Staring back at me on the magazine rack at Union Square's Barnes & Noble

What is it about me missing the important memos? What happened to the 50% plus one scenario of enacting SPGB style socialism? Did a floor resolution overturn the long established Party position?

It does beg the question: Is it time for me to invoke my favourite Marxist quote . . . 'I don't want to be a member of a club that will have me as a member.'? Maybe it's time for my very own bailout package?

I wonder if I can get the Newsweek front cover made into a T shirt? . . . I wonder if this the thirty-fifth or thirty sixth time that some bright spark in publishing on either side of the Atlantic has used William Harcourt's famous quote as a headline since the shit hit the capitalism fan? I wonder if they know they're quoting Harcourt? . . . I wonder if they know that nine times out of ten when they're lifting the quote they've misrepresented the context in which Harcourt said those famous words? . . . I wonder if the World of Free Access people are tearing their hair out now that 'socialism' is somewhere between 'Britney Spears' and 'Christian Bale's rantathon' in Google's most popular searches? . . . I wonder how to end . . .

Ashford (Kent) and Ronnie Simpson (Glasgow Celtic)

Morphing Into A Music Blog (6)

OK, so I didn't get the Sunderland/Newcastle result right, and that doesn't bode well for my other predictions regarding the ultra-left TinTin movie. I better just continue with the blog making its transition from being a spew of words dedicated to solipcism, spgb'ism and seltic to a blog dedicated to solipcism, spgb'ism, seltic and the sampling of mp3s.

A few music blog links for your sampling delectation:

17 Seconds brings you Mark E Smith doing his 'vocal-ahs' to a series of cover versions from down the years. Naturally, 'Victoria' and 'There's A Ghost In My House' are listed; they were The Fall's biggest hits. But I'd never heard The Fall's version of 'A Day in the Life' before. Smiffy should have got a guest vocalist in for the Paul McCartney bit. Maybe Rory Erickson was busy that week.
The post also includes The Fall's cover of 'Mr Pharmacist'. The song that brought The Fall onto my radar all those years ago. Good stuff.

The Vinyl District is currently doing a brilliant series of posts on the seventies as seen through the speakers of AM radio. Simple but effective, he's taking that decade year by year with artwork from the period and accompanying mp3 links to sample tracks.
I'll be honest, I'm really waiting for his posts covering the second half of the seventies as I'm intrigued what sort of tracks he will post, but for the oldsters out there, he's already covered '70; '71; '72; '73; '74.

Check out the album covers from 1971. Never knew that James Dean Bradfield used to be in Badfinger.

Weekend Shots from The Vinyl District Vinyl District must have heard me, 'cos whilst he takes a break from the seventies series - apparently it's a Monday thru' Friday thing - he throws in a side dish of proto-punk tracks from 1977. Brilliant to finally be able to check out for the first time Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill's pre-Simple Minds band, Johnny and the Self Abusers, (a foreshadowing of Simple Minds descent into stadium politicised rock in the second half of the eighties, when he became known as 'Jim Kerr, the Self-Important Wanker'). The post also features tracks from The Buzzcocks (including Devoto), Tubeway Army, Radio Stars (why weren't they bigger?) and the Flamin' Groovies.

The Vinyl Villain has a post dedicated to Bourgie Bourgie, another Scottish band from the second half of the eighties who didn't pull their weight during the 'Great Pop Wars of 1984-1988'. (See such other non-combatants as Flesh, The Big Dish, Love & Money and Owen Paul.)
I totally remember that YouTube clip of BB from The Tube. Is it not enough that I have heavy recourse to eighties musical nostalgia that I have to be stricken down with fond memories of eighties music shows now? I'll be singing the praises of Razzamatazz next.

Just had a thought: Isn't every other post on Vinyl Villain dedicated to Paul Quinn in some way or another? I get it: 'Breaking Point' is a great track - probably the third or fourth track I ever tried to hunt down when I discovered the delights of file sharing - but, for me, PQ's finest four minutes will always be, 'Mud In Your Eye', his duet with Edwyn Collins off the Orange Juice's 1982 album, Rip It Up.

If I'm going to cut and paste write a blog about music blogs, I should throw in an mp3 to sample as a way of finishing the post.

Orange Juice - Mud In Your Eye mp3

That can be my contribution to the 'Remember Paul Quinn' Campaign.

A Mashup* in TH

Radar: "Their ringer spotted our ringer."

A total misuse and misapplication of a film quote as you will see below but it is drag down Friday, and I couldn't help but think of the above quote from M*A*S*H, Robert Altman's classic 1970 anti-war film, after I spotted this comment from 'Johng' over at Socialist Unity Blog:

"In other words this was an anti-democratic move. All this talk of late surges. Really. How absurd. Hundreds of people were being recruited and paid for by a single counciler just a couple of weeks ago. Did you not notice?" (From here.)

Mmm, an SWPer getting all upset at the idea of someone packing a meeting. Whatever next? A mormon complaining about someone turning up unannounced on their doorstep on a wet and windy Wednesday night? In fact, I can just picture it:

The scene: The doorstep to a mansion situated just outside Boston. Two people with clipboards and a bundle of papers are at the door. The one who rings the doorbell does all the talking.

Bright eyed and bushy-tailed doorstepper - Mr Romney?

Mitt Romney [hesitant and wary.] yes?

BEABTD - You signed our petition back in August . . .

MR - I did?

BEABTD - Yes, it was about plans for a local incinerator.

MR - OK, I vaguely remember that, and did you vote for me like I asked when signing the petition?

BEABTD - Sorry, we'd already committed ourselves to Ron Paul. He has a more consistently anti-imperialist position on the war.

MR - [clearly irritated] I'm a busy man. What do you want?

BEABTD - Well, as you signed our petition, we've thought you'd be interested in an event we've organised. It will be a week of debate, drama and the dialectic.

[Bushy-eyed hands Romney a glossy brochure advertising the event. A familiar face stares out from the brochure.]

MR - Wait a minute? This was months ago. I'm a mormon not a moron. You know there's a difference, right? Wait up . . . I get it. You don't know how to finish this post, do you?

BEABTD - [Now looking anything but bright-eyed. If anything, looking a bit sheepish.] Don't know what you mean.

MR - You should have finished the post on the quote from M*A*S*H. That was one of your better efforts.

BEABTD - [Now totally crestfallen.} I guess so. But we still have to sell another five tickets for this event or our district organiser will have us doing paper sales outside Foodtown for the next six months. What do you suggest?

MR - "Off you go - fuck off, fuck off the lot of you" [Slams the door in their face.]

BEABTD - [Talking to the door just shut in his face.] Ok, totally understand. Would you like to take out a supporters subscription to our newspaper, then?

Mashup - "A Jamaican Creole term meaning to destroy".

XTC's 'Great Fire'

Latest song under discussion by Andy Partridge and Todd Bernhardt over at the XTC MySpace page is the excellent 'Great Fire' from the 'Mummer' album. (I've previously declared my opinion on the song on the blog here.)

Not as instantaneous a pop classic as a lot of their early singles, 'Great Fire' did have to creep up on me before becoming one of my favourite XTC songs. But for all that, I was still surprised to discover that the song didn't even chart when it was released as a single in '83. Coming so soon after 'Senses Working Overtime' and 'English Settlement', I bet it was a bigger surprise for the band and their record company at the time.

Andy P reveals in the interview that the song was played on Radio 1 a grand total of one time! That was when Radio 1 could make or break a song in a matter of weeks. It'd have probably been better if it had never been played at all. That way they could have at least claimed they were victims of some sort of deliberate campaign to kill their career.

I'm trying to think back to why they might have been so out in the cold by '83. I can only speculate that by that point in their career they were caught between the hard rock and the missing chart place of not being pretty enough to compete with the Duran Durans and Spandau Ballets on the one hand and not having that cache of being new or left-field enough to still be championed by the likes of John Peel and Janice Long (the last XTC Peel Session was way back in '79).

Any chance of being part and parcel of the Second British Invasion of America at that time was effectively killed off by Partridge's stage fright and refusal to tour, and it would be another three or four years before XTC would become an overnight sensation in the States via 'Dear God' picking up airplay on college radio.

OK, I'm getting off topic and before I start hunting high and low on the internet to see if John Hughes ever featured an XTC song in one of his films*, I'll jump back on blogging track by echoing the opinion of one of the posters on the XTC MySpace page in stating that this is definitely one of the best interviews so far in the series between Andy P and Todd Bernhardt.

Granted a great bulk of the interview is made up of the muso bits that leaves me in a fog, but even I in my musical illiteracy recognise that it is in the bridge of the song, when Andy P. kicks in with the line "I've been in love before . . . " and the music totally shifts in mood and tone that moves it up from a good XTC song to a great one.

To placate us musical numpties, the interview also carries the by now expected abundance of Andy P's anecdotes, skewed viewed of the history of XTC and the world, and a brilliant humour which spells out once again that you have to be a clever bastard to write with the acuity and wit of Andy Partridge. I especially loved this passage from the interview:

AP: I was listening to the song today, as is the sort of thing I do when you ask me about these songs, so I put it on and had a listen. But, just to show you how paranoid I am -- I know there are some fans traipsing around the town [there was a meeting of XTC fans that weekend in Swindon, to see The SheBeats and tribute band The Fuzzy Warblers play at a local club the night before this interview], so I sat here with headphones [chuckling] so they wouldn't hear the sounds of my music coming out of my house and think, "What a wanker he is, listening to his own songs!"

I actually heard a horrible story about Sting -- where'd I hear this story, about someone who went to dinner with him, and a few other people...

TB: I sent you that! From the Holy Moly newsletter...

AP: Yeah, you did! He pulls out his iPod during dinner, cutting himself off from the conversation...

TB: ... and the guests ask Trudi if they said anything wrong, to make him be so anti-social. She says, "He always does it, and the worst thing is, he's listening to his own fucking music."

AP: Yeah! Unbelievable. Well, I didn't want that to be the case, I didn't want people thinking, "Wow! There's Andy, and he's listening to his own songs!"

TB: [laughing] Right. Sobbing.

AP: [laughs] Yeah. Sobbing gently.

I think that passage is all the more brilliant and funny, 'cos I can hear him telling this story in his West Country accent. (You can check out more wondeful quotes from this series of interviews in this old post from the old blog.)

And after the recent Colin Moulding slideshow on the blog, I thought would also include a picture of the 'Great Fire' record cover with this post. I'm glad that I sought it out, 'cos it tipped me the wink to the possibility that there is another XTC fan within the ranks of the SPGB back in Britain. How else do you explain that the cover of 'Great Fire' carries such a strong resemblance to a particular Socialist Standard front cover from the mid to late nineties?

At the time of the issue's appearance, I remembering thinking that the layout editor of the Standard must have been on something to come up with such an outlandish design but I now think that it was nothing more than being exposed to a bit too much Psonic Psunshine. OK, I'll stop here before this paragraph turns into a Super Furry Animals lyric.

*It turns out that XTC had the song 'Happy Families' on the soundtrack of the 1988 John Hughes film, 'She's Having a Baby'. Never seen the film, never heard the song. Never will see the film, but I'm off to hunt down the song.

Pete and the Dud

Of course he wrote 'Michelle'. It was the only bum note on what is, otherwise, my favourite Beatles album. Paul McCartney and Pete Doherty take time out from the tabloid life to stroke each other in this month's Observer Music Monthly.

And naturally they have things in common: the Barat/Lennon comparisons and trade offs; both being seen as the well dressed good-looking sensitive ones who the fans wanted to take home to meet their mums; Doherty born in '79, Macca dying in '79.

It all adds up to a bit of journalistic fluff, but I did like McCartney's anecdote about meeting Penny Rimbaud at the height of punk in the seventies, and fingers crossed that the late Linda McCartney's reported love for The Smiths didn't begin and end with 'Meat is Murder'.

I'm not sure that these type of music magazine blind dates ever work. Wasn't there that case of the NME covering Paul Weller meeting Pete Townsend at the height of The Jam's fame? I seem to remember reading - maybe in The Beat Concerto? - that they hated each other on sight. But that was nothing in comparison to that time at the height of mullets and militancy on Merseyside that the now sadly defunct Record Mirror covered The Redskins meeting Derek Hatton within its pages.

Sure the pictures of the meeting looked cheery enough, but the gossip is that afterwards it took seven copies of the Militant International Review to mop up the spilled egos. Any advancement for a unified vanguardist left at that time = via the SWP's recent Open Letter to the Militant Tendency - was squandered over an argument as trivial as who played bass on the originally recording of Wilson Pickett's "Ninety Nine and a Half (Won't Do)".

Damn those petit-bourgeois Bolshevik-Centrist-liquidationist types . . . those completely demoralized elements, wearing button down Ben Sherman shirts, sporty number one haircuts and knocked off shiny Pierre Cardin suits.