30 Day Song Challenge - Day 09

A song that makes you happy.

A bit random with this one. I didn't really think too much about this choice. Another time I could have picked 20 other songs, but this song hit the spot on the day when I picked it. I can't remember if I bought it as a single, but I do remember that I would listen to it again and again in the Charing Cross Road branch of Borders back in the day. I'm sure I convinced myself at the time that there was a Marxian tinge to the lyrics - for the obvious reasons. I was deluding myself:

Propellerheads feat: Miss Shirley Bassey - 'History Repeating'

Bright Summer - Dark Autumn by Robert Barltrop (Waltham Forest Libraries and Arts Department 1986)

And, in the height of the summer, the 'red' air-raid warnings began in the daytimes. There was a siren on the island in the road junction near us, at the top of a very tall grey post. At the shop we heard the deep metallic growl as it started up, rising to the harsh wail which went on for a couple of minutes. People scurried away, and the shops closed; the streets were nearly empty by the time the siren finished sounding. Nothing happened. As a reminder that it was not a meaningless warning, bombs were dropped on Croydon and killed sixty-two people. Sometimes on cloudy days when the warning was on we would hear the throbbing of an aeroplane engine, hidden and persistent as if hovering not far away.

Yet, in this threatened state, normal activities and recreations went on. On their afternoons off the shop assistants were going to the West End to see Gone With the Wind (they said it was too long - we were used to films which lasted an hour and a half). The dance bands and comedy shows on the radio: Jack Warner playing the Cockney soldier in 'Garrison Theatre', Robb Wilton, 'Itma' with its fund of catchphrases; Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters singing 'Bei Mir Bist du Schoen'. Pubs flourished, as did dance halls. There was said to be a boom in reading the classics of English literature, and I suppose the black-out nights were an opportunity which many people had previously lacked for reading. The book I remember from those weeks before the Blitz was a paperback novel called This Bright Summer. Several of my friends were reading it; it was well written, and passionate in places, and in my mind it belongs to the summer of 1940.

The Black Album by Hanif Kureishi (Scribner 1995)

Brownlow went on with his packing but kept stopping to look at Shahid - who was turning the aubergine in his hand - like he wanted to say something. "The thing is, this religion - the superstitions, cults, forms of worship, prayers - some are beautiful, some interesting, all have their purposes. But who'd have imagined they'd survive rationalism? Yet just when you thought God was dead and buried, you realize he was merely awaiting resurrection! Every fucker's discovering some God inside them now. And who am I to challenge this?"
"Exactly. I'd say you're just a weak bastard, Dr. Brownlow."
"Thank you. Are they the fools or am I the fool? Where does that leave me?"
Where could it leave you?"
"Because, because, you i-idiot, everything I believed has turned into shit. There we were, right up to the end of the seventies, arguing about society after the r-revolution, the nature of the dialectic, the meaning of history. And all the while, as we debated in our journals, it was being taken from us. The British people didn't want e-education, housing, the a-arts, justice, equality . . . "
"Why's that?"
Because they're a bunch of fucking greedy, myopic c-cunts."
"The working class?"
"Yes!"
"A bunch of cunts?"
"Yes!" Brownlow struggled to contain himself. "No, no, it's more complicated. Very complicated." He was sobbing. "I can't say they've betrayed us - though I think it, I do! It's not true, not true! They've b-b-betrayed themselves!"
He untucked his shirt and wiped it across his drenched face. He threw down his hands, put his head back and, with his lips quivering, angled his thinker's forehead at the ceiling.
"C-c-cut my throat. Please. Lost in more than my fortieth year - no direction home! End me before things get w-w-w-worse!"
Shahid leapt up and rushed to the window. Thinking he'd heard Chad coughing, he concealed himself behind the dusty curtain and peered outside.
"You don't have to plead, Brownlow, the throat-cutters are checking the address right now. They'll be coming up the front path. If you stay in that position, redemption will be on the way!"
Shahid could see no one. But it was dark, and if his enemies did reach him, he'd be trapped here; and Brownlow gibbering like Gogol's madman awaiting the straitjacket, would hardly provide cover.

Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

Hey Zinesters

Oops, turns out Communist Headache was an ultra-left, rather than a council communist zine.

Apologies. I was working from a hazy memory of the zine that I picked up in the 56a Infoshop in south east london - which, if memory serves me right, was a molotov cocktails throw away from the old Labour Party headquarters in Walworth Road - about 10 or 11 years ago.

Now that I think about it, all I can remember about the zine was that the author - or authors - were based in Sheffield, he/they worked in a library and I'm sure that there was a drawing of an insect on the front cover that looked like it'd been cut and pasted from a school textbook. Always loved the title. For sheer imagination, it's up there with 'Proletarian Gob' and Dan Chatterton's 'Chatterton's Commune - the Atheist Communistic Scorcher'

What was I doing haunting the 56a Infoshop? I think I must have been on a hunt for a copy of the aforementioned Proletarian Gob. I really would go the extra-yard in those olden days for the obscure and badly-photocopied.

UPDATE

Turns out that typing "Communist Headache" into the google search engine does turn up more than my blog entry and a ten part article by Weekly Worker's Jack Conrad on Jesus Christ and the Dialectic of History. 'White Punks on Bordiga'? I like the sound of that. Reminds me of half-digested Stewart Home novels. I'll have to check it out when I get back.

Cheers to 'Butchersapron' for the correction.

"I'm ripping down that poster. I fucking hate socialists."

The title of this blog is from The Man Who Feel Asleep's Tube Gossip. One of the funniest things I have read on the web in a long time. If you have a spare half hour, it's worth checking out.

Some more of my favourites are reproduced below (and thanks to SIAW for the original hat tip.)

I got chocolate money, but it was Euros.... I felt very modern.

Rebrov's gone from the Champions League to the bench at West Ham. That's the Spurs effect.

I smoke cigarettes because I like them, not so that I can get criticised by you every ten minutes.

I spoke to God and he told me that he hates you.

Anyway, she has to go round everyone in the IT department and remind them not to wank in the toilets.

That's not a dog - it's a rat with delusions of grandeur.

Osama Bin Laden is like the Tupac Shakur of the terrorist world. He's dead, but they keep re-releasing old statements of his.

Some people in the third world can't afford DVDs and have to watch VHS videos.

I would never punish my kids by hitting them. I just make them feel guilty and all twisted up inside.

I was actually born in Harpenden. But I got out of there pretty fast.

He was pretending to play with the phone, but he was obviously trying to photograph me.

You have the chin of a Welshman.

There’s nothing worse than those white Ipod headphones.