Music Notes September 2021(A little late…)
September’s Music Notes. Written in late September, but somehow didn’t get published.
1 The Beat – I Just Can’t Stop It
Typically on my drive to work, I catch Indie 88’s Josie Dye show, but after the 30 Second Song Challenge, I often switch to a CD. The Beat’s debut always puts me in a good mood (I can listen to “Sister Ray” in its entirety if I skip Josie, but then I’m unfit for work)
2 The Style Council – Long Hot Summer:The Story of the Style Council
A double CD set from a couple of years ago is a nice introduction to the band. All the hits and some choice cuts. I actually prefer listening to the albums rather than the singles as the mood and versatility of Weller’s vision really emerges. Not always successful, but never boring.
3 M(h)aol – Gender Studies EP
While the EP doesn’t drop until the end of October, the title track from Gender Studies is out now. Great feminist critique over a chugging riff. Sometimes deliberately political songs fail as politics and art – this works as both.
4 Jennifer Otter Bickerdike – Nico: You are Beautiful and You are Alone
Brilliant biography of Nico. If you are even a casual fan of her world or of the Warhol/Velvets scene and beyond, you’ll want to get this book.
5 Green Day – American Idiot
Oddly enough, I had never listened to the entire thing until a few weeks back.Two decades after its release, the album has aged very well. Punk, ballads and a few things that don’t quite fit into either group. Well done lads.
6 The Chap
I’ve had a subscription to this magazine for a couple of years and it’s always worth it. The new issue has an extensive interview with Ron and Russell Mael (AKA Sparks), a piece on the ye-ye girls movement, and a tribute to the sartorial elegance of Charlie Watts.
7 Marina Topley-Bird – Forever I Wait
Topley-Bird will likely always be known for her work with Tricky and Massive Attack. While not to understate the brilliance of that work, her solo work is equally impressive. The final cut of this album, “Rain” underscored by a simple string back is achingly beautiful. A great record.
8 The Felice Brothers – “To Do List”
A whimsical ode to the glory of the to-do list. Would that we could achieve it all.
9 Best Coast – Crazy For You
Put on this one the other day. Such a sweet summertime album, it always made me forget that we didn’t really have a summer this year either.
10 Various artists – I’ll Be Your Mirror
I know I plugged this last month, but the whole album is put now, and if you’re a Velvets fan, you’ll want to hear this. Some interesting takes (the St. Vincent and Michael Stipe cuts), and some as you’d expect (the Thurston Moore/Bobby Gillespie track), but all worth a listen. Currently digging King Princess’ version of “There She Goes Now”
Till next month.
Mac Intosh – a Tribute by Internationalist Perspective
Internationalist Perspective has published a moving tribute to Mac Intosh who passed away in August. It includes his political biography as well as recounting the enormous contributions he made. I’m still shaken by his passing, and the loss it has meant. Please read this appreciation.
New York Archive of Autonomous Marxism
This site came to my attention a couple of days ago. Seems to be a lot of material from the CLR James tradition (a big influence on me). The blog is a bit thin right now, but will be adding more stuff soon. Still the stuff there is interesting and well worth a look.
The Canadian Federal Election (2021) Post-Mortem
Bloomberg called the election a “$600 million cabinet shuffle.” Not far off, because in this election that no one wanted, very little was achived by the bourgeois parties.
The day before the election, I predicted:
- The Liberals would stay the same (they gained two)
- The Conservatives would lose a few (they lost two)
- The NDP would pick up a couple (they gained one)
- The Greens would be reduced to one (they won two)
- I had no idea about the Bloc Quebecois (they gained one)
- The People’s Party would be shut out again (they were, although they managed a significant vote jump)
I was hoping for a minority government as they can usually do less damage, and that’s where we stay. Given the number of minority governments in the last two decades, you might be forgiven for thinking the voting Canadian population agrees. What an even greater waste of time and money than usual.
But a word needs to be said about the People’s Party, Maxime Bernier’s vanity project. The PPC increased its vote total from under 300,000 to over 800,000 votes, but in the first past the post system failed to come anywhere close to winning representation. Bernier polled a strong, but still distant second in his former riding. That was as close as they got.
Despite some commentators warning of creeping Canadian fascism, the PPC vote is likely ephemeral. Remember in 2011 when the NDP painted Quebec orange only to lose just as impressive in the next election? By opportunistically positioning itself as the voice of anti-lockdown and anti-vax (though does anyone believe Maxime Bernier has not been vaccinated), the PPC was the recipient of a protest vote by those in safe Tory ridings, first-time voters excited by “doing something,” and of course those across the political spectrum frustrated by Covid.
Can the PPC consolidate that vote? Since the PPC’s platform on these issues was negative, there seems to be little they can do (aside from the farcical attempt to storm the Eaton Centre yesterday). If you want a look at how it might work, visit Alberta where 100% of the covid cases in hospital are unvaccinated and the healthcare system is about to be overwhelmed. And if Covid does fade away, the wedge issue fades with it, and if it doesn’t death or vaccination follows.
Plus ca change.
Ten Thoughts on the Canadian Federal Election
It is a truism that if voting could change anything, it would be made illegal. In fact, in many countries, the state is so confident in the inability of voting to make a difference, it’s been made compulsory (the US has its own version of this democratic mystification by seeming having a permanent election cycle – Trump filed his re-election papers as soon as he was sworn in). Tomorrow is Canada’s Federal election. Here’s a few random observations about the parties.
- It seems like a no-brainer, but if you want to have people involved in the political process, don’t call an election in late-August – people are still trying to enjoy the last of the generally short Canadian summer, and worrying about sending the kids back to school, especially with a fourth Covid wave in ascendance. Perhaps because of this, it’s been a very low-key campaign. There are very few lawn signs on front lawns (at a guess it seems as if 70% of them are on “public” land.) One candidate knocked on my door, and I’ve received only three pieces of campaign literature (from that same candidate).
- Unlike its cousins to the south Canada follows the British parliamentary model rather than the presidential one. As a result, minority governments, like the previous federal one, while not the norm, are not uncommon either. It’s widely believed that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to call an election was based on the calculation that his government’s not as terrible as certain Conservative province’s response to Covid would translate into him regaining his majority. So far, this has proven to be a miscalculation as the LIberals have trailed the opposition Conservatives since the start of the campaign.
- The Conservatives started well with as much as a 5% lead over the Liberals in the polls, but this has dwindled to a statistically insignificant difference the day before the vote. In addition to the albatros of Alberta and Ontario around their neck (see below), the Conservatives have faced a righter-wing party, the People’s Party posing as “true Conservatives” and likely draining votes from them, possibly costing them as many as a dozen seats.
- Canada’s social democracy, the New Democratic Party, lost almost half of its seats in the last election (dropping from 44 in 2015 to 24 in 2019). In this campaign, the second for leader Jagmeet Singh, the party seems hardly posed to paint the country orange. Nevertheless the unions and small leftist organizations (among them Socialist Action, the International Socialists and Fightback!) are calling for a vote (“But be sure to ask for socialism as well”)
- In the 2019 election, Canada’s Green Party elected three MPs, its best result ever. True, one of them subsequently defected to the Liberals, but still something of a breakthrough. This time around, the Greens seem unlikely to repeat their success. The Greens are polling around 3%, and will no doubt be the victims of the first past the post system, but also a spectacular self-immolation earlier this year where the central office moved toward dumping leader Annamie Paul, largely it seems on the grounds of race.
- The People’s Party of Canada began as a vanity project for leader Maxime Bernier after he lost the leadership of the Conservative Party to Andrew Scheer. In the 2019 election, the PPC failed to win a single seat and Bernier lost his as well. However, by opportunistically positioning itself as the voice of the anti-vax, anti-lockdown movement (as well as to some other wacky conspiracy theories and US rightists), the PPC has avoided disappearing into the garbage can of history. Currently polling around 6%, it is still not expected to win a seat, however, it may have prolonged its existence before its core grows tired of being on the fringes and limps back to the federal Conservatives.
- The separatist Bloc Quebecois is polling at almost 7%, but exists only in Quebec meaning its impact in Quebec is larger for that: in the 2019 election despite having less than half the NDP’s share of the popular vote, the BQ won 8 more seats than the New Democrats. The general view is that the Bloc does better in tough times, since they can make the argument Quebec would be better off outside Canada more easily, so currently the Bloc is the main challenger to the LIberals in the province.
- While this may have been the most boring and unwanted campaign in recent memory, it has also been one of the most unpleasant. A rent-a-mob of anti-Trudeau hecklers has followed the Liberal campaign around on tour – one heckler confronted Trudeau calling his wife a whore (Trudeau’s response “don’t you have a hospital to bother?” was well-received), while a PPC riding president threw gravel at him (and was later charged with assault). PPC leader Maxime Bernier was hit with an egg, but everyone except his supporters dislike him so much, no one cared. It’s a mistake to blame this all on Trumpist policies, but nothing succeeds like success.
- But Covid is the background to all of this. While the opposition parties in Ottawa have been howling “Trudeau must go” for a couple of years, the moment the election was called the Conservatives immediately pivoted that there shouldn’t be an election during times of Covid. It’s mildly amusing that they travelled from “Why isn’t the government getting us vaccines” to “the government paid too much for them” before reaching “you can’t make people take them” in less than a year. (About 15% of Conservative candidates have revealed they have been double vaxxed) .
Still, you might also blame the Conservative-led provinces of Alberta and Ontario for the election, as it’s clear that Trudeau though their dreadful response to Covid would translate into support for him. In July, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney opened up Alberta proclaiming Covid was done and promising the best summer ever. He then went on a two-week vacation (which lasted a month) as the fourth wave took hold. Last week Alberta declared a state of emergency as hospitals threaten to be overwhelmed by next Saturday. O’Toole, who earlier praised Kenney’s approach, cannot bring himself to say Alberta or even mention Kenney by name.
In Ontario, the Tory government is also MIA, and recently decided to delay the opening of the fall session for a month because they felt they couldn’t make decisions until the election was over. Premier Doug Ford has not given a press conference since early September although he did recently tweet a video urging people to buy smile cookies from his favourite donut shop Tim Hortons. (in all fairness, the cookies, which admittedly are pretty good, do raise money for charity) - I’m usually wrong about stuff like this, but I’m going to predict a Liberal minority. The Liberals stay the same. The NDP pick up a couple. The Tories lose a few. The Greens are reduced to a single seat. The PPC do not win anything. Te Bloc lose a couple. I like minority governments. They generally do less damage.
Races/candidates to watch: Annamie Paul; Derek Sloan (kicked out of the Conservative Party for being an arsehole and taking a donation from a Canadian neo-Nazi): Maxime Bernier. I expect my riding to stay Liberal. I’m probably going to watch CBC for the results.
Charles H Kerr Publishing Company
It seems appropriate for this year’s Labour Day that Hard Crackers has published a lovely interview some of of the people involved with the reemergence of Charles H Kerr, which has been in business since 1886. Kerr recently published Noel Ignatiev’s memoir Acceptable Men (close to my top of things to read) And, why not go directly to the Kerr site itself?
I had lunch with Franklin Rosemont in 2004 and we went over to the Kerr office afterwards. It was exactly as you imagine a socialist publisher’s office to be. Glad to see it’s still going.
Mac Intosh
The recent death of Internationalist Perspective member Mac Intosh is a profound loss on a personal level for those who knew him, but also on a political level for the pro-revolutionary milieu.
His passing leaves behind more than half a century of activity in revolutionary circles. I’m uncertain if he was a member of News and Letters of a part of its periphery, but he was a founding member of Internationalism, later the US section of the International Communist Current, and later a founding member of Internationalist Perspective.
I met Mac Intosh in 2004 at the first IP conference I attended. Over the next 15 years, I was fortunate to benefit from his wisdom, his insights, and his generosity. This week, I’ve re-read some of the article he wrote for Internationalist Perspective and marvelled at their value. But more than the writings, I’ll miss the man.
The poet Cicero once wrote:
“The life of the dead is placed on the memories of the living. The love you gave in life keeps people alive beyond their time. Anyone who was given love will always live on in another’s heart.
Truly the best we can hope.
IP is planning to publish a collection of his writings both as a tribute to his contributions, and also that those writings continue might to provide insight for others. See the statement on the IP website
Music Notes – August 2021
As you head back to school, some great things old and new.
- Amyl and the Sniffers – Comfort to Me
Amyl and the Sniffers are one of those bands, like the Sleaford Mods, whose reputation precedes them. You heard the buzz, but even when you finally explored their sound, nothing could have prepared you for how good they would be. Second album is a little more polished than the first, but every bit as enjoyable a garage-punk sound as you remember. - The Shadracks – From Human Like Forms
And speaking of garage rock, there’s a certain purity, an honesty to garage rock that is refreshing. This terrific second album by the Shadracks was recorded in four days and is everything you’d expect. Great crunchy rock ‘n’ roll. - The Stranglers – “If Something’s Going to Kill me (It might as well be Love)”
From the original band only Jean-Jacques Burnel remains. Hugh Cornwall departed decades ago, Jet Back retired in 2015, and Dave Greenfield died from Covid in 2020. Still, the first single from the forthcoming album Dark Matters has a lovely poppy Stranglers sound to it. The album comes out September 10. - Fugazi – 13 Songs
LIstening to a lot of Fugazi these days too. This album of course is a compilation of the first two Fugazi releases, Fugazi and Margin Walker. Post-hardcore, it could be argued, begins here. - Various artists – I’ll Be Your Mirror
I’m thinking a lot about the Velvet Underground since that Warhol show at the AGO. This re-imagining of the debut album comes out on Verve on September 24, with an all star-cast: Michael Stipe, Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen, Thurston Moore and Bobby Gillespie, Fontaines DC, and more. The Kurt Vile and Courtney Barratt tracks are streaming now. - The Specials – “Freedom Highway”
The new Specials album is a protest album. I know what you’re thinking, “Aren’t all the Specials albums protest albums?” And there’s a point to that. Still, the new one, actually entitled Protest Songs, is an album of protest songs from left field, including covers of Frank Zappa, Big Bill Broonzy, and Talking Heads. Stream their cover of the Staple Singers “Freedom Highway” and Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” right now. - The Revillos – “Stratoplay – The Box Set”
Do you really need a six-disc 140 song Revillos box set? Yeah, you do. Revillos singers Eugene Reynolds and Fay Fife were previously part of the Rezillos, one of the great pop-punk bands of the late 70s. After the band’s acrimonious split, Reynolds and Fife dropped the punk rock guitar sound and pushed forwarded the sixties sci-fi surf sounds. Guaranteed to brighten your mood. - Various artists – Manchester: A City United in Music
A 2-CD musical history of Manchester courtesy of Ace records is a delightful journey beginning in 1952 with Ewan MacColl’s “Dirty old Town” and concluding in 1994 with Oasis’ “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star.” Along the way, we meet the Hollies, Georgie Fame, 10CC, Slaughter and the Dogs, Joy Division, and the Stone Roses, and many more. No compilation of this sort gets everyone (the missing piece here is the Smiths although Johnny Marr appears as a solo artist), but this is pretty close. Well worth a listen.
- Various artists – Sophisticated Boom Boom! The Shadow Morton Story
Any collection with the Shangri-Las, the New York Dolls and Mott the Hoople is worth a look. I could have lived without the Iron Butterfly and Vanilla Fudge tracks, but that’s just me. As with all the Ace releases, an informative booklet accompanies the album. - Joni Mitchell – Blue
So I’m 50 years late to this party. Never a Joni Mitchell fan, but a recent article (in the Guardian? ) made me think, give it a listen. And while I’m saying nothing that people don’t already know, Blue is brilliant.
Till next time.
And…
Sadly we have to mention the losses of Don Everly, Charlie Watts, and Lee “Scratch” Perry. Three exceptional and influential musical figures who will be missed.
Radical Reprints
In the mid-1990s when I first started to explore the “ultra-left” (for want of a better word), to be honest there wasn’t a lot of material around. A few Geocites sites, but most of the rarer council communist material still seemed to exist only in yellowing hard to come-by editions. Within a few years though the expansion of the internet meant that a virtual (ouch) treasure trove of material had been unloaded and was easy to access.
Still, a lot of people still like hard copies,, so here’s an idea for anyone who likes to have the printed copy rather than reading off of a screen:
Radical Reprints is a small collective which republishes, translates, and recirculates forgotten or print inaccessible radical works as books and zines on mainstream and underground platforms. We share all print files and all templates for free for anyone online, whether they are indie printers who have access to a printing press to print books, or a hobbyist from home who just wants to print three wallet-sized zines to gift to friends. All of our print books are only priced between 5 – 30￠more than manufacturing cost and retailer cut, and all of these proceeds go to mutual aid funds we see every month.
Returning to Normal Patterns
Busy with work related projects which has meant several pieces which were started, did not get finished. As a result with the ending of the great “Spartacist” debate, viewing patterns have returned to usual, more modest, numbers. Maybe I should write something about the ICC?
