Music Notes: September 2023
Hiatus or not…a number of people wrote to me to make sure everything was OK after last week’s announcement. Thank you. Truth was, I was just a little overwhelmed with some other things, and if I can’t do something well, I’d prefer not to do it at all. No, I’ll probably try to put out posts, but at a slower rate for now. In anyevent, Music Notes will continue.
1 The Who – Who’s Next (Super-deluxe edition)
Now, Who’s Next, make no mistake, is a great record. Beyond “Baba O’Riley” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” there are plenty of amazing things. Still, this edition is nuts – 11 discs including the original album, 2 CDs of demos, 2 CDs of sessions, four live discs, and a blu-ray. I’m sure if you are the ultimate Who fan this is a dream, but after shelling out $400 for this behemoth, you have to quit your job in order to find time to listen to the whole thing. Maybe the 2 disc edition…
2. The Replacements – Tim (Let It Bleed Edition)
Having just dissed the Who for a bloated release, I come to the Replacements deluxe version of Tim. Am I a hypocrite? I can see myself getting this one – a remastered original, an amazing Ed Stasium mix, demos, and live stuff. Brilliant.
3 Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros – Live at Acton Town Hall
It’s hard to listen to this without conflicting emotions. It’s a Clash heavy set of prime Strummer material and featuring Mick Jones on three songs. I’m always glad the Clash never reunited as it would likely have soured the memory of that brilliant band (I’m deliberately leaving out Cut the Crap here), but to hear Mick and Joe together for a final time, well. But that’s the flipside. It was the final time. A month later, Strummer was gone. And you know that as you listen.
4 Black Country, New Road
I’ve seen a lot of shows at Toronto’s Concert Hall – The Cramps, Billy Bragg, the Beastie Boys, Ice-T, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Replacements, Pearl Jam, Sonic Youth, the Violent Femmes, and the Jesus and Mary Chain, and likely more. Good size venue where the sound was crisp and the slightlines were good. But then it closed and was a TV studio for a while. Now, it’s back and it’s exactly the same. The other week I saw Black Country, New Road there in a sold-out show. Pretty good show despite the fact having to stand all night is getting harder and harder. The band was in good form and sounded great to me despite me being unfamiliar with this album, and the switch up of the band following the departure of singer Isaac Wood. Someone asked me to describe the band and I replied avant-garde post-punk folk-jazz. Dunno if that’s entirely accurate, but the band went through most of those styles, much to the delight of the Toronto audience.
5 The Feelies – Some Kinda Love
New Jersey’s the Feelies are in good company – bands inspired by the Velvet Underground. For me, they’ve always reminded me of the third Velvets album (feel free to disagree, it’s cool), and that’s entirely a compliment. This live album, which will be released in October, it is a pretty amazing thing; a live Velvets cover album drawing from all four albums. You can hear two songs on Bandcamp and pre-order there. A fitting homage.
6. The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground
And speaking of the Velvets. Since my August trip to the Warhol Museum, the Velvets have been higher in the rotation. I usually alternate between the first two albums as my favourite, but this third is really amazing too:. From the rockers of “What Goes On ” and “Beginning to See the Light,” to the prettiest song Lou Reed ever wrote, “Pale Blue Eyes.” Even “The Murder Mystery” is worth a listen (though it didn’t entirely work). I’m working my way toward the live stuff.
7 Margo Cilker – Valley of Heart’s Delight
OK, I’m plugging a record I haven’t listened to yet (though the last one was great, and the reviews from this are very good as well). The real reason I’m looking forward to this is she’s playing the Monarch Tavern in Toronto in a couple of weeks. Never been to the Monarch, but its capacity of 120 makes me very excited. Watch for a review.
8 The Rolling Stones – “Angry”
On a certain level, my feeling is what’s the point? Is it even the Stones? It’s Mick, Keef and Ron. The announced album, Hackney Diamonds, is packed with friends and celebrity cameos (Gaga, Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney, even Bill Wyman), which is usually a sign of flagging interest,but you know, the single isn’t half bad. Punchy, and with a great guitar sound.
9 Sleaford Mods – “Big Pharma”
New Mods, nuff said.
10. Teenage Fanclub – Nothing Lasts Forever
A somewhat ironic title as despite comings and goings, TFC does seem to be lasting forever. The band has that rare ability to have a sound that is at once familiar, but always different. A truly classic pop band who deserve to me worshipped around the globe.
Till next time.
Labour Day
Today was Labour Day, and I didn’t go to the parade. But you know who was there? Monte McNaughton, Ontario’s minister of Labour.
Normally, I wouldn’t quote a capitalist politician, but here’s what he tweeted along with a video:
Happy Labour Day to all the incredible #EverydayHeroes making Ontario the best place to live, work, and raise a family. Our government will continue #WorkingForWorkers to ensure better health & safety protections and more opportunities for everyone to earn a bigger paycheque.
This is the same Minister of Labour who voted for Bill 124 limiting public sector workers to 1% raises and after the law was declared unconstitutional supported his government’s decision to appeal the ruling; the same Minister of Labour who voted to deny CUPE workers their constitutional rights. I could go, but instead I’ll just call Bullshit!
Still, you’d think that with the crowd of protesters, some people might have suggested the Minister get the fuck out.
Crisis, What Crisis?
Over the decades, I’ve talked, read, and written about the idea of crisis. Marxists talk about the economic crisis, the unemployment crisis, the environmental crisis, and the crisis of capitalism. And more. When I was a Trotskyist, I spent a lot of time talking about the “crisis of leadership,” a perennial obsession of Trotskyists. At this moment though, it seems relevant to recall Winston Churchill’s comment that you should never let a good crisis go to waste.
In 1995, high-school dropout and then-current Ontario education minister John Snobelen was memorably recorded talking of the need to bankrupt the education system creating a “useful crisis” where radical changes could be carried out. (Essentially the theme of Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine). And so, in subsequent years, crisis, rather than being the purview of the left has become the playback of the right.
In 2018, Doug Ford led the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party to a majority government, handily defeated Kathleen Wynn’s Liberals. Ford, a college dropout who inherited a labels business from his father, was a one-time city councillor alongside his brother Rob, Toronto’s infamous crack-smoking mayor. (To get a sense of Doug Ford as comic relief please enjoy this clip of John Oliver’s Last Week This Week from 2014) Despite a sort of inherited buffoonery seemingly endemic to the Ford family, Doug displayed a tactical savvy by courting and then dumping Tanya Granic Allen, an Islamophobic and anti-LGBTQ contender for the Tory leadership, in order to become Conservative leader (It is also widely believed that Ford had a hand in the ouster of previous leader Patrick Brown, who Ford detersted)
In opposition, Ford spoke of two crises: The financial crisis created by the corrupt Liberals (a theme he would refer to repeated even in his second term of majority government five years after defeating the Liberals) and the health care crisis including a vow to end hallway medicine.
As it turned out, the $15 billion deficit was in reality about half that, but that didn’t stop the PCs from cancelling projects they didn’t like, scrapping plans to raise minimum wage laws (until shortly before the 2022 election) as well as passing laws (now deemed unconstitutional) limiting public sector raises to 1% for the next three years.
To no one’s surprise, Ford’s government did not end hallway medicine. Despite endlessly promoting the odd hospital wing here and there in Conservative held ridings, the most common outcome has been the closure of emergency wards on weekends (although not the one closest to the Ford family cottage) . A government spokesperson denied these were closures, but rather relocations of resources. Ford’s approach was two-fold. Underspend what it had planned to spend, while declaring a crisis – the solution? Privatization.
Despite reports of Canada’s “socialist” medical system, private clinics have long existed. Each province has its own public system, and which varies from province to province (the system in Ontario is called OHIP – Ontario Health Insurance Program). In the past, the way around public healthcare was that private clinics were allowed to offer services not provided by public medicine. Previous Conservative, but also LIberal and NDP (the self-proclaimed defenders of public medicine) governments simply delisted services, and voila! Clinics could offer them.
Nevertheless, for most people, the idea of private healthcare conjures up the experience to the south. Ford declared that while public health care dollars would now be going to private clinics, no one would ever be out of pocket and treatments could be paid for with an OHIP card (this has already proven to be untrue with numerous reports of hidden service fees and upselling for “the best service” becoming more and more frequent).
The current crisis is housing. According to government figures, Ontario’s population has grown by 500,000 in the last year. But it’s the nature of the crisis which is important. While housing and accommodation may be scarce, it is affordable housing that is most sorely needed. Conservative politicians provincial and federal have railed against the cost of housing, all of them have opposed measures which could provide accommodation for those who truly need it. You want a condo? Plenty being built. Office space? Downtown in most cities are empty. Affordable housing?…er.
The solution was to open up the Greenbelt. The Greenbelt was created in 2005 by the governing Liberals. It was intended as a permanent area free from development to protect farmlands and prevent urban sprawl. In the two decades since, small parcels of land were moved in and out of the Greenbelt, but the idea of the greenbelt reamined a sacred cow.
Prior to the 2018 election, Ford, who was later to describe the Greenbelt as a “scam,” announced that if elected he would open up large parts of the Greenbelt to development. Public reaction was swift and negative. Ford backed away saying the people had spoken and he wouldn’t touch the Greenbelt. But in 2022, after winning re-election, Ford changed his mind. Citing the need for new housing his government proposed moving over 7,000 acres out of the Greenbelt, while moving some part land in (of course the land which was moved in was undesirable for development).
As public anger continued to build, more dubious details came to light. Large areas of the greenbelt had been purchased shortly before the decision to move land out of the Greenbelt was announced. As a result, developers who owned the land stood to profit by over $8 billion. Further, it turned out that some of the same developers had been at a stag and doe party for Ford’s daughter and were encouraged to donate cash fro the couple. Ford claimed the developers were personal friends although during an investigation by Ontario’s Auditor General, he claimed he didn’t know any of them. Finally, it was discovered that Ontario Housing Minister Steve Clark’s chief of Staff had received “packages” from several developers stating their preferences for land to be removed from the Greenbelt shortly before the decision was made. Needless to say they were. Ford and Clark have conceded mistakes were made (“We moved too quickly”) but defended their actions because of the “housing crisis.” (Ford has claimed to have been involved and not involved with the decision making process). A subsequent report by the Integrity Commissioner found that Clarke had broken the rules, but instead of resigning, Clarke blustered he was responsible without actually taking any responsibility. This story continues to unwind, but all of the opposition parties seek only the removal of the minister and a return to the status quo. Unfortunately, they seem happy to waste a good crisis of the government’s own making.
Finally, in two weeks, Ontario students return to the classroom. It can only be a matter of time before Education Minister Stephen Lecce announces a crisis in Education. As it stands, teachers have been without a contract for almost a year, and there is a shortage of teachers. Last year, the Ministry announced it would be allowing students studying for their teaching degree to supply teach in Ontario classrooms (it has always been that case that student teachers completing their practice teaching were never to be left unsupervised). Still, Ontario has not yet moved to the depths of Quebec, which, facing a short of 5,000 teachers, announced that some classrooms in the province will have adults without any training at the front of the room. Minister Bernard Drainville also mused that inexperienced teachers should start in kindergarten because it was easier – spoken like a man who hasn’t been in a classroom in decades. Last week, Lecce announced the government and the teaching unions had struck a deal to continue negotiating until the end of October, but then both would submit to binding arbitration. We shall see how the government will attempt to turn this to its advantage as the unions cry for them to play fair.
The origins of the word crisis is Greek. The word has its roots in decision. A choice. For the right-wing and conservative forces, a crisis has become an opportunity. A chance to force change, to further shift power, resources and wealth to themselves and their allies. For those opposed to capital, crisis must become more than an analysis of what is wrong with the world, although it should not abandon this idea either. But for anti-capitalists, for revolutionaries, crisis must always become an opportunity, a moment to cast off chains and reshape the world into the one we deserve.
Doppelganger
Many people have travelled across the political spectrum: ex-Trotskyists Max Shachtman and James Burnham, Ramparts editor David Horowitz , and former RAF founder turned neo-Nazi Horst Mahler to name only a few. To go from right to left is probably less common, but I’m sure it happens. The question which fascinates me is always why? We’ve probably all had this experience where a friend or comrade who once shared our ideas evolves in such a way they are unrecognizable. I was a social democrat. I became a Trotskyist, then a left communist. Quite an evolution, but in each there was a core belief in that something called socialism would be a good idea (even if the content of what constitutes socialism has changed for me and I look back in horror about somethings I once proudly believed)
Naomi Wolf burst to fame in 1991 with her first book The Beauty Myth. She worked as an adviser to Al Gore and was viewed as a prominent public intellectual. By the late 2000s, this label began to be replaced by another, “Conspiracy theorist.” She was permanently banned from Twitter (although she is back on X) as she went deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. Still, she wasn’t someone who I really followed, so no big deal.
Then a few days ago I read a piece in the Guardian by Naomi Klein about Wolf entitled “Doppelganger.” (an excerpt from a forthcoming book). Klein is a few years younger than Wolf but is often mistaken for her: Both public intellectuals (Klein for No Logo and The Shock Doctrine), both 50-something Jewish women named Naomi (actually Wolf is 61) with brown-blonde hair. And so it goes. Klein says she actually used to find the confusion amusing, but since their political divergence (she’s a left left social-democrat) , it’s become less so. And so she did what writers do: wrote a book about it.
Klein’s mix of anti-globalisation, environmentalism, neo-Situationist ideas, and smidgen of Marxism has never been to my taste although her books are interesting. Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World is out in September
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PS The New York Times ran a similar article in the magazine this week
Fightback
I read a lot of things I don’t necessarily agree with. One of them is the Fightback newsletter. Fightback is the Canadian section of the International Marxist Tendency.
The IMT was the product of a split in the UK based Militant tendency, which after decades of entry in the British Labour Party felt it was big enough to go it alone. When a section of Militant around founder Ted Grant resisted the change in orientation, they were expelled and set up Socialist Appeal in the UK and the IMT internationally.
Like their big brothers in Britain and elsewhere, Fightback worked in the social democracy, the New Democratic Party selling the paper Fightback, “the Marxist voice for Labour and Youth.” Wording and even the font almost identical to the British.
I’ve not paid much attention to this rightwing Trotskyist group, but when I read the newsletter and the site two things struck me. First how little coverage the NDP received. Did I miss something? Is Fightback engaged in ultra-left sectarianism too? Second, how often the word communism was used. “Join the Communists” and “How I became a communist” among other articles. Now Militant always referred to themselves as Marxists and often socialists, but very rarely as communists (hard to when you think the police are workers in uniform and as in the case of the poll tax riots offered to help the police identify the “anarchists.”).
Maybe I’ll ask if I go to the Labour Day parade on Monday.
Music Notes: August 2023
1 Al Green – “Perfect Day”
Yup, the old Lou Reed song. Such a beautiful recording; even Lou might have smiled.
2 Sparklehorse – Bird Machine
I’ve been talking about this for a while, but it’s finally about to drop, the last Sparklehorse album. What a talent Mark Linkous was. A, well, sparkling collection of ballads, fuzz guitar and more. Incredible.
3 Sheryl Crow – The Very Best of Sheryl Crow
I’m old school about music in the car. I pack the CDs. But if I put in this album, it will always get played. I know some people say greatest hits albums are for the casual (or lazy) fan – I’m sure I’ve said that, but this album is just really amazing. Aside from that duet with Kid Rock, and mostly because it’s Kid Rock, there are no missteps. Great car record.
4 PJ Harvey – Jungle Queen
Bootleg that has more or less been released in pieces, either as her demo series or the Peel Sessions CD. You can find it on YouTube or Last FM and its worth a listen for “Claudine, the Inflatable One.”
5 The Smiths – Hatful of Hollow
And speaking of car albums, maybe not this one. My son had mentioned he liked a couple of Smiths songs (“Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” and “How Soon is Now?”), so I thought a Smiths record would work for a trip to Ottawa. Make no mistake this is a brilliant album, but it’s mix of quiet and loud songs doesn’t always work on the 401 (also it’s an old CD and seems to be recorded at different levels throughout). Those two songs the boy liked sounded great though.
6 Robbie Robertson RIP
Nothing to say beyond listen to that man’s work. With the Hawks, with Dylan, with a Band, as a solo artist. What a performer. A major loss.
7 The Breeders – Last Splash
I haven’t listened to this 30th anniversary edition of supposedly lost analog tapes and some bonus tracks, but you know it’ll be good. It’s the Breeders.
8 Gloomgirl MFG
My new favourite band this week. Nashville based pop-punk (heavier on the latter). New EP out in September, and currently a couple of singles on streaming services.
9 Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers – Live at Max’s Kansas City
This edition contains two sets of glorious sloppy rock n roll recorded a year apart at Max’s. The earlier set has Ty Styx instead of Jerry Nolan on drums, and the second set has only five songs as Thunders and the band left to “tune up” and never returned, but it’s still brilliant.
10 The Lowest of the Low – Shakespeare My Butt
One of my favourite debut albums. Great tunes and beautiful lyrics: political, funny, and poignant. Singer Ron Hawkins was a contact of the Trotskyist group I was in, and it shows. Scattered references to Marxism and the Spanish Revolution (Ron was reading Trotsky’s writings on the subject). In the end, he decided to choose music over politics, but we do have this amazing record.
See ya next month.
Shift Work
There’s a weekly newsletter published by Press Progress called Shift Work which is centred on Canadian labour, strikes etc. It’s hardly revolutionary (nor does it claim to be), but it’s a useful source of information.
Thing is, everytime it appears in my mailbox, I misread it as “Shit work.” Which is pretty much how work is most of the time.
Fifteen Minutes of Fame
My birthday is in July, and often the answer to the question, “What do you want to do for your birthday?” is to go somewhere on a road trip. I once took the family to the Museum of Steam and Technology in Hamilton (I’m a big big steampunk fan). Everyone was bored except for me, but that’s what birthdays are for. This past weekend, my wife and I drove to Pittsburgh to visit the Warhol Museum. It was a birthday trip originally planned for the summer of 2020, but covid meant it was delayed for three years.
I’d gotten into the Velvet Underground in a big way in high school although the first album I bought was White Light White Heat, the band’s second release. By the time I went to university, I’d picked up the rest of the VU’s catalogue and was also interested in the Factory scene, Pop art, and Andy Warhol.
The museum is in a seven-story building on Pittsburgh’s north shore about a five minute walk from PNC Park. The material is arranged more or less chronologically and you start from the top and work down. The top floor displays Warhol’s early work and his success in commercial illustration, but visitors are soon introduced to Warhol’s more famous work.
Over the next levels, we see the famous illustrations of Campbell’s soup cans, Brillo pads, Elvis, Marilyn, Mao, and more. In addition, examples from Warhol’s TV, magazine, and film work including many of his “superstars.” I didn’t see mention of the 1980 film Blank Generation with Richard Hell (I may have missed it), but I’m going to seek out that Love Boat episode.
The second floor is current dedicated to the Velvet Underground: A large room filled with photos and Warhol screen-takes in which the “Scepter Sessions” album plays on repeat. In April 1966, the band recorded its first album at Scepter Studios in Manhattan. The nine-song album was shopped around to several labels, all of whom passed, before Verve agreed to handle it, but not without conditions. The version which was released in March 1967 featured a different running order, re-recorded versions of several of the songs, a new song “Sunday Morning” which would open the album, and “There She Goes Again,” an old song not present on the acetate. The album was finally released as part of of the Super-deluxe reissue of the Velvet Underground & Nico in 2012, but circulated on the internet for years. You can find it on Youtube under the title The Velvet Underground & Nico – Unripened I stood and imagined.
There’s a debate as to whether Warhol was a businessman first and a artist second ruthlessly exploiting capitalism’s tendency toward consumerism and commodification, or that his work was a critique of these elements. I’m not of an art critic to entertain that discussion here although I encourage my friends who are artists to weigh in (I do feel a need to reread Walter Benjamin and John Berger though).
Overall, a pretty cool experience. Don’t miss the photo booth in the lobby.
Jamie Reid, the Situationists, the Sex Pistols.
The creator of those fantastic Sex Pistols record covers passed away on Tuesday. Other people have already written better pieces than this one, but I wanted to share this.
I was 12 years old in 1976, and as I lived far from the madding crowd that was any city where there was a punk scene, I saw the Sex Pistols before I heard them (my parents read the Daily Mirror, so I saw “the Filth and the Fury” headline the day it was published).
There was an immediacy of attraction though. Punk was exciting. Punk was funny. Punk pissed off a lot of people who really deserved to be mocked. Of course it was going to be attractive. In words I would later learn, boredom is always counter-revolutionary, and punk was not boring.
. Jamie Reid worked with Malcolm Mclaren and Vivienne Westwood as the Sex Pistols’ graphic designer creating the covers for “God Save the Queen,” “Pretty Vacant,” “Holidays’ in the Sun,” and the album “Never Mind the Bollocks” album. Bollocks. What a word. And “Cheap Holidays in other people’s misery, ” the opening line of “Holidays in the Sun”- fuck yes.
And an interest in the music of rebellion transferred into the politics of rebellion. I began my journey through leftist politics around this time as well. I was initially interested in anarchism as I was a fan of Crass, and remained largely ignorant of some of the other radical ideas that mingled with punk including those of a French group, the Situationist International. I can’t remember whether I read Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle or Greil Marcus’ Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century first, but both caused me to look at punk differently. It’s worth noting that opening line for “Holidays” was part of a Situationist slogan that read “Club Med: A Cheap Holiday in other People’s Misery” and the famous buses for “Pretty Vacant” were created by a US Situationist group Point Blank! in 1972.
John Lydon denies that the Sex Pistols and punk had anything to do with Situationist ideas,and of course he might be right, but it’s undeniable the influence those ideas had on McLaren, Reid and others.
Situationist ideas did not come to Britain through Reid. The SI did have a British section, which was swiftly expelled. The London- based group King Mob certainly used similar strategies including dressing a member as Father Christmas and giving away toys to children in a department store (security took the toys back), but most famously in graffiti on a tube wall in west London:
“Same thing day after day- tube – work – dinner – work – tube – armchair – TV – sleep – tube – work – how much more can you take? – one in ten go mad, one in five cracks up.”
The Angry Brigade did it violently. (Apparently, it was the phrase “create spectacles” in one of its manifestos that sent the police scurrying toward radical bookshops for informations on the Situationists)
Reid had been around the fringes of Situationist circles though. He noted, he “wasn’t so much attracted to Situationist theory as to how they approached media and politics. The slogans, for example, were so much better than the texts.” In 1974, Reid worked with Chris Gray to produce the “bootleg” edition of Situationist material Leaving the Twentieth Century.
At this time, Reid also worked on a project called Suburban Press with Sophie Richmond. In addition to a magazine which had a circulation of around 5,000 copies, they also produced a series of agitational stickers including one used unofficially by the National Union of Mineworkers during its struggle with the government: “Switch on Something for the National Union of Mineworkers.” In 1975, Reid closed up Suburban Press and moved to the Outer Hebrides.
In March of 1976, he received a telegram from Malcolm Mclaren: “Got these guys, interested in working with you again.” And the rest is history.
If you can find a copy of Up they Rise: The Incomplete Works of Jamie Reid by Reid and Jon Savage, it’s worth it.
Notes from Underground 