Pope-tastic

Brilliant last line. Pure quality. Reminds me that I need to dig out his autobiography. I dipped into it a couple of years ago. I should have stuck around.

The clip was found on Twitter but the bloke who posted it is notorious for posting other people's stuff without proper credit, so I thought I'd just bypass him and find the clip on YouTube.

Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids?: An Indie Odyssey by Nige Tassell (Nine Eight Books 2022)

When Malcolm returned to Essex from university in Sheffield, his ears full of a new band called the Smiths and his head full of Marxist theory, the three of them resumed making music together. This was the point at which the idea of fusing tuneful pop music with political lyrics was forged.

‘It was political almost from the start. “There’s no point writing love songs” became a thing because we couldn’t be as good as the Beatles. We could never hope to write something like “I Saw Her Standing There”. So Malcolm decided what he could do was write political songs because there hadn’t really been any particularly fantastic ones written in the way he was thinking about politics. There obviously had been political songs, but not from a real, properly thought-out Marxist perspective.’

The concept was sound. Pop tunes to get people over the threshold and then encourage them to think about the lyrics. Another iron fist in another velvet glove.

‘It made us stand out from everyone else. We weren’t marching around. We weren’t Stalinists or anything.’ At the time, Billy Bragg was the most conspicuous political songwriter. He was from their home patch, a few years ahead of them at the same comprehensive school. ‘We knew him as one of the big Jam fans in Barking. He was in that band Riff Raff who, for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, played on the back of a lorry in Tim’s street.’

This top-floor office is level with a railway viaduct just outside the window, carrying trains back and forth between Clapham Junction and Richmond. They rumble past every couple of minutes, occasionally emitting a metallic screech. John is clearly used to it. He’s been at Domino now for fifteen years.

‘At the beginning, we always aimed for Top of the Pops,’ he explains. To some, being an anti-capitalist band aiming to work in an industry known for its rapaciousness and greed might seem a little contradictory. ‘My favourite quote about this is from John Cooper Clarke – “There’s no point being an island of Marxism in a sea of capitalism”.

John then cites McCarthy’s ‘Use a Bank I’d Rather Die’, a song written with heavy irony. ‘Just because you think a certain way, you’re not going to stop using the bank. You’re not necessarily going to cut things off.’ (The use of irony and sarcasm – those traits much enjoyed by the Manics – often led to the band being misunderstood. ‘Almost all of the McCarthy songs are sung by a “character”,’ Malcolm explained in a 2007 interview before he fell silent on the subject of the band, ‘like a character in a play. I often don’t agree with the sentiments expressed in the song. Quite the reverse.’)

Hairstyles and historians

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 135

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 135th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1565 friends!

Recent blogs:

Re-cycling food waste

Indian Earthquake: Did it really kill?

Money Must Go

Coming Events:

Public Debate between Adam Smith Institute (Eamonn Butler) and the Socialist Party (Richard Headicar).

Thursday, 4th February, 7.00pm

Small Hall, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London. WC1.

Film: Capitalism and Other Kids Stuff

2pm, Saturday 30th January

The Workshop 53 Earlham Road, Norwich NR2 3AD

Radical Film Forum,

Sundays 6pm - 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN.

31st January - Manufacturing Consent (part two)

Quote for the week:

"Read the paper - humdrum

Henley Regatta - page one

Eat die - ho hum

Page three - big bum

Giving a lunatic a loaded gun.

He walks - others run

Thirty dead - no fun

Foreigners feature as figures of fun

Do something destructive chum

Sit right down - write a letter to The Sun

Say... 'Bring back hangin' for everyone'"

John Cooper Clarke - 'Suspended Sentence'
>

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

"Comrades, Get your kicks with bulletin 66!"

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (66)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 66th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1351 friends!

Recent blogs:

People's capitalism

The right to be homeless

A Culture of Violence

Coming Events at SPGB Head Office, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North):

A Season of Free Film nights from Sunday 14th September to Sunday 23rd November at 52 Clapham High Street, London.

All films start at 4 p.m.

Sunday 12 October: Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on trial

Sunday 26 October:The Corporation

Sunday 9 November: Zeitgeist

Sunday 23 November: The War on Democracy

Quote for the week:

"Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion." Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1891.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain