Actor, writer, politician May 11, 2024
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I was looking up Tracy Brabin, Labour Mayor. Quite a career she’s had – actor and writer as well as politician.
Born in Batley, Brabin was an actress and television writer prior to entering politics, appearing in several British soap operas including Coronation Street, Doctors, EastEnders, Casualty and Emmerdale. She was elected for Batley and Spen in an October 2016 by-election after the murder of previous incumbent Jo Cox.
She was appointed as Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport by Jeremy Corbyn in January 2020, succeeding former Deputy Labour Leader Tom Watson. In April 2020, new Labour Leader Keir Starmer removed Brabin from the shadow cabinet and appointed her Shadow Minister for Cultural Industries.
And she was in this, more an art project than a film. And a soundtrack delivered by Acid Mother’s Temple’s Makoto Kawabata, putting the space in ‘space rock’.
Steve Albini May 11, 2024
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A genuine shock to hear of the death of Steve Albini this week. Big Black was something else. Fair to say he mellowed a little as time went on.
Looking at the list of albums that he produced for various groups over the years he was clearly working all the time. A lot of ones people would be familiar with in there – obviously Pixies and Nirvana being perhaps the biggest names, but The Wedding Present, Manic Street Preachers, Cath Carroll, P.J. Harvey, The Frames, for me the Breeders, Amps and The Fleshtones being particular favourites.
Light show May 11, 2024
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Went out to Dollymount at about one in the morning to see this. It was not quite as spectacular as the photographs – I could only see pink hues but it was spectacular and the sense of something happening very high up was very clear. Camera phones picked up the colours a lot better (though the photo above is appropriated from RTÉ’s site). Anyone else take look? Apparently if the weather is good enough this could well be visible again tonight.
This Weekend I’ll Mostly Be Listening to… Look Blue Go Purple May 11, 2024
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This series of posts about post-punk has in a sense been hovering around the very idea of what post-punk is. On paper it’s clearly just music that came after punk, but whatever else it seems that punk wasn’t a simple musical style – being itself a sort of funnelling of previously existing styles, from garage rock to proto-punk, pub rock and many more. The fact it leaned so heavily on rock’n’roll is indicative of an approach that deconstructed popular music. And after that, people added or subtracted as they saw fit from a broad range of areas and developed new ones.
In fact reading post-punk as a process rather than a simple genre is probably the most useful way of considering it. Because that allows for the incredible multiplicity of styles that developed in its wake, or how it fed into and added to already existing styles (I think of dub in particular).
But there’s another aspect to this. Punk itself ran at variable speeds. There’s a strong case to be made that it existed long before the Sex Pistols staggered into view. Surely the Ramones were exponents of it well before their comrades on this side of the Atlantic. And there’s another angle too, it ended in different places at different times, or more particularly post-punk styles developed at different times.
Here’s an example. I consider the Dead Kennedy’s first album, released in 1980 as a clear example of punk. Yet it arrived a full three years after punk. But you say, it arrived in the United States, as indeed it did. But that raises the question of how long punk lasted in the US if the Ramones were there before the Pistols.
Another example, possibly to be addressed in this slot, is Husker Dü who to my mind moved from punk to a form of post-punk, around 1982 or 1983. Which raises the question as to how to engage with post-punk in the US, Talking Heads springs to mind, but before them there’s Television – 1977 their debut album was released, but surely that was post-punk. And many more.
Perhaps the best way of regarding this is that punk and post-punk aren’t conveniently packaged periods of time that start and end neatly but instead co-existed and overlapped. After all, by one definition everything since punk is post-punk. But you won’t find many posts in this slot tackling post-punk from the 1990 let alone the 2000s onwards. There are, naturally groups that work in a post-punk style in the contemporary period, but they’re not quite post-punk in the original meaning of the term.
Which brings us to New Zealand. The foremost exponents of post-punk there were grouped around Dunedin and the Dunedin sound, seen most directly on the Flying Nun label. These were groups which took a lot of the energy of punk and wedded it to that of garage rock before it with a strong pop vein. One interesting curiosity was the way many of these groups leaned on the keyboard or organ as an intrinsic part of their sound. The Clean and the Chills, are obvious examples. It’s as if this byway of post-punk developed in an interestingly different direction due perhaps to geographical isolation.
And from that environment here’s a group that has been neglected but surely deserve a much higher profile, Look Blue Go Purple, a group on Flying Nun. As the label itself notes:
Though they’d made a conscious call to play with other women, LBGP never labeled themselves as a “feminist” or “girl” band, and grew tired of being endlessly asked about gender in interviews. “Gender has nothing to do with it,” they said.
The sound is intriguing. There’s hints of Young Marble Giants and of the sort of music exemplified by much of Cherry Red’s output during the early to mid 1980s. Tracks like Year of the Tiger remind me of early Lush – there’s something about the vocals that are eerily reminiscent of the latter and later group’s sound. But there’s something else too. The music has a weight to it which emphasises the vocals and a speed too. The faster songs are faster than might be expected, the slower ones too. There’s also an experimental aspect here. For example the vocals are great, and often they’re layered. There also a willingness to use flutes and other instrumentation in ways that never come over as twee, quite the opposite – there’s often a darkness in the music and the lyrics. Hiawatha is a perfect example of that – a blend of spoken word and experimentation in the music.
Amazingly they never released a full album. Their output consists of three EPs and unreleased live tracks. That these hang together as a single body of work is a testament to just how good they were.
Cactus Cat
Circumspect Penelope
As Does the Sun
In Your Favour
Conscious Unconscious
Hiawatha
Vain Hopes
Year of the Tiger
Circumspect Penelope (Live)
Campaign posters May 10, 2024
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Out and about yesterday it was remarkable how candidates had taken the opportunity to put posters up for Europe and the local elections at the earliest possible moments. Lots of them up around the city centre and north inner city. Mostly, actually almost exclusively, from the big battalions, or the smaller big battalions. Didn’t see many Independent or very small party posters. Posters have always been a point of contention on campaigns. Positioning of them, posters going missing, that kind of stuff.
Social Democrats campaigners have said they were threatened with a knife while putting up local election posters in Dublin on Tuesday.
Two women in their 20s were putting up posters for Ellen O’Doherty, one of the party’s candidates for a seat on Dublin City Council in the Smithfield area, when they heard shouting and roaring.
A man came out of a house and roared abuse at the two women, saying the Social Democrats “are Nazis” and demanding the poster be taken down.
The situation escalated when a second man came out of the house a few minutes later.
The two women said this man attempted to grab the ladder and pulled a box-cutter blade out of his pocket, saying he wanted to cut down the poster himself.
By the way, this seems a bit of a stretch.
Tidy Towns competition adjudicators will not penalise towns and villages where election posters are displayed so long as they remove them and cable ties within the time frame set out in legislation, the Dáil has heard.
Following a drive by campaigners in recent days to erect posters in advance of next month’s local and European elections, Minister for Rural and Community Development Heather Humphreys warned those doing so to remove cable ties as well as posters after the vote because “the ties are a torture for the Tidy Towns, I can tell you”.
She said that if posters are up “within the allowed time frame”, set out in the 1997 Litter Act, “my department has advised the panel of adjudicators that it should not impact on any Tidy Towns scoring”.
Posters for the June 7th elections went up on Tuesday, the first day legally allowed, and must be removed, along with cable ties, within a fortnight after election day.
They should be taken as quickly as possible after elections. But a good set of shears or likewise should do the job.
Signs of Hope – A continuing series May 10, 2024
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Gewerkschaftler suggested this a while back and it’s as good an idea now as it was then. Whatever else those of us on the left need some hope, need some tangible achievements to hold on to, something that gives a sense of how things can be made better:
“I suggest this blog should have a regular (weekly) slot where people can post happenings at the personal or political level that gives them hope that we’re perhaps not going to hell in a handbasket as quickly as we thought. Or as the phlegmatic Germans put it “hope dies last”.”
Any contributions this week?
Not just anyone will be accepted into the BLP! May 10, 2024
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That according to Wes Streeting.
Labour’s Wes Streeting has said he has spoken to more Conservative MPs considering a defection to the opposition, similar to that of Natalie Elphicke, but insisted the party would not accept just any politician.
Okay. So what’s the limit?
“If Liz Truss were to want to cross the floor, and I don’t imagine she would, I would rather take the lettuce.”
That’s the limit?
The Journal poll May 10, 2024
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Fresh this morning. Polling on the European elections from The Journal/Ireland Thinks.
The results from the latest poll by The Journal and Ireland Thinks show that almost a quarter of people (24%) plan to vote for candidates classed as ‘independents and others’ on 7 June, up from 17% last month.
The next most popular choice is Sinn Féin on 22% (down slightly from 23%).
The state of the other parties is as follows:
- Fine Gael: 19% (down one percentage point)
- Fianna Fáil: 16% (down one)
- Green Party: 6% (no change)
- Social Democrats: 5% (down one)
- Aontú: 4% (down one)
- Labour: 3% (no change)
- Solidarity-People Before Profit: 2% (down one)
Fairly sharply at variance with other general polls for the General Election as seen here. At least with respect to Sinn Fein. Of course one has to factor in the locals as well. The jump for Independents and Others of 7% sees all other parties down one percentage point so drawing across the political spectrum. But perhaps an indication given SF’s higher ratings in polls for the GE that they’ve a good 5% or so of support that is weak.
Almost needless to say it’s one thing to state this in a poll but when faced with actual candidates that’s another thing entirely.
The Journal points to this:
The vast majority of people who participated in the opinion poll said they plan on voting in the European elections with 85% saying they are ‘very likely’ to vote next month.
Most people across all age groups said they intend to vote – ranging from 79% among 18 to 34-year-olds to 88% in older age brackets.
However, it’s notable that just under half of eligible voters turned up at the polls in 2019.
No big deal! May 10, 2024
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Mr Harris’s visit to Stormont Castle had an unpromising start when First Minister Michelle O’Neill and Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly were not outside the building to officially welcome him as his car arrived.
After standing at the bottom of the steps for a few moments, Mr Harris then entered the building only to emerge shortly after with the two Stormont leaders to pose for photographs.
There was a time when the arrival of a Taoiseach in the North would be a cause of great controversy. Now, they’ll be down to meet him when they’ve finished their tea and biscuits. Changed times.
Compare and contrast: Elphicke and Abbott May 9, 2024
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The Labour party’s chair has defended the decision to admit a staunchly rightwing MP while Diane Abbott has remained suspended and under investigation for more than a year.
Anneliese Dodds said she believed Elphicke was a good fit for Labour because her remarks on border security and housing were “absolutely fundamental to the Labour party”.
But she refused to “go into detail” about why Abbott’s complaint process had taken more than year while Elphicke had been allowed into the party.
Keir Starmer is under pressure after admitting Elphicke to his party on Wednesday, a decision that took Labour MPs and shadow cabinet ministers by surprise.
Again, who thought this was a clever idea? It raises so many contradictions at the heart of Starmer’s project. As with this: The move has been controversial among many female Labour MPs because of her defence of Charlie Elphicke, her then husband who was convicted of sexual assault in 2020.
But also this:
The branch of the GMB union that represents MPs’ staff said it had requested a meeting with Labour whips regarding the vetting of sitting MPs and candidates.
The branch chair, Jenny Symmons, described the decision to admit as “really, really poor and disappointing”.
Starmer et al have made a fetish of vetting candidates. Apparently minor missteps or misspeaks have seen long term Labour members in trouble as candidates, and yet someone with hard right views is waved in?
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 