Naebody Move, There's Been A Murdoch! Part 2

When you live in an essentially conservative country, like the UK, and you are somewhat to the left on the political spectrum then you quickly become familiar with a sense of almost endless disappointment; obvious corruption in public life gets ignored or whitewashed, light-weight politicians with the sincerity of used-car salesmen become Prime Minister, the main political parties offer an almost identical intellectually and morally bankrupt take on the prevailing neoliberal agenda, and these parties are supported and maintained by a venal, unscrupulous and mercenary media that panders to the worst of human instinct. Yeah, that's modern life in the UK right there, and sometimes the smell of shit rising from the whole bloated and fetid mass can make you despair.
And then there are weeks like this one. We've already posted (below) on The Streetlamp team's joy at the demise of the repulsive and nasty News of the World, but this story just continues to grow and grow, and with today's news of the, long overdue, resignation of the Medusa of Wapping, Rebekah Brooks, we couldn't resist the opportunity to indulge in a little more grave dancing.
As this story unfolds it will soon become apparent that the whole corrupt Augean stables of British public life needs to be thoroughly cleaned out once and for all. The mainstream parties, the mainstream press, the toothless Press Complaints Commission, the Metropolitan Police Force (and possibly other forces elsewhere in the country) are all culpable to some degree in either colluding with or cringing before Murdoch's despicable empire. It is time for ordinary, decent people to demand something better, something braver, something more transparently honest. The only party to come out of this whole affair with any honour is the outstanding Guardian newspaper which has refused to let this affair be concealed and has demostrated admirably what the real job of investigative journalism entails. More power to them!
One other thing that has annoyed us is that many newspaper columnists are indulging in "we are all guilty" excuses and justifications; claiming that the British public and their apparent love of celebrity gossip was ultimately responsible for the criminal behaviour of the News of the World journalists. Bullshit! Only 2.7 arseholes read the News of the World; the paper was written by scum and read by scum and the vast majority of the British public wouldn't have deigned to wipe their arses with it. Here at The Streetlamp, we long for the day when; Murdoch himself is brought to book, The Sun newspaper disappears for ever, Andy Coulson is properly investigated for his role in this affair, and slick charlatan David Cameron is finally dismissed from office. On days like these we tell ourselves that it could yet happen!
Longtime Streetlamp favourite, and all-round good bloke, Billy Bragg, evidently feels the same way. He has just released a cracking new song about the News of the World scandal called 'Never Buy The Sun'. A wonderful studio version is available as a free download from his website. Here's
a video clip of him singing it in his dressing room before a recent gig at Garforth Arts Festival.



With Love From The ~Streetlamp~ Gang

Naebody Move, There's Been A Murdoch!

As the three ~Streetlampers~ dance and piss on the grave of the News Of The World; and as we gaze on with gleeful eyes as Murdoch's corrupt empire crumbles around him, we only have on thing to say:

Andy Coulson

Rebekah Brooks

and especially paymaster Rupert Murdoch:


"Legalized theft
Leaves me bereft
I get it straight in the neck
Somehow expecting no less
A court of justice
With no use for truth
LAWYER....LIAR
LAWYER....LIAR
You pleaded and squealed
And you think you've won
But sorrow will come
To you in the end
And as sure as my words are pure
I praise the day that brings you pain
QC's obssessed with sleaze
Frantic for fame
They're all on the game
They just use a different name
You lied, and you were believed
By a JP senile and vile
You pleaded and squealed
And you think you've won
But sorrow will come
To you in the end
And as sure as my words are pure
I praise the day that brings you pain
So don't close your eyes
Don't close your eyes
A man who slits throats
Has time on his hands
And I'M GONNA GET YOU
So don't close your eyes
Don't EVER CLOSE YOUR EYES
You think you've won
OH NO!!"

With Love From The ~Streetlamp~ Gang

~I Misplaced It At The Movies~#1: 'D.O.A'(1980)

The first in a new series looking at important films, music based or otherwise!

Lech Kowalski's 1980 movie 'D.O.A'(sometimes referred to as 'D.O.A: A Right Of Passage') is a fascinating documentary, and massively important document of one the most extraordinary and much misunderstood periods in the history of Popular Music.
Following two threads, the film at once follows the Sex Pistols ill fated tour of the Southern States Of America, while at the same time heads over to Britain to find out exactly WHY Punk evolved in Britain and to focus on the new acts following in the wake of the Pistols. The film is full of extreme juxtapositions as we shall discover, but more importantly it is one of the only movies that exists that captures fully the feral, incendiary power of Punk Rock.
There exists two movies which try to tell the story of the Sex Pistols, both directed by Julien Temple, but both telling radically different views of what went on. 'The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle'(1979) tells manager Malcolm McLaren's view of how he did everything and was practically involved in in every single aspect of the Pistols except for the actual playing and singing. 20 years later in 'The Filth And The Fury', Temple allows the members of the Sex Pistols themselves tell their version of the story, which as you can imagine is completely at odds with the popular notion the public had been fed by McLaren.
'D.O.A' on the other hand, cuts through all the bullshit and simply allows the music to speak for itself, and thus we are treated to some of the most visceral live music captured anywhere anytime.


Watching the Sex Pistols perform before varying moods of crowds dispels many myths that exist around the Pistols. Firstly, the idea that the band were always a shambles live, and especially on this tour, is utter crap. The band are SCORCHING and deliver truly ferocious performances night after night like a well honed unit(remember they had been playing live almost constantly for three years by this point). Secondly, the idea that Sid Vicious could not play a single note is also dismissed as horseshit. Sid is quite clearly playing(and more than competently), as can be verified at a moment when Steve's guitar cuts out and all that can be heard are Sid and Paul's bass and drums. Sid is quite clearly playing in time, and in tune, traducing all the nonsense that McLaren fed to the music press.
In the live footage, the band sound fantastic and Johnny Rotten looks and sounds every bit a star. Full of charisma, he seems completely unswayed by the indifferent audiences, even taking a full glass of something suspicious in the face without flinching.



The American audiences do themselves no favours whatsoever. Either sounding like spaced-out loony tunes or IQ-free Rednecks, they spout the most outrageous twaddle to the camera. The Rednecks on one hand believe that the band piss, crap and vomit on the audience and offer nothing but physical violence as response. Those who 'dig' the band seem every bit as mad, blethering all kinds of mystical and hippyish arsewords and acting like a bunch of precocious kids who've just found Mummy's dressing up box. The unreality of the American audience leads to the greatest juxtaposition within the movie.....the difference between the Americans getting off on the band, and the British kids from where Punk emerged....

The footage shot in Britain circa 1979 shows the country in a very bad way indeed. Young people, from where the Punks themselves manifested, are interviewed in grotty, rundown play areas in rain lashed council estates. Their language is more than a little peppered with 'F' and 'C' words and they offer very little promise of any kind of bright future.
An up and coming band called Terry And The Idiots are featured and front man Terry Sylvester also paints a grim picture of life heading into the new decade. He insists that young people these days have virtually nothing to live for; no money, no prospects, television which shuts down about 11:00pm. When his band are featured they turn out to be awful; a drunken hybrid of The Fall and The Swell Maps but with absolutely NONE of the talent of either. In a quite touching moment an audience member chucks a pint a Terry while he's 'singing' and the band simply let the 'song' meander to a halt, to no audience reaction whatsoever.


While in Britain, Kowalski and his film crew manage to capture some excellent footage of bands following in the Pistols jetstream. Generation X are seen recording the quite superb 'Kiss Me Deadly'; the Rich Kids are captured performing 'Pretty Vacant' with Glen Matlock and Midge Ure sharing vocal duties; an impossibly young looking X-Ray Spex are filmed performing a raucous 'Oh! Bondage, Up Yours' while looking like school kids. But the most fascinating footage belongs to the much maligned Sham 69 whose leader Jimmy Pursey is seen on several occasions begging his audience to stop fighting before launching into some admittedly quite powerful performances including a blistering 'Borstal Breakout'. Sham 69 have been denied the kudos dealt out to other Punk bands mostly because their concerts often attracted an unwanted Fascist Skinhead element, and regardless of Jimmy's endless protestations, the mud often seemed to stick.





Back in America we are shown some homegrown Punk.....some, like the Dead Boys and the Dicks seem to get it; others who never appear to be named, quite clearly don't, performing some grotesque pantomime of watered down rock with shock theatrics.
But also back in America we are 'treated' to the centerpiece of the film; an interview with Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen......oh dear!
In hindsight of the deaths of both Sid and Nancy, the interview seems skin-crawlingly ghoulish; Sid can barely stay conscious for more than five seconds, often passing out mid-answer and accidentally burning himself with lit cigarettes. Nancy, while not trying to wake Sid up either opens her legs suggestively to the camera or strips topless. I hate to speak ill of the dead but when Chloe Webb played Nancy in Alex Cox's 'Sid And Nancy', she was criticised for playing Nancy as a shriekingly unpleasant caricature; all I can say is that Chloe actually underplayed the reality. Nancy really comes across as grossly unpleasant.


So, to recap then; this is a fantastic movie capturing the Sex Pistols at their best and showing how Punk HAD to evolve from dead-end Britain. It also shows that most Americans of the time seemed to lack any sense of irony and either simply didn't 'get' Punk, or those who claimed they did merely saw it as a continuation of the burnt out, opiated counter culture dream that evolved in the 1960s.
It also paints a grim picture of the emerging 1980s Britain which would become a reality under Thatcher with the Brixton and Toxteth riots only a year away, and with the Iranian hostage situation and the storming of the Iranian embassy in London by the SAS just as Ronald Reagan slithered to power, the film captures that grim Post Punk feel beautifully.
And what of Sid? Watching the film you wonder if he had never got involved with Nancy and all the Class A bullshit that she encompassed, could he, and indeed the Pistols have gone on to greater things? The final image of the movie; John and Sid captured together defiantly on stage suggests this very thing.
As far as I am aware the film is not currently available on DVD. I know it was once available on a VHS release, and I seem to recall that it has only played once on British TV, way back in 1991, and it's a recording of that which I own.
Hopefully the film will one day get a full bells-and-whistles release but I wouldn't hold your breath.
Whatever you do though, please try and see this brilliant movie, and rediscover just why the Sex Pistols, and Punk in general, is so massively important to the history of popular music!

Kiss This!!

~Gordon~

This is the final 10 minutes of the movie which features a storming version of 'Bodies' plus Augustus Pablo's beautiful 'A P Special' playing over the doomy end credits:

Griff says; Welcome to Glasgow's best kept secret

If any of you out there in blogland ever decide to visit the dirty old town of Glasgow then the one must see visitor attraction in the city, which I would advise you to take in at all costs, is the Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre. The reason that I mention the Sharmanka tonight is that I paid it an overdue visit today in its swanky new premises at Trongate103. Whilst there I learned that it is now being used as a venue for live music, with the first performance due tomorrow, Thursday July 7th at 20:00.



But more of that later, firstly I'd like to explain a wee bit more about the unique Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre experience itself. Sharmanka is the Russian word for hurdy-gurdy and if you think of what that instrument evokes; a clanking, mechanical contraption belching sinister fairground music and operated by a shabby, disreputable vagabond; then you have an inkling into the ambience conjured up by this strange and uncommon theatre collaboration.



Imagine hundreds of carved figures and animal bones mounted on huge mechanical machines composed of bicycle parts, antiquated sewing-macines and other pieces of old scrap suddenly lurching into ominous life. Now imagine them performing an incredible choreography to a programme of haunting music and the whole perfectly synchronised to a marvellously inventive light show. Can you imagine that? If so, congratulations on your wonderfully gothic creative inner life. If not, then get yourself down to Trongate103 in Glasgow to see the real thing. You won't regret it. Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre describes itself as, "telling funny and tragic stories of the human spirit as it struggles against the relentless circles of life and death."
And that sums up the whole experience really; it's a spooky, darkly humorous dance of grotesque figures underpinned with comic religious and erotic imagery. Here's a video of the installation, Master and Margarita, to give you a flavour of what to expect:



The theatre is a collaboration between sculptor-mechanic Eduard Bersudsky, theatre director Tatyana Jakovskaya, and light and sound designer Sergey Jakovsky.
Eduard Bersudsky (b. 1939, St.Petersburg, Russia - then Leningrad, USSR) is a self-taught, visionary artist. He started carving in his late 20s, while making a modest living as a metal worker, electrician, skipper on a barge, night guard and boiler man, and acquired his education in museums, libraries, exhibitions, and evening classes for drawing and sculpture.


In 1974-80 Bersudsky took part in some exhibitions of “non-conformist art” - a movement of artists who wanted to avoid the control of the official Soviet ideology.
In 1974 he found a job with his local park department; his remit, to carve giant figures out of fallen trees for children's playgrounds. At the same time in his only room in a communal flat he began producing kinemats - kinetic sculptures driven by electrical motors and controlled by sophisticated electro-mechanical devices, incorporating pieces of old furniture, metal scrap and grotesque carved figures. Until 1989 his kinemats could be seen only by few friends and acquaintances.
In 1988 he met Tatyana Jakovskaya (b.1947), a theatre critic and director. Together they founded Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre (opening in St.Petersburg in 1990). The third member of team – Sergey Jakovsky (born 1980) – joined Sharmanka at the age of 13 and gradually became responsible for light/sound design as well as technical management.
In 1993, Sharmanka was driven out of Russia by an economic depression and a lack of support for art. At this time, Glasgow Museums bought some of its exhibits for the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art and invited it to provide a personal show at the McLellan Galleries in the city. Eventually, in 1996 Sharmanka Kinetic Gallery/Workshop opened permanently in Glasgow. Initially, it took up premises in King Street, before a short sojourn in Osborne Street and now it finally has a permanent performance space in the Trongate at Trongate103. I first visited the Sharmanka several years ago and have returned numerous times, each time I go I pick up on something new. It truly is a wonderful experience.


As mentioned at the start of this piece, Sharmanka now plays host to live music. Tomorrow, sees them welcoming, at short notice, the combined talents of Howie Reeve (of Tattie Toes) and Drew Wright, aka Wounded Knee, to the theatre. Wounded Knee, an experimental vocalist and singer, recently relocated to Glasgow from Edinburgh. His music; dark experimental folk; can be found, and downloaded free on his bandcamp page. Here's his version of Hamish Henderson's classic, alternative Scottish anthem, Freedom Come-All-Ye, released this year in support of the popular uprising in Egypt.



And here's his version of Shane MacGowan's, A Pair of Brown Eyes, released in June of this year:




Howie Reeve is the bass player in Tattie Toes, and has previously played in other Glasgow luminaries, most notably Maxton Grainger and Shlebie.
Tattie Toes; who trade in quirky, experimental, European-style jazz-folk; have an album which will be in the shops in September 2011, but you can get an advance copy 'here' and also pick up three free MP3 tracks while your at it. Here are Tattie Toes performing live at the CCA, Glasgow last year.




I'm not sure how Reeve and Wright's collaboration will sound but it should be mighty interesting. I'll try to get there myself but as I only learned of the concert today and have plans to head to the Highlands tomorrow I might not make it back in time. If you're in Glasgow, do try to get along and feel free to send us your review. The duo will perform amidst Eduard Bersudsky's marvelous mechanical machines and donations will be collected for the artists as you leave the gallery following their performance.

Enjoy

Griff
xx