i have a great playlist going at the moment now-

i am going to share it with you, i would reccomend it for a sunday afternoon, containing as it does, sufficient proportions of agression, angst, noise and sadness. good preparation for the imminent week.

theatre of hate - original sin - kirk brandon's voice still works; it soars (and cracks halfway up), but what with the studio technology available at the time, and whatever, the arrangement sounds inept, but it's sparseness works in its favour, if only everyone now had that restraint.

the pop group- we are all prostitutes - still incredible to me, oscillating between nihlist noise/jazz and death disco funk seamlessly.at the centre of the maelstrom  mark stewart variously screams and intones we are all prostitutes/ everyone has their price.....capitalism is the most barbaric of all religions....and fuzz guitar periodically drowns the disco/funk backing. an inspired deconstruction/destruction.

at the drive in- one armed scissor.  - surrealist nonsense, with noise. the great thing is the huge commitment that goes with it. they seem to mean it, whatever it is that they are saying.

suede- stay together - sub glam, sub bowie. much guitar action and talk of post nuclear tower blocks. bernard butler's guitar bringing up memories of sweet or gary glitter. transistor radio anthems where the speaker could just reproduce a fat, fuzzy melody and hook. but giving a poetic (that would be fake, then) image of teenage urban angst, fetishisation of concrete, doom.

leonard cohen - let's sing another song, boys - piano driven, sounding as if recorded live. len tells a story of a flirtation or relationship in a series of broken vignettes, then packs them up at the end like sweeping up playing cards.  they'll never, they'll never ever reach the moon/ at least, not the one that we're after/ it's floating broken on the open sea/ look out there, my friend/ and it carries no survivor/ let's leave our lovers wondering/ why they cannot have each other(here a sarky don't know what you call it, an cross between yodel and arpeggio, ironic shades of franky valli) let's sing another song, boys/ this one has grown old and bitter.....la la la.....    beautiful and moving.

black box recorder - seasons in the sun - this lot (well maybe just luke haines) manage to sound sarky. this is version of the cheesy monstrosity of the '70s, that i remember well from my childhood. cold, and clinical; subverting the schlock and skin deep emotionalism of the original by just making it, well, precise. haines is also notable for being the driving force of the auters also, a hugely underrated band of the early '90s, who used the glam sound to devastating effect on one album, remiscing about youth clubs and teen violence. (see suede)

mclusky - lightsabre cocksucking blues, and to hell with good intentions - i've written enough about mclusky here previously. ranting, vicious guitar, pitch perfect denunciations and manifestos of -what?- except extreme pissed offness, and great intelligence. poetry. when we gonna trash the restaurant/? when we gonna pay the guide dog?/sing it/ our love is bigger than your love/sing it....

magazine -boredom(peel session version), song from under the floorboards- first of all the classic buzzcocks song, reinvented by devoto once he'd left those manchester pop punksters with a chas and dave pub piano- and as cutting now as ever, but maybe more so than the obviously "punk" version of the buzzcocks, this has a weary dandyism about it, epitomised by the roxy music synth squealing that goes on throughout, juxtaposed with aforementioned piano. the same thing goes on, but more extreme, in the next track; there is a sort of ironic chorus in the backing vocals, which harmonise with a lalalala at points repeating the word "habit!"- gleefully camp, and very much in tune with certain strands in 70's pop; notably steve harley and cockney rebel, queen,  also some of eno's early solo work (dead finks don't talk). a sort of effette self parody.  it has a contrast of doomy post-punk guitars and barry adamson's extremely mobile bass, which bubbles and hops underneath. plus some early keyboard action. the track ends with the same pub knees-up piano that features in this version of "boredom". the whole, the aneasthetised guitar, the skipping bass and soaring keyboard, makes an uneasy whole, which is wholly appropriate- punctuated by the chant of "habit!" i include the full lyrics here, as they strike me as a work of some genius. it's like the hero of "against nature". it's not quite self-loathing, though it is disgust, not really clear where this is directed. it's someone who has (already) had too much of something. here's the lyrics, cos they are worthwhile.

i am angry i am ill and i'm as ugly as sin/ my irritability keeps me alive and kicking/ i know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit/ i know beauty and i know a good thing when i see it.// this is a song from under the floorboards/ this is a song from where the water's flat/ my force of habit - i am an insect/ i have to confess i'm proud as hell of that fact.// i know the highest and the best/ i accord them all due respect/ but the brightest jewell inside of me/ glows with pleasure at my own stupidity// this is a song from under the floorboards.....//i used to make phantoms i could later chase/ images of all that could be desired/ then i got tired of  counting all of these blessings/ and then i just got tired.//this is a song from under the floorboards......habit!! lalalalal.....

maybe this one is better - ?

here's another, but it's really stupid...........appropriate, i suppose. maybe more in a bit.......

link below: DIY "are you thinking what we're thinking?" poster site. very good - but must admit my inventiveness sadly failed me; too many possibilities!

http://kryogenix.org/code/conposter/index.php

that was the best i could do........pathetic

about mark stewart (previously mentioned on these pages for his "as the veneer of democracy....." album.) but some of this relates to the post below, about urban "regeneration" (well, to me anyway). about what we are doing with art as regeneration. by the way, the blog, k-punk, could easily become a favourite.

alright the first bit, about looking silly, was something i just liked........(not necessarily to do with shepherdesses - but a bit)

"Embarrassment is the secret weapon of the Social, power's first line of defence. What the Pop Group and Stewart risked, in their earnest intensity (both in its early Artaud-Rimbaud teenage poet + p-funk phase and in its later all-too-often all-too po-faced mode of political hectoring) was... Looking Silly. ... And it embodies a disconcerting of the FORMAL that is integral to punk - reproduce the form and you reproduce the power - unpack, unsettle, dismantle form and you may be dismantling power --- in the very neurophysiology of the listener...."   http://k-punk.blogspot.com/2003_08_03_k-punk_archive.html#106017916664112359         .....doesn't  that sound good? "dismantle the form and you may be dismantling power" it's obviously not true, but it's nice to tell yourself anyway.

" Stewart's decision to make As the Veneer of Democracy sound 'badly' produced - like a tape of a Shaka show -; his willful refusal to smooth out or tune his vocals, his deliberate overloading of the tapes with random hiss, his cutting up and not-quite-proper reassembly of the tracks... All of this is a strategy against sonic architecture - and through it, social architecture - a rejection of formal COMPLETENESS "     http://k-punk.blogspot.com/2003_08_03_k-punk_archive.html#106017916664112359  this is it- aesthetic radicalism is the appropriate mode for expressing radical sentiments. to smooth over disjunctions and disputes is not the way to go about things, if you want real change.

the idea of making a unified space  to serve a dis-unified constituency does not appeal. it seems more like papering over cracks. that is why the sheep idea does not do it for me.

just back from the special brew shop. the air smells green. i saw the council apple blossom go from orange/pink to yellow/pink in the light of the crossing beacon. the abandoned playground glittered with broken glass, rustling with plastic bags. the "no u-turn" sign on cambridge heath was numinous brightness against the edwardian dark of the road. the cars were hushed. spring is here.

listening now to pavement: "silent kid", marvellous messy stuff. excellent rock drumming, in the sense that it teeters on the edge of losing it, but doesnt - just skids around the pulse. (cdzinc.com to listen to all sorts of stuff, poor quality stream, but what the fuck). now "fillmore jive" from the same album - which embodies all i said about the last track as far as the drums go, but which has guitar action borrowed equally from sonic youth, the velvets, and all sorts of other places, and just falls apart - nearly - a  palimpsest  4 or 5 tracks deep, from wah-wah abstraction, to atonal fuzz, and something stuttering over a melody. plus a stoned/cataleptic vocal enumerating youth cults, that contrasts nicely with the sprawling guitar and drum anarchy. beautiful work.

anyway, what else? i'm currently attending a course in "creative enterprise" in hackney. it gives a GNVQ, in project management which is pretty useful. all the ads asking for artists to design benches or signage or whateverthefuck look for project management experience or qualification. i'm getting both on this. i'm still sceptical about the whole business of community arts, looks frequently like a way of beautifying areas and creating bogus heritage for property developers. the new owner/occupiers can look at their signage/litter bins/benches/pointless lump(sculpture) and feel that they are part of a "community" and continuity with the very people that they displaced and priced out. this is borne out in the way that we are asked to look into the history of our given site. it's east london, so there are lots of interesting nuggets. but i suspect that the agenda is to look far back enough that we can come up with something uncontroversial that everyone relates to. cue sheep. our site has a sheep related name. there is no evidence for it that i have found, but it is possible that sheep were grazed there at one time, and no one can take issue with sheep, right? so we have a (fake) pastoral theme, for an area that is "enjoying" gentrification. i know something much more interesting about the area

http://www.professorharbottle.co.uk/pub/londonnorth/eagle.html

" There was a tavern on this site from the early 18th century called The Shepherd And Shepherdess (hence the name of this road), where the folks of London, including its invalids, would come for cream cakes and fresh country air (don't expect either these days around here). In 1835 it was knocked down and turned into The Royal Eagle Music Hall - one of the first and most influential.......It changed its name to The Grecian Theatre and developed a reputation for bawdiness (hooray) - so much so that William Booth and The Salvation Army bought and took over the place in 18884 and eventually demolished it ....." Harbottle's pub guide (URL above)

as a matter of fact, Booth petitioned for subscriptions in order to buy the lease of the place when it was up for renewal. and managed to buy it, anonymously. then the sally army took possession and turned the place into a meeting hall or chapel or whatever they call them. it didn't go down well, there was rioting. i can see why booth chose to do this: literally just over the road was the St. luke's workhouse, so the geographic constellation of pub/music hall/pawnshop/brothel with workhouse was irresistable. he wanted to break the chain. i believe that his intentions were entirely good, probably more so than the brewers and pimps etc. that fought this in court (for breaking the terms of the lease) but i think that booths methods in this case stunk, and he deserved to lose the case, which he did. (more about this if i could now find the links) 

in terms of history, to me this is fascinating, and is right on our doorstep. the name for the site was from an early C18 pub, which was flogging dodgy fake pastoral to londoners who schlepped out there for a cream tea. shepherds and shepherdesses were stock figures of poetry and painting at the time, as non-threatening avatars of the rural poor, an avoidance of the real relations of production. so now, we fall back on the sheep trope to "regenerate" the area.

yes. if you are thinking  "fascist nob end".

this "are you thinking......" campaign has really pissed me off. big white posters, with the message apparently scrawled in pen. they are like notes passed around at school, slagging the teacher, or the smelly kid. there is an air of innuendo about the whole thing, like "They won't let you say what you really think......we're not allowed to either, but we know who we mean don't we?" so, read the call for traveller pogroms as something more general. (very strategicly placed sikh in the line up of -who? behind howard. "look, we're inclusive") there seems to be a whole class of people now, who claim that we're not allowed to celebrate christmas, or fly the union flag (like i fucking care), who suddenly decide that this is a "christian country", and go on about "political correctness run mad" (though many seem to think PC includes health and safety regulations)- and then claim that they are afraid to say anything about it, because THEY won't let you. go to the channel 4 news forum, it seems to have been taken over by this type.

howard's ten word, or thirteen word "pledge" is already pissing me off too. everything broken up into the smallest digestible chunks that can fit in a short news item. like blair's "forwards, not backwards". meaningless shit. they must think that we are stupid. in a lot of cases, they are right. i know that they all do it, or will do it, but it's the howard one that is first to really irritate. that, and the "hard working britons" mantra. britons?  am i hard working? am i a briton? i have my doubts.

i remember him from the '90s as the home secretary that both jack straw (seems funny now) and blunkett claimed as a tabloid friendly role model. punitive, "zero tolerance". wanker.

i have to say that i quite like this : http://www.respectcoalition.org/index.php?ite=448 certainly some of their iconography is lamentable; just look at the artwork section of the site. but some is not so bad- and it does present a different visual identity to the anodyne productions of the other parties. at least some of the montages are sub-heartfield http://homepage.ntlworld.com/davepalmer/cutandpaste/heartfield.html (alright, they are nowhere near as good, but the liberty one isn't bad at all), others are just crap.

but this breathless rant http://www.respectcoalition.org/index.php?ite=164 is actually hilarious. "routemaster busses!.....and another thing- what about concierges?....." etc. etc. it starts rational, then sort of loses shape and degenerates. it's not that i neccessarily disagree with her sentiments - it's just that her prose is awful. 

well, as far as the election go, i think that this lot have probably got my vote (that is, if i'm registered and i have a vote). no other party round these parts have bothered to try and get it, though.  their literature is the exact opposite to the others. the others are very light on principals in case it scares people, but detailed on how they are going to do this or that. this lot state a lot of principals, but seem wooly on how the specifics are achieved. it seems a better way round to me. this lot appear - dissaffected lefties - to be motivated by the same anger that i feel; but that doesn't mean they could organise a pissup in a brewery. but i can't, in all conscience, vote for the party of asbos and iraq and internment without trial.

http://www.respectcoalition.org/index.php?sec=31

nonetheless, i predict that galloway will prove to be just as in love with his self-made personality cult as ken livingstone.

i realise i've thought very little, and written nothing, about the forthcoming election. i was far more engrossed in the american one last november. i have to say that i felt that one would have greater impact in how we all live than this one will.of course i don't want the tories back in, they started what blair is enthusiastically finishing off - the privatisation of everything. i acknowledge that the tories would never have introduced a minimum wage, or increased it, now it's there. i don't believe that they would have handled iraq any differently either.

polly toynbee has an interesting, slightly vitriolic article about "voter apathy" here:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1449976,00.html she veers between blaming voters and politicians - she's dead right about your average "middle england" voter. these are the ones that new labour are terrified of alienating by using the S word (socialism). these are also the people that thatcherism was made for. they own property, they love their cars and their families and don't see much beyond that. i can understand the disgust  that comes through in the article. she's wrong on one point though, the council tax is not a property tax; landlords do not pay it for the properties that they own and profit from, their tenants do.this is the explanation for the popularity of "buy to let" mortgages - they reward the greedy. on the other hand, when people have lost faith in the welfare state, pensions and the health service to look after them, and successive governments have encouraged this sense of mistrust, people will make other arrangements. but this is my problem with property owning - it encourages people to pull up the drawbridge, and say "im sorted - fuck you".  this was thatcher's ambition though, and the labour government is not challenging this. they have de-politicised themselves, as far as they can, in order not to alarm anyone. they are concerned about the public realm, in the form of public space, but they don't see the increase of fly tipping is connected to the privatisation of waste disposal contracts, they don't see (one) possible cause for dissafection amongst the youth in the removal of whatever chance they had for an education via the removal of  grants for higher education. i was amongst the last in this country to recieve a mandatory grant for my degree (though i still had to take a loan as well), and the first in my family to go into higher education. instead we have what look to me like petty, curtain twitching gripes, graffitti, burnt out cars; which can all be fixed, apparently, by handing out ASBOS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASBO . these are directed against individuals, not social or economic conditions. also, incidentally, whilst there is a criminal penalty for violating one, the "offense" which gave rise to it is not necessarily criminal, and needs only civil court standards of proof (rather than beyond reasonable doubt) to be imposed. asbos have recently been given to people for feeding seagulls, begging, standing at a window in underwear (no shit). just do a google on it.

what this sums up to me is a sort of purse-lipped punitive approach. i haven't even mentioned the recent house-arrest laws. this is the stance of a government that feels impotent in so many ways to shape society, the damage having already been done in the '80s. and it is worried about the public realm, but for some reason it feels it needs to be seen as tough, so it will bully individuals. it deliberately removed class narrative from politics, in order not to scare anyone, so has tied it's own hands. the slogan "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" from 1997 rings pretty hollow coming from a government that has virtually soiled in itself in it's eagerness to prove the former - but shies away from the latter. to deal with the causes of crime might involve restructuring society, and they don't want to deal with that; it's a vote loser.

instead we get: http://www.howardleague.org/studycentre/fact2.htm because that's what the tabloids (and middle englanders) wnt. the highest prison population in the EU.

"Home Office data reveals that about 78% of people sentenced to immediate custody in 2003 had committed non-violent offences (i.e. offences that did not involve violence, sex or robbery)" Howard league for penal reform (link above)

you will never hear a politician say (these days)  "people are rich because others are poor"; but seeing as we don't live in a world of infinite resources, i can't see that there is any other explanation. hence the eagerness to sop up the glory for a strong economy, which translates to a consumer spending boom. the collateral for all this has been house ownership, facilitated by cheap mortgages/cheap credit. in other words, debt. there is a growing chasm between the landlord, or owner/occupier class, and the tenants. one is paying the mortgage of the other, thus securing the others collateral to gain credit - to maybe buy more houses. the supine response of all the parties to this has been to "make it easier for first time buyers". so, the housing market is going to be the engine of our economy, then. obviously, we'll all just keep getting richer and richer from this. only if there is a rented sector, the prices would fall otherwise. there has to be a demand. the solution is not to allow the profit motive to rule over the provision of one of the most vital resources, the solution has to be (gasp) publc housing.