Benjamin Péret: songs of the eternal rebels

Benjamin Péret (1899-1959) was active in the Surrealist movement from its formation until his death. Among other things he edited at one stage the journal 'La Révolution surréaliste'.

His most substantial prose work is the surrealist novel 'Mort aux Vaches et au champ d'honneur' - literally 'Death to the Cows and to the Field of Honour' but sometimes translated as Death to the Pigs (since Vaches was used as slang for cops).

To give one example of its striking imagery, it features a section where the sobs of cinema goers form a sea of tears that floods the world:

'Suddenly the sun yawned like a dog waking up, and breath reeking of garlic polluted the atmosphere. A kazoo came and fell in to the heap of barbed wire the broom-seller was tangled in. He grabbed it and blew into it. A long whine and several tears emerged, which burst and expelled lumps of foam all around, which floated on the sea of tears. Delighted, the broom­seller continued to blow into the kazoo, continuing to to produce teary fireworks which burst into foam and settled all about him... When the sea of tears was covered over with a thick rug of foam, circumstances changed rapidly for the broom-seller, who had the unfortunate notion of lying down on it. Barely had he stretched out when the kazoo's whimpering became extraordinarily loud. They were no longer whimpers but veritable roars which destroyed his eardrums and slowly dug a tunnel through his head'

Like other Surrealists, Péret used automatic writing as a technique to discover the marvelous in everyday life: 'The marvelous, I say again, is all around, at every time and in every age. It is, or should be, life itself, as long as that life is not made deliberately sordid as this society does so cleverly with its schools, religion, law courts, wars, occupations and liberations, concentration camps and horrible material and mental poverty'.

His experiences in the French army in the First World War made him a pronounced anti-militarist, as well as being vehemently anti-clerical - Mortes Aux Vaches includes images of 'A general trampled by reindeer' and dogs sniffing dead priests. The photograph here was originally published in La Révolution surréaliste (1926) with the caption 'Our colleague Benjamin Péret in the act of insulting a priest'.

Péret was one of the first of the Surrealists to break with Stalinism. In the early 1930s, living in Brazil (with his wife, the singer Elsie Houston) he joined the trotskyist Communist League. In the Spanish Civil War, he worked first with the independent socialist POUM and then an anarchist militia fighting on the Aragon front. Later he was part of a group called the Union Ouvriere Internationale which broke with the trotskyist movement over the latter's defence of the Soviet Union as a degenerate workers state (see this biography of Ngo Van Xuhat for more about this)

In a 1949 poem, A Lifetime, Péret looked back on his long association with Andre Breton and wrote of:

'the songs in raised fists of the eternal rebels thirsting for ever new wind
for whom freedom lives as an avalanche ravaging the vipers' nests of heaven and earth
the ones who shout their lungs out as they bury Pompeiis
Drop everything'.

Main source: Benjamin Péret, Death to the Pigs and Other Writings, translated by Rachel Stella and others (London: Atlas Press, 1988). The best source online is L'Association des amis de Benjamin Péret (in French)

What is it?

It was my birthday recently. Some friends who know my penchant for small stringed instruments - I play mandolin and ukulele and also have a baglama - brought me back this instrument from Morocco:

It's shaped like a camel-skin covered frying pan, with a tubular neck. It has three strings and makes a bass sound with a satisfying rattle. Can anyone tell me any more about it - what it is, how it's played, what kind of music it's associated with? I've come across a mention of a North African instument called a guenbri which kind of fits this description. I know there's a few musicologists reading this blog - can you help?

Woofah Issue Three

Woofah issue three has been out for a month now, but it's taken me a while to get round to reviewing it. If you haven’t seen previous issues, it’s a lovingly produced glossy A5 zine, aiming to cover reggae, grime and dubstep. As well as taking seriously musics that are under-represented in print (in my view), the contributors also have a strong sense of the way music emerges from connections between people in specific places and scenes, from their life journeys through these times and spaces, and from the sonic dialogue that is opened up when sounds created in a particular zone are transplanted somewhere else.

In the latter respect, I was fascinated to read the interview with The Bomb Squad (legendary producers of Public Enemy, among others). In the latest twist in the Black Atlantic dialogue, these African Americans have been seriously checking out dubstep made by people in England many of whom in turn would have grown under the influence of their groundbreaking hip hip productions. It’s all about the bass – ‘It’s dark, it’s heavy. At the same time its rebellious’ (Hank Shocklee).

Elsewhere an article on the history of UK Dub follows a route from Jah Shaka’s Dub Club at the Rocket on London’s Holloway Road through to Aba Shanti’s University of Dub at Brixton Recreation Centre, while Soulja of FWD recalls London and Essex hardcore and garage nights at places like Telepathy in Stratford, the Berwick Manor Club and Grays (Grays Inn Road) on her journey through to becoming dubstep promoter and working with Rinse FM – nearly 14 years on air as a London pirate despite crackdowns including an ASBO that banned one of the people involved from going above the 3rd floor of any building!

You can get it here. and you really should.

The Light Behind the Curtains

The break of dawn is not always the end of the party, but it is usually the beginning of the end. If nothing else, the first rays of daylight are a warning that the spell is breaking and that the special quality of night as a period outside of the normal rules of daytime (work, school etc.) is fleeting. In the 1920s, Herman Hesse described a moment at a party when 'a feeling that it was morning fell upon us all. We saw the ashen light behind the curtains. It warned us of pleasure’s approaching end and gave us symptoms of the weariness to come'. For him this was a signal for a last joyful burst of energy 'we flung ourselves desperately into the dance once more'.

A more doleful image of a party's end occurs in great Sicilian novel The Leapoard by Tomasi di Lampedusa (1958):

'The ball went on for a long time still, until six in the morning; all were exhausted and wishing they had been in bed for at least three hours; but to leave early was like proclaiming the party a failure and offending the host and hostess who had taken such a lot of trouble, poor dears. The ladies' faces were livid, their dresses crushed, their breaths heavy. "Maria! How tired I am! Maria! How sleepy!" Above their disordered cravats the faces of the men were yellow and lined, their mouths stained with bitter saliva. Their visits to a disordered little room near the band alcove became more frequent; in it were disposed a row of twenty vast vats; by that time nearly all were brimful, some spilling over. Sensing that the dance was nearing its end, the sleepy servants were no longer changing the candles in chandeliers, and the short stubs diffused a different, smoky, ill-omened light. In the empty supper room were only dirty plates, glasses with dregs of wine which the servants, glancing around, would hurriedly drain; through the cracks in the shutters filtered a plebeian light of dawn. The party was crumbling away…'

This pessimistic perspective is in keeping with the theme of the novel. Its main character, Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, is dying and reflecting melancholically on the fading away not only of his own life but of a way of life as the Sicilian aristocracy decays in the face of Italian unification - the party is over in every respect. For him 'The crowd of dancers... seem unreal, made of the raw material of lapsed memories, more labile even than that of disturbing dreams'. A young couple dancing may be 'sweet and touching' but they too are mortal and doomed: 'his gloved right hand on her waist, their outspread arms interlaced, their eyes gazing into each other's. The black of his tail-coat, the pink of her interweaving dress, looked like some unusual jewel. They were the most moving sight there, two young people in love dancing together, blind to each other's defects, deaf to the warnings of fate, deluding themselves that the whole course of their lives would be as smooth as the ballroom floor, unknowing actors set to play the parts of Juliet and Romeo by a director who had concealed the fact that tomb and poison were already in the script'.

Still the end of the night doesn't have to signal despair. In Camera Obscura's great party song Let Me Go Home (a favourite floorfiller at How Does it Feel?), 'Daylight appears through the curtains and nobody cares, Supremes in our dreams, Do we quit bein' obscene on the stairs?'. Anyway, sometimes the end of the party holds out the promise of something more: 'Well the room goes boom to the sound of temptations and more, Twisting and turning that girl's looking good on the floor, Well the four walls they collide, Until the blue-eyed girl decides to let me go home'.

Image: from Visconti's 1963 film of The Leopard

Songs about Dancing (5): Sophisticated Boom Boom

I was walkin' down the street,

And it was gettin' mighty late.

Well, the truth of the matter is,

This poor girl had been abandoned by her date.

When, from out of nowhere,

Came this music loud and clear.

Let me see, from over there?

(No, from over there.)

Over there? (Yeah.)

Well, I open up the door,

And much to my surprise,

The girls were wearin' formals,

And the boys were wearin' ties.

And I feel that I should mention,

That the band was at attention.

They just stood there, oh, so neat,

While they played their swingin' beat.

So I grabbed this little boy,

Who came struttin' 'cross the room,

And I say, "What's that?" And he say,

Sophisticated boom, boom.

It's been long overdue, Sophisticated boom, boom.

We been need'in' somethin' new, Sophisticated boom, boom.

Now stand up straight and tall, Like your back's against the wall.

Take two steps forward (Boom, boom.) (Boom-boom, boom-boom)

And shake your hips. (Boom, boom)...

Sophisticated Boom Boom by The Shangri-Las was originally a b-side to Long Live Our Love in 1966. It was written by George "Shadow" Morton. The song title was also used as the name for a cool Scottish girl band in the early 1980s and for Dead or Alive's first album in 1984. The Shangri-Las were from Queens (NYC) - perhaps the song describes going through a time tunnel in 1966 and coming across a Vampire Weekend gig in Brooklyn in 2007.

Queer Albert Hall

'Queer urban culture was the site of diverse intersecting modes of queerness and "normality," coalescing around their desires for homosex, sociability, and intimacy. These antagonisms crystallized in two prominent annual events: the Chelsea Arts Ball and Lady Malcolm's Servants' Ball -both held at the Royal Albert Hall.

1926 Chelsea Arts Ball (from Getty Images)

The former, in particular, was a centerpiece in the metropolitan social calendar, a New Year's Eve costume ball that attracted massive media attention and crowds of up to 7,000 socialites, artists, and ordinary Londoners in elaborate fancy dress. These "true pageants" were, observed Kenneth Hare in 1926, notable for their "variety, inventiveness, vivacity and colour." For many men, becoming part of this carnival gener­ated a palpable sense of release. Hundreds of working-class queans flocked to both balls, discarding the masks they wore in everyday life, wearing drag, dressing outrageously, and socializing unashamedly while never appearing to be anything out of the ordinary. In so doing, they were further protected by the Albert Hall's unique legal status: it was outside the Met's operational sphere. For once, temporarily and locally, men could fully escape police sur­veillance.

A 50-feet high mermaid designed by Ronald Searle for the 1954 Chelsea Arts Ball
(from Perpetua - Ronald Searle tribute blog)

The results were spectacular. In 1934, one observer described "groups of men dressed in coloured silk blouses and tight-hipped trousers ... lips ... rouged and faces painted. By their attitude and general behaviour they were obviously male prostitutes."...

1947 Chelsea Arts Ball, taken by Tony Linck, sourced from the Life Archive

From the early 1930s the organizers of both events were increasingly exercised by these "disgraceful scenes," and a nagging sense that men's behavior was somehow out of control. In 1936, Lady Malcolm herself wrote cryptically - apparently in some desperation-to the Times: 'Each year I notice at the ball a growing number of people, who, to be frank, are not of the class for whom the ball is designed. It is what it is called- a servants' ball, and I am jealous that it shall go on deserving that name."Both balls employed private stewards to maintain "order" and exclude "undesirables." From 1933, having failed to secure a police presence, Malcolm employed two ex-CID officers to remove any identifiable "sexual perverts." From 1935 tickets were sold with the proviso that "NO MAN IMPERSONATING A WOMAN AND NO PERSON UNSUITABLY ATTIRED WILL BE ADMITTED". On entry, men's costumes had to be approved by a "Board of Scrutineers." Whatever they tried, however, the organizers could neither keep the "Degenerate Boys" out nor adequately contain their visibility; indeed, they often struggled even to identify them amidst the fancy dressed crowds. In 1938, an observer thus described the "extraordinary number of undesirable men at this Ball who were unmis­takably of the Homo-Sexual and male prostitute types." Well into the 1950s, the balls remained, in Stephen's words, "a great Mecca for the gay world."

Working-class men reappropriated two high-profile public events, creat­ing a space at the center of metropolitan culture in which they could be together and socialize free of the constraints that braced everyday queer lives.'

1947 Chelsea Arts Ball, taken by Tony Linck, sourced from the Life Archive

Quote: Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957 - Matt Houlbrook (University of Chicago Press, 2005) - I couldn't find any specifically drag photos, but these images certainly show that this was some party.

George Brecht

George Brecht (1926-2008), Fluxus artist, died last month.

His many sound pieces included 'Drip Music' (1959): 'For single or multiple performance. A source of dripping water and an empty vessel are arranged so that the water falls into the vessel' and 'Comb Music' (1959): 'For a single or multiple performance. A comb is held by its spine in one hand, either free or resting on an object. The thumb or a finger on the other hand is held with its tip against the end prong of a comb, with the edge of the nail overlapping the end of a prong. The finger is slowly and uniformly moved so that the prong is inevitably released, and the nail engages the next prong. This action is repeated until each prong has been used'.



Photo is of him performing 'Solo for Violin' (1964) at 359 Canal Street, New York City during Flux Fest at Fluxhall - a piece for which the score reads simply 'polishing'.

More Soho Nights: Hand Jive

More on Soho Nights from today's Guardian:

'... in 1956, I heard about this new dance craze called hand-jiving. So I made a number of visits to a coffee bar called The Cat's Whiskers in Soho. Cliff Richard used to appear there. I remember the place was crowded with young kids when I arrived. It was pretty late, but not after midnight. In those days, midnight was the witching hour; things closed up after that. I did not speak to anyone, but I do remember the atmosphere was very jolly. Wholesome would be a good word. And the reason they were jiving with their hands was just because there was precious little room to do it with their feet. Everyone was doing it, which was quite a bizarre sight.
The craze just fascinated me. It seemed like a strange novelty, but it really caught on. There were quite a few variations they could do, like one called the mashed potato... What's more, hand-jiving was an activity that everyone shared and had a go at in their own particular style. Not being a great jive artist myself, it was one of the things I could do, and I used to join in. .

Ken Russell's work features in Soho Nights, at the Photographers' Gallery, London W1 (0845 262 1618), until 8 February.

Dancing Questionnaires (10): Onomé Ekeh

From Brooklyn, Onomé Ekeh recalls a life in dance from New York to Switzerland:

1. Can you remember your first experience of dancing?
No. It must have been when I was preverbal. I was always inclined to dance.

2. What’s the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while out dancing?
Entering a trance and replicating slash imbibing the moves of dancers far more advanced and superior to me.

3. You. Dancing. The best of times…
8 hour jags with a gallon of water, emerging at 10 a.m in the morning in a cloud of baby powder--thanks to the rocksteady crew types who need the stuff to be fluid.

4. You. Dancing. The worst of times…
Crowded. Cokeheads. People bogged down by alchohol, parking on the dancefloor. Insensitive DJs...

5. Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you’ve frequented?
Early in my NY career, I would go to BoB a bar on Eldridge St. on the lower east side on Wednesdays and Fridays'--this was pre-Giuliani, crowded, free, old school funk till dawn. Then I was introduced to "The Loft" on Avenue A, classic deep house on Saturday nights, shortly thereafter, The AfterLife (Deep House) which started from 3 am in a small theater company space in Tribeca--actually round the corner from what came to be known as "Body and Soul", sort of the last stand- a "Tea Party" from 4 to 10pm on Sundays. Classic house with Danny Krivits, Kim Lightfoot and others. Finally plagued by tourists and people on drugs...

6. When and where did you last dance?
At a cinderella type club in Zurich, Les Halles -which is normally a restaurant but on Christmas Day it turns into a fabulous dance party, straddling the balance of electric disco and paris house...

Sylvester, photo © Clay Geerdes

7. You’re on your death bed. What piece of music would make your leap up for one final dance?
Hmmm. Sylvester (pictured), (You Make Me Feel) Mighty Real? Disco Inferno? Most anything 70s disco would raise me from the dead...

All questionnaires welcome- just answer the same questions and send to transpontine@btinternet.com (see previous questionnaires)

Cildo Meireles

Only a few days to go of the exhibition by Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles at Tate Modern (London) - it closes on 11th January. If you haven't been yet, I strongly recommend it.

The exibition starts with some of his earliest work from the 1970s under the Brazilian military dictatorship, including his Insertions into Ideological Circuits which involved printing political messages on banknotes and Coca-Cola bottles and putting them back into circulation.

Several of the installations feature sound elements. Fontes is a room full of 1,000 clocks ticking in different rhythms and 6,000 suspended rulers making their own sound as people push through them. Babel )pictured) is a tower built of around 800 radios, bursting out white noise which shfits as you move around it. It is also a kind of museum of the radio age -or what the artist has described as ‘an archaeological sample of events - with old style valve radios at the bottom and smaller transistor radios at the top.

Red Shift is a room set up like a domestic environment with everything - furniture, food, objects - in red. Watch out for a copy of Ottowan's D.I.S.C.O. in red vinyl (seriously). The final room, Volatile, is quite magical. If you've never waded barefoot through talcum powder by candlelight, now is your chance. But be warned - there will be probably be long queues for this and the Red room, so you might want to get there early.

More on Babel:

'The fact that the radios gathered together in this installation are tuned in to many different stations underscores, moreover, the notion that, even within a context of growing interrelationship between peoples, it might be possible to generate and assert difference. In opposition to the social entropy proclaimed in the narrative of Genesis, the demise of a universal language - and the subsequent end of a presumed transparency of meaning in the spoken language of all the inhabitants of the world - might in fact be associated with the interruption of a colonial rule that imposed the language and culture of a single nation upon everyone, and therefore constrained the emergence of alterity. Connected yet different, members of that network cannot thus be associated with exclusive interests nor reduced to a uniform amalgamate, being better understood as individual parts of a 'multitude' which produces and shares that which it imagines it holds in common.

However, the other elements that make up Babel problematise this communal utopia, indicating that the expression of various opinions is an insufficient condition for the most equitable division of power between distinct human groups. From the first glimpse of the work, it is obvious to the visitor that the radios piled up by the artist to form the tower are bearers of the most varied technologies - from the obsolescent to the excess of resources. This diversity may be understood as an index of the unequal access of nations (and also of the many social strata within each one of them) to the power of communicating with that which is distant and, by this token, of asserting that which they deem to be important. In fact, the 'right to narrate' that all nations and communities constantly claim - the right to be heard, recognised and represented is always conditioned by the hierarchical (albeit disseminated and dispersed) control of technological media and political instruments through which it is exercised, thus rendering such media and instruments integral parts of the 'ideological circuits' that anesthetise difference and block change in stratified societies.

Even though they occupy the same space in the exhibition room, using the same means of transmission, these many different radios allude to the simultaneous presence, among different peoples or even within a single nation, of distinct social times. Thus they symbolise the asymmetrical distribution of power that allows for the assertion of sovereignties and the decentralised yet effective command of the mechanisms that structure exchanges between distant places.

The drone produced jointly by all of the sets also suggests that the immeasurable quantity of information transmitted by radio in the contemporary world - as well as by television and even more so by the internet - eventually obscures the content of intended communications, emptying them of clearly discernible meanings. Within any given transmission frequency, the number of stations is great enough for their broadcasts occasionally to overlay each other, mix or even cancel one another out. Thus, the listener is alienated from the speech of others less through scarcity than through excess of information, provoking a 'negative ecstasy of radio'. It is an ecstasy that reduces differences not by rendering that which is communicated more transparent but, on the contrary, by rendering indistinct each discourse that desires to affirm itself as unique. Paradoxically, this erasure of alterity becomes all the greater as the means of communication needed for its expression become more widely disseminated.'

From: 'Where all places are' by Moacir Dos Anjos in Cildo Meireles, edited by Guy Brett (London, Tate, 2008)

Weekend Free Parties, Oxfordshire and Devon

Police break up illegal rave (Oxford Mail, 6 January 2009)

'Teenagers accused police of being heavy-handed when they arrived in the early hours of the morning to break up an illegal rave in Carterton. According to eye-witnesses at the party, up to seven police cars, a riot van, dog handler and an ambulance were summoned to the scene at a warehouse on the South Industrial Estate off Black Bourton Road, Carterton.

More than 30 young people, mainly teenagers from the town, gathered after midnight and into the early hours of Saturday. Officers seized sound equipment and made several arrests. Police said an 18-year-old was arrested for possession of cannabis and theft of a vehicle — a fork lift truck removed from the industrial unit — and a 19-year-old for burglary. Thames Valley Police spokesman Toby Shergold said the warehouse had been broken into and a rave was set up at about 1am.

Unemployed teenager Jack Murphy, 18, of Dovetrees, Carterton, was among those arrested. He has not been charged with any offence. He told the Oxford Mail: “We all gathered there by word of mouth. There was a full sound system and a DJ. It was going okay when all these police suddenly came in. Some fighting broke out with them and there was a bit of violence. It got a bit out of hand.”

Another Carterton teenager, Chris Baughan, 19, said: “I got there after it started and there were about 30 people having a good time. Suddenly all these officers turned up. There were about six or seven police cars, a dog unit and ambulance. It looked well over the top.” He claimed one youth — aged about 15 — suffered a broken nose and was taken to hospital. It is understood the warehouse was not damaged despite being broken into.'

Police Halt Rave (Devon24, 6 January 2009)

'An illegal rave on an area of land between Honiton and Sidmouth was shut down by police. Officers were called to East Hill Strips at 2am on Saturday, December 27, after it was reported that there were between 60 and 100 vehicles on the site as well as open-air sound equipment. Traffic officers carried out a number of road-side breath tests but they all came back negative.The DJ was told to pack up his sound equipment and police were eventually able to disperse people at around 10am'.

'Wild Beatnik Parties', London 1964

'Beatnik Parties took over Nash House - Wild Parties Held

In the past week some 15 young people have been arrested and charged with various offences under the Vagrancy Act in connexion with 6 Carlton House Terrace, London… The handsome Nash terrace which for the past three weeks has been the scene of wild beatnik parties, overlooks the Mall near the Duke of York’s Steps. Early this century it was a private address. Then some of the houses were taken by clubs, including the Savage Club, the Union Club and Crockfords. Today many of the houses including No.6 are vacant...

Yesterday morning the door to No.6 was open and there was a strong smell of beer. Inside, among the dirt and falling wallpaper, piles of sacking had been placed on the floor and slept on. There were jagged gaps in the grimy windowpanes.

The young people in their jeans and sandals had moved off. Some of them were drowsing in a favourite corner of Trafalgar Square. They sat on a low wall, wiggling bare feet in the sun, most of them grubby and unshaven, and told me about the wild parties that had been drawing people like themselves from all over the country to the deserted house.

Art of Living Soft

The sessions began around midnight, after the public houses closed, and went on most of the night. Those who wanted to sleep used sacks. Afterwards they all moved off to the parks to sleep, then assembled in Trafalgar Square to wait for the next night.

A few of them were students. One girl with long, fair hair relatively clean, and brushed, said she was an art student from Birmingham, in London for five weeks. Another girl in a leather jacked grimaced and said she was a clerk from Newcastle, down for the weekend. Three young men were unemployed. One boasted with a Scots voice that he was an art student – he was studying the art of living without work…

The Carlton House Terrace days, they feel, are over – the place will be heavily watched by the police. ‘After all this publicity’, the Scotsman said, waving a Sunday newspaper in the air, ‘we’ll have to find another place. But it won’t be difficult. There’s plenty of empty houses’

Source: Times (London), 31 August 1964; the building is now the headquarters of the Royal Society. The Institute of Contemporary Arts is also based in Carlton House Terrace. In June 1977, the Squatters Action Council took over number 14 Carlton Terrace, but were evicted by the Police Special Patrol Group who claimed they posed a security risk as the building was on the route of the Queen's Silver Jubilee procession (source: Squatting: The Real Story).

Soho Nights

Showing at the Photographers Gallery in London at the moment is Soho Nights, an exhibition of photographs of London nightlife in the 1950s.



There’s a group of 1957 pictures taken by Ken Russell in the Cat’s Whisker (above), a Soho coffee bar, with a quote from a Daily Mirror article Teenagers of Soho (1.4.1957): ‘It’s so crowded the girls “hand jive” to the band as there’s no room for dancing’. The suggestion seems to be that hand jive developed because that was all there was space to do – wonder if that’s true?

The Cat's Whisker was in Kingly Street, and was an important venue in the skiffle scene - see this 1957 article from Time Magazine: 'Into umbrous, ill-ventilated underground caverns, seemingly as necessary to life as the air-raid shelters where some of the visitors were born, thousands of bemused young Londoners squeeze nightly to stomp and holler their approval of Britain's latest musical mania: U.S. rock 'n' roll, commercial hillbilly and folk music, warmed over and juiced up in a mishmash called skiffle... To the Soho hipsters who swelter and suffocate for it in the Cat's Whisker, the Côte d'Azur or The Two I's, skiffle is brand-new'.

There’s also a series of photographs taken by Charles ‘Slim’ Hewitt at Cy Laurie’s trad jazz club in 1954 (examples below). They were originally taken for an article featuring the club in Picture Post magazine that is included in the exhibition, ‘Blue Heaven in the Basement’ (10.7.1954) : ‘it is a hypnotic, ecstatic, musical experience… There are no non-partisans. The dancers are expert and frenzied… On Friday nights there is always a queue of black and blue jeans quietly intent on forcing the “House Full” sign’.

The exhibition includes a whole series of shots that were not used in the Picture Post piece and they are very striking and timeless – multi-racial dancers in jeans, striped tops, bare feet.

Cy Laurie’s Jazz Club was held downstairs at Mac's Rehearsal Rooms at 41 Great Windmill Street, Soho, and opened in 1953 - see previous posts on this scene.

More on Form 696

The row is continuing about the Metropolitan police discouraging grime nights and other black musics, and its use of the now notorious Form 696. The Music Producers Guild has added its weight to the campaign against the form, with MPG chair Mike Howlett saying he feels 'this is a gross infringement of civil liberties and a form of racial discrimination. We also feel that this will deter the staging of live musical events, stifle free expression and possibly penalise certain genres of music and ethnic audiences'. The Voice newspaper has also highlighted the campaign, with an interview with Pete Todd, promoter of grime night, Dirty Canvas.

I've just come across an old story from the South London Press which throws some light on police tactics. In April 2007, the police invited South London club owners to a meeting at the Ministry of Sound to discuss gun crime in clubs. At the meeting Sergeant Mick Meaney of the Met's specialist S019 firearms unit told club owners: 'If you're playing a violin string quartet you're not going to get a steaming gang turn up. These people go to certain places and they are attracted by the music. If the music being played is attracting a certain type of crowd, don't play the music'. (South London Press, 20 April 2007).

That's the problem in a nutshell. As I've said before, gun crime in clubs is a real threat. As I've also said before, the police already have powers to deal with it - and for firearms police to dictate what kind of music Londoners can party to is a highly dubious state of affairs.

Banning Christmas

Still a few days to go of the Twelve Days of Christmas festivities. In the 16th century though, protestant churches in Scotland sometimes tried to ban mid-winter celebrations - even Christmas carols - as pagan and papist:

'at St Andrews, in 1573... the kirk session, the local unit of church govern­ment, punished a number of people for 'observing of superstitious days and specially of Yuil-day.' The following year it made a particular example of a baker, for filling his house with lights and guests on New Year's Day and shouting 'Yuil! Yuil! Yuil!' In that year, too, the kirk session at Aberdeen tried fourteen women for 'playing, dancing and singing of filthy carols on Yule Day at even'...

From 1583 the Glasgow kirk sessions ordered that those who kept Yule were to be excommunicated and also punished by the secular magistrates. A few years later bakers at Perth were questioned for making 'Yule Bread', and in 1588 the Haddington presbytery forbade the singing of carols at this time. In 1593 the minister of Errol equated this pastime with fornication and in 1599 the local elite of Elgin prepared for the season by forbidding 'profane pastime ... viz. footballing through the town, snowballing, singing of carols or other profane songs, guising, piping, violing and dancing.' In that decade also a piper from Dunblane was forced to promise not to play upon Christmas Day or any other old festival, having been hired to do so by Yuletide revellers in villages along the Allan Water.


The same sorts of record (which are all that we have) also make clear the large amount of opposition which these measures encountered. The ruling at Glasgow had to be repeated four times up to 1604, a sure sign of resistance to it. At Aberdeen in 1606, thirty years after the campaign of repression began, the kirk session had to condemn anew 'the superstitious time of Yule or New Year's Day' and direct that henceforth the citizens should not 'presume to mask or disguise themselves in any sort, the men in women's clothes, nor the women in men's clothes, nor otherways, be dancing with bells, other on the streets of this burgh or in private house'. The Elgin session ruling of 1599 had been the third, and most detailed, of its kind within five years. Every one of those before had been defied by revellers disguised by blackened faces, masks, handkerchiefs, or fancy dress; traditional festival costume now assuming a practical advantage. So was this order, by at least two young women going abroad attired as men. At Yule in 1603 a man rode through the town with a cloth over his head, while another was accused of 'singing and hagmonayis' at New Year. Two years later a set of Aberdonians got into trouble by going through the streets 'masked and dancing with bells'.

Source: Ronald Hutton, Stations of the Sun: a History of the Ritual Year in England (1996)

New Year's Eve

I know millions of people have been partying and having a good time in the past 24 hours (from a free party in Kent to Melbourne where 40,000 partied at Sensation rave at the Telstra Dome. So sorry for highlighting two bad news stories, one tragic, one farcical but with serious implications for people who live in the Maldives and enjoy dancing.

Thailand: 61 die in nightclub fire (Guardian, 1 January 2009)

'The death toll from a fire at a Bangkok nightclub, packed with New Year's Eve revellers, has risen to least 61 with 200 people injured... The cause of last night's fire was unclear; some clubbers blamed it on fireworks while others said it had been caused by an electrical fault in the Santika club. Video footage of the disaster showed bloodied, bruised and burned victims being dragged out of the still burning, two-story club, or managing to run through the door or shattered windows. "We were all dancing and suddenly there was a big flame that came out of the front of the stage and everybody was running away," Oh Benjamas told Reuters. Another survivor told how the ceiling caved in, burying victims in the rubble...'

Maldives: Islamists spoil the party

'Disco organisers have blamed the ministry of Islamic affairs for the poor turnout at their New Year’s Eve events after the ministry asked police to ban all discos on the night... Ibrahim Manik, the organiser of a disco held at Dharubaaruge hall said many young people were afraid to attend the discos after it was announced that they were illegal and would be stopped by police... Although the discos were not banned on the night, organisers say they were continually disrupted by police officers inspecting the venues every hour. Security was tight all over the Male', with hundreds of police officers patrolling the streets, in particular in areas where discos were being held... A 26-year-old woman, who did not wish to be named, said she was very annoyed with the ministry’s decision.“I can’t believe it. I planned to go to a disco but changed my mind when the announcements were made saying they were cancelled,” she said. Likewise, Seni Naim, 18, said her friends were planning to go to a disco but decided against it after the ministry’s announcement' (Maldives News, 1 January 2009).

The ministry of Islamic affairs appealed to the Maldives Police Service on Wednesday to end to all the discos organised for New Year’s Eve celebrations. Police sergeant Ahmed Shiyam confirmed Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari, the minister of Islamic affairs, had made an official request to the police commissioner, Ahmed Faseeh, for police to take action regarding this matter... Sheikh Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed, the state minister of Islamic affairs, said the ministry had formally requested the police stop the discos from taking place because they were contrary to Islam. He added the ministry had received complaints from the public. “We have received hundreds of complaints asking for a ban on the DJs,” he said. “So, the number of people who are against having DJs is greater than the number who wants them. Even a police official has informed us that they have also been receiving complaints.” he said. According to Shaheem, it is haram or forbidden in Islam for both sexes to dance together (Maldives News, 31 December 2008).

Teddy Girls

I am hoping to get to the Photographers Gallery (London) next week for an exhibition on 1950s Soho Nights which apparently includes some images by Ken Russell. I am sorry I missed the Bombsite Boudiccas exhibition a couple of years ago, featuring pictures Russell took of London Teddy Girls in 1955.



For the launch of the exhibition at the Spitz in East London, the organisers tracked down some of the women in the photographs, as reported in the Times:

'"We weren’t bad girls,” says Rose Shine, then Rose Hendon, who was 15 when she posed for Russell. “We were all right. We got slung out of the picture house for jiving up the aisles once, but we never broke the law. We weren’t drinkers. We’d go to milk bars, have a peach melba and nod to the music, but you weren’t allowed to dance. It was just showing off: ‘Look at us!’ We called the police ‘the bluebottles’ – you’d see them come round in a Black Maria to catch people playing dice on the corner. But we’d just sit on each other’s doorsteps and play music.”

The teddy girls left school at 14 or 15, worked in factories or offices, and spent their free time buying or making their trademark clothes – pencil skirts, rolled-up jeans, flat shoes, tailored jackets with velvet collars, coolie hats and long, elegant clutch bags. It was head-turning, fastidious dressing, taken from the fashion houses of the time, which had launched haute-couture clothing lines recalling the Edwardian era. Soon the fashion had leapt across the class barrier, and young working-class men and women in London picked up the trend.

...Rose and her group of West End teddy girls would meet at the Seven Feathers Club in Edenham Street, North Kensington, a youth club popular with both the boys and the girls. “There was a jukebox and dancing,” she says. “Just tea and cakes, because we didn’t go to pubs then. It wasn’t until we were 20 that we might go to the pub. We weren’t bad, not like some of the boys. There was this song called Rip It Up… Well, the boys, they used to go and rip the seats.”

...Teddy girls from different parts of London rarely mingled. Grace Curtis (then Grace Living) was one of the girls Russell photographed in the East End. “We hung out down the Docklands Settlement – a club where there was space for dancing and boxing. We were East End. In those days you just stuck to your area. There was a little snack bar in the club where you could buy drinks and we just all got together and danced.”

Both women hoot with excitement when they remember dancing The Creep by Ken Mackintosh – a slow shuffle of a dance so popular with teddy boys that it led to their other nickname of “creepers”. “It’s the best dance,” says Curtis. “You used to dance or jive with your girlfriends, but for The Creep you could choose your partner. You could pick up a fella and go and dance with him.”

(more at When the Girls come out to play, Times, 5 March 2006)

The bottom photograph shows Elsie Hendon, 15, Jean Rayner, 14, Rosie Hendon, 15, and Mary Toovey on a bombsite in Southam Street, North Kensington, West London.

Christmas nightclub tragedy in Peru

'Police in Peru were searching Friday for the person who threw a tear gas canister into an unlicensed discotheque early Christmas Day, causing a stampede that killed five people, Peruvian news reports said. Police also want to talk with the owner or manager of the disco, El Buum, in the southern Peruvian city of Juliaca, the state-run Andina news agency reported. Three women and two men died from asphyxiation as hundreds of young people trampled each other trying to get out of the disco, Andina reported. The three women have been identified as two 20-year-olds and a 17-year-old, but the two men remained unidentified.At least six others ended up in the hospital...

TV images of rescuers rushing into the upstairs disco captured some of the pandemonium. "Help us, please," one woman is heard yelling desperately. "Water," a man pleads. "Open the door," someone else shouts. Survivors described the panic.

"You could see all the people leaving, dragging each other, asking for water. And my sister, I found her fallen to the ground. I took her to the hospital, but she was unfortunately already dead," Canal N TV, a Peruvian 24-hour cable news channel, quoted one young man as saying.
"The kids were falling. They fell to the ground and everyone was crying out for water. It was packed," an unidentified young woman is quoted as telling Canal N'.

Source: CNN, 26 December 2008

Uganda: the death of a disco dancer

The Police in Arua district have detained Nyadri district Police commander Benedict Ojingo and Police constable Rashid Nyakuni over murdering a student. Ojingo and Nyakuni, were arrested after Stephen Enzabugo, a Senior One student of Oleba Seed Secondary School, was shot and killed during a dance in Alikua trading centre on Christmas Day. The two allegedly opened fire in an attempt to stop the dance. They were enforcing a ban on night discos that had been imposed by the local authorities. One of the bullets hit Enzabugo on the forehead and killed him instantly...

The Nyadri resident district commissioner, Mary Akwiya Anecho, however defended Ojingo, saying he was enforcing the late night disco ban. “We had agreed to stop any discos in the area this festive season because we wanted to avoid violence. So, the DPC (Ojingo) was merely enforcing what we agreed. We think the death was an accident. It is very unfortunate and we are very sorry to the parents,” Anecho said.

Source: New Vision Online [Uganda], 29 December 2009

Argentine Floggers

From Latin American Herald Tribune, 26 December 2008:

'A 16-year-old boy died over the weekend in the central province of Cordoba after being beaten by other youths, police said, adding that the victim was apparently attacked for looking like a "flogger," a popular new fashion in Argentina. Three suspects, two of them 16 years old and another who is 20, have been arrested for allegedly attacking the teenager, hitting and kicking him as he was leaving a discotheque early Sunday.

Precinct chief Oscar Criado told Argentine media that the victim was wearing "clothes that identify floggers," as Argentines call those who contact each other publishing photos on Internet social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. "Flogger" comes from Fotolog.com, a photoblog social web site that is particularly popular in Argentina. Floggers usually wear tight jeans, canvas sneakers or skate shoes, colorful T-shirts, with a hairstyle that includes a fringe that tends to cover the eyes completely or partially, and is the same for girls and boys.

Other common characteristics include listening to electronic music and dancing in their own peculiar way. The most popular move, related to the French tecktonik and the Australian shuffle and the Charleston of 100 years ago, consists of rapidly spreading one leg, hitting the floor with the heel, and drawing the other leg backwards, and then quickly changing the position of the legs (spreading the other leg, and shifting backwards the one that was spread)...'

Here's how ('floggers,glams, chetos villeros etiketense todo es posible!' sourced from youtube):

O Come O Come Emmanuel

I am a bit of sucker for Christmas carols - well, even uber-atheist Richard Dawkins enjoys singing along to them. And of all the carols, my favourite is O come, O come, Emmanuel

For me, there's something about the continuity of human expression. On a personal level, a continuity with songs sung in childhood at school and on our family's sporadic visits to church. On a deeper level, a continuity with generations who have sung the same song. OK so this hymn in its current form only goes back as far as the mid-19th century, but the words are a translation by John Mason Neale of a Latin text ("Veni, veni, Emmanuel") parts of which date back at least as far as the 8th century. The tune likewise is believed to originate from a 15th Century French processional for Franciscan nuns, although it may be even older.

The text is based on the biblical prophesy from the Book of Isaiah (7:14) that states that God will give Israel a sign called Immanuel (Hebrew for 'God with us'.). The prophet Isaiah is generally dated to the 8th century BC, so the subject matter of the song is getting on for 3,000 years old. I like the idea that - language barriers notwithstanding - a Jewish refugee in Babylon, a Roman slave, a medieval French peasant and a 17th century Digger would immediately understand what this song was about.

Of course continuous tradition is a double-edged sword - there is a continuity of religiously-sanctioned oppression and war, the dead weight of superstition and prejudice. Hearing the present day Pope's absurd statements about homosexuality reminds me of why it is important to hold on to a critique of religion and clericalism.

On the other hand, there is another tradition of radical Jews and Christians drawing on Biblical verses for inspiration for rebellion and social transformation - from peasant revolts to liberation theology. 'O come, O come, Emmanuel' with its call to 'ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here' can certainly be sung with such meanings in mind. And its source, the Book of Isaiah is full of admonitions against those who 'grind the face of the poor' and fail to 'seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow'. Famously it pictures a future world where 'they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more'.

While Christians believe that Isaiah's prophecy was fulfilled in the form of Jesus Christ, religious Jews dispute that the promised Messiah has already come and gone. I am sure that one of the reasons for Christian anti-semitism was the Church's hostility to a minority in the midst of Christendom who publically questioned their absolutist interpretation of the Bible. For instance in Barcelona in 1263 there was a famous four day disputation in front of King James I of Aragon between a Dominican friar, Pablo Christiani, and Nahmanides, a rabbi. The latter denied that Jesus was the Messiah on the simple basis that he had failed to deliver - work, war and death were still very much around - 'these punishments were not annulled by the advent of your messiah'. The King rewarded Nahmanides for his rhetorical victory in the debate - even if he disagreed with him - but later he was to be banished from Spain (source: Kaddish by Leon Wieseltier).

Nahmanides certainly had a point - where was the new heaven and new earth promised in Isaiah? But personally I tend towards the sentiments of the secular hymn that declares 'No saviour from on high delivers, No trust we have in prince or peer, Our own right hand the chains must shiver, Chains of hatred, greed and fear'. Still I guess I have moved to a position where I no longer see atheism as a necessary indicator of radicalism (for instance there are some quite dubious aspects of Richard Dawkins' politics in my view). Similarly I no longer assume that anybody who uses religious language is a superstitious bigot. And I can certainly appreciate a good hymn!

I have included three versions of this song here for your listening pleasure (just click on links to download).



Blyth Power - O Come O Come Emmanuel (MP3)
The first is by Blyth Power from a 1986 tape they put out called 'A little touch of Harry in the night'. Although they played countless anarcho-punk benefit gigs, Blyth Power always had a broader frame of reference than most bands on that scene (Shakespeare, Shelley, trainspotting) and liked to challenge the moral certainty and narrow-mindedness of some Crass punks - for instance by playing a hymn!

Belle and Sebastian - O Come O Come Emmanuel (MP3)

B & S's version was recorded live for a Xmas 2002 radio session at John Peel's house (the female part is sung by Tracyanne Campbell from Camera Obscura). The band's Stuart Murdoch is one of the people who has challenged my bigoted conception that all Christians are bigots - a former church caretaker who is a sex-positive socialist (sample lyric 'she was into S & M and Bible studies, not everyone's cup of tea, she would admit to me').

Sufjan Stevens - O Come O Come Emmanuel (MP3)

Sufjan Stevens has released a whole series of Christmas albums with a mixture of his own and traditional songs, now nicely collected in boxed set, Songs for Christmas.

Have a good holiday!

Rubbish soundtracks

Soundtracks can make a film, or certainly enhance it. For instance, the soundtrack to Juno is excellent, with its indie pop/anti-folk vibe perfectly complementing the feel of the film, and seeming true to the people in it. In the closing scene the main characters sing Moldy Peaches ‘Anyone else but you’ and it is entirely believable.

But sometimes soundtracks seem to bear no relation to the film - snatches of seemingly random tunes (or ones aimed at a similar demographic to the film) dropped in here, there and everywhere just to justify the existence of a soundtrack album. Most of the time this crass product placement goes in one ear and out the other, but sometimes the music jars so badly with the film that it ruins the moment completely.

The worst example I've come across recently is in the film Blood & Chocolate which I watched last night. In the scene in question, a handsome young American comic book artist and his beautful girlfriend (who is in fact a werewolf) are climbing over the rooftops of Bucharest, looking at the wolf statues on the remains of an ancient castle, while being trailed by other werewolves. Potentially a moment of tension and excitement - but what music was playing? Incredibly, Cash Machine by Hard Fi, a prosaic account of living in London, going to the cash machine and... er.... finding there's no money in your account. Yes, just the song you'd choose for a moment of Romanian lycanthropy! It's not a great film at the best of times, but that just about finished it off for me.

If anyone can think of a worse example of inappropriate soundtrack syndrome let me know.

December policing round-up

England (London): squatted pub evicted (Islington News, 19 December 2008)

'Bailiffs have evicted squatters who turned an empty Holloway pub into a late-night basement rave club.The squatters, who are believed to have moved in a month ago, were ejected from Tufnells in Tufnell Park Road on Tuesday morning... A bailiff, who did not wish to be named, said: “They didn’t really trash it that bad. They took their mattresses with them when they left. It was all very peaceful.”He added: “They put mattresses upstairs and turned the cellar into a club. One guy had a Buddha room with joss sticks and plants and a statue of Buddha.”'

England (Essex): 'Ten jailed after police battle at rave (Saffron Waldon Reporter, 11 December 2008)

'An illegal rave near Great Chesterford earlier this year which resulted in police helicopters from three forces being scrambled has resulted in 10 men being jailed. Chelmsford Crown Court was told on Monday that 60 officers were injured in the rave raid and were damaged. Objects thrown at police included glass bottles, cans, stones, metal poles, lighted pieces of wood, logs and mud and fireworks. Ten men, some of whom gave themselves up to police later after seeing themselves on BBC's Crimewatch, admitted violent disorder and were jailed for a total of almost 10 years. The court was told that officers from Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Herts, Beds and the Metropolitan Police were drafted in for the raid. As well as the defendants sentenced today another 34 were arrested for drugs offences'.

India: Mumbai drug testing (Times of India, 21 December 2008)

'The anti-narcotics cell (ANC) of the Mumbai police has sent summons to 36 people, including 10 girls, who have tested positive for narcotic substances at a rave party in Juhu on October 5. The state forensic laboratory submitted its second report on Friday, which contained the test details of the 36 partygoers. "They have to present themselves before the court or the police in a week's time," said deputy commissioner of police (ANC) Vishwas Nangre-Patil. "The second report submitted showed that of the 43 samples, 36 tested positive for Ecstasy. In the first report, 109 people had tested positive for drugs," he said... The police had booked 231 people for allegedly being under the influence of the narcotic substances. Those who tested positive for Ecstasy would have to appear before court and file fresh bail pleas'.

India: open air parties banned in Goa

'While hotels, big and small, will continue with their planned new year's eve programme, albeit on a smaller scale and with incentives attract tourists thrown in many feel the positive part of the ban on open beach parties from December 23 to January 5, will be the stopping of rave parties. The open air parties with their dubious links to drug peddling and consuming will be dealt with firmly, police sources told TOI. "Rave parties on the beach or anywhere else will not be allowed at all," IGP Kishen Kumar asserted. If any complaint is received, the police will "immediately" take action and stop the parties. "Besides, we will keep strict vigil on all such areas," he added. Police sources further said, "This year we haven't noticed rave parties as locals are not taking any chances in allowing them to use their place either." ' ( (Times of India, 21 December 2008)

'Unwilling to take the ban on beach parties lying down and feeling cheated by the state government's decision to ban open beach parties shack owners have decided to submit a memorandum to the government demanding compensation. Cruz Cardozo, president of the Goa Shack Owners Welfare Society, said that the government should either compensate shack owners for their losses or forfeit the license fee of Rs 30,000.... He said many shack owners are feeling the heat as they have paid huge advances to book bands and other entertainers for Christmas and New Year celebrations (Times of India, 22 December 2008)

Botswana: Nightclubs closed by police (Mmegi online, 26 November 2008)

'Lawyers acting for two Gaborone nightclubs will this week apply for the jailing of the Commissioner of Police for contempt of court. Others to be cited in the application, for defying a court order, include the Station Commander of Gaborone West Police Station and the section leader of a unit that raided the nightclubs on Friday night.

The lawyers are instituting contempt of court proceedings after the police ordered the closure of Grand West and Satchmo's nightclubs last Friday night. The police claimed that the two nightclubs - both in Gaborone West - were operating without licences. The two nightclubs have been closed since Friday on police orders. The police action comes after the High Court granted an interim order that, among others, stipulates that the police should not harass the nightclubs following their application seeking an interdict against the police'.

More vinyl archaeology

I've posted before on Excavated Shellac, a site dedicated to '78 rpm recordings of folkloric and vernacular music from around the world'.

But there are many more shellac/vinyl archaeologists out there. One of the most interesting sites I've come across recently (thanks to Bob from Brockley) is Locust Street, whose author seems to have set themselves the task of telling the history of popular music in the twentieth century year by year - starting with 1900, and now reaching as far as 1909. As well as music, there's lots of historical material and some great contemporary images.

Also of interest is Snap, Crackle and Pop, rediscovering 'The dusty sound of old records, other people's detritus picked up from boot sales, flea markets and charity shops. Forgotten music for our enjoyment'.

I just wish I had the time to listen to all this music... though careful what you wish for - plenty of people are finding themselves with more time on their hands at the minute, but without the money to enjoy it: it's called mass unemployment.

Jitterbugging in London 1944

I've been spending a lot of time searching through the treasures to be found at the recently released Life archive of photographs. Among my favourites so far are this collection of shots taken by David E. Scherman at the Paramount Dance Hall in Tottenham Court Road, London in 1944. They show a couple in what appears to be a jitterbugging competition, and an African American soldier dancing with a British Women's Auxiliary Air Force member.

More on Sonic Torture

In the new journal Nyx - a noctournal (produced by people associated with the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, New Cross), Mark Teare writes A Chapter in the Secret History of a Musick Yet To Be:

'Music's abilities to connect with the emotions and to alter our psychological state are being exploited and perverted in a number of ways in a variety of locations, from office or commercial spaces to clandestine interrogation cells. What we generally consider to be a harmless form of creative expression becomes a tool, coldly employed in the manipulation and control of populations, numb from the constant stimulus of programmed information'.

Teare mentions a number of uses of music as instrument of torture/warfare: in Panama 1993, when invading US forces surrounding the building where the dictator/former US client Manuel Noriega was holed up where 'troops bombarded the embassy with constant loud heavy rock music in an effort to drive Noriega out'; in the same year at the FBI siege at Waco, Texas, where the Branch Davidians 'were treated to marathon sessions of loud music in order to disturb their sleeping patterns and break morale inside the camp'; and in Iraq during the Fallujah offensive in 2004 when 'US troops engaged in psychological operations' used 'high powered speakers mounted on tanks and humvees'to play 'AC/DC, Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Eminem and Barney the Purple Dinosaur at high volume for long stretches of time to disorientate and confuse the enemy'.

See also: Against Music Torture

Against Music Torture

Tempting as it is to make cheap jibes about the torture of having to listen to Limp Bizkit under any circumstances, musical torture is a serious business. Playing the same songs over and over again at high volume without a break - sometimes for weeks on end - might not leave any bruises but it's easy to see how it could literally drive somebody mad. There have been many reports of the use of this kind of torture across the world, including in the secret prisons run by the US and its allies.

So the new Zero dB campaign (zero decibels = silence) against musical torture launched this week by Reprieve is welcome. So too is the support for this campaign by the Musicians Union and musicians including Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine (RATM), Massive Attack, The Magic Numbers and Elbow. It must be very dispiriting as a musician to know that your song is being used in this way, especially if, like RATM's Killing in the Name Of, the practice is the complete opposite of the song's sentiments.

Looking through the list of songs that have been used in torture, it appears that they fall into a number of categories. Some seem to have been chosen because of their aggressive sound - AC/DC, Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Limp Bizkit, RATM etc. Others though seem to have been chosen for their saccharine banality - perhaps the contrast between children's TV themes like Sesame Street or Barney the Purple Dinosaur and the reality of being tortured is itself an assault on people's sanity.

The Mouse Organ and the Hoot Planet

The death this week of children’s programme maker Oliver Postgate (1925-2008) has prompted an outpouring of nostalgia from everybody raised on 1970s British TV. And I don’t see why I should be any different. Some of my earliest memories are of Pogles Wood and Noggin the Nog, but it’s really Bagpuss (made in 1974) and the Clangers (1969-74) that had the biggest impact, programmes Postgate famously made with his co-collaborator Peter Firmin in a cowshed in Kent. Music was an important part of both programmes.

For the unitiated, Bagpuss was set in a bygone shop run by a girl called Emily (played by Peter Firmin's daughter) - a shop where nothing was sold, but things just waited in the window for their rightful owners to claim them. The show featured folk songs sung by real folk musicians - John Faulkner (the voice of Gabriel the banjo-playing toad) and Sandra Kerr (the voice of Madeleine Remnant, the singing doll). But most memorable was the high pitched singing of the mice who shared the shop with Bagpuss the cat - and who maintained The Marvellous Mechanical Mouse Organ.

The Clangers was set on a planet populated by pink mouse like creatures and their friend the Soup Dragon (inspiration for Scottish indie band The Soup Dragons). There was also a cloud that floated over the planet dropping musical rain drops. In one episode, Tiny Clanger is floating in space on her music boat – with her friends the flowers - when she encounters the Hoot Planet, made up of musical horns. Later, her brother makes an ill-fated attempt to make a rocket ('now what has Small Clanger made - a rocket, I don't like the look of that') and a soup pipeline, something that is contrasted unfavourably with Tiny's invention, with the help of The Music Trees, of a Pipe Organ ('Listen. Music I wonder what that is?... Tiny clanger has made an organ... very good, yes now that is better, that is something really useful').

Not hard to read an implicit anti-militarist message here (music is better than missiles), not surprizing either as Postgate was an active peace campaigner for most of his life - see writing at his website. I actually saw him once in the 1980s speaking at a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament rally in Canterbury. I also once met the grown-up Emily Firmin from Bagpuss in a squat in Brixton. Well I guess we all have to move on from cuddly toys, even magical ones that come to life when we're not looking - but it's nice to remember them too.

Bigger Slump and Bigger Wars?

Like many people around the world, I'm trying to get my head round the 'credit crunch' financial crisis. Six months ago there was pretty much the same amount of people, needs, goods, houses, productive capacity etc. as today. So how come, without anything fundamental changing, we have moved so quickly from 'boom' to 'crisis' with thousands of people losing their jobs? Clearly there is an irrational element in the economy that is more or less beyond the control of the people who pretend to be in control, let alone the rest of us. But beyond platitudes about the inevitable cycle of crisis in capitalism, understanding how and why is not so easy. If you want to get into these debates you could do worse that start at Radical Perspectives on the Crisis, which has lots of different takes on the matter.

There's not a lot of musical guidance on this issue, but one exception is Stereolab's brilliant Ping Pong (1994):



The lyrics are a neat summary of a marxist take on the cycle of boom and slump:

it's alright 'cos the historical pattern has shown
how the economical cycle tends to revolve
in a round of decades three stages stand out in a loop
a slump and war then peel back to square one and back for more

bigger slump and bigger wars and a smaller recovery
huger slump and greater wars and a shallower recovery

you see the recovery always comes 'round again
there's nothing to worry for things will look after themselves
it's alright recovery always comes 'round again
there's nothing to worry if things can only get better

there's only millions that lose their jobs and homes and sometimes accents
there's only millions that die in their bloody wars, it's alright

it's only their lives and the lives of their next of kin that they are losing
it's only their lives and the lives of their next of kin that they are losing

Of course the scary thing about this particular take on crisis theory is the suggestion that slump is followed by war before recovery - an argument that is sometimes put forward to explain the mid-20th century (1930s depression - 1940s war - 1950s/60s - post-war boom). Since then there have been lesser crises which have not been resolved through war, so let's not get even more gloomy and start scanning the skies for missiles. Still there are tough times ahead, and competition between economically desparate global powers could fuel increasingly dangerous conflict - unless an international movement emerges to challenge this drift.

Form 696

Form 696 sounds like the name of a Belgian industrial outfit (oh no that was Front 242) but is actually a pernicious example of bureaucracy - to be precise it is a form that the Metropolitan Police (Clubs Focus Desk/Clubs & Vice Unit) in London is 'asking' all licensed premises to fill in for music events. The promoter and the venue are required to list 'all artistes, the acts, sound systems, other promoters performing' (including DJs) with details including name, address, telephone number and date of birth.

It is not actually a legal requirement to complete the form - not that you would know that as it states 'This form must be completed by the licensee in consultation with the promoter'. The reality is that if the police express concerns about a venue's license it is likely that the license will be taken away - so when the form says that ' full co-operation is regarded as demonstrating positive and effective venue management' everybody knows that this is an implied threat. In England and Wales, the Licensing Act 2003 requires venues to have a license from their local council to sell drink and/or allow music and dancing - and councils are obliged to take into consideration the views of the police.

Controversially, the form singles out particular kinds of black music, asking 'Music style to be played/performed (e.g. Bashment, R'n'B, Garage)' . As I said before when discussing the Met's apparent crackdown on grime, this is a bit more complex that 'the man trying to stamp out the kids' music'. People really are being murdered at some club nights - at the seOnelub in October for instance - and it is true that some kind of music nights seem more likely than others to attract this kind of violence. But the police already have the powers to stop people carrying guns and shooting people - so is it really necessary to label entire genres of music as implicitly criminal and to require police approval for the the simple human act of making music and dancing?

Pressure group UK Music (headed by ex-Undertones singer Feargal Sharkey) is seeking a judicial review of the use of the form, arguing that it will discourage venues from putting on music (see article in Independent). A facebook group Stand Up to Form 696 already has over 3000 members and there is also a Scrap 696 petition. You can read the actual form here.

Guns N' Roses still crap shock

Something for World AIDS Day tomorrow, 1 December:

Simon Reynolds has efficiently scraped off his shoe the 'vigorously polished turd that is "Chinese Democracy"' by Guns N' Roses. Whoever this album was 'eagerly awaited' by, I was not one of them - I would apply Reynolds' diss of the album to their entire career: 'redolent of the 4-hour erections induced by Viagra: engorged but devoid of desire, a meaningless show of strength'.

What I'd forgotten about until today was a row about their political dumbness early in their career, with their 1989 song 'One in a Million' and its lyrics about 'niggers', 'immigrants' and 'faggots' who 'spread some fucking disease'. In London, AIDS activist group ACT UP protested at Virgin Megastore demanding that an AIDS information sheet be added to the album to counter its 'racist and homophobic lyrics'. Axl Rose's later comments that he wasn't homophobic because he liked Elton John were laughable; not so funny is the fact that it was later covered by nazi band Skrewdriver.

The report of the action comes from 'ACT UP Action News' (London, June 1989). Note next to it there is also a report of an ACT UP Sylvester Memorial in May 1989 at the Fridge nightclub in Brixton, featuring Jimi Somerville (Bronski Beat/The Communards) and Andy Bell (Erasure). The great Sylvester died from AIDS in December 1988. Give me Dance (Disco Heat) over anything G N'R have done any day of the week.

[click on picture to see enlarged image]