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Sorry everyone, I didn’t mean to trigger the tell everyone mode. I’m just trying out a link to Soundcloud….
The Smears were a South London band in 1979 with Mike Dignam, on drums and Rob Gell on vocals…. One of their early performances has just been unearthed. The Smears on YouTube
I notice that The Smears name has now been taken on by a girl grunge band.
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Vivid Projects unravels Birmingham’s music history with a very special collection of cassette demos to celebrate Record Store Day 2013, in partnership with Birmingham Music Archive and The Catapult Club.
Since 1989, Catapult Club founder Arthur Tapp has been in the business of championing music in Birmingham. As resident promoter at Brummie institutions including the Hare & Hounds, The Jug of Ale, The Actress & Bishop and Birmingham Academy/ O2 Academy he has acquired a vast collection of band demos, posters and flyers in the process.
Join us Thursday 18th – Saturday 20th April as we delve into Arthur’s vast archive, documenting Birmingham’s local music scene in analogue – from cassette tape demos to cut ‘n’ paste posters.
Full Programme Click
She was a model of upward mobility in our divisive meritocracy. But she was also driven by hatred for working class people who don’t want to aspire to values of the upper classes. When the Poll Tax Refusal-to-Pay campaign brought her down the Tories tried to find another lower class frontman. But John Major with his musichall roots was mild in comparison; Tony ‘Gulf War’ Blair did a better job. Now they are not trying to hide behind a lowerclass nutcase. Now its down to putting forward the best toff illusionists and smarmy charm merchant they can find amongst their own ranks. Bring in Darren Brown to expose their chicanery. They will fail.
Thatcher was a symbol and so is her death. If she stood for lower class division and self-hatred and the coldest free market ‘logic’ then her death can be a symbol of how that must perish. The alien worm of class hatred had entered her brain at some stage. Once she had felt the admiration of the rich and eminent she was hooked on the power they lent her.
Now she is dead the minds of all the remaining zombies of aspiration to self-hatred can finally be freed from their ‘Belief’ in humilating Toff Coalition bollix. But there is only one thing that must be done first to clear out any lingering psychosomatic effects. Shake to this ritual concoction of music.
ONE Test Dept.
TWO The Beat
THREE Crass
FOUR Hard Skin
FIVE Demon Rockers
SIX Hefner
SEVEN Pete Wylie
EIGHT notsensibles
NINE The Specials
TEN The Newtown Neurotics
‘The Rest Is Noise: the soundtrack of the 20th Century’
This ambitious series of 93 London Southbank concerts throughout 2013 is based on the eponymous 2009 book by Alex Ross. The book is basically a one person ‘Agit Disco’ of classical music throughout the C20th which relates music to its political and social contexts. It shows that classical music is political but it does several other things on the way to maintain this high art form in its tenuous position. It reinforces the canon in a way that reinstates it as a live form that is relevant to and responsive to the state of the world. This is a manoeuvre that has a global resonance when we think that every ‘world city’ must now have its own prestigious concert hall.
Jude Kelly, progressive artistic director of the Southbank has taken on the ambitious task of realising the books scope with the support of her large team. It is, to say the least, an interesting project that I can hardly review in a short space.
One thing I like about it is the way the sections are periods of time with a theme, many of which overlap. So we get: ‘The Rise of Nationalism’ 1900 – 1930; Paris 1910 – 1930 and ‘Berlin 1920 – 1933′.
I guess what is most frustrating is what is kept at bay by the need to maintain a classical ontology. So ‘folk’ is of interest as much it is material for composers, the same with jazz which is related to the Parisian fashion for Le Jazz in the ’20s and then ‘Ellington’ played by BBC concert orchestra. (Berlin) Cabaret is let in because of The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill.
As a working-class artist, growing up in north London, he realised that “my lyrics were my only power”. The music business was corrupt and he decided to take them on with his LP ‘Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround Part 1′.
Tuesday 27 November on BBC Radio 4′s Mastertapes at 1530 GMT
Bikini Kill by Jessica Gordon-Wrench from Stool Pigeon Issue 40 p.60
“Formed in Olympia, Washington in 1990 by vocalist Kathleen Hanna, drummer Tobi Vail, guitarist Billy Karren and bassist Kathi Wilcox, they spent the next seven years fostering a feminist community via the punk scene. “
“Vail draws parallels between punk rock and folk: “My punk aesthetic is pretty much a folk aesthetic. I like singers who can sing and musicians who excel at their instruments, but I also like the sound of people’s voices who are not ‘singers’ and don’t believe that great musicians are the only good songwriters.”
“Despite their informed and highly politicised stance, both refute the idea that Bikini Kill were strictly activists. “I didn’t identify as an activist or an artist during Bikini Kill,” says Vail. “I thought of myself as a punk rock feminist that was creating counter-hegemonic culture. The band pretty much was our contribution to society… I wouldn’t call that activism, I would call that culture — a culture of resistance. I would call Riot Grrrl cultural activism.”
Vail: “Feminism is not dead. People have been saying it’s dead since the eighties. Maybe they want it to die. But saying that something is dead doesn’t kill it.”
Read the whole interview here:
http://www.thestoolpigeon.co.uk/features/interview-bikini-kill.html
A Women’s Liberation Music Archive was launched as an online blog in May 2011 by Frankie Green and Dr Deborah Withers. They have an exhibition coming up at Space Station Sixty-Five, 373 Kennington Road, SE11 4PS, from the 1st December to 13th January 2013. The opening is on Friday the 30th November 2012.
This focuses on how women used music as an activist tool to entertain and empower women during the 1970s and 1980s – the politics of music making explored. Currently on tour to Cardiff, Manchester and Glasgow.
