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The Twat In The Hat

Pens at the ready
Reporters, report!
The news just came in
From the Dublin High Court –

The case of the stylist with no leg to stand on
Who brought such a case with such ruthless abandon
A case she could never have hoped to have won
Has been lost.
But of course.
Now it’s over and done.

Let’s start at the start, where most tales often do
With a baby, a boy who like most babies – grew
But whose growing was out of proportion, you see,
For his body:head ratio was at least 1:3
Like a weeble he wobbled but sometimes fell down
For his legs couldn’t carry his noggin around.
And his eyes, look, see! Far too big for their sockets
Like snooker balls heading for opposite pockets.

But big heads, small bodies, while strange in a boy
Are common in rock stars. So imagine his joy
When he found his strange shape had some use, after all:
And this way they’d love him.
Though bug-eyed.
Though small.

So the first thing he did was come up with a name
That would dovetail just so with his imminent fame.
“My real name – Paul – just won’t do. Oh no.
From now on (such trumpets will sound!) I am Bono.
In truth, Bono Vox. Let the minions rejoice!”
(Translated, it means in bad Latin, ‘good voice’.)

Then he gathered around him a tight little band:
A bassist so drunk he could just about stand
A good-looking drummer who couldn’t quite play
And a balding guitarist with a pedal delay
With a pedal delay with a pedal delay.
They named the band U2.
With a pedal delay.


So. We’ve come this far
But we know very little.
Enough of beginning –
Now on to the middle.

There are various ways to get noticed. Some think
You can shout very loudly. Make a big stink.
Kill someone famous. Go on Big Brother.
Marry a film star. Then marry another.
“There are easier ways of skinning a cat,”
Thought Bono – who went and acquired a big hat.
Just that. A hat. A stetson, in fact
Which gave him the status his empty head lacked.
I say “he acquired,” as opposed to “he bought” –
For when you’re a millionaire rock star of note
You don’t do the shopping. There are people for that.
“Fresh underpants, master. New socks. And a hat.”

Well he wore the hat here
And he wore the hat there
And it sat on the mullet
That passed for his hair.

He sang in the hat and he read in the hat.
(Some said they wished he was dead in the hat).
But no. That was it: Bono, hat.
The two went together like spoilt and brat
Inseparable, married, three marvelous years
Of man and chapeau sharing one pair of ears –
Then
dropped.
Separated.
Parted.
Divorced.
Rock’s own Lone Ranger without Silver, his horse.

And out with the bathwater went baby by chance –
The waistcoats, cowboy boots, black leather pants.
“From now on,” said Bono, “I’ll have tailored suits made
I’ll grow dignified stubble and always wear shades
No stetson or leather to suit my fresh start;
For a man, newly sanctified, needs to look smart.”

(Which he did, for a while, though the specs were just daft
Especially in very dark rooms. How we laughed
When he got himself stuck in a lemon one night
As he fumbled around for the switch to the light.)

So the ego went hatless and took to the streets –
So many African babies to meet!
They popped up whenever a camera was pointing
Catching him unawares – see him anointing
Their little black faces with stigmata’d hands?
(It was dark with the glasses. He thought they were fans).

Lunch with George W, tea with John Paul
Such heights for a man who was really quite small.
On top of the world with a Boomtown Rat,
Adieu to the past! (The trousers. The hat.)


So that was the middle,
And now it’s all gone
No time to hang round
For the end has begun…

In a passed-over shop in a passed-over street
Of the town where you live, all alone and discreet
On a shelf at the back where the sign says, Sale
Is a book, and that book is the cause of this tale.
Inside the Zoo with U2. That’s its name.
The book’s badly-written and dire. That’s a shame
Because here is the book that made Bono see red
Oh the tears that he shed! The crusade that he led
In defence of the twenty-six people who bought it!
“I’ll get even,” he hissed, “with the woman who wrote it!”

He stepped to the plate.
A swing of the bat.
Crying “This is for justice!
(And some pants, and a hat).”

Oh what a palaver! What a to-do!
As the chip on his shoulder it grew and it grew
With Bono declaring himself stabbed in the back –
“My honour and ego are under attack!
Crucified, scorned, like that time in the lemon
(Me and our Lord, we’ve got plenty in common)
Oh Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!”
(Christ calls his Dad. Bono talks blarney.)

So for justice, then. For doing what’s right
Bono determined to fight the good fight.

Now the author (named Lola) had toured with U2
As the buyer of sunspecs and T-shirts and shoes
And undies and socks for the band. And trousers.
Vests for the drummer. A few frilly blouses.
And a hat. That hat. That stetson, size 10.
Need I remind you – apologies! – again?
How he wore the hat here
And he wore the hat there
And it sat on the mullet
That passed for his hair?

(Some say that Lola should’ve earlier been charged
By the style police. Stiff sentence, very large
Fine, thirty-five licks of the cat
For giving the world – what a rat! – the hat.)

But there was our man, the last day of that tour
Our backstage Messiah, pop’s entrepreneur
Sallying forth from the shower’s apt cloud
Half-naked, sweating, addressing the crowd –
Which was Lola. The singular Lola remained.
“Everyone had to… rush off,” she explained
And our hero, bereft in the valley of plenty
The rockstar whose stadium is suddenly empty
Cried “Lola! Nobody loves me! It’s true!”
And Lola replied, “Er… I’ve got to go, too.”

So down on one knee, torso bared, croaky voice
The Man Who Would Save All The World made a choice,
Pleading “Lola. Friend. Soulmate. Amigo.
Don’t leave me alone with this oversized ego!
This demonic bloodsucking vampire bat
Has outgrown me. Now it won’t fit in my hat.”

And grabbing said hat from off his said head
Pleaded “Here, take this gift!”
So she did.
Then she fled.
A backward glance, a stolen look –
Then off home to write it all up in a book.


Which brings us back neatly to Dublin’s High Court
Nineteen years on as reporters report
And Lola, accused, holds her head in her hands
‘Til the Judge bangs his gavel and loudly demands
That she take to the stand. “Take to the stand!”
In the case of herself versus U2, the band.
The case of the singer who took home his bat
Who roared like a lion and cried like a rat
Who hired the best lawyers to beat on the brat
And whose unhatted head, like his wallet, grew fat.

The Judge gave B. Vox such obsequious respect
As to remind one of The OJ Simpson effect
To wit: Judge, though in charge, is quite clearly in awe
And for a couple of autographs will sell out the law.
“Here you go, Your Honour – from Bono, with love.
Free tickets? No problem. Here Sir, hold my gloves –”

So the hat and the pants were thus placed on display
And paraded and prodded then taken away
While the Judge and Sir Bono slapped each other’s backs
And made jokes about wigs, about pants, about hats.
At some point in proceedings – in no sense ironic –
Bono described the old hat as “iconic”
As if he’d invented it, made it OK
To be clueless and copyist. Cowboy as cliché.
Ten-gallon Gump with his one-gallon brain
Amateur ham ends up playing The Dane
King of the sandcastle, Lord of the Prance
Reunited with hat, at last. (And pants.)

So. Pens at the ready
Reporters, report!
The news just came in
From the Dublin High Court –

This case – which should never have even begun –
Is concluded. Finished. Bono has won.

But let it be known that in lieu of this act
(This crusade to obtain both the hat and pants back)
That Bono, resplendent in stetson and leather,
Shall be known as the Twat in the Hat. Forever.



Dr Sue Us

]]> General http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=18 Sun, 26 Sep 2010 22:07:34 +0500 http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=17
Here are some random impressions from the tour, little things that pop into my head rather than the 'and then on Tuesday we drove to London' narrative you normally get. That's partly because my rock'n'roll brain is so fried that once it's done the details of the tour start to blur and merge.

We started in the Lake District, I remember that. Boff got up early the next morning and ran up a small mountain before breakfast and then slept all the way to London - a gig which will sadly be remembered by all mainly for the persistent drunken heckling by a lovely woman who was essentially over-excited about seeing us, thought it was still the late eighties, and wanted to hear Whitewash. Good job we're used to it. I wonder if The Unthanks have to put up with that sort of thing?

Food featured, as it always does. The hours on the motorway are punctuated by service station stops. Our observations? Waitrose was a bit of a disappointment, and M&S don't do as good a range of veggie sandwiches as they used to, although the falafel and hummus wrap was quite a hit. We try and stay reasonably healthy on tour - most of us go running if there's time (Phil pops into an art gallery or admires the Norman architecture of a nearby church while we're doing this, and then joins us for breakfast), but illness, as ever, featured on the tour. Heidi (the Tidow of O'Hooley and Tidow) ate some re-heated rice in Keswick and paid a hefty price for a few days afterwards. Lou went down with a humdinger of a cold halfway through, and a couple of times it was touch and go whether she'd be able to do the show. But we are, if nothing else, troopers. Lou did point out, between bouts of coughing, that we have never yet cancelled a gig due to illness, a comment which led us to tell the audience about all the times various of us have thrown upon stage. Thank you for sharing.

Philip, with his crinkly metal tie, and his George Melly impersonation was the star of the show. I think his spell as Narrator in Riot, Rebellion and Bloody Insurrection (where he had the audience eating out of the palm of his hand) may have gone to his head. He took plenty of photos too, so expect a gallery sometime soon.

Phil and crinkly tie

The new songs went down very well. You can never predict exactly which ones will work and which won't. The rattles were bit hit in Wagner At The Opera and the couple of songs where Belinda and Heidi joined us onstage made it feel like a proper Evening With … rather than just the usual band and support band set-up. Belinda was ecstatic when there happened to be a grand piano in the venue.

We revisited some of or favourite haunts on this tour - take a bow West End Centre and Bury Met, you know you deserve it. We played in pubs, Arts Centres, beautiful old churches, and of course, the wonderfully posh surroundings of the Howard Assembly Rooms in Leeds. Thank you everybody who made the effort to dress up for the occasion - it was wonderful looking out at you all.

We clocked up a lot of miles on the tour - Neil's got the driving equivalent of bedsores - but like the pain of childbirth, I'm told, it's receded and forgotten. We've all got used to making our own breakfasts again now and anticipating the joys of the next batch of shows. Germany (Switzerland and the Czech Republic) here we come. Now, how do you say Devil's Interval in German?
]]> General http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=17 Mon, 12 Apr 2010 01:52:49 +0500 http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=16
So here’s the discussion again; or at least my side of it. My defence against being burnt at the stake for not voting. And my defence is basically that whether or not I vote isn’t, in most cases, important; what’s important is what I do the rest of the time, in that five-year gap between polling days.

First though, I’ll cover myself. If you live in an area where there’s a genuine chance of your vote ousting the Tories or the BNP, or if you genuinely feel better for having voted, or if you use your vote as a springboard to getting involved in real community politics, or if you just feel like a walk down to the polling booth will do you good and stretch your legs, then it makes sense to vote.

But if your vote is the expression of your political view, if it’s the focus of your politics, then it ridicules the people who lobbied, chained themselves to railings, spent time in prisons, marched and campaigned for the vote in the first place. Those people were activists, not politicians. They believed in the politics of community action, striking, debating, leafleting, singing, direct action, changing the world around them. If they thought for a minute that the eventual extent of our political power would be making a cross on a ballot paper, they might have some sympathy with the half-arsed deadbeats like me.

Don’t be satisfied with your vote against the Tories or BNP; get involved in actively working to stop them gaining ground in your area – I’m talking about every day other than the day of the General Election, here – by talking to people, writing, organising, whatever it is you feel you can do. Because the bigger problem than the right-wing bigots getting Parliamentary seats is right-wing bigots taking over our cultural and social lives, because that’s where people really get hurt. On a day-to-day level.

In my constituency (West Leeds) the Labour Party have such a safe seat that they’ve parachuted in a London-born Oxbridge career politician (and a huge vote-loser in another constituency at the last election) to contest the General Election. She was placed there in front of local candidates because she’s one of New Labour’s up-and-coming stars and they need her in Parliament. Whether we, the people who live here, need her in West Leeds is irrelevant to the Party.

The Labour vote here is usually around the 19,000 mark. The Lib-Dems get around 6,000, the Tories even less. The BNP struggle to top 1,000. This is a safe Labour seat. My vote is irrelevant. There are enough people here who will vote for an unknown Blairite outsider to stop any chance of the Tories or BNP getting a sniff at power. So what’s important for me is that I use my passion for this area and for its people and its politics to get involved in it on an everyday level. Do the things I do best, locally. Maybe part of that involvement would involve keeping a check on our new Labour MP, trying to encourage her to work for the people here and not just for Party Central Office. I don’t know if I could stomach that, to be honest; but I will try.

There’s another argument here. A vote ‘against’ the Tories and BNP doesn’t register as a vote against anything, it registers only as a vote for (in this instance) the Labour Party. And once a party has that mandate, they’ll up and run with it for the next five years, doing whatever their leader decides to do. It’s what whips are for; to stop your local MP (who you voted for) from opposing the Glorious Leader (who you didn’t). That war we opposed? We inadvertently voted for it; shut up.

Yes, people worked, fought (and some died) for the vote. But they did it because they wanted it as a right, not an obligation or a duty. As a right to be used wisely and sensibly. Right now we live in a country where cynicism of the major parties is at an all-time high; understandably so. Basically, they’re all crooks, the lot of ‘em. Why shouldn’t I have the right to refuse to support any of them? Why should I have to demean my intelligence, my work and my ideas by thinking that by putting my cross in a box I am suddenly A Participant In This Democratic System? I think I play my part in this society in the way I live and work, not in whether or not I vote. People who would accuse me of “not caring” or “not bothering” are wrong. I ‘care’ and ‘bother’ every day.

It’s been said before a thousand times, but if ballot papers included the option ‘None Of The Above’ we might have to rethink our attitudes to non-voters; basically they couldn’t be accused any more of “not bothering”. All those people (including me) who are generally typified as suffering from ignorance, or lazyitis, or both, would have the chance to at least pro-actively register their dissatisfaction with the candidates. Which wouldn’t solve anything, really, other than putting a halt to the assumption that my refusal to vote for one war-mongering, self-interested bunch of Oxbridge careerists over another means I don’t care.

There’s a new and hugely-popular group called Folk Against Fascism. I love the whole idea of it, because it works within a definite community and works on a cultural issue (the far right’s infiltration of traditional music) that it understands and knows. It’s a good example of one of the most effective ways of affecting the political landscape – because I believe that most real change comes from the bottom up, through culture and society, not from the top down by laws and statutes and those schoolboy Commons debates.

Changed attitudes to race, sexuality and gender over the past few decades have come about through huge shifts in media, culture and community; in my lifetime, and where I live, black music and black footballers have changed our attitudes to race more than any number of anti-racist laws (essential though they may be). Laws concerning Civil Partnerships, equality for women and tolerance of others’ beliefs have been a response to a changing culture, they didn’t create it.

I see the day-to-day ways we try to change things as being the real politics. Voting with your feet, your mouth and your purse. Where you choose to go, what you choose to do. That’s all more important than that one cross on a ballot paper. I don’t want the BNP in Parliament. But let’s face it, that’s highly unlikely. Much more likely is that they’ll meet in a local pub, or march down the street, or smash the Asian shop’s windows, or start the racist chants at the football match, or join your local Morris Dancers. And those are the places where we can be really effective in changing attitudes and ideas.

There’s an awful lot of ground between “Can’t be bothered to go down the Polling Station” and “People fought for the right to vote. It’s my duty!” An awful lot. It’s in that space that campaigns can be fought, laws can be made and broken, communities strengthened or crushed. And it’s in that space where the real stuff happens.

As I say, if there’s a chance the Tories or BNP could win a seat in your constituency, then it’s worth that trip to the Polling Station on Election day. But the real politics – the way things change – is down to what you do every other day.


]]> General http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=16 Sun, 4 Apr 2010 21:30:11 +0500 http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=15 So. The Pope is coming to visit us. In September. He’s been invited by Gordon Brown, and he will be warmly welcomed by the Queen.

This is a Pope who opposes women's reproductive rights, gay equality, embryonic stem cell research and the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV.

And this is a Pope who plays an ongoing role in the cover-up of child sex abuse by Catholic clergy, a Pope who happily rehabilitated the Holocaust-denying bishop Richard Williamson, and decreed the beatification and sainthood of the war-time Pope, Pius XII, who stands accused of failing to speak out against the Holocaust.

Right now, the Leaders of the Catholic Church – and the Pope as its head – stand accused of child abuse on a mass scale. Meanwhile, a spokesman for Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: “The PM is obviously delighted at the prospect of a visit from Pope Benedict XVI to Britain.

“It would be a moving and momentous occasion for the whole country and he would undoubtedly receive the warmest of welcomes.”

Conservative leader David Cameron said he was “delighted” to hear of the possible visit. He said: “Such a visit - the first in over a quarter of a century - would be greatly welcomed not only by Roman Catholics but by the country as a whole.”

Really? Will his visit be welcomed by the country as a whole? That whole would include me and you. I certainly don’t welcome a visit from a holocaust-denying, homophobic and backward leader who is in the act of covering up child abuse.

Pope Benedict XVI will make his visit between September 16 and 19. He will be received by the Queen, who is Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and the Duke of Edinburgh at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh on September 16.

]]> General http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=15 Sun, 4 Apr 2010 21:28:55 +0500 http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=14
The Leeds Refuse workers – bin-emptiers, street-cleaners – have been on strike for almost two months, because they’ve been singled out by the Leeds Council as scapegoats for a cost-cutting exercise.

The 600 strikers walked out on the 7th September over Leeds Council’s proposals to level down pay for workers in the refuse and street cleaning department as a bizarre way of equalising women’s pay, which they’ve been forced to do by law. These workers face pay cuts of up to £6,000 down from an average of £18,000. The City Council is run by a Lib Dem/Tory administration.

In short, the council officers, the suits and leaders (all on substantial, protected wages, some earning well over £100,000 a year) picked on the sector of the council workforce that they thought might give them the least trouble. They thought wrong, obviously. Bins are overflowing, rats are thriving, but significantly the people of Leeds are almost unanimously supporting the strike.

At the gig I was shocked because this was the union’s crowd, the workers crowd. Where were the young people? Where were the eco-activists and anti-fascists? Leeds is a student city. Where were they all? They get their bins emptied, don’t they? Mind you, we all choose our forms of protest and activism, and I’m happy to have witnessed and been encouraged by the determination of the Refuse strikers.

How long this strike will last I don’t know. Me, I’ll put up with having to take my rubbish down to the dump. I’ll laugh at the council’s scab refuse workers on their once-a-month collection. And I’ll raise a fist for the workers who don’t give in to unreasonable demands, who do a job that we all respect, and who have decided not to be treated like serfs by the well-paid councillors who came up with this scheme.

And to jump issues: The crypto-fascist English Defence League are turning up in Leeds on 31 October. Here’s hoping there’s a huge turn-out of anti-racists; and here’s hoping people might make a connection between the relatively clear politics of anti-fascism and the politics of supporting workers’ rights.



]]> General http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=14 Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:55:34 +0500 http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=13 Canadian Folk Festivals 2009

The Canadian Folk Festival – it’s a closed secret. What happens over there doesn’t seem to happen anywhere else on the planet, but all the British musicians who make the trip over there and play these things don’t ever say anything once they get back. Shhh! Canada? Folk Festival? Don’t know what you’re on about, mate.

It’s like the Freemasons. You meet someone who’s played at one and suddenly you’re all fancy handshakes and nods and winks. Oh yes, ha ha, how weird and freaky… But between ourselves, let’s keep it quiet, eh?

Here’s the big secret (what a blabbermouth. Half a lager and a cocktail with an umbrella in it and I’ll tell you anything). You go to Canada and play one of the Folk Festivals. You may or may not get the chance to play on the main stage (and to be honest, the main stage is an irrelevance there). You’re given an itinerary that tells you that you’ll be doing four workshops over the weekend, at any given time of day, sharing a stage with any given type of act/musician/band. It’s like opening Xmas presents. Ooh, what’ve we got? It’s exciting and weird and interesting.

Canadian festivals open their gates at some unearthly hour of the morning, and hundreds – no, many thousands – of people pile through the gap armed with folding chairs and rucksacks full of sandwiches. At one such festival last year we were told that this morning rush was called (after the preferred choice of footwear) ‘The Birkenstock Dash’.

Those few hundred who get to the main stage first set up their chairs and their little rugs and blankets, do their territorial pissing, and then wander off to find coffee. The chairs and blankets stay put, ensuring that the space is reserved for the time seven hours later when some ageing old folkie strums his/her way through a couple of old hits as the evening’s finale.

Thus, the main stage audience is claimed and staked out first thing. The only thing to do is see what’s going on on the other stages. There are usually four, five, six other stages. Here’s where the interesting stuff goes on. No Birkenstock ‘claim your patch’ bollocks here. Turn up and watch. Elbow your way to the front, like at a proper gig.

The Canadian organisers call them ‘workshops’. That implies teaching, or demonstrating, or something. In reality they’re loose gatherings of several musicians, stick ‘em on a stage together and see what they come up with. And call it ‘a workshop’.

Now anyone that knows Chumbawamba will know that we’re not Grateful Dead or Phish or any of those jamming bands. In fact, we are officially the anti-jamming band. We don’t jam. We meet. We don’t play loosely together, hoping for musical inspiration. We meet. We don’t cruise the old twelve-bar looking for inspiration. We meet.

We meet and discuss what we should sing about, and how, and why, and in what form. It makes everyone’s life simpler and clearer. It’s verbal and open, not hidden behind fretwork and foot-tapping and fancy musicianship. That’s how we see it, anyway.

So the idea of this band sharing music with other bands on stage at these Canadian Festivals could be seen as the ultimate horror. But no! Because, despite our aversion to jamming/noodling/communicating with the musical muse, we love a challenge. Love being thrown in at the deep end. Swim, y’buggers!

And this is what the Canadian Festival has taught us – get up there, and make it work. There’s an audience. Yes, we know it’s 11 o’clock in the morning. But the audience want to be entertained. Now! Fear and thrill all rolled into one.

Over the past few years we’ve been up onstage playing with Scottish trad fiddlers, fey singer-songwriters, African dancebands, the lot. This year at Edmonton we were pitched right in with Arrested Development, fantastic Atlanta rap group, great tunes, amazing history, great politics. But a hip-hop group nonetheless, and how do we fit in with that? We shared a stage for an hour. We played our songs, laughed together, sang ‘Enough is Enough’ and kept the rhythm and chords going as Speech from Arrested Development rapped over the top. We joined in with them, they joined in with us. We marvelled at the ass-shaking women on stage (don’t cry ‘sexist!’, we all love to see a woman shaking her behind), they laughed at our ridiculous Englishness, and we all met somewhere in the middle … somewhere that’s friendly and funny and political and audience-friendly and entertaining.

And half-way through the show I caught myself thinking, ‘this wouldn’t happen this easily anywhere else in the world.’

I recently saw Tinariwen and Tunng playing in Leeds. Two different cultures meeting in the middle. It was brilliant. And I thought then, as I think now, this is what happens on stage at all those strange and obscure and massive and amazing Canadian festivals. Every day of the long weekend, on five different stages. Sometimes it’s a disaster. Sometimes it’s boring. But it’s always an adventure. Always.

We did other workshops that weekend. One with some bands I can’t remember the name of. One with Oysterband and Dick Gaughan (which, frankly, was too easy – joining in with Gaughan on ‘Diggers Song’ and convincing Chopper from the Oysters up to sing Johnny Cash with us) and one with Mongolian throat singers Hanggai, which was incredible. Singing one of our acapella songs along to a throat-sung drone was risky, ridiculous and beautiful, all at the same time. Joining in with their Chinese drinking song was a joy.

So there you have it. The secret of the Canadian festival. It doesn’t seem to happen anywhere else in the world – the Canadians have their own strange rules within their own cultural bubble, and I’m happy for them. Happy that they don’t think like we do, that festivals have to be neatly parceled into genres and styles and boxes. Happy that they don’t feel the need to massage the artist’s egos by keeping them well separated from the other acts. Happy that it forces us musicians into thinking on our feet, working together, dealing with stuff outside our cosy worlds.

And believe me, the Canadian Festivals are well outside this band’s cosy world. Good. I’m glad. Just don’t expect me to buy a pair of Birkenstocks.

Boff 2009
]]> General http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=13 Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:08:11 +0500 http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=12
Seething Wells

Irony. It’s what the British do best.

Seething (Steven) Wells died two days ago. Then tonight, starting to write this, I find out that Michael Jackson has died. One of these two men owned a ranch called Neverland and had three children called Michael Joseph Jackson Jr, Paris Michael Katherine Jackson and Prince Michael Jackson II. The other one was the King of Pop.

I grew up reading the NME, the New Musical Express as it was called back then in the mid-seventies. I ate it up, all the cynical hipster talk and the post-hippy anti-establishment rants. Nick Kent and Charles Shaar Murray sticking it to Pink Floyd and ELP and the rest of their bloated ilk.

Then along came Tony Parsons and the new writers, ably deconstructing the decade and rebuilding it as punk, replacing cynicism and cannabis with positivism and anger and come on, get off your arse and do it yourself.

That was important for me back then – I needed to read stuff by people who were prepared to kick me up the arse and tell me to do something. Anything. Anything except sitting down reading the NME.

Post-punk (those salad days between the gruesome let-down of Sid joining the Pistols and the horror of Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet) was a vacuum filled by those clever enough to see that good music, good art, involved a knowledge of politics and a sense that the world was much bigger than Top of The Pops: Crass, The Specials, Elvis Costello, Robert Wyatt, Dead Kennedys. And so a new bunch of journalists came crawling out of the lefty woodwork to champion this music, slowly at first, but eventually picking up momentum… ex-fanzine writers, pushing and jabbing each other into saying something worthwhile in the national music papers (there were three back then – NME, Sounds and Melody Maker).

Swells came along on that wave. I first heard about him through a couple of fanzines done by himself and a local Leeds lad called James Brown – Attack On Bzag and Molotov Comics. Swells wrote poems, polemic-disguised-as-poems. Great, ranty, in-your-face poems. Along with people like Mekons’ Jon Langford I contributed stuff to both zines, convinced that here in Leeds in the doldrums of the early eighties there was something exciting and important coming out of the Rock Against Racism, Miners Strike northern city culture.

Next I knew he was in the NME writing reviews. Scathing reviews. All the old guard – all your Phil Collins has-beens – were summarily summonsed and shot by Swells. I remember an interview with Mike Oldfield. It may or may not have been on board Mike Oldfield’s private jet. Or was it conducted while playing tennis? Memory tells me it was an exercise in the annihilation of pompousness, but mostly I remember laughing at the lad’s cheek and his ability to sneak his brand of agit-prop into the pages of the New Musical Express. James Brown says of Swells’ time at NME that “he was obsessed with class war, masturbation, dogs, cancer, Jello Biafra and the multiple use of the exclamation mark.”

Come 1985 and Chumbawamba released our first single and got our first proper live reviews in the music press. And who was there singing our praises, sticking up for this weird northern punk/cabaret hybrid? Seething Wells. From that time on he stuck his neck out for us. In a world where the NME editor increasingly dictated copy according to what the advertisers/record companies wanted to see, Swells was the thorn in the side who refused to kow-tow to the bland norm. Through the miners strike he was alone in championing the idea that music could be used for something important, that there were bigger issues here than whatever gold lame was being worn by Haircut 100 or ABC on Top Of The Pops.

Swells stuck by Chumbawamba when we were ridiculed and lambasted by the journo hipsters who celebrated the return of bland, everyday and utterly non-political ‘indie’ music which dominated the next decade. Politics was unfashionable (especially if you had a job writing record reviews for a music mag). Bands like us disappeared from the popular cultural radar, despite growing live audiences.

When ‘Tubthumping’ was a worldwide hit in 1997, all the old magazines and writers suddenly had a change of heart and wanted to get back in touch with us again. Ha! How funny. Get lost.

We agreed to an interview with the NME only if Seething Wells was to do it. They agreed (bloody prostitutes). Through all this time, our dialogues with Swells were peppered with anarchist v Marxist arguments, disagreements on the merits of the Third International and debating the difference between Redskins and Conflict. Him and us, we ranted and barked like wary dogs, snapped and snarled and probably dribbled at the mouth a bit, too. But always, Chumbawamba recognised what this Swells bloke was doing, how much he meant in a world where the same old groups made the same old charts and the same old magazine covers time after time after time.

And my goodness the rest of the journalists hated us. It seemed like Swells was the only one who ‘got’ our sense of humour and our way of laughing at ourselves while doing something utterly serious. In 1998 we made a documentary of the band. We contacted all the major journalists who’d gone on record slagging us off and asked if they’d like to be in a documentary “about pop and politics”. They all said yes. Each of them turned up (not suspecting they were being interviewed by that their most hated band) and, with little prompting, slated us. They signed cleverly-worded release forms and bob’s your uncle, we stuck them all in our film, slagging us off. The exception, of course, was Swells. We interviewed him straight. Sat him in a pub and asked what he thought of this rag-tag bunch of situationist clever-arses called Chumbawamba. He did his usual thing on-camera – told stories, embellished, sexed-up, ranted etc – but essentially came up with how Chumbawamba elongated its stay in the pop world: “It’s alright walking around with hair like a gonk. But it doesn’t half alienate you from ordinary decent working class people like their parents. That’s the reason why they changed.”

Seething Wells. I can’t, even now, get used to the idea of calling him Steven Wells. Because by rights he was always seething. Really, he was. Not seething with undirected, Liam Gallagher-style dumb-ignorant fury, but with a righteous (yes, that’s the word! Righteous!) indignation that, bloody hell, while he was around, things could be better! Now!

He died of cancer; specifically, Hodgkins Lymphoma. My Dad almost died of it two years ago. It’s a killer that sneaks up on you not because you’re unfit or you’ve been smoking thirty cigs a day but because… because nothing. Annoyingly for a ranting poet/journalist who spent his life pointing fingers and trying to get to the heart of society’s ills, there’s no explanation and no reason for suddenly finding out you’ve got lymphoma. A big question, without an answer. Reading Seething Wells’ blog, detailing his own illness, is to read the powerful madness of someone wrestling with science and logic. It’s Swells telling himself that, if there’s very little beauty in cancer, at least there’s plenty to be got from the wrestling.

Seething Wells died having spent his short life writing stuff that was mainly designed to piss people off, and he probably succeeded. Because those people were the millionaire, hypocrite know-nothings of the music world. And the answer to the question ‘Why?’ would be, in Swells’ case – “because someone had to do it”. And on behalf of Chumbawamba, I’m glad someone was there to do it.

Seething Wells, if you were still writing, you’d probably have something to say about how Michael Jackson chased you into the grave. I won’t say it for you. But the irony, oh the irony. And for a northern English writer who lived his last decade in America, I’m sure you’d understand. One final thing. If anyone ever says to me, remember Michael Jackson, the King of Pop? I’ll think of Swells.

Here’s Seething Wells’ last written diary entry, the day before he died:

“I speak as someone whose greatest craving at this exact moment is not world peace and universal democracy or a rational and global redistribution of wealth, but a can of ice cold ginger ale.
“And of course all this bollocks is written by an idiot who has polished his image as an existentialist, atheist hard-man and anti-mope, forever sneering at the tribes who wallow in self-pity -- the gothers, the emo kids, the Smiths fans -- the whole 900-block-wide marching band composed entirely of the white male urban middle classes who are convinced that (as the most affluent and pampered human beings who have ever walked the planet) theirs is a story worth hearing. Blissfully unaware that they are but a few generations away from regular visits to the doctor who would wind parasitic worms from their beer bloated assholes using sticks.
“You could blame this fallacy on poor education, cultural deterioration, or simple moral decline.
“Me? I blame it on sunshine. I blame it on the moonlight. I blame it on the boogie.”


What an apt and ironic last line.


Boff Whalley

Swells’ harrowing, funny and typically ranting diary of his last days are at:

www.philadelphiaweekly.com

]]> General http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=12 Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:45:12 +0500 http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=11 A: Max Clifford can't milk a cow.

As with the ‘tragic, shocking and devastating’TM death of Princess Diana, we’ve all been invited of late to fall in line with the sanctification of some inconsequential girl who’s met her maker (her maker actually being publicist Max Clifford) and then shuffled off in as garish a way possible under the glare of the dear old British media (hitherto referred to as ‘the nation’).

Jade Goody. I’ve got nothing against the poor girl. From what I can tell she was a lass who did the best she could to make something of herself, given a terrible start in life and against all the odds becoming one of those rich people who get photographed in magazines and sell their own perfume line. I have nothing against those people, as I say, but then again I’ve got no vested interest either in believing I ought to mourn them on demand when they give up the ghost.

It makes me puke, this media-deification: watching how the red-tops and the paparazzi and the silver-haired publicists have us all in their pockets, worshipping what we once were sold as rubbish. Makes me angry that I’m not allowed to come out and say that the whole thing stinks, it’s all a sham, a joke, a huge expense account payable by the British public for whatever regurgitated morality we’re all spoonfed, without coming across as heartless. And with Jade, of course, the big morality word was Cancer.

People close to me have been diagnosed with cancer. I like to think that their efforts in reaching some kind of breathing space (literally), and remission from the pain of chemo- and radiotherapy, gives them some kind of personal hero status. Not front-page tabloid headlines. Not Max Clifford on morning TV telling the world (for his £200, 000 fee) that he was “a personal friend, and very very close” (pass the sick bucket).

Cancer’s a right bastard (not the best way to describe a wholesale biological killing machine, but you know what I mean) and it’s great that Jade Goody could be highlighted as a focal point for the campaign for women to come forward for screening for cervical cancer. But let’s get this clear: Jade and her media-profiled struggle does not represent the thousands of people who are involved on a daily basis with fighting, struggling with and caring for cancer patients; and so it gets my back up that Clifford can monopolise the word ‘brave’ for a Reality Show client who’s paying him huge sums of money. And as Michael Parkinson said in a recent article – “Why buy a Jade Goody candle, when you can simply make a donation?”

I hated all the Diana crap, the instant canonisation of a deeply-flawed and ignorant rich girl who happened to get famous by marrying a twerp with a Royal lineage. But this Jade Goody stuff takes the biscuit; it’s as if the media wondered whether they could actually pull off the same scam with some utter nonentity from Essex – ordinary woman to instant sainthood in the space of a few weeks. I hear Sky TV went wall-to-wall on the funeral, too, prostitutes that they are. I wouldn’t know, I refuse to watch Murdoch’s tacky version of the news.

Death’s a funny thing. It’s sacred, sacrosanct, above ridicule. Jade Goody was always ripe for a good slag-off, a right laugh, until she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Suddenly the media stopped its sniggering and guffawing and got all pious and serious. I didn’t. I laughed all the way through the whole charade – not at Jade’s plight, obviously, but at the media’s hypocritical about-face. The media’s pathetic attempt to play the straight man. The media’s black-tie cry-baby seriousness. The media’s laughable ‘we really care’ headlines. The media’s stifled-sniggers hand-rubbing as the sensationalism of the story translated into newspaper sales.

For anyone who read Johann Hari’s piece in The Independent*, no Johann, it’s not about snobbery and class. I’m not talking about Jade Goody as a person (neither I, nor Johann Hari, nor anyone I know, nor most of the people in the media, ever met her) but as a media-construct, a clay model thumbed into life by the indescribably awful Max Clifford and his money-grubbing hangers-on; bloodsuckers who live off the lives and (more lucratively) deaths of real people.

Only one newspaper didn’t feature Jade’s funeral on its front page. (Come on, everyone, join in!) Nevertheless, catching the mood not of a nation I’ve read about in the crap papers but a nation I see and meet and talk to every day, can I suggest that we don’t waste time mourning the death of ‘Our Bermondsey Diana’ (spelled out in a wreath at the funeral), or ‘the Nation’s Brightest Star’ (OK Magazine) or indeed ‘an ordinary woman from a rubbish telly show’ (me). Let’s mourn instead the death of common sense and the passing of a sense of perspective…



*Johann Hari’s piece about Jade Goody can be read here .
]]> General http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=11 Sat, 11 Apr 2009 20:22:53 +0500 http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=10
Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause - even among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the anti-apartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves ... This international backing must stop."

Yet even in the face of these clear calls, many of us still can't go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. But they simply aren't good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tool in the non-violent arsenal: surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counter-arguments.

Punitive measures will alienate rather than persuade Israelis.

The world has tried what used to be called "constructive engagement". It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality: expanding settlements, launching an outrageous war against Lebanon, and imposing collective punishment on Gaza through the brutal blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures - quite the opposite. The weapons and $3bn in annual aid the US sends Israel are only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first country outside Latin America to sign a free-trade deal with the Mercosur bloc. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45%. A new deal with the EU is set to double Israel's exports of processed food. And in December European ministers "upgraded" the EU-Israel association agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem.

It is in this context that Israeli leaders started their latest war: confident they would face no meaningful costs. It is remarkable that over seven days of wartime trading, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's flagship index actually went up 10.7%. When carrots don't work, sticks are needed.

Israel is not South Africa.

Of course it isn't. The relevance of the South African model is that it proves BDS tactics can be effective when weaker measures (protests, petitions, backroom lobbying) fail. And there are deeply distressing echoes of apartheid in the occupied territories: the colour-coded IDs and travel permits, the bulldozed homes and forced displacement, the settler-only roads. Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, said the architecture of segregation he saw in the West Bank and Gaza was "infinitely worse than apartheid". That was in 2007, before Israel began its full-scale war against the open-air prison that is Gaza.

Why single out Israel when the US, Britain and other western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the strategy should be tried is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work.

Boycotts sever communication; we need more dialogue, not less.

This one I'll answer with a personal story. For eight years, my books have been published in Israel by a commercial house called Babel. But when I published The Shock Doctrine, I wanted to respect the boycott. On the advice of BDS activists, including the wonderful writer John Berger, I contacted a small publisher called Andalus. Andalus is an activist press, deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement and the only Israeli publisher devoted exclusively to translating Arabic writing into Hebrew. We drafted a contract that guarantees that all proceeds go to Andalus's work, and none to me. I am boycotting the Israeli economy but not Israelis.

Our modest publishing plan required dozens of phone calls, emails and instant messages, stretching between Tel Aviv, Ramallah, Paris, Toronto and Gaza City. My point is this: as soon as you start a boycott strategy, dialogue grows dramatically. The argument that boycotts will cut us off from one another is particularly specious given the array of cheap information technologies at our fingertips. We are drowning in ways to rant at each other across national boundaries. No boycott can stop us.

Just about now, many a proud Zionist is gearing up for major point-scoring: don't I know that many of these very hi-tech toys come from Israeli research parks, world leaders in infotech? True enough, but not all of them. Several days into Israel's Gaza assault, Richard Ramsey, managing director of a British telecom specialising in voice-over-internet services, sent an email to the Israeli tech firm MobileMax: "As a result of the Israeli government action in the last few days we will no longer be in a position to consider doing business with yourself or any other Israeli company."

Ramsey says his decision wasn't political; he just didn't want to lose customers. "We can't afford to lose any of our clients," he explains, "so it was purely commercially defensive."

It was this kind of cold business calculation that led many companies to pull out of South Africa two decades ago. And it's precisely the kind of calculation that is our most realistic hope of bringing justice, so long denied, to Palestine.]]> General http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=10 Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:56:58 +0500 http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=9
John Humphreys, for anyone that doesn’t know, is the main interviewer for BBC radio 4’s Today programme. He’s a man that continually interrupts the politicians that he interviews, won’t let them get away with their two-faced, mealy-mouthed, half-arsed attempts at lying.

This is what he said in that interview:

“There are three types of politicians. Those who never lie; those who are economical with the truth when it comes to the possibility of embassing the government; and then there are those that don’t give a bugger what they do.”Humphreys doesn’t give us the proportions.

The day I read this interview was the day the Israeli government invaded Gaza with tanks, rockets and soldiers.

The day before, in the paper, I’d read US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice saying she had “no plans to travel to the region at this point”. She refused to answer questions on whether a ground offensive was justifiable. Basically, the reason she wasn’t going to Israel to broker a ceasefire was because she knew there was going to be a ground invasion, that she had to stay safely out of the way.

She knew; she knew but she lied.

This is how it works in politics. Powerful people tell lies, papers report what they say, people die, then we all forget the lie.

I would hazard a guess that most politicians, in the words of Humphreys, ‘don’t give a bugger what they do.’

We’re all taught about lies when we’re young – witness the collective (and harmless) lie that is Santa Claus. So about the time we’re old enough to discover there’s no Father Christmas, we ought to realise the power of lying and apply it to our understanding of the world – as the joke goes, “how can you tell when a politician is lying? His lips are moving.” We’re not four years old, there isn’t really a fat man in a red suit, and let’s be realistic enough to question what we’re told by those in authority.

After John Humphreys gave Tony Blair an on-air grilling over New Labour ‘sleaze’ in 2000, he wasn’t given access to the PM for four years. That’s what you get for questioning; arguably Humphreys survived those four years with a greater level of dignity, honour and integrity than Blair.

Condoleeza Rice had no plans to travel. And Israel is, somewhat nobly and for all of us, “fighting the war against international terror,” so says an Israeli spokesman. ‘The War on Terror’ itself, the modern-day Father Christmas, a huge umbrella of a lie which serves to justify any manner of slaughter, bloodshed, torture and – yes – terror. Isn’t shelling a UN school terror? Killing civilians, murdering women and children, isn’t that terror? Israel have a long-term relationship with terror, despite the handy and frequently-trotted out cry of ‘anti-semitism’. The list of Israeli massacres (mainly in Lebanon but frequently in Palestine) is long. Look them up, count up the thousands of dead bodies, every one of them qualified and justified by a lie.

20 Israelis have been killed in and around Gaza in the last ten years (20 too many). In contrast, this week alone, 600 Palestinians have been killed, including the 40 civilian refugees killed in the school bombing. An Israeli ambassador responded to this bombing by saying, “Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties.” Which is, of course, a lie.

Maybe, as with Santa Claus, people over the age of four still need something to believe in. Need to believe that those self-serving wretches in suits (and dress suits) are acting in our best interests. What a world it would be if we didn’t believe a thing they said.

I just went to see the exhibition of anti-war art and photography at the Barbican in London. Beautiful, harrowing, powerful stuff, as clear a statement about war as you can get. Spain, China, Vietnam, Iraq – and coupled with what’s happening in Gaza right now, I couldn’t help a feeling of futility and desperation. And chanting slogans outside the Israeli Embassy (I went there too) seems so puny compared to the media-trumpeted lies of the powerful.

Thank goodness we have people like John Humphreys: “The one I want to interview is the Queen. Would I stick the boot in? Of course I would!”

Now looks like a good time to be sticking the boot in to the Israeli government, the US administration which funds it and the conservative media apologists who support it.

Not forgetting, of course, a well-aimed boot for Middle East Peace Envoy Tony Blair, who this week was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom – the country’s highest civilian award – by George W Bush. Presumably for his outstanding success as Middle East Peace Envoy.


Boff Jan 2009

]]> General http://chumba.com/blog/index.php?itemid=9 Mon, 12 Jan 2009 04:17:44 +0500