There is no other conclusion to draw. All we need is for a Donald Trump tweet to make vague sense and we're done.
Jacobin, after all, is not known for reasonable pieces on popular culture. They seem to think that "popular culture", as a field dominated by "the Class Enemy", is something to shout at. Their approach tends to involve declaring loudly just how much they are "Against" things in a bid to generate clicks with cheap didactic controversies.
This leads to some regrettablecases. Maybe the most extreme was the horrific and offensive piece they ran just after US country music legend Merle Haggard died, that involved an extremely dishonest and one-sided slandering of the singer.
However, their piece on legendary Irish folk singer Luke Kelly ('Ireland's Red Troubadour') is better. It is informative and sharp, capturing the dynamic interplay between artistic creation and the social conditions that surround it. Christ, I'd even encourage people to actually read it and God knows I never thought I'd say that about a Jacobin piece on popular culture!
The piece not only looks at the artistic qualities of Luke Kelly -- best known as a member of The Dubliners and often considered Ireland's greatest folk singer -- but provides a useful overview of the social conditions in which he grew up, and the broad social forces behind the Dubliners' role in reviving and transforming Irish folk music.
These economic and cultural changes helped The Dubliners update Irish folk music for the 1960s and beyond -- presenting it with a rawer, gritter feel, connected to the spirit of rock'n'roll. This in turn opening the way for the likes of The Pogues who, in the 1980s, took it even further and wedded Irish folk music to the spirit of punk.
It is true that in Luke Kelly, Jacobin has an easy case to manage. He was, after all, not simply a brilliant balladeer but also a dedicated socialist. At one point a card-carrying Communist, he travelled from pub to pub in England, performing songs then selling The Daily Worker to audiences.
Kelly's status as a socialist allows Jacobin to acknowledge his importance as a singer without getting caught up in awkward complications involving contradictory and shifting politics of artists as they seek to engage with the world around them in a process mediated by fucking capitalism, its power, and its capacity to determine how you earn a fucking pay check as an artist.
Not so poor Merle Haggard, who may have been one of the greatest American singers of the post-war period and a towering figure for millions of working people, but he did have some political contradictions, the goddamn sap. So fuck him, better to accuse him of fantasising about a place where "politics remained untroubled by the presence of non-whites” despite writing multiple anti-racist songs.
Not that I'm bitter.
Luke Kelly was not a songwriter, but a brilliant interpreter and performer of songs. His legacy rests on his stunning capacity to express emotion in his vocals and whose versions of several Irish folk standards are definitive.
He was also a socialist committed to the interests of ordinary people -- and saw folk music as a way to express this. He refused to tour South Africa, helped organise political rallies at which he also performed, and supported the civil rights struggle in Northern Ireland, opposing internment and other brutal policies of the British state.
Jacobin concludes:
Ireland shaped Luke Kelly, his music flowed from the heights of its history, rose and fell with its social upheavals, and mourned its unfulfilled promises. But maybe more importantly, Luke Kelly shaped Ireland. His music became part of the national fabric...
But probably his greatest contribution was the fact that no other known figure in human history has rocked a giant Ginger Afro like quite like Luke Kelly,
GINGER AFRO!
In honour of Jacobin's unexpected achievement in publishing a cultural piece that doesn't make you want to tear your own eyeballs out, I made a playlist of 10 songs, posted below, sung by Luke Kelly.
It is a range of songs, including his iconic version of tracks like "Raglan Road" and "The Rocky Road to Dublin". It features his moving version of Phil Coulter's ode to his disabled son, "Scorn Not His Simplicity"-- a song whose emotional power Kelly respected so much only ever performed it publicly once, so as not to undermine it with repetition.
The only explicitly political song is the first on the list, "Alabama '58", about systemic racism in the US. But there is social commentary through out, especially the Coulter-written "A Town I Loved So Well", which details the destruction of British-occupied Derry in the 1970s.
Some are traditional songs that The Dubliners helped revive with defining versions, such as "Whiskey in the Jar", others more recently written songs that, in large part by the Dubliners effort, became classics and standards, such as Brendan Behan's prison song, "The Auld Triangle", and the English folk singer Ewan McColl-penned "Dirty Old Town" (like Kelly, both Behan and McColl were socialists).
For its part, the Kelly-sung Dubliners' version of "Dirty Old Town" is very similar in style to the version of The Pogues in the 1980s, which is how many, like me, first came to the folk standard. When The Pogues do "Dirty Old Town", they are covering not just the song, but the Dubliners' version specifically.
The track listing is below...
Alabama 58
The Auld Triangle
Raglan Road
The Rocky Road to Dublin
Leaving of Liverpool
Dirty Old Town
The Town I Loved So Well
Black Velvet Band
Scorn Not His Simplicity
Whiskey in the Jar
Since leading Sinn Fein politician Martin McGuinness died aged 66 on March 20, much ink has been spilt on the life and legacy of the ex-IRA fighter who helped negotiate Ireland's peace process. Praise and sometimes slander, from highest offices around the world to ordinary people, have come the way of the deceased man from Derry in Ireland's north.
But how many of these bastards have bothered to use McGuinness's death as a great excuse to bang on about one of the greatest songs most famously sung by possibly Ireland's greatest-ever folk singer as part of one of the great Irish folk bands? Huh?
A whole bunch of people have missed this rather obvious trick. But no more! The absence of Luke Kelly and the Dubliners in discussions of Martin McGuinness's life and times ends here! I WILL END THIS AND I WILL END THIS NOW!
Yes! You can listen BELOW to Irish songwriter Phil Coulter's classic song "The Town I Loved So Well", first recorded by the Dubliners in 1973.
It describes the Derry that McGuinness, like Coulter and thousands of other working-class men and women, grew up in. It captures the tragedy of the violence that wracked it from the perspective of the working class who were its victims. And YES there is much more to say and GODDAMN IT fear NOT I go on to SAY FUCKING BUCKET LOADS OF IT DOWN BELOW IN THIS VERY POST!
But first, before anything else should even be thought, much less said... first... Luke Kelly.
In my memory I will always see the town that I have loved so well Where our school played ball by the gasyard wall and we laughed through the smoke and the smell Going home in the rain, running up the dark lane past the jail and down behind the fountain Those were happy days in so many, many ways in the town I loved so well
In the early morning the shirt factory horn called women from Creggan, the Moor and the Bog While the men on the dole played a mother's role, fed the children and then trained the dogs And when times got tough there was just about enough But they saw it through without complaining For deep inside was a burning pride in the town I loved so well
There was music there in the Derry air like a language that we all could understand I remember the day when I earned my first pay And I played in a small pick-up band There I spent my youth and to tell you the truth I was sad to leave it all behind me For I learned about life and I'd found a wife in the town I loved so well
But when I returned how my eyes have burned to see how a town could be brought to its knees By the armoured cars and the bombed out bars and the gas that hangs on to every tree Now the army's installed by that old gasyard wall and the damned barbed wire gets higher and higher With their tanks and their guns, oh my God, what have they done to the town I loved so well
Now the music's gone but they carry on For their spirit's been bruised, never broken They will not forget but their hearts are set on tomorrow and peace once again For what's done is done and what's won is won and what's lost is lost and gone forever I can only pray for a bright, brand new day in the town I loved so well
The song is a great demonstration of the talents of Luke Kelly as a folk singer, as he hits lines bemoaning a sudden and devastating shift towards violence with ever greater force.
The song starts depicting a working class community that suffers poverty (the men are on the dole, though the women work in local factories), but with a strong sense of community and pride. The narrator leaves and later returns to find a town "brought to its knees" by violence, with the "army installed by the old gas yard walls, and the damned barbed wire grows higher and higher". Kelly's voice is almost broken with barely suppressed anger as he declares "My God, what have they done?", before insisting the town's spirit is "bruised but never broken" and they set their eyes towards peace.
It is a song about social realities in the folk tradition, and is not explicitly political. It is no "rebel" song, and while it bemoans British military violence there is no suggestion of sympathy for the armed resistance McGuinness helped lead in the 70s. If anything, the reference to "bombed out bars" suggests the violence, from all sides are fuelling the singer's despair and grief.
But this doesn't reduce its capacity to capture the reality that made McGuinness who he was. When it was clear the armed struggle could not bring about a speedy end to the war, while the violence wrecked havoc on all aspects of society in Ireland's north, McGuinness was part of the push for an end to armed conflict to shift the struggle to peaceful means.
The ;picture of Derry, and what happened to it in the Troubles, provides a great frame to understand Martin McGuinness.
Born the son of a tailor in 1950, McGuinness grew up poor, in the working-class (and largely Catholic and nationalist) Bogside in Derry. Leaving school at 15, he worked a series of low-paying jobs. He was working as a butcher's apprentice when, in 1969, he witnessed one atrocity against his community too many and joined the IRA.
Derry is the second largest city in the six Irish counties that Britain retained when Ireland was partitioned in 1921 at the end of the War of Independence that ended direct British rule over 26 of Ireland's 32 counties.
To ensure a population in the partitioned state that was "loyal" to the Crown, it was established with an artificial majority of the largely loyalist Protestants, with the largely nationalist Catholic population a minority (Derry, however, has a clear Catholic majority).
The state was set up on the basis of Protestant supremacy, with Northern Ireland's first prime minister James Craig famously declaring it "A Protestant Parliament for a Protestant people."
Run along sectarian lines, Catholics suffered poor services, housing and were denied access to many jobs, often reducing to living in slums. Local voting rights were granted to those who owned property. As many Catholics didn't own homes, they couldn't vote. In Derry, this meant that despite Catholics being the majority, the town was run by bigoted pro-British Protestant unionists.
Most of Northern Ireland's working class were Protestant, but within the working class, the poorest and most deprived were overwhelmingly Catholic (and nationalist).
In his funeral oration at McGuinness's graveside, his long-time comrade and Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said:
Like many other Derry ‘wans’, Martin grew up in a city in which Catholics were victim of widespread political and economic discrimination.
He was born into an Orange State which did not want him or his kind. Poverty was endemic.
Unsurprisingly, such injustice sparked opposition. Inspired by the US civil rights struggle, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was formed in 1967 to campaign for equality for Catholics. The response to peaceful civil rights marches was extreme violence — especially in Derry.
Extra-legal loyalist gangs and the infamously sectarian and violent Royal Ulster Constabulary viciously attacked marchers. When marchers sought to defend themselves, attacks grew into anti-Catholic pogroms.
Catholics in mixed or largely Protestant areas were driven from their homes, which were often burned — turning the Catholic areas of cities like Belfast and Derry into besieged ghettos. Adams, in his 1997 memoir Before the Dawn, describes police snipers on building tops, opening fire on any Catholic they saw move. At this time, the IRA was all but non-existent.
In 1969, tens of thousands of Catholics were forced from their homes, many fleeing across the border into the Republic of Ireland — at the time, the largest forced movement of people in Europe since World War II.
The besieged population did not take the repression lying down, and brutal attacks by police and loyalist gangs were met with barricades and riots as people sought to defend their communities. In January 1969, with barricades erected, the nationalist areas of Derry (including the Bogside) declared their areas "Free Derry" — a liberated zone, protected by residents armed with clubs, rocks and petrol bombs, in which the sectarian authorities were barred from entering.
In August 1969, three days of violent street fighting between the RUC, which used CG gas (the first time it was used against civilians within the British state) and the nationalist community, known as the Battle of the Bogside broke out, sparked by attempts by a notoriously sectarian Orange parade to march through nationalist areas.
With the community undefeated, the British government took the fatal decision to mobilise British soldiers, sending them to the Bogside.
The Troubles had begun.
The British military failed to take control of Free Derry until 1972 (while the IRA operated openly, defending the area), but the path to full scale military conflict was opened.
In his graveside oration, Adams continued:
I remember [Martin] telling me that he was surprised when his father, a quiet modest church going man, marched in the civil rights campaign here in Derry.
The Orange State’s violent suppression of that civil rights campaign; the Battle of the Bogside, and the emerging conflict propelled Martin into a life less ordinary.
With British soldiers on the streets, the conflict spiralled into war, as a civil rights struggle morphed into an armed struggle for national liberation.
To crack down on the newly re-energised republican movement, the British authorities introduced internment in August 1971. Doors were smashed in, homes raided and hundreds of overwhelmingly Catholic men and women (most of whom weren't active republicans) were interned without trial, often tortured.
In Before the Dawn, Adams describes a terrible event in the working-class Catholic neighbourhood of Ballymurphy, where he lived. The day interment was introduced, the British Army set up a "free fire" zone in the area. For three days, soldiers opened fire on sight on anyone within their line of fire — shooting 11 civilians dead, including a priest who ran to to aid a wounded man and a mother of eight, on the streets desperately trying to round up her children to keep them safe.
This massacre predates the start of the IRA's bombing campaign. There has never been any justice for the atrocity. The soldiers responsible came from the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment. Five months later, on January 30, 1972, the same regiment opened fire on unarmed civil rights marchers, killing 14 in the infamous Bloody Sunday massacre.
McGuinness, a leading IRA member in Derry at the time, witnessed the events on Bloody Sunday. In an April 1972 Irish Times profile of McGuinness entitled (to McGuinness's embarrassment) "The Boy Who Rules Free Derry", he said:
The worst I ever felt was Bloody Sunday. I wandered about stunned, with people crying and looking for their relatives, and I thought of all that about honour between soldiers. The British Army knew right well we wouldn’t fight them with all those thousands of people there, so they came in and murdered the innocent.
Think of this context and listen to the song again.
It's not hard to see how the likes of McGuinness ended up IRA volunteers, responding to such conditions with guns in their hand.
McGuinness may have become a leader of note, but his story was typical of his generation. Young working class men and women, looking to live ordinary lives, were driven to resist by violence and oppression.
A story told often about young working class men from nationalist areas being "lifted" by the British occupying forces, interned with trial and tortured — despite frequently having no involvement in republicanism. Instead, they were interested in the same things as young men everywhere — watching sport, getting drunk, trying to get laid.
But once released, the previously apolitical youths would search out their local IRA recruiter.
Adams pointed out in his 1997 memoir Before the Dawn, the working class nationalist in Ireland's north were not better or worse than anyone else. They were neither devils nor saints, just ordinary people facing extraordinary violence. Neither inherently pacifists nor predisposed to violence, they didn't want war but were willing to fight one when they felt they had no choice.
And with that reality of ordinary people — will all the good and bad that comes with it — came good and bad in the armed conflict.
There was incredible bravery, resilience and sacrifice. (None are more justly famous than the 1981 hunger strikes in which 10 men died rather than give up their dignity in the face of the Thatcher government's heartless cruelty).
This existed along with reprehensible violence that can not be justified no matter the cause. (One infamous example is the 1987 Remembrance Day bombing, when an IRA bomb went off at an Remembrance Day event at a War Memorial in Ennskillen in Northern Ireland and killed 10 civilians. The incident was described by Sinn Fein as a "huge tragedy" and Sinn Fein's An Phoblacht criticised it as a "monumental error". The IRA unit responsible was disbanded. The IRA had not intended to kill civilians, instead aiming to target British soldiers, but such deaths were always a strong risk with such bombings.)
The point is not whether both aspects have equal weight — I think the republican movement, whatever it did wrong, was trying to respond as best it could to a horrific situation not of its own making. Merely to point out that people enter such struggles with all their flaws and imperfections, not helped in this instance by the role of militarist thinking in the republican tradition.
(There is something sickening about the lecturing of one side of a conflict, which did not start the conflict, by those writing in safety who have never lived through one thousandth of the suffering of the nationalist community in Northern Ireland.
And when pointing out the reprehensible, it is reprehensible not to point out the sheer scale of the violence dealt out against not just active republicans but the general Catholic population during the Troubles, who were targeted for cold-blooded mass murder by loyalist death squads operating in collusion with the British state. This ugly truth is proven in great detail by Anne Cadwallder's 2013 book Lethal Allies: British Collussion in Ireland.)
McGuinness and Adams, especially, grasped that the issue was not simply which side had greater cause or was responsible for more suffering, but finding a way to resolve the armed conflict so the struggle for republican goals — and to advance the interests of working class people who bore the brunt of the conflict, from all sides — could occur in a peaceful framework.
As a few commentators have pointed out, there were never *two* Martin McGuinnesses, a violent terrorist first and a peacemaker second. Rather just one with the same goals, who proved willing to adapt strategy and tactics through experience. Adams put it in his speech at McGuinness's funeral:
"There was not a bad Martin McGuinness or a good Martin McGuinness. There was simply a man, like every other decent man or woman, doing his best."
The best evidence of that intent — to do his best for the community he came from, lived in, loved and sought to serve as best he could — came with the turn out to McGuinness's funeral. Thousands accompanied his coffin and is made its way down the streets of his beloved Bogside.
McGuinness's funeral, March 23.
Looking at the pictures of McGuinness's tricolour-draped coffin almost lost in the sea of people, I wracked my brains to think of a single living Australian politician whose funeral would generate such a response. I finally concluded a few could — but only to ensure the bastards were definitely dead and buried.
Make no mistake. The town McGuinness loved so well sure loved him back.
"The Town I Loved So Well" may not be a rebel song, but here is one about Joe McDonnell, one of the republican prisoners who died in the 1981 hunger strikers.
'And you dare to call me a terrorist, while you look down your gun...'
Barnie McKenna, Ronnie Drew, Luke Kelly and John Sheahan.
Saint Patrick's Day, every March 17, is a day where the whole world seems to come together to celebrate the culture of an ancient peoples that has survived invasion, occupation and genocide by binge drinking beer artificially turned green while wearing novelty leprechaun hats.
But it might also be one of the rare days people feel obligated to pay some attention to you banging on about the glory of Irish folk music legends such as the Dubliners. Or maybe not, but one can but try.
The Dubliners emerged out of the post-war period that saw big ruptures and innovations in various cultural in Western countries. In Ireland, the Dubliners, with a raw energy and rough edge that owed something to the same spirit of the times that led to the rise of rock'n'roll, helped lead a crucial traditional Irish folk revival. they took folk music out of stuffy concert halls being performed by the stiffly middle class people put the music back into smokey pubs. And from there, to England's Top of the Pop's and well beyond.
Often political or bawdy, the Font of All Knowledge that is Wikipedia informs us that the band "drew criticism from some folk purists and Ireland’s national broadcaster RTÉ had placed an unofficial ban on their music from 1967–71."
Having disbanded after 50 years in 2012, the band's members and output was wide and varied — with banjo player Barney McKenna (said to have revolutionised tenor banjo playing) and fiddle player John Sheahan the only two members to have been in the band from start to finish..
My play list focuses heavily on the definitive line up featuring singers and founding members Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew.
Kelly, who tragically died in from a brain tumour in 1984, was a left-wing activist one of the greatest folk singers of his generation, able to impart such passion and personality in his rendition of songs to render many of his versions definitive.
Ronnie Drew... well no one has ever accused the man of having the "greatest" voice, but, described as the "sound of coal being crushed under a door", it was certainly one of the most original — and perfect for story telling.
The two weren't song writers. They interpreted songs written by others, whether traditional standards or a new generation of folk song writers like Pete St John and Phil Counter, but the band created definitive recordings of wide array of songs.
What the Dubliners did in the 60s, in revitalising an old tradition with new energy, bringing it to a new generation in a way they could relate to, The Pogues did in London in the 80s, infusing Irish folk music with the energy and attitude of punk. Not for nothing did The Pogues record with the Dubliners in 1987.
And when The Pogues recorded a track like "Dirty Old Town", they weren't just covering Ewan McColl's folk standard, they were specifically, clearly, covering the Dubliners' version featuring Luke Kelly.
This is ap lay list of 20 songs that I think give the best overview of the quality of the Dubliners -- and their two most defining and distinctive singers, Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew. A couple of tracks such by Barnie McKenna are also thrown in, as is a version of traditional song Carrikfergus sung by Jim McCann, who replaced Ronnie Drew in the band for a chunk of the '70s, simply because ... well when you hear it you'll know why.
Done right, there is little to match Irish folk music in its capacity for affecting or amusing story telling, for bringing to real characters drawn from every day life. And few have done it so well as the Dubliners.
OK, this is the third installment of my ASIO files, and I have to admit, but now I was starting to see a certain trend. Apparently the only thing ASIO care about is recording me in some pub with the cad Leslie. FINE! We can only hope the remaining two installments provide us with something of actual interest.
You can read the fucking thing below, though I should warn you should probably read the previous two installments as this is a pretty linear, plot-driven series and you might otherwise get lost.
* * *
A pub.
[10:10AM. WEDNESDAY, [DATE REDACTED]. CARLO MEETS LESLIE AT THE [REDACTED] HOTEL.]
CARLO: I gotta hand it to you. You finally came through with a beer! And it tastes pretty sweet!
LESLIE: Yeah, I found it in the hand of this passed-out guy in the beer garden. It was pretty much full too, just had to wipe a bit of his vomit off.
CARLO: Well... cheers!
[Two glasses are clinked]
CARLO: I still haven’t forgiven you though.
LESLIE: [sipping beer] Hmmm?
CARLO: You know why.
LESLIE: What?
CARLO: YOU FUCKING BEAT ME IN A DUEL TO THE DEATH! I AM NOW DEAD!
LESLIE: You're still going on about that? You challenged me to a duel to the death because I had “insulted your honour” by failing to buy you another beer, declaring that you “demanded satisfaction”.
CARLO: My reputation as a gentleman was at stake!
LESLIE: So I chose aging as my weapon. State of your liver’s so bad, you can barely drink a ginger beer without falling over.
CARLO: And it was with such innocence I took that Facebook quiz “When will you die”! I still remember the result... October 21, 2008. It was only when you OH-SO-HELPFULLY pointed out it was already 2009 that the truth struck me... I was dead!
LESLIE: How do you think I felt? Being the slayer of Carlo Sands after all those millennia, when so many angry mobs and enraged bartenders had failed! Every cowboy in the known universe wants a crack at me! I had three assassination attempts on the walk here just this morning! Luckily, those Tai Kwon Do lessons have proven handy.
CARLO: YOU SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE YOU MURDERED ME WITH A FACEBOOK QUIZ! Jesus. Now my beer's empty. Just coz I’m dead doesn’t mean I am NOT THIRSTY!
LESLIE: I’m right ahead of you. I saved you this one from the table next to the passed out guy. This bloke had actually thrown up right into the schooner, but I borrowed a sift from the pub kitchen and I think I got all the chunks out.
CARLO: Ah! You’re alright! You might be a murdering bastard, but this beer is going down gre... [chokes loudly] AARGH!
LESLIE: Sorry, must have missed a bit.
CARLO: [coughs it out] I hate pineapple!
LESLIE: I know you are upset at being dead...
CARLO: The hangovers are even worse!
LESLIE: … but just think of what you achieved with your life! The discovery of fermented fruit, the invention of human sacrifice, the sack of Jerusalem ...
CARLO: Twice!
LESLIE: Three times. That was you with the Assyrians, wasn’t it? 8th century BC?
CARLO: Oh yeah, I had forgotten that one. I was pretty drunk.
LESLIE: And of course the Black Death!
CARLO: Ha! My most successful practical joke.
LESLIE: A third of Europe dead! Your proudest moment.
CARLO: I suppose I did achieve a few things. But I never conquered Persia!
LESLIE: Not the Alexander the Great thing again...
CARLO: The bastard left without me!
LESLIE: He couldn’t get you out the pub when it was time to go!
CARLO: It was happy hour! And that pub band was going off! Still I have to say, their version of “Dirty Old Town” was pretty shit. I kept shouting at them to play that poetic yet gritty take on life in a post-war northern English industrial town... but they just kept saying “It’s the 4th Century BC, what the fuck’s a gas works wall?” I had to put my machete right into their faces and scream “PLAY IT YOU PRICKS!”
LESLIE: Brave effort, though. And Alexander got his come-uppence. You never told me how you ended up in Babylon that night, but I'd recognise your handiwork anywhere.
CARLO: I guess you’re right. I have achieved a lot! Come on, you murderous bastard, another drink to celebrate!
LESLIE: I suppose one more couldn’t hurt.
[FROM THIS POINT ON, NO FURTHER CLEAR DIALOGUE CAN BE DISCERNED FROM THE RECORDINGS. AT ONE POINT, IT APPEARS THEY COULD BE ATTEMPTING TO SING THE IRISH FOLK BALLAD “THE FIELDS OF ATHENRYE”, OR POSSIBLY SOMEONE IS ASSAULTING A POSSUM.]
‘Against the famine and the Crown, I rebelled, they cut me down...' It is unclear if this was what the ASIO transcript captured or if a marsupial was being tortured. Stay tuned for more!
In today's Daily Carlo, I will share two things I learned by going into the horrible depths of NSW Parliament House tonight at Macquarie Street... that I am going to put *on my blog* despite having put it on Facebook because I have decided that fuck it. FUCK IT. I AM GOING TO START USING MY BLOG TO *MICRO BLOG* AND JUST PUT UP RANDOM SHIT!!! COZ I CAN!!! FUCK YOU!!!
NSW parliament is not like other parliaments I have visited. the WA parliament is no where near as "historic", "prestigious" and "fucking pompous" as this building. SA parliament? Don't joke. The ACT Legislative Assembly is a fucking B-grade , all-plastic convention centre compared to this. Not even the federal parliament feels as "steeped in history"/pompous crap" as the NSW Parliament.
And these are the lessons of my visit to the place:
1) the security police are *much* friendly, nicer and happily jokey than they are when you have to go to court.
2) The fucking beer is reasonably priced in the parliamentary bar. Like I mean $5 for a fancy fucking over-hopped pale ale craft beer that, anywhere else, with that amount of suits and soulless bar atmosphere, would surely cost like $8 or $9. I mean you can barely get a fucking schooner of VB or Toohey's New anywhere in this state for five bucks these days. WE ARE PAYING FOR THESE GODDAMN HACKS TO DRINK REASONABLY PRICED BEER! IT IS AN OUTRAGE!!!
3) Well... I'll get to that.
To expand on point one... at least I *got dressed up for fucking court*. You would think they would give you *some* respect! But no... cold, mechanical, harsh, soulless... that is some of the things the mothers of the cops at Parramatta Court House say about their sons who work there as security.
But Parliament House? Never mind I went in looking like I'd just woken up from my park bench I call home, as I go through and set off the metal detector the cop is all like "steel caps in your boots? not a problem... only problem is you are still sober at this time of night!" (Somewhat presumptuous to assume I was sober...) Way out was met with equally jokey cops. I really am not used to, and feel quite nervous around, friendly cops.
And while we are on the topic of point TWO... I should point out it was hardly a smooth ride... they really didn't seem to want us in their bar and for ages we couldn't get served because the guy behind the bar was very clear that you needed to be associated with some sort of sitting elected parliamentarian. And ours had disappeared to go off to prepare a speech for somethingorather. Eventually one parliamentarian was scrounged up by someone who *knows* these kind of people and the nicely dress man behind the bar was satisfied he was allowed to serve us.
Which was fine until I needed to order another and, standing there for sometime while the man behind the bar did various other tasks, was not convinced I would *get* served at all, what with looking, as I explained, as though I had just arrived from my park bench. But sure enough he did... and I was stunned by the change I got for the twenty I gave him. STUNNED! OUTRAGEOUS! THIS IS THE TAXPAYERS MONEY HE WAS GIVING BACK TO ME!!!
You might be wondering why I was even there.,.. and that reminds me. Point three. I didn't just learn it at Parliament House today, but was told of it once more .. .and that is:
Established, proven, collusion between the British state and death squads in northern Ireland to carry out the most heinous, unspeakable, stomach turning, soul wrenching massacres of civilians is truly ... well fucking unspeakably horrific.
And for more information, read this article by some prick who wore a suit to parliament today (and was forced to tolerate me shuffling along after him) about more details. Or watch this documentary about the British state's use of what can only be described as serial killers to slaughter civilians, often wiping out whole families. And think about both how this is a direct continuation of an approach the British state took to other parts of its Empire over the centuries, perfectly the craft, and how this practice in Ireland has led directly to the occupiers actions in Iraq -- using sectarian violence and death squads to divide and rule for Great Power.
If you really want to have your stomach turned, your tear ducts dried out and your heart taken and stomped on and smashed into a thousand pieces at the sheer unspeakable destruction of innocent human life driven by hatred, bigotry, cold-blooded hypocrisy that has never been properly recognised or had anything like justice administered for, then you can read Anne Cadwallader's Lethal Allies.
Oh well. Luke Kelly sings a mean song about the mess, at least.
It is near impossible to capture just how fucked up shit is in this country, let alone world. Great Barrier Reef? Oh well... well it was only getting in the way of exporting coal. Asylum seekers? Well, obviously we are concerned that they are being encouraged to take "dangerous journeys"... so we'll throw the desperate people that come here on small life boats, send them off the Indonesia to fend for themselves even though at least three people have died as a result. We had to do that otherwise they might have died.
But... I mean, I made my case some time ago that we serioiusly needed to find a decent sized wall for these fucking pricks, but did you goddamn aresholes *listen*? HUH? I even *tried to find a wall*. Goddamn you.
I even fucking suggested this wall for the goddamn pricks, you useless motherfuckers.
Well fuck. This is why God in His infinite mercy gave us music. There is not much better than live music done well, when a song swells with emotion and power until it seems it will explode. It is self-evident that such things are best actually experienced live. But, I have spent far too many evenings getting drunk and surfing YouTube to not know that there are some truly great, even breathtaking, life performances captured on film and uploaded there for our enjoyment.
So here are five great live clips. Trying to actually pick a "best five" would be impossible. This is a long way from that (among other things, I avoided Tom Waits coz once you go down that path, every single song will be Waits. You want some great Waits' clips, and who doesn't, I suggest my blog post Tom Waits' Top 20 Tearjerkers Of All Time.)
I simply chose five great live clips that I could think of right now -- and I can already think of some other great clips with no less claim to be on this list. These ones are great for different reasons -- the Springsteen clip is set on fire by Tom Morello's guitar solo; Janpis Joplin's astonoshing brilliant-but-raw vocal performance is out of this world; the Dubliners clip, as befits a folk song, brigns the story to life; and Kurt Cobain's shrieking is horrifying and spine-tingling in equal measures.
Anyway, the clips are below and, as ever, in a YouTube playlist.
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'He was a sick man, he had murder in his heart...'Weddings Parties Anything were a glorious folk rock band that toured one end of this country to the other -- the type of band the closing of so many live msic venues has seemingly condemned the hiustory books. They developed a reputation for one of the great live acts of their day -- and this clips helps show why. The song is about the infamous case from 19th century Tasmania, in which escaped convict Alexander Pearce turned to cannibalism... and developed a taste for human flesh.
'Now history is a pack of lies, as any fool can tell.
So when I got down to hobart Town I told my story well.
But do you think they would believe a word I said?'
'The highway is alive tonight. Where it's headed everybody knows...' Tom Morello's guitar solo alone would be enough to make this re-imagined version of Springsteen's originally accustic tale of the "new world order", with its old world poverty and suffering, utterly electrifying. Add to that... well everything else about this performance, and you've got yourself a gem.
'Honey I know she told you she loved you much, much more than I did....' Well, really, this is how you sing a song. An incredible vocal performance in which Janis Joplin inhabits the song entirely. Every line is delivered like her entire future happiness depends on it.
'With their tanks and their guns, oh my God, what have they done...' This version by the Dubliners of a song written by Phil Coulter about his home town of Derry is a great example of how you perform a track about war and oppression. Coulter's autobiographical words capture the tragedy of British occupation of Ireland's north and the violence it wrought by capturing the way it actually affected people's lives. Luke Kelly sings it with real emotional power so that each line is a fresh heartbreak.
'I will shiver the whole night through...' This raw, hard-edged cover of the traditional song made popular by Lead Belly as "In the Pines", is haunting and unsettling until Kurt Cobain starts shreiking, at which point it becomes like a knife in guts. It is a very potent performance that is a fitting conclusion to Nirvana's groudbreaking MTV Unplugged acoustic set.
It is also, in popular mind, inevitably bound up with the fact the Unplugged album was released after Cobain committed suicide -- it seems to add extra gavitas to the performance and make a track like this even more haunting. But it is worth keeping in mind Cobain was not suicidal while he performs this. If he was, he'd have killed himself there and then, not spent a few hours in front of a crowd to record a show in which he did some of his finest live work.
What it is, rather than some inevitable swansong or pointer to the tragedy that was to come, is a sign of Cobain's talent and most of all, his potential. It is a sign of why his premature death was such a loss -- it showed what he was capable of. We can only imagine what he could have given the world had he lived.
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BONUS TRACK!!!
'We're hanging here in an inch of our lives, from the day we're born till the day we die...' Shovels and Rope!!! Christ I love the glorious country folk duo that are wife and husband Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent.. Let no one accuse me of being *purely* negative... I end on this fucking heartfelt call to action to fucking DO SOMETHIG OF VALUE WITH OUR LIFES. Like you know.. finding a decent wall for all the motherfuckers...
Well, so it seems it has somehow gotten to February and I have not posted *even once* so far in 2013. So I figured I'd better give my multitude of fans something pretty special... and what could be more special than a song featuring pretty highly specialised acts that I am obsessed with but almost no one else I know really gives a fuck about? HUH? HOW ABOUT THAT?
I mean, I shouldn't have to apologise really, as I have been *pretty fucking busy* this year. Destroying a liver takes more time and effort than maost people realise. Plus I got my Green Left Weekly Carlo's Corner columns to write, like once a fucking week! Like seriously, my latest column -- taking up the key issues facing this country of climate change, corporate profiteering and David "Kochie" Koch -- was more than *840 words long*! Fucking exhausting.
And then in what little spare time I have, I have been singing for the Western Sydney Wanderers, as all decent human beings do, and crying for the Essendon Bombers. The best thing that can be said about the drugs scandal that Essendon may find itself at the centre of is it has the potential to also bring down Manly. It might not stop there either, given the release of a damning ACC report. So let me start very clearly: *should* the scandal of drugs in sport limit itself to the destruction of CARLTON, MANLY and SYDNEY FC, I for one welcome it. (Essendon, however, should be off limits on grounds of... um... being Essendon.)
Regardless of these entirely understandable reasons, I am only too away of just how painful and distressing my multitude of fans find the absence of blog posts. So while I am in the midst of preparing my magnus opus on the issue of our times (Tom Waits), I nonetheless offer you all this wonderful gem of a song -- in which Irish singer-songwriter The Mighty Stef teams up with the legendary Ronnie Drew of The Dubliners and Dave King and Bridget Regan from the Irish American celtic punk band Flogging Molly.
The song is The Mero, written by Pete St John, who has written many Irish folk classics (most notably Fields of Athenry). The song is about Dublin and growing violence plaguing the city. You can read a little bit about the slang and characters that feature in it (and the lyrics) here.
I am not sure when this filmed, but it was clearly right at the very end of Ronnie Drew's life (he died in 2008). Ronnie Drew is a genuine legend of Irish music, his ability to use his voice (once described as "the sound of coke being crushed under a door") giving emotional potency to the songs he sings. Below, he sings another Pete St John classic about Dublin.
"The years have made me bitter, the gargle dims my brain." Tell me about it Ronnie...
The Mighty Stef? Well, he is a seriously underrated performer (at least in Australia, where "not rated at all" would be more accurate). He has three studio albums under his belt and has also recorded with Shane MacGowan. Check the bastard out, in a track that speaks to me deeply...
"It's getting the stage I guess I always knew it would, where I can't walk down my street. I'm getting death threats here and death threats there from every one that I meet..." The man is singing my song.
And Flogging Molly... are just one of my all-time favourite bands. They don't miss. Their songs cuts a lot deeper than some of the drunken bravado that makes up some of the Celtic punk genre (*cough*Dropkick Murphys*cough*). There is a real weariness to their songs -- a sigh that says "Well life pretty much has me beaten, but fuck it, I can still raise my pint glass and sing." I rate their song The Worst Day Since Yesterday one of my absolute top songs of all time. To see them in full flight doing their stuff... see the clip below.
"You drink too much coffee, I drink too much stout..." So very true.
So, no need to thank me. Just buy me a beer -- via the PayPal button on the right-hand side. Or... hell, why not also check out my stand up clip at Five Minutes Live and click "like" if you like to help me win the online comp, based on the most "likes", and FIVE THOUSAND BUCKS. Then I'll buy *you* a beer!*
* Offer only eligible to people called "Carlo Sands".
