Well, this is one fucked-up place... so here's five great live performances

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.

Fuck civil liberties, fuck unions, fuck public education, , fuck the disabled, fuck working mothers, fuck the ABC, fuck the Tasmania's forests, fuck marine life, ... fuck any hope of any kind of civilised life on a fucking planet capable of hosting civilised life.

And may the Good Lord have mercy on your poor, pitiful soul should all of this make you want a MOTHERFUCKING DRINK in this goddamn state of NSW.

And the rest of this goddamn motherfucking world ... well, what is there left to say? I could point out that 85 people control half the world's wealth while much of the rest are condemned to Hell.

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...

In defence of the gutter

Well, it is there right under the big fucking slogan that reads: "An Alcoholic's Guide to Modern Life". A further statement. It reads: "We are in the gutter, but some of us enjoy it."

Now this statement, which I am told is a "play" on some sort of thing some prick called Oscar Wilde once said, was not actually something I personally came up with.

It was something that was once said about Carlo Sands by someone who, for reasons that escape me, calls herself "Amy".

The details of how it came to be said are a little hazy, but I believe it involved Canberra and a bad hangover.

And it is an accurate enough summary of the ideology, nay philosophy of Carlo Sands.

But I would, on reflection, go further and state: "We are all in a gutter but some of us DON'T EVEN FUCKING REALISE IT!"

No, some of us live in denial. Some of us think we can escape the gutter. And they think this is an easy task and one to be actively pursued.

The way you do this is you go some place to do your drinking, as we all must, that involves a greater wanker-per-head ratio than, say, some place with no one else there.

These places, for reasons that completely escape me, are usually full of people. And the way you can tell this is a place that its inhabitants think is above the gutter is, as well as the unseemly crowds, that the fucking beer costs more.

And sometimes, it even comes with a twist of some sort. Like if you hand over to the poor, overworked bastard behind the bar twice the cash for a standard beer, they'll kindly throw some fucking tabasco sauce into you beer for you.

You know, just for fucking kicks.

God knows why anyone would drink beer with tabasco fucking sauce in it, unless they were being force-fed it in Guantanamo Bay in the latest horrific torture technique invented by the Land of the Fucking Free as part of its bid to spread democracy one poor fucking tortured concentration camp prisoner at a time.

But apparently, the very possibility of ordering such a monstrosity, such a crime against humanity in blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions, is a sure sign you have taken a step out of the much-maligned gutter.

You know, as opposed to all those places that just serve fucking beer straight without the foresight of offering, for a just few extra hard earned dollars, a dollop of hot fucking sauce that renders your beer undrinkable.

And the worst thing about such places is they are never located anywhere fucking decent. By which I mean, located somewhere not overridden by fuckwits and wankers.

And yet, such places, in locations overridden with prats (to say nothing of very uptight bouncers) are considered, in some way, to be a step up from some dive in nowhere in particular.

That is, nowhere overrun by prats. Or, indeed, much in the way of anyone else.

And seriously, what is it with the bouncers in these areas? All you want is another fucking drink and you can't walk in to some place without being harassed by some meathead asking very impertinent questions, such as: "How much have you had tonight, mate?"

Ah, how about you mind your own fucking business is what you want to say. Or, clearly not enough as evidenced by the fact I am trying to walk into another fucking pub.

But you don't say that, because your chance of another drink is dependent on the goodwill of the giant slab of beef with an earpiece asking the question.

So you try and sound coherent and mumble something about "maybe a couple" and you get refused entry by the coked-up, steroid-ridden monstrosity who sees fit to judge your drug use.

That is the sort of neighbourhood where you find these "beer-with-tabasco-sauce" joints.

And, apparently, this is a step up from the gutter.

Well here is the thing. It really, really isn't. It is still the fucking gutter.

It is no less the gutter than some near-empty squalid pub with an old, drunken, redfaced Irishman behind the bar who insists on playing Kenny Rogers "The Gambler" on repeat on the jukebox.

It is still the gutter, only with more wankers in your way.

You can't escape the gutter. Not by choosing a different joint to try and kill the pain of late monopoly capitalism in.

The gutter is where we live. It is the place we are assigned to by our benighted rulers. Who, by the way, also live in the gutter — only with much more expensive booze and better views.

Or, in the case of those puppets the rulers like to pretend are allowed to rule, in Canberra.

The gutter is life in this society.

And by all means "look at the stars", as that absinthe-drinking Irish bastard once said.

Which means, as Wilde himself spelled out in The Soul of Man Under Socialism, dare to imagine a different society is possible, one in which we are not enslaved to some form of degrading labour, not alienated, not subjected to the horrors of war, exploitation and Justin Bieber.

And by all means, organise to overthrow this fucking system that threatens total destruction of all life on Earth.

Carlo Sands is for that. Hell, I even started the important work of scoping out a potential wall to put the motherfuckers up against.

But, within this nightmare, it is all just a nightmare.

That is why people drink, no matter how many times the government, who are all fucking alcoholics, or the media, who are all fucking alcoholics, warn us about the dangers of alcohol abuse and come up with insane, laughable formulas about four or more standard drinks is binge drinking.

There is no "step up". There is no "better class of joint". There are only more expensive drinks and more wankers in your way at the bar.

What do you need from a pub? You need available booze and a place to sit and talk to a small group of people about shit to in a bid to forget about the nightmare that is the world.

And maybe play a game of pool.

The best thing a pub can be is close. That is the best characteristic a pub can have, after "cheap" and "not overridden with wankers".

The worst argument that can be made is that going to some joint located in the middle of some wanker-ridden suburb is it means you have "more of a social life".

Jesus fucking christ, you want a social life go see the fucking theatre. Go and watch the goddamn ballet. Get up at 6am on a Sunday morning to join a bushwalking society. Go to flower shows.

But if you just want a drink to relax and forget the world, then just go and have a fucking drink. And pick your company with care.

But do not engage in illusions, nay delusions about where you chose to do your drinking.

And if you must enter one of these hubs of wankery, of pratness — let's pick a place at random and say Newtown/Enmore — then it is much more enjoyable if you assault the place in the company of someone, let's call him "Ben", who has been drinking goon all afternoon and is staggering up the street to the pub dressed in a suit for no reason other than he has been drinking goon all afternoon and it seems a good idea.

And, in between some decent, coherent discussion on the relative prospects of the Bulldogs or Bombers in the 2011 Premiership Season, you have to try and convince him that stealing one of those big, moveable heaters is not wise, nor is it advisable to stop random passerbyers to ask whether they like to wear condoms or just shout out, to the beer garden, "Woopha!!!" every half-a-minute.

You get to test out important life-phrases such as "C'mon Ben, don't do that..." and "for christ's sake Ben, SHUT UP!".

And wonder in amazement at how long it takes before the bouncers make their way over to advise that leaving sooner, rather than later, may be in everyone's best interests.

And at the fact it took some bastard at a nearby table to rat Ben out to the bouncers after he hid an empty jug in some bushes to pick up on the way home — especially as he completely forgot he put it there anyway.

And that he scored a free glass when, after the bouncers' "time to leave" message, he staggered out of the premises with half a schooner in hand - only to find out later it got confiscated five metres down the street. But, anyhow, it didn’t matter as he had another stuffed in his inside suit pocket he had forgotten about but discovered to his surprise the next day.

If you must drink in these places, best approach it in such a way.

But ok. I mean, you know, what difference does it make? Drink where you fucking like. It doesn't matter, you know, just drink.

But don't pretend where you drink is any better than anywhere else. It is still just the gutter with some fucking booze on tap. And *that* is all that fucking matters.



"Nine-to-five is eating us alive, eating us alive. We're not kings, we are footsoldiers. We are walking the road to nowhere ... Is there any other place for us to go? Or is there even anywhere we know? No, no, no, no ..."

We want blood...

"We want blood! (we want blood), We want blood! (we want blood), let the scarlet red river turn our cities into mud..."

Finally, someone has stood up and said what needs to be said. And that someone is the great singer-songwriter from Dublin, The Mighty Stef (born Stefan Murphy).

The Mighty Stef aims his rough-as guts, drunken, impassioned, bluesy musical guns at the Irish government and calls them out for what they are: fucking lying thieves.

Having turned those parts of the Emerald Isle not still occupied by the British into a happy hunting ground for corporate plunderers (corporate tax rate lowered to 12%), when the good ship Corporate Plunder ran aground, the good people in the Irish government gave them 70 billion euros.

I mean, seriously, they gave it to them. It was not a loan. They wont have to pay it back. Just "there you go, you cheeky scamps, don't spend it all on lollys".

And these are the sort of people who wouldn't give a beggar a buck in the snow.

I mean, I was personally a bit strapped for cash a year or two back and I asked Brian Cowan himself if he could lend me a few bucks for a few pints in his nation's lovely pubs.

Well, the reply I got from his personal secretary's staff clerk's assistant's secreatary is not printable even on this blog.

Hell, I was only trying to do the bastard a favour. The economy clearly badly needed a stimulus package to get it back up and running and nothing stimulates an economy like a Carlo Sands' drinking binge.

But no.

But a bunch of goddamn fucking thieves in suits who fucked the economy up in the first place give him a call and next thing you know its 70 billion pounds from the public coffers straight into the veins of the profit junkies.

And it all gets blown on debts and speculation. Soon as they get the cash, it's straight down to their dealer round the stock market and whole sad and pathetic cycle starts again.

With the cash not being spent on anything *actually* productive or useful, far from saving the economy, it drove it further into crisis. Unemployment has tripled since 2007, numbering hundreds of thousands. Wages are 20% lower than three years ago.

Mass migration, that terrible feature of Irish history that has foisted morbid, miserable Irish folk songs on innocent people all over the world, is raising its ugly head once more.

And, after it all, the government has found itself a little strapped for cash.

The solution? Pay for the bailout of the parasites by squeezing the fucking people that *actually* do something useful in society, that actually produce something of social value: brewery workers and bartenders.

And the working class in general, they were just the first that came to mind.

The problem is it wasn't even the government's cash to begin with. It was money provided by taxpayers.

And the rich in Ireland generally don't pay taxes (do they Bono?).

So the government gives the rich the working people's cash. Then, it makes up the balance by making the working people pay even more.

It follwed this up by slashing billions out of social services, cut funds to education and hike up tuition fees, slash public sector jobs, reduce pensions and increase taxes for ordinary people.

But that was still not enough, because the Irish government claims it still can't pay its loans to... the FUCKING BANKS.

The solution? Well, "dear banks, get fucked" is the one understandably that struck most Irish people, who polls say back a default.

Instead, the government went crawling on its knees to the International Monetary Fund and European Union and got 90 billion odd euros in a loan at high interest rates, in order to burden the Irish people minus the six counties claimed by Britain with *even more* debt it never asked for. (But don't worry, the six counties claimed by Britain are having to pay for debts racked up by the British government for handing billions of euros to British banks.)

And in return the cash, the government will lose economic sovereignty and hand the running of the day-to-day economy over to IMF and EU bureacrats *and* commits to implementing *further* savage spending cuts and other neoliberal austerity measures - of the sort that helped cause the fucking crisis in the first place.

This, you might think, may make people angry. Well, the government is on the verge of collapse an some 100,000 protested in Dublin on November 27 at this state of affairs.

The Mighty Stef goes further: "Let the downtrodden rise with a fire in their soul ...how many times do you need to be told? We want blood!"

How to organise such a thing? I made some general suggestions on the issue of how to make the streets run scarlet red with the blood of the ruling class, followed by what may be best described as a "colourful" discussion in the comments section, in my post Could *this* be the wall?

But the practicalities are largely to do with Australia and the Irish people will have to find their own solutions. And, indeed, their own walls.

The Mighty Stef has rightly raised the issue and got the ball (if not yet the heads) rolling. And this from a man whose previous experience of protest songs was this effort in response to Ireland losing a football match to France in the "Hand of Frog" scandal.

But I like the Mighty Stef in general. Rough, raw and drunken... Irish, in other words. If you want to hear some more, here are three song suggestions (though I could list more):

Death Threats: "It's getting to the stage I guess I always knew it would, where I can't walk down my street. I'm getting death threats here, death threats there from everyone I meet..." Carlo Sands can relate, especially to the empty beer glasses in the film clip.

Poisonous Love: "I'll return, your jewelry, I'll return your keys. I'll return your records and your poxy DVDS. I'll give you back your innocence that you blindly gave to me, and I'll sink you to the bottom of the sea..." The Mighty Stef shows the mature way to deal with a relationship break up.

Waitin' round to die: "I came of age and I met a girl in a Tuscaloosa bar, she cleaned me out and hit it on the sly. I tried to kill the pain, I bought some wine, hopped a train..." The Mighty Stef teams up with Shane MacGowan to cover Townes Van Zandt's classic.

Or you could just get on with the task of spilling their blood.



"Coz I've heard all the lies that I'm ever gonna wanna hear... we want blood!" Accoustic fury this time.

Could this be the wall?

“Can this be the wall we put the coal barons up against?”, is the thought provoking question from Fitzroy, Melbourne. It poses a very important question indeed.

Too often, the great mass of the oppressed go into a mass insurrection, driven by hatred of an outmoded social system that condemns their lives to utter hell, without fully thinking such questions through.

Too often, essential questions such as that posed by this piece of graffiti are not answered in advance. The result is ad hoc solutions are found.

Well, no need this time.

We know who is responsible for the coming eco-holocaust. And we know what needs to be done.

And we have concerned citizens thinking ahead and putting in their bid.

So, to the question posed: *Should* this, indeed, be the wall?

Well, I decided to investigate for myself. I went down to Melbourne, took the 86 tram to Fitzroy and found the wall in question in order to carry out a thorough study.

The conclusions drawn from my investigation are mixed.

In short: the wall is adequate. It is definitely high enough and has a reasonable length, so as to ensure a relatively efficient process

However, I would caution against any rushed conclusion that views this particular wall as *the* wall.

For a start, while relatively long, it is far from *long enough* to line up all the coal barons and associated hangers on — such as the entire parliamentary grouping of the NSW ALP, to say nothing of the editorial board of various Murdoch tabloids.

If this is the *only* wall, it may take some time to get through them all.

It seems to me, if this is to be done in a relatively short period of time (and climate scientists keep emphasising that the time in which to act is short), then more than one wall is required.

This wall may well prove useful for those traitors to humanity as can be rounded up in Victoria, but further walls should be investigated for use in other key regional areas.

Those of us in Sydney have a particular responsibility, I feel. Even more so those in Newcastle.

In short, Carlo Sands wishes to congratulate those in Melbourne who have thought ahead and found a wall *before* the mass insurrection that condemns this fucking insane fucking system — that fucking threatens fucking destruction of all fucking life on fucking earth so a few fucking corporations can fucking earn some fucking unimaginable fucking profits — to the fucking dustbin of fucking history.

But, the rest of us should not take this as a signal to rest on laurels.

This wall is merely a good start. Many more will be needed. Time to get scouting.



"You can crush us, you can bruise us. But you'll have to answer to... the guns of Brixton."