The Passing of Iron Peg

Regarding the death of Margaret Thatcher, and the accompanying revival of Reaganolatry, I have to observe that I was a bit young to follow the minutia of Iron Peg's career. For a better dissection of her legacy, I defer to YAFB, who lived in Thatcher's UK. My opinions of Thatcher's career were all filtered through a pop-culture lens, so I figure I'd better serve my readers by posting a couple of videos.

Looking through the archives, I find a paucity of posts about New Model Army, whose album "No Rest for the Wicked" formed, along with Gang of Four's "Entertainment", my "Bush Era Coping Soundtrack". New Model Army's Spirit of the Falklands is among the most scathing indictments of the Thatcher era, and it's definitely the most hard-driving. Turn the speakers up to eleven for this one, it's thunderous:





Another song that we played the hell out of in high school was Stand Down Margaret by the band we 'Murican kids called The English Beat. It's a perfect example of one of my favorite musical styles, the jaunty little number with depressing lyrics:





Of course, the most appropriate song for this day is Uncle Declan's Tramp Down the Dirt, which anticipated this day:





Jewish Steel reminds me in "Rumproast" comment of this number by the Mekons, and zrm would disown me if I didn't post it:





Through the Gang of Four's website, I found a New York Times opinion piece by A.O. Scott concerning Margaret Thatcher as an "anti-muse". Following a link in this essay led me to a wicked takedown of Iron Peg's legacy:





Personally, I always prefered Sid's version, but that's not germane to this post. The real takeaway is that the Margaret Thatcher hagiography, like that of Saint Ronbo, must be countered with real evidence of her legacy. When Shakespeare wrote "The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones", he got it half right- while the lasting legacy of the austere, free-market loving supply siders of the 80's still haunts the Anglophone world to this day, the reality of their regimes has largely been shoved down the memory hole.

I don't celebrate the passing of Margaret Thatcher, but I sure as hell don't celebrate her legacy.

UPDATE: Lot of great "Death of Margaret Thatcher" music out there... I'd never heard this number before:

The Happy Ever After Is at the End of the Rainbow

Via LGM, this news comes as a genuine blow: Andy Gill, guitarist of Gang of Four, has died at the all-too-young age of 64. Emma Goldman famously said, "If I can't dance I don't want to be in your revolution." I have no doubt that Emma would have been a huge Gang of Four fan- the band combined trenchant satire, lefty politics, and an amazing groove. Andy Gill supplied the jagged guitars which formed a counterpoint to bandmate Hugh Allen's funk-inspired bass lines and lead singer Jon King's biting, juvenalian lyrics and haunting melodica playing.

I consider the band's first album (Entertainment!) to be essential listening. During the Iraq War, I compulsively listened to the album after watching the nightly news, while pounding away at a heavy bag... it was a good way to sublimate the wrath that I felt at the time. The opening track, Ether, was written about 'The Troubles', but with a quick edit, it could have been about Operation Iraqi Liberation, swapping out Gitmo for Long Kesh and Mosul for Rockall:





While singing songs of righteous rage, the band also managed to combine their anger with humor, such as describing a bikini-clad actress on television as 'dressed for the H-bomb' in I Found that Essence Rare (perhaps my favorite song by the band):





This humor comes to the fore in To Hell with Poverty, which perfectly showcases Andy Gill's discordant guitar playing:





In later releases, the band toned down the dissonance to produce some danceable music, but the leftist satire remained a key component of even their most 'commercial' sounding songs:





Sadly, the band's material remains as topical as it did back in the late 70s:





It is fitting that Andy Gill was touring until the end of his life, his message being so necessary in these dark and stupid days. The message that history is not made by great men is important in a day and age when stupid, venal men are in charge over much of the world:





I'm going to spend much of the overnight shift listening to Andy's music, and the message conveyed in the songs he helped to craft. It's not a comforting message, but it is a challenge to act for positive change... and it's danceable as hell. This is the sort of music that Emma Goldman would approve of- what better tribute to Andy Gill could there be?

ADDENDUM: I think I found that better tribute, from Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello- "His jagged plague disco raptor attack industrial funk deconstructed guitar anti-hero sonics and fierce poetic radical intellect were formative for me,"

Living in Interesting Times

It's been a hell of a week. I've been spending a lot of time scratching my glossy bald pate and trying to figure out just what the hell has happened. The financial markets are in disarray, the "full faith and credit" of the U.S. has been downgraded by one of the ratings agencies. Things are volatile, unsettled... I like excitement as much as the next person, but this is a bit too much- an occasional roller coaster ride is great, but I sure as hell wouldn't want one as a daily commute.

I have to confess that I've had a bit of writers' block, my online time has largely been spent trying to glean enough information to make some sense out of what the hell is transpiring. One thing's clear, we're living in post-prospertiy America. There's one consolation, just because we're pauperized, that don't mean that we can't dance. Here's an appropriate tune, by one of my all-time favorite bands, Gang of Four- as always, crank it, and this time, chug prodigiously from a Carlo Rossi weekend special while shaking your now-stricken ass:





Damn, gotta love that chunky bass line- Gang of Four was always a most danceable group of polemicists. The album Entertainment is a remarkable document of the late twentieth century, and, depressingly, holds up as even more topical now than it was when it was released in the late seventies.

At Home He's a Tourist

Every once in a while, it's nice to experience one's hometown while in tourist mode. Even though my sister grew up in the NY metro area, she hasn't lived here for over twenty years. Her husband decided he needed to get out of his winter rut, so he took the family up to the Big Apple for a change of pace. Additionally, a Prestigious Bastion of Prestige is courting Boy B., my eldest nephew. We made plans to meet in the vicinity of The Cathedral of St John the Divine, and then head up to the campus of the aforementioned Prestigious Bastion of Prestige. The unfinished cathedral is pretty bizarre- it began as a Romanesque church, but a decision was made to complete it as a neo-Gothic cathedral. The nave makes a somewhat abrupt transition from a diaphanous, Gothic dreamscape tinted beautifully by huge stained glass windows into a dark, heavy Romanesque bring-down. Did I mention that the cathedral is unfinished? When one looks at the Western facade, one can instantly tell that the top of the tower is much newer than the rest of the facade, yet it still seems truncated. The northern side of the church really looks half-formed- one looks in vain for a transept that seems like it should be there, and some of the roof is covered with weathered plywood.

Just south of the church, the Peace Fountain forms a funky centerpiece of a nice little park which is surrounded by sculptures designed by schoolkids. The fountain itself has some delightfully disquieting features, such as a severed devil's/satyr's head and an archangel who seems to be getting disturbingly friendly with giraffes.

After our cathedral visit, and a quick swing by Morningside Park, we headed over to the campus of Columbia University. Columbia University is an extraordinarily pretty urban campus, and the neighborhood is disconcertingly quiet for Manhattan- there was very little automobile traffic, and the vibe of the community is more small town than huge city. Of course, we were visiting the area the Sunday before Christmas, while most of the student body was away on break, but the area is sandwiched by parks, so it doesn't ever really get too bustling.

We then headed over to Riverside Church, another stellar example of neo-Gothic architecture, before heading to Riverside Park and Grant's Tomb (to all the wags out there, U.S. Grant is interred there, along with his wife). My nephew Boy A. waggishly asked if Grant's Tomb was the Tomb of Horrors... I told him that it certainly is, if you're a Confederate sympathizer!

After our sojourn at Riverside Park, we strolled down to the Hungarian Pastry Shop where we split a couple of linzer tarts (one apricot-filled, one raspberry-filled) and a poppy seed hamentasch. I had an excellent "Hungarian coffee", flavored with almond extract and topped with a glob of whipped cream. As much as I love the place, it's a little annoying to discover that the cutely-painted menu behind the counter has absolutely no bearing on the actual menu. The sweet counter girls kept telling us "no, we don't have that" until they finally admitted that the whole menu was a cruel hoax perpetrated by a management that doesn't want to paint over the pretty colors.

After our coffee-break, we leisurely sauntered down to 97th and Amsterdam where we hit El Malecón, one of a mini-chain of Dominican rotisserie chicken restaurants (I usually go to their location on Broadway near 231st St in the Bronx). El Malecón never fails to deliver the goods- the chicken is perfectly cooked- crispy skin and moist meat, and served with a citrus/garlic mojo sauce. We ordered a whole chicken, an order of tostones, an order of mofongo, and an order of fried pork chunks. Sides of yellow rice, black beans, and a rich vegetable stew accompanied the main dishes, which we ate family style. The twenty-three block walk from Grant's Tomb was a prerequisite for such a delicious gut-buster of a meal. I parted from the family afterwards, because I had to get home to take a nap before working the graveyard shift. Their plan was to hit the Columbus Circle Christmas Market, then figure out their next move.

It was a good time hanging out with the family, and getting to a neighborhood that I don't often visit. I hadn't been to Grant's Tomb in about fifteen years, and I'd never been inside Riverside Church. I know it's not a Christmas song, but the most appropriate soundtrack for the day would have to be the Gang of Four's At Home He's a Tourist:





Maybe that should be a Christmas song...

Didn't Realize It Was a Political Song 'Til Now

I'm heading off to a departmental meeting this afternoon, so I figured I'd fall back on that old "post a video" gambit... A few days ago, Ned put up a post titled "Camouflage", which reminded me of Gang of Four, a band I like enormously. Gang of Four's song "I Love a Man in Uniform" was a departure from their earlier work sonically (it's a lusher, fuller sound, in contrast to the edgy, jittery minimalist music of their earlier works), and I used to think that it really didn't have a political bent. Recently, with the focus given on gun ownership, and the generally poor state of the economy, the political nature of the song finally dawned on me- the song is basically the lament of an underemployed, disaffected man who convinces himself that his dysfunctional relationship is healthy, and props up his flagging self-esteem by collecting weapons and engaging in "military" cosplay:


Time with my girl, I spent it well
I had to be strong for my woman
She says, "You must be joking, oh man You must be joking,"
She needed to be protected.
The good life was so elusive,
Handouts, they got me down.
I had to regain my self-respect
So, I got into camouflage
The girls, they love to see you shoot.

I love a man in a uniform.
I love a man in a uniform.
I love a man in a uniform.
I love a man in a uniform
To have ambition was my ambition.
Time with my girl,
I spent it well.
"You must be joking, oh man, you must be joking."


If that doesn't describe the Tea Party and "Milita" communities to a "T", I don't know what does. Enough of yapping, crank this one and shake your rump for great justice:

Gotta Clean out the Auditory Canals

A couple of days ago, I made the mistake of listening to a new alt-right anthem, much to my dismay. In order to clean out my auditory nerves, I decided that a Gang of Four listening binge was in order. While in the midst of this binge, I found a great cover of Damaged Goods by a Chinese punk band:





Gotta love the bassist, she totally has that badass Dee Dee Ramone stance down pat, and she even has the same 'do as Dee Dee did. Finding this video almost makes listening to that horrible alt-right drivel worth it... but then I realize that, being a huge Gang of Four fan, I probably would have found it anyway.

Happy Valentine's Day

Today marks the celebration of the solemn Feast of St. Valentine, a day devoted to the celebration of gang violence. On this feast day commemorating a celibate martyr, we celebrate love and passion by purchasing lumps of carbon gathered by desperate, brutalized peasants and the fermented embryos of a tropical tree. On the topic of love, a wiser man than I said:


Love crops up quite a lot as something to sing about,
cos most groups make most of their songs about falling in love
or how happy they are to be in love,
you occasionally wonder why these groups do sing about it all the time -
it's because these groups think there's something very special about it
either that or else it's because everybody else sings about it and always has,
you know to burst into song you have to be inspired
and nothing inspires quite like love.

These groups and singers think that they appeal to everyone
by singing about love because apparently everyone has or can love
or so they would have you believe anyway
but these groups seem to go along with what, the belief
that love is deep in everyone's personality.
I don't think we're saying there's anything wrong with love,
we just don't think that what goes on between two people
should be shrouded with mystery.


Of course, I'd remiss (un-loving even) if I didn't post a video for the amazing Anthrax by Gang of Four:





Now I feel kinda bad... like I came across as bitter and cynical. That's no way to spend Valentine's Day. How about something tender? Here's a little number that's sweet, yet fuzzy- like a piece of bubblegum that was idly stuck in one's pocket, and is covered with lint:





Last night, the Ramones won a lifetime achievement Grammy award, almost ten years after the death of Joey Ramone. Effin' Grammys, how do they work? To show how out of it the Grammy nominating commission is, this guy damn near swept the Grammys in 1981. Gadzooks, the music industrial complex cannot crash and burn quickly enough.

2020 Music Retrospective Part Two

 For part two of my 2020 music retrospective, I figured I'd showcase two young musical acts which I've been kind of obsessed with over the second half of the year.

The first of these acts is Boston-based band Sweeping Promises, who sound as if they've plundered their parents' record collections for all of their circa-1979 post-punk albums.  Listening to Sweeping Promises, I hear a blend of Joy Division, Kleenex, The Slits, maybe a hint of Gang of Four.  The band has a spare sound buoyed by vocalist Lira Mondal's sweet vocals.  I'm partial to groovy bass lines punctuated by jagged, staccato guitar licks, synth noodling, and bubblegum vocals- so this is right up my alley.  Out Again, the first song I heard by the band, immediately grabbed my attention, but I believe my favorite song by them is Hunger for a Way Out, which is a perfect description of my feelings about this terrible year:

 

My post-election theme song is Rot, by Allegra Krieger.  I dig her voice, and I like the crunchy guitar song of the track, but it's the lyrics which have me obsessed, as they describe the situation of the current Occupant of the White House perfectly:

Give a little, take a lot
And live out your days like some sanctified parasite
And when your empire begins to rot
Return to the earth without a question without a fight 

He's not really fighting, just allowing his increasingly deluded surrogates appear to do so in order to extend the scam.   Here's the song for your listening pleasure:

 

With the pandemic, live music has been dealt a blow, and I sincerely hope that young artists such as the acts I've highlighted in this post can hunker down until we get this thing behind us, and have a successful 2021.  Being cooped up at home, good music is one of the necessities of life, and I hope we are able to repay the artists that kept us entertained in this hard time once the world restarts.

A Bleak Song for a Bleak Time

Given the pretty bleak mood of the country this week, how about an appropriately bleak song? I have long been a fan of the English band Gang of Four, as longtime readers will know. The band's songs are all good lefty polemics, critical of war, the media, consumerism, sex roles... a wide range of topics, but they were all as danceable as all get out- righteous rage with a serious groove.

One of there least danceable tunes, one with a noticeable lack of throbbing bass, is 1978's Armalite Rifle, a scathing ode to the AR model series of rifles, made famous by the nightly news of mass shootings, which was favored by members of the Provisional IRA back in the not-so-good old days. The song, with barbed tongue firmly lodged in cheek, catalogues the 'virtues' of the eponymous rifle:





It sounds like an ad for the weapon, and some of the Y00t00b comments reveal that there are a bunch of people who don't realize that the song is a perfect example of Juvenalian satire, as topical today as it was back in '78.

Bad Year for the Skeptics Community

 As if 2020 weren't bad enough, I recently read of the death of animation giant Ken Spears, co-creator of  the classic television cartoon Scooby Do Where Are You! (sic).  To compound this bummer, I also learned that Ken Spears' friend and collaborator Joe Ruby died last August (and am somewhat chastened by not having known this when it happened).  The original 'Scooby Doo', which I blogged about last year on its 50th anniversary, was an improbable mélange of slapstick comedy, Gothic trappings, bubblegum pop, and mystery procedural.  Each episode was formulaic (the 'gang' would drive into town in their groovy van and encounter a mystery involving a haunting, then hijinx would ensue until the gang could determine the nature of the mystery), but the formula was a winner.  There would always be a slapsticky chase scene accompanied by a pop song, brainy Velma would amass clues, clever Fred would build a Rube-Goldberg contraption to thwart the 'monster', accident-prone Daphne would trip a secret door and disappear for a bit, cowardly gluttons Shaggy and Scooby would inexplicably find the ingredients to make enormous sandwiches, and a cast of malfeasors voiced by Don Messick would be exposed by the meddling kids.

The Scooby Doo series was, in an era in which there was a mainstream backlash against the subversive youth culture, unabashedly pro-teenager.  The meddling kids invariably foiled the plots of petty crooks who used deception to further their own ends... we could have used them for the past four years: 

via GIPHY

The show was also unabashedly pro-reason... the supernatural manifestations always turned out to be smoke-and-mirrors illusions perpetrated by local crooks trying to scare people away so they could bring their nefarious plans to fruition.  Empiracism beats superstition, inquiry beats fear.  By keeping your eyes open and your wits about you, and trusting your friends, you could figure out what's really going on and save the day.

Ken Spears and Joe Ruby went on to form their own production company in 1977, and among other cartoons, produced the post-apocalyptic Conan-Meets-Star Wars adventure cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian in collaboration with comic book titans Jack Kirby and Alex Toth.  Too bad there wasn't a Scooby Doo/Tundarr crossover, with the Mystery Gang pitting their wits against savagery, super-science, and sorcery.  Still, if their only contribution to cartoon history was creating the Scooby Doo Industrial Complex, they would be considered titans.

Again, the original Scooby Doo series was a beacon of reason in an era which produced supernatural thrillers such as Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist... and told us that the Devil wasn't the villain of the story, only greedy Old Man Higgins from the opening scene.

As a coda to this panegyric for Messers Ruby and Spears, I have to note that skeptic and debunker James Randi also died this year after a lifetime of exposing fraudulent claims of the supernatural and paranormal.  I don't know if he was a fan of the cartoon, but I imagine he would have supported its premise.

The Tourist Experience

Working evenings and nights, sometimes I am tasked with locking up the site after business hours... I have found that the best way to get people to leave at the end of the day is to give them someplace to go. There are a couple of nearby places to which I refer people, one of which I went to for dinner with friends before tonight's shift. We are all June babies, celebrating a month late, so we went to one of the nicest local places:

Every once in a while, it's good to see one's home territory through the eyes of a tourist- I have been referring people to this restaurant for years (if they are on a budget, I tell them to order one drink apiece, split an appetizer plate or two, and live la dolce vita for a half hour before going to a less expensive place for a main course), and it is nice to see that my local knowledge is sound.

Me being me, I am now reminded of a Gang of Four song which is most appropriate:





Of course, playing the tourist isn't the same as being a tourist- as I walked from my parking spot to the restaurant, I ran into plenty of locals that I knew.

Fate Forces Me to Post

I was dithering about a topic on which to post when I read about Keith Olbermann's suspension. While I have been without a television for a couple of years now, I religiously watched "Countdown" during the early-to-mid noughts. I would get home from work, descend to the basement, and watch Keith deliver a newscast which contrasted sharply with the war-boosterism and "don't question Bush" lie-down-and-roll-over punditry of the other "news" outlets. During the commercial breaks, I would pound away on a heavy bag. I credit the combination of Keith's righteous anger and Everlast's commitment to quality with the maintenance of my sanity throughout the bizarre Bush era. Goddamn MSNBC suspends Keith for making legal political contributions, while giving "blame Poland for WW2 fabulist Pat "America's Racist Uncle" Buchanan. Fuckin' fuckers are fucking fucked!

I'm pissed off, so I think I'll post the one other thing that kept me sane during the noughts. I compulsively played Gang of Four's Entertainment. The song "Ether", written about The Troubles and the UK media's coverage of said strife, could (with a little tweaking - substitute "Gitmo" for "Long Kesh") have been written about Operation Iraqi Liberation. Give it a listen, then go out and get the whole album:





While I am venting, I may as well express my scorn for fucking Clinton's fucking signing of the fucking 1996 telecommunications act, which ushered in the era of media consolidation.

Tainted Love Day

I have to confess that I've always been cynical about Valentine's Day- it really comes across as a made-up holiday engineered to make people in committed relationships feel obligated to spend a lot of money and to make people not in committed relationships feel bad about themselves. I'm not as down on romance as the guys in Gang of Four, but I'm not really big on commercialization/commoditization. As a hilarious aside, one of my cousins used to put her relationship with her boyfriend on hold from Christmas to Valentine's Day so as to avoid the whole present-buying kerfuffle. She can't do that with her marriage these days, but she had a good run while she was still single.

A scant year ago, though it feels like a longer time, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting eclipsed the romantic holiday with its utter horror. The original St Valentine's Day Massacre could be snarked about, it was a gangland slaying and the victims were, as Dotard would put it, bad hombres. Another mass shooting in 1977 in my beloved New Rochelle remains largely forgotten.

The Stoneman Douglas massacre seemed to have marked a shift in the national discourse about gun violence- the survivors were eloquent and media savvy, the victims were heroic, those who lost their lives trying to save their students, their friends. Sadly, though, nothing substantial has been done, and mass shootings still occur regularly. There were attempts, thankfully failed, to portray the shooter as a victim of bullying, and repeated attacks on the survivors' character, which helped to make this past year seem like a slog. The real tragedy is that there will never be a normal for these kids, never a February 14th which will be about overpriced roses or chocolate samplers. Title taken from a classic of my adolescence.

The Big Local Story, or Not so Proud Now

Today, the last two 'Proud Boys' who were charged with gang assault for a brawl on Manhattan's Upper East Side were sentenced to four years in prison. New Yorkers really don't have any tolerance for cartoon fascists.

The funniest thing about this whole sordid episode is that 'Proud Boys' founder Gavin McInnes, who lives in a multimillion dollar house in tony Larchmont has been blaming members of the media for the sentencing, even though he himself arranged the surrender of his ten violent followers. Right-wing rank and file commenters are also trying, and failing, to 'guilt' liberals about the sentencing of one of these assholes because his wife is African-American... nice try, she and the kids are better off without this violent asshole around. Maybe McInnes can support the guy's kids, or the 'Proud Boys' can run a bake sale to pay for their living expenses.

It's nice to see that New York's prosecutors are playing a major role in the pushback against the right, both against the big fish and the random dumbasses like these two.