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Archive for the 'books, zines, etc.' Category

Isn’t The Internet Amazing? #527

Posted: January 7th, 2004, by Marceline Smith

I’ve just been astonished for the second time in two weeks in relation to the work of Robert Tressell, author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. You’ve probably never heard of this book but it’s possibly my favourite ever book and it even made it to #72 in The Big Read (where the BBC had great trouble finding anything to say about it, not surprising since they also managed to destroy the original tape of the dramatisation of the book after broadcasting it a mere two times). Anyway, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is one of the few books about working class life written by the working class, being the (semi-autobiographical) story of a group of house painters in Hastings at the turn of the century and the attempts of Owen to explain to them the principles of Socialism as a way of ending their poverty and powerlessness. It’s a great book, you should read it.

But to get back to the astonishment. Last week, I wandered randomly into a charity shop and discovered up on a high shelf a range of trade union and communist books, no doubt the past possessions of a recently departed relative. Among them was a copy of One Of The Damned, the biography of Robert Tressell which has been long out of print and which I have been trying to find a copy of for literally years, since reading the copy hidden in the vaults of Aberdeen Library. And here it was for the stupidly tiny sum of £2.75! Having now re-read the book, I’ve been filled with a sense of pained sadness and frustration as Fred Ball unravels the sad tale of Tressell’s life – his death in the workhouse, the butchering of the manuscript to cut it down to a shadow of the original, the loss of much of his murals and signwork and the general lack of recognition for his writing and artwork.

So then to discover this evening the TUC History Online website where they have scanned in every page of the original manuscript of this remarkable book, in Tressell’s handwriting with all the orginal amendments and self-censorship and all the later cutting and pasting (quite literally) and restoring, has quite knocked me over. Even just to see the original front page has practically made me want to cry.

It’s always been one of my main hopes for the internet, that you’d be able to find out anything at all in the greatest of detail and be able to see and read all the things currently hidden away in the archives of museums and universities. My heartfelt thanks go out to the TUC and all involved for making one person very very happy.

[I hope everyone enjoys the juxtaposition of today’s postings]

Henry Rollins’ journal

Posted: December 19th, 2003, by Chris S

I am stuck in the living room at my girlfriends house. In the adjoining kitchen is a grasshopper the size of my hand. Sure, it doesn’t look like it’s up to much but I can see it thinking. And you know what? It’s thinking about when it’s going to land on my face. I don’t intend to give it the chance.

So, I thought I would take time to type up a document I found in the toilet on the plane over here. It was written in red ink on journal paper and appears to be some fresh writing from none other than Henry Rollins himself. As someone who has read much of his work I feel it’s my duty to publish it for the world. I only wish he’d dropped more of it in the john. Enjoy:

September 18, Los Angeles

Woke up same as normal. By repeatedly punching myself in the face to break from the false world of DREAM. Dream is evil. It is the temptation to break from what is REAL. In this dream I was at a fun fair with a friend. We were on the merry go round, screaming and laughing. As the cars went round in circles our legs were pushed together. I woke up with an erection so I punched that too.

September 19, Los Angeles

I was eating the bleeding heart of a cow with 4 raw eggs in my favourite coffee shop style tortured beat poet hangout in the trendy upmarket area of LA that I live in, when a woman approached me and asked if I was Henry Rollins. In my mind I saw myself get up from my seat and pound her pretty face into pulp.

?MY NAME IS HENRY ROLLINS BUT YOU CAN?T MAKE ME TELL YOU WHO I AM?.

But I answered yes.

She told me she was a fan of my work. But she told me she was a PIG. And she told me she was offended by the ?anti-police? content of my ?work?. Who the fuck do these people think they are? I think back to my tortured youth spent living in Mr and Mrs Ginns purpose built office, them bringing out milk and cookies to me while I picked dried cum off my gym shorts with my fingernails. The PIGS never did me any favors then, I think. I think about my adolescent pig-beating masturbation fantasies. It?s then that I snap out of it and realise I am dribbling cow blood and egg white down my moleskin slacks. The PIG looks horrified as I tell her to fuck off. I cannot believe PIGS consider themselves people or worse that they are doing anything good in their weak, pathetic lives.

I have to head back to my pad as a journalist from some newspaper is calling to profile me in advance of my upcoming spoken word tour. I walk back to my pad, carefully avoiding the fact that, by creating moral panics to sell copies, the newspaper she writes for is probably just as directly to blame for the ?attitude? of the police and the general public than the PIG I met earlier and I am about to sit down and help the newspaper out. Sure is great to be me.

September 20, Los Angeles

Wake up late. Do 860 push ups in the nude in my garden. Drink coffee. Kill neighbours cat for being representative of the lazy lay-about nature of the modern human. Rub faeces and cat brains into my chest and thighs. Masturbate. Go to bed.

September 21, Los Angeles

Before my upcoming spoken word tour I have a few European shows with my band, called The Rollins Band after me, Henry Rollins. I walk to our rehearsal space, a shitty run down garage styled hangout near my pad that I am describing here to reassure you, the reader, that I will never stray from my punk rock roots and what is real. I was in Black Flag. With that fucking wankshit cuntface Greg Ginn SPIT SPIT SPIT

who is the greatest guitar player ever and a constant source of inspiration to me even now. The air conditioner isn?t working when I get there and my personal assistant Maurice has ONCE MORE forgotten to stock the fridge with asparagus hearts. This is the rage I need to play and I play hard. The band is hot. Hot and tight. We will DESTROY on this upcoming tour on which I expect I will debate endlessly with myself and my journal about whether I like music, these people, the crowd (doubtful) etc etc reaching no conclusions I can act upon but filling 155 pages of hardback splendor available from my publishing company.

September 22, Los Angeles

Today we fly out to Europe. Being in Economy puts you in with the masses, the American masses. It?s like a wake up call to how much people stink. Their rotting bodies writhing back and forth in their tiny chairs. Their obese bellies fighting with their obese arms as they spill the shitty aircraft food onto their immediate neighbor. Dirty, diseased children fight each other for control of computer games designed to divert their attention away from the freedom of youth and bury them early into the grave of consumerism. Economy is the place to really see the world for what it really is.

Which is why I always always fly first class.

As a coincidence I am today seated next to a fellow actor; Ted Danson.. When the cabin attendant comes round I note with horror that Teddy Boy opts for a light Balsamic Vinegar and Olive Oil dressing for his Four Leaf salad. He must have moved out of LA as everyone I hang with wouldn?t be seen dead nibbling on a rocket leaf covered with anything except lime and crushed chili.

Later in the flight Ted asks me to kindly change into some pants as my miniscule black gym shorts are drawing attention to the veins in my legs and Ted says it looks like worms are crawling around under my skin.

September 23, London

Yesterday we arrived early evening in London, England and I hooked up with my band who took an earlier flight to save money. I am so disgusted with this wound of a city that I found it impossible to write in my journal last night so I put my laptop back in my bag and concentrated on getting to the hotel.

The streets of night time London are filled to breaking point with prostitutes and drug addicts, each one selling or abusing themselves for a cheaper, more immediate short term high. Drug addicts make me sick. I would never pollute my veins with evil, my body is a temple. A great big, rippling, brilliant, masculine temple.

I can?t wait to get back to the USA as later this year we are opening for the Red Hot Chili Peppers who really are swell guys. Being American I see no irony in this.

It’s a fanzine!

Posted: November 16th, 2003, by Simon Minter

I was very pleased when an actual, paper fanzine dropped through my door the other day. ‘Do people still make fanzines?’ I thought to myself, before thinking of course, they obviously do. Simply because I’m too lazy to keep up, it doesn’t mean the world has stopped. Anyway. One of my main problems with fanzines is often the sloppy nature of the writing – I don’t take half-arsed attempts at journalism with no bullshit filter and no quality control to equal Punk Rock Attitude – but luckily ‘Stereo Sanctity’ fanzine (number two of which I have here) is pretty consistently high quality in its writing.

Content-wise it’s kind of what you’d expect – reviews, interviews, etc – but with a few interesting things to spice up your life: namely some reviews of comic books and some comic strips and ‘comment’ pieces. The interviews are with Oneida and Meanwhile, Back In Communist Russia… and are a combination of knowingly unoriginal questions (‘what are your favourite records’, etc) and more personalised, reactive questions which elicit interesting responses from the interviewees.

I admire anybody who still bothers to put together fanzines and put the time and effort into photocopying, mailing out, and so on. So why not make Stereo Sanctity’s writer Ben work hard for my admiration by writing off for a copy right now!

It’s £1.50 (according to the cover), plus some postage money or stamps I guess, for 36 A4 pages, from Ben at 3 Ferry Cottages, Cosheston, Pembroke, Pembrokeshire SA72 4TY.

Zines

Posted: June 14th, 2003, by Dave Stockwell

Here’s a rarity for you, howabout mentioning a ‘zine? It’s not a review of sorts, as the latest issue of Punk Planet is probably beyond any of that, as it’s huge. You just don’t see it in the UK all that often. However, despite difficulties in tracking it down, I encourage anyone with even the remotest interest in printed words to find a copy of the latest issue wherever you can. #55 (May-June) is a special, dedicated to all kinds of printed matter this time around. What you get is a plethora of interviews with all sorts of people from different disciplines and backgrounds, each feature being accompanied by a sample of the interviewee’s writing. Of most notable interest to the general indie-rock afficionado is Everett True waxing lyrical about Careless Talk Costs Lives, but there’s a fantastic amount of many more interesting things.

I cannot stress enough how incredibly inspiring ths issue was.Go read it, go do something positive.

Is This Music?

Posted: February 6th, 2003, by Marceline Smith

There’s a new issue of Scotland’s answer to Careless Talk out now. Issue three of Is This Music? has interviews with Teenage Fanclub, Nick Cave, Swimmer One, Idlewild, Calamateur, The Beauty Shop, Cayto and Olympic Lifts plus live and record reviews and the usual actually-good free cd featuring Swimmer One, Won Mississippi, Tacoma Radar, The Aphrodisiacs, The Electroluvs, The Beauty Shop, Cayto, Real Shocks and Calamateur. £3 from independent record shops in Scotland (nationwide soon) and online from www.isthismusic.com.

Snow reading

Posted: January 31st, 2003, by Dave Stockwell

I don’t know what the weather is like near you, but hopefully you’re reading this a long way from the south-east of England. Yesterday, a journey that normally takes me barely the length of Lightning Bolt‘s Fleeing the Valley of Whirling Knives (about ten minutes for those of you not fortunate enough to have heard such a marvel) instead took me approximately 2.5 hours by car, and another 60 minutes on foot – once said vehicle had been abandoned in a nearby Bat-cave.

But no matter! For such times are to be treasured. Cooped up behind a windscreen bearing the brunt of 8 inches of snow that was being hand delivered by gales, I was able to curl up (as much as you can whilst behind the wheel of an automobile) with a remarkable book translated into English from Japanese a couple of years ago. It was called Asleep by one Banana Yoshimoto. Three short stories with thematic links of epiphanies that sleep can deliver and take away, it was a book I had picked up in my local library because it had a nice cover. It also reminded me of an old friend from Singapore who would insist on calling herself ‘Banana,’ because her first language was English. Though we always did our best to placate and cajole her at these times, all our efforts to assuage her ego would always be in vain – her confusion about her cultural identity had long ago created a vicious circle of self-loathing which we could never break. The sadder, more tender moments of this book frequently reminded me of her, and brought out some dusty nostalgia within me.

During this time, I was able to enjoy uninterrupted two Leonard Cohen albums, and a preview of Reynolds’ Love Songs, whilst yearning for a camera to record the finer moments of a day that surely won’t be repeated any day soon.

Eventually, cabin fever broke my spirit, and I soon found myself wandering home through the gridlock, listening to Spiderland, and helping out the odd driver suffering from that lethal combination of icy slopes and useless clutch control. Finally, about five minutes away from home, I threw myself into a ditch of deep unspoilt snow. Though my journey had left me largely dry and warm, it had to be done.This truly is the stuff Douglas Coupland short stories used to be made of. (Whilst in the library, I also picked up a copy of possibly his finest hour Girlfriend In A Coma, for the grand total of 20 pence. The first person to email me can have it, if they feel they’re suitably deserving.)

A few things from me

Posted: August 20th, 2002, by Marceline Smith

First Pretty Girls Make Graves stayed at our house last night and were very nice so go see ’em if you get the chance. They’re doing London and Reading this week.

Finally, I got the new issue of Tasty fanzine in the post. I should snub it like how Sam snubbed our housewarming party but hey [hoho]. Unfortunately my copy was printed by a photocopier with Impressionist ambitions meaning it’s a bit of a struggle to read. At least it wasn’t into Abstract Expressionism I suppose. Anyway, it’s in honour of the forthcoming Tasty gig in Nottingham next Monday [featuring The Lollies, Darren Hanlon, The Liberty Ship, Kosmonaut and Dallas Burn if you’re interested, which you should be] and gives you a run down of who they all are. The Lollies kick in a UK tour diary which is good fun and good reading and there’s interviews with Ant, Chumbawamba and The Reverse [who feature a certain diskant columnist] as well as the usual stack of reviews and the political article [Immigration this issue]. Tasty’s getting reliable now so if you want indie pop and politics you know where to go. Free as always from the website or the gig.

Stereo Sanctity

Posted: August 8th, 2002, by Marceline Smith

I spent a fantastically exciting day in the Housing Benefit offices today. No, actually, it was the most boring two hours of my life EVER. Luckily I had the foresight to bring along Stereo Sanctity, a fanzine that turned up in the post the other day so I didn’t quite go postal. What better literary companion culd you ask for really? Well, apart from one that took two hours to read I guess. Anyway, it promises “music, pop culture, politics and weirdness” on the cover and that’s pretty much what you get along with a hefty dollop of Sonic Youth worship.Which translates as an extensive write-up of the best bits of All Tomorrows Parties LA, articles on recommended comics and Melt-Banana, pretty funny cartoons featuring Sonic Youth and Steve Malkmus, some political rantings and a few record reviews. It’s well-written, friendly and enthusiastic and dotted throughout with good illustration. It’s making me really happy to see all these new fanzines springing out of odd places in the UK and hopefully this is just the beginning. Start supporting zines now and maybe we’ll be back up to 1995 levels again. Stereo Sanctity is definitely worth your cash so go buy so he can do #2. Not that he mentions how much it costs though. I shall endeavour to find out. In the meantime you can email him yourself.

Update: A word from the Editor

It costs 50p or a trade or a tape or something else nice, and the address is: Ben, 3 Ferry Cottages, Cosheston, Pembroke, Pembrokeshire, SA72 4TY

Isabelle Eberhardt

Posted: August 7th, 2002, by Chris H

What I have been doing recently is getting knocked off my bike in various ways. This morning I had the classic ‘car-door-opened-in-face’ and I bounced and rolled into the road like a rubber ball with sore bones and a foul mouth. I have to loudly sing the praises of the man from Argyle Locksmiths (Argyle St, Glasgow) who got me a chair and water, retrieved my bike and made sure I got the details of the door-wielding maniac / actually quite contrite and decent lady. Any lock-related needs you have in Glasgow, that’s the place to go.

When waiting in the Western’s waiting room, if I had chosen things to have with me I would have been reading The Journals of Isabelle Eberhardt, who now tops my list of People I Would Invite Round To Dinner If They Weren’t Dead. Anarchist, Islamist, Sensualist, Journalist, Nomad-ist, Transvestite-ist, whatever. All that, or: Individual. And then drowned in a desert at age 27? That’ll be what they call liviing fast and dying young, but she did this 100 years ago. Beat that Kurt Cobain / Jimi Hendrix / Jim Morrison / all you boring rock icons with your conformist, unknowing self-destruction.

A Cheery Wave From Stranded Youngsters

Posted: July 25th, 2002, by Marceline Smith

I forgot to say that when I was away Up North last week visiting my family I bought a finger puppet of a big eyeball! It’s pretty fantastic. I need some more plus Playmobil men and then I can make my own mental version of The Residents!

Okay, fanzine #2 is A Cheery Wave From Stranded Youngsters and I’ve managed to lose Al’s letter so I can’t remember what issue this is or how much it costs – DUH. Sorry about that. This issue’s mostly filled with lots and lots of lengthy gig reviews covering Trail of Dead, Fonda 500, Sigur Ros, Brian Wilson, The Rock of Travolta, Babes in Toyland and Maher Shalal Hash Baz amongst others written by a whole host of contributing writers. There’s also interviews with The Flashing Astonishers and The Supernaturals [when did they come back? and, more importantly, why? It’ll be The Gyres next], record reviews dotted about the place, a crossword and a good article on whether today’s bands are retro copycats or not, all illustrated with Al’s cartoon drawings. This issue is slightly lacking in bands that I’m excited about but it’s a good read nevertheless. Probably I’m getting too old. If I find that letter I’ll post up the proper details but I think it’s £1.50 to Al Maceachern, 6 Angotts Mead, Stevenage, Herts SG1 2NJ. Or email Al and ask him at alcwsy@hotmail.com