The 75 year old Ustad Naseerudin Saami is a master of the unigue Pakistani vocal style known as Surti which is characterised by its use of microtonals,
and is widely regarded as the very last master of the khayal (Arabic for
"imagination"), a pre-Islamic predecessor of Pakistani qawwali music which has been handed down by his ancestors for over a thousand years, but currently on the brink of extinction. It is multilingual (Farsi, Sanskrit, Hindi, the ancient and dead language of Vedic, gibberish, Arabic, and Urdu) music.
But because his style of music is regarded as blasphemous and considered haram, impure and resented, as they do anything else pre-dating Muhammad, and have made threats on his life for simply performing the ancient art. This has seen in Pakistan many musicians being murdered since the turn of the century. notably the assasination of the famous qawalli Anjad Sabri in a hail of bullets in 2016 and the numerous attacks on Sufi Pakistanis. Sadly, like in in Mali,this distrust has seen a violently imposed break from anything outside the doctrine and
history of Islam which has resulted in the ritual burning of instruments and a ban of
most musical forms. Master Ustad Naseeruddin Saami's however has spent his entire life mastering the nuances of every given note, in order to keep Surti alive, and it
is important to acknowledge, that when he passes, the music may die with
him. While many others would be cowed into silence, Saami remains defiant, literally risking his life daily in Pakistan.
I have finally managed to get hold of a copy of ' God Is Not A terrorist ' which was produced by acclaimed Tinariwen producer and Grammy Award winner Ian Brennan. Vol.5 of Glitterbeat’sHidden Musics series and was recorded in one single night session during which
the musicians present continuously chewed paan (a preparation combining
betel leaves with areca or betel nuts found in South Asia, South-East
Asia and Taiwan and chewed for its stimulating and psychoactive effects)
until their teeth turned a fiery red. The session yielded 5 tracks,
all featuring the harmonium or pump organ (an instrument introduced
in Asia by Christian missionaries and banned on the Indian and later
Pakistani radio for the longest time) in the leading role.
The record is a delight, the music is dense and rich and full of wailing that bends and
weaves throughout, hypnotising, raw and haunting, powerfully carrying a contemporary message celebrating peace and diversity that is truly universal. You do not need to understand the lyrics to enjoy the singing, with his soaring voice it's a truly electrifying listening experience. I especially love the message in the title track, "to sing is to listen" The highlight for me has got to be the almost twenty-minute long closing track
'Longing'. A truly mesmerizing homage to a disappearing musical tradition! Long may this music live on freely. As the Sanskrit proverb says;" If one has a diamond in their chest, it will shine on their face."Despite opposition, Master Ustad Naseeruddin Saami chooses the light.
Tracklist 1, God Is 2. My Beloved Is On The Way 3. Twilight 4. Hymn 5.War Song 6. Longing
I can't rap, in fact i'm rather crap
a light weight snowflake, not hardcore,
my poetry can arrive like a hallmark card
overworked rather tired, ever so scarred,
uninvited not making people beg for more
but sometimes brutally honest when I soar,
with a revolutionarty message to it's core
after smoking bud, mind starts to flow,
words arrive not from god or allah
from deep inside my heart to catch ya,
under the influence am not falling yet
beyond poetical rules this is what you get,
i'm not sorry, I just can't fake it
unleashed take a stand against bullshit,
cutting like razors, releasing inner edge
get too deep, don't know when to stop,
renegade thinking ,growing and knowing
rhymes released, just my way of showing,
on the battlefield try to protect peoples rights
bewildered by what I see fight against injustice,
stand wth the kurds, the palestinians, anyone not free
on the streets, on the page this is my reality,
love can arrive to act like a tranquiliser
a passion that oozes when fuse is lit,
making me stronger easing the pain
through the haze and smoke, pouring rain,
releasing my songs of pride and devotion
this is me, please accept my contradiction..
The year 2001 marked the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating
to the Status of Refugees. The UN General Assembly therefore decided
that 20 June would be celebrated as World Refugee Day from 2001 onwards.
Since then Refugee week is now a UK-wide programme of arts, cultural and educational
events and activities that celebrates the contribution of refugees to
the UK and promotes better understanding of why people seek sanctuary.
Anyone can take part by organising, attending or taking part in
activities.
This
year during Refugee Week we are invited to discover the experiences of displacement
that are found in our families, neighbourhoods and history. The theme of Refugee Week this year is, ‘You, me
and those who came before’, and is an invitation to explore the lives of
refugees – and those who have welcomed them – throughout the
generations. people escaping war and persecution have
been welcomed by communities in the UK for hundreds of years, and their
stories and contributions are all around us. From the Jewish refugees of
the 1930s to people fleeing Vietnam in the 1970s, Kosovans in the 1990s
to those arriving today; they are part of who we all are.
This year during World Refugee Week, June 16-23, 2019, people are also invited to join the Ration Challenge. You are asked to commit to eating and drinking
the same rations as a Syrian refugee living in a camp in Jordan, and the money raised will provide food, medicine and
education for refugees and people living in poverty around the world.
It’s
a tough challenge but you will be joining others raising money and awareness for refugees and showing that your with them, and not against them.
Former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning
will cruelly remain in jail after a federal appeals court on Monday denied her
request to be released on bail, and upheld a lower court's decision to
hold Manning in civil contempt for refusing to give evidencebefore a grand jury. She,now faces another further 16.5 months of incarcernation.
Manning was convicted by court-martial in 2013 of espionage and other offences for furnishing more than 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts to WikiLeaks while she was an intelligence analyst in Iraq.
Former US President Barak Obama in his final days in office, commuted the final 28 years of Manning's 35-year sentence.
Manning has tried to fight the grand jury subpoena in the Assange case, citing her First, Fourth and Sixth Amendment rights under the Constitution. Manning's lawyers lawyers argued that the government was abusing the grand jury process, since she'd already disclosed everything she knew during her court-martial proceedings years ago. Following Assange's arrest, her legal team released a statement saying that holding her in jail any longer "would be purely punitive."
Manning also argued that the government should be required to reveal if they had her under surveillance, and that the district court judge had wrongly sealed parts of her contempt hearing in March. According to Manning's court briefs, a prosecutor told her lawyer that the government believed Manning gave false, contradictory, or incorrect testimony during her court-martial, and Manning's lawyers took this to mean the government had "intercepted, misunderstood, and misattributed electronic communications."
The 4th Circuit rejected all of her arguments. Manning can now ask a full sitting of the 4th Circuit to reconsider the three-judge panel's decision, or she could petition the US Supreme Court to take her case — the press release from Manning's legal team on Monday indicated she was considering both options.
"We are of course disappointed that the Circuit declined to follow clearly established law, or consider the ample evidence of grand jury abuse," Manning's attorney Moira Meltzer-Cohen said in a statement., Moira Meltzer-Cohen, suggested prosecutors were abusing "grand jury power", and that "the likely purpose of her subpoena is to help the prosecutor preview and undermine her potential testimony as a defence witness for a pending trial".Her lawyers have also argued that the courtroom was improperly sealed during substantial portions of the hearing.Manning had been held in "administrative segregation," also known as solitary confinement, for nearly a month after the contempt finding, which her lawyers protested. Her support team tweeted from her account on April 4 that she'd been moved into general population at the Truesdale Adult Detention Center in Alexandria, Virginia.
In a comment released by a spokesman, Manning said
that while disappointing, the appeals court ruling will still allow her
to "raise issues as the government continues to abuse the grand jury
process". "I don't have anything to contribute to this, or any other grand jury. While I miss home they can continue to hold me in jail, with all the consequences that brings. I will not give up. Thank you for your love and solidarity through letters and contributions,"
The fact that Manning is still in jail is one of the clearest signs that
federal prosecutors are still investigating Assange and WikiLeaks and
mulling additional charges. Assange was arrested
by United Kingdom authorities on April 11 at the Ecuadorian embassy in
London, in part because he faces an indictment in the United States that
charges him with conspiring with Manning to hack into US Defense
Department computer systems in 2010.
Blair Peach died from a broken skull on the 23rd of April 1979, as a result of being struck on the head by a truncheon wielding policeman from the Special Patrol Group during a demonstration outside Southall Town Hall, people will march in his honour in London, near a
primary school that's named after him. A plaque will also be unveiled in memory of him and Gurdeep Singh Chaggar, a local man who was killed by a racist gang in 1976.
Clement Blair Peach was born in New Zealand on the 25th of March
1946. He studied at Victoria University of Wellington and
was for a time co-editor of the Argot literary magazine with his flatmates
Dennis List and David Rutherford. He worked as a fireman and as a hospital
orderly in New Zealand before moving to London in 1969 and started working as a teacher at the Phoenix School in Bow, Towe Hamlets, East London, a special needs
school.
Peach was no stranger to radicalism
and protest; he was a member of the Socialist Worker’s Party, as well
as the Socialist Teacher’s Association and the East London Teacher’s
Association, both within the National Union of Teachers. A committed anti-fascist.In 1974 he was
acquitted of a charge of threatening behaviour after he challenged a
publican who was refusing to serve black customers. He was also involved
in campaigns against far-right and neo-Nazi groups; he was well known
for leading a successful campaign to close a National Front building in
the middle of the Bangladeshi community around Brick Lane. He was also arrested in April 1978, outside a public meeting held
by the NF in an East London school. The police had arrested a fellow
demonstrator, who was black and female. Peach instinctively placed
himself between the woman and the arresting officer and said, “Leave her
alone, she has not done anything.” He was arrested, and pleaded not
guilty but was convicted, receiving a fine of £50.
Peach was elected President of the East London Teachers Association
in 1978. Twice that year he was attacked by supporters of the National
Front as he cycled home from teaching at the Phoenix School, and he
suffered black eyes, bruising and cuts. According to the East Ender
newspaper, “Doctors fear permanent damage may have been done to one of
his eyes. His finger has been bitten through to the bone shredding the
nerves.” Even before 23 April 1979, Peach was putting his body on the line in the cause of the struggle against fascism.
On St. George’s Day 1979, the fascist National Front held a meeting in
Southall Town Hall. The Front had almost no supporters in the area, but was hoping to gain
publicity by bulldozing its way through the Asian districts of outer
London. The Anti-Nazi League held a counter demonstration
outside the Town Hall. Peach was one of 3000 people to attend. The
demonstration turned violent; over 150 people were injured, and 345 arrests were made.
Peach sustained a blow to the head from a weapon by a police officer at the junction of Beachcroft Avenue
and Orchard Avenue, as he tried to get away from the demonstration. that left him staggering in to a nearby house. The impression is sometimes given that Blair Peach died instantly in
the street but in fact he was still conscious though very dazed and
finding it hard to speak when the ambulance arrived a quarter of an hour
after the injury. There was no blood or external trauma but it’s clear
that he was suffering from a swelling in the brain, what’s termed an
extra-dural haematoma. Blair Peach died in an operating theatre at the New Ealing District Hospital at 12.10am. He was only 33 years old. At least three other anti fascist protesters were hit so hard to the head that their skulls were fractured.
Peach’s death struck a chord amongst the communities he had stood up
for, and across the city as a whole. A few days after his death, 10000
people marched past the spot where he was fatally injured. His funeral
was delayed by several months, until the 13th of June, but that was also
attended by 10000 people. The night before his funeral, 8000 Sikhs went
to see his body at the Dominion Theatre in Southall.
In the aftermath of Peach's murder, protesters were everywhere,
flyposting, speaking, organising, discussing the lessons. The police were around, in very large numbers, but they did not
dare to stop people from organising. It was almost as if the police were
shamed by the enormity of what they had done. June 1979 also saw a 2,000-strong first Black people’s march against state harassment through central London.
Police investigated themselves in the aftermath of Blair Peach's death and identified 6 cops, 1 of whom administered the fatal blow. No one has ever been charged..
The death of Blair Peach was the dire outcome of a double-edged state
racism. The police that day staunchly protected a racist gathering in a
predominantly Asian community, while unleashing militarised measures of
control and punishment on demonstrators looking to oppose the fascists
(Institute of Race Relations, 1979).http://www.irr.org.uk/
Blair Peach’s death became a focal point for those who questioned the
nature of the Special Patrol Group and the general lack of police
accountability which that force epitomised. And, from the agitation of Blair’s family, especially his long term partner Celia Stubbs, about the
inadequacy of the inquest system and the secrecy surrounding the
coroner’s court and the evidence withheld from the family, was created
the organisation INQUEST.
The Metropolitan Police commissioned an internal inquiry into what
happened, which was led by Commander John Cass. 11 witnesses saw Peach
struck by a member of the Special Patrol Group (SPG). The SPG was a
centrally-based mobile group of officers focused on combating serious
public disorder and crime that local divisions were unable to cope
with. It started in 1961, and was replaces in 1987 by the Territorial
Support Group, which also has a less-than stellar reputation amongst
activists.
The pathologist’s report concluded that Peach was not hit with a
standard issue baton, but an unauthorised weapon like a weighted rubber
cosh,or a hosepipe filled with lead shot. When Cass’ team investigated
the headquarters of the SPG, they found multiple illegal weapons
including truncheons, knives, a crowbar, and a whip. 2 SPG officers had
altered their appearance by growing or cutting facial hair since the
protest, 1 refused to take part in an identity parade, and another was
discovered to be a Nazi sympathiser. All of the officers’ uniforms were
dry-cleaned before they were presented for examination.
Cass concluded that one of 6 officers had killed Peach, but he
couldn’t be sure who exactly, because the officers had colluded to cover
up the truth. He recommended that 3 officers be charged with perverting
the course of justice, but no action was ever taken. The results of the
inquiry were not published, and the coroner at the inquest into Peach’s
death refused to allow it to be used as evidence, despite making use of
it himself. Two newspapers, the Sunday Times and the
Leveller, published leaks naming the officers that had travelled in the
van that held Peach’s killer. They were Police Constables Murray, White,
Lake, Freestone, Scottow and Richardson. When the lockers of their unit
were searched in June 1979, one officer Greville Bint was discovered to
have in his lockers Nazi regalia, bayonets and leather covered sticks.
Another constable Raymond White attempted to hide a cosh. The failure of the authorities to adeguately invstigate Peach's murder left a huge feeling of resentment. Celia Stubbs, said: "This report totally
vindicates what we have always believed - that Blair was killed by one
of six officers from Unit 1 of the Special Patrol Group whose names have
been in the public domain over all these years."
An annual award has since been presented
by the UK's National Education Union to teachers to carry on Blair Peach's memory and after his death a number of writers have dedicated poems to his memory,
including Chris Searle, Michael Rosen and Susannah Steele, Louis
Johnson, Edward Bond, Sigi Moos, Sean Hutton and Tony Dickens, and songs including the following by
dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson in Jamaican patois.
:
Everywhere you go its the talk of the day, Everywhere you go you hear people say, That the Special Patrol them are murderers (murderers), We cant make them get no furtherer, The SPG them are murderers (murderers), We cant make them get no furtherer, Cos they killed Blair Peach the teacher, Them killed Blair Peach, the dirty bleeders.
Blair Peach was an ordinary man, Blair Peach he took a simple stand, Against the fascists and their wicked plans, So them beat him till him life was done.
Everywhere you go its the talk of the day, Everywhere you go you hear people say, That the Special Patrol them are murderers (murderers), We cant make them get no furtherer, The SPG them are murderers (murderers), We cant make them get no furtherer, Cos they killed Blair Peach the teacher, Them killed Blair Peach, the dirty bleeders.
Blair Peach was not an English man, Him come from New Zealand, Now they kill him and him dead and gone, But his memory lingers on.
Oh ye people of England, Great injustices are committed upon this land, How long will you permit them, to carry on? Is England becoming a fascist state? The answer lies at your own gate, And in the answer lies your fate.
Campaigners are now demanding a fresh inquiry into Blair Peach's death Gareth Peirce, the lawyer who defended many of those arrested in
1979, said: “Unquestionably a public investigation is required as to
what happened and why it was covered up for so long. A man was killed,
wholly innocent people were convicted and evidence against them
fabricated.
“The police went out to deliberately inflict injuries on innocent
people and were being provocative and racist. An onslaught of violence
was unleashed on the Southall community and other protesters. The
Hillsborough inquiry shows that reopening investigations into incidents
that happened in the past is not only important but achievable.”
Darcus Howe writer and anti racist activist remarked: “The death of Blair Peach is a lasting injustice. But it is also a
pressing issue because there is no evidence that the policing mistakes
that led to the death of Blair Peach have been consigned to the past.”
It is sad that battles which were fought against
state-sanctioned violence and far-right racism are still the battles being fought today, and we should not forget that Blair Peach wasn’t the first person nor the last to be killed by the police, since his murder Mark Duggan, Ian Tomlinson, Jean Charles de Menezes; are some other people who have
had the misfortune of being famous because they were killed by the
Metropolitan Police. The fight for justice goes on, as does Blair Peach's legacy who believed in the inclusion of everyone no matter what race, religion or educational ability. We must continue to confront and resist the forces of fascism and racism everywhere.
The first Earth Day was April 22, 1970. The idea was to raise awareness about our role in protecting our natural world.
It originally started out as more of a political movement, though today it has
become a popular day for many communities to clean up litter, plant
trees, or simply reflect on nature.
It was in 1970, that Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson and an activist
John McConnell separately asked Americans to join in a grassroots
demonstration. McConnell chose the spring equinox (March 21, 1970) and Nelson chose April 22.
Earth Day continues to be widely celebrated. The focus of Earth Day 2019 is protection of Earth species. The Earth Day Network, which runs Earth Day, claims that we are now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the normal rate.
Insect
populations have decreased by more than 45% worldwide, 40% of the
world’s bird species are in decline, and beekeepers report annual hive
losses of 30% or higher.
Many species will disappear before we learn about them or the benefits
they bring to our ecosystems and our planet. The loss is so great that
the welfare and future of the human species are threatened. Earth Day 2019 is marked by extreme contradictions. Scientists around the world agree that climate change, caused by an increase and trapping of greenhouse gases within the earth’s atmosphere, is our reality. Ocean temperatures and acidity, sea levels, and coastal flooding are on the rise because of temperature shifts. As a result it is the greatest existential crisis facing humanity today. According to Guardian Columnist George Monbiot, capitalism is destroying the earth and we need a new human right to fight for future generations https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/15/capitalism-destroying-earth-human-right-climate-strike-children and only rebellion will prevent an ecological apocalypse https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/15/rebellion-prevent-ecological-apocalypse-civil-disobedience.
Today’s planetary ecological crisis is due first and foremost to the increasing scale of the capitalist world economy. Capitalism is a system totally reliant on the exploitation of nature, whether that be sacrificing our clean water to frack for hydrocarbons or sacrificing our children to the production line. We must deelop new ideas of what a different future may look like outside the constraints of both capital and fossil fuels in order to move forwards to a sustainable future for humanity, instead of one of catastrophe.
Meanwhile inspiringly protests calling for the UK government to declare a climate emergency have entered a second week.Activists have stopped traffic in a series of demonstrations across London since Monday with actions including fixing a boat at the junction of Oxford Street and Regent Street, occupying Waterloo Bridge and disrupting the Docklands Light Railway by climbing on a train.
A total of 963 people had been arrested as of 7pm on Sunday while 40 have been charged in connection with the protests, the Met Police said.
A spokesman for the Extinction Rebellion movement said there would be
no escalation of activity on Earth Day, but warned that the disruption
could get "much worse" if politicians were not open to their negotiation
requests. The activists are holding a "people's assembly" at Marble Arch today between 3pm and 5pm, to decide where they go next.This will be followed by a feast celebrating
"life, community and collectivity". Everyone is invited, and attendees
are encouraged to bring throws and flowers to decorate tables.
We should keep demanding a system change not Climate Change. There really is no Plan B, not yet at least. This world is all we have. Earth Day is a day to recognize the richness of our planet and, as its trustees, do everything we can to protect it. Happy Earth Day.
Here are six further ways one could mark Earth Day:
Pledge to stop using pesticides to save pollinators
Use safer sunscreen to protect coral
Organise a "clean up" of your community
Use the Earth Day Network's plastic calculator to track, then reduce, your plastic waste
O Spring-time sweet!
The whole Earth smiles, thy coming to greet.
–Unknown
' Our origins are of the earth. And so there is in us a deeply seated response to the natural universe wihich is part of our humanity.' - Rachel Carson
The Mekons, a band that I have long loved, first emerged from the 1977 British punk
scene, and progressed from socialist art students with no musical
skills to the prolific, raucous progeny of Hank Williams. They have been releasing music which has combined politics with post-punk, folk and country music
for the last 40 years as radical innovators of both first generation
punk and insurgent roots music. For years continuing while staying true
to the punk ethos. Political provocateurs. Social agitators. Punk's
reigning contrarians willing outcasts, exuberant luddites the Mekons have been called all this and more. The late Lester Bangs called them “the most revolutionary in the history of rock’n’roll” the Mekons were notorious, as critic Greil Marcus notes, for being “the band that took punk ideology most seriously.
There story began at the University of Leeds, where a politicized student
body was further ignited by the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the UK” tour
of ’77. Out of that flashpoint came one great band ,Gang of Four and a
group of incompetent malcontents who picked up Gang of Four’s
instruments when the group wasn’t looking.
They were from the outset highly principled stating ”That anybody could do it; that we didn’t
want to be stars; that there was no set group as such, anybody could
get up and join in and instruments would be swapped around; that there’d
be no distance between the audience and the band; that we were nobody
special”
They called themselves the
Mekons after a sci-fi movie villain from the popular 1950’s
comic The Eagle . releasing singles on a variety of labels and
their first album, The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strnen, was recorded using a friends bands instruments. Due to an error by the
record company art department the cover featured pictures of, fellow
Leeds band, Gang of Four by mistake.
The group’s first iteration was a purposefully sloppy mix of mangled
power chords and ideological messages, some of them aimed at the punk
revolution itself; the Mekons answered the Clash’s “White Riot” with the
reality bites of “Never Been in a Riot.” They played benefits for
striking miners and fought hard against the short sharp shock of
Margaret Thatcher’s domestic policies.After The Mekons Story compilation
in 1982the band called it a day, with Langford forming The Three Johns, and that
seemed to be that.
However they soon returned and began pumping out album after album again on a
multitude of labels and even at one time making it onto a major though
the resulting album was a commercial flop and though it was loved by the
fans they were soon dropped like the proverbial hot potato and cut
adrift again.
The band’s discovery of folk music and honky-tonk in the early ’80s
recharged them for the long run; The band's longtime members - Jon Langford,Tom
Greenhalgh, Dick Taylor( a greying
elder who’d been in the very first Rolling Stones lineup) and Kevin Lycett - had added a superb fiddle player Susie Honeyman, an
accordionist Rico Bell, multi-instrumentalist Lu Edmonds formely of the Damned. and a professional drummer, Steve Goulding (from Graham
Parker's band, the Rumour), whose beat steadied the band somewhat, and then Sally Timms arrived, her voice wicked with the weight of class warfare
and long nights drinking at the local.
The albums of this era — from “Fear and Whiskey”
(1985) to “I [heart] Mekons” (1993) — are majestic works of roots-rock
entropy, angry and exhausted, daring and funny. Their track
“Robin Hood”, interspersed choruses from Percy Bysshe Shelley with attacks on Winston Churchill as villain “shooting down/the South Wales striking miners”, and they occupied roughly the same musical space as the Oysterband. When they recorded ''Fear and Whisky,'' the Mekons
had been transformed by exposure to American music, especially
honky-tonk country and Cajun music; both are connected to British and
Celtic traditions from the home front.
With abundant good humor and dark ironythey released The Mekons Rock ’n’ Roll” in 1989 it was recieved very favourably . 'Rock-and-roll''
turns up all over the album. The sprightly ''Club Mekon'' links rock to
sex, but not in the standard way; for the Mekons, each is ''a
commodity, to be bought and sold.'' In ''Learning to Live on Your Own,''
a ballad, Ms. Timms sings that she'll ''throw a rock-and-roll song on
the fire''; in ''Amnesia,'' a jumble of images from the 1960's, band
members bellow, ''any old army high on drugs/ fight that rock-and-roll
war.''Not
that rock-and-roll is the only target for the band's skepticism.
''Empire of the Senseless''
Over the years and after the band had learnt to play their instruments
their musical style transformed and The Mekons were now famous for
playing country and folk music as well as brief forays into rock and
even dub reggae. With around twenty albums to their name plus untold
amount of singles and EP’s as well as appearances on dozens of compilations
For more than
four decades they’ve been a constant contradiction, an ongoing art
project of observation, anger and compassion, all neatly summed up in
the movie Revenge of the Mekons, which has ironically brought an
upsurge
in their popularity around the US as new audiences discovers their
shambling splendour. That the band is still with us nearly four decades
after its founding, the only one of British punk’s class of 1977 still
standing , is
remarkable in itself. More endearing is that the Mekons’ shaggy,
jaded-but-jovial communal ethos still holds strong, embracing alt-folk,
country-punk, pub-rock, leftist rage, boozy humor, a rotating cast of
men and women, and a dedication to taking nothing seriously but the
music and the moment.
Critically and cultishly adored The
Mekons deserve to be much more well known as they continue to make
innovative original music while staying true to the punk ethos. After a
bit of a hiatus these beloved survivors are back with Deserted, their
first full studio album in eight years. Their new album was recorded in the desert environs of Joshua Tree,
California after,the group’s bassist The Baron (aka Dave Trumfio) set up a studio in the
Yucca Valley, where the Mekons
became inspired by the surroundings, leading to the writing and
recording of Deserted. “There are deserts everywhere. We took time to ponder the vastness and
the weirdness of the desert. Going to the country to get your head
together is a ripe old rock cliché. We went to the desert to have our
brains scoured… We went from one desert to another. A more hopeful place
where we arm ourselves with spikes and endure" main man Jon
Langford has said and their new album is every bit as bold, raw
and imaginative as the work that’s established them as one of the most
revolutionary groups in punk-rock history.
They have managed to
craft something very much in keeping with their surroundings.and is
drenched with widescreen, barbed-wire atmosphere and
hard-earned (but ever amused) defiance. Deserted is still rooted in their dual comfort zones of
raucous post-punk and rollicking alt-country, folk balladry, sea shanties and whatever else strikes their creative
fancy.
The formidable opening track “Lawrence Of California”, is inspired by the guitarist Tom Greenhalgh wandering
in Joshua Tree National Park, it arrives on a swell of feedback that
erupts into a shout-along gang vocal
that remind us they’ve lost none of
the firebrand punk spirit on which they were originally founded.
The next song “Harar, 1883” imagines the patron saint of punk poetry, Arthur Rimbaud’s time spent in the area of Harar, where he, “…was not troubled in the least / To give up writing poetry.”
The almost pastoral 'How Many Stars' ' sees Tom Greenhalgh’s deadpan
vocals unravel a magical and occasionally mystical tale,
which looks to the massive desert night sky pondering the universe and the hereafter while in the harshness of the environment. As beautiful and moving as this song is, there is still humor in a line like “For I am pickled, I am done.” Yes, it’s
a folk song about death.
“In The Desert”, Sally Timms sings about a shattered statue half sunk, a “creature of Bush and Blair”, a reference to the Gulf War and sees her quoting from the closing three lines of Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias.”
The raucous 'Mirage’ follows and is anything but a dreamy number.It's raw and exciting.Calling out
Mark E Smith’s name in a brightl lit alley, as guitars grind away like buzz saws amid cries of “Where you hiding?“ “This is as good
as it’s going to get/Between the mirage and the sunset.”
The beautiful"Weimar Vending Machine ” makes a direct reference to “Alabama
Song”by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill (also known as “Moon Of Alabama”), a song that The Doors covered turning into a delightful David Bowie tribute “That starts off about Iggy Pop in Berlin,” Langford explains.
“There’s a story that he went to a vending machine and saw the
word ‘sand’. He put his money in and a bag of sand came out.”
Then there is the gorgeous rambling “Andromeda”, with a jaunty reggae beat that is undercut by Langford’s echoey, distorted vocals and really lovely violin playing. It’s as left-field as The Mekons canget. The album ends with the atmospheric ‘After The Rain’. It has
a dark and haunting sound, a cinematic, elegiac farewell that finds the Mekons on top of their game.
The Mekons are without a doubt still passionate, it's embedded into everything that they do. Upon the whole the album looks like a musical landscape, that is
monumental but is subject to chaos.The LP sounds fresh and
not out of time. Deserted is a joy and marks the welcome return of one of the
planet's most essential rock and roll bands that after 40 years still have something to say. Deserted is the Mekons at
their finest, and is a proud addition to their catalog. It's folk music by
folks who are pissed and disillusioned, lost and longing to be found,
but only on their terms. It’s a testimony to resilience, showcasing a
band still as creatively vital as when they first formed, living up to
their reputation ' as the only band that matters.' The Mekons still treading their very own idiosyncratic path and because of this the musical world is a much better place for bands and
albums like this.Viva the Mekons.
