Last week, my partner and I went to the movies in Telford. Having booked tickets for about £34 on nearly a whim and driven 40 minutes on a wet night to get to the theatre, I can suggest that we're not hurting. The same cannot be said for a woman we passed between the parking lot and the entrance to the multiplex. She was underdressed for the weather, was missing a front tooth, and sat under an umbrella with a cup. She told us she was trying to raise £18 to get a bed for the night. We could have covered that amount without thinking twice. Partner gave her two or three pounds as she had change which I did not. I bought her a sandwich and a cup of coffee from the Starbucks inside, because I could feel good about buying her some sustenance.
There's a subconscious mental juggling act in which I think I'm supposing she should work harder to get a roof over her head for one December night rather than just having it.
I've equivocated that sentence because I'm afraid of articulating just what goes on in my head when I give a homeless person less than what they need to get to the next step. The personal calculus is that as an individual, I don't have the ability to adopt every person on the street. And I extend that to 'or even one person on the street'. And in the family that consists of my partner and me, the calculus is that we don't want children of our own or even to adopt or foster. There's a selfishness to it, to be certain. And an unwillingness to examine just what it would take to abandon our plans to pay off our house and have the retirement plan that we want. We both know how very lucky/blessed we are to live the way we do, but not to the extent that we extend that luck too far from ourselves.
I vote and I donate to campaigns of politicians who seem to think the way I do about how the future should look, but in the end, they're politicians and they vote in favour of much larger sums of money than I represent. And in the US and the UK the ones who profess support for the underclasses are in the minority. Again. (Note: When the left holds the majority, they're only slightly less mendacious. I'm not blind in this regard.)
My job is still fish. (And your job as well, I trust.) The problem is still how to get fish to people. I give irregularly to charities that seem to be doing this work and every year I say to myself that I'll make this more regular. Every December a local food bank does a drive at my local supermarket for one day – my guess is that they go for one day to each of the big supermarkets – and on that day I buy 30 or 40 euros worth of stuff off of the bank's want list. While that's definitely regular, it's not enough. (Note: I'm in England at the moment and spending pounds, I grew up in the US, and I live in the Netherlands.)
In between, I send some money to this charity or that charity as the whim hits me and pledge each January to make it a more regular. So I write down some random thoughts on the matte and make a note to make a note to do something about it. As soon as I finish writing this, I'll create a calendar entry that will repeat on the first of each month to give some group or other some money or fulfil something on that group's amazon wish list. (One group I support sometimes is London's Breakfast In A Bag who have an ongoing list of things they provide to those sleeping rough.) As noted, this kind of thing is really easy. There's much harder work to do and I don't have the slightest where to begin.
I visited Oakland, California where my sister and her family live (and where I lived about twenty years ago) and the homelessness has gone off the charts. People who have spent decades in public service probably have some ideas about the solutions needed, but as noted above, there is no political will to help people who don't vote with deep pocketbooks. These are the folks with no pocketbooks at all left.
Our jobs are not judgement. The jobs are fish. Some of us have fewer fish than others, but I have a feeling that everyone reading this has more fish than they need. Give more fish.
So Sunday night’s adventure (as you might have noticed) was the last three acts on the Southern Lord Records Fest at Melkweg, Magma, Unsane, and of course Sunn O))) (being the folks who started and run Southern Lord).
Magma are curious blend of jazz and hard progressive rock. Under various lineups that have only the constant of drummer Stephan Vander, they’ve been doing the work since 1970. Interesting and compelling stuff.
Unsane are one of these crews I wish I’d gotten into a long time ago. They’ve been on the circuit for almost 30 years. Hard and sludgy, Unsane have musical elements in common with early Nirvana and Big Black and to a lesser extend The Melvins. When you get folks who’ve been doing the work together for almost 25 years (the current line-up solidified in ’94), there’s a joy in hearing and watching them lock together. (Note to San Francisco / Bay Area friends: Unsane will be at Bottom of the Hill on 1st December. You should go.)
Sunn O))) are a different thing altogether. They perform more as ritual than as rock and roll. The fog, the volume, and the robes the band members wear contribute to this vibe. Vocalist Attila Csihar took center stage and, for want of a better word, intoned for about ten minutes to increasing volume and fog before the other band members (guitarists Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson, and two people working keyboards.) For all the flowing of the sound between the instruments and the vocalists, it seems to be a pretty tightly constructed set these days. (Alas, while I recognised various pieces, I couldn’t tell you what they’re titled.) I’ve seen them once before, at Paradiso on the Monoliths and Dimensions tour and the most interesting aspect of the gig was noticing a brass instrument on the stage and being afraid of what they might do with it. (The volume at a Sunn O))) is such that you both hear it and feel it in your bones.) I don’t recall that anyone did anything more than brandish it. There was a trombone stood next to one of the keyboardists, stage left, and it added a lovely counterpoint to one of the pieces. However, as with last night’s gig, I had to leave early not to be on the very slow train back to Leiden. One of these days I will witness one of their gigs to its conclusion. All in all, a great set.
Sadly, I rushed out in order to make my train and didn’t stop at Unsane’s merch counter at all. And I didn’t have my wits about me at Sunn O)))’s. I bought a t-shirt and a vinyl copy of Kannon (their very beautiful 2015 release). I should also have bought a vinyl copy of the 2008 live album Domkirke.
There’s nothing political in this one, except an admission that I’m well aware of how privileged I am to be able to take a two+-week vacation in a nice country and do next to nothing.
Note also that these notes get a little repetitive. Apologies in advance.
Holiday – 25 August – 10 September 2017
25/8 – Flew to Split, taxi to our AirBnB – probably got ripped off a little by the cab driver, but not enough to sweat. Airport is very small – saw JayWay Travel’s man on the ground, but he was gone by the time I thought to say hi. Had lunch in the centre near (in?) the palace at one of Charlie’s recommendations. R had a really nice tuna salad and I had a tasty steak sandwich. We wandered the old centre for a little while – identified the location of the old synagogue, but it was not open (not surprisingly). Had supper at Apetit, another recommended joint where I had beef and R had fish. Aside from the astounding quality of the mains, the olives were divine. Saw a band play some cool rock and roll by the waterfront for a little bit. Also nice.
26/8 – Explored the palace some more, got my hair cut. Breakfast at Galerija – R had shakshuka and I had a really nice chia pudding with mango. Visited a church and the underground part of the palace (part of which was used as a Game of Thrones location – lots of those in Croatia). Supper at Mazzoon – we both ate ratatouille. Nice. Window shopped a little, but didn’t buy anything.
27/8 – Breakfast at Banana Split, just a bit downhill from our apartment and then packed our stuff and got the hire car. Two stops on our drive to Starigrad – Klis fortress which was another GoT location (and a good hike up a hill) and to some lovely waterfalls just south of Zadar in Krka National Park. Getting to the waterfall involved a nice hike, but then we could bathe just in front of the falls. Very cool. Arrived at the hotel in Starigrad at about 7, dropped our gear, and walked across the street to Degenija, a restaurant owned by the family of one of my colleagues. I had the mixed grill and R had fish. Well pleased. (We went back four times, I think.) Josip’s aunt, who runs the place, and his cousins had already returned to Zagreb, so I didn’t get to meet them. By the time we got back to the hotel, several coach loads of English people had arrived to share the holiday with us.
28/8 – Got up early and ran 4.4km up the road before 9:30 orientation. Mostly relaxed after checking out the things on offer. R did some sailing theory and then we had cocktails at the sky bar at sunset. Read the rest of this entry »
And there’s a reason Haynes used it: That opening rush of instrumentation (which accompanies a rush of glam-rocking teenagers chasing a pop star) pulls the listener right in. The intrigue doesn’t let up through the album’s 42 minutes. Lyrically, it’s almost all (in the words of Blank Frank) incomprehensible proverbs, but musically it’s a gorgeous grab-bag of styles, the way the best glam albums were back in ’73. This new remastering does a wonderful job of separating the musical components so that you can hear the strange fuzzed out guitar on the title track as something separate from the drums, keyboards, and the vocals (which are still too indistinct to figure out).After two pretty flawless major label releases, 1985’s Oil & Gold and 1986’s Big Night Music, Island Records wanted a hit. At the time, I’d heard some of their music but nothing I could have identified as them. Go Bang! came out several months before I moved in with a flatmate who played me the glory of Oil & Gold. I don’t think I heard Big Night Music until about 1991. So really, I knew of them by reputation only. I was working at Rainbow Records on Stanyan and the store manager was very keen on hearing it the day it came in. I recall feeling the affair was all too disco (which I definitely did not appreciate for another ten years or so), not helped by the first single, a mostly faithful cover of KC and the Sunshine Band’s Get Down Tonight. I’m pretty sure the manager was disappointed too.
As they’re touring this year for the first time in forever, I’ve started to dig into the catalogue. Go Bang! is the only album I didn’t have in some form or another and which isn’t available on Spotify. Four quid and a week in the post, and some fine Amazon seller has me taken care of. Whereas Oil & Gold is balanced about half and half with hard tracks like Nemesis and softer tracks such as The Only Thing That Shines, and Big Night Music tends very much to the jazzy, Go Bang! is almost entirely hard dance music. Only Nighttown and the closer, Dust and a Shadow hint at Shriekback’s downtempo tendencies.
It’s not as though the album isn’t recognizably Shriekback, though. Producer Richard James Burgess (Spandau Ballet’s Journeys to Glory, Adam Ant’s Strip) has maintained most of their signature sound – Barry Andrews’ tenor augmented with the female voices heard on the previous releases, the bass. Even going back to their stripped down earliest releases, the bass and the funk were always prominent
Lyrically, side one has more of the depth found in their earlier work. I can’t really tell if they arranged the tracks for LP release or CD, but major releases still came out on vinyl at the time. After Nighttown, side two has the disco 1-2-3 of the title track, Big Fun, and the aforementioned KC and the Sunshine Band cover. Big Fun has big horns and lyrics about going out and (long before Daft Punk) getting lucky. The chorus of Well-e-o, well-e-o here we go / We got a bite like a pit bull yeah we don’t let go / Well-e-o, well-e-o under the sun / Everybody looking for…big fun doesn’t really suggest the seriousness of purpose the band was known for. On the other hand, the bass and the brass are used to good effect. Even considering the lyrical silliness of Big Fun, the only real embarrassment of the album is the rap that Andrews injects into Get Down Tonight. (All one can say is that it was a thing at the time.)
Dust and a Shadow very much harkens back to the sound of Oil & Gold, to the point where back to back, it sounds like a brasher but inferior reworking of This Big Hush.
At a meagre 32 minutes, it’s a sugary and tasty confection, but not the perfection found in their other work.
Joe Jots 