re:tg

Deprived of urban75 for a day while they move servers, our hero is forced to update his blog by reviewing the RE:TG recording session.

Jim Evergreendaze has a nice photo in his review.

Me? I was picking up the daughter from my parents after a hefty night out on Saturday. More of which later.

deptford fun city

Neil will be launching his new pamphlet Deptford Fun City: a ramble through the history and music of New Cross & Deptford on Thursday May 27th 2004, 8 pm at South London Radical History Group, Use Your Loaf, 227 Deptford High Street, SE8 (admission free).

He will be reading some extracts and also playing some music mentioned in the text. Afterwards there will be time for a drink (with cheap quality beer) and chat. Expect to hear a bit of Band of Holy Joy, Carter USM, Alternative TV, This Heat, Throbbing Gristle (well they did record a live album in New Cross), Jah Shaka, Test Department and some of the new wave of local bands such as Art Brut and The Violets – New Cross is the New Seattle, dontcha know…

The pamphlet is available for £2.50 (68 pages) from Morps Records, in the basement of Moonbow Jakes Cafe, New Cross Gate, or by post from Past Tense Publications, 56a Info Shop, 56a Crampton Street, London SE17 3AE (cheques payable to N.Gordon-Orr).

Deptford Fun City includes a cast of punks, pagans, revolting peasants, gut girls, slaves and slavers, sound systems, suffragettes, speedway riders, sailors, dock strikers, deserters, metal bashers, may queens, pearly kings, ghosts, vampires, Chartists, bread rioters and anarchist bombers.

pounding shitstem

MY NAME’S DUBVERSION AND I DON’T LIKE BOB MARLEY.

Not at all unusual, really. Partly as a reaction to over-exposure, and partly because of the content. It does get a bit tiring having conversations with people about Bob Marley when they find out your are interested in reggae, but that shouldn’t overshadow the massive amount of impact the man has had… on Rock Music.

I think it was the much-criticised Lloyd Bradley who said that Bob Marley existed outside of Jamaica in virtually every way after he signed to Island – making LPs rather than pre 7s and dealing with weighty metaphysics rather than the day to day oppression of his contemporaries.

None of this should overshadow the sublime nature of the tunes – that bit of footage of Bob and the Wailers doing “Stir it Up” on the Whistle Test is mandatory viewing and never fails to send shivers up my spine.

Many “proper” reggae heads are ok with Marley (tho making sure you namedrop the early stuff and obscure dubs is a way out of the populist maze) and many are not.

Plus, all the artists “from yard” give Marley much love – their homie who made it – the most famous jamaican in the world.

If people want to buy Marley flags, t-shirts, trainers, bookmarks, ash trays, rizlas or whatever, then that shouldn’t necessarily detract from the music. (But realistically, it does).

Anyway, Comrade ‘Version also makes a point of Not Liking the Beatles, so we are certainly in the realms of the iconoclastic.

gah

“I just need to eat pudding and watch telly…” – the daughter, today.

Don’t we all have days like that? I’m off work again with some fluey cold thing. Sleeping and sweating, trying to muster up the energy to DO something useful or interesting. I always conk out like this after over-doing it, but it’s not like the weekend was a mass of hedonism and debauchery or anything.

Really mental dreams, though. Airports morphing into stone circles and back again. Meeting people for the first time I used to email a lot. Mad nursery rhyme stuff.

Can’t face music, but there have been all sorts of things repeating themselves over and over again in my head all day long. The Mighty Dub Kats’ “Magic Carpet Ride” is one. Just the intro, mind. Over and over and over again. If I had any energy it would make me quite violent, I tell ya.

Harummmmph.