PAKISTAN'S 'CIVIL SOCIETY'

Here's a link to a piece by old new leftie Tariq Ali who was in Karachi for the World Social Forum. It's about NGOs and WGOs (Western Governmental Organizations--ho de ho) and the pros and cons of 'civil society' under a military dictatorship. 'Civil Society' is a phrase bandied around a lot these days in the media, quite loosely in my opinion, to justify a few liberalizing gestures in states where political rights are heavily restricted. It's become a kind of alibi for the state when it introduces legislation that actually severely limits the civil/human rights of citizens. This situation has been exacerbated in recent years with the war on terror giving license to state machineries to act punitively against their people. General Musharraf has been patting himself on the back in public about the freedom he has 'granted' to the press and television networks to be critical of government policy. At the same time he has also used the War on Terror to harrass and jail critical voices and activists. Islamists and pro-Taliban types are not the only ones feeling the heat.

READ ABOUT SEYMOUR

GEE, THAT'S A SWELL MAP

Saddened to hear that Nikki Sudden, formerly of art noise-punk-post punk group Swell Maps, died in NYC last Sunday. He was 49. Cause of death has not been announced yet. Swell Maps were born in the early 1970s in Solihull, a rather drab middle class suburb of Birmingham in the West Midlands of England. At the time, I lived a few miles away in Walsall. I lost track of Sudden's music many years ago, but still have Swell Maps' first single from 1977 on their own label Rather, which was distributed by Rough Trade records. 'Read about Seymour' is only 1 minute and 27 seconds long, and exemplifies the economy and DIY ethos of the punk aesthetic. It clatters and clangs and like many of the group's songs it threatens to collapse into chaos any moment but just manages to keep on trucking with the smell of an oily rag. I actually liked one of the two tracks on the B-side just as much: 'Ripped and Torn' (only 1 minute 45 secs) had this guitar sound which sounded like Status Quo. The lyrics were better than Quo though. I think a fanzine took the title as its name. It sounds soooo punk now. I think the nearest I got to dressing like a punk was ripping and tearing a sweater slightly on my way to a Stiff Little Fingers gig in Bradford. Anyhow, I remember my friend James Clubb buying the Maps' albums A Trip To Marineville and Jane From Occupied Europe. So I must have been listening to this stuff when I was about 15-16-17 years old. There were punkish tracks though at a more leisurely pace than your pogo type stuff. Some of them had great short guitar riffs, fatter sounding than The Buzzcocks, more like the Beatles on the White Album and that medley on Abbey Road. I've since read that Sudden, his brother Epic Soundtracks (great name), and Jowe Head were into the Stones and T. Rex. What's the aural equivalent of hindsight? They now also sound a bit like the psychedelic pastiche of The Soft Boys, the group that spawned Robyn Hitchock and Kimberley Rew who wrote 'Walking On Sunshine' and 'Going Down to Liverpool' for Katrina and the Waves & The Bangles respectively. I had a few Swell Maps singles which I must have sold at some time or other--Let's Build A Car & Real Shocks, for definite. The latter was covered effectively inna electrodiscodub stylee by The Soft Pink Truth AKA Drew Daniel from Matmos on his hommage to New Wave a couple of years ago. But Swell Maps also had another side to their character that consisted of long repetitive lo-fi instrumentals with few if any lyrics, especially on Jane From Occupied Europe. These were more difficult to listen to back then. They didn't have the shape and familiar guitar of the two or even three minute song. They just bashed along with the drummer getting quite sweaty. Some of them were quite droney, and tinny with lots of echo; other tracks sounded like hammers and saws in a muted Einsturzende Neubauten sorta way. I've only just read that the group were also into Can. I had no clue who Can were at that time and am still pretty ignorant of their work though I'm keen to investigate this group since I've read a lot about their influence. In my narrow teenage knowledge of Sounds more than the NME, I wasn't prepared for this more arty stuff yet. It wasn't until PiL came along with Metal Box in 1979 (or was it 1980?) that I began to appreciate the loosening of musical structure. I should have been more responsive to these alternatives since the ambient music in the house was my parents' Indian classical music, including the odd live act that would play all night in the living room. But that was background music. It took Metal Box, mushrooms and Gavin Smith lending me Greensleeves albums and 12" Discos with their reggae spatials to really open me up. Later when I was writing about music for the Michigan Daily in the late 80s, I snapped up a promo copy of a compilation album of Swell Maps work called Collision Time Revisited, released by Mute and Restless. Thurston Moore provided brief sleeve notes and recounted how he heard 'Read About Seymour' as 'this weird and foreign thing'. Moore also says that the band were 'a part of his upbringing' and he wished that he'd seen them. Alas, I also failed to witness them live. I remember from the descriptions of the varying personnel on their singles and album sleeves, and the snaps of them in what looked like a domestic bedroom studio, that I felt something of the aura of a bunch of musicians just hanging out, messing about, experimenting and having a lot of fun as they discovered the pleasure of creative collaboration and recorded it all. They probably took that vibe with them to the stage. Check out their albums which have been recently released. 'Midget Submarine' would make a great children's singalong standard. These days I seem to be writing a lot about musicians passing away.

LONESOME DEATHS

The Israeli election is predicted to deliver a Yes for a shrinking Palestine in the West Bank and the extension of Gaza's tenure as a reservation for the natives.

Cue: "Don't Fence Me In" by the Sons Of The Pioneers.

Some topical ointment from Billy Bragg, however.

In general I've preferred his love songs rather than the 'political' songs, though of course the categories are by no means exclusive. But you should definitely give a listen to a new tune about the war on terror Israel style.

You can download "The Lonesome Death of Rachel Corrie" about the young woman from Olympia, Washington who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza. It borrows from Bob Dylan's "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll", a song on The Times They Are A Changin' about a black barmaid who died after a wealthy Baltimore resident verbally abused and hit her with his cane because she didn't bring him his drink quickly enough.

Bragg's song was recorded in Ann Arbor and I don't know if it's jet lag, the whiff of a head cold, post-gig sore threat or just the vocal mellowness of age, but he sounds really gruff and deep, almost like Johnny Cash in the late 60s on those Talking Blues inherited from Woody Guthrie and Ramblin' Jack Elliot. Somehow I can take the straight-on, super direct lyrics because of that weariness in Bragg's voice. The despair offsets the mannered though effective cynicism of the Bob Dylan original.

YOUNG HEARTS RUN FREE

One of the best collections of 1960s soul constantly on the player in the last couple of years is Candi Staton's work at the legendary Fame studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, compiled by Honest Jon's of London. Saw this recent interview and story about the woes of Staton--alcoholism and a domineering manager-husband. But she found Jesus. Then Dave Crawford wrote a song about her life which she recorded in 1976 ('Young Hearts Run Free' is still one of the great disco tunes). And she was sampled on a British dance pop hit by the Source. She's now recorded a new album with songs by Bonnie Prince Billy, amongst others. Jesus Saves.

COMPACT DISC ETIQUETTE AT PARTIES

Don't you just hate it when people at parties, usually under the influence of alcohol, rip out the CD from the stereo, and don't bother to find the right case for it as they stick the next CD into the machine. They just put the abandoned disc in another completely inappropriate empty case or worse still, plonk it bare and exposed on the stack to gather dust or scratches. By the end of the night, the stack of jewel cases is riddled with naked CDs that have been exposed to the elements.

THE BURDEN OF REPRESENTATION

There is a dilemma in speaking or writing in the public sphere for or about a group of people even though you don't represent them (how can anyone?). But in these days of evil presidentes working for the clampdown, it's even more of an urgent issue. Whitey is too afraid, too ignorant, or has decided that media training for brown and black people is not that important. So you have to intercede when the vox pop of the 'community' is usually regressive crap from a few mouths that themselves can never encompass the breadth of opinion. Catch 22. Anvar Khan is a Scottish Pakistani who's found herself in that situation in the UK.

GLASTONBURY FILM

Here's an interview and story about Julien Temple's new film about the history of the Glastonbury music festival in Ingerland. Sounds promising. Looking forward to seeing it in the UK in late May if it's still on screens in Londinium. It might be a possibility for my new 2007 course Popular Music On Screen, though Wattstax is the current favourite for the concert film week.