Having spent a totally delightful time in the company of Jethro Tull, and Blodwyn Pig, blues guitarist extraordinaire Mick Abrahams, Rob Ayling (Gonzo Grande Fromage) is very pleased to announce that Gonzo are to be releasing some of Mick's wonderful music. The first release will be "65" a double CD/DVD combo of Mick's Birthday - a prize for anyone who can guess which one? This release features: Paul Jones, Elliot Randal and a reformation of Blodwyn Pig, with Jack Lancaster and Clive Bunker.
Welcome to Gonzo Mick Abrahams!
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AUBURN
A sneak peek from Liz Lenten |
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AN OPEN LETTER TO LIZ LENTEN
Bloody hell Elizabeth! I knew the results of your sojourn in Nashville would be good, but I had no Idea that they would be this good.
Somehow you have mined the rich seam of Southern country blues, that Dr John has been doing for years and that Elvis and Dusty Springfield did at their best.
I was excited by the demos you sent me a few weeks ago, but these songs outstrip anything that I could possibly have imagined. I am so looking forward to being able to share them with the rest of the world.
Well done! |
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A couple of weeks ago, the legendary Mick Farren, the revolutionary man of letters that I have often aspired to be when I have not been aspiring to be something completely different, sent me a copy of his new novel - Road Movie. It is as good as one would have hoped, if not better, and this week thanks to those jolly nice people at Penny Ante editions, I am in the glorious position of being able to publish a chunk of it, exclusively for you.
Ain't life grand? |
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| Lies, Damned Lies and the Media. |
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In 1924 there was a minority Labour Government in power in the UK. It was the first Labour Government in history.
In those days the Labour Party was still fresh. It had been formed in 1900 from an alliance between socialist groups (including the forerunners of the British Communist Party) and the Trade Unions. It had a purpose. Its purpose was to represent the interests of working people in Parliament. It had a socialist agenda. Its aim was to remove the inequities in economic life, to undertake a whole scale redistribution of wealth and to take strategic industries into public ownership. Membership of the Labour Party was made up exclusively of socialists, Trade Unionists, and working people. It was wedded to a class interpretation of history. It saw itself as the parliamentary wing of the Labour Movement, merely one strand in a general movement towards the liberation of working people from the economic constraints of capitalism. Its eventual aim was the complete and final abolition of capitalism.
Unfortunately it was hamstrung by its minority position. Every policy decision was voted down by the combined efforts of the minority parties. It went to the Polls hoping to gain a majority. It lost.
By 1945, when the first majority Labour Government had come to power, the Labour Party was no longer a socialist party. Its aim was not to abolish capitalism, but to work with it for a greater share of the wealth for working people: not whole scale redistribution, but some semblance of fairness merely. Its philosophy was based upon the work of the Liberal Economist, Maynard Keynes and was known as the Mixed Economy. The Mixed Economy involved an alliance between private industry and public services, using the public services as a way of priming the pump of capitalism, as a route by which public money could be funnelled into the economy. Its agenda had been agreed by Winston Churchill and the National Government during the war years. It was carrying out policies which would have been implemented no matter which party had won the election. And although there were still a large number of working people in the party, there had been a major influx of middle class people in the meantime, particularly Lawyers, who now made up a significant proportion of Members of Parliament.
By the time I joined the party, sometime in 1985, its membership was almost exclusively middle class.
But you have to wonder what a majority Labour government in 1924 might have done. It would have been a different world.
The reason the Labour Party had lost in 1924 was because of a letter which appeared in the Daily Mail. It was front page news. It purported to come from Grigoriy Yevseyevich Zinoviev, a member of the ruling Politburo of the Soviet Union, and it called upon British Communists (who had helped set up the Labour Party) to use the party as a vehicle to foment revolution. As a consequence there was a witch hunt of Communist Party members from the Labour Party and they lost the election. The Labour Party were a front for a Soviet plot to undermine Britain, it was said.
It was only later that it was revealed that the so-called "Zinoviev Letter" was a fake.
This is certainly not the only time in history that fabricated evidence has been used to change public opinion. Fake documents purporting to show that Iraq had been importing Uranium from Niger were one of the bases used to justify the recent war. Something very similar may well be happening to George Galloway right now. If the incriminating documents found in Baghdad and splashed across the front page of the Telegraph do, indeed, turn out to be false, several months - or even years - down the line, then it might merit a line or two on the inside pages of the newspaper. But the damage will have been done. George Galloway will have lost his seat in Parliament, and one more effective voice will have been stifled.
I don’t think we have to speculate too hard to work out who it was behind the Zinoviev Letter. We only have to know who gained by its publication.
As Adolph Hitler once said: "The great masses of people. . .will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one."
This, of course, turns out to be the rule rather than the exception. Fabrication of the news in order to determine the media agenda is one of the tools by which governments get us to go along with what they had already planned to do anyway. The road to Baghdad has been littered with such falsehoods. We’ve already mentioned the fake export documents from Niger. Then there was that dossier plagiarised from a ten year old post-graduate thesis taken from the net. And Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations involving shots of low-flying aircraft supposedly capable of spraying chemical and biological weapons which, when looked at closely, turned out to be computer generated images merely. The list goes on. These are only the cases we know about. How many more great lies and small lies lie hidden amidst the rubble of this media-led war?
Finally there is the example of the toppling of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad. We all saw the pictures. It looked like one of those moments of a spontaneous uprising of the people we often see in history, and fulfilled the American’s prediction that, once the people were free from Saddam, they would welcome the coalition forces as liberators. It certainly looked that way. Well even that moment was a fake. The "vast crowds" of Iraqi people actually consisted of about 150 hand-picked extras in an empty square, revealing less about the mood and the feelings of the Iraqi people, and more about the value of close-framed filming - a technique learned from Hollywood - to give the impression of large numbers. The crowds were actually followers of Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon’s own chosen successor to Saddam in the new "liberated" Iraq.
So there you have it: another "Hollywood Moment" in the story of Iraq, and proof, if any more were needed, that it is the victors who write the history. Indeed, in this case, the victors are even writing the history as they are constructing it. What the Iraqi people themselves think about all this is yet to be discovered, if anyone has even bothered to ask.
In other words: be very wary about what you see on your TV. It could be a pack of lies. |
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HAWKWIND NEWS
(The Masters of the Universe do seem to have a steady stream of interesting stories featuring them, their various friends and relations, and alumni). Each week Graham Inglis keeps us up to date with the latest news from the Hawkverse.. |
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Things are fairly quiet on the Hawkwind front at present, apart from concern for ex-Hawkwind member Lemmy, who recently had to cancel a string of Motorhead tour dates for health reasons. Having recently suffered a haematoma (basically, a blood clot in the body's tissue) he's reportedly been told to get some rest for a couple of weeks.
Lemmy's not exactly a model of healthy living, but it appears that he's heeding the advice on this occasion. Motorhead's summer dates have been cancelled, and the drummer, Mikkey Dee, has been quoted as saying, "You have to put health before everything else." Given Lemmy's almost-legendary intake of Jack Daniels whiskey, that piece of news will likely be quite a relief to any worried fans. |
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AN EXCERPT FROM ROBERT CALVERT'S FIRST BOOK OF POETRY
now reissued by Gonzo (and typeset by me) |
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A REFUSAL TO MOURN THE REMOVAL,
BY SURGERY, OF TWO BENIGN TUMOURS
No, I will not think of you
laid out under lamps: the glare
of eyes, above white bandit-
masks, all trained on you; your flesh
cut back and held by clamps, while
instruments investigate;
your pale, blue-veined breasts both touched
with expert vermilion
openings, like two lip-sticked
mouths, smiling, one on either
side, a vision of Magritte’s.
I will think of something else
and smoke a continuous
cigarette. I will only
think of the surgeon’s pencil-
marks, you wore the night before,
as a fading endorsement,
for a readmission to some
orgy, a eunuch doorman
applied to your breasts as you
stepped outside to take the air.
I refuse to think of you
asleep beneath the breathing
mask of a black Ganesha:
your trunk sucking oxygen;
your eyes gone in; under more
dazzle than this scarred page’s
angle-poise. I will not mourn
your imagined death, for the taste
of tears. I will only think
of the morning, when I’ll come
with grapes and flowers to rouse
you from your anaesthetic
shell; to unwrap and open
the shy kiss I shall give you;
when you lie in albumen-coloured sheets.
As exquisite as though you were newly hatched. |
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| THE YES CIRCULAR - TIME AND A WORD |
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| The Court Circular tells interested readers about the comings and goings of members of The Royal Family. However, readers of this periodical seem interested in the comings and goings of Yes and of various alumni of this magnificent and long-standing band. Give the people what they want, I say |
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| I am probably getting a bit OCD about all of this, but I find the Yes soap opera of sound to be absolutely enthralling, and I for one can't wait to see what happens next! |
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| TRAYVON MARTIN (all of 17) |
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went shopping for skittles/on the way home
his life was stolen by a man with a gun.
That much is certain.Trayvon will not be coming home
yet, every day,on television,the face of his killer
in a suit, on stage for a jury to decide
whether second degree murder
will be punished or released.Jamie Foxx's T-shirt
speaks justice via media.It has been a year
since Trayvon has gone from us.Hoodies are not the issue.
Race is not the issue.Law and order is not the issue.
The issue is murder by gun of one so young.
Any more is a massacre.Start with the truth..
Trayvon is gone.What will you do?
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| The Trayvon Martin case on Wikipedia |
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In Victorian times every well-bred Gentleman had a 'Cabinet of Curiosities'; a collection of peculiar odds and sods, usually housed in a finely made cabinet with a glass door. These could include anything from Natural History specimens to historical artefacts. There has always been something of the Victorian amateur naturalist about me, and I have a houseful of arcane objects; some completely worthless, others decidedly not, but all precious to me for the memories they hold..
I used to be a collector of rock and roll memorabilia, but most of my collection went into my solicitor's pocket during my divorce from my first wife, and I never had the stomach to build the collection up again. However, people send me pictures of interesting things such as this. |
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| According to Helen McCookerybook: "This was supposed to be printed in the Glastonbury Free Press, a daily paper that should have been printed on a vintage Heidelberg press. The press said No, and the paper wasn't printed. A limited edition of this might appear in the near future..." |
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On the third weekend of August every year for the past fourteen years we have had the weirdest weekend you can imagine. The Weird Weekend is the largest yearly gathering of mystery animal investigators in the English-speaking world. Now in its fourteenth year, the convention attracts speakers and visitors from all over the world and showcases the findings of investigators into strange phenomena.
Cryptozoologists, parapsychologists, ufologists, and folklorists are descending on Woolfardisworthy Community Centre to share their findings and insights. Unlike other events, the Weird Weekend will also include workshops giving tips to budding paranormal investigators, and even a programme of special events for children. The Weird Weekend is the only fortean conference in the world that is truly a family event, although those veterans of previous events should be reassured that it is still as anarchically silly as ever!
The event is raising money for the Centre for Fortean Zoology, the world’s only full time, professional cryptozoological organisation. The profit from food and beverages goes to a selection of village charities, mostly working with children.
How do you fancy spending three days of high strangeness, good food and great beer, together with the cream of British Fortean researchers in the middle of the glorious Devon countryside? By the way, I am sorry to have to say this, but as this is a fundraising event, tickets are non-refundable, although you are free to resell them should you be unable to attend.
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FEATURED SPEAKERS INCLUDE:
Lee Walker: Dead of Night
Andrew Sanderson: Russia Expedition report
Lars Thomas: The Natural History of Trolls
Judge Smith: Life after Death
Jon Downes/Richard Freeman: Intro to Cryptozoology
Nick Wadham: You will believe in fairies; you will, you will!
Tony Whitehead (RSPB): Starslime
Glen Vaudrey : Mystery animals of Staffordshire
Darren Naish: Adventures from the world of tetrapod zoology
Richard Freeman: Expedition repoort Sumatra 2013
Sarah Boit: Orbs from a photographer's perspective
James Newton (London Cryptozoology club): Bigfoot
Shaun Histead-Todd: Pre Columbian civilisations in america
Ronan Coghlan: Amphibians from Outer Space
Jon Downes: Keynote Speech
Speaker's Dinner at the Community Centre
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| INTRODUCING THE NINE HENRYS |
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| I think Peter McAdam is one of the funniest people around, and I cannot recommend his book The Nine Henrys highly enough. Check it out at Amazon. Each issue we shall be running a series of Henrybits that are not found in his book about the nine cloned cartoon characters who inhabit a surreal world nearly as insane as mine... |
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| NEW MUSIC FROM STEPHEN STILLS |
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Stephen Stills fans can now get a preview of Can’t Get Enough, the upcoming debut album by his blues-rock supergroup The Rides, which also features Kenny Wayne Shepherd and founding Electric Flag keyboardist Barry Goldberg. The band’s rendition of the Iggy Pop and the Stooges classic “Search and Destroy” is now streaming in its entirety....
Read on... |
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