A review...

A review from the excellent RnR magazine...

Leeds - in the Dock

I visited Leeds Dock this afternoon.  What a depressing place.  I don’t know how long it’s been there but it’s already showing signs of falling apart.  Compared to what it might have been the Leeds waterfront / river area is a bit rubbish.  It has the distinct look of a 2000s property boom gone wrong.  You just know they will have talked a lot about 'exciting spaces' and ‘regeneration’ – which many people have now spotted was short-hand for property speculation / expensive flats.  Cheaply built expensive flats by the looks of it.  I think all the cool young people earning a fortune in ‘digital industries’ are supposed to live in them when not out jogging to the office, eating sushi, playing ping-pong outside cafes and riding bikes with no gears to Tesco Metro.  But I think the word ‘faux’ applies to a lot of it – faux public spaces, faux community, faux cool, faux bleeding edge…For people who have ‘lifestyles’ but oddly find that they don’t always feel as great as they should.

I don’t know when it was all built but it was clearly quite recently.  But now we see the stains on the buildings, the cracks, the weeds, the plastic coating peeling off posts and railings, plants and green algae growing where they’re clearly not supposed to, rusty bits on vents and fittings and maintenance budgets (if they have them) presumably not up to the task.  Like a smart City trader after a weekend in the cells it doesn’t look so smart any more.  It looks a bit abandoned really.  

And basically it’s a pile of tower-blocks.  I don’t know if anyone estimated how long they’d last when they built them, my guess is that was a question dodged, but I predict that it’ll be less than 20 years before the first one comes down and the questions start getting asked as to how they got away with so many shoddy buildings that no-one really wanted or needed.

I just Googled ‘Leeds Dock’ and it seems it has a website – “Leeds Dock is a thriving public space featuring the best the city has to offer, from flexible contemporary workspace to quirky cafés and outdoor dining”.

It doesn’t look like it’s thriving (if it was maybe they wouldn’t have to insist it was) and I suspect that most of the space is actually private.  Quirky cafes – oh Lord save us!  Look at the News section for a list of Tweets about how brilliant it seems to be desperately trying to be.  

Am I just being harsh and cynical?  Probably.  Are these people really having a wonderful time?  Perhaps so and I should embrace 'independent food' and 'agility workshops 'to improve your run' (for only £12.50!) and waterside yoga and...well, perhaps it's just not for the likes of me...   

Floody Hell!

I happened to catch the Mail on Sunday today (and no, I didn’t buy it…) The front page was about the floods that are happening hereabouts (North of England anyway). “Cities submerged” it said. That didn’t sound quite right to me. So here are the first definitions of the word ‘submerged’ I could find on-line:

"Cause (something) to be under water".

"Descend below the surface of an area of water".

"Completely cover or obscure".

So presumably at least 2 British cities were submerged. Under water. Completely! But when I turned over the page somehow the floods were a little less serious. In fact the Mail on Sunday considered a picture of Barbara Windsor dressed as a nurse in a Carry On film more important than the floods. Turn over again and there was more flood news – apparently there were “towns like Venice”. Hang on the Mail on Sunday - between page 1 and page 4 (with only a brief stop-over for Barbara Windsor) the sunken cities you were reporting have become partially flooded towns? Bad enough, but not quite the same eh?

Later on I’m sure I heard Radio 4 say that Leeds was flooded too. I drove to Leeds today (with no hold-ups on the road since you ask and no floods visible) and it turns out that it's not flooded - parts of Kirkstall Road and other bits near the river are flooded. Bad enough, but there are people out there who might think that there were submerged cities in the North of England and that Leeds was flooded. Some places are flooded. But not 98% of Leeds. And no cities are submerged.

Mind you, there are parts of Birmingham that are no-go areas to non-Muslims - Ha!

More gigs on the blog front page?

I should really keep gigs to the gigs page but this one came up this evening and it's tomorrow - Playing on Woodhouse Moor in Leeds at just after noon.  In a small tent I think - a student event (I think - Beckett University, formerly Leeds Met, formerly Leeds Poly) - acoustic acts sorted by Cloth Cat.  So I thought I'd mention it...  

Now entering Harehills Chapeltown (again)

As I often do I walked home through Harehills (Leeds) recently.  Cars pull out without indicating, yellow hatched areas, bus lanes, no right or left turn signs are routinely ignored and people wander across the road within a few feet of pedestrian crossings.  Outside the takeaway shops cars just pull onto the footpath – so you can be walking up a footpath 8 feet wide to find a car 7 feet wide just sat there in the middle of it.  It might then zoom off towards you before spinning out into the stream of traffic just missing various pedestrians who were outrageously attempting to walk on the footpath. 

I nearly had a go at one driver today but last time I did that some nut job (I guess that's an American term but I like it so I'm using it!) was outraged and threatening violence.  He explained that he had had to drive down the path because the kerb was too big for him to mount in the place where he’d wanted to drive onto the footpath - he wanted me to be grateful for the fact that he was driving along the footpath quite slowly!  Yes he was a nutter, but this victory of driver rights over everyone else’s rights is so ingrained that it never even seems to occur to people that driving on the path is a bad thing to do.  If I began to stroll down the middle of the road I’d soon be told I was doing something wrong.  And you still get the Clarksons of this world whining that there are people in power out to get them.  If only!   

Hey, here's a song!

http://wholeskymonitor.bandcamp.com/track/harehills-chapeltown

Salad daze

Dear Bloggeteers

I've just joined the Green Party - Hurray for me. I'm feeling rather pleased with myself. Now I'll have to start going to meetings and badgering people and stuff though (not badgering in the sense of culling mind). Hopefully / probably. First up, I'd like everyone's human rights respected please - whadda hippy! But I'm a no nonesense punk hippy...

It's all very idealistic and nothing will change and all that - but it's a tiny move in the right (or rather libertarian left) direction.  I'm not embarrassed about it.  We can start (he says like he started the Green party hisself this morning...) by trying to get a couple more Green Councillors elected to Leeds City Council.  An MP would be good.  If we all whatever it is together we can do whatever it is we want to do - a bit.  See, an election winning slogan and I only joined a few minutes ago.  Inspired by the election...

 

The Longest Day

It's the 70th anniversary of D-Day.  I wrote a song about D-Day a while back.  It's not been released.  But It's now up on Bandcamp for you to download for free - http://johnparkes.bandcamp.com/

Here's a long explanation about the song which possibly takes itself a bit seriously...

But please download the song, have a think maybe and pass it on or whatever...You can pay something if you like but there's no need... 

This is my song about D-Day, June 6th 1944. I recorded it a few years back. It wasn’t intended as a song to mark an anniversary or anything and it doesn’t really fit with my other songs, and partly for that reason it hasn’t been released. I have mixed feelings about the military and patriotism and heroism and war and commemoration.

Very few people examine lyrics for meaning (not my lyrics anyway!) but I’d like to mention a few things about it anyway.

As many will know the title comes from the film ‘The Longest Day’ – all star cast and all that telling the story of D-Day. From what I’ve read subsequently it’s fairly accurate though clearly selective in what it portrays. So, that’s the title.

There are a couple of Churchill quotes in there – you might notice the ‘sunlit uplands’ and the ‘new dark age’. I know a lot of people who broadly hold a lot of the same views I do aren’t big Churchill fans – they point to the General Strike and his views on Ghandi and India and, well, lots of other stuff. I may agree, but he was very human and funny and emotional too – and most importantly he had Hitler and the Nazis ‘taped’ to use an old fashioned term. And some of his speeches still bring me out in goose bumps when I hear them. So I’m happy to quote him.

When I first came up with this song it was more specifically intended to be written as if it were the ‘voice’ of a contemporary person or participant. I dropped the idea really, probably because it would have been too difficult - but that’s why the phrases ‘this Nazi crew’ and the ‘patriotic types’ are in there – they’re old fashioned and meant to be. On the other hand the ‘piss and fear’ and calling out for mothers is more a modern view I think. A reminder that war is not glorious anyway. I hate that phrase ‘the glorious dead’ as there’s nothing at all glorious about being killed in war in my view.

The ‘eyes of blue’ are future generations of course – me for one. I was told that my dad was wounded in the D-Day landings but I later found out that wasn’t true (he was actually wounded in the raid on Dieppe in 1942). I don’t actually know if he was there, but I do know he was involved in several amphibious landings and when asked what he did in the war he said he was a radio operator on landing craft. He died in around 1976 when I wasn’t very old so I never got the chance to ask.

When I added the ‘eyes of brown’ I was thinking of Jewish people. This is a bit of an anomaly really, as at the time I don’t think many of the invasion forces were aware of the Holocaust. There’s a bit of a myth grown up that WW2 was a straightforward fight by the good guys against the perpetrators of the Holocaust which isn’t true – or at least is much more complicated. If you want an indictment of Winston Churchill by the way, I read his 6 volume History of the Second World War and I think I’m right in saying it’s not mentioned once. He mentions Jews in a faintly patronising way (as he does Greeks and Indians I think) just once or twice. I didn’t spot any outright racism though (even from a modern point of view) – but no mention of the Holocaust.

Anyway, going off on a tangent here – and I need to remind myself that it is just a song and doesn’t support that much analysis.

Moving on...I’m still not 100% sure about the ‘when England’s right’ line and ‘salute your name’ but in this case I reckon that patriotism is defensible at least – so it stayed. ‘The Allies’ wouldn’t have worked as an alternative lyric by the way but it’s worth remembering the men from New Jersey or Idaho or wherever - and from right across the world that died liberating countries thousands of miles from home.

One final thing to say about this song. The last verse doesn’t really work very well I’m afraid. This was my attempt to finish the song by bringing things up to date – a reminder that there are still Nazis about. The BNP must have been ‘on the rise’ when I wrote this. I was sort of echoing (maybe consciously I’m not sure) Woody Allen. There’s a scene in one of his films where one of his Liberal friends is talking about how the Nazis were given what for in an article in the New York Times - Woody suggests that going down to meet the Nazis with a baseball bat would be more effective. I applaud the sentiment at least.

This reminds me that I was threatened with arrest in Leeds a few years ago against the background of a Nazi demonstration. Nick Griffin had been arrested for something or other and was on trial at Leeds Crown Court. I didn’t know this and stumbled upon it when I came out of my work for a sandwich. One of the apparently rival right wing groups that were there had their own flag. This is worth mentioning – the flags were bright red with a white circle in the middle. In the circle was a black cross like affair. Didn’t half remind me of something. And I think they still objected to being called Nazis.

Anyway, one of them had a megaphone and was going on about how millions had died defending free speech (I think Mr G was up on a charge of inciting racial hatred or something). I overheard this and got a bit cross. I shouted ‘from the Nazis’ to point out the obvious fact that the war was well, generally in favour of free speech and that millions had indeed died defending free speech – from the Nazis. Before I knew it a big and angry looking policeman came barrelling towards me with three of his mates just behind nearly knocking me over and telling me I’d better shut up or he’d arrest me. These days I like to think I’d tell him to calm down and point out that if it were OK for Nazis to shout down a megaphone it was OK for me to shout without one. It must have made a bit of a ridiculous sight as I remember I had a sandwich in a bag in one hand and a vanilla slice in a bag in the other. I sort of shrugged and walked off I think.

Anyway, the point is that once in a while you get Nazis on the street who need to be confronted on the street. When I first came to Leeds I was attacked by Nazis in my first few days for wearing an anti racism badge. That wouldn’t happen these days and I genuinely think that racism of that kind is receding into history, and since I wrote the song the prospect of Nazis on the street seems more remote. But it didn’t at the time is the point. And best not to be complacent, eh?

So this song is my acknowledgement of D-Day. It maybe makes me seem a bit more supportive of war and the military than I really am. But the D-Day invasion was certainly one way of destroying Nazism, whatever the arguments might be about empire and imperialism and ruling classes and the rest.

The picture I’ve used to illustrate the song is an old picture of two women in my life. My dad never met them. They both have blue eyes. Though brown might have been better!

lyrics:

Longest Day

Here, on the longest day of the year
Dawn is breaking from above the waves
But we are sure why we’re here

I’m here for you – your eyes of blue
Unborn, un-named
Free just the same

Here, on the greatest day of the year
Fight your way up to the sunlit uplands
Against the new dark age

We hit the ground - for her eyes of brown
We get back up
For a future love

Not just the patriotic types
But everybody came
And just for once when England’s right
We can salute your name

Here, the shortened lives and the tears
The teenage boys cry out for their mothers
In shit and sweat and piss and fear

‘Cos talking won’t do
Against this Nazi crew
A fight for peace and truth
Coming to a street near you

And now...here they are...The Rutles! - I feel good, I feel bad...

Now, it’s impossible to explain here what the Rutles are all about if you have no idea...but here’s my quick go....at sometime in the late 70s (probably) there was a Beatles documentary on the telly called ‘All You need is Love’ which was basically a potted history of the Beatles – could have even been a series.  It was pretty good and included interviews with people such as Brian Epstein’s mother and well, some of the usual ‘people who knew the Beatles’. 

At the time ex Python Eric Idle was involved in a new series called ‘Rutland Weekend Television’...I should really direct you to Wikipedia.  Anyway...it included a spoof bit about the ‘Rutles’ along with such golden phrases as ‘the legend that will last a lunchtime’ and ‘the pre-fab four’.  Neil Innes wrote some very Beatle like songs.  And 25 years later they’re playing those songs live.  In fact have a look at this... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rutles

So...the Rutles were at the Brudenell Social Club t’other night and I went along. 

I'd been slightly confused by the advertising – it mentioned ‘The Ruttles’ (2 ts) somewhere for a start and said they featured Barry Wom and Ron McNasty.  Now how can you put on the Rutles without a) being able to spell the name of the band and b) knowing that is was Ron Nasty and Dirk McQuickly and that there was no such person as Ron McNasty?  Ah well, people are strange (in Double Back Alley?)

On the night I was slightly put out that none of the instruments used were anything like the proper Beatles ones (let’s not even mention amps fact fans...)  They’re not a tribute band in the rubbish er, tribute band sense of the word.  They are sort of an affectionate parody – but the odd Hohner bass or Rickenbacker guitar wouldn’t have gone amiss in my world.  They were pretty good though.  But here’s the weird thing...the two most memorable bits were 1) Neil Innes playing the ‘Brave Sir Robin’ song from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and 2) a version of All Things Must Pass (The George Harrison song from the album of the same name) which somehow managed to be both a tiny bit silly (Mr Innes was playing a ukulele for a start) but also really touching and heartfelt.  A really serious song (optimistic, nah, not really) done with a light touch that just brought out the beauty of it all.  So it all felt good!  This isn’t a great quality vid but it’s the only one I can find on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUz6nokcLsw  I don’t think this is as good as the version they played in Leeds either!

So the Rutles were fun as I expected them to be though the sounds were a bit unauthentic...Nearly forgot to mention, back in the day my band Greenhouse played a version of the Rutles ‘I Must Be In Love’ live at the few gigs that we did supporting the Wedding Present.  So far as I know no recording exists of us doing this!

If you’ve never heard the Rutles you should first of all be a Beatles fan.  You should then buy the Rutles first album.  The second one is more Innes and less Beatles and to be honest not as good – but worth a listen.  Meanwhile I really should have written this a bit more, like proper...apologies.