A Visit to the Sixties

On Thursday, I had the opportunity to visit the nineteen sixties. Needless to say, I grabbed it with both hands.

This story begins (for me) in November 2009, when I answered an ad on
http://www.joinmyband.co.uk/ from a chap called Richard who wanted people to join his latest project of producing a band that sounded like Can, or like Metal Machine Music etc. Now, although I neglected to blog any of this, my friends know that, for the last year, I've been taking every opportunity I can to perform.

I've been singing with the Swamp Band since March 2009. I've also done some solo performances including an acapella rendition of Tom Waits' God's Away on Business at the Royal Festival Hall. In November, I also bought my first instrument, a stick dulcimer, which is not only the easiest instrument to play, but also one of the most versatile (at least in my hands). I bought it because acapella gigs are hard to come by whereas if one can accompany oneself, it's much easier.

Anyway, I answered Richard's ad and he began working on ways we could perform. And on Monday he told us all were gigging on Thursday. The gig was at
http://www.illfm.net/ which is where I found myself suddenly in the sixties.

The atmosphere was a cross between Radio three and a commune. I loved it. And we played as if we were the Velvet Underground and we were part of Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable. I have no idea yet how good we were but I enjoyed myself and even got to pose for photos. After 49 years, for the first time, I felt cool!

Let's Storm the Charts

Well to begin with, before I forget, here's where to go.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=231943888357&ref=mf#/group.php?gid=231943888357&ref=mf

Right, so why are you going there? Just because I said so? No... because this group on facebook is doing everything in its power to break record companies' oligopoly of the music you get to hear on the radio, on TV and anywhere else that the charts are used as some kind of barometer of youthful taste.

I'm hoping this is a worldwide phenomenon, not just an English one and so, I've invited all of my facebook friends to join, not just those in the UK. Later, I shall invite all my Myspace friends as well... and my local newsagent (hallo Harry), the landlord of the Rose and Crown, all the messagegroups I'm still using (which means mustardland right now) and anyone else I can think of.

This is a spur so, once I've got a better recording of Armageddon Ball, or maybe any recording at all of one of my other songs, I'll put it on itunes and Amazon and put my name forward (although it'll have to be good to compete with Joy Shannon's band (once you're in the group, you can find a link. She's good)).

One word of warning though. No covers so, although I think Gemiinii Riisiing's version of Don't Fear the Reaper is awesome, she'd have to nominate another track. Likewise, I'm hoping to see nominations for Playing Rapunzel, The Sharron McLeod Fauxtet, and the Pennebakers as well.

Good luck everyone.

Looking back from 2109

The discussion takes place in a chatroom officially sanctioned by the Gunhuaguo, I imagine it will pretty much follow the Party line.

Back in 2009, there were still wars being fought on Earth itself, in fact, Earth was all there was. This was before the Mars Colony, before Titan, even before the moon was colonised. There was concern in those days that a "failed state" or a terrorist group might get its hands on nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. That was before the sixth Pakistan-India war, of course, when the Indians showed uncontrovertibly that but for its "shock and awe" value, a nuclear weapon was useless as a weapon of war. Remember how the "New Thugs" went through the Red Zone in Kashmir to take Pakistan by surprise?

The people in 2009 were terrified about so much and so much of it was needless. They worried about Terrorism, Islamification, Disease, Famine, Overpopulation never realising that the truly implacable enemy was apathy.

Look at the fall of the United States. It didn't come directly from any of the perceived threats much touted in the American media at the time. Even the Gunhuaguo waited until the state had fallen before intervening. No, instead, like Prince Prospero in Po's "Masque of the Red Death", they tried to protect themselves from the forces at large in the world by removing more and more of the liberties their citizens enjoyed to the point where the country simply ceased to be democratic (and then it was an easy matter for the Gunhuaguo, through rational argument to subsume the Republic into the Benevolent Global Hegemony of Zhonghua.)

But enough of politics. You all know the stories. What of technology, what of recreation, what of humanity itself?We've mentioned Mars, Titan and the Moon, buto those colonies are the results of 20th century thinking. Under the benevolent guidance of the Son of Heaven, Mankind is now looking further, beyond the solar system. We know of at least forty habitable planets of other stars, true it will take a lifetime to reach one of them, but the Gunhuaguo has lifetimes and the first generation starships are already being built in the Belt, and shipped to O'Neill station for assembly. Then there are the undersea and Antarctic habitats. The beginnings of global climate control, the emergence of nano-technology, so loudly heralded in the twentieth century, but only now coming to fruition.

And of course, there are the remaining vestiges of democracy, the only form in which it was popular, voting on reality shows like the X-factor and You Bet Your Life.

In music, who remembers rock music? House? Reggae? Of course not, these are all obscure. Do you know in 2009 few people even knew what a Bassoon was, let alone a Saz or a Zhonghu, for popular music was still in the age of the electric guitar and the synthesizer.

And what of humanity itself...? There were artificial hearts of course, but in 2009 there were no cyborgs in the world. There were not even shaped people - everyone and we mean everyone, was born with the genes they inherited randomly from their parents. Can you imagine that, a world in which you could have been born stupid or ugly, or suffering from dread diseases such as albinism?

We've come a long way in the last 100 years and it's hard even to imagine what the next hundred years will bring.

Channeling Kafka

I find it easy to imagine being taken from my home in the dead of night for something I never did (always assuming someone was kind enough to tell me what I was supposed to have done, not all countries of the world give a prisoner the right to know with what he is charged).

I find it easy to imagine being woken up in the cells by the caress of a baseball bat against my ribs and then having to endure the beating. I can't imagine confessing but many people would, provided they were told what to confess to.I find it easy to imagine being refused communication with anyone outside and then given a lawyer appointed for me who turns up drunk and unprepared on the day of the trial.

I can imagine hearing endless evidence that would convince anyone with half a brain of my innocence... only to look at the jury as they pronounced me guilty and realise they didn't have one between them (or alternatively, they just didn't know me and so didn't know I must be innocent).

I can imagine being taken to prison and locked away, perhaps in solitary confinement after the other prisoners and guard are told my crime is particularly repugnant even by their standards.I can imagine being turned down for release countless times because I would not admit my guilt for a crime I did not commit.

I can imagine dying in prison because I was not prepared to admit a crime I did not commit.Alternatively, I can imagine crying my eyes out and begging for my mom (or almost anybody else to be honest, you don't know my mum) as they dragged me kicking and screaming to the gurney and held me down while they filled me up of poison all for something I knew I didn't do.

I can also imagine being murdered and do you know what. A murderer is evil. It's somehow worse to be killed after "due process" by upstanding normal citizens just doing their jobs. Whether one person suffers that fate, or millions, there is no difference in quality between the regimes that allow it.

Teaching Science

I won't beat myself up. I know I failed in my new years' resolution to write every day but I expected to fail so there we go. On the other hand, I have been writing (under the name Alcuin) on http://www.fanstory.com/index.jsp where people can judge my works and I get feedback (which helps me be a better writer).

That's not what I really want to write about today. I'm prompted to write by a TV programme in which a teacher in Burnley is trying to enthuse pupils with an interest in science. The trouble is, there's an elephant in the room that was mentioned but not discussed.

He was trying to interest kids in science but health and safety regulations meant that many experiments could not be performed by children. More to the point, he was using fireworks to provide the enthusiasm but WITHOUT telling them the formula for gunpowder. Not only could he not give them the proportions but there was one scene in which a professor from a firework company was explaining how they add strontium chloride to make a bright red flame. The teacher had to stop himself mentioning Sulphur, Charcoal or Potassium Nitrate and instead said "Strontium Chloride and other stuff".

I mean come ON!. When I was at primary school, they told us how to make gunpowder and by the time I was thirteen, I went on a school trip to Nottingham University to see a lecture on explosives in which they even gave the formula for RDX, a form of plastique.

As long as we treat the idea of letting kids know things as somehow dangerous. As long as we won't let the little mites have hands on experience with chemicals (at least things like dilute sulphuric acid) which may be dangerous in the wrong place, can be handled safely with proper supervision. We're going to have generations with no interest in science.

Worse still. No wonder we have people who went to school under this teaching regime arguing that science is just another opinion. They don't understand how science works because they've just been taught it out of a book. No wonder they're bored and no wonder we're descending into anonymity as just another small country. Soon we'll be Denmark.

Arrrgh

I haven't gone to bed yet, so I can pretend it's still yesterday and come in under the wire.

The cat's still ill and worse but unconnected, I forgot my PIN number today. I tried it twice then stopped I don't want to lose my debit card. I'll go to the bank and get it changed tomorrow. When I've been to the vet.

One thing I did do today though, was cook! I made Lasz (a vegetarian dish similar to Goulash) but served it with conchiglie instead of rice. Best of all, I did it without following a recipe (although I did use a recipe as a basis for a shopping list).

Here's the recipe:

Slice a big onion and fry it in sunflower oil for five minutes. Add three half peppers chopped up (I used one each of red, green and yellow). Add 250g of fresh mushrooms peeled and sliced. Add a big spud, diced and two cloves of garlic, crushed. cook it for another five minutes.

Then put a tin of chickpeas and a tin of peeled tomatoes in another pot with a little chilli and a lot of paprika. Add the contents of the frying pan and simmer for forty minutes.

Cook the conchiglie separately (takes about ten minutes) and when it's al dente, add it to the pot. Stir for a couple of minutes and then serve. It serves three. My family liked it, even when I told them it was student food.

Memory 3

I don't know how old I was but probably very young. I remember the dark of a black cab. I remember the glow of the streetlights and the old vans with the Evening News logo. I don't remember getting into the cab or out but I imagine the ride was from Victoria to Grove Park, Camberwell, where my grandmother used to live.

I remember my grandmother's black hair and parchment skin. She had a very strong resemblence to Madame Jiang Qing, and this resemblance grew stronger as both my grandmother and Jiang Qing, both grew older. When we were around her, she and my father would talk about spiritual evolution but it was always more Blavatsky than Teilhard de Chardin, but at that age, I'd heard of neither. I thought my grandmother very wise for a very long time.

I guess we all think our forbears wise until we grow into our own wisdom. I hope mine isn't long in coming.

Sometimes it's hard

Sometimes it's really hard to find anything to write about, but that's what I've promised myself I'll do. It's Saturday. I stayed in all day with young Tashai crawling all over the place, demanding attention and even worse, disturbing P-P, who has a swollen face from being attacked by another cat.

P is a most unhappy cat right now. It could be worse though. Last week, he had a visible tumour growing on his head. This has now fallen off, and I've examined him closely. It's no longer there. The scarring from the other cat's claws though is deep and probably painful. I'm going to have to take him to the vet. I remember the last time I took him. He's a heavy cat, and his carrying cage is big enough for an ocelot. And then I'll get to the vets and find it full of dogs.

Let's hope he gets well soon.