News Of The World

London Fields # 94
First published Inpress (Issue # 1184), Melbourne on 27 July 2011, and in Drum Media (Issue # 1070), Sydney on 26 July 2011
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

A Sunday morning stroll through the News Of The World’s website to see what celebrity muck had been freshly raked used to seem like a bit of fun. Many of the stories were seemingly so ludicrous that they were amusing, and it could be done with a clear conscience didn’t involve actually buying the rag. But the fairly ambivalent attitude of the British public to the phone hacking saga changed dramatically about three weeks ago when it was revealed that News Of The World had not only hacked into the voicemail of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, but had deleted messages as well, leading relatives believe that the then only missing family member was perhaps still alive. Targeting those who had at some point actively sought the limelight didn’t seem so bad, but this was another thing entirely. As Billy Bragg sings in his new song Never Buy The Sun: “the means justify the ends because we only hunt celebrities and it's all a bit of fun”.. But this reprehensible act shocked a nation and (contrary to what I read in a piece in The Australian) quickly became a hot topic of conversation across all classes and beliefs.

As this saga unfolded I kept recalling the central motif of HBO’s Game Of Thrones: "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground." For decades newspapers have played at king making - Murdoch papers supported Labour Party in the elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005, and then at the last election reverted to their formal loyalties to stand firmly behind David Cameron and the Conservative Party. So perhaps it’s not unexpected that Ed Miliband, the current leader of the British Labour Party, has seemed to finally gain some teeth when discussing this issue. While it seems this present government is determined to substantially weaken the BBC, some papers have tried to claim that the whole Hackgate sage was a beat-up of a private leftist cabal between The Guardian and the BBC, with a Daily Mail headline asking “why won't he [Miliband] tackle the REAL threat to our way of life - the BBC” in response.

While attention was focussed on this, there wasn’t much room for other stories. So the announcement that the NHS, which we’re continually reassured isn’t going to be privatised, will have £1billion of services opened up to private competition passed almost unmarked, as did Education Secretary Michael Gove’s report to the Commons that the rebuilding project for 58 schools which he axed would remain scrapped (despite the opinions of the High Court). Meanwhile on television late night current affairs show Newsnight saw a surge in rating as day-by-day new revelations came to light, and hosted great live interviews such as one where Steve Coogan eviscerated a NotW journo. Over on Question Time, another celebrity who had found himself the subject of tabloid stories fought back, with Hugh Grant proving himself mightily impressive.

The shining knight in this whole sorry affair has been the pioneering and persistent investigative work by The Guardian that has brought this into the light. Yet its continued future is a cause of concern. Although The Guardian has the second largest online readership of any English language paper in the world, there is no paywall (Comment Is Free) but last month it revealed an annual loss of £33 million and stated that the Guardian Media Group could run out of cash within five years “if the business operations did not change”.

This weekend showed nothing much had really changed. While that the closure of the News Of The World may have put some people out of work and adversely affected newsagents Sunday takings, the act has done relatively little to address serious issues in certain sections of the Fourth Estate. One tabloid led with what was apparently Amy Winehouse’s final drug deal, while others were happy to quote the story and show photos of the late singer’s blanket covered corpse being removed from her home. While in (Murdoch owned) The Times last Friday cartoonist Peter Brookes depicted three staving Africans, one of whom opined “I’ve had a bellyful of phone-hacking”. But perhaps the most telling comment on the whole affair was automatically generated by a machine. When I tried to access the NotW website from my work PC, I found it had been blocked by my employer. The reason given was that it was “categorized as: Tasteless & Offensive”.

© James McGalliard 2011

Inpress: Published on page 57
Drum: Published on page 60

Life In A Day

London Fields # 81
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 11 August 2010
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

The English midsummer marks the height of the festival season - each weekend events jostle for attention and audience. Yet over the past few years there’s been a new type of event gaining popularity - that of the day festival. Usually at this time of year you’d find me at the Truck Festival at Hill Farm, Steventon in Oxfordshire. 2010 marked its 13th year, and it’s hard to think of a better combination of music, atmosphere and good vibes as this event continues to offer. But circumstances made it impossible for me to get there this year, so as compensation I decided to check out some of these newer day events. While these give you a festival experience without stepping out too far from home or having to camp, the trouble with holding them in urban parks is the enforced sound restrictions If it’s loud enough for the punters inside the fences, it’s probably a nightmare of shuddering windows for nearby residents. Yet when you use more high-tech directional PAs, it does really restrict the area in which paying audience can experience good quality sound.

The first thing that greets me as I arrive at the dusty expanses of a very dry Shoreditch Park in Hackney is an enormous queue. This it turns out if for VIPs and those on the free list . As I’ve bought my ticket for the third Shoreditch 1234 Festival it turns out I can walk straight in - well almost. The security searches are vigorous, and apparently they’re under strict instructions not to allow any food or water entering the arena. In front of me a woman gets into an argument with them as they take exception to a small box of nuts in her handbag. Her friend diffuses a rapidly escalating situation by taking them herself and tipping them into the bin. Nearby someone says they have special food with them due to a gluten intolerance - they’re told they have to eat it now or toss it. God help a diabetic carrying an emergency Mars bar. Inside are three tent stages, and one main outdoor one. Some of the acts I catch during the day include S.C.U.M, Dum Dum Girls, Vivian Girls, Rolo Tomassi, and Bobby Gillespie’s new covers supergroup The Silver Machine. Later I wait fruitlessly for These New Puritans to fix a catastrophic equipment failure which sees everything seize after a single song; it is in vain. But the real reason I’m here is to catch the only London performance of Peter Hook’s take on Unknown Pleasures. On the whole it’s better than you’d think it might be, although Hooky’s air punching gets a bit tiresome, and it is weird that his son who plays the iconic bassline to She’s Lost Control.

You’d be hard pushed to find a more corporately branded event than Ben & Jerry’s Sundae On The Common, yet the way it is done doesn‘t make it feel too much of an imposition. Like the end of an episode of Sesame Street, it‘s continually drummed in that today was bought to you by Fair Trade and a multinational company which loves the planet. This is the sixth year of Sundae and my third visit and while ticket prices may have nearly doubled in the last two years, at around £17 they’re still very reasonably priced. You couldn’t get an atmosphere less like the 1234 Festival After yesterday’s experience I have nothing with me; of course today anything is allowed other than drugs, glass and alcohol. It’s is genuinely a family-friendly event, and early in the day the bands tend to be seen as a mild distraction - the real attraction is the free ice cream.

Although officially opening the day, Barnsley’s Exit Calm are my main draw card and they play a headline-worthy set. Rob Marshall’s anthemic guitar lines are loud and clear whilst singer Nicky Smith paces up and down like a caged tiger, seemingly ready to explode into violence at any moment. Simon Lindley’s fluid bass and Scott Pemberton’s tight stick work complete the sound and it’s really damn impressive. When an act can hold a stage with such well-informed self-belief, it won’t be long before they’re topping the bill at events larger than this. Later in the day Frightened Rabbit explain that even though this is a family event if they only chose numbers with G-rated lyrics they’d be down to a two song set. So it’s business as usual - thankfully. Billy Bragg doesn’t have his hands down the front of his trousers but his undies on the outside of his jeans - for Pants For Poverty. His set includes a sublime rendition of Must I Paint You A Picture? as its subject used to live on the other side of the Common. doves close the day, and this is their penultimate set before going on a long hiatus. It all feels a little tired, and only on Kingdom Of Rust do I see again the band I used to love so much.


© James McGalliard 2010

Gypsyfolkpunkrock

London Fields # 51
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 23 April 2008
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

There are some interesting developments in indie UK music away from the generic ‘Carling Indierock’ that seems to be widely exported. There’s a growing unquiet, which is finding its expression not through radio-friendly unit shifters like The Enemy, but via singer-songwriters. While you could say that some of these were following in Billy Bragg’s footsteps, and others from a folk rock tradition, each is saying something different in a vibrant way.

I suppose the most long-standing one of these artists is Chris T-T. His early records were very London-based – The 253 album was named after a bus route (which ran from Whitechapel to Euston via Hackney, Finsbury Park and Camden). In October 2005 came his furious protest LP 9 Red Songs, resulting in some media attention and a live session with Tom Robinson on BBC 6Music. I caught him play a mid-afternoon set on the main stage at Truck Festival last summer, and was suitably impressed with his personality, his wit and his songwriting. He’s just released Capital, which completes the London triptych he began with The 253. Sharing a label with Chris T-T, and having recently toured in America with him, is Frank Turner. Like Billy Bragg, he came from a punk background, in this case as frontman of defunct punk rock band Million Dead. Turner has just released Love Ire and Song, his second album as a solo artist. It’s a more political beast and perhaps not as endearing as its predecessor, Sleep is for the Week, which dealt more with personal relationships. Yet both albums share a refreshing honesty and candour of music and lyrics which distinguish him from the run of the mill. For both artists are making strong statements in a time when much of the music that is broadcast is mainly apolitical and homogeneous.

On The Ballad Of Me And My Friends, Frank Turner sings of playing ‘another Nambucca show’. Tom Hull, aka Kid Harpoon, started his London career living above, and playing regularly at that very north London venue. I first caught Kid Harpoon as a solo artist, opening the bill for shoegazey folk-rockers Fields. Accompanying himself on an acoustic guitar, he had a great presence, and a strong set of songs. But the crowning glory was his blistering take on Leonard Cohen’s First We Take Manhattan. Since then, he’s recruited a band, The Powers That Be, and I’ve seen them several time before, but nothing prepared me for the joyous explosion they created recently at a show at Dingwalls. For in an age when gigs can be over-regulated, they showed people it was possible to have fun without being ejected from the venue. From the people who ran onstage and planted kisses on Tom’s cheek, to the crowdsurfers, and those who stayed onstage to sing along the chorus of The Milkmaid – all were left alone to get on with it and no-one was hurt or evicted. With the full band, the music is sorta gypsy folk punk rock, showing the transparency of all those post-Libertines acts. For what Kid and The Powers have created is a musical timewarp, an age when you could let it all go at a gig and have a fantastic time without fear. And it’s still early days; he and his band are still finding their way and learning just what they can achieve. But the most startling thing is the way Manhattan is now his song, just as much as John Cale or Jeff Buckley can lay claim to Cohen’s Hallelujah.

Although not folky in any sense, but like Kid Harpoon another of my picks for 2008, there have been great leaps forwards by Exit Calm. When I first saw them I loved the music but was unsure of their singer. But now Nicky Smith has all the swagger of Ian Brown and the menace of a young Liam Gallagher, but his throaty rasp is all his own. The only thing that may stand in their way is the volume of Rob Marshall’s guitar, which at a recent show at The 100 Club threatened to destroy anything within a 400’ radius of the stage.

Speaking of loud, there’s been a huge shift in the world of The Twilight Sad - they’ve added a fifth member. Now the Sad were my favourite act of 2007; each show was special and unique. And it’s unfair to make a judgement based on a single show, but their London showcase at The 100 Club was the first time they didn’t blow my proverbial socks off. Dok (from Aereogramme) is the newcomer, and he fills out the sound with keyboards, loops and some additional guitar. Alas, it was a case of more is less. For there was a purity about the four-piece – the contrasts between the fury and the ebb. The impact of this has lessened with the expansion, as all the spaces are filled. Afterwards the band tells me this addition is permanent, as they felt they needed some new input. I’ll tend to trust them and wait to see how it all turns out as they’ve been right in so many ways before. Oh, and the new stuff sounds just grand…


© James McGalliard 2008

Flying The Flag

London Fields # 2
First published Inpress, Melbourne on 16 June 2004
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here

“Mixing pop and politics, they ask me what the use is”

Billy Bragg – Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

It wasn’t until I’d been living here a while that I came to appreciate the differences between England and Britain. Yet the question of nationality has been fuelling debates for months, and couldn’t have been more apparent over the last few weeks. Is a political awakening of the masses behind this sea change? Partially. It’s a response to Iraq, the rise of the British National Party [BNP – think of a nastier One Nation] and the build up to the Euro 2004 Football Tournament.

More than ever, national identity has become a key issue in the UK today. In the lead up to Euro 2004, there are St George’s cross flags EVERYWHERE – pubs, fronts of houses, flying from cars. This ties into the debate over the call for official recognition of St George’s Day. But who was St George? No-one can be sure of any facts, but it appears England’s patron saint was born in Turkey in the third century, lived in Palestine and fought in the Roman army.

In a strange way the debate can be seen in recent events at XFM, where Breakfast DJ Christian O'Connell decided to put out his own football song, inspired by the rumour that the Football Association [FA] were going to have Blazing Squad record the official anthem. A competition ensued where listeners submitted songs for approval. The winner was ‘Born In England’, by The Wheatleys. Under the moniker of Twisted X, this was re-recorded featuring Bernard Butler, members of Delays, The Libertines and Supergrass, as well as 500 listeners of the Breakfast Show, with profits to go to the charity ‘Help a Local Child’.

XFM was hoping to get the FA’s official sanction for their song. The FA wouldn’t grant it, and released a new version of The Farm’s 'All Together Now'. So how does all this tie in? Well, personally, I think that the FA were wary of being seen to support a song that could be taken as a nationalist anthem at a time when the BNP are trying to make their presence felt. Now, I’m not for a second suggesting that ‘Born In England’ was guilty of any such thing; yet people are terrified of being misconstrued in a time of mistrust and doubt. It’s these very sentiments that feed the paranoia that are a part of the Little Britain mentality, and used by anti-European fearmongers.

It’s worth relating the story of the Unity Festival, part of the ongoing campaign by the Anti-Nazi League. Love Music Hate Racism was due to be a free event held in Finsbury Park two weeks ago, headlined by The Libertines. When Police then insisted that a fence be placed around the area; this made the event financially unfeasible, forcing it to be scaled down and moved indoors to the Hammersmith Apollo. To cover their new costs, they then needed a minimum donation of £5 per person to pay venue hire costs. Then, with Pete Doherty in rehab in France, the whole thing fell though, and had to be cancelled.

With events like this being buried, and then disappearing, most people I know did felt that they had to bother to vote this time around. With non-compulsory voting, the turn-up was around 36% - still this was amongst the best in Europe. The thing was that their votes were always against something; the majority of people I spoke to just wanted the BNP to be stomped on, but also to register their feelings over the continuing situation in Iraq.

In May, Morrissey returned to the charts singing

“I’ve been dreaming of a time when to be English is not to be baneful
To be standing by the flag not feeling shameful, racist or partial”

Then last weekend in Dublin he commented on the death of Ronald Reagan, saying that the wrong President had died. He may well find that the Americans are far less tolerant of criticism of their country, than is the case with the UK’s reaction to his mythical Little Britain sentiments that he writes of from his Hollywood home.

In case you’re wondering, here are the final scores:
Charts: “Born In England” at #9, “All Together Now” at # 5, “Come On England” at # 2
Euro 2004: France 2 England 1
Vote 2004: BNP 5%, UKIP 17.7 % {9 % gain}


© James McGalliard 2004