hmmm_tea

This evening I wandered over to the SPGB, who were holding a screening of the film Matewan.

I don't know much about the detailed history of the US and in particular the coal workers strikes of the 1920s, so I've no idea how accurate a portrayal of the Matewan Massacre the film was. However, it was very well acted, very moving and did carry across several strong messages.

The film clearly shows how workers could be exploited by their employers and the reactions that take place to this. For example, early on the film you saw the miners reactions directed to imported workers being brought in to replace those that joined the union rather than the employer that was treating them as a commodity and replacing them accordingly. This is exactly the same reaction as the modern "British jobs for British people" mentality. The jobs don't belong to the workers, they belong to the employer and the workers that fulfil those roles are essentially commodities owned by the employer. Modern workers may have a lot more freedom nowadays, but that basic fact is still true and as with all commodities the purchaser (employer) will seek to gain this at the lowest price and potentially replace them if a lower priced alternative comes to light.

The other key message the film put across was how violent uprisings weren't the answer to this. The main character, Joe Kenehan, when discussing not fighting in the war, highlights that is objection is that he couldn't take the life of another man who is just doing what his government tell him to. I've heard people put forward the view of soldiers as workers tasked with killing each other to promote the views of the governing class before, but never in a major film. It makes a change from the promoted idea that all soldiers clearly fought for a cause they strongly believed in.

However, even in a minor uprising like this one, where the miners were fighting for their rights, the film gives strong messages to show how this doesn't help. All the active fighting doesn't actually help the miners at any point in the film and it only ends up with casualities.

All in all, it's a good film, very well acted and very thought provoking.

Ooo look a free moment, that's novel. Time to review the next CD in the pile, namely Mamienco's self-titled EP.

Found Mamienco at Broadstairs Folk Festival during the summer, where they played a late night concert on the opening night programmed as "Where Gypsy Jazz and Rock meet". Clear influences of French gypsy folk, jazz and contemporary rock are all present here delivered through a blend of clarinet, acordeon, bass and drums with a good dose of eccentric dramatism. They're somewhat like a French cross between Bellowhead and Soft Machine, which has to be a winning combination.

They had an amazing amount of drive with which to set the atmosphere for the opening night of the festival, as shows through in tracks like "Too many", but with the ability to slow things down to dramatic effect as in "Vivre avec". "Celui qui marche" sees them at their most contemporary and most dramatic, somewhat like indie rock, but with a strong folk jazz twist. "Interlune" on the other hands takes them back to their folk roots, starting off with just the accordian playing a very dramatic French waltz with the other performers joining in as the track develops to layer even more contemporary drama on top.

The highlights of the album have to be "Too many", "Interlune" and "Celui qui marche", but the tracks are all so different that it's difficult to say that any one outshines the others.

Some of these tracks can be found on MySpace.

As if last weekend was not enough. Thrales are out again on Friday. This time on the Isle of Dogs.

We're meeting at the Henry Addington, MacKenzie Walk at 7.30 for an 8pm start. Then going on to:

City Pride, Westferry Road
The Rogue Trader, Westferry Road
The Fine Line, Fishermans Walk
1802 Museum of Docklands

...and whereever else we can find

Also on facebook, although there's not any more detail there.

This is cool...


(Direct Link)

(via richardwiseman)

Turn your back for 5 minutes and it suddenly becomes fashionable to turn your feet into sandwiches, all thanks to these



Bread Shoes from da da da studios (via craziestgadgets)

Well I suppose it solves the problem of what to do if you get peckish when you're out for a walk.

It's nearly Thrales weekend again!

This year Gaorsach are joining us all the way from Aberdeen.

The weekend is looking something like this...

Friday

Meeting 8pm at The Three Compasses, High St, Hornsey.

We may dance or not depending on who's there and what people feel like.


Saturday

Dancing starts in earnest with our usual tour of Soho during the day taking in the following pubs:

• De Hems, Macclesfield St - Meeting from 10.30 am ready to dance 11.45 am


• Three Greyhounds, Greek St


• The Cambridge, Cambridge Circus

Then after a brief stop for lunch...

• Admiral Duncan, Old Compton St - at about 1.45 pm


• Dog and Duck, Frith St


• Crown and Two Chairmen, Dean St


• Pillars of Hercules, Greek St


• Nellie Dean, Dean St


• John Snow, Broadwich St


• Shaston Arms, Ganton St


• White Horse, Newburgh St


• The Clachan, Kingly St


• Blue Posts, Kingly St

Then off to the Borough for some food before hitting the following in the evening

• The Old School Yard, Long Lane - prob around 8.30ish


• The Shoehorse, Melior St


• Bunch of Grapes, St Thomas St


• The Wheatsheaf, Southwark St


• George Inn, Borough High St


• Royal Oak, Tabard St

Sunday

As always, we'll be rounding off the weekend with a gathering of the great and the good of the rapper world and beyond at the Prince William Henry, Blackfriars Road from around 12 noon.


Which will probably keep us quite busy...

So, Morris a Life with Bells on finally found its way inside the M25 and so I finally saw it with a big group of Blackheath/Dacre/Greenwich people after doing a few dances outside the cinema.

One of the best things about Morris Dancing is how open it is to ridicule. There's something very special about the "OMG! Morris Dancers" reaction you can get from an unsuspecting crowd. The film plays on this to hilarious ends.

The plot centres around Derecq Twist, a Dorset tractor mechanic who's life revolves around Morris Dancing and his run ins with the Morris Circle for going against the traditions.

As with all comedy, it wouldn't be anywhere near as funny if there wasn't an ounce of truth in it. Although, there are a lot of open-minded welcoming individuals within the morris world, there is also a lot of pretentiousness as you get with anything "traditional", and this just makes a complete mockery of it and traditional social organisations as a whole. There was something very masonic about the portrayal of morris dancing in the film, which just went to emphasise this.

To top it all off, they even had a Cambridge professor of folk dancing analysing the goings on in very academic way at various points in the film. The fact she reminded me of one of the tutors I met while I was there, just made it all the more funny.

It was good to see Wild Hunt's cameo, even if the fame does appear to have gone to their heads a bit recently.

However, the highlight of the film has to be the performance by Orange County Morris, which is a brilliantly funny combination of traditional and modern dance.

Overall, it's somewhat like Spinal Tap, but with sticks and hankies. Well worth seeing.

Just when you thought I might be having a day off from Morris Dancing...

Blackheath will be dancing out around Greenwich on Sunday, nearish to the Picturehouse Cinema meeting 2.30pm at the The Mitre, Greenwich High Road (Dacre are apparently going to be around abouts those parts at the same time... must be something luring Morris Dancers to the cinema).

I won't start on the long rant about the film-makers decision that they would hold back the London showings of the film until after everywhere else, because films tend to be shown in London first, except they then showed it in Leicester Square (which obviously isn't in London apparently!).

This Saturday is Halloween, which means it's traditional for trickMorris dance or treating.

Wild Hunt will therefore be dancing around the Borough and South Bank area, starting at around 2pm at the George Inn, Borough High Street.

I'm a little teapot, must be one of the more memorable childhood songs, which makes it utterly confusing that I can't remember the 5th line.

I've heard lots of different versions of it as an adult, but they all sound wrong somehow.

Having ended up singing it last weekend, it seems appropriate time for a poll (especially as I haven't had one in ages)...

Poll #1478066 I'm a Little Teapot
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 21

What comes next? I'm a little teapot, Short and stout, Here's my handle, Here's my spout...

Have a strange feeling I may have posted a very similar poll before, but as I'm still not enlightened, I reserve the right to repeat myself

Before I give up on this new fangled GMT lark and run off and find sleep, I must write up the next album on the pile. Not least, so I don't have that cockroach from the front of Papa Roach's 2000 Infest album staring at me whenever I check my email.

Bit of an odd one for me this one, as I'm not usually a big fan of rap. Generally by itself, I tend to find it a bit boring, however when you use it alongside other vocals it somehow works much better and adds character to the music. Following Faith No More's Epic mould Papa Roach use both to great effect backed up with a strong heavy metal grungy guitar based sound.

They're not exactly original and have very little new to add to the genre, but what they do, they do well and what they do is punchy angst-ridden alt metal.

Highlights of the album Last Resort, which does a wonderful job of toning down the guitars to let the rap take the centre stage during the verses, with the full sound kicking back in for the sung choruses, Broken Home, which lets the vocals focus mainly on song with only a little rap for effect, and Snakes which does the opposite (including record scratching during the rap). However, the sound really comes together on Between Angels and Insects, which takes their sound and rams it right down your throat.

The whole album is available to listen to on last.fm, but have a link to Between Angels and Insects.

Having had a run of metal in the pile, the next one is something completely different...

So just caught up on last nights Question Time. For those of you that missed it, it's available on iplayer at the moment:


(Direct link)

The slagging match at the begining was a bit pointless. Throwing quotes at him and him denying them isn't going to convince anyone that's BNP policy unless they know he's already said them, in which case they either agree with the sentiment expressed or they don't.

The BNP have some horrendous views, but if you throw quotes at anyone that the vast majority disagree with, and they couldn't possibly justify to the people, in front of the very people they are trying to convince of their policies, then of course they are going to try and wriggle out of these things.

Unless the government make hugely monumental cock up to completely alienate the people against all the main parties, the BNP are unlikely to gain a majority in the government, so the chances of any of their most extreme policies getting implemented are minimal.

However, they do have more moderate policies that are winning over voters. These are the ones to address. When these came up later in the show, Nick opened up and not only expressed these views, but also gave insight into the underlying abhorrant reasoning behind them. That is where the true agenda of the BNP is shown off to the nation, not through a personal attack on their representative.

He has every right to hold his views and every right to express them. It is the duty of opposing politicians to expose the holes within these policies not within the person. Whatever he believes he is a human being and he deserves be treated with common courtesy regardless of whether he shows this to others in return.

No matter how extreme his views, he does have some valid points to raise. People voted for him because they believe he represents their views, so he needs to be allowed to represent them. Many of these people aren't going to believe in all the policies the BNP puts forward. Who believes in all the policies of the party they vote for? It must be a very small minority of people. If the majority of the views the BNP put forward turn out not to be what the people voted for and against what these people believe they'll question why they voted for him. However, there will be some of them that do express what the people voted for.

There are issues with people feeling that immigrants are coming into the country and threatening their way of life. There are people who find homosexual activities repulsive. Homophobia exists. These are issues that need to be raised and the BNP are quite right to raise them. Many people feel threatened by these things because they threaten the values they have been brought up to believe in and so want them brought up for discussion for that very reason.

What makes the BNP abhorrent is what they want to do about these issue, shutting them out of harms way instead of bringing them forward to help people come to terms with them. It's through debating these issues that the true nature of these policies come forward and you see exactly how anti-equality the BNP really are.

We don't fear being equal. We fear being less important than those around us and things that challenge our position in society to make us that way. To show the true nature of the BNP, you need to show how they want to make huge numbers of the people in this country into lesser citizens by promoting inequality.

I must admit I was feeling quite sorry for Griffin by the end. No matter how extreme his views are they are still as valid as anyone elses and he had to sit there and put these forwards to a room full of negative feeling towards him. It can't have been easy for him no matter how used to it he is and it was interesting to see how much he seemed to be shaking towards the end.

He and the people who voted for him, have these views for a reason. You can't just dismiss them. They need to be debated so that the issues they raise can be looked at under a more rational light. You don't gain equality by putting one persons views in higher regards than another. Equality requires all these views to be discussed on equal grounds. Only then can everyone feel that their views have been represented in the resulting solution.

There are too many of us who want to see equality for the BNP to get their way, but this equality can only be truely equal if it gives the views of all individuals including those in the BNP fair consideration.

The other major thing happening this weekend is the clock's change, which means more dancing as I've been invited to dance with Tylers Men on their clocks tour on Sunday.

Never even seen them, let alone danced with them before, so this could be interesting...

We're (I say we, but I've no idea who we are apart from a few blackheath people and a couple of familiar recipiant names on the emails) starting dancing at The Duke of Hamilton, New End at around 12.30


Is dancing with 6 sides in one year excessive?

It does means that I will have managed to double the maximum number of sides I've danced with in previous years. How'd that happen?

Don't think I'll try doubling it again. Even I'm not stupid enough to try for 12!

Then again... it could be fun!

This weekend it's Dance Around the World at Cecil Sharp House in Camden.

Wild Hunt are there on the Saturday running a workshop 1pm - 2pm and then doing a performance at 4.30 pm

Will probably head up there for the whole day and take in a few of the other workshops.

So, the next CD in the pile is the Smashing Pumpkins' Adore from 1998.

The Smashing Pumpkins somehow missed my radar when I was a teenager other than for a general awareness that the band existed. It wasn't until university that I actually really listened to any of their music through this album and it's predecessor Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Even then, although I found it interesting, I never really got into it.

Several years later, I found this copy in a local record shop for £2, so picked it up and gave it another listen... and another... and another and it keeps growing on me.

It was around this time that music fashion appeared to turn back towards synthesisers under the influence of bands such as Aphex Twin and there were several grungy rock bands trying out more synthesised styles to varying degrees of success. The Pumpkins with their art rock sound naturally seem to have the blend these bands were trying for without any effort. In some ways it takes the arena dance rock of the likes of Depeche Mode and angst-ridden playfulness of bands like the Cure and does the unthinkable and attempts to add even more drama to it. Somehow it works, seemlessly moving between orchestral synthesisers, heavy rock guitars and more acoustic stuff.

Adore came out after the dismissal of drummer Jimmy Chamberlin from the band which was taken as an opportunity to update the bands style. It's quite a while since I last heard Melon Collie, so how much of a change it represents I cannot say, but it certainly shows heavy leanings toward drum machines alongside it's multitude of studio drummers.

One of the things that makes this album so interesting, is the huge variety of styles of the tracks. Whatever you could say about the band, you couldn't accuse them of having only one sound on this album.

Of all the tracks the one that really stands out to me is Pug, which wonderfully melts between orchestral synthesisers and rocking guitar making strong use of both the acoustic drum kit and electric drum machine.

The first single from the album Ava Adore also demonstrates the sound quite well and the video also shows off the dramatic eccentricity of the band, so here it is:


(Direct Link)

There are a multitude of artists promoting themselves through the internet on the likes of facebook and twitter, but billycorgan is the first one I've heard of on LJ.

I enjoy the occasional alcoholic drink and there are times when I have a few too many, but in general I don't enjoy being drunk.

As with many teenagers who start to become able to purchase alcohol (whether legally or not), I went through the whole drink vast quantities to prove how much I could hold my drink when I was younger. The upshot of which was generally, however much you can take, you drink far more than this, end up losing most of your inhibitions, being very ill, spending far too much and not remembering any of it in the morning making it a utter waste of time.

Saw this advert at the cinema recently, which seems to cover the point quite well:


(Direct Link)

As I've grown up, I've opted to drink less, but move towards spending a bit more for something that actually tastes nice. Whereas, my aim as a teenager was to get drunk, now it's just to enjoy the drink. If I drink too much then it's because I've not being paying attention to how much I've drunk rather than because I've been deliberately aiming to drink that much and even then I don't get near the states I got into as a teenager.

However, even as a grown adult you still get into situations where peer pressure is pushing you to drink more than you really want.

Recently I ended up the pub with some friends, I had a pint and socialised for a bit, but not feeling like I wanted a second I wandered off for a bit, returning about 2 hours later. By that time they'd had a few more pints and were quite merry, which is obviously up to them if they want to.

From what I gathered when I got back, there had been a few of them buying drinks for another member of the group. Nothing wrong with that in itself as it's just friendly. However, what they'd been doing was buying doubles without telling her, which has been bothering me since I found out. If someone chooses to get drunk that's one thing, but if others around them are actively seeking to make them drunk then that's going against their free will.

You hear many horror stories of people who have had things like Rohipnol placed in their drink. While I'm fairly sure that no one here was trying to take advantage in that way, placing extra alcohol in someones drink is still the same abuse of someone's free will even if the result is more socially acceptable.

For all I know they could have all been perfectly happy with the situation. I didn't really stick around very long afterwards to find out.

To me, being drunk isn't a fun state to be in, so actively seeking to get someone else drunk is just seeking to make a fool out of them. How can that possibly be a good thing?

Don't seem to have posted about Morris dancing for a while, which is very remiss of me, especially as Wild Hunt are a group of people who strangely weigh the same amount as ducks, in Holborn this afternoon.

There's a number of things that have got me thinking about nationalism recently including discussions about British nationalism with a member of the BNP on facebook and a talk on nationalism in Palestine by the socialists on Tuesday evening. I guess I still just don't get it.

British folk traditions are a big part of my life, as anyone who has read my previous posts would readily pick up, but these aren't threatened by people of other ethnic origins. In fact, if you look at the likes of Boka Halat or Baka Beyond (to focus on music as an example), you see how much other traditions can add to these. Your average IVFDF can demonstrate how much fun UK ceilidh goers can have doing Israeli circle dances in the middle of the night.

In short if you've got a cultural interest and someone comes along with a different one, that doesn't stop you pursuing your original interest so all it can do is add to it. The major benefit of a multi-cultural society is the diversity of things it puts before you be they foods, activities, music, art or whatever and when you start drawing the influences together that's when things become really interesting. What's the point of culture if you can't share it?

So far I'm failing to see any issues demanding the defence of our national identity.

So, what else is there? Well, there's the Poles who are stealing all our jobs. At least that's what people keep telling me. It must be very annoying. I remember when I first graduated and the number of jobs I applied for that were stolen from me. Many of the people who stole them from me were British, which somehow makes it acceptable for them on take the job I wanted entirely on the basis that they were a better candidate for the role.

I was born in this country, but why should that give me more right to my way of life than someone born elsewhere?

When resources like food get scarce, most animals will move to where there is food. Birds take it to the extreme and fly off on holiday in the winter when it gets cold, as do the wealthy. However, for most people when these things get scarce, they can't move to where the resources are, because they're stopped by paper of all things.

Being benevolent souls, we have to do our bit to help these people though, so we send them all the things we don't want and encourage school children to eat overcooked broccoli. Still lost as to how the latter helps, but we'll put that issue to one side. We couldn't possibly share our way of life with them. Although admittedly, most school children would probably be willing to share the overcooked brocccoli.

We live in a society where many people argue for equality by gender, race, sexual orientation, shoe size, tendancy to wear hats and a million other factors. Yet, the world's resources are naturally unequally distributed geographically. The only way you could possibly get equal access to these things is to allow free movement.

Nationalism is therefore about promoting inequalities between the various societies of the world. How could that possibly be a good thing?

I appear to be not the only one who thinks this, given the existence of the No-Borders Network as I discovered last week, who promote freedom of movement and an end to all migration controls. It's a nice idea, but unless they do something to really wake people up, I suspect the most of the population will statisfy their need to do their bit for world poverty by making sure that that soggy broccoli gets eaten up.

In recorded music, when producing a cover version, it seems utterly pointless unless you do something different enough to bring something new to the original.

This certainly seems to fit that criteria, as I'm fairly certain Shakespeare didn't have this in mind when he wrote the speech:


(Direct Link)

The Metal Shakespear Company's rendition of the famous speech from Act III Scene I of Hamlet otherwise known as "To Bleed Or Not To Bleed" (via prettyarbitrary).

Given how much overacting you can get away with in heavy metal, it's like giving them free rein to go bananas with it and they seem more than happy to oblige.

What's more, apparently, there's a whole album of it!

Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.

I've heard people claim that "Vespers rock", but I'm not entirely sure this is what they meant:



(via craziestgadgets)