There was a fascinating piece on the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan on last Tuesday’s episode of Democracy Now! Here’s the summary:
Veteran Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid explains how the US ally Pakistan has armed and financed the Taliban after the US invasion of Afghanistan; how the CIA pays Pakistan to arrest al-Qaeda operatives, but Pakistan uses the money to fund the Taliban resurgence in northwest Pakistan; and how the US and NATO’s failure to deal with Afghan civil society has led directly to the huge rise of the opium trade that funds the Taliban.
I urge you to go and watch/listen if you interested.
….as it’s all over the HC parts of t’Internet I may as well say that rumours of a Stupids reunion gig are finally true. Tom and Martin have apparently been playing together for a while and with deluxe new re-issues series about to hit the streets they decided the time was right to play a ’secret’ show at the wonderful Portland Arms in Cambridge as part of Aston’s all-Boss Tuneage extravaganza on Saturday 26th July. Info here.
Tom’s asked if I’d like to join in proceedings as vocalist, so it’s all the way back to 1986-87 for me and trying desperately to remember how to be a frontman without a guitar. It’s a tiny venue (ironically the same one I played the recent gig with John Ruscoe), so I expect it’ll be rammed, but I’m looking forward to it…I just hope we get an opportunity to rehearse before the gig!
That very nice Ms Kirstie Green has uploaded to YouTube a few choice visuals from the recent acoustic show in Cambridge. Really good quality (much better than the preview images would lead you to believe), so well worth checking out. Here’s a tip for the trainspotters; every time I smile it’s because there’s either a tricky bit of singing or playing coming up. Click here if you want to go straight to YouTube and watch the videos there for any reason.
First up is the second half of Jigsaw Catch.
Next we have the 2nd verse and all of the lovely guitar solo of Missing A Train.
…and bringing up the rear is a minute or two of Missing A Train (again) this time from the soundcheck.
I finally ponied up the necessary and bought myself a decent second hand Denon cassette deck off evilBay. This means I’m now in the position to start working on the slew of unreleased studio demos, 4-tracks, live stuff etc. etc. from the past. Don’t hold your breath though; while I have overcome the technical problem of not having a cassette player, I still have to overcome the less tangible one of not having very much time to dedicate to this site.
However, I have been going through some cassettes over the last few days and discovered a decent radio interview I did for a local radio station way back in the Sink days. It’s actually not too embarrassing. Will try and post it and other rarities (ahem!) as soon as I can.
Never one to turn down a request, here’s the very first BDS demo, Gothic Monstrosities (for James R). Recorded over a couple of days in the basement of a used car salesroom in Kingston in (I think) 1986. The engineer was a lovely bloke called Hick. He even played sax on one of the songs I think. Martin Hawkes (aka Marty Tuff) from the Stupids played lead guitar on a couple of songs (listen out for anything that sounds remotely competent and that’ll be him!). I had no idea what I was doing and relied on Jason and Paul who had both been in the studio already with earlier bands. I’d hung out with the Stupids for a couple of sessions and done a 4-track recording with Frankfurter, but this was the first ’serious’ session I’d ever done. Listening back now I honestly can’t say any of it sounds too clever…in fact most of it’s pretty embarrassing, but I’m amazed at the number of people who like it 20+ years later. To be honest I’m amazed that anyone’s heard it at all.
A lot of it’s punk-by-numbers and influences were very much in evidence. Here’s a rundown of the more obvious steals:
Obsession = London Dungeon by the Misfits.
Dark Knight = Heard It All Before by Stupids (or the Marginal Man track that they nicked it from).
Never So Funny = No More Pain by Embrace (just the intro which is taken from Chris Bald’s bassline)…also a nod to the Stupids again with their song title Always Never Fun (which is way cleverer than my feeble attempt).
