One of my favourite cartoonists, Hate author Peter Bagge was doing some strips on the 2008 Primaries for Reason Magazine. I just saw his April 08 entry, which detailed the death of his support for Ron Paul, and this one time he was on the McCain press bus (and got billed $319.65 for the trouble).
Three months is a long time in politics, huh?
Following the hysteria surrounding Bizzle’s bottling at Download, I’ve written an article for The Quietus on the subject of top-down racism in the British music industry.
Headline:
Strapline:
Last week amongst the detritus thrown at UK rapper Lethal Bizzle by the audience at Download was a banana skin. Forget about this though - a bigger problem facing UK hip hop stars, argues rapper/writer Adam Narkiewicz is the media itself.
I love Editorial Intros. Just in case people don’t actually read stuff mind, this is not me dissing the whole of the BBC. Some good people work there, and they know who they are. Anyway, go check out the article here.
.
A story by The Svenhunter lifted from Playlouder:
When cleaning out my inbox I wondered why I’d left a ‘news story’ with ‘Morrissey‘ and ‘racism‘ in the title undeleted.
Well, now I remember: The NME withdrew £75,000 in funding for the Love Music Hate Racism event in London in late April, and Morrissey stepped in, rallying his “management, booking agency, and promoters” to help make up most of the huge funding defecit.
The NME’s reasons for pulling out are unclear. Morrissey’s press seemed to suggest his own asociation with the event made things difficult for the magazine, what with ongoing court proceedings concerning the NME’s botched and blunt hatchet job on Morrissey earlier this year. (Morrissey: “Love Music Hate Racism got in touch and explained that the NME had pulled support, possibly as a result of their association with me.”)
However, most sources presume that it was simply a case of dwindling sales and lack of cash.
As far as I can see, the story failed to pique the interest of anybody except left wing bloggers. (Though please feel free to correct me.)
The NME has long maintained a naïve and annoyingly-vague left-wing stance on political issues, but perhaps this just doesn’t cut it anymore? Given the recent election of naïve and annoyingly-vague right-wing mayor, Boris Johnson, not to mention the relatively huge success of the BNP candidate, Richard Barnbrook (now one of the 25 members of the London Assembly), when compared with Left List’s Lindsay German, perhaps the NME could re-invent itself as a far right rock rag? If that’s where the money is…
The LMHR Carnival took place as planned on Sunday 27th April 2008 in Victoria Park, East London, and was a huge success.
Incidentally, I attended the event, was offered (yes, offered) a fight by one person, was refused entry due to possession of non-branded alcohol which wasn’t bought in the sponsors’ expensive booze tents, and was amused to witness a topless reveler dusting his hands on the way out and proclaiming, “Well, that’s racism dealt with.”
The rain fell hard throughout.
I didn’t go myself, even though I only live five minutes away, as I was editing videos. Anyway. As if NME has £75,000 to pay wages, let alone found festivals where - spit - colored folk who don’t play White Man’s Indie are appearing! Lolinger!
Did you hear the one about Noel Gallagher blaming Jay-Z for Glasto’s slower-than usual ticket sales? “
I’m not having Hip Hop at Glastobury,” he said. “It’s wrong”
Me, I laughed quite a bit. Swells? He too. Dude also wrote a very funny and very correct article about the whole fiasco for the Quietus.
Sample text:
There is no racism - casual, institutional or overt - in indie music. If indie musicians state that English identity is threatened by immigration, that is not racist. And if indie fans talk about hip-hop in language reminiscent of that used by Adolf Hitler to describe Jews in Mein Kampf (”contamination”, “filth”, “disease”) that too isn’t racist. In fact to even suggest that it might be racist, is racist - racist against white males who just happen to despise black music and only like music made my white males for white males.
Lolocaust!
Read the whole thing here. It is mad good to have ole Swells back. My favourite thing about editing PlayLouder back in the day was commissioning, then getting to read Swellls’ stuff. It was always brilliant.
In other journalistic happenings, I did a small email interview with Moby recently. Sample text:
Me: Do you regret rubbing your dick on Winona Ryder, or do you look back on those days fondly?
Moby: I never rubbed my dick on Winona Ryder. But hey, I’m still relatively young. Operative word: ‘relatively’.
Moby is a funny guy! Read the rest here…
Speaking of funny white people, you ever hear of Barry Seal? I’m going to be writing a bit over the coming months about dude, and his connections with the cocaine epedemic of the 80s, Bill Clinton, Pappa Bush, and the CIA. So this might be a good place to start.
