When Nelson Mandela was designated an Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience, he said: ‘Like
Amnesty International, I have been struggling for justice and human
rights, for long years… But as long as injustice and inequality persist
in our world, none of us can truly rest. We must become stronger still.’ Truly, there is nothing more to be said.
Two artists, each in his own way a man of the Sixties and whose work provided a watershed in his chosen sphere, have left us. Lou Reed, the pop star who changed the meaning of the title more than anyone in the 'sixties/'seventies, has died at 71. He left us a raft-full of new blueprints, their influence already disseminated widely by the millenium's end.
When Alex Salmond, the lone voice of sanity, condemned the proposed bombing of Bosnia towards the end of the Yugoslav civil war, as "an act of unparalleled folly", he was almost right. In the days before D-Day, the Allies carried out bombing raids all over the northern coast of France, the intention being to 'soften up' the enemy, but in reality killing lots of the French people who were up for liberation. The damage was still easily visible when I visited and looked in the 'fifties. The USA repeatedly followed a similar routine in Vietnam later on, bombing villages each time they were taken over by the Vietcong.
Sahara Complex, near Damascus
Some of us are capable of learning from history, if our politicians cannot. Do we want to follow the same incoherent behaviour again, with the long-suffering people of Syria as victims this time? The answer must be no.
Chy Walton and other supporters hold posters during a vigil for graffiti artist Israel Hernandez-Llach, who died after being shocked by a police officer's Taser, in Miami Beach, Florida August 10, 2013.(Reuters / Gaston De Cardenas) The victim’s father, Israel Hernandez-Bandera spoke to Reuters, calling Israel’s death an “act of barbarism” and an “assassination of a young artist and a photographer.” Hernandez-Llach’s female friend and former classmate, Lucy Rynka, had touching words to say about him: “he was a genius… He showed me how powerful art can be, how you can use color and design to relay a powerful message.”
David Strathairn, George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr, Patricia Clarkson, Frank Langella
Paranoia was, for America in the 'Fifties, much more than a passing unease. Guatemala and the rest of Uncle Sam's 'backyard', Green men from Mars, brain-rotting comic books and of course the mirror image of US Imperialism, Soviet Imperialism. Americans ate and breathed the stuff. And smoked it, too. The 'Fifties were perhaps the apotheosis of smoking culture. This (black and white) film captures smoke throughout in several variations of backlighting in scenes reminiscent of those classic jazz photos. Smoke or no smoke, particular attention has been lavished on the lighting, and that, with the high-resolution and subtle gradations in tone and texture typical of colour stock, combine to make this a film worthy of lingering over, and adding to your collection when it moves down to DVD. But the time to see it is now, while it's still on the big screen, and director Clooney is quite honest about its intended relevance to what is happening in the US/UK today. It will prove to be the kind of movie where audience connection might be expected to include applause, and perhaps even some heckling.
The attention to period detail even unto the new Nylon shirts with visible vests, make it easy to forget that this is not in fact a documentary or at least an old movie; everything looks self-consciously Modernist and Important and you would not be surprised to catch a glimpse of the young Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster in there somewhere.
It's a reason to be cheerful that this film has been made now, with the War on Fright acting as a cover for the erosion of our hard-won liberties and democratic process, just as the 'Soviet Threat' was talked up before.
Ed Murrow, who began his broadcasting career in radio, moved into television with the conviction, like Reith in the UK, that its supreme function was to inform and educate. This is no encomium for a faultless hero though: there is a sly dig at his perhaps unconscious acceptance of the realpolitik of compromise to the extent of the product of one of the TV shows' sponsors, Kent, being placed permanently in his hand or stuffed in his mouth while he addressed his audience. Director Clooney is also able to hint that behind Murrow's elegance and finely-crafted polemics he was first at odds with his boss, as when he didn't quite round off an interview with Liberace, cutting it short rather than carry on with a bland guided tour of his home (an intercut with the actual Candelabra King, from the archives); the Bad Guy, Joe McCarthy, also appears in archive recordings, although his famously bombastic and occasionally drunken performances have been skipped, possibly to avoid giving the film the crude pantomime flavour of, say, 'Fahrenheit 451'. David Strathairn should have been close to an Oscar for his impeccably understated but dynamic performance. If he never acts again, he has a fine set of laurels to rest on.
The story is book-ended by a celebratory dinner held for Murrow by his colleagues, opening with his welcome to the rostrum, going into flashback and ending with his catchphrase. This would be good enough as a punch line, but the film ends on a suitably wry, reflective mood with Dianne Reeves, who is caught in action in the next studio several times throughout the story, providing colour or emphasis, singing with Rosemary Clooney's old band, no less; and again, detail is observed, with Rosemary's own original arrangements. Tim Robbins' 'Cradle will Rock', the true story of art depicting Diego Rivera, Orson Wells and The Workers versus right-wing paranoid politics in 'thirties Manhattan, acts as a good prequel to this.
One of the important subtexts is the bravery Murrow showed in going against the flow, breaking news media ranks in standing up against Senator McCarthy at a time when Joe had grabbed the lead role in fighting the 'enemy within'. Today in the UK, practically all professional journalists and papers, rightwing or leftwing, are united in not merely tolerating but praising one-time Sun editor editor Kelvin McKenzie as no more than a decent bloke who likes a good laugh. Compare and contrast.
This story has all the complexity of the power politics to be found anywhere in publishing, broadcasting and of course, political life, from Shakespeare's 'Caesar' right up to the new millenium backstab tango in the House of Commons. If it has been trimmed to make a good movie, and it most probably has, it works. Clooney is managing very well to pull off the trick that Orson Wells established but lost interest in: making a couple of hack mainstream films, doing small parts in daft action movies to finance the important work, like 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind' and now 'Good Night'. Long may his lum reek.
THE LAST BOHEMIANS Roger Bristow Published by Sansom & Company “They came in one day and I was mesmerised by them. They were dressed in black from top to toe... I thought - Christ, these are real Bohemians!” Ken Russell
This blog, having charted the coup at the Royal West of England Academy of Art, has been tardy in following up with the altogether simpler closing chapter; here, then, is the latest in the saga.
The (Original) RWA Friends voted to retrieve all data files from the new RWA Board and its offshoot, the ‘Friends’, and to take back all monies that had strayed.
Simon Baker’s fellow board members asked that he resign as his term of office was over, which he duly did - a surprise to many.
The new, hefty, ART Magazine folded after only a few months in business.
The (original) Friends resumed holding lectures at the RWA.
The first of a new succession of presidents has been established.
It’s almost as if the whole thing was only a dream, although one-time editor of the Friends’ Newsletter, Roland Harmer, believes ‘It is not quite wake up time yet.’ He adds, ‘We [the original Friends] are on the verge of taking on the role that we had prior to Simon Baker. So there may
Wild game In the late nineteenth century, travelling abroad had suddenly become easier and cheaper for well-off Europeans than ever before, and this, combined with the high tide of the British Empire gave rise to the craze for tiger hunting. A great many upper-class young men went off to the wilds, especially India, to bag themselves a tiger rug for a proud family heirloom. Although tiger hunting had been a popular royal sport for years in India, during the British Raj, the greater fire-power, willingness to kill among the colonists and habitat loss had huge consequences, reducing the tiger population in India from 40,000 to less than 1,800 in a hundred years.
The Shoot would involve riding on a horse or elephant or even being carried in a rustic sedan-chair while servants or slaves carried crates of food, clothing and other necessities of comfortable living. Once the animal had been scared into the open by native beaters, the intrepid chap could fire his rifle, at no great risk to himself.
In the USA, bear hunting enjoyed a similar fashion among those who would be macho, and wanted to go further than sniping at buffalo herds from trains. A celebrated Washington Post cartoon of Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosvelt cornering a skinny, big-eyed little animal gave the teddy bear its name. Modern-day hunts are open to women, too. They, and their male friends, may enjoy even greater levels of comfort and convenience as they pick off their prey with a stab of the mouse at their computer consoles, linked to a sniping device in Palestine or a ‘no-reply’ drone anywhere the natives are said to be restless.
The majority surviving tigers which in nature would share a borderless open world with other creatures, keeping to their own mutually exclusive paths, live now in captivity, which means cages with rain. The hunt continues, and war is waged, increasingly on ordinary people who have not even had the courtesy of a declaration of war.
Medea Benjamin OR books ISBN-13: 978-1-78168-O77-3 As far as this blog is concerned it goes without saying that the current upsurge in the use of drones for killing, making war as un-involving and casual as a shopping-mall game, is a genuine evil which too few people recognise as such. Medea Benjamin has been on the road introducing her book on the subject, and recently appeared at BristolFoyles bookshop as part of that city's innovative Festival of Ideas. Weeks after the 2002 American invasion of Afghanistan, she visited that country. There, on the ground, talking with victims of the strikes, she learned the truth about the “smart bombs” on which U.S. forces claimed to be increasingly reliant. Now, with the use of drones escalating at a pace unthinkable just a few years ago when this was science-fiction, Benjamin has written this highly readable, hard-fact book as a call to action: “It is meant to wake a sleeping public,” she writes, “lulled into thinking that drones are good, that targeted killings are making us safer.”
Medea Benjamin is also a driving force behindCode Pink, which is well worth visiting if you want to know more or better still, be active.
Washington DC is well-known for its phoney classical monuments and for links to Superman, through DC Comics or being a contender, with New York, for being the original of the City of Metropolis. But like any city of any size it has a life of its own, and its own cultural proclivity. A new show opening there in April, Mumbo Sauce, includes one artist personally known to this blog, Clark Fox, well-known for his finely-crafted Pop since his Manhattan days. Plus BORF, Richard Colman, Cynthia Connolly, Tim Conlon, Cool "Disco" Dan, Globe Poster Archive, Mark Jenkins, Rosina Teri Memolo, Mingering Mike and Robin Rose. It's called after a local favourite relish... I'll let the curators take over here: Mumbo Sauce is a part of the African American culture and is the flavour of home for true D.C. natives.The exhibition was planned in response to another local show, Pump me up – D.C. subculture of the 1980s, an art exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art It's a survey of artists who have, or once had, deep roots in Washington, D.C. The exhibition will be an exploration and commentary on how the environment of Go-Go, graffiti, punk, hardcore, graphic design and fine art has influenced their work. Mumbo Sauce is a red, sweet, and tangy sauce, thinner than barbeque sauce and similar to plum sauce. Arguably indigenous to Washington, D.C., the condiment is found in carry outs throughout D.C. and the surrounding metro areas. Like the sense of identity that Mumbo Sauce carries for the District of Columbia, the artists featured in the show will be creating new works and 'tribute' installations surveying their relationships and remembrances from living and working in the Capitol. The art will be in various media and (of course) for sale. Visit them online at www.contemporarywing.com/projects/mumbo-sauce. And if you're in Washington any time before April 21st, the place to head for is 906 H Street, NE Washington, DC 20002
After her hi-definition trawl of Los Angeles in'The Pink Hotel', Anna Stothard does a similar, fascinating, job on a recognisable corner of her home city, London. The story is also an in-depth study of someone, Eva, who doesn't take easily to closeness and is always looking for an escape route. As a way of life this only works as long as she is in control; and you, the reader, are free to roam at will through her mind as she copes with being left instead of leaving - while juggling the two men and the one, mystery, woman in her life. If you want more: although she doesn't happen to be a writer, Eva has the kind of feverish imagination many authors would kill themselves for .
Alvin Lee, in so many ways the embodiment of the 'Sixties, hasn't quite made it into his own seventies. He established the gold standard for speed as a guitarist - in fact, before Alvin Lee, speed just wasn't an issue except among small groups of competing musos. The term 'rock hero looks' wasn't coined until one or two guys including Alvin made pop music appeal to the big girls again. He combined his talents with the attitude of a Real Hippie: effortlessly generous and modest on-stage and off. I base my sketch on passing acquaintance: Ten Years After's performance of 'Crosscut Saw' at the Railway Hotel West Hampstead August 1968, featuring Roger Chapman on vocals and Cliff Hanley on harmonica.
The harp had its own story - it had spent a few years stuck in a saddle round my neck before I went electric, and saw some busking and partying in Germany and Istanbul, before allowing its owner a rare and memorable plug-in to a bit of the best of the Love Decade. TYA obviously had their night in the pub as a regular open mic thing - after us, John Mayall joined them for a tune. And the moothie? It ended being given with some change to a very pleased beggar in Oxford Circus tube station around 1985.
This, the first Bristol international jazzfest, certainly lived up to its name with Colston Hall making room for gigs major and minor, plus the odd jam session - and international enough with the mighty Ginger Baker and Jazz Confusion, leaning heavily on the African roots of jazz. And as James Brown alumnus Peewee Ellis, long settled in the West Country, took the stage, he got a special cheer for being himself and local too. He reappeared with one of the many bands gigging out front in the entrance hall, and headlined too, on Sunday. Read the full review here:
John Schofield (here with his new Organic Trio) is a real all-rounder, easily moving from the kind of big-build-up and firey solo that a younger man would be proud of, to the prettiest of ballads with Tennessee Waltz. A real feast.
So the sardonic king of sunshine has left us for good. A founder member of Soft Machine, he also led The Whole World (lead guitarist Mike Oldfield) and managed to record a string of charming, quirky and avant-garde albums although he claimed to be work-shy, and had a tendency to vanish between albums or tours. He told me once that he used to think living the easy life in the sunshine was the way to live. "Now I'm fucking sure it's the way!"
The unlikely venue of Bath City Clubhouse hosted a rare showing of three banned Ken Loach films on Friday 1st February, just the job for your blogger, who is a bit of a Loach completist. After the director identified himself as an unequivocal supporter of Bath City FC, the night opened with a trip back to the black-and-white 'sixties; a documentary made with Tony Garnett for Save The Children and London Weekend TV which turned out to be a call for an end to the injustices that put children in harm’s way, and the relationship between class politics and and charities; more polemical rather than the expected celebration of the Charity’s fiftieth anniversary; simultaneously an unintentionally funny exposure of the charity workers, no matter how well-intentioned they were, as upper-class and patronising. Also one made for LWT during the Miners’ Strike, which inescapably included lots of footage of police brutality. This was too hairy for Melvin Bragg and his fellows at the TV station; More embarrassing for them might have been the question implied: ‘If the police were only following orders, who gave the orders?’
ISBN: 978-1-84688-234-0 Alma Books Peter Conradi, by being a kind of insider and by attending to his research, made quite a success of The King’s Speech, the best-seller that as a film won an Oscar. He returns to the territory with this look at the entire phenomenon of European monarchy, in an attempt to understand the archaic anomaly; and why and how it survives in post-industrial democracies where unearned deference is otherwise strictly a thing of the past. We aren’t just dropped in it, though: the book starts off with a race through the history; the rise and fall and rise again - opening with the highly visual Final Walk of King Louis-Auguste, followed by his wife Marie Antoinette. This might equally be the way to open the story if you were telling it as a film instead of a book. It could have been the beginning of the end for European monarchy(if Cromwell’s men hadn’t already done that in London a long time before), but in fact after this, whenever a country was faced with a choice of options including having an unelected toff as head of state they (including France after the revolution) tended to re-establish, and even newly created countries like Belgium wanted one, too. Today the subject has been mooted in Scotland (not entirely unseriously) as independence is news again. We know, though, why newspapers and the rest of the news media pay so much attention to the royals. It sells. But the rest of it remains a complex puzzle. This book makes very good sense of the reasons for monarchy's survival into the twenty-first century.
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