Electro Swing swing swing swing.....

Last weekend the Book Club (100 Leonard St) hosted Electro Swing which is a club night gaining momentum at the new talked about venue.

The night has been running for a good few months and I've been going for three (it runs once a month). Doubling in attendance the more I go, last weekend was mental with way over a hundred people queuing outside. Costing a fiver after 9 and free before, The Book Club has two floors and various separate areas, with two being a very mini library and a ping pong area. Electro Swing is just that, a new and exciting genre mixing 1920’s and 30’s swing with dance beats. Not confined to Electro, swing is mixed with Hip Hop, Reggae and Dub Step.

Attracting good types and not the OTT Hoxtons... yet! It's also not very rockabiliy so you won't feel a fool if you're not dressed in your old skool gladrags or cannot dance like you're one of the cast members of Grease. Acts who played included five times scratching world champion DJ Switch and The Correspondence. DJ Switch rocked the shop with his amazing technical and fast mix of hip hop and swing which quickly turned grimy. The Correspondence? Well, at first I though they were a joke as a skinny white boy wearing a tuxedo, purple spandex leggings and riding boots donned the staged to then MC! An I must say, he did it well and ended their set Mcin’ to DnB!

Electro Swing will be playing at The Hootananny in Brixton at The Ska VS Electro Swing night on the 7th of May. They'll also be doing The Book Club again in mid May so don't bloody miss it!

David Cameron: weak and irresolute

In this excellent, gentle destruction of David bleedin Cameron and his bullshitty "invitation to join the government" yesterday, David Hare says, "Cameron has charm." He then quotes Somerset Maugham: "Charming people are generally weak and irresolute, charm is the weapon nature gives them to cope with their disadvantages; I never could set much trust in anyone who had it." Exactly.

I'm not taking anything for granted, of course, but the number of Labour and Lib Dem posters up in my area (Islington) has made me feel quite hopeful that Cameron will not get in next month. Or maybe I just can't cope with imagining that grim possibility. (I grew up in the Thatcher years; they were shit.) The Labour party have royally pissed me off (Iraq, bankers) but they do care about the health service and education. I don't think David Cameron cares about anything except his posh mates and getting elected. Neither of these things is a good motive for running the country. Gordon Brown is a Decent Bloke; David Cameron is an Eton careerist. Ugh.

Sir Michael Caine... Give me a break

Ok, so Michael Caine grew up in a tough south London council estate, yes?

So that means he can talk about a whole new generation as if he was born there yesterday? In fact, he left in the 50's and obviously, is out of touch.

Yesterday, Sir Michael Caine came out in support of David Cameron being our next Prime minister. In a speech he used buzz words such as Britain's 'lost generation', it's as if he has been reading The Mail and taking it as gospel and then regurgitating it.

The Tories propose to divert £50million from anti-extremism funding to pay for voluntary three-week summer courses for 16-year-old's. Have you spotted the key word here? Voluntary. David Cameron's scheme will not be compulsory. The young kids who volunteer, volunteer, end of. The ones who are out there committing crimes don't want anything to do with the government and being seen to hob knob with a Tory inspired summer scheme is seen as lame (to use a tame word) to them.

Honest Folk

After completing a grave yard shift, I was dead to the world fast asleep at eight on a Friday night. I awoke at about half one to a sound on the radio and pure bliss passed through my ears, carefully crafted folk with heartfelt lyrics and beautiful instruments. By the time the song had finished, I had my pen and paper ready to jot down who made it.

Radio 3 announced a band called Musee Mecanique and the song was called ‘Under Glass’. The hypnotic lyrical delivery of ‘Under Glass’ is brought to life by the instrumental strings with co.

MM are Micah Rabwin (vox, guitar, musical saw, keyboards), Sean Ogilvie (vox, keyboard, guitar, accordion and melodica), Matt Berger (Drums, percussion, glockenspiel), Jeff Boyd (Bass, glockenspiel, cassett player) and Brian Perez (keyboards, lap steel, glockenspiel, melodica, percussion).

They define their genre as Indie, Folk Rock, Electronics, are from Portland Oregon, and are signed to Souterrain Transmissions.

Using an array of musical instruments including accordions, musical saws, a pedal steel, glockenspiels, pianos, synthesizers, trumpets, woodwinds and strings. Each song is layered with sound, sound that progresses with every beat.

Their A/B side singles ‘Sleeping In Our Clothes’ and 'Like Home' was released last month and has gained spot plays on BBC 6 Music. MM have shared the stage with Great Lake Swimmers, Wye Oak and Laura Gibson.

Their debut full-length album ‘Hold This Ghost’ was released on the 15th of February. For more information, check out their website.

Fav: Under Glass

make lies sound truthful and murder respectable

Have you seen the video footage of US soldiers shooting and killing unarmed civilians in a Baghdad suburb? Then a van comes and two unarmed men try to take away a wounded man (who turned out to be a driver working for Reuters news agency), and the US soldiers (after getting permission from their boss) shoot and kill them too.
The soldiers talk like people playing a video game.
There is a short article on Salon about it which I wanted to link to here because it talks about how the event itself isn't rare - it's the fact that we can watch it on video, online. This made me think of Ian Tomlinson again. Is there any point being able to film these crimes and post them for millions to see online if it doesn't seem to change anything? I think there is. Let's see.

Don't time fly

One of my happy childhood memories is walking round the mini-market near the holiday house my grandad owned in Sutton-on-Sea, on the Northeast coast. This would be the summer of 1983, I think, when I was nine. I would later build a sand boat on the shore and then frantically bail water out of it as the tide came in, imagining I was actually at sea. But for now I was looking at frozen food and sweets and comics, and the shop stereo was playing Baby Jane, the Rod Stewart single that was Number 1 that July. I was very happy.

(This exact happiness resurfaces fairly regularly. Last week they played the Pointer Sisters in the pound shop near my house in London as I compared translucent plastic storage boxes, and I felt a proper sense of well-being. Six or seven years ago in New York, three friends and I walked round a Japanese mini-market next door to City Lights bookshop. I bought various delights including Japanese toothpaste in a silver tube with neon writing. They were playing Rozalla's Everybody's Free (To Feel Good) and I almost levitated.)

I love Baby Jane. I love Rod Stewart. I love his voice, I love his face, I love his long and varied career (lots of which I haven't heard yet). I love him and Ronnie Lane singing Maybe I'm Amazed. And I love this clip. There are so many reasons to love it, but let's not ignore the outfit or the woman on the balcony just because we are deeply wowed by Rod and his voice.

One day Rod will do a duet with Bonnie Tyler, and beautiful raspy worlds will collide.

Ian Tomlinson

I went to the memorial service for Ian Tomlinson this morning, which was a very simple affair on the patch of pavement near Threadneedle Street where he died a year ago today.

Tomlinson was hit from behind by a police officer during the G20 protests. (He was not actually a protester. He had been selling newspapers nearby; he was trying to walk home but the police had blocked his way as they were 'kettling' people, ie blocking off the ends of certain streets.) There is footage of what happened here and here. It is upsetting to watch, and it feels slightly intrusive, but I think it's important to see what happened.

The police initially said that Tomlinson had died from natural causes, and that the protesters had "pelted" them with bottles while they were trying to help Tomlinson. Both these statements were shown to be false. The police had lied.

There were about 100 people at the one minute's silence this morning. A lot of photographers were there too; I hope that the family were aware of all the people standing in silent support and protest, and not just aware of the cameras pointed at them.

We pay the police to protect us. I don't think this was an example of one violent policeman among a force of good and decent police. I think it's an indication of something more disturbing: the police - and specifically the TSG, which is the branch of police brought in to 'control' public protest - now see us as the enemy. We are the people they are supposed to serve, but they're bullying us. And if they keep getting away with it, they'll keep doing it.

It's a year since Ian Tomlinson died; the officer who attacked him needs to be charged with manslaughter. Can you imagine what would happen if there was a video of you or me beating someone to the ground, someone who died - with head injuries - shortly afterwards? We'd be in jail by now. Why is it different when it's a policeman? Slow motion justice is the same as injustice, and is the same as a cover-up. It stinks.

The loss of a loved one is hideous enough without having lawyers and the media and politicians and shifty police to add to your pain. I hope the family are able to keep as strong and as dignified as they've been so far, and that they get to find out what truth and justice actually feel like.