The Bargain Basement MP3s

Fileden is killing me

The bandwidth has just been reset in the past day and, by my reckoning, the bandwidth will be busted again within the next ten days. Therefore, I've decided that my only option is to start deleting mp3s to free up some space. That's fair enough. They were only ever placed on the blog in the first place for *sampling* purposes.

The deal is that I will start deleting the files tomorrow night at 8pm, so if anyone wants to take a last chance to check out the various songs posted, they can click on the posted mp3s link and see if there is anything there that may tickle their fancy.

There's too many songs to list or go through, but I hope there's something in amongst the pile that's music to your ears.

One last thing, here's the disclaimer regarding posted mp3s that should be permanently on the blog's sidebar:

The Secret Melody of the Class Struggle's policy on the mp3s posted

"As well as the rants about politics and footie, I do from time to time post mp3s on the blog. These are for sampling purposes only, and are only up for a limited time. I hope that you like the songs as much as I do, and support the artists featured by buying their albums, DVDs and coffee table books.

Any bands or artists featured who don't want their music to be associated with bad taste in politics and dodgy football shorts, please email me and I'll take the mp3s down pronto. No hard feelings at my end, and *cough* thank you for the music."

The Faking of Pelham One Two Three

On the first Wednesday in the month, this much I pretend to know

Livingston's only deadhead is roaming around Kerala. My sitemeter has informed me of this fact.

Denise Mina's latest novel, The Last Breath, was reviewed recently over at Huffington Post. I can call it 'The Last Breath' rather than 'Slip Of the Knife' (its American title) because Kara and myself are such Mina devotees that we got the book on import when it was originally released in Britain.
"Released?" Paddy Meehan noir is the new rock'n'roll. You will only read that bold statement here.

JC over at Vinyl Villain music blog has finally resumed his 45 45s at 45 series. He's been holding out for a few weeks but he's now down to his top ten.
In at number ten is Friends Again's 'Sunkissed'. Nice enough record but I of course don't have the same sort of back story as JC for reasons to truly love this song. I best know Friends Again for James Grant, and his follow up band, Love and Money.

There's a bastard load of monster trucks and trailers in the neighbourhood at the moment, as self-important people with loud voices and flourescent bibs are currently doing a bit of filming in the area over the next few days. For reasons I can't quite fathom - outside of the sound of the 'kerching' at a cash till - Hollywood has decided to do another remake of the classic 'The Taking of Pelham One Two Three'. And let's not bullshit here: the 1974 film was a bona fide classic.
The remake is being directed by Tony Scott, and will star Denzel Washington in the original Walter Matthau role and John Travolta will step into the late Robert Shaw's shoes as Ryder. I bet it will be shite. I'll go further than that. Sylvester Stallone miscast as Jack Carter will come to be seen as inspirational film making by comparison.

"Mel Gibson? He can't be in another film, I'm sure I saw him get his head chopped off in Braveheart." The Man who fell to sleep has still got it.

According to the iTunes recently played list on the computer, The Sparks track, 'Here in Heaven', is track 180. OK, fair enough. Kimono My House is a fine album.

So it looks like Barack Obama has finally secured the Presidential nomination for the Democratic Party. Speculation is now rife on whether or not Hillary Clinton will get to be his running mate.
One cynic has suggested that Barack will opt for Hillary for not only her very obvious political qualities, but because it will also be the best guarantee against any possible assassination attempt against himself.

If you skush some Ajax antibacterial orange scented washing liquid into hot water, it smells like Irn Bru. If you try and drink it, it tastes more like Orange Fanta.

It's taken me 24 years to reach a definitive position but I've finally decided that my favourite Police single was the one that was written by Stewart Copeland.

I was only saying to Kara the other week that I would like to read more British novels that are set in Thatcher's Britain or are contemporaneous of that period. I had this particular epiphany whilst watching the opening titles of Starter For Ten, and realising that, whilst the film itself is rather mediocre, I bet that the novel it is based on is so much better.
If nothing else, it has given me an excuse to hunt down the old Adrian Mole books from the 80s.

People can scoff all they bloody want, but Sue Townsend's books were amongst the handful of books that I actually got round to reading during that lost decade. It was through those books that I first heard of Tressell's 'Ragged Trousered Philanthropists', Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment' and the Norwegian Leather Industry.

It seems to like another world to think that the author of the best selling new novel of the eighties was an unreconstructed Bevanite, and that one of the best loved fictional characters from that period was a curmudgeonly communist by the name of Bert Baxter.

A few weeks back I was going to spew out a ranty post about Ann McElvoy's recent Radio 4 programme, The Jam Generation, where assorted political hacks such as Cameron, Milliband, Osborne, Clegg, Cooper and Purnell congratulated themselves on being so different from past political generations. All this was going on whilst the music of The Jam was being played in the background, 'cos - sit tight - they were all of an age when The Jam were the biggest band in Britain. Geddit? Some of the preening numpties were even referring to themselves as 'The Jam Generation' whilst being interviewed. You couldn't make this shit up.
I'm glad I said nowt at the time 'cos I'm quickly cottoning onto the fact that it's not them who is out of step, it's me. First Weller gets interviewed in the Torygraph and now it's John Lydon who's getting the Torygraph treatment.

Will Rubbish was kind enough to pass on the link and, he's right, it's a good interview, but what the hell next: free GG Allin CDs given away with the Mail on Sunday? It don't seem right.

Mark Hughes has joined Man City? Sparky has gone down in my estimation by about 750%. I hope he fucking chokes on Thaksin's dirty money.

He may not get elected to the Michigan's state board of education, but I bet socialist/green party candidate candidate, Dwain C Reynolds III, has the fanciest smanciest website of all the candidates standing for office. There may be a few too many flashing lights and whistles on his website for my liking, but I was impressed that a candidate from a minor political party could come up with something so professional looking.

Over at his MySpace page, Attila the Stockbroker has blogged his ten favourite Half Man Half Biscuit songs. His number seven, 'Dead Men Don't Need Season Tickets', is a lost classic, but I would have also included '24 Hour Garage People' and 'National Shite Day' in my HMHB top ten.

As part of its forthcoming European Championship football coverage, ESPN has this past week been broadcasting highlights of previous European Championship finals. (To clarify: the actual finals themselves.)
I absentmindedly forgot to watch the 1984 final between the great French team and Spain, and kicked myself black and blue when I discovered my foolishness but I have been able to check out the finals from 1980, 1988, 1992 and 1996 so far.

Do you want to read something heretical, and I don't care if it does cause a coronary in old Utrecht.

Everybody (understandably) bangs on about that Van Basten goal when they refer to the '88 final. The perfectly controlled volley from an impossible angle . . . a stunned Dasayev stumbling back in astonishment as he's the last person in the stadium to realise that the ball is in the back of the net . . . and that look of unalloyed joy on the face of Rinus Michels when he knows that the trophy has gone Dutch, but it has to be stated for the record that the game itself was one of the most piss-poor games of football I've ever had the misfortune to sit through.

It was nothing more than ninety minutes of pedestrian play by blokes sporting perms, with the ball ricocheting around the pitch as each outfield player took it in turn to either miscontrol the ball or overhit a pass. For the life of me, I can't understand how people can make a just comparison between the '88 team with those brilliant Dutch national sides from the 70s.

As an antidote to that disappointment, tonight I thoroughly enjoyed watching the highlights of the '96 final between the Czech Republic and Germany. The Czech Republic were a fine side, and on another day they would have deservedly won the title. I really had forgot how good Karel Poborský was back in the day. I guess if you were going to sport that hairstyle in '96, you had to be the dogs bollocks to back it up.

Finally got round to seeing Juno the other week. I had similar feelings towards it to what I had towards the last 'indie' film to generate the Oscar baubles, Little Miss Sunshine: it's good, but not as good as I was expecting. Saying that, I liked both the skewed happy ending and the Sonic Youth line.

Stumbled across the Irish songwriter Mike Cleare recently, who hides behind the monicker of My Brother Woody.
Excellent stuff. Think Luke Haines with a girlfriend, a Beach Boys fixation and a prozac prescription.

I really must get the links thing sorted. It's got beyond a joke. Apart from anything else, I bet Volty over at Shiraz Socialist thinks I'm cyber-stalking him because he's getting so many hits from Brooklyn. 'fraid the truth is more prosaic than that: I just happening to be using blogroll whilst my one has gone awol.
Because of my procrastination, even Morph is quickly losing patience with my present predicament. He wants to give me the finger in this latest pic but Aardman animators won't supply him with the necessary fingers for the full effect. Thank you Nick Park. You're a gent, and I'll get that blogroll sorted.

Listening In

"Attica! Attica!"

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (49)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 49th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1260 friends!

Recent blogs:

Should the left consider socialism?

Human nature and human behaviour

The cloying embrace of the New Age

This week's top quote:

"When communist artisans associate with one another, theory, propaganda, etc., is their first end. But at the same time, as a result of this association, they acquire a new need "the need for society" and what appears as a means becomes an end. ... the brotherhood of man is no mere phrase with them, but a fact of life, and the nobility of man shines upon us from their work-hardened bodies." Karl Marx, Human Needs & the division of Labour (1844).

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

June 2008 Socialist Standard 'Capitalism isn't the problem: you are'

June 2008 Socialist Standard

Editorial

Know your enemy

Regular Columns

Pathfinders Love is a Drug

Cooking the Books 1 The way the world can feed itself

Cooking the Books 2 The nature of business

Material World Evo Morales: A Call for Socialism?

Greasy Pole Timer for a change?

Pieces Together Big Brother is Listening; An Expensive Tipple; Heathrow Homeless; 100 Years of Poverty

50 Years Ago The Liberal revival

Main Articles

Biology as ideology For over 40 years there has been an increasing momentum to the wholesale medicalisation of human and social problems

The happy slave syndrome Why do we so doggedly embrace the wages and money system when it openly makes use of us?

Football: a capital idea Football is now a commodity packaged and sold to make money for the clubs’ shareholders.

Boris who? Does the election of a Tory mayor of London mean the end of civilisation as we know it?

Nigeria, Biafra and Oil Oil was a major issue in the Nigerian civil war forty years ago.

Las Vegas and the environment In the US the so-called “richest country in the world”, millions are so desperate for more money (and/or are bored to tears with their lives) that gambling is a major industry.

Relearning history Don’t believe what you were taught in school or hear from the media about benevolent Britain. We look at some books that give the other side of the story.

Simon the Sociobiologist Cartoon Strip

Letters, Obituaries, & Meetings

Letters To The Editors: Kosovo (and Soros)

Obituaries: Ron Cook; Robert Russell

Socialist Party Meetings: Swansea; Manchester, Clapham, Chiswick & Birmingham:

Voice From The Back

More Profit Means More Hunger; The Name Is Bond - Capitalist Bond; Dignity? No Way; The Killer System; Primitive Accumulation; Business As Usual

Random Kirsty MacColl Record Sleeve

More info here.

Do They Mean Us? #18

I can't remember if I have previously included the WSPUS in the 'Do They Mean Us?' series but, what with my geographical arrangements, it would be daft for me not to take the opportunity to feature them if and when the occasion arises.

They get a special mention today because I had a bit of a result this week when I was able to obtain a secondhand copy of the 1990 edition of The Encyclopedia of the American Left for only $2.85 (plus $3.99 postage) from a bookshop in Auburn, Wa. (Trust me, that is a result. The later 1998 edition is going for anything in between $32 to $100 on Amazon.)

Edited by Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle & Dan Georgakas, this 900 page tome covers everything and everyone on the American Left from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to Di Zukunft (a Yiddish language socialist journal given over to literary and wider cultural matters). Granted, what with the book being published back in 1990, that of course means that there's nearly twenty years of the American Left that could be covered in later editions but as my ignorance of the history of the American Labor Movement is vast enough as it is, I can work my way up to 1990 for now.

Whether I'm living in the States or in Britain, old habits die hard and on receiving the book I immediately turn to the back of the book to see whether or not the SPGB or the WSPUS are featured in the index. I'm pleasantly surprised to see that the WSPUS has a modest entry in the book. I wouldn't expect much more than that. As the entry states, the WSPUS historically has been most visible and vocal in the Boston area, and it would be a self-delusion to claim otherwise. However, I think the entry gives the mistaken impression that though the organisation started in Detroit, it left Motor City soon after but the truth is that for a time in the 40s & 50s, the WSPUS had a strong local there and even had its national headquarters based there for a time in the 50s.

Nice to see the mention of Isaac Rabinowich ('I. Rab') in the piece. I had the good fortune to met his grand-daughter, Karla Rab, a few months back when she helped out with the Party stall at the Brooklyn Peace Fair. She has been working on a biography of her grandfather for a couple of years now and, now that it has been completed, she is in the process of looking for a publisher. It should be a fascinating read.

Final mention should be made for the author of the piece on the WSPUS in the book. Franklin Rosemont is a longstanding IWW member and well known surrealist. Why it seems particularly apt that one of America's leading surrealist should pen the entry on the WSPUS I can't quite articulate, but it just seems par for the course.

WORLD SOCIALIST PARTY

The WSP is the US companion party of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB), which was formed in 1904 by a group of anti-reformist Marxists who had broken with H.M. Hyndman's Social Democratic Federation. During World War 1, SPGB members Moses Baritz and Adolph Kohn came to the United States to avoid conscription, and they established a following in Detroit. In 1916 some of their supporters founded the SP of the United States, but changed its name to Workers' Socialist Party a few months later when they found that the name Socialist Party had been copyrighted by the SP of America. The new party at first existed only in Detroit, and from 1919 to 1922 took the name Detroit Socialist Educational Society.

WSP locals have existed off and on in several US cities, including New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. But its real stronghold, and the only city where it can be said to have had an enduring influence, was Boston, where the tireless I. Rab conducted Marxist study classes and lively forums almost nightly from the early 1930s through the late 1940s, and more or less weekly for many years thereafter. In the 1970s the Boston WSP local had a regular program on the radio.

In 1939 the WSP started publication of The Western Socialist ("Journal of Scientific Socialism in the Western Hemisphere"). The name World Socialist Party was adopted in 1947 to avoid confusion with the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party.

Tractarians and debaters rather than activists, the WSP persists today as a very small educational group, pamphleteering and leafletting for what it regards as the only truly and purely Marxian socialism. See also Proletarian Party

- Franklin Rosemont

REFERENCES

Jerome, W. "A Brief History of the World Socialist Party." The Western Socialist 33, no. 252 (1966).