The Notorious Byrd Brothers by Ric Menck (Continuum Books 2007)

I'm not sure of the exact reason Gary Usher chose "Artificial Energy" as the first track on The Notorious Byrd Brothers, but it sure sounds like that's exactly where it belongs. A few swift cracks of the snare drum and the arrangement instantly springs to life. It feels as if the band are so charged up they can hardly wait to count the song off and go. The instrumental approach is hard and aggressive, and stylistically it relates to the recently released "Lady Friend" in that a horn section is featured. But while "Lady Friend" comes off sounding all strident and regal, "Artificial Energy" has a darker edge. This is mostly due to the song's lyrical imagery, which deals with the horrors of amphetamine use. Strangely, whereas their 1966 single "Eight Miles High" was banned because it supposedly contained overt drug references, no one batted an eyelash when the Byrds actually did write an honest-to-God drug song.

In "Artificial Energy" the song's protagonist takes his "ticket to ride" (okay, there's a drug reference and a Beatles reference all rolled into one), and sits alone waiting for it to take effect. Slowly he feels an "artificial energy" welling up inside, but as the drug takes hold something horrible happens. Instead of achieving some kind of enlightenment, our hero ends up losing control and, in the song's stark final imagery, kills a homosexual and winds up being thrown in jail.

It would also work as a great heckle

OK, I know it's a cheap shot but a funny bit of graffiti, nonetheless.

Snaffled off of Urban 75's 'I'm on ur boardz, wasting ur bandwidthz' thread.

If I was in London right now . . .

. . . I'd be thinking of popping along to this meeting:

‘What makes good radical writing?’

A panel discussion with Anne Beech, Ian Bone, and Suzanne Moore

Wednesday 9th May, 7pm

Entry £3, redeemable against any purchase

On Tuesday 1st May the first recipient of the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing shall be announced. The process of creating a radical book prize has brought up interesting questions as to how to evaluate radical writing. Is the primary goal to effectively communicate ideas? And if so, how do we measure its effectiveness? How do we measure it’s radicalism? Must it be accessible to all readers, or is there a place for pedantic or even obscure writing?

On his influential blog, ‘Anarchist in the UK’, Ian Bone posed a fundamental, and as-yet-unresolved, question about radical writing: is it a matter of “writing about what you want people to know, or what they want to know?”

Based on their experiences within the radical wing of contemporary journalism and book publishing, our speakers will navigate the tensions between vanguardism and populism that have guided radical writing and actions for the last century, and reflect on how these tensions are manifested today.

Please join us as we tackle these questions in what will be an illuminating discussion on the forms and contents of radical communication.

About the participants

Anne Beech is the Commissioning Editor and Managing Director of Pluto Press.

Ian Bone is founder of the anarchist paper Class War, author of the books ‘Decade of Disorder’, ‘Anarchist’, and ‘Bash the Rich,’ and a long-time political agitator. He blogs at http://ianbone.wordpress.com/

Suzanne Moore is an award-winning columnist for the Guardian. She also writes for the Mail on Sunday.

The session will be chaired by Tess Carota.

Ian Bone's an entertaining public speaker, and it's a topic close to my heart.

A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler (Fawcett Books 1998)

I am a man you can trust, is how my customers view me. Or at least, I'm guessing it is. Why else would they hand me their house keys before they leave for vacation? Why else would they depend on me to clear their attics for them, heave their air conditioners into their windows every spring, lug their excess furniture to their basements? "Mind your step, young fellows; that's Hepplewhite," Mrs. Rodney says, and then she goes into her kitchen to brew a pot of tea. I could unlock the outside door so as to slip back in overnight and rummage through all she owns - her Hepplewhite desk and her Japanese lacquer jewelry box and the six potbellied drawers of her dining-room buffet. Not that I would. But she doesn't know that. She just assumes it. She takes it for granted that I'm a good person.

Come to think of it, I am the one who doesn't take it for granted.

'You're the ones we don't want'

Greasy. I feel nauseous.

Hat tip to SH over at Facebook.

ETA: Yes, in my head, it's 2010.

XXXing the UK

On this day of days a funny picture from a good soul over at Facebook:

And just because I'm a lazy blogger these days . . . months . . . years decades that's no excuse for not me pointing you towards the 'Voting for Socialism' post over at the SPGB's election blog. The SPGB is standing in the Lambeth & Southwark and the Merton & Wandsworth GLA constituencies. My old friend Danny, who is the SPGB candidate in Lambeth & Southwark, is featured in a ten minute video over at The Big Smoke website.

Check it out.

Update

I've been reading . . . and getting heavily beat at Lexulous.

The Long Midnight Of Barney Thomson by Douglas Lindsay (Blasted Heath 1999)

There were some in the town who could not understand why James Henderson hadn't closed the shop, but only those with no conception of the Calvinist work ethic, which Henderson imagined himself to possess. If there were to be members of the public needing their hair cut, then the shop had to be open.
Had it been a women's hairdressers, the customers would have fled, and the shop would already have gone out of business. But men are lazy about hair, creatures of habit, and the previous two days had been business as usual. And besides, the word was getting out – there was a barber there at the top of his game. If Jim Baxter had cut hair at Wembley in '63, they were saying, this is how he would have done it.
The chair at the back of the shop was now empty. In the chair next to that James Henderson was working. He knew he shouldn't be. It was ridiculous, and his wife was furious, but he told himself that this was what Wullie would've wanted. What was more important to him was that it got him out of the house, took his mind off what had happened.
The next chair along was worked by James's friend, Arnie Braithwaite, who had agreed to start a couple of weeks early. His was a steady, if unspectacular style, a sort of Robert Vaughn of the barber business. He wouldn't give you an Oscar winning haircut, but then neither would he let you down.
And then finally, working the prized window chair, was Barney Thomson. He'd moved into it with almost indecent haste, the day before. Perhaps if he'd been thinking straight then James would've considered it odd, but everything was a blur to him at the moment.

The End of Days by Douglas Lindsay (Blasted Heath 2011)

0759hrs London, England

The PM petulantly pushed the newspapers off the desk. Here he was, suddenly at the peak of his career, and the media were barely taking any notice of him.

'What do I have to do?' he said, looking at Prime Ministerial aide Bleacher, Barney Thomson, diary secretary Lucy, and cabinet secretary Blaine. 'I'm busting my balls here. I've ordered more troops to Afghanistan, I'm crushing the other guy in my iron fist, I opened up a can of whoop-ass at PMQs, I told the Prime Minister of Pakistan how to run his country, and I've got the best hair of my life. What else can I do? Yet what do we get today? More Tiger flippin' Woods. Banks, banks, banks. The Mail says they cost forty thousand a family, the Telegraph, five and a half. Hah! Seems I'm not the only one can't do maths. And now these bloody murders and everyone's going to be peeing in their pants about that.'

They were all staring at him, waiting for the invitation to speak.

'Well?' said the PM. 'What about me?' Another pause. 'People say, where's our Obama? Well, don't they see? I'm their Obama. It's me. I could be PM for twenty years. I can cement our place as a world leader.'
There was another extended pause around the room. None of them gawped at the PM in quite the manner that his words demanded. They were all quite used to his self-obsession; even Barney Thomson, who had only been there three days.

'Prime Minister,' said Blaine dryly, 'we lead the world in pregnant teenagers, binge drinking teenagers, divorce, cocaine addiction and litter. If you'd like to be the Prime Minister who cements that, I salute you, but I just came in to remind you that there's an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss the crisis at 0900hrs.'

He turned to leave.

'What crisis?' barked the PM, scowling.

'The murders,' said Blaine. 'At Westminster,' he added, in case the PM might have thought he meant Midsomer.

The Crime Interviews: Volume Two by Len Wanner (Blasted Heath 2012)

Good question. Why are you writing books?

I'm writing books to try and make a connection with a reader. It doesn't matter whether it's a reader who's on the Booker panel or a reader who's a waitress... Whenever I'm up for a prize I think: "Who the fuck are you to judge me?" And then I think: "Give me that fucking prize." Ha! You don't know these people exist until they write to you to say: "You're up for a prize. Do you want to come and have a bad hotel dinner, while feeling really nervous and wearing uncomfortable clothes, and then get up and make a cunt of yourself in front of a big audience?" What the fuck?

I mean, prizes are good marketing tools. They're shorthand for telling readers: "This is a good book." But a better way for people to come to your books is for their pals to say: "You'll like that book. It really meant something to me."

When did a book first really mean something to you?

When I was nineteen, reading Thérèse Raquin in a bedsit, being totally transported by the writing and the way two words can click together, and sitting back, thinking: "What an amazing thing to do with your life – to make that sort of connection with another person, to feel exactly what Zola was talking about, or looking at, or imagining... What an incredible connection!" And what I really love about Zola is that he was a political writer.

Do you see yourself as a political writer?

Yeah! Orwell was who I stole from the library... So it's that connection: reading A Tale of Two Cities and sweating with my heart racing at the end because it was so exciting. But I think you really have to keep your eyes on the prize, because otherwise you become bitter and disillusioned despite having everything. You're being published, you're making a living, you're spending your days in pyjamas wrestling with words, and people are writing to you saying: "I read your book and it mattered to me." How lucky is that?

(Len Wanner interviewing Denise Mina.)