It was because of Alan Anderson that my brother collected ‘My Favorite Soccer Stars’. Michael’s a Hearts supporter, and Centre-Half Anderson was the only Jambo amongst the 160 player cards given away free each week in the comics Buster and Jet, or Lion and Thunder, or Valiant and TV 21, or Scorcher and Score or, Tiger in 1971.

This was when soccer players were beginning to move away form looking like extras from The Sweeney to bass players for a teenybop band. Unlike today, most players earned a working wage, and usually retired with little more than their Cup Winner medals, that is, if they ever won any. 

The game was more than “a matter of life and death” as Liverpool’s Bill Shankly once famously said:

‘Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.’

Amongst the 160 cards were some legendary players, unforgettable characters like Francis Lee and Colin Bell for Manchester City, Derek Dougan for Wolverhampton Wanderers, Martin Chivers and Martin Peters for Tottenham Hotspurs, Arsenal’s Charlie George, and Billy Bremner from Leeds United

My brother collected 2 sets - one from Lion and Thunder and one from Buster and Jet. I knew why he picked the first, but the second made less sense, unless it was for Aberdeen’s chubby striker Joe Harper, or out of a sneaking respect for Leeds United.

My comic was Tiger, which featured a Native American wrestler called Johnny Cougar, and an unbelievably decent footie player, Roy of the Rovers. As I support Celtic, I had to forfeit my favorite comic to collect the one Celtic card featuring wizard of the wing, Jimmy “Jinky” Johnstone.  For 4 weeks I collected the squares of 4 press-out cards from Scorcher and Score. It was worth it for wee Jinky and the bonus of George Best, although Scorcher and Score was shite compared to Tiger.

This is my brother’s 2 collected sets Buster and Jet (with cover), and Lion and Thunder (without cover) - a look back at sporting heroes (and their sideburns) from forty-years ago.
 

 
More of 1971’s favorite soccer stars, after the jump…
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Picture Postcards: 50 Famous Britons 1868-1968

 
With thanks to Michael Gallagher
 

 
Two members of the Pussy Riot feminist art collective have fled from Russia to avoid prosecution for the same protest against Vladimir Putin that landed three of their fellow band mates two-year prison sentences. This according to the AP report and the Pussy Riot Twitter feed:

Five members of the feminist group took part in a provocative performance inside Moscow’s main cathedral in February to protest the Russian leader’s rule and his cozy relationship with the Orthodox Church. The women wore their trademark garishly colored balaclavas, which made it difficult for police to identify them, and only three were arrested.

After a controversial trial that highlighted Putin’s crackdown on dissent since he began a third presidential term in May, the three band members were convicted of hooliganism and sentenced to two years in prison on Aug. 17. Days later, Moscow police said they were searching for the other band members, an apparent warning to the group to stop its anti-Putin protests.

Even as the judge was reading the verdict in a Moscow courtroom, one of the band members who had escaped arrest played Pussy Riot’s latest song, “Putin sets the fires of revolutions,” from the balcony of an apartment building across the street.

Pussy Riot tweeted on Sunday that the two activists had fled Russia and are “recruiting foreign feminists to prepare new protest actions.” No mention was made of where they went.

Can’t say I blame them for wanting to keep mum on that count!

An essay appeared in The Moscow Times today arguing that the political art/punk pranksters have roots to earlier counterculture movements and strains of Russian political dissent going back to the 19th Century. Peter Rutland writes:

Much more interesting than the band’s antics in the cathedral, however, were the closing statements that the three defendants delivered to the court, which New Yorker editor-in-chief David Remnick described as “a kind of instant classic in the anthology of dissidence.” Each woman took a different theme. Yekaterina Samutsevich dissected the unhealthy fusion of church and state. Maria Alyokhina talked about the deficiencies of the country’s education system and the suppression of the individual. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova offered a critique of the “autocratic political system” in general and the conduct of their prosecution in particular.

The statements portray a society that is passive and disoriented in the face of an all-powerful ruling bureaucracy. Their critique is spiritual rather than material, and they are not particularly interested in leveling accusations of corruption, which have been the central theme of the mainstream opposition.

Many Russian observers have been dismissive of Pussy Riot, characterizing their provocative actions, including previous performances of a sexual nature, as infantile and offensive — and unpopular with the public at large. But it is not at all clear whether Pussy Riot expects or even desires a groundswell of public support. They do not aspire to be leaders of a revolutionary movement, either Orange or Leninist.

Rather, their appeal for truth and freedom puts them squarely in the tradition of the 19th-century Russian intelligentsia. Tolokonnikova directly referred to the group’s punk antics as equivalent to the truth-telling “holy fools” of centuries past and embraced the idea that their prison sentence proves the virtue of their cause.

Pussy Riot adopted the tactics of protest from the Situationists of 1960s France, the punk rockers of 1970s Britain and the feminist Riot Grrrls in the United States in the 1990s. The idea of donning masks comes from the movie “V for Vendetta,” which was popularized by the Occupy movement.

But the strategy of Pussy Riot has a deeper foundation. Their moral critique of authority and appeal to a higher truth is rooted in pre-revolutionary Russia, a tradition that fitfully resurfaced during the Soviet years. They cite 19th-century literary critic Vissarion Belinsky and Fyodor Dostoevsky, but not Voltaire, John Stuart Mill or other representatives of the Western liberal tradition.

The assertion of an individual’s right to exist — what Alyohkhina refers to as “inner freedom” — is not a problem for young people living in the West and has not been for a century or more. Whatever the shibboleths that are evoked by today’s Western radicals — such as capitalism, neoliberalism, Empire and racism — they are phenomena quite different from the challenge posed by the authoritarian Russian state.

There are at least twelve other members of the Pussy Riot collective who still remain in Russia.

 
From The New York Times:

“From a vanity standpoint, it makes you feel a bit old to have a person from your generation on the presidential ticket,” said the actor Johnny Knoxville, 41, of “Jackass” fame. “And it’s embarrassing that it’s Paul Ryan. I wonder if The Germs ever felt this way about having Belinda Carlisle as their first drummer.”

Ouch!

I think two things can safely be said of this quip: First, that Paul Ryan has already, or will soon hear of it. And second, that Germs ref will sail right over Ryan’s pointed little head…

 
It was the summer holidays and we were visiting my grandparents. It was warm and giddy, and there was a rippling excitement at the thought of a man landing on the Moon.

No one actually doubted it, but then, no one was really sure it would happen. All we knew was that somewhere above our heads a rocket was hurtling its crew towards their fateful destination.

It was to be shown live on TV. The time difference meant it that the landing was set for the wee small hours of our morning. That night we bought cones from the ice cream man, who still claimed the Moon was made of cheese and the mice would see these astronauts off. He meant well, but I was 7, and didn’t believe him.

Later, sleepily awake, we sat huddled on the sofa, a flickering black and white picture, that suddenly burst with the pock-marked surface of the Moon. It was unbelievable. It was fantastic. And as the Lunar Module Eagle landed, I wondered how this would change our lives? For it seemed to me then that we had gone in search of dreams and had only discovered a rock.

But I was wrong. This was only the beginning. 

As the first man on the Moon, Neil Armstrong was a hero. More, his actions had a greater significance: they cut away the hold of superstition and ignorance from controlling our destiny.

The Moon landing changed this, and we were at last able to begin our examination of the Universe.

R.I.P. Neil Alden Armstrong 1930-2012
 

 
Via Spacecraft Films
 

 
The LA Weekly didn’t exactly shy away from blasting the acts who made their The 20 Worst Hipster Bands: The Complete List.

Ben Westhoff on Arcade Fire, #3

If the essence of hipsterdom is fetishizing the authentic, then Arcade Fire deserve a Canadian Nobel Prize for sucking the life out of the pop music canon. Sure, all artists build on their influences, but Arcade Fire sap the passion, intensity, and sincerity from greater acts who came before them, wringing their sounds out through a sponge and lustily devouring the drops. In a way, they’re like the over-processed food our generation consumed as children; with color and nutrients added after the fact, they almost smell and look like something that’s good for us. But they’re not. Arcade Fire is not good for us.

Probably not!

Moving right along, Dan Weiss on MGMT, #16 on the list:

Exploiting LOLcat culture and synthy, psychedoodling indie-dance for pop crossover was such a good idea, apparently, that MGMT made it all their own. They tried to be meta about it on their big 2008 breakthrough single “Time to Pretend,” which is about rocking ‘til you die with “models for wives.” And a follow-up hit was not to come; the hookless prog meanderings of their difficult second album (2010’s Congratulations) made it clear they weren’t in on the joke after all.

(I will admit to playing the shit out of the first MGMT album and loving the second album when it came out. A few weeks later, however, I decided that I absolutely hated it and have never listened to them since. That might be the only time this has ever happened to me with an album. I can’t think of a second time.)

The 20 Worst Hipster Bands: The Complete List (LA Weekly)

 
We seek to write the perfect sentence. The one that opens the paragraph, like a key in a door, to places undiscovered. It was how to begin this story on Duglas T Stewart, the lead singer and mainstay of BMX Bandits, whether with a fact or a quote, or oblique reference that would set the scene to unfurl his tale.

Duglas has written his fair share of perfect sentences - in dozens of songs over his twenty-five-year career with BMX Bandits. From the first singles in 1986, the debut album C86 in 1989, through to Bee Stings in 2007, Duglas has been at the center of an incredible family of talented musicians who have together created some of the most beautiful, toe-tapping and joyous music of the past 3 decades.

In the early 1990s, when Nirvana was top of the tree, Kurt Cobain said:

’If I could be in any other band, it would be BMX Bandits.’

It was a tip of the hat to a man who is responsible for singing, writing and producing songs of the kind of beauty and fragility Cobain aspired to.

Not just Cobain, but Brian Wilson and Kim Fowley are also fans, with Fowley explaining his own definition of what it means to be a BMX Bandit:

’It means a nuclear submarine floating through chocolate syrup skies of spinach, raining raisins on a Chihuahua covered infinity of plaid waistcoats, with sunglasses and slow motion. It sort of means, pathos equals suburban integrity of loneliness punctuated by really nice melodies.’

But let’s not take Kim’s word for it, we decided to ask Duglas to tell Dangerous Minds his own version of his life and love as a BMX Bandit.

DM: What was your motivation to become a musician?

Duglas T. Stewart: ‘Initially it was two things. I heard Jonathan Richman in 1977 and it sounded so human and full of warmth and humor and beauty. It also seemed to fly in the face in the punk ethos of DESTROY. It really made a connection with me and I thought I’d like to try to do something that hopefully might make others feel like I did listening to Jonathan. Listening to his music gave me a sense of belonging. I felt less alone.

‘The other thing was I met Frances McKee, later of The Vaselines, and I thought she was incredible. I loved everything about her from her mischievous sense of humor to her slightly overlapping front teeth. She said to me one day she thought it would be fun being in a group, and so I thought I would start a group and she could be in it and that way I could spend more time with her and have a vehicle for expressing how she made me feel.

‘Also I had a lot of self belief so I knew if I started a group it would be way better and more interesting than any other local groups at that time.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

The fabulous BMX Bandits: Interview and performance of ‘(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)

 
More from Duglas on music, art & books, and from BMX Bandits, after the jump…
 
With thanks to Duglas T Stewart
 

“Me Walrus. You Jane. Goo goo ga joob.”

This just in: Apparently the “disgusting” new Skittles TV ad was enough to send conservative Christian woman’s group One Million Moms into an apoplectic fit. Now they’re snapping into action. The group, who in the past have called for the boycotting of JC Penny because the retailer hired Ellen Degeneres as its spokesperson, sent out the following press release about the “bestiality” themed Skittles ad:

We are not sure of Skittles’ thought process behind their new ad, but if they are attempting to offend customers, they have succeeded. Skittles’ newest “Walrus” commercial includes a teen girl making out with a walrus. The two are on a coach in an apartment kissing on the mouth when her shocked roommate walks in on them. Parents find this type of advertising inappropriate and unnecessary. Does Skittles’ have our children’s best interest in mind? Skittles candies are for all ages, but their target market is children. Skittles Marketing Team may have thought this was humorous, but not only is it disgusting, it is taking lightly the act of bestiality. Let Skittles know their new ad is irresponsible.

Raise your hand if you think this ad puts a child—even one kid on the entire planet—in danger of wanting to make out with a large flippered marine mammal with tusks? Didn’t think so.

[Now all that needs to happen for this latest “boycott” to crawl up its own ass is for an ANTI-bestiality Christian candy company to…uh, take a stand. Then Mike Huckabee will tell all of the lemmings who listen to his radio show looking for clues on how to think (?!?!?) that they need to support this brave anti-bestiality candy maker by eating their fine sugary Christian products by the bagful. As if it was food… But all of this is really just a nefarious plot to dupe Mike Huckabee and One Million Moms into throwing their support behind the anti-bestiality candy maker… It’s all just an evil satanic ruse. The supposedly anti-bestiality candy maker is really owned jointly by Michael Moore, Michelle Obama, Rachel Maddow and Bill Maher. The real goal of this evil foursome being to give god-fearing Christians type 2 diabetes and make millions of dollars in the process. All of this will be exposed by WorldNetDaily and Donald Trump a few weeks from now, but I digress...]

I can’t believe One Million Moms thinks this is ad is so offensive. It’s just seems… kinda stupid to me. I will admit, though, that all the fuss made me curious about these “new” counter-intuitive Skittles flavors, so thanks for spreading the word One Million Moms! I’d never have heard about this product otherwise if you hadn’t taken the bait! (What a great way to increase the client’s ROI on an ad like this: Troll conservative Christians. They’ll get predictably outraged and then act as unpaid, hostile brand ambassadors! Maybe this deceptively stupid ad is is a lot smarter than I thought at first glance? It’s not just Skittle doing this, it’s Ragu, too)

One YouTube commenter, writing in support of OMM had this to say:

“Gross!! It makes me NOT want to eat Skittles. They have walrus and her spit on them!.”

If only more people knew that Skittles had “walrus” and spit (and probably walrus spit, too) all over them, then this Skittles boycott might actually catch on. Walrus spit? That’s disgusting!

Below, the offending Skittles commercial that arrogantly promotes the acceptance of an unnatural “lifestyle choice”:
 

 
Via Joe.My.God

BONUS CLIP: A video of a walrus sucking his own dick.

Squier by Andy Warhol.
 
Can a shitty video kill a musician’s career? In the case of Billy Squier, one did. In a poll of over 400 music industry mover and shakers, Squier’s video for “Rock Me Tonite” (terribly mis-directed by choreographer Kenny Ortega) is considered to be the worst video ever made by a major artist and record label. Mike Kelber, who headed the Capitol Records division responsible for making the video, called it “a whopping steaming turd” and was astonished that such crappy looking production may have been the most expensive video Capitol had made up until that time. The resulting fiasco was devastating for Squier.

In the thoroughly entertaining book I Want My MTV (I keep mine next to the toilet), Squier describes the effect the “Rock Me Tonite” video had on his career with a combination of self-pity and dumbfounded disbelief. He still seems dazed by the fact that his life could be so profoundly altered with such irrevocable swiftness :

When I saw the video, my jaw dropped. It was diabolical. I looked at it and went, “What the fuck is this?”

The video misrepresents who I am as an artist. I was a good-looking, sexy guy. That certainly didn’t hurt in promoting my music. But in this video I’m kind of a pretty boy. And I’m preening around a room. People said “He’s gay.” Or, “He’s on drugs.” It was traumatizing to me. I mean, I had nothing against gays. I have a lot of gay friends.”

The video damaged his reputation among rock fans and Squier went from playing to packed arenas to less than 10,000 people a night.

Everything I worked for was crumbling and I couldn’t stop it. How can a four-minute video do that? Ok, it sucked. So?”

Squier eventually quit rock ‘n’ roll and it’s pretty obvious that the video is what compelled him to retire. Whatever regrets he might have are tempered by the fact that he left the music biz a wealthy man.

The wounds have healed and the scars aren’t that deep, because my life has evolved in a good way. I left the music business when I was forty-three. I don’t have to work. Look who’s smiling now! That video is a bad part of a good life.”

I’m sure most first wave MTV fans remember this: the video that killed the rock ‘n’ roll star:
 

 
Update: I Want My MTV author Rob Tannebaum wrote us to clarify a point made in my article. Thanks Rob.

There wasn’t an actual poll. My co-author and I interviewed more than 400 people for our oral history, and there was a clear consensus that “Rock Me Tonite” sucked way more than any other sucky video. No other video came close, not even Journey’s “Separate Ways,” which is pretty damn sucky.”

 
In the annals of activist history, Howard Zinn is a hallowed name, though without much rally from any cult of personality. The A People’s History of the United States author is known mostly for his seminal work and activism, as he took great pains to keep his private life private. Author Martin Duberman starts A Life on the Left by noting that Zinn actually went out of his way to destroy any personal affects, journals, etc that would reveal anything about his private life, perhaps remembering the good work that has been marred by the personal lives of its participants. However, the book is a compelling chronicle of Zinn’s contribution to US activism and academia, as well as the history of the US Left, itself.

The book only falls short for brief flaws, none of which are unheard of in the canonization of activists. First, while inference into Zinn’s interior life might help us understand him better, the speculations on his affairs and his wife’s insinuated mental health issues don’t actually contextualize him or his work, nor do they appear to give a better understanding of him as a husband or father. While I don’t believe in protecting a man’s legacy (and I’m aware he’s not perfect), frankly, it feels a bit gossipy, and unnecessary. The only other (again, minor) gripe I have is that the author (a historian himself) tends to devolve into polemics in what is otherwise a fairly professional account. It’s probably an excruciating exercise in abstinence for a historian to cover World War 1, Vietnam, Civil Rights, Reagan, etc without inserting their own analysis, but Zinn’s views are still the focus, so it never strays too far.

What it does well is a lot. The book gives a great analysis of his body of work; Zinn was more than just A People’s History. While I expected a strong focus on his most famous work, the book doesn’t skimp on Zinn’s theoretical pieces. Disobedience and Democracy: Nine Fallacies on Law and Order is as much a primer for young activists as Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, providing an analytical basis for protest and dissent in common speak language. Moreover, the earlier works that made waves in academia are often overlooked, and it’s a welcome backstory to learn.

The book is more about Zinn’s activism, organizing, and protest than his writing, however. Ardently averse to the stodgy academic, Zinn was arrested multiple times during direct actions in desegregation and civil rights organizing in the south. His regular arrests and organizing, as well as his subversive teaching style, caused constant clash with both his major tenures, Spelman (a black women’s college in Atlanta), and Boston College. While his later time in Boston was marked by a malicious conservative university president denouncing him at every turn (and once accusing him of trying to set a university building on fire), his clashes during his first position are almost more interesting. While Spelman obviously pushed for improvement in the socioeconomic standing of Southern black communities, the college did not advocate breaking the law. At one point, the president of Spelman accuses Zinn of a sexual relationship with a student, on the basis of giving her a ride. It’s under this sort of scrutiny and fear that Zinn continued to break the law in the name of social justice, and remain an ardent radical in spite of the benefits he would have received from compromising as a fair weather liberal.

Identifying as “something of a Marxist,” and, unlike his colleague and friend Noam Chomsky,  refusing to fully commit to a label of socialist or anarchist, Zinn was motivated by the work to be done, and not by an ideological dogma. With our current struggles in mind, the 60s and 70s feel so prescient, and in reading the book, there’s a hopeful tone when all the progress made in a single lifetime is laid out before us. A Life on the Left is a history book, using the life of a man to reflect the conditions of history; I think Zinn would have approved.
 

 
Bill Nye, “The Science Guy” thinks Creationism isn’t appropriate for children.

At one point in this video, Nye explains that when he is confronted with an adult who seems stuck on Creationism as their primary reality tunnel, he tells them they can “deny evolution and live in your world that’s completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that’s fine, but don’t make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future.”
 

 
Via reddit