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Reason to Believe: Rod Stewart cries tears of joy when Celtic beat Barcelona, 2-1
11.08.2012
02:29 pm
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Real men do cry, as the legendary Rod Stewart proved last night, when he burst into tears after his beloved Celtic F.C. beat ‘the world’s best soccer team’ Barcelona, 2-1, at their stadium in Glasgow.

While some wags thought Mr. Stewart must have lost his wallet to elicit such a response, I can attest, as a fellow Celtic supporter, tears of joy were more than understandable after such a tense and exciting, Champions League game. Now, here’s to the next one.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.08.2012
02:29 pm
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‘BMX Bandits In Space’: Duglas T. Stewart releases contender for Album of the Year
11.05.2012
08:34 pm
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The latest release from BMX Bandits reunites the talented, maverick frontman, Duglas T. Stewart with his former Bandits Jim McCulloch, Norman Blake and Sean Dickson, who together have produced BMX Bandits In Space, which is the most accomplished and best record of the Bandits’ long and influential career.

This the 16th BMX Bandits’ release and is the first time Stewart has written with Dickson and McCulloch in over 20-years. The rekindling of their talents has gilded the quality of the bandits’ songs - writing some of the finest they band has ever produced.

‘There isn’t really a pattern or formula for how BMX Bandits songs are written,’ Duglas T. Stewart explains, ‘And I like it that way.’

‘I think some writers get tied in by habits they have when writing, their hands tend to gravitate to certain shapes and chord progressions on instruments. Because I don’t write at an instrument, as I don’t really play any instruments and don’t understand the rules and mathematics of music,  I avoid doing that naturally. When I write a melody it can pretty much go anywhere.

‘For this album the songs were written many different ways. A lot of the songs were written with Jim McCulloch. Jim was an original member of BMX Bandits in 1985 and 1986 but we didn’t really write together then. Sometimes Jim had a musical idea that I would contribute other musical ideas to and lyrics to and sometimes he had some words and a bit of a time and sometimes I had the original musical idea.  I think of music in very visual ways, a bit like a soundtrack to little movies in my head or like what Shadow Morton, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry did with The Shangri-Las. So within a song each musical section will often be a representation of a scene.  Musical phrases and sound motifs may represent a character, an emotion, an action or even dialogue that the lyrics doesn’t include.’

Through a series of connected songs, BMX Bandits In Space tells the story of an Astronaut as he drifts in space and time, looking back on the loves of his life.

‘The space in BMX Bandits In Space isn’t the space of Star Wars or 2001: A Space Odyssey, it’s more like the space that’s portrayed in Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running,which starred Bruce Dern, or a bit like a space version of 1964 TV version Robinson Crusoe, scored by Robert Mellin. Mellin’s Crusoe soundtrack for that series was something I kept returning to during the making of BMX Bandits In Space.’

The opening track is the beautiful “Still”, which sets the tone for the album and where Stewart, at times, sounds like a young Willie Nelson.
 

“Still” - BMX Bandits.
 
‘The first song that I wrote for this album was “Still”. The melody for the verses and the first line came to me the last time I visited Japan. I kept singing “There’s no need to worry, it’s going to be alright” over and over to myself, trying to reassure myself but somehow I didn’t believe myself. 

‘I worked on my idea with the Japanese group Plectrum and when I returned home they sent me a rough version of what they had recorded. I was playing the game Wii music with my son and I loved it and the sounds on it. I could suddenly hear/see the complete story and heard the arrangement for the song with mellotron voices and sounds like the ones on the game. The song set the whole tone and mood and setting for the album. Although the song doesn’t mention space or space travel I felt like the character in this song was hopelessly drifting in space in a little pod like craft with instruments crackling and things shorting around me.’

“Still” sets up the concept of an astronaut or traveler in search of personal, emotional redemption, the tale told through the cycle of songs, incluidng “Beautiful Friend”, where we are told:

“I was alive again, I could smile again.”

Through to “Look At You, Look At Me” and “Listen To Some Music”, with its knowing reference of post pop glories, to “Like The Morning Sun” - with Rachel Allison’s delectable vocal, “Elegant Love”, “You Disappointed Me”, “Fucked Up This Time”, “It’s You”, through to the haunting final refrain of the brilliant “In Space”.
 

BMX Bandis “In Space”
 
Duglas explains there are a series of characters who run through the album, appearing and reappearing on different tracks, as he explains:

‘The Lonely Astronaut - dreaming, remembering and misremembering little scenes of love.

‘The Dream Lover - who first appears in the song “Beautiful Friend”, then reappears in “Look at You, Look at Me”, “Like The Morning Sun” and in other places.

‘The Angel - who can wash away my sins and guide me and other lost souls home, sometimes she blurs at the edges with the dream lover character.

‘The Soldier - sent off to the front the day after meeting his ideal girl at a dance. Again this character blurs with the lonely astronaut, with me and with an idealised version of my grandfather.’

The blurring of these characters and songs reveal how close their emotional odyssey in BMX Bandits In Space is to Stewart’s own biography, and the ending with the Astronaut / Soldier traveling across a landscape bathed in light, offers a hopeful redemption.

As Duglas sings on the album:

“It’s a complicated story, like the best ones can be…”

which

“...could change your life, so let our song begin.”

And I suggest you do just that. For Duglas T. Stewart and his fellow Bandits have brought together the best of their talents to make BMX Bandits In Space a stunning, beautiful and brilliant album, which is top of my list for Album of the Year.

5 stars *****.

BMX Bandits In Space is release on Elefant Records and is available here.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Duglas T. Stewart: The Incredible Pop Life of a BMX Bandit


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.05.2012
08:34 pm
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Frankie Vaughan: Glasgow’s Gang culture of the 1960s
10.19.2012
07:28 pm
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Gangs have been synonymous with Glasgow since the 1800s. The poverty, squalor and terrible overcrowding of this great industrial city led to a harsh indifferent attitude to life and self-preservation.

The Penny Mob came out of the East End of the city. They had their own rules, dress code and even collected fees for a shared fund to pay police and court fines - hence their name. The Penny Mob elected their own chairmen to take charge of collecting money for the fund and its distribution.

The Penny Mob bred many rivals, who they fought for territorial dominance of a few blocks of street. The San Toys operated out of the Calton, a district close to the city center, and they fought with the Tim Malloys. Battles were brutal, bloody and quick. Fights often took place in Glasgow Green, a large municipal park to the east of the city, on the banks of the River Clyde. These were called “square gos” - one-on-one fights, where gang leaders slugged it out with each other. More often than not, these ended in pitched battles between rival factions.

Gangs spread throughout the city - each district, or block, was demarcated with its own gang. The South Side had some of the most vicious gangs, including the Mealy Boys, the McGlynn Push and the Gold Dust Gang, which operated out of the Gorbals. Gangs used bars and drinking dens as their HQs and meeting places, from where they planned their next territorial battle.

By the First World War, gangs were rampant across the city, with the most infamous being the Redskins that ruled the East End. Unlike previous gangs, the Redskins preferred swords, hatchets, machetes, razors and lead-weighted clubs rather than fists. They also operated as a major criminal organization, running protection rackets on local shops and businesses, and were involved in extortion, burglary and random mugging.

The Redskins fought rivals like the Calton Black Hand, the Bloodhound Flying Corps, the Hi-Hi’s, the Kelly Boys from Govan and the Baltic Fleet, which ran out of Baltic Street. The Redskins were eventually crushed by the police who were not afraid to use their own brutal tactics to quell the gangs.

Gangs always flourished during times of poverty. The 1930’s Depression saw a rise in violence and a new wave of gangs using cut throat razors as their weapon of choice, not just on their enemies (where they were used to inflict the “Glasgow Smile”), but on innocent members of the public.

In the 1960s, singer Frankie Vaughan famously visited one of Glasgow’s most troubled areas - Easterhouse. Here the singer successfully co-ordinated an amnesty between rival gangs, raising thousands of pounds to pay for amenities and youth centers. Vaughan, who had starred with Marilyn Monroe in Let’s Make Love, and had a highly success singing career, became a hero to the community.

By the 1970s, gangs had lost much of their appeal as judges gave out stiff sentences - a 2-5 year jail term for carrying a razor blade. Some gang members moved into more serious crime, running drugs and extortion rings, and carrying out major bank robberies across the city.

Today, though Glasgow has changed dramatically for the better, it still has an unfortunate reputation, In part because it is sadly still one of most violent cities in Western Europe. The homicide rate for males aged between 10 and 29 is on a par with the countries Argentina, Costa Rica and Lithuania. Not other cities but whole countries. A stabbing occurs every 6 hours. Many more go unreported. Alcohol-related death rates are 3 times the British average. And there are parts of Glasgow have the lowest life expectancies in Europe.

Yet, I love this city, for there is a great humanity amongst the people of Glasgow, that reflects a genuine belief things can and will get better.

This documentary focusses on Glasgow gangs during the 1960s, interviewing various gang members and looking at Frankie Vaughan’s involvement in bringing an amnesty to parts of the city.
 


 
With thanks to Racket Racket.

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.19.2012
07:28 pm
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‘Artificial Indifference’: John Butler gives a seminar on Drone Warfare today in Glasgow
10.19.2012
07:25 am
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John Butler of The Butler Brothers will be presenting Artificial Indifference: A Seminar on the Ethics and Economics of Drone Warfare, at the University of Glasgow, today, Friday October 19th, at 15:30 in the East Quadrangle Lecture Theater.

John will be speaking alongside Dr. Ian Shaw and Keith Hammond, and the seminar ties in with a one-day exhibition of Butler Brothers’ work also being held at the University.

This is highly recommended for any fans of Butler’s brilliant work, and for his critical analysis of drone warfare.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

The Ethical Governor


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.19.2012
07:25 am
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Alex Harvey was the Director: SAHB was the soundtrack
10.02.2012
07:35 pm
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They were making a film, and Alex Harvey was the director, creating the different scenes, to which SAHB put the sound track. And what a great film it was too.

It’s 30 years since Alex Harvey died on the eve of his 47th birthday. Hard to believe, but there it is. It seems so recent but is now so very far away. Yet, we all need some Alex Harvey in our life, just to remember the brilliance of the man, and of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band. Here is Alex in a brief interview with “Whispering” Bob Harris on the Old Grey Whistle Test, where he talks about his early days as the Scottish Tommy Steele, playing in the Big Soul Band, and performing in the musical Hair. The key thing to note here is the long apprenticeship Harvey had before he reaped success.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band


 
3 bonus tracks from SAHB, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.02.2012
07:35 pm
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Bing Hitler: Craig Ferguson long, long before ‘The Late, Late Show’
09.15.2012
03:56 pm
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This is Craig Ferguson long, long before The Late, Late Show, performing as his stand-up comedy alter ego, Bing Hitler, at the Pavillion Theater, Glasgow, on October 14th, 1987.

This is 2 years after Bing’s famed gig at the Tron Theater Gong Night, which led to column inches and a variety of shows, ranging from a-one-off at Cul-de-Sac Bar to the legendary Night of the Long Skean Dhus in 1986. Back then, the Cul-de-Sac in Ashton Lane, was an important watering hole for artists, writers, musicians and performers, to meet and share ideas, gossip and alcohol. Of an evening you could find Ferguson at the bar with musicians like Bobby Bluebell, the late Bobby Paterson, James Grant, and writers like Tommy Udo. Even the bar staff had talent like the artist Lesley Banks. These were fun times.

At times in this concert, Bing comes across like a shouty cousin to Rik from Young Ones. Craig has always been a confident, talented and assured performer, but here he was just a wee bit rough around the edges - part of the character - but it’s all good fun, and a great look back.
 

 
Bonus clip of Bing Hitler performing at Bennet’s, from 1987, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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09.15.2012
03:56 pm
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‘Hear Victor & Barry…and Faint’: Musical comedy from Alan Cumming & Forbes Masson
09.14.2012
03:36 pm
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You see, the eighties wasn’t all about big hair, lip gloss, Boy George and Miami Vice. No. It was also the heyday of that redoubtable cabaret duo, Victor and Barry.

Victor Ignatius MacIlvaney and Barry Primrose McLeish, and their theatrical organ, the Kelvinside Young People’s Amateur Dramatic Art Society (KYPADAS), were the masterly comic creations of drama students Alan Cumming (Barry) and Forbes Masson (Victor). Together they traveled across the world (and Glasgow) entertaining audiences with their witty repartee and hand-carved selection of songs.

These ditties included such memorable sweetmeats as “Kelvinside Man” (Kelvinside is a small enclave in the West End of Glasgow, a sort of twee Greenwich Village, where your fruit is a yam, and you buy fish from a van); “Marks & Spencers” - V & B’s favorite department store; and the painful rivalries of showbiz, “We Knew Her So Well”.

This tartan twosome were a musical Julian and Sandy, whose unstoppable success led to the release of their best selling (well, in Kelvinside, and parts of Bearsden and Milngavie, anyway) debut recording cassette, Hear Victor and Barry and Faint. By way of introduction to this fabulous twin-set of talents, here is Victor and Barry singing “Kelvinside Man”.
 

 
Bonus clips, plus ‘Hear Victor and Barry…and faint’, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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09.14.2012
03:36 pm
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Alan Cumming: First TV performance (as a dead soldier) for BBC director’s course
08.30.2012
03:19 pm
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A 19-year-old Alan Cumming makes his first television appearance in a BBC TV Director’s training course in 1984.

Never intended for broadcast, this is probably Alan’s first performance in front of a camera, though he did have a very fleeting appearance in episode 6 of Traveling Man the same year. However, he is billed here, along with his fellow performers, Forbes Masson and David Lee Michael, as final year students at Glasgow’s Royal Academy of Music and Drama.

Cumming would team-up with Masson to become the double-act Victor and Barry, making a memorable impact at the Tron Theater’s Gong Nights in 1985, where Craig Ferguson and Jerry Sadowitz also made their names.

Here Cumming is cast as one of 3 dead (or possibly war-weary) soldiers, where he lip-synchs pop songs and recites a poem by Wilfred Owen. This was Justin C Adams’ Final Project for his director’s course. Adams went onto a career as a director of quiz shows at BBC Scotland, before establishing his own highly successful production company.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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08.30.2012
03:19 pm
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Duglas T. Stewart: The incredible pop life of a BMX Bandit

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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
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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08.24.2012
06:36 pm
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The fabulous BMX Bandits: Interview & performance of ‘(You Gotta) Fight For the Right (To Party!)’
08.13.2012
07:30 pm
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A handsome young Duglas T Stewart of BMX Bandits gave this brief tour of his favorite things for 1980s pop show FSd. Amongst the items on display in Duglas’ den were: a fan’s portrait made from sticky-back plastic, records by Village People, The Beach Boys and Throbbing Gristle (nuff said?), and his plastic fish tank. This will go in some way to explaining why BMX Bandits are one of the most beloved, beautiful and inspiring bands of all time. As has been said by others in the documentary film Serious Drugs, BMX Bandits’ music is like being hugged by all the people you love, all at the same time. Pretty heart-warming.

Duglas’s piece to camera segues into a quick clip of Wray Gunn and the Rockets, featuring a very young Keith Warwick, now with The New Piccadillys, before we return to Duglas and BMX Bandits performing a subversively delightful version of “(You Gotta) Fight For the Right (To Party!)”

Serious Drugs - The Film about BMX Bandits is to be shown at the Portobello Film Festival, in London on 7 September 2012, check here for details.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

The New Piccadillys: If The Beatles played Punk


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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08.13.2012
07:30 pm
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‘I am not a comedian, I am Lenny Bruce’: His brilliant performance from 1966
08.08.2012
07:41 pm
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I was in drag the last time I did stand-up, about twenty-five-years ago, in a crowded bar at the Tron Theater, Glasgow. It was a return appearance, on a ‘gong night’ bill that included Craig Ferguson, who was starting out with his comic character Bing Hitler.

In some respects I was amazed to be asked back, and was certain my invitation had been a clerical error. The first time I’d tried to be Lenny McBruce and was full of misplaced energy that led me to telling the audience to ‘fuck off’, whilst reading a copy of the Sun, riffing on its headlines, horoscopes, interviews and adverts. I’d got as far as Princess Diana and Pete Sutcliffe jokes, when the howls of abuse proved too much, I was gonged quickly off.

Other gong nights had seen a generation of new and original talent: a duo called Victor and Barry - Alan Cumming and Forbes Mason - those erstwhile founders of the Kelvinside Young People’s Amateur Dramatic Art Society (KYPADAS), who performed camp musical numbers, in slick-backed hair and monogramed smoking jackets.

And then there was Jerry Sadowitz, who was incredible, and still is. His humor was unpredictable, relentless and much in the spirit of Lenny Bruce - nothing was sacred, no subject off limits. When menaced with the gong, he pulled out a joke pistol and threatened to shoot the compere, John Stahl.

Amongst such talents, I was just a daft, wee laddie, who wanted to succeed more than I wanted to perform.

So, on my return, I revamped one of my old drag characters, Bessie Graham, a mistress of the single entendre. I went through the rehearsed material and it seemed to be working well - at least for half the audience, those nearest to the stage that is. But for anyone beyond row 4, I appeared as an indifferent mime artist, with a basic grasp of mime. Later, I was told my mic had not been working.

Afterwards, watching Craig Ferguson perform, I decided to give it all up. Over 2 years of performing, on-and-off, I’d found out I was fine at comic characters and sketches, but hadn’t grown-up enough to have my own voice, and know what I wanted to say. And without that, I would never be any good.

That’s why Lenny Bruce was so good. He knew what to say. He understood himself - his strengths and his weaknesses. He developed his own philosophy that influenced, as a new documentary reveals, writers such as Norman Mailer (who even tried his hand at stand-up), and Philip Roth; musicians like Frank Zappa, Jim Morrison and even David Crosby. Here is Lenny Bruce performing towards the end of his life, when he was banned for obscenity, unable to perform anywhere but San Francisco, bankrupt, drug addicted, and yet still as brutally funny and as honest as he had ever been.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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08.08.2012
07:41 pm
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A Cultural Goldmine: Variant magazine’s back catalog now available on-line
07.16.2012
07:57 pm
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A cultural gold mine, the complete back catalog of radical arts magazine Variant is now available on-line.

Variant is a free cultural magazine, produced in Glasgow, which is now available in print and online editions. From its first edition in 1984, Variant has been an essential source of thought-provoking and constructive investigations into all areas of arts and ideas in contemporary society.

Variant describes itself as a magazine of “cross currents in culture”,  which states:

Objectives

Variant is a constituted association.

The Association’s objects are to promote, maintain, improve and advance the education of the public particularly by the encouragement of the Arts including (but not limited to) the arts of drama, dance, music, singing, literature and visual arts. In furtherance thereof the Association shall seek:
a. to act as a consistent forum for innovative, experimental and new artistic endeavour;
b. to stimulate imaginative and progressive thinking in the arts; and
c. to promote the links between cultural practices and to place these within a wide social context.

Over the years contributors have included Ewan Morrison, Leigh French, Ian Brotherhood, Angela McRobbie, and Daniel Jewesbury, and now, all issues of this seminal and important magazine are available for downloading here.
 
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A selection of other Variant covers, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.16.2012
07:57 pm
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Tonight, A DJ Will Save Your Life: An interview with Performer Extraordinaire The Niallist
06.21.2012
07:25 pm
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‘...I’m from an old school that believed that music and musicians could change things - maybe not radically and maybe not quickly, but that the seeds for change could definitely be sown with songs and videos and shows and interviews.’

Niall O’Conghaile aka The Niallist is talking about the music that inspired him to become a musician, a producer, a DJ, a one-man-disco-industry, and a Performer Extraordinaire.

Niall makes music that moves you “physically, mentally and emotionally. Dance music, for want of a better term!” But it’s always been about more than that.

Let’s turn to the history book…

When Brian Eno was working with David Bowie in Germany, he heard Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” in a record shop. Eno bought the single and ran, holding it aloft, back to Bowie in the studio, where he announced, like a pop John-the-Baptist, ‘I have heard the future.’

Niall is part of that future and his musical output is quite phenomenal and brilliant.

But it’s not just music that Niall has made his own, you’ll know him as a star blogger on Dangerous Minds, and perhaps through his work on the blogs Shallow Rave, Weaponizer, Menergy and his site, Niallism.

Niall also DJs / organizes club nights with Menergy and Tranarchy, and is the keyboard player with Joyce D’Ivision. All of which, for my money, makes The Niallist one of the most exciting, talented and outrageous DJ/producers currently working in the UK. Not bad for a boy who started out spinning discs on one turntable at school.

Now, it’s strange how you can spend much of your working day with someone and yet never really know that much about them. Wanting to know more about the extraordinary Niallist, I decided to interview him for (who else?) Dangerous Minds, and this is what he said.
 
DM: Tell me about how you started in music? Was this something to moved towards in childhood?

The Niallist: ‘Yeah, music is something I remember affecting me deeply as a kid. My sister, who is older than me, was a huge Prince fan and naturally that teenage, female, pop-music enthusiasm rubbed off on me. I would read all her old copies of Smash Hits and create my own scrap books from the magazines, even though the bands were, by then, either non-existent or pretty naff.

‘My brother was into more serious, “boy” music, which I didn’t like as a child, but which I really appreciated when I hit puberty. He had a big box of tapes that was crucial to me, even though he didn’t like me borrow them, but he had pretty much all Led Zep’s albums in there, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Bowie, The Stone Roses, and I particularly remember him getting a copy of Nevermind when it had just come out, which was a key discovery. That box smelt of Dettol and musty cassettes, and to this day the smell of Dettol still takes me back!’

What were your early tastes in music? What were those key moments when a song a record made you realise this was what you wanted to do?

The Niallist: ‘Well, Nevermind was definitely one. I think that record started a lot of people on a musical journey. But also, I really identified with Kurt Cobain, as he was an outsider in the pop music landscape who spoke up for gay and women’s rights, which really struck a chord with me. He was a man, but he also wasn’t scared of being seen as feminine. He was a pop star, he looked scruffy and spoke with intelligence and passion. He was different. As someone else who was different, and a natural outsider, I guess I saw music as maybe a place where I could fit in and still fully express myself.

‘Call me hopelessly naive if you will, but I’m from an old school that believed that music and musicians could change things - maybe not radically and maybe not quickly, but that the seeds for change could definitely be sown with songs and videos and shows and interviews. Looking back on the early 90s now, it seems like an incredibly politically-charged time for music and pop culture. Public Enemy, NWA, Ice Cube, Huggy Bear, Bikini Kill, The Prodigy with “Fuck ‘Em And Their Law”, Pearl Jam telling Ticketmaster to fuck off, Spiral Tribe, massive illegal raves, Back To The Planet, Senser, Rage Against The Machine, the fact that RuPaul was a pop star, even Madonna’s Sex book and Erotica album for God’s sake! If you weren’t politically active or at least aware back then, you were terribly uncool. That spirit seems to have disappeared from music altogether now, which is sad.’
 

 

 
More from Niall, including his Top 5 picks, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.21.2012
07:25 pm
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Sounds for the summer pt 2: Miaoux Miaoux is definitely ‘Better For Now’
06.01.2012
01:58 pm
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More gorgeous electronic pop, this time from the Glasgow-based one-man-band Miaoux Miauox, aka multi-instrumentalist Julian Corrie.

Set to release his debut album Light Of The North on the celebrated Glasgow indie label Chemikal Underground on June 11th, with production from Paul Savage who has previously helmed work by Mogwai and WuLyf, Miaoux Miaoux has just released the first video from the long player, the rather beautiful “Better For Now”.

Light Of The North is an accomplished work. The songwriting couples the summertime breeziness of Hall & Oates with the adolescent yearning of Hot Chip.  The production, while rooted firmly in the one-man-in-a-bedroom aesthetic, has shades of trip-hop, post-rock and the psychedelic post-crunk of fellow Glaswegians Hudson Mohawke and Rustie, all riding over synth funk bass lines and samples and beats with a real 90s-dance feel. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for this one - you can pre-order the vinyl and CD, and download the MP3s, from the Chemikal Underground online shop.

There’s a little bit more information about Miaoux Mioux on the site www.miaouxmiaoux.com, but if you want to hear more music, then check out his Soundcloud page. This is just one of the download tracks on offer:

Miaoux Miaoux “Hrvatski”
 

 
 
And here’s the above mentioned video, coming on like a no-budget Jodorowsky with a slowly decaying skull made out of flowers:

Miaoux Miaoux “Better For Now”

 

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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06.01.2012
01:58 pm
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Jimmy Reid: The ‘greatest speech since President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address’
05.24.2012
04:58 pm
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DM pal Tommy Udo reminded me today of this brilliant and inspirational speech by the socialist, trade unionist, politician and writer Jimmy Reid. The whole speech has been posted over at Exile on Moan Street, and my DM comrade Richard Metzger wrote eloquently about Jimmy Reid at the time of his death in 2010.

It’s may be forty years since Reid gave this speech, at his inauguration as Rector of the University of Glasgow, but its inspirational words are still as relevant and much needed today. Back in 1972, Reid’s speech hit resonated across the world, and was published, in its entirety, in the New York Times, where it was described as:

“...the greatest speech since President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.”

No hyperbole. This is one of the Great Speeches, and as Richard has previously pointed out “Mandatory Reading”.

Jimmy Reid’s Inaugural Speech as Rector of the University of Glasgow, 1972
 
“Alienation is the precise and correctly applied word for describing the major social problem in Britain today. People feel alienated by society. In some intellectual circles it is treated almost as a new phenomenon. It has, however, been with us for years. What I believe is true is that today it is more widespread, more pervasive than ever before. Let me right at the outset define what I mean by alienation. It is the cry of men who feel themselves the victims of blind economic forces beyond their control. It’s the frustration of ordinary people excluded from the processes of decision-making. The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies.

“Many may not have rationalised it. May not even understand, may not be able to articulate it. But they feel it. It therefore conditions and colours their social attitudes. Alienation expresses itself in different ways in different people. It is to be found in what our courts often describe as the criminal antisocial behaviour of a section of the community. It is expressed by those young people who want to opt out of society, by drop-outs, the so-called maladjusted, those who seek to escape permanently from the reality of society through intoxicants and narcotics. Of course, it would be wrong to say it was the sole reason for these things. But it is a much greater factor in all of them than is generally recognised.

“Society and its prevailing sense of values leads to another form of alienation. It alienates some from humanity. It partially de-humanises some people, makes them insensitive, ruthless in their handling of fellow human beings, self-centred and grasping. The irony is, they are often considered normal and well-adjusted. It is my sincere contention that anyone who can be totally adjusted to our society is in greater need of psychiatric analysis and treatment than anyone else. They remind me of the character in the novel, Catch 22, the father of Major Major. He was a farmer in the American Mid-West. He hated suggestions for things like medi-care, social services, unemployment benefits or civil rights. He was, however, an enthusiast for the agricultural policies that paid farmers for not bringing their fields under cultivation. From the money he got for not growing alfalfa he bought more land in order not to grow alfalfa. He became rich. Pilgrims came from all over the state to sit at his feet and learn how to be a successful non-grower of alfalfa. His philosophy was simple. The poor didn’t work hard enough and so they were poor. He believed that the good Lord gave him two strong hands to grab as much as he could for himself. He is a comic figure. But think – have you not met his like here in Britain? Here in Scotland? I have.

“It is easy and tempting to hate such people. However, it is wrong. They are as much products of society, and of a consequence of that society, human alienation, as the poor drop-out. They are losers. They have lost the essential elements of our common humanity. Man is a social being. Real fulfilment for any person lies in service to his fellow men and women. The big challenge to our civilisation is not Oz, a magazine I haven’t seen, let alone read. Nor is it permissiveness, although I agree our society is too permissive. Any society which, for example, permits over one million people to be unemployed is far too permissive for my liking. Nor is it moral laxity in the narrow sense that this word is generally employed – although in a sense here we come nearer to the problem. It does involve morality, ethics, and our concept of human values. The challenge we face is that of rooting out anything and everything that distorts and devalues human relations.
 

 
Via Exile on Moan Street, with thanks to Tommy Udo!
 
The rest of Jimmy Reid’s speech, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.24.2012
04:58 pm
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