September 21st, 2010

“Hands Off Our Eggs, Benedict!”

Here’s ITN footage of yours truly, about 21 seconds in, grey jacketed, close-cropped and sporting the serial killer reactolite glasses, mouthing along, if not actually singing aloud, the anti-Pope chants. Under a blue sky marred only by the waspish presence of three static police helicopters keeping watch above Trafalgar Square, some 10,000 of us marched against Ratzinger’s visit, his church’s policy on condoms particularly in AIDS-stricken countries, his attitude to gays, ordination of female priests, his more relaxed attitude towards holocaust deniers in the clergy, and, of course, the cover-up of countless cases of child abuse committed over decades in which he himself was arguably complicit, in order to protect what he laughingly regards as the “good name” of the church.

There were widespread fears in some quarters that the Pope’s visit to the UK would not go well. My Mother, a practising Catholic, told me that in her diocese, three coaches had been ordered to take pilgrims down to London for the Hyde Park mass but with just a fortnight to go, had only managed to sell three seats. Even her friend, the redoubtable Sister Nora, whose commitment to Catholicism can be taken as a byword, snorted that she would “certainly not” be making the trip herself, as she thought the Pope’s visit represented a shocking expense in times of economic hardship. Others were concerned that what loyal Papists still insist on describing as a media campaign full of “distortions and exaggerations” (as the Pope’s own brother had it), or to put it another way, the widespread and prolonged incidence of child rape on the Pope’s watch, might deter others from coming along to drink in his piety.

As it was, although numbers were down, the Pope’s visit could be said to have gone well. This was less due to the Pope and his people himself, preceded by aide Cardinal Walter Kasper, who described Britain as a “Third World country” in which “aggressive atheism” threatened to hold sway. The Vatican hasten to clarify that Kasper wasn’t conflating atheism with the Third World but that his remarks were an allusion to Britain’s multicultural society. No offence there, then. As for the Pope himself, all got up like a Christmas tree and sporting that rictus, senile leer of his, he wasn’t exactly putting his back into the charm offensive either. One imagined Mr Burns out of The Simpsons attempting to do a Jesus and turn over the tables in the temple. In his reedy, Teutonic monotone, he berated Britain for its culture of “aggressive secularism” (always with the aggressive – but more of that later), our celebrity-fixated culture, the apparent danger that we were on the point of doing away with Christmas and the greater danger that in turning our back on God we were scrunching along the gravel secular road to full-blown Naziism.

The visit went well not because of any of this. It went well because the Pope benefited from wall to wall media coverage, a pliant, mainstream media who go into a quiet, prolonged lather over any event they can train their cameras 24/7 upon, and goggling crowds who gawped and mobile phone snapped at the Pope as if he were Martine McCutcheon turning on the Christmas lights in Oxford Street. (If I had been the Pope, I really wouldn’t have had such a downer on UK celebrity culture – he has, after all, been a beneficiary of it these last few days). Corrections of the Pope’s factual errors were marginalised in mainstream coverage. As a former member of a Nazi organisation, he ought to have known better than most that the Nazis were anti-atheist and pro-God and Christianity. Yes, priests were persecuted, but only for speaking out against the church, not for practising their faith. As for the threat of Christmas being cancelled, it seemed that this eminent theologian and intellectual, master of the diamond sharp nuance, was simply parroting the annual, evidenceless scare stories trotted out by the Daily Express and taken them at face value. Still, I suppose in the Pope’s line of work, having a strong evidence base for your utterances is no big concern.

As for the Pope’s apologies, they were less than adequate – though in fairness, were he to apologies to the extent fully required, he’d be laying the Vatican open to countless lawsuits. And so, he continues to fail to address the point. It is not the abusers for whom he should apologise – abusers come from all walks of life. It is that the crimes of these abusers were covered up, treated as internal matters by an institution that still, in its heart of hearts, believes itself to be above the law, a state unto itself. Suppose this had been the Post Office. If it turned out that postmen had been guilty of serial rape against children but instead of being reported to the police, had simply had their rounds changed, or their crimes regarded as an internal Post Office matter, and when the police had taken it upon themselves to investigate the PO on the strong suspicion of concealing evidence, the Post Master General had openly protested at their interference, describing their actions as “surprising and deplorable”? (The Pope’s reaction to police raids on ecclesiastical premises in Belgium, following the exposure of the former Bishop of Bruges as guilty of child rape and incest).

Still, none of this was probed too sharply by a media paralysed by the traditional reverence afforded to churchfolk. It was presumably out of a similar reverence that Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury extended a civil, ecumenical hand to Ratzinger, despite his having openly courted members of the C of E who felt their own lot were becoming too liberal to come join the ever reliably, ever-illiberal Catholic Church.

There were, however, the dissenters, led by those described as the “usual suspects” – Peter Tatchell and Richard Dawkins. It has been impossible to conceal the level of antipathy towards the Pope and his visit. However, it’s the wont of those who dissent against the dissenters not to address and refute the content of their arguments but to caricature the supposed temper in which they make them. The anti-Pope brigade are described in idly pejorative terms as invariably hotheaded. So, to grab a few phrases that have stuck from recent coverage at random, we have the “excitable” Richard Dawkins, the “frenzy” of the secularists who are “spitting venom” (The Daily Mail). “jumping up and down” in anger, and, of course, making their points in a manner that is markedly “aggressive”, as the Vatican complains, or elsewhere, “aggressive”, or, as they further describe the secularists, “aggressive”.

Why these ad hominem assaults? Often accompanied by the baseless and meaningless counter-accusation that the “new atheists” are somehow the mirror image of the “religious fundamentalists” they purport to describe? (Fair point, of course – the recent spate of atheist suicide bombers, plus the numerous, arbitrary strictures placed by atheists concerning how atheist women should dress and what they should, or should not be allowed to do with their own bodies are all proof of that). I suspect it’s because the established church is still in something of a daze at the assault they themselves have suffered at the so-called new atheists – they feel they’ve been knocked off the plinth of respectfulness traditionally afforded to the religious, by their own flocks and non-believers alike, one which has successfully hitherto inhibited unseemly inquiry into their internal goings on, their tax status, their grip on the UK educational system and so forth. This “atheists are as bad as fundamentalists” nonsense is a puerile, reflexive taunt, a provisional response mustered in a confused daze. The best they can come up with, sorrily.

I attended the demonstration on September 18 in London in protest at the Pope’s visit, as he said mass in Hyde Park, adding my body to the thousands who marched down Piccadilly and into Downing Street. I managed to work my way to the front, as it was all getting a little bit “Blessed are the cheesemakers” 50 yards from the truck where the demo leaders and speakers were doing their bit on the megaphone. There were chants. It was voluble. There was anger. There was also a great deal of laughter. I can confidently report that the mood was not “frenzied”, that if anything the demonstrators were under-excitable and there was markedly little in the way of jumping up and down – a slow, measured tread in the main. In the past, I’ve always shied away from demos because I’m not one of life’s natural chanters and I always fear that I’m going to be marching alongside the idiot fringe of whatever cause I might be espousing.

These, I now realise, are truly dumb reasons not to go on demos. Certainly would have been in this case. The crowd I marched with were a thoughtful, good humoured reflective lot. Granted, there was someone carrying a banner depicting the Pope as an out and out Nazi, which was eventually taken down when demonstrators themselves complained to the police about it. The demo leaders tried to get sing songs going but found us hard work, especially early on. We made the effort – a demonstrate should either be conducted in utter, reproachful silence or be a noisy affair, I reckon, no equivocal murmuring – but most of us found the call-and-response thing a bit unnatural – more than one person recalled the Life Of Brian scene and the “Yes! We are all individuals!” chant – and we took some warming up.

The scripted chants themselves were a mixed bunch, some of which went down less well than others, one or two of which even the demo leaders themselves baulked at; “Nah, that doesn’t make any sense!” said one, following a chant which, well, didn’t make any sense. Even as we joined in, or at least mouthed along, we were critiquing some of the wording. “Cut the Pope, not our services!” ran one. But what does “Cut the Pope” mean? A small incision in his right arm? A headwound? Then there was, “What do we want? A secular Europe!” Well, we did want a secular Europe, but as one or two wondered aloud, why stop there? It seemed to invite the follow up chant, “But keep Asia as it is as far as we’re concerned.” Why not a secular world? And, despite Peter Tatchell’s proper insistence that this demo included Catholics as well as non Catholics, the chant “Good Catholics are being let down” met with a less than hearty chorus, even the vague murmur of, well, they could save themselves a hell of a lot of kneeling and needless guilt by getting the hell out of the church.

However, the immortal “Get your rosaries off my ovaries” and “hands off my eggs, Benedict!” quite properly raised a hearty laugh, while the simple exhortation to “Arrest the Pope” was most lustily echoed, albeit laced with the recognition that it was a remote contingency.

Curious, to me, was the attitude of those who lined the streets to watch us file past, occasionally filming us as we went. I felt the need, almost a sarcastic one, to film them back. On the one hand, it is flattering to be the object of that sort of attention, on the other it was as if we were part of a circus parade to some. There was little hostility, apart from a grey suited claque of idiots braying from the safe distance of a pub door and one poor soul shaking a rosary at us as we went past. I thought I divined a gamut of emotions in the onlookers, ranging from consternation to amusement, from idle curiosity to sympathy, though largely a sort of bland, blank indifference. I wondered why they didn’t join in. Was our protest outlandishly unreasonable? Did they imagine that joining a demo requires some complex signing up procedure, days of pre-arrangement, as opposed to simply turning up? That it is the sort of thing other people do and that the issues we raised were of concern to other people? That sort of dead-eyed, inactive curiosity is a hard thing to pierce. Sad, because it keeps demos down to the just 10,000 and leaves Popes unmolested. Sad, also, because a demo is the wonderful, communal antidote to the lonely cry unheard, a point most poignantly made by Sue Cox, who in a speech described herself as a child, abused at the age of 10 but told by her Mother that it was all part of God’s plan. If she had been told then that some 50 years on she would be able to speak out about what had happened to her, her infant self, abandoned and alone, would never have believed it. The non-believers could believe today.

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September 18th, 2010

Jimi Hendrix, 40 years on

(Originally delivered as a talk at the Gavin Martin-organised Talking Music Revolutions event at the Three Blind Mice bar, London, 2010)

I didn’t experience the 60s, I never had any idea who he was until the mid-70s but I finally got into Jimi Hendrix in 1978 when I came of age as a music lover. Polydor released a double album called The Essential Jimi Hendrix. Of course, one’s mid teen listening epiphanies tend to be lifelong – it was about this time I also first got into Can, Stevie Wonder, Sun Ra, Karlheinz Stockhausen among others and they’ve remained prominent on the mountainscape of my listening ever since. But maybe it was a good time to be introduced to Jimi Hendrix, a time when you could really begin to see him for the many things he truly was. In their own era, artists like Hendrix, much like The Sex Pistols later on, tend to be dismissed in a very cool blasé manner by even rock experts as gimmicky, flashes in the pan, seem it all before, rather than regarded with shock and awe. But by 1978, Hendrix was a legend. Clearly, he’d raised the volume and temperature of rock music forever, to the extent that no one could really take, say, the Caucasian twang of a George Harrison quite so seriously again. In Blakean terms, he represented rock’s transition from innocence to Experience. Punk had just happened but the likes of The Clash and The Damned sounded like so many firecrackers by comparison with the thermonuclear energy of a “Purple Haze” or a “House Burning Down”. In fact,  my Hendrix obsession delayed for two years my appreciation of the seismic events of my own teenage years, punk and post-punk.

Because punk had been seismic. It exploded old certainties, it brought the whole idea of progressive, mainly white rock as the only road ahead down from its plinth. In deprivileging white rock, it opened up a new cultural multiverse and incidentally, opened my eyes at least to the transcendent diversity of Jimi Hendrix – the way he touched, and was touched by, not just heavy rock, but soul, jazz, psychedelia, blues, electronics, funk even the nascent ambient genre. They all had a piece of him and he a piece of them.

Of course, Hendrix, like no other solo artist in rock, represented physical and sexual potency. He was way, way more than a cock rocker but he casually tossed off the index for cock rock. He was more than just a guitarist, but someone who worked in the medium of electricity, in his amps, in his sound board, and in the air, someone who had the capacity to bring down thunder and lightning from the sky. In some ways, his apotheosis was Electric Ladyland, for me still, the heaviest and greatest rock album ever recorded and ever likely to be recorded. The apotheosis of that apotheosis was “Voodoo Chile”, an 800 lb monster demonstration of wizardry, brimstone and infinite black capability, released in 1968 against a blazing background of conflagration and uprising, and also the Olympic year in which Tommie Smith and John Carlos delivered the black power salute and in which the long jumper Bob Beamon practically jumped out of the pit to record an unthinkable world record of 8 metres 90 centimetres. To think of Hendrix is to think of rock’s closest approximation to a superhuman, someone apparently capable of physically altering the atmosphere, the environment, the times.

And yet, the truth is, Hendrix as a human being was not a strong man. He was slight, physically unassuming, diffident in interviews. He wasn’t a wild man but passive, his destiny often in the hands of others, including his management. He cowed beneath the authority of his disciplinarian father, and acquired from his early childhood a lifelong habit of not saying “boo” to a goose. “A fish wouldn’t get into trouble if it kept its mouth shut,” he once said. He wasn’t a natural rebel – although seen as a key provider to the soundtrack of anti—Vietnam protest, as an ex-paratrooper he was actually pro-US involvement in the war until well into the 60s, and even provided music for an army recruitment campaign. What’s more, when the Black Panthers came knocking at his door, looking him to press him into service for their cause, he acquiesced but in a very qualified, reluctant and uncomfortable manner. He is regarded as a pioneer in his times, trailing clouds of glory and imitators but in fact felt profoundly lonely, and out of kilter with the 60s, the decade he in some ways is supposed to symbolise, but of course, in reality wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. His sense of temporal displacement is best expressed on “I Don’t Live Today”, as a moan comes rearing out of the mix, “There ain’t no life nowhere.” And yet, all of this “weakness” somehow came to be Hendrix’s true strength.

Hendrix didn’t rise like a natural force through the ranks. He was 24 when he first made his impact proper, considered a great rock’n'roll age in the 1960s. Only a couple of years earlier, Melody Maker had run an editorial pondering the question, “Ringo Starr – too old to rock at 24?” Although impelled by his own curiosity to depart the Chitlin’ circuit, and providing backline accompaniment for touring soul bands like The Isley Brothers, there was no doubt that in America, that that was deemed his place. He was salvaged from this fate by the entrepreneurialism of Chas Chandler, and the dubious expedient of launching Hendrix in London, his genuine talents showcased under the pretext of frazzle-haired, Wild Man Of Borneo-type pop oddity. A stronger man might have resisted being paraded for the zoological fascination of a novelty-hungry, swinging London, still in the grip of appalling, racist assumptions about African-American men and their uncivilised proclivities. But Hendrix acquiesced, Hendrix went on tour with the Monkees, went along with the fabricated story of his being dropped at the behest of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Hendrix is one of the most identifiable figures in the rock firmament. Yet his own sense of identity in 1967, in 1968 was elusive and fluid, and he himself suffered a profound and inherited sense of displacement, coming as he did from a mixed ethnic background whose make up was Cherokee on his Mother’s side. What was he, this crossover figure at this time? African American? Native American? British American? American? A lack of certainly in his roots saw him casting and hankering about in all directions, in both past and future, flailing in an existential quandary. He was everywhere because he was nowhere.

By 1968, a sense of the general had overtaken the personal, and Hendrix was subsumed into a wider context. One of my favourite stories about Hendrix, which even it’s apocryphal is too true to be really untrue, concerns the day Martin Luther King died. He found himself in a bar. A group of white rednecks were laughing at the screen, loudly toasting Dr King’s assassination, perhaps looking to provoke a reaction out of Jimi. And a stronger man might have invited these guys outside. But Hendrix said nothing. Instead, later that evening, in concert, he offered a dedication to “a friend of mine” and unleashed a magnificently lachrymose improvised blues jam, an acid rainstorm of angry lamentation which no one who heard it could ever forget and which, sadly, no one had the presence of mind to bootleg.

This story, for me, speaks a great deal about Hendrix. Passive by nature, he absorbed, he internalised, in this instance as a black man individually but as black people had been forced to collectively. Rather than hit back or make some assertive show of manhood, he sublimated his feelings and, allowing them to sink into the prismatic, unfathomable depths and processes of his talent, returned to the surface with something far more powerful and stirring and harrowing than any reflexive show of angry agitation could ever have hoped to produce.

There are many Hendrixes – the bluesman on “Hear My Train A’ Comin’” summoning forth a coded message of civil rights in tandem with Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready”, the jazz pioneer, who helped set electric Miles on his way, on a similar journey of curiosity and profound loneliness. Hendrix the funkster, retaining some of the Isleys’s spirit and inspiring that group’s 70s funk/rock renaissance. But this soundtrack here, now, is perhaps my own, favourite Hendrix, imagining escape from a broken world to which ultimately he doesn’t belong or to which he is made to feel he does not belong, descending into deeper shades of turquoise into an aqua-Utopia of his own imagining, straining every piece of technology available in 1968 to its utmost, flying around the soundboard in tandem with his sound engineer Eddie Kramer. He’s part of a tradition of what’s been termed Afro-Futurists, who include names as divergent as Sun Ra, A Guy Called Gerald and Asian Dub Foundation, who chafe at the benign contentment in the here and now, who are deeply impatient at the dominance of conservatism and especially nostalgia in rock, having no reason themselves as black people to feel very much affection for past times at all. It’s escapism, but of the most meaningful sort. Sublimation, truly sublime.

When Hendrix did depart from this world in 1970, there was, of course, a shared sense of tragedy. Melody Maker’s headline that week spoke for many when it said, “Coliseum To Reform”. Actually, I think he died at an inconvenient point in the week, music press deadlines-wise, so perhaps . . . I suppose, then and now you feel the lose more keenly because unlike a great many rock’n'roll deaths, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, you didn’t feel that here was a man in bloated decline or bent on a death wish. His death was a terrible accident, one of those terrible things. It’s also led to speculation as to what he might have done next. People have talked of him collaborating with various people, including Miles Davis or Stevie Wonder, or going on a jazz odyssey, or even forming his own big band to help realise his Aquarian visions. Others say he was a burnt out case. I personally feel he’d gone so far and covered so much ground that while his talent was undiminished, he’d left himself very little to do, few places left to go. I regard his as a potential fulfilled, and his early death as convenient in an awful way, preserving him in his youth and preserving us from his iconic decline.

But what of his legacy? Occasionally, this has been spoken of in rather simple terms, Initially, he was seen as merely the Godfather of white guitar virtuosity, with the likes of Robin Trower regarded as his inheritors – or even as the inaugurator of heavy metal. Later, he was credited with a revival of black rock, and even, God preserve us, for having paved the way for Lenny Kravitz. But truth be told, Living Colour and a handful of others apart, there hasn’t been a whole lot of black rock and I don’t particularly think it should register as any particular failure that that floodgate hasn’t exactly opened. Rather than draw such straight lines between blackness and rockness, I prefer to find shards of Hendrix and his roomful of mirrors scattered across the spectrum, across rock time and space, in Public Image Ltd, in James “Blood” Ulmer, in My Bloody Valentine, in Brian Eno and The Orb, in minimal Techno, or in those countless many who use electronics as a sound palette – a myriad range of reference points, reflecting the myriad multiverse that, despite his popular image, is Hendrix’s true bequest.

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July 4th, 2010

In Defence Of The Vuvuzela

(This piece was commissioned a couple of weeks ago for a broadsheet but bumped for reasons of space. Still got paid, mind)

The ceaseless, barely differentiated, sheet waves of tuneless, b-flat drone, hour after hour, game after game – I love the vuvuzela. In full, choral effect, the vuvuzela reminds of the sustained tsunami of air horns which used to accompany European and international games in the 1970s and early 1980s. This was one of the most impressive auditory experiences of my young life, one which connoted the remote, exotic nature of international live football.

The air horns eventually disappeared, replaced by more conventional terrace chanting. However, they were, in my freak instance, the gateway that led me to a fascination with more extreme modern musical forms such as the primal, electronic Krautrock of Faust, the cosmic, exploratory jazz of Sun Ra, the pioneering work in musique concrète of Pierre Schaeffer and Stockhausen. Sadly, I’d appear to be in a freak in that regard. For despite its introduction into the  aesthetic canon around a century ago, and despite its having been a key component of other world musics for centuries longer, there remains a strong, mainstream Western, hands-over-the-ears fear and loathing the idea of noise as a form of cultural expression.

The range of satirical responses to the vuvuzela has been somewhat unanimous; wags in both tabloids and broadsheets have compared the noise to “a swarm of bees”. TV pundits, meanwhile, have observed more than once that vuvuzelas resemble “a swarm of bees”, while over in America, on Jon Stewart’s razor-hip The Daily Show, they suggested that the sound of the horns was like “a swarm of bees”. Guys, do better. Remarks like these offend me not as a lover of dissonant music but as a lover of comedy. But it’s the anguished anger, rather than the feeble mockery, which is most striking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gKx__JOGF8

The vuvuzela has receded into the background as the tournament has settled down and the TV channels found ways of filtering away what they and many of its audience consider its “worst excesses”. However, after the blaring crescendo of the opening World Cup game, which featured hosts South Africa, there were immediate cries for the instrument to be banned. One Facebook group set up calling for its suppression swiftly escalated towards a membership of 200,000 after just a few days. The virulence of the complaints and the extent of the distress suffered by those merely watching games on television, including headaches and tinnitus, has been extraordinary. It would be unfair to tar all plaintiffs with the brush of racism, though remarks on Facebook such as “bunch of white guys afraid to tell a bunch of black guys what to do” and references to South African culture as “retarded” makes me wonder if there is indeed a dubious moral whiff about the anti-vuvuzela movement, which has echoes of the resentment at the noise levels generated by West Indian fans at cricket games. The noise of our own, traditional, familiar sing-songs and party rituals we can cheerfully bear. The noise of others, of other cultures, rather less so – particular, perhaps, those of darker skin colours, with murky associations of the primal, the untamed, or, to borrow a word from our Facebook friend, the “retarded”.

The implications of primitivism are particularly ironic, since contemporary art forms owe much to Africa – Picasso’s Demoiselles D’Avignon, the birthpoint of non-figurative art, clearly took African masks as its inspiration, though Picasso rather stuffily denied it. Early Dada events featured naïve recreations of African tribal drumming.  Further afield, Buddhism, the dervishes, Japanese gagaku and gamelan have influenced academically approve artists ranging from Debussy to extreme Improv group AMM. Since the Crusades, which introduced to Western music a host of new Eastern instruments, “high” classical music has developed by plundering other cultures.

The Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo would have been aghast at today’s “passéist” aversion to noise. In his Art Of Noises manifesto in 1913 he joyfully thundered, “We find far more enjoyment in the combination of the noises of trams, backfiring motors, carriages and bawling crowds than in rehearing, for example, the Eroica or the Pastoral”. He even devised crude lever-operated “noise intonators”, prototypes for today’s synthesisers, to illustrate his point.

Composers from Edgard Varèse onward excitedly took up Russolo’s ideas, which have resounded and developed down the decades in jazz, rock, improvised music and various electronic hybrids. And yet, 100 years on, Russolo’s ideas have failed to stick with a wider audience, even of the sort who regularly frequent in huge numbers the Tate Modern and contemplate its Rothkos and Pollocks. For although modern, abstract art and modern, dissonant, atonal music developed in tandem during the 20th century, derive practically from the same root, their fortunes have diverged. Modern art has an extremely lucrative high end, is reverentially pored over at by the shuffling multitude at exhibitions. Modern, avant garde music has no equivalent of the Original, no high end. It is still relatively obscure, gets little or no wider airing and still sounds foreign and absurd even to people who have long since acquired the good taste to understand that a Jackson Pollock is not the result of a madman run amok with tins of paint, indulged by a gullible arthouse establishment. Over the years, the price tag of the original, and endless newspaper stories about Rothkos, Bacons, Picassos, etc, going under the hammer at auction for millions, have accustomed people to the idea that this abstract art stuff is of authentic and high value. Avant garde music remains marginal and undervalued by comparison.

Moreover, experimental sound is liable to inculcate more distress than the visual. Were this bright, abstract, African friezes we were discussing, there would be no complaints of people experiencing eyeball strain, or exasperation at the lack of animal, fruit or people shapes. Music is different. You cannot shut it out, there are no earlids – you cannot walk away from it as you can a canvas -  you must be enveloped in it for its duration. Unexpected noises, moreover, raise fears that date back to our hunter-gather prehistory. Despite its longevity, “deliberately inflicted noise” is something to which people are generally unaccustomed, unexposed, protected by broadcasters and record companies fearful of scaring away mass audiences, offering instead the tonal, the tuneful, the familiar, the reassuring. With this World Cup, however, an audience of millions upon millions has had the rare experience of being held in prolonged captivity to instrumental noise, and a great many have reacted with exaggerated and reactionary ferocity. Yet if you’ve listened, as I and many others have, to, say, the US minimalist Phill Niblock then the vuvuzela holds no fears. It’s on the same spectrum. Not to make claims for its use in stadia as high art but there is a way of attending to the vuvuzela en masse, rather than indignantly lamenting the lack of a tune, which yields its own pleasures – its undulations, its textures, its individual details, the happy way it occasionally washes rhythmically back and forth, or simply its awesome passages of clamourous intensity. And frankly, what it does drown out – the boorish, over-familiar chants, a British brass band playing The Great Escape ad nauseam, infuriatingly inane commentaries? Aren’t all these things worth forfeiting?

Quite apart from the cheapness and plasticity which has piqued many detractors (“real” music should be expensive, metallic), the vuvuzela has exposed a persistent, aggressive timidity which has always denied wider access to the music dreamt of by Russolo, Varèse, Schoenberg long before most of us were born. Sound does have its inherent difficulties and one does sympathise with the eardrum damage that can be suffered by a 124 decibel blast of a vuvuzela at close range. But for most of us, it is a distant phenomenon. I harbour the hope that as this tournament progresses and excitement mounts, the stadium noise will became less of a bone of contention, even acquire positive connotations. Maybe a young freak or two out there might even make the exciting leap from the vuvuzela to John Coltrane’s Ascension.

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July 4th, 2010

The Wing Commander’s 2010 World Cup Diary – Part Two

June 21

Finally, the truth can be revealed about goings-on at the England camp – that all is well. Englishmen, redouble the number of flags attached to your wing mirrors. Foreign guest workers, clean those toilets to an even higher shine. You are also exhorted to learn our Constitution off by heart, to wit, all six verses of the National Anthem, as well as the ability to recite by rote every monarch since King Egbert. You will be deported in any case, but this wisdom will prove both instructive and helpful.

North Korea v Portugal (0-7)

Nothing less than the total annihilation of North Korea would represent a satisfactory result. As for today’s game, I am indifferent. Portugal – their best days are behind them, I feel. Prior to the 1974 coup they were thinking along the right lines. However, a cue delivered during the “Eurovision Song Contest” of that year precipitated a regrettable coup against the dictator. A further argument, to be added to repeated Balkan connivance, for the cancellation of that annual cavalcade.

June 22

France v South Africa (1-2)

And so, as in 1940, the French have tasted early defeat, the Maginot line of their defence having once again collapsed under the gentlest of prodding from first the Mexicans, and now the South Africans.

It seems that defeat can be ascribed to discord in the camp -  that the French were fighting among themselves. There is no more amusing spectacle than this. When the French fight the French, they always lose, even though it is only the French they are fighting.

On the field, they were a scattered shower. Indeed, the French have played as if hoping that members of the English and American teams would wade ashore and enter the fray to save their hides, as in happier days. And so, they were dispatched from the tournament, unloved, undone, unwashed. The final spectacle was of their man Ribery, sullen, frowning, unable to battle his way even out of his own shirt.

Argentina v Greece (2-0)

England have nothing to fear from this fellow Messi. He’s called “Lionel”, hang it all. What’s he going to do? Tap dance us into submission? Lions versus Lionels. I know whose remains will be scraped up from the den after that one.

June 23

England v Slovenia (1-0)

So FIFA are insisting this afternoon’s game goes ahead? Their pedantry defies belief and is an insult to England and their world standing, to Her Majesty, Princess Anne, the former Duchess of York and her buxom daughters. However, like Harfleur in Henry V, Slovenia have a last chance to surrender. Or else we will storm their defence, mock their women, rape their goats.

June 24

Italy v Slovakia (2-3)

Late in the game, and now PLO on the pitch, according to the commercial channel’s commentator.  A terrorist outrage afoot – the folly of hosting the World Cup in a troublesome, naive continent, as many of us predicted. Still, the game goes ahead, with Slovakia, despite only semi-existing as a country, prevailing.

As the Italians discovered in 1941, it’s a long way back home from Africa, especially nursing the sore backside of defeat. It is not my business to suggest that angry fans hang their manager by his ankles from a lamppost. However, I would advise that when pelting their returning team at the airport, they use  sun-dried, not rotten tomatoes. They squelch less but sting more.

Japan v Denmark (3-1)

Too many short teams qualifying for my liking – Korea (S), Mexico, now Japan. They must be discouraged – they will only bring things down to their level. We need some sort of sign, the like of which one gets at amusement parks. “You must be this tall to get into this round.”

Poor showing from Denmark, particularly its would-be young Prince Niklas “To be or not to be of any fucking use” Bendtner. This is why “Great Briton” is in reference to Newton, Shakespeare, Brunel, Mosley, etc and “Great Dane” is in reference to a dog. Given that all Denmark has ever contributed to civilisation is bacon, you’d think they’d have had more time to practise defending free kicks

June 25

Portugal v Brazil (0-0)

Nothing to fear from Brazil. Their manager and star player are synonymous with excrement. As for us, it is John Terry, not John Faeces, Steven Gerrard, not Steven Pile Of Shite. It is all about mobility. British movement versus bowel movement, such is what an England-Brazil final would represent.

June 26

Reminds me of the extraordinarily hot Summer of 1914 out there. But fear not, as then, the real fun of slaughter will commence soon enough, upon the morrow. I am reminded of the wistful, scratchy chimes of a ditty composed at the start of the Great War to buoy British troops, its haunting, balladic strains not dissimilar to “Come Into The Garden Maude” rendered upon an old gramophone player. It was called “Annihilate All German Scum Or Die, Die, Die Trying, You Dogs”.

Uruguay v South Korea (2-1)

Helpfully, as in their restaurants, the Koreans are identifiable by number as well as by their names. No guarantee you won’t find a dog’s tail in your soup, mind. Meanwhile, switching to the other channel, I witness confirmation that  the British Broadcasting Corporation is indeed a hotbed of homosexuals. They are currently showing the tennis. If association football is, according to the seditious Mr Orwell “war minus the shooting”, then tennis is sodomy minus the anal sex.

Ghana v USA (2-1)

Culturally jarring, no doubt, for the USA to be departing a conflict midway as opposed to entering it midway.

June 27

England v Germany (result disputed)

Nothing to read here. Keep calm, sit up square and carry on scrolling down.

June 28

Sensible of England to return home, having amply established superiority to sundry, conquered nations. FIFA can forward the trophy to FA HQ, by running boy and then by RAF helicopter to the nearest courier depot. Word reaches me, however, that mascot Capello is to be kicked out. Evidently, the England team grow weary of his flapdoodle and riddle-me-rees. Perhaps they should hire a Spaniard to amuse the team instead? Benitez the Bungler, perhaps, who could perform a routine in which he attempts to cook a paella, only for his trousers to catch fire?

Holland v Slovakia (2-1)

A low country, an even baser one. England have nothing to fear from either of these teams in the forthcoming rounds. The 57 year old bald fellow in the orange appears to present a particularly negligible threat. How, one wonders, did a codger like that get in the team? Did his son, the Minister for Sport, pull strings?

Brazil v Chile (3-0)

There is only one matter of importance in this fixture. As ITV’s commentator reminds us only barely adequately, the English referee is England’s Howard Webb, an Englishman who hails from England. The two English linesmen also hail from England, which, being English, makes sense. And so, the final score is indeed 3-0. Englishmen 3 (Webb, Linesman, Other Linesman), Foreigners nil.

June 29

Paraguay v Japan (0-0: Paraguay win 5-3 on penalties)

The Paraguayan National anthem sounds like their military falling backwards down the Palace steps en masse during a bungled coup attempt. This game is a wet paper bag and those very sporadic, muffled sounds you hear are two inferior nations failing to punch their way out of it. Uninterestingly, the referee is not English.

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July 4th, 2010

The Wing Commander’s 2010 World Cup Diary – Part One

June 11: Opening of the 2010 World Cup.

As the formality the World Cup tournament commences, and thoughts already advance to the knockout stage, questions play upon my mind, chiefly this; should England practise taking trophies? I say not. I am confident John Terry will grasp it with two firm, warm hands on July 11, with no slip-ups on the podium leading to accidental collisions with other players’ naked wives.

Meanwhile, a message to all UK-based foreigners, who find themselves flanked on all sides by the flag of St George and might consider that in some way they are regarded askance as hostile aliens. Fear not. Agree to support England and you may stay. Till half time. Then gather up your rags and await instructions by bullhorn. As for Englishmen concerned with the level of fervent patriotism shown by their next door neighbours, ie, failing to display a flag of St George with the word “ENGLAND” helpfully emblazoned across the middle in order to distinguish it from the French flag, take heed of the following instructions. 1. Stay calm 2. Call the police, who will presently arrive in Morris Minors.  3. Turn up your wireless to drown out bludgeoning noises through the walls as they handle the matter.

The opening ceremony. Since no one else has said it, I will. There appear to be a remarkable number of negroes in this stadium. However, it is pleasing to see that the adverts on commercial television being brave enough to depict the truth about South Africa’s darker-skinned citizens – that they are all living in cheerful poverty. I, too, would be smiling and cheerful if I were a darker-skinned South African, and not just at the thought of working 14 hour shifts in the diamond mines to advance the interests of my distant English employers. I would be in a state of constant, tickled amusement at my own language, and the phrases, nameplaces it throws up. “Vuvuzela! Bafana! Mandela!” All hilarious. Life for these people must be like rolling in one long aisle.

Mexico v South Africa (1-1)

The Mexicans are showing the same marked reluctance to remain in their own half as they do their own country. The commentator ejaculates to the effect that “South Africa have liberated themselves” – as if to imply that this were necessarily a good thing. However, a draw is the right result. Wins over-inflame the peasantry of third world nations, losses make them querulous. Draws leave them properly subdued.

France v Uruguay (0-0)

It seems the French team is a mixture of English foreigners (Anelka) foreign foreigners (Ribery) and English foreign foreigners (Henry). My advice to the Uruguayans is, when in close contact with the French in midfield, whisper in the players’ ears something amusing Mr Jerry Lewis once said or did, reducing them to helpless hysterics. Then advance and score at will.

June 12

England v USA (1-1)

Anticipation mounts, despite the absence of key members of our defence. This being the United States Of America, however, a 0-0-5 formation ought to do the trick. Moreover, highly as I regard Rio Ferdinand, I deplore his being named after the second city of a hostile nation. Why not Birmingham Ferdinand? A timely name change by deed poll could boost England.

As for the USA, another reminder. The game tonight kicks off at 7.30. Not 7.55, not 8.45 but 7.30. We would be obliged if you could be in this conflict from the start.

June 13

Serbia v Ghana (0-1)

Serbia. Not so much a team as an assortment of sinister henchmen. Mr Roger Moore would make short work of them. As for 11 Ghanaian men, I am less sure.

Germany v Australia (4-0)

Hmm. One can sense the German supporters – their vuvuzela drones have audible umlauts – vüvüzelas, if you will. As for the Australians, well, the South has performed poorly, as a hemisphere, throughout history and tonight would appear to be no exception. Their play is ponderous, futile and doomed, as if having taken to the field wearing Ned Kelly-type makeshift suits of armour. A fast and free-scoring start for the Germans – as ever, they have started off well. However, I would not be drawing up the blueprints for the redesign of Berlin just yet.

June 14

Japan v Cameroon (1-0)

Japan-Cameroon on the British Broadcasting Corporation. Both teams beaten by England so I have no idea what they are trying to prove. They are equally vanquished. As it is, the Japanese prevail.

Inscrutable in victory, the Japanese. Not like our own Alf Ramsey, whose expressions ranged wildly from grim satisfaction to grim dissatisfaction. But then, foreign nations as a whole do not experience emotions they way we English do, merely fall into ritualistic behaviour patterns – dancing, bright colours, so forth – as befits their animal nature.

Sir Alf: Delirious, and (below) devastated

June 14

Italy v Paraguay (1-1)

A simple glance at the map is instructive. Italy; the shape of an effeminate boot. Great Britain, by contrast; plumed, regal, sedentary, breaking wind in the direction of France. As for the National Anthems, both Italy and Paraguay should have theirs confiscated. Both sound composed in haste following coups whose success surprised even the plotters.

June 15

Only three more days till the next World Cup game. Meanwhile,  I am alarmed at possible fissures at Camp England. Joe Cole says England “can” win the World Cup? Why the “can”, Mr Cole? Not unlike saying, gravity “can” prevent you from floating into space. The word is “will!” Go to it with one. I trust John Terry has stiffened the lad’s sinews, summoned up his blood.

New Zealand v Slovakia (1-1)

FIFA’s insistence on playing out these fixtures among the world’s pre-doomed minnows is risible. One suspects that were the alternative channel to broadcast a two hour programme entitled The Unremarkable History Of The Rain Gauge, they would garner more viewers than for this. New Zealand? They are Australia’s own little Australia, for Australians to laugh at the way the rest of us laugh at Australia. As for the Slovakian anthem, it summons all of the despondency to which East Europeans are chronically addicted. It reminds of a four mile trudge to the marketplace, only to be informed that there will be no beetroots till next month.

Portugal v Ivory Coast (0-0)

A querulous encounter, this, between truculent, swarthy and as such effectively internecine adversaries. An English referee would have shot his revolver into the air by now. How typical of foreigners, however – fighting among themselves.

June 16

Hmm. Herr Beckenbauer, doubtless obeying orders, loudly asserts that English football is a matter of “kick and run”. Nothing wrong with than, I retort. Worked well for us in Empire. Kick out the incumbent, large featherhatted native in charge: Run his country.

Chile v Honduras (1-0)

The global dregs. One hopes the British Broadcasting Corporation features a two hour interview with Jamie Milner instead. Subtitled, naturally.

Spain V Switzerland (0-1)

What have the Spanish given us? Flu, fleas and practices. And that first half. A poor haul, all told.

South Africa v Uruguay (0-3)

Hmm. Those drones – like swarms of bees assailing a pondful of mallards – fall queerly silent. A message, however, to disappointed South Africa fans – do  not transfer support to England. We have more than enough fans. We are full up. You will be turned away.

June 17

Greece v Nigeria (2-1)

This Nigerian team appears to be full of Nigerians. As for the Greeks, this ball might as well be an Elgin Marble, so incapable are they of retaining possession of it.

Argentina v South Korea (4-1)

Yet another Argentine handball, as is their swarthy wont. Could FIFA not institute the sanction of amputations for persistent offenders? Or at least the removal of a thumb for first time transgressors. Still, Nothing for England to fear from Argentina – a country so amusingly destitute that cattle is now their official unit of currency.

Mexico v France (2-0)

Some of these Mexicans are, I suspect, women. A senior English FA official must make it his business to go down to the dressing room at half time to conduct a spot genitalia check on them. Perhaps two England players could accompany them. No female, with the exception of Her Majesty The Queen, could resist throwing themselves mouth first at any our players – the game would at once be up.

June 18

An interesting statistic. The Axis nations have all made a fast start to the tournament – Japan, Germany – even Italy, proud conquerors of Abyssinia, got a draw. What this all means I am uncertain, but know this – it means a great deal. And now Argentina are running rampant, the flag of their complacency hoist aloft the Goose Green of their forthcoming nemesis.

English fervour builds, but still the forces of Political Correctness and Liberal Elitism stalk the land. Just this morning, a policeman arrived at my fireside, woke me and arrested me for wearing an England shirt. Bleary but with sound instincts, I  reached for my revolver and shot him in the knee. Turned out to be Seppings bringing me my mid-morning flagon of port but it nonetheless remains a disgrace.

Germany v Serbia (0-1)

The Serbians must be unaccustomed to this flat surface as the open playing space of their own country consists mainly of  mass graves, across which the ball is apt to bobble.

USA v Slovenia (2-2)

2-0 down at half time, and hard to see USA recovering from its current state as a nation. Drenched in oil, humiliated by a Balkan backwater. On no account waste your energies attempting some sort of second half comeback. Instead, throw in the towel, rejoin the Commonwealth!

England v Algeria (0-0)

Who to keep goal? Can I suggest, as a gesture of lip-curled contempt for the foe, our mascot Capello, dressed in full jester’s motley?

The final whistle, and England, insofar as they remain England, are winners. Leaden, lethargic, overhyped, incompetent, clubfooted, arsefaced cunts paralysed by a bizarre mixture of arrogance and anxiety? Clearly not. Appalled, following the victory, on being rickshawed by Seppings past Trafalgar Square to see no fans dancing in the fountains this evening. Doubtless English bobbies five rows deep are being obliged to repel massed celebrants in Northumberland Avenue, lest offence be given to the Algerian ambassador. A disgrace. Fortunately, advertisements on the commercial channel strike the right tone. Children! Have a Mars bar! A burger! A Pepsi! The diet of future English World Cup winners.

June 19

Netherlands v Japan (1-0)

Queer, given their display in the recent world war, to talk of “Dutch courage”. What next, “French hygiene”? “Danish interestingness”? “Greek policework”?

Ghana v Australia (1-1)

A lot of Princes in Ghana team. Feels like cheating. We could have played Princes Harry and William, our best men yesterday,, and won even more easily. Still, the Ghanians in their expressions are evidently happy to be on the same pitch as Caucasians, even of the lower-rung, antipodean variety. As for the Australians, they have acted in accordance with what would doubtless be their Latin national emblem, were any of its countrymen capable of speaking that tongue; “Only poofs finish with eleven men.”

June 20

Astonishing news from the French camp. The French train? Shabby. England do not train. To do so is poor form and ungentlemanly. We shall see the results of this policy on the field of play, mark my words. Disgusted, also, at reports of an unauthorised person berating players in the English dressing room following the Algeria game. Capello is team mascot. He should know his place, and his duties, which largely involving the jiggling of a bladder on a stick.

Excellent to learn, however, that John Terry, now England’s player/manager is giving a team talk tonight. His authority is evident in his eyes, bearing, torso and, doubtless, scrotum.

Slovakia v Paraguay (0-2)

Slovakia, Slovenia, interchangeable. How do we know some of these Slovaks aren’t Slovenia players, sneaked in illegally? Has anyone checked? Typical Balkan ploy. Confuse the enemy by making them wonder who the hell any of you are and why the hell are you squabbling with each other when you’re all Slavs anyway, and who give a hang about what happened to your ancestors in 1173? (Not like 1066, of course, which, as England’s last defeat in any sort of field, still rankles).

As for Paraguay – I cannot remember whether goats are worshipped or eaten there, or both. Whatever it is, it is wholly unacceptable.

New Zealand v Italy (1-1)

“New” Zealand! Are you implying there was an “Old Zealand”? There was not. You are “Zealand”, near the bottom of the Directory of Nations. A draw – but do not write Italy off. They are apt to win the World Cup under robust, no-nonsense Fascist regimes, eg Mussolini (1934-8) and Berlusconi.

Ivory Coast v Brazil (1-3)

That Scandinavian dimwit in the dugout looks familiar. Did we not employ him once in some groundskeeping capacity? Sacked for doing nothing, apart from standing at the side of the pitch with the air of an empty car park in Stockholm?

Brazil make the game look far too easy. The art is to do as England do and make it look as difficult as it actually is.

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