Monday, 22 February 2016
Ian Smith/Bowie
Michief La Bas head honcho and five-star solo artist Ian Smith introduces a familiar face
FEATURE BY IAN SMITH.
as told to Gareth K Vile
PUBLISHED 02 FEBRUARY 2011
David Bowie may seem a cheesy and obvious choice, but it has to be my choice because I have been following his every move and batting of eyelash for about forty years. You’ll hear this story from everyone, from Boy George, everyone who was completely transformed by the Starman appearance on Top of the Pops in 1972. It did change the world for lots of outsider freakos living in grim suburbs of London, who suddenly realised you could be anything you wanted, even something from another planet.
That has informed my thinking ever since; he is an artist of the twentieth and twenty-first century, and has probably introduced more concepts, styles and subversive thinking to the popular consciousness than anyone else. I was thirteen when I got into him, and he was the first person who was mine. I’d had a huge education in popular culture from my brother who was seven years older than me, so I had been (vicariously) a mod, a greaser, this and that on my brother’s coat-tails. But this was for me and has been ever since.
There are tracks on The Man Who Sold the World that mention Winston Churchill, Kalil Gibran, about seven kinds of religion, gangsterism, et cetera et cetera, and you were then inspired to explore all these things. Jung. I mean, who the hell was Jung? And that was in a top ten pop record.
I went with my brother to the last tour in both Wembley and Glasgow, and it was one of the finest moments of my life to share with my brother who had always led me. And when he did numbers like Waterloo Sunset – for me, as a London boy, it was about as close to bliss as I could get.
Everybody knows what he has done on his erratic and interesting journey: it is like having a freakish big brother, and I'm not disappointed in the least that he seems to be settling down now. He has done enough, surely! He inspired me to realise that you could be your own person, dress it up a bit and that was enough. Theatre, art and music, my three favourite things, all in one package that looks brilliant. What more do you want?
PUBLISHED 02 FEBRUARY 2011
David Bowie may seem a cheesy and obvious choice, but it has to be my choice because I have been following his every move and batting of eyelash for about forty years. You’ll hear this story from everyone, from Boy George, everyone who was completely transformed by the Starman appearance on Top of the Pops in 1972. It did change the world for lots of outsider freakos living in grim suburbs of London, who suddenly realised you could be anything you wanted, even something from another planet.
That has informed my thinking ever since; he is an artist of the twentieth and twenty-first century, and has probably introduced more concepts, styles and subversive thinking to the popular consciousness than anyone else. I was thirteen when I got into him, and he was the first person who was mine. I’d had a huge education in popular culture from my brother who was seven years older than me, so I had been (vicariously) a mod, a greaser, this and that on my brother’s coat-tails. But this was for me and has been ever since.
There are tracks on The Man Who Sold the World that mention Winston Churchill, Kalil Gibran, about seven kinds of religion, gangsterism, et cetera et cetera, and you were then inspired to explore all these things. Jung. I mean, who the hell was Jung? And that was in a top ten pop record.
I went with my brother to the last tour in both Wembley and Glasgow, and it was one of the finest moments of my life to share with my brother who had always led me. And when he did numbers like Waterloo Sunset – for me, as a London boy, it was about as close to bliss as I could get.
Everybody knows what he has done on his erratic and interesting journey: it is like having a freakish big brother, and I'm not disappointed in the least that he seems to be settling down now. He has done enough, surely! He inspired me to realise that you could be your own person, dress it up a bit and that was enough. Theatre, art and music, my three favourite things, all in one package that looks brilliant. What more do you want?
Ten Plagues @ Traverse, Fringe 2011
One man, one piano, one vision
It’s a shame that writer Mark Ravenhill is adamant in his introduction to Ten Plagues that he wrote the libretto with Mark Almond in mind as the solo singer: Almond’s performance is the weakest aspect in a production that cleverly adapts a narrative about London’s black death into a worthy metaphor for any curse befalling a city. Almond’s star quality – evident as far back as his iconic appearance on Top of the Pops as part of Soft Cell – is not enough to hide his voice’s limited range and character, and while he revels in the lighter moments, he fails to capture the more hysterical, operatic sequences.
Director and designer Stewart Laing gives Ten Plagues an agitated energy. Opting for a sparse set, he allows Almond plenty of space to inhabit, and the subtle touches of video intensify the lonely isolation of the man adrift in a city of plague. Almond is at his best in the intimate numbers, remembering a lover or guilty enjoying the extravagance of a wig, and the finale, when his voice is joined by a chorus in the audience, makes the finale a melancholic celebration of survival.
Ravenhill’s words are a poetic evocation of the paranoia, selfishness and anxiety that grips a mind in the thrall of terror: the singer is lost in a city populated by the sick, dead and frightened. Without trying to justify the behaviour of a man who is simply trying to survive, Ravenhill demonstrates a profound compassion for the victims of the Black Death and, by extension, any urban horror. A descriptions of a trip to the fish-market, replete with period detail, becomes a vivid adventure into the heart of terror, resonate of both early responses to HIV and even contemporary anguish around financial disorder.
Almond is solid, but not remarkable, robbing the production of immediacy and high drama: Laing opts for an understated meditation and a triumphant end, suiting the undertow of Ravenhill’s writing and keeping Almond’s ability unexposed. Yet in avoiding the more rabid analysis of the plague, this vision of hell is a subtle reflection rather than a provocation.
Director and designer Stewart Laing gives Ten Plagues an agitated energy. Opting for a sparse set, he allows Almond plenty of space to inhabit, and the subtle touches of video intensify the lonely isolation of the man adrift in a city of plague. Almond is at his best in the intimate numbers, remembering a lover or guilty enjoying the extravagance of a wig, and the finale, when his voice is joined by a chorus in the audience, makes the finale a melancholic celebration of survival.
Ravenhill’s words are a poetic evocation of the paranoia, selfishness and anxiety that grips a mind in the thrall of terror: the singer is lost in a city populated by the sick, dead and frightened. Without trying to justify the behaviour of a man who is simply trying to survive, Ravenhill demonstrates a profound compassion for the victims of the Black Death and, by extension, any urban horror. A descriptions of a trip to the fish-market, replete with period detail, becomes a vivid adventure into the heart of terror, resonate of both early responses to HIV and even contemporary anguish around financial disorder.
Almond is solid, but not remarkable, robbing the production of immediacy and high drama: Laing opts for an understated meditation and a triumphant end, suiting the undertow of Ravenhill’s writing and keeping Almond’s ability unexposed. Yet in avoiding the more rabid analysis of the plague, this vision of hell is a subtle reflection rather than a provocation.
Brief Notes: Shock Doctrine
In Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein argues that the success of capitalism in the past decade is the result of long-term intellectual planning. Manipulating natural disasters, like tsunamis, or manufacturing a catastrophe, like the invasion of Iraq, has allowed venture capitalists to dominate both economic theory and the processes of government.The same concern is expressed by Adam Curtis in his films. Capitalism, in its current expansive mood, has taken advantage of dramatic situations to impress its values on populations around the world.
In the 1970s, philosophers of the free-market, despite having about as much credibility as Boris Johnson in Liverpool, developed their ideas outside of the mainstream. When Thatcher gained power at the end of the 1970s, she had a ready-made philosophy to apply to the state.
After 9/11, this model was accelerated. The 'War on Terror', by Klein's analysis, is an excuse for a 'war on social services'.
You know that I am going to say Diderot did this first.
The 'shock doctrine' - in which the intellectual foundation is developed in the wilderness, before coming of age in a time of chaos - is exactly how the philosophes shifted French society from serfdom to bourgeois revolution. Then the Bolsheviks did it: thanks to the First World War, they applied Marx to the existing revolution, and grabbed Russia by the balls.
I'm not qualified to develop this argument: I'd be simply copying Klein, anyway. There must be other factors, but the idea of philosophers providing the engine for change intrigues me (even as I watch the growth of consumerism with despair).
Sunday, 21 February 2016
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO CLASS ANALYSIS?
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO CLASS ANALYSIS?
The SWP is currently obsessed with Islamophobia - an odd preoccupation for an organisation that hasn't had time for religion in the past. Class analysis is painfully unfashionable, even as the Marxism of the Frankfurters is dominant in establishment cultural theory.
It has been pointed out to me that this suggestion for an article unfairly blames the SWP for a lack of class analysis and might suggest that attacking prejudice is not a function of the revolutionary left. I recognise that this is unfair on the SWP, since the lack of class analysis goes far beyond their ranks: The Guardian abandoned it around the time it started to lose its reputation for bad spelling, and The Labour Party invented the Third Way so it didn't have to work out the difference between bourgeois and middle-class.
Equally, answering the Islamophobia of much right-wing rhetoric is an important task. Whether taking it on as the SWP rather than through another organisation, or whether there is revolutionary potential in this activity, is the subject of heated and thoughtful debate.
However, that isn't the point I wanted to make. I do not feel qualified to make judgements based on class analysis - I lack an appropriate knowledge of Marxist thought. I'd be, as pointed out, a terrible socialist in 1933, Germany, or any other time because I lack the theoretical grounding to articulate a socialist position.
I do believe a class analysis of many situations would be helpful - I think that The Glasgow Effect business could have done with one, since the division between a perceived 'working class' and the intelligentsia was pretty evident.
The SWP is currently obsessed with Islamophobia - an odd preoccupation for an organisation that hasn't had time for religion in the past. Class analysis is painfully unfashionable, even as the Marxism of the Frankfurters is dominant in establishment cultural theory.
It has been pointed out to me that this suggestion for an article unfairly blames the SWP for a lack of class analysis and might suggest that attacking prejudice is not a function of the revolutionary left. I recognise that this is unfair on the SWP, since the lack of class analysis goes far beyond their ranks: The Guardian abandoned it around the time it started to lose its reputation for bad spelling, and The Labour Party invented the Third Way so it didn't have to work out the difference between bourgeois and middle-class.
Equally, answering the Islamophobia of much right-wing rhetoric is an important task. Whether taking it on as the SWP rather than through another organisation, or whether there is revolutionary potential in this activity, is the subject of heated and thoughtful debate.
However, that isn't the point I wanted to make. I do not feel qualified to make judgements based on class analysis - I lack an appropriate knowledge of Marxist thought. I'd be, as pointed out, a terrible socialist in 1933, Germany, or any other time because I lack the theoretical grounding to articulate a socialist position.
I do believe a class analysis of many situations would be helpful - I think that The Glasgow Effect business could have done with one, since the division between a perceived 'working class' and the intelligentsia was pretty evident.
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