twenty odd years now

1. Behind the Schemes at the Museum.

April has bust through the seams and alla sudden work is a warzone, silent strikes (union members won’t tell me whats happening and I couldn’t join if I wanted to, no contract, no rights.) Management bargaining postures are as subtle as King Jong-Il, I’m trying to show solidarity for struggles that aren’t mine, but the only mind in which I’d be a scab, as a temp, for covering shifts left empty due to strikes, is my own, and i’m pretty sure its the temps they’re cutting out anyway. Gah. Some say cover your own ass and the rest will follow, but signing new contracts that rob all of any unauthorised toilet breaks (‘please sir, can I take a piss?’) and forbid talking with other staff unless ‘brief and/or work-related’ may be one step too far. Bear in mind as a lowest-rung ‘visitor host’ in a kinduvuabigdeal museum, this means literally standing in a room by yourself for eight to ten hours. Take away my aimless chats with cooworkers and you take away my humanity and soon my sanity. I hid a scrawled ‘fuck you’ in an unusually elaborate signature and signed it anyway. Comedically self defeating strategy, that and talking all the louder on shift – Insolence as a form of rebellion, I notice myself slowly getting slacker as shining examples are ignored and the tiniest indiscrepancies of my colleagues are seized upon. Phil’s got a bad leg, used up all his sick days, management are onto him he says, sure of it, croaks when he’s worried, and from today he must ask a supervisor a third his age for permission to can limp to the loo. Angie’s been there fifteen years, the place is her whole life, she’s got a grip on that radio like you wouldn’t believe (received, over) more than just a last straw for her. Something about struggles assuming new forms. These are our weird new quiet battles, the frontline’s been effaced with some corporate-sponsored street art, and the factory has glass doors and award-winning architecture. Culture mercenaries working flexitime and wondering idly about tax rebates. Motivation hits the floor and the gap between what they’re told and what they know becomes too big to jump.

2. NHS – Neat Hospital Shit.

This month I endured general anaesthetic for the first time. It was a routine procedure administered one hundred percent free, gratis and for nothing on the NHS – that last, bustling but loveable vestage of a British socialist backbone that has long since succumbed to early-onset neo-liberal crumbling. It is still the largest employer in Europe, I was born and (god willing if it’s still here then) will die in its hospitals, and the National Health Service is the indirect benefactor of my life having also paid my Dad to dispense what is admittedly, these last few years, a bulging mountain of daily methadone scripts as a ‘community chemist’ in our native South Wales for his entire pharmaceutical career. Aneurin Bevan, the creator of the reforms that saw the introduction of this national free-for-everyone framework, was also, incidentally, a lovely Welsh man with a valleys lilt. One of the first things I was handed on my resurfacing into the world, by the kindly nurse, along with a biscuit and some juice, was a newspaper which detailed news of Obama’s healthcare reforms. The circumstances and real arguments are beyond my knowledge but the bizarre cell-based judgements handed out to Americans who for whatever reason get ill then can’t afford their treatment made me stop feeling sorry for myself sharpish, sitting as I was, in my free bed with my free juice and my new, polyp-free sinuses.

3. Four good songs for Spring

Anyway, since all i’ve been doing is popping codeine (all prescription drugs are also free – regardless of who you are if you live in Wales, thanks devolved left-leaning government – or free if you live in England and can prove you’re poor enough, which isn’t hard right now…) I’ve been listening to songs over and over again and proselytizing weirdly, as you’ll see. Cram this mini-mix hypothetically into your earholes for Easter and beg for mercy…jesus is dead, the pope, says the papers, is some manner of paedo, so let’s party.

Lack of Knowledge – Danger to Life.

I downloaded this LP by accident, late pass on a lot of this Crass Records stuff that isn’t Crass, the most, most pleasurable surprise. Androids of MU! Honey Bane! And the best thing is you’re not unlikely to come across some of these records in most of the more neglected charity shops around London (american friends perhaps you call this ‘thrifting’, you’re gross) anyway, Lack of Interest are an interesting group. Pretty much everything that it had always bugged me that was kind of lacking from Joy Division is distilled into these detailed intelligent tunes (in the good way, not the ‘feels like it needs to explain itself separately’ way) They have those style buzz-AND-howl basslines, a bit of new wavey stomp to them and lots of pointed lyrics about girls working in factories, mountains of black bags, diatribes reminiscent of Crisis with A-levels. It sounds like urban trauma and grey faces, weird guitar twinkle that puts you all off kilter, then expanding into awesome sudden upbeat climax in the way that does sure remind of that Ian Curtis in his more open mouthed seizure songs, but like I said…better. This tune starts with a fucking air raid siren, don’t tell me it’s not perfect.

Neon Blud – Sophomore Blud

Now I’m not being funny but this band sounds like fucking No Trend with a teenage girl singer, caught me absolutely by surprise (was expecting more ‘woah dudes, aren’t we like, so unsettling and deranged and shit bro?’ and all that cheaply executed novice pedal pushing post-first-Cult-ritual-demo impersonal impersonator steeze) but the whole of the Whipps CS is so lucid and on point, colourful and noisy as shit in a considered way, this could be Born Against for the first twenty seconds, until the vocalist kicks, quite literally, in, and it could be The Wrecks or Nog ­Watt. I’d kill for physical copy of the tape, so smack my thigh and call me a hypocrite but this is just incredibly good quality, contemporary, awesome.

Non-Band – Duncan Dancin’

I don’t know that much about this all-girl band beyond that it was the stand-out track on a mix, released in 1982, I got but the shouty Japanese vocals literally sound like the baby voice I use to talk to animals (lots of plosives and eee-ing) which make it great. Post punk, bass and sax and lots of space. Brilliant bedroom dancing, which I WILL now be able to actually do without fear. Yes, the man who the crazy lady that I live with has chosen to move in is doing so as I type this, he shares an adjoining wall with a set of double doors set into it with me that I have ’sound proofed’ (badly) because I was warned he was doing a doctorate and would NOT appreciate my NOISE. However, upon making the gent a cup of tea, he revealed he used to play sax. As aforementioned loonette is a jazz-obsessive, I assumed that was his passion too, so imagine my joy and relief (I don’t get jazz really, I pretend when necessary though) when he said ‘Er, more, like, punk sax really, making noises here and there, problem is you can’t get too excited or nothing comes out.’ Maybe thats what happened with Non-band, the sparseness was hyperventilation! Joy of joys though, looks like I can unstaple the duvet from the door. On further pressing, he used to hang out on the Kings Road, frequent Legends, wear bondage gear from Sex and his best mate went out with Billy Idol. I embarrased myself with how excited I got. I have a new ally!

Hygiene – Organic Shopper

I’ve been getting massively paranoid that the music part of this column is sort of redundant cos hasn’t everyone heard everything these days… So, to balance the books, here is Hygiene – we put a record out by them and its so brilliant but I’m scared to say so to people for fear it’s one of those occasions where one is subject to deflected humility when you release something like to avoid sounding like a weak sales pitch/self-aggrandisement. Fuck it, this band is way, way ahead of most others in this vein (there are few, I think the Human Race are also great though – http://www.myspace.com/thehumanRACE) in the UK – I want to show some love to Hygiene because, lets be honest here, I’ve been too scared to interview them for the longest time due to the fact that their individual specialist subjects are so wide and deep in range that i’d need a particularly scorn-proof kayak to traverse it. One day I will do it and learn everything from how to make value judgements on a good pair of sta-prest, to well, lots of other really quite important things about football and critical theory. Anyway, they are kind of the transatlantic equivalent to Airfix Kits, both in terms of post punk jerkiness and having a singer who has the ‘wrong’ (but so right) accent given the sonic-geography / locational identity of the band. Nat’s Canadian but everything else is very not-North American, which is so refreshing in a period where London bands are in love with all those forgettable geometric West coast mindless fuzz-peddlers.) Live they’re more brooding, coming over like if Mark E. Smith was Jewish and visibly terrified. On the cusp between half half-time scrap and premeditated theoretically-validated violence, some kind of pogo chin stroke? The Real psycho mafia, cheap pub uppers, crushing grey sundays. I’m killing it by trying to explain it. Listen to their song about the National Front Tea Party. Sniff glue not ketamine.