Jay Stringer's Blog, page 8

Lost City Soundtrack- A Track A day- Big In the Body, Small In The Mind

Lost City comes out on January 14th. It’s the final book in the Eoin Miller Trilogy and, may I say, it’s really good. For the first two books I posted a spotify playlist. For Lost City I’ve decided to release it one track at a time. Check back each day between now and publication day to see another track. Hopefully you’ll find a few artists that you like, and check out their work.

 

 

Lost City, January 14th.

Track five sees another band return to the Miller soundtracks. There are a few acts that have appeared before, on either the Old Gold or Runaway Town soundtracks. Simply put, I love The Selecter. In all of the forms they’ve taken. They’re an example of why 2-tone and ska needs to be remembered as more than white southerners in hats singing about condoms while dancing funny. It’s an urban music, a music that speaks of the towns and cities that birthed it, and the social issues that really matter. And they do it with wit and style, and more than a little humour. Most importantly, they do it with Pauline Black’s voice, the key ingredient to what can so often seem like a very male form of music. Music like this feels like home to me.

Big In The Body-Small In The Mind is taken from the same album as the song I used for Old Gold, 2011′s Made In Britain. The song tells of the modern problems in Britain -via a helping hand from Woody Guthrie- in which the real issues of greed, self interest and corruption bring a country to its knees while the media wants us to look at other distractions. “All of you fascists bound to lose,” goes the old refrain. Do I still believe that? I have to. I think having faith in people to win out is the only sane choice we have.

Lost City Soundtrack- A Track A Day- Turn Around

Lost City comes out on January 14th. It’s the final book in the Eoin Miller Trilogy and, may I say, it’s really good. For the first two books I posted a spotify playlist. For Lost City I’ve decided to release it one track at a time. Check back each day between now and publication day to see another track. Hopefully you’ll find a few artists that you like, and check out their work.

 

 

Lost City, January 14th.

Whiskeytown are one of my favourite bands. Top 5 material. I’ve had a love affair with them that has lasted longer than I’ve had with almost any other musical act. And this song in particular, off the first Whiskeytown album I bought (1997′s Strangers Almanac), has stuck with me. What is it? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the organised chaos as the song heads into its second half. Maybe it’s the haunting plea contained within (“All I want from you, is for you to turn around.“), maybe it’s the way the song fades in an out like passing weather, or maybe it’s that it’s one of Ryan Adams’ finest vocal performances. Perhaps the real reason I love it is because it so perfectly fits this book.

Lost City is a book filled with broken and wounded people. Some are fighting back, some are laying down, but it’s not a town full of winners. Each of them needs to ‘turn around’ in one way or another. It’s a book where failed romances rekindle, and unrequited love comes tinted with doom. Friendships and family ties are the only things that might drag you through the mess, but you’ve burned them and thrown them away. Am I not doing a good enough job of selling it? Well, there’s more tracks to come.

Lost City Soundtrack- A Track A Day- Never Seen No Devil

Lost City comes out on January 14th. It’s the final book in the Eoin Miller Trilogy and, may I say, it’s really good. For the first two books I posted a spotify playlist. For Lost City I’ve decided to release it one track at a time. Check back each day between now and publication day to see another track. Hopefully you’ll find a few artists that you like, and check out their work.

 

 

Lost City, January 14th.

The third track in the official (totally not official) soundtrack album for Lost City is Never Seen No Devil by The Twilight Singers. This track fits the story -and the whole trilogy- on so many levels. In one sense, the whole series has been a long-con play on the unreliable narrator. Does Eoin Miller tell the truth? Is he honest about his own position, his own culpability in the game, and about his own addictions? You’ll have to read to find out. Greg Dulli of The Twilight Singers writes of addiction, self-deception and lies in ways that will be familiar to anyone who has experienced those things. It’s a level of deception where you know the truth but convince yourself that you don’t, and then convince yourself that there isn’t a truth to know. Miller has been setting himself up for a fall for a long time, and needs to hit a form of spiritual rock bottom before he can admit things to himself that he already knows. The title of the track competed very hard to be the title of the book, and really only lost out because I wanted to keep the same two-word pattern as Old Gold and Runaway Town. 

The Twilight Singers have had a slow-burn at the back of my brain to being one of my favourite bands. They crept up on me. The track is from their 2011 album Dynamite Steps. Check it out.

Lost City Soundtrack- A Track A Day- Lies

Lost City comes out on January 14th. It’s the final book in the Eoin Miller Trilogy and, may I say, it’s really good. For the first two books I posted a spotify playlist. For Lost City I’ve decided to release it one track at a time. Check back each day between now and publication day to see another track. Hopefully you’ll find a few artists that you like, and check out their work.

 

 

Lost City, January 14th.

The second song on the soundtrack album is Lies by Chvrches. You don’t need me to tell you who they are at this point, but this track felt like it belonged in the book since the very first time I heard it. There are three characters in the trilogy who have been dancing around each other, wrapping themselves in lies while building mythic versions of each other that will be be torn apart in this final book. They’ve been spinning webs of deceit, love, lust and resentment. Each person finally see’s themselves, and each other, for what and who they are. Do they like what they see? And which three characters am I talking about? Find out.

Chvrches pretty much seem to own the world right now. But if you’re that one weird person who lives in a cave and sends me hand-drawn pictures of your toenails (great shading, by the way) then you can check them out here and you should immediately run to the shops and buy their debut album, The Bones Of What You Believe. Or you can buy it online, and pay for someone to run to your front door with it.

Lost City Soundtrack – A track A Day- Peggy Sang The Blues.

Lost City comes out on January 14th. It’s the final book in the Eoin Miller Trilogy and, may I say, it’s really good. For the first two books I posted a spotify playlist. For Lost City I’ve decided to release it one track at a time. Check back each day between now and publication day to see another track. Hopefully you’ll find a few artists that you like, and check out their work.

 

 

Lost City, January 14th.

The first track is Peggy Sang The Blues by Frank Turner. Frank kindly gave me permission to quote this song as the epigraph for the book. “It doesn’t matter where you come from, it matters where you go.” It’s a good summation of the journey Eoin Miller has been on through the three books, a character who has spent most of his life running from -or apologising for- his past, only to realise it’s his actions that will define him. The final book in the trilogy starts with Miller at his lowest and darkest point. Can he save himself? Can he save those around him? Do they need saving? Find out.

I’ve been following Frank’s music for a long time now, and he doesn’t need anybody’s help in showing his talent or converting people to his music. But if you haven’t checked him out yet, you can do so here and check out his music using the spotify link below. The track is from his 2011 album England Keep My Bones. His newest release is Tape Deck Heart. Frank - along with his band the Sleeping Souls- is one of the best live acts on the road, and if he’s taking in a venue near you (and he will be) you’ll get 2014 off to a great start by seeing them play.

The Times Of The Doctor

And so we’re done with the Eleventh Doctor.

I’ve loved Matt Smith’s portrayal. I’d had huge problems with the show during the Tennant years, and they filtered through to eventually include the choices of the lead actor. I hated the fake accent. I hated the gurning and the wide-boy antics and the lack of gravitas, I hated that you could tell when the Doctor was being emotional because it was when he cried.

It had started well. Tennant’s first few episodes had featured a Doctor who hadn’t yet decided what kind of man he was going to be. He switched between being fun, being exciting and being dark. He was rude and sarcastic, but he was also heroic. As the second season –Tennant’s first- went on, he settled into the annoying blandness that made him beloved of pensioners across the land.

His predecessor never had the chance to dip, and maybe that’s why the ninth Doctor remains so interesting and elusive. He had a 13 episode run in which every other aspect of the show fought to figure itself out in the modern day – the tone, the pace, the directing, the acting, the budget- but Eccleston carried the show on his back all the way to his last perfect moment. Even his regeneration scene was right. Regeneration has been handled a number of different ways in the 50 years of WHO. For some Doctor’s it’s been merely the turning of a page, a brief pit stop to change the tires before the adventure starts again. For others it’s been very much a death, in episodes that have been infused with tragedy. In just a few moments, Eccleston managed to carry all of this, and made his final scene into something that carried both the tragedy of the passing of Nine and the excitement at the arrival of Ten.

Tennant’s final scenes, by contrast, were marked by excess and melodrama. He took just long enough to die to take trips through time and space to wave at everybody he’d ever seen ever, he threw tantrums about not wanting to go (pure ego here by someone behind the scenes, since the Doctor wasn’t going anywhere) and then, just to make certain sections of the audience happy again, more tears.

A problem that had grown with every season during the Davies era had been what ex-Davros Terry Moloy referred to as the show being anti-clever. Increasingly it was silliness and pomp and running and explosions and tears, don’t forget tears. It was a constant battle between brains and emotion in-which brains was armed with a feather and emotion was armed with a bazooka. The shining light during these years was Steven Moffat. His scripts were witty and intelligent, and stood above all others by default.

Then everything changed. A total reset. New show-runner, new cast, new crew, new theme, new everything.

Season 5 arrived as everything I’d been wanting since Eccleston had left. It was fun, it was witty, it was clever, and it balanced brains and emotion (because we need both, not one over the other.) There was clearly a plan for the whole season, and the overall story arc was parsed out in well-paced chunks that left a final episode which had the room to be a fun romp, because all the heavy lifting had been done.

And the Doctor? The Doctor was amazing. An old man trapped in the body of a young fool. The dark boffin. The perfect distillation of the character.

Then season 6 and….eh….

To be fair to Moffat -and season 6- it contains some of the best stand-alone episodes of all of modern WHO. But the story arc was a total mess. And it showed Moffat after one great season was now doing what Davies did after one very good season, and learning all the wrong lessons. If season one managed to keep a balance between brains and emotion, seasons 2-4 then pushed head long into explosive and dumb soap opera. And if season 5 had managed to perfect that balance between brains and emotion, Moffat then pushed onwards ever more towards ‘clever and tricksy’ and away from ‘emotional truth.’ Strip brains away from emotion and all we have is empty sentiment, but strip emotion away from brains and all we have is cold and convoluted plot.

Season 7 marked a minor fight-back. The past few episodes of the Ponds marked a return to form, and left me with the feeling that these stories would have worked far better as the spine of an alternate season 6. Jenna Coleman came along as the new companion, and then proceeded to spent several episodes fighting gamely against being given a shallow plot-device of a character. A hope for season 8 is that she will get a chance to shine and to let her obvious talents win out now that the suffocating story arcs are done. The general opinion of season 7 at the moment is that it was quite weak, but I think it will age well. Aside from a couple of clunkers around the mid point, when Clara joined the Doc full-time,  we were given a number of very string stand alone episodes that people will enjoy far more once we get some distance from the mess that preceded it and the distraction of the 50th anniversary that followed it.

Moffat had earned my trust back not just with The Day Of The Doctor, the 50th anniversary special, but with everything that surrounded it, including the The Night Of The Doctor. He’d showed a love and respect for the whole history of the show that many people had started to doubt he possessed, right down to essentially making Big Finish audio adventures canon by having the McGann’s Doctor mention all of his BF companions.

And now for Matt Smith’s final story. And the sense of waste that it brings with it.

A Doctor who has been so good, who has starred in some of the shows finest moments and carried it through some of the worst, deserved a far stronger final bow than this. Perhaps it was the perfect summary of his era, in many respects. It was full of interesting ideas, full of nice twists and some very witty dialogue, but was hamstrung by bad choices and rushed storytelling.

I was one of the people who’d seen the leaked storyline in advance and had anticipated a great final story because of it. I loved the idea of us seeing a Doctor age on screen in a way that we’d never been given before, and the sense of epic scale that it would give to Smith’s Doctor. I loved the idea of this crazy dark boffin making a heroic stand and dedicating all of his final life to standing between all of the monsters and a bunch of innocent people that he’d never met. That said everything we need to know about the character. It was a story that should have been able to show us why the universe needs The Doctor, and why he is such a heroic character.

Moffat loves playing with time, and keeps finding new ways to present us with the various logical quirks thrown up by time-travel, and people within the same episode ageing at different speeds, and destiny paradoxes. I love all of that, if it’s done the right way. In it’s barest bones the story for The Time Of The Doctor was perfect. But in it’s execution it was terrible. Whether that’s down to the script, the directing or the post-production, I can’t say for sure. I do know of at least one sub-plot that was filmed and cut, suggesting that time constraints did mean the show was edited down somewhat, but I also think we have more than enough proof by now to think that many of the problems were down to the script choices.

We are simply never given any investment in the characters that the Doctor is dedicating his life to protect. There is a large emotional gulf at the very centre of the episode, which leaves his sacrifice as nothing more than a plot device. The passing of time in this town –the idea that Moffat wanted to build the whole story around- was thrown at us briefly through exposition and montage, and Jenna Coleman was once again left to fight against having only one real thing to do in the whole story. The scenes with her family –none of whom we’ve met before, none of whom we have emotional investment in- only serves to show that their screen time would have been better used getting us more invested in the people of Christmas Town or seeing more of the destruction the Doctor was defending them from.

We’re given a town where nobody can lie, in which The Doctor still somehow tells white lies in order to make children feel better, and was to be the point where the Time Lords would break through into our universe again once they found proof that it was the right spot, but they then failed to break through once given that proof. It’s a town in which The Doctor spent about 900 years protecting innocent people, all the while knowing he was destined to die in an epic battle there, without coming up with any simple escape plan for those innocent people (like, say, the TARDIS.)

It was also an episode that failed to learn the lessons of the Star Wars prequels. Some sections of the WHO fanbase call for answers to everything. It always seems to me we hold WHO to a different standard to other shows. Usually we revel in being trusted to figure a few things out ourselves, and WHO in particular has lasted for 50 years because enough room is left for fans and future writers to fill in a few blanks. But the modern WHO audience wants every box ticked, every door opened, and every sub-plot tied up. George Lucas drove his most famous property into the ground by spending three films providing needless explanations to all of the gray areas that had given it life in the first place. And here Moffat gives us whole passages of screen time that are just exposition, dialogue that should come with a checklist for each fan question being answered. What was behind the door in The God Complex? Who cares? Well, now we know it was a crack in the wall, which is surely far less interesting than the many answers you’ve been coming up with on your own. Who did this? Who did that? Why is the grass green? And who did kill the chauffer in The Big Sleep?

The result was a leaden and convoluted mess in place of what was, in it’s basic form, a very simple and effective story.

It’s important to say that Matt Smith still shined. Even in the midst of an episode with so many problems, he managed to elevate every scene he was given, and almost, almost, manages to make it into a good episode simply by force of will.

And the final moments were near perfect. Smith’s final thoughts, as well as the goodbye from his definitive companion, all managed to hit the right notes. Smith has never needed to simply to turn on the water works to show he’s emoting. He has the gravitas that Tennant lacked. I remember the simple moment in A Good Man Goes To War where he sold us all on his anger, grief and frustration simply by moving his jaw. He doesn’t need to act for the back row in the theatre, he acts to the camera, and he did that here one last time. He goes to more effort than Eccleston in his final words, and perhaps doesn’t get it quite as right at Nine, but it was still a great way to face his last moment.

I like the way Moffat has approached regeneration. Davies gave us two in four seasons*; one was perfect and one was terrible. In the space of six weeks Moffat has given us three. Eight’s regeneration into The War Doctor was given to us as a choice, War’s change into Nine was given to us as a simple matter of course, as something to be accepted and moved on from. Eleven into Twelve is presented as the ultimate representation of how we change and grow as human beings, how we wear a number of different faces during our lives and how we own and remember each one. I much prefer this to Ten’s tantrum and tears.

So farewell Matt Smith. You were brilliant. And welcome Peter Capaldi, who could be about to put in the performance that will define his long (and Oscar-winning) career.

And Moffat?

He’s responsible for most of the high-points in modern WHO. If I listed my top-ten episodes from 2004 onwards it would be heavy with Moffat scripts. But he also gives the impression of someone that has already told his definitive WHO story and is struggling to find another. He was behind the casting of Capaldi, and I argue he still should have enough credit from us to get this next season to show what he does with his new Doctor and a fresh direction. He has also done great service to whoever follows him; he’s already thrown out the baggage of the regeneration limit, he’s established that The Doctor can change gender, and between rebooting the universe and tweaking the time-war he’s once again freed up the modern continuity to be whatever the show needs it to be. By the time he hands over to the next producer he will have either brought Gallifrey back or have left an easy route for that person to do it if they wish, and will likely be handing over with a fantastic actor already in place in the form of Capaldi, avoiding the stress Moffat had with starting everything from scratch when he took over. I’m a fan of his work, with a few large reservations about choices he’s made in the last couple of years, but the tenth anniversary of the show’s return may be the perfect moment to pass the torch to someone new, someone who hasn’t been such an influential part of the past decade. WHO is a show about change and I think we’re ready for that.

*Well, he gave us three, I suppose. But since Ten into Ten was such a cheap throwaway trick, I try and ignore it.

Thomas Paine; My Favourite Troublemaker

 “Something in the heart of Tom Paine burned for revolution.”

-Franz Nicolay

 

I wrote yesterday of how I find Jesus to be a troubling figure. After opening the Christmas season with such cheer, I felt I should try something different. Who would I rather see praised? What figures do I think we should celebrate? I think I may make this my own Christmas tradition, to name and celebrate figures deserving of such a day.

For my first stab at this I have to go for the figure that springs most easily to mind. To my mind, that is. I apologise in advance for this person being a white male. That’s something I should look to redress with future attempts at this. But even still, I think it’s a white male that we could all agree deserves to be feted.

Before I get to him though, I have a slight diversion. Earlier this year Russel Brand caused a fuss, as Russel Brand is prone to do, with his essay on why he believes people shouldn’t vote. I’m not going to digress into a discussion on that topic, and I’m also not ignoring the people who criticise Brand’s authority to preach on the treatment of other human beings. They have a strong case. However, hidden away in that essay was something that I felt was deeply important, and was largely overlooked in the fuss that followed.

 

“I did a job with Billy Connolly and Eddie Izzard not long ago and the three of us shared a dressing room. Eddie believes in democracy and spoke sincerely of his political ambitions. “One day I’d like to be a politician . . .” he said. I spoke of my belief that change could only come from within. “I’d like to be a spiritual orator . . .” I said grandly. Billy eyed us both, with kindly disapprobation. “I’d like to be a nuisance,” he said. “I want to be a troublemaker, there in the gallery in parliament shouting RUBBISH and PROVE IT.””

-Russel Brand

 

I’d put it to you that those who come to make a real difference in history, the real history that is made up of people and progress, rather than the fake thing taught in schools that’s all about dates and textbooks, are not the politicians or the spiritual orators. They are the troublemakers.

And so, I suggest that we celebrate Thomas Paine, one of histories greatest troublemakers.

The colonial past of the country I was born in means that Englishman have forced themselves into a great many corners of history. Their names often stained with blood or lies, both within the British isles and abroad. In spite of this, or perhaps in some ways because of it, I can’t say any of them can touch the legacy of Paine.

Before Paine, the discussion over the concept of ‘rights’ was confined to the rich and the church. Mostly it was discussed only as a way of proving that a monarch deserved to rule, that they were there by divine right. At a time when increasing numbers of the population were gaining a basic understanding of literacy –an understanding that those in charge sought to oppress by keeping the texts in obscure and difficult language- Thomas Paine became the first person to put the concept of basic and universal human rights down on paper. He argued that if rights existed, then they belonged to everyone. His book The Rights Of Man is the first time that concept was argued in a form that was mass-produced and available to all. Aside from it being available, he wrote it in a style that also made it readable.

I’ll grant him one moment of historical blindness, and argue that we should forgive him for talking about The Rights Of Man rather than The Rights Of Humans, because I’m convinced the gender-bias of the title was not an intentional slight, and that he felt at that time that arguing for one was to be arguing for both. But we also shouldn’t ignore that Mary Wollstonecraft was less forgiving, and responded a year later with A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women. The title can’t be a coincidence.

If The Rights Of Man alone was his achievement, it would be one worthy of monuments in the country of his birth.

But his story doesn’t stop there.

In 1774, 37-year-old Thomas Pain sailed to America. He arrived at a time when the independence movement was starting to gain momentum. The mainstream within ‘the colony’ at the time was simply calling for a better position within the established empire, but there were growing voices for something more, for something free. Pain used his skill at writing to produce essays for The Pennsylvania Magazine that railed against the establishment. He then wrote Common Sense, a pamphlet that called for independence, for self-determination, for annual elections and for the abolition of (or breakaway from) monarchy. As I’ve already mentioned above, Paine had a knack for putting his arguments in terms that hadn’t been tried before, in bringing politics to people who didn’t usually get to join in. That’s not to say he ‘dumbed down’, in the manner of modern politicians. He presented string arguments in the language of the people, whereas the current crop hide weak arguments by talking down to us. Paine wrote in the way that things needed to be written.

The pamphlet reached the eyes of one George Washington, who then swayed from anti to pro independence. Common Sense quickly became the biggest selling publication in America’s history at that point, and within months Thomas Jefferson had written the declaration of independence. Paine may not go down in history as the author of that document, but then, Slade don’t get royalties from Oasis songs, either. It has been claimed that Paine was the first person to use the phrase, “The United States Of America,” but we may never know if that is true.

Like many inspirational troublemakers, Paine found that he went out of fashion once the people around them got what they wanted. The winds changed as the nation established, and soon the weird man who wrote about taxing the rich to pay for public services, became inconvenient. He argued for the abolition of slavery, when his key allies during the independence struggle were slave owners, and he befriended leaders within the Native American communities, who were still seen as the enemy. Heavily in debt and now a political enemy, he returned to England.

And, once again, if that were end of his story, he would be a man fit for a monument in the capitals of both America and his homeland.

But he didn’t stop there.

Something was stirring across the channel, in France. The public were starting to realise they didn’t have a great deal, they were demanding more. They were demanding revolution. These stirrings were making it across to England, and those in power were beginning to seriously fear that the country may wake up and call for a revolution of it’s own. In the middle of this unrest, and once again stirred at the thought of revolution, Thomas Paine sat down to write. This brings me back to where I came in, and The Rights Of Man. He called for the country of his birth to follow the example of its European cousin, and stated that the idea of hereditary rule was “as absurd as a hereditary mathematician.” In the second volume of the book he argued (with the figures to back it up) that abolishing the monarchy and redistributing the wealth would provide funds for state pensions and funerals for the population, it would allow for the establishment of a state-funded education system available to all, and that everyone would be given a sum of money when they reached adult age. He even outlined plans for housing the homeless.

The book became the best-seller of all time. This is as key a moment in English history as the revolutions were for France and the United States, but sadly in the other direction. Here’s where the establishment wised up. Here is also where the modern concept of ‘Britishness’ arose. It was PR. Those in charge combated the revolutionary stirrings by changing the terms of the debate, by working to bury the separate identities of the regions of England, and then eventually the wider national identities of the UK, and creating a common enemy in France, the very people who had been inspiring the uprising. But it wasn’t all fun and games with spin doctors. The government and the crown started using the law to suppress free-thought, and started using violence to suppress free-expression. This is where Britain’s long love affair with libel laws took hold. The government banned ‘seditious writing’ and prevented groups of people from marching together. Movements like The London Corresponding Society, a working class movement campaigning for republican democracy, became the target of the authorities for committing treason.

The charges extended to people who owned or published The Rights Of Man. It was passed out in secret amongst workers, and people began learning to read in order to see what the fuss was about.

So, inspiring Revolution in one new country, and almost instigation it in another older one, that would be enough for any person to be a legend, no?

He still didn’t stop there.

Fearing death or -much worse- libel, Paine fled across the channel to France, where he then managed to get elected to the French Parliament (National Assembly.) It also has to be noted here, just in case there is any doubt at all about whether Pain should really be considered an Englishman, that he was elected despite failing to learn a single word of French. He fits into the long and bemusing tradition of Brits abroad who bumble along by simply talking slower and louder in their own language. While he was in France he was part of the committee who prepared the Girondin Constitutional Project and played a part in the abolishment of slavery.

Once again he eventually proved to be too much of a troublemaker for the troublemakers. At a time when the mood was to execute the deposed king, Paine spoke (and voted) against that idea on principal, arguing against the death penalty in any form. For this inconvenience he was thrown into prison and very nearly executed.

While in prison he wrote another book, The Age Of Reason, in which he offered the first detailed analysis of the contradictions and errors contained in the Bible. Atheists have, of course, been around since long before religion. The presence of non-believers is proven by the fact that all the major religions feel the need to describe what happens to people who fail to follow the correct path. But, as with The Rights Of Man being the first time universal human rights were put to print, Paine’s forensic deconstruction of the bible was the most significant atheist document in history at that point (though Paine himself still believed in a creator, if not one who participated in our affairs after than initial act.) He took an argument against organised religion to the very people that were being enslaved by it. He put into print the simple and dangerous idea that the priests were lying to us. Once again he’d written a bestseller, with the book spreading across Europe and the United States.

It was this publication that finally made him unemployable. It seemed he could inspire revolutions in multiple countries and still always find a home among radicals and revolutionaries, but once he took his fight to God, he lost all allies. He found this when he travelled back to America only to be ignored by the government and to have violent mobs attack him. He became a shadow of his former self and fell into illness and alcohol, finally passing away in 1809. His final act of defiance was to refuse to repent on his deathbed, therefore declining his chance to become a part of the establishments recognised history while confirming his place in the history of people who actually mattered.

In a final twist his remains were lost and have never been recovered. I think it’s fitting that Paine has never officially come to rest anywhere. In a sense his story has never ended. It also keeps him slightly mythical, just on the fringes of history, with no one state, party or government able to claim final ownership of his legacy.

If we do need to have festivals to celebrate the lives of historical figures, I would suggest there can be few with a greater claim than Thomas Paine. He changed the world. We are still living in a world that bears his fingerprints. He inspired revolution wherever he went. He lived through two and very nearly managed to kick-start a third. And even when that was all done, when he was sitting in a jail cell facing an uncertain end, he managed to write a book that has become the bedrock of modern atheism.

And he did all of it, all of it, despite never claiming to be acting on behalf of god. He never had to speak of eternal salvation or damnation, never promised paradise to those who followed him, and never even requested followers. He changed the world through thoughts and words, and he lived to see the results in his own lifetime. More than that, he wasn’t simply on the right side of history when it came to revolutions in France and America, he managed to be on the right side within them, too. Arguing for a free France but against the killing that followed, arguing for an independent America but also taking a stand against slavery.

And even more than any of this, he is simply an inconvenient truth for those in power. He was not a ‘genius’ or a ‘great man,’ or any other terms that are used to make the rest of us think that only certain people can change things. He was a normal human being, of humble background, with a normal amount of intelligence. All that marked him out was that he had the will to use all of what he had, and the drive to see it through. He is the great reminder that any of us can do it. Think of that, next time someone on the right or left tries to tell you to “be realistic.”

Don’t be realistic. Be Thomas Paine. Be a troublemaker.

 

“We can’t all be Tom Paine, but we can all be little Tom Paines, changing a bit of history by being the first in the room to say, ‘that’s not right, we’re not standing for that.’ If Tom Paine has one thing to say to us, it’s ‘make a fuss.’”

-Mark Steel

How To Solve A Problem Like Jesus?

I find myself in a bind around the time of Christmas. We live in a culture that foists religion upon on us. It’s in the casual acceptance of phrases, it’s in the national holidays, it’s in the television programming and –increasingly- it’s in the workplaces that want to force horrors like “Christmas Jumper Day” on us. I intend never to have children, however if I do, and I raise them without the trappings of religion to allow them freedom of choice as adults, I would be considered a bad parent if I chose not to share Christmas traditions with them, or even worse, if I chose not to tell them an immoral and magical lie for the first 8 years of their life that a fat old white man is allowed to sneak into their room, and that he knows what they’ve been doing.

So those of us who do not believe in any of this humbug live with these things daily. And yet, when we voice our own opinions, we are accused of being intolerant or of not respecting other people’s beliefs. I’m afraid that if I have to tolerate yours, then I’m going to insist on the same myself.

It’s also worth pointing out that I’m not railing against the many kind people who wish me ‘Merry Christmas,’ ‘Happy Holidays’ or take the time and thought to send me a card. Each and every one of those is, of course, taken in the spirit it’s intended, with thanks and appreciation. And it’s partially out of respect for these people that I usually bite my tongue at this time of year. Who am I to want to throw good wishes back in their face? By all means send me cards and wish me a happy holiday, and most times I’ll return the wishes. Hugs and kisses, punk rock style.

No, it’s something else that’s got me writing today. Stop filling up my Facebook feed with posts about what a swell guy Jesus was. Or how mean-spirited it would be for me to voice an opposing opinion. I’m even respecting that to the extent that I’m choosing, in return, not to fill the same public space with my replies. I’m happy for people to believe all of that if they wish, but I’m not going to sit down and shut up out of some weird one-way modern version of tolerance or respect.

So, on my own little corner of the web, where people can choose to read or ignore me, I’m going to get a few things off my chest.

I wrote at the top that I find myself in a bind at Christmas. One of the chief reasons for that is Jesus. El Jefe. The chief dude of the winter pomposity pageant. Atheists often hide from this issue. We stumble over our words when charged with the idea; “well, even if you don’t believe he was god, you’ve still got to accept he was a nice guy.” This concept ramps up this time of year with all of the memes about how Christians should be more like Christ, and what a nice wee dude he was, and how he probably loved kittens and would think that the internet was invented for sharing pictures of dogs in Santa hats. If only, the argument goes, Christianity was more about Christ, we’d all be happy.

And why do I find this a bind? Because it’s bullshit of the highest order. It’s a dodge. But to voice that opinion in any public forum is to be accused of that gravest of modern crimes, being offensive. Well, I don’t write to be inoffensive.

He was a nice guy, Jesus. All he preached was love. All he asked for was compassion. All he did was heal the sick. He even threw out the rich people. He told us to turn the other cheek. He said we shouldn’t cast the first stone.

He was nice, right? It doesn’t matter if he was actually god, right?

No. It matters.

Let’s take for a moment the words of C.S. Lewis;

“That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic -on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg- or else he would be the Devil of Hell…….(edit)…But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that option open to us.”*

 

Putting aside debates of historical accuracy, and over which versions of the stories should be considered canon, let’s for a moment simply take the bible at face value. If we judge the man based on the book, and we actually read the book, we have to make certain observations.

Jesus talked about Hell more than Heaven. In fact, Hell doesn’t exist in the bible until Jesus comes along. The Old Testament has references to a pit, and a grave, but nothing about eternal hellfire. That concept came to us from the mouth of the peace-loving hippy. He preached immorality as often as morality. He spoke of damnation more than salvation. He picked and chose whom to save.

Here we have the case of a man wandering around Palestine making grand claims to be acting for God. He backed up his grand claims with zero proof, other than that he was the product of a virgin birth (by the by, Jesus is constantly rude and dismissive to Mary in the bible.) The act that supported his claim was when his entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey fulfilled the prophecy of Zechariah. This, according to Matthew (21:4) “was done that it might be fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophet.” It was done because they’d all been told that was how the Messiah would arrive. So, in modern terms, it was a con trick. A politician kissing babies. I wonder if I could walk into Buckingham Palace with a sword and say, “hey, I pulled this out of a stone, I guess that makes me king like the old stories said. Here, Lizzy, fuck off out my new house.”

So, on the back of these grand claims and scant evidence, Jesus promises that you must follow his way in order to attain an eternal reward, and that if you do not, you are damned for all time to hell. The religious leaders of the Old Testament may have been largely immoral violent warlords, but at least they did their worst to you while you were alive. At worst they brutally took your life from you, perhaps at the end of a long process of torture and/or rape. But once you were dead, you were left alone. Not so with the “kind, mild, loving man,” Jesus Christ Superstar. If you do not bend to his will, you are to be cast off forever, with no hope of reprieve.

Let us take a look at some of his moral teachings.

Matthew 6:34**

“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

Do not think of tomorrow? Do not save. Do not think of your health or your future. Do not build anything, do not plan anything, do not worry about an economy, a health care plan, social welfare reform. Do not think of investment or pensions. A society that actually follows this teaching is a society that doesn’t make it past day one.

Matthew 10:37

“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

 

Are there any less moral lines that could be spoken? Love me above your parents, love me more than your children, I demand this of you. These are not the words of a nice man. At best, we can argue they are the words of someone who is mentally unstable. At worst they are spoken by a megalomaniac.

In Matthew 15:21-28 we have the case of Jesus initially refusing to heal the sick daughter of a Canaanite, saying that she is the wrong sort; “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” To translate, “you are not a Jew, I will not help.” Eventually he agrees to help and heals the child, but only after the mother begs again and proves her faith to him. To repeat again, he will not help a sick child from another ethnic group or tribe until the mother of that sick child proves she has faith in his way. Is this moral? Is this the version of Jesus that Facebook want to convince us we should believe in at this time of year?

Let’s look also at one of the most famous tales. John 8 3-11. The woman taken in adultery. The scribes ask Jesus to choose whether to follow Mosaic Law, which dictates the woman must be stoned to death. Jesus speaks the famous line, “he that is without sin among you, let him cast a stone at her.”

Let us ignore that he failed to tell them, as perhaps he would if truly divine and preaching love and equality, that theirs was a misogynist and patriarchal law system. Let us also ignore the question of where the man who was caught in the act got to, since he should also have been stoned. And let us finally overlook the basic idea that Jesus seems to be saying that adultery is fine, and that he could forgive the woman on behalf of the actual wronged parties who were not present at the scene.

Ignore all of that.

My question about that story is this; if ‘let he that is without sin, cast the first stone,’ is a great principle upon which we should base our ethics and our lives, then how could we operate a fair criminal justice system? We have to take the word ‘sin’ in the context of the book it appears in, and therefore conclude that nobody who has ever coveted, lusted, masturbated, stolen, profaned or idolised can, in fact, pass judgement. And so it would be impossible to try anyone by a jury of their peers. Do we simply sit back and let people behave as they wish, whenever they wish, simply because none of us are in a position to judge?

These kind of bizarre, short-term rules only make sense if you believe the world is going to end very soon. In that context, there truly is no point thinking of the future, it doesn’t really matter whether you love a cult leader over your family, and there is no need to build a criminal justice system. And, for those who choose to actually read the bible rather than pick and choose the bits they were given at Sunday school, that is exactly the context in which you have to take Jesus’ words.

He believed the end was coming. Soon. He promised that his followers would live to see the final revelation. He also welcomed it. And here’s the thing, the basic idea that so many of the truly kind and decent religious folks either ignore or expect us to ignore; religion is not an open-ended story. Each of the major faiths has a beginning, middle and end. And believing in those religions is a tacit acceptance of that end. To preach those religions is to welcome that end, to relish it.

To believe in Jesus is to believe in everything he preached. And that includes the immorality. It includes the man on the mound in equal measure with the man of the Book Of Revelation.

This is a man who condemns you to hellfire if you disagree with him. Who claims to have the ability to heal the sick, but will only do so if you praise him, and may ignore you if you’re not of his own ethnic group. A man who demands that you love him more than your own family, and who impels you to plan nothing for the future. This is a man who announces to the world that he can die for their sins, whether they want him to or not, and not just for the sins already committed but those you may one day choose to transgress. You’re being forgiven for thought crimes that you haven’t even committed yet, by a man who has not asked for your permission or vote.

This time of year is a religious festival based around him. And I respect people’s desire to join in the celebration. I’ll stand back and stay silent at having religious dogma thrown at me constantly, and I’ll even refrain from sharing my own beliefs every time someone chooses to share theirs. Even if, on the rare occasion I actually voice my opinion, I’m called disrespectful or offensive by those who do not themselves refrain.

About the only thing I ask, is that if you’re going to worship him, you read the book you draw him from. You worship him for what he actually is and was, and not for some nice new-aged mystical figure that you take from a dumbed down, prettied up, storybook version.

Something I am often puzzled by is the lengths that decent, compassionate and caring people will go to in order to overlook the bits of the bible that they don’t like. It becomes an all-you-can-believe buffet, where people select the chapters they agree with, and ignore the ones they don’t. We can take the fuzzy-wuzzy love bits, but ignore the bigotry, the hatred, and the violence. Religion is already a form of supreme arrogance, it’s already saying that our small mammalian brains have been capable of writing down all there is to know about the big black space above us. But to pick and choose in the manner that so many do is to take that arrogance one step further. Not only is it saying we’ve been able to write down the thoughts of the omnipotent creator, but we’re able to second-guess him/her/it. We can judge that “this is what God meant to say.” We don’t really have that option available to us. It’s either right, or it’s not, and if it’s not, then it’s false.

To expect me to respect that Jesus said and did some nice things, also means I expect you to accept that he taught immorality and welcomed the end of the world. You can have neither or you can have both, but you can’t have one without the other. As C.S. Lewis put it, “he has not left that option open to us.”

Merry Christmas.

*Taken from Mere Christianity by C.S.Lewis. It should be noted that he wrote that in defence of the idea that Jesus was God. I, of course, believe the opposite, so I’m making his position clear to avoid a charge of selective quoting.

**The biblical quotes are taken from the King James version.

Footnote; Though there are no direct quotes from Christopher Hitchens in this post, it would be wrong not to acknowledge his presence in the words. His book God Is Not Great is a very effective summation of the argument against religion, and helped me to pull my many disparate opinions together. His comments on the ‘woman taken in adultery’ have been especially influential on this post, and he was the reason I sought out the C.S. Lewis text.

The Anatomy Of A Clusterfuck

 

I’ve been in two minds about whether to comment on this further than what I’ve said on twitter. It’s a news story that probably needs little in the way of drama or debate heaped on it. There is an inbuilt amount of self-defeat in me taking a look at this; I’m moaning about the way people stir up controversy while playing a part in that process. However, it involves my team, it involves a cause I’m passionate about, and it involves so many revealing issues about modern journalism.

Internet controversy is a fun thing. It’s never productive. It’s rarely adult or considered. Into this we have newspapers, desperate for page views and readers, who now follow the trends rather than trying to lead or observe them. They whip up comments on twitter and beg for our attention. Even when the news story itself is worthy and interesting, the news media have developed a way of devaluing them into some form of tawdry circus. However, surely some topics are still considered taboo? Maybe not.

There are times in internet controversy when nobody is wrong, there are just clashes of different opinions. There are also times when nobody is right. Let’s unpack one of those.

First up, let’s get the actual news story out of the way. The Express & Star reported this morning that Wolves Chairman Steve Morgan invited shamed policeman Norman Bettison to watch Wolves play last weekend. There’s a very good news story here. Steve Morgan is from Liverpool. He’s a life-long fan of Liverpool FC (despite his claims to have put that allegiance aside. I think that claim works against him. If it’s a lie, it’s a pointless attempt to appease Wolves fans. If it’s true, it speaks to a money-led fickle nature that no adult football fan can trust.) Bettison is the police chief who was in charge of the original enquiry into the Hillsborough disaster. An enquiry that has itself been challenged and overturned; shown to have ignored evidence, doctored statements and lied to the public.

Morgan can, of course, pick his friends as he sees fit. If he is a long-term friend, as has been claimed, I suppose there is also an argument that Morgan is right to stand by his friend. I don’t agree with that line of thought, but it is there to be debated. Morgan also owns Wolves and -within the rules of football- can do pretty much what he wants. The club hospitality is there for whoever he decides should enjoy it. Despite all of that, his decision to invite Bettison to a football match shows an extreme level of insensitivity and poor judgement. That lack of judgement is sadly no longer really ‘breaking news’ when it comes to Morgan, but this particular instance is more than fair game for a news story.

If we accept that journalism is there to uncover hypocrisy, abuses of power, and bad ethical choices, then I would not stand in the way of anybody who wanted to publish this news story. Furthermore, I am deeply angered by Morgan’s decision. I am one of the people this story would be intended for, if handled in the right way. His stupidity and gross insensitivity is not worthy of the club I love. Decent, right-minded football fans (I originally wrote “working class” there, but forget that, all football fans) stand with Liverpool fans on the issue of Hillsborough, and the Express & Star have highlighted the huge gulf in compassion between the clubs fans and owner. It was a disgusting decision, and was not done in my name, or in the name of any decent Wolves fan.

Have I made my feeling on that issue clear enough? Good. Because if not, this next bit might seem like a huge backtrack.

The most insulting and insensitive aspect of this news story is not the stupid decision of the chairman of Wolverhampton Wanderers. It is the actions of the Express & Star.

If we could believe for one second that this story was founded on any principle of journalistic integrity, I would back off and let the story rumble on. But it is purely a shill. It’s about getting page views and hit rates, and working up a storm. How can I say that? Let’s take a look.

Early this morning, the E&S editor tweeted this;

Which was then followed by this;

Note not just the tone and words of the tweets, but also the hash tags and the @ links. The first tweet was openly addressed to a Wolves podcast and to one of the Internets biggest Wolves message boards. The second was an open call -despite, presumably the Wolverhampton newspaper having the ability to contact the Wolverhampton football club by many other private means- to hear from ‘someone’ with what we hack writers would call a ‘ticking clock.’ Big story. Lawyers. Yikes. The message board went into  meltdown. If they were looking for attention, they got it.

The news story itself, which went live around an hour later, contained not just the bare bones of the story, but also pictures of the Hillsborough disaster, just incase we had forgotten. It had screen grabs of tweets, because what serious act of journalism is complete these days without the hard fought research of copying some tweets. (Still, if the E&S say it’s okay, then they won’t mind me…) Also, just to really show the seriousness with which the paper takes it’s role,  a poll. A poll. Quality journalism there. A real assessment of moral bankruptcy and abuses of power. A searing piece of investigation. Topped off with a poll, because that’s all we are these days, we are a yes or a no on a TV talent show or a major news item.

Results of which, by the way, you can’t see unless you vote.

At least they stop short of asking whether we were Team Morgan or Team Football. But hey, even noble intentions can me misconstrued, right? Maybe I was being harsh. Maybe this was an honest and well-meant act of journalism. Maybe they were not twisting the emotions and grief of a tragedy to get page views, and manipulating people into a yes/no right/wrong false argument. Maybe I should calm down and hear the other side of the argument. Fortunately, I didn’t need to look far.

There’s the bottom line. ‘Huge web traffic.’ ’2.5K votes.’ ’10k web vies.’ That’s all this was. There was no assessment of the rights and wrongs. No attempt to provide critical analysis of the story. No attempt at actual journalism. It was look at us. We’re in an age when ‘in the public interest,’ no longer means something that is of value to the public, but something that people will click on. It’s advertising hit rates. It’s clicks. It’s.Just.Money. The Express & Star is the first newspaper I ever read. It was the one I read most frequently growing up, and over the years I’ve known people who worked there. I’m not going to claim that it was ever a newspaper that was carrying out Watergate style acts of valued investigative journalism, but I think they used to be better than this. Looks at us, please, attention, attention, attention.

I called this post the anatomy of a clusterfuck for a reason. There is no right in this situation. Steve Morgan did a stupid, insensitive, maddening thing. And he was fair game to anyone who wanted to weigh in with some considered work on the subject. The Express & Star, though, used that as a chance to make money, to receive huge hit rates, and maybe to briefly raise the profile of a sports desk that is finding itself getting lost amid the modern social media news cycle. It’s tried to grab hold of its own piece of a story that belongs to a whole other group of people, and a tragedy that needs no further stirring.

And now I’ve gone and dragged myself into it to, feeling the need to argue, to shout and to debate.

There is no right in this.

(And as a final thought; I’ve made mentions to serious acts of journalism in this post. If the defence of any of the staff involved is that this wasn’t meant as a serious act of journalism, I suggest they get the hell out of a newspaper.)

Lou Reed

 

“And something flickered for a minute, and then it vanished and was gone.”

-Lou Reed.

There was a time when I didn’t really like music. Oh, sure, I thought I liked it. I’d been raised on folk music and punk rock, I loved songs with messages and anger hooks. But I still liked it to fit a certain framework, I wanted a verse, a chorus, maybe at a push a bit with some widdly widdly guitars, then a good ending. I liked Patti Smith out of duty more than anything, because my mum had pushed the music on me, and I knew that I should like it.

A lot of the musicians that I loved kept name dropping acts that I couldn’t really get into. They’d mention Tom Waits, and Springsteen covered one of his songs, but whenever I tried listening to him I was pushed away by something I couldn’t define. It didn’t seem like music to me. But around this time I was really into finding cool shit. It was the mid 90s, and I’ve written before about how much of the adult me dates back to this small window in time. This was when I started to become more than what other people had raised me to be, the time when my own tastes were taking over. It was when I really discovered crime fiction, it was when I got my first Springsteen album, it was when I rejected almost everything about the britpop craze that everyone my age was falling for.

I don’t remember where I got it. It wasn’t mine. Maybe I stole it from a friend or relative. But somewhere around 1996-ish I got a CD copy of The Best Of Lou Reed & The Velvet Underground. Wikipedia tells me that particular compilation was released in 1995, and that works out about right, because ’95 was when I got heavily into Bruce, and it would have been a year later when I got my hands on someone else’s copy of this CD.

Track one, Sunday Morning. Track two, I’m Waiting For The Man. Track three, Venus In Furs. The top blew off my brain somewhere around track three. These songs still fit the basic framework that I expected of music, but there was something else in there, something that the teenaged me could only describe as arty. ‘Art’ was a dirty word to the teenaged me. Still, from there I dabbled in the Velvet Underground albums, and I liked them without feeling the love that would come a couple years later as another part of me awakened.

Then I tried solo Lou Reed.

I feel no guilt or shame in admitting this; I prefer Solo Lou to Velvets Lou.

The Velvet Underground changed music. Forget The Beatles. I know this and I love the band and everything they did together. Even the dodgy reunion period. But even with all that, solo Lou was the artist that helped shape my tastes. Transformer and Berlin were the albums that opened me up to a different way of seeing music. They were my gateway drug, and my soundtrack to gateway drugs. Without listening to Solo Lou, I may never have finally ‘gotten’ Tom Waits. I may never have circled back and loved Patti Smith for what she was, rather than what I felt obliged to say she was. A lot of the bands I came to enjoy from the 80s and 90s indie music scenes, bands like The Butthole Surfers and Pavement crept in through the door opened by Lou Reed. But there was an album that was more important to me than either Transformer Or Berlin.

One of the most important albums of my teenaged years, one of the most important pieces of any of the forms of art that have shaped me and the voice I came to write with, was New York.

I bought it in Sundown Records in Walsall. I was 17, I think. Maybe 18. The album looked cool. I already knew the singer was cool. I’d been dreaming about the city of New York for years, and it was a dream that had been getting stronger and louder, filling my head with traffic and noise and smells. The dreams brought with them a certain frame of mind, something that opened me up to George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Matt Scudder and 70s crime films.

I took that album home, put it on, and a switch flipped in my brain.

It wasn’t as far off the musical path as other Lou Reed albums I’d listened to. In fact, musically it was very basic, it was a real trip back to the tight and structured music that I’d grown up with. But the words, oh, the words. And the voice, that magic Lou Reed voice, the jaded, tired, but vaguely trustworthy uncle who kept you safe as he gave you a ride through the anger and desperation that his stories contained. The album was a novel. The album was stripped back noir, it was everything that I loved about prose but set to music. It was art, pure and simple, and I no longer felt that was a word I should hide away or whisper, it was an aspiration.

I never looked back from that moment, and I never will.

Thanks Lou, you grumpy old dead bastard.