Discover Top Posts Tagged with #red wedge

We need another young punky rock group singing about social and political issues revolution like in the 70s ‘cause honestly there’s a lot to be sung about.

#my rambles #music #70s #1970s #1970s music #song #rock #rock music #rock band #punk #politics #social issues #red wedge

El Lissitzky (1890-1941), Клином красным бей белых! / Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge! (or Red Wedge), 1919.

#el lissitzky #russian art #suprematism #geometric abstraction #red wedge #russian avant-garde #beat the whites

Round about this time, at both MM and NME, we would be collating our best albums and singles of the year lists. I am having similar feelings as I survey the names of the musicians I have written down as I went through my work on the music press. June 23, 1979, the date of my first review. Nick Lowe on the cover. I came to Nick Lowe’s later and best work through hearing him on the Robert Elms Show. I am at peace with Elms now, but our dealings have mainly been antagonistic.

In 1985, Red Wedge was launched, spearheaded by Billy Bragg and Paul Weller. The aim was to involve young people in politics and create a voting bloc that would ensure the removal of Margaret Thatcher. My instincts at the time were saying not to get involved. This won’t go anywhere. Bunch of pop stars influencing Labour Party policy? Right. But I didn’t follow them. I followed the crowd. I got involved. Elms did as well.

In one of his first interviews, he bad-mouthed Northerners. I hate that. As a kid growing up, I was constantly told how tight and mean with money Scottish people were. Not in my experience. To me, they are the most generous people you can meet. Same with Scousers. People are people and mainly good – wherever you go, whatever the accent.

I pulled Elms up at the Wag Club about his quote. He told me he was being funny. I didn’t see the joke. We quarrelled. At the time, Elms worked for The Face and had been set up as a style guru. I remember the Sunday Times writing about him as such. I thought it ridiculous. I told him so. Again, we quarrelled. When I went to interview Spandau Ballet, a band he was very friendly with, he advised the band not to speak to me. Again, we quarrelled.

In later life, Elms found employment at Radio London, hosting a very popular mid-morning show. In the year 2000, I began writing The Looked After Kid, my memoir of growing up in care. At the same time, my book The Soul Stylists was published. Elms invited me onto his show to talk about it. That day, I wrote some of The Looked After Kid, then put aside my antagonism towards Elms, travelled to his show, and did my best to play friendly. This time we did not quarrel.

I came home that afternoon and recommenced work on The Looked After Kid. One thing was really bugging me about the project. I needed to recall a few events concerning my mother, and to do that I needed talk to my old social worker, Kathy Pring but I had lost her address and phone number. I had no idea how to get hold of her.

Then the phone rang. It was Radio London. With a message. A Kathy Pring had heard me on the radio and left a number for me to call. I was amazed. I called Kathy. I said to her, ‘You are not going to believe this, I am writing a book about living in care and need to talk to you, but I had lost your contact details. And here you are.’

Kathy laughed. ‘Well, here is another thing. I only listen to Radio Four. But my son borrowed the car last night and changed stations. When I got in this morning and turned the engine on, your voice came on.’

After I had finished writing the book, I had a drink with the publisher. He said to me, ‘It must have been very cathartic writing the book.’ I nodded and agreed. But that was me, people-pleasing again. I didn’t feel that way at all.

As I was to find out, it wasn’t writing the book that helped me – it was publishing it. Over the twenty–two years that I had lived in London, the amount of people I had told about my past could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

I did not want sympathy. I wanted confirmation that I could write. Revelation of my troubled past would taint the minds of the people who mattered, would mess with their abilities to verify my talents. But by publishing The Looked After Kid, my secret was out. My fractured, turbulent past was there on paper for all to see. And because it was, a kind of liberation occurred. The weight was off. Before The Looked After Kid, if people began talking about their family, I would two things – change the subject or walkaway. Now, I could sit at the table and say, ‘Actually, funny you should say that because in my children’s homes there was this guy…’

It brought relief and more healing.

And it explained things. When I went on the Elms Show to talk about the book, he said, ‘So that’s why you are like you are.’

And that is why everyone’s childhood allows us to say the very same thing – ‘So that’s why you are like you are.’

Thank you for that, Robert.

#paolo hewitt #substack #red wedge #paul weller

#D1950 #v-tip #chukka #red wedge #2-2 fox #barrie last #the villager

I found a lot of pretension in here (Red Wedge magazine) but also some interesting thoughts and spec fic and a valuing of creativity, soooooo...mixed bag, like anything else. Take what you find useful.

#red wedge

What writers at the Wall Street Journal are so displeased with is the idea that the left might yet again gain any cultural purchase, might flex any capability to disseminate its own myths and jokes and phraseologies into the world at all. That it have a symbol for anything past the old dusty aesthetic scraps of hammers and sickles. This is an unpleasant thought for respectable defenders of the current order. Particularly when it is done with a corporate sports mascot. Such brazen disrespect for cultural propriety is something that, while it may not dispossess them of everything that should be ours, at least makes their skin crawl. Which is precisely why we should keep doing it.

—Alexander Billet

#gritty #philadelphia flyers #mascot #alexander billet #red wedge