Fifteen

Happy New Year! 

This blog is fifteen years old today. Bagging Area was born with a whimper on 1st January 2010, with the intention of seeing if I could do it for a year and no real plan for what I was going to write about. Here we are a decade and a half later with 5, 939 posts under my belt, over 18, 700 comments from people from near and far many of whom are now actual friends in virtual and/ or real life, and over 4, 666, 787 page views (at the time of writing). I didn't expect it to be as central to my life as it has become and can't really conceive how I could do without it. Micro- blogging and social media have their place, sharing music and with the capacity to make similar connections, but there's something about long form blogging, the process of writing, that sets it apart. I'm sure it's an outdated form of internet expression in an age of Tik Tok and Instagram Reels but it works for me and many others. The comments, the connections and the conversation, are really what make it so thank you to everyone who reads and leaves comments here (or when I share posts on Facebook). There's more of the same to come in 2025- apart from a list of artists/ songs on a notepad next to the computer and a few ideas for Saturday and Sunday posts I've no real plans beyond the next few posts, but something always comes up. 

To celebrate Bagging Area's fifteenth birthday here are a trio of fifteens in song and a poster. Andy Warhol famously said that, 'in the future, everyone will be world- famous for fifteen minutes'. And he didn't even know about YouTube at that point. Two of the songs here (I think) are inspired by or refer to that quote. The first is by Johnny Boy, a Liverpool boy- girl duo from the mid- 00s who released a legendary 7" single, You Are The Generation Who Bought More Shoes (And You Get What You Deserve), a 60s girl group inspired song that was a proper music blog song, shared countless times all over the place. Their sole album included this...

15 Minutes

Thundering drums, squealing guitars, hand shaking percussion, more multi- tracked girl group vocals, an 00s feel (think The Go- Team et al).

Ride's second re- union album was 2019's This Is Not A Safe Place, an album that drew from Jean- Michel Basquiat, Sonic Youth, and post- punk, all undercut by some squally electronics. Fifteen Minutes is three minutes fourteen seconds of indie rock with some kiss off lyrics about someone who's had their fifteen minutes and who has been bitten by karmic retribution, the song interrupted by bursts of  Goo- esque dirty guitar 

Fifteen Minutes

Thirdly, a fairly obscure Joe Strummer song, the B-side to the Island Hopping single from 1989. 15th Brigade (Viva La Quince Brigada) is a song from the Spanish Civil War, Joe singing in Spanish. There's a song of the same name written by Christy Moore, a tribute to the Irishmen who fought in the war against fascism in Spain in the International Brigades, Irish socialists who were also know as the Connolly Column. As far as I can tell the two songs aren't the same song. 

15th Brigade

And finally, a Factory records fifteen. In true Factory style the catalogue number Fac 15 wasn't given to a record but to a poster and an event (just as Fac 1 had been a poster). Fac 15 advertised the outdoor gig held jointly between Factory and Liverpool's Zoo Records, the two independent labels meeting half way in Leigh. I cycle through Leigh quite often- the idea that the cream of 1979's post punk bands played in a field there is always faintly ludicrous and totally brilliant, as is the poster's advice about how the post- punk youth of Manchester and Liverpool should get there. In terms of value for me it's second to none. It was however very poorly attended- the other bands on the line up watching whoever was on stage often comprised half of the total watching crowd. Accounts from the few who attended report that Joy Division were breathtaking. 

 

xiM sgnoS sdrawkcaB fO setuniM eviF-ytrihT

Thirty- five minutes of backwards songs.

This mix occurred to me a few weeks ago when I posted David Holmes' remix of Andy Bell's The Sky Without You, a remix of the opening song from Andy's 2022 solo album Flicker. Reversing the tapes and playing them backwards is an age old technique- The Beatles used it in 1966 on Rain and then perfected it on Tomorrow Never Knows (although both of those merely contain backwards elements/ instruments- most of what's included below is entirely backwards). They went the full hog on The White Album with Revolution 9. Those backwards noises- the sound of cymbals splashing in reverse, the trippy whirl of guitars backwards, the weird throb of bass- are all very evocative and possibly suggest too long spent in the studio, indulgence maybe, but when done well are superb. I've loved it as a sonic whoosh, an aural WTF?, since my first exposure to The Stone Roses and their B-sides in 1989 and Don't Stop. This mix will I suspect be an opinion splitter- you'll either roll your eyes and quietly close the page and go elsewhere for your Sunday morning music fix or you'll love this. I've played it through several times and each time can convince myself it's the best Sunday mix I've ever done. 

xiM sgnoS sdrawkcaB fO setuniM eviF- ytrihT

• Andy Bell: The Sky Without You
• The Stone Roses: Simone
• The Clash: Mensforth Hill
• The Stone Roses: Previously Unheard Backwards Track 3
• The Stone Roses: Full Fathom Five
• Andy Bell: The Looking Glass
• Andy Bell: The Sky Without You (David Holmes Radical Mycology Remix)
• The Stone Roses: Guernica
• The Stone Roses: Don't Stop

The Sky Without You opens Flicker, Andy Bell's solo album. It was a deliberate nod to The Stone Roses, Andy looking backwards to Don't Stop and the B-sides of Elephant Stone, Made Of Stone, and She Bangs The Drums. Most of the rest of Flicker is fully crafted, 'proper' songs, from the lovely Something Like Love to the wistful Way Of The World. Halfway through, the start of the second disc on the vinyl version, is another backwards track, The Looking Glass, Andy's voice, guitar and what sounds like some organ fed backwards through the looking glass. I'm guessing it's one of the songs from Flicker flipped. 

Simone is Where Angels Play played backwards and for many years was only available as the B-side of a U.S. import version of I Wanna Be Adored, which found its way into U.K. shops in 1989. It was buying this 12" single for this one song, a 12" priced at £5.99 (a huge amount for a 12" single then) that made me realise I was in deep. Where Angels Play was the 'lost' song from the golden period of 1989- 1990, the song that didn't make the album but was often bootlegged live. It was eventually released on a 12" of I Wanna Be Adored, put out by Silvertone as a money spinner when the band and label were in dispute- a dispute that led to a court case that led to the band signing to Geffen and to the end of the group ultimately.  

By the time The Clash had committed themselves to an album which would comprise six sides of vinyl  and to having six songs for each side, they were in very deep indeed. Studio experimentation, Joe's lyric writing bunker, and hours through the night of recording dubs and versions with Mikey Dread were the order of the day. I've said it before and I'll say it again- London Calling may be their 'best' album, punk purists will go for the debut, some of the class of '78 will always argue for Give 'Em Enough Rope, but Sandinista! is where the true, questing spirit of The Clash is to be found. It's a treasure trove and as Joe says in Westway To The World, it's 'a magnificent achievement, warts and all'. Mensforth Hill is Something About England played backwards with studio chatter at both ends. 'Shall we do another one then?' asks Joe at the end. Yes please!

Previously Unheard Backwards Track 3 is She Bangs The Drums played in reverse- it came out as an extra on the 20th anniversary release of The Stone Roses (the one with the lemon shaped USB stick- no, I didn't buy it). 

Full Fathom Five (a nice coincidental link to Duncan Gray's album Five Fathoms Full that came out last week) is Elephant Stone backwards (the Peter Hook produced version of Elephant Stone, so if you can reverse the reversed version, you've got Hooky's mix of the song too). I think this is a little more than just flipping the tape round- Ian's vocals are unclear but recorded and dropped in forwards. Full Fathom Five is the name of a 1947 Jackson Pollock painting, one of his earliest drip paintings, a masterpiece, and a clear influence on John Squire's Roses sleeve art from this period. 

The Sky Without You has already appeared once here. For his Radical Mycology Remix David Holmes took all of Andy's backwards Roses swirl and took it further, adding forwards drums, a blurry sunny day feel and sirens. One of my favourite records of recent years. David's name for the remix came from some mushroom based experimentation he undertook during lockdown, dealing with some growing up in Belfast related PTSD

Guernica is Made Of Stone backwards with Ian singing a new vocal forwards- 'If you wanna hurt me stop the row' (or similar), can be made out fairly clearly. This one feels like a step towards Don't Stop. You can imagine them in the studio with John Leckie working their way through the songs backwards, hitting on certain ones, trying new vocals, flipping parts around and eventually getting it all together when they reversed Waterfall. There was an interview with Ian and John in '88 or '89 where they said they used to drive out the road under the flightpath at Manchester airport (I know exactly which road they mean too), sit on the bonnet of the car and wait for the jumbo jets to take off over head, and then try to replicate the roar of the engines with their reversed tapes. Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso, depicting the Spanish town that was obliterated by the Nazi's Condor Legion, Stuka dive bombers deployed to aid the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. 2024; see Gaza.

A Spanish Civil War Sunday mix anyone?

Don't Stop is more and more, as each year passes, the highlight of The Stone Roses debut album- don't laugh- the one where the experimentation, delight in backwards tapes, a modern psychedelic guitar band was fully realised. Reni's drums and Ian's vocals are both forwards, recorded over Waterfall played in reverse. There's more to it than just reversing the tape- the guitars are slowed down, sounding like an actual waterfall, and the fade in has been added from elsewhere. Things are out of sync. The flow of the backwards guitars and bass, bubbling, lightly drilling, is a rush and Reni's cowbell tapping away gives so much. John wrote the lyrics by listening to Ian's vocal for Waterfall played backwards and then transcribed what Ian's blurred voice seemed to be suggesting.Ian then sang them- the lyrics are among the best too- 'hey blues singer/ just the guitar/ from the top/ what can I steal/ what can I feel/ I wake/ ease into my heart/ one of us/ don't stop/ isn't it funny how you shine?'. Andy Bell used this technique on Flicker. Which is where we came in....

The Hillsides Ring With 'Free The People'

London Calling side two, pick the arm up, place the needle carefully on the outer ring, let it find the groove, a little static, and then...  Spanish Bombs kicks straight in, Topper's drum salvo followed instantly by organ (played by Mickey Gallagher on loan from The Blockheads) and Mick's guitar line, a crashing, uptempo chord sequence with Joe and Mick doubling up on part of the vocals. Joe had really taken Bernie Rhodes' advice about lyric writing to heart- forget love songs, write about the world- and Spanish Bombs is Srummer at his best, contrasting The Spanish Civil War and 'the days of '39' with the growing tourist industry of the late 1970s, 'Spanish weeks in my disco casino'. The Basque separatist group ETA were active meaning the bombs of the song could be from the 1930s and the 1970s. In the midst of all this imagery, firing out of the speakers with the music piling ever onward, Joe finds space for some really memorable lines, lines about the murdered poet Federico Lorca, a hero of Joe's, killed by Franco's fascists, lines about 'bullet holes in cemetery walls' and 'hearing music from another time' and the chorus in Spanish-

'Spanish bombs, yo te quierro y finito
Yo te querda, oh mi corazón
Spanish bombs, yo te quierro y finito
Yo te querda, oh mi corazón'

                                                               Federico Garcia Lorca

In his novel Powder Kevin Sampson, writing about a fictional rock band in the 90s based loosely (or closely) on The Verve, has a character explain that the tune for Saturday Night (by Whigfield, an international pop- house hit in 1994) and Spanish Bombs are the same- you can sing the words of one over the other. Since discovering this I have never, ever got tired of singing Spanish Bombs over Saturday Night. 

After Spanish Bombs comes The Right Profile, Joe throwing his subject matter net wider still with a song about movie heart throb Montgomery Clift. The song begins the staccato stabs of Mick's guitar and a hi- hat, Joe reeling off the films Clift starred in- 'say, where'd I see this guy? In Red River? A Place In The Sun? Maybe The Misfits? From Here To Eternity?'

                 Montgomery Clift (left, seated) with The Misfits including Clark Gable (right) and Marilyn Monroe (duh) 

Montgomery had a car crash that left him with a broken jaw and facial scarring. He'd hit a tree leaving a party at Liz Taylor's, pumped full of pills and booze. From then on he'd only be photographed from the correct side and angle, from the right profile. Producer Guy Stevens had given Joe a biography of Clift and suggested he write a song about the star's life. Joe, no stranger to drugs and alcohol himself, wrote about the last ten years of Clift's life, from the crash in 1956 to his death in 1966, a death some called the slowest suicide in cinematic history. Mick arranges the group and has The Irish Horns swinging about all over the place, everyone speeding up and slowing down, veering left and right, Paul and Topper driving things like Clift's car with Joe garbling and gurgling the words over the top, breaking down completely for the 'nembutal/numbs it all/but I prefer/alcohol' part. Joe gives voices to the crowd standing and staring- ' And everybody says'what's he like?', 'is he alright?/ can he still feel?' and 'it's not funny/that's Montgomery Clift honey!'. No other band, certainly none of the class of '77 could have written this, the music or the words. 'Go get me my old movie stills/Go out and get me another roll of pills/There I go shaking again but I ain't got the chills'. Poor Monty. 

Side two, track three is Lost In The Supermarket. Near Joe's flat in the World's End Estate was a supermarket, the International (numbers 471- 473 King's Road). After a disorienting late night shopping visit Joe went home and wrote Lost In The Supermarket, a song about the alienating effects of capitalism, commercialisation and the way the world depersonalises the individual- Joe only came in for a special offer, 'guaranteed personality' and left bewildered and broken. Mick wrote a lovely, slick tune for the song, a gliding chord sequence. The rhythm section, led by Topper's brilliant drumming, complement it completely. Joe sings about the suburbs (where he'd lived) and life in high rise flats (where Mick lived with his Nan, overlooking the Westway). As the song grooves on, a smidgen of disco in the drumming and guitars, Joe develops his theme-

'I'm all tuned in, I see all the programs
I save coupons for packets of tea
I've got my giant hit discotheque album
I empty a bottle, I feel a bit free

The kids in the halls and the pipes in the walls
Makes me noises for company
Long distance callers make long distance calls
And the silence makes me lonely'

Joe gave the song to Mick to sing, a gift, saying he wrote it partly with Mick in mind. From intro to fade out Mick sings and plays beautifully and Paul's bass playing is streets ahead of where he was two years previously.

Three magnificent songs into side two and there are a pair of songs to come that are as good as anything the band ever did. Clampdown opens with a squeal of feedback, the tsk- tsk- tsk of Topper tapping the cymbal and Mick bawling '1-2-3-4' off mic before the descending riff plays through for a few bars. Joe mutters over the top, words that are almost inaudible-

'The kingdom is ransacked
The jewels all taken back
And the chopper descends
They're hidden in the back
With a message written on a half-baked potato
The spool goes 'round
Saying I'm back here in this place
And I could cry
And there's smoke you could click on'

... and then the smoke clears, leaving Topper's boom thwack boom thwack, Mick counting everyone back in again and then the question 'what are we gonna do now?!'

Joe answers with a song about the rise of the far right, the dignity and indignity of labour, the crushing of youthful dreams and becoming what you once stood against, conformity and coercion, and a final part about 'evil presidentes getting their due'. The band are on fire, fully amped up, Mick leading the charge, and the effect is electrifying. Paul's bass playing is upfront and centre, especially in the remastered version from Sound System. Joe and Mick trade lines, call and response, intuitively- the segue from Mick's spoken middle eight to Joe coming back in with the 'But you grow up and you calm down' is hair raising. 

It's worth pulling a few of Joe's lines out, starting with the astonishing first line of the first verse-

''Taking off his turban 
They said 'is this man a Jew?' ''

Joe follows it with 'they put up a poster saying 'we earn more than you', the divide and conquer politics of the far right dissected in a few lines.

''We will teach our twisted speech
To the young believers
We will train our blue-eyed men
To be young believers"

Forty years on from the National Front's resurgence we're right back where we were. The racists and immigrant scapegoaters that have dragged our politics and public life into the gutter over the last decade are still at it, people now emboldened by the rise of the populist scaremongers. If as he said last week the Clash are his favourite band it's pretty clear that Boris Johnson wasn't listening to the words. 

'No man born with a living soul
Can be working for the clampdown'

Joe urges the youth not to give in, not to fall in line, warning them of the older generation- 

'The men at the factory are old and cunning
You don't owe nothing, boy, get running
It's the best years of your life they want to steal'

He also warns of being co-opted by them- 

'So you got someone to boss around
It make you feel big now
You drift until you brutalise
Make your first kill now'

The song was originally called Working And Waiting and the lyrics must have started as a warning about the grim realities of work. School leavers in the 70s were factory fodder and with the destruction of manufacturing industry and rising unemployment even that vanished.  As the song fades out and the group bash away Joe and Mick continue to hammer it home, 'work, work, work/ I give away no secrets/ work, work, more work, more work'. A major piece of work by Joe (the words) and Mick (the tune) and the group rise to the occasion pulling together a hard rocking song to match the lyrics. In a way it's a much an epic in its scope as (White Man In) Hammersmith Palais was a year before or Straight To Hell would be a few years later. 

Clampdown

In 1980 The Clash played Lewisham Odeon, with this blistering take of Clampdown recorded on film. Is there a better sight in rock 'n' roll than the moment at fifty two seconds where the three frontmen, all in black, step up to the mic to bellow the first line in unison?



Also in 1980 they played New York (a whole other story) and appeared on the TV show Fridays where they put everything- absolutely everything- into this performance of Clampdown.



Sometime during the recording of Give 'Em Enough Rope Paul realised that the money came from songwriting and during the rehearsal sessions at Vanilla brought in a song, initially known as Paul's Tune. It would become The Guns Of Brixton. Someone wrote somewhere that The Guns Of Brixton contains the greatest bassline of the Twentieth Century. Over this thundering, reggae inspired bass Mick adds some texture, some scratchy guitar and Topper splashes the cymbals. The sound of the studio chairs having their Velcro ripped apart is in there too. Joe was given an early version of the lyrics, which Paul wasn't sure about, and Joe encouraged him to work on them. When the words were finished and the music recorded Joe was given the lyric sheet but handed it back to Paul, saying he should sing it. Paul sings/shouts his words, South London style, a song about police brutality and the ghetto, suffering and surviving. He then brings in Ivan from The Harder They Come- 'you see he feels like Ivan/ born under the Brixton sun/ his game is called surviving/ at the end of The Harder They Come'. The dub rhythm swings and lurches, Paul throwing the bass around, moving from one foot to the other. The Guns Of Brixton sounds massive, filling the room when played loud. It is one of the most enduring of the songs off London calling, the bassline reverberating through pop culture as a sample and a cover version. The perfect way to close side two, under heavy manners. 

There are five songs on side two, five standouts, five album tracks better than most band's singles. They must have known how good they were when sequencing the album. It has flow, range and depth, showcases their quality as songwriters, inventiveness as players and Joe's unique abilities as a lyricist. 

As much as London Calling is an album about the world in 1979, the state of things in London and the faraway towns, it's also an album about people and their lives, the way they respond and react to the world, a world which kicks them and brutalises them and threatens to flood their homes. It's an album about Jimmy Jazz and Rudie, the narrator of Hateful and his dealer, Federico Lorca, Montgomery Clift, Ivan and Joe dazed and confused under the supermarket striplights. The Clash were a people band, they did things for their fans (letting them into gigs for free, not over charging them for albums, not stripmining albums for singles) and they wanted to reach as many people as possible. Writing about people was what they did. As Joe pointed out much later 'without people you're nothing'. 

In a few days- side three.  

La Passionara

Here's a well Balearic instrumental from an 80s pop group which has been enriching my life recently. In 1990 The Blow Monkeys released an album called Springtime For The World, fully informed by dance music culture. Album track and single La Passionara was a Spanish influenced instrumental (with odd bits of voice at the start and throughout but mainly just Iberian guitars, synths and lazy drums). It gained a vocal for the single but the 12" is the one you need, perfect for those warm evenings we're still getting.

La Passionara (12" version)

Given Dr Robert and The Blow Monkeys politics and political pop I've always assumed that the title refers to La Passionara (Dolores Ibarruri), the Basque heroine of the Spanish Republic of 1936-1939 and the Spanish Civil War. She was famous for her No Passaran! slogan, galvanising the defenders of Madrid during the battle for the city in November 1939 and her speeches throughout the war. The statue of her pictured above actually stands in Glasgow not Madrid.

This also means I can add it to my Spanish Civil War mixtape, something I wrote about back in 2012 which seemed like a good idea at the time. Some day I may fnd time to actually put it together in some format.

Which links nicely to this- non-league football team Clapham CFC have been deluged with thousands of orders from Spain for their new away kit for the 2018-19 season, a kit in the colours of the Republic (purple, yellow and red) with La Passionara's slogan on the back, honouring the volunteers of the International Brigades who went to Spain to fight fascism when the democratic, western powers refused to help the legitimate government against a military, fascist coup by Franco (whose allies Hitler and Mussolini had no such qualms about sending help). More here.

Unmuddied

In which The Orb remix The Grid, 1993. Ambient with a drum machine pattering away. Thwup whoosh thwup.

19 Julio

Sleep deprivation on a bus traveling backwards through Europe (me travelling backwards, almost everyone else claimed they had to face forwards or they would be sick). It causes strange things to happen. I dozed off briefly and was woken with Shaun Ryder intoning  two lines from Black Grape's Reverend Black Grape...

'You do  nothing but socialise and become a menace
Put on your Reeboks man, go and play fucking tennis'

This rang around my head for a good while. Then, at about two thirty a.m. we stopped at a service station somewhere in The Netherlands. One of the kids emerged from the top deck, rubbing her eyes, and disappeared into the toilet. When she came out she said 'Sir, are we in Argentina?'

I have no idea.

Reverend Black Grape

Oh Ma Corazon

Some kind soul has uploaded The Clash's 1979 song Spanish Bombs onto Youtube alongside newsreel footage from the Spanish Civil War. Their most folk-punk moment (English Civil war excepted maybe), this song is a sublime piece of Strummer-Jones songwriting and playing. It's all about the ratatattat drumming and the multi-tracked acoustic guitars and Joe's timeshifting lyrics- jumping back and forth between the days of '39, Federico Lorca dead and gone, and the ETA bombings of discos and casinos, all as imagined by Joe while flying in on a DC10 tonight. There's also a theory that in this song, during the chorus, Joe is bidding farewell to ex-girlfriend Paloma (Palmolive of the Slits).

!No Pasaran!

I started May by wittering on about a Spanish Civil War themed mix tape and which songs might go onto it. Thanks to everyone who made suggestions about other songs- Drew, Davy H, Helen and Suggestedformaturereaders. Thus, I can start June with a better, more expansive Spanish Civil War mixtape.

Durutti Column- Sketch For Summer
Manic Street Preachers- If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next
The Clash- Spanish Bombs
The Pogues- Lorca's Noveno
Billy Bragg- Jarama Valley (available here from The International Brigades website)
Leonard Cohen- Take This Waltz (based on Lorca's words)
O'Luge and Kornertrone Allstars- Spanish Bombs (cover of The Clash song)
Christy Moore- Viva La Quinta Brigada
The Stone Roses- Guernica
Maxine Peake and Urban Roots- speech by Dolores Ibarruri (aka La Pasionaria, from the Billy Bragg cd linked above)

Can we make a case for Jonathan Richman's Pablo Picasso on the grounds that Picasso painted Guernica? Reckon so.

Viva La Quinta Brigada

The photo of the militiawoman in heels with a pistol was taken by Gerda Taro, Robert Capo's partner. Between them they covered the war and helped invent photo journalism. Gerda was killed during the war, run over by a tank accidentally. Stunning picture isn't?

They Shall Not Pass

I was thinking, following Sunday's post, about whether I could put together a Spanish Civil War themed mixtape. Stick with me, these are the things that sometimes occupy my mind when driving. I've got this far-

1. Durutti Column- Sketch For Summer (it could be any Durutti track really, but this one's my favourite unless anyone can think of a more appropriate one. Durutti was an anarchist-syndicalist leader during the war, as I'm sure you knew)
2. Manic Street Preachers- If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next (see Sunday's post)
3. The Clash- Spanish Bombs (obviously)
4. The Pogues- Lorca's Noveno (posted here a long while back, the song tells of the murder of poet Federico Garcia Lorca by the Francoist Falange)

And that's it. A fairly short mixtape unless anyone's got any other suggestions.
I wondered about ABBA's Fernando but I'm not convinced it's about Spain.

This could go on actually if we don't have a rule about the same song featuring in different versions- a dub cover of The Clash's Spanish Bombs by O' Luge and Kornerstrone Allstars from a dub tribute album to The Clash called Shatter The Hotel (a line from Spanish Bombs).

Spanish Bombs

If I Can Shoot Rabbits

There aren't very many number one songs about the Spanish Civil War.

There's a copy of this poster in the Manchester Peoples' History Museum, worth a visit if you're kicking your heels this weekend and in the North West of England.

I've never shot a rabbit incidentally.

If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next

Redskin Rock

Furthermore, here's The Redskins, funked up leftwing punks, who wanted to 'walk like The Clash, talk like The Supremes' with their single Unionize. This was released on their own label CNT, which as everyone surely knows is the name of the anarcho syndicalist union who helped prop up The Popular Front government in Spain in the 1930s (despite being anarcho syndicalists, and therefore being against government and believing that the workers should rule themselves for their own benefit) and who armed the workers in the defence of Spanish cities against Franco's military fascist coup.

Sorry to be a history bore. The music's worth it.

Unionize

Buenaventura Durruti

I'm half way through a book about the Spanish Civil War and have just read this description of the accidental death of Buenaventura Durutti, the great anarchist leader before and during the war-

'A rumour started that Durutti had been shot by one of his own men who objected to his severe discipline. The anarchists, for reasons of morale and propaganda, claimed he had been shot by a sniper's bullet when in fact his death had really been an accident. The cocking handle of a companion's 'naranjero' machine pistol caught on a car door, firing a bullet into his chest. Durutti was without doubt the most popular anarchist leader. He had been an unrelenting rebel throughout his life and had earned the reputation of a revolutionary Robin Hood. His funeral in Barcelona was the greatest scene of mass mourning that Spain had witnessed, with half a million people in the procession. alone. His reputation was so great, not just among anarchists, that attempts were made after his death to claim his allegiance.'

During the war Durutti told his followers 'We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin it's own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts.' Which is quite inspiring isn't it. The anarchists refused to join the Republican government- they didn't believe in government, a philosophy which contributed to divisions among the left and let the Stalin-directed communists take the reins, and Franco take power in 1939.

There's a Spanish Civil War re-enactment society called La Columna I found while idling on the net. I'm just happy such a thing exists. You can find them here-

http://www.lacolumna.org.uk/

I'm not sure I'm going to spend my weekends dressed in 1930s clothing, digging trenches and pretending to shoot fascists. But maybe I'm just not ready yet.

On to the music. Vini Reilly's band The Durutti Column have been releasing records since the late seventies, first on Factory, managed and named by Tony Wilson. Wilson took the name from a 60s Situationist poster. From their first album The Return Of The Durutti Column this is Sketch For Winter, produced by Martin Hannett. Wonder what Buenaventura Durutti would have made of the band named after him.

http://download472.mediafire.com/80tzp1kmfhag/fkb5zb6gt5t9h5e/Sketch+For+Winter.mp3

Lorca's Corpse Just Walked Away

I had a 'when did I put this on my mp3 player?' moment in the car this morning-The Pogues' mournful, stirring and elegant (not a word usually associated with the Pogues) tribute to Federico Garcia Lorca. Starting with a military drum beat and building slowly, while Shane sings about Lorca's murder at the hands of Genral Franco's falangists during the Spanish Civil War. Lorca was an internationally acclaimed poet and playwright, outspoken critic of Franco and fascism, and a leading light of the Spanish Generation of '27. Franco's men took him at some point in August 1936 from a friend's house and along with three others shot him at Fuente Grande on the road betweenViznar and Alfacar. His body was buried somewhere in the vacinity, and despite recent attempts has not been found.

In Shane's hands the lyric is full of drama and symbolism, and some insensitivity ('the faggot poet they left til last, blew his brains out with a pistol up his arse') but there's no doubt where Shane's sympathies lie, and at the end when the killers come to mutilate the dead and terrorise the town, Lorca's corpse gets up and walks away. History lesson over- Lorca's Novena is from The Pogues' Hell's Ditch album, produced by Joe Strummer.

The Pogues - Lorcas Novena.mp3