WHO SAYS A FUNK A BAND CAN’T PLAY ROCK? FUNKADELIC, BLACK ROCK AND THE DEATH OF THE SIXTIES

Who says a funk band can’t play rock? /and who says a rock band can’t play funk? —Funkadelic, 1978 There wasn’t no other black groups taking acid at that time. At the time I didn’t realise that we were doing what we were doing because we were doing so much acid, but I can see […]

REVIEW: “FLAT EARTH NEWS” BY NICK DAVIS

As many of you will know, in the fifth and final season of The Wire the viewer is taken inside the busy newsroom of The Baltimore Sun. Unfortunately, the view is not a particularly inspiring one. The central figure of this fictionalised journal of record is one “Gus” Haynes, a thinly veiled portrait of the […]

Unnecessary Strangers: A Review of “The Aquariums of Pyongyang” by Kang Chol-Hwan.

North Korea is the most dysfunctional state on earth. As this bizarre country began life as a Soviet client, it is often referred to as ‘the last Stalinist state’. Yet while it is true that Stalin helped Kim Il Sung establish and maintain a ruthless totalitarian regime on the Soviet model, it is also true […]

REVIEW: What’s Going On? by Mark Steel

Thanks to the many people on the left who’ve kept the spirit of resistance alight, including those who will violently disagree with chunks of this book. So writes Mark Steel in the acknowledgements at the end of his little memoir; words I thought fitted this reader exactly. I’ve long had a soft-spot for Mark Steel. […]

The ‘Problem’ of Evil.

Shortly after the fall of the Shah in 1979 the French philosopher Michel Foucault visited Ayatollah Kohmeini’s new theocratic regime and was delighted with what he saw. On his return from Tehran, Foucault was asked about the violence there, and the fact that the so-called “Islamic Revolution” was viciously persecuting its political opponents. “They don’t […]

REVIEW: “Among the Dead Cities” by A. C. Grayling.

A thought provoking and troubling read that is all the more powerful for being so reasonably argued. Here Grayling sets about a moral examination of the Allied bombing campaign during WW2 with his usual calm and clarity. The Allied campaign, and, by implication, the Allied powers, don’t emerge looking particularly healthy under such penetrating illumination. […]

REVIEW: “But Beautiful” by Geoff Dyer.

I must admit I was sceptical at first. The book, in fact, was pressed upon me by a friend and writing tutor. I was already a fan of Dyer, having read a book of his essays. I enjoyed his writing, which seemed to display an admirable breadth of subject matter, although I had my reservations […]

NO POPE FOR ME: Of Bedroom Fascists and “Great Men”

Man is a toad-eating animal. The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself: the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave. William Hazlitt No, I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, […]

WHY WE (SHOULD) FIGHT: The people of Afghanistan are the moral leaders of our time. (Nov 2009)

Part 1 Afghanistan is teetering on the brink of chaos. About that, I think we can all be agreed. The NATO mission there has reached an impasse. It is losing both men and ground to the insurgents, and it is propping up a regime that is looking decidedly ineffectual and whose legitimacy has been seriously […]

Genius at Work: Listening to Louis Armstrong

I wouldn’t have missed the St. Louis Blues sung out on that trumpet for anything. Something shone from that man, a rare thing, real joy. It is becoming exceedingly rare among artists of any kind. And I have an idea that those who can and do communicate it are always people who have had a […]