Tuesday, 27 February 2007
Connections...
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
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© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
Prog is Dead...
Another bad weekend for progressives...
Sunday started badly - Hitchens (,C) and Billy Bragg arguing the toss over Saturday's anti-war/Trident march. Bragg far too conciliatory against Hitch's articulate John Self-pro-Bush-bluster, blithered into the age old frustrated lefty failing of trying to talk louder over his already too loud opponent, thus drowning out any meaningful exchange. The most eloquent point in the whole show was made by a banner at the march: Trident = 160,000 nurses. To his credit, Hitchens is in for a penny/pound on the Iraq thing, isn't he? I wouldn't want to put a figure on the number of deaths and casualties it would need before he'd even be prepared to concede that perhaps in one or two areas, Bush and Blair might have gone about the whole thing slightly differently. We'd be somewhere between Hitler and Stalin numbers I reckon. You really have to admire intransigence like that, don't you?
Then things got rapidly worse. Started reading this article in Sunday's Obs., finishing it on the way back from Cardiff, where Arsene's youthful, joyous-to-behold young gunners were crushed out of an astonishing (and highly unlikely) victory in the Carling Cup Final by Jose Mourinho's pragmatic, Petro-billion-financed Chelsea. A double shame, as the verve and exhilaration of their play in the first period and for much of the second has been eclipsed somewhat by the more typically Arsenalesque denouement of the game, as the slide rule passes and exquisite movement of the kids' first-half performance ended in a tetchy brawl when cooler, wiser heads may still have salvaged something from the game's lengthy Terry-in-a-coma-provoked stoppage period. Still, this team's time will come soon enough. And at least we got to land a few shiners on the Cheslea scum.
Without over-extending the obvious parallels between the current premiership heirarchy and the new Russia of Putin and the oligarchs, there was the very same sickness to the stomach induced by reading the stark and succinct description of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya as I experience whenever a dubious offside or disallowed goal ensures another Cheslea victory:
She took the tiny elevator up to her flat on the seventh floor and dropped two bags of groceries at the door. Then she went down to fetch the rest of her parcels. When the elevator opened on the ground floor, her killer was waiting. He shot her four times - the first two bullets piercing her heart and lungs, the third shattering her shoulder, with a force that drove Politkovskaya back into the elevator. He then administered what is referred to in Moscow, where contract killings have become routine, as the kontrolnyi vystrel - the control shot. He fired a bullet into her head from inches away. Then he dropped his weapon, a plastic 9mm Makarov pistol whose serial number had been filed away, and slipped into the darkening afternoon.
And before the point I'm trying to make here gets drowned out in a chorus of "how can you possibly equate a football team with a cold-blooded assassin"....Just think on this. Both are at one man's beck and call. Conceivably the same man. No wonder the Russians are drinking themselves to extinction.
In the same paper, Nick Cohen - who variously exhorts either a "sanest man in Britain" or a "wad the f...." from your humble scribe - is strangely muted as he questions the extent to which the web has transformed the globe (here). I don't know whether my own imminent elevation to the blogging equivalent of the mile-high club (100,000 visits, presuming I don't get a call in the night from the King's Road KGB) will make any difference to the way I view it, but I'd have to echo Lennon's claim here that "[we're] still fucking peasants". This of course has nothing to do with my having been
a) splashed by a four-wheel drive as it raced through a puddle earlier today, as I were some 'umble, snivelling costermonger who'd mistakenly got to close to the Lord Mayor's cart.
b) ticked off by Will Hodgkinson for telling him I hoped his record label went bust.
I don't know the first thing about Mr. Hodgkinson other than that he has been given £5,000 (and a regular column/ceaseless free publicity) by the Grauniad in order to start up a record label and that he has been capped several times as a fly half by the RFU. (Typical Grauniad, isn't it? Give a few grand to some rugger bugger to start a label up when there are poor black kids like me struggling to work in the rain, being splashed by Abramovich's KGB stooges in their blacked out window 4 wheel drives....) Anyroad, I sent him a note back saying, words to the effect, that I was releasing my own CD and I didn't need his (or the Guardian's for that matter) poxy money, and while we're on the subject, if he'd asked, I'd have given him £30,000 *not* to start up a record label....etc. etc. etc. You see, this is how things are now - the middle classes don't just want to have their cake and eat it. They want yours too and to slap you in the face as well, just for being so cheeky...
Speaking of Rugby, as we were a few days ago...The one bright spot of the weekend? The marvellous reception extended to the England Rugby team at Croke Park for the highly emotive and symbolic game played there on Saturday. Always nice too to see a good stuffing administered to the rosbifs so beloved of the Green jacketed hordes who regularly make my life a misery, taking over the pubs and streets of Twickenham as if it were Tuscanny, insisiting on watching some Belgian third division Ladies XV while the Arsenal are playing, braying long into the night air before riding back to the Home Counties, innocent children and pets wedged like roadkill between the front bars, mere trophies as they pollute their way back to the Shires. And the Irish were good enough not to make too big a fuss about all the innocents gunned down there on Bloody Sunday too.
So maybe we *have* turned a corner, of sorts...
L.U.V. on ya,
Bob
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Add to my Page
Visit me in MunterSpace - 10,000 Goth Girls Splattered in Feck Blood Can't be Wrong!!!!!!!!
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Bob's old blog - it's much better than *this* rubbish!
Listen to Bob's songs at indie911.com!
Listen to Bob's songs at GarageBand.com!
Listen to Bobcasts here!
© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
Sunday started badly - Hitchens (,C) and Billy Bragg arguing the toss over Saturday's anti-war/Trident march. Bragg far too conciliatory against Hitch's articulate John Self-pro-Bush-bluster, blithered into the age old frustrated lefty failing of trying to talk louder over his already too loud opponent, thus drowning out any meaningful exchange. The most eloquent point in the whole show was made by a banner at the march: Trident = 160,000 nurses. To his credit, Hitchens is in for a penny/pound on the Iraq thing, isn't he? I wouldn't want to put a figure on the number of deaths and casualties it would need before he'd even be prepared to concede that perhaps in one or two areas, Bush and Blair might have gone about the whole thing slightly differently. We'd be somewhere between Hitler and Stalin numbers I reckon. You really have to admire intransigence like that, don't you?
Then things got rapidly worse. Started reading this article in Sunday's Obs., finishing it on the way back from Cardiff, where Arsene's youthful, joyous-to-behold young gunners were crushed out of an astonishing (and highly unlikely) victory in the Carling Cup Final by Jose Mourinho's pragmatic, Petro-billion-financed Chelsea. A double shame, as the verve and exhilaration of their play in the first period and for much of the second has been eclipsed somewhat by the more typically Arsenalesque denouement of the game, as the slide rule passes and exquisite movement of the kids' first-half performance ended in a tetchy brawl when cooler, wiser heads may still have salvaged something from the game's lengthy Terry-in-a-coma-provoked stoppage period. Still, this team's time will come soon enough. And at least we got to land a few shiners on the Cheslea scum.
Without over-extending the obvious parallels between the current premiership heirarchy and the new Russia of Putin and the oligarchs, there was the very same sickness to the stomach induced by reading the stark and succinct description of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya as I experience whenever a dubious offside or disallowed goal ensures another Cheslea victory:
She took the tiny elevator up to her flat on the seventh floor and dropped two bags of groceries at the door. Then she went down to fetch the rest of her parcels. When the elevator opened on the ground floor, her killer was waiting. He shot her four times - the first two bullets piercing her heart and lungs, the third shattering her shoulder, with a force that drove Politkovskaya back into the elevator. He then administered what is referred to in Moscow, where contract killings have become routine, as the kontrolnyi vystrel - the control shot. He fired a bullet into her head from inches away. Then he dropped his weapon, a plastic 9mm Makarov pistol whose serial number had been filed away, and slipped into the darkening afternoon.
And before the point I'm trying to make here gets drowned out in a chorus of "how can you possibly equate a football team with a cold-blooded assassin"....Just think on this. Both are at one man's beck and call. Conceivably the same man. No wonder the Russians are drinking themselves to extinction.
In the same paper, Nick Cohen - who variously exhorts either a "sanest man in Britain" or a "wad the f...." from your humble scribe - is strangely muted as he questions the extent to which the web has transformed the globe (here). I don't know whether my own imminent elevation to the blogging equivalent of the mile-high club (100,000 visits, presuming I don't get a call in the night from the King's Road KGB) will make any difference to the way I view it, but I'd have to echo Lennon's claim here that "[we're] still fucking peasants". This of course has nothing to do with my having been
a) splashed by a four-wheel drive as it raced through a puddle earlier today, as I were some 'umble, snivelling costermonger who'd mistakenly got to close to the Lord Mayor's cart.
b) ticked off by Will Hodgkinson for telling him I hoped his record label went bust.
I don't know the first thing about Mr. Hodgkinson other than that he has been given £5,000 (and a regular column/ceaseless free publicity) by the Grauniad in order to start up a record label and that he has been capped several times as a fly half by the RFU. (Typical Grauniad, isn't it? Give a few grand to some rugger bugger to start a label up when there are poor black kids like me struggling to work in the rain, being splashed by Abramovich's KGB stooges in their blacked out window 4 wheel drives....) Anyroad, I sent him a note back saying, words to the effect, that I was releasing my own CD and I didn't need his (or the Guardian's for that matter) poxy money, and while we're on the subject, if he'd asked, I'd have given him £30,000 *not* to start up a record label....etc. etc. etc. You see, this is how things are now - the middle classes don't just want to have their cake and eat it. They want yours too and to slap you in the face as well, just for being so cheeky...
Speaking of Rugby, as we were a few days ago...The one bright spot of the weekend? The marvellous reception extended to the England Rugby team at Croke Park for the highly emotive and symbolic game played there on Saturday. Always nice too to see a good stuffing administered to the rosbifs so beloved of the Green jacketed hordes who regularly make my life a misery, taking over the pubs and streets of Twickenham as if it were Tuscanny, insisiting on watching some Belgian third division Ladies XV while the Arsenal are playing, braying long into the night air before riding back to the Home Counties, innocent children and pets wedged like roadkill between the front bars, mere trophies as they pollute their way back to the Shires. And the Irish were good enough not to make too big a fuss about all the innocents gunned down there on Bloody Sunday too.
So maybe we *have* turned a corner, of sorts...
L.U.V. on ya,
Bob
Subscribe Free
Add to my Page
Visit me in MunterSpace - 10,000 Goth Girls Splattered in Feck Blood Can't be Wrong!!!!!!!!
Watch Bob's promos on Youtube
Bob's old blog - it's much better than *this* rubbish!
Listen to Bob's songs at indie911.com!
Listen to Bob's songs at GarageBand.com!
Listen to Bobcasts here!
© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
Friday, 23 February 2007
Bobcast #26...
...Sweden....California....Venezuela....
There isn't a place on the globe we're not ready to cause offence in..
Get your regular dose of Bobcast here, here and here...
L.U.V. on ya,
Bob
Visit me in MunterSpace - 10,000 Goth Girls Splattered in Feck Blood Can't be Wrong!!!!!!!!
Watch Bob's promos on Youtube
Bob's old blog - it's much better than *this* rubbish!
Listen to Bob's songs at indie911.com!
Listen to Bob's songs at GarageBand.com!
Listen to Bobcasts here!
© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
There isn't a place on the globe we're not ready to cause offence in..
Get your regular dose of Bobcast here, here and here...
L.U.V. on ya,
Bob
Visit me in MunterSpace - 10,000 Goth Girls Splattered in Feck Blood Can't be Wrong!!!!!!!!
Watch Bob's promos on Youtube
Bob's old blog - it's much better than *this* rubbish!
Listen to Bob's songs at indie911.com!
Listen to Bob's songs at GarageBand.com!
Listen to Bobcasts here!
© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
Bastards Who Hold Work Meetings in Public Places...
Don't you hate them?
You know, as if the corporate world doesn't impinge upon our "free" time enough as it is - all those bibbed, t-shirted graduates trying to get you to sign up for regular donations to some poxy charity at every turn (and while we're on the subject, how much do those b & t-s'd g's have to clear before the poor orphans/crips/underprivileged Romanians/orphaned-crip-underprivieged-Romanian-Africans etc. start getting a slice of the action? Graduates ain't gonna get out of bed for less than 18K P/A are they ? Not even to spend 14 hours a day standing around in the freezing cold waiting for the opportunity to be sniffy when law-abiding citizens try to avoid being collared by them when they invade our personal space on the street). Then there's the adverts on bus tickets. What's the point of those, other than to make any reasonably-minded person decide to give the wares of any company cheapskate enough to advertise on a poxy bus ticket a very wide berth. Claire Nasir's weather forecast on GMTV - "sponsored by Nestle" ffs. And don't get me started on the changing it from Nestles to "Nez-lay". Swiss Bastards. Perhaps if they put the odd fecking nutritional element in their baby milk, there wouldn't be so many under-nourished African kids and we could lose a few of the b and t-s'd g's trying to guilt-bludgeon a wage out of us. Medecins sans Frontiers? Medicins sans Loot if I had my way.
But I digress.
Last night, the fairer half and I were enjoying a lovely aggregation of the choicest Indian food this side of the sub-continent, relishing the tang of the Paneer Tikka, gourmandising on the melts-in-the-mouth Bombay potato and generally having a cosy, quiet time of it with a couple of similarly lovey-dovey couples and the obliging and friendly staff.
All of a sudden, in breeze a handful of business types and before we know what's hit us, we're hearing the quarterly maximisation forecasts for the coming trimester, all bellowed out in that braying, dick waggling tone of the sort of public school wanker who finds their number-crunching/profit obsessed little racket so thoroughly absorbing that it's not even possible for them to take a sip of Perrier water without letting someone (anyone!) in the vicinity know their views on natural wastage in the toboggan-glazing sector.
A good meal spoiled.
Cunts.
L.U.V. on ya,
Bob
Visit me in MunterSpace - 10,000 Goth Girls Splattered in Feck Blood Can't be Wrong!!!!!!!!
Watch Bob's promos on Youtube
Bob's old blog - it's much better than *this* rubbish!
Listen to Bob's songs at indie911.com!
Listen to Bob's songs at GarageBand.com!
Listen to Bobcasts here!
© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
You know, as if the corporate world doesn't impinge upon our "free" time enough as it is - all those bibbed, t-shirted graduates trying to get you to sign up for regular donations to some poxy charity at every turn (and while we're on the subject, how much do those b & t-s'd g's have to clear before the poor orphans/crips/underprivileged Romanians/orphaned-crip-underprivieged-Romanian-Africans etc. start getting a slice of the action? Graduates ain't gonna get out of bed for less than 18K P/A are they ? Not even to spend 14 hours a day standing around in the freezing cold waiting for the opportunity to be sniffy when law-abiding citizens try to avoid being collared by them when they invade our personal space on the street). Then there's the adverts on bus tickets. What's the point of those, other than to make any reasonably-minded person decide to give the wares of any company cheapskate enough to advertise on a poxy bus ticket a very wide berth. Claire Nasir's weather forecast on GMTV - "sponsored by Nestle" ffs. And don't get me started on the changing it from Nestles to "Nez-lay". Swiss Bastards. Perhaps if they put the odd fecking nutritional element in their baby milk, there wouldn't be so many under-nourished African kids and we could lose a few of the b and t-s'd g's trying to guilt-bludgeon a wage out of us. Medecins sans Frontiers? Medicins sans Loot if I had my way.
But I digress.
Last night, the fairer half and I were enjoying a lovely aggregation of the choicest Indian food this side of the sub-continent, relishing the tang of the Paneer Tikka, gourmandising on the melts-in-the-mouth Bombay potato and generally having a cosy, quiet time of it with a couple of similarly lovey-dovey couples and the obliging and friendly staff.
All of a sudden, in breeze a handful of business types and before we know what's hit us, we're hearing the quarterly maximisation forecasts for the coming trimester, all bellowed out in that braying, dick waggling tone of the sort of public school wanker who finds their number-crunching/profit obsessed little racket so thoroughly absorbing that it's not even possible for them to take a sip of Perrier water without letting someone (anyone!) in the vicinity know their views on natural wastage in the toboggan-glazing sector.
A good meal spoiled.
Cunts.
L.U.V. on ya,
Bob
Visit me in MunterSpace - 10,000 Goth Girls Splattered in Feck Blood Can't be Wrong!!!!!!!!
Watch Bob's promos on Youtube
Bob's old blog - it's much better than *this* rubbish!
Listen to Bob's songs at indie911.com!
Listen to Bob's songs at GarageBand.com!
Listen to Bobcasts here!
© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
Wednesday, 21 February 2007
Exclusive!!!! Bob's First *Ever* Pop Promo!!!....
...It's arty, it's farty, it's intense, brooding, moody....erm....
Alright, it's me lying in the bath.
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on munterspace.com
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Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert A. Swipe Show
© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
Alright, it's me lying in the bath.
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on munterspace.com
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on indie911.com
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on Garageband.com
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert A. Swipe Show
© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
Depression...
Between 1987 and 1994, I went out with someone who suffered from clinical depression - and yes, before you ask, although I no doubt exacerbated the situation considerably, the illness did actually pre-date our relationship. The bouts of depression were (and, very sadly, still are) lengthy, painful and deeply distressing, not only for poor V., but those closest to her. Without revealing too much of someone else's painful personal life, but, equally, not wishing to avoid discussing the painful charactersistics of the illness as I've observed them, the troughs would involve a quite remarkable withdrawal, acute anxiety and a state of fearfulness and paranoia which could lead to the belief that even the most trivial (and unrelated) item on the television news was a direct attack on the depressed person herself. In happier interludes, we used to find wry amusement in the assertions of our friends, common, I imagine, to most sensitive people in their twenties when things aren't going too well, that they were "really depressed". So, having seen V.'s struggles with "the black dog" at close quarters and lost a good friend to depression-induced suicide, I think I know the difference between my own current low and the full frontal assault that is severe, clinical depression.
That said, I can't help but acknowledge the fact that what once seemed a remote and (possibly due to my being absorbed in my own proximity to it) isolated affliction has, over time, become a fairly common experience. Numerous close friends, family members-in-common-law, work colleagues - even your humble scribe - have all at one time or another suffered from what would come under the broad heading of depressive illness, to the extent that those in my close circle who haven't appear now to be in the minority.
So, what's changed? Or is it a time of life thing? Hard to say, but I know my own lows (and that of those closest to me) are largely grief related. Loss has been a big factor. My own experience was directly related to the loss of my mother. Those dark days, spent hoarding all the pent up anger and supressed pain manifest as rage was finally acknowledged by me about a year after Mum's death for for what it was - grief, sadness, depression disguised. But a sense of loss in the broadest sense, not just of people, can be painful in itself and complicate matters - time of life, and so on. Indeed, there can appear to be a snowballing effect, a heightened awareness of the accumulation of time, opportunities, innocence as well as loved ones one has lost over the course of one's life, to the extent that the days take on a very elegiac quality that's quite conducive to mild melancholy.
I stress, again, that there is a marked difference between that quasi-romantic sense and the awful rigours of acute psychosis. I remember reading some sleeve notes written by Sting in which he commented on the falsity of the widely-held assumption that the heart is the physical seat of the emotions. According to Mr. Sumner, it's actually somewhere in the brain. And, for sure, the kind of illness described in the first paragraph *is* as simple as that - a chemical imbalance in the head. I don't know about Sting or anyone else, but I get mine in the solar plexus, and it feels as if someone's been using it as a punchbag. It's where I think of my heart as being, even if that's not anatomically correct.
But it's not all bleak. V. was well read in the field and there can be no denying that she was right about the link between depression and creativity. Beethoven, Van Gogh, Plath, Milligan, Churchill - the list of eminent suffererers whose talents were fed by their depression is long and distinguished. I'm sure it's no accident that my current prolific writing spree has coincided with being on a bit of a downer. And that, I suppose, is where the difference between the Sunday driver, mildly depressed, not feeling so good today Doc folks like me and the in-for-the-long-haul, pale blinds drawn all day, nothing to read, nothing to say lifers is most pronounced. Given the choice between how I am today and my carefree, pre-anti-depressant* self, I'd stick with what I have. Because ultimately, and at the risk of sounding like a Telegraph reader, the best in one's character is usually forged more though hardship and adversity than through lamb-like frolicking. Suffering may make us more fragile, but it also makes us more human. It deepens our souls. But the real deal is no fun at all, believe me. Poor, poor souls.
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
*Just to clarify, I mean by this the time before I had cause to take anti-depressants, and not that I still have need of them - please, no flowers, grapes etc...
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on munterspace.com
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Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on Garageband.com
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
That said, I can't help but acknowledge the fact that what once seemed a remote and (possibly due to my being absorbed in my own proximity to it) isolated affliction has, over time, become a fairly common experience. Numerous close friends, family members-in-common-law, work colleagues - even your humble scribe - have all at one time or another suffered from what would come under the broad heading of depressive illness, to the extent that those in my close circle who haven't appear now to be in the minority.
So, what's changed? Or is it a time of life thing? Hard to say, but I know my own lows (and that of those closest to me) are largely grief related. Loss has been a big factor. My own experience was directly related to the loss of my mother. Those dark days, spent hoarding all the pent up anger and supressed pain manifest as rage was finally acknowledged by me about a year after Mum's death for for what it was - grief, sadness, depression disguised. But a sense of loss in the broadest sense, not just of people, can be painful in itself and complicate matters - time of life, and so on. Indeed, there can appear to be a snowballing effect, a heightened awareness of the accumulation of time, opportunities, innocence as well as loved ones one has lost over the course of one's life, to the extent that the days take on a very elegiac quality that's quite conducive to mild melancholy.
I stress, again, that there is a marked difference between that quasi-romantic sense and the awful rigours of acute psychosis. I remember reading some sleeve notes written by Sting in which he commented on the falsity of the widely-held assumption that the heart is the physical seat of the emotions. According to Mr. Sumner, it's actually somewhere in the brain. And, for sure, the kind of illness described in the first paragraph *is* as simple as that - a chemical imbalance in the head. I don't know about Sting or anyone else, but I get mine in the solar plexus, and it feels as if someone's been using it as a punchbag. It's where I think of my heart as being, even if that's not anatomically correct.
But it's not all bleak. V. was well read in the field and there can be no denying that she was right about the link between depression and creativity. Beethoven, Van Gogh, Plath, Milligan, Churchill - the list of eminent suffererers whose talents were fed by their depression is long and distinguished. I'm sure it's no accident that my current prolific writing spree has coincided with being on a bit of a downer. And that, I suppose, is where the difference between the Sunday driver, mildly depressed, not feeling so good today Doc folks like me and the in-for-the-long-haul, pale blinds drawn all day, nothing to read, nothing to say lifers is most pronounced. Given the choice between how I am today and my carefree, pre-anti-depressant* self, I'd stick with what I have. Because ultimately, and at the risk of sounding like a Telegraph reader, the best in one's character is usually forged more though hardship and adversity than through lamb-like frolicking. Suffering may make us more fragile, but it also makes us more human. It deepens our souls. But the real deal is no fun at all, believe me. Poor, poor souls.
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
*Just to clarify, I mean by this the time before I had cause to take anti-depressants, and not that I still have need of them - please, no flowers, grapes etc...
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on munterspace.com
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Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on Garageband.com
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert A. Swipe Show
© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
There's a new, Nun-eating-Monster Heavy Metal Tune up here for you all to get on down to....
I wrote the chorus when I was about twenty - which just goes to show, the old ones *really* are the best....
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on munterspace.com
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on indie911.com
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on Garageband.com
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
I wrote the chorus when I was about twenty - which just goes to show, the old ones *really* are the best....
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on munterspace.com
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on indie911.com
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on Garageband.com
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert A. Swipe Show
© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
Friday, 9 February 2007
Nowhere...
Listen to it here....
L.U.V. on ya,
Bob
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on munterspace.com
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click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert A. Swipe Show
© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
Thursday, 8 February 2007
Deep Sea Diva...
Listen to it here... ("if you want to...")
I have a feeling that Betty might like this one....
L.U.V. on ya,
Bob
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on munterspace.com
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on indie911.com
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on Garageband.com
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert A. Swipe Show
© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
Tuesday, 6 February 2007
"The Worst Trick God Can Play On You...
...is to make you an artist - only a mediocre one". I'll always remember that quote. It comes from Bowie's epic 1980 NME interview with Angus MacKinnon. Here was an artist not only at the absolute pinnacle of his musical powers - Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) is a stunning piece of work [how many artists in today's stodgy pop climate could bring so much from the margins of pop culture into the very heart of the mainstream and still sound as daring as that music does], but also still basking in the critical afterglow of his Broadway success in The Elephant Man. So *that's* mediocrity...
To the rest of us mere mortals, it's ultimately encouraging to hear an artist as committed to adventure complaining of the "ball and chain of middle class morality" that's holding him back, or expressing his artistic insecurities with such candour. For younger readers (if there are any of you, indeed, if any of you can *actually* read...) it might be worth having a look at the article linked above, if only for a peak into a world where an organ (and I use the term advisedly) such as NME could function as so confessional a space within the huckstering world of pop promotion. Imagine, for a start, any of today's career-attenuated, 4-wheel-drive worshipping musicians having anything worthwhile to confess in the first place, let alone so public a booth and a confessor with and within which to share it. The NME, like so much of the spikey, bottom-up culture with which I grew up, is long dead now. A less glamourous, less informative, less avidly read Smash Hits for those carefully dishevelled metrosex-rugged indie kids to pose with in their builders crack revealing, ready ripped jeans before their band hitches a Toyota or Vodaphone advert-muzak gig that will save them having to "sell out" by donning a suit to coin it in the city.
But there is hope, I guess, of the featherless, Emily Dickinson/Woody Allen kind. For all the dissing in these quarters, I think the Munterspace arena, if nothing else, allows for the kind of grass roots democracy that we fondly recall of the punk movement. If anything, the way that the download is transforming music consumption could see a revolution within the pop culture that is far more extreme and lasting than punk ever was. Because here, at last, is a means to do away with the big corporations altogether - even the little labels and distributors may ultimately be on their last legs. Because now, *anyone* can build up a following, large and trendseeking (Klaxons, e.g. 2,000,000 visits - many, I'm guessing courtesy of the Grauniad guide cover) or small and devoted* (Your Humble Scribe e.g. - c.9,000 visits in three months or so) and not only have a direct means of advertising their wares/performances etc., but also (if they wish) communicate directly with the people who, in years gone by, would have been huddled around the stage door hoping to feel the hem of their idol's garment.
I think this is a *fabulous* development and whilst the johnny-come-lately, middle class, "our-kids-are-organic-and-biodegradable" toss bags at the Grauniad will *always* latch onto the exciting stuff *just* as it's beginning to lose it's intimacy and freshness and become yawnsville, so there will always be something extraordinary peeping through the soil, dazzling us with it's freshness before the cold hands of the industry and the mass media rip them up and away with them to the hothouse. It's a very exciting time - we could be living through the pop music equivalent of the Gothenburg Press, but, as yet, still blinded as we are by the glare and blare of the meretricious colour supplement charade that passes for critical journalism at the moment you wouldn't know it.
I've rather strayed from my original purpose here somewhat, which was to say how *absolutely* and *totally* demoralised I feel right now, but there has been a catharsis of sorts in the writing of this, so I suppose it's worth carrying on a bit longer...
Reader's (that's singular, btw) choice for tomorrow's post:
a) Johnny Dee is a cunt for not plugging the Swipe Show.
b) Johnny Dee is a cunt for *repeatedly* not plugging the Swipe Show.
c) Johnny Dee is a cunt. He just *is*.
The choice is yours, baggiebird,
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
*yes, I am *of* *course* kidding...
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on munterspace.com
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on indie911.com
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on Garageband.com
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
To the rest of us mere mortals, it's ultimately encouraging to hear an artist as committed to adventure complaining of the "ball and chain of middle class morality" that's holding him back, or expressing his artistic insecurities with such candour. For younger readers (if there are any of you, indeed, if any of you can *actually* read...) it might be worth having a look at the article linked above, if only for a peak into a world where an organ (and I use the term advisedly) such as NME could function as so confessional a space within the huckstering world of pop promotion. Imagine, for a start, any of today's career-attenuated, 4-wheel-drive worshipping musicians having anything worthwhile to confess in the first place, let alone so public a booth and a confessor with and within which to share it. The NME, like so much of the spikey, bottom-up culture with which I grew up, is long dead now. A less glamourous, less informative, less avidly read Smash Hits for those carefully dishevelled metrosex-rugged indie kids to pose with in their builders crack revealing, ready ripped jeans before their band hitches a Toyota or Vodaphone advert-muzak gig that will save them having to "sell out" by donning a suit to coin it in the city.
But there is hope, I guess, of the featherless, Emily Dickinson/Woody Allen kind. For all the dissing in these quarters, I think the Munterspace arena, if nothing else, allows for the kind of grass roots democracy that we fondly recall of the punk movement. If anything, the way that the download is transforming music consumption could see a revolution within the pop culture that is far more extreme and lasting than punk ever was. Because here, at last, is a means to do away with the big corporations altogether - even the little labels and distributors may ultimately be on their last legs. Because now, *anyone* can build up a following, large and trendseeking (Klaxons, e.g. 2,000,000 visits - many, I'm guessing courtesy of the Grauniad guide cover) or small and devoted* (Your Humble Scribe e.g. - c.9,000 visits in three months or so) and not only have a direct means of advertising their wares/performances etc., but also (if they wish) communicate directly with the people who, in years gone by, would have been huddled around the stage door hoping to feel the hem of their idol's garment.
I think this is a *fabulous* development and whilst the johnny-come-lately, middle class, "our-kids-are-organic-and-biodegradable" toss bags at the Grauniad will *always* latch onto the exciting stuff *just* as it's beginning to lose it's intimacy and freshness and become yawnsville, so there will always be something extraordinary peeping through the soil, dazzling us with it's freshness before the cold hands of the industry and the mass media rip them up and away with them to the hothouse. It's a very exciting time - we could be living through the pop music equivalent of the Gothenburg Press, but, as yet, still blinded as we are by the glare and blare of the meretricious colour supplement charade that passes for critical journalism at the moment you wouldn't know it.
I've rather strayed from my original purpose here somewhat, which was to say how *absolutely* and *totally* demoralised I feel right now, but there has been a catharsis of sorts in the writing of this, so I suppose it's worth carrying on a bit longer...
Reader's (that's singular, btw) choice for tomorrow's post:
a) Johnny Dee is a cunt for not plugging the Swipe Show.
b) Johnny Dee is a cunt for *repeatedly* not plugging the Swipe Show.
c) Johnny Dee is a cunt. He just *is*.
The choice is yours, baggiebird,
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
*yes, I am *of* *course* kidding...
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on munterspace.com
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on indie911.com
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on Garageband.com
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert A. Swipe Show
© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
Monday, 5 February 2007
Natalie Would...
And here's the proof....
Well, wouldn't you??
******UPDATE***********
For anyone interested, I've also put a souped up version of the song "Wallis" up on Garageband.com - I'll be posting a few more tracks from the (hopefully) forthcoming LP/CD up there and at indie911 over the next few weeks and I'd be grateful for any comments as I begin to get the finished versions ready for a limited run (12? 13?) of self-financed, self published copies - probably they'll be available sometime after Easter (?), fingers crossed. As I'd like the project to be taken (vaguely) seriously away from these pages, I've decided not to allow downloads, rather as steaming (streaming?) audio, so if you want to bootleg them (by all means do - it'll save me a fortune getting the cunting thing pressed up), you'll probably need a Minidisc player....
Oh, and I'd recommend listening to the lo-bitrate version of 'Wallis', as well as the high - it's like it's being played on the world service, which I thought was rather apt...
L.U.V. on ya,
Bob
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on munterspace.com
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on indie911.com
Listen to Bob's Music *ABSOLUTELY FREE* on Garageband.com
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert A. Swipe Show
© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
Friday, 2 February 2007
Spinsterella - You *Shall* Go To The Ball!!...
[...]*
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
*© B. Damage (deceased)
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert A. Swipe Show
© 2007 Swipe Enterprises
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