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Wednesday 31 March 2010

Remember him this way...

An Adult-Oriented Rock Singer's Love Song:



After A Subaltern's Love Song.

Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
In your velvet jacket
With military braiding.

Singing your mind-numbing
A.O.R.
On your poncey, roundbacked
Ovation guitar.

Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
Indifferent to the countries
We are invading.

While sectarian militias
In Basra riot,
You pointlessly sing about
Dropping the pilot.

Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
In Baghdad and Kabul
The troops are parading.

While you wail your songs for
Middleclass simpletons
And cohabitate with
Valerie Singleton(s)

Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
Geo-political conflict
Evading

You sing not a word of
Iraqi invasion -
You're not in love...

....but you're open to persuasion.



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© 2006 Swipe Enterprises

Tuesday 30 March 2010

Remember him this way...

An Adult-Oriented Rock Singer's Love Song:



After A Subaltern's Love Song.

Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
In your velvet jacket
With military braiding.

Singing your mind-numbing
A.O.R.
On your poncey, roundbacked
Ovation guitar.

Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
Indifferent to the countries
We are invading.

While sectarian militias
In Basra riot,
You pointlessly sing about
Dropping the pilot.

Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
In Baghdad and Kabul
The troops are parading.

While you wail your songs for
Middleclass simpletons
And cohabitate with
Valerie Singleton(s)

Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
Geo-political conflict
Evading

You sing not a word of
Iraqi invasion -
You're not in love...

....but you're open to persuasion.



Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!

click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!

Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show




© 2006 Swipe Enterprises

Monday 29 March 2010

Swimmin' with the wimmin'...

Apropos of nothing, really but my God, Jane Moore's a sexy old boot, isn't she?



(Sorry folks, couldn't find any pics with her legs in, but there you go...there may be some on Chickipedia, but if they're there at all, they're taking one heck of a long time to appear on the screen...Chikipedia - nice one; why didn't I think of that?) Of course, the woman talks out of her arse most of the time, but you can't have everything, can you? One could try muzzling her, I suppose - but not only would that be deeply offensive to both of us - yes, believe it or not, she's a stonewall feminist, despite the brown shirt - but would also take a lot of the fun out of the contest. (You feel that everything would be turned into a contest with Jane, don't you?; even champagne-enhanced, languid all-day love-making in her sumptuously satin-sheeted Essex fourposter beneath a ceiling mirror (she *must* live in Essex and have a mirrored ceiling, right?) And she'd find, you know in your heart of hearts, some way to spoil even the most romantic of shared fag post-coital moments of intimacy with an ill-advised rant about bogus asylum-seeking gypsies being waved to the top of the council house waiting list by politically correct zealots or such like bile-fuelled xenophobic rhetoric.

I suppose that's part of the appeal, isn't it - opposites attract and all that. (Although, for the record, I'm with her on the bogus asylum-seeking gypsies being waved to the top of the council house waiting list by politically correct zealots or such like bile-fuelled xenophobic rhetoric. And bring back flogging while you're at it. Bendy buses? Don't get me started...) Or maybe there's a secret and irresistable urge buried deep within all but the most neutered of 'liberal-with-a-small-L' Guardian reading new men to get deep down and personal with the Queen the of filthy red top enemy. Preferably in a break between coursing hares on our 500 acre estate. Wearing nothing more than a black latex boob tube and a pair of stirrups. (Jane'll probably be in slacks though, I should imagine...)

Sexist nonsense - I hope you've all been able to see the above as such. All of which casual misogyny leads me to my main (if you'll excuse the phallocentric word choice) *thrust*. I sense a change in the political climate. Perhaps it's the recession, or maybe they're just getting fed up with having to ponce around in ridiculously perpendicular high heeled shoes looking vacant all day, but there seems to be an austere new zippin'-up-our-boots-going-back-to-our-roots feminism abroad and I for one say "about time too girls!"

A while back, I read this article by former Burchill squeeze Charlotte Raven. Putting aside any reservations about the rather Radcliffe-Hall hairdo she seems to be wearing, I think she has a point about the "have-it-all" school of wimmin's libbers who feel that they can have their lipgloss and eat it. I wonder how representative her views are? As my readership divides pretty much straight down the middle along gender lines (2 male, 2 women, 1 not sure) I thought we had a fairly good sample. So, is it off with the skimpy see-through all-in-one and suspenders and on with the brogues, Fred Perry and designer stubble? I await your comments with interest bordering that of one of Pavlov's mutts.

Speaking personally, I'm ambivalent. As someone who's spent large amounts of time trying (with varying degrees of success) to pass himself off as a woman, I've been on the end of a fair amount of unrestrained male chauvanist piggery myself. I've also been treated with considerable respect - insert your own Monty Python-style "and what's more, he knew how to treat a female impersonator.." gag of choice...) As many modern women do, I've objectified myself and been viewed as an object - I am after all, as we all are, an object in the strictest sense, I suppose. But curiously, this objectification has not by any means been the preserve of the males of the species. Women can and do collude in the This would suggest that the truth is perhaps a little less clearcut than Raven suggests. Or maybe the imprisoning male gaze is now so universal and we've grown so used to the chains it binds us in that we can no longer see them.

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Sunday 28 March 2010

For Whom the Blogs Toll...

(...That's as in the kind of toll you pay on a motorway or (inexplicably) to enter Wales, obviously - don't worry, it should all make sense when you read the rest of the piece. For once.) I mention tolls because as you'll all probably have read already in your weekend papers, due to the sharp economic downturn and the *sheer* *expense* of paying myself the exorbitant fee I command to come up with this bilge on a fortnightly basis, it is with regret that I have to announce that as of tomorrow, I have no option but to demand a small charge from you all for the privilege of reading my enormously important and (in some of the more remote areas of East Anglia) influential opinions.

The decision has not been taken lightly. I've looked at all the other options such as advertising...



(Hmm nice pins - I don't know if that's Mr. Dolce or Mr. Gabbana in the picture, but he can carry my tote bag to work for me anyday...!)

...Linking to pornographic websites...



...trying to use this page to flog the remaining 3,000 copies of Bedroom Burlesque currently rotting away in the attic here at Swipe Towers...




(Hmm - even nicer pins. Wonder what she's doing now...?)

But none of these measures would come close even to keeping me in exfoliator for a week, let alone put food and wine on the table, so a 2 pound charge it is. Fiver a week. (Go on - twenty notes for a year's subscription and I'll throw in a copy of *Glam*!! for good measure...*ANYBODY*???)

But seriously, this will be an interesting moment in the digital revolution, don't you think? Quite how this will go down with a generation brought up with the idea that music, information, sport (heck, even an old crusty like me was able to watch the Arsenal's pitiful last minute capitulation to Birmingham City live, as it happened and completely gratis on a high definition Veetle link) are to all intents and purposes available as freely as the lillies of the field, isn't exactly rocket science. Neither is it too demanding of the old grey matter to reach the conclusion that, whatever impediments are put in the way by the News International geeks, there'll be a pretty simple way to get round their paywalls. Once that's happened, like pretty much everything else in cyberspace, it'll just be a question of finding the free version - should anyone be *remotely* interested in reading the tosh in the first place, of course.

I read a quote from Bowie recently where he claimed that in ten year's time, there'll be no such thing as intellectual property, to which the only sane response is; you mean, it will last that long? So what we may be seeing over at Murdoch HQ are the beginnings of its death throes.

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Saturday 27 March 2010

This is not America...

Three books on the go right now.

I'm nearing the halfway point of Philip Roth's recent (I say recent - it's *six* years old...how time flies!) novel, The Plot Against America.



It's a kind of SSGB for the US - or, put more simply, a kind of SSUS, I suppose. In Roth's book, history takes a different turn as the 1940 US presidential election is won not by FDR but rather a Nazi sympathising, proto-Fascist uber-hero; the aviator Charles A. Lindbergh. Scary stuff ensues as the fictional, non-interventionist US diverges further and further from the principles of its founding fathers. No echoes of the contemporary there then...

For the British reader I suppose the nearest equivalent would be waking up in a parallel universe in which the Labour government many of us so joyously celebrated the election of in May 1997 soon turned out to be as corrupt as the day is long - dishing out honours for cash and legislating to the whim of the highest bidder, pursuing the Thatcherite project of privatisation more vigorously than even TBW* herself had ever dared, widening the gap between the richest and the poorest in our society to an unprecedented degree and duping the electorate into sending our troops to become mired in two lengthy, intractable, unpopular, possibly illegal and ultimately unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). Thank heavens for fiction, eh?

I also picked up Barry Miles' London Calling: a countercultural history of London since 1945.



Miles was the co-owner and founder (with Marianne Faithful's then fella John Dunbar and [I think] Peter Asher - Dickster will know...) of the Indica bookshop and gallery; home of The International Times and eventual meeting place of John & Yoko. A confirmed townie - passing them atop a Green Line bus, he used mentally to obliterate the open fields and trees of his native Cirencester and replace them with terraced houses - Miles is a groovy guide to the city's bohemian nooks and crannies. Not sure if it's everyone's cup of tea, but if you feel remotely enriched by the discovery that the artist Francis Bacon used to brush Kiwi boot polish through his hair and polish his teeth with Vim before a night out or find the following as hysterically funny as I did, it might well be the book for you:

Sod, known during the war as 'the bugger's Vera Lynn' for her drinking club catering to gay servicemen, liked to lie on the divan naked, sleeping off her morning intake of gin while Anne [Dunn]'s Australian fruitbat hung upside down above her, squirting everything with jets of diarroah.

Ah, the glamour of it all.

Lastly: from the ridiculous to the sublime. The fairer half and I went dutch on Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights and an excellent purchase it has proved to be.



Full of tasty morsels, delightful amuses bouches (whatever that is) and handsomely illustrated with a selection of glossy and easy to wipe plates, it's a must for every home that has a kitchen in it. Apparently there are some recipes in there too...

Right, I'm off to watch Eduardo confront his demons at St. Andrews.

Up the Arsenal!

L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob


*TBW: That Bloody Woman. There is a ruder version, but I'll spare my younger readers that for now...

Thursday 25 March 2010

Great Names for Pretentious Indie Bands...

#3,476:

The Jonathan Safran Foer.



(He looks like he could be in it too, doesn't he?)

JSF is only, like, 16 or something (...see what I did there? Savage, huh?) but he writes with a maturity and wisdom that you'd usually associate with someone a lot older - say, I dunno, a 21 year old? Whatevah. I've just finished his first novel (it's about my 4,308th novel - I get through them at a rate of knots. Well, they give me something to read on those long bus journeys and there's only so many times you can skim through your copy of Metro looking for upskirt shots of Jane Moore before you start drawing attention to yourself. Well, you try spending an hour and a half on a busy airport dormitory route lying on the floor staring up at an upside down copy of the free London newspaper and not raise an eyebrow or two...If you can show me how it's done, there's a Parker Knoll Recliner and a year's supply of oven chiops in it for you, Gungadin...).

It's called Everything is Iluminated. That's the kind of thing the novel's half-narrator, Alex, would say when he means to say "everything is clear" and JFS (JSF? Whatevah) uses this technique to splendidly Nabokovian and humorous effect.* Well, so I'd imagined when I saw a bald, Jewish looking chap reading the paperback of it some months ago on the underground. He was laughing his knackers off. I found it less amusing - possibly because I'm not Jewish. Or bald, for that matter - although I am starting to thin a little at the crown. Maybe I should re-read the book in a few years when I've thinned out a little more. Or "done a Burchill". Incidentally, while I mention it, have they let her in yet? That'll be one packed Brighton synagogue when they do, won't it?

Anyway, there are some very funny things in the book - like the bit where Jonathan (yes, it's that kind of book where there's a character in the novel with *exactly* the same name as the author - Jonathan Flivingston Seagull? Whatevah.) is explaining yiddish words to Alex (who is, I should maybe have pointed out earlier Ukrainian. Yes, I know; *crazy*, isn't it?) and all the examples he can think of mean the same as the word 'schmuck'. Or actually *are* schmuck. It also has lots of very moving bits to do with the Holocaust. (Just a minor digression here, but is it just me or does every novel published in the UK over the last decade have, by law, to have something to do with the Holocaust? I'm not complaining - I like a good WWII yarn as much as the next man, but aren't they somewhat over-egging the pudding on this one, just a tad? Just a thought.) Oh, and speaking of puddings - wasn't Sophie Dahl wonderful on the telly the other night. Lovely Roly Poly Puddings. And her desserts weren't half bad either from what I could see.

So, there you have it: "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Saffron Waldon (Ralph Waldo Emerson Lake Huntley & Palmer???? Whatevah).

An excellent read.

Now all he needs are some songs...


*This is the kind of thing I would say, when I could think of nothing better to, at dinner parties - in the unlikely event that anyone would ever considering inviting me to a dinner party to discuss Nabokov (or any Russian novelist, come to think of it.)

Wednesday 24 March 2010

Bobcast #62...



...It was 50 years ago today...

(...erm... in a couple of years time... I thought I'd get in early, like...)

;)

...Tune in, turn on, download...

L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob