Our Heavy Emotional Moment mix

1. Al Green Lover’s Hideaway
2. Detroit Emeralds Admit Your Love is Gone
3. Dorothy Moore I Forgot To Be Your Lover
4. Percy Sledge The Dark End of the Street
5. Moody Scott Darling, Please Do Not Take My Love
6. Curtis Mayfield So In Love
7. Darondo Didn’t I?
8. The Impressions (Man, Oh! Man) I Want To Go Back
9. Donny Hathaway Giving Up
10. The Chi-Lites Oh Girl
11. Roberta Flack Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye
12. Erasmo Carlos Gente Aberta
13. Amanaz Khala, My Friend
14. Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose Too Late To Turn Back Now
15. The Bar-Kays Feels Like I’m Falling In Love
16. SOS Band No One’s Gonna Love You
17. Force MDs Tender Love
18. INXS Never Tear Us Apart
19. Depeche Mode Blue Dress
20. Sinead O’Connor Heroine
21. Bryan Ferry Slave to Love
22. Sade By Your Side (Cottonbelly’s Fola Mix Edit)
23. Todd Terje Johnny & Mary

Public Pool Mixtape

Lost Fuck Me USA songs

Courtesy of Mar Sellars, who has (somehow) moved these MP3s from computer to computer over the past (near) 13 years.

From a November 2003 recording session at the Hive Studio in Vancouver, BC.

Somewhere Somehow & Anyways Mix

 
A mix of international pop, psych, folk, and so forth - some political, some not.
Music from Iraq, Angola, Iran, People’s Republic of Benin, Guinea, Greece, Brazil, Senegal, Venezuela, Cuba, Turkey, Spain, Palestine, Nigeria, Sierra Leon, Chile, Italy, and the Solomon Islands. 92m3s

1. Quilapayun Chacarilla
2. L’Arpeggiata Luna Lunedda
3. Ali Primera America Latina Obrera
4. Thai Thanh Bung Sang
5. Trini Lopez If I Had A Hammer
6. O Conjunto Sérgio Carvalho Suck ‘Um Up
7. Chris Montez The More I See You
8. Antoine Dougbe Ya Mi Ton Gbo
9. Amazones de Guinee Samba
10. Tonito Kiukitukila
11. No. 1 De Dakar Yaye Boye
12. Lokonon Andre & Les Volcans Mi Kple Dogbekpo
13. Shohreh Del
14. Vasilija Radojcic Na Uskrs Sam se Rodila
15. Xorwdia San Atsalino Teixos
16. Rita Pavone Lui
17. Mirtha Y Raul El Sueno de Andria
18. Selda Bagcan Yaz Gazeteci Yaz
19. Muharem Serbezovski Ramajana
20. Iordanis Tsomidis Mis Sto Krasi Mou
21. Lehakat Tsiley Haud Me Afula Hanale
22. Ja’afar Hassan Palestinian
23. Sir Victor Uwaifo & His Melody Maestros Ogiobo
24. S.E. Rogie Do Me Justice
25. Joan Manuel Serrat Ara Que Tinc Vint Anys
26. Sabina Varesanovic Svejedno Kad
27. Girls of Bunana Untitled

Trotskyites of Defeat

"Trotskyists of defeat, they export revolution not in order to save it but in order to evade it."*

-Corey Robin

Easterhouse Whistling In The Dark

Easterhouse Ain't That Always The Way

Easterhouse were a Manchester band, notable for their connection to the Revolutionary Communist Party, a group of by all accounts unbearable lefties who ended up all unbearable, no left.

  The RCP's the more interesting story here: as the RCP split many members went on to Living Marxism, then to the Institute of Ideas, and most ended up finding a home at Spiked Online, where they pedal a hyper-charged "'twas young but now I know better" form of libertarianism and lazy contrarianism, such as how within critiques of economic inequality lie green shoots of oppression and totalitarianism.  Careful with that tax, Eugene!

  George Monbiot has written about the group, and Jenny Turner has a particularly interesting piece in the London Review of Books which covers some of the weirdness of the group and Frank Furedi's piss-poor research skills.  For some more, let's say speculative writing on the group, read Pandora's Docs, wherein an Adam Curtis fan comes to believe the filmmaker shares ideological affinities with the group and has included some of the LM types in his productions.

  In Canada, the nearest and closest practitioner of this would be Terry Glavin, who admonishes the left for their weak-kneed pacifism, etc; but unlike other pot-bangers and sword-rattlers, such as Andrew Coyne and David Frum, at least has the strength of his convictions to fly to a war-zone to get a picture taken with a machine gun.

  Oh yes, Easterhouse... Well, they were on Rough Trade and from Manchester and not the Smiths (though there were a few connections (check Wikipedia). The centre of the band, or the dialectical core (let's say), were the two brothers Andy and Ivor Perry.  Ivor Perry left in 1989 and the band's final album, Waiting for the Red Bird, has the tepid, head-nodding quality of contemporaneous CanCon rock, while the earlier work (which you can hear above) sounds a bit like The Sound or New Model Army.

*(h/t @equalitybfast for finding this quote)

Unicornio!

Nicolle Meyer - Nowhere bei Mir

Fred Banana Combo - The Captain

Greg Vandike - Animation

Mercedes Sosa - Unicornio Azul

Quilapayún - Chacarilla

Nicolle Meyer is recognizable to most who know her as a model for her work with photographer Guy Bourdin. She was also a member of the German post-punk group Fred Banana Combo, who recorded with Neu! & Kraftwerk producer Conny Plank in the early 80s.

Greg Vandike's Animation sounds like a blueprint for Destroyer's (still terrific) Yr Blues album (along with the MIDI trumpets of King's Quest.)

From Argentina, Mercedes Sosa's magic voice with a (possibly kitsch) ballad about a lost blue unicorn, and from Chile, Quilapayún, the leading group of the politically engaged Nueva canción movement.

A Thousand Pouts: Inge Fonteyne's Polaroids

A very brief article I wrote for Let's Panic magazine to accompany a selection of Inge Fonteyne's polaroids from the 90's.

Argos and Nauplia

Vangelis So Long Ago, So Clear (with Jon Anderson)

Feargal Sharkey Loving You

Vangelis pairs with Yes vocalist Jon Anderson for some tuneful pleading beyond the moons of Jupiter in 1975. Undertones singer Feargal Sharkey works with Jo Callis of Human League and Roger Taylor of Queen in 1985.

Your Big & Wild Day!

Music

The Trypes - The Undertow

Yung Wu - Big Day

Phil Manzanera - Big Day

Chunky, Novi & Ernie - Underground

Gerty Molzen - Walk On The Wild Side

Words

Thomas Frank Storybook Plutocracy [Public Books] 

Notes: The Trypes and Yung Wu were both projects related to The Feelies, as you can certainly divine from the songs, the latter a cover of Phil Manzanera's Big Day (which features production and vocal duties handled by Brian Eno).  Chunky, Novi & Ernie was an early Laurie Wood band - production handled by Mr. John Cale.  German opera singer and film actress Gerty Molzen turned in this cover of Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side in 1985, at age 80 and assisted by Gerd Plez of German new-wave group Hong Kong Syndicate (their catalogue is a difficult slog with a few interesting highlights, I assure you).  She performed it on Late Night with David Letterman in 1986.

Sporting Men

MP3s

Wally Badarou - Voices

Eurogliders - When the Stars Come Out

Ryuichi Sakamoto & Robin Scott - Once In A Lifetime

Haruomi Hosono - Sports Men

Wally Badarou - One Day, Won't Give It Away

Words

Sarah Kendzior "Surviving the post-employment economy" [Al Jazeera]

Robert Reich "Foundations are the voice of plutocracy" [Boston Review]

Tom Slee "Charity Assets" [The New Inquiry]