OVO

If you pick up some crap book about the history of punk rock, chances are there will be about 90 pages dedicated to Joe Strummer’s jackets but only two sentences about Crass. This is despite them selling millions of records, singlehandedly creating the DIY punk blueprint, and maintaining their hard-line libertarian and anarchy principles even as they reach their mid-60s today. A lot of you reading this will be aware of their logo and the fact that they were a punk band, but not a lot of people know their actual story. Because it’s so inspirational and so “anti-music” (in the sense that it was a total revolt against the established music industry of the time) we feel that everybody with even a passing interest in punk rock should hear it.

And so we interviewed founding members Penny Rimbaud and Steve Ignorant for a brief history of the group and to procure their ideas surrounding this issue’s theme. During the talks between myself and Penny that preceded this interview I discovered that the unthinkable has happened and that Crass, the most anti-authoritarian, anarchy-endorsing free spirits in the history of punk music, are on the verge of going to Crown Court to ask lawyers and judges to intervene in a huge row over some remastered CDs. Despite our efforts to include all sides of the story here, a couple of former members of Crass declined to participate. [...]

What was the reason the band folded?
We always all had the idea that ’84 was the mythical, Orwellian thing. And I think it largely folded because I was becoming interested in something broader than punk. Our interests were going out, and really it was after we’d done that last gig in Aberdare which was so disillusioning and so sad, which was the fucking result of Thatcher’s vicious Britain. And I think all of us felt that jumping up and down on a stage saying “No more war!” was a joke in light of the poverty and desperation we saw that night.

What happened?
It was a benefit gig for the sacked miners in Aberdare. We went down in the van as we usually did, loaded with bins of food because people were literally starving in those villages. It was inevitably raining, which it always does in those valleys, and it was just so sad, the sense of destruction and the sense of despair. There were lots of men who didn’t know what they were doing anymore. Lots of men who just didn’t know what had happened. It was horrible. And the gig was great and everyone enjoyed it, but it was still just so sad. It was the next morning that Andy came through and said, “I’m leaving the band, Pen,” and I didn’t react because I thought,“Fine, I completely understand.” So he sort of initiated what I think would’ve inevitably happened anyway. It was 1984 and we had said we were going to end then, which is what the countdown was all about in our catalog numbers. We’d said everything that was to be said in that context, fucking hell. The fact that it’s still just as pertinent today is indication that nothing’s changed. You can’t say more than what we’ve said, really, except possibly offering a few answers. But you know, I’m still looking for them. And they’re certainly not ones that will be found in the context of punk rock. I think within the context of punk rock we did everything we possibly could.

We’d been doing it since 1977. It had been all those years, nonstop. We lived at Dial House, the doors were always open, and who we were onstage wasn’t any different from who we were in life. It wasn’t like we could come off tour and have a week’s holiday. We were doing it all ourselves and running the other label, Corpus Christi. Pen was always in the studio; I was doing vocals with Conflict or something like that and writing songs for other people. And it wasn’t like a nine-to-five job. It went on and on forever. When Margaret Thatcher came in, it all went up a notch. It was endless. Looking at horrible images, living in a horrible time, dealing with things like the Falklands War, the miners’ strikes, unemployment. It was a horrible time. There was violence at gigs; I was wearing black clothes all the time. I got fed up. If I went out for a drink there was an unspoken responsibility I always felt that if I went and got drunk I couldn’t show it. If I fell over in the gutter it wasn’t just me falling over in the gutter, it was Crass. So there was this responsibility to not fuck it up.

A lot of “punk” was being proud of falling in the gutter. People would pretend to do it even if they weren’t drunk. What made Crass different?
Well, we thought that the message was important enough to make people come and listen and buy the records. We couldn’t shit all over that by being idiots in the pub afterward.

So it was anti everything that rock ’n’ roll stood for.
Yeah. I never got all that. I have been around people who should know better. I mean, throwing a TV out the window, nothing new. I have seen people throw food around, and that really annoys me. I mean, someone has taken the time to cook the stuff. I have seen people onstage giving it all large about “nonviolence,” and the next minute they are in the street fighting with someone who comes from Manchester because they are from down south. Complete and utter bullshit. I have never been into that rock ’n’ roll image. Yeah, you get a bit of adulation; fair enough, I can deal with that. But the limousines and paparazzi and all that? You can stick it! Stick it as far as it can go. Bullshit! I have seen musicians who have so many people around them telling them they are great that in the end the idiots actually think they are and that they can tell people what to do.

Did that ever happen to anyone in Crass?
No. But it happened to a couple of close friends of mine. So, in that sense, for us it was never about being a part of a rock ’n’ roll band, though sometimes I did want some of the things associated with it. I wanted the blonde girls and the free drinks, which I never got. The only people I spoke to at gigs were spotty blokes in anoraks asking me about anarchy.

Haha. But that’s what you signed up for. Do you regret that?
I suppose sometimes it’s a little thing, I don’t know. It would have been fun for it to happen now and again. Regret it? Not really, we did what we did. As you said, that’s what I signed up for. It was a commitment; and my own fault, really. [...]

And now you’ve remastered all the albums and Gee’s done new artwork and Southern is going to release it, but that’s all caused a bit of a hullabaloo, right?
Yes, well, in the remastering I’ve been doing of the Crass material, I’ve incorporated stuff which is otherwise only available as bootleg. And why is this stuff only available otherwise in bootleg? It’s because we never bothered to do it ourselves. We’re to blame, not the bootleggers. So what we’ve done now is to sort of reclaim that, give really good sound to it, as good as we can, and then put it out so that if people want our version of it they can buy it. The bootlegs will probably still be there.

I discussed the plan to remaster everything with John in the year that he was ill. I was visiting him once a week or so. We talked a lot, obviously, about the future and that. We fantasized about going in to remaster the entire catalog, remaster a lot of my own works like Acts of Love, do new material, but I have to say that most of the time I knew it was a fantasy because it was quite obvious he wasn’t going to survive. When he died, Southern had a lot of trouble coping with it all and during that time I spent a lot of time worrying about what the fuck was going to happen to our material because with John there’d never been any formalities, nothing had ever been signed, who owned what, what owned who. There was nothing to go by. What I was really worried about was the receivers being called in. I thought, “Well, if Southern goes down, they’re going to go in and all the fucking stuff’s going to get nicked. I want to know what’s ours so we can have it.” I sort of made halfhearted attempts, but really the place was such a fucking mess that I thought, “OK, I’ll back off and let them sort whatever they need to sort out, and then we’ll go from there.” That coincided with trying to stop the house being taken over by a lot of property investors, so I got very embroiled in a big legal battle.

Who has the house now?
We do.

You nearly didn’t?
Yeah, you know, several times over. During the era of the band, we could have sat down and said, “Look, we don’t own this house. Why don’t we buy it?” We could easily have done it, but it never even occurred to us. Every time we got any money we were like,“Oh, we’ve got a grand! Let’s go ask those people down the road if they want to put out a fanzine!”

It was the same when we did fucking gigs, actually, which I’m not so pleased about. Like we’d go and do a gig, pick out a place somewhere, hand all the money over to people in need or charities or whatever, and then realize we hadn’t left enough money to buy supper that evening. We were that stupid, seriously. We didn’t look after ourselves. If we had looked after ourselves, the house would’ve been ours and Gee and I wouldn’t be living in what’s close to poverty most of the time. We’d have looked after it, but we didn’t, and that’s because we weren’t interested and we’re still not interested, so I’m not complaining, it’s just that’s a fact. [...]

I was a 35-year-old man when a 17-year-old boy turned up and wanted to form a band, and the band that he and I formed together denied him everything he should’ve had. He should’ve been fucking the groupies, snorting coke, and having a laugh. He never had a laugh; he never had a fucking adolescence. It was denied him by our hard line. I realize that now, I didn’t realize it at the time. I thought we were having fun, but Jesus what fun it was. I mean, I suppose I could get more fun out of it because my fun has always been more cerebral and intellectual, so for me some of the conflict that we created with the state and that sort of stuff was fun. But Steve wanted to be having proper fun, and I can completely understand that now. And also I can’t actually believe that he is so underappreciated. I think the guy was brilliant, among the best of the punk voices.

Why do you think Pete is so opposed to the rereleases?
When the band broke up and we no longer had that common ground, it increasingly became obvious that there were distinct differences between the various members. That didn’t rest well, and so certain conflicts started developing in the house. Notably I would say between those who didn’t see the folding of the band as a collapse of security, the individuals who were secure in their own being and quite happily got on with whatever it was they might be doing or not doing, whereas another part of the band was worried, like: “Where’s the future now? Our security has suddenly been taken from beneath our feet.” I think that was the root of the conflict, but it became expressed in lifestyle arguments. I created this house as a center for anything anyone wanted to do with it, in a way. It wasn’t for me to define, it wasn’t for me to judge, it wasn’t… I’d found the house, I was quite happy to finance it, and everyone could do what they wanted within certain parameters. I’ve since been accused of standing back when I should’ve helped a situation. So the objection that Peter’s making, by his own admittance, is that I would not give support to his criticisms, some of which were probably just, but in large number were bloody infantile or impractical.

Such as?
Well, one infantile one was to not recognize a natural authority. A natural authority is one that produces 65 percent of the material that you’re making a living from. Not for their own ends, but for a genuine belief that there’s a shared purpose here, which is why I wrote all those Crass songs. I don’t take kindly to someone turning around and being critical of that authority when they’re not directly benefiting in the way they want to directly benefit, while at the same time benefiting in all sorts of ways in which they continue to benefit. I don’t think that’s graceful. I think it was infantile to feel that one could change a situation by stamping your foot and being rude. It’s not how to do it. I’m willing to sit and listen if someone is willing to sit and talk, but I’m not willing to be insulted by anyone. I don’t think it’s very graceful of people not to acknowledge that; to live somewhere for seven years, rent free, for fuck all, to use every little iota of space which could’ve been mine in a selfish way, and then to make a big cacophony about it all. [...]

There’s no question that during the period that we lived 15 people in the house with 25 cats there was unbelievable accord. Obviously there were occasional rows about something, but they were very, very rare and we managed somehow. We couldn’t have done what we’d done otherwise. However many albums, all of the stuff, it ran like a machine. We did it at the cost of our emotional lives, and we were very good at it. But when it all ended the emotional baggage wasn’t properly dug out from all the dark holes around the house and dealt with by us. We should have deprogrammed, but we didn’t. We deprogrammed in our own slow way and within that a lot of bitterness formed. [...]

No contracts were ever signed.
There’s no contract, there’s no written anything in the history of Crass and Southern, and there never was between any of the bands that Crass recorded. It was done on trust or it was not done at all. And in fairness to John, I think that was a principle he kept on Corpus Christi. If Pete wants to play the law, in the real sense of the word, it’s a very foolish line to take. If I were to play the law on a 65 percent ownership of the songs of Crass, I could be sitting with a swimming pool just close to us, rather than a cat bowl, and he would have to work a little bit harder at whatever part-time jobs he does now. That’s the truth of it. [...]

When was the last time you saw Pete?
I think it was the week John was dying. He knew he was going to die and I bumped into Pete at the studio, and I said, “Pete, we really need to talk,” so we went over to a café and sat down, and it was cordial enough. I said, “Look, John’s going to die, we need to sort out our material.” He said, “No we don’t, it’ll be all right.” He just wouldn’t even hear of it. [...]

To my mind, the dispute has its root in ideological differences that existed between the individual members of the band. In my understanding, Pete was fundamentally a socialist, and socialists like wagging their fingers at anyone except themselves. He claims to be an anarchist. Well, I claim to be an anarchist, but I’m fundamentally a libertarian and a fierce individualist. I think that does fit into an arena of anarchistic thought. I certainly draw a line at all this stupid anarchistic organization of industry and that sort of stuff, because I’m just not interested. If people want to do that, then I’m not going to criticize them. But frankly, it’s not my thing. My thing is rising with the angels and flying in the sky.

Article continues.

Imagine a world in which art is forbidden! Art galleries would close. Books would vanish. Pop stars would shed their glamour overnight. Advertising would cease, television would die. We could refocus our vision not on a succession of false images but on the world as it is. A stillness would fill the air. Art has provided us with fantasy worlds, escapes from reality. For whatever else it is, art is not reality. Soap operas, novels, movies; concerts, the theatre, poetry. None of these are real as a starving child is real, as a town without water is real. Art is the glamorous escape, the transformation that shields us from the world we live in. Injustice, endemic disease, famine, war. Those are real. Art has replaced religion as the opiate of the people just as the artist has replaced the priest as the voice of the spirit. Once we reached inside ourselves to find God / truth /really / etc. Now we find only art. We are regulated by our addictions and art hm become an addiction. We struggle through life in a drugged dream, searching for escape, for brighter fantasies, longer voyages of the imagination, louder music. Another’s life is always more interesting than our own. It is only those who have given up art who can experience the true nature of creation. Now, a self-perpetuating elite sell art as a commodity for the wealthy who have everything while making the artists themselves rich beyond their wildest dreams. Art is money. It is ironic that the myth of the artist celebrates suffering while it is those who have never heard of art, the poor and wretched of our earth, who truly suffer. To call one person an artist is to deny another the equal right of vision. Paint all the paintings black and celebrate the dead art: there is no booze in hell. We tum away from mountains of food that rot in storage while acres the globe humans grow too weak to eat because it is time for our favorite TV program. We live up to our knees in blood, wasting not only hours but days – whole lifetimes – in the bind belief that art is good, art is pure, art is its own justification – and a nightmare scourges our planet. Until we end famine there will be no peace. Artists are murderers! Artists are murderers just as surely as is the soldier who sights down the barrel of a gun to shoot an unarmed civilian. Without art, life would be unendurable! We would have to transform this world. Overnight, one person’s dream can become a nation’s future – but we do not seize power because we are enchanted by art. Forbid art and revolution would follow: the withholding of creative action is the only weapon left. Seeing and creating are the same activity. Those who create art are also creating the starving. In a world in which art is forbidden the deserts would flower. Give up art. Save the starving.

(from OVO 14 Suffering March 1992)

How dry I am, how dry I am, nobody knows how dry I am…

(sh) Speak easy, (sh) speak easy, said Johnny Brown.
I’m gonna leave this town, everything is closing down.

(sh) Speak easy, (sh) speak easy, and tell the bunch
I won’t go East, won’t go West, got a different hunch.

I’ll be leaving in the summer and I won’t come back till fall.
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
With a stein upon the table I’ll be laughing at you all.
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.

I’m on my way, I’m on my way,
And I’ll make whoop-whoop whoopee night and day.

Anytime my wifey wants me you can tell her where to call.
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.

Let’s go!

Yamo, yamo, I think I want a drink.
Yamo, yamo, there’s water in the sink.
The sink, the sink, the sink, the good old rusty sink.
But who the heck wants water when you’re dying for a drink?

That old tin pail, that old tin pail, was never meant to carry ginger ale.

[original additional lyrics]

Oh, We Won’t Get Home Till Morning is the best song after all.
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
There’ll be no more Orange Phosphates you can bet your Ingersoll,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.

There’ll be photographs of breweries all around my bedroom wall.
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.

(sh) Speak easy, (sh) speak easy, asked Tommy Gray
I must know right away, are the gals up there okay?
(sh) Speak easy, (sh) speak easy, said Johnny Brown
You ain’t been hugged, ain’t been kissed, till you’ve hit that town.

via youtube.

In April 2008 I published OVO 18 MONEY. Following the pattern of many previous issues of OVO, I was using the publication of a magazine as a chance to learn about the theme found in that publication. In the course of putting that issue together I did learn a small amount about economics. Money is that which you want to own more of than get rid of. Banking and finance regulation and the stock market seem to be far more complex. Not long after that issue was published, the world economy took a turn for the worst. My understanding of what I do not know or understand is much greater now. All I can say about this video is it made me laugh.

Ralph America [home of The Residents] will be closing after 11 years on August 15, 2010. Changes in the music business have made it very difficult for small operations to exist as the world goes download. There are sites where you can download all RA titles for free (RSD ones too) so trying to stay in business no longer works very well. RSD will also be pulling back on issuing music due to the free download sites.

EuroRalph faced a similar situation last year and also closed down [after 17 years].

Welcome to the new reality.

We didn’t buy, and so they die.

See also: Mashed in Plastic.

Jed worked at Landis Music back in the early 80s. He sold pianos, and increasingly synthesisers. Jed was the man who found me a whole KORG MS modular system for $250. That immediately places him in Master of the Universe status.

Up on the wall was a picture of Jed in white tuxedo with a white bow tie, sitting at a piano. I seem to remember there were balloons in the background but that might be confabulation from the grog. The photo was from when he played the piano on cruise ships. I like to think that many pretty ladies swooned to hear him play and would drift to his cabin after all night tinkling. But then I know a guy that DJ’ed on a cruise ship years later and he said that most of the ladies tended to be rolled up and down the decks in wheelbarrows by their husbands.

I would buy just about anything Jed pointed at. I bought a whole host of Electroharmonix drum pads – Crash Pads, Syndrums and a thing called a Clockworks which was the ‘brain’ of the pads, if by brain you mean something that could count to 12. I still have that. The rest of it I hit too hard and broke. Jed said it was as if somebody had dropped bricks on them.

I was looking at synthesisers one time and it was a big decision between this and that – back then you’d get a new synthesiser maybe once a year, not like virtual instruments. I asked Jed about it and he said – people spend their life learning how to play the piano.

Article continues.

Happy Easter, everybody!

Cheesy robot pilots battle for the planet and disco nightlife. You have seen these pilots massed outside travel agents – you know they move when you’re not watching – here the awful truth is revealed at last in high definition. First made in 2004 in standard 4:3, now regenerated at great personal cost from the original source files, extra string and leeches. Special note – the last version had a different president. The choice of current president is simply a matter of accuracy and pilots have no political bias – they hate everybody equally.

Another video that has me thinking of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick.

This video is why director Michel Gondry should be the one to adapt The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Phillip K. Dick to film.

Slide show and text of a presentation given by Tom Ellard on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of Severed Heads.

We’ve had 40 years of post everything. Stop with the passive language. Stop analysing. Publish and be damned. Progress is pornographic, but that’s not a bad thing.
Music is not research, it’s not measured in milligrams. I don’t want to told how many speakers you used, whether it was MaxMSP, whether you used a Wiimote. It’s not to be metricised. To hell with funding as the score and festivals as the new concept album. We need people to make music that’s intangible, loud, tiny, ridiculous and in every way metaphysical. Music that’s brave and foolish.
Stop seeking approval from the past, seek community, seek experience, seek humour. But the whole ‘golden age / end times’ argument has got to go. It belongs in the 1800′s.
I am not afraid of pop music, of pubs, of top 40. I make things. I make chairs, I make myself useful. Milton Babbit asked Who Cares If You Listen? I do.
Reclaim randomness. Randomness is an energy source, infinite opportunity. It is not shuffle, it’s not a nihilistic everything is the same as everything else. Difference is an energy that can lead us onward.

Radley Balko, How to Get Ahead in Law:

Last June, District Attorney David Capeless of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, announced that he was dropping all charges against 44-year-old Bernard Baran, a man who has spent half his life behind bars on child molestation charges that the state no longer has the confidence to retry. Baran was convicted in January 1985 of molesting six children at a pre-kindergarten day care facility in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He was released on bond in 2006 after an appeals court determined that his trial attorney had been incompetent and that the prosecution may have withheld key exculpatory evidence. Baran says that during his jail term he was raped and beaten more than 30 times, necessitating six different transfers to new correctional institutions. Such is the cost the prison system exacts on an openly gay man convicted of molesting children. Baran was one of the first people in the country to be prosecuted in the day care sex abuse panic of the 1980s, a bizarre nationwide hysteria fed by homophobia, fears of Satanism, and a wing of child psychology that used unproven interrogation techniques that critics say caused children to recount sexual incidents that never took place. In this case, prosecutor Daniel Ford, now a judge on the Massachusetts Superior Court, showed the grand jury that indicted Baran an edited video interview with the children. According to court documents, the video shows several kids alleging that Baran had sexually abused them. Edited out was footage in which some of the children denied any abuse by Baran, interviewees accused other members of the day care faculty of abuse or of witnessing abuse, and, most important, interrogators asked the same questions over and over – even after repeated denials – until a child gave them an affirmative answer. Some children were even given rewards for their answers. [...] In upholding the ruling that granted Baran a new trial, the appeals court added in a footnote that if the state wanted to retry him, Baran could file a motion for a hearing on Ford’s alleged misconduct. By dropping the charges, the D.A. avoided that hearing. “In my opinion,” says Boston civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate, “ the possibility of an embarrassing hearing into misconduct by a former prosecutor and now sitting Superior Court judge was the main reason, if not the reason, they decided to drop the charges. The appeals court opinion cut a bit too close to the bone for them.” So while Bernard Baran is free after 22 years of incarceration, there are no plans to look into the actions of the prosecutor, now a sitting judge, responsible for his conviction. Ford’s career trajectory indicates the backward incentive structure that prosecutors face: Convictions produce rewards, while abuse rarely comes with a penalty.

Religious Tolerance, The Baran Sexual Abuse Case:

The Bernard Baran indictment appears to have many factors in common with dozens of ritual abuse cases which surfaced during the 1980s and early 1990s. Bernard is a homosexual. That has proven to be a tremendous personal liability, because of the high level of homophobia in American society. On 1983-AUG-1, Bernard Baran was hired as a teacher’s aide by the West Side Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) in Pittsfield, MA. Pittsfield is located near the extreme western border of Massachusetts, very close to the state of New York. The uncle of one of Baran’s students complained to the ECDC that he did not want a homosexual teaching his nephew. Shortly after this complaint, he and his sister-in-law called police and said that the boy had accused Baran of molesting him. On 1984-OCT-6, Baran was charged with sexually assaulting two three-year-old children at ECDC. The number of charges reached nine after most of the 160 children at the ECDC were interviewed. Baran was 19 years of age at the time. On 1985-JAN-30, he received a sentenced of 3 concurrent life terms. Because of his age and slight build, he was easy pray for other inmates. “During his first four years, he was raped and physically assaulted 30-40 times. He has suffered serious eye injuries and many broken bones. [...] In all probability, he is innocent. In fact, the criminal acts for which he was charged probably never happened. However, the children (now in their twenties) probably retain “memories” of the abuse that were implanted in their minds as a result of improper interview techniques.

Articles continue at links.  See also the Free Baran archive.  I lived in a small town as a teenager in the 1980s.  I read books, including books on taboo subjects.  I played role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons.  I listened to music that wasn’t to be found on the radio.  I was very aware that a satanic panic was occurring in the United States, and that I could be caught up in it for my interests.  I could be accused of the kind of nonsense that Baran was caught up in.  I found two strategies that worked well in keeping myself safe.  Those strategies were knowing when to be public about my interests and when to be private.  Being public (including publishing OVO) meant that any argument I was a secret agent for evil would be weak.  Being private meant that what the do-gooders didn’t need to know about they never knew about.  But it was my dumb luck that the do-gooders didn’t try especially hard.  Now I’m an adult and it turns out reading those books, playing those games and listening to that music didn’t do me or anyone else any particular harm.  Turns out the good guys were the bad guys and the bad guys were innocent.  I’m the one who stuck by my guns.  The judges and therapists and police and teachers and clergy who made bank on the satanic panic are the ones who tucked tail and shuffled into an underground tunnel.   I don’t deserve any particular reward for what I did.  But were this a just world, they would be held accountable for what they did.  Bernard Baran spent half his life in prison to satisfy the blood lust of those who serve an invisible monster that lives in the sky.  And that’s one of the reasons I’m public about my interest in the withering away of religion under the twin suns of scorn and reason.

John Dolan, Lord Byron the eXile’s Patron Saint (via):

[Lord Byron] chose to be noisily “immoral” not because he was any worse (or any better) than the average aristocrat of his time but as a weapon against the moralism of Wordsworth. I don’t mean “moralism” in a normative sense – God no. I remember sifting through the elderly Wordsworth’s letters looking for any comment at all on the Great Famine which was extirpating the Irish, and finding only one remark, in which the great moralist earnestly prays that England will not weaken, ie provide any aid whatsoever. It’s one of the curiosities of English literary history that you’ll never find the least particle of compassion for the Irish in “moral” poets like Wordsworth. Only the “mad, bad and dangerous” Byron mentioned the slaughter of 1798, attacking the PM, Castlereagh, for “dabbling [his] sleek young hands in Erin’s gore” and, as Pope would have recommended, delivering an extra kick to his enemy’s corpse in this epitaph: “Posterity will never survey a nobler grave than this: here lie the bones of Castlereagh: stop, traveler, and piss.”

Worshippers quit church after council noise ban ‘takes away their ability to praise God’:

Members of a congregation in north London have abandoned their church – because of a council noise ban. The Immanuel International Christian Centre was ordered to keep its amplified music and sermons quieter after a neighbour complained. But the church’s pastor Dunni Odetoyinbo claimed Waltham Forest council had only told them to keep quiet so as not to offend the Muslim community. The church also argued the council had ‘taken away its ability to praise God’, and that congregation numbers had dwindled from 100 to 30 because of the restrictions. Baha Uddin, who lives near the church, had complained he was unable to use his garden at weekends and his one-year-old daughter was regularly disturbed by the noise from services. He said: ‘It’s been a nightmare. I’ve not been able to use my garden or living room on a Sunday because of the church services. The amplified music, drums and the loud sermons made having a conversation impossible. The noise made me depressed.’ But other neighbours say the noise is not a problem. The church lodged an appeal, and appeared at Waltham Forest magistrates’ court on Tuesday. In court Mrs Odetoyinbo, 55, claimed a council officer had asked her ‘to keep the noise down so as not to offend the Muslim community’. But magistrates rejected the appeal, and ordered the church to pay £2,250 costs.It can now only play music for 20 minutes on a Sunday between 11.30am and 11.50pm. A council spokesman said: ‘All attempts at mediation have failed and we regrettably were forced to issue the church with a noise abatement notice.’

Article continues at link.  Previously at OVO, The Bells Bells Bells Bells Bells Bells Bells.  When you’ve got an invisible monster that lives in the sky on your side, giving you special dispensations that are unquestionable and eternal, you might get it in your head that anything you do in the service of that invisible monster that lives in the sky is justified – nay, compulsory.  That’s the sort of thinking that causes US Presidents to declare war [1] [2] [3] [4] and Saudi Arabian architects to hijack airplanes [1] [2] [3].  Perhaps compared to these evils, annoying a neighbor is a small thing.  Perhaps it is an unfair comparison all around.  But I will say that being a pest to your neighbor is not excused by superstition.  And every time a place of religion drags the State into their affairs, both the freedom to worship and the ability to have a secular / pluralistic government suffer.

Wikipedia: “Radetzky March, Op. 228 is a march composed by Johann Strauss Sr. in 1848. It was dedicated to the Austrian Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky von Radetz, and became quite a popular march among soldiers.”

Oh, but for some of us this song means something else entirely [4:30].

The guy who slagged the football team? Those yobs were not for him.
He turns into a real estate agent who believes in discipline.

The guy who’s first to use cocaine, the wild boy breaking free?
He’ll end up in a court of law as the prosecuting Q.C.

Remember the School Captain? Success was a matter of time.
I can hear her now, as she screams “Greg! You missed the stop sign!”

Forget Snoop Doggy Dog, forget old Ice Tea.
The true word out on the streets is produced by the D.A.C.

What’s the use of striving? Life’s road in front unravels.
We get to do the driving, don’t choose the direction we travel.

Do your homework or wag for weeks, graffiti the Dandenong line.
It don’t matter much when you hear that scream “Greg! You missed the stop sign!”

Sometime in the next 10,000 years a comet’s gonna wipe out all trace of man.
I’m banking on it coming before my end of year exam.

The rich kid becomes a junkie, the poor kid an advertiser.
What a tragic waste of potential (being a junkie’s not so good either).

Your folks worked hard for what you got, you are the fruit of their vine.
Who cares what you sow and what you reap? ’cause Greg! You missed the stop sign!

Bought a car just the other day. Man! could that baby run.
But you know what they always say: there’s always a better one.

Got a tumor in my brain, it’s creeping to my lungs.
And I’ve searched around in vain, can’t find me a better one.

Hardwired into everyone’s head is the person they’re gonna be.
Growin’ up’s not a matter of choice, it’s a matter of wait & see.

So kids, yeah, you can do it! You can be your best!
Girls can do anything! You can pass the test!

I’m OK, you’re OK, we’re OK, we’re fine!
I thought I heard a semi-trailer… “Greg! You missed the stop sign!“

James King, Catholic Church Sues City of Phoenix for Right to Ring Church Bells: In June, a Catholic bishop was sentenced to three years of probation and 10 days in jail (suspended) for violating a noise ordinance by ringing church bells in a Phoenix neighborhood. On August 24, city officials warned St. Mark’s Catholic Church, located near Van Buren Street and 30th Street, that it could be prosecuted “if St. Mark did not reduce the amount of times that it rings its carillon to the satisfaction of certain neighbors,” according to a complaint filed by prosecutors. [...] The churches are asking for nominal damages, declaratory judgment under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and a permanent injunction so they can ring their bells.

What King describes as ‘ringing church bells’ in his article are recordings that are played hourly.  There’s a different mental image invoked by a weathered bell tower and its sonorous chimes peeling down through history on the one hand and a recording on the other.  There’s no definition of what a religion is in US law – that’s what the Second Amendment does for us – so there’s no legal case for preventing hourly blasts of recorded bells because it isn’t a ‘real’ religious practice.  But it does seem reasonable to compel them to pipe down, in the interest of those whose freedom of religion includes a little peace and quiet.  The bishop fighting for the right to make his joyous noise may not know it, but he is laying the groundwork for any other religious group that wants to bomb their neighborhood with their own recordings.  Say, a Muslim call to prayer five times every day over concert-grade loudspeakers.   You don’t get one without the other.  Think of the “ear-splitting” sound of 4,000 mosques doing just that – five times a day – every day – in Cairo.  Or if Cairo is too far away, think of the problems caused by religious loudspeaker use in London.  Is this really a problem that we need to import to the USA?

Nonhuman primates scarcely respond to human music, and instead prefer silence.

Monkeys Get A Groove On, But Only To Monkey Music

I’m a cyber-terrorist –
Just how cool is that?
I’m gonna take on the World Bank
And knock the bastard flat.
The broadband is my minefield
The command prompt is my gun.
The fact is I’m a dickwad
And so very young.

Number nine – your meal is ready.

Rebellion’s not been tried before,
Not that I’m aware.
We’re the first in history!
If not, I wasn’t there.
There was some sort of thing in France,
My teacher once did speak.
It can’t have ever come to much
And I skipped school that week.

Number nine – your meal is ready.

No one’s ever thought before
The thoughts inside my head.
Before us cyber-terror-kids
No one sliced their bread.

[lyrics from Cerebral Knievel by TISM from The White Albun.]

Founding member Gerardo Velasquez died of AIDS in the 1990s, but the remaining members — Edward Stapleton, Michael Ochoa and Joe Zinnato — brought back Nervous Gender for more audio terror in 2006.

Nervous Gender – The Echo – Los Angeles – Events