Music

Darren Bedford takes a look at the increasingly audible working-class voice in British music. It’s been a long time since the British music scene has been graced with such a plethora of honest artists singing frankly about working-class life, cutting through the glam-bullshit of most American indie rock and certainly through the musically unadventurous monotonous garbage that is most British pop music. I say “plethora”, but we’re really only talking about a few bands here. It’s good listening nonetheless. One such band is Staines’ Hard-Fi, whose debut album Stars of CCTV was a smash hit and...

Cathy Nugent reviews Walk the Line Young American musician fulfils his goal and becomes a successful “country” recording artist. He turns to pills to cope. He is saved by the love of a good woman. Then he finds God again. Sounds pretty cheesy. But that’s how Walk the Line tells the story of Johnny Cash. Given that Cash’s musical career spanned five decades, and given that Cash was such a complex mix of a man, and led such a turbulent life, this is bound to be a big disappointment to the really serious Johnny Cash fan. But given that I am not a really serious Johnny Cash fan (just a little bit...

In August Gate Gourmet, a US-owned firm, sacked workers at Heathrow Airport, London, who provide airline food for British Airways and replaced them by scab labour. In scenes reminiscent of the balaclavas and guard dogs escorting workers from the waterfront here in 1998, seven hundred Heathrow workers were fired over five hours, many with three minutes notice over a megaphone in the company's car park. They were replaced by a smaller number of temporary workers. Gate Gourmet serves both as a warning and as an example to the Australian labour movement. Other Heathrow workers have taken action...

A musicians’ fund has been set up to help New Orleans’ musicians who have lost everything. This is from the person who has set up the fund, Stan King Joe “Fish” Bastie, a New Orleans drummer with the Preservation Hall Band, has just shown me a letter from Mr Michael D Brown, the incompetent, Bush-croney, ex-head of FEMA. Joe has been rejected for any government aid... though Joe has lost everything he's ever had. FEMA suggests that he get a small business loan. . .how generous! Joe is not a business. He’s the rhythm heart of the world’s most famous jazz band, which just happens to reside in...

The last issue of Solidarity (3-63) argued that charity appeals like Bandaid cannot stop world hunger. But does charity do any good at all? The answer to that is yes, to an extent, if you have an immediate need that it meets. And does charity do any harm? Sometimes. For instance Bob Geldof says he just wants to feed people, and would work with “the devil himself” to do it. And he has done! For example in the 1984 Ethiopian famine, the regime stopped food going to certain areas. The Mengistu regime used aid against people, as a pretext to round people up into camps. As many people died in the...

A lot of people have been disturbed and sickened by the suffering from famine in Africa. Some rock stars have felt the same way. The have got together — under the name of Band Aid — to put out a record, “Feed the World”. All proceeds will go directly to the starving in Ethiopia. Steps have been taken to prevent a repetition of the Bangladesh fiasco when very little of the money raised by George Harrison got beyond embezzlement by state bureaucrats. A very good and well meaning idea. But the record itself is almost unbelievably bad. The lyrics are so inane as to be insulting. “Do they know it’s...