This Writer asked for musical commentaries on the Russia-Ukraine situation and it didn’t take long for one to turn up!
I found this on the blog of my brother the Beast:
Mighty punk princess Toyah Wilcox and her husband Robert Fripp have been entertaining their legions of fans on YouTube over the past couple of years with their Sunday lunch performances.
Ten days ago they posted this song, ‘Ukraine We Hear You’. It’s obviously rather more serious, a musical gesture of support following the Russian invasion. Well, we in Britain and the West have heard Ukraine, and we hear Toyah and Robert’s song of support.
I hope the forces of peace and justice win, and that the war will shortly come to an end.
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Selfie: Vladimir Putin poses with Russian children. This image was taken in 2014. Does he know whether any of these children went on to fight in his Ukrainian war? Would he care if any of them died? Many millions of Russians do – don’t they?
I remember this old Sting piece from when it first came out in 1985. It is tragic that, nearly 40 years later, it has become relevant again.
The sentiment it expresses was powerful then and is powerful now, as once again Europe (and America) is in the hands of tyrants who are acting without any regard for the future of their people, or their people’s children.
Over to you, Sting:
Are there other songs out there, about the Russia-Ukraine conflict or that have been adapted to be relevant to it? If so, send links so I can put them up too.
Music, culture and the arts are powerful tools to shape political activity.
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This is how Boris Johnson’s career ends – in mocking laughter.
That’s what sisters Tabby and Chloe -who perform as Sugar Coated Sisters – are discovering after they made a TikTok video mocking Johnson and his Christmas party-going pals.
It’s a rewritten version of S Club Party by S Club 7 – and at the time of writing it has racked up 289,000 likes and a massive 2.2 million views.
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Nadine Dorries: she likes to take credit. Shame she doesn’t deserve it.
How do you like the nerve of the Culture Secretary?
Nadine Dorries (the people of Mid Bedfordshire must be so proud of her) has tried to take credit for the hard work of LIVE, the Association of British Orchestras and others who have been working hard to cut the red tape that her government has wrapped around musicians from the UK who want to perform in EU countries.
Bloody cheek – This is because of the hard work of trade body LIVE, Association of British Orchestras and others in the industry engaging with Spanish counterparts and NOT an ineffective British Government which created the problem in the first place. https://t.co/fspQDNvU4m
What motivates people like her to lie so brazenly?
Will she try to convince us that God told her to do it?
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Festival: this site stated before Brexit happened that, if you’re a musician who regularly performs at EU events, you can kiss those big crowds goodbye – unless you’re getting paid big bucks for your performance.
This is unlikely to be music to anybody’s ears: not only are musicians facing red tape and costs that make touring in Europe prohibitive after Brexit – it turns out the Conservative government deliberately arranged it that way.
According to the Independent,
The UK rejected an offer of visa-free tours by musicians to EU countries, despite blaming Brussels for what the industry is calling the devastating blow of them requiring permits.
A “standard” proposal to exempt performers from the huge cost and bureaucracy for 90 days was turned down… because the government is insisting on denying that to EU artists visiting this country.
It seems insane. Last year the UK music industry brought £2.9 billion into the country.
Some of that came from tours that went to EU countries. This Writer is willing to bet that more money came from the EU to the UK than in the other direction.
So by denying a reciprocal deal for visa-free tours, Boris Johnson has turned down a huge amount of tax income.
Maybe he isn’t musical.
(More accurately, it seems Priti Patel is the one with the tin ear – as the extra red tape is part of her crackdown on immigration which has introduced tough restrictions on tours by EU musicians.)
If you’re wondering why this is such a problem, the new rules that make touring in the EU under post-Brexit conditions prohibitive are detailed here.
Stars including folk singer Laura Marling and Charlatans frontman Tim Burgess have signed a parliamentary petition demanding visa-free tours, backed by almost 230,000 people.
Burgess explains the problems in another Independentarticle:
Bigger artists putting on stadium shows will more than likely be able to survive, but anyone below that level will be hit hard. Primarily by, you guessed it, “bureaucracy and red tape”.
Those costs mean that the precarious economics of touring Europe would make it impossible for so many artists starting out. Those artists that are lauded when they make it – those future Florences, Adeles and Eds – are having so many more obstacles put in front of them. It puts the music industry everyone is apparently so proud of under serious threat.
The government has said the Independent‘s story is incorrect and misleading.
But the restrictions have been imposed.
So who, exactly, is misleading who?
And how long will it be before the Tories realise they’ve made a mistake?
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Okay, he may still be prime minister but when it comes to pop support, Johnson falls to Corbyn.
It’s the festive season and that means it’s time for the usual slew of seasonal novelty singles.
This year, leading politicians from both the Labour Party and the Conservatives have songs dedicated to them.
On the left, we have Letter to Corbyn, by Craft-D:
Sorry, Keir Starmer fan, but there’s no song for your idol this year.
Perhaps you can console yourself with the thought that any sentiment for him may be included in the meaning of the following, which is this year’s tribute to Conservative leader – and UK prime minister – Boris Johnson:
‘Nuff said?
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Festival: if you’re a musician who regularly performs at EU events, you can kiss those big crowds goodbye – unless you’re getting paid big bucks for your performance.
As a musician myself – even though I’ve never toured in Europe – this is infuriating.
I know musicians who do gig on the Continent, and the new costs triggered by Brexit are likely to make it impractical for them to continue.
Wasn’t Brexit supposed to make it easier for us all to ply our trades? Do you know anybody who actually and materially benefits from January 1 onwards?
Here’s Howard Goodall to explain the bad news:
Dear fellow musicians, performers, technicians etc. Here’s a thread about how our lives are going to change re touring/working in the EU in 50 days time. Think of it as a kind of Bad News Advent calendar. Here goes 1/
To work or do a gig you’re going to need a work visa, just like you do for the USA. But here’s the thing. Work permits & visas and the conditions attached are a matter not for the EU but for the member states themselves 3/
So you’ll need to get a work permit for every country you’re intending to work or gig in and the rules are often different, as are the rules on eg taxation of that work (eg Spain has a withholding tax, France does not) 5/
[Fun fact: in Germany, you need to verify a contract to work there, the verification needs a passport, and the new Brexity-Blue UK passports are incompatible with the ID system they use. Cheers, Brexit Govt] 7/
You get an ATA Carnet from the London Chamber of Commerce & Industry and they cost £351.60 each (or £562.80 for their express 2 hr service) and they last 12 months 9/
Oh and if your (valuable, old) instrument contains materials derived from any endangered species, eg ivory from elephants, you will need either a FED0172 certificate or a CITES form too, from the APHA Centre in Bristol 12/
And crossing from a non-EU country to an EU one by lorry you’ll need to factor in a long-ish wait at the border. Pre-Brexit average at Dover-Calais was a few minutes per vehicle, Ukraine to Poland (non-EU to EU) anything from 1 to 32 hours. 16/
When you get across the channel, turn data roaming on your phone OFF, swiftly, or you’ll get stung for big bills now we’ve withdrawn from the EU’s roam-anywhere deal 18/
(If you want to take advantage of the EU’s cheap & easy roaming by cannily buying a burner in eg France with a French number, you’ll need a registered French address to do so fyi) 20/
That’s because Frosty & his Brexit Overlords in Downing St are WAY more concerned about fishing, an industry over ONE HUNDRED TIMES smaller than the Creative sector. 22/
Final thought. Everything we do as creative artists – everything – is about removing the barriers between people. We do collaboration, reducing conflict, bringing people closer, unity, friendship, enjoyment & shared experience 24/
All correct apart from one Carnet can be used to contain ALL the instruments an absolute nightmare to get all those serial numbers AND ALL the instruments & musicians would have to travel together if you use 1 Carnet. So far from ideal completely unnecessary & a total step back!
Last summer, the arts/culture charity I currently chair – Radnor Fringe Festival – ran an online version of its annual event because Covid-19 made a physical festival with thousands of people standing around shoulder-to-shoulder impossible. It was a huge success.
We’re currently working on making the online festival an ongoing thing, with new content by musicians, artists, actors and so on, to be funded initially by donations.
Personally, I see this as one way for UK musicians to get their sounds out to the Continent while the Brexit insanity holds sway.
It won’t be the same as being there at a gig, but it might be the only cost-effective way of being heard.
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Boris Johnson should have known better but he didn’t. Neither did his Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, who is more directly responsible.
You see, after he announced that he was re-focusing government support to concentrate only on “viable” employment, Sunak had to answer questions about what was to be done with people whose jobs were “unviable”, according to his reckoning.
His answer? “Rethink. Reskill. Reboot.” He wanted people to re-train for different jobs.
No doubt he is now left wondering why people in some employment sectors have taken his words as an attack…
… especially after a government advert that appeared today:
HM Government’s next job could be in the workshop of the prison where they’re serving their sentences for corruption. They just don’t know it yet. pic.twitter.com/Ntp00WpL4Y
It specifically targets entertainers – “Fatima” is a ballet dancer, and therefore belongs to a highly-exclusive corner of the live entertainment sector.
And it suggests that her time would be better-spent working at a desk, in front of a computer, making money for somebody else. Hence this response:
— Mark 'Being sure to wipe carefully' T (@Spungletwit) October 12, 2020
(Of course the reference is to the fact that the government lost more than 16,000 positive Covid-19 traces because it was recording them on an Excel spreadsheet that ran out of fields.)
Others have responded equally bitingly – and often amusingly. I’ll intersperse what follows with some of these.
But it is important to mention the elephant in this particular room: the fact that entertainment is a multi-billion pound industry that deserves government support that Sunak and Johnson aren’t providing.
The case was made very well by Rou Reynolds. If you’re not familiar with the name, he’s the lead singer of the band Enter Shikari – a personal favourite of This Writer’s stepdaughter, before you all start labouring under illusions that I’m suddenly “with it”.
In an open letter to Sunak, published by that venerable pop periodical Kerrang!, he made the case for entertainers to receive support – and he made it well:
Musicians rely on live performance for their main source of income.
The music industry has been one of the most drastically hit industries throughout the whole [Covid-19] crisis. And as the government furlough scheme ends in a few weeks, your government has decided to give the least amount of support for one of the hardest hit industries.
Like a fish writhing in the dust at the bottom of a drained lake, in losing the option of gigging, those in the music industry have been deprived of their life-source.
And the government is standing on what was once the shoreline, suggesting to the fish that it retrains as an elephant.
Most people in the music industry are now being told they no longer have a “viable job” and must retrain or otherwise adapt. There is to be no financial support for them. This, from the same government that wasted £2 billion on helping businesses that are actually thriving during the pandemic. From the same government that wasted millions painting planes, handing out dodgy coronavirus contracts to its ill-equipped pals and employing inept private companies to do jobs they aren’t trained for.
Lots of people are rightly focusing on the economics, pointing out that the music industry adds £5 billion a year to the UK economy. Live music specifically adds the same amount as the whole of the UK fishing industry.
But I would argue that even more important than the economics, live music creates community, friendships and it brings people together indiscriminately – something that this country desperately needs. It is a reliable tonic for our mental health, both for the performers and the listeners. It heals, it unites, it gives hope, it provides escape, it motivates us and it connects us.
Of course, these things are not measured in our economic statistics. Nor do they seem to be acknowledged at all.
Telling artists to diversify, retrain, or simply get another job is even odd in itself, to be honest. Most artists do have other jobs already. Most artists juggle multiple aspects of their own career already. Many could attempt to get more hours in the jobs they have outside of the music industry and just what…? Leave it to rot? Leave it in the safe hands of the well-funded, “establishment-approved” mainstream, and lose all the beautiful diversity and nuance of the underground, the alternative and the more esoteric scenes? The very scenes that have made UK music the world’s most inventive and leading cultural force for decades.
That Cyber First / HM Government 'Rethink Reskill Reboot' ad with Fatima the ballerina is really inspiring…
And it’s not just artists that are going to struggle either without support, is it? It’s not just whinging, complaining singers like me!
You remember those iceberg diagrams? The musicians are the little bit of the iceberg we see above the water. Look below the surface and you witness the true extent of the colossal size of the industry: it’s huge.
It’s the stage technicians, lighting designers, engineers, management and production teams, agents, press teams, media, photographers, videographers, promoters, venue staff, security, bus and truck drivers, caterers, even the kebab shop near the venue that relies on the gig-goer’s custom to keep its doors open. What happens to them?
And if you remove an artist’s main source of income, how are they then supposed to afford to record new music? You’re then impacting the record producers, the studio engineers, the mixing and mastering engineers, the session musicians, the video directors and music video production teams, the labels and the publishers.
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This Writer has always liked The Levellers and now I like them more.
The band is using its current tour to help homeless people in the towns where the tour will be stopping.
Here are Charlie and Matt to explain how it works:
I’ll be seeing the band at Llandudno at the end of this month and I intend to help.
If you’re a fan, check the lists on this Facebook page to see what you can bring.
Levellers have a new album, called Peace, out on August 14.
Here’s a taste of what it is and what they’re about:
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“What a lark”: Jarvis Cocker is thrilled that his song is the centre of the campaign – and all proceeds will go to Shelter.
Campaigners are hoping to rebuild an atmosphere of “inclusivity, representation, love, acceptance and kindness” – by getting a song to the top of the Christmas charts called C*nts Are Still Running The World.
A Facebook group has been launched to get the song to Number One and it seems that people are joining the campaign in a big way – as a comment on the Conservative general election victory earlier this month.
And the great news is that all proceeds will go to Shelter, to help relieve the huge homelessness crisis that has been created by Conservatives like Boris Johnson.
If you’re unfamiliar with this particular opus, here it is (be warned: the lyrics feature one word that many consider to be extremely strong language):
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