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A lot of the 80s soul stuff in this thread was aspirational really - music for an emerging black bourgeoise. And that was kinda weirdly radical - black people with money? Kinda the more refined cousin of hip hop's obsession - gold ropes and ice down medallions. To reject all those trappings...

How about the Nazis then? Is that a fundamentally different type of regime, or just a hop, skip and a jump away from liberal democracy?

Going up to clubs in the West End was a way away from the violence actually. That trajectory - suburbs to West End was pretty common at the time, thus the thread title. The 80s soul was suburban stuff, but the rare groove and jazz was absolutely West End.

Can literally recall having it said about me, as someone lurched towards me, pint glass in hand, i think his name was Dean though. Jocelyn Brown wasn't playing at the time though to be honest.

That probably reads quite weirdly 'cos I'm trying to relate my own personal trajectory and the blinkers I had them to demographic changes I grew up through. The TLDR is that class and race are weird shaping factors in the UK in a different way than the US. I think Gus seems to read this as if...

In a lot of ways when I first heard it for definite, just as rap was, this music was anti-hegemonic, though it would never have discussed itself in that way. It was black music first and foremost, and as such wasn't played or heard on mainstream radio or TV, you had to seek it out. It was...

That's interesting. There's a similar response in some British circles tbh, esp those strongly invested in more dissonant sounds, alternative rock experimental stuff. In the last few years, these kind of sounds have had a critical reappraisal - lots of smooth jazz, house and garage has all been...

No I'd not heard that before, cheers.

I wasn't joking when I used the phrase "Neoliberal bangers" -

Some interesting material that's a direct critique of Mearshiemer and the realist position from Phillips P O'Brien re. the shooting down of the Kirzhal missle by Ukraine last week. To understand why I believe this is really important, we need to step back to before February 24, 2022. At that...

The interesting thing is about how their wealth, power and control of land (and rental income) largely stays out of public consciousness until moments like this when they can't resist waving bejewelled fucking sceptres right in your face.

Not much. I think people find the weird pagentry appealing (as do I in a way) but no one really gives a fuck, largely 'cos it's unclear what they actually fucking do.

It looks like two butt cheeks. Getting a hand job off him would be like having sex doggy style.

How many push ups do you do a day Linebaugh? 100 would be impressive.

They'll go even madder, the far Right will take over the party but the BBC will still treat them as the official opposition and elements of far Right discourse will be normalised.

I had that with Sinclair and his book about Hackney. Shouldn't be that fucking obscure, a book about a London Borough. Yet it is, somehow

In poetry terms, I tried reading Geoffrey Hill once and gave up after finding him near incomprehensible.

I've had it a lot with film. The last Zulawski Cosmos was like that, Hard to be A God as well. I got the sense that something magnificent was lurking just behind the veil but I couldn't access it. At least with the latter there was a sea of absolute lurid spectacle to ogle at while you trying to...

There's a couple of questions which maybe foreground claims about rationality - one, is what is Russia engaged in in Ukraine?What are the stated intentions? And a big part of it ithe destruction of national identity, and Ukraine's right to exist as an independent nation. Thus the mass...

Levels of opposition or support for a war and imperialist aims more broadly are just one of the metrics here.