*UNDER CONSTRUCTION* Signal-boosting #ToryBritain truths to the nation. Helping YOU be part of the fightback.
From The Independent: Stormzy‘s headlining set at Glastonbury, which aired live on the BBC, saw the crowd chant along to the words “F**k Boris”, in reference to Boris Johnson, the frontrunner to succeed Theresa May as the prime minister of the UK.
From the Morning Star: Michael Gove has been labelled a “stuck-up, lying, money-grubbing, privileged git” by Chumbawamba’s former guitarist after the Tory leadership hopeful aligned himself with the anti-authoritarian pop group’s 1998 hit Tubthumping.
The Environment Secretary, with eyes for the top job, has branded himself “the Chumbawamba kid.”
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Mr Gove said: “Someone said the other day: Michael, you are the comeback kid. You are the Chumbawamba candidate: You get knocked down, but you get up again. That’s been true throughout my career.”
The previous week Mr Gove had been forced to out himself as a former coke sniffer prior to publication of a biography that referred to his drug-hoovering past.
His comments sparked ridicule from former Chumbawamba guitarist Boff Whalley, who helped pen Tubthumping. Mr Whalley said: “Gove doesn’t understand that in order to declare yourself a ‘Chumbawamba kid’ you have to commit to a lifelong hatred of divisive, bigoted, self-obsessed Tory public-schoolboy politics. Gove’s naive and clumsy attempt to give himself some popular cultural credibility by remembering one line from a 20-year-old pop song is ridiculous considering Chumbawamba’s reputation for attacking self-serving politicians, physically and otherwise. What a stuck-up, lying, money-grubbing, privileged git.”
#FTG (F**k The Government) is the new music video by XL, produced by D-Low Beats.
Unsurprisingly enough, the video contains strong language.
XL is an up and coming Hip Hop artist from the north of England. More at https://therealxlmusic.bandcamp.com/
XL – #FTG [Music Visual]HQ Youtube link in the comments
Posted by XL on Saturday, August 4, 2018
From The London Economic: Green Day’s American Idiot has moved into the top 20 in the UK charts ahead of Donald Trump’s visit to the country this week.
The President is set to arrive in London on Thursday and will be welcomed with hostile crowds and a Trump baby blimp in the skies.
But protesters look to have gone one step further by launching a concerted campaign to get American Idiot to the top of the music charts.
Through a combination of purchases and streams, the song has risen to No. 1 on the Amazon sales chart, cracked the iTunes Top 10, and sneaked into the Top 20 singles chart as well.
Webcam performance of “Poor Man’s Show”, a new song about #ToryBritain by Millie Manders.
I’ve been getting increasingly annoyed recently with the privatisation of our NHS, the mistreatment of the homeless and vulnerable and the cuts to police, schooling and everything else that we mere mortals need. Our government sucks.So here’s a new song.It’s called Poor Man’s Show. ❤️
Posted by Millie Manders and The Shutup on Sunday, January 14, 2018
If you enjoyed the GE17 anti-Tory song “Liar Liar” making #4 on the UK singles chart, Captain SKA will be launching a new single on December 15th, just in time for the Christmas chart. All proceeds to food banks and The People’s Assembly Against Austerity.
Anti-Theresa May song joins race for Christmas No.1. Here's the teaser for the new Captain SKA Christmas single! Available for download on December 15. Remember that BBC Radio 1 refused to play #LiarLiar due to "Election Rules"? Nothing to stop them this time..right?? We might even give Simon Cowell a run for his money!! You know what to do!! #ToriesOutForXmas
Posted by The People's Assembly Against Austerity on Tuesday, November 28, 2017
From SWLondoner: Following the austerity measures implemented by the coalition government, funding for the arts was curtailed, and access to music education has become increasingly difficult.
The 2010 comprehensive spending review announced a 30% cut the Arts Council England budget. These cuts placed significant strain on our cultural organisations, including theatres, orchestras, music venues and art galleries.
Our most prestigious institutions, including the National Theatre, Southbank Centre, Royal opera House, and the Royal Shakespeare Company, are set to lose £2.5million of Arts Council funding per year between them.
Yet the impacts are more widespread; with cuts to local council budgets, less money is being spent on grassroots music education.
While 85% of parents state that music education is beneficial for their children, 70% say that the cost is prohibitive.
The National Children’s Orchestra of Great Britain stated that 70% of its members were privately educated, which underlines that access remains an ongoing challenge.
A Spotify playlist by vinylwally of “anti-Tory songs from the Thatcher era through to the 2017 general election. Mostly fairly unsubtle.”
From The Daily Edge: Calvin Harris and Florence Welch have both slammed the Conservative Party for using their music without permission during their conference in Manchester.
Calvin Harris found out that his track ‘This Is What You Came For’ was used at the event and he was not impressed. He took to Twitter to share his disapproval about such a happy song being ‘played at such a sad event’.
Indeed the Tory conference was sad, but let’s not pretend that’s not the soundtrack of some of the most incredibly grim student nights that have ever occurred.
Florence Welch also commented on the fact that Florence And The Machine’s hit ‘You Got The Love’ was used at the conference. She wrote that the party’s usage of the song was not approved by the band, nor would it have been if they had asked.
From LeftLion: For Peter Yeandle and Lytisha Tunbridge, two of the Nottingham coordinators of We Shall Overcome, it’s time to face the reality behind the numbers of foodbank users and do something practical to help.
Together, they’ve coordinated four days of poetry, drama and music gigs over the first weekend in October. Donations at all six events will go directly to services in the city that support people in need, from those who are street homeless to families who can’t afford to feed their kids.
The decision to hold the gigs in October was made by the national We Shall Overcome spearheaders. Peter explains why it’s significant: “As the weather changes, sleeping out on the streets gets a whole lot rougher. There’s also a greater demand on food banks in autumn.” He hopes people will donate enough to help prevent food banks running out of supplies, and to make sure people sleeping on the streets are still supported when the crisp air starts to bite.
The line-up they’ve put together is impressive. Echoing the political spirit at the heart of We Shall Overcome, it’s all tied together with social commentary.
From the Daily Telegraph: Theresa May has admitted she is “not very happy” about a song which labels her a “liar”.
Speaking to BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat, she said: “Well, I’ve heard bits of it and to be perfectly honest I’m not very happy about it. I don’t much like it, I don’t think anybody would when they heard a song about themselves like that.”
From Esquire: The writer of the anti-Theresa May song ‘Liar Liar’ has claimed a BBC editor asked him “not to go too heavy on the Tories” during an appearance on the channel.
From Sky News: A song describing Prime Minister Theresa May as a “liar” and calling the country “broken” has become the most downloaded on iTunes.
The song samples clips of Tory speeches and has the chorus “She’s a liar liar, you can’t trust her, no, no, no”.
Another lyric talks about the NHS, saying: “When there’s nurses going hungry and schools in decline, I don’t recognise this broken country of mine.”
Other lyrics by the London-based ska band focus on poverty levels, schools and police cuts.
This in from Frazer…
“Hey guys! Hope you’re all good 🙂 So my #punk band Foreign Flag just put out a track called Theresa On The Guillotine and I thought you guys might be able to do something cool with it!
“We’re aiming to put any profits back into the Labour Party but struggling to get a decent reach at the moment! Turns out most publications won’t share anything with a political agenda haha!”
From Dazed: Creativity, they say, thrives when right wing politicians are in power. We’re not sure about that – with shrinking wages, an increase in precarious work, rising rents, and Tory cuts to the welfare state, the material conditions to actually create art are getting worse – but one thing that is true is that right wing politicians are a great target for artists to channel their anger towards. In the UK, some of our most inventive musicians have been inspired by their sheer, unwavering hatred for the Conservative Party, whether that’s the reggae and dub made in the aftermath of the Brixton riots or the free parties of the late 1980s and early 90s. That means that, with the general election looming, there are plenty of anthems you could choose to belt out should Theresa May’s government get the boot.
From the Guardian: Last Sunday, Snapchat users seeking the latest updates from Jeremy Corbyn were greeted with something unexpected. “It’s JME on Jeremy’s Snapchat and I’m here right now to tell you to register to vote!” grinned the Tottenham-based grime MC, while the words “Jeremy Corbyn” hovered in the background.
A month later, Stormzy did an interview with the Guardian in which he declared the leader of the opposition to be: “My man, Jeremy!”.
From Daily Mirror: Grime artist Jamie Adenuga, known as Jme, took time out from promoting his new album to have a sit down chat with Jeremy Corbyn, speaking about why so few people actually vote. He has made a point of emphasising the importance of registering to vote ahead of next Monday’s deadline.
[Read full article on Daily Mirror website…]
Akala, a Mobo award-winning hip-hop artist and founder of the Hip-hop Shakespeare Company, writes in the Guardian: “I have a confession to make: I have never voted in a general election in my life. Despite attending more demos with my parents than I care to remember, I have never yet cast a vote. I can hear the voices of disapproval. Don’t bother; it has been a conscious choice. Many people have been trained to see the Houses of Parliament as the only site of political activity and their vote as their only, or at least primary, obligation. I was, thankfully, not raised with such a narrow view of political engagement.
“So why will I be voting now? Jeremy Corbyn. It’s not that I am naive enough to believe that one man (who is, of course, powerless without the people that support him) can fundamentally alter the nature of British politics, or that I think that if Labour wins that the UK will suddenly reflect his personal political convictions, or even that I believe that the prime minister actually runs the country. However for the first time in my adult life, and perhaps for the first time in British history, someone I would consider to be a fundamentally decent human being has a chance of being elected.
From The Guardian: 2017 looks set to be awash with vitriolic political guitar albums. To the fore are Manchester’s Cabbage, creators of the snappily titled Uber Capitalist Death Trade EP, who somehow crept onto the BBC Sound of 2017 longlist with songs about austerity, Jeremy Corbyn, class war, Brexit, Kim Jong-Un, protecting the NHS, the royal family and calls for the head of Donald Trump. Perhaps aware of the Chumbawamba-ness of such themes, guitarist and vocalist Joe Martin denies that the band are activists and claims: “It’s such a bizarre political climate at the moment, it’s just occupying our minds”, but other new bands are on more of a mission.
Take Vant, a London-via-Seaham alt-rock four-piece with Joe Strummer’s principles thrumming in their veins and the blood of Boris on the boot-heels. They see every gig as a form of activism and protest. “For me, rock music has always gone hand in hand with making a stand, being on the forefront of a movement and trying to change the world,” singer Mattie Vant has said, “no-one else in rock music was saying anything that meant anything – we’re laying down the gauntlet.”
From The Independent: As the march started, originality prevailed. Long gone was the rhetoric; music now greeted the crowd from steel drums and trumpets to Hare Krishna singers and an austerity-inspired Frank Sinatra. One group installed speakers on a bicycle and travelled the entire route singing covers of rock anthems like The Clash’s ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go?’ and The Troggs’ ‘Wild Thing’.