<Soundtracks For Them>

Thursday, October 04, 2007

This Ain't No Roller Disco

It's not every day you get tempted to a roller derby game with a free ticket, and I was hardly going to turn it down. My only expectations of the sport were rooted in bleary late night memories of a sci-fi dystopian called Powerball, where nutters wielding chainsaws whirred around a track after each other on skates and motor bikes.

After half an hour spent on transit I'm outside a high school on the outskirts of Montreal, watching promoters strain to organize a growing throng of fans panicked by rumours of sold out tickets for a Triple Threat Match play off that's set to decide the city's roller derby league final.

The contest tonight is between Les Filles Du Roi, a team of "roller skating misfits who love to knock other chicks to the floor and crack a smile when they bruise" and Los Contrabanditas, a bunch of "bootlegging betties" who escaped to Montreal after issues with US Customs to dish out some "black market brutality" or so an over blown biography claims. Inside the door, a stand sells cans of beer to fans for a couple of dollars, but most are whipping out their own from bags or starting to crack into slabs carried in with their mates.

Its only when you see a swelling audience of hipsters begin to chant along to tinny baile funk rhythms breaking across a high school auditorium PA system that you get even half way to grasping the buzz of the DIY grass roots roller derby rebirth sweeping cities across North America.

"I waited and waited for it to start here, and it didn't happen, so I started it myself. Derby has turned into a big sisterhood across the world. I was just in Vegas at Rollercon '07 and I met tons of amazing roller gals from all over the place," explains Georgia W Tush, a fan favourite in the Montreal League she helped found and now stars in.

The atmosphere is thick with pre-club land anticipatory ramblings crossed with a football match; and with so many sub cultural codes on display you'd be forgiven for thinking all the record stores had emptied out at the news roller girls were about to don short skirts and helmets.

Down a set of bare concrete steps closer to the hockey rink, two off track derby girls power a table, one gathers disclaimers from fans waiving any rights to personal injury claims, as the other tags passes on to eager wrists as people scramble for "suicide seats."

These are located right at the corner of the track behind a yellow line, an area where throughout the game the gallant spill of the chase is most likely to career violently out of control right in front of you. As Georgia describes, the injuries can be excessive.

"I've only been involved since April 2006 and I have seen broken ankles, noses, collar bones, the most disgusting bruises ever, and some mad fishnet burns. It's not if you're going to get hurt - but when."

The standard jam lasts 20 minutes and consists of five girls from each team—three blockers, a pivot and a jammer. At the first whistle, the skate starts, four from each team form a pack, while another player takes on the role of the pivot setting the pace and directing the team.

Suddenly there's another whistle and two girls begin to hurtle through the pack, they score points by lapping the track and forcing their way through over and over again. Of course, the opposite team tries desperately to take them down while their team mates guard them.

Left sort of dumbed by the circling effect of the skaters and the difficulty of following the rules I was happily distracted by the carnivalesque moments that dotted the game. They early started with a fake brawl between two of the team managers.

At half time two semi nude luche libre wrestlers emerged from the crowd, to chase each other around the ring, before being humiliatingly chased off by a demonically skating queer in a dress with wings stitched on. Eventually she gave up and grabbed a mike to provide a foul and sharp mouthed bi-lingual commentary on the game.

On the track the players are clad in short red skirts, some are ass busting dyke like, others play bookish, often with sex kitten lingerie tricks and fishnets to accompany their retro-style roller skates; some have cut their uniforms to a provocative approximation of suicide girls on skates.

This is the image obsessed over in the media and on the web, to the detriment of other aspects of the sport much to the frustration of skaters like Mia Culprit, a representative for the Toronto league of six teams and 75 players.

"Although there are the guys that go on and on about us being cute girls in skirts who fight, most people love it because we're for the skater, by the skater. We're passionate about it and it shows. People want to be involved and be a part of something like that"

Most of the players' names send mixed messages, trapped between punk zine politics and glamour rag personality. Georgia W Tush has her name spray painted across her arse stencil style like a Holy Bible era Manic Street Preacher on roller skates. She also carries her own crowd of piss taking friends from game to game. Tonight they stood at the side wielding placards inviting her to invade their bedrooms in a blend of sexual and political double entendre.

(Photo courtesy of Bubba Brown)

Laden with alter egos and theatrical characters, the sport allows its mainly twenty something participants, who like most of us, are stuck chasing ambitions in between McJobs, school, internships and the cacophonous ho-hum of the ordinary an escape.

The Montreal league's derby logo gives visual bent to this empowerment, being an image of a skating fifties waitress about to fling a skull in a patron's face.

"I think the alter-egos give derby an extra excitement during a bout. Some women live a generally normal life throughout the day, and by night there are the bad-ass of the track.," says Tush.

Then with a quickly developing fan culture outside the original mix bag base of new wave psycho-billies, punks and the queer scene, some new elements mightn't get the staged aspect of the theatrical sass, so there is the security of anonymity as Mia Culprit hints.

"I don't have to worry about any fans finding out more about me than I care to tell them. It also allows me to be someone else when I'm out on the track and live through Mia Culprit. She's a little terror!"

The sport has a growing surrounding culture that strikes like an ambiguous dance between a respectful but ironic reclamation of white trash culture and a third wave feminism busy re-assessing aspects of feminine sexuality and fifties kitsch.

Within this critical space some derby participants and fans are remarkably conscious of the potted social history of their sport, both haunted and inspired by the forgotten starlets and stories of a predominantly female sport as Mia tells me.

"This sport used to consist of a man with money dressing the girls and telling them what to do. The players knew what was coming and those women who did skate, didn't have any control over the game."

If you can remember an old Waltons episode where Jim Boy came up with some scam to win enough money to buy a type writer by dancing all night in a marathon competition, then you have some hint of roller derby's origins in working class depression era desperation.

A canny business man, Leo Setlzer, realised such dance marathons were interfering with his cinema takings, so he moved into simulated cross country roller skate races with two teams circling a track repeatedly for paying fans.

Of course the charm in this dizzying medley of repetition wore off quick for the spectator. Setlzer realised the most interesting aspect of his idea lay in dramatic collisions and falls, so with the help of a sports writer he developed a set of rules to maximise the carnage.

The fifties saw the North American public go on a derby binge, with a movie about the sport staring Mickey Rooney called The Fireball propelling its growth further. Troupes of women toured the states in exhibition roller derby games that pulled in massive crowds every night

"These were like touring punk bands lugging their own gear around the country" enthused Rebel Rockit to me, as I scabbed fags off her drunk outside a Toronto after game party.

At its height the sport featured on TV several times a week across 120 syndicated channels, with the indoor crowd record set at 19,507 at Madison Square Garden in 1970.

Just three years later the Seltzer killed off his league, due to the expense of moving teams around thanks to the oil crisis. Competing leagues continued, split along business lines much the same as the factionalism in pro-Wrestling.

Powerless players were trapped in the middle and the classic era of derby was over. Then the ad men pulled their money out.

Sociologist Paul Fussell sees it as a simple equation, "they discovered that the people watching it were so low-prole or even destitute that they constituted an entirely wasted audience for the commercials: they couldn't buy anything at all, not even detergents, antacids, and beer."

The leap of difference between that incarnation of derby and today's grassroots revivalist leagues couldn't be more pronounced as Tush explained to me.

"MTLRD is a non-profit organisation run by elected board members. We keep checks and balances by voting on major issues at general meetings. Anytime an outsider gives us fancy pants propositions, we often stand our guard and keep caution. Others realize there's a lot of money that can be made out of this, so it's always important to keep control close to home."

With a documentary called Hell On Wheels about the 2001 Austin league that sparked the current rebirth, piquing attention at South by Southwest back in March and Melissa Joulwan's anthology of Rollergirl: Totally True Tales from The Track sneaking around as cult bathroom reading, Georgina is optimistic about skater run derby.

"I'm sure there will be a league in most cities in Canada and US, and many more popping up all around the world."

Back inside Les Fils du Roi have taken the Triple Threat cup and track invading fans have built massive beer can pyramids for celebrating skaters to smash through.

Outside, as people wait for the teams to get their asses in gear to hit the after party, a cop car and a fire brigade have arrived in a hysterical over-reaction to the sight of some supporters with swirling fire poi and en masse street boozing.

The crowd of around 200 jeer them good naturedly, and some of the derby girls offer the uniforms swigs of lagar as they start to back off. I'm left to think what more evidence is needed for the momentum behind derby, than a football style roving, belligerent mob of drunk and happy fans heading into the Montreal night?

Shouts to Coach McWhopper, Mia Culprit, Georgia Tush and any one else from the Toronto and Montreal Leagues and thanks to Totally Dublin for carrying it.

Labels: montreal, roller derby, sport, Travel

# posted by antrophe @ 8:22 PM

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Saturday, September 01, 2007

Scratching the Surface of San Telmo

Buenos Aires is a city where European cultural impulses throb with a South American heart beat. Each night I found myself basking in a pool of dusk in squares ruled by colonial elegance, sipping Quillmes beer, sucking on cigerettes and nattering over life's hum and haws in the night time company of young portenos (Buenos Aires locals).

The economic collapse and peso devaluation of 2001 has made Buenos Aires an increasingly popular destination for partying American students and it has even become a retail respite for bargain hunting backpackers. Foreign language capabilities and youthful exuberence take precedence in the resulting tourist industry, allowing high unemployment to be avoided.

Staying in the Hostel Inn on Humberto Primero, one of the party hostels brought on by this economic boom, meant that I was planted right in the heart of San Telmo.

The pressure cooker of a hostel nestles nicely beside the gorgeous Plaza Dorrego, surrounded by old time cafes with their omnipotent lomo completo (world famous Argentinian steak) and ice cream parlours exhibiting the best of Argentina's Italian heritage. The Plaza also plays host to antique fairs during the weekend and the daily handicraft sellers give a taste of the hippy sub culture that exists. Off the plaza there's an open indoor market, selling limited edition screen printed t-shirts and hip urban wear.

La Boca, the old dockers neighbourhood and centre of the Boca Juniors universe, is only about ten minutes walk from San Telmo. A tack filled, tourist warren called Caminito in this otherwise run down neighbourhood is the main attraction. It stands out like a sore thumb, a badly executed memory to the immigrant heritage of the city. The hastily constructed housing in the area led to the colourful mix-match housefronts and were all artificially restored in the fifities by the artist Quinquela Martin.

(Photo of a Tourist in La Boca)

This area is famed for flamboyant tango dancers busking on the sidewalks. Away from the maddening crowds, in a bar called La Tanguerra De Roberto near Plaza Almagro, tango is a whole different experience. It is less a regulated dance and more an outpouring of pent up blues. There's a harsh reality to life in contemporary Buenos Aires, so this "tango as blues" interpretation is understandable.

In the Zizek Club on Mercoles de Octubre, the urban consumer class dish out ten pesos to watch a DJ from the States dance P Diddy style, yelling 'I do it all hours like Austin Powers!'. Later, a band called Matimatike, sporting a sort of early millenium street wear with one tracksuit-bottom leg pulled up to avoid an imaginary bike chain, encourage the crowd as they spit fire over some simplistic beats.

Taking the Subte across the city from San Telmo to Palermo is a must. Scores of kids sell religious medallions and pour fast paced descriptions of the medallions’ inherant magic before gathering them up and hopping onto the next carriage. It becomes a lasting memory as you emerge from the underground into the globalised extravagance of Palermo.

There, the Recoleta cemetery graveyard, once the highest valued real estate in the city, is but a walk away. Decorative gothic angels and gargoyles haunt Evita's final resting place in this city, replete with miniture mansions as holding spots for the bones of the nation's elite.

Palermo also holds the MALBA (Museo De Arte Latin Americano de Buenos Aires), with its Costantini Collection collection documenting the whirlpool of artistic vanguardism Buenos Aires has always prided itself on. Ironically, the amazingly vibrant street art culture that is spreading like a virus through out the city today is being clamped down on by the government for the sake of tourism.

However it is stil possible to catch glimpses of multi-coloured visions of Hendrix, animated sprites, subverted street signs and thousands of stickered cartoons that sparkle like diamonds in the corner of your eye everywhere you walk.

Buenos Aires can be anything you want it to be; all surface and no feeling or a city where the best will only be found the more you scratch the facade.

This overly gushing travel piece was published in a recent edition of the Irish Backpacker Magazine, if I remmeber it right, its amazing how much they edited out. Something else from Buenos Aires will be popping up here soon too...

Labels: Buenos Aires, Street Art, Travel

# posted by antrophe @ 4:25 AM

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Tuesday, April 03, 2007

A Big Hole On Jagtvej: Remembering Ungdomshuset.

There's a big hole on Jagtvej. They tore it down and now there's nothing but a big hole. It could be a carpark. At the wall to Saxons there is still a chimney and flue that they couldn't destroy. Some people gather around it and there's a few candles lighting, a makeshift shrine in an imaginary fireplace. Someone tells me that you can go down Jagtvej and if you don't pay attention you can still see Ungeren in the corner of your eye.

But it really is gone. If this was a normal day I would have come into Copenhagen and walked up the steps and said hi to everyone at the door. I would have walked past the stairwell and into the bar, and all my friends would be there, sitting in a corner and complaining about the kids even if they're only twenty three. I could have gone to the bar and got a warm organic beer for only 12 kroner and I could have smiled till my cheeks got sore.

But it's gone now, and there's nothing but a hole on Jagtvej. It took three days of rioting and seven hundred arrests to tear down Ungeren. but they did it. And now my friends are in jail and who knows when they'll get out. And there's a great big hole on Jagtvej.

What could they put there? Property prices have shot right up, now that those disreputable elements have been denied their refuge. It could be a train station, a shopping centre, apartment blocks, even a church, but it won't be Ungeren.

We had it for over a hundred years. Built by the worker's movement it was a bookstore, a meeting house, a ballroom, a boxing ring. It grew disused and run down before we took it back, and the resistance used it as a base to fight the fascists from. Years later and it was empty again, 'til the city gave it to quiet a growing squatters movement. Now it became a concert hall, a soup kitchen, a bar, a place for those who wanted something different to go. A place to read books, make music, cook food and drink beer.

But now there's nowhere left to go. How can a movement centred around a single place survive without that place? It doesn't seem possible. Even if they do get a new house, it won't be the same. Who can handle a defeat like that?

There was nothing perfect about Ungeren, it was full of faults and all the inconsistencies that trying to live free in capitalism entails. The market logic penetrates everything, even some supporters of Ungeren would claim that it 'nurtured creativity' to please the city council. But you cant express the value of a place like Ungeren in the logic of capitalism. The value of Ungeren was freedom, autonomy, a place that you could organise yourself; that's what made it fun, that's what made the people there the nicest people in all of Denmark, how can you sell that to a politician?

But now they have had their way, and once again Copenhagen is to be grey, peaceful, bland and boring. Sports bars, bistros and cinemas, organic food and who fucking cares? Every single bit of it shouting in our face 'there's no place outside of capital, there's no place we can't find you'. The only answer we have is struggle, struggle and the refusal to give up until our whole lives are made of freedom.

By Ronan

Labels: Denmark, Guest Blogger, Politics, Ronan, Travel, Ungdomshuset

# posted by antrophe @ 2:39 PM

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Monday, January 08, 2007

Two Months In Print: From the Book Exchanges Or Not?

The stalls may be bustling with Spanish language editions of Dan Brown sitting alongside The Art of War and Das Kapital, but the best you'll manage is to scan through a daily tabloid and come away with a faint understanding . Well thats the experience of an Spanish speaker in South America. This gives a weighted importance to book exchanges in hostels. Far from being bursting, divergent little caves of taste and interest, invariably they included two shelves of semi-erotic romance novels, spy-fiction in abundance and multiple out of date travel guides. Here's some books I got around to reading on my travels. You can judge what came from the exchanges and what came from ruthlessly rooting around markets yourself. In the spirit of 60 Seconds On Film here's some reviews. Rueeq had a similar idea and reviewed some of what she read, doubling up on some of the ones below and others.

Primitive People, Francine Prose This is exactly the sort of book that old adage on judging by the cover warns you against. A forceful, blurb bends you towards this supposedly, acerbic anthropological satire of American, middle class suburbia. This is Wisteria Lane as seen through the eyes of Simone, a Hatian migrant economically conscripted as "care giver" to the permanently crisis prone divorced Rosemary.

The authors finger is on the trigger when it comes to characterizing the shallowness of the upper middle classes, simultaneously wrapped in dilemmas about their own status, then flaunting it or trying to off-set it through New Age philosophy or exploring the artist within. Cringe inducing incidents provide the backbone of the humor, and then like one Desperate Housewives voice over too many it all becomes a little too tedious to bother finishing.

Death in the Andes, Mario Vargas Llosa Llosa is a writer to make your spine tingle. In this delicate combination of love story and detective noir he crafts a modern horror relying in equal dose on the natural spookiness of the Peruvian mountains and the violence of Sendero Luminoso. The Senderistas become confused and intertwined with demons of the hills in this clash of rural/urban and furoe into the persistence of pagan belief among Andean peasants. The plot unfolds around a coastal city Civil Guard Corporal Lituma, who lands a rural out-post investigating the mysterious death of several laborers on a road-works.

It's a series of narratives within narratives, on one hand Lituma's lovelorn side kick interrupts the textual flow with flashbacks to his own romance with a former prostitute. On the other hand Lituma, tortures himself with imaginings of the bawdy drunken debauchery foisted on road laborers by Dona Adriana and her husband the mystic Dionisio who run a shanty roadside canteen. The ancient and modern collapse into each other, leading to a violent and iconically charged ending that immediately brings the Wickerman to mind.

From Gangland to Promised Land, John Pridmore Remember those secondary school afternoons when some lunatic with a history of drug addiction, mental breakdowns and violence held your class rapt with tales of his visitations from God? Yes well John Pridmore is one of these retreat running men. In Carlow one particular wild haired, former seventies rocker, a skillful story teller who noodled Zeplein on acoustic and warninged of their dalliance with satanic rites and the consequences on young minds. Pridmore never had such occult rock ambitions, instead he was a simple minded East-end bouncer with a short fuse. Pridmore successfully cultivates a soap opera hard-man on the downward spiral image, concoctions of drugs, women and lad culture take their toll and he first obsesses over some slight on his pub pride and then batters some kid near to death.

Mid way through his court case he of course turns to God, replacing a set of voices in his head with just the one. Amble on through a series of adventures in the poverty industry, where Holy John used his tough boy exterior to break down walls between youth and social workers and its all pretty much wrapped up until celebrity status strikes through the Youth 2000 campaign. There are some truly disturbing moments described as he sails through school retreats. One such class weighed heavy due to the presence of visibly upset and distant girl. In private Pridmore advanced towards her and told her the reason for her state of mind,as God had put it to him - serial childhood sexual abuse. If you want a picture of the mentallers still being dragged into our schools to shore up the moral fiber of our teenagers in religion classes, here's your start. You couldn't even begin to make this bollox up.

Fortress of Solitude, Jonathon Lethem One of the more brilliant novels to fall into my hands recently, but this loses its glittering attraction towards the end by eschewing explorations of the 1970's Brooklyn tagging and hip-hop culture for the personal trauma of growing up white in a black neighborhood. Though disappointed by the ultimate direction of this novel, it'd be foolish not to recognize how Lethem has made the area of racial tensions and its contribution to pop culture his particular area for mining anecdotal recalls from the very recent modern.

He builds up a plot around the shared mutual love of DC Comics, hip hop and robbing spray paint between two boys, one white, one black. That these two kids would take such dramatically different paths in life is an testament to the strength of racial separation in the states today, despite the mainstream acceptance of predominantly black cultures. Brooklyn breathes all over this book, you can be of no doubt that Lethem was inhaling its air as he produced the detailed accounts of building gentrifaction beginning with the '60's counter culture and then how crack first began to take hold in the projects.

History of Argentina in the 20th Century, Luis Alberto Romero Going by the Evita Museum and others in Buenos Aires, after the dictatorship came to power - it without reason dug up the first lady of the Peronista movement's corpse. The gaps between what most national history museums tell you and the reality of a country's politics is the reason you rush out and buy a book like this to fill in the blanks yourself. Romero has produced a book that does extraordinarily well on the undergraduate circle, its constant status as an instant reprint has led to more recent updates to cover the dramatic neo-liberal restructuring under Carlos Menem and the more recent uprisings from 2001 on.

Basically its a dry, academic history of Argentinian presidencies and their economic polices, the complexity of social movements are really only explored when they pierce out of and briefly push aside state hegemony as in the late 1960's and again in the late '80's and 2001. Though for an account of the social movements readers are best pushed off to reading the contemporary accounts the author himself will likely end up relying on for future updates. Romero successfully manages to give the new comer a grounding in the emergence of Argentina as a distinctly European South American city, his coverage of the Juan and Evita Peron movement, which in itself stands as a good basis for moving on to other periods while the corruption within the ruling elites is pleasantly left wide open for consumption.

Wild Swans, Jung Chang This piece of history from below has probably sat on most book shelves since the mid-1990's, when it first had accolade after accolade thrown on it for its emotional detailing of the lives of three daughters of China. Its brick shaped size has put many off, but don't be afraid. What Chang has managed to do is create a highly engrossing account of three periods in Chinese history, from the period of war lords and Japanese occupation, right through to the civil war between the nationalist Kuomintang and the communists and then the most dramatic period of all under the stewardship of Mao and the cultural revolution.

At its best Wild Swans details the effect different forms of political hegemony had on the internal life world of the Chang family. The most astute renderings are the descriptions of the lives of women during the three periods, from the concubine existence of her grandmother and her struggle against it to her own mothers development as a communist as a slap in the face to the reactionary feudal system and its prescriptions on women. Wild Swans is a fantastic entry point to Chinese history, but the author's bleeding heart eventually becomes tiresome as you realize the gap between her parents sufferings and her own privileges.

My Century, Gunter Grass There's a name that rings familiar, you associate it with terms like "intellectual tour de-force" or the obscurities of German left-wing writers. A lot is riding on it when you come across one of his books for the first time. My Century is an unusual novel, it rolls through what Eric Hobsbawn called "the century of extremes" in a series of personal tales told by 100 different voices for 100 different years. The years of the Great War are recalled by the hunched over authors of several war classics from a perch of four decades later, while the twenties and thirties are marked by the social crisis of German society between the struggling forces of Communism and the fascist response to working class organization.

Overall as this landslide of voices tumble down around you Grass presents a multi-faceted, overview of the complex questions that feed into the construction of contemporary German national identity which dominates the novel from the 1960's on and emerges strongly again in the era of re-unifaction. To be honest, that Grass received the 1999 Noble Prize for literature for this novel says more about the pre-millennial love for count downs than his writing talent.

Labels: Irvine Welsh, Literature, South America, Travel

# posted by antrophe @ 2:50 AM

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Saturday, June 10, 2006

Look Ma No hands!

Biking across the country . . . everyone says your mad. But like most things like this I say yes first and think about the reality too late to skip out on the plan. Only one of the six of us had any experience of cycling long distances and as these things work, she was the only one who got injured. My faith in humanity was renewed as locals let us sleep in their fields and offered us tea. But only slightly as our entertaining trip to Knock reminded me that you get more people every day going to absurd religious sights and taking it seriously then you would get to any libertarian event in Dublin. Considering all the blasphemous things we did while in Knock we better be right about there not being a god!

Our trip started off in full force that has us cycling through many a country and 117 kms in the first day. If we didn't have a bed waiting for us at the end of that day I would have given up and fallen into any ditch to make the pain go away. But in the end it was all worth it, we left the green fields of the midlands and arrived to the coast of Mayo. All I have to say is I heart Mayo.

With my illumimous vest stating Shell to Sea that I never seemed to take off and ruined many a photo with the reflection I could pretend that yes this fun bike ride had some thing to do with politics. But the reality is the few flyers we gave out were just an after thought to things like swimming in the bay of Grainne Whales castle and sitting at the edge of cliffs while we
ate our picnic.

So don't worry I havn't become a lifestylist . . . just needed a holiday and believe you me the weather was with us the whole way. They say the Rossport solidarity camp is no holiday but when the weather is like this and they are located at one of the most beautiful spots in all of ireland with an isolated beach you can't go wrong.

Click here to see a photo essay of the weekend and here to read a random bits about the bike ride.

Labels: Biking, Ireland, Social Movements, Travel

# posted by Reeuq @ 1:17 PM

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Thursday, May 25, 2006

ATP 2006: Universal Value Systems and a Dose of Advice From Charles Manson.

All Tomorrow’s Parties is one curious beast of a festival. Displaying an acute branding genius, it holds sway with a certain vintage of muso regardless of whatever gets thrown up on the mixing desk. The myth these weekends have cultivated for themselves revolve around the idea of the all inclusive festival, a return to Eden with none of the corporate tie-in's that trample the leaves of your common garden variety festival. At ATP, there's a delusional hope that you are as liable to find Richard D James smoking blow outside your door as have a drunk teenager crash into your tent at 5am. This myth always guarantees a crowd of avidly pepped up enthusiasts. So low and behold cue a festival brimful with girls all wearing exactly the same Top Shop provided faux charity shop dresses. Accompanied by legions of the most self-conscious looking rake thin Indie males, all still pale from being shipped in en masse via container trucks and refusing wholesale to let themselves enjoy anything in case it dare scare well cultivated long faces with a smile.

This is a rites of passage that guarantees a brimming sense of smug satisfaction once you get back to posting online on whatever off the map indie forum wiles away the working day. There's the assurance of a buzzing self imposed musical austerity at ATP, this ain't no Glasto, this is pure unadulterated exclusion. You come here because you are of the curators mindset, there's no mid day ramblings between fields of random “yeah they're ok” bands. This is a pure hit, straight to the heads of muso beard scratchers. ATP bills itself as a showcase of the definite left of centre music scene, it lets you walk through the pages of The Wire magazine as it masquerades as a festival. Then when you are finished your top shelf browse, you can return home and big up your latest musical gems. As the curators make this festival, it was funny that the organisers stuffed the upper shelves of the first weekend this year with as discordant a set of curators as you are ever liable to find. Ranging from grunge survivors Mudhoney, New York fashiontas and indie scene ascendancy hispters the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and finally a nature worshipping hippy operating under the name of Devendra Barnhurt. That's a mix of archetypes that I wouldn't trust enough to DJ at a house party never mind take hold of the musical range of a whole festival. Are we prepare to run straight from the debris when the stereotypes come crashing into each other head on?

ATP is set amidst a sprawling sea side resort called Pontins. While Mosney shipped in the refugees to reap its millions as the housing estates packaged themselves off to the Spanish coast instead of the Irish seaside, Ponitins eyed up the demographic of the offspring of the original children who ran around barefoot in its chalets. Bare moments from a sun washed, sandy beach the resort stands as a bizarre monument to industrial society. While Russia had its artificial beaches, the UK had fields full of prefabricated housing with concrete crazy golf, massive arenas of late night waltzing and the flashing lights of arcades and one arm bandits. All now handed over for this festival to the delight of an urbane class of young professionals. A democgraphic who grew up revelling on the kitsch effect gleaned from a shared ironic attachment to the half broken memories of childhood entertainments and toys. Left to wonder around this open prison, you are left puzzled at how the appendages of decayed and past tense modes of production are revitalised and put once again to productive use for the leisure industry. Wandering around this bizarre ode to modernism late at night, it was piss easy to wind up lost, rambling through its enclaces and circling on its roads. Hero City, Surf City, Echles Green..chalet numbers jarred completely out of any rational order and only a pirate flag in your sitting room window to confirm the individuality of your place of stay.

For the first night Mudhoney outlasted grunge long enough to provide the crowd with re-jigged memories of early teen bedroom tantrums and we moshed ourselves sweaty to them. But as most of their recent work warned the acts they brought in were a cold mix of static seventies stoner rock from the likes of The Drones and The Scientists, leaving an already staid crowd rooted to the spot. If there was a spontaneous outburst all weekend, it came from those sudden moments where the music crashed at the end of the night, quick spaces opening as the previously crammed crowd turned joyfully on itself to kick crushed plastic glasses at each other before being pushed off by security.

Only the Yeah Yeah Yeahs selection whipped up something of a festival fervour but this was purely amplified in comparison to the tedium of the rest of the line up. No-wave noise merchants Macik Markers left pained ringing ears, less due to scrapped electric guitars battered by plastic fish and more due to an over indulgent wank fest in undergrad philosophy from their lead singer best po-mo pronouncements over a cacophonic rehash of the droned out feedback that ends a Sonic Youth song. The Ex-Models provided a blistering set of roof shredding noise in the vein of a less hyper Meltbanana, while fellow NY-er duo Services displayed the only hint that something called rave ever came to pass with a very LCD Soundsystem-esque set of rantings over a fucked sampler that veered from Cabaret Voltaire to the mashed up punchy industrial of Patric Catani. The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s gig was more like a convention where every minor regional town hipster this side of Wigan pier circa 1975 gathered to be beamed instructions on next seasons fashion loves and hates via some sort of gamma exuding death ray embedded behind the glasses of Karen O.

With a poor line up, a lot of time is spent taking advantage of the arcades, drinking in the chalets and simply crowd watching. Everyone is on stage, and everything is a performance. Indie girls are following people who look like they are in a band around with cameras. A group of friends who look just like that, mates sitting stoned at a festival are asking each other why the hell that woman is filming them? For a documentary of course, in a world full of Nathan Barley cunts it can only make sense. Two hippies sit in front of you as you are queuing for a car racing arcade game. Like a warped Doors cassette tape hinting at the music it once held before being consciously updated, they are out of synch - is it familiarity or difference? They aren't just fans, there's something more. Why the fuck is that guy filming them? He looks pathetic, drunk you brag loudly about the perpetual idiotic task of finding art even in the down time of a video arcade. But it expresses itself much more along the lines of "posing wankers"than any comment on the culture of performativity. Step off the stage, these wishful hippy fuckers are probably his mates - yet they blank him completely as they stand and leave and he is left to follow in his own path of reverence for them through the arcade. Wait? Was that Devendra leaving credit on a car racing game? Nice one, dickhead. Its saturday night, lets get a party started – not quite. A candle lit dinner blossoms behind your chalet. "Its a real cooked meal AND its going to be in a documentary." God bless us and save us the things ya have to listen to, just to have your fucking craic...

Inside the gig, in that sanctified zone of rest outside the toilets, a four year old child runs by. The girls beside me starts pointing "there's so many chavs at this festival" she drawls in a Londoninnit acccent "one of my friends was going to ask them for drugs, we had to drag him away." The curated TV suddenly appeals with R Kelly's soap opera echoing “Trapped In The Closet” turning into a wry festival highlight, a musical epic of infidelity and his brazen attempt to distract from his impending sentencing for statuary rape. Visiting other peoples chalets is a must at ATP and only after rushing through a blisteringly entertaining hour of Scooter and Queen at another Irish chalet is it time to hit the bar. It comes on with the piss head rush of a classic student bar, with Stone Rose's anthems mixed in with pulsating LFO and Vitalic. The place is dancing like crazy – or is that just the drunk punters on the stage? When its time to go outside in pursuit of a buzz, you are literally dragged along in a manic congo line through one door and out the other deposited in the playground.

Late into the night, bouncing through variant clusters of people, its burgeoning on 6am and sitting on the grass in Surf City opposite a Richey Manic lookalike. Cross legged in his white faded jeans, a pair of brand spanking new Converse and a laboured claim to fame as the singer with a short-lived band "you may've heard of us? We played around London" blissfully ignorant of the cliche cartwheeling out of his mouth he continued "called the Walking Abortions?" My own blissfully clichéd, drunken maggot of an Irish man, comes storming up inside of me prepared to wreck havoc in this quite isolated resort for the retired festival goer and their wuzzy Indie offspring. No amount of MIA from the satisfactory stereo can placate me. The words of Magick Markers still ringing pained in my ears, its all too much and I start to roar: "Wake the fuck up ATP! Universal sets of value systems still exist. The need for free mass education may seem extravagant to a bunch of charity shop dress wearing..." A running blur from my chalet as one of my co-horts rushes out and grabs me by the lapels "James SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Holy shit ATP is expectant, its waiting for a party that will never happen, its waiting for tomorrow, there can be no celebrations – no real celebrations tonight with whatever catatonic state of indie indulgence has been curated for us...pillow, then sleep and hangover.

For the final day all you had to do was factor in a line up curated by nature worshipping Devendra Banhart and his "gobshitey" face. Far too folk seemed to have a problem when this wispish hippy, looking like the wind blew him away from sucking on an acid tinged mole on the side of Jerry Garcia's arse came on stage and started muttering to himself "man...we...glad to ...be here...we are all..same direction...vibes." As for some of the others, groups like the Metallic Falcons looked like they took too much advice from Charlie Manson. Scarred by the 60’s and reliant on blessing a stage with incense before murmuring cathedral reverb-ed vocals to the ground. You quickly realised it was time to head back to the chalet for a marathon run of Dr Who and write this festival off and deal with the continued stomping hangover.

Labels: ATP, Gig Review, Music, Travel

# posted by antrophe @ 9:17 PM

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Sunday, April 09, 2006

The 30 Second Bookviews Of A Wanderer

Homage to Catalonia George Orwell - When asking Anthrophe if this would be a good book to take with him, he sat up suddenly, said that I should drop everything else, read this one first and write a 2000 essay on how it changed my life. So I did, well not the essay part but I did read it first and really its a personal account of the Spanish Civil War. An example of anarchy in action. And you can see the roots of where 1984 and Animal Farm came from. If I was younger and didn't already know about the Spanish Civil War and politics I could see how it could "change my life". So I suppose I could write a retrospective essay. In the end it entered my subconsciousness and started having dreams about being coined a communist and having to go into hiding.

Animal Farm George Orwell - I got this book in Lunag Prabang when I traded in my scuba diving book that I had no use for and which apparently has no value outside the islands. The question might be why have I not read this before, the answer to that includes families, gender prejudice and teenage angst. Its a simple book, screaming absolute power corrupts absolutley and begging people to fight for anarchism. It did encourage me to buy Burmese dreams go continue my George Orwell and South East Asia theme, but alas by the time that became a possiblity I was stuck into cyber punk novels.

Sex Slave; Traffiking of Asian Women Louise Brown - This book is just badly written. Really this woman has all this knowledge and information and she wants to get it out but what ends up happening is a spewed mess that repeats the same point through examples of a dozen countries. If you want to find out more about the sex industry in Asia I would suggest starting from her bibliography but giving this book a miss.

GB84 David Peace- This is another book that Antrophe suggested I bring, this time I didn't listen to him (mainly because the book was to large to drag around for two months.) But the second island I was on had it in their library. WARNING it can seem confusing to start off with. Its a historial fiction about the Miners' Strike. I actually really enjoyed the confusion of it all, you have a diary entry of an average joe on one side of the page then a novel who's chapters are split into weeks of the strike. You end up flipping back and fourth alot trying to get it all in. I left this book half way through since it still was too big for me to drag around and secondly because it really started to bring be down . . . corruption, money - power - control. I read it dirrectly after Homage to Catalonia and started to be sick of human behaviour in general. I will pick it up and finish it now that I am home and don't need to drag it around.

The Princess Bride S. Morgenstern - Classic. For all those who watched and loved the movie as a kid, this will bring back the greatest memories and let you hear Vizzine lisp "INCONCEIVABLE" in the dialogue in your head and it makes all your adventures a bit more fun, the crazy cliffs that you kayak past become the cliffs of insanity. Classic.

Pattern Recognition William Gibson - William Gibson is said to be the god father of cyber punk novels. This is a more recent one of his that I would say he has not lost his touch. You will be infatuated with the main character unsure if you want to be with her or be her. The discriptions of London, Tokyo and Moscow are brilliant along with the internet message board world. Its a gate way drug to the cyber punk world.

VURT Jeff Noon - Yet another cyber punk novel. Dealing with drugs, dreams, virtual reality, love, sex and fighting cops. Jeff Noon takes you to the world of the Vurt filled with robodog, shadowgoth, robocrustie, pures and many more. This book will take you a bit longer to read then the average novel but really its worth getting your head around the stash riders world.

Around The World In Eighty Days Jules Verne - Mud traded something to get this. I felt through out the book that I was going to be asked to write an essay on how the British colonists viewed the orient and the other. The discriptions of cultures and places were so full of arrogant sterotypes. Yet its a great read to have when you are traveling. Any time you are taking long journeys of trains, boats, buses etc, you can always say Phileas Fogg would have been proud. It started an adventure reading tread for Mud. Which resulting in her naming her dragon (the one that would accompany her on her adventures after I left) Jules.

The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown - Ok there was this couple that saw me reading The Princess Bride and got all excited, they wanted to know if they could trade it for some classic after I was done. They were all cute about it. The guy had never read it before and the two of them were going to read it out loud to each other. A few days went by and we never say them. We had given up on the trade untill we ran into them agian on the way to Bangkok. We gave them the book happily only to discover The Da Vinci Code was all they had left to trade. I had avoided reading this book for years, since EVERYONE plus your grandmother has raved about it. It felt like reading the subtitles to a Hollywood film. Don't get me wrong the female goddess stuff was interesting and made we want to look at paintings in a new way. But nothing has screamed block buster to me like this before. So wait and watch the film, its on its way out.

The Plough and Stars Sean O'Casey - This is an Irish play that created mad controversy when it first came out. Its a critique of the Easter Uprising. Basically saying that it was out of touch with what the working class people wanted. Its a realist play and blatently says what it likes. And really a nice touch of Dublin while you are away.

Heart of a Dog Mikhail Bulgakov - This book was lent to me by Doc, saying it was a good travel book. Its a parady of the Russian Revolution. Very weird, very good. But it did make me start to wonder about my book choices.

Parody/discription/analysis of revolution: 5/11
Books where animals stand up like humans: 3/11
That means more then 25% of the books I read had dogs or pigs walking around like humans.

Labels: Literature, Travel

# posted by Reeuq @ 8:18 AM

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Monday, April 03, 2006

Dispatch 12: Three Out of Four

So I have been traveling for 8 weeks now to the day. I have only had three days that didnt' work out. Three days. These three days have been in the past four, which have all been in Chaing Mai! Really disasterous. the thing is this is the city where "you just have to go to" (don't believe the hype!) everything is pre organised for you. Life becomes a package. The reason people come to Chaing Mai is to get out. Really, its for organising treks, taking classes etc, it is impossible to just enjoy something on your own, there are set prices/times etc for your enjoyment. You want to see a park but the only way to get there and back is a group taxi and they say you can only stay an hour. When you refuse and stay as long as you want there is no way to get back.

But here comes my love hate relationship with the Thai tourist industry. I hate how they organise my time and tell me when to smile, laugh, take photos and when to leave. But since they have a reputation to uphold you can work outside the system. Like yesterday we were 30 km away from Chaing Mai on top of this mountain the only westerners in this beautiful park (the rest of the westerners were told that they had to leave by three but the place is open for ages after that). So we walk out and there is no tuk tuks to be found. We were planning on starting to walk and hitch a ride. We decided to ask the security guards if there were anymore buses or taxis. Suddenly they went into panic mode, two falangs got stuck here, oh no. This guy started to stop cars and he hooked us up with a ride back.

The same thing happened to me today, I rented a bike and biked 12 km out to this water reservoir ( I will have water surrounding me even if I am in a land locked city!) of course the bike breaks down a few km from the place. It was only the chain falling off, but for some reason the chain is covered in metal casing and with no screw driver or anything that could act as one, the chain debilated the bike. But the park guy concerned that yet again a white tourist would be put out found someone to give me a ride in the back of their truck to a place I could fix the bike.

The contradiction of the Thai tourist industry is that if something does go wrong in your world and it is there fault or at least not your own, there is no apologies. This country is said to be the land of a thousand smiles, but really people here don't seem happy, they only smile when they are ripping you off. But lets say there is a huge cockroach in your food - no apology and definitly no discount. Lets say they forget your food all together or give you completely the wrong thing- you are treated like you put them out for reminding them you did order something. And lets say your bike breaks down in the middle of no where, you have to walk a few kms in the heat to a place you can rent another bike for a few hours and then pay to get it fixed. Well don't expect anything in return instead expect to feel contempt as if your sheer existance has put them out.

It interesting to note that the Laos people seems to smile for real and laugh all the time. They live in a poor communist country. Thailand is flithy rich in comparison and I have never seen a people so miserable.

Did i meniton I hate it here! Overhearing brain dead American conversations is mind numbing enough when they are in their 20's but then you see them a bit older and you realise that the idiots and the assholes somehow get positions of power. The same guys you hear screaming white power (with out realising the connection to any nazi idiology) at a boxing match between a Thai guy and a Canadian grows up and sits in a restaurant with you and talks about how people at work have a duty to serve you and if you just change the language around and make them sound more important then they are they they will be happy to serve you. AHHHHH!

I hate tourists, the tourist industry and not the biggest fan of Thailand (at least where they have high quanities of both of these) But take me to the non tourist rest of South East Asia and my heart beat drops a few beats and I feal that I am in paradise and might never leave.

Labels: Tourism, Travel

# posted by Reeuq @ 5:32 PM

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Saturday, April 01, 2006

Dispatch 11 April Fools: All the Pubs are closed

So it suddenly hit me that today was my last Saturday and that I shouldn't be saving my big night out for my last day in this city since that will be a Tuesday. So I change gears and get ready to go on an adventure to find the lesbian bar. Since the two of us have looked so much like dykes compared to the regular backpackers I had no hesitation on asking at the front desk of our guest house where the dyke bar was. I went with the information that I have. There is a place called Le Femme Fetale and I have what looks like an area but no address. The first woman I ask tells me that its Saturday and therefore closed. I give her a look of suspicion and go ask the expat what the story is.

Since I have been here there has been some political upset in Thailand. The Prime minster made a few bad moves and people don't trust him as much now. Huge protest on the streets and people wanting him to step down. I really don't know the details, but there is something to do with a free trade agreeement that people don't neccesarily want and he was just going ahead with it. While we were in Laos they called an election. And the election day is tomorrow.

How does this effect going to a lesbian bar on a Saturday? Well aparently the night before an election places don't serve alcohol. Seriously. This is a typical Thai strategy. You don't want apathy due to a hangover so you ban alcohol the night before and day of an election. Which then fouls our plans for dancing with Thai dykes grrr politics.

Labels: Queer, Travel

# posted by Reeuq @ 6:51 PM

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Toilets: OK this is one of those things that you know about but really are never perpared for. I mean you hear squating, you know and expect squating but when you get there. FUCK I have to squat. I think we are all use to squating, its not like sitting in a clubs toilet is the cleanest thing to do. But these toilets are low and you have to worry about the splash factor. And forget going for a shit. But here is the killer. no toilet paper or flush. There is this hose that you wash yourself with and then you fill a bucket to pour down the squat toilet in hopes that it will flush on its own.

McD's: Yes, they have Starbucks and McDonalds. In Bangkok at least. I suppose they are trying to make them culturally appropriate, which of course is bullshit, but they have auld Ronald with his hands together as a sign of respect. There is an obsession with western culture and western pop music specifically here and well for that matter any non-english speaking country I have been to. Its like that movie Gallaxy Quest. The only radio signals they get from the west is pop music so they think that its good. seeing young bands give it there all for "ohhh baby I love your ways . . . everyday" is sad to say the least. Then heading to a club called Immortal "best hip hop club in town" and seeing every thai girl dressing and dancing like every girl in the videos of their favorite songs. Everything becomes a stereotype. you see the 22 year old male from the states, who just graduated and has been drinking cheap beer in Thailand long enough that he too thinks he is "big pimping" and shoves his white dick against the thai girls ass, thinking that yes he is the shit tonight. Then you go outside to escape only to see lost hippies dancing on the streets hoping that this moment of ecstacy will never end.

Vegetarian: I have had some of the best veggie food here, some places, espcially those who target tourists specialize in veggie food. But the moment you leave those safety nets you are pretty much fucked. I mean I went to eat by the river at this little place. Me, my dad and his girl friend ordered the same dish, theres with pork and mine with tofu. We get ours, I have tofu sitting ontop of a pork dish. We return it and ask for NO MEAT. I get another dish with tofu and no big chunks of prk but the noddles are covered in the stuff, they try to say that its egg, but when my dad had a bite he said it was pork. they saw the sad look on my face as I looked across the river wishing for Cornicopia and they brought me a veggie dish this time, hot noddles cooked with out pork this time. I suppose in a country where they eat bugs for a snack, alive, dried or otherwise, the idea of what is meat is flexiable.

There is another post on Thailand over here.

Labels: Asia, Travel

# posted by Reeuq @ 2:23 PM

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