Kingdom of the Absurd

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Question #1

December 09, 2008

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Can you tell a man's history from the scars on his shaven head?

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Beyond Fame

After the screaming stops, everything stops The Bros documentary, After The Screaming Stops , which was screened by the BBC over Christmas, is almost unique as a piece of cultural and social history with additional psychological interest. Naturally, that’s not what draws you in. Instead you’re beguiled by a voyeuristic glimpse of diva-esque pop drama and sibling rivalry with the promise of real-life ‘The Office/Partridge’ moments. I hadn’t even intended to watch it but the social media furore made it irresistible. I’m as much a voyeur as anyone else, I particularly enjoy seeing self-importance ridiculed and egos pricked, so I was initially enraptured but eventually began to see the deeper relevance to modern culture and mental health issues, realising how very little has changed. With ATSS you could see how that self-importance is developed and enabled by the music industry. In one of the more dramatic arguments that festered in a crowded rehearsal studio the brothers

A Shoe In

In its relationship with live music, intimate has become corrupted. It can happen, words lose their impact through constant misuse. I am equally guilty of suggesting that a band who can sell 30,000 tickets are playing an intimate gig when they appear in a venue with, for example, a 2,000 capacity. Of course, the experience is anything but intimate. Perhaps I only understood what an intimate gig was when sitting in the upstairs function room of a small pub with 20 or so others. In the direct eyeline of musicians playing softly whose songs were interspersed with stories of experiences, places, and people with whom I am familiar – intimately so, since some of them included me. Post-Covid gigging is strange. Audiences differ between reticence and reverie, caution about being in crowds or uninhibited delight about being allowed to be. The distinctions may be across age-lines but those lines are distinctly blurred. At a certain level though gigging has always been an uncertain enterprise, a

Divide and Distract

There has been a concerted attempt by conservative commentators to label the Black Lives Matter protesters as ‘left wing’. Since there is no obvious way to determine the party politics or influences of a large group this has no basis in fact. So, why bother? If the right wants to let us know that it’s only the left that care about equality, I’m fine with that. As Conservative Home Secretary Priti Patel is an Asian woman who backs a law that would’ve prevented her own parents from entering the country , it may be a safe assumption. Since the BLM protesters were a young group it is likely that their allegiances to any party are quite loose. Statistically they’re more likely to be apolitical or non-voting as they are to be identified by links to party or doctrine. So why do the ‘right’ want to label the demonstrators as ‘left’? The simple fact is that demonstrating in itself is seen as provocative. It is easier to sit on the fence (or the sofa) than to stand up for som

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