Having been residents of Americana-UK Towers for longer than we care to remember we were surprised when, having come back from a stroll in the grounds, we were asked at the door to The Bunker to provide evidence of our right to enter. “Come off it” we said “We’ve been here for, like, ever”. “No good” said The Gatekeeper Terry Might “Where are your papers?” “Well last we heard you had them” we said. “Yeah – well I burnt them.” Said Terry “Get back on the good ship Empire Windrush or however you got here – and go home” “But this is our home” we protested. And so it went on for several tedious hours until eventually Terry Might realised what a colossal balls up they had made and sheepishly gave us leave to remain. What a heartache…
Author: Paul Villers
Pick of the Political Pops: Sean Rowe “Soldiers Song”
The world – a mad and bad place at the best of times – got a little too much for us recently so we have taken to the bunker for a couple of weeks respite and partaken of its fully stocked larder and bar. Having poked our heads above ground this week we find that its still mad and bad and possibly even more dangerous than we had previously believed. All sorts of nasty goings on everywhere you look and if Donny John and Terry Might have there way there may just be a new proxy war on the horizon between the west and the east, the battleground being Syria. We are minded of Harry Patch’s words: “Politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organising nothing better than legalised mass murder.” This tune sums up our feelings:
Pick of the Political Pops: Clarence Gatemouth Brown “Information Blues”
This week when we came to boot up our trusty BBC Micro (younger readers might need to Google that) in order to check our social media we were surprised to learn that, via Netscape Navigator (younger readers might need to Google that too), all and sundry knew everything about us from our shoe sizes to our off-shore bank account numbers. Actually on closer inspection it became obvious that marketing companies didn’t know that about us because we have our profile set up in such a way that we identify as mixed race, non-binary, early twenty-somethings. Continue reading “Pick of the Political Pops: Clarence Gatemouth Brown “Information Blues””
Pick of the Political Pops: Hank Snow “Poison Love”
We thanked Crikey Almighty for The Bunker this week what with nutters running around with chemical weapons and nerve agents poisoning folk. Appalling behaviour and something we hope is dealt with swiftly. TM The PM did take action of sorts and berated the Leningrad Cowboy giving him a right ticking off. That’ll show him. And the 800 million or so quid donated to her party by Russian oligarchs need not concern us…
Pick of the Political Pops: Kesha “Woman”
We emerged briefly from the bunker this week in order to sample the air and survey the devastation left by the inclement weather. The air was clear and Americana-UK Towers was intact. Whilst out we were reminded that this week saw the annual iteration of International Women’s Day. In many ways we are quite sad that, in 2018, we actually NEED a women’s day and look forward to the time when gender is irrelevant and we can just be who we are. Anyhow we have cast about for suitable tunes to play on our jukebox and think that this will do nicely.
Pick of the Political Pops: Marty Robbins “Big Iron”
Lately we were horrified to find that Americana-UK Towers had been visited by a host of unwanted visitors. In short we had a vermin problem. Rats. Big ones. Big, horrible nasty, sharp teethed Johnnies with scaly tails and a poor attitude to other people’s personal space. We presented the problem to The Editor and his “brilliant” solution was to send in more rats so that all the rats could kill the rats and then there would be no more rats. We were uncertain of his logic and indeed the state of his mental health so we hired the services of local Pest Controller Donny John who was happy to go in and tackle the problem. So gung ho was he that he insisted in going in without so much as a sharp stick to defend himself. Eventually we persuaded him to at least take a shotgun borrowed from the organic farmer up the road. All was well and the only payment he required was a pint of sweet sherry and a rendition of this on our jukebox.
Pick of the Political Pops: Kellis “Caught Out There”
Oh its all very free and easy down here at Americana-Uk Towers. Given the fact that its cold out we’ve turned the central heating up a notch or two and directed the main blast down to The Bunker so that we can (ironically) chill out in comfort whilst observing the madness of the world over a small beverage. Or a large one _delete as appropriate_ depending on one’s preference. We found it quite funny that The Leader of Her Majesties Loyal Opposition has been accused, in certain quarters, of being what we must understand is a ‘traitor’. A crime which the red-headed Tory broadcaster Andrew Neil rightly pointed out would have held the death penalty. We can only assume that some people are very, very scared and as we all know fear breeds anger. And anger breeds hate. We took it in turns to impersonate the Paul Dacre response but could do no better than this:
Pick of the Political Pops: The Grateful Dead “Ripple”
Given the inclement weather and the fact that we forgot to buy Our Glorious Leader (The Editor) a Valentine’s Day card we have chosen to repair to The Bunker for a few days to drown our sorrows and wait until the worst of His temper has subsided. We remain connected to the outside world through the regular channels however and news reached us that there has been a right old kerfuffle about the wrong doings of the charity sector with some coming in for particular attention. We like to believe in the inherent goodness of all folk but we also believe that if you abuse your position of help/power/doing right then you are a horrible human being and completely lost to us. On the other hand we can’t help wondering about the vehemence of the right wing press in pursuing certain people and organisations in this matter. A charity came right out and said that capitalism distributes the rewards of market activity inequitably (and by extension is responsible for poverty). The right wing press came right back with one rodney suggesting that socialism was responsible for the desperate poverty inflicted on hundreds of millions (and by extension charity people are all lefties whom we will label ‘sexual abusers’ just to put them in their place). Crikey – it’s a right old mess. Have a listen to this tune which suggests a gentler way of going about handing things out.
Pick of the Political Pops: Fairport Convention “Who Knows Where The Time Goes”
This week we have been mostly ruminating on things horological. It is, in the UK at least, one hundred years since (some) men and (some) women got the right to vote. Also we are minded that this year marks the point at which the Berlin Wall has been down as long as it was up. Also someone sent a car into space. Progress we suppose.
Pick of the Political Pops: Joe Purdy “Children of Privilege”
Here at Americana-UK Towers we like to think ourselves as being at a certain level of elite without, of course, being elitist. We’ll entertain any old Tom, Dick or Harriet particularly if they are handy with a tune or guitar picking or even, under certain circumstances, harmonica blowing. If the said hoi polloi can pitch up with some fine spirits or decent beer then we can be more than welcoming. We had fun, then, imagining how one of our bacchanalia would go down in Davos – that Swiss place where the ‘great’ and the ‘good’ find themselves every so often in order to discuss the best way forward for the rest of us. Why even Donny John turned up to liven things up (although we suspect he wasn’t fist bumping with our own John MacDonald). Pity we didn’t get an invite but had we done we would immediately have offered to do a DJ set and given pride of place to this little tune which we hope would have given them something to think about. We’re not holding our breath for next year.