April 27, 2012

The Jesus and Mary Chain wikipedia entry is amazing.

[T]hey initially told journalists that they had taken their eventual name from a line in a Bing Crosby film, although six months later they admitted that this wasn’t true.

In the early days Jim Reid’s guitar would be left out of tune, while Dalglish’s drum kit was limited to two drums, and Hart’s bass guitar only had three strings, down to two by 1985; In Hart’s words “that’s the two I use, I mean what’s the fucking point spending money on another two? Two is enough.”

Struggling to get gigs, the band took to turning up at venues claiming to be the support band, playing their short set and making a quick exit.

Playing in front of small audiences, during early shows the Mary Chain performed very short gigs, typically fuelled by amphetamines and lasting around 20 minutes,[16] and played with their backs to the audience, refusing to speak to them.

The follow-up, “You Trip Me Up”, was delayed due to staff at the pressing plant refusing to press it due to the presence of the song, now re-titled “Jesus Suck”

In a performance on Belgian television in March 1985, the band did smash the set and the audio equipment, but this was at the request of the TV producer. Such behaviour became expected of the band and many shows culminated with the Reids trashing their equipment, which was often followed by the audience throwing projectiles onto the stage and damaging equipment.

On 15 March 1985, the Jesus and Mary Chain played a gig at the North London Polytechnic in front of one of their largest crowds up to that point. The organizers had overbooked the venue, leaving hundreds of fans locked outside. When Gillespie and Hart attempted to break the locks, the police were called. Support band Meat Whiplash had stirred up violence before the Mary Chain even set foot onto the stage when singer Paul McDermott threw an empty wine bottle into the audience, prompting four members of the crowd to attack him, leading to their set being abandoned.[28] Second act The Jasmine Minks got through their set without incident, but the Jesus and Mary Chain then kept the audience waiting for over an hour before taking the stage, and then left the stage after playing for less than twenty minutes.[28] Members of the audience began throwing cans at where the band were hiding behind the stage curtains, before mounting the stage to smash the equipment that remained there. The violence continued for some time before police eventually took control.[28] The venue blamed the band’s late appearance and two equipment breakdowns, while McGee issued a statement saying that “the audience were not smashing up the hall, they were smashing up pop music”, going on to say “This is truly art as terrorism”.[29] The violence soon started to become a hindrance to the band, with people attending concerts simply for the violence rather than the music, William commenting “I hate it, I despise it. It gets in the way in terms of getting more gigs, and it gets in the way of our image”.[29] Many performances were cancelled during the remainder of 1985, with promoters or local councils not prepared to risk a riot.[29] The violence flared up again at a performance at the Electric Ballroom in Camden Town in September, with bottles thrown at the band while they played, and a section of the audience smashing up the amplification equipment and smashing the lights afterwards, with several people injured by flying glass.[30] A major factor in the audience reaction was the length of the band’s sets at the time, which lasted less than twenty-five minutes, Jim explaining this with “there’s never been a group good enough to play any longer”. Lack of songs was also a factor, according to Jim: “We’ve only got enough songs to play for that long”.

A second version of “Some Candy Talking” was issued on a free EP issued with the NME in January 1986, and the song was released as the band’s next single in July. It reached number thirteen in the UK Singles Chart, but attracted controversy when BBC Radio 1 DJ Mike Smith decided that the song was a paean to illegal drugs (denied by the band at the time, but admitted by William a year later) and convinced the station to ban it from being played.

1. That’s just some highlights.

2. This is all before we even get to the part where Jim Reid stabs a fan.

3. I love them so much. I had Upside Down on CASSINGLE (an honor shared only with Husker Du and Guns and Roses) and literally wore it out.

4. We would all argue for hours about the politics of drum machines.

12:24am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zu71EyKPCOOp
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: punk past life violence punk therapy 
April 17, 2012
"Why has it been difficult for feminists to imagine violence as a viable strategy for political transformation? Why, despite a documented history of women’s violent struggle, have women tended to disavow their capacity for violence? Part of the answer can be found in the representational habit of positing resistance as the logical negation of the thing being resisted. In the case of violence, this means that - since men wield violence against women in an effort to maintain relations of domination - the use of violence by women would only serve to strengthen the logic of domination itself. Rachel Neumann confirms this tendency when she describes the feelings that some anti-globalization activists had with respect to the Black Bloc riot. In her account, protester violence seems to reiterate existing power imbalances. “Property destruction,” she notes, “has often been linked with larger uses of violence […] Because of the way that men in particular are taught to repress and vent their anger, it often comes out as an exaggerated representation of masculinity, reproducing instead of contradicting the existing power structure.”

According to this logic, by using violence to smash the violent system, activists end by reinforcing the system itself. Here, violence is construed as a logical quantity, a sign that can only be negated by siding with its representational antithesis. But Neumann’s formulation says more about the state of our current political impoverishment (where everything is subsumed within the representational sphere) than it does about violence itself. And while it can be easily transposed into the field of representation, violence itself is not merely a representational act. Its political effects can’t be measured on a balance sheet of stable significations. By abstracting violence from its social context, by distilling it into a representational essence and disconnecting it from the world of lived experience, activists run the risk of foreclosing the possibility of even contemplating the political use of violence."

—

Black Bloc, White Riot: Anti-Globalization and the Genealogy of Dissent (via combat—wombat)

If you had asked me 2 years ago how I felt about “violence” (and/or destruction) as a tactic, I would have made some quip about violence being the status quo and how everyone needs to be less violent, especially “men.” But I thought about how I was often punished for violently lashing back at other kids who spoke a word against me in grade school, whereas men in my family would beat women like it was a standard procedure. I resented it a lot, and eventually had taken to the idea that I might as well denounce all violence in order to deal with that resentment. But one can only sit with such resentment for so long, before fantasizing about, even realizing some kind of retribution or destruction of that which strengthens resentment. Deep in my heart I’d love for a world in which everyone to be “less violent,” but I no longer believe in that world, like I no longer believe male-socialized people have a monopoly on “violence” or destruction.

(via suzy-x)

(via brujacore)

11:57pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zu71EyJsAd_B
(Notes: 91)
  
Filed under: feminism insurrectionists anarchafeminism identity politics violence sharing tags activism liberation 
January 26, 2012

sydneyreising:

LANA DEL REY~ KINDA OUTTA LUCK (by LanaDelRey)

Even more so.

11:55pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zu71EyFRMBff
(Notes: 6)
  
Filed under: violence feminist revenge non-ironic 
October 11, 2010
"There’s no way to be committed to non-violence in one of the most violent societies that history has ever created. I’m not committed to non-violence in any way. —Bernardine Dohrn"

—

She was a badass. I might need a badass tag. I was talking with a bunch of progressive ladies one night this summer—one of them had put out Bill Ayer’s book. I was asking if anyone had any thoughts on why the right went after Bill when Bernardine was, on the record I’m familiar with at least, 10 times more out there. We bandied about the usual answer, that maybe they didn’t want to demonize a woman given the gender politics of the race, and that there was a bit more on the record of Obama and Ayers, although even that was skimpy—Obama and Ayers served on a charity board together in 1999, Ayers gave $200 to Obama’s state senate campaign, and they all live in the rich-people area of Chicago.

Just now I see, in this Washington Post piece, that the speculation about Obama and Ayers started in the British press. The earliest story I could find was this one in the Daily Mail, written by Peter Hitchens, brother of Christopher. To give you an idea of its tone, he describes Hillary Clinton as “the  world’s first militant feminist doormat” and says “Obama has black skin and was deserted by his father at the age of two.” WHOA.

I was really fascinated back in September, when the trustee review board at the University of Chicago, led by chairperson Christopher Kennedy, denied Ayers emeritus status after he retired, because he once dedicated a book to Sirhan Sirhan, the man who murdered Robert Kennedy in 1968.

Emeritus status isn’t that big of a deal, really, although it’s certainly fancy. I think all that happens if you get it is the ability to put “emeritus” in your bio. I find Kennedy’s action to be both classy and calculated—it appears he never used his position to militate against Ayers, who was a faculty member for 20 years, until this happened. I can totally see being like, OK this is a small thing, but this is where I draw the line. From the piece I linked to earlier:

While trustees regularly vote on emeritus appointments, they rarely comment about them.

But in an emotional statement, Kennedy discussed his reasons for voting against Ayers’ request.

“I am guided by my conscience and one which has been formed by a series of experiences, many of which have been shared with the people of our country and mark each of us in a profound way,” Kennedy said.

He said he could not confer the title “to a man whose body of work includes a book dedicated in part to the man who murdered my father.”

Kennedy was referring a 1974 book co-authored by Ayers, “Prairie Fire,” which was dedicated to a long list of people including Robert Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan and “all political prisoners in the U.S.”

Prairie Fire, the book, beget the Prairie Fire Organizing Committe, the above-ground political group led by Bernardine’s sister, Jennifer Dohrn. I just went over to their website to see what they are up to, and their mission statement explicitly renounces violence:

We support non-violent civil disobedience, direct action and militant protest. We respect pacifism as both a tactic and a philosophy, which for many dedicated activists is a fundamental and deeply held belief and the source of their commitment to struggle against injustice. We also respect the right of people to take up armed struggle against colonialism for the liberation of oppressed peoples. This is in accordance with resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly and the Geneva Convention, which recognize that the crime is colonialism, not the struggle for liberation.

So we’ve had pro-violence and anti-violence. What now, Hegelians?

(via kimclit)

(via hunger-painsss)

8:26am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zu71Ey1CyHzs
(Notes: 40)
  
Filed under: SDS Weatherman Bernardine Dohrn REVOLUTION Prairie Fire Kim Dohrn violence anti-violence RFK Sirhan Sirhan 
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