Category: Punk
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Joe Strummer, Class War and Rock Against the Rich
In 1988, Joe Strummer embarked on a tour across Britain called ‘Rock Against the Rich’. The tour was endorsed and organised by the anarchist group, Class War. Ian Bone, former leading member of Class War, has published this on the history of the tour. Amongst a collection of newspapers and journals that I recently obtained,…
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Briefing Margaret Thatcher on punk and pop music (1987)
(picture from Buzzfeed) In early 1987, as Red Wedge was underway calling for young people to support the Labour Party, Margaret Thatcher conducted an interview with Smash Hits magazine. The interview was published in March 1987 and featured such exchanges about The Smiths and The Housemartins (who had both been vocal in their criticisms of Thatcher):…
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Jedermann Sein Eigner Fussball: The mixture of Dada, Communism & ‘Zines’ in Weimar Berlin
I am in the (hopefully) final stages of putting together my monograph and have been lacklustre in posting much on this blog lately. In the meantime, I was looking through my old harddrive, looking for notes that I wrote for my PhD, and came across this I wrote for my zine back in 2003. I…
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New article: Thatcherism and The Young Ones
This is just a short post to let everybody know that my new article on depictions of Thatcherite Britain in The Young Ones has been published in Agora. A version of the paper can be found here. If you can’t access it properly, send me an email and I’ll ping one your way. As usual,…
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The Conversation (UK) On Rik Mayall, The Young Ones and Thatcher
I just thought I’d mention that The Conversation (UK) has published a short piece by myself on The Young Ones as Mayall’s ground-breaking achievement and what the show reveals about Britain under Thatcher in the 1980s. You can read it here.
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In tribute to Rik Mayall: The Young Ones, Thatcherism and the People’s Poet
It is very saddening news to hear of the sudden death of Rik Mayall at the age of 56. As Rick, the lefty sociology student in The Young Ones, Mayall helped create one of the greatest contemporary portrayals of life in Thatcherite Britain, while indulging in surreal and off-the-wall comedy. The longevity of The Young…
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June 4, 1976: Sex Pistols play Manchester for the very first time…
In the history of British popular culture, June 4, 1976 is a significant date. The Sex Pistols played at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall to a small room of people. It is one of their first gigs outside London. Like the saying about the first Velvet Underground LP, nearly everyone in the audience that night…
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The Youtube clip I’ve been waiting for: Tony Martin doing Billy Bragg
This is the greatest bit from The Late Show. I’m glad someone’s finally uploaded it. Enjoy!
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Interview with John Cooper Clarke in Young Communist League’s Real Life (1983/84)
Real Life was a short-lived magazine produced by the Young Communist League during the early-to-mid-1980s and with the tagline of ‘the theoretical and discussion journal of the YCL’, it looks like it was the 1980s version of the 1960s/70s YCL mag, Cogito. The contact address was the CPGB/YCL offices on St. John Street in London,…
New Historical Express 