It's been a long while.

Indeed it has. Well I'm back at least for today. Bloggers block? Or a bout of CBA Syndrome? (Cant Be Arsed) Probably a bit of both, cos life is about a balance, and I wouldn't want to be unbalanced Well, what's been going on? Pretty much the same shit, just a different year and different places.

Violent uprisings in the Ukraine and in Britain people are moaning about the weather, dodging rain showers not snipers bullets.

Nationalism unites and divides nations, the debate about Scotland’s independence from Britain continues. In Ukraine its a clash between Eastern and Western values that have turned the country into a warzone, where things will only get worse, especially with the EU countries getting involved due to the strategic importance of the area. Here's a little piece I started writing nearly a month ago about a few things:

“Nice to see fires of dissent are burning bright on the streets of Cairo and in the Ukraine. It warms my winter to see burning tyres rolling across the road towards riot cops sheltering under shields from showers of sticks and stones. Not good seeing Syrian refugees, being displaced, things must be bad if they are seeking refuge in Iraq. Talking of Iraq....What's that cunt Blair on about, it's fuckers like him and that retard Bush that have fucked the world and are now gonna blame it on religion, not ideology. Well tell us something we didn't already know; RELIGION KILLS! A car bomb in Belfast or a suicide bomber in the Sudan, and so does ideology GOVERNMENTS KILL! A drone attack in Baghdad or a Tomahawk Cruise in Tripoli. Western governments interference in areas of the world already divided by religious and ethnic grounds have made things worse, by creating power vacuums, so when Tony Blair says that it is religion not ideology that causes conflict, he is right, but it is a conflict he has created with his free-market West is best democratic globalisation ideology. Western business interests continue to arm global conflicts.”

As a footnote to the above, it is worth remembering that Europe’s gas supplies pass through pipelines that cross the Ukraine, there have been talks of dividing the country on ethnic/religious lines, in a bid to bring stability to the area. Talking of instability in the world, it has all been kicking of in Venezuela as well with protesters taking to the streets and making a stand against their government. The Venezuelan leader is blaming the US for plotting to overthrow the government. It is worth noting that Venezuela has some of the worlds largest oil and gas reserves, and that the opposition leader has strong links to American business and the oil sector. Talking of oil, one of the big issues about Scottish independence will be about North Sea oil. Like I said same old shit!

MONEY AND POWER! 

BLOODY REVOLUTIONS....THERE'S ALWAYS A PRICE TO PAY....

The image is of a protester shot dead by the Venezuelan National Guard on Feb 19th 2014. There appears to be a media blackout in Britain as on what is going in Venezuela in favour of the coverage of the Ukrainians fight for freedom!

COLORYDE - The 1994 Demos. (Re-Uploaded)

Twenty years since these demo's were recorded, Coloryde have returned to the studio to record an album, scheduled for release in March. Coming straight out of Welwyn Garden City/Hatfield, England in the early 1990's. Coloryde were a indie/mod/punk band with a collection of infectious and passionate songs. In the Brit pop years Coloryde should have been massive, but alas we got the likes of Shed Seven instead.  WHY?  Because the taste makers had no taste!

Check out Coloryde's 1994 Demo's here! and hear what all the fuss should have been about then.

Check out their facebook page here! and find out what the fuss is gonna be about now!

MING CITY ROCKERS - I Wanna Get Out Of Here But I Can't Take You Anywhere

More about Ming City Rockers here!

THE REVERENDS - Moocher (Live at The Pipeline, London 2013.)

THE STEVE DIOR BAND - Songs For The Wicked (An Unauthorized and Unofficial 3 Track Promo)

Steve Dior formed The Idols along with Barry Jones in 1976, by 1978 they had been joined by ex Heartbreakers and New York Dolls Jerry Nolan and Arthur Kane, The Idols became Sid Vicious's backing band at his Sid Sings at Max's Kansas City gigs, by the early 80's Kane had been replaced by another former Sex Pistol Glen Matlock and the band became The London Cowboys. In 1993 Steve formed Filthy Lucre with Phil Lewis from LA Guns, but that was then and now it's today.

Songs For The Wicked is set to be Steve's first album for fifteen years, and if the three tracks Some Kind of Saint, Song For The Wicked and Hanging Onto The Backside of Something Good are anything to go by it should be a good 'un. They take a reflective look at the world through Rock'n'Roll eyes, loads of subtle references to what's been going on over the last few years. If you are only as good as your last kiss, then Steve Dior and his band are gonna have to go something to top these tunes, cos they are all one hell of a whiskey soaked tongue in the mouth kiss! Soulful and slick with tinkling pianos and swooping soaring Rock'n'Roll guitar riffs'n'licks. The biggest surprise is Song for the Wicked which sounds like Johnny Cash fighting with Nick Cave over the last bottle of valium.   Like a good malt Steve's music has matured with age.  but....Hey don't take my word for it check it out here. 
Link removed due to copywrite reasons, but the tunes can be listened to here at their web page.

TWENTY FLIGHT ROCKERS - I Love To Rock and Roll (A Radio Session)

Here's a repost for the Twenty Flight Rockers, and their classic leather clad Rock'nRoll Punk; Eddie Cochran meets The Clash and the tower block rocks! Back in the day the Twenty Flight Rockers were a phenomenal live band, never saw a duff gig, and I saw a few of 'em, at places around London;  Dingwalls, The Croydon Underground, The Fulham Greyhound, The Electric Ballroom to name a few. I remember going to see 'em at Brunel University in Uxbridge and I recall there were some 'issues' because the Student Union wouldn't allow the band to put up their backdrop as it was deemed to be sexist, don't think they stopped the band wearing their leather jackets with the same logo adoring the backs of them though. A similar problem unfolded when students at Bradford Uni tried to ban The Queer Boys from supporting The Cherry Bombs, and protested during their set by handing out flyers proclaiming their name was offensive. Shortly afterwards they tucked their tongues firmly in their cheeks and changed their name to The Pretty Girls. I appear to have digressed, so back to the Twenty Flight Rockers...A planned live album Nine Yards of Dead Cow never materialised, and only two singles were released in the bands short life time. They should have been massive, they had it all; the looks, the image, the hype, but more importantly the songs! As this MP3 from my original well worn and well played tape of a unknown Radio Session from 1985 will testify. ENJOY!

Post Script

Former Twenty Flight Rockers singer and songwriter Garry Twinn is now strutting his stuff along side Glen Matlock, James Stevenson and Clem Burke in The International Swingers, who at present are recording an album, which if their recent demos are anything to go by should be worth a listen if you like yer Rock to Roll!

Thanx to Nekrodad for requesting this!

VIVE LE ROCK - Desolation Avenue (A Compilation)

Time for some music, courtesy of those good folks at Vive Le Rock Magazine, and their great free cover mounted CD's. Once again it's a great something for everyone compilation of all things Punk, New Wave and Beyond. THE DEAD BOYS kick this one off with a blistering live version of Sonic Reducer. MICHAEL MONROE continues with the Rock'n'Rolling with the rootsey glam punk tune Ballad of the Lower East Side, before CAROUSELS AND LIMOUSINES come over all Gaslight Anthem with One and Only. THE COFFINS are a growl from the garage Bible John sounds like the Jim Jones Revue on Valium. DYWD by MORNING SMOKE is a wired paranoid and pounding piece of post-punk. Undertow is another haunting lament from SPEAR OF DESTINY, while SECRET  AFFAIR provide  I Don't Need No Doctor a mammoth and marathon brass fuelled R'n'B soul stomper.  Renegade by DOUBLEBLACK is a neo-rockabilly fuzzed up foot tapper. God save THE DESTRUCTORS who punk out like it's 1982 again with Duty Unto Death, OVERSPILL continue in the same punk rock vein with their gravely growl of Let's Riot. THE HICKOIDS bring some Blue Grass country punk rawk to the party with TJ. The Curse of Captain Blood by EAST TOWN PIRATES is a storming and steaming punk sea shanty. THE SOLICITORS Pretty Penny is a shot of 1978 stylee New Wave, while VALENTINE take us back to the sound of 1990's indie/rock with Finch. THE SNAKES finish the show off with the alternative country of The Band Played On. Take a ride down Desolation Avenue here!

This post was gonna be called “Excuse me while I hug a tree.”.... but it grew and sprouted a few more branches as I started writing....so its now more of a “Hey teacher leave those trees and immigrants alone, but give past and present governments a good kick in the head.” kind of post!

Cutting down ancient woodland in order to build houses, property developers may be able to do just that if they agree to plant new trees to replace the ones they chopped down, under new proposals in a bid to deal with Britain’s housing shortage. Why not just build the houses where the new woodlands would be planted? Or is it because the areas with ancient woodlands are more desirable, and would make more money for all concerned; the land owner, developer, and the buyer, well I dunno about the buyer, because if this is the case, the reason property in certain areas is more desirable, is because of things like the scenery, of which there wouldn't be much left after the developers have moved in.

No doubt any Right wing environmentalists out there will blame Immigration for the death of the countryside. I blame peoples greed and ignorance, when it comes to issues of the environment and immigration. Surely there's enough land out there to build on, without destroying something that has been there for hundreds of years providing habitat for wildlife and an escape from the concrete and brick jungles.

Developers would not be allowed to demolish ancient buildings and monuments, so why destroy nature, does the natural world mean that little to some people? Yeah it does until a river bursts its banks and floods peoples homes or strong winds cause travel disruptions, then what do they do? They say that the government hasn't done enough to prevent and protect people from flooding. Well unfortunately shit happens and you have to let nature take its course, but with local authority austerity cutbacks that have left rivers undredged for years it would appear that the authorities do have some responsibility for how the weather has effected some people. 'Mother Nature' has more power over people than governments, and she is more democratic as everyone feels the force no matter who they are. Still once the flood water settles the rebuilding can start.

There's gonna be a lot of construction taking place over the next few years. Welcome to building site Britain if the government get it's way with the high speed rail link, new home schemes etc.

Just who's gonna be building everything? Foreign labour/Economic migrants, that's who! Which is why Britain is reliant and has been on immigration at certain times in its history, British workers do not have the skills, and many refuse to work for low wages, which have been kept low because the employers can actively recruit from a pool of EU workers, who will work for less, because it is more than they can earn than in their homeland, this is the nature of economic migration. Supply and demand. The skills shortage can be blamed on New Labour education policies which have ill prepared a generation for the world of work and schooled them with the idea that they were special, did nothing wrong, took no responsibility, expected everything without doing anything, ignorant of anything or anyone else other than themselves, and that greed is still good. I hate competition, but under a capitalist system it is a fact of live, there are winners and losers, why take away the competitive element in schools, but do nothing about the whole capitalist system other than carry on and increase peoples dependency on it.

If Britain wanted British jobs for British workers, Britain should have skilled its young in trades like bricklaying, carpentry etc, and not encouraged them to go to university to gain useless qualifications for useless but highly paid bureaucratic jobs. It's all about a balance, and New Labours policies were unbalanced, just as the current LibCon coalition Government ones are.

Immigration is a divisive issue, yes a country doesn't have infinite resources to support people, but it needs to accept that other cultures bring benefits and are not just here to claim them. New Labour policies around multiculturalism were also unbalanced. White middle class pen pushers decided what was and wasn't politically correct, and a black bin bag couldn't be called that because it inferred that black people were rubbish, many of these sort of policies have done more harm for race relations than good, and created barriers when fuelled by the right wing media.

Economic migration only works when wages are manipulated and kept low, because it is in the New World Orders interest to keep the workers of the world divided, because if they were united regardless of their nationality and in what country they were working then who knows what the order of the world would be.

Some Old News!

The shooting two years ago of Mark Duggan by the police was the spark for massive civil disorder and unrest across Britain in August 2012. The verdict of lawful killing at the recent inquest of his death did not go down well with friends family and the local community a protest after the inquest passed off peacefully, because it would appear that unlike the Ukrainians, people in Britain don't like to riot in the winter. Anyway I digress....Yeah, Mark Duggan might have been a dodgy character who lived by the sword, which in many peoples minds appears to justify the polices actions,; “He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.”, maybe, but surely it depends if they've got the sword, or in this case a gun in their hand at the time of their killing. In a previous court case concerning the person that sold Mark Duggan 'the gun' the jury concluded that at the time of his shooting he was not armed, yet at the inquest the Police officer that fired the shots testified that Mark Duggan did have a gun in his hand?!?!? Just who are we supposed to believe, because the police never lie do they? From what I've read and heard all the evidence points towards a state sanctioned execution of someone because of who they were and what they had done in the past, not because of what they were going to do or had done at the time of their shooting. If this isn't true then how come the killers of Lee Rigby outside Woolwich Barracks were not shot and killed when they still had the weapons in their hands?

He's a little devil!

Over the years nothing has changed....

Britain is still a nation of gamblers and drunks, the times may have changed, but people haven't; they still feel the need to have and make money and escape from the mundane, they are prayed on by big business with it's cheap supermarket booze and chains of bookmakers.

The disappearance of pubs is another nail in the coffin of true community, not some forced Big Society Localism agenda, were in order to create communities they destroy pieces of existing ones.

In my town centre there was a Pub called the Edward The Confessor, or Ted the Grass as locals called it. A Badgers arse was smooth compared to this place, When North London Country Punks The Rockingbirds came to town for a gig in the nineties, they popped in there for a beer and witnessed a fight they said going in there was like pissing blood. The pub has been closed for a good few years now, although recently the YMCA had been using the property for a drop in advice centre, until they were asked to leave because a developer had been found, and the place is going to become a Paddy Power Betting Shop. WHAT THE FUCK! An organisation that helps people who are in trouble through things like debt problems caused by gambling have had to move to make way for a company that makes money from peoples greed and desperation, this must be the Big Society they are talking about. The YMCA are looking for a new home for their drop ion centre, but the council could have let them be and told Paddy Power to find somewhere else to profit from the poor, like another town

Gambling is now a new national pass time thanks to government and media approved promotion, there's never an advert break on TV that isn't telling us about another new online gambling site. We are living in a wireless world with a toxic landscape of dependency and addiction in full view of anyone that wants to play. Lets drink to the future!

LAST ORDERS AT THE LOCAL.

WAITING FOR THE WRECKING BALL!

REGENERATION BY DEMOLITION!

JOHNNY THUNDERS - The Film! A Extract!

JOHNNY THUNDERS - A Film!

 OUT VERY SOON!

2013....2014....

....They are just numbers. Nothing is new if nothing changes. Never mind resolutions what we need is a New Years Revolution! The clock keeps ticking, it's time to seize the time! The future is unwritten, the past has been and gone, we can't change that, we can't turn back time, but we can learn from it in the present and use it to shape our futures as individuals. We need to be moving forward, progressing as people in order to create a better world for ourselves and others, unless we are truly happy with what we have got, with what we hear and see around us, but ultimately with who we are. When we re-visit the past is it to remember, regret or remind us of who we have become. Nothing will change if we all stay the same, and change nothing in our lives,unless we do when we wake up tomorrow, it wont be a New Year, it will just be the next year.

All the best for the future to all the Readers and Rock'n'Rollers who've visited this blog last year Hopefully you will have taken something musically or mentally away with you from here. If you didn't I make no appologies, it obviously wasn't me you were looking for. Thanx, NPW.xxx

2013....The Beat Went on!

2013....What's been released this year and going round and round on my CD player. Well....In no particular order we have.... JOHNNY THUNDERS with Hurt Me, this album showed his tender side; stripped naked with just a guitar, a brittle and beautiful listen NIKKI SUDDEN, The Boy From Nowhere Who Fell Out Of The Sky is a six CD box set. A lovingly crafted and compiled collection of Nikki’s work. Both these were reissued by the wonderful Easy Action Records. Sweet Revenge by the criminally ignored Punk'n'Rollers the LIGHTNING RAIDERS, was not so much a re-issue, because back in the day it was never released. Knox may not be touring with THE VIBRATORS but On The Guest List shows he's still part of the band, with a collection of songs that rank amongst the best he's written, and all supported by a cast of special guests. The UK SUBS, they just keep going, and going and getting better as they go, maturing with age disgracefully. CHARLIE HARPER and CAPTAIN SENSIBLE, this was a real surprise Too Much Reality....took Punk to a new Psychedelic underworld of neon grey. GLM, released three blinding Rocky yet slightly poppy download only tracks from their website. DEADCUTS, do just that....they cut you dead! A switch-blade to the throat of all the taste-makers and trend-setters. Deadcuts are out there and have got something special going on. BABYSHAMBLES Sequel To The Prequel, a brilliant album, Pete Doherty has been the only real Great British Rock'n'Roller for the last....fuck knows how long. THE MOB returned with a single Rise Up! an anthemic call to arms. THE FITS, reformed legends of the UK82 Punk scene, returned with some Punk Rockin' action with their Lead On EP. NEW MODEL ARMY, released a dark and moody master piece, and JAMES KING AND THE LONE WOLVES crawled out of the wreckage with some sublime swamp rock blues. Finally a couple of Punk'n'Roll supergroups cut through the crap this year. THE CRUNCH with their album Busy Making Noise which is a blast of pure Power Pop Punk, their line up includes former members of the Cockney Rejects, Lords of New Church/Sham 69 The Clash and Diamond Dogs. THE INTERNATIONAL PLAYBOYS, include a Twenty Flight Rocker (Gary Twinn) Sex Pistol (Glen Matlock) a Gen X/Chelsea (James Stevenson) Blondie (Clem Burke.) released three stompin' tracks via their web page. Hopefully an album will be released in 2014. Finally PRIMAL SCREAM's 2013 was a real return to form, a musical and lyrical statement of intent. Well there you have it a year in my Rock'n'Roll world....Here's to the next one!

Goldblade ft Poly Styrene 'City Of Christmas Ghosts'