The Rusty Wire Service

The Rubberbandits:  XOYO, Cowper Street, London, Sunday, 27 November The Rubberbandits UK tour finished on a high note in London’s trendy Shoreditch at the weekend and The Deptford Croppy crossed over the water to watch. Shoreditch; the very name filled me with dread but we resolved to press on nevertheless; over the river and into the deserted City, winding up Commercial Road and finally into the Heart of Darkness...or Islington anyway. XOYO : even its mission statement resonates with portent... “XOYO is a dynamic space across two floors profiling a mixture of Art, Music, Culture and Media events. We see ourselves as a living, breathing hub, creating touchpoints across these activities...” And in spite of that, we still we pressed on; such was our desire to see the Rubberbandits.  Besides, it wasn’t all that bad once we got there. Even if it was a bespoke dynamic space (or sumthin); XOYO still felt pretty much like any other music venue in which I’d ...

Let me first be clear: drug use of any kind should never really be undertaken without some sense of premeditation and understanding of its consequences and broadly speaking; that principle holds equally true of caffeine at one end of the spectrum or opium at the other.  So when it came to experimentation, even this was approached with some sense (however spurious and self-vindicatory) of ascertaining the value of the experience in a clinical research context. What I was to discover to my surprise however  on my first experience with LSD, was that it was rather like being thrown out of an airplane without a parachute; only to discover that I’d always had the power of unassisted flight.  It just came naturally to me; there were no bad trips.  Maybe (and I'd like to think this at any rate) I used to be a lemonade-from-lemons kinda guy.  If the experience started out unpleasant, it didn’t stay that way for any length of time (or at least any length of time...

Back in July, under increasing scrutiny for his own dubious connections with News International, David Cameron announced a two-part inquiry investigating the role of the press and police in the phone-hacking scandal. The Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press opened with preliminary hearings on 04 October. According to its own website , it will “make recommendations on the future of press regulation and governance consistent with maintaining freedom of the press and ensuring the highest ethical and professional standards.” Well, we’ll see about that. Given that the conduct of the press and the actions of tabloid reporters at News International in particular are already the subject of a parliamentary inquiry as well as a police criminal investigation; one can’t help feeling that the Leveson Inquiry is at best a whitewash, at worst a cynical attempt to muddy the waters. While the inquiry has already been underway for some time now, the rea...

In England, it’s not just the Royal Family that’s German.    Just in case you thought those lovable Teutonics were too busy using the European Central Bank to topple governments in Ireland, Greece, Italy and Spain, the nice people at Development Securities released a report this week which suggests that Germany is the biggest investor in the City of London. The report – Who Owns the City 2011 – suggests that a whopping 52% of The Square Mile is owned by foreign investors. Germany remains the largest overseas investor with a 16% share of ownership, followed by the US (10%). Development Securities is a FTSE-listed company and the fact that anybody is buying up London (even those ghastly Ethel Mermans) is good news for them and their shareholders. Since the 1980s ownership of London’s Square Mile has inexorably slipped from English hands. In 1980 less than 10% of the City’s office stock was owned by overseas interests. Foreign ownership passed 25% in the mid 19...

Village life goes on tonight at the Occupy London camp in Finsbury Square much as it would in any sleepy English hamlet. Old Holborn: Jacobite or agent provocateur?   The local cafe is a focal point where residents gather and gossip over their teas and coffees. There’s a labour exchange, a newspaper, a housing committee and last night, there was even a celebrity guest giving a talk just down the lane in Sun Street. Self-styled ‘old time alternative comedian’ Mark Thomas was preaching to the converted at the Bank of Ideas: itself a public repossession of an abandoned office block formerly belonging to UBS bank. Now, some people might view the Mark Thomas talk as a cynical ploy to sell his most recent published offering ‘Extreme Rambling’. The protest dollar is, after all, the mainstay of the Thomas demographic. Certainly, the delightfully contrarian blogger Old Holborn  was happy to take a pop at the grand old man of situationism-lite. His opening sh...

After ten minutes of hold music and being reminded that the bank was recording the conversation.... Wanker Banker: Hello Soapytitwank Banking and Mortgage Solutions, can I help you? [ Bank name changed to protect the guilty party ] Deptford Croppy: Hello, I’d like to know why staff at two branches of your bank told me last week that my direct debit mortgage payment went through; yet you then sent me a letter explaining that my payment had not been received and that you were charging me for the failed payment.   Wanker Banker: Ah yes sir, that’s because there were insufficient funds to cover the transaction, you had reached your overdraft limit. Deptford Croppy: OK....that still doesn’t really answer my question. Why was I told that the payment went through? Wanker Banker: I’m sorry sir, I can’t answer that but your payment failed because you had reached your overdraft limit. Deptford Croppy: But I have a statement here in front of me that clearly s...

‘There’s no way I’m riding you unless I’m wrecked on bags of glue’  'If you're looking for a ride, I've a horse outside'   With hooks like that, I was always going to be putty in the hands of The Rubberbandits. You may not have heard of them yet if you’re reading this in the UK, but don’t worry; you soon will.  If you like your satire overlayed with smoove R’n’B chops and delivered by scallies wearing plastic shopping bags like balaclavas or alternatively; you like your hip-hop informed by the satirical stylings of old-school Irish absurdist Flann O’Brien, then your prayers have been answered because Limerick City’s finest are in full effect, currently touring the UK and promoting their upcoming pilot for Channel 4.  To be fair, poor old Mother Ireland has never been known as a hip-hop heartland. Sure, there have been Irish American acts like the House of Pain and even quality Dublin artists like Scary Éire back in the day but the Rubberbandits br...

The Worst Job I ever had?...Christ on a bike. Where do I start? I suppose I could always go into the minutiae of passive aggression and thinly-veiled sociopathy that characterised much of my white collar life and it’s very tempting. That way, I could talk about the Christmas office party where my Secret Santa was one of the company directors and his gift to me was a spud wrapped in a small Union Jack. Or even about the sneering line-manager who asked me if thought I was doing them a favour by coming into work during a family bereavement. I’ve always marvelled at how much deeply unpleasant behaviour people put up with in an office context. While these environments are thoroughly depressing and almost certainly damaging to your mental health in the long run, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is how many people actually prefer to work. I guess I just lack the corporate killer instinct when it comes to screwing over my colleagues (ie other human beings with families and feel...

This article also appears in Sabotage Times . Tributes continue to roll in for former world heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier who died on Tuesday (08 November). The 67-year old, who succumbed to a liver cancer diagnosed only a month ago, was an exceptional fighter, even among the greats from a golden age of pugilism. Those three bruising showdowns with Muhammad Ali in the early 1970s, culminating in the epic ‘Thrilla in Manila’ in ’75, weren’t just boxing matches, they were world events in their own right. That final battle in the tropics is often seen as the axis upon which the lives of these two fighters turned. Joe Frazier was born in Beaufort South Carolina in 1944. In his autobiography, he recalls the events that set him on the road heavyweight championship.  His family owned a TV set and their house was where friends and neighbours would gather to watch the greats of another golden age of boxing: Sugar Ray and the two Rockies (Marciano and Graziano). ...