It’s that time again to look back on what’s been read in the year. I’ve not got time for a big analysis I fear so I shall just list all I’ve read in the year, in the chronological order in which I read it. Got that? Good.
God and the State – Michael Bakunin
The Prison [...]
A Merry Christmas to all Spike and Splinters readers. Here’s some festive treats for you.
No Xmas for John Quays - The Fall
Merry Fucking Christmas - South Park
and of course
Its Cliche’d to be Cynical at Christmas - Half Man Half Biscuit
You know when paranoid idiots say that the security services have direct sinister involvement in even the most trivial aspects of our lives, such as the silly films we watch? The blithering twat-pots? Well, as Matthew Alford and Robbie Graham observe, sometimes they’re right. I already knew the CIA slime had funded the film of Animal Farm, but it doesn’t [...]
I’d like to see Scorcese’s Stones documentary Shine A Light, but I’ve always really wanted to see the banned 1972 documentary Cocksucker Blues - and it’s currently available on YouTube in 9 parts. Go see before it disappears again.
Studs Terkel, the brilliant chronicler of American life over the past half century has died at the grand old age of 96. Scarcely can a life have been so well lived. As I wrote here some months back, the Studs Terkel Reader makes for wonderful reading.
A great shame he didn’t hold on a few more [...]
I only found out about the memorably named And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks a couple of days ago - someone had pre-ordered it on Spike through Amazon. It’s a previously unpublished collaboration between William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. My interest faded almost as quickly as it was raised - this must be [...]
Pankaj Mishra ponders on the world-weary eponymous hero of Bellow’s Herzog and his support for the failed Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, rejected by the great American public, as so many other Democrat candidates after, as an “egghead”, in favour of the utterly fraudulent ”average Joe” image of his Republican opponent (Ike and Stevenson, W Bush and Kerry [...]
At the Guardian, Fiona Maccarthy reviews a very interesting sounding biography by Sheila Rowbotham - Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love. I must confess I’d scarcely heard of Carpenter, he certainly doesn’t get as much namechecking as those other early left stalwarts, Morris, Hardie, Owen et al. Perhaps a reason for this reticence is that [...]
Great timing. Just as I write a post proclaiming them the future of music - again - the Long Blondes have only gone and split.
Flippancy aside, this is doubly sad. Not only because Britain and the world have lost a truly great band, but the reason why they have lost it. Guitarist and songwriter Dorian Cox suffered a stroke some weeks [...]
The guilt is me not writing a proper review of “couples”, a bold departure of a follow up every bit as great as the Long Blondes debut.
Instead, here’s Guilt, the second single from it you should have bought but bleedin well didn’t.
And while we’re at it, gorge on these gorgosities
Once and Never Again
Century
Giddy Stratospheres
This is, [...]