It’s a Half an Inch of Water

From ABC to Deacon Blue and Madness to Right Said Fred, the list of bands who take their names from other band’s lyrics is worth a Wikipedia page all of its own. But I can only think of one band named after a mondegreen.

Now a mondegreen, as you well know, is a mis-heard lyric, and in this case it’s the line “It’s a half an inch of water” from John Prine’s That’s The Way That The World Goes Round that gives Paddy Nash & The Happy Enchiladas the non-eponymous bit of their name.

We first met Paddy and Diane at the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival in 2012, where we played a number of gigs, official, unofficial and very unofficial with them before deciding that they were wonderful and we were following them home to Derry.* **

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You know who you are….

So, we were delighted to be able to return the favour and put on a couple of shows for them in London. Despite some initial (and last minute) fretting from us as organisers, the Veg Bar gig was magical. The atmosphere was great, and the audience outstanding. We’ve had a few stand-out shows over the years but I don’t think we’ve ever had a crowd sing along to every word of pretty much every song from every performer before, and it definitely brought the best out of all the acts.

 

The Sunday was a more relaxed affair at Walthamstow Folk Club and the folk club format really suited them, rewarding us with some of the stories behind the songs and two sets of  songs with light and shade exploring a range of emotions. They really are extraordinary storytellers and performers.

There’s a load of stuff out there on YouTube and what have you if you want to explore their music further, but if you want a better sense of them, then try their appearance on Radio 4’s The Listening Project.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02np2j6

Wedding or Camper Van? Well, we’ll be seeing the van in Tolpuddle this July.

* Or Derry/Londonderry as it was known at the time.

** We know a song about that.

 

 

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On Not Going To Yeovil

So when was Orient’s season over?  Last week after the Star Man Dinner kerfuffle? When Dean Cox and Unlucky Alf got injured? Not until the beer runs out?

Actually, that’s an easy one: It was officially over a fortnight ago at AFC Wimbledon when any over-optimistic talk of the play-offs was finally quashed. Well, you say easy. Not so easy if your mates from Derry have planned a trip over for the last weekend of the season, are playing gigs in Brighton and London on either side of your last fixture, if you’d really like to put on a gig so that you can play with them again, and there might, just might, be something on the last game.

This is where you find out which of your band mates (and fellow Orient fans) are optimists, which are pessimists and which are obsessed with football statistics. Thankfully, after extensive negotiations, we reached a position that the Yeovil game was only worth going to if promotion or relegation rested on the outcome and even then only promotion outright, not making or failing to make the play-offs. Which gives you a probability argument if you like maths or a football argument if you’re actually watching them play. So, as soon as the maths and the O’s woeful form allowed us, we booked tonight’s gig at the Veg Bar in Brixton.

We’re basking in the glow of a fabulous trip to Barnsley last weekend for the May Day Festival of Solidarity, and looking forward enormously to being reunited with Paddy & Diane and Robb Johnson. I’m looking forward to the venue too, having seen a Loud Women gig there earlier in the year, just a little worried about the PA, but we’ll be there early enough to sort any teething trouble out with any luck.

We’ve got loads to talk about too. Electoral success for Eamonn McCann and People Before Profit in Belfast, New London Mayor Sadiq Khan and the results of the poll on the future of Have I Got News For You. There will even be a few vaguely disappointed Orient fans to sing a song for.

Thank you AFC Wimbledon.

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Have I Got News For You?

Yes, it was the first day of May 2008. Yes, I did stay up half the night listening to the results coming in. I couldn’t quite believe it. Maybe it was my natural optimism*. Maybe I couldn’t quite get my head around people threatening to vote for Boris Johnson because Boris being Mayor of London would be a laugh. Maybe I just couldn’t see past Ken Livingstone**. Ken had made the job his own over the previous eight years, a big personality, with vision, and maverick enough to be anti-the government of the day and pro-London. There was good and bad with Ken of course, the revival of London buses and free travel for under-18’s in full time education on the one hand, the privatisation of London’s fleet of fire engines on the other. Being back in the Labour Party didn’t hurt in 2004 but this time out it probably didn’t help. The (perceived) bigger maverick got the vote.

Not that there was much in it. 1, 043, 761 people had Boris Johnson as their first preference vote, a statistic that I have quoted from the stage on more than one occasion. First day of May 2008. And not long after, a song was born.

The idea to write about all that dodgy stuff in Boris Johnson’s recent past; the racism, philandering, dodgy-dealing, arranging to have journalists beaten up etc., came quite quickly, but the Mayor Boris Blues just didn’t quite hit the mark. As fellow song writers will know, there’s got to be a hook and there’s got to be an angle, and both of them came together around the idea of Have I Got News For You. It also gave rise to one of my favourite couplets of all of those that I’ve written:

“Anna Fazackerly, now it’s me and you, getting screwed by the bloke off Have I Got News For You.”

But it’s nearly over. The London mayoral election happens again on 5th May this year and Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson won’t be standing. Having treated the job of Mayor as a part-time gig for the last eight years, he’s leaving to concentrate full-time on his campaign to be the next leader of the Tory party***.

So there’s been talk of retirement. Not his, but in the band there are voices suggesting that we retire Have I Got News For You.

Oh.

I’m against it. I think it stands up as a historical document that’s worth airing from time to time. I also think that it’s a valuable tool in our armoury against a Johnson-led Tory party, as and when that happens. But mine is just one voice. We’re definitely going to sing it at one of the next two gigs as they’re either side of the vote, but after that it might be up to you lot. You know where to find the Protest Family. You tell ’em.

Steve

 

* Yeah, right.

** We’re not here to talk about that.

*** Of course he’s going to deny it.

 

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Pay Your Tax

Pig-Fucker in Panama Papers Pickle

Is anyone surprised that David Cameron benefited from offshore investments that paid no tax? I’m only surprised that he wriggled and tried to hide it when the Mossack Fonseca story started to break. After all this government by the rich on behalf of the rich seem to get away with pretty much whatever they want, and we may chortle at his “It’s a private matter” whining, but it’s not like he’s going to give any of it back now is it? You might call for his head too, but there will be no challenge to his leadership this side of the EU referendum, the knives are still being sharpened.

Regular listeners will know that the words to Pay Your Tax vary considerably live, giving us the chance to have a pop at the latest tax dodger du jour. If the song makes it to the set lists for either Barnsley or Brixton, Camerons junior and senior are very much in the cross-hairs. And Cameron’s the perfect target. Although the song lists corporate tax dodgers (along with the occasional dig at Gary Barlow) their “it’s not illegal, just immoral” defence holds water. The real enemy is the system of government that allows the super-rich and the multinationals to benefit from massive tax avoidance only barely hidden from public view, and Cameron is both author and beneficiary of this corrupt regime.

David Cameron, we’re coming for you.*

 

* In rhyme, with mandolins and shit.

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Glossop Labour Club

glossop labour club 2bw

“Glossop Labour Club is an independent social club. It is not affiliated to any political party, but is home to people who share a progressive outlook on life.”

Ooh, that’s interesting: setting out your “No, we’re not affiliated to the Labour Party” stance in the opening paragraph of your web site. The authors of Glossop Labour Club’s site go on to add that they’re one of the oldest Labour/Socialist clubs in the country, founded in 1906 by the ILP, two years before the national party existed.

Our kind of folk, but folk we’d mostly not met before; and though a warm and friendly audience, one that was prepared to subject our songs to some scrutiny. From the stage you could almost feel people listening, working out what we meant and realising that yeah, we are all on the same side. It’s great when that happens. I remember a conversation at Tolpuddle the morning after we’d played when a fella we’d not met before (let’s call him Hugh) came back to us with a couple of lines from the first verse of No Pasaran In E17 for a fuller version of the story.*

Talking of anonymous contributors to the story, I used a fictional friend (let’s call him Dave) as part of the intro to Victoria Says. Fictional Dave is of course based on a real friend called, um, Dave, but being 200 miles away from home I thought I’d got away with it. Turns out that Dave (the real one) had a mate in the room who he’d encouraged to come along if we were ever playing nearby. Busted. But in a good way.

Anyway, an hour long set gave us a good opportunity to set out our stall to a new crowd. We started with a bang, messed around with spoons and poetry in the middle, and finished on a high with a Pete Seeger singalong and our version of the National Anthem. We got a lovely review in the Morning Star too.

With a bit of TLC, the Protest Family tour bus made it to and from Glossop without incident and we’ll hope for the same again as we head to Barnsley on May Day for the Festival of Solidarity in the Polish Club. That’s one you don’t want to miss, a gathering of the great and the good of the lefty touring scene, with an average age slightly lower than the Pensioners Against The Cuts Tour.

May Day Festival of Solidarity

You should come.

Steve

* Hugh: “So what you’re saying is that the RMT used health and safety to perform an overtly political act and oppose fascism?” Us: “Yeah”.

 

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A Spoonful of Poison

Fantastic.

Spoonful crops up periodically in the history of The Protest Family, from my early solo appearances at its original incarnation in the front bar of the Rhythm Factory (banished to the main room eventually after too many noise complaints), to me, Doug and Lol debuting our non-Orient Barron Knights stuff as Fuck Off White at the Legion*, to Lol trying not to bash his head against the unfeasibly low ceiling in the Trash Bar, and that night in a basement in Stoke Newington when Andy realised that The Protest Family probably wasn’t for him.

What is A Spoonful of Poison you ask? Well if you really don’t know, it is, in Spoon’s own words “a night of joyfully shambolic, chaotically entertaining, multi-discipline open mic anarchy”. And that’s not far from the truth. Spoonful at the Rhythm Factory was the spiritual home of the London Antifolk scene and the place where you’d catch all of the capital’s most interesting performance poets. Kate Nash, Milk Kan and Scroobius Pip all cut their teeth at Spoonful. Without Spoonful we’d never have had Spinmaster Plantpot, nor that glorious night when me and Chris The Lips ended up opening for Babyshambles.

As the years went by there were fewer poets (“Go back to your ghettos and bring me poets!”) as the spoken word slots were filled by stand-up comedians (I invariably preferred the poets) and the realities of running an open mic in London forced a series of venue changes** but the important things remained constant: the great, and sometimes challenging, acts, Spoon’s progressive drunkenness as the evening wore on and the variable timekeeping that meant it’s always ran late, but everyone always made the last bus.

There was, and is, something very special, and hard to define, about A Spoonful of Poison. Not everybody gets it, but for those that do, they realise that there’s no other night out like it, and for proof of that you’ve got to look no further than last night. After something of an extended break, Spoonful’s back. Well for five Saturdays in March and April anyway. And last night’s opener was a cracker featuring a bunch of old-school Spoonful acts: Scrappy Hood, Stu Crane (did Stu have a stage name last night?), Ernesto the Naked Poet and of course, JJ Crash and The Lips….

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Spoonful’s back. You should definitely go.

Steve

* Yes, that was the night that Lol first set eyes on Ernesto.

** I lost count somewhere along the way, but if we haven’t played at all of them, then it’s nearly all of them.

 

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What Would Sonja Pedersen Do?

Writing this after an amazing gig at The Wanstead Tap with Attila The Stockbroker and Janine Booth.
I do not believe in God or Karma or any of that other whacky stuff, so I will put all of this down to coincidence. But nice coincidence.

In 2010 on this weekend, we played a packed gig with Mr Stockbroker at the much missed Plough in Wood Street , Walthamstow.

We managed to get Attila to play with us thanks to the O’s having a home game against his beloved Brighton. Brighton got a lucky 1-1 draw on the day so we were all happy.

Sadly for us, the idea of playing against them now is a pipe dream , thanks to mismanagement by the powers that be at LOFC BUT WE ARE NOT HERE TO TALK ABOUT THAT!!

A year ago this weekend three of the Protest Family (clue, the one who plays the spoons was absent) went to Centre Parcs Longleat for Sonja Pedersen’s (Beryl T Peril) wake. The difference being that Sonja was still alive against all odds. That is how Sonja rolled .

I often go on about the time we played Derry and how defining that weekend was, but last year’s bash surpassed that.

We got there at about 1pm to be greeted with beer, wine and food and we set up our equipment. We started playing from that moment and apart from toilet and pizza breaks continued until God knows when (I am thinking it was about 3am the next morning).

The place was buzzing, apart from us there was also Paddy Nash and Diane Greer from the amazing Paddy Nash & The Happy Enchiladas, Les Black and Grace Petrie. This was all in a really packed chalet in Centre Parcs. For me, the highlights were us all doing The Band’s The Weight and all of that lot playing while I sang Billy Braggs To Have And to Have Not.

So (I dislike sentences that start with SO, but still) it came to pass that last night’s gig happened to have many people from far and wide that were at Centre Parcs a year ago this weekend. Nothing was arranged , it just happened . Synchronicity as The Police sang (although I prefer Invisible Sun).

It was nice to see people who I last saw at Sonja’s funeral in a different  atmosphere. Sonja is in all of our hearts and will continue to be so.

A word about last night’s gig. Attila was as Attila is. Great fun , but behind that, giving his audience food for thought. You must also catch Janine Booth. She is getting better and better with each gig that I see her. She gets the balance right between her humour and seriousness in her poetry.

And a word for The Wanstead Tap. It is a great place with great people running it with great ales.

Doug Protest

Solidarity brothers and Sisters ( I always say that)

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Protest Family Migration

So, there I was this morning enraged yet again by the unbiased BBC reporting that hearts are hardening to the Syrian refugee crisis, as now 41% of those surveyed thought that we shouldn’t take any more in. No mention of the 59% of people who think that we should definitely be doing a lot more. Even if it’s down from 69% it still looks like a majority to me, but looking at the figures that way clearly doesn’t suit the narrative. (And before we go on to talk about the “M” word, has anyone noticed the complete lack of media coverage of the bombing campaign in Syria since the vote?)

But yes, the “M” word got a repeated airing in the BBC Radio 4 coverage this morning. Migration’s for the birds isn’t it? I thought people were immigrants or emigrés, not migrants. Migrant is a dehumanising term straight out of the bigot’s toolbox. How much easier is it to discriminate against people if you describe them as something that falls short of your definition of people. See also: the way the Nazis described the Jews and the way soldiers are taught to describe the enemy. Charlie Hebdo can fuck off too.

But I’m not here to talk about that.

The talk about travel does remind me that I should be talking about The Protest Family and our upcoming travels. Now maybe if you’re AC/DC or Bruce Springsteen your gigs for the next twelve months are already well mapped out, but if you’re us, maybe less so. What we do know is that we’ll be hitting the road a lot more this year than we have done in previous years, starting with a trip to Glossop next month.

Now Baby Jesus died on Good Friday and rose again on Easter Monday, leaving a very convenient long weekend in between. Easter Sunday might be a re-run of Christmas three months later, tofurkey dinner and board games with the folks, but that does leave you with a whole Easter Saturday to fill, particularly if the football calendar gets switched to the (Good) Friday. Never fear, we shall be performing at Glossop Labour Club with fellow WSO-er Ste Goodall. The Quiet Loner’s Defiance Sessions are gathering some momentum and it promises to be something of an evening.

Talking of Sundays, May the 1st falls on a Sunday this year and it’s Tony Hurrier’s inaugural May Day Festival of Solidarity in Barnsley where we’ll be joined by many of the luminaries of the socialist music scene. We’ve got to get to grips with the workers’ holiday before the Tories turn it into Margaret Thatcher Day or something equally horrid, so hit the streets and celebrate, and if it’s the street that the Polish Club in Barnsley’s in so much the better.

The weekend of the third Sunday in July is of course the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival. Expect the usual Tolpuddle Unplugged shenanigans. More of this later, but also on a Sunday is the Burston Strike School Rally and another opportunity for band selfies in front of trade union banners.

Somewhere between Burston and Bridport we’ll have to squeeze in WSO, Stowfest and somebody’s birthday celebrations, but the fixture computer hasn’t spoken yet so watch this space.

Is that it? Probably not, but do join us around the country and do listen to the news with a critical ear.

S.

 

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Hello. It’s me, Doug.

Is it just me or is this blog a bit rubbish? I write a much better and far more popular one, and what’s more, it’s all about me. I think what this band needs is a nice spreadsheet or something.

Here’s a picture of me with my real mates from Thee Faction:

doug thee f

Solidarity brothers and sisters! (I always say that).

The Bass Player

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Hello. It’s me, Lol.

Hello. It’s me, Funky Lol.

You may know me from such bands as the 4Fathers*,Imenim or Walthamstow Folk Club, but I can also sometimes be found engaged in a competition to see who can play the most instruments during a Protest Family set. Sometimes I even win. If there was ever a member of the band to get banned from Facebook it would be me. I’m also the one that does all that jumping around on stage, not because I’m really into the music but more just to keep myself awake.

Here’s a picture of me sleeping on the job.

Asleep

Lol.

* I stole that band name from Doug.

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