NEWS JULY 2010
NEW ALBUM
"WOEBEGONE" by Danbert Nobacon and The Bad Things will be released on October 19th 2010.. The album is a fictional sort-of-musical noir tracking the early years of Johnny Woebegone and Lilithiana Red, songs of oil, sex, death and other worldliness, set in in the rapidly decaying world of the mid-2020's. The album is mixed and goes to manufacture this month, and will be released by Verbal Burlesque Records of Twisp WA.
NEW BOOK
My first novel "THREE DEAD PRINCES" will be published October 1st 2010 by Exterminating Angel Press www.exterminatingangel.com an unfairy tale for nine to ninety nine year olds, illustrated by Alex Cox. I will be doing a West Coast book tour in October 2010 and getting over to New York and Chicago, playing gigs en route as well.
DANBERT IN THE HOOD
Upcoming Gigs ...
See: Danbert Nobacon films and more at youtube. Punch in 'suzynobacon' or 'coneyislandgirl' for genuine Nobacon films.
... talking of film, I made my Hollywood acting debut, back in April. A small part in Alex Cox's much anticipated film "Repo Chick." The film is being edited as we speak and is due for release around August time this year. A high octane roller-coaster ride through current recessionary times and some ... due for release later in the year. The track Jamestown 2007, from Library Book of the World, will appear onb the soundtrack.
Hear: two tracks from a different future album ... a couple of tracks from Library Book of the World, plus two Danbert Nobacon and the Shifting Sand, live tracks from Chumbawamba 25th Anniversary show now up on my myspace, and short films from VBTV (Verbal Burlesque TV) at: www.myspace.com/danbertnobacon
The Library Book of The World the last album by Danbert Nobacon and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts was released in the US back in August 2007 on BLOODSHOT RECORDS of Chicago. The album was also released in Europe (out of Hamburg via Indigo) and in the UK September 2007 on Bloodshot.
You can also hear music and an interviews of twenty first century danbert nobacon at:
Live at North West Folklife Festival, Seattle WA. May 2008 (scroll down through artists listed till you find Nobacon) at:
www.nwfolklifeaudio.org/2008Festival/sunday08.html
Why me 'Worst Music in the World' Podcast:
http://www.whymepodcast.org/2005/12/whyme_042.html
And a podcast interview from Leeds, 'It's a Mean Old Scene' at:
http://web.mac.com/garykaye/iWeb/meanoldscene
Axis of Dissent last updated October 2007 ... years ago I know, ah how time flies when you're not in cyberspace ...
OLD THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT
NEWS JULY 2009
I have played a few gigs in the Pacific Northwest recently; am working on roughs for my next album which will be recorded in Seattle later this year with The Bad Things; am doing a community radio show here in the Methow Valley, called "THE MYSTERY MOTEL" which is not streamed but maybe I will be able to put up some streams of recorded shows at some point in trhe future. Besides that am gardening, enjoying the summer and road testing various writing projects of a fictional nature.
NEWS OCTOBER 2008
CALL ME MISTER SINICKSPEAKE
Election season in full flow here, if you can riase your head above the corporate fat cat engendered world recession (not that the high fliers at Washington Mutual, Wachovia and Lehman Brothers are any the worse for it).
It has to be Obama, not because he will have any wiggle room to deliver the ‘hope for change’ he claims to represent, if he actually believes his own propaganda that is. Rather because if he elected, and he fails to deliver then maybe the collective disappointment will produce some of the groundswell necessary to change the system which elects the corporate community’s man every time.
If McCain manages to manufacture a victory then I fear that it will be more of the same old, same old, and we will have the false hope that ‘if only the Democrats had won, it would have been so different.”
And if McCain does win then we have the prospect of him keeling over mis-term and being replaced by the uber-Creationist Princess from Alaska serving as the first woman president of the USA, the prospect of which brings no joy, even to a cynic such as myself.
Why so cynical? I witnessed the rapturous election of the ray of hope that was Tony Blair in 1997 and then lived through ten years of the same Tony ‘five-wars-bend over backwards to satisfy his sponsors’ Blair.
If one turns even a old beat up bullshit detector on the small print of Obama's speeches, then the huge promises to the ruling vested interests are there. Obama has promised to wean the US of its dependence on Middle Eastern oil in ten years. This was the key promise in Obama's acceptance speech, and if he is elected then this should be the litmus paper which we hold up to him. Alas in the next breath he made big promises to keep energy generation in the hands of centralised mega-corporate 'clean' Coal and Nuclear power, whilst like all before him keeping renewable energy on the back burner. Promising to stand behind Israel but not mentioning the Palestinians, sounds like every Presdent of all shades of the last forty years when they were in office. Moving troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, sounds like more of the same in different clothes, with the added subtext; until they need to be moved back to Iraq again.
The problem with the electoral system in both the US and the UK is that it has been forged to meet changing circumstances by operating as a filter system, where no one who represents anything resembling real change in their time can ever succeed in reaching the top of their game. Radicals are weeded out and those who ‘succeed’ do so because they manage to tread the high wire that is, being seen to respond to the needs of the people, whilst never disappointing the vested interests in whose image the system was constructed in the first place Raising the presidential head too far above the pulpit, as history bears witness, risks having it shot off.
Who will the next president of the USA choose to disappoint? The people, once their votes have been secured, many of whom are increasingly in today’s climate on, or near the breadline, or the monolithic pillars of the corporate community who keeps the whole circus up in the air?
Blair sided with the vested interests every time, tentatively at first, but shamelessly as he ‘progressed’, delivering the salt left over in the bottom of the bag of peanuts in terms of lasting change that actually benefited people.
We can dismiss the Ralph Nader's of the world, but deep down we know he is on to something. How can there be anything resembling a political spectrum if there are only two visible points on it? Where is the genuine democracy if there are only two people involved in a debate? Two adjacent stripes of a rainbow, or are they even the edges of the same stripe? Roll on , roll off November 4th ...
SEPTEMBER 2008
Am slowly getting my head around life in rural USA and finding my feet. Think Bill Bryson's "Notes From A Big Country" only in reverse.
Am still hoping to do some new recordings this year and continue branching out into other mediums but am not making any resolutions here, rather it will all happen when it happens. Moving continents saps a lot more energy than I could have imagined. I guess I know how continental plates feel now. ...
MARCH 2008
Well, I finally roused myself from my Moomin-like hibernation in the mountains and above average quality-powder-snow fun was had by all. I am now enjoying the first strains of Spring and trying to get myself in gear.
I am now fully green-carded up, and am following US election hullaballo at a safe distance. I am as a resident alien bound to pay tax but am ineligible to vote. Didn't someone once fight a revolutionary war in parts not so removed from here, with the slogan 'no tax without representation'. The long drawn out-ness and crass over-exposure of every nuance and hiccup — when the differences between candiadtes, in the scheme of things are so slight — troubles me, as it eclipses most other news. We are in Washington State, firmly in Obama country here and I can live with that on the basis that his pitch gives at least pretense of something different and it would be interesting to see if he means any of it. Of course, having lived in Britain in 1996-97 when there was the same expectation and hope surrounding one Tony Blair , I remain as unconvinced as I was back then, that electoral systems that offer so little wiggle room, whilst bending to the needs of the corporate community, can truly offer us the substantial change that this country and indeed the planet sorely needs. Is Obama the man to ride the wave of public outrage that demands weaning the US off its fossil fuel dependency and oil wars ? Is it actually possible under the present system for a president to stand up against the corporate community in any meaningful way? I hope so, but am not holding my breath.
NOVEMBER 2007
The big news (for me at any rate) is that I have just become an alien resident of the USA, currently residing in Washington State, two thousand feet up, two inches of snow already. Whilst this was as straghtforward as it can possibly get, having been married to Ms. Nobacon of Delaware for the last twelve years, they still make one jump through post 9-11 hoops and I have the vaccination scars to prove it. The process began back in May and has left me somewhat in no man's land this year but now I can begin actually get my feet on the ground again and think about my new locale. Hopefully, 2008 will see me 'concentrating on my new backyard' and playing up and down the west coast some.
Of course people ask, why in the hell would you ever want to move to the USA? And whilst the answer is long and involved and personal on many levels, it is possible to frame an answer in the context of the Bush-Blair relationship. People in the US ask me 'How could a seemingly intelligent man like Blair throw his lot in with an evidently stupid man like Bush?' But then Blair was not even half as clever as he liked to think himself, and Bush is not nearly so stupid as we would like to think he is. In other words, if we think Britain is somehow less implicated in our current planetary predicaments than the US then we are sorely kidding ourselves. Of course there is a question of scale and the very junior partner in the special relationship adds little in terms of boots on the ground, but the legitimacy given to Bush by Blair's support of him, has been pretty damn crucial at significant junctures along the way. And remember, Gordon Brown financed everything that 'five war' Tony did, and has done little but reiterate the importance of British ties to the USA.
I will also take some pleasure in witnessing first hand the tawdry end of the Bush regime, but not, I fear, before more fireworks still to come, as Cheney makes the most of it before relinquishing his grasp on the reins. Moreover, so far have the goalposts been moved over the last eight years, that I remain thoroughly unconvinced that what is to follow will be any more genuinely world friendly in real terms. Only time, and unknown unknowns, will tell.
