A Slow Waltz For Chile
Radio Africa | Nomzamo
Sandinista | Burn Again
Auguste
Weatherman
Ed Murrow
The Colour Scheme
The Men Below | Cora
No Rope As Long As Time
Race Me Down
Toulouse
America For Beginners
One Fell Swoop
Nothing Like Velvet
Swimming Against The Stream

A song about the work of the solidarity campaigns for Chile, first for the Socialist Government of Allende, and then, from 1973, against the dictatorship of Pinochet.

To consolidate we must advance: was the catchword of the radical Left before the putsch in September 1973, whereas the temperate Left pleaded for an alliance with other political currents, that Allende also strived for. Quick step: A fast dance, here used as a contrast to the slow waltz.
 

There's only bad news from Radio Africa. In 1985 South Africa was still governed by the monster apartheid. The West complains about the foreign aid, but in the trade with the industrial nations, it's the African countries who are at a disadvantage: They exchange cheap raw materials for expensive finished products. With the war in the Ogaden 1977/78 Moscow first supported the socialist government of Somalia, but then supplied weapons to the Ethiopian dictatorship. There is still hope for Mozambique and Zimbabwe, but for Tanzania progress has had to stop -- the oil imports devoured too much foreign exchange. " Exchange ", "Credit", " Interest ": technical terms that all add up to only one thing: Everything gets even harder. Independence is an expensive commodity when the finances lie in white hands.
 

This song is based on the book 'Part Of My Soul', a collection of essays by Winnie Mandela, wife of Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress, who was arrested in 1963 and sentenced to life in prison the following year. The full name of his wife is Nomzamo Winifred Mandela. She's one of nine children. The Xhosa people, to whom she belongs, fought nine big wars against the Boers, the white settlers, in the 18th and 19th century.

Nomzamo means 'test of faith', but even when one loves, how long can a person bear inhumanity and inequality? In 1960 she already became a victim of the laws, a word that is meant to give the police batons and slamming cell doors a veneer of respectability. In twenty years Winnie Mandela was convicted 19 times, had to leave her home and go into exile to Blandford.

Now all the processes against her have been struck down. She refuses to accept the message of the whips and the waving flags. Even the goal of separate development of blacks and whites, which some moderate reformers aspired to, is unacceptable. In the Apartheid regime only the gunfire of the police and the military didn't know the difference between skin colours. The solution applies: One people, one cause!
 

This song is in praise of the Nicaraguan revolution. It is from the point of view of the people in the West who feel powerless sometimes themselves to modify things however encouraged they feel by progress in another part of the world so far away.
 

Anastasio Somoza reigned over Nicaragua as if it was a family possession. The National Guard might just as well have worn the family crest of the Somozas. The country was a family business, economically dependant on the West, but those who overthrew Somoza wanted to end the serfdom and share the land with everyone. We should be ashamed that the West wants to undermine the newly won freedom. Must Nicaragua burn again, because the USA has the need to be born again? The USA itself started in a war of independence, when the word 'freedom' was written large in the constitution. But now the torch (of freedom) casts a giant shadow - when the Congress sends the Contras out to hunt the Nicaraguans in the hospitals and classrooms, in order to make a free election impossible. The USA plays with Central America as if it was a fruit machine. She takes the coffee beans and pays the bill with bullets and marines.
 

Basically it’s a song about Mike's (and the new left in general) development and defeat.

It starts in the late sixties with a lot of hippy references. 'The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter' for instance is the title of an album by arch-hippy (and brilliant) group 'The Incredible String Band'. 'Siddhartha' is the title of a book by Hermann Hesse, a great favourite of hippies and New Agers. It was a time of great 'idealism' - some of it quite mad – but definitely a great time. Mike was one of those young long-haired hippies and I would have been if I could have got my hair to grow downwards instead of outwards. We thought we could change the world into a 'nicer' place - put a 'warring world to right'.

I can't recall much of the next two verses but I suppose it talks about the 70's, becoming more hardline socialists, the class struggle, the idea of overthrowing capitalism etc.

Then came Thatcher. The point here is that when Thatcher became Prime Minister, no one took it very seriously. We just thought she was another Tory who we could easily resist. In fact she destroyed so much of what we thought was indestructible in the working-class movement. In particular, she took on the Miners' Union - the union that had beaten back so many right-wing governments in the past - and she won. In fact she set in motion a dynamic that would mean the disappearance of the union and the industry in general.

So why 'The Weatherman'? Well because of the under-estimation and complacency of the left-wing movement in relation to Thatcher. You see, in October 1987 at the end of a weather report on the BBC, the weatherman (Michael Fish) said that he'd just received a phone call from a woman in Cornwall, who was worried about the possibility of a hurricane hitting the UK. Very arrogantly, the weatherman told her not to worry, that there was no way a hurricane was coming and that she could sleep soundly that night. No worries.

Well that night the strongest hurricane for centuries smashed into the UK. There were floods, trees were uprooted (one third of all trees in the famous Kew Gardens), roofs torn off, windows smashed (mine was in London) - maybe even some deaths though I don't
remember clearly.

So that gave Mike the idea. 'There's a hurricane approaching, the weatherman predicted showers.'.......'A political hurricane is approaching (Thatcher), the weatherman (the left) predicted an easy time.'

(Song description above by Steve Skaith from A Little Latin Quarter)

Mike Jones on some of the lyrical references:

Blind Joe Death had been transfigured
‘The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death’ is an album by John Fahey on Takoma Records. I first heard it on John Peel’s Perfumed Garden show on Radio London. JP as a pirate DJ played the most amazing music – in 1967, The Doors, Love, Mothers of Invention, Incredible String Band, Capt. Beefheart, Country Joe and the Fish to name but a few. So, for me, these references are directly personal ones – ones that go back to my ‘formation’ as someone who thought the world could be changed/was changing/he could help change it.

In the rolling paper of silence
People smoking dope, too stoned to speak!

We thought in step like passers by
Just that weird stoned experience of ‘shared thoughts’ (implicitly shared goals) – and a continuation of the silent self-absorption late at night, hearing a couple of lovers pass by at the exact same pace, maybe some heels clicking on the pavement..

From Cyfartha to Siddharta to King Arthur’s Saintly Knights
Cyfartha in Merthyr, home of the original ironworks, basically – from the working class/from unglamorous industry. Just the contrast between grim/humble surroundings and great and noble dreams.

As Chinese-printed ‘Gotha Programmes’
When we were student lefties we bought all the Marx/Engels/Lenin pamphlets and books, mostly in Soviet or Chinese editions, all very cheap because they were looking for converts!

If Allende is Angola
It seemed that there were to be breakthroughs but not in the heart of capitalism – which is what the student/worker actions promised in France and Italy in the late-60’s.

With Franco down and Lisbon free
Death of Franco, end of Portugese fascism

From the first cut, to the last round
I don’t think its ‘cut’ but I can’t remember, the ‘last round’ – because we’d ALWAYS end up in the pub!!

We met and argued, marched and planned
Oh who would guess we’d soon be fewer
When everywhere was garage land
Oddly in 1977 – year of the first Clash album, the left began to lose its way/lose the gains made internationally

Oh, you can’t get a pin between the splinters
Far left splinters – what really WAS the difference between the 54 different revolutionary groups in the UK c.1980??

With the broad church on its knees
Labour Party always described as a ‘broad church to differentiate it from the sects/sectarianism of the Far Left

In these cold and bleak mid-winters
The south is blue and the rest can freeze
The Conservative victory of ’79 was almost a diagonal line travelling from The Wash to Bristol

From the Medway to the west way
Easy money they recite
Rise of Thatcherite Yuppies

Where 'The Sun' would cast no light
‘The Sun’ newspaper, absolute mouthpiece of a far-right government

Oh, chain the Raindogs to the gatepost
Tom Waits ‘Raindogs’ a great album in 1985 – I was counting off the years in terms of the music I was listening to…..

Drag your urchin kids inside
Some of my friends had started having kids, a big change for the close knit world of tiny Marxist groups…

From the Taybridge to the Tamar
Basically throughout the length of the country.
 

Edward R. Murrow was a journalist and broadcaster of high integrity and courage. To him the era of McCarthyism was a nightmare coming true, as he had witnessed fascist movements in Europe. He knew how the fascists made their excesses palatable: anti-communism was the respectable cloak they wore. When his nation was drowning in cowardice and political manipulation, it was Murrow who hurled the spear at the terror. The spear was his "See It Now "television broadcast on Senator Joe McCarthy. In doing so he was laying his future on the line. His broadcast used only footage of McCarthy just to show him for what he was, thereby letting McCarthy damn himself by his own mouth. Nine month's later McCarthy was in disgrace for bringing America into dishonour and disrepute.
Ed Murrow's broadcast on "Hunger in America" caused one critic to comment, "This is the most gruesome programme that I have seen because it is happening in the midst of plenty."

"We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment unpopular." Ed Murrow
 

About someone who claims to know what sort of person I am, just because he's seen how my home is decorated and knows where I take my holidays. But what does that testify to after all? Those are only externals. One needs a roof over ones head and you can't choose the colour of the wallpaper. A journey only consists of delays and missed connections after all, the route is a matter of chance. This person also claims to know my thoughts, but what is thinking? One furrows ones brow and stays awake with coffee and the time goes by uselessly. He also claims to know a formula to minimise my risks, but who wants to gamble anyhow? Even the safest gamble always fails. I don't have a choice anyhow and I have nothing to lose.

Angry reds: The extreme left. Dust bowl blues: A reference to the "dust bowl ballads" of Woodie Guthrie. In them he sings of the fate of the small farmers and labourers in Oklahoma, whose livelihood was destroyed by sandstorms in the 1930's , forcing them to leave their homes. To fall away: To fall away from the lead in a horse race.
 

To record an album and then go on tour - that's what keeps a band together and lets them grow. A tour is the nourishment for them, like the egg white is for a chick, before it hatches. The work on stage is hard, but much harder is the lot of the men below, the miners. They dream of the life that musicians lead. And yet the miners have to plead and fight for their jobs - like in the big strike of 1984/85, when the police gave the few, who wanted to return to their work, a police convoy to protect them. In front of the gates the strikers stood with paving stones in their hands, knowing that force might be the only way that they could preserve their jobs. At the same time, the big newspaper proprietors were having bitter circulation wars. To that end, they all featured bingo games. But it seemed as if every gaudy ball had the number ten on it, like 10 Downing Street, official residence of Margaret Thatcher. Because all the big newspapers at the time supported the Government against the miners. There was a method in the virulent articles - who would want to do the miners such harm? And who knows, how much we all owe them?
 

For 60 years or more, an icy wind has blown Cora in the face. When she was young, she worked as a housemaid in a rich county Surrey house, south of London. Then she moved back to the north, in order to marry a coal miner. The general strike of 1926 was broken after short time, only the miners continued to strike. The employers prevented them from receiving the coal ration they were entitled to, so in order not to freeze in the winter, they dug in the hills for coal themselves. Like with the last strike in 1984/85, Cora and the other Methodist sisters stood by the coal miners. But now they are fewer of them and the songs from the hymnbook don't sound the same anymore, with only a few voices left to sing them.
 

"No Rope As Long As Time" was written after reading the biography of one of the founders of the South African Communist Party: a white guy whose name escapes me as does the name of the book. Sorry to be so vague but it is 16 years ago!.. The phrase 'No Rope as Long as Time' is/was a saying of black South Africans meaning that no amount of oppression could ever halt their eventual freedom. Musically the song was inspired by Bruce Springsteen. After composing so much at that time on keyboards, often using pop-type riffs ("Modern Times", "Seaport September", "No Ordinary Return", "America for Beginners", "Eddie", "Truth About John"...) I was listening to Springsteen and thought Jesus! why don't I get back to strumming a guitar. Actually you don't hear the acoustic guitar too much on the record, but that's how it started. Steve Skaith
 

Felipe is a Mexican immigrant in Los Angeles. His hopes have been shattered; he couldn't make it out of the "Barrio", the Latino Ghetto. The population of the Barrios lead a wretched life: the windows of the shops have been smashed, but hardly anyone can afford the goods on display anyhow. Only the advertising slogans are free. The meat from the hamburgers you can buy there are full of bits of gristle that you have to spit out. Comfort can be had from relatively cheap drugs. Felipe's brother, who dealt in them, sits in jail. He couldn't afford to pay the protection money to keep up his business.

Felipe shows a curios white tourist the Barrio, but they stay there too long, until after sunset. It gets too dangerous in the streets then, especially for an outsider. There's a literal curfew in force. Now the two of them are forced to rely on each other, but nothing connects them.

Dust of angels, angel dust: A drug that induces feelings of being all-powerful. Originally developed as a sedative for animals. To crack in two: a wordplay with the drug crack.
 

It is a long way from the markets (bazaars) in North Africa, in which leather goods and Berber (member of Muslim group in North Africa) carpets are sold, to the car factories in which each movement is measured in units of time. One does not earn much here, but the work doesn't leave any visible scars. They give you the impression that France is like in the pictures of Monet and Braque. But they don't use the colours of the painters here. Every filter, which you insert, leaves an invisible crack in you. You came all the way to Toulouse, in order to lose (wordplay: Toulouse / to lose). As you clock in, he walks in right behind you and you both pick up your rivets; he thinks he's different because of the colour of his skin . You've already had their O.A.S., the French mercenary troop in the Algeria war and you've had the communist trade union federation C.G.T. If C.N.C (computer-controlled robots) are introduced everyone will lose their jobs.
 

The election of Ronald Reagan to President of the USA and subsequent swing to the political right horrified many people. "Bed-Time for Bonzo": One of Reagan's last movies in which his co-star, a chimpanzee named Bonzo, was the better actor. Great Britain under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher became little more than just another State of America. The paranoia of the McCarthy era surfaced again with the administration's determination to rid the world of the red menace aboard. The origins of crack cocaine in California was traced back to the Contras, a guerrilla force backed by the Reagan administration that attacked Nicaragua's Sandinista government during the 1980s. Payment were made to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department from funds authorised by the Congress for "humanitarian assistance" to the Contras. In some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies. These activities were carried out in connection with Contra activities in both Costa Rica and Honduras. Even the swingers of the permissive 60's are suddenly swerving to the right. At prime time the vigilantes are appearing in programmes about the "good fight", while the day begins with a triple "K". (The Klu Klux Klan.) There's no sponsored programme for the sinners, instead they're bringing back the electric chair. (The "hot seat".)
 

In May, 1985, Liverpool played Juventus in the European Cup Final. The match was played at the Heysel Statium in Brussels. Before the match began, skirmishes between supporters turned into a massacre, a stadium wall collapsed and 38 people were crushed or suffocated to death - 38 innocent Belgians and Italians murdered by English football hooligans. The image of Liverpool's fans as the 'best in Britain' was destroyed 'in one fell swoop'.

And whilst the media and politicians back home in the studio scream for law and order they by their own actions themselves promote English Imperialism that is the root cause of English hooligans.
 

About the traffic in hard drugs, which is controlled by organised crime in the UK as well. Many criminals are dealing in this domain. There wasn't the same connection with violence with Marihuana. But those who like to think they are 'hip' maintain that everyone should decided for themselves if they want to take drugs or not. And the Right likes to present horror stories, without looking at the social causes of the problem. Charlie Parker was an idol, but a bad example because of his heroin addiction.
 
Crack: A crack in the aeroplane, but also the drug crack that's being transported on it. Poppy: The basis for heroin is extracted from the seeds of the poppy. Colombian Leaf: Cocaine is made from the leaves of the coca bush - of which Colombia is the biggest producer. Velvet: Also a play on The Velvet Underground, a band that glorified heroin consumption in one song. Pound On Pound: A reference to the money that needs to be found to buy the drugs. Shooting up: Here refers to shooting up with guns as well as with needles. Charlie Parker: American jazz saxophonist - died in 1955.
 

The civil rights movement that started in the 1950's in the USA, fought for the economic and political equality of African Americans, especially in the Southern States. There the discrimination was legal and institutionalised. This changed in the 1960's. The Congress, the legislative body of the USA, passed legislation that outlawed formal discrimination. But in truth it still continued. The reforms that the civil rights movement had achieved were undermined in the 1970's and, especially under the presidency of Ronald Reagans, to a large extent clawed back. Today African Americans are economically and socially even more disadvantaged than they were 25 years ago. Before they harvested (in the Southern States) cotton, today they have to work to get their food stamps (a form of social welfare).

The high point of the civil rights movement remains the march on Washington on August 28 1963, which, with 250.000 participants, was the biggest demonstration ever held in the country up to then. During it, Martin Luther King, made his famous 'I have a dream' speech. One of the actions of the Movement were the freedom rides. To break down discrimination in the busses and bus stations, in 1961 a group of black and white demonstrators (mostly from the north) drove together from Washington to New Orleans in a Greyhound bus. The attacks from the opponents of equality culminated in Montgomery, in the State of Alabama, where only the National Guard protected the freedom riders from the violent mob.

In March 1965, in Selma, also in Alabama, a black female demonstrator was murdered by three members of the Ku Klux Klan. In 1987 in Howard's Beach, New York State, a group of young black's suffered a car break down. A gang of white youths chased one of the occupants on to a busy street, where he was hit by a car and killed. This incident was regarded as proof that even in the North racism is still as widespread as before.