nadinem

yeah, it was a great line-up and the bands were ace. but what i said about cape man stands. he may have been having fun, but no one else found the antics i witnessed of him fun.

ANYWAY. nightmare before christmas anyone?

mikey - you're on it. i was at their glasgow gig and it was amazing. indispensable band.
and isn't it worlds apart? i've seen it written world's apart, but that doesn't seem to make much sense!

Hi arbroath
totally agree with the hickster - nationalism is at its best ridiculous and irrational.
i'm still 100% behind what i said though about the madstock incident being dangerous. if he was to do it now it would still be so and for the following reasons:
- national identity and the symbols of national identity in britain have been a sticky issue since the crumble of empire and when we began to realise that what this country had done in the name of that empire was exploitation.
- i have just received campaign 'literature' from the bnp -their logo? a union flag. of course, when moz sings about 'standing by the flag not feeling shameful, racist or partial' he's talking about that very difficulty - that racists use the flag when it should be a swastika. but this is a very subtle point that we've only come to terms with in the past decade or so.
- if what he was trying to do in 1992 was to reclaim the flag from the thugs, he should have been less subtle. artists that put their work into the public domain have a certain responsibility to answer their critics. many people, sadly, are too overworked, or a little silly (just look at the circulation of the sun and the star or the flacid effluent that passes for 'culture' these days) to read between the lines or analyse a song like 'we'll let you know' (one of the moz's finest songs) from start to finish.
- of course one council seat isn't much, but it was big news in terms of what it represented in the wider context - the far right was on the rise all across europe, and the fall of communism signalled a resurrgence of sometimes ugly nationalisms in its wake - ie yugoslavia.
The disgusting, reactionary NME attack aside, if any Moz fan can truly say they weren't confused or didn't question his motivation at the time, they are either blindly loyal or Moz himself.
If the flag can be reclaimed as a progressive, multi-ethnic symbol, we've still alot of work to, but little things like this discussion board (thanks DiS! and thanks Moz!) can help us begin to negotiate it away from the BNP.
While we're talking politics, people - GET OUT AND VOTE ON JUNE 10th! It's so important - the right always get their vote out and at the moment the UKIP are higher then the LDs in the polls. There are parties out there (the Greens, the LDs, the SSP in Scotland)who are anti-war and anti-scaremongering about asylum seekers. To me, if there's anything at all to be proud about being British, if that we've been a haven for people from all over the world. And yet, in a recent survey, we are supposedly the most racist nation in the world. That's very, very sad.
Political broadcast over!
cheers arbroath! (do you come from there? i've spent a couple of fondly remembered childhood holidays there - the minirailway at the front rocks!)
xxx

Hello Dr Furry, thanks for your comments. I completely agree with you now, in hindsight, but at the time and for a few years after the whole debacle, I was very confused. When it happened I was very young and naive perhaps, but I knew 2 things: 1 that I was almost apoplectically anti-racist and 2 that I was (and am) a huge Morrissey fan. I could understand that tracks like 'Asian Rut' and 'Bengali in Platforms' were complex commentaries on multi-ethnic Britain, but this was something different. Something I could not yet comprehend and - as I said in the piece - this was not a good time for oblique statements. The whole NME thing was a concocted piece of hate which was probably done in an otherwise slow news week, but Morrissey's silence was irresponsible and only furthered my confusion. So I did feel tainted for continuing to like him. I still feel uncomfortable also, with anyone wanting to 'stand by (any) flag', but I understand that as one gets older, so one becomes more sentimental for the place you grew up in, even if that place existed in few films and not in reality. Anyway good doctor, it's late, but I hope I've cleared up what I meant.

What exactly do you mean by 'pretencious' Bobby?
or are you just hurting 'cos you can't spell?
Lay your cards on the table and I will play.