Total Assault On The Culture - December 2022

News from Nowhere

Mark Sampson

Dec 9, 2022

PERFORMANCE STORYTELLING by TUUP
MUSIC by HAMID MANTU and TIM WHELAN of Transglobal Underground.

The Story of “Children of the sweet water”

Enter a world of supernatural beasts, power, jealousy & transformation.

Available for iOS and Android

Medieval rulers of England and France often claimed descent from a part demonic, part angelic, part human, part fish-tailed creature called Melusine — a creator of peace and of conflict, a builder of cities, a vengeful daughter and a wronged wife — a legendary figure who the kings would credit for their achievements and blame for their cruelties.

World renowned storyteller TUUP, joins forces with regular collaborators from the band Transglobal Underground, Hamid Mantu and Tim Whelan, to bring these wild medieval legends into focus for a new world.

Combining story, music, unpredictable instrumentation & contemporary technology, journey with them through a landscape that is as much science-fiction as it is fairytale.

“Wild, passionate, enthralling” — Everything Theatre

You can buy Melusine — Children Of The Sweet Water on CD here.

If you enjoy listening to these stories then we’d advise you go and listen in person to an oral storyteller. Thank you to all ancestors of the storytelling community.

TUUP — Storyteller and percussion
Hamid Man Tu — Drums and Percussion
Tim Whelan — Landscape sounds and keyboards

Additional percussion: Levi Duncan

Recorded by Paul Chivers at HMVS
Mastered by Paul Tipler
Design by Nick Clark

A production by THEE Unspoken Word and Mule Satellite recordings

Contact TUUP: gdtuup@yahoo.co.uk

For all Transglobal Underground bookings and related projects contact: peter@peterconwaymanagement.com

TuuP
TuuP. London, UK. Tuup is recognized as one of the most inspiring inspirational storytellers, from the…tuup-storyteller.bandcamp.com

Transglobal Underground
Welcome to the Bandcamp shop of the notorious global fusion electronica anarchy that is Transglobal Underground. Since…transglobalunderground.bandcamp.com

Free Download Code

If anyone would like a download code for any Iron Man Records release on Bandcamp, email mark@ironmanrecords.co.uk with your request and I’ll see what I can do. Thank you for your continued interest and support here.

Iron Man Records
Iron Man Records seeks to provide a cultural outpost for musicians, writers and travellers in the arts. An Embassy for…ironmanrecords.bandcamp.com

All I ask in return for the free code… is for you to seek out the Artist / Band involved and buy something from their Merch Shop or Artist Website direct. Artists desperately need all our support, but few will admit it.

Most Artists I’m talking to are finding it hard to survive. Brexit has been a hammer blow, Coronavirus has been a hammer blow, and now everyone is trying to Tour and release music all at the same time. Audiences are being overwhelmed with new music, and concerts to go to, and it’s hard for people to know what to choose to listen to, or go and see, with limited financial resources. Ticket sales are down, merch sales are down, every band with the ability to do so is out touring and asking for your support. There’s little or no significant money coming in from downloads or streaming platforms. Joining the mailing list and buying physical merch from Artists direct can really help them over the Christmas period. And if you are struggling for money yourself, you can help in other ways by leaving a comment, sharing an Artist’s latest work or messaging them to tell them you are still there. You know what to do.

A big thank you if you have already bought Vinyl, T-shirts, or other Merch from the Iron Man Records shop. A big thank you to all Iron Man Records Patrons and all those who have made a donation too. Everything helps. Music will find a way. The work continues. Thank you.

John Sinclair Presents Detroit Artists Workshop

Not many people can say that John Lennon wrote a song about them, but John Sinclair is among that select bunch. Viewed by the powers-that-be as a dangerous revolutionary for his involvement with the White Panther Party, Sinclair was handed a ludicrously harsh sentence — “they gave him ten for two” — for marijuana possession after a police sting. In 1971, Lennon, along with Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Phil Ochs and Archie Shepp played a freedom rally in Michigan and three days later Sinclair was freed.

Sinclair is probably best known in the music world for managing riotous proto-punks The MC5 and imbuing them with a radical zeal. But Sinclair is a beatnik at heart, a poet and an ardent jazz fan, who’s combined those two loves on more than 20 albums of his own down the years.

Art Yard and Strut present the culmination of a 7-year project researching the archives of author, DJ and activist John Sinclair with the first ever retrospective of the influential Detroit Artists Workshop spanning 1965 to 1978.

“In the mid-‘60s, Detroit was nowhere,” explains Sinclair. “A decaying jazz scene, no community of poets, painters or writers so a group of young Detroit artists, most of us students at Wayne State University, got together in the late Summer of 1964.” Led by Sinclair and trumpeter Charles Moore, the Artists Workshop Society was formed as a co-operative community, drawing upon the resources of every participating individual in order to perpetuate itself. They began to provide spaces in Detroit for musicians to rehearse and to promote live concerts showcasing a range progressive jazz artists across the city.

Between the mid-‘60s and the early ’80s, Sinclair amassed a huge archive of recordings from the Workshop concerts featuring Detroit residents like Moore’s Contemporary 5, Ron English and Lyman Woodard alongside many other US jazz luminaries including Donald Byrd, Sun Ra Arkestra and Herbie Hancock. Dormant in the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit for many years, Strut and Art Yard began their research into the archives in 2015.

This first compilation of Detroit Artists Workshop is a revelation for any fan of jazz, featuring previously unreleased recordings by Byrd, Moore, English, Woodard, Bennie Maupin and Teddy Harris accompanied by extensive sleeve notes from John Sinclair, Robin Eichele and Herb Boyd. All tracks are remastered from the original tapes by Technology Works.

His latest release is a revelatory trawl through the archives of the Detroit Artists Workshop, an organisation Sinclair co-founded with jazz trumpeter Charles Moore in 1964. Released last month on Strut/Art Yard, the album features exhilarating live performances from Donald Byrd, Lyman Woodard and Bennie Maupin, with a warm intro from Sinclair himself.

So what do you want to ask a lifelong believer in the revolutionary power of music? Send your questions to audiencewith@uncut.co.uk and John will answer the best ones in the next issue of Uncut.

John Sinclair
"Sinclair is an iconic figure of '60s counterculture, famous for, among other things, having co-founded the anti-racist…johnsinclair.bandcamp.com

John Sinclair
www.johnsinclair.us
www.RadioFreeAmsterdam.org
www.theJohnSinclairFoundation.org
http://www.facebook.com/pages/John-Sinclair/132833609285

Carry On Touring

I’ve written two pieces, based on my experiences as a Tour Manager, to help DIY Musicians Touring in the EU post Brexit and having to deal with an ATA Carnet crossing the UK/EU Border. Not everyone can afford the luxury of a Tour Manager so I hope this helps those who have to do it all by themselves.

Tour Management: Crossing the UK/EU Border Using a Carnet

Tour Management: Going to Ireland and crossing the UK/EU Border using a Carnet

In other news, @HarrietHarman recently asked the following parliamentary question to the @DCMS:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what bilateral arrangements are in place for UK musicians seeking to tour in Belgium?

She thought that the response she received was wholly inadequate & misleading, so passed it onto #CarryOnTouring.

The @DCMS response:

“This Government is committed to supporting the UK’s creative industries, including musicians, to adapt to new arrangements with the EU.

EU Member States are principally responsible for deciding the rules governing what work UK visitors can undertake in each Member State. We have engaged bilaterally with all EU Member States, and nearly all (24 out of 27) have confirmed they offer visa and work permit free routes for UK performers for short-term touring.

This includes the UK’s biggest touring markets such as France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Following engagement by the UK Government and the sector, this also includes Spain, which introduced 90-day visa and work permit free touring in November 2021; and Greece, which announced a visa and work permit free route for UK creatives in June 2022, currently due to be in place until 31 December 2022. The UK Government is continuing to engage with Greece on extending this arrangement beyond the end of this year, however this is ultimately a decision for the Greek Government to take.

The Government is engaged with the remaining Member States — Cyprus, Malta and Portugal — on allowing creative professionals to tour more easily. However, ultimately it is up to these countries to align their requirements more closely with the UK’s generous rules.

The UK’s domestic rules allow musicians, entertainers and artists (and their technical staff) from EU Member States, to perform in the UK without requiring a visa, and the UK does not have work-permits.

More broadly, we have confirmed that:

1. Nearly all Member States offer visa and work permit free routes for musicians and creative performers.

2. Portable musical instruments, carried or in a vehicle, can be transported cost-free and should not require ATA Carnets; and

3. Small ‘splitter vans’ are not subject to the Trade and Cooperation Agreement limits around haulage for the creative sectors and ‘cross trade’. In addition, the Government has introduced dual registration to support specialist hauliers, meaning they can benefit from more generous market access arrangements in Great Britain and the EU.

#CarryOnTouring’s Response:

The Govt states that they are committed to supporting the creative industries. 18 months ago they talked about setting up a Music Export Office yet there has been no progress on this at all.

They say nearly all member states offer visa and work permit free routes for musicians and creative performers, BUT each and every one of those states are different AND this is ignoring the problem of the 90 in 180 day rule in that any creative or support worker would if exceeding their allowance would need to apply for a “Schengen cat D visa” for EACH country to be worked in as the free allowance is useless if you cannot actually enter Schengen because you’ve run out of allowance.

Regarding Carnets their response is all smoke and mirrors. This is ONLY true for the actual equipment defined as “portable musical instrument” I.E. Guitar / Harp / Accordion / Drum Kit / Cello etc NOT so ancillary equipment (effects pedals / loopers / computers etc) must be carried across the Schengen border and be declared for temporary import / export which usually is an ATA Carnet (It is possible to do this by complex declarations for each country but essentially the mechanism is by far and wide ATA Carnet ..so virtually all musicians in particular are affected by this and would likely still need a carnet.

Lastly, they talk about dual registration for specialist hauliers, this doesn’t help small operators who cannot afford to setup ‘Bridgehead operations’ or ‘owner operators’ like orchestras that own their specialist vehicles.

These are typical of the copy and paste answers that we have been seeing for nearly 2 years now, no matter whether the question comes from a musician, technician, an MP, a Lord or an open letter signed by 1135 supporters of the Carry on Touring Campaign in just three days. It isn’t good enough, we need real action, NOW, not in six months, a year, 5 years, NOW! The govt need to start proper negotiation with the EU to sort out these issues facing creative touring once and for all. We are losing tours and jobs now and it will not be long before creative touring becomes unattainable and a truly world beating industry ceases to be!

With a new SoS for the @DCMS, we hope that @michelledonelan takes note of our response above and starts to deal with the issues in a manner that the previous incumbent was totally incapable of.

Listen to the Cain album here:

You can watch the Cain Birmingham show from the start of October here:

Police Bastard are back in rehearsals working on new songs and back catalogue with a new drummer. Updates to follow.

Police Bastard
Confined Dead To The World It's Good To Hate Traumatized Police Bastard John Doom - Vocals, Guitar Mark Badger …policebastard.bandcamp.com

Framework Recording Studios has all sorts of work to finish over coming weeks. Current edit work includes the recent recordings of Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson read by Oliver Senton.

Simon Reeves has got as far as page 129 at the time of writing and hopes to get the rest done over the next week or so.

If you are an Iron Man Records Patron you will soon be getting Audio to listen to and review.

Prometheus Rising tries to make sense of Timothy Leary’s eight neurological circuits, G.I. Gurdjieff’s self-observations exercises, Alfred Korzybski’s general semantics, Aleister Crowley’s magical theorems, and the several disciplines of Yoga, this is a book about how the human mind works. It’s also the unoffical Tour Manager’s handbook. Trust me, it will be worth a listen when it’s finished.

What’s Going On?

Listen to John Sinclair and Radio Free Amsterdam

Mondays
The John Sinclair Radio Show
Fly By Night with Steve The Fly

Tuesdays
The Blues Show with Bruce Pingree
Mood Indigo with Leslie Keros

Wednesdays
BluesTime International with Roger White
Party Train with Linda Lexy

Thursdays
Face The Music with arwulf arwulf
The Groove Yard with George Klein

Fridays
Jazz from the French Market with Maryse Dejean
Sounds of Blue with Bob Putignano

Saturdays
New Orleans Music Show with Tom Morgan
The Soul Lucille Show with DJ Lucille

Sundays
Jazz at Daybreak with Leslie Keros
Jazz Lunatique with David Kunian

You can see the player here: https://radiofreeamsterdam.org/shows/

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