Essays

Our politicians are the defense industry. A person going from the state department, to being CEO of a defense contractor, and back into the vice presidency, defines the legal principle of a ‘conflict of interest’. The same man who wages war cannot be the same man who profits from one.

Theo Gangi rails at the weapons manufacturers who rule governments and the fear that lets them.

The awed reverence of the crowd, mindful of the Spaceman’s recent brush with death but looking somewhat healthier for it, added to the religiosity of the occasion, embellished by the rock n’ soul gospel chorus on numbers from down the years — ‘Walking With Jesus’, ‘Feel So Sad’, ‘All of My Tears’, ‘Broken Heart’, ‘Think I’m In Love’ and a sadly truncated ‘Funeral Home’. Beyond the gospel, Pierce’s voice shone as brightly as luminescence through a cathedral window during an epiphany. Before blowing the fucking roof off, like the blast of horn at an early Sam Cook gig.

Andrew Stevens reviews a recent Spiritualized accoustic set.

Gina’s temperament is suited to, and her work embodies, the same ethos which Stuckism embodies, namely holistic truth to self and experience and its direct communication. She is a fellow traveller in the paradigm, despite wishing not to — and claiming not to — travel with her fellows, and, for that matter, regardless of their wishes or claims on the matter. History does not give a fig for such refutatory peccadilloes and incidental vanities.

Charles Thomson‘s column for 3:AM.

At Maidstone Art College, I attended tutorials by Brian Eno, who informed us that David Bowie had happily confessed to nicking the idea for the song ‘TVC15’ from him. Kylie Minogue didn’t have any problem in acknowledging she had taken words from Billy Childish for the title of her Impossible Princess tour and album.

The second of Charles Thomson‘s three-part Stuckist critique, exclusive to 3:AM.

Introduce a new national anthem. Maybe we could just go for an instrumental version this time? The British music scene is alive and well and any of the following artists would make good compositional candidates: Mogwai, UK Apache featuring Shy FX, Shaun Ryder, Squarepusher, Tony Hatch, Gallows, Ralph McTell, Black Sabbath (original line-up only please. Note: Ronnie James Dio-era Sabbath will not be allowed near this project). Cat Stevens.

Regime change begins at home. Are you thinking what he’s thinking? Vote Ben Myers.

You see it makes so much sense that it rocks and cries and screams into your wicked dreams, the ones of colour that all make sense and flash around your eyes strange psychotic wax we dance in your trance like means of attack unlike the trees fall on my wall

By Heidi James.

Postmodern prose is perhaps best approached as an exercise in posturing and phonetics — of couching slim and trite observations in needlessly Byzantine language; or as what Sokal and Bricmont refer to as “a gradual crescendo of nonsense.” Efforts to fathom deep meaning, or meaning of any kind, are generally exhausting and rarely rewarded. More often, what you’ll find is essentially a pile of language, carefully disorganised so as to obscure a lack of content.

David Thompson casts an eye over the postmodern scholarship of “radical cyber-feminist”, Carolyn Guertin.

Once I was in London, I went to a pub in Euston Street where I had several pints with Richard Marshall, who’d written an essay about me for the 3:AM website. We talked about Hazlitt, and Richard suggested my plagiaristic tendencies made me a far more typical representative of English literary traditions than jokers like Julian Barnes or Martin Amis.

The final exclusive excerpt from Stewart Home‘s Memphis Underground.

You produce The Gem from the Past, for your mates’ musical edification, knowing they will thank you for enlightening them (actually they will soon forget who was first and become all snotty about how they were among the early admirers.) Such is the feeling I got when I first heard some of these tracks on The Transmitters’ Myspace page. The real thing, cutting through all the heavily hair-styled cohorts of contemporary imitators, talented and less so, from Franz Ferdinand to more recent acts like The Blood Arm, the Fratellis and whatnot.

Vim Cortez reviews The Transmitters‘ album.

If this album was a bald eagle wrapped in the Stars’n’Stripes and bombing a non-threatening Middle Eastern country, it could not be more American. If rock’n’roll can still be used as a euphemism for sex, then Jesse Malin is rock’n’roll syphilis: time-old, persistent and dangerously catchy.

Richard O’Brien reviews Jesse Malin‘s new album.

The game begins. Robinson wrote this in collaboration with a Defoe of Stoke Newington, onetime brickseller and odd-job author: tales of fast women and roguish men, King-before-King horror stories about a plagues, storms and apparitions. Together, it appears, they cooked up this story of a virtuous island tenure. Easy to picture them in the upper room of a London inn — cheap candles, two chancers laughing at the absurdities to be thrown at the public.

Sean Walsh is fascinated by an enduring literary recurrence.

But that’s the way of the world; if you put art in the street it won’t last unless it’s something monumental, and if it’s constructed from a material and in a way that will ensure it will last then it’s just a totalitarian imposition on other people’s lives. Culture has to remake itself continually, go with the urban flow, single cultural artefacts shouldn’t permanently occupy space in a city.

Stewart Home on Oscar Niemeyer and the street art of São Paulo.