landgrab

photo by max crow reeves

in the above photo you see horsemouth planning to urinate on a derelict estate in newham - an estate kept empty for years so as to be available for redevelopment at a higher density.






horsemouth has been spending a little time learning to play world turned upside down which as howard noted is strangely appropriate at the time of the government’s landgrab on housing associations and councils. the National Housing Federation has cooked up some backdoor deal where they give the government what they want voluntarily allowing the government to get the policy in without it being taken to a vote in the houses of commons. the councils may feel they have been ratted out (they would be obliged to sell off their more valuable property as it came empty to fund the ‘replacement’ of housing association property sold off under ‘right to buy’ legislation for housing association tenants) and will thus become uncooperative. 

horsemouth thinks right to buy (with up 100k reductions for longstanding tenants) should be extended. it should be extended to private tenants. similarly the requirement to lower rents by 1% every year (required of housing associations) that should be extended to private landlords too...etc. etc.

there are curious results from the blitzkrieg of proposed housing legislation - where once there was a set aside of a proportion of flats on most new build estates that had to be let out at affordable rent (80% of market rent) now this no longer has to be done - but housing associations will still be required to produce their new housing at affordable rent, it’s all a bit random and poorly thought out - but that doesn’t matter it just increases the shock and awe.

housing policy doesn’t have to work (in the sense of housing people) - all it has to do is drive people into the arms of private landlords and enable those landlords to charge the highest rent possible. that works for the landlords.

the sin of property we do disdain - but of course we don’t, we feel aggrieved that what is properly (if collectively) ours is being taken from us by government diktat - but really we are just being given an object lesson in the fact that all property rights ultimately derive from the state and can be revoked at any time.

you poor take courage you rich take care.

the tabernacle of the sun (le tabernac du soleil)

such is the strange wapping church visited by the hero and his best mate in hitchcock’s british version of the man who knew too much. later on the DVD (downstream and on the other side of river) hitchcock is filming frenzy opposite the houses of commons before being interviewed by aquarius london weekend television’s arts show.

peter lorre in 'the man who knew too much'

things go badly for our hero and his mate at the tabernacle of the sun - it all goes a bit sydney street - stolid british bobbies shot and then the guns come out (before that there is a distressing marathon man style visit to the dentist). peter lorre a snickering nazi henchman.

the tabernacle of the sun - good name for a band (well in horsemouth’s line of work anyway).

on wednesday night on the beer trophy front horsemouth acquired one of those tubular steel clothes rails - and a reasonably robust one at that. however today he failed to pick up some flooring/ shelving from a recycling point (when he got back to it after working it had been recycled). he will further be re-arranging his flat soon (probably when it comes time to move into his radiator hugging igloo for the winter.

horsemouth has worked - the sun is shining - soon his weekend will begin.

'come in. I hear a voice. come inside...'

horsemouth is back from a screening of voice of the eagle a film about the life and music of robbie basho at the VUE piccadilly (central london basement multiplex). it was shown as part of the london raindance film festival which continues. there was a short Q and A at the end with the film’s frighteningly young maker liam barker.


horsemouth got there early and bought one of the last four tickets but was surprised to discover only one other person in the screening room when he got down there. (he turned out to be a sufi who’d tried to promote robbie basho gigs with not much interest in 78 or so - he’d also managed a duo who’s died in a car crash who were now (moderately) famous due to their horror movie soundtracks - does that sound familiar to anyone? horsemouth didn’t catch the name.) 

of course for the price of a cinema ticket in central london horsemouth could have gone to the launch gig at cafe oto seen 3 modern guitarists and bought a beer (but hey then he wouldn’t have been out at the bermondsey folk festival).

the sufi guy was soon in conversation with the IT textbook writer next to him who praised the old ways - the juxtapositions of music created by the limited number of radio stations in the UK and blamed algorithms for the narrowing of people’s tastes if you like...then...(horsemouth actually thinks it goes the other way - he listens to a broader range of music now than he used to. what the wire shows is the mainstreaming of eclectic tastes. the internet/ social media has brought much that was lost back. look at this film - kickstarter funded, digitally edited, almost impossible to make without email).

the room filled up. the film began - it’s a little overlong. it has a natural end with basho’s death and funeral service (the sufis danced and scattered rose petals in a circle). but then it must continue, to steffan basho-junghens, to track down basho’s ‘lost’ recordings and artefacts - his guitar, his guitar case, a harmonium.

the sufi guy liked the film - he’d got to see all his friends of the meher spiritual center in myrtle beach - afterwards the sufis had split some remaining with the temple some going their own way. pete townshend was actually good on this (as a follower of meher baba himself) - the sufis are goofy in love - a quality you find in basho.

books, gigs and films september

books;
cultural capital - robert hewson (part),
chamberlain and the beautiful llama - stefan lorant,
the pageant of summer - richard jefferies -,
performance theory -,
middlemarch - george eliot (half, still reading),
a history of the worthies of england - dd thomas fuller,
men of ideas - bryan magee (the sections on/ with isiah berlin, charles taylor, herbert marcuse, heidegger, wittgenstein, ernest gellner)

gigs;
- thomas mccarthy, gemma khawaja, fran foote - bermondsey folk festival,
- grandmaster flash, levi roots - er. grillfest, walthamstow,
- orchestre baobab. blick bassy - rfh and simo lagnawi in the qeh foyer,
- laura cannell, angharad davies, oliver coates (and another violinist) individually then all together - cafe otto,
-  stick in the wheel, the gentle people, jack sharp - album launch party underneath holborn viaduct,
- magic science quartet (marshall allen, henry grimes and various guildhall music schoolers) - the barbican foyer.

 films;
tideland, the jacket, don't look now, groundhog day, the house that dripped blood, whatever happened to jack and jill? . 

magic science (‘you thought I was dead’)

horsemouth wandered out to henry Grimes / marshall allen's Magic Science Quartet Together With Students From The Guildhall Music School. he did not make it out to the earlier folk things (even though they were free - normally a big motivator for horsemouth - apparently stick in the wheel are big with horsemouth's friends that he does not see so often as well, but he missed seeing them). horsemouth liked the combination big band and cosmic sound (the thing he liked about the sun ra arkestra). the youth did good.


henry grimes vanished from the music scene in the 70ies. he sold his double bass and went and got a job. the rumour went around that he was dead. but then in the 90ies he was rediscovered. horsemouth likes the second acts that the internet permits.

horsemouth is back to the gainful employment later - back to his main gig.

the one where horsemouth does everything

Universal Tribulations by Howard Grange on Mixcloud

horsemouth has been reading bryan magee's men of ideas (token honorary man - iris murdoch) a whistlestop tour of various philosophers. this has distracted him from middlemarch (which was going really well).

howard (on the other hand) has held down a very demanding job and put up the second in his series of musicians of bremen mixes - gil evans, robbie basho movin' up a-ways, caribou, robert wyatt, joni mitchell, some electronica horsemouth isn't familiar with - all good clean stuff.

horsemouth is feeling slightly guilty having ditched out of going to a drone gig at st. leonard's shoreditch. he's also anxious that an article he wrote about clays lane in the limited circulation journal of the monkey-on-a-stick housing co-op (300 copies maximum) might have intersected with a criticisee (and that - gulp - horsemouth will now have to work with them). did he mention that this was many years ago.

it is typical of horsemouth to get anxious about minor shit - he gets anxious about this kind of stuff because he doesn't have real problems (like mortgages, childcare responsibilities for example). if he had real problems he would get anxious about other things.

nonetheless when horsemouth comes to tally up the gigs he has gone to this month it will be a creditable performance - but he will still persist in beating himself up with the gigs he didn't go to, the books he didn't read or finish reading, the theoretical connections he didn't make, the music he didn't record, the work he didn't do. this is why althusser is such an appealng character to him, wheras adorno (who only had to open his mouth for fully formed prose to fall out - according to habermas) appeals largely because of his grumpiness.

horsemouth may go out to a marshall allen gig tuesday - he works wednesday and thursday, so far nothing else. next week he's back to his main earner (and will doubtless be moaning about it all).

were a lion to speak to us we would not be able to understand him. if a mule should speak to us we would recognise him as a fellow son of toil (and set him to work).

it's a grey rainy day outside. yesterday was bright and sunny and warm - horsemouth was out babysitting in the morning - 'are you her grandfather?' guessed the girl in the playground, 'good guess' replied horsemouth.

quantative easing park (the ghosts of clays lane)

so horsemouth failed to go out on the e15 mum's march yesterday (a campaign to prevent working class mums and their children from being rehoused outside london when hundreds of social housing flats lie empty on the estates) - he feels suitably guilty. he'd forgotten about it until the morning in question and not liking surprises he got a wobble on. he'd assumed they we making the same huge march they did last time but no it was a comparatively short and un-puritan ramble round stratford.

instead (or just after, it would have been, in the horsemouth does everything chronology) he went up to quantative easing park a tiny corner of which covers over the site of the old clays lane housing co-op, which was the second largest purpose built housing co-op for single people but is now no longer social housing but trees and fields - landscaped out of existence. and as john notes frequently the wrong type of trees (a species that likes muddy feet planted on well drained hillsides for example and now obviously not thriving).

horsemouth has written before about the closing down of clays lane (perhaps intemperately) but this was probably just personal pique at having been evicted out of his best flat ever to make way for refugees from it - and they weren't even happy about this as many of them wanted the community to be refounded elsewhere rather than be dispersed round the various councils, almos, tmos (sorry about the technical housing terms) of london. and this was just the ones who stayed to the bitter end - horsemouth's friends who left during the years of its decline got nisht. but there was (at least) some compensation and rehousing for the remaining members - and for all people's rose tinted memories of 'the lane' it was not a vastly loved place - there were plenty of conflicts. horsemouth's friends who lived there probably know better. even so horsemouth went to some great parties there.

in some ways, and this was the perspective at the london federation of co-ops, the clays lane management committee did it to themselves - there was a deal on the table they prefered to get the lawyers in (and they lost). the co-op had a complicated courtyard democracy management structure which meant it was difficult to provide all the documentary evidence that elections to the management committee had been taken correctly. the result of this was that any attempt to refound the management committee to deal with difficult circumstances could always be challenged. this all came up again recently in another context (the world of housing is a small one after all) - horsemouth should re-read his piece to see if he's being fair, at the time he was quite angry and it seemed to him a manifest and deliberate injustice but perhaps it was just a fuckup that could have been avoided or at least mitigated better.

and hey! he really liked that flat.

 ----------------------

anyway - horsemouth walked home from QE park, got a quick bite to eat, and then went into town to hear the stick in the wheel album launch.

first on was jack sharp (of the wolf people) at first solo and then with two other singers - good songs, great singing, perhaps a joke about the folk audience being more likely to be pro-hunting that other audiences (introducing a song about hare coursing) needs work.

then the gentle people - horsemouth likes the four piece line up and the harmonies (a 30 minute song-cycle with only 1 noticeable fuckup -wow),

and then stick in the wheel who played the tracks in the order they are on the new album (reviewed in the observer today). they recently played the house of commons where the made sarah champion (MP for rotheram and member of the shadow cabinet) cry.

horsemouth is of the opinion more MPs should be reduced to tears on a regular basis but perhaps he's just being intemperate.