Sic - Chumbawamba

 SIC - CHUMBAWAMBA

Produced in 2002 by members of Chumbawamba when they were flush with money from the success of Tubthumping, Sic is subtitled as being a 'magazine of no value' and described on the back cover as 'an irony-free zone where artists, activists and sex and drugs and rock'n'roll meet up'. Design-wise it's more like a Reader's Digest than a typical kind of magazine you'd pick up at your newsagent and content-wise it's neither 'a pop magazine with politics or a political magazine with pop'. To be a bit more precise, it's probably better described by the mock caption on the cover: 'Adventures In Anti-Capitalism' - but without the exclamation mark.

So what do you get for your cover price of £4.95? A bargain that's what and a pretty good one at that. An interesting and easily readable compilation of interviews, articles and graphic design that whiffs of social change and do-gooding without the typically associated embarrassment. It's a roll call of participating names that if put together in the same room would erupt into arguments but on paper sit very well together. Jake Black of Alabama 3, Mick Farren, Jeremy Hardy, Seething Wells - and that's just the ones who have since passed away. Caroline Coon, Bill Drummond, Rob Newman, Jon Savage, Mark Thomas - and that's just some of the better known ones.

Twenty years after it first being published and it's interesting how 'soft' some of the politics and points of views expressed within Sic's pages now seem. Even though the kind of world being aimed at by all the contributors might appear even further away than ever, everything being expressed sounds so very reasonable and easily achievable with just a bit of good will and fortitude. So after twenty years it now begs the question that Marc Bolan first posed back in the early 1970s as Glam Rock wobbled on its stack heels: Whatever happened to the teenage dream?

In Italy that dream was represented for a moment by the Tute Bianche, otherwise known as the white overall movement on whom there is a very good article written I presume by one of Chumbawamba? Dressed in white overalls with home-made foam and cardboard body armour beneath and sporting crash helmets and home-made shields, the Tute Bianche would make their way to the front of demonstrations and advance towards lines of riot police with a chant of 'Here we come, bastards'. Significantly and importantly the only weapons they held were soft cuddly toys and bendy balloons whilst the foam padding meant they could only push and use weight of numbers. In effect, this meant that any violence could only come from the police. 

During the anti-globalization mass demos of the late 90s and early 2000s the Tute Bianche were a sight to behold and they easily stole headlines. Come the anti-G8 demo of 2001 in Genoa, however, these tactics came to a head when the Italian State responded in the way they knew could be most effective: by massive indiscriminate violence. To witness Italian police armed with tear gas, batons, guns and armoured cars attacking people armed with teddy bears, balloons and water pistols might well reveal the true face of the State but it doesn't bring that State down, though it does leave a lot of people injured and jailed. Clearly, post-Genoa 2001 it was time for a re-think.

Meanwhile in an interview with Sri Lanka-born writer Ambalavaner Sivanandan, migration is cited as a way of looking at what capitalism does to people's lives. 'Globalisation displaces people, I call it economic genocide by stealth. There's no such thing as an illegal migrant, there's only an illegal government,' he says. 'The cultural demonisation of asylum seekers takes place before the law comes into place. Capitalism moves in mysterious ways, its miracles to perform. There's a collective subconscious about capitalism which allows it to use the cultural feeling, the cultural instance, the cultural dynamics of a people in order to soften them up for the economic exploitation to come. In an old democracy like Britain it's a blotting paper society that absorbs and negates opposition.'

And then there's artist, writer and veteran of both the hippy movement and punk, Caroline Coon, who says 'The most heroic thing you can do is smuggle refugees into this country. I always feel that I should do it. The poor lorry drivers who are getting fined, it's a very heroic thing to do.' And remember, this was twenty years ago she was saying this.

More closer to home and in what is the best interview/article in Sic, the late Reverend D Wayne Love (aka Jake Black) of Alabama 3 expounds upon his interactions with Crass and whilst acknowledging their influence sees them now as having been extremely conservative in their politics. As for the One Little Indian label Alabama 3 were on at that time, according to the late Reverend all that label boss Derek Birkett was doing was accumulating and writing off groups as tax losses or viewing them as grist to the mill, just in the same way that any boss would do in terms of surplus value. The interesting thing about this is that One Little Indian was the label Chumbawamba were on prior to them signing to EMI and the release of Tubthumping - leading to the financial success without which Sic would never have been produced or published. There's some kind of lesson there.

As is there also a lesson in the fact that copies of Sic are currently for sale on Amazon and AbeBooks for £75...

John Serpico

Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerney

 BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY - JAY MCINERNEY

Whenever Dillinger had cocaine running around in his brain and he would tell Jim that a knife, a fork, a bottle and a cork was the way you spelt New York I used to think: No it isn't. When I actually first went to New York I thought I might hate it there, this powerhouse of capitalism where money is God and where its inhabitants are loud and crass as a matter of course. But I was wrong. I was impressed. I stood looking out at Manhattan from on top of the Empire State Building and the noise from down below was like some colossal machine. A never-ending roar like that of a gigantic waterfall. Down there below me was one of the pinnacles of human creation. Looking up from the street from down on Fifth Avenue the buildings stretched up into the sky and were indeed like canyons. And then with the hustle and the bustle and the extremities of all human life I though yes, I could live here.

Whenever Peter York or some such similar talking head was on television defining the 1980s solely as a time of extravagance, Sloane Rangers, yuppies, and wealth creation on the Stock Exchange I always used to think: No it wasn't. On picking up a copy of Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City I thought I might hate everything about it, this tale of a young urban professional carousing the streets of Manhattan in a blaze of cocaine and first world problems. But I was wrong. In fact I'm almost impressed.

According to the blurb on the cover from Tony Parsons, Bright Lights, Big City is 'probably the best book ever written about being young, about doing drugs and about music'. It isn't and Tony Parsons is wrong but then when is he ever right? Were it not for its wry humour and weird attention to weird detail then it would be a tale of self absorption and self pity kept afloat by a druggy white line fever but it is instead a sort of immorality tale of a fall from grace and a gradual redemption. It's well composed, finely executed and not too serious which makes for the final redemption to come across as quite touching that in itself is an achievement because let's face it, no-one likes a yuppie.

Its drug angle is of interest as well because the whole book seems to be not so much about drugs but drug-fuelled: 'The sweet nasal burn hits like a swallow of cold beer on a hot August day and by the time you all troop out of the bathroom you are feeling omnipotent. You are upwardly mobile. Certainly something excellent is bound to happen.'

Would it come as any surprise to know that the whole Thatcher/Reagan economic free-for-all, the whole shoulder pads and Armani fashion sense, the whole selfishness and greed is good mantra of the 1980s was ridden on the crest of a cocaine wave? Of course not. Why else would all those brash city slickers of that period appear so confident? How else would the musical emptiness and the lyrical shallowness of someone like Phil Collins gain such traction and provide the soundtrack to anyone's life? Why else would a place like Studio 54 become so popular? Why else would anyone want to go to the Groucho Club?

Not that I would ever condemn cocaine use, however. In fact more power to it, I say. Whatever gets you through the night, etc. It's just that Bolivian Marching Powder does not make for witty or erudite conversation nor does it make for great art which is why Bright Lights, Big City impresses because it is witty, it is somewhat erudite and it is rather great.

John Serpico

Levellers - Dance Before The Storm - George Berger

LEVELLERS - DANCE BEFORE THE STORM -

GEORGE BERGER

They used to live on this big traveller's site on the outskirts of Amsterdam called The Last Bus Shelter. I didn't know them personally but I had a few friends who did and they were always very complimentary about them. The first time I ever saw them play live was at the Treworgey Tree Fayre in 1989 where they played by candlelight in a marquee to a small but appreciative audience. I remember them doing a cover version of Police On My Back and me thinking this was a band who had something special about them. To be honest, I was never really enamoured by their music but it was obvious their hearts were in the right place. And then I saw them next on the main stage at Glastonbury Festival in 1994 and the audience reaction to them was what I can only describe as phenomenal. That whole field was undulating, heaving and jumping unlike any other time I'd seen it before. This was their audience all in one place on a massive scale. This was the match made in heaven. That evening Glastonbury was the Levellers' spiritual home and it was like the Levellers were Glastonbury's spiritual band. It was genuinely a sight to behold.

Ah yes, the Levellers. The band the music press loved to hate. The Levellers. The band that invited a thousand jibes at the mere mention of their name. The Levellers. The band that still to this day provokes hostility from a legion of armchair critics. You thought The Alarm were bad? Here's the Levellers. You thought Chumbawamba, Steeleye Span, Ed Sheeran, Mumford and Sons, etc, etc, etc were bad? Here's the Levellers. And here's Dance Before The Storm, written by George Berger, the official story of the Levellers.

I have no axe to grind here at all, I might add. I hold no prejudice or no fear or loathing of the band in the slightest. In fact, as a band and as individuals and even as an institution (for that is what they are now, particularly in regard to their annual Beautiful Days festival) the Levellers have my utmost respect - even if I don't get off on their music. For they have moved into and now occupy a sphere where they represent a certain common good beyond the realm of music where values, integrity and politics are just as important if not more so and where these things are displayed if even subtly because they are genuinely believed in rather than them being a 'hearts on sleeve' pose used cynically to push product.

There is no hypocrisy when it comes to the Levellers. What you see is what you get and it's precisely this that in hindsight caused so much upset with critics. The Levellers once held up a mirror to the 'music biz' and the music biz didn't like what it saw and so tried to smash it. The Levellers were that mirror.

George Berger used to be the vocalist of anarcho punk band Flowers In The Dustbin who rather than Crass always had a lot more in common with Adam And The Ants and Poison Girls. Berger has also written a book on Crass although Dance Before The Storm is the superior one for the fact that between the lines of his Crass book there was a sense that he didn't actually like Crass or at least he kind of resented them in a way, whilst with the Levellers you can tell he genuinely likes them. He's a fan.

Where exactly did the Levellers come from, you might wonder? Well, it's not too much of a surprise to read they were birthed from a gene pool of punk, Crass, The Waterboys, Dexys Midnight Runners, and The Pogues. The most important ingredient, however, is Brighton without which they could probably never have happened. Brighton being a sort of elder sister of Hackney and parts of Bristol, if you know what is meant by that?

But if writing about music is like dancing to architecture, what is it when writing about the Levellers? Well, it's like being given a gun and being asked to shoot at a sitting duck. It's like being given a gun and a barrel of fish then left to your own devices. A weapon called the word doesn't do justice to the fun on a plate to be had. For example, how can you not be amused by a review of a Levellers album that described the band as a 'horrible, grubby, beardy, little band... you know what they sound like. Fiddles and things.' Or from the NME that described a 'fairly sickening nightclub scene where someone tells Farquar, or whatever the singer's called, that she loves him before fantasising about the world bombing Brighton and the introduction of a police state.' Or from What's On magazine where they wrote 'But what does the song sound like, you say. Who cares? It's the Levellers, for God's sake.' 

The thing about this kind of vitriol from the music press, however, is that it's almost a given that when a band is so intensely disliked you just know there's going to be something of interest about them. So too for the Levellers but if it's not their music then what is it? In his book, Berger suggests the Levellers are the final revenge of punk rock, which is probably a bit over the top. He also says they are the actual inheritors of the Crass legacy, which is debatable and probably not true. Also that A Weapon Called The Word is a 'glorious debut album', and that by 1991 the Levellers were 'far and away the best live band in Britain, maybe the world'. Which is feasible, I suppose. At a push.

Leaving aside these debates, the obviously interesting thing about the Levellers is their support of counterculture, particularly around travellers and free festivals, this being the thing that drew the most ire from their critics. According to vocalist Mark Chadwick it was his encounter with festival culture, particularly the Elephant Fayre in Cornwall in 1981 that cemented his realisation that this was the way of life for him. The aforementioned Treworgey Tree Fayre eight years later was apparently the first 'big' festival the Levellers played at and from there they went on to play the Wango Riley stage in the traveller's field at Glastonbury before eventually playing the main stage. Along the way, of course, was the Battle of the Beanfield in 1985 where the core of the Stonehenge festival crew were beaten to a bloody pulp and their vehicles destroyed by crazed police high on hate, prejudice and ultra-Thatcherism.

Anyone who had a heart could not fail to side with the Beanfield victims and be shaken at how the full violence of the State was utilised to attack defenceless men, women, children and even babies in a bid to decommission a way of life. Unfortunately there were a lot of heartless people around at that time, with certain journalists with an eye on a future job at the Daily Mail being instrumental in depicting travellers as somehow less than human and deserving of even less sympathy or support. Against this tide of conservatism the Levellers stuck out like a sore thumb.

At the same time, a curious thing about the ire being aimed at the Levellers is that it wasn't also being aimed at the Levellers' peer groups such as Culture Shock, RDF, or Back To The Planet and it needs to be asked why? The answer, of course, is pretty clear: None of these other free festival-type groups were attaining the same level of success as the Levellers and it was all being done - especially in regard to the huge audiences the Levellers were pulling - without the seal of approval and without the slightest bit of help from the music press. It was sheer spite and vindictiveness on the part of the press essentially and nothing less.

A protracted war was being waged culminating in a strange concession with Melody Maker newspaper offering the Levellers the front cover and the centre pages of their next issue to do with as they please. It was a bizarre and unique proposition and one that any band would probably sell their granny, their teeth and the right arm of their drummer for. So what did the Levellers do? According to Berger they had a meeting in a pub, got pissed and then got their friend to write an article urging people not to buy Melody Maker but to buy fanzines instead. Which was fine though probably a pointless effort that would go unheeded. Much better it would have been to urge people to create their own fanzines but then apparently the article had been rushed and not properly thought through, not helped by the author getting pissed in the pub alongside the Levellers and having to write it the next day. And how does Berger know all this? Because Berger was that author.

For all this, the Levellers are indeed a much more important band in the scheme of things than most others due not to their music but their extracurricular band activities involving their support of traveller and festival culture and not least their work around the Criminal Justice Act of old - actual government legislation that effectively outlawed a way of life. In his introduction to Dance Before The Storm, Berger says the world of the Levellers is an important one and unless it's recorded now it will be wiped from the face of history like so many important worlds before it. In an increasingly conservative and mono-culture world it's a very valid point and in itself justifies the time and the effort put into writing his book. Indeed, it justifies its very existence and why it deserves to be read. Dance Before The Storm is a job well done.

John Serpico

Beautiful Twisted Night - Marc Almond

BEAUTIFUL TWISTED NIGHT - MARC ALMOND

As Plato is quoted as saying, at the touch of love everyone becomes a poet. And so too in regard to Marc Almond who as evidenced by his book, Beautiful Twisted Night, has also been touched by love and has also become a poet though not through the love of any one particular person. No, Marc has been touched by the love of the city - the cruel, dirty, heartless, selfish, souless city where the hustler is hero and the loser is saint, where the ugly is beautiful and the beautiful more beautiful. The city of secrets, neon, fantasy and desire, of darkness, sex, drugs and twilight glamour.

As Marc in his introduction explains: "When I became successful I was given so many keys to so many cities. People had listened to my songs and read the themes of my lyrics, so they knew where to take me and who to introduce me to. Prostitutes, hustlers, porn stars, strippers, gangsters, pimps, dominatrixes, transsexuals, madams, subculture celebrities, superstars and even Satan worshippers - they have all danced in and out of 'my beautiful twisted night'." Marc's songs became a reflection of this life as his life in turn became a reflection of his poems and songs.

Published in 1999, Beautiful Twisted Night is not only a testament to Marc's talent as a wordsmith but also to his prolificacy. It's a collection of his poetry and prose that throws into confusion any distinction between what makes a poem and what makes a lyric for a song. Is there a dividing line? A point of cross-over? Are song lyrics simply bad poetry and if so does bad poetry make for good lyrics? Is a poem a hymn and can a hymn be a lyric and vice versa? Is anything too stupid to say simply sung instead? I'd say 'Yes' to that one but as a proviso there are also some things that whilst they can easily be said are actually better when sung. 

And then there's Marc Almond whose words work just as well as poetry as they do lyrics, and just as well as words on a printed page as they do when accompanied by music. It's a rare thing. A rare act. An almost exclusive club to belong to. In fact, in the context of Leonard Cohen's Tower of Song, whilst most occupants are paying rent to lodge there Marc Almond owns a whole floor just a few down below from the one owned by Hank Williams.

For the record, I might suggest that actually Marc's prose is even better than his poems/lyrics because it's here that he has more room to breathe and expound even when talking in a kind of veiled Polari. He does it really well, particularly for example when on the subject of Piccadilly rent boys where he shines a spotlight upon the characters though always a compassionate and tinted one.

London, New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Barcelona, Rio, Bangkok, Berlin, Hamburg, St Petersburgh, Beirut, Tokyo, Paris, Rome and Amsterdam. Ah yes, Amsterdam. Marc has passed through them all, making the acquaintance along the way of the exotic, the erotic, and the plain psychotic. Down into the backstreets, the cellars, the red light districts and the bars with one eye on the gutter and the other on the stars. All noted, recorded and praised over the course of over forty albums, an autobiography and this very good book - Beautiful Twisted Night.

John Serpico

Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism - John M Cammett

 ANTONIO GRAMSCI 

AND THE ORIGINS OF ITALIAN COMMUNISM - 

JOHN M CAMMETT

There's nothing like a bit of Gramsci on your daily commute. It's where I do a lot of my reading: On the train to and thro from work as the world goes by outside. And therein lies the only difference between me and my fellow commuters: Where they all tend to be surfing social media on their iPhones, there's me with my nose stuck in a book about the origins of Italian Communism. It doesn't in any way make me a better (or worse) person of course just because I'm reading a book because it's each to one's own at the end of the day. It's horses for courses. Same song difference dance. Or as Elton John once put it: 'While the other kids are rocking round the clock, I'm hopping and bopping to the Crocodile Rock.'

But I digress.

Antonio Gramsci was born on the island of Sardinia in 1891 where his parents scratched a living in what was an economically backward area even by southern Italian standards. Poverty and crime were endemic and life was brutal, and it was from these origins that Gramsci developed a natural instinct of rebellion against the rich. After gaining entry into the University of Turin from a special scholarship fund for needy students his writing began in earnest, contributing to the weekly organ of the Turin section of the Socialist Party and then to the national socialist newspaper, Avanti.

Gramsci was a thinker, a contemplator whose analysis was always innovative, cutting and precise. Small wonder then that by 1921 at the age of thirty he was serving as a national leader of the Italian communist proletariat.

John M Cammett's book, Antonio Gramsci And The Origins Of Italian Communism swerves and weaves around and ploughs through the ins, outs and intricacies of the 57 Heinz baked bean versions, splits and factions of Italian Communism with exhaustive attention to detail. He eventually reaches the stage in Gramsci's life where following the attempted assassination of Mussolini, the Fascists pass the Exceptional Laws which orders the immediate dissolution of all opposition parties. After establishing a Special Tribunal for the defence of the State, mass arrests are carried out with Gramsci being one of the first to face the Tribunal. On the advice of the prosecutor, Gramsci is sentenced to twenty years of imprisonment on charges of treason with the prosecutor declaring "We must stop this brain from functioning."

Ironically, it's actually in prison that Gramsci gets to do some of his best thinking particularly in regard to the concept of cultural hegemony, all recorded in 2,848 pages of manuscript to be later published years after his death as The Prison Notebooks. If Gramsci was already considered to be an intellectual, these prison notebooks cemented his position as being one of the masters of twentieth-century political thought.

Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony is the process by which predominance is obtained by consent rather than force of one class or group over other classes or groups. But how to explain this so it makes sense? How to explain a Universal Truth? 

As Cammett in his book puts it: "Hegemony is an order in which a certain way of life and thought is dominant, in which one concept of reality is diffused throughout society in all its institutional and private manifestations, informing with its spirit all taste, morality, customs, religious and political principles and all social relations.'

I'm loathe to quote Wikipedia at the best of times but as they put it: "Cultural hegemony is the dominance of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class who manipulate the culture of that society - the beliefs and explanations, perceptions, values and mores - so that the worldview of the ruling class becomes the accepted cultural norm. As the universal dominant ideology, the ruling class worldview misrepresents the social, political and economic status quo as natural, inevitable and perpetual social conditions that benefit every social class, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class.' And then 'Hegemonic culture propagates its own values and norms so that they become the 'common sense' values of all and thus maintain the status quo.'

Hegemony, as Gramsci points out, however, is a two-way street and so just as bourgeoisie and conservative values are cast as common sense values held by all and of benefit to all - subsequently justifying and maintaining a world of massive and terrible inequality, values that are actually of benefit to the proletariat could easily replace them. This, however, needs to be done from below, from the lowest social classes though potentially in conjunction with other progressive social elements and some parts (and the accent is on 'some') of the petty bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia. 

The working class, as Gramsci puts it, must create its own Enlightenment.

The significance of cultural hegemony cannot be overstated and though it doesn't explain everything, it explains so much: The present day culture wars, the rise of Trump, how the news is depicted, advertising, the manipulation of algorithms, social media and memes, deference, stereotypes, lifestyles, the acceptance of the unacceptable, the normalization of the immoral, etc, etc, etc.

Cammett's book is probably not the best place to start when trying to understand Gramsci's ideas but as a way of understanding where Gramsci has come from and subsequently where his ideas have come from it serves its purpose. Above all, it serves as a testament to his life and presents the case that Antonio Gramsci is very much deserving of our respect.

John Serpico.

Survivors - Terry Nation

 SURVIVORS - TERRY NATION

I was really young but I have vague memories of the BBC television series of Survivors shown in the Seventies, particularly the first episode depicting London falling into chaos as people fled the capital. The fact that I can still remember this episode is an indication of the impact it had on me as a child. The series was remade in 2008 but I was otherwise engaged at that time and never got round to watching it.

And so to the book that the series was based on, first published in 1976 and written by Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks for Dr Who and that other BBC cult television series, Blakes 7. Books based on the Dr Who television series along with others of that ilk were quite popular in the Seventies though I never actually read any myself and likewise for Terry Nation's Survivors. Time for some catching up then, with now being as good a time as any - in fact, now being probably a far better time than any.

The premise of Survivors is really very simple: A killer disease sweeps through the world and within weeks almost all the world's population has been wiped out. As power, water and food supplies fail, cities become open graves and nature lays waste to civilisation. In England, a small group of survivors roam the countryside after fleeing London but with no law and order they not only face the trials of day-to-day life in this post-apocalyptic world but also the threat from other survivors competing for limited resources.

The striking thing about Survivors is that in its description of the early stages of the disease how very similar it is to the Corona virus pandemic. It starts with a passenger being taken ill whilst disembarking at a London airport and after being stretchered off and taken away by a waiting ambulance the other 211 passengers along with the cabin crew also disembark. That same day more than 6000 people move through the same airport, their destinations including every major city in the world. That same night the air stewardess who tended to the ill man on the plane is also taken ill, then four days later the man dies in an isolation ward of a London hospital.

Does it sound familiar?

In the early stages of the pandemic there are descriptions of schools closing, trains being cancelled due to staff not turning up for work, and shops and factories closing for the same reason. Reports come in from New York, Rome and Paris about the rapid spread of the virus, hospitals overflow and are unable to take further admissions with medical staff falling ill as fast as the patients. From some quarters the virus is called 'the Asian flu' or 'the China virus' though it's obvious this is no influenza. There's a rush to escape London for more isolated places in the country as people panic buy and start stocking up on canned foods.

Does it ring any bells?

Terry Nation takes it all one stage further with the main plank of the book taking place in the post-pandemic world where society has totally collapsed. It's a world where there is no electricity, no running water, no heat and no food production. A world where the dead lay unburied, looting is a prerequisite but where the stench in the cities makes it impossible. Guns and petrol have become symbols of power whilst things such as the clearing of leaves to prevent the blocking of drains to prevent flooding is suddenly realised as having been a once unrecognised but important job. Likewise, simply knowing how to plant vegetables and other basic farming skills is quickly recognised as being invaluable. And as for something so apparently simple as knowing how to make a candle is suddenly seen as one of the most important aspects of human knowledge.

Unlike the aforementioned Dr Who books based on the BBC television series, Survivors isn't aimed at  a teenage readership but is instead an adult book dealing with adult themes This then poses a question of what it should be categorised under? When first published in the 1970s, Survivors might well have been labelled as science-fiction of the post-apocalypse kind but now we have experienced the Corona pandemic it's more akin to 'science-fact'. Granted, we haven't seen the collapse of civilisation but we have witnessed something that just two years ago would have been incomprehensible - as in the world being brought to heel by a virus and coming to a near-juddering halt.

Terry Nation's predictions are uncannily prescient with the only thing him getting wrong being the near-wipe out of the human race from the virus. This then poses another question as in how close was he in actually getting everything right? Just how close were we at the start of the Corona pandemic to a potential death count of utterly horrifying proportions? To a death count so high it could have been nigh-on impossible for the human race to have recovered from? Fanciful thinking? Possibly but then so too until not long ago was the notion of a global social and economic lockdown.

There are some books that age very badly and become obsolete almost overnight but on the other hand there are some books that become ever more relevant over time. Though it's not the best written book in the world Survivors is very much of the latter group.

John Serpico

Berlin Now - Peter Schneider

 BERLIN NOW - 

THE RISE OF THE CITY AND THE FALL OF THE WALL - PETER SCHNEIDER

All roads don't lead to Rome, they lead to Berlin. And why? Because Berlin is an anomaly. A muddled, messed up ball of confusion where you end up whether you take either the right turn or the wrong. Berlin is a representation, a hall of mirrors reflecting the logical and simultaneously illogical outcome of all decisions, all paths and all flights of fancy. Berlin is the Cinderella of European capitals, a city though often compared to New York is actually more comparable to Detroit in its sense of devastated ephemerality and rejuvenation.

How exactly do you write about a city? With great difficulty I imagine because just as the night has a thousand eyes a city has a million stories. You need passion, enthusiasm and an awareness of not only the physical life overground but the unreported and oft times unspoken life underground. An awareness as possessed by Peter Schneider who puts it to full effect in Berlin Now, his ode to that most fascinating of cities.

How exactly do you sing about a city? Or to be more precise, how exactly do you sing about Berlin? Lou Reed named a whole LP after it, an LP that just happened to be one of the most bleakest ever recorded. In Holidays In The Sun, the Sex Pistols likened it to an end of the world tourist attraction. David Bowie in Heroes depicted it as a place where dreams can rule supreme, whilst in his Where Are We Now? he reflected upon it with much affection.

Berlin is whatever you make of it and ultimately whatever you want it to be.

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the explosion of places and types of entertainment in the city was unprecedented, spurred by a surfeit of abandoned warehouses and factory sites. Caught off guard by the fall of the Wall, the owners of these sites had little idea of what to do with them though the movers and the shakers of West Berlin's alternative culture had no such hesitancy and swiftly moved in and took them over. This was the time it should be remembered when Ecstasy was becoming everyone's preferred drug of choice and Techno the accompanying soundtrack.

'What these clubs promised was the possibility of another life,' writes Schneider 'one that celebrated the moment, the now. They were driven above all by the desire to escape from the real, everyday world of capitalism and to create a parallel world according to one's own rules.' Just like Bowie's Heroes, in fact.

Berlin became the stuff of legend where young people from all corners of the world flocked to immerse themselves and to soak-up non-stop drugs, dancing, sex, protest and a hitherto unprecedented approximation of freedom.

When Schneider tells his grown children he is planning to write a book about Berlin, they look at him with indulgent scepticism as if to say 'sure, go for it if your target group is the fifty-plus generation', presuming he won't be writing anything about what matters to younger people such as the bunker and tunnel parties and clubs that open only after midnight on the weekends and don't close until the following Monday or Tuesday.

To be fair to Schneider, however, he doesn't shirk from his research and attends and reports back from a variety of nightclubs, inadvertently ending up as one of the oldest swingers in town. He concludes, in fact, that a lot of great artists whose work has now been canonised as masterpieces didn't just come from nowhere but built their reputation on the foundation of a highly politicised culture of street theatres, variety clubs cabarets, cafes, bars, and nightclubs whose performances were considered low art at the time. Alternative culture is always the springboard.

That's not to give the impression that Berlin Now is solely about club culture and alternative lifestyles because it's not. Schneider also looks at Berlin's architecture, the fall of the Wall and it's consequences, the Stasi legacy, the American occupation after the 2nd World War, Jewish life in Berlin, gentrification, and so on. Interestingly, he mentions at one point that it's actually misleading to speak of the 'fall of the Wall' because the Wall didn't fall on November 9 or even in the ensuing days; instead, several openings were broken into it with the help of cranes and then specialised companies were brought in to cart it off piece by piece.

And what became of the Wall in the end? Well, whilst a lot of it was reprocessed and ground down to sand to be used in the building of new highways in the former East Germany, a lot of it was also distributed around the world - to at least 125 different places to be precise including America and even Tonga and Hawaii.

Interesting also is the subject of Berlin and gentrification, a subject of relevance to most major cities throughout the western world these days. Schneider describes gentrification as meaning expulsion - the displacement of an area's traditional inhabitants by more well-off nonlocals with deep pockets, this being as good a description as any. The question, however, is 'what to be done about it it?'.

Whilst the Berlin militants and its Autonome scene shout "Burn the tourists!" and launch attacks on luxury cars and cafes selling latte macchiato, some Left-leaning district city councils particularly in the former East German parts of the capital are now starting to demand that money not be the last word and that the cultural values of certain areas be given priority over market value. Needless to say, the heralds of the free market economy and other market fundamentalists are up in arms against them. More so than around race and ethnicity, gentrification and class are the areas where the future of Berlin is going to be decided, it would seem. And likewise, of course, for every other major city throughout the world.

Peter Schneider is a good writer but then if you're going to make a book about a city be of any interest then you're going to have to be because let's face it, it can easily be a pretty dry subject. Throughout the book you get the sense that he's doing his utmost to remain politically neutral though every now and then his personal opinions seep through between the lines, sometimes revealing his liberalism and then sometimes revealing his conservatism. But that's okay and even understandable because Berlin is a city of extremes that almost forces passion, making it near impossible not to sound forth. Berlin is a city that everyone should try and visit at least once in their life and Berlin Now succeeds in demonstrating why.

John Serpico