ALEXEI SAYLE at the STAND GLASGOW

Typecast to death , some would say , by the overtly histrionic performances on 80s TV and Pop chart shows the avant garde founder of the Alternative Comedy scene has come back to roadtest new material after a 16 year break from live stand-up comedy.

I first realised there is much more to Alexei Sayle than cringeworthy pop jingles when i heard a radio programme he made about the history of the UK communist party , especially the pro-Stalinist bitter-enders.He had excellent unimpeachable primary sources for his research as his parents were very much staunch members all through his childhood and well into his post-graduate years.

Alexei was not sitting in the meantime on his laurels , he has spent a most productive energetic seam in the world of literature with such titles as " How Stalin tole My Childhood".A Book that aroused great passionate denunciations from old style Communists , no less his Mum as this Guardian review tells. 

Another admirable quality was Alexei being a signatory of the Jews For Justice For Palestinians group along with Stephen Fry.Alexei is a patron of Medical Aid for Palestinians  as well as The Palestine Solidarity Campaign and one of the motivations to get back and doing political comedy live has been some recent appearances for those generous social justice supporters

Alexei explains more in this in-depth interview for the local Skinny Magazine..

This review of a gig he did in Birmingham captures his current routine. though it has to be said it was the understated elements of his act that had the deeper, longer-lasting penetration giving his set an accomplished sharp , refreshing edge.

ULYSSES at the TRON

"What the fuck have i just read" is the usual honest reaction of those that glance , yet alone read , James Joyce Ulysses.So it is no surprise the response "What the fuck have i just watched" is the stock reaction from those who have just seen the stage adaptation of the Novel.

Reading Ulysses  is a tough shift.

More famous for its experimental groundbreaking tryouts than actual substance.Joyce dictated a lot of his work to a third party later in his life , so if you get bogged down a bit then try reading it out loud until you find the rhythm again.

 If its any consolation the last hundred , well 50 pages, are very free flowing.
I may be wrong but i wouldnt be surprised if the later pages contain the longest unbroken sentence in literature , there is no punctuation at all your eyes read the words faster than you can catch them in the brain which makes for quite an effect.

In saying that the novel is a bit experimental topheavy and is generally only appreciated by career writers for its innovations rather than being a rewarding read in its own right.You would be hard pressed to find anyone who actually enjoys it , rather than most who "appreciate" it.

You could say it is the Citizen Kane of novels with the same type of cult likers and loathers.

One admirer of the work states  "Once you get used to the rhythms of the prose and the weird technique Joyce uses it's laugh-out-loud funny in parts, and just jaw-droppingly good for the rest of the time.

The first 50 pages are tough going right enough. In fact, the first 4 chapters (which are all Stephen Dedalus's interior monologue) are dull and difficult, but then they're supposed to be because Stephen's supposed to be a bit of a prig.

Stick with it, though, and in ch. 5 the action switches to Bloom who is much better company."

Optimists call it , euphemistically , "experimental" with such devices as Wagnerian musical notation formatted to the written word canvass and things like stream of consciousness , but even regarding that this novel was the first sustained attempt at it , it is not by any means a particularly good example and has been surpassed by many better attempts since.

Its what you might call a pioneering work and has its place in literature as the inspiration of many Authors afterwards.

It is always a sign of bad art when one has to read several articles to get a grip on what the artist is trying to say not because the subject metaphor is deep and complicated but rather the method of technical delivery is such , it takes some other party to explain what the artist is trying to say.

All in all one could say the Book dogmatises itself into self-worshipping needless complicated complexity.What we might call Elitist Art for Arts sake.

Anyway , the play itself takes advantage of copyright expiry which will allow Ulysses to be brought out into other artistic formats.The Play version was actually written way back in 1994 but can only now be given a theatrical staging.You can find out the whole story background from a brilliantly detailed dedicated bl;og for this production. 

As one can imagine a staging of such a complex book is no easy task , this article tells of the adapters challenges and dilemmas in this staging whose every word is taking from the Book itself.

This review by the writer for the Scotsman Newspaper  and  this one from the Stage are fairly accurate  and give the playwright a backhanded compliment of sticking to Joyces own words in handling of the script.

To help with the narrative the blog also gives a short synopsis of the scenes of the play and their relation to the Book.It is best followed by reading it from the bottom up.

And the second portion , again read from the bottom up corresponds to the second part of the play after the interval.  

As a guide here is a ten point plan to get your head round the Book 

1.         Think of it as an A-Z.
Think of it as something more like a map than a novel, like a Dublin A-Z. Some streets, districts, pubs will be more familiar than others at first, but your awareness will increase in ever widening circles. You can follow the wanderings of the characters on Google Maps. (Google ‘The Boston College Guide to Ulysses’). If you’re lucky enough to find yourself in Dublin the people at the James Joyce Centre in North Great George’s St are very helpful.
2.         Think of it as a vocal performance
Read it aloud, alone or with friends, or listen to it. The musicality, humour and pathos come out better that way. There’s a very good recording by Jim Norton (Bishop Brennan in Father Ted) available on iTunes and Audible, and podcasts available of the recent Bloomsday broadcast on BBC.
3.         Think of it as a book of short stories.
Feel free to skip. The second and third chapters in particular can be hard going, and many a would-be reader takes leave of the book when Stephen Dedalus, an intense, difficult young man,  is going on about the Nacheinander and the Nebeneinander and the Ineluctable Modality of the Visible. Go on to chapter 4 where you get to know Leopold Bloom, his curiosity and kindness, and his relish for the extraordinary ordinariness of everyday life. Each of the 18 episodes can be read independently. The ones called Hades and Nausicaa are good places to start. (Annoyingly these titles, though used by everyone, are absent from the text, but they can be found easily enough either in the notes or online.)
4.         Think of it as poetry.
Read it one sentence at a time. Open it at any page and you will find something wonderful going on. Joyce notices everything, and never wrote a bad sentence.
Actually that’s not true: there is one episode, Eumaeus, which is deliberately and some would say perversely composed of nothing but bad sentences. It’s very skippable.
5.         Think of it as a play.
You will be able to see the play at the Tron, but one episode, Circe, is the most brilliantly surrealist cartoon psychodrama ever written, featuring the hilarious trial of Bloom for mostly imagined sexual misdemeanours. Its cast of thousands includes a singing bar of soap, some warbling kisses, and The End of the World, who is (of course) a twoheaded octopus in gillie’s kilts, busby and tartan filibegs.
6          Don’t think of it as a marathon.
Take your time. No one is going to sponsor you. It’s more a morning stroll, and an afternoon stroll, and an evening stroll, and a nighttime stagger, and so to bed.
7.         Don’t think that it’s full of classical allusions.
You are mistaking it for The Waste Land. (Don’t be ashamed of that – T.S.Eliot also mistook it for The Waste Land.) Yes, it’s built round the scaffolding of Homer’s Odyssey, but that needn’t present any difficulty. Many of the allusions in the book are to popular song, or adverts, bits of news or gossip, the ephemera of city life. They are not there to make you feel stupid.
8.         Take a guide.
Harry Blamire’s The New Bloomsday Book is handy for keeping in touch with what is happening in the story beneath all the verbal pyrotechnics, and there are many other resources online, to help you with the bits you’ve skipped for the time being.
9.         Don’t boast about having read Ulysses.
People will know exactly what you’re up to and you’ll end up looking and sounding like a self-satisfied eedjit.
10.       Don’t boast about not having read Ulysses.
People will know exactly what you’re up to and you’ll end up looking and sounding like a self-satisfied eedjit.

ANDY ZALTZMAN at THE STAND GLASGOW

Andy Zaltzman latest round is called the "Armchair Revolutionary Tour"

Nothing was left out in the marathon 2 set performance by Andy zaltzman  tonight , even the kitchen sink was thrown it for good measure.The show had brilliant moments , profoundly funny moments , supreme satire moments , baffling moments and , more than occasionally , cringeworthy embarrassing  moments.But they were always topical and current.

If the material could be cut-down and honed into a 45 minute set then we could have a taut , very funny and superb memorable satire showcase masterclass on our hands.

The video below gives a good synopsis of same of the material in todays show:



Andy Zaltzman has a show called the Bugle The  latest satarical series of shows can be found in this podcast link.

And here is an Andy Zaltzman article for Huffington Post  , featuring a audio link of his Jubilee Special Show.

AFRICAN AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

This years schedule of Glasgow Black History month threw up an intriguing discussion of the little known role of Black Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War.The talk was given by Glasgow University lecturer Dave Featherstone.

The figures of just how many volunteers there were are disputed , ranging from about 90 to 250.Given the nature that many American Blacks were not allowed in the US Military allied with the hazardous logistical barriers for the always harassed and harried  US Communist Party of which many, though not all, were members made the journey nearly impossible.

The US contingent formed up as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

Compare and Contrast the attitudes and actions of Albert Einstein and Gene Kelly with General Motors ; Texaco and other Corporations in what Historian Paul Preston has rightly described as the actual beginning of WW2 in which Fascism tested the Worlds resolve and found ample grounds to be encouraged and emboldened.

The reaction of Western governments to the war was ambivalent and duplicitous. They agreed to a nonintervention pact and the United States embargoed aid to the Spanish belligerents, policies intended to de-escalate the war but whose selective enforcement undermined the Republic. While Germany and Italy supplied Franco with troops, tanks, submarines, and a modernized air force (the first to bomb open cities, most notably Guernica), the nonintervention policy only prevented arms from reaching the Republic. General Motors, Texaco, and other American corporations further assisted Franco with trucks and fuel. The Soviet Union and Mexico were the only governments to sell armaments to the Republic, although much of them were impounded at the French border. Throughout the war, a vociferous political and cultural movement in America rallied to the Republic by raising money for medical aid and demanding an end to the embargo. Such participants as Albert Einstein, Dorothy Parker, Gene Kelly, Paul Robeson, Helen Keller, A. Philip Randolph, and Gypsy Rose Lee reflected the wide base of support for the Republican cause.

You can find a synopsis of the trials and tribulations of the formation and continuation of the Abe Lincoln Brigade before they even got anywhere near Spanish Soil in this very informative concise piece.

The Lincolns came from all walks of life, all regions of the country, and included seamen, students, the unemployed, miners, fur workers, lumberjacks, teachers, salesmen, athletes, dancers, and artists. They established the first racially integrated military unit in U.S. history and were the first to be led by a black commander. At least 60 percent were members of the Young Communist League or CP. "Wobblies" (members of the Industrial Workers of the World or "IWW"), socialists, and the unaffiliated also joined. The Socialists formed their own [Eugene] Debs Column for Spain, but open recruitment brought on government suppression.

Because the State Department banned all travel to Spain for any potential recruits a lot of volunteers ended up in Britain before taking underground roundabout trails into Spain to join up with the Brigades.

This is a picture of an unidentified Black soldier who the Spanish Authorities were trying to trace prior to a visit by Barack Obama to Spain. "All we know is that he arrived with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade of American volunteers and that he died in the battle at Brunete [in July 1937]," said Sergi Centelles, whose father, Agustí, took the picture.".As far as i know the soldier has not been identified yet, though some authorities have narrowed it down to two possible candidates."The photograph remained hidden for four decades after Agustí Centelles, known as the "Spanish Robert Capa", fled Spain as Franco's forces looked set to win the civil war in 1939."

You can get the full story in this excellent Guardian Article.

And here is a very disturbing tale about the highly disputed accounts of Oliver Law ( pictured at the top of the post) , who became for a short while the only Black Commander of a Company of mixed Black and White US personnel at a time when the Official US Army had segregated units , some of whom were not even recognised or decorated for service in WW2 until the 1990s and in some cases only in the 21st Century.

The brilliant hard hitting in-depth documentary traces the History of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in its brave fight to aid the democratically elected Spanish Government and against the Mussolini and Hitler supported Franco Military Uprising.(It comes in 12 parts and features the legendary Salaria Kea ).