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Lost and Found #2: Noel Gallagher – The Amorphous Androgynous album
Oasis were always at their most thrilling when they were at their most rudimentary. The visceral in-your-face blast of 'Supersonic', the relentless, scuzzy noise of 'Columbia' and 'Slide Away', the guileless simplicity of 'Songbird', the blatant theft of 'Shakermaker', 'Whatever', 'Cigarettes & Alcohol' and so many more.
The truth is that for all the comparisons made by those who should have known better, both in and out the band, Oasis weren't really like The Beatles. They just really liked The Beatles – and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
So when they tried to experiment, they didn't really innovate the way John, Paul, George and Ringo (and George Martin) did. Instead, they made do with playing with some backwards tape ('D'You Know What I Mean'), drum loops ('Go Let It Out'), and superficial psychedelic sheen ('Who Feels Love' and 'To Be Where There's Life').
Their greatest departure from the Oasis sound was the sample-laden instrumental 'Fuckin' in the Bushes' that opened the unloved Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. The track was used as a live intro tape for the band for a few years, but didn't really rub off on the rest of the album or the three that followed before the group's eventual split.
Oasis – Fuckin' in the Bushes
So Noelrock and Dadrock effectively became interchangeable terms. Guitar, bass, drums, vocals. Meat. Potatoes. Chug chug chug. And Noel absolutely didn't (and doesn't) help himself with his old-man-yells-at-sky pronouncements about pop, hip-hop and the rest of the modern world.
Still, it wasn't entirely fair. Noel was a child of Acid House. He picked A Guy Called Gerald's 'Voodoo Ray' as one of his Desert Island Discs amid the usual suspects (Beatles/Pistols/Smiths). Maybe just as striking, he also opted for David Bowie's 'Let's Dance' rather than anything from …Ziggy Stardust… or Hunky Dory.
Given the right collaborators, Noel proved that he was capable of something genuinely experimental. Written and recorded with The Chemical Brothers and released in late 1996, 'Setting Sun' is one of the weirdest, noisiest and best number one singles of the decade.
The Chemical Brothers – Setting Sun
Sure, it borrowed heavily from 'Tomorrow Never Knows', but rather than just nicking from or nodding at The Beatles the way Oasis did on songs like 'She's Electric', 'Setting Sun' sounded almost as groundbreaking as the band who inspired it.
They repeated the trick in 1999 with 'Let Forever Be', but Oasis themselves never picked up that thread. The Noel-sung final single 'Falling Down' was the closest they got, even being offered up for some remixes, but by then the group was pretty much done.
When Noel finally pulled the plug on the band in 2009 and went solo, there was the suggestion that he was always itching to expand his musical horizons. That it was Oasis – and his boorish luddite brother Liam in particular – who were holding him back.
Noel launched his solo career with a press conference in July 2011, announcing that he'd already recorded his debut album Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds with Dave Sardy, and that he'd also pretty much finished its follow-up, a collaboration with the Amorphous Androgynous.
Noel Gallagher Press Conference (July 6, 2011)
Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans, also known as '90s dance superstars The Future Sound Of London, already had history with Noel. The duo had released an epic remix of 'Falling Down' back in 2009.
"We turned it into a 22-minute mini-album," Garry told Teletext at the time. "Halfway in, we wondered 'What if they only wanted a five-minute mix?'. But Noel gave it its own 12" format, its own artwork.
"Liam loved it too. He came up to me, hand on his heart, saying, 'I've got you to thank for making me look at music in a new way'. I'd never met him before!"
For his part, Noel wrote on his now defunct Oasis blog: "I fully expect 50% of you not to have the attention span to deal with something like that but the rest of you, I hope, will be blown away. It's a staggering piece of music. Monumental even. All superlatives will apply."
But despite their previous success, the new project was almost immediately put in doubt. Industry insider Peter Cornish-Barlow reported that Noel had run off to Los Angeles because his team weren't keen on the collaboration.
"No-one, apart from Noel likes the reworked material AA have done! Its causing problems in camp, so I am told," he said on Twitter. "Also the feeling is that he won't get his way, and he will most likely [release] the album that did the rounds last year!
Later that year though, Noel was still talking up the record for a 2012 release. "It sounds a bit like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. The sound is similar to High Flying Birds, but more psychedelic and tripped out," he told Spin. "It's not an electronic project. People are jumping to that conclusion because Amorphous Androgynous used to be an electronic outfit."
A month on, he was dialling it back, but only a little. "A lot of people are looking forward to it, which I'm a bit nervous about," he told the Daily Star of the album. "They're building it up in their own minds, thinking it's going to be something it might not be when they hear it. It's fucking good, but I probably shouldn't have announced it. But I just thought, 'It's finished, so fuck it, here's what I've been working on'."
When he was heckled about the record at a gig around that time, Noel admitted from the Roundhouse stage that the album was still being tweaked. "Well, I haven't finished it. Would you buy it unfinished? Really, for a tenner?" he asked. "Give us your fucking address. I'll send you a shit demo if you give me a tenner, yeah? Anybody else? Fucking hell, it's the quickest two grand I've ever made!"
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds – Shoot A Hole Into The Sun
The first we heard of the collaboration was 'Shoot A Hole In The Sun', a remix of 'If I Had A Gun', which was tacked on to single 'Dream On' as a B-side. Meanwhile, the album was still being spoken about, with Noel suggesting it would finally be ready for 2013.
"I've got a break in the middle of this tour in July, so now the plan is to do something then, and then to finish it off after the tour in October," he told NME in February 2012. "So it might come out at the end of the year, but it's more likely to be next year now. I set the benchmark pretty high with this record, and I'm not just putting [out] a record for the fucking sake of it. At the moment it's not a great record – so it won't come out until it is."
An Amorphous Androgynous remix of 'AKA… What A Life!' emerged as the B-side of 'Everybody's On The Run', but a month later we got the first whispering from Noel that the album itself might be shelved altogether.
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds – AKA… What A Life! (The Amorphous Androgynous Remix)
"It was supposed to be delivered the night I did that press conference and I hadn't been involved in any of the mixing at that point due to being busy with other things," Noel told The Sun that August.
"Anyway, it was a toss-up whether to announce it in the first place, but I just thought fuck it, I've done it, let's announce it. But since then I've been on the road and because of that I've not been in the mixing, and I'm not happy with any of the mixes.
"They're going backward and forward so then the plan was to get mixing done after the tour, but this tour has gone on so long that there's been no time, and that means looking at it next year. But by then I fear the moment may have passed."
After that, everything went pretty quiet for a couple of years. Noel then suddenly stirred the pot in early 2015, again complaining about the AA mixes of the album.
"Initially when they delivered [the first mix of the album], they managed to pull off the trick of recording the quietest CD of all time," Gallagher told the NME. "When I got it I couldn't hear it and was like, 'Is it broke?'.
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds – The Mexican
"For all the great ideas on it, I was in the middle of a tour, that last album had blown up, the mixes weren't right. And by the time I got back off tour I was just like, 'I'm not fucking putting out another record, I can't be arsed'. I was frazzled and had glandular fever. I was fucked."
Apart from the two remixes that came out as B-sides, the only things Noel salvaged from the sessions were 'The Mexican' and 'The Right Stuff', which he reworked it for his second album Chasing Yesterday.
"'The Right Stuff' in this record is vastly different from the first one, which had a lot of noodling and fucking about," Noel said. "It's become quite psychedelic, jazz, fucking whatever you wanna call it."
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds – The Right Stuff
Having held their piece, Amorphous Androgynous finally piped up. Initially, they were pretty conciliatory. Complimentary even.
"He still fascinates me. He's a great untapped source," Garry said to musicfeeds of Noel. "The only thing holding him back is himself.
"He constantly talks about how he's 'long accepted his limitations' but I don't really believe that… If he placed more faith and trust in himself, Noel could reap magic."
Soon after, Cobain was a bit more prickly about the whole thing – ultimately suggesting that Noel "became too afraid to be weird".
"He has been asked about our album a lot, and his rebuttal of it is a disgrace," he told The Guardian. "It's doing me a lot of damage."
Garry said that the sessions had "started out promisingly" and that Noel came into the project "with all the right intentions" but added that things didn't work out, now agreeing that he had to work around Noel's "limitations".
Noel Gallagher & the Amorphous Androgynous in the studio (Shoot A Hole Into The Sun pt 1)
"We tried to force him to write new material. But he dragged his heels and failed to stretch himself," he said. "We had kids' choirs, harpsichords, mandolins. We really went to town with orchestras and all sorts of crazy instrumentation. He just needed to cut the pie to suit Noel the solo artist."
He added: "I believe ours is the album people wanted him to make – a liberated, exploratory Noel Gallagher, cutting loose from Oasis, enjoying his freedom; the Noel who name-drops our Monstrous Bubble albums and krautrock, and who had hits with the Chemical Brothers. He obviously loves that kind of music, but has no idea how to make it."
Noel, inevitably, hit back. "The album got finished," Gallagher told Noisey. "We spent a lot of time working on it, but the way that they work is that they get me in and I play all day then they take it away.
"Then the next thing you hear, you go, 'Well, that's not what I was thinking'. It became apparent that they weren't making a record for me but I was making a record for them. You know me, that's not going to fucking work."
He added: "There's no bootleg because I own the master and I destroyed it. My manager's not even heard it. I wouldn't play it. It was so underwhelming to me that I never played it to anybody.
"I'm not going to put records out to please people and their imagination, then they hear it and go, 'Actually, it's a bit shit'. I know it's shit that's why it's not coming out and that's the end of it."
And for a while, it was.
It's tempting to wonder if after (re-)establishing himself as an arena-filling rockstar with Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Noel felt there was just too much to risk with an album that might well turn off half his fanbase.
To be fair though, while he's not gone full psychedelic freakout, he's consciously been trying to push on since then. Chasing Yesterday had its moments – especially those AA remnants – and even had its own remix album.
Noel chucked the whole kitchen sink at follow-up Who Built The Moon? There were waves of different instruments (brass, strings, keyboards, Rhodes piano, organ, tin whistle), a couple of handfuls of female backing vocalists, and guest spots from two past trad-rockers-turned-experimentalists (Johnny Marr and Paul Weller). Most importantly, it was produced by David Holmes.
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds – Holy Mountain
"David's whole thing was, 'You can sit there for the rest of your life with an acoustic guitar and do what you do and you're the best at it and no one will argue. But you know, why don't you try something different?'," Noel told i-D, making Holmes's pitch sound an awful lot like Garry Cobain's from a few years earlier.
"Do we wear the same clothes every day? No. Do we get dressed up to go out? Yeah. Do you like fancy dress parties? I fucking hate them but it's a thing. So it's like, why make the same fucking record every few years?"
It was as though he'd finally recorded the album that he was supposed to have made with Amorphous Androgynous half a decade earlier. On a few moments, it all came together. 'Holy Mountain' in particular was an enthralling, squalling racket that saw Bowie's 'Diamond Dogs' in a head-on collision with, er, Ricky Martin's 'She Bangs'.
That said, overall the ambition definitely outweighed the execution, and it's striking that the album's very best song, and maybe Noel's best moment since the '90s, was the album's bonus track/coda – a stripped-down-to-nothing performance of 'Dead in the Water' recorded live for Irish radio with zero bells or (tin) whistles.
Noel Gallagher – Dead in the Water" (live at RTÉ 2FM Studios, Dublin)
After that Noel kept pushing, probably too hard. His trio of EPs in 2019-20 (Black Star Dancing, This Is The Place and Blue Moon Rising) added up to much less than the sum of their shuffling parts, despite the open mind, danceable rhythms and smattering of remixes.
At the same time, Noel was taking not entirely unjustified shots at just how by-the-book his younger brother's suddenly successful solo work was.
"I think it's unsophisticated music. For unsophisticated people," Noel told The Guardian. "Made by an unsophisticated man. Who's giving unsophisticated orders to a load of songwriters who think they're doing the Oasis thing."
He wasn't throwing his past work or past fans under the bus. "You can turn the Marshall amp up to 12 all you want and do a bit of glam, but Oasis's words were about including people, everyone in it together. And what I hear from him is just a load of bile… angry nonsense."
Between Who Built The Moon? and his trio of EPs, Noel had nudged open the door to the idea that the Amorphous Androgynous album could one day be heard.
"I did find a copy of it recently in a sock draw," Gallagher told Matt Morgan when asked about the lost album during a YouTube interview 2018. "The masters, somebody has them, the masters have not been destroyed – but it won't be coming out any time soon.
Noel Gallagher – True or False with Matt Morgan (August 18, 2018)
"It might be nice to go back and revisit it in years to come, because 'Shoot A Hole Into The Sun' is fucking great and there might be more stuff like that in there. Best to give it a bit of distance though I think. It just wasn't right for the time."
More recently he told Record Collector: "That's one regret I have, that thing never being fully realised. I credit them, along with David Holmes, with opening a lot of musical doors for me, music I would never have heard of.
"Gaz is great… We ended up making it at Weller's studio. The days would start off with a lecture about psychedelic rock and reverb."
He added: "We'd finished the recording and they'd had it for two months to mix. I was having a press conference and I wanted to announced it. 'It's not ready. It'll be ready the night before. Promise.' It gets to the night before – nothing. The morning of – nothing.
"So, like an idiot, I just thought, 'How can shit can it be?' I'll just announce it'. Two days later I get it and I'm like, 'Woah, no fucking way, man. This is not gonna be my fucking debut album. No fucking way!'.
"We tried to make the best of it and then I slowly went off the idea and was like, 'You know what? Let's not fucking don the wizard's hat first time out. Let's do this gradually'. I think it would have been too much."
Despite some differences of opinion, Garry still hasn't ruled out the idea of some sort of release one day, having plenty to say about the whole affair to the NME in 2021. Speaking then, he brushed off any suggestion that the masters were at risk of being either destroyed or drowned in odd socks.
"He hasn't destroyed the masters because I've got them, haven't I?" he said. "Of course! How has the producer who made the record alone in a room for 18 months and only worked directly with Noel for three weeks not have the masters?"
Cobain made it clear he "wouldn't release somebody else's music because he's paid for it" but hinted that he might well still be tinkering with the recordings.
He also rejected the idea that he and Dougans were always making an AA album on the sly ("I couldn't be more co-operative if I fucking tried"), and said that they and Noel were "buzzing" creatively despite the odd argument.
Garry also said he and Noel were on okay terms and expressed regret that the project was binned just before the final mixing ("It wouldn't have taken that much more of a relationship").
"There was some art, it for to almost being finished and I think it's a real fucking shame," he said. "It's still sitting there and it's still extraordinary. I think people would love to hear it."
Posted byMayer Nissim January 11, 2022 January 11, 2022 Posted inMusicTags:Amorphous Androgynous, Lost and Found, Noel Gallagher, Noel Gallagher's High Flying BirdsLeave a comment on Lost and Found #2: Noel Gallagher – The Amorphous Androgynous album
Lost and Found #1: Del Shannon – Home & Away
Del Shannon may have sounded and looked like a lumberjack but he cracked just like a soda jerk. He was incessantly on the run, broke and alone, and his true loves all betrayed him. In the naked city, there was an eternal thunderstorm and the raindrops mingled with his tears
Rock Dreams – Guy Peellaert & Nik Cohn (1974)
Del Shannon was never a conventional rock 'n' heartthrob. That wasn't because he couldn't compete with the rugged good looks of Eddie Cochran or raw sex appeal of Elvis Presley. After all, few could.
More than say, Buddy Holly or even Roy Orbison, there was was something captivatingly awkward about Shannon. That's because rather than singing about loving or even longing, Del sung about misery, heartbreak and betrayal.
Del Shannon – Runaway
Del's songs don't have the proto-incel vibe of Morrissey's work. It's absolutely not the case that his characters have never had no-one ever. On the contrary, they've loved and lost and decided that all things considered it may well have been better to have never loved at all.
Shannon break-up songs aren't just about pain, hurt, and regret. They're also steeped in bitterness, revenge and spite ("Hats off to Larry he broke your heart / Just like you broke mine when you said we must part").
Del Shannon – Hats Off To Larry
It's no coincidence that the first Rolling Stones song Shannon covered wasn't the merely unfulfilled 'Satisfaction' but the vindictively misogynistic 'Under My Thumb' ("Under my thumb / It's a squirmin' dog who's just had her day").
That rancour didn't stop his flashes of success in the early 1960s. 'Runaway' went to number one. 'Hats Off To Larry' and 'Little Town Flirt' made the Top 20. After that it was always a rollercoaster, and there were more misses than hits, especially back home in the US.
Borrowed from The Beatles after he shared a bill with them at the Royal Albert Hall, Del's June 1963 cover of 'From Me To You' only peaked at 77 – still making it the first Lennon/McCartney song to reach the Billboard Hot 100. In 1964, less than four years after 'Runaway' topped the chart, Del scored his last ever Top 10 single when 'Keep Searchin' (We'll Follow the Sun)' reached number nine.
Del Shannon – Keep Searchin' (We'll Follow The Sun)
Shannon kept on going, mixing up covers and his own tunes, but despite (or because?) of his willingness to experiment and flit between genres, nothing really stuck. The speed of the shifting sixties was probably the underlying cause, but label issues certainly didn't help.
On a UK tour a year into his deal with Liberty Records, Del bumped into Andrew Loog Oldham after a BBC interview at Portland Place. Oldham bundled Shannon and his pal/road manager Dan Bourgoise into the back of his Rolls-Royce and played them the then-unreleased Beatles single 'Strawberry Fields Forever'/'Penny Lane'. He also told them how much he loved Del's take on 'Under My Thumb' (which Shannon had co-produced with Liberty's Dallas Smith).
Del Shannon – Under My Thumb
"It felt like we'd hit royalty here," said Bourgoise. "Andrew suggested that he had some ideas that he'd like to try with Del, and would Del be up for it? Del was thrilled and eager. Liberty had an office in London and it was pretty easy to push it through with Andrew's name."
Del is said to have immediately called Liberty HQ long distance in LA. Sensing the possibility of a hit or at the very least some attention, and with not much to lose, they apparently replied: "Yes, whatever the expense. Go cut with Andrew!"
It all happened fast. Del didn't have a load of material lying around, but he had 'He Cheated', and he and Bourgoise also came up with 'Silently' in just one night in a hotel room.
Having someone as well-connected as Andrew Loog Oldham on board meant that there wasn't a lack of available contributors, with a load of writers from his Immediate label pitching in.
There was Billy Nicholls ('Cut and Come Again', 'Led Along', and 'Friendly With You'), Andrew Rose and David Skinner (aka Twice as Much) ('It's My Feeling', 'Easy To Say' and 'Life Is But Nothing' – the last of which had already been released by Immediate artist PP Arnold as a B-side earlier that year) and Jeremy Paul Solomons ('Mind Over Matter').
PP Arnold – Life Is But Nothing
An astute song-spotter himself, Del brought along Ross Watson's 'My Love Has Gone', a demo of which he'd been hawking around to producers without any success since they crossed paths on a UK tour in in 1963.
Always as much a hustler as he was a manager/producer, Oldham pushed Del to remake his calling card and sole chartopper 'Runaway'. Del wasn't keen on the idea, but was eventually worn down/won over.
And Oldham's involvement meant access not just to Olympic Studios, where the Stones has been recording weeks earlier, but also to the cream of British session talent.
That included Andy White (drums), Big Jim Sullivan (electric guitar), Joe Moretti (acoustic guitar), Billy Bell (banjo), Eric Ford (six-string bass and acoustic guitar), Clive Hicks (acoustic and 12-string guitar), Nicky Hopkins (keys) and Reg Guest (also keys).
Most notably, also appearing on keys was Steve Marriott, whose Small Faces Loog Oldham had only recently signed to Immediate, and bass player John Baldwin (aka John Paul Jones, soon to be a quarter of Led Zeppelin).
Contrary to popular belief, Jones's future Led Zep bandmate Jimmy Page wasn't there, having quit session work to focus on The Yardbirds by this point – and he was off touring with them in Scotland while Home & Away was recorded.
"There were three things that Andrew wanted to condense together. The kind of record he wanted to make," Bourgoise told Kieron Tyler for the reissue liner notes. "Pet Sounds, the Lou Adler stuff with The Mamas & the Papas, and Phil Spector's 'River Deep–Mountain High'. Del was intrigued. Andrew had a very definite idea, and Del hadn't seen that for a while and was totally excited."
It's the sort of grandiose bullshit pitch/mission statement you could well imagine the 23-year-old Oldham delivering, but the incredible thing is that with those songs and studio musicians – and with Arthur Greenslade arranging – they actually made good on it.
Del Shannon – Home & Away
Home & Away is sometimes billed as an attempt at "a British Pet Sounds" but its similarities to Brian Wilson's masterpiece are essentially superficial. Sure, you can pick out plenty of melodic turns and harmonic whoops that borrow from the Beach Boys, (especially on 'It's My Feeling' and 'Led Along'), but the album owes almost as much to Spector girl groups, Dusty Springfield's heavily orchestrated blue-eyed soul, and to Del himself.
The differences from Pet Sounds are as crucial as the similarities to it. Both have a sense of thematic unity, but while the Beach Boys' album was mainly written by Brian Wilson and Tony Asher, the patchwork contributions for Home & Away make it feel that bit more unsettled.
Both were effectively recorded by session groups – Pet Sounds by the Wrecking Crew and Del's album by its London-based approximation – but while Brian led the recording of one instrument at a time in countless hours-long sessions, the eleven songs of Home & Away were knocked out in just four days, giving a sense of spark and spontaneity.
The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds
The albums both explore melancholy and heartbreak ("I may not always love you" / "All I've got's memory of you") but where Wilson/Asher are ultimately hopeful and even redemptive ("Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true"), even with his baroque backdrop, Shannon holds on to his essential bitterness and resentment ("When you left I thought of dying / Then I knew that you were lying", "He'll hurt you all over again / 'cos he cheated and he lied to you").
The tension of Home & Away builds. The penultimate 'He Cheated' is the album's finest moment and the ultimate synthesis of Del's utterly overwhelming intensity and the Brit Wall of Sound Loog Oldham was aiming for. Free from Max Crook's Musitron and Del's own vocal histrionics, 'Runaway '67' isn't the barmy masterpiece of the original, but it acts as the perfect closer and coda, giving an incongruous sense of release after all the angst.
Despite the rushed recording, all involved probably had high hopes for what was a fantastic record, but it didn't work out that way. Bourgoise suggested that the Liberty execs' jaunt to the Monterey Pop Festival that summer was the death knell for Home & Away. Having switched from suits to spliffs, the label was said to have suddenly decided Del's album was too square for the new direction.
Maybe closer to the truth was that, not for the first time, record buyers just weren't interested in what Del was selling. Single 'Led Along' failed to chart in the US. 'Mind Over Matter' flopped in the UK. Despite hitting the Australian Top 20, even 'Runaway '67' backed with 'He Cheated' only reached 112 in the US charts.
Given how poorly the singles had performed, maybe it's no surprise that Liberty cut their losses and scrapped the album before it was even pressed.
The remaining seven songs stayed in cold storage until 1978, when all eleven tracks were remixed and released with another three songs shuffled into the running order as …And the Music Plays On. Out of shape and out of time, it drifted by unnoticed.
In the meantime, Shannon was undeterred. He picked up the psychedel-ish thread of the abandoned Home & Away and took it even further. Del recorded the more convincingly lysergic The Further Adventures of Charles Westover before the end of the year, having this time written most of the material himself.
Del Shannon – The Further Adventures of Charles Westover
Despite its bravery and undeniable quality, it wasn't a hit, and the possibility of renewed chart success continued to recede as the decade came to a close. Shannon dabbled in production, but as depression and drinking took hold, his output slowed to a trickle.
There were attempts to give Home & Away a proper release in the years after Del died, but rights issued scuppered those plans initially. Instead, the abandoned album lent its name to a comprehensive 2004 boxset which included its 11 songs somewhere in the middle of disc five.
Home & Away was eventually given the standalone release it deserved in 2006, with its intended sleeve, tracklisting and a handful of mono/single mixes as bonus tracks. Another reissue followed in 2012, with a much prettier cover and apparently better sound. Both are shamefully out of print, but the album is thankfully available to stream.
The failure of Del to find an audience with either Home & Away or The Further Adventures of Charles Westover wasn't the end of the story. He had a resurgence of sorts at the end of the '70s when Tom Petty lent his patronage for the Drop Down and Get Me album (released in 1981). The collaboration even got Del back in the Top 40 with a cover of Phil Phillips's 'Sea of Love'.
Del Shannon – Rock On!
A decade on, Petty brought along the Heartbreakers and Jeff Lynne for Rock On! (posthumously released in 1991). There was even talk of Shannon joining the Petty/Lynne/George Harrison/Roy Orbison/Bob Dylan supergroup The Traveling Wilburys when Orbison died in 1988.
It didn't happen. On February 8, 1990, Shannon took his own life at his home in Santa Clarita, California. He was only 55.
Sources/Further Reading
Home & Away (2006 reissue) liner notes
Del Shannon bio (from delshannon.com)
Home & Away – AllMusic
…And The Music Plays On – AllMusic
Home and Away: The Complete Recordings – AllMusic
Home & Away – Steve Hoffman forums
Toppermost – Del Shannon
Home & Away – Something Else review (2012 reissue)
Further Adventures of Charles Westover – The Active Listener review
Robert Pollard's Guide To The Late 60s – Episode 015
Posted byMayer Nissim December 14, 2021 December 14, 2021 Posted inMusicTags:Album, Del Shannon, Home and Away, Lost and Found, ReviewLeave a comment on Lost and Found #1: Del Shannon – Home & Away
613 Great Jewish Works of Art: #1 – Ramones
Punk is Jewish. Not Judaic. Jewish, the reflection of a culture that's three millennia old now. It reeks of humor and irony and preoccupations with Nazism. It's all about outsiders who are "one of us" in the shtetl of New York.
Steven Lee Beeber in The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGBs
Given that the Ramones perfected the (sometimes sub-)two minute pop song, it's striking that they're rarely praised/damned as a "great singles band".
That's partly because of their lack of Actual Hits (their three charting singles in the US failed to crack the top 60), but also a testament to how incredible their early albums were.
Their LPs didn't sell much better than the singles, but their first four albums are absolutely perfect. There's not a beat out of place or second of wasted space on the 54 songs that make up Ramones, Leave Home, Rocket to Russia and Road to Ruin.
"Tommy had the whole concept already planned," producer Craig Leon told Uncut years later. "He designed the sets like one long art experience rather than a bunch of songs."
The quality control plummeted as the '70s ended, though End of the Century is a half-brilliant album that's underwritten rather than overproduced. And there's at least one song on every Ramones album from Pleasant Dreams on that makes it worth shelling out for.
Ramones – Ramones
Even if the Ramones had split after their debut they'd have already done more than most bands could dream of. Recorded in seven days at Plaza Sound above Radio City Music Hall in New York for $6,400, it's the ultimate punk manifesto.
Leaning on the violence of The Stooges and degeneracy of the New York Dolls, Ramones stripped everything down to a distillation of frenetic pace and raw power.
Everyone knows the formula: 1-2-3-4! This is a chord. This is another. This is a third. Johnny's buzzsaw guitar, Dee Dee's relentless bass, Tommy's pounding drums. And above it all, Joey's utterly unique vocals. Half teenage primal scream, half headcold.
The lyrics are about all those pop perennials – (un)requited love, dancing, glue sniffing, struggling to sell sex before killing a john to prove you're not a sissy, nihilism and Nazis.
Ramones isn't just The Best Punk Album, it's also the best '50s/'60s pop album of the 1970s. The Sex Pistols brought more phlegm and The Clash broadened the sound with their rock and reggae influences, but no-one could touch the Ramones for purity of punk purpose.
Jeffrey Ross Hyman was born on May 19, 1951, in the Forest Hills district of Queens, New York City, to art gallery manager mum Charlotte Mandell and trucking company boss dad Noel Hyman. Both sets of grandparents were born and raised in Brooklyn.
"I was a misfit, an outcast," Joey said in Hey Ho Let's Go: The Story of the Ramones. A stranger in a strange land.
Like any good cantor, he knew that if you needed to stick in a few extra notes to make a verse work then that's what you had to do. This was a man who rhymed "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" with "took my baby away from me".
Joey Ramone bent words around the phrasing to fit a melody the same way he contorted his 6ft 6 in frame over a microphone stand.
Tamás Erdélyi (or Erdélyi Tamás, depending on your source) was born on January 29, 1949, in Budapest, Hungary.
"My parents were professional photographers and they had liberal, artistic friends who protected them," Tommy told Steven Lee Beeber for his nating and inspirational The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGBs. "But most of my family was murdered in the Holocaust. I am barely here."
The bruddas birth as the Ramones is often highlighted as a moment of reinvention, but this was nothing new to Tommy. In the face of antisemitism in Hungary, his dad had previously changed the family name from Grunewald to Erdélyi – and when they moved to the US in 1957, Tamás changed his name to Thomas on arrival.
The Erdélyis settled in the Bronx and Tommy was bundled off to a local yeshiva¹. Then came a move to Brooklyn and a less happy year at a hasidic institution. Redemption came with a final move, this time to Queens, and the family settled at Verona Estates in Forest Hills.
In 1974, Yes released Relayer, a 40-minute album of three songs. It opened with 'The Gates of Delirium' (21:50), loosely based on Tolstoy's War and Peace. It followed the previous year's double concept album Tales from Topographic Oceans, which gave each of its four songs a side to itself and clocked in at 81:14.
Ramones is 14 songs in twenty-nine minutes and four seconds. That's an average of 2:06 a song. The longest, 'I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement', is 2:35. The shortest, 'Judy is a Punk, is 1:30.
In the midrash² Genesis Rabbah 38.13, amoraic sage Ḥiyya bar Abba tells the story of Abraham smashing all the idols in his father's store, before cradling the stick in the largest idol's arms.
"Our music is an answer to the early seventies when artsy people with big egos would do vocal harmonies and play long guitar solos and get called geniuses"
Tommy Ramone to Rolling Stone.
The Nazi stuff? Unlike the snotty, shlock tactics of their British successors (Joy Division, Sid and Siouxsie's swastikas, Sex Pistols' 'Belsen Was A Gas'), at least the Ramones' WWII-fixation didn't feel contrived.
Dee Dee was the son of a stereotypically Aryan German woman and an American soldier who was part of of the post-war occupying force. He moved to West Berlin when he was a kid and stayed there till he was 15, rebelling against his violent dad by collecting Iron Crosses and swastikas. Tommy and his parents barely escaped the Holocaust.
You can't ignore or excuse Dee Dee and Johnny's habit for collecting Nazi paraphernalia on tour. Worse still were the antisemitic insults Johnny threw at Joey over the years.
Beeber argues the case for Johnny as Tommy's own personal golem³, and of Dee Dee and Johnny being ersatz Jews because of their outsider status in Forest Hills.
That doesn't convince, but with Joey as the frontman and Tommy having the strongest claim to being the band's architect, the Jewishness of the Ramones was nevertheless undiminished.
When it came to the band's image and the WWII references in the work itself⁴,the Ramones reeked of Commando and Weird War Tales comics rather than anything more sinister.
And anyway, the only people more fixated on Nazis than antisemites are Jews.
When the Israelites were in the wilderness after the Exodus from Egypt, they sent 12 spies to survey the land of Canaan. Ten of the spies reported back that – despite God's pledge to his people – the land would be unconquerable.
As punishment entry to the Promised Land was delayed, with the Israelites forced to wander the desert for 40 years, until the most of the spies' generation had died out.
In 2014, with Joey, Dee Dee and Johnny already gone and just weeks before Tommy died, Ramones went finally went Gold in the US, having sold half a million copies in 38 years.
¹ A yeshiva (literally "sitting"): a Jewish school or college where students study religious texts.
² The midrash (literally "exposition" or "investigation"): the body of commentaries on Jewish scripture.
³ A golem is a creature from Jewish folklore made from clay or mud that is brought to life, often by using a scroll inscribed with one of the names of God.
⁴ Blitzkreig Bop' was written by Tommy as 'Animal Hop' before Dee Dee gave it a lightning jolt ("Blitzkrieg bop… Shoot 'em in the back now"), but it's still essentially a song about dancing. 'Today Your Love Tomorrow The World' was apparently toned down on the insistence of Sire Records boss Seymour Stein, with Tommy changing the words. The lyrics shifted from "I'm a Nazi baby" (though Joey still sung this live sometimes) to "I'm a Nazi shatzi" (German for sweetheart) and "I'm a German soldier" became "I'm a shock trooper in a stupor".
Posted byMayer Nissim November 23, 2021 November 23, 2021 Posted inMusicTags:613art, Album, Jews, Ramones, ReviewLeave a comment on 613 Great Jewish Works of Art: #1 – Ramones
Nicky Wire – I Killed The Zeitgeist
For his first decade and a half in the Manics, Nicky Wire stuck to what he knew best: writing lyrics, wearing sexy eyeliner, playing bass, and jumping unfeasibly high in tight skirts.
Apart from playing the stuff, he didn't seem that involved in creating the Manics' music, and having James Dean Bradfield on vocal duties meant he damn well wasn't going to sing any of it.
That line began to dissolve with the sprawling Know Your Enemy. On the B-side of joint lead single 'Found That Soul', Nicky swaggered up to the microphone for 'The Ballad of the Bangok Novotel'.
Manic Street Preachers – 'The Ballad of the Bangkok Novotel'
And what a debut it was. A squalling, sweary, gleefully atonal RACKET. Like the much more trad 'You Stole The Sun From My Heart' and then-off-in-the-future 'Still Snowing in Sapporo' it's a tour travelogue, specifically about the dark, destructive side of life on the road ("Breakfast, my mouth tastes like piss … Four sickly boys are losing resistance").
It's a significant nod at the lo-fi '80s UK indie influences the band would increasingly lean into, and also much better than pretty much everyone gives it credit for. It's more sparky and fun than a good half of Know Your Enemy.
On the album itself, Wire stepped up once more for 'Wattsville Blues', which played with fire by having Wire's spoken word drawl alternate with James Dean Bradfield's choruses, and even letting them go head to head. They got away with it, too.
Manic Street Preachers – 'Wattsville Blues'
Where '… Novotel' ripped away the supposed glamour of life on the road to reveal the diseased reality, 'Wattsville Blues' flipped things around, celebrating the familiar boredom of home ("And time is leaving me here… I'm so happy, I know I can never leave").
After the splurge of KYE came the career ellipsis of 2002 greatest hits Forever Delayed and the following year's B-sides compilation Lipstick Traces, before the band reconvened for the restrained, flawed ambition of Lifeblood.
It's scary to watch someone you love go into the center of himself and confront his fears, fear of failure, fear of death, fear of going insane. You have to fail a little, die a little, go insane a little, to come out the other side.
Eleanor Coppola in Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse
Things got properly back on track with Send Away The Tigers (and you can read how in my chapter in Manic Street Preachers: Album By Album), but bridging that gap were Nicky and James's solo albums.
Both are now seen primarily as stepping stones for the Manics' return. Released on Columbia, JDB's The Great Western got to a more-than respectable 22 in the charts, with its lead single 'That's No Way to Tell a Lie' even going Top 20. He's since released the movie soundtrack The Chamber and a second proper solo album Even In Exile.
By contrast, Nicky's I Killed The Zeitgeist shuffled out on the (yes, Sony-owned) indie Red Ink, peaking at 130. Even at a time when normal people still bought albums, you'd have thought name recognition would surely have pushed it higher than that.
Critics described the album as "possibly the least anticipated solo record yet released". Even some of the biggest Manics fans mention it now with a smirk, or at best see it as a necessary housecleaning exercise.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep
Robert Frost – Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
The reviews on release were a lot kinder than you might remember, though they all predictability laid into Wire's singing ("a rough tone that may not be to everyone's liking", "something only a fan of vacuuming could love" and "a drone to match Ken Livingstone").
With uncharacteristic insecurity in both interviews and even in his lyrics, Nicky had the jump on them. He pre-empted and likely encouraged the almost-instant dismissal of the album ("This is my last crusade / No-one is listening anyway" he sings on 'Nicky Wire's Last').
Nicky Wire – 'Condemned To Rock 'n' Roll' / 'I Killed the Zeitgeist'
So it's a surprise to listen with open ears 15 years later to find that I Killed The Zeitgeist is a brilliant, ramshackle masterpiece. It's thrillingly different, and at least as good as the Manics albums either side of it.
Musically it zips along with real pace and energy. There's the early Manics bounce and thrash of the opener/title track and the the enjoyably underthought Britstomp of 'Withdraw/Retreat', 'Stab Yr Heart, 'Kimono Rock' and 'You Will Always Be My Home'.
The road has taken a lot of the great ones: Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Janis, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis. It's a goddamn impossible way of life.
Robbie Robertson in The Last Waltz
And it's not just quintisentially long '90s guitar rock. There's the cavernous echo of 'Goodbye Suicide', the strung out New York drawl of 'So Much For The Future' and sonic workouts of 'Sehnsucht (Neu Song)' and closer 'Everything Fades'.
They may not have the shimmer, sheen and style of the Manics own similar experiments in sound, but given the guitar/bass/drums template they're bound to, they're every bit as bold.
Best of all is the sense of melody that weaves through everything here, with the pure pop sensibility if anything elevated by how rudimentary the recording and performances are, even with JDB popping up on a couple of tracks.
Nicky Wire – Break My Heart Slowly
The single 'Break My Heart Slowly' burrows into your brain pretty instantly. The deceptively mellow 'Bobby Untitled' follows. 'The Shining Path' has such a great tune that most of the mid-'00s bands churning out too-eager-to-please radio-friendly material at the time would have gladly pawned their trilbies for it.
Nicky Wire had long been drifting away from the pure sloganeering of the Manics' early work to incorporate more personal expressions, and on I Killed The Zeitgiest he freely mixes the two without having to worry about the Manics brand. It feels like he's working without any sort of filter, and the results are endearingly unguarded.
So you've got screamed manifestos ("I killed the zeitgeist/ Ground it all to dust"), brazen simile ("Hope dead, like Jesus on the cross") and art biography ("Break my heart slowly/ Dora Maar said to me"), alongside real emotional honesty ("If the ending fits the words/ If you struggle to be heard", "We'll tattoo ourselves and each others hearts").
The furies are at home
in the mirror; it is their address.
Even the clearest water,
If deep enough can drown.
RS Thomas – Reflections
Like The Holy Bible and the then-yet-to-come Journal For Plague Lovers, …Zeitgiest features snippets of poetry and movie dialogue to add an extra layer.
Lyrically, those records were very much Richey's albums, and it's striking how the quartet of quotes on …Zeitgeist – from Eleanor Coppola, Robbie Robertson, RS Thomas and Robert Frost – could easily be interpreted as being chosen for their resonance with his troubles and eventual disappearance.
And the album isn't great in spite of Nicky's vocals – his voice is a key part of its charm. Sure, he's no James Dean Bradfield, but there's something enthralling about the raw, strangled honesty of an otherwise talented musician struggling to get the right notes out of a strange instrument that's bound into their physical being.
Manic Street Preachers – Nicky Wire Sings
Since I Killed The Zeitgeist, Nicky's sung on a few more Manics songs ('William's Last Words', 'The Future Has Been Here 4 Ever', 'As Holy as the Soil (That Buries Your Skin)', 'The Left Behind', plus some B-sides and deluxe edition demos). He's also written some Manics music ('Some Kind of Nothingness', plus co-writing credit on Journal For Plague Lovers and every album from Rewind The Film on).
He's only been getting better as a songwriter and as a singer. You could paste together a pretty convincing compilation of Nicky-fronted Manics songs from the last 20 years that earns its place among their proper albums.
So what next? As the Manics trundle into their fourth decade with intermittent flashes of brilliance, James recently put out his soundtrack and hooked up with Nicky's brother Patrick Jones for his second studio album.
Nicky's also been moonlighting, and as with last time round, he's already looking to dampen expectations. "All I've got to do is get 500 CDs made, print off a lot of polaroids and hand-make them all," he says.
He doesn't need to be so modest.
Posted byMayer Nissim November 13, 2021 November 23, 2021 Posted inMusicTags:Album, Manic Street Preachers, Nicky Wire, Review1 Comment on Nicky Wire – I Killed The Zeitgeist
The Jam's 15 greatest songs ever, ranked
The Jam released music for just five years, but they put together an incredible run of 18 top 40 singles in that time.
From In The City in 1977 to The Gift in 1982, The Jam released a remarkable six albums in five years, each littered with hit singles and other standout tracks.
Read the full article at Gold Radio
Posted byMayer Nissim September 23, 2021 September 25, 2021 Posted inMusicTags:Gold, Link, List, The JamLeave a comment on The Jam's 15 greatest songs ever, ranked
'Jolene' by Dolly Parton: The making of the pleading country classic
Dolly Parton is an icon not just of country music, but of music full stop.
After releasing her first albums in the 1960s, she took the 1970s by the scruff of the neck (releasing SEVENTEEN albums during that decade alone) and became one of the biggest stars of the century.
Read the full article on the Gold Radio website
Posted byMayer Nissim September 16, 2021 September 25, 2021 Posted inMusicTags:Dolly Parton, Gold, Jolene, LinkLeave a comment on 'Jolene' by Dolly Parton: The making of the pleading country classic
'Candle in the Wind' by Elton John: The making of the tender pop tributes to Marilyn and Diana
Elton John took control of rock in the early 1970s with a clutch of hit albums and run of peerless singles.
One of those classic hits was 'Candle in the Wind', a beautiful tribute to a blonde bombshell who died tragically young.
Read the full article on Gold Radio
Posted byMayer Nissim September 10, 2021 November 11, 2021 Posted inMusicTags:Elton John, Gold, Link, Princess DianaLeave a comment on 'Candle in the Wind' by Elton John: The making of the tender pop tributes to Marilyn and Diana
Luke Haines in… Setting The Dogs on the Post-Punk Postman
The most laughable pop cliché is the claim that artists are just making music for themselves and, hey, if anyone else likes it, it's a bonus!
It's especially funny when you hear it from bands chucking out identikit rock 'n' roll while constantly pounding the press pavements for attention.
For Luke Haines though, it's so evidently true he doesn't even need to say it.
His last album may well have been an unlikely hook-up with bona fide indie rock megastar Peter Buck, but it was a fly-under-the-radar record all the same.
Its askance look at Jack Parsons/Johnnie Ray/Andy Warhol meant that it was hardly going to set the Spotify end-of-year charts alight, even before COVID-19 put the duo's planned tour on the backburner indefinitely.
And Luke Haines in… Setting The Dogs On The Post-Punk Postman picks up where its predecessor left off.
Like Beat Poetry for Survivalists and 2016's Smash The System, Haines's new one is a rare non-concept album for the post 2010 Haines, only in that it doesn't have a single concept.
Instead, it's got 11 scattershot stories about subjects that don't usually show up on records from ex? post? non? formerly Britpop-adjacent popstars.
It's got songs about scarecrows and pumpkins. Songs about bad gigs in Liverpool, former Eastern Bloc spies, singing on a bus with Ivor Cutler and swimming with Andrea Dworkin.
Where to begin? How about with 'I Just Want To Be Buried', the sort of unashamedly pripaic pop song Led Zeppelin (not righteous) would find a bit much but Peaches (utterly righteous) would probably appreciate ("I just wanna be buried / Between your breasts / Between your legs").
'Yes, Mr Pumpkin' has a spoken word bit from Nathan Barley/Boosh/etc. star Julian Barratt. But while Barratt's partner/fellow modern Britcom legend Julia Davis did a brilliantly straight Kids TV narration job on Haines's 2013 album Rock and Roll Animals, here Barratt uses just the right amount of BBC newsreader crossed with The Day Today disdain on the snippy outro ("The pumpkin was found not guilty of all charges…").
Opener 'Ex Stasi Spy' is an early-80s le Carré jangle ("Secrets and lies / A memo from the Bundesbank / Wearing a groovy disguise / Driving around in a Trabant"), complete with era-appropriate nods to Madonna and a guest spot from last year's collaborators Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey.
Haines's taste for and acquaintance of unlikely icons is well-represented. 'Ivor on The Bus' is about well, singing a song with Ivor Cutler. On a bus. 'Andrew Dworkin's Knees' is about spotting the radical feminist superstar on the way to the swimming baths in Archway because… well, because this is a Luke Haines record.
Soundwise it's maybe the most straight rock 'n' roll record Haines has done since since 2009's 21st Century Man, which was just before he started going full concept (everybody knows you ALWAYS go full concept, btw).
There's a sprinkling of synths and squawks to keep things interesting, but this mainly guitars and bass (Haines) and drums (Tim Weller), all stuck together with those late-era breathy, half-spoken, half sung Haines vocals.
It's decidedly old-skool, frequently catchy (especially closer/title track 'Setting The Dog On The Post-Punk Postman'), and completely untouched by any trends in pop music, recent or otherwise.
Look. In 2021 it's clear that Luke Haines is making music for himself. And with his strange, silly-but-always-straight-faced, singular outlook, what's not to like?
Luke Haines in… Setting The Dogs on the Post-Punk Postman is out on April 30 on Cherry Red.
Posted byMayer Nissim April 29, 2021 September 17, 2021 Posted inMusicTags:Album, Cherry Red, Julian Barratt, Luke Haines, Peter Buck, ReviewLeave a comment on Luke Haines in… Setting The Dogs on the Post-Punk Postman
Why fans should also blame themselves for the European Super League
Poorly conceived, badly executed and ideologically rotten, the European Super League was an expensive and hilarious fiasco.
The owners of those 12 "founding" clubs have rightly taken the bulk of the blame for the whole mess. Varying degrees of stupid, greedy and desperate, it's been wonderful to see the whole thing implode instantly underneath them.
Previously unloved football authorities, broadcasters and even governments have managed to recast themselves as heroes, with their own past avarice and incompetence seemingly forgotten.
And while some have taken a moment to ask whether the likes of UEFA, FIFA, Sky or Boris Johnson really deserve more than the slightest of thanks for their *push-you-and-catch-you* "saved your life!" routine, there's been wall-to-wall self-congratulation from fans for their role in killing off the ESL.
Of course JP Morgan and the owners of the dirty dozen deserve everything they're getting, but the fans and football press have failed to take the slightest responsibility for the mess in which football's found itself.
For decades now, egged on by a media that loves constant sackings, sensationalism and storytelling, fans have played a key role in turning the game upside down.
Winning (and losing) is a vital part of any sport, but the pervasive idea that winning is everything and losing is nothing is necessarily self-destructive.
In a division of 20 teams, only one can win the title. Chuck in a few cups and maybe a bit of winning is spread around. But the idea that nearly all teams are "failures" every year and that these clubs "need" sackings and signings to rectify that sets a perpetual transfer machine in motion.
This utterly destructive spiral has been seen as an inevitable consequence of modern football, and with the honourable exception of The Ugly Game author Martin Calladine, few have seriously explored any of the multiple options for getting out of this whole mess.
And the obsession over player transfers hasn't just equalled the sensible weekly worry about winning and losing football matches. It's easily surpassed it. We've all read countless articles from journalists who should know better weighing up whether or not winning the FA Cup or even the League will facilitate buying players, rather than rightly seeing those trophies as triumphs in and of themselves.
Fans themselves are frequently even worse. From the terraces to Twitter, the constant cry is "spend some fucking money".
Ticket prices and the cost of TV subscriptions skyrocket. Matchday employees in the capital are routinely paid less than the London Living Wage. Backroom staff are sacked midway through a global pandemic. All the while, transfer fees, player wages and agents' fees rise and rise.
Yet for all the crimes and misdemeanours of various club owners, the one thing that routinely got fans of all clubs exercised before the ESL debacle was the worry that rich owners weren't pumping in more money to clubs by "investing" in players.
Fans always complain that they're not being listened to. In fact, the thing they yell about the most is what they're actually getting a fair amount of: spiralling, unsustainable, game-destroying spending on transfers and wages.
If anything, it's only the relative (if obviously self-interested) restraint of owners that has kept this horrorshow on the road as long as it has.
Clubs who spent beyond their means for years and decades and now face financial worries or even bankruptcy deserve little sympathy.
They reaped the suspect rewards of this "investment" by crushing their opponents on the pitch, collecting trophies like ever-more meaningless baubles and hoovering up fans, commercial deals and revenue at the expense of all the other clubs. And all the while their fans cheered on every galactico's signature.
Remarkably, even as The Twelve's owners made their embarrassing public apologies for their part in the ESL affair, the genuine response from a large percentage of fans was, "We'll forgive you… if you sign Mbappe/Haaland." They have learned absolutely nothing.
Beyond the laughter, the best bit about the rise and immediate collapse of ESL has been the proof that fans really do have an incredible amount of power. Now's the time to use it.
Keep picketing. Keep protesting. But instead of urging your club to spend £100m on a player (and £300k a week on his wages), maybe suggest they take a year off buying anyone at all.
Ask them to pay their other staff a fair wage. Ask them to put some serious money into the local community on which the history and culture of their entire commercial venture is based.
Ask them to have cheaper season tickets and a matchday allocation for local schoolkids. Ask them to push for regulations to prevent the changing of match dates and times with minimal notice to please broadcasters. Maybe even ask them to push for a minimum number of free-to-air league games every season.
You've proved you've got the power. Now's the time to use it to do more than preserve the rotten status quo.
Posted byMayer Nissim April 24, 2021 September 17, 2021 Posted inFootball, WritingTags:ESL, European Super League, FootballLeave a comment on Why fans should also blame themselves for the European Super League
Telling stories with Daliso Chaponda [2020 re-edit]
The original version of this interview was published in my Northern Quarter fanzine back in Summer 2006.
Around the time of the failed launch of State of Play, I moved back to Manchester. My plan was to take matters into own hands with a self-published quarterly (hence the title), featuring writing from my old London friends and new Manchester work colleagues.
For all the usual reasons (life, lethargy and laziness), it only ran for one issue in the end. The best of my own articles was an interview with up-and-coming stand-up Daliso Chaponda.
Just over a decade later, Daliso appeared on Britain's Got Talent. Amanda Holden used her Golden Buzzer to fast-track him to the semi-finals, and he eventually finished in third place on the 2017 series.
Daliso ended up with a BBC Radio 4 series Daliso Chaponda: Citizen of Nowhere off the back of it, showing that sometimes talent (eventually) does out.
Here's that 2006 interview, given a slight edit.
Beat The Frog at Oldham Street's Frog and Bucket can be a harsh place. It's a baptism of fire for newbies and still a rough ride for more experienced stand-ups trying new material.
While it's not as deeply aggressive as some gong shows, it's still proved to be the last resting place of many comedians and much more material besides.
Some of the very best performers still struggle at the Frog. At least one of the three tipsy judges chosen from the audience on the night will usually stick up their green "get off the stage" card at some point during each set, regardless of quality.
Beat The Frog – a Manchester institution
Even for those who escape three cards and the Frog Chorus exit music, it's clear that many find filling those five minutes a challenge. The crowd's attention is often sapped by cut-price lager and the knowledge that hey, it's a free night.
With all that in mind, a few months back we saw Daliso Chaponda making his Beat The Frog debut. His five minutes passed in what seemed like five seconds. He won the clap-off with ease and walked away from venue a more-than deserved winner.
We had to find out more. Where the hell did Daliso Chaponda come from, and where's he going next?
The short answer to that first question is well… there isn't one. Born in Malawi, Daliso spent time in South Africa and Swaziland before a move to Canada to study computer science and literature, taking what he calls "a good steady path to stability".
His down-the-line schooling then got sidetracked. Unlike most Manchester stand-ups who got their first exposure to comedy via telly and the stage, Daliso took the scenic route.
"I didn't watch any stand-up early on in my life," he says. "I watched a lot of humour. I read a lot of humour, like Oscar Wilde, but not stand-up, so I've always had a sort of different, odd style."
And at school in Swaziland he became a storyteller. "It's a very big African art," Daliso says. "It's cheap, you don't need any props, it's just a dude who starts talking. Wonderful!
"It's a very versatile kind of artform and I was very into it, also because I write fiction, a perfect mesh."
Daliso writes. He writes a lot. His passion is sci-fi, with Orson Scott Card and Octavia Butler namechecked as influences, but there's also a stash of erotica in his back catalogue.
Daliso Chaponda on his teenage years for Just For Laughs
With credits on literotica.com, some stories in an erotica anthology and his own collection coming later this year, we can't not ask.
"I needed a quick way to make money, and people are obsessed with porn on the net," he says. "There's so much, right? "I thought 'Well, I can write porn better than this badly-written nonsense'."
Starting off with the obvious fantasy material, Daliso quickly moved into writing erotic humour. "I thought there's no point spending time being ashamed of it, so I may as well write it in a way that I can tell my friends, 'Look at this!'."
Back to the comedy then. Daliso's stand-up features quick, sharp gags, piercing insight and above all else, supremely confident delivery. He owns the stage. So, it's no surprise that he cites Chris Rock as an influence.
A more unexpected shoutout goes to South Shields-born Sarah Millican, who's been making big waves on the Manchester circuit. "She really impressed me because her writing was amazing, and the stuff which impresses me is writing, because I write.
"There are a lot of people who are great performers with dodgy material, so the ones who really astonish me are the ones who can write."
With his storytelling background and focus on writing ahead of performance, Daliso has a different edge to many on the Manchester scene. His four years in Canada have also had an effect.
Daliso Chaponda at the ROFL Comedy Club
He thinks the smaller number of comedians and venues there compared to the endless gong shows here explains why so many Canadians have managed to succeed in the UK and elsewhere.
"Gong shows are a crap way to become good at comedy," he says. "For your first year you can do one minute, it's terrible! You never progress.
"In Canada I was doing five minutes every week, or every few weeks. There were only a few clubs too, so you're forced to write new material."
Having been repeatedly frustrated seeing potentially interesting comics failing to get off a single gag, and also seeing popular circuit names using identical material for months on end around the city, we're inclined to agree.
The streets of Manchester are littered with the comedic corpses of unrealised potential but Daliso really feels on the cusp of something big.
Currently playing a mixture of paid gigs and amateur spots to get noticed, is there anything that will take the guy to the next level?
A look back to his time in Canada is certainly encouraging. He toured the full-length Feed This Black Man in 2002, followed by Don't Let Them Deport Me two years later – that second show being a response to Canadian authorities refusing him a visa extension.
He's still a storyteller, then. "I like writing novels. I believe that in stand-up you only get started when you're doing half an hour. I just want to get to the point where I can do one hour shows. I like to think of them as being very structured, almost like a book.
"And I want it that when I'm 60 that you can line up the shows I've done and it gives you a story of where my life is at.
"When you do ten minutes, it's just foreplay. You're just making people laugh, you can't say anything. So comedy-wise, I just wanna do shows. I wanna write scripts."
Daliso's last show in Canada was called They're Deporting Me Anyway, performed as a one-off shortly before he was forced from the country. We ask if being a struggling immigrant comedian is any easier in the UK, and are unsurprised to find out that it's just as difficult here as anywhere else.
There's been plenty in the news of late about the release of non-British prisoners into UK society. Many in the press have wilfully confused and misrepresented the facts, choosing instead to emblazon their front pages with the words "foreigners" and "criminals" alongside large numbers, tapping into the latent xenophobia in British society.
"It's interested the way you see the headlines… the words used," Daliso says. "It's also capitalised on by certain political parties, it's just very worrying".
Daliso Chaponda on Lazy Racists at the Hot Water Comedy Club in 2010
In local elections the day after our interview, the BNP doubled its number of councillors, making its largest gains in Barking and Dagenham and becoming the second-largest party there. Some suggest that fears of the BNP and others like them are overstated. Daliso disagrees.
"Notions of hypernationalists and what they do to countries are a very distant fairytale for people here, but growing up in Africa we've seen it straight up," he says. "My home country Malawi had an extreme dictatorship, South Africa had apartheid and it was very nationalistic."
And race is still an issue in comedy. We ask if Daliso would consider a permanent move to the US, like other successful Canadian comics. He's not sure if he wants to move from the UK.
"What I like here is that you're a comedian. You're not necessarily a black comedian," he says. "In the States you're really a black comedian. I don't know if that makes sense, but the race thing means more there.
"In terms of the clubs that are gonna book you, 'Here black comedian, you do Def Jam'. You can do other shows, but certain clubs are gonna book you more.
"Here, I just go everywhere, and I talk about being black but I can talk about other things, and I like that element."
Daliso wants to perform for everyone. "The truth is I'll do comedy anywhere", he says. "I had a hard time about a year ago when I did a golf club, because it was very rich people, a lot of my comedy was about being broke, they didn't understand.
"Also a lot of them were sports people. I'm not a very big sports guy, but I learnt. Immediately after that I got home and wrote jokes about wealth. I wrote some jokes about sports."
Daliso Chaponda's 2017 audition on Britain's Got Talent
Under all that wit and swagger, is Daliso Chaponda just another bland careerist, then?
Later that evening we dropped by the Comedy Balloon at Jabez Clegg, the comedians' comedy night where stand-ups try out new material to an audience made up mainly of other comics.
After a few drinks, Daliso explains that as human beings we have a connection with everyone else. There's always something that connects a comic to their audience, no matter how different they may appear on the surface.
And when you strip everything away, he says it's the comedians job to draw out this connection and use it to make their audience laugh.
Perhaps it's a hangover from his storytelling days. A medium where, as Daliso says, "you can go to all sorts of places and you can entertain children and adults". That desire to take on any audience and find that connection. To bust open the conventions of stand-up and tell a story.
Posted byMayer Nissim September 27, 2020 September 24, 2021 Posted inComedyTags:Comedy, Daliso Chaponda, Interview, Northern QuarterLeave a comment on Telling stories with Daliso Chaponda [2020 re-edit]
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Showcasing South African talent, while preserving binding and printing heritage.
Sometimes in the middle of last year, while recuperating after another mad, overnight, want-it-tomorrow-job, we decided that it is time to take our life back. With all the letterpress, binding and laser engraving commissions, there was no time for anything fun. Except for few daily cups of coffee, that is. Sure, we are grateful for being busy, but every time our eyes fell on Columbian, Albion, Intertype or any other of the dozens of machines we managed to save, we realised that they have not been used in months. Somehow quietly the fun hobby became a job. Without noticing, we turned into slaves of our own success. Things needed to change.
The challenge was seemingly simple: to create a product that everyone needs, can afford, and will want to buy. It had to be easy enough to manufacture, possibly on our otherwise obsolete, antique machinery. And allow us some time to restore and maintain equipment in our collection. It also had to be fulfilling and fun.
Naturally, journals were right at the top of the list. We could print them entirely by letterpress, like no one does anymore. Bind them to lie flat, as all good books should. And since letterpress and binding bring tremendous satisfaction to us, we would certainly have fun.
There was only one thing missing: how to make them stand head and shoulders above all the Moleskins, Paperblanks, Fieldnotes, and any other mass produced journals this world has to offer. Unbeknown, Bianca Giani walked right into the middle of our dilemma and provided opportunity for fresh ideas and solutions.
Bianca, University of Johannesburg final year communication design student, contacted us with regards to her upcoming year-end exhibition, for which she needed letterpress business cards and portfolio covers. Being a student her budget was more in line with digital production, not handcrafted letterpress. Just about the time she was to hand over her student savings, the idea emerged: how about creating a bespoke cover design for our upcoming notebooks in exchange? She agreed, and her artwork graces our January 2019 journals.
Ideas hardly happen in isolation, and soon we had all the answers we were looking for: we will produce limited edition, fully letterpress printed, hand bound journals with bespoke art created by young up and coming South African artists/designers/creators. Each month we commission a different person, and allow them the opportunity to have their artwork to be the key element of 750 journals. And to tie them to their creation for eternity: they will have to sign each of them. These will be imPRESSed Signature Journals, a fitting name.
Since that faithful evening, with help of many great people, we managed to sign up a number of artists. As you read this, they are busy creating their vision for Signature Journals. You will find them here soon, but now, for us at least, it's time to roll up the sleeves and make it happen. This time, with a smile.


Serve this delicious stuffed-squash as your holiday meal centerpiece.
This stuffed squash makes a lovely presentation and if you can find a squash large enough, you can actually "carve" it at the table. The stuffing recipe, from Robin Robertson's Party Vegan, makes about four cups—enough to fill one large or two smaller squashes. Serve with your favorite brown gravy.
1. Preheat the oven to 350. In a saucepan over high heat, combine the wild rice and water,cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, add 1/4 teaspoon salt, and cook covered, for 30 minutes. Stir in brown rice, cover, and cook 30 minutes longer. Remove from heat and set aside. If any liquid remains, drain it off. Lightly oil a 9x13-inch baking pan and set aside.
2. Season the squash halves with salt and place them in the prepared pan, cut side down. Add 1/4-inch of water to the pan and cover tightly with foil. Bake until slightly softened, about 30 minutes.
3. Split the leeks lengthwise, wash thoroughly, and finely slice them. In a medium skillet over medium heat, heat 1 tablespoon oil. Add leeks, season with salt, and cook uncovered for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Sprinkle with the sugar, and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until nicely browned and soft, about 15 minutes. Stir in a tablespoon or two of water if the leeks begin to stick. Remove from the heat and set aside.
4. In a large skillet over medium heat, heat tremaining 1 tablespoon oil. Add onion and celery and cook until softened, about 7 minutes. Stir in mushrooms, thyme, sage, pepper, and salt to taste. Cook until mushrooms are softened, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes. Transfer mixture to a large bowl. Add the reserved rice, leeks, and parsley, and season to taste with salt. Mix thoroughly to combine well.
5. Turn the squash cut side up, and fill with the stuffing. Cover and bake until the stuffing is hot and the squash is tender, about 30 minutes. Serve hot.


Having great tools in your kitchen is essential to making great food. You do not need to spend a small fortune or that you need every gadget that is at Williams-Sonoma. Usually, it's just the opposite.
I have bought so many kitchen tools over the years of teaching myself how to make great food at home; I have a pretty good idea what is necessary and what is superfluous.
This guide is for people who want to make incredible food at home. For people who enjoy cooking and want to practice and get better at making restaurant quality food, at home, for their family and friends. But it also breaks down the necessary tools that every home cooks need in their kitchen and a few nice to have that have made my life a whole lot easier and leaves out a lot of the "junk" that stores try to sell you which you end up putting in a drawer and never using.
Having good knives in your kitchen is probably the best way to take your food from good to incredible. Knives in your kitchen should be an extension of your arm. You'll use them to slice, dice, chop and a variety of other terms that become chef-y very quickly.
Unfortunately, most home kitchens I walk into have, frankly, terrible knives. Terrible knives will make it almost impossible to cook, will frustrate you and at worst can be quite dangerous (a dull knife is a dangerous knife).
Making matters worse, most stores sell these 16 piece sets that skimp on quality at the expense of quality, and worse, you don't need that many knives. About 99% of the time I use just three knives.
The Chef's knife is the workhorse in the kitchen. You'll use this knife almost all the time, for the vast majority of your cuts.
If you are going to spend a few hundred dollars on a really good chef's knife, I would go into a kitchen store and test a few out. There are a lot of variables involved, like how it feels, comfort, etc that contribute to what will work for you. I like Global knives, but there are lots of great brands.
The next two knives I use infrequently, but they have a purpose that the Chef's knife can't cover. The first is a paring knife. The paring knife is a small knife that is used to make very fine or small cuts. Whether it's chopping a shallot or taking the top of a strawberry a paring knife is essential.
I think a serrated, or a bread knife is an important tool in a home cooks arsenal. It's excellent for that French baguette, but it's also great at several other tasks. For instance, have you ever crushed a tomato trying to cut it with a chef's knife? Use a serrated knife, and it'll slide right through!
– No surprise here, the Victorinox serrated knife is a great knife for the home cook.
I mentioned earlier my favorite chef's knife loses it's edge quickly. Well, these two tools are essential to make sure you always have sharp and safe knives. But they are two different tools that serve two different purposes.
The first tool that a home chef should have is honing steel. These are the things that you see chefs running the edge of their blade on several times before using them. These realign the blade; they do not sharpen the blade. They're great to use every time you pull out your knife.
I bought mine at a kitchen store in Toronto's Chinatown, but this one looks close to what I have.
The second tool is not essential but a useful skill for a more advanced chef, which is a sharpening stone. It's a whole other article to show how to use one of these. Make sure you look into how to use one of these, because you can very easily ruin your knives! If you don't get one, take your knives to get sharpened every once in a while.
This whetstone with a plastic base is useful and a great starter stone. But as I said above, make sure you research this before going ahead and sharpening your knives.
Pots and Pan's have the same problem that knives have. Typically they are packaged in sets of 12, 16 or even 24, and often people think that more is better when just like the section above, you need a few quality items that you will use a lot, instead of a whole bunch of pots.
There are tons of different kinds of pans; stainless steel, copper, cast iron, non-stick and even more variations that are too long for me to list. So, before we go on, let's answer a basic question. What makes a good pan? Well, the most important thing is for the pan to heat evenly. The pan transfers heat from your burner to your food. Cheap pans will have "hot spots" and not cook your food evenly.
What about non-stick? Well, a non-stick pan is an excellent specialty tool. It's essential for things like fish or eggs. But you can't do a whole lot of sauteeing in them, because if you overheat them, the coating will rub off and into your food. Not only are you eating Teflon, but you've ruined the whole purpose of the pan! If you are making a lot of scrambled eggs, an excellent cheap nonstick pan is great to have.
T-fal 8″ Nonstick Fry Pan – I use these because they are cheap and when the coating wears off I can easily replace them. I use an 8″ pan here as well, which may be small for some, but I like it for omelettes.
I also have a cast iron pan, which I would say is an option for most home chefs. But if you want something to sear a great steak, a good cast iron pan always does the trick!
My mother gave me my cast iron pan, it's possible her mother gave it to her and so on. Lodge makes good ones.
I love my dutch oven. I make almost everything in this thing. I make pasta; I make stock, I roast a chicken, I make bread, I braise beef. It's a workhorse that is easily worth the investment. These are heavy, big pots that have been around forever.
Staub Cocotte, 6-1/4-Quart others love Le Creuset, it's mostly just an esthetic preference.
If you don't want to spend a few hundred dollars, Lodge makes great cast iron dutch ovens.
There are so many kitchen appliances out there, and I have a lot of them in my kitchen, but I questioned what I use as I wrote this. In this guide though, I've focused on the essentials. So, I tried to ask myself, if I was starting from scratch what would I include. Here are my best effort and rationale!
I think a good blender is essential. You can do so much with it. Making frozen drinks comes to mind right away, but I almost never use mine for that. A good blender helps you puree soup, you can make a Hollandaise sauce easily with it, you can make spice blends. There are many uses.
The problem is, cheap blenders are usually not up to the task of doing the things I need.
If you're looking for something a little cheaper the Oster VERSA gets good reviews, but I have not used it.
You may have heard the crazy about the Instant Pot? Well I bought one purely for the pressure cooker, and it's one of the best things I have in my kitchen. You can make incredible stock in about 20 or 30 minutes, which would usually take 4 or 5 hours (and a stock is one of the most important ingredients a home chef can have on and). It can make beans or a great pizza sauce in a short period. The Instant Pot has a variety of other features I almost never use, but if you like a rice cooker or yogurt maker you can throw some other stuff out!
Instant Pot DUO80. There are a lot of different versions of the Instant Pot, some with fewer functions, some with Bluetooth. Look into what you need. This one has everything I need.
I never thought I needed a stand mixer until I got one as a Christmas gift. It is fantastic. If you are going to bake, it is fundamentally essential. I make cookie doughs and cake batters easily in my Kitchen-Aid mixer. But it also helps with pizza dough and making pasta. Many add-ons (like a meat grinder, if you're into that) put this on to my list.
Kitchen Aid Artisan Tilt-Head Stand Mixer. Occasionally, when I'm making a dough or something that requires a lot of power I think about the professional version, but mostly this one gets me through what I need.
The first time I bought a food processor, I bought a cheap one, it was a waste of money. Buy this one, it'll last a long time and do everything you need. Cuisinart Pro 11-Cup Food Processor.
It might surprise a lot of people to find a scale on the top of this list. But measuring by weight rather than volume is a game changer in the kitchen. While not every book shows weights (more and more good cookbooks are doing this) but it's a great habit to get into the habit of the precision of weighing things.
A fine mesh sieve is something I discovered after reading several cookbooks by Anthony Bourdain and Thomas Keller. Professional kitchens use these things all the time. While I certainly don't use these as much (I don't have a paid dishwasher on site!), they can take things to a whole other level with minimal effort.
You'll need some spoons and spatulas. I like basic and cheap wooden spoons of different sizes and a good silicon spatula for folding batters and flipping omelettes. A fish spatula is a most if you are making fish. Buy a whisk.
An instant-read thermometer is something that gets used often, especially when just starting. Thermapen are apparently the best, but I don't have one, the Javelin one works great for me.
Mixing Bowls are used for, you know, mixing ingredients. But they also have other uses. Sometimes I store things in the fridge in a mixing bowl. They are used for ice baths when blanching vegetables. I like stainless steel mixing bowls.
Sheet pans are used all the time! They are used in the oven to make things, but they are also used to catch things that might fall when baking things (like making French Onion Soup and having cheese fall off when it's baking). Sometimes they are just used to transport stuff to the BBQ. Good aluminum half sheet pans work the best. I have several.
I had a cheap vegetable peeler, and then I bought this Y peeler. It changed my life.
A microplane grater is, surprising, an essential tool in the kitchen. I use it to grate lemon zest, nutmeg and other things that easily take a recipe from alright to great. They're a great tool. You'll also need a regular box grater for larger jobs.
I went back and forth and whether to include tongs or not. A lot of professional chefs will tell you not to use them because they crush your food (like a flaky piece of fish) but for a home chef, I think they are essential. I prefer the shorter 9″ tongs so you have a bit more control.
A valuable tool, because canned food is excellent. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Canned tomatoes, canned tuna and a variety of others are essential for the home cook. I like this kind.


Your dream home payments are always paid in arrears.
4 What Percentage of My Paycheck Should My Mortgage Payment Be?
The monthly mortgage payment is typically made one month in arrears. After closing, your first payment is due one full month after the last day of the month in which your home loan. So, whether you close on 15 or 29 June, your first mortgage payment would become due on 1 August. When you leave your closing, be sure to ask the closing agent for a "first pay" letter which will give all of the contact information, including the complete amount and due date of the first payment. This letter should be provided since the lender may not have had time to send out a billing statement or payment booklet in time for the first payment due.
Mortgage interest is always paid in arrears. This means that the month behind you should accrue before it is actually due. If your loan closes on the 30th of July, the lender would collect daily interest on your new loan for the 30th and the 31st of July. Then, the following month of August would need to pass before the payment would be due on the first of the following month, September.
There is one exception to the rule of collecting odd days of interest in the month when closing a loan. If you close in the first 10 days of the month, some lenders will allow for a "short pay" of interest. This treats the account as if the loan actually closed on the last day of the month before, and no interest days are collected. If you closed on the 10th of the month, and the lender allowed a "short pay" of interest, your first payment would be due on the first of the following month, which would be approximately 20 days later.
In all of the excitement of being approved for your loan, visits to your dream home, decorating plans, color decisions, packing to move and deadline changes, you might forget to ask when your first payment is due. If this happens, you should call your new lender. Your closing agent will give you a package of all signed documents from your closing. This package should contain a letter explaining when, where and how to make the first payment. If this letter is missing, call your lender. You will find a phone number in your closing package. Use your new address and Social Security numbers to identify yourself if you are unable to locate the loan number. If, in all of your moving confusion, the closing package is missing, you can call your closing agent. She will be able to steer you to the right place with the correct information so you can get your questions answered and make your first payment on time--or early.
Lendingtree: Why close at the end of the month?
Campbell, Joey. "When Do You Pay Your First Mortgage Payment After Closing?" Home Guides | SF Gate, http://homeguides.sfgate.com/pay-first-mortgage-payment-after-closing-9662.html. 18 July 2017.
How Do I Make a Mortgage Payment Immediately After Purchase?
How Is Interest Calculated When Closing on a House?


CFO South Africa is the organisation that helps finance executives in South Africa boost their knowledge, network and career through summits, dinner events, CFO Magazine and CFO.co.za.
CFO Day is the premium learning and networking event for leading finance professionals and business leaders. In 2019, the event will take place on 23 July. Contact John Deane to get involved.
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text:
Q: How to get std::basic_istream from AAssetManager? I am using NDK and I need to read resource media file. So, as far as I understand in order to access to resources I need to use AAssetManager, and eventually I need to get std::basic_istream to work with it.
So, question is, how to get std::basic_istream from AAssetManager?

A: The answer is actually very different whether you have a compressed asset (e.g. text) or uncompressed (by default, Jpeg images and mp3 are stored by the packer). For these uncompressed assets, you can get the file descriptor with AAsset_openFileDescriptor(), and then follow the ways of How to construct a c++ fstream from a POSIX file descriptor?. For compressed assets, you may look for a (potentially API-level-dependent) hack that will let you get the file descriptor (or file path) to the transient file that the OS opens for you when it unpacks your asset.

A: You can adapt this example to work with the "buffer" mode of AAssetManager.
This will read the entire asset into memory, though. You could make an implementation that works more like std::fstream by reading chunks into a memory buffer, but that is significantly more complex.
Note: I only test-compiled the code below.
class asset_streambuf : public std::streambuf {
    public:
        asset_streambuf(AAsset * the_asset)
            : the_asset_(the_asset) {
                char * begin = (char *)AAsset_getBuffer(the_asset);
                char * end = begin + AAsset_getLength64(the_asset);
                setg(begin, begin, end);
            }
        ~asset_streambuf() {
            AAsset_close(the_asset_);
        }
    private:
        AAsset * the_asset_;
};

Usage:
AAsset * asset = AAssetManager_open(mgr, "some_asset.bin", AASSET_MODE_BUFFER);
asset_streambuf sb(asset);
std::istream is(&sb);

EDIT: Found a shorter way based on this answer.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Newcomer Matt Mason is slowly (but decidedly) building his brand from his Indiana upbringing. His background on such reality TV singing competitions asNashville Star and CMT's Next Superstar (he took the title in 2011) is simply a small piece of the puzzle. He's landed opening gigs on tours for Blake Shelton, Luke Bryan and Little Big Town, but he still remains the down-to-earth person he's always been, something he notes is rather important in the overall scheme of things.
Nashville Gab recently spoke with the singer-songwriter about his favorite tour, his upcoming EP and what he'd be doing if he didn't have music (and much more).
Nashville Gab: You're working on new music with James Stroud, correct?
Matt Mason: Yes. We went into the studio two years ago and cut four songs with him. We're back in the studio, and we're re-cutting those same four songs to try to get Warner Bros. excited about them. If they aren't excited about them, there are a couple other labels in town he's talked to that are excited about them. Hopefully, our goal is by this time next year to have one song on the radio. It's a tough process, but James is awesome to work with. He's a super cool guy. He knows his stuff. It's cool sitting with somebody who's played on Hank Williams Jr. records and worked with Toby Keith when he first started and found Tim McGraw. He's been in the business with some of the best guys from the '80s until now. It's an honor to [work with him].
NG: When you listen to a demo or are pitched a song, what is it that you connect with the most?
MM: A big problem for me is if the person didn't hire a demo singer to sing the song to make it sound good, I almost can't listen to it. Vocally, I can hear if someone is off. First of all, they have to have a decent production on it. Lyrics are the most important thing. You can rearrange the music and how it's played. If the song says something and means something, that's the most important thing to me.
NG: How early on were you exposed to music?
MM: I got my first guitar when I was 11. I went to a pentecostal church as a kid, and this guy named Carl Downey taught me how to play. I'd stay with him there after church on Sundays. He would [teach me how to play]. They never plugged me into the main speakers, and I didn't know why. It was because I was terrible. My dad bought me my first guitar when we were going to pick up my mom from the airport. I was like 'I want to learn how to play guitar.' He said 'well, let's stop. There's a music store up here. We'll swing in there and see if we can find anything.' I got an epiphone guitar that I wish I still had, but I gave it a kid one time that wanted to learn how to play.
NG: Has any other career path been an option for you?
MM: I've worked odd jobs a couple of times. I worked at EPS a couple times. I worked landscaping for three or four months, but I always said that if I didn't make it in music, I would drive a truck. So, as many miles we're putting out on the road now, I'd be damn good at staying awake [driving a truck]. I don't think I could do anything else really.
NG: You did 'Nashville Star' a few years ago, correct?
MM: Yup. I was on the year Chris Young won. Me and him have stayed pretty good friends ever since. That was a cool experience. It taught me a lot, and I learned a lot of lessons the hard way after the show. A couple of years ago I got the opportunity to do CMT's 'Next Superstar.' I kind of was playing for it from 'Nashville Star' from doing the live TV thing to know what to do on stage when there's a camera rolling. The second time around was a lot better than the first one. I had my head on straight and was a little older to not jump into a lot of pitfalls that a 19-year-old kid can dive head first into.
NG: When you did those shows, did producers try to push you into going a certain direction with your music?
MM: They did a little bit, but I'm just kind of who I am. That's the only [way] I know how to be. They might want you to wear this or wear that or do this or do that. Clothes don't make the man. I've never been able to conform. I have a personality that if you say I have to do something then I have to do something different, which is good, and it's bad all wrapped up into one.
NG: You have two previous EPs 'Chasing Stardust' and 'America's Favorite Pastime.' Talk about those.
MM: 'Chasing Stardust' [was] released last year, in June. I had done a demo CD five years ago. So, we did this one, and I hadn't had music out in a long time. We give fans something. It doesn't have a ton of music on it; it only has six songs. It's better than nothing. We threw that together with some of the best songs that I could find that I had written because as long as I wrote them, I could put them out without a problem. Then, we did another EP called 'America's Favorite Pastime,' and we released that towards the end of October last year. That had some brand new stuff on it, and we're getting ready to go in and cut another one to release here in a couple of months. It's just to try to get music out to people where they always have something new to listen to.
NG: As a songwriter, what are you inspired by?
NG: I read that you've opened some shows for Blake Shelton and Luke Bryan.
MM: Yea, we toured with Luke for three months. We've [also] done shows with Aaron Lewis, Charlie Daniels, Little Big Town. The Luke thing was awesome. It was Luke, Lee Brice, Josh Thompson and myself. I learned a ton from [him]. You know, he's one of the biggest things in Country music right now, one of the most down-to-earth guys I've ever met. That was a good thing for a young artist like myself. You can be a big star and still be a nice person. I don't consider myself to be a big-headed person, but a lot of artists you meet are full of themselves. It was good to see that he's not. Lee's not; Josh's not. They're all super nice guys and were great to me.
[Adding:] We were with [Luke] longer than anybody else. Blake is really cool [too]. He's a big prankster. That was fun, but he's a lot harder to get to know than someone like Luke.


It is now clear that the two former world superpowers are on the path to being the world's two most powerful fascist governments. Russia already has a classically fascist form of government. The United States of America is about to get one.
Fascist government is defined by three essential factors: a strong-arm political leadership, the unification of state power and corporate economic power, and political populism. Stripped of other incidental characteristics – such as geographic location, language, the identity of which ethnic group it scapegoats in its drive to forge national unity – this is the essence of fascism.
That is certainly chilling. But in our horror, or denial, we tend to forget the characteristics of the foreign policy of fascist governments. We have incredibly short memories.
The Tripartite Pact of 1940, binding together Germany, Italy, and Japan into the Axis, preceded Japan's attack on the United States a year later at Pearl Harbor. The Axis's big loser, of course, was poor Italy, which unlike Germany and Japan, never recovered from Mussolini's fateful miscalculation and is today one of the most unstable governments in the world.
What next? If fascist governments typically sign mutual nonaggression agreements as a prelude to massive military intervention in a third country, what would be the next targets for the world's two new fascist superpowers?
Forget about Syria. Syria is finished. Aleppo is the Lidice of the new world order: Lidice, Czechoslovakia, some of whose citizens in 1942 defied German authority and whose town as a consequence was razed to the ground with no survivors. True, the complete victory of Assad and the Russians appears to bring some measure of stability to Syria, especially the western part, no doubt to the relief of other countries close to its borders.
No, the new candidates are more obvious. Russia cares only, and has cared obsessively for more than a thousand years, about securing its borders, which it does through territorial aggrandizement. The fact that the three Baltic countries – Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia – have joined NATO is anathema to Russia. That Ukraine even thought of doing so was enough to trigger an invasion in 2014. Donald Trump has already opined that NATO needs to be re-examined. So, with a new mutual nonaggression pact between Russia and the United States, where would Russia turn? To its west and southwest.
What about the United States? We are obsessed with ISIS and the Islamic world in general. We are joined in this by regional allies in the Middle East, such as Israel, Saudi Arabia – and, potentially, Iran. Yes, Iran. Iran, whose nuclear energy program Russia supports, enables, and protects by taking the huge bulk of Iran's fissionable uranium under its safe-keeping. Absent that element, the Iran nuclear deal, whatever you may think of it, could never have been finalized. Forget about the window-dressing of anti-Semitic, anti-Israel statements by Iran's ayatollahs. They hate the Sunnis more, they need Russia (more than Russia needs them, no doubt) and they respect Israel's military might. Unimaginable? Improbable? Maybe not.
In any event, with Syria pounded into submission on its southern flank and with Iran beholden to Russia for its nuclear energy program, Vladimir Putin can turn his attention from the Middle East to the prickly thorn that has enraged him on his western border – the Baltics – and complete his work in Ukraine. All he needs to know is that the U.S. will look the other way, which Donald Trump has all but guaranteed. That is why Putin used all his powers, official and unofficial, overt and covert, to have Donald Trump elected President.
What does that mean for the United States, and in particular for Israel? Is this going to promote Israel's security, external and internal, or destroy it? The stakes in this gamble are immense.
Beware the foreign policy of fascist governments. For in the end, they lose. And their smaller allies, such as Italy, also lose, bigtime. And Israel? This is the discussion that the American Jewish community should now be having, and in which it must also engage with Israel. Many Israelis (and American Jews) may welcome Donald Trump with open arms, and many others may not have a problem with Vladimir Putin. But it makes a difference who your allies are, and who your allies' allies are. The ally of your ally is not necessarily your friend.
Gerson S. Sher, Ph.D. is a retired foundation executive and US civil servant who has devoted his career to the intersection of scientific cooperation, international affairs and global security, primarily with the countries of the former Soviet Union.