I've been so FLIPPING busy that my blog has been left unfed since October. (Also, I will admit, the crack cocaine of tweeting has weaned me off the long opium dream of blog posting.)
But my old friend Suzie Shorten just sent me this photo, so feck it, I'll slap it up for your amusement.
Major flashback... Galway, 1997... Town Hall Theatre bar. Left to right: Former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, Suzie (who's at MCD now), future president of Ireland Michael D. Higgins, and me (with blond hair).
Some cowboys, in the Wild West, 1997: Malcolm McLaren, Suzie Shorten, Michael D. Higgins, and me.
By golly, a night out in Galway was a NIGHT OUT in those days. Malcolm had finished his talk, and was about to be taken away by the Arts Festival organisers, to the respectable and venerable festival club in the Warwick, in Salthill. They'd almost got him safely into the taxi when he escaped from his minders, trotted up to me and my beloved (we were sheltering for a last few minutes in the theatre doorway from the inevitable Galway rain) and, under the entirely mistaken impression that we knew where the cool clubs were, asked us where he should go. (I was a milk-drinking, hot-water-bottle-using homeboy who went out about once every three years, and my beloved was worse, but he wasn't to know that. It was the hair, man. Blondes DO have more fun.)
I had heard of an illegal wine bar, in a cellar under a solicitors on Abbeygate Street - passwords! secret knocks! - but I'd never tried to get in. It turned out that "er, yeah, that's Malcolm McLaren" was a secret password. And so Malcolm held court, enthroned in a very comfortable old leather armchair, in the Galway underworld, till pretty close to dawn. Stories, theories, stern lectures, good advice (which I never took), even better anecdotes, and his complicated, multiple, silly, brilliant future plans. (He was most excited by his Chinese, satirical/situationist, pop group, The Rice Girls... I don't think he ever did get a record company to fund that one...) A highly entertaining man. (Oh, if any tabloid journalists are reading this; the future president retired early - long before the illegal wine bar - don't worry.)
For a more detailed account of the night... er, email me.
Number one in a very occasional series, in which I bring you up to date on the continuing adventures of the other members of Toasted Heretic, the "messy beat combo" (courtesy Andrew Mueller, Melody Maker, circa 1991), in which I whiled away my youth.
Aengus McMahon has been running along a beach in Mexico. You can read the full story here, and even leave a comment, ideally sarky (sample comment so far: "Don't come to Dangan if you catch a flu :))") but meanwhile here's the picture, 'cos he looks so cool in the heat...
I am in Tipperary, for reasons mysterious. And yes, that means I am typing on a computer older than time. I strike a key; the computer begins to think about perhaps carrying out an action; I go off and make coffee, play a game of chess, solve a major global problem, write my memoirs in longhand, and return to the computer; it carries out the action; I realise I had pressed the wrong key; and so the long day passes.
So no complicated blogging.
But, seeing as we were talking about Toasted Heretic (about a week ago)... I was interested to see that an act of wanton vandalism by, er, me, has been chosen as one of the Top Twenty Moments in The History of Irish Indie Music by Hot Press magazine.
Hmmm... I may have photos from back then... It would take me about six hours to put up a photo here, but I might when I get back to Berlin...
Meanwhile, all you pop kids (well, the Irish ones) - Hot Press are asking what would you nominate as your top Irish Indie Moment. Throw in your fivepence worth in the comments section here. And paste a copy down below, I'd be interested. My top Irish indie moment (leaving aside Toasted Heretic) was probably Cathal Coughlan-related. Personally - seeing him play an astounding lunchtime set with Fatima Mansions in a slightly dodgy club New York, and then getting trapped there for half an hour afterwards, as the cops fought a gunbattle with some drug dealers a little further down the street. (And this was lunchtime, imagine what that street was like at 3am...) Must have been 1990.
A more objective top Irish indie moment (ie one I didn't see myself), has to be Cathal Coughlan buggering himself onstage with a plastic Virgin Mary holy water dispenser in front of 50,000 very angry Italians, when he supported U2 in Milan.
I could write a small essay about the significance of that moment, but I am very tired.
Speaking of Toasted Heretic has reminded me of a small but annoying itch I'd been meaning to scratch. Here goes.
The report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse has finally been published in Ireland. It is 2,000 pages long. It tells us that the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland (which ran most Irish schools until very recently, including the one I attended, the Christian Brothers, Nenagh), systematically sexually and physically abused the children in its care, particularly the boys. In particular the "industrial schools" run by the religious orders were tiny gulags. I have been reading, with mild annoyance, responses to this. John Banville's, in the New York Times, is typical:
"Never tell, never acknowledge, that was the unspoken watchword. Everyone knew, but no one said.
Amid all the reaction to these terrible revelations, I have heard no one address the question of what it means, in this context, to know. Human beings — human beings everywhere, not just in Ireland — have a remarkable ability to entertain simultaneously any number of contradictory propositions. Perfectly decent people can know a thing and at the same time not know it. Think of Turkey and the Armenians at the beginning of the 20th century, think of Germany and the Jews in the 1940s, think of Bosnia and Rwanda in our own time.
Ireland from 1930 to the late 1990s was a closed state, ruled — the word is not too strong — by an all-powerful Catholic Church with the connivance of politicians and, indeed, the populace as a whole, with some honorable exceptions. The doctrine of original sin was ingrained in us from our earliest years, and we borrowed from Protestantism the concepts of the elect and the unelect. If children were sent to orphanages, industrial schools and reformatories, it must be because they were destined for it, and must belong there. What happened to them within those unscalable walls was no concern of ours.
We knew, and did not know. That is our shame today."
Hmmm. "Everyone knew, but no one said." Below are the lyrics of a Toasted Heretic song, released in Ireland (on vinyl and cassette) as part of the Smug EP in 1990 (well within Banville's definition of that "closed state"). The song is called "They Didn't Teach Music in My School". Its real title is, of course (as it should be in any good pop song), the key line of the chorus, "Sliding Up Seamus". However, we foolishly believed that it was a good song, that it was - in as much as a pop song can be - an important song, and that the national broadcaster RTÉ might actually play it, so we made life easier for them by giving it a title they could actually read out on air. They, of course, didn't play it.
They Didn't Teach Music In My School.
"When your calls go uncollected and the neighbours have electrified the fence
Then will you start thinking, will it sink in, will you exercise some sense?
Everybody hates you, thinks it's great you got the flu, do you know why?
It's because you're such a shite we'll laugh all night with sheer delight the day you die
Your hand inside your habit, you would grab it and emit a gasping noise
As you walked in your black cassock past the showers and slapped the buttocks of the boys
But we got out alive
We're rich, we're famous
And you're inside
For sliding up Seamus
In our religion classes you would glare through black-rimmed glasses down the back
And summon up the sinner who'd regurgitated dinner, to be smacked
Vomiting in terror was a tactical error, he'd find
As you lowered his trews and began to bruise his behind
Picture our joy when you were caught inside a boy behind the bike shed
Oh summer holidays forever, and much better weather, when you're dead.
But we got out alive
We're rich, we're famous
And you're still inside
For sliding up Seamus..."
Of course, pop culture never gets much credit for saying anything of any importance, though it often speaks truth well ahead of high culture. John Banville, who is an excellent writer (though of the kind of novel I don't like), and by all accounts a very nice, decent man, appears to be speaking for Ireland when he tells the readers of the New York Times "Everyone knew, but no one said." "What happened to them within those unscalable walls was no concern of ours." "We knew, and did not know. That is our shame today."
Well, it's not MY bleedin' shame, mate. "Sliding Up Seamus" was being played live in towns across Ireland, and being cheered to the rafters by pupils and ex-pupils of the Christian Brothers, twenty years ago, before it was even recorded. And my friends and I officially released our report, on vinyl and cassette, 19 yearsbeforethe Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse released its report.
And, of course, being a disposable piece of pop, existing only in analogue recordings on vinyl and cassette, on an indie label, before the internet, it has vanished almost entirely now. I don't even have a copy myself. But just to prove it existed, here is a rotten recording, with terrible sound, of a live performance of "They Didn't Teach Music In My School" - which we may as well officially rename "Sliding Up Seamus", now that it doesn't matter any more - in Róisín Dubh, Galway, on the Now In New Nostalgia Flavour Tour.
(The actual vinyl version was unusually well recorded, for a Toasted Heretic song, and sounded darn good. Renouncing our 4-track Tascam 244 for the first time, we recorded the Smug EP on 16-track in West One, with the great Pat Neary engineering.)
A final point: The song, rather optimistically, places the chap in the black cassock behind bars. In that, "Sliding Up Seamus" was less a description of the Irish present in the late 1980s, when it was written, and more a projection of a possible future, a wish-fulfillment exercise written to cheer up some friends of mine, who had suffered under the regime, and give them a laugh. No priests or Christian Brothers were getting jail sentences back when that song was written. But it is slightly sad to be reading this on Wikipedia, twenty years later:
"The report itself cannot be used for criminal proceedings (in part because the Christian Brotherssuccessfully sued the commission to prevent its members from being named in the report) and victims say they feel "cheated and deceived" by the lack of prosecutions,[18] and "because of that this inquiry is deeply flawed, it's incomplete and many might call it a whitewash."[17]"
Note for younger readers: Toasted Heretic was the band in which I invested the golden coin of my youth. Back in the 1980s, we looked a bit like this:
And we sounded a bit like this. Think lo-fi. Now think even lower-fi. No, lower... (There's a "play" button for each song, down the left side of this page.)
In 2005, after rather a long break, we looked a bit like this:
We are currently all growing long white beards, in preparation for the next performance in our grueling schedule, pencilled in for late spring of the year 2039.
Well, that was a splendidly enjoyable reading in Kaffee Burger on Wednesday night. A lovely crowd, and excellent questions afterwards (except for Clare's one about bondage). One is always delighted with a crowd that contains both one's parents and Momus. (Giving the evening the air of a disturbing teenage dream.) I do like the way you can stay on in Kaffee Burger after the reading to catch the band, then the disco, and dance till dawn. (Though I wussed out, and only danced till 3.30am.)
I have just been contributing my opinion to a row on the Guardian's Books Unlimited about Will Young's fitness to judge the National Short Story Prize. I may as well cut 'n' paste my contribution in here too... Feel free to head over, and add your own thoughts...
I'm probably slightly biased in favour of the National Short Story Prize, as I won it in its second year.
But Alison, I think you are completely wrong when you say
"What's the point of having a literary prize if it isn't judged by someone with some kind of literary knowledge/qualifications?"
Wrong on two levels. The prize isn't judged by "someone", it is judged by a team of five. It's the overall balance of the team that you have to consider. I hope you agree that a team of, say, five professional semioticians would be very high in literary knowledge and qualifications. But they'd make for a lousy, unbalanced team of judges.
A short story contains a lot more than just literature. I note that the Guardian have linked, just below these comments, to an account of my 2007 win, headed "'Tipperary Star Wars' wins National Short Story Prize". Now, the team of judges in my particular year included the magnificent A.S. Byatt. I'm sure she got my references to Yeats, and to Voltaire's Candide. But I have no idea whether or not she got my story's references to, say, the Eurovision Song Contest, or knew what I was on about in lines like - "A brief chant went up from the Young Farmers in the Mosh Pit: "Who put the ball in the England net?" Older farmers, further back, added bass to the reply of "Houghton! Houghton!""
Yet I do know that the judges read and reread the stories, discussed them, and were unanimous in their final decision. And I believe a good range in age, sex, class, nationality, and experience of both life and literature can make for a richer collective decision.
This year, Margaret Drabble, for example, who was born before World War Two kicked off, needs a great deal of balancing in certain important areas. So, of course, does Will Young - but between them, there are very few references that they won't be able to explain to each other.
Last of all, but very important; a short story is not designed to be analysed by professionals. It is created to be read by human beings. If a short story, after several rereadings and much discussion with Margaret Drabble and others, still fails to make a connection with an intelligent young man who has read Ulysses, then it has on some level failed.
Will Young is OK by me as a judge (and no, I've no story entered this year, so I'm not covering his buttocks in butter with any selfish intent).
However, if you want a tip for a potential future judge from the pop world who likes his short fiction literary: I met Morrissey in a hotel in Galway when I was a teenager (long story). I happened to be holding a copy of James Joyce's Dubliners. "Dubliners!" he exclaimed. "Oh, you've read it?" I said. "Read it? I have it tattooed all over my body," he said.
I have just discovered that Momus is handing out free Christmas presents, and I am very excited. (I hope you are excited too.) In the run-up to Christmas, at a rate of several songs a day, he is giving away his six Creation albums over on his splendid blog, Click Opera. He provides links to high quality MP3s of all the tracks, and is commenting on each song, giving a little description and history, before saying what he thinks of it now, looking back. I will return to this topic, but I thought I'd tip off all you Momus fans immediately (I am looking at you, Neil Farrell).
Songs from when, as he says,
"Everything was poetry and coffee bars, basically. And we all signed on."
And for those of you pop children who weren't born when Momus first gently parted the cheeks of pop's dreaming form, and who desperately need a musical reference from the last five minutes to orient yourselves, let me point out that Amanda Palmer of the delicious Dresden Dolls is covering Momus's "I Want You, But I Don't Need You" on her current tour, EVEN AS I TYPE. In fact here she is...
And here's Momus himself, in a video from slightly later in his career, when Creation had money (thanks to Oasis), and he briefly had a promotional budget. Now go grab some songs, and be sure to say thankyou.
I am extremely pleased to see that the sweeping powers of Britain's Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act - passed in 2001 to keep Britain safe from global terror - are being used to defend Britain's shores from the lethal threat of Icelandic bank accounts.
Although lawyers, the Financial Times, and other lily-livered defeatists who would capitulate in the face of Icelandic Bank Terror are less pleased:
"Lawyers said the Treasury’s unprecedented use of anti-terror powers
to freeze Landsbanki’s estimated £4bn UK financial assets could create
knock-on problems for other institutions with which the failed lender
was doing business.
The freezing order was issued under the 2001
Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act that was passed after the
September 11 attacks the same year."
More news from the latest front in the global war on terror here...
We must remain vigilant. This is just the start. Iceland's sinister banking sector may have sleeper units all over the UK. We cannot show weakness. We cannot show mercy. I hereby call on Gordon Brown to authorise an SAS raid on Björk's Post Office Savings Account.
Look at her. Quite clearly planning to destroy our free markets by unleashing weapons of mass destruction. Quick, stop her! She's reaching for her piggy bank! We haven't a moment to lose.
And cancel the Oyster Cards of Sigur Rós while you're at it. You wouldn't know where they'd be going...
My site traffic counter tells me there's been a lot of visits to a rather obscure page on the Forum this week (the Good Lord alone knows why). The page discusses Toasted Heretic's 1991 hit single, "Galway and Los Angeles", so I thought I'd add these links for the various versions of "Galway and Los Angeles" available free on Youtube...
1.) The second version of the original video (slightly muffled audio, I think it was uploaded from an old VHS tape). There was an earlier, artier version of this video, which I prefer (one long take of my mouth singing, it gets hypnotic, and the lips, when closed, start to look like a leaf or an old sofa after a while), but I don't know where to find it. Brian Shanley shot the original, but the record company freaked out and wanted another version, so we shot some stills of photos by Aengus McMahon and cut them in to make this second version:
3.) Toasted Heretic play "Galway and Los Angeles" live in Róisín Dubh, Galway, August 2005, on the Now In New Nostalgia Flavour tour... (Very dodgy one-camera version! This was an all-ages, alcohol-free gig, in the daytime, so that the band's children and the children of our original fans could come. Thus the kids doing the amusing hand-gestures down the front. We did a far more blood, sweat and alcohol-soaked gig in Róisín Dubh the night before, for adults only, so don't worry if this version doesn't tally with your memory of the Róisín Dubh gig you attended...):
While I'm at it, this is our most popular video on Youtube... Toasted Heretic do "Stay Tonight" (off Charm & Arrogance), on the Den with Zig and Zag... in which I stand on Zig, and throw a lot of dollars in the air, Declan speaks fluent Guitar, and Zig and Zag provide rather lovely backing vocals...
I've grown bored with my blogging style. My policy, recently, has been to say only nice things about nice people, which means I can't mention two-thirds of the people I'd like to, or say three-quarters of what I'd like.
(You will notice I said nothing at all about the recent Booker Prize, even though the winning book was written by a fellow Irish novelist, I used to share an agent with at least one of the judges, my brother knows another judge, and I had potential gossipy stories coming out my every orifice...)
So while I rethink my blogging style (what do you think, should I revoke the only-say-nice-things rule? Or can anyone think of a new rule that would liven things up?), I've decided to outsource my blog to someone who's much better at blogging than me...
Because this is Berlin, I found myself admiring sculptures of foetuses last Saturday while drinking whisky with Momus. Which led me to visit his magnificent blog, Click Opera. I hadn't been there for a while, and had forgotten how great it is. Much, much more interesting than mine. Go have a wander round it, while I build a new persona.
Meantime, feel free to make recommendations for my new personality, and blog style. What do you like in a blog? This blog? Other blogs?
When people say that music doesn't sound as good these days, they usually just mean they aren't having as much sex these days.
But, if you liked the way pop music used to sound fifteen years ago, then the music genuinely doesn't sound as good these days, and it's for straightforward technical reasons.
For several years, record companies have been fighting a secret war, the Loudness War, and it has changed the sound of pop music. Really, "changed" is too small a word for it. It has abolished the dynamic range of pop music. The loud bits are no longer loud, and the quiet bits are no longer quiet. And here is why…
Record companies want their albums to sound louder than the other guy's album, in shops, on your hi-fi, wherever, because people tend to think that the louder of two songs is the better of two songs. That’s just the way our brains are wired.
So record companies have been boosting the overall loudness of CDs. But there's a maximum loudness limit to the digital signal on a CD. Increasing the overall loudness increases the loudness of the quiet bits: but it doesn't (it can't) increase the loudness of the bits that were already at maximum loudness.
Imagine the loudest part of a song as Mount Everest, and the quietest part as the bottom of a valley, five miles below. There is a physical upper limit on how loud the song can get on a CD: metaphorically, nothing can be taller than Mount Everest. Ten or twenty years ago, songs had a five-mile dynamic range: songs had dramatic peaks and troughs. Quiet bits whispered, and loud bits roared.
By raising the volume of the quiet bits, the Loudness War has filled in the valleys. Which makes the mountains seem much, much smaller.
The loud bits still roar: but now the quiet bits roar too. So you turn down the overall volume on your iPod or stereo or computer, to a more comfortable overall volume. Which means that, perversely, you don’t get the benefit of the “louder” album. But you do lose the dynamics which made the original song interesting.
This is why re-releases of old albums often sound strangely flat and undramatic compared to your memory of the vinyl or early CD original. They ARE less dramatic. They’ve been remastered “louder”.
It also makes them more tiring to listen to.
You know how you talk to your friends? Mostly you’re just talking away, but now and then one of you gets excited and shouts, and it’s exciting because it doesn’t happen very often? Well, if Warner Brothers reissued that conversation, YOU WOULD ALL BE SHOUTING ALL THE TIME. PASS THE SALT. THANKS. I’M GLAD IT’S RAINING, THE GARDEN NEEDS IT. WOULD ANYONE LIKE A COFFEE? SURE. ME TOO. YEAH I’LL HAVE A COFFEE, NO MILK. I LOVE YOUR HAT.
Very, very tiring. And if someone got shot in the middle of it, Jesus Christ appeared, and the world ended, you wouldn’t notice, because it would all happen at exactly the same volume as a polite request for a biscuit.
Here’s a great visual explanation of what’s been going on, in three minutes of excellent video:
One of the more peculiar side-effects of my winning the National Short Story Prize has been the appearance of my venerable old band, Toasted Heretic, on Ireland's oldest and most venerable television chat-show, the Late Late.
After a brief interview (where I was asked about the prize, modern Ireland, and Jude: Level 1), I wandered across the studio to join the rest of Toasted Heretic and we played "Galway and Los Angeles", which was originally a hit single in Ireland in 1991. (It peaked at number 9. It was also Single of the Week in the dear, departed (Allan Jones/Chris Roberts era) Melody Maker in the UK. In France, an import copy was played by Bernard Lenoir on French national radio until the grooves wore flat, though the single was never officially released there.)
A strange but enjoyable evening. Everyone who was ever in Heretic played, so it was the full wall-of-guitars line-up (seen previously only on the Now In New Nostalgia Flavour tour): me on vocals, Neil Farrell on drums and sampler, Declan Collins on lead guitar, Aengus McMahon on electric rhythm guitar, Breffni O'Rourke on acoustic rhythm, and Barry Wallace on bass guitar.
Let us draw a silken veil over the debauch which followed, in the Westbury Hotel.
I've been talking to Aengus, official photographer to the band (ie the only guy who had a camera in the old days... now a very successful professional photographer), and we're going to stick up a bunch of old Toasted Heretic photos here in the next month or two. Watch this embarrassing space...
I agree with Roswell's comment (which was made on my last post, but over on the dirty, under-class-oriented copy of my blog at www.myspace.com/juliangough: and ain't that the postmodern condition, baby): extra-thick, super-black, ultra-chunky vinyl is the way to go. This city is practically made out of vinyl. Winos live in mounds of old Chris DeBurgh albums, while students sleep insulated under warm, fashionable cardboard duvets, stitched together from the sleeves of New Order 12-inch singles. Berlin children, when they play, not only skip, but also crackle, and rotate at 45 rpm.
Ideally, "It Makes The Sex Exciting (When There's Been A Little Fighting)" will eventually come out as a yummy, limited-edition 7", on a Japanese label so obscure the owner's mother hasn't heard of it.
Meanwhile, we might put it out for nowt on Myspace. Cuz Free is the new Paid For. Broke is the new Rich. And Old is the new Young.
Yeah, I'm surfing a wave, I'm so smooth I don't shave...
I have just, to my own surprise, recorded a song. Very, very quickly, and most enjoyably. Melanie Houston (DJ, musician) invited me to try something with her. We met up in an improvised home studio in Brunnenstrasse. (Brief description of studio: a couple of doors laid flat on trestles, covered with black cloth, on which lay a tremendously chaotic bunch of, ah, let’s call them "vintage" Korg rhythm boxes, a keyboard with one key jammed down, and a mike with its mesh so bent in that it may have been used as a hammer, or murder weapon, all enthusiastically and incomprehensibly wired together. Everything fed down one wire into a hard drive.)
We spent ages working on a fairly traditional pop song, until we both lost the will to live and abandoned it.
Then, as so often happens after wasting ages on something that doesn’t work, we relaxed, gave up, started to play for the joy of it, and came up with something we loved. In the next thirty minutes, we wrote, rewrote, and recorded a 200 beats-per-minute, electronic, punkatonic, ultramoronic anthem that is almost certainly the first great song of the new millennium. Well, that’s what it felt like, halfway through the first take. I was on my knees, scrolling through stacks of lyrics on the MacBook, rewriting and reciting on the fly into the crunched mike, while Melanie played keyboard, avoided the stuck key, messed with the rhythm boxes and mixed the master live, all at the same time, with no way to go back, cuz it’s all on one track...
It’s called It Makes The Sex Exciting (When There’s Been A Little Fighting), and I’ll try and get it up on the site somehow, soon. Oh, and Melanie will be DJing in White Trash , Schoenhauser Allee, on February 9th, if you’re in Berlin…
Meanwhile, here’s the lyric:
...No, it's not. This is that very rare thing from me, an edit in a post. About a year after posting the above, I reworked a lot of those words into a poem that I rather like, and I want to send it to some people who frown on reading anything that's been published. Yes, I know, cheerfully slapping stuff up on your own blog isn't exactly publishing, but rather than risk confusion I thought I'd pull the lyric from my post. It's been very enjoyable, back-engineering a song into a poem. The words started off, as words do, in my notebook, with no job description (song lyric / poem / aphorism / diary entry / whatever). But, hmmm, they make a rocking poem... I'll put the poem up when all this is over... (This edit done July 29th 2008.)
Julian Gough
The website of Julian Gough, author of Connect, Juno & Juliet, the Jude novels, and the ending to Minecraft. He is also the author of the Rabbit & Bear children’s books (illustrated beautifully by Jim Field).
This sidebar rather cunningly links you to the official Substack newsletter for The Egg And The Rock. That is where I am writing my next book, in public. Which is both terrifying and exhilarating… What’s it called? Er, The Egg and the Rock. It is a beautiful book about our beautiful universe. Go and subscribe, if you want to be kept up to date as the book develops. Or if you would like to help me develop it: I love to get your comments over there. It’s free, and once you’ve subscribed, you will be emailed each new piece of the book as I write it. There is also some other fun stuff going on. Click now! Subscribe! You will not regret it! (Well, you might regret it, but then you can just unsubscribe.)
Some cowboys, in the Wild West, 1997: Malcolm McLaren, Suzie Shorten, Michael D. Higgins, and me.
