Friday, April 25, 2025
Blog Page 437

Live Album Review: Vulfpeck at Madison Square Garden

Lloyd Bishop
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Live Album Review: Vulfpeck at Madison Square Garden

Madison Square Garden, NY, late 2019. A packed house. We see a stage, empty save for Woody Goss at the keys and a lone clarinetist serenading us with an exotic melody. Cheering erupts as band leader Jack Stratton emerges, crawling onto the stage and putting on a show of immense physical effort. Eventually, he leaps to his feet as Goss launches into ‘Tee Time’: ‘Ladies and babies, big children, little children, even the gentlemen, every single one of them – are you ready for tonight’s show of the Vulfpeck?’ Each band member is introduced in turn and runs onstage to wild enthusiasm from the audience. ‘No Xanax! No beta blockers! Fully adrenalised! Everything 20 per cent faster tonight! Are you ready?!’

       Released in December 2019 as both a live album and a YouTube video, the Madison Square Garden live show was the culmination of a buildup of nearly a decade of cult-like enthusiasm surrounding the funk band. Vulfpeck – an imagined German equivalent of the classic American rhythm sections of the 1960s and ‘70s, like the Funk Brothers and the Wrecking Crew – emerged in 2011, formed by Stratton and some friends from the University of Michigan. The premise is bizarre, yes, but bear with me. Not only is the band invested in a wacky quasi-alter ego of itself, this is abundantly backed up by genuinely astonishing musicianship, with several band members switching freely between instruments, and fan favourite Joe Dart producing bass solo after incredible bass solo (find the track ‘Beastly’ on YouTube for more of this).

       ‘Theo, kick that drum!’ The band launches into a raucous performance of the joyous and high-energy ‘Animal Spirits’, from 2016’s The Beautiful Game. From there, we are treated to a medley of some of the tightest funk imaginable (‘Cory Wong’ / ‘My First Car’ / ‘Tesla’), performed with truly unacceptable levels of groove. As the last note of this glorious melange sounds, Stratton turns to the audience: ‘Now there’s a lot of over-stimulation, a lot of loud noises. We’re getting worked up into a silly excitement. But we wanna ground ourselves. This isn’t typical but it’s… it’s becoming faddish.’ He proceeds to get his mum on stage to lead 14,000 obliging concertgoers in a slightly tongue-in-cheek ‘arena breath-work meditation’.

       And this is another aspect of the band’s appeal. The whole operation is self-contained; Vulfpeck have made waves of their own success as a self-run band with no management or major label behind them. They started out recording YouTube videos in a basement in Ann Arbor – and, in a way that beautifully symbolises the band’s homegrown quality, they had their set designer drive the furniture from that Michigan basement to New York and reconstructed the room on stage, with various band members taking the opportunity to recline on it throughout the show.

       The show now hits its soul-infused stride, featuring vocals from Joey Dosik and Charles Jones (on the heart-rending ‘Running Away’ and ‘Baby I Don’t Know Oh Oh’), and frequent collaborator Antwaun Stanley (on the unbelievably energising ‘1612’, ‘Funky Duck’, and ‘Aunt Leslie’). Now, Stratton begins to pace the stage, delivering a speech in his quasi-persona of the ‘founder of Vulf Records’; ‘I am a shepherd of greatness. […] Some say polymath, some say dilettante. I specialise in everything. I get Tony Robbins results at TJ Maxx prices.’ He goes on to recount the story of the band, as a ‘group of young mountaineers [who] set out on a trail, a treacherous path, with no rope—no label, no management’, and who had triumphantly ascended the summit of ‘Mount Madison Square Garden’. Even conveyed through the eccentric persona, it’s inspiring stuff.

       Honestly, I can’t think of a more charismatic, yet sincere, group of musicians; each member has their own engaging charm: Stratton, the ‘shepherd of greatness’; Dart, the sunglasses-clad bass virtuoso; Katzman, the feel-good showman; Goss, the buttoned-up piano man; Wong, the funky, energetic guitarist. The songs oscillate between straight-up funk (‘Beastly’ and ‘Cory Wong’), indulgent soul set-pieces (‘Running Away’ and ‘Wait for the Moment), and a kind of Vulfpeck-brand synthesis of pop, funk, and soul (‘1612’, ’Back Pocket’, and ‘Christmas In L.A.’), where the band really finds its voice. There is something slightly, and knowingly, silly about the concept. But this obvious joyousness and fun is what makes Vulfpeck endearing. It’s infectious, energising. All the eccentricities of the group can seem alienating at first – I know they did for me – but this is a band you have to take on its own terms. The wonderful thing is that everyone is invited to be in on the joke.

Debate: Is banning books ever justified?

Annabel Rogers and Ela McLaren
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Debate: Is banning books ever justified?

The Case For Edward McLaren

The case for banning certain works of fiction is often understated. While we like to pretend immoral books that focus on the ‘real world’ are the only ones that can distort the mindsets of their readers, this is not so. All literature deigns for us to indulge in the author’s impression of reality, not reality itself. This goes for fiction more than the core volumes of radical ideologies. To be convinced of a system from a text depends on one’s ability to suspend his disbelief; to attribute the representation of reality to one’s own experience of reality. It is rarely the statistics that are remembered by those who read the volumes I have alluded to, but the rhetoric.

What is so pernicious about fictional works that engage in the same radical dialogues is the expectation that, because they are about a different world, they can have no impact on our own. We are sceptics towards the rhetorical aspects of political works because we take the genre seriously. They profess to be detached judgements of life and lifestyle. In comparison, their literary equivalents, which are just rhetoric, by-pass our sensibilities. We do not notice the unconscious effect which their conceits have on our ideas precisely because we view them as unreal. If a reader in the 1920s who did not consider himself an Anti-Semite read Eliot’s description of a Jewish person, without the rest of T.S. Eliot’s poem to couch it in euphemism and fantasy, he would be appalled. And yet, once placed in a fictional context, these sentiments would probably be justified by that same reader.

Christopher Ricks’ T.S. Eliot and Prejudice is a damning indictment of the poisonous effect which literature can have on our minds, such that some critics continue to justify the needless bigotry in this and other works by the same author. How much of an impact such similar works had on the rise of Oswald Mosley, and others like him throughout Europe in the 1930s, is unquantifiable. But that literature itself may have a lasting and permanent psychological effect on its readers is proven by history, old and new.

Admirers of Goethe will know all too well of the supposed impact of his novel, The Sufferings of Young Werther. Published in 1774, it told the story of a man’s romantic failure eventually leading to his suicide by gunshot. This is rather a reductive description, and yet it anticipates what came after its runaway success. It started the phenomenon of ‘Werther Fever’, which inspired men of the protagonist’s age and likeness to dress in his clothing style, wear his perfume, and, reportedly, imitate his death. According to Patrick Devitt, a writer on suicide contagion, the book was commonly discovered by the bodies of those who chose to take their own lives. While Rüdiger Safranski dismissed the effect ‘as only a persistent rumour’, the ruling of Leipzig authorities to ban the Werther clothing style still shows the extent of the anxiety created by its distribution.

I should not have to explain the parallels between these occurrences and those attributed to a certain Netflix broadcast. I will just posit this: if individuals relying on censors and printing presses in the 18th century were wrought to mania, public and private, by one literary volume, what goes for the 21st century – where all is permitted and nothing is true? Surely we need to control literature once in a while, whether it be to dilute the influence of extremists, or preserve the wellbeing of the vulnerable.

The Case Against Annabel Rogers

Is it ever right to ban a book?

The short answer – no.

The long answer – who are you to decide?

When someone says the phrase ‘banned book’, the first one that probably comes to mind is D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. (Don’t pretend you haven’t seen it in a charity shop and flicked through with gleeful curiosity to find the ‘naughty’ parts.) However, it was never actually banned in the UK. It was the subject of an obscenity trial in 1960, which its publisher, Penguin Books, won. They promptly went on to sell over three million copies of it. Its newfound scandalous reputation can’t have injured its sales – ‘any publicity is good publicity’, or so they say. The supposedly salacious parts – which caused the chief prosecutor, ludicrously out of touch, to ask if it was the kind of book “you would wish your wife or servants to read” – are not all that shocking today. Times have changed since then. The nature of obscenity has changed since then – and continues to change. Yet it will no doubt always be a concept within society. The teaching of evolution is, after all, still prohibited in many American schools – a fact that seems laughable to many of us, but a humourless reality to others. Those responsible for banning it perceive their own truth as the right one, and anything that deviates from it as bannable.

But that’s different, you might argue, if you have a modern bannable text in mind. They’re wrong.

Whether they’re wrong or not, how is one case differentiated from another when it comes to book bans? Proponents of the book ban cite different reasons for different texts – offensive language, sexual content, violence, political influence, to name but a few. The basic assumption behind all of these arguments is that art has a direct impact upon life; that immoral behaviour read about in a book will induce immoral behaviour in real life; that a scathing criticism of authoritarianism thinly hidden behind the veil of fiction will stir up revolutionary feeling in its reader – and that is not necessarily untrue. Reading makes us feel things, which is why we enjoy it so much. But they are just feelings. We cannot be compelled to act on them, brainwashed by a piece of literature. That’s not how it works.

The real issue at hand is one of knowledge. Books are vessels for knowledge. So the notion of a book ban implies that there are things that the general public should not be exposed to, that they might find in a book. This argument starts off harmless enough: protecting children from profanity, or preventing imitable behaviours being seen as acceptable. This was the motivation behind banning Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, of course – within it there is no explicit condemnation of its notorious subject matter. It was turned down for publication by no less than five different major publishers. It was only accepted by someone who – unknown to Nabokov – had sympathy with the book’s despicable protagonist, and made no real distinction between him and its author. Its publication history is questionable, make no mistake. The presentation of its subject matter could be seen as tacit approval, simply because there is no explicit condemnation. But to ban it for this reason is to believe that one book has the power to erase its readers’ moral compasses entirely, and to shape them in its image. While many a writer would probably like you to think that, it is very much not the case. The highest power Lolita holds is to encourage those who already endorse it – and this is indeed a problem. Yet this is not a problem that will be solved by a ban. Ban Lolita because it hasn’t condemned the abuse enough – fine. What next? Where do you draw the line between approval and condemnation? Can a book be neutral, or must it always preach a moral message? Will this continue until all we are left with is a literature enforcing the ten commandments, varying only in the synonyms chosen to express them? It’s a slippery slope, littered with the corpses of masterpieces.

Dangerous books require trigger warnings, much as a news report might require an epilepsy warning. This should not be up for debate. However, to shut out avenues of thought and knowledge, which sometimes are the basis for entire branches of culture, by banning them entirely is reductive and short-sighted. The most hateful, damaging document today is just that – a document – and it will provide a window for those looking back in the future.

There is an argument that reading books about immoral things actually nurtures our own morality. We read about something reprehensible and we are one degree removed from it, unlike if we were to experience this thing in real life. ‘Immoral’ books that do not have a moral slant are test-cases, almost. They allow us to have experiences in a vacuum, into which our pre-existing moral ideas come rushing in. We can examine our own biases in the face of moral atrocity and come out wiser, better.

Literature is important, and there is a reason the image of burning books makes our skin crawl. Books are morsels of ideas, fragments of knowledge and history and personality. The ghost of a cultural moment is contained within each one. To ban a book is to kill an idea, and that’s as immoral as any murderous literary content.

The participants in the debate do not necessarily hold the positions for which they argue.

And the winner is…? International Booker Prize postponed as book sales slump

Fliss Miles
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And the winner is…? International Booker Prize postponed as book sales slump

“Restlessness gives wings to the imagination”.

Maurice Gilliams

Dutch author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld chose this epigraph to preface their debut novel, ‘The Discomfort of Evening’, long before Coronavirus demanded a state of restlessness worldwide. Now, the quotation takes on a hopeful and poignant quality, speaking to the many acts of creativity that have been borne from lock-down. But for Rijneveld and the other five authors shortlisted for this year’s International Booker Prize, this period has been rendered more febrile with the news that the announcement of the prize-winner will be postponed indefinitely.

The International Booker prize awards £50,000 for the best novel translated into English, which is shared equally between author and translator. The winner was due to be announced on 19th May, following the announcement of the shortlist on 2nd April. Organisers made the decision to delay the award after publishers and booksellers emphasised the unprecedented difficulties posed by Covid-19 to the sales and distribution of the shortlisted novels. A new date has not been given for the announcement of the winner, but it is likely to take place later in the year. 

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s ‘The Discomfort of Evening’ stands out as the only debut novel on the shortlist. At 28 years-old, Rijneveld, who uses the pronouns they/them, is one of the youngest authors ever to be shortlisted for a Booker prize, beaten only by Daisy Johnson, who was just 27 when her novel ‘Everything Under’ was nominated for the Man Booker Prize in 2018. Rijneveld’s debut tells the story of an intensely religious Dutch dairy-farming family, whose lives are fractured after one of their sons dies in an ice-skating accident. The narrative premise holds a striking parallel with the author’s own life; Rijneveld’s older brother died after being hit by a bus when he was 12-years-old. 

The novel is narrated through Jas, the middle child, and is quick to establish the unsettling mixture of childish innocence and profound psychological trauma that characterises the rest of the book. It opens with Jas feeling jealous of her older brother, Matthies, who sets off to go ice-skating with local children, somewhere too dangerous for the young Jas to join them. Simultaneously, Jas suspects that her father wants to serve her pet rabbit for Christmas dinner in a week’s time. Before bed that night, Jas adds a flippant prayer to her usual repertoire, asking for her rabbit’s life to be saved in place of Matthies’. The following morning, a doctor returns Matthies’ dead body to the family home. 

Rijneveld’s simple and candid tone, translated into English by Michele Hutchison, masterfully captures the interiority of a child’s mind, particularly the freedom of imaginative association that comes with youth — the warts on a toad’s back are like the ‘capers’ found in the kitchen of Jas’s mother, for example. But the authenticity of this innocent narrative voice takes on an increasingly uncanny quality as it is forced to confront the family’s trauma. In one vivid moment, Jas recalls a schoolteacher recommending that students push drawing pins into a map of the world, choosing the places they’d most like to go; Jas desires to escape the distressing world she finds herself in by folding up inside herself and disappearing, so she decides to push a drawing pin into her own belly-button. The wound becomes progressively more infected as the novel continues, serving as a gruesome marker of the passing of time.

Tactility is a major concern of the novel, allowing Rijneveldt to showcase their notable talent for transposing sensory experience into language. This starts as something innocuous and child-like, such as Jas’ experience of holding the decorative Christmas angels that lie around the house, or the feeling of sticking her fingers into the soft cheese that her mother makes from the farm’s dairy cows. It soon acquires a more sinister quality after Matthies’ death; Jas touches her dead brother’s eyelids, sensing the tissue paper that the mortician put behind them to paste them shut. In more sensitive moments, Jas mourns the loss of physical affection from her parents; she positions herself in the way of her mother in the kitchen in the hope that her mother might accidentally brush past her — the children have not been hugged or touched by their parents since the death. 

With their parents preoccupied by a potent mixture of extreme grief and religious guilt, each of the surviving children develop unsettling compulsions and obsessions. Jas refuses to take off her coat for months on end and starts to hoard a variety of objects in her pockets. Her older brother, Obbe, repeatedly bangs his head against the wall at night. These troubling behaviours are intensified by the backdrop of the family’s extreme evangelism — Matthies’ chair at the family dining table is kept untouched in its place as they anticipate his return at the Second Coming. Indeed, because the death occurs so early-on in the book, the reader finds herself questioning whether the children’s morbid behaviours were caused by this immediate trauma or were already established by their intensely stifling family dynamic. Death continues to follow the family even after the tragic accident; Obbe drowns his pet hamster in front of his sisters in a perturbed mirroring of their brother’s death, and the dairy-farm is blighted by foot-and-mouth disease (the book is set in the years after the millennium, when there were numerous outbreaks of the infection). 

This is a disturbing and unsettling read that is certainly not for the faint-hearted, but its vivid and gruesome components are in no way gratuitous. There are elements that may sit too uncomfortably with some readers, particularly its treatment of Jas learning about the Holocaust at school through her childish mind, and other visceral depictions of bodily orifices being penetrated by fingers and farm tools (Jas’ father tries to treat her constipation in a rather violent way, and later there is some difficulty with a cow and an artificial insemination device). But Rijneveld possesses a singular talent for narrating the abrasive, distressing and unnerving elements of extreme trauma when experienced through young minds. Already a bestseller in the Netherlands, ‘The Discomfort of Evening’ is a confident and provocative debut that undoubtedly deserves its spot on the International Booker Prize shortlist, if not the top-prize itself. 

‘Don’t Walk Away in Silence’: Ian Curtis Remembered

Alison Hall
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‘Don’t Walk Away in Silence’: Ian Curtis Remembered

Monday 18th May marked forty years since Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division, took his own life by hanging himself in his kitchen using a washing line in the early hours of the morning. A quiet, scholarly boy from Macclesfield with keen interests in philosophy and poetry eventually became one of the most enigmatic figures to have made his mark on the post-punk scene in the late 1970s—and one of the most tragic.

Curtis was the archetypal “troubled soul”, plagued by mental and physical health issues. Diagnosed with epilepsy the same year that Joy Division’s debut album Unknown Pleasures (you know, the one on all the T-shirts) was released, his condition gradually worsened, coupled with depression, drug abuse and marital woes. Those who knew him describe him as a deeply contradictory figure—good-natured and friendly, but erratic and aggressive after a few drinks; a sensitive artist who championed bohemian ideas and at the same time a staunch Tory; a loving husband and father who embarked on an affair with Belgian journalist Annik Honoré. Who Curtis was as a man is shrouded in mystery, to fans and friends alike. He died before he had a chance to truly shine as an artist—just days before the band’s first North American tour was due to start. Curtis was never an especially big name at the height of his success—only in death could he become the cultural icon that he is today.

“Listening to Closer, you think, fucking hell, how did I miss this?” Stephen Morris, Joy Division’s drummer, remarked in an interview with the Independent to mark the fortieth anniversary of Curtis’ death. He has a point—Joy Division’s second album is saturated with imagery of disillusionment, isolation and anguish, and so through his songwriting, Curtis gave the listener a glimpse into his own deeply troubled mind. Knowing that the album was written in the immediate run-up to his suicide is, quite simply, chilling. Beneath frenetic, moody melodies lie the innermost thoughts of a man plagued by ill physical and mental health, creating a unique sense of manic melancholy that defined Joy Division’s music. He was one of many to have redirected the course of alternative British music, shifting this sense of undiluted contempt away from the establishment to mankind—and, often, himself. Of all of Joy Division’s releases, their 1980 single ‘Atmosphere’—released just two months before Curtis’ death, is among the most strikingly poignant. The line ‘People like you find it easy’ serves as a haunting reminder of how Curtis was gradually consumed by his health problems and yet suffered in silence as those who knew him struggled to understand what he was fighting. The signs were all there, and yet, at the same time they were not. He went to great lengths to hide his various conditions as much as he could, and his bandmates remember him as sound of mind until the weeks preceding his death. An incredibly young, unruly band on the precipice of international success were largely oblivious to the struggles of their lead singer until it was too late. 

It’s difficult to listen to Joy Division’s work today without looking at it retrospectively through the lens of Curtis’ untimely death. Curtis’ Macclesfield home and burial site have since become a site of pilgrimage for fans, à la the Dakota Building in New York or the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. But we cannot fall into the trap of deifying him as many have before with Lennon or Morrison. What set him aside from others is the unashamed, raw humanity that seeps through his lyrics. Without proclaiming himself to be a martyr, Curtis made no effort to conceal the demons that constantly haunted him. His music laid his trials and tribulations bare to listeners, a constant cry for help that fell upon deaf ears. Dead at the age of just twenty-three, Curtis did not even make it into the infamous ‘27 Club’ of tragically young ‘dead rock stars’—nor did he quite reach the status of ‘rock star’ in his lifetime. He was certainly no saint, nor should he be remembered as one—but his death marked the loss of one of the greatest talents of the past century, a life cut tragically short.

The New Music Celebrity

Hannan El-Amriti
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The New Music Celebrity

The glossy pages of the likes of NME and Rolling Stone were pored over by music aficionados in the past, hoping for a snippet of the intent of their hero’s use of a 5/4 time hi-hat on Track 6. Those unwrinkled pages were very much the landscape of music journalism in the past: a smooth grassland of domineering publications with any disturbance being minute, in the form of a fanzine or otherwise. It was a time in which scathing remarks and low ratings were very much part and parcel of music reviewing. So much so that Rolling Stone re-reviews now-beloved albums that they gave on initial release a mixed to poor review. Although these giants have wielded weighty words, many music fans approach traditional publications with scepticism and derision.

Circulation remained afloat nevertheless, with magazines fighting for exclusive interviews and photoshoots with the same musicians that they may have dismissed years earlier. Huge artists were part of a pantheon, defined by their myths and legends, and only music journalists had the authority to poke holes.

With the arrival of the World Wide Web in the early ’90s however, the internet became the meteor to wipe out the dinosaur publications. All of a sudden, fanzine (a portmanteau of fan and magazine) creators with no background in professional publishing could create blogs online dedicated to the independent music scene—crucially, with a guaranteed readership. Blogs shifted the focus away from glorifying the larger-than-life rock stars to profiling up-and-comers still playing the pub circuit. ‘Pitchfork’, now owned by Condé Nast, is heralded as a bastion of music reviewing, but it started out as a humble Chicago-based online music magazine. No longer did circulation and sales matter, but rather clicks and hits.

In an era of instant, anytime, anywhere media, video music journalism has undoubtedly become the hivemind of the internet music community. One of the early pioneers of D.I.Y videos is the eclectic, offbeat Nardwaur. The self-proclaimed ‘Human Serviette’, his work dates back as early as 1985, interviewing the likes of Courtney Love back in the heyday of ‘Hole’, and most recently interviewing industry it-girl Billie Eilish. Donning a tam o’shanter and a scarily encyclopaedic knowledge of the artist at hand, his charmingly bizarre interview style is enough to knock back any PR-curated facade. Even the previously-mentioned Pitchfork have capitalised on the visual media market, with video essays and even interviews where artists breakdown their creative process, all with a technical focus.

To talk about internet music journalism without mentioning Anthony Fantano would be impossible. His YouTube channel ‘theneedledrop’ has amassed over 2 million subscribers as of the writing of this article, and his influence has no signs of halting in the near future. ‘The internet’s busiest music nerd’ is famous for his album review videos, rounding off with a final score out of ten. This flagship content is interspersed with takes on industry news and, in the past, meme reviews The overwhelming appeal of Fantano may appear baffling to outsiders; there are few, if any, examples in history where a music critic has a clamouring fanbase magnitudes larger than many of the artists he reports on. It seems he has the perfect balance of sincerity and amusement; packaging compelling analysis in a wrapping of internet humour and distinct channel branding.

These online personalities have created enormous followings, and they have somehow become the new music celebrity. In an era where artists are more accessible than ever (see the multitude of Instagram lives during quarantine!), there is less need for journalists to brawl for the latest scoops when many artists are open to talking about their lives through social media. Nardwuar and Fantano, on the other hand, remain elusive to their fans, with appearances outside of their own content rare, which keeps interest and speculation rolling.

Nonetheless, the fixation with someone like Fantano’s music criticism can be inhibiting. I too have been guilty of hanging onto every word, waiting for the gavel to drop and the final rating to be uttered, but it has been argued amongst online communities that some fans may be forming musical opinions entirely based on the words of a few individuals. Ultimately, they are human too, and healthy disagreement is far more valuable to the discussion. Such behaviour, however, has existed since the dawn of music criticism and has simply been magnified by the lens of social media.

Regardless, the rise of independent journalism has been praised for its coverage of fringe genres and can be credited in part for expanding modern music tastes, with a face to boot. Where Rolling Stone was more concerned with the big label mainstream, niche artists with less industry backing are finally taking up their rightful space in the musical zeitgeist.

Opinion – Why this government boils my piss

Will Atkinson
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Opinion – Why this government boils my piss

First, I must admit I’m a leftist, I have my biases and I am certainly not a Boris Johnson fan but one consistent theme I have seen in this government’s response to COVID-19, especially over the last week, has been sheer hypocrisy. The defence by senior members of the government of Dominic Cummings’ breach of the lockdown rules is the most recent, glaring example of this.

Matt Hancock’s integrity is something I have questioned for a while since his branding of Boris Johnson as “dangerous” only days before backing him as leader and his similar rejection of suspending Parliament before ultimately backing it in government. His defence of Cummings was the nail in the coffin. On the 6th of May Hancock said Neil Ferguson, a government adviser who broke social distancing rules was “right” to resign and that social distancing rules are “very important and should be followed”. Fast forward a few weeks and it is revealed another important adviser, the Prime Minister’s right-hand man, has broken the rules. The same response? Of course not. Hancock tweeted it was “entirely right” for “Dom” to seek childcare for his toddler.

Michael Gove also weighed in on the debate on twitter stating, “caring for your wife and child is not a crime”. That is undoubtedly true but is also completely irrelevant. The argument is that Cummings broke the lockdown rules which is a crime, a crime introduced by the government Gove is a part of. I have read the regulations and as far I can see caring for your family is not a defence to breaking them. Nor are ministerial tweets a defence for crimes last time I checked.

Boris Johnson had gone M.I.A over the previous two days (presumably hiding in the Downing Street fridge), the silence was deafening. His eventual response was a car crash. The UK’s worst Churchill tribute act set out his case that Cummings’ actions were “responsible”, “legal” and done with the “overwhelming intention of preventing the spread of the virus”. The Prime Minister is wrong, it is clear he broke the regulations once if not twice. Travelling to a second home is explicitly what the government had been telling us not to do and was the reason the Scottish health chief was forced to resign only weeks ago! Cummings’ actions were not those of a man attempting to “prevent the spread of the virus” they were the opposite.

Although there is undoubtedly an element of this being a witch-hunt to remove Cummings, it is, at its core, a matter of principle. If you don’t hold your top adviser to account for failing to follow your own rules how can you expect anyone else to follow them? The answer from the Prime Minister was (uncharacteristically) clear: it’s one rule for us and another for him and his pals.

This was not the only time this week the Prime Minister showed himself to be a bumbling hypocrite. The post-Brexit immigration bill, introduced into Parliament on Monday, declared that care workers were “low-skilled” and that new foreign care workers would be subjected to surcharges on entry to the UK. This was until the government was forced into an embarrassing U-turn by Keir Starmer and the Labour Party. The people the government label as “low skilled” are those currently keeping the country going; they are the very people that this government clap for every Thursday, the type of people who Boris Johnson admitted saved his life. They clap for them with two hands and slap them with the other… three-handed monsters.

The final dose of hypocrisy is shown in the government’s similar U-turn on the problem of homelessness. The government set out its commitment to solve homelessness by 2024 in December last year. Fast forward to the outbreak of COVID-19 and they were able to get most people of the streets in two days. Why were they able to do this so quickly? Because suddenly homelessness became a problem for them. Fearful that COVID-19 would spread among the homeless they quickly took action to house people. Admittedly homelessness is a far easier problem to solve with hotels laying empty. But what it does show is that homelessness is a choice for government, it isn’t inevitable and with the will to solve it can be done, and fast.

Events during this pandemic have highlighted this government does not care about ordinary people. It is one rule for them and their pals and another for us. “Arrogant and offensive”, this government are “truth twisters”. Shout out to the Civil Service twitter page for that last quote.

In defence of Jerry Krause: Responding to ‘The Last Dance’

Thomas McKeown
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In defence of Jerry Krause: Responding to ‘The Last Dance’

“Players and coaches don’t win championships; organisations win championships.”

These are the infamous, supposedly self-interested words of former Chicago Bulls GM Jerry Krause, the villain of Netflix’s ongoing 10-part documentary, The Last Dance. At the time of writing, two more episodes remain of the ultra-popular basketball documentary; and while public favour of former Bulls star player Michael Jordan seems to be at an all-time high, the same could probably not be said of MJ’s front office counterpart. At a time when people have more reason than ever to engross themselves in television, Krause’s infamy in pop culture is currently matched only by Tiger King protagonist Carole Baskin. If you aren’t familiar with the NBA or the documentary, here are a couple of tweets to give you an idea:

Throughout the series, Krause is portrayed as jealous, greedy and bitter. On multiple occasions he is openly mocked by Michael Jordan, mainly in reference to Krause’s stature. On one occasion, Krause is shown swallowing medicine while standing on the sidelines during a practice session. Jordan, without missing a beat, sarcastically remarks: “So those are the pills that keep you short! Or are those diet pills?” It was Jordan, the most decorated player in NBA history, who immortalised Krause’s nickname, ‘Crumbs’, in reference to the doughnut crumbs which Krause was often said to leave on his suits. Despite being ostensibly the boss of the team, Jerry Krause was at the very bottom of the Bulls’ social hierarchy. He sat by himself on the team bus, he was the butt of every joke, and he was critiqued – publicly and privately – by the Bulls’ playing and coaching staff.

Of course, some of this criticism was entirely fair. When Scottie Pippen, Jordan’s brightest co-star and a perennial all-star player in his own right, asked for a contract which didn’t even remotely come close to other players of his calibre, it was Krause who stubbornly refused. Pippen would become renowned as the most criminally underpaid player of his generation. And when the Bulls did win their sixth championship in eight years in 1998 – spoiler alert – it was Krause who seemingly inexplicably dismantled the team, losing four of the team’s starting five players and replacing long-term head coach Phil Jackson. The prevailing diagnosis for this decision has, for the guts of two decades, been that Krause simply could not stand being out of the limelight. That his jealousy simply overrode his professionalism and steered the Bulls into the (mostly) mediocre two decades which followed in his absence. I, however, would like to offer up a defence.

It is not easy to win a battle of public opinion against a man like Michael Jordan. In today’s age of ultra-accessible celebrities enabled by social media, it is simply impossible to quantify the scale of Jordan’s ethereal fame in the 90s. Between commercials with Nike, McDonalds or Coca-Cola, Jordan would win a record 6 MVP awards and find the time to star in Space Jam, which at the time was the highest-grossing sports movie ever which didn’t have a bloke called Rocky in it. Suffice to say: Jordan speaks, people listen. And, in The Last Dance, he speaks at great length – usually at the expense of Jerry Krause.

But here’s the problem: in the NBA, general managers aren’t supposed to engage in wars of public opinion, and Krause was dragged into a public trial which he never wanted any part of. One of his more complimentary nicknames was ‘The Sleuth’, earned due to his renowned ability to keep secrets and do his work outside of the mass media horde. The team Krause inherited in 1985 consisted of what Jordan himself compared to “a travelling cocaine circus”, and The Sleuth transformed this into the most successful team in the history of the sport within 15 years, winning three championships in a row on two occasions. For those unaware, the NBA operates on one crucial egalitarian principle: each year, the teams with the worst record in the previous season receive the first choices in the following year’s NBA Draft, consisting of the best prospects from colleges throughout the country and elsewhere. If you’re a good team, that means you have to try exceptionally hard to find diamonds in the rough if you are to achieve any modicum of longevity, given every other worse team are being given the best young players in the world year upon year – and as it happened, diamonds in the rough were Jerry Krause’s speciality. In one famous example, he travelled to Yugoslavia to personally scout young forward Toni Kukoč, who would go on to be drafted as late as 29th overall in 1990, and ended up being an integral part of the team as the Bulls won their second ‘three-peat’.

Other than Jordan, there was not a single player on any of the Bulls’ championship-winning teams in the 90s who hadn’t been hand-picked by Jerry Krause, and yet the Bulls faithful and general public have painted him as the villain at every turn. The Last Dance and its long full-feature interviews with Jordan and Pippen do not help to soften this depiction. “[Krause] would rather destroy an institution than see it thrive,” seethes one of the aforementioned tweeters off the back of another episode of the documentary, but in my view this anger is misplaced. Jerry Krause orchestrated arguably the most successful period of sporting dominance of the last 30 years and initiated a rebuild of the team when it appeared as though that era was coming to an end. Krause died in 2017 and wasn’t able to be interviewed by the producers of The Last Dance. Perhaps if he had been, the unfortunate narrative which continues to shroud his legacy could have been reversed.

The Housing Crisis: coronavirus and ‘mass evictions’

Sophie Irving
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The Housing Crisis: coronavirus and ‘mass evictions’

In the midst of a global pandemic, another dangerous crisis is emerging on British soil. This time, Day Zero will be the 25th of June. Unless action is taken before this point, the UK government’s inability to provide strong safety nets for private renters will end in perhaps the worst housing crisis this country has faced yet.

Private renting has seen a significant increase of 63% in the previous decade, with 4.5million households now living in the private rented sector. With few rights as renters, the COVID-19 pandemic has showcased how fragile this market is, and the danger this poses to millions. Government measures announced in mid-March to protect renters and landlords lack any financial support, rent freeze or subsidies, and instead suggests co-operation between tenants and landlords to avoid devastation. While the effective “eviction freeze” until the end of June has provided short term reassurance, its lifting can only end in mass evictions unless more is done.

This crisis cannot be understated. Unless the Government provides financial support for renters, or a rent freeze, mass evictions will become the norm, as more and more are unable to meet their monthly rent. Research by Citizens Advice this month showed 2.6million tenants have already missed a rent payment, or expect to do so, owing to coronavirus. As an increasing number of workers are furloughed or face job losses, lack of home security will become a serious threat to millions. Private renters especially will struggle to make ends meet as the English Housing Survey of 2017-18 found that 63% of this group reported no savings. A further study, by YouGov and Shelter, found that in 2019, almost three million private renters were a single pay check away from losing their home. Such a dire situation prior to the pandemic can only have been expedited since.

Worryingly, this appears to be affecting our most vulnerable disproportionately; those in the government’s categories of “increased risk” to COVID-19 are three times as likely to have fallen behind on a bill during this time. Families with children are also at an increased risk of losing their homes during this pandemic. In the same YouGov and Shelter study in 2019, it was found that in the case of job loss, 44% of these renting families would not be able to pay their rent or mortgage from savings at all. This means that 550,000 families would be immediately unable to pay their rent in the case of job loss, a prospect increasingly likely in the current climate.

Come June 25th, when the eviction freeze ends and court proceedings begin again, where will these families go? Recent government leaks suggesting the end of the homelessness support scheme enacted in March, will expedite this fear and rightly so. A large portion of our society has been abandoned by their government. To avoid the imminent crisis, the government must do more – as must the opposition in holding them to account. Labour’s recent 5-stage plan response was welcomed but found lacking – it too did not propose the rent freezes or subsidies that would alleviate those in precarious positions.

This pandemic has the potential to be the crescendo of a housing crisis that’s been brewing for years, and unless we see a major re-shaping of legislative support for renters, it will be catastrophic. Going forward, there must be an in-depth assessment of how housing is provided in this country, and for now we must put pressure on elected officials to immediately provide home security for all, through legislation and financial support.

Anyone who is facing homelessness can get free and expert advice from Shelter by visiting www.shelter.org.uk/get_help or by calling their emergency helpline on 0808 800 4444. If you too feel strongly about this, get in contact with your local MP to put pressure on the government.

SATIRE: Has anyone checked in on Gwyneth Paltrow recently?

Ben Jureidini
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SATIRE: Has anyone checked in on Gwyneth Paltrow recently?

Holly Holiday from Glee consciously uncoupling from her brain stem has become the definitive image of Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 pandemic-based thriller, Contagion. Yes, Contagion, you know, that one where Gwyneth Paltrow dies like five minutes in. It’s easy to see why: her distinct lack of characterisation in said five minutes means the audience is basically just watching actual real-life Gwyneth go through the motions of a film’s exposition… (“That’s Gwyneth Paltrow flying home to a cuckolded husband!”)…until she’s not… (“That’s Gwyneth Paltrow’s forehead being peeled back in an autopsy room!”). The shock of so-called Beth Emhoff’s death is really the shock of imagining a virus so ostentatious as to remind us that Gwyneth Paltrow, Shakespeare-in-lover and vagina-egg-entrepreneur, is as vulnerable to collapse of the central nervous system as the rest of us nobodies.

The film in general, whilst host to some of the finest acting talent the western world has to offer, as well as (sorry) Gwyneth Paltrow, isn’t that great. It’s difficult not to laugh when we see Gwyneth go from sweaty brow to grand mal seizures before you can sing two happy birthdays– have you tried Matcha for that, Gwyneth? Kate Winslet shivering herself to death again is still, however, more uplifting than Gal Godot’s rendition of Imagine but perhaps less educational than Kylie Jenner’s stunning revelation that “Coronavirus is a real thing”.

In the midst of the literal apocalypse, it’s difficult to sit back with Bake-Off-Style fodder (You know what else is crumbling, Sandi?! The NHS!), but turning to BBC1 after the credits roll on the 26 million dead only to be hit with ‘Pandemic death toll reaches 200,000’ is far from reassuring. Some things, naturally, are more relatable than others: I have been informed by conspiracy theorists (you know Jude Law is the bad guy in this film because the powers-that-be spent God knows how much of their $60 million budget giving him a snaggletooth to indicate general neckbeard nefariousness) that COVID-19 is a government-controlled bioweapon/5G radio waves /Greta Thunberg’s coup-de-force of climate activism. I have not been kidnapped on a WHO mission to rural China as a hostage for vaccine priority, but hey, who knows what’s going on with you. You do you, Marion Cottillard, you do you.

Christopher Orr complained in The Atlantic that Contagion was too ‘clinical’, that it needed a lesson beyond ‘wash your hands and hope for the best’. Besides this confusingly apt adjective – The CDC? Clinical? Surely not – Orr, alongside those posting pictures of Venice’s dolphin/swan/ichthyosaur-laden canals, seems to have missed the point of the film: global pandemic does not a metaphor make. COVID-19 is not Mother Nature getting her own back, nor punishment for straying from God’s light (Can you imagine? You’re a card-carrying Catholic, you masturbate once and bam – worldwide pandemic). It’s biology. People become fomites – your aunt is suddenly a weapon of mass destruction who must be avoided like the plague, because she is the plague. There is no allegory here: Contagion is about contagion. Wash your goddamn hands and hope for the best. And please, someone tell Gwyneth Paltrow about catch-it, bin-it, kill-it.

Oxfess Wars: Fun, Harmful, or just plain Boring?

Sam Harper
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Oxfess Wars: Fun, Harmful, or just plain Boring?

Most Oxford students’ lives right now are defined by uncertainty. Will we be faced with an online Michaelmas as well as Trinity? When will we be able to see our friends and family in person again? Will the world we live in ever return to something resembling normality? 

Yet one certainty remains. Seeking respite from an essay crisis or trying to pass the time during lockdown, we open up Facebook to see a feed clogged with heated political debates between anonymous strangers desperate for validation. I am, of course, talking about Oxfess. 

I’m sure at some point Oxfess was better. A confessions page should be a place to share embarrassing, hilarious stories free from judgment, to give others a quick laugh during a break from their busy schedules. I’m not saying that there aren’t still great Oxfesses- there are always gems to uncover, however many “Oxford colleges as ‘Simpsons’ characters” or “OUCA members as flavours of crisps” posts you need to sift through first. But the recent preponderance of political discourse between enraged keyboard warriors has turned Oxfess sour. 

Don’t get me wrong- political debate has its place, and passionately supporting your views is an essential part of liberal democracy. But Oxfess shouldn’t be that place. Relentless arguments between increasingly angry students are at best boring and annoying to the majority, and at worst anxiety-inducing. At a time where many have lost loved ones or are trying their hardest to deal with working in difficult home environments, to be told there is yet another issue we absolutely MUST care about is a step too far. Even if these debates are engaged with, they achieve very little; seldom do people change their minds or reach common ground after a series of emotionally charged rants over Facebook.  

True, there is a certain irony about writing an entire article about content you ostensibly claim to not engage with. But this trend on Oxfess seems to showcase part of what’s wrong with current political discourse. The Internet allows views to be expressed without the need for accountability; behind a veil of anonymity, people can say whatever they want, however outlandish, ignore or shut down criticism, and find like-minded groups where their subjective opinions are accepted as fact. Now that COVID-19 has forced people into physical as well as political bubbles, there is a risk that politics will become further distorted, with common ground harder to find. Real constructive debate, between passionate individuals willing to openly defend their beliefs, risks being replaced by anonymous ideologues screaming talking points at a computer screen, achieving nothing. 

So as much as you might feel an undying urge to ‘confess’ your belief that taxation is theft, or that private schools are an abomination, or that the controversial SU motion of the hour is a much-needed recognition of existing systemic issues/ushers in an Orwellian police-state, please don’t. Or express your opinion in an appropriate space, like a niche ideological sub-reddit or the YouTube comments on a Jordan Peterson video. 

Or Twitter.  

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