Much as I love Snoop as a rapper, from the interviews I’ve heard, seen, and read, I can’t say I expect I’d like him as a person. But that’s personal and this is anything but. Though I suspect it actually might be for whichever arse decided to bar the mighty Snoop from entry to the UK less than a fortnight before he’s due to play some shows with the only slightly less mighty P Diddy. How else would you figure it? I mean…as a country we’re apparently happy to let in mass murderers…

…and rapists…

…but not a fun loving stoner with a few hard mates and, maybe on occasion when provoked, a bit of a temper. What exactly has Snoop done that’s worse than mass murder? Or is it just they just don’t like the look of him? He’s an entertainer fer fucks sake. He got his work permit through six weeks ago! Don’t these departments ever speak to each other?

Snoop makes these points, and a few others, more politically in an eight minute monologue which surfaced on You Tube via MTV earlier today. Quite apart from the seriousness of the matter at hand, it’s great entertainment. He begs, he pleads, he rationalises, he reminisces on the good times he’s had in London. He gives a shout out to Wimbledon’s finest Slick Rick and, as a final flourish rolls out his shitty but charming attempt at an English accent.

For those of you too lazy to sit through the whole thing I’ve typed out my favourite bit, from somewhere in the middle. All great stuff, but I particularly like the last bit, when he says ‘let me in so I can do what I do’ and his face breaks into a smug grin (see above). Yeah, maybe he has a smidgen of evil in him. So what? There’s evidently plenty of good too.

“Hip hop has spread over the world to where it is an important factor in London, it’s an important factor in the whole UK. So it’s only relevant to let the king of hip hop, which is me, myself - not proclaimed by me but proclaimed by the people - to come over there and show some love and do it with my main man Puff to show you that we can work through differences. No-one knew that the east/west rivalry could come to a halt and someone as big as me and Puff could put together a tour that could go around the whole world with no incidents, no violence, all peace, all love. And it to be stopped short at the door of London, which is one of the homes of hip hop. Great rappers like Slick Rick came from London. We really appreciate the hip hop community in London, so that’s like a slap in the face if I don’t get to perform out there. My fans really want me to be there, I can’t really blame them, and I know they fighting to get me in there. It’s all the people that don’t understand me, that don’t know me.

I just think they need to talk to the kids and talk to the community and see exactly what they feel. Do they feel like Snoop should be banned? If they feel like that I’ll keep it moving. But if it’s other than that - like I know it is - let me in so I can do what I do.”

Posted by Ringo on Thursday, March 29th, 2007
(1 Comment)

Ouch.

Possibly true, but does it matter? Are white people in the process of appropriating and re-writing history as some folks would speculate? Is it possible to write anything of value on hip hop if you’re not from the hood? Should all white people be banned from writing on hip hop or just the rich ones?

See, as a honky I’d love to say race doesn’t matter, but then I look up at my music collection and see 75% of it is by black artists, and probably 95% of what I’ve bought in the last eight years. Am I trying to buy into some condescending notion of black cool? When I listen to stupid black music am I buying into a 21st century minstrel show or just identifying with the moronic escapism? Does it make everything okay if I listen to some clever black music too? Do I have more in common with Fred Durst or Dizzee Rascal and should I shift to writing about music I grew up with rather than music which moves me right now?

Ahhhhh…I dunno. What do you think?

Posted by Ringo on Thursday, March 15th, 2007
(1 Comment)

If Norris McWhirter were still alive, we might presently be seeing him passing a certificate to the good folk of Napalm Death. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of proto-grindcore classic Scum, Earache Records have made a video for their classic track ‘You Suffer’. Given that ‘You Suffer’ clocks in at one second in length, this makes it the shortest music video ever. Watch it here.

Posted by Louis Pattison on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007
(1 Comment)

Editorial

This month’s Plan B is a testament to the wave of hugely talented men who are poised to take hold of the music scene in 2007. From Nick Cave to Patrick Wolf to Grandmaster Gareth, they’ve brought new energy to a scene dominated by females. Plan B has always looked to the future, and we see a future where men are making music on equal terms with their female counterparts. What the critics are already calling ‘malecore’ is the music of tomorrow. A bold statement? We think not.

We’re proud to present our first annual ‘Men In Rock’ issue, the same way we’re proud to feature so many special individuals in our pages: just because they look a little rough and don’t like to wear eyeliner doesn’t mean they can’t make great music. No, don’t call us sexist! This is no token gesture on the part of the Plan B editorial team: we plan to feature more and more men within these pages as more and more men make great records. All of our main stars this month are living proof that you can still rock a crowd when you’re wearing a shirt and a tie, a hoodie, or even a nice pair of corduroy britches.

While newspaper critics herald the ‘female invasion’ of music, even suggesting that women have the evolutionary upper hand because they’re “in tune with their feelings” and “less afraid to be candid about human frailty” (Observer Music Monthly), Plan B takes a stand against such lazy essentialism. After all, who could accuse the elfin Patrick Wolf, the heartbreaking Arthur Russell, the none-more-confessional Of Montreal or even the sensitive brutes of Grinderman of being out of touch with their more vulnerable side? Or fail to see the ‘human frailty’ in the lyrics of both Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Klashnekoff?

What really amazed us when we put together this issue was how awesomely different men are from one another. In fact, it seems almost insulting to group them all together just because they’ve got cocks and make music. Nonetheless, we hope they appreciate our support.

Normal service will be resumed next month.
The Plan B Editors

http://www.planbmag.com/order

Posted by Everett True on Wednesday, March 7th, 2007
(3 Comments)

i’m playing solo guitar tonight at the penthouse in brighton. also playing solo sets are pete moyse, ginger lee (the two other members of pine forest) and davidd winter. it’s free and drinks are cheap.

Posted by Andrew Clare on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007
(No Comments)

I’ve heard people describe the Tate Modern as some kind of graveyard to the avant-garde, revolutionary expression pinned up for easy consumption, sapped of their power like tins of beans on a supermarket shelf. I don’t really buy that, though; it makes the assumption that experimental creation must be, is always, an act of war. Of course, that’s conceptually really tempting, but looking around the current Gilbert and George retrospective at the Tate Modern, I have my doubts that’s true.

For approaching 40 years now, Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore have played the role of self-proclaimed “human sculptures”, creating a colourful dynasty of artwork from their home on Fournier Street in London’s East End. Typically, their pieces are large and lurid, housed in large single or arranged multiple frames; and almost without fail, the primary topic of their artwork is themselves. They appear propping up bars in blurry unfocus, walking the bare boards of their unfurnished house, grimacing like gargoyles on a plinth, or naked and dangling their saggy balls.

To Gilbert and George, the gallery is not a life-sapping museum space: they exist to be collected, pictorialised, documented, referenced. In doing so, they’re the classic mirror that reflects their surroundings. All their artwork is created by source material from in walking distance of their East London address, from the personal (their bodies, charted swelling, flopping, disintegrating; splashes of urine or sperm viewed under a microscope, luridly coloured, inflated to massive size to the social (racist graffiti and personal ads; pasted flyposters and leaflets preaching Islamic fundamentalism, or offering the services of an African witchdoctor).

You could accuse it of being conservative, you could accuse it of being reactionary. But as time goes on, I’ve begun to greatly admire this manner of creation. It’s a spirit I can identify in some of my favourite bands (Kraftwerk, Whitehouse), and also what John Peel meant when he said that great thing about The Fall: “Always different, always the same”. ‘Ploughing a furrow’, you could say, but I prefer to think of it as a steady, meticulous recreation of the same ideas, themes and practices; the idea being, perhaps, that truth is to be found in some bigger picture, revealed inch by inch. If “genius” (a horrible, misused word, as a current discussion on the Plan B forum attests) exists, surely it’s to be found in the small differences.

Posted by Louis Pattison on Sunday, March 4th, 2007
(1 Comment)