A trilogy. The opening piece 'March of the Levellers' was the first Renaissance tune I wrote:  in its original form it was the opening track on my second album 'Sawdust and Empire' in 1983. Then the words of the first English Socialist, Gerrard Winstanley, leader of the Diggers, in 1649, set to an old traditional tune, and finally a version of Leon Rosselson's great song about the Diggers - the latter pair are the only covers we do. This and the other tracks on this page are all from the first Barnstormer album, 'The Siege of Shoreham' released in 1996 and still available from www.attilathestockbroker.com . In the late 90s we did quite a few gigs around the UK playing this kind of stuff. Then our lineup changed... 
We became a band who toured extensively in mainland Europe and hardly at all in the UK (I did my solo stuff here) playing melodic Clashy punk with the odd medieval tinge and releasing three more albums: 'Just One Life' (2000) 'Zero Tolerance' (2004) and 'Bankers & Looters' (2012) 
But now the band has reverted to what I always intended it to be - a punk band playing (home made) Renaissance and Baroque music. Touring the UK as of March 2018. 
It truly is the Renaissance of Barnstormer in ever sense of the word.
Now inspired both instrumentally and lyrically by the incredible, radical period of the English Revolution of 1649, we are currently rehearsing 11 new pieces I have written (songs and instrumentals) for a new album 'Restoration Tragedy' which will be released later in the year.

The Siege Of Shoreham

March Of The Levellers/The Diggers Song/The World Turned Upside Down

A song for revolting peasants everywhere!
This and the other tracks on this page are all from the first Barnstormer album, 'The Siege of Shoreham' released in 1996 and still available from www.attilathestockbroker.com . In the late 90s we did quite a few gigs around the UK playing this kind of stuff. Then our lineup changed...
We became a band who toured extensively in mainland Europe and hardly at all in the UK (I did my solo stuff here) playing melodic Clashy punk with the odd medieval tinge and releasing three more albums: 'Just One Life' (2000) 'Zero Tolerance' (2004) and 'Bankers & Looters' (2012)
But now the band has reverted to what I always intended it to be - a punk band playing (home made) Renaissance and Baroque music. Touring the UK all this year. 
It truly is the Renaissance of Barnstormer in ever sense of the word.
Now inspired both instrumentally and lyrically by the incredible, radical period of the English Revolution of 1649, we are currently rehearsing 11 new pieces I have written (songs and instrumentals) for a new album 'Restoration Tragedy' which will be released later in the year.

Cheering The Plough

This and the other tracks on this page are all from the first Barnstormer album, 'The Siege of Shoreham' released in 1996 and still available from www.attilathestockbroker.com . In the late 90s we did quite a few gigs around the UK playing this kind of stuff. Then our lineup changed...
We became a band who toured extensively in mainland Europe and hardly at all in the UK (I did my solo stuff here) playing melodic Clashy punk with the odd medieval tinge and releasing three more albums: 'Just One Life' (2000) 'Zero Tolerance' (2004) and 'Bankers & Looters' (2012)
But now the band has reverted to what I always intended it to be - a punk band playing (home made) Renaissance and Baroque music. Touring the UK all this year. 
It truly is the Renaissance of Barnstormer in ever sense of the word.
Now inspired both instrumentally and lyrically by the incredible, radical period of the English Revolution of 1649, we are currently rehearsing 11 new pieces I have written (songs and instrumentals) for a new album 'Restoration Tragedy' which will be released later in the year.

The One That Got Away

Bombarde (Parts 1 And 2)

Title track of the first Barnstormer album in 1996, now revived as part of the Barnstormer Renaissance!

Demo - Attila on mandola, tenor recorder and vocals.
Around the country many were inspired by Gerrard Winstanley's ideas when he started the first Diggers community in 1649.

WELLINGBOROUGH & WIGAN 
The King had been beheaded, the world turned upside down
Winstanley and the Diggers  cried ‘The poor shall wear the crown!’
They made their stand in Surrey upon St George’s Hill
But Winstanley was Wigan born, folk there will tell you still
The poverty around him bit deep into his soul  
He grew up watching local folk dig common land for coal
That’s where he got his digging from, his modern comrades say
And there’s a Diggers’ Festival in Wigan to this today 
 
It wasn’t just in Surrey they were diggin’
This song goes out to Wellingborough and Wigan (x2)
 
The Wellingborough Diggers were inspired to have a go
They said ‘all things in common’ and on common land did sow
The field there was called Bareshank but it soon was bearing fruit
Till thugs hired by the rich arrived to trample and uproot
The Diggers’ manifesto came from teachings by the Church
But priests just served the propertied and left them in the lurch
Although it was so long ago their statement still rings true –
And there’s a Diggers’ Festival in Wellingborough too
 
It wasn’t just in Surrey they were diggin’
This song goes out to Wellingborough and Wigan (x2)
 
Across the South and Midlands on bits of common land
Thirty-four communities in total took a stand
They made appeals to Cromwell but all fell on deaf ears
Their cries for justice drowned out by the cruel landowners’ jeers
They echo down the centuries as we campaign today
Against the men of property who hold us in their sway
So many empty houses, so many folk in need
Extremes of wealth and poverty, and profiteers, and greed
 
It wasn’t just in Surrey they were diggin’
This song goes out to Wellingborough and Wigan (x4)

Wellingborough and Wigan (acoustic demo)

There have been two Poll Taxes in English history, and two Peasants Revolts against them ..in 1381 and 1990. I wrote this after the second one. (Obviously!) It brought down Thatcher...the first nearly brought down a king.

Tyler Smiles

This is the very first bit of early music that I wrote (sounds a contradiction in terms of course, but you know what i mean!) It was the opening track of Side 2 of my first album 'Ranting at the Nation' in 1983 and obviously was not what many people were expecting to be on the debut album by a ranting poet. Like I say, I have loved this stuff all my life.  
It features Tim O'Tay, current second recorder player in Barnstormer - and, curiosity fans, Chris Payne on crumhorn and viola. Chris was the keyboard player in Gary Numan's Tubeway Army and the man responsible for the music of Visage's 'Fade To Grey'.  He moved to France shortly afterwards.  I always rib him that it was out of shame.  Both Tim and Chris were members of Boundstone school band Crucible, the mid 70s Lancing early music-meets-rock bunch which sowed the seeds of the new Barnstormer in my mind, all those years ago.
I very much hope that Chris will join us on stage sometime. His crumhorn technique is awesome. 
:)

Ranting At The Nation

The Fall Of King Zog

Robina's beautiful composition from the Barnstormer 1649  'Restoration Tragedy' album written and played on piano with myself on bass recorder and Tim O'Tay on treble.

13 CROMWELL’S FUNERAL

NEW ALBUM 'RESTORATION TRAGEDY' out now on CD and double vinyl LP and available from http://www.attilathestockbroker.com/merch.php
Barnstormer 1649 aim to do with early music & punk what the Pogues did with Irish music & punk - but with a strong historical and political message.  Leader, poet and multi-instrumentalist Attila the Stockbroker, describes their sound as ‘Roundhead Renaissancecore and Baroque ‘n’ Roll’.

Attila has always loved early music and plays a lot of the instruments – crumhorn, cornemuse, shawm, bombarde and five different recorders as well as violin, viola , mandola and mandocello. A lifelong socialist and activist, he has always been fascinated by the radical movements which exploded at the end of the English Civil War and the execution of Charles 1 - radicals who can be described as the first English socialists. And his songs are inspired both musically and lyrically by the events of that tumultuous time. So instruments and ideas fit together: they are from the same period.

The songs are mostly based around the time at the end of the war, after the King was beheaded and, in the words of a ballad of the time, the world turned upside down. Previously marginal ideas of social justice and equality spread across the land. Barnstormer’s songs are about the Diggers, the Levellers, the Ranters and their leader Abiezer Coppe, the radical factions of the New Model Army and their confrontation with Cromwell’s grandees. There is an epic piece about the narrow escape of Charles 11 after the Battle of Worcester in 1651 in a coal boat which sailed from the spot where Attila has fished all his life  in Shoreham Port, 400 yards from his front door.  (If he’d been caught, we’d probably be spending more money on the NHS now instead of the Royal Family!)There are some earlier references to Wat Tyler and the Peasants’ Revolt as well.

And all with an eye on what‘s happening now, which is essential. Attila has written a couple of very modern early music songs too. One’s about a visionary with a beard and the initials JC!

History is mainly presented as the story of kings, queens and nobles but real history is about us and our battles for justice. As our country becomes more and more divided along class and generational lines, and the extremes of wealth and poverty become even more sharply defined, we can learn a lot from the events of the past.

Although their politics are similar, there’s one very important difference between Barnstormer and the Roundheads though. Some Roundheads, apparently, thought drinking beer, dancing and having fun was evil. Attila and Barnstormer think it should be obligatory.

BARNSTORMER are
M.M.McGHEE – drums
COOKIE – bass, backing vocals
JASON PEGG – guitar, backing vocals
TIM O’TAY - recorders
ATTILA – vocals, mandola, mandocello, violin, viola, recorders, crumhorn, cornemuse, shawm

BARNSTORMER 1649

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