Radio show about jazz, oil and the making of America.

Red White Blues

It's the first day of spring. Coronavirus is spreading. The economy is tumbling because neoliberalism sucks and Tories are not fit for purpose (unless that purpose is pillory). Austerity has picked Britain's bones clean but no one knows if capitalism will survive this crisis or what will come next. Where is Brexit? Who cares? Most of us are stuck inside anyway. In our first episode, Ben reads 'Rough Sleep', an essay that should have been published this week but all the shops are closed. Except Burning House Books, which is an online shop, where you can buy a copy. 'Rough Sleep' charts the passing clouds of history as they cast shadows on the author's life: from working for low pay and being a homeless teenaged drop-out in the US in the late '90s; working for low pay while in an abusive relationship in London when the Tories first came to power in 2010; working for low pay in a cafe and volunteering at a food bank in Cornwall during the Brexit vote; to finally working for low pay at a soul-destroying call centre in Glasgow in 2019. Buy a copy of 'Rough Sleep' at www.burninghousebooks.com

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01: ROUGH SLEEP (22.03.2020)

This week Ben talks to his old friend Norm, a comedian and political organiser in Connecticut. They discuss healthcare during the COVID-19 crisis, the legacy of a failed Obamacare, perform a post-mortem on the Bernie 2020 campaign and try to figure out where the movement can go from here.

03: ASHES (21.04.2020)

The election came and… it’s still happening. While it looks like Biden will probably win, the Dems have taken a real beating getting there. Ben & Norm talk turkeys voting for Christmas, how the establishment need to be afraid of us, and—of course—how Bernie would have won.

Theme song, as ever, ‘Now That I Can See’ by Gerry Nobody: https://gerrynobody.bandcamp.com/album/arse-poetica

The other song is ‘Nothing’ by The Fugs

Image by Norm

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05: MASK OFF (06.11.2020)

Ben reads a short story: 'Butts Up'. Then Norm and Ben talk about Walter Benjamin and turning war into art, Gulf War The Movie, America's relationship to the spectacle of violence—and baseball cards. 

Opening music, as ever, 'Now That I Can See' by Gerry Nobody.

Subscribe to the Spaghetti For Brains newsletter for nuggets of brain genius and to see images of the Desert Storm baseball cards: www.spaghettiforbrains.com

07: BUTTS UP (27.11.2020)

'Oh, Cymru'. The Big "D" Word. Dick Stormer, Keir Starmer's Iranian avatar. SpyCops. Lying to children. The Easter Bunny's endocrinology. Abandon all hope, ye who enter politics. On a personal note, 2020 made me a communist.

The opening music, as ever, is Gerry Nobody's 'Now That I Can See'.

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09: HOPE ADDICTS (11.12.2020)

We discuss Joel Schumacher's classic 1993 film Falling Down, what it can tell us about the AIDS crisis and the sliding scale of value applied to American lives, the LA Riots, Biden’s ‘94 Crime Bill, and how empires crumble in the shadows of their own nostalgia. 

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10: AM I THE BADDIES (17.12.2020)

We recorded this on New Years Eve. Everything about 2020 was bad. Even the good stuff, which just made the rest feel worse. 

Both tunes are taken from Gerry Nobody's tribute to Thelonious Monk: He Saw.

Sign up to the Spaghetti For Brains newsletter and learn how you can be clutch, bruh: www.spaghettiforbrains.com

11: GOODBYE 2020, WE HARDLY KNEW EU (04.01.2021)

Don Draper makes a guest appearance to read the 'hard' poetry of our greatest living William. Inauguration intubation across the nation. Sea Ashanti. Bible studies with Ben & Joe. Blessed be the grifters, for theirs is the kingdom of MLM. Americans abroad are only as bad as Brits at home. The United States is a nation of Mad Men.

Special thanks to ⁠The Unperson⁠ for the synth drone: https://linktr.ee/theunperson

Opening theme: '⁠Now That I Can See⁠' by Gerry Nobody.

Check out the Spaghetti For Brains Substack where you can read articles and subscribe to the newsletter: www.spaghettiforbrains.com

14: MANIFEST DENSITY (22.01.2021)

Jon Hamm has beef with Norm but Obama's got his back. Norm and Ben talk about the stock shorting attack radiating from the sulphurous bowels of Reddit. Is it a form of online organising? Trolling in the style of 4chan Trump "supporters"? Or are these guys just Jokers in it for the lols? 

Stay tuned later in the week for a *BONUS EPISODE* where Ben reads an essay on the concept of the "Orwellian."

Theme music: '⁠Now That I Can See⁠' by Gerry Nobody

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15: EAT MY SHORTS (28.01.2021)

Originally published on 12.02.2021.

Ben reads the latest instalment in a series of pamphlets on the “Orwellian”: ‘Sales Soar at the Everything Store: Orwell, Power-Worship and the “Story of America”’. The piece looks at Orwell’s many critiques of James Burnham, whose 1940s works inspired 1984’s nightmare vision of an Anglicised Soviet surveillance state. Ben also explores the relationship between traditional intelligence methods (mostly leading to mass murder in the name of “anticommunism”) and the modern ‘data companies’ role in running that game for the ruling class. It’s easy to forget that power and control are not the same thing, and that sometimes our desire to feel like the ship is being steered entices us into believing that things are not going haywire. Hence Biden’s (and others’) guff about ‘the story of America’.

Read the piece at www.spaghettiforbrains.com⁠ and subscribe for free to read future pamphlets in the newsletter.

Opening music: 'Now That I Can See' by Gerry Nobody.

Closing music: 'The Chestnut Tree' by Glenn Miller

SALES SOAR AT THE EVERYTHING STORE

This week Ben & Norm look at Neera's chances, compare German guilt with Anglo-American guilt, recount the foibles of Keir "Daily" Starmer, why you should give up on Labour and just go for a party who also won't win but will at least lose with dignity, the Biden admin launch Coolag Junior, Mr & Mrs Potato Head's God-given biology, why "normal" people are perverts and psychopaths, Sophia the Robot vs. Shamima Begum, and Cuomo the sex pest.

Check out the Spaghetti For Brains newsletter: www.spaghettiforbrains.com

19: STARMFRONT (01.03.2021)

For our milestone 20th episode, Norm & Ben gain exclusive access to a wet a** press conference. Norm takes a moment to be serious and address anti-Italian bias. Iranian history plays an understated role in present day geopolitics. A picture of Cuomo being a sex pest is worth a thousand words. Norm calls out a celebrity chef and drops truth about tahdig rice.

Featured music: 'Del Dare' by Kourosh Yaghmaei

Drone courtesy of The Unperson: https://theunperson.bandcamp.com/

Check out the Spaghetti For Brains newsletter: www.spaghettiforbrains.com

20: ECCE CUOMO (05.03.2021)

Apple Johnson comes out as 'ex-gay.' Gif or Jif and fungible art. Why your veggie pizza is just wrong. Big bunny milkers get cancelled. Lastly, and in all seriousness, we talk about Sarah Everard, the police brutally cracking down on vigils held in her memory, and the context in which this is taking place: increasingly violent and arbitrary state repression against legitimate forms of protest. Ben gives a short history of British policing. If you have a problem with 'defund the police' then how about we do a Marie Kondo on these mfers?

Check out and subscribe to the Spaghetti For Brains newsletter: www.spaghettiforbrains.com

21: A BEGGAR'S OPERA (17.03.2021)

Norm loses the game. Ben adopted a cat and made it an honorary Italian. Constantine the influencer posted Christianity until it went viral. Corporations pretending to be human. White boy summer in a totally not-racist police state. Conspiracy is all well and good but have you heard of the valorisation of capital? If only the Chauvin trial really could put the criminal justice system in the dock. What 'Keir' stands for.

The open letter about #killthebill that Ben talks about: https://www.spaghettiforbrains.com/p/a-dark-stain-on-our-democracy

23: OWNIN'-ISM (06.04.2021)

After a totally planned hiatus, Ben & Norm are back. It's the End of History — Season Two. Israel, the movie. Fighting to lose. Chimps and Spaniards of Hartlepool. The Queen's Speech, Kill the Bill, long distance asylum applications and other Tory manoeuvres straight out of the Republican playbook. Cockhands' Voter ID law and how the US is like the UK a little further down the road. Also we call out Chapo Trap House.

24: END OF HISTORY SEASON TWO (14.05.2021)

Originally published on 29.05.2021.

Ben reads a letter to the so-called "gender critical" left. Young people are growing into a politics that is radical and trans inclusive. If we're not responding to the changing dimensions of the working class, then who are we?

You can read the letter on the Spaghetti For Brains website: https://www.spaghettiforbrains.com/p/an-open-letter-to-the-gender-critical

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE "GENDER CRITICAL" LEFT

Ben & Norm are joined by SFB's first guest. Writer and bookseller Aimee from Burning House Books drops by to talk Pride & couches, football, accidentally getting @'d by the First Minister of Scotland and the ensuing toilet bowl of her mentions, the working class experience of reading, urban decay, financialisation, and the pure uncut diamond genius of David Wojnarowicz.

We'll be back soon to continue the conversation with Aimee and probably read some bits from Wojnarowicz's titan of a book, Close to the Knives (1991).

Check out Burning House Books: www.burninghousebooks.com
Norm's other podcast, This Is Bad: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/this…ad/id1566431001

26: X RAYS FROM HELL ft. AIMEE FROM BURNING HOUSE BOOKS (06.07.2021)

Vampires & landlords earning their blood. Ben is on a news & social media hiatus. When you've ruined someone's Christmas. Abolish restaurants (check out prole[dot]info for a book-length thought on the subject). Hippies doing Blood & Soil politics. Covid is your fault. How can you not be crazy when everything is bullshit? The Olympics can't be sexy, even as a joke. Abolishing the police is a mental health issue.

Here's the article that Norm refers to about people being awful at restaurants: https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/SF-Bay-Area-restaurants-customers-rude-Yelp-review-16333535.php

And the article Norm refers to about the NYC pilot scheme to replace police with mental health professionals: https://www.nbcnewyork.com/investigations/nycs-non-police-mental-health-pilot-increasing-rate-of-those-getting-aid-data-show/3165520/?_osource=SocialFlowTwt_NYBrand&&fbclid=IwAR0ZuKkXmWtjjV2wwFQfJyhZs8j1Qe-uCvhstGOAdL1NAaBLBRtH_L8uXaM

28: COP PSYCHOLOGY (29.07.2021)

Originally published on 29.08.2021.

Backwater Blues: "Natural" Disaster, Blues Records and the Commodity Form. 

Ben looks at Bessie Smith's classic 1927 recording and the way it transforms a 'merely private misfortune' into a historical record of race and class dispossession, carving out a space for a collective consciousness. Music that speaks to and even operates as a social consciousness and memory—how has this changed over time? Can music in America and other “developed” capitalist societies still do this? Are there modern-day equivalents? Or has the commodification of recorded music and its shaping of the way we listen undermined our ability to have this kind of collective experience?


You can read this article and subscribe to the Spaghetti For Brains newsletter at www.spaghettiforbrains.com

BACKWATER BLUES

COP26 sponsored by Chevron, Exxon-Mobil and Shell Oil and brought to you by Morgan Freeman. World leaders throw pennies into a wishing well for COP26. Sleepy Joe lives up to his name in Glass Cow. Militarism is the biggest threat to the climate but capitalist omertà keeps it out of the conversation. It's the imperialism, stupid! The Cold War is alive and well and structuring our thinking around carbon. Being forced to defend China. Housing justice is climate justice, even if it's boring to talk about. Ben introduces Norm to the King of Juice—THE BRU.

MR Online: ‘COP26: Military pollution is the skeleton in the West’s climate closet’ https://mronline.org/2021/11/10/cop26-military-pollution-is-the-skeleton-in-the-wests-climate-closet/

GlasgowLive: ‘Glaswegians rally in George Square to demand free public transport for locals when COP26 ends’ https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasgow-news/glaswegians-demand-free-public-transport-22126892

32: BRU-PILLED (11.11.2021)

The fellas are back with a reading about the housing crisis. The first article, from the Financial Times, traces the origins of the crisis in Britain to Thatcher's 'Right to Buy' scheme, but also the less well remembered New Labour creation from whole cloth of the 'buy-to-let' private rental sector (and the ballooning landlord class) as we know it. The second article comes courtesy of the Guardian, who are demonstrably invoking a new Maoist Land Reform Movement, by asking—WILL SOMEONE PLEASE CONSIDER THE POOR LANDLORDS? Come with us on a journey through this Tiny Tim Nation and let us poison your mind with CRT (critical rent theory) while we pack up our stuff and move into a future that will be either socialism or barbarism (but more likely the latter).

Next week, we'll start releasing ⁠The Housing Monster⁠, written by an anonymous construction worker for the website prole.info where you can download the ebook for free. [www.prole.info] You can listen to Ben read it here in four instalments in the coming weeks.

Subscribe to the ⁠Spaghetti For Brains newsletter⁠ for new writing and updates: www.spaghettiforbrains.com

33: CRITICAL RENT THEORY (24.04.2022)

We're doing a live show this Friday, the 27th of May in the year of our lord 2022 at Burning House Books, 446 Cathcart Road in Glasgow. It's free. You should come. 
www.burninghousebooks.com

SPAGHETTI FOR BRAINS LIVE! (Commercial)

Recorded Live at Burning House Books in Glasgow on 27 May 2022 and hosted by the 44th President of These United States.

Norm samples the local delicacies. George W. Bush and Ellen think you're a punk. Elon challenges you to name five weird things about his weird thing. Partygate is a movie that flops. Dick Stormer, the human korma. Workers are just capital's lower intestine. Glasgow's radical history of rent strikes. An open letter to landlords, who are the modern-day Beverly Hillbillies.

34: CAPITAL'S LOWER INTESTINE (30.05.2022)

There's a strike wave sweeping the UK right now, with workers across sectors refusing to accept stagnating wages while the cost of rent, energy and food skyrockets. One of the strikes brewing is in healthcare, with NHS Scotland workers (like Ben) recently balloting to refuse a paltry pay offer and signalling their willingness to take industrial action. After the ordeal of covid and the sacrifices of millions of workers, people aren't willing to sacrifice any more to keep profit rates high.

In this episode, Ben talks a little about how he came to write 'Socialism In Sick Times' for the first issue of a new magazine called The Guts Of It, then reads the piece. You can read the piece yourself in print or online. Check out www.thegutsofit.org to find your copy.

Subscribe to the Spaghetti For Brains newsletter if you want to read more: www.spaghettiforbrains.com/p/socialism-in-sick-times

35: SOCIALISM IN SICK TIMES (10.09.2022)

Originally published on 27.09.2022.

Beside the Golden Door: A Love Letter to Govanhill

All about Scotland's rent freeze, what gentrification is (and isn't)—and Ben's neighbourhood, Govanhill.

Read the piece, and subscribe for other new writing, at Spaghetti For Brains ⁠newsletter⁠: www.spaghettiforbrains.com

BESIDE THE GOLDEN DOOR

The boys are back after Lord Eli graciously reinstated them. On this episode, Ben talks about having a baby and what fatherhood means when you're not one of the freaks and perverts obsessed with gender ideology (ie. ultra cishet people). Norm has a word for the haters.

For those who want to read up about the subject of miscarriage and why it's stupid that we have a taboo around talking about it, we suggest this article: ⁠https://www.vice.com/en/article/mv5knx/we-need-to-remove-the-taboo-of-talking-about-miscarriage-337

36: BABY BRAINS (11.04.2023)

Ben reads a piece of writing titled 'The Passive Voice'.

'The Passive Voice' was pulled together from notes made in 2020 during the George Floyd uprising, reflecting on the history of American citizenship and its relationship to slavery. The causes of racist state violence and Black American resistance to it have a material basis of course, but our understanding of them is mediated by a dense web of assumptions and ideological sleight of hand—like a police report written in the passive voice. The disconnect between the material and the ideological is the subject of these notes.

The piece also featured in a recent episode of Ben's radio show Red White Blues: an Anthology of America’s Music, where we hear the entirety of Charles Mingus’s 1963 masterpiece The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. We’re up to episode five now and there’s a lot more in the pipeline about jazz, oil and the making of American power. If you haven’t listened yet, you can do so at soundcloud.com/spaghettiforbrains. 

You can also check out @__redwhiteblues on Instagram where you'll find the show notes and other fragments of research from the project.

THE PASSIVE VOICE

THE BOYS ARE BACK FOR "SEASON FOUR". We reflect on fake news and how funny it is that the very people tasked with questioning it are the ones falling for it the hardest. And the real news is so bad that it isn't worth reading, so you might as well relax because there's nothing you can do about it. Also Ben's infant son's favourite song is "problematic".

37: SFB SAYS RELAX (24.09.2023)

The auto workers went on strike at the same time that Ben was reading about the auto workers being on strike in 1936. Good Morning Britain flirt with Marxist ecoterrorism. America is made of plastic, and Americans are made of cars. The best pizza is really from Connecticut. Norm and Ben reflect on the state of the left since Bernie. "Make me care".

38: NAHCCAM'S RAZOR (29.09.2023)

Norm and Ben read this stupid article by a man who hates people, but most of all Taylor Swift: https://thefederalist.com/2023/09/05/taylor-swifts-popularity-is-a-sign-of-societal-decline/

Sneering isn't just ugly, it's bad criticism. The sixties are still around because private equity firms say so. What no cultural memory does to a mfer. Taylor Swift does a no growth. My narcissism is better than yours. The passion of Frank Costanza.

39: SERENITY NOW (07.10.2023)

Ben flies solo on this episode. You're not crazy for being horrified by the genocide in Gaza. The "rules based international order" = the Ugly American. Folk songs have been around for a long time because there's something good about them. A new symbol of a unified left.

YOU CAN NOW BECOME A PATRON: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/spaghettiforbrains

40: DANDELIONS (01.11.2023)

This is episode 20 of Ben's radio show Red White Blues: an Anthology of America's Music (aired 14 November 2024 on Radio Buena Vida). We're able to share it because the music played is all non-commercial V-Discs taken from the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/V-discs1-991943-1944. 

On this episode, we look at the history of V-Discs and the rise of vinyl.

In August of 1942, the American Federation of Musicians declared a strike: an all-out ban on members going into the studio and recording music. The strike was called to force the big three record companies to increase the royalty rate on recorded music paid to musicians, which had become a substantial part of music workers’ business in an American culture structured around the production of consumer goods. The strike would last for two years, in which time no commercial records were made.

But the US military and the big labels joined forces to create V-Discs (or Victory Discs)—non-commercial records for the enjoyment of the American soldiers and staff stationed abroad. Records up to this point were made of a rationed material sorely needed in the production of armaments: shellac. With the US having an abundance of oil, the petroleum-based vinyl record came to prominence and it’s been that way ever since.

Oil-based plastic didn’t just shape music manufacture in its own image, though—it shaped American consumerism, which undergirds the world as we know it through mass production and mass communication, the end result of which is masses. It’s us.

Tracks played (with V-Disc catalog numbers in brackets):
1. “Ain’t Misbehaving & Two Sleepy People”, Fats Waller [32]
2. “There’s Gonna Be A Hot Time In The Town Of Berlin”, Frank Sinatra [72]—with introduction from side A (“I Only Have Eyes For You”)
3. “Blues in Berlin”, Josh White [44]
4. “Pearl Harbor Blues”, Dr Clayton [82]
5. “Ring Dem Bells”, Duke Ellington and his Orchestra [37]
6. “Redman Blues”, Don Redman Orchestra [104]
7. “A Smooth One”, Benny Goodman, Cootie Williams, Charlie Christian et. al. [187]
8. “Jelly Jelly”, Earl Hines and His Orchestra [308]

If you like the show, you can listen to every episode right here on SoundCloud or by following this link: https://soundcloud.com/spaghettiforbrains/sets/red-white-blues

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