S12 E2: Diana Burkot

Explicit content warning

05/03/24 • 67 min

My first experience of censorship in music came with the battle between the Dead Kennedys and Tipper Gore’s PMRC (remember the “Parental Advisory Explicit Content” stickers?) which culminated in the obscenity trial in 1985/6 over the artwork for DK’s record Frankenchrist. I don’t know if anyone remembers but the board members of the PMRC were a bunch of white power brokers funded by Coors Beer, who also just happened to be big supporters of..... Ronald Reagan.

The elite keeping the lid on challengers to their power. Some things never change do they?

Anyway, forward 25/6 years or so to Moscow and 4 of the founding members of the art collective Pussy Riot perform their inspired Punk Prayer inside the Cathedral of Christ The Saviour.

It’s still one of the best and most effective pieces of protest performance art that I’ve seen, although at great personal cost as 3 out of the 4 performers were arrested and convicted.

Separation of church and state, censorship, state violence, state control, repression of equality, denial of intersectionality....and still the elite, the despots and the sycophants fear art and artists more than anyone since feudalism, capitalism and all that good stuff began.

Diana Burkot is a founding member of Pussy Riot, a multi disciplinary musician and a committed activist. Her music project away from Pussy Riot is called Rosemary Loves A Blackberry and it is a glorious kaleidoscope of performance art that brings together diverse instruments, beats, imagery and lyrics that open your mind to eclectic and experimental interpretations and is at home with any industrial die hards, synth lovers or lovers of the darker, magical sounds from the other side.....

It's a huge honour to have her on the show.

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The elite keeping the lid on challengers to their power. Some things never change do they?

Anyway, forward 25/6 years or so to Moscow and 4 of the founding members of the art collective Pussy Riot perform their inspired Punk Prayer inside the Cathedral of Christ The Saviour.

It’s still one of the best and most effective pieces of protest performance art that I’ve seen, although at great personal cost as 3 out of the 4 performers were arrested and convicted.

It's a huge honour to have her on the show.

Previous Episode

S12 E1: Amanda Mac

If I were to create a mixtape (it’d have to be an old school cassette cos that’s probably the last time I made one!) for Amanda and her music life, it’d probably open with The Undertones’ Family Entertainment with the classic line “Got To...Keep it In the Family”.
I mention family not so much to talk endlessly about the quite rare band structure of her band, Bad Mary – in her words “a band family and family band” - but to segué clumsily into some of the questions that I have for myself about where friendships and family relationships fit into today’s lifestyle such as....
Do we make friends the same way as we used to do?
We have the largest number of generations alive at the same time – do we bridge these generations?
Do we make enough time for them?
Do we have friends for life?
Do we appreciate friends and family?
How do they impact our wellbeing?
What role do virtual friendships play?
This is a very beautiful conversation with Amanda and I'm grateful for her openly talking about some difficult subjects. Make a brew, hit the sofa and enjoy!

Next Episode

S12 E3: Lizzie No

I met up with my old friend John Robb over the UK May bank holiday weekend. He was in London talking about his birthday, sorry life and career (!).
For those who don’t know John, he formed The Membranes in the early 80’s and he’s an author whose writing about music and the future I admire hugely – and his talk was called “Do You Believe In The Power of Rock N Roll?”.

So, do I?
Well, in a lot of ways, yes.
Music, art, poetry and dance remain the number one threats to the establishment and the elite.
But sadly, in my opinion, the music establishment is just as big a threat to music and artists.
I’m not talking about the entirely fucked capitalist model – although no, fuck that, actually I am when I heard that UMG are proposing to make a performance related payout to their CEO Lucian Grainge of £119million – capitalism is at the very core of everything that is evil in the world – but I’m also talking more overtly about some of the less talked about things like genres (and yes, I know, I myself talk about genre a lot).
Putting a band in a genre has been happening forever and we could talk about it being a lazy way for the industry to market music – which it is – but I think there are much more malignant effects of using genre as a way to compartmentalise playlists and market big label artists.
With categorisation comes all sorts of social constructs – and sometimes the subtle ones are the most harmful - that are essentially used as an anti-freedom power tool to keep people in their lanes – I’m thinking ways to dress, subjects to speak about, instruments to play, and the worst of all....who they deem allowable to actually play the music.
For example, whatever you think musically of Beyonce’s album Cowboy Carter, it seems clear to me that the gatekeeping that, back in the day, excluded black musicians from a ‘genre’ that they created ,still exists – and there ain’t anything subtle about that, it’s rooted in racism.
I don’t remember Kid Rock for being subjected to any such gatekeeping when he went “country”.
Lizzie No has written, sung, played on and produced three world class records, her latest being Halfsies which fucks off those genres and is just a fabulous piece of work.
She's also an activist - the subjects above are close to her heart - and fabulous human.