To Dystopia, defiantly

“Music is not viable”, “Retrain", etc. The establishment and mainstream media mantras believe Arts and Entertainment are disposable. TheZineUK has proven they are not. #WeMakeEvents …and so do the cast and crew of this tale. New Picture Book

Our “Time travelling”, multi-billion creating, tax paying economy has been a key necessity (of lockdown and long before). It’s our world beating reputation. It would be short sighted and unviable to throw away THE biz and all who sail with it.

TheZineUK‘s latest picture diary underlines The End, but just of an era. Six years of grass roots newer wave blessed with ace contributors. We create, adapt, reconstruct and campaign as we fall apart and come together. We are truly down - but not out.

Our Events x Expos sew stardust seeds and we earned a top level sponsor from this year. Positive meetings with Industry like Key Production and Features Artists Coalition. Piloted a new music TV show. More. But, ya know… 2020. We are all viable.

New picture book (Dec 2019-Jan 2020 via the 90s!) is a personal time travel by resident vintage rocker (me!). Having experienced “the industry” at all levels for YEARS, I assure you that the nation’sentertainment economy is essential to recovery.

Watching the rise of technology like Flare Audio and TryLife TV through TheZineUK’s six years of reporting, digging the ethics of Resonate and BandCamp. There is an infrastructure for the sonic economy to interact with from theatre and literature to commercial advertising and post-pandemic tourism.

TheZineUK highlights a frack shunning fraction of Broken Britain’s multi-genre audiobuzz at duck’n’dive level. Anti-hate/greed, pro-FUN/ethics, our “Fertile Environment” is blooming against increasingly hostile odds. Spiritually, self expression is Nature’s jungle telegraph. There ARE new heritage artists. The Interdependent Industrious nurture them.

Further reading:

Dystopia dawns. It’s a grave new world. Zeenagers are in the arts renaissance, under the radar. Usually in sacred #SaveOurVenues spaces. Our imperfection connects with empathy.

Zeenagers: Peace DJ for This Feeling set at Amersham Arms, Ms. Mohammed at DecoloniseFest, Daniel Cross (Birthmarks) and Eugene Ankomah at Brixton Windmill, Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals) at Crosstown Concerts launch, Madame So and Dan at Sisters Of Perpetual Resistance filming DEUX FURIEUSES Year Of Rage video, Gavin Monaghan at Magic Garden Studios, Stormzy at Leeds Festival photographed by Tarquin Clark, #No3Expo (42 stalls at our “Ministry Of Fluff And Dreams” pop-up HQ for 2015), Haviah Mighty at #TGE19, photo journalist Elly Bailey created ‘Why Generation’ - Happy 1st Year.

Nuanced by socially inclusive contributions and ideas from school children upwards, our (often dramatic/accidentally comedic), cult of positivity still grows.

From behind the scenes with TryLife (met at a gig!) in Chapter 1, to Rupert Hitchcox’s shot for poserity of this day out in 2014.

In 2014 Music Venue Trust, Independent Venue Week and quite a few of our tapestry’s other threads were, like TheZineUK, sixth sense seeded. Now We Are Six. Passion has proven that talent fuels the now and next, despite a decade of vulture as culture during heist and hostility (rebranded to “austerity”).

Saint Agnes, TheZineUK stage (Latest Music Bar) at The Great Escape Festivals 10th Anniversary in Brighton. Images by Paul Linus.

With diversity in their DNA, Generation Tremorists live an alternative reality. Glammed up lives held together by gaffer tape, romantic dreams and glimpses of hope.

Tarquin Clark’s images of Idles and Haus from Leeds Festival 2016

The fall of civilisation. Look how elders are treated as graveyard fodder and youngers are ignored as the elite establishment fashfuckers kill off decency and the future of life itself while propaganda divides and scares the worried, disabled, poor and disadvantaged. Chuck the non elite in a volcano. Stupid hatred as a badge of dishonour. We’d rather grow together.

An Argonaut, Dolls, Lillith Ai supergroup sofa surf at Loud Women Festival. Loud Women celebrate their fifth anniversary on 3rd October.

I have an affection for TheZineUK’s youthfulness but as a mad old bat (deluxe!) can also value their vision as much as their energy: It’s post-Post and Pre Next. We are a virtual rotating agency of creators that you can hire (at reasonable rates) for your events and projects. They are the high quality, interdependent industrious.

Engagement. A lot of loveable laughing goes on in this tale. Early doors (2017) gig by The Velvet Hands for Mark Beaumont (NME, The Guardian) who DJ’d our 2015 ArtBeat Amersham Arms extravaganza. Oh Camden Monarch, RIP.

Artists I have worked with in the 1990s remain valid through classic songs. Ignore the composition and performance skills of the new 21st century charismas at your peril. They defiantly (if only just, sometimes) EXIST and have pulsed bright euphoria into 2020’s dystopian bleakness. Without support, less can continue. Somehow, some are still breaking through.

Nova Twins at Sahera’s Walker’s launch for Some Might Say (2017), False Heads on the cover. Music Women doing their own thing in music and print media. By 2020, Sahera is putting new venue, Werkhaus, on the Music Tourism map and Nova Twins are deservedly big time and heading for Reading and Leeds Festivals 2021 with debut album, ‘Who Are The Girls?’.

We started when sofa critics declared guitar bands to be over. I repeat, that’s bollocks. More Working Class, More Women, More Non Aryans - on yer festival stages mate, mwah ha HA! Appreciation to those bookers.

Some midnight “Connor on stage and Ryan on Mikey” action at Magic Garden Studios live party in Digbeth 2017 after the CABBAGE and Blinders gig.

Six years of being chuffed for the aces from our pages inciting pleasure live on stage. Some even get to grow their profile with household name presenters uttering their names. Our adventures have been part of some plot twists of highs, lows, envy, success, failure, death, hope and new life. From all walks of life, united as Playing Class, we are stronger together: Collaboration bears the most fruit, pro-rata when funds and support are scarce.

One day. Three flags. Viva Cuba and Palestine. Down with AmeriKKKa. Nottingham, 2017l

Since we began with live poetry and punk on Tin Pan Alley (RIP Soho) we’ve seen cross-breeding alternative lifestyles that I feel Sister Rosetta Tharpe would approve of. Inspirations who provide edgy high quality music and LOVE waves like DecoloniseFest, CroCroLand, Loud Women, Kick Out The Jams, This Feeling, Modern Age, more. In turn, they have woven media attention and collaborations into their individual but interdependent trail for artists and audiences. Radio presenters have been essential, they HEAR it! Thank you.

Blackwaters and Carl Barat play one of the Pirate Studios launch gigs in 2017. Thanks for the invite Mikey, This Feeling. Our documentary would look different without the kindness of artists, promoters, PRs and managers who invite TheZineUK behind the scenes.

Plus, even in lockdown, our under the radar community were over the rainbow with podcasts and live streams (i.e. the Joyzine instigated BalconyFest uniting multiple sites while misgovernment divided most communities). The rule of £6,000 raised for six charities by six Balcony Festivals is an indication of just how viable the next Entertainment Industrious are, also how quickly the self employed can adapt.

The Reckless Yes Record label and Signature Brew (who employed musicians during lockdown) also came on board with this unity. Louise Schofield (BBC Sesh etc) hosted.

No human quota or tokens required in the Newer Wave. Britain and Ireland have got greatness and charisma on merit, away from the mainstream appropriation of street talk to “cancel” the “woke”. Believers find each other organically in our adventures, friendship exchanges, recommendations and aural investigations.

TheZineUK have repped at Google HQ, Westminster (and in the broom cupboard of Glasgow King Tuts) - ha ha, we got CLASS alright…

Some complain the #2020vision of new world entertainment is not the real thing. Of course live streaming and physically distanced Safety 1st Gigs aren’t the same as in the lost last world. They do help us build back better. If we are lucky enough to have computers and internet, we can feel connected. In a Bot-ruled world, seeing music performed, by any means necessary, is the real thing. Also, performers gotta perform. Somehow. Physical distanced and curfew events are akin to a seated TV or an awards show.

MOSES started releasing at the end of 2016, regrouped in Autumn 2018, reboosted our batteries with their show at SNCFest in Autumn 2020 and will tour in 2021.

The reactions of friends reporting back from the Safety 1st Gigs around the country, since the end of August, bear witness. We had a night out, meeting friends and grinning like children when Jeanie and Jonny steered SNCFest to a week of entertainment with only two weeks notice to create it.

“Do things out of love and not fear”
(Jean Genie’s Massive Hugs)

Hats off to The Novus, they may be younger than google but they are a power station of ideas and idealogy that heighten their musical prowess to a rock art concept where DIY has no limits. The Midlands is one of the musical fireworks factories on fire as Rome burns. Get your 16th October Birmingham moment (and mask!) here. They also designed one of TheZineUK’s picture book covers. We are all living La Vida PMF in this Post Modern Fairytale.

We CAN make great. If we learned nothing - appreciation for creativity and energy of all kinds, included - then 2020 was all for nothing. Be Kind is beyond a platitude to a human superpowered attitude. 2021 holds NO guarantees other than we need to communicate and be “community”. Apocalypse now, the armageddon celebrity distracted remix. It’s life and death time, but oh, WHAT a soundtrack.

TheZineUK picture book 2018: 7th December Mark Ronson and Miley Cyrus at The Borderline. 8th December Fontaines D.C. playing for Kick Out The Jams in The Good Mixer!

Oh hell yeah, we are gonna pump love and hope out, rock and rave, you fucking name it. Some may sneer at DIY enthusiasm and hippyish idealism, but like every woken human right now, my mental health is sideways. Music is my push ups. Art is my jogging. Dancing badly like nobody is watching (the Lockdown Shimmy) pulses my endorphins.

“I think I’ve never stopped feeling like a kid.”
(Mr Marvel, Stan Lee)

A moment of calm at the sparkling and sold out CroCroLand Festival of 2019 which you could only dream of. It will happen again, don’t even wait for the line up to be announced to secure a ticket. A blueprint for 21st Century Festivity.

From gentrification’s culling of music venues, especially over the last decayed decade, to a huge economy for the nation being shut down systematically, the words #LetTheMusicPlay needs to resonate alongside the Climate Emergency’s #WeWantToLive

“The fight for a future doesn’t end here.
This is just the beginning.” (Greta Thunberg)

This was how this year began, at Modern Age’s Ones To Watch on a Friday and THis Feeling’s Big In 2020 on the Saturday.

Time travelled, via the WTF dimension, from 5th March (False Heads album launch) to 5th September for the live music experience. The Moon and Mars shone bright over the Stanley Halls, our first after-dark outing in six months. It’s made all the difference.

Smaller picture by Neale Howells

Last week, Jupiter and Saturn formed a triangle with The Moon. TheZineUK cog teeth spin with numbers, serendipity, magick, poetry, karma, kismet and gentle daydreaming woodland folk of yore in modern settings. (Violence is for punching the air to a big TUNE!)

Beverley Whitrick and Mark Davyd (Music Venue Trust) have made ALL the difference to the music world. Pic from Venues Day at the Ministry Of Sound. In 2021, Elbow will play the Manchester edition of Passport Back To Our Roots.

Uniqulture from the Bach inspired Nina Simone: "I had spent many years pursuing excellence, because that is what classical music is all about... Now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important." 

Freedom to smile. Taylor, Monefa and Sandy (in the background Dan, Toby and Mikey.

We do our best.

A decade ago, two working class rockers met at an ArtBeat Poet’s performance and time travelled to (still) looking forward through the medium of situationist performance theatrics. “Something Must Grow”.

Editor, Events, Documentary: @TheZineUK

All backgrounds, abilities, hippies and hipsters alike are invited to the social inclusion if they’re like minded. It’s not a cliche niche. So much has grown, already. Eternal appreciation, Patrick Jones.

Photography by Lorna Cort (raising funds for charity), Poetry by Patrick Jones. Poignancy by Time Travel. We STILL look forward.

Viability reiteration.

“Nightlife industries in the UK generate £66bn of revenue (6% of the UK total), support 1.3m jobs (8% of the UK's employment). This in addition to the contribuition made to our hearts, minds, culture, towns, cities, international status. Those jobs, that industry; cast aside.” (Dave Haslam, DJ Journalist, Monday 28th September 2020)

The above will probably repeat when the diary reaches September 2021. If we can get there. We have nothing and should make everything.

Newer Wave classics. Over the years the likes of Bad Wolf, Mourning Birds, The Blinders (and so many more that everybody’s faves will look different) have enriched the soundtrack of Dystopia. Now imagine 2020 without music, like those who cast creativity aside, do (for algorithm-bot futures?)

In the stone ages, with no modern materials, humans left art in caves. The most remote tribe in the world sing, dance, laugh, love and cry, live and die. Creativity is Nature’s communication, don’t write it’s humanity off yet. Understanding that now is overwhelming. Yet, our time is now.

#FuturePicks : Jelly J, visual artist

Thank you everybody involved in Zeenagers documenting towards the 21st Year Of The 21st Century like 21st Century Vixens. Feeling free in the Fertile Environment? We’re down but not out. Make the most of now with art for life to imitate. It’s ALL happening. A blessing of very best wishes to YOU. Yes, you.