Don’t stop starts the Music People Party

Cue BUGEYE’s ‘Don’t Stop Reset’ remix by FERAL FIVE

Download or stream via https://kycker.ffm.to/dontstop * Lift your heart and soul - maybe with some glam disco moves.

The following was inspired by hearing this song which (for me) evokes images of a space ship in bright Bugeye grrrl colourful riot shades. It hovers above parks where humans are allowed outdoors, at main stage level and the band travel around lighting up hearts and souls into their brightest moves and shapes in their least-lockdown-look gear. It’s not more improbable than what passes for real life. Taken from their 2020 world class debut album, ‘Ready Steady Bang’ (Reckless Yes) and given a Duranesque feral energy of beats that turn your speakers or headphones into your personal nightclub. The LP is a year old this month. It’s a home grown classic in every sense.

If you want an entry point to the kindness, collaboration, gifted musical activism, artbeat and multi talent tasking that has made all the difference to the last few years, then newer wave faves, Bugeye, are your arts initiative point of call.

Download the song and all profits go to The Magpie Project community who help parents and young children at risk of homelessness. In a rich country, go figure. Poverty is something that more than a few of us can relate to.

Uniqulture: ‘Don’t Stop Reset’ Remix by Feral Five. Mastered by Paul Tipler. Art by 31% Wool.

Alongside founding involvement with Cro Cro Land (how to festival) and their always engaging Rock Pop Rambles podcast (recently endorsed by Radio X’s ace John Kennedy in Clash Magazine) there is a whole remix album to follow on July 9th! Bugeye are one of TheZineUK story fuelling power points - with stem-level tunes and musicality.

Inspired by the above (further doc update below)

June 2021: Started the next picture book diary, recording a tiny fraction of TheZineUK interactions from mid April when lockdown started to unlock. Even in these few months it’s so obvious that misgovernment HATES music, musicians, music venues, music fans, music socials, music festivals, music education (for us “povs”), music tourism, live music and music festivals. It’s time that “hands in the air”, “singing along”, “buying music/merch” and “moshing” became sports. Music Fan Olympics are GO. As we emerge from our virtual yellow submarimes, far queue, blue meanies! *(Alien hearts ain’t too keen on women/womxn or even the planet, to be fair).

After the sold out Polarized Eyes headline, June 2021. Access All Ages Amersham Arms - Generation Tremorists power.

We are so obviously on our own, the parallel dimension where the biggest arts movements are soundtracked in the smallest venues. A genuine starmaker circuit that the selfservatives attempt to cull, consistently, for years now. In the last six years new possibilities and hopes have seeded against a backdrop of climate emergency. In the last five years kindness has proven itself a super power as hate multiplied five fold since the brexshit “win”.

School children see through the bullshit of Murderoch’s propaganda empire. (What has he GOT on the hisstablishment?). Adults who have “Seen/Done It All” ain’t so bright. I’m vintage and I think we are often just twats. Note how teen media editors Scarlet of Mash Zine and Arlo of Pint Sized Punk ain’t hung up on which decade musicians are born (that is SO last century!) but are inspirationally clued up on the music that they make. I dig that Punk Word Legend, Bruno Wizard said “punk is dead, let’s start something new” at Dizzy’s Bowie night (in, erm, Amersham Arms a few years ago), Gwan Generation Tremorists, all…

Kerrie & Angela Bugeye, with inspiring friends (including Kat Five of remi(n)xers, Feral Five) out in support of Kick Out The Jams, monthly music social June 2021. Amersham Arms is part of a nationwide grassroots circuit renaissance. Thank you Music Venue Trust.

Time travel

2017’s rock n roll zeitgeist - where we shrugged off seeking interest, let alone approval, from the mainstream for a newer waver wave of generation tremorist graced, genre/gender fluid music industrious (r)evolution. Yeah, guitar bands ARE back. So what if they’re virtually banned from day time TV this century and the streets aren’t as clothing bright with music tribes - children got YouTube and don’t all see lying bully bigots as role models. The audiences are more reflective of the 21st century than profile artist/events based Arts Desks have experienced.

TheZineUK Punk Takeover of St Paul’s. The Blinders/485C after party AFTER party at Abbie McCarthy’s Good Karma Club and a cast and crew party on This Feeling Stage at Isle Of Wight Festival.

In all the noise we romance and giggle. It’s almost as if Earthlings are animals connected to a living organism planet that communicates with them through music and more, while celestial forces inspire water beings who also have weather (moods). Up yours, alien hearts.

Stick with the Zeenagers, we are hell bent on having FUN and may be as imperfect as any band, cos we are natureal - but we mean well and have LOVE at heart. ArtBeat heartbeat.

There is room for us all. Interdependent media support the artists that this new, skint, diverse, friendlier and rebelliously fun community recommend. We trickle up the talent, baby. Interdependent. Collaborative. Multi talent tasking. The #MusicPeopleParty years were born when Dizzy Spell used working class woman power wonders to learn website tech etc fro m scratch.Our allies complete the cast and crew picture. December 2017 first Party. Our friends, The Velvet Hands and Katie Owen topped and tailed the live music/DJ hosting).

Season 2 of TheZineUK doc (2018 onwards)

laid some surreal, apocalyptic foundations …but so many wonderful campaigns and creations had pumped kindness and hope into the either, also.

A 2018 trip to Genesis Cinema (Eastenders Land) to see sparkle queens, Bugeye, play a Genesisters event with Lilith Ai and more at the L7 screening added a whole new tangent. In 2019 another musical trip to the movies with Simon Baker for his movie ‘90 Minutes’ produced by Rio Ferdinand and soundtracked by MOSES. Was it watching the Star Wars finale triple until the early hours, there, or their Chadwick Boseman display outside that endeared them? Either way, TheZineUK started 2020 with a collaboration of the Velvet Goldmine film, cocktails and photo session (night out with RtN and Monefa Walker)

Season 3 of TheZineUK doc begins as humanity is adapting to the trauma of 2020 and 2021 Planet Earth (also on line, if they can afford it).

Ha, when you started a situationist tapestry about how good gigs can propel great potential and it turns into The Dystopian Rocky Horrow ShitShow.

Would always rather SEXit that Brexit. Compassion and courtesy are SO attractive that I fancy you all (good people). Onwards darlings, onwards, stay strong, we got this. Together. Don’t Stop.

July 2021: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Hallo Bright Pink Catwalk.

It’s the 21st year of the 21st century and we’re trying everything to Revive Live amidst a barrage of bad news, environment fears, financial stress and then our mind/spirit-medicine; gigs and festivals, cancelled, postponed, cancelled, postponed, cancelled, postponed while the crime ring continue their herd immunity eugenics.

There’s more of a war cancelling culture and being aware, than there is (the destruction distraction of) “cancel culture”. Ain’t having it. Gotta ROCK, Gotta DANCE, Gotta LAUGH. Can’t hug? No problem. We’ve got a friend who is (literally) named Massive Hugs! amidst a cast, crew and story who often sound made up.

So we spend last month inspired by movies, by the live streams unification of Balcony Festival last year and having Music Venue Trust as our actual government since 2014. The force is strong in all of us and we have the very best tunes and pop stars. Yeah, you heard me, STARS. I don’t know the name of every bint in the sky but they still all twinkle. The Music People Party will be a multi dimensional December and we have no idea how it will need to be staged but as a Twitter survivor I know we will try to find a way to share JOY. come with. Don’t Stop.

Music Tourism: “The brilliant thing about a Bugeye tour is that no stage style is too glam to wear while shimmying to their sparkling Top Of The Pops/BBC Later-worth alternative art rock disco punk!” @TheZineUK tweet 29th June. Truth.

Tickets are on sale - NOW! Ready Steady Bang! https://linktr.ee/bugeye - photography by Keira Cullinane (bring your own spaceships)

Monefa Walker debuts with 'Aries'/'Aquarius'

Mid-March 2020 onwards feels like we’re extras in a dystopian movie. In February 2021, #TheZineUK’s own MONEFA WALKER has the score.

‘Aries’ and ‘Aquarius’ are classical piano compositions and performances by astrologer, Monefa Walker. The recordings have arrived to soundtrack the drama of our lives in a rapidly unfolding (unravelling?) new world.

These pieces literally sound (to me) like a melancholic lantern festival rounding off 2021’s Lunar New Year followed by an imminent Spring welcome for the Snow Moon. I don’t know if that is just the synchronicity that weaves our tapestry, but it’s where my mind went.

Released independently on Lil Minx Records, ‘Aries’/’Aquarius’ was recorded at London’s West Kensington Studio, mixed by Thomas Rickerby and co-produced by Anita Maj.

The artwork is by multi talented artist, Emma Whitworth (a.k.a. Judy Jones, drummer with garage punk powerhouse, The C33s). This single is musical fluidity in action. “You don’t have to be stuck with one genre” Monefa Walker.

Some of TheZineUK readers may know Monefa as one of our writers (interviewed Garbage, The Mysterines, Calva Louise, reviewing Fontaines D.C. etc - among much more). At our most recent Music People Party, Monefa (a rocking, live music promoter in her own right) compered our punky artists, allies and freelancers end of year social.

From #TheZineUK doc’s Slideshow 1: Talented friends in our documentary’s tapestry: Monefa with artists, Sandy K. Moz (one of our photographers) and Jake Elliot of False Heads who were headlining Modern Age’s night, December 2017.

Maybe I’m biased because as Live Events Department of this documentary (ArtBeat Promo) Monefa has been such a force for good in shaping it’s association with so many key artists, events and co-promotions since 1st April 2017 inception. Such a rich allumni who also allow us access to diary their story. In turn the now and next fuse with inspirations from previous decades. Monefa has Mansun in her raising and we have Paul Draper in ours.

Photography by Keira Cullinane

When TheZineUK talks of the newer wave and music women, it’s the reality of the next music industry being driven by a more diverse force than the end-of-20th-century model that some still cling onto by their finger tips.

If anything, the pandemic has shone a brighter light on the fact that the fertile environment’s innovation is driven by the energetic DIY suss and necessity of the grassroots circuit community united by the #SaveOurVenues campaign.

Part of this Happening, Monefa Walker has an album in the wings. “Essentially it’s twelve preludes, no more than two minutes, every prelude represents a zodiac sign” she explained when interviewed by Louise Schofield. Her introduction to the general public, with ‘Aries’ / ‘Aquarius’, is a credible one. “Astrology never sounded so good” (Anita Maj)

Sam Asbury

‘Show Me The Best Thing You Can Do’.

Sam Asbury’s second solo EP is out now, with proceeds going to Mind the mental health charity. Reviewed by Keira Cullinane

Among notifications I got from Bandcamp Friday (5th February), this one stood out. Perhaps surprisingly, because before its brief announcement earlier that week there had been no publicity - usually a risky publicity stunt, but we're reassured: “It's just that Sam is bad at business.”

After Long Teeth and new band Big Sea Creature, Sam has released a second solo EP. With the first, ‘Bored In A Beautiful Place’, the lyrics really stood out for me and this is again something I love in ‘Show Me The Best Thing You Can Do’.

The EP cover is perfect for the mood of the songs and the last year too. The sun streaking in through a restricted window, showing a fantastic day - outside. "Baby it's like how it was, but it's how it's become, Sunbathing on the steps cos the beach is shut" sung with a slight accent that seems to emphasise the normalness of this slight disappointment.

Harmonies throughout the EP are impressive (with I suspect occasional vocals from Big Sea Creature bassist Jade) remind me a little of the chilled warmth of The Velvet Underground and Nico and the 60's, combined with an uneasy, socially aware commentary that feels bitter. However unless you're listening to the lyrics you might feel upbeat by the tunes, and as I think this, Sam sings, "Don't talk to me until I'm listening".

This, mixed with the lyrics of 'Bent Back Mud Men Monster'. feels like whistling in the park, content with trying to forget what you're really thinking about. "Yeah the lights okay, but I think we're better in the dark anyway".

All this to say, it's not a sad EP and there is a depth and intelligence to the contradictions in music and lyrics. You'll go about your flat happily humming ‘Bent Back Mud Men Monster’ to your cat.

On third track 'Wet Hair', layers of guitar, harmonies and trumpet - played by Sam - feel a lot like the end of a day spent feeling slightly out of place, coming home to someone you feel safe with. The anxiety you might feel perhaps, having someone ask you to 'Show Me The Best Thing You Can Do'; before helping you relax while listening to it.

All proceeds will go to the Mind charity. www.mind.org.uk