News Bulletins In Colour

NEWS BULLETINS IN COLOUR

/ SOMETIMES I HAVE EROTIC

FANTASIES ABOUT

TV NEWSREADERS

(with apologies to George Cairncross)

this evening I had shit for tea,
the Government calls it news,
non-nutritional excrement
with non-controversial views,
projecting ideal lives
wrapped in media disguises
in calculated words that
won’t offend the advertisers…

a diet of information
supposed to fuel my imagination,
a mind-polluting diarrhoea
inducing only indignation,
sometimes it makes me sick
like I’m gonna go insane,
wanna smash the radio and
stick the TV down the drain,
sometimes I try withdrawal
which only leaves me feeling bad,
like I wanna firebomb the Newsagent
and aerosol the hoarding ad…

but News Junkies depress the button
depress themselves, and me,
what more can you expect when
all they feed you’s shit for tea…?



Published in:
‘MOLOTOV COMICS No.3’ (UK – March 1981)
‘MELODIC SCRIBBLE No.6’ (UK – August 1986)
and on cassette:
‘IRUIDO EXTRANO/AZTEC RECORDINGS’
(UK, C60 or C90 – June 1981)
‘MORROCCI KLUNG – ONE HOUR OF MUSIC & TALK’
(UK, C60 – Sept 1981)
‘LANDED (SYC NETWORK C60)’ Recorded ‘Live’ in Birmingham
(UK – August 1982)

Amid the furore about Michael Jackson, other notable have also quit this continuum, Sky Saxon of the Seeds, Beat writer Harold Norse, Soft Machine’s Hugh Hopper, and sometime Ranter Steven ‘Seething’ Wells. At the decayed end of the ‘70’s I was doing a lot of readings up and down the country, considering myself pretty-much way ‘out there’, until accepted a gig (accompanied by Andy Robson) at Bradford’s ‘Vaults’, to find myself on a bill with new full-on Punk-Poets Joolz Denby, Little Brother... & Seething Wells, reducing their set down to scatalogical rhyming doggeral of some considerable force, to audience-rush response more usually reserved for bands. Joolz was sweet about my obvious bemusement. It caused me some hard reconsidering. They had something. Sure they did. In response I did some rethinking. They read hyper-fast, so I slowed right down, make every vowel count. Then, I wrote ‘News Bulletins In Colour’ (adapting a line by George Cairncross) and a few more which Steven published in his ‘Molotov Comics’ zine with much amusing verbal-banter exchanges. Didn't always agree with his relentless attack-negativity, but – as he moved to ‘NME’ and beyond, always read him with interest. His loss now is disturbing...