The Stone Roses are more than a band. They are movement. Their music, their attitude and their style has made them a badge of identity for many of us around a certain age. The thick end of their thin catalogue has continued to inspire on repeated listens over twenty-plus years, bringing to life dancefloors on indie nights, empowering listeners on headphones on public transport and through speakers behind closed doors.

So the return that never seemed likely, as John Squire in particular seemed to make clear over years that differences in the band were irreconcilable, means their reunion gigs which started last summer, have the feel of welcome home parties. There is no burden of musical expectation due to a tainted reputation as live performers as they gradually disintegrated after The Second Coming, so this third coming on open air stages across the world are events as much as gigs, and a chance for the masses to sing and dance along as one.

Their return to London consisted of two consecutive dates at Finsbury Park, the second benefitting from being on a weekend and with a support that included Johnny Marr and Johnny Rotten. Despite the staggered journeys of six-hour event the Victoria Line is more busy on a Saturday afternoon than on a North London Derby day for a crowd who would have only had to give that first album a listen to whet the appetite.

The Roses wrote the line “the past is yours the future’s mine” in their masterpiece She Bangs the Drum, and as Pulp sang in Sorted for E’s and Wizz, the future is indeed tens of thousands people standing in a field. And on the way to the field all the signs are there of a demographic indulging in a bit of nostalgia with several England 1990 replica shirts as well as a variety of retro hats, tracksuits and Stone Roses t-shirts. Then, past the gates, there are a number of blokes who wander through the packed field for the rest of the evening, shouting for their lost mates, who all happened to be called “Charlie” or “Pills”.

Musically the common ground is celebrated early on as Johnny Marr plays four Smiths songs in his set which as well as being sing-alongs in the sun give a platform in How Soon Is Now for the extended guitar dance solos which clearly influenced The Roses. For all their great artwork and defiance, music is the main reason why the Roses live on, and when Ian Brown started a gig of his at Brixton Academy a few years ago with seven Roses songs in a row, there was little doubt he hadn’t lost the passion for them.

When they came on the late evening sun at Finsbury Park to The Supremes Stoned Love the first bars of I Wanna Be Adored are sung along to like a football chant, which continues throughout the evening for both notes and words. Despite the sound system at times blowing in the wind The Roses are excellent throughout. Brown’s voice, unfairly castigated for too long, holds up well, and Shoot You Down and Breaking into Heaven are particular highlights.

After the joyous opening, Waterfall, She Bangs the Drum, This is the One and Made of Stone are also triumphant, and a reminder of the strength of one of the great debut albums. An extended Fools Gold, with some Beatles riffs thrown in, is the centre-piece of the set in front of a backdrop of striking visuals as the night sky turned dark.

Just like on the first album, I Am the Resurrection is the perfect book-end to a performance that started with I Wanna Be Adored. With all the euphoria left behind after they finish for the local 10.30pm curfew, the revisiting of their greatest hits may have another summer in it yet. Especially if the only notable omission, Sally Cinnamon, makes it back onto the set list.

MG

The Substantive is a platform for new, independent writing on popular culture. To support it, and treat yourself, you can buy the e-book and/or t-shirt. Details Below.

The Substantive ‘The Boss’ t-shirt, with an original print by the artist Lilly Allen, is 100% ultracotton and made by an ethical and environmental partner. It is available to order here.

New, independent writing, ‘Glory Nights from Wankdorf to Wembley’ documents the journey that captures the culture of travelling to Europe watching football while examining a sport where money is valued alongside glory. It is available to preview for free and download in full for less than a bottle of beer at Finsbury Park from Amazon and Smashwords. More details, including photos and links to reviews, here.

Continually inventive with two biographical electro-pop albums, Neon Neon have now taken the live music experience to another plane with their touring performance of Praxis Makes Perfect which celebrates and inspires through popular culture, while still getting the basics spot-on, by letting us all have a good dance to a brilliant sound.

Their third consecutive night at the Village Underground in Shoreditch was more much Performance Art than a run-of-the-mill Thursday night gig in London; an indication of what was to come came in an online invitation asking ticket-holders to wear an item of red and bring a copy of a favourite book to exchange with fellow gig-goes, referred to as “comrades”, ahead of the prompt 8pm start. And “comrades” seemed appropriate as once inside the atmosphere was both electric and unifying.

Actors were both in the crowd as well as on a central on a stage in the middle of what would have otherwise been the dance hall in a performance interspersed with the live music, while throughout visuals were beamed onto the walls narrating the tale of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, the subject of their second album.

The story sheds light on a little-known Italian publisher who smuggled Dr Zhivago out of Soviet Russia, which leads to arguably the slogan of the night: “Reading is Resistance”, as the lead character argues that he can be anti-fascist without being a violent communist. He convincingly makes the case that art and popular culture are freedom as actors playing soldiers storm into the audience and chastise anyone going near a discarded book, as the crowd are now complicit supporters of Feletinelli.

We go on to see more of his life through the cultural and social changes of the time, including the swinging sixties with nude body painting and the protagonist playing basketball with a wise-cracking Fidel Castro before his life ends with a body hanging from the ceiling of the Village Underground. Before his body is carried out, Gruff Rhys holds up a placard instructing us to make a “LEFT FIST SALUTE”, which we all doing willingly, caught up in the emotion of what has unfolded in the best part of the previous 90 minutes.

Placards have long been a part of Super Furry Animal gigs and by the end, as we are all lost as one in Neon Neon’s music, dancing in a freedom Feltrunelli was fighting for to I Lust You from Stainless Steel, the placards are out in abundance, with humour and topicality thrown in with messages on subjects including Bradley Manning, casual texting and the Da*ly Ma*l.

It is about as action-packed as any gig has been for an hour and a half and engrossing and enjoyable throughout. The Super Furries are missed, but Neon Neon have brought something new and started their own party. By the end, surely everyone wanted to live in the Neon Neon republic Gruff Rhys declared, with their own currency that was earlier showered down from above.

MG

The Substantive is a platform for new, independent writing on popular culture. To support it, and treat yourself, you can buy the e-book and/or t-shirt. Details Below.

The Substantive ‘The Boss’ t-shirt, with an original print by the artist Lilly Allen, is 100% ultra-weight cotton and made by an ethical and environmental partner. It is available to order here.

New, independent writing, ‘Glory Nights from Wankdorf to Wembley’ documents the journey that captures the culture of travelling to Europe watching football while examining a sport where money is valued alongside glory. It is available to preview for free and download in full from Amazon and Smashwords. More details, including photos and links to reviews, here.

Neon Neon picture © Randy The Funk

Stratford-Upon-Avon was an appropriate setting for the start of the UK leg of our own modern day touring musical Shakespeare, Billy Bragg. With a rich back catalogue to compliment his most recent material and the ability to speak charismatically at length, alternately sharing new anecdotes and inspiring his audience on the hot topics of the day (with a few puns, pop culture references and punchlines thrown in), he is always worth seeing live, be it at festivals, bookshops, record stores or his own gigs.

As the Bard of Barking came to Shakespeare’s town on a beautiful day, the sun came out, the trees began to sing and half-way through what was the final day of the Stratford-Upon-Avon Arts Festival, steel brass bands played in Bancroft Gardens outside the venue; in the afternoon and early evening leading up to gig, the market stalls were out, there was dancing in the park, pub gardens were packed and scores of people from different backgrounds wandered through the streets of Stratford, including the man himself (pictured above). Who said Society doesn’t exist?

We were reminded of the answer to that as soon as Bragg came on with his band at the Royal Shakesphere Centre; his set opened with Ideology, and the lyrics “When one voice rules the nation just because she’s the top of the pile doesn’t mean her vision is the clearest.” Anyone familiar with Bragg’s work knows the depth of his music goes far beyond political conflict, yet when he later speaks for the many there on the night about the revulsion of the recent rewriting of the legacy of the divisive former Prime Minister he follows it with Between the Wars, with words as poetic and passionate as anything this Shakespeare theatre will have seen.

It is a song that when performed live in the past has brought tears to the eyes of the crowd singing-along on more than one occasion, particularly in the post-Major period when it looked like there could be a long-term incumbent government that would put progressive social politics at the heart of its agenda. And the original recorded version will instantly have come to many people’s mind in the aftermath of Thatcher’s death, with the lines:

I kept the faith and I kept voting
Not for the iron fist but for the helping hand
For theirs is a land with a wall around it
And mine is a faith in my fellow man

And’s Bragg’s dulcet tones from the same song again rand out clearly in the head after the recent atrocity committed in Woolwich with the words:

Sweet moderation, heart of this nation,
Desert us not, we are between the wars

As a tireless campaigner against facisim as well as an ex-soldier, that barbaric murder, which was designed to stir up hatred and violence on the streets of Britain and has been a recruiting sergeant the far right, is naturally an elephant in the theatre that can’t be ignored for the most topical of singer-songwriters. And within the set are two powerful examples of mixing pop and politics that address the issue, with Woody Guthrie’s resilient call to arms, All You Fascists Are Bound to Lose, now a Bragg staple, as well as his own There Will Be A Reckoning, which he wrote for Mick Gordon’s engrossing play from 2010, which recognised that an environment of ignorance and lack of opportunity is a breeding ground for a hate-filled agenda.

But it is not just the politics that beautifully move. A stunning and unexpected rendition of Tank Park Salute, a personal and poetic tribute to his father which he always sings from the heart, took the collective breath away of the all seated audience.

There are treasures throughout, with a rare comeback for You Woke Up My Neigbourhood, perfect as the country-pop song for the band playing with him on this tour. The stripped down version of Greetings to the New Brunette still remains a treat even past its summer years, and Guthrie’s Ain’t Go No Home has become a reoccurring glorious highlight of a Bragg set over the last few years, and a perfect fit in set of heartfelt renditions.

The more recent songs are just as welcome; Goodbye is a song that can continue to be played when he returns to solo touring and Handyman Blues is a contribution that sits alongside The Lemonheads’ The Outdoor Type in themes for the more creative and celebral man.

Never Buy The Sun, will endure as both a reminder how consumers have power in the pocket in a mixed economy, as well as a conspiracy that involved a police force, a government and the mass media. In just over two hours, of course there isn’t room for many favourites and classics. “Milkman” shouts one fan. “I’ve already paid him” shouts Billy straight back.

The RST didn’t do its paying punters any favours with its strict approach to photography let alone recording, and its banning of dancing in the isles, never previously a problem at other seated venues for Bragg tours, including the Barbican and Fairfield Halls, was particularly po-faced. However, it provided context for a great writer and performer of our times. As well as the festival inspired pun “this is the winter of our disco tent”. Billy Bragg, all-round entertainer.

MG

The Substantive is a platform for new, independent writing on popular culture. To support it, and treat yourself, you can buy the e-book and/or t-shirt. Details Below.

The Substantive ‘The Boss’ t-shirt, with an original print by the artist Lilly Allen, is 100% ultracotton and made by an ethical and environmental partner. It is available to order here.

New, independent writing, ‘Glory Nights from Wankdorf to Wembley’ documents the journey that captures the culture of travelling to Europe watching football while examining a sport where money is valued alongside glory. It is available to preview for free and download in full from Amazon and Smashwords. More details, including photos and links to reviews, here.

When Arrested Development first began it took situation comedy to another level with multiple strands of layered gags that come thick and fast be it with satire, visual gags, great lines, self-referential in-jokes, nods to popular culture, farce and at times dark humour; it was the freshest thing to happen to comedy on television since The Simpsons, and it was confident enough to never feel the need to sentimentalise that its close relations – The Office (UK) which preceded it and Modern Family which followed it – felt obliged to.

Its fourth season, released in its entirety yesterday, is totally groundbreaking in its own right; Netflix have made it a global TV event via the Internet, with the simultaneous release of all new 15 episodes, a sharp contrast for a show that was previously shunted around schedules and a welcome antidote to modern day fragmented viewing habits.

Like all great comedy, the gags come easy because the characters are so well defined. Not that they are likeable characters – even Jason Bateman’s Michael Bluth, the previously supposed moral compass of the show, early on bemoans undergoing a rigorous security check at an airport because woman in burkas are allowed to pass, plays loose with his scruples throughout the new season, and deliciously delivers a cruel dig at the English; so when Isla Fisher jokingly introduces her character as a narcissist early in the fourth season, the viewer knows she going to fit right in with the self-obsessed assembly of core and subsidiary characters.

There are early signs of the old genius writing as Lucille (One) gives a new meaning to chain smoking while there is black comedy in abundance, notably as Tobias continually tells all and sundry, including passing children, about a sex offender conviction earned earlier in a misunderstanding. Misunderstandings and confusion are staples of conventional sit-coms, but they are delivered far more elaborately in Arrested Development and with as much style as in Curb Your Enthusiasm (a show which also gets a very direct nod as the fourth season develops).

The episodes are centred on the back story of the main characters, filling in the gaps of what they have done over seven years to get to a fourth season that never materialised until now. It is a story that’s told in a mix of flashbacks and intercut timelines, like chapters in a Tarantino film, meaning many references, lines and scenes only fully make sense in later episodes. It is a style that rewards a marathon sitting as the pieces come together like a jigsaw as each episode progresses.

It is undeniably very clever writing, as around seven-and-a-half-hours are woven together in a circle that tells a story of a number characters, that will surely benefit repeated viewings, with the rich layered comedy behind it. Even the initial impact is strong enough, however, to implant “Get away, Getway” in a constant loop in the head and educate non-geeks about Showsteeler software.

The targets of satire are varied, including the drone bombing of civilian targets, dumbed down investigative television, corrupt politicians and economic policy from 2006 in “a time when banks were happy to incur as much debt as possible”.

There is also plenty for loyal fans, with a brief update on Annyong and the return of many of the brilliant ancillary players including Judy Greer’s Kitty Sanchez, Carl Weathers as himself, Liza Minnelli’s Lucille (Two) and Henry Winkler’s Barry Zuckerman. Also, Michael Cera’s George Michael mentions a film called ‘Dangerous Cousins’ is what first made him sign-up to Netflix, in the knowledge many viewers of that line will have subscribed themselves that day.

Arguably, if the fourth season lacks anything it is big ensemble pieces which were logistically difficult when shooting. But the acting, particularly from Portia de Rossi, David Cross and Jeffery Tambour, continues to be first class. And that ensemble piece may yet come. The fifteen episodes of season four now have us up-to-date with all the characters with plenty of plot-developments to be expanded on. One of the many strands involved Michael Bluth trying to get together a film and it seems inevitable that this fourth season is precursor for that, which was always rumoured to be the comeback. But as Maeby knowingly suggests to Michael, “I think movies are dead. Maybe a TV show?” Arrested Development’s highly skilled use of time and pacing has shown in this fourth season, they are already on the superior medium.

MG

The Substantive columnist Mel Gomes is the author of ‘Glory Nights: From Wankdorf to Wembley’ an e-book with echoes of Glory from American Cinema to Bruce Springsteen re-telling a journey travelling to watch a sport where money is seen as the pinnacle of success.

 Available to preview for free from Amazon and Smashwords.

Mark Perryman of Philosophy Football reviews the latest batch of sports books on The Substantive.

In England there’s no sportswriter quite like Dave Zirin. He writes about sport from the Left with such passion and style that readers will never spot the join. An American, the bias is unsurprisingly towards baseball, basketball and their own bastardised version of ‘football’, yet both the issues raised and his range of coverage are unmistakably internationalist.

Dave’s latest Game Over should by rights be a major publishing event for the committed British sports fan, yet our fan culture is so parochial this superb book will be lucky to get a mention of two. Ownership, athletes on strike and supporting others on strike, Egyptian fans at the core of the Tahrir Square protests, the failed legacy of World Cups and Olympics. this book  has the lot and more. The writing style provides a template for how to mix politics and sport yet keep the reader engaged whose interests leans more towards one or the other. Simply unmissable.

The London 2012 Olympics more than any other event has helped stimulate at last some writing over here of the sort Dave Zirin provides in the USA. Accounting for sport’s meaning beyond the touchline, track, pool or ring. In the build up to the Games Matt and Martin Rogan’s  Britain and the Olympics  provided a rare moment of context. Revisiting the 1948 London Olympics, dubbed the ‘austerity games’ for an insight into what London 2012 might become in a period of similar economic recession. Rich in interview material, one year on from London’s Games this is a book that deserves to be revisited as we ponder over the reality of the legacy claims.

Written since the Games ended Phil Cohen’s On The Wrong Side of the Track? locates  those legacy claims firmly in the social and geographical context of East London. This was where the regeneration was supposed to take place, acting as a leveller between the city’s tourist and retail mecca, the West End, and the depressed East End. Beautifully written, with an uncanny eye for cultural detail Phil’s book is a powerful response to the overblown myths and broken promises of the Olympian legacy agenda.

None of this is to deny the very obvious joy so many of us felt during last year’s summer of sport. What it means though is the need to question the claims made of how these moments of excitement can effect lasting change. Sport is full of such moments, it’s what explains the unique, and enduring appeal. Moments of joy and despair. In terms of the latter a recent outbreak of football hooliganism attracted banner headlines and wall-to-wall media agonising. Of a magnitude city-centre public disorder when the pubs shut rarely if ever attract. Sport, especially football, provides a platform for social and cultural themes which ensure they get noticed, for good or ill.

Geoff Pearson’s recently published  Cans, Cops and Carnivals  is an academic study that deserves to become the definitive work on modern English football fan culture. In-depth ‘participant observation’ over a sixteen year period, the book challenges so-called common-sense notions of hooliganism and the crowd control responses in an effective and thought-provoking way.

Whether  from the stands, or the sofa, no football match would be complete with a vocal suggestion that the Referee needs an optician’s appointment combined with a questioning of his parentage, or words to that effect. We all like to think we know better, and given a chance could do better than the proverbial men (and sometimes women) in black. You are The Ref  by ex-referee Keith Hackett and legendary illustrator Paul Trevillion provides every possible test for your suitability to challenge the officials’ decisions. Strip cartoon style, questions posed and scenarios described, rules patiently explained, the referee’s role described. Ref! With this book at your side blaming your side’s loss on one dodgy decision or another may never be quite the same again.

Football rarely inspires good fiction. Perhaps this is because the reality is so full of intrigue, heroes and villains, loyalty and disloyalty, that the make-believe version would never be as good. Rodge Glass’s Bring Me The Head of Ryan Giggs is one of the rare exceptions. A wicked plot of talent disappointed and dangerous obsession manages to create both a compelling read of fiction yet rooted in the sport that frames it.

Understanding sport requires more than anything else a social construction of sport, addressing the particularities of inclusion and exclusion of each and every sport. Precious few have produced such studies. A Global History of Running by Thor Gotaas provides this for the most basic sport of all, running, and by doing so gives an insight into how to write something similar for other sports too. Historical, anthropological and cultural with an international coverage  combine to account for both running’s global appeal and national differences. Alexandra Heminsley’s  Running Like a Girl couldn’t be more different. It is written, designed and marketed in ‘chick-lit’ style, aiming for a mass audience of potential women runners with a dose of the self-help manual added too. Not for everyone, yet this is just the kind of writing sport needs if it is to appeal beyond the already committed,  the spectator or the active.

Philosophy Football was founded with the idea of putting the words of Albert Camus on to a  T-shirt . “All that I know most surely about morality and obligations’ I owe to football’ was Albert’s maxim that inspired us so it seems only natural that my pick for book of the quarter is philosophy on the run provided by author Mark Rowlands in his superb book Running With the Pack. This is a book that doesn’t simply explain the appeal of a sport to the individual who does it, but the purpose of sport as play in modern society. Mark doesn’t overload sport with meaning, though as a professional philosopher he does like to cite the ideas behind his core message. That the point of sport is that it is pointless, the joy is to be found in it being play, when we ascribe to it too much of one purpose or another the value of sport loses its meaning. And in the process becomes corporatised, commodified, the stuff of political spin.

There may well never be another summer of sport quite like 2012. Yet every summer there is the potential for sport to excite and infuriate in near equal measure. Once the Champions and Rich Runners Up League Final is out of the way there’s the centenary Tour de France, and the poignancy of the centenary of Emily Wilding Davison’s fatally heroic protest at the 1913 Derby too.  The Lions down under, the Ashes over here, Murray seeking to match his victory in New York with a home Grand Slam at Wimbledon. All this and more are socially constructed, read these books not to distract from the enjoyment of sport, watching or doing, but to inform and enrich the experience.

Mark Perryman

The Substantive Columnist Mel Gomes’ e-book ‘Glory Nights: From Wankdorf to Wembley’ is available to preview for free from Amazon and Smashwords, documenting high-level football and the journey of travelling around Europe following a sport where money is now valued alongside trophies. New, independent writing on popular culture, it is being backed by The Substantive.

Philosophy Football’s Mark Perryman’s latest batch of Book Reviews includes books on society, politics, sport and music.

As the Thatcher funeral hoopla fades away and the focus shifts to the likely rout of the Con-Dems in the 2 May local elections the political landscape outside the Westminster bubble in the next few months is likely to be further shaped by the deepening impact of the cuts. Central to this, and sparking enormous local campaigns such as in Lewisham remains the not-so-creeping privatisation of the NHS and the resultant cuts in vital services including A&E. Roger Taylor’s carefully-argued God Bless the NHS isn’t perhaps the call to action some campaigners might be looking for yet his depiction of the rude health of an NHS as the closest thing we have to a ‘national religion’ is a spectacular contrast to the so-called crisis the government claims to be fixing with its marketised reforms. Those reforms are brilliantly dissected and the ideology behind them in this powerfully argued book.

Perhaps less central, except for those immediately affected, the university sector has been the target for the most revolutionary change of all. The student-led tuition fees protests were the first mass resistance to the government, now the eye-watering £9,000 a year fees are turning these places of learning into just another marketplace that will have enormous social consequences in years to come. Andrew McGettigan’s The Great University Gamble spells out in chilling detail what the future of Higher Education run as a business will look like. It is hard to imagine another crisis won’t be sparked as the scale of these changes start to turn our universities into upper middle-class finishing schools and never mind the rest. In all the acres of newsprint eulogising Thatcher few remarked on the fact that student loans replacing grants and £9000 per year university tuition fees were policies not even she and her ministers dared contemplate.

Many on the Left argue that in order to understand the sheer scale of the austerity agenda onslaught we need a broader analysis of its roots combined with an effective counter-narrative. One effort towards this has been launched by the editors and writers behind Soundings, the politics and culture journal. Their After Neoliberalism Manifesto will be published in twelve monthly instalments, each as a free download. Subjects to be covered following April’s framing statement include the economy, welfare, patriarchy, and generational politics. Expect fresh and radical thinking in abundance. Providing a focus for activists in the next few months will be the 22 June Peoples Assembly Against Austerity, initiated by the trade unions to seek to build a broader community campaign against the cuts. Yet as has recently been argued by the socialist writer David Renton the unions aren’t what they once were. A fascinating account of the social and political force of left-led political trade unionism is provided by the biography of Communist Party Industrial Organiser Bert Ramelson, Revolutionary Communist at Work. In many ways an inspirational read, the harder part remains though, how to adapt a politics framed by trade unionism to the changed working conditions and culture that David Renton patiently describes in his piece.

Published in a new and updated edition, Paul Mason’s Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere provides a panoramic survey of the seedbeds of a new protest movement, largely existing and organising outside the ranks of the traditional left and labour movement. Globally youthful, well-educated, social media savvy, wedded to organisational forms that revolve more around autonomism and horizontalism than either Leninism or Labourism. Paul Mason’s writing is breathless reportage at its best. Where did this all begin? There is never one simple start point for the new but ten years on for the thirtysomething activist the huge anti-war demo of 15 February 2003 will probably remain the key moment of their political lives so far. Chris Nineham was one of the march’s organisers and remains one of the key figures behind the left-wing group Counterfire. His book about the 2003 march, The People v Tony Blair is an interesting argument about how the power of protest is represented, and more often misrepresented, by the media. The book provides vital insights into how to construct present and future resistance to austerity and much else. Ian Sinclair takes a different, and more politically neutral, approach with his The March That Shook Blair. This is an oral history of the 15 February march as told by those who took part. The variety of voices is hugely impressive with a wide range of themes covered too, together creating a picture of a day that didn’t stop the war but for many changed their lives.

One of the key characteristics of the anti-war movement was the huge involvement of the Muslim community in the protests. This hadn’t happened before with campaigns such as CND, or even the Anti-Nazi League. A 21st century protest movement is fatally narrowed if it isn’t multicultural in complexion. What this can look like was illustrated again by the large and lively demonstrations against Israel’s air and land assault in Gaza, ‘Operation Cast Lead’, in December 2008. Generation Palestine edited by Rich Wiles is an excellent digest of experiences from the growing movement to boycott Israel, with divestment and sanctions as key tactics of pressure. While the comparisons of Israel with Apartheid South Africa are difficult for some to accept the involvement of such leading figures as Archbishop Desmond Tutu in this book points to an increasing urgency to change Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians and the global movement of solidarity this is sparking. A future campaigning priority, which also has the potential once again to reach out to the Muslim community because of their deployment against targets in Pakistan, is the military use of airborne drones. Medea Benjamin’s Drone Warfare is a passionately written account of what is becoming one of the fastest growing weapons of modern warfare. Remote control is characterised by the dehumanisation of their targets, with Medea making the key point that their escalating deployment will almost certainly see their use in retaliation in the near future, unless this escalation can be stopped by the kind of campaigning she begins to describe.

If the sci-fi world of drone warfare seems futuristic Arms and the People edited by Mike Gonzalez and Houman Barekat helps the process of making connections between past, present and future wars, resistance and social change. A richly original study of the role of the military in popular movements ranging over the Paris Commune, Russian Revolution, Chile and the Arab Spring, this is a book to make readers think carefully about the role of the military not just in stopping revolutions, but making them happen too. Of course the Spanish Civil War features in the collection. It remains an iconic moment of Left history, still celebrated today by Philosophy Football’s best-selling British Battalion T-shirt. Richard Baxell’s magnificent Unlikely Warriors is surely set to become the definitive account of the British in the Civil War’s International Brigades. A brilliant piece of military- history at its best, capturing the extraordinary courage of untrained volunteers travelling to a foreign land to join the fight for land and freedom, while never failing to describe the grim reality of the loss of life and eventual defeat.

On the British left it is rare to find sport , except occasionally men’s football, being taken particularly seriously. Perhaps in part that’s because, or maybe why, we don’t boast a critical sportswriter remotely like America’s Dave Zirin. His latest book Game Over makes the argument for sport as politics in an engaging and thought-provoking style that has the ability to connect with a popular audience. Football and the Arab Spring, the 2012 Olympics, sexism and racism in sport, athletics, lessons of the Occupy movement for fan resistance. This is the kind of sportswriting neither the mainstream nor the Left press very often feature. Dave shows why and how it could.

Redefining, or if you prefer, repositioning the ‘political’ to embrace a much broader cultural agenda, including but beyond sport, should be a central theme in any movement towards the next Left. Richard Weight’s comprehensive account Mod effortlessly mixes the historical, the social and the cultural to produce a style of writing that is both detailed in its coverage yet so sharply written never to lose its focus or argument. Clampdown: Pop-Cultural Wars on Class and Gender by Rhian.E.Jones provides a refreshingly polemical account of pop and politics, with an angry denunciation of exclusions common to both centred on class and gender. Rich in its musical references, this is a book that knows its way round the deficiencies in politics too. Perhaps reflecting a more hopeful moment when the mix of pop and politics co-existed in a more mutually inclusive manner Tracey Thorn’s memoir Bedsit Disco Queen is without doubt one of the stand-out titles of this quarter. From the early eighties indiedom of the Marine Girls, to the slow-burn success of the jazzily soulful Everything but the Girl to indie elder stateswoman, Tracey Thorn chronicles life, music and movement with a writing style than never fails to enthral and inspire, plus a healthy dose of nostalgia for those of us of a certain age, enjoy!

The politico- fiction list for this quarter is particularly strong. Leo Zelig’s debut novel, Eddie The Kid is centred on the anti-war movement, full of personal intrigue, destiny, hope and despair. London’s Overthrow is a novella by the much celebrated writer and SWP dissident China Mieville. This is extreme dystopianism as the capital falls apart besieged by riots and repression yet with a political core projecting the shape of what an alternative might look like for a city in violent and desperate decline. Christopher Brookmyre is now well-established as one of Britain’s most popular crime writers, not of the stature of Ian Rankin, Christopher however manages to inject both a humour and a politics into his books that are less obvious in most of Rankin’s work. His latest is Bedlam and is unlikely to disappoint Brookmyre fans. Nightmarish violence, a chaotic plot, deadly satire aimed at the political establishment, and defiantly Scottish. All the ingredients of what has helped make Chris’s books such a great read. Few fiction writers have tried to explain the motivations that turned a small but significant group in the 1930s into Soviet spies. Demonised as dupes, crooks or charlatans, the political circumstances that led them to risk everything are rarely given much space. Jennie Rooney’s Red Joan makes a serious, and extremely readable, effort in that direction in her story that is more than loosely based on real-life spy Melita Norwood. An intensely personal story and it is this approach that helps the reader to understand, if not sympathise with, the reason why for some the ideals of Communism meant sacrificing family and country for that cause.

Book of the quarter? There’s only one contender. Published posthumously Fractured Times: Culture and Society in the Twentieth Century will sadly now be Eric Hobsbawm’s final book. The subject matter, and the range, is a testament to Eric’s ability to combine political analysis, the finest historical writing of the modern era and cultural criticism. Chapters include Jewish culture, festivals, the Art Nouveau movement, the role of intellectuals, and an incredible account of the mythology of the Wild West cowboy. Whether there will ever be a writer of the Left like Eric again will in many ways be determined by a politics emerging that can also combine historical tradition, a politics of resistance and revolt with a theory and practice that understands the crucial role of culture in both forming and changing ideas. Here’s hoping!

Mark Perryman

The Substantive Columnist Mel Gomes’ e-book ‘Glory Nights: From Wankdorf to Wembley’ is available to download from Amazon and Smashwords, documenting high-level football and the journey of travelling around Europe in a sport where money is now valued alongside trophies. New, independent writing on popular culture, it is being backed by The Substantive.

Tottenham Hotspur’s trip to Basel this week was a trip typical of the exciting European nights told in Glory Nights: Wankdorf to Wembley, with ticketing complications, a less than linear journey, friendly locals, cultural highlights and of course, drama only sport can deliver.

The English Premier League table doesn’t lie but the final tables in both the 2005-06 and last season stretched credibility when Spurs finished below Arsenal twice, despite looking much the better side for most of both terms, technically assured and in control of games in 05/06 and fluent, expansive and at times breathtaking in the last campaign. Points dropped through late goals were punished by a final day illness in 2006 and tactical errors in the final straight in 2012 allowed a West Brom goalkeeping performance so bad it defies belief, to have the final say. Ultimately those league placings twice cost Spurs Champions League Football, but strange how things work out; while the luck hasn’t been apparent on the pitch Tottenham’s European draws since 2006 have included a fixture at Sevilla that coincided with the city’s Semma Santa Festival, a tie against Hearts during the Edinburgh Festival, journeys to Belgium and Germany when the Christmas markets stalls were out and a trip to Udinese at the best time of the year to visit nearby Venice.

Spurs fans have had some great cultural bonuses in the last few years and coinciding with the Europa League Quarter-Final second leg, the city of Basel is currently hosting a Picasso retrospective built exclusively from the city’s public and private collections. Who knew? In the Kunstmusuem (a venue best spelt rather than pronounced when asking for directions), the exhibition shows Picasso the young talent, the storyteller, the freedom fighter and the master through etchings, sketches, portraits and layered paintings that show his versatility in styles through the ages.

Back in the last century Danny Baker once asked on his radio show where all the women were when bemoaning the all-male pubs he used to frequent; decades earlier the answer would have been posing for Picasso who, like guitars, “the poor”, fruit and flowers, are subjects used to develop art, from sharp lines to distortions, via the hidden faces David Hockney would later use on paintings of trees.

In a city that gives all its visitors free travel on buses and trams for the duration of their stay via a hotel booking, getting to the museum, which also houses pieces from Dali and Munch in its everyday collection, was easy enough, and public transport throughout Switzerland was smooth.

The journey to Basel started waiting for a night bus just before 3am alongside the urban foxes roaming the streets in North London on the day of the game; the match ticket, secured only after flights, annual leave and hotel were booked, after a mistake by the person who volunteered to order the tickets, was less than the size of a travel card and safely tucked inside the wallet.

Of the 1600 or so Spurs fans, only five others were on the 6am flight out of Heathrow that had more empty seats than passengers, with most others presumably flying directly into Basel, driving or on different flights. Heathrow was desolate with not even a shop open before 4.30am and a lone traveller could enjoy a lengthy period of silence in a public space like no other, outside of the Emirates or one of the remaining libraries yet to be culled by the coalition.

From Zurich Basel is just eighty minutes away on the train and the great views from the window followed by Picasso later in the morning, was a reminder that Michael Portillo is very fortunate to get paid to do these things.

Basel, on the border of France and Germany, is Switzerland’s third largest city and also a University town. And like previous footballing trips with Spurs to University towns including Bremen, Lyon, Twente and Udine, the locals were all very friendly and helpful. A multi-cultural city situated on the Rhine, there were shops, bars, restaurants and sights a plenty in Basel, with welcoming residents. Sociable and pleasant, a contrast to the sharp elbows and sharp knees Glenda Jackson this week noted we are now more used to at home.

Likewise, I witnessed real diligent work and kindness at Zurich Airport by Carepoint and experienced exceptional customer service several times in less than 30 hours in Switzerland including wonderful hotel staff, an owner of the restaurant who re-opened his kitchen longer to cook for me and friendly bar staff at a few local venues.

The European trips often have a habit of showing how things could be as was the case when contrasting run-of-the-mill service we are used to in the UK; while many are trying to white-wash the walls of the Thatcher legacy in a ten-day PR window that will culminate on Wednesday, largely at the State’s expense, the harsh realities of everyday life including zero-hours contracts and a de-motivated workforce with declining social mobility where workers rights continue to be under threat from the snowball she set rolling, are constant examples of the society that we created and where we could improve.

Little is cheap in the Basel, perhaps not surprisingly in a city whose name is shorthand for financiers as a piece of Banking regulation, although the bars buzzing full of locals on an early Thursday evening – in the old town but away from the English and Irish pubs where many Spurs fans had congregated – suggested that people still have the purchase power of the Swiss franc in their pocket.

Also, the price of the match ticket was relatively cheap, compared to the exorbitant prices of English Premier League at least. Basel’s stadium, St Jacob’s Park, looks smart from the outside, with the exterior the model Bayern Munich later used for their ground. Inside, unlike Tottenham’s last visit to Switzerland, in the Wankdorf in Berne, the pitch was all natural grass, if wet from the evenings downpours.

It was officially full to its 38,000 plus capacity, although there were small numbers of empty seats visible around the ground by the time the match kicked-off, shortly after 9pm local-time. The Basel fans provided a cauldron of noise throughout, with a stand full of banners, flags and scarves when the teams come out and all four sides jumping up and down when singing.

It is easy to generate atmosphere for big games and a European quarter-final is a massive match for both sides and as always at away games there was plenty of songs from travelling Spurs fans. The nature of football, and travelling fans who understand the culture and history of the club, mean that songs can start organically and don’t need conductors as false as the attempts to generate un-spontaneous chants at Wembley Stadium.

Unlike the fluency of last season, Spurs have relied more heavily on individual match-winning performances this term, often from Gareth Bale, Aaron Lennon and Jermain Defoe, all three of whom were out injured. Without the only three attacking match-winners left in the squad since Van der Vaart’s departure and considering FC Basel’s excellent home record as well as the first-leg when the away side got behind the Spurs defence several times with ease, Basel were surely favourites to progress.

But we started well, looking to play in the opposition half before taking the lead when Clint Dempsey capitalised on a defensive error. Mohamed Salah did the same for Basel to equalize with an excellent early finish after a sloppy Dembele pass put us in trouble. Red flares were instantly lit up behind the goal they were defending in the first half and it wasn’t long before the whole pitch was covered in smoke.

We pressed again before half-time with shots on target from Dembele, Naughton and Adebayor while Basel always looked capable of a break. Minutes into the second-half it was 2-1 as for the third successive game we let in a soft goal at a corner. As the game wore on Basel stayed compact, looking to close what had been a very open tie. The only threat was a Dawson header from a corner until a Huddlestone pass put in Dempsey who managed a shot on target the keeper should have saved but dribbled into the next behind him and in front of us.

For all the agony in football the ecstasy is pretty good. The goal wasn’t as decisive or even as unexpected as Dembele’s last minute strike in Lyon, but it was just as welcome. With eight minutes left of normal time the game was there for the taking now with the advantage of the away goals wiped out and the momentum with us.

It looked like it may come as a decent move led to Kyle Walker getting to the byline and his cut-back deflected across of the face of an open goal but too far in front for Dempsey to touch home. Just as we should have been looking to win the tie the ball seemed to hold up on the wet pitch and Dawson lost the ball in midfield letting Basel to be on the verge of getting behind our high line. Vertongen stuck out a foot rather than looking to defend properly and missed the ball and caught the man and was walking back down the tunnel.

We hung on for the remainder of stoppage time and then effectively for the whole of the extra half-hour, escaping twice in the first period when Friedel was twice beaten by shots bent in, before he gave the ball away cheaply several times in the second period, with long aimless balls that put us straight back under pressure.

As predicted by people queuing up beside me in the heavy rain before kick-off, it was going to penalties. And as predicted by anyone who has seen us miss countless penalties over the years, we got knocked-out. The one moment of hope came from Basel’s first kick, which looked just for a milli-second that Friedel might have saved before it hit the net. Huddlestone’s kick was better than his penalty at Bolton in the cup a few years ago but it was well saved and we were always going to be struggling as they scored their second.

The one-sided shoot-out, which finished 4-1, was typified by Adebayor’s effort, which was a bad as most of his other first touches during his time in the club. It was a miss as predictable as Bentley’s awful penalty at Wembley in the 2009 League Cup Final and again raises the question of when the club will cut their losses on highly paid players that don’t fit.

We played well on the night but the European campaign ends having won just four of twelve European games played this season. After Basel’s winning kick, a number Spurs players came over to acknowledge the travelling fans before, unusually for a European away game, we were let straight out of the ground, able to squeeze on a tram and get back into the centre of town, finding a pub that was open until 4am and had Dylan, The Stone Roses and New Order on the jukebox.

It was a European trip that nearly had all the elements of a classic Glory Night: the adventure, the place, the people and the football. And even in defeat there was an echo of Glory, as all the ties have had since we have entered the knock-out phase of the competition. Fifty years since we became the first British team to win a European trophy, we continue to challenge for cups on the continent and need to continue to do so.

MG

Glory Nights: From Wankdorf to Wembley, which covers Tottenham’s 2010/11 Champions League campaign and contains an epilogue following the 2012 season, is available to preview for free on Amazon and Smashwords.

Sporting and artistic boycotts of an Apartheid South Africa previously raised the profile of Mandela when he was a political prisoner on Robben Island and were a key instrument in change, arguably more so than economic sanctions; Sunderland’s recent partnership with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation which aims to pursue social justice, was a positive reminder of the part sport, and popular culture, plays in shaping a wider society.

So, the announcement last night, the day after SAFC’s very own Mandela Day, that self-confessed fascist Paolo Di Canio was the club’s new Manager, to replace O’Neill, who had been relieved of his duties the previous evening, was particularly bizarre.

On three separate occasions in 2005, after he had finished playing in England and during his time with Lazio, Di Canio made fascist salutes to a right-wing crowd, before openly stating he was a fascist. It was not a throw-away remark that was latter taken out of context as Sunderland and Di Canio are now trying to day; in his autobiography Di Canio had previously expressed admiration for Benito Mussolini, a proud racist, one of the founders of fascism and an ally of Hitler’s Germany, and Di Canio also has a tattoo in tribute to Mussolini.

When Di Canio returned to England to manage Swindon, the local GMB branch withdrew its sponsorship of the club in protest, and last night David Miliband sacrificed the position he treasured as Vice-Chairman of Sunderland AFC due to the Di Canio appointment.

In a city where the British far-right of today were exposed as organizing and operating out of as recently as on Saturday, Di Canio himself is now symbolic. And coming days after some followers of the national side sang about throwing a victim of racial abuse, Anton Ferdinand, on a bonfire, and in a season where European fascists have twice attacked Spurs fans on the continent because of the club’s Jewish association (a community Di Canio has already shown his disdain for), the appointment is surprisingly blinkered to the wider responsibilities football clubs have.

From the defiance of Jessie Owens at the 1936 Olympics to the movement that sought justice for the victims of Hillsborough, via South Africa’s post-Apartheid Rugby World Cup triumph and the acts of dissent at the 1968 Olympics, sport has long been a force in politics.

As the national sport, Football in England should be leading the way, yet Liverpool acted with belligerence when it had a chance to act over Luiz Suarez, the FA continues to look the other way as a minority of nationalists spread hate at its events and now Sunderland are banking on Di Canio to ignite their team to avoid a financial costly relegation, while ignoring the bigger picture.

It is the sort of prioritization, with short-term success considered more important than ethics, that led to Swindon glossing over this bit of behaviour by Di Canio, which in any other walk of life in a civilised society would have been recognized as Gross Misconduct, as a Manager physically attacks a sub-ordinate. Whether Sunderland survive in the Premier League this season is not the issue; it is how the club crisis manage the situation they have now created for themselves.

MG

The Substantive Columnist Mel Gomes’ e-book ‘Glory Nights: From Wankdorf to Wembley’ is available to download from Amazon and Smashwords, documenting high-level football and the journey of travelling around Europe in a sport where money is now valued alongside trophies. New, independent writing on popular culture, it is being backed by The Substantive.

England v Brazil, friendly or no friendly, is a tasty international fixture to mark the start of the Football Association’s 150th birthday celebrations. It will be a feast of free-flowing football, and England. Never mind, with the other home opponents lined up so far – the Republic of Ireland (last qualified for a World Cup in 2002, at Euro 2012 failed to win a single game) and Scotland (last qualified for any tournament, 1998) – England fans should be able to look forward to some home victories to savour. Although what exactly the players, manager and coaches will learn by playing such relatively lowly opposition is anyone’s guess. These opponents have been chosen to put bottoms on seats, and stir up memories of old, and more recent rivalries, but never mind the quality of the football.

Brazil though are not only the 5-times winners of the World Cup, and hosts of the 2014 tournament on an international stage they invented what Pele famously dubbed ‘the beautiful game’. Or as Brazil international, doctor, philosopher and left-wing political activist Socrates poetically put it, “ “Beauty comes first. Victory is secondary. What matters is joy.” Words which, naturally have been turned into a Philosophy Football T-shirt.

Brazil have had their own problems, a disappointing semi-final defeat at World Cup 2010 following their Quarter Final exit at World Cup 2006. This is a team however whose high expectations are based on recent success, winning the tournament in 2002, that semi-final in 2010, finalists in 1988 is all a lot more recent than anything England has achieved (I don’t count England getting to a semi- final in ‘96 when we were the tournament hosts).

The period since Euro 96 has been a successful one for the England team, relatively speaking. Every tournament, except Euro 2008, was qualified for. This compares well with the 1990s when England failed to qualify for World Cup 94, the 1980s when the team failed to qualify for Euro 84 and the dismal 1970s with failures to qualify for the World Cup in both 1974 and 1978. The much maligned Sven Goran Eriksson took England to three consecutive quarter final stages, in 2002, 2004 and 2006. The latter two lost on penalties, while at World Cup 2002 England lost to the eventual winners of the tournament, tonight’s opponents Brazil. Very few England managers have come close to match Sven’s achievement. Roy Hodgson has started well too, surprising many by taking England to the top of their group at Euro 2012 and going out on penalties to Italy in the quarter-finals. Not bad, but not good enough many England fans would argue with the 47-year old memories of 1966 still fresh in the nation’s memory. Yet as Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski argue in their provocatively titled book Why England Lose comparatively speaking, in terms of England’s size of population and number of professional players, getting into the top eight of the World’s teams is a considerable achievement. Its just that England’s national psyche, which is largely impossible to separate from the legacy of empire, the martial history and having invented most of the world’s sports, expects to win trophies and nothing much else will do.

Up to World Cup 2010 the popular support for the England team was huge. Every other summer the country would be decked out in St George Cross flags. Beckham helped football reach a wider audience in the way Gazzamania did before him at Italia 90. And the team resembled serious enough contenders not to lose all hope that when they got knocked out that they might at least do better the next time. The linkage, often unfairly made, of following England with hooliganism also pretty much ended after Euro 2000 with every tournament since then England fans coming home feted for their friendliness.

World Cup 2010 pretty much dented all of this. The team was arguably the strongest since 1996. With Wayne Rooney we had a world-class player in our starting eleven in addition to the existing ‘Golden Generation’. The sorry exit at the hands of Germany, losing 4-1, at the last sixteen stage following a series of dismal group games put paid to all of that pent-up optimism. The turmoil over John Terry, his manager’s Fabio Capello, resignation over the way the FA was treating the matter, his awkward reinstatement, widely perceived as at the expense of Rio Ferdinand, and the apppointment of Roy Hodgson as manager had left pre-Euro 2012 interest at an all-time low.

Yes England can still fill Wembley, as it will do tonight, and count on a size of support that dwarfs most other European countries, home and away. But in terms of the much bigger broader audience, with a St George Cross flying out of every other car window, worn as a T-shirt and daubed on kids’ faces, there was precious little of this during last year’s Euro 2012. The TV viewing figures were impressive enough but this was more a case of going through the motions from the comfort of the sofa, there was little of the magnitude of the spectacle of London 2012. In last year’s Summer of sport, from Chelsea winning the Champions League, via Wiggo winning Le Tour, to Europe’s victory in the Ryder Cup and Andy Murray ending the British Tennis version of the years of hurt in New York, England at the Euro’s hardly merits even a footnote.

And the immediate future doesn’t look much brighter either. A qualifying group for the 2014 World Cup which had looked easy turned awkward almost from the start. The away qualifier against Montenegro (total population round the size of the London Borough of Hammersmith) has all of a sudden turned into a must-win game, last time England were there in 2011 we scrambled a draw. And even if England do get to Brazil for the 2014 World Cup the expectations which were low enough for Euro 2012 are likely to be lower still. Meanwhile England will around the same time be hosting the first three days of the Tour de France. A decent performance this year by Wiggo, Cavendish and Froome could leave the previously unrivalled ascendancy of England’s tournament campaign shaping the sporting summer severely dented, if not irreparably damaged,for the second time in three years.

So enjoy the game, but give a thought to the sport’s future as the goals rain in, hopefully in the back of Brazil net, not ours. Optimism cannot be entirely extinguished, otherwise whats the point of being a fan? However getting used to being around the 8th best team in the world probably isn’t quite how those organising the FA’s centenary in 1963 envisaged the following fifty years through to 2013. A decent performance at the 1962 World Cup, yes once again losing a quarter-final, and spookily it was to Brazil once more, the eventual tournament winners that year too, was the cause of some hope. And they would have been looking forward as well to hosting the World Cup three years later in 1966 with the emerging talent of a youthful Bobby Moore suggesting this team had some considerable promise. Today there is precious little optimism, the crop of young players coming through look decent enough but well-short of being world beaters so far at any rate. The public excitement around the England team will take something really special in the difficult conditions of Brazil to restore it to anything like its previous scale. Still, if we finish the year having beaten Scotland at Wembley, plenty will be happy enough. Maybe actually the FA’s 150th anniversary fixture list is inspired after all, by the management of low expectations?

Mark Perryman

The Substantive Columnist Mel Gomes’ e-book ‘Glory Nights: From Wankdorf to Wembley’ is available to download from Amazon and Smashwords, documenting high-level football and the journey of travelling around Europe in a sport where money is now valued alongside trophies. New, independent writing on popular culture, it is being backed by The Substantive.

In the nineties, Quentin Tarantino gave an interview with the Independent on Sunday where he spoke about how he would “run” to the cinema every time a new Martin Scorsese film came out. Tarantino himself continues to have the same effect on millions of film goers worldwide who, ever since his debut Reservoir Dogs in 1992, will take the time, effort and pay the money, to see anything Tarantino does on the big screen. And his latest offering, Django Unchained doesn’t disappoint.

The original Django was the eponymous hero of an Italian spaghetti western from 1966 which, as Alex Cox explained in his Moviedrome introduction, when it was finally first aired in the UK around 25 years after its release, derived from A Fistful of Dollars itself “a rip-off of” Yojimbo. It was banned for its violence originally, although Cox points out the violence is mild by later standards (i.e. average Schwarzenegger fare), yet highly stylized, improbable and exorbitant.

They are all attributes Cox loved about that film and there is no doubt Tarantino did too; we already know the influence Django’s ear-cutting scene must have had on him, and with Django Unchained he has now made his own stylish Western with a hero that follows in the tradition of the original Django, who inspired Jimmy Cliff in The Harder They Come and then Joe Strummer to write the reggae song ‘Don’t Tango With Django’.

In Django Unchained there are actually two heroes, with two fantastic lead performances by Jamie Foxx, playing the freed slave Django, and Christopher Waltz, the bounty hunter with a moral compass who frees Django, takes him under his wing and then walks it like he talks it.

It’s an excellent performance by Waltz, convincing as a daring, crusading and authoritative master of his profession, with flashes of brilliant comic timing when necessary, that is essential to the heart of the film as Tarantino successfully manipulates the audience like a latter-day Alfred Hitchcock.

In the first part of the film the violence is almost poetic at times, with blood spluttering on white cotton fields, as we are already willing the good guys on in the heat of battle. And then, as our heroes enter new territory, the violence suddenly becomes brutal and deliberately uncomfortable to watch, arguably just a little window into the darkness of the villains Tarantino is dealing with and as uncompromising as the scene-setting racist language throughout the film.

It inevitably leads to a pulsating climax where again the violence is at times cathartic, end even occasionally played for laughs in a grim situation.

Throughout the dialogue is excellent. The one-liners, such as the phrase about the sharpest shooter in the South, seem perfect but also, when Leonardo DiCaprio is spouting the most ignorant right-wing rant (cleverly delivered in a style that is both confident and aggressive yet somehow flustered) Tarantino’s words are simultaneously reminding his audience of a history of oppression.

Not that there are many long stretches of dialogue that are more familiar with European cinema – in fact many of the lines are usually conversational, at times developing the characters and creating tension, such as during the ride to the fictional Candieland, where Django shows his metal as Waltz’s Dr Shultz is close to buckling, or throughout the film in the one-to-one dialogue between Django and Shultz, seemingly the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

There is comedy throughout, with the KKK scene laugh out loud funny, and Tarantino showing he can do Monty Python as well as Sergio Corbuci and Sergio Leonne all in the same film.

Released within weeks of Martin McDonagh’s second film, Seven Psychopaths, the disappointing long-awaited follow-up to his wonderful debut In Bruges, Django Unchained shows how far Tarantino is ahead of the rest of the field. Where McDonagh has made a film about failing to make a film, with the dialogue and characters not really working, despite a strong cast and a self-contained critique, Django Unchained is made by a film-maker with no doubt, just utter conviction.

As always with a Tarantino film, the score and the graphics are terrific, and as with all his other films, it feels like it will be worth a second viewing sooner rather than later. In cinema terms it may be considered a long film, but it is less than the length of three episodes of quality twenty-first century television drama watched back-to-back, and in that perspective not a second is wasted.

The value of the best part of three hours in a sold-out showing inside a nice cinema in central London for less than £15 on a late Saturday afternoon the day after release puts other more expensive alternatives into perspective and Tarintino’s fans have been served well.

It is highly skilled film-making and a hugely enjoyable film.

MG

With echoes of Glory from American Cinema to Bruce Springsteen, and full of the flavour of Escape that European Travel brings, The Substantive Columnist Mel Gomes’ e-book ‘Glory Nights: From Wankdorf to Wembley‘ is available from Amazon and Smashwords. New, independent writing on popular culture, it is being backed by The Substantive.