Gem quinn interviewed by mark antony raines ghostman

Gem Quinn wrote:
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What inspired you?Good production and sounds inspire me, interesting people and passionate friends who believe in working towards something you love rather than money.
What are you Aims? are to get better and better at my craft..
What plans do you have for the future? for the future are limited, as the future doesn't exist.. The immediate future, maybe, and upcoming gigs, but no big plans.
Thanks.

CRASS AN ARTICLE

Re-printed in it’s entirety from Best Before). When, in 1976, punk first spewed itself across the nation’s headlines with the message ‘do it yourself’, we, who in various ways and for many years had been doing just that, naively believed that Messrs. Rotten, Strummer etc. etc. meant it. At last we weren’t alone. The idea of becoming a band had never seriously occurred to us, it simply happened. Basically anyone was free to join in and rehearsals were rowdy affairs that invariably degraded into little more than drunken parties. Steve and Penny had been writing and playing together since early ’77, but it wasn’t until Summer of that year that we had begged, borrowed and stolen enough equipment to actually call ourselver a band….CRASS. Having finally managed to rehearse five songs, we set out on the road to fame and fortune armed with our instruments and huge amounts of booze to help us see it through. We did gigs and benefits, chaotic demonstrations of inadequacy and independence. We got turned off here, turned down there and banned from the now legendary Roxy Club. ‘They said they only wanted well behaved boys, do they think guitars and microphones are just fucking toys?’ By now we had realised that our fellow punks, The Pistols, The Clash and all the other muso-puppets weren’t doing it at all. They may like to think that they ripped off the majors, but it was Joe Public who’d been ripped. They helped no one but themselves, started another facile fashion, brought a new lease of life to London’s trendy Kings Road and claimed they’d started a revolution. Same old story. We were on our own again. Through the alchoholic haze we determined to make it our mission to create a real alternative to musie biz exploitation, we wanted to offer something that gave rather than took and, above all, we wanted to make it survive. Too many promises have been made from stages only to be forgotten on the streets. Throughout the long, lonely winter of 77/78 we played regular gigs at The White Lion, Putney with the UK Subs. The audience consisted mostly of us when the Subs played and the Subs when we played. Sometimes it was disheartening, but usually it was fun. Charley Harper’s indefatigable enthusiasm was always an inspiration when times got bleak, his absolute belief in punk as a peoples’ music had more to do with revolution than McClaren and his cronies could ever have dreamt of. Through sheer tenacity we were exposing the punk charlatans for what they really were, a music-biz hype. Our gigs remained wild and disorderly, we were still too scared to play without a belly full of booze and invariably we were in such a state that we’d realise half way through a song that each of us was playing a different one. For all the chaos it was immense fun, no one bitched about leather boots or moaned about milk in tea, no one wanted to know how anarchy and peace could be reconciled, no one bored our arses off with protracted monologues on Bakunin, who at that time we probably would have thought was a brand of vodka. Ideas were open, we were creating our own lives together. These were the glorious years before the free alternatives that we were creating became just another set of bigoted rules, before what we were defining as real punk became yet another squalid ghetto. We even played a Rock Against Racism gig, the only gig that we’d ever been paid for. When we told the man to keep the money for the cause, he informed us that ‘this was the cause’. We never played for RAR again.-READ MORE LINK-http://blog.southern.com/about-crass-records/-

Lauren Barley	2:31 PM (22 hours ago)
to me

Thank you so much for getting in touch. Great that you are interested in Crass. There's so much of a story to tell...this would be a good place to start: http://blog.southern.com/about-crass-records/

Thanks for the cartoon! Let me know how you get on with your explorations.

On 10 December 2014 at 16:20, mark antony raines <maraines88@gmail.com> wrote:

i would like to know more about crass as heard a brief history through a talk given at weird weekend 2014 by wally dean ,am just a humble blogger  here is a link-http://ghostmanraines.blogspot.co.uk/ and a free cartoon for you-thank you from me mark aka ghostman

thank yo-Web: www.rarelyunable.com
Twitter: @rarelyunable

Back-to-work schemes are 'making mental illness worse' says charity

The government's back-to-work schemes are ineffective and damaging for people with mental health problems, according to campaigners. The charity Mind says unemployed people with mental health problems should be moved from mainstream programmes onto a specialist scheme. Mind surveyed 439 people supported by the government's Work Programme. The government says it has helped thousands of people with mental illnesses into work. The coalition government introduced the Work Programme - a key plank in its welfare reform agenda - in 2011. Participants are given support but can face sanctions if they fail to comply with certain conditions. According to Mind, 83% of people they surveyed said using the programme and the government's job centre services had made their mental health worse. Three quarters of those polled said they felt less able to work as a result of being on these schemes, the charity said. At the same time, the schemes were ineffective for people with mental health problems, as only 5% of people had been helped into work, campaigners claimed. 'Perverse' The charity is calling for the government to introduce a specialist scheme for people with mental health problems. The Work Programme is a government welfare-to-work programme introduced in Great Britain in June 2011. "It's perverse that programmes which are supposed to help those who are unwell and struggling to get into work are having the opposite effect, damaging their health," said Paul Farmer, Mind's chief executive. "These schemes are not appropriate for people with mental health problems. If someone is out of work because of depression and anxiety, simply asking them to attend a CV writing course is a waste of time and money, as it doesn't address the real problems they are facing. "Forcing people to engage in these activities, and cutting their benefits if they struggle to do so, is inappropriate and counter-productive. "This approach assumes people don't want to work and the only way to motivate them is to withdraw financial support, which only causes greater anxiety and stress, and makes returning to work less likely."read more-http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30415243

MERLIN IS A HOOT.

An escaped European Eagle Owl  has been perched  on top of a house in OLD TOWN area  of BIDEFORD,DEVON for several days. The  bird is called MERLIN  and is 13 years old. EUROPEAN Female Eagle Owls  can grow to 30 inches -76cms in length and a wingspan of 74 inches -188cms ,males afre slightly smaller. Their nortunal predators and hunt small mammals ,birds,reptiles,amphibians,fish,large insects,earthworms.

BEES CAN HELP?

If you need help with hair growth,treat tumours,inflamation and wounds,fungal and bacterial invasions.Try out a natural sealant used by bees called PROPOLIS could be your answer ,tried on mice by DR.KEN  KOBAYASI,JAPAN.

NORTHAM HISTORY GROUP NEWS.

If you like to see archive  history of Northam,Devon a new room at the Bideford and District    Community Archives.From 1856 to present day and housed at council offices in Windmill  Lane.Run by volunteers and is OPEN MONDAY,WEDNESDAY 9.30 AM TO 1.00 PM Worth a look.

We found an ancient lake on Mars — a sign the planet may have once been habitable

Earlier this week, the scientists running NASA's Curiosity rover announced the mission's latest finding: evidence of an ancient Martian lake that appears to have formed over the course of millions of years and has since dried up. Naturally, this has a lot of people asking the obvious question: Was Mars once home to alien life? This is a difficult question, and one that scientists still don't have a full answer to. But by collecting more and more data with Curiosity and other probes, they're getting a better idea of what Mars looked like billions of years ago. http://www.vox.com/2014/12/11/7376103/mars-curiosity-lake Here's what we know — and how the new finding changes things.READ MORE AND SEE PHOTOS LINK-