- What have I learned? – The I worked just a few houses away from where HG Wells wrote War of the worlds
- Listening to – Live ’85 – The Alarm
- Reading – Still working through Time to Teach: A History of the Southern Civil Rights by Julian Bond
Still working my way through the Julian Bond’s Time to Teach. Still a great read, detailed, and does not pull punches, both within the civil rights movement, and the south in general. Let’s be clear, the south and organizations like the “White Citizens Council” are never going to look good, and quite frankly they should not.
Currently learning about the run up to the passing of the 1965 Civil Rights act. Civil Rights organizations were pushing for voting rights. This led to riots and protests across the south, but specifically in Alabama and the city of Selma. There the county sheriff used the police force to stop African Americans from registering to vote, with violence if necessary.
In January and February of 1965 Selma saw the contrasting approaches of non-violence pushed by MLK, and a few days later an explicit call to arms by Malcom X. The book claims that Malcom X’s language was more extreme in the hope of making MLK seems more reasonable, and to get the support of whites.
This led to the Selma to Montgomery marches, the first one ended in what became known as bloody Sunday as marchers were hit my teargas and charged by police horses. Bond felt that the pictures that were beamed into houses across the country that night from Selma let to President Johnston addressing a joint session of Congress a couple of weeks later, and directly asking for voting right legislation. This led to the Voting Rights Act being passed that August.
Riveting read, and I really can’t recommend it enough.
In 1986 (also within living memory) I went to Wembley to see Freddie Mercury and Queen absolutely dominate. It was my first huge stadium concert and everyone else I’ve ever seen has been compared to that sunny day at Wembley.
One of the support bands were The Alarm, I was vaguely aware of a couple of their songs (68 Guns was one), but that was about it. The opening band was INXS playing one their first British gigs, and they walked off the stage after Michael Hutchins got hit by an apple. They were not very good.
Then the Alarm came on and rocked, I’ve never found a bootleg of The Alarm that day, but the short set they played was really good. The Alarm Live ‘85 was recorded the previous fall in Boston and was the same line up that we saw at Wembley that day. Good live album, not overly remixed and shows a band at the top of their form. Songs come from Declaration and Strength albums, I think their strongest studio work, and the crowd is clearly having a great evening.