Cro Cro Land Forever (please)
The sold out Cro Cro Land Festival of 2024 is so much more than a MOMENT of the year.
Read MoreDon’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.
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)
Post PMF Pre (r)Evolution
Our post-post modern fairytale, post-"Post-Punk" (and long post fascist coup) documentary is an artist powered blueprint of a courteous and compassionate recovery - for the many.
This includes the imperfect but mostly kind humanity of planet and peace, as well as the alien-hearted, ingreeding hate-mongers of war. There’s no Planet B. There is no Britain B, either. Even though it cost less to start littering Mars, than to steal from a nation while ensuring enough of them died to save even more on pensions etc. Black Lives Matter gifted an instant major history lesson for us to rebuild a #GR8BRTN with equity for equality. (Tyler Challenger's front cover image for the Autumn 2019 upload of this doc is reprised later in that issue as Post Modern Scary Tale. We are now in a groundhog day Stockholm Syndrome situation of All Fools Day x Halloween).
This is actually how we already operate and inspired TheZineUK from ArtBeat gatherings at the end of 2013. Uploading mid-March 2014 we could have NO idea. The last page of Chapter 1 is from a scene in TryLifeTV at the grassroots venue which spawned us, Amersham Arms. Half of Nova Twins represented in Floodliners photographed by Rupert Hitchcox.
How the wonderful Zeenagers (generation tremorists of creativity and performance) have come through this, is a heroic story of it's own making. DIY power is real.
It’s Spring 2021
The Dystopian Future is a reality beyond the twisted sick imaginings of fiction to screaming divided friction. Cast and crew from our pages have stepped up with kindness, courage, exceptional albums, digital adaption, charitable hearts and collaborative goodwill. (Oops, guys, we were supposed to have been divided and conquered!!! - Fuck that, our voices are 4REAL)
The Newer Wave of music industrious who rock the #SaveOurVenues circuit have organically laid the foundations of the next public service announcements - with guitars.
Between us we love - and are influenced by - every genre of music. As humans shag new beauty into the world, Nature style, our sixth sense fused heritages bloom like the living globe who gives birth to us.
Mother Earth, Father Time, Sister Moon and Brother Sun interact with the one race: Living Water Based Meat Machines. We can't live in water, live without it. We sing and dance before we can talk and walk. Laughter, romance and poetry can stay in the hearts of lifelong children, despite the 21st century being misruled by the few; Blue Meanies.
I Now Live In A (virtual) Yellow Submarine
Rock n Roll is tribal, queer and fun. Anybody can be magnetised. When TheZineUK started, sofa-critics stated that guitar bands "are over". Bollocks. What STARS from our tale are achieving over our collective seven year (w)itch, is genuinely unreal.
There is no huge wealth investment financing this. Everything is a fucking struggle. I won't lie, I was in such a bad head space this weekend that I've cancelled an online appearance. I can't face people yet, but I can type and my family friend circle is inspirational, so HALLO! - I'm gonna allow myself to breathe good vibrations in, to share the joy again. Everybody we know is in a bad place. It's called Capitalist Earth. 2020 Vision turned out to mean seeing things clearly so Evil's Empire appropriated "woke" to fashion a weapon against being aware.
Sixth sense human instinct cares for planet and people. The force is weak in alien hearts who worship money, statues, flags and position. They are sad fucks, wasting their time on Eden.
Every day humans ROCK, quite literally, in our case.
Uniqulture: The day after Lockdown 2020 began, the aptly named Joyzine had assembled Balcony Online Fest to broadcast and raise charity funds.
It's the first quarter of 2021
Let SEVEN #SaveOurVenues rocking promoters speak for themselves
Then we SO want Reading and Leeds Festivals to happen so that Nova Twins can rightly take their place on the main stage.