Latest / You Call That Radio? / 'Radical Glasgow History' w/ The Tenementals (David Archibald)

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'Radical Glasgow History' w/ The Tenementals (David Archibald) · You Call That Radio?

• 0:00
  Speaker A: A minute.
• 0:03
  Speaker B: Is this a Netflix? It's actually a. A podcast is where the. Our podcast, you know, it's kind of.
• 0:10
  Speaker C: Like a radio show.
• 0:12
  Speaker D: Radio.
• 0:17
  Speaker B: 2Nd of November. It is minus 7 degrees in Glasgow and I am considering having a LEM set for recreational purposes. I hope you're all well and welcome to episode 23, season 4. If you call that radio's audio podcast. This is a really interesting episode. Today I was on Facebook and I seen a really good page called Lost Glasgow. They share loads of cool pictures and stories from Glasgow's past and they were promoting and writing up this band called the Tenementals. So I just seen. This is all new to me. This is only about a week or two ago. I watched a video called the Illa Minerva and both the animations and the lyrics blew me away instantly. Loved it. So I sent the Tenementals a message and David Archibald of the Tenementals responded and said they would love to come on the show. So it's a really interesting conversation. They've basically made an album, concept album about Glasgow's radical past. And David's an interesting guy, he's a working class academic, so we talk about class issues and universities, we speak about the suffragette movement, we speak about Glasgow's anti fascist movement and just lots of interesting tales of Glasgow from the past. So hope you enjoy the show. There's actually an album launch on the 27th of November. If you're a patron, then send me a message if you'd like to go. I've got a few free tickets to give away for it. You can sign up at patreon.com forward slash. You call that radio? We don't have any sponsors or any funding or any adverts during our shows. It's all powered independently by the patrons. So thank you to everyone who does already support the show. And we're having a wee Boxing Day, Christmas night, so check your Patreon notifications for information on that one. And also my band Gyrobabies is playing the Alabama 3 afterparty on Friday 6th December. Once again, send us a message if you would like a ticket. They're very limited and they will sell out quick style. And that's just a nice wee warm up for ahead of our album launch. The dreams are mental. Album launch on March 29th. But you know, I said there'd be no adverts and that's starting to sound like adverts. So that's it, no more adverts. We're going to talk about Glasgow's Radical Past with David Archibald of the Tenementals. And thank you to Michael, as always, for mixing and mastering the audio for you. Hope you enjoy the show. Bye.
• 2:58
  Speaker A: You call that radio? First of all, thanks for joining me. What is the Tenementals?
• 3:06
  Speaker C: Well, firstly, thanks for the opportunity to come on Martin and talk about the Tenementals. So the Tenementals are a group of academics, artists and musicians that live in Glasgow. And at the minute we've been recording a series of songs that we count a history of the city that we live in and we say that we tell a radical history of a radical city and we try and do it in a radical way. So we're interested in exploring fragments of a city through song. You can't really tell the totality of history in any form of history, in fact, but in 42, 40, 42 minutes or nine tracks on a 12 inch album, it's limited to what you can do, so you get fragments. But we think, we hope, that within those fragments of the first volume of the first volume of the series, we've called the album Glasgow A History, Volume one of six. And a journalist asked me the other day, why is it called volume one of six? To which, of course, the only response is, because it's the first one of six and there's another five to come. Whether we get there remains to be seen, but we are interested in a history of the complexity of the city. It's not I belong to Glasgow, it's a bit more complex than that. And we're interested in dissidents and dissenters because we think that they forcefully change the shape of history by standing up and saying, no, we don't want it to be like this. We think it could be better. And we think that by looking at moments in the past where people have attempted to foster positive change, then we nurture and look after those little moments and we see what we can learn and we try and popularize them and blast them into the future. So the Tenementals are interested in radical pasts, but we're more interested in radical futures.
• 5:09
  Speaker A: How do you go around choosing? I think you've got on, according to the. What I've read and what I've heard, you've picked up on things like people from Glasgow fighting against fascism. You've got suffrage, deadly suffragettes movement and also you've got things like Jimmy Reed as well. It's mad that you've actually got six planned. How did you pick your first ones? Are these. Are these. Are these in order of things that are of interest to you personally, or is it just the way that the music came out?
• 5:47
  Speaker C: Just the way that it falls? I think, like art has to fall the way it falls, I suppose so. I think that there's, you know, a lot of this. I mean, I teach at the university, but a lot of the content of the songs is things that have just happened to me. I write the lyrics, I don't. Me and Simon, the guitarist, can I put the songs together? I write the lyrics and then he comes into my house with his guitar, he writes the chords and maybe between us we put some kind of a melody together. Sometimes not. Sometimes it takes a different form. But the lyrics I can write. And sometimes they might be things that I first encountered when I was a teenager or even earlier. But as a teenager I read. I was interested in the Spanish Civil War. I was involved in the Young Socialists and I read all the books that I could about the Spanish Civil War. So when we were coming to write a history of Glasgow and thinking about songs about that, then, you know, the statue to the members of the International Brigades who left from Glasgow and never returned to fight in Spain, and the years between 1936 and 1939 where they fought against a right wing group of people who had staged a military coup against a democratically elected left wing government. It seemed that that would be an interesting tale to tell. But we were also interested in some of the complexities of that. So the Spanish Civil War, like all civil wars, isn't. There's quite complex stuff going on there. And basically the song poses a question about whether we need to know the complex stuff because the fascists are coming back and they absolutely are coming back, whether that's in Spain or elsewhere. So that for us was one of the songs that we just. That was one of the first songs that we wrote. But another one of the songs that you mentioned there talks about Jimmy Reed and Jimmy Reid, who some people might know was the leader of the. Or he was the recognized leader, the unofficial leader of the occupation of the yards, the shipyards, which took place there, four main yards in the Clyde in 71. And the workers then, they didn't go on strike, but they occupied the yards and they had what they called a working. So for a period of months the workers controlled the. Controlled the. Could control the shipyards. Reid was a kind of giant at that time. He became a kind of world famous figure in the Glaswegian, the British labour movement. He was on Parkinson, the Saturday night main television chat show. And after that he was elected by the students to be the rector of the University of Glasgow. And he was. And he made a magnificent speech in the main hall in the university in Butte hall. And the speech was titled Alienation. And he talks about different aspects of. He talks about the rat race and why he shouldn't be signed up to the rat race. So when Reid died a few years ago, he was eulogized as an absolute hero by many people. And just when I was 18, I took a different view with Jimmy Reed because at that time it was the height of the British miners streak and I worked in Browns. I was a shop steward in John Brown's, which had been one of the. Was then, I guess it was a gap made gas turbines when I worked in it. But it was previously one of the shipyards that had formed, you know, the working in 1971. And I was, I had moved to the stewards committee that we should have a pound a week levy for the miners to support the British, to support the miners who were involved in a year long strike when, you know, when they were trying to close the pits, not really for economic reasons, but they wanted to destroy the National Union of Mine Workers because it was the strongest union in Britain and they realized that if they could destroy them, they could make severe inroads into the conditions of working people elsewhere. So that was an absolutely political strike. So that was passed. And what was meant to happen then was that everybody in the union was to give a pound to their shop steward. And then I collected the money from the shop stewards. But what happened was anybody in the union that never paid, I had to go and visit them and persuade them to try and pay the pound a week levy. And the name I heard all the bloody time was Jimmy Reed said the miners are violent. Jimmy Reed said the miners should have had the ballot. Jimmy Reed said this, Jimmy Reid said that. And the problem for me at that point was the chips were down. Thatcher was having a severe conflict with the National Union of Mineworkers. And whether he agreed with everything that the National Union of Mine Workers leadership had done was neither here nor there. The battle, the lines were. The battle lines were drawn and battle had commenced. So at that time I never had a long time for Jimmy Reed at all. Of course if it hadn't been Jimmy Reed, they would have said something else. But Reed at that time, in my view was on the wrong side. The wrong side at the minor strike. Now of course, you take a life and its complexity and its totality. So the song is near. The song doesn't have a go at. It's not a song about Jimmy Reed and the minor street.
• 11:33
  Speaker A: It's not a Jimmy Reed diss track.
• 11:36
  Speaker C: No, no, no. But there is a little line in there. There's a little line in there called it wrong when it came to picket line beatings, which he absolutely did because 40 years later there's evidence, you know, about police, orchestrated police violence against the miners rather than, as Reid was lining up with a kind of right wing argument about minors being violent. So, you know, that's a kind of long story. But, and, but in that song we want. We sort of look at the kind of complexity of. The complexity of people and, you know, don't have heroes, you know, don't have heroes. Don't expect that you should be. Have someone that you can agree with on everything. People are complex. People make mistakes and try and be able to discern what's the positive and what's the negative from them. But we put that all in a kind of song that we think is also quite fun and entertaining. We sampled some of Reid's speech from the universe, from the University of Glasgow's. The speech he made in the credible speeches. Yeah, he was a fantastic auditor and we have a. He's in the song, he's in the tenementals momentarily. So, so we're no so. And we've got. And we're glad that he is. And we want to look at the positive things, but we're not ashamed or afraid to look at the, you know, the things where things could have been better.
• 13:02
  Speaker A: And with regards to you mentioned, learn about the rise of fascism, how, how dangerous is it right now? How close are we to just the rise of fascism coming back? Well, because obviously the reason I'm quite interested because obviously you're coming from a historic background and you know, we are saying that if you don't know history, history repeats itself. And yeah, I would just like to hear your opinion on that.
• 13:28
  Speaker C: Well, I mean, I was in Spain. I was in Spain last. Was it last year or earlier this year? And I passed by a rally organized by Vox, which is really the party of the. The sons of the grandsons and the granddaughters of Francisco Francos. You know, he was the dictator, he was the right wing fascists, won the Spanish Civil War and they ruled Spain with an iron fist from 1936 to Franco's death in November 1975. And maybe after Franco had died then people may have thought that, you know, that, you know, that his resurrection was not on the cards. And yet in A relatively short period of time. You know, people and people in Spain are afraid. They're afraid of what would be, what would be the consequences. I was in a meeting in the University of Madrid last year, and a man said that to me. He says, I'm very afraid of what the future holds. So are we in the same position that we were in Europe in the 1930s where Hitler was elected in January 1933? Mussolini had been in power. Franco came to power through civil war. We're not in that position, I don't think. But I think we see in countries in Europe, in Germany, in Austria, in Spain, forces of the organized far right which are, you know, which are significant, absolutely significant. And of course, we know history. One of the things history tells us is that when they take power, they absolutely quash democracy, that their opponents become the enemy, the enemy within, and the enemy within has to be dealt with. And of course, some of these issues have arisen in the United States of America. I don't think Trump's a. Well, depends on how you define it. But Trump's primary aim is personal accumulation. He's interested in felonies, pockets, and keeping.
• 15:39
  Speaker A: Himself out of the jail and keeping.
• 15:41
  Speaker C: Himself out of jail and surrounding himself with people who are also, I mean, it's some kind of, it's a, it was almost like a parody where he names the people who are, you know, chief executive officers of gas and oil, who to be the new environment secretaries, or people who, you know, bodies are covered with tattoos which take the name from the Crusades. I mean, these are people of the extreme right. So they're interested in personal accumulation, interested in filling their pockets, keeping themselves out of the prison. And they are all of an extreme right political persuasion. And that's, I think that that's, that's incredibly worrying. And of course, at home as well, and, and by which, I mean, in Britain, then you know, the, the, the, the growth of the far right. And here is, you know, something I don't think is we've seen in my lifetime.
• 16:41
  Speaker A: So. So you saying that you think that there's been far right tactics used, Obviously, the, by turning people against each other. So there's far right rhetoric, but the people themselves don't seem that overly concerned about ideology, but more like self enrichment.
• 17:03
  Speaker C: Well, I think the, I think the right has been better at the left than the left, very broadly appealing to people's naked self interests. And, and there's nothing wrong with developing programs which do appeal to people's self interests. And we'll see what happens in Britain. But the new leader of the Labour Party, he doesn't seem to meet someone who's prioritized the working class. And of course when racism and fascism emerges, it doesn't just emerge amongst the working class, it becomes a cross class phenomenon. And you get fascism at the upper echelons of the society, amongst the upper class, amongst the middle class and amongst the working class. But as someone who positions themselves politically on the left then I'm interested in how you might mobilize working people to resist that. So, you know, so there's a concentration on policies that may be developed by working class people, by the trade unions who historically have been the most effective people preventing the growth of fascism, are the most prepared to put their bodies on the line. Whether that be in Cable street in East London in the twenties or in Europe and elsewhere, or the people from Glasgow, three score and more who went from Glasgow to fight in Spain and died, you know, died and never put their bodies on the line in order to fight fascism there. So I'm interested in labor movement strategies and socialist strategies that might be discussed and put into place to counter the fascists.
• 19:00
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's quite a worrying thing because it's really, it's Starmer go and without. We used to politicians lying and giving us false promises, false hope. But he seems like the only the Prime Minister that I can remember in my lifetime that didn't have. We didn't promise anything. He kind of just sort of said yeah, it's going to be really bad, it's going to be tough. But I think the TWIES were just so terrible over the, the various four, four or whatever Prime Ministers that they had that people just needed a change. So it is concerning that you've got people at the Reform Party that will, that will happily lie and offer something new or something in theory something new that they're going to claim. So yeah, that is quite concerning. Nigel Farage for Prime Minister. Could it be Nigel Farage 2028 and Elon Musk 2028? How does Elon Musk fit into all this? Is with the rise obviously right Now I say the 19th of November, the last four days, about 20 million people have supposedly left Twitter to join Blue Sky. I don't actually believe that's going to be a long term thing, but I've been wrong before. What do you make of all of that? It's quite interesting here, isn't it? You could have a thing where there's actually a left wing bubble appearing somewhere else and a Right wing bubble on Twitter.
• 20:34
  Speaker C: Yeah, I don't know, I'm not an expert on social media. I mean it would be good. I mean Twitter, any casual user of Twitter over the last year will have seen an absolute degeneration. And you open it up and scroll it and scroll through it in the morning, not your followers, but the people that are picked for you and it's just carnage, absolute carnage. So if Twitter was to go under, then I don't think many people at this stage would shed tears for Twitter in its current state. Of course, what Twitter did for many people right at the beginning was it did form a space where people could have these digital interactions and it provided a lot of joy for a lot of people. I mean, I don't know enough about bluesky. Tenementals have signed up to bluesky but really just to sell our stuff and let people know what we are up to. But these communications platforms, I suppose it's like anything, you can't rely on them being owned and controlled by billionaires and then expect them to do good things. They're interested in accumulation, so they're interested in accumulation and putting people in power who will allow them to do what they want to do, which is accumulate profit. So, you know, Blue Sky I think is owned by billionaires as well.
• 22:02
  Speaker A: So they're all owned by billionaires. And I think I said, you know, we're all, we're all in free. You call that radio destroyed Blue sky as well. So I'm saying that I just, I've just, I think I've seen it before though. It is, I think that what people have spent years building the fan bases into it. I think, you know, people that are actually deleting it. Fair enough. But I don't think it will. It will. Can it will last for long. But yeah, you've got, you've got billionaires, you know who you're going to give your money to. People are on Facebook with an irony saying, I've joined Blue Sky, I'm one of them. But you know, that's Facebook as well, which is probably got us into this situation in the first place with some, some elections that set us up to where we are now. But getting back to history, just to sort of talk about that, the Glaswegians that involved in Spain. What was the song called? This one, the album about that. And yeah, could just give us a little bit more information because maybe for them, for some of our younger viewers, I may not be aware of the, the Franco background.
• 23:08
  Speaker C: Okay. So we wrote a song Called A Passion Flowers Lament, which is written from the perspective of the statue to a Basque politician commonly known as La Passionaria. And she was a left wing radical. She was a member of the Communist party in Spain in the 1930s. And that monument is to the men from Glasgow who went to Spain and they fought in the International Brigades. And the International Brigades was an international collection between 30 and 40,000 strong of people who went to Spain to fight fascism. Because at that period, Franco had been one of three generals who rebelled against the. Who led a military rebellion against a democratically elected left wing government. And so there was a civil war that took place In Spain between 1936, between generally progressive forces, people on the, you know, the left and the, you know, in the center, and then the kind of far right and the right and the military. But. And so 65 men from Glasgow went and never returned. But also what happened at that time is that there was a revolution in Spain in 1936 as well. So in the northeast of Spain, primarily around Catalonia and just below Catalonia, when the workers were resisting the Franco, the fascist attempt to overthrow the government, the workers took control of parts of Spain. So in Barcelona, the workers organized a revolution. The workers ran Barcelona. George Orwell, who wrote an interesting book called Homage to Catalonia, he describes being in Barcelona at that time. And he said, it was the first time I had been in a situation, a city where the workers were in the saddle. So in Barcelona, everything came under the control of the workers organizations. Even the cinema. Cinema was collectivized and the anarchists. Anarchism was a massive force in Spain in the 1930s. There was over a million people in the anarchist trade union cnt. And so that the northeast of Spain was revolutionary Spain. It was not just. It was not there just a fight for democracy. People were there fighting for revolution. They wanted. The peasants wanted to own the land. The workers wanted to own and run the factories. So of course, the landowners and the church, or the majority of the official figures in the church and the army were hell bent on absolutely crushing that and crushing any form of. Of democracy. Anybody who was labeled as a democrat was just labeled as a Rocco, a red. And many people were just taken. When the fascists would come into a city, they would just round people up, imprison them, and then take them for a walk in the evening and shoot them and bury them in shallow graves. And actually they undertook, when Franco won in 1939, they conducted what they called Olympia, a cleansing. And that cleansing involved the physical eradication of their enemies right up until 1973. The last political prisoner, 1973, if I'm not mistaken, executed by a garrote. Where they get. These fuckers are medieval and executed with a garrote which is tightened up and you get strangulated or strangled. So the song Wiro salutes every one of those, you know, every one of those men that went to fight. But also because Spain was involved in that revolutionary action as well. There were some people on the left who were in favor of the revolution and there were some people who were saying, oh, we need to be a bit more cautious and it's just a fight for democracy. So there was a conflict between those groups and some people get caught in the crossfire of that. And one of the people that got caught in the crossfire of that was a student from the University of Glasgow called Bob Smiley, who was a member of what was called the Independent Labour Party. And the people in the Independent Labour Party, they traveled to Spain, but just because of the different intricacies of the organizations, they didn't fight with the International Brigades. They fought. We are kind of different groups. And Bob Smiley got involved in some kind of conflict between the pro revolutionary side and the side that were concentrating on fighting just for democracy. And he got arrested when he was trying to leave the country. And you know, it's a bit. It's a bit. He was badly beaten and he died in a prison cell in Valencia. And no one knows for. Absolutely, for absolute certain, but it's at least possible that he died at the hand of his own. And the people who were ostensibly on his own side, he may have died of natural causes. That is not an absolute certain fact about that. But we dedicated the song to him because he's not one of the International Brigades. So he's not really remembered in some way. So I suppose the Tamentos are interested in these histories. You know, we want people to find out more about the. About what happened. But we're also interested in the little stories that are a little bit more complicated than the stuff that's a bit. Not less neat. And we're interested in the margins of the margins. So we're interested in the people that get sidelined, even from the. Even from the stories of the great heroes that went and fought in Spain. So that's a long answer. But Spain's complicated. The complicated but. But inspiring. And the thing about it is this, for me anyway, the Jean Paul Sartre says in relation to the Paris 1968, or jump in another country, but in Paris 68, it was a massive revolt, again led by the students. And there was a workers general strike. And there was the possibility that there was at least the possibility that there was going to be some form of revolution. France in 68. And Sartre says something like, if it happened once, it can happen again. And I think that that's the same for revolutions elsewhere. You know, the reason that the Spanish ruling class are terrified of the idea of the story of the Spanish revolution is because they know more than anybody else. They know more than anybody else. The ruling classes know more than anybody else. The revolutions can happen again and they can happen when people least expect them. And that's what happened in Spain. No one was really expecting that to happen. No one was really expecting the massive revolt in Paris in 68 to happen. So things pop up when they're least expected. So we're interested in nurturing those little revolutionary moments and taking care of them, making them more popular and blasting them into the future.
• 30:29
  Speaker A: And just play. Thanks for that big answer. Why don't we play one of your tunes?
• 30:37
  Speaker C: So my answers can be very long. I can keep here.
• 30:40
  Speaker A: I like it, you know, I like it. It's not my special subject. So it's just good to hear what you've got to say about this stuff.
• 30:49
  Speaker C: And yeah, just say something about the music. And so, I mean, so as I said, you know, the lyrics. And Stu Simon is a guitarist, very talented musician. Simon also does the artwork for the. For the Tenementals. We've created some artworks which we. Which we're happy with. We hope other people like them. And Simon and I worked together on the little videos that we make. Not just us, but, you know, primarily us. And Simon, I think as well. That song, we kind of put it together in my house. We. A couple of lemonades. But Simon put that Simon used an old guitar that he found in the street. Simon lives in Govern. And he found this old Spanish guitar in the street. And so I think there's something quite nice about that in the sense that what's nice about that or what's fitting about that, to use perhaps a better word, is that the Tenementals are also interested in using things that have been discarded and rubbished and put into the dust. Beneficiary. And we're interested in recovering them and looking after them and seeing what we can do with them. So it was quite fitting that we found an old Spanish guitar and tried to make something that at least we thought was quite beautiful from it.
• 32:07
  Speaker A: I say so. And just to clarify, you called it as a Wild research project. Is that correct? Yes, yes, a wild research. And also just I did TV on another interview saying that, you know, that is as well as it's about how history books is how the beginning. I don't know what examples you give, but you're talking about history used to be taught by theater back in the day. And yeah, if you'd like to just expand on that.
• 32:39
  Speaker C: Okay, so you could say that history is too important to be left to the historians, that the Tenementals, by bringing out an album which claims it's a history and demands that it is taken seriously as a history, then what it's doing, I think one of the things it's doing is posing a question, well, what is history? So if we regard the outputs that historians make, which is like standard essays, 8,000 word essay, or a book, a history book 80,000 words long, we're interested in saying, well, what would it be like if academics, academic historians or academics produced histories in a different shape and in a different form? What would we gain from that? We might lose something, but we want people, we want other academics, we want historians to listen to the Tenementals album and say, okay, I'm going to assess that as a work of history. And we think that, we hope that we're something to be gained by doing it differently. And maybe the example that I mentioned in another interview was the Haitian the Story of the Haitian Revolution by C.L.R. james, who one of the key books about the seminal account of the slave revolt in Haiti, or Haiti is the Black Jacobins. And before it was produced as a history book, it was produced as a West End play. So that history, that history comes into being in a different shape through art. So what we're interested in exploring, if history becomes art, what's gained, what's lost. And of course you get a different. You get different histories. Maybe the histories are more personal, maybe the histories are less rigorous. There's no footnotes in the Tenementals album. There's no where you can go and check up their sources. But we hope that maybe there's something that you can gain. But it's up to other people to call that. We're not going to review our own album. We're happy for other people to engage with. We're also happy if people engage with and they're critical of that. But that's fine. But we want to have that conversation.
• 35:27
  Speaker A: And it was showing, basically the tent was new to me up until a week or two ago. Show us to Lost Glasgow. A great page on Facebook. Who Share some really interesting facts and photography from. From the site. And yeah, they just.
• 35:45
  Speaker C: Can I just say Lost Glasgow have been great supporters of the tenementals and the really valuable. Right at the beginning I asked Norrie from was Glasgow. I said, can we join forces? I said, we've got 300 followers on Twitter and you've got 177,000 followers on Facebook, but maybe we could work together. So they've been. And Nori wrote a blisteringly great review of the album on Lost Glasgow. So we're very grateful for their support. And Nori's actually compared in the album Lunch and or and more on the.
• 36:21
  Speaker A: 27Th, 27th of November. And we'll be talking about the support act after the song as well. We've got a very special support act which we'll get to. So this is the Owl of Minerva and the animation's fantastic as well. It really. It really just grabbed me.
• 36:37
  Speaker C: Simon.
• 36:38
  Speaker A: Simon did that as well. It's really fantastic. It really, really grabbed my attention. And the lyrics as well. Just really. It just demands. It demands your attention. So could you just give us a little bit of background to the Owl of Minerva and where this all comes from?
• 36:55
  Speaker C: Yeah, sure. So there's a kind of phrase of an aphorism associated with the philosopher Hegel, which is the owl of Minerva takes flight at dusk. Now, different people will spend a lot of time interpreting that. One very simple way of thinking about it is just. It begins as night falls. We begin to understand things. We begin to understand things as the. At the end of them. And I was walking along Minerva street in Finiston, which is at the foot of the Finiston crane. And I thought, maybe this is the way an artist may differ from a historian. Maybe not. But I just thought, I wonder what it would be like if then if the Earl of Minerva was on the. On top of the finishing train and lived there and flew over the city and talked about what she saw and then and asked some questions about what history was. And that was the song. And once you know that, I mean, if you write songs sometimes you might know. It's like you think, well, that's the song. I now need to do it. But actually 50% of the labor in some ways, what is recognizing what the thing is. So that was how. That. That was how the song came into being. And then. And then this. The same process, we kind of worked. We worked. We worked that soul together. We. A couple of lemonades and in a few different sessions. And. Yeah, and it's the it's probably the most. It's the first track on the. On the first side of the first album. So I think that says something about where it sits in the tenuel.
• 38:35
  Speaker A: Let's give that a shot.
• 38:55
  Speaker D: Minerva takes flight at dusk from the finest and cran she flies east Agricola's quota, the half life where the rapids of revolution give way to river banks of financialization Mongoose children lie in slumber Emboldens of pleasure and bars of silent forges of production she comes to settle on a red road in ruin.
• 39:34
  Speaker E: She.
• 39:35
  Speaker D: Ponders what will rise from these broken bricks of utopia. New futures, new presence or new pasts. And still the river flows. The Earl of Minerva takes flight to dusk from the Finiston trance she flies west Colonial gardens, bourgeois bachelor boulevards great in Weston Four story tenemental sandstones, red and blonde Georgian terraces, Parks of Sutkus Kelvin bridges, the three judges stones of Arlington stitched by Polish tailors and halls of oriental residence she comes to settle on a flagpole of learning she ponders if the past is simply random non systematic motion why does it always settle into patterns of scarcity and depression? And still the river flows. The isle of Minerva takes flight at dusk from the Finiston crown she flies south Carol teens Glasgow greens housing schemes expanse citizens from Bengal, Donegal Dip bred in the ghost of Viking cauldrons Longships long gone what's in the hour of the wolf? Tramways transport thug dies to midsummer weeks on Kafkan breeze Where Joyce's donkey caribou and castle she comes to settle on a golden dome of worship she ponders what value the rag picker who rakes through the dustbin of history Conjuring a constellation of possibility. And still the river flows. The Earl of Minerva takes flight and dusk from the finest and crown she flies north Hills of hag, hills of lamb, Canals forth and clay she surveys a swam ocean Majestic panorama pure of coin but rich in gallus swagger.
• 42:53
  Speaker E: Beyond.
• 42:54
  Speaker D: The black hills of Malindina Boom. A gallery of preachers on a highway of historical time Prodigy Call me John Bible John, Christ, even paupers John. She comes to settle home on her cantilever roost and she ponders, she ponders if the past is just one thing after another Perhaps interruption is the true revolutionary act. And still the river falls.
• 44:13
  Speaker A: So yeah, that's the elementerva taken from the new Tenementals album the string order more 27 November and there is tickets.
• 44:23
  Speaker B: Available and they are free, I understand.
• 44:27
  Speaker C: Yeah, we got some funding from Glasgow City Heritage Trust, which paid for the production costs of the album and the costs of the oring more gigs. So that's amazing. We're very grateful to them from their point of view. I think they see it as a way of raising awareness and understanding of the city's built environment, which is what they're interested in. So it's quite enlightened on their part and it's good for us and it's good for people who can come and see a free gig.
• 44:56
  Speaker A: Yep. I've already got my tickets booked. I've put a link in the. In the info for anybody who's wanting to order a ticket and it's limited to two per people. It's free, but book in advance because I believe it's almost sold out. And we've got some comments. Read a couple. Pay for a couple of the comments that are coming in. Dan sun says, what a journey of Glasgow. Brilliant words. Worried about poppers John though. And they still saying, I wonder if that's the same paupers John.
• 45:26
  Speaker C: I remember it's everybody's paupers John. I mean that's a shout out to all the poppers John's everywhere.
• 45:37
  Speaker A: We've got Dr. Normal saying burn. Great lyrics. And I'm a bit of a Midgie record in history myself. Says excellent fmu. I love the correlation and inspiration. And he also adds, there's nothing but thanks for the research and dedication to humanity's true heroes and spotlighting their sacrifices for others. Right to freedom of self and thoughts through the arts, music and poetry.
• 46:05
  Speaker C: Absolutely. That's. That's really nice to read these comments. That's lovely.
• 46:09
  Speaker A: And Mark McInnes is saying, is that you in the Winter War?
• 46:12
  Speaker C: I'm in the winter.
• 46:13
  Speaker A: Well, that's just to be very insane joke. Just because I like it when I. I'm not there with a summer water man. I like a nice cold tap. I don't have time. A busy man. I can't be in 10 seconds for my war to come off the top. So, yes, this. This episode is sponsored by Winter War. Okay. It's free from the tap if you.
• 46:32
  Speaker C: Feel that's what we like.
• 46:35
  Speaker A: So yeah, brilliant video. The animation is fantastic. So shows to Simon for. For doing that. So yeah, just go. Let's have a look at. So it seems like that there's a. The album's focusing on the radical history of not only Glasgow, but of course it's going to be Glasgow centric. There is a. There's a big element of Glasgow. So can we talk about the History of Glasgow. Where did Glasgow come from?
• 47:00
  Speaker C: Oh, that's for the album. Album three or four. Maybe we'll come. We'll cover that. We'll come to that in due course. I actually spent 30 years in Govan, so which was, you know, I lived in Govan for 30 years. So we may have another album dedicated to Govan because Govan, you know, Govan would have been bigger than Glasgow before, you know, before the origins of the city. Glasgow is 850 years old next year. But Govan was the center of the spirit. Govan was the spiritual center of what was called the kingdom of Strathclyde. Played which was, you know, I don't know how actually. I mean, there's a. There's. I actually still think some of that history is kind of not that well known in the city even. Although in the last few years there's been more knowledge has come to pass about the. About the governed stones. There's a collection of medieval stones in the church in Govan and there's a long story about that. But in something like 870, I grew up. Vikings and Gaels set sail from Dublin and they laid siege to Dumbarton Rock for four months. They killed the king and then they defeated. It was a kind of Brittonic kingdom. And they sailed up the Clyde and they formed a new settlement and govern. And then they created. That became the center. That became a new kingdom, the kingdom of Strathclyde. And Govind was the center of it and they created these kind of sculptures, these kind of possibly death stones. And they're there in the church and it's quite an incredible. Quite an incredible history. And I think a lot of people think about Govan and they think about the shipyards, but there's a whole history. There's a whole pre history of Govan, which is super interesting as well. And so maybe further down the line we'll write a little story about the history of Govan. Or govern my sneak. Sneak it sneak in there as well.
• 49:03
  Speaker A: So yeah, Govern so governs album four.
• 49:06
  Speaker C: Possibly.
• 49:07
  Speaker A: Possibly album four. So we say what. What other topics on the. On the new album? We've got. Oh yeah, let's talk about Monica Queen actually.
• 49:18
  Speaker C: Yes. So I mean, Monica Queen is an extraordinarily talented singer who I think is from Lanarkshire. I don't know if she's with Bells Hill or somewhere like that, but. And our drummer, Bob Anderson, who also runs a little micro label that we bring our tracks on strength and numbers records. Bob drums with Monica and Monica's partner is Johnny Smiley. And Johnny Smiley mixes and masters the tracks on the album. And, you know, we want. We had. We were in the luxurious position of being able to work with different talented female singers. And we had said to Monica maybe that Monica would maybe record a track with us. And we hadn't got round to do that yet, but we were doing a concert in St. Luke's in September 2023, and we asked Monica if she would maybe just do one song with us that night. And we sang a song. We asked her if she would sing a song by Victor Hara. Victor Hara was a Chilean protest singer, artist, poet. And in 1973, in October, in September 1973 again, there was a democratically elected left wing government that was overthrown by a military police. A combination of the military basically overthrew the democratic elected government, killed Pinochet, who was Pinochet was the leader of the generals. Salvador Allende was the president who died when the military bombed the presidential palace. And Victor Hara, who was the protest singer, was arrested in the immediate days after. In the immediate aftermath of that, he was taken to a football stadium which was used as a concentration camp, where they broke his fingers and then in the next few days shot him dead and then dumped his body in the street. And 50 years to the day, plus one after, plus one day after Victor Harrah's body was discovered, we were doing this gig. So we thought, well, let's do a Victor Hara song. Because while we remember the people who were killed, the artists, the poets, the singers, when we sing their songs, then in some way they still walk with us. So we asked Monica if she would do that. And she came in the night before with Simon and his little Spanish guitar. And we were in La Chunque, which is tenemental headquarters, which is owned by Ronan Breslin, cone by Ronan Breslin, who's the keyboard player in the band, very talented musician. And they just did it once. I was like, wow, that was absolutely amazing. The first take was just like, that was phenomenal. And then the next night, so they rehearsed it two or three times, but they totally had it down. Monica does not speak Spanish, but we'd said to her maybe he could speak. We could maybe do a new translation or. Because it's always nice to do it slightly different in some way. So we were maybe going to do a new translation. And she said, well, I don't speak Spanish, but I speak Italian and I could maybe have a go. So she had a go. And it sounded, you know, it Sounded good. So we. So she sang it the next night we were. We did nine or 10 songs and then we went off stage and we came back on and I, you know, we came back on as an encore and I'm to just said a few words about Victor Hara and then introduced Monica and Simon and you know, it was a special moment. I mean it was a special moment in that. In that special moment for the Tenementals but it was a special moment on the night. It was total silence.
• 53:04
  Speaker A: Is it. Monica's full band is supporting at the.
• 53:08
  Speaker C: Yes, yes, Monica. Monica a partner. Johnny plays the guitar and sings but Monica's the main lead singer and when Monica and Johnny play together we are an acoustic set. They're called Tenement and Temple. But when they play with Monica and the big band they've just given themselves a new name if I'm not mistaken, which is Monica Queen and the Sorrowful Mysteries. So this will be the first outing for. First public outing for Monica Queen and the Sorrowful Mysteries. And they'll be playing half an hour, 35 minutes, something like that. And you know, worthwhile going to see them and then get up the road and missing the Tenementals. I mean they're fantastic in their own right.
• 53:52
  Speaker A: Well, yeah. Tickets. I put the Eventbrite link there for them to my check. I've already got my tickets. If anyone want to go along with me then give me a shoot. With regard also, there's a lot of class mentioned to class throughout the album and there's also something. There's been a bad controversy this week about classism in. Is it Edinburgh University? I think it is, yes. Which classism in the university setting?
• 54:22
  Speaker C: Wow, good question. Well, of course, I mean, wow, how long have you got. I suppose I would say the universities are, you know, I was. I was born. And you know, I was not born in a middle class background, far from it. And I left school, worked in a factory and went to university when I was 28 or 29 and I had spent 10 years before that as a political activist working in trade unions for community organizations. Spent a year of my life trying to organize the campaign against the poll tax, which was. Which was good because Thatcher got a bloody nose in that period. So. And I went to university to read books when I was about 28 or 29. 29. And I wasn't really sure what I was going to do and I ended up getting a job there and I ended up teaching them. And universities, if you're from a working class environment, universities as a teacher As a member of staff, they're awkward places because the rules of the game are they run on middle class moors and it just takes a while to. Takes a while to find your feet, by which I mean about 15 years because it's quite difficult. It's a difficult thing to navigate and to negotiate. Working class people are often very vocal about what they think about things. And middle class people, I don't want to make massive generalizations and yet I just have. But you know, middle class manners are often about silence and listening to silences and hearing silences. Whereas if you make something where, you know, if you do a thing and your working class pals don't like it, then there'll nobody slow in telling you about it. So, you know, I mean, that's a funny thing. I mean, I wouldn't be the only person that goes as a university worker. I work in the university comparison. Some people, I get well paid for it, I'm not disputing that. But also I work and increasingly many people who work in the university sector work in extremely precarious working conditions. I mean, last week there was a report, and I think it was in Cambridge, which said that the majority of tutorials are taught by people who are on part time contracts. So universities are not ivory towers. I don't know, my experience of teaching students from different classes is. That's a positive one. I love teaching and this year, I mean, one of the universities are amazing places and one of the things which is an absolute privilege to do is to teach what are basically your own research interests. So I've been teaching this year a course called Radical Film and Television. So these are films that I think are of interest. They're films which center the focus on questions of revolution. Revolution in Spain, the Spanish Civil War, revolution in Algeria. Today. Yes. This week we were looking at a Cuban film which is a little bit critical of the Cuban revolution. And that is, you know, I mean that's, that's a real privilege to do that. And I suppose you're teaching, you're encountering students from, who come from all sorts of different backgrounds and different, you know, not just different class backgrounds but different geographies. You know, there's, there's increasing, increased numbers of international students in universities because of the intricacies of the university funding systems. And international students pay well, let's say exorbitant fees. So that, so that's one of the reasons, that's the main reason why. Sorry, that's one of the reasons why there's increased numbers of International students here. So it's class, of course, is the thing that you can't identify, you can't see, you know, and it's also, you know, it's also a lot of the people who draw up, you know, diversity agendas. Some of them maybe used to be working class, but it's harder to deal with class because let's face it, if the campaign against gender inequality is to abolish gender inequality, well, what's the campaign around class inequality? Is it to abolish class inequality? Well, I'll sign up for that, absolutely. Because that's the abolition of the class system. But so of course people are against, diverse people are against, they're against. They don't want class, they want class to be addressed. But you know, they don't want the abolition of the class system. And it's the one thing, it's the one thing that capitalism cannot, in my view, in my opinion, put that on the table for discussion anyway. It's the one thing that capital cannot negotiate with. You know, they can't say, okay, you could have a capitalism that dealt with a different relationship of genders. You could absolutely have that. Of course, patriarchy and capitalism hardwired into each other as well. But class inequality is absolutely essential for the maintenance of the established order. I mean for the Trumps, for the Elon Musks, but also for the Starmers, capitalism is dependent on the super exploitation of the proletariat. For some people that sounds like super 19th century, but fundamentally still the case.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker A: You said about the radical film.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker C: Thing.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker A: That you're doing, was that a module so you were doing for radical film?
• 1:00:41
  Speaker C: Yes, I said, yeah, 10 week, a 12 week course.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker A: Is there any, is any films from that that you would recommend that maybe people could check out?
• 1:00:51
  Speaker C: Absolutely. I mean the Battle of Algiers is a fantastic film. I mean not just like interest politically, historically a phenomenally moving, dare I say, entertaining, you know, film directed by Italian filmmaker Porte Corvo, about the Algerian revolution against French occupation. The Battle of Chile is a three part, a three part documentary about the. About the events in Chile between 1970 and 1973. Absolutely gripping stuff. I mean really gripping stuff. Land and Freedom was a film about the Spanish Revolution directed by Ken Loach, the director of the Battle of Chile. Patricio Guthman made some other films afterwards. The Bartolocelli is a kind of direct cinema. It's actuality footage of the events. He made some more poetic documentaries afterwards, all of which are outstanding, they are very valuable. I'm trying to think what Else we watched a film called Paris La Commune in Paris 1871, which is a six hour film about the Paris Commune, the first workers revolution. And you know what was great was the students watched. Well, not all of them, but a lot of them watched all of it, which was fantastic. So that's a very interesting film. There's an amazing film called Burn Quemada which is also directed by Ponte Corvo, which is about revolution sort of. And it's like in a mythical play or a fictionalized place. It's actually not on the coast. But that's another great film about revolution. Yeah, there's that. There's a few, A few, a few to be going on. Brilliant.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker A: That's a nice little list of. See if any of the capital streaming platforms will be.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker C: We'll.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker A: We'll show them or I'm sure that they're out there somewhere. But I've got a wee note of them so I appreciate that. So we've got like time for maybe one more song. I've got the Peter Piker Pink lined up here. We can maybe to maybe play us out. So yeah, just give us a bit of background for that. That'd be great.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker C: Well, during the lockdown I took a walk up to what's called the. The Martyrs Monument and the Saint Hill Cemetery. And it's a monument to the people who participated and what's different called in different ways the 1820 Radical wars of the radical rising of the Scottish insurrection. And it lists the names of the people who were killed for their part in that. Three people who were killed. And then it lists the people who were deported. And for me the 18th, most people. I would contend most people in Glasgow don't know that much or the central Scotland don't know that much about 1820 and the radical wars that it doesn't set into the public consciousness that much. And I saw this little. There was one of their names and it was listed and it said his second name said Piker Pink. And I thought that's quite interesting. They don't even know his name. And the lack of certainty around his name for me was a mirror. It was. It connected with how people understand 1820. For some people it was too radical, for some people it was too nationalist. British spies were involved in it. It's all a bit complicated. So I thought when I saw Piker Pink I thought that's the song. And then we asked Sarah Martin from Belle Sebastian to sing that with us. And so we were delighted that Sarah. Sarah sang the lead vocal on that and yeah, that's the. I suppose that's. Yeah. And that's the little song we made.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker A: Brilliant stuff. Well, thank you very much, David. Been a pleasure speaking to you today and I'm looking forward to that album lunch. I put the link in the comments to the. To order the album in Band camp and of course to order the free tickets from Eventbrite to the show at or more. Well, thank you.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker C: Thank you very much, Mark. It's been. It's been a pleasure and a privilege speaking to you. No worries, man. Come and see the Gyro babies. Where is the date?
• 1:05:13
  Speaker A: March 29th.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker C: March 29th. So that.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker A: That's our own tenementos. We've got our album called Dreams are mental and that's March 29th. So I. You're welcome to join us at that one. But. Yeah, brilliant. Really interesting hearing this and I'm really looking forward to listening a few times over. Yeah, good stuff, David. This is a Peter Baker pint feature.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker E: Who are you then, Peter P. When you marched against the crowd who were you then, Peter P? When you marched against the crown Were you a fighter?
• 1:06:09
  Speaker D: Were you a cobbler?
• 1:06:13
  Speaker E: Were you a teacher?
• 1:06:16
  Speaker A: Were you a carpenter?
• 1:06:20
  Speaker E: Were you a flesher?
• 1:06:23
  Speaker D: Were you a weaver? Were you a frightened man?
• 1:06:30
  Speaker E: Were you a rebel? And what did become of you, Peter Pike A bing when they sent you to foreign lands? And what did become of you Peter pike or pink when they sent you to foreign land? And what did become of you Peter pike or pink when they sent you to foreign land? And what it become of you, Peter Pipe of pink when they sent you to foreign lands? We are a lover.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker D: Were you a father?
• 1:07:08
  Speaker E: Were you a redone? Were you a cominter? We were present.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker D: Were you a sailor?
• 1:07:22
  Speaker E: We were an honest man we were rebel I need to fight for pain and I imagination.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker D: Are you a riddle?
• 1:08:31
  Speaker E: Are you a problem? Are you a go? Are you a history?
• 1:08:42
  Speaker D: Are you a future?
• 1:08:45
  Speaker E: Are you mystery? Are you a rebel? Who were you the pizza pink when you marched against the crowd? Who were you the pizza pike of when you marched against the crowd? When they sent you to foreign lands in our national imagination? And what did become of you Peter pike or Pink? And how might we remember you Peter pike or Pink?