Drudion,

A coupla months back I got a request from RDF MEDIA to teach 12-year-olds on a forthcoming reality TV show to be called ROCK SCHOOL, ‘inspired by the movie SCHOOL OF ROCK, starring Jack Black’. My family are huge fans of the film and wanted me to do it, especially as this company had done two of the more credible reality TV shows (what an oxymoron, ya moron). Anyway, THE MEGALITHIC EUROPEAN was done and dusted and I remembered similarities with the movie in the scam behind my 1985 single ‘Competition’, released under the pseudonym Rabbi Joseph Gordan. The highly unbelievable story we put out was that the Rabbi was a music teacher backed by his 14-year-old proteges. Needless to say, I got into the TV show idea but turned it down… and saw SCHOOL OF ROCK two months later. Whoa! Am I glad I turned the sucker down? U‑Know! Where the movie was mind manifesting and soon occupied in my head the larger place, the TV show could only be worthy and journeyman boring. More than ever before I know know know from that movie for kids that rock’n’roll is the last Gnostic trip and ultimate antidote to religion. Go to see this film and – tacky and Hollywood as it may be – it’s the ultimate confirmation that rock’n’roll is the truth. Even when the band rocks no more than Huey Lewis and the News at the end, it’s still the pig’s business.

Meanwhile, Iraq is burning on the left hob whilst the US plans to turn up the right hob under Iran. I’m sure Tony Blair has no problem with this course of action, as there is never a point at which end results sink lower than his public expectations. He reminds me of my friend Paul Crockford, who, caught with a particularly unattractive woman (long ago), was asked: 

‘Crockford, don’t you have any standards?’
‘Of course I do’, he shot back. ‘I’ve just never met a woman who falls below them.’

Blair is precisely the same but with war. On June 1st of last year, Herr Blair said: “Over the coming weeks and months we will assemble this evidence and then we will give it to people. And I have no doubt whatever that the evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction will be there… Those people who are sitting there saying: ‘Oh, it’s all going to be proved to be a great big fib got out by the security services, there will be no weapons of mass destruction’ — just wait, and have a little patience.’ Well, we had patience because we had no choice but to have patience, and one year and one month later, Blair now said on July 6th that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction ‘may never be found’ and that he had ‘to accept we haven’t found them and we may never find them.’

His Christian beliefs evidently drive him, and evidently inform his relationship with George Bush to a level in which they’re clearly capable of dealing with the wrongs they are doing to Iraq. But they are Christian and, therefore, happy in the knowledge that democracy flavoured with Christianity is being injected into Iraq. They can, therefore handle a few Iraqi deaths as the price they have to pay. But what about the rest of us who find no solace in Christianity and are having to accept this increasingly Creedist way of behaving? Yes, my allegiances lie with the Jews and the Christians more than Islam because Judaeo-Christian thinking has informed my upbringing from the start. Like the Jews, I’ve never believed in forgiveness, but like Christians I’ve always believed the bit about those without fault casting the first stone. But I can’t believe that Islam needs to be redeemed by the West in any way at all, when the West is itself wading in a right old moral mire. We have gained so much from Arab Culture down the ages, but it’s been in retreat since the 17th century and was too inward-looking to set its sights on us unless provoked by nutcases like Bush’n’Blair. We should never let Tony Blair rest over this issue of not finding the weapons. He took us to war on this. War is a fucking heavy thing to declare on a people who don’t have what you accuse them of having, especially as a lot of the people in charge at the time war was declared still remain at their posts, when we know that – were they to have been situated in the Balkans – they would be branded as War Criminals and hauled up in front of a jury.

Insiders seem always to get away with it. There’s no better metaphor for what I’ve been saying than the white-washing of the porn judge David Selwood, who got off with a 12-month rehabilitation order after being discovered with 75 images of young boys on his computer. Even the BBC has stressed ‘his long and distinguished career’, though readers of this Drudion will be unsurprised that this is the same git who handed out three-year prison sentences to the publishers of Green Anarchist and Animal Liberation Front merely for reporting all direct actions and, in ‘75 jpeg’ Selwood’s own words: ‘conspiring to incite criminal damage.’ The sentences were all overturned on appeal and Mark Thomas commented: ‘It’s like prosecuting Martin Bell for causing the Bosnian War.’

Okay, I’ll get off my high horse for a while and tell y’all that we have decided to update the Head Heritage Q & A, because of the forthcoming gigs and release of THE MEGALITHIC EUROPEAN. So anything that’s been bugging you for a while please feel free to ask me via [email protected], okay? I also wanna say love fucking peace to Doggen and Kevlar, as July was the fifth anniversary of Brain Donor – gentlemen, we been going longer than The Teardrop Explodes. A new single will soon be forthcoming from the Donor, released on vinyl only. 

In the meantime, The Teardrop Explodes’ album that I’ve put together over the past few months is now ready and available (Monday 2nd). It’s entitled ZOOLOGY and features re-mastered versions of stuff only available on bootlegs and a coupla Bill Drummond cash-ins. Have a look at the merchandiser over the next few days for more detailed information. Needless to say, the artwork is monstrously beautiful and is released on the Head Heritage label, being HH16.

Okay, I’m getting out of here before I whine on any longer and lose you all.

Love a fucking piece,

JULIAN (M’Lud Yatesbury)