Mars, Old Fashioned Knees Ups and Tragedy

Bruno Mars has been sitting on the edge of my consciousness for a while now due to 'Just The Way You Are' and, now with his excellent new single 'Grenade', this young Hawaiian singer songwriter has really caught my attention. Isn't it great when you come across an artist you had never listened to before and find that when you do you really enjoy the music they create?

He looks like an Asian version of Cliff Richards as Cliff looked in 'Summer Holiday'!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR6iYWJxHqs&feature=channelhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Mars

He is so cute!

I've spent the evening listening to Dance Music. As in disco dance, not techno or house or garage. Why? Dance music isn't really 'listen to' music. The clue is in the name init?

Each guest to a party I am going to next week has been asked to put together some of their favourite dance music. It's been a long time since I have boogied but I immediately came up with the following 3 and, yes, they show my age but when I hear them and start to move to them - well - then I am transported to some dance floor down the Old Kent Road.

Jocelyn Brown and 'Somebody Else's Guy' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdGNeC2G1AU

Odyssey and 'Native New Yorker' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9M6gXIqlfI 

To end the evening this would bring the house down - Chaka Khan's 'I'm Every Woman'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8xuUdI1an0&feature=related

Can it be that it was all so simple then? Or has time rewritten every line?

Inspired by a dislike of dinner parties and the desire for relaxed 'get togethers' some of my friends and I have decided to have old fashioned parties. The sort of parties where you bring a bottle, push the furniture back, roll up carpets, sit on the stairs, dance in the hallway and chat in the kitchen. Similar I suppose to a birthday party held in 1981 at a house in New Cross, South London. This week saw the 30th anniversary of the horrific fire that killed 13 teenagers who were at the party and, belatedly, a memorial has been placed at the scene of the fire. At the time the cause of the fire was thought to have been racially motivated and some still think this is the case. Duscus Howe, writing this week in the Guardian, reports that a witness statement claims that a white man was seen throwing a petrol bomb into the house. However, a survivor of the fire, talking on the news this week rejects this version explaining that a white man, throwing a petrol bomb would have been seen by him and the many people sitting outside the house that night. Whatever the reason for the fire the aftermath was certainly racist. Listening to the reactions of the government, the police and the press is both shocking and sickening. I was going to say that times have changed but now I am not so sure having read some of the comments on CIF following Howe's article.

Benjamin Zephaniah's wrote this poem about the tragic event - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r3EnIBO-_c

Those poor children and their poor families.

Re the thread - Michael Rosen has a lot to say (and has even had a comment removed by the moderator) and there is an exchange between him and a policeman called 'Pilotchute'. At the risk of being 'policist' - Pilotchute writes well and with humour. A copper with brains and wit? Surely not!

'Joanevelyn' echoes my thoughts:
I was around at the time - and I living not far away in Southwark - and I remember first and foremost the sheer horror of the event; I was still young enough to remember parties like that, and to empathise with the terror when the fire broke out. The people who died were all just kids. At the time it was obvious to any reasonably sensitive human being that the popular press would have reported it quite differently if the party-goers had been white youngsters - and those early news reports undoubtedly influenced the reaction - or lack of reaction - from politicians. Some journalists of the time seem to take a view governed by racial stereotyping, i.e. Black Youths + Loud Music + Party Mood = Illegal Drugs and Violence etc. - therefore whatever happened is all the victims' own fault. The way the press handled it has left the same kind of bitterness among black Londoners as was experienced by the people of Liverpool in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 - when 96 people were crushed to death at a football match - and the Sun newspaper chose to insult the dead and injured by putting the blame for the whole event on the victims. In fairness not all the newsmedia were guilty - the coverage on the BBC I recall seemed to be much more sympathetic and sensible. But however poor and racially prejudiced the original police investigation was, I think it unfair to tar the 2004 inquest with the same brush; I believe it was a genuine attempt to clear things up. .But with all the best will in the world, a lack of evidence available makes it unlikely that we will ever be 100% certain whether it was arson/murder or plain accident. It has to remain in the limbo of uncertainty. Unless of course someone comes forward to confess that they started it deliberately - or perhaps that their own carelessness with a cigarette or candle or whatever may have accidently ignited it. And who is likely to confess to being responsible for the death of 13 young people, even by accident? So could we just express our deepest sympathies to those who lost family or friends on that dreadful night, and stop the futile argument for a moment's silence?
 
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