Listen to ‘Riot’ here, and watch the live video here.

Exactly six years ago, on August 6, 2011, riots erupted across the UK. The trigger had been the killing, by police, of Mark Duggan in Tottenham in north London the day before, and for the next three days there were riots across the country — the largest riots in modern British history, as 14,000 people took to the streets.

As I wrote back in May, when my band The Four Fathers released our song, ‘Riot’, which was partly inspired by the 2011 riots, “Buildings and vehicles were set on fire, there was widespread looting, and, afterwards, the police systematically hunted down everyone they could find that was involved — particularly through an analysis of CCTV records — and the courts duly delivered punitive sentences as a heavy-handed deterrent.”

I wrote about the riots at the time, in an article entitled, The UK “Riots” and Why the Vile and Disproportionate Response to It Made Me Ashamed to be British, and my song ‘Riot’ followed up on my inability to accept that the British establishment’s response to the riots had been either proportionate or appropriate. Read the rest of this entry »

See my photo set on Flickr here!

The WOMAD festival (World of Music, Art and Dance) takes place on the last weekend of July, and since 2002 I have attended the festival every year — first at Reading, and, since 2007, at Charlton Park in Wiltshire — with my family and friends, as my wife runs children’s workshops, culminating in the children’s procession on Sunday evening that snakes through the entire festival site.

I’ve taken photos of the festival every year, and have made them available on Flickr since 2012 — see the photos from 2012 here and here, from 2014 here, from 2015 here, and from 2016 here.

This year the weather was quite challenging, but we all had a great time anyway. The camaraderie was great in our camp, and there was wonderful music everyday — starting on the Thursday night before most people were there with my favourite band of the festival, who I had never heard of before — Bixiga 70, a Brazilian Afrobeat band — and an old favourite, Orchestra Baobab, from Senegal, and continuing with Junun (from Israel and Rajasthan) and Oumou Sangare (from Mali) on Friday, young rapper Loyle Carner (from Croydon), kora legend Toumani Diabate (from Mali) and Toots and the Maytals (from Jamaica) on Saturday, and whirling dervishes from Syria, Benjamin Zephaniah from the UK, Seun Kuti and Egypt 80 from Nigeria, and US vibes legend Roy Ayers on Sunday. Read the rest of this entry »

In the wake of last week’s entirely preventable inferno at Grenfell Tower in west London, in which, officially, 79 people died (although the real total may well be over 300), the horrendous loss of life — and the fact that it was entirely preventable — has forced London’s housing crisis to the top of the political agenda, although to be honest, that is where it should have been for the whole of the 21st century.

The latest online single released by my band The Four Fathers (also on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube), ‘London’ deals largely with the housing crisis, as part of a love song to the city going back to the 1980s. I moved to Brixton in 1985, and in the song I provide my personal take on how the wild and chaotic capital of the 1980s and 1990s has been overtaken by a focus on greed and the dull, soul-sapping, materialistic values of “gentrification,” and how, in this dysfunctional new world, the vibrant dissent of the 80s and 90s has largely been silenced, and those in charge of housing — endlessly putting profit before the needs of people — have razed neighbourhoods to the ground and given the capital city a lobotomy.

Listen to the single below — and buy it as a download if you wish: Read the rest of this entry »

Listen to ‘Riot’ here!

Today my band The Four Fathers are releasing ‘Riot’, our third online single from our forthcoming album, ‘How Much Is A Life Worth?’ following the release of ‘Close Guantánamo’ (2017 mix)’ in February, and ‘Dreamers’ last month.

I initially wrote ‘Riot’ in 1986, while living in Brixton, as a punky reggae song that dealt with how parents and society mess up kids’ minds and emotions — themes of youthful alienation that didn’t survive when I revived the song for The Four Fathers at the end of 2015. We’ve been playing it live since then, and we recorded it last summer in the first session for our new album, ‘How Much Is A Life Worth?’ which we hope to release on CD in September.

Musically, our version of my old tune is the closest we’ve come to date to echoing the minor key tunes and armagideon themes of classic late 70s roots reggae, which remains my favourite music, nearly 35 years after it first blew my mind at university in Oxford. Read the rest of this entry »

Listen to ‘Dreamers’ here on Bandcamp!

A year ago, I wrote ‘Dreamers’, a song for the 50th birthday of a very good friend, Jen Owen, who I first met 20 years before. I played it for the first time at her birthday party in Stroud, in Gloucestershire, and then recorded it last September with my band The Four Fathers, and we’ve just released it online as the second single from our forthcoming second album, ‘How Much Is A Life Worth?’

‘Dreamers’ reflects on our wilder, younger years, and then progresses to look at how we came to be parents and how “we overcame some demons / And gained some wisdom somehow,” and it’s one of a number of songs I’ve written in which I attempt to grapple with getting older and what that means — something that, I find, very little popular music does, being generally fixated as it is with youth, even when those responsible for its creation have long passed their youthful days.

That said, one of the most poignant musical moments for me over the last few years was when David Bowie returned from long years of musical silence with his 2013 album, ‘The Next Day’, and the absolutely extraordinary ‘Where Are We Now?’ with its palpable sense of mortality, and its refrain about “walking the dead.” And then, in 2016, almost on the eve of Bowie’s death, came ‘Blackstar’, a song that felt like a requiem — as well as being one of the most profound pieces of popular music ever recorded. Read the rest of this entry »

Check out our existing recordings here, and get in touch to let us know if you’re interested in our new album, out very soon!

Yesterday, I was very excited to put the final touches to my band The Four Fathers‘ second album, ‘How Much Is A Life Worth?’ The album will be available soon on CD and to download on our Bandcamp account, where our existing recordings are still available — our first album ‘Love and War’, the ‘Fighting Injustice’ EP, featuring remixes of three songs from ‘Love and War’ (US and UK versions), and a single, ‘Close Guantánamo.’ Please feel free to like us on Facebook and to follow us on Twitter.

The album features ten original songs — eight by me, as lead singer and rhythm guitarist, and two by Richard Clare (lead guitar, backing vocals), and we recorded it with Pat Collier at Perry Vale Studios in Forest Hill in three sessions from July to November with Brendan Horstead on drums and percussion, Andrew Fifield on flute and harmonica, and Louis Sills-Clare on bass.

My songs include the title track — our most recent song — comparing how white westerners value their own lives compared to the victims of the west’s post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the refugees fleeing the death and destruction in Syria and elsewhere, and the black men — and children — killed with impunity by the police in the US, where the Black Lives Matter movement has been such a powerful force. Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote the following article (as “New Close Guantánamo Video Reminds President Obama He Has Just 70 Days Left to Close the Prison Before He Leaves Office”) for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

Video features photos of some of the 500+ celebrities and concerned citizens who have sent in photos this year for the Countdown to Close Guantánamo, and a new song, “Close Guantánamo,” by The Four Fathers.

Following the news that Donald Trump has won the Presidential Election, the Close Guantánamo campaign has launched a new promotional video, urging President Obama to do all he can to fulfill the promise to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay that he made on his second day in office back in January 2009.

We believe that the need to close the prison is more urgent than ever, given that, on the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised to keep Guantánamo open, to send new prisoners there, and to reintroduce torture.

See the video below via YouTube — and please note it is also featured on our Facebook page, and is also on the homepage of Close Guantánamo website.

  Read the rest of this entry »

Buy ‘Love and War’ here, as a download or CD — or buy individual tracks to download.

It’s been an action-packed week. Last Monday, I promoted the release as a download of Song for Shaker Aamer, by my band The Four Fathers, which I wrote about the last British resident still held in the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. We recorded it last November, and it was used in the campaign video for We Stand With Shaker, a campaign I launched with my activist friend Joanne MacInnes, featuring MPs and celebrities standing with a giant inflatable figure of Shaker. The song is available — on Bandcamp — for just 80p ($1.25), although you can pay more if you wish. We are donating 25% of the takings from the song to Shaker’s family.

After sending out a press release about the download, I was almost immediately asked to appear on RT to promote it — and the Morning Star also featured it. And then, on Friday, came the welcome and long-awaited news that Shaker is to be released! Thanks to everyone who has worked to get him out of Guantánamo and back to his family in London. We anticipate that he will be home within a month, allowing for the statutory 30-day period that the US Congress has insisted on having before any prisoner is released.

‘Song for Shaker’ is just one of eight original songs on ‘Love and War.’ I wrote five other songs, Richard Clare wrote one, and one is an old folk song that I gave a punky roots reggae makeover in the late 1980s while living in Brixton. The Four Fathers are: myself on lead vocals and guitar, Richard on guitar and backing vocals, Bren Horstead on drums and percussion, Andrew Fifield on flute and harmonica, and — not a father — Richard’s son Louis Sills-Clare on bass. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, after I had released ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ by my band The Four Fathers on Bandcamp, I sent out a press release that was picked up on by RT, who invited me to discuss the release of the song, and Shaker’s ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial in Guantánamo, on the evening news.

I was delighted to cycle down to Millbank Tower for the interview, which was not shown last night, but, I hear, was shown in rotation on the news earlier today, although I didn’t see it until I was sent a link to the video that RT made available on YouTube, which I’m posting below.

My thanks to RT for making the interview available, and for their coverage of the story — the We Stand With Shaker banner projected on a huge screen in the studio, the clips from the song, and my interview, in which I was able to express my profound frustration with the fact that he is still held, despite being approved for release under George W. Bush in 2007 and Barack Obama in 2009, despite the UK government calling for his return since 2007, despite the UK government backing a Parliamentary motion calling for his return in March, despite David Cameron raising his case with President Obama this year, and despite the president promising to “prioritize” his case. Read the rest of this entry »

Buy ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ here!

Today, on Bandcamp, I launched ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’, about the last British resident in Guantánamo, as a download, available for just 80p ($1.25) — although you can pay as much as you want for it — with 25% of the money received going to Shaker Aamer’s family.

I wrote ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ last year, and it was used as the song in the campaign video for We Stand With Shaker, the campaign to free Shaker from Guantánamo, which I launched last November with the activist Joanne MacInnes, and which has secured substantial support, with nearly 100 celebrities and MPs standing with the giant inflatable figure that is at the heart of the campaign.

I recorded ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ with my band The Four Fathers, and it is the opening song on our debut album ‘Love and War.’ The eight-track album is available in its entirety on Bandcamp for £4.50 ($7), or you can buy individual tracks for 60p ($0.93) each, and a CD is also available for £7 ($10.85), which contains two bonus tracks. You can also buy the CD via my website. Read the rest of this entry »