Des Res

They're dying
to get in to
the cemetery.

Blakean visions in Peckham, South London

Yesterday I saw a vision
of an angel in a tree
in a park in Peckham.

You can read about it here:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/11/blakean_visions_in_south_londo.html

Sculpture Of A Star

The rock star cast in marble,
torso taut and biceps pumped
abdominals rippling, arms intact,
limbs not yet decapitated by time.

Genitalia ambiguously rounded
and unthreatening atop sturdy thighs;
hip confidently cocked like
Michelangelo’s boy David;

bare feet planted to a plinth
that announces nothing but
the presence of an Olympiad
demi-God of the modern arena.

(He himself prefers The Winged Victory that
he saw in the Louvre, Nike of Samothrace
headless, her back arched to the heavens
wings poised dramatically, anticipating flight).

Byzantine in stature, his silence
speaks unwritten volumes -
an iconoclastic warning to
challengers, his form fills the room

and inspires gasps of awe, wonder
devotion and puzzlement, transcending
myth and concept to become a reality
in ways the real rock star never could.

This Is Not A Love Song

It is not
anything.

SYSTEM OF A DOWN: RIGHT HERE IN HOLLYWOOD (US Edition)

I have a new book out now in the USA. Here is some info....


THE FIRST AND ONLY BOOK ON ONE OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST SELLING BANDS

SYSTEM OF A DOWN: RIGHT HERE IN HOLLYWOOD
by Ben Myers


Published by Disinformation

“Ben Myers presents a truly well researched account of System’s presence in music. It’s a nice reference guide to some of our past antics.” - Serj Tankian

System of a Down has evolved from a cult band whose demo tapes swapped hands voraciously on the metal underground to one of the world’s biggest bands, having sold in excess of forty million albums. Show-stealing support slots with Ozzy Osbourne and Slayer propelled the band to new heights and their second album, Toxicity, is what turned the band from an underground phenomenon into a mainstream smash, who have also garnered attention from the CIA, who trail them closely.


SYSTEM OF A DOWN: RIGHT HERE IN HOLLYWOOD is the first and only book on one of the world’s biggest selling bands, featuring exclusive new interviews with the band and the major players involved in their story. Unofficial and unauthorized, this new book from author Ben Myers–an authority on alternative, punk and hardcore–is the first definitive account of this remarkable band. The book is in stores now–timed perfectly with the first solo record release from lead singer Serj Tankian.


Price: $19.95


ISBN: 978-1932857-88-7


Buy now from Amazon.com or please visit http://www.disinfo.com

British Sea Power and the Rural Rock ’n’ Roll Idyll

Here's a piece I've just written for The Guardian.


'Rock needs to get back to nature'

Cities have been done to death. More rock bands should take inspiration from countryside, mountains and rivers - like British Sea Power

Ben Myers
November 20, 2007

British Sea PowerBritish Sea Power's forthcoming third album Do You Like Rock Music? on Rough Trade is a fine return from a band who inhabit the genre that, whichever way you look at is, is still best described as "alternative". As the critics start hailing them "the new Arcade Fire", existing fans can take comfort in knowing that the Brighton quartet have been doing breathless, windswept melancholic rock for longer than their Canadian counterparts - and better.
The reason British Sea Power are unique is not their music - which though completely captivating is nevertheless built around the usual band set-up - but their influences, which are decidedly non-urban (in the original sense of the word).

Unlike 99% of their guitar-toting contemporaries, British Sea Power draw inspiration from nature and the rich landscape of Britain and beyond. Their songs predominantly sing of the countryside, the mountains and the sea. Not in a corny and obviously eccentric way, but in a highly believable and poetically English manner.

Their music contains an abundance of references to the outdoors and the elements. Aside from their name and a propensity for decking their stage set in freshly collected foliage and flora, Oh Larsen B was an ode to a melting ice shelf in the Antarctic Peninsula, Orkney's famous Scapa Flow provided a key line in early single Carrion, Something Wicked namechecks poetic Lake District novel The Shining Levels, the South Downs' five-metre square Lullington Church inspired The Smallest Church in Sussex, while the band's artwork features a smattering of bears, birds, deer, cockerels and leaves. Shows have been played in caverns, village halls and rural towns where no other rock bands ever visit. Collectively British Sea Power's songs chart a dreamy, non-linear pyschogeographical map of Britain.

The band walk it like they talk it too - literally: bassist Hamilton once eschewed the tour bus for a three day Trans-Pennine walking trip from a show in Leeds back to his hometown of Kendall "armed only with a bivouac and a bag of bananas". Their one recorded collaboration was a cover version of country bumpkins The Wurzels' I Am A Cider Drinker. BSP's depiction of this fair isle then is surely the dream of Albion that labelmates the Libertines spoke of yet never achieved in music.

There's no parochialism at work here though - and, thankfully no pointless patriotism or flag-waving. The band have toured far and wide (including marathon stints across America with The Killers) yet, refreshingly, you wouldn't know it. Aside from referring to "a parking lot" on their second album, you'd hardly know they had spent a lot of time across the pond at all.

Given that rock'n'roll is bohemian at heart, this begs the question: why aren't more British bands influenced by the landscape? We live in one of the greenest countries in the world, where fields, mountains, lakes, wooded valleys, grassy planes and ancient stone circles are all within a couple of hundred miles' drive, and where you're never further than 70 miles from the sea.
Folk music and country music reflect the landscape, yet it seems like most guitar bands would rather move to the scummiest area of the nearest city to draw inspiration. Living in London myself I understand the allure of the place, yet the cities' musical canon is already fit-to-bursting, which is precisely why listening to British Sea Power is a unique experience, a holiday for the ears.

So come on, boring old rock bands. No one wants to hear your songs about Camden High Street or Shoreditch clubs. It has been done to death. It's time to get some colour in your cheeks and some air in your blackened lungs. Don your walking boots, take to the countryside and you might just find new inspiration.

(View online here: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/11/british_sea_power.html)

My Secret Past As A Pre-Teen Girl

It's time for a confession.

Children's author Judy Blume changed my life.

And I'm not the badass I pretend to be.

Here's why:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/11/judy_blume_taught_me_everythin.html

Skip Rats

In case you were wondering how a top international journalist and author spends his down-time, I can inform you that Saturday night, around midnight, was spend wandering the sub-zero neighbourhood streets of Peckham, South London, looking for skips to raid.

Once located I would then climb into said skips taking care not impale myself on any rusty nails or get any of the beastly foul-smelling matter upon my person, and would then extricate the best looking lumps of wood from in there, pass them onto my patient and thoroughly understanding girlfriend, whereupon we would the flee the area to return to our abode, stamping our feet to keep warm.

Once home we then built a fire in the fireplace.

Once built, we lit it.

Once lit, we moved in close.

Once close, our frozen cheeks began to thaw.

Once unfrozen, we were able to smile again, and laugh at the way my recently re-heeled second-hand brown Chelsea boots looked funny sticking out from beneath the tarpaulin that I had disappeared under like a greased lightning skip rat, and the way the passing late night dog walker had looked at us with a mixture of surprise and pity, but mainly disgust.

All of which is the reality of an English winter when the royalty cheques aren't forthcoming and you're too socially inept to get a proper job.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

The Brutalists in Flux

The writing of The Brutalists - Tony O'Neill, Adelle Stripe and myself - are featured in the new issue of Flux magaine. On sale now. More info: www.myspace.com/brutalists

Songs Of Experience.

Tomorrow night. Let us party.

I Don’t Want To Hear Love Songs Right Now

I don’t
want to

hear love
songs

right
now.

Alternative Press feature

I've written an extensive piece on the UK music scene for the new edition of US magazine Alternative Press, out now:

'UNION, JACK! AP's BRIT ROCK SPECIAL'

Yeah, yeah, we know everyone in the scene loves Radiohead, while their parents rock Coldplay in their P.T. Cruisers. But the United Kingdom has been fostering new bands that are churning everything from murderous metalcore to techno-punk mutations to twisted angular throwdowns. AP's British correspondent Ben Myers gets us caught up with BIFFY CLYRO, ENTER SHIKARI and BRING ME THE HORIZON, as well as tipping us off to the next wave of Brit-rock contenders...

More details: http://altpress.com/apmag/

Dream #60

Click here for a new poem
of mine in the latest edition
of Straight From The Fridge.

Or maybe it's a story.
I'll leave that for you
to decide.

http://upbondageupyours.blogspot.com/2007/11/dream-60.html

Tony O'Neill

Here's some all new footage featuring my friend and fellow writer of The Off-Beat Generation Tony O'Neill, discussing his forthcoming novel 'Down And Out On Murder Mile', published Autumn 2008 on Harper Collins:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=cfuVhCGY1ak

Flash: Argh-Argh. Saviour Of The Universe.

'The story as one-liner'

The increasing fashion for flash fiction is a great demonstration of how much can be told in a few words....

Read on:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/11/the_story_as_oneliner.html

The Politics Of Cruelty

An uncharacteristic exercise in shamelss self-publicity, of sorts:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/11/we_started_our_own_record_label_and_our_latest_release_is_our_biggest_challenge_yet.html

Celebrity Verbs

Britney Spears
Kenny Rogers
Taye Diggs
Wayne Sleep
Vince Neil.

She’s Reading The Russians

She’s reading the Russians.
She visits them every day on
imaginary reconnaissance missions
into poetry’s frosted interior.

It is cold there. She wears mittens.
Carries a flask of vodka at all times.
She thinks of the poetry
and she thinks of the party.

She stamps her feet and she
can see her breath hanging there
like Bulgakov’s pipe smoke.
Like a wood-burning Gulag brazier.

A Short Order Romance in Amarillo, Texas: A Novel

She fries eggs on a hot plate.
He eats them from a cold one.

Brutalism is coming

From 3:AM Magazine today:

01/11/07: Another Offbeat Goes Overground

'Down and Out On Murder Mile', the sequel to Tony O’Neill’s cult classic 'Digging the Vein', has just been snapped up in the US by Harper Collins and will be released as a Harper Perennial edition in the autumn of 2008. 'Hero of the Underground', the memoir of NFL player Jason Peter which Tony has co-written, will be published next summer by St Martin’s Press: “As you’ve probably guessed, this is not a typical sports biography. Rather it is a book about his thwarted career, his crippling injuries, and his years of post fame heroin and crack addiction”. The author also features in the forthcoming Brutalist chapbook alongside Adelle Stripe and Ben Myers.

(http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/another-offbeat-goes-overground)

Spam poem: Mouthpiece Trimmings

I think the fierceness
you wore in daylight
was the fierceness that
convinced you last night that I
had nothing to do
with this.

And spoken quickly,
with a completely new
matter of factness,
and a twitch of emphasis to the arm,
you agreed, before slipping silently
unconscious to the car.