Rockist Git Frank Turner and the horror of the live version of "I Still Believe"

Turner replies: http://frank-turner.com/blog/2012/09/schmolitics/

Checking his "following" list was quite good fun, BTW. James Delingpole! Toby Young! Guido Fawkes!

Turner replies: http://frank-turner.com/blog/2012/09/schmolitics/

"I don’t consider myself “right wing” either."

Right, yeah, no idea where people got this idea from, apart from you saying "I consider myself to be pretty right wing" in an interview that one time.

today has fucking sucked, actually

i cried a little bit

I wonder about people who pick up the BNP policy document and say "yes yes all that, but what are their economic policies like?", I mean, who cares?

also:

http://images.45cat.com/shakin-stevens-cry-just-a-little-bit-epic-2.jpg

Chris T-T is friends with this douche? Many sadfaces.

labelmates and I think sometimes bandmates as well

Likewise it confounds me that someone like Billy Bragg would want to associate with this guy....

It's one thing to be outspoken about politics as a musician or minor figure. Also to explicitly incorporate that message into your music under the guise of a ragged "man of the people" despite this image representing roughly the antithesis of what you're all about. It's another thing entirely to write a butthurt missive that backtracks on a number of points with the excuse that you were "running your mouth" off.

Like it or not, if your name is synonymous with political music*, and you go around posing as a grassroots freedom-fighting philanthropist**, and then you start spouting idiotic nonsense explicitly denoting your neolibertarian rightwing allegiances (whilst hypocritically slagging off Blair's regime which has more in common with your fucked up viewpoint than you seem to give it credit for)***, don't expect any sympathy from anyone who might have once thought you were actually a decent, well informed, benevolent chap who makes decent music****. Crying it off and saying your music isn't supposed to be political and you aren't rightwing and you weren't thinking properly when you said that stuff about the BNP is an even bigger load of toss.

*which it is
**which you do
***which you did
****which you aren't and never have been.

tbf it took dedicated shit-talkers who sit on the internet all day nearly three years to discover a smoking gun wrt this guy's political leanings, so I'm not sure what intimate knowledge you expect Billy Bragg to have

also I kind of feel like this kind of under the guise of a ragged "man of the people" and posing as a grassroots freedom-fighting philanthropist rhetoric is p unhelpful if you're trying to construct a serious point and not just doing drive-by zings

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-K2LtSuD5VDQ/TfxE_YOzMbI/AAAAAAAACxo/4w0Du7SMrfg/s1600/bobrobertscover.jpg

JoshuaHelmer

5 September 2012 2:23PM
Response to brian68, 5 September 2012 1:59PM

This might not mean a huge amount as its anecdotal but about 5 years ago my friend interviewed him for university radio and I sat in the room and listened in. He turned up in a battered van with just his band mates in tow (so quite obviously wasn't drawing from his priveleged background) and proceeded to have a very open and honest discussion with my friend for about 45 mins.

I can safely say that Frank Turner is the most intimidatingly intelligent man I have personally ever met. He's completely humble and down to earth too and has worked his butt off to get where he is today. He is literally one of the hardest working musicians in the world

I can safely say that Frank Turner is the most intimidatingly intelligent man I have personally ever met.

Perhaps more accurate than he knows.

literally working really, really hard on his terrible, terrible records.

I dream of owning a battered van. And having mates.

but will he ever live like, um..

i know my use of "Git" was controversial, me being american and all, but i feel vindicated

Turner's bass player is one Tarrant Anderson, from Oxford. One Tarrant Anderson won 343 votes as the Conservative party candidate for Headlington ward in the 2004 Oxford City Council elections. I do not know if they are the same person.

i was gonna ask how many tarrant andersons could there be, but then...

also paul weller was in the jam and this fuckstain is some kinda prep school fake working class Sir Punklesworth Cougar Mellencamp III who writes godawful music

^ enjoyed this

Based in Oxfordshire? Could be 'closely related' but apart from that:

re:Tarrant Anderson
He is also a director of the tour bus hire company Vans For Bands Ltd

Battered Vans a speciality...

i know my use of "Git" was controversial, me being american and all, but i feel vindicated

― Jandek at the Disco (upper mississippi sh@kedown),

I think it should be changed from git to cunt, me being Scottish and all, but I feel it will be vindicated.

Twitter exchange after Steven Adams of Broken Family Band/Singing Adams asked Tarrant Anderson if he was the former Tory candidate.

@singingadams yup I stood as a paper candidate while researching a thesis on party organisational reform. What of it?

@_sleepingsouls oh I get it, you weren't a serious conservative party candidate, it was for a homework project.

@singingadams MPhil in Politics thesis. In the Bodlian Library in Oxford if you want something to send you to sleep

that doesn't sound like complete bullshit at all

i'm sure he did get a thesis out of it. but paper candidates are still put up by the actual party. i suspect they don't invite people doing theses to just fill the slots.

Did I ever tell you about the time my Dad stood as a paper candidate for Labour and accidentally served 2 terms?

Yeah, you have to be a party member to stand, and also be "in" with local party organisation. Standing in the first place hardly something that happens to you by chance.

What I don't understand is why these gits are being so evasive about it. Being a Tory or a Libertarian nitwit is not a crime (yet) but I guess evading and dissembling are good old fashioned Tory values they are intent on emulating.

oh god my friends from an old message board who love, like, the get-up kids/fun. in 2008/cursive/streetlight/that band with the civil war album/childish gambino love this dude. i always thought he just did harmless poppy folk punk. i was so wrong

I just listened to that song for the first time.

*stabs ears with pencil*
*throws away entire music collection*

*gets real*

ookej... frank turner and luke turner are not the same person, then.

They're pretty much the opposite of each other

everything about this is so disgusting

Was wondering when Mr. Bragg would say something:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/08/frank-turner-political-post-ideological-culture

yeah, that felt inevitable

tbh his don't seem like the kind of statements that require this guy to be slandered & libelled and so on. soft tories who haven't thought about much are people who also exist!

eh he seems like someone who's thought about a lot and come to many very stupid conclusions.

thought about it a lot and doesn't come to the same conclusion as ilxors

Yeah, I'm sorry, this isn't an innocent young kid who hasn't thought about shit. He's 31 years old FFS. If he has thought about it and come to these stupid conclusions, he's an idiot. If he hasn't thought his positions through, he should be old enough to realise that he shouldn't be speaking about them in public. Otherwise he's an idiot.

And what he said absolutely does not amount to saying there's no difference between Labour and the Tories. Labour haven't had any Socialist leanings for a very very long time. A 31 year old who talks about politics should be able to understand that. Fuck, a ten year old who talks about politics should be able to understand that.

And pandemic, there's an awful lot of stuff he's said that is rampantly deficient in facts - it isn't just a difference of opinion.

ya i dunno that ilxors are alone in being opposed to blinkeredly and stridently cack-handed libertarianism.

ilxors hate radicalism

One of the problems is that for someone whose stated concern is individual liberty is the way he used words used to diminish individual so casually - "retarded". And in this YouTube vid at 5:25 he calls Gordon Brown a "stupid Scottish one-eyed bleating illiterate socialist cunt". He's entitled to despise Brown, but "one-eyed"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntqydh5EaN4&feature=youtu.be

turnerian anarchism is a bit too much for we squares it's troo.

Dunno where that video has gone. Try here.

This thread desperately needs random Frank Turner googlers.

plz bring us your insights, westillbelieve262

I don't know how much there is for random googlers to get their teeth into. He doesn't really deny the political position that he's coming from and it's such an odd viewpoint in the UK i'm not sure how comfortable his fanbase is in defending it. Most of the responses i've seen are just "it's not fair to judge him because he disagrees with you".

I've just been through several pages of Googling "frank turner" and this doesn't come up.

he's thirty-one? oh wait

yeah it's the way he applies this quintessentially american ideology to an old class-bound european society because now he makes cash his essential venality requires a rigid defence of property rights but simply being a conservative is anathema, so the polarity switches from ~radical~ socialism to ~radical libertarianism~

nb i am not sure if i have ever heard this wateman's music, unless i clicked on one of the embeds upthread and have thankfully forgotten it