Know Your Enemy

"While it’s easy to sit here contemplating some terrifying machine-ruled future, we must never forget that the past contained myriad horrors that we’re still trying to understand, never mind come to terms with. And a lot of them happened in the 1980s. Thatcherism; the Cold War; AIDS; Level 42; Shakatak. Oh yeah, the 80s were a positive fucking joy on the soulless plastic jazz-funk front. Who doesn’t hanker for the days of pencil-moustachioed blokes with rolled-up jacket sleeves, driving Capris and dancing to Johnny Hates Jazz? Michael Lee here obviously does. He’s written an album’s worth of tributes to it all. And he’s allowed us the privilege of listening to it in its entirety, like sitting Vietnam vets suffering from PTSD in front of a 3D rendering of Hamburger Hill. And because Michael thinks we deserve an extra special treat on top of this particular turd trifle, he’s thrown in some boyband balladry and what might be the scrapings from the bottom of a bag of Jamie Cullum processed potato snacks for good measure. Thoughtful old Michael. Well, here at Nightshift we live by the credo that every well-intentioned act of cruelty deserves a disproportionate response. So tonight we’re off round to Mr Lee’s house with several rolls of gaffer tape, a few tabs of LSD and a copy of every single Nurse With Wound recording ever made, including live bootlegs of their notorious 24-hour shows. And to make sure he enjoys every moment of his experience as much as we enjoyed his album, we’ve got a set of bolt cutters handy in case he doesn’t applaud enthusiastically enough after every song. Right, which of you fuckers is next?"

The Demo Dumper review in Nightshift is always eminently quotable - though perhaps never more so than the one in the May issue (reproduced here in its full glory), a spectacular evisceration of something submitted by the hapless Michael Lee.

The issue also features live reviews of the Public Service Broadcasting/Jane Weaver show at the New Theatre and Shame's sold-out gig at the Bullingdon - both gigs I would have killed to have been at, had I still been living in Oxford.