True Blood Soldierz have released a new mix tape/cd with 14 tracks. Genre Problem is available for 5 euro from the bands bebo page. Track above, Recession Skank features the guest female vocalists Nadine Smith and Lina. The TBS crew……

Thanks for reading man, stick around

Now I don’t care THAT much about the song, it just pissed me off a bit. I’m aware of the context of Up The Ra. It’s been discussed at length and is an interesting song but I don’t agree that it’s as altruistic as Rubberbandits claim. Intellect carries a duty to be used wisely and they chose to apply that intellect to mocking the IRA and its supporters, by way of a catchy jingle. Armchair Republicanism is unfortunately one of few pockets of patriotism apparent in Ireland today. Most people can’t even spell Tiocfaidh ar la, let alone express its meaning. There is nothing to be gained from alienating people on the grounds of their football jerseys or miseducation – what matters is Ireland, and despite whatever social failings those people may have, there is a spark of nationalist pride absent amongst many other Irish people. Rather than having a go, why not use that witty spark to reach out to Irish people and make them proud? I’d rather hear/see people encouraged to care for our country, rather than belittled for the worst it stands for.

Chants like ‘Up The Ra!’ Actually mean something, harking back to a cause people truly believed in. Hearing it far from home, it never failed to remind of what was still going on despite Eurovision wins and soccer matches. I have a strong Republican background and I needed every bit of ammo I could get growing up as a kid in England. I heard the stories and horrors of history and they stayed with me, unlike the rantings of Fuck The Brits or the Queen on the Green. I was suspended from school for a week for refusing to remove my green ribbon, and I’ve known men in Mountjoy who painted Republican murals with those fateful words, rather than focussing on drug addictions and criminal activities.

The IRA marked the Irish people’s struggle for freedom, not its hatred of the British. The cause of unification fell largely to the wayside when the Republic boomed, and Ireland as we knew it changed forever, an awful lot of history was wiped away with wealth and security. To me it seems that if you took away that section of society who do still place significance in the name of the IRA, no matter how ill-informed they are, we’d be poorer for it. Our national identity has been swallowed whole and now it’s more acceptable to wear American runners or drive Japanese cars than it is to fly a tricolour. To a lot of people, the IRA were just a bunch of thugs with guns. Songs like this just propagate that image. I guess in a way, myself and Rubberbandits are singing from the same sheet, in different accents, and in a trivial way in this small respect, I just don’t like their voices.

A Note on “UP DA RA

We have been getting some feedback that UP DA RA is
offensive to Irish Republicans. I want to clear this matter up.
Up DA RA is a piece of satire. It Satirises armchairrepublicanism. It was written from the point of view of the type of eejit who is liable to have Tiocfaidh ar la tattooed on his arm while wearing a Manchester united Jersey. It was personally inspired by a gentleman I knew who spray painted C.I.R.A on a bus stop, believing that the acronym stood for Constitutional Irish Republican Army. The writing technique implemented inUP DA RA is known as The unreliable Narrator. This is a narrative mode used by the writer to best communicate the intended message. This unreliability canbe due to psychological instability, a powerful bias, a lack of knowledge, or even a deliberate attempt to deceive the reader or audience. Some lovely examples of this technique can be found in the song Rednecks by Randy Newman

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=-W8WmkH…,

or in the satirical piece A modest proposal by Johnathan Swift.
http://www.uoregon.edu/~rbear/modest….

So if you listen to UP DA RA literally, without exploring its subtext then it is wide open for misinterpretation. As its author, I wrote the song for a 21st century audience who are very familiar with postmodern Irony. Also, any song whereby the narrator threatens to chase the Queen of England around a field with dog shit on the end of a golf club should generally be taken with a pinch of salt. For example, If you were walking down the road and a man who talks to himself and smells heavily of piss tells you that you can use old condoms as currency, would you then save all your used condoms and try and buy a jumper with them in River Island.?? Probably not, because the mans view of society is unreliable.

Up DA RA is intended to educate through the use of humour, because humour is a damn fine way to get your message across to someone without shoving your views down their throat. If it means even one armchair republican picking up a history book and actually understanding why they call themselves Republican then the song is a success. I personally find the level of ignorance and lack of knowledge amongst some people who call themselves republican to be offensive. It is offensive to the memory of the Irish men and women who gave their lives for basic civil rights. Armchair republicans attach themselves to a romantic image of the I.R.A brandishing Kalashnikovs as a way of making themselves look and feel tough, when it suits them. They will loudly state how they hate the brits yet have no problem supporting English football or more commonly, mimicking every aspect of British chav culture and absorbing it into their identity. I also get a bit annoyed with the student types who wear Che Guevara T-shirts without having any real interest in socialism. The T-shirts just look cool, thats it. UP DA RA has received a positive response mostly, I take this as evidence that an awful lot of people are just as annoyed with armchair republicanism as I am, because its insincere, and insincerity is a particularly annoying human trait.

I support peaceful republicanism; I support all peaceful attempts to pursue justice where a community of any creed is downtrodden by an unfair and oppressive system. That includes Palestinians, the Travelling Community,and foreign nationals in Ireland. I am proud of my Irish history. My own grandfather was a member of the I.R.A in Tom Barrys flying column during the war of independence and he took a bullet for it too. However… while I understand my ancestral history of oppression and cruelty I have no interest in hanging on to hatred of the oppressor. If a child is born today, of English blood in London, I refuse to hold him responsible for the actions of his ancestors before he was born. So to anyone who thinks that we are being disrespectful to Republicanism? Well then you may as well call Edward Norton a Racist for the character he portrayed in American History X. [Taken from the Rubber bandits note to Up The Ra]

So anyway that leads me to the gig the other evening. I went with my girlfriend to see the gig and hopefully have a word with the boys and to tell him how much I love what they re up to. Unlike Naomi, my girl friend didn’t have to wear a tache [to be honest the audience was 50/50 male female ratio] and although the bandits leave little to the imagination i found the show top class irreverent fun that could only offend those devoid of a sense of irony. To cap it all a friend of mine in the pepper introduced me to the lads back stage [apologies if I'm blowing their cover] but I found 2 highly articulate and fully sober [so the slurring wasn t actually the Turberg] young fellas who were thankful for my liking their stuff and extremely funny and charming. So to finish I guess music and art is very much to do with the individuals aesthetic tastes but I do feel I needed to clear up the bits that are possibly saying more about the critic than that to which she is critiquing. Mise le Meas Paul.