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Home Contact Us Archive
Swine Archive
By Phil Thornton
When you stop being a ‘lad’ and become a ‘fellar?’ I only ask because I’ve just passed a fellar on Bold Street who looked to be well into late 50s or even early 60s (unless he’s just had a very hard life that is) wearing a very fetching old skool Peter Storm ( a design I’ve never seen before) and a pair of what appeared to be original Indoor Supers.
On Her Majesty’s Not So Secret Service
By Alexander Scott
This is an advert placed in The Guardian and no, it’s not a skit, this is genuine.
Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Fighting Terrorism Means Knowing Your Audience...
Downloading & Charlotte Church
By Dave Kenny
So again we have had more Tabloid scare stories about the horrors of Internet piracy threatening the Music industry with extinction. Like the last time, how Napster was going to kill all CD pressing world wide with its file sharing chicanery.
ALWAYS FIGHTING
By Andrew Vaughan
Used to know this kid called Stevie G – got cut to fuck in Amsterdam in 81. Spurs had a go at Ajax. Got a bit messy. Great lad wouldn’t hurt a fly unless it was football. Also used to play a bit. Had the best fucking shot I’ve ever seen.
By Phil Thornton
Now that the US Federal Reserve has bailed out the entire American financial system from a 30s style collapse and the in the UK the FSA and Bank of England are desperately attempting to bolster the banking and mortgage sector, the capitalist myth has been exposed for what it is.
Writers Blocked
By Ronnie Ely
Did the vodaphone awards replace the Britts? What the fuck are they? I’m channel hopping waiting for the Ryder Cup highlights to come on when I stumble on this drivel. The blurb said it presented by Steve Jones and Juliet Lewis but alas (Schmitt and Jones) it’s not the Pistols bore but that taffy irreverent ‘TV safe’ Steve Jones. Juliet Lewis is probably wondering who he is and she looks like she doesn’t know where she is.10 FAMOUS PEOPLES GARDENS I'VE HAD A SMOKE IN
By Clancy Eccles
Denis Law - The original King wasn't present at the time which was a shame but I don't spose I'd have been able to skin-up with him watching so it's probably just as well.ots of leafy Cheshire.
By Dave Kenny
Minutes Re: next years NME awards
Sponsorship: Got to get sponsored because Corporate approved rock and roll is where its at nowadays. We could do the usual hair gel deal but apparently there is a South East Asian military dictator with a few bob to spare doing the rounds just now, so hanging on for a better deal might be an option.
Running Order Squablefest By Alan MetcalfeI have a confession to make, readers. I was 17 years of age before I saw a live gig, by a bona-fide rock band. 17! Actually, that's not strictly true. When I was around 15, or so, the church youth leader took us all in his Datsun Sunny, over to Hoylake, to see some Christian Metal act.
Let’s Not Be Beastly To The Beasts
By Phil Thornton
Whenever I hear the words ‘Sex Offenders Register’ I automatically imagine a schoolroom full of paedophiles sat at tiny desks with an exasperated teacher calling names from the front.
What I Did On My Holidays By Kirsty Walker
One of my finest school moments came in the first week of 2nd year juniors when we were asked to do a project entitled 'My Summer Holidays'. As we did this every September while teacher's blood alcohol level returned to normal, I had planned diligently and spent my summer holiday in Palma Nova collecting things that I might stick in my project book when I got back.
And Then There Were Three... By Ste, Phil and John
Three winter coats for all you fashionistas who probably stopped looking at Swine two years ago when we decided it was dead...boring
By Phil Thornton
This goes out to all the doubters and the haters who said Capital of Culture would be a waste of time, a big fat nothing, a hastily cobbled together series of bland, unimaginative gimmicks that, far from establishing the city as a forward thinking metropolis forging its own future from the ruins of the past, would only wallow in its own myriad myths and self-delusions.
In the city theres a thousand faces all shining bright and each one of those faces is under 25!
By Dave Kenny
Or so Paul Weller said before he became some beaut running around the New forest in a loin cloth for a Style Council sleeve. But it did get me thinking about my own age. Now going on into my late twenties and I’ve got to look at the facts that im not exactly a youth anymore. Which kind of saddens me.
By Joe Hawkins
You don't half get some shite spouted in those hoolie books . . . .
1. We only had it with their main mob, not like . . . . who beat up families and scarf'eads2. They were well game for such small numbers3. They were a tight little mob who never ran
By Phil Thornton
It’s three cheers for Ankle, the perennial under-achievers of dull, northern epic rock n’ yawn music. Their LP, ‘The Seldom Heard Band’ is perhaps the most boring LP since their last LP ‘The Perennially Over-Looked Band’ and therefore a deserved winner of the UK’s most tokenistic music award.
Music Reviews and Café del Lar Jukebox By Phil Thornton & Ste Connor
Are friends eclectic? Choice tunes news and reviews from musicland, yes you heard...
IT’S A LOCAL PUB FOR LOCAL PEOPLE
By Andrew Vaughan
Recently a mob of us got talking about how we used to go to the pub when we were young and just embarking on our drinking life. We were also noticing how you see few young people in your local nowadays. We used to go the local and then go up town.
August 2008 By John Connolly
When I was 14 and it was time to take my options in school, I plumbed for Drama as my one and only cushy subject. Having half a brain in my Comprehensive meant you had to take a science, geography or history, woodwork or metalwork, art or technical drawing and the mandatory English lit, language and maths.
Pentangle - Liverpool Philharmonic
By Merle Veggard
I might have let slip in last month's Swine that I had a bit of a thing for medieval jazz-folk weirdos Pentangle - well blow me down with ye plague, they only went and reformed the classic 1967-73 line up and decided to a do a show at the Liverpool Philharmonic.
By Phil Thornton
Now that Linda Robson has shamelessly jumped on the anti-knife crime bandwagon as a way of reminding Joe Public of her career as the one wasn’t the fat one in Birds of a Feather, surely it’s time that the hysteria surrounding youth crime is put into its true perspective.
Everything’s Gone Green
By Shaun Smith
God knows why, but it’s a colour combination that’s always appealed to me. From the classic hoops of Glasgow Celtic, lime green adidas Gazelles, Benetton’s corporate colour scheme and Kevin Sheedy’s Republic of Ireland shirt to Boston Celtics leisurewear, pool tables, goalkeepers shirts and Saint Etienne kits, green and white has always drawn me in like a moth to a 40 watt light bulb.
Michael Head and Some Other Bands - Liverpool Echo Arena
By Mike Love
Down by the docks the talking turned. Who'd have thought it; Mick Head ending up playing the cavernous new complex at the waterfront, as part of 'Summer Pops'. Has Britain's 'Greatest Living Songwriter' (NME 1999), finally made it to the big time, and lining up in this year's extravaganza alongside the likes of Mick Hucknall and Mick Buble.
What’s Eating Gilbert & Sullivan?
By Gilbert O'Sullivan
Gilbert - The Secret Millionaire/Kevin McCloud’s Big Town Plan That’s just what we need; puffed up dough heads picking and choosing ’deserving’ causes from the massed ranks of those horrendous ’poor people’ and writing out ’life-changing’ cheques for 10 grand to set the saps up in business as fruit and veg plasterers and oh so socially conscious architects ’collaborating’ with poor downtrodden council estate types to improve their communities via the magic of design.
Chapter 2
By Phil Thornton
Back at the office, Johno, who’d fixed the whole farce up in the first place asked Stoney how it had gone. “Fucking waste of time lad.” Johno nodded a bit guiltily, as Stoney took out his files from the cupboard. “Who’ve we got in today?”
By Finton “Home Taping Is Killing Music” Stack
You all know the ad. The worst, most unequivocally turgid piece of shit ever conceived over a beaked up lunch session of the ad men’s equivalent of the Groucho Club is darkening our screens for a second run. Perhaps the original wasn’t ridiculed quite enough the first time round? Personally, I'm at a loss with absolutely everything to do with this ad.
Epydemyk
By Brian Wilson
The SWINE cognoscenti share a variety of musical tastes, but, rather than just sit at home listening to our favourite artistes, we do like to regularly check out fresh and upcoming bands. Not for us the treadmill of looking out for tour dates, booking tickets with a load of add-on fees, and then turning up for a set that you know will last from 9.30 'til 11, on the dot, before the Kings of High Vis lob you out.
The People's Republic of Merseyside: A Vision of the Future
By Mike Cotgreave
There was a ruckus recently when somebody dared to express a not entirely positive opinion about the city of Liverpool. Everyone from Kevin Keegan to Boris Johnson to one of the city's own sons, Alexei Sayle, has had a dig over the years, so you'd think the inhabitants of Scouseland would be used to it by now.
There’s a brand new dance……………..
By Finton “Clean living under difficult circumstances” Stack.
………..but the thin white Duke couldn’t remember its name. Well, I suppose that’s what holing yourself up in Berlin mainlining smack with Iggy will do for you. Anyway, that dance was called “fashion”. A concept which has increasingly little relevance for me these days. There comes a time in every man's life when he's actually glad that he's too old to be "fashionable".
By Phil Thornton
There is something of the ancients in Cormac McCarthy, something that evokes Moses and Homer, as well as Milton and Blake and Melville and even Ellroy. A world that is at once brutal and barbaric yet poetic and mystical, where men are truly beyond good and evil and inhabit a No Man’s Land between morality and instinct, a place where laws and rules and other abstract human concepts have no meaning and all that’s left is base survival.
The Car Boot Experience (aka Feeding Time at the Human Zoo)
By Mike Cotgreave
It was approx 6:30am. Me and my good friend Richie were in a muddy field somewhere near Burscough and we were surrounded by some of the most hardcore elements of the local car booting community. Like flies around the proverbial excretion they came.By Ste Connor
Want-wit callers into Jeremy Vine, Victoria Derbyshire, Roger Phillips et al Alan Green Heat magazine Lenny Henry 99.98% of Internet bloggers...
Café del Lar Jukebox - August Phil Thornton and PJ pick this month tunes for those rainy August days
By Martin Hall
The Sweet Science has a new Professor. He doesn’t look or sound like a scholar and he deals in more robustly direct methods than any academic. He’s less Descartes and Diogenes; more D’Amato and Dundee. Everything this man has learned is from the School of Hard Knocks with further knowledge gained from the University of Life.
By Steve Grenfell
Now, I don�t want to overstate this. There are loads of things that depress me more. Monday mornings for a start, and the governments 2% pay limit they
really do get me down.WHO REALY KILLED JILL DANDO? A SWINE SPECIAL REPORT
By Nick Ross
Now that Barry George has been cleared and come up with perhaps the funniest quote of the year ‘i don’t want people to go ‘there’s Barry George, he killed Jill Dando, I want them to go ‘there’s Barry George he DIDN’T kill Jill Dando’ it’s no thanks to vile hacks like the Mail’s Geoffrey Levine who after his acquittal continued with such damning slurs as this;
July 2008 By Phil Thonton
It was in the pool room of the Cherry Tree in Runcorn that I first noticed it; one of the scousers from up the road, a lad well known as a bit of a stanley merchant in his youth was sat with a tweed jacket with what appeared to be a Genesis t-shirt underneath.
Career Oportunities By
Charles MansonI do envy people who are able to access the internet in work. I dream of the day when I can sit on various cyberspace forums, firing off invective, commenting on my favourite crisps, and asking the seemingly perennial question of "any minge". Not for me, I am afraid, as I have the worst job in the world.
All Back To Ours - The Stoner Scal Tapes
By Dave Richards
It was 20 years ago today, well nearly, since Pink Floyd played their infamous show at Maine Road. To celebrate that fact, Swine has produced a handy playlist for all those of us who knew our bus-stop ratbags from our fucked-up old hags.........
By Kirsty Walker
Who the fuck would want to be a music journalist? I remember a time when it actually seemed cool to be a writer for the NME or Melody Maker but then I also remember thinking Diego Forlan was a good signing.
You’regonnagetyourfuckinheadkickedin!
By Phil Thornton
Stoney sat opposite the professor in the cafe above the book shop, somewhere he didn’t feel too self-conscious, somewhere where the sight of a man with a five inch scar running down the right hand side of his face, from his temple to the corner of his mouth talking to a balding, bearded, unkempt man in his late 50s wouldn’t attract too much attention.
By Clancy Eccles
(If you ask me for a light I'll give you a light no mither but I'll keep hold of the lighter and light the cig for you. That's the proper way to do it just because it is. It's gentlemanly and it avoids stealth lighter-taxation.)
By Kirsty Walker
The government is preparing to spend £10 million on an advertising campaign telling us how ignorant we are over alcohol limits. Apparently people don’t know that you shouldn’t drink more than a glass of wine a day under any circumstances – much in the same way they ‘don’t know’ not to smoke or eat fast food. Actually you cretins, we all know, but we’re not listening.
WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE ACID WARS DADDY?
By Phil Thornton
You young uns don’t know yer born, it used to be all fields round here. Fields and acid house clubs, that’s all we had to entertain ourselves back in the 80s and 90s. Ask yer dad or yer trendy uncle who still reckons he can throw some shapes at family parties, the one who brings along Playing With Knives just to show you a few moves from back in the day and bores you rigid with tales of wild partying in places as exciting and glamorous as Blackburn, Burnley, Widnes and Stoke.
FILM REVIEW – IN SEARCH OF A MIDNIGHT KISS
By Martin Hall
It seems highly improbable that Odeons the length and breadth of the country will be overwhelmed by millions of punters clamouring to see a black and white American indie flick but if there was any justice, viewings of Alex Holdridge’s charming In Search Of A Midnight Kiss would need to be fortified with security guards to quell the crowds.
No Notion Disco -
KA A Rainy Sunday Afternoon in Sankey Bridges, more of a selection than a mix per se;
TROPA DE ELITE – (ELITE SQUAD) – FILM REVIEW
By Paul Cunniffe
In 2007 the film “Tropa de Elite” (Elite Squad) was released in Brazil under a shroud of great controversy, the film depicted the “Policia Militar” (Military Police) as being unscrupulous, corrupt, lacking in motivation and spending much of the time hanging around shops, bars and clubs collecting “protection money” as opposed to carrying out “preventative police duties” which is their remit.
By Peter Grummitt
Another three years have gone by, and it's time for a new album from that great British institution Half Man Half Biscuit. And, as ever, it's impossible to 'review' in the conventional sense, as you largely know what to expect...
By Phil Thornton
That’s the ultimate parental put down and one I’ve used myself when the 17 year old is yelling childish insults to her 11 year old sister, as if I’m any yardstick of maturity. I’ve always believed in that old cliché ‘you’re only as old as you feel’ or as Mae West put it ‘as old as the man you feel’ not that I’d be feeling any men you understand but y’know I know where’s she’s coming from like.
Mandela v Mugabe - Who’s Your Favourite Black Power Icon?
By Phil Thornton
Two black African leaders, two very different representations in the media. Mandela has, since his release, become some kind of Dalai Lama type figure revered by pop stars, actors politicians and other parasites as a kind of saintly figure, a non-committal cypher of innate goodness, wisdom and nobility for those who don’t like their personal political and spiritual beliefs interfere with their total self-obsession and greed.
June 2008 By Phil Thornton
Look, I know what you’re thinking; how did such a high brow cultural commentator like myself end up at a Ricky fucking Tomlinson performance? See, me ma and da had booked tickets with the missus’s ma and da but the missus’s ma had been rushed to hozzy and the missus offered our services as last minute replacements.
The Picket John Peel Celebration 27th May 2008
By Muckspreader
Music loving John Peel would have been proud of this night. In fact all music lovers would have been. It had everything from his Tim Buckley/Nick Drake folk period via ‘All Along the Watchtower” and “Like A Hurricane” right through to the punk chaos of “White Man In Hammersmith Palais” and “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”
By Phil Thornton
If you didn't catch the first part of Islington based 'comedian' 'writer' and 'broadcaster' (what exactly is a 'broadcaster' anyway? Someone who's been on the telly by all accounts), Alexei Sayle's three part series about his former home city, then you missed a valuable and philosophical insight into the complex culture, history and psychology of er, Alexei Sayle.
By Phil Thornton
What a strange couple of days. On the surface, it appears that a lot is happening yet underneath there’s really fuck all going on. Like most of the Capital of Culture ‘celebrations’ it’s all smoke and mirrors, an illusion, a delusion, a confusion.
By Kirsty Walker
My dad is stood on the doorstep in the rain with a dazed look on his face and a sprig of privet hedge in his hand. He looks up, with his usual visage of incredulity and gives the feed line to what I know will be a night full of coffee drinking and gasping for air as the laughter stitch leaves us both bent double and crying ; “You’ll never guess what just happened to me!”
By Roy
Jesus H. fuckin Moyes! My eyes scope the tiny, unfamiliar room, of which the walls are painted black. I spy a poster of Bjork on one wall alongside an Audrey Hepburn portrait and a map of the world on the adjacent one. A greasy smell, which is coming from the empty pizza box that lays right next to my head makes me strangle someone.
By Carl Mc
At this time, Wednesday night could only mean one thing – Disco night at the Bootle Arms. I was in my very early teens, about the age where when you went into a pub there was a 50-50 chance you’d get knocked back. The Bootle Arms was about 4 miles from our house but if you took a shortcut down the canal it was less than 2 miles.
The Muffin Men at The St Helens Citadel
By Big D
My other half came in one night saying The Muffin Men are on in St Helens, do you fancy going? I thought why not. Although I had been to St Helen’s on many occasions for a bevy and shopping I had yet to grace this establishment with my psychotic persona.
Joy Division - The Movie By Mike Love
I thought it was supposed to be the Sex Pistols who were famous from milking every last drop of publicity (and, more importantly, filthy lucre) from the back of a pretty short-lived 'career'? Joy Division - the Ian Curtis story in particular - also seem to be going the same way, though. But this isn't cash from chaos or turning rebellion into money.
Big Brother: The Big Shit Nothing Could Shift
By Anthony Leahy
Big Brother – quite possibly the worst Dutch export since Mateja Kezman (ok, he’s Serbian) – has once again found its way on to our television screens. Series 9 has delivered an unusually diverse range of deviants, opportunists and the emotionally vulnerable in the hope that this will be the BEST series EVER!
Paul Weller – Blackpool Empress Ballrooms
By Words by Finton “Mr Clean” Stack
Yet, there they were getting covered in piss at this magnificent yet ageing venue with its sprung floor, chandeliers & antiquated toilets that bore more than a passing resemblance to the River Caves, a Golden Mile or so down the road.
By Phil Thornton
Look, I don’t care if my apples come from Northwich or Nepal, I don’t give a fuck if my beef is sourced in Brecon or Buenos Aires, as long as it tastes good, then I’m not arsed about where it comes from or who gets rich in the process.
by Laurence Bergren
Cosa Nostra, La is the startling insight into the counties biggest most organised criminal gang. Born on the banks of the Mersey, Cosa Nostra, La were pioneers in drug smuggling, gun running and all manor of illegal activities that made the American Mafia look like a bunch of petty thieves.
THE SECRET PASSIONS OF GIRLS ALOUD
By Phil Thornton
The Trial Of Socrates has always fascinated me. In some ways I think Meletus was justified in bringing his prosecution because in times of difficulty it was imperative for city states to unify around common ideals and customs.
By Phil Thornton
The Fall, Seelenluft, Mrs Jynx, Lulu Rouge, Four Tet and DJ Yoda reviewed plus the Cafe Del Lar Jukey
Another Day, Another Blubbering Wreck
By Finton “( Norley ) Boys don’t cry” Stack
Were these the tears of a mother who’d lost a son in the Burma cyclone? A father who’d lost a daughter in the Chinese earthquake? No. These were the tears of good old “Captain Courageous” because he’d lost a football match.
Falling and Laughing but still singing like an angel – Edwyn Collins – Shepherds Bush Empire
By Paul Cunniffe
You know sometimes there is a gig that just grabs you, well this one did me. Edwyn Collins was playing in London. The boy from Edinburgh, ex – lead singer of Orange Juice and solo artist, formerly signed up to Postcard and later Polydor was touring.
By Doughboy
So summer's here & the time is right for dancing in the street. Sadly Martha Reeves forgot to mention that the change in season raises the chance to dress like a knob tenfold. Now I'll declare this straight away. I HATE summer, always have, always will.
By Phil Thornton
Russell T. Davies – hey mate, it’s Doctor fucking Who, it’s not The Odyssey, it’s Doctor fucking Who, it’s not Hamlet, it’s Doctor fucking Who, it’s not Bleak House, it’s Doctor fucking Who, it’s not Finnegan’s Wake, it’s Doctor fucking Who, it’s not even HG Wells or HP Lovecraft, it’s Doctor fucking Who so shut the fuck up, for fuck’s sake you Welsh fucking whopper and get over yourself!
The name is synonymous to people of a certain vintage with going abroad on the cheap either to watch your team in Europe, go on your first holiday abroad with your mates or a ticket to black market nirvana.
May 2008 The Happiest Days of our Lives By John Connolly
When we grew up and went to school, there were certain teachers who would hurt the children in any way they could. By pouring their derision upon anything we did and exposing every weakness, however carefully hidden by the kids.
by Clancy Eccles
I used to work with Lionel Ritchie. Not the real Lionel Ritchie but a bloke from Middleton called Dave who was only Lionel Ritchie at the weekends. He did a tribute act in the clubs and was making his way to Vegas via Langley and Littleborough.What’s Eating The Great Grape Ape?
By Phil Thornton
Miranda Sawyer. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t sour grapes (geddit?) but how did this two-bit former Face hack get to become one of the country’s leading ‘culture gurus?’ Either she’s got a great agent or there are hidden depths to the Cod-like genius.
Spanish Bums in Andy Luke's Ear by Bernie Rhodes
Ours wasn't a bad school, all things considered. It had it's usual array of bullies, swots, school-team poseurs, specky no-mates, free-dinner types, and lads who - had they been born twenty years later - would clearly have become Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, but, by and large, you were allowed to go about your business unmolested.
By Phil Thornton
The past is a foreign country, so the cliché goes, and never is this more true than with football. In the age of the Premiership with its array of international superstars and purpose built modern stadia (let’s leave Anfield out of this), it’s sometimes beneficial to be reminded of just how different British football used to be.
By Bernie Bostik
Mr Hughes - My English teacher, an all round good egg. He let me get away with murder but he also knew when to crack the whip when needed. He kept me back one time and told me the school was getting a visit from some Governors or Local Council people (I can't remember which), he wanted me to read out a short speech for them.
By Kirsty Walker
Drunkenness, class wars, casual racism and a complete rip-off. Yes, the Glastonbury Festival is the most British of events. What escapes me is how the failure of a multi-million pound company to sell out a festival in three hours should be of any concern to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
By Anthony Leahy
Growing up in the 1980’s it was difficult to escape the seemingly daily spats between Margaret Thatcher and various figures of hate on the Left. The turmoil and turbulence of the era of Militant and Scargill ensured that the 80’s were dominated by big political personalities famed for the extremity of their views and potential for vilification in an emergent Murdoch dominated-press.
FA Sunday Cup Final By Mike Love
Some two hours before the Toffees took to the pitch on Sunday, another big game was kicking off, at Anfield, under L4's leaden skies. Down the A1 in their hoardes, they came, those North-East inhabitants of Coundon and Hetton, following their local sides to the final of the FA National Sunday Cup - the pinnacle of the pub-league season.
By Robin Chowder
Rewind to Mothers Day 1965: Frank Zappa joins and assumes lead role in an R&B band called the 'Young Giants', quickly renaming them to 'The Mothers'. Record company quickly insist they rename themselves 'the Mothers of Invention' due to controversial "mo-fo" connotations.
by James L / Mike Love
The Pale Fountains - Plato's Ballroom
We came for Orange Juice, for Edwyn. He was the coolest motherfucker on the planet, he wore his fringe like Roger McGuinn and was so frightfully camp it made us laugh. But we reckoned without the Pale Fountains. Playing their first real proper gig they shuffled on to the cabaret stage at Pickwicks nervously.
By Martin Hall
Some bands are born great, some achieve greatness, others have greatness thrust upon them. If you believe their singer/guitarist Liam Fray, The Courteeners are all three.
By Liam Ronan
Swine has the pleasure to introduce you to Salford born, Sheffield resident genius Kings Have Long Arms (KHLA) for a cheeky chinwag about glam rock, fame in France and appearances on Coronation Street.
Falling out with the Jones By Holden Caulfield
This is the debut of local writer, Scott Murphy, and is being performed for a week at the 'Actors Studio', in Seel Street, Liverpool. The venue is about the size of a large living room, and 'intimate' hardly does it justice.
Best Of Allez Allez - Allez Allez (Eskimo)
By Ph