This is episode 20 of Ben's radio show Red White Blues: an Anthology of America's Music (aired 14 November 2024 on Radio Buena Vida). We're able to share it because the music played is all non-commercial V-Discs taken from the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/V-discs1-991943-1944.

On this episode, we look at the history of V-Discs and the rise of vinyl.

In August of 1942, the American Federation of Musicians declared a strike: an all-out ban on members going into the studio and recording music. The strike was called to force the big three record companies to increase the royalty rate on recorded music paid to musicians, which had become a substantial part of music workers’ business in an American culture structured around the production of consumer goods. The strike would last for two years, in which time no commercial records were made.

But the US military and the big labels joined forces to create V-Discs (or Victory Discs)—non-commercial records for the enjoyment of the American soldiers and staff stationed abroad. Records up to this point were made of a rationed material sorely needed in the production of armaments: shellac. With the US having an abundance of oil, the petroleum-based vinyl record came to prominence and it’s been that way ever since.

Oil-based plastic didn’t just shape music manufacture in its own image, though—it shaped American consumerism, which undergirds the world as we know it through mass production and mass communication, the end result of which is masses. It’s us.

Tracks played (with V-Disc catalog numbers in brackets):

1. “Ain’t Misbehaving & Two Sleepy People”, Fats Waller [32]

2. “There’s Gonna Be A Hot Time In The Town Of Berlin”, Frank Sinatra [72]—with introduction from side A (“I Only Have Eyes For You”)

3. “Blues in Berlin”, Josh White [44]

4. “Pearl Harbor Blues”, Dr Clayton [82]

5. “Ring Dem Bells”, Duke Ellington and his Orchestra [37]

6. “Redman Blues”, Don Redman Orchestra [104]

7. “A Smooth One”, Benny Goodman, Cootie Williams, Charlie Christian et. al. [187]

8. “Jelly Jelly”, Earl Hines and His Orchestra [308]

If you like the show, you can listen to every episode right here on SoundCloud or by following this link: https://soundcloud.com/spaghettiforbrains/sets/red-white-blues

Ben flies solo on this episode. You're not crazy for being horrified by the genocide in Gaza. The "rules based international order" = the Ugly American. Folk songs have been around for a long time because there's something good about them. A new symbol of a unified left.

YOU CAN NOW BECOME A PATRON: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/spaghettiforbrains

Norm and Ben read this stupid article by a man who hates people, but most of all Taylor Swift: https://thefederalist.com/2023/09/05/taylor-swifts-popularity-is-a-sign-of-societal-decline/

Sneering isn't just ugly, it's bad criticism. The sixties are still around because private equity firms say so. What no cultural memory does to a mfer. Taylor Swift does a no growth. My narcissism is better than yours. The passion of Frank Costanza.

The auto workers went on strike at the same time that Ben was reading about the auto workers being on strike in 1936. Good Morning Britain flirt with Marxist ecoterrorism. America is made of plastic, and Americans are made of cars. The best pizza is really from Connecticut. Norm and Ben reflect on the state of the left since Bernie. "Make me care".

THE BOYS ARE BACK FOR "SEASON FOUR". We reflect on fake news and how funny it is that the very people tasked with questioning it are the ones falling for it the hardest. And the real news is so bad that it isn't worth reading, so you might as well relax because there's nothing you can do about it. Also Ben's infant son's favourite song is "problematic".

Ben reads a piece of writing titled 'The Passive Voice'.

'The Passive Voice' was pulled together from notes made in 2020 during the George Floyd uprising, reflecting on the history of American citizenship and its relationship to slavery. The causes of racist state violence and Black American resistance to it have a material basis of course, but our understanding of them is mediated by a dense web of assumptions and ideological sleight of hand—like a police report written in the passive voice. The disconnect between the material and the ideological is the subject of these notes.

The piece also featured in a recent episode of Ben's radio show Red White Blues: an Anthology of America’s Music, where we hear the entirety of Charles Mingus’s 1963 masterpiece The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. We’re up to episode five now and there’s a lot more in the pipeline about jazz, oil and the making of American power. If you haven’t listened yet, you can do so at soundcloud.com/spaghettiforbrains.

You can also check out @__redwhiteblues on Instagram where you'll find the show notes and other fragments of research from the project.

The boys are back after Lord Eli graciously reinstated them. On this episode, Ben talks about having a baby and what fatherhood means when you're not one of the freaks and perverts obsessed with gender ideology (ie. ultra cishet people). Norm has a word for the haters.

For those who want to read up about the subject of miscarriage and why it's stupid that we have a taboo around talking about it, we suggest this article: ⁠https://www.vice.com/en/article/mv5knx/we-need-to-remove-the-taboo-of-talking-about-miscarriage-337

Originally published on 27.09.2022.

Beside the Golden Door: A Love Letter to Govanhill

All about Scotland's rent freeze, what gentrification is (and isn't)—and Ben's neighbourhood, Govanhill.

Read the piece, and subscribe for other new writing, at Spaghetti For Brains ⁠newsletter⁠: www.spaghettiforbrains.com

There's a strike wave sweeping the UK right now, with workers across sectors refusing to accept stagnating wages while the cost of rent, energy and food skyrockets. One of the strikes brewing is in healthcare, with NHS Scotland workers (like Ben) recently balloting to refuse a paltry pay offer and signalling their willingness to take industrial action. After the ordeal of covid and the sacrifices of millions of workers, people aren't willing to sacrifice any more to keep profit rates high.

In this episode, Ben talks a little about how he came to write 'Socialism In Sick Times' for the first issue of a new magazine called The Guts Of It, then reads the piece. You can read the piece yourself in print or online. Check out www.thegutsofit.org to find your copy.

Subscribe to the Spaghetti For Brains newsletter if you want to read more: www.spaghettiforbrains.com/p/socialism-in-sick-times

Recorded Live at Burning House Books in Glasgow on 27 May 2022 and hosted by the 44th President of These United States.

Norm samples the local delicacies. George W. Bush and Ellen think you're a punk. Elon challenges you to name five weird things about his weird thing. Partygate is a movie that flops. Dick Stormer, the human korma. Workers are just capital's lower intestine. Glasgow's radical history of rent strikes. An open letter to landlords, who are the modern-day Beverly Hillbillies.