Jerry Dammers brings The Good The Bad and The Queen to LMHR

Specials Founder Jerry Dammers is hosting the LMHR Carnival '08 Finale, which will feature a set from Paul Simonon (The Clash), Simon Tong (The Verve), Tony Allen legendary afrobeat drummer) and Damon Albarn (Blur) - playing music from their The Good, The Bad and The Queen" album.

Jerry and The Specials played the last-ever Rock against Racism carnival in 1981, and Jerry has played a leading role in the LMHR =campaign; Jerrysaid: "Love music hate racism; always say that you don't have to love music, it's the second part that's important! Hating racism should be as natural as liking music, or breathing air for that matter. Anti racism is not "political" it's normal. Please support Love music Hate Racism and help correct the hysterical lies and distortions of the B.N.P."

Paul Simonon also played the 1978 concert, as bass player in The Clash and is also a supporter of LMHR, "It is what it is... musicians against racism. I was against it then and I still am today".

LMHR Carnival '08 is timed to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the iconic 1978 Rock Against Racism (RAR)/Anti Nazi League (ANL) carnival and march. As with the original event there will be an Anti Nazi League-organised march against racism and fascism on the day, assembling at 10am at Weavers Fields London E2. coaches will be bringing groups from around the country to the event.

MORE INFO ON THE OFFICIAL RAR SITE:- http://www.lmhrcarnival.com/

Watch an interview with the band, and a performance of their song 'Herculean' live in the studio, from the Henry Rollins show:-

Click here to watch the video

(Those outside the US should click the link for international visitors).

The Independent:-

Click link to bring up review in new window

The Times:-

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/live_reviews/article2054804.ece

The TimesJuly 11, 2007

The Good, the Bad & the Queen

Pete Paphides at the Tower of London

As his recent involvement in projects such as Africa Express and Monkey: Journey to the West show, these days Damon Albarn is something of a global villager. However, it is his relationship with London that continues to inspire some of his most soulful work. And come the end of the year, it'll be the Good the Bad & the Queen – Albarn's brooding love letter to his adoptive hometown – that will propel him into 2007's Best lists.

That said, it has taken a while for the group to find their feet as a live entity. A high-profile debut at the Roundhouse was hampered by the audience's lack of familiarity with the songs and the fact that the group's on-stage chemistry had yet to assert itself. Eight months later, though, there was no mistaking the relish with which they took to the job. With Paul Simonon sketching out a lithe dub through a theremin-abetted Kingdom of Doom, a Fagin-stooped Albarn gazed from his piano at a view that took in a gleaming Gherkin and the Tower of London. Of the latter, he said: "This place has a lot to answer for, but . . ." He couldn't find the words to finish off the thought, although the music did it for him.

Albarn writes about London like a future historian might, lacing his words with an affecting melancholy. "Oceanographers are charting the rise of the sea," he sang on Nature Springs, as though the words had been found on a scrap of paper after some great flood. To his left, a choir added dissonant portent to the mix while the top-hatted female string quartet played with the sort of inappropriate jollity that made you think of the Titanic house band.

"This is about the whale that swam just over there," said Albarn introducing A Northern Whale – the song about the ill-fated mammal that captured London's imagination last year. The cumulative effect of these songs – apocalyptic and yet oddly Dickensian – was to cause greater consternation about changing times than Live Earth managed to do in eight hours.

For all the epithets recently lavished upon Albarn, few think of him as a folk singer. But in every sense that matters, that's precisely what he is. To borrow his own words on History Song, "If you don't know it now, then you will do."

The band will play Club "B1" in Moscow, Russia on 27th July.