Video parody of Countryside Alliance benefit gig

[Poison Ivy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_HCbPVgUS4

Excellent

[aubergine]

Top stuff.

Did the Countryside Alliance (of idiots) actually have a benefit gig then?

[the_red_star]

The gig isn't until the 20th i don't think.

[aubergine]

I hadn't heard about it...

[the_red_star]

Animal aid have info on their website - homepage

[Poison Ivy]

Read more here

[aubergine]

Thanks

[snaffler]

Thanks for the info Poison Ivy, I have just researched the actual benifit gig being held by Clapton / Ferry & Walters in aid of bloodscum what a joke...a bunch of old coffin dodgers trying to sing that bloodsports are cool....W****rs

[aubergine]

I wonder if it's just another thing to say they're into if it means doing a gig.

There's been some questionable acts performing at good charity events too.

[applecrumble]

thanks for the link, the video is a right laugh.

[veggiewoman]

yeah thanks , was funny hehe.
I heard the CSA lol gig is this coming Sat May20th , could be wrong though, just dont like going on thier website to check it tho lol.

[gibby]

well to do my bit
every artist who performs there will have their music copied and given away free to anyone who wants a copy - to save people buying it

Ill have a look at their fan sites and state my message all over the place


G

[snaffler]

You know I could have swore I was read Eric C was a veggie and had contributed towards a book for veggie charity called "Veggie Tales" ? hmm I smell a rotten apple in Erics house.

[saycheezly]

ferry and clapton are definitely both blood junkies - someone emailed me this vid thing this morning, made me laugh...

ferry's son got done for sending abusive mail to anti hunt people i seem to recall and wasn't he one of the parliament protesters? good to see they've all got their political priorities right anyway

what a thing to raise money for eh..

[the_red_star]

I know, you think if they had all that spare time etc they would want to do something constructive and beneficial to humanity. Raising money for the Countryside Alliance is neither of the two. I have my confused face on now...

[saycheezly]

i dunno, i think the percentage of humans who actually do good things with their spare time is fairly miniscule... maybe i should stop expecting humans to do anything good ever and i'd have less gutting disapointments....

[aubergine]

Not a bad policy.

[applecrumble]

Not trying to excuse them, but some people get taken in and think the Countryside Alliance is legit and helpful, and just try to gloss over hunting, which is actually opposed by most people in rural areas as I recall.
Clapton's life has been dogged by disaster. Born under a bad sign.

[saycheezly]

well he aint gonna be getting any good karma points hanging out with this lot!!!

[the_red_star]

He probably doesn't care about karma points - he's got money!!

[saycheezly]

surely he must have realised that that aint gonna buy him happiness though? how can these people think that if they engage in violent nasty activities, it's not gonna get revisited on them in some way??? or am i just being a hippy about this?

[aubergine]

I'm not trying to defend them, but in my experience the majority of the population back up other peoples ideas without checking all the facts.

To an omni, what the CA say sounds like a good idea. Give people the rights they deserve etc etc. I'd be surprised if most of the people on the bill have even been hunting. It might just sound like another 'good cause' to play in aid of.

[meggymaggoo]

I think you are right - a lot of people do just support things without checking facts. However, the people on that bill DO support hunting, shooting and fishing. Clapton, for example, is well known as a 'game' shooter and has been for years. Waters announced in The Times he was leaving the UK if the ban went ahead (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1763726,00.html).

With the high profile of the CA and hunting it would be impossible for anybody to perform at that concert without knowing exactly what they were supporting.


Here is publicity for the concert from The prohunt Telegraph, May 15th.

*Note the complete rubbish Otis comes out with about what is supposedly illegal now! Unfortunately, a lot of people will read this and accept it, again, as fact because it has been printed in a BIG paper.

Otis - you are either lying or you're stupid - which is it?


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.../ftferry15.xml

Bryan Ferry and his son Otis are an unusual double act, but both are doing their bit to defend the countryside, they tell Cassandra Jardine

Bryan and Otis Ferry are a unique phenomenon. With the possible exception of the Prince of Wales and Prince William, I can't think of another father and son combination in this country where the famous dad is already being eclipsed by his 23-year-old son.

The pair of them appear at a London restaurant for lunch dressed like clones, in open-necked shirts and tailored jackets (Bryan's from Ralph Lauren; Otis's inherited from his maternal grandfather), but in other ways they are very different.

Bryan, 60, still with the sleek dark hair of his Roxy Music heyday, remains a smooth charmer in the Cary Grant mould, while Otis has the firebrand intensity and bone structure of the young Ralph Fiennes.

Each has come straight from a morning devoted to his chief passion. Otis has been trying a point-to-point horse in Sussex - although well over 6ft, he is light enough to be a jockey - while Bryan has been working on a new album in his studio.

To his credit, Ferry père doesn't seem to mind that his crooning skills have been upstaged by Otis's invasion of the Commons two years ago to protest against the Hunting Bill and his subsequent demonstrations against the ban and support for the Countryside Alliance.

Indeed, it was he who wanted Otis to come along today, to keep his father on message, at a lunch that would otherwise have been spent chatting about Roxy Music's past glories and its singer's post-divorce penchant for young women.

I am joking, of course. Sadly, we never get on to discussing the amusing occasion when father and son both tried to date the same woman. When I ask the older Ferry whether he is still going out with Katie Turner, a 25-year-old backing singer, he reaches for his mobile as a cowboy might reach for his gun. He checks with his PA whether the ground rules have been made clear to me. If not, heads will roll; he likes things to go "according to plan".

So, although the answer to the Turner question is "Yes", we revert to the safer ground of music and rural matters in the light of Bryan's forthcoming appearance at a rock concert at Highclere Castle in Hampshire to raise funds for the Countryside Alliance. There, he will join a line-up of 1960s and 1970s greats, including Eric Clapton, Roger Waters and Georgie Fame, but if there is something comic about these erstwhile wild boys strutting their stuff in support of waders and shotguns, Bryan doesn't see the joke. "In the 1970s, the countryside wasn't an issue," he says. "It wasn't under threat."

He does have a sense of humour, it is just very dry. So is his son's, to the extent that Bryan frequently has to check whether Otis is in earnest.

"Really? Are you having a laugh?" he asks, his heavy-lidded face startled out of melancholy repose by his son's more incendiary pronouncements. At such moments, Otis turns a deadpan gaze on to him, surprised that his father isn't aware of quite how deeply he feels about hunting and other countryside causes. "It's my whole life," he says urgently.

His high profile as the Jamie Oliver of the hunting movement is to him a necessary evil and he uses it sparingly. In the recent local elections, he went on the stump for the Conservatives in Shropshire and helped them win. He would do anything to get rid of the Labour Government, which he describes as "miserable scum of the earth".

"Steady on, old chap," says his father in the country-gent tones that have effaced the Geordie lilt of his poor, but happy childhood in County Durham. The wild country he knew and his father's work tending pit-ponies are subjects he often brings up, with notes of wistfulness.

But on most other topics, Bryan is hard to get going, while Otis is hard to stop. He could gallop away forever on the subject of the rural life he learned to love when, at the age of 12, his family moved to the country. "Do you know it is now illegal for your pet dog to chase a squirrel that is eating the bark of your tree?" he tells us. "Or that, if a fox is in your chicken hut and you kill it, it is illegal? We are dealing with craziness."

For the past two years, Otis has been master of the foxhounds of the South Shropshire, yet, despite the ban, he says, the hunt is more popular than it has been for 100 years. "If the Government had left it alone, hunting would have died out quite soon because farmers want to spend their spare time doing other things," he says. "By making it illegal, they have made it cool. Seventeen- and 18-year-olds now support the hunt. We are getting the kennels rebuilt and a new dog wagon."

But enough about hunting. The Countryside Alliance is concerned with more than that single issue. Shooting, fishing, the preservation of buses, post offices and police: it seeks to preserve the rural way of life. Unfortunately, says Otis, this means that the Government can ignore their protests because the focus of discontent is so broad.

Bryan's enthusiasm for the countryside is deeply felt, but more temperately expressed. He has had a house in Sussex for 30 years, but he doesn't hunt and he can't even ride. "I'm doing my bit for the Countryside Alliance," he says, "because I don't like the idea of minority interests being persecuted."

Even more to the point, perhaps, he is seizing this opportunity to show his support of Otis. After the Commons invasion in 2004, he stayed away from the trial leaving his ex-wife, Lucy Helmore - with whom he has four sons - to be Otis's chief supporter. At the time, Otis said that he knew his father's fans might not like it if Bryan became identified with the hunting cause and he understood his desire to keep his distance.

Both Ferrys have changed their tune now. Otis says that his father's fans won't be affected by his support of the Countryside Alliance because they "are interested only in his music", while Bryan insists: "I'm not worried about flak. You can't have your life ruled by that." Recently, the police warned him that he is on an anti-hunt campaigners' blacklist because of Otis.

Ideally, Ferry senior believes politics and art should inhabit separate spheres, but that is not possible. As a former art student, he believes the way things look matters. Indeed, the enduring influence of Roxy Music lies as much in Ferry's choice of suits and the design of album covers, as in the songs themselves. "This Government has no aesthetic sense and no respect for tradition," he says. "It is covering the countryside with houses."

It is music, however, that continues to absorb him. He works manically hard, as he always has done, and the tan that gilds him comes from a recent spell in Florida where he went to write, not to relax.

This obsession with work may have strained his 20-year marriage, which ended in 2003, but it has made him immensely productive. There was a bad patch a few years ago when perfectionism seemed to lead to artistic constipation, but recently he has been touring again with Roxy Music and producing solo albums.

"I used to make up to three albums a year, but I do less now," he says. "The children take up a lot of time."

He doesn't seem to resent it. For a reticent man, he is relatively voluble about his sons, of whom Otis is the eldest. The next one down, Isaac, followed in his father's footsteps by going to Newcastle University to read art, but left after four months because he couldn't bear to be away from London's nightclubs. He now works for his father learning the recording business and (until he was banned for being only 20) stood in the local elections for the Green Party campaigning against the development of Holland Park Comprehensive's playgrounds in London.

Tara, 16, is still at Bryanston boarding school and intent on becoming a drummer, while the youngest, Merlin, 15, is at Marlborough and is more academically inclined. To Otis's distress, none of them seem to share his enthusiasm for the countryside. "If they come to stay and there is nothing to do, they start calling taxis," he says.

While two of his brothers show signs of viewing music as the family business, Otis has from an early age forged his own path. Currently, he is "interviewing" for a new girlfriend (his last relationship having fallen apart because Shropshire is so remote) and he has no intention of impressing potential candidates by jumping on to the stage at Highclere or anywhere else.

"I wouldn't dream of it," he says. "Any more than my father would get on a horse. One thing that outsiders find difficult to understand is that, if your father's whole life is related to his individual gift, you can't just say: 'I'm going to carry on singing like my Pop.' I'm often envious of people who come from a small farm because they have something they can inherit. And I often feel sorry for my brothers because they have to work out what they are going to do with their lives."

Bryan is visibly moved by his son's speech. In return, I venture that, whether or not others agree with Otis's views or methods, he is remarkable in being a young man who has become a role model, not by being a pop star or a clothes-horse, but by standing up for what he holds dear. "I couldn't agree more," says Bryan proudly.

• 'Highclere Rocks' is on this Saturday.

[saycheezly]

"because I don't like the idea of minority interests being persecuted."

hmm, i wonder when he's doing a benefit gig for paedophiles and drug dealers...

[aubergine]

Hmm. Worse than I thought then.

[meggymaggoo]

Guardian – Diary
19/05/06

Would the Eric Clapton spotted in the Times slagging off Coldplay and Bono for being more interested in fame and good causes than in their music be the same Eric Clapton lending his name to Saturday's Countryside Alliance "concert in the park" in support of, er, foxhunting?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/diary/stor...778425,00.html