BBC says it should have pulled livestream of rap group Bob Vylan's act over 'antisemitic' chants
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The BBC said Monday it should have pulled a livestream of rap group Bob Vylan's performance at Glastonbury Festival over 'antisemitic' chants against Israeli troops.
The British broadcaster has come under heavy criticism for broadcasting the rap punk duo's performance Saturday, when rapper Bobby Vylan led crowds attending the U.K.'s largest summer music festival in chants of 'free, free Palestine' and 'death, death to the IDF,' the Israel Defense Forces.
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Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
Kneecap owe Keir Starmer, the BBC and Helen from Wales a thank you
Helen from Wales won Glastonbury . She didn't sing or dance or chant a death threat. She held up her phone and live-streamed the whole Kneecap show on TikTok, 'even burning her finger on the overheating device', reported the Sun admiringly, 'to bring the music to the masses'. Kneecap hailed her as a 'legend'. From which you might infer that earning legend status can be nice work. But Helen Wilson is a very modern kind of legend. She surprised herself by thrashing the crusty old BBC at its own game – though it's arguable if 1.7 million people actually watched or just liked her livestream as opposed to the 7,200 who definitely watched. It also left Keir Starmer looking like the infamous 1990s judge who inquired if Gazza (the world-famous footballer and also the plaintiff) might be an operetta called La Gazza Ladra. The BBC probably workshopped 10 impossible ways to livestream the Kneecap gig, ie to bleep out any recurrences of calls to kill your local Tory MP – for which the band subsequently apologised to the families of two murdered MPs – while weighing accusations of censorship alongside the terror-related charges against a band member (for allegedly displaying a flag in support of Hizbullah and saying 'up Hamas, up Hizbullah'). It eventually settled on releasing an edited form on iPlayer, saying it was due to fears it would breach 'editorial guidelines' on impartiality. The wonder is that the thousands of attendees fulminating about censorship didn't respond as Helen did with her TikTok stream, which is now being lionised as another near-lethal shot across the BBC/MSM's bows. Glastonbury forbids the unauthorised recording and disseminating of live performances but Helen isn't worried. Some things are too important not to be heard, she says. READ MORE If Kneecap's pro-Palestine stance is noisy and relentless (reflecting in principle the impotent fury of many people, young and old), it's right up there with the band's marketing nous. Among the many stunts designed to 'p**s off' just about everyone, they brought a PSNI Land Rover with them to the Sundance film festival last year (where their semi-autobiographical film with a Gerry Adams cameo won the audience award) and found a place called Provo to have their picture taken with it. 'It ended up that we were on the front of all the magazines, because of that jeep,' Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh (Mo Chara) told The Guardian. The alleged Hizbullah flag-waving incident was preceded by a social media image posted by the band of a member reading the Hizbullah leader's writings. Their official website leads with quotes from the Los Angeles Times – 'reminiscent of early Eminem' – saying the band has 'built up a notoriety for themselves which hasn't been seen in Irish music for many years'. So it's fair to say that they've leant into the notoriety – but not without a heap of marketing gifts from British officialdom along the way. The band won a legal action against the UK government when the latter overruled the awarding of a £14,250 grant to them under a scheme that supports UK-based music acts abroad. But there's nothing to beat the clamour around a prime minister's condemnation – until you compound it with the agonising decisions faced by a state-funded broadcaster. When asked if he thought Kneecap should perform in Glastonbury, Starmer could have refused to comment, on the grounds that there was an ongoing case. Instead he pronounced that the band's performance would not be 'appropriate …'. The rest was wildly predictable. No edgy band wants to be declared 'appropriate' by anyone, never mind a grey prime minister, in a world where the US president uses f**k for emphasis. So naturally the show became the most anticipated set of the weekend. The field around the stage was closed early to prevent a crush. Far from softening its cough, the band heightened the drama by showing a video montage of its enemies, including Sharon Osborne calling them a hate group, then kicked off a chant of 'F**k Keir Starmer' in a charged, triumphant gig . Hardly original as chants go – two songs with that title already exist – but it did the job. The sum total of Starmer's and the BBC's achievement was to ratchet up the protesting and ensure that any artist worth their inappropriate tag would shout 'Free Palestine' (at least) during a set, have a Palestinian flag on stage or be wearing a keffiyeh. And no one sussed that the act just before Kneecap, a self-described 'violent punk' London duo Bob Vylan, hitherto unknown to the masses – until the hapless BBC streamed them live and failed to pull the plug – would make the Irish band's act look almost puppyish. 'Sometimes we have to get our message across with violence', said frontman Bobby Vylan, who led a chant of 'death, death to the IDF'. British police are investigating both performances, though legal experts believe it's futile since the accused's intent at the time – what he intended to happen or believed might happen as a result of his words – decides the matter. So legal vindication once again most likely – although it's worth noting that Bob Vylan are paying the professional and financial price in terms of being dropped by their management, cancelled shows and revoked US tour visas. Long-time music critics writing about Kneecap blend admiration with caution. The Glastonbury lead-up was 'a perfect example of how quickly stories can become overheated in 2025″, writes The Guardian's Alexis Petridis . 'Vastly more people now have an opinion about Kneecap than have ever heard their music, which is, traditionally, a tricky and destructive position for a band to find themselves in.' [ Kneecap would not face prosecution under new Irish anti-terrorism laws, Minister insists Opens in new window ] But who loaded fuel on to the stories? Keir Starmer surprised us – again – by failing to consider his own contribution while delivering a petty told-you-so to the self-flagellating BBC: 'I said that Kneecap should not be given a platform and that goes for any other performers making threats or inciting violence ...' For Kneecap, the upshot of the weekend is a coveted invitation to take the main stage at Electric Picnic . 'This is going to be a special one,' said the festival about its sudden announcement. That's show business.
Irish Independent
an hour ago
- Irish Independent
Neil McCormick: Why Oasis are the greatest rock band of the modern age
Well, I know exactly where I was. I was standing deep in the heart of that crowd, with my arm over the shoulder of my own brother, singing along at the top of my voice. As I wrote in The Telegraph at the time: 'Great earthshaking, groundbreaking, world-beating rock and roll occurs at a point where the expression of an artist and the needs of the audience coincide. Right now, this is where Oasis stand.' Later, when the band had been helicoptered away to continue fighting, cursing, slurping and snorting at their leisure, their audience were left to shuffle painfully towards the exits. For three hours, packed in bomber jackets and bucket hats, we barely moved. Yet all that time, we kept our spirits high by singing Don't Look Back in Anger, Wonderwall and Live Forever. And now we are about to do it all again. Britain has produced many gold-standard rock bands, and I would cite The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Queen and The Clash as the greatest of all time. To that pantheon we must add Oasis, the outstanding British rock band of the modern age. I know there will be scepticism about such a proclamation, although not among the 14 million people who desperately scrambled to buy tickets when the reunion was announced, or the two million set to attend 40 shows of a world tour that kicks off at Cardiff's Principality Stadium on Friday. We all know what we are going to get, and it is nothing fancy. Oasis perform as if showmanship is beneath them. They stand still, battering out songs with thunderous drums, fuzzy guitars and barely a hint of musical nuance. Liam spits out lyrics as if he is ready to take on the whole world in a fight. Noel's elegantly rising and falling melodies do the rest, inspiring the biggest communal sing-alongs you could ever hope to hear. I've never been interested in pushing music forward. Life is so chaotic in Oasis anyway Oasis songs are absurdly catchy, bristling with earworm hooks and snappy lyrics performed with total commitment, putting melody at the heart of hard rock. It is like hearing a whole history of British rock in three-minute bursts, the power of Led Zeppelin playing Beatles songs with swagger of The Rolling Stones. 'I've never been interested in pushing music forward,' according to Noel. 'Life is so chaotic in Oasis anyway, I don't want to be experimenting as well. 'Let's try this in an urban cyber-sonic punk style.' No, give us that Marshall stack and that guitar, I know where I am, thank you very much.' When Oasis signed to Creation Records in 1993, Noel had one question for the label: 'We're going to be the biggest band in the world. Can you handle it?' And then, boom. In April, 1994, Supersonic was the perfect debut single for the Britpop era, riding in on an insolent riff, sneering vocals and euphoric surrealistic lyrics bound by the assertion that 'you can have it all'. It only reached number 31 but it was enough to put Oasis on Top Of The Pops and give us a glimpse of the future. A month later, Definitely Maybe became the fastest-selling debut album in UK pop history. ADVERTISEMENT Oasis scored 22 consecutive top 10 singles and eight No 1 albums between 1994 and 2008, with an estimated 75 million record sales. Their second album, (What's the Story) Morning Glory was the biggest selling album in the world in 1995. The Gallaghers became the nation's favourite soap opera. They fought, they swore, they stormed off tours, cancelled gigs and fell out with each other and every original member of the band, and yet achieved something no pop group since The Beatles had done, infusing a whole country with their own self-belief. Britpop was a great time to be a music journalist. There was a blurring of lines between bands, fans and media. I had many memorable encounters with Oasis, one of the oddest being Liam playing peacemaker when a food fight broke out in a cafe between members of the Spice Girls and All Saints. The most surreal was driving across San Francisco's Golden Great Bridge in a van with U2 and Oasis after a stadium double bill, everyone singing U2's One. The way Oasis swept everything before them, there was an assumption that the sky was the limit. In 1997, third album Be Here Now was initially acclaimed a masterpiece, yet despite notching up six million sales came to be regarded as overworked and hollow. As members left and were replaced, each successive album was scrutinised through a lens of their explosive past and found mysteriously lacking. The critical consensus was that Oasis had lost their way, but it might simply be that the pop zeitgeist moved on, while Oasis continued surfing their own mighty wave. They released towering singles throughout the 2000s (Go Let it Out, The Hindu Times, Songbird, Lyla, The Importance of Being Idle, The Shock of the Lightning). With the public onside, Oasis continued to play packed stadiums to the bitter end. Liam's like a man with a fork in a world of soup And it was bitter, rooted in the antagonistically contrary personalities of the duelling brothers. For a while their sibling conflict had provided much public amusement, with tiffs conducted in a ludicrously comedic language. Noel characterised Liam as 'the angriest man you'll ever meet. He's like a man with a fork in a world of soup'. Liam branded Noel a 'working-class traitor' for the sin of eating tofu. Yet the animosity directed towards each other was counterbalanced by the unity with which they faced the outside world, performing anthems of togetherness such as crowd favourite Acquiesce, duetting: 'We need each other, we believe in one another.' Until they didn't. Oasis split minutes before a concert in Paris in August 2009, when another trivial argument escalated, guitars were smashed and Noel stormed out. His subsequent statement made it sound like he was suffering from PTSD, insisting: 'I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer.' Sixteen years after breaking up, Oasis still have 25 million monthly listeners on Spotify, over twice the number of their erstwhile Britpop rivals Blur. Their eight No1 studio albums and three major compilations remain regular fixtures of the charts, collectively amassing 1,824 weeks in the top 75. Wonderwall has clocked up 2.4 billion streams on Spotify. According to music data analytics site Chartmetric, Oasis are still ranked in the top 20 British artists in the world, and in the top 10 in the UK itself. It is not unusual to hear spontaneous outbreaks of crowds singing Oasis songs at public gatherings. An impromptu rendition of Don't Look Back in Anger in St Ann's Square, Manchester, in July 2017 in response to the Manchester Arena bombing was a powerful demonstration of its enduring emotional significance. What's fascinating is how much Oasis matter to people too young to remember Britpop. Both Noel (now 58) and Liam (52) have carved out arena-level, chart-topping solo careers, but it is Liam who has really carried the Oasis torch. He played to 170,000 fans across two nights at Knebworth in 2022, a larger audience than Oasis drew in 1996. They certainly weren't all men of a certain age fishing out bucket hats for one last hurrah. Liam has a near legendary status amongst younger music lovers, who have been indoctrinated by their parents' record collections while connecting with his wackily amusing online personality and steadfast refusal to mature beyond the lairy spirit of rock'n'roll. Liam is widely celebrated as The Last Rock Star Standing, a man who delivers every note of every song in a tone that cuts right through the mix and burns to the soul. Ultimately, it is the songs that have kept Oasis in the ether. Noel may talk down his sophistication as a songwriter, but he has a rare gift: the magic that makes things flow. His songs are not always particularly clever, and are rarely radical or earth-shattering, but there are moments when you hear them and nothing else will do. And that moment has arrived once more.
The Irish Sun
8 hours ago
- The Irish Sun
Rebel Fred Perry became UK exile and served in US Air Force in WWII after he was ostracised by Wimbledon snobs
ANDY MURRAY will soon become only the second person to be honoured with a statue at the All England Club. And having ended a 77-year wait for a British men's singles champion at Wimbledon, few would argue against Advertisement 11 Fred Perry was the last British man before Andy Murray to win Wimbledon Credit: AFP 11 He secured three Wimbledon crowns but was exiled from the UK Credit: Getty - Contributor 11 He had a string of relationships, including a romance with Jean Harlow Credit: PA:Press Association Yet even Murray's inspiring life and career - including three Major titles, two Olympic golds and a Davis Cup - pale in comparison with the only previous player to be handed this accolade, Fred Perry. As the first man to complete a career Grand Slam, a Especially as he had been a world champion at table tennis, as well as the undisputed king of the lawns. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Advertisement READ MORE ON WIMBLEDON Not only was Perry a working-class man from Stockport and the son of a Labour MP, he was also a fashionista, a lothario, a heart-throb, a rebel and, ultimately, an exile. He dated Hollywood sirens, including Marlene Dietrich and Jean Harlow, he married four times and, after emigrating and taking American citizenship, Perry served in the US Air Force during World War Two. In an age of intense class-based snobbery and of strict amateurism in tennis, the elitist plum-suckers in the Wimbledon boardroom decided that Perry was a lad from the wrong side of the chalk lines. When he turned professional in 1937, Perry was stripped of his All England Club membership, went on lengthy world tours and settled in the States - where he felt far more accepted than in stuffy pre-war Britain. Advertisement Most read in Sport CASINO SPECIAL - BEST CASINO BONUSES FROM £10 DEPOSITS The first of Murray's two Wimbledon triumphs in 2013 ended a wait for a British men's singles champion which had stretched back to Perry's hat-trick of successes between 1934 and 1936. And while the Scot was something of an outsider and an anti-establishment figure - especially in his early days - he competed in far more enlightened times than Perry, who was the victim of overt discrimination from the authorities. Sue Barker returns to Wimbledon in new role a year after legendary BBC presenter's emotional Andy Murray interview As well as his working-class northern roots, Perry was also frowned upon because he was simply too competitive, occasionally even showing dissent towards umpires - which was unheard of in the 30s. Advertisement He was extremely fast across the court and, unlike many of his competitors, was supremely fit - often training with the dominant Arsenal team of the 1930s to develop his sharpness. But after a comprehensive victory over Australian Jack Crawford to win his first Wimbledon title - celebrated with a Centre Court cartwheel and a leap over the net - Perry suffered one of his most memorable instances of All England Club snobbery. While soaking in a bath after coming off court, Perry claims he heard upper-crust committee member Brame Hillyard tell runner-up Crawford that "this was one day when the best man didn't win". Hillyard then draped Perry's Wimbledon tie - symbolising his membership of the All England Club - over a seat rather than presenting it to the champion in person. Advertisement Perry later wrote in his autobiography: 'I don't think I've ever been so angry in my life. Instead of Fred J Perry the champ, I felt like Fred J Muggs the chimp. 'Some elements in the All England Club and the Lawn Tennis Association looked down on me as a hot-headed, outspoken tearaway rebel, not quite the class of chap they really wanted to see winning Wimbledon, even if he was English.' 11 Perry was a fashion star as well as a sporting hero Credit: Alamy 11 He went out with Marlene Dietrich Credit: Rex Advertisement 11 Perry's first marriage, with American film star Helen Vinson, lasted five years Credit: Times Newspapers Ltd 11 Andy Murray will follow in Perry's footsteps with a statue at the All England Club Credit: Getty Images - Getty And Perry certainly wasn't the only British sporting great of his era to become ostracised by snobbish attitudes. Harold Larwood, the great England fast bowler and hero of the Bodyline triumph over Don Bradman's Aussies in 1932-33, became a scapegoat for the diplomatic crisis sparked by the ruthless tactics of his upper-class captain Douglas Jardine. Advertisement Larwood, a former Nottinghamshire coal miner, would never play for England again and ended up emigrating to, of all places, Australia. Perry, who inspired Great Britain to four consecutive Davis Cup triumphs, was far more popular with the public than his sport's top brass - and not least with women, who loved his fashion sense, including his on-court penchant for tailored white flannels and blazers. He would, of course, go on to make millions from his As for the ladies, Perry would marry four of them - including the Hollywood actress Helen Vinson and the model Sandra Breaux - before he settled down with Barbara Riese, the couple having two children and enjoying a 40-year marriage until Perry's death in 1995, aged 85. Advertisement He was finally accepted back into the fold at Wimbledon during the last 25 years of his life, broadcasting for the BBC before his statue was unveiled in 1982 - to Perry's intense pride. 'I never thought I'd live to see the day when a statue was put up to the son of a Labour MP inside the manicured grounds of Wimbledon,' he wrote in his memoirs. 'There will be a few former members of the All England Club and the LTA revolving in their graves at the thought of such a tribute paid to the man they regarded as a rebel from the wrong side of the tennis tramlines.' Murray, who often felt his Scottishness was held against him during his early days at Wimbledon, never really knew the half of it. Advertisement 11 His name lives on as the clothing brand Credit: Getty 11 He was briefly married to Sandra Breaux Credit: AP:Associated Press 11 The Stockport native was also a world champion at table tennis Credit: Times Newspapers Ltd 11 Perry died aged 85 in 1995 Credit: Times Newspapers Ltd Advertisement
