Masses Attack Massive Attack

On Sunday 25th August Massive Attack played their first live Bristol show in 5 years in an event marking 25 years of climate activism by the band, which promised to be the lowest carbon show of its size ever staged. It was set up as a first physical fruition of their collaboration with climate scientists and analysts from the renowned Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, and included Massive Attack’s commissioning of the only Paris 1.5 compatible roadmap for decarbonisation of the live music sector.

Having previously lived in the city and now residing not too far away I just had to go and check it all out. There was a lot to take in with some mega positives and some serious negatives for me to try to articulate as accurately as possible – which is one of two reasons why it’s taken me a week to get this review written. The second reason will be revealed further in to the piece. So here goes…

Act 1.5 Climate Action Accelerator

Billed as an event to accelerate climate action, tickets were initially only available to people who could walk or cycle to the event in a bid to both cut car travel and highlight the importance of doing so. Later on tickets became available to those further afield like myself who were encouraged to travel by train. Alongside my wife, a lifelong Massive Attack fan who had always wanted but never managed to see them live (despite having lived in the same building as Robert Del Naja for a period), we set off on the train which was going to get us there in time to arrive just before the gates opened. Sadly GWR obviously didn’t get the memo and so a two carriage train was all that was put on, making the carriages more and more crammed with each stop closer to Bristol. It’s not fault of the event but the travel experience to the gig made us feel more like factory-farmed animals than civilised humans.

Once we arrived at Temple Meads Station there were a fleet of electric buses waiting to take us to Clifton Downs where the event was taking place. We were given Train Hugger wristbands which would enable us to get the return shuttle after the event as well as give us access to a VIP bar – extra incentive given to all those who managed to ditch the cars and travel by train. Train Hugger are a rail booking company who plant native trees with every ticket booked. In partnering with Massive Attack for this event they have created a climate resilient woodland of 19,150 native oak trees in James Wood, near Taunton.

We got to The Downs just before the doors were due to open and joined a long queue which whittled itself down very quickly as soon as the gates had opened. In we went and my very first impression was that I was back at the brilliant Dismaland. There were installations on show (including a superb @coldwarsteve piece), a gallery tent, a screen printing area highlighting the devastating effects of fast fashion, and plenty of other anti-capitalist interactive experiences to get involved with. I’ve posted some pictures on my Pixelfed account for you to see more.

Médecins Sans Frontières had a good presence there, looking to sign people up for donations (as they are one of very few charities who do not accept any government funding in order to remain truly neutral). All profits from merch at the event went their way.

All traders on the site were 100% plant based and vegan: backstage as well as for all of us punters and we took delight in sampling a good few of them. Again there are some piccies on my Pixelfed profile.

Us Hypocrites Love Calling out Hypocracy!

It was from one of these vendors that I was given an insight in to the supposed real goings on behind the scenes. This particular vendor was extremely hacked off at what he saw as just a publicity stunt and effectively greenwashing. We got in to a deep conversation after I asked if I could pay cash and they said, “We’re not allowed to take it, we’re mandated to use these (card) machines with mined minerals that require electricity”. From that they went on a deep dive of everything that was wrong with the event. I’ve got to say I think they were being particularly negative and misunderstanding despite raising some legitimate concerns. We had been told that the entire event, back of house too, was supposed to be 100% plant-based but they told me that when setting up earlier in the day all they could smell across the site was bacon sandwiches.

They were also not happy with the amount of single use plastic such as the cable ties used for the perimeter fencing. On this issue I had to point out the site was in effect being borrowed from the annual Forwards Festival taking place the following weekend so it would all have been set up for that. I imagine if it was solely set up for this gig then we’d have seen more consciousness in these sorts of areas.

Another gripe this vendor had was with the amount of diesel that was supposedly on show in the background. All we saw and heard as punters were electric buggies & vehicles and amazing solar powered generators – a pioneering innovation provided by Grid Fairies (another new venture for Dale Vince of Ecotricity, Forest Green Rovers, Sky Diamond etc. fame) – but this person told me there were diesel vehicles and a diesel generator in use. I was not able to get this verified by anyone else and I honestly don’t think that this would likely have been the case, but I want to be open and honest about my experience and this discussion was a big part of the day, with someone who seemingly cared greatly about the future of humanity on our fragile earth.

My thinking is that either A) This person mistook the solar generators for diesel ones, B) There were such generators/vehicles there ready for the bigger festival the following weekend or were hanging around having been used in setting it up, or C) They were there as a contingency in case the essentially beta-mode solar generators were to fail – After all what could be worse than putting on ‘the world’s most sustainable event, powered 100% by renewables’ than for it to fail and give the tabloids the headlines they crave to quash the plausibility of such events taking place. Anyway, the main point here is that the event did run successfully 100% powered by the renewable generators, never used before in an event of this magnitude.

I do feel that one of the problems for many of us looking for progressive solutions to the world’s problems is our seemingly innate need to call out any imperfection as hypocrisy. In this case I was trying to get the point across to this person that this event was never going to be perfect (as indeed nothing ever is, things can always be better) but that it’s the best of it’s kind and is making good steps in the right direction. To find the imperfections, which will always exist, and focus mainly on them is counter-productive. By all means dig out other such events for the fact that none have come close to this one, which has set a new benchmark that they should all now be trying to reach and better themselves, but be supportive and at least constructive with any criticism to enable further progression in future. Something else cropped up on the point of ‘infighting’ over focussing on the bigger picture. It was at one of the talks on whether or not we have the greenest government ever which I’ll go in to in the next section.

Talks Bring up the Serious Issues.

Once fueled up we made our way to the talks tent hosted by Novara Media. Sadly we missed the first talk as it had begun only half an hour after the event itself, at 2.30pm, and with no food allowed to be brought in our first port of call was the food area. (I’m so glad we did it that way round because later on the food stalls were very hard to to reach as they were all situated at the stage end of the event). It’s a shame because I would have like to have seen Grace Blakeley’s take whether or not capitalism is doomed.

Still, we did catch the other five talks:

‘Does The World Still Care About Gaza?’ with Daniel Levy and Ahmed Alnaouq. The British-Israeli commentator and the London-based Palestinian journalist tackled one of the biggest issues of our time. I don’t think I can begin to talk about this without at least tripling the size of this already long article!
‘Black History in Bristol’ with David Olusoga and Lawrence Hoo. Another fascinating talk of which the one nugget I’ll pick out here is Lawrence Hoo responding to a question from the audience on black representation. It was put to him that even at events like this one it’s an overwhelmingly white, middle-class audience despite Bristol being home to so many people from working-class and black backgrounds. His response, paraphrased as I can’t remember it word for word: “You see these here Georgian buildings that surround this part of Bristol? They were built on slave blood. The blood of my grandparents. There are invisible boundaries in Bristol which black people do not cross. We don’t tend to come up here (Clifton Downs). There is intergenerational trauma. This is a brilliant event but we should ask Massive Attack, if they do it again, to hold it in Castle Park instead’.
‘The Greenest Government Ever’ with Dale Vince, Carla Denyer MP and Dominique Palmer. I hold a lot of respect these panelists and all three agreed that it’s the greenest government we’ve ever had, albeit a very low bar to achieve it with. Now, I don’t like reducing the immense nuances in politics to supposed binary left and right but it is often said that The Left’s biggest problem is their own infighting when The Right are able to unite despite their differences. ‘The Left’ and progressives are, at their purest, idealists, perfectionists and utopian. That’s not a criticism. Of course we should always strive to be as good as we can be. But it is that idealism that I feel sees them always call out one another for any imperfections. That and perhaps an innate schadenfreude in us humans. Either way it is to our detriment.

This talk held another prime example of this. Vince has had an incredible career to date and although I endeavour to not put people on pedestals or create mythical god-like statuses out of people (we are all simple humans) I admire him greatly. If he had never gone about his business who knows how much worse off we’d be now but I imagine quite a lot. He’s been a pioneer in so many forward-thinking, kind and open projects, standing up for people and planet and against some of the worst examples of modern society. I have followed his work for as long as I can remember and regularly listen to his Zero Carbonista podcast.

In one of the most recent episodes of the podcast he’s looked to call out the Green Party’s co-leader, Adrian Ramsay, for what he cites as hypocrisy and nimbyism. Without getting in to the details of what it’s about (because it appeared to me like the whole thing was a misinterpretation of things that had been reported in the media) he also used the Novara Media stage to echo the call out. It felt to us that whether or not he had a valid point it is a line of argument that only feeds in to the hands of the real enemies of progression. I can’t see how it helps his own cause or indeed that of the current government, which we’d all love to get behind if they will truly support his own vision. Only time will tell on that.

We were left none-the-wiser on the nimbyism issue as he and Carla had a little back and forth, both seeming to have significant points to raise but leaving us and Dominque Palmer feeling we were simply wasting valuable time. My suggestion, if Dale has a genuine concern, would be to initially raise it privately with those who are essentially on the same side in our pursuit of a sustaintable future. If having raised it privately the issue is not sufficiently addressed after any potential misunderstanding is ironed out, or if there is evident hypocracy or corruption seen first-hand then sure take it public to address it at that point. But in this case it seems as though a line of attack was taken based on third party stories and has been too quickly pounced upon without looking to find genuine answers to legitimate concerns in private first. I’ve written about it too much here. They spoke about it too much there. We have bigger banana blossom to fry!
‘2073: Directing Dystopia’ with Asif Kapadia. The director of the incredible documentaries on Ayrton Senna, Diego Maradona and Amy Winehouse has a new film, ‘2073’, premiering very soon. Set in a dystopian future and inspired by Chris Marker’s iconic 1962 featurette La Jetée, it follows a time traveler, who risks his life to change the course of history and save the future of humanity. When asked what we can do as individuals he talked about making ethical changes one small step at a time, which of course is what I try to encourage on Ethical Revolution with my 26 Steps to a Better World.
‘Reporting on Palestine’ with Motaz Azaiza. This was hard hitting and powerful. He also spoke on the main stage. Not being on Instagram or Twitter myself in recent times I’d not heard of Motaz until this. I learned that with his 19 million followers he was one of the only ways the outside world was getting to see what has actually been happening in Gaza as all foreign journalists are banned and very many of his compatriot journalists have been singled out and killed.

He’s currently touring around Europe trying to raise the issue further but says he’s completely lost the passion to take photos. Who can blame him? His friends and members of his family have been killed and only a few days prior to this talk he learned that his street had been taken out rendering him homeless. I’m not going to go any further in to this here. As I said for the Gaza talk above it would likely treble the size of this already long article if I did. But one thing I do want to highlight, and again, it’s the innate hypocrisy urge kicking in, is the use of supposed genocide-endorsing platforms to try to bring a halt to genocide. Wow. Here I am looking to talk about genocide and I’m going to focus on social media. But bare with me. It actually IS important…

The Elephant not in the Room 🐘🤷‍♂️

I’m well aware that most people reading this will be on these platforms. I was myself until very recently. But as Matthew Smyth has succinctly put it, “Next time you’re on WhatsApp, why not invite Myra Hindley over to babysit.” Whatsapp is of course owned by Meta, so ‘Whatsapp’ is interchangeable in that quote with ‘Facebook’ and ‘Instagram’ too. If you’re not aware of Meta’s huge role in the genocide in Myanmar you can read the details about that in four parts here.

I do understand that sometimes you need to be inside the machine to help take down the machine. I also understand that in this instance Motaz wouldn’t have the reach if he didn’t post on Instagram. My suggestion, and this is for everyone who cares at all, anyone who believes that genocide is wrong, is that you either stay exclusively on Meta platforms and effectively endorse them, or at the same time as being there also be on the alternatives. Maybe even reserve the odd exclusive post solely for the alternatives to encourage people to join you there.

What are the alternatives? Sure, I get it, it’s hard to work it out. You jump from one ship to another and it turns out to be just as bad down the line. Well, those issues come about largely due to ownership and corporate greed. And the good news is that there are now platforms that cannot be bought or owned and have no monetisation, and as a result have a whole lot of other brilliant consequences such as not tracking you, not being full of Nazis etc. I’ll save the detail for another article but in short Pixelfed is the decentralised answer to Instagram and anybody who uses Instagram should get themselves a Pixelfed account with a view to eventually having it become the dominant photo sharing platform, at which point we can all say good riddance to the evil that is Instagram.

The same goes for Mastodon over X (Twitter) (there’s that dubious ‘elephant not in the room’ pun). If people care about not supporting certain evils of society they should make the effort to be part of the future. These platforms are those. They exist in The Fediverse. The Fediverse is essentially the social web of what Tim Berners Lee and co originally intended the internet to look like. The opposite of the highly walled gardens that exist to exploit people for profit which is what Instagram, X (Twitter), Facebook etc. all do.

Massive Attack were never going to get everything right at this event but the fact they pointed all of us 34,000 attendees exclusively to their Instagram account in order to get updates in the lead up to the event was one big misstep. 🤦‍♂️ Meta are one of the least ethical companies on the planet. They’re certainly not powered by renewables, which you can choose your Fediverse account(s) to be.

Massive Attack, Dale Vince*, Novara Media, Asif Kapadia and all individuals who genuinely care I call on you to get yourselves set up in The Fediverse.

*Dale in particular, whose arch-nemesis is Elon Musk, going back to the days when Musk stole his ideas to set up Tesla. The fact he supports that highly toxic platform without any attempt to create a roadmap on to an alternative platform that is 100% powered by renewables beggars belief.

The Cow in the Room 🐮

Gosh, Dale has taken a little bit of a battering, yet very few do more than him. With the Elephant not yet in the room (go on Dale, get yourself a Mastodon account!) its space is taken by a cow. ‘The Cow in the Room’ is Vince’s currently coined phrase and he took to the main stage to talk about one of the key shifts we’re going to have to make very quickly if we’re not going to leave a dystopian horror to our kids.

Trouble is it seems to me like it’s either preaching to the converted (the few) or talking to a brick wall (the many) and as such the cognitive dissonance by the many is setting our future generations up for lives of hardship, wars and famine currently unthinkable in our oh so comfy current lifestyles.

Vince also used his stage time to talk about how the gig was a glimpse of the future. He introduced a video highlighting people getting locked up for peaceful protest, welcomed Sarah Webb to talk about why Just Stop Oil is not fun, and called for help in the campaign to free Paul Watson.

The Empty Bar

I mentioned earlier about being given Train Hugger wristbands* for travelling by train which would not only get us on to the free shuttle buses provided going to and from the two main Bristol stations, but would also give us access to a special VIP area with its own bar. Once the talks had wrapped up that’s where we headed. There was about an hour to go to the gig and all of the main bars had absolutely ginormous queues. We were hoping we might be able to join a shorter one in the VIP area. To our astonishment there was no queue at all. In fact there was nobody ordering from the bar and the staff were waiting to serve. It was a lovely area, complete with two sets of compostable toilets (which were also set up all over the rest of the site), but it was pretty sparse. It may be that most train goers just didn’t venture in to this area although that is a little hard to believe given everyone would want drinks and the queues to the main bars were horrendous.

When we arrived home my inlaws (who had been dog-sitting for us) said they’d seen the event on BBC news and the reporter had been getting interviews from the crowd to find they’d largely all driven from London. This backed up the thinking that the empty bar was indeed an indication of just how few people had travelled by train (as had been strongly advised and encouraged in advance by the organisers). A pointer at just how far we’ve got to go to change minds and shift behaviours of the masses.

*I’m trying not to nitpick but who on earth at Train Hugger thought to themselves, ‘Right, we’re a B-Corp whose entire shtick is to restore the UK’s nature via our business and we’ve partnered with the most sustainable event of it’s kind ever, what sort of wristbands shall I get? 💡 I know! I’ll get fabric ones that clamp together with a bulky chunk of unrecyclable black plastic.’ Fucking idiots. Sorry. Onwards…

The Gig Itself

As the sun set Massive Attack took to the stage in front of what looked like way more than the 34,000 officially in attendance. Long time collaborator Horace Andy was introduced to huge cheers as he helped get the set underway. Next to join the band on the stage were Young Fathers. I had watched their Glastonbury set last year and was blown away by their energy, which they brought in equal measure to the performance here. Much needed too as by this stage the heavens had opened. 15 minutes of torrential rain saw an exodus of thousands of people, which for those of us who stayed and danced our way through it left us a lot more space to do so!

And we got our just rewards. Having my vision almost entirely taken away by the rain on my glasses, suddenly the rain stopped and the swirling wind completely cleared my glasses bringing my vision back just as Massive Attack broke in to Unfinished Sympathy with Deborah Miller on vocals. It was a truly magical moment. By the time the song had finished we suddenly had a completely clear sky full of stars. Sure my feet and legs were still wet but it was little sacrifice as the band continued to play a blinder.

Other than for Unfinished Sympathy and Teardrop the rest of the set was accompanied by video montages created by the brilliant Adam Curtis for the group, addressing so many issues, as you’d expect, from celebrity culture to surveillance capitalism, human rights to conspiracy theories and of course the ongoing atrocities in Ukraine and Palestine. Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins was present for a good number of songs and her voice is just as good (probably better) as the day she originally recorded Teardrop with the band.

As with most live events these days, the vast majority of the crowd need not have been there anyway. Most people prefer to experience these things through a tiny screen in the palm of their hand rather than actually feeling the experience of being part the event. Weird given they could have stayed at home, saved money and simply watched it on their phone anyway. I suppose they are paying to have something to show off to people to say, ‘I was there’. Ironic given that in essence they were not present.

Justin Hawkins of The Darkness stops his gigs as soon as he sees a phone waved above heads in the crowd and I applaud him for it. Not only would the phone wavers have a better time if they put their phones away but so would everyone around them. It’s a pet hate of mine going to gigs, theatres, galleries, whatever and having to be distracted by the incessant glowing of screens in my face when all I want to focus on is the thing I’ve paid to come and see.

So are we Fucked?

This gig was billed as being all about changing the way we do energy, transport and food. The festival itself did so much to address those issues. I’m not sure many of the 34,000 people in attendance did though, or whether they care at all. I don’t know if the problem is that people simply don’t see the link between: eating meat and climate change; driving cars when there are other options and climate change; using social media platforms that undermine democracy and cause genocides when there are other options which don’t … or if the problem is that people simply don’t care.

Perhaps they don’t realise what climate change actually means. I mean it is quite an ambiguous term. Should we scrap the term and instead say things like: ‘No access to food’. ‘Mass migration on unimaginable scales leading to civil unrest’. ‘Famine’. ‘War’. ‘On your own doorstep’. I’d genuinely love to know the reasons hardly anybody is prepared to change. Write a comment and tell me where you stand on these issues. I personally find it hard to envisage many people over the age of 30 changing their eating habits. I have hope in the youth, but humanity simply doesn’t have the time for all of us oldies to die out before we have to make the drastic changes to stop the atrocities listed above coming for our children.

My experience at the event was that most people didn’t care for the politics or the sustainability and would have preferred none of it to be there. People were bragging about smuggling in meat sandwiches. Various people said it was ‘too political’, that they didn’t want the stuff rammed down their throats.

The overwhelming comments I heard on the way home were that they didn’t like the Adam Curtis visuals highlighting what’s going on outside their comfortable little bubbles. God forbid they ever face any such hardship themselves like so many people around the world are suffering. Their children and certainly their grandchildren will suffer similar fates, but I just don’t think people care enough.

Some people seemed to take real delight in doing the opposite of what they’re being encouraged to do. There were comments like, ‘The food was atrocious’. It seriously wasn’t. We sampled four different stalls and all were well prepared, large portions of tasty food and you could choose from so much from the very wholesome to festival ‘junk’ food.

Summing it up

It was a a fantastic gig and a brilliant event. I take my hat off to Massive Attack, Dale Vince and everyone involved in the organisation. Perfection will never be reached, certainly not at the first attempt, but this really showed what can be done when there’s a will to achieve better things. Sadly so much is broken that needs fixing in society. I’ve deliberated all week on how to present this and in the end left it to others to go in to detail on things like the genocides of the world.

As for the second reason it took me a week to write this… Being packed in like sardines to a tiny train of only two carriages in a broken rail system meant my wife and I caught Covid which we’ve had for the week since. It’s a small price to pay to be have been part of this event if one day it will be looked back on as a historic game changer.

I have my doubts whether we will ever truly transition to a largely-sustainable way of living, but doubts are normal and I will never give up hope nor give up fighting for it. If it turns out that we don’t ever make it then at least Massive Attack and co. can say they tried. If that’s the case let me say sorry to our children and grand children for the traumas you’re going to face thanks to the vast majority of people not taking them seriously.