MUSICIANS AND MUSIC BLOGS RESPOND

Some of the more regular blogging musicians and music bloggers have turned their blogs in the direction of London today, as you might expect:

Bob Mould calls it a "difficult day"; while Moby offers a longer perspective:

as a new yorker who understands what it is to experience first hand the slaughter of innocents at the hands of terrorists, i would like to say to the people of london and the uk that i'm deeply sorry for your loss and your pain.

Over in London, Dickon from Fosca is safe:

I'm entirely safe and unharmed here in Highgate. Sorry to disappoint you, Unkind Reader. Woken up by a phone call from my father checking I was okay.

It's just as well that I'm in a not-going-out-in-London mood at the moment. After a series of bomb attacks in town, London Transport has been pretty much closed down for the time being (tempting the Dorothy Parker quote about the dead president - 'How can you tell?').

The bombs were initially reported as 'power surges' on the Tube. Later it transpires this was an accidental interpretation rather than a deliberate euphemism, but at the time I assume the latter, and muse if this is the 2005 terrorist equivalent of the theatre fire signal, 'Mr Sands is in dressing room 3.' Anything rather than shouting 'Fire!'

It seems silly at first, even insulting and deceptive, but when the level of panic alone can make a difference to casualties, one has to admit it makes sense. The only time I understand you are meant to actually cry 'Help! Fire!' is when you're being raped or mugged. The psychology of alarm. Two pictures on the news take me aback before I turn off. One is a dark, cave-like photo of people walking along Tube tunnels. The other is of splattered bloodstains halfway up the wall of the BMA building in Tavistock Square. The stains are level with the top deck of the exploded bus.

DJ Martian was on a bus, not that far from the one outside the BMA; while Tom at Indie MP3 makes the mistake of watching the hysterical coverage on Sky News. (We must mention, at this point, that we flicked on Fox a while back, and saw a good five minute chunk of them taking a direct feed from Sky of Charles Clarke giving an interview; they cut back to the studio where the fair and balanced anchor started with "there's obviously some sort of law enforcement official there...")

Pop Matters' Robert Collins captures the sudden shift from Olympic victory to exploding buses and suggests that the future might be a bit gloomy.

But over in the upstairs wing of the ACME blog, the London News Review has an open letter to the terrorists, which pretty much sums up the prevailing mood of the city and the nation at the moment:

What the fuck do you think you're doing?

This is London. We've dealt with your sort before. You don't try and pull this on us.
[...]
We're London, and we've got our own way of doing things, and it doesn't involve tossing bombs around where innocent people are going about their lives.

And that's because we're better than you. Everyone is better than you. Our city works. We rather like it. And we're going to go about our lives. We're going to take care of the lives you ruined. And then we're going to work. And we're going down the pub.

So you can pack up your bombs, put them in your arseholes, and get the fuck out of our city.

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