Biography

With his blowtorch poetry, anti-authoritarian politics and general lack of tact with the volume of his voice, East London-based Captain of the Rant has quickly established himself in the punk community and poetry circuit as a formidable performer. Whenever he can't find a gig, he will often just stand outside venues, wait for the unsuspecting audience to exit and recite to them. Although, given the British weather, he mostly prefers to play inside.

Every show unleashes energy, wit, fury, chair clambering, shouting and encourages excessive drinking. He laces each poem with a uniquely strange sense of humour and socio-political commentary, while never forgetting that watching a man jump around like a hyperactive monkey while reciting reasonably serious poetry is itself quite amusing.

He has now teamed up with the mysterious, brilliant musician Hair Explosion for their album 'Captain of the Rant Fights Hair Explosion'... it will be proper good, when we finally get round to recording all the tracks.

Captain of the Rant is happy to play formal poetry nights, squats, punk gigs, open mic nights, house shows, parties... anywhere.

Book him.

Samples

THE CHAOS OF THE SNOW

The news screamed the other day of the snow’s chaos
Blank faced presenters presenting a presentation
Of a nation ground to a halt
Ken saying it’s all the council’s fault
Lonely computers are left whirring blankly on the desk
With snapshotted commuters pissed off they didn’t stay in and rest
The buses, the trains, the city, everything stopped

So… what’d the rest do?

Carry on, without the usual traps of routine
A free day, clean of superficial sheen
A bubbled day hanging in space
Every need for fun and no need for the race
Parents rested their eyelids
Before playing with their kids on the white carpet floor
Some of them had never touched a snowball before
Their faces glowed ecstatically
Automatically knowing exactly what to do
And through the speckled windows
People
Read books
Watched films
Made love
And everyone deserved this because they were living
Life by their own design, their own sketch
And didn’t take the fine day for granted
Or go to the jobs that make their hearts wrench
They built their own out of absolutely nothing
Without the pressures of the brick wall
They were constantly head butting
Without coming home grumpy and knackered
Without flopping lifelessly in front of an old Cracker DVD
It gave them energy
Gave them options
It made them free of corruptions
Gave them the power to be free to move
And that day proved we can thrive and survive
And when the system that puts a price on a day like that dies
We will rise and show
That we don’t even need the excuse of snow


ACOPYOFACOPYOFACOPYOFACOPY

I look outside and the rain batters down
Knowing soon that the grey clouds will part with the town
And the sun’ll start blazing when it comes back around
Sucking the puddles into the sky for another round
It’s pouring on a culture which is repeating
And retreating up into its guts
Forcing our imaginations into a rut
Making them steadily simmer instead of erupt
A corrupt system of arts
We’re not encouraged at the start
Told that all the great ideas that come from the heart
Have all been used
When I know for a fact they’ve been exploited and abused

CUT TO:

A film production meeting, and the world’s gone beserk
As they just seem interested in doing less work

“We need some new ideas”
“How about instead of having new ideas, we just remake a load of South East Asian horror films?”
“Brilliant. Rest of the day off”

It’s a fucking ruse
Cheating us out of our ambition
A mission to slow fission and break us into submission
Because when minds have nowhere to roll
My soul, brain, blood and guts start to boil
Under the royal culture raping that makes us all meek
Made worse by clubs like Favela Chic
Shanty towns with open sewers
Below the poverty line
Are transformed into a drunk factory line
Where the privileged can wine and dine
And avoid the world’s troubles
In a bubble of trendy beats
And clueless rhythmic feet
If it’s gotta be this way
At least have the balls to go all the way
You might call this is too far
But how about: Auschwitz Bar
Where you can be spoilt and pampered
To get the real experience of a concentration camper
Bouncers are dressed as SS guards
And there’s buy one get one free Hasidic hats at the bar
But they’ll never do this
They’ll consider it too rotten
Probably cos favela’s aren’t in the news as often

It’s like spraying our eyes with mace
Blinding our choices
Forcing cling film over our face
Suffocating our voices
Until we’re just a wasting copy of a copy of a copy
Wearing a remembrance poppy
Because it’s polite and a nice shade of red
Rather than to remember the plight of so many wasted dead
And when Catherine Tate features Tony Blair
And Coco The Eaton Clown is Londontown’s mayor
You know that irony is keeping us in line
And what we need is a little honesty from time to time

TALKING BACK
(a children's poem)

Little children should be seen and not heard
That’s what they say
But I reckon they’re wrong
You guys should be heard loud and proud
Coz you have the biggest brains
Cos you haven’t been brainwashed like some grown ups have
It’s driven them insane!
Like some aliens kidnapped em walking home in the rain
Opened up their heads while you were in bed
Took out all the interesting bits and bobs
And made them do really, really boring jobs
Now, between you and me…
This has happened to some of your teachers
And you can tell a good teacher from a bad teacher
Because bad teachers have to RAISE THEIR VOICE
Good teachers make you all go ssshhh
It’s the bad teachers who’ve been lobotomised
And it’s the teachers you like who’re wise
Be noisy – give the good teachers cheers
And the bad teachers boos!
And if they tell you to shut up
Ignore their words
It’s only because they think
You should be seen and not heard

JUST TEXTED

Fuck, I just texted
And now I’m next to vexed
I used my most concise wording
Cramming and ramming all the info in
So I didn’t have to pay for that second page
And I reckon it was pretty good
I’ve definitely written worse
But I gotta sinking feeling I might as well have sent it in a hearse
My fingers skipped hesitantly over the keys
But I pretended to myself I’m doing it with ease
I gave it a quick review to see if there was anything to mend
And then I picked her number and whacked send
Will she notice the ‘x’ at the end?
She could construe it as a kiss
It was such a risk, why didn’t I think?
Jesus I hope she doesn’t make the link
Christ, calm down Paul, it’s not that bad
It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a reflex of a hand
And on reflection it could move it into the sublime
Anyway I use it with my female mates all the time
Oh, great, now I’m sweating
Betting that I fucked everything up

I hear the beep of my phone on the kitchen table
And at first I’m barely able to move my hand
Then it shoots over, unlocks and presses ‘read’
And it’s a message from Mum asking what I had for fucking tea
I feel like texting back: ‘Rejection on toast’
But I leave it and wait for my special digital post

What the fuck happened?
When did it come to this?
Our perspectives bent all out of proportion
Forcing us to take nervy caution contacting people we fancy
Getting antsy about whether we seem too needy or keen
It’s obscene:

Technology is taking over our lives

And arrived so subtly we didn’t even notice the rift
As we all started to drift apart with too much ease
As companies make us think we need more stuff
More phones, more profiles
More time shut up in our rooms
Sitting underneath our band posters
Pretending it’s all drawing us closer
While there’s so much info about us online
We update our blogs every day on the dot at nine
To replace ringing and meeting and talking
To those friends who you now haven’t got the time to see
Now there’s no surprises when we chat over a cup of tea
And on the flipside, you’re now a few clicks away from near anonymity
As if increased CCTV wasn’t enough
Making us fear all the people we thought we could trust
Now we’re making our own cells
Giving the State a hand
Sinking in electronic quicksand
And the democratisation of media is great
Unifying people for the constant fight
Giving information to people who otherwise wouldn’t see the light
Giving our community more muscle, strong and tight
Just don’t let bulletins replace marches
Don’t let profiles replace personality
Don’t let texts replace conversation
Don’t let porn replace meeting someone you genuinely love
Don’t let them bury us up to your necks
Shit, I’m still waiting for that text…

MY LIMITS

A beer clamped to my hand
I bitch of sell outs and let downs
My voice is always too fucking loud
Shouting above and about the crowd
As I’m pissing out these words
Of self-righteous curses and quoting
Contradictory verses
I’m too used to buying bands as
t-shirts, badges and political tokens
Holding them to my heart as a keep all
And not seeing the real people

Man alive,
I wonder what I would do if The Big Five
Knocked on my door
And offered me an international tour
And store for all my dreams
And when I really think about it
I’m not so sure

I think of Against Me!
I think of Rage Against The Machine
I think of The King Blues
I think of Husker Du
Jawbreaker, Chumbawamba
And any number of bands
Cast out of hand
By self-appointed punk police
Who won’t rest at abusing
Terms and ideas to hide their fears
And screaming a confused mess
No better than the real police, I guess

In a place I don’t want to reach
I see Thich Quang Duc burning alive in Saigon
I see The Diggers standing united as one
I hear the click of the cock of the policeman’s gun
I hear the blood steaming in my brain
I remember the early shift tomorrow
So I can’t risk being arrested

And I wake up asking:
Will my limits ever be tested?

GOOD TUNE, THAT

I’m going to tell you something that you already know
But I don’t think enough people say it, so here goes:

Music
is
fucking
fantastic

So fluid, slippery, undefinable
It wraps you up in its bubble
It opens up bits of your heart and brain you never knew existed
It kisses, cuddles, bites, roars
It soars and tears through the air
Burning or affirming all your despair
It makes your hairs stand up on end
It’s the sound of warm rum
The pounding of every bit of joy and sadness you ever felt
It makes my skin melt
It explodes behind my eyes
In a place of love and fire
My body burns
My mind relearns and unlearns everything I’ve been taught
It finds everything for which I’ve sought
It’s something beyond being sold and bought
How can you put a price on when your mate’s older brother played you Nirvana for the first time?
How can you put a price on dancing?
Because music is music is music is music
Nothing comes close
Nothing else makes me speak in such saccharine verbose hyperbole
But the whole world of words can’t capture it
It’s just out of sight, around every corner
A lover, a drunk, a ranter, a mourner
Give me rock to grow my hair
Give me hardcore to smash systems
Give me reggae to smoke to
Give me ska to skank to
Give me folk to protest
Give me punk to bond
Give me classical to swell my heart
Give me pop to smile
Everything from Prince to Converge
From Mogwai to NWA
From Bach to Stevie Wonder
From Captain Beefheart to Slipknot
From Super Furry Animals to Weezer
And everything in between
Give me it all
I’ll never let it go

Because music is the dog’s bollocks

TIM THE WAREHOUSE GUY

Tim the warehouse guy
Was the kinda person who’d look you up and down,
Frown in a lack of frustration
Suck in another inhalation of nicotine
His eyes blandly keen
His bear-like body slumped at the shoulders
And when he spoke, something in the air got a bit older
He wore the same clothes every day, static as a boulder
Except a moth-bitten green jumper when it got a bit colder
He never said how long he’d worked there
But the lines in his face said nigh on forever

He looked like he had a gun constantly at his head
But happy that he wasn’t dead
No one ever saw him arrive or leave
Everyone wondered about the bloodstain on his sleeve
Looked anything between 35 and 78
Looked like he didn’t have an ounce of hate
Or an ounce of love
He looked like he was built to shove
His cage trolley around
For long after the floods and the fire
Tore away the town
He had white shadows for skin
And the din of machinery drowned out
Every word that came out of him
He was a blank slate
A bank where you could store all your hopes and fears
An object of all the part-timers jeers over post-work beers

I spread a rumour that he escaped from the circus
Mike said he killed his family and ate their corpses
Harriet said he used a KGB hitman
Roland said he was half-lizard
Which is why he always wore jeans, and never shorts

All these fantasies seized us, a shared madness
Everyone believed us
No matter if the chances of the rumour were slim
But the truth is we were fucking scared that we could end up like him
And have our twentysomething dreams mutate into dedication
For a company we rolled our eyes at with every mention

Then, one day, Tim just wasn’t there
The managers seemed too busy to care
A whole day was spent sponging up even taller tales of his disappearance
To fill the vague void he left in his wake
To give our lives credence
The circus came back to town
The police finally hunted him down
He was extradited back to St. Petersberg
The lizard kings took him back to Planet Zerg
And the day after that, Tim just faded away
A life reduced to gossip stubbed out into an ashtray
Things carried on pretty much the same
And no one ever found out his second name

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.

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