Johnny Kowalski
LightNews LightNews
banner
johnnykowalski.bsky.social
Johnny Kowalski
@johnnykowalski.bsky.social
150 followers 200 following 120 posts
Musician/writer/hand poked tattooer/promoter/lefty irritant. Birmingham based. Friend of the freaks. He/him
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
johnnykowalski.bsky.social
Johnny Kowalski @johnnykowalski.bsky.social · Nov 25
Little trailer plugging my "Competing Pleasures " series of releases. The first one is the soundtrack here "Mixtape (bedsit dub)"
Reposted by Johnny Kowalski
greenevillezoo.bsky.social
We do not experiment on animals. The flamingos are supposed to look like that.
April 23, 2025 at 7:53 PM
Reposted by Johnny Kowalski
johnnykowalski.bsky.social
The Tower is one of my favourite cards in the Tarot deck cos I see it as meaning "eventually all empires will fall" (amongst other things). And we definitely need that energy right now
April 8, 2025 at 11:25 AM
johnnykowalski.bsky.social
Never trust someone who pushes you to absolute breaking point THEN starts filming your reaction
April 17, 2025 at 10:15 AM
johnnykowalski.bsky.social
Fingers In The Wind from the album Out Here Forever
#folkpunk
April 15, 2025 at 5:15 PM
Reposted by Johnny Kowalski
sireviscerate.myatproto.social
I take off my blindfold. Before me is a gory tableau of death and destruction, bodies strewn across the landscape. The piñata is unscathed.
June 9, 2023 at 12:41 PM
Reposted by Johnny Kowalski
dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social
17. Norwich.
Norwich is a quiet and mild city, although I perhaps didn’t realise how quiet and mild until I walked through it with my dad, who is neither of these things. My mum and I kept losing my dad, then realising he had stopped to take a photo of some people sitting on a bench who he thought looked interesting, or to pretend to shout abuse at someone on a loud motorbike, or to try to sneak onto the end of a guided history tour and consume some of the information for free. “LOOK AT THIS, IT’S FUCKING AMAZING!” my dad said, as we reached Pulls Ferry, the fifteenth-century flint Watergate near the cathedral. “WHY HAVE YOU NEVER SHOWN ME IT BEFORE?” “I showed you it in 2005 and then again in 2009,” I reminded him. “NO YOU DIDN’T,” said my dad. “I’D KNOW IF YOU HAD.” I noticed that nobody else in Norwich was as loud as my dad, or as keen to make friends with strangers. I began to feel like someone leading a large, inquisitive dog through a lawn bowls event, with a blaring radio attached to the dog’s collar. ‘I am charmed by this dog’s enthusiasm but why don’t its owners turn the radio down?’ I imagined the bowls players thinking. But what the bowls players didn’t realise was that the radio didn’t have a volume switch, just one marked ‘ON’ and another marked ‘OFF’, and that these switches controlled the dog too, not just the radio.
April 15, 2025 at 7:34 AM
johnnykowalski.bsky.social
Skateboarding in the city that invented tennis, Cluedo, industrial techno and grindcore, this week on the Johnny Kowalski Substack-
johnnykowalski.substack.com/p/birmingham...
April 14, 2025 at 1:39 PM
Reposted by Johnny Kowalski
blackazizanansi.blacksky.app
America will never regain its footing as a respected super power if it doesn't totally purge MAGA from every governmental and major private institution.
April 14, 2025 at 11:55 AM
johnnykowalski.bsky.social
The Quiet us, doing excellent and important work as always
thequietus.com The Quietus @thequietus.com · Apr 13
'We live in a time where newer manufactured “concepts” rather than actual illnesses are invented. A time where: “Trauma has gone from the battlefield to the television studio, and from hostage-taking to hurt feelings.”'

The Normal: TikTok Tics & the Crisis in Psychiatry

buff.ly/8iJBLMa
No More Normal by Dr Alastair Santhouse book cover. An unsmiling emoji that looks as if it could be peeled off against a white background.
April 13, 2025 at 9:52 AM
johnnykowalski.bsky.social
Modern life in a nut shell
pookleblinky.bsky.social Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · Apr 11
A zombie apocalypse story where everyone still has to keep showing up for work and paying bills the whole time
April 11, 2025 at 10:39 AM
Reposted by Johnny Kowalski
ewacat.bsky.social
got the best earworm

I wanna take you to a trade war
I wanna take you to a trade war
I wanna take you to a trade war, trade war, trade war
April 9, 2025 at 10:00 AM
Reposted by Johnny Kowalski
garydelaney.bsky.social
I got a ransom note in the post today and I was so shocked. Who still writes letters?
April 8, 2025 at 10:17 AM
Reposted by Johnny Kowalski
johnnykowalski.bsky.social
Fictional festival movie madness this week on the Johnny Kowalski Substack-
johnnykowalski.substack.com/p/stealthfes...
March 24, 2025 at 6:12 PM
johnnykowalski.bsky.social
Cake mix as currency and much more fictional fun this week on the Johnny Kowalski Substack-
johnnykowalski.substack.com/p/every-punk...
April 7, 2025 at 12:59 PM
johnnykowalski.bsky.social
The stories behind Gaucho are legendary, my fave being the band paying a sound engineer 150000 dollars to make them a primitive drum machine just so they could place the beats exactly where they wanted, something you could do with free software on the device you're reading this on nowadays
April 6, 2025 at 10:13 AM
johnnykowalski.bsky.social
"We built this city, built this city on massive rats"
And now we have massive pigeons too. Soon Brum will be nothing but a kind of urban Jurassic Park for oversized vermin
bearwoodcouncil.bsky.social Bearwood Parish Council @bearwoodcouncil.bsky.social · Apr 4
Amidst rumours about rats 'the size of cats' being seen over the border in Birmingham, as a result of the ongoing bin strikes, we've been alerted to an even *bigger* threat. Alarming reports suggest that some pigeons, left to gorge themselves on discarded food waste, have grown to the size of cows.
April 4, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Reposted by Johnny Kowalski
johnnykowalski.bsky.social
Punk as technology this week on the Johnny Kowalski Substack-
johnnykowalski.substack.com/p/punk-is-a-...
April 1, 2025 at 11:21 AM
Reposted by Johnny Kowalski
jahduran.bsky.social
I have fewer books “scraped” by Meta than Bob (though I do have one that has been) and it’s not my livelihood but I still think it’s incredibly important to push back hardest against the biggest organisations. Please consider sharing & signing.
rockingbob.bsky.social Bob Stanley @rockingbob.bsky.social · Apr 3
Fun fact. All of my books are being used by Meta to feed its AI model. No one asked me for permission, or has offered any compensation. I'm certain I'm not alone here. If you think copyright is important, please sign this. www.change.org/p/protect-au...
Sign the Petition
Protect authors’ livelihoods from the unlicensed use of their work in AI training
www.change.org
April 3, 2025 at 10:54 AM
johnnykowalski.bsky.social
Garnett Silk was amazing go check out his work if you've never heard it. There was a mad rumour when I moved to Brum that when he played here he got kidnapped and forced to make dubplates for local soundsystems . No idea if it's truez
houseofreggae.bsky.social House of Reggae @houseofreggae.bsky.social · Apr 2
Remembering Garnett Silk who was born 59 years ago today.

In 1989 veteran Derrick Morgan persuaded Garnett to stop DJing and start singing. Over the next 5 years he became one of the great singers of reggae music...

youtu.be/przYmNuKBfw?...

#reggae #reggaesky #vinylsky #musicsky
7" of Garnett Silk - Seeing Zion aka Zion In A Vision on Black Scorpio label. Released in 1992. Produced by Maurice Johnson.
April 3, 2025 at 2:42 PM
johnnykowalski.bsky.social
Can't fight an animal with no shoulders
dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · Apr 3
I remember all too little of the interviews I did with rock stars when I was briefly employed as the music critic for a national newspaper, but there is this.
24 years ago I was sent to a London pub by a newspaper to interview and drink whisky (no “e” over here) with Lemmy, who was in the band Motorhead and, before that, slightly less famously, Hawkwind and, before that, much less famously, Sam Gopal. We had a good chat: about being from the part of the Midlands north of the River Trent, about books, and about roadying for Hendrix in the mid-60s (him, not me; I was minus nine at the time). When the record company PR sidled over to tell me my time was up, Lemmy waved him away. “No, no, I’m enjoying this,” he said, commandingly. I realised at this point that I had another question I’d been meaning to ask but hadn’t. “Are you scared of anything?” I said to Lemmy. “Nothing,” he replied. Then he paused and frowned for a moment, as if an idea had suddenly occurred to him. “Oh, maybe snakes,” he said. “It’s because they’ve got no shoulders.”
April 3, 2025 at 2:39 PM
johnnykowalski.bsky.social
Punk as technology this week on the Johnny Kowalski Substack-
johnnykowalski.substack.com/p/punk-is-a-...
April 1, 2025 at 11:21 AM
Reposted by Johnny Kowalski
luketurner.bsky.social
This is an extremely thoughtful article about men, masculinity and literature which airs some uncomfortable truths that need saying
April 1, 2025 at 9:07 AM
johnnykowalski.bsky.social
Digbeth, Birmingham. 2 days ago.
#sunset #Birmingham
A firey sunset over graffiti strewn Digbeth
March 30, 2025 at 3:22 PM
Reposted by Johnny Kowalski
spinal-bap.bsky.social
Electric Wizard reference in Stewart Lee’s latest column ⚡️ 🧙‍♂️ www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
March 30, 2025 at 11:09 AM
Reposted by Johnny Kowalski
pookleblinky.bsky.social
Like, man-made horrors several orders of magnitude worse than the man-made horrors the US has *already* inflicted on the other 8 billion humans on earth, and people somehow seem more concerned about the hegemony being weakened.

"Oh no, the hegemony!" As the asteroid approaches the T-Rex.
March 30, 2025 at 11:39 AM