Thursday, 31 May 2012

               

Jeremy Hunt congratulated James Murdoch on BSkyB deal bid progress

Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Clementine

Doug Dillard RIP

Doug Dillard, the pioneering country rock banjo-player, has died aged aged 75, according to reports.
Dillard had first found fame in the Dillards, a bluegrass group formed with his brother Rodney, who made regular appearances on successful American sitcom, The Andy Griffith Show, where they played a fictional band called 'The Darlings'.
After leaving the Dillards in 1968, Doug Dillard teamed up with former Byrd, Gene Clark, to form Dillard & Clark.
Dillard & Clark released two albums - The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark (1968) and Through The Morning, Through The Night (1969) - which are both considered country rock classics.
The musicians who played on Dillard & Clark's two albums reads like a Who's Who of country rock's A list: The Byrds' Chris Hillman and Michael Clark, The Eagles' Bernie Leadon and Flying Burrito Brothers' Sneaky Pete Kleinow.
Two tracks from Through The Morning, Through The Night - the title song itself and "Polly" - were later covered by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss on their 2007 album, Raising Sand.
In 2011, Dillard had been admitted to a Nashville hospital suffering from a collapsed lung.
According to country and bluegrass website The Boot, a family spokesperson confirmed that Dillard was taken to a Nashville emergency room on Wednesday night [May 16] and died shortly thereafter.
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How did I miss this sad, sad news???

ACTA rejected by EU Parliament committees in crucial vote

Pete Rock's Vinyl Collection (Crate Diggers)

Crate Diggers profiles people with extraordinary vinyl record collections, with owners displaying and telling the stories behind their collections. In this episode Pete Rock, the legendary DJ and producer for rappers like Nas, Notorious B.I.G, and members of the Wu-Tang Clan, talks about his early days with cousin Heavy D, his love of funk, and a rare Marvin Gaye record.
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The Rolling Stones to celebrate 50th anniversary with free exhibition in London

The Rolling Stones: 50
Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood
A Free Photographic Exhibition at Somerset House
13 July – 27 August 2012
‘This is our story of fifty fantastic years. We started out as a blues band playing the clubs and more recently we’ve filled the largest stadiums in the world with the kind of  show that none of us could have imagined all those years ago’.
- Mick, Keith, Charlie & Ronnie
On 12 July 1962 the Rolling Stones went on stage at the Marquee Club in London’s Oxford Street. A phenomenal 50 years later, and to celebrate this milestone, Somerset House will present a free photographic exhibition documenting the last half-century and looking back at their astounding career. This exhibition will also coincide with the release of the book by the same name, published by Thames & Hudson.
With privileged access to a wealth of unseen and rare material, this one-off exhibition will include over seventy prints ranging from reportage photography, live concert and studio session images, to contact sheets, negative strips and outtakes from every period of the band’s history – from performing in the smallest blues clubs to the
biggest stadium tours of all time.
Visitors to the exhibition will have the opportunity to purchase limited edition prints, copies of the book and other merchandise.
INFORMATION
Dates: 13 July – 27 August 2012
Opening Hours: 10am – 6pm Daily
Address: East Wing Galleries, Somerset House, Strand, London, WC2R 1LA
Admission: Free
Transport: Nearest Underground Stations – Temple, Embankment, Charing Cross
Further Information: www.somersethouse.org.uk

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Australia inches closer to getting killer drones

Ecstasy and cannabis should be freely available for study, says David Nutt


Bono to join Suu Kyi on stage. Is there no end to that woman's torment?

InstaCRT demonstration

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Michael Franti sings to my friend Lou's (upcoming) grandchild

Filmed in Louisville last Saturday night

Modern Warfare

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Punk Britannia (Trailer)

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Exclusive performances can be found here
If you are outside the UK, use this to view them...

EPIC, EPIC FIAL!!!

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An ap(p)t spelling really when you think of it...

Concerns of Racism Ahead of Euro 2012

John Pilger: Why the Assange Case Is Important

On 30 May, Britain's Supreme Court turned down the final appeal of Julian Assange against his extradition to Sweden. In an unprecedented move, the court gave the defense team of the WikiLeaks editor permission to "re-apply" to the court in two weeks' time. On the eve of the judgment, Sweden's leading morning newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, known as DN, interviewed investigative journalist John Pilger, who has closely followed the Assange case. The following is the complete text of the interview, of which only a fraction was published in Sweden.
DN: Julian Assange has been fighting extradition to Sweden at a number of British courts. Why do you think it is important he wins?
JP: Because the attempt to extradite Assange is unjust and political. I have read almost every scrap of evidence in this case and it's clear, in terms of natural justice, that no crime was committed. The case would not have got this far had it not been for the intervention of Claes Borgstrom, a politician who saw an opportunity when the Stockholm prosecutor threw out almost all the police allegations. Borgstrom was then in the middle of an election campaign. When asked why the case was proceeding when both women had said that the sex had been consensual with Assange, he replied, "Ah, but they're not lawyers." If the Supreme Court in London rejects Assange's appeal, the one hope is the independence of the Swedish courts. However, as the London Independent has revealed, Sweden and the US have already begun talks on Assange's "temporary surrender" to the US - where he faces concocted charges and the prospect of unlimited solitary confinement. And for what? For telling epic truths. Every Swede who cares about justice and the reputation of his or her society should care deeply about this.
DN: You have said that Julian Assange's human rights have been breached. In what way?
JP: One of the most fundamental human rights - that of the presumption of innocence - has been breached over and over again in Assange's case. Convicted of no crime, he has been the object of character assassination -perfidious and inhuman - and highly political smear, of which the evidence is voluminous. This is what Britain's most distinguished and experienced human rights lawyer, Gareth Peirce, has written: "Given the extent of the public discussion, frequently on the basis of entirely false assumptions ... it is very hard to preserve for [Assange] any presumption of innocence. He has now hanging over him not one but two Damocles swords of potential extradition to two different jurisdictions in turn for two different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his own country. [And] his personal safety has become at risk in circumstances that are highly politically charged."
DN: You, as well as Julian Assange, don't seem to have confidence in the Swedish judicial system. Why not?
JP: It's difficult to have confidence in a prosecutorial system that is so contradictory and flagrantly uses the media to achieve its aims. Whether or not the Supreme Court in London find for or against Assange, the fact that this case has reached the highest court in this country is itself a condemnation of the competence and motivation of those so eager to incarcerate him, having already had plenty of opportunity to question him properly. What a waste all this is.
DN: If Julian Assange is innocent, as he says, would it not have been better if he had gone to Stockholm to sort things out?
JP: Assange tried to "sort things out," as you put it. Right from the beginning, he offered repeatedly to be questioned - first in Sweden, then in the UK. He sought and received permission to leave Sweden - which makes a nonsense of the claim that he has avoided questioning. The prosecutor who has since pursued him has refused to give any explanation about why she will not use standard procedures, which Sweden and the UK have signed up to.
DN: IF the Supreme Court decides that Julian Assange can be extradited to Sweden, what consequences/risks do you see for him?
JP: First, I would draw on my regard for ordinary Swedes' sense of fairness and justice. Alas, overshadowing that is a Swedish elite that has forged sinister and obsequious links with Washington. These powerful people have every reason to see Julian Assange as a threat. For one thing, their vaunted reputation for neutrality has been repeatedly exposed as a sham in US cables leaked by WikiLeaks. One cable revealed that "the extent of [Sweden's military and intelligence] co-operation [with NATO] is not widely known" and unless kept secret "would open up the government to domestic criticism." Another was entitled "WikiLeaks puts neutrality in the dustbin of history." Don't the Swedish public have a right to know what the powerful say in private in their name?
Dagens Nyheter @'truthout'

 
               

Julian Assange given 14 days to challenge extradition ruling

Wednesday, 30 May 2012

♪♫ Ruby - Tiny Meat

I'd forgotten how good Lesley Rankine/Ruby is/are. (Was/were?)

Alice in Dali land

Salvador Dali and Alice Cooper, 1973

Twitter War Rages on Between Russia and US Ambassador

Friendly As A Hand Grenade


Dylan awarded Medal of Freedom

President Obama presented Bob Dylan with the Medal of Freedom at the White House today, saying "There is not a bigger giant in the history of American music." It is the United States' highest civilian honor and is awarded for meritorious contributions to the national interest of the United States, to world peace, or to other significant endeavors. Congratulations, Bob!
Photo by Charles Dharapak/AP

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Macbeth in Damascus

Illustration: Judy Green

Besides torture - and yeah, that's a big exception - is there a single civil liberties issue where Obama is better than Bush?

Amanda Fucking Palmer

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AFP
This Is The Future Of Music

The Impending Violence Of The Failing Right Wing

Brilliant!!!

(Click to enlarge)

'Authenticity' In Advertising: The Worst Kind Of Fake?

♪♫ Fostercare - The Empire Will Drain U

Page from Jack Kerouac’s notebook (1953)

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Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will

♪♫ Sandie Shaw - Always Something There To Remind Me (1964)


written by songwriting team Burt Bacharach and Hal David. First recorded as a demo by Dionne Warwick in 1963, "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me" first charted for Lou Johnson whose version reached #49 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1964.
 British impresario Eve Taylor heard Johnson's version while on a US visit scouting for material for her recent discovery Sandie Shaw who resultantly covered the song for the UK market in September 1964 that same month premiering the song with a performance on the Ready Steady Go! pop music TV program. Shaw's "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me" was rush released to reach #1 on the UK charts in three weeks, spending three weeks at #1 in November 1964 and that same month debuting on the Billboard Hot 100; however despite reaching the Top Ten in some markets including Detroit and Miami Shaw's version of "...Always Something There to Remind Me" failed to best the national showing of the Lou Johnson original as the Hot 100 peak of Shaw's version was #52.
(wiki)

Tuesday, 29 May 2012

State Department Human Rights Report Ignores U.S. Role in Abuses


Rally For Julian Assange 31st May 2012 12-2pm & 4:30-6:30pm, 2 Lonsdale St Melbourne CBD. Dept. Foreign Affairs & Trade.

Jennifer Robinson describes Julian Assange's extradition fight

How long before 'The Age' does the same?

What took them so fugn long?

Syrian ambassadors expelled from countries including UK, France and US

Jubilee: The art of punk 7″s

Sixty Punk Singles

:)


This website should be banned. If you buy a t-shirt, someone should get a proceeds-of-crime smack down too.

ACTA: Unredacted Docs Show European Commission Negotiation Failures

Keith Haring and Grace Jones by Andy Warhol (1984)

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Nik Colk Void: Gold E Playback


Void is asking people who bought the single to send her videos of the sleeve being played to be used in a future work (watch more of those videos here)
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Syria using rape as weapon against opposition women and men

Monday, 28 May 2012

Copyleft/Copyright

Illustration: Ron English

The Flaming Lips rewrite 'Race For The Prize' for Oklahoma City Thunder

The Flaming Lips - with the help of followers on twitter - rewrote their song "Race For The Prize" as a Thunder theme song.
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Colour Striped Icebergs

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Beyond Where the Wild Things Are: Maurice Sendak's Other Illustrations

From now on, Britain's "cookie law" prohibits tracking without consent

Dear Alan - Letters to the Last Days of Youth

Orange, White and Blue (Mayhem): Roots of South African Punk

Download
Soundtrack to the article "Orange, White and Blue (Mayhem): the Roots of South African Punk" in Paraphilia Magazine 13, December 2011.
Vintage underground rock, 1960s garage, psychedelia, township funk and proto-punk from South Africa, 1958-1980
Tracklisting:
1. Ivan Kadey, “Chief Joseph” (solo demo, 2010)
2. A-Cads, “Down The Road” (1966)
3. Otis Waygood Blues Band, “You Can’t Do Part 2” (1970)
4. Abstract Truth, “Pollution” (1970)
5. Freedom’s Children “Gentle Beasts Part 1” (1970)
6. Suck, “The Whip” (1970)
7. Hawk, “Uvoyo” (1972)
8. Solven Whistlers, “Something New in Africa” (1958)
9. Allen Kwela and His Guitar 500, “Guitar Rock” (early 1960s)
10. Dark City Sisters, “Shala Shala Twist” (1962)
11. The Raiders, “Deep Soul” (1969)
12. The Invaders, “Turn on the Sun” (1970)
13. The Flames, “For Your Precious Love” (1968)
14. The Beaters, “Harari” (album version, 1975)
15. The Movers, “Crying Guitar” (1970)
16. Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens, “Wozani maHipi” (1975)
17. Philip Tabane and Malombo, “Malombo Blues” (1976)
18. Ivan Kadey, “Orange White and Blue (Mayhem)” (solo demo, 2010)
19. Flaming Souls, “30-60-90” (early 1970s)
20. Reggie Msomi and His Hollywood Jazz Band, “Midnight Ska” (1965)
21. Mike Lebisi with National Wake, “Corner House Stone” (1980)
22. Radio Rats, “ZX Dan” (album version, 1978)
23. Michael Flek, “What About Me / Down in the Streets” (acoustic, 2010)
Article available at www.paraphiliamagazine.com
For more information, see www.punkinafrica.co.za
Some of this music is available for purchase through the excellent South African reissue label Retro Fresh - http://www.freshmusic.co.za/retrofresh.htm
compiled and mixed by Keith Jones and Craig Duncan (Radio Wave)
    

Punk In Africa
(This one's for you Stan!)

David Byrne: This Is How We Ride

The major reason that Melbourne's bike scheme has never really taken off is due to our stupid and totally unnecessary compulsory helmet law. As a cyclist for about the last 45 years I can assure you that a helmet would not have helped in the slightest when my knees, elbows etc got grazed the few times I have come off...

Crash



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LA

♪♫ Filastine - Colony Collapse

Mamma's Boys

Naked man killed by Police in Miami was ‘eating’ face off victim


Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/26/2818832_naked-man-shot-killed-on-macarthur.html#storylink=addthis#storylink=cpy
Well they would, wouldn't they?

Authorities still gunning for Assange, cables show

Sunday, 27 May 2012

Artur Dutkiewicz Trio - Hendrix Piano (2009)



- Voodoo Chile (J. Hendrix)
- Angel (J.Hendrix)
- Manic Depression (J. Hendrix)
- Wind Cries Mary (J. Hendrix)
- Changes (B. Miles)

Artur Dutkiewicz - piano
Darek Oleszkiewicz - bass
Sebastian Frankiewicz - drums

♪♫ Bvdub - Don't Say You Know

Yanukovych and the wreath (2010)

The Original

The Remake

 LOL!
(Thanx Gennady!)

More U.S. Soldiers Killed Themselves Than Died in Combat in 2010

Alan Warner: A life in writing

Alan Warner at the Scottish Railway Museum, Boness. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian
One day in 1981, 16-year-old Alan Warner was in Oban with a friend when they noticed something in an art shop window. "My friend said: 'There's that new book by that guy in Glasgow.' It had beautiful rococo art work on the cover." The book was a hardback copy of Aladsair Gray's novel Lanark, just published by Edinburgh-based Canongate press. "I remember saying to my friend: 'You mean there's someone in Scotland writing books today?' I genuinely thought writing in Scotland had died out like the gas lamp."
Warner concedes that this deluded impression was in part prompted by living in a Highland tourist town and seeing Walter Scotts and Robert Louis Stevensons bound and forbidding in souvenir shops – "an antiquarian feel that had been projected on to Scottish literature." But it wasn't much better in Glasgow. He recalls going to a three-storey bookshop there the same year. "The Scottish literature section consisted of Muriel Spark, John Buchan, Stevenson and Scott. Apart from Spark you'd have nothing published since the 60s. Nothing. Everything was over with."
Worse, literature had been colonised by the posh English. "Every Penguin classic you looked at was 'He studied at Oxford or Cambridge.' That's why I was fascinated by literature – because it was otherworldly. It wasn't something made in and of my community."
It's inconceivable that any sentient Scot could feel today as Warner did in 1981. Scottish literature has flourished so much in the three decades since that disbelieving Oban moment, thanks to Gray, James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, AL Kennedy, Andrew O'Hagan, Iain Banks, Ali Smith, Kathleen Jamie, and others too numerous to mention, that the firm of Scott, Stevenson and Spark no longer has a stranglehold on the national literary imagination.
The most notable omission from that list of Scottish literary revivifiers is Warner himself, who, as the author of seven novels from his bravura 1995 debut Morvern Callar to the sophisticated ambition of his latest The Deadman's Pedal, published this month, has been feted as one of Scotland's finest writers. The critics hail you, I tell him, as the true artist of the Scottish novel. "Oh I cringe when you say that. It's just I can't walk around – I should but I can't – thinking 'I am an artist.'" Warner's a big man, but shrinks over his Red Bull and ice as he sits at a table framed by the window of the bar of Edinburgh's Rutland Hotel.
Behind him it rains unstoppingly for the next three and a half hours, reinforcing the melancholy Caledonian mood Warner established when we met, as he pointed out closed-down shops on Princes Street. Scotland's premier boulevard is hushed: there's no traffic thanks to the building of a tramway and few pedestrians because of the rain. There is, though, a tank parked on the street, to woo army recruits. Outside, Edinburgh's unpeopled and militarised; inside, Warner eventually moves from Red Bull to Guinness.
"I've always had to pinch myself," he says, de-hunching himself finally. "Even today I still feel like a reader who happens to write. I know it's not really the truth, I know it's taken over my life, the writing, become a compulsion. And more than a compulsion – a curse."
Long before he became an accursed artist, Warner was bookless in Argyll. "My family didn't really read books. Nor did I." That changed when, aged, 15, he went into John Menzies and came out with three novels – Camus's The Outsider, Gide's The Immoralist and Charles Webb's The Graduate – partly because the covers suggested the books would be about sex.
"I thought books were James Bond and Agatha Christie and then suddenly I read The Immoralist and later Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country and half way through them you're devastated by what's going on. It completely changed my world. I never knew literature could move you, change the way you looked at the world."
Seduced by literature, he became a Highland autodidact, trawling in almost continuous literary rapture through Penguin classics from a charity shop. "Twenty five of them in a row – no sensible connection between them. Dostoevsky, Gide, The Lives of the Saints, Henry James. It was a completely pure experience for about a year of my life. Those books twisted me around something remarkable."
Only later did Scottish writing catch up with Warner's reading. The book that revolutionised his sensibility and induced him to write fiction was James Kelman's 1984 novel The Busconductor Hines. "I remember that the effect it had on me – apart from great joy – was 'That's all you have to do. You sort of, eh, have a job and you write about the job and the guy has thoughts.' So out came the pen." He still starts his books in longhand...
Continue reading
 Stuart Jeffries @'The Guardian'

Sacha Cohen’s War

Chris & Cosey revisiting 10, Martello Street

Revisiting TG's HQ 'The Death Factory' in Hackney, East London - after an absence of 30 years - as part of the BBC 3-part documentary 'Punk Britannia'.
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Carter Tutti & More At Free One-Dayer

Say it with words

Get them HERE

Henry Rollins Learns to Wrestle an Alligator

'Those things are not tame, as if you could tame a big reptile," Rollins says about wrestling an alligator. "There’s no familiarity. They might not scare you, but it is a very big animal. I had never done anything like that before. But basically I just tried to stay very present and very aware of what I was doing. I have not seen the footage but I’m sure my face was a study of concentration. I do remember going ‘okay, get through this.’ Before I jumped on the alligator, the owner was like, ‘You know he’s more of a runner than a biter.’ Which apparently is supposed to buck you up.'
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A Bug in the Sound System

San Francisco auditorium uses sonic blast, nightly, to disperse homeless

Houla child massacre confirmed by UN



Graphic videos after the jump