What if...

What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said "I do" to?
What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?

What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to painkillers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
What if Obama were a member ofthe "Keating 5"?
What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election
numbers would be as close as they are?

(thanx to smeggers)

Could you torture somebody? Would you?

Stanley Milgram’s 1961 obedience to authority experiment countered the participant’s moral beliefs against the demands of authority. For this study, Milgram took out a newspaper ad that offered $4.50 for one hour of work, at Yale University, for a psychology experiment that sought to investigate memory and learning. Participants were told that the study would look at the relationship of punishment in learning, and that one person would be the teacher, and the other would be the learner (a confederate), and that these roles would be determined by a random drawing. The learner was then strapped into a chair, and electrodes are attached to their arm. It was explained to both the teacher and the learner that the electrodes were attached to an electric shock generator, and that shocks would serve as punishment for incorrect answers. The experimenter then states that the shocks will be painful, but that they will not cause any permanent tissue damage, while in reality no shocks would actually be received. The teacher and learner are then divided into separate rooms.

The experimenter shows the teacher the shock generator, which has 30 switches, with a voltage ranging from 15-450 volts, and are labeled from “slight shock” to “danger: severe shock,” and the last switch labeled “XXX.” The teacher is told that it is their job to teach the learner a simple paired associate task, and that they must punish the learner for incorrect answers, by increasing the shock 15 volts each time. The teacher was then given a 15 volt shock to show that the generator was actually working. When the experiment begins, the learner found the task to be difficult and made various mistakes, which resulted in increasing intensity of the shocks. When the machine reached 75, 90, and 105 volts, the teacher could hear the learner grunting through the wall, and at 120 volts the learner claimed that the shocks were getting painful, and at 150 volts he screamed, “get me out of here! I refuse to go on.” When the teacher questioned progressing, the experimenter said things such as, “you can’t stop now,” or “the experiment depends on your continuing compliance.” As the shock voltage increased the learner cried out, “I can’t stand the pain,” at 300 volts the learner began to pound on the wall and demanded to be let out. When the machine reached 330 volts there was no longer any noise coming from the learner. The experimenter then told the teacher that his lack of response was to be considered as an incorrect answer, and that shocks were to still be administered. The experiment concludes when the highest shock level is reached.

Milgram found that 65% of participants would render shock levels of 450 volts, and that these were everyday normal people. In the post-experiment interview, Milgram asked the participants to rate how painful they thought the shocks were, the typical answer was extremely painful. Most of the subjects obeyed the experimenter, however the subjects did show obvious signs of an internal struggle, and demonstrated reactions such as nervous laughter, trembling, and groaning. These interviews confirmed that everyday normal people can cause pain and suffering to another person, under the right set of circumstances. Milgram also found the tendency of the teacher to devalue the learner, by saying such phrases as, “he is so dumb he deserves to get shocked,” which helped to interally justify the teachers behavior of continuing to administer the shocks. This experiment by Milgram has given a tremendous amount of insight into human behavior and obedience.

Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", writing:

'The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.'

Melbourne psychologist and writer Gina Perry has now tracked down and interviewed four participants in the 1961 experiment and the resulting hour long programme, 'BEYOND THE SHOCK MACHINE' is to be broadcast on Radio National here in Australia today at 2pm (AEST).

It will be available here to download shortly afterwards.

http://www3.niu.edu/acad/psych/Millis/History/2003/stanley_milgram.htm

Free Patti Smith exhibitions here in Melbourne

Patti Smith expo at Anna Schwarz Gallery.

Photo of Patti Smith performing in 'Cowboy Mouth' the play she wrote with Sam Shepard.

Anna Schwartz Gallery

LAND250
Australian Premiere
Patti Smith began to take photographs in 1967 for use in collages. In 1995, she returned to
photography: “The immediacy of the process was a relief from the long involved process of
drawing, recording or writing a poem.” Many of her photographs embody significant personal
meaning, others serve as a visual record of her well-travelled life. This exhibition is a rare
collection of her photographic work.

THE CORAL SEA
Australian Premiere
The Festival presents Patti Smith’s installation The Coral Sea, which includes photographs by
her longtime collaborator and friend, Robert Mapplethorpe. These installation works include
visual records comprising very personal artifacts and objects – offerings from her life.
5 photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe with text by Patti Smith
Film: Jem Cohen
Guitar: Kevin Shields
Production: Stefan Righi
The Coral Sea is on loan from the Fondation Cartier, Paris.
Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs appear courtesy of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, New York City.

THE INFIRMARY

MELBOURNELAND
World Premiere
While in Melbourne, Smith will create a place-specific project, Melbourneland, especially for the Festival.
Responding to her surroundings she will create a unique record of Melbourne with an accumulation of
images added to Anna Schwartz Gallery each day.As part of its Patti Smith residency, the Festival presents an exhibition of her photographic work drawn from pieces created between 1967 and 2007, offering audiences a rare opportunity to explore the photography of the punk poetress.

Patti Smith began to take photographs in 1967 for use in collages. In 1995, she returned to photography, using a vintage Polaroid Land 250, and found solace in the creative expression of the artform when she was grief-stricken at the untimely loss of her husband, her brother and some of her dearest friends. "The immediacy of the process was a relief from the long involved process of drawing, recording, or writing a poem."

Many of Smith's photographs, which she refers to as, ‘relics of my life … souvenirs of my wanderings”, embody significant personal meaning: Robert Mapplethorpe's slippers, Virginia Woolf's bed, Hermann Hesse's typewriter and Arthur Rimbaud's utensils. Others serve as a visual record of her well-travelled life.

Patti Smith: Photography & Installation
Anna Schwartz Gallery, Flinders Lane, Melbourne city
Thu 9 Oct – Sat 25 Oct

Centre of Contemporary Photography

Objects of Life is a fascinating exhibition of photographs, objects and video inspired by Steven Sebring's time with Patti Smith during the filming of their extraordinary documentary Dream of Life. During the 11 years of filming, Sebring became increasingly interested in the history and mythology behind the possessions and personal treasures that Smith shared in the film's most intimate moments. It resulted in the desire to return to his roots as photographer and to recontextualise the sacred and the commonplace through his camera lens. Objects of Life consists of 14 large-scale photographs taken by Sebring. This collection ranges from Smith's childhood dress to an ancient urn containing the remains of Smith's close friend and collaborator Robert Mapplethorpe, to black leather boots that have stomped around the world and a video installation of Smith in the course of creating an art piece. The exhibition also includes a rare oil painting by Smith, her largest and most recent work to date. Also featured is a private collection of personal belongings from both artists whose collaboration is grounded by their relationship to the film and to their individual personal experiences.

Objects of Life
Centre of Contemporary Photography, 404 George Street, Fitzroy
Fri 12 Sept – Sat 25 Oct

Laddies and Gentlemen...

Patti Smith is in town for the International Arts Festival.
It seems that she will be everywhere the next three days or so.
This will give you 'Horses' (Live - NY 1975) & Dylan/Smith performing the Grateful Dead song 'Black Peter' (Philadelphia November 1995).

My father and I watched this in Glasgow back in 1976.
I was sixteen.
My father was pissed off and confused.
A woman that looked like a man.
(That made a change, he usually complained the men looked like women.)

It's funny that the music that used to piss off my parents now pisses off my children.

WELCOME TO MELBOURNE

How to get there

"The central problem with these maps is not in the way in which they confront norms of cartography, but the duration to which they are bound. The ephemeral nature of psychogeographic space meant that these sites could quickly shift through the pressures of development. The Situationist maps in turn become an archive of a specific moment in the life of the city. However, if these maps incorporated time, they would be able to show the migration or disappearance of these psychogeographic spaces, highlighting and critiquing the urban trends that were / are shaping the city.

Although the Situationists most likely regarded these maps as a record of the drift and a means for provoking new tactics for inhabiting the city, they also represent a valuable schema for creating new forms of cartography. These maps uniquely propose a networked model in which spatial events are abstracted from the grid and linked according to their typology. As databases form the engines of the contemporary base map, the information they contain may be retrieved in multiple configurations, allowing for a range of methods for visualizing the space of the city. The vocabulary of geo-spatial metadata behind the contemporary base map should be expanded to include a broader set of terminologies, allowing for new interpretations of the urban landscape. For example, querying space according to ambient phenomena such as its emotional associations or pollution levels. Visualizing urban space as a montage of typologies may in fact be closer to the fragmented way in which we create our own mental maps. Perhaps we can begin to use database driven maps to understand place within a system of relations determined by their relevance to our queries, rather than their geographic location."

From: Redifining The Basemap by Alison Sant.

Illustration by Guy Debord.

Paris July 2009

Would love to be in Yirrip for this.

OOPS

Ry Cooder fux up (BIG time) at 2 minutes 40 seconds in footage of last weeks gig in SF with Nick Lowe & Jim Keltner.

(Thanx to the smeggers for this.)

Grateful Dead 'Dark Star' Veneta Oregon 27th August 1972

This here will get you a SBD of 'Dark Star' from the gig.

It was a benefit for the creamery owned by Ken Kesey's brother.

The video above is from 'Sunshine Daydream'.

Make believe maverick

There is an interesting article on John McCain in the current American edition of Rolling Stone. It can be found here.

"During his 1992 campaign, at the end of a long day, McCain's wife, Cindy, mussed his receding hair and needled him playfully that he was "getting a little thin up there." McCain reportedly blew his top, cutting his wife down with the kind of language that had gotten him hauled into court as a high schooler: "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." Even though the incident was witnessed by three reporters, the McCain campaign denies it took place."

The illustration above is by Robert Grossman.

Where are Martin Rev and Alan Vega?

An image flashed into my head of Nick Cave presenting Suicide with the Innovation In Sound 2007 Mojo Magazine award.
They are the only thing missing from the aforementioned ATP festival at Mount Buller early next year.

This will give you Suicide live at Max's Kansas City in 1978.

I was at one of those Clash gigs in Camden in 1978 and the other support band was The Coventry Automatics who later changed their name to The Specials.

Another thing. I keep reading that the Suicide '23 Minutes Over Brussels' was issued as a flexi disc back in 1978 but I had a regular vinyl album that had that and an equally short Berlin gig that also ended in a riot on the other side.
Bought it from Harem Records in Muswell Hill.Never see this in the discographies and don't remember it as a bootleg. Certainly never saw a flexi disc back then.

I WOULD RATHER HAVE METHADONE THAN KEN DONE

Oh dear here we go again.
Melbourne's own Bill Henson, who had an exhibition shut down earlier this year in Sydney is in the news again after it was disclosed that he had been invited to look for kids to photograph at an inner city primary school.
Now all hell has broken loose.

A Supreme Court decision this year said that NO he was not a child pornographer.

A rare moment of intelligence from a sportsman as reported by The Australian today;

"Six-time Olympic rower James Tomkins, whose daughter Jess is in Grade One at St Kilda Park Primary in Melbourne's east, said he supported the school's decision.
"I've got no problems whatsoever as long as the school knows what the situation is," Mr Tomkins told AAP.
"You rely and trust their judgment, their responsibility.
"The scouting I don't have a problem with, it's then what it's used for - that's another question.
"But having someone like a well-known artist go to a school, no problems whatsoever.
"You don't know what he's going to produce. All he's doing is looking for appropriate kids.
"I think if Jess was chosen, then it's the whole question of are you going to agree or not?"
He said the school was popular for its diversity.
"There's all these artists, actors, designers, sportspeople - it's got an eclectic mix," Mr Tomkins said.
He said Ms Knight (the Principal) had been fantastic for the school.
"You talk to any of the parents at the school and I would be surprised if you heard a bad word against her," he said."

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd when asked what he thought of the Sydney exhibition said that he thought it was "disgusting."
When asked what he thought of Bill Henson going to the school he said that he thought it was "disgusting."

You just know that he would love Ken Done's 'artwork'.

It was the late Brett Whiteley who supplied the heading to this post.

The image above is 'Untitled No. 8' by Bill Henson.

Michael Gira

This link here will get you some songs by Michael Gira. If you are only aware of the work he did with the Swans then you are in for a pleasant surprise. Their pulverizing (thanx Chris!) sonic assault has been left behind for a much more acoustic sound though his lyrics can still get into those dark places. There are two tracks 'Black River Song' and 'Sunflower's Here To Stay' from the Angels of Light's last release 'We Are Him' which was definitely in my top-ten-of-2007. 'Blind' from 'Drainland' and 'God's Servant' from 'Solo Recordings' which were both issued under the name of M. Gira and finally a version of 'I Want To Be Your Dog' from the Skin album 'Shame, Humility and Revenge'.

I even forgive him for giving the world Devendra Banhart.


The live photo was taken by Niblox at the Indian Summer Festival in Glasgow (July 2007). He has a blog called WORDS ARE MY WEAPON that can be found here.

The editorial team here at 'Exile' digging 'Rocking The Cradle' which finally got delivered today.

(and YES they did make a silk purse from a camel's ear!)

ALL TOMORROWS PARTIES Australia 2009

The Nick Cave curated ATP is coming to the Victorian alpine region and with artists such as Spiritualized, Michael Gira, James Blood Ulmer, the original line up of The Saints, the Laughing Clowns, Fuck Buttons, The Necks, Silver Apples, Robert Forster and Roland S. Howard joining The Bad Seeds, it is looking good. Full details can be found here.



Here is a recording of The Bad Seeds from 'Pandora's Box' at De Doelen in Rotterdam in 1985.
I caught this tour in Amsterdam and Blixa (I didn't join a rock'n'roll band to play rock'n'roll) Bargeld's guitar is just amazing. Tracks are: I Put A Spell On You, Well of Misery, Sad Dark Eyes, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Wanted Man, Train Long Suffering, St. Huck & Little Girl Tree.

CHIX WITH GUNZ # 2

...and a big shout out from Sarah in Alaska to 'Joe Six-Pack' (wink-wink)



if you go here you can find out what your name would be if Sarah Palin was your mom.

Global Mix 1

A mix of musical styles though predominantly north African.
After opening aptly on this Sunday morning with Baaba Maal's 'Call to Prayer' we find ourselves 'tranceported' by music from both the mountains and medinas of Maroc, by the psychedelic sounds coming from the Congo in the mid seventies and by the present-time desert blues of Tinariwen and Group Inerane.
From Algeria by way of Paris to the Ju-Ju lands of Nigeria.
From London to New York via Turkey.
Also featuring those bass-masters Jah Wobble & Bill (Have Bass Will Travel) Laswell.

If this compilation doesn't want to make you dance barefoot under the sky then you are already dead.

It can be got from here.
Left click on picture above for list of featured performers.

As an extra bonus you can get Tinariwen's performance from Womad of 2004 here.

DOT...DOT...DOT.

With the news that Dot Allison is the new paramour of that well known scallywag Pete Doherty, I thought it a fitting time to revisit her first band One Dove. You will find here a couple of remixes of the tracks 'Fallen' & 'White Love' from their one and only album 'Morning Dove White' as well as a track from the film 'Unleashed' where she collaborated with Massive Attack, although this track 'Aftersun' was not on the soundtrack 'Danny the Dog'. There is also a demo from her and Pete Doherty entitled 'I Wanna Break Your Heart'.

For everyone that is put off by the drug-taking, having gorgeous girlfriends (bastard!) side of things of Mr. Doherty, do try and investigate some Babyshambles, Libertines or solo stuff-there is some amazing rock'n'roll to be found.

OOPS...MAJOR MALFUCTION (SIC) RE: COMPUTER. HAVE TO BE REALLY NICE TO MY TECH SUPPORT GUY (SON # 2) HAVE I TOLD YOU RECENTLY THAT I REALLY REALLY LOVE YOU CAL!
NORMAL SERVICE WILL BE RESUMED ASAP.

dot..dot..dot.

Samidah Sound

Ms.Mayfield oop north in the jungle asked me for 'Home of the Whale' by Massive Attack the other day and here it is.

This will get you a version of Fred Neil's 'Dolphins' by Beth Orton with Terry Callier, as well as 'Live With Me' by Massive Attack also featuring Terry Callier and an almost perfect cover of 'Live With Me' by those well known Gutter Twins Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli, this time masquerading as The Twilight Singers.

Please Mr. Postman...

While I am waiting for the new Grateful Dead album 'Rocking The Cradle' to wing its way to me from America, I thought that today I would lay on you a track recorded on the 15th of September 1978 at the Gizah Sound & Light Theatre that is not on the album. So here is 'Ship Of Fools' by the Grateful Dead and here is Elvis Costello covering the same song taken from the album 'Deadicated'.

When The Two Sevens Clashed!

This tune, the dub of Culture's 'Two Sevens Clash' here will always remind me of Eric's and then the long walk home to Wavertree.

Two more Eric's thingys and the flyer will give you some idea of the quality of gigs put on there. Check out the price of tickets, those were the days when you could go out practically every night and still have change left.

Story on 'Eric's - The Musical' here.

Ah! Good old Eric's in Liverpool. Somewhere in the bowels of Matthew Street is my name sprayed on the dressing room wall with a can borrowed from Ivor Hay the drummer from The Saints.
Eric's one day, North Wales the next and my Grandma freaking out in Blissworth St! Here is a set from Echo and the Bunnymen and here is a set from Teardrop Explodes both from September 1979. Oh and if the bastard who stole all my music back in London 20 odd years ago is reading this. I truly hope that you enjoyed it especially the tape that I got from the mixing desk of both those bands supporting Joy Division at the YMCA in Tottenham Court Road. The photo above is of The Save Eric's Rally in 1980. Finally here is the very last song played live at Erics by (The Mighty Shambeko) WAH! (Heat). This is just for you Chris.

The other day at her blog here, the Australian artist Hazel Dooney mentioned Dudu Pukwana, a musician that I was extremely lucky to see countless times in London in the 70's. He was one of the expat South Africans who came to prominence first as The Blue Notes and then as Brotherhood of Breath. Here is a version of Mongezi Feza's 'Sonia' by him. One by the Brotherhood of Breath here. And finally Robert Wyatt's version that features the late great Mongezi Feza on trumpet here. Dudu has also unfortunately since passed on.

The image above is by Hazel Dooney and is a detail from 'Strategies of Modern Survival'.

For any Americans reading this. Here is John Martyn with 'Black Man At The Shoulder' and to think that this wasn't good enough to get on 'One World'! McCain and Palin worry me (a lot.)

Here is my theme song

The beginning.

Well all I got to do now is learn how to upload music and we will be off. Testing 1-2!!