The Mystery of Bill Laswell

A Dutch TV Program Loladamusica did an interview with Laswell.
Other musicians talking about Laswell include Liu Sola, DXT & Nicky Skopelitis.
Talking about: 'Rockit' - Hancock, Bootsy Collins, Pharaoh Sanders and mainstream music.
Showing around Laswell's studio by DXT and Laswell's Bass collection.
Some shots of Praxis, with Buckethead, Brain, DXT.

Good interview with Bill Laswell at 'Phil Zone' here.

(My thanx to 'Music Hertz', 'Burning Dervish' & the Laswell Yahoo! group for the heads up.)

Ornette Coleman to curate this years 'Meltdown' festival in London

THIS YEARS MELTDOWN FESTIVAL CURATED BY ORNETTE COLMAN.

featuring

Ornette Colman & The Master Musicians Of Jajouka

as well as

Patti Smith & The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra
Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band featuring Sean Lennon, Cornelius & guests
The Roots with guest David Murray
Yo La Tengo
Baaba Maal
Moby
Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra with guests Carla Bley and Robert
Wyatt + The Bad Plus
& More!!!!!

~For More info go to:
http://meltdown.southbankcentre.co.uk/

Nels Cline & Thurston Moore - 'In Store' performance @ Rhino Records Westwood LA 30/12/96

Bonus: Audio
Nels Cline/Thurston Moore
'In Store'

Nels Cline/Oren Ambarchi duo free Melbourne gig Thursday @ NGV (Fed Square) 6 PM

Oren Ambarchi
Sample of 'Inamorata' here.

Key to Nels Cline's pedal board (below)

Nels Cline

Lots of Nels Cline sample mp3's here.

Steppe - 'Delight' (New & unsigned Belgium band)

Lisa Steppe

Just came across this while browsing the web.
An unsigned band from Belgium called Steppe.
The band members are: Lisa Steppe:Vocals, Patrick Steenaerts:guitars, keyboards & arranging, Mario Goosens:drums, Werner Lauscher:bass, Mauro Pawlowski:backing vocals & Carlo Mertens on trombone.
Their 'myspace' page is here.
I like this.
A very sultry sound.

Girlz With Gunz # 32 - 34

Gallhammer

Yeah right!

The Immaculate Consumptive

The Immaculate Consumptive were Nick Cave, Clint Ruin (aka JG Thirwell/Foetus), Lydia Lunch & Marc Almond.

They toured Washington DC & New York between October 30 and November 1 1983.
Complete chronology here.
You can get a live recording of the NY performance on the 30th October 1983 here.

The day I shook Jack Black's* father-in-law's hand & why I want to kill TimN

Federation Square

Charlie Haden & TimN

Well that wasn't planned really well at all!
There was (as previously mentioned) a free concert in Melbourne today by Charlie Haden and his (Australian) Liberation Music Orchestra.
Originally to have been held in Federation Square in the heart of Melbourne, due to the expected bad weather it was moved to the 'Edge' auditorium within the Fed Square complex.
The result of this was that not everyone who wanted to see the concert was going to get in.
Unfortunately I missed the train that I wanted to catch and therefore by the time that I got into the city the queue to get into the gig obviously had more people than were going to get inside.
It had been arranged that it would be broadcast outside to those that couldn't get in but instead of showing it on the big screen it was shown on a little screen in the atrium.
This was not obviously going to be an optimum viewing experience.
Ordering a coffee I sat down to watch the gig and felt that I really might as well be reviewing the cup of coffee instead. (It was OK, but an honourable mention goes to the chirpiest barrista ever, though as she said it had been a twelve and a half hour very busy day and it might have just been delirium!)
I also had a brief chat with Jamie & 'Raze' (?) who had stopped by before going off to see this at the Comedy Festival which is overlapping with the International Jazz Festival here in vibrant Melbourne at the moment.
It was about a third of the way through the gig that I noticed that the door security staff had changed so I thought that I would attempt to get inside saying that I had just been to the toilet and 'hey presto' there I was inside.
It was a pretty restrained and polite performance certainly nothing like the previous time I had seen them in London back in the seventies or early eighties.
Anyway who should I bump into but TimN whose photographs of Patti Smith, Nick Cave, Spiritualized, Leonard Cohen and Michael Gira amongst others have apeared on this site in the past.
At the end of the show we decided to go and have a chat with Charlie Haden and I was given Tim's camera to take a shot of the two of them and then was informed that there was no room left on the memory card with the result that I DIDN'T get my photo taken in the company of Mr. Haden!!!
(At least I take some solace in the fact that TN looks like an idiot in the photographs above but good to see his hair is growing back!!!)
My other bit of bad planning occured to me just as I saw someone take their vinyl copy of the first Liberation Music Orchestra album out of their bag to get it signed and thought WHY didn't I bring my copy?
Charlie said we will do it next time.
I look forward to it.

* Yes that Jack Black!
(Thanx to Joseph for services rendered!)

Also my apologies to the 'melbdeadheads' crew for not thinking of meeting up until it was too late!

(Charlie Haden photos by TimN)

There is a good review of the gig here which also includes a link to download Charlie Haden's interview with Andrew Ford on Radio National the day before.

Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra Melbourne free gig today

Details here.
Not outdoors anymore so now limited seating.
Curse the weather!

Quick get the Mad Men

From 'Retro Life' here.

Go! Go! Go! This is it, this is it!

J.G. Ballard's last short story

"I felt the tortured rumbling as somewhere the spine of this great edifice began to crack" ...
Photograph: Getty Images

'THE DYING FALL'
J.G. BALLARD

Three years have passed since the collapse of the Tower of Pisa, but only now can I accept the crucial role that I played in the destruction of this unique landmark. Over twenty tourists died as the thousands of tons of marble lost their grasp on the air and collapsed to the ground. Among them was my wife Elaine, who had climbed to the topmost tier and was looking down at me when the first visible crack appeared in the tower's base. Never were tragedy and triumph so intimately joined, as if Elaine's pride in braving the worn and slippery stairs had been punished by the unseen forces that had sustained this unbalanced mass of masonry for so many centuries.

I realise now that another element - farce - was present on that day. By chance a passing tourist on the steps of the cathedral had taken a photograph of the tower as the crack reached the third floor and a tell-tale section of cornice began its fall to earth. The photograph, endlessly published throughout the world, clearly shows the four startled tourists on the uppermost deck. Three of them are leaning back on their heels, hands raised to grip the sky, aware that the ancient campanile has moved under their feet.

Continue reading at 'The Guardian' here.

(My thanx to Moira: 'my-eye-in-the-Skye' for the pointer.)

PC was eager to 'hit G20 protesters'

Story from the 'BBC' here.
PS: The RBS in the background seems ro stand for 'right bullying shits'!!!
See here.

The sad and sorry case of Rev. Magdalen

Rev. Mary Magdalen: Letter to Karmic Angels
January 22, 2009

This is a letter to Karmic Angels. It's really a kind of interactive thought experiment; I send this letter hoping it finds its way to a certain kind of person, one of the people who burn with the desire to help others, but unlike most of us, who are also gifted with extraordinary power to do something about it. People who can change someone else's whole life - lift a burden unfairly laid on them, balance the karmic scales so that a bad thing that happened to a good person is undone and made right.

Far be it from me to judge my own goodness. The official records show that many people officially charged with judging others have condemned me in the worst possible terms as a "pervert" or at least an unfeeling mother. Who am I to contradict them? And yet, I never meant any harm when I made the SubGenius writings and performances that condemned me. We only wanted to laugh.

So then, I fight on. I can't accept that what happened to me was fair. If I have made art that is truly blasphemous and destructive to society, I didn't mean to. I just did it, as any artist does, and it was meant to be funny.

I accepted that I might have to listen to critics chastise me; that's fair. I accepted that my art would never be widely popular. That didn't matter to me as long as my friends liked it. I accepted that I would never get a National Endowment for the Arts grant; it's fair for the taxpayers to choose what art they want to spend their money on.

But to lose my firstborn and only son, that was not fair. To be burdened with more debt than I could pay with ten years of my salary, that is not fair. To have been forced to leave my home and husband, and live alone in another state in order to attend endless court proceedings for nearly two years, that was not fair.

Now, thankfully, our family is finally back together, but the financial burden that remains is devastating, especially as the proceedings grind through their final appeals. No matter how hard we work, we just barely make it each month.

So I offer up my story to any Karmic Angels out there who want to make a difference to one family, lifting an overwhelming burden off people who never meant any harm but got hammered hard, just for joking. If you are moved by my story, and you have the power to help, that help would be most welcome.

I need $38,000 to pay the debt my father offered his entire retirement savings as collateral for. I need $23,000 to pay my outstanding debts with the excellent lawyer, Mr. Christopher Mattingly, who fought beyond the call of duty to reunite our family. I need an additional $5,000 to finish the current appeals.

These amounts are far beyond my reach, but if you are a person to whom that amount of money sounds like a nice summer vacation in Italy, and you want to give an entire family a new life, it would be much appreciated, and I'm sure Karma would take note. If not, would you be so kind as to forward this letter on to anyone you think might help?

http://www.subgenius.com/updates/maghelp.html

Or if you want to just mail Mr. Mattingly a check, or use a card over the phone, his info is:

Christopher S. Mattingly
42 Delaware Ave
Ste 120
Buffalo, NY 14202-3924
(716) 849-1333 ext 351

Thank you!!

Rachel Bevilacqua (Rev. Magdalen)