A young person's guide to Cornelius Cardew's 'Treatise'

Cornelius Cardew

These are excerpts of the musical notation of 'Treatise' by Cornelius Cardew.
Go HERE
for more info and follow the links, especially THIS one.

"Experimental music scores are enigmatic, opaque, demanding, irritating, humorous, childlike; the best, like Cardew's Treatise, are also inspiring, giving rise, on occasion, to a music of vitality, intelligence and elegance." - John Tilbury

"Graphic music or graphic notation came out of attempts by composers in the 50's to articulate a different relationship of music/sound to composer and musician. Composers like Brown, Cage, Feldman, Wolff and others were part of a sea change that enabled multiplicity to grow out of the modernist framework." - Kerry Andrews

"A Composer who hears sounds will try to find a notation for sounds. One who has ideas will find one that expresses his ideas, leaving their interpretation free, in confidence that his ideas have been accurately and concisely notated."
- Cornelius Cardew

'Treatise' (Pages 82 - 84)
as performed by:
Keith Rowe: guitar, electronics
Tetuzi Akiyama: amplified acoustic guitar
Oren Ambarchi: guitar, electronics
Toshimaru Nakamura: electric guitar
Otomo Yoshihide: electric guitar
Burkhard Stangl: acoustic and electric guitars
Taku Sugimoto: electric guitar

(Many years ago I found some similar pieces in the basement of the LMC in Camden and like almost everything else I wish that I still had them (and my almost complete collection of 'Musics'.)
In fact I once sent off a bundle to Chuck Wood in New York who I had met when he was playing with Richard Hell, the idea being that he would send me a copy of Theresa Stern's book of poems 'Wanna Go Out?' of which at the time (early eighties) there were apparently lots of copies under Mr. Hell's bed...not going to ask how Chuck knew this! Anyway the outcome was that no copy of the book ever arrived and although I have since got a copy having bought it from Hell when he came to Melbourne in the early 90's but for that Mr. Wood, you get the first and probably last 'Exile - Cunt of a Lifetime Award' )

Quote of the day

"No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top, or the head of the port authority is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, and now is the time for it to end."
PRESIDENT OBAMA, on the need for reform in Africa.

A Call to Jihad From Somalia, Answered in America

Some young Somali-Americans left their inner-city neighborhood in Minneapolis to fight in Somalia. At right, a drill by Shabaab fighters near Mogadishu.

A fascinating read from the 'NY Times' here.

Photos of Oren Ambarchi & Nels Cline taken at the gig at the NGV

More here.
(Funnily enough I can see me in this photo!)

George Orwell's grave in Sutton Courtenay (For Niblox)

HERE LIES

ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
BORN JUNE 25th 1903
DIED JANUARY 21st 1950

'The Pretendies: The art of the spoken interlude' by Paul Kelly

The spoken interlude has a long history in popular song. And takes a fair bit of nerve to pull off. The singer must step out from behind melody’s curtain and act. Elvis’s famous talking bit in ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight’ stretches Shakespeare’s actor-on-the-stage-of-life metaphor to breaking point. In later years even Elvis lost his nerve when reciting these bombastic lines. You can hear him on a live recording falter halfway through, giggle, then lapse into gibberish in a classic example of The Pretendies – the scourge of all performing artists.

The Pretendies – a term first coined, to my knowledge, by the songwriter–guitarist Spencer P Jones in the back of the band Tarago after a gig in Geelong – can strike any time. One minute you’re putting a song over to the crowd, totally inside what you’re doing, everything meshing; then suddenly you’re adrift, floating above yourself and wondering what on Earth you’re doing. You feel like a complete fake, and the thought runs through your head: What made me think I could get away with this?

Anything can set The Pretendies off. Maybe a fluffed line or chord that jars you out of the moment. Looking at a pretty woman in the audience or glimpsing someone in the front row who reminds you of somebody you went to school with. You may be just a fraction over-tired. Or over-confident, perhaps having done a great show the night before. Without warning you’ve lost control of what you’re doing – like the kid on a bike who’s riding with no hands and going along fine until he calls out, “Look at me, Mum!”

The Pretendies can shudder through a band. You can almost see them ripple across the stage. The guitarist and the drummer sense that the singer’s got the metaphysical wobbles; everyone keeps their head down, not daring to look each other in the eye as they attempt to right the listing ship.

Elvis, though, on that night, once he takes his turn, doesn’t bother trying to come back. He’s broken right through the veil of illusion, exposed the working of the hitherto-unseen gears – and he’s taking the audience with him. It’s painful and thrilling to listen to. He sounds pilled off his head. Unmoored.

Circumventing the perils of the talking bit is mainly a simple matter of wheel alignment: you need to have the axles of sincerity and slyness in perfect counterweight. Too much overblown feeling on the one side, or too much smirk on the other, and you’re swerving all over the road. Lou Reed steers this course beautifully in ‘I Found A Reason’. You have to keep both hands firmly on the wheel to get away with a line like “I’ve walked down life’s lonely highways hand in hand with myself.”

The cadences of southern American speech are particularly suited to the spoken interlude. Old-time preaching straddles song and prose and goes naturally with country music’s solid pillars of sentiment, morality and religion. The Louvin Brothers serve it up straight in ‘Satan Is Real’ with not a whiff of The Pretendies. Likewise, Red Simpson in ‘Roll, Truck, Roll’, his tale of a trucker missing home, says:

Mama said little Danny’s not doing too good in school
Said he keeps talkin’ about his daddy that he hardly knows
Teacher said that he just sits at his desk and draws the pictures of trucks
I guess I know what that means and what it shows

Delivered without a shred of irony. And rightly so.
Rose Maddox and Buck Owens get a little more playful – talking back and forth to each other – on ‘Mental Cruelty’, despite the seriousness of the subject matter. Rose speaks in rhyme but Buck doesn’t. Many years later, on ‘Far Away Eyes’, Mick Jagger imitated Rose’s vowel-bending drawl, with his tongue firmly in his cheek. His reference to driving through Bakersfield, Buck’s hometown, listening to the gospel music station, is a sly wink to the aficionados.
The talking bit can turn a song into a nightmare – ‘The Leader of the Pack’, for example – or a dream. In ‘Green, Green Grass of Home’, Tom Jones wakes on the morning of his execution to realise he’ll never again touch the gold hair of Mary or kiss her cherry lips. The padre and the hangman are coming for him at daybreak. With the bleak spoken reality breaking in on his pastoral vision, this is the talking bit at its finest and most dramatic.

It’s not for everyone, though. You have to be a believer or, at least, prepared to suspend enough belief to allow the tears to flow and the goose bumps to pimple. There are those who are appalled or sneer. Others fancify their sneer by calling the talking bit “wonderful kitsch”.

The beauty and fascination of being human is the capacity to experience opposing emotions at once – to be cynical and moved in concert (crying during a schmaltzy movie) or to feel blessed and ridiculous simultaneously (sex!) – and to be able to float above them both, observing, testing out the one then the other, dancing the devilish dance of The Pretendies.

Written by Australian singer/songwriter
Paul Kelly
From 'The Monthly' (July 2009)

'Narcotized' (split release featuring Dhul-Qarnayn, Ayyur & Al Namrood)

CD-R: Salute Records (SALR-023)
MC: Salute Records (SALT-002)
Released in December 2008 as a limited edition of 40 cassettes & 60 CD-R's.

Al-Namrood
1.	Barzakh	05:25
Dhul-Qarnayn
2.	Suqoot Allah	08:16
Ayyur
3.	The Queen of Awres (Narcotized version)	04:19
4.	Proud Slave	05:17
Total playing time		23:17

Get it here.
(Via 'Fuck Life')

Black metal from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Tunisia.
Download it for track 2 alone. It is an absolute killer!

Al Namrood - Youm Tusaar Nar AlJaheem

Al Namrood are a Saudi Arabian black metal band that have been rocking my world these past days. They have to my knowledge released a self titled EP and an album 'Asthl Al Tha'r' which translates as 'Vengeance Intensified' which was released in May.
Their 'Myspace' page is here.
Do yourself a favour and do check them out.
UPDATE:
There was also a split release with Dhul-Qarnayn & Ayyur called 'Narcotized'

Sly Stone & George Clinton "Thank You For Letting Me Be Myself" Live Zanzibar Santa Monica 3/15/09

Sly Stone w/ a rare appearance playing guitar on the Sly and Family Stone classic w/ help from George Clinton and BabyStone during the Sly Stone Variety Show/ Birthday Party Celebration

The super seven incher!

One question: Do you spit or swallow?

Robot girlfriend for lonely men

She's big-busted, petite, very friendly and she runs on batteries.

Sega, best known for its home video game consoles, has introduced a 15-inch tall robotic 'girlfriend' that kisses on command, with a target market of lonely adult men. The robot, named "EMA", which stands for Eternal Maiden Actualization, is designed to pucker up for nearby human heads, entering "love mode" using a series of infrared sensors powered by battery. "Strong, tough and battle-ready are some of the words often associated with robots, but we wanted to break that stereotype and provide a robot that's sweet and interactive," said Minako Sakanoue, a spokeswoman for the maker, Sega Toys to Reuters news agency. "She's very lovable and though she's not a human, she can act like a real girlfriend." EMA can also hand out business cards, sing and dance. Sega is hoping to sell 10,000 robotic girlfriends in it's first year and envisions a $10-billion market for artificial intelligence in a decade. The busty bot will be available in Japan in September for around $175.

(Via 'Fun-On')

The Fireman of the Follies Bergere 1928

(Via 'coisas do arco da velha' & 'pratinho de couratos')

Deadicated...

(Thanx to Chris & Jim)

HA!

Cheney Is Linked to C.I.A. Concealment of Terror Program

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about secret counter terrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the
agency's director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.

Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.

More at 'NY Times' here.