Man guitarist Micky Jones RIP

Micky Jones played with Man from its formation in 1968 until ill health in 2002

Guitarist and singer Micky Jones, one of the founders of Welsh prog rock band, Man, has died aged 63.

With Merthyr Tydfil-born Jones, the band had four Top 40 UK albums from the late 1960s and toured across Europe and America, where admirers included Frank Zappa.
Friend and former colleague Phil Little said Jones had a "command of melody" and was "the most humble guy".
Jones, who had been fighting a brain tumour, died at a care home in Swansea.
Mr Little, who played with Jones in the 1980s with the London-based The Flying Pigs, said Frank Zappa once described Jones as "one of the 10 best guitarists in the world".
He said: "I did hundreds of gigs with him and I never saw him have a cross word with anybody. He had maximum respect from all the musicians.

With Micky Jones on guitar, Man had four albums in the UK UK Top 40

"He had great command of melody. He would improvise fantastically. He also have a very pure and soulful voice."
Jones' first band The Bystanders, was a Merthyr-based close harmony five-piece formed in the early 1960s, with BBC Wales radio presenter Owen Money, who was calling himself Gerry Braden, on vocals.
Money said he was "devastated" at the loss of someone who was a family friend as well as an artistic collaborator.
He said: "We came up together, we shared our life together. I know it was an inevitability but words can't express what I'm feeling at the moment.
"He taught me to play the guitar. His first job was as a hairdresser. He cut my hair.
"He was a fantastic musician. He had a "Frankie Valli" voice. We were set apart from any band in Wales at the time - we could do songs others could not do - because of his high falsetto voice.

Micky Jones (second right) was ever-present in the band's line-up

The women loved him so much, especially in the 60s. There we girls screaming and always three times as many screaming for Micky than anyone else. He was a good looking boy."
In 1968, after Money had moved on, the Bystanders added Deke Leonard, Jones' guitar partner for some three decades, embraced the counterculture and became Man.
They had four albums in the UK Top 40 between 1973 and 1976 and toured on continental Europe and America.
Music journalist Michael Heatley, who ran a Man fans newsletter for 20 years, said the band reached "the upper second division of British rock" but had been overlooked in the history of rock.
He said: "Man were a live band. People would go and see them because they knew that the live performance was going to be much better than the record.
Touring
"Micky was a fantastic improvisational guitarist. Deke would create the outline and Micky would "fill in the bits". The thing that kept people coming back was the he could make the guitar talk."
Man's ever-changing line-up had some 20 musicians over the years.
Jones was an ever-present member of Man, who split in 1976 and re-formed in 1983, until a brain tumour caused his departure in 2002.
He returned briefly two years later but retired from touring and spent his last years in residential care.
His son George was his immediate replacement, but he is now pursuing his own musical ideas away from Man.
He said: "I was so proud of him as a father and as a performer. To share a stage with him and be part of that legacy is one of the proudest moments."
He was buried yesterday.

@'BBC'

Rare Man live albums from 1972

HERE

Hmmm!

Cryptome.org is a venerable New York based anti-secrecy site that has been publishing since 1999. On Feb 24, 2010, the site was forcably taken down following its publication of Microsoft's "Global Criminal Compliance Handbook", a confidential 22 page booklet designed for police and intelligence services. The guide provides a "menu" of information Microsoft collects on the users of its online services. Microsoft lawyers threatened Cryptome and its "printer", internet hosting provider giant Network Solutions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA was designed to protect the legitimate rights of publishers, not to conceal scandalous internal documents that were never intended for sale. Although the action is a clear abuse of the DMCA, Network Solutions, a company with extensive connections to U.S. intelligence contractors, gagged the site in its entirety. Such actions are a serious problem in the United States, where although in theory the First Amendment protects the freedom of the press, in practice, censorship has been privatized via abuse of the judicial system and corporate patronage networks.

PDF

HERE

@'wikileaks'

AKA: 'theywhoshallnotbenamedhereinaustralia'

Aqualung - Strange & Beautiful (Live)

(All this listening to Big Star has made me want to listen to some perfect pop songs. 

This is one.)

Actually here is another...

WARNING!!!

(Thanx Drew!)

(Thanx Anne!)

HA!!!
(Click to enlarge at link)

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band - Framed (Live 1974)

CIA reportedly ordered Blackwater to murder 9/11 suspect

In 2004, the CIA sent a team from the private security firm Blackwater, now Xe, to Hamburg to kill an alleged al Qaeda financier who was investigated for years by German authorities on suspicion of links to al Qaeda, according to a little-highlighted element in a Vanity Fair article to be published this month.The report cited a source familiar with the program as saying the mission had been kept secret from the German government.
"Among the team's targets, according to a source familiar with the program, was Mamoun Darkazanli, an al Qaeda financier living in Hamburg who had been on the agency's radar for years because of his ties to three of the 9/11 hijackers and to operatives convicted of the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa," writes Vanity Fair's Adam Ciralsky.
"The CIA team supposedly went in 'dark,'' meaning they did not notify their own station -- much less the German government -- of their presence; they then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down," reports the magazine.
Washington authorities, however, "chose not to pull the trigger," it said.
 Vanity Fair has reemerged as a powerful journalistic force in recent years, outing the long-secret "Deep Throat" source of The Washington Post's Watergate reporting.
Earlier reports revealed that the Bush Administration was considering a "targeted assassination" program -- in apparent breach of international treaties -- which would have put lethal targets on the backs of terror suspects beyond the reach of US law. The article adds that the CIA also considering taking out Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan (at left), believed to be the mastermind behind Pakistan's development of a nuclear bomb.
"Khan’s inclusion on the target list, however, would suggest that the assassination effort was broader than has previously been acknowledged," Ciralsky writes.
A source purportedly said: “They say the program didn’t move forward because [they] didn’t have the right skill set or because of inadequate cover. That’s untrue. [The operation continued] for a very long time in some places without ever being discovered. This program died because of a lack of political will.”
Berlin today denies any knowledge of the CIA operation, according to a German media outlet.
Green party parliamentarian Hans-Christian Stroebele told a local paper that it was the government's job to monitor foreign intelligence agencies operating in Germany.
"It can't be true that they knew nothing," Stroebele told the daily Hamburger Abendblatt.
Deutsche Welle, the German news source, further reports today that Federal prosecutors in Hamburg are conducting an investigation into the magazine's CIA assassination plot claims.
German authorities have previously investigated Darkazanli but never charged him; he was arrested in 2004 on a Spanish extradition request but released nine months later.

@'The Raw Story'

NB

Extra Music New

has a new home

HERE

On the 7th anniversary of the war in Iraq

Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen commemorates the life of Alex Chilton

Czech pot smokers exhale with relief over new drug law

Czech pot smokers have breathed a sigh of relief after the government clarified a law on drug use, turning the country into one of Europe's safest havens for casual drug users.

Under the more transparent and liberal law in effect since January, people found in possession of up to 15 grammes (half an ounce) of marijuana or growing up to five cannabis plants no longer risk prison or a criminal record, but can only be fined if caught.

"Our legislation says that possession and growing of marijuana for personal use is not a crime," said journalist Jiri Dolezal, slowly savouring a joint he just rolled with admirable expertise.

Now, "if the police find you carrying less than 15 grammes, you don't risk anything except a fine of up to 15,000 korunas (580 euros, 800 dollars)."

Dolezal has led a tireless campaign to relax the laws on "soft" drug use in the pages of Reflex, the respected magazine where he works.

The weekly even organises an annual contest for the best photo of marijuana grown by its readers, the Reflex Cannabis Cup, in this ex-communist country where one-third of all adults and half of youths under 24 years confess to having tried cannabis at least once.

The new law replaced an ambiguous one that made it a penalty to be in possession of "a larger than small amount" of marijuana.

"It will reduce contacts between youths and dealers who, sooner or later, offer them hard drugs," asserted Dolezal, puffing on what in colloquial Czech is called "brko" for "quill", or "spek" for "bacon fat".

But Karel Nespor, a doctor who heads the addiction treatment centre at Prague-Bohnice psychiatric hospital, is concerned about impact the eased law may have on health.

"One study found that the risk of heart attack is four times higher in the hour after someone smokes a marijuana joint," he recently told the Czech daily Dnes .

"Marijuana use also risks provoking 'cravings' for the drug," he said.

Adopted after years of wrangling, the new drug law also allows people to possess less than 1.5 grammes of heroin, a gramme of cocaine, up to five grammes of hashish, and five LSD blotter papers, pills, capsules or crystals.

Czechs can also legally grow up to five cannabis or coca plants or cacti containing mescaline, and possess up to 40 magic mushrooms.

If growers comply with the legal limits, possession is treated as a minor offence, while the possession of bigger amounts may result in up to six months in prison for hemp and up to a year for magic mushrooms, plus a fine.

In neighbouring Poland and Slovakia, people possessing any amount of marijuana risk ending up behind bars.

"Czech society is secular and more free, I would say," said psychologist Ivan Douda, who specialises in treating addicts. "Our laws are more tolerant and more pragmatic. We are closer to the Dutch legislation."

Cannabis use is technically illegal in the Netherlands, though the consumption and possession of under five grammes was decriminalised in 1976 . That amount is sold legally in one of 700 or so licensed Dutch "coffee" shops. Cannabis cultivation and mass retail remain illegal, and magic mushrooms were banned in 2008.

Douda, however, warned that the new law would not resolve all drug problems.

In recent years, he has traveled around the country, meeting students to raise awareness about the risks of using not only cannabis but also other drugs including tobacco and alcohol.

"Alcohol is an underestimated drug, while marijuana is overestimated and too severely criminalised," he said.

Neither Dolezal nor Douda feel the more relaxed drug law will transform their country into "an Amsterdam of the East".

"There is a difference between the approach in Amsterdam, which is more tolerant towards dealers, and that of Czech authorities, who are easier on the users," said Dolezal.

The psychologist conceded it was inevitable that cannabis lovers from neighbouring countries would come from time to time in search of "a more liberal environment."

Recently, Czech police discovered that a fast-food kiosk in Cesky Tesin/Cieszyn, a town on the Czech-Polish border, was selling Polish clients marijuana along with their French fries.

"Regulars were offered French fries as a bonus," joked local police spokeswoman Zlatuse Viackova.

@'AP'

Unbelievable!!!

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