Monday, 12 October 2015
Sunday, 11 October 2015
The Genius of Bert Jansch: Folk, Blues and Beyond
An effortlessly cool singer-songwriter and virtuoso guitarist, Bert Jansch came to prominence in the folk clubs of the mid-1960s. Jansch galvanized a whole scene, through his solo work, as a duo with John Renbourn and with his folk-jazz supergroup Pentangle. Neil Young called him the Jimi Hendrix of the acoustic guitar, Led Zeppelin and Paul Simon were weaned on him and younger generation musicians including Beth Orton and Johnny Marr beat a path to his door. Bert Jansch's influence reached far and wide.
Interviews and rare archive footage weave together performances from a landmark multi-artist concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London as Ralph McTell, Robert Plant, Donovan, members of Pentangle, Bernard Butler, Martin Carthy, Martin Simpson, Lisa Knapp and more pay tribute to Jansch, who died in 2011. The concert's stage set recalls the legendary Les Cousins club in London's Soho, where he was a resident artist, and the Royal Festival Hall itself was the venue for Pentangle's first and final major gigs.
Robert Plant shows his vocal prowess with a powerful rendition of Go Your Way My Love, joined by Jansch collaborator Bernard Butler. Martin Simpson and Danny Thompson surprise with a version of Heartbreak Hotel, a track covered by Jansch. Ralph McTell tackles the seminal Angie and Lisa Knapp and Martin Carthy combine for Blackwaterside - Jansch's arrangement of which heavily influenced Led Zep's Black Mountain Side. There's also a real coup with an extraordinary performance by Neil Young of Jansch's haunting Needle of Death, filmed at Jack White's Nashville studio especially for the occasion
The Flaming Lips and Deerhoof - 21st Century Schizoid Man (Lawrence, KS 22/6/12)
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The Flaming Lips & Cat Power- War Pigs
The Flaming Lips are the first act announced for MONA's 2016 Mofo
Ry Cooder - Live The Old Grey Whistle Test(1977)
1. Tattler
2. The Dark End of the Street
3. Jesus On The Mainline
4. Do Re Mi
5. Goodnight Irene
6. He'll Have To Go
7. Smack Dab In The Middle
Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Volumes (1979-2015)
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On Thin Ice: Inuit Way of Life Vanishing in Arctic
The way it was
Awkward
Saturday, 10 October 2015
RESPECT
I am a responsible gun owner.- Steve Elliott
I bought my first gun when I was 12. It was a Browning 12-gauge shotgun, and I saved money from my paper route and cleaning a drive-in restaurant to buy it in time for dove season. In the years before I could legally drive, I’d tie the Browning across the handlebars of my bike and ride to the fields outside town to hunt.
I’ve owned several guns since, and own a handgun now. I bought that gun to keep my family safe, and lock it up to keep them safe from it. Like I said, responsible.
And so while I’d like to believe I’m not part and party to the gun violence that stains America, I can’t. My grandmother shot and killed herself with a gun, and a few years ago my father shot and didn’t quite kill himself with one. My stepbrother died in a murder-suicide with a gun, and the husband of one of my sister’s co-workers was killed in a mass shooting.
None of that happened with my gun, of course, but after every new mass shooting, I’m reminded that I bear a portion of the responsibility for our nation’s gun violence. There are too many guns to do anything about it, the gun lobby says. Regulations are a slippery slope that only limit the rights of responsible gun owners, they say.
My gun is being used to argue against common-sense laws and policies that could reduce gun violence in America, arguments I find unconscionable. That’s what being a responsible gun owner means today – I’m responsible. I’ve been uneasy about that for a while now, and ashamed to admit it’s taken two more mass shootings for me to do anything about it.
That ended today. Today I disassembled my handgun, a 9mm Ruger, clamped the pieces in a vice and cut them in half with an angle grinder. I’m sending the proper paperwork into the state to report it destroyed.
None of us individually can stop gun violence in America, but as a responsible gun owner, I will no longer be used as a justification for doing nothing about it. Today I did what I could. Today there is #ONELESSGUN
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