Jah Wobble & The Invaders of The Heart - Visions of You

Paul Kelly A - Z Downloads: L

Just a reminder that Paul Kelly's 'L' songs: 'Lately - Leaps & Bounds - Little Boy Don't Lose Your Balls - Little Kings - Love Never Runs On Time - Love Is The Law & Luck' are now available to download here.

Girlz With Gunz # 18

Actually Asia Argento will always be my No.1 girl with a gun!

'Mountain of Snakes' by Sean Penn

From 'The Huffington Post' here.

Brits on top in casual sex league

Story from 'The Daily Mail' here.

The trouble is that living in the UK you get fuct in lots of other ways too.

Heroin Legalization Programme Approved by Swiss Voters

Story from 'The Huffington Post' here.

To all who opposed the injecting room here in Melbourne a number of years ago note the words:
"...and is credited with reducing crime...".

What some other people think of our (?)
"war on drugs".

Iain Banks
“The choice we have is not between a drug free society and a society with drugs; it is between a society with drugs and a sensible attitude to them and a society with drugs tearing itself apart in a preposterous, nonsensical “War against Drugs” which not only was lost long ago but which grinds on now with almost zero benefit and something approaching 100% collateral damage. Support Transform to help end the war and promote a society at peace with itself.”
Source: Transform - 04/1999

William Burroughs
"President Bush said in his television address not long ago: 'Our outrage against drugs unites us as a nation!' A nation of what? Snoops and informers? Take a look at the knee-jerk, hard-core shits who react so predictably to the mere mention of drugs with fear, hate and loathing. Haven't we seen these same people before in various contexts? Storm troopers, lynch mobs, queer-bashers, Paki-bashers, racists - are these the people who are going to revitalize a 'Drug-free America'?"
Source: ‘The Drug User’ Documents 1840-1960, Foreword

Ben Elton
Addressing the Scottish Parliament recently:
"The real problem is not the drugs, it's the criminalisation of the community. And the fact is that this vast nation of social criminals, of whom you are all acquainted, is linked arterially to a corrosive, cancerous core of real criminals. The law is effectively the number one sponsor of organised crime."
"The logical answer appears to be legalising. One thing is certain, doing nothing is not an option."
Source: BBC News May 2006

"I firmly believe that hugely radical solutions are now required. It is about legalisation, not de-criminalisation."
Asked whether he was referring to hard drugs such as heroin, cocaine and crack, Elton said: "Yes. I think we need to get the police, the government and the emergency services in front of the criminals, not behind the criminals.
"It is now a self-evident fact that criminalisation hasn’t worked. All it has presented us with is organised crime."
Source: Scotsman - 23.07.02

“There is no moral high ground to be had in blindly ignoring the utter failure of 30 years of drug legislation, while loudly calling for more of the same. No one who is content to bang on about tougher sentences and zero tolerance while leaving our crime-bedevilled communities to their grim fate has any cause to think themselves righteous.”
“It is a matter of simple fact that a large proportion of people in this country, particularly young people, take drugs. Very few of them are drug addicts but they are all criminals under the law - the problem is that this vast nation of social criminals is linked arterially to a corrosive, cancerous core of real criminals.”
“One thing is certain - doing nothing is absolutely not an option. A crisis is developing, a crisis created by the law and from which the law offers no protection. Both the Government and the media are failing the community. It is time for a proper adult debate and I personally believe that that debate must now encompass the possibility of some form of legalisation.”
Source: ‘Legalisation Might Be The Only Way To Halt The Drugs Epidemic’ Daily Telegraph - 8.11.02

Aldous Huxley
"Complete prohibition of all chemical mind changers can be decreed, but cannot be enforced, and tends to create more evils than it cures."
Source: "Drugs That Shape Men's Minds," Saturday Evening Post, 1958

Stephen King
"I think that marijuana should not only be legal, I think it should be a cottage industry. It would be wonderful for the state of Maine. There's some pretty good homegrown dope. I'm sure it would be even better if you could grow it with fertilizers and have greenhouses. . . ."
Source: Hightimes magazine, January 1980

Carlos Fuentes
"The only way to curb the violence of the drug cartels in Mexico is by legalizing drugs."
Source: AFP website

Sir Paul McCartney
"I support decriminalisation. People are smoking pot anyway and to make them into criminals is wrong. It's when you're in jail you really become a criminal."
Source: Independent on Sunday, 28/09/1997.

Ringo Starr
"Why don't they just make it all legal?"
"I don't think the campaigns of the government in this country or America are doing anything. I think it's an absolute waste of resources, the way they're going about it. You go to clubs, everybody's taking stuff, that's how it is. Most lawyers have inhaled, they've had a joint, they've had a snort, they've had a drink. Then they carry on with their lives.""The downside of all that, like Jimi Hendrix, is we have lost a lot of musicians. But any law wouldn't have stopped him taking it."
Source: interview in The Big Issue magazine quoted in The Daily Mail “WHY ALL DRUGS SHOULD BE LEGALISED BY RINGO - Campaigners' Fury at Ex-Beatle” 28.07.98

Lemmy
"I have never had heroin but since I moved to London in 1967, I have mixed with junkies on a casual and almost daily basis. I hate the idea even as I say it, but the only way to treat heroin is to legalise it."
"If it were on prescription, then at least two thirds of the dealers would disappear and you would have records of who was using it. If a junkie has a regular supply, most are able to do a job. They will never rehabilitate until somebody - you - gives them a chance to."
Source: Speech at the Welsh Assembly 03.11.05

Woody Harrelson
"One thing I don't like is that I have become the poster boy for marijuana, certainly in the States, I don't know about here so much. It all came from a TV show I went on years ago and said a few things about the bullshit laws banning marijuana. The main thrust of my argument is not just its legalisation - which I think should happen - but that the war against drugs is unwinnable. Millions of people use pot and always will, so it is a war against the people. It all comes down to freedom. You should be free to do anything, even if it is self destructive, as long as it is not hurting someone else or their property. I absolutely believe that."
Source: Press Gazette 17.11. 05

Jack Nicholson
"My point of view, while extremely cogent, is unpopular. . . . That the repressive nature of the legalities vis-a-vis drugs are destroying the legal system and corrupting the police system."
Source: Widely quoted, but source unknown

Rupert Everett
"I don't think prostitution will ever end, just as drug taking will never end. Both should be legalised as a way of controlling them. Cut out the middleman. Tax them. Use the money to fund clinics for the victims."
Source: The Telegraph Newspaper, 08.06.08

Nigella Lawson
“..whatever one feels about alcohol or any other drug, it appears to be the case that the desire for intoxication is innate in humans. Any primitive society investigated by anthropologists depicts peoples who either danced themselves into whirling states of frenzy or who ate berries calculated to induce hallucinations (or both). Both my children, from the age when they were barely stable, used to twirl themselves around until they fell down helplessly dizzy. I agree, just because something is innate doesn't make it good, but whatever, prohibition can never be the answer.”
Source: ‘More Es and less flannel, (subtitled) Drugs may be bad for us, but banning them is not the answer’
The Observer, 06.08.00

Jonathan Ross
“For a long time I’ve felt that the war on drugs is a lost cause. As a parent I’m obviously aware of the dangers of drugs but its clear to me that these dangers are massively increased by the criminality involved in an illegal market. I’m supporting Transform because I’d like to see a more honest, rational and compassionate approach to the drug problem. ”


Source: Transform Annual Report 2005

As Burroughs said:
"JUST SAY KNOW".

All The Rage - Bob Ostertag and the Kronos Quartet (1993)

"Bob Ostertag's "All the Rage" turned the evening on its head with a devastating roar of gay anger.
Of recent concert pieces having to do with AIDS, "All the Rage" seems by far the most powerful example.
Mr. Ostertag's stern, purifying gaze has swept away the sentimentality and melodrama that have compromised more famous compositions in the genre."
- The New York Times

You can download this album for free from Bob Ostertag's website here.

Its sister album 'Burns Like Fire' here.
There is also live recording partly from the ICA in London, 'Voice of America' featuring Bob Ostertag, Fred Frith and Phil Minton here.
(A gig I actually attended back in 1981.)

"...A few months later Fred and I were in London for a concert. Moments before going on, my synthesizer was destroyed in a technical mishap. I was left with my cassette set-up and a contact mic I either kept between my teeth or used to amplify various toys. Fred had brought only a piece of wood with a few screws at either end and guitar strings strung between them. With my synthesizer still smoking, we hastily recruited Phil Minton out of his seat in the audience and without any time for discussion began the set that became Voice of America Part 2."

Bob has a blog at 'The Huffington Post' here.

Jorn Utzon - Sydney Opera House Archirect Dies

Details from 'The Sydney Morning Herald' here.

In Memory Of All Those We Have Lost Over The Years

Information here.

Phil Minton's Feral Choir - Arnolfini Venn Festival 2008

Phil Minton & Maggie Nicols - Battersea Arts Centre London January 2008

Ken Hyder's Talisker - Land of Stone (ECM 1977)

You can get 'Land of Stone' here.

Talisker
Ken Hyder: drums

Marcio Mattos and John Lawrence: basses
Davie Webster: alto saxophone
John Rangecroft: tenor saxophone, clarinet
Ricardo Mattos: soprano and tenor saxophones, flute
Maggie Nicols, Frankie Armstrong, Brian Eley, and Phil Minton: vocals


Ken Hyder has two web sites here and here.
There you will find tracks from the past and the present to download.
Here is an interview with him from 'The Wire'.
The vocalists, substituting Julie Tippetts (nee Driscoll) for Frankie Armstrong had worked together as 'Voice'.


"...it sounds for all the world like an Albert Ayler album released post-New Grass when the tenor alchemist was experimenting with a woodwind contraption called the chanter—the blown portion of Scottish highland bagpipes. The twin sax / twin bass lineup of Hyder's quintet creates a droning, cantatorial spiritsound one can imagine as the sound of Ayler's dreams."
(From a review of the first Talisker album)

This is my 'desert island disc' and it has never been reissued on CD!

Finally for those of you who were in the Feral Choir when Phil Minton came out here to Melbourne, you can watch (and hear) yourself here and you may recognise one of the vocal motifs from the above album.

Speeq - Trine (featuring Phil Minton on vocals)

Phil Minton with The Mike Westbrook Band - Concrete (from 'Mama Chicago')

Phil Minton - The Cutty Wren

The editorial team here at 'Exile' busy uploading dead links

Dead Links

When I started this blog I had download links through Zshare.
These no longer work.
I will re-up them over the coming days.
If you find a link that doesn't work leave a comment and I will rectify it.

Winona Ryder 'loses' 125,000 US dollar Bulgari diamond bracelet. Police investigate

Story from 'The Daily Mail' here.

Husker Du - Eight Miles High (Live Pink Pop Festival Landgraaf Netherlands 1987)

Do you remember?

Husker Du with William S. Burroughs.

Here are Husker Du's 'Northern Lights' demos recorded by Colin Mansfield in 1979.

William S. Burroughs blows Amy Winehouse's brains out!

Story here.

Installation 'The Only Good Rock Star Is A Dead Rock Star' by Marco Perego at Half Gallery in NY.

Sennheiser announce wireless earbud headphones

Story at 'boingboing' here.

Grateful Dead - He's Gone (Tivoli Konsertal Copenhagen April 17 1972)

More than half of Atlantic Records' sales in US now digital

Story from 'International Herald Tribune' here.

Girlz With Gunz #'s 7 - 17!!!

Yes I can count, it's just that one silly 'soldier' was SO busy getting her beret at such a jaunty angle that she forgot her gun!

William Blake 1757 - 1827

William Blake was born on this day in 1757.

Here is Van Morrison's cover of Mike Westbrook's setting of Blake's "Let The Slave/The Price of Experience'.
Original sung by Phil Minton.

Macy's Thanksgiving Parade is Rick - Rolled

The Tech Assistant (AKA Son # 2) is no longer a teenager

Taken 15 years and 5 months ago by Josh Ellis.

The boy on the bib may be worth billions.
The boy in the bib is priceless!

Happy Birthday!

Political Gridlock posters

Website here.

A Thanksgiving Prayer - William S. Burroughs

For John Dillinger.
In hope he is still alive.
Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1986.

Thanks for the wild turkey and the Passenger Pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts

thanks for a Continent to despoil and poison —

thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger —

thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin, leaving the carcass to rot —

thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes —

thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through —

thanks for the KKK, for nigger-killing lawmen feeling their notches, for decent church-going women with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces —

thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers —

thanks for laboratory AIDS —

thanks for Prohibition and the War Against Drugs —

thanks for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business —

thanks for a nation of finks — yes, thanks for all the memories... all right, let's see your arms... you always were a headache and you always were a bore —

thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.

Watch it here.

Bloody Bandwith - Back As Soon As (Soon)

Chairman Rudd: one year in power today

Richey Edwards declared dead

The photo above was taken after he carved '4 REAL' into his arm while being interviewed by the NME.

Richey Edwards the guitarist with the Manic Street Preachers, who disappeared in 1995 has been declared legally dead.

Story here.

A Song For Me

Quicksilver Messenger Service - "Mona"

'Mona Medley' - here.

Also another version of 'Mona' by Quicksilver Messenger Service was the very first song that I uploaded on this blog - before I even knew what I was doing (!)

The Grateful Dead with David Murray live at Madison Square Garden 22nd September 1993

Following on from David Murray's version of 'Dark Star' yesterday.
David Murray live with the Grateful Dead in 1993 here .
Tracks are: 'Estimated Prophet - Dark Star - Drums & Space'
What can I say about this?
Well by this time Jerry Garcia was just mostly noodling (and nodding) and that had an obvious adverse effect on the rest of the band.
Murray's Ayler like sax obviously works better on these more free-form Dead workouts but I would have loved to have heard him play with them 20 years earlier.

Shane MacGowan entertaining in a bar

You gotta be kidding! ( # whatever)

"There are ... low graduation rates, plummeting North Slope oil prices, proposals to build alternative energy projects, the gas pipeline," the paper said in an editorial. "It's time for the governor to refocus on Alaska's needs."

Your weekly address from Obama

Vatican 'forgives' John Lennon

Story from the BBC here.

Two faced kitten dies

Photo from 'The Sydney Morning Herald'.

The kitten born three days ago died overnight.
Sad.
story from 'The Age' here.