Tuesday, 28 April 2009

Natasha Veruschka - the 'Queen' of swords








Natasha Veruschka
Natasha currently holds seven world records in sword swallowing including the most swords swallowed by a female (13 twenty two inch long swords) and the longest sword swallowed by a female (twenty seven and a half inches long.)

Gulp!


REPOST - Ornette Coleman & the Grateful Dead live 23rd February 1993 (Oakland Coliseum)

Photo above by Susana Millman
(Taken from the wonderful new book 'GratefulDead365')


Here you can get Ornette Coleman sitting in with the Grateful Dead at the 'Mardi-Gras' gig from the 23rd of February 1993 at the Oakland Colisseum.
Tracks are 'Space - The Other One - Stella Blue - Turn On Your Lovelight & Brokedown Palace'.
Again it would have been interesting to have heard them playing with each other in the seventies when both Ornette and the Dead were exploring new sonic boundaries.
Ornette's son Denardo is also sitting in on percussion in this set.

(Another gig of Ornette and the Dead playing together from later in the year can be found here.
David Murray live with the Grateful Dead at Madison Square Garden on September 22nd 1993 can be found here. Use search engine at top for much more Grateful Dead live material on this blog.)

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.)


Monday, 27 April 2009

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)


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

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.

Sunday, 26 April 2009

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.)

Saturday, 25 April 2009

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)

I really do (heart) you all

Slackr

Baggy - trousered madness in Michigan!

(Via 'expat@large' here.)

Friday, 24 April 2009

RE-Search 8/9 - J.G. Ballard


J.G. Ballard & V. Vale October 2008

The best introduction to the work of J.G. Ballard bar none.
Available here.

Evolution?

J.G. Ballard - Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan (1967)

Illustration by Trevor Brown.

RONALD REAGAN AND THE CONCEPTUAL AUTO DISASTER. Numerous studies have been conducted upon patients in terminal paresis (GPI), placing Reagan in a series of simulated auto crashes, e.g. multiple pileups, head-on collisions, motorcade attacks (fantasies of Presidential assassinations remained a continuing preoccupation, subject showing a marked polymorphic fixation on windshields and rear trunk assemblies). Powerful erotic fantasies of an anal-sadistic surrounded the image of the Presidential contender.

Subjects were required to construct the optimum auto disaster victim by placing a replica of Reagan’s head on the unretouched photographs of crash fatalities.

In 82% of cases massive rear-end collisions were selected with a preference for expressed fecal matter and rectal hemorrhages. Further tests were conducted to define the optimum model-year. These indicate that a three year model lapse with child victims provide the maximum audience excitation (confirmed by manufacturers’ studies of the optimum auto disaster). It is hoped to construct a rectal modulous of Reagan and the auto disaster of maximized audience arousal.

Motion picture studies of Ronald Reagan reveal characteristic patterns of facial tones and musculature associated with homoerotic behavior. The continuing tension of buccal sphincters and the recessive tongue role tally with earlier studies of facial rigidity (cf., Adolf Hitler, Nixon). Slow-motion cine films of campaign speeches exercised a marked erotic effect upon an audience of spastic children. Even with mature adults the verbal material was found to have a minimal effect, as demonstrated by substitution of an edited tape giving diametrically opposed opinions...

INCIDENCE OF ORGASMS IN FANTASIES OF SEXUAL INTERCOURSE WITH RONALD REAGAN. Patients were provided with assembly kit photographs of sexual partners during intercourse. In each case Reagan’s face was super imposed upon the original partner. Vaginal intercourse with "Reagan" proved uniformly disappointing, producing orgasm in 2% of subjects.

Axillary, buccal, navel, aural, and orbital modes produced proximal erections. The preferred mode of entry overwhelmingly proved to be the rectal. After a preliminary course in anatomy it was found that the caecum and transverse colon also provided excellent sites for excitation. In an extreme 12% of cases, the simulated anus of post-costolomy surgery generated spontaneous orgasm in 98% of penetrations. Multiple-track cine-films were constructed of "Reagan" in intercourse during (a) campaign speeches, (b) rear-end auto collisions with one and three year model changes, (c) with rear exhaust assemblies...

SEXUAL FANTASIES IN CONNECTION WITH RONALD REAGAN. The genitalia of the Presidential contender exercised a continuing fascination. A series of imaginary genitalia were constructed using (a) the mouth parts of Jacqueline Kennedy, (b) a Cadillac, (c) the assembly kid prepuce of President Johnson...In 89% of cases, the constructed genitalia generated a high incidence of self-induced orgasm. Tests indicate the masturbatory nature of the Presidential contender’s posture. Dolls consisting of plastic models of Reagan’s alternate genitalia were found to have a disturbing effect on deprived children.

REAGAN'S HAIRSTYLE. Studies were conducted on the marked fascination exercised by the Presidential contender’s hairstyle. 65% of male subjects made positive connections between the hairstyle and their own pubic hair. A series of optimum hairstyles were constructed.

THE CONCEPTUAL ROLE OF REAGAN. Fragments of Reagan’s cinetized postures were used in the construction of model psychodramas in which the Reagan-figure played the role of husband, doctor, insurance salesman, marriage counselor, etc.

The failure of these roles to express any meaning reveals the nonfunctional character of Reagan. Reagan’s success therefore indicates society’s periodic need to re-conceptualize its political leaders. Reagan thus appears as a series of posture concepts, basic equations which reformulate the roles of aggression and anality. Reagan’s personality. The profound anality of the Presidential contender may be expected to dominate the United States in the coming years. By contrast the late JFK remained the prototype of the oral subject, usually conceived in pre-pubertal terms. In further studies sadistic psychopaths were given the task of devising sex fantasies involving Reagan. Results confirm the probability of Presidential figures being perceived primarily in genital terms; the face of LB Johnson is clearly genital in significant appearance--the nasal prepuce, scrotal jaw, etc. Faces were seen as either circumcised (JFK, Khrushchev) or uncircumcised (LBJ, Adenauer). In assembly-kit tests Reagan’s face was uniformly perceived as a penile erection. Patients were encouraged to devise the optimum sex-death of Ronald Reagan.


Annotation & Commentary by the author, J.G. Ballard, to "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan", published in The Atrocity Exhibition, 1990:

"Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan" prompted Doubleday in 1970 to pulp its first American edition of The Atrocity Exhibition. Ronald Reagan's presidency remained a complete mystery to most Europeans, though I noticed that Americans took him far more easily in their stride. But the amiable old duffer who occupied the White House was a very different person from the often sinister figure I described in 1967, when the present piece was first published. The then-novelty of a Hollywood film star entering politics and becoming governor of California gave Reagan considerable air time on British TV. Watching his right-wing speeches, in which he castigated in sneering tones the profligate, welfare-spending, bureaucrat-infested state government, I saw a more crude and ambitious figure, far closer to the brutal crime boss he played in the 1964 movie, The Killers, his last Hollywood role. In his commercials Reagan used the smooth, teleprompter-perfect tones of the TV auto-salesman to project a political message that was absolutely the reverse of bland and reassuring. A complete discontinuity existed between Reagan's manner and body language, on the one hand, and his scarily simplistic far-right message on the other. Above all, it struck me that Reagan was the first politician to exploit the fact that his TV audience would not be listening too closely, if at all, to what he was saying, and indeed might well assume from his manner and presentation that he was saying the exact opposite of the words actually emerging from his mouth. Though the man himself mellowed, his later presidency seems to have run the same formula."

Copies of this story were published by pro-situs on official Republican Party headed paper and distributed at the 1980 Republican Covention in San Francisco.

James Joyce - Anna Livia Plurabelle (Poem Animation Movie)

Judge in Pirate Bay case denies conflict of interest!!!

"The judge who presided over the recent Pirate Bay trial has denied he had a "conflict of interest", after a Swedish radio station revealed he is a member of the country's main copyright association."
Story at 'The Guardian' here.

(Yeah right!)

At last some good news...

Noel Gallagher says there will not be a new Oasis album for at least five years.
Story from 'The Guardian' here.
Oh and I like his comment on Liam - "He's like a man with a fork in a world of soup."

Improve your socks life (butt socks!)

Details here.

Art


Via 'Basic Sounds' here.

Flower-fresh

From Flickr here.

Pipedreams

From: 'The Pipe Dreams (Those sell smoking men)' on Flickr here.

Lee Mavers & Pete Doherty to record album?


London - 29th March 2009.

News of the mooted collaboration at the 'NME' here.

A history lesson

Spot the difference


Jacqes Tati's pipe banned in Paris Metro adverts!!!
It's the 'no-smoking policy'!!!

Thursday, 23 April 2009

Phew and bloody hell!!!


Via 'hangover-helper' here.

Toxic

Wednesday, 22 April 2009

Interrupted Transmission

Girlz With Gunz # 31

Gen's rings NY 17-04-09

(Photo by Randsom)