Half of babies 'will live to 100'

More than half of babies now born in the UK and other wealthy nations will live to 100 years, researchers say.

The study, published in The Lancet journal, also says the extra years are spent with less serious disability.

@'BBC'

Revealed: millions spent by lobby firms fighting Obama health reforms

America's healthcare industry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to block the introduction of public medical insurance and stall other reforms promised by Barack Obama. The campaign against the president has been waged in part through substantial donations to key politicians.

Supporters of radical reform of healthcare say legislation emerging from the US Senate reflects the financial power of vested interests ‑ principally insurance companies, pharmaceutical firms and hospitals ‑ that have worked to stop far-reaching changes threatening their profits.

The industry and interest groups have spent $380m (£238m) in recent months influencing healthcare legislation through lobbying, advertising and in direct political contributions to members of Congress. The largest contribution, totalling close to $1.5m, has gone to the chairman of the senate committee drafting the new law.

@'The Guardian'

The Bug - Skeng

Irony of the day

Woody Allen calling for Roman Polanski's release.

My party mix

Richie Hawtin - Power96 Detroit Radio - 24-11-1989

In 10 hours "Exile' turns 1!!!

Happy Birthday to me...
Keeping
you 'infro-med' (sic)
since 2008.

Girlz With Gunz # 82 (Back to the beginning!)

One of Australia's best-known young female artists, Hazel Dooney posed for a series of study photographs in the desert near Lake Eyre, Australia, in 2001 The photographs were later be used to create a series of large, high gloss enamel paintings that were exhibited around the country, a year later. The works can be seen here and the study photos here.

This is where it all began exactly one year ago today!
Quickly followed by this...
(So you can see that Ms Dooney and I go way back LOL!)

New band (and song) for Thom Yorke

The steady flow of recent Thom Yorke news continues with an exciting new development. Yorke has posted on Radiohead's blog that he has started a new band to perform his solo material. The band (pictured above) consists of himself, Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Beck/R.E.M. drummer Joey Waronker, percussionist/multi-instrumentalist Mauro Refosco, and... Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea. Yes, Flea.

Two shows have been scheduled for the as-yet-unnamed band: October 4 and 5 at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. Thom writes, "the set will not be very long cuz ..well ...we haven't got that much material yet!"

The only question is: will Flea keep his shirt on?
Get the full info here.

@'Pitchfork'

He has also contributed a cover of Marc Mulcahy's 'All For The Best' for the album 'Ciao My Shining star' which also includes Mercury Rev, Dinosaur Jr, The National and Michael Stipe amongst others covering songs written by Mulcahy.The proceeds from the album are to help him bring up his twin daughters following the sudden tragic death of his wife, Melissa, in 2008.

Bad Lieutenant - Sink Or Swim

Fela Live! (1971)

Rare early footage (shot by Ginger Baker) featuring Fela & Afrika 70 performing in the rainy southeastern town of Calabar, shortly after the the Nigerian civil war.
Simply astonishing!
(Thanx Don)

Spanish imprint Vampi Soul has reissued three new Afrobeat and Highlife music collections, available in the U.S. through Light in the Attic distribution. These three releases add to the label’s growing catalog of Latin, African, and South American classic soul, rock, and psychedelic pop titles.

Their first offering is a stunner: Fela Kuti’s Lagos Baby: 1963 – 1969, issued as both a double-CD or three-LP set, plus a bonus 10” single. The collection features early recordings by Fela Ransome-Kuti and the Koola Lobitos (his band before he formed Egypt 70) that blend Highlife, jazz, soul, and other influences to form the sound he later popularized as Afrobeat. These recordings are licensed from The Fela Kuti Estate and Premier Records, with liner notes by African specialist Max Reinhardt and artwork by Victor Aparicio. The bonus vinyl 10" captures Fela’s "Afro Beat On Stage, recorded Live at the Afro Spot" performance, with original artwork and liner notes.

Vampi Soul’s Highlife Time! collection recounts the formation of West Africa’s signature jazz-pop dance music during an era of rapid post-colonial change. The hybrid style is as celebratory as the historical time itself, featuring rollicking guitars, blazing horns, and intricate vocal harmonies. The two-disc or three-LP set features Highlife legends like Accra, Roy Chicago, Rex Lawson, and Dr. Victor Olaiya. If Fela’s Afrobeat is all you know about West African music, this is a natural next step. To quote the Vampi Soul crew: “Highlife became the soundtrack for a [continent] freeing itself from the shackles of an empire.”

The third Vampi Soul reissue, Afrobeat Nirvana, is a collection of late '50s to late '80s West African sounds, featuring established names like Tony Allen, Orlando Julius, and Fela himself, as well as more obscure West African musicians like Fred Fisher and Opotopo.

Spanish imprint Vampi Soul has also reissued three new Afrobeat and Highlife music collections, available in the U.S. through Light in the Attic distribution. These three releases add to the label’s growing catalog of Latin, African, and South American classic soul, rock, and psychedelic pop titles.

Their first offering is a stunner: Fela Kuti’s Lagos Baby: 1963 – 1969, issued as both a double-CD or three-LP set, plus a bonus 10” single. The collection features early recordings by Fela Ransome-Kuti and the Koola Lobitos (his band before he formed Egypt 70) that blend Highlife, jazz, soul, and other influences to form the sound he later popularized as Afrobeat. These recordings are licensed from The Fela Kuti Estate and Premier Records, with liner notes by African specialist Max Reinhardt and artwork by Victor Aparicio. The bonus vinyl 10" captures Fela’s "Afro Beat On Stage, recorded Live at the Afro Spot" performance, with original artwork and liner notes.

Vampi Soul’s Highlife Time! collection recounts the formation of West Africa’s signature jazz-pop dance music during an era of rapid post-colonial change. The hybrid style is as celebratory as the historical time itself, featuring rollicking guitars, blazing horns, and intricate vocal harmonies. The two-disc or three-LP set features Highlife legends like Accra, Roy Chicago, Rex Lawson, and Dr. Victor Olaiya. If Fela’s Afrobeat is all you know about West African music, this is a natural next step. To quote the Vampi Soul crew: “Highlife became the soundtrack for a [continent] freeing itself from the shackles of an empire.”

The third Vampi Soul reissue, Afrobeat Nirvana, is a collection of late '50s to late '80s West African sounds, featuring established names like Tony Allen, Orlando Julius, and Fela himself, as well as more obscure West African musicians like Fred Fisher and Opotopo.

Just under an hour of Fela in concert!

@'XLR8R'

HA!

@ 'Radio Free Exile'

'Yo=Otro'

Levan Mindiashvil can also be found at 'Yo=Otro'

Levan Mindiashvili

HERE

imindiashvili@yahoo.com

Spank!!! # 14 (eh?)

Smoking # 34

"I don't know it must have been the roses..."

Richard Hell

Oscar Rodriguez Lopez

Why?

Roses certainly seem to be in bloom in the record label design world at the moment it would appear.

Album review of the year

There is a sense in which fans of Ian Brown are the Bilderberg Group of rock. They are a large, shadowy organisation. No one outside their mysterious ranks really understands their actions or motives, but it’s clear they wield considerable influence: enough at least to keep the former Stone Roses frontman thriving in the music business. His career has survived incarceration, accusations of homophobia and the oft-mentioned but incontrovertible fact that, away from the dulcifying technologies of the recording studio, his voice sounds less like something you’d actually pay money to listen to than something you’d deploy to stop ships crashing into Lizard Point in poor visibility.

On several occasions over the last decade, the present writer has attempted to go undercover, infiltrating their meetings at the Brixton Academy and the Southampton Guildhall, observing their participation in baffling occult rituals, including cheering wildly as Brown sets about a Stone Roses classic with the blunt instrument of his larynx, leaving She Bangs the Drums or I Wanna Be Adored lying insensible in intensive care, with a doctor by its bedside sadly shaking his head and offering grief counselling to its relatives. They appear to be having the time of their lives, but if you are not of their number, you reel away from an Ian Brown gig as you would from an unprovoked assault in a Yates’s Wine Lodge: shaken, confused, unable to work out what possessed you to go in there in the first place.

So perhaps the answer to his appeal lies in his albums, of which My Way – his sixth – is a pretty representative example. While in the Stone Roses, Ian Brown wrote – or at least co-wrote – songs of a swaggering perfection. After the Stone Roses split, he started writing songs like a man who’d never actually heard a song before: My Star, Dolphins Were Monkeys. It’s hard not think something was lost, but a certain naive charm was difficult to dispute. So it proves here. Opening track Stellify sets out his current musical stall, which is nothing if not idiosyncratic: an odd mid-tempo house thud, topped off with electronics and jangling pub piano. The melody ambles along, weirdly recalling the Grange Hill theme, before a vast horn section crashes into view as unexpectedly as a flying cartoon sausage on a fork. It’s a peculiar sonic cocktail on which to base an album, although the most peculiar thing about it might be that it works: on the ebullient Just Like You and the gorgeous lope of Laugh Now.

Elsewhere, there’s a song called Own Brain. As its lyrics helpfully point out, this is an anagram of Ian Brown. You somehow imagine it came about after agonised writing sessions in which he churned out songs called things like Wino Barn and I Warn Nob, but there’s something weirdly gripping about the resulting breakbeat clatter.

Not all of his idiosyncracies are as charming. He wastes the album’s loveliest melody on Always Remember Me, another unedifying comparison of his fortunes with those of John Squire: there’s something about Brown’s endless harping on this topic that recalls the guy who spends the evening loudly informing friends that his ex means nothing to him, then goes home and cries in a candlelit room wallpapered with her pictures. We once more encounter his unique brand of protest song, on which Brown expresses an utterly inarguable point in such a clumsily hectoring way that you immediately feel impelled to start arguing with it: “Save us from warmongers who bring on Armageddon! Save us from all those whose eyes are closed to the plight of the African child!” he bellowed on 2007’s The World Is Yours, causing at least one listener to frantically try to formulate a case in favour of warmongers who bring on Armageddon. This time, it’s a gloomily portentous song called The Crowning of the Poor, which socks it to “zillionaires” and leaves you fighting the urge to demand City bonuses be increased a hundredfold with immediate effect.

It ends with So High, a pastiche of classic southern soul. Given that southern soul is entirely predicated on the singers’ ability to convey raw emotion through the incredible power of their voice, you might reasonably assume that it’s a genre slightly out of Brown’s reach, even if he had the most powerful dulcifying studio technologies known to man at his disposal. But reasonable assumptions count for nothing in the world of Ian Brown: he just ploughs through it, with the reckless abandon of a man piloting a battered Datsun in a banger race. As with the rest of My Way, highlights and lowlights alike, you listen to it struggling to think of anyone else who would do this. And perhaps that’s the secret of the most mysterious continuing success story in rock.

@'The Guardian'

Wave Machines - Go/Go/Go

New AIR album...

You can listen to 'Love 2' online for approx the next 24 hours by going

HERE

Bonus: Audio
How Does It Make You Feel? (Adrian Sherwood Remix)

Alas poor Jude: "I knew her how well...?"

I would guess
not a particularly
happy chappy at the mo...

Not so Naked Lunch

Kim Gordon, Michael Stipe & William S. Burroughs
Via 'This isn't happiness'

Hosh Roshana שנה טובה

A shofar made from a ram's horn

In the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, there is a ceremony called Tashlich. Jews traditionally go to the ocean or a stream or river to pray and throw bread crumbs into the water.

Symbolically, the fish devour their sins.
Occasionally, people ask what kind of bread crumbs should be thrown. Here are suggestions for breads which may be mostappropriate for specific sins and misbehaviors:

For ordinary sins
White Bread

For erotic sins
French Bread

For particularly dark sins
Pumpernickel

For complex sins
Multi-Grain

For twisted sins
Pretzels

For tasteless sins
Rice Cakes

For sins of indecision
Waffles

For sins committed in haste
Matzoh

For sins of chutzpah
Fresh Bread

For substance abuse
Stoned Wheat

For use of heavy drugs
Poppy Seed

For petty larceny
Stollen

For committing auto theft
Caraway

For timidity/cowardice
Milk Toast

For ill-temperedness
Sourdough

For silliness, eccentricity
Nut Bread

For not giving full value
Shortbread

For jingoism, chauvinism
Yankee Doodles

For excessive irony
Rye Bread

For unnecessary chances
Hero Bread

For telling bad jokes/puns
Corn Bread

For war-mongering
Kaiser Rolls

For dressing immodestly
Tarts

For causing injury to others
Tortes

For lechery and promiscuity
Hot Buns

For promiscuity with gentiles
Hot Cross Buns

For racist attitudes
Crackers

For sophisticated racism
Ritz Crackers

For being holier than thou
Bagels

For abrasiveness
Grits

For dropping in without notice
Popovers

For over-eating
Stuffing

For impetuosity
Quick Bread

For indecent photography
Cheesecake

For raising your voice too often
Challah

For pride and egotism
Puff Pastry

For sycophancy, ass-kissing
Brownies

For being overly smothering
Angel Food Cake

For laziness
Any long loaf

For trashing the environment
Dumplings

(Thanx to RobbieM
via Superstar R.J. Lemon from the "krewe du jieux, New Orleans" ~ Happy New Year to you all!)

Moritz von Oswald Trio @ Bimhuis Amsterdam 23062008

Featuring Moritz von Oswald with Max Louderbauer and Sasu Ripatti (Vladislav Delay).

Evolution - Burning Man 2009 Time Lapse

From Red to black in seconds (last week in Australia) "Oh my gosh" & "Holy shit" indeed

“The future influences the present just as much as the past.” - Friedrich Nietzsch

Tack>>Head - In The Area 2008

Doug Wimbish (bass), Keith Leblanc (drums), and Skip "Little Axe" McDonald (guitar) at Sully's Pub & Tiki Bar in Hartford, Connecticut. WIMBASH 2008 (August 9, 2008)
Sharehead, soon come.

Glenn Beck: High as a kite

"Beck was known at B104 as a pro's pro in the studio but was becoming increasingly unraveled when not working. "Beck used to get hammered after every show at this little bar-café down the street," remembers a music programmer who worked with Beck. "At first we thought he was going to get lunch." The extent to which Beck was struggling to keep it together is highlighted by Beck's arrest one afternoon just outside Baltimore. He was speeding in his DeLorean with one of the car's gull-wing doors wide open when the cops pulled him over. According to a former colleague, Beck was "completely out of it" when a B104 manager went down to the station to bail him out. In his 2003 book, "Real America," Beck refers to himself as a borderline schizophrenic. Whether that statement is matter-of-fact or intended for effect, he has spoken more than once about taking drugs for ADHD, and when he was at B104, Beck's coworkers believed him to be taking prescription medication for some kind of mental or psychological ills. "He used to complain that his medication made him feel like he was 'under wet blankets,'" remembers the former music programmer.

Today, when Beck wants to illustrate the jerk he used to be, he tells the story of the time he fired an employee for bringing him the wrong pen during a promotional event. According to former colleagues in Baltimore, Beck didn't just fire people in fits of rage -- he fired them slowly and publicly. "He used to take people to a bar and sit them down and just humiliate them in public. He was a sadist, the kind of guy who rips wings off of flies," remembers a colleague."

Excerpt from Alexander Zaitchik's three part mini-biography at
'Salon'
Via 'Daily Kos'

PS~ What is "White Culture" Glenn?

Sunday Mix - Dave Twomey: Mariana Mix

Go HERE for tracklist and to download.

Back in the real world

Meanwhile 'enduring America' has a good wrap up of the rumours flowing in and around Iran today.
HERE

1730 GMT: Today’s “Velvet Revolution” Showcase. It comes courtesy of the Supreme Leader’s Advisor For Military Affairs, Major General Seyed Yahiya Rahim Safavi, who said on Saturday, “The (enemies’) soft war is aimed at changing the (Iranian nation’s) culture, views, values, national beliefs and belief in values. Soft warfare is a complicated type of political, cultural, information operations launched by the world powers to create favorable changes in the target countries.”

1715 GMT: The Wall Street Journal, snarling for a confrontation with Iran, inadvertently exposes the weakness in the dramatic presentation of the second enrichment facility: “Let’s also not forget the boost Iran got in late 2007, when a U.S. national intelligence estimate concluded that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and kept it frozen. The U.S. spy agencies reached this dubious conclusion while apparently knowing about the site near Qom.”

Probably for the chest-thumpers at the WSJ is that the conclusion is not dubious at all (see the State Department’s defense of it in a separate entry). Even if the second facility had taken in shipments of uranium, which is not alleged even by the US Government, even if high-grade centrifuges had been installed, which is not established, even if those centrifuges had begun enriching uranium, which is not claimed anywhere, that would not establish a direct link with a resumed nuclear weapons program. It would merely establish that Iran now had some quantity of enriched uranium which might or might not be for military rather than civilian purposes.

However, the WSJ’s railing do not have to be logical to show the problems for the Obama Administration’s strategy. Opponents will now claim that the 2nd enrichment facility shows that all intelligence assessments from 2007 must be thrown out and will put by default the faith-based assertion that Iran is hell-bent on the Bomb and beyond diplomacy.

1650 GMT: The Institute for Science and International Security has posted images “of two possible locations of the gas centrifuge uranium enrichment facility under construction near Qom, Iran. Both are tunnel facilities located within military compounds approximately 30-40 kilometers away.”

Ethicist blasts Ahmadinejad on IRIB

A hat trick for Torres

LIVERPOOL 6 VS 1 HULL

Bring 'em on!
And it just keeps on getting better!
(sorry Longy!)

Putting the KY back into Kentucky!

@ 'Daily Dish'
Jeez Louise!
Lynchings down south! Calls to bring back McCarthyism!
Obama banning flavoured tobacco (and pot) is "gay"!
WTF?!?
Where is an interrobang when you need one?
(My apologies to Yotte!)

M/A/R/R/S - Pump Up The Volume

Bonus: Audio
M/A/R/R/S - Pump Up The Volume (Remix)

Bodhan (with an X)

(Click to enlarge)
Somewhere along the lines in the past week or so I was talking with someone about Bodhan and I just found this over at Prehistoric Sounds.
Who knows, maybe someone's memory will get refreshed...could have been up at 'High Vibes'.
Anyway enough of this, or god forbid Bodhan will think he is having a revival.
(It's all good mate, it was mostly complimentary, I think!)

Icon

Tom Verlaine

(Sigh...again!)

Dot Allison
You have until the end of the month to catch her recent acoustic show on Janice Long's BBC Radio 2 show
HERE

Cheating goalkeeper Kim Christensen faces fine after moving goalposts

A goalkeeper in Sweden’s top football league may be suspended and perhaps fined after being caught moving the goalposts. Literally.

Kim Christensen, a Dane who plies his trade with IFK Gothenburg, was seen on camera kicking in both sides of the goalframe to reduce the target area ever so slightly at the start of a crucial match in the Allsvenskan (All Sweden) division, the equivalent of the English Premier League.

The game between IFK, who are top of the league and on course for a lucrative place in European competition next season, and Örebro, was shown live on national television but it took the referee more than 20 minutes to spot that the posts were a few centimetres inside the guidelines marked on the pitch. He moved them back out to their correct positions but, because he was unaware that the goalkeeper was responsible, took no further action.

Faced with clear television evidence, however, Christensen later admitted that this was not the first time he had moved the goalposts — which, in the Swedish game, often rest on top of the artificial playing surface and can easily be manipulated.

“I got the tip from a goalkeeping friend a few years ago, and since then I have done it from time to time,” Christensen told a reporter.

Stefan Johansson, the referee, said: “Had I seen him do it I would have warned him. I think so, anyway — it is not easy to find that rule.”

A member of the disciplinary committee for the Swedish Football Association (SFA) said that, had the referee witnessed the incident, a penalty kick for Örebro would have been the correct response. The game ended 0-0 but Örebro came close to scoring several times, so may yet decide to appeal to the SFA. Christensen has already been reported to the body.

Jonas Nystedt, a spokesman for the SFA, said that its disciplinary committee would consider the case at its October meeting. “Since this ia a very special case we cannot say at the moment what will happen. During an investigation, we can say that a player is not allowed to play, but so far he has not been suspended.”

He said that moving the goalposts was not a specific offence in the SFA rulebook but the player could be charged with obstruction. Mr Nystedt added that the SFA would consider the mandatory fixing of goalposts securely to the ground in future. “On artifical grass it is not so easy to hold the goals in the right positions all the time.”

@ 'The Times'
(Thanx SirMick!)

All you David Sylvian fans...

You may be interested in this.

The Interrobang is back!?!

The interrobang was introduced in 1962 by Martin Speckter, head of a New York advertising and public relations agency and editor of a magazine called Type Talks. In a Type Talks article, Speckter declared that advertising copywriters needed a new mark to punctuate exclamatory rhetorical questions common in advertising headlines (for example: “What?! Whiter than White?!”). In this type of copy, neither an exclamation point nor a question mark (used alone) could fully convey the writer´s intent.

@ 'FontHaus' & 'Wiki'

Girlz With Gunz # 81

Lydia Lunch