Wednesday, 21 April 2010

Planes VS Volcano (Updated & Corrected)

(Click to enlarge)

King Sunny Adé cancels US tour due to deaths

Lots of musicians have been canceling international tour dates lately, mostly because of the hazards posed by the volcano eruption in Iceland. But concerns at once more tragic and more ordinary have forced King Sunny Adé, the legendary Nigerian bandleader, to call off his North American tour, which was scheduled to start in Canada last week and come to the Highline Ballroom in Manhattan on May 20.
In late March two percussionists in Mr. Adé’s 17-piece touring band, Gabriel Ayanniyi and Omo Olope, died in a car accident in Nigeria on the way to a music video shoot. With just a few weeks before the tour was to start, attempts to get American visas for replacement members of the band proved unsuccessful.
Andy Frankel, the band’s Philadelphia-based manager, said that the band had applied for visas but that American officials in Lagos “just flat-out failed to respond.” For help Mr. Frankel turned to his Congressional representative, Chaka Fattah, Democrat of Pennsylvania, but there was no luck there, either. “We got a response a week later,” Mr. Frankel said, “saying that unless it is a matter of medical emergency or business emergency they will not respond to any issues out of the normal time frame. I don’t know how this doesn’t constitute a business emergency.”
Finding replacement players in the United States was next to impossible, Mr. Frankel said, for financial, logistical and, especially, musical reasons, given Mr. Ayanniyi’s key role: lead talking-drum player. In Mr. Adé’s juju music — a Nigerian pop style rooted in Yoruba traditions — the talking drum is, Mr. Frankel added, “equivalent to the lead guitar in a rock band.” “After King Sunny, it does everything,” he said.

Ben Sisario @'NY Times'

RIP Guru

HERE

Sex Pistols interview on Radio Clyde's Streetsounds Show with Brian Ford from 23rd November 1977

HERE

(Thanx to 'Exile' reader WMHP!)
I listened to this at the time

Sid is AWOL...

Cannot believe...

...that I went past the 5,000th post without realising it!

Sorry Audiozobe

(but as you say here's to the 10,000th!)

How to put a little more G in your Earth Day

It will make you all warm and fuzzy. Or not.

Imagine for a moment the amount of batteries that it would take to charge up 15 billion dollars worth of sex toys per year, then imagine the majority of those batteries ending up as toxic waste. Along side that there are the manufacturing processes, most of which go relatively unregulated and continue to use phthalates (pronounced thal-ates), chemical plasticizers that have already been banned from use in children's toys in the U.S. and which Greenpeace has now requested the European Union start banning the use of in sex toys as well. All told, it suddenly seems obvious that the sex toy industry is a great place to start going green.

The manufacturers of the Micro-Kitty, the world's first solar powered sex toy (which is also phthalate-free) were apparently thinking the same thing. Using the popular design of a strap-on clitoral vibrator that can be worn by women solo or with a partner, they made the toy from silicone which a handful of conscientious sex toy manufacturers are now turning toward to create phthalate-free toys. They then took it one step further and made the vibrator solar powered just like the grade school calculators but a apparently a whole lot more fun.

@'PRWeb'

No comment from me...

I will let you make up yr own mind!

Disregard the wanky 'youtoob' headline

Memo to TV producers:

There is a great competition there...

Yirrip blondes VS USA blondes

& who do you think will win?

CAVEAT:

I AM a blonde.

(Happy 4:20 BillT!)

Sonic Boom reads his liner notes to MGMT's 'Congratulations'

Get it

HERE

(This was only available as a limited iTune pre-order release)

Jah Wobble's top ten Dub trax

1 KING TUBBY MEETS ROCKERS UPTOWN
Augustus Pablo I first heard this as a pre-release in 1976. Love the sound of Augustus Pablo's melodica; I am also kinky for the sound of the dubbed-up timbale drums that feature on this recording. King Tubby was the king of pure, heavy-duty dub at that time. It was released in this country on Island Records. Hearing 'King Tubby' for the first time had a profound effect on me: it was like hearing music from another cosmos. There are any number of good King Tubby compilations now around - Trojan Records and the Blood & Fire label are good places to look.
2 CONCRETE DUB Bob Marley
I no longer have this record... in fact, I have not heard it for probably 25 years, so I hope it does really exist and is not a figment of my imagination. If memory serves me well, it was the dub version B-side of an Island 7" single; probably of the track called 'Concrete Jungle', from the Catch a Fire album. It must have been one of the first ever domestically released dub singles. It was great to hear a dub version of a Marley track - I nearly always preferred the dub version of a tune. There was more space, and the bass and drums were pushed to the fore.
3 MARCUS GARVEY (DUB VERSION) Burning Spear
One of the very first dub versions I ever heard. I heard it in 1975 on a Friday night on the Capital Radio reggae show. I used to listen to that show religiously - Tommy Vance was the DJ. I now occasionally hear him DJing on heavy-rock stations as I channel-hop.
4 PROMISE IS A COMFORT TO A FOOL Trinity/Yabby You
A classic bassline, with a beautiful vocal refrain, and DJ chat. There are some bass lines that contain the whole mystery of creation within them. This is one of them. Other examples are Roy Budd's bass line to the title track of Mike Hodges Get Carter, and Cecil McBee's line on Lonnie Liston Smith's 'Expansions' are two that come immediately to mind. The crediting of reggae musicians is notoriously lax. There are three possible players, re this particular tune. All giants of the bass - Robbie Shakespeare, Aston 'Family Man' Barrett and Clinton Fearon. If I had to put money down on who it is on this track, I would say it was Mr Fearon.
5 TWO SEVENS CLASH Culture
For a while back in 1977, you could not get away from this tune. It still sounds heavenly. It reminds me of walking back from a party in Hackney on a Sunday morning as the sun was coming up. I couldn't get the tune out of my head.
6 JUJU MUSIC King Sunny Ade
There was a little-known dub version of this classic album, mixed by an engineer that I worked with, called Groucho. What he did was devastating. I would love to hear it again. It was on Island (again!) and was released around 1982.
7 ROWING Dennis Bovell
One of the great musicians of his generation. I used to watch him perform this with his band Matumbi. As with "Juju Music", I hankered after hearing it again. I'm pleased to say that the label Pressure Sounds has released a compilation of Dennis's dub stuff, which includes this track.
8 THE SAME SONG Israel Vibration
Similar to our own late, and very great Ian Dury, 'Skeleton,' 'Apple' and 'Wiss' [Israel Vibration's three members] were stricken by polio in the fifties. This blend of their vocals within a dub context is wonderful. Yet again, there is a great compilation on Pressure Sounds.
9 CONSCIOUS MAN DUB Lee Perry and the Jolly Brothers
You could not have a dub selection without Lee "Scratch" Perry appearing. This is a great example of his idiosyncratic style.
10 SMILING STRANGER John Martyn
This is taken from his 1980 album One World. It was one of the first records outside reggae to utilise dub techniques. Superb.

The Black Dog (Orlando Voorn remix)

Tuesday, 20 April 2010

Going out...

OOPS!!!

Actually I am going up to the Northcote Social Club to see The Paradise Motel...
Laterz/

Jah Wobble's top ten Dub trax

Nick Lowe - So It Goes

'Yaka-Wow' hits Boing Boing!

Are you a breezy person who goes, "Yaka-wow!"? Maybe you already were, and just didn't know it. Alice Bell, science communication lecturer at Imperial College, London, explains:

The main reason we've all been saying yakawow is simply because it's a cool word. It should be used more. Try saying it yourself out loud - yakawow, yaka-wow. Doesn't it just make your mouth happy?

More specifically, yaka-wow is the accidental brainchild of British neuroscientist Susan Greenfield. In the UK, Greenfield is known for holding the rather controversial position that use of computers and video games irreparably damages children's brains—unless, of course, said children are using her computer games, in which case they will become smarter. You see the problem. Last Thursday, Greenfield gave an interview to the London Times, which led to this fabulous exchange:

She doesn't think computer games are life-threatening, like smoking, but she says that they are as much of a risk to mankind as climate change. [...] She is concerned that those who live only in the present, online, don't allow their malleable brains to develop properly. "It's not going to destroy the planet but is it going to be a planet worth living in if you have a load of breezy people who go around saying yaka-wow. Is that the society we want?"

Within hours, yaka-wow had inspired a Twitter stream, poster, T-shirt and burgeoning personal philosophy. But why yaka-wow? Bell says it's probably a fortuitous typo:

As it turns out, Greenfield wasn't just making up an odd phrase. It seems to be a transcription error of "yuck and wow", a phrase Greenfield has often used to describe the way people act online, running quickly from one sensation to another. Greenfield famously refereed to the banality of twitter as, "Marginally reminiscent of a small child saying, 'Look at me, look at me mummy! Now I've put my sock on. Now I've got my other sock on.'"

Naturally, that quote inspired mathematician Matt Parker to thoroughly wow the web by pulling both his socks on at the same time.

Image courtesy the brilliant mind of Adam Rutherford.

@'Boing Boing'

4-20

...but especially for you Dray 3-0!

In prosperous South Korea, a troubling increase in suicide rate

Iran bans the country's two remaining official opposition parties

Iranian authorities banned the country's two remaining official opposition parties Monday after two of their leaders received prison sentences.

The move, subject to confirmation by Iran's judiciary, effectively silences the last parties legally permitted to promote political change in Iran and prevents foes of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from gaining power through elections.

The parties, the Islamic Iran Participation Front and the Mujaheddin of the Islamic Revolution Organization, advocated more civil liberties and changes in Iran's system of Shiite religious rule. Together they formed one of the country's main political blocs.

The action follows the sentencing Sunday of two of the parties' leading ideologues -- Mohsen Mirdamadi of the Front and Mostafa Tajzadeh of the Mujaheddin -- to six years in prison. They were also banned for 10 years from political activities after being found guilty of illegal assembly, conspiring against national security and propagating falsehoods against the state.

Both were among the leaders of young militants who seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and held 53 Americans hostage for more than a year. They backed Ahmadinejad's main challengers in Iran's presidential election last June.

Iran's main political opposition group, the Green Movement, is not a recognized party and has never had permission to operate. Its leaders, former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi and Shiite cleric Mehdi Karroubi, ran independently of party affiliation when they challenged Ahmadinejad in last year's election.

After Ahmadinejad was declared the winner by a landslide, Mousavi, Karroubi and the opposition parties silenced Monday charged that the election was marred by massive fraud and backed street protests against the results.

Thomas Erdbrink @'Washington Post'

Coming soon...

WORDS OF ADVICE
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS ON THE ROAD

A Film by Lars Movin and Steen Moller Rasmussen

In 1983, the counter culture icon and author of the cult classic Naked Lunch (1959), William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), traveled throughout Scandinavia making a series of personal appearances. Twenty years later, filmmakers Lars Movin and Steen Moller Rasmussen found never-before-seen footage of his Copenhagen visit and set out on the road to record new material, telling the story of the acclaimed authors later work – especially what is known as The Last Trilogy - and his unique performance skills. The result is Words of Advice: William S. Burroughs on the Road, a compelling portrait of one our most enigmatic public figures.

Featuring:
James Grauerholz, John Giorno, Hal Willner, Jennie Skerl, Ann Douglas, Regina Weinreich, and others.

Music by:
Bill Laswell/Material, Patti Smith, Islamic Diggers, and others..

Extras include:
- A nearly complete documentation of Burroughs reading in Copenhagen,
Oct. 29th 1983.
- A statement by Ann Douglas, Professor at Columbia University, New York.
- Two short tribute films, One Shot I + II.

http://www.microcinemadvd.com/product/DVD/958/Words_of_Advice_William_S_Burroughs_on_the_Road.html

@'Republic 21'

Capital Radio - The Tommy Vance Show (July 16 1977)

Johnny Rotten on Capital Radio

The interview was a turning point in people's perception of John Lydon and his public image. Malcolm McLaren and Glitterbest hated it. They never wanted him to do it; and were horrified at his record selections. However, this wasn't just a case of breaking rank – if it ever even was – it was about music. MUSIC. "Just play the records. They'll speak for themselves. That's my idea of fun…" The records highlighted John's eclectic musical tastes, and his open-mind. Reggae, folk, soul, avant-garde, and good old rock'n'roll, it was all there. And not a Stooges or Dolls record in sight.

Full transcript and tracklist @'Fodderstomph'

Handwritten recommendations for further reggae listening from Lydon
Get it

HERE

(Thanx Stan!)

Longy over at 'Punk Friction' has an interview that JR and Sid did with John Tobler for Radio 1 in 1977.
You can grab that
HERE

Lost and Found

How Apple lost the next iPhone

Balls!

Surgeon cuts off testicle by mistake!!!

Green means Go: U.S. Government Permits the Export of Anti-Filtering Technology to Iran

The Internet has its enemies: Iran, China, Burma, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, and more. As an increasing number of countries attempt to restrict Internet access, the U.S. government made freedom of expression on the Internet a primary foreign policy goal. A step toward achieving that goal was demonstrated in a press release issued April 13, 2010 by Censorship Research Center (CRC) announcing the acquisition of the license required to export their anti-filtering software, Haystack, to Iran.

Anxious to learn more about what this authorization means for the people of Iran and provide a follow-up on a recent post, "Effective Tools and Strategy: Kicking it up a Notch in Cuba and Beyond," I interviewed CRC Executive Director, Austin Heap. He shared his journey to this pivotal development, the technology behind Haystack, as well as both the considerations and limitations involved in disseminating this same type of filter-circumventing software to other countries similarly affected by government controlled Internet filtering. Heap's commitment to upholding Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- that all people have the right to seek, receive and impart publicly available information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers -- is abundantly clear. From learning his first programming language at 8-years-old and knowing code in 20+ languages at the age of 26, Heap is thrilled to see technology being used to tear down walls that inhibit tolerance and promote human rights. While I was aware of this recently developed tool, I wondered how many people the software can empower and if there are limits to its impact. In a candid interview, Heap explained how the Haystack software works securely and CRC's hopes to provide this complex anti-filtering software around the globe.

"This license permits CRC to provide safe and uncensored Internet access via our Haystack software to those in Iran who live under government-imposed limits on free speech. Any organization looking to do humanitarian work in a sanctioned country has to go through the license application process. We are deeply committed to the idea that everyone has a human right to free expression, and censorship is a direct infringement of that right," he says. "This project is our attempt to make the world a better place by safeguarding the peoples right to free expression and access to information."

Heap claims authorities can block Haystack only by entirely disabling access to the Internet. According to him, their Haystack permits users to securely use normal web browsers and network applications while hiding traffic from the user inside other Internet traffic between ordinary web connections to innocuous sites. "To a computer, anyone using Haystack appears to be engaging in normal, unencrypted web browsing, which raises far fewer suspicions than many encrypted connections." Heap adds, "We would like to see as many people as possible assert their right to free expression. While Haystack is free-of-charge, CRC is dispersing it by invitation only while they build out capacity and organizational resources. To start, we aim to provide secure and uncensored Internet access to as many people as possible in Iran."

Haystack may be successful in other countries but CRC has not yet discovered the similarities and differences in the censoring methods used elsewhere. Heap explained to me that each country has a specific set of issues when it comes to online censorship and the way it's performed. While Cuba, Iran,and China all filter the Internet, the way it's done from a technical standpoint is different and may not be the exact same thing as what he and his partner, Daniel Colascione, developed for those in Iran. "Right now, our focus is Iran. Haystack was developed specifically to target the methods in which [the Iranian government] filters the Internet although we look forward to the opportunity to providing the freedom of speech to citizens of many more oppressed countries sooner than later," says Heap.

Ultimately, there's no way for CRC to know who is using their network. Part of the protection built into Haystack is meant to protect them from the users and the users from us, "That's just the nature of the dragon!" says Heap. When I asked how CRC intends to stop opposition authorities from discovering how Haystack works and creating a block specifically for Haystack, Heap acknowledge the charge as "difficult to rebut." "Under normal conditions, 'security through obscurity' is indeed false security, but Haystack has several properties that make it unique. To start, we do not rely on "obscurity" for protecting our users' privacy -- everything that one of ours users sends and receives is encrypted and it would take centuries for all the world's computers to decipher one of our users' browsing sessions even with full access to the Haystack source code," explained Heap. Their thorough design, however, is obscure as it was developed to make it very hard to find the software, let alone the user.

Heap and Colascione are not planning on leaving well-enough alone. They anticipate authorities will invest resources into finding a way to do prevent Haystack from being effective. Should they succeed, Heap is confident it will be temporary. "We will diligently refine our software and issue a new version that circumvents the restrictions. We will not, however, give the authorities any assistance in this process. By retarding their efforts, we ensure that the Haystack network operates more robustly for longer periods," Heap stated assuredly. When pushed further on the development of any solution for those affected by government initiated censorship, Heap could not have made his stance on safeguarding the peoples right to free expression and access to information more clear, "We are deeply committed to the idea that everyone has a human right to free expression, and censorship is a direct infringement of that right. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'"

Learn more about Censorship Research Group and how you can support Haystack by visiting www.CensorshipResearch.org.

Stephanie Rudat @'HuffPo'

(Maybe that can export it here if Conroy's filter comes into effect)

WTF???

Mice?

Vaseline?
(Check the comments - I just couldn't help myself)

Awww!

Smoking # 63

Kick Cameron

Women to blame for earthquakes, says Iran cleric

A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes.

Iran is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, and the cleric's unusual explanation for why the earth shakes follows a prediction by the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that a quake is certain to hit Tehran and that many of its 12 million inhabitants should relocate.
"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Women in the Islamic Republic are required by law to cover from head to toe, but many, especially the young, ignore some of the more strict codes and wear tight coats and scarves pulled back that show much of the hair. "What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble?" Sedighi asked during a prayer sermon last week. "There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam's moral codes." Seismologists have warned for at least two decades that it is likely the sprawling capital will be struck by a catastrophic quake in the near future. Some experts have even suggested Iran should move its capital to a less seismically active location. Tehran straddles scores of fault lines, including one more than 50 miles long, though it has not suffered a major quake since 1830.
In 2003, a powerful earthquake hit the southern city of Bam, killing 31,000 people – about a quarter of that city's population – and destroying its ancient mud-built citadel.
"A divine authority told me to tell the people to make a general repentance. Why? Because calamities threaten us," said Sedighi, Tehran's acting Friday prayer leader. Referring to the violence that followed last June's disputed presidential election, he said: "The political earthquake that occurred was a reaction to some of the actions [that took place]. And now, if a natural earthquake hits Tehran, no one will be able to confront such a calamity but God's power, only God's power ... So let's not disappoint God."
The Iranian government and its security forces have been locked in a bloody battle with a large opposition movement that accuses Ahmadinejad of winning last year's vote by fraud.
Ahmadinejad made his quake prediction two weeks ago but said he could not give an exact date. He acknowledged that he could not order all of Tehran's 12m people to evacuate. "But provisions have to be made ... at least 5 million should leave Tehran so it is less crowded," the president said.
The welfare minister, Sadeq Mahsooli, said prayers and pleas for forgiveness were the best "formulae to repel earthquakes. We cannot invent a system that prevents earthquakes, but God has created this system and that is to avoid sins, to pray, to seek forgiveness, pay alms and self-sacrifice," Mahsooli said.

@'The Guardian'
(Thanx Carolyn!)

(Thanx Lauren!)

Tamam Shud

The band
The case

Spank!!! # 17 (the Two Gun Kid)

The best ads for Al-Jazeera are on CNN!

I love it when the title of a study is almost better than that a death metal number. This study goes: "When Blood Becomes Cheaper than a Bottle of Water: How Viewers of the English Version of Al-Jazeera Website Judge Graphic Images of Conflict". You gotta admit the first part is a kick-ass song waiting to be written.

"CNN and other Western media have abdicated their journalistic responsibility to provide balanced, objective news and have instead become a voice of the government -- not controlled by the government but controlled by the big multinational multimedia conglomerates that own them and by their own self censorship." Another respondent went further, claiming that American media is "controlled and censored by Bush and his cronies."

Fahmy said the dilemma that photo editors face of whether a graphic photo of war and conflict would be too shocking to view gathered around the breakfast table might no longer hold true in the current media environment.

"Younger audiences, especially the 'YouTube' generation, seek graphic visual images in a far different way than audiences did before the World Wide Web," Fahmy said. "This has serious implications for the news media. I think it's time for media organizations to amend their ethical codes to allow for more graphic visuals in an effort to provide a more comprehensive and realistic view of war and conflict to U.S. audiences."

@'ScienceBlog'

Why women cry

(Click to enlarge)

HA!

Kode9 DJ-Kicks tracklisting:

1. Lone Once In A While
2. Aardvarck Revo
3. Kode9 Blood Orange
4. Kode9 You Don’t Wash (DJ-Kicks exclsuive)
5. Cooly G Phat Si
6. Ill Blu Bellion
7. Ikonika Heston
8. Scratcha DVA Jelly Roll
9. Mr Mageeka Different Lekstrix
10. Grievous Angel Move Down Low
11. Sticky feat. Natalie Storm Look Pon Me
12. Sticky Jumeirah Riddim Sequel
13. Mujava Pleaze Mugwanti
14. DVA Natty
15. Aardvaarck Re Spoken (Nubian Mindz Released Mix)
16. Morgan Zarate feat. Sarah Ann Webb M.A.B.
17. Rozzi Daime Dirty Illusions
18. Zomby Spiralz
19. Kode9 It
20. J*DaVeY Mr. Mister
21. Digital Mystikz 2 Much Chat
22. Terror Danjah Stiff
23. Digital Mystikz Mountain Dread March
24. Zomby Godzilla
25. Digital Mystikz Mountain Dread March (Reprise)
26. Addison Groove Footcrab
27. Kode9 vs. LD Bad
28. Maddslinky Cargo
29. Ramadanman Work Them
30. Terror Danjah Bruzin (VIP)
31. The Bug Run (feat. Flo Dan)

The compilation is due out on June 21.

@'fact'

iPhone 4 - it's real

Full Story
@'Gizmodo'
"because it’s thinner, it feels even nicer in your pants."
More here.

Monday, 19 April 2010

New York Dolls to pay tribute to McLaren tonight in London

The New York Dolls have announced that they will pay tribute to their former manager Malcolm McLaren, who died earlier this month, during their encore at their gig at Koko in London tonight. The band will dedicate their song 'Jet Boy' to McLaren, and will be joined by a number of special guests, too. As well as this, McLaren's funeral takes place on Thursday, and the Humanade charity are asking fans to mark the occasion with a 'minute of mayhem'.