Song(s) of the Day # 4,357 Donny Osmond
2 hours ago
Sunday, 19 June 2011
Bootsy_Collins Bootsy Collins
We lost another funkin' soldier y'all, Clarence "Big Man" Clemons. the Funkateer Nation will rise to this... http://fb.me/Hvkk51FX
The Amen Break (2004)
This fascinating, brilliant 20-minute video narrates the history of the "Amen Break," a six-second drum sample from the b-side of a chart-topping single from 1969. This sample was used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music -- a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures. Nate Harrison's 2004 video is a meditation on the ownership of culture, the nature of art and creativity, and the history of a remarkable music clip.
Clarence Clemons RIP
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Fleet Foxes On Piracy – Don’t Make Discs, Make Music
In an interview with Shortlist Magazaine, band leader Robin Pecknold does nothing to undermine that support.
“There’s nothing you can do about technology. When the product leaves the disc it’s not chained to a physical format any more. It’d be different if we were sculptors because you can’t download a sculpture — not yet, at least,” says Pecknold.
“We’re unlucky in that our medium of choice is easily transferable over the internet, but that shouldn’t really matter. You’re not trying to make discs — you’re trying to make music. The medium shouldn’t matter and people will still reward you by buying records or seeing shows if you do something that they like.”
“I’m a music fan and that’s what I do.”
Read More
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Saturday, 18 June 2011
Can - 'Free Concert' excerpt (1972)
On February 3, 1972, Can held a free concert at Kölner Sporthalle in Cologne. They had just enjoyed a number one chart position in Germany with "Spoon" and more than 10,000 people attended. This concert came to be known as CAN-FREE-CONCERT and is featured on the Can Box video.
CAN-FREE-CONCERT was made by Peter Przygodda and Robby Müller. Przygodda has edited all of Wim Wenders' films, and Müller was Wenders' cinematographer on several occasions including the film "Paris Texas".
CAN-FREE-CONCERT was made by Peter Przygodda and Robby Müller. Przygodda has edited all of Wim Wenders' films, and Müller was Wenders' cinematographer on several occasions including the film "Paris Texas".
Timing
Taliban Evoke a Vietnam Flashback
simon_klingert Simon Klingert
So apparently a coordinated insurgent attack is underway in Kabul, while Karzai says "peace talks have started [..] and it is going well."
Resonance
Resonance is the vision of SR Partners; a collaborative project with over 30 independent visual and audio designers/studios. The aim was to explore the relationship between geometry and audio in unique ways.
SEE || Displace Studios and MoveMakeShake | Esteban Diacono | Heerko Groefsema | Jean-Paul Frenay | Jr.canest | KORB | Kultnation | Mate Steinforth | Matthias Müller | Momentary People | MRK | Murat Pak | Onur Senturk | Physalia studio | Polynoid | SR Partners | Thiago Maia | Tom Waterhouse | Tronic Studio | Spatial Harmonics Group
HEAR || Audionerve | Combustion | CypherAudio | David Kamp | Echolab | Hecq | Michael Fakesch | Mutant Jukebox | Radium Audio | Box Of Toys | Studio Takt | World Gang
resonance-film.com for more details and opportunities to get one of the limited edition Blu-Ray and DVD versions of the full film.
SR Partners are looking for opportunities to talk about the project and explain the process which we went through to get to this point. If you are interested in taking part in this and for future screenings and festivals please contact simon@sr-partners.co.uk
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Student who ran file sharing site TVShack could face extradition to US
The mother of a British student who is facing extradition to the United States over alleged copyright offences online has spoken of her anguish that he could face a possible jail sentence.
In a case carrying echoes of that of Gary McKinnon, the computer hacker who has spent years fighting US extradition, 23-year-old undergraduate Richard O'Dwyer was arrested late last month at the request of the US immigration and customs enforcement department.
Until last year, when police and US officials first visited him at his student accommodation in Sheffield, O'Dwyer ran a website called TVShack which provided links to other sites where users could download pirated versions of films and television shows. He appeared before magistrates in the capital this week for a preliminary hearing into the planned extradition, which he is fighting.
The case seemed "beyond belief", said O'Dwyer's mother, Julia, from Chesterfield. "The first he knew about it was this visit from the police and the American officials in November," she said. "He shut the website down the very next day and I don't think he expected it to go this far. But then in May he even had to spend a night in Wandsworth prison as the court was too slow for us to sort out his passport and bail.
"Richard's still studying in Sheffield. He's doing his best not to think about it. But it's a real strain for the family. I wake up every morning and think about it. What we can do? I'm no expert but I've read the extradition treaty from cover to cover."
It is the UK's 2003 extradition agreement with the US, campaigners say, which is at the centre of the problem. Much criticised in the case of McKinnon, it currently contains no provision for what is known legally as forum, which would allow a UK judge to consider whether a case is best heard in the UK or abroad.
O'Dwyer's mother says she is baffled why a case with no direct links to the US – her son last went there aged five – should be heard in the US. Her lawyers agree.
"The (computer) server was not based in the US at all," O'Dwyer's barrister, Ben Cooper, who has also been heavily involved in the McKinnon case, told Tuesday's hearing at Westminster magistrates court. "Mr O'Dwyer did not have copyrighted material on his website; he simply provided a link. The essential contention is that the correct forum for this trial is in fact here in Britain, where he was at all times."
Some experts on digital law question whether providing links to illegal downloads rather than directly hosting them would even constitute an offence in the UK. In February last year charges involving fraud and copyright against a similar site, TV-Links, were dismissed after a judge ruled that linking alone was not illegal.
"If it's an offence under UK law, then it has to be prosecuted and tested under UK law," said James Firth of the Open Digital Policy Organisation thinktank. "If there is no offence under UK law, then there is no 'victim' to copyright infringement and no case for extradition."
Civil liberties groups have also questioned why the government has not swiftly amended the extradition law by enacting a pre-existing but dormant forum clause, given that both coalition parties were heavily critical of it while in opposition. In September last year the home secretary, Theresa May, instead ordered a wider, year-long review of all extradition laws.
"The government hasn't acted in time. This is exactly what we warned against," said Isabella Sankey, director of policy for Liberty. "Enacting the forum amendment would have been quite simple. It's not that we're arguing that in every case where activity has taken place here we shouldn't allow people to be extradited. But we should at least be leaving our judges some discretion to look at the circumstances."
Prter Walker @'The Guardian'
Jimmy Carter: End the Global War on Drugs
In an extraordinary new initiative announced earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.Read More from Jimmy Carter in the New York Times.
The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.
These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”
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Papa
HERE
The Specials: How Ghost Town defined an era
Ghost Town by the Specials is 30 years old. How did this strange but unforgettable record capture a moment in history?
It starts with a siren and those woozy, lurching organ chords. Then comes the haunted, spectral woodwind, punctuated by blaring brass.Over a sparse reggae bass line, a West Indian vocal mutters warnings of urban decay, unemployment and violence.
"No job to be found in this country," one voice cries out. "The people getting angry," booms another, ominously.
Few songs evoke their era like the Specials' classic Ghost Town, a depiction of social breakdown that provided the soundtrack to an explosion of civil unrest.
Released on 20 June 1981 against a backdrop of rising unemployment, its blend of melancholy, unease and menace took on an entirely new meaning when Britain's streets erupted into rioting almost three weeks later - the day before Ghost Town reached number one in the charts.
The song's much-celebrated video - in which the band, crammed into a Vauxhall Cresta, patrol empty, crumbling streets - seems unlikely promotional material for a hit single.
And whatever similarities might exist between the tough economic environments of 1981 and 2011, the fact this odd, angular song could become such a massive hit might be astonishing to modern ears.
But, clearly, it expressed the mood of the times for many. "It was clear that something was very, very, wrong," the song's writer, Jerry Dammers, has said.If the band's ability to articulate the mood of the era can be traced anywhere, it is surely in Coventry, where they were based. The city's car industry had brought prosperity and attracted incomers from across the UK and the Commonwealth, meaning the future Specials grew up in the 1960s listening to a mixture of British and American pop and Jamaican ska.
But by 1981, industrial decline had left the city suffering badly. Unemployment was among the highest in the UK.
"When I think about Ghost Town I think about Coventry," says Specials drummer John Bradbury, who grew up in the city.
"I saw it develop from a boom town, my family doing very well, through to the collapse of the industry and the bottom falling out of family life. Your economy is destroyed and, to me, that's what Ghost Town is about."
With a mix of black and white members, The Specials, too, encapsulated Britain's burgeoning multiculturalism. The band's 2 Tone record label gave its name to a genre which fused ska, reggae and new wave and, in turn, inspired a crisply attired youth movement.
But, as a consequence, Specials gigs began to attract the hostile presence of groups like the National Front and the British Movement. When vocalist Neville Staple sighed wearily on Ghost Town that there was "too much fighting on the dance floor", he sang from personal experience.
The violence came even closer to home when guitarist Lynval Golding was badly hurt in a brutal racist attack - an incident documented in Ghost Town's bewildered B-side, Why?As their popularity grew, the band's tours of the UK took them around a country shaken by rising joblessness. Dammers has cited the sight of elderly women in Glasgow selling their household possessions on the street as the song's inspiration.
But it was not only economic hardship, industrial dereliction and racial unrest that imbued Ghost Town with paranoia and tension. By the time it was recorded, The Specials were riven by acrimony and distrust. Following their appearance on Top of the Pops to promote the single, frontmen Terry Hall and Neville Staple walked out of the group along with Golding.
"Ghost Town was a rough time for the band members," recalls Bradbury. "We were more or less at each other's throats. It was very intense. That definitely makes you play in a certain way."
While it may have sounded chaotic, the song had been carefully plotted by Dammers for over a year. Once it became public property, however, Ghost Town took on an entirely new meaning.
By mid-1981, the UK was already tense following April's riots in Brixton, which an official report later found were fuelled by indiscriminate use of stop-and-search powers by the police against the local black population. The murder of a Coventry teenager called Samtam Gill in a racist attack prompted The Specials to announce a gig promoting racial unity in their city on the day of Ghost Town's release; the National Front announced a march in the area on the same day.
Then, as the single climbed up the charts, Britain's streets ignited. Between 3 and 11 July, serious rioting broke out across the country at Handsworth in Birmingham, Toxteth in Liverpool, Southall in London, and Moss Side in Manchester, while Bedford, Bristol, Edinburgh, Gloucester, Halifax, Leeds, Leicester, Southampton and Wolverhampton all witnessed unrest.
By the evening of 10 July, Ghost Town was a number one single.
From a 21st Century perspective, the song's nightmarish chanting, portentous lyrics and doom-laden bass all sound remarkably avant garde for a hit song.
But according to the Guardian's chief pop and rock critic, Alexis Petridis, the momentum of The Specials' growing fan base and the uneasy mood of the general music-buying public combined were enough to propel it to the summit of the charts.
"There's something frenzied and mad about that record," he says. "It has such a kaleidoscope of influences - jazz, (film score composer) John Barry, Middle Eastern music, a solid reggae undertone and stuff that sounds like nothing else."But you don't listen to Ghost Town and think it's weird. I was 11 when it was released and I don't remember going, 'What's this?' At the time there were a lot of political songs in the charts. But if a record like that got to number one today you'd go, 'Wow, that's bizarre.'"
Nonetheless, while it may describe a very specific moment in British history, Ghost Town's popularity has barely dimmed. A re-formed Specials, minus Dammers, are due to tour later in 2011, with the song as the centrepiece of their set.
The parallels between the Britain of 1981 and 2011 might be up for debate. But Les Back, professor of sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, who has studied the 2 Tone phenomenon, is not surprised that the track has endured, regardless of the political context.
"It sums up how it felt to be young at the time," he says. "But at the same time it's timelessly resonant.
"There are a handful of tunes that do that and Ghost Town is one of them."
Jon Kelly @'BBC'
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