Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,494 Al Green - Call Me
18 minutes ago
Wednesday, 16 June 2010
Why Marijuana Is Central to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
Cannabinoids are good.”
Have you heard that truth before? – It’s something you will understand if you read any further. You see, science is a truth conspiracy. It’s a testing of reality and standing your ground when you find evidence.
In some ways, being American means confronting untruths. To voice “our” truth through language, to create a new set and setting, we turned to the founders and a collection of essays known as The Federalist Papers.
During 1787 and 1788, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay wrote 85 essays in support of the US Constitution. They used the pen name "Publius" in honor of a famed Roman republican – someone they saw as a defender of liberty.
We became "Publius" for the same purpose: to make our sum greater than our individual parts. In doing so, we have created a series of 36 essays to detail the role of cannabinoids in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We began releasing the essays online in 2009 and will conclude this fall. The essays will then be available in book form as The Cannabis Papers: a citizen’s guide to cannabinoids.
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Tuesday, 15 June 2010
William Burroughs -Tangier Cut-Up (Esquire 09/64)
In these foreign suburbs here, a map of Tangier on a flaking plaster wall. I look from a photo layout to the map and drive pins in the map pointing location of the photos. The wall is grey and metallic under the plaster; electricity leaking into the walls the way it does in these old houses, you can get a shock from these pins. Look at the map. It won’t be there long. Departed have left no address. Your reporter selects a clipping from file labeled Daily Express, Saturday, April 23, 1964, (London): “This is America, New York, Friday: Research team spoke into a tape recorder which was playing through sound spectrograph. The machine converted words into pictures looking like contour lines on a relief map.” Relief map of old words and photos. They all went away. In 1929, year of the St. Louis tornado, when all the records went up, wasn’t nothing for it but to survey the county. They called in Old Arch to do the job and a heap of folk didn’t own what they thought after the Big Survey. Wasn’t a less liked man in Interzone than Old Arch standing there with the coldspring news. “The last carnival is being pulled down, buildings and stars laid flat for storage.” What’s in Tangier? Look at the map. Your reporter leafs through back numbers of the (now defunct) Tangier Gazette, Moroccan Courier, Minaret: “English Made Easy for Beginners, January 17, 1947. Today we are going to study the verb to fix. The general meaning of fix is to fit together or put in place, as I fixed the notice to The Board. Still another meaning is to set right or put in order. I fixed that up all right. Other meanings are to fix a date.” November 8, 1957: “Restaurant 1001 on Garibaldi Street reopened last week with a large cocktail party. Manager Brion Gysin is back. Among those present were Mr. & Mrs. James Skelton (it will be recalled that Mrs. Skelton is the former Mrs. Mary Cook of Seattle), veteran traveler David Edge, Mr. Peter Mayne author of The Narrow Smile, Mr. David Lamont, Hamri, the Moroccan painter, Mr. Martin, Mr. Jones, Monsieur Jean and Barnaby Bliss your reporter.” Friday May 31, 1957: “Explosions demolished the contraband ships Barra (English-owned under the British flag) and the Red Witch (Lituanian-owned under the Costa Rican flag) in Tangier port during the early hours of Monday, May 20. At approximately two a.m., the Barra blew up killing the Spanish watchman aboard. At three a.m., police and fireman over the scene, the Red Witch went sky high.” July 31, 1959: “Newest of the galaxy of bars to open is Top Hat on the Avenue España, decorated by George Jantus with Peter Lacey at the piano.” February 6, 1942: “One of the mysteries of Tangier Sergeant T. (for Terrence) Heming, Gibraltar Security Police aged thirty-one, death certificate at the British Consulate. Five other names with the same date. Explosion at the port February 6, 1942. Bomb in a mail sack? Mine against the quai? Dust and smoke, “The Man Who Never Was.” The cavity still exists: Stein’s British ultimatum of peace or war. To the sound of alarm bells English made easy: 1, 2, 3, 4. This is the fourth lesson. Look at the map? Sky full of holes flaking like plaster. Dead folks talk dim jerky far away now. August 25, 1955: “Charles Gallagher’s latest get together held at his new apartment on the top floor of the Old Flatiron Building had its moments of suspense. So strong was the crosswind from the open front door through the balcony that every time the door was opened to let somebody in or out the subsequent blast of air all but blew all the guests on the balcony over the retaining wall. A closed-door policy saved the guests. Those who risked their lives and had a lot of fun doing it were Mr. and Mrs. Paul Bowles, Rupert Croft-Cooke, Chris Waklyn, Bill Burroughs, Dave Wollman (your reporter) and Eric Gifford, who now works with the Gibraltar Broadcasting Service.” How many Tangier residents were listed in Who’s Who, February, 1958? Paul Bowles, composer and author, studied with Aaron Copeland and Virgil Thompson, composed music for Summer and Smoke. October 9, 1959: “That taxi that burned for a few minutes last Tuesday afternoon on Mohamed V.” April 8, 1955: “we know of one soul who was presented with an electric bill for $42. There had been an electric leak in this particular dwelling.” “Twas the rain-riddled late afternoon of December 13, 1955, at the Villa Mouniria Calle Cook. Author Bill Burroughs was writing a letter in his penthouse quarters. Suddenly a stream of men, some carrying guns, opened Burroughs’ door and looked in. The explanation is that the Villa Mouniria is for sale and these were guides for the ‘Black Bernous,’ none other than the ex-Sultan of Morocco Mohammed ben Arafa. Burroughs, the most politically neutral man in Africa, said: ‘Ben Arafa’ Quien es” January 21, 1955: “Madame Terefen Laila, clairvoyant, is now telling fortunes at the Rembrandt Hotel. . . .There’s a new policeman on Goya St.”
The Last Director
Dennis Hopper, 1936-2010. Portrait by Kris de Witte for Sight & Sound
After the success of ‘Easy Rider’, Dennis Hopper took to the Peruvian jungle to unlock the cinema’s own doors of perception in ‘The Last Movie’. Brad Stevens reconstructs the late actor-director’s raw findings
The success of Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie (1971), his follow-up to Easy Rider (1969), can best be gauged by calculating the extent of its failure.
Apparently intended as a deliberate provocation, an anti-establishment ‘happening’ designed to kill off Hopper’s career as a commercially viable director, the film languished in distribution limbo after Universal refused to release it (despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it won the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival). It turned up for a handful of UK screenings in the early 80s, made two appearances on Channel 4 later in the decade, then once again vanished into the marginal world of illicitly exchanged video recordings and illegal internet downloads.
I was among those Hopper fans who recorded the film off Channel 4, and watched it perhaps a dozen times over the next few years, becoming increasingly fascinated by its structural complexity. I’d not viewed it recently for a decade or more – but a few days ago, for no obvious reason, I started thinking about a sequence in which a shot of Hopper running through the street and collapsing on the ground is seen twice, from two different angles. And now comes the sad news that Hopper has passed away, occasioning a stream of tributes and obituaries in which The Last Movie is dismissed as a drug-fueled disaster: according to Ronald Bergan in The Guardian, “the film, made for the stoned by the stoned, was stoned by the critics.”
As the critical response to Abel Ferrara’s New Rose Hotel (1998) – which ends with 20 minutes of what seem to be randomly assembled flashbacks, continuing well beyond the point where the narrative has been resolved – confirms, any American film existing within the commercial field which attempts to interrogate the dominance of narrative codes is automatically regarded as the product of a miscalculation: surely Hopper and Ferrara were trying to tell straightforward stories, and somehow got it tragically wrong? When Europeans such as Godard or Resnais do this kind of thing, it’s assumed to be the result of a consciously intellectual approach; when Americans do it, it’s assumed they are taking too many drugs. We are all studio executives now.
Dennis Hopper in The Last Movie
If there’s a theme running through the seven films directed by Dennis Hopper, it’s the clash between irreconcilable viewpoints and lifestyles: young and old, hippies and straights, punks and rockers, cops and criminals, artists and hitmen, and, increasingly in the later work, females and males. In The Last Movie, the ostensible opposition is between North America and Latin America.
The plot, insofar as it is comprehensible, has an American crew shooting a Western about Billy the Kid in a Peruvian village. Following their departure, a stuntman referred to only as ‘Kansas’ (Hopper) remains behind, and discovers that the villagers are reenacting the film-makers’ activities as if they were part of some elaborate ritual, with cameras and other equipment constructed from bamboo. Kansas is obliged to accept the role of Billy the Kid in this new ‘film’, but fears that the villagers will genuinely kill him when it comes time to ‘shoot’ the scene of Billy’s death.
What happens next is impossible to say, since Hopper allows The Last Movie to play itself out via a series of disconnected shots whose function is rendered obscure. The sequence I found myself remembering appears towards the end, as the narrative has started to break down (you can see it on YouTube), and begins with two shots of children playing on a hill, in the second of which the camera pans slowly away to focus on a landscape.
The next image shows Hopper running in slow motion past a crowd (which watches without reacting, like an audience at a play or film), then collapsing onto a patch of ground covered in what appears to be chalk; after lying in a crucifixion pose for 15 seconds, Hopper stands up and walks away, rubbing his hands to clean off the chalk as he does so. This is followed by a brief (four-second) image showing Hopper falling on the ground (perhaps a reverse angle of the previous image, though no chalk is visible), then a different take of Hopper running in slow motion, filmed from a slightly different angle and interrupted by some almost subliminal black frames on which the words ‘ripped’ and ‘torn’ are visible: once again, Hopper rubs his hands together to clean off the chalk after he stands up, an ‘authentic’ gesture made to appear self-consciously theatrical by repetition. We then return to previous shot of Hopper on the ground; this time, Hopper sits up and pulls a face at the camera, sticking out his tongue.
The next image shows the villagers’ bamboo film-making equipment, some of which is burning; the camera zooms in and out uncertainly, just managing to catch Hopper, who is moving around at the bottom left of the frame.
A card with the words “scene missing” in black against a white background is inserted at this point, followed by a shot, introduced with a slate on which the title ‘The Last Movie’ and the name ‘D. Hopper’ are clearly visible, of a man sitting on a roof holding a gun; the man stands up, and the camera pans away to focus on some scaffolding, then pans back to show the man, who is clearly responding to offscreen direction, striking various poses with his gun. The sequence ends with a glimpse of the Western we had earlier seen being filmed.
What we have here is a remarkably sophisticated essay on cinematic images, on the ways in which an image’s meaning can be changed or redefined by context and editing – even by a refusal of editing, since it is clear that many of these shots were not intended to play in ‘unedited’ form. Our most basic assumptions about cinema are foregrounded and challenged: our assumption that, if two takes exist, only one will be used in the final cut; our assumption that those slates which appear at the start of each take will not appear in the actual film; our assumption that moments in which actors come out of character will be left on the cutting room floor; our assumption that the ‘scene missing’ cards used in a work-print will not be retained in the version shown in theatres. And, above all, our assumption that films which contain narratives (as opposed to abstract or experimental works) will resolve those narratives rather than abandon them at arbitrary points.
Yet what made this sequence lodge itself so deeply in my memory is surely its elegiac quality (underlined by the mournful John Buck Wilkin song Only When It Rains, used on the soundtrack): the sense that this deconstruction of traditional film-making practice is being undertaken more in grief than anger.
Perhaps the real conflict of irreconcilable viewpoints upon which The Last Movie was constructed is that between old and new Hollywood. But it is striking how Hopper’s film contains none of that gleeful joy in the destruction of conventions one finds in similar works by European film-makers, such as Jean-Luc Godard’s Le vent d’est (1970) or Marco Ferreri’s Touchez pas a la femme blanche (1974). Seen from this perspective, Hopper’s return to more traditional forms of storytelling in Colors (1988), Backtrack (1989), The Hot Spot (1990) and Chasers (1994) makes perfect sense. This child of the the studio system – who acted for Henry Hathaway, George Stevens and Nicholas Ray – may have been both that system’s greatest enemy and its most passionate champion.
Brad Stevens @'bfi'
Monday, 14 June 2010
Memories...
wolon Mr Momus, due to soundtrack a film soon, waxes lyrical over the synthetic-orientalist music in the first porn film he saw http://imomus.com/ 
exilestreet @wolon Remind Mr Momus that the Classic Grand in Glasgow was known to one and all as the Classic Gland back then! Kode9
Kode9 is one of the single most influential people in dance music context, thanks to his expansive DJ sets, his flagship label Hyperdub, or his own productions. His A&R abilities alone-- finding and encouraging Burial, Zomby, King Midas Sound, Ikonika, LV, Cooly G, and nearly half a dozen more-- suggests he has rare and consistently accurate vision. As a DJ he also sets the bar for many of his peers, so the arrival of his second studio mix CD-- a volume for !K7's DJ-Kicks-- is no small event.
His first mix was Dubstep Allstars: Vol. 3, released in 2006 in what felt like a very different era. Back then his vision was much more singular, finding the space between dark, synth-lead dubstep and grime instrumentals, interlocked with a raft of bassy DMZ dubplates. Dubstep was just showing the signs of growth to suggest that it wasn't going to remain the tiny niche community it had been for six years.
Fast forward to 2010 and Kode's vision is far more expansive. "I just wanted to do a snapshot of some of my sets from the last year and the range of music I've been playing," he explains. "Once I'd put the tracklist together, I realized it was a bit tense, so I added the interlude in the middle for a bit of fresh air."
As the interlude suggests, it's a mix with different phases and tempo plateaus, yet it is eclectic without falling into jumbled, aimless "anything goes" freestyling. The first half is quickly-mixed UK funky and UK funky-influenced tracks from Ill Blu, Cooly G, Grievous Angel, Scratcha DVA, and Sticky alongside his own "Blood Orange" and "You Don't Wash (Dub)". It's an overview of the driving, percussive seam of UK funky that has proven such a revelation in the last two or three years, swinging the pendulum away from grime and dubstep halfstep plodding back toward danceable grooves without falling into 4x4 stiffness and techno-sterility. There's even a touch of dancehall and South African flavors, from Natalie Storm and Majuva respectively.
The interlude to which he alludes is a bridge of R&B and soul influenced tracks from Morgan Zarate, Rozzi Daime, and J*DaVeY, which hint at Kode's longstanding love affair with acts like Sa-Ra and his links to Flying Lotus and L.A.'s beat scene. What's notable about this diversion is if you look at Kode9's musical path over the last 15 years, from jungle through UK garage, dubstep, grime, and UK funky, they all are local, London-based genres, so it's telling that Flylo and Kode9's musical dialogue and transnational friendship was founded abroad and nourished by a shared international outlook.
"I met Flying Lotus in Melbourne, Australia in 2006 I think, and we've just stayed in touch," explains Kode. "He's got a musical vision which is rare and not just stuck in his own city. All the Brainfeeder crew are an amazingly talented bunch of freaks, and what is cool about the nights, whether the crowds like it all or not, is that, in quite a focused way, really anything goes."
Like his relentless global DJ schedule, the mix soon moves on, upping the tempos and building momentum. For some parts of this phase, he revisits some of the ideas of Dubstep Allstars Vol. 3, finding the synergies between low percussive dubstep (Digital Mystikz' "2 Much Chat" and "Mountain Dread March") and synthy jams (Zomby) or mid-driven grime (Terror Danjah). Also blended here is a very 2010 sub-section, with Addison Groove's pivotal "Footcrab", Kode9 vs. LD's "Bad", and Ramadanman's juke-influenced "Work Them" suggesting new energetic possibilities at 140 bpm, without having to stray into the world of wobble to generate an impact.
Overall it's a very coherent and forward-thinking mix for someone who recently categorized his musical surroundings as a full of "mini micro sub-niche[s]" and in a "holding pattern before something else comes." As complex and fragmented as this sounds, the suggestion that bass-driven music is currently fragmented seems accurate, so a broader question then follows: Is it impossible for audiences to be truly inspired and blown away by this "holding pattern" of "niches"-- in effect a long tail of smaller but collectively inspirational musical mutations-- or does that effect of being "blown away" instead require the coherence that only comes from one core larger scene, with unity of purpose and relative sonic definition?
"Well I'm not blown away by much to be honest," he admits bravely, perhaps a reflection of his famously high musical standards "Although I crave that fix, and that's what drives me to discover music that I haven't heard before, new and old. Most people that make music or DJ have experienced at least one musical movement that embodied an energy that was singular and that inevitably things get measured against, even if you don't listen to that music anymore or make it. Until that kind of singularity comes that reshapes everything, it all just seems like a fun, but an ultimately transitory mess to get lost in. The point is to create something fresh in the process of getting lost."
World Cup stewards in Durban clash with police over pay
South African riot police in Durban have fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of security stewards protesting over alleged pay cuts.
The clash took place in a carpark at the city's Moses Mabhida stadium shortly after it hosted a match between Australia and Germany.
The stewards said they were being paid only 190 rand (£17; $25) a day, although they had been promised more.
Reports say one woman was injured and at least two people were arrested.
It was not immediately clear how much the stewards were supposed to have been paid according to their contracts.
So far there, have been no public comments on the incident from South Africa's World Cup organising committee or Fifa.
...Did Decriminalization Work?
Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It's not the Netherlands.)
Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled "coffee shops," Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don't enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.
At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal's drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal's new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.
The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to "drug tourists" and exacerbate Portugal's drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.
The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.
"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."
Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.
The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.
Portugal's case study is of some interest to lawmakers in the U.S., confronted now with the violent overflow of escalating drug gang wars in Mexico. The U.S. has long championed a hard-line drug policy, supporting only international agreements that enforce drug prohibition and imposing on its citizens some of the world's harshest penalties for drug possession and sales. Yet America has the highest rates of cocaine and marijuana use in the world, and while most of the E.U. (including Holland) has more liberal drug laws than the U.S., it also has less drug use.
"I think we can learn that we should stop being reflexively opposed when someone else does [decriminalize] and should take seriously the possibility that anti-user enforcement isn't having much influence on our drug consumption," says Mark Kleiman, author of the forthcoming When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment and director of the drug policy analysis program at UCLA. Kleiman does not consider Portugal a realistic model for the U.S., however, because of differences in size and culture between the two countries.
But there is a movement afoot in the U.S., in the legislatures of New York State, California and Massachusetts, to reconsider our overly punitive drug laws. Recently, Senators Jim Webb and Arlen Specter proposed that Congress create a national commission, not unlike Portugal's, to deal with prison reform and overhaul drug-sentencing policy. As Webb noted, the U.S. is home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners.
At the Cato Institute in early April, Greenwald contended that a major problem with most American drug policy debate is that it's based on "speculation and fear mongering," rather than empirical evidence on the effects of more lenient drug policies. In Portugal, the effect was to neutralize what had become the country's number one public health problem, he says.
"The impact in the life of families and our society is much lower than it was before decriminalization," says Joao Castel-Branco Goulao, Portugual's "drug czar" and president of the Institute on Drugs and Drug Addiction, adding that police are now able to re-focus on tracking much higher level dealers and larger quantities of drugs.
Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology and public policy at the University of Maryland, like Kleiman, is skeptical. He conceded in a presentation at the Cato Institute that "it's fair to say that decriminalization in Portugal has met its central goal. Drug use did not rise." However, he notes that Portugal is a small country and that the cyclical nature of drug epidemics — which tends to occur no matter what policies are in place — may account for the declines in heroin use and deaths.
The Cato report's author, Greenwald, hews to the first point: that the data shows that decriminalization does not result in increased drug use. Since that is what concerns the public and policymakers most about decriminalization, he says, "that is the central concession that will transform the debate."
'What Barry Says' by Simon Robson & Barry McNamara
What Barry Says by Simon Robson & Barry McNamara. Short animation. USA, global domination, war, oil, Iraq, corporatism, new world order, conspiracy, project for the new American century.This controversial film won Best Animation at the Brooklyn International Film Festival in 2004
U.S. Discovers Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan
The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and Blackberries.
The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.
While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.
“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant...”
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James Risen @'NY Times'
So no hope to the end of the war soon then...
ColinUdoh BIG TROUBLE at Durban Stadium!! Something just exploded. outside. Media being forced to stay inside the Media Centre
Let's kick against the Eighties revival
In a lot of respects, I had a great time under Thatcher. Under her rule, I became a music journalist; DJed at the Wag; met James Brown (the soul Godfather, not the Loaded founder); most of all I shook off the apparently dying rhythm of rock'n'roll and made a part-time passion for black music into a full-blown obsession.
But having also endured a period of homelessness back then and watched yuppies taking over areas of London I loved, the last thing I would like to see under the Tory-led coalition is an Eighties revival, musical or otherwise.
For left-leaning musicians, Thatcher should have been a gift, a ready-made enemy arriving hot on the heels of punk. At first, there were musical protests: The Pop Group's "We Are All Prostitutes", The Beat's "Stand Down Margaret" ("Stand Down Margaret, stand down pleeeease" – as if) and any number of gigs in support of the striking miners; I played some on a bill that included the punk poet Attila the Stockbroker. But the musical dissent didn't last and somehow Thatcher managed to cling on to power despite the efforts of Red Wedge – a leading light of which was a reformed Paul Weller, who had supported the Tories in 1979. For many people, myself included, it a case of "dance before the police come" as Shut Up and Dance succinctly put it, at warehouse parties where you and your awful pleated trousers could forget the brave new Tory world.
There were few reminders of politics on the mid-1980s dance floor and soul music did not try to address society's ills in the mid-Eighties. Tony Blackburn was a top soul DJ, along with the now-forgotten Steve Walsh, who was big in every sense, and the pirate jocks were mostly about having it large like their fans. Chants of "woh-oh" to Maze classics, fine; chanting down the Falklands War, forget it. Amid all this, Paul Hardcastle's "19", released just 10 years too late for the Vietnam War, which was its subject matter, came across like the era's "We Shall Overcome" – for about two months. Meanwhile, reggae's protest era had been abandoned at the end of the 1970s, with occasional exceptions and rap's rebellion was more musical than verbal back then.
As for pop's protests at the new Tory era, it is hard to see where they might emanate from. The Beat were a major chart act when they implored "Stand Down Margaret". Would Keane or Florence and the Machine do the same? I can't see it happening: much of current pop is musical conservatism. For Madge, read Lady Gaga, for Rick Astley we have Justin Bieber. For The Specials, we have ... The Specials, which is perhaps the saddest indictment of all. But there are some loosely politicised potential stars on the horizon. The hip-hopper Akala, recognised with a Mobo in 2006, is realising his potential as a thoughtful observer of, uh, Broken Britain on his Double Think album. The Supernovas' "Slaughter in the Gaza" proves that an outfit of mixed heritage that is every bit as pretty as any contrived boy band can rock with intelligence. Their label mates Krakatoa are aiming to change their industry with "Rock'n'Roll Revolution", which moans "They're singing about nothing when there's so much you can say". Whether their 1960s-mod inflected sound can be described as revolutionary is a moot point, but if anyone is going to put the desert boot into the Coalition, it's them.
Paul Weller, too, hasn't forgotten social comment. A couple of songs on his latest album lament the growth of computer-mediated personal interaction. And there's "history" between him and David Cameron. When the PM declared "The Eton Rifles" one of his favourite songs, Weller sniped: "Which part of it didn't he get? It wasn't intended as a jolly drinking song for the cadet corps."
So from me, a cautious welcome for a new musical era; art changes when society changes. I'll be pressing my pleated pants anew – back in fashion just in time, I'm told.
Ian McCann @'The Independent'
(Thanx SJX!)
I too was homeless in London for a while back then - grim times indeed!
Well...
...I have to say on that display (and without TimmyC in the next game) I really do fear that it is Germany and Ghana going thru to the next round from this group unfortunately.
Loved to be proved wrong but...
HerrB/
Well I said it could be 3-0 to Germany but I am not sure that the score (so far) is really the score that it should be...
Let me update that!!!
*sigh*
(Australia ARE a better team on their day than this display)
Let me update that!!!
*sigh*
(Australia ARE a better team on their day than this display)
WTF???
Right-Wingers Have Nothing Better to Do Than Be Pissed Off About the World Cup
Much like the Olympics, the Right Wing Noise Machine sees the FIFA World Cup in South Africa as something to despise, hate, and otherwise ignore as an event “Real Americans” don’t tolerate. Glennsanity:
But that’s how it works. Constantly redefine what’s allowable and what’s not, separate us from the rest of the world through the rah-rah protectionist policies of “American exceptionalism” and declare since the USA have never won the World Cup, it simply doesn’t matter. It’s a sport played by Socialist weirdos, third-world hellholes and Evil Brown People, so into the Other pile you World Cup fans go.
Sports is just American dominance waged on a different battlefield to them. Except for the sports that don’t matter, like soccer. I mean North Korea and Mexico are in it. It must be eeeeeeeeevil New World Order stuff, right?
“It doesn’t matter how you try to sell it to us, it doesn’t matter how many celebrities you get, it doesn’t matter how many bars open early, it doesn’t matter how many beer commercials they run, we don’t want the World Cup, we don’t like the World Cup, we don’t like soccer, we want nothing to do with it.”G. Gordon Liddy throws in too:
Whatever happened to American exceptionalism?” Liddy noted that “this game … originated with the South American Indians and instead of a ball, they used to use the head, the decapitated head, of an enemy warrior.”Which is funny, because I hear that whole decapitated head thing is how basketball got started, not soccer. Oh wait, that’s increasingly becoming a “not a Real American” sport either, along with football and baseball. Add World Cup soccer fans to the growing list of people who aren’t Real Americans. Funny how that list keeps growing larger and larger seemingly every day as those team sports become more and more racially and ethnically diverse…increasingly at the ownership level, and that’s really got the Wingers pissed off.
But that’s how it works. Constantly redefine what’s allowable and what’s not, separate us from the rest of the world through the rah-rah protectionist policies of “American exceptionalism” and declare since the USA have never won the World Cup, it simply doesn’t matter. It’s a sport played by Socialist weirdos, third-world hellholes and Evil Brown People, so into the Other pile you World Cup fans go.
Sports is just American dominance waged on a different battlefield to them. Except for the sports that don’t matter, like soccer. I mean North Korea and Mexico are in it. It must be eeeeeeeeevil New World Order stuff, right?
zandar @'AlterNet'
Very true!
LuckenbachTX
I know if #aus
were playing #eng 
, they wouldn't be 2-0 down, like they are against #ger 
I know if #aus
were playing #eng , they wouldn't be 2-0 down, like they are against #ger
HerrB/
Bloody hell!
You laughed about Australia being called the Socceroos the other day and yet I have just discovered that yr team is called the Man Shaft!!!
Hmmm...
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