Once again the Australian artist Hazel Dooney is offering a download of artwork which you can print out and then send to her to sign and inscribe for you.
Details here.
Details here.
Thursday 23 October 2008
Avert your eyes jonger
Posting will be later today as Jay Spacebubs and I will be amongst other things checking
Simone Maynard's exhibition out.
This painting makes me laugh.
Wednesday 22 October 2008
"Ve haff ways of making you laff."
Stewie, the obnoxious baby character at the center of the series, and Brian, a talking dog, travelled back in time to Poland during the 1939 German invasion. The characters ambush Nazi soldiers in an alley and steal their uniforms so they can travel without drawing attention. Putting on an overcoat, Stewie notices a McCain-Palin campaign button affixed to the lapel. "Huh, that's weird," Stewie remarks.Rest of world prefers Obama over McCain for US president: poll
If the rest of the world could take part in the US presidential election, Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama would win four times more votes than his Republican rival John McCain, a poll showed Tuesday.
In surveys conducted by the Gallup Organization in 70 countries representing nearly half the world's population, 30 percent of people said they would choose Obama as president of the United States against eight percent who said they preferred McCain.
In four close US partners in Asia -- Australia, Japan, Singapore and South Korea -- residents came out clearly in favor of Obama.
Two-thirds of Japanese and Australian respondents said they preferred Obama to McCain, who only scored about 15 percent in the two countries.
In Singapore and South Korea, meanwhile, the pro-Obama vote outpaced the pro-McCain vote by around two to one.
"McCain and Obama have each pledged to reinvigorate and strengthen partnerships with the four developed Asian countries and take a more active role in Asian regional organisations," Gallup wrote.
Nine out of 10 people polled in India and Pakistan and seven in 10 in Bangladesh said they had no opinion about whom they would prefer to see in the White House in Washington come next January.
Gallup said the disinterest among South Asians revealed "a great disconnect between many of the world's poorest inhabitants and the politics of the United States."
Latin Americans showed a similar disconnect, with 68 percent of those polled in central America and Mexico and 58 percent in South America voicing no opinion about the US election.
Middle Easterners in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories chose Obama over McCain by a margin of at least two to one, although three-quarters of Palestinians said they didn't think the result of the US election would change much in their country.
A majority of Europeans in 14 countries said they wanted an Obama victory, with the Dutch and Norwegians the strongest Obama supporters in Europe: nearly three-quarters in both countries said they preferred him to McCain.
In France, 64 percent chose Obama against four percent for McCain, and in Germany, where an Obama rally in Berlin gathered some 200,000 people in July, the Democratic presidential contender was supported by 62 percent of those polled compared with 10 percent for McCain.
In Africa, a median of 56 percent of poll respondents chose Obama -- meaning the percentage who chose the African American presidential contender was higher than 56 percent in half the 22 countries polled and lower than 56 percent in the other half.
A median of nine percent chose McCain, who did not beat Obama anywhere in Africa, even though the current US administration of Republican President George W. Bush has a high approval rating on the continent.
Bush in July signed legislation tripling funds to fight the killer diseases of AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa under an initiative launched under his administration in 2003.
In Kenya, where Obama's father hailed from, the Democrat was supported by nearly nine in 10 poll respondents; McCain had the support of three percent of Kenyans.
Around 1,000 people were interviewed face-to-face earlier this year in most of the countries that took part in the surveys.
Survey sizes in Kuwait, Japan, Pakistan, Mexico and India were 484, 750, 804, 873 and 2,000 people respectively.
Man Smart, Woman Smarter* (Buffalo 1989)
Belated Birthday wishes to Brent Mydland too!
1952 - 1990
* (Sarah Palin excepted.)
"Uh - Oh"
McCain cites nuclear threat in warning against Obama
John McCain told voters Tuesday his White House rival Barack Obama was unprepared to handle a national security crisis, citing the US-Russia standoff in 1962 that put the world on the brink of nuclear war.
Struggling to overcome rival Barack Obama's strong lead in the polls with just 14 days left in the epic presidential race, former fighter pilot McCain emphasized that the next president "won't have time to get used to the office."
"I sat in the cockpit on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise off of Cuba. I had a target," McCain said, referring to the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis.
"I know how close we came to a nuclear war and I will not be a president that needs to be tested. I have been tested. Senator Obama has not."
The Republican senator warned voters at a rally in Moon Township, Pennsylvania that the United States faces "many challenges here at home, and many enemies abroad in this dangerous world."
"We know Senator Obama would not have the right response," he said.
McCain, trailing Obama by seven percent in national voter surveys, according to an average by independent RealClearPolitics.com, acknowledged that he was "a few points down" in the polls and castigated the national media for writing him off.
He told supporters "nothing is inevitable" and vowed to continue to fight for hard-working Americans.
He kept up his attack on Obama's economic policies, casting the Illinois senator as a shifty, job-killing socialist bent on "redistributing wealth."
"Senator Obama's more interested in controlling who gets your piece of the pie than growing the pie," McCain said.
In Florida Obama shot back, accusing McCain of turning a blind eye to the financial crisis and offering up out-dated ideas for fixing the country's troubled economy.
"The financial crisis that states, businesses and families are facing didn't just spring up full-blown overnight," the Democratic candidate said.
"This has been a long time coming, and the warning signs have been very clear, but while President Bush and Senator McCain were ready to move heaven and earth to address the crisis on Wall Street, President Bush has failed to address the crisis on Main Street," Obama said.
McCain "has failed to fully acknowledge it. Instead of common sense solutions, month after month, they've offered little more than willful ignorance, wishful thinking, and outdated ideology."
He also accused McCain of just making "stuff" up as time runs out before election day.
He hammered McCain over the Republican's claims that he attacked "Joe the plumber," an Ohio voter who has become an emblem of the middle class tax debate.
"It was really amazing, he's decided to fabricate this notion that I've been attacking Joe the plumber," Obama said, after noting he had watched a speech by McCain earlier in the day on television.
"John McCain is still out there, just saying this stuff, just making it up."
Accompanied by Internet giant Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, Obama led a round-table talk on economic policy at a community center near Palm Beach, using the venue to push his jobs and economic recovery plans.
The talk aimed at wooing voters in a region particularly hard-hit by the US real estate and banking crash, with hopes that Obama might be able to win Florida in the November 4 election, a state earlier thought solidly in Republican hands.
As Florida voters flocked to early voting sites for a second day Tuesday, polls suggested Obama now has a slight lead over McCain in the state, which was crucial in President George W. Bush's win over Al Gore in the 2000 election.
Nationally, the latest daily tracking poll of registered voters by Gallup showed Obama expanding his lead to 11 points. The daily Rasmussen survey, however, had McCain narrowing the race to four points, trailing Obama by 46 to 50 percent of voters nationwide.
With Obama stepping out of the race on Thursday and Friday to be with his ailing grandmother in Hawaii, McCain will be able to dominate media coverage as he campaigns aggressively in battleground states.
He and will meet up with running mate Sarah Palin, who has been instrumental in rallying the Republican party's conservative base, in Ohio Wednesday following a that afternoon before flying to Florida for a Thursday rally.
(Sydney Morning Herald)
With your propensity for crashing American planes John, thank God you only sat in the cockpit!
Dennis Cooper says
Richard Hell - Dennis Cooper - Ishmael Houston-Jones"...Mona, Hey. Oh (...) yeah, I remember. You were in Amsterdam when I was there? That's crazy. Crazy 'cos I had no real friends there, so I wish our paths had crossed. It's great you're going to do something on Mike Hart. I can't remember if I ever met him properly -- probably -- but Compendium was such an important and great place, and even though I don't get to London often, I miss it terribly when I'm there. The last reading I did in London was there. Your new blog is lovely. I'll be a reader, and let me alert the folks around here. Everybody, Mona, friend of and occasional commenter on this blog, has a terrific new blog that brings all kinds of things to the fore, from the great Lizzy Mercier Descloux and Miles Davis, for instance, to decisive backroom stuff on nasty Sarah Palin and much more. Check it out..."
What can I say apart from a BIG humble 'thanx' and you can find Dennis's blog here.
Could've been written by me
In Search of the Dark Star
I'm a music collector, of sorts. Obsessive and arrogant. With pendantry bordering on unbearableness, some might say - and some do say. I collect the likes of Coil, Sun Ra, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Nurse With Wound, Can. Erratic, esoteric, obscure. Lately I've been into Dark Star. Not the band or the record label, but the track by the Grateful Dead. Come to think of it, I've always liked the Dead. Especially their 1969 album Live/Dead which I bought in the mid 1970s. It's got Dark Star on it. A whole vinyl album side long. It was like nothing I'd heard before. It has these weird guitar lines going on for eternity, making worm holes in the brain. I couldn't match any of them on my acoustic guitar, although I had mastered the intro of Smoke on the Water by then. But Jerry Garcia wasn't in the same league as Ritchie Blackmore - Jerry wasn't even on the same planet, judging by his freeform experimenations on the seventy or so live versions of Dark Star that I've collected so far.From 1968 till 1974 Dark Star was the ultimate Grateful Dead song, the centre piece of their legendary marathon concerts. Although originally recorded as a 3 minute single (with lyrics by Robert Hunter) Dark Star became the vehicle for improvisations that could take up 30 minutes or more and saw Garcia soaring and ascending to unknown regions. For Garcia as a solist Dark Star became what Chasin' the Trane was for John Coltrane, or Voodoo Child for Jimi Hendrix, and Starship for both Sun Ra and the MC5. Exploration of inner and outer space. Dark Star was prototypical of the early Grateful Dead. The track contained everything Jerry and the Dead stood for. Americana, psychedelic rock, free jazz. All in one long guitar solo aided by a fearless band - and inspired, I might add, by Owsley's finest.
'Dark star crashes/pouring its light into ashes', wrote Robert Hunter, the Grateful Dead's lyricist. Cosmic hippie stuff? You bet! But although the Dead was an unashamed hippie band the musical structure of the song itself was far removed from the typical West Coast sound. Sure, in concert Dark Star was an extended jam, but compared to the jams that their peers, like Jefferson Airplane or Quicksilver Messenger Service played on stage it must be noted that Dark Star was not derived from the traditional 12 bar blues format. Where guitarists like Jorma Kaukonen and John Cipollina based their improvisations mainly on blues licks, Jerry Garcia seemed to draw from an all together different source. A source rich with all kinds of American (folk) music but transfigured and expanded by the influence of LSD. Let us not forget that Garcia and the Dead were heavilly influenced by the time when they worked as the house band for the (in)famous Acid Tests conducted by Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. Maybe more than other musicians of his day and age Jerry Garcia's views on music in general and guitar playing in particular were dramatically altered by the use of chemicals. The blues element in the Dead sound was personified by Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan (organ, harmonica, vocals) who usually kept a low profile whenever Dark Star was played. During the 80s, when Dark Star was very rarely to be found in a Dead set, keyboardist Brent Mydland used to ruin it for me with his pseudo-jazz noodling on what sometimes sounded like a plastic honky tonk piano. The best versions of Dark Star were performed in the early 70s, like for instance the magical and rather subtle Dark Star from 1971 in Columbus, Ohio (released on Dicks' Picks Volume 2) or the mesmerizing 37 minute version performed one year later in Philadelphia (Dick's Picks Volume 36). Of course, Jerry Garcia's cryptically fluent and warmly organic playing made Dark Star into the most celebrated Grateful Dead piece. But praise should also go to Phil Lesh, whose 'lead bass' never failed to mark new routes in space for Garcia to explore.
Great versions of Dark Star are easily to be found in the extensive discography of the band. Besides Live/Dead and the two Dick's Picks, I also recommend the version from the 4 CD set Steppin' Out With The Grateful Dead, Engeland '72. Those of us who can't get enough should check out www.archive.org where a few hundred (!) concerts by the Dead can be found. It's a real treasure trove for Dead Heads with downloadable gigs (mostly lofi-ish audience recordings) and streams (excellent soundboard recordings). A very special Dark Star that I've found on archive.org is from a Hollywood Paladium gig dated september 10th, 1972, where half way through Dark Star the band is joined by David Crosby on 12-string electric guitar.
Advanced Dark Star fans should try the double CD set Grayfolded by sample-artist John Oswald. Phil Lesh invited Oswald, who is wellknown and rather infamous in the music industry for his 'Plunderphonics', to have a go at the Dead catalogue. Oswald choose Dark Star for obvious reasons. He took some 50 versions recorded between 1968 and 1992 and transformed them by way of layering and 'folding' bits and pieces, speeding up and slowing down, and turning 'm inside out. The results, as released on Grayfolded, are impressive yet very beautiful - even for Dead-purists.
(Written by Q-Base @ Crummy-tapes.blogspot)
Defunkt!
The longest live 'Dark Star'
The Grateful Dead.
European tour 1972.
The first unofficial live recording I ever heard of the Dead was a bootleg I picked up at the age of 14 in Glasgow.
A Robert Crumb cartoon of 'Mr. Natural' on the cover.
A dreadful quality recording of what I now know to be Hamburg on the 29th of April 1972.
(At one point Bob Weir announces the result of the England vs West Germany soccer match.
3 - 1 to Germany at Wembley if you're interested.)
I fell in love with 'Dark Star' and in those days it wasn't easy to get hold of different versions but I tried.
Boy did I try.
What started as a 2 minute 45 second single in 1968 became the starting point for the band to improvise culminating in the longest version (45 minutes & 11 seconds) played in Rotterdam on the 11th of May 1972.
It was played live 219 times over their 40 year history.
The first unofficial live recording I ever heard of the Dead was a bootleg I picked up at the age of 14 in Glasgow.
A Robert Crumb cartoon of 'Mr. Natural' on the cover.
A dreadful quality recording of what I now know to be Hamburg on the 29th of April 1972.
(At one point Bob Weir announces the result of the England vs West Germany soccer match.
3 - 1 to Germany at Wembley if you're interested.)
I fell in love with 'Dark Star' and in those days it wasn't easy to get hold of different versions but I tried.
Boy did I try.
What started as a 2 minute 45 second single in 1968 became the starting point for the band to improvise culminating in the longest version (45 minutes & 11 seconds) played in Rotterdam on the 11th of May 1972.
It was played live 219 times over their 40 year history.
This will get you both the shortest and longest versions of 'Dark Star'.
(Over the coming weeks I will bring you every one one of the 'Dark Stars' from that 1972 tour.)
You can still get 'Dark Star' (Veneta OR 08-27-72) here.
You can still get 'Dark Star' (Veneta OR 08-27-72) here.
Tuesday 21 October 2008
Rosa Yemen (AKA Lizzy Mercier Descloux)
The late Lizzy Mercier Descloux pictured here with Richard Hell and at top with Patti Smith.
You can get the 'Rosa Yemen' (L.M.D. - vocals & guitar and JD Barnes - guitar) EP which came out on ZE Records in 1979 here.
This was one of my favourite releases in the first wave of ZE 12" which included James Chance, Mars and DNA.
Bonus track of 'Morning High' (a bi-lingual reading of Arthur Rimbaud's poem 'matinee d'ivresse') by L.M.D. & Patti Smith here.
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