Sunday 7 December 2008

Your weekly address from Obama

Another (different) Lapland event cancelled

More from the 'BBC' here.
Previous story here.

O.J. sentenced (justice at last)

Bettie Page in coma after heart attack




Story here.

Saturday 6 December 2008

A New Grateful Dead Live Album Released Next Week (Road Trips: Volume 2 No. 1)


Madison Square Garden: September '90
2 Disc Set + Bonus Disc

"To kick off Volume 2 of our Road Trips series, we're making our first foray into the '90s-specifically, the extraordinary Madison Square Garden run from September of 1990!
You'll recall the unusual historical circumstances surrounding this famous series of shows: In July, Brent Mydland had died tragically after a glorious 11-year stint as the Dead's keyboardist. With both the band and Dead Heads in shock, a few planned summer shows were cancelled, and it looked as though the group's long-scheduled tour of Europe might be in jeopardy, as well. But then, two things happened: friend and fellow traveler Bruce Hornsby, already well-versed in the band's music, volunteered to venture into the breach temporarily once his summer tour was over; next, the group settled on former Tubes keys man Vince Welnick to step into Brent's big shoes on a permanent basis. Fortunately, he was a quick study! By early September, Vince had played his first shows with the Dead (in Cleveland and Philadelphia), and then the band moved on to Madison Square Garden -- always one of the most magical places the group played-- for a series of six shows spanning September 14-20, before jetting off for the big European tour.
Bruce joined the band beginning with the second concert in that series, and immediately the chemistry of this new septet was apparent. Bruce was a bold and assertive player who really pushed the band--and particularly Garcia--in some fascinating new directions, and the combination of his grand piano and Vince's electronic keyboard textures made for a big and dynamic sound. There were smiles all around as the new unit found its footing and with surprising confidence ushered in a new era of Grateful Dead music before roaring New York crowds!
Back in 1997, our late, great vaultmaster Dick Latvala pegged the September 16, 1990 Garden show to be Dick's Picks Vol. 9, but many fans of the run have long believed that the hottest shows from MSG that year were actually the two concluding concerts, September 19 and 20. So, for this Road Trips we offer some two-and-a-half hours of high energy rock 'n' roll and intense jamming from the second sets of 9/19-20 (as well as the moving "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" encore from 9/18). Included are spacey and beautifully developed journeys through "Dark Star" and "Playing in the Band"; a rare second set "Let It Grow" that rolls into a fantastic improvisation that really shows off the chops of the "new" band; a rousing "Uncle John's Band"; rockin' tunes like "Truckin'" and "Turn on Your Lovelight," and more. The spirit and life on these tracks is amazing! You can find the entire track listing below. As always, the discs have been expertly mastered to HDCD by our own Jeffrey Norman, and the package includes a 16-page booklet with lots o' groovy pix and an essay about the shows by Dan Levy.
This time out, the exclusive limited edition Bonus Disc was compiled entirely from the 9/18/90 MSG show, another sizzler. Highlights include "Foolish Heart," "Eyes of the World," the rare-in-every-era "To Lay Me Down," and an especially rollicking take on "Picasso Moon."

OK, by now you probably know the drill: Order your copy today by going here!

Track List

Disc One - 9/20/90 and 9/19/90

Truckin'>
China Cat Sunflower>
I Know You Rider
Playing In The Band>
Ship of Fools>
Playing In The Band>
Uncle John's Band>
Let It Grow>
Jam>

Disc Two - 9/20/90

…Jam>
Dark Star>
Playing In The Band>
Dark Star>
Throwing Stones>
Touch Of Grey
Turn On Your Lovelight
Knockin' On Heaven's Door (encore 9/18/90)

Bonus Disc - 9/18/90

Mississippi Half Step
Picasso Moon
To Lay Me Down
Eyes of The World>
Estimated Prophet>
Foolish Heart>
Jam"
(Information from: dead.net)

OK. Hot on the heels of the 'Egypt' and 'Road Trips: From Egypt' packages comes the above.
It is going to be shipped out next Wednesday which would suggest that if you want the bonus disc you are going to have to pre order before then.
Once again it's a composite from a couple of shows (three if you count the bonus material).
The above details only appeared on dead.net on Friday!
Rhino. A question for you.
Who are you aiming these discs at?
Most Deadheads will either have this stuff already or are after a complete concert from the past.
Not this cobbled together fake gig that just makes us feel cheated.
There are some 'holy grail' gigs that perhaps you could look into releasing and from the top of my head I would be looking at a couple of dates from the 'Europe 72' tour but 'hey' - that's my obsession.
(7th April at Empire Pool Wembley, London and 24th May at The Lyceum also in London if you are really interested.)
Another question.
Is it going to be released with the tapes running at the right speed this time?
Finally a bit of semantics I realise but (and this thought occurred to me when you released the 'From Egypt With Love' set recorded at Winterland) do multiple gigs at one venue really qualify as a 'Road Trip'?

For a limited time you can listen to a soundboard recording of the
last night of the Madison Square Garden run (20-09-90) here:



Setlist and other details from archive.org

Norah Jones & Keith Richards - Love Hurts (Gram Parsons Tribute Santa Barbara July 9th 2004)

The Flying Burrito Brothers - Christine's Tune (1969)

The Flying Burrito Brothers - Live at Palomino's LA 1969


If you go here you will be able to get to hear Gram Parsons and the Burrito's version of 'cosmic American music' as played in North Hollywood in 1969.
From 'Aquarium Drunkard'

A confession.
I named my eldest son Gram 22 years ago.
He was conceived in Amsterdam (where somewhat ironically and to my chagrin he is now living).
When he was less than a year old we went to a party and a Channel 9 idiot, sorry 'identity' said to me that- "it was a great name".
To which I replied- "thanks".
An hour later he returned and asked if it "was short for Gramaphone"!

("There was a wee laddie called Gram
who piped up from the depths of his pram.
"I may be an Oz
but I was named so because
I was conceived in old Amsterdam."
)



Always wear your helmet

Remember kids that if you are going to do drugs, just make sure that you do them safely.
(As demonstrated here by Mr. P. Doherty.)

Friday 5 December 2008

Girlz With Gunz # 19


Dedicated to the I.F.P.I

No Gods No Masters

An unedited interview with Deepak Chopra

Photo AP/Random House

'...Bill O'Reilly asked him to come on The O'Reilly Factor too. "I will appear on your show on two conditions," he emailed O'Reilly. "Number one: You will not raise the volume of your voice. And number two: You will not interrupt me. And I will not raise the volume of my voice and I will not interrupt you." O'Reilly has yet to reply...'

I will keep my personal thoughts about Deepak Chopra (and other self-help gurus) out of this and just say that there is a very good interview with him from 'The Huffington Post' here.

Palin's stylists were paid $55,000 (US) in final weeks

You can read the whole story at 'The Huffington Post' here.

Mike Hart (from Compendium) passed away on this day in 2002 - REPOST (originally from Nov 15)


I first met Mike with his two brothers (John & Andy) when he inquired at the record stall I was working at in the Barras in Glasgow whether I could get him a copy of 'Electrif Lycanthrope'.
(THE Little Feat bootleg.)

This must have been 1977.
A couple of days later all four of us trooped off to see Elvis Costello at the Watermill Hotel in Paisley.
I then went down to London to catch up for a weekend (and go to see The Clash at the RAR carnival) before eventually moving to London full time staying originally with Mike and his son and ex - wife in Wood Green.
This was 1978 and we seemed to be at gigs all the time be they punk or jazz and to be honest a list here would just make you jealous!
(Not forgetting our annual pilgrimage to the Bracknell Jazz Festival or the time that we turned up to see Kathy Acker read and we seemed to be the only ones interested in what she had to say.
Mike would later be involved romantically with her.)

Mike turned me on to so much stuff - books, records and films.
We even worked together for a while in a transport depot, moving boxes here and there and back again.
Mike also had a second - hand book stall in Camden Market (not easy for a man who didn't drive).
I remember one weekend as we went around the other stalls with our usual habit of him starting at one end and me the other and just before we met in the middle he found a first edition 'Naked Lunch' still in its WSB designed dustcover!

(Boy was I jealous.)
Then we found ourselves working in Camden, him at Compendium and me at Dingwalls.
It all sounds good but Mike put up with a hell of a lot from me.
I was a young kid still attempting to come to grips with my Mother's suicide and developing addictions left, right and centre.

Then I moved to Amsterdam (yeah I know, a really good move for my addictions!)
but I would still see Mike on my fairly frequent visits back to London and he was always suggesting that I should move back there and work at Compendium.
Through him, however, I had found myself working in the 'Melkweg' bookshop in Amsterdam.

A move to Australia in 1986 was next up for me and once every couple of months or so I would ring him up at Compendium and we would chat about this and that and it seemed as though I was just around the corner.
Books would arrive from publishers hoping that I would review them and I would think: "Thank you Mike for arranging that one."
Of course as time went on, partly due to the tyranny of distance and partly due to things that happen in life, we lost contact but his name would pop out from the dedication of this book or another from time to time.
Then one day I googled his name and found out that he died.
So this is just a few quick words about a friendship that I will treasure to my dying day and you may notice from reading below that no one ever had a bad word to say about one of the nicest and most generous people I have ever had the privilege to know.

(Finally should John, Andrew, Stephen, Angie or Laurie ever come across this then please get in touch.)

"Mike Hart, who has died of cancer aged 54, was a man who worked in a bookshop. He was also among the greatest influences on a generation of new British writers, more so perhaps than any literary critic or editor.

For 20 years, Mike, a stocky Glaswegian, presided over the fiction and poetry department of Compendium bookshop in Camden Town, north London, which from its opening in 1968 until its closure in 2001 was Britain's pre-eminent radical bookstore. Whether you wanted books on anarchism, drugs, poststructuralism, feminism or Buddhism, Compendium was the place to go. Under Mike's supervision, its modern fiction department was its greatest strength, and the tradition of bohemian bookselling was carried forward into the 1980s and 1990s.

When Mike took over the department in the early 1980s, British fiction was in a dismal, class-bound rut. Mike helped to change all that. His enthusiasms included then unheralded American thriller writers such as Elmore Leonard and George V Higgins; London writers from the forgotten Patrick Hamilton to the unknown Iain Sinclair. A new Scottish writer called James Kelman was also a favourite, as was the great African-American writer Chester Himes. If these writers have emerged from the margins to become major players in the literary landscape it is in no small part due to Mike's efforts.

To walk into Compendium, survey the novels on display and ask Mike's advice was to enter a new world of fiction. The shop became the haunt of an unlikely mixture of more or less literary luminaries, from Nick Cave to Ben Okri, Ivor Cutler to Kathy Acker.

Thanks to Mike, and others, Camden Town in the 1980s became a kind of counter-cultural nexus: a place where you could drift from record shop to caff to Compendium and thence to the pub. There you would find Mike at the heart of a group of autodidacts, musicians, writers, lowlifes and drunks whose house band was the Pogues and whose cultural heroes were Jim Thompson, Hank Williams, Tom Raworth and Little Willie John.

A GP's son, born in Clydebank, Glasgow, Mike was the eldest of four children. After local schools he went on to Glasgow Art School, before moving to London in the early 1970s. He did odd jobs and then took a history degree at North London Polytechnic, where he met his wife Angela. They split up in the late 1970s, but he maintained a close relationship with his son. He combined working on building sites with running a Camden Market stall, before Compendium in 1982.

As the 1980s moved into the 1990s, Camden became a magnet for the world's teenagers and Compendium underwent a facelift. Mike formalised its literary scene by initiating regular readings in the bookshop, something of an innovation at the time. Visiting Americans, from old beat heroes like Lawrence Ferlinghetti to new literary lions like Walter Mosley, read there; so too did the London writers Iain Sinclair, Martin Millar and Derek Raymond.

By the end of the 1990s, Camden Town was thoroughly commercialised, its last remaining outposts of bohemianism swamped by endless leather jacket stores, and it was with a sense of bowing to the inevitable that Compendium closed its doors.

Mike moved to the independent crime specialists Murder One. With his death, the literary world lost a sweet and genuinely unselfish man who freely gave of his vast knowledge and delighted in the achievements of those he influenced so profoundly.

He is survived by his son Stephen."

John Williams - The Guardian December 9 2002


Patrick Michael Hart, bookseller, born May 20 1948; died November 15 2002

"Patrick Michael Hart, best known as Mike Hart, was one of London's most popular and experienced booksellers and will be fondly remembered by not just many customers, but also a score of authors, publishers and sales reps. Born in Glasgow in 1948, the son of a general practitioner he attended Glasgow School of Art locally, and later moved down to London where he studied at North London Polytechnic. A great enthusiast of all forms of modern literature and music, he was also a keen book collector who inevitably found his way into second-hand dealing in North London, and championed poetry, beat literature, small presses and crime fiction.

He joined the staff of Camden Town's now legendary independent Compendium Bookshop in the early 1980's and remained there until it's sad closure almost twenty years later. A familiar, avuncular and friendly presence usually at the front of the shop saw him for years provide advice, friendship and much-needed support for Scottish literature, independent publishers and alternative presses, and he ran the poetry, music and literature sections of Compendium with a relaxed attitude to commerce but an acute appreciation of the timelessness of good writing. Here, he established lasting friendships with many writers from the onset of their careers, organising readings and events and was himself a regular presence at book events throughout London and not just at Compendium.

When Compendium closed, I was pleased to be able to offer him a position at Murder One, where many of his previous customers gladly followed him and he made a new set of friends amongst the crime and mystery community and colleagues. He was here two years until generalised cancer was detected in the summer of 2002 and he returned to his native Glasgow where the end came mercifully quickly and he died in his sleep on 15th November with his son, brothers and sister present.

Mike Hart was a bookseller of the old school who treasured human contact and handselling and communicated the joy of books (and his other great love, blues music) like no other.

He will be sorely missed."

Maxim Jakubowski - Murder One

"Like a lot of people, I can mark out certain important influences in my life by purchases in Compendium - in the early 1970s buying a copy of Mircea Eliade's Shamanism, for example, or the time that Nick Kimberley had a consignment of La Monte Young's 'black' album. In those days, booksellers tended to be more knowledgeable than most of their customers, and Mike Hart's expertise seemed to cover an extraordinary amount of ground. I bought my first Elmore Leonard in Compendium, and Mike directed me to Don DeLillo's Running Dog. This was long before either author was celebrated. Mike also knew which thrillers hit the spot as well-written, pleasurable escapism, and which ones were a disappointment. He would never express a negative opinion, but you could tell from his expression when to save your money. On the other hand, he was already ready with the new Beach Boys Stomp, or the latest rockabilly and deep soul fanzines; if I look through the books and magazines in my music collection, there are numerous obscure titles that remind me of our conversations, and his recommendations.

Mike was a reserved man, perhaps shy, and so he was difficult to know well. After many years I discovered that he lived in Victoria Road, Alexandra Park, almost directly opposite to a house in which I'd lived in the early 1970s. We talked often about his proposed book on the Glasgow music scene and I tried to encourage him to finish it, get it out. Perhaps he knew too much, and felt unable to make the compromises that allow a book to become a practical reality. His knowledge could always surprise me. When I was putting together an ill-fated compilation to complement my book, Exotica, I was trying to track down the license owner for J.B. Lenoir's "I Sing Um the Way I Feel". Mike took this challenge seriously, and if we bumped into each other at a book launch, he'd update me on his researches into the problem. After his death I met Paul Hammond in Barcelona. Paul was surprised I hadn't been present at the wake organised in London for Mike. I'd felt badly enough, not knowing Mike was ill, even though I'd spoken to him in Murder One during the period when he moved there after Compendium, but to have missed the wake felt terrible. What saddens me is the fact that people like Mike, who quietly and modestly informed the tastes and knowledge of such a wide range of practicing artists, musicians, authors, and poets, have now become an extinct species."


More reminiscences here.

From George Washington to Barack Obama - A Long Way

One for us girls

Thanx to Loki for pointing me in this direction!

Thursday 4 December 2008

Roomba driver

Still (very) pissed off

This link will get you the Wiki page of who complained to blogger about the post on my friend who died that was removed.

Santa attacked, elf pushed in 'Lapland'

(Illustration by Biljana Djurdjevic)
Story from the 'BBC' here.

Odetta 1930 - 2008


'House of the Rising Sun' - Live 2005


'Water Boy'

Obituary from 'New York Times' here.

Blogg - AAAAAGH!!! (Re: 'Mike Hart (from Compendium) passed away on this day in 2002' post)

I have just had another post pulled from my blog by Blogger/Google.
This time it was a post that I put up on the anniversary of the death of a very good friend of mine.
Seriously pissed me off.
Once again can I point out that if anyone has any issues with ANYTHING that I post, could they please get in touch with me directly at:

monastreet@gmail.com

and I will remove the offending post or part of it at once.
This also means that I know what it is that I am doing wrong and can therefore endeavour NOT to do it again.
If you want to remain anonymous so be it.


UPDATE:
I just read my email concerning the 'Blogger DMCA takedown notification' and noticed that perhaps the complainant isn't quite as anonymous as I originally thought:

"...The notice that we received from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the record companies it represents, with any personally identifying information removed, will be posted online by a service called Chilling Effects at http://www.chillingeffects.org. We do this in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Please note that it may take Chilling Effects up to several weeks to post the notice online at the link provided..."

Well guys - the post did contain some music namely the Little Feat bootleg 'Electrif Lycanthrop'
I linked to www.archive.org
as the whole album is there as a LEGAL download.
Alternatively you can listen to it here.



May I suggest that in future you look at exactly what is posted at blogs before issuing DMCA notifications.

(Finally as an aside Lowell George used to personally remix his band's bootlegs as he knew that it was a way for more people to get into his band and probably then sell more records.
Which is what you record companies are trying to do isn't it?)


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Anne Coulter - humanish (shock!)

Anne Coulter talking about all things Grateful Dead from 'Jambands.com' here.
(Thanx to the petalumadeadhead for pointing this my way.)

Henry Rollins - 'Letter to Anne Coulter' (video) here.

David Murray Octet - 'Dark Star' (The Music of the Grateful Dead) Update


My colleague over at 'Pathway To Unknown Worlds' has upped the whole of the David Murray - 'Dark Star' album to his blog.
You can download it here.
This will give you David Murray performing live with the Grateful Dead in 1993 or you can download just his take on 'Dark Star' from the above album here.

Lee Perry meets John Lennon Mashup


A mashup of Max Romeo's "Chase The Devil" (produced by Lee Perry) & The Beatles' "A Day In The Life", recently uploaded on Adrian Sherwood's myspace page with some pictures to match.
Adrian Sherwood's (On-U Sound) MySpace page here.
How long before it's taken down ?

Wednesday 3 December 2008

Indian bombers high on drugs

According to 'The Daily Mirror' here, the bombers had injected LSD (!) & cocaine before rampage.

India names Mumbai mastermind

Photo:AP
Story from 'The Wall Street Journal' here.

Condileezza Rice piano recital for Queen Elizabeth II

Tuesday 2 December 2008

Jah Wobble's Chinese Dub - Horse Mountain Song (Live July 2008)

P.I.L. - Poptones (O.G.W.T. 1980)

P.I.L. - Careering (O.G.W.T. 1980)

P.I.L. - Public Image

Jah Wobble & The Invaders of The Heart - Visions of You

Paul Kelly A - Z Downloads: L


Just a reminder that Paul Kelly's 'L' songs: 'Lately - Leaps & Bounds - Little Boy Don't Lose Your Balls - Little Kings - Love Never Runs On Time - Love Is The Law & Luck' are now available to download here.

Girlz With Gunz # 18

Actually Asia Argento will always be my No.1 girl with a gun!

Monday 1 December 2008

'Mountain of Snakes' by Sean Penn

From 'The Huffington Post' here.

Brits on top in casual sex league

Story from 'The Daily Mail' here.

The trouble is that living in the UK you get fuct in lots of other ways too.

Heroin Legalization Programme Approved by Swiss Voters

Story from 'The Huffington Post' here.

To all who opposed the injecting room here in Melbourne a number of years ago note the words:
"...and is credited with reducing crime...".

What some other people think of our (?)
"war on drugs".

Iain Banks
“The choice we have is not between a drug free society and a society with drugs; it is between a society with drugs and a sensible attitude to them and a society with drugs tearing itself apart in a preposterous, nonsensical “War against Drugs” which not only was lost long ago but which grinds on now with almost zero benefit and something approaching 100% collateral damage. Support Transform to help end the war and promote a society at peace with itself.”
Source: Transform - 04/1999

William Burroughs
"President Bush said in his television address not long ago: 'Our outrage against drugs unites us as a nation!' A nation of what? Snoops and informers? Take a look at the knee-jerk, hard-core shits who react so predictably to the mere mention of drugs with fear, hate and loathing. Haven't we seen these same people before in various contexts? Storm troopers, lynch mobs, queer-bashers, Paki-bashers, racists - are these the people who are going to revitalize a 'Drug-free America'?"
Source: ‘The Drug User’ Documents 1840-1960, Foreword

Ben Elton
Addressing the Scottish Parliament recently:
"The real problem is not the drugs, it's the criminalisation of the community. And the fact is that this vast nation of social criminals, of whom you are all acquainted, is linked arterially to a corrosive, cancerous core of real criminals. The law is effectively the number one sponsor of organised crime."
"The logical answer appears to be legalising. One thing is certain, doing nothing is not an option."
Source: BBC News May 2006

"I firmly believe that hugely radical solutions are now required. It is about legalisation, not de-criminalisation."
Asked whether he was referring to hard drugs such as heroin, cocaine and crack, Elton said: "Yes. I think we need to get the police, the government and the emergency services in front of the criminals, not behind the criminals.
"It is now a self-evident fact that criminalisation hasn’t worked. All it has presented us with is organised crime."
Source: Scotsman - 23.07.02

“There is no moral high ground to be had in blindly ignoring the utter failure of 30 years of drug legislation, while loudly calling for more of the same. No one who is content to bang on about tougher sentences and zero tolerance while leaving our crime-bedevilled communities to their grim fate has any cause to think themselves righteous.”
“It is a matter of simple fact that a large proportion of people in this country, particularly young people, take drugs. Very few of them are drug addicts but they are all criminals under the law - the problem is that this vast nation of social criminals is linked arterially to a corrosive, cancerous core of real criminals.”
“One thing is certain - doing nothing is absolutely not an option. A crisis is developing, a crisis created by the law and from which the law offers no protection. Both the Government and the media are failing the community. It is time for a proper adult debate and I personally believe that that debate must now encompass the possibility of some form of legalisation.”
Source: ‘Legalisation Might Be The Only Way To Halt The Drugs Epidemic’ Daily Telegraph - 8.11.02

Aldous Huxley
"Complete prohibition of all chemical mind changers can be decreed, but cannot be enforced, and tends to create more evils than it cures."
Source: "Drugs That Shape Men's Minds," Saturday Evening Post, 1958

Stephen King
"I think that marijuana should not only be legal, I think it should be a cottage industry. It would be wonderful for the state of Maine. There's some pretty good homegrown dope. I'm sure it would be even better if you could grow it with fertilizers and have greenhouses. . . ."
Source: Hightimes magazine, January 1980

Carlos Fuentes
"The only way to curb the violence of the drug cartels in Mexico is by legalizing drugs."
Source: AFP website

Sir Paul McCartney

"I support decriminalisation. People are smoking pot anyway and to make them into criminals is wrong. It's when you're in jail you really become a criminal."
Source: Independent on Sunday, 28/09/1997.

Ringo Starr
"Why don't they just make it all legal?"
"I don't think the campaigns of the government in this country or America are doing anything. I think it's an absolute waste of resources, the way they're going about it. You go to clubs, everybody's taking stuff, that's how it is. Most lawyers have inhaled, they've had a joint, they've had a snort, they've had a drink. Then they carry on with their lives.""The downside of all that, like Jimi Hendrix, is we have lost a lot of musicians. But any law wouldn't have stopped him taking it."
Source: interview in The Big Issue magazine quoted in The Daily Mail “WHY ALL DRUGS SHOULD BE LEGALISED BY RINGO - Campaigners' Fury at Ex-Beatle” 28.07.98

Lemmy
"I have never had heroin but since I moved to London in 1967, I have mixed with junkies on a casual and almost daily basis. I hate the idea even as I say it, but the only way to treat heroin is to legalise it."
"If it were on prescription, then at least two thirds of the dealers would disappear and you would have records of who was using it. If a junkie has a regular supply, most are able to do a job. They will never rehabilitate until somebody - you - gives them a chance to."
Source: Speech at the Welsh Assembly 03.11.05

Woody Harrelson
"One thing I don't like is that I have become the poster boy for marijuana, certainly in the States, I don't know about here so much. It all came from a TV show I went on years ago and said a few things about the bullshit laws banning marijuana. The main thrust of my argument is not just its legalisation - which I think should happen - but that the war against drugs is unwinnable. Millions of people use pot and always will, so it is a war against the people. It all comes down to freedom. You should be free to do anything, even if it is self destructive, as long as it is not hurting someone else or their property. I absolutely believe that."
Source: Press Gazette 17.11. 05

Jack Nicholson
"My point of view, while extremely cogent, is unpopular. . . . That the repressive nature of the legalities vis-a-vis drugs are destroying the legal system and corrupting the police system."
Source: Widely quoted, but source unknown

Rupert Everett
"I don't think prostitution will ever end, just as drug taking will never end. Both should be legalised as a way of controlling them. Cut out the middleman. Tax them. Use the money to fund clinics for the victims."
Source: The Telegraph Newspaper, 08.06.08

Nigella Lawson
“..whatever one feels about alcohol or any other drug, it appears to be the case that the desire for intoxication is innate in humans. Any primitive society investigated by anthropologists depicts peoples who either danced themselves into whirling states of frenzy or who ate berries calculated to induce hallucinations (or both). Both my children, from the age when they were barely stable, used to twirl themselves around until they fell down helplessly dizzy. I agree, just because something is innate doesn't make it good, but whatever, prohibition can never be the answer.”
Source: ‘More Es and less flannel, (subtitled) Drugs may be bad for us, but banning them is not the answer’
The Observer, 06.08.00

Jonathan Ross
“For a long time I’ve felt that the war on drugs is a lost cause. As a parent I’m obviously aware of the dangers of drugs but its clear to me that these dangers are massively increased by the criminality involved in an illegal market. I’m supporting Transform because I’d like to see a more honest, rational and compassionate approach to the drug problem. ”


Source: Transform Annual Report 2005

As Burroughs said:
"JUST SAY KNOW".

All The Rage - Bob Ostertag and the Kronos Quartet (1993)


"Bob Ostertag's "All the Rage" turned the evening on its head with a devastating roar of gay anger.
Of recent concert pieces having to do with AIDS, "All the Rage" seems by far the most powerful example.
Mr. Ostertag's stern, purifying gaze has swept away the sentimentality and melodrama that have compromised more famous compositions in the genre."
- The New York Times

You can download this album for free from Bob Ostertag's website here.
Its sister album 'Burns Like Fire' here.
There is also live recording partly from the ICA in London, 'Voice of America' featuring Bob Ostertag, Fred Frith and Phil Minton here.
(A gig I actually attended back in 1981.)

"...A few months later Fred and I were in London for a concert. Moments before going on, my synthesizer was destroyed in a technical mishap. I was left with my cassette set-up and a contact mic I either kept between my teeth or used to amplify various toys. Fred had brought only a piece of wood with a few screws at either end and guitar strings strung between them. With my synthesizer still smoking, we hastily recruited Phil Minton out of his seat in the audience and without any time for discussion began the set that became Voice of America Part 2."

Bob has a blog at 'The Huffington Post' here.

Jorn Utzon - Sydney Opera House Archirect Dies


Details from 'The Sydney Morning Herald' here.

In Memory Of All Those We Have Lost Over The Years

Information here.