To celebrate the return of On-U Sound Records after 5 years I give you 'Human Nature' by Gary Clail.Also included is the original 12 minute demo by the Tackhead crew featuring the words of the Rev. Billy Graham.
Monday 5 January 2009
There's something wrong with 'Human Nature'
To celebrate the return of On-U Sound Records after 5 years I give you 'Human Nature' by Gary Clail.Also included is the original 12 minute demo by the Tackhead crew featuring the words of the Rev. Billy Graham.
Ricky Gervais defends his fat jokes
"I heard someone on the radio once say that they were tired of the prejudice aimed at the overweight. They said something like "you're not allowed to make fun of gay people, so why are you allowed to make fun of fat people? It's the same thing."
It's not the same thing though, is it? Gay people are born that way. They didn't work at becoming gay. Fat people became fat because they would rather be that way than stop eating so much. They had to eat and eat to get fat. Then, when they were fat they had to keep up the eating to stay fat. For gayness to be the same as fatness, gay people would have to start off straight but then ween themselves onto cock. Soon they're noshing all day getting gayer and gayer. They've had more than enough cock... they're full... they're just sucking for the sake of it. Now they're overgay, and frowned upon by people who can have the occasional cock but not over indulge.
When a doctor tells me that that's how you become gay, I'll stop making jokes about fat people."
More blogging from Ricky Gervais here.
It's not the same thing though, is it? Gay people are born that way. They didn't work at becoming gay. Fat people became fat because they would rather be that way than stop eating so much. They had to eat and eat to get fat. Then, when they were fat they had to keep up the eating to stay fat. For gayness to be the same as fatness, gay people would have to start off straight but then ween themselves onto cock. Soon they're noshing all day getting gayer and gayer. They've had more than enough cock... they're full... they're just sucking for the sake of it. Now they're overgay, and frowned upon by people who can have the occasional cock but not over indulge.
When a doctor tells me that that's how you become gay, I'll stop making jokes about fat people."
More blogging from Ricky Gervais here.
Sunday 4 January 2009
Newsflash!!! (From On - U Sound HQ)
ON-U SOUND ARE PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THAT WE ARE BACK IN BUSINESS AND RELEASING MUSIC AGAIN, ALTHOUGH PAST EXPERIENCE TELLS US NOT TO!!! We are back after an absence of nearly 5 years and along with the Lee Perry, Harry Beckett & Samia Farah albums - which will be available across Europe from January - we are happy to announce the following titles for 2009:
- African Headcharge's "VISION OF A PSYCHEDELIC AFRICA" (around May 2009)
- "DUBSETTER" by Lee Perry & Adrian Sherwood (around May 2009)
- "THE ROYAL VARIETY SHOW : THE BEST OF DUB SYNDICATE" by Dub Syndicate (before the summer)
- Ian King's "PANIC GRASS AND FEVER FEW" or "... KING OF ENGLAND" (will be mastered this month and scheduled for release)
January 2009 : Off to Jamaica to do a new batch of recordings with Ari Up, towards a new New Age Steppers album and tracks for a new Adrian Sherwood album that started in Brazil and will hopefully end there. Life's Sweet!!
A 12" of "International Broadcaster" (Remixed by Moody Boyz) by Lee Perry (Ft Roots Manuva & LSK) is due out soon and a collaborative project between Adrian Sherwood and The Moody One is under way.
New On-U recordings are under way with Denise Sherwood, Sandman, African Headcharge, Ghetto Priest, Little Axe, Mark Stewart, DJ Moodie & Jennie Bellstar / Dave Barker.
- African Headcharge's "VISION OF A PSYCHEDELIC AFRICA" (around May 2009)
- "DUBSETTER" by Lee Perry & Adrian Sherwood (around May 2009)
- "THE ROYAL VARIETY SHOW : THE BEST OF DUB SYNDICATE" by Dub Syndicate (before the summer)
- Ian King's "PANIC GRASS AND FEVER FEW" or "... KING OF ENGLAND" (will be mastered this month and scheduled for release)
January 2009 : Off to Jamaica to do a new batch of recordings with Ari Up, towards a new New Age Steppers album and tracks for a new Adrian Sherwood album that started in Brazil and will hopefully end there. Life's Sweet!!
A 12" of "International Broadcaster" (Remixed by Moody Boyz) by Lee Perry (Ft Roots Manuva & LSK) is due out soon and a collaborative project between Adrian Sherwood and The Moody One is under way.
New On-U recordings are under way with Denise Sherwood, Sandman, African Headcharge, Ghetto Priest, Little Axe, Mark Stewart, DJ Moodie & Jennie Bellstar / Dave Barker.
Watch this space!
Links & Comments (Getting MY Message Across...)
From now on all download links for anything I post will be in the comments section and while you are there...
Saturday 3 January 2009
There Are No Spectators!
Get it here.
(A rather subdued excursion this time around perhaps due to the gig being held in an art gallery.)
(A rather subdued excursion this time around perhaps due to the gig being held in an art gallery.)
Israel/Palestine: Another Path Is Possible
Cast Lead in the Foundry
From the Editors
Middle East Research and Information Project [MERIP]
December 31, 2008
A stopped clock, the saying goes, is right twice a day. The “senior Bush administration official” who chatted with the Washington Post on December 28 was right that Israel is “not trying to take over the Gaza Strip” with the massive assault launched the previous day, and correct that the Israelis are bombing now “because they want it to be over before the next administration comes in.” That’s twice, and so one must take this official’s remaining reasoning -- that President-elect Barack Obama may not smile upon Israel’s gross abuses of military power as the Bush administration has done -- with a grain of salt.
To be sure, it is hard to imagine that the incoming Obama administration could be as blithely indulgent of Israeli belligerence as its predecessor has been. In 2004, President George W. Bush broke not only with international law, but also with decades of US policy, when he promised Israel that it could keep its major West Bank settlement blocs and forget about Palestinian refugees. Bill Clinton did much the same in 2001, with his last-ditch plan for reviving the Oslo process, but settlements and refugees were still matters for negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians, not between Israel and the United States. In 2006, as Israel laid waste to swathes of Lebanon, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hardly tried to hide that her refusal to broker an end to hostilities came in deference to Israel’s requirement for more time to achieve objectives it ultimately failed to meet. Henry Kissinger did much the same in 1973, green-lighting additional Israeli advances into Egypt after passage of UN Security Council Resolution 338 imposed a ceasefire, but he did it behind his own boss’s back. Obama will almost certainly be more cognizant of the value of being held in global esteem, and thus more inclined to restrain Israeli militarism, than Bush.
But Obama and his team should feel the imperative to speak out now, as Israel illegally shells a captive civilian population, if only in light of the conventional wisdom that Operation Cast Lead complicates their advertised plans for an early push to restart an Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Instead, the administration-in-waiting has kept quiet, stirring only to send future White House adviser David Axelrod on CBS’s Face the Nation to say that the president-elect understands Israel’s “urge to respond” to the Qassams, Katyushas and mortars being lobbed from Gaza. Far from a mere slip of “one president at a time” decorum, this de facto endorsement of the bombardment echoes the Clinton administration line backing Israel’s “right to self-defense” as live ammunition flew at rock-throwing Palestinians in the fall of 2000. It also underlines the magnitude of the changes Obama must make in US policy toward Israel-Palestine, if he hopes to intervene other than to bless and uphold the achievements of Israeli settler-colonialism.
As for the official narrative of the “all-out war” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak swears to wage against “Hamas and its kind” in Gaza: Even CNN reporters in Sderot acknowledge that there is no equivalence between the unguided projectiles of Hamas, illegitimate and ill-considered as they are, and the might and technological sophistication of the Israeli air force and army. Not a single rocketeer will be dissuaded by the bombing of the Islamic University of Gaza or the headquarters of al-Aqsa television. Israel plainly chose the moment of attack not only to spring a tactical surprise, but also to maximize the death and destruction. Upwards of 385 Palestinians lie dead -- at least 64 of them, by “conservative” UN estimates, wearing no uniform not required by a school -- and more than 1,750 others are injured.
And as for the Israeli-US tale, parroted by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu al-Ghayt, that Hamas brought this mayhem upon Gaza by declining to extend the truce that expired on December 19: According to the December 28 edition of Ha’aretz, Barak ordered the Defense Ministry to begin plotting this offensive before the truce agreement was concluded six months ago, in anticipation of a pretext, and in preparation for a smoother, less costly campaign than the 2006 stalemate in Lebanon. The next day, the defense minister told the Knesset the same thing. The renewal of Hamas rocket fire in November, prompted by an Israeli incursion to close off a “ticking tunnel” originating underneath a Gazan home, was the pretext. According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, 18 people in Israel have been killed by rockets and mortars from Gaza since 2004, four of them since Operation Cast Lead got underway. The costs of the campaign to the Palestinians have already been far steeper -- and they will grow steeper still in Israel’s attempt to keep its own costs to a minimum.
The most compelling explanation for the scope of the assault on Gaza is that militarist interpretations of the failed war in Lebanon have prevailed inside the Israeli establishment. As one general told the New York Times, the problem then was not that the Israelis hit Lebanon too hard and too indiscriminately, but rather that “we were not decisive enough.” Mark Heller of Tel Aviv University completed the thought: “This operation is an attempt to reestablish the perception that if you provoke or attack you are going to pay a disproportionate price.” Leave aside that the linchpin of Israel’s strategy is therefore the very lack of proportionality that Israeli spokespeople so bristle at being accused of by proponents of the laws of war. If this explanation for Israel’s actions is accurate, then Gaza will suffer considerably more punishment before Israel is satisfied that its “deterrence capability” is adequately acknowledged. The danger of escalation, moreover, is acute.
The appearance of such a frank analysis in America’s newspaper of record, to be mulled over by the more intelligent anchors on CNN, is perhaps a sign of slippage in Israel’s exercise of dominion over both Gaza and the way that events there are portrayed. Since the fall of 2000, and far more intensely since Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, Israel has entrapped Palestinians within Gaza, preventing them from telling their story abroad, and blocked the access of outsiders to the coastal strip. Recipients of foreign scholarships are forced to stay home, as are human rights activists invited to speak by Israelis or others in the world outside. Palestinian reporters living in Gaza cannot travel either, and might not want to, given the beating administered by Israeli security personnel to their colleague Muhammad ‘Umar, who managed in June to escape to London to collect the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. Members of the non-Palestinian media, meanwhile, have periodically been barred, as they are now, from entering Gaza or the “closed military zone” in its vicinity, leading the Foreign Press Association in Israel to register regular protests at this “serious violation of press freedom.” Other outside fact finders, like Bishop Desmond Tutu, are likewise excluded, and only two weeks before Operation Cast Lead, the new UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Richard Falk, was detained at the Tel Aviv airport and summarily expelled from the country on spurious charges of “legitimizing Hamas terrorism.” The systematic veiling of Gaza from outside scrutiny allows Israel to turn Gaza into a black box to which only it holds the key. Israeli spokespeople enjoy a near monopoly on the story that gets told, whether about the tactics of Hamas rule or the tunnels that Gazans use to infiltrate food and (non-military as well as military) supplies.
So it is not surprising, if still vexing, that most American coverage of Cast Lead, and certainly the reaction in Congress, hews closely to Israel’s position that the expansive nature of the operation is justified as self-defense. “We are trying to hit the whole spectrum,” an unnamed Israeli officer told the Washington Post, “because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel.” Lost in the laying of blame upon Hamas is the stark fact that Gaza remains Israeli-occupied, both in the eyes of the UN and in the practical sense that Israel has near complete control over exit and egress of persons and goods. There is political purpose behind the bombing of the Islamist party’s “civilian infrastructure” and the closure of border crossings to needed shipments of food, fuel, medicine and cash -- closures, again, that long preceded Cast Lead. It is the same motive underlying the December 30 ramming of an activist boat carrying emergency supplies (and a CNN reporter -- oops) and the repulsion of a Libyan relief vessel on December 1. The purpose is to render Hamas totally unprepared to deal with humanitarian crisis in the hope of undercutting support for the party as it fails to deliver basic services. Absent from the American media, as well, is the long history of the siege, the primary reason by far that Hamas refused to renew the ceasefire. This stance, to a large extent, came about in answer to popular demand.
Hamas, without a doubt, has contributed to Gaza’s isolation, not least with the brutality of its armed takeover of the territory in the summer of 2007 and its vindictive maltreatment of Fatah affiliates and others since then. But enmity for the Islamist party cannot pardon the Arab complicity, most notably that of Abbas and the Egyptian regime, in the “all-out war” on Gaza and the years of siege that have gone before. Abbas, like Syria, has “suspended” talks with Israel until the offensive winds down, but the fact is that those talks are premised upon removing Hamas from the Palestinian national equation. Like Israel, he now hopes that bombardment will quell the Islamists’ will to political power, instead of working with Hamas to remove the blockade upon the livelihoods of the Gazans he still claims to represent. Certainly, as well, the chaos in Gaza takes the spotlight off the impending crisis over the status of his presidential term after January 9, 2009 and his resolve to stay in office for another year. Meanwhile, the Arab world is again treated to the spectacle of Egyptian border guards forcibly sealing Palestinians back into Gaza after they had broken out. The regime of President Husni Mubarak, seized with antipathy of its own for the Muslim Brothers of whom Hamas is nominally a part, is just as determined as Israel and the Bush administration that the Islamists next door be prevented from governing -- the well-being of Gazans be damned. It is striking that some of the more raucous demonstrations in Jordan, Yemen and elsewhere since the bombing began occurred at Egyptian embassies and consulates. Six pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested outside the Egyptian embassy in Tel Aviv, of all places.
Why exactly did Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, until recently the presumptive prime minister-designate, pay a visit to Cairo shortly before the fighter jets roared over Gaza? Was it simply to warn her Egyptian interlocutors that “all-out war” was coming? Or might there be an Israeli endgame discernible in the siege that keeps the Gaza pressure cooker constantly boiling over? In theory, the endgame could aim at dumping the humanitarian catastrophe on Egypt’s doorstep. With Abbas signed up to sever Gaza from the West Bank, Israel and its allies are free to make conditions intolerable in Gaza in a bid to weaken Hamas and eventually impel Egypt to take security responsibility for Gaza as the precondition for lifting the siege. Egypt was abuzz with precisely this theory this past January, when Gaza’s agony last dominated the news cycle. On the one hand, the regime calculates that the doomsday scenario blunts domestic opposition to its enforcement of the embargo. But that does not mean the scenario has no champions among Israel’s strategic thinkers.
The Israeli project of deepening the political and geographical division between Gaza and the West Bank is quite compatible with a longer-term objective of greater Egyptian (or even Jordanian) involvement in the Occupied Territories. Egypt cannot relish the prospect, and so its diplomacy is geared toward encouraging a more coherent Palestinian polity that can keep Gaza and its Islamists on the other side of the border. But Israeli and Egyptian interests converge upon the immediate challenge: how to cut Hamas down to size.
Operation Cast Lead is intended as a hammer blow, but one with the comparatively modest ambition (for now) to “shape a different and new security situation” in the Gaza Strip. In the estimation of the aforementioned senior Bush administration official, “the Israeli goal now is to damage Hamas enough so that Hamas will accept a real truce.” Of course, there was a real truce, for the most part, from mid-June through mid-December. Yet the quiet on Israel’s southern front did not result in a significant loosening of the blockade, and Hamas returned to its old logic that it must inflict pain upon Israel to accomplish its political goals. Now Barak’s declaration that Cast Lead has been in the foundry since before the ceasefire began will be taken by the Islamist party as confirmation that its thinking was on target.
Along with Barak’s speech in the Knesset, the calls emanating from Hamas leaders in Gaza and Damascus, and Hizballah in Lebanon, for a “third intifada” including resumed suicide operations in Israel ought to compel the UN Security Council to pass a binding ceasefire resolution. Instead, what little international pressure the combatants have faced to desist has come from individual European states, Britain and France, the European Commission and the so-called Quartet invested by the Security Council with the Israeli-Palestinian file. For its part, the Security Council has issued an ineffectual press statement calling for an “immediate halt to all violence.” That Russia suggested this course of action reveals the extent of US hegemony over the thinkable in Turtle Bay -- Moscow knows that Washington would stymie any attempt to lend the plaintive ceasefire pleas the teeth of international law. The Bush administration, surprising no one at this point, is poised to shield Israel once again as the Jewish state carries out its military campaign to its conclusion. The questions are when Israel will adjudge its “deterrence capability” sufficiently burnished and, as with the Gaza offensive of 2006, whether external factors will intrude.
In the meantime, the Israeli attack prepares the political battlefield in anticipation of an Obama administration-led peace process. Assuming that Obama’s effort follows the phased approach of Clinton, and continues to freeze out Hamas, Israel is protected from the concessions of a comprehensive settlement. As long as Gaza remains separated from the West Bank, and the Hamas-Fatah divide festers, no peace process can gain traction. This is true regardless of which party wins the upcoming Israeli elections, for Israel will be able to claim that the Palestinians have no single political address, and Hamas will have every motivation to sabotage any attempt to strike a deal with Mahmoud Abbas alone. The siege of Gaza would then stretch on indefinitely, with Hamas duly weakened.
Another path is possible, of course. Obama could quietly drop US rejection of the 2006 Palestinian election results, and work to help the Palestinians form a national unity government. As the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is advocating, he could call the siege of Gaza by its rightful name -- collective punishment -- and demand that it cease. He could throw the weight of Washington behind Security Council action toward that end, and toward a genuine halt to settlement and separation wall construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. He could enforce the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, and terminate US supply to Israel of F-16s and Apache helicopters, paid for with US military aid dollars, because they have been used to harm civilians in the attack on Gaza. The measure of Barack Obama will be how far, if at all, he travels toward such a dramatic transformation of US policy on the question of Palestine.
Is it true that “change is coming” when Obama enters the White House? We hope so. Yet the conventional pro-Israel tilt of his campaign indicates otherwise, as does the composition of his foreign policy crew. Obama appears poised to content himself with more energetic US engagement in the sort of flawed negotiations of the Clinton years, the sort that put ending the occupation last, as if the developments of the Bush years had not rendered that approach utterly untenable.
Please, Mr. President-elect, surprise us.
Friday 2 January 2009
You should be repulsed by this
Mustafa Barghouthi, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative writes at 'The Washington Note' here.
'Free Jazz' Primer
Albert AylerOver at Dennis Coopers's blog today there is a wonderful guide to 'Free Jazz' by Chill Jay Chill from 'Destination OUT'
Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore on his top ten here.
(If you go here you can download many of Thurston's choices.)
Thursday 1 January 2009
It's official
THE DEAD ANNOUNCE 2009 ARENA TOUR DATES - KICKING OFF APRIL 12
MARKS THEIR FIRST CONCERT TOUR IN FIVE YEARS
Happy New Year from the DEAD.
After months of fan speculation bolstered by an October 2008 performance at the “Change Rocks” concert/rally for Barack Obama in State College, PA and three recent viral internet videos with band interviews and performance footage, the DEAD today (1/1/09) officially announced tour dates for 2009.
Th is marks their first trek since 2004’s “Wave at Flag” tour.
Kicking off April 12 in Greensboro, NC and wrapping May 10 near San Francisco, the tour will encompass 19 shows--all to be performed as “An Evening With”--in 16 cities. Details for pre-sale and on-sale tickets will be announced in the near future. Go to WWW.Dead.net for ticket and tour information. All the concerts are set for indoor arenas except for the final show at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, CA.
Original Dead members Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart will be joined by keyboardist Jeff Chimenti and Allman Brothers Band/Gov’t Mule guitarist Warren Haynes, both of whom played with the band at the “Change Rocks” concert.
Th e group first formed with lead guitarist Jerry Garcia as the Grateful Dead in 1965 and are legendary for their live performances. The Grammy-winning Rock & Roll Hall of Fame group always toured relentlessly, allowing their “Dead Head” fans to tape and trade their exploratory, free-flowing concerts.
“We’ve got some unfinished business,” says guitarist/singer Bob Weir. “Everybody has a whole new bag of tricks; we have the body of material we worked up over the years and we have a mind meld going on here and it would be a sin to let that just wither and die.” Drummer Mickey Hart adds, “A mind meld is a terrible thing to waste.” Bassist Phil Lesh says, “For me, it’s the question mark that’s really pulling me in…what’s gonna happen? When you walk
out on the stage the possibilities are infinite every time. Th e musical possibilities are infinite: there is no end to it, there’s no back wall and there’s no ceiling, there’s no floor. It’s infinite and therefore you can still explore it till the day that you die.” Drummer Bill Kreutzmann says, “I get goose bumps just thinking about the possibilities.”
Seeds of the idea of touring again were first planted in February of this year when Hart, Lesh and Weir played a “Dead Heads For Obama” show at the Warfield in their native San Francisco, and last year Weir, Kreutzmann and Hart performed at a post-inauguration for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Always sonic and technological adventurers, the Grateful Dead formed in San Francisco’s electric Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in the mid-‘60s, combining their love of bluegrass, country, electric rock and jazz to create one of the most iconic repertoires in rock music. By touring continuously and never relying on radio hits or latest trends, the Dead and Dead Heads created an unparalleled bond. Fans were turned on to the group by live bootlegs and word of mouth, with many following the band on the road for whole tours.
For more information, go to www.dead.net or www.Dead.Net/Dead09
Date: City: Venue:
Sun 4/12 Greensboro, NC Greensboro Coliseum
Tue 4/14 Washington, DC Verizon Center
Wed 4/15 Charlottesville, VA John Paul Jones Arena
Fri 4/17 Albany, NY Times Union Center
Sat 4/18 Worcester, MA DCU Center
Sun 4/19 Worcester, MA DCU Center
Tue 4/21 Buffalo, NY HSBC Arena
Wed 4/22 Wilkes-Barre, PA Wachovia Arena @ Casey Plaza
Fri 4/24 Uniondale, NY Nassau Coliseum
Sat 4/25 New York, NY Madison Square Garden
Sun 4/26 Hartford, CT XL Center
Tue 4/28 E. Rutherford, NJ IZOD Center
Wed 4/29 E. Rutherford, NJ IZOD Center
Fri 5/1 Philadelphia, PA Wachovia Spectrum
Sat 5/2 Philadelphia, PA Wachovia Spectrum
Tue 5/5 Chicago, IL All State Arena
u 5/7 Denver, CO Pepsi Center
Sat 5/9 Los Angeles, CA e Forum
Sun 5/10 Mountain View, CA Shoreline Amphitheater
MARKS THEIR FIRST CONCERT TOUR IN FIVE YEARS
Happy New Year from the DEAD.
After months of fan speculation bolstered by an October 2008 performance at the “Change Rocks” concert/rally for Barack Obama in State College, PA and three recent viral internet videos with band interviews and performance footage, the DEAD today (1/1/09) officially announced tour dates for 2009.
Th is marks their first trek since 2004’s “Wave at Flag” tour.
Kicking off April 12 in Greensboro, NC and wrapping May 10 near San Francisco, the tour will encompass 19 shows--all to be performed as “An Evening With”--in 16 cities. Details for pre-sale and on-sale tickets will be announced in the near future. Go to WWW.Dead.net
Th e group first formed with lead
Happy New Year
buon anno
šťastný nový rok
godt nytår
godt nytår
gelukkig nieuwjaar
manigong bagong taon
hyvää uuttavuotta
bonne année
Frohes neues Jahr
ευτυχισμένο το νέο έτος
שנה טובה
नया साल मुबारक हो
selamat tahun baru
happy new year
laimīgu Jauno gadu
laimingų Naujųjų metų
godt nytt år
szczęśliwego nowego roku
с новым годом
feliz año nuevo
gott nytt år
chúc mừng năm mới
كل عام وأنتم بخير
manigong bagong taon
hyvää uuttavuotta
bonne année
Frohes neues Jahr
ευτυχισμένο το νέο έτος
שנה טובה
नया साल मुबारक हो
selamat tahun baru
happy new year
laimīgu Jauno gadu
laimingų Naujųjų metų
godt nytt år
szczęśliwego nowego roku
с новым годом
feliz año nuevo
gott nytt år
chúc mừng năm mới
كل عام وأنتم بخير
Wednesday 31 December 2008
www.gush-shalom.org
THE WAR BELONGS TO OLMERT-THE VICTIMS BELONG TO US.'A Congress of Peace Seekers'
by Uri Avnery
(Uri Avnery is an Israeli peace activist and a former member of the Knesset.)
PLEASE TAKE A COUPLE OF MINUTES AND READ THIS ARTICLE.
Cryptic message # 2
There is a man (RT) that has solved the riddle of 2008!
Now my riddle for 2009:(why are Canton and Potsdam not in China and The Netherlands?)
Girl With A Gun # 1 (Revisited)
Go here & here.
Hazel - I don't think you have to change much really you know but I do think that you have to embrace the 'sisterhood of spit', (HAH!) but hey what would I know?
(Cryptic message that even I don't understand!)
Hazel - I don't think you have to change much really you know but I do think that you have to embrace the 'sisterhood of spit', (HAH!) but hey what would I know?
(Cryptic message that even I don't understand!)
What do you actually think of this blog? Good? Bad? Indifferent? I WOULD like to know...obviously Melanie & Kat you can tell me in person
I know that people are finding this blog.
What do you think?
Any feedback is welcome.
Comments.
Suggestions.
Let me know: monastreet(at)gmail(dot)com
If you like what you find spread the word!
Hoots mon it's Hogmanay! Who is that masked man?
"COMPRESSION"
The proudly-Scottish singer and songwriter, renowned for his fondness for traditional battle-dress, discusses his 1995 ISDN "Compression" album with Wendy E. Ball, recorded during his time of collaboration with Adrian Sherwood:
"How the idea started was that, coming from the Borders [***Ed.: ...of Scotland, specifically St. Boswells...***] and then going away and living abroad in the States for many years, I always wanted to come back, have a family and live here again. But I was concerned that there wasn’t a music industry in Scotland and I was hoping, twelve years ago, that there was at least the start. So I thought I'd come back having timed it right. Just shows you how wrong I was!
"So I had to figure away and was thinking, "How do I still hook up with my friends who were thousands of miles away?" I’d heard a story from a friend of mine, who was an engineer in New York, that Capitol Records in LA were doing a recording with Frank Sinatra in his house and he was having guest artists coming in through the telephone line. So I thought I’d find out more about it. I was really desperate to make this album with my friends before they all dispersed all over the place.
"I hadn’t the money to go back out and live there for six months to do it and I couldn’t get a record company to pay for it so I contacted BT [***Ed.: ...a big phone company in the UK...***] and I found a really good bloke called Ray Pritchard who was into my music and stuff. He said that they were trying to launch ISDN in 1992-3. I said to him "Look, I’ll make you a deal. You install the ISDN lines here and I’ll give you my music to promote so that you can show off what it’s capable of doing." That’s really how it came about."
So when did this, this come out?
"1995. It took about a year. The whole ISDN system was just up and running and so, for instance, we did the first [link] through to Africa and rhino and all sorts of things would run over the lines and they'd be out! So there were things that were kind of difficult to get back on line quickly. You know, until some, some wee lad goes out there with a pair of wire clippers and puts it back together again, you know? So, eventually I managed to install ISDN lines in a studio which I’d used in America called ‘House of Music’ in Orange, New Jersey. That’s the home of the P-Funk - the funkadelic lot of the top black musicians that inspired Prince and all that other stuff. They were my pals there and so it was easy for them to come in and do some stuff."
Would it not need a lot of logistical organisation, you know, when it’s sort of midnight in New York?
"I had a huge phone bill to begin with. Now ISDN is a penny a minute or something and it’s really cheap, you know. At the time it was quite expensive. It was like, a pound a minute and we were on-line for eight hours sometimes! They [BT] paid for that just 'til we got to the stage where we'd got the recordings done. After that, then I had to try and finance the thing myself.
"It was interesting to say the least that, you know, I could sing Umhlaba Jikelele with someone in Africa and they were singing with me. I also organised this live television shoot with ISDN as well, so that I had a TV monitor here and I had a cameraman running out with the long cable that went about fifty metres back to the studio. They had a PA out in the streets, and I was speaking in real time, telling him the shots I wanted and telling the girls to sing, when to come in on the beat and stuff. This was amazing. There was a real friendliness about the thing and that’s what really pleased me - because then I realised the potential of that and especially sound quality ... you could hear everything so clearly."
Has it been repeated, the experience?
"There was this group Future Sound Of London. They got a lot of glory for it but we were actually first because I put the ISDN lines into On-U Sound. On-U Sound with Adrian Sherwood was doing the big dub. They did a lot of reggae and they were a purist kind of dub funk lot that had a lot of respect in the industry but weren’t, like, the big commercial end of things. Future Sound Of London after we had done it brought out a record that they had done through ISDN but not to the extent we had."
You were talking about the track Braveheart?
"Yeh, Braveheart. I did a live ISDN show in Glasgow. I really don’t think people knew what the hell I was doing to be quite honest. But I had the video screen up, we had the video, we had Doug Wimbish from Living Colour, Skip McDonald from Tackhead and the heavy duty lads playing live in London."
What about the relationship between the audience and the performer? Is that not lacking a bit?
"Well, you see, what I did was to compensate for that. I stuck a mike up in the room and I stuck a mike up in Glasgow so the, the audience could shout along and, shout things to the bass player or the drummer and they could respond to it, which is really the whole point of communication doing a live gig. If the audience were just sitting and watching a screen and listening to incoming sound, and they weren’t actually able to participate, but if they whistled and they clapped and they shouted something for Keith LeBlanc, he'd lifted his drumstick and he waved it at them and he played something.
"It allowed that contact element that maybe might not have been there unless I’d done that. But I was aware of that and I thought, "Well, they’re just going to think they’re watching a tape. How are they going to know it’s live?", I mean one bloke was heckling away there and he was adamant about it, you know. And Doug just turned round and said, "What the hell’s wrong with you man. Sit doon!" You know. Well, he’s American but he said it in those terms and the guy was just sort of dumbfounded that he could see them in the club in Glasgow and was telling them to sit down!
So no, the potential of it is amazing and I’m glad I’ve done it."
(Re-edited extracts from an interview originally transcribed in the Scottish Borders Memory Bank)
The proudly-Scottish singer and songwriter, renowned for his fondness for traditional battle-dress, discusses his 1995 ISDN "Compression" album with Wendy E. Ball, recorded during his time of collaboration with Adrian Sherwood:
"How the idea started was that, coming from the Borders [***Ed.: ...of Scotland, specifically St. Boswells...***] and then going away and living abroad in the States for many years, I always wanted to come back, have a family and live here again. But I was concerned that there wasn’t a music industry in Scotland and I was hoping, twelve years ago, that there was at least the start. So I thought I'd come back having timed it right. Just shows you how wrong I was!
"So I had to figure away and was thinking, "How do I still hook up with my friends who were thousands of miles away?" I’d heard a story from a friend of mine, who was an engineer in New York, that Capitol Records in LA were doing a recording with Frank Sinatra in his house and he was having guest artists coming in through the telephone line. So I thought I’d find out more about it. I was really desperate to make this album with my friends before they all dispersed all over the place.
"I hadn’t the money to go back out and live there for six months to do it and I couldn’t get a record company to pay for it so I contacted BT [***Ed.: ...a big phone company in the UK...***] and I found a really good bloke called Ray Pritchard who was into my music and stuff. He said that they were trying to launch ISDN in 1992-3. I said to him "Look, I’ll make you a deal. You install the ISDN lines here and I’ll give you my music to promote so that you can show off what it’s capable of doing." That’s really how it came about."
So when did this, this come out?
"1995. It took about a year. The whole ISDN system was just up and running and so, for instance, we did the first [link] through to Africa and rhino and all sorts of things would run over the lines and they'd be out! So there were things that were kind of difficult to get back on line quickly. You know, until some, some wee lad goes out there with a pair of wire clippers and puts it back together again, you know? So, eventually I managed to install ISDN lines in a studio which I’d used in America called ‘House of Music’ in Orange, New Jersey. That’s the home of the P-Funk - the funkadelic lot of the top black musicians that inspired Prince and all that other stuff. They were my pals there and so it was easy for them to come in and do some stuff."
Would it not need a lot of logistical organisation, you know, when it’s sort of midnight in New York?
"I had a huge phone bill to begin with. Now ISDN is a penny a minute or something and it’s really cheap, you know. At the time it was quite expensive. It was like, a pound a minute and we were on-line for eight hours sometimes! They [BT] paid for that just 'til we got to the stage where we'd got the recordings done. After that, then I had to try and finance the thing myself.
"It was interesting to say the least that, you know, I could sing Umhlaba Jikelele with someone in Africa and they were singing with me. I also organised this live television shoot with ISDN as well, so that I had a TV monitor here and I had a cameraman running out with the long cable that went about fifty metres back to the studio. They had a PA out in the streets, and I was speaking in real time, telling him the shots I wanted and telling the girls to sing, when to come in on the beat and stuff. This was amazing. There was a real friendliness about the thing and that’s what really pleased me - because then I realised the potential of that and especially sound quality ... you could hear everything so clearly."
Has it been repeated, the experience?
"There was this group Future Sound Of London. They got a lot of glory for it but we were actually first because I put the ISDN lines into On-U Sound. On-U Sound with Adrian Sherwood was doing the big dub. They did a lot of reggae and they were a purist kind of dub funk lot that had a lot of respect in the industry but weren’t, like, the big commercial end of things. Future Sound Of London after we had done it brought out a record that they had done through ISDN but not to the extent we had."
You were talking about the track Braveheart?
"Yeh, Braveheart. I did a live ISDN show in Glasgow. I really don’t think people knew what the hell I was doing to be quite honest. But I had the video screen up, we had the video, we had Doug Wimbish from Living Colour, Skip McDonald from Tackhead and the heavy duty lads playing live in London."
What about the relationship between the audience and the performer? Is that not lacking a bit?
"Well, you see, what I did was to compensate for that. I stuck a mike up in the room and I stuck a mike up in Glasgow so the, the audience could shout along and, shout things to the bass player or the drummer and they could respond to it, which is really the whole point of communication doing a live gig. If the audience were just sitting and watching a screen and listening to incoming sound, and they weren’t actually able to participate, but if they whistled and they clapped and they shouted something for Keith LeBlanc, he'd lifted his drumstick and he waved it at them and he played something.
"It allowed that contact element that maybe might not have been there unless I’d done that. But I was aware of that and I thought, "Well, they’re just going to think they’re watching a tape. How are they going to know it’s live?", I mean one bloke was heckling away there and he was adamant about it, you know. And Doug just turned round and said, "What the hell’s wrong with you man. Sit doon!" You know. Well, he’s American but he said it in those terms and the guy was just sort of dumbfounded that he could see them in the club in Glasgow and was telling them to sit down!
So no, the potential of it is amazing and I’m glad I’ve done it."
(Re-edited extracts from an interview originally transcribed in the Scottish Borders Memory Bank)
Tuesday 30 December 2008
Plans for Chris Carter's 'Gristleizer'
The other day 'BoingBoing' posted this.TG becoming hip? (Again?)
Whatever next? Genesis as Christine Aguilera?
Back to the source my friends.
There is the Gristleizer.
Here is a synth.
Whatever you could possibly want to fuck up sound.
Just click whatever you fancy in the left hand column and get the instructions of how to build it.
More here in case you missed it.
More noisetoize here (as used by Nels Cline from Wilco.)
Monday 29 December 2008
Occupation 101
A thought-provoking and powerful documentary film on the current and historical root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike any other film ever produced on the conflict -- 'Occupation 101' presents a comprehensive analysis of the facts and hidden truths surrounding the never ending controversy and dispels many of its long-perceived myths and misconceptions.
The film also details life under Israeli military rule, the role of the United States in the conflict, and the major obstacles that stand in the way of a lasting and viable peace. The roots of the conflict are explained through first-hand on-the-ground experiences from leading Middle East scholars, peace activists, journalists, religious leaders and humanitarian workers whose voices have too often been suppressed in American media outlets.
The film covers a wide range of topics -- which include -- the first wave of Jewish immigration from Europe in the 1880's, the 1920 tensions, the 1948 war, the 1967 war, the first Intifada of 1987, the Oslo Peace Process, Settlement expansion, the role of the United States Government, the second Intifada of 2000, the separation barrier and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as well as many heart wrenching testimonials from victims of this tragedy.
The film also details life under Israeli military rule, the role of the United States in the conflict, and the major obstacles that stand in the way of a lasting and viable peace. The roots of the conflict are explained through first-hand on-the-ground experiences from leading Middle East scholars, peace activists, journalists, religious leaders and humanitarian workers whose voices have too often been suppressed in American media outlets.
The film covers a wide range of topics -- which include -- the first wave of Jewish immigration from Europe in the 1880's, the 1920 tensions, the 1948 war, the 1967 war, the first Intifada of 1987, the Oslo Peace Process, Settlement expansion, the role of the United States Government, the second Intifada of 2000, the separation barrier and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as well as many heart wrenching testimonials from victims of this tragedy.
Part1
Part2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
part 8
part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
part 8
part 9
Part 10
Part 11
ENOUGH ALREADY!
The 'Exile' book of the year award goes to...
This novel by Willy Vlautin also initially contained the soundtrack of the year too and features illustrations by the very wonderful Nate Beaty.A good little TV segment from Ireland about his first novel 'The Motel Life' here and just read that 'Northline' has been optioned for a film.
Alt country style & design
New issue of this wonderful online magazine is now availablehere.
102 pages includes an interview with the very wonderful Richmond Fontaine.
(Read the Richmond Fontaine article here.)
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