Sunday 26 June 2011

That's the end of his career then eh?

Prince to 'Hold Off on Recording' Until Piracy Is Controlled

Swing for the Fences

The Real Facts About America's 'Oxy Epidemic'

Smoking # 100

Brandon Witzel

Steve Earle: Renaissance man

Steve Earle - This City

Origin of Song: Gil Scott-Heron’s Revolution of the Mind

In 1970, Gil Scott-Heron was barely 21 when his first novel, The Vulture, was published and his startling, spoken-word record, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, caught his incisive cool on tape. “I consider myself neither poet, composer, or musician. These are merely tools used by sensitive men to carve out a piece of beauty or truth that they hope may lead to peace and salvation,” he wrote in the album’s liner notes. Accompanied only by conga drums and percussion, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox featured a reading of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, Scott-Heron’s most enduring work and an early masterpiece with words no less potent today than they were when Marshall McLuhan’s “cool medium” was still a relative baby.

“The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In four parts without commercial interruptions.”

Excoriating the media and marketing, the song’s structure burrowed its way into the collective conscious of musicians—both mainstream and underground—and listeners alike; it is referenced throughout music, and rather un-ironically the title phrase has been repurposed to advertise consumer goods, from sneakers to television itself. The piece is also, of course, foundational to hip-hop, its words potent and direct, even if some of the allusions and references may be lost on those uneducated in ‘60s or ‘70s culture. It also sounds great, which explains why musically it’s a standard-bearer for everything from politicized and sexy neo-soul with funk grooves to jazz. Yet pulsing throughout the piece is Scott-Heron’s projection, similar to the theories of McLuhan and scientists like Tesla who foreshadowed the actual facts of global connectivity as well as the pacifying effect on the brain from viewing from a small screen. Heron was channeling his times while bringing a word to the wise:

“The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal…
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised.”

We’re heard via media channels that the revolution will be “digitized,” the revolution will be “synthesized,” but so far, the revolution has not been “organized.” One ill-fated ad campaign suggested the revolution will be televised. But Scott-Heron was well ahead of the ball when he posited a necessary parsing of media-generated “reality” from truth and set his poem to music on his 1971 album, Pieces of a Man. With that release, Scott-Heron was caught in the chasm between jazz and soul, poetry and rock, and few knew just what to do with the new poet and big bass voice on the scene, though time would reveal his impact, as he would later weigh in on matters environmental and racial, as well as political and social. Though often his was a cry in wilderness, it served as a clarion for future generations of conscious voices...

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Denise Sullivan @'Crawdaddy'

Do you feel that you have been cheated? A rant at U2 live at ‘Glasto’

'ohnoit'sbon(g)o' yesterday

Do you ever feel you have been cheated?
There will be a mighty roar when the dark prince Bono takes to the Glastonbury stage this evening- like a choreographered rally thankfully punctuated by the UK UNCUT protestors waving the placards of doom at the showbiz monolith U2 winning the war in the law of averages.
We will stand there, dumbfounded, soaked in Bono’s vile sweat as the clown prince of Jesus Rock stalks onto the stage in his midget heels, with his God hard on and back pocket stuffed with business cards from the Bush family and I will be left wondering just where it all went wrong, knowing that the Wombles are not only sexier but more rock n roll than his band.
Somehow, as a rancid schoolboy, I was conned by the great froth mouthed, amphetamined sex beast known as punk rock into believing that I was going to be part of some sort of stink breathed, gakk infested, terror monkey stukka diving assault onto the vile and badly haired pop mainstream.
For a few brief months I took the beatings on behalf of the skinny trousered punk rock uberlords as I stalked the beer washed streets of my windswept hometown of Blackpool where anti punk violence was an Aperitif before the main course of lard soaked fish and chips.
It was worth it because I felt like I was on the barricades for some sort of revolution collecting bruises was all part of the punk rock experience as much as collecting seven inch singles.
Imagine my shock and disappointment when I realised that all this was for nowt. And that all we were doing was paving the highway for the likes of U2 to launch into their huge international taking the piss philanthropist carrier by bolting together the genius guitar of John McGeogh (god bless his brilliant soul) the bass lines of Lord Peter Hook and the Combat rock chic of our beloved Clash.
They then worked hard and grinned like Christians in an orgy and became the biggest band in the world that no-one really loved.
It all felt very wrong but the Americans made them superstars and their admittedly okey dokey songs sold out the stadiums that superior bands would not even be allowed to piss on.
This all came rushing back to me when I heard that the band were to be playing Glastonbury and that somewhere in the middle of all that mud and expensive Wellington boots there would be the most hideous shrieking since Sting was told that he was not an ‘interlektual’.
The thought that Bongo and his cloth eared Afrika corpse corps would be stukka diving Glass Stoned Bury and entertaining the backstage great unwashed micro celebs who would be leaving their expensive portacabins that are larger and more comfortable than your flat for a glimpse of the pint sized messiah was too much to bear. The micro celebs and their jolly hockey sticks good friends the Eton Rifle Tories will be glorying at the side of the stage, dancing like accountants at a Christmas party whilst on their mobile phones as the band launch into their ill gotten booty of hits whilst I unleash my lunatic fringe and spray-paint the computer screen with spittle and furious words in a spray gun of molten word jism of AK! AK! AK! AK47 adjectives that somehow fail to capture my dissolution with my utterly wasted youth as I realise with a sickening curse that…
U2 made punk rock a waste of fucking time...
John Robb @'Louder Than War'
hmmm...

Photo
I SO hope that is spit...
and why oh why did NATO not authorise a humanitarian bombing sorty that cld have got rid of Coldplay at the same time?