Wednesday 14 October 2015
Tuesday 13 October 2015
J.G. Ballard: The Concordance
Ballard has always experimented with the form of his fictions; fiction as book index, as questionnaire, as psychiatric report. This concordance of Ballard's works is part of a project to 'decode' the work using some of Ballard's own techniques — as he says:
'...the open-ended character of my fiction requires the reader himself to make a significant contribution. I'm offering a kit with which the reader, using my books as a sort of instructional manual (fit nozzle A into socket B, and you'll hear a loud whirring noise, which is the cosmos getting through to him).'The concordance is based on all the material in Ballard's published novels, his non-fiction works; A User's Guide to the Millennium and his autobiography Miracles of Life. Also included is all the material in the one-volume Complete Short Stories (Flamingo 2001), the stories from The Atrocity Exhibition (Re/Search 1990), and various uncollected pieces, such as Neil Armstrong Remembers His Journey to the Moon
HERE
Monday 12 October 2015
You've Got A Friend: The Carole King Story
Documentary telling, in her own words, the story of Carole King's upbringing in Brooklyn and the subsequent success that she had as half of husband-and-wife songwriting team Goffin and King for Aldon Music on Broadway.
It was during this era in the early 1960s that they created a string of pop hits such as Take Good Care of My Baby for Bobby Vee, The Locomotion for Little Eva and Will You Love Me Tomorrow for the Shirelles, which became the first number one hit by a black American girl group. They also wrote the era-defining Up on the Roof for the Drifters and the magnificent Natural Woman for Aretha Franklin.
By 1970, Carole was divorced from songwriting partner Gerry Goffin and had moved to Los Angeles. It was here that she created her classic solo album Tapestry, packed with delightful tunes but also, for the first time, her own lyrics, very much sung from the heart. The album included It's Too Late, I Feel the Earth Move and You've Got a Friend and held the record for the most weeks at number one for nearly 20 years. It became a trusted part of everyone's record collection and has sold over 25 million copies to date.
The film features some wonderful unseen material and home movies, and narrates her life as an acclaimed singer-songwriter. To date, more than 400 of her compositions have been recorded by over 1,000 artists, resulting in 100 hit singles.
More recently, Carole was the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Gershwin Prize for Popular Song by the Library of Congress for her songwriting in 2013, and the 2014 Broadway production Beautiful (which tells her life story during the Goffin and King era) has received rave reviews.
Nowadays Carole King would see herself as an environmental activist as much as a songwriter, and she is to be found constantly lobbying congress in defence of the wildlife and ecosystems of her beloved Idaho.
Steve Mackay R.I.P.
Steve was a classic '60s American guy, full of generosity and love for anyone he met. Every time he put his sax to his lips and honked, he lightened my road and brightened the whole world. He was a credit to his group and his generation. To know him was to love him.- Iggy Pop
Sunday 11 October 2015
The Genius of Bert Jansch: Folk, Blues and Beyond
An effortlessly cool singer-songwriter and virtuoso guitarist, Bert Jansch came to prominence in the folk clubs of the mid-1960s. Jansch galvanized a whole scene, through his solo work, as a duo with John Renbourn and with his folk-jazz supergroup Pentangle. Neil Young called him the Jimi Hendrix of the acoustic guitar, Led Zeppelin and Paul Simon were weaned on him and younger generation musicians including Beth Orton and Johnny Marr beat a path to his door. Bert Jansch's influence reached far and wide.
Interviews and rare archive footage weave together performances from a landmark multi-artist concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London as Ralph McTell, Robert Plant, Donovan, members of Pentangle, Bernard Butler, Martin Carthy, Martin Simpson, Lisa Knapp and more pay tribute to Jansch, who died in 2011. The concert's stage set recalls the legendary Les Cousins club in London's Soho, where he was a resident artist, and the Royal Festival Hall itself was the venue for Pentangle's first and final major gigs.
Robert Plant shows his vocal prowess with a powerful rendition of Go Your Way My Love, joined by Jansch collaborator Bernard Butler. Martin Simpson and Danny Thompson surprise with a version of Heartbreak Hotel, a track covered by Jansch. Ralph McTell tackles the seminal Angie and Lisa Knapp and Martin Carthy combine for Blackwaterside - Jansch's arrangement of which heavily influenced Led Zep's Black Mountain Side. There's also a real coup with an extraordinary performance by Neil Young of Jansch's haunting Needle of Death, filmed at Jack White's Nashville studio especially for the occasion
The Flaming Lips and Deerhoof - 21st Century Schizoid Man (Lawrence, KS 22/6/12)
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The Flaming Lips & Cat Power- War Pigs
The Flaming Lips are the first act announced for MONA's 2016 Mofo
Ry Cooder - Live The Old Grey Whistle Test(1977)
1. Tattler
2. The Dark End of the Street
3. Jesus On The Mainline
4. Do Re Mi
5. Goodnight Irene
6. He'll Have To Go
7. Smack Dab In The Middle
Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Volumes (1979-2015)
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On Thin Ice: Inuit Way of Life Vanishing in Arctic
The way it was
Awkward
Saturday 10 October 2015
RESPECT
I am a responsible gun owner.- Steve Elliott
I bought my first gun when I was 12. It was a Browning 12-gauge shotgun, and I saved money from my paper route and cleaning a drive-in restaurant to buy it in time for dove season. In the years before I could legally drive, I’d tie the Browning across the handlebars of my bike and ride to the fields outside town to hunt.
I’ve owned several guns since, and own a handgun now. I bought that gun to keep my family safe, and lock it up to keep them safe from it. Like I said, responsible.
And so while I’d like to believe I’m not part and party to the gun violence that stains America, I can’t. My grandmother shot and killed herself with a gun, and a few years ago my father shot and didn’t quite kill himself with one. My stepbrother died in a murder-suicide with a gun, and the husband of one of my sister’s co-workers was killed in a mass shooting.
None of that happened with my gun, of course, but after every new mass shooting, I’m reminded that I bear a portion of the responsibility for our nation’s gun violence. There are too many guns to do anything about it, the gun lobby says. Regulations are a slippery slope that only limit the rights of responsible gun owners, they say.
My gun is being used to argue against common-sense laws and policies that could reduce gun violence in America, arguments I find unconscionable. That’s what being a responsible gun owner means today – I’m responsible. I’ve been uneasy about that for a while now, and ashamed to admit it’s taken two more mass shootings for me to do anything about it.
That ended today. Today I disassembled my handgun, a 9mm Ruger, clamped the pieces in a vice and cut them in half with an angle grinder. I’m sending the proper paperwork into the state to report it destroyed.
None of us individually can stop gun violence in America, but as a responsible gun owner, I will no longer be used as a justification for doing nothing about it. Today I did what I could. Today there is #ONELESSGUN
William S. Burroughs: Photo-Collages (Mexico, Tangier, Paris, etc 1954/61)
"The photo collage is a way to travel that must be used with skill and precision if we are to arrive [...] The collage as a flexible hieroglyph language of juxtapostion: A collage makes a statement."
Details
Friday 9 October 2015
The Widdershins (Journey on James)
The first time I caught The Widdershins must have been early 87 when they played at the Baden Powell in Vic Parade which was my first job out here behind the bar and I missed their soundcheck but started work as they were having their meal and then got talking with James and Juliet and had a great chat about nothing and everything and then I heard their set. Oh man they were fucking beautiful. Juliet's voice of course grabbed me. I remember asking who were her influences and she pointed to her cig and said that and Stevie Nicks but it was James's guitar that really stood out for me. I remember taking an old London friend of mine to a gig they did at The Club in Smith St and telling him before to really make a point of listening to James's guitar lines...and well Nag and myself had been in London before and seen some of THE great bands of the punk/post punk time and yeah he agreed that James had that something that elevated him above a lot of other musos. But when all is said and done I will just remember him as being an exceptionally nice human being that I would catch up with from time to time over the next 30 years. A SAD loss to obviously those that loved him but to us as well
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