Death from Above 1979: Black History Month

That Mitchell and Webb Look/Dead Kennedys: Kill the Poor

We need them for all the things that we don't fancy.

Aren't you thinking of immigrants ?

Super Bowl XLIX

This coming Sunday, half of North America will celebrate the cultural phenomenon known as the Super Bowl.  In which, several hours will be expended in observing the playing of a game officially sixty minutes long.  A glorious modern-day bloodsport going by the name of 'football', involving as it does, the movement of a non-ball-shaped object more closely resembling a pointy egg up and down the field by hand.  A game in which massive steroidal armoured men will intersperse periods of incredible tedium standing about doing nothing with slamming into one another at great velocity, and competing to see who can give the other the greatest muscular and spinal injury, and quite possibly brain damage.

There will be a lengthy halftime show involving various overpaid A-list MOR artists, and there will be lots and lots and lots of commercial advertising.  People will watch the advertising...voluntarily.  They have been waiting for it in eager anticipation and speculation.  For many, it is more exciting than the game itself (cough).  There will be much consumption of beer and nachos.  A few audience-members will no doubt accidentally shoot one another, this being America.  And at the end of the day, after all the cheerleading and fireworks, someone will win the actual game, such as it is.  Will it be the New England Patriots, most recently infamous for the terrible sordid horrible no-good affair of 'Deflategate' (gasp), or will it be the Seattle Seahawks, with their oh-so-cleverly named '12th Man' supporters and their penchant for attempting to destroy one another's eardrums and inflict permanent loss of hearing ?

Anyway...

Kirsty MacColl: Us Amazonians

Can it really be fifteen years since Kirsty MacColl was killed/murdered ?  I couldn't believe the numbers when I looked, but it seems to be so.  So many societies drift along without justice ever done.  Presumably it was an accident, of some sort, but with the plutocratic default of our system, one can't but suspect the worse.  I had originally assumed a blameless but horrific accident, from the event, and the more I read, the less I want to know.

Still, I somewhat envy Kirsty and those of a similar generation, for having an optimism and a hope that has never seemed rational in my generation (whatever keeps the millennials going I'll never know).  How much of that is the one or the other, or something else entirely I could hardly say, though not having known her of course myself, Kirsty always seemed to me one of the blazing bright lights of humanity, and a credit to her generation.  I want to believe in the Kirsty's of this world.  They inspire, they encourage, they give hope.  They take on the world, take on racism and misogyny and their ilk, and tell whoever gets in their way to go fuck themselves.  And then, some rich privileged asshole comes along and runs them over in a speedboat...and gets away with it.

One thing I could say is, that although she grew older, Kirsty never got old...never dull...never lost her edge...never lost her passion.  And she went out in her prime...as a confident mature woman, and as an unshakeable talent.  Hers is one fire that'll never fade.

Blondfire: Where The Kids Are

Oh God, help us all...


Millennials Will Overtake Baby Boomers to Become America’s Biggest Generation

There’s a lot of them: 75 million total, in fact.

Millennials, or individuals born between 1981 and 1997, are set to become the most populous generation in the U.S. this year, eclipsing the baby boomer generation, according to newly-released data from the U.S. Census Bureau cited in a Pew Research Center report.

Baby boomers, or those born from 1946 to 1964, will drop into second place and then third place by 2028, when Generation X (those born between 1965 to 1980) will beat out baby boomers.

The 74.9 million people born as a result of a post-World War II population boom — hence the name baby boomers — are seeing their numbers decline through increasing mortality rates, while millennials are seeing an upsurge in their population from immigration, the Pew findings show.

Traffic: The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys

Why...Why can't I escape this song ?  I never even liked Steve Fucking Winwood...and I never got fucking Traffic...

The Buzzcocks: Autonomy

Fuck the Clash, the Pistols, and all the rest of those southern cunts.  Fuck Jupitus while we're at it.  Toby was taking the piss.

Saint Pepsi: Mr. Wonderful

Need something with a more positive vibe for this super-duper post-democratic hyper-capitalistic consumer-enabled age.  Yah, thad'll do i'.

Iron Maiden: Two Minutes to Midnight

Going for the obvious as usual...

Doomsday Clock at 3 minutes to midnight due to 

global warming and rising nuclear tensions

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) has announced that the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock will be adjusted from five to three minutes to midnight, and that urgent action is required to prevent an imminent global catastrophe.

In particular, the BAS cited the continued global nuclear weapons modernisation, halting of nuclear reduction and unchecked climate change as key reasons why the clock has been moved forward.

The BAS' Science and Security Board said in a statement: "In 2015, with the Clock hand moved forward to three minutes to midnight, the board feels compelled to add, with a sense of great urgency: 'The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon.'"

The BAS is a group of international scientists, which includes 18 Nobel laureates.

"The world will be between 3-8 degrees Celsius warmer by the end of the century. Global emissions rates are now 50% higher than in 1990," Richard Somerville, a member of the BAS' Science and Security Board and a distinguished professor emeritus at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, said at the press conference.

"Efforts at reducing global emissions of heat-trapping gases have so far been entirely insufficient to prevent unacceptable climate disruption.

"Unless much greater emissions reductions occur very soon, the countries of the world will have emitted enough carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by the end of this century to profoundly transform the Earth's climate."

All I'll say is this: I'm ashamed of my generation, and I'm ashamed of the assholes who came before, and those of their generations still in power who are willfully raping the future of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren for their own selfish short-term gain. And I have little reason to hold out any hope whatsoever for the so-called millenials. Who could say when we're gone, that our species didn't deserve it ? And we laugh at the fucking dinosaurs !

Amy Winehouse: Me & Mr. Jones

Before we get too dark...the late, ill-starred Amy Winehouse.  What kind of fuckery is this ?  Could serve as such a general-purpose statement on our times in this here shitty 21st century.

Betty Driver: The World Will Sing Again/Anne Kirkbride, RIP

Odd that this song should come up in the shuffle just a couple days after we lost another Corrie veteran in Anne Kirkbride (Deirdre).  Betty lived what we'd consider a long full life by today's standards; Anne at sixty, many of us would consider far too young.  Still, every extinguished flame is a loss, and both will be missed long to come.

Coronation Street actress Anne Kirkbride in 1983

Buran: The Soviet Space Shuttle

A fact rarely remembered, but, in the dying days of the Soviet Union, the USSR had and launched at least one successful test flight of its own space shuttle: The Buran.  A craft that oh so coincidentally seemed almost an exact twin of NASA's shuttles, just as NASA's earliest orbital rockets happened to be the not so subtle twins of the V-rockets that rained down on Britain from the Third Reich, and just as China's latest stealth planes just so happen to look like carbon-copy clones of their American counterparts.  What comes around and all that.

No idea who originally put together the videos herein, but the soundtrack is suggestive of the perspective behind it.  And who indeed knows what might have been had we ended up ruled by a different despotic overlord rather than the one that happened to win out in our modern day Game of Thrones ?  Most born today presumably will scarce be able to countenance the possibility of the (first ?) Cold War having gone differently, just as we can't easily conceive of different outcomes for the (first two ?) so-called World Wars and the various (American, French, Russian, some other countries we don't really care about) revolutions of the past few centuries.  Always healthy to gain what little perspective one can with a taste, however fanciful, of what might have been.

Oh, and say what you will of the US Shuttles, the fact that the US in grounding them willingly placed itself in almost total dependence upon Putin's Russia at a time of growing tensions, even prior to the Ukrainian provocations (by which I mean, the expansionary and de-stabilising activities of the EU & NATO, lest I be misunderstood), is indeed almost funny.  Almost, were it not for the fact of us continuing to be eager to pretend that the threats of nuclear war have somehow vanished with the end of the cold war, when in fact nothing of the sort is or ever was remotely the case, and when the actual threat of global nuclear annihilation is probably as great today as it was in the time of our grandparents.  Of course the planet may well boil if we carry on burning fossil fuels at the current rate, possibly before we get the chance to blow ourselves up, so it may be a moot point.  Stupid fucking humans !

Lest we should end on a lite note. Bauhaus: Silent Hedges

And now for something completely different.  Cos'.

The Bar-Kays: Soul Finger/Spies Like Us

The threat of impending apocalypse in the eighties was so hilarious...

Pulp: She's a Lady

Best played at max. volume, doing apx. 80 mph with the windows open.

Arcade Fire: Ready to Start

Doubt that Arcade Fire will ever put out a better album, but I'd love to see them prove me wrong.

Mission of Burma: That's When I Reach for my Revolver

Rich Hall's The Dirty South

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_G2VOBKXxM

In which the cinematic and literary history of the American South is recounted and skewered by the inimitable Rich Hall.


Rich on musical bio-pics (from 43'23):

Southern music was a shadowland of honkytonk hell and rockabilly heaven: Drugs, murder, alcohol, miscegenation, and illumination. And Hollywood would repeatedly and always belatedly try to capture this demonology.
.....
The one and only Hank Williams. If Hank Williams is a one-and-only kinda guy, then why is someone else pretending to be him? Of all the shitty things that Hollywood does to sell films, the absolute shittiest, is when they try to crank out some musical bio-pic. A musical bio-pic exploits the details of an artist's life, and pigeonholes 'em, homogenizes them, and in the end, just lies about it. Patsy Cline died in a plane crash near Camden, Tennessee, eighty miles west of Nashville. And yet in the bio-pic of her life, Sweet Dreams, the producers decide to have her plane crash out in the American desert in the southwest.
The screenwriters of a bio-pic are forced to attribute character changes to specific events in that artist's life. That's not how life happens! Ray Charles becomes a heroin addict in the film Ray because his brother died, when in fact, Ray Charles became a heroin addict because he kept shootin' fuckin' heroin into his arm! It's reductive lies. It's reductive emotions. It's reductive  talent. People do not listen to the music of Johnny Cash for any other reason than that it allows them to tap into a greater depth of emotion. Watching Joaquin Phoenix pretend to be Johnny Cash is about as goddamm illuminating as if Johnny Cash had stopped a concert midsong, and started doin' scenes from Gladiator.
But wait a minute Rich, wait just a cotton-pickin' minute. That's what you're sayin': Didn't Joaquin Phoenix get an Academy Award nomination for playing Johnny Cash, and...and didn't Jamie Foxx win an Academy Award for bein' Ray Charles?  Well, yes they did. What that means is that Jamie Foxx did a slightly better job of raping Ray Charles' corpse than Joaquin Phoenix did of raping Johnny Cash's corpse.
Actors don't portray musicians out of some sense of honor or admiration.  They do it because it's Oscar-bait. But Rich...you're sayin', what if it turns that person on to their music? If you do not have the innate ability to seek out someone's music on your own, and you have to wait for Hollywood to do it for you, then you are some sort of hillside grazer of culture. You're a sheep, a cow, what is biologically classified as...a ruminant...Fuck you!

Not available for purchase as far as I can tell.  Which is a shame.

The Grateful Dead: Eyes of the World

Okay, some palate cleanser then.  If you don't like at least a little Dead, you may not be human...

Kentucky AFC: Be Nesa

Wanted to post the Kentucky AFC cover of Gorkys' awesome Iechyd Da, but apparently it's not on YouTube (have to learn to post there myself).  But this ear-cleanser'll do for now.

Paid downloads from the LP available at http://www.amazon.com/Kentucky-AFC-Afc/dp/B000T37KWE, though you'll have to look elsewhere for possibly their best English-language track, Outlaw.  Gonna gun the sucker down...  Wait, Not Available, WTF ?  The expense of re-printing CD's I get, but this is digital downloads of tracks from an album released in the last decade.  Fuck.

I won't tell you to download shit illegally, but does this industry ever suck ?  If you can support the band-members in any more recent projects please do, and there is always http://www.sadwrn.com/eng/ for new Welsh music.  Highly recommended.

The Psychedelic Bolero: Jefferson Airplane: White Rabbit

Yidcore: Yerushaliyim Shel Zahav/Dayenu

So why didn't Yidcore ever catch on exactly ?  Seems a perfect pairing to me.

Culprit One: Parting Shot

How the hell is this guy not an international superstar by now ?

Bis: The End Starts Today

Not even the best moment in the history of what was initially seen/and sadly still remembered as a novelty-indie-pop band:

The Cars: Candy-O

Left off from the US Greatest Hits Release.  Gee, I wonder why...

Killing Joke: The Wait

Bent: Swollen

Think I may actually have Michael Caine of all people to thank for my awareness of this track.....

Washed Out: Feel it all around

Ofra Haza: I'm nin'alu

Posted without comment.

Bis: A Portrait from Space

Another very promising band that never got their due respect, and were never taken seriously, in their case having established themselves early on with the gimmicky generational references and the cringe-worthy label 'sweet-shop-avengers'.  In another reality, bis would have been modern-day rock gods...

Sleater-Kinney: You're No Rock N' Roll Fun

One of the finest bands ever to emerge out of the northwest.  Carrie obviously better known these days for Portlandia, but fuck, this trio originally out of Olympia rocked in their heyday.  Much missed.

Th' Faith Healers: Reptile Smile

Another disc (EP versus LP) that calls out for listening as a whole, but still has its highlights.

We've been in this town so long we may as well be dead (Belle and Sebastian: We are the Sleepyheads)

Belle and Sebastian's output had been sliding on autopilot for a number of years before their triumphant return in The Life Pursuit in 2006, and We Are the Sleepyheads is arguably the highlight of the album.

Think of the Children

So some paparazzo takes (very boring) pictures of Paul Weller and his teenage daughter out shopping in LA with Weller's twin babies in a pushchair or stroller.  So the Daily Mail publishes some of these pictures, misidentifying Weller's daughter as his wife.  The Weller family sues the Daily Mail, wins damages, and now Weller's wife is pushing for a law in Britain criminalising the publication of non-pixelated potentially recognisable pictures of childrens' faces without their parents' consent.  Common-sense measure to protect children or slippery slope ?

Personally I think it's rather pathetic that there's a market for such pictures in the first place, and the world would be a much better place without paparazzi scum harassing and stalking individuals who happen to be celebrities or friends and relatives of the same.  But must we really legislate everything to this degree ?  Would the measure apply only to newspapers ?  What about street photography ?  And why, if we're going down this road, shouldn't adults be entitled to the same protections ?

In a sane world, surely we'd agree that publications that engage in or encourage this type of activity should be shunned, and that would be that.  But ooh, look...they got pictures of Brangelina at the beach, ooh look at that actress without makeup, doesn't she look old !  Oh look, evidence of space aliens in Hitler's bunker.  I'll just add that to my basket at the checkout and have a nice read later over tea.

Julee Cruise: Falling

Possibly the key intersection between David Lynch as cult film-maker and Lynch as national icon.  Here as in Mulholland Drive, Badalamenti's musical influence makes all the difference.

And I said let me let you let me down again...and she said no. (Hefner: When Angels Play their Drum Machines)

Replacements: Bastards of Young

Possibly the only video on Bizarro MTV that Beavis ever actually recommended to Butthead.  Truth is they mostly all rocked.

Turned over a new leaf, then tore right through it. Pet Shop Boys: It's a Sin

Update: Fuckers don't want you watching the video, because...well, because they're fuckers apparently.

Pet Shop Boys - It's a Sin (1987) by darkub

Of all the things to block...motherfuckers...

For every thing I long to do...has one thing in common to...At school they taught me how to be...so pure in thought, and word and deed; They didn't quite succeed.

Message read loud and clear, motherfuckers.

Siouxsie and the Banshees: Israel

The incredible thing is, Sue & Steve Severin, started out literally as groupies of the Sex Pistols, in the same company in the Bromley Contingent as the likes of Sid Vicious & Billy Idol, and in Susan's case, certainly best known for their role in the onscreen downfall of Bill Grundy. And within a few short years, they were producing the likes of this.

Massive Attack: Lately

Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream (Animals, 1977)

If I had to pick one album by Pink Floyd as my favourite, Animals would probably be it. It's certainly in the top three with Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall.  This is Pink Floyd ten years

on from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, a Pink Floyd that had stumbled a little with uneven albums such as Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother, only to find themselves ever more popular and famous with the release of The Dark Side of the Moon, and having subsequently to live in its shadow.  This is also Floyd in the age of Punk, a band probably eager to prove their relevance with a new more electronic sound and lyrics that reflected the political and social realities of the time.  This is the Pink Floyd that would crash out two years later with The Wall, a double disc epic that ended the Roger Waters era of Pink Floyd on a high much as The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway did for the Peter Gabriel era of Genesis.

Whilst much of Floyd's more ah-hippieish work hasn't dated all that well, the darker, more reflective, and the more politically incisive songs have stood the test of time quite well.  Thinking Welcome to the Machine here, Time, Money, and the like.  And this album has those same sort of attributes condensed into a perfect whole, one that really should be listened to in a single hearing.  It slows and builds up again with the (most played by radio) track Pigs (Three Different Ones), only to reach a crescendo in the manic and lyrically cutting Sheep:

Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away
Only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air

You better watch out

There may be dogs about

I've looked over Jordan, and I have seen

Things are not what they seem

What do you get for pretending the danger's not real ?

Meek and obedient you follow the leader

Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel

What a surprise !

A look of terminal shock in your eyes

Now things are really what they seem

No, this is no bad dream

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want

He makes me down to lie

Through pastures green He leadeth me the silent waters by

With bright knives He releaseth my soul

He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places

He converteth me to lamb cutlets

For lo, He hath great power, and great hunger

When cometh the day we lowly ones

Through quiet reflection, and great dedication

Master the art of karate

Lo, we shall rise up

And then we'll make the bugger's eyes water

Bleating and babbling we fell on his neck with a scream

Wave upon wave of demented avengers

March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream

Have you heard the news ?

The dogs are dead !

You better stay home and do as you're told

Get out of the road if you want to grow old

-- Roger Waters

The metaphor in the album of people as Pigs, Dogs, or Sheep, loosely inspired by Animal Farm is a simple one, but one that resonates to this day, as a minority of us amass ever more obscene levels of wealth and power, the Dogs of the world fight viciously for what wealth and privilege they can, and the majorities live meekly in denial and willful ignorance of their increasingly vulnerable serf-like place in society.  What do you get for pretending the danger's not real indeed ?

Cable Tee-Vee

'I remember when MTV used to play music videos' has become a cliche of the same sort as 'when I was a kid we had to walk to school, uphill, both ways,' but at some point the generification of American cable networks becomes something of a sad joke as cable continues to die a slow death.  Perhaps the internet would have inevitably killed cable TV anyway just as it seems to have killed off not just much of the print media, but most of the field of journalism outright.  But could it have been different, if instead of giving their customers an ever more crowded field of hundreds and hundreds of mostly pointless stations, the cable companies had given in, and acceded to long standing demand and offered a la carte programming ?  If stations got a cut of the profits based on subscription numbers rather than relying so much on maximising ad. revenue ?

Fuck, I remember a time when A&E (Arts and Entertainment originally of course) used to show opera and ballet instead of the endless marathons of Duck Dynasty and Storage Wars they have now.  When at any time of the day, any day of the year, I could turn on CNN or Headline News and get actual news, turn on the Weather Channel, and see a weather forecast, watch documentaries on the History Channel pulled from the pages of history rather than those of the supermarket tabloids.  And what the hell happened to what used to be The Learning Channel (TLC) ?  At least when The Nashville Network gave up the fight for country music fans to their lesser competitor CMT they were honest enough to change their name (from TNN to Spike) at the same time.  With their main competitor gone, you'd expect of course that CMT today would be all Country all the time.  Well, no, of course it isn't.  Even the networks that seem to vaguely adhere to their original remit during business hours, turn into a vast zombie wasteland after hours and on weekends.  I know someone must watch the cold case programmes on HLN and the endless prison documentaries on MSNBC, but how many episodes of this shit are there, and how many times can you watch them ?

It would be some consolation to think that at the end of all this, in our Netflix and Hulu futures, we could at least be rid of wretched companies like Time Warner Cable and Comcast, but they retain their internet monopolies of course, and, since the asshats at the FCC apparently saw no possible conflict of interest in letting Comcast buy up one of the nation's biggest and most famous broadcasters, now they're a content provider.  Comcast.  That Comcast.  The one who tried to rebrand their Internet service, as their name is so universally loathed.  Fuckers.

/rant


Now, negative infinity points for originality: The Boss.  Fifty-seven channels.  I remember when it was that many channels.  It was heaven.

Cabin Pressure, Bon Voyage

Finally listened to the long-awaited finale of 'Cabin Pressure', one of the greatest sitcoms of our age, and it certainly lives up to, although hardly exceeds Finnemore's earlier efforts.  It's perfect timing really, to go out, with a show-count that just so happens to match that of the number of letters in the English alphabet.  I'm less fond frankly of JF's other output than that of the characters of MJN Air, but the guy's evidently a genius.  Check out his blog at http://johnfinnemore.blogspot.com if you're somehow still in any doubt in this regard.

I'd recommend you go buy the episodes now, along with the rest of the series, if you hadn't already, but, the private organisation to which the BBC, in their infinite wisdom, gave the commercial rights to almost all of the historical radio/audio output of the BBC went bankrupt, and now almost all the radio licence-payer-funded content of what was the BBC is now in the hands of American entities like Audible, the likes of which I would scarcely recommend on my deathbed.  AudioGo were hardly perfect, but compared to Audible...  The latter's parent company were originally known for and still host a moderately functional search engine.  Use it if you will.  And bung a few dollars or quid in Finnemore's direction if you appreciate his work.  I'll leave my ultimate opinion of Audible unsaid.  And as for the cretin the politicos seem to end up choosing to head the BBC...

'The Lemon is in Play...'

'T as D'

'T as D' in contemporary British English:


'What are you going to tell your daughter ?'

Say the above sentence, out loud, or silently. If you're an American, Canadian, Irish, Australian, New Zealander, or South African speaker of English, or basically a speaker from anywhere other than Britain, then you probably pronounced these letters basically the same way:

What are you going to tell your daughter ?

If British, then you likely, but by no means certainly may have pronounced, as one might logically expect, the following the same way:

What are you going to tell your daughter ?

Given that our systems of spelling are based, however loosely, on the pronunciation of the words at the time the spelling was codified (though how we came up with 'ch' I will never understand), presumably the latter is the earlier and more 'original' form. And yet one, that seems to be nearing extinction as the more 'American' pronunciation becomes more and more common throughout Britain with every passing year.

I never used to notice it much, but once I did, I couldn't stop hearing it, seemingly everywhere. When I heard David Cameron (descendant of royalty, and graduate of Eton and Oxford) talking in various speeches about 'the Briddish people', 'Briddish innovation', 'the Briddish economy', and the like, in a way that I could never imagine hearing from the lips of Winston Churchill or Margaret Thatcher, I suspected that perhaps this was on the advice of some media consultant to make him sound 'less posh.' But I could be wrong. Perhaps this is just the inevitable result of a universal linguistic shift in English pronunciation. The ubiquity of this pronunciation throughout the rest of the English speaking world suggests as much. And yet when did this shift start ? When in Britain, and when in the former colonies ? Was it people of a particular place or class in Britain who took this habit around the world, or a spontaneous shift that took place across the globe, and is only latterly now conquering Britain ?