Juned: Kyuss

The Orb: Toxygene

Leonard Nimoy: Spock Thoughts

Update: And though the man died but recently, the vultureslawyers are already at the door:

Y'know what, the 'song' kinda sucks, and I, like probably many others, only posted it as a tribute to Leonard, but fuck it, you have to ruin even that...And...as I'm not a Vulcan...Fuck You !

Melys: Achilles Heel

So in recent news, people's perception of colour varies (and many people's monitors are incorrectly calibrated), and some llamas escaped.  Oh, and the Federal Communications Commission had some trivial ruling or other.  Oh and those naughty naughty tricksters ISIS engaged in an act of minor vandalism in Iraq.  Oh, and surprisingly Russia still has an opposition, given that an opposition leader was gunned down near the Kremlin.  But don't worry, the Russian government has assured us that Vladimir Putin (the er, chief suspect in most people's mind) is going to personally head the investigation, after a few months of which some Chechen separatist or Ukrainian fascist will presumbably be charged with the crime (and die in custody days or weeks later), unless relations with the West deteriorate even further in which case, it will turn out to be a plot by SIS or the CIA.

Billy Joel: Pressure

I'm sure you'll have some cosmic rationale...

Bis: Two Million

I realise this will be my third Bis posting from Return to Central alone.  But fuck, it still kills me that this band never got anyway near its due.

CSS: Alala

Not content even with fittings and fixtures

Considered posting this story, and occurred to me this is the sort of thing 'Nothing to do with Arbroath' used to cover.  So I checked their site...and indeed they had covered it already.  So I'll give them the click.

A house is missing and deputies with the Klamath County sheriff's office in Oregon are looking for it.



Sheriff Frank Skrah made the announcement during a press conference. "We had a complete home stolen. This isn't a motor home, this isn't a mobile home and this is a 'home.'" 

Akira the Don: London

May be a better video out there, but I'm almost surprised this shit is on YouTube at all.  Another case where Blogger pretends not to recognise the video.  Arseholes.

The Andrea True Connection: More More More

Came up on the mix, and feels so wrong right now...but so right at the same time.  Listeners of a certain age may recognise the later sample, if not the original.  Myself, I'm not sure I was aware, till reviewing the bio., she was gone.  RIP.

Update: If the bastards really want to block shit, they're gonna block shit.  Meanwhile...

American Theocracy Now

Exhibits A & B for those who may think fears of the US of A turning into a theocracy are overstated:

Via little green footballs, 57% of Republicans support establishing Christianity as the national religion.

Via Jon Green of AmericaBlog: Unelectable Atheists: U.S. States That Prohibit Godless Americans From Holding Public Office

I'm not surprised...at all...at the sentiment, but maybe...at little...that the fundamentalist bastards in so many states tried to write this shit into law.

So what, requiring belief in a god or Supreme Being, is not a religious test ?  Depending on one's definition of religion, maybe.

Bankrupt the US just a little bit more and the Tea Party can take over as a parallel ISIS.

George Harrison: Marwa Blues

And a day late...

Le Tigre: Get off the Internet

Finally watched The Punk Singer, and given that I'm probably more familiar with Le Tigre than with Bikini Kill...

Prince: U Got the Look

Aw, sheeet, how did I get back into this 1980's crap ?  And apparently we're still playing bullshit games with content and ownership.  Fuck, is this 2015, or 1815 ?

http://www.totallyfuzzy.net/ourtube/prince/u-got-the-look-stereo-video_0c5c5bcb2.html

Wasted enough time on this that I almost hate this song now.


Update: Finally revisited this, and got the embed.  Yay.

Billie Holiday: In My Solitude

Sarah Vaughn came up in the playlist, and I'd love to add her to the mix, but something got me thinking about Billie instead.

Air: Run

Amazon MP3

Tried downloading some new music from Amazon for the first time in a while; Oh G-d, what a mistake.  Experience as painful and complicated as I've ever experienced it, prices way up, the new resource-intensive downloader rife with examples of everything that is wrong with that trendy evil of  'flat design', and then, this crap with the Prime Library, wherein Amazon will gracefully give subscribers access to oh so many tracks, so long as they now and till the end of eternity maintain their payments to Amazon in order to access what they quaintly may have once seen as 'their library.'  Da fuck ?

Like people can't use Pandora and their ilk ?  Like most music isn't available for free on YouTube these days ?  What's this shit about having to install & run special apps. to play Prime tracks ?  Free is worth what you pay for it and all that, but the idea that people should pay you a premium to create a library, that is held in thrall to the temporal products of a company that could just as well choose to close up shop (or individual service -- like that's never happened in recent memory) tomorrow ?  When they could get the same for free elsewhere ?  Or buy and own* from other services ?

After iTunes held back the market for years on .mp3 sales with their over-priced DRM'd garbage, the introduction of relatively cheap DRM-free .mp3 tracks on Amazon, was the reason I finally took to seriously buying music by the track for the first time, having previously relied largely on CD's and on DRM-free subscription services like eMusic.  Seems likes we're moonwalking backwards here.  Fuck the cloud, fuck flat design, and fuck Amazon.

*(Oh hell, not going to get into the legalistics here of how the corporations will simply determine that they own content from now until the end of eternity, and that you are simply renting it from them.  Cough.  Microsoft.  Cough.)

The Arquettegate Intersectionality

So, Patricia Arquette made some comments backstage at the Oscars, à propos of her call for pay-equality for women, that were perhaps not best calculated, and apparently people took it badly, and argued about it on Twitter, as people will.  Whatever, don't care, move on.  Having read a transcript of Arquette's comments, and not following Twitter, I naively assumed that the cause of offence was the implication that somehow the fights for equality for racial minorities and the 'gay community' were already and fully won, and that now it was the time to focus on women.  But, no.

Being fool enough to listen to a certain podcast (rhymes with rib lime), I am reliably informed that the problem was 'Intersectionality'.  Okay, let's take a look-see on the old wiki, and ah, fuck me.  Scroll, scroll, scroll...'a Marxist-feminist critical theory'...ugh.  I'm remembering now why I never liked liberals when I was younger.  Yeah, I get it, the experience of a black lesbian is different from that of say a black man or a white woman, and people can be oppressed along multiple axes of identity.  Yeah, no shit.

U2: Out of Control

Sometimes think I may be guilty of misremembering Boy as if I Will Follow were the only great track, but really, the whole album stands up pretty well, especially for a debut album of a band now so very long in the tooth.  Nothing per se against the mid-eighties to early-nineties U2, but for my money, they would never again have quite the same spark, quite the same excitement as at the start of their career.

Couldn't find a live version I really like, and yeah, that's the US cover.

Black Doll, White Doll

Believe I'd heard of the results before, but not actually seen these videos.  This is just sad.

Komeda: A Simple Formality

Always assumed, without positive confirmation, that this was a tie in with the Depardieu/Polanski film.  Holds up pretty well regardless.

Paul Simon: Under African Skies

Sia: The Girl You Lost to Cocaine

Dresden Dolls: Girl Anachronism

Apologies to Ukraine

My apologies to the people of Ukraine.  Our leaders continue to rant and rave as if they are going to risk military confrontation with Russia over the conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk, as if Russia can be forced to hand back Crimea.  It's cruel, the false hopes they persist in encouraging.  They're liars, and they can't admit the truth.

Sorry to have to say it, but the Ukraine you knew is gone...forever, and no amount of bluster or outrage will bring it back.  No, it isn't fair, but as parents say to their children, life isn't either.  And we tolerate plenty of unfairness we could do something about, never mind the things we can't.  Men earning more than women isn't fair, or whites earning more than minorities, or CEO's earning multiples in the hundreds of what their lowest paid employees get.  We tolerate income inequality, just as we tolerate homelessness, poor families going hungry, disproportionate incarceration of minorities, businesses colluding against consumers, politicians selling their office to the highest bidder.  We imprison whistleblowers pointing out the crimes of our governments, whilst war criminals go free.  We have an exceptionally high tolerance for unfairness generally.

And as for unfair territorial disputes or questions of sovereignty ?  We allow our greatest trading partner to bully its neighbours, and persistently threaten one of them (a peaceful democratic ally of ours) with use of military force up to and including nuclear weapons.  We've allowed an entire population in the West Bank and Gaza to be held hostage as political pawns, to be kept in amber as a perpetual 'refugee' population, decades after the wars that made them refugees.  We allow a population of twenty-five million in North Korea to be imprisoned under an insane radical dictatorship that threatens us with nuclear war because it suits the People's Republic of China to have it there between them and US-ally South Korea as a buffer state.  We won't be waging any 'wars of liberation' in North Korea anytime soon, will we ?  An entire state sacrificed for the realpolitik concerns of China, and we won't do anything about it...because we can't.

Fun Fact of the Day

Cobain came up with the song's title when his friend Kathleen Hanna, at the time the lead singer of the riot grrrl band Bikini Kill, spray painted "Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit" on his wall. Since they had been discussing anarchism, punk rock, and similar topics, Cobain interpreted the slogan as having a revolutionary meaning. What Hanna actually meant, however, was that Cobain smelled like the deodorant Teen Spirit, which his then-girlfriend Tobi Vail wore. Cobain later claimed he was unaware that it was a brand of deodorant until months after the single was released.

Terrorgruppe: Mein Skateboard ist wichtiger als Deutschland

I don't think ones like or dislike for Germany is a predicate for liking this song -- And as for the overall sentiment...  (And...gratuitously I could always throw Greece into the mix...)

The Crimea: Opposite Ends

Coincidental to my imminent publication of some of my very belated thoughts on the Ukrainian bullshit.  Selfishly, horribly, I hope the bandmates don't suffer from the association with the current insanity (How could they have known what that name might conjure up ?).  But, then again, who am I kidding ?  They've probably been selling that many more records.  Another shoulda-been top-ten band.

DAF: Als Wär's das Letzte Mal

Belle and Sebastian: Expectations

You're on top of the world again...

Ultravox: Vienna

Bis: I'm a Slut

School of Seven Bells: Babelonia

Crystal Castles: Courtship Dating

Stevie Wonder: Part Time Lover

Cos.

Bernthøler: The Choice

Honestly, this isn't even close to the best of Bernthøler's music, but this is the first time I've ever seen them rather than just heard them, and I'll post it for that alone.

Lesley Gore: You Don't Own Me

Dead at 68.  RIP

Googoosh: Yekrouzi / گوگوش : یه روزی پیدات میکنم

Wouldn't pretend to understand Persian or Arabic, but music is music, and it does seem a shame that the cultures of countries like Iran and Afghanistan lost so much of what they did in the cultural revolutions of the seventies and eighties.

The Sundays: Joy

Too much depressing shit in the world to consistently post depressing videos. The nineties didn't start out so bad...

Love: Alone Again, Or

'Officer involved shooting' in Pasco, Washington

Another day in America.  Really, it isn't surprising that a disturbed homeless guy throwing rocks at American police would end up with his body riddled with bullets -- That's as likely to be the result of someone, especially of the non-melanin-deficient variety, looking at a cop the wrong way in the United States.  What's really surprising is that he somehow survived a incident a year earlier in which he supposedly 'grabbed for one officer's gun while he was being detained'.  Michael Brown could perhaps tell us how that might go down...were he not very dead, from his own encounter.

Wire: I am the Fly

Buzzcocks: Everybody's Happy Nowadays

Genesis: The Knife

Nah, that didn't quite do it.  We've gotta go for the Gabriel era after all.  I know...this.....

Some of you are going to die; Martyrs of course, to the freedom that I shall provide...

Genesis: Domino

But no, I can't leave it there.  Gotta do Genesis, post-Gabriel era.  But nothing remotely...pop.  First track occurred to me...

Blood on the windows
Millions of ordinary people are there
They gaze at the scenery
They act as if it is perfectly clear
Take a look at the mountains
Take a look at the beautiful river of blood

The liquid surrounds me
I fight to rise from this river of hell
I stare 'round about me
And children are swimming and playing with boats
Their features are changing
Their bodies dissolve, and I am alone

Now see what you've gone and done
Now see what you've gone and done

Phil Collins: Sussudio

Passed on several more songs about suicide.  I think it may be time to take the plunge.  Yeah, I like PC.  Even this.

Dream Theater: Pull Me Under

Sleater-Kinney: Jumpers

Four seconds was the longest wait...

For my money, one of the most compelling songs ever to come out of SF.  As for its relevance to the current gentrified environ. and house prices in SF, well that's ground rather too well-trodden and too-depressing for my tastes.  Another glorious city shat all over by the insatiable appetites of our billionaire overlords.  I guess Portland is still relatively cheap.

David Bowie: Panic in Detroit

Historically, geographically, the wholesale abandonment of Detroit by non- 'African-American' populations makes no sense.  And what other similar territory in the US would not, decades later, have been gentrified by now ?  What is it about this particular piece of real estate, with wealthy white suburbs ringing it all about, with nearby Arab-heavy suburban communities, and with so many auto factories relocated just north of the border into Canada ?  Where else in the US is the line between populations so explicitly marked along stark white and black lines ?  For what reason, and to what end ?  By rights, Detroit could have been/should be one of the jewels of America's crown.  Instead, it's a perpetual embarrassment, and a racial case-history upon which no race seems hugely inclined to dwell.  I could go into the current right-wing 'emergency measures' being put forward for the 'reform' of Detroit, but I don't think my heart could stand it.  Detroit deserved/deserves better.

Of course Detroit is merely practice.  YourTown, USA is next on the Billionaire agenda.  Your time will come, and sooner than you think...

Sleater-Kinney: Combat Rock

Since when is scepticism un-American ?

Not sure how I'd have got through the Bush years without the likes of Sleater-Kinney.  But then, what to say of the years since, in the inter-regnum till Uncle Barry hands the reins over to Hill' ?  It's one's thing to feel justifiable outrage when you think there's an alternative; another entirely when there's demonstrably nothing of the sort, when there is (as there has been most of my life), nothing but shit, slightly shittier, and shit-on-a-stick...  In 2016, America will elect as president either a) the most right-wing Fascistic Democratic politician, or b) a lunatic-fringe Tea-Party Republican who makes the most right-wing Democrat look like fucking Gandhi or Jesus.  This is representative of the totality of the options for most Americans.  And the options for most Britons are scarcely better.  Fuck us all.

Tears for Fears: Change

Vaccinate your Bloody Kids

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2woBNxrDQA

I'm staggered.  A song from Mitch Benn on The Now Show that doesn't suck.  When does that ever happen ?  And yeah, vaccinate your bloody kids.

Stiff Little Fingers: Alternative Ulster

Buzzcocks: I Believe

Da fuck ?  I put in the video URL, of the service that Google owns, and duh-huh, can't find it...  I edit the HTML manually, and it takes the audio, but for some reason throws up an error on the image.  Another video URL, again from the service that Google owns, and duh, somehow, can't find it.  Edit the HTML manually again.  Fucking tossers !

Don't believe boys & girls in shiny tech. companies that promise the earth whilst drooling over thine own data.  Fuck 'em all.

ZZ Top: Heard it on the X

And then, turnin' that Mogwai'd frown back upside-down...

Mogwai: Summer

Sammo Hung: The Disco Commandments

My faith in the Internet is (somewhat) restored.

Guided by Voices: Watch Me Jumpstart

Harper Lee published her first novel in 1960, and recently announced the publication of her second (a previously written sequel), five and a half decades later, at the age of eighty-eight.  GBV were...er, slightly more prolific.  Not to compare the two as such.  Full disclosure: I've never read To Kill a Mockingbird.  I'm sure it's a very good book.  But does it rock ?

Dear Supermarkets/Grocery Stores

Could you please stop going out of your way to make shopping at your locations even more actively painful than it already was ?  Is it not bad enough that you go out of the way in the physical geography of the shops/stores to maximise the time customers have to spend per visit, with the most frequently bought items physically separated by the greatest distance ?  Not bad enough that you intentionally place products like tooth- and brain-rotting sugary products at children's eye-level ?

Is it not bad enough that your customers have to deal with a) persistent understaffing at peak hours, b) annoying Christmas music for several months of the year during the 'holiday season', c) carts/trolleys for 'junior shoppers/customers', so that other people's spawn can take up that much more of the aisle space as they weave this way and that with their mini-carts like drunken octaganerians (on the positive side, at least they're not then rushing backwards and fowards down the aisles, like they're in some kind of carnival competition), d) the persistent under-provisioning of the more useful smaller carts, as if every shopper represents the cast of Just the Ten of Us, e) shitty parking structures, that force one to enter/exit and park at awkward angles, f) persistently malfunctioning self-service machines, g) those EVIL EVIL EVIL 'loyalty' campaigns, that impose artificially higher prices on those unwilling to sell their souls to Marketing Satan, and so many other nasty horrible evil practices ?

But no, every aisle has to also be blocked with a cart filled with discounted produce, with a special advertising display, with a stupid cardboard cutout smiling inanely at us.  We have to put up with already congested aisles being reduced many times to the width of a single cart so that you can prolong our shopping misery that little bit longer in the vain hope that we'll spend that little bit more at your evil establishment.  Well, FUCK YOU !

And while we're at it, no I didn't find everything I was looking for today, but, no, I'm not going to tell you about it, because a) You don't give a shit, b) You can't do anything about your establishment's stocking policy, c) the reason I couldn't find the product has nothing to do with any magical advantage you have in locating products on the shelves over me, and d) Fuck you, leave me alone !  I know it's not you.  I know it's your evil Fascist cocksucking corparatist overlords.  That's why I lie when you ask me if I found everything I wanted today.  Why I lie when you ask me how I'm doing.  Why I'd lie about just about anything that wouldn't get in the way of my getting my fucking purchase done, and my arse out of your wretched establishment a second earlier.

And to think, our right-wing establishment politicians would have us believe that the 'free market' is all about efficiency, and that it smoothly and effortlessly rewards and punishes players according to the best accordance with customer needs and demands.  Well, if you keep in mind that the only 'customers' that truly matter are those making purchases in the millions and billions, perhaps.  Otherwise, pull another one.

Yelle: A Cause Des Garçons

Update: Old video made Private for some reason, so attempting to replace.

Killing Joke: Money is not our God

Coke meets Social Media meets Gawker meets Adolf Hitler

So apparently, Coca Cola came up with a cutesy social media campaign to turn hateful tweets into cutesy ASCII re-tweets of the same, and the geniuses at Gawker decided to test whether they could get Coca Cola to retweet extracts from Adolf Hitler's Great Austrian Novel Mein Kampf, and, well...
turns out, sure 'nuff, they could...  And thus ended one of the great social media campaigns of this particular mayfly era.  Perhaps in future, Coke could take advice from one of their transnational peers before engaging on a cutesy but ultimately untested and not-totally-thought-out marketing campaign ?  How about...McDonalds, say ?  They'd surely know how to navigate this sort of landscape securely and safely, free of the threat of humiliating mockery...er...

X: I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts

Lest we be thought to forget the U.S. of A., that rather dickish reference to the 'British Invasion' notwithstanding, X were all manners of awesome in terms of the music to come out of the LA Punk Rock scene.

I give up, why can't they ?

Black Box Recorder: Child Psychology

And another flavour entirely.  Case here I suspect of the right band at the right moment in history.

Gorkys Zygotic Mynci: Iechyd Da

Never did get the Kentucky AFC version sorted.  But the original is awesome enough...

Erasure: Chains of Love

Stayin' kitsch at least a little longer...

Ah, Seattle...

Video: Seattle Police Jail Elderly Military Veteran for "Walking in Seattle While Black"

Ah, Seattle...  Guess this story's been around a while now, probably a little buried as the PD's of NY, Saint Louis, and Cleveland drove Seattle from the headlines.

Lucky the poor bastard with limited hearing was only carrying a golfclub.  Were it a (perfectly 100% legal) whittling knife, he'd have been dead, seconds from the cruiser's approach.  Lots of speculation online about the police-officer in question, much of which, in my opinion, seems disturbingly centred upon her gender and/or sexual orientation.

Fact is, cops are, and have for a long time now, at least since the so-called 'War on Drugs' been trained in such a way, that they see the general public, BY DEFAULT, as a potential threat, as the enemy, as a hostile force to be subdued.  Actual military forces in hostile territories are taught more discretion in their dealings with civilian populations than day-to-day cops in the modern-day militarised US.  And no, while there may well be/is a racial component to this, this is not primarily a racial problem.  This is a problem of training, of psychology, or mindset.  A problem that is that much more exacerbated by an officer's pre-existing prejudices, such as they may be...  Firing this particular fool won't protect the next stupidly targeted senior citizen, or other innocent.

Stay classy, Cristina...

Argentine President Mocks Chinese Accent on Twitter

Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner caused a furore on Wednesday by joking about her hosts’ accents while on a state visit to China seeking badly needed investment.
Fernández tried to mimic a Chinese accent by switching “rs” with “ls” in a tweet in Spanish that translates as: “Did they only come for lice and petloleum.”
...
The controversy comes as Fernández struggles to distance herself from the mysterious death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was found dead in his bathroom on 18 January, hours before he was to elaborate on allegations that Fernández helped shield Iranians connected to the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre that killed 85.

But, bad economy, debt, the oh-so-convenient death of a political enemy...  I can see why Cristina might see any distraction from domestic politics back in Argentina as a.....Oh, yeah...This could be a bad sign...

Mylène Farmer: L'instant X

Palate-cleanser much ?

Choreography kinda reminds me of Katy Perry, minus the shark costumes.  But do I really want to compare Katy Perry with.....Mylène ?...

Makes me wonder also what Alizée's been up to lately..

The Prodigy: Take me to the Hospital

Air: Brakes On

Komeda: Glöd

The Delgados: The Actress

Amanda Palmer: Oasis

Whilst we're at it on politics, religion, and the offence that may be involved thereof...and guilty pleasures for that matter...  It ain't the Dresden Dolls, but boy does this song ever...well...

Katy Perry: Hot 'n' Cold (w/Elmo)

No, I didn't watch the Super Bowl.  And no, I'm don't have too much sympathy for poor Pete Carroll.  For so-called 'Beast Mode' ?...  Er, well...Nah, fuck 'im.  But yes, Katy Perry's dancing sharks were fucking awesome.  And in honour of Katy Perry's delightful sense of kitsch, rather than revisit the sharks and shit all over poor 'Left Shark', how 'bout we revisit another one of Katy's kitschiest moments instead ?

In which, of course, we had a rare instance of censorship on fucking Sesame Street, because...cleavage.  We are so fucked.

Curve: Die like a Dog

Huh.  Turns out all these years, I misheard the lyrics to this one.  Just the one word, but still....

I'm just trying not to die like a dog
End up alone wheezing from the smog
I'm just trying not to die in vain
Gonna make my mark, stake my claim

Peace in a world, free from religion
Peace in a world where everyone gets heaven

Def Leppard: Bringin' On The Heartbreak

Def Leppard at their absolute peak, tho' they'd no idea at the time what the years to come had in store...

RIP Geraldine McEwan

Another good one gone.  Never saw her Jean Brodie, and too little perhaps of her Miss Marple.  Much missed regardless.