Thursday 3 September 2009
No shit! Man accused of climbing into toilet pit (again!)
According to a new complaint, Moody didn't get the message...
Wednesday 2 September 2009
Beastie Boys - Doublecheck Your Head
I made the project in support of the Beastie Boys recent reissue of their "Check Your Head" album (one of my personal favorites.) The concept is that the Beastie Boys are mashed up with themselves, rapping over tracks sampling their own instrumentals, with all vocals and sampled elements coming from "Check Your Head."
Get it
HERE
WWF/WTF?
However the ad has already won a prize and appears to have been commissioned by the WWF in Israel.
UPDATE:
DDB Brazil (the agency which made the ad) has apologised for the ad's creation, but claims it was approved for publication by the local branch of the WWF. The statement reads: "The 'Tsunami' ad for World Wildlife Fund Brasil was created by a team at DDB Brasil in December 2008, approved and ran. The team in question is no longer with the Agency. DDB Brasil apologizes to anyone who was offended or affected by the ad. It should never have been made and it does not portray the philosophy of the agency."
"...urinating on each other & drinking vodka from the cracks of buttocks"
@ 'Politico'
Hell yeah! (#2)
Richard Hell as Nick Detroit in John Holmstrom’s photo story “The Legend of Nick Detroit,” Punk 6 (October 1976). Photo: © Roberta Bayley.
“I DO NOT REPUDIATE any of my paintings,” Henri Matisse once wrote, “but there is not one of them that I would not redo differently, if I had it to redo.” Once a painting is out of the artist’s hands, of course, the opportunity to rework it rarely presents itself—though Pierre Bonnard is said to have carried a little paint box with him during museum visits in case he felt the need to revise one of his canvases on the spot. Prose writers and poets, on the other hand, more readily revisit their earlier efforts (not always happily, as the onslaughts of Marianne Moore and W. H. Auden against some of their younger works show). And music tends to be a still different story. Composers in the European classical tradition can worry at their published scores the way some poets do with their poems, and of course performers can repeatedly record different versions of the same scores. But rock musicians treat their primary products as, indeed, records—documents of the moment when disparate elements, brought together by technological alchemy, crystallized into something definitive. To truly redo a finished record has been rare. One of the few instances I can think of is Paul McCartney’s 2003 revision of the Beatles’ 1970 album Let It Be—shorn of the Phil Spector “wall of sound” McCartney had always objected to—as Let It Be . . . Naked. But as the title indicates, McCartney’s intention was not so much to redo the album as to bring it back to some original condition—a fictional condition, of course, since it was the Beatles’ inability to finish the record themselves that led to Spector’s intervention.
All of this to say that Richard Hell’s Destiny Street Repaired, released this month by the online distributor Insound, might be the first rock record ever “redone” in Matisse’s sense—and this despite a title that likewise evokes a lost-and-regained original state preceding the first version of Destiny Street, made by Hell in 1982 with the Voidoids. Destiny Street was the much-anticipated follow-up to the band’s brilliant Blank Generation (1977), which had immediately been recognized as a quintessential expression of the punk moment. Its very title was a manifesto of refusal. This very quality, however, made it hardly surprising that what followed was five years of silence. This time lag could perhaps be explained by Hell’s increasing substance dependence, which certainly enters into his long-standing dissatisfaction with Destiny Street. He recalls often missing studio sessions, merely phoning in to instruct guitarists Robert Quine and Naux to layer more guitars into the mix. For admirers, the resultant squalls of noise are one of the album’s pleasures. Yet by the time Destiny Street finally appeared, punk’s initial impetus had spent itself. The term post-punk had been coined as early as 1980. While Blank Generation had paradoxically managed to become a manifesto of the times by articulating an existential isolation (“when I dine it’s for the wall that I set a place”), Destiny Street embodied that isolation concretely, in part through its untimeliness. Though its songs were the equal of those on the first album, and if anything were more open in emotion, the record never had the same impact, because it no longer had a context.
Checking on that quote from Matisse’s “Notes of a Painter,” I just noticed that the translator has slightly changed the artist’s meaning. In the original, it reads, “I do not repudiate any of my paintings” . . . not but, but rather “and there is not one of them that I would not redo differently.” Matisse’s desire to redo his old paintings is perfectly consistent with his refusal to repudiate them. The artist’s commitment to his work resides in his never deceiving himself into believing it has reached its ultimate form; it maintains a potential claim on him. Hell observes, “Destiny Street Repaired better represents the intentions of the original 1982 sessions than does the Destiny Street that was released that year.” That doesn’t mean he was capable then of wanting the record to sound the way the new version does. On the contrary, he is capable now of grasping the intentions that back then he could only vaguely make out. Many artists experience such belated clarity about their earlier work, but only rarely do they act on it.
Barry Schwabsky is a London-based writer and International Reviews Editor of Artforum.
NB:If you go to the Artforum link above you can also listen to two of the songs from the album.
Unspeakable cruelty
New hidden camera footage obtained at this facility during a Mercy For Animals undercover investigation gives a disturbing glimpse into the cruel and industrialized reality of modern hatcheries.
The warm, comforting, and protective wings of these newly hatched chicks' mothers have been replaced with massive machines, quickly moving conveyor belts, harsh handling, and distressing noise. These young animals are sorted, discarded, and handled like mere cogs in a machine.
For the nearly 150,000 male chicks who hatch every 24 hours at this Hy-Line facility, their lives begin and end the same day. Grabbed by their fragile wings by workers known as "sexers," who separate males from females, these young animals are callously thrown into chutes and hauled away to their deaths. They are destined to die on day one because they cannot produce eggs and do not grow large or fast enough to be raised profitably for meat. Their lives are cut short when they are dropped into a grinding machine tossed around by a spinning auger before being torn to pieces by a high-pressure macerator.
Over 21 million male chicks meet their fate this way each year at this facility.
For the surviving females, this is the beginning of a life of cruelty and confinement at the hands of the egg industry. Before even leaving the hatchery they will be snapped by their heads into a spinning debeaker a portion of their sensitive beaks removed by a laser. Workers toss and rummage through them before they are placed 100 per crowded box and shipped across the country.
The callous disregard for animal welfare at this facility is not isolated. In fact, the conditions documented during this investigation are completely standard and acceptable within the commercial egg industry. Referred to by Hy-Line corporate leaders as mere "genetic products," these chicks are treated just as they are viewed as inanimate objects, rather than the sentient creatures they are.
Driven by consumer demand, the egg industry will continue to exploit, abuse, and kill day-old animals as long as doing so remains profitable. Empowered consumers can put their ethics on the table by choosing kindness over cruelty at each meal by adopting an animal-friendly vegan diet.
Saeedeh Pouraghaei: the face of a new victim
@ 'NIAC'
Blogger Fixes Its DMCA Takedown Process
First, for those issuing the takedown, they've switched from a manual (send a fax or letter) process to an electronic one -- which has the side benefit that Google can now get those takedown notices to ChillingEffects.org much faster. Google always passes along takedowns to ChillingEffects, but when the notices were faxed or typed it took a while before ChillingEffects could get them up, meaning that if content was taken down, there was often no way for the blogger in question to understand what happened (Google says it always emails the bloggers, but not everyone's email address is up-to-date).
On top of that, Google not only will notify people via email, but will put a notification in the Blogger admin dashboard, so the next time the blogger logs in they'll see it. Finally, and most importantly, to handle the "takedown," rather than totally deleting the posts as before, the posts are switched to draft mode, which allows the blogger to see the post and change it (if necessary). This seems like a much better policy than what Blogger/Google was doing before.
The one that that still seems to be missing (at least in this description) is the counternotice process. The process described in the announcement says that bloggers can adjust their post... but what if they don't believe it's actually infringing (fair use, authorized copy, different content, etc.)? It would be nice if Google also offered an easy counternotice procedure from directly within the Blogger admin as well -- so that a Blogger who has been falsely accused of a copyright violation can quickly counternotice and get the content back up.
@ 'Tech Dirt'
A radical solution to end the Drug War: Legalize Everything
We've heard a lot about the terrible death toll Mexico has suffered during the drug war — over 11,000 souls so far. This helps to account for the startling lack of controversy that greeted last week's news that Mexico had suddenly decriminalized drugs — not just marijuana but also cocaine, LSD, and heroin. In place of the outrage and threats that U.S. officials expressed when Mexico tried to decriminalize in 2006 was a mild statement, from our new drug czar, that we are going to take a "wait and see" approach.
Still, we've heard nothing about the American death toll. Isn't that strange? So far as I can tell, nobody has even tried to come up with a number.
Until now. I've done some rough math, and this is what I found:
6,487.
To repeat, that's 6,487 dead Americans. Throw in overdoses and the cost of this country's paralyzing drug laws is closer to 15,000 lives.
Jerry Lawson from The Persuasions upcoming New York gig
The Persuasions a cappella Grateful Dead covers album 'Might As Well' was available to download from 'Never Get Out of the Boat'
Jerry who for nearly 40 years fronted the legendary a cappella group, The Persuasions and who has recorded and toured with numerous artists such as Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Liza Minnelli, Joni Mitchell and Frank Zappa also has an upcoming gig in New York at the Bitter End on September 19th. Details are above. Check it out.
It is also nice when artists recognise the power of blogs to spread the word about groups that we like as Julie (Jerry's wife) said in the e/mail:
"My husband is Jerry Lawson, lead singer, arranger & producer of The Persuasions for 40 years & 22 albums. I spotted your blog and showed it to him. He is not a computer person so he asked me to thank you for sharing his music."
Tuesday 1 September 2009
Ricky Tic in 'Ricky Tic & the Nazi'
More on Phillip Garrido
If you enter his home address of 'Walnut Avenue, Antioch California' into Google Earth and follow the road away from it you can see
Garrido's van trailing the Google van for a while!
An interesting article by Beatrix Campbell at 'The Guardian'.
Yidcore -They Tried To Kill Us. They Failed. Let's Eat!
Check this out
Dead a cappella
With only their collective voices, The Persuasions can turn almost any musical composition into smooth, groovin' doo-wop or gospel. They also have fun stretching the boundaries at the same time. It wasn't all that surprising with Frankly a cappella - The Persuasions Sing Zappa (their Frank Zappa covers disc) because doo-wop was such a crucial building block in Frank's early constructions. But the Grateful Dead? Those guys were into bluegrass and banjo music back when the Persuasions were first conceptualizing their stylistic blend of street corner harmonics and black-centric doo-wop. Since then, The Persuasions have transcended those root styles to encompass various musical genres, incorporating proper instrumentation when it serves their purpose (as in the gospel-tinged piano work in "Ship Of Fools," below). You like The Dead? You like a cappella? You should like this, even if you never really listen that much to either. (@320)
Here Comes Sunshine (0:28)
Might As Well (3:30)
Lazy River Road (5:34)
Loose Lucy (4:23)
Ripple (3:11)
Brokedown Palace (4:25)
Liberty (5:18)
Sugaree (5:38)
Ship Of Fools (8:20)
He's Gone (6:29)
It Must Have Been The Roses (4:51)
One More Saturday Night (5:34)
Bertha (5:37)
I Bid You Goodnight (2:05)
Black Muddy River (4:14)
New Thom Yorke 12" due Sept 22
Nothing like (possible) news of even more new material from those busy Radiohead guys. According to an Exclaim! report (via TwentyFourBit), Thom Yorke is set to release a limited edition 12" featuring two new songs called "Apart by Horses" and "The Hollow Earth" September 22 via TBD. And limited means limited; the story claims only about 8,000 copies of the vinyl-only release will be available worldwide.
Meanwhile, Kid A, Amnesiac, and Hail to the Thief were reissued last week, too.