Monday, December 31, 2007

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year
Bonne année
Próspero año nuevo
Próspero Ano Novo
كل عام وانتم بخير
Dewenati
Glückliches neues Jahr

Gelukkige nuwejaar

šťastlivý nový rok
Manigong bagong taon
С Новым Годом
Kung hé fat tsoi
Subho nababarsho
Arahaba tratry ny taona
Feliç Any Nou!
Kali chronia
Felix sit annus novus
Hauoli makahiki hou
สวัสดีปีใหม
Selamat tahun baru
Rogüerohory año nuévo-re
Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku
Seh heh bok mani bat uh seyo
Yeni yiliniz kutlu olsun
Chúc Mừng Nǎm Mới
Boldog Új Évet!
Nav varsh ki subhkamna

Felice anno nuovo
ש� ה טובה
Felicxan novan jaron

(Some international greetings courtesy of Freelang, AppliedLanguage.com, and UniLangWiki!)

Around The World, (12)

Hello, Around The World goes latin on New Years Day, rests me to wish you all a Happy New Year !

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Fania All-Stars - Fania All-Stars (75 ^ 99mb)

In 1964, Fania Records was founded in New York City by Jerry Masucci, an Italian-American lawyer with a love for Latin melodies, and Johnny Pacheco, a talented composer and bandleader born in the Dominican Republic. Together, the men's originality and keenness for great tunes transformed Fania Records into the ultimate foundation for salsa, a contemporary style of Latin music.In 1968, with the record label garnering more acclaim and a troupe of emerging artists, Masucci and Pacheco decided to create an ensemble of the most well-known and innovative Fania artists, a continuously-revolving line-up of entertainers known as the Fania All-Stars.
Especially during the 1970's, the star-studded group became renowned worldwide for their spectacular one-of-a-kind musical performances. Among the most treasured of these recordings is the legendary arrangement "Fania All Stars: Live At The Cheetah, Volumes 1 and 2." The set, exhibits the entire All-Star family performing before a capacity audience in New York's Cheetah Lounge. The volumes went on to become the biggest-selling Latin albums ever produced by one group from one concert. Following sell-out concerts in Puerto Rico, Chicago and Panama, the All-Stars embarked on their first appearance at New York's Yankee Stadium on August 24th, 1973. The stars performed before an unprecedented crowd of 63,000 spectators in a concert that highlighted the talents of Ray Barretto, Willie Colón, Larry Harlow, Johnny Pacheco, Roberto Roena, Bobby Valentín, and Jorge Santana (younger brother of Carlos Santana), among others.

In an attempt to attain a wider market for salsa, Fania made a deal with Columbia Records in the US for a series of crossover albums by the All Stars. The first project was the lukewarm "Delicate & Jumpy" (1976), in which Steve Winwood united with the All Stars' Pacheco, Valentin, Barreto and Roena. It was also in 1976 that the Fania All Stars made their sole UK appearance. In 1978 the All-Stars released "Live," a fully-blown version of the band recorded in concert at New York's Madison Square Garden in September of that year. 1979 saw the release of "Crossover," the All-Stars' last Columbia Records album, as well as "Havana Jam on Fania," which came from an historic concert recorded on March 3rd 1979 in Havana, Cuba.

The first signs of recession appeared in 1980, when Fania suffered setbacks including an unsuccessful movie, tension from artists with unpaid royalties, and failed distribution deals with Columbia and Atlantic Records at boosting salsa into the mainstream US market. In addition, the New York salsa scene, which had always been vital to the success of the label, was gradually succumbing to the rise of merengue from Dominican Republic and salsa romantica from Puerto Rico. As the decade ended, the All-Stars recorded fewer albums together, and it was pretty visible that the genre -- and the star-studded group that propelled it -- had reached the end of its golden age.



01 - Viva Tirado (5:13)
02 - Chanchullo (5:33)
03 - Smoke (4:02)
04 - There You Go (3:06)
05 - Mama Guela (2:51)
06 - El Raton (7:47)
07 - Soul Makossa (5:43)
08 - Congo Bongo (10:09)


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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Don't Panic ! , (12)



Hello hitchhikers, today we reach the end of the secondairy phase, no worry..next year will continue with the tertiary phase, still many fits to go, for the moment here's a recap of last weeks 11th fit.


The episode opens with a conversation between Lintilla and Arthur. Lintilla mentions that she's an archaeologist, stranded on Brontitall, as her spaceship was disabled. She activates her crisis inducer, and leads Arthur through a set of tunnels. While they're running, the narrator describes the state of medical science in the universe, with artificially induced injuries.

Meanwhile, Zaphod and Ford have landed on the back of one of the birds from the previous episode, and eventually convince it to reach the ground by wrapping Ford's towel around its eyes. But because the bird had to reach the ground, it and its fellow birds are upset, and start attacking Zaphod and Ford on the surface. A loud noise occurs, which causes the narrator to explain its lack of immediate context.

Arthur emerges from a tunnel behind Lintilla, who had overcompensated for her artificially induced crisis. Lintilla introduces Arthur to two of her "sisters" (actually clones), and they begin discussing the noise, finally establishing a context for it. Lintilla finally admits that there are 5,780,000,000 clones of herself in the universe. The narrator explains how this happened, and what is being done about it. Lintilla takes Arthur to the shaft suddenly created after the mysterious loud noise, and they finally confirm what the three Lintillas had been looking for: "An entire archaeological layer of compressed shoes." After making this confirmation, they are captured by Hig Hurtenflurst, a Dolmansaxlil Shoe Corporation executive.

The narrator finally describes what made the noise and created the shaft that gave the Lintillas their breakthrough. It's none other than Marvin, who himself finally fell out of the cup that the Heart of Gold is parked in. He's lying at the bottom of a mile deep shaft, and goes "zootlewurdle." Meanwhile, Hig has decided to take Lintilla and Arthur back to his office.

Hig explains the background of what happened to Brontitall - they fell victim to a Dolmansaxlil Shoe Shop Intensifier Ray, forcing them to construct nothing but shoe shops, and selling nothing but badly made shoes. Arthur learns that Earth was to be one of the next targets, spared from this by being demolished by the Vogons. The film being shown to Arthur and Lintilla explaining the Shoe Shop Intensifier Ray is suddenly interrupted, as is power to the office, when Marvin decides to rescue Arthur and Lintilla, and her two clones.

The narrator then explains that the Shoe Shop Intensifier Ray was unnecessary, that a "Shoe Event Horizon" would have occurred on that planet, and many other worlds, as part of their natural economic histories. A lesson from the future is heard, explaining this principle. Lintilla, Arthur and Marvin continue their escape, while Ford and Zaphod finally arrive at a large, very old building, and enter it to take shelter from the still angry bird people.

They discover that the building is a spaceport, and find abandoned ships left inside it. One such ship is still connected to supply lines, and still has power. Zaphod makes himself a stethoscope (for both heads), and holds it to the hull of this ship. He's stunned by what he hears inside, and here the episode ends

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THHGTTG - Fit 12 (17mb)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here

This and That

I'm not sure if it's a particularly tenacious virus, a severe cold, exhaustion from this past quarter, or some combo of all of the above, but I'm still battling the tail end of a severe cold/the flu, which has included a sore throat, a cough that felt like someone was grating bricks in my chest, and, over the last few days, an earache (which I haven't had in years), which explains the lack of posts over the last week. I've felt too horrible to do much of anything except taking lots of medicine and drinking lots of tea, paying bills, reading books and essays I hadn't managed to finish during the quarter, venturing out only when necessary, answering necessary emails, and, for those students and friends who may have been wondering, sending off recommendations. I haven't been able to focus enough even to post some unfinished prior posts, memorializing Vèvè Clark and others (Jane Rule, Karlheinz Stockhausen, St. Clair Bourne, Oscar Peterson) who've passed, but I'll try to do so soon.

So here's a belated best wishes for the holidays--Merry Christmas and Happy Kwanzaa (Habari Gani)--to people dropping in here, and I'll try to post a timely New Year's Day message.

***

A belated congratulations to Byron and Richard, whose commitment ceremony took place on Christmas Day in Santo Domingo. Felicidades, and here's to a lifetime of love and joy between them.

***

I don't have anything to add to the spate of online commentary about the horrific assassination of Benazir Bhutto the other day beyond my sadness at this turn of events, though I do want to note one minor point: I've been noting that few online commentators, and certainly none of the mainstream media talking heads, have discussed the stated politics of her Pakistan's People's Party, which is socialist in its vision, if not in name. That is, the current right-wing administration had brokered a deal to install a socialist-leaning party in power as a way of maintaining--if not legitimizing--the authoritarian rule of dictator Pervez Busharraf Musharraf, but then I no longer doubt that the W Gang has any clue as to the ramifications of its actions. As my cousin Lowell Denny pointed out to me in an email the party's stated principles, viewable on its website, include: "Socialism is our economics." You can't be clearer than that. I'm not sure how much Bhutto intended to hold to this transparent notion, but considering Pakistan's current economic problems and widespread poverty, and considering this administration's overt hostility towards avowed socialist governments (socialist-lite, like Brazil or Chile, is much more palatable), I wonder how far Bhutto and the PPP would have gotten with even modest socialist-leaning economic "reforms" before the US began actively trying to destabilize her government. It appears their close ally wasn't going to take any chances.

Random Photo

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Sundaze, (12)

Hello Sundazers, today the first of 3 parts focussing on Cluster. Their experimental music influenced the development of contemporary popular electronic and ambient music. They have recorded albums in a wide variety of styles ranging from a disorienting meld of random space music, industrial noise, proto-ambient atmospherics to progressive rock, all of which had an avant-garde edge. Here now their first, second and fourth album for you to explore and daze from. 

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Cluster was one of the pioneering electronic music groups which popped out of Germany's electrical grid in the late 1960's.
Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Conrad Schnitzler formed Kluster in 1969 after the three had met at the Zodiak Free Arts Lab.This trio released three albums, Klopfzeichen, Zwei-Osterei and Eruption. When Schnitzler left the group, Roedelius and Moebius became Cluster. They were joined by Conny Plank, Cluster's eponymous debut in 1971 on Philips, was the first major label release for the musicians. Previous Kluster works had been small or private label releases with no more than 300 copies pressed and sold. This album and the 1972 follow-up were a musical bridge between the avant-garde, discordant, proto-industrial sound of Kluster and the softer and more controlled ambient sounds of their mid to late '70s albums. They continued as a duo thereafter but worked extensively with producer/engineer Plank until his death in 1987.

In 1973 the duo moved to the rural village of Forst, West Germany to build their own studio.There Cluster and Neu! co-founder Michael Rother recorded two albums under the name Harmonia: Musik Von Harmonia in 1974 and Deluxe in 1975, both released on Brain. (will get to those in the future). After Rother left to concentrate again pn his band Neu ! Cluster went back to work as a duo, releasing Zuckerzeit later in 1974. Zuckerzeit sounds different from any other Cluster album, with clearly defined melody and beat and a rhythmic sound, at times approaching the Motorik style of Neu !

The resulting unit of Moebius and Roedelius would prove itself to be very durable and innovative. Before long, their reputation was such that Brian Eno opted to make two recordings with the group. The period from 1976 - 1979 was Cluster's most productive, with the four albums released during those four years receiving the most critical acclaim of any of Cluster's works. 1976 also marked Cluster's move to Hamburg based Sky Records. Their first release for Sky was Sowiesoso, a highly creative album of gentler melodies recorded in just two days.

In 1977 the duo joined with Brian Eno for recording sessions at Conny Plank's studio. The first release from those sessions was the even softer Cluster & Eno. Guest musicians on the album included Can bassist Holger Czukay and Asmus Tietchens on synthesizer. The association with Eno brought Cluster a much wider audience and international attention. The second album drawn from the Cluster & Eno sessions, After the Heat, released on Sky in 1978, featured a much wider variety of styles, including three tracks with vocals by Eno. Roedelius also began releasing solo material during this period, beginning with Durch Die Wüste for Sky in 1978.

Cluster's 1979 release Grosses Wasser was produced by ex-Tangerine Dream member Peter Baumann and once again featured a wide variety of styles, including some of the most avant-garde material since the demise of Kluster. In 1980, Sky Records reissued the first Cluster release with new artwork and a new title: Cluster '71. That same year, Dieter Moebius teamed with former Cluster member, engineer and producer Conny Plank on the album Rastakraut Pasta, released on Sky. A second Moebius & Plank album, Material was released in 1981. Cluster's 1981 release Curiosum lives up to its name, with the seven tracks of offbeat and unusual melodies. Curiosum was Cluster's last release for Sky. It was also the final collaboration between Moebius and Roedelius before an eight year long hiatus. to be contimued....


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Cluster - Cluster 71 (71 ^ 99mb)

Cluster was recorded at Star-Studio in Hamburg, Germany in January, 1971. Cluster began a transition away from the discordant, proto-industrial sound of Kluster towards a more electronic sound. Russ Curry of Curious Music credited Conny Plank with the change of direction, describing it as having "...continued the commitment to improvisation but developed a focus on sound structure..." Instrumentation included a pair of organs, Hawaiian guitar, cello, and audio generators, all played by Moebius and Rodelius, all of which were electronically treated by Conny Plank.

Note "The Wire" places Cluster's self-titled debut album in their "One Hundred Records That Set The World On Fire".



01 - 15:33 (7:42)
02 - 07:38 (15:43)
03 - 21:17 (21:32

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Cluster - Cluster II (72 ^ 99mb)

Cluster II was recorded at Star-Studio in Hamburg, Germany in January, 1972. It was Cluster's first release for legendary Krautrock label Brain Records, a relationship which would last until 1975 and include the subsequent album Zuckerzeit as well as the first two Harmonia albums, a group which included both remaining members of Cluster and Michael Rother of Neu!.Cluster II continued the transition away from the discordant, proto-industrial sound of Kluster towards a more electronic sound. It was the first album to feature relatively short tracks and it was the first album in which tracks were named.



01 - Plas (6:11)
02 - Im Süden (12:45)
03 - Für Die Katz (3:00)
04 - Live In Der Fabrik (14:39)
05 - Georgel (5:34)
06 - Nabitte (2:40)

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Cluster - Sowiesoso (76 ^ 78mb)

Sowiesoso was recorded in just two days in Forst, Germany in 1976. The title is a construct and roughly translates to English as "So why so". It was Cluster's first release for legendary Krautrock label Sky Records, a relationship which would last until 1983 including albums with Brian Eno, solo recordings, and three albums by the duo of Moebius and former Cluster member and frequent engineer/producer Conny Plank. Sowiesoso was Cluster's gentlest and most melodic album of electronic music to that point. Brian Eno had worked with Moebius and Roedelius with Harmonia prior to the recording of Sowiesoso and worked with Cluster again on two albums in 1977 and 1978 and the influence of the British ambient musician is clearly heard on the softer and more controlled sound of this album.



01 - Sowiesoso (8:10)
02 - Halwa (2:48)
03 - Dem Wanderer (3:52)
04 - Umleitung (3:23)
05 - Zum Wohl (6:52)
06 - Es War Einmal (5:23)
07 - In Ewigkeit (7:19)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Into The Groove, (11)

Hello, Some old school rap today at Into The Groove the mid eighties delivered a number of hits and the compilation album, certainly delivers some of the best of those, it certainly will have your neurons fire up some memories, and should you have missed those days, it's never too late to join those beats..Whodini were a ' class act' from brooklyn that went to London to record some of the coolest beats of the day (84/85), they had the hottest scratcher on their team, Grandmaster Dee , and seemed set for the big league when once again the record company messed up. When the dust had settled the world had moved on....

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Whodini - Back In Black (86 ^ 98mb)

Coming out of the fertile early-'80s New York rap scene, the Brooklyn-raised trio, Whodini were one of the first rap groups to add a straight R&B twist to their music, thus laying the groundwork for the new jack swing movement. The group consisted of rappers Jalil Hutchins and John "Ecstasy" Fletcher, adding legendary DJ Drew "Grandmaster Dee" Carter, known for being able to scratch records with nearly every part of his body, in time for the Escape LP, released in 1984. Whodini made its name with good-humored songs like "Magic's Wand" , "The Haunted House of Rock" (a rewrite of "Monster Mash"), and "The Freaks Come Out at Night."

Their third record, Back in Black, is the follow-up to a multi-platinum album, 1984's Escape. The first track "Funky Beat" features monster bass and drums, the one-two punch of Hutchins and Ecstasy, as well as a rare rap from Grandmaster Dee. The well-produced "One Love" has great synth signatures and the guys dispensing their brand of pithy and pragmatic advice. The producer Larry Smith knew how to keep things sonically interesting. On the lyrically foggy "Fugitive," the hard rock guitars and clanging cymbals mesh especially well with Ecstasy's droll and abrupt delivery. "Echo Scratch" is also all over the road, but it was a great chance for Grandmaster Dee to show off his turntable skills. Also recorded at Battery Studios in London (as was Escape), Back in Black wasn't as influential as its predecessor, but it's just as enjoyable.

Following 1987's Open Sesame, Whodini went on hiatus due to problems with their record company, as well as to concentrate on new families. The group attempted a comeback in 1991 with Bag-a-Trix without much success, despite receiving their due as rap innovators. Five years later, Whodini returned with their sixth album, appropriately titled Six. The album disappeared shortly after its release.



01 - Funky Beat (5:04)
02 - One Love (5:29)
03 - Growing Up (5:12)
04 - I'm A Ho (4:00)
05 - Fugitive (6:05)
06 - Echo Scratch (5:16)
07 - Last Night (I Had A Long Talk With Myself) (5:27)
08 - The Good Part (4:09)

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VA - Hip Hop Chartbusters Vol.1 ( 86 * (68:41) 99mb)

So you never bought all those great 12" back in the days ..nevermind here's your chance to enjoy.( ps Be DEF ? Take the full bitrate)



01 - LL Cool J - Can't Live Without My Radio (5:29)
02 - Whistle - Nothing Serious (Just Buggin) (5:01)
03 - Real Roxanne, The - Bang Zoom (Let's Go Go) (5:54)

04 - Lovebug Starski - Amityville (House On The Hill) (5:30)
05 - Kool Moe Dee - Go See The Doctor (5:29)
06 - Full Force - Alice I Want You Just For Me (6:11)

07 - Doug E. Fresh - The Show (6:44)
08 - DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - Girls Ain't Nothing But Trouble (4:35)
09 - UTFO - We Work Hard (5:17)

10 - Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five - The Message (7:06)
11 - L Cool J - I Need A Beat (4:57)
12 - Whodini - Haunted House Of Rock (6:28)

VA - Hip Hop Chartbusters Vol.1 ( 86 ^ (68:41) 165mb)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Eight-X, (11)

Hello, after all that food and drink has found is way it's time to continue with Eight-X. This system still gives me some trouble recording vinyl so i reverted to CD. First in line are The Cult , who after some tentative starts recorded a classic with Love, it seems US fans largely missed that one and so get a chance to make amence. B.A.D. was Mick Jones ' answer to the Clash after leaving them, here's the first and as so often most fresh album, though B.A.D. would release some good work in years to follow. My last posting today is another former Clash member , Joe Strummer, who quite unexpectedly died shortly before X mas five years ago. The album here doesnt rank as his first official soloalbum, though to my mind it is, it maybe a soundtrack to a movie which takes pplace in 1850, way before electric guitars that is, but i think he did a great job with "Walker" , admittedly it helps if, like me, you enjoy some latin music.

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The Cult - Love ( 85 ^ 158mb)

The origins of the Cult lie in the Southern Death Cult, a goth rock outfit formed by vocalist Ian Astbury (born May 14, 1962) in 1981. In December 1982, the Southern Death Cult released their first single -- the double A-side "Moya"/"Fatman" -- and the following month, they supported Bauhaus on tour. Though the group's future was looking bright, Astbury pulled the plug. Following the disbandment of the Southern Death Cult, Astbury shortened the name of the group to Death Cult and recruited guitarist Billy Duffy -- who had previously played with Theatre of Hate -- and drummer Ray Mondo and bassist Jamie Stewart, who had previously played with Ritual. Death Cult released an eponymous EP in the summer of 1983.In early 1984, the band shed "Death" from the title, fearing that the word gave them the misleading appearance of being a goth band.

Where both Southern Death Cult and Death Cult had been overtly influenced by post-punk, the Cult was a heavy hard rock band with slight psychedelic flourishes. Dreamtime, the group's first album, was released in the fall of 1984. For the group's summer single, "She Sells Sanctuary," the band was joined by Big Country's drummer, Mark Brzezicki. "She Sells Sanctuary" became a major U.K. hit, peaking at number 15. During the recording of the group's second album, drummer Les Warner joined the group. Love, released in the fall of 1985, displayed a marked improvement over the Cult's early material, and though it remains underappreciated in America, this exceptional record has actually aged better than the band's more notorious releases: Electric and Sonic Temple. Equal parts psychedelic hard rock and new wave goth, the songs on Love emanate a bright guitar sheen, tight arrangements, crisp drumming, and a command performance from vocalist Ian Astbury. The album benefits from a wonderful sense of space, thanks in large part to guitarist Billy Duffy, who also provides compelling melodies , driving riffs , and even a U2-like intro to "Big Neon Glitter." On top of all that it contains two great singles "She Sells Sanctuary" and the smash "Rain". Considering the musical schizophrenia that would plague each subsequent Cult release, Love just may be the band's best moment.



01 - Nirvana (5:29)
02 - The Big Neon Glitter (4:53)
03 - Love (5:32)
04 - Little Face (4:57)
05 - Brother Wolf Sister Moon (6:49)
06 - Rain (3:58)
07 - The Phoenix (5:06)
08 - The Hollow Man (4:44)
09 - Revolution (5:25)
10 - She Sells Sanctuary (4:19)
11 - Judith (5:29)
12 - Black Angel (5:25)
---Xs
13 - She Sells Sanctuary (The Howling Mix) (8:19)

diet version without Xs
The Cult - Love ( 85 * 94mb)

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Big Audio Dynamite - This Is (85 ^ 99mb)

After Mick Jones was fired from the Clash in 1983, he formed Big Audio Dynamite (B.A.D.) one year later to continue the more experimental funk elements of the Clash's Combat Rock. The group's original incarnation included Jones, video artist and Clash associate Don Letts (effects and vocals), Greg Roberts (drums), Dan Donovan (keyboards), and Leo "E-Zee Kill" Williams (bass). Adding samplers, dance tracks, and found sounds to Jones' concise pop songwriting, B.A.D. debuted on record with the single "The Bottom Line" in September 1985 and the album This Is Big Audio Dynamite later that year.

When it arrived in late 1986, Big Audio Dynamite's second album, No. 10, Upping St., boasted co-production and co-writing from Joe Strummer, Jones' former bandmate in the Clash. It was a much better fusion of contemporary production techniques . After a two-year break, the band returned with a less free-form work, Tighten Up, Vol. 88, but righted the ship with 1989's Megatop Phoenix, their biggest performer in America (thanks to the singles "Contact" and "James Brown").

After Megatop Phoenix, the band split apart at the end of 1989. Jones quickly added Gary Stonadge (bass/vocals), Chris Kavanagh (drums/vocals), and Nick Hawkins (guitar/vocals) to form Big Audio Dynamite II, the first full-length album with the new lineup, in 1991, B.A.D. II experienced their greatest success yet with the American Top 40 hit "Rush." In 1994, Jones truncated the band's name to Big Audio and released Higher Power. Thereafter, Big Audio parted ways with Epic, signing with Radioactive in early 1995 and releasing F-Punk.That conglomeration also split shortly afterward, Jones is these days mostly appearing in the production chair .



01 - Medicine Show (6:29)
02 - Sony (4:30)
03 - E=MC2 (5:54)
04 - The Bottom Line (4:35)
05 - A Party (6:40)
06 - Sudden Impact! (5:03)
07 - Stone Thames (4:05)
08 - BAD (5:54)

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Joe Strummer - Walker (87 ^ 98mb)

As frontman and main songwriter of the Clash, Joe Strummer created some of the fieriest, most vital punk rock -- and, indeed, rock & roll -- of all time. Since the Clash disbanded in 1986, Strummer has sporadically pursued film acting and released the occasional solo album, though seemingly only when it suits him. Joe Strummer was born John Graham Mellor. During his time at London boarding schools, the teenage Strummer immersed himself in rock and reggae, and began busking on the streets under his newly adopted stage name. In 1974, he formed the pub rock group the 101'ers, and co-founded the Clash in 1976; the rest was history. Six albums, and one frequently brilliant body of work later, the Clash broke up amidst rancorous infighting and uncertainty of direction.

Joe Strummer had become friendly with filmmaker Alex Cox when Strummer contributed some songs to the soundtrack of Cox's movie Sid and Nancy, and Joe later tagged along for the drunken holiday in Spain that was Straight to Hell. In 1987, when Cox began filming his ambitious film about the life of American mercenary William Walker, he brought Strummer along to play a small role in the film and compose the score. Strummer's music turned out to be just as ambitious as the film itself; Walker bears almost no resemblance to Strummer's work with the Clash, instead aiming for a airy fusion of several Latin musical styles . Strummer only sings on three cuts ("The Unknown Immortal," "Tennessee Rain," and "Tropic of No Return," which sound more like Mexican folk tunes than anything else), and while more than a few fans will wonder what Joe was thinking when he recorded this stuff, Strummer obviously took his assignment seriously and rather than forcing a period piece set in 1850 to bend to the force of his music, he pulled back the reigns on his rock influences and fashioned a series of simple but evocative pieces that conjure up the mystery and beauty of Nicaragua with commendable sense of dynamics and grace. In short, Strummer could have become a first-rate film composer if he'd stuck with it, and while Walker is something of an anomaly in his discography, it's also a lovely and engaging set of music.

Strummer also wrote five songs for the soundtrack of 1988's Permanent Record. In 1989, he released his first solo album, Earthquake Weather, which blended straight-up rock & roll with touches of world music. However, following a temporary stint filling in for Shane MacGowan in the Pogues, Strummer largely fell silent after the very early '90s. In 1999, Strummer released his second solo album, Rock Art and the X-Ray Style, which largely forsook straight-ahead rock & roll in favor of eclectic, rhythmic, world music flavored compositions, plus elaborate singer/songwriter-ish lyrics. Strummer further refined this new direction with the follow-up, 2001's Global A-Go-Go. In December 2002, he was in the midst of recording his fourth solo album when he died suddenly of a heart attack at his home in Somerset.



01 - Filibustero (3:57)
02 - Omotepe (3:46)
03 - Sandstorm (1:56)
04 - Machete (3:04)
05 - Viperland (2:40)
06 - Nica Libre (3:45)
07 - Latin Romance (3:52)
08 - The Unknown Immortal (3:45)
09 - Musket Waltz (2:38)
10 - The Brooding Side Of Madness (3:02)
11 - Tennessee Rain (2:54)
12 - Smash Everything (3:21)
13 - Tropic Of No Return (3:09)
14 - Tropic Of Pico (4:26)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Don' t Panic !, (11)



Hello fellow travellers , as usual a recap of last weeks episode

The episode opens with more background material on Arthur Dent, specifically how the "remarkably unremarkable" human from Earth had an effect on the war between the G'Gugvunts and Vl'Hurgs, and will now have further significance on the planet Brontitall, where the Heart of Gold has just arrived. Zaphod and Ford discuss their arrival in a cave with Eddie the computer, noting the cold. Eddie calculates after they, and Arthur and Marvin, have departed the ship, that they are thirteen miles above ground level, despite there not being any mountains on the planet.

The four begin to explore the cave. Shortly, Arthur falls out of the cave mouth. Zaphod nearly falls as well, but catches the lip of the cave mouth, then discovers for himself that they are "miles up in the air." Ford talks to Zaphod while the latter dangles.

Meanwhile, Arthur has managed to fall onto a large passing bird. The bird reveals that the "cave" is actually a mile long marble sculpture of a plastic cup, hanging in the sky, part of a larger statue. The bird flys Arthur to the main statue, which is known as "Arthur Dent Throwing the Nutrimatic Cup." Arthur then reveals himself to be the very person that the statue is modeled after, and the bird flys into the statue's right ear, where the rest of his kind live. Arthur meets them, and their leader, the Wise Old Bird, and learns a few things about the past of Brontitall. For example, the statue was built in Arthur's honor after his argument with the Nutrimat Machine inspired them to rid themselves of the "blight of the robots". There is one thing the birds refuse to speak of, however, and the Wise Old Bird tells Arthur, "if you want to know, you will have to descend to the ground...."

The Guide mentions how little is still considered to be unspeakable in the galaxy, except for the rudest word in existence: "Belgium". Zaphod uses this word to finally convince Ford to attempt a rescue, still dangling from the lip of the mile-long cup. The attempt fails, and both of them fall out of the cup, and onto another passing bird.

On the surface, Arthur encounters a Footwarrior, who has declared the planet of Brontitall to be the property of the Dolmansaxlil Galactic Shoe Corporation. Fleeing the Footwarrior, Arthur takes refuge in a trench with an archaeologist named Lintilla, who tells Arthur that she's on Brontitall to discover why the Footwarriors are all limping due to blisters, as the episode ends.(wiki)

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THHGTTG - Fit 11 (19mb)


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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Sundaze, (11)

Hello Sundazers, today i have a special X-mas post, after all that awful muzak that gets on peoples nerves...and when like meets like at Xmasday those nerves enhance eachother and go pop, so i promise you with todays music as Xmas muzak things will stay decent and provide a frosty fresh atmosphere as back ground to the smells of food and the sound of laughter and will keep the agitation in check.
Now then The Beating of Wings was my Xmas record of 84 , i planned to supplement it with True Love Waits, classical piano renditions of Radiohead songs, but...i couldnt find it searching is not my strong point but i made a substantial effort, i decided to fall back on another Andrew Poppy album, Alphabed..well after all that had been ripped recoded and uploaded, i sat down to watch some tele, with a knawing feeling..how come i couldnt find the cd i know i had in my hand just a week ago when planning tonights post...another search drive and this time ..bingo, even time to code it twice...so there you have it..Happy X mas , btw Rhotation continues as usual this week.

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Andrew Poppy studied music at Royal Holloway College and Goldsmiths College University of London, studying piano and earning a B.M. degree in piano performance. One of the least internationally known of British minimalist composers, Poppy was a founding member (in 1981) of The Lost Jockey, a large ensemble dedicated to the performance of new works by British composers composed in the style of such composers as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Louis Andriessen. He wrote a number of works for the ensemble including, "The Object is a Hungry Wolf". In the mid 1980s he signed to Paul Morley and Trevor Horn's ZTT Records. Pursuing a post minimal aesthetic in the context of a pop label he recorded 2 CDs. "Alphabed" merges traditional composition and studio production techniques in its use of sequencers, samples and electronic keyboards and includes a variety of singers including Annette Peacock, Ashley Slater, Udo Scheuerpflug and Dee Lewis

He contributed orchestral arrangements to Force The Hand of Chance, the first album by the group Psychic TV which was released on WEA Records in 1982. Over the last two decades Poppy has worked in the studio with bands such as The The, Erasure, Nitzer Ebb as well as making theatre scores for Julia Bardsley's productions of Macbeth and Family Reunion and Kenneth Branagh's perfomance of Coriolanious. The list of choreographies provoked to make dances to Poppy's music include Ian Spink, Sally Owen, Michael Clark, Gaby Agis, Sue Davies, Linda Gaudreau, Julia Bardsley, Michael Popper, David Massingham and most recently New Yorker Heidi Latsky. He has also made music for TV and film - notably with Portugese director and producer Vitor Gonçalves - and between 1995-97 he was head of music at the National Film and TV School in the UK. The year 2000 saw the CD release of Time At Rest Devouring It's Secret, a studio work of 35 minutes duration which once again connects the musical techniques of the minimalist project to an image from popular culture.

Andrew Poppy - The Beating Of Wings (84 ^ 99mb)



1 - The Object Is A Hungry Wolf (12:27)
2 - 32 Frames For Orchestra (8:38)
3 - Listening In (13:01)
4 - Cadenza (14:31)

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Andrew Poppy - Alphabed (A Mystery Dance) (87 ^ 99mb)



1 - 45 Is (Voc. Sheila Smith , Udo Scheuerpflug) (20:37)
2 - Goodbye Mr G (Voc. A.Peacock, A.Slater, D.Lewis, J.Favier) (14:34)
3 - The Amusement (Voc. Sheila Smith , Udo Scheuerpflug) (6:34)

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Christopher O'Riley - True Love Waits (03 ^ 145mb)

O’Riley was born in 1956 in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in Evanston, Illinois. He studied classical piano at the New England Conservatory of Music. He has received sebveral awards at competitions. O'Riley' s debut album, a collection of the works of Ferruccio Busoni, was released in 1983. He has since released several recordings, including works of Maurice Ravel, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Jean-Philippe Rameau, John Adams, Igor Stravinsky, and Alexander Scriabin, as well as a recording of Rhapsody in Blue with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

O'Riley is the host of the weekly National Public Radio program From the Top, one of if not the most popular classical music show on the air today. O'Riley first began performing Radiohead songs as a intermezzo during a break in the program, to supplement preludes and miniatures by composers such as Debussy and Rachmaninoff. Many of those short classical pieces are found on his CD release At the Break.

True Love Waits: Christopher O'Riley Plays Radiohead was released in 2003. O'Riley's second Radiohead-derived album, Hold Me To This, followed two years later and contains a different selection of songs. In 2006, he released a piano tribute to Elliott Smith, Home to Oblivion, again featuring his own arrangements.

O'Riley claims his own piano arrangements have introduced the music of Radiohead to an ignorant classical audience as well as introducing classical music to a wider or younger audience, as he sometimes performs both standard concert repertoire, such as Shostakovich or Mozart, and Radiohead, Elliott Smith or Nick Drake interpretations at the same concert. O'Riley describes himself as an obsessed Radiohead fan in interviews, and says he was attracted to the multilayered nature of the band's music, leading him to listen and transcribe lesser known album tracks, live bootleg recordings of performances, b-sides, and even songs never officially released, as well as some of their hit singles.



01 - Everything In It's Right Place (4:07)
02 - Knives Out (4:38)
03 - Black Star (3:35)
04 - Karma Police (4:37)
05 - Let Down (5:32)
06 - Airbag (3:47)
07 - Subterranean Homesick Alien (4:15)
08 - Thinking About You (2:00)
09 - Exit Music (For A Film) (4:29)
10 - You (2:56)
11 - Bulletproof (3:02)
12 - Fake Plastic Trees (4:58)
13 - I Can't (2:38)
14 - True Love Waits (5:01)
15 - Motion Picture Soundtrack (4:49)

diet version
Christopher O'Riley - True Love Waits (03 * 99mb)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here

Taser Humor + Steroids 'R Us + One Laptop Per Child

Watching TV today as a way of diverting my attention from this cough that is drilling straight up through my throat, I had to turn off CNN, after watching correspondent Fredricka Whitfield giggling like a teenager on whippets over a video clip of University of Florida student Andrew Meyer screaming out the phrase "Don't Tase me, Bro!" just before out of control security guards Tasered him this past September 17. His transgression, you may remember, was pressing that hapless boob Senator John Kerry at a university forum. Anchor T. J. Holmes had initially responded to the Meyer cry clip, which he announced had been named the year's most memorable quote by the Yale Book of Quotations, by pitying the rambling, incoherent reply Miss Teen South Carolina, Caitlin Upton, gave at this past year's Miss Teen America competition. But he quickly joined in the giggling as well. Last night, I saw WPIX anchors Lolita Lopez and Jim Watkins chuckling heartily over the same clip. Assuming these people are not all psychopaths, is watching someone being violently assaulted by cops wielding a potentially lethal electrical device that funny? Are these people that jaded and desensitized, is Tasering people that passé? Yes, I know that we're living in a time in which not only police brutality, but state-sanctioned brutality and torture, have become so normalized they barely merit public comment, let alone outrage, but still, the drollery disturbed the hell out of me. Which makes me wonder: am I being too sensitive, serious? Or is it that the detached, zombified, overpaid media bobbleheads emblematic of so much that's wrong with our media and our society?

UPDATE: Digby notes another appalling CNN moment, this time involving anchor Kyra Phillips, who indifferently described and downplayed the fact that police were attacking the people protesting the Department of Housing and Urban Development's plans to demolish several longstanding housing projects in New Orleans. She then slanted her on-air riff to openly defend the police, using tortured and disengaged language to describe the assaults on the protesters. (I should add that my great uncle has worked for HUD for many years, and is none too fond of the clown now running it, the scandal-plagued Alphonso Jackson, the other Black person in W's Cabinet of Horrors.) One of the commenters in the Digby thread points out that the New York Times's architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff recently penned an excellent piece criticizing HUD's terrible plans. Ourousoff argues that HUD is failing not only to recognize the value of the architecture it seeks to destroy and replace with shoddier, less hurricane-worthy housing in a misguided fantasy of suburbanizing the city, but also to acknowledge the symbolic and social violence of the plans as well. He writes:

The agency refuses to make distinctions between the worst of the housing projects and those, like Lafitte, that could be at least partly salvaged. Nor will it acknowledge the trauma it causes by boarding up and then eradicating entire communities in a reeling city.

In an eerie echo of the slum clearance projects of the 1960s, government officials are once again denying that these projects and communities can be salvaged through a human, incremental approach to planning. For them, only demolition will do.

The difference between then and now is what will exist once the land is cleared. If the urban renewal projects of the 1960s replaced decaying historic neighborhoods with vast warehouses for the poor, HUD’s vision would yield saccharine, suburban-style houses. And the situation is likely to get worse. The government has identified some other historically important public buildings for demolition as part of its push for privatization. Charity Hospital, an Art Deco structure built downtown in the late 1930s, was abandoned after Hurricane Katrina, and its fate is uncertain.

I cannot say it enough, but the crimes against the city and people of New Orleans embody everything that is wrong with this administration and this country we're living in.

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Sammy Sosa and sonsI've passed on commenting on Major League Baseball's very flawed Mitchell Report, which despite its flawed methodology has revealed that a far wider array of major league baseball players than previously assumed were using various kinds of performance enhancement drugs, while the owners, the players union and other players, and the MLB hierarchy looked the other way. One immediate effect of this news, and subsequent reports, should be that fanatical sportswriters need to issue a collective, stentorian apology to Barry Bonds, who has been crucified in the media for denying being a roider, and then to Sammy Sosa (at right, from the Monaga Blog) who until the most recent news about pitcher Jason Grimsley's affidavit, had not been tied conclusively to any performance enhancement drug use.

The false shock and piety, which is to say, sanctimony, from people in the baseball world, including former baseball owner and public welfare maven George W., was totally predictable. What I'm still waiting for some of these folks to admit is how much baseball benefitted from the bulked up stats, and the fact that players began earning outsized salaries compared to other professions in the early 1980s if they made the major leagues and could sustain even a modest career, so there was every incentive to juice up. There still is. For hitting a ball around a field or getting it over the plate, baseball players earn more than most CEOs, who are grossly overpaid as it is. The truth is, an entire era, up through now, will have to be viewed with "enhancements" as the norm, rather than the exceptions. This new realization must be taken into account with all of the stats and records set or none of them. Before steroids there were amphetamines, which still exist, and who knows what someone is cooking up in a laboratory even as I type these words. "Clear" was out there for a while before track and field's authorities discovered it, and only they did so as quickly as they did only with the help of whistleblowers. So long as the financial incentives exist to cheat, people will do so. My question is, who really believes that baseball is the only sport where this is a serious problem? What about the NFL, the NBA, the NHL, and every other sport where chemical enhancement gives athletes an edge? Could the Beijing Olympics possibly be clean? I doubt it.

Which leads me to this link, from the Dallas Morning News: "More professionals, students using brain performance enhancing drugs." Business people, musicians, professional gamers, students...it's definitely not just pro athletes, but our society in general that needs to undergo more thorough self-analysis and critique....

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Yesterday brought a pleasant surprise: an XO computer arrived in the mail, though I'd hardly expected to see it anytime soon. The computer is the result of my participation in the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program, the brainchild of visionary MIT professor and Media Laboratory founder and former head Nicholas Negroponte, who decided to develop affordable, networkable computers to empower children in the developing world. The original prototype, which I blogged about here two years ago, has been modified to some extent, but the model I received is a robust, fully loaded little portable machine containing an easy-to-figure, Graphical User Interface (GUI) atop a Linux platform. The software includes a browser, a writing program, several layers of music-making software (which I sampled right away), a recording studio with a camera (for photos, videos and audio--that's me, at left, on screen, photographing myself photographing myself), lots of games, a basic programming tutorial, and the means for children to network with others very easily, either in class or outside it. In fact, I could see children getting started on these machines swiftly and learning not only to write, but to create group projects, make music and visual art projects, create mathematical and statistical programs, write software programs, and even learn to repair their computers and troubleshoot hardware problems.

The XO has great Wifi capability (in fact, its literature say it's a fulltime wireless router), and after C added its MAC address to the base stations here, I was on the Net...in less than 5 minutes. It also easily links to local networks and fosters their creation. It has ports for a microphone (in), headphones (out), and USB-connective devices, a slot for memory upgrades, no harddrive, and only two internal cables--and it saves all projects unless you delete them. The computer's CPU suspends its CPU operation selective, allowing it amazing power savings, or about 1/10th of what a standard laptop consumes. This aspect of the computer mirrors its battery, which lasts between 6-8 hours with average use and can be recharged using a variable energy powercord, as well as via a crank or a solar or wind-powered source, to facilitate use in the many countries where electricity is a premium. The screen rotates so that it can function as an e-book, and the overall machine is compact enough that it can fit in a backpack and appears to be fairly robust, though real world use will probably assist its manufacturers in making it even more so. The only drawback I can see so far is the tiny keyboard, which is perfect for children but a challenge for anyone with larger fingers--but that's the point, this is a computer for children, though I can foresee someone down the road creating something along these lines, affordable and very robust, for adults as well. I certainly hope someone does, because the XO is a sweet little machine.

All in all I think Negroponte's idea was a remarkable one, and I'm very interested to see how the OLPC program unfolds. So far, from what I can tell, it has worked out pretty well where it's been implemented. The computers have been piloted in Nigeria, Brazil, Thailand, Peru, Uruguay, and India, and I sincerely hope that they can be offered to children in many more countries. Here's a quote from one child in Nigeria:

“I use my computer very carefully so that it will not spoil. I use it to type, I use it to write, I use it to draw, I use it to play games... I'm using my computer at home to type assignments.” — T. (Primary 4), Galadima School, Abuja, Nigeria

If you'd like to learn more, you can click on the link above, and if you think you'd like to contribute to the program, donate a computer or volunteer your time and services, click here. If you know of people who write open source, educationally-oriented software that might children can use, please urge them to contact OPLC as well.×

Friday, December 21, 2007

Fin del semestre + Travels + Picano as Publisher

Nearly a week has elapsed, but this past Monday was E-Day, as in End of Quarter Day! Tonight I'm sitting at my computer, nursing a chest cold that I picked up while on vacation--a geographical but not mental and physical vacation, that is, because I was, naturally, reading student work and addressing administrative issues--but even a persistent runny nose and hacking cough can't diminish my feeling of relief that this quarter is finally, finally over. Finally. Over. The daze lingers but the days, thankfully do not. As is always the case, the classes themselves, and the students, were a pleasure; it was clear to me that by the end of the quarter the introductory students were conversant in the principles of good fiction writing and their final submissions demonstrated this, the advanced sequence students were really hitting their stride with their second stories, and many of the revisions were superb; and the graduate students produced submissions that were among the strongest I've seen at that level. The two graduate fiction students with whom I've been working closely are really advancing, and the doctoral student on whose committee I sit produced a thesis chapter that is much closer to completion than before. In terms of the classes themselves, I believe all three proceeded pretty well, I think, though I often felt mentally exhausted from the sheer amount of reading at what can only be described as an insane pace. A colleague once suggested that students should learn to and be encouraged to read slowly, a suggestion which I strongly agree with, though I see the reality of our society, and particularly the high-powered sectors in which most of them hope to operate, demanding that they--and we--be able to assimilate and process information, in textual and other forms, at a dizzying pace. ("I want to be a machine."--Andy Warhol) If you cannot keep up.... But I did, and though I am still feeling a bit of mental whiplash, I'm glad to have had to the opportunity to work with these three sets of students. I hope to see some of the intro students as majors down the road, and I am looking forward to continuing on with the advanced sequence students into the new year, when I'll hand them off to my colleague who teaches the novella-reading and writing portion of the course. Before then we'll be reading Haruki Murakami and Aimee Bender stories (perhaps with stories by Edward P. Jones, William Faulkner, and Alice Munro in the mix), and I personally will try to resume work on several different projects that I had to shutter when I simply could not muster the brainpower to look at them. The novel, stories, a new book of poetry, translations, and several talks I'm supposed to be giving will need attention pronto. But that's for then; for now, finally....

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We did get away, leaving the snow and ice of Chicago (at left) and the New York area for a very mild few days of Caribbean December (at right). I was surprised at how breezy it was, because C and I have traveled to the tropics during the winter months and wished we'd brought along a portable air conditioner. But this time, after the luases and loas and orishas and saints and every other intercessor drove Hurricane Olga out in a period of days, our good friend Victor and we were able to spend a little time sightseeing and relaxing and catching up with old and new friends, not least among them Anthony Montgomery, whose birthday, and birthday celebration, marvelously fell just before we left. It was a joy spending time with him, as always, and I will say this again: he is one of the best oral storytellers I have ever come across. Child know he need to have his own TV show!

We also got to spend time with Bernard, who joined us on an ear-popping trip up to Bonao, in the south Cibao valley province of Monseñor Nouel, where our wonderful and absolutely adorable tourguide, Henry Acosta (below, left, at the Balneario--click on the photo to see Henry in his full glory), recommended by Anthony, took us on a scenic tour of the vibrant, maze-like little city and environs, which included a riverside disco, the Disco Balneario "El Camellon" (though during the day, so though we heard and were breathing to the beat of Omega's infectious "Si no me amas" [*Note: Do not listen to this song if you do not want to become spellbound] by the time we got there we didn't fit in a dance) and a youth boxing match. (Anyone who goes to the Dominican Republic--or Brazil or anywhere else--and doesn't venture outside the resorts is really missing out in a huge way.) I even stuck my hand in the water, though I--none of us--was ready to "take a bath" (as Henry described it) in what looked like perfect rapids for whitewater rafting. Henry assured us, however, that he, Anthony, photographer Paul Culver, and a host of other beauties had marched 10 kms up the river and crisscrossed it for the purposes of art, but we were perfectly willing to experience his and Anthony's riverine experiences vicariously.

I did not keep a journal during the trip or even post anything here (I started to see online radesheets in quadruplicate and kept my screen viewing to a minimum), so at the risk of leaving out someone, let me say that it was fun once again see and to hang out with Byron, Richard, Patricio, José, Kenny, Gerard, Ruddy, Amauri, and Ruskin, and meet Edward, Merrick, Vicky, Michael, Mike, Natja, David, Rafael, Rey, Johane (more on her soon), and Terrance, a fellow writer from the US. I even talked up the university's graduate writing program. And it was truly exciting to finally drive a car in another country, which I've never done (is that true?--no, not even Canada or Mexico), though I was glad that C was behind the wheel when the ominous sounds kept issuing from the area of the rear wheels and the axle, because I knew he would be able to keep us moving forward at just the right speed so that the SUV would not disintegrate in the middle of the carretera and we'd get to the airport on time.

Y, por los luases, we did!

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As I said, I was reading student work intently through Monday, so for lighter reading I picked up Felice Picano's history-cum-memoir, Sex and Art in Greenwich Village: Gay Literary Life After Stonewall (Carroll & Graf, 2007) just before we left, and finished it during the trip. It's a thorough, entertaining review of one of the most important segments of the gay literary scene, and by extension, of the development of LGBT mainstream culture, from the late 1960s through the early years of the AIDS pandemic, which killed off a number of the figures in the book and marked both an end-point and a beginning, as the mainstreaming of LGBT culture was rapidly underway. Picano was a noteworthy and rising young author and a member of the Violet Quill writers group--which included Edmund White, Robert Ferro, Michael Grumley, Christopher Cox, Andrew Holleran, and George Whitmore--when he decided to start SeaHorse Press in 1977. It was, according to Picano, the second "gay press" after Winston Leyland's Gay Sunshine Press--I'm assuming he meant gay-male-owned and operated--and it and its two brother presses, which banded together to become Gay Presses of New York, published not only fiction, but poetry, essays, and works in other genres over the years, including poetry and fiction by Picano, as well the first books of Dennis Cooper and Brad Gooch, the poems of Rudy Kikel and Gavin Dillard, Robert Glück's "new narrative" landmark Jack the Modernist, the only novel of Guy Hocquenghem's to have been translated into English, the then-little known Harvey Fierstein's bestselling Torch Song Trilogy, two groundbreaking lesbian anthologies, and the hilarious anti-clone The Butch Manual.

Picano's narrative is as much a social history as a memoir. With a liberal and generous touch, he describes many of intersecting queer literary and social narratives of that era, though his particular network consisted, at least from what this book suggests and from other things I've read about it, of a primarily middle and upper-middle-class, educated and professional, 20-to-40-something, urban (or "metronormative") white male cohort. Picano does note his own more nuanced class origins and his strong connections with lesbians, yet he often reads his social group as "the gays" of that era, and, more troublingly, voices what sounded to me like a somewhat skewed understanding of the historical trajectory of radical lesbianism and lesbian separatism, but then I'm not an expert on LGBT or gender studies and perhaps I have the chronologies and figures wrong. His rendering of Adrienne Rich's positions and work, however, do seem problematic. Picano does note in a few places the monocultural and monocolor aspects of the world in which he ran, but too often it's taken as a given; gay equals white and male of a certain class. Yet he also situates his story within the more fluid context of that era's particular historical moment, which itself offered spaces of fluidity and exchange, in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, and class, particularly around sex (as others such as Samuel Delany, never once mentioned in this book, have detailed elsewhere), more so than what immediately followed or what passes for the LGBT mainstream today. Still, the absence of almost any significant queer writers of color in the narrative speaks volumes, and led me to appreciate even more some of the women's presses that did publish writers of color, Barbara Smith's, Gloria Anzaldua's and Cherrie Moraga's pioneering efforts, and Sasha Alyson, who, for whatever the reasons and whatever one may say about his press and its aesthetics, was by the mid-to-late 1980s publishing books like the invaluable anthologies Black Men and White Men Together, In the Life, Brother to Brother, as well as individual works by authors from Steven Corbin to James Earl Hardy. I also remembered Robert Ferro's how encouraging Robert Ferro, who makes several appearances in Picano's book, was to me the one time I met him, not concerning my desire to become a writer--I hadn't completed more than a few verse or a short story draft since college at that point--and as a potential publisher, a career I haven't taken up, though I am glad dynamic visionaries like Lisa Moore and Renee Gladman have.

Along the way Picano dishes quite a bit, providing delicious anecdotes about the dottiness of Gore Vidal, whose Myra Breckinridge nearly appeared under a GPNY imprint; how he managed to publish Charles Henri Ford's famous early co-written novel, which allows him divagations on the emotional and financial vicissitudes of gay figures from earlier eras; his pas de deux with James Purdy, which did not pan out; his near-miss with one of my favorite poets, the charming, sadly overlooked Edward Field; and his contretemps with John Preston, who considered Picano and his gilded cohort as gay literature establishment (they were and are), among others. One of the best stories revolves around Harvey Fierstein, who now receives routine voice work but whose bass rasp, in his early onstage (and later onscreen) appearances, most certainly sent a lightning bolt through viewers. Among the many new and fascinating tidbits I picked up was how Richard Schechner, whom I'd worked with closely at NYU during my days at the Faculty Resource Network, actually came to New York; I'd had no idea of The Drama Review's peripatetic history, or the extent of Schechner's bravado, which he demonstrated when he and a handful of colleagues led a revolt against Tulane's conservatism and quit, bound for New York, leaving that southern institution bereft of its best theater and performance scholars, and endowing the City with some of the liveliest young minds in the field, with repercussions for decades to come.

The easy and frequent sex of the title suffuses the story, as Picano details the square-dance of boyfriends and partners that many of the figures he's writing about, including himself, enjoyed, but what he makes clear is that sex was not just a means of pleasure, but an important step in developing social bonds that fostered the blossoming of what is now a historical fact, early post-Stonewall gay life, and especially its artistic triumphs. Art, in fact, was the aim of so many of these (mostly) male lovers, and one of the saddest and most tragic aspects of the story, which I've noted on this blog in the past when speaking about some of the Other Countries writers, or heroes of mine like Melvin Dixon, was how AIDS stilled their eyes and hands and dreams prematurely. A deep river of suffering and sorrow runs beneath this text, though Picano takes pains, it seems to me, not to belabor the grieving or the losses. He also doesn't hold back on discussing the pernicious homophobia and sexism that is now sometimes swept under the rug even by LGBT spokespeople who are too callow, indifferent or ignorant of fairly recent history. One frequent target is the mainstream media, particular the New York Times, which I can recall suffered several fainting spells before it could even print the word "gay" without qualification, yet now publishes same-sex wedding announcements as readily as all the straight bourgeoisie's banns. The Gray Gentleman comes out in an unflattering light. But then that's hardly a surprise these days, especially on the political front.

Overall, I would recommend the book to anyone who's interested in understanding how "gay" literature, or at least a good portion of it, became mainstream, now just another niche for the publishing industry, another shelf for the bookselling conglomerates, but more importantly, for anyone who's interested in a good story about a particularly fascinating moment in New York history and (gay) American culture.

Rhotation, ( 11) Into BPM

Hello, its been one of those days..i was busy working at the pc when i started smelling melting plastic (?) then my pc switched off came back on and 2 min later out again..took the covers off cleaned it out but restarting didnt make it too the wallpaper.. Ouch. No change copying data. Now i got another system but that caused some troubles aswell, before i could work with it..silly stuff and i cant connect my trackball-of which ive been very fond of for 9 years now, i really dont understand why all of you are mousing along all the time. Well obviously all this cut into my preperation time so today..

In October 2000 React celebrated its 10th birthday, but it celebrated more than that. The history of the label tells the story of how acid house and club culture came of age. As React grew into one of the most successful and long-running independent dance labels in Britain, so did dance music. Nostalgics would tell you that club culture's days of innocence are gone, but, for all their success, React still believed in the same things they always have. Many dance labels rose and fell over the previous decade, but React continued to stay ahead of the pack.

Although React was enjoying its best period of turnover and profit for 5 years, the label was owed in excess of £1,000,000 in distributed income from 4am/Flute, part of the Beechwood Music group of companies that went into voluntary administration in June. Following Beechwood’s closure, React was unable to extract any monies due or trade out of such debts and as a result the label was forced into voluntary administration on 16th June 2004. In its place, a new company, Resist Music, has been set up by React's James Horrocks and Melissa Kemp and has since acquired the staff, rights and catalogue of React and is now officially open for business.

Here are two great Various Drum & Bass double albums released by the React . Artcore 3 & 4,  and in two flava's..

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VA - Artcore 3 (97, 148min. ^ 327mb)

Celebrating D n B as an expression of thought and feeling, from the height of idyllic opimism to the depths of inner turmoil. Feel the urban uniformity, the hope tinged with soulfull realism and the freestyle freshness...each track of this compilation communiquates a unique ideausing both simple and sophisticated techniques, food for the thoughtful..enjoy



VA - Artcore 3 (97 * 98mb)

1-01 - Bliss 'n' Tumble - The Journey (6:34)
1-02 - Ken Ishii - Stretch (Shogun Remix) (7:42)
1-03 - Underwolves, The - The Crossing Pt.II (Words) (6:14)
1-04 - Dave Wallace - Expressions Pt.2 (7:45)
1-05 - Icons - Electric Soul (6:16)
1-06 - Spirit - Solar Glide (7:36)
1-07 - Tribe Zero 2 - Death By Sax (7:06)
1-08 - Garbage - Milk (Goldie's VIP Trash Your Sh*t Mix) (7:43)
1-09 - Ed Rush - Skylab (6:19)
1-10 - Nasty Habits - Shadow Boxing (7:58)

VA - Artcore 3-2

2-01 - DJ Die - Reincarnation (6:08)
2-02 - Danny Breaks The Bear (7:50)
2-03 - Peshay - On The Nile (8:26)
2-04 - Larry Heard & Nookie - Mystical People (6:18)
2-05 - Saint Etienne - The Sea (PFM Remix) (9:36)
2-06 - Intense - Motions (VIP Mix) (7:33)
2-07 - Wayward Minds - Homeland X-Pressive Journey (8:35)
2-08 - Zed - Pulse (VIP Mix) (6:59)
2-09 - Adam F - F-Jam (7:23)
2-10 - A-Sides & Nathan Haines - Ave Maria (8:19)

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VA - Artcore 4 - DnB Beat Technology (96, 141min. ^ 313mb)

Artcore moves to a fourth dimensions following the progress, here selected are the cream of contemporary drum and bass . This volume focuses on a fresh wave of beat technology where state of the art drumprogramming as at the forefront of a more minimal sound, leaving your speakers plenty of space to breathe. A recurring techno theme ranging from raw analogue to more polished Detroit sound features as one of the newer flavas of this drum and bass collection..



VA - Artcore 4 - DnB Beat Technology (97* 99mb)

1-01 - Justice & Tertius - Essential 4 Life (6:35)
1-02 - A Forest Mighty Black - Tides (Peshay & Flytronix Remix) (6:25)
1-03 - Subject 13 - Mystical Flyte (7:22)
1-04 - Smoke Screen - Nu Breeze (6:40)
1-05 - Matrix - Fluid Motion (5:15)
1-06 - DJ Krust - Soul In Motion (11:04)
1-07 - Boymerang - Mind Control (8:31)
1-08 - Decoder - Vapour Rub (6:57)
1-09 - Optical - Cryogenesis (5:39)
1-10 - State Logik - Technologik (7:20)

VA - Artcore 4 - DnB Beat Technology 2

2-01 - Dilemma - Spring Box (Matrix Vip Remix) (6:55)
2-02 - Andy C & Shimon - Genetix (5:50)
2-03 - Digital & Spirit - Shockwave (Vip Mix) (6:27)
2-04 - Jonny L - Piper (5:58)
2-05 - Future Passed - Searching For A Beat (6:14)
2-06 - Kitachi - Spirit (6:35)
2-07 - Spinback & Q Project - Led (Vip Mix) (7:02)
2-08 - Blu Mar Ten - The Fountain (11:04)
2-09 - Override - Pac 3 (6:54)
2-10 - Chicane - Sunstroke (Mission Control Remix) (6:45)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Into the Groove, (10)

Hello, time for some 'down to earth' funk from the seventies Funkadelic they had a 'up in space' funk side aswell, Parliament, but i leave that for some other day. Funkadelic furthered the notions of black rock begun by Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, blending elements of '60s psychedelia and blues plus the deep groove of soul and funk. Their albums are rather more ethereal and abstract when compared to Parliament’s. Rather than tell the story of a cast of characters, the mythology of Funkadelic is a socially conscious spiritualism. After ripping these vinyls today i couldnt help thinking how influencial these guys have been, not to mention the high production values. Really enjoyed hearing them again. I've added the inside artwork..you just don't get that anymore in these cd days...i have the " One Nation" version with the bonus ep but offered it as a seperate download..well worth it ..



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Funkadelic was originally the backing band for the doo wop group, The Parliaments. The band was added in 1964, primarily for tours, after the army took them, George Clinton (the leader of The Parliaments) recruited Billy Bass Nelson and Eddie Hazel in 1967, then also adding Tawl Ross and Tiki Fulwood. They would later go on to add members of the famous James Brown backing band "The JB's" to the Funkadelic lineup, with the addition of brothers Bootsy & Catfish Collins.

Due to legal difficulties between Clinton and Revilot, The Parliaments' label, the name was abandoned in favor of Funkadelic, which consisted of the same group of people (that is, both the former Parliaments and their back-up band, now both combined in the name "Funkadelic"). The group signed to Westbound in 1968. The group's self-titled debut album, Funkadelic, was released in 1970. The credits listed organist Mickey Atkins plus Clinton, Fulwood, Hazel, Nelson and Ross, though the actual recording also included several uncredited sessionmen then employed by Motown, as well as Ray Monette and Bernie Worrell.

Bernie Worrell was officially credited starting with Funkadelic's second album, 1970's Free Your Mind... and Your Ass Will Follow, thus beginning a long collaboration between Worrell and Clinton (who had been friends for quite a while). Worrell would go on to produce many Parliament and Funkadelic albums, as well as play keyboard on albums by other members of P Funk. After the release of Maggot Brain in 1971, Bootsy and Catfish Collins joined the group. The group would go on to become major contributors to the P-Funk sound. In 1972, this new line-up released America Eats Its Young, but many members left the group after that, due to internal squabbles and drug problems.

1975 brought Funkadelic to Warner Brothers, and saw the release of Hardcore Jollies in 1976. The same year, Westbound released a compilation of archived tracks titled Tales of Kidd Funkadelic, which did commercially significantly better than Hardcore Jollies and included "Undisco Kidd", an R&B Top 30 single. In 1977, Westbound capitalized on the success of Tales of Kidd Funkadelic by releasing The Best of the Early Years. Funkadelic recorded and released its magnum opus, One Nation Under a Groove in 1978. The titular track spent six weeks at #1 on the R&B charts, while Parliament was enjoying success with "Flash Light" and "Aqua Boogie." Uncle Jam Wants You continued Funkadelic's new more electronic sound production. The album contains fifteen minutes long version of chart-topping "(Not Just) Knee Deep". The last album, The Electric Spanking of War Babies, was released in 1981, and has a very good reputation among the funk music listeners despite the fact that it yielded no hit singles..

As the 1980s wore on, with legal difficulties arising from the multiple names used by multiple groups, as well as a shakeup among Parliament's record label, Parliament and Funkadelic disintegrated. George Clinton recorded several solo albums (sometimes under the name George Clinton & the P.Funk All-Stars)

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Funkadelic - Maggot Brain ( 71 ^ 87mb)

One central concept is Maggot Brain (Maggot Brain, 1971), which is an unenlightened small-mindedness, and which must be overcome for humanity to avoid its destruction and decay. It is explicitly ascribed to the titular junkie in "Super Stupid," who has "lost the fight" with fear. Other songs on the album advocate universal love, peace, and brotherhood, and war is explicitly compared to insanity in "Back In Our Minds." The album ends on an apocalyptic note with "Wars of Armageddon," in which the sound of a crying baby can be taken as a direct reference to the speech at the beginning of the title track: "Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time, for y'all have knocked her up." With its noisy improvisation and activist chanting, the track appears to depict a final confrontation between good and evil.



01 - Maggot Brain (10:19)
02 - Can You Get To That (2:49)
03 - Hit It And Quit It (3:49)
04 - You And Your Folks, Me And My Folks (3:34)
05 - Super Stupid (3:56)
06 - Back In Our Minds (2:36)
07 - Wars Of Armageddon (9:39)

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Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove (78 ^ 95mb)

One Nation Under a Groove introduces Funkadelica, a nation wherein the Funk rules and can’t be either stopped or labeled. The people of Funkadelica are called Funkateers (as are P Funk fans) and are led by Uncle Jam. Their mission is to rescue dance music from the doldrums (unFunkiness) This album is the pinnacle of Clinton's political consciousness. It's unified by a refusal to acknowledge boundaries -- social, sexual, or musical -- and, by extension, the uptight society that created them. The tone is positive, not militant -- this funk is about community, freedom, and independence, and you can hear it in every cut.



01 - One Nation Under A Groove (7:30)
02 - Grooveallegiance (7:00)
03 - Who Says A Funk Band Can't Play Rock? (6:14)
04 - Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema Squad (The Doo Doo Chashers) (10:57)
05 - In To You (5:40)
06 - Cholly (Funk Getting Ready To Roll!) (4:25)

Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove bonus ep ( ^ 38mb)
07 - Maggot Brain (live)(7:32)
08 - Chant (Think It Ain't Illegal Yet!) (0:48)
09 - Lunchmeataphobia (Think! It Ain't Illegal Yet!) (4:14)
10 - P.E. Squad / Doo Doo Chasers (4:16)

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Funkadelic - The Electric Spanking Of War Babies (81 ^ 99 mb)

The phrase "electric spanking of war babies" refers to what George Clinton saw as the U.S. government using the media to promote imperialistic wars. To the funk innovator , the American media functioned as a propaganda machine during wartime. But whether or not one cares to examine its hidden political messages, Electric Spanking is a party album..



01 - The Electric Spanking Of War Babies (8:37)
02 - Electro-Cuties (6:16)
03 - Funk Gets Stronger (Part I) (6:37)
04 - Brettino's Bounce (3:40)
05 - Funk Gets Stronger (Killer Millimeter Longer Version) - She Loves You (4:41)
06 - Shockwaves (5:07)
07 - Oh, I (4:54)
08 - Icka Prick (4:05)

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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here !