tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52309154114410011802024-02-07T05:20:02.712+00:00Twat BubbleJohn Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.comBlogger212125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-2614981905584367022018-12-15T17:43:00.000+00:002019-04-26T14:17:19.956+01:00Happy Christmas - War is Coming<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The merriest of Christmases to one and sundry and I hope and trust Santa and her elvises have been good to you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And continued apologies to those less than avid readers of this less than average site for my lardiness regarding the governance/maintenance/effluence of this musically inclined blog.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So then, gentle, accursed reader, why should you feel compelled to, with the myriad number of more esteemed alternatives available, read this hastily assembled post? (Warning: contains Prog...)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Well, it's got MUSIC in it!!!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Of course, I don't mean the music you ignore on your TV, mishear on the radio or eat on your computers...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I mean this...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And this...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Definitely this...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="text-align: justify;">In a year characterised by just awful shit happening here and everywhere music was one of the few things that kept the insane sane. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Hip Hop, more specifically, female Hip Hop, ruled the roost - with releases by the already mentioned Tierra Whack, Jean Grae, Rico Nasty, Black Milk, Georgia Meldrow and Dej Loaf addressing and undressing the hubris generated by white, ugly, rich men. They didn't slay those fucks but they came mighty close. Maybe next year...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">More great records?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Francis MacDonald, nango, Bang Messiah, 79.5, Roger Doyle, Proc Fiskal, Low, Johnnny Jewel, Quelle Chris, Grouper, Dr Octagon, Marie Davidson, Yo La Tengo, Ben Hauke, Sleep, Lando Chill, Mr Fingers, Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto, Mary Gauthier, Laurie Anderson and The Kronos Quartet, n-Prolenta, Lotic, Brigid Mae Power, Marlowe and 2 great records from one of the musical phenomenons of the year, the genius that is Sarah Davachi.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And hear she is...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Reissues? I'll give you issue reissue...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And this...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And this...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Definitely this...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The King is dead - long live The Klitz!!!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Excellent compilation album, prodeuced by the genius that was Alex Chilton, with deliciously fine sentiment attached it exemplified a marvellous year for reissues, coming hot, thick and steamy from places deep and far and wide and tall. And broad. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Including: Haruomi Hosono's back catalogue, Happy Rhodes, Takashi Kokubo, Carl Stone, The Glands, Joan La Barbera, MKWAJU Ensemble, John Coltrane, Gladiators, Skull Snaps, more from the KPM reissues' series, Catherine Ribeiro and Alpes, Marcus Valle, Brown Sugar and those amazing Steven Wilson remixes of classic Yes albums.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And here they are!!!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We did say there'd be some Prog and we did disappoint....</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So 2018, a year of some highs, some low lows, lowest of lows if truth be told, with more to come in 2019 no doubt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Merry Christmas and unhappy listening - and to make that possible - my favourite record of the year - no surprise, a reissue, but what a noise!!</span></div>
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John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-58662082242037563502014-12-14T18:33:00.000+00:002014-12-21T22:35:27.007+00:00It's Christmas time. Be afraid.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Merry Christmas!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And, many apologies to those less than avid readers of this less than average site, for my tardiness regarding the maintenance/governance/effluence of this music etc blog.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So, then, gentle, accursed reader, why should you feel compelled to be similarly cursed to read this hastily, poorly assembled thing?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Well, it's got MUSIC in it! </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Of course, I don't mean the music that you see on the television, hear on the radio or eat on your computers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I mean, well, this...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And this... </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And maybe this...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />Definitely this...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Lastly this...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In a return to monstrous form Aphex Twin and Locsil both released fantabulous records - music that ran the gamut from danceteriaeria to sit down, listen, shut the fuck up.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Also: Dan and Letha Rodman Melchior, Flying Lotus, Cut Chemist, The Weather Station, Orcas, Angel Olsen, FKA Twigs, Beck, United Nations, Scott Walker and Sun O))), Grouper, Fatima Al Qadiri, Ex Hex, Clark, Jonathan Richman, Perfect Pussy...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It was a quieter year for Hip-Hop with a myriad number of releases - but little that was outstanding. The mighty Madlib reigned supreme - his collaboration with Freddie Gibbs proving, once again, to be 2014's Rap high point. Disshonourable mention must also go to Run The Jewels, Shabazz Palaces and Edinburgh's very own Young Fathers - who released their weirdly wired debut on Anticon early in 2014. Marvellous stuff.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Reissues? I'll give you issued reissue...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">With Roy Montgomery, Yo La Tengo, Boards of Canada, Townes van Zandt, Horace Andy, Josef K, Slint, Muslimgauze, Angus MacLise, Jonny Trunk's 'Funny Old Shit Vol1', Pablo Moses, Public Enemy, Drexciya, Sly Stone's 'I'm Just Like You.'... </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">However, Boom!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A-Boom-Bang-Bang-Shang-A-Fucken-Lang!!!!!!!!! </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Tav Falco's musical outburst is almost certainly the album of the year - funny, hysterically so, it meanders Cramps like through every inconceivable music genre - creating some new ones in its sweet-smelling wake. It's a delight - ask Santa to buy one but don't expect him to have any in stock as Donner and Blitzen both sold their souls for this Rock and sweet and sour Roll.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">To finish, it wouldn't be Christmas if we didn't have some Svenonius. 'Minimum Rock and Roll' was a lovely stinky thing - worth the admission money alone for the line 'We want the Middle Class to feel alone.'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And we all want that don't we Pop Snickers?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Happy Christmas.</span><br />
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John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-64030859790274116662014-04-14T22:34:00.002+01:002014-10-31T18:31:49.063+00:00Bobbi Humphrey: Jazz Musician.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Bobbi Humphrey is a comparatively rare phenomenon in that she's one of the few women ever to record for Blue Note records: the label synonymous with, and celebrated for, the hard bop style that originated in the 1950's and which was popularised by musicians such as Horace Silver, Art Blakey and Miles Davis.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">All men. All middle aged men.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It must have been a tough gig - literally and metaphorically - for the 21 year old Bobbi. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The flute playing on these 1970's Blue Note releases is as tight and accomplished as any contemporary male instrumentalists - so much so that artists as creatively distinctive and industry renowned as Stevie Wonder and Duke Ellington wanted her to perform and to excel on their records.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And play and excel she did, paving the way for other, similarly talented female musicians and singers to be successful in their own rights often under their own terms.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Bobbi Humphrey's third LP for Blue Note is her best. 'Blacks and Blues,' is a gorgeous record - evocative and irreverently funky, not unlike the records being made by the more celebrated George Benson at CTI and label mate and trumpeter extraordinaire, Donald Byrd. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A great and underrated musician, still recording and performing today, look out for Bobbi Humphrey. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Boy, can she play.</span><br />
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John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-39005711509965906362014-02-13T17:33:00.000+00:002014-02-13T19:46:03.928+00:00'Friends, Romans, comedians, lend me your ears.'<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I only just heard about the death of one of comedy's greatest figures - the incomparable Sid Caesar.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Sid's life and career spanned ten decades - as a comic actor and performer, on stage, screen and, famously, on television. Less well known, however, was his musical prowess - as a saxophone player - for musicians and bandleaders as forward thinking and as indomitable as Art Mooney and Benny Goodman.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It's the small screen however, that has the most to be thankful to Sid</span>. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">His imperious 1950's shows signalled in a new era in comedy writing</span> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">initiating the careers of Neil Simon, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen</span>...<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">the list does go on and on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Unfortunately for us, human beings <i>don't </i>last for ever. We are all extraordinarily lucky to have basked in Sid's talent, his appreciation of it in others and his overwhelming generosity of spirit in developing these then new custodians of comedy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Thanks Sid.</span></div>
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John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-12347611658913996932013-12-07T16:12:00.000+00:002013-12-18T11:56:57.529+00:00It's Kanye's world, we just live in it.<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I usually wait
until mid-December before beginning posting poorly constructed opinions
and biased reviews of <i>the year's best records, movies, books etc.</i> This
allows me sufficient opportunity to arrogate obscure albums,
independently released movies and stand-up comedy 'discoveries,'
reviewed by other people, as my own. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Completely my own. </span>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Absolutely me.</span>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">- Here's a record by someone I like -</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Following on from the splendidly splendid 2012 release 'Gigantic Vol 1,' Jamil 'Small Professor' Marshall finds himself collaborating with Detroit's Byron 'Guilty' Simpson - Stones Throw Records' alumnus and J Dilla favourite (the reader of this blog will be familiar with how much we love and adore <a href="http://www.stonesthrow.com/">STR</a> and its roster...) Although not as on fire as the former record it's a sweet release reminiscent of the earlier sonic finery of MF Doom, King Geedorah and Madvillain (war and peace be eternally upon them.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Kanye West.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">DJ Rashad's phenomenally phenomenal 'Double Cup' signals a new high for both the <a href="http://www.hyperdub.net/">Hyperdub</a> record label and for the still pretty new electronic sub-genre of footwork. It's an old fashioned record in a way but it has power, precision and a panther-like poise which marks it out as <i>one of the records of the year.</i> I don't want this whole piece to focus either entirely or exclusively on Electronica or Hip-Hop but, in truth, as in 2012, they have been the dominant, the speediest and the most evocative genres of 2013.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Of course, we don't like genres so fuck that shit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">More past and future noiseniks?, more new/reissued records by these c****: Julia Holter, Tim Hecker, Big Inner, William Onyeabor, Omar Souleyman, Drexciya (again), David Bowie, Josephine Foster, Felix Kubin (and Karl Bartos!) Parquet Courts, King Khan and the Shrines, Daughn Gibson, Elvis Presley, Sonny Smith. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnejbIBLGTg%3C/font%3E"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Grouper 'Living Room'</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUFcGGn8rw8&list=PLIz3ndQUuHssb2ljgLtnkTw9WsWBzpvEo">The Urinals 'I'm a Bug'</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPeIrp-aIOY">Patty Griffin 'Go wherever you want to go'</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And The Fall.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">'Live at the Witch Trials,' was reissued...(we know...)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Although not covering any new ground Savages' 'Silence Yourself,' was that increasingly rare thing - a bloody good pop record with tunes. Haim, Bleached and Iceage - remember them from their marvellous 2010 release, 'New Brigade' (copyright 'Down with the kids' kids) delivered an excess of really nice and good but both lacked crucial hormones when it mattered. Savages, by contrast, had the bat, the ball and the court all to themselves. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">'Disco-vered' by Brain Eno busking in a New York park in 1979, Edward Larry Gordon is still an unknown. You hear so much of what he was doing in so much of what so many others are striving to do today - the new Boards of Canada/Oneohtrix Point Never albums are basically homages to the L. The collected 'Celestial Music 1978-2011' is a monumental work full of beautiful, timeless vistas of sound. It is hugely influential and hugely important - a catalysing force for so much of what we know today as electronica or electronic music. Available from <a href="http://boomkat.com/cds/828228-laraaji-celestial-music-1978-2011">All Saints Records. </a> Ask Santa for one.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">More records: the mighty Dot Wiggin Band, Yo La Tengo, Amor de Dias, Deafheaven, Fat White Family, Glenn Jones, Happy Jawbone Family Band, Locust, reissues from The Mountain Goats, Sid Hemphill, Goodiepal, Karen Dalton, the entire output of the Light in the Attic label, Bear Family's incredible 'Street Corner Symphonies - A History of Doo Wop, Wolf Eyes, Henry Flynt, Jack White's increasingly increasing Revenant label, </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Warp's BOC vinyl represses</span>....</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6dN1WB8Az0%3C/font%3E"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Laurel Halo 'Chance of Rain'</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And, finally, more speaking, we will always be more speaking, about the maverick, the madness, the fragile and the strong, the sometimes silliness, the never, never, never boring or dull, the one, the only, Kanye West - the overarching genius of our time delivers the album of the year easy-queasy-peasy. Forget all about Tyler and Lamar and all the best of the rest and the rest. KW is the realest of deals, super arrogant, super talented, flawed tae fuck and (f)lawless. He's our flavour of the year. What beautiful music he mistakes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Until when...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For John.</span></div>
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<br />John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-70038864711684391142013-09-15T14:14:00.005+01:002013-09-15T20:39:54.890+01:00Elvis and Stax: a match made in Heaven.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOyuNwvc-NyxhZTh7qRcNsz25UhXux5Ev7C8HmlGEoI3RjlqHigrjJByamvrbStlOFff96v4f3Huje63iKPvjC6C_mNmP609-4CKwPpG4nxi0vwlyWYXFGQutP2pZwABLDl11agLy2gLRV/s1600/elvis-at-stax.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOyuNwvc-NyxhZTh7qRcNsz25UhXux5Ev7C8HmlGEoI3RjlqHigrjJByamvrbStlOFff96v4f3Huje63iKPvjC6C_mNmP609-4CKwPpG4nxi0vwlyWYXFGQutP2pZwABLDl11agLy2gLRV/s320/elvis-at-stax.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span id="goog_106865393">For many Elvis fans, the 1973 June and December <a href="http://www.staxmuseum.com/events/news/view/new-box-set-focuses-on-elvis-presley-s-sessions-at">Stax Sessions</a> represent a high watermark in his illustrious recording career. </span>The set contains myriad versions of all six of the singles the label issued from 1973-1975: and there's not anything approaching a dud amongst them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Personal favourites include his marvellous rendition of Chuck Berry's 'Promised land,' a stalwart of his live shows at the time, and 'There's a Honky Tonk Angel (who will take me back in,) co-written by countrypolitin troubadour Troy Seals and covered by the likes of Mr Conway Twitty as well as the Elv.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The recordings exude a passion and intensity that was missing from much of Elvis's output of the time - even the country, and countrified versions of many of the songs are electrifying: you can tell that Elvis, freed from the considerable shackles of an increasingly constricting and hierarchical RCA label, and his ensemble cast of musicians, flown in for the sessions, were enjoying every God damn minute of every God damn minute.....</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What, more than anything, that emerges from these fun packed, gloriously musical sessions, is a totally fearless Elvis - more than ever before willing to embrace different musics and musical idioms with a ferocity that both the 1968 performances and the <a href="http://www.elvis.com.au/presley/reinventing_elvis_memphis_1969.shtml#sthash.W87JhCKm.dpbs">American Sound Studio Sessions</a> a year later alluded to, an Elvis Presley, shorn of the malign influences that deadlocked and stifled his talent for nigh on ten years, reborn.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Buy it now.</span><br />
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John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-52369900961885747082013-07-23T18:01:00.002+01:002013-07-23T18:01:12.341+01:00We All Hail West Texas (We All Hail...)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpK16VOgwOV4KwWaIduipFLWvvnYbyztcYmxFRnOx0_KKFiEE792nHLb_aLacvxKgr99dGCw5g92DrPbGkEJI52xCR1fxIe5oiQzrKDMKUpeIPbNAguxpv3hs5FzGRZvzhL-nMfaJjHvmQ/s1600/Mountain-Goats.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpK16VOgwOV4KwWaIduipFLWvvnYbyztcYmxFRnOx0_KKFiEE792nHLb_aLacvxKgr99dGCw5g92DrPbGkEJI52xCR1fxIe5oiQzrKDMKUpeIPbNAguxpv3hs5FzGRZvzhL-nMfaJjHvmQ/s320/Mountain-Goats.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">John Darnielle has been recording music for over 20 years - and nobody ever told him. Gloriously lo-fi, Darnielle's music has much in common with fellow long-term barbists Bob Pollard and Mark Davies in that it gloriously grates against much of today's over-produced hype-shite.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.mergerecords.com/artists/mountaingoats">Merge Records</a> have recently reissued The Mountain Goats magnificent 'All Hail West Texas,' surely 2002's 18th best LP. Full of songs about love and death, hospitalisation and the fatalistic attractions of hot metal music, it's an album to hold to your heart and, secretly, to your pants. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And, to not, to never, let go..</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Touring - Glasgow at The Arches on the 10th of October. You should go.</span><br />
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John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-64684342963339583972013-06-03T17:34:00.002+01:002013-06-27T12:16:26.007+01:00Marcia, my dear...<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When I worked in music shops - many years ago - it was not uncommon practice to source some records and tapes from 'non-traditional suppliers:' in some cases, literally, off the back of a tatty, smelly van that had almost certainly, like much of the stock they carried, recently failed its MOT. Many an hour was spent gently idling in these vehicles - pouring over some long deleted Magma LP, caressing the spines of remaindered Jetstar compilation albums and fingering the holes of some long forgotten cut-out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Sex was always an option...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">On one such occasion however, I found, to my surprise and no small astonishment, an album that has, even to this day, continued to beguile and bewitch. Six copies of the album, to be exact. I took them all - at a dealer price of less than £3 - and boxed them up, tenderly, lovingly, placing them next to an oddly juxtaposed admixture of Psychedelia, Easy-Listening and Jazz records (it was that kind of a shop.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I never did sell any of the albums - well, reader, I <i>sold</i> one. But I'll certainly never forget the feelings of exhilaration and transcendent joy when I took 'Sweet Bitter Love' home, placed the needle over track one, side one and listened to Marcia Griffiths sing.</span></div>
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<br />John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-20401768470556307062013-04-18T20:29:00.001+01:002013-04-18T20:31:06.148+01:00Mondo Franco...<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKwpWcNjLs2IGFfSWstoBWyQUAozoQ1F-cKjwBPAFot5pyaOS1VDYi_e_N1AQ-0_KwYVmd6_tBGG6CD8O7_qVEDoML0Qmslqr79xKQLVCW-nQUSctG0h2n-O-rYeZUQ36MJoOidh_Cuy29/s1600/SUCCUBUS+363.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKwpWcNjLs2IGFfSWstoBWyQUAozoQ1F-cKjwBPAFot5pyaOS1VDYi_e_N1AQ-0_KwYVmd6_tBGG6CD8O7_qVEDoML0Qmslqr79xKQLVCW-nQUSctG0h2n-O-rYeZUQ36MJoOidh_Cuy29/s320/SUCCUBUS+363.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Despite what many might think, Jesus 'Jess' Franco was much more than just a trashy latter day purveyor of tits and ass (liberally covered in bright red stuff.) Franco, who died earlier this month, was a ghoulish gourmand of gore who slathered his beautiful women and similarly adorned hunk-a-men with blood and guts and brains and more blood. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Always, more blood.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Except that wasn't the whole picture. Franco, in many ways, was the unlikely progenitor of much of the great Spanish horror that is current today. Sure, his style may have been a bit workmanlike, lacking in the cinematographic niceties and technical brio of some of his more revered contemporaries, but central to all of his films, and this is why his movies will continue to captivate, thrill and be watched, is a consuming love and passionate intensity for the art of film-making </span>- <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">irrespective of the genre, the budget, the stars or, often, conspicuous lack of them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Director, writer, musician, artist - Franco could do it all. And, thankfully, for over 50 years, as the clip below of perhaps his most celebrated film, 1971's 'Vampyros Lesbos' shows, he never tired of making films the uniquely Franco way...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Hell, we can even forgive him 'Mondo Cannibale...' </span></div>
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John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-7390612488717905272013-03-14T16:04:00.000+00:002013-03-14T18:00:57.613+00:00Louie CK Louie CK...<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><object height="325" width="500"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pJ51BNYXbV4?version=3&hl=en_GB"></param>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Sometimes, I feel this way..</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Louis Szekely has been a stand-up for over twenty years, performing and writing for, amongst others, David Letterman and Chris Rock. It's only now, how and ever, with the relatively recent broadcast in the UK of his *stand/sit show on post-terrestrial TV, that's he's gained recognition. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And, pleasantly surprisingly, popularity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Like all trenchantly funny things, his comedy will not appeal to everyone. However, if you're a fan of the slightly surreal - and we'll deal with the greatly surreal later - then you might just like Louie CK.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Cue, the greatly surreal:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">*stand/sit - a show which features a combination of 'stand-up' comedy and 'situation' comedy. (copyright, S. Lee)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As an adjunct to the above, the </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.glasgowcomedyfestival.com/">Glasgow Comedy Festival</a> </span>starts today. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Spread over a number of venues, the vast majority of which are conveniently located in the centre of the city, </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">there's
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Anyway, here's David Kay, the undoubted star of Stewart Lee's 'Alternative Comedy Experience.' </span><br />
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John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-2487271508406865972013-03-01T00:05:00.000+00:002013-03-01T00:10:49.176+00:00Oscars - What Oscars?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmJ-w4xgX_OEp-QzQT8Oe9Cn58YWFUHwYEpMFwK5p84572mgx6ytOjTlfJKp0rmUqZNzQ6dZzqv1Tl_KeaL_2mULHjniNys03vqtKC7J-hvU76wz5OCLWBkUXYawnJ1B3AJATwKaJqeUBb/s1600/a-star-is-born-judy-garland.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmJ-w4xgX_OEp-QzQT8Oe9Cn58YWFUHwYEpMFwK5p84572mgx6ytOjTlfJKp0rmUqZNzQ6dZzqv1Tl_KeaL_2mULHjniNys03vqtKC7J-hvU76wz5OCLWBkUXYawnJ1B3AJATwKaJqeUBb/s320/a-star-is-born-judy-garland.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Of course, The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards, and the vast majority of the films that contest them, are a slavering, hyperbole fuelled nonsense... </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Or are they? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The picture above, one of the great films, featuring a supremely talented ensemble cast and two magnificent central performances, puts the above contention into highly entertaining perspective. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Judy Garland, a shoe-in for the 1954 best actress Oscar in Cukor's remake of 'A Star is Born,' lost out to, an albeit fine performance from Grace Kelly in 'The Country Girl,' in what Groucho Marx - who knew a thing or two about celebrity and its malign influences - called 'the biggest robbery since Brinks.'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The conservative nature of The American Academy tacitly enshrines and ensures that a certain kind of film nearly always wins the big prizes - it's nothing new when a John Sayles film fails to win anything. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Some of the greatest movies, actors and directors have never won an award, any award. And, as in the famous example indicated above, great actors, great performances - often genre defying and defining - are routinely passed over in favour of what undoubtedly are/are perceived to be, both at the time and retrospectively, lesser works.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I've always preferred films that either poke fun/ignore the self satisfied smugness of awards, and the often ludicrous ceremonies that accompany them, or which celebrate the craft of writing, performing and direction above all else. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It doesn't matter who wins, it's the not taking part that counts....</span><br />
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John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-11554210932000736552013-02-17T23:24:00.000+00:002013-02-18T00:12:19.948+00:00Glasgow Film Festival 14-24 February<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm1bpRDiowIehq8QGFxsJkWfShC3INcKT5FZ5-uMG0rU38MoyjG1CQ9lI5tymLOWMGrg9FGJTozL5aSoqXLcZE5L5lZTXMqW3lx9RGBN3TJC_jftwh50jdPB8kg0BRo4fzRvAvLqzTk2gV/s1600/Glasgow-Film-Festival-Logo.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm1bpRDiowIehq8QGFxsJkWfShC3INcKT5FZ5-uMG0rU38MoyjG1CQ9lI5tymLOWMGrg9FGJTozL5aSoqXLcZE5L5lZTXMqW3lx9RGBN3TJC_jftwh50jdPB8kg0BRo4fzRvAvLqzTk2gV/s320/Glasgow-Film-Festival-Logo.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The <a href="http://www.glasgowfilm.org/festival/whats_on">Glasgow
Film Festival</a> has been going for nearly 10 years now -
almost - and it's showing no signs of getting wearisome. This year's
festival has a number of delights to tease, torment and tantalise
including, for this moviegoer, a retrospective of the movies of James
Cagney, the sweetly sado-masochistic showing of Spielberg's 'Jaws' at
the Tall Ship and a welcome showing of Mario Bava's marvellous 'Black
Sabbath;' newly restored and all the more sexy and scary for it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The veritable and venerable Monorail film club have chosen 'Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me,' as one of their picks of the festival. For those of you unfamiliar with one of Memphis' finest, this is a fabulous introduction - including interviews with both Andy Hummell and Jody Stephens. It promises to be something special. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A highlight for this writer, is the showing of Carl Theodor Dreyer's 'The Passion of Joan of Arc,' at Glasgow Cathedral. Dreyer's film is one of the most evocative ever made, and has stood, more than any of its contemporaries, the screen test of time. With a live musical and vocal accompaniment, it promises to be a crowning highlight of the festival.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So, whether it's David Hayman playing the parts (sic) of Sawney, Jake Schreier's wryly delivered comedy of human and robotic manners, 'Robot & Frank,' or Billy Wilder's supremely gothic melodrama, 'Sunset Boulevard,' there's something for just about everyone in this year's festival. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You really should go.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">To finish, two trailers for films I really want to see...</span></div>
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John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-13818825688558079252012-12-24T16:29:00.000+00:002012-12-24T16:48:09.886+00:00Shaky, rattle and roll...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzztbCCLaGeRktGLOfCufOEij97_kTxtz9QVR-HkVS_pScUx0rLhCk8tfy8cqryt7f968ggBT-m587xs4QEatpB62mmwCu9YcwqvLQnUFD6keRxdve2O3j6pG4Cl5qWjJQ-qPGFOt6DKUV/s1600/shakin-stevens-and-the-sunsets_1043766.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzztbCCLaGeRktGLOfCufOEij97_kTxtz9QVR-HkVS_pScUx0rLhCk8tfy8cqryt7f968ggBT-m587xs4QEatpB62mmwCu9YcwqvLQnUFD6keRxdve2O3j6pG4Cl5qWjJQ-qPGFOt6DKUV/s1600/shakin-stevens-and-the-sunsets_1043766.jpg" /></a></div>
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Michael Barratt, otherwise, and far more famously known as, Shakin' Stevens will be the grand old age of 65 next year. </div>
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Most people will remember Shaky as an incredibly charismatic performer - his string of 11 top 5 chart hits in the 1980's bearing eloquent testimony to his abilities to entertain and beguile. What many forget/do not know is, prior to 1981, and his first UK number one record, Shaky had been a performing and recording artist for 13 years - gigging up and down the country and abroad with The Sunsets - to considerable acclaim.</div>
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The Sunsets were, as contemporary articles agree, one of <i><b>the </b></i>great live bands, attracting the attention of NME hacks, John Peel - who attempted to sign them to his own Dandelion record label and, finally, and certainly most importantly for Stevens himself, Freya Miller who signed him to Epic Records.</div>
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The rest was history....</div>
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Thanks Michael and thanks to the mighty Shakin' Stevens and The Sunsets - one of the great British exponents, along with Billy Fury, Johnny Kidd and Bob Fish, of rrreal Rock and Roll...</div>
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Lastly, and entirely in keeping with Michael's music, Everyone here at Twat Bubble would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!</div>
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John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-10931645088599129232012-11-26T18:04:00.003+00:002012-12-10T23:13:20.358+00:00It's the end of the year as we know it...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ2LAEf-HxjtkXk0jq165pjly38HdJJXe_Mnyudw40IcgJT2nOPg_P79vwyFULrldEuY-5eE3HgFXdhdBecp7UYnw1ZtAj5YEneLDlD1FMv_xXSr4OFwuwNuyS05G0AHYNF-5DA03a959p/s1600/records.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ2LAEf-HxjtkXk0jq165pjly38HdJJXe_Mnyudw40IcgJT2nOPg_P79vwyFULrldEuY-5eE3HgFXdhdBecp7UYnw1ZtAj5YEneLDlD1FMv_xXSr4OFwuwNuyS05G0AHYNF-5DA03a959p/s320/records.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I usually wait until mid-December before beginning posting poorly constructed opinions and biased reviews of the year's best records, movies, books etc. This allows me sufficient opportunity to arrogate obscure albums, independently released movies and stand-up comedy 'discoveries,' reviewed by other people, as my own. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Completely my own. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Absolutely me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">- Here's a record by someone I like -</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Kendrick Lamar's official debut album is, for many people, this year's great Hip-Hop
record. In a year where the music has enjoyed considerable and renewed
commercial and artistic success - many contend that it's been the best
year for breaks and beats since the early 1990's - Lamar's 'good kid,
m.A.A.d city' sets a considerable benchmark. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Following
sexily, uncomfortably closely, great new albums by Odd Future, Action
Bronson, Apollo Brown, De La Soul, Fushawn, JR and PH7, Prince Paul,
Gangrene... </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Two albums, however, for this writer, stand up and out. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://smallprofessor.bandcamp.com/">Small Professor's</a> 'Gigantic, Vol 1' and <a href="http://oddisee.bandcamp.com/">Oddisee's</a> 'People hear what they see.' </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Both are genre redefining examples of the new music: containing nods to an illustrious musical past - whether Soul, Funk, Rap or ? - whilst spitting and shitting, however respectfully, on their memory. </span><br />
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="color: white;">If you<span style="color: black;">
<span style="color: white;"> like your music loud and Canadian then Metz may be for you. Recalling
the mighty Nation of Ulysses and, to these ears, Bob and Grant at their
howling best, they know how to chill out the rolling rock in you. Bone-cruising
stuff.</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">More past and future noiseniks, more new records by these c****. Batsauce, Chuck Prophet, Dan Deacon, Bill Fay, Bobby Womack, Dexy's, The Flowers of Hell, Josephine Foster, Mac Demarco, Mission of Burma, Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs, Momus, Orbital, Tindersticks, The Wave Pictures, The One Ensemble, Laurel Halo, Bob Mould...Momus. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Momus?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If
2012 saw anything, it saw a return to 'floaty dreamscapes' - a bit
shoegazey but where you could see your reflection in your uppers. Both
Tennis and Taken by Trees are fine examples. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It's been a great, great, great year for noise, noise, noise. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Australia's <a href="http://www.myspace.com/royalheadache">Royal Headache</a> delivered a fast and furioso set, harking back to torn and ripped ears/jeans of yesteryear. Arto Lindsay, Marc Ribot and Mike Ladd resurfaced on <a href="http://www.myspace.com/arbzzz">Anarchist Republic of Bzzz's</a> marvellous eponymous album. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">More noise? Records from Dean Blunt, Japandroids, Dope Body, Agent Side Grinder, Dead Rat Orchestra, Godspeed (in a magnificent return to form), remixed albums from Bjork and Mogwai and their various collaborati, Gonjasufi, El Ten Eleven, Mark Eitzel, The Fall, Iris Dement, La Sera, Astra, The Pheromoans, Death Grips, Kid Koala, Spider Bags, Dinosaur Feathers, This Many Boyfriends. The Fall.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Fall?</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In an astonishing year for reissues, no album was more revered than <a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17064-the-disintegration-loops/">William Basinski's 'Disintegration Loops.'</a> An awe inducing piece of work, it paved, and continues to pave the way, for much of what is happening in new electronic music today. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You must have it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What else? Drexciya's phenomenal output collated in the 2 volume 'Journey's of the Deep Sea Dweller,' David Sylvian's 'A Victim of Stars,' the recent slew of Karen Dalton re-issues, more new King Tubby releases - especially those on VP records, the welcome remastered version of Lynch/Splet's, 'Eraserhead,' Oliveros's 12 CD box set (not forgetting the collected Deep Listening Band material reissued recently on Ltd edition vinyl), Virgin's Roxy Music Complete Studio Recordings and, of course, reissues of classic albums by Massive Attack, MBV, Ken Higney, The Heads, The Human League, Swans, Tortoise... and, of course, undoubtedly the best and most important, this...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So, 2012 rears and allows its ugly head to fall. If you like any of these records why not buy them. In your local record shop. NOT HMV. Y'hear?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">To finish - Gerry Love's/Lightships homage to love - the beautiful 'Electric Cables.' </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Being beautiful is not impossible.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Now where did I leave that <a href="http://4ad.com/news/24/9/2012/scottwalkertoreleasebishboschthisdecember">NEW SCOTT WALKER ALBUM!!!</a></span><br />
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John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-3066068152998251662012-11-13T22:21:00.000+00:002013-01-04T21:05:20.645+00:00Marfa, my dear...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #6fa8dc;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Art is made as one lives. It must be as decisive as acts in life..."</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #6fa8dc;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Donald Judd, 1983 </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://larryclark.com/marfagirl/">Larry Clark</a> has chosen to set his most recent film in the border town of Marfa, Texas - made famous, some of the inhabitants of this small town would contend 'infamous,' by its close cultural associations with the artist Donald Judd and the proto-artistic community he established there.</span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In common with other artist, musician and writer contemporaries, Clark is eschewing more traditional means of release/distribution by premiering the film on his own website for a nominal fee (see above.)</span> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">His first feature in 7 years, it will be especially interesting to see how such an uncompromising stance fares both artistically and, crucially, commercially </span>- <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">for Clark's sake and for others who share a similar viewpoint on hyper-commercialism in and beyond the Hollywood mainstream.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Despite some early negative critical impressions of the movie I, for one, hope it's a success.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: #9fc5e8;"></span>- <span style="color: #6fa8dc;">'Marfa Girl'</span> - released 20 November 2012 on larryclark.com</span></div>
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John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-45704587555954082452012-11-01T20:24:00.001+00:002012-11-01T20:28:07.544+00:00Slashed, not burned...<div style="text-align: center;">
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Although officially released by Slash records in 1983, Violent Femmes actually recorded their eponymous debut in 1982 - which affords us legitimate ample opportunity to shout about it, get all dove-eyed about it and near demi-deify it in this, the 30th anniversary of its release.</div>
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It was a bit of an odd record even way back then - coming as it did in an era of lovingly upholstered long coats and perma-dried ice, the debut single from madonna and an era and genre defying record by some guy who used to sing/dance with his brothers in a band.</div>
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With so much going-on and being begun, a freshmen album from some mid-North West musical miscreants was hardly likely to register highly if at all on pop/rock's increasingly ephemeral Richter scale. But, hugely, surprisingly, it did. The record found its audience: the same long-coated sophomores looking for a new bible of the beats finding it in the new age kerfuffle-skiffle-punk of this mightiest of trios from Wisconsin.</div>
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The record has not dated one inch of one iota. 2 tracks to follow - one live, and one not so. </div>
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Break your heart all over again.</div>
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<br />John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-60372347633152033002012-08-27T17:14:00.000+01:002012-08-27T17:18:36.049+01:00Under the radar...what radar?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4VBkw6CSBgGeQu0vX38Sc2yKmiYXGzQ5tXWfn8R0iJ1OxkTLxlqTcJdUF-Y8BtkoLCVVKksU30yLBhtenZhg1_R0Qy7O8VPjHF9FJr-KvuMK8KjF3Rtzh6oH6Y_xixY00bV2BZQPOO2sy/s1600/BillFay.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4VBkw6CSBgGeQu0vX38Sc2yKmiYXGzQ5tXWfn8R0iJ1OxkTLxlqTcJdUF-Y8BtkoLCVVKksU30yLBhtenZhg1_R0Qy7O8VPjHF9FJr-KvuMK8KjF3Rtzh6oH6Y_xixY00bV2BZQPOO2sy/s320/BillFay.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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It's been 41 years since Bill Fay recaptured our hearts with his second album 'Time of the Last Persecution.' Bill has often suffered at the biting hands of critics: lazy journalism often saw him dismissed as a Nick Drake clone here or a Graham Nash clone there...</div>
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These barbs were unfounded and grossly unfair, contributing to his star shining dimly, if at all, throughout the already drifting towards excess 1970's.</div>
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2012 sees a new record by Bill Fay, 'Life is People' - on <a href="http://www.deadoceans.com/">Dead Oceans</a> records.</div>
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The voice has changed over the years, becoming more sonorous yet, softer, imbuing the meticulously crafted songs and their choreographed arrangements with a timeless, haunting quality.</div>
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And, after 40 years of waiting and waiting, that's more than enough.</div>
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John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-3397581423833363182012-07-23T15:20:00.000+01:002012-07-23T15:24:15.753+01:00The Wonderful Kitty Wells...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgYhIhiaVJB8Q7OWQH-f1rXq76vtB6fFbjP7lExL0gM0vXGmT5Fo0HAkxXSO1DF0hjVLgnPaPjdmjbAMlX5CTmw8ON3BYL3H2LlXslcB_WA5H-n6o88uwvFS4F93ZvWodpQH-blUCzGjte/s1600/Kitty_Wells_2280026b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgYhIhiaVJB8Q7OWQH-f1rXq76vtB6fFbjP7lExL0gM0vXGmT5Fo0HAkxXSO1DF0hjVLgnPaPjdmjbAMlX5CTmw8ON3BYL3H2LlXslcB_WA5H-n6o88uwvFS4F93ZvWodpQH-blUCzGjte/s320/Kitty_Wells_2280026b.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Kitty Wells was a true Country music original. A recording artist for over 40 years, she began her performing career as early as the 1930's performing as part of The Deason Sisters. The 1940's saw her join the already established Tennessee Hillbillies and then, on Jack Anglin's return from the Army, with her husband Johnnie Wright and Anglin, singing and playing guitar as part of their Johnnie and Jack duo.</div>
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Recording initially for RCA; who found her in your face determinedly 'unfeminine' fierceness difficult to market, her greatest success came when she signed for Decca Records. Paul Cohen, A & R man for the Stateside arm of the company, was looking for an answer song to Hank Thompson's 'The Wild Side of Life;' a song which to this day still rankles many with its thinly veiled sexism. It certainly inspired Ms Wells: her recording of Jay Miller's 'It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,' set her on the road to stardom, establishing her as the nascent queen of Country Music. <br />
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It really was no contest. And, for many, it stayed that way. <br />
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<span style="background-color: ;">Kitty Wells was that rarest of rare things - a quiet revolutionary. Kind, sympathetic and willing to do whatever she could to help young musicians, especially young women musicians, gain a foothold in a precarious often combative industry, she will be remembered for this, for her unequalled generosity of spirit and, most of all, for her voice - which never failed to inspire and uplift.</span></div>
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<br /></div>John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-19305811375839211892012-07-12T17:48:00.001+01:002012-07-12T19:22:29.976+01:00Thankyou Ernest...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: center;">Each year, in a West Village Mexican restaurant, a dinner is held to proclaim the life, the movies, and the man known as Ernest Borgnine. Guests sit in decorated booths wearing sailor hats and Ernest masks asking and answering questions about celebrated movies, breathtaking individual and ensemble performances, and about a man who seemed, certainly to outsiders, convincingly larger than life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ernest appeared in many films over as many years. He was often pigeonholed as the gnarled, uncomprehending, at time barely incomprehensible, bully. In 1953's 'From here to Eternity' he played the brutish James 'Fatso' Judson - a man whose sadism reached its peak in his relentless victimisation of Frank 'Maggio' Sinatra - a masterful performance and, possibly, what influenced Sturges to cast him in such a similarly unprepossessing role in his 1955 masterpiece 'Bad Day at Black Rock.'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Borgnine won an Oscar that year for his portrayal of Marty Piletti in Delbert Mann's film of the same first name. It was an unusual role for him, but it was played with the same thoughtfulness and intelligence that was to characterise all of his performances. He deserved his Academy award - despite depriving his friend, and the star of 'Bad day...,' Spencer Tracy, from taking the honours.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although Ernest continued to act regularly on both the big screen and television, he never reached the heights of his earlier films - with the possible exception of the part of 'Cabbie' in John Carpenter's marvellous 1981 'Escape from New York.' Again, as was the case in many of his films, it was a smallish part, not a starring role. But he brought to it a brusque charm and devilish humour, often stealing the show from his illustrious companions - a role he was to reprise with effortless regularity throughout his career.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We will miss him.</span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="325" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/vpUu8zxqUDI" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;" width="500"></iframe>John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-47215830410520586872012-06-29T20:43:00.000+01:002012-06-29T21:07:56.619+01:00Is it really 50 years since 'Carnival of Souls?!'<div style="text-align: center;">
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You bet.<br />
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In 1962, the, as yet unknown, Herk Harvey decided it was time to make a movie all of his own.<br />
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He
had ample writing, directing and producing experience prior to this -
from the 50's through to the 80's, he worked for Centron (an independent
producer of educational and industrial films), making well received
docu-pics covering everything from the gloriously unremarkable -
'Manners in School' to the slightly ridiculous - 1963's, 'Pork: The Meal
with a Squeal.'<br />
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Prior to his interest in meat products
however, Harvey co-wrote, directed, produced and starred (well, that's
stretching the truth slightly...) in 'Carnival of Souls,' one of the
underappreciated genre movies of the early 1960's.<br />
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There
is no real need to go into the plot - the film, now public domain, is
included here for you to see for yourself. Suffice to say it is like no
other motion picture- with the possible exception of Romero's darkly
claustrophobic first feature, heavily influenced by Harvey's
surrealistic masterpiece, and made some 6 years later. <br />
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Of
course, you'll have to bring your own screams - that is if you can hear
yourself scream above the macabre Gene Moore soundtrack...but those
screams, I can assure you, will come. Despite being made 50 years ago,
the film delivers big time on chilly chills - the kind of sweet
otherwordly chills that Hollywood, with few recent exceptions, appears
to have neither the guile nor desire to reproduce...<br />
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Harvey died in 1996. But his film, and his own uniquely terrifying performance in it, lives on. <br />
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<br />John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-17120820641020064702012-06-04T13:39:00.000+01:002012-06-06T15:24:08.307+01:00The sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's now almost 50 years since the publication of <a href="http://www.rachelcarson.org/">Rachel Carson's</a> seminal book, 'Silent Spring;' documenting the wholesale detrimental effects of pesticides on the environment, especially on birds and the flora and fauna symbiotically associated with them.<br />
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Carson wrote her book to highlight not only these deleterious effects on avian populations, but also, in looking at the wider environmental implications per se, to draw attention to large chemical conglomerates' profligate use of these synthetic chemical pesticides to control both actual and, crucially, perceived threat from biological pests.<br />
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As a marine biologist, Carson was aware of the need for balanced ecosystems - her earlier 1951 work 'The Sea Around Us,' argues the importance of this need and fundamental understanding; communicated with the poetic insight and intensity and clarity of vision that became a trademark of all of her subsequent writings.<br />
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Throughout her writing career, Carson was vilified by many in the scientific community - and, almost without exception, by agribusiness CEO's, politicians and political commentators on Capitol Hill - as an alarmist, as an extremist, and, by some commentators, as dangerous (witness, as recently as 2007, John Tierney's vituperative assault on Carson whilst writing in the conservative New York Times [on DDT and its use as an anti-malarial agent in Africa]).<br />
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Of course, being a hysterical woman hasn't helped...<br />
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Despite those rallied and railing against her, Carson remained convinced that she was right. Although mortally ill, she testified, in 1963, before US Senate committees/sub-committees, on the misuse of chemicals in the environment - leading, eventually, to the curtailing and subsequent banning of DDT agricultural spraying in the United States in 1972 (something that Carson was opposed to - as a scientist she believed that chemicals/their compounds should be investigated for, amongst other things, their aetiological properties).<br />
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Rachel Carson 1907-1964. Biologist. Writer. Ecologist. Read everything she wrote.<br />
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<a href="http://www.chemheritage.org/discover/online-resources/chemistry-in-history/themes/public-and-environmental-health/environmental-chemistry/carson.aspx">Chemical Heritage Foundation</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.nrdc.org/health/pesticides/hcarson.asp">NRDA</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.silentspring.org/about-us/legacy-rachel-carson">silentspring.org</a><br />
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<br />John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-86639583902263629712012-04-19T19:32:00.000+01:002012-04-19T19:40:45.555+01:00Guitar? Wolf? Guitar Wolf!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggIA9xqc-sCReFovtAXMz_mOGTWDrfUNmKWTRuoq0bUqwY87GV1vzgJ5aqayXbs3n2xyEACcX88kY-KjG67IfX24PkGwOMY6Z-j7kZDL7Hjvih1mAoSWjffMwOTpcl6ZYhKuGNUiP7VUI1/s1600/Guitar-Wolf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggIA9xqc-sCReFovtAXMz_mOGTWDrfUNmKWTRuoq0bUqwY87GV1vzgJ5aqayXbs3n2xyEACcX88kY-KjG67IfX24PkGwOMY6Z-j7kZDL7Hjvih1mAoSWjffMwOTpcl6ZYhKuGNUiP7VUI1/s1600/Guitar-Wolf.jpg" /></a></div>
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The wonderful world of Guitar Wolf rears its decreasingly ug-ly head at the venerable Glasgow institution that is Mono on the 4th of June (perilously close to my birthday, hipsters...).<br />
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<a href="http://www.monocafebar.com/index.php?m=event&c=view&id=27:811">The kindly folks at Mono explain 'Guitar Wolf live at Mono - 4th of June 2012!!!'</a><br />
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If you like your squall with a capital Yee-Ha, then GW are for you. Bring your parents too. If you're a parent yourself - nae luck - your kids are probably near the front practising their stage misdemeanour, trying on their school teachers make-up and planning partial world domination with a collective flick of an uncultivated wrist...<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="325" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/L6tYhX0R2EI" width="500"></iframe><a href="http://www.monocafebar.com/index.php?m=event&c=view&id=27:811"> </a>John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-73308020073872832242012-02-24T12:35:00.001+00:002012-02-24T12:43:19.232+00:00One more reason to believe...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrHS-n6uEx3q6n0hajLPxBCgrVkbVHVv-VGPqM53bXQXeX8NqxYSqtzlRBgiXUjmxQwOm2VIJmNIgQI7FfL_QGi1cdtWSIVFoBefGwEz1WDtwYkzay67fGCaNN-Rzuw5xs3xz1hbGMHIuR/s1600/karen-dalton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrHS-n6uEx3q6n0hajLPxBCgrVkbVHVv-VGPqM53bXQXeX8NqxYSqtzlRBgiXUjmxQwOm2VIJmNIgQI7FfL_QGi1cdtWSIVFoBefGwEz1WDtwYkzay67fGCaNN-Rzuw5xs3xz1hbGMHIuR/s320/karen-dalton.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Karen Dalton, whose magnificent album '1966,' has very recently been issued on <a href="http://delmorerecordings.com/">Delmore Recordings</a> is a true original. Her unique voice, her idiosyncratic interpretations </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">of compositions by the likes of Tim Hardin and Fred Neil, and her own inflected and infected songs, marks her as an artist of the first degree.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So why do so few people know about her? It's difficult and surprisingly easy to guess. Dalton's life was one marked by personal and artistic struggle - often, with the music playing second fiddle (awful pun intended) to her personal demons - her recording career was sporadic, with only two albums released in her lifetime. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">'1966' is a marvellous record. Essentially a rehearsal tape, it includes full-throated, open-armed</span> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">renditions of songs old and new - and criminally undiscovered - by an artist at the peak of her considerable powers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="325" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/raLXnnlPI_I" width="500"></iframe> </span>John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-77393885122722793442012-01-16T16:10:00.025+00:002012-01-16T21:24:09.128+00:00Books of 2011 - Part 2 (But it's January...)2011 was a standout year for non-fiction books of all misshapes and argumentative sizes...it's even more difficult to put these into critical context than it is fiction writing.<br /><br />Nevertheless...<br /><br />Norton publishing released R P Crease's marvellous <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Balance-Historic-Measurement-ebook/dp/B005LW5J94">'World in the Balance;'</a> a history of weights and measures, their attribution and their adoption, or not, by various countries. Or not. Crease makes a potentially dry subject highly amusing, fun even, emphasising the differences, highlighting the similarities. Hell, there's even a section on brassiere measurement - and that's incontrovertibly no bad thing.<br /><br /><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904060604576572741010152296.html">'Hemingway's Boat,'</a> as reviewed by Allan Massie, is as quixotic a read as the man himself. Tremendously entertaining, the book is, in many ways, similar to Hemingway's own, 'A Moveable Feast,' written when he was a young objet d'art living in Paris (the book begins after Papa's formative years spent carousing there).<br /><br />What differentiates Paul Hendrickson's book from so many other biographies is that it counterbalances the warts and the all of a man often beleaguered by life, at odds with his crucial self, with his headstrong humanity - in all its rumbustiousness.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4S3RKvo6_vuuQ5VxOf0MYrCYekNHjT7-UigCQaXeF5EF7a5OyrI_rqX_FpQPikHz7rjbLJDYLxTZ63oZ0syOvjoD2BTb3ktLWYX7yzswp_48KYNdpm1j9_EfTzvBMONccQGocUPjF5OJ2/s1600/hellvetica.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; clear: both;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4S3RKvo6_vuuQ5VxOf0MYrCYekNHjT7-UigCQaXeF5EF7a5OyrI_rqX_FpQPikHz7rjbLJDYLxTZ63oZ0syOvjoD2BTb3ktLWYX7yzswp_48KYNdpm1j9_EfTzvBMONccQGocUPjF5OJ2/s320/hellvetica.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5698289313621386370" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br />Paul Shaw has written a delightful book about an even more delightful subject - the New York City Subway System or, more specifically, its signage. For years, New York's underground signs were an indecipherable mess; difficult to read, nigh impossible to follow. Impeccably researched and gracefully written, it's the story of how a font changed a small, imperfectly formed part of the world for the better and to a new way of seeing.<br /><br /><a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12439"> Paul Shaw 'Helvetica and the New York City Subway System' MIT Press</a><br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/A6aCir5bu-c" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="325" width="500"></iframe><br /><br /><a href="http://www.jonronson.com/psycho.html">Jon Ronson</a> has written a number of entertaining, enlightening and informative books. Ronson's latest, 'The Psychopath Test,' follows in these footsteps - albeit following them wearing a pinstriped suit, a pair of Trickers brogues and a mePad. Above all, as Ronson says and writes, it shows how eager many of us are to recognise the marks of madness in other people, and to steadfastly ignore these hallmarks in ourselves.<br /><br />There have been other great books this year, too:<br /><br /><a href="http://darylgregory.com/unpossible/default.aspx">Daryl Gregory's collection of short stories, 'Unpossible and Other Stories,'</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jul/28/dream-repairman-jim-clark-review">'Dream Repairman: Adventures in Film Editing by Jim Clark with John H Myers'</a><br /><br /><a href="http://around.com/the-information/">James Gleick 'The Information,'</a><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwEsTeuqGs5OZjoPd50IippCtj0DaV80gdjZDnMeL0ap_yYOknxdGU6AAWKQAjWRG3k7SGEQYM9gaIessUCgtJ3heZsFVNGRf87TekFIKxvgQmrwf0TbW1DlySW7XWX-m3Gsxdo5fVILmF/s1600/daytripper.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; clear: both;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwEsTeuqGs5OZjoPd50IippCtj0DaV80gdjZDnMeL0ap_yYOknxdGU6AAWKQAjWRG3k7SGEQYM9gaIessUCgtJ3heZsFVNGRf87TekFIKxvgQmrwf0TbW1DlySW7XWX-m3Gsxdo5fVILmF/s320/daytripper.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5698282430050651938" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br />In closing, it would be impossible not to mention Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon's magnificent <a href="http://vertigo.blog.dccomics.com/2009/11/16/daytripper-1-by-gabriel-moon-and-fabio-ba-preview/">'Day Tripper,'</a> published by Vertigo. Undoubtedly one of THE books of this or any other year, the story, unlike so many graphic novels, grabs and gripes you from the start and never lets go - Ba and Moon have been rightly compared to another Vertigo alumnus, Neil Gaiman; both in terms of story-telling and, crucially, realisation - but their visions are undoubtedly their own.<br /><br />So, finally, an end to 2011. And a beginning to 2012.John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5230915411441001180.post-55191003191575877202011-12-31T09:23:00.004+00:002011-12-31T10:47:31.002+00:00The message is in the movies...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2-_foV-waqiLSE4sXHpGym5MvK44jGYdlPdcX0Kn978-e4aMinwZNzwN_agtPhjBDf5r2KotOck4sMZSc1dxnWBYjb9Srn3rwhsDD93vS2VRyC9DHR0DYHPmmVTZ-Ub7Cf7KkszNS2TOf/s1600/trees.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 500px; height: 325px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2-_foV-waqiLSE4sXHpGym5MvK44jGYdlPdcX0Kn978-e4aMinwZNzwN_agtPhjBDf5r2KotOck4sMZSc1dxnWBYjb9Srn3rwhsDD93vS2VRyC9DHR0DYHPmmVTZ-Ub7Cf7KkszNS2TOf/s320/trees.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5692221618884429458" /></a><br /><br />No matter what film historians, movie magazine editors, ordinary Joe's and Jolene's may say about 2011 and its movies, there is a tacitly accepted truism that, every year, about five films are released - usually quietly, often unassumingly - that will stand the test of celluloid time.<br /><br />2011 is no different.<br /><br />This year's LA Confidential award goes to Nicholas Winding Refn for his less than subtle re-working (and all the better for it) of 80's Noirishness in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY1TLgqfjvw">'Drive.'</a> Ryan Gosling, despite some slightly deluded critical comparisons to Steve McQueen, holds the film together nicely. <br /><br /><iframe width="500" height="325" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/zzNhyZlTNAg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />For those of us more solipsistically inclined, Michel Hazanivicius's 'The Artist,' may well be the film of 2011 - despite it's release date being, um, yesterday... Disney matter. Fans of cinema have been waiting for a film like this for years and, in its unsentimental melodramatic depiction of 1920's Hollywood, the unchecked hubris of its stars and the system they were so in thrall to, the movie compellingly convinces - with an authenticity seldom seen in film-making today.<br /><br />In terms of sheer spectacle, little came close to startling the senses more than Werner Herzog's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kULwsoCEd3g">'Cave of forgotten dreams.'</a> It's a film which, quite literally, stops you in your tracks, quietly, yet insistently, caressing your heart with its inspiring message of wonder...<br /><br />Similarly, from South Korea...<br /><br /><iframe width="500" height="325" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fo2dfY317-k" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />And, from one of the great American movie makers...<br /><br /><iframe width="500" height="325" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WXRYA1dxP_0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />Penultimately, <span style="font-style:italic;">another</span> film about the transmigration of the soul...with goats...<br /><br /><iframe width="500" height="325" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NZDO4GJehQs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />In 2011, film fans were also treated to that rarest of things - a television programme about films that was as good as the films that it celebrated. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/show?p=TnYApHeWfJw&tracker=show6">'The Story of Film,'</a> written and directed by Mark Cousins, was an unbridled joy from start to finish - taking us across time and vividly transacted space, across genres and continents, into the hearts, the minds and the mouths of directors, cinematographers, actors, visionaries. <br /><br />It is worth spending some of your life watching it.<br /><br />Here's to 2012...<br /><br /><iframe width="500" height="325" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/jSfXh8IJEg4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>John Simpsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16103432523302616988noreply@blogger.com0