Dear Kitty. Some blog

This music video, recorded in the USA, is called Massive Attack (Safe From Harm) at Nokia in Dallas Sept 2006.

From British daily The Morning Star:

Don’t ignore the war

(Friday 20 June 2008)

LIVE: Massive Attack
Royal Festival Hall, London SE1

MARK WAGER says that Bristolian trip-hop duo Massive Attack have come out of the shadows to deliver a political message.

During the first Gulf war, Massive Attack dropped the word “attack” from their name in order to distance themselves from the hostilities and to avoid implying that they supported the attack on Iraq.

Supported by Riz MC, who himself secured a radio ban on his single Post 911 Blues - “Bush and Blair sittin’ in a tree, K.I.L.L.I.N.G” - and introduced by the lawyer who campaigns for the human rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees Clive Stafford Smith, Massive Attack could now be happily accused of purposefully attracting attention to the second Gulf war.

Last Saturday’s performance at the Royal Festival Hall as part of the Meltdown festival was aided by a fantastic light show centred around a large screen.

Their protest is presented on-screen through sobering facts and figures on the war displayed through a mesmerising display of light and dark.

It could be said that the current climate has become Massive Attack’s reason for coming out of the shadows and working on their first album since the disappointing 2003 release 100th Window. If this gig is anything to go by, they are clearly back on form.

This is a music video from the USA of Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode.

From British daily The Independent:

No, Johnny, No: Chuck Berry joins chorus of musicians snubbing McCain’s campaign

By Leonard Doyle in Washington

Wednesday, 11 June 2008

Songs by Chuck Berry, Abba and John Cougar Mellencamp have at various times been chosen for the McCain campaign but the artists have made it clear they do not support the Republican candidate

For a US presidential candidate, there is nothing better than a rocking anthem to pump up the crowds and project the sort of imagery that could help win the keys to the White House.

The Republican hopeful John McCain may be pushing 72, but his “town hall” events can be as noisy as the stadiums where Barack Obama appears on stage to the strains of U2’s “Beautiful Day.” But the McCain camp is having trouble settling on a suitable campaign anthem. After searching for months, it finally picked “Johnny B Goode” – Chuck Berry’s rock ‘n’ roll classic from 1958. The high-power guitar licks and “Go, Johnny, go” chorus put a spring in Mr McCain’s step. When asked why he chose it, he quipped: “It might be because it is the only one [the artist] hasn’t complained about us using.”

Berry, 81, may not have complained about his song being appropriated by Mr McCain, but he has made it clear he would prefer Barack Obama in the White House. “America has finally come to this point where you can pick a man of colour and that not be a drawback,” Berry said. “It’s no question, myself being a man of colour. I mean, you have to feel good about it.”

The anointment of Mr Obama as the Democratic presidential candidate was, he added, “definitely a proud and successful moment for all the people of this country – not just black people, but Americans in general”.

Berry, known as the “father of rock ‘n’ roll”, recounted: “In the Fifties there were certain places we couldn’t ride on the bus, and now there is a possibility of a black man being in White House.” “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, free at last,” he added, quoting Martin Luther King.

There was a groan at McCain headquarters as it suffered yet another musical derailment. An attempt to use Abba’s “Take A Chance On Me” also bombed. “We played it a couple times and it’s my understanding [Abba] went berserk,” Mr McCain said.

Mr McCain is not the first political candidate to stumble into a musical minefield, only to discover their theme song is not what was originally imagined. Objections often come in the form of letters to “cease and desist” by offended songwriters or musicians. Sometimes the lyrics are discovered to be off message. The McCain team had earlier alighted on John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Pink Houses”. The Mellencamp back-story as a hard-living rocker who had cleaned up his act seemed to perfectly project Mr McCain’s maverick image as a rule-breaking but deeply conservative sonofabitch.

That scenario went into meltdown when aides realised Mellencamp is a Democrat activist who supported the presidential contender John Edwards, even appearing with him on the campaign trail. Mellencamp asked Mr McCain to cease and desist. Not only that, but “Pink Houses” is a song about missed opportunities and wasted potential, so the lyrics are not exactly on-message for a presidential campaign.

Mr McCain then used the theme from Rocky after the head of MGM, a McCain backer, gave his approval. But MGM did not own the rights to the track.

Republicans seem to have a tin ear for music. For a while in 2004, George Bush’s re-election theme was the rock standard “Still The One”. However, it turned out that the songwriter John Hall was an environmental activist who had been campaigning against nuclear power since 1979.

David Cameron [of the British Conservative Party] will have some sympathy with Mr McCain. The Tory leader recently incurred the wrath of Paul Weller for expressing his liking for The Jam’s song “Eton Rifles”.

This is a music video from the USA: Pete Seeger, Which side are you on.

From the Independent series about United States activists:

Pete Seeger

1955

For more than half a century, Seeger’s songs have provided the soundtrack to protest: at union halls, civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam War protests. As a result, he has been investigated for sedition, harassed by the FBI, and called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities

“I was hauled up before the HUAC along with about 30 other actors and musicians in New York. The committee claimed that it was investigating the Communist conspiracy in the entertainment business. Of course, they were just investigating their own definition of heresy. The committee asked me, “Did you ever sing a song called ‘Wasn’t That a Time‘?” I still sing that song. It has a verse for Valley Forge, a verse for Gettysburg, a verse for the Second World War, and a verse for the McCarthy days. But it ended on an optimistic note: “Our faith cries out. Isn’t this a time, a time to free the soul of man?” So I told the committee, “That’s a good song, and I know it. I’ll sing it for you.” They replied: “No. We don’t want to hear it. We want to know, did you sing it on such and such a place and date?” I said, “I would be glad to sing any song I ever sang. But as to where I’ve sung them, I think that’s no business of this committee. I’ve got a right to sing them anywhere.” A year later, I was cited for contempt of Congress because I had refused to answer the committee’s questions. In 1961, I was tried, convicted and sentenced to a year in jail. My family and friends stood behind me. And all around the world, people sent dimes and dollars to help pay the legal expenses. A year later, the appeals court unanimously acquitted me. I’m only sorry I hadn’t done what Paul Robeson did. He stood up and shouted, “This whole hearing is a disgrace. You are the Un-Americans!”

This is a music video of Imagine by John Lennon.

From Scientific American:

Imagine there’s no evolution: Yoko says oh no to Expelled

Yoko Ono is incensed that the antiscience film Expelled: No Intelligence used a snippet of late husband John Lennon’s 1971 paean to peace Imagine sans permission. So she sued the film’s producers and distributors, demanding that they yank the track from the controversial movie, which stars Nixon-speechwriter-cum-actor-cum-pitchman Ben Stein.

The BBC reports that the former Beatle’s widow balked when, among other things, the film triggered a blogospheric backlash against her, because it appeared that she had authorized the song’s use and, so, endorsed the movie’s creationist antievolution claims. Joining Ono in the lawsuit against Premise Media Corporation; C&S Production, LP; and Rocky Mountain Pictures: Lennon’s sons, Julian and Sean, and publisher EMI Blackwood Music, Inc.

Darwin still causing waves after 150 years: here.

This video is called The Paris Commune of 1871.

By Sandy English and Peter Daniels:

A turn toward history we need: Paris Commune at the Public Theater in New York

4 June 2008

Paris Commune, written by Steven Cosson and J. Michael Friedman, directed by Steven Cosson, and performed by The Civilians at the Public Lab Series Workshop at the Public Theater in New York City, April 4 to 20

Paris Commune, staged recently at the Public Theater in New York, is a musical about the first government established by the working class, which ruled the French capital from March 18 until May 28, 1871, when bourgeois troops crushed it and massacred thousands.

The artistic quality of the work and the seriousness with which the creators treat the material make this theatrical piece unusual in the current cultural environment, especially in the US. It suggests that the general restiveness and discontent in artistic circles is beginning to find a more focused expression.

Plays and other works of art about the lives of ordinary people are not entirely lacking, but a consideration of those moments when daily life becomes charged with great historical purpose has been more or less off the map for most artists.

In Paris Commune, we are presented with a thoroughgoing and lively presentation of precisely one of those moments in history.

Writers Steven Cosson and J. Michael Friedman uncovered new material from primary sources for this work. They present facets of French life often missing from accounts of the Commune—in particular, with the Public Theater production’s 14 songs and dance numbers, the popular culture of Paris in the 1870s.

The play lets the workers of Paris speak for themselves, but it fills in many of the gaps in historical knowledge that a contemporary American audience might have. (For that matter, the Commune is not widely taught in French schools, either.) At one point, for example, the play combines a lesson in French revolutions from 1789 to 1871 with a dance number that simultaneously teaches the history of the famous dance, the can-can. This scene, literally breathless, puts the Commune in context as the final and greatest revolutionary struggle of the nineteenth century.

The writers, of course, can’t fill in all the blanks in 90 minutes. A sense of the French Second Empire (1852-1870) and its Napoleon III is largely missing. That is a shame, too, since the period resembles our own in many ways: the frantic greed of the ruling classes, the social polarization, the stifling political atmosphere, the constant military adventures and provocations, a vulgar and dimwitted ruler.

This is a music video of Bo Diddley - Road Runner, from a 1960 TV show. Remarkably for the early 1960s, a woman guitarist is in the four piece band.

From Wikipedia:

Bo Diddley (December 30, 1928 – June 2, 2008), born Ellas Otha Bates, aka “The Originator”, was an influential American rock and roll singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Often cited as a key figure in the transition from blues to rock and roll, he introduced more insistent, driving rhythms and a hard-edged guitar sound. He was also known for his characteristic rectangular guitar.

From The Independent daily in Britain:

Bo Diddley, the pioneering electric guitarist who was playing rock’n'roll when white America was still calling it jungle music and without whom there might never have been Elvis Presley, the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, has died at the age of 79.

See also here.

This video from the Netherlands is called Rage Against the Machine - Bullet in the Head (Pinkpop 1993 [the first time they played at that festival]).

From Dutch daily Sp!ts, 2 June 2008, page 14, paper edition:

[The annual rock festival] Pinkpop attracted for three days in a row over 60,000 visitors to Landgraaf; this had never happened in the 38 previous editions …

Rage as furious as ever

The most spectacular set on Pinkpop was by headliners Rage Against The Machine. The foursome, reunited after a breakup in 2000, get on stage to the sound of sirens, in orange prison clothes, with hoods on their heads, like prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

The hoods on the photo with this Sp!ts article remind one more of Abu Ghraib torture prison in Iraq; while the orange clothes are like in Guantanamo Bay.

They even have to search a bit for their instruments before starting off well right away with their blockbuster Bombtrack. And when the suits get off a bit later, the old socialist fighting song, The International, sounds from the PA.

See also here.

Also on Guantanamo Bay: here. And here.

This video from the USA is called The Banana Slug String Band-Dirt Made My Lunch.

From the BioBliz Blog in the USA:

It’s official: The 24-hour Santa Monica Mountains inventory has come to an end, but the party’s just beginning!

Teams turned up 1,364 unique plant and animal species by noon today–more than twice the hoard volunteers ID’d in the same time at Rock Creek Park last year. More still will come in the days ahead as bio-sleuths resolve the identities of a slew of mystery species.

For now, at least, the breakdown looks like this:

Algae - 22
Amphibian - 4
Arthropod - 628
Bird - 86
Fish - 6
Lichen - 3
Mammal - 12
Marine Invertebrate - 91
Other Invertebrate - 2
Plant - 495
Reptile - 15

TOTAL - 1364

The Celebrate Biodiversity Festival’s in full swing, with the Banana Slug String Band on the main stage.

This video, from Democracy Now! in the USA, is called Folk Singer Utah Phillips dies- 1/5.

From Songwriter’s Notebook blog in the USA, by singer David Rovics:

I wouldn’t want to elevate anybody to inappropriately high heights, but for me, Utah Phillips was a legend.

I first became familiar with the Utah Phillips phenomenon in the late 80’s, when I was in my early twenties, working part-time as a prep cook at Morningtown in Seattle. I had recently read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, and had been particularly enthralled by the early 20th Century section, the stories of the Industrial Workers of the World. So it was with great interest that I first discovered a greasy cassette there in the kitchen by the stereo, Utah Phillips Sings the Songs and Tells the Stories of the Industrial Workers of the World.

See also here.

This video is called Shostakovich playing Symphony 7 (Leningrad).

Review by Alex Miller in Australia:

A complex socialist composer

Shostakovich: A Life
By Laurel E. Fay
Oxford University Press, 2005
458 pages, $47.95 (pb)

Dmitriy Shostakovich (1906 — 1975) is regarded by many as the greatest composer of the 20th Century.

At the time of his death in 1975, Shostakovich was regarded as the “official face” of Soviet music: he frequently represented the Soviet Union abroad, was a member of the Communist Party and deputy to the Supreme Soviet, and had honours such as “Hero of Socialist Labour” and the “Order of Lenin” bestowed on him by the Soviet regime.

Shostakovich: A Life steers a careful course between this official Soviet view of Shostakovich and other accounts released after his death — finding that the truth about this intensely private person is significantly more complex than either of them suggests. …

The early chapters in the book give a vivid picture of the intense creative energy released in Russia by the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. Shostakovich’s earliest works — including his popular and acclaimed First Symphony — were produced in the explosion of artistic talent in the decade that followed. …

Following Shostakovich’s partial rehabilitation after the Fifth Symphony, he found himself in besieged Leningrad after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. He applied twice to serve at the front, but was rejected on each occasion.

While beginning the composition of his Seventh Symphony, he worked as a fireman in the starving and bombarded city, until he was evacuated to Kuybishev on the order of the government.

In one of the great propaganda coups of the war, the score of the completed Seventh Symphony was flown into still-besieged Leningrad and performed by the half-starved Leningrad Radio Orchestra in August 1942.

As psychological warfare, the performance was broadcast on loudspeakers to the German troops stalled on the edge of the city, and the Seventh Symphony quickly became an international symbol of resistance to fascism.

Shostakovich dedicated the work “to our struggle with fascism, to our coming victory over the enemy, and to my native city, Leningrad”. The Seventh Symphony is still referred to today as the “Leningrad Symphony”.