I luurve Marc Bolan so muuuchh. Fun trvia fact (?): Bolan was so tiny he wore size five shoes. Women’s size 5 shoes. UK size. That’s a 7 in America. My size, coincedentally.

This is a song, that I wrote when I was young,
And I call it, the broken hearted blues,
The air on that night, was tempered like a knife,
And the people wore the face masks of a clown,
Don he was long, mis-shapen and forlorn,
And his woman ran away without a smile.

Days of the earth, are unbroken changeless turf,
But the faces of the men are something else.
In the wind, as a boy, was a spacious sexual toy,
But baby, now he’s a toothless baggy man,
When the hills of the sun, make you feel that you are young,

Get good now, and face your face into the wind.
This is a song, that I wrote when I was young,
And I called it the broken hearted blues

Marc Bolan on the set of Born To Boogie, 1972

Then Marc Bolan in a 1974 version of the Children of the Revolution

Donovan: “It was natural for romantic bohemian musicians to think pop would become an art form. Many of us saw ourselves as painters and artists, and we dressed ourselves in our dreams. The interest in the ballad tradition seemed natural because it was in direct contrast to the materialistic world that we grew up in… We looked to the East, because we felt that we could enter the secret world only through meditation which wasn’t taught in the West.”

Steve Took: “I guess, for a while, Marc was a good hippie.”

Despite having sort of trailed that I was going to write about a period of homelessness and sofa-hopping, I wanted to write about something different today. I can’t recall why but I’ve been remembering a time when I was doing quite a lot of gigs on my own and had gone in for the ‘glam rock‘ look. This was not as unexpected as a few people tried to make out at the time: my first ever rock and roll t-shirt had been a black one with the face of Marc Bolan transferred on, which I persuaded Mum to buy me when I was eight or nine years old. My father wanted to know “Why have you got that pouf on your chest?” so I wore it as much as possible, to annoy him. In fact I wore it so much that Bolan’s face eventually vanished from the shirt. So what I had was a black t-shirt, although I continued to refer to it as my ‘Bolan shirt’.

All those years later I was to be seen strumming and singing with red or purple hair, and dressed in spangly silver tops, glitter eye-shadow and a white fur coat. Well, I had a white one and a brown one (fake fur, I couldn’t wear the real thing), but I mostly wore the white one. On stage no-one really questions it; it’s part of rock and roll iconography, even if not many people are going in for it these days. A friend who had moved to the States saw me on my way to a gig one afternoon. He’d been in New York seven years and had picked up the accent very strongly. “Hey,” he called to me. “IS that you? I almost didn’t recognise you. You look weird.” Without missing a beat I replied “Yeah but you sound weird so what are we gonna do, eh?”

It may have been the same evening when I was heading back to my car, guitar and small amp in hand. I’d parked some distance from the venue and had to walk down a narrow alleyway to reach the car park. As I headed down into the darkening alley I spotted a group of seven or eight men walking towards me. They were Royal Marines: my town had a marine camp a few miles outside and all the civvies knew instinctively who the marines were, even when they weren’t in uniform. Something to do with the chiseled jaws, the huge biceps, and the jarhead haircuts, I guess. Anyway, there was I, dressed like a ladyboy, and here were eight of them coming towards me. “This is not going to go well,” I muttered to myself but kept on walking.

When they were only a couple of paces in front of me one of them said “Hey!” Now, I don’t know what it is in me but whenever I am faced with such situations, my mouth tends to act as though it is not as frightened as the rest of my body. So I replied “What?” in a surly voice. “Can you play that?” he asked, pointing at my guitar. “No, I just carry it around to look cool. What do you reckon?” I said, inwardly wishing I would shut the hell up. “No but can you though, mate?” he said. I nodded. “Play us a Beatles song then.” Considering I’d been expecting to be beaten within seconds, this almost caught me by surprise but I got my guitar out, sat down on the amp, and played them ‘Help’ or ‘I Feel Fine’. They all applauded and wanted another so I played something more contemporary (Paul Weller maybe) and they applauded again. The one who had spoken to me clapped me on the back and said I was great. Then they all dug into their pockets, handed me loads of coins, and wandered off into the night. I counted the money in my hand, it was over ten pounds! And there was me expecting the encounter to have ended with me lying down a lot and doing some bleeding.

As I said earlier, onstage no-one really questions the glam look. Well there was one occasion when I was going to the toilet during a break in a performance at a local bar, and I heard a girl say to her boyfriend, “Oh he’s really good.” To which the boyfriend replied “Bloody queer.” So of course when I got back onto the microphone for the second set I made a little announcement: “Ladies and gents, I understand that some of the men in the crowd are commenting on my sexuality. Well be afraid, be very afraid gentlemen, I am heterosexual and all your girlfriends fancy me.” I was onstage, so I got away with it. The magic protection of a guitar and a mic, eh?

One occasion I really was convinced thviolence was going to ensue occurred one night when I was out drinking with some friends, including my best friend Rob. I was in my white fur coat and make up. Altogether there were six of us but the other five dressed like normal people. Across the bar was a table of six or seven youngish guys, probably students, I thought. One of them looked at me and said ‘Pouf!’ I’d heard it all before, of course and my thinking about such insults was as follows. They’ve made a judgement about me, deciding that I am a homosexual. I am not a homosexual so their judgement is incorrect, therefore the insult fails. If I did happen to be a homosexual then their judgement is correct, in which case, what do they want, a medal? Again the insult fails. In other words, words are words are words. But Rob was feeling particularly determined that evening that we should be able to enjoy our night out without people throwing insults around. So he started staring at the guy who’d called me a pouf.

One of the students, but not the one Rob was staring at, came over and stood in front of Rob. It was at this point that I realised our friends had gone. Rob and I were alone in the bar, save for the six or seven people sending us hostile vibes. The new guy said “What’s your problem?” to Rob. “No problem,” said Rob. “But you’re staring at my mate.” “Yes, yes I am.” said Rob, who is nothing if not truthful. “So what’s the problem?” The guy’s voice was raising in pitch a little and the tension was mounting. If there had been a piano player in the bar, that would have been about the time he stopped playing. “No problem,” said Rob again. “BUT YOU’RE STARING AT MY MATE!” the insistent guy repeated. “Yes I am,” “SO WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?” “

Now I could tell from the look on Rob’s face that he was getting bored of this groundhog day style conversation so he decided to try and move things along to the inevitable violence which was brewing as there’s nothing worse than waiting for people to start punching you. “Why don’t you just fuck off?” he said to the guy. Face all purple and eyes wide as hell the guy demanded to know what Rob had just said. So Rob repeated his words, very slowly, punctuated every one of them with a little jab to the guy’s chest. Any second now the other students were going to leap from their chairs and start laying into the pair of us. I still had a drink in my hand and contemplated throwing it towards the first one that came my way. The one who had just been jabbed and told to fuck off finally found his voice again. “But, but, you’re staring at my mate.” Instantly the tension deflated. He was clearly not going to start the fight so his friends were not going to have to do the honourable thing and join in. He was, as Rob wasted no time in telling him, an arsehole. Even his mates were telling him to shut up and sit down by now. So he did, all abashed, and we finished our drinks and went to find out what had happened to our oh so brave friends.

Nicholas Nassim Taleb makes it easy on us. At the beginning of his book The Black Swan he goes ahead and tells us exactly what its all about:

To summarize: in this (personal) essay, I stick my neck out and make a claim, against many o four habits af thought, that our world is dominated by the extreme, the unknown, and the very improbable (improbable according to our current knowledge)–and all the while we spend our time engaged in small talk, foocusing on the known, and the repeated. This implies the need to use the extreme event as a strating point and not treat it as an exception to be pushed under th erug. I also make the bolder (and more annoying) claim that in spite of our progress and the growth in knowledge, or perhaps because of such progress and growth, the future will be increasingly less predictable, while both human nature and social “sciences” seem to conspire to hide the idea from us.

Taleb’s book was published in 2007. So what? Well I’ll tell you what. His basic contention, that we live in a fundamentally unpredictable world (at least as it concerns the socially constructed parts of it, which means pretty much all of it), does not exclude economics, or the markets. In fact, he goes to great lengths to show that all the hedging, and risk management, and portfolio building that goes on in finance–from your neighborhood stock broker up to the high-flyers on Wall Street–is pretty much bullsh*t and setting everyone up for a big surprise one day.

Well, that day came w/ this whole mortgage-backed-economic debacle we are in now, and this book (published in 2007) basically predicted it.

But the author, who spent most of his working life as a trader on Wall Street, certainly wouldn’t take credit for the prediction. But he probably would take credit for being prepared. That’s kind of the crux of the book.

The Black Swan is rife w/ concepts which form a fairly coherent philisophical view that just may change the way you live.

At the heart are two worlds. On the one hand, we have Mediocristan, a predictable place described by common notions of probability and statistics. Unusual things happen, but they don’t affect average conditions. The natural sciences tend to study these phenomena and build physical laws  out of them. On the  other hand we have Extremistan, where the “black swan” lives. The black swan is an improbable event with outsizes impact. Its onset really shakes things up, even to the extent that it alter the world. The result is that, in Extremistan, the way things are now are no good indicator for the way things might be, since one never knows when a black swan might swoop down and change it all.

For better or worse, humans don’t really live their lives in Mediocristan (though some features of our day-to-day share some of its features); we live in Extremistan. As Taleb puts it:

Note that before the advent of modern technology, wars used to belong to Mediocristan. It is hard to kill many poeople if you need to slaughter them one at a time. Today, with tools of mass destruction, all it takes is a button, a nutcase, or a small error to wipe out the planet.

The problem with living in Extremistan is that Donald Rumsfeld was right.

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.

But as Taleb shows, we tend to forget about the unknown unknowns, or pretend they don’t exist. We mis-use mathematics and and theories and history to give our selves the false sense of knowing what’s going on in our social world (examples include the effects of natural disasters on our built environment, the fate of financial markets, social trends, deaths from terrorism, the evolution of technologies), when we really don’t, and probably can’t. When black swans arrive we are caught unawares , often with disastrous consequences.

There are two reasons to read the book. One: for the rush of discovering in detail how the way everyone thinks about the world is a little bit wrong. Two: for some tips for how to deal w/ a life dominated by lurking uncertainty. One example is to avoid specialization. Another is “barbell strategy,” or being hyperconservative and hyperaggressive, instead of mildly agressive or conservative. There are more, but you can read.

Okay, there’s one more reason to read this book. Unlike nearly every other non-fiction book I’ve ever read, the author mixes in the facts at hand with autobiography, fictional vignettes, philosophical speculations, and humors asides — all with a entertaining self-righteous irreverence–that almost puts the book in the same company as wild post-modern novels.

It’s not boring. And its a little scary.

But don’t worry, afterward you can retreat into the fantasy of Mediocristan, with the very not-mediocre  “Ride a White Swan” as your soundtrack, courtesy of the even less mediocre Marc Bolan & T-Rex:

David Bowie guesting on Marc Bolan’s Marc TV show, 7 September 1977, in a culmination of the pair’s long and odd rivalry-cum-friendship. According to Bowie: “I never had any competition except Marc Bolan… I fought like a madman to beat him, knowing theoretically there was no race, but wanting passionately to do it.” Nonetheless, according to Bolan: “We’re mates, we think very similar, read the same kind of books, probably had the same background…” On Marc, Bowie and Bolan ran through their individual hits (“Heroes” and “Debora”), before joining forces on “Standing Next To You”, which was essentially a repeated riff. The whole thing ended with Bolan tripping off the stage and Bowie flashing one big, amused grin.

Two weeks later, Bolan would be killed in a violent car wreck. Bowie attended his funeral service at Golders Green Crematorium.

"The Day That Pop Came Back"

The 70’s answer to Beatlemania was without doubt Marc Bolan though his boast that ”we’ve done in a year what took The Beatles four years” was more ego than fact but let’s not let that spoil a good story.

With his transformation from being a mod through a folkie phase with the original Tyrannosaurus Rex to pop stardom with the re-formatted and re-named T-Rex complete it was no surprise that Ringo Starr, then Managing Director of Apple Films Ltd put forward a film  proposal to him in 1972.

It was agreed that the film should be built around two live concerts to be performed at The Empire Pool, Wembley on 18th March 1972.

The shows were recorded by Tony Visconti on The Rolling Stones Mobile Studio.

Between the opening “Cadillac” and closing cover of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” were all the glam hits

plus three acoustic numbers reflecting his continual love of his musical history.

“Spaceball Ricochet” – T-Rex

In order to make the film more than just a record of the concerts additional sketch material was filmed together with an Apple Records basement jam  which included Elton John and Ringo Starr.

“Children Of The Revolution” – T-Rex with Elton John and Ringo Starr

The film was premiered on 14th December 1972 and for many years the film was presumed lost then come 2003 272 cans of footage were located in a warehouse near Heathrow and with Ringo Starr’s approval Sanctuary Films carried out extensive restoration work from which the 2005 double CD and double DVD sets were sourced.

For more information click HERE

To buy the CD and/or DVD click HERE

Like a lot of people, I watched some of the Summer Olympics in Beijing last summer. And, like a lot of people, I was wowed by the opening ceremony which was quite the spectacle.

This coming out party for the Chinese (as many dubbed it) caused quite a stir among the pundits and prognosticators. There were more than a few people getting the vapors over what they viewed as the first glimpse of coming attractions, a world where China is a superpower.

One morning last week, I read a piece – I think it was in The New York Times – detailing the relationship between the education level of a nation’s citizens and economic stability and growth. It was thought provoking and basically warned that the average high school kid in the US reads at about the same comprehension level as a baked potato (or something like that, it wasn’t encouraging).

Then, a few nights ago, I was writing. The television was on, essentially background noise. A familiar melody caused me to look up. It was a commercial for Cisco – an ad depicting technology coming to an idyllic looking countryside.

It closed with a screen filled with young Chinese school children looking ridiculously eager to carpe the @#$%! out of the diem and throttle anything that might get in their path (but with a gleeful enthusiasm that was disarming).

I’m thinking that our potato children are toast.

Anyhow, the song that caught my attention was a version of T. Rex’ classic Children Of The Revolution. So, if a world where China is a superpower means a T. Rex revival, I’m on board.

I can’t remember exactly when I discover the music of Marc Bolan and T. Rex. I was far too young to have been aware of their years as superstars in the ’70s (not that I would have heard much of their stuff aside from Get It On here in the US).

I think the first time I heard T. Rex was seeing the video for Bang A Gong (Get It On) on MTV. Several years later, Power Station covered the song and, not long after that, Violent Femmes covered Children Of The Revolution.

As I entered college and CDs were beginning to be issued for most titles, I stumbled across a T. Rex compilation (there’ve been a ridiculous number of them). The packaging was quite shoddy, but the music was astounding – all candy-coated primal crunch and sing-song lyrics.

I certainly own more T. Rex than I probably need (courtesy to a multi-set collection in the ’90s which I received as promos), but there are few acts whose music brightens my mood like T. Rex. So, to help everyone in the West relax a bit during breaks from learning Mandarin, here’s a handful of Marc Bolan classics…

T. Rex – Children Of The Revolution
from Great Hits 1972-1977

T. Rex – Hot Love
from The Legend Of T. Rex

T. Rex – Metal Guru
from The Slider

T. Rex – The Slider
from The Slider

T. Rex – Get It On
from Electric Warrior

In Huize Zutphen zijn dino’s het gesprek van de dag. Geenszins uitgestorven, maar superhip. Aldus togen wij vanmorgen mét ons reptielennest naar Naturalis te Leiden voor de doldwaze dinodagen.

Wij keken daar de ogen uit. Nu deed vader dat al tijdens zijn studententijd, maar om andere redenen. (Je hoeft trouwens geen gepromoveerd bioloog te zijn om het verschil te zien tussen de kippen van toen en nu, maar dit geheel terzijde.)

Prachtig en indrukwekkend. Wij raakten niet uitgesproken over die beesten- ik hoop dat iedereen vannacht rustig slaapt…

B52s – Meet the Flinstones

Ice Age Crew – Walk the Dinosaur

Marc Bolan & T-Rex – Hot Love

o nome do post poderia ser tb “i dont see dead people anymore”.

um maluco fotografou o lugar onde pessoas famosas morreram e expôs as fotos. achei interessante esse conceito, pq o lugar nas fotos está vazio, tem o lance do lugar ser triste, decisivo na história, e ao mesmo tempo mostra o lugar como sendo qqr esquina.. é.. da pra viajar bastante nessa idéia…

“The Prettiest Star” is a song by David Bowie, originally released as a single in 1970.

Bowie had recently re-recorded an old Deram track, “London Bye Ta Ta”, intended as a follow-up single to “Space Oddity” in early 1970. However, the same sessions had also spawned a new composition named “The Prettiest Star”. Bowie wrote it for Angela Barnett, (Angie Bowie) reputedly playing it down the telephone as part of his proposal to her. He also chose it as his next single, to the displeasure of manager Kenneth Pitt, who favoured “London Bye Ta Ta”.

The track featured Marc Bolan on guitar, with whom Bowie would spend the next few years as a rival for the crown of the king of glam rock. Producer Tony Visconti, who brought the two aspiring pop stars together in the studio, recalled that the session went well until the end when Bolan’s wife June remarked to Bowie, “Marc is too good for you, to be playing on this record!”

Despite receiving good notices, the single reportedly sold less than 800 copies, a major disappointment on the back of the success of “Space Oddity”.

In 1973, a more glam-influenced version was recorded and released on the album Aladdin Sane, with Mick Ronson recreating Bolan’s original guitar part almost note-for-note.

On the other hand some say it was actually written for and about Marc Bolan.

“The Prettiest Star” – David Bowie (Single Version)

“The Prettiest Star” – David Bowie (Aladdin Sane Version)

Cold fire, you’ve got everything but cold fire
You will be my rest and peace child
I moved up to take a place, near you

So tired, it’s the sky that makes you feel tried
It’s a trick to make you see wide
It can all but break your heart, in pieces

Staying back in your memory
Are the movies in the dark
How you moved is all it takes
To sing a song of when I loved
The Prettiest Star

One day though it might as well be someday
You and I will rise up all the way
All because of what you are
The Prettiest Star

Staying back in your memory
Are the movies in the past
How you moved is all it takes
To sing a song of when I loved
Prettiest Star

One day though it might as well be someday
You and I will rise up all the way
All because of what you are
The Prettiest Star

To buy the music of David Bowie click HERE

Here is Mr Bolan in all his glory.

Mickey Finn was asked to join T.Rex, not for his musical talent (Tony Visconti recalls it to be lacking), but for his good looks and style that acted as an effective counterpoint to Marc Bolan’s. Marc found him a neat spot behind the bongos.

Let Me Sleep Beside You.

Tony Visconti, a 22-year-old bass player from Brooklyn, came to the UK in April 1967 to illegally work as an apprentice record producer. He managed to convince Customs that he was traveling with four guitars because he was a dedicated vacationing musician who had to practice on each guitar daily. In New York he had caught the eye of British producer Denny Cordell by writing a complete arrangement for a Georgie Fame overdub session in an hour’s time, and once in the UK Visconti was put to work on tracks by The Move (“Cherry Blossom Clinic,” “Flowers In the Rain,” “Mist on a Monday Morning“) and Manfred Mann (“So Long Dad“).

Soon after David Bowie’s LP was released in June ‘67, Visconti met Bowie at the office of David Platz, Cordell’s business partner and Bowie’s song publisher. Platz thought the two might hit it off as Visconti already had a reputation of being able to work with “hard to understand” artists (e.g., Marc Bolan, whose band Tyrannosaurus Rex Visconti would soon convince Cordell to sign). The first thing Visconti noticed was that Bowie had different-colored eyes. The two talked about American music for hours (both were fans of Ken Nordine’s Word Jazz LPs), went for a walk in Chelsea, saw Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water together and had become fast friends by the end of the day. So when Bowie went in to record a new prospective single for Deram at summer’s end, he asked Visconti to arrange and produce it.

Bowie often has been reliant on his producers, using them as interpreters, mirrors, secondary composers, performers, muses and casting directors. Along with Gus Dudgeon, Visconti was the first of the major Bowie producers, and where Dudgeon’s work is that of someone fleshing out an unusual, occasionally brilliant sketchwork (the role George Martin often played with John Lennon), Visconti’s style is both practical in its studio realism and aggressive in its scope: feeding, then realizing, Bowie’s nascent ambitions.

Visconti helped convince Bowie to push “Let Me Sleep Beside You” as his next single, flattering Bowie by pronouncing the song “almost American.” Also, Bowie was dead broke—his LP had stiffed—so “Sleep Beside You” was a bald attempt to ape the success of the Stones’ “Let’s Spend the Night Together” (blunt requests were in vogue). It marks a turn away from the eccentricity and provincial theatrics of Bowie’s earlier Deram material, as “Sleep Beside You” is a basic rock & roll sex song, just sweetened up and given to putting on airs.

It’s a fairly basic composition—the chord progression of the verse (C-Bb-F)  has become so cliched that it’s simply dubbed “the classic rock progression” in Richard Scott’s music theory guide (it’s used in everything from The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” to ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man”). Visconti offers stage settings and mood lighting: a cello section; a dominant bass that doubles Bowie’s initial sung hook; and drums (by Alan White, later of the Plastic Ono Band and Yes) that serve as accents and occasional fireworks—the acoustic guitar (Bowie?) is what really drives the track. The strings are a moody, luxurious contrast to the wind-based arrangements that had dominated Bowie’s first LP and “Laughing Gnome” single. In the first verse, the strings repeat a five-note pattern, then offer a series of long-held notes until, after the song peaks with the bridge, Visconti gives the cellists a whole eight-bar verse to sweep through.

What works is the restraint: Bowie and Visconti set up hooks but don’t overuse them (the opening distorted guitar riff (likely played by John McLaughlin) doesn’t appear again until the fadeout, for instance), while Bowie’s figured out how to best display his voice—go low on the verses, high and imperious on the bridge, where he’s trying to close the sale.

“Let Me Sleep Beside You” is a rake’s come-on in the well-worn style of Andrew Marvell and Robert Herrick—the singer frames his seduction as being empowering, the rake merely serving as a means of liberation. He appeals to youth’s vanity; he flatters his conquest with the promise of her alleged maturity: “Brush the dust of youth from off your shoulder/because the years of threading daisies lie behind you now,” Bowie murmurs, keeping a straight face. “Lock away your childhood…child, you’re a woman now/your heart and soul are free.” (Neil Diamond’s “Girl You’ll Be a Woman Soon” had been released as a single in April ‘67, and so might have been an influence, but then again the late ’60s were rife with “girl, you’re a woman now” type of lyrics.)

It’s the most lustful Bowie song since “Liza Jane,” but as the track goes on, its aim seems less about Bowie bedding the girl than Bowie wanting to convince the listener that he really is a seductive, charismatic rock star (the promo film for the song, made in early 1969, has Bowie burlesquing the image of rock-star-as-sex-god, years before Ziggy). Bowie’s at last hit on the idea that a reflection, perfectly arranged, of an Elvis-Jagger figure will serve just as well as the original.

Recorded on 1 September 1967. Deram’s review board uniformly rejected it as a single, and it wouldn’t be released until the 1970 patchwork LP World of David Bowie that Deram issued to cash in on Bowie’s post-”Space Oddity” fame; on Deram Anthology.

Photos: Kim Farber, Miss February 1967, with winter flower arrangement; the author Adam Diment in a fertility dance, London, 1967.

Another day, another reminder of how things have changed. Sam chases a perpetrator of assault only to find that this particular assailant believes he is above the law.

As Sam proceeds to handcuff said assailant, even his victim is moved to point out the inaccuries in Sam’s arrest speech. In an almost pantomime fashion, as if he could be playing a part…

Young Sam clearly moved house a lot. He now finds out that this might have been due to a lot of missed rent. Did his subconscious need Ivanhoe to lead him back to this particular house so that he could find his mum? Cats are good at that type of thing.

‘Have you got inside information?’ Define inside information. Gene’s suspicions are aroused when Sam attempts to swap Proud Percy for Red Rum in the Grand National sweepstake. I’ve always thought a prolonged series of inexplicably successful bets was surely the only way to convince Gene that you’re from the future. That and possibly an explanation involving a Party Seven.

So how likely would it have been to see Marc Bolan and the Manchester United team in the same club? And that mere mortals would be allowed amongst them? Of course this was before Studio 54 and elitist door policies and twenty or so years from the Met Bar. Was the Warren real and what did it become? Interestingly, there is an actual club called The Warren Police Sports and Social Club. But I would love to think it had something to do with the Hacienda and we will see a younger Sam visiting said club in a flashback in A2A3.

‘Off duty slags with glitter in their hair.’ Sometimes, including on this occasion, Annie seems shocked by the chauvinistic comments her presence appears to invite from Gene and co. Really? I wasn’t around in 1973 but I’ve seen the evidence – the world was a completely different place. Not 100% sure Annie is really a 70s girl…

Nelson, on the other hand, seems baffled by the thought of a TV in a pub so we can conclude that whichever chronological place he hails from, it was before 1992.  Gene can think of nothing more revolting than a dishonest hippy. Give it twenty years, Gene…

Others have tried and failed to challenge Steven Warren…what others? Where are they now?

The honeytrap girl bothers me. Would she really be that good an actress? If so she could have got herself a part in Crossroads instead of dancing in a cage for Wendy Warren.

The drug induced images that flash before Sam’s eyes: Britney, his mum, Basil Brush, Hollywood, terrorists, the Gulf War, Santa.

Sam recovers from his trip with that 70s mum stalwart: Lucozade. With the orange cellophane wrapper on. I honestly think they used to stock it in the pharmacy section in Boots back then. Since when was sugar, glucose and untold e numbers good for you?

One of the most telling scenes is when Sam’s mum notes that he has ‘naughty men to arrest’. It’s so typical of something a mum would say to her son. Add to that the fact that she forgives him so easily and invites a relative stranger into her home and I’m convinced she knows who he is…

En plan apunte y con pocas palabras: ya se ha publicado la programación de la próxima edición del festival de documentales musicales In-Edit, que se celebrará en Barcelona del 29 de octubre al 8 de noviembre y en el que se podrán ver un total de 44 documentales.

Este es uno de los mejores festivales que se hacen en Barcelona y mira que se hacen unos cuantos. Yo ya me estoy haciendo la lista de los que quiero ver (aunque misteriosamente nunca consigo ir a todos). Os dejo algunos de los trailers de los documentales que se proyectarán para que elaboréis vuestras propias agendas (o los busquéis en Internet…ejem).

1947

Nace Marc Bolan vocalista de T. Rex.

1964

Nace el bajista de Goo Goo Dolls, Robby Takac.

1977

Ringo Starr lanza el album Ringo The Fourth.

1988

John Lennon recibe su estrella en el paseo de las estrellas de Hollywood.

Kilka miesięcy temu zauważyłem, że wiele z najlepszych płyt rockowych wydano w roku 1969. Pomyślałem “czyżby najważniejsza data w historii muzyki popularnej?”. Swoje przypuszczenia postanowiłem sprawdzić. Przeglądnąłem recenzje albumów na Only Solitaire, oceny na angielskiej Wikipedii, przejrzałem własną płytotekę, zasięgnąłem też dla równowagi opinii kuzyna. W efekcie wybrałem kilkudziesięciu najważniejszych twórców z lat 1965-1975 oraz maksymalnie 3 najlepsze albumy każdego z nich. Okazało się, że pomyliłem się z tym 1969 , jednak nie tak znowu bardzo. Zobaczcie zresztą sami…

bob dylan:
1965 bringing it all back home, 1965 highway 61 revisited, 1966 blonde on blonde
cream:
1966 fresh cream, 1967 disraeli gears
creedence clearwater revival:
1969 willy and the poor boys, 1970 cosmo’s factory
donovan:
1966 sunshine superman, 1967 mellow yellow, 1969 barabajagal
eric clapton:
1970 eric clapton, 1974 461 ocean boulevard
george harrison:
1970 all thing must pass
janis joplin:
1967 big brother & the holding company
jefferson airplane:
1967 surrealistic pillow
jethro tull:
1968 this was, 1969 stand up, 1971 aqualung
jimi hendrix:
1967 are you experienced, 1967 axis – bold as love, 1968 electric ladyland
john lennon:
1970 plastic ono band, 1971 imagine, 1974 walls and bridges
john mayall:
1966 bluesbrakers with eric clapton
led zeppelin:
1969 II, 1970 III, 1971 IV
love:
1967 da capo, 1967 forever changes
paul mccartney (& wings):
1971 ram, 1973 band on the run, 1975 venus and mars
pink floyd:
1967 the piper at the gates of dawn, 1973 dark side of the moon, 1975 wish you were here
queen:
1974 sheer heart attack, 1975 a night at the opera
t. rex (& tyrannosaurus rex):
1969 unicorn, 1971 electric warrior
the beatles:
1966 revolver, 1967 sergeant pepper’s lonely hearts club band, 1969 abbey road
the doors:
1967 the doors, 1967 strange days, 1971 l.a. woman
the kinks:
1968 the village green preservation society, 1969 arthur, 1971 muswell hillbillies
the rolling stones:
1966 aftermath, 1969 let it bleed, 1971 sticky fingers
the small faces:
1968 ogden’s nut gone flake
the stooges:
1969 the stooges, 1970 fun house
the velvet underground:
1967 the velvet undergrond and nico, 1968 white light white heat, 1969 the velvet underground
the who:
1969 tommy, 1971 who’s next, 1973 quadrophenia
zz top:
1973 tres hombres

Zdaję sobie sprawę z tego, że nawet najdokładniejsze badania (a moje obliczenia z pewnością na takie miano nie zasłużyły)  nie byłyby idealne, bo gust muzyczny jest czymś subiektywnym. Macie jakieś propozycje, sugestie? Piszcie w komentarzach.

Źródło zdjęcia: blask.naszeokolice.pl

The artists nominated for the next R & R Hall of Fame include

• Kiss
• LL Cool J
• Red Hot Chili Peppers
• Donna Summer
• Darlene Love (who?)
• ABBA
• The Chantels (who?)
• The Stooges

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090923/ap_en_mu/us_music_rock_hall

I’ve said this here before and I’ll say it again.  The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame does an awful job of inducting worthy rock and rollers.  How could LL Cool J or Donna Summer possibly make the Hall of Fame before massively influential groups like The Small Faces/The Faces and T. Rex?  I just don’t get it.

The Moon has moved into Pisces and will be full. The Sun is in Virgo at this time of the year. Opposites. This is a good combination. I can flow with the water sign and get busy with attention to detail and an enhanced desire to work, work , work that comes from the Earthy Virgo.

Yesterday’s aggravation (just stuff) has gone and I’m ready to float in the dreamy waters of Pisces.

Pisces is always a creative faucet for me. I will tackle . . .  no, I will roll with my stitching work today, or imagine designs not yet implemented.

I finished a cakebox cap for my Marc Bolan Slider print.

Here’s the cap on my head form. I need to name this handmade head. She kind of looks like an old friend named Diana from my UNM days.

She was a Sagittarius. A real mover and shaker. We ran the cinema for a short time.

An evil, evil Republican right-wing nut went up against our appointment. He, Dan something, went into law with the intent of harming humans rights where ever possible.

Yuck. People who crave power are messed up cookies.

A close up of the Bolan Cap shows the tiny red stars I felt I should add.

“I got stars in my beard and I feel real weird,” said Marc.

There was a time when enchanted boys and girls frolicked on the greens of Britain, heavily glittered and glamorous.

What is glamor? One definition: hex: cast a spell over someone or something; put a hex on someone or something.

Your magic enchants others to see you as sparkling and beautiful.

From John McIntyre at the Baltimore Sun: “The word glamour came into English by way of Scotland, where it originally meant, the OED says, ‘Magic, enchantment, spell; esp. in the phrase to cast the glamour over one.’ It made its way to beauty by way of magic, since the allure secured by magic was illusory and dangerous.”

I’m sure Marc Bolan knew this. He was a good soul.