(Roughly) Daily

Your correspondent is headed (way) west again– this time to the tundra-like steppes of Mongolia– where it’s so cold that electrons just sit around shivering in copper and photons don’t even try to traverse fiber…  Consequently, regular service will be interrupted until on or about February 11.  Meantime, a blast from the past…

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From 1978, a full hour of cable access staple Efrom Allen’s Underground TV– featuring the Ramones.

[TotH to Pop Loser]

As we wanna be sedated, we might whistle jaunty birthday ditties to Stephane Grappelli; he was born on this date in 1908.  In 1934, Grappelli founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France, one of the first all-string jazz bands (and probably the best), with guitarist Django Reinhardt; they disbanded in 1939, as World War overtook the continent.  After the war, Grappelli did session work with Jazz greats like Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Peterson, with pop artists like Paul Simon and Pink Floyd, with classical musicians including Andre Previn and Yo Yo Ma, and with Indian classical violinist L. Subramaniam.  He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997, and was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.

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In the late 70s, Tony Wilson– who would go on to co-found Factory Records (the seminal independent label that embodied “The Manchester Sound”) and The Hacienda (the warehouse-based club that was the birthplace of the rave)– hosted a tea-time television show called So It Goes.

A weekly arts/culture/music series, the program’s passion was emerging new pop music…  which in those days meant Punk and New Wave.

The Way We Were is a Channel 4 (UK) retrospective first broadcast circa 1984.– a compilation of performances by bands performing on So It Goes– many of them making their TV debuts: Sex Pistols, Clash, Buzzcocks, Iggy Pop, The Fall, Elvis Costello, Blondie, Penetration, Wreckless Eric, Ian Dury, Tom Robinson, Magazine, John Cooper Clarke, XTC and Joy Division…

[TotH to Richard Metzger and his essential Dangerous Minds for the lead to TWWW]

As we slam dance down memory lane, we might recall that it was on this date in 1976– as we in the U.S. were beginning our Bi-Centennial Day celebrations– that the Clash gave their first public performance: they opened for the Sex Pistols at The Black Swan in Sheffield, England.  As U2 guitarist The Edge later wrote, “This wasn’t just entertainment. It was a life-and-death thing….It was the call to wake up, get wise, get angry, get political and get noisy about it.”

The Clash, 1976 (source)

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My work explores the relationship between new class identities and midlife subcultures.

With influences as diverse as Kierkegaard and Francis Bacon, new combinations are generated from both explicit and implicit layers.

Ever since I was a student I have been fascinated by the theoretical limits of relationships. What starts out as triumph soon becomes corroded into a hegemony of power, leaving only a sense of nihilism and the chance of a new beginning.

As temporal phenomena become clarified through emergent and personal practice, the reader is left with a statement of the edges of our era.

Readers can create their own statements– for use in funding applications, exhibitions, curriculum vitae, websites, and the like– at Arty Bollocks Generator (an entry on the 10K Apart Challenge– in which developers built apps like this one in less than 10 kilobytes).

As we plan our next retreats, we might recall that it was on this date in 1978 that UNICEF named the rock group Kansas “Deputy Ambassadors of Goodwill.”  (Music historians have mused that, had the band operated with the benefit of a compelling artistic mission statement, they might well have joined the likes of Summer Sanders and Tami Erin as full Ambassadors.)

“Carry On Wayward Son” (source)

Even Walt Whitman might have quibbled (“what about Tom Petty for Florida?”, he might have asked…  ZZ Top for Texas?); still, it’s cool to be reminded that every corner of the Union is tuneful…

click (and again) on the image above– or here– to enlarge

(from The Houston Press, via Breakfast Links)

As we crank it up to 11, we might recall that it was on this date in 2006 that “The Wail from Wales” (aka “The Voice” and “Tiger”) became Sir Tom Jones.  His benefactress, Queen Elizabeth II, was a 38-year-old mother of four when Jones burst onto the scene in 1965.

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From Iri5, on Flickr, “Ghost in the Machine“…

In this series I showcase a number of portraits of musicians made out of recycled cassette tape with original cassette. Also included are portraits made from old film and reels. The idea comes from a philosopher’s (Ryle) description of how your spirit lives in your body. I imagine we are all, like cassettes, thoughts wrapped up in awkward packaging. : )

As we refrain from hitting rewind, we might might wish a happy birthday to John Charles Walsham Reith, 1st Baron Reith, KT, GCVO, GBE, CB, TD, PC, the first Director General of the British Broadcasting Corporation; he was born on this date in 1889.

Reith oversaw the establishment of the BBC, building it to avoid the extremities of the systems he saw growing in the United States to his West and in the Soviet union to his East.  The principles he encouraged, which have come to be know as “Reithianism” include an equal consideration of all viewpoints, probity, universality and a commitment to public service.

It was a measure of his seriousness (and of his proper upbringing) that he required all radio news readers broadcasting from the dinner hour on to wear black tie though they could not, of course, be seen– to dress otherwise would be disrespectful both to the other performers on the air (also in evening dress) and to the audiences into whose homes the voices were going.

The Director General (source)