The future of music, in a strange alternate universe.

Get Down!

Season's greetings to Pirate Skulls everywhere!

Dammit, Jimmy Page still knows how to look cool when he wants to. Is this fair use? I suppose it's commentary.

First Song, First Album

Or what about 'Good Times/ Bad Times', come to that: 'In the days of my youth...'

Why didn't they ask me?

There was a review by Colin Tudge in yesterday's Graun of a book which purports to debunk Dawkins et al. The review was startlingly fallacious - I have no idea about the book, not having read it - and so I was going to witter on about it here.

But bugger that! Led Zeppelin are playing tonight fer fuxake! Yes, this lot:



Corks. I was glad to find that video, as that would be the 'Telecaster as offensive weapon' I was talking about on a previous post. There's a still more ferocious version of the song here.

No I didn't get tickets.

But the reason for posting was that I realised that unbelievably, I have failed to have the 'what will they/should they play' conversation with anybody, in particular the will they/won't they play You Know What thing. What kind of geek do I think I am?

Well, My two pennyworth is this: I think they should start with it. No one will expect that, and most importantly it will get it off their chests right from the start; speculation dealt with, they can then get on with the rest of the gig and play. More than all that, though, it would work terrifically in terms of dynamics. Picture it thus - pitch black stage, and spotlights pick out each of 'em in turn as they come into the song, Page first, then Jones, Plant and finally, ahem, JB, who will get a HUGE response, I hereby predict. Instead of a hammer blow to start with, we go from hush to a roar, within the first song. The trouble with opening up hard and fast is that in terms of dynamics, you've nowhere to go but down; after this, they can go anywhere they like.

In the recent Queens of the Stone Age DVD they open spectacularly with Go With The Flow, an excellent WHAM of a beginning with a terrific visual punch to go with it. The trouble is, that song has rather a down beat chorus, the melody descending and releasing rather than climaxing, and so you feel that the impact is lost even before the first tune is over.

If you have to go with attacking from the off then it would have to be CB I guess, as in the above vids. One of the first songs they ever nicked, sorry, wrote, and it, ahem, never fails to bring the proverbial Rock, as far as I'm concerned. Somehow it's all in that one riff, a bridge from Cochran to Hetfield and beyond.

My prediction, though? It would take a heart of stone not to be sorely tempted by the sheer cheesy appropriateness of 'It's been a long time since I rock 'n' rolled', would it not? Either that or D'yer Mak'er. Not so much Sons of Thunder as Sons of Althea and Donna.

NME and Uncut will be blogging live as the band plays. I will be watching, because I'm old enough not to care if you think I'm sad.

Aaah - aaaaaah - AH!

(Now, if he can still do that, I'll be impressed.)

Your Kung Fu lousy.

Well, here's a splendid video. To summarise, amazing martial arts magician demonstrates his fabulous Chi powers and chucks his students around the room without laying a finger on them! He challenges any martial artist (or possibly any martial artist from a particular discipline, I don't know) to fight him for tons of money! Do I need to spell out the next bit? Here it is:



So, how does this all happen? My strongest hunch is that these students actually believed all that they were doing. There are a huge amount of social pressures which push people to act in the ways expected of them, but that doesn't mean that the students are putting it on. They think they are going to get knocked about by magic, and so they are. He thinks he can knock people about by magic, and so he can - as long as they've drunk the kool-aid (I nicked that). People can persist in these parallell worlds absolutely forever, unless something happens to fracture it. And you know what? I bet that even now that guy believes he can do it, it's just that the meridians weren't flowing right, or the other guy secretly practiced ultra anti-chi woo more powerful than his woo...

So, don't ever give me 'lots of people think homeopathy has worked for them so it must be true', because it's bollocks. As are crystals. Psychics. MMR did not cause your child's autism, and the strength of your conviction that it did is the strength of the force beating the student around the head so that he is helpless, vibrating in space.

I wonder if there's something here, too, about how it is that manifest fools like Rumsfeld and Bush can command so much respect and obedience for so long. There's lots more to this, but I'm tired now. Laugh at the fool!

Music: Neu!2

My teddy bear is called 'God is a cunt.'

So, what can we say about the Sudan that will shed any light onto the sorry spectacle playing itself out over there? For one thing, it needs to be noted that people out there have been being murdered, tortured and raped in their thousands, without so much as a naming a beanie baby after Abraham. In a sense, then, the current spectacle is not really that important.

Still, it's unedifying in the extreme, isn't it. I've thought of all sorts of epithets for the numpties on the streets who are so upset about their wretched prophet being apparently insulted, but truly what they are is wretchedly ignorant. I don't know whether they have been whipped up by local authorities into their frenzy or if its truly spontaneous or, indeed, what, but it amounts to the same thing.

One thing, though: if, as, of course, all the moderate voices agree, this is ridiculous, then it is equally ridiculous for there to be any suggestion that it is not OK to insult religion in any way. Offense is in the eye of the offended, and how offended they are should never ever be used as a measure of whether what was done was illegal or otherwise reprehensible. The Sudanese have a point, in the sense that the intentionality of the person causing offense is irrelevant, it's just that they draw the wrong conclusion.

And you know what else? As long as we allow there to be a law against blasphemy on our statute books, we are the sodding numpties. There is no better justification for it than for burning teddy bears. This is not Islam's problem, it is the problem of any system of thought which privileges recieved wisdom, because belief without evidence (i.e. faith), no matter how apparently benign, is a doublethink which inevitably leads to absurdity. And blasphemy laws do nothing other than protect people from having to listen to facts and opinions and, indeed, lies, which might challenge their doublethink.

And by the way, if your God, the arbiter of the afterlife, really wants you to kill people who say rude things about him or his, when he has all eternity to do as he wishes with them, then he is a miserable, wretched hobgoblin who deserves every insult he gets.


Appropriate, time, then, to rediscover this. I heard this when it was first broadcast, inserted in the middle of a routine radio 4 topical comedy show. The visuals are well done, but will, I fear, add little to the experience. Just listen...




oops! forgot to add the Music: not sure now; Either Lou Reed - Rock 'n' Roll Animal or Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile. Probably.