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TM by @kingtubby1Oz
Moved to Twitter
September 21, 2018Instead of an Aretha obit, here is a Highly Recommended Site.
August 18, 2018Being incapacitated at present, I’ve spent inordinate hours cleaning up email sites and related digital trivia,
In so doing, I realise that I’ve never drawn attention to:
The Department of Afro American Research Arts and Culture DAARAC formerly Blaxploitation Pride – Cinema.
Brilliant site by any measure, and one which you should hit up right now:
Or go to the Blog Roll.
God, I love Film Doo’s youtube on The Ten Best Blaxploitation Movies on the right. Note
Yes, the video insert where the really hot Pam Grier is about to make your day.
And if that is too serious for you, try this excerpt from Im Gonna Get Ya Sucka.
William Bell didn’t anticipate that sort of mayhem.
Note
Found my copy of Across 110th Street in the old folks home where I ran the painting gig. It would have thinned out the ranks if it was ever shown.
Lots of Bobby Womack’s soundtrack on youtube. but I go with this version.
NICE. And Kim Jon Un can eat his heart out.
kim jon
Reincarnation
August 12, 2018Brothers and Sisters.
It’s time to get down and talk about the Afterlife.
A bit of context before we arrive at the BEQ.***
It’s a real game of thrones here in tubbyland. Being an Absolute Monarch in this century of Neo Liberalism, free market globalization and Human Rights is a big ask to put it mildly. After years of terrorizing the various wives, their spoilt and none-too-bright offspring plus a host of unpaid feudal retainers, life has been reduced to FUP – fear, uncertainty and paranoia.
And just before we get to the various issues relating to the Hereafter, there is a small homework task which now seems so beside the point ie what does Marxist and post Marxist academia have to offer the world today?
If ever there was a middle-ground Marxist, it would have to be Perry Anderson, editor of New Left Review and author a number of tomes including Lineages of the Absolutist State (1974, NLB, London). However, soon after publication, it was blown out of the water by Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, which offered a totally different perspective on the nature of power, strategy and tactics not based on class interests.
Depiction of failed regicide Damien’s death – the center piece in Discipline and Punish.
Now if you want a primer on the questions raised by Anderson’s text, try this <a href=”https://kingtubby1.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=3029&action=edit”>read</a>, and if it gives you a headache, please refrain from snarky comments.
A bit more fun is the youtube interview with Perry Anderson as it puts a face and personality to a Maximum Thought Leader of 1970s. Anderson is definitely an international Englishman of a type, even if Harry Kreisler our interviewer is not the sharpest object in barn. And his choice of tie wear is beyond disgusting. (Jeff Minson, one of my past supervisors, and a serious heavy hitter in the Foucault department also resided at Berkerley.)
Anyway, having provided a thin veneer of intellectual context to this post, its time to return to the immediate fraught situation, that being the really rotten life-prospects experienced by Absolute Monarchs in the 20th/21st century. Think Qaddafi, Nicola Ceausescu, Enver Hoxha, etc.
Since I strongly suspect that some of tubbylands denizens are plotting regicide, and here there are a raft of possibilities – poisoning, hot tub drowning, garroting when intoxicated, death by chain saw, etc – its time to take evasive action and avoid this very uncomfortable fate.
Consequently, I’ve organised an Advance Health Directive specifying no medical interventions whatsoever. In effect this document focuses on dignity in death combined with lots of painkillers. While euthanasia is all but banned in tubbyland, this option means virtually the same thing, since medical staff give you a hotshot of fentanyl, Big Pharmas answer to morphine on steriods ie it is 80 to 100 times more powerful than morphine. As an addendum. pharmaceutical opiods kill about 150 people daily in the US, for the most part in the Trump-voting northern Rust Belt states, so I suppose there is a sunny side to contemporary Corporate Capitalism.
Fortunately, even the most despicable Absolute Monarch gets a second chance if he embraces the Christian Pantheon. Express a bit of regret no matter how insincere, you enter the Promised Land and enjoy eternal life as an angel or some similar Medieval construct.
S…, what an awful fate, existing as some sexless creature with fluffy feathers adulating the Lord in some eternal praise loop. Sort of like some repetitious Angelic Bot. Viewed in this light, I’m certain that the Reader will gain a renewed appreciation of the Cardinal Sins – pride, greed, envy, lust, gluttony, wrath and sloth.
Anyway, having cardinal sinned to the maximum – which, after all is the duty statement of an Absolute Monarch – and rejecting all that Christian redemption drivel, I’ve opted for another path to eternal happiness.
And you guessed correctly. I intend to return as a back up singer/dancer in a band. Lots of possibilities here, but I will settle for this at the moment.
*** Big Existential Question
0
Overdosing on Fun
August 4, 2018Beginning on a biographical note.
The other day I visited one of my regular Op Shops, which are sort of like Oxfam minus the sexual exploitation by its employees.
Most towns in tubbyland have three or four such shops and I visit about 20 a month in my drives.
“How much do you want for that old pair of speakers”?
A bit of consultation among the very nice women who ran this place.
“Five dollars each”.
Done, since I had a look at the back. B @ W’s about fifteen years old and Made in England.
All in all, they are brilliant since that bring out the qualities in piano not delivered by modern speakers, and they really shine when there is a lot of brass instruments.
Matched up with really big screen IMac which has a great sound card, you can be sure that the kangaroos and snakes are getting a serious musical education.
Which brings me to all the contemporary Neo Afrobeat bands to be found on Youtube, given that Fela died in August 1997.
Oh yes, what is a shekere – nice selection here.
I hear you say, that bloody kt is going to inflict more of that jungle music on us and, yes children, you’re right.
London Street Party. Kokoroko Afrobeat Collective from 2017.
Underground System Afrobeat from New York, deconstructionists playing some seriously over-proof afrobeat/ funk.
https://www.undergroundsystembk.com/
I could keep going here but won’t, since I know you’ve taken my musical message to heart.
These insistent jungle rhythms lead directly to juvenile promiscuity and marijuana madness.
Equally.
The Sisters have colonized contemporary Afrobeat.
Finally, if ever there was a good reason for stealing the children’s Piggy Banks to buy extra speaker boxes, this is it.
Ugandan 70s Afro-Funk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidandali
Neo Afrobeat : The Sisters Sock it to Fela
July 26, 2018As everybody knows, the African section of the planet shifted on its axis with the vinyl release of Black President by Fela Ransome Kuti in 1981. And if you missed that seismic event, you were probably listening to Queen (vomituous arena rock), Adam and the Ants (thnx Malcolm), Phil Collins or Barry Bloody Manilow. Throw in Oasis and we have some exemplary candidates for the Final Solution for musical rubbish.
Fela was the founder of Afrobeat, and I’ve written about him before ad nauseum. However before we begin today’s musical lesson, your task is to read the excellent wicki entry on the elements – a complex fusion of jazz, funk, Ghanaian/Nigerian highlife, psychedelic rock and traditional West African chants and rhythms – which formed this highly influential West African genre. On second thoughts, forget the homework, since all of us have an internet attention span of about seventeen seconds these days.
Afrobeat is characterized by a fairly large band with many instruments, vocals and a musical structure featuring jazzy, funky horn sections. A riff-based “endless groove” is used, in which a base rhythm of drums, shekere, muted West African-style guitar and melodic bass guitar riffs are repeated throughout the song. Commonly, interlocking melodic riffs and rhythms are introduced one by one, building the groove bit-by-bit and layer-by-layer. The horn section then becomes prominent, introducing other riffs and main melodic themes.
Fela’s band was notable for featuring two baritone saxophones, whereas most groups were using only one of this instrument. This is a common technique in African and African-influenced musical styles and can be seen in funk and hip hop. Fela’s bands at times even performed with two bassists at the same time both playing interlocking melodies and rhythms. There were always two or more guitarists. The electric West African style guitar in Afrobeat bands are paramount, but are used to give basic structure, playing a repeating chordal/melodic statement, riff or groove.
Now I hear you say, why all this analytical stuff KT, I was rather more impressed by the fact that he subjected his audiences to long marijuana blasted rants of a political nature, and was a polygamist of epic proportions. Both impressions are correct. In total he had 80 something wives, held obnoxious patriarchal views and not surprisingly died from HIV/AIDS.
Black President – Fela at his peak.
Yet, the really affirming aspect of Fela’s music lay in the massive bands he used in the studio and in live performance, usually exceeding twenty or more members. Very much based on a collective or ensemble approach with a loose groove that enabled even the second trumpet to get their bit of spotlight. A bit like musical Mexican Wave anchored by percussion and bass. The shekere player is having a hissy-fit or has family matters to attend to, no problems, other instruments can take up the slack on the day. The band coordinator holding together a collective identity.
Wanted to conclude with this track Colonial Mentality found on Black President, but had to put it here due to my technical bads. This is talent of the first order and I love the guitarist channeling some of Miles trumpet playing.
Newen Afrobeat were formed in Chile in 2009 and you can read their publicity blast HERE https://www.musicamacondo.com/2016/06/newen-afrobeat/
Try this track.
Here’s a full concert and you don’t have to stay glued to the screen overindulging your critical faculties.
Do that housework which you normally avoid. You’ve been having too much fun.
GRRRL Power on guitars
July 21, 2018I’ve finally regained control of this rotten blog after expelling the agents of chaos. Why I wonder, since the political planet is such a depressing place? At this moment, I’m having the servants giving me a serious flogging for supporting Brexit. But it was done in the belief that neo-liberalism had its day, and that we needed a new and more equitable distribution of wealth.
Then the Orange Fool arrives centre stage and really stinks up the global political order. Its time to take all those Manchurian Candidate metaphors seriously, folk. And if you’ve had the time to read The Web:The War for Cyberspace by Alexander Klimburg (2017.Prentice Hall.US), you’d agree that the Russians are so ahead of the game when it comes to cyber-warfare. They leave the US and China in the dust. Not surprising since they’ve had a serious interest in cybernetics since the 1940s.
But even Fools can get some things right eg the China-US trade war, even if the headlines are 3 to 1, the 3 predicting that China shall prevail. However he can’t even get this right and has to piss off Mexico, Canada and the EU in the process.
You’ve driveling KT, so lets move to the main menu. If we are looking for a Repository of Information on the past century, it has to be Youtube. The Detroit Riots (read Insurrection) in 1967, the police murders in the Algiers Hotel, The Cream live at the Grande Ballroom and lots of other stuff which bedevil led the Motor City during that tumultuous year. The Speeches of Minister Louis Farrakhan. Detailed bios on Black Drug Gangs. A live concert by the MC5 -over rated. Interviews with John Sinclair. You can do the Time Tunnel thing.
However, you need another perspective on the Black Experience in America, and so should read The Warmth of Other Suns:The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson (2010. Random House. NY) No links as it’s all over the net, not to mention a good dose of authorial self promotion. Best read in years and written with such warmth and context.
But best of all, Youtube delivers in the music department. After all, you can’t spend your remaining years replaying The Best of Oasis. I was in that cul de sac a few days ago, and after a couple of hours made these great discoveries.
Anna Calvi. Good wicki overview. I’ll leave the link work to you. And no bloody laziness Team, plug in those Big Speakers and straight to 11.
That was kinetic by any measure and the drummer was no slouch either.
Eileen Jewell. Totally independent musician with a dotcom site to build her audience. Hot band.
And, as the long suffering reader expects, another bloody version of Shaking All Over. Talk about arrested development KT.
Valerie June. Good wicki overview. Multi-instrumentalist at home in either Appalachia or the Black Deep South. Very much a traditionalist.
What a voice.
It is worth sorting through Valerie June’s repertoire as some tracks contain absolutely brilliant brass playing.
Music plus Russian Reads.
March 22, 2018After a couple of years of being unable to access my site, I stumbled back in a few hours ago more by accident than design, so here goes.
One of the great joys of a vanity presses is the ability to inflict one’s musical taste on readers in addition to jeering at the preferences of others (and here the list is endless.)
Lots of rain in the last few months, so much time has been spent on YouTube revisiting my musical past.
Surely one of my great past moments was catching jazz pianist Cecil Taylor in a hall with tremendous acoustics.
This is Jitney from his Silent Tongues LP recorded in Montreux in 1974. A very demanding listen due to the discordant, percussive qualities of his playing.
Still worked for me even after some 30 years and his other offerings on YouTube are worth a visit.
To this day, I regret selling a three LP box set of Keith Jarrett’s Bremen/Lausanne 1973 solo concerts. Best $10 ever spent and far better than his later solo offerings such as Live at La Scala
Finally, in this serious vein, some rollicking piano by Randy Weston, a pianist who to my mind has never received his due.
The Dear Reader may recall my past infatuation with Malian music, the Wassoulou African origins of early 20th American acoustic blues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassoulou brief history and geography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassoulou women’s advice music
You can listen to this precise genre by tuning into internet Radio Wassoulou, even though it comes in the form of a tape loop.
A couple of my faves.
Oumou Sangare
Lets be honest. The dancers are hot.
Mamou Sidibe
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Party time is over children, so we need an appropriate intro for our next item focussing on that smirking shit Vladimir Putin
The KGB Made a Man out of Me by The Barracudas, surely one of the best retro garage bands ever to tread the boards.
The West has many things to thank the New Russia and Prince Vlad for – the strength of the property market/tax havens in London, hi-tech assassinations, Donald Trump, etc.
Not even close. It’s the Western publishing industry which owes him a particular vote of thanks.
The Guardian’s list of ten top books on Putin’s Russia https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/20/top-10-books-on-vladimir-putins-russia. Trust Luke Harding to wade in with his potboiler.
The Washington Post in a similar vein https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-books-that-best-explain-putin-and-his-russia/2017/07/14/8f48d87c-6809-11e7-9928-22d00a47778f_story.html
Particularly enjoyed Putin’s Kleptocracy by Karen Dawisha. The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin by Steven Lee Meyers 2016 is well worth the effort, as is Putin: His Downfall and Russia’s Coming Crash by Richard Lourie which value adds, even if the Crash part is totally unconvincing.
Man Spread Moscow Style
TO BE CONCLUDED
Rural Idiocy has its Rewards
October 9, 2015After an absence of almost a year – to be totally blamed on that PC disaster Windows 10 and continuous changes to the WordPress dashboard, both of which are getting beyond my skill set – I hit up my stats and discovered, hey, the past scribbles are still picking up a few readers.
While they probably arrived there by accident, I feel the great need to pose a Big Existential Question/BEQ.
After dealing with all the minutae of daily living, what are the big constants in this vale of tears that routinely provide us with large measures of happiness and pleasure.
Any sane checklist would probably focus on the following.
High-end material comforts and experiences eg a luxury auto, regular holidays in exotic locations or possibly moving to a more upmarket abode. Forget it. That’s all the stuff you should have consumed when you were young and stupid. In fact, with each successive decade you should be striving to strip your lifestyle down to bare essentials.
How about a well stocked drinks cabinet and a comprehensive pharmacopoeia of Old School drugs. I must admit to being a bit ambivalent on this one, since both are essential in any decade after the age of consent.
Hot sex with a really good looking partner. Now this is positively dangerous and should not be ticked under any circumstance, as it involves a high degree of predestination, also known in contemporary parlance as sociological determinism. In brief, marriage/de facto relationship/shacking up or however you like to characterise this coupling activity. Ten years down the track, what have you got for some transitory carnal bliss? Unending responsibilities, low-level sniping at the breakfast table plus ungrateful offspring who have appalling musical taste and a vicious appetite for expensive digital toys. If you have a rural address, you must also factor in a horse, expensive feed supplements and vet bills that would terrorise a Russian oligarch.
Gardening? Now this is a relaxing and rewarding activity and it also brings out the pantheist in one, so it worth half a tick.
How about giving back to rabbit ears the community rabbit ears? Okay, and speaking from experience – fire brigade volunteer (see banner above) and part of a fun diversional therapy team in an oldies home – volunteering has a lot to recommend it as it creates tolerance for others. That is to say you learn to get along with the simple folk who you wouldn’t normally include in your socio-intellectual orbit.
Still, our check list is looking a bit thread bare.
So much negativity and ambivalence KT, I hear you say. What is your bloody recipe for eternal happiness and pleasure?
The answer is simple. Get in the car and drive for thirty minutes through a scenic hillscape to the local town. Mine is set in a Hinterland (ie close to the Coast) and is a very nice place indeed. Friendly folk and full of dogs and their owners who appreciate compliments about their canine companions. None of those nasty Norman Rockwell/David Lynch-type tensions which have been done to death in American mini-series in this burg.
Now, even the most idiotic post modernist wouldn’t argue that all this people niceness, mixed with conversations with dogs and their owners, provides a full measure of pleasure and happiness.
For the latter, we have to visit the local library, in my case an elegant building staffed with great librarians, a coffee shop, community meeting rooms, a craft shop, tons of fast computers and, most importantly, a diverse and up-to-date book purchasing program.
BTW. According to a BBC report last night, the sale of Kindalls and their e-equivalents peaked in 2011. The global sales of old fashioned tree books are back bigtime, and not just reclaiming their market share, but actually increasing their overall sales figures.
This is great news and definitely better than any intoxicated carnal grope in a Garden of Eden.
Part One of a related series, if I can deal with some basic cut and paste issues/strong.
Piano.
September 19, 2014Before returning to the unpleasantness which is contemporary Israel, a musical interlude prompted by a track by James Booker which I heard for the first time the other night, and who was clearly one of the giants of the New Orleans piano tradition.
Listening also invited the question as to whether the piano is a percussion or a stringed instrument.
Answer: a percussion instrument if one ignores the European classical tradition.
Back to James Booker who clearly led a troubled life on many fronts, and that is not to be celebrated at the expense of his mind-bending keyboard technique.
So lets do a quick tour of some piano greats, all of whom recorded in glorious analogue with one exception. Somehow digital technologies destroy some of the defining qualities of the saxophone and piano. We also often ignore the fact that listening is a active and rather than a passive activity, involving a productive or labouring subject to employ some basic Marxist concepts.
Perhaps the Reader will recall a very well played LP that looms large in their pantheon of favourite sounds: the ear works to filter our many of the bumps and hisses resulting from stylus-vinyl collisions and general wear and tare. In addition, there are those rudimentary recording techniques made worse by many plays over the years. Yet, by virtue of the filtering process performed by our ears, we can capture the original sound which enraptured listeners then and now.
Where to begin?
Lennie Tristano, who was a pall bearer at Charlie Parker’s funeral, produced a body of work which is not exactly easy listening, and I am only familiar with three of his LPs.
Very early Tristano.
Not being any jazz expert, I take for granted the line wicki draws from Tristano to Cecil Taylor, who I had the great fortune to see live. Great shards of percussive sound with the sound board protesting under the strain. An extended version of Jitney which virtually left his piano in a heap of thousands of pieces. The perfect adjective would be coruscating in the strong shimmering, glittery sense.
Silent Tongues – Live at Montreux is a killer intro to a pianist who wrings you dry and leaves you in an exhausted heap.
Back to an earlier period, we had Art Tatum and Bud Powell.
Randy Weston is recommended if you are undertaking a deep exploration of jazz piano, and this clip has the added attraction of some tremendous abstract imagery.
It is impossible to ignore Keith Jarrett who has produced a massive body of work, much of which leaves me cold, but his solo works are just brilliant.
Live at La Scala is probably his final statement as a solo performer before he reduced his tour schedule, and it is a tour de force of the first order.
If that captured your imagination, go back to his 1973 three LP box set of solos concerts performed in Bremen and Lausanne. I think I paid $8 for mine in a second record shop in Sydney.
I know! I know! Where is Thelonious Monk? Simply couldn’t locate a great clip, so we have to settle for a great photograph.
Trust me. He is in there in what was probably the most famous photo ever taken in old Harlem. Rumour has it that he deliberately arrived late for the group photo, so as not to be outdone in the sartorial stakes.
End Note.
I failed to conclude this post properly and do justice to Art Kane’s photo taken in 1958, so here is a better one plus an identifier.
01 – Hilton Jefferson, 02 – Benny Golson, 03 – Art Farmer, 04 – Wilbur Ware, 05 – Art Blakey, 06 – Chubby Jackson, 07 – Johnny Griffin, 08 – Dickie Wells, 09 – Buck Clayton, 10 – Taft Jordan, 11 – Zutty Singleton, 12 – Red Allen, 13 – Tyree Glenn, 14 – Miff Molo, 15 – Sonny Greer, 16 – Jay C. Higginbotham, 17 – Jimmy Jones, 18 – Charles Mingus, 19 – Jo Jones, 20 – Gene Krupa, 21 – Max Kaminsky, 22 – George Wettling, 23 – Bud Freeman, 24 – Pee Wee Russell, 25 – Ernie Wilkins, 26 – Buster Bailey, 27 – Osie Johnson, 28 – Gigi Gryce, 29 – Hank Jones, 30 – Eddie Locke, 31 – Horace Silver, 32 – Luckey Roberts, 33 – Maxine Sullivan, 34 – Jimmy Rushing, 35 – Joe Thomas, 36 – Scoville Browne, 37 – Stuff Smith, 38 – Bill Crump, 39 – Coleman Hawkins, 40 – Rudy Powell, 41 – Oscar Pettiford, 42 – Sahib Shihab, 43 – Marian McPartland, 44 – Sonny Rollins, 45 – Lawrence Brown, 46 – Mary Lou Williams, 47 – Emmett Berry, 48 – Thelonius Monk, 49 – Vic Dickenson, 50 – Milt Hinton, 51 – Lester Young, 52 – Rex Stewart, 53 – J.C. Heard, 54 – Gerry Mulligan, 55 – Roy Eldgridge, 56 – Dizzy Gillespie, 57 – Count Basie. [Source: DannyChestnut.com]
Here is one reference and here is the full background provided by wicki.
My bad.
And since Miles Davis missed the photo shoot, some serious trumpet within an almost funk setting.
Turn up the volume, Brothers and Sisters.
People of the Book: Update 2.
September 15, 2014Before continuing this scribble, there are two new additions to the blog roll, and both should be enjoyed with a coffee when powering up your pc in the morning.
Been following this photography site http://giddysap.wordpress.com/ for ages Quirk’n it. While the photographer Jennifer is focusing on her daughter of late, the photos are both diverse and interesting. I would steal her dog if the opportunity presented itself.
A recent discovery Border Crossings, a site somewhere near tubbyland and highly recommended for its African music.
What the heck. Its time for some deadly electro-funk from Lagos in the 70s by William Onyeabor.
Lots of volume and the right attire please. Nigeria in my cloud category provides more info.
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