Stuart Ramsay, Chief Correspondent of Sky News has been tweeting chilling coverage of the current genocide from inside Syria.

from homs to the leb border people making preps to die

huge military offensive expected families saying goodbye to loved ones

i predict a further massacre

FSA say as many as 10 thousand troops deployed outside homs - cant confirm

tanks apc artillery infantry everywhere - fsa all but overwhelmed - counting bullets

fsa attacking across region but feels like a hornet on an elephant

You can follow @ramsaysky here.
 

Neil’s gear.
 
Neil Young appearing at last week’s Dive Into Media conference expressed his distaste for MP3’s in no uncertain terms.

Young, the perennial music purist, said that while modern music formats like MP3 are convenient, they sound lousy.

“My goal is to try and rescue the art form that I’ve been practicing for the past 50 years,” Young said. “We live in the digital age and, unfortunately, it’s degrading our music, not improving it.”

It’s not that digital is bad or inferior, it’s that the way it’s being used isn’t doing justice to the art,” Young said. “The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t have to make that choice.”

Young proposed that fans stage a grassroots movement to demand higher-quality audio. “Occupy audio!” he urged.

Here’s Young talking about digital recording with The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg and All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka.
 

 
Santorum may have beat Mitt in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado, but he’s no match for Mommie Dearest.

Joan, next time bring out the heavy artillery. A wire hanger!
 

 
Hollywood Illuminati’s website blows the cover off of Madonna’s half-time spectacle revealing it to be a lavish Lucifer worshiping group grope fueled by cosmic lunar forces in synchronization with ancient Illuminati rituals. It seems that Madonna was voguing with the Devil.

According to Lucifer Freemason Texts, Lucifer is the lord of light and to worship Lucifer one would wear a black robe (like Madonna had on) and by her having the entire stadium participate with her in this ritual by holding up lights to her ritual, she basically did a classic musician performance of casting a spell on her audience and fooling them into Satanic Worship.

Dont forget that before Madonna put on the black robe, her dancers were in red, gold & black outfits and some were in red & white, which are colors that one uses to worship Lucifer.  The entire show had a Lucifer color theme.

We see the male dancers doing acrobats for her track “Music”. During this chaos, there were two male dancers that got down on all fours, like the Muslims do when they pray to Allah.  Most cheerleading teams, do not actually assume a prostration position when building a pyramid but in Satanic Rituals, it is believed that Lucifer or the devil would assume a prostration position and the witches would line up and kiss his anus as a sign of respect.  We not only saw a classic Lucifer Ritual Pose but we also saw the quick building of a pyramid by her dancers.

During the last act “Like a Prayer” we not only see lights that are made to look like Hell Fire & sometimes the beams of light even take on a giant, quick pyramid formation but also during this supposedly ”church song” she ends the show by dropping into the ground.  This was a Satanic Ritual.

What did this ritual mean? This Satanic Ritual, is a classic petition to Satan, in an effort to call for chaos out of order.  While many people think that the Illuminati wants order out of chaos, that is simply not true.

According to Illuminati text, the Fallen One, desires Chaos out of Order. They will take what is orderly and make it chaotic!

So, this ritual, done by Madonna along with millions of Americans, spells wars, disease and a crashing of the Old World Order.  While the lights at the end said “World Peace”-it doesnt matter what you see but instead you have to look at what they do and what is their definition of “peace”

For more startling revelations visit Hollywood Illuminati’s website.

So far there is no discussion of M.I.A.‘s arcane hand gestures and their link to the occult. But I have my own theories. Born Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam (oral/pray/orgasm), this deity worshiping Hindu rapper’s middle name “Maya” is Sanskrit for “illusion.”  The question is, what kind of illusion was the dark-skinned Delilah trying to lure millions of unsuspecting TV viewers into? What horrible vortex of evil were we spared when NBC blotted out the “finger of death?”

Watch for yourself the whole sordid event. What has this world come to?
 

 
Via The Daily Swarm

 
BTJunkie, the popular torrent tracker that boasted tens of millions of monthly users has voluntarily shut down for good to avoid legal hassles. After a nearly seven year run as one of the world’s top five Bit Torrent destinations, the following message was posted on the homepage:

“This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we’ve decided to voluntarily shut down. We’ve been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it’s time to move on. It’s been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best!”

Via TorrentFreak:

Talking to TorrentFreak, BTjunkie’s founder said that the legal actions against other file-sharing sites such as MegaUpload and The Pirate Bay played an important role in making the difficult decision. Witnessing all the trouble colleagues got into was cause for a lot of worry and stress, and those will now belong to the past.

That said, BTjunkie’s owner still thinks there might be a future for other BitTorrent sites.

“I really do hope so, the war is far from over for sure,” he told TorrentFreak.

While BTjunkie was never targeted directly by copyright holders, the site was reported to the US Trade Representative (USTR) November last year. Both the RIAA and MPAA listed the torrent index as a ‘rogue’ site that facilitated mass copyright infringement.

BTjunkie is also one of the search terms censored by Google because it’s piracy related, alongside The Pirate Bay, RapidShare, uTorrent and others.

 
It’s been brought to my attention by Collapse Board’s Wallace Wylie that Pitchfork have dedicated an entire page to calling MIA an asshole because she apparently told the American public to fuck off during Madonna’s Super Bowl performance last night. In case you hadn’t heard, MIA did indeed raise her middle finger during Madonna’s overblown performance of “Give Me All Your Luvin’,” on which the rapper makes a guest appearance. To see the incident, scroll down to the bottom of this post. 

Here’s an extract from the offending Pitchfork article:

What’s extra annoying about last night’s event is that M.I.A. doesn’t need these cheap ploys to up her visibility, even when the stage design and costuming is best described as “GoldenPalace.com.” After all, she released her first great single in years just last Thursday, and its music video had already racked up more than 3 million YouTube views even before the Super Bowl send-up. Following the rep-shattering press surrounding 2010’s /\/\/\Y/\, it wouldn’t be the worst idea to draw as much focus as possible back to her music. [So why run this story?]

Instead, in the few bars Madonna was kind enough to grant her during the biggest television event of the year, M.I.A.‘s message to America was simply, “Fuck you.” Well, in M.I.A.‘s own words, the little people will never win, but they can fuck shit up. Success might be the best revenge, but apparently, being an asshole is forever.

Seriously Pitchfork, GET A FUCKING GRIP.

As I stated in my last post about her, I am an MIA skeptic. I have found her performances and music to be underwhelming in the past, though I have really warmed to her latest video “Bad Girls.” The same goes for last night’s performance at the Super Bowl - it ain’t no great shakes, though she does look great. But if you take this much offense at last night’s throw-away hand gesture—which I honestly might not have noticed if it hadn’t been pointed out to me—then you seriously need your head examined. Yes, seriously. Just look at the clip below, and then tell us how offended you are on a scale of one to ten.

What I find truly bizarre about this reactionary Pitchfork piece is the level of personal affront the writer has taken at MIA’s (actually rather tame) gesture. According to this article MIA is not just flipping the bird at a camera or a camera person, she is not just flipping the bird as a routine hand gesture that countless MC regularly use, she’s not flipping the bird to accentuate her line about “not giving a shit” - no, MIA is flipping the bird to show her disgust at every single person in the United States of America. AMERICA, MIA HATES YOU!!! And especially those who may have tuned in to the Super Bowl to see her!! Yes, this makes perfect sense.

With that in mind I’m really, REALLY looking forward to seeing Pitchfork calling out Kanye West, Jay-Z, Eminem, Lil Wayne, Fred Durst, Jonathan Davis and countless other rappers and rockers who have raised their middle finger on national television at some point in the past and will do so again in the future. Because THEY must hate America and everyone watching them at that moment TOO, right?

Unfortunately, this will never happen. As other writers have pointed out in the past, Pitchfork has a legacy of sexism to its tarnished name, which explains the hyperbolic over-reaction to a common hand gesture in this news piece. Had this been done by a man it would surely be lauded as “punk,” yet when MIA flips the bird during a televised game where grown men BEAT THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF EACH OTHER, she’s an asshole who hates every single person watching her at that very moment. Living and dead. I mean seriously, how is anyone watching American Football going to cope with the mental scars that seeing a raised middle finger can bring?!?

That’s leaving aside the fact that MIA is a brown woman, and not even from America itself. Unlike Madonna of course, who can remain completely blameless during this entire farrago, and who was “kind enough” to grant MIA exposure on her tune. As opposed to hiring MIA in the hope that some of her credibility will rub off on a very lukewarm track. Or even—get this—simply being a female performer who wants to work with another female performer. 

What is also “extra annoying” is that Pitchfork has, in the past, given critical support to acts who condone the most brutal of violence against women and who have been deemed somehow edgy and confrontational because of it. Presumably because rape, sexism and homophobia is “punk” as opposed to “a cheap ploy to gain visibility.” I await with glee the moment when Pitchfork tells Tyler the Creator/Eminem/Lil Wayne to drop their bird-flipping schtick and draw our focus solely back to the music.

Again though, I doubt this will ever happen.

Pitchfork, with this news piece you have placed yourselves firmly (and finally) on the side of the fucking establishment.

Rock on, bros.

MIA HATES AMERICA!!! AND HERE IS THE PROOF:
 

 
In its 50 years of independence, Jamaica’s had an indelible influence on the global scene, mostly via its dizzyingly prolific music industry and sports stars. In terms of film, as iconic and authentic as movies like The Harder They Come, Rockers and Dancehall Queen are, they’re largely non-indigenous productions.

But recently, a new breed of grassroots digital DIY film- and video-makers have emerged who are depicting the zeitgeist on the island in ways that transcend the typical “yeah mon” stereotypes with which we’re too familiar.

One of these new breed is twenty-four-year-old Simon Thompson, who directs and edits video under the moniker Yosef Imagination. Along with videos for some of the island’s most well-known artists—including Capleton, Luciano, Fanton Mojah, Lutan Fyah—Thompson’s produced ads, short subjects and video series like the hilarious Konfu Dread, which has previously featured here. He’s currently at work on Zombie Flim, Jamaica’s first undead flick, which he’s uploading to his YouTube channel as he shoots and cuts.

Thompson’s work is pretty impressive considering that he’s got no formal training and has been at it for a little under two years. He’s also shot virtually all his stuff on Canon T2i and Canon 5D digital still cameras rather than conventional camcorders.

Videographers like Thompson are composing a wide-ranging vision of a young, energetic and cosmopolitan Jamaica, mindful of its cultural history and struggles, yet infatuated with what’s next in music, technology and style. And yes, it’s a vision that’s imbued with the indefatigable sense of humor that typifies life on the island.

Thompson explains how his stuff differs from that of the island’s street-side genre directors:

I looked around in Jamaica and realized the quality and the topics of our film industry is pretty much the same from filmmaker to film maker. I wanted to show Jamaica in a different light. We’re not all gangsters we don’t all smoke weed and we don’t all push violence towards others who don’t have the same viewpoint we have. I want and will continue to push for change, push for a difference in Jamaica’s thinking, showing the youths that, hey, we can make quality films that don’t have to be about gangsters and politics.

I also try to include alot of humour in the projects from Yosef Imagination showing people a lighter and more free-spirited vibration of the Jamaican people and culture.

And what does the future hold?

I see Yosef Imagination as a Paramount Pictures or a Universal Pictures eventually…the sky is no limit to our imagination ....Yosef Imagination is limitless.

Here’s one of the most hectically paced YI pieces yet: a multi-artist jam on the Bipolar riddim…
 

 
After the jump…more music vids and Jamaica’s first zombie film!

 
Adbusters magazine, the original impetus behind the Occupy Wall Street movement, has issued a new invitation for a month-long direct action and occupation this May in the Windy City. Looks like this one could be quite a party, too:

Hey you redeemers, rebels and radicals out there,

Against the backdrop of a global uprising that is simmering in dozens of countries and thousands of cities and towns, the G8 and NATO will hold a rare simultaneous summit in Chicago this May. The world’s military and political elites, heads of state, 7,500 officials from 80 nations, and more than 2,500 journalists will be there.

And so will we.

On May 1, 50,000 people from all over the world will flock to Chicago, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and #OCCUPYCHICAGO for a month. With a bit of luck, we’ll pull off the biggest multinational occupation of a summit meeting the world has ever seen.

And this time around we’re not going to put up with the kind of police repression that happened during the Democratic National Convention protests in Chicago, 1968 … nor will we abide by any phony restrictions the City of Chicago may want to impose on our first amendment rights. We’ll go there with our heads held high and assemble for a month-long people’s summit … we’ll march and chant and sing and shout and exercise our right to tell our elected representatives what we want … the constitution will be our guide.

And when the G8 and NATO meet behind closed doors on May 19, we’ll be ready with our demands: a Robin Hood Tax … a ban on high frequency ‘flash’ trading … a binding climate change accord … a three strikes and you’re out law for corporate criminals … an all out initiative for a nuclear-free Middle East … whatever we decide in our general assemblies and in our global internet brainstorm – we the people will set the agenda for the next few years and demand our leaders carry it out.

And if they don’t listen … if they ignore us and put our demands on the back burner like they’ve done so many times before … then, with Gandhian ferocity, we’ll flashmob the streets, shut down stock exchanges, campuses, corporate headquarters and cities across the globe … we’ll make the price of doing business as usual too much to bear.

Jammers, pack your tents, muster up your courage and prepare for a big bang in Chicago this Spring. If we don’t stand up now and fight now for a different kind of future we may not have much of a future … so let’s live without dead time for a month in May and see what happens …

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

Below, footage of the confrontation between Chicago police and protesters at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago:
 

 
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Chicago”:
 

Kermit the Frog by supajoe
 
Jim Henson’s Muppets have been in London this past week for the UK premiere of their new movie, simply called The Muppets. On Thursday, Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog gave a press conference at the May Fair Hotel, and one of the questions raised was how they reacted to the recent claims by Fox News’ Epic Trolling Eric Bolling that the Muppets “brainwash children” with a “dangerous liberal agenda”.

Kermit answered the question reasonably, but as usual it was left to Miss Piggy to strike the fatal blow, with a swift and simple rebuttal. Fox “News”, indeed - if you are interested in seeing the original idiotic anti-Muppet outburst by Trolling, then you can go here - but I am not sullying the beautiful countenance of Dangerous Minds by embedding that shite here.

What an insanely delusional world these people must live in if even the goddam Muppets are somehow seen as a dangerous Communist threat. Speaking as a non-American, the work of Jim Henson was fundamental in inspiring a view of American society in my generation that was founded on the tenets of diversity, equality and opportunity. Beautiful ideals that could never be associated with those Pox News sock puppets. Fox has done more than any other media outlet in destroying the United States’ reputation around the world. All this despite the fact that Bill O’Reilly’s sagging face looks more and more like Kermit by the day - and even then, Kermit made the better reporter.

Murdoch’s cronies obviously don’t understand that some cultural artefacts beyond their ken are as sacred as Jesus and money, especially those associated with happy childhood memories. To condemn as being part of some imagined “problem” is a big mistake. Have at ‘em, Piggy:
 

 
There’s little to no leftie fodder to mock on his radio show, according to Rush. Just “two shows or three shows” on MSNBC.

Here’s what the conservative radio blowhard had to say on November 9, 2011, in a rant about how America will continue to decline unless the GOP establishment embraces conservative ideology.

Transcript taken from his own website:

If it weren’t for MSNBC we wouldn’t have any liberal sound bites.  I’ve told Cookie I’m sick of it, ban MSNBC, and we can’t, ‘cause there’s no other place to get liberal sound bites.  There isn’t any other place.  I mean CNN is just insane over there.  They emphasize their hosts, they have guests, but just roll tape on ‘em and it’s so boring. It’s not worth putting anything from CNN on the air.

If it weren’t for MSNBC there wouldn’t be any liberal sound bites.  Now, that has to mean something.  That has to mean that they’re rare, that they’re not everywhere.  They may be everywhere in print, but, you know, left-wingers on the radio, genuine cuckoo’s nest.  You wouldn’t even want to go there.  I wouldn’t play that stuff.  MSNBC’s it, and it’s two shows or three shows.  It’s it is morning thing with Scarborough, it’s the Larry O’Donnell show at night, and maybe occasionally something from Reverend Sharpton. (interruption) Well, yeah, sometimes Sergeant Schultz.  Sergeant Schultz is out there walking amongst abandoned railroad cars looking for the future of America. I know there’s Al Gore’s channel, but that’s nothing worth highlighting. It really says something. MSNBC is the only place in the media to get these liberals.

There it is. He done let the cat out of the bag.

Curiously he left Rachel Maddow out of these comments, but maybe not so curiously because she’s generally so circumspect and fact-based in the arguments she makes on air as to be impervious to attacks from Limbaugh on a regular basis.

Ed Schultz, Rev. Al Sharpton and Lawrence O’Donnell, with their more bombastic (and yes, male) styles I can see providing easy targets for Limbaugh (a service he provides for them, too, of course) but I think his instincts to perhaps stay away from commenting too much on Maddow is a smart one on his part.
 
Via Daily Kos

 
Wyatt Doyle, writer, publisher and a founding contributor to the NewTexture.com website, recently brought my attention to the new “Sex and Guts” blog, a digital resurrection of the infamous magazine. I’ll let Wyatt tell you about it:

In putting together our anthology of Chris D.’s writing, A Minute to Pray A Second to Die, I spent a lot of time tracking down his old press clips. When I asked Chris about an interview in a book called Midnight Mavericks, he clarified that it was reprinted from Sex & Guts magazine. That interview—by Gene Gregorits—turned out to be the most in-depth talk with Chris I’d read, and the rest of Gregorits’ interviews in S&G were of the same caliber. I eagerly picked up a copy of Midnight Mavericks for more.

That book, issued by the UK’s FAB Press in 2007, collected four dozen (!) interviews by Gregorits from the pages of Sex & Guts, encompassing a wide spectrum of artists in popular media whose work has placed them squarely outside the mainstream. With back issues of S&G difficult to come by, Mavericks was an easily-procured frequent recommendation I made to friends, fellow travelers and Chris D. fans who’d write in for progress reports on Minute. Midnight Mavericks was and is a cultural guidebook on par with the best of RE/Search Publications—no small achievement. This was eye-opening, mind-expanding—even inspirational—stuff.

Now Gregorits is taking his archives digital, via his new site, SNG Unexpurgated. He promises “the entirety of the Sex & Guts back catalog” over the next few weeks, all in his full, original edits (most of his work in S&G and MM was trimmed for space). He’s already posted an impressive array of profiles, including Stephen R. Bissette, Dan Fante, Patton Oswalt, John Waters, Lydia Lunch and that Chris D. interview that pulled my coat to begin with.

Though rarely short on memorable quotes, for the most part, Gregorits’ interviews are resolutely anti-soundbite—no small achievement, considering much of what passes for print interviews today. Save the glib and facile for bumper stickers; give me an interesting thinker in an expansive mood—and Gregorits on the tape recorder.”

“Sex and Guts” can be found here.

 
Nina Carter and Jilly Johnson were popular pinup girls in their native England during the 1970s. They were known as Page 3 girls because they appeared mostly nude on the third page of British tabloids like The Sun. Carter and Johnson had ambitions beyond being mere models and formed Blonde On Blonde and released a disco version of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.”

Nina Carter was Yes keyboard player Rick Wakeman’s third wife. She’s the one on the right in the video and picture disc.

Blonde On Blonde were big in Japan, which might explain the tentacle.
 

 
I was surprised this morning when I did a search for the infamous “Thatchergate” tape—an audio collage constructed by Crass bassist Peter Wright (aka “Sybil Right” and “Pete Wrong”) of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan “talking” about nuclear weapons and the sinking of the HMS Sheffield as a deliberate attempt to escalate the conflict in the Falklands War—and didn’t find it on YouTube.

These days we’re used to seeing public figures like Sarah Palin and Scott Walker punked, but in the early 1980s, the avenues for media hacking just did not exist the way they do now. The “Thatchergate” tape was an event back then, especially in the squatter/anarcho-punk crowd that I was a part of in London at the time. To hear about Crass perpetrating the hoax of Ronald Reagan getting “caught on tape” threatening to nuke Europe (to show Russia who was boss!) was nothing short of a blow against Moloch!

Today, there are a little more than 2000 items that come up on Google for “Thatchergate” and most have nothing to do with Crass. This story should be a lot better known, it’s one of the greatest pranks in history:

From San Francisco Chronicle, January 30, 1983.

Washington. A fake tape of a purported conversation between President Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was circulated in Europe this spring, possibly by the KGB, the State Department said yesterday.

“This type of activity fits the pattern of fabrications circulated by the Soviet KGB, although usually they involve fake documents rather than tapes,” the department said in a written response to reporter’s questions.

The department said that although the recording is of “poor quality,” a technical analysis revealed that the voices were those of Reagan and Thatcher.

But the department indicated the voices were spliced together and said they were not part of an actual conversation.

“We checked with the White House, which advised thay no such conversation took place,” the department said.

The President’s part in the recording apparently was lifted from his Nov. 22, 1982 speech on nuclear disarmament,” it said. “We are not sure where Mrs. Thatcher’s remarks came from.

The department said a copy of the tape was received by the U.S. embassy in the Netherlands a week before the British elections.

The tape dealt with the Falklands crisis and U.S. missiles in Britain, the department said.

It said, “From the drift of the tape, the evident purpose was to cause problems for Mrs. Thatcher by blaming her for the sinking of the British destroyer Sheffield and also for us by stirring trouble on the INF (Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces) issue.”

The Sheffield was sunk by Argentine forces last year during the war with Britain over the Falkland Islands.

Britain and the United Staes took part in a NATO decision to install intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe late this year as a counter to similar Soviet forces if an agreement on restriction such weapons is not reached.

The State Department said the tape-recording was sent with a covering letter from an anonymous person to Dutch journalists.

It is said an analysis by the language experts “suggests that the author was not a native speaker.”

The Reagan administration has contended for some time that the KGB has contended for some thime that the KGB has a forgery factory producing false documents to mislead target audiences.

It was also written up in The Sunday Times, on January 8, 1983

How the KGB fools the West’s press.

THE TAPE is heavy with static and puntuated with strange noises, but through it all can be heard the authentic voices of Ronald Reagan on the telephone: “If there is a conflict we shall fire missiles at our allies to see to it that the Soviet Union stays within its borders.”

At the other end of the telephone is Mrs. Thatcher. “You mean Germany?” she asks increduously.

“Mrs. Thatcher, if any country endagers our position we can decide to bomb the problem area and so remove the instability.”

If this is not hair-raising enough, we hear Mrs. Thatcher virtually admitting that she had the Belgrano sunk to end any chance of an agreement with Argentina. “Oh God!” says Reagan.

The whole conversation is fake. Both voices are real but the words spoken have been doctored, cut, rearranged and then expanded on the transcript of the tape. Every word from Reagan is extracted from his lengthy presidential address on nuclear strategy. When, for instance, he seems to swear at Mrs. Thatcher, he is in fact coming to the end of his speech and quoting a hymn: “Oh God of love, O king of peace.”

The tape surfaced in Holland just before last year’s British general election, but it never quite overcame the suspicions of Dutch journalists. They declined to publish the juicy exclusive, sent to them anonymously. But other journalists across the world have fallen for an increasing flow of such stories based on “authoritative” cables, memo and tapes. The State Department in Washington says they are all products of an increasingly sophisicated Russian campaign.

“They have accelerated their efforts and they have fine-tuned them,” claims Larry Semakis, deputy director of a State Department team that monitors what the Russians call “active measures.” He admits that “no one can specifically prove in a court of law that Soviet hand was on this or that item.” But he says there is a pattern in the use of forgeries which points unmistakably to the Russians.

The State Department believes that “active measures” are the responsibility of the KGB’s first directorate; that some forgeries go as high as the ruling Politburo for approval…

“[W]hich points unmistakably to the Russians”? I don’t think so…

Then one year later in The Observer newspaper on, Sunday, January 22, 1984, it was revealed that…

‘Soviet’ faked tape is rock group hoax

A TAPE recording, purporting to carry details of a secret telephone conversation between Mrs Thatcher and President Reagan, has been revealed as a hoax manufactured deliberately by an anarchist rock group.

The recording was taken to newspapers throughout Europe—including The Observer—but, apart from one Italian newspaper, nobody had been taken in by the hoax tape until it appeared in the Sunday Times earlier this month.

That newspaper described it as part of a KGB propaganda war. Unfortunately the tape was recorded not in Moscow but in an Essex farmhouse.

The New York correspondent of the paper reported that the State Department believed the tape was evidence of ‘an increasingly sophisticated Russian disinformation cam- paign.’

The real authors of the hoax tape, the anarchist punk rock group Crass, said that they had been ‘amused and amazed’ that the tape had been attributed to the KGB.

The recording first appeared in the offices of a number of Continental newspapers shortly before the British general election last year.

A covering note said it was a recording of a crossed line on which was heard part of the two leaders’ telephone conversation, and that the person who sent it wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.

Key lines in the tape include Mr. Reagan apparently asking why the Belgrano was sunk during the Fallrlands war, when Secretary of State Haig was nearing a peace agreement. Mrs Thatcher appears to reply: ‘Argentina was the invader. Force had to be used now, punishing them as quickly as possible.’

Mr. Reagan then says: ‘Oh God, it is not right. You caused the Sheffield to have been hit. Those missiles we followed on the screen. You must have, too, and not let them know.’

Later, in a discussion on nuclear strategy, Mr. Reagan is made to say: ‘If there is a conflict we shall fire missiles at our allies to see to it that the Soviet Union stays within its borders.’

The tape was first brought to The Observer by a Belgian journalist last June. We concluded, like most of the other newspapers, that it was a fake.

The quest for the real hand behind the tape led to an isolated farmhouse in north Essex, where the eight members of the band live with their children.

Reluctantly the members of the band, who sport names like Joy Be Vivre, G Sus and Sybil Right, admitted faking the tape. They showed how they had put it together over two and a half months, using parts of TV and radio broadcasts made by the two leaders, then overdubbing with telephone noises.

‘We wanted to precipitate a debate on those subjects to damage Mrs. Thatcher’s position in the election. We also did it because of the appaling way Tam Dalyell was treated over the Belgrano debate,’ they said.

‘We believe that although the tape is a hoax, what is said in it is in effect true.’

And there was more: From The Associated Press, Sunday, January 25, 1984
 

 
And still more…

Crass ‘KGB tape’ hoax (Sounds, January 28, 1984)

CRASS have been uncovered as the perpetrators of a bogus tape of a telephone ‘conversation’ between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

The tape was originally circulated last sammer before the General Election and was claimed to be a recording of a crossed line between the two leaders. Needless to say it is not complimentary to either statesperson.

During the coarse of the ‘conversation’ Thatcher replies to Reagan’s question about the Belgrano by saying: “Argentina was the invader. Force had to be used now, punishing them as quickly as possible.”

And later in a discussion aboat nuclear strategy Reagan says: “If there is any conflict we a shall fire missiles at our allies to see to it that the Soviet Union stays with stays within its borders.”

Most newspapers recognised the tape as a fake but the Sunday Times attributed it to KGB propaganda a couple of weeks ago and last Sunday’s Observer took considerable delight in tracking the tape back to Crass’s HQ in Essex.

Invoking the spirit of one of Reagan’s predecessors, George Washington, they explained that the tape had been put together from TV and radio broadcasts overdubbed by telephone noises.

They justified their actions by saying: “We wanted to precipitate a debate on the Falklands and nuclear weapons to damage: Thatcher’s position in the election. We also did it because of the appalling way Tom Dalyell (almost the only MP to raise any awkward questions over the Falklands affair) was treated over the Belgrano debate in the House of Commons.

I recall hearing at the time that Jane Pauley did a story on this on The Today Show in the US, but can find no record of that online, sadly… To this day, the members of Crass have never been able to figure out how the tape was traced back to them.

Pretty much there are only two ways to hear the “Thatchergate” tape: In the Crass song, “Powerless with a Guitar” you can hear a bit of it. It was also included at the end of a “God Told Me to Do It” mix by David Tibet which you can download at the excellent Kill Your Pet Puppy blog (where I got most of this information from and has audio interviews about “Thatchergate”). Since it’s not ideal listening—the conceit was that it was recorded due to crossed wires, so there is a ringing phone noise throughout (a nice touch)—here’s a transcript of the “Thatchergate” tape in full:

Thatcher: Own business!

Reagan. I urge restraint. It’s absolutely essential or the area ‘be “through the roof”.

Thatcher: Look, our objectives are fundamentally different. Al Haig…

Reagan: Secretary Haig….

Thatcher:. Doesn’t seem to be able to find a solution.

Reagan: Why eliminate “Belgrano”? You directed this. The Argentinians were then going…. Secretary Haig reached an agreement.

Thatcher: Argentina was the invader! Force has been used. It’s been used now, punishing them as quickly as possible.

Reagan: Oh, God, it’s not right! You caused the “Sheffield” to have been hit. Those missiles we followed on screens. You must have too, and not let them know. What do you hope to gain?

Thatcher: What I said before -“Andrew”- ....As “cruise” go in, I want incentives at all levels….

Reagan: There’s a deal….a third more submarine ballistic missiles, and you will see that the United States forces remain deployed. The intermediate range missiles are U.S. defence. You proposed building them in Europe. Build up the economy. They don’t work, they’re social programmes…. The United Kingdom is a….er….little nation….

Thatcher: You still need those nations, and you’re given long term international markets.

Reagan: We are supported by our allies, whether they want, or not.

Thatcher: I, I don’t understand you….

Reagan: In conflict, we will launch missiles on allies for effective limitation of the Soviet Union.

Thatcher: ‘Mean over Germany?

Reagan: Mrs Thatcher, if any country of ours endangered the position, we might bomb the “problem area”, and correct the imbalance.

Thatcher: See, my….

Reagan: It will convince the Soviets to listen. We demonstrate our strength….The Soviets have little incentive to launch an attack.

Thatcher: Our British people….

Reagan: London! ....

Thatcher: I think….

Reagan: Let that be understood…

 
A couple of interesting music related articles have popped up in the last short while that I want to share here. Both have instigated some heated debate, but it seems to me like they both represent different sides of the same coin, namely the age old battle between the supposedly “authentic” nature of rock music and the disdain that rock snobs in turn show for “pop” music.

The first of these articles appeared in the Guardian on Thursday, and is titled “Indie Rock’s Slow and Painful Death,” by Dorian Lynskey. I’m pretty sure you can guess the content of the article by the headline alone, but here’s a taster anyway:

Just before Christmas US music writer Eric Harvey compiled a list of sales figures for the top 50 albums in Pitchfork’s end-of-year poll, inspiring the Guardian to conduct a similar exercise [re-published at the bottom of the article]. Each list prompts much the same conclusion. Of the five albums in Pitchfork’s list that sold more than 100,000 copies in the US in 2011 only two (Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes) are indie artists. In the Guardian’s top 40 the only alternative acts to pass 100,000 (the benchmark for a gold record) are Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Noah and the Whale, PJ Harvey, Radiohead and Laura Marling.

Of course critics’ polls are not an authoritative measure and other indie artists exceeded 100,000 sales in the US (including Wilco, Feist, the Black Keys, the Decemberists, My Morning Jacket), the UK (Elbow, Kasabian, the Vaccines, Snow Patrol, two Gallagher brothers) or both (the Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead). If you really stretch the category then Coldplay, Foo Fighters and Florence + the Machine also did the double, and if you count 2010 releases you can add Mumford & Sons and Kings of Leon. And let’s note that, because of Spotify and YouTube, sales figures aren’t the only measure of success. That said, it’s still an unforgiving climate for the kind of crossover alternative rock act that not so long ago was taken for granted, especially when so many of the bands mentioned have been around for a decade or so and selling to loyalists rather than new fans. This sobering data invites two questions: how long will indie’s big slump last? And does it matter?

To an extent pop trends are cyclical. To borrow the language of economics, after each speculative bubble bursts (grunge, Britpop, mid-00s indie) there’s a market correction that leaves many casualties. In 1999 and 2000 there were many brilliant records but they were disparate and rarely suited to magazine covers, throwing both Select and Melody Maker into first panic and then closure, when just five years earlier it had seemed like the stream of charismatic, platinum-selling, magazine-shifting rock bands would never end. Of course just a few months later the Strokes and the White Stripes heralded a vibrant new phase, which led to the Libertines and Franz Ferdinand and then another bubble: landfill indie. By the time radio and magazines were pushing dreck such as the Automatic and the Pigeon Detectives the writing was on the wall.

While I think the thrust of this article is applicable in both the US and the UK, I feel it’s important to note that in the UK “indie rock” is seen as an actual genre of music rather than just a descriptive term for independent artists. Because to these ears “independent” is the last term that comes to mind to describe acts like Oasis, Snow Patrol, Foo Fighters, the Strokes and Mumford & Sons, and it seems somewhat absurd to judge the success of supposedly “alternative” acts on how much they sell. Also, the term “landfill indie” refers to a glut of bands whose names begin with “The” and who tend to dress similarly and make similar sounding records, who get signed for a year and release a “buzz” album, before being dropped once the PR budget runs out. 

I think the real subtext of Lynskey’s article is that there is a crisis in mainstream music journalism. As less and less genuinely interesting music reaches journalists’ desks through the traditional PR channels they have relied on since the 1990s, the journalists in turn cry that “music is dead!” Because surely excessive PR spin is the only rational explanation for the acts mentioned above being considered “alternative” or “independent”? And speaking of Spin, I think it’s the same reason that magazine has decided to abandon music reviews in favour of tweets, while claiming that there are “fewer and fewer actual music consumers” (a claim which is demonstrably false, by the way.) There is no dearth of interesting and forward-thinking music being made in the world, but as is repeatedly pointed out in the article’s comments section, journalists need to look a bit harder to find it now.

The second article I have read lately that has provoked some commentary is Wallace Wylie’s “Why Pop Music Matters (No Matter What Age You Are)” on the Collapse Board website. While, again, the content of the article is explained pretty succinctly in the headline, this time it’s a bit more composed and thoughtful than Lynskey’s piece, taking in as it does criticism of both rock and pop:

The tragedy of rock music is that it went from cutting edge rebellion to conservative defender of values in a very short amount of time. Music magazines still run stories of Dylan going electric as a singular moment in rock history, and each person who reads this story shakes their heads sadly at the idea that anyone would castigate Dylan, thinking that, obviously they would have embraced this thrilling new sound. These same people then decry the current state of music and complain loudly at almost every new development, claiming that the current version of pop is some degraded, commercialised bastardisation of what music once was. Despite the obviousness of the historical lessons above, each generation still produces thousands of individuals who imagine that THIS time music really has drifted too far from its roots, that some essential quality is missing, that music has become meaningless.

Utimately, nobody can prove one way or the other whether ‘music’ was ever good or bad, and to think that anybody can launch a rational argument based around the idea that the entire musical output of a new generation is somehow not meeting some in-built standard is foolish beyond words. No art form or style has ever held firm amid the onslaught of modernisation and emerged the victor. The only thing able to somewhat succeed in ending innovative thinking and inevitable change thus far has been murderous totalitarian governments. Left to their own devices, many artists willfully experiment, and those in the commercial field are no different. This is not to say that pop music is above criticism. If pop music has a problem, however, it is in its process and in its reception. While the music plays on regardless, an intellectual war rages beneath the surface. With charges of frivolity thrown constantly at pop, postmodernism came to its rescue, bringing a brand new set of problems in its wake.

There is something rotten at pop’s core. While it is undoubtedly more welcoming to women and non-whites, it has a tendency to use and discard those same people at will. Women’s looks are under constant scrutiny in the world of pop, to the extent that a little extra weight can undermine a performer’s entire career. Once a person’s moment under the spotlight is over, hosts of cackling jackals take great delight in declaring that person a non-entity. Pop worships at the altar of youth and beauty, and anyone deemed old or ugly should probably wander off into the cold and die the moment their time in the spotlight is over.

It’s important to note that there are differences, of course, between popular music culture in the US and the UK, but Wylie addresses this in his article (being a British writer based in America writing for an Australian site, he’s well aware of these differences.) But I’m with Wylie on this. “Pop” is just as valid a “genre” as any other you’d care to mention, and I have an innate distrust of those who dismiss pop music out of hand. It seems nonsensical to me to disregard any music simply because it is popular, just as it would be nonsensical to dismiss all music made before an arbitrary year like, say, 1974. It’s not a sign of having more developed and advanced taste I’m afraid, it’s actually the exact opposite - your taste must be pretty weak if it is swayed by the amount of people who enjoy a song rather than the song itself.

What is more interesting to me though are the core arguments that get bandied about in relation to the perceived “authenticity” of rock music as opposed to pop, and how these notions can lead to enjoyment of pop music being seen as shameful. As Wylie mentions in the comments to this piece, an artist like Neil Young is perceived as being somehow more “authentic” than, say, Missy Elliot, despite coming from an upper middle class family with a famous father, while Elliot came from a truly impoverished broken home and had to fight harder to achieve her popular status. There is another excellent Collapse Board article on this same issue that music fans should also read: “Everything Is Plastic: The Corrupting Ideal of Authenticity In Music” by Scott Creney.

There’s much food for thought to chew on in these articles, but it’s important for me to re-state here on DM—a site where only last week a newish rock band experimenting with electronics called Errors got dismissed as being clones of, err, Hawkwind?!—that following music is now easier than ever. It’s as accessible as simply surfing the net, and as mystifyingly off-putting to older generations as that pass time can be, too. It’s the lame-ass reason that Spin is cutting its reviews (because the audience can hear the music before the review is read - yes, that is what they said!), it’s why Dorian Lynskey’s desk is overflowing with dross, and why shitty “indie rock” matters less now than it ever did.

NOBODY is too old for pop music, or even the music of the younger generations, regardless of genre. I’ll leave you with this quote from Wallace Wylie:

When a music fan starts to imagine that the essential sprit of music lies in holding on to an old idea rather than embracing a new one, it’s probably fair to say that they have become something of a musical conservative. I say this without labeling myself the most forward thinking of listeners. I merely state it as an absolute, unarguable fact.

Further reading:

Wallace Wylie: “Why Pop Music Matters (No Matter What Age You Are)”
Dorian Lynskey “Indie Rock’s Slow & Painful Death”
Scott Creney “Everything is Plastic: The Corrupting Ideal of Authenticity In Music”
Slate.com “Spin Magazine To Review Albums On Twitter: Is This the Death Of Music Criticism?

This template for the SOPA blackout (the one we used) was created by Zachary Johnson.

Depending on where you live, you might not be able to read the thought-provoking polemic posted by the Pirate Bay yesterday, so here it is in full. It’s well worth reading.

INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012. PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would “do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”. He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.

Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent.

There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them - like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.

So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: “stole”) other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they’re all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations - it’s all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules.

The reason they are always complainting about “pirates” today is simple. We’ve done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between each other, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them).

It’s all based on the fact that we’re competition.

We’ve proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We’re just better than they are.

And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.

The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe - but we’ve stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this:

The word SOPA means “trash” in Swedish. The word PIPA means “a pipe” in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to therest of us obedient consumers.

The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you’ll learn that no one wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government want the American people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown.

SOPA can’t do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we’ll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really.

To fix the “problem of piracy” one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they’re creating “culture” but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they’re fat.

In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he’s complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world - because he’s jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you’d get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.

Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can’t access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We’re sorry for that.

—THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012

UPDATE: The reddit thread about this essay is also worth reading.

 
The announcement that Rupert Murdoch’s News International has agreed to pay-out to 37 victims of the News of the World phone hacking scandal (Hackgate) should come as no surprise. It only confirms what has been suspected all along - that Murdoch’s papers were up to no good.

The 37 who will receive payments include: the actor, Jude Law who will receive $201,000 (£130,000); Labour politician Lord Prescott $62,000 (£40,000): and former actress and designer Sadie Frost $77,000 (£50,000). The full total of settlements are likely to land the publisher with a bill around $2m. Small potatoes to Murdoch, yes, but the inference is damning.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Today’s allegation that senior management at News Group Newspapers (NGN), the subsidiary of News International that published the News of the World, took part in an orchestrated cover-up by “deliberately deceiving investigators and destroying evidence” is certain to bring criminal prosecutions against journalists and management. Moreover, the fact that NI lawyers did not contest this claim tells us everything.

Full details of pay-outs can be found here.
 

 
During Ron Paul’s 2008 run for President, he had a cringe-inducing and gut-bustingly funny encounter with the fabulous Bruno (Sacha Baron Cohen).

Paul’s description of his encounter with Bruno:

We were in a studio situation, I wasn’t invited into a hotel room. There were lots of lights and blaze and commotion and they said we better get in this back room which had been fixed up as a bedroom.

‘So there was some dishonesty getting me into the interview, I was expecting an interview on Austrian economics. That didn’t turn out that way.

‘By the time he (Cohen) started pulling his pants down, I was like what on earth is going on here and I ran out of the room. This interview had ended.

I’d forgotten about this and I think Paul would like for you to forget about it too.
 

 
Fifty years ago today Ernie Kovacs died in a car accident. He was 43-years-old. A tragic end for a hugely talented artist.

Kovacs elevated television comedy to a fine art. Innovative, subversive and diabolically funny, he created a surreal style of humor employing cutting edge visual techniques and envelope pushing irreverence that influenced a wide range of TV shows from Saturday Night Live and SCTV to Sesame Street and Monty Python.

In this six minute compression of cine-semiology, Kovacs pays homage to film noir classics such as Touch Of Evil (the tracking shots), Psycho, Asphalt Jungle and Night In The City with a hint (as I see it) of Jean Genet and Godard. The soundtrack is Béla Bartók’s “Concerto for Orchestra” and it creates a beautiful sense of dread.

This first aired in 1961 and it still seems fresh today. The highly-stylized sets, feral cat, dead-eyed baby dolls and hallucinatory effects have the eerie dreaminess and sense of camp that David Lynch, the Kuchar brothers and Kenneth Anger would explore years later.

No telling where Kovacs would have taken his art had he lived. Sadly, it came to an end on a dark street in Los Angeles on January 13, 1962 when Kovacs lost control of his car while allegedly attempting to light one of his ubiquitous cigars.
 

 
One of the defining moments of my life was when I picked up the debut album by The Fugs in a People’s Drug Store in Falls Church, Virginia in 1966. And when I say “picked up” that’s exactly what I mean. I didn’t even have to listen to it. All it took was picking up the album and looking at the cover to have my 15-year-old mind scrambled forever. A grainy black and white photograph of five scruffy-looking hippies holding musical instruments standing among rubble in front of an ancient looking brick wall somewhere in NY City’s East Village was not your usual teenybopper rock and roll imagery. If parents didn’t want their daughters to marry a Rolling Stone, they wouldn’t want them within 20 square miles of a Fug. This was punk rock in beatnik drag. Ten years later The Ramones would release their first album with a similarly New Yorkish cover. I stared at The Fugs with the awe of a kid coming upon a creature from outer space.

Of course, I bought the record (along with a copy of the first Mothers Of Invention album, Freak Out) and went home and eagerly put it on the turntable. The rest, as they say, is history. The Fugs were the hippest thing I’d yet encountered on vinyl. Their mix of the sacred and the profane, poetry and street talk, beauty and coarseness, was intellectual and spiritual manna for my hungry teenage brain and heart.

I wanted to be a part of whatever world The Fugs existed in so I ended up taking a bus to New York City and immediately went to The Fugs’ co-founder Ed Sanders’ bookstore, Peace Eye. There I began my serious Beat education, thumbing through the pages of books by Michael McClure, Alexandra David-Neel, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kerouac, the whole underground scene…and it was still relatively underground at the time.

(While writing this I’m listening to the hugely underrated Fugs’ psychedelic/folk-rock masterpiece It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest .)

As much of a Fugs fan as I was, what eventually really knocked me out was Ed Sanders’ prose and poetry. He had a Whitmanesque/Blakean vision and bardic style coupled with gutter humor that bridged the heavens above and the mud below. He could undercut literary pretense with the foul-mouthed rants of a heavy-maned hillbilly cranked up on a ten dollar bag of crystal meth. His beatnik/hippie sensibilities were the foil to his truckstop cowboy skepticism. In other words, Sanders knew how to yin his yang, keeping the whole beautiful cosmic mess balanced between words of worship and the laughter on the tongue of a drunken whore. Within his howling vowels and clanging consonants, Sanders located that strange geography where the mythic mingles with tabloid headlines and TV commercials, where Jimmie Rodgers knocks back cheap bourbon while staring at the reflections of Isis and Ra in the bottom of his shot glass.

Drink up oh mighty yodellers and scribblers who praise the Dharma. The truth that envelopes us all and sends us squealing like delirious pigs into the arms of unbearable bliss is upon us like an ambergris-scented robe made of the pubic hair of two thousand and twelve Aztec virgins. Get naked, now! Or get the fuck out!

Yes, Ed Sanders was my guru of the gobble grope, my slum God of the Lower East Side, the dopethrill psychopath who pointed the way to a place where there is no shame in the flesh, the fuck or the flame that ignites the holy sacraments of the good lord Ganja. With Sanders as my shamanic guide I became a full-fledged member of the skin flower army, bravely facing the future with my hair flapping in the wind, a flag made of a million love tendrils.

That was then, this is now. And it is with great pleasure that I share with you good news indeed. The almighty Fug and editor of “Fuck You: A Magazine of The Arts,” has published a new memoir, Fug You, that covers his early days as a peacenik, poet, rabble rouser and musician in New York during the Sixties. It’s a great read full of fascinating anecdotes, essential counter-culture history, downtown bohemia, wrangles with the law, appearances by hundreds (yes, hundreds) of Sixties’ icons including Jimi Hendrix, Andy Warhol, Frank Zappa, Kenneth Anger, The Velvet Underground and tons of photos, images and manuscripts from his archives.

Unlike many a chronicler of those stoned days, Sanders has kept his wits about him. This isn’t a wobbly sentimental journey. The writing is sharp, witty and full of precise detail and facts. Of course, who would expect less of the author responsible for one of the best (and darkest) non-fiction books on the Aquarian Age, The Family. Sanders has always shown an abiding respect for form and tradition, even when fucking with them. Fug You is not only a personal history, it is history in the big sense. It is one of the few books that deals with the hippies and the counter-culture from the inside that doesn’t read like an amnesiac trying to reconstruct a past life or a brain-addled Deadhead recalling the time he caught the clap in a crash pad in the Haight as he desperately tries to keep his drool cup from toppling off his beer gut. Or worse, those guilt-ridden confessionals by former junkies who used to play in hair bands. Sanders doesn’t sound like an old fart spinning tales or pathetically trying to revive the good old days.

What kept Sanders interesting from the very beginning is still very much in operation in this new book: the clarity of his bullshit detector and his irreverent take on virtually everything, including himself. Which is not to say he doesn’t care about things in a deep sense, he does. He just approaches life with a Zen perspective knowing that getting overamped over shit ain’t gonna change a thing. He continues to be a revolutionary with a sense of the ridiculous. His strategy has always been to see the absurdity in the horror show and to shine a cosmic light on it. We see the Fug and Abbie Hoffman style of revolutionary theater echoed in today’s Occupy Movement. When The Fugs went to Virginia to levitate the Pentagon in 1967 not everybody was laughing, but they were certainly paying attention.

“You ask about my philosophy, baby, yeah? Dope, peace, magic gods in the tree trunks, and GROUP GROPE, BABY!”

The book ends in 1970, so I’m hoping this is the first in a series. More than four decades after I first encountered him, Sanders is still manna for my hungry brain.

Fug You: An Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, the Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side is available here.

Here’s a little video mashup of some vintage film footage with selections from Sanders’ ode to rednecks, hippies and the trailer parks of absolute reality, Sanders’ Truckstop.

1. “Jimmy Joe, The Hippybilly Boy”  2. “Maple Court Tragedy”    3. “Heartbreak Crash Pad”    4. “Banshee”    5. “Plaster Song”    6. “Iliad”
 

 
British football legend and tough guy gangster in Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, Vinnie Jones demonstrates CPR in this British TV public service announcement. The result is one of the most amusing things you’ll see today that could actually save a life.

Perfect choice of music.
 

 
Via Copyranter