Mom discovers her son’s stash. Instead of smacking him senseless, his chain-smoking, boozing dad lectures him on the dangers of pot smoking. Tom decides to discover the Truth for himself and learns a harsh lesson before deciding to “Keep Off The Grass”.
Keep off the Grass is a educational film written, produced and directed by Sid Davis. Like all of Sid Davis’s films they were made very heavy handedly. Tom gets in trouble when his mother finds a joint in his room. Instead of punishing Tom, his father challenges him to learn more about marijuanas evil effects on society. Nobody gets killed in this Sid Davis film, yet Tom still learns a harsh lesson after being mugged by druggies and learning that his best friend sells pot to school children. One of the last Sid Davis films to focus on drugs.
“Take the ghost train from Los Mochis to Veracruz and travel cross country, coast to coast, Pacific to Atlantic. Ride the rhythm of the rails on board the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México (FNM) and the music of a journey that has now passed into history.”
El Tren Fantasma, (The Ghost Train), is Chris Watson’s 4th solo album for Touch, and his first since Weather Report in 2003, which was named as one of the albums you should hear before you die in The Guardian.
A thrilling acoustic journey across the heart of Mexico from Pacific to Atlantic coast using archive recordings to recreate a rail passenger service which no longer exists. It’s now more than a decade since FNM operated its last continuous passenger service across country. Chris Watson spent a month on board the train with some of the last passengers to travel this route. As sound recordist he was part of the film crew working on a programme in the BBCTV series Great Railways Journeys. Now, in this album, the journey of the ‘ghost train’ is recreated, evoking memories of a recent past, capturing the atmosphere, rhythms and sounds of human life, wildlife and the journey itself along the tracks of one of Mexico’s greatest engineering projects.
‘We take you on a chronological journey through the most important music of the 20th century and dramatise the century’s massive political and social upheavals. The London Philharmonic Orchestra, with over 30 concerts, is the backbone of this festival, which reveals the stories behind the rich, exhilarating and sometimes controversial compositions that have changed the way we listen forever.’
The Rest Is Noise views 20th-century music through the prism of history with its revolutions and counter-revolutions, its major moral and philosophical upheavals around race, gender, faith, political credo and pacifism – and its new relationship to technology and artistic democracy.
Over the year, The Rest Is Noise turns the spotlight on 12 parts of the century. In the first half of the festival, from January to June 2013, we move from Richard Strauss and the breakdown of the old world to the influence of Stalin and Hitler on music via the cosmopolitan glamour of inter-war Paris. In autumn 2013 visit the 1960s, Hollywood and Downtown New York and look at artists behind the Iron Curtain.
Through listening to this extraordinary, rich and eclectic repertoire and hearing about the events that shaped its composition, we hope to bring a completely new dimension of understanding and enjoyment to the audience.
If you’re new to 20th-century music, then this is your time to start exploring. There has never been a festival like this.
MANDALAGIFS is the work of artist Chaotec Chichiliki. Here’s a blurb from his tumblr:
Mandalas represent to me the fountain of love that forever expands they are rabbit holes that take us to other dimensions. Follow the white rabbit.
Im Elias or thats who they say I am. I studied Interactive Design and live in Mexico City. I paint and sometimes write. Also I like to take photography. Do believe in God (no religion) thankful to he/she .Interested in art, illustration, astral projection, lucid dreaming, mandalas, psychedelics and everything that has to do with the universe. I love psychedelic trance.
Maṇḍala (मण्डल) is a Sanskrit word meaning “circle.” Mandalas have spiritual and ritual significance in Hinduism and Buddhism.
In common use, mandala has become a generic term for any plan, chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically, a microcosm of the universe from the human perspective.
Satan s’amuse or (Satán se divierte in Spain) is a 1907 French — Spanish silent film directed by pioneer Segundo de Chomón.
In an unnamed place, Satan is bored. Despite his servants’ exertions, nothing can be found to cheer him up.
Segundo Víctor Aurelio Chomón y Ruiz was a pioneering Aragonese film director. He produced many short films in France while working for Pathé Frères and has been compared to Georges Méliès, due to his frequent camera tricks and optical illusions. He is regarded as the most significant Spanish silent film director in an international context.
Beckett’s own cinematic short, starring a somewhat reluctant Buster Keaton.
Samuel Beckett’s only venture into the medium of cinema, Film was written in 1963 and filmed in New York in the summer of 1964, directed by Alan Schneider and featuring Buster Keaton. For the shooting Mr. Beckett made his only trip to America. The film, which has no dialogue, takes its basis Berkeley’s theory Esse est percepti, that is “to be is to be perceived”: even after all outside perception — be it animal, human or divine — has been suppressed, self perception remains.
Film was edited by Sydney Meyers and the cinematography was by Boris Kaufman, both of whom were preeminent in their fields. Film was produced by Barney Rosset and Evergreen Theater. (USA, 1965 — 20′+)
For a handful of years, New York’s Anamanaguchi have been making some energetic, hyper-melodic, and chiptune-infused rock music. In 2010, the band strung together a series of amazing, free singles they put out on their site, and took part in producing the soundtrack for the Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World videogame soundtrack.
Now the older, wiser, and they’ve finally mustered up the courage to put together another full-length LP. The title is Endless Fantasy, and it’s due for a Spring release. In the meantime, we’ve got audio and video for the group’s new single, “Meow.” It’s neon-colored, pixie stix’d, ready to friggin’ party.
The music video itself looks like a tricked out Chuck E. Cheese commercial for twentysomethings. The song is loaded with rich, wailing melodies that are backed up with samples of kitty cats meowing.
The Meow video pretty much perfectly encapsulates the sugar high fit the band’s music will send you into. Welcome to Daddz Fun Zone, home of just about the craziest time you can have on the planet. This is truly rock for the .gif-addicted Tumblr user.
Wilhelm Reich is a wildly interesting figure on many different levels. Nor Nazi Germany neither post War World II America were ready for his ideas and both ended up persecuting him, which leads me to think he must have been right on many of his theories. As the saying goes, there is no left or right, there is only tyranny or freedom.
He was born on March 24, 1897 in Galicia, in the easternmost part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Ukraine. He grew up in the Bukovina on a large farm operated by his father. His first language was German, and until 1938 he was an Austrian citizen.
Reich worked with Sigmund Freud in the 1920s and was a respected analyst for much of his life, focusing on character structure rather than on individual neurotic symptoms. He tried to reconcile Marxism and psychoanalysis, arguing that neurosis is rooted in the physical, sexual, economic, and social conditions of the patient, and promoted adolescent sexuality, the availability of contraceptives, abortion, and divorce, and the importance for women of economic independence. Just to be clear, my personal opinion regarding Marxism and communism goes along the lines of a previous post about John Henry Mackay if you care to read it.
His work influenced a generation of intellectuals, including Saul Bellow, William S. Burroughs, Paul Edwards, Norman Mailer, and A. S. Neill, and shaped innovations such as Fritz Perls’s Gestalt therapy, Alexander Lowen’s bioenergetic analysis, and Arthur Janov’s primal therapy.
Reich was living in Germany when Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933. On March 2 that year the Nazi newspaper,Völkischer Beobachter, published an attack on one of Reich’s pamphlets, The Sexual Struggle of Youth. He left immediately for Vienna, then Scandinavia, moving to the United States in 1939. In 1947, following a series of articles about orgone in The New Republic and Harper’s, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) obtained an injunction against the interstate sale of orgone accumulators. Charged with contempt for violating it, he was sentenced to two years in prison.
In the case of the United States of America vs. Whilhen Reich, the US district court ruled that his published works be destroyed. The Discovery of the Orgone Vol. 1, The Functioning of the Orgasm Vol. 2, Cancer Biopathy, Ether, God and Devil, Cosmic Superimposition, Listen Little Man, The Muder of Chhrist, People in Trouble. These books were burned in the public incinerator at the corner of Hudson and Gansevoort St. in New York city under the supervision of Federal Food and Drugs administration agents. This occurred on August 10, 1956 and again on march 17, 1960. Fahrenheit 451 comes to mind, not to mention how ironic it is to have escaped Nazi Germany to have his books burned in America.
Here is a very interesting documentary named Who is Afraid of Wilhelm, that is a very good introduction to get to know more about him.
Delia Derbyshire was born in Coventry, England, in 1937. Educated at Coventry Grammar School and Girton College, Cambridge, where she was awarded a degree in mathematics and music.
In 1959, on approaching Decca records, Delia was told that the company DIDNOT employ women in their recording studios, so she went to work for the UN in Geneva before returning to London to work for music publishers Boosey & Hawkes.
In 1960 Delia joined the BBC as a trainee studio manager. She excelled in this field, but when it became apparent that the fledgling Radiophonic Workshop was under the same operational umbrella, she asked for an attachment there — an unheard of request, but one which was, nonetheless,granted. Delia remained ‘temporarily attached’ for years, regularly deputising for the Head, and influencing many of her trainee colleagues.
To begin with Delia thought she had found her own private paradise where she could combine her interests in the theory and perception of sound; modes and tunings, and the communication of moods using purely electronic sources. Within a matter of months she had created her recording of Ron Grainer’s Doctor Who theme, one of the most famous and instantly recognisable TV themes ever. On first hearing it Grainer was tickled pink: “Did I really write this?” he asked. “Most of it,” replied Derbyshire.
Thus began what is still referred to as the Golden Age of the Radiophonic Workshop. Initially set up as a service department for Radio Drama, it had always been run by someone with a drama background. Derbyshire was the first person there with any higher music qualifications, but as she wasn’t supposed to be doing music, much of her early work remained anonymous under the umbrella credit ‘special sound by BBC Radiophonic Workshop’.
On being told at the Workshop that her music was ‘too lascivious for 11 year olds’ and ‘too sophisticated for the BBC2 audience’, Delia found other fields where the directors were less inhibited — film, theatre, ‘happenings’ and original electronic music events, as well as pop music and avant garde psychedelia. To do this she encouraged the establishment of Unit Delta Plus, Kaleidophon and Electrophon, private electronic music studios where she worked with Peter Zinovieff [composer and inventor], David Vorhaus and Brian Hodgson.
Delia’s works from the 60s and 70s continue to be used on radio and TV some 30 years later, and her music has given her legendary status with releases in Sweden and Japan. She is also constantly mentioned, credited and covered by bands from Add n to (x) and Sonic Boom to Aphex Twin and The Chemical Brothers.
“This is Islamophobic shit,” cried an angry spectator two-thirds of the way through DV8’s investigation of multiculturalism in ‘Can We Talk About This?’.
‘This’ being free speech, multiculturalism, Islam, Islamism, the issues at the heart of DV8’s extraordinary new show.
Lloyd Newson’s company has, for more than quarter of a century, blurred the lines between dance and theatre as a way of, in the company’s own words, ‘reinvesting dance with meaning, particularly where this has been lost through formalised techniques’. It has always tackled controversial and difficult subjects, but the latest is likely to be the most challenging yet.
The show opens, as most of those in the audience must have known, with a cast member demanding of the spectators ‘Do you feel morally superior to the Taliban?’. It’s a nod to Martin Amis who asked that same question to a hostile audience in a notorious debate at London’s ICA, back in 2007. It is hardly the most sophisticated of questions. Yet its very unsophistication reveals so starkly the spectre haunting the liberal moral swamp.
It is that sense of moral reticence – even of guilt – at the thought of passing judgment upon other cultures, revealed by the reluctance to think that one could be morally superior to the Taliban, that lies at the heart of Can We Talk about This?. The show begins with the infamous Ray Honeyford row in Bradford in 1985, and moves through the Rushdie affair, the murder in 2004 of Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh, the Danish cartoons controversy the following year, and the banning in 2009 of Dutch MP Geert Wilders from this country because of his anti-Islamic film Fitna, all interwoven with discussions of forced marriage, honour killings, jihadism. The emotion that courses through every scene is a pulsating anger at the way that liberal cowardice has interwoven with multicultural naivety to allow Islamist extremist to silence critics and to betray both principles and people.
Newson’s argument that there is a conspiracy of silence about Islamist wrongs is undermined by the fact that most of the cases he documents are already familiar to us from the media. “To speak out,” someone says, “is called racist.” No, it’s not: it’s called journalism, as evidenced by the quotes in the show from Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens, and the numerous columnists cited in the programme. And, much as I applaud a piece of physical theatre that deals with serious issues, the debate about multiculturalism is over-simplified. What is never explored is the idea that integration in some areas of life can be combined with preservation of one’s cultural and religious identity. Perhaps such criticism is unfair. After all, Can We Talk About This? is physical theatre not a roundtable discussion. The ambition of the show, and its willingness to stomp all over the debate, is its great strength.
As always with DV8, the physical side of the show is impressive: one female performer illustrates the determination to escape a forced marriage purely through sinuous hand and hip movements.
Can We Talk About This? is, like all DV8 works, both thought provoking and gut-wrenching, food for mind and heart. It is the kind of bold, polemical spectacle that the theatre so badly needs, a world away from the insipid offerings that all too often litter the contemporary stage.
