THE BEATLES 1965

In 1965 I was a precocious twelve year old school boy who got up early (5am) to do his paper round which I would do for the next few years. There were three TV channels ‘Ready Steady Go!’ was the first real pop music show I watched but I still watched Animal Magic with legend Johnny Morris on kids TV. 
The word "fuck" is spoken for the first time on British television by the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan so I knew something was going on! I can still recall my parent’s shock though my father (who did not ever swear) was somewhat mildly bemused. 
The Beatles had already won us over the year before with the film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ which we watched on holiday in Wales (Barmouth where there was a magnificent record shop, ‘Cob Records’ that became legendary and is still there) after the record shop we went every day to the corner milk shake bar. This year they released ‘Rubber Soul’ which made me really sit up and take notice (especially of girls!) Norwegian Wood told stories I wanted to happen to me but we hung around with a lovely girl called Michelle (who went on to marry my best friend) and her sister and I mooned over her and listened to the track that featured her name. George played sitar on the album and began studying with Ravi Shankar. Prior to this Donovan had been the highlight for me on Ready Steady Go singing ‘Universal Soldier’ by Buffy St. Marie which I thought was better than ‘Eve of Destruction’ by Barry McGuire! The Small Faces released Watcha Gonna Do About It and I determined I was going to be a mod. The Beatles ‘Day Tripper’ came out about a “naughty girl” and was thought to be about drugs though we didn’t then know it. The opening riff by George was the most exciting sound I had ever heard!

(* I just watched an ITV programme last night, well early hours of the morning at 3.00am, which featured hours of Beatles as they searched for the Nation’s Favourite Beatles No. One single [Hey Jude] but Shelia E noted to check the drum intro from Ringo on Day Tripper the drum rolls he uses are FAST!)

The Beatles perform ‘Rain’ and ‘Paperback Writer’ on BBC TV show 'Top Of The Pops’ in London on 16th June 1966 and by then when 'HELP!' their second film came out, I definitely knew something was going on, something special, something a part of me. Deep down. Something was definitely happening . . . . .

definitely  . . . . 

The Beatles perform ‘Rain’ and ‘Paperback Writer’ on BBC TV show 'Top Of The Pops’ in London on 16th June 1966 and I knew something was going on, something special, something a part of me. Deep down. Something was definitely happening . . . . . 

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BIG O Ezine 

ANYWAY, ANYHOW, ANYWHERE (All the news this week)

TAYLOR SWIFT CALLED AN 'OBNOXIOUS NAZI BARBIE'

Taylor Swift with her squad.

Taylor Swift has been criticised for being elitist and presenting a "silly, regressive public image" by famed feminist author Camille Paglia, who has also labelled the star an "obnoxious Nazi Barbie". Paglia has penned a think piece for The Hollywood Reporter in which she critiques Swift's modern brand of 'girl squad' feminism and portrays her as elitist and self-gratifying, reported NME, Dec 11, 2015.

In her colourful manner, Paglia writes: "In our wide-open modern era of independent careers, girl squads can help women advance if they avoid presenting a silly, regressive public image - as in the tittering, tongues-out mugging of Swift's bear-hugging posse. Swift herself should retire that obnoxious Nazi Barbie routine of wheeling out friends and celebrities as performance props, an exhibitionistic overkill that Lara Marie Schoenhals brilliantly parodied in her scathing viral video 'Please Welcome to the Stage'.

"Writing about Taylor Swift is a horrific ordeal for me because her twinkly persona is such a scary flashback to the fascist blondes who ruled the social scene during my youth."

She continued: "Girl squads ought to be about mentoring, exchanging advice and experience and launching exciting and innovative joint projects. Women need to study the immensely productive dynamic of male bonding in history. With their results-oriented teamwork, men largely have escaped the sexual jealousy, emotionalism and spiteful turf wars that sometimes dog women.

"If women in Hollywood seek a broad audience, they must aim higher and transcend a narrow gender factionalism that thrives on grievance. Girl squads are only an early learning stage of female development. For women to leave a lasting mark on culture, they need to cut down on the socializing and focus like a laser on their own creative gifts."

Might we also add, Taylor Swift is a control freak as she embarks once again on copyrighting her album titles, song lyrics and phrases (click here). She's become the Mickey Mouse of superstar musicians, following that rodent's practice to sue anyone who infringes its image.

SWIFT MIS-STEP

A drawing of a red-coloured fox has become a copyright issue for pop diva Taylor Swift. An American artist Ally Burguieres has taken to Facebook to call out the 26-year-old singer for using one of her artworks to promote a Taylor Swift album without her permission or offering compensation. In October 2014, in the lead up to the release of her album 1989, Swift posted a picture of a hand-drawn fox with the song lyrics "They are the hunters we are the foxes and we run..." written beside it. Ms Burguieres claims she is the original artist of the fox, which was signed by someone else in Swift's post. The issue has dragged till now, a year later, without a resolution. The artist has now posted an open letter on Facebook to shame Taylor Swift. Read the story here.

JOHN LENNON 1940 - 1980

(ten minutes silence)

Oh, No Not John 

35 years ago this week, John Lennon, was shot and killed outside his New York City apartment building on December 8, 1980, and he didn’t have a funeral. His wife, Yoko Ono, asked people around the world to pray for John’s soul at a designated time. 

On December 14th, fans around the world gathered in public squares at 2pm ET for 10 minutes of silence. More than 100,000 people assembled in New York’s Central Park to pay their respects.

I too observed the silence in my parents house in their front room, sitting on the floor and my mother and father were kind enough to make no noise and leave me undisturbed and in that way joined in also in ten minutes silence. 

The front room was like a music room where I had discovered music as a child and where dad had played me so much classical music and then where I had listened to so much with my brother and all our friends, learned to play the piano and the electronic organ, eventually learning the guitars and where I had first heard 'With The Beatles', 'Rubber Soul', 'Revolver' and where we first played 'Sgt. Peppers'.

This news just in from the peerless Emily Barker - news of her new music for the film Hector starring Peter Mullan . . . . . .

"Hello Greetings from Switzerland, where I played one show last night in between all the shows on my current tour of Germany... Back home in the UK, today is the day Hector is released. It's been a long road, and one that I've so much enjoyed being on, working with the wonderfully talented Jake Gavin - this is his first feature film - and my first full soundtrack - it's so exciting to see it hitting the big screen all over the UK from today (it will also be showing in France and Australia, and with luck a few other countries too). Along with the film, there's also this video for the film's title track 'Anywhere Away'... I spent an afternoon with Jake filming my parts and he edited it in with scenes from the film - hope you enjoy it! Emily x"

Anywhere Away EP Songs from Hector Alongside the release of the film, I've also put together an EP featuring the three songs from the film: 'Anywhere Away', 'Wheels and White Lines' (featuring Roddy Hart on vocals) and 'Roll Me in Your Arms'. The EP available now (CD and download) from my Bandcamp store (as well as on iTunes, Spotify etc.). Proceeds from the single will be donated to London homeless charity, Shelter from the Storm.

Anywhere Away EP >> Live on air in 2011, Dermot O’Leary asked me if music for film and TV was something I wanted to do more of. The Red Clay Halo and I had just performed ‘Pause’ live on Dermot’s BBC Radio 2 show, a song which had recently been used as the theme to BBC noir thriller The Shadow Line. Listening in to the show that afternoon, as I answered an emphatic “Yes!”, was film maker Jake Gavin. This is the first song from the soundtrack I subsequently composed for Jake’s directorial debut, Hector. Peter Mullan stars in the title role as homeless Hector McAdam, making his annual journey from Glasgow to spend Christmas at a London shelter, his back story unfolding as his journey progresses. Given the bleak backdrop of homelessness in the UK, the film actually tells a rather uplifting story, highlighting the random acts of kindness from strangers that can bring hope at difficult times. ‘Anywhere Away’ was written for Hector, but also connects with that feeling all of us have faced at one time or another: the feeling that we are being overwhelmed by circumstances out of our control, and the only place we want to be is any place but the one we’re in. Jake Gavin shot this video and edited it together with scenes from the film... The single is available now from my own shop here: https://emilybarker.bandcamp.com/albu... or iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/any... and on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/3FYr1S... Proceeds from the single will be donated to Shelter From The Storm. http://sfts.org.uk http://www.emilybarker.com http://facebook.com/emilybarkerhalo http://twitter.com/emilybarkerhalo http://instagram.com/emilybarkerhalo Greetings  Emily Barker just released Anywhere Away (Songs from the Jake Gavin film 'Hector'), check it out here.  Enjoy!

EELS!

All eels are born in one place, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in the Sargasso Sea.

* whichever species whether American (Anguilla Rostrata) or European (Anguilla Anguilla), after they reach a certain age they depart for their seperate countries! (How they know where to go and which lot to head off with is anybody's guess) 

They also return here to breed and to die. All of them!

Rostrata live for up to forty years, European ones twice that at up to as much as eighty years old.

Their blood is toxic to humans . . . . . . 

How to make a mouse: The bizarre 'recipes' borne of spontaneous generation

portrait of a mouse visitor andyswapp 2010 

I come across articles that I really enjoy and often quite randomly this at The wonderful Mother Nature Network by Laura Moss is one such and is a wonderment. I am especially fond of theories like the flat earth society, the treatments recommended by Pliny and these are no exception either. I believe them to be true. Especially how to make Barnacle geese and the making of a mouse!

It was once widely accepted that the planet was flat and the sun orbited the Earth. It was also commonly believed you could make a mouse by placing a dirty shirt in a container of wheat.

"If a soiled shirt is placed in the opening of a vessel containing grains of wheat, the reaction of the leaven in the shirt with fumes from the wheat will, after approximately 21 days, transform the wheat into mice," wrote 17th-century Flemish chemist Jean Baptiste van Helmont.

This "recipe" for mice was a product of the body of thinking known as spontaneous generation.

People didn't have an explanation for how maggots materialized on old meat or how molluscs seemed to appear in the sea, so they surmised that such creatures simply arose from inanimate matter.

The idea wasn't unique to Europeans like Helmont. The Babylonians, Indians and Chinese drew similar conclusions based on their own observations.

Animal 'recipes'

Although people across the globe came up with a variety of ways in which animals were created, Helmont's "recipes" are perhaps the most creative.

For example, take his method of scorpion manufacture: Carve an indentation in a brick, fill it with basil, cover the hole with another brick and place it in the sun.

In a matter of days, "fumes from the basil, acting as a leavening agent, will have transformed the vegetable matter into veritable scorpions," he wrote.

How did other animals supposedly spontaneously generate?

Bees were once thought to swarm from the corpses of partially buried dead bulls.

Salamanders were born from fire. It's likely that people sitting around fires saw the unfortunate animals — which often hide in logs — crawling out of the flames.

Because cities lacked sewage systems and proper waste disposal methods, they threw trash into the streets, which attracted rats and led people to believe rats were generated from garbage.

After observing flooded rivers leaving behind both mud and frogs, it was assumed that wet soil created the amphibians.

English scientist Edward Heron-Allen wrote one of the most detailed descriptions of spontaneous generation when he described the origin of barnacle geese.

He said they hung from their beaks along the sea until they grew feathers and either fell into the water or flew away.

"I have frequently seen, with my own eyes, more than a thousand of these small bodies of birds, hanging down on the sea-shore from one piece of timber, enclosed in their shells, and already formed," he wrote.

By: Laura Moss

Read more: http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/how-to-make-a-mouse-the-bizarre-recipes-borne-of-spontaneous#ixzz37vDVwVEc

http://www.mnn.com/users/lmoss