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Friday, November 30, 2012

OUT OF TRACTION, BACK IN ACTION!

well not that I've actually been intraction (so you're lying then? ED) well it's the thought that counts.....er, I mean it's poetic license.....(Have you got one of those cos let's face it your driving licence didn't help you much did it?! ED) Oh shut up! Let me get on with it now I have permission to type and am back on the full-time work situation I need to catch the guys up with some Zimmy and some Groobin Stooves!

Annnnnyhooo, here's the link of links to the last concert of the year 2012 of Neverending Tour for 
His Bobness!
This from the concerts with The Sultan Of Swing hisself, Mark Knopfler

Now, I have not checked this out yet but Big O says the following so you have been warned . . . . . Chuck Armstrong wrote at ultimateclassicrock.com:

Less than half an hour after [support act Mark] Knopfler’s performance, Dylan and his band walked out on-stage and immediately broke into 1967’s You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere. As typical with any Dylan performance, there was no chit-chat with the audience, only rocking song after rocking song. The only time Dylan took a break from the music was to introduce his band, which consisted of long-time members like bassist Tony Garnier and drummer George Receli, as well as pedal steel guitarist Donnie Herron, guitarist Stu Kimball and a legend in his own right, guitarist Charlie Sexton. Dylan’s set included classic tracks like Highway 61 Revisited and Tangled Up in Blue, and he also jammed on two brand new tracks from his latest studio album, Tempest - Early Roman Kings and Soon After Midnight. Playing mainly on a grand piano, Dylan also spent some time behind an electric piano as well as showing off his phenomenal mouth harp skills with his harmonica. From Knopfler joining Dylan and his band onstage for a handful of songs to the encore of the one and only tune, Blowin’ in the Wind, Dylan’s final scheduled performance of 2012 exceeded expectations. Fans might also want to search out a copy of the JF Master version of this show. While it is also an audience recording, Dylan’s vocals are clearer and the sound is much brighter. Unfortunately, the original uploader does not allow it to be shared lossy.


For those of you not happy with trying to scrape around in the penny jar to raise your £950 for a Stones ticket to watch a bunch of septuagenarian's looning around through the wrong end of a looking glass here the MEWSIC!

 Ladies and Gentlemen, the Oldest Rock n Roll Band in the World . . . . . .

THE GROOBIN' STOOVES! 

I dedicate these two boots to the memory of my dear dear friend Stephen Blackman who rekindled my waning interest in both Bob and the Groobers some years ago now so that we became obsessed (again)and as I have mentioned we went to see His Bobness at The Roundhouse gig back in 2009. 

I miss you Stevie everyday.........

Saturday, November 17, 2012


BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM

The Democratic Party has won the election and the privilege to sit in power while the US economy crumbles bit by bit over the next four years. Watch the tea leaves with Michael Hudson.
The Democrats could not have won so handily without the Citizens United ruling. That is what enabled the Koch Brothers to spend their billions to support right-wing candidates that barked and growled like sheep dogs to give voters little civilized option but to vote for “the lesser evil.”
This will be President Obama’s epitaph for future historians. Orchestrating the election like a World Wrestling Federation melodrama, the Tea Party’s sponsors threw billions of dollars into the campaign to cast the President’s party in the role of “good cop” against stereotyped opponents attacking women’s rights, Hispanics and nearly every other hyphenated-American interest group.
In Connecticut, Senate candidate Linda McMahon spent a reported US$97 million (including her earlier ego trip) to make her Democratic challenger look good. It was that way throughout the country. Republicans are pretending to wring their hands at their defeat, leaving the Democrats to beat up their constituency and take the blame four years from now.
Obama’s two presidential victories represent an object lesson about how the 1% managed to avoid rescuing the economy - and especially his own constituency - from today’s rush of wealth to the top. Future political analysts will see this delivery of his voters to his Wall Street campaign contributors control as his historical role.

Republicans are pretending to wring their hands at their defeat, leaving the Democrats to beat up their constituency and take the blame four years from now.

In the face of overwhelming voter opposition to the Bush-Cheney policies, the President has averted popular demands to save the economy from the 1%. Instead of sponsoring the hope and change he promised by confronting Wall Street, the pharmaceutical and health care monopolies, the military-industrial complex and big oil and gas, he has appeased them as if There is No Alternative.
If the Republicans are correct in accusing President Obama of steering America along the “European” course, it is not really socialism. It is neoliberal financial austerity, Greek style. His task over the next two months is to avoid using deficit spending to revive the economy.
The neoliberals whom he appointed as a majority on the Simpson-Bowles Commission already have inflated their trial balloon claiming that the government must balance the budget by slashing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, not by restoring progressive taxation. My UMKC colleague Bill Black calls this the Great Betrayal. “Only a Democrat can make it politically safe for Republicans, who hate the safety net, to unravel it” he notes. [1]
Having appointed the Bowles-Simpson commission members who seek to shift the tax burden off business onto consumers, the President will pave the way for Bush-type privatization. In his first debate with Mitt Romney, Mr Obama assured his audience that they were in agreement on the need to balance the budget (his euphemism for scaling back Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid). By christening this “the Great Bargain,” President Obama has refined Orwellian doublethink. It is as if George Orwell went to work on Madison Avenue.
Four years ago, the economy stood at a potential turning point in the war of finance against labor and industry, President Obama could have mobilize public support for politicians willing to rescue hopes for prosperity. He could have appointed a Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve chairman who would have used the government’s majority control of Citibank, Bank of America and other “troubled asset” holders to take these into the government sector to provide a public option.

Having been elected with an enormous voter mandate, Mr Obama could have reversed the sharp polarization between creditors who were pushing the 99%, industry and real estate, cities and states deeper into financial distress. Instead, his policies have enabled the 1% to monopolize 93% of America’s income gains since the 2008 financial crisis.

He could have written down debts to payable levels at only a fraction of the cost that was spent on rescuing Wall Street. Obama’s political genius was to avoid doing this and nonetheless keep his “street cred” as paladin defending the 99% rather than the 1%.
Having been elected with an enormous voter mandate, Mr Obama could have reversed the sharp polarization between creditors who were pushing the 99%, industry and real estate, cities and states deeper into financial distress. Instead, his policies have enabled the 1% to monopolize 93% of America’s income gains since the 2008 financial crisis.
At a potential turning point in the direction the American economy was taking, rescue and change were averted. We have seen what will stand as a classic example of cynical Orwellian doublethink. Promising hope and change four years ago, President Obama’s role was to hold back the tide and divert voter pressure for change.
He rescued the financial sector and the 1%, and sponsored the Republican privatization of health care instead of the public option, and to take $13 trillion onto the government balance sheet in the form of junk mortgages, largely fraudulent loans held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ($5.2 trillion alone) and other casino capitalist gambles gone bad. Mr Obama was Wall Street’s white knight.
The trick was to get re-elected as a Democrat rather than as a Republican sponsoring a health care plan crafted by the Koch Brothers’ Cato Institute, and putting Wall Street bank lobbyists in charge of the Treasury and (de)regulatory agencies. As a Blue Dog Democrat, how was President Obama made to look better than the alternative?

Big fish eat little fish, and the 1% are devouring the 99%. Those who describe how this is happening are accused of class war… What is collapsing is the idea of equity and fairness in the economy - and in the politicians that are remaking markets to benefit the 1%.

The answer is clear by looking at the alternatives being offered. The Republicans have played ball. They call him a socialist - not too far fetched when we look at how Europe’s Socialist, Social Democrat and Labour parties are backing austerity and supporting anti-labor policies, privatization sell-offs and other neo-oligarchic policies. That is what socialism seems to mean these days.
While corporate profits are recovering nicely, most peoples’ savings and the net worth of their homes are down. This is not economically sustainable. Something has to give - and voters are afraid that it will be their wages and savings. As corporate pensions plans are being cut back or reduced in bankruptcy, their under-funding suggests that debts to retirees will not be honored - only those to Wall Street. Big fish eat little fish, and the 1% are devouring the 99%. Those who describe how this is happening are accused of class war.
It is not the old fashioned class war of industry against employees. It is a war of finance against the entire economy. And as Warren Buffett has noted, the financial class is winning. Instead of breaking up the banks, the five largest “Too Big to Fail” banks have grown even larger. With support from the White House, they used their TARP bailout money to buy smaller banks, turning the financial sector into a vast monopoly that is busy privatizing the election process so as to hold the government hostage.
What is collapsing is the idea of equity and fairness in the economy - and in the politicians that are remaking markets to benefit the 1%. Most voters opposed the bank bailouts of 2008. The Republicans were politically savvy enough not to vote for it, so that they could strike a populist stance. But Mr Romney has not picked up this line of attack, even though it might have enabled him to defeat a president in whom much of whose constituency has lost confidence.
There is disillusionment and many young people, minorities and the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” have been busy writing op-eds and blogs that this time they were going to “vote with their backsides” - by staying home. And that is pretty much what the election returns showed. Their complaint is that President Obama has broken nearly every campaign promise he made to voters - but not a single promise he made to his big campaign contributors!

That is the essence of being a politician today: to deliver one’s constituency of voters to the campaign contributors. In this respect Barack Obama is America’s version of Tony Blair; or alternatively, Margaret Thatcher and Neville Chamberlain rolled into one. We need a new word to describe this - something more than simply “irony.”

That is the essence of being a politician today: to deliver one’s constituency of voters to the campaign contributors. In this respect Barack Obama is America’s version of Tony Blair; or alternatively, Margaret Thatcher and Neville Chamberlain rolled into one. We need a new word to describe this - something more than simply “irony.”
It’s not just Mr Obama, of course. It’s the Democratic Party leadership. So here’s the litmus test to watch: On what committee and at what rank will the Senate put Elizabeth Warren?
Will she be named head of the Senate Banking Committee? Will she even be on it? Is she an embarrassment to Democratic fund-raisers on Wall Street - or window dressing to help give the impression that the Party really is other than crypto-Republican.
What inspired the Occupy Wall Street movement a year ago was a spontaneous protest against not only President Obama but also the Democratic Party for its lack of real effort to stem the right-wing tide. The Democrats did not rush to the OWS defense, although some operatives tried to jump in front of the parade and steer it into the usual liberal blind alley. (They did not succeed!) Voters have expressed a wish for just the opposite policy than the Democrats’ rightward turn, but the American political system excludes third parties, not being based on proportional representation as in Europe.
“By their fruits ye shall know them.” The Democrats took labor unions, minorities and middle class voters for granted because they had nowhere else to go, thanks to Mitt Romney giving Mr Obama wide room to move to the right wing of the political spectrum. This is the political wrestling match that is being scripted.

A new title is needed for a new pro-labor, anti-militarist coalition that would restore the spirit of true reform, progressive taxation and the rule of law (that is, throw financial crooks in jail).

We can see the denouement. As in Britain, unionized public-sector labor is being singled out. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, former White House Chief of Staff, showed his colors (and incensed Progressive Democrats) last week by signing a contract with the contractor of about 350 airport maintenance workers to cut back their wages by up to $5 an hour (from $15 to $10).
How will the “Not Blue Dog” Democrats respond? Will Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Tammy Baldwin and Alan Grayson in the Senate and House take on the President in opposing austerity and the appointment of yet more Wall Street lobbyists to his cabinet?
Here’s the dilemma the American president faces: Markets are shrinking, and consumers are having to repay debts they earlier took on during the heady Bubble Economy that crashed in 2008. Paying down these debts leaves less to spend on goods and services. Labor productivity is soaring - but not wages. While the bailout economy’s fruits are going to profits and paid out as interest and dividends, neoliberals are demanding that the retirement age be raised, not lowered, and that work hours be lengthened more, not shortened. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s helicopter only hovers over Wall Street, not the rest of the economy.
The middle class that voted so strongly for Mr Obama four years ago is being squeezed. To describe their plight, I expect the next four years to see the spread of a fresh vocabulary to describe what is happening: debt deflation and neofeudalism, while the classic terms rentier and oligarchy may become popular once again.
But neither party will use these words. Only a third party can do that. Right now its potential members are called “Independents.” A new title is needed for a new pro-labor, anti-militarist coalition that would restore the spirit of true reform, progressive taxation and the rule of law (that is, throw financial crooks in jail). The problem the economy faces is how to revive wages and consumer demand, and to write down personal debts, not government debt. Mr Obama has joined with the Republicans in perverting the vocabulary to pretend that government is the problem, not his campaign contributors on Wall Street.
Note: Michael Hudson’s new book summarizing his economic theories, “The Bubble and Beyond,” is available on Amazon. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. He can be reached via h@michael-hudson.com. The above article was posted at CounterPunch.

Monday, November 05, 2012


NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE - NEW ORLEANS 2012

Big O says ( for it is they!) 

Live at the Voodoo Experience, City Park, New Orleans, Louisiana; October 26, 2012. Excellent webcast.
The upside is that Neil Young & Crazy Horse are on a roll - they are on fire. The downside is that, given Young’s catalogue, he could have played a much more varied set. But this is still a great time to collect live Neil Young - the sound is great and the performances are equally great.
This is what Keith Spera (NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune) wrote:
In their jeans, T-shirts and work boots, accented by gray, thinning hair, glasses and/or a paunch, the four members of Neil Young & Crazy Horse looked like the guys who constructed Voodoo Fest’s main stage. Instead, they were the guys who deconstructed it… Young, bassist Billy Talbot, drummer Ralph Molina and rhythm guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro muscled through two exhilarating hours of especially stout guitar rock. If Gary Clark Jr. was a fighter jet at Voodoo, Crazy Horse was a squadron of B-52 bombers…
In his book, Young revealed that he had, on a doctor’s suggestion, given up both pot and alcohol after a lifetime of indulging. A clear head apparently agrees with him. He was animated, laughing and clowning with his bandmates in “Fuckin’ Up” and elsewhere. And his playing, concentrated at the middle and far end of his guitar’s neck, was superb…
At 11 pm, as an encore of “Like a Hurricane” blew itself out, Young sacrificed his guitar. He tore off the strings, scratching them against the instrument’s pickups to produce more distortion. As the guitar lay prone, he contemplated it and nudged it with his foot, as if to see whether it was really dead. It was. In one of the greatest Voodoo sets to date, Young, abetted by Crazy Horse, played it to death.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse Oct 26th 2012

Enjoy!
 Remember remember the 5th of November and if possible blow up the Houses of Parliament while you're about it!

Saturday, November 03, 2012

Hindsight is a dangerous thing as witnessed by the recent grilling of the new Head of the BBC re: the Savile Debacle

 Some setting of context is required . . . . Most of us of a certain age knew/know most of this . . .Gilbert Harding, Kenneth Williams (Julian & Sandy on 'Round the Horne' et al thinly veiled 'gay' speak of Polari that I adored and still do!) but is it dangerous to associate homosexuality (when it was illegal remember) with perversion that saw Joe Orton & pals feel that 12 was a bit too young for their boys but 14 year olds were fine!

 There is a notion that homosexuality and paedophilia are somehow linked and they aren't but it also seems to me that public school, boarding school traditions makes for the buggery of school boys for one, part of a culture that lends the lowest common denominator of moral behaviour to be taken for granted, 'schoolboys will do that don't cha know' - Lord of the Flies anyone?

 There are recent accounts of all sorts of 'actors', being known for such moral turpitude; the predatory lesbianism of Comic Actress (P.R.) for example . . .as one new female runner was warned not to get in a lift with her for fear of her legendary reputation of aggressive groping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .when friends went to TOTP studio we all knew Jimmy Savile was a creep and a "DJ" therefore beneath contempt, not a real artist or "star", but what about John Peel? We worshipped HIM! First wife 15 years old and girlfriends later not much older and often spoken about as funny, for after all we were all that age too! But dear old Auntie Beeb transported these people to stardom . . . . . .

Brilliant article here obtained from B3ta ezine. . .

 "Light entertainment: our paedophile culture" by Andrew O'Hagan (London Review of Books) http://cdn.lrb.co.uk/v34/n21/andrew-ohagan/light-entertainment 

 Brilliant article placing the current 'hysteria' in some context. Who's guilty? Why we all are!

Friday, November 02, 2012

VIDEO OF THE WEEK! 

For the sixth Crypt Covers, the most excellent 'Hope & Social' were joined by wunderbar Wonderband, "Wilful Missing". The idea behind the #cryptcovers is to attempt to record a cover track, chosen by the fans, in just one day.
I spent WAY too long thinking about what song they could cover and thought of all sorts of arty and interesting titles they might successful do together and really I shouldn't have worried.......what else would they come up with? ...........  .............why it stands to reason..........Who ya gonna call?
GHOSTBUSTERS!