Today's news.   

Things we have learned lately (another in an ongoing if somewhat sporadic series)

Keep a weather eye out from now on for drunken Vegans!

A Sienese wine producer, Alberto Cenni, from Fattoria Casabianca has produced the first wine not to use gelatin or fish-bladder membranes which we delicately and sneakily call isinglass. Doesn't it sound romantic, almost innocent!? Certainly exotic, it is truly revolting!

Isinglass - eeeyewwww!

Obviously vegetarians and vegans have never drunk alcohol up to now that would be hypocritical but watch out from now on as they lurch around corners carrying bottles of the stuff. They'll get a taste for it mark my words!

But I didn't inhale!

Indonesians didn't have much choice when the authorities "accidently" set light to three tonnes of seized marijuana. (Doesn't look accidental to me) Residents of a West Jakarta suburb around the police station offices complained of headaches and feeling"dizzy" on finding themselves engulfed by fumes and smoke. Most of the police seemed to be adequately forewarned however and wore gas masks!(some of them . . . . )

Sneaky lot! Not, I would have thought, something to be caught out on so close to an election?

John Bercow was close to tears today as MPs dramatically defeated a Tory plot to oust him as Commons Speaker

Am I the only one despairing of politicians behaviour in the beginning of the run up to an election? Apart from clearly not telling us anything they are going to do before we elect them their underhand and frankly appallingly school playground behaviour of late beggars belief. The Government seem to have been hoist with their own petard after a particularly underhand move to oust the Speaker of the House, John Bercow, but it fell foul of their own members. Now I'm not the biggest fan of Mr Bercow (or his fame hungry wife) and he may have raised hackles from time to time but for him to have been reduced to being close to tears is underhand "jiggery-pokery" of the poorest sort. A nasty vindictive stealth move that resulted in its Machiavellian perpetrator, one Mr William Hague on his last day of his parliamentary career (Hoorah!), being described as "grubby", "squalid" and "nauseous"! Which sounds about right to me and one for the history books to note for one who showed such promise as Thatcher's Golden youth! So much promise to come to this to find yourself leaving parliament siding with the despicable Michael Gove in such a nasty devious attack on democracy.

Commons Leader William Hague today defended the move which Labour branded 'petty and spiteful'

No it isn't April Fools!

MEANWHILE
I am mildly horrified to learn that MacDonald's has launched its own clothing range. Based apparently on inspiration by their Big Mac! You couldn't make it up!

THEA GILMORE

New album announced - coming soon - Ghosts and Graffiti

THE GRATEFUL DEAD

I have been listening to The Grateful Dead a lot lately, largely thanks to a Forum I belong to where the amazing guy who runs it is a real Dead Head amongst other things (being a fine fine singer songwriter in his own write, Bob Dylan, TTRH etc) He has posted some awesome recordings and they have been on my decks hour by hour passing the choogling time away and I have rekindled my appreciation having left them around the time Pigpen McKeirnan passed away and along with lots of other stuff gong on I had stopped listening to them. My dear old school friend Billy passed away last year and it was he who originally turned me on to them around the time of the release of Workingman's Dead. So this is in part dedicated to them . . . . .

Pigpen

Now Big O have had a mini (sic?) festival of posting boots from the boys not least because legendary bootleggers like Charlie Miller and David Latvala have been cleaning up and re-issuing tapes from as long ago as 1969

Now Big O only tend to make these available for a couple of weeks so I post them here on that understanding you need to get them downloaded a bit smartish before they all disappear again ( you could always ask them to re-up the files but it is worth checking them out now).
I really admire the guys over at Big O and these are merely links to their website so any gripes take it up with them yes?

The Grateful Dead - Philadelphia 1983

http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=2258

# THE GRATEFUL DEAD - NEW YORK 1972

http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=2255

# THE GRATEFUL DEAD - BOSTON 1973

http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=2254

# THE GRATEFUL DEAD - FILLMORE WEST (JUNE 7, 1970)

http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=2253

# THE GRATEFUL DEAD - FILLMORE WEST (JUNE 6, 1970)

http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=2252

The Grateful Dead Fillmore West - June 5, 1970

http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=2249

# THE GRATEFUL DEAD - CHICAGO 1971

http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=2251

# THE GRATEFUL DEAD (WITH JANIS JOPLIN) - FILLMORE WEST 1969

http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=2250

 Now they also suddeny posted this one from their archive and the text hit me for six as it was the last concert by the Dead before Jerry passed away in rehab from a heart attack due to the effects of his heroin addiction and the text there really moved me so I reproduce it here in tribute to Croz at the ROIO Forum, to Jerry Garcia and Deadheads everywhere

# Grateful Dead Chicago 1995

The LAST CONCERT

http://www.bigozine2.com/features05/GDremember.html

Remember The Dead
Jerry Garcia (1942-August 9, 1995)

In the months before Jerry Garcia died on August 9, there were many unprecedented events that plagued the Grateful Dead on their final tour of 1995. There was a near riot and gate crash at Deer Creek Music Center in Noblesville on July 2, which forced the cancellation of the next night's show. The gatecrashes during the final tour have mostly been blamed on new fans of the Dead but three cities decided to take it out on the band, and the Dead were banned from playing Albany, NY; Highgate, VT; and Noblesville, Ind. Then some fans were struck by lightning. And a structure in a camp ground occupied by Dead fans collapsed. Both incidents were like something out of the Twilight Zone. There were persistent rumours of threats to Jerry Garcia’s life. It was at the show in Indianapolis that he received the first threat. He was reported to be afraid for his life. It seemed like something was going to happen. The Dead played their final gig at Soldier’s Field in Chicago on July 9, 1995. Then Jerry Garcia started taking heroin and committed himself into a drug rehab centre for two weeks at the end of July and everything seemed fine. He voluntarily admitted himself a second time into another centre at the beginning of August. It was here that he was found dead in bed at Serenity Knolls from a heart attack. The Grateful Dead started life avoiding the trappings of commercialism. They were outlaw hippies with ideals. The ideals were simple - they wanted to make great music for people to enjoy. They wanted to make music as best as they could. The Dead spent a lot of money and time perfecting their sound in the studio. This memorable anecdote comes to mind: In 1967, Joe Smith the exec who signed the Dead to Warner Brothers, wrote a letter to the Dead’s manager complaining of the time wasted in completing the Anthem Of The Sun album. "The Grateful Dead are not one of the top acts of the business yet," Smith wrote. "Their attitudes and their inability to take care of business when it’s time to do so would lead us to believe that they never will be truly important. No matter how talented your group is, it’s going to have to put something of itself into the business before it goes anywhere." Later, the letter was found with big capital letters scrawled on it the words, "FUCK YOU". The Deads’ attitude to business was typical hippie idealism. They looked after the fans, they cared for their music and they showed all this by allowing every concert they played to be taped by fans and shared. The Dead took great pains and at great expense to make their sound system the best money could buy. They treated their fans like real people not consumers of their records. Today when you hear about music "collectives" whether it’s the folks at Elephant Six or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the Dead were there at the beginning building a community, setting an example. On the internet, sharing of the Deads’ music won’t get you in trouble. The band also started their own indie label to put out high quality recordings of their many concerts from 1968 to 1995. They have a large and active mailing list of fans and there are numerous sites discussing the Deads’ music. When Tower Records opened in $ingapore in 1995, the American manager who stocked the magazine section filled it with Rolling Stones’ Jerry Garcia issue, not knowing if the Dead were popular here. He was paying tribute to a fellow traveller. The Grateful Dead seem immune to the trends of the rock business and the whims of fashion and technology. Neither the fast changes of the internet nor the fickleness of pop culture have affected their popularity and commercial appeal. The secret of their success is indeed simple. They cared. And in return we cared about them. - The Savage Hippo

#  Grateful Dead Long Beach 1985

http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=2092

# Grateful Dead with The Beach Boys Fillmore East 1971

http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=830

# Grateful Dead Warlok

http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=1745

# Grateful Dead with Joan Baez San Mateo 1981

http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=1149

In the summer of 1969, John Dawson was looking to showcase his songs while Jerry Garcia was looking to practise his brand new pedal steel guitar. The two played in coffeehouses and small clubs initially, and the music they made became the nucleus for a band - the New Riders Of The Purple Sage. That same year, David Nelson, expert in both country and rock guitar, joined the group on electric lead guitar. Filling out the rhythm section in those early days were Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart and engineer Bob Matthews on bass, who was later replaced by Phil Lesh. In 1970, Dave Torbert took over on bass and the New Riders played every chance they got.

# New Riders Of The Purple Sage Fillmore West 1971

http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=2245

and for what it's worth ( a lot actually!) there's a lovely NRPS set too available over on the archive:

New Riders of The Purple Sage - 28th April 1971 (Charlie Miller)

  

Deadheads

 

and try to remember . . . . . . 

This posting from the wonderful Ideas & Images from Portsmouth and Beyond by Johnny C

This posting from the wonderful Ideas & Images from Portsmouth and Beyond by Johnny C    working in a similar field I was moved by this piece and have worked with many a Bert . . . . . . . .   Bert knew things… by johnnyc1959

A story of sorts....a prologue maybe...

Bert knew things. It wasn't always apparent though,since for most of the day he did little more than sit in his chair at the back of the home, waiting for someone to pass by. Years of drinking had slowly stripped him of his ability to remember the everyday details. These days he couldn't always tell you what day of the week it was, or what he'd eaten for breakfast yesterday. It also wasn't entirely clear whether he'd chosen to stop drinking or whether he'd simply forgotten. But ask the right questions and he could tell you about his life on the road or recount in great detail stories of his time working on trawlers in the North Sea.

Compass... John Callaway 2015

I've known Bert (not his real name) for a good thirty years. He's been in and out of most of the hostels in Southampton, but more often than not he slept rough under one of the bridges which spanned the Itchen River, tucked out of the way. You could never tell with Bert where he was going to get his head down...it all depended on whether it was pay day, whether he'd been barred from a particular hostel, or more realistically how much alcohol he'd had to drink and how far he could manage to walk.

The Seaman's Mission was a useful starting point...Bert had his ticket which got him through the door, but sometimes the problem was payment. The Salvation Army was 'dry' and so that was often ruled out straight away. The ’Spike’ was a little more accessible, but you had to take your chance with everyone else and it was a good two or three miles walk out of the city; after which there was no guarantee that you'd get a bed.

Ebb & Flow... John Callaway 2015

Even when the dormitory accommodation was ended, the idea of a single room in a hostel with 50 or so other drinkers, panhandlers, madmen and other assorted chancers wasn't really so much a choice, but a matter of necessity. Over the years I've lost count of the number of men who said they'd sooner sleep rough than spend a night under the same roof as 'all them fucking lunatics'. And in truth why would you, when sometimes the only shared experience that you had was an ability to drink yourself into oblivion; you wouldn't choose to have most of them behind your front door when you went to sleep.

It's funny how quick people are to label men like Bert and to dismiss them as little more than "just another drinker", as if nothing else really mattered....

To be continued... check Johnny C's website here he is a fine photographer and works in the homeless sector down on the south coast

Bringing It All Back Home . . . . 

50 Years Ago today . . . .

Bob Dylan's fifth album came out 50 years ago today and once more he blew everyone's socks off if not their minds. The so called beginning of electric Bobby (it wasn't! his single 'Mixed Up Confusion was electric some three years earlier for one) ) but it had some strange STRANGE songs on board [check Bob's 115th Dream if you want some amphetamine fuelled lyrical surrealism]

The albums either side of this masterpiece and certainly the next three with this as the first and culminating in 'Blonde on Blonde' stand as one of the world's most creative periods in any artist's oeuvre without any doubt and arguments centre about what might be best considered Bob's best album of all time (impossible I know but these three alone are generally considered indispensable in any mature collection of vinyl records IMHO)

It also featured a contender for the first rock promo video with the beginning clips of D.A Pennebaker's film 'Don't Look Back' and 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' has come to be considered amongst the first but in reality was a part of the legendary film

NU-TROGLODYTE MANIFESTO

by Jarvis Cocker

Where can you find peace?
Where can you find total silence?
Complete darkness?
Here.
No phone reception.
No wi-fi.
No TV.
No radio.
This is the real sound of the Underground: (cos it is, y'know actually underground)
No outside influences whatsoever.
A blank canvas.
Well, not exactly blank - look at those walls: what do you see when you look there? Can you see faces? Patterns? They're not really there you know - just like there aren't any scorpions or bears or hunters up in the night sky. No, they're just dot-to-dot pictures invented by some forgotten caveman. The universe is random: only man tries to give it a pattern. To make it mean something.
But aren't these patterns good enough as they are? Without any interpretation? And wouldn't you love to be able to make something as beautiful as this? Of course you would. But no one made it: it just happened.
Stalagmites
Stalactites
Which is which?
"Tights come down" - (a crude but effective way to remember)
These things take over 20,000 years to form, you know.
And I thought I was a slow workerŠ
Is it a coincidence that the club that gave birth to the most significant and influential musical group of the past century was called "The Cavern"?
I don't think so.
And why are all the best nightclubs in dark, dingy basements with low ceilings?
Easy:
Because it reminds us of being hereŠ Back in the cave. I mean - c'mon: why do you think it was even called "Rock Music" in the first place?
This is where it all began
A member of your family once lived here
The original Des-Res
Now it's time to come home
Time to come back to the source
Time to escape the constant, endless, meaningless jabbering that distracts you from who you really are and what you really want to do.
There's room to think in here
Room to live
Come in (mind your head)
Sit down
Stare at a rock
Let's start all over again.

Published online by Another Man S/S15, March 11, 2015. (click here)

	Leonard Cohen Releases "Can't Forget: A Souvenir of the Grand Tour" - May 12, 2015 Leonard Cohen releases Can’t Forget: A Souvenir of the Grand Tour on May 12, 2015.  The ten songs of this hypnotic album are Cohen rarities recorded on his recent, celebrated "Old Ideas World Tour."  Remarkably, this is Cohen’s third album release since last September’s Platinum selling Popular Problems which garnered four 2015 JUNO AWARD nominations and won for the coveted ‘Album of the Year’. The songs on Can’t Forget have the immediacy, spontaneity, and thrilling intimacy of the best studio recordings made in the white heat of live performance and Cohen's legendary soundchecks, in which he brings the colors of his virtuoso band to full bloom in harmony with his voice, never more seductive. Here is a full range of Leonard Cohen's work: new songs including, from the realm of blues, the wickedly funny "Got a Little Secret" and "Never Gave Nobody Trouble";   luxurious performances of such Cohen masterpieces as "I Can't Forget," "Light As the Breeze," "Night Comes On," and a sublime "Joan of Arc". Cohen also treats us to a gripping version of the Quebecois love song "La Manic," performed before a captivated audience in Quebec City, and a moving tribute cover of the late country master George Jones's "Choices." These are songs and performances of the first order that you can't forget. Can’t Forget is available for pre-order at all digital service providers, where fans will receive "Never Gave Nobody Trouble" instantly with purchase. You can preview "Never Gave Nobody Trouble" at The Guardian (click to listen). Cohen’s live concert tours were met with extraordinary and unanimous accolades as he performed around the world from 2008 through 2013. His mesmerizing performances totaled 470 shows in 31 countries, attended by four million fans.  Can’t Forget gives listeners an extremely special glimpse into Cohen’s intimate rehearsal process, widely known to be in-depth ‘concerts before the concert!,’ heard by fans for the first time with this new record.  Cohen continues to work with vocalists, musicians, producers and engineers who are the best in the business. Can’t Forget: A Souvenir of the Grand Tour Tracklisting: 1. Field Commander Cohen 2. I Can’t Forget 3. Light as the Breeze 4. La Manic ++ (originally by Georges Dor) 5. Night Comes On 6. Never Gave Nobody Trouble *** 7. Joan of Arc 8. Got a Little Secret *** 9. Choices ++ (originally by George Jones) 10. Stages *** New original Leonard Cohen songs ++ Covers never previously recorded by Cohen

 Johnny Flynn

Just noticed that theme tune by Johnny Flynn to the wonderful "Dectectorists' series by Mackenzie Crook and staring he and Toby Jones is back available on youtube I urge everyone to buy it, to buy his album and to download or get the DVD of the TV show . . . . . .


Johnny Flynn - The Dectectorists

I posted a version of 'Water' with Laura Marling when the 'Dectectorists' TV series started so here's another version  . . . . .

I feel ashamed to say I didn't know Johnny's work when I first heard the theme and like the 'Wilful Missing' band I came across them/him through my telebox and nothing wrong with that! I thought Johnny reminded me of Nic Jones and his voice and guitar made me sit up and take notice, mesmerised me and fascinated all that the same time . . . had to check him out from that haunting voice and what do ya know?! Here's another youngster restoring one's faith that music especially that of one voice and guitar, will never die . . . . . .  keep carrying the torch young man!

Peerless stuff IMHO


The Dectectorists (theme) The Line of Best Fit
Love it!

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/id821034898
The Album 'Country Mile' on iTunes here

Johnny Flynn web