30.7.10

Change strip...

In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.

Ivan Illich in Tools For Conviviality (1973)




Fans groups have hit out at the increased number of Premier League clubs who are launching a new home shirt every season.

In 2000, the Premier League charter pledged that replica strips would be released every two seasons to save fans digging into their pockets too often.

But 18 clubs issued a new home shirt last season and all 20 Premier League clubs are doing the same this term.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/8848630.stm

Remember- you don't have to buy them...

29.7.10

Santic and Friends- A Even Harder Shade of Black



Not the best known of the Jamaican record producers of the 1970's, Leonard 'Santic' Chin did however work with many big names, producing roots, dub and DJ version hits. He had a great studio band to work with:
Reggy- guitar
Family Man Barret, Leroy Sibbles- bass
Tin Leg- drums
Augustus Pablo- melodica and keys
Leonard moved to London in 1975 (he was still only 22 yrs old) and remains active to this day.





28.7.10

27.7.10

The Insane Ward at the Naval Hospital , Vladivostok.

Photograph by John Van Rensslaer Hoff (c.1905)

17.7.10

The Dead Kennedys



Fair play- there's a couple of clips from this session on Youtube- and to my mind they represent the high point of the punk genre.

15.7.10

Hugh Welch Diamond




Inmates of the Surrey County Asylum (England) -1850's- photographed by Dr Hugh Welch Diamond.

11.7.10

Everywhere looks more and more like everywhere else...



I had this dream- I was on the edges of the town- near the by-pass, in a retail park.one of those bleak hinterlands of DIY stores, warehouses, depots, dual carriageways with littered verges, clusters of unnameable shrubs catching the styrofoam, bubble wrap and pizza boxes. Neglected chain fences. Over flowing skips. Bottle banks.



A burger trailer, one of those insubstantial boxish looking caravans, parked in a huge car park. The name PORKY’S is painted on the burger trailer. Also there are paintings of burgers, cups of steaming tea and hot dogs. in front of the caravan, all in the space of a vacant parking space stand blackboards, a litterbin and some folding chairs.


We are sitting at a flimsy plastic table with tin ashtrays and my companion is saying over and over…

'...it's now a global phenomenon-this process of making everywhere look more and more like everywhere else...'
Where do I know this guy from? He's a couple at lunchtime drunk, looks a bit schoolmasterish, substantial, riled.
'... making everywhere look more and more like everywhere else...'



In 1955 , Ian Nairn (1930-1983) wrote an article for the Architectural Review called Outrage: On the Disfigurement of Town and Countryside (Architectural Review special June 1955; -your local library can get you a copy if you're interested unless you've got about £500 to spare). The essay was based around a journey along a line drawn from Southampton to Carlisle, and aired Nairn's grim prophecy that soon the whole of Britain would look like the homogeneous fringes of a town. He coined the term Subtopia to describe this anonymous hinterland.By the tame Nairn was making his TV programmes in the 1970's much of his prophecy had already been realised.

In the 2005 film, Three Hours From Here Andrew Cross retraced the extensive journey across England that Nairn took in order to research and write Outrage in 1955.

8.7.10

Would-be-goods- The Camera Loves Me (1988)

Twee. Imagine the most twee record that you can remember from the golden age of twee in the late eighties and then times the twee by twenty. Named from a story by Edwardian children's author E.Nesbitt- says it all really.
However- I've included it here on account of my devotion to The Monochrome Set, who provide the backing tracks.



5.7.10

Waxy Flexibility...




Emil Kraepelin. Psychiatrie: Ein Lehrbuch fur Studirende und Aerzte. Sechste, vollstandig umgearbeitete Auflage. Leipzig: Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1899.

3.7.10

Erazerhead- Shell Shock 7" (1982)


Ramones clones from London. The A-side is a little too long at two minutes thirty...Keen eyed readers will notice that Erazerhead spelled their name differently from the title of David Lynch's dark masterpiece Eraserhead. In case he sued, apparently.