Layer 547 . . . It was 50 years ago today - Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play . . .

Not quite true, of course. It was 50 years ago this week that the Beatles released their first single - Love Me Do. On October 5th 1962, to be precise.

It was 50 years ago this week the Beatles taught the world to play, in all senses of the word.

The Beatles were four strong characters who had worked and played hard for several years in dark, smoke-filled clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg, learning how to perform in a variety of styles for a variety of audiences, their music based mainly on the genres they loved best - rock and roll, and rhythm and blues.

They learned how to harmonise, how to improvise, and how to compose. None of them were musically trained, none of them could read music, but all of them were musically gifted. Yes - even Ringo, who was a very fine backbeat drummer. They were free spirits with an obvious love for the music they wanted to play - that of Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, etc.

They startled and delighted a world that had come to believe 'rock and roll' was a mere mid-50s flash in the pan which had been co-opted and sanitised by the likes of Tin Pan Alley, Billy Fury and Cliff Richard. From Little Richard to Cliff Richard was a descent into musical hell, and the Beatles were a true phoenix, a harbinger of a new world of musical energy whose various forms would evolve and mutate throughout the rest of that decade, and beyond.

The Beatles didn't so much ignore the music establishment of that time as take the piss out of it. They were irreverent, witty, sardonic and anarchic. They did their own thing, and what they did was amazing. Love Me Do begins with a blast of bluesy harmonica that was impossible to ignore - even when heard through the tinny speaker of a transistor radio. This was . . . different! This was the clarion call of a new Pied Piper - clear, inspirational and compelling. We heard it and we followed. We had no idea where it was heading but we knew we wanted to go there. Anywhere at all was better than Cliff Street and Billy Fury Boulevard.

In the fullness of time, of course, it led to the assassination of John Lennon and the mediocrity of a post-Beatles McCartney, but back then it was an era of pure gladness to be alive, and a era of real excitement, as with each passing week new talents emerged. The rock and roll virus hadn't, after all, been eradicated. It had incubated in guitar shops and teenage bedrooms where pimply adolescents had spent hours hardening their finger tips, memorising three-chord progressions and learning how to play.

Soon after the Beatles there came bluesier, grittier bands such as the Rolling Stones and the Animals - their names reflecting more down to earth instincts than the Beatles, whose name was a weak pun and whose songs frequently spoke of 'love' or of wanting to hold someone's hand. The Stones' first album kicked off with Route 66, telling the world to get out on the road and 'get your kicks'. The second track was Willie Dixon's 'I Just Want To Make Love To You', and you can't express yourself much more clearly than that. Eric Burden, meanwhile, told us of the perils of spending our lives in sin and misery if we visited the House of the Rising Sun. ["The whisky-soaked menace of his voice sounded at times like Old Nick incarnate." - Martin C Strong]

It occurs to me now that my very first week as a teenager was the week the Beatles' released Love Me Do and the Fab Four showed the world where music, and the counterculture, was heading. A strange coincidence, and a very great blessing.

See also:

October 1962: the month that modern culture was born

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/sep/29/october-1962-modern-culture

This week sees the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' first single. But as Love Me Do hit Britain's record shops, a series of issues – from the cold war to civil rights and sexual liberation – also started to shape a tumultuous decade and banish the austere mood of the 1950s

by Robert McCrum

Looking back, 1962 now seems to be the fascinating antechamber to the great party that was the 60s. But it's also a time capsule. Here are issues – civil rights nuclear disarmament, radical feminism, the dystopian imagination, secularisation – with which we are still grappling. But then the world was young – Lennon was about to turn 22, McCartney was just 20 – and Love Me Do, three words, two basic chords and a pocket harmonica, could change the hearts and minds of a generation.

See also:

http://oxzen.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/layer-506-inheritance-tracks-wax-laughs.html

http://oxzen.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/layer-448-magic-of-music-education.html

http://oxzen.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/layer-195-born-to-be-wild-and-route-66.html

http://oxzen.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/layer-462-voices-artists-adele-music.html

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Meanwhile, back here in the 21st Century, what do we have? Oxzen readers may recall some less than flattering comments posted on this blog recently about a band called Muse, who played at the Olympics closing ceremony. In fact some maniac decided that one of Muse's tracks, Survival, should become the 'official song' of the Olympic Games. Alexis Petridis had this to say about it, and them, in the Guardian recently:

"Comparisons are regularly made between their oeuvre and that of Queen, Rush and Radiohead . . . But none of them really capture the sheer level of trenchant preposterousness at which Muse operate. The most apposite comparison might be to say Muse have actually achieved what the Darkness set out to do: conquer the world with music that's clearly meant to be funny, but isn't supposed to be a joke.

You can see why the organisers thought Muse would be the right band to provide the official song of London 2012, but Survival didn't work – partly because it seems to have no tune whatsoever, but mostly because it didn't fit the event. The Olympics turned out to be as much about tiny human stories . . . as epic spectacle. With their choirs, string-laden intro, hysterical vocals and lyrics you might characterise as a bit Ayn Randy – "I chose to survive whatever it takes … vengeance is mine … Fight! Win!" – Muse got the scale but missed the humanity. Six albums in, this is a recurring problem: amusing and enjoyable as the aural histrionics are, you do start to wonder what, if anything, they're trying to express, or if it's just bombast for bombast's sake."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/sep/27/muse-the-2nd-law-review

Apparently the Fox News pundit Glen Beck is a long-standing fan of Muse, despite their labelling him previously as "a crazy rightwinger". This probably tells us as much about the nonsense lyrics and nasty music of Muse as it does about the sanity of Glen Beck.

Dorian Lynskey interviewed Muse for yesterday's Observer:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/sep/30/muse-2nd-law-tour-interview

Muse have sold more than 15m albums. Like Depeche Mode in the 1980s, they are taken more seriously outside their homeland, in countries where people are less likely to arch an eyebrow at songs with rococo arrangements and titles such as Exogenesis: Symphony Part 2 (Cross-Pollination).

[Also taken more seriously in countries where people are less likely to speak or understand English, obviously.]

Because Muse's success rests on tours and albums rather than hits and headlines, they are not quite household names, so some viewers were doubtless puzzled during the Olympics closing ceremony by the trio's performance of Survival, a berserk, operatic anthem that seemed more appropriate to a supervillain than an athlete: "I won't forgive/ The vengeance is mine/ And I won't give in/ Because I choose to thrive." Bellamy admits that the song was already written when the organisers approached him. "It was definitely a bit more demented than I think they realised," he says with pleasure.

Muse were taken aback when The Resistance was embraced by swivel-eyed Fox News demagogue Glenn Beck ("the lyrics are just dead-on [about] what's coming our way") and the single Uprising began soundtracking YouTube clips produced by the kind of people who believe climate change is a socialist conspiracy and Obama is an Indonesian Muslim. 

Bellamy, a gifted musician but naturally shy, only reluctantly became singer and chief songwriter because "nobody wanted to join our band". They played gigs for five years before releasing Showbiz and even then Bellamy struggled as frontman. "It wasn't as fun as I thought it would be," he says. "The songs were a bit moody. When you're having to play them every night it can be a bit draining."

Bless.

Here's a band that couldn't get a singer or a songwriter to join them, so they had to make do with a guy who clearly has no talent for either singing or songwriting. Quite incredible.

Muse played on the BBC's "Later" last week, and were awful. They were also featured on Mark Lawson's "Front Row" on Radio 4, and spoke complete nonsense with the creepy Lawson, who clearly has no musical  taste himself.

So here we are in England, in the 21st Century, where nice middle class youngsters learn to play musical instruments and often have the connections to get fat recording contracts, no matter how talentless and vacuous they might be. Such people are now the ones making megabucks out of showbiz - in part thanks to the likes of clueless Olympics organisers and to lunatics like Glen Beck who think bands like Muse and Coldplay are worth listening to.

What a bloody world. Things can't go on like this. Can they?

Layer 542 . . . Being Ray Davies

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Ray Davies is the most famous Ray Davies on the planet. If you google his name, then THE Ray Davies is the only Ray Davies to appear in the first few pages of search results.

There's a kind of global warmness and fondness for Ray Davies that has built up over the years. He's become some sort of national treasure.

Maybe it was unkind of Oxzen to mention in a recent post how bad Ray's singing was during the Olympics closing ceremony. The guy's getting on for 70, so what can we expect? Personally I expect plenty. Cohen, Dylan, Jagger, and the old blues guys, especially BB King, still sing incredibly well. This sing it like they mean it. They're still brilliant because they're authentic, soulful, natural singers. Ray Davies isn't, and he never was. He's an OK songwriter, and that's about it.

He seems like a very pleasant man. He was on Radio 4's Saturday Live this morning, talking about his upbringing in Muswell Hill, and the fact that he's lived in that part of London for the whole of his life. "I write songs about people, and I happen to feel that the suburbanite kind of person who's not much noticed is quite interesting." Hmmmm. Quite interesting.

It's pretty obvious that Ray Davies is no poet, he has very little in the way of artistic insight into the human condition, and never sets out to raise levels of human awareness or consciousness. A song like "Tired of Waiting for You" has a pleasant enough tune, but it's hardly going to be on anyone's list of desert island discs.

In this Youtube video Ray explains his early enthusiasm for music: "When I was a little boy/ I was just 13 years old / I wanted to be a blues singer / Like John Lee Hooker . . ."

It didn't take very long for Ray to discover he was no John Lee. Pleasant as Ray may be, I'm sticking to what I said about his music losing its appeal (for me) soon after "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night". I've now discovered that his brother Dave was responsible for the great guitar riffs that lifted those songs out of the ordinary, and gave them their power and their appeal - which was clearly nothing to do with Ray's very basic lyrics.

Given his well-known antipathy and feud with his brother Dave, it's perhaps not surprising that Ray shifted the Kinks' musical style away from hard-driving R & B, which was Dave's forte, and towards nostalgia, whimsy and easy-listening music hall, which is Ray's real territory.

According to Dave Davies, "Ray's an arsehole".

"Ray sucks me dry of ideas, emotions and creativity. It’s toxic for me to be with him. He’s a control freak".

‘We must be careful. We might be feeding Ray’s illness by making him think he’s more interesting than he is.’

What illness? ‘He’s a narcissist,’ says Dave. ‘I walked into a bookshop a month ago and picked up Tony Blair’s autobiography. I looked at the picture and felt sick. I thought: ‘‘Hello, he’s got the same thing [as Ray]. It’s some sort of ­grandiose disorder.’’ ’

Dave, you see, claims to be something of an expert on vanity and self-delusion. He has spent ‘a good part of my adult life studying metaphysics and psychology’.

Since when exactly? ‘When I first started to realise what an arsehole Ray was. I thought, I’m going to investigate this.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1324979/The-Kinks-reunion-Not-Ray-Davies-stamped-bother-Daves-birthday-cake.html#ixzz23u1XEFXz

According to Wikipedia, Ray Davies has been diagnosed as having bipolar disorder.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Davies
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Ironically, having complained about NBC's decision not to broadcast certain sections of the Olympics ceremonies, it turns out that Ray Davies and Muse were two of the performances that were cut. Good call!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9473465/Viewers-in-US-complain-after-NBC-cuts-Ray-Davies-from-Olympics-closing-ceremony-to-broadcast-comedy.html

The wit and wisdom of Ray Davies. Not.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/ray_davies.html

Easy to love, and impossible to live with:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/may/01/ray-davies-kinks-meltdown-interview

Layer 538 . . . The Closing Ceremony

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First of all we need to know who was responsible for doing precisely what to a Closing Ceremony which was meant to be a proper tribute to an amazing two weeks of sporting endeavor. Or did someone decide beforehand that Team GB was bound to end up with 'null points' a la Eurovision, or something similar, so we might just as well produce a Eurovision-style crass "spectacular" which would be tantamount to a tongue in cheek statement of how 'awful' we really are, a la Kenneth Williams or Dick Emery? Come to think of it, this song was surely worthy of inclusion in the horrible mash-up we were presented with in the Olympic Stadium: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUn0n9Yu7Vw

Was it Stephen Daldry, "head of the Olympics ceremonies" who bears ultimate responsibility for hiring the people who came up with the "vision" and the "concept" for this ceremony? Did he lay down the guidelines and the parameters himself? Was his personal taste in any way imposed on the whole thing?

“It’s a proper show. It’s got all the bizarre, surreal, funny, camp and moving elements you could want from a really good piece of Sunday night entertainment,” Daldry is quoted as saying.

According to Wikipedia, the ceremony's Music Director David Arnold said: “It’s going to be beautiful, cheeky, cheesy, camp, silly and thrilling".

Beautiful, funny, moving and thrilling we like. Who the hell asked for bizarre, camp, cheesy or silly? Cos that's exactly what we got. Which hardly does justice to either the games themselves or to Great Britain. [Alright - you can argue that the majority of Britain's contemporary culture is indeed bizarre, camp, cheesy and silly - but that's not something we should feel proud of or wish to advertise throughout the world.This is pretty much what we have, it's true, thanks to the likes of David Arnold, Simon Cowell and Kim Gavin.] Can you guess which one of the characters in the satirical TV spoof "2012" would have come up with this particular recipe for a camp, bizarre and cheesy closing ceremony? That's right - all of them. Especially Shiobhain and her folks at Perfect Curve.

According to my online dictionary "cheesy" means "cheap, unpleasant, or blantantly inauthentic". Sounds about right, except in the financial sense: rubbish as lavish and overblown as this doesn't come cheap. It's what they aimed for, and it's what they gave us.

Something like this was bound to happen when you hand the overall production of a Closing Ceremony to a marketing 'creative' like Kim Gavin ("who usually produces shows for the likes of Take That")  -  a slick, trashy, overblown attempt to advertise and 'sell' the 'best of British' to the rest of the world, and possibly to ourselves. It was inevitable, and it's what we've dreaded since the incomparible opening and closing ceremonies of Beijing 2008. Oh well - maybe it actually said something as truthful about Britain in its way as Danny Boyle's opening ceremony said in his own way.

Here's the crux of the matter. Kim Gavin has the business sensibility of someone who's content to spend his days marketing the likes of "Take That" - a fucking awful and forgettable musical confection with no artistic merit whatsoever - to a gullible public who prefer pretty boys and girls singing simple-minded pop ditties to anything that's real or interesting or important.

Danny Boyle, although not one of the world's best artists or directors, uses artistic insight to tell us things we didn't know or had maybe forgotten about ourselves. That's what proper art and decent entertainment is supposed to do. That's what you spend £80million on - not some useless flashy garbage that has absolutely no artistic merit.

None at all? No. None. But weren't the dazzling lighting & sound effects and the fireworks wonderful? Well - put it this way. We have some brilliant people who can do amazing things with light and sound and pyrotechnics. But what's the point if they're in the service of something that's so leaden yet so vacuous, overblown yet trivial, flashy yet dull, sentimental, cheesy and silly - just as the man proudly described it?

Weren't there any good bits AT ALL? Well of course there were. In any scatter-gun approach to entertaining the masses for three hours (as opposed to creating a worthy closing ceremony) there are bound to be some valid elements.

Eric Idle is a true Brit. "Always Look On The Bright Side of Life" is a work of genius. Anyone who can stand up in front of millions wearing a silly costume and sing "Life's a piece of shit - when you think of it" - is worthy of inclusion in a celebration of genius and Britishness. We Brits are known for our earthy sense of humour. [Though we could have done without "a skit featuring nuns on roller-skates, Morris dancers, Roman soldiers and a comedic entrance of Punjabi bhangra players and dancers before a human cannonball crossed the stage". - Wikipedia]

What else?

A film of John Lennon singing "Imagine" - no countries, and no religion too. Excellent. [And let's just be thankful there was no appearance at any time in these proceedings by McCartney, which many of us were dreading.]

A version of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" performed by Nick Mason, Ed Sheeran, and pals. Definitely a Desert Island Disc. Pity there was nothing from Dark Side of the Moon, though there was a track from it in the opening ceremony.

A track by Kate Bush played on the PA system – "Running Up That Hill". Superb.

Russell Brand singing "I Am The Walrus" from the top of a bus. Not great, but quite funny. I think Lennon would have approved - in the way Lennon would approve of most of our Russell's challenges to bourgeois sensibilities.

Anything else? Not really. No? Surely The Who?

Mmmm - no. Two of the three songs they performed were from Tommy - a thoroughly bad album with rubbish songs. Even Pete Townshend must know that by now. Had they just come on and cranked out a dynamic version of My Generation they'd have been OK. As things stood, it felt like they'd just sold out to the likes of Stephen Daldry, David Arnold and Kim Gavin - who presumably think The Who's "Pinball Wizard" is a great song, since they got the Kaiser Chiefs (more sell-outs) to perform it here. They probably think the concept of a deaf, dumb and blind boy being a world champion pinball player is like really cool. Maybe they'll reprise it for the paralympics.

And speaking of reprises - did we really need to hear crappy songs like Parklife, West End Girls and What Makes You Beautiful not just once but TWICE? What was that all about? Prior to Sunday evening I'd never even heard of the boy band called 'One Direction', and I don't ever want to hear them again. It seems they were manufactured for a programme called The X Factor, and they didn't even come first in that ridiculous talent contest. Third place was all they could manage, for very good reasons, obviously, yet there they go into the closing ceremony! On the back of a bloody lorry! What's THAT all about?! It's not the boys' fault of course - what the hell do they know? As for their name, they should change it to One Dimension, to indicate their complete lack of breadth and depth.

Ray Davies was another disappointment, which quite frankly he has been since the Kinks rocked us with You Really Got Me and All Day and All of the Night. I don't really go for whimsy and sentimentality. Back in the beginning the Kinks were one of the most powerful blues-based bands around, and it was annoying that they couldn't maintain that basic simplicity and build on it, like the Stones did. And let's face it - Ray can no longer even hold a tune.

George Michael? Perleeeease! Mr Sleaze certainly dressed for the occasion.

Freddie bloody Mercury? Let him go! ["We will not let him go!"] Brian May - half man, half sheep, totally crap guitar licks. Wake up people! Queen were only ever camp, cocky, pomp-rock, cheesy, sleazy, silly pop nonsense. And if you want to argue, then try explaining what the hell Bohemian Rhapsody was all about.

A David Bowie collage of photographs with snatches of his tunes. Why? Even Bowie admits that he's not done anything original or anything of value since Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust - before he got into the drugs and the whole fame thing took him away from the real world. Still - that's all he ever really wanted - to be famous. Someone else who started out brilliant and ended up stuck up his own arse. Such a pity. He had something good happening there for a while. No point in him dressing up in platforms and makeup and trying to make a 'comeback'. [Though he did make one decent guest appearance a few years ago to sing 'Arnold Lane' with David Gilmour and the Floyd. "Oh Arnold Lane, it's not the same . . ." The voice wasn't great but it was a nice novelty turn. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwyEqSZz1uM]

Beady Eye? Liam Gallagher??!! Wonderwall? Another piece of complete pop piffle. Noel's better off without him, that's for sure.

Take That? FFS. More manufactured pop nonsense.

Annie Lennox? Good voice. Not very interesting. Silly presentation.

And so we come to the Spice Girls. Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear. How delightfully symbolic to see them all standing atop individual black cabs covered with flashing lights, the mundane together with the showbiz flashy trash - so very together and yet so very separate. And long may they remain so. RIP.

Emeli Sande? No real opinion as yet. Deeply unmemorable, even though her song was also reprised.

Jessie J? Great legs. Sorry - but they are. She can sing OK too. I notice her website proudly displays lots of photos of her as featured in the Sun, the People, the Star, OK magazine, etc.

Muse? Completely horrible. Who the fuck are these people?

Madness? Great when they were young and whacky. Going off them rapidly. Our House was fine at Buck House for the Jubilee, but I've had enough of it already. Never a great song.

And last and VERY least (cos I can't be bothered to go through the whole lot of them) . . . . ELBOW!!!!!!!!!!!  Somebody is having a laugh! What a fucking awful band!!!!  According to Wikipedia, which I needed to consult in order to learn something about these tossers, "Elbow have cited a number of influences on their music, including Genesis (in particular the progressive rock years featuring Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett), Talk Talk and Radiohead." Which just about tells us all we need to know about these "progressive rock" exponents. Such dire bilge I have never heard in my life, and never wish to do so again. Not ever.

So there we have it. What a complete bloody failure. What a very sad ending to what had been a very memorable and enjoyable two weeks. Damn!

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Layer 525 . . . Great Artists, Enlightenment, Zen, Dawkins and Obscurity

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In the previous blog I wrote about some of America's greatest living artists, and it seems to me I need to say a little more on this subject. The job of an artist is ultimately to raise awareness, to express, celebrate and comment on the human condition, and to bring a little (or a lot) more enlightenment into the world.

There should be no doubt that artists such as Dylan, Cohen, Springsteen and Young fulfill all of these criteria. Anyone who doubts Dylan's credentials as an artist and a poet should read Christopher Ricks' wonderful "Dylan's Visions of Sin" and Michael Gray's "Song and Dance Man - the Art of Bob Dylan", and also pay careful attention to Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man".

Anyone who questions Leonard Cohen's right to be called a great artist also ought to pay attention to his words, his poetry and his music, and then allow themselves to go "a thousand kisses deep", or simply take a walk down "boogie street".

Bruce Springsteen's art, on the other hand, is based on a very different sort of poetics, and a determination to speak to his audiences clearly and directly, without obscurity, but without being in any way patronising or underestimating their intelligence. Of course there will still be idiots like Reagan who completely fail to understand the irony in a song like "Born In The USA", but Bruce has learnt to live with this as a fact of life.

Neil Young also comments on his country and his fellow humans through songs like Ohio, Let's Impeach The President and Restless Consumer.

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/11/layer-84-music-politics-neil-young-and.html

http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/lwwvideos/therestlessconsumer_wm.html

Neil's all-time masterpiece may well be the Sleeps With Angels album, and in particular the track "Change Your Mind", which not only has brilliant lyrics but also features scintillating, extended guitar solos which tear at the senses and wrench emotions from stony souls. Try listening to this track on decent headphones with the volume turned up in a darkened room, with or without the video on the screen -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGZWPgScALU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWXy-8vNxrs&feature=fvsr

You'll need to be in it for the long run though - all 14 minutes and 55 seconds.

http://www.neilyoung.com/   -  Horse Back -  This is even longer!

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Enlightenment and Obscurity

You have to hand it to Richard Dawkins - he draws attention to some pretty important stuff and gets people talking:

What is the proper place for religion in Britain's public life?

Britain became engulfed in a culture war last week as secularists and believers clashed over the role of religion in public life. Even the Queen intervened to defend the Church of England's role. Richard Dawkins, whose survey about Christianity in the UK ignited the row, defends his position on secularism, faith and tolerance in conversation with Will Hutton of the Observer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/19/religion-secularism-atheism-hutton-dawkins

Once again Will Hutton ventures into territory he's not really qualified to have strong opinions about. It's not clear from this article that he really understands secularism.

On the other hand, Oxzen has issues with Dawkins' disbelief in what some of us are calling spiritual intelligence. He's not the only one who fails or refuses to understand this crucial intelligence. Most people do.

Here's what Oxzen said in Layer 12:

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/layer-12-spiritual-intelligence.html

Key concepts for developing spiritual intelligence can be found in schemes of work with a sharp focus on human values. These are values that are subscribed to by humanists and by people of no particular religion, as well as by members of the many different faith communities throughout the world – values that give meaning to life and help to direct our most positive beliefs and actions. They are values that help to make our families, our communities and our societies better places to live in for all of us. Without such values we descend into strife, conflict, selfishness and aggression.


The following list is a summary of the key words and concepts we need to understand as part of a curriculum for human values and spiritual intelligence.


TRUTH
Curiosity, Equality, Honesty, Integrity, Intuition, Optimism, Truthfulness, Self-knowledge,
Reasoning


LOVE
caring, compassion, friendship, forgiveness, generosity, helpfulness, joy, kindness, tolerance, sharing, sympathy, patience


PEACE
calmness, contentment, dignity, discipline, happiness, honesty, humility, understanding, patience, reflection, self-confidence, self-control, self-discipline, self-respect, optimism


RIGHT CONDUCT
Contentment, Courage, Dependability, Duty, Ethics, Gratitude, Good behaviour, Healthy living, Helpfulness, Leadership, Initiative, Unity, Respect, Responsibility, Sacrifice, Self-confidence, Self-sufficiency, Simplicity, Perseverance 


NON-VIOLENCE
appreciation of others, brotherhood / sisterhood, citizenship, compassion, concern for all life, consideration, cooperation, unwillingness to hurt, equality, forgiveness, global awareness, good manners, loyalty, social justice, service to others, respect for people and property, unity, universal love, collaboration

My feeling is - without having read his book on science, religion and atheism - that Dawkins and his ilk set up a false dichotemy with God on the one side and total disbelief in any sort of spiritual intelligence on the other . . . . . .  whereas most people neither have any definite belief in God nor any disbelief in the 'spiritual'. This would appear to be a perfect example of the wisdom of crowds - that the majority of people believe there is something within most of us that directs us towards the values and virtues listed above - in the broad categories of truth, love, peace, right conduct and non-violence. The question is not whether spiritual intelligence exists, but where do we sit on a continuum that goes from high spiritual intelligence to low spiritual intelligence?

The two most spiritual words I know are lovingkindness & enlightenment. Professor Dawkins has a problem if he can't understand or reckon with these key Buddhist concepts. I commend him in a spirit of lovingkindness for his stance in favour of atheism, but I'd recommend him to pay greater attention to Buddhist philosophy and metaphysics.

Enlightenment? Don't know what it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_(spiritual)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensho

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Layer 509 . . . Happier, Rat Racers, Top of the Pops, Music, Star Wars and Jane Austen

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Happier

Today's Observer contains within it a free book which is very cleverly called 'Happier'. Following on from yesterday's blog ruminations on 'happiness' this is timely indeed.

The book's author, Tal Ben-Shahar PhD, has very astutely cottoned on to the fact that 'happiness' is in fact an indefinable and highly relative concept - relative both within ourselves and between one other. It's therefore a waste of time discussing 'happiness' - since we'll never agree on what it is - but we can and should address issues of what might make each of us happier!

As a taster here's a brief quotation -

"Am I happy?" is a closed question that suggests a binary approach to the pursuit of the good life: we are either happy or we are not. Happiness, according to this approach, is an end of a process, a finite and definable point that, when reached, signifies the termination of our pursuit. This point, however, does not exist, and clinging to the belief that it does will lead to dissatisfaction and frustration.

We can always be happier; no person experiences perfect bliss at all times and has nothing more to which he can aspire. Therefore, rather than asking myself whether I am happy or not, a more helpful question is, "How can I become happier?" This question acknowledges the nature of happiness and the fact that its pursuit is an ongoing process best represented by an infinite continuum, not by a finite point. I am happier than I was five years ago, and I hope to be happier five years from now than I am today.

Very wise words, in my opinion. Here's a few more:

The rat racer, subordinating the present to the future, suffers now for the purpose of some anticipated gain.

As a young child, Timon is unconcerned with the future, experiencing the wonder and excitement of his day-to-day activities. When he turns six and goes to school his career as a rat racer begins.

He is constantly reminded by his parents and his teachers that the purpose of going to school is to get good grades so that he can secure his future. He is NOT told that he should be happy in school or that learning can be - and ought to be - fun.

Afraid of performing poorly on tests, fearful of missing a word of the teacher's gospel, Timon feels anxious and stressed. He looks forward to the end of each period and each day and is only sustained by the thought of the upcoming holiday, when he will no longer have to think about work and grades. 

Timon accepts the values of the adults - that grades are the measure of success - and despite the fact that he dislikes school, he continues to work hard . . . His classmates - who have also been indoctrinated - envy him. By the time he enters high school, Timon has fully internalised the formula for success: sacrifice present enjoyment in order to be happy in the future. No pain, no gain. Although he does not enjoy his schoolwork he devotes himself fully to it. He's driven by the need to amass [grades], titles and honours, and when the pressure becomes overwhelming he tells himself that he will begin to have fun once he gets into college.

Of course college turns out to be pretty much the same as school, as far as self-sacrifice, stress and unhappiness is concerned, and so too does the world of work.

Timon was a top student in college; he is now a partner in a prestigious firm; he and his wonderful family live in a large house in an upscale neighbourhood; he drives a luxury car; he has more money than he can spend. Timon is unhappy.

While Timon is an unhappy rat racer, it's important to note that there are many businesspeople who love to spend eighty hours each week immersed in their work. being a hard worker, or a high achiever, is not synonymous with being a rat racer. There are supremely happy people who work long hours and dedicate themselves to their schoolwork or to their profession. What differentiates rat racers is their inability to enjoy what they are doing - and their persistent belief that once they reach a certain destination they will be happy. 

As I say - well worth a read. The book then goes on to deal with the 'Hedonism Archetype' and the 'Nihilism Archetype', before arriving at the 'Happiness Architype'. I'll probably quote from these in the next blog.

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Top of the Pops

Why on earth is BBC4 re-broadcasting old editions of Top of the Pops? I only ask because I've never seen anything quite so depressing. It's not funny, it's not clever, and it's definitely not entertaining. This weekend's edition is a repeat from January 1977. I watched for a few minutes out of sheer curiosity, but soon had to switch it off.

The whole rubbishy punk phenomenon that started to take off in 76/77 clearly happened from a need to revolt against the crap that was infesting the entire nation in the name of music in the early and mid-70s. It was shockingly bad, post-60's, the whole music 'business'. Money for nothing, indeed.

Punk, at least, was an attempt to reclaim music for people who wanted to play and to sing from genuine feelings and emotions of authentic joy, passion, anger, and so on. Of course punk was also stupid in its own way, being born of teenage angst, aggression and ego, but for the most part early punk was at least authentic. The Clash were certainly a good band.

On last night's TOTP there was the twat known as Noel Edmonds, the great Noel himself, with his ridiculous hair and his stupid beard, presiding over the whole plastic shambles. (Tony Blackburn was also a top man on TOTP.) Pathetic fakes and posers: Celebrity DJs.

There was also David Soul at 'Number 1'. Was there ever a greater misnomer than Mr Soul? Apparently the programme also featured Gary Glitter, Leo Sayer, Brotherhood of Man, Showaddywaddy, and others too horrible to mention. McCartney's Mull of Kintyre also dates from 1977.

Gruesome, horrible rubbish. This was awful back then, and it certainly is now. How did all that crap happen - post Woodstock, post Rock n Roll, post Psychedelia, Post Sergeant Pepper, post Rhythm n Blues, post Tamla and Soul? Who actually bought such cheesy rubbish?

And then there was Legs and Co. Did anyone really get off on them - with their silly routines, their ill-fitting, badly-designed costumes, and their girl-next-door grinning faces?

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Apparently David Soul's been married five times -  a true romantic.

One reviewer of 'The Very Best of David Soul: Don't Give Up On Us' on Amazon (£4.49) says,

"When I bought this album recently, everybody in the office laughed at me, but they didn't really know what they were laughing for."

Oh yes they did.

Horrible lyrics here:

http://www.songlyrics.com/david-soul/don-t-give-up-on-us-lyrics/

Makes you wonder what the Very Worst of David Soul might be like.

Click the arrow heads and sample some of the tracks here, including 'Bird On A Wire':

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Give-Up-Us-David/dp/B004SLMYBU/ref=dm_cd_album_lnk

Eat your heart out Leonard Cohen.

42 songs for £4.49 - at 10p a pop they're a bit pricey, but what the heck - they are hilarious.

It seems Mr Soul was born on August 28th - the same day as my son. Worrying.

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Star Wars and Jane Austen

'So You've Never Seen Star Wars?' is a programme that's been broadcast on both radio and TV by the BBC, and one I sometimes try to catch. The basic premise is that we all have gaps in our experience, and we've all failed to do things that the rest of the world seems to consider essential to the good life - such as watching Star Wars. Celebrities go on the programme and do things that they otherwise wouldn't, and never have done before.

If I did a session on the programme I reckon I might have to confess to never having read a Jane Austen novel, and also to never seeing a film or television adaptation. How come? - when everyone else talks about the wonderful Pride and Prejudice, Mr Darcy and all the rest of it?

For a start off, the books are impenetrable - especially for someone who has a problem with long, dreary complex stories concerning romantic young women and their efforts to ensnare suitable husbands. At least I think that's what they're about. As I say, I've never read any of them. Life's too short.

If you doubt what I'm saying then I'd challenge anyone to get past the first 2 or 3 pages of Sense and Sensibility - Austen's first published novel - without losing the will to live. You can read the entire thing here, if you really have the urge - http://www.online-literature.com/austen/sensibility/1/ Even getting through the first paragraph requires a lot of dedication and determination.

Mind you, even the synopsis of the book on Wikipedia is very hard work to wade through. It's not clear to me, at least, why anyone would actually care about the life and times of the upper middle classes and the landed gentry either now or back in history, unless you happen to be a historian and somehow find this stuff fascinating.

Never let it be said, however, that Oxzen isn't open to new experiences. And so I duly went along to see a new stage play based on Sense and Sensibility. It's currently having a run at the Rosemary Branch theatre, N1.

Ahem. It's brilliant.

The 6 actors are all superb in their (multiple) roles. The script is brilliant. The music and sound effects are sublime. The whole production works incredibly well, especially in the confined space above the Rosemary Branch. It takes a lot to bring tears to the eyes of an old cynic, but the performances are so well crafted and so passionately acted there were actually two and a half instances of welling-up in Oxzen eyes. Emma Fenney's speech as Elinor – the sensible and intelligent, charming yet reserved one of the two sisters - when she tells her sister in increasingly passionate and pain-filled words how she's had to keep within herself her true feelings about the loss of the man she desires - is just beautifully and brilliantly done. Breathtaking and heartrending.

Of course the story consists of basically immature romantic twaddle, told by a young woman who had yet to experience what most of us would call reality, but it's a story incredibly well crafted and well told - at least in this wonderful touring version of the book. Definitely catch it if you can.

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Layer 506 . . . Inheritance Tracks, Wax, Laughs, Hardy and Even More Cohen

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It's often worth listening to Saturday Live at 9.00 on Radio 4, if only for the feature called "Inheritance Tracks". This morning featured Ruby Wax, who gets better as she gets older.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019q9jx
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b019q9jx

"The piece of music I inherited was the first time I ever heard The Beatles' "Twist & Shout" - and I almost fainted on the floor. John Lennon's voice was the sexiest thing, and I didn't even know what that meant. I grew breasts overnight. Boy do I wish I'd met him. I only came to England to marry one of The Beatles."

This is something that people who don't 'get' the Beatles' fame and music fail to understand. Lennon's voice (and the band) was capable of being raw, raucous and totally compelling - especially back then - when Britain on the whole hadn't discovered rhythm and blues or soul music, and the musical idols of the day were people like Cliff, Adam Faith, Billy Fury and others too bland to mention.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA9maAERDAs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVlr4g5-r18

"The music that I would hand down is James Taylor's 'You Can Close Your Eyes'. The reason I want my kids to hear it is because I want them to understand how deep and profound our music was - in comparison to the stuff you get on X-Factor."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXxJHk3vWvo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELElnewhHkU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkIiaaXUjlE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpMfdob55W0

Ruby also mentioned 'Frontier Psychiatrist' - "The video is NUTS!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUecUKa_yqo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H86TKkPA3QI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GEXwDJZuBo

To listen to Ruby's bit go straight to minute 49.30 (out of 58.00) if you don't have time to listen to the rest of the programme.

[47.35 - an amusing piece of poetry by Elvis McGonagall ]

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Jeremy Hardy at the Watford Palace Theatre

I don't want to say anything bad about Watford, so I won't say anything at all. Jeremy, on the other hand, was brilliant. Funny, political and passionate. Catch him when you can.

http://uktv.co.uk/dave/quotes/sid/7617
http://jeremyhardy.co.uk/
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/jeremy-hardy-tories/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/apr/04/politicalcolumnists.comment

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Here's another mention of Leonard from this week's Guardian:

Leonard Cohen shows there's life in the old dog yet with launch of new album

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jan/19/leonard-cohen-old-ideas-new-album?newsfeed=true

by Alex Needham
His detractors may sarcastically call him Laughing Len, but Leonard Cohen kept a roomful of journalists entertained on Wednesday night as he launched his first album in eight years.

"Old Ideas" proves that Cohen's long-term preoccupations with sex, death and salvation have endured. The inside cover features a drawing, by Cohen, of a naked woman and a skull.

[Cohen said] songwriting involved "perseverance, perspiration, but also a certain kind of grace and illumination."

[Jarvis Cocker asked] how Cohen felt about being awarded the PEN New England award for literary excellence in song lyrics.

"The thing I liked about this award was that I'm sharing it with Chuck Berry," said Cohen. "'Roll over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news' – I'd like to write a line like that."

Once questions were opened to the floor, Cohen revealed that he is likely to tour after the album's release. The singer said he had been "invigorated and illuminated" by his last tour, which took in 247 shows over two years to huge audiences and ecstatic reviews.

Before he'd started the tour, Cohen said, "I hadn't done anything for 15 years. I was like Ronald Reagan in his declining years. He remembered he'd had a good role – he's played the president in a movie and I felt somewhat that I had been a singer. Being back on the road really re-established me as being a worker in the world and that was a very satisfactory feeling."

Comments on Len from the Guardian's feedback this week:

alexisd
Lovely article. Laughing Len is truly a living legend. Would have to say that I felt blessed to see him twice on his world tour in 2008. The atmosphere at the 02 was electrifying. He wears his learning lightly but he speaks so much truth, beauty and wisdom, he is impossible not to appreciate.


MoonMoth
For anyone interested in LC, a fascinating and revealing recent speech by him at the Prince of Asturias awards.


http://1heckofaguy.com/2011/10/25/upgraded-video-of-leonard-cohen%E2%80%99s-prince-of-asturias-awards-speech-with-no-overdubbing/


urlaccount
Seeing Mr Cohen in a concert hall in Vienna, where he sang for over 2 and a half hours and even the normally reserved Viennese were literally "dancing in the aisles", will always remain one of the top 3 moments of my concert experiences. When the audience showered him with roses was special too.


Of course, when he played "Take this Waltz" the Viennese audience went "mental" in their own sweet peculiar way.


I want more.


greatpoochini
For someone who can't sing, he is the master of melody, of tune, of song.


And then there's the lyrics.


The widest, most heartfelt, most gregarious tip of the hat to Leonard.


Dravazed
Leonard Cohen is the real thing: a poet in an era--and especially, in a country--that does not value poets. He is not a scribble of mediocre lines, he is not simply self-absorbed, he is not a relentless self-promoter. As noted in the excellent interview described above, he cares but is not didactic.


His poem/song "Democracy" is in many ways the theme of our time, the struggle to bring people back to the integrity of self-rule. He never fails to suffuse his work with a vulnerable tenderness that is only accentuated by his unmusical voice.


Thank you, Leonard Cohen, for your life and your life's work. Some of your songs are among the most important I've ever had the good fortune to hear. Bless you.


2baz
It feels like a privilege, a blessing, to live during the time that Leonard Cohen is recording and performing. Generations to come will tell me how lucky I was. And they will be right.


sammer
Only Dylan, who is more musical, has in my lifetime even attempted to yoke together the concrete and the abstract, the personal and the political, in the same line.


Cohen is a poet who was forced to make recourse to music to create an audience.. Dylan is a musician who was forced to make recourse to poetry to stand up and be heard.


They are the best of our times; but Cohen is the real poet.


Commit suicide listening to Cohen's lyrics? More chance I would have committed suicide because I had never heard his voice.


Thanks for everything you gave.


grembold
Whither thou goest, I will go...


sammer
He reduced the political choice of mankind to 4 lines without mentioning poltics:


I saw a man on a wooden crutch 
He said to me, 'You ask for too much.' 
And a woman in her darkened door 
She said to me: ''Hey, why not ask for more?'


PlanetNat
I too want to add my gratitude for being alive in the same era as the great man.


I love his voice, his words, his humour, his wit, his dryness, his darkness, his generosity as a thinker, poet, song-writer, performer.


DanielFrisbee
The thing I have found most inspiring about leonard cohen is his stoic approach- the balance of ego, incredulity and honesty. It's like he has nailed the scientific formula for how to address and express ideas. I think everyone can benefit from that, it is a gift we are all fortunate that he can share, including him. He strikes me as a fully realised individual - his ascension is a community event.


magicorgan
Leonard is of course your man and (as has been said) is along with Dylan the best songwriter of the last fifty years. i would just like to put in a word for Ten New Songs
one of his most neglected masterpieces, absolutely wonderful. Alexandra Leaving is one of his best songs ever. Not to be missed.


alilea
For me, the best Cohen album is the recording of his concert at the O2 in 2009


GregCallus
I was at that concert - wonderful show, awful arena (like a 10,000 seater cinema) but the performance was magnificent in many respects. Also the most musically-literate audience I've ever seen - they appreciated every minor tweak, every slightly-changed lyric, every phrase of a solo instrument that made delicate reference to a different Cohen song. Probably the best concert I've heard.


inspiring
Consummate performer........The man is perfect in every respect........


marmitetoast
I'm so glad Cohen is still with us and still recording and touring (and hopefully I'll get to see him). Such brilliant writer - I don't know anyone who can tie up love, despair, sex, politics, and theology in quite the same understated way. Some of his lyrics - Love Itself, or If It Be Your Will - are the most astonishing fusion of Jewish, Zen, and Christian thought, with his own wisdom and experience driving them. And he doesn't hit you over the head with how clever he is, either.


Just extraordinary.


Ricooper
Leonard Cohen is the greatest singer-songwriter of them all. When I first heard 'Songs of Love and Hate' as a teenager, I realised: here is someone who feels everything , who suffers everything, who understands everything, and yet it does not destroy him. He's kept me going for nearly forty years, and I treasure his life and work as a blessing.


CatBCN
I am not a "fan" of anyone else, but Cohen is simply incredible. Had the great luck of hearing him at the jazz festival in NIce three and a half years ago...have never, ever seen an audience (for anything or anyone else) that was as profoundly reverential, hanging on every note, waiting for the revelation of the next song, as this one. Left deeply moved, as I think did everyone there.


sunny15
Saw him twice on last tour - he has the most amazing charisma. Brilliant song writer and as sexy as hell.


Snowbirdk
I've been a fan of Leonard Cohen for more years than I care to remember and he has always been my hero. I had the great privilege of hearing him sing at the O2 and it was just amazing how he could make that vast hangar feel intimate, holding the audience in the palm of his hand.


glynluke
I met the man twice long ago. Even then he was charming, droll, gracious, self-deprecating, patient. I would always go and see him on tour in the 60s/70s. He was always impeccable.


whitworthflange
His songs are full of self deprecation and sly wit.
How about: I don't trust my inner feelings; inner feelings come and go.


Missbabs
I've always thought that in interviews Leonard appears as kindly, avuncular, and amused, but above all, detached. He doesn't seem to believe in his own mythology. As the mighty Ian Dury once said, 'Never explain' - it shouldn't be necessary. 


robbo100
When Leonard toured here in 08 and 09 the demand for tickets and the size of the venues he played came as a pretty big shock to me (as well as the price of the tickets!) Never realised there were so many fans. A very big cult audience I suppose combined with the fact that a lot of us had thought that seeing Leonard Cohen live in concert was something we were never going to see - so pretty much everyone who likes LC wanted a ticket. I wasn't really expecting that much to be honest - thinking LC was pretty old and his voice would be gone. Thought I'd just be there for the fact of seeing him. But he surpassed all expectations - really great shows. And as someone said earlier he managed to bring an atmosphere of intimacy to very large venues. Very much enjoy watching the DVD of the O2 performance also 


AshesRising
Being there [at the interview with LC] does mean you have to endure the monotony of waiting for a considered response. I have every sympathy for those who find silence so threatening - unfortunately in this media-driven cacophony it's a rarity. It's the wall to wall din that conceals the vacuousness of content, empty-headed superstars with verbal diarrhoea and not an intelligent thought they can call their own. That's why LC and his like are difficult for some to appreciate - they think before they open their gobs, and what they say is well worth the wait. 


Jamus1
Leonard will assuredly go down as one of the great creators from our time - a Shakespeare or Botticelli. I've been listening since '68 - how great to have Cohen play through my life as a grounding rod. 


Liuzhoukaf
We called him Laughing Lenny because he was funny from the beginning, not the miserable cliché which lazy music writers came up with..


PaxGrass
The New Yorker is streaming the new Leonard Cohen song 'Going Home', the first time they have ever streamed a song. They also publish the lyrics.


'I have been satirised as suicidal and self-indulgent' – a classic Leonard Cohen interview from the vaults

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/nov/29/leonard-cohen-interview-rocks-backpages?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

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Layer 505 . . . Old Ideas, New Album, Cohen, Justice, Art, Education and Ecuador

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Terrific piece on Leonard Cohen in today's G2.

Sombre prophet, mordant wisecracker, repentant cad: Leonard Cohen is back with a great new album, Old Ideas – and more wit and wisdom

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jan/19/leonard-cohen

These days, Cohen rations his one-on-one interviews with the utmost austerity, hence this press conference to promote his 12th album, Old Ideas, a characteristically intimate reflection on love, death, suffering and forgiveness. After the playback he answers questions. He was always funnier than he was given credit for; now he has honed his deadpan to such perfection that every questioner becomes the straight man in a double act. Claudia from Portugal wants him to explain the humour behind his image as a lady's man. "Well, for me to be a lady's man at this point requires a great deal of humour," he replies. Steve from Denmark wonders what Cohen will be in his next life. "I don't really understand that process called reincarnation but if there is such a thing I'd like to come back as my daughter's dog." Erik, also from Denmark, asks if he has come to terms with death. "I've come to the conclusion, reluctantly, that I am going to die," he responds. "So naturally those questions arise and are addressed. But, you know, I like to do it with a beat."

He had lived, and this gave his elaborate, enigmatic songs a grave authority to younger listeners who sensed that he was privy to mysteries that they could only guess at. He was neither the best singer, the best musician nor the best-looking man around, but he had the charisma and the words, and the eroticised intelligence. Perhaps because his style owed more to French chansonniers and Jewish cantors than American folk, he was always more loved in Europe than north America. An early write-up in folk gazette Sing Out! remarked: "No comparison can be drawn between Leonard Cohen and any other phenomenon."

In 1993, resurgent and well-loved but in a dark frame of mind, Cohen disappeared from the public gaze. He spent the next six years in a monastery on Mount Baldy, California, studying with his old friend and Zen master Kyozan Joshu Sasaki, whom he calls Roshi and who is now a resilient 104 years old. "This old teacher never speaks about religion," Cohen tells the Paris audience. "There's no dogma, there's no prayerful worship, there's no address to a deity. It's just a commitment to living in a community."

When he came down from the mountain his lifelong depression had finally lifted. "When I speak of depression," he says carefully, "I speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish and anxiety, a sense that nothing goes well, that pleasure is unavailable and all your strategies collapse. I'm happy to report that, by imperceptible degrees and by the grace of good teachers and good luck, that depression slowly dissolved and has never returned with the same ferocity that prevailed for most of my life." He thinks it might just be down to old age. "I read somewhere that as you grow older certain brain cells die that are associated with anxiety so it doesn't really matter how much you apply yourself to the disciplines. You're going to start feeling a lot better or a lot worse depending on the condition of your neurons."

In Paris, after the press conference, I'm discreetly ushered into a back room for a rare interview alone with Cohen. Up close, he's a calming presence, old world courtesy mingled with Zen, and his smoke-blackened husk of a voice is as reassuring as a lullaby. I ask him if he wishes the long and painful process of writing his songs would come more easily.

"Well, you know, we're talking in a world where guys go down into the mines, chewing coca and spending all day in backbreaking labour. We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons so it's very hard for me to place any high value on the work that I do to write a song. Yeah, I work hard but compared to what?"

...................................................

Excellent front page on the Guardian today. Justice!

How News Group hid the phone-hacking scandal

Judge criticises Murdoch empire as it agrees aggravated damages for 37 victims of News of the World

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/19/news-group-phone-hacking-scandal

A high court judge said the Murdoch-owned company behind the News of the World had made "an admission of sorts" that it engaged in a deliberate cover-up of evidence relating to phone hacking, on the day that the publisher paid an estimated seven figures in damages to settle 37 phone-hacking claims brought by public figures ranging from Jude Law to John Prescott.

Mr Justice Vos, the judge presiding over the hacking cases, told News Group Newspapers (NGN) he had seen evidence which raised "compelling questions about whether you concealed, told lies, actively tried to get off scot free".

The judge read out a section from the confidential court papers detailing the cover-up allegations made by hacking victims against the company's executives and directors. It included the charge that the company "put out public statements that it knew to be false", that it had "deliberately deceived the police" and had destroyed evidence of wrongdoing including "a very substantial number of emails" as well as computers.

Mark Thomson, of law firm Atkins Thomson, said: "After years of denials and cover-up, News Group Newspapers has finally admitted the depth and scale of the unlawful activities of many of their journalists at the News of the World and the culture of illegal conduct at their paper."

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Should art really be for its own sake alone?

If art museums are the new churches, perhaps they should end the veneration of ambiguity and start serving our inner needs

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/20/art-museums-churches

by Alain de Botton

Try to imagine what would happen if modern secular museums took the example of churches more seriously. What if they too decided that art had a specific purpose – to make us a bit more sane, or a little bit wiser and kinder – and tried to use the art in their possession to prompt us to be so? Perhaps art shouldn't be "for art's sake", one of the most misunderstood, unambitious and sterile of all aesthetic slogans: why couldn't art be, as it was in religious eras, more explicitly for something?

Modern art museums typically lead us into galleries set out under headings such as "the 19th century" and "the Northern Italian School", which reflect the academic traditions in which their curators have been educated. A more fertile indexing system might group together artworks from across genres and eras according to our inner needs. A walk through a museum of art should amount to a structured encounter with a few of the things that are easiest for us to forget and most essential and life-enhancing to remember.

The challenge is to rewrite the agendas for our art museums so that collections can begin to serve the needs of psychology as effectively as, for centuries, they served those of theology. Curators should attempt to put aside their deep-seated fears of instrumentalism and once in a while co-opt works of art to an ambition of helping us to get through life. Only then would museums be able to claim that they had properly fulfilled the excellent but as yet elusive ambition of in part becoming substitutes for churches in a rapidly secularising society.

.....................................................

Jayati Ghosh is a brilliant economist and an excellent writer:

Could Ecuador be the most radical and exciting place on Earth?

A decade ago, Ecuador was a banana republic, an economic basket case. Today, it has much to teach the rest of the world

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/19/ecuador-radical-exciting-place

Ecuador must be one of the most exciting places on Earth right now, in terms of working towards a new development paradigm. It shows how much can be achieved with political will, even in uncertain economic times.

A major turning point came with the election of the economist Rafael Correa as president. After taking over in January 2007, his government ushered in a series of changes, based on a new constitution (the country's 20th, approved in 2008) that was itself mandated by a popular referendum. A hallmark of the changes that have occurred since then is that major policies have first been put through the referendum process. This has given the government the political ability to take on major vested interests and powerful lobbies.

The government is now the most stable in recent times and will soon become the longest serving in Ecuador's tumultuous history. The president's approval ratings are well over 70%. All this is due to the reorientation of the government's approach, made possible by a constitution remarkable for its recognition of human rights and the rights of nature, and its acceptance of plurality and cultural diversity.

Consider just some economic changes brought about in the past four years, beginning with the renegotiation of oil contracts with multinational companies.

Increased government revenues were put to good use in infrastructure investment and social spending. Ecuador now has the highest proportion of public investment to GDP (10%) in Latin America and the Caribbean. In addition, social spending has doubled since 2006. This has enabled real progress towards the constitutional goals of free education at all levels, and access to free healthcare for all citizens. Significant increases in public housing have followed the constitution's affirmation of the right of all citizens to dignified housing with proper amenities.

There are numerous other measures: expanding direct public employment; increasing minimum wages and legally enforcing social security provision for all workers; diversifying the economy to reduce dependence on oil exports, and diversifying trading partners to reduce dependence on the US; enlarging public banking operations to reach more small and medium entrepreneurs; auditing external debt to reduce debt service payments; and abandoning unfair bilateral investment agreements. Other efforts include reform of the justice system.

All this may sound too good to be true, and certainly the process of transformation has only just begun. There are bound to be conflicts with those whose profits and power are threatened, as well as other hurdles along the way. But for those who believe that we are not condemned to the gloomy status quo, and that societies can do things differently, what is happening in Ecuador provides inspiration and even guidance. The rest of the world has much to learn from this ongoing radical experiment.

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Layer 480 . . . Summer Was Cancelled, The Arab Spring, Libya, A People's Army, Comedy, Music, Intelligence, Musical Genres

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The rain lashes down; there are shouts and squeals from the children who are out playing peacefully in a nearby garden. Barely ten minutes ago I was contemplating sitting outside to read the newspaper. Then the rain hammered down in a sudden, heavy discharge - out of the blue, you could say. This is the way it's gone this summer, and with my son's birthday and the late Bank Holiday looming up I suddenly realise summer is over - before it ever started.

We had a perfect winter followed by three months of perfect Spring followed by three months of absolutely crap so-called summer. Can we now assume we're about to have a perfect autumn?

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This has been the year of the 'Arab Spring'. Revolutions have rolled back and forth across most of North Africa. Tripoli is for the most part now in the hands of the revolutionaries (the so-called 'rebels') - Libya currently has no government, and Gaddhafi has gone into hiding. It seems like only a matter of time before the mad colonel is captured and a new government is formed.

The revolutionary army in Libya has been something to behold - guerillas in everyday clothing moving fast in improvised vehicles - cheap pickup trucks cheaply converted into carriers of heavy weapons - powerful multi-barrel anti-aircraft guns used to devastating effect on regular army tanks, artillery and fortified positions. There's no way the regime and its regular forces could have anticipated being up against such an effective armed uprising.

The Tunisian and Egyptian non-violent revolutions must remain the models for all future uprisings of citizens against despots and their corrupt regimes, but the events in Libya must surely give food for thought to any current despots who think they can put down legitimate demands for change through the use of armed force.

Of course NATO air power made a huge difference to the speed with which the revolutionaries in Libya were able to move, but there are those who claim that the revolution would have taken place and would have been successful in Libya without the support of NATO, sooner or later.

It'll be interesting to see what level of support the citizens of other countries - such as Yemen and Syria - get from the Libyan revolutionaries - if and when it's required. Once the people of Libya have control over their own financial resources and oil revenues it'll be interesting to see how they use those billions - for their own benefit and also for the benefit of their Arab brothers and sisters.

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"Most good comics are obsessed with music." So said Mark Steele on Chain Reaction (Radio 4) this week. Interesting observation. Good comics (and humourists, such as Ian Hislop) are highly intelligent, witty people. But why should intelligence correlate with a love of music? This brings to mind a previous blog about Einstein and his obsession with music, which he played as a means of expression for emotional and spiritual release.

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/10/layer-200-art-einstein-music-human.html

Oxzen has also previously noted that most of the desperately dull, self-obsessed celebrities who wander on to Desert Island Discs clearly care nothing at all for music, and have no musical taste.

Personal observation also tells me that the people I enjoy spending time with all have good or great collections of music, and they need to listen to (and sometimes play) music every day of their lives.

At the top of the pyramid of self-actualised people are lovers of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, John Lee Hooker and BB King. You don't get to be seventy years of age and still play massive concerts that sell out all over the world and also achieve critical acclaim unless you have some special quality and something important to communicate. Intelligent lovers of good music recognise this, and respond to it.

Of course the likes of Cliff Richard are also still performing and making records - but that's another story.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b013gfnh/Chain_Reaction_Series_7_Kevin_Eldon_interviews_Mark_Steel/

Have a look at the previous programme featuring John Cooper Clarke here -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01390bf/Chain_Reaction_Series_7_John_Cooper_Clarke_interviews_Kevin_Eldon/

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Michaelangelo Matos is a name to conjure with. Mr Matos this week has a whole page in the Guardian's music and film supplement to tell us about musical genres - "an exhaustive catalogue of music's phrasemakers and trendsetters". And a right load of anoraky rubbish it turns out to be. There's a fair bit of stuff in it I didn't actually know - but then again, I didn't want to know it and have already forgotten it. I've spent years avoiding musical 'trends'.

There's also stuff in the article that's just plain wrong. The only interest was in finding out that, according to Matos, Rhythm & Blues "came to be" in 1947 "when Jerry Wexler began using it to denote the kind of postwar black pop that he went on to pioneer with Atlantic Records."

In the first place, the output of Atlantic was rhythm & blues and soul music - not 'black pop'. But the more important point is that rhythm & blues was being played way back before WW2 - by the likes of the sublime Louis Jordan, Cab Calloway, T-Bone Walker  and Slim Gaillard.

According to Wikipedia

Although Jordan began his career in big band swing jazz in the 1930s, he became famous as one of the leading practitioners, innovators and popularizers of "jump blues", a swinging, up-tempo, dance-oriented hybrid of jazz, blues and boogie-woogie. Typically performed by smaller bands consisting of five or six players, jump music featured shouted, highly syncopated vocals and earthy, comedic lyrics on contemporary urban themes. It strongly emphasized the rhythm section of piano, bass and drums; after the mid-1940s, this mix was often augmented by electric guitar. Jordan's band also pioneered the use of electric organ.

With his dynamic Tympany Five bands, Jordan mapped out the main parameters of the classic R&B, urban blues and early rock'n'roll genres with a series of hugely influential 78 rpm discs for the Decca label. These recordings presaged many of the styles of black popular music in the 1950s and 1960s, and exerted a huge influence on many leading performers in these genres. Many of his records were produced by Milt Gabler, who went on to refine and develop the qualities of Jordan's recordings in his later production work with Bill Haley, including "Rock Around The Clock".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Jordan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slim_Gaillard

As for T-Bone Walker, Wikipedia says

By 1942, with his second album release, Walker's new-found musical maturity and ability had advanced to the point that Rolling Stone claimed that he "shocked everyone" with his newly developed distinctive song upon the release of his first single "Mean Old World", on the Capitol Records label. Much of his output was recorded from 1946–1948 on Black & White Records, including his most famous song, 1947's "Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just as Bad)".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Bone_Walker


On the origins of rock n roll Matos says this -

Radio plays a big role in the history of the term rock'n'roll itself – though it had been used in blues records dating back to 1922 (Trixie Smith's My Man Rocks Me with a Steady Roll, for example) and, as Preston Lauterbach's superb new book The Chitlin' Circuit makes clear, was basically everyday talk in postwar R&B: Roy Brown's 1947 Good Rockin' Tonight (later cut by Wynonie Harris and, on his second single, Elvis Presley); Wild Bill Moore's We're Gonna Rock, We're Gonna Roll (1947); the Dominoes' Sixty Minute Man (1950) ("I'll rock 'em, roll 'em all night long").

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/aug/25/origins-of-music-genres-hip-hop?INTCMP=SRCH

The late 1940's may have seen the birth of electric rock n roll, delivered by Gibsons and Fenders, but it had a very long gestation period, thanks to all those brilliant pre-war jazzers and blues people.

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Layer 469 . . . Dylan, No Direction, New Labour, The Beat, The Rapture, and a New Morning

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Thought For Today

It's often through teaching that the teacher learns more about a subject.

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"He's got the holy spirit about him. You can tell just by looking at him. He can't help what he does."


This was said about Bob Dylan by one of the people interviewed for Martin Scorcese's film, No Direction Home, broadcast (again) on BBC4 last night and the night before (parts 1 and 2).

Bob himself was filmed speaking directly to camera, giving simple and straightforward opinions about his life and times, and his work. The man, of course, is a genius, and of course he's driven by a spirit that neither he, nor anyone else, can control. As were Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. As is Leonard Cohen.

You'd have to say that this is in contrast to someone like John Lennon, whose desperation for love and acceptance put him in thrall to Yoko Ono. Also Paul McCartney, who needed people like Lennon to give him musical direction, and also needed his wife Linda to keep his ego intact. I pretty much can't bear to look when potentially strong, capable and independent people put themselves under the influence - if not the command and control - of partners who reinforce their weaknesses and sap their strength.

Part of the genius of Dylan is that he called himself "just a song and dance man", and he long ago realised that living as a hermit - afraid of and in retreat from the world's madness - was no way for a genius and an artist to live.

To live in the world you have to be part of it - you have to participate in it and you have to interact with it. Otherwise - what are you going to write about, or make art about? What's going to stimulate, feed and ultimately move your soul and spirit? How, as an artist, are you going to describe the world if you're not out there experiencing it?

Therefore, even at the age of 70 - like John Lee Hooker before him, and BB King and Leonard Cohen in the present - Dylan constantly tours and constantly makes music . . . he practices his art and offers his genius to those of us who seek inspiration, stimulation and nourishment for our souls and our spirits.

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The Beat - live at the Half Moon last night - were good, but not great.

Their ska-based music is still tremendously lively and energetic - with lots of audience interaction and participation. The drums, bass and sax work together extremely well, and the lead vocalist is a great character as well as a good singer.

However - the acoustics of the Half Moon are crap, and the quality of the amplification was extremely poor. The keyboards were totally inaudible, the guitar was rarely at a high enough volume to be heard properly, and the vocals were muffled and incomprehensible.

All in all, very disappointing - though worth going to - to see a very good band and in order to support live music. This country desperately needs a  good live music scene, and as many venues as possible to support it. Music is good for the soul, and brings people together. South London desperately needs to bring its people together.

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The thrilling thing about this morning is that the world is still in existence, in spite of the line-up of planets, and forecasts that it would come to an end yesterday because of this rare cosmic configuration. This morning started off wet and dull, but the sun's already broken through and we have another beautiful morning of blue skies and sunshine.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/may/19/rapture-end-of-the-world

http://gawker.com/5799742/a-friendly-reminder-that-the-worlds-ending-in-two-weeks

http://www.businessinsider.com/end-of-world-may-21-2011-4

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Ed Miliband: Labour must win back middle classes

Labour leader sets out mission to regain trust of voters by admitting to past mistakes and pledging to tackle inequality

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/may/21/ed-miliband-labour-middle-classes

What's this about winning back the middle classes? Labour has an awful lot to do to win back the working classes, or indeed anybody. Particularly socialists and the Left in general. Labour has a problem with anyone apart from its core vote of uncritical deadheads. Who else could support what the Labour party became, thanks to the Blair/Brown years?

Still, Ed Millibean, in spite of his posh-boy-with-an-Estuary-inflection voice and his schoolboy looks, is making a steady start. And of course he's dead right that Labour MUST admit to its past mistakes AND must pledge to tackle inequality - things that New Labour could never, ever, do.

"In a speech to the Progress thinktank in London, Miliband pledged to tackle the "new inequality" between the rich and the rest of society, but also admitted the gap had grown under the last Labour government."

In a direct pitch to middle-class voters in the south of England, Miliband said their living standards were being squeezed in the same way as those in poorer parts of the country.

Labour needed the humility to acknowledge that the inequality between "those at the top and everyone else" had grown under the last Labour government, although the coalition was exacerbating the problem.

"Inequality is no longer an issue just between rich and poor. But between those at the top and those both in the middle and on lower incomes," he said.

"Since 2003, those at the top have seen their living standards continue to rise at extraordinary rates, while those of the rest have stagnated."

He said he was committed to tackling Britain's budget deficit, but that the current government's austerity measures were loading more of the financial burden on to those who were already struggling.

Improving jobs and wages would mean "asking less of the state", although he did not eloborate on whether this meant something akin to Cameron's "big society".

"The truth is that we cannot create a society that is equal to the aspirations of the British people in a world of wide and growing inequalities – a world in which there are bailouts for bankers and austerity for the rest.

"Asking more of our economy, good jobs and wages, means asking less of the state. At times, we hung on to a picture of Britain in which people were either poor, and desperately in need of our help, or affluent, aspirational, and doing OK.

"We failed to understand that for millions of people in the middle, life was becoming more and more difficult.

"In the future the Labour offer to aspirational voters must be that we will address the new inequality by hard-wiring fairness into the economy."

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Our ignorance was bliss for Fred Goodwin

A supine and compliant judiciary has allowed too many corporate wrongdoings to go unpunished

by Nic Cohen

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/22/nick-cohen-fred-goodwin-superinjunctions

As a journalist, I have learned to notice the stories that aren't printed and the witnesses who don't come forward. Chief among the people we ought to hear from but never do are bankers not only at RBS but also at HBOS, Barclays, Lloyds, Goldman Sachs, Abbey National and Northern Rock prepared to tell us about the blunders their banks made and how they might be avoided in future.

Bankers know that the judges would issue a gagging order if they spoke out. Their employers would fire them and no other bank would hire then because they had broken the omerta of the City. Privacy law does not work in isolation. It meshes with commercial confidentiality and fear of the sack to form a conspiracy against public understanding.

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This is Andrew Rawnsley's article from last Sunday, which might have given Ed Milli the push he needed to get going with his latest speeches -

To have a hope of power, Labour must turn from dull into dynamic

Ed Miliband's party needs to forget complacent assumptions and remember that the task is both big and urgent

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/15/andrew-rawnsley-labour-should-sharpen-up

The most recent meeting of the shadow cabinet turned into a long discussion of Labour's performance in the local and devolved elections. A rigorous postmortem is certainly required.

Let me suggest five things that Ed Miliband and his party ought to forget and five things they need to remember if Labour is to look serious as a contender for power.

The time frame to think about is the mid-term of this parliament. By then, Labour ought to have demonstrated that it has learned from its mistakes in office, developed a persuasive critique of the coalition's record, and started to look like a convincing replacement. Even if this parliament goes the full five-year stretch, the midterm is now only 18 months away. That is not long at all. In fact, for the Labour party, I'd say it is frighteningly little time to establish themselves as a credible alternative government.

Remember parties get the attention that they deserve. Labour frontbenchers moan that the media won't pay them any attention. With a few honourable exceptions, watching slow-drying paint is more gripping than most of the output of Labour spokesmen and women.

Labour's transport team should be getting out more, travelling the world to learn what works best abroad. Ditto the education team and the health team. They ought to be hungry for new ideas and seek them from people you would not always expect Labour to engage with. And they need to be seen doing so.

The anniversary of the coalition has been marked by a welter of pieces saying that David Cameron looks good in the part of prime minister. Voters prefer Mr Cameron to Mr Miliband on questions such as charisma and strength, and they do so by big margins. Building himself into a more prime ministerial figure is the Labour leader's greatest personal challenge. An operation on his adenoids isn't going to be enough. He needs to demonstrate much more verve and daring, and articulate a much clearer sense of direction, if he is to show the stuff of successful leadership. Given a more dynamic lead by its chief, his party might then start to follow and look interesting again.

Or Labour can carry on being what it is now: risk-averse, ill-defined, dull and complacent in its assumption that the failings of the other side will coast them to power. Well, that worked a treat in Scotland, didn't it?
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