psycho

psycho
Originally uploaded by fourthirtythree.

I just got lost on the web, was going to just post a quick link to the great edit of both versions of Psycho played together. I've never heard of Frank Hudec before, but I like this, the Usual Suspects edit on the same page doesn't come close to it. It seems like Gus van Sant's is a mirror image of the original - probably made it handier for copying on set. As an aside, I could never understand the adulation van Sant got - didn't like any of his movies that I saw (I even sat through an early one with William Burroughs in it at the Pompidou centre), but I loved Elephant. I got the link from Bitter Cinema, and followed a link there about the legendary Skidoo. I first came across this picture in the biography of the Marx brothers Groucho, Harpo, Chico and sometimes Zeppo, and have wanted to watch it, intermittently, since. Of course it has never been released on VHS or DVD, of course it is available at this marvellous site with all sorts of non-released and incredibly strange films. I got that link at a fine film site. But of course it's available cheaper on ebay. Plus, you can watch clips from it. Got to get the credit card out.

But you can find the links here...

Mocha Beans
Originally uploaded by fourthirtythree.

At Marco's Weirdomusic site. I don't know about you but I'm looking forward to Mocha Beans' in the moog. In truth it's easy to be let down by moog albums (hey, it's by no means my favourite synthesizer - in fact it's not in the top twenty I think) but you keep hoping. And anyway, lots of them use tape manipulation and all sorts of synths.

Gojira's links are offline

I'll get on to him today to see if he is putting that page back up.

Lots of free music. Go-go Gojira.

Joe Burns over at Gojira 69 has handily collected a bunch of the exotic sharity free downloads available in the extended virtual community. Watch those lovely page transformations and his nice scratchy old film backgrounds. Most of these are up for a week or so only and then changed, from legends of sharing strange and unusual music like weirdomusic, basic hip, Vegas Vic, and Hepcat Willy, . There are also some newcomers, like the soon to be legendary Sabadaba. Sem Sinatra, and Kristof Space Debris.

No need to hurry, as it's been up for years, but you really need to check Mohommed Al-Bakkar for some classy middle eastern music.

It's all about the name for me...

Now you can do both!! At the same time! And not feel dirty! It's here yagoohoo!gle. I suppose it's interesting to compare the two (Google has loads of ads) but since their corporate divorce (Google provided the search results for Yahoo until early last year) Google has been working even harder than usual on homogenising their results manually to ensure important searches don't throw up curveballs.

Where's the memes?

Good point. I haven't engaged in any meme transmission. So here's some I got last week and have received again since (which qualifies them as far as I'm concerned).
Dennis Madalone, ex Star Trek stunt coordinator (apparantly) now has joined the fireman loving, soft rock for jesus school of hilarious patriotism. He's not afraid to stand in the sea. I love the green Ceylon eye thing he has going on his wraparound shades in the splash page. I wonder were his web designers undermining him? I'll leave the last words to his own website "Dennis' song wishes to fill your heart and soul full of pride, hope and love for our nation and most importantly each other. He is truly an artist of power, passion and originality".
No I can't let them be the last words. His song is out there wishing things off its own bat. I'm scared. He's got nearly 76K visitors to his site - go on, you know you want to.

At least you can deface the site.

Possibly the least accurately named song ever..

would be one note samba by Jobim. I tried to learn it the other night. One note? By the time it's finished telling you it's only got one note it's gone through 10 chords, only two of them not weird. Tonight I start again.

Cars

After years of holding out we are finally buying a car. Or trying to anyway. Everybody who owns a car seems to live in Saggart or Clonsilla or some other place you can only get to by car.

Not knowing anything about cars doesn't help much either.

Barry Adamson on repeat

You know those times when you just have to put Barry Adamson on repeat? I must load some more on to iRob. You get asked, often enough that you'd comment on it, why isn't Barry Adamson huge? Why aren't they queuing up to have him write their soundtracks? Barry Adamson is an ex member of magazine (funky basslines, Sly and the Family Stone covers) and the Bad Seeds (they did dark) who went on to do solo electronic crime jazz. These were soundtracks to imaginary noir films. Just like everybody else from Portishead on you might think, but this was 1988. And Barry Adamson put out Moss Side Story. I first got some of his stuff with The negro inside me in about '94 or so - more for its cool cover version of Serge's je t'aime than anything else. I'd recommend Oedipus Schmoedipus and As above so below which should be easy to get.

That's it. I was too full of words yesterday after a long absence due to idiocy, insomnia, lethargy, deafness, and a strong urge not to ridicule incessantly.

test

DSCN3507
Originally uploaded by Emmaline.

some italics

Master musicians

I finally got my hands on 'Brian Jones presents the pipes of pan at Jajouka' by the Master Musicians of Jajouka. I've been hearing about this album for maybe 20 years. Isn't the net wonderful? All those things I spent my youth hearing about are now available. I can get my hands on old Kosmicherock like Can, Neu!, Faust, Popul Vuh, (I will be reading lots about Popul Vuh soon - apparantly it is the creation myth of the Mayan people and I'm going to Mexico in June) and so on. This album is a legendary psychedelic masterpiece. I came across it again recently in the Wire's list of 100 albums that changed the world if anyone had been listening. There is a fair amount of intervention in the recording - phased rhythm tracs, deep reverb in spots, and some obvious editing. The album takes a lot of stick from purists because of this - but then, it was people like Robert Palmer that did the criticising. I love it. Anyway, I don't like anything pure. I like keeping it unreal as Mr. Scruff puts it. I've been involved in a mailing list called exotica for about 10 years. Exotica is, to take a narrow definition fake jazz with fake polynesian influences. So no, this record is not a literal recording of a seven hour ceremony. But it is a wonderful presentation of psychedelic ritual, and more exciting than the average gnawa album. I can hear its influence in Badawi and in Frederic Galliano. Not in the music so much as the integration of found sound, music, and technology.

Less of a media John...

I've always been suspicious of the process of daily news and avoided consuming it. News doesn't happen on a daily basis, or on the schedule of 7,8,1 and 6 o'clock news programmes. Morning and evening papers are there to sell different things aren't they? Daily or continual news reporting is so wonderfully easy to twist and fool. There was a great part in the documentary The control room where they speculated about why the US might have murdered the Al Jazeera reporter on the roof of a hotel in Baghdad. The US media attache Josh Rushing (one of the most sympathetic people in the film) pointed out that if they wanted to stop broadcast they could simply jam the signal. No fuss about it. The Samir Khader of Al Jazeera pointed out that the two other arab media sources broadcasting to the general world in Baghdad were also attacked (with casualties) - the fact that al arabiya was attacked wasn't even mentioned in Ireland at the time - the US murder of a Palestinian journalist did get mentioned. He then replayed the arrival of US tanks in the centre of the city. There was supposedly a joyous crowd there. When you look at it again there is a suspiciously homogenous crowd of boys and young men that arrive with the tanks. Nobody joins them. He then pointed out that the young men did not speak like Iraqis, were foreign. And nobody broadcasting in town on that day could tell that. By shutting down the arab media, even for a single day, the army's orchestrated media propaganda did its magic. For all we know everybody in all the buildings around may have wanted to join the 'celebrations' at the statue of Saddam but a rational fear of tanks and soldiers kept them away. But I do believe we were successfully lied to. The fact that anyone knows that now is irrelevant - the result has already happened. Another side of this is that I never really believe the baby killing stories that almost inevitably arise from a war - whether this be Cromwell in Ireland, the Boers, or Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. They take days to disseminate and years to be disproved. Not that it matters the feelings they create never go away. I still felt sick when I arrived in London and saw Oliver Cromwell's statute outside the houses of parliament. Mind you he's not that great a role model for republicans - he never could get himself elected no matter how often he purged parliament and the voting register.

Continuous news, rolling news sources like Sky News just love a big juicy pageant like the pope's death. I mean, don't get me wrong, he was interesting and did wonderful things for the end of the repressive system in Eastern Europe and soviet Asia (unlike the US Republican party which did nothing for those people but likes to, as Doonesbury said at the time, 'claim it' as their victory), relations with islam and the arab world, and went some way to making amends for the appalling treatment of jews by catholics. Not that that helped relations with extremist zionism of course as on the ground in Israel/Palestine the catholic church refused to be part of the programme of taking land from arabs, even when it was offered for christian churches. Anyway, they're still broadcasting it, and he's still dead. That's it. No news yet - just continuous news.

And the reason I'm less of a John is that I managed to not buy, and not miss, Sunday newspapers this week. I tend to buy The Sunday Times as it has Irish news in it but isn't as vacuous as most Irish newspapers (the Business Post being the honourable exception - the Sunday Independent being the hilarious nadir of pretend serious journalism). Last week I finally got sick of how much of it, that I read at least, was written by A.A. Gill, that guy Clarkson (he's supposed to only write about cars isn't he?), and Brian Appleyard. All people who have gone down the Julie Burchill route - write, but never read. So, out it goes from my weekly spending and nothing will replace it.