Germs- GI (1979)

Germs Incognito, the sole LP offering of the Los Angeles band. Singer Darby Crash committed suicide by heroin overdose on December 7, 1980.

Darby Crash- vocals
Pat Smear- guitars, backing vocals
Lorna Doom- bass, backing vocals
Don Bolles- drums, backing vocals

Autumn Break

Be back about the 12th of October.

History of the Makhnovist Movement, 1918-1921 - Peter Arshinov

Peter Arshinov (1887 - c 1937) first met Nestor Makhno in Butyrki prison in Moscow.

Arshinov was serving 20 years for smuggling arms into Russia, having earlier escaped whilst awaiting hanging for the shooting of the boss of the railway workshops of Alexandrovska.

Makhno was serving life imprisonment with hard labour (commuted from the death penalty) for political assassinations. Both men were liberated by the Revolution, and in 1919, Arshinov joined Makhno in Ukraine, where he became involved in cultural and educational work in the area controlled by the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine. He was also the leader of the Confederation of the Anarchist Organizations of Ukraine.

He wrote his History of the Makhnovist Movement in 1921.

Here's a link to the text , courtesy of Libcom:
http://libcom.org/history/history-makhnovist-movement-1918-1921-peter-arshinov

Stereolab- Peel Session, September 8th 1991

Tim Gane & Lætitia Sadier

Stereolab's first session for John Peel, transmitted September 1991.

Joe Dilworth - drums
Martin Kean - bass
Tim Gane - guitar
Lætitia Sadier -lead vocals
Gina Morris -vocals

Super Electric
Changer
Doubt
The Difficult Fourth title

Another image from Kraepelin's textbook on psychiatry...

Another image from Kraepelin's textbook on psychiatry.

Spectacular Times- Larry Law

With the egocentricity of youth- when I was about 17 - I thought that I'd practically invented anarchism, and with a narcissistic smugness I'd go on about it to anyone who'd listen. To be honest about it I wasn't looking for kindred spirits or sympathetic ears, I wanted the outraged responses of the ordinary Joes.
Then, when I started college I met a lot of old heads from the sixties who had seen it all before. In 1983 1968 seemed to me an impossibly long time ago, but to these guys it was just the other day.
So I came to be aware of The Situationists, and stuff like this.

I don't know much about Larry Law ('writer, publisher and anarchist'). I do know that his series of 'pocket-books' Spectacular Times was started on April 1st 1979, with the aim of assimilating Situationist ideas (so often steeped in obfuscation) into the anarchist movement. The title is a reference to Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle.

Larry Law died on July 22nd 1988.

Copies of Spectacular Times are available to read online here...

The Jesus and Mary Chain- Barbed Wire Kisses (1988)

Late in 84 the NME described The Jesus and Mary Chain as the best band in the world.
This 1988 compilation of singles, b-sides and rare tracks went to #9 in the UK album charts.
Dark and menacing plundering of the lexicon of pop.

George Orwell

This site has on-line texts of Orwell's complete works.

http://orwell.ru/

Flux of Pink Indians- Strive to Survive Causing the Least Suffering Possible (1983)

I've posted this before, a dodgy rip.
Here's a vinyl rip @ 320.
A classic of its kind.

Billy Bragg- Peel Sessions (1984-1988)

Saw Billy Bragg a few times in 1984 and again in 2009. Amazing, the bloke's enthusiasm for what he's doing doesn't seem to have waned one bit. And he talks a lot of sense about socialism.

Eye of the Devil (aka 13)

Ask anyone who knows me and they'll probably tell you that I have a good memory. They might even say an exceptional memory, an unnatural memory...
I disagree. True, there was a time when I could perform prodigious feats of memory. Party tricks.
My memories of real life events however, tend to be sketchy collages of fact and fancy. I know for a fact that some of my memories are memories of dreams.
I was convinced, however, that when I was a child I had seen this film.
It would have been in the early seventies and I would have seen it on TV with my nutty 'babysitters', late on a Saturday night.
I could remember only tantalizing details; The Marquis' moustache, the somnambulism, the bow and arrow, the candles...
It's taken about 25 years for me to track it down. You can download it from this blog.

Matisyahu- Youth (2006)

Matthew Miller grew up in White Plains, New York.
In 2001 he became a Baal Teshuva, adopting Orthodox Judaism and taking the Hebrew version of his name-Matisyahu.
This is his second studio album, produced by Bill Laswell and featuring Roots Tonic (Aaron Dugan- guitar , sounds; Josh Werner -bass, keyboard; Jonah David -drums, percussion).

The Defective Record

The Defective Record (1938)

Cut the bank for the fill.
Dump sand
pumped out of the river
into the old swale

killing whatever was
there before—including
even the muskrats. Who did it?
There's the guy.

Him in the blue shirt and
turquoise skullcap.
Level it down
for him to build a house

on to build a
house on to build a house on
to build a house
on to build a house on to . . .


William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963)




















Visit to W.C.W. circa 1957, poets Kerouac Corso Orlovsky on sofa in living room inquired wise words, stricken Williams pointed thru window curtained on Main Street: "There's a lot of bastards out there!" Allen Ginsberg- Death News (1963)

John Jacob Niles

This is another departure. John Jacob Niles (1892— 1980) was known as The Dean of American Balladeers. As a collector of traditional songs he was very influential on the folk music revival of the 1960's.
I saw John Jacob Niles on TV when I was a child. I had nightmares afterwards. I was convinced that I had been watching a ghost.
There was an other wordliness about his undulating falsetto, eerie strained expression and his huge Appalachian dulcimer. Add to this the subject matter of his songs- murder ballads and songs of doomed love and death- and the haunting effect was complete...

Nat Tate

My local library's copy of Nat Tate, An American Artist 1928-1960 by William Boyd is still in pristine condition. The last time I checked I think it had been taken out four times, and it's glossy spine occupies an almost permanent position amongst the books on Modern Art.

I moved it once , into the fiction department, but some fastidious librarian, guided by the coded sticker, had moved it back by the following day.

Boyd might be pleased to know that twelve years after the publication of his now celebrated hoax, that there is a corner of Wales in which the deceit endures.
Of course, when the book was launched, (readings by David Bowie, no less...) not one art critic actually came out and said 'Nat Tate? Never heard of him...'

I can imagine them all laughing with a measure of relief when the book was revealed to be a hoax.

The Emporer's new clothes, my friends...