Just What the World Needs...

Just what the world needs - another record label. (Attributed to Frank Zappa).

I said I'd write more on Jack White's announcement yesterday regarding his new band The Dead Weather, and Third Man, his wet photo studio, music studio, performance space and record company.





Jack's band The Dead Weather sounds interesting, a bit like The Kills with a decent drummer. The record company venture sounds more interesting, if très Marc Bolan. Alas for music, T. Rex Wax Co. ended up putting out only T. Rex material and the money was diverted offshore to a holding company that thirty years later, is still holding it. (I think his son got his first payout a couple of years ago.) Jack probably has more common sense, and the business has changed a bit since then.

[Jack said] Third Man would focus mainly on his musical projects. He aims to reissue whatever music of his own that's out of print as well as recordings that are out of circulation, and he spoke energetically about restoring some of the physical component of experiencing music that's been lost in the age of downloading and what he calls "invisible music.""Only 20% of music released during the 20th century is available right now," White said. "That's a lot of music that's getting lost."

I couldn't work out from Jack's comments in the LA Times article quoted above whether he intended to do anything about the 80% of 20th Century music that is no longer available, or he just wanted to make sure his music was immortal. The latter doesn't make sense - if 80% of music issued on vinyl last century is unavailable, then creating your own company to issue your own stuff on vinyl is not redressing the problem, it's adding to it. Duh!

He says he can record a band that comes through Nashville in the associated studio and have vinyl at the band's shows in three weeks. Faster than the old record companies, but a crawl by digital stands. Phish can play anywhere, and have the soundboard mix available as mp3 on their website in a couple of days - and there are bands trying to have CDs available as you leave the concert hall. I know Jack White doesn't like digital, but apart from a few retro students and boho basement dwellers, vinyl will continue to be a minority taste. Most people prefer to go to a gig and have the mp3, or just plain stay at home and listen to the mp3. I can see this catching on with the thrift stores and vintage clothing crowd but with most folks not so much.

I suppose the business plan assumes the money will come from the artifactual nature of vinyl – it's a manufactured object, and can't be duplicated for online free trading. (At least until 3D printers are in most houses which will take five years or so.) In that sense it's like a White Stripes matryoshka, rather than a sound recording.

I like the model of having the pressing plant just down the street. And it's great that he knows a good acetate cutter. It's a dying art and keeping it together is valuable, the same way my local mission employs a blacksmith to make stuff using 18th Century technology.

But if making music immortal is the real goal, you need get it into the Cloud. As any fool kno, dead vinyl goes to YouTube to dwell forever at Tim Berners-Lee's right hand. For example, one of Marc Bolan's influences, the wonderfully named Sleepy La Beef (Sleepy Labeef in YouTube land, for search engine purposes) can be heard playing his hit rekkid All The Time there.



It's said to be an inspiration for Jeepster.

Fight for net neutrality and fair copyright laws, folks. We could lose YouTube, you know, and without it Jack would have a lot more music needing to be saved from oblivion.

Jack White's New Band: The Dead Weather

Jack White has formed another new band. Called The Dead Weather, they debuted last night in Nashville at a launch of themselves and another set of simultaneous Jack White ventures. One is beginning to think the man is an automaton - Unstoppable Jack.


Photo by Christopher Berkley for The Times


According to the LA Times today,

Reporting from Nashville -- Jack White took the wraps off his new band here Wednesday night, launching phase three of his ever-evolving career with a 20-minute live performance by Dead Weather, fronted by the Kills singer Alison Mosshart, at the site of his new Third Man Records headquarters.

The private show, attended by about 150 invitees, took place in the downtown building that houses not only the label's offices but a performance space, a record store specializing in vinyl, a photo studio and a darkroom.

He is also close to a pressing plant and intends to be able to record bands that come through Nashville and get vinyl records pressed for them to sell at gigs within three weeks.

The new band's website is here, and comes with two tracks for your listening pleasure. Sounding much like The Kills with a good drummer, they have Hang You From The Heavens and the venerable Are Friends Electric - which used to be punctuated differently in my day - to which I guess the answer is 'yes, but not digital', at least in Jack White's world.

A less breathless-pajama'd-blogger take on this will follow later. It Made Me Think.

Update: More on Dead Weather's first gig, April 14th here and here.

**

Resurrect Your Own Osiris For Spring

It's almost spring, the time when the dead ground brings forth new life. That means it's almost Easter. At that time, the Christian God is resurrected. For the rest of us most modern rituals at this time of year involve things like coloring rabbits' eggs and putting Peeps into baskets of excelsior.



Osiris



In olden days, the new life was considered to be part of a cycle. The new shoots were cause for celebration, but the death of the old plants was a cause for celebration too - you grew them to make beer and bread, after all, so their death was your life. There's a British figure that corresponds to Osiris in this way, called John Barleycorn.

Robert Burns describes his life and death. And the beer.

They took a plough and plough'd him down,
Put clods upon his head,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead.

But the cheerful Spring came kindly on,
And show'rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up again,
And sore surpris'd them all.

If the peeps and rabbit eggs aren't doing it for you, it may be time to resurrect a god yourself. How about Osiris?

The ancient Egyptians used to resurrect Osiris using a simple technique. In Tutankhamun's tomb, in the room called the Treasury, was found a wooden frame filled with Nile silt. It had been planted with wheat seeds and watered, germinating in the tomb to symbolize the resurrection of both the god and the deceased.

In her classic book on Tutankhamun, Tutankhamen (Penguin books, 1965) Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt says:

In the south-west corner of the room, beneath several of the black chests, was a long narrow box containing a frame outlining the mummiform silhouette of the god Osiris. It contained alluvial Nile mud sown with corn. The grains had germinated in the darkness of the tomb, and had thus recreated a sprouting and new-born outline of Osiris, symbol of resurrection. Of human size, it had been wrapped in linen like a mummy.

Later she explains:

To assist the deceased to reconstitute himself and be reborn, the great silhouette of Osiris, laid flat in a coffer at the bottom of the tomb, was covered with grain which was watered. The corn soon germinated, its tender young shoots giving promise of a harvest. This magical mechanism was intended to recreate the process leading to resurrection.

Here's the original from Tutankhamun's tomb. It's a bit faded but it is several thousand years old.




To do this yourself, you need an outline of Osiris (here's one as an Excel file), some paper, some earth, and some wheat seeds, or failing that, grass seeds. You'll also need water and patience.

Print the outline and cut out the seedbed center



Put the outline on earth and sow the seeds on it. Sprinkle some more earth on top of them and water. Here the paper is held down by stones. I've laminated the paper to help it last for two weeks while being watered.



A week later, the seeds have sprouted



In less than two weeks, you have a living Osiris!



The first day of spring this year is March 20th. Easter Sunday is on April 12th.
In a city, you can get wheat and barley seeds from a beermaker's supply shop - plus ca change there.

Aquatic Wonders Part 94

Fish With Human Faces Found In Korea




It's rather cute. Shame both known fish are females - I sense a new pet phenomenon if they could be bred.


Dalek Head Found in British Pond



A team was clearing weeds from the pond.

The 42-year-old said: "I'd just shifted a tree branch with my foot when I noticed something dark and round slowly coming up to the surface. "I got the shock of my life when a Dalek head bobbed up right in front of me."

They would have had to bring out the smelling salts for me.

Don't ask me why I'm reading the Torygraph. They just came up on the news, that's all.

More aquatic news from Oceangal - the drunk-with-lost-keys fish, the transparent-headed fish and the vandalous octopus.

Pink Dolphin

Yes, it's a pink dolphin. Apparently, according to this article in the Daily Telegraph it is an albino, so the color of its blood is showing through its skin. It's so striking that tourists are being asked to keep away so it is not frightened or injured by the crowds.

You're doing it wrong: P2P defense breach claimed

While we're on the subject of censorship and goverment limitations of the web, here's something that's NOT censorship.

Report: Pennsylvania Company Discovers Marine One Security Breach

Sensitive information about Marine One was reportedly found by Tiversa employees at an IP address in Tehran.

Tiversa CEO Bob Boback said a defense contractor in Bethesda, Md., had a file sharing program on one of their systems that contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One and financial information about the cost of the helicopter.

"We found a file containing entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One," Boback said.

"When downloading one of these file-sharing programs, you are effectively allowing others around the world to access your hard drive," Boback told WPXI.

Now, any firm that allows its employees to download P2P on to work computers, or allows employees to take sensitive files to their home computers with P2P installed are, frankly, delinquent. I work for a medical company, and there's no way I could get an unauthorized program installed on my work computer. And if I put medical or business information on my home computer, they'd fire my ass inside 30 seconds. Which is exactly how it should be.

How can a defense contractor not know this?


Mind you, this is an interesting sentence from the report:

A Pennsylvania company that monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing networks discovered a potentially serious security breach involving President Obama's helicopter, Marine One, NBC affiliate WPXI in Pittsburgh reported.

Tell me again why this company, Tiversa, monitors P2P networks? Does this mean that when downloading one of these file-sharing programs, you are effectively allowing Tiversa to access your hard drive? Why yes, it does!

Guilty, though not charged - internet freedom

New Zealand has a law, due to come into effect yesterday, which says that if you are accused of theft of copyright materials over the internet (like music files), then your internet service provider is obliged by law to cut off your internet access. That is, if you are *accused* (not proven guilty), your service provider (your ISP, your local coffeeshop, your local bookshop, your school and so forth) are required to prevent you from accessing their services.


Not surprisingly this silly law has come under intense fire. Last week, the government backed down a little, saying that the law's backers should explain exactly how this could work. If they don't, within a month, the law will be struck down.

TVNZ says:

After weeks of protest the government has delayed introducing controversial copyright laws. It has told the industry to find a way to make the legislation work or it will be dumped altogether.

The government has announced it is delaying the controversial section 92a that critics say will force internet providers to cut people's connections without proving first they have breached copyright.

The Prime Minister has told the laws backers they have a month to figure out how they will make it work, or it goes.

"Let's see if that code of practice can be achieved. They've been promising it for some time, they say they're close, we're giving them another onth to do that," says John Key.

No need to get smug if you're not in New Zealand - Australia has Clean Feed censorship, in America President Obama (along with failing to end the Iraq war) is appointing RIAA-tainted men to the DOJ, and in the UK, censorship has been around for years and is set to expand.

Governments do not like the internet. They don't know how to make money out of it and they don't want people speaking to each other without their permission. If they get their way, they'll kill it. If you want an internet that is purely for buying taxed goods at big websites, you can have it. If you want it for anything else - start preparing for a battle. We didn't have it 20 years ago and we could well not have it in 20 years' time.

I do not think it means what you think it means

The title is from the 1987 movie, The Princess Bride, where Vizzini keeps on using the word "inconceivable!"

[Vizzini has cut the rope The Dread Pirate Roberts is climbing up]
Vizzini: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE.
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Here's a couple of people with Vizzini Disease.

First, a video about dirty pillows. Did you watch it? It was about mites and fungus in your pillows. You thought it would be about breasts, didn't you? So did I. Ever since the movie Carrie (1976) "dirty pillows" has meant breasts to pretty much everyone. The announcers on CBS never used the phrase and possibly knew. But the naughty website designer either didn't know or, more probably, thought he could get away with it.

Here's the famous clip from Carrie:

(Note: Google wants you to know this clip might be objectionable. This might
be so if your Mormon great-grandma is watching over your shoulder.)



More weirdness: Here is a fascinating video of Lawrence Welk and his guests Gale and Dale singing




One Toke Over the Line

I really want to climb through the screen and ask them what they thought a toke was. I mean, do they sing every weird hepcat lyric that someone puts in front of them without looking it up? Did they ever do Walk on the Wild Side? Their version of Anarchy in the UK must be rockin'.

I was alerted to the Lawrence Welk song by the fun blog Power Pop. Now, you might ask yourself, since the dateline on the dirty pillows video was 2007 and Peromyscus is not mentioning why she saw it, was she intentionally looking up the words "dirty pillows" on the interwebs? Guilty as charged. Someone on yet another website was quoting the P J Harvey song Sheela-na-gig.

I've never heard it myself. This is what "sheela-na-gig" means to me. Odd thing to write a song about.



**

Creationism

The Thieving Magpie guy claims that Jimmy stole his violin bow schtick from The Creation.

I'd never heard the Creation and assumed they were buried in Mod history. Not so! YouTube reviveth those who have otherwise passed on, and they have The Creation in living B&W, of course. First, the claims.

From Thieving Magpie:

Page was not the first guitarist to use a violin bow. He was a favorite session musician of famed producer, Shel Talmy. Talmy had used Page on session work for the Who and the Kinks among others. One of Talmy's pet projects was a band called the Creation. Eddie Phillips, lead guitarist of said group, had employed a violin bow on his guitar on two 1966 singles, "Painter Man" and "Making Time." It's worth musing over whether Page ever happened to see Phillips use the violin bow in the studio.
Talmy himself had no doubts about it. In the book, Unknown Legends of Rock 'n' Roll, he shared his views on Eddie Phillips and Jimmy Page with author Richie Unterberger. "He [Phillips] was one of the most innovative guitarists I've ever run across. Jimmy Page stole the bowing bit of the guitar from Eddie. Eddie was phenomenal," Talmy said.

(If you want to read a more balanced set of notes about Led Zeppelin's 'plagiarism' or borrowing, try the huge selection at zharth.net.)

Eddie Phillips, The Creation's guitarist, has no doubt how Page's violin bow technique was discovered. In Guitar Player Magazine, April 07 it stated:

When did you begin playing with a bow, and why?
That was around 1964, and it began with a desire to create sustained notes. I tried using a hacksaw with the blade replaced by a .046-gauge guitar string, but that didn’t work, so I tried out the bow. That didn’t work at first, either, until I realized that I had to rosin it!

Did Jimmy Page steal the idea from you?
Yes!

Jimmy Page feels differently.

Interview in Guitar Player, July 1977

g.p.:When was the first time you used the bow?
j.p.:The first time i recorded with it was with the Yardbirds. but the idea was put to me by a classical string player when i was doing studio work. One of us tried to bow
the guitar; then we tried it between us, and it worked. At that point i was just blowing it, but the other effects I've obviously come up with on my own - using wah-wah and echo. You have to put rosin on the bow, and the rosin sticks to the string and makes it vibrate.

In a 1986 Interview with Steven Rosen Jimmy Page said:

At times, the sounds you create with the bow and the wah-wah [his main effect
during the hewing sequences] and the Les Paul seem to be generated by a guitar
synthesizer.

JP: Yeah, that’s it. Except it’s immediately controllable like that [snaps fingers] with a wah-wah. Obviously it’s a hit-and-miss approach sometimes with the bow—it doesn’t always react if there’s humidity in the hall, which is a bit of a drag but you can keep rosining it [the bow]. Obviously, it’s not an arched neck like a violin or a cello, but sometimes you can come close to hitting a full chord with it. And that’s alright. But if it’s a humid atmosphere, it doesn’t. I’ve never spoken to a violinist about it actually; whether the humidity can affect the rosin to the bow to the strings. I’m sure it must, though.

The Les Paul lends itself better to the bowing than the Telecaster or a Stratocaster?

JP: It works on them all, really.

[Tim Marten interjects that it relates to the ‘Physical aspects of the curvature of the bridge.” To this end, Marten sawed the Les Paul bridge to create a more violinesque-type housing and raising the strings to allow for more accurate bowing.]

Yeah, he did that. And it was purely because it was so hit-and-miss. Sometimes it would be dead on and then you wouldn’t change a thing and it wouldn’t work. Last night [referring to The Firm's performance at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida] I didn’t think it came off at all. Not as well as it should have done. It’s almost like pulling at it and that’s alright but when the bow just goes right across the strings it doesn’t work. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t—but you’ve got to try it.

Jimmy Page Interview with David Fricke in Rolling Stone June 2008

What attracted you to the bow? It is the signature sound in "Dazed and
Confused."
It was proposed to me when I was doing studio work. One of the session violinists was the father of David McCallum, the actor in the TV show The Man From U.N.C.L.E. String players would keep to themselves, but this guy was quite friendly. He said to me one day — we'd just finished a session — "Have you ever tried bowing the guitar?" I said it wouldn't work. The strings aren't arched over the guitar, the way they are on a violin. He said, "Have a go." He gave me a bow. I tried it and realized there was something in it. I don't remember if I used it on any sessions, but I certainly used it the minute I was in the Yardbirds [notably on the 1967 single "Little Games"].

Anyway, here is The Creation playing Making Time in 1966, i.e. before the Yardbirds did Dazed and Confused. Violin bow ahoy at about 1.40. Isn't that guy perfect? He's like an ultra-Mod, outmods even Pete Townshend. His hair is so hip, you could wear it that way today.



But this song, Painter Man, is the clincher. Not only does this feature a violin bowed guitar, but it also has the guitarist guy whipping the singer with the horsehair. (1.50 Singer looks nonplussed.) This is obviously where Jimmy stole his whip thing from. And the lyrics are about a guy who went to art school to do fine art and ended up a mess - clearly inspiring Jimmy page to leave art and become a famous musician.

History is nice and simple.


Actually, his bowed guitar sounds great. Much more musical and integral than Jimmy's eerie effects.

Chris Welch, in Led Zeppelin: Dazed and Confused : The Stories Behind Every Song, reiterates the David McCallum story and adds:

In Page's hands, the bow became not only a symbol showmanship, but a magical device, creating extraordinary sounds never heard before. He used the technique with the Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin and his 1985 band The Firm.

**

Friends

The White Stripes reformed, if that's the word, for Conan O'Brien's last-show-for-some-time yesterday evening.

Judging by the YouTube comments (I know that's a bad idea at the best of times, but sometimes you have to break down and look) it didn't universally wow the masses. It was an intense, but quiet, version of We Are Going to Be Friends, played with a nod to Conan O'Brien's favorite lullaby. I thought Jack White was about to cry. Clearly it was carefully chosen for the occasion, and it worked well for Conan, who who leaned over to Jack and said, "That means the world to me."

Meg for some reason was not personning[1] the drums but instead strumming a striking red and white Truetone guitar played through a Fulltone tte echo unit to supply a rhythm that was part guitar and part percussive. The analoguefullness was terrific - and signalled early on, as while Conan was still introducing the band you could hear the portentous hum of classic amplification. One wonders if the TV crew tried to get rid of it and couldn't or if they were asked to leave it alone. I love that electric crackle, the sound of a rock band about to manifest.

I've listened to it a few times now and the way they chose to perform this has really grown on me. I thought it was wonderful. I'm not sure why Conan moving two thousand miles west is an occasion for quite such a lot of emotion, though. He himself was a bit choked up when he thanked his producer, soundman, applause-button guy, dog, God, his mother etc at the end of the show. In fact my PVR recording cut off, he took so long over it.


We Are Going to Be Friends, 02/20/2009





[1](c) Philip K Dick

**

Classic Rock turntable

From the fabulous blog Photoshop Disasters, we learn of a turntable which will rip your records.

Literally.




Photoshop Disasters says:

Under 30: Huh? What's wrong with it? Tchoh.
Over 30: Argh! Looking at that makes my teeth hurt!

I'm over 30.

As commenters there point out, it may be intended for those who want to listen to the Back Masking.

By the way - free tip - I rip my vinyl records by finding them on YouTube and recording them using Freecorder. It just gets you an MP3 but easy as pie and good enough to hear in the car. If you wanted to hear them in hi-fi [1] at home you'd use your record player, wouldn't you? Well, wouldn't you?

[1] That's what we used to call it!

Same Old Rock

I've posted these videos before, and I'll post them again. This time, with much added information.

There are three lovely videos of Jimmy Page and Roy Harper singing and playing Same Old Rock and Hangman, along with an interview by baby-faced Old Grey Whistle Test cutie Mark Ellen. Mark gets short shrift from our musical friends who seem alternately irritated and amused by him. The OGWT was originally broadcast November 1984.

The group is walking on the border of Langdale, where it goes into Blea Tarn. This is near Scafell Pike, England's highest mountain.




These photos are reputed to be from this shoot, but having found them on the internet I can't either vouch for them or credit them. They certainly look right.








The first video is Same Old Rock



The interview



And the third video is Hangman



Here's a higher quality, but possibly edited, version of the videos:




Got it? The details will become important later. There will be questions.

In a recent (January 2009) web supplement to Uncut magazine, Roy Harper said this about that day:

I was down at Jimmy’s place in Windsor and I’d got naked for Sundays. I’d got my girl with me, you know, we were enjoying it. Then suddenly I’m getting bitten by gnats, as we were by the water. I didn’t think much of it, so we got dressed and everything. Two days later, Jimmy and I are doing TV up in the Lakes, for Whistle Test. By then, I’d come up in eggs all over my arms and legs. It was my first allergic reaction to some pathogen I hadn’t come across before. So at lunchtime, I went into Jimmy’s room. The previous night, we’d been pissing around with the TV crew. We had some white snuff, which they thought was cocaine. It was comical.

So when I went into Jimmy’s room on the day of the shoot, I showed him these eggs and he said “Ah, I’ve got something for that”, and he gave me some antihistamines. We were due to film a couple of hours later, but just as we get up there, I decided to drink a can of Holsten. But it reacted with the antihistamine and I couldn’t play. I realized really quickly what was happening, so asked my girlfriend to run down to the stream with an empty water bottle and fill it up for me, so I could wash it all out of my system. But it didn’t wash out in time, so the TV people, of course, thought that Jimmy and I were both completely stoned. That we were being rock’n’roll crazies and were totally out of it. And they decided they weren’t going to have anything to do with us. It was a virtual write-off. I tried to say tell producer Trevor Dann that we should give it an hour, because then I’d be able to play again. It was just the antihistamines, but they didn’t believe us. They told Jimmy and I they had a dinner party to go to in London. And the dinner party won.
But it was a terrible thing, a real catalogue of errors. Talk about bad luck. It’s a strange memory, but a really good memory.

For a change of narrative pace, here is Jon Holmes, extracted from his book Rock Star Babylon - Outrageous Rumors, Legends & Raucous TRUE TALES of Rock & Roll Icons.

Time now for a recipe for disaster. In the very early morning, take one out-of-it and not-slept-all-night Roy Harper and Jimmy Page and add one mountain. Then take a small film crew and drop in a plan to record the hairy legends playing an acoustic version Harper's `Me and My Woman', on a hillside, for broadcast on BBC2's whispery show The Old Grey Whistle Test. Stir until thoroughly mixed up.

[...]The plan is to climb England's highest peak, Scafell Pike, early in the misty morn and shoot the piece against a background of a mysterious mountain. The first thing then is that Jimmy ignores the 5 a.m. wake-up call to his hotel room. This is because he hasn't been to bed yet and thus doesn't technically need to wake up. Instead of getting slumberous respite from the tribulations of being a Rock God, Mr. Page has chosen to stay up all night imbibing a cocktail of hotel minibar miniatures, a somewhat powdery `sharpener' and a young female acquaintance of unknown origin.

He goes on to say that eventually Jimmy was persuaded away from his young woman's arms, and the pair of them were marched up the mountain by the film crew. The young lady accompanied them on their climb. Since the film rolls were ten minutes long, the song should be ten minutes long also. This was explained to them.

They were handed their guitars and the camera began to roll. Nine minutes and 30 seconds later they still hadn't reached the chorus. The director called, `Cut,' explained to the boys that the ten-minute rule wasn't a joke but a fact and could they please try to concentrate because they needed the song, start to finish, to fit exactly on one roll of film. Roy and Jimmy continued staring at the grass.

The camera rolled again. It was then that Jimmy got up, mumbling something about `going for a piss.' The camera stopped. Jimmy wandered over to a nearby drystone wall with some sheep on the other side, taking his hitherto spectating young female acquaintance with him. Without words he indicated that she should help him with his ablutions. The camera began to roll again. She then undid his trousers and took out his penis. There then followed a fantastic few moments where she, with the practiced skill of a veteran, directed the piss of Page, hoselike, wherever and at whatever he indicated, including the wall, the sheep, a bush, herself and finally his shoes. When he was sated, she shook him dry and tucked it back inside his leather trousers. They wandered back, Jimmy picked up his guitar and he and Roy performed an awesome version of `Me and My Woman' start to finish, note-perfect, within the allotted time.

One wonders where Mr. Holmes got his information – presumably from one of the camera crew. It doesn't quite match Roy Harper's recollections - or the video's songs, or Jimmy's footwear on the video - but it sure makes a helluva story. Do film crews really only run one camera at once without a covering shot? Do they really forget to film untoward incidents like sheep-soaking? Oh well, it could be true.

But the Scafell Story is marvelous, isn't it? Do you think it's true? I've read a few tales in this book and I have to say they go from the hackneyed (The Spaghetti Incident; The Shark Incident) to the not-very-outrageous. If you like this sort of thing it's the sort of thing you'll like.

For those wanting to hear more, there's an audio file of the studio version song mentioned above, Me and My Woman at YouTube. And Roy Harper's records are available from Roy himself at http://www.royharper.com/

**

Black Zeppelin

An interesting article from Mark Levine in the Huffington Post (and elsewhere) claiming Led Zeppelin as the first black rock group (as in funk, not as in skin color).

I can remember when Led Zeppelin were regarded as the whitest group of all. I guess the years of reappraisals that led to John Bonham being recognised as a swing drummer has also led to descriptions like this one:

The great funk, blues and jazz musicians have always known this about Zeppelin. At one of Zeppelin's early festival shows, James Brown's rhythm section reportedly watched stupefied as these long-haired white kids from England played the meanest funk imaginable, with John Bonham's drums in particular blowing them away. I've been fortunate to meet or work with many well-known funk and blues artist, and invariably in discussions of music the subject would turn to Led Zeppelin. Few of them didn't shake their heads when asked how they managed to be so funky, bluesy and so intensely rock n roll at the same time.

It beats me, no pun intended, that people now say these things, but why argue? Clearly The Crunge (listen here) has gone from being the not-at-all funky song that no-one can dance to, to a song that is known to have deliberately taken funk a step further to make it post-modernly undanceable. (The jury's still out on whether that's a funny enough joke to make it worth taking up space on an album.)

Lots of examples in Levine's article. YouTube videos and stuff. Go read.

Stimulus Package

I'm told one of the provisions of the "stimulus package" is that executives of bailed out financial institutions should jolly well show willing and try to muddle along on half a million bucks a year or less. It's a toothless provision, since there are many ways of compensating executives besides salary. But it hurts.

This man, for instance, believes it will start small, with salary caps, but soon it will lead to handicapped lesbians of color being offered jobs. How vile. And the rot won't stop there, he says. Apparently this will all come about because the people who own the firms - us, we paid for them - will want some sort of say in how they're run.

But it's the salary cap that worries people the most. When I say people, I mean the people currently without a cap, the people who recently caused $3 trillion to disappear out of the economy. They are whimpering in fear. Not fear of the new owners of their banks (us), but fear of living on $500,000 a year. The ever obliging NY Times set down the reasons for their wholly legitimate fear. Among them are these overwhelming concerns.

Barbara Corcoran, a real estate executive, said that most well-to-do families take at least two vacations a year, a winter trip to the sun and a spring trip to the ski slopes. Total minimum cost: $16,000.

A personal trainer at $80 an hour three times a week comes to about $12,000 a year. The work in the gym pays off when one must don a formal gown for a charity gala. “Going to those parties,” said David Patrick Columbia, who is the editor of the New York Social Diary, “a woman can spend $10,000 or $15,000 on a dress. If she goes to three or four of those a year, she’s not going to wear the same dress.” Total cost for three gowns: about $35,000.

Each Brooks Brothers suit costs about $1,000. If you run a bank, you can’t look like a slob.

Candace Bushnell said, “People inherently understand that if they are going to get ahead in whatever corporate culture they are involved in, they need to take on the appurtenances of what defines that culture,” she said. “So if you are in a culture where spending a lot of money is a sign of success, it’s like the same thing that goes back to high school peer pressure. It’s about fitting in.”

Possibly Candace, or at least the NYT, has forgotten that we all live in the same culture, the one where spending a lot of money is a sign of success, and yet most of us earn a tenth as much as this earnings cap. Other people are unable to spend that sort of money - unemployment, or even regular normal-person's employment, puts a crimp in that sort of ambition. And that is the whole point of spending money like water. You can't do it.

The reason why we are "in a culture where spending a lot of money is a sign of success" is that the conspicuous throwing around of money is a way to distinguish yourself as better than a miner, or a farmer, or an auto worker - and, for that matter, as better than a disabled lesbian of color. If ski vacations were free for laborers, or gowns were made cheaply for waitresses, the rich would find something more exclusive to do. The exclusivity of the purchase is the main reason for making it.

Conspicuous consumption is a trait I find despicable even in people who have worked hard and produced nice things.

Imagine how much I like the idea of people who have literally bankrupted the entire world treating regular workers this way.

Now try to imagine how much I like the idea of those people getting to treat workers that way by spending money I have given them, as a taxpayer, out of my own pocket, because they said they needed it or they wouldn't fit in with their friends any more.

I doubt if you can imagine it; even I can't imagine it and I thought of it. Let's just say I don't like it very much at all.

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John Bindon by Page 3

For some reason four separate searches with the search terms "John Bindon's cock" (some with the word "photo" in the search) have led someone to my blog. I don't know why JB's famous endowment is suddenly popular with searchers.

No pictures here - and I don't know of any. Bindon was a part-time actor - he played a London gangster in Performance, for instance - and an accused murderer (he was acquitted). He died allegedly an addict, of AIDs, in 1993. He was generally thought of as a hard case, and lived on the fringes of gangland London. He had a party trick, allegedly, which you can find out all about in the video below.

"John Bindon" appears on the blog because he was hired by Peter Grant as a minder for Led Zeppelin, during the later years when the entourage seemed to be overcome by that peculiar cocaine sensibility that makes people think they are above criticism and at the same time paranoid. It seemed logical to hire someone from the fringes of London gangland at a time like that, I suppose, but the conclusion was pretty much foregone - he was involved in an assault on one of Bill Graham's workers that led to charges against him, Grant and Bonham, among others, and this is generally regarded as the first major incident in the downfall of Led Zeppelin.

Punk band Page 3 (Ray "Roughler" Jones and Ian "Class War" Bone) sing their song about the legendary appendage. Not work safe. No pictures, but the lyrics are...interesting.