Ah, Saturday morning. The dripping sounds of night rain outside my room.
Housemates emerging from their post-whirlwind-tour funk. Time to hit the couch and go you tubing.
As Lou says, these players are my new favourite thing. i think they’re in the UK though, East London. They played Glastonbury this year. Brassroots playing Karma Police, somewhere in London.
via YouTube – Brassroots – Karma Police Radiohead.
They also do a version of 7 Nation Army. Ooh yeah, i want them to play in Melbourne.
Seems to be a few bands around with similar names: Here’s their Myspace just to be sure. And yes i think this album is theirs too, over at Last.fm.
While on the topic of Dreadlock-inspired Radiohead covers, who could go past Radiodread from the Easy All Stars!! Here’s No Surprises, with the original video.
i think it’s going to be this kind of Saturday. Clothing sales, picnics in the rain, exotic midnight parties.
Laid back.
Nice work from a rapper known as Jasiri X in the United States of Hell: “What if the Tea Party was black?”.
The Tea Party have been seriously dissing their president. If they were left-wing or non-white, the media would interpret their messages as seditious, treacherous and Anti-American. They would be vilified in the most ugly ways imaginable. But no, the Tea Party is the darling of the media with their horribly misguided and intellectually-damaged thought missiles. Reprehensible rubbish.
Thanks for this video!!
via YouTube – What if the Tea Party was Black?.
Ok, irony alert. i got the video from “Stuff White people do”, chapter entitled: listen to anti-racist music. Yes i’m trying to salve my bruised conscience. Whatever.
While i’m talking of anti-racist music, one of my all-time favourites is “George Bush don’t like black people” by the Legendary KO. Impressed to see this song has its own wikipedia page.
..and here’s the original quote from Kanye West that led to the remix:
..and another video mix
This originally came out back in ’05. Xeni at BoingBoing pointed everyone toward it. You can still get the mp3 file too: “George Bush Don’t Like Black People” MP3 (8.7MB). [Lyrics here.]
On the other side of The Pond, a 15 year old gains notoriety with this stirring speech during the recent demonstrations around education fees. Good to see the next generation coming up and with such strength and passion. Really like the way he weaves narrative into the invective. No music, but a really good talk eh.
via YouTube – 15 year old Tells Establishment to Stick-it..
Finally we made it to the performance night.
“first chorus: a retrospective” was a celebration of the first 4 years of Virginia Bott’s amazing Band of Singers. Such a joy to be involved with a magic and gorgeous bunch of good people.
The venue: Anytime Place in Brunswick. Gray Taylor and her team of speakeasy angels worked hard to get the venue looking its best. They are incredibly adept at adapting their environment to suit different kinds of performance.
The acoustics and sound engineering: Simon did a truly amazing job with the sound setup. What a dude. Thanks to Marianna and Ro for pointing out the need to turn down the band and the solo singers. Amazingly, we really had a good balance of volume from choir and soloist/band. (i heard later on from someone who sat both back and front that it was still pretty quiet out back in the standing room.
The audience: what a delightful and generous audience we had, filling out the space with warmth and focus.
The director: everyone knows now that Virginia Bott is a complete genius.
The new CD: Cave of Lights, the collaboration between Emma Tonkin and first chorus: band of singers is now available, hot from the CD burning presses. Launch should be around February. So lucky to have a preview copy that we gave a good spin last night after the gig.
Woohoo. Wish we’d recorded it.
Did anyone video?
Went to a meeting in Richmond, came out to find my bike had subtly changed.
Without knowing the original condition, can you spot the difference?
(This photo was taken after unlocking the bike and moving to another location.)
You won’t believe it but Jessie Tucker is having her 3rd exhibition this year, and it’s a beauty.
Another round of 3D painting-style sculptures, this time focussing on fables like the 3 wise jellyfish, the pigeon and the birds of paradise, the tiger and the moth. Gorgeous, magical pieces.
Get yourself to the nunnery and drink in this splendour.
C3 Gallery, Abbotsford Convent, until 14th November – hurry!
“i do know what it’s like to grow up feeling like you don’t belong.”
okay, Barack’s popularity might be rapidly declining with people living in the USA (due to the heinous media campaign against him), but i’ve got to say he is becoming one of my all time heroes. Who gets hold of the US presidency and makes a video like this, for gay and lesbian kids still at school?
Go Obama.
Watch and enjoy.
via YouTube – President Obama: It Gets Better.
Boxing Day (PS): i’ve just found one of the sequels, where White House staff add to this message with their own stories. It’s so good to see this kind of message coming out of the US government. They have a whole part of the wh.gov website geared toward the campaign. wh.gov/itgetsbetter Which is part of the larger campaign at itgetsbetter.org
PS: i know many people are probably angry with Obama’s administration for fighting to prevent a Judge making the decision to get rid of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military position.. even though they’ve said they want to get rid of it.
Sigh. Seems bizarre. They say they want the change, but when a judge gives it to them, they go, “ah no wait til we’re ready”.
Postscript, December’10: well Obama was good for it. The military, congress and the senate all worked together to repeal the DADT regime. Good news.
i wonder if this Bill Hicks video is offensive. Probably i shouldn’t post it without listening first, but my speakers aren’t working, so here goes.
Oh yeah, there’s a severe language warning on this one. NSFW!! And it’s likely to offend supporters of military personnel. Thank you Bill.
So i discovered this comic via my new android phone. And i really like it.
One of those stories where you just want to read the next bit, and the next bit. Funny characters, relationship issues, obscure musical references, interesting tee-shirts, plenty of punchline, engaging visuals.
Yes i keep wanting to know what happens to the characters, so i think i’ve read 6 years worth in 6 weeks. Keeps me from spending all my spare time watching television series like BSG and Glee.
If you’re into comics at all, i’d recommend this one.
[Relevant links]
Update: 27Nov.
Well I’ve read the entire series now, and I’m currently having to wait for a single update per day. If I’m lucky.
Oh how I wish I had read more slowly.
Listening to an episode of background briefing, where they’re talking about how the Eastern quoll was wiped out in the 60s, and the Western quoll is endangered. So is it time to open up ‘captive breeding’ for quolls, and allow suburban dwellers to take in their own pet quoll.. instead of getting another cat?
Greg Miles reckons it’s an “anti-extinction” policy. A ranger from Kakadu, he has seen native animal populations ravaged by all kinds of ferals.
On one hand, the income could really help native animal breeders. On the other, animal rights advocates might say that marsupials shouldn’t have to live in captivity, with humans.
Good program, worth a listen.
Here’s the mp3 file on the abc site.
Sugar gliders sound like bad pets though. They bark, and their bark sounds like a mad car alarm. They will urinate on you as soon as they wake up. But in the US, people are hopping on the sugar glider bandwagon like kids lining up for sugar at a birthday party.
photo credit: pierre pouliquin
Dude you have no Qu’ran.
You’ve got to love the Autotune remixes.
i don’t know what’s going on in the USA at the moment. They’ve got a brilliant leader, and a whole bunch of intelligent creative compassionate people working for social change, but somehow there’s still idiots who want to burn Holy Books during a really ugly world war.
And then there’s the cool people who just run up and spoil the media event. On top of that, someone is going to make an autotune remix out of anything these days.
—————————————- Thinking:
One of the comments on the youtube video page was this: ‘so, let me get this straight: hippies love to burn flags but can’t stand to see the Koran get burnt?’
Interesting point.
i think it’s a bit like Jewish jokes. You can make all the anti-Jewish jokes you like, if you are in fact a Jewish person.
You can burn the US flag if you’re a US citizen. (okay, it’s not legal, i mean under my rules which i’m making up right now)
You can criticise the heck out of your own relationship, tear yourself to shreds, burn the Bible if you’re raised a Christian, find the weak spots in your cooking strategies, etc.
But lay off other people’s business.
. . . . .
How about this joyful piece from andrea dorfman in Halifax. The same woman who made that previous one.
Cycling is something i love too.
Thanks Andrea!
