Another Beatles mini-mystery unraveled ! As proven in this fun clip of ultimate keyboard expert and author of the most over-the-top Beatles book I’ve ever seen
Thanks Matt Devine !
Analog Suicide
Shithead rocker and borderline (?) psychopath Ted Nugent is in the news again for making racist statements onstage in Dubuque, IA. No surprises here. None whatsoever:
Musician Ted Nugent made racially tinged remarks throughout his show Thursday night at the Mississippi Moon Bar in the Diamond Jo.
Within a few minutes of starting, Nugent commented on the race of his audience and the city of Dubuque.
“There’s a lot of white people in this crowd—I like that! (Dubuque) is a white town.”
Nugent also pointed out at least one audience member and questioned his race.
It’s a shameful statement about the low, low intellectual level of political discourse in this country that Fox News has this egomaniacal cracker on as a guest to spout his “opinions.” I wonder if Sarah Palin will tweet about the Nuge’s First Amendment rights being trampled?
Sure, everyone loves a good ultra time-stretched pop tune. All the kids are doing it. Now you can make your own! I’m fairly sure that it’ll come out sounding the same regardless of what you feed into it, but I had fun playing with the OSX version.
The one that started it all after the jump…
Mostly unknown on these shores, the late Jimmy Reid was a heroic Scottish union leader who came to international prominence in the early 1970s when he led the famous “work-in” of thousands of shipbuilders, in the process thwarting government efforts to close the profitable shipyards of the Upper Clyde river. The “work-in” was not a strike, the workers actually continued to do their jobs. If the shipyards were to lose their government loan, over 6000 jobs would have been lost. In a speech to the workers, Reid, a member of the Communist party, laid out the plan:
“We are not going to strike. We are not even having a sit-in strike. Nobody and nothing will come in and nothing will go out without our permission. And there will be no hooliganism, there will be no vandalism, there will be no bevvying because the world is watching us, and it is our responsibility to conduct ourselves with responsibility, and with dignity, and with maturity.”
Reid’s principled leadership was essential in gaining the support of the majority of Glasgow’s residents. A demonstration in support of the union saw 80,000 people march through the city. John Lennon and Yoko Ono were amongst those who donated to the cause of the workers, giving £5,000, which was a substantial amount of money at the time. Reid and the shipbuilders won, and the Edward Heath government backed off on cutting the shipyard’s subsidies.
Another speech, one Reid made to students as rector of Glasgow University on “rejecting the rat race,” is a legendary piece of rabble-raising oratory. The New York Times printed the speech in full and declared it to be on par with the Gettysburg Address. It’s been republished lately in several British papers (here from The Independent) on the occasion of Reid’s death on August 10th and the memorial service held for him today. I highly recommend reading it. It’s surely as relevant today as it was when he first spoke these words. Fans of great writing and speechification, take note, you’ve not heard these thoughts expressed in quite this same way ever before and these words will move you and stay with you for a long time. Seriously, considering the shape the economies of the West are in and what this shitstorm has meant for the common and uncommon man alike, I think this should be considered MANDATORY READING right about now.
I can vividly recall listening to a BBC radio broadcast in 1983, during the apocalyptic miner’s strike going in Britain at the time. I was sitting in the sunny backyard garden of a squat where I lived in the Brixton area of south London. Jimmy Reid was the main guest. It was thrilling for me, as an American, to hear someone say such… Communistic things on the radio. One of the other people who lived there, a Scot himself, made a big deal of it and bought some beers and rolled some joints, insisting that I listen with him in quiet contemplation of what the heroic Jimmy Reid had to say. I was glad I listened and you’ll be glad, too, if you click here and read the entirety of Reid’s “rat race” speech yourself.
Here is an excerpt from Jimmy Reid’s famous speech. It’s a pity it’s not on YouTube, but there is a clip of a young Reid in his fiesty prime embedded below.
To the students [of Glasgow University] I address this appeal. Reject these attitudes. Reject the values and false morality that underlie these attitudes. A rat race is for rats. We’re not rats. We’re human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts, and before you know where you are, you’re a fully paid-up member of the rat-pack. The price is too high. It entails the loss of your dignity and human spirit. Or as Christ put it, “What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?”
Still irresistible, a working-class hero’s finest speech (The Independent)
Final farewell for Glasgow shipyard leader Jimmy Reid (includes video of comedian Billy Connolly’s eulogy and additional links to more reporting on Reid’s life) (BBC News)
Another winner today suggested by Paul Gallagher
Missouri-based design group MK12 have replicated the look and sound of educational/industrial films of the 1960’s in the beautifully constructed Telephoneme. MK12 was partly inspired by the Bell Science Laboratory series of short films we used to have to watch in elementary school. They’ve just added some LSD to the mix.
Telephoneme takes visual cues from The Alphabet Conspiracy as well as other educational films of days past, inspired by the awkward editing & absurd premises that so often defined the genre. The color palette is simple and deliberate, and we also developed a technique in which all the elements were split out into their respective red, green, and and blue channels(similar to how a printer makes several passes of pure color to construct a realistic image). These channels mostly remain superimposed throughout the film, but they sometimes move independently of one another, creating interesting transitional & graphic effects.
After the jump, you can watch a short clip from The Alphabet Conspiracy and see where MK12 got some of their inspiration for Telephoneme.
Watch The Alphabet Conspiracy…
The Punchy Players return with another Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli animation, Judy’s Baby Daddy. Liza helps Judy get her beat. This one is as good as their first one, Judy’s Cream of Wheat.
New Yorker Judy Linn’s photographs of Patti Smith are an indelible part of the collective consciousness of Patti’s fans and admirers. But, the Dylan one is new to me.
A book of around 100 black and white photographs Lynn took between the years of 1969-1977 of Patti, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sam Shepard, Gerard Malanga, among others, is being published next March by Abrams.
More of Linn’s photographs of Patti after the jump…
What bears ♥ .
(via Super Punch)
