The New York Observer posted this FANTASTIC clip of a Fox News personality (I can’t recall this guy’s name and I’m too lazy to check) getting his ass schooled by a (super) articulate Occupy Wall Street protester named Jesse LaGreca, a man born with a rare gift for gab (and blogging, he’s known as “Ministry of Truth” when he blogs at Daily Kos).

I just can’t imagine how this conversation landed on the cutting room floor, can you? This footage is going to be all over MSNBC, CNN and Current later today.

Fox: Jesse, so Ray, your partner here, your ..

Ray: comrade.

Fox: Your colleague, she’d seen the protests in Greece and Europe and elsewhere. Did you guys take your cue from that? Are you hoping to cite certainly what was a lot of the tension, if not police activity. I know over the weekend there were over 100 arrests and you guys got things fired up. Are you taking your cues from the international movement and how do you want to see this? If you could have it in a perfect way, how would it be?

Jesse: Well I don’t know, its really difficult to answer questions leading to those conclusions. I’d say that we didn’t take our cue leading off of anybody really. It became a more spontaneous movement. As far as seeing this end, I wouldn’t like to see this end. I would like to see the conversation continue. This is what we should have been talking about in 2008 when the economy collapsed. We basically patched a hole on the tire and said let the car keep rolling. Unfortunately it’s fun to talk to the propaganda machine and the media especially conservative media networks such as yourself, because we find that we cant get conversations for the department of Justice’s ongoing investigation of News Corporation, for which you are an employee. But we can certainly ask questions like you know, why are the poor engaging in class warfare? After 30 years of having our living standards decrease while the wealthiest 1% have had it better than ever, I think it’s time for some maybe, I don’t know, participation in our democracy that isn’t funded by news cameras and gentlemen such as yourself.

Fox: But, uh, yeah well, let me give you this challenge Jesse.

Jesse: Sure.

Fox: We’re here giving you an opportunity on the record […] to put any
message you want out there, to give you fair coverage and I’m not
going to in any way

Jesse: That’s awesome!

Fox:…give you advice about it. So, there is an exception in the case, because you wouldn’t be able to get your message out there without us.

Jesse: No, surely, I mean, take for instance when Glenn Beck was doing his protest and he called the President, uh, a person who hates white people and white culture. That was a low moment in Americans’ history and you guys kinda had a big part in it. So, I’m glad to see you coming around and kind of paying attention to what the other 99 percent of Americans are paying attention to, as opposed to the far-right fringe, who who would just love to destroy the middle class entirely.

Fox: Alright, fair enough. You have a voice, an important reason to criticize myself, my company and anyone else. But, let me ask you that, in fairness, does this administration, President Obama, have any criticism as to the the financial situation the country’s in…?

Jesse: I think, myself, uh, as well as many other people, would like to see a little but more economic justice or social justice—Jesus stuff—as far as feeding the poor, healthcare for the sick. You know, I find it really entertaining that people like to hold the Bill of Rights up while they’re screaming at gay soldiers, but they just can’t wrap their heads around the idea that a for-profit healthcare system doesn’t work. So, let’s just look at it like this, if we want the President to do more, let’s talk to him on a level that actually reaches people, instead of asking for his birth certificate and wasting time with total nonsense like Solyndra.

GENIUS!!!! I wanted to cheer when I watched this clip. Someone needs to start an effort to draft Jesse LaGreca for Congress, if not a higher office! 

This video was shot by Kyle Christopher from the Occupy Wall Street media team.

More at the New York Observer.
 

 
Via Glenn E. Friedman

 
Some serious backwoods Tennessee stupidity on display here. I hope these guys press charges to the fullest extent of the law.

“I went over to take the keys out of the ignition and all the sudden I hear someone say ‘sick’em,’” said Gibson County resident, Jerry Pittman Jr. Pittman said the attacked was prompted by the pastor of the church, Jerry Pittman, his father. “My uncle and two other deacons came over to the car per my dad’s request. My uncle smash me in the door as the other deacon knocked my boyfriend back so he couldn’t help me, punching him in his face and his chest. The other deacon came and hit me through my car window in my back,” said Pittman. He said bystanders did not offer assistance. He said the deacon yelled derogatory homosexual slurs, even after officers arrived. He said the officers never intervened to stop the deacons from yelling the slurs.

This covers a wide spectrum of “fucked up,” doesn’t it?
 

 
Via Joe.My.God

 
Although this video was put together by Think Progress to show/prove that Obama’s politics are in sync with GOP patron saint Ronald Reagan and the Republican party of that era, the compare/contrast the viewer is being asked to mentally do as they watch this clip, doesn’t exactly express the message they think it does… The only thing that *I* got from it is how damned far right the Democrats have moved in the past three decades.

And that’s bloody appalling.

It’s about time the Democrats to start acting like Democrats again. Their base is turning rapidly leftwards for the first time in decades and they seem to have no idea which way the wind is blowing. Even some Tea party types are starting to wise up. Some are joining Occupy Wall Street actions. Perhaps some policies that are a little MORE “New Deal” and much less “Republican party 1980” are in order?
 

 
Thank you Chris Campion, of Berlin, Germany!

 
Revolution is in the air and we’re all feeling the first rumblings of what may become a long hard winter of discontent. Destiny is kneeling at the hem of absolute reality altering the 13 inch pegged pants that Jesus wore to Elvis’s and Priscilla’s wedding. Gene Vincent’s blue suede shoes have turned a whiter shade of pale and Lou Reed is breaching the tight tangle of his own decadent and decaying bunghole only to discover there’s little velvet left in his underground. At the outer rim of what we have come to accept as the entirety of our little world there’s a fluttering of moth-like wings which, to everyone’s surprise, is the hypnogogic light show palpitating on the moist pink plasma of our eyelids. As we lay dumbstruck on a bed of lavender-scented panty shields, a large shadowy figure hovers above us: the ghost of Canned Heat’s Bob “The Bear” Hite in coitus with a giant rubber replica of Timothy Leary’s pineal gland. Our silent awe is violently interrupted by the lower intestinal flubbering of Mr. Kurt Cobain sucking the last sustaining droplets of Lil Wayne’s bottle of drank while Thom Yorke, wearing a thong made of Gypsy foreskins, cowers in a dark, dank, moldering corner cluttered with the remains of Bob Guccione, Miles Davis and Stiv Bators. As a thousand angels weep, Pete Townshend fumbles for his eyeglasses, slaps them to the bridge of his nose, and places his long calloused fingers upon his computer’s monitor screen where an image of a young Bob Dylan in flannel pajamas sullenly strokes the head of a tattered Teddy bear.

At times like these I always turn to music to recharge the cells that fire the cylinders of change, renewal and transformation. Rock and roll is the soundtrack of my life, perhaps it’s your’s as well.

Here’s a fistful of musical dynamite to detonate within the circle that encloses our dreams, hopes and desires. Let the walls dissolve as our flesh extends into eternity like infinite tendrils of meat, sweat and cum.

Squares, you’ve been warned. Stand clear, run for your lives, or loosen your belts and join the party.

Rarely seen videos from The Music Machine, Baris Manco, Steppenwolf, Fleetwood Mac (with Peter Green), Frumpy, MC5 and Iggy Pop.
 

 
Russian motorcycle madness - rock band literally goes on the road.

The title of the video Бременские музыканты. Наши дни is Russian for “The Town Musicians Of Bremen,” a Grimm Brothers fairytale that was made into a very popular animated film in Russia.

In the story a donkey, a dog, a cat, and a rooster, all past their prime years in life and usefulness on their respective farms, were soon to be discarded or mistreated by their masters. One by one they leave their homes and set out together. They decide to go to Bremen, known for its freedom, to live without owners and become musicians there.

Good luck young rockers, long may you ride.

Update: When I posted this last night it had 307 views on Youtube. It’s now at a quarter million. Talk about going viral!
 

 
Via Gadling

 
A compilation of videos shot over the course of the past 16 days during the Occupy Wall Street protest set to some rock and soul anthems.

Thanks to all the folks who shot and shared their videos with the public at large.

“Cinema is truth 24 frames-per-second.” -Jean-Luc Godard
 

 
So I’ve been trying to sum up how I feel about Occupy Wall Street and the media coverage (or non-coverage) of the demonstrations the last few days, when I found this clip and realised that one of the most brilliant poets of the last hundred years had already summed it up perfectly. Of course.

I was gonna say that the oldstream media has been over for me since 2000, when I saw some peaceful protests badly misreported on TV and in the papers. I wanted to mention how my obsession with this summer’s “Murdochgate” sprang from a desire to see the established news channels I detest so much crumble, to lose all respect with their audience through their refusal to cover a story with such huge significance. I’ve been struggling to express how we don’t need validation through a mainstream that has always ignored us or deliberately misrepresented us, that people shouldn’t worry too much, the message is getting out there loud and clear.

But fuck it. Gil Scott Heron beat me to the punch (hard) thirty years ago. 

This incredible recording of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (as a spoken monologue with no music and some ad libs) is from 1982. It was performed at the Black Wax Club in Washington DC, as part of a documentary film on Scott Heron called Black Wax. His voice is a thing of rich, easy-going beauty but his words are like dynamite. Yeah, the times and technology may have changed, but this is still so prescient and just so damn relevant it’s amazing.

Gil Scott Heron died only four short months ago, and it’s a real pity he can’t be around now to see the people of his home town out on their streets and taking direct action, how he can’t be there himself to rally the crowds with this incredible monologue and share his no doubt sharp-as-a-pin insights into politics and society. It’s true - sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone. But we DO still have this recording, and I hope that everyone, including all the people involved with the protests in New York, gets to hear it.

Because the revolution will NOT be televised.

THE REVOLUTION WILL BE LIVE.
 

You see, a lot of time people see battles and skirmishes on TV and they say
“aha the revolution is being televised”. Nah.
The results of the revolution are being televised.

The first revolution is when you change your mind about how you look at things, and see there might be another way to look at it that you have not been shown.
What you see later on is the results of that, but that revolution, that change that takes place will not be televised.

After the jump “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (Black Wax monologue) transcribed, plus footage from the fantastic Gil Scott Heron “Black Wax” documentary/live film.

1974 NME Sparks cover - uploaded by Sparksmael.
 
Yes, it’s an original 1974 promo clip for Sparks’ classic glam-era chart topper! Not enough people know that this video exists, which includes even a lot of Sparks fans - I only discovered it myself quite recently. It’s not amazing but it is fun, and is worth a watch to see Russel’s uber-camp flying leap at 0:35. Not to be too down on Queen, but a lot of people assume that “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For the Both Of Us” was a cash in on the opera-pop of “Bohmenian Rhapsody”, which is not the case. “This Town…” was released a whole year before Queen’s smash, and this video pre-dates their “Bohemian Rhapsody” promo too - in fact Queen supported the Mael brothers on some of their first ever UK dates in 1973, so it’s pretty safe to assume the influence was the other way around. But, hey, this isn’t a competition, both bands were high-class acts, I’m sure Queen fans will find a lot to like in this clip:
 

 
I looked at the above picture and wondered:

How many New York Police does it take to arrest a young girl?

Why are they arresting her?

Hasn’t she a right to the freedom of assembly?

How old is she?

Is it because she has a camera that she is such a threat?

When did the NYPD start to define “a threat” as a young girl with a camera?

When people are arrested for peaceful demonstration, then there is something wrong at the heart of America.

How would the US government have responded if this had happened in China?

Your Government is not your Government. Your Police are not your Police. Your Country is being slowly sold from under you.

When the interests of the Banks are put before the interests of the People then the Freedoms of that Country are under threat.

For information on Occupy Wall Street check here.
 

 
Photographer Robert Whitaker, known for the infamous Beatles’ raw meat photo shoot, has died at the age of 71 of cancer.

The album cover of “Yesterday And Today” (1966) featured a photograph taken by Whitaker of The Beatles in butcher smocks covered in slabs of raw meat and a beheaded baby doll perched on Paul McCartney’s shoulder. It created a firestorm of controversy and the album was immediately pulled from the marketplace by Capitol Records when distributors complained that it was offensive. 750,000 copies of the record were in warehouses ready to be shipped but it’s estimated that only 25,000 copies of the album were actually sold with the original cover, ultimately making it one of the most collectible albums in rock history.

Rather than destroy all the sleeves, Capitol instead chose to slap a much more conservative photo of the lads posed around a steamer trunk over the original art and then re-issue the records to retailers. It didn’t take long for fans to figure out how to peel the trunk photo off to reveal the Butcher photo underneath, which eventually lead to a cottage industry of professional peelers. A collectors’ jargon evolved to distinguish “First State” (original uncovered version), “Second State” (paste-over version) and “Third State” (peeled) copies.

Whitaker proudly took credit for the cover concept saying that the idea was entirely his own…

though he was never consistent in explaining it. Sometimes he said he was not sure why he had posed the Beatles that way; other times he said the butcher theme was meant to suggest that the Beatles, so worshipped by their fans, were real flesh-and-blood people. On another occasion he said the image was to be one of three that would tell a story.

Among the other rock stars and artists that Whitaker photographed were Salvador Dali, Mick Jagger, Allen Ginsberg, Cilla Black, Gerry and the Pacemakers and Eric Clapton. But it was his iconic photos of The Beatles that brought his vision to millions and millions of people and for which he will be best remembered.
 

 

Whitaker with George Harrison. Photo by Whitaker.
 

 

Allen Ginsberg, Hyde Park 1967