Reading (and trying to sing) bits of Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues over lunch, I came across the following in the 118th chorus: It’s all the same to meThe radio I dont wanta hearAnd cant have to hearPlays one thing and anotherOf great Sarah Vag A musician once told me that, during one of Ms…
The Times of India writes of the late Raja Ramanna that he had the capacity to design a nuclear bomb with one hand and play Bach, Beethoven and Lizst with the other. Given that most of us need at least two hands in order to pursue either hobby, the survival of this planet in the…
André Hazes, the notable (but not notably abstemious–he famously lit up in the no-smoking cinema in which his life-film was being premiered) Dutch singer, died yesterday morning. RIP, one would think, but the Dutch music industry is smart–and tacky–enough not to miss a fiscal-friendly moment like this: Enschede a/ Zee has scanned the condolence ad…
From Popbitch: Abu al-Zarqawi is the mastermind behind this week’s gruesome hostage beheadings in Iraq. By filming himself doing the beheadings and then selling the resulting snuff movies as DVDs all over the Middle East, al-Zarqawi has turned himself into radical Islam’s hottest celebrity. What nobody has pointed out is how influenced by hip hop…
Right headline, wrong story from Deutsche Welle: what the DB Vorstand really wanted to communicate is that German rail privatisation will proceed according to plan, and that under a new CEO, one Kurtis Blow, trains will be marketed to a wider public by using them at night for 70s-style hiphop parties.
I don’t normally read David de Ugarte, but this is strange: Las asociaciones de periodistas declaran como objetivo “luchar contra el intrusismo profesional”, conocidos comunicadores braman contra “los que pretenden hacerse pasar por periodistas” en la web y nuestras saturadas facultades alertan a sus estudiantes de que sus futuros puestos de trabajo están en peligro…
This morning’s revelations of a depression Prozac symbiosis are nothing more than a variation on the old Guinness-is-good-for-you pub therapy industry. The trick is to recognise it as such and manage it effectively. While it is evident that Hank Williams failed in the latter respect, I think that one of his songs contains a remarkable…
A glittering prize for the person who, on being asked to select his channel’s best 10 programmes for veteran news broadcaster John Humphrys, “sent him tapes of programmes such as Banzai, Breasts Uncupped and Nip/Tuck.” There is, however, a glaring inconsistency in his criticism of reality telly and defence of news journalism: on the one…
There is no sound quite as revolting as an ex-street cat on heat and with ferocious nasal congestion licking its posterior end, and the smell is not exactly Scandinavian pine either. Jimmy Rushing on his 1944 recording of Harvard blues sings I don’t keep dogs or women in my room but omits mention of pussy,…
The news (via Normblog) that the Iranian justice system has strung up a mentally incapable and unrepresented 16-year old girl for getting to know a boy shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to anyone who has heard the stories of those who escaped the revolution or the various officially sanctioned torture and murder…