John B (on John C’s comments) mentions the story doing the rounds about a video which, if it existed, might alarm Mr Rajoy’s more conservative following. What we need now is John A with a pirate version, or at least some decent fakes. (Does no one here know what Photoshop is really for?) Here, meanwhile,…
Giles Tremlett writes this morning in The Guardian that: Support for the Spanish People’s party government is ebbing away as concern about terrorism and separatism dominates the general election campaign, according to opinion polls published yesterday. In fact – apart from the blip in socialist support when the war started – there is no statistically…
Very few journalists in any language can compete with Frits Abrahams, who currently writes five days a week for Holland’s best paper, NRC Handelsblad. His current function is that of glocal reporter: documenting clearly and accessibly everyday events that don’t get proper coverage elsewhere and that also happen to be of great importance to the…
One of the first questions (ethno)musicologists ask is, “Hey, but what does it look like?” Turntablism now has its own patch of the curriculum at Berklee (NYT), and this is what it looks like in the Turntable Transcription Methodology devised by John Carpaccio: Here (PDF) is an in-depth description, but you should be able to…
One of the proudest memories of my musical career is of a mission undertaken on behalf of the Dutch nation to a Swedish folk festival, at which a programme of James Last covers was performed to accompany the wobblings of a display team of penny-farthing riders. Some believe that the deep affinity that exists between…
Cockroach-eye view of the choir up to the usual nonsense in a garage in Sants: We’re still looking for a good tenor and more sponsorship – apparently the full video is crashing mailservers all over Korea, so Samsung, this is your chance. Contact me on my mobile or use the form. Creds to al-Ben for…
I’m slightly confused that Asian Media Watch is condemning Lost in Translation but supporting The Last Samurai in AA campaigning. Although the latter film is more explicit in its rejection of the present and embrace of the past, the positive use of Japan clichés (chanting monks, temples, flower twiddling) by the former makes it clear…
The difficulty of interpreting intent in materials published in a different language and cultural context was one of the interesting facets of the case of the Fuengirola imam, convicted of publishing with malicious intent a manual on how to beat women without leaving scars. It’s not going to get any easier here once radio and…