No shopping malls or fast food restaurants in Ur, Iraq shocker!

From the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,921356,00.html

'A few miles from the bridge to the south lie the ruins of the ancient city of Ur, founded 8,000 years ago, the birth place of Abraham and a flourishing metropolis at a time when the inhabitants of north-west Europe were still walking round in animal skins.

Sgt Sprague, from White Sulphur Springs in West Virginia, passed it on his way north, but he never knew it was there.

"I've been all the way through this desert from Basra to here and I ain't seen one shopping mall or fast food restaurant," he said. "These people got nothing. Even in a little town like ours of twenty five hundred people you got a McDonald's at one end and a Hardee's at the other." '

The last No Disco

was good wasn't it? The video for Johnny Cash singing Hurt was fantastic, very moving. I looked at it again this morning. When I went to look up the lyrics I noticed that the "crown of thorns" was originally "crown of shit".

Watched a bit more telly then, MTV are doing a 'brand new music' promotion, this meant some live Interpol (good except they should move 2 % of their attention from clothes to the wigging out), a few Thrills videos (ok songs, definitely looking Irish in the clothes dept), 50 Cent (In Da Club - do all his songs sound this good? The samples and music are sort of rave inspired, piano up and up to the peak) and some other stuff that I have forgotten.

Does Johnny Cash play live anymore?

Calexico and a few more reviews.

I should get the new Calexico album. I've been listening to that free track supplied by salon and it's pretty nice, in a reallly laidback way. Reminds me of something, I can't remember what. Something about the lovely smoothness of the singer's voice. The first thing that comes to mind is Bruce Springsteen on his downbeat albums (The Ghost of Tom Joad, for example).

Talking Heads - True Stories

A soundtrack to a film made out of wacky stories in local paper, this is naturally their most American album. It has pedal steel on a few tracks. Mmmm, pedal steel. It's also probably their closest to the mainstream: it's high-energy without having the "beamed from another planet" vibe of their first few albums. A long way from The Big Country.

Love - Love Revisited

This is a best of, and proves that Love has at one time or another covered every type of sixties song. From warped psychedelica to smart British Invasion ditties, they can do everything as well as the originals. And their own style, exemplified by the beautiful Alone Again Or remains untouched by others.

Also, there's an article in the Onion's AV Club about South By Southwest, which a passle of Irish bands flew off to this year. And sure enough, one of the up-and-comers gets singled out as a band to watch in the future. Step forward The Frames!

More

about the war. Was reading an Iraqi blog Where is Raed? which is quite good and just noticed that the NME is amopng his daily reads (along with the Guardian, Google news etc.). Interesting.....

3-D cleared of porn charges

http://www.nme.com/news/104556.htm Good news

New Evan Dando album

Sounds very good BBC album of the week

So the marines have raised the stars and stripes on Qasr a few days after Bush said that no UK or US flags would be raised - only Iraqi flags.

Not much else music or film wise - I can tell you all about afforestation, 1000 plants per acre for Lodgepole Pine and so on!

Oh hang on - No Disco is going to be axed. Online petition here. Confused about this, I really loved the program when it started, it was a big thing for me living in 2 channal land, the excitement of the first Palace Bros video, or Halycon or even David Gray (who I still like). Maybe music videos don't do it for me anymore but I have watched less and less of ND over the years. Still it is one of the only Irish tv shows to air Irish music and the recent Planxty special was great. Maybe they should try for a short season (10?) of specials like that about music from the last 30 years or so. For example we don't need another U2 special but what about the Horslips? Or Stars of Heaven who supposedly everyone from REM to.....REM like? Ok the budget and time for such a special is a lot higher but I still want to see and learn about music from tv programs.

No Disco * 2

Beard! got around to watching the Planxty No Disco special the other night and most enjoyable it was. Didn't know that much about Planxty (or the other 70s trad bands who started experimenting with new instruments) and am now keen to locate some albums. Brian noted afterrwards that it is pretty hard to get good compilations of Irish trad or folk perhaps because most of the labels involved seem to be more interested in making money quickly rather than treating the music and the creators with some respect. There is no label (that I know of and I could be wrong) like {{ http://www.topicrecords.co.uk/ Topic}} in the UK which is an excellent source for English & Scottish folk music. Planxty were no strangers to bad business deals, they don't have any control over their albums any more. The masters were sold on by their producer Phil Coulter to a US label - Seanachai - and they find it extremely hard to get any royalties out of them, Seanachai also have made shoddy releases of the albums, omitting liner notes, not having the original wrong covers etc. So Phil Coulter looks like a right prick for helping to create this situation.

Then watched the new episode of No Disco. The only track that stands out in my memory is PJ Harvey's - Good Fortune which is just brilliant with a simple video of PJ (looking pretty good) wondering around NY (where I will be in April...yeahhhh. What a pity she is playing Glasto (yes Andrew - I'm recovering my senses I think and will plump for Glasto not 100% tho). Should book flights soon and save a packet.

Lisdoonvarna line-up (more)

According to the Microphones site also playing at Lisdoonvarna will be "Sinead O'Connor, Bonnie Billy, Anonomoan, Dirty Three, more!"

So we have

Christy Moore, The Frames, BPB, Sinead O'Connor, The Microphones, Anonomoan, Suzanne Vega, Mundy, Damien Dempsey, Luka Bloom, Goodtime John, D.A.D.D.Y, Dirty 3.

Damn, so no confirmation of BPB playing (or not) Glasto and the Lisdoonvarna line-up gets a bit better.

Official site

Let's start a Glastonbury lineup rumours entry....

Updated March 31st

Definitely

Love - forever changes

That is high up on the NME writers poll - I wonder what it is like?

Got the Sugababes - Angels With Dirty Faces and an Embrace album Drawn From Memory yesterday (it was €4.95 in Golden Discs). Very familiar with AWDF already from mp3 - it's just such a good collection of pop dance and ballads. It looks like they're playing T in the Park so prob ruling them out of Glastonbury unfortunately. I wonder where is a good palce to collect rumours about who is playing Glasto? The message board at the official Glasto site isn't up yet. Melanie C was on the Late Late on Fri night, she is terrible, what awful songs and singing - and yet she sold a million copies of her first album! Listening to The Strokes album - it still sounds very exciting.

The Coral

I know Beard! were very dismissive of The Coral when we first saw them at the NME Brats tour Jan 12 months ago (everybody else was good or brilliant - BRMC, The Lost Prophets and Andrew WK but I can't get their single out of my head - 'Don't think your the first'. It's a pretty good song.

fuck fuck fuck - Lisdoonvarna

Has a good lineup, including Bonnie prince Billy, Suxanne Vega & the Microphones

fuck because it is on the same weekend as Glastonbury. Maybe they'll play Glasto as well?

"LISDOONVARNA, CO CLARE

JUNE 28TH 2003

Lisdoonvarna Festival is back. 20 years after the last Lisdoonvarna Festival was held, we are delighted to announce that the world famous festival is back. Lisdoonvarna 2003 will take place on Saturday June 28th at the original festival site, just outside Lisdoonvarna, Co. Clare.

Christy Moore will headline the festival in his long awaited return to outdoor performance. Joining Christy Moore on the bill will be The Frames, Suzanne Vega, Mundy, Damien Dempsey, Luka Bloom plus more acts to be announced.

The Festival will also feature a second Stage hosted by Wonky. Artists confirmed so far are: Bonnie Prince Billy, The Microphones (K Records), Goodtime John and D.A.D.D.Y

The first Lisdoonvarna Festival was held in 1978. Over the next six years the festival played host to artists such as Jackson Browne, Emmylou Harris, Van Morrison, Planxty and Rory Gallagher. At the time, the festival was hailed as the ‘grandson of Woodstock’ by the music press and at its peak it attracted over 50,000 patrons to Lisdoonvarna."

Nick Cave's Bring It On

A clip from the video is available at www.nickcaveandthebadseeds.com. It starts out as a pretty standard run-through, nice music, plenty of opportunity to wonder whether Nick is starting to look like Hugo Weaving as he gets older, and then ... stuff happens.

Link from the excellent (and newly returned!) Do You Feel Loved?

News from outside!

Homelands announced!

Although we like our mimsy miserablism around here, we have been known to throw our hands in the air from time to time, and Streets + Chems + 2manydjs + Jon Carter + Jacques Lu Cont sounds like a good time to me.

Trevor Horn to produce Belle & Sebastian

Trev has been around a bit: there's a 1980's bootleg of Yes covering Video killed the Radio Star, which sounds like madness until you realise that Trevor Horn was half of Buggles and a fifth of Yes. Then the bootleg sounds like sanity in comparison.

Green Energy Gigs announced

I'll have a proper link later. Beck, maybe. Electric Six: definitely.

Like Andrew Beard!, I was watching a few filums over the weekend

Saw Chicago as well, 3 or 4 great numbers in it, the rest drag a little, Renee Zwelleger (??) does a good snarling pout. On the smallest screen in the Savoy but maybe it has been out for ages. How long do films remain in a cinema these days? I thought a month would be normal for a big smash hit but for instance 8 Mile isn't on anymore.

Relaxing vousing in front of the tv yesterday. Hitchcock's Rebecca at first seems dated - it's nearly too painful watching (the very charming) Joan Fontaine try to adapt to her new life in the big house (which I assummed was the main theme) but then the whole thing changes and it's actually about a murder! The film looks great, there are some fantastic shots such as the opening one. There was something in the newspaper about the declining standards of written English and I am reminded of that when reading over my own ramblings.

I got Herzog's Aguirre - Wrath of God on video, which is an amazing film, screenplay in 2 1/2 days, shot in 5 weeks for 300 K in 1972. Epsodic plot, Spainish conquitadore party head down the river looking for El Dorado encountering hostile Indians, mutiny, hunger and madness. The whole thing is elevated into classic status by the camera work (opening and final scenes are especially fantastic, make you weep for the arrogance of fragile humanity) and Klaus Kiniski's hypnostising performance. He doesn't do or say a whole lot, just stares off into the distance mostly. But it's one moody, smouldering, non blinking stare. All sorts of great stories about the making of it, Kiniski and Herzog (who made 3 or 4 other features together) were 2 personalities ranged against each other. Herzog allegedly directed Kinski from behind the camera with a rifle (unfortunately this story probably isn't true but he did threaten Kiniski with guns quite a bit- mind you Kniski was quite mad as well and threatened to fire bomb Herzog's house). When we get a DVD player this would be a film worth owning. There is also a good accompanying score performed by some German kraut-synth band. Sound like a human choir.

There was also a completely separate documentary on the video called Land of Silence and Darkness, about those who are deaf and blind. It's main subject is Fini, an elderly woman who has been deaf-blind since her teens and has managed to surmount her challenges (her mother kept her in bed for 30 years) to help others. It's very touching - when they go up on a plane there is a lot of joy, as they are signed (using a painfully slow system called the tactile system where every letter is signed onto the palm of the deaf-blind, some can speak reasonably well, others have lost that power) descriptions of the flight. The camera is unflinching remainging on one person for minutes at a time, at first you are full of pity, then uncomfortable as you want to move away from this person's tragedy and sometimes you see a chink of hope in their behaviour. For those born deaf-blind it is a huge stuggle to learn the basics of communication with the world.

An interesting beginning to the week.

Cinema Weekend!

Chicago

Does what it says on the tin. A Stage Musical starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renee Zellweger and Richard Gere. If this sounds like something you'd enjoy, knock yourself out. I though this was the first time I'd seen any of the stars, but of course I saw High Fidelity, which means this movie is this ILE thread in disguise.

The Good Thief

A really good little heist movie. Well made, with sharp dialogue, a great end and fine acting throughout. If you're of a disposition to lament how Hollywood doesn't make great movies anymore, you'll find a lot of fuel for your argument here, from Nick Nolte shooting up at the start to the great twist at the end.

Adaptation

I was probably over-hyped on this. It's a bit more focussed than Being John Malkovich, though without real payoff. Whether that's intentional irony or not I can't decide. Nicholas Cage is incredible throughout. The monologue at the start pretty much describes my mental state at the moment, and there were bits of the film where I couldn't watch him. This is intended as a serious compliment. I'll probably have to watch it again.