Mysteries Of The Revolution

Rauschenberg

2008-05-14T08:55:00.000-07:00

Have just heard that Robert Rauschenberg has died. A real loss. One of my all time heroes. A giant among painters and a true innovator. Blows all the sh** outta the usual mediocre suspects that get lauded and applauded by arswipes. His work is just so envigorating and enlivening. I well remember an art student in my foundation year discovering his work and never looking back.

A colourful character and a seminal member of the New York School (along with a who's who of modern painting) he forged a new language and style.

Absolutely wonderful.

RIP RR - Lux Eterna

Can Cannes do the Can Can?

2008-05-13T22:34:00.000-07:00

We're taking a slight break next week from rehearsing/working and donning our other personas as we're off to Cannes with our short "The Incandescence Of One Man's Journey To Remain A Solid Object" The film side's always been important to us and we're pushing hard to make the feature. We had a mare though in submission terms as can you believe possibly the most prestigious of all film festivals, can't handle (yet anyway) Hi-Def? We were amazed. On the one hand I suppose it's quite quaint (I too love old stuff) on the other it's pain in the a**! Which prompted a 'kinda speak'ese dealing with it...in that could Cannes do the Can Can - or the no no?
T'was touch and go I can tell you. Dont'cha just amour it...

Just shot a great vid with director Antonio Ribeiro of our version of "Get Carter" Had so many requests again for this. And this is now the final outing. It looks great. So watch out for it everywhere - soon!

Nice little ditsville to end upon:

Scrobble dobble tweakn'pullit
So much sh** and nowhere to puddit
We're down the cra**er that's for sure
Who give a f*** let's f*** some more!
Anon (Wilium Shakessmear)

The weather and Marmite

2008-04-22T00:28:00.000-07:00

It was (I think..) Mark Twain who said the worst winter he ever experienced was summer in San Francisco. Having spent the worst March on record in SF I know what he means! Though
SF has a lot going for it in any event, some good music included and we hope to get there sooner rather than later. But here with no Spring and an endlessly bitter east wind it seems that, as ever, the weather reflects our living condition.

With up to 50 billion being pumped into the economy and banks continuing their headlong drive down the toilet, baling out all over the place with rights issues and selling everything they've got, it seems The Treasury and the Bank Of England have come up with a really BIG idea.

Yep, a stunner. It's brilliant. Mindblowing. Worthy of the greatest of minds. Move over Einstein. Move over Keynes. Move over Jesus and the Saints. Move over the beginning of the f******whole world - why don't we all go back to the f****** war!!? Why don't we issue Government Bonds! Oh yeah! Eeeeeexxxcellent! Lease people's OWN money back to them to prop up a whole host of bozos who've f***** up in the first place. Genius.

And while we're at it, let's give everyone a Government Issue pack. Y' know candles, Marmite, rice, sugar, bread, half -a-dozen eggs, flour and a 'hope' bag we can wear over our heads just in case! 'Cos that's how it's going.

Jeez! It's completely asshole. And while we're about it why don't we stick a white hot poker up the rectums of the good 'ol footsoldier and abolish the 10p tax rate!!?? Sure 'ol Brownie tried slippin' it in last time round. But what's happened since expels that myth. Just look at the shower at the top. Sad. And the warning sings have been written on the wall for some time. No one wanted to heed them. Then.....shock horror when it happens. No one wants it. It's madness.

As, whatever's reported, Iraq ('jaw jaw's better than war,war?!') also continues to go totally belly up, with sooooo much money being flushed down the bog of moral turpitude, misplaces righteous zeal and oh yeah - oil. Which is rising at an alarming rate whilst OPEC coins it like there's no yesterday - which there won't be.

Meanwhile there's a lotta good out there too.... and there's always music, the constant in one's life. And for MOTR there's a lot going on, so power on eh. Just power on. Stay on the mission.

Gettin' by, money n'war...

2008-03-14T23:46:00.000-07:00

After the latest news that the fifth largest investment bank in the US now requires funding from the Federal Reserve to stay afloat and Darling's kinda 'hold the line' non-budget it seems no one, but no one's got the bottle to come out with the real truth.

Sure the sub prime market in the US has had an effect and maybe the UK should have saved more for a rainy day but what's plainly evident (and should have been from the start) is neither the US nor the UK can afford the f****** war! Osama must be laughing like the proverbial drain as he watches the West's economy slide further and further into the mire.

What galls me most is the sheer arrogance of the West in their assumption that they and only they can solve global problems. Did it never occur to the Rumsfeld's or the Cheney's (well...I suppose you are asking a lot there!) that they just might be walking into quicksand and that not everyone would be delirious about having US troops on their soil for many years. I'm sure they thought it'd be a quick, cheap and easy option to 're-balance' the Middle East. Against all advice - literally - they stumbled like the blind leading the blind deeper and deeper into the pit. Now with a folksy, mumbling apology for a President (the only one left of the the triumvirate, I mean have you seen head nor tail of Cheney lately!!?) about to set off into the sunset, Rome will burn whilst he fiddles (or whatever he does) in the vast flat plains of good 'ol Texas.

No one wished to see a tyrant such as Saddam destroy a population and lord it over a land so rich in history and endeavour. But again the US continues to remain in denial about Saddam being feted by such as Rumsfeld et al whilst he did the US's bidding against Iran. Now of course the US remains more than just a mite twitchy about Iran's stance on a lot of things, both nuclear and militarily. Which will never be solved until there's a huge shift of emphasis in US foreign policy. And that's a long way off - if at all achievable - as whilst Clinton and Obama slug it out, I would hazard a guess that 'at the end of the day' the Republicans will triumph once again such is the paranoia surrounding National Security.

Whilst Iraq festered and Afghanistan became the preserve of the Taliban there was nothing like enough diplomatic effort made to solve the problems. The whole weapons of mass destruction debacle only served to prove that the US had decided long before on military action as the only solution. One which should have been employed, if at all, in the first Gulf War. Then there's the sheer folly of 'reconstruction' which was never in place or even thought about. Which is beyond lunacy.

I dearly wish for the people of Iraq to live in peace and prosper, as in Aghansitan. And I feel for those troops who do a massively difficult job in extreme circumstances with one hand tied behind their backs, and a paucity of the right equipment with which to do it. A situation which can be laid firmly at Brown's door. You only have to look along the front bench of the Labour party at PMQ's to see why we're forever in the sh** in this regard as those government ministers responsible are basically completely ineffectual individuals with nothing, but nothing to offer whatsoever. And their erstwhile one time former boss is now about to solve the Israeli/Palestinian question!? I don't think so.

I can well understand the hurt, anger and outrage over 9/11. I've been to Ground Zero and it's a moving experience. The sheer scale of it overwhelms one. But wouldn't it have shown real guts and fortitude for the US to have taken a step back and thought maybe, just maybe there's a reason for all this and we should sort it out? And there's the rub as few at the top are 'great thinking' people, giants of political thought and initiative. Mostly we're run by medicorities on their own agendas. Anyone with anything apposite to contribute is sidelined. No one knows anymore. And few -if any -care.

Across the board mediocrity rules. From the arts, education, wholly inefficient government to badly run companies, staffed by the scourge of the UK - 'middle management' - possibly the worst anywhere in the world. The pre-requisite for heading up such a company or organization is be a useless arse, screw the company up even further and walk away with a huge pay off. Beautiful. So inspiring.

Whether it be dealing with banks, lawyers, utilities, whatever, and going through the endless pain that they and only they can dish out or indeed trying to get your broadband sorted and being tortured with totally unacceptable service, useless engineers and premuim rate utterly 'non help', helplines you're left with only one choice - that of remaining stoic.

My point is if all this idiocy was correctly chanelled and addressed we might get somewhere.
It'd need a sea-change of epic proportions for that to be achieved but in what could yet be a curious irony as the West's economy continues to slide into the abyss and we're brought up sharp on so many things, it'll all have to change in any case. Maybe the time's about to arrive. We shall see.

What I do know is that music remans a constant, in a special place, and whilst there's the usual sh** out there, much remains inspiring and dwarfs the sludge and putrifaction that is the daily condition.

A journey, Big Buddah, Roland, his heart and my mind...

2008-01-21T03:42:00.000-08:00

Now that a New Year's well under way and MOTR' s gathering momentum I'm on a plane to Europe for some solo dates mindful of the fact that making music is in itself much like a journey, to wherever the mind sets itself. Music can, and does, take you to wherever you want to go and will always remind you of time and place.

I can absolutely remember hearing Rahsaan Roland Kirk's "Serenade To A Cuckoo" for the first time one hot, sultry summer (yes we did have them once!) in Brighton and how it blew me away. I played it over and over. His whole being's in that track from wonderful playing to a kind of irreverence, a singlemindedness. Kirk was a maverick, something I've always admired. He like Miles and Coltrane had attitude both in their being and their playing long before the rest and was there an age before such as Jethro Tull.

'Big Buddah' (a play on 'buddy' and 'ah', as in ..ah!) has its own meditative spiritual essence as its dedicated to Roland and began life as a solo feature, remaining so with MOTR.

RIP Roland, may you blow ever heavenward.

BB

MOTR - up and running for the sun...

2007-12-08T04:31:00.000-08:00

So we're there now! Up and running for the sun - set your controls for its heart.

That's what we wanted to follow with MOTR.

I was in Marrakech and decided I wanted to get a three-piece together, as an offshoot to The Orch. I'd got some ideas as had Dan and we decided when I got back to get something together with which we could experiment and take to wherever we felt appropriate.

It wasn't a question of doing the standard 'jazz' trio thing (much as we love what's been done) as there's so many on the market now. Some great but an awful lot truly mediocre. And we wanted to kick ass a bit with different stuff, invest in some retro-psychdelic wonderment, get vibed by what vibed us, which had drive and passion, where we weren't constrained and which we could build on with a number of albums.

As it was a lot happened in our personal lives during its recording, which inevtiably had a bearing on the final outcome. And I don't give a rat's arse what anyone might say. I know it's a good album. Filled with different aspects and melody which whilst I love f*** y** beats, we needed to explore, away from sheer atonalism.

Marrakech I find wholly conducive to creativity and much of the album was written there. The track 'Secret Fire' came out of being vibed by the indigenous music floating from cafe to cafe whilst sampling delicious the al la menthe. It's a stimulatng and interesting city, like a kind of louche down-at-heel Paris. Plus it has style. And MOTR's got style along with creative guts, edge and finesse.

I'll be updating what we're doing as we go and giving my views and opinions on a range of subjects, from which I've never stinted. I worry about people with no opinions. Who always go with the flow. Always accept without questioning. If you don't have an opinion, get one ok!

Love
BB

2007-12-03T08:17:00.001-08:00

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