Vangelis Talks About The Role Of Music In Times Of Chaos
Via Al Jazeera English:
In December 2011, leaders from around the world gathered at the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations meeting in Doha, a forum meant to encourage dialogue between cultures and people.
The host nation, Qatar, asked Vangelis, the Greek composer, to create the music for the event, which also marked the inauguration of Doha’s cultural village and Greek-style amphitheatre. The event brought together celebrated artists from around the world and his music was written to formulate a message of hope.
Vangelis, one of the world’s most celebrated creators of electronic music and the Oscar-winning composer of the music for Bladerunner and Chariots of Fire, came to a Middle East in the midst of upheaval at a time of financial crisis in his own country.
Al Jazeera’s Tony Harris met the composer to talk about the role of music in our times.
KMFDM Bitch-Slaps Plutocracy With A Drug Against Wall Street
From Johan of HoodooEngine:
The whole #OccupyWallStreet thing is cool and all, but it’s not a real party until some heavyweights of radical music start throwing their weight behind it. Fans of industrial metal will be pleased to know that KMFDM has done just that, releasing a new version of their classic track (which the more angsty of us rocked in our angsty bedrooms over a decade ago), A Drug Against War, but have altered their own lyrics to spotlight the recent rebellion against evil psycho-clown corporations.
The vocals in the track are now all about defeating our shady bankster-GMO-Annunaki overlords with the new title A Drug Against Wall Street! Calling upon the 99% to “march to the drum of the ultra heavy beat,” the vocals warn against remaining passive to the ravages of class warfare, warning us rather succinctly that “make no mistake, our children’s future is at stake.”
Shortly after the release of this…
‘Soul Train’ Moments: Young Al Sharpton (Video)
In the news because Soul Train creator Don Cornelius died today. This nineteen-year-old would run for president (see Al after Mr. James Brown, around the 2:30 mark into this clip):
Playing Music Can Offset Aging Process
Photo: Stilfehler (CC)
Via ScienceDaily:
Age-related delays in neural timing are not inevitable and can be avoided or offset with musical training, according to a new study from Northwestern University.
The study is the first to provide biological evidence that lifelong musical experience has an impact on the aging process.
Measuring the automatic brain responses of younger and older musicians and non-musicians to speech sounds, researchers in the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory discovered that older musicians had a distinct neural timing advantage.
“The older musicians not only outperformed their older non-musician counterparts, they encoded the sound stimuli as quickly and accurately as the younger non-musicians,” said Northwestern neuroscientist Nina Kraus. “This reinforces the idea that how we actively experience sound over the course of our lives has a profound effect on how our nervous system functions.” …
Read more here.
By Popular Demand: The Cure For What Ails You
A little over a decade ago, disinformation published its first book, the now out of print anthology You Are Being Lied To (superseded by You Are STILL Being Lied To). We didn’t really know much about publishing books at the time, so when the book industry’s biggest annual trade show in Chicago came around, we needed help to stand out from the crowd. Enter Thomas Negovan, who was, and is our standard bearer in Chicago. Proprietor of the amazing art gallery Century Guild, Tom “found the others” for us.
A Renaissance man, Tom is also an accomplished musician who has done something truly unusual and, to my mind so compelling, that if you are anywhere near Los Angeles this week, you should go to the most unique of record release parties. I asked Tom to explain for disinformation:
It’s Sunday night, I’m up in Topanga in my friend Ysanne’s cabin, and as I experience no internet, no cell phone, and a…
The Therapeutic Singing House
To be unveiled in New Orleans — a home equipped with a drone synthesizer that produces pleasing tones reflecting the surroundings. I hope this architectural innovation catches on everywhere:
Demonstration of latest Quintron invention called THE SINGING HOUSE. This is an analog “drone synth” can be installed into any building in order to provide its inhabitants with a pleasing chord that is constantly changed by the weather. Preliminary studies have show that these soothing sounds can bring mental relaxation and healing to the modern home or institution. The music is actually played by the skies above. No two days sound the same.
Shostakovich vs. Stalin
A 1997 documentary on composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s attempts to both live and not completely sell out his art in the face of Stalin’s dictatorship:
Eighties New Wave From The Children Of God Cult
The apocalyptic, kidnapping and brainwashing California-based cult known at various times as Children of God, Family International, Family of Love, and the Family apparently stumbled upon a knack for catchy power pop melodies for a brief period in the 1980s. The result was a string of music videos concerning subject matter such as the impending arrival of the Antichrist, and “Cathy Don’t Go (To The Supermarket Today)”, which breezily delves into being implanted with RFID chips, barcodes, and the mark of the beast:
Do You Hate New Music?
Chuck Berry. Photo: Roland Godefroy (CC)
You do? Well in that case you must be a Gee-Bee. Jim Fusilli explains for the Wall Street Journal:
It’s 1955 and you’re in a record shop. The proprietor puts on “Maybellene” by a newcomer named Chuck Berry. You’re enjoying it, but a fellow customer saunters over: “That’s nothing more than Roy Acuff’s ‘Ida Red’ with different words,” he says, pointing out that Acuff cut his track in 1939. “I wouldn’t call that original.”
Or it’s 1963 and you’re listening to “Girl From the North Country” from “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.” Someone says, “Dylan didn’t write that. That’s ‘Scarborough Fair.’ It’s on Shirley Collins’s ‘False True Lovers,’” he adds, referring to the 1959 recording. “Dylan put new words to Martin Carthy’s arrangement, that’s all.”
Or it’s 2012 and there is a multitude of young singers, songwriters and musicians trying to develop their own sound. They’re not quite there…
Cee Lo’s Controversial New Year’s Eve Version Of ‘Imagine’
Cee Lo Green’s taking a lot of heat from fans of religion and John Lennon, with both groups vying for his blood. The controversy surrounds his substitution of “Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion too” to “Nothing to kill or die for, And all religion’s true” in Lennon’s 1971 classic song “Imagine.” He then tweeted “Yo I meant no disrespect by changing the lyric guys! I was trying to say a world were u could believe what u wanted that’s all” (since deleted). Here’s the performance from New York’s Times Square, shortly before midnight on New Year’s Eve, lyrics conveniently subtitled:
Cosmic Cycles of Violence: John Lennon and Dimebag Darrell Gunned Down on December 8
Courtesy of Brandt Hardin
From RockStarMartyr.net:
Pantera’s furious music was propelled by guitarist Darrell Abbott’s maniacal claws ripping across a Washburn fretboard. The music was aggression distilled, warfare on vinyl, the hellish harmonics of testosterone-pumped teenagers smashing beer bottles and crucifixes, the pentatonic expression of sociopathic sexual impulse turned loose on loose pussy, power chords and possession, amplifiers and alcohol, whammy bars and whimsical youth. Pantera was pissed. And yet, no one remembers the jolly Dimebag Darrell being particularly pissed in day-to-day life. Not nearly as pissed as John Lennon was, anyway.
Behind the lead Beatle’s circular granny glasses and tireless promotion of peace burned a fury unmatched by most metal enthusiasts. Lennon was pissed at his parents, pissed at his bandmates, pissed at his stay-at-home wife, pissed at Her Majesty the Queen, pissed at America’s war machine, pissed at the world for not giving peace a chance. Lennon was fucking hostile. But…
Crazy Clown Time with David Lynch
David Lynch, the surrealist director behind such films as Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, and Mulholland Drive, is branching out. His new solo album is entitled “Crazy Clown Time.”
Simple Question: What’s So Funny …
Disinfo.com commenters are the best the world … open question?
The Illuminati Pop Music Conspiracy Featuring Eminem, Gaga, Jay-Z…
Photo: http://www.glenjamn.com
Disinformation readers have long been tracking the illuminati agents Jay-Z and Kanye West (currently on a world-dominating tour together), as well as mind control puppet Lady Gaga, but now Jonah Weiner reveals for Slate that the pop conspiracy goes way deeper…
I’m not sure if Eminem has yet managed to escape the grasp of the Illuminati — the secret society of string pullers whose ranks he joined years ago in exchange for wealth, fame, and power — but I know he’s been trying very hard. Numerous people online tell me so. There is, for starters, a Yahoo Answers page that poses the question “Is Eminem trying to break free from the Illuminati?” and offers spirited excavation and analysis of the hidden anti-Illuminati messages Eminem embedded in his song “Not Afraid.” There is a four-page message-board thread titled “Is Eminem an Illuminati slave?” A YouTube video called “Eminem vs. Illuminati” explains, via solemn text and creepy music, that when the Detroit…
A Song For The 99%
South African folk singer Brendon Shields offers up a song for our times from his forthcoming album Truth and Recession:
NYC’s Beloved Monster Island Closes
Surprisingly, the demise of non-profit music and art venue Monster Island (which was as weirdly charming as it name would imply) drew a write-up in this past weekend’s New York Times. Like its brethren Market Hotel and Silent Barn (both of which also shuttered their doors this past year) Monster Island stood in stark, defiant contrast to the commercially-oriented music club model. It helped to foster some of the city’s most acclaimed and exciting bands in recent years, before falling prey to the incessant steamroller of gentrification:
The concert was particularly poignant for the hundred or so people who stood listening intently in the bright light off the East River in Brooklyn because it was the last time they would be able to gather for a block party at Monster Island, a collection of performance spaces and studios in a faded commercial building covered with murals near the Williamsburg waterfront. Many…
Gibson Guitars Vs. the U.S. Government
Via Brooklyn Vegan and Gibson.com:
The Federal Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. has suggested that the use of wood from India that is not finished by Indian workers is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because it is the Justice Department’s interpretation of a law in India. (If the same wood from the same tree was finished by Indian workers, the material would be legal.) This action was taken without the support and consent of the government in India.
On August 24, 2011, around 8:45 a.m. CDT, agents for the federal government executed four search warrants on Gibson’s facilities in Nashville and Memphis and seized several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. Gibson had to cease its manufacturing operations and send workers home for the day, while armed agents executed the search warrants. Gibson has fully cooperated with the execution of the search warrants.
“One True TOPI Tribe” Compilation
The One True TOPI Tribe, thee OTTT, or simply TOPI (said like Hopi, see TOPI mission statement one), as you already know is a coum-Unity, a decentralized proccess network, founded by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.(Genesis Breyer P-Orridge & Dust La Rock for Frank151 from Frank151 on Vimeo.)
You will at once notice at least two unfamiliar terms, TOPI and COUM. Let us start with COUM or coum and see if we can then speak a little more about this One True TOPI Tribe. It’s hard not to notice, how coum is spelled (but how does it sound?), COUM (the capitalization is just to draw your attention to) or coum can be pronounced ‘cum’ or ‘com’. Yet we do not stop at that level. The term also resonates with the word ‘come’ as well as ‘cum’ (like in your face).
This portmanteau word, this phoneme/morpheme, coum invokes other terms that it may combine with, such as communication and all other (dot) com- related terms, even…
