SHOJI HANO
Drums
(Heart Lord Studio)
The new five-track Drums album is a series of solo drum improvisations which draws from his Shintaido influences. Drum purists will love the crisp recording sound where every hi-hat is captured in pristine tones.
US$15 (click here to order)
PETER BROTZMANN and SHOJI HANO
Funny Rat/s 3... Flying Crow
(Heart Lord Studio)
While Brotzmann is renowned as an energy player, Flying Crow can almost be considered mellow free. There is a roundedness in Brotzmann's sax tone, a certain composure that burns without setting off a fire. Or maybe it's Hano's gentle influence.
US$15
(click here to order)
VARIOUS
Hoshizora No Drive
Syd Barrett Tribute Compilation Album
(Heart Lord Studio)
The wildness, experimental anarchy and sheer noise are all
here. The madcap is laughing alright.
US$33
(Early bird special US$30!)
(click here to order)
DEJA VU...
Ten years ago, in 1998, Malaysians took to the streets and braved water cannons when they stood up for Anwar Ibrahim and reformasi. With what's happening in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysians might have to take to the streets again in 2008. Click here to read or buy Sabri Zain's first-person account of those early reformasi days in Face Off.
THE SHOP
Visit The Shop to order
Noel Vera's
Critic After Dark
BigO CDs,
BigO books and
BigO back issues Click here
GET FREE
E-ZINE Email mybigo@bigozine.com with
the message,
"Put me on your mailing list," and get free weekly e-zine
featuring music news, reviews, movies, books and cool cutting-edge
stuff.
+ + + + +
CONTACT US mybigo@bigozine.com Tel:
63484007 Snail mail:
PO Box 784
Marine Parade
Singapore 914410
Want
to reach thousands of young $ingaporeans with your sales message?
Ad rates for our weekly emailer will be forwarded to you.
Counter
started:
October 8, 2007
Note:
Those who are sensitive and easily offended please do not click on
the link
When the bulletin that Michael Jackson had died flashed across the screen, writer Ishmael Reed was prepared for TV at its worst and he wasn't disappointed. The man wasn't cold before the familiar adjectives were rolled out - "weird", "bizarre", "eccentric". As Reed said, with the absence of black and Latinos from journalism, the media have become a spare all white jury always ready to take down a black celebrity for the entertainment of the types who used to attend those acts created by P.T. Barnum.
Last Thursday, while working on some writing deadlines, I was switching channels on cable. On CNN they were promoting "Black In America," an exercise meant to boost ratings by making whites feel good by making blacks look bad, the marketing strategy of the mass media since the 1830s, according to a useful book entitled "The Showman and the Slave," by Benjamin Reiss. The early penny press sold a "whiteness" upgrade to newly arriving immigrants by depicting blacks in illicit situations. By doing so they were marketing an early version of a self esteem boosting product.
The '90s might have been known for grunge music but the indie spirit also brought with it bands such as Uncle Tupelo, whose Jay Farrar and Mike Heidorn went on to form Son Volt while other members such as Jeff Tweedy continued as Wilco. In this interview, Bill Glahn, who published Live! Music Review, talks to members of Son Volt, who had released their Trace album in 1995. This article was published in BigO #125 (May 1996).
With a busy schedule of radio and print interviews scheduled along their tour, trying to get the full band to sit down at one time was damn near impossible. It was finally decided to do this interview in two segments; the first with Dave Boquist and Jay Farrar while Jim Boquist was handling the local media at the same time. Jim and drummer Mike Heidorn would then sit down later to fill in the gaps.
Bailing out on Barclay's with massive losses, Temasek forgets to tell $ingapore's citizens about it. (Also read the sidebar: All Aglow Over US$10bil Swiss Buy.)
$ingapore officials' sense of superiority has taken another beating. A behind-the-curve bunch of sheep with MBAs may now be the truer image. While the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi has cleaned up on its investment in Britain's Barclays Bank, Temasek Holdings, still headed until October by Ho Ching, wife of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, has bailed out at a loss estimated at around US$850 million.
The Wind Of Distant Drums After Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead died in 1995, the band's drummer, Mickey Hart, went on to pursue an interesting musical career starting with the Mystery Box, his follow-up to the critically-acclaimed Planet Drum album. The articulate and energetic Hart, who has written several books on the history and mythology of rhythm, spoke to Matthew Lewis while on tour in Park City, Utah. He was nearing the end of a 40-date concert tour, the so-called "Deadapalooza" extravaganza that also featured Dead guitarist Bob Weir's group. This article was printed in BigO #129 (September 1996). Click here
Urbane Cowboys In 2007, the Cowboy Junkies released Trinity Revisited, a re-recording of the album that propelled them into the limelight. With its basic set-up, the 1988 Trinity indeed provided a stepping stone for the band to hone its craft, allowing the Cowboy Junkies to experiment and release subsequent albums such as The Caution Horses (1990), Black Eyed Man (1992) and Pale Sun Cresent Moon (1993). Gerrie Lim caught up with Michael Timmins just when the Junkies released their 1996 album, Lay It Down. This article was published in BigO #127 (July 1996). Click here
Hope Flames Eternal The Flaming Lips were always hot stuff. BigO's astroboy Ben Harrison reckons he probably first read about them in the '80s via an old photocopied issue of BigO (our pre-internet incarnation). And then, over a decade later, they hit a new level of success with the release of their brilliant 1999 album, The Soft Bulletin, making them an even hotter commodity... and even harder to reach on the phone. But Ben persevered, battled the robots, and eventually got Lip-synching with the bands' main spaceman, Wayne Coyne, when he called the Witchita line, man. This article was first published in BigO #168 (December 1999). The Soft Bulletin was BigO's Album of 1999. Click here Click here for more articles
Hauntings It takes a ghost to show a lonely photographer what's missing in his life - a situation made worse when he ends his affair with his former schoolmate in the erotic Texture Of Skin by Lee Seong-gang, a filmmaker who made his mark with animation movies. Stephen Tan reviews. Click here
Loving Daughter Fights Back The idea of filial piety goes out the window when a beastly father wants nothing better than to keep on having sex with his daughter, after he observes her taking a bath in Ivan Lai's cult hit, Daughter Of Darkness, an erotic morality play that ends in gore and tragedy. Stephen Tan reviews. Click here
The Horror! The Horror! It's easier to enjoy Asian horror in its multivaried forms than to explain why one enjoys it, or why it's perceived to be generally better than the Hollywood kind. Is it that Asians have a more profound, more widespread belief in the supernatural? Is it that their many cultures are more open to matters mythological, irrational, metaphysical? Critic After Dark Noel Vera ponders on the horror at the Rotterdam International Film Festival 2009 (Hungry Ghosts programme). Click
here
NEW ROIOs* Elvis
Presley - The American Way: The Legendary 1969 American Sound Studio Recordings
Vol 1-5 Elvis
Presley - You Know It Don't Have To Be Strictly Country Vol 1 Elvis
Presley - The Brightest Star On Sunset Boulevard: REMASTER Elvis
Presley - The Talk Of The Town Elvis
Presley - Sunset Rundown: Standing Room Only Tapes Vol 4 Elvis
Presley - Rock My Soul: Standing Room Only Tapes Vol 5
Paul Simon
& Friends -New York Children's Fund Benefit: EXPANDED
The Beatles
- John, Paul, George & Ringo: The Ex-Beatles
Nick Cave
& The Bad Seeds - Melbourne 2009
Bob Dylan -
The Lyrics Of Bob Dylan
Bruce
Springsteen - The Way It Was: Sept 19, 1978
Yusuf Islam -
Bayern3 Radio Show 2009
Rod Stewart
- Live at the Olympia 1976: 2009 Broadcast
Rod Stewart
- Live at the Olympia 1976: COMPLETE
Neil Young
& Crazy Horse - Oslo 1976
Neil Young
& Crazy Horse - Rotterdam 1976
Neil Young
& Crazy Horse - Brussels 1976
Bob Dylan -
XM Theme Time Radio Hour: Show 325 Goodbye: Satellite Version
Led Zeppelin
- London Fog: BBC Sessions 1969-1970
Pink Floyd -
"the Best Of Tour 72": Completed & Restored
Rolling
Stones - A Brussels Affair: The Quad Mix
VARIOUS -
BBC4 Radio: For One Night Illegally: The History Of The Bootleg
Procol Harum
- The Elusive Procol Harum: New York 1971
Bob Dylan -
Mighty Mockingbird: Isle Of Wight 31st August 1969
Bob Dylan -
XM Theme Time Radio Hour: Show 324 Clearance Sale: Satellite Version
Harry
Nilsson - The Secret Tracks *Recordings of indeterminate origin Click
here for complete list
DVD Archive of Rare Films VARIOUS -
Blues At The BBC VARIOUS -Blues Britannia: Can Blue Men Sing The Whites? Later With Jools Holland - Series 34 Show 4 Page &
Plant - Walking Into Rockpalast 1998 Puccini's
Tosca with Zubin Mehta 1992 Verdi's Rigoletto Live in Dresden 2008
Carole King
- A Video Story 1971-2007 Marianne
Faithfull - BBC4 Sessions plus Later With Jools Holland: UPGRADE Sheryl Crow
- The Fillmore 2008 The Jackson
5 & The Jacksons - Video Collection: 1969-1984: REMASTERED Hank Jones'
The Great Jazz Trio - Speak In Music with Hank Jones 2009
Linda
Ronstadt - The Pirates of Penzance Santana -
Tokyo 2000 VARIOUS -
7th Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival 2007 VARIOUS -
BBC Electric Proms: Saturday Night Fever 2008
VARIOUS - Musikladen Episodes 13 & 14
Marianne
Faithfull - BBC4 Sessions plus Later With Jools Holland José
Feliciano - Live at Leverkusen 2005 Roberta
Flack - Live In Tokyo 2008 Later With
Jools Holland - Series 34 Show 1 Later With
Jools Holland - Series 34 Show 2
Live From
Abbey Road - Series 2 Montreux
Jazz Festival - Prog 1: July 2006 Montreux
Jazz Festival - Prog 2: July 2006
Kate Bush -
"Kate": 2009 Rebroadcast Bat For
Lashes - Later With Jools Holland 2009 Click here
ROIO
Of The Week Neil Young - Hyde Park 2009 [no label, 2CD] Live at Hyde Park, London, UK, June 27, 2009. Very good audience recording. The highlight of this concert must be the historic meeting of Neil Young and Paul McCartney on stage. From grunge to rock to mid-tempo ballads, Neil Young drew them out and entertained the crowd with a pleasing set. Click
here to find out more and to download free MP3s.
Destabilization 2.0 On June 13, 30,000 "tweets" begin to flood Twitter with live updates from Iran, most written in English and provided by a handful of newly-registered users with identical profile photos. YouTube is providing a "Breaking News" link at the top of every page linking to the latest footage of the Iranian protests (all shot in high def, no less). Welcome to Destabilization 2.0, the latest version of a program that the western powers have been running for decades in order to overthrow foreign, democratically elected governments that don't yield to the whims of western governments and multinational corporations. By James Corbett. Also read Jeff Stein's Mousavi Was The Butcher Of Beirut. Click here
What The Big Banks Have Won The banks created the financial crisis, and now they are its biggest beneficiaries. They don't need to worry about risk, because Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has assured them that they will be bailed out regardless of the cost. By Mike Whitney. Click here
Free Download For New Movie By Scanner Darkly Producer While the MPAA sees BitTorrent as enemy number one, many filmmakers dream of getting their work into the top 100 download list on The Pirate Bay. Filmmaker Tommy Pallotta is one of them. His previous film was already immensely popular on BitTorrent, and he hopes to repeat this success with his latest work, American Prince. This article, by Ernesto, appeared on TorrentFreak.com. Click here Click here for more articles
MUSIC
REVIEWS ARTHUR DOYLE TRIO Nature Boy [Homeboy Music] Doyle's playing is largely influenced by the full-bodied tenor sax sound of John Coltrane but his anguished playing draws from Albert Ayler. If Ayler's impassioned playing is akin to a cry to God, then Doyle's fiery feelings is a reminder of Nature Boy's lyric: "The greatest thing you'll ever learn/Is just to love and be loved in return". By
Philip Cheah Click
here
PHOSPHORESCENT To Willie [Dead Oceans] At the end of his last album Pride, Matthew Houck aka Phosphorescent, ended the album on the instrumental title track, a one-man cattle round-up with whoops and yodels while the music droned on. That should have prepared us for this, a trip into country music with a tribute album to Willie Nelson. By
Philip Cheah Click
here
DRAG ME TO HELL
Dir: Sam Raimi (2009) After the Spider-man movies, Sam Raimi gets the chance to cut loose in Drag Me To Hell. As Critic After Dark Noel Vera says, the director enlists shadows, flames, flies, staplers, creaks, whispers, embalming fluid, anything and everything under the sun (and a number of which are buried or hidden otherwise, under a full moon) to his cause, whirling them in a non-stop devil's twister of a comic-book ride. Click
here
DUPLICITY
Dir: Tony Gilroy (2009) As a romantic spy thriller, Tony Gilroy's Duplicity does not come any where close to classics such as Hitchcock's 39 Steps, but, as Critic After Dark Noel Vera says, it lunges in the same direction and manages the most difficult of challenges, to keep things consistently interesting, if not amusing. Click
here
