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THE PERSECUTION OF MICHAEL JACKSON

July 2, 2009 – 3:17 pm

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.

One of the initial sensational stories was about the autopsy of a black woman named Joice Heth, who claimed to be George Washington’s nurse and over one hundred years old. It was the O.J. story of the time. Circus master, P.T. Barnum, charged admission to her autopsy, which attracted the perverted in droves.

And so, if the people broadcasting cable news appear to be inmates of a carnival, there is a connection since the early days of the mass media to that form of show business. According to Reiss, early newspapers were not only influenced by P.T. Barnum, but actually cooperated with him on some hoaxes and stunts.

I would classify CNN’s “Black in America” as a stunt. In preparing for a sequel to the first “Black In America,” which boosted the networks ratings (the O.J. trial saved CNN!), CNN rolled out the usual stereotypes about black Americans.

Unmarried black mothers were exhibited, without mentioning that births to unmarried black women have plunged since 1976 - more than that of any other ethnic group. Then we got some footage that implied that blacks as a group were homophobes even though Charles Blow, a statistician for The New York Times, recently published a chart showing that gays have the least to fear from blacks.

Recently, the media perpetrated a hoax that blacks were responsible for the passage of Proposition 8, the California proposition that banned gay marriage. An academic study refuted this claim, but that didn’t deter The New York Times from hiring Benjamin Schwarz to explain black homophobia. Schwarz is the writer who wrote in The Los Angeles Times that blacks who were victims of lynchings in the south were probably guilty.

In the last “Black in America,” Soledad O’Brien, CNN’s designated tough love agent against the brothers and sisters, scolded a black man for not attending his daughter’s birthday party. The aim of this scene was meant to humiliate black men as neglectful fathers. Ms. O’Brien won’t be permitted by her employers to mention that 75 per cent of white children will live at one time or another in a single parent household and that the Gov. of South Carolina’s not showing up for Father’s Day isn’t just a lone aberration in “White America.”

How would CNN promote a “White in America?” The thousands of meth addicts who have abandoned their children? The California rural and suburban white women who do more dope than Latino and black youth? The suburban Dallas white teenagers who are overdosing on “cheese” heroin? Why not? Can’t get State Farm, Ford and McDonald’s to sponsor such a program? All of these companies are sponsoring “Black in America,” the aim of which is to cast collective blame on blacks for the country’s social problems. For ratings.

During CNN’s carnival act disguised as news, the scene of Zimbabwe’s Prime Minster being urinated upon by a monkey while sitting in his garden drew snickers in the newsroom. This is what passes for coverage of the African continent by CNN.

When the bulletin that Michael Jackson had died flashed across the screen, I was prepared for TV at its worst and I wasn’t disappointed. The man wasn’t cold before the familiar adjectives were rolled out. “Weird, bizarre, eccentric,” the traditional language used to disparage artists by the bourgeoisie. Dan Abrams, who made his reputation by convicting O.J. Simpson before the opening arguments of his criminal trial, made a snarky comment about Jackson’s weirdness. Mr. Abrams, a higher up at MSNBC, employs a Hitler admirer named Pat Buchanan. Given Abram’s background, why isn’t that considered weird?

Former Calfornia poet laureate Al Young called to inform me that CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin, another O.J. alumni, and a man who said that blacks shouldn’t be “patted on the head” or “patronized” for believing in O.J. Simpson’s innocence, had made some ugly comments about Jackson. (A star who has had at least a dozen facelifts called into the “Larry King Show” to comment about MJ’s altering his appearance).

It was the prosecution of Michael Jackson by District Attorney Thomas W. Sneddon Jr, who, among other things, violated Jackson’s fourth amendment rights, and made disparaging remarks about the star during a press conference, and the side-show pro prosecution media coverage that killed Jackson.

Also weird was MSBC’s Savanah Guthries’ air-headed depiction of the trial. (For a list of Ms. Guthries’ false reportings see MediaMatters.com). She said that the evidence against Jackson in the trial was “devastating.” So devastating that some legal experts said that Jackson should never have been brought to trial and that the aim of the trial was to seek a pound of flesh from Jackson for being uppity and for putting the name of Thomas W. Sneddon Jr., a vindictive District Attorney, into a song.

In my opinion it was the prosecution of Jackson by this District Attorney, who, among other things, violated Jackson’s fourth amendment rights, and made disparaging remarks about the star during a press conference, and the side-show pro prosecution media coverage that killed Jackson.

In my lengthy examination of the trial printed in my book, “Mixing It Up, Taking on The Media Bullies,” I concluded that though millions of Jackson’s fans celebrated his acquittal, the District Attorney, who was allowed to squander the California taxpayers’ money so that he might humiliate a rich black man, whom he felt had sassed him, was the victor. At the beginning of the trial, Jackson was dancing on top of a van. During the trial he had to be hospitalized. At the end, he was a frail emaciated wreck.

Because of the malicious prosecution of Jackson by Sneddon and Sneddon’s claque in the media, Jackson will always be regarded as a pedophile. (When the trial opened, a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll found that 72 per cent of whites and 51 per cent of Blacks believed that the charges against Jackson were “Definitely” or “Probably” true.)

Wherever “Mad Dog” Sneddon, this hateful man might be in his retirement, he can gloat over the death of the man against whom he waged a vendetta with all of the power of the state at his disposal. Sneddon even tried to introduce photos of Jackson’s genitals during the 2005 trial, which proved too much even for the pro prosecution judge.

Of course, none of Sneddon’s abuse or the abuse of Jackson by his accusers was mentioned by an old corporate media, out of touch and on life supports. For infotainers like Katie Couric, Jackson’s father Joe was MJ’s sole abuser. In the eyes of yesterday’s media, black fathers are the principal actors in domestic violence.

Guthrie also said that the prosecution “had conducted mini trials within the trial,” which brought up  “a whole history of prior bad acts of molestation.” She was referring to the 1994 case in which Jackson was accused of pedophilia by a youngster who, according to writer Mary Fisher, a serious journalist, was used by his father to wrest some cash from Jackson. In”Mixing It Up,” I summarized Mary Fisher’s serious and thorough investigation that was originally published in GQ, October, 1994,  under the title “Was Michael Jackson Framed?” Jackson settled out of court because Johnnie Cochran didn’t want him to face one of those all white suburban juries that O.J. faced.

Fisher wrote: “It’s a story of greed, ambition, misconceptions of part of police and prosecutors, a lazy and sensation-seeking media and the use of a powerful, hypnotic drug. It may also be a story about how a case was simply invented.”

Fisher claimed that the first case arose from the ambitions of the 13-year-old accuser’s stepfather, Evan Chandler, who exploited Jackson’s friendship with his son. At one point, he asked Jackson to build him a house. Fisher said that the child denied being abused by Jackson until he was administered the drug sodium amytal, which is known to induce false memory. Chandler refused to be interviewed for the article and refused to appear on the Today Show, where Fisher repeated her charges before a nationwide audience. She said that the whole scheme was concocted by the child’s stepfather to destroy the superstar.

None of the media descriptions of Jackson’s career, including a superficial pop-driven survey of the star’s career by Anderson Cooper, referred to the 2005 plaintiff’s lies and his mother’s shabby history of conning individuals and institutions including J.C. Penney’s, which she accused of sexual abuse. She claimed that she had been “fondled inappropriately” by store personnel. Documents also hinted that “…the mom rehearsed her children to corroborate her story.”

During the 2005 trial, Jackson’s Attorney, Tom Mesereau Jr., got the teenage boy to admit that he lied under oath during the J.C. Penny case. USA Today reported on March 1, 2005, that the mother used the boy as a prop to get money from Mike Tyson, Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, Jay Leno and others, “even though insurance was paying his bills.” Linda Deutsch, one of the last of hard-nosed shoe leather journalists, reporting for the Associated Press on March of 2005, said that Mesereau got the 15-year-old to admit that he’d told Jeffrey Alpert, a school official that “nothing happened” between Jackson and him.

Because of the malicious prosecution of Jackson by Sneddon and Sneddon’s claque in the media, Jackson will always be regarded as a pedophile.

Connie Keenan, editor of Mid Valley News, wrote of a hoax that the boy’s mother perpetrated on that newspaper. She made a pitch that her son needed medical care and that she had no financial means to provide it. During the first week of the newspaper’s appeal, the mother received US$965 in donations. It turned out that the boy was being treated at Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles with no cost to the family. Connie Keenan concluded that “My gut level, she’s a shark. She was after money. My readers were used. My staff was used. It’s sickening.”

While referring to Jackson as “bizarre” none of the cable reporting about Jackson’s death cited the bizarre courtroom testimony of the plaintiff’s mother, Janet Arvizo. At one point during her testimony, she said that feared her children would disappear from Neverland, Jackson’s ranch, in a hot air balloon.

On Apr 18, 2005, Agence France-Presse reported “The mother of Michael Jackson’s young molestation accuser claimed that she feared her children would be spirited away from the star’s Neverland Ranch in a hot air balloon. In some of the most bizarre testimony of Jackson’s frequently surreal trial, the woman revealed that she told police she feared her three kids would vanish from Neverland into California’s blue skies.

“Did you tell the sheriff that you thought your children might disappear in a hot air balloon from Neverland?” Jackson’s lead lawyer Thomas Mesereau asked the woman under cross-examination.
“I made them aware,” she said.

Finally, in November of 2006, according to TMZ, Janet Arvizo pleaded no contest to a welfare fraud charge in Los Angeles. She was ordered to 150 hours of community service and to pay $8,600 in restitution. During Jackson’s trial, Arvizo invoked the Fifth regarding welfare fraud. Seems that she applied for welfare even though she’d received a $150,000 settlement from J.C. Penny’s. Even with the mother’s behavior and the boys lies, Nancy Grace, commenting on the death of Jackson, said that she was surprised by the not guilty verdict in the Jackson trial. No wonder Ms. Grace has been called” a cheerleader for the  prosecution.”

Yet, these journalists insist that their news product is superior to that of bloggers. (Journalistic bottom feeder, Diane Dimond, a Sneddon fan and Jackson stalker was invited by MSNBC to weigh in during which she was allowed to engage in doofus speculation much of it ugly about Jackson’s life and death.)

GQ’s Mary Fisher accused her colleagues of lazy journalism of the sort that defamed Jackson in life and in death. Maureen Orth from Vanity Fair didn’t read Mary Fisher’s findings. She was on the Chris Matthews Show accusing Jackson of “serious felonies” involving pedophilia. Another reporter who seemed to nullify the 2005 Jackson jury’s decision was “Morning Joe’s” adjunct bimbo, Courtney Hazlett.

She said that there would be no pilgrimage to Neverland as there was to Graceland because “bad things happened at Neverland.” We are led to believe that Presley and his entourage spent their days at Graceland drinking milk and reading each other passages from the scriptures. All of these opinions seem to indicate that cable’s talking heads have taken it upon themselves to nullify the judgment of juries whenever they please. This all white electronic jury has placed itself above the law.

But at least Jackson didn’t suffer from the kind of hi tech lynching accorded the tragic Patsy Ramsey. For years cable, which now not only calls elections but acts as judge and jury, accused her of murdering her child. Only after her death was it found that she was innocent. If the reporting on Jackson’s death by the media wasn’t salacious and ignorant enough, it didn’t get any better the next day, June 26.

Ignoring Jackson’s philanthropic pursuits and contributions to 40 charities, on the “Today Show,” it was all about what happened to all of the nigger’s money and whether he died from too many drugs and what’s to become of his children, questions meant to attract the prurient. Again, Diane Dimod was invited on to spread scurrilous unconfirmed rumors about the dead star.

Some of the modern day carnival barkers like Chris Matthews expressed surprise that Jackson’s death resulted in such an outpouring of worldwide mourning. This is what happens to people like Matthews who dwell in an insulated white supremacist bubble (that includes the Anglo wannabe and Churchill admiring Irish among them) which holds that a narrow cultural strip between New York and Washington represents the world.

I would like to have seen more independent African-American journalists comment on the passing of Michael Jackson, but, according to Richard Prince, who runs a media blog for the Maynard journalism Institute, hundreds have lost their jobs over the last two years, including Pulitzer Prize winners like Les Payne.

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.

Note: Ishmael Reed is the publisher of Konch. His new book, “Mixing It Up, Taking On The Media Bullies”, was published by De Capo. The above article was posted at Counterpunch.org.

D.S.
They wanna get my a**, dead or alive.
You know he really tried to take me down by surprise.
I bet he missioned with the CIA.
He don’t do half what he say.
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
He out shock in every single way.
He stop at nothing just to get his political say.
He think he hot cause he’s BSDA.
I bet he never had a social life anyway.
You think he bother with the KKK?
I bet his mother never taught him right anyway.
He want your vote just to remain TA.
He don’t do half what he say.
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom S. Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man

Lyrics: Michael Jackson
Track found on the HIStory album

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SON VOLT: A LITTLE BIT COUNTRY

July 2, 2009 – 4:06 am

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.

I had known Dave Boquist for several years and knew him to be quiet and soft-spoken. Jay Farrar went beyond soft-spoken. He was the epitome of an introvert. Often times during the band’s soundchecks he would remain off to the side of the stage by himself while the other band members tuned and checked the levels and mix. It was rare to see him engaged with anyone in conversation. When others were in his presence he seemed genuinely shy and embarrassed by any attention that might be cast his way.

Like his brother Dave, Jim Boquist was soft-spoken, but seemed more willing to exert an opinion and warmed to the task of talking about the band’s history. Mike was a contrast to the other members, exhibiting non-stop energy, a fast rapid fire speech, and an affinity to mingle with people. It was Mike you would find in the audience during the warm-up act, being a social animal and seeking out old friends.

Much of the same material was covered during the two interviews with Jim and Mike expanding on the basic information given by Jay and Dave. It appears here compiled into one interview for a more cohesive read.

BILL GLAHN: In the late ’60s and early ’70s a lot of producers took a “hands-off” approach in the studio, letting the creative juices of the artists flow. Trace has that kind of flavour to it. Is Brian Paulson that kind of producer?

JAY FARRAR: He’s exactly that kind of producer.

BILL: It seems to be a very band-oriented production as opposed to…

MIKE: The Nashville way.

JIM BOQUIST: It was (a very band oriented production).

Dave had played some demos for me early on before the name “Son Volt” was really thought of. The record sounds very close to those demos. Producers seem to be getting a lot of print these days. There’s a “band’s sound” and a “producer’s sound.” Sort of a return to the ’50s and ’60s when producers were in complete control.

JIM: Well, there was a time when the songs lend themselves to that.

Sometimes, now, you’ll hear a baby band play and when their record comes out it’s not the same band anymore.

JIM: Yeah, I don’t think any of us agree with that.

Would you say that Brian Paulson is the type of producer who just lets the tapes roll and brings it into focus in the end? Would that be a fair assessment?

JIM: Yeah.

How did two guys from southern Illinois get hooked up with two guys from Minnesota?

JAY: The idea was born at the 40 Watt Club in Athens (Georgia) on the final Uncle Tupelo tour (1993).

DAVE BOQUIST: Jim was on tour with the Joe Henry Band and had been calling me on the phone. He said it was amazing the way they (Uncle Tupelo) were playing all the same covers that we used to enjoy playing together.

JAY: We actually met in ‘86 or ‘87 in Chicago.

JIM: That was the…

MIKE: Full moon meeting!

JIM: It was pretty strange… Actually… That’s the scoop. Gary (sound man for Son Volt), Jeff, Jay, Dave, Mike and I were all in the Cubby Bear that night. Dave was in town doing a moving job or something. I was in the MoFos there, this band from Minneapolis. There were only 20 people or so in the crowd. Gary was doing sound.

So, Jim, you ran into Jay in Athens. Did you remember him from ‘86?

JIM: Oh yeah.

So there was a meeting of the minds to…

JIM: It was the first night of the tour. As the tour progressed I would call Dave. As the tour went on I said, “Do you remember these guys?” and he did. We’d seen them three or four times in Minneapolis. It was so akin to what Dave and I had done over the years. It was amazing. At that point it was way too early to consider anything with Uncle Tupelo still being… But Jay and I kept in touch after that.

Mike, you left Uncle Tupelo in 1992. Did you do anything in the interim?

MIKE: No - nothing. I think I stayed asleep for three years. I didn’t even get up. I played one gig for a singer/songwriter from St Louis that needed help. I’d go to a Bottle Rockets show or something and everyone would say, “Mikey, play some drums” and I hated that. So I even stopped going out.

Didn’t you feel even a little itchy to…

MIKE: No. There was no desire.

How did you get pulled into this band then?

MIKE: I got sucker punched! No - I just think it was when I met them. We met at a bar called the Cat’s Meow. My sister, Kelly, called and said Jay was bringing down two guys he’s playing with. I still don’t think at that point that there was a decision made where I’d be here today talking to Bill in Champaign.

JIM: I was lobbying for you.

If it was somebody else you wouldn’t have joined?

MIKE: No, I wouldn’t have played with anybody else. I know that. I’ve only played with Jeff and Jay and I never found myself in a position to… find another band. I don’t know. If anybody else asked I’d probably tell them to call back in another 15 or 20 years. A very natural progression - Son Volt was. Not much talking. Just picking up instruments.

Jay, on Trace you use a lot of water metaphors. But where many writers use water as a positive, like “cool, cool water,” “watching the river flow,” “wash away my sorrows”… you use the more turbulent qualities of water.

JAY: Many of the songs were written in a period of upheaval.

From the timing of the Uncle Tupelo breakup I would imagine that they were written during the floods around Illinois and Missouri.

JAY: Our little floods?

Little?! They were called the 500 year floods! Did you draw some of your imagery from those floods?

JAY: No, it was just something that was in me.

Who’s St Genevieve? (From the line “St Genevieve, hold back the water” in Tear Stained Eyes.)

JAY: It’s not a person, it’s a town on the Mississippi River.

In Windfall, you have a line “catchin’ an all night station, somewhere in Louisiana, sounds like 1963 but for now it sounds like heaven.” The early ’60s are generally looked upon as a period when Elvis was making bad movie soundtracks and the Beatles hadn’t happened yet. People forget about the great country music that was being made during that period.

JAY: (nodding in agreement) Absolutely. Merle… Johnny Cash.

How old are you? Do you actually remember radio from 1963?

JAY: Well, I would have been minus three.

I guess you came across your influences second hand.

JAY: AM radio. Records.

The rest of you? Where did you pick up your influences?

MIKE: Elvis Presley. He was a little bit country.

He made a country album.

JIM: Synthesized country.

DAVE: My dad played saxophone. He would play a lot of big band music and country around the house.

JIM: We had separate developmental things. That influenced Dave more. He played clarinet in school and all that. I never really got into that. I’d listen to Dylan, the Beatles, Peter, Paul & Mary, Neil Young, Flatt & Scruggs.

Did any of you pick up on any of the early country artists through later performers?

JAY: The Beatles did a Buck Owens song.

Act Naturally. I remember being in a car with my dad when that song came on the radio and my dad knew all the words. I was amazed that my dad knew all the words to a “Beatles” song! Did you ever listen to the Byrds or Gram Parsons?

JIM: Oh yeah. In our town… it was kind of a small town… we were kind of restricted. There was no record store. We just had one AM radio station.

Where was that?

JIM: Rosemount (MN). It’s about 25 miles south of St Paul.

I imagine you got Minneapolis radio.

JIM: Yeah. The Kingsmen and all that garage rock.

I imagine you listened to St Louis radio.

MIKE: Elvis Presley

How old are you?

MIKE: 28.

I would imagine you grew up in a kind of crappy era for radio.

MIKE: Radio? Oh shit yeah! Journey. That sort of thing. But that was when I started finding albums. They were more exciting because it was music you didn’t hear before.

Did you ever buy a record for just the cover?

MIKE: Oh yeah. I’ve done that. I bought my first Meatmen album because it was on white vinyl. I lived at home. When you live at home you’ve got money. You can buy stuff.

I bought the first King Crimson album because of the cover. It was a real heavy cardboard gatefold cover with a painting and no words on the front. You kind of miss that on CDs.

MIKE: I think Trace is coming out on vinyl. Maybe some B-sides or something.

JIM: We’ve been told that they’re going to do a limited run of vinyl.

A lot of companies are doing that now.

MIKE: It puts a whole new perspective on the cover of the album.

When I was a kid I bought the Byrds’ Untitled record.

MIKE: I’ve got it.

I bought it for Lover Of The Bayou and fell in love with Truck Stop Girl.

JAY: (nodding in a knowing way) That’s good.

Radio seems to be jumping on the rockers from your album like Drown, Catching On and Route. I really haven’t heard any of the country stuff like Ten Second News…

JIM: Which I think is …

I think it’s the best song on the record.

MIKE: It’s our child.

JIM: Everything kind of revolves around that song.

Do you think any kids will pick up Trace for the rockers and back into the country stuff?

JAY: Let’s hope so.

MIKE: I don’t see any kids buying this record.

JIM: It’s hard to speculate what will happen.

It happened in a big way in the ’60s and ’70s.

JIM: This is such a peculiarly weird and different time. The half life of a song, much less a record, is so short.

The life span of bands is so short now.

MIKE: But the bands like the Rolling Stones and Aerosmith average things up a bit.

JIM: Every year there’s a 4 Non Blondes. I think it says something more about the industry than the music. It’s not so much about music as it is marketing. There’s a lot of money handlers.

I think a band like Son Volt would have a much longer longevity than…

JIM: Well, the amount of time that Son Volt stays together is completely up to the members of Son Volt.

I’m talking in terms of commercial viability.

JIM: Yeah… I don’t know… We don’t think in terms of commercial…

You want to play what you want to play?

JIM: Yeah, if it happens it happens and if it doesn’t it doesn’t.

Has there been a video for the record?

DAVE: For Drown.

Was that the first time you’ve done one?

DAVE: Yeah.

JIM: Jay’s done some with Uncle Tupelo. It was done in two parts. The first part was shot in a hall in Minneapolis. It was pretty painless. The guy who did it, Phil Carter, worked pretty fast. He was tuned into us as people. It wasn’t any kind of big production. The other part was just road footage. The 9:30 Club in Washington.

I counted five road references on the first five songs. You’ve been touring for so many years, Jay. First with Uncle Tupelo and now Son Volt seems to be following the same pattern. There was a tour after the record came out that continued to the end of the year. Now you’re back on the road for a few weeks and Gary (sound man) tells me there’re more dates after a short time off. Are you sick of touring yet?

JAY: Not really. That’s part of it. That’s what we do.

DAVE: You have to take the music to people. That’s part of being a musician.

That was one of the reasons you left the D.T.’s, isn’t it? You weren’t getting outside of Minneapolis.

DAVE: That was part of it but there were other things. The band just wasn’t progressing.

MIKE: For me it (touring) couldn’t have happened at a better time. I’m feeling good. Actually I’m a bit hung over today but I’ll be feeling better tonight.

I heard a rumor that Johnny Cash wanted Son Volt to be his backup band for his next record. Anything to that?

DAVE: No. There’s nothing to it. What happened was he wanted the Jayhawks to do it but they had broken up. So Gary Louris was looking for musicians to put together a different band. But it looks like the Jayhawks are going to get back together to do it.

If you could back a country legend, who would it be?

JAY and DAVE: (in unison and without hesitation) Merle (Haggard).

Note: Mike Heidorn and Dave and Jim Boquist have since left Son Volt, though Jay Farrar is still at it. A new Solt Volt album, American Central Dust, is expected from Rounder Records on July 7, 2009.

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WHAT THE BIG BANKS HAVE WON

July 1, 2009 – 4:11 am

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.

The trouble started 24 months ago, but the origins of the financial crisis are still disputed. The problems did not begin with subprime loans, lax lending standards or shoddy ratings agencies. The meltdown can be traced back to the activities of the big banks and their enablers at the Federal Reserve.

The Fed’s artificially low interest rates provided a subsidy for risky speculation while deregulation allowed financial institutions to increase leverage to perilous levels, creating trillions of dollars of credit backed by insufficient capital reserves. When two Bear Stearns hedge funds defaulted in July 2007, the process of turbo-charging profits through massive credit expansion flipped into reverse sending the financial system into a downward spiral.

It is inaccurate to call the current slump a “recession”, which suggests a mismatch between supply and demand that is part of the normal business cycle. In truth, the economy has stumbled into a multi-trillion dollar capital hole that was created by the reckless actions of the nation’s largest financial institutions. The banks blew up the system and now the country has slipped into a depression.

Currently, the banks are lobbying congress to preserve the “financial innovations” which are at the heart of the crisis. These so-called innovations are, in fact, the instruments (derivatives) and processes (securitization) which help the banks achieve their main goal of avoiding reserve requirements. Securitization and derivatives are devices for concealing the build-up of leverage which is essential for increasing profits with as little capital as possible. If Congress fails to see through this ruse and re-regulate the system, the banks will inflate another bubble and destroy what little is left of the economy.

On June 22, 2009, Christopher Whalen, of Institutional Risk Analysis, appeared before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, and outlined the dangers of Over-The-Counter (OTC) derivatives. He pointed out that derivatives trading is hugely profitable and generates “supra-normal returns” for banking giants JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and other large derivatives dealers.

He also noted that, “the deliberate inefficiency of the OTC derivatives market results in a dedicated tax or subsidy meant to benefit one class of financial institutions, namely the largest OTC dealer banks, at the expense of other market participants.” As Whalen testified:

“Regulators who are supposed to protect the taxpayer from the costs of cleaning up these periodic loss events are so captured by the very industry they are charged by law to regulate as to be entirely ineffective… The views of the existing financial regulatory agencies and particularly the Federal Reserve Board and Treasury, should get no consideration from the Committee since the views of these agencies are largely duplicative of the views of JPM and the large OTC dealers.”

Whalen’s complaint is heard frequently on the Internet where bloggers have blasted the cozy relationship between the Fed and the big banks. In fact, the Fed and Treasury are not only hostile towards regulation, they operate as the de facto policy arm of the banking establishment. This explains why Bernanke has underwritten the entire financial system with US$12.8 trillion, while the broader economy languishes in economic quicksand. The Fed’s lavish gift amounts to a taxpayer-funded insurance policy for which no premium is paid.

Nothing will change. Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner’s primary objective is to preserve the ability of the banks to use complex instruments to enhance leverage and maximize profits.

Whalen continues:
“In my view, CDS (credit default swaps) contracts and complex structured assets are deceptive by design and beg the question as to whether a certain level of complexity is so speculative and reckless as to violate US securities and anti-fraud laws. That is, if an OTC derivative contract lacks a clear cash basis and cannot be valued by both parties to the transaction with the same degree of facility and transparency as cash market instruments, then the OTC contact should be treated as fraudulent and banned as a matter of law and regulation. Most CDS contracts and complex structured financial instruments fall into this category of deliberately fraudulent instruments for which no cash basis exists.”

No one understands these instruments; they are deliberately opaque and impossible to price. they should be banned, but the Fed and Treasury continue to look the other way because they are in the thrall of the banks. This phenomenon is known as “regulatory capture”.

Credit default swaps (CDS) are a particularly insidious invention. They were originally designed to protect against the possibility of bond going into default, but quickly morphed into a means for massive speculation which is virtually indistinguishable from casino-type gambling.

CDS can be used to doll-up one’s credit rating, short the market or hedge against potential losses. CDS trading poses a clear danger to the financial system (The CDS market has mushroomed to $30 trillion industry) but the Fed and other regulators have largely ignored the activity because it is a cash cow for the banks.

Whalen again:
“It is important for the Committee to understand that the reform proposal from the Obama Administration regarding OTC derivatives is a canard; an attempt by the White House and the Treasury Department to leave in place the de facto monopoly over the OTC markets by the largest dealer banks led by JPM, GS and other institutions…

“The only beneficiaries of the current OTC market for derivatives are JPM, GS and the other large OTC dealers… Without OTC derivatives, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG would never have failed, but without the excessive rents earned by JPM, GS and the remaining legacy OTC dealers, the largest banks cannot survive and must shrink dramatically.” (Statement by Christopher Whalen to the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment, United States Senate, June 22, 2009)

The Geithner-Summers “reform” proposals are a public relations scam designed to conceal the fact that the banks will continue to maintain their stranglehold on OTC derivatives trading while circumventing government oversight. Nothing will change. Bernanke and Geithner’s primary objective is to preserve the ability of the banks to use complex instruments to enhance leverage and maximize profits.

The banks created the financial crisis, and now they are its biggest beneficiaries. They don’t need to worry about risk, because Bernanke has assured them that they will be bailed out regardless of the cost. Financial institutions that have explicit government guarantees are able to get cheaper funding because lending to the bank is the same as lending to the state.

Note: Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

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HAUNTINGS

June 30, 2009 – 4:23 am

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.

Photographer Kim Yoon-tae runs into former schoolmate Kim Joo-ryeong, now married, and the two begin an affair on the condition that they will only meet for a total of nine times. Over drinks, he tells her about a car accident where a young girl is killed. Yoon-tae soon moves into a new apartment and finds a necklace with a locket while fixing the water pipe.

Through his reporter friend, Yoon-tae’s current work involves staking out a woman’s apartment at night from the rooftop - the reporter hopes to catch a prominent personality visiting his girlfriend.

During one of his sexual encounters with Joo-ryeong, while he is about to climax, Yoon-tae has a vision of a girl being smothered. On occasions when he returns to his apartment, he finds his photographs strewn on the floor. Lights go out and his CD player mysteriously comes to life.

The apartment is haunted by the ghost of Choi Bo-yeoung, a girl in her 20s who made a living selling her own (street) designer-clothes. Yet Yoon-tae does not seem particularly perturbed. His affair continues and he finds himself falling in love with Joo-ryeong. His “surveillance” work does not pan out and, in the meantime, his sick mother dies. At the wake, Yoon-tae’s brother, who claims he hears voices, denies that the voice had told him to kill their mother. At the same time, Yoon-tae’s brother’s wife suffers a mental breakdown.

Yoon-tae declares his love when his affair with Joo-ryeong ends. In the park after a night drinking, Yoon-tae sees a woman run down by a car. The young woman dies as Yoon-tae tries to help.

Before Texture Of Skin (2005), director Lee Seong-gang was noted for his animation movies, My Beautiful Girl, Mari (2001) and Yobi, The Five Tailed Fox (2005). For his first live action movie, Lee made the erotic Texture Of Skin - due to the sexual nature of the film, the film was only released in Korea in 2007. In the meantime, it made the film festival circuit and was generally well received.

With its elliptic style and fracturing of time - think David Lynch, Texture Of Skin is probably what limbo is like. In the beginning when he meets Joo-ryeong, Yoon-tae tells her of the girl who dies after being knocked down by a car. At the end of the movie, just as the life goes out of the girl, Yoon-tae too finds the only bright spark in his life being diminished.

But Yoon-tae isn’t the only one yearning for something more. Night after night, his reporter friend hopes that Yoon-tae will take the one picture that will turn him into a star reporter but it never happens. With her mournful look, the ghost Bo-yeoung isn’t scary looking but that is in sharp contrast to her vibrant joy when she was alive, young and in love. In death, she yearns to be alive to be with her lover. Even Joo-ryeong, so alive in the ecstasy of sex, can only cast a wistful look as she leaves Yoon-tae for the last time.

As for the girl who was killed in the car accident - she was raped by her father and was attempting to flee from her father when she was run down. And the woman Yoon-tae and his friend were shadowing? It turns out she’s a transsexual (or a transvestite) working as a bar tender with big dreams and yearnings of her own.

Carefully shot and composed, with drenched or muted colours that recall Darius Khondji’s work on Se7en, to some viewers, Texture Of Skin seems to wear its art-house tag on its sleeves. In its own way, the film is also a quiet meditation on life and death. Faced with the ennui of modern life, it is the closeness and intimacy of sex that becomes life affirming - the nudity and sex become the high points in the movie, leaving the quiet moments for contemplation. Take away that tactile sensation, what’s left is a yearning in the living and a haunting for the dead.

Note: The Texture Of Skin DVD (Taewon Entertainment) is banned in $ingapore.

Click here for more reviews.

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DESTABILIZATION 2.0

June 28, 2009 – 4:09 am

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.

It’s the 2009 presidential election in Iran and opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi declares victory hours before the polls close, insuring that any result to the contrary will be called into question.

Western media goes into overdrive, fighting with each other to see who can offer the most hyperbolic denunciation of the vote and President Ahmadenijad’s apparent victory (BBC wins by publishing bald-faced lies about the supposed popular uprising which it is later forced to retract).

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. The Jerusalem Post writes a story about the Iran Twitter phenomenon a few hours after it starts (and who says Mossad isn’t staying up to date with new media?).

Now, 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.

Ironically, Iran was also the birthplace of the original CIA program for destabilizing a foreign government. Think of it as Destabilization 1.0: It’s 1953 and democratically-elected Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh is following through on his election promises to nationalize industry for the Iranian people, including the oil industry of Iran which was then controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

It’s 1953 and democratically-elected Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh is following through on his election promises to nationalize industry for the Iranian people… The CIA is sent into the country to bring an end to Mossadegh’s government. They begin a campaign of terror, staging bombings and attacks on Muslim targets… They foster and fund an anti-Mossadegh campaign amongst the radical Islamist elements in the country. Finally, they back the revolution that brings their favoured puppet, the Shah, into power.

The CIA is sent into the country to bring an end to Mossadegh’s government. They begin a campaign of terror, staging bombings and attacks on Muslim targets in order to blame them on nationalist, secular Mossadegh. They foster and fund an anti-Mossadegh campaign amongst the radical Islamist elements in the country. Finally, they back the revolution that brings their favoured puppet, the Shah, into power.

Within months, their mission had been accomplished: they had removed a democratically elected leader who threatened to build up an independent, secular Persian nation and replaced him with a repressive tyrant whose secret police would brutally suppress all opposition. The campaign was a success and the lead CIA agent wrote an after-action report describing the operation in glowing terms.

The pattern was to be repeated time and time again in country after country (in Guatemala in 1954, in Afghanistan in the 1980s, in Serbia in the 1990s), but these operations leave the agency open to exposure. What was needed was a different plan, one where the western political and financial interests puppeteering the revolution would be more difficult to implicate in the overthrow.

Enter Destabilization 1.1. This version of the destabilization program is less messy, offering plausible deniability for the western powers who are overthrowing a foreign government. It starts when the IMF moves in to offer a bribe to a tinpot dictator in a third world country. He gets 10 per cent in exchange for taking out an exorbitant loan for an infrastructure project that the country can’t afford.

When the country inevitably defaults on the loan payments, the IMF begins to take over, imposing a restructuring program that eventually results in the full scale looting of the country’s resources for western business interests. This program, too, was run in country after country, from Jamaica to Myanmar, from Chile to Zimbabwe.

Destabilization 1.2 involves seemingly disinterested, democracy promoting NGOs with feelgood names like the Open Society Institute, Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy. They fund, train, support and mobilize opposition movements in countries that have been targeted for destabilization.

The source code for this program was revealed in 2001, however, when former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz went public about the scam. More detail was added in 2004 by the publication of John Perkin’s Confessions of an Economic Hitman, which revealed the extent to which front companies and complicit corporations aided, abetted and facilitated the economic plundering and overthrow of foreign governments. Although still an effective technique for overthrowing foreign nations, the fact that this particular scam had been exposed meant that the architects of global geopolitics would have to find a new way to get rid of foreign, democratically elected governments.

Destabilization 1.2 involves seemingly disinterested, democracy promoting NGOs with feelgood names like the Open Society Institute, Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy. They fund, train, support and mobilize opposition movements in countries that have been targeted for destabilization, often during elections and usually organized around an identifiable color. These “color revolutions” sprang up in the past decade and have so far successfully destabilized the governments of the Ukraine, Lebanon, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, among others.

These revolutions bear the imprint of billionaire finance oligarch George Soros. The hidden hand of western powers behind these color revolutions has threatened their effectiveness in recent years, however, with an anti-Soros movement having arisen in Georgia and with the recent Moldovan “grape revolution” having come to naught (much to the chagrin of Soros-funded OSI’s Evgeny Morozov).

Now we arrive at Destabilization 2.0, really not much more than a slight tweak of Destabilization 1.2. The only thing different is that now Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media are being employed to amplify the effect of (and the impression of) internal protests. Once again, Soros henchman Evgeny Morozov is extolling the virtues of the new Tehran Twitter revolution and the New York Times is writing journalistic hymns to the power of internet new media… when it serves western imperial interests.

We are being asked to believe that this latest version of the very (very) old program of U.S. corporate imperialism is the real deal. While there is no doubt that the regime of Ahmadenijad is reprehensible and the feelings of many of the young protestors in Iran are genuine, you will forgive me for questioning the motives behind the monolithic media support for the overthrow of Iran’s government and the installation of Mir-Hossein “Butcher of Beirut” Mousavi.

Note: The above article was posted at Counterpunch.org. James Corbett helms corbettreport.com, a site which provides podcasts, interviews, articles and videos about breaking news and important issues from 9/11 Truth and false flag terror to the Big Brother police state, eugenics, geopolitics, the central banking fraud and more.

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MOUSAVI WAS THE BUTCHER OF BEIRUT

He may yet turn out to be the avatar of Iranian democracy, but three decades ago Mir-Hossein Mousavi was waging a terrorist war on the United States that included bloody attacks on the U.S. embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut.

Mousavi, prime minister for most of the 1980s, personally selected his point man for the Beirut terror campaign, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-pur, and dispatched him to Damascus as Iran’s ambassador, according to former CIA and military officials.

The ambassador in turn hosted several meetings of the cell that would carry out the Beirut attacks, which were overheard by the National Security Agency.

“We had a tap on the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon,” retired Navy Admiral James ‘Ace’ Lyons related by telephone Monday. In 1983 Lyons was deputy chief of Naval Operations, and deeply involved in the events in Lebanon.

“The Iranian ambassador received instructions from the foreign minister to have various groups target U.S. personnel in Lebanon, but in particular to carry out a ’spectacular action’ against the Marines,” said Lyons.

“He was prime minister,” Lyons said of Mousavi, “so he didn’t get down to the details at the lowest levels. “But he was in a principal position and had to be aware of what was going on.”

Lyons, sometimes called “the father” of the Navy SEALs’ Red Cell counter-terror unit, also fingered Mousavi for the 1988 truck bombing of the U.S. Navy’s Fleet Center in Naples, Italy, that killed five persons, including the first Navy woman to die in a terrorist attack.

Bob Baer agrees that Mousawi, who has been celebrated in the West for sparking street demonstrations against the Teheran regime since he lost the elections, was directing the overall 1980s terror campaign.

But Baer, a former CIA Middle East field officer whose exploits were dramatized in the George Clooney movie “Syriana,”  places Mousavi even closer to the Beirut bombings.

“He dealt directly with Imad Mughniyah,” who ran the Beirut terrorist campaign and was “the man largely held responsible for both attacks,” Baer wrote in TIME over the weekend.

“When Mousavi was Prime Minister, he oversaw an office that ran operatives abroad, from Lebanon to Kuwait to Iraq,” Baer continued. “This was the heyday of [Ayatollah] Khomeini’s theocratic vision, when Iran thought it really could export its revolution across the Middle East, providing money and arms to anyone who claimed he could upend the old order.”

Baer added: “Mousavi was not only swept up into this delusion but also actively pursued it.”

Retired Adm. Lyons maintained that he could have destroyed the terrorists at a hideout U.S. intelligence had pinpointed, but he was outmaneuvered by others in the cabinet of President Ronald Reagan.

“I was going to take them apart,” Lyons said, “but the secretary of defense,” Caspar Weinberger, “sabotaged it.” - Jeff Stein

Note: The above article was posted at Information Clearing House.

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MICKEY HART: THE WIND OF DISTANT DRUMS

June 25, 2009 – 2:08 pm

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).

It’s been a year since Jerry Garcia died in 1995, but former Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart hasn’t missed a beat in building his solo career and championing a wide array of ethnic music. In June 1996, Hart released Mickey Hart’s Mystery Box on the Rykodisc label, a surprisingly accessible, pop-oriented follow-up to the 1991 Planet Drum, which won a Grammy award for Best World Music Album.

Mystery Box seems a surprising departure for you. How did you go from Planet Drum to Planet Pop?

Oh interesting that you perceive that. It’s really a logical extension from Planet Drum if you look at it with the right eyes. I’m using the engine of Planet Drum, the same great drummers, and I’ve the lyric content of (Grateful Dead lyricist) Robert Hunter.

I wanted to make songs out of it. It wasn’t the rhythmscape I was after, necessarily. I was after tune, percussion and chant, and I wound up with what you heard. I wasn’t really heading into a pop world, necessarily, although I knew that it would be more popular than Planet Drum, because it had words.

My advance copy of the CD is short on credits. Did Hunter write all the lyrics?

Yes he did. That was a big part of all this. In all my Grateful Dead days I hadn’t written that many songs with Hunter. It was just one of those great moments where we could spit out 10 songs… I didn’t want to do another Planet Drum. I’d already done Planet Drum. I like new experiences every time I go out, fresh ideas. The imagination changes every day.

There’s no need to keep pumping out Planet Drums. All of us that did Planet Drum are out here having a blast, with six-part harmony over the top of this beautiful, sinuous rhythm. I mean, wow! We couldn’t resist that.

We’ve got (Puerto Rican) Giovanni Hidalgo, who is the master in the world of Latin percussion. And Zakir Hussain, the great maestro from North India, and Sikiru Adepoju from Nigeria. This is not a pickup band. This is sort of a percussion dream team. We wanted to come together and play songs for once. We thought, Geez, wouldn’t that be nice?

How did you hook up with The Mint Juleps (the female a cappella group that sings most of the songs)?

Interesting story. Actually (Jerry) Garcia led me to it. He had seen a Spike Lee video called Do It A Cappella, Spike had made about different a cappella groups around the world. I went and rented it, and there they were. I went to Europe to meet with them in London, by way of Jamaica. They didn’t sound like a generic Western backup group. They had the world’s influence. I liked their smooth style. Four of the six of them are sisters. They have that blend that only sisters can have.

One thing (the album) didn’t have, which I tried not to have any of, was guitars or other instruments clouding up the beautiful percussion. The lack of all that stuff was intended. I tried to do things with percussion that we would do with other instruments. That’s why the talking drum is like a lead guitar in this band.

How did you achieve the percussion sounds on this album?

I achieved them by going out into the zone and finding them. They were achieved by processing, mostly of acoustic sounds. I have a formidable percussion collection. In this collection, as we sample things or play things, I would process them. What you hear on most of this is not synthesizer sound, they’re processing of some kind of unusual percussive sound. That was part of the game, the composition. That was part of the beauty of this.

It wasn’t like you got it out of a bottle, or a number. It’s a custom job, if you will. A hot rod. I have my own studio. I can spend enormous hours in it. Whereas you couldn’t put in the time that it would take to do some things like this in a real studio, in a renter. So I was able to experiment, and find these gourmet percussive sounds.

Mystery Box strikes me as one of the most accessible projects that any Dead member has ever been associated with. Would you agree?

That’s amazing, with all the drums and everything. It’s the voices, and all that harmony and all that melody. It’s interesting, because there are two sides of the Grateful Dead: there’s one of order, and one of chaos. I’ve always been up there in the chaos side. This seems very “sane” in a way. But I meant it to be like that. This is the way I wanted to do it. These were songs that Hunter wrote, and I wanted the lyrics to be really heard.

Did you write all the music on the album?

I co-wrote all the music on the album. There were others who wrote with me, like (keyboardist) Vince Welnick in the Grateful Dead, and the drummers contributed to the composition as well. A fellow by the name of Dave Jenkins. He used to play in a band called Pablo Cruise.

Mickey, you sing on three of the songs on the album… Is this the first time you’ve sung on record, and how do you feel about your own voice?

Yes, it is. Oh, I can listen to it. It sounds good. You see, it’s not singing, it’s more like the talking blues. It’s an attitude. It’s not like, my God-given great gift. “Mickey Hart, Vocalist” will not be the thing that we remember. I know that. Whitney Houston, she keeps bothering me with these phone calls, wanting to duet with me constantly. You understand how this is changing my life.

The song, Down The Road, seems an interesting tribute to John F Kennedy, John Lennon and Jerry Garcia. What’s the background?

That’s what folklore is all about. You take your heroes and you sing about them. Well, all of these are big-time guys, and they did a lot in their time here on earth. Of course, Hunter wrote that lyric after Jerry died. It was one of those things that just came to him, boom, in a flash. I don’t think anybody even thought of writing anything like that; we already had a fourth verse. He just came in and said, ‘You know that fourth verse? I think I have a better one.’ I said, OK. He went and sang it, and around the middle of it, we realised he had said it better than anyone could have said it.

At this time, we were not feeling so good. This was not our best moment here. We were grieving at the time he wrote it. It was like, very heavy times. So it relieved a lot of pressure and it really put everything into perspective, and it’s a way to heal. There’s no better way to heal than with music. That’s what you do when you’re a musician, you go to your music.

It’s been about a year since Jerry Garcia died. Do you miss the Dead?

Oh, of course. You can’t look back, though. You did a lot with what you had, and you really did well - the Grateful Dead was a wonderful thing. It still goes on in the hearts of people, and it ripples out into society in many ways, it’s not forgotten. But you know that life has to go on. Jerry does not live physically on this plane, but I think of him all the time. I see him here and there, images that look like that little bearded Santa Claus. And physically, I hear that guitar in my left ear - the ear that he partially deafened (laughs). In the other part of it, I can hear his guitar singing.

Are the any Dead-related projects in the pipeline?

Oh, there’s a lot of them. But Phil (Lesh, Dead bass player) mostly takes care of that.

What’s the status of the Library of Congress Endangered Music Project that you head up?

We’re about to release another batch, from South America, Africa, the Philippines, in a few months. Stay tuned.

What is your next project?

I just want to go further with this Mystery Box. I work on things all the time. I go into the studio every day. I just record every day. I’m recording always. I’m always laying down tracks and recording and composing. There are movie scores, CD-ROMs in the making.

How often do you see the other Dead guys?

I see some of them more than others. Every day I see at least one of them.

Who’s that, Bob (Weir)?

Yeah. I see him every day, multiple times, maybe. (laughs) I see the other guys from time to time, we run into each other. We’re all friends. Nothing has changed between us.

Mickey, thanks very much for your time and for all the years of good music.

Thank you for asking, or for giving this time. This is important to me because I really want this band to perform in Asia.

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DEVIL TAKE THE HINDMOST

June 23, 2009 – 4:11 am

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.

You can imagine Sam Raimi on the set of his Spider-man films, viewing the various installments of the Hostel and Saw franchise and thinking: “I can do that; I can do better than that. Give me a chance, and I can show them how it’s really done.”

With Drag Me To Hell (2009) Raimi gets his chance, and how. Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) hopes to impress her boss Jack (David Paymer), so she turns down a request for extension on a house payment from a Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver), a decrepit, milky-eyed old Romany woman with a set of slimy dentures.

Things go horribly wrong, and Christine finds herself on the receiving end of a particularly nasty curse: for three days she will be tormented by the Lamia, a demon with the head and hooves of a goat (originally, she’s the daughter of Poseidon and Lybie, becomes a mistress of Zeus, and is turned into a half-woman, half-snake creature that eats small children), then dragged through cracks in the ground to the Infernal Pit, to suffer Eternal Damnation.

Bummer. Actually the whole thing is simply an excuse for Raimi, who has struggled with the Spider-man franchise for some six years, to relax and cut loose. The camera doesn’t pan so much as whip from side-to-side; it doesn’t truck so much as careen into an actor’s face at bruising velocities (one hopes the performer has his or her health insurance premiums all paid up).

Raimi enlists shadows, flames, flies, staplers (have to see this to believe it), 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 around poor Christine in a non-stop devil’s twister of a comic-book ride.

I said “comic-book,” not that more pretentious term “graphic novel.” Raimi is no Zack Snyder, making a bid for artistic seriousness with an overproduced, thuddingly literal adaptation of a literary title. He evokes the term “comic book” in its old-fashioned sense, that is, a story told through a series of images with dialogue, full of graphic energy and inventiveness and wit (Raimi can teach Star Trek director J.J. Abrams a thing or two about coherent action sequences).

Along the way we have belly laughs and in-your-face horror a-plenty, sometimes both at the same time, but we also sense a surprisingly subtle eye at work: in the film’s rip-roaring opening, when a victim is dragged to his intended place, the camera rises from the floor up to the second floor terrace to move in on spiritual medium Shaun San Dena (Adriana Barraza); the shadow of the victim’s outstretched hand falls on her face, summarizing the situation and what’s at stake (and what will happen to Christine if San Dena doesn’t do something) in a single image.

Later Christine, desperate to fob off the curse on someone else, looks around at the people in a twenty-four-hour diner in a funny yet graceful dumb-show parody of a morality play (Who to give it to - her work rival and backstabber Stu (Reggie Lee)? The annoying waitress who keeps hinting she should order something or leave her booth? The old man with the oxygen tank who obviously doesn’t have long to live?).

Raimi knows as any genre master will that to instill a sense of true horror in the audience you don’t just assail them with intestines and decapitated limbs and instruments of torture. You build the story, you tease them, you distract them with sympathetic characters and brief bursts of visual beauty (Christine in a sunny yellow dress) and oddball touches (Mrs. Garush sucking on sweets from a dish on Christine’s desk with repulsive relish), you soften them up and leave them vulnerable to attack from all and any direction, at any time.

The film is a homage to classics both under and over-rated (Raimi like Quentin Tarantino has collected a pack-rat’s worth of influences; unlike Tarantino he has the visual and aural chops to fuse these influences into a distinct look), from William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (grudge match between demon and demon fighter) to Jacques Tourneur’s Night Of The Demon (desperate victim attempts to get rid of cursed talisman).

It’s an encyclopedia of Raimi-isms, from the floating ghouls and popping eyeballs of Evil Dead 2 to the stop-motion animation of Army Of Darkness to the hauntingly beautiful transition from face in dismay to face in mourning hours (or days) later in Darkman. But the movie isn’t some mere patchwork sum of its parts; the various appendages aren’t sewn clumsily together, nor do they work clunkily against each other - Raimi has thoughtfully (That word! Applied to this movie!) laid each effect in its proper place, and the overall impression is of a smoothly rising swell.

Well, not too smooth - Raimi has left in rough edges, has not completely finessed the handmade quality out of the special effects, has not made your standard-issue Hollywood horror flick, proper and essentially polite.

Are Saw and Hostel polite? Why - yes. They promise torture porn, they deliver. They don’t renege on expectations aroused by their trailers; they don’t surprise you, or unsettle you, or make you squirm in ways you don’t expect (Watching these pictures is about as stimulating as a business transaction).

Drag Me To Hell cleverly plays on our preconceptions of who is the heroine, who the villainess - pretty (but nevertheless morally weak) Caucasian girl from the banking industry (Raimi claims the relevance of her job to the present economic crisis is coincidental, but who is he kidding?), or ageing Romany woman with a nasty propensity for casting curses?

It delivers a cornucopia of surreal jokes, expertly timed “boo!” moments, fluids in a rainbow of colors (from bright red to chemical green) and textures (from arterial spray to chunky sewer sludge) squirted out of a variety of orifices into a variety of other orifices. More, a movie with a séance scene involving a nanny goat cannot be, by definition, bad.

Raimi has survived the worse that Tinseltown has to offer, the helming of not just one but three major movie productions, one of the more successful comic-book franchises in Hollywood, and made it out more or less whole, his voice, his distinct storytelling sensibility still intact. Is he an artist? Possibly not; he doesn’t seem to have anything more substantial to say to us than “Hey! Look at this!” But he’s a wonderful stylist, and a great entertainer, and he’s back in a big, big way.

Note: First published in Businessworld, June 5, 2009. You can also email Noel Vera at noelbotevera@hotmail.com.

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FREE DOWNLOAD FOR NEW MOVIE BY SCANNER DARKLY PRODUCER

June 18, 2009 – 3:03 pm

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.

Tommy Pallotta is an American film director and producer from Texas, currently living in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Being this far away from his home country is one of the reasons  he became a BitTorrent enthusiast, no further explanation needed for most TorrentFreak readers.

In film circles, Pallotta is known for his outstanding animation work that defines most of his work thus far. His last film, A Scanner Darkly, starred Keanu Reeves and was a smash hit on BitTorrent. With more than a million downloads, the movie earned a place in our list of Top 10 most downloaded movies four weeks in a row.

Pallotta’s latest work is something totally different though. It’s a follow up documentary to film legend Martin Scorsese’s cult-classic American Boy that was shot more than 30 years ago. In American Boy Scorsese documented the life of his friend Steven Prince, who was also the inspiration for one of the best known scenes in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. With American Prince Pallotta continues the saga.

Since Scorsese’s original documentary is a rarity nowadays, Pallotta had to ‘pirate’ much of his material on BitTorrent sites and YouTube. In return, Pallotta is giving the film away for free on BitTorrent. This of course caught our attention and we decided to catch up with the director to lear a little more about his motivation to embrace BitTorrent.

First off, A Scanner Darkly - which you produced - became quite successful on BitTorrent and was downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people. Were you aware of that at the time? What do you think of people who use BitTorrent to download the film?

Really, A Scanner Darkly was successful on BitTorrent? GREAT! I wish it was more so, I have to admit, I get jealous when I look at the top 100 downloads on the trackers and I don’t see my movies. In fact, part of the reason I am releasing American Prince on BitTorrent is for the hope that it breaks the top 100.

I live in Amsterdam now, so the only way I can keep up with some of my favorite shows, events, and films is to download. I think it is great, especially for filmmakers of niche movies. My movies tend to get limited releases and are more of the cult film status, so the initial release is often overlooked or simply the movie is unavailable in many areas.

For me as a filmmaker it is most important that the work I make get seen. I feel for many people and places, downloading is the only way they will get to see my movies. Waking Life is a movie that I produced that is a pretty interesting example of that. It seems more popular today than when it came out in 2001. I think BitTorrent and steaming sites like YouTube are completely responsible for that phenomena. Since I use BitTorrent, I wanted to give back to the community, that was part of the motivation is releasing American Prince via BitTorrent.

The MPAA has often argued that the movie industry loses billions of dollars through piracy. Others think that it has close to no impact. What’s your position in the ongoing ‘piracy debate’?

Well, everyone has a different opinion. It is pretty simple to me: The exact same thing that happened to the music industry will happen to the film industry. I suspect the film industry knows that and is trying to hold off the inevitable as long as they can. My guess is that they will try to make as much money as long as they can until they have to change or someone comes in and organizes and unifies the industry in the way Apple did for music.

But even that is tricky because obviously Apple benefited more than the music industry. So they should be looking at alternative revenue streams. I find it hard to believe that many DVDs will be sold a few years from now. I would rather embrace new technologies and distribution methods, I feel this gives me greater and more immediate access to an audience.

For American Prince you’ve used material from BitTorrent and YouTube, which is great. Did you license all these clips, or are they pirated copies?

Yes we used material from BitTorrent and YouTube for American Prince and no, we did not license them. I did receive the Master copy of American Boy from Steven Prince himself, but we found a copy via BitTorrent that was better than that copy, so we used that!

Plus, there is some confusion as to who actually owns the rights to American Boy. Part of the motivation of this film was to get a proper release for Scorsese’s American Boy. I felt this film would help uncover who has the rights and hopefully get it in front of a larger audience.

Why did you decide to release American Prince for free on BitTorrent and what do you expect from it?

Scorsese’s American Boy has been and is still generally unavailable for over 30 years, yet so many filmmakers have been influenced by it. The way we saw it is through multi-generational VHS tapes. Now with BitTorrent, there is a whole new audience and generation ready to be influenced by that film and I hope mine.

Steven Prince is a gold mine of future cinema scenes and I hope a whole new generation of filmmakers will understand how he has influenced American Cinema. My biggest expectation is that the most people possible will watch my film! Also, I would really like to encourage people to talk about the film, with each other as well as on the Internet. It would make me happy to see Wikipedia entries and IMDB boards as well as Internet sites.

I would love for people to get together and have screenings of it with their friends, or for universities to suggest to their class for the students to watch it. I look at American Prince as the film school I never had, what I always imagined film school to be.

Do you think that the Internet and file-sharing technology will play an important role in shaping the future of film distribution?

I absolutely believe how we watch and share movies will shape the future of film distribution. I believe it will have such a profound influence that it will even change how movies are made. I think it is a win-win for the filmmakers and the viewers.

Filmmakers will have a more direct reach with audience and viewers have more to choose from. I wanted to release this film in support of file sharing and to prove to myself and others that it can have a profoundly positive effect.

Amen.

Note: In 1978, director Martin Scorsese turned his camera on his friend and roommate, Steven Prince, with his lost documentary American Boy. Best known for his role as the gun salesman in Taxi Driver, Prince was a true-life raconteur, actor, ex-drug addict, and road manager for Neil Diamond. To Scorsese, Steven’s life was more fascinating than what any screenwriter could dream up, it had to be captured in celluloid. Three decades later, filmmaker Tommy Pallotta draws out Steven Prince to recount his days since American Boy and to compose the next chapter of his story.

American Prince can be downloaded for free via Mininova’s content distribution platform. Everyone is of course free to share and remix the documentary.

Visit TorrentFreak.com for more updates.

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URBANE COWBOYS

June 18, 2009 – 4:06 am

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).

The private interview suite at the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood looks appropriately spartan. Even the coffee’s gone, and so we sit drinking Evian water instead, and I get to face one of my own modern-day heroes. Michael Timmins is tall and gaunt, looks more than a little tour-weary, and today he’s clad in all-black, including a black T-shirt that proudly proclaims: NANCI GRIFFITH.

No, he doesn’t know her, he tells me, he’s just a fan. And this setting, in a nutshell, reflects the quirky stance of Timmins’ band, Cowboy Junkies, who play Los Angeles this evening before heading off to Europe for two weeks. It’s been a long haul since 1988, the fateful year that Timmins, along with his sister Margo on vocals, brother Peter on drums and longtime friend Alan Anton on bass, caught the pop world sleeping with their second album, The Trinity Session, an offbeat collection of bluesy songs recorded in the wee small hours in a Toronto Catholic church (the Church of the Holy Trinity, hence the title), done with a single microphone in a single 14-hour session with an impressive budget of US$250.

That record sold over a million copies, won the Los Angeles Times Critics’ Poll (”Album Of The Year”), the four-star adulation of Rolling Stone (”An album as important as it is inspiring”) and even that year’s New Music Seminar (”Best New Artist” and “Best Independent Release”). It was an uncanny feat of sorts, for four musicians from Toronto, though they remain steadfast and humble about it all, as reflected again in their newest, sixth, album - Lay It Down, their debut on Geffen Records.

The new album returns them to their four-piece, groove-grounded Velvet Underground roots, an influence instilled upon the three siblings by their older brother John, who’d briefly played guitar in the band’s inception.

It brings them full circle, following 1995’s two-CD live album, 200 More Miles, which chronicled the band’s history since 1985, a priceless document in the light of their fractured relationship with their then label, RCA. Ironically, they were signed to RCA by Jim Powers, the very same A&R exec who signed them to Geffen, a fitting climax for a band from Canada who’d basically re-exported country blues back to America.

Michael Timmins, as lead guitarist and lead songwriter, remains something of an unsung hero, except of course to his peers and his fans. Few musicians I’ve encountered today know their way better than him around that complex art involving words and music, and he lets his crystalline-voiced sister Margo steal the spotlight. Talking to him, naturally, confirmed my longtime suspicion that it’s all been a deliberate ploy.

Lay It Down’s opening track, for instance, ponders an old existentialist quandary: “I guess I believe that there’s a point to what we do/But I ask myself is there something more besides you?” And so, because belief is so much a part of the Cowboy Junkies story, and their invocation of it continues to inspire me, I found myself spending this spring afternoon with Michael Timmins, letting him tell me his version of those things I hold sacred and true. In Cowboy Junkies style, of course, barely audible beyond a whisper and a sigh.

GERRIE LIM: When you think of Canadian musicians, you think of Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Bruce Cockburn, k.d. lang, Sarah McLachlan, a lot of the singer-songwriter stuff. But the first time I heard you guys, it was The Trinity Session, and it was astounding to me that this was the blues, coming out of Toronto! I was amazed.

MICHAEL TIMMINS: (laughs) Yeah, I know. Toronto has got a really good music scene. And has for a long time, you know, with interesting and diverse types of music, too. For us, and for me, the blues influence came from simply loving blues music. When the band first started out especially, that was sort of the main influence. We never started out wanting to be a blues band, but we wanted to sort of adopt a lot of the feel and the atmosphere and the approach to music that a lot of the great blues players that we admired had to their music.

We didn’t want to play the same structures or think about the same things, but we wanted to have that intensity that a John Lee Hooker or a Lightnin’ Hopkins had. That’s what we based our style on and we worked at it, getting the atmosphere and the intensity going among the various individuals in the band. That’s sort of how it developed.

Prior to all this, you were living in England, where you had the bands Hunger Project and Germinal. I’ve always been curious as to how the experiences of those early bands must have impinged upon what you do now. Everyone’s now talking about how “Cowboy Junkies have gone back to their four-piece roots,” but I suspect that some of the things you do, like the way you use sustain on your guitar, for instance, these things come from way back there.

Yeah. It’s a good point. When you’re a successful band, a lot of people think that your career started at the beginning of the band and goes to now. But for me, my musical career goes further back, way further than that, to Germinal and Hunger Project. And for Alan as well. Alan was also in those bands.

Hunger Project was a noisy band. It was very noise-driven, so a lot of the ideas about feedback, how to use feedback, and certainly the intensity of a very steady groove, Alan and I developed those ideas when we were in Hunger Project. That’s where we learnt to appreciate those ideas. Germinal, I think, was probably the most influential band for me, because it made me rethink how to play guitar and how to approach the guitar.

At that time, we were listening to a lot of jazz, a lot of really abstract stuff like Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman, a lot of people like Evan Parker in England, Derek Bailey and those people. They were actually playing around that time, too, and we used to go and see them. Germinal, what we were doing in that band, really taught us that there were no boundaries. You can do anything. Just because everybody plays three chords doesn’t mean that you have to play within those three chords. So I think it really taught me a guitar style which I occasionally get back to now, and which I certainly got back to on this record (Lay It Down) and certainly on the tour.

Which is that you don’t have to be within the rhythm. You can play outside the rhythm, you can play outside the chord structure, and it doesn’t have to be based on melody. There’re lots of different ways of communicating through your instrument rather than playing a pretty melody or a 12-bar blues type of thing. I think that’s what I learnt from Germinal and I continue to bring those things, those ideas, forward.

Your sister, Margo, made a pretty astounding statement, in an interview with another magazine: “Sometimes in order to understand the significance of the words, you have to focus back on what’s happening with the guitar.”

Yeah, we always make sure there’s a connection somewhere between the music and the lyric, whether the music is being juxtaposed against the meaning of the lyric or is complementary to it. And I think what Margo’s saying about the guitar there is that the focus of a lot of the emotional content of the music is through the guitar. I think she’s right.

Sometimes Margo can be delivering a line with a melancholy or a sadness to it but if you listen to the guitar, it’s sort of howling or screaming. And that’s the underlying arrangement which is in the lyric, that it’s not just one level of sadness. It’s also this churning that’s going on within the characters’ minds in the lyrics.

The opening song on the new album, Something More Besides You, is a perfect example. Margo just maintains this very controlled approach to the song and yet the guitar kicks in, so underneath it churns and growls.

Is that how you work? Do you all sit down and have discussions on song dynamics or is it all sort of more intuitive?

I think it’s intuitive, you know. The four of us have a very intuitive way of working together. We rarely have to discuss things on a specific level. If a song’s not going right, then we have to back up and sit down and discuss it, but generally the music and the feel of the music moves pretty intuitively and as one to where it should be.

And if it’s not working, we just continue to keep working at it till it gets there. But it’s very rare that we have to say, ‘Let’s do this, let’s push it in this direction.’ It usually happens very naturally and, as a unit, pushes in the right direction.

Even when it’s you writing the songs?

Yeah, it’s just part of the process. I’m the songwriter, I write the lyrics and the basic chord structures. And then Margo comes into the picture and she develops the character and the emotion of the lyric. And then Pete and Alan will come in, and the four of us will work on the overall picture - the groove and the feel and the overall atmosphere, those little touches that make a song powerful and worth listening to. That’s the whole songwriting process, beginning with me sitting by myself writing and ending with the four of us working on it. Without one of those stages, it doesn’t become a Cowboy Junkies song.

Tell me about sibling rivalry. There’re three of you, so how easy or how difficult is it being part of the same band?

For us, it’s very easy. Our personalities are such that we, first of all, respect each other individually, we all know what each of us does in the band, what we are responsible for. We are very aware that without one of us, this band doesn’t work. Including Alan. And we all realise that if one element drops out, we’re a different band, a different-sounding band. So I think that with that understanding, that makes it very easy for us. Even as brothers and sisters, we get along really well, and we just translate that into the band.

You’re the oldest?

Of us. There are three other brothers and sisters. There are six of us in all. We have an older brother, an older sister, then me, then Margo, another sister, and then Pete. So that helps as well, you know, knowing we’re not just a band, we’re part of a much bigger entity which isn’t just Cowboy Junkies, which is our family. I think that helps as well. It keeps us straight.

Are they in a band, too?

No. (laughs)

Let’s talk about the career of the band thus far. I’m going to interject with some of my own views of your albums and we can discuss from there. When I first came across Trinity Session, I thought it was one of the most phenomenal things I’d heard in a long time and I kept playing it for weeks. I got into Whites Off Earth Now! later. So then Caution Horses came along and I didn’t like it. I thought that you’d gone into a real studio and the result was watered-down.

Caution Horses was a very different record than Trinity. We weren’t trying to do the same thing. The band that played on Caution Horses was an eight-piece band we’d been touring with, and all those songs were written and developed while we were touring. The arrangements and the orchestrations of those songs were complex, in that they were developed over a year on the road. The lushness and the interconnecting of all the added instrumentation is something that I really like. That’s what we were trying to do on that record - to capture the sound of the live band and how we worked together as an eight-piece unit.

That’s why we went into the studio. That record is pretty much live, but the song structures were too complicated to do a one-microphone thing, so that’s why we went into the studio, so we could mix it afterwards. For us, that’s one of the band’s favourite records because it’s a real band album. A lot of people don’t like that record and some people love it. It’s a funny record.

I think that because it came out back to back with Trinity, a lot of people compare this to that. Some people think that it’s a bad copy of Trinity and some others think it’s so far gone that there wasn’t enough connection to it. So it’s confusing. I always find it funny when I hear people’s opinions of it because they’re so varied.

Whereas Black Eyed Man is easily your most accessible record.

I think you’re right. With Black Eyed Man, what we wanted to do was get away from the live band thing but again experiment with instrumentation. We used a lot of outside people. Black Eyed Man was the first time we really used the studio. We went in a four-piece, sort of put down the songs, and then brought in outside musicians and worked with them on different ideas to put on top of what we’ve done.

The idea with that record was to use lots of different instrumentation. There are probably 20 different instruments on that record, from banjo to tuba to trombone. Every song was a little entity unto itself. And I think you’re right. The tempos are a bit more “up,” a little bit more country-rock, an easier record on that level, and that was really the intention behind that album.

And I think Pale Sun Crescent Moon is a very, very underestimated and underrated record.

I think so too. I was disappointed with the reaction to that record in general. The intention behind that record was to record as a five-piece band, with the four of us and Ken Myhr on lead guitar.

We wanted a more electric attack. Someone said it was our version of (Neil Young’s) Zuma, you know, with two guitars going at it. We wanted to do it really raw, and just go and record, and we did that over a three-day weekend. The mixing took a little bit longer. But yeah, that was a funny reaction to that album. I never quite understood it. I was sort of disappointed with the reaction. I didn’t know why people didn’t hear it.

But the funny thing is that now, when we do songs from Pale Sun Crescent Moon live, they get huge reactions. So I think the fans really liked it but the media, for whatever reason at that point, didn’t. Also, a lot of the times, it doesn’t have anything to do with music. It has to do with where you are in your career. Like the media will go, “We don’t like these guys now.” And (laughs) all you can do is go, “****.”You can’t deal with that, you just have to do what you want to do.

And the live album (200 More Miles), how did you feel about that? You were going to leave RCA, so was that a contractual obligation?

Not really. An element of it was. When we put it together, we went through all the tapes and decided that it was for us and for our fans, all the people who had seen us through the different incarnations, with the different bands we’ve had on tour. We wanted to capture all the incarnations, so we’d have everything from the eight-piece Caution Horses band to the four-piece Whites Off Earth Now! band. So it was just a collection. It wasn’t meant to do anything except sort of be a 10-year summary of where we were at that point.

Before the box set someday comes out.

Yeah, exactly. (We both laugh) I really like that record, though. It’s very straightforward and simple. It’s a really good document, is what it is.

And what about this new record, Lay It Down? What are your general feelings about it?

I feel that our career, the band’s musical career, goes in cycles. And to me, this is the beginning of a new cycle. Whites Off Earth Now! and Trinity were one cycle, and the next three records - Caution Horses, Black Eyed Man and Pale Sun Crescent Moon - I see them as a unit. The reason I say this is because Whites Off Earth Now! and Trinity Session were about the innocence of the beginning of the band. We were all learning how to play together as a unit and they were both recorded in a similar manner, both one-microphone or two-track recordings.

They were also “naive” recordings, as I call them, in the sense of, “This is what we do because this is what we do. We don’t have any other option behind it. We are doing all we can do right now.” And then, with the next three records, you have the band learning to grow a little bit - playing with other musicians, getting more ideas, getting a little bit more experienced, learning to work in studios. And I grew as a songwriter as well.

This one (Lay It Down), to me, is the beginning of our third cycle. I don’t know where that cycle’s going to go, but it’s sort of stripping back down to the four of us again, reconnecting with the dynamic between the four of us as musicians. But it’s also about having come 10 years down the line and not getting back to Whites Off Earth Now! We’re seeing where we are now as musicians and as a band, and taking all we’ve learned over these past 10 years working together, stripping away the added musicianship and seeing where we stand now, just as a four-piece.

And I feel that with my songwriting at this point, I think I have really good control over what I want to do musically and lyrically. I guess this cycle is about the maturation of the band. It takes a long time, you know. Learning to play in the studio is very, very difficult. I think we’re just getting it now. We’re just beginning to understand and enjoy it.

Well, if all else fails, you can always go back to churches.

(laughs) Exactly, we can do that all over again!

One last question. What is the secret of great rhythm-guitar playing?

(laughs) It’s hard to say, but I think the secret is to have a good rhythm section to work with. Somebody you have a connection with. For me, playing with Pete - and again this is a brother thing, I think - him and me, we have very similar ideas of rhythm and feel. There are times when we’re playing together when I know he’s about to do something, or he’s about to **** up, or something. I just know it. I can feel it coming in his overall playing.

And I think just having confidence in what he’s doing has allowed me to have confidence in the rhythm, you know. I know that I can fall out and fall in with the rhythm, and push and pull, or fall back, not to be too stiff. To allow your playing to breathe, in and out of the rest of the rhythm section, I think that’s the main secret.

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LOVING DAUGHTER FIGHTS BACK

June 16, 2009 – 3:03 am

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.

In a Chinese mainland police station, Lily Chung walks in to report a murder at her home - the victims being her father, mother, brother and sister. The investigation is led by Anthony Wong and new assistant, Money Lo.

Since movies such as Se7en and Silence Of The Lambs and the hit C.S.I. TV series, viewers are very clued in on police procedurals and they can only shake their heads in disbelief as Anthony Wong not only fondles the murder victims (”so pretty, such a waste” seems to be his general attitude), he totally obliterates any rules to keeping the crime scene untouched.

He steps on the blood leaving his footprints; uses a murder weapon - a towel used to strangle a woman - to wipe his face; casually tosses another murder weapon aside to be examined later (a piece of a General Kwan statue broken from the Buddhist altar); and, as an example of the notion of renqing (returning favours) taken to ridiculous extreme - Wong simply invites the press into the house for a photo shoot.

While sex is never far from his mind (he is not above sniffing at women’s undies), Wong can be a pretty sharp investigator. As Chung is questioned, her statements about what she did on the night of the murder begins to differ and Wong begins to suspect something is not right. Fearing for her safety, Chung’s boyfriend, copper Hugo Ng, claims he is the murderer but Wong quickly sees through him.

Under intense questioning, Chung relates how her family members mistreat her. But the main focus of her tale is how she came home one day from work and found her womanising father and a naked prostitute in the house. After a brief tiff, the prostitute leaves and to satisfy his urges, father William Ho not only rapes Chung but photographs her in the nude.

At her work place, using the photographs, Ho tries to blackmail Chung for more sex. Chung turns to her boyfriend for comfort which eventually leads to sex. Driven to breaking point, Chung returns home to confront her father. But he easily overpowers her, ties her up, smears cake icing over her body (it’s her birthday and he got a cake for her) and begins licking her.

Boyfriend Ng shows up to free Chung before he is knocked out by Ho. Using Ho’s gun, Chung shoots her father. Just then, her mother and brother return. Chung shoots her mother and stabs her brother to death. She then strangles and drowns her sister who is hiding upstairs. Just when she is trying to revive Ng her father recovers but Chung manages to stab him. A court later finds Chung, who is already pregnant, guilty of murder and sentences her to death, after the baby is born.

Even if this was a 1993 movie, the opening credit segment of Lily Chung in prison with a make-up kit against a flute soundtrack (a-la Morricone’s The Mission) has a moody feel and looks like a throwback to the Hong Kong New Wave films of the ’80s. But Daughter Of Darkness makes a comedic turn, which lasts for about half the movie, when Anthony Wong shows up and leads the audience through the murder investigation.

Western viewers tend to think of Anthony Wong as the brutal killer in John Woo’s Hard Boiled (1992) while cult movie fans prefer to revere him as the psychotic cook in The Untold Story (1993). But Wong must have been one of Hong Kong’s hardest working actors in 1993 - the wikipedia lists him in 17 movies, which include The Heroic Trio, Taxi Hunter, Lamb Killer and The Mad Monk.

And Wong can do broad comedy. Even if he is more lively than Lau Ching Wan, Wong also has a deadpan delivery and if not for the Category III rating for nudity, sex and gore, the first half of Daughter Of Darkness is actually quite funny (especially if you can understand Cantonese). Also check out 2003’s Cat And Mouse, with Andy Lau, for Wong in another comedic role. But not all the comic segments click - the interrogation with cinema owner Lo Hung is really flat even as it tries to poke fun at the Mainland Chinese legal system.

Overall, the mix of comedy and sex and gore does not work. The change in tone is too drastic and no amount of wit can lessen the suffering that Lily Chung goes through. This is a movie that seems predicated on what else can be done to make that woman suffer further. If the father peeping at her daughter taking a bath is only a start, he gets to strip her, rapes her, ties her up and licks her good and proper.

Note: The Daughter Of Darkness DVD (Universe) is banned in $ingapore.

Click here for more reviews.

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