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January 28, 2022

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When the US requested UN inspectors enter Iraq to find the weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein obliged. This did not stop the US and UK from invading Iraq. And the Queen of England has presented the former UK prime minister, Tony Blair, a knighthood. By David Hearst.

George W Bush told Tony Blair he did not know who would replace Saddam Hussein in Iraq when they toppled him and that he “did not much care”, according to an explosive top secret account of the meeting seen by Middle East Eye [MEE].

The former US president was blithe about the consequences of launching an invasion at a crucial meeting with the British prime minister at his Texas ranch in 2002, almost a year before the war was launched.

Click here for the article.

Free Downloads: This Week's New MP3s
(Click on the link to download the show)

Latest: Eric Clapton
Laguna Hills 1988 [Mike Millard Tape]

Latest: Elvis Costello
Los Angeles 1991 [Mike Millard Tape]

Latest: The Tubes
Los Angeles 1978 [Mike Millard Tape]

Latest: Genesis
San Diego 1977 [Mike Millard Tape]

Latest: Peter Gabriel
West Hollywood 1977 [Mike Millard Tape]

The Ventures [Don Wilson R.I.P. 1933 - 2022]
Reseda 1981

Mary Halvorson
Pittsburgh 2021

Various [Ronnie Spector R.I.P. 1943 - 2022]
New York 1997

Miley Cyrus
Napa, CA 2021

Loretta Lynn
Westbury 1981

Margo Price
Farm Aid 2021

Rosanne Cash
Cincinnati 1981

Angel Olsen
San Francisco 2021

Jean-Luc Ponty
Encinitas, CA 1976

Damon Albarn
Paris 2021

Eric Clapton
Madison Square Garden NY 1974

Ronnie Spector [R.I.P. 1943 - 2022]
New York, Christmas 1989

Jethro Tull
Santa Monica 1979 [Mike Millard Tape]

Lindisfarne
The Alternate Fog On The Tyne

Bonnie Raitt
The First Album Live!

Ed Sheeran
London 2021

Martini Big Band
Italy 2020

Carole King
Los Angeles 1971

Bob Dylan
Moon Township, PA 2021

Elton John
Seattle 1974 [JEMS]

Michael Nesmith [R.I.P. 1942 - 2021]
Drury Lane, London 1975

Various
Nashville Acoustic Christmas 1990

Coldplay
London 2021

Freiburger Barockorchester
Freiburg 2020

Bob Dylan
Charleston 2021

Marty Robbins and Floyd Cramer
Nashville 1982

David Bowie
Los Angeles 1990 [Mike Millard Tape]

Led Zeppelin
Los Angeles 1977

Elvis Presley
Las Vegas, August 1969

Dale Warland Singers
Christmas 1972-2004

Dave Douglas
Berlin 2021

Tom Jones and Beverly Knight
Cardiff, Christmas 2017

Sunny Murray
New York, Christmas 1976

Joni Mitchell
Blue Live

Lynn Anderson
Salt Lake City 1979

Chicago
San Diego 1976 [Mike Millard Tape]

The Strokes
San Francisco 2021

Sylvie Courvoisier Trio
Moers 2021

Lily Allen
France 2009

Nanci Griffith
London 1994

Joni Mitchell
Philadelphia 1976

Tanya Tucker
Hollywood 1979

Tammy Wynette
Lima, OH 1985

Suzanne Vega
Madrid 1990

Nubya Garcia
London 2021

Michael Nesmith [R.I.P. 1942 - 2021]
San Francisco 2019

The Monkees Present [Michael Nesmith R.I.P. 1942 - 2021]
The Mike & Micky Show - Denver 2018

Yes
Jersey City 1976

Linda Ronstadt
Jones Beach 1990

Phil Spector
Rare Masters [CD3/4 of 4]

Bill Withers
London 1973

The Flaming Lips
Chapel Hill 1987

Sheryl Crow
Arrington 2018

Yusef Lateef Quartet
Hamburg 1971

Tom Petty
Los Angeles 1989 [Mike Millard Tape]

AC/DC
Bon's Gone, But His Boots Live On 1976-1980

Phil Spector
Rare Masters [CD1/2 of 4]

Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Bern 1999

John Hiatt
Ottawa 1988

Manchester Orchestra
Carson 2018

Christian Scott
Paris 2018

The Ramones
Buenos Aires 1996

Tom Waits
Cleveland 1976

Wang Yuja
Lenox 2011

Slade
Holland 1971

Updated: Mash [Added May 7, 2020]
Coronavirus Songs

As of now, we have stopped all restarts of older shows to reduce the cost of running the site. Readers who can donate towards the cost of the site, please open a Skrill account.

Long Live Rock! [BigO Audio Archive]

New ROIOs*
Anna von Hausswolff with Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra - Live in Gothenburg, Sweden 2016 audience (A nilssound production, 2CD)
Various - Christmas Around Europe 2021 FM (BBC Radio 3, 320kbps)
Mary Halvorson's Code Girl - "Artlessly Falling", Jazzfest Berlin, 2021 FM (no label 1CD)
Mary Halvorson's Code Girl - "Artlessly Falling", Jazzfest Berlin, 2021 FM UPGRADE, ENTIRE CONCERT (no label 1CD)
Cindy Bullens - Live at Paradise Theatre, Boston 1978 FM (no label 1CD)
Godspeed You, Black Emperor - Live in Philadelphia, 2000 soundboard (no label 1CD)
Led Zeppelin - Live at Carnegie Hall, New York 1969 audience (dadgad remaster 2CD)
Anne Murray - Live in Toronto, Canada 1983 pre-FM (no label 1CD)

*Recordings of indeterminate origin
Click here for complete list

Features

Listening Up To 'Don’t Look Up!'

Don't look. This is entertainment. By David Yearsley.

At well over two hours' running time, Adam McKay’s 'Don’t Look Up' (steaming on Netflix) isn’t exactly a bagatelle, but it mostly retains its satiric lightness and goes by quickly.

A holiday film about the end of the world should be fun, and 'Don’t Look Up' is at its best when it’s quirky and distracted from its larger message of rousing a world obsessed with self and stuff into action against climate change, allegorized here by a Mt Everest-sized comet hurtling towards the earth.

Click here for the article.

Profits Over People: Why Weren’t the Vaccine Manufacturers Nationalized?

Federal “bailouts” have replaced nationalization as the modern form of government economic intervention. The rich want to be king. By David Rosen.

As of December 18, 2021, more than 800,000 Americans had died due to the Covid-19 epidemic. The historic legacies of both the presidencies of Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be shadowed by those who died, let alone suffered, from the pandemic.

On January 20, 2021, the day Trump left office, 392,641 people had died of Covid; as of December 18, 2021, 411,359 people died during the first 11 months of the Biden presidency - and Biden has another three years in office.

Click here for the article.

Shakin' All Over [the noize]

Movement Music After The Movement Fades: Reflections On Phil Ochs
The protest singer is a singular occupation that paid well to Bob Dylan but to no other. Movements come and movements disappear. How does the protest singer survive? By David Rovics.
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X'Ho [aka Chris Ho] R.I.P.
Singapore icon/DJ/writer/artiste X'Ho (aka Chris Ho) passed away from stomach cancer in the morning of September 27, 2021. He will forever be 27. Chris was on the first and last cover of the hardcopy BigO magazine. He was a mainstay in the magazine with his regular X'Ho Files column, with articles compiled into ‘Skew Me, You Rebel Meh? [1998] and Attack Of The S.M. Space Encroachers [2002]. He was the most insightful Singapore commentator that Singapore never realised it had. He told truths with unusual clarity. Both his book cover titles alone spoke volumes of the Singapore construct. Rest In Peace, Chris, dear friend and bigO founding member. The following interview was published in BigO #202 (October 2002). Interview by Alfian Sa'at; pictures by fFurious.
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“Pushing Back At Authority”: Son Volt, And The Power Of Protest Music
'With Electro Melodier, Son Volt have rejected mediocre commercialism, political complacency, and the cowardly withdrawal from politics on display throughout most of pop culture.' By David Masciotra.
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Harlem’s Forgotten Festival
Some parties and celebrations are more meaningful than others. Make sure you go to the right ones. By Seth Sandronsky.
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Thank Heaven For Nirvana
It was 30 years ago today... when Nirvana were the Next Big Thing! And since then, nothing has ever come close. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Nirvana's groundbreaking second album, Nevermind, here is the exclusive Kurt Cobain interview by Patrick Chng that we ran in BigO #75 (March 1992). Pictures by Jacque Chong.
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I Can't Explain [world affairs]

Putin and Xi Plot Their SWIFT Escape
Is a new alternate financial world order coming soon? By Pepe Escobar.
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Sorking The Ricardos: The Real Story Of Lucy And J Edgar
Lucille Ball was a Communist. But I still love Lucy. Wasn't Jesus about forgiveness and turning the other cheek? Guess who was the 'meanie'? By Fred Gardner.
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America’s Foreign Policy Dilemma
America, are you listening? By Paul Craig Roberts.
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Cuba Defeats Covid-19 With Learning, Science And Unity
Tiny Cuba stands up to Covid-19 and shows the way forward. By WT Whitney.
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What Is The Surveillance State?
Are you afraid of your citizens? You don't trust them? By Steve Martinot.
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Free The Weed: 50 Years After The John Sinclair Freedom Rally
The John Sinclair Freedom Rally of December 10, 1971 - when John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Bobby Seale, Phil Ochs, Allen Ginsberg, Ed Sanders, Archie Shepp and Roswell Rudd, CJQ, Bob Seger, the Up, Commander Cody and a host of others gathered with 15,000 supporters at Ann Arbor’s Crisler Arena - struck a chord for freedom. By John Sinclair.
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The NATOstan Clown Show
US and NATO foreign policy? Dumb and Dumber. Pepe Escobar explains.
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I Can See For Miles [cinelife]

My Favorites Of 2021
I’m really not a big fan of these “best of” lists, but of all the new arts entertainment (or edutainment as KRS-One would say) I consumed this past year, here’s what helped me most in wading through the muddied waters of 2021. By Joshua Frank.
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When Time Started Breathing – The Tale Of Burmese New Wave
The story of Burmese independent cinema seems like a tale of happy accidents. Nothing was planned. All the key players just happened to find small doors opening and rushed through them instinctively. In the case of Thaiddhi (Programme Director of Wathann Film Festival), it was attending a cinematography workshop that led to a film scholarship in Europe, that led to meeting his wife (who was in the same scholarship), that led to a shared dream, for an independent film festival, Wathann, that has now lasted 10 years. Philip Cheah hears the tale.
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More Burmese Days
For someone who has such sentimental memories of South-east Asian film, Burma remained a mystery to me. After 30 years, I had still not stepped on Burmese land even though I had met Burmese filmmakers at other festivals from Cinemalaya to Yamagata. It was more mysterious considering that the taste of a national cinema is not complete until you have visited the country in person, to taste its food, feel its heat and dust and see how the sun rises and sets on its rooftops. Since I live by signs given by the universe, it was a chance meeting with Thaiddhi, the Wathann Film Festival’s Programme Director in 2018, that prompted me to see his festival the following year. By Philip Cheah.
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Noteworthy New Tunisian Films
“A Son” and “She Had A Dream”, both from Tunisia, are among the new productions distributed by ArtMattan Films in the US this fall. By B Nimri Aziz.
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Embracing The Unknowable
Even for many of us who are followers of South-east Asian cinema, the terrain can still remain unfamiliar, even though well-trodden. When you encounter a film such as Anatomy Of Time (World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 9, 2021) that encompasses religion, philosophy, politics, history, cinema and more, one feels the pleasure of swimming in unknown waters yet again. Philip Cheah speaks to the film’s Thai director, Jakrawal Nilthamrong, about his cinematic tapestry.
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Movie Reviews

Don’t Look Up: See It
By Manuel García, Jr.
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Decolonizing James Bond
'So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye'. Fawzia Afzal-Khan reviews No Time To Die, the 25th James Bond movie in the franchise.
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Ken Loach’s Stirring Exposure Of Capitalist Speed And Consumers’ Greed
Online shopping has moved up. From a week to delivery, to same day delivery, we are now in the realm of delivering within a few hours. But for that faster service, there must be a price. Is it worth all that effort to receive your purchases so quickly? Will you suffer any loss if it took a bit more time? By Eric Mann.
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The Best Films Of 2019
With the streaming of music and movies now a reality, you can watch some of the best and obscure films for the US$5 you pay to subscribe to any streaming service. By Louis Proyect.
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Praying The Gay Away
Imagine that? A couple of sentences in the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament is the motivation for Christians to condemn lesbians, gays, bi and trans (LGBT). By Louis Proyect.
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