
+ + + + +
EXTENDED BREAK!
BigO's Spread The Word emailer... we are taking a longer break than expected.
Sign up for FREE newsletter.
+ + + + +

Donate here.
+ + + + +
Contents
Index to
Previous Features Articles
click here
+ + + + +
Cool Links
Why So Quiet $ingapore?
click here
You Kept Silent
(Those who are sensitive and easily offended please do not click on
the link)
click here
Welcome To $heep City
click here
Singapore Democrats
Tak Boleh Tahan ['cannot take it anymore']
click here
Far King Bus Turd
click here
$ingapore Is Burma's Biggest Investor
click here
Talkin' About My Revolutions
click here
Is There An Islamic Problem?
click here
May Day, May Day
click here
Still Not Free After All These Years
click here
Honey, I Shrunk The News
click here
How Many $ingaporeans?
click here
+ + + + +
CounterPunch
click here
Information Clearing House
click here
Rock & Rap Confidential
click here
Alternet
click here
|
Won't Get Fooled Again
New Items Added
August 1, 2018
Malaysia To Empower Youths With Voting Right
Click here
FOR SALE!
VARIOUS
Do The Independence
There are over 263 tracks on Do The Independence, a five-disc indie music compilation. The box set comes with a silver disc DVD (which contains 203 songs but no video); four CD-Rs (TDK or Sony discs) of 60 tracks; and printed artwork. All together there are over 175 acts.
US$35
(click here to order)
DEJA VU...
Ten years ago, in 1998, Malaysians took to the streets and braved water cannons when they stood up for Anwar Ibrahim and reformasi. With what's happening in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysians might have to take to the streets again in 2008. Click here to read or buy Sabri Zain's first-person account of those early reformasi days in Face Off.
THE SHOP
Visit The Shop to order
Noel Vera's
Critic After Dark
BigO CDs,
BigO books and
BigO back issues
Click here
|
Bootleg
Artwork Archive
Today's Art
(featuring
hundreds of titles)
Yvonne Elliman
Tokyo 2011
+ + + + +
Copperhead
Sausalito 1972
+ + + + +
Dick Clark
New Year's Eve 2011 (data)
+ + + + +
Liza Minelli
Basel 2011 (data)
+ + + + +
Various
Prince's Trust Rock Gala 2011 (data)
CLICK HERE
|
Click here for free pinups
|
|
|
+ + +
|
GET FREE
E-ZINE
Email
[email protected]
with
the message,
"Put me on your mailing list," and get free weekly e-zine
featuring music news, reviews, movies, books and cool cutting-edge
stuff.
|
|
+ + + + +
|
CONTACT US
[email protected]
Snail mail:
PO Box 784
Marine Parade
Singapore 914410
Want
to reach thousands of young $ingaporeans with your sales message?
Ad rates for our weekly emailer will be forwarded to you.
|
|
+ + + + +
|
Started July 11, 2013
|
|
|
VISITORS

22% of BigO readers are from Japan.
The BigO site is ranked 44,654 in Japan.
Ranking provided by alexa.com. |
|
|
|
|
Latest: A Cleaner BigO Homepage
JUST TO LET YOU KNOW: To reduce spamming, the BigO website is going through Cloudflare. What it does is scan your browser to ensure the visitor is not a spam. Please enable Javascript and cookies. Do not be alarmed as this usually takes only a few seconds. Email us if you still have difficulty accessing the BigO site; or playing or downloading the tracks. If you know a better way of reducing spam, do let us know.
+ + + + + + + + + +

|
Evil Putin vs Good Guy Zelensky? By Michael Welton.
Interfering in another state is tricky business - so says the gutsy University of Chicago international relations scholar John Mearsheimer (The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities, 2018). It is tricky - and dangerous - and the exceptional nation, the US, may think pushing NATO (with its missile sites and troop placement) to Russia’s borders is benign.
But another state - Russia - thinks it is threatening. Mearsheimer admits that great powers may follow “balance of power” logic, but they can also embrace “liberal hegemony.” When they do, “they may cause a lot of trouble for themselves and other states. The ongoing crisis over Ukraine is a case in point” (p. 171).
Click here for the article.
|
Long Live Rock! [BigO Audio Archive]
|
New ROIOs*
John McLaughlin and Shakti - John Peel Show, London, UK 1977 FM (no label 1CD)
John McLaughlin and Shakti - Bob Harris Show, London, UK 1977 FM (no label 1CD)
The Byrds - The 1978 Reunion Concert soundboard (no label 1CD)
Myriam Gendron - Live in Washington, DC, 2022 audience (no label 1CD)
Merle Haggard - The Best of The Silver Eagle #13, Nashville, TN 1981 pre-FM vinyl source (no label 1CD)
Jethro Tull - Live in Anaheim, California 1977 audience (The Lost and Found Mike the MICrophone Tapes Volume 136 2CD)
Metallica - Live in Buenos Aires, Argentina 2022 webcast lossy source (no label 2CD)
Saving Grace featuring Robert Plant and Suzi Dian - Cheltenham Jazz Festival, UK 2022 audience (An EBR Recording 2CD)
*Recordings of indeterminate origin
Click here for complete list |
|
Features
|
Watching The River Flow: Siddhartha 100 Years On
One hundred years after Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, the adolescent religions that rose from the Middle East are still terrorising eastern thinking and culture. By John Kendall Hawkins.
By the time I was introduced to Hermann Hesse for the first time, some 50 years ago, I had already crossed many rivers in my life. Born and partially raised in southern California, moved to Dad’s Missouri haunts, and on, because of tragic events, to the New England Home for Little Wanderers in Boston.
And now, here I was a working class Lowell High School student at a summer Upward Bound program (GLUB) held at the prestigious Groton School, where maybe the young Roosevelt, alumni of the school, Teddy and FDR, first wet-dreamed of Manifest Destiny and the New Deal, respectively, from dormitory cubicles with curtains for doors.
Click here for the article. |
Hysteria And The Solomon Islands-China Security Pact
Whose island is it? The Americans? The Australians? It belongs to the islanders. By Binoy Kampmark.
Visits to Honiara, part plea, part threat. Delegations equipped with a note of harassment. That was the initial Australian effort to convince the Solomon Islands that the decision to make a security pact with Beijing was simply not appropriate in the lotus land of Washington’s Pacific empire. [Ed: Honiara, on the island of Guadalcanal, is the capital city of the Solomon Islands. Solomon Islands is a sovereign country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and northwest of Vanuatu.]
Despite an election campaign warming up, (Australian) Senator Zed Seselja found time to tell Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare that Australia remained dedicated to supporting the security needs of the Solomon Islands, and would do so “swiftly, transparently and with full respect for its sovereignty”.
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.
click here |
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.
click here |
“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.
click here |
Harlem’s Forgotten Festival
Some parties and celebrations are more meaningful than others. Make sure you go to the right ones. By Seth Sandronsky.
click here |
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.
click here
Click here for more articles |
I Can't Explain [world affairs]
|
Remembrance Of Things Past
"No history is mute. No matter how much they own it, break it, and lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth. Despite deafness and ignorance, the time that was continues to tick inside the time that is," said Uruguayan scholar and journalist Eduardo Galeano. The Philippines General Election is on May 9, 2022. Will the Marcoses be brought back to power? Filmmaker and cultural critic Ram Botero reflects on her nation.
click here |
Now Is The Time For Nonalignment And Peace
It's time to get back to where we once belonged. The Nonalignment Movement needs to be restarted back on the road to peace, progress and prosperity. By Roger McKenzie and Vijay Prashad.
click here |
Western-Led Globalization Might End, But The New Globalization Might Have An Eastern Face
Time to loosen the West's grip on globalization. Look East. By E Ahmet Tonak and Vijay Prashad.
click here |
The Astronomical Price Of Media Propaganda: An Electorate Of Morons
Fed with bull s**t and kept in the dark. Is this how your media is treating you? By Eve Ottenberg.
click here |
Learning The Wrong Lessons From Ukraine
It’s a very well kept secret, but peace is not fragile or difficult. Getting a war started is extremely difficult. It requires a concerted effort to avoid peace. By David Swanson.
click here |
Washington Watches as China and Latin America Deepen Their Ties
Everybody wants to rule the world, especially America. By Marco Fernandes.
click here |
A Deeply Remembered Family In A British Colony
By Kenneth Surin
click here
Click here for more articles |
I Can See For Miles [cinelife]
|
The Shock Of The New
What a wonderful world... the Kazakh New Wave. By Philip Cheah.
click here |
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.
click here |
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.
click here |
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.
click here |
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.
click here
Click here for more articles. |
Movie Reviews
|
Miranda Writes: Encanto’s Chart-Topping Enchantments
Another magic kingdom movie reviewed. And it's dripping with sarcasm... By David Yearsley.
Click here |
Listening Up To 'Don’t Look Up!'
Don't look. This is entertainment. By David Yearsley.
Click here |
Don’t Look Up: See It
By Manuel García, Jr.
Click here |
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.
Click here |
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.
Click here
Click here for more movie
reviews
|
|


The Bottom Line
|
Look
at what more we have to show you.
Click
here
|
Copyright
(c) 2022 BigO/Options Publications Pte Ltd. All Rights Reserved. |
|
|