Censorship, it’s a funny thing. Why a cable channel decides to screen a movie such as Layer Cake, here in Indonesia and then subjects it to the normal round of pious cuts is beyond me…that is, removing all drug references, any sex and any swearing or blasphemy before showing it, so it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Why bother…..I guess it adds another dimension to the movie, trying to figure out what in god’s name is going on…odd.

And thinking of rock’n’roll. We were invited up to the, ever so fabulous, Alila Hotel in the Ubud Hills on Friday night for the launch of the new Alila in house CD. The evening was centred around the performance by a singer-songwriter, Made J (whose name, to a New Zealander, might well evoke unpleasant memories of a similarly named Matty J and a heinous sub Vanilla Ice moment called Colourblind a decade or so ago). Fortunately Made, whose musical lineage seemed to come more from Robert Johnson than Matty’s pallid, watery, attempt at sub Bobby Brown R’n’B, was rather more pleasant to the ears.

So there we were, the invited guests at a rock’n’roll event being held in the dining pavilion, at dinner time, or thereabouts; in one of Bali’s most famously serene resorts. With a glorious backdrop of one the worlds most renown pools…indeed, the world’s original infinity pool, falling off into a humid Ubud valley of dark green, still steaming after an afternoon shower.

And we were not alone. The show, since it was being recorded exclusively by and for iTunes, was rather well attended. Some of the attendees were guests of the artist, some invited VIPs, and some, I think, had no idea that they were about to be treated to something contemporary and musical, albeit amplified (although not outrageously it must be said). They were the hotel guests. And therein lay the problem, the clash (a rather appropriate word I think) between two vastly opposing cultures. There were quite a number of well fed middle aged and beyond, largely, I’d say, very wealthy couples enjoying their very expensive dinner at this tranquil resort-spa in the hills when the guests started to arrive.

Or to be more precise, the culture collision occurred…..like one of those buckling high speed locomotive crashes in the old sepia westerns. You really have to ask: what in gods name were the hotel management thinking. I understand the concept: reasonably high brow, some might say, adult contemporary music…still with an obvious cutting edge…and a hotel that tries to position itself somewhere on the edge of style. It seemed like a match made in some sort of heaven. But the reality was, of course, somewhat different and that was no more obvious (and inevitable) than when the Mohawk-ed punk fashionistas, piercings intact, arrived from Kuta.

Of course some of those shaking over their Chardonnay had perhaps done more in their eminent careers to cause harm (mostly economic) to other human beings, behind a boardroom door, than any of the punks or punkettes present would ever be capable of. But that’s’ beside the point and beyond the scope of this post….

When Brigid and I first arrived Made was still performing a quiet-ish semi-acoustic set to warm up…but you could already feel the seething anger amongst the pre-booked dinning couples. One guy in particular was sitting near the stage rolling his glass’ edge on the table and clearly only just holding it together. His wife, to whom he communicated nothing beyond a regular glare (I would imagine the weekend was her idea by the looks), sat there trying to roll with their predicament, tapping her feet now and then, out of time of course, forcing an unenthusiastic replica of an enthusiastic smile. And the longer they sat, the more, rapidly drinking and chain smoking, Made J fans placed themselves on the steps around their table. And then Made turned up the volume.

And then the Kuta punk contingent arrived. Not that many mind…half a dozen or so at the most. But they had the hair, and the studs, and the eyeliner and everything they had on, with the exception the silver of the studs and the skull and pistol screenprinting ink on their ripped t-shirts, was black. The ripples of discomfort spread across the tables. You could smell it (actually you could smell some of the punks too, but that’s part of the calculated allure of punkdom). Husbands looked fearfully at their wives who were now obviously in danger of being violated right there and then. And the wives, with the clear and present knowledge all their present worldly goods were now liable to be wrenched from them at any moment, quickly tucked their bags under their crossed arms, and then crossed their legs…..and refused, no matter the pain, to go to the toilet in case……

Yes, of course, I’m exaggerating the last bit somewhat for effect…but the fear was real

However point is, as I said earlier…what in hells name possessed the hotel management to do such a thing. To smash the allure to the Alila with a rock’n’roll gig; to face the inevitable demands for room refunds the next day and the swathe of bad word of mouth that was utterly inevitable from a gig like this. I could’ve told them….anyone who’s done such a gig could’ve warned them of the risk, especially when the artist invites friends.

Were they swayed by the lure of iTunes, or by the thought of the cutting edge nature implied by such a gig. Or was the manager leaving and wanted to see a band….who knows….but I guarantee whatever the reason, the in room mayhem left in the various after-show party suites (I was in one…are peanut shells hard to get out of a carpet??) negated the benefit….

We went for a swim in the morning to clear our heads

The odd thing is, we didn’t ever get to see the CD…nobody mentioned it…once…

9890…..this number scares the hell out of me. And it should you too. The number quoted is the median number found in a survey last week of Americans, asking how many Iraqi civilians have been killed since the invasion.

Even scarier is that 52% of those asked put the civilian dead at less than 10,000, whilst only 11% put the figure at more than 50,000. Of course, the only reliably sampled figure we have to date puts the probable figure, a year ago, at between 350,000 and 900,000 lives lost…a figure which stands as the only credible figure we have despite the voluminous efforts of the hard right to discredit it.

Even Bush, in his response to the Lancet survey touted a figure of 30,000…a figure so ludicrously low that nobody beyond his borders could be expected to give it any credibility. But pronounce it he did, and some traction it obviously did have.

Of course what scares the hell out of me is the ignorance that this survey illustrates too well. It goes far beyond the sort of almost humorous global geographic unawareness that I parodied at the start of this post. On the basis of this survey 89% of those surveyed either have no idea or think that the number of innocents killed is so ludicrously low that it defies reasonable thought. Simply put, they have absolutely no idea of what hell their government and their military have wrought, or are about to, in far lands, in their freedom lovin’ name. And they seem not to care enough to find out…after all, as I said elsewhere, they are only against this war because they are having their nuke tipped butts kicked.

No idea at all….and it reminds me of this, yet again….superpower? No it’s a manipulated intellectual kindergarten with a few flashes of brilliance around the edges….. oh and lots of bombs….

My favourite moment this week: after being asked if he liked Thai food, an American said to me

I don’t know, but I’ve been to Taiwan briefly and it looked ok, so I guess so….

But that’s an aside.

What inspired me to put finger to keyboard today was the story going around about the forthcoming Milli Vanilli biopic in production as I type.

I’m intrigued by the MV story. The manufacturing of the pop group is one thing, there is an art form just in that…in this case thank Frank Farian, who pulled it off, using the same formula he’d perfected in the past. It’s an established part of the pop machine, it has been for decades and the charts, across the world are full of such records.

But what intrigues me much more is the way American pop industry reacted with such self righteous indignation to the fact that Milli and Vanilli (ok lets be fair…Rob and Fab..and the endgame to their story is very sad) were a manufactured group who perhaps did not sing on their own records. Witness the quote from the director:

I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of fakes and frauds, and in this case, you had guys who pulled off the ultimate con, selling 30 million singles and 11 million albums and then becoming the biggest laughing-stocks of pop entertainment

Which in a way sums it all up…the quote is idiocy. The fakes and frauds bit does not concern me, it’s the line “pulled off the ultimate con” which really raises a smile. Perhaps I’m being a little smug here but Milli Vanilli did absolutely no such thing. The truly intriguing part of this story is the way the Americans (the industry, the media, and the public) somehow were unable to see what was glaring obvious to the rest of the world, from the toppermost (to use a word coined by that decidedly un-manufactured, despite the collarless suits, artist, John Lennon) record exec to the most naïve squealing ten year old fan: that not only were these guys a complete pre-fabricated facade, but every indication was that they had very little if anything to do with their records. And so what….. who sang on The Crystals records…certainly not the girls….who played virtually everything on The Beach Boys surf classics, and for that matter, Pet Sounds…not the “band”..???

We all sniggered knowingly as they were awarded a Grammy, and shook our heads in bemusement as they were lauded as the next big thing (a soul act no less), selling some thirty million records in the process. Then came the big crash, the stripping of the award, the incredible furore, the anger and indignation, the cancelled tour, the bloody (and only in America) Class Action Lawsuits for gods sake. The American chat shows began to mock the group relentlessly, as did the likes of Weird Al Yankevich, without, to this day realising that the joke was completely on themselves. And it still is…

Still, from time to time I smile at it all. And I bet Farian does too…he got to bank the cheque regardless of what happened in the USA as everybody tried to point the blame at someone else, refusing to accept, or even see, that they were all responsible. There is some irony, watching a multi billion dollar industry, beset with arrogance and self belief, humiliate itself so badly in front of the whole planet, as it did. Hadn’t the name Boney M on Frank Farian’s CV set any bells off? It seems not. And I bet The Village People made their own records, yeah? Let’s face it, in an industry that has perfected beautifully the art of manufacturing imagery and idols who exist primarily to extract money from the masses, and whose real talent doesn’t go beyond photo-geniality, the level of naivety evident in the reaction to MV was incredible.

And I imagine these same people still think American Idol is “real”….and Britney has played a part beyond providing a vocal track to be heavily digitally enhanced in “her” music, despite more recent claims to have “co-written and co-produced” recent releases.

If it wasn’t for the tragedy surrounding one of the faces of MV (and indeed the self-implosion of Britney (although the cynic in me does wonder if her escapades right now may have something to do with a forthcoming album and an image reinvention, but I suspect it may be more to do with the realisation that her time in the sun is over)) this would be funny.

Read Glenn Greenwald at Salon today if you have the time.

Greenwald is usually superb, but the accolades this time need to go General William Odom, former director of the NSA under Reagan, who neatly demolishes the hard right rationale for staying in Iraq; and for Bush dragging us all into a global conflagration with Iran:

We could not have increased Iranian incentives for getting nuclear weapons faster, or more effectively, than the policy we’ve used to keep to prevent them from getting them. . . .

Sometimes you wonder how these people can be so damned stupid…

Here are some more songs, (almost) as they played today:

LCD Soundsystem – New York I Love You (DFA) …in which Murphy and Goldsworthy issue the first truly great song for the ages for 2007. And if these is any doubt that they are the best rock’n’roll band in the US of A right now, this, and the accompanying album, should, by all rights put that to rest. It’s staring them in the face, as they moan about collapsing sales (22% down on last year now…sheeeit), and the Americans don’t even know it. The song, the lyrics, the performance, and that fucking great bounce back ¾ of the way through, bellow classic.

Isaac Hayes – I Can’t Turn Around (Hot Buttered Soul)….one of those songs you need to revisit every now and then, if only to re-iterate to ones self how much house / techno are a bigger part of the grand tradition of black rhythmic music going back to Leadbelly and W.C Handy. It’s a bloody great song too…

Echo & The Bunnymen – All That Jazz (Korova)…I like E&TBM when they are at their most strident…and this is strident on steroids….slicing guitar over staccato toms

Human Resource – Dominator (Joey Betram mix…of course) (R&S)..I’m bigger and bolder and rougher and tougher…..I didn’t really think I’d be smiling in a Balinese garden to the sound of wailing rave fifteen years later, but here I am. And I can’t even find my glow-stick….there is nothing like a roaring hoover loop in the sunshine….wanna kiss myself / wanna kiss myself

Eric B & Rakim – My Melody (Marley Marl 808 Remix) (mp3)…I found this on the net somewhere a few weeks ago, it being a mutant radio only remix, with the kitchen sink thrown in, done by Marley a couple of decades ago (somebody suggested that this may be on the extended version of the Paid in Full album (which I don’t have), but I don’t think so, as this is a good thirty seconds longer).

Arthur Russell – See My Brother He’s Jumpin’ Out (let’s go Swimming #1) (Audika)….from the album of unreleased material released in 2006, a dubbed out re-working of the classic Lets Go Swimming, sounding for all the world like Arthur working out with The Junkyard Band. Its well cool….

Faze Action – In The Trees (Carl Craig C2 Remix #1) …..yes it sounds like Carl, very Angola (the second half), in that measured mid tempo way, almost a slow grind, that also feels like parts of The Detroit Experiment album (now that was a masterpiece), with the melancholy moodiness of the original strings laid over the top and climbing into the mix very subtly, and organically. How does this man do it?

Blue Magic – Look Me Up (Atco)….I like the cute intro on this poppy Norman Harris production from one of Philly’s finest seventies vocal groups, although for a moment it begins to feel like one of the lesser Spinners‘ hits from the same era. It is pop after all, and slightly more lightweight than many of the other tracks from this group but it completely redeems itself towards the middle when it breaks down to a percussion fest, and then the swelling MFSB strings come rotating into the mix, layered with soft brass and a little, I think, electric piano. Bliss.

Mike Clarke – Let Your Love (Charles Spencer mix) (Third Ear)…..the line between house and techno is not only a hard one to define, it’s also a pointless one. As this record so neatly illustrates…I don’t know if this track could be exclusively claimed by either genre. I found this tucked towards the end of the Detroit Beatdown Remixed album, which I’ve played a lot over the past months. I’d never really heard much Mike Clark apart from an EP of disco re-edits I’d bought somewhere a while back. He’s one of a swag of lesser players from motor city and this song really crept up on me which surprised as it’s, on first listen, a little faceless, and sounds like the sound formless looping sub disco that has plagued Chi-town in recent years. But that’s the joy of music….it’s the one you least expect…

Big Youth – Hit The Road Jack (Trojan)…..with a killer bass line that poor old Ray Charles could never have imagined in his most inventive (or indeed chemically induced) moments. Twisted Jamaican versions of things like this are a particular fetish of mine, and I dig the way he drops into What The World . I can thank Paul Weller for this, I found it on his Under The Influence collection

Catherine Miller – Hunchin’ All Night (Heavenly Star …via Sussed)….I’d never heard this until I found it on the recent Ian Dewhirst complied Deep Disco Culture Vol 1, a fabulous (you can use words like that for disco) collection of obscure as phuck tracks from the golden era of humanoid dancefloor anthems (before the machines truly kicked in). This is one odd record, it really is….addictive & dirty (hunchin’ being a by-word for, you know, with lines like hard times / so sore / baby, ain’t gonna give you no more); and mixed (I think) by Patrick Adams (the credits are vague on this) in a spacey (both in terms of the space in the mix and the actual cosmic-ness of the sound produced) way, albeit with addictively haunting real strings, and a mid tempo, almost post Disco, groove.

Wire – Mannequin (Harvest)…tell me / why don’t you tell me…perhaps the perfect punk single, from the perfect punk album, from the perfect punk band. In the spirit of Pink Flag, I’ll keep this brief.

I’m going to link to Cering again on the Iran story, as an addendum to my post of three days back. This in getting increasingly fascinating, as a key player in the Pentagon repeatedly bucks the administration Gulf-of-Tonkin-isation of the US line on Iran and Iraq.

Remember Seymour Hersh writing about the revolt of Pentagon generals over White House plans for Iran, back in July of last year?

Can you imagine the emails and calls flying between the White House and Pace….it really doesn’t matter what pressure is put on the guy to back down when he gets home, it’s been said…twice.

From Firedoglake:

We are now in a Strangelovian bizarroworld where we must count on General Buck Turgidson to refuse to follow orders. Holy Moly.

This is fascinating stuff

I really liked the Pet Sounds story in the (I think) December issue of Mojo magazine. Mojo is like a warm cuddly blanket for me at times. It has lots of rather well written stories about artists that I used to like a lot (and many I didn’t, and for that matter, some I still do) and usually does little more than refresh things in my mind that I’ve already read before over the years. I truly believe there is nothing more of any real interest to me that can really be said about (or by, in some cases) The Beatles, or indeed Jimi Hendrix, or, you might think, The Beach Boys.

Its contemporary coverage bores the hell out of me. Like it’s classic coverage is overwhelmingly white rockist (and those black artists it covers are the “acceptable” variety like Aretha…it’s as if hip hop exists in a parallel universe and the musical revolutions of the last twenty years didn’t happen). The sort of comfortable, vaguely rootsy acts that it praises, without exception I think, put me to sleep. I still like to be challenged by a new record and I certainly don’t get that from the likes of The Magic Numbers or Rufus Wainwright, who, to be honest, I find tedious. They’re just not me….each to their own…..but I have trouble convincing myself that the successor to this magazine will be featuring someone like that in 2027. Chances are of course, I’m wrong, and it might be that generation gap hiking up on me again. But I don’t think so…the kids don’t want to hear a bunch of acts that sedate older folks like because they sound like something they might’ve liked 25 years ago…without any noticeable edge.

But the Beach Boys story was, to use a comfortable word, nice. I’d read most of what was revealed in it a dozen times or more (my favourite Brian Wilson story still remains the one Nick Kent, perhaps Britain’s greatest music writer, included in his collection, The Dark Stuff), and the story of the album, its recording and its aftermath, is now the stuff of rock’n’roll folk law, but it was pleasantly put with the odd rather quirky quote. I liked it a lot. What I especially related to was the contemporary-ness of Brian, with Al Jardine, the only other remaining Beach Boy worth thinking about (I was thinking the other day I’d not heard Mike Love’s name used without the adjective odious preceding it for some years now), performing Pet Sounds live for the last time.

The very last time, or at least that’s the story, but, as we know, with all things rock’n’roll, never say never.

I love Brian Wilson. I’ve never met him, but was within a breath of doing so a few years back. A friend, a mutual Wilson fanatic had the man banging on his door wanting to come in…but was out. He said he’d have called me on the quiet to drop by……that’s sadly beside the point though, although I’ve thought about it often….you would wouldn’t you….

But, listen to the pounding beat (very Wrecking Crew) sliding into and under the vocal ahhhs of Don’t Worry Baby’s opening moments; or the layered harmonies of ‘till I Die, which float on top of, and drift away from each other like a soft swell, and if you can honestly tell me that this man wasn’t sent by some higher force to create…its almost enough to give an old cynic some religion.

What really moved me in Mojo was the photograph of Brian (which I can’t find online so the above will suffice), and the thought of this grand old man (who really isn’t that old of course, I’m talking in white rock terms), a survivor, who in all reason should not have survived, playing his grand opus one more time before he leaves it forever. And I started thinking about the passing of a guard. Two really…..the icons of the sixties are slowly beginning to shuffle away, if not passing on, at least winding down their activities or at least finding themselves in a place when such is being reasonably considered. And the rock icons of the seventies, the young revolutionaries, are not passing as such (although we lost Joe), but, unlike the sixties icons, becoming less and less relevant to the modern world. The seventies heroes never really fulfilled their potential, and, perhaps the exception of Elvis Costello & Paul Weller, nobody else from that era really managed to extend their sell by date. I mean, look at Robert Smith or Siouxsie Sioux, both adequately described as parodies of themselves twenty five years on. Sad but true.

And just to clarify before someone screams Kraftwerk or Al Green at me, I’m talking guitar, bass, drum, rock’n’roll.

For those of my generation it’s a strange place to be. I’ve lived with names like Jagger, Dylan, Townshend, Page, Wonder and McCartney all my life. That’s not to say I’ve liked everything they done, not at all, quite the opposite in fact. And, I’d be glad if all of the above didn’t make another record (with the exception McCartney who redeemed himself totally with his last album), or at least one I didn’t have to hear. The same goes for David Bowie, once one of my heroes…still actually…but I’d be happier if there wasn’t yet another hailed-as-returning-to-form album…its been twenty six years since Scary Monsters, his last longplayer to get excited about. To be honest there is virtually nothing from any of the above I’ve liked since about 1980. But the point is, they still held their iconic status largely intact…and the fact that there are few heirs to that status might have a little bit to do with collapsing CD sales.

So no, its not about the fact that these people will not, for much longer, be making records, I guess its more about me, and what the passing off the scene of these, still in my mind, youth icons actually means to me, and my life. The Wilson story as much as anything was a whoa moment for me…

And I suppose it’s also a great deal of disbelief as to how long these people have retained some sort of relevance. The Beatles wiped just about every icon out of the public consciousness in 64, but, and a it’s a measure of how little the punk icons I mentioned earlier actually achieved, the big bang of 76 was barely noticed by the sixties rock giants.

I don’t really know what this post has to do with anything…it just hit me….I think I’m rambling…