Make sure that the movies you watch are suitably left wing (or at least know which bits you should be snearing at). Visit the Maoist movie review site.
Apparently The Matrix is fantastic, MIB II is OK, while the review of Enemy of the State is definitely one to read!
Just in case you ever needed to know anything about Hawkind (and obviously you will, what with them being the best band in the world, ever), you should visit Starfarer’s site. Included in the site is a detailed reference to every album, good and bad, and signs for what to look for and avoid if trying to buy second hand stuff. Invaluable for someone like me trying to find the better old stuff on ebay.
He does however very much take the side of Dave Brock in the whole Hawkind� argument. For a fair and balanced alternative view, why not also visit Nik Turner’s site and follow the links from there. Nik has a rather lighter view of the world, of Hawkind and his ex-colleagues.
Following on from the last page of the Internet is shit site (the one about the million monkeys) someone has actually built a monkey simulator… Rather unsurprisingly the best they’ve managed so far is 8 letters…
Oops: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=74&e=8&u=/cmp/13100775
Microsoft has made a big deal out of asserting that Linux is not fit for the enterprise. But Microsoft itself is using Linux to help protect its servers against denial-of-service attacks.
Apparently the Blaster worm is affecting microsoft.com so badly they’ve had to move to Akamai, who run Linux. What a shame…
Following up from previous posts regarding the lovely Zora Suleman it transpires that she now even has a mailing list dedicated to her. Go Zora. We’ll have you on the evening news yet!
Oooh… According to today’s Guardian there’s another twist in the location tracking story… Tesco has ended the trial of RFID where photos were taken of people taking Gillette razors off the shelf, and then again as they passed through the check out. Interesting that Gillette are the largest purchasers of Alien RFID chips - thought to be the latest and greatest of their type. Alien lead the way in long range miniature chips, and are also one of the main players in the AutoID specification (rather prosaically refered to as the Internet of things). It’ll be interesting to see how this one pans out…
Monoman pointed out a while back that the Internet is reaching some kind of critical mass, in that there is always a web site sadder and more detailed than your own effort, regardless of how esoteric the topic. Not that I was trying to build a site about the history of the Russian calculator of course…
Lester Bangs. It says on the cover, rather cheekily, that
he’s the star of Almost
Famous. In a way he is I suppose. If you’ve not seen the
film (and you should) Lester Bangs is the journalist that
gives the kid his first break. This is one of my favourite
films, about one of my favourite subjects (music) and set in
one of my favourite periods (late sixties, early seventies).
In it the character of Lester Bangs is used to epitomise the
times. His vicious, cynical treatment of the rock and roll
inudustry of the time is what grounds the film. Rather
embarrassingly I didn’t know he was real, so it was a bit of
a shock to find a book written by him… It’s a posthumous
collection of pieces, stretching from Velvet Underground and
The Stooges all the way through to The Troggs, The Stones and
any other act of the time that you may care to mention.
This is one of those books that actually makes you call
into question your own activities. This guy could really
write - the vitriolic outpourings and wild flights of fancy
that mesh so tightly with words that so clearly show his love
for the music about which he was writing make you (me) doubt
whether it’s actually worth me reviewing anything else. Sure
I can tell you that I like a thing, but to produce a piece of
the elegance, power and beauty of (say) his review of Van the
Man’s Astral Weeks
is, I’m afraid to say, beyond me.
While Hunter S Thompson was writing about sports and
politics, while Tom Wolfe was writing about art and while PJ
O’Rourke was writing about, well, whatever, Lester Bangs was
writing about Rock and Roll. This is a guy who saw The Who,
who saw Jefferson Airplane, who saw Creedence, The Stones,
The Beatles. In the introduction to the book Marcus Greil
(a friend of Lester’s who compiled the book) says that this
isn’t a compilation of his rock and roll reviews, more a book
that showed how Lester Bangs felt about life. He’s right - in
this book Lester manages to have an opinion about every band
you’ve ever heard of and a million you haven’t, but more
importantly he waxes lyrical about the very nature people,
life, things, and of course rock and roll. Greil goes on to
say that people can’t believe that one of America’s most
important writers was only writing record reviews. Well yeah,
they are record reviews, but then Hunter was ostensibly
writing about politics, wasn’t he..?
I’ve fallen in love with this book, and with the notion of
who Lester Bangs was. I’ve always thought that I was born 30
years too late and this book (along with the Woodstock
DVD, Fear
and Loathing, Electric
Kool Aid Acid Test and Bless
Its Pointed Little Head) serves as a stark reminder that I was.
So much of what he was to say about the record industry, about
superstardom and about the raw facts of the great rock and
roll party still rings true today.
Lester, I salute you, and I salute your vision. Read this,
and find out why music just isn’t as good anymore.
A while back I blogged a story about revision history information held within Microsoft documents and the fact that someone had examined the history of the ‘dodgy dossier.’ Well, the BBC has finally picked this up and have written a rather better article on the subject than any of the previous links. Read and be warned.
