Big Chief:
"Smokey Johnson, the session's drummer, wore out the inside of this thumb and forefinger from the constant stick work during those takes, conceding, 'Yeah, I was in there bleeding like a goose.'...

"I took two broomsticks and cut the bottoms off and I took these Coke tops," recalls Johnson. "I took a hammer and straightened them out, a bunch of them. I put three on a nail on each nail that I had on these sticks, and I overdubbed them as shakers that you hear back there."

Another curious detail from the session, Quezerque says, was the need to tie Fess' left hand behind his back, "or something of that nature, so he wouldn't use it. He did that all with one hand."

Ray Carney's search for a missing American classic: "What made the Shadows story particularly interesting was that a number of critics and viewers who saw both versions were convinced that Cassavetes had made a grievous mistake. Jonas Mekas's Movie Journal column, published in the Village Voice on January 27 1960, can stand for all: 'I have no further doubt that whereas the second version of Shadows is just another Hollywood film - however inspired, at moments - the first version is the most frontier-breaking American feature film in at least a decade. Rightly understood and properly presented, it could influence and change the tone, subject matter, and style of the entire independent American cinema.' "

Thomas Bewick (1753-1828)

Big and Bad great New Yorker article about SUV's

Ageing punks' single stunt a hit: "Ageing post-punk band The Alarm have scored a top 30 UK chart hit - with a stunt disguising themselves as an unknown younger group. "

Malcolm Lowry murdered?

Rhythm is a vacuum
bruises are weapons

Bruce Andrews in the Brooklyn Rail

History of House Music

House is a Feeling freitag in Mannheim

What kind of techno music are you? No need to tell you what I am

let there be drums!! DRUMMERWORLD: The DrumSolo Collection

Sui Generis - The utterly new sounds of Dizzee Rascal, Britain's rising superstar. By Sasha Frere-Jones: "Dizzee's mentor, Wiley, a producer, MC, and architect of Dizzee's scene, calls his music 'Eskimo Dance,' abbreviated as 'Eski,' a term he explains as his idiosyncratic synonym for emotional coldness. There are few legato sounds and the reference points are the tools of digital life: cell phones, pagers, video games. Inorganic squawks fire around constipated, angry bass lines. Sounds enter and exit quickly, without explanation. Imagine a teenager slamming a door over and over. "

Andy Goldsworthy - Sheepfolds--Coleridge's walk

Christian Marclay atSAM through April

Christian Marclay shockwave site

Christian Marclay interview- Perfect Sound Forever

Maple Sugar Festival 2004: "Le Festival du Sucre d'Erable / Maple Sugar Festival de Nanaimo est de retour du 25 au 29 fevrier 2004 au village du festival du Parc Beban, 2300 Bowen Rd et au centre-ville de Nanaimo."

An exhibition of flower illustration in books since the Renaissance

Kierkegaard Manuscripts

CJR Campaign Desk excellent campaign overview blog

The Frank W. Tober Collection on Literary Forgery

New York in the 70s

oral history of William Vollmann's Rising Up and Rising Down

escape the CRIMSON ROOM & then let me out

The Secret Life of Maps

Trade Ephemera

The Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway nice pics if you scroll down

Houston Press 1997-- Swangin' and Bangin' ... and getting to that other level with the disciples of screw:

"The master player himself (real name: Robert E. Davis Jr.) lives in the same worn South Park house in which he began mixing tapes four years ago. At eight o'clock almost every night, the privacy gate to DJ Screw's driveway swings open, and cars steadily fill up the street in front of his house. Teenagers and adults -- black, Hispanic and occasionally white -- line up at the back door's metal security gate to buy from the selection of $10 tapes Screw and his band of 20 in-house rappers (The Screwed Up Click) have just recorded."

Houston, Texas-- One Last Spin,Friends: "DJ Screw was perhaps the first person to make hardcore rap psychedelic. Now, you may say that artists like De La Soul and P.M. Dawn were the first to bring a creatively trippy, '60s-style mind-set to contemporary rap and hip-hop. But what they brought was a free-spirited sense of pacifistic liberation. Their music didn't really exhibit, or endorse, the hallucinogenic haziness DJ Screw created nearly out of thin air. It almost seemed like DJ Screw's mission was to make the definitive blotto music, something to pop in your tape deck and listen to as you slouch on your couch. "

Ottawa Citizen: "Rights enshrined in Canada's Constitution, such as protection against unreasonable search and seizure, and the country's generous social-welfare system have made it 'a favoured destination for terrorists and international organized crime groups,' says the report, which is titled Nations Hospitable to Organized Crime & Terrorism."

Counterspin Central: The unofficial "FIRST AMENDMENT ZONE." best asessment of Kerry rumors here

Land of a Thousand Dances: "It's a cover, but not an interpretation. Everything in the song about failed love gets cut, so what remains is a song about clowns, and since it's coming from a Krusty, a song about himself. He even gets to refer to himself in the third-person plural (a favorite trick of Hollywood narcissists) as being 'soulful and doleful.'"

Wapping '86: a photo essay by Nic Oatridge (PDF)

London Riot Re-enactment Society:

"Brixton Riots, 1981
Among other things, re-enactors will set fire to an abandoned police car on Atlantic Road, throw petrol bombs, setting fire to police cars and private cars, set fire to pubs and drive police out of Brixton for most of the night. Re-enacting will spread to other parts of London. Over 200 police officers will be injured, and 83 premises and 23 vehicles damaged, at an estimated cost of 7.5m.

Broadwater Farm, 1985
In protest at the death of a woman during a police search of her home, re-enactors will attack the police, eventually re-enact killing one of them. (The re-enactor who re-enacts the killing will look like someone other than Winston Sillcott, who was framed for the murder and is still in prison).

Wapping, 1986-87
Re-enactors will picket Rupert Murdoch's News International's Wapping site for a year, and have numerous clashes with scabs and the police.

Poll Tax riots, 1990
Re-enactors dressed in authentic 1990 clothes (start searching in cupboards, attics and charity shops now) will assemble in Trafalgar Square for a demonstration that turns into an all-out riot. The next day, most of the self-appointed leaders will condemn the riot. "

The Wapping Dispute 1986 : "Within two years all national newspapers had adopted the technologies News International introduced and had adapted their working practices accordingly, precipitating an exodus of newpapers from Fleet Street, largely to Docklands. After hundreds of years of ascendancy, Fleet Street was no longer the centre of the UK newspaper industry, no longer able to resist the influence of new technology, changing employment practices and the demands of a more competitive business environment. The Trade Union movement, and the printworkers unions in particular, found themselves in a spiral of decline, increasingly unable to muster a response to the changing industrial landscape. The Labour Party, after years of soul-searching, finally allied itself with Murdoch, and in power showed no appetite for repealing the legislation Margaret Thatcher had introduced to curb union power."

London's Industrial Heritage