Local trees & c.

YouTube - History Of House Music Prt 1

Glenn Greenwald on Tom Friedman

Tom Friedman can declare with a straight face that "anyone who shoots up innocent people is ... mentally imbalanced" without seeing how clearly that applies to himself and those who think like he does. It's that self-absorbed disconnect -- seeing Hasan's murder of American soldiers as an act of consummate evil and sickness while refusing to see our own acts in a similar light -- that shapes most of our warped political discourse. And note the morality on display here: Hasan attacks soldiers on a military base of a country that has spent the last decade screaming to the world that "we're at war!!," and that's a deranged and evil act, while Friedman cheers for an unprovoked war that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and displaced millions more -- all justified by sick power fantasies, lame Mafia dialogue, and cravings more appropriate for a porno film than a civilized foreign policy -- and he's the arbiter of Western reason and sanity...

two biker classics on on TCM tonight....Psychomania followed by

Electra Glide in Blue

my cousin's excellent clothing & textile company:



You are cordially invited to attend the upcoming Sans Soucie
studio sale just in time for Christmas!!!

We are clearing out our studio to make room for completely new work so there will be great deals available to one and all!!!

Most stock ( clothing and accessories) will be available at wholesale prices, which means 50% off the retail price as well as there will be an addition to our sale this year that has never seen before.....which we will keep as a surprise!!!

Please come and join us for a cup of tea and a nibble or two and see what treasures you might find!  We will also have some new work on display that has been not seen anywhere else yet!

If you would like to attend please RSVP at info@sanssoucie.ca or call 604.716.1531 to let us know which date you may attend.

If you are unable to attend any of the dates below please contact us to arrange an alternative time to visit the studio.  For those folks who are not in Vancouver we will have work online available at studio sale prices. 

Please feel free to forward this message to anyone who you might think would like to attend!

We hope to see you this Holiday Season!

Best,

All of us at Sans Soucie


Where:

            123 E. Hastings (main floor, it is gated so please ring the doorbell to gain entrance)

When:

            Saturday Dec 5th 12-6pm

          Saturday Dec 12th 12-6pm


Pay Parking available on the south side of the street of Hastings across the street form the studio and on Columbia St.  We are directly on the bus route, if you need directions please let us know.

Torture: The greased pig of our perilous existence

Canada’s military is deeply integrated into that of the US. Since the 2004 torture scandal at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison it is well known the US has been practicing torture. Only the utterly naïve would be believe that Canada’s military could avoid being complicit in torture and the breaking of international law in this close and utterly compliant relationship. It now remains to be seen how many other NATO countries serving there are also complicit in torture. The British army for one is embroiled in a series of torture accusations dating back to the Iraq war.



As long as this not so cuddly little pig has the run of the house all of us get smeared and the blame does not lie totally with our leaders. We too are refusing to wrestle this not so cuddly little pig as we drift toward being torture tolerant societies. Stark testimony to this is not only our lack of outrage to torture connected to the less than authentic war on terror but also domestic torture. Domestic torture comes in the form of our apparent tolerance for the use of the tasers by our police forces. Both the UN and Amnesty International consider the taser a form of torture. It was never intended as a lethal weapon, but it now has a proven lethality, and a growing list of victims...

local trees & c.

A Quote and a Marvellous Mix: Theo Parrish – Straight No Chaser!

Love of the music should be driving force of any producer, performer or dj. Everything else stems from that core, that love. With that love, sampling can become a tribute, an expansion on ideas long forgotten, reconstruction, collage. Using this same understanding openly & respectfully, can turn djing into spiritual participation. It can turn a few hours of selection into essential history. Necessary listening through movement...

1. Jaco Pastorius – ‘Portrait of Tracy’ (Sony)
2. Hanna – ‘Hanna’s Waltz’ (?)
3. Blackbyrds – ‘Mother/Son Talk’ (Fantasy)
4. Common – ‘It’s Your World’ (Good Music)
5. Jean Luc Ponty – ‘Between you and Me’ (Atlantic)
6. Ojeda Penn – ‘Happy People’ ((?)
7. Al Jarreau – ‘Take Five’ (Warner/WEA)
8. The Crusaders – ‘Chain Reaction’ (MCA)
9. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers – ‘Cubano Chant’ (Philips)
10. Herbie Hancock – ‘Sleeping Giant’ (WEA)
11. Herbie Hancock with Bill Laswell Feat Chaka Khan – ‘The Essence’ (Transparent)
12. Miles Davis – ‘Ife” (Sony)
13. Lenny White – ‘Venusian Summer Suite’ (Wounded Bird)
14. Haki Madhabuti & Nation – ‘Medasi’ (Third World)
15. Theo Parrish – ‘Love is War for Miles’ (Peacefrog)
16. The Rebirth – ‘This Journey In’ (Cajmere Sounds)
17. Fertile Ground – ‘Yellow Daisies’ (Blackout Studios)
18. Dee Felice Trio – ‘The Cricket Sing’ (?)
19. Hanna – ‘Laughin’ (?)
20. Ronnie Laws – ‘Tidal Wave’ (Blue Note)
21. The Heath Bros – ‘Smilin’ Billy Suite’ (Strata East)
22. Georgia Anne Muldrow – ‘One For the Funk (Stones Throw)

Dust begins to clear even before landing.  The helicopter, under its own halo, casts a moon shadow.

Robert Polito from Artforum, 2002--Painter of pictures: The Farber equation is never simple--

"Ideas impossible to understand because they come through a fog of stupidity." It's scary for a writer to come across a sentence that so plainly says what it means, in which the prose is so exquisitely balanced, and you take pleasure in the way the words are put together, and you worry that you've written things about which something like that could be said over and over and over again.

Walter Benjamin once said that an author who teaches a writer nothing teaches nobody anything. One thing that I think happens for many writers reading Farber is that they feel themselves on trial. They feel this same scrutiny that's brought to bear on actors, on directors, on painters, on musicians, on comic-strip artists. Maybe they feel lucky that Manny Farber has never read them and therefore doesn't have an opinion on them...

VANCOUVER COMPLICATION (1979 compilation)
(n.b. the U-J3RK5 tracks here much better than on the better-known EP...)

Vancouver Complication is a potent document, rife with frenetic, explosive punk, yet with a smattering of quirky new wave and edgier post-punk for good measure. Local kingpins DOA of course anchor the disc with the muscular 'Kill, Kill, This is Pop' and the caustic punk of 'I Hate You'. The all-girrrl fury of the Dishrags marks their vinyl debut here with the studied anglo-punk of 'I Don't Love You.' The K-Tels, soon to be the Young Canadians, weigh in with their crabby pop-punk, while Exxotone straddle Devo and Gang of Four with the jumpy, oddball "Big Shot'. Not to be outdone, U-J3RK5 contribute the most fascinating track here. A prime shard of spastic weirdness, 'U-J3RK5 Work for the Police' is a stunningly intense 1:03 of jerky, chafing post-punk, all the more fascinating for having been recorded in March of 1979 as well as for counting among its members future photographer-extraordinaire Jeff Wall. Alas, few bands here ever achieved much in the way of fame, even by the paltry indie standards of the day - Pointed Sticks and of course DOA the obvious exceptions. Still, this is a gutsy sampler, a lucid snapshot of an adolescent, though swiftly maturing underground scene...

photo of the Dishrags (who I saw open for the Clash's first North American gig, with Bo Diddley!) by
Don Denton

via Isola di Rifiuti

Wandering with Robert Walser





Since it rained so heavily and we came to look like drowned cats I suggested that we take the tram to the edge of St. Gallen. Robert thought that we should push on. Oh, why not! Finally we arrive, dripping, in the third class buffet and creep into the corner so that no one could see the pond growing around us. They had hasenpfeffer. Robert smiled benignly. At dessert I mentioned that the Quakers got the Nobel peace prize. He asked "Did you know that their leader, the itinerant preacher William Penn, founded Pennsylvania three hundred years ago and dreamed of a league of nations? Zschokke told his story in a cute novella. Back in Zschokke's day, they still understood how to write gracious novels. Today novelists terrorize readers with their dense tediousness. It's not a good sign for these times that literature acts in such an aggressive way. It used to be modest and good-natured. Today it attracts the rulers. Das Volk are said to be its subject. That is not a healthy development."

Toward evening he wanted to walk back to Herisau. Then he realized that, as a waterfall he could arouse unpleasant reactions at the sanitarium, so we took the train. When we arrived in the coach I discovered the reason for his bad mood: from now on I should only visit on Sundays. On workdays he has a job like all the other patients. I said: "The Director told me explicitly: whenever, and as often as we like." Robert, serious and firm: "The Director! je m'en fiche! [I don't care!]. I can't report exclusively to the director, I also have to consider the other patients. Can't you understand that being a privileged one is an unpleasant role?"

Hal Ashby's terrific 1970 debut The Landlord on TCM tonight...

via PC two night trees from William Gedney Photographs and Writings

From the mid 1950s through the early 1980s, William Gedney (1932-1989) photographed throughout the United States, in India, and in Europe. From street scenes outside his Brooklyn apartment to the daily chores of unemployed coal miners, from the indolent lifestyle of hippies in Haight-Ashbury to the sacred rituals of Hindu worshippers, Gedney recorded the lives of others with remarkable clarity and poignancy. These photographs, along with his notebooks and writings, illuminate the vision of an intensely private man who, as a writer and photographer, revealed the lives of others with striking sensitivity. Included here are selections from Gedney's finished prints, work prints, contact sheets, notes, notebooks, handmade photographic books, book dummies, and correspondence...

Delia Derbyshire

warm things up with O.V. WRIGHT : Giant of Southern Soul...

EIGHT MEN, FOUR WOMEN / NUCLEUS OF SOUL / MEMPHIS UNLIMITED / THE BOTTOM LINE (1967 / 1968 / 1973 / 1978)

thoughtful article on Jim Jarmusch--

"Acting is like piano playing. The dialogue is just the left hand; the melody is in the eyes."

local trees & C.

an evening of Claudia Cardinale on TCM tonight...