Happy New Year!

Che bella cosa na jurnata 'e sole,
n'aria serena doppo na tempesta!
Pe' ll'aria fresca pare già na festa...
Che bella cosa na jurnata 'e sole.

What a beautiful thing is a sunny day!
The air is serene after a storm,
The air is so fresh that it already feels like a celebration.\
What a beautiful thing is a sunny day!

Mourning, Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth. I have got to cut it out.

I am/was going to write about Ted Cruz calling for carpet bombing. Something...

But every time I type carpet bombing, tears roll down my cheeks.

It is the concussion not worked out yet. I just cry like a fool.

This is what the Lord says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” Jeremiah 31:15

It is the awful photos of Dresden. Dresden had no strategic value. We broke it because we could. It is what Kurt Vonnegut wrote about being there and here:

“The corpses, most of them in ordinary cellars, were so numerous and represented such a health hazard that they were cremated on huge funeral pyres, or by flamethrowers whose nozzles were thrust into the cellars, without being counted or identified,” Vonnegut wrote in “Fates Worse Than Death.


“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

I was born today in December on the 9th in 1943.

I am going to have steamed Alaskan Crab with Drawn Butter for birthday supper. I am eating an almond croissant. Nothing hurts me at the moment although I seem rather dim. God bless us every one.

To All my Friends, Foes and Fellow Music Gnomes

Hello Everybody.

I had an MRI yesterday. And what is even better, I do not need or want a pill for pain for the first time since November 13. There is nothing like severe pain to adjust your priorities - clears your sinuses right out.

I ate. I bathed myself by myself. I have the cutest Brazilian physical therapist named Leo who is also a gardener. He and I will be walking around the Hood with my new walker. Leo says I cannot go anywhere by myself.

Leo hopes I 'will not give up gardening.' I will never give up gardening. What is even funnier was hearing a snatch of a fellow client's explanation of how how he happened to be in the orthopedist's office "...well, I was in the garden..."

My Shrink beat my GP up thoroughly for conspiring - with my garden - to get me.

You Gnomes from the Music Grotto even made mention in the 'Yes, she is Sane' testament. I do not know why. I encourage her to read these pages. While the love and conflict around here is superior, some of us may make the SANE CATEGORY only with a some judicious trimming and shoving into place.

Thank you for all the cards and flowers and good wishes.

I am on SLOW. It took more than an hour to compose and correct this note to you all. That is pathetic. So I still need brain rest.

And just so you know it is really me, let me tell you I would rather fuck Leo. Hmmm, I am getting better.

This is Plum's kid, she has a concussion and needs rest. She's alive and doing ok. When she has the ok from her doc she'll be back. She misses you all and hopes to see you guys soon.

My Garden Bit Me

I fell down hard on my hip which was a good thing because there was a biggish branch that was put there to stick me in stomach. I wiggled on by.

X-rays tomorrow. I am fine. Black and blue is all. I will back. You all just be decent while I am gone or not. I am too woozy to type.

"I will bleed on your capitalism."

Oh how I love Third Wave Feminists. 

CONTENT WARNING: BLOOD.

"Today i am forgoing tampons and pads outside the houses of parliament to show how ‘luxury’ tampons really are.

We are also raising money to buy tampons for homeless shelters, womens shelters and the refugee crisis.

We’re getting lots of dirty looks and someone just shouted at us to get a job. But everyone keeps saying “haha omg how quickly would we get free tampons if everyone stopped wearing them?!” So, I’m giving it a go.

Taxes are necessary, i get it. So are tampons/ pads. They’re not luxury items, anymore than jaffa cakes, edible cake decorations, exotic meats or any other number of things currently not taxed as luxury items.

Maternity pads are taxed, but incontinence pads arent. We’ve had enough. Maybe bleeding on their doorstep will get the tories to do something about this?"
- Charlie Edge

KlingonShit happens - again.

I wrote about this guys election HERE.

Gordon “Dr. Chaps” Klingenschmitt, the Religious Right activist and Colorado state representative, is adept at “discerning the spirits” within his adversaries and applied his talents to the leaders of Planned Parenthood on his “Pray In Jesus Name” program this weekend.
- READ MORE... 

“I don’t believe these people for a moment, do you? In fact, we can discern upon them the spirit of lying, the spirit of death, the spirit of murder, the spirit of greed. I mean, whenever I look at a picture of those executives, if you look in the spirit, at the demons inside of them, you can see the blood dripping from their fangs. These people are just evil.” - Gordon KlingonShit

I am not going to apologize for the Klingon joke. I know how this guy got elected. You stoners and trekkies cannot fool me. I mean, who else would vote for him? There cannot be that many fundamentalist Christians in Colorado. They legalized marijuana did they not?

Musical Interlude for Attitude Adjustment - Philadelphia Opera Company

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats. - Albert Schweitzer

I shop at Reading Terminal Market weekly for fresh ground coffee and real bread. Iovine's for fresh produce. The Amish butcher for breakfast sausage and honey. Then I eat lunch at Pearl's Oyster Bar. Music and good food is Paradise.

I love the City of Brotherly Love. You never know when a random act of culture by the Philadelphia Opera Company may appear. 

Where is Barry Goldwater now that we need him?

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. - Article Six of the Constitution of the United States of America

Ted Cruz said this at the Kill the Gays Conference:

"No man who doesn't begin every day on his knees is fit to stand in the Oval Office"

I have only one question. It is the President who needs the kneepads now instead of the intern?

Republicans want to stick their noses so far up my hoohah they can see my uvula because Jesus. If any of these sick fundamentalist freaks becomes POTUS, I am emigrating. I just do not know where to go. 

Kill the Gays! Bengazi! This is policy?

Barry Goldwater said this and I keep quoting him in hope that somebodys somewhere really are conservative:

On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both.

I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?

And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism."
Speech in the US Senate (16 September 1981)

Sign of the Month - November 2015

Million Mask March London

Read more at the Guardian...

There is Something Wrong With You

This post has musical accompaniment and a cool recipe below:

"Theodore Shoebat is outraged that a Chick-fil-A franchise was listed as a sponsor of a "faith-based LGBT film festival" in Tennessee and has responded in a typically reasonable manner by demanding that everyone who works at Chick-fil-A be put to death."  - Read more...

I have only one question.  Does this guy own gun(s)?

For those who support our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, really like the sandwiches and are not interested in being shot by a religious zealot, I have a solution.  Here are the directions for making your own southern-style chicken sandwich. I know you can create your own film festival. Ahh modern life. So many Christians. So few lions.

"...and this no one has a right to but HERSELF."

"...every man has a property in his own person and this no one has a right to but himself."
- John Locke, 2nd Treatise on Government

"This idea that you hear about in the abortion debate that it's a woman's right to choose and she has the right over her own body, no, that's not true! What that means is that your arms and your legs and your head, it all belongs to God."
- Arkansas Pastor Jeff Crawford

And who speaks for God? Why, Jeff Crawford. Amazing how that works...for centuries.

1 Timothy 2:12
But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

 This is his twitter you can let him know what you think: https://twitter.com/JeffCraw4d

Gene214
All these guys look like fucking child molesters.

VirginiaLady
That's only because they are.

PlumDumpling
Correct. If grown women are so easily dispensed with, what or who are they planning to fuck? Children. It is biblical.
Numbers 31:18
But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

Letter to the Roman Catholic Church - Remember the last time this happened?

The following is the full text of a letter addressed to Pope Francis on Oct. 3 by Polish Monsignor Krzysztof Charamsa, a former Vatican official who publicly revealed that he’s gay and in a long-term relationship on the eve of a Synod of Bishops in Rome in which discussion of how the Church relates to gays and lesbians was expected to be a major topic of conversation. Crux translated the letter from Italian.

Holy Father, Dear Francis,

I have always loved the Church of Christ.

Today, as a baptized person, as a priest and a theologian who’s wanted to serve the Church with my entire life, I turn to you, my superior and pastor of this Church.

After a long and painful period of inner discernment and prayer, before God and with full consciousness of the gravity of the moment, I’ve made the decision to publicly refuse the violence of the Church with regard to people who are homosexual, lesbian, bi-sexual, transsexual and intersexual.

Being myself a man with a homosexual orientation, I can’t continue any more to tolerate the homophobic hatred of the Church – the exclusion, marginalization and stigmatization of people who, like me, are continually offended in their dignity and human rights, rights which are denied and struck down by this violent Church and its individual faithful.

Today I stand on the side of courageous homosexual people, who for centuries have been humiliated by the fanatical Church. I no longer accept a salvation that gratuitously excludes a part of humanity. We homosexuals don’t need the compassion that the Church promises us. We’re neither the enemies of the Church or of the family, which is the false and offensive image that Church has succeeding in creating about us. We desperately seek only to be respected in our dignity and our rights. If the Church is so obtuse, so incapable of reflection, so behind the times in terms of the conscience of humanity, as Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini put it so well, if it can’t come up with an adequate welcome for this innocent people, it should at least stop pressuring states and nations that want to respect the human right of homosexual people to a civil marriage.

[Note: Martini, a former Archbishop of Milan frequently mentioned during his lifetime as a papal candidate, died in 2012. In his final interview, Martini said he believed the Catholic Church was “200 years behind the times”.]

Let the Church focus on its own religious marriage and make its heterosexuals happy, who right now don’t seem all that happy behind the prison walls of the cold doctrinal rigidity of the Church! But stop spreading hate against those who want to live their own love in peace on this earth! A Church incapable of dialogue with humanity should be quiet, if it’s not capable of using reason!

I thank you for some of your words and gestures as pontiff with regard to some homosexual people. But your words will have value only and exclusively when all the violent and offensive declarations of the Holy Office about homosexual people are cancelled, as well as the obscene instruction of Benedict XVI that prohibits admission to the priesthood for homosexual people. In the meantime, the clergy, which is full of homosexuals and at the same violently homophobic, should be consistent with this diabolical instruction: All the gay cardinals, the gay bishops and gay priests – including fantastic gay priests, as they are – should have the courage to abandon a Church that’s inhuman, insensitive, unjust and violent.

[Note: The “Holy Office” is a reference to the Vatican’s powerful doctrinal watchdog agency, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The instruction under Pope Benedict XVI to which Charamsa refers appeared in 2005 and was issued by the Congregation for Catholic Education, which is responsible for supervising seminaries.]

I stand with homosexual people to be at their service and to help them wake up this dormant Church, which is Pharisaical and hypocritical, locked into its cold and inhuman doctrine without mercy or charity, a homophobic Church that knows only how to hate the other because he or she isn’t heterosexual. It knows how to persecute and destroy the loves of thousands of gays who are spiritual people, open to the transcendent and sensitive to the divine. They’re treated as excluded lepers by the Church, as if human beings choose their own sexual orientation, heterosexual or homosexual.

I stand with this people that’s oppressed and persecuted by the Church. I stand with that people as a Polish priest representing a particularly hateful Church, which is presently led by pastors without hearts or brains, for whom one can only ask forgiveness and show the proper compassion. Some of them are with you in the synod, with their language of hate lacking any human sensitivity, interested only in how to pressure democratic governments and get them to submit, how to steal more and more from the common good, and how to deny fundamental rights to free people.

I’ve lived a long period of discernment and inner struggle in order to reach the full awareness that I will no longer accept this hatred of exclusion: If the salvation the Church has to offer does not respect the nature of homosexual people, I refuse that salvation. I refuse it in the name of God, who created us and loves us as we are.

I reflected a long time about this decision, in part because I know how violent the Church is toward anyone who leaves it. I’m afraid of how violent the Church could be towards my family, which has no responsibility at all for my decision. I’m especially worried for my mother, a woman of unbreakable faith, who’s not to blame for my decisions. I know the risks she runs in this violent and uncaring Church, to which she’s unreservedly dedicated her entire life. Catholics can be people without hearts, without mercy, without any human feeling, following the logic of collective responsibility for individual decisions and destroying the lives of the innocent. In Poland, Catholics are true maestros of hatred, of stigmatization and exclusion of others, of homophobia. My mother does not deserve any offense from this inhuman Polish church!

“I want mercy from you, not sacrifices!” [Note: This is a quote from the Old Testament, Hosea 6:6]. God does not want human nature to be sacrificed. God respects the mystery of created human nature, yet the Church hates everything about human nature that’s different from its project of power and dominion over people and their sexuality. The church serves only the heterosexual part of humanity, and does not want to reflect calmly and rationally on the nature of homosexual people.

Holy Father, the challenge facing the Synod of Bishops, the major part of which is intellectually dormant and has never experienced the smell of the sheep, is not only the faithful who are divorced and remarried, but also those of us who are sexual minorities who have the right to live our love in dignity, a love which the Church is stubbornly killing. [Pope Francis has said he wants pastors who “carry the smell of their sheep,” meaning who are close to ordinary people.] We have the right to a family life, even if the Church doesn’t want to bless it. We exist and will continue to exist, even if the Church reduces us and keeps reducing us to nothing, as it still does with faithful who are divorced and happily remarried.

In order not to upset your happy journey of heterosexual salvation, which is different from us, many of those of us who are sexual minorities have already withdrawn from your Church. Absolutely do not pity us! Have pity only on yourselves, the hypocrites and Pharisees over whom you’re presiding in the synod. But please, have mercy! Have just a touch of mercy! Have mercy: At least leave us in peace, allowing civil states to make our life more human, while you with your Church have succeeded in making our lives as homosexuals and lesbians nothing but a Hell.

Your Church should only apologize and then keep quiet forever! Or, it should convert during its path in the synod and start to think about that part of the Church and of humanity made up of homosexual believers, whom you denigrate, offend and stigmatize, humiliating and excluding them as if they were lepers.

I pray for you, knowing that you’re a man of God, but I will do everything I can to help homosexual people wake the Catholic Church from its inhuman sleep, which by now has reached bestial limits of intolerability.

Yours,

Monsignor Krzysztof Charamsa

Adjunct Secretary of the International Theological Commission

Official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

Professor of theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome

Rome, 3 October A.D., 2015

Happy Halloween

Vanuatu is in the news again... - Bede's Beat

There was a major earthquake 35km NE of Port-Olry on 20 October. Fortunately no casualties and minimal damage was reported.

Flag of Vanatu

But the news that is really grabbing Australasia and Oceania's attention is that -- after being convicted by the Vanuatu Republic's Supreme Court on corruption charges along with 13 other legislators on October 9 -- Vanuatu's Parliamentary Speaker Marcellino Pipite immediately invoked one of his powers as "acting president", since President Baldwin Lonsdale happened to be abroad on the 9th, to pardon himself and the other 13 MPs. Immediately upon his return, President Lonsdale overturned the pardons. On October 21st, the Supreme Court ruled the pardons unconstitutional.

Coat of Arms of Vanuatu 

We hear of or read about places such as Vanuatu, but what about the people who actually live there?

Vanuatu is home to the "Jeux d'eau" or "Water Games" -- the highlight of which are Water Percussion competitions and demonstrations.
The following clip contains footage from the Jeux d'eau 2007, shot by videographers from the Museum of Music in Paris.

The following clip contains a demonstration of water percussion filmed at Banks Island, Vanuatu.

It is raw footage filmed by AJ Hickling as part of a self-funded hour-and-a-half film exploring Vanuatuan culture through percussion and rhythms, "Evolving Rhythms - Island Adventures"

The film contains some amazing performances, but the filmmaker's attention span is less than I prefer when i drum with someone, as much of the music is presented in tantalizingly (and maddeningly) short clips of local performers, whose performances are often used as samples rather than featured in full and explained and explored... Perhaps AJ should have done more listening and less smoking during his trip...

Here is an example of a Vanuatuan "stomp dance", filmed at a Chiefmaking ceremony in Bethel Village, Vanuatu. The percussion is provided by slit drums.

The final clip is footage of a ceremonial dance, of a type known as a "kastom dance", performed by the Smol Nambas people of Vanuatu. It was recorded on Maskelynes, one of the very small Vanuatuan islands, located off the coast of the larger island of Peskarus. The percussion instrument being played is a slit gong drum. The dance they are performing is called the "raft dance" and tells of how the Smol Nambas came to live on Maskelynes. 

The videographer notes that -- while the ceremonies captured in this video are very sacred and performed at very specific times -- "The men were keen for me to film them and put the footage on the internet for the world to see but I was forbidden to show footage to any villager."

Naked Bunch

I need to get out more. I love my funky city. I had no idea we had an annual Naked Bike Ride in Center City. The 12 mile ride through the city is part of the World Naked Bike Ride movement. 

The World Naked Bike Ride  is an international clothing-optional bike ride in which participants plan, meet and ride together en masse on human-powered transport (the vast majority on bicycles, but some on skateboards and inline skates), to "deliver a vision of a cleaner, safer, body-positive world."

Photo by NYC Pixelista

Remembrance of a Beloved Man

Dear friend,

Would you please consider making the obituary I wrote for Nick included at the bottom of this page available on your blog for his countless friends and followers to read who still may not yet know of his passing. Not a day goes by where I don't encounter at least one of his loyal readers who hasn't. Another, even just yesterday while posting on Raw Story.

Nick and I met at the Philadelphia Inquirer where we both worked during our early 20's while fresh out of college circa 1980. In addition to our other duties we composed literally thousands of obituaries although I never imagined I'd one day be writing his.

Anyone who personally knew Nick would surely agree he deserves and has duly earned all respects including final remembrance.

Gratefully, Mike Adams

adams6abc@windstream.net
  

VANOCUR, Nicholas (1957-2015) age 58 of Nashville TN passed away Sun August 23, 2015.

Beloved son of Sander Vanocur (born 1928, ret) and Edith C. Pick (1923-1975). The eldest of two children, Nick is survived by his dear father Sander Vanocur of Santa Barbara CA and loving brother Christopher Vanocur of Columbus OH (born 1959).

While an official CoD hasn't yet been determined nor released by Davidson County officials (Nashville TN) it's believed Nick passed peacefully while asleep sometime during Sunday August 23rd due to kidney failure or related complications.

Nick was a lifelong writer, editor, journalist and political humorist enjoying a loyal daily readership and following of national proportion. He attended Sidwell Friends School in Wash DC (class of 1975), UCSD and Temple University.

Nick was a professional staff member of The Philadelphia Inquirer (Phila), Temple News (Phila), The Tennessean (Nashville) and Planet Weekly (Tuscaloosa) newspapers.

He also worked for Sam-Eric Theaters and Universal Studios while a student in California. He was chosen for and served two prestigious internships during his earliest years. One as a US Senate page during 1969 and another with IBM during 1970.

Over his career Nick received two “Best of Gannett” Headline Awards and was mentioned in a book by Joe Calloway entitled “Becoming a Category of One" for his outstanding ability to quickly glean the most strategic facts involved with a story and produce a provocative headline of award-winning caliber.

Nick's professional abilities included Journalist, News Production Editor, News Copywriter, News Story Editor, Press Release Agent, News Blogger and Political Humorist.

Interment and memorial services will be announced by the Vanocur family at a later date as soon as they've been arranged and become known.

Abortion Follies

The authoritarians are foaming over the CHOPPED logo being used on a poster for a Planned Parenthood fundraiser. The cleaver gives them wood. I love to watch them foam. 

So while I was having fun slaying fetus freak trolls, I came across this question. 

WelderChick
I wonder what would happen if a huge crowd of pro lifers simply arrived outside the bar, stood silently, all the while holding up pictures of PP's work? Think it would dampen the "fun" mood?

Frankly, I think it would increase the fun mood. Ever seen any fetus freaks in action? Enjoy a quick peek from Jaguar Jones. 

George Carlin: Why is it that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't want to fuck in the first place?

One Brief Comment with UPDATE

The Republicans are going to follow the spectacular success of the Benghazi Hearing (laughing) ...

...with a hearing on Planned Parenthood chaired by Marsha Blackburn the Tatty Wedding Cake. What could go wrong?

And please somebody tell me: what does the House Energy and Commerce Committee have to do with my pudenda? And who I choose to palpate it?

This is going to be as effective as the IRS and Benghazi scandals. It will be a hoot. Pearl clutching at 20 paces. No tampon throwing, Ladies.

Editorial Cartoonist is Clay Bennett. 

"House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) rolled out the leaders of his new select panel to investigate the abortion practices of Planned Parenthood, an eight-member group promoting the female members of the Republican Conference.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a veteran conservative who has been outspoken in criticism of Planned Parenthood, will chair the select subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee." Read more...

UPDATE:

I feel sick.

Legislatures must not practice medicine. The clip below begins with Paul Ryan discussing the candidacy of Todd 'legitimate rape' Akin:

Akin is an outspoken opponent of abortion in all cases, including health reasons or in cases of rape or incest and opposes embryonic stem cell research. In a 2008 speech on the House floor, Akin called abortion providers "terrorists" and alleged that it was "common practice" for abortion providers to perform "abortions" on women who were not actually pregnant. - wikipedia

This man Ryan may be two lives away from being President of the United States of America. And he will kill women and hurt children if he can.

In 31 states in the USA, a rapist gets visitation privileges once his sentence is served. That is how caring and serious our country is about sexual crimes. Women have had the vote in America for 95 years, the lifetime of one woman. One of the primary issues taken up by political women from the beginning is sexual crime. Dismissing women's concerns is the primary reason I would never vote for Joe Biden. I am a bipartisan scourge on this issue. The Dalai Lama has said "The world will be saved by Western Women." Let us continue our work.

The rape conviction rate in the USA is 2%. Women do not report rape. I did not report mine. Why? I knew that this was the kind of man who would be seeing to it I received "justice."

https://rainn.org/statistics

Ode to Joy by Hong Kong Festival Orchestra - Attitude Adjustment

Beethoven's Ode to Joy always makes me cry. Beauty and greatness can do that to this person everytime. I just stand there like a fool sobbing with joy. I need adjustment like this often. 

Caricatures of Ludwig van Beethoven (1815).

These sketches show Beethoven walking the streets of Vienna in deep thought and with not a great deal of attention to his appearance. The signatures of Beethoven and of the artist - Johann Peter Theodor Lyser (1803-70) - are included on this artwork. See more portraits of Beethoven at Music Ease.

Over the years, Beethoven's Ode to Joy has remained a protest anthem and a celebration of music. From demonstrators in Chile singing during demonstration against the Pinochet dictatorship, Chinese student at Tienanmen Square broadcast, The Concert Conducted by Leonard Bernstein After the Fall of the Berlin Wall and Daiku concerts in Japan every December and one after the 2011 tsunami. - Wikipedia

See one of the other three flashmob performances of Ode to Joy at Sabodell, Spain here, Perhaps the Music People will come out of the Cellar Conservatory and tell us more about this music than I know. I do know the poem is meant to be the music for Friedrich Schiller's poem Ode to Joy.  

Ari Up the Essence of Punk - Bede's Beat

Five years ago, on October 20, 2010, Ariane Daniela Forster -- better known as "Ari Up" -- died of cancer in Los Angeles. She was only 48 years old.

Ari was the very essence of punk. After divorcing her German father, Ari's mother, Nora Forster, moved with Ariane to London and married John Lydon -- who was then in his "Johnny Rotten" incarnation -- making him Ari's step-father. Their household became a focus of intense musical and artistic activities of all sorts during the intensively creative period that followed The Ramones' first tour of the UK in 1976. That tour produced what is now referred to as "first generation punk", as well as "second generation punk", a term which covers bands such as The Buzzcocks, The Clash, The Ruts and The Slits, who were inspired by bands such as The Damned (the first band to record a "punk" single, "New Rose") and The Sex Pistols, which formed in reaction to The Ramones' 1976 tour, to DIY ("Spiral Scratch", the first Buzzcocks EP, was self-produced and self-distributed, which sparked an explosion in DIY labels and projects).

Despite her youth, Ari was an enthusiastic participant in all of this activity, co-founding the seminal punk band "The Slits" at the age of 14, after being taught to play the guitar by Joe Strummer and immediately beginning to compose music to accompany her poetry. Although The Slits are known as the first all-female punk band -- an all-female five-piece founded when Ari met former members of Flowers of Romance and The Castrators at her mum's place -- over the course of their career as a band, their line-up did include some men, including Budgie, who later became famous as the drummer for Siouxsie & The Banshees, and his and his wife Siouxsie's side-project, The Creatures.

As you can hear in "Typical Girls", Ari brought a dub influence to The Slits -- even persuading her band mates to have legendary reggae producer and bassist Denis Bovell produce their first album, "Cut", 1n 1979 (with a teenaged Neneh Cherry on loan from Rip Rig + Panic contributing backing vocals) -- which made them the perfect touring companions for The Clash in the late 1970s. Ari's flamboyance as a performer is well captured in Wolfgang Buld's 1980 documentary "Women In Rock", only a very short clip of which is available online.

Ari's irresistible energy -- and that of the early punk scene -- is featured in a 5-minute segment from another documentary, "Raw Energy", shot in 1978 and released in 1979 -- which alternates between live performances and interviews.

The Slits also made an unforgettable appearance in the 1978 "The Punk Rock Movie", trashing a bloke's car. The live portion of the footage of The Slits in performance included in the movie was shot in 1977 by Don Letts, most famous as a movie-maker and photographer who documented the birth and death of the original punk movement, who was also a member of Mick Jones' post-Clash project Big Audio Dynamite.

One of my favorite post-Slits side-projects of Ari's were her recordings and appearances with Adrian Sherwood's New Age Steppers -- who have been described as a "post-punk reggae supergroup" -- and which was/is comprised of many of the British-born "usual suspects" from the On-U stable of artists and produced by Adrian Sherwood. Here she is performing a reggae standard "My Guiding Star" with The New Age steppers.

Ari's best-selling hit as a solo artist was her infectious "Mi Done" from her 2005 album "Dread More Dan Dead."

Here is a more mellow dubwise version of "Me Done" with the lyrics delivered at a slower pace, recorded live by Ari Up & her band True Warriors live on the radio station that has done more to broaden my musical horizons than anything else in my life, WFMU, the world's oldest free-form radio station.

The Slits reformed in 2006, although Ari was only one of 2 original members to participate in the reassembly. For their initial EP, they recruited Paul Cook, who drummed for The Sex Pistols, and Marco Pirroni, who is best known for being Adam & The Ants lead guitarist and co-writer of most of Adam Ant's 1980s-era hits. As Narnack Records documented at her last label's website, the last project she worked on -- a video for The Slits' song "Lazy Slam" -- was released posthumously at Ari's request.

Sign of the Month - October 2015

A Planned Parenthood #PinkOut. Notice the men in the crowd who came to help out. Real men, gay and straight, heart women.  

Women vote. Do the Republicans know that Women have the vote? 

Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House? The "rape is just a method of conception" guy? Oh hell no. 

Rock'n'fucking'roll's Greatest Rhythm Guitarist - Bede's Beat

John William Cummings, better known as "Johnny Ramone," was born on October 8, 1948. The original members of The Ramones each took the surname Ramone to display their solidarity, unity and equality. The name was suggested by Dee Dee, who had heard that it was the surname that Paul McCartney used when he checked into hotels.

In a Guitar Player interview, collected in The Guitar Player Book, Johnny stated: "I guess that before me, people played downstrokes for brief periods in a song, rather than the whole song through. It was just a timing mechanism for me."

On the topic of The Ramones' songbook, Johnny often said that every Ramones song has everything a "regular" pop song has, only it's played really fast without any solos, so they simply end up being short.

On September 15, 2004, Johnny died of prostate cancer. He is buried at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Joey Ramone, who developed lymphoma, predeceased Johnny in 2001, Dee Dee Ramone died of a heroin OD in 2002. DeeDee's gravestone isn't far from Johnny's. The last of the original Ramones, Tommy, died, also of cancer, in 2014.

The best way to appreciate Jonny's artistry is to listen to the Ramones live. The "solos" that appear on Ramones records were actually overdubbed by either Ed Stasium, Walter Lure or Tommy Ramone. This is the oldest known footage of The Ramones performing at CBGBs on September 15, 1974:

Here is what was once extremely rare footage of The Ramones practicing a set, filmed at "the Fifth Ramone", Autoro Vega's NYC studio on February 3rd, 1975.

The most famous of The Ramones' live recordings is "It's Alive!" -- a full concert recorded on New Year's Eve 1977 at the Rainbow Theatre in London. The Ramones recorded four full concerts during their 1977 tour of the UK. The band's priority was to provide their fans with an accurate portrayal of their concerts, at which they played every song they'd recorded very very fast. To achieve this, they wanted to use a single, complete concert. Sire Records wanted to hedge its bets and cull the best performances from each concert and edit them together to form a "complete show". After 10 rows of seats were thrown at the stage after The Ramones left the stage for the last time at their New Year's Eve performance, and the London and UK musical press proclaimed it one of the best performances ever held at The Rainbow, Sire decided to use the entire New Year's Eve concert for a double-LP release. A little less than half-an-hour's worth of the New Years' Eve performance which was released on LP was also filmed;

October 8 is also the birthday of Tucker, who has done so very very much to keep we wanderers in the wilderness intact and in contact -- you may have noticed a few of us squatting all over Plum Street. Happy Birthday, Tucker!

BEDE ! WHERE ARE YOU ?

I cannot find the extra columns you made for me. I am still searching. We need a new Bede's Beat. And I worry about your raggedy ass. I worry a lot because I heart you.

"Yeah now, if I have to swim a river, you know I will.
And if I have to climb a mountain, you know I will.
And if he's hiding up on a blueberry hill,
You know I'm gonna find that child you know I will.'

Tune in! Turn on! Please do not Drop Out! Hat tip to Timothy Leary.