Saturday Night

Steph is gone to Barrie so I'm DJ'ing for myself tonight. Some drinking may be involved. Post'em if you got'em.


Couldn't find the 7 minute version - but I did find the original video


I know all the lyrics to this because it was on one of the first compliation tapes I owned (Big Hits 84?). I can now place it in the early 80s ska-boom in Britian but as a kid I only knew it was catchy and the lyrics meant something. It wasn't about love or jobs or money or other meaningless things to a child, it was about a home and a family:

Our house, was our castle and our keep
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, that was where we used to sleep
Our house, in the middle of our street,
Our house

These are lyrics a kid can empathize with .

ALSO from the same tape:

Ladytron: Destroy anything that may desert you - so it cannot hurt you
Len Cohen: I feel so close to everything I lost - because I'll never have to lose it again



Trip-hop. Drum&Bass meets Acoustic. Whatever the term, millennium-era music did this genre so well.


Mosquitoes have been bad for the last week, the long hot autumn has breed another wave. The forest is thick with insects, a walk through leaves me covered in lime green, black-brown and powder-blue aphids.

I cannot find the 8 minute version of 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' that mixes a Harry Belafonte/Gospel version with a Willie Nelson/Blues version - so here is each artist's versions

Belafonte has been a longtime critic of U.S. foreign policy. He began making controversial political statements on this subject in the early 1980s. He has at various times made statements opposing the U.S. embargo on Cuba; praising Soviet peace initiatives; attacking the U.S. invasion of Grenada; praising the Abraham Lincoln Brigade; honoring Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and praising Fidel Castro.[42] Belafonte is additionally known for his visit to Cuba which helped ensure hip-hop's place in Cuban society.

During a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day speech at Duke University in 2006, Belafonte compared the American government to the hijackers of the September 11 attacks, saying: "What is the difference between that terrorist and other terrorists?"  In response to criticism about his remarks Belafonte asked, "What do you call Bush when the war he put us in to date has killed almost as many Americans as died on 9/11 and the number of Americans wounded in war is almost triple? [...] By most definitions Bush can be considered a terrorist." When he was asked about his expectation of criticism for his remarks on the war in Iraq, Belafonte responded: "Bring it on. Dissent is central to any democracy."

Nelson is a co-chair of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) advisory board. Nelson has been arrested several times for marijuana possession.

While swimming in Hawaii in 1981, Nelson's lung collapsed. He was taken to the Maui Memorial Hospital and his scheduled concerts were canceled. Nelson temporarily stopped smoking cigarettes each time his lungs became congested, and resumed when the congestion ended. He was then smoking between two and three packs per day. After suffering from pneumonia several times, he decided to quit either marijuana or tobacco. He chose to quit tobacco. [Today he is 84...]

Nelson is an advocate for better treatment for horses and has been campaigning for the passage of the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act (H.R. 503/S. 311) alongside the Animal Welfare Institute.

In 2001, following the September 11 attacks, he participated in the benefit telethon America: A Tribute to Heroes, leading the rest of the celebrities singing the song "America the Beautiful". In 2010, during an interview with Larry King, Nelson expressed his doubts with regards to the attacks and the official story. Nelson explained that he could not believe that the buildings could collapse due to the planes, attributing instead the result to an implosion.

Just to be clear: No one can fuck with Nelson & Belafonte. Everyone else can just tip their hats and pay their respects. Soulful music, real politics, mass popularity - these two men are the real thing. They are the part of the reason I will never condemn all Americans.

Austin unveiled a life-size statue to honor him, placed at the entrance of Austin City Limits' new studio.  The statue was unveiled on April 20, 2012.[204] The date selected by the city of Austin unintentionally coincided with the number 4/20, associated with cannabis culture. In spite of the coincidence and Nelson's advocacy for the legalization of marijuana, the ceremony was scheduled also for 4:20 pm. During the ceremony, Nelson performed the song "Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die"

Belafonte felt the Bush administration suffered from "arrogance wedded to ignorance" and its policies around the world were "morally bankrupt".

In January 2006, in a speech to the annual meeting of the Arts Presenters Members Conference, Belafonte referred to "the new Gestapo of Homeland Security" saying, "You can be arrested and have no right to counsel!"

During the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day speech at Duke University in January 2006, Belafonte said that if he could choose his epitaph it would be, "Harry Belafonte, Patriot."

Birth name Willie Hugh Nelson
Born April 29, 1933 (age 84)
Abbott, Texas, U.S.

Born Harold George Bellanfanti, Jr.
March 1, 1927 (age 90)
Harlem, New York, U.S.

Listening to old mix tapes dug out of a storage box. The titles of them are from an old Mac 'random word generator':

Jedi Kick-Fight
The Final Hemophiliac
Fetish-Droid for Hire
Candy Reagan Woods
Telepathic Journey of the Walrus
The Brooding Finger
90 Found Dead

I'm enjoying hearing the human touch in them. The fades done by hand on that old Radio Shack mixing board, the skipping Miles Davis record that gets nudged, the great combo of William Burroughs reading of the 'Wild Fruits' mixed with some Hungry Ghosts' dark cowboy music, the great songs I can no longer name....

The 'Preservation Jazz Hall' tape from my grandfather; the tapes labelled 'Neil - Techno', Neil - Rap?', 'Gerald - Electroll'; Steph's teenage tapes of Goth music dubbed onto old Amway tapes, tapes full of Great Eastern and Dead Dog Cafe...

We can carry 500 albums in a thumb drive, but there is something to the bulkiness of old technology. They take effort to drag around and lift, tapes need to be re-spooled by pencil, the noisy clack of the tape machine as it lurches in and out of motion that scares the cat, scrawled titles written in black ink and decorated with doodles.

Old mix-tape nostalgia is nothing new but this is my first solid day of it and I'm going to enjoy it as much as I can.

We just finished having guests for the past 3 weeks and I look forward to going through this post on my days off!