Friday, October 08, 2021

FRIDAY MUSIC: Tuba Skinny 2021, by JD

It is three years since we featured the New Orleans street performers Tuba Skinny https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2018/08/friday-music-tuba-skinny-by-jd.html 

- and I see from the link (now dead) at the end of that post it was 2014 when I first discovered them. I think it is time for a well deserved revisit. All of the videos here were recorded this year and, as usual, people are dancing to their music!

Outdoor Music - Tuba Skinny

Back Roads B-roll, Festival of Fools, Tuba Skinny 2021

Tuba Skinny at Mace Chasm Farm - last tune before encore

Tuba Skinny - "I Got A Woman"

“Michigander Blues” by Jabbo Smith - Tuba Skinny at Jammin’ Java in Vienna VA. Aug 18, 2021

Tuba Skinny - BRMC, Galax, Va, Aug 21,2021

Tuba Skinny - "Grandpa's Spells"

Tuba Skinny - Kicking The Rocks (a small song)

Thursday, October 07, 2021

THURSDAY BACKTRACK: Music and news from 60 years ago - week ending 07 October 1961

At #3 this week is Helen Shapiro's 'Walking Back To Happiness':



Some memorable events (via Wikipedia):

2 October: 'French President Charles de Gaulle delivers a televised address in France and French Algeria, outlining his plans to allow Algerian residents to determine their own future, and pledges to work toward the creation of a "strictly Algerian" security force. He also states that, if necessary, he will again invoke the national emergency powers that he has allowed to expire two days earlier.'

https://fresques.ina.fr/de-gaulle/fiche-media/Gaulle00073/allocution-du-2-octobre-1961.html

3 October: 'The Dick Van Dyke Show, starring Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Rose Marie and Morey Amsterdam, was shown for the first time, making its debut at 8:00 pm EST on CBS. Although the show would go on to become very popular, the initial telecast, competing against Bachelor Father (ABC) and Laramie (NBC) attracted so few viewers that it was not even among the Top 70 most popular programs that week.' 
The Hollywood Reporter's reviewer called it right, though: 'Probably the most encouraging start of any new comedy series in the past 12 months, this debut had most all the necessary ingredients that add up to a winner.' https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/dick-van-dyke-show-first-816638/
    This episode can be seen here in colour: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?extid=SEO----&v=675922793030189

5 October: 'Maurice Papon, the Paris Chief of Police, issued a religion-specific curfew against all "Muslim Algerian workers" within the jurisdiction of his prefecture, even though they were considered citizens of France. The curfew order decreed that the Muslims were "advised most urgently" to stay indoors between 8:30 pm and 5:30 am. A protest by 30,000 of the affected persons twelve days later led to the Paris massacre of 1961.'

6 October: As the Berlin Wall continues to be erected, 'The "Schießbefehl" (literally, "order to shoot") was formally issued by General Heinz Hoffmann, the Minister of National Defense for East Germany, spelling out the rules for shooting anyone who attempted to escape from the German Democratic Republic. After a shouted warning and the firing of a warning shot, guards were ordered to fire their weapons at persons clearly planning "to violate the state frontier."'

UK chart hits, week ending 07 October 1961 (tracks in italics have been played in earlier posts)

Htp: Clint's labour-of love compilation https://www.sixtiescity.net/charts/61chart.htm

1

Michael Row The Boat

The Highwaymen

HMV

2

Wild In The Country / I Feel So Bad

Elvis Presley

RCA

3

Walkin' Back To Happiness

Helen Shapiro

Columbia

4

Kon*Tiki

The Shadows

Columbia

5

Johnny Remember Me

John Leyton

Top Rank

6

Jealousy

Billy Fury

Decca

7

You'll Answer To Me

Cleo Laine

Fontana

8

Wild Wind

John Leyton

Top Rank

9

Sucu Sucu

Laurie Johnson

Pye

10

You Don't Know

Helen Shapiro

Columbia

11

Together

Connie Francis

MGM

12

Get Lost

Eden Kane

Decca

13

Hats Off To Larry

Del Shannon

London

14

Reach For The Stars / Climb Every Mountain

Shirley Bassey

Columbia

15

Granada

Frank Sinatra

Reprise

16

Muskrat

The Everly Brothers

Warner Brothers

17

Michael Row The Boat / Lumbered

Lonnie Donegan

Pye

18

Bless You

Tony Orlando

Fontana

19

Hard Hearted Hannah / Chilli Bom*Bom

The Temperance Seven

Parlophone

20

Sea Of Heartbreak

Don Gibson

RCA


Sunday, October 03, 2021

Conspiracy theory, conspiracy fact

You may have missed it, but Google’s slogan ‘Don’t Be Evil’ was airbrushed out over three years ago https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393 . I can’t say whether this more lenient attitude to Old Scratch has anything to do with its corporate parent Alphabet being partly owned by investment house Blackrock https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/011516/top-5-google-shareholders-goog.asp , which has ambitions in China https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/9/8/blackrock-raises-1bn-for-its-maiden-for-the-chinese-market , as does another Alphabet shareholder, Vanguard https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/18/vanguard-gave-up-on-mutual-funds-in-china-but-working-with-ant.html . In any case, and especially now that public opinion is being nudged against China, we should remember that the Middle Kingdom is hardly the head shed of lies and wickedness; our own governments manage very well without their help.

What concerns me is the growing tendency of mainstream Western news media - including much of the social media and internet platforms - towards distortion and suppression, something for which we used to laugh at Russia’s ‘Pravda’ (Truth) and ‘Izvestiya’ (News). As with the supposedly uniquely oppressive Communist regimes, the liberal-democracy corporate approach to ‘don’t be evil’ is to change that to ‘be evil, but don’t let the public find out; and if they do, woe betide the whistleblower.’ We saw that with Daniel Ellsberg and ‘The Pentagon Papers;’ we saw it with Julian Assange’s Wikileaks and the Apache helicopter ‘Collateral Murder’ in Iraq https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/ .

In Assange’s case, Yahoo! News shows how far the authorities are prepared to go https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london-shoot-out-inside-the-ci-as-secret-war-plans-against-wiki-leaks-090057786.html . An especially outrageous detail of the CIA’s 2017 plans to intercept the transfer of the Australian journalist from the Ecuadorian Embassy to Russia and kill him on British soil, is the UK government’s willingness to become directly involved:

‘Those included potential gun battles with Kremlin operatives on the streets of London, crashing a car into a Russian diplomatic vehicle transporting Assange and then grabbing him, and shooting out the tires of a Russian plane carrying Assange before it could take off for Moscow. (U.S. officials asked their British counterparts to do the shooting if gunfire was required, and the British agreed, according to a former senior administration official.)’

I wonder how such an incident would have been covered in the British news.

So far, so bad; but it’s the news treatment after Yahoo!’s that deepens one’s concern. For a start, the online BBC News seems to have remained silent – except for their Somali-language edition, as Media Lens tweeted:  https://twitter.com/medialens/status/1443626585916121089

I happened upon this tale via a Facebook group and followed through to the BBC – you’ll see that the search address line includes a tell-tale, showing how you got to that page https://www.bbc.com/somali/war-58709505?fbclid=IwAR1T3Brt_mcHO8GLuMgjHn65F7Ywou_my1dpE55ccMBRrBvL3l8nDooTrg0 . This gave me access to the Somali-language version, so as a Google Chrome user I clicked Google’s ‘Translate this page’ icon at top right, and it got even weirder:

https://www-bbc-com.translate.goog/somali/war-58709505?fbclid=IwAR1T3Brt_mcHO8GLuMgjHn65F7Ywou_my1dpE55ccMBRrBvL3l8nDooTrg0

Oh, yeah? When I highlighted and copied the text and pasted it into the Google Translate app it managed just fine. In fact, if you try the link yourself now it will translate to English – but it didn’t then. So I surmise (who’s going to tell me the pravda?)  that Google temporarily suppressed the translation but gave up as the internet rumour spread.

Was it because the link came from Facebook?

Maybe. After all, Facebook has now announced it will ‘begin removing content questioning any approved medical vaccine, not just those for Covid-19’ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-29/youtube-will-remove-videos-with-misinformation-about-any-vaccine , so the 1984 memory hole has widened into a mineshaft. The omniscient webmasters at Facebook and Google know the truth exactly and infallibly, whether on medicine or politics; trust them!

This time, some of the izvestiya leaked; but soon, as their algorithms get even smarter, we may not get to hear the rumours.

Saturday, October 02, 2021

WEEKENDER: The Energy Crisis, by Wiggia

The current energy crisis has even a long time coming, yet was inevitable: the perfect storm formed by demand in Europe, stupid short-sighted net zero targets and the lack of wind over a sustained period; the latter had to happen and the timing was spot on.

How Boris at a time like this can stand up in the UN and spout his eco nonsense is one of the most mendacious acts of fannying while Rome burns we have seen from a politician. If nothing else one would have thought he would have had a last minute re-write so as to not make himself look stupid, but no, he ploughed on as though all was well.

This red flag is just a warning. It could be we have power cuts this winter if a similar scenario develops even if it doesn’t it seems inevitable that it will, having dismantled nearly all the back up needed to avert disaster.

With an ever increasing population you do not diminish your energy supplies or the means to create energy, it should all be going in the opposite direction. As good an explanation of the problems in Europe as any is here….


Why are we where we are? No sane man or organisation could not have foreseen the problems down the road with the green policies being put in place; this was evident many years ago, not just under this government but previous ones as well; in other spheres it could be called a dereliction of duty.

We led the world in nuclear energy but the government started to take notice of protest groups, in those days CND, and the nuclear program was never fulfilled, in fact we frittered away our lead in that area, sold abroad our knowledge and now have to rely on foreign companies to build any reactors we need; the stupidity of that alone should tell us the state of our energy industry.

Yet instead of looking back and seeing the folly, we indulge a green movement that represents very few of the population and further diminish our ability to produce energy by refusing to use coal gas and less nuclear. It has nothing to do with the phasing out of the first two which should only be done if renewables prove to be doing the job, but they are not, they can’t, they fall at the first hurdle, they are unreliable.

The whole of Europe has been going down this path. Germany closed its nuclear plants because of green party activists, and paid the penalty with high energy prices that nearly crippled industry and cost the general public 60% more in energy costs than us. They now are having to use coal fired plants, so that went well, and do we see the folly and say 'hold on a minute'? Oh no, we are going one better because Boris knows about these things and we will lead the world in eco-loonery, green jobs will be bountiful and energy prices will be cheaper, yes he has said all that and more; none is borne out by the facts.

Job creation is minimal as virtually all solar panels are produced abroad, China being the biggest supplier. All of the top ten wind turbine producers are foreign:


- and our two nuclear reactors are being built (maybe) by a foreign companies, French and Chinese, so what is he talking about?

Denmark is put up as the poster child of renewable energy production. Much is made of its ability to provide energy solely from wind power, only it isn’t:


It is very reliant on importing energy from surrounding countries, a route we are increasingly having to take. That is not a route that gives energy security especially at moments like this when gas is being fought over across Europe, hence the rapidly rising prices for home owners; and it doesn’t factor in any of the price rises that will come from switching all to electric and the hideously expensive heat pumps being foisted on homes totally unsuited to them.

Also, California should be a lesson to all who want to tread this path, and they have the sun that should make solar power worthwhile, but of course the sun goes down and as when there is no wind you are in the proverbial; without any storage that is meaningful light years away, black outs become normality and will increase. Has Boris or any of his advisors read and taken any of this on board ? It appears not.


We are suffering a two-pronged attack on our prosperity: Climate Change and the resultant changes that governments insist with the backing of big business are necessary to combat CC. One quite simply is an excuse to implement the other, whatever the input of man on any climate change - and there is little factual evidence any changes are happening despite the incessant claims, and as happened with Covid the blatant scare-mongering - why are governments making decisions on energy production that simply fail to meet any criteria on reliability and cost? This excerpt from a German expert gives some insight:


An interesting development re those who advocate change in the way we live, such as BLM and ER and off shoots, is the discovery that the basis for these movements hides a much broader vision, that of political change. The Marxist tendencies have leaked out in their literature; now you can add the ‘Doomgoblin’ to that list. Her latest speech, which as usual is all blame and no solution, goes further: it implies, as the others have, political change; climate change is just a vehicle for the real intent.


And this from Boris Johnson -

Young people around the world are already paying the price for the reckless actions of their elders," said Mr Johnson.

"Hundreds of millions of you are facing rising seas, failing crops, burning forests, and evermore ferocious storms, daily challenges that lead to lost opportunity. And your future is literally being stolen before your eyes."

He sounds as though he is trying to outdo the Doomgoblin. Seriously, is he mad? He is indeed in thrall to the Swedish sage; he has even repeated what she said about Britain being the cause of climate change. Luckily more sensible, intelligent people have called her out. Why is she followed with such fervent admiration?


Hundreds of millions? Rising sea levels - where? The Maldives were supposed to have disappeared by now but nothing has changed. As for 'the forest fires are the worst in history', a claim often made, not really true: swings and roundabouts re numbers of fires and areas destroyed, but the biggest fires are all in the past:


Even the much vaunted hurricanes in the USA can be seen historically to be cyclical.


You can always cherry pick statistics to say what you want either way, and use start and finish dates to suit your message. What has to be grasped is all of this is being used to push an agenda that assumes man has caused any differences. With Boris now blaming his own country for starting the industrial revolution we are not arguing on a level playing field; everything coming from government is skewed towards 'Net Zero' whatever the costs, and we will all pay if this lunacy continues. Our hope is that the facts on what is simply not achievable for practical reasons will filter through and as with dates already being pushed back some sense will be seen before untold irreparable damage is done.

Apart from the zeal of CC activists and believers, vested interest parties need to be exposed. The enormous subsidies being granted in this area would sway any company to join the troughing currently going on.

I am not sure how the ‘back in the ground’ slogan being used by energy companies now tied into the renewable scam pans out. It is surely again, not beyond their reason to realise that all the by products of oil that the west takes for granted in everyday life, the much maligned plastic and other polymers, would have to be sacrificed and a substitute found. Good luck with that: replacing plastic straws is just one small thing. The same goes for the thinking behind eliminating meat products: again if the goal is reached, which I doubt, all dairy products, milk, cheese etc. will either disappear as well or the limited amount produced will become very expensive, another point never found in the CC manifesto.

Why does this matter? Because most of the world leaders and governments, certainly the western ones, are in thrall and fear to CC activists and groups and are prepared to throw the population to the dogs to achieve a net zero at any cost - not a cost to them of course, just the little people who pay for it all.

But why this lack of of rational thinking, why is no one in any position of power standing up to the baseless measures being assembled, why the mantra of ‘build back better’ being uttered by all the world leaders at the same time? Is it they have no thoughts of their own in their heads, or is there actually some truth in the conspiracy theories that global business have the power to influence way beyond their normal reach?

If you discount that last point, why is all this happening? None of it makes sense. Is the energy crisis which is largely a gas demand shortage just an excuse to jack up energy prices to slow the use of auto mobiles and force the changes in travel and home heating they want to introduce? This fits in nicely with the CC objectives, but my guess is as good as yours.

What we are seeing happening is a series of costs rising at the same time. The post virus age is a very good base on which to raise taxes to pay for the mismanagement of so much; billions are being thrown at the NHS which will not, for the general public, make a jot of difference to the non service most are getting. Social care is now being paid for as I outlined before, on three fronts: council taxes are being raised by the maximum next year, National Insurance is being raised, and energy costs are going up now and next spring by rates not seen before.

With many private sector workers not having had pay rises in the last 10 years anywhere near keeping pace with inflation which itself is now rising higher than for years, the future is bleak. Anyone who has been near a supermarket has seen the price rises coming through; energy costs add to this and further rises in basics can be expected.

How all this squares with the 'triple lock' inflation protection being discarded for the worst paid state pensioners in Europe is not something to contemplate with any relish.

The energy crisis is very real for the medium term. Our total lack of forward planning for infrastructure hits everything. The area in the firing line now is energy production: you don’t build nuclear plants overnight, especially here; we may be temporarily able to ‘buy’ our way out in the short term but the cost will only add to the misery of those who work on low incomes and pensioners who rely on a state pension.

Friday, October 01, 2021

FRIDAY MUSIC: The Byrds, by JD

Enough has been written about the popular music 'revolution' of the 1960s, most of it being the somewhat lurid imaginings of journalists who didn't quite understand what was happening. Suffice to say that the USA's dominance in the field was overturned by an 'invasion' of British beat groups who had taken American music, repackaged it and then took it back to the land of its birth.

It took a couple of years for the Americans to respond and that came in 1965 from The Byrds, formed by two former folk singers Jim McGuinn and Gene Clark. (Jim McGuinn subseqeuntly changed his name to Roger for reasons which remain obscure.) Their first hit was a 'rock' version of Bob Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man which helped to inspire Dylan himself to change direction into this new 'folk rock' style.

"McGuinn developed two innovative and very influential styles of electric guitar playing. The first was "jingle-jangle" – generating ringing arpeggios based on banjo finger picking styles he learned while at the Old Town School of Folk – which was influential in the folk rock genre. The second style was a merging of saxophonist John Coltrane's free-jazz atonalities, which hinted at the droning of the sitar – a style of playing, first heard on the Byrds' 1966 single "Eight Miles High", which was influential in psychedelic rock."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Byrds

The third video here features new band member Clarence White's famous 'string bender' guitar. Invented by White and drummer Gene Parsons this modified Fender is so famous it gets its own special mention on White's Wiki page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_White#The_StringBender










Thursday, September 30, 2021

THURSDAY BACKTRACK: Music and news from 60 years ago - week ending 30 September 1961

  At #6 this week is Billy Fury's 'Jealousy':


Some memorable events (via Wikipedia):

25 September: "Wisconsin became the first state in the United States to require the installation of seat belts as standard equipment in motor vehicles, as Governor Gaylord Nelson signed into law a bill directing that all 1962 and later model cars and trucks were required to include the safety belts before they could be sold. In the first six months that the law was in effect, all but one belt wearer had survived a car accident in the state." 
    See also: https://www.wpr.org/surprisingly-controversial-history-seat-belts and the invention of the modern three-point seat belt by Volvo's Nils Bohlin: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/three-point-seatbelt-inventor-nils-bohlin-born

26 SeptemberThe U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) came into being, per the Arms Control and Disarmament Act, Pub.L. 87–297, 75 Stat. 631. Its mission was to strengthen United States national security by "formulating, advocating, negotiating, implementing and verifying effective arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament policies, strategies, and agreements."
    As of April 1, 1999, ACDA was abolished and its functions merged into the Department of State.


27 September: The first episode of cartoon series Top Cat airs on USA's ABC network TV. See it here:

29 September: "Minutes after Fidel Castro announced that he was going to "clean up" Havana, the last casinos in Cuba were closed. At the time of the revolution, there had been 25 gambling casinos. Five were left, all in government operated hotels, at the time of the order."
UK chart hits, week ending 30 September 1961 (tracks in italics have been played in earlier posts)

Htp: Clint's labour-of love compilation https://www.sixtiescity.net/charts/61chart.htm

1

Kon-Tiki

The Shadows

Columbia

2

Johnny Remember Me

John Leyton

Top Rank

3

Wild In The Country / I Feel So Bad

Elvis Presley

RCA

4

Michael Row The Boat

The Highwaymen

HMV

5

You Don't Know

Helen Shapiro

Columbia

6

Jealousy

Billy Fury

Decca

7

Get Lost

Eden Kane

Decca

8

Reach For The Stars / Climb Every Mountain

Shirley Bassey

Columbia

9

Hats Off To Larry

Del Shannon

London

10

Together

Connie Francis

MGM

11

You'll Answer To Me

Cleo Laine

Fontana

12

Michael Row The Boat / Lumbered

Lonnie Donegan

Pye

13

Walkin' Back To Happiness

Helen Shapiro

Columbia

14

Cupid

Sam Cooke

RCA

15

Sea Of Heartbreak

Don Gibson

RCA

16

Granada

Frank Sinatra

Reprise

17

Halfway To Paradise

Billy Fury

Decca

18

Ain't Gonna Wash For A Week

The Brook Brothers

Pye

19

That's My Home

Acker Bilk

Columbia

20

I'm Gonna Knock On Your Door

Eddie Hodges

London


Tuesday, September 28, 2021

What Parliament Is For, And the Delusions of Frau Merkel and Remainers

A man called James Hawes has just brought out a book called ‘The Shortest History of England’ (288 pages.) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shortest-History-England-James-Hawes/dp/1910400998/. If you see who praises it, you may guess its political tendency. https://jameshawes.org.uk/

On the back of it he has written an article for Unherd https://unherd.com/2021/09/angela-merkel-wins-again/?1632732450484 that is a fine piece of Remainer coat-trailing, as the furious comments section shows.

In passing, the author recounts an anecdote that made my diesel engine cough into life:

I have twice been told by a German insider… that at the 2015 G7 meeting at Schloss Elmau, Merkel, Cameron’s best friend in Europe, personally begged him not to hold his utterly needless referendum and “throw away 800 years of parliamentary rule.”

I will do Frau Merkel the courtesy of not calling her a cynical, manipulative liar; I shall believe that she was giving her sincere opinion. If so, she is – I flail about for a suitable adverb – astoundingly ignorant and blinkered. So for her edification and your convenience, I shall now offer a much, much shorter history of England.

Frau Merkel seems to think that Parliament is merely a conduit of rule, as it is in the EU, where those delegates who do not simply sign in and then take their wheelie luggage straight back on the train remain to air their views powerlessly.

She does not understand that we are ruled not by Parliament but by a monarch, albeit one whose awesome powers have devolved onto the Privy Council and especially the British Prime Minister and Cabinet, all of whom are automatically members. It is now 241 years since John Dunning MP moved his resolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dunning,_1st_Baron_Ashburton that "the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished"; this is long overdue for resubmission, perhaps with the substitution of ‘Prime Minister’ for ‘Crown’; indeed it should have been remooted when Mr Blair brought his wrecking ball to the Constitution, but surely now we have seen the whim of iron wielded by the Government during the Covid crisis we feel its relevance more than for a very long time.

Merkel remembered that Parliament’s roots go back eight centuries, but seems to have forgotten the significance of 1215. Runnymede saw the first of several versions of Magna Carta and was about the restraint of autocratic power, not its passive transmission as the deluded German Empress imagines. The same Charter also established Parliament to set controls on the King, especially in money matters. The key role of our representatives is to scrutinise, moderate and sometimes outright oppose the ruler who is tempted to say ‘The very firstlings of my heart shall be / The firstlings of my hand.’

Speaking of Scottish kings, we had the strife all over again when the Stuarts came to the throne, bringing their cronies and Celtic absolutist kingship with them; not to mention religious bigotry and double-dealing (‘Na, na, we’ll no’ need the Catholics noo.’) There was a little discussion about that in the 1640s, following which we discovered that we didn’t like despots even if they were Puritans.

I can understand and forgive ignorance, but it is asking too much to accept it when it is accompanied by egregious arrogance, as we see even among those Remainers who are obviously literate, even littérateurs. I can only think it is down to an inability to distinguish between what the European Project means to them, and what it actually is. The EU is adept at the emotional management of us by signs, symbols and words, which we use to process our perceptions of reality. Its cheerleaders in Britain are so wedded to the groupthink that they cannot see that the EU is institutionally antidemocratic; it wields the Ring of Power that even Gandalf feared to handle; and like groupthinkers they feel compelled to misrepresent and despise those who disagree with them. The English intellectual, unable to see what is in front of his nose, instead looks down it at the rest of us.

What a shame; for leaving the EU was only the first struggle; the people are now at war with several great Empires.