the case for the defence

"I love this blog not just for the editor's musical taste (which is exemplary), but also for his artful presentation of the material. Rather than post entire albums (which I don't approve of), he instead zeroes in on a particular song or two and offers it along with anecdotal text which is as smart as it is smart-assed. Ambiguity and mystery is, for me, a major component to the joy of discovering new sounds, and unlike a lot of MP3 blogs that treat art as a bland commodity, SibLINGSHOT uses it to make personal and political points with exceptional panache. I'm proud to call myself a fan."

To Mike L., filling in for Tom Scharpling: thank you for your generous words. Thanks too, to Thee Punk Rock Chef for forwarding the love. SibLINGSHOT ON THE BLEACHERS.

communiqué #27: more riz for your sunday spliff

illustration by Boris Artzybasheff: 25 May 1899 - 16 July 1965.


Somewhat tiring of this, quite frankly, I have these few words to impart:

DMCA ballbreakers and ambulance chasers; suck my F@CKIN' cock.

Suffer one more paragraph of mine to be deleted, and I'll toast you and your litter of rats. If you wish to see 'product' exist solely in a vacuum, so be it. Go peddle it to that blind and deaf duffer on the mountain.

If you are bent on breaking the proverbial butterly on a wheel, so be it once more. I will gladly spit right in your eye socket. Or pitch my tent on your lawn.

Rest assured. Your legal jurisdiction is a figment of your own bloated imagination; a rusty firmament where artists once starved and PR men drove shiny Oldsmobiles.

Or Vauxhall Astras with four bald tires. Death's Heads on the doors.

One more thing. Blogger. You better get your act together. It is one thing to advise that you have reset a post to draft status; it is quite another to 'accidentally' delete it from a domain you have no proprietory claim to.

And please. Do not again forward me an email detailing a list of more than 40 affected URLs which pertain not one iota to this site. This is not China, and the adverse publicity does not reflect well on you.

bomis prendin: seconds too late

Further to an earlier piece here on Richmond's Karen Cooper Complex, travel directly to WFMU to avail yourself of Jason Sigal's concise overview on the experimental scene which existed in Virginia and Washington DC between 1970 and 1981.

As archived on the previously lauded FMA, DC's Bomis Prendin was born of a "mutating collective" originally entrenched in Richmond, VA; sonic terrorists Titfield Thunderbolt and Big Naptar walking point on reconnaissance. 1979's "Test", and its successor "Phantom Limb", elicited praise from Jandek and eventually earned Bomis Prendin an entry on the Nurse With Wound list.

A mythical Grail of sorts coveted by those blistering in the shadows.

Do not fail to click the play button on Keith Chambers' video reel homage to Karen Cooper Complex while you loiter.

Bill Altice - guitarist in both Bomis Prendin and KCC - alerted me to its existence back in April. I had just been watching a documentary on survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - HBO's "White Light / Black Rain" - and Keith's cut up to "Jerkin' Pretty" prompted a snow of fallout on the same retina burn. Dislocated and hypnotic, it made me feel like I was back in the classroom in 1970; chasing through Olive to Gold on the teaching apparatus which was SRA.

The following, "Doppler Shift" - the second serving - is a closed percussive groove which might have come via The Cryptic Corporation. One listen to it was all that was required to convince me that Sheffield's Cabaret Voltaire might have been exposed to it during their early tenure at Geoff Travis's Rough Trade.


▼ BOMIS PRENDIN: THE DOPPLER SHIFT from "Phantom Limb" 9" Eva-Tone Soundsheet Flexi (Artifacts/yclept) 1980 (US)

communiqué #26: hard of hearing

Friends. Roamings. Siblings.

While I am inclined to believe the recent dearth of commentary might just as readily be a symptom of sheer tedium - that interest has waned, as it inevitably must - I have been alerted from a distant quarter that certain comments were not registering as expected.

That there may, in fact, be an issue with Blogger.

One more for the scrapbook.

Now. Deride me as cynical, if you will - or merely desperate in listening out for the scrapings of dung beetles - but I am a firm believer in emperical evidence. So. Seeking to put an end to said speculation, I entered a comment of my own (administrative) making and - lo! - my words were immediately lost to the ether.

Admittedly, a second attempt half an hour or so later achieved the desired result, but it may be that the interface is indeed exhibiting some kind of erratic glitch. That, or you are all off beating your meat elsewhere as I originally assumed.

Should your pearls have fallen on swine, please accept my condolences.

illustration by ib

communiqué #25: balancing act

walk this way... take #2

Well. I received another DMCA takedown notification last night. The first in several long, quiet months.

This time with a major difference. I logged into the dashboard to be greeted directly with a dispatch from Blogger Support:

" As a result, we have reset the post(s) to "draft" status. (If we did not do so, we would be subject to a claim of copyright infringement, regardless of its merits. The URL(s) of the allegedly infringing post(s) may be found at the end of this message.) This means your post - and any images, links or other content - is not gone. You may edit the post to remove the offending content and republish, at which point the post in question will be visible to your readers again."

The notification was duplicated by email.

In my opinion, Google has at long last got it right. The resetting to draft status, rather than gung-ho deletion, affords the administrator the opportunity to directly address a reported issue without suffering the abuse of having original work expunged on some McCarthyist whim. This is a major step forward, on balance, and Blogger are to be congratulated.

I am unsure to what degree Larisa Mann - student of Jurisprudence at U.C. Berkele y - contributed to this recent development, but her perseverance in the dialogue between EFF, the Stanford Fair Use law clinic, and Google itself is to be applauded. Thank you, Larisa.

The issue, however, with regard to making transparent offending material remains unresolved. In this, those parties invoking DMCA action continue to do so without publicly delineating cause for complaint. 

A practice both offensive and grossly unjust.

sibling whispers: mir uncovered

Originally hurtling into orbit via Big B over on Art Decade, and appearing here, Memphis cosmic crew Jetty Webb remain shrouded in mystery if not space debris.

But wait. Delving deep into the static of dead space, sibling NØ has uncovered more. Repair to Digital Meltd0wn to put endless speculation to rest in a recently conducted interview with guitarist and founding member, Brian McKay.

The truth is out there.

fritz goro; gargantuan

chicago, 1954.

ghet•to |ˌgɛtəʊ|
noun ( pl. -tos or -toes)
a part of a city, esp. a slum area, occupied by a minority group or groups.
• historical the Jewish quarter in a city : the Warsaw Ghetto.
• an isolated or segregated group or area : the relative security of the gay ghetto.

verb ( -toes, -toed) [ trans. ]
put in or restrict to an isolated or segregated area or group.

ORIGIN early 17th cent.: perhaps from Italian getto ‘foundry’ (because the first ghetto was established in 1516 on the site of a foundry in Venice), or from Italian borghetto, diminutive of borgo ‘borough’.

Photojournalist, Fritz Goro died at home in Chappaqua, New York as the result of cancer related illness in December, 1986. He was, the New York Times recorded, eighty-five years old.

A veteran contributor to "Life" magazine and specialist scientific journals from the late 1930's in the USA - and credited with the invention of macrophotography - some of his most outstanding images, nonetheless, were solid social reportage.

A native of Bremen, Germany, Goro (né Goreau) was editor in chief of "Munich Illustrated", a weekly publication, by age thirty, but emigrated with his wife, Grete - a sculptor - after the National Socialists seized control of the press in 1933. His arrival at the offices of "Life" in 1936-7 coincided with major scientific advances which would ultimately reach their apogee with nuclear fission and the development of the atomic bomb.

The fall-out of his last days in Germany haunt, too, his pictorials of Chicago slums in the 40's and 50's with their echoes of European ghettos, and in his portrayals of American boardroom politics.

Under the patronage of Gerard Piel, then science editor at "Life" and chairman of the board of "Scientific American" - the most prestigious of popular American science periodicals - Goro made a unique art of lending pictorial form to abstract theory and esoteric physics; enabling the layperson insights more commonly denied.

He not only covered the Manhattan Project, literally endangering his long term well-being by shooting directly at Ground Zero, but "His image of a fetus in an artificial womb inspired Kubrick's 2001."



"view of fetus in an artificial womb", june, 1965.



"view of different intra-uterine devices", june, 1965.

As Piel observed in hindsight, ''it was his artistry and ingenuity that made photographs of abstractions, of the big ideas from the genetic code to plate tectonics.''

all images originally appearing in "life" magazine.

whose bad ?

the lengths

some people will go to to pull out of an upcoming gig or two would put even
Mark E. Smith to shame.

Too bad.

communiqué #24: a word of caution regarding money grabbing $hits

normal service disabled, mister ib.

The good news, clearly, is that DivShare has reset my monthly download limit.

Allegedly, there was an issue with their database on 16th June; coincidentally the same day they collected $12 on my account. Rather inconveniently, all linked files up on their server were locked over a two day period. While Support has since resolved the issue, apparently it was considered a low enough priority that no apology was forthcoming.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word. Even when one is paying top dollar for it.

To compound matters, it appears that a further $9.99 was debited from my account just today. Go figure. A monthly subscription is just that; one does not expect to forfeit twice in any one given month. Furthermore, while checking their premiums up on their members' page as a consequence, it appears the monthly amount levied for those services leased is currently $5.95. Assholes. That makes for quite a princely overpayment by my calculations, depite the fact they have lowered their rates in recent months to undercut the competition.

I advised them by e-mail to investigate as a matter of urgency, of course. If the situation is not promptly resolved I see no option but to close my account immediately. In addition to taking steps to recover misappropriated funds on a service which does not deliver as advertised.

F@ck them. If any blogger dropping in here is thinking of setting up an account with them, I would encourage you to reconsider.

Oh, and did I mention their traffic statistics do not update into the bargain ? Kind of problematic when one is trying to keep tabs on the popularity of content.

"You Publish, They Control".

illustration by ib.

bum deal; the emperor's new clothes

do drop inn, shelby, mississippi. photograph by bill steber.


Sunday broke this morning on a bum note.

Firstly, at 5:45 AM, there beat a tattoo of insistent knocking on my front door. I assume it was acquaintances of those unneighbourly neighbours directly above. I say assume, merely because I did not vacate the sanctuary of my sheets to investigate. But given that a racket of shrieking and cacophonous sound erupted on the ceiling not five minutes later, it is a fairy safe wager.

Those f@ckers are incapable of reading a nameplate or door number. And frequently too inebriated to navigate a direct route home.

I resisted the urge to uplift a claw hammer to complain. The racket subsided less than half an hour later but sleep eluded me.



On impulse I checked my email. I am waiting from a response from DivShare Support. They collected payment three days ago on my account but the monthly download renewal had failed to go through, the bastards. It still read at 80% of the limit - as it had on Friday just prior to the scheduled renewal - and they seem bent on either feigning ignorance or persisting with their lie.

It's the emperor's new clothes all over again.

Needless to say, the in-tray was quite empty. Moreover, it appears I have as of this mornng reached 100% of this month's limit. Bollocks, obviously, but unless they reconsider that means no sounds here, dear siblings, until the 20th of July.

A full f@cking month of radio silence.

Well. As you may recall, I have a trick or two up my sleeve to ease the deprivations of such Stalinist tactics. Short of greasing more palms or bowing to inflated party membership dues.

The bad news, whichever way you choose to skin this white rabbit, is that those previous entries remain hopelessly locked. I just don't have the time to reupload the content to another server. And - in the meantime, sadly - any new content will not be recognised by Hype Machine. You have been warned.

Let's hope DivShare get their act together. I have no intention of paying them a penny more.

UPDATE:

Well. As of this morning - a full three days after my download tracking was scheduled to renew - my account appears to have been reset correctly. Still no word of an apology though, or explanation; and since Hype Machine now seems to register MediaFire content - when did that happen? - I am left wondering whether to simply bail now and jump ship on a permanent basis. Oh, happy Monday!

(22.06.09)

▼ MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC COMPANY: TROUBLE IN MIND from "Sojourner Box Set" 4 x CD (Secretly Canadian) 2007 (US)

This cut wings its way by email from Douglas over on the excellent Hell in a Kiss. From the "Sun Sessions" EP from 2007's "Sojourner" heavyweight - literally, packaged as it is in wood - four disc box set. "Trouble In Mind" is a traditional arrangement engagingly resuscitated by Magnolia Electric's Jason Molina.

The entire EP was fittingly recorded in one day at Sun Studios, Memphis in March, 2006.

if thy right eye offends thee...

illustration by ib.

Siblings. Your silence is deafening.

No commentary on any new post in the last ten days and counting. Despite some healthy incoming traffic.

I am almost tempted to check that I haven't inadvertently disabled a function or two in the settings somewhere.

Indeed, were it not for those statistics helpfully thrown into focus via StatCounter and its ilk, I might have come to the conclusion that this blog had simply overran its 'best by date'. Have I been rude ? A good brother informed me that my posts had been somewhat terse of late, and certainly it's true that I have been investing less time and resources here - and elsewhere - than previously. Things are afoot. By the twitching of my thumbs. In fact, I ought to have declared an armistice of sorts - a defined period of truce - but I am impulsive by nature, and such a cease-fire could never last. Neither do I feel compelled to turn this activity into some kind of full-time job; replete with contractual obligation and negotiated absence in place of the true spirit of vacation.

Of course. I am tempted just to weather the storm. Stick my head above the parapet as my mood dictates, and simply feign indifference.

A far more noble resolution, perhaps.

As I opined once before, rather tactlessly, when Siblingshot On The Bleachers was a mere imperious suckling:

no f@cking comment.

There. I just spat the dummy all over again.

apostle of the strung-out

Figure 3-29.–Correct way to take out a kink in wire rope.

kink |kɪŋk|
noun

a sharp twist or curve in something that is otherwise straight : a kink in the road.
• figurative a flaw or obstacle in a plan, operation, etc. : though the system is making some headway, there are still some kinks to iron out.
• a stiffness in the neck, back, etc.; crick : it takes the kinks out of stiff necks.
• figurative a quirk of character or behavior.
• informal a person with unusual sexual preferences.

I am not so much at a loose end as vaguely tied in knots. Nothing that won't ultimately unravel; maybe a kink in a length of string is nearer the mark.

Anyway. I was sitting idly keeping one eye open on the FEEDJIT stats - as one might do or even justify in such a predicament - when I chanced upon a visitor bouncing away from here to alight on Canon 2.0. Said site is essentially a "literary experiment" curated by Jorn Barger, of Robot Wisdom fame, an individual who has been kind enough to link to SibLINGSHOT ON THE BLEACHERS on occasion. Donovan and Patti Smith - dancing barefoot - spring to mind.

So. Interestingly, Jorn possesses some very sound literary tastes. None too meticulously, I found myself dipping into a list he has compiled on a number of authors up on Canon 2.0 when I happened on an entry with regard to Robert Stone. A list for the transiently listless. Stone is a writer I admire but know too little about. I had all but forgotten his name. Born in 1937 in Brooklyn, in addition to his string of successes as a novelist, he worked for a period too as a Vietnam War correspondent in 1971, an experience which culminated in the publication of "Dog Soldiers" three years later.

A solid book, but not quite as strong as his 1967 debut, "A Hall of Mirrors".

Many moons ago, my good friend Gus lent me an old paperback copy. It was a good read. It's style has been compared to that of the Beat Generation, and that is valid enough, but on balance I remember it reminded me more of Glaswegian author, Alexander Trocchi, whose incisive portrayal of heroin addiction, "Cain's Book", was famously banned in the UK on publication in 1960 after a lengthy showcase obscenity trial. Trochhi had a deeply entrenched habit. And a capacity for controversy on a par with Burroughs or Ginsberg.

Or Hubert Selby, jr.

A champion of outsiders Samuel Beckett and Henry Miller, Trocchi found an outlet amongst the pornographers of Paris in the 1950's, editing the literary magazine, "Merlin", before eventually settling in New York City where he operated a stone scow - a flat-bottomed dredger - on the filth of the Hudson river.



Anyhow. I digress.

I am glad I chanced on the Stone entry. The title for this post comes from a 1997 interview from the Salon, conducted by Dwight Garner.

I claim no credit whatsoever.

INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT STONE @ IDENTITY THEORY.COM

communiqué #23: flatline

Apologies, brothers and sisters. We have a CPR crisis.

Due to an oversight on my part, we have reached bandwith capacity on our server for this month drastically ahead of schedule. Of course, the good news is that our audience is constantly expanding. The bad news, conversely, is that a number of files - including those most recently posted - will remain inaccessible until our download allowance renews on or before April 20th.

Nurses on standby.

In the meantime new posts will be rolled out via our standby server. Thank you.

sibling whispers #23: rockin' with jerry lee

Quite possibly the finest review of the Killer in the raw I have come across; Jon's invocation of a night in the company of Jerry Lee in Little Nashville Opry in Nashville, Indiana - over on Poetry is for Assholes - perfectly conjures the Old Testament evangelism of bearing witness to serpents writhing straight up from the Mississippi swamplands. Not to be missed. EVOL.

▼ JERRY LEE LEWIS: WHOLE LOT OF SHAKIN' GOING ON from "Whole Lot Of Shakin' Going On b/w It'll Be Me" 45 (Sun) 1957 (US) [r]

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Please adopt a senior CEO.

Poor Charlie. They've threatened to take his bonus away.

Every year in the financial services sector, bonuses are being cruelly slashed in a bid to punish the innocent. Charlie is only one of several senior executives unable to underwrite that third luxury home; the private island in Malaysia; a string of well educated personal escorts.

That's why it's imperative we dig deep in our pockets and do something about this frightful state of affairs. Today.

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Come on. Won't somebody please adopt an elderly wretch like Charlie ?

Now the tax payer is obliged to bear the financial burden of bailing out the banks, there is a groundswell of furious debate as to whether the continued practice of paying out grossly excessive bonuses can be countenanced. Expect to see an advertisment like this coming to a space near you in the none too distant future.

gravest hit

Erick Lee Purkhiser:
October 21st, 1946 - February 4th, 2009.

Sadly, a fellow blogger alerted me to the news that Lux Interior bit the bullet yesterday in a hospital in Glendale, California as the result of an existing heart condition. Sorry, Ivy.

▼ RONNIE COOK & THE GAYLADS: GOO GOO MUCK from "Goo Goo Muck b/w The Scotch" 45 (Norton) 1962 (US)

OUT OF PRINT

an unaccountably false economy

beware of false profits.

And trumped up balance sheets. The money-lenders conjure them up out the darkness only to justify their bonus.

In spite of those recent bail-outs and very public censure, the practice of collecting obscenely huge bonuses appears to continue quite unabated.

detail, "the money-lenders" by quentin metsys, c. 1515.

communiqué #21: devil's advocate

image forwarded from sara smith.

I am unsure whether the recent sender of images of the suffering being endured in Gaza is seeking to redress the balance after my posting a photograph from the Holocaust, or is doing so merely in an attempt to educate me in outrages I am already painfully aware of. I suspect we have all become inured to images of the atrocities attributable to world conflict to one degree or another. Darfur; Rwanda; Bosnia; Somalia; Vietnam; Korea; Burma; Uganda; Tehran; Tibet; El Salvador; Afghanistan; Iraq; Cambodia... The list is endless. A plague of images. Of blighted lives.

Many of these conflicts continue unabated largely after generations of unresolved dispute. The names of invading or occupying forces may change, the borders may recede or advance from one outcome to the next. There is only one far from superficial constant: the endless suffering of people deemed expendable by one authority or another.

The situation in Gaza is as ugly as in any conflict, the effects of Israeli offensives on a largely invisible enemy untenable in humanitarian terms. The parallels with the sectarian situation in Northern Ireland as it stood until recent times have been familiar to all of us for years. If pressure is to be brought to bear on Israel to cease its offensive - as it rightly should - then pressure must also be brought to bear on Hamas to negotiate. Hamas is a very different political animal to Fatah, its Palestinian predecessor. Hamas refuses to negotiate. In measurable terms, casualties sustained by Israel are dwarfed by those of its neighbour in this most recent turn of events. That much is inarguable. And as such, as a state it has exposed itself to just accusations of inappropriately brutal force, or as it maintains, counter force.

Certainly, too, Israel must now shoulder the incandescent and impotent fury of thousands of Gazans once resistant - privately at least - to Hamas, without persistently shirking responsibility.

Let your outrage pour forth for those innocent men, women and children maimed and slaughtered on the streets of Gaza. Atrocities continue to occur; not least as the result of substantiated reports of the illegal use of phosphorus, which beggars belief. But do not delude yourself that Hamas is an instrument of freedom; it is undeserving of the moral high ground.

This is the last I intend to engage in discourse on this subject. For the forseeable future, at least. I am not qualified to speculate on these events with any degree of authority beyond mere gut reaction. I have no agenda beyond the simple wish, shared by the many, for an immediate ceasefire. And no reasonable expectation for reconciliation.

pissing in the wind

a rant, or just a little necessary agitation ? :

"Somethingis rotten in the state of *@!!... downright fishy even.

Someone has stopped taking their medication, and that someone isn't me.

Well. Let's up the ante a little. Several months back, some chickenshit anoraknoid was all a quiver at the prospect of debate on what exactly constituted file-sharing and whether he actually gave a fuck. Very proud. And then he found himself in the same position as a whole bunch of others - including me - and promptly changed his tune. So much so, he snivelled that he was not in the business of giving away songs "for free" and threatened to "quit" his non-existent job as industry insider. Big tears.

Well. Let me tell you this, cowboy. If you have a problem with me, bring it on. Come on over here and I'll jam my foot right up your motherf@cking ass, you pansy jackass Roy Rogers wannabe.

Got something to say ? No? Well, shut your fuckin' mouth. You'll get some fucking respect right after you earn some.

Oh. I feel a whole lot better getting that shit off my chest."

Of course, it's perfectly plausible I just grabbed hold of the wrong end of the stick. Next stop the sanitorium; assuming they haven't closed it down.

▼ THE CLASH: DENY from "The Clash" LP (CBS) 1977 (UK)

PURCHASE THE CLASH REMASTERED

communiqué #20: more server issues

what the f@ck...

Technical issues, it seems, continue to persist; a myriad plague of "invalid key" errors; incomplete (or non transferring) downloads; and sundry assorted glitches.

I am uncertain whether this is exclusively the fault of MediaFire, which appeared to have sustained a "temporary outage" yesterday. Allegedly, the official line is that those problems have since been resolved, but my own experiences today would seem to indicate otherwise. Apologies, brothers and sisters.

Oh. In addition to all this, you may notice an odd white keyline which has mysteriously appeared in the lower right corner of the pictorial banner above. Two horizontal lines between the 'O' and 'T' of SibLINGSHOT. This would seem to have something to do with "Signatunes"; if you hover a mouse over it you summon up an "Insert current track Signatune" message - something to do with FoxyTunes, I would hazard, but I'm at a loss as to how to toggle the keyline on or off - or even if that is possible. If anybody there has any ideas, I'd welcome your advice.

All very strange and vaguely conspirational. On the other hand, I'm an old fart and much more of a technophobe than you might imagine. I am easily rattled. Better make that "measly". Today I feel tempted to press the "delete blog" button and start over anew.

Fuck it. In the meantime, I've switched back to a previous file hosting service as a temporary measure. You have been warned, in a manner of speaking.

I am beginning to tire even myself with this incessant whingeing.