Friday, April 07, 2006

Classical Rock

During the heyday of the 70's, before Disco melted down the creativity level of music to drum beats and homogonized dance music, and before the rebellion of the three chord reaction to the dumbing down of music, the Punk DIY movement, the stellar sphere of sound was Progressive Rock.

That is rock music that was longer than two or three minute radio spots. Rock Music influenced by Classical music, and by the idea of the 'Concept Album', the idea of creating a symphonic sound out of rock and telling a story where the whole album spoke to a singular idea or theme.

The Who created Tommy a Rock Opera, and later Quadraphenia as less popular rock opera, Jethro Tull had created Thick As A Brick, Yes and Emerson Lake and Palmer integrated organ music and pre-synthesiser sounds.

ELP originated out of King Crimson and the classical music sound of Keith Emerson's earlier band the Nice, which rockified classical and symphonic music through the use of the electric organ, the percursor to the synthesizer. One of Emersons best rock classical albums is entitled the Five Bridges Suite, took several well known classical compositions and Rockified them, sped them up and underscored the basso sound using electric organ and moog synthesizer. The Bridges are tonal overlaps in classical music. Thus Rock music went from pop sound to full symphonic sound.

Tarkus, ELP's second album was a rock version of Hungarian modernist composer Bela Bartok's work without credit. Their third Album was the rock version of Russian modernist Mussgorsky's Pictures at an exhibition.

Moody Blues were one of the first bands to really work with a symphonic orchestra with their first album and hit single, Knights in White Satin.

Deep Purple would follow up with their concept album Deep Purple in Rock which again contained longer 6-9 minute songs, including the hauntingly beautiful Child in Time, recorded like the Moody Blues had, with the London Sympthonic Orchestra.

In Europe Vangelis first concept album with his band Aphrodites Child; 666 was released as an unheard of double album, live recording which was a musical concept album about the Anti-Christ, Babalon and the book of Revelations, which included famed Greek Actress Irene Papas singing the part of Babalon.

My favorite band of this period is Rennaissance, whose rock motifs are based on Russian composers. Russian Classical music by its inherent nature has been and is modernist, daring to create sound poems and aural stories, using themes to tell stories, not merely using the music to express an inner ideal.

Rennaissance picked up on this as the Folk revival was kicking off in England, and as concept albums, the creation of Progressive or Experimental rock, was begining.

I just picked up the live two CD collection of their performances which were released in the late 1990's almost twenty years after their performances were recorded. The complete collection of their work has yet to make it to CD. So look for them on vinal.

I reccomend the link above on Progressive Rock from Wikipedia, though I must say that while they show the progression from the early rock concept bands such as the Yardbirds, from whence Renaissance originated, and which gave birth to such bands as Led Zepplin, they missed one of the most influential of the Classical, Jazz, Rock crossover musicians, who really should be credited with being the father of the concept album and Progressive Rock, none other than Frank Zappa.

His only hit single Peaches in Regalia is a wholy unique and original modern classical piece of instrumental music. Zappa was influenced by the fifties modernist composer Edgard Varese, whose compostion Ameriques is a stunning combination of modern symphonic music and jazz with a continual police siren in the background, and was written in the 1920's!!

Now compare that with Leonard Bernstiens paen to America, West Side Story, and you can see the paths that modern classical/symphonic music was moving towards, where we end up in the seventies with its merger into Progressive Rock.

Varese and Zappa created tone poems, and Zappa was as egotistical an orchestra leader as ever one could find in the Classical realm. In fact his clashes with that other symphonic egotist, conductor Zubin Meta (whose 1812 Oveture with small live cannons is still the ne plus ultra version of the composition) during 200 Motels is well documented, indeed why Zappa placed Meta and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a concentration camp setting in his movie. Nasty.

What Zappa has never been given credit for is his guitar playing. He was one of the best guitar players of his generation. And it is perhaps his classical approach to the instrument that deminished the appreciation of his abilities. Becuase he approached his guitar playing like his composing and his leading his band like a conductor, his tightly controled playing did not appear wild, arm swinging, hair flinging, style that was so popular amongst other expressive rock musicians that led to his underappreciation as a guitarist.

What Zappa got from Varese was the concept of the Idee Fixe, "
Some of Edgard Varese's later works make use of the 'Idee Fixe', a fixed theme, repeated certain times in a work. "

Through out his work a common Idee Fixe will appear repeatedly, this is a the very essence of modernist classical music, and Zappa was not only a Rock and Roll guitarist but the very essence of a modern classical composer.

By the 1980's Progressive rock was having a well deserved revival in the works of Genesis, the Quebec band Harmonium, the electronic works of Vangelis, and his team up Jon Anderson former lead singer of Yes, to create thematic concept albums like the Friends of Mr. Cairo, heralded the return of the concept album and the revival of Progressive Rock.

The Alan Parsons Project overlapped many of the concept albums coming out in the eighties, where Parsons had worked with folk musicians like Al Stewart, again there is the connection between the English Folk revival and Progressive Rock, and Pink Floyd, before coming out with his own Concept ablums with the Project.

But it was short lived revival as the ninties diminished all new sound into a wave of unoriginal remastering of 'found' sounds and the diminuation again of music to the drum beat machine staccato of Hip Hop.

Underscoring all this is the continual return to the classical roots of music, its symphonic sound, that ability to layer sound to create depth and imagery. Whether it was with the eight track revolution of the Beatles sound on Sgt. Peppers or the Rolling Stones Their Satanic Majesty's Request, both concept albums, or with the later use of synthesizer, the progressive sound in rock was its imitation of and merger with symphonic music.

As Bakunin once joked when asked if his anarchist revolution would get rid of all culture, he replied, "No we will keep Beethoven's 5th." It was the progressive and radical music of its day. An elegy to human reason. As it remains today.

Reason to Rock: Rock Music as Art Form
A Web Book by Herb Bowie










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Thursday, April 06, 2006

Casanova Harper

He's no Casanova

OTTAWA -- Fending off a torrent of attacks in the debut question period over his decision to "seduce" Liberal turncoat David Emerson to his cabinet, Harper responded with a dry smile. "I do not think I have ever been accused of seducing anyone, even my wife," he quipped, as Laureen blushed from a seat above. Then he added: "I see there is some agreement in the gallery."

Au contraire I would say that our Dear King Stephen I is quite a swinger, which is now legal in Canada.

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Headline From Ontario

Alta. shuffles cabinet as MPPs jockey to replace Klein



Alberta Premier Ralph Klein has shuffled his cabinet to fill vacancies left by ministers departing to...


This is the headline from Global TV News/Canada. com written in Ontario, by an Ontarion for Ontarion's.

Because in Alberta we have MLA's, Members of the Legislative Assembly, NOT MPPs.

I can understand the thinking of the headline writer, we wouldn't want to confuse Ontario readers with a term they are not familiar with now would we....poor easily confused Ontarions.




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God Bless Canada

May Divine Providence guide your deliberations.

So ends the Throne Speech. Is this another way of saying God Help Us All......


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Bush Is A Fascist

A picture is worth a thousand words.......

http://www.labornet.org/images/sieg.jpg

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Harpers Other Kiss

As I blogged here the other day the Conservatives have dropped the Same Sex Marriage debate for now. Maybe this is the reason why.

Cancun was such a gay time for the Three Amigos


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Where is Harpers other hand?


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Missing Link Missing Funding

Ok here are two stories on evolution that come from Canada. The irony would be delicious, except for the idoicy.

It's a story of two kinds of dinosaurs. One that is a real fossil and one that is political.

The first is the discovery of a possible missing link between fish and amphibians coming from the Canadian arctic. Proof of evolution. Empirical fact.


The fish that crawled out of the water

A crucial fossil that shows how animals crawled out from the water, evolving from fish into land-loving animals, has been found in Canada. The creature, described today in Nature1,2, lived some 375 million years ago. Palaeontologists are calling the specimen from the Devonian a true 'missing link', as it helps to fill in a gap in our understanding of how fish developed legs for land mobility, before eventually evolving into modern animals including mankind.

Tetrapods did not so much conquer the land, as escape from the water. John Maisey American Museum of Natural History, New York

Tiktaalik - the fish that found it's feet

Tiktaalik - the fish that found it's feet

The fossil record is full of 'missing links', transitional forms between organisms on either side of a phylogenetic tree, but with Tiktaalik, a fish that shows striking features of a limbed vertebrate (tetrapod), one of these rare missing links has been found. Nature presents a FREE ACCESS story from news@nature.com alongside the discovery and analysis of this incredible animal, and a discussion of its significance in a special News & Views article.



The other story is how a Canadian scientist who wants to study the influence of the Intelligent Design debate in the US is having on Canadian students. He is denied funding.

No he is not a creationist, he is a scientist who accepts evolution as a fact. Which is why he is being denied funding. Right-o that makes alot of sense.

Professor denied federal research funds for assuming evolution to be scientific fact


Hmm do ya think SSHRC is being influenced politically by the Regime change in Ottawa? Doing their masters bidding and denying funding to 'controversial studies' (sic), that might upset the social conservative fundamentalists in the Conservative government. Like the Rev. Stockwell Day, who is a creationist?

Or are they just jumping the gun anticipating an ideological change now that the vociferous critics of SSHRC/Canda Council are in charge.

The last time the Conservatives were in charge they dismantled large sections of SSHRC/Canada Council.

The government's budget was therefore constructed to show that the federal cabinet understood the Reform Party agenda--that it too was determined to cut government fat and slash away at those parts of the bureaucracy most seen to providing useless services and not helping the ``just plain folks back home.'' Indeed, to conceptualize this view it is useful to look at the National Citizen's Coalition document of a few years ago--we might think of the Coalition as being part of the organic intellectuals of the Reform party. The document was entitled ``Tales from the Tax Trough'' and it listed a whole series of useless government services including a hit list of what the NCC saw as particularly stupid research projects. Who was mentioned? SSHRC projects were the first on the list--followed by those of the Canada Council, the Canadian Institute on International Peace and Security, and IDRC. On the hit list were projects on the analysis of yard art, the fool in Western civilization, the wife's role in food shopping for the family, and the participation of women in trade unions in Argentina. Some of us, myself included, may react by thinking what interesting projects these are--and in fact how socially pertinent--but this is clearly not the intent of the pamphlet. The tone of the pamphlet and indeed the way it is likely to be read is of a totally profligate government flinging out dollars to finance absurd projects without any regard for, and even as an insult to, the hard-pressed taxpayers. In rereading this pamphlet one can easily conjure up the image of Don Mazankowski consulting it in preparing his budget. The ``little people'' speak and Big Don listens.



Evolution of the Reform Alliance Conservative Party


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CIA Front Companies Exposed

Here are the CIA front companies used for 'rendition', that is the illegal capture, transportation and torture of individuals, in violation of national and international law. This is SOP for the CIA since they invaded Guatemala for the United Fruit Company fifty years ago.

Rendering is also a term used in the livestock business for herding animals together in preparation for them to be slaughtered in Rendering Houses, abatoirs, slaughter houses, meat packing plants.

Every time there is some military operation the CIA black ops comes up with an 'Air America' front which inevitably ends up engaged in side operations such as drug (opium/heroin/cocaine) and arms smuggling.

The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations

Which of course is how the CIA pays for its off the books operations which is what Rendition is.

CIA Hawking Heroin in Baghdad?

Meanwhile, Tony Blair agreed that Britain would take the lead in eradicating the opium harvest in Afghanistan, the origin of 90% of British heroin. In his new book, State of War, James Risen quotes a CIA official as saying: "The British were screaming for us to bomb those targets because most of the heroin in Britain comes from Afghanistan. But they [the US military] refused." He writes: "The Pentagon feared that counter-narcotics operations would force the military to turn on the very warlords who were aiding the United States against the Taliban and that would lead to another round of violent attacks on American troops." The rancid relationship

The CIA should be actually called the Corporate Insurance Agency, since it actually works for the Transnational American corporations as their secret army.
BBC News | MIDDLE EAST | Analysis: The CIA and the arms ship

This should give Peter McKay something to look into, and yes he should be afraid we are being used as soft landing space for secret CIA flights.....OTTAWA (CP) — Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay says he "may very well" raise the issue of alleged CIA planes ferrying terrorism suspects around the globe with his U.S. counterpart. It is the first indication the new Conservative government might have concerns about the Central Intelligence Agency’s apparent use of foreign airports. But MacKay’s officials insist the minister has no fears that Canadian air facilities are being abused by the intelligence agency.

Courtesy Infomedia.


THE FRONT-ORGANIZATION (FO) COMPANIES

The eight CIA shell companies thought to be extant are:

AVIATION SPECIALTIES, INC.
BAYARD FOREIGN MARKETING, LLC.
CROWELL AVIATION TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
DEVON HOLDING AND LEASING, INC.
KEELER & TATE MANAGEMENT, LLC
PATH CORPORATION
RAPID AIR TRANS, INC./RAPID AIR TRANSPORT, INC.
STEVENS EXPRESS LEASING, INC.

Some of the numbers in the list formerly were registered to a ninth company, PREMIER EXECUTIVE TRANSPORT SERVICES, INC. Its planes have been moved to other companies in the shell game.

THE OPERATING COMPANIES

AERO CONTRACTORS, LTD. (NORTH CAROLINA)

The operation of the front-company (CIA-owned) planes is the job of a company called Aero Contractors Ltd, founded by a former CIA pilot. Aero Contractors operates all but one of these out of the Johnston County Airport in Smithfield, NC. The Boeing 737, N4476S (formerly N313P), operates out of the Kinston Regional Jetport in Kinston, NC. Both locations have been recent targets of anti-torture protests. The mailing address and phone number given for the 737's front (Keeler & Tate), by the way, belong to the law office of former US Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada, once called the "First Friend" for his relationship with President Reagan.

The US Air Force base (Rhein-Main) at Frankfurt, Germany, is the European base of the 737.

TEPPER AVIATION, INC. (FLORIDA)

Three other large transports on the list -- Lockheeds N2189M, N4557C, and N8183J -- are owned by the shell company Rapid Air Tran (Transport).

Tepper Aviation, Inc., maintains and operates these planes out of the Bob Sikes Airport in Crestview, FL. Tepper was started by a CIA pilot of that name and was and is CIA-financed.

The European base of the Lockheeds also is Rhein-Main. The large CIA planes are involved in Afghanistan operations.

The N8183J, like the N8213G, was investigated by a European government but got a pass because it is a cargo plane. Two Austrian Draken fighter planes intercepted N8183J intruding into Austrian airspace on Jan. 21, 2003. The Drakens normally would have forced the plane to land, but they only intercepted it. The Austrian foreign ministry considered the aircraft as civilian (Is the CIA civilian?) and saw no reason to authorize the ministry of defense to force the plane to land. After all, it was a cargo plane (see photo).

AVIATION WORLDWIDE SERVICES, INC. (FLORIDA)
PRESIDENTIAL AIRWAYS (FLORIDA)
SUBSIDIARIES OF BLACKWATER USA (NORTH CAROLINA)

Presidential and AWS are owned by the mercenary firm Blackwater USA. They operate out of the Melbourne International Airport in central Florida. They are run by the former owners, Richard Pere and Tim Childrey.

The companies fly Spanish CASA C-212 wide-body passenger/cargo aircraft. These carry paratroops and oversized cargo and can operate from short and unimproved runways.

In Europe, Malta is the base for these planes and the ATRs in the list, both of which operate in Afghanistan.

PEGASUS TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

Pegasus Technologies works on the avionics (aviation electronics), sensor, and electrical systems of the CIA planes. This presumably includes top-secret encrypted-communications systems and night-vision systems.

At the company's airstrip near Green Cove Springs, FL, in the Reynolds Industrial Park, at a former naval base, you are apt to see many of the planes in the list. Few if any other companies would have the security clearances to work on the CIA's electronics.



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You Are Here

New map of Milky Way charts where stars are born


This is the cosmological equivalent of the shopping mall map......You Are Here......


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Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Welfare for Millionaires


Gee wonder why the Conservatives just don't tell these folks about how their tax breaks are going to help them down on the farm. You know 5% is a Canadian Value. Ingrates.

So when in doubt sign over more welfare checks to farmers while you try and shut down the Wheat Board. Makes sense eh.

Note that the Ontario farmers protesting are demanding a protectionist market and subsidies like the US grants its agribusiness. Not exactly Tory farm policy.....
Strahl doesn't mention market-solutions for protesting Farmers

Now imagine the crisis on the farm if we had a free and open market with no Wheat Board or other producer run cooperatives or marketing boards. It would be the end of the so called 'family farm'. Which is long in the tooth and almost non-existant in Canada now.


http://images.ctv.ca/archives/CTVNews/img2/20060405/160_farm_protesters6_060405.jpg
Strahl promises better relief for struggling farmers
CTV.ca - 9 hours ago
As thousands of farmers converge on Parliament Hill for a massive rally, Federal Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl is promising better relief for cash-strapped producers.
Provinces have to help, Strahl tells farmers Globe and Mail
Harper promises money for farmers Toronto Star
Brandon Sun - Reuters Canada - CBC Manitoba - 580 CFRA Radio -



Yep these guys would all be gone and all that would be left would be big Agribusiness corporations. Who would then demand subsidies like they do in the US.

Its the battle between the farmer Millionaires versus the Corporate Agri-Billionaires.

And the irony is that these guys are the right wing backbone of the Tories, who demand they kick folks off welfare.



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