It was great that in Japan you could get cigarettes called Hope and Peace. Ah, them were the days!! I wonder if they still make them? Hope, as I recall, was a very strong but good tasting ciggie.

MUSIC:
Duke Ellington, Bill Frisell, Jimi Hendrix, Wayne Krantz, Marc Ribot, Steve Reich, Cassandra Wilson, Philip Glass, David Tronso, Richard Thompson, Marc Johnson, Can, Marianne Faithfull, James Jamerson, Jah Wobble, Bob Dylan, Pentangle, Pete Erskine, Joey Baron, Ambrose Pottie, Keith Carlock, Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, Henry Lowther, Bill Evans, Joe Zawinul, Herbie Hancock, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Jan Garbarek, Arvo Part, TV On The Radio, Tortoise, Talking Heads, Pere Ubu, Deerhoof, The Go-Betweens, Talk Talk, Talking Heads

WRITERS:
Conrad McCarthy, Bill Bryson, George Orwell, Voltaire, Monica Ali, Bruce Chatwin, Michael Ondaatje, Granta, James Joyce, TS Elliot

ACTORS:
Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Edward Norton, Gael Garcia Bernal, Karl Malden, Franka Potente, Jennifer Connelly, Susan Sarandon

Following on....some good ones....

Fortunate Son - Creedence
Soul Of America - Ian Hunter
Vigilante Man - Woody Guthrie/Ry Cooder
Ohio - CSNY
Shipbuilding - Robert Wyatt
East Hastings - Godspeed You Black Emperor
Give Peace A Chance - John Lennon
If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next - Manic Street Preachers
Cortez The Killer - Neil Young
What's Going On? - Marvin Gaye
Fight The Power/Fear Of A Black Planet - Public Enemy
Amerika v6.0 (The Best We Can Do) - Steve Earle
Hurricane - Bob Dylan
This Is England - The Clash
The Vancouver National Anthem - Matthew Good

'Can a song change the world? A Generation ago we believed it might, but music's revolutionary spirit went quiet way before time was called on the 20th century. Another decade on, Paul Morley still laments the passing of the protest song.'......

A brilliant and provocative article that reminds me why Paul Morley was essential reading for us new-wavers in the UK (and elsewhere) who waited expectantly for the NME every week. He says it better than me but I've touched on this topic recently. Time for us all to wake up from our sleep walking.

The article is here. It's in the PRS members magazine. This link is to the digital edition. Just type in page 26 at the bottom.

I just finished Bill Bryson's 'Neither Here Nor There'. A hilarious travelog account of Bryson's retracing of an earlier journey he and a friend made across Europe in 1972. This second journey he took alone in 1991. Towards the end he's trying to get from Split to Sofia in 4 days (preferably by train) in order to make use of his Bulgarian visa which is about to expire. This part of the journey involves going through Sarajevo and for one page he describes how lovely the city of Sarajevo is. I had to double check the date at this point because I was immediately reminded of another wonderful book I read recently called, 'The Cellist of Sarajevo' by Steven Galloway. This story is set in Sarajevo during the seige which began a few months after Bryson's passing through. It's an ingenious and harrowing story told from a number of perspectives that illustrates what happened when the defeat of all reason produced a monstrously real version of hell for half a million people who only 8 years previously had hosted the winter Olympics.

Topically the New York Times online today has a good article on the reopening of the Sarajevo - Belgrade rail link now running the first trains between the cities in 18 years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/world/europe/11train.html?ref=world

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sarajevo

Here is the book in Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Cellist-Sarajevo-Steven-Galloway/dp/0307397033

View from a floor mattress at dawn on the second of January.

Michele gave me the Phillip Norman biography of John Lennon for xmas. It's a big book - 800 pages plus. I finished it this morning and I will admit that I cried a bit. I didn't think I wanted to read right to the end but having gone that far it seemed wrong not to. It does finish abruptly just as it did for John. This is a good book, well researched and well written. Apparently Yoko didn't like it when she read the manuscript, telling Norman that he'd been 'mean' to John. I can't see that myself. JL was no angel - I think we knew that - but everything here is balanced and is more likely to enhance a readers opinion of the man.

I found the earlier sections relating to his upbringing in Liverpool (and post-war Britain) in the '50's particularly interesting - Liverpool and Glasgow being such culturally similar cities. I was given my first 45, She Loves You when I was 5, and was taken to see Hard Days Night when I was 7. Northern life was better after the Beatles. The soundtrack of a nation in renewal. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Monty Python, 1968, Tariq Ali, Revolution#9, Working Class Heros, fuck yeh!

One day in 1988 during a break between songs when the Commotions were rehearsing in Nomis in West London this guy put his head round the door and said, 'alright lads' in a familiar sort of way - it was Macca. He said a couple of nice things and then he was gone. I think Linda had put him up to it. They were in Nomis with Robert Plant for some reason. Quite made the day that, Paul sticking his head round the door and saying hi, then meeting the lovely Linda and Mr Plant. Thanks Mac...and John, George and Ringo. In the end the love you get IS equal to the love you make. - ps I know it's actually 'take'