Saturday, March 21, 2009

SATURDAY NIGHT BACK TO THE NINETIES.

After Kurt Cobain's death in 1994 I thought Nirvana would simply evaporate and never leave a trace. I was not a little surprised to see its drummer, Dave Grohl, take off a little while later on a very successful career with his own band, Foo Fighters. Reading about Grohls lifepath is a fascinating journey into the world of hardcore punk and grunge, although also involved are sidesteps with exotic bands such as Killing Joke, Tom Petty and the Heartbrakers and The Prodigy. Along the way, he performed with Pearl Jam and Nine Inch Nails, and even covered a dark Gary Numan number, Down in the Park (still love the original far better, though). For this "Saturday Night" I wanted to post the single Everlong, from their second album The Coulour and the Shape. However, since I only found acoustic/live versions, and I hate both acoustic and live versions, I settled for "I'll stick around", from their nameless 1995 debut album:





The Folk Implosion was a US indie rock band founded by Lou Barlow and John Davis in the early nineties in Boston, MA. For a couple of years they led a rather obscure existence, until the (disastrous) movie Kids came out, and a Folk Implosion song was lifted from its soundtrack. The year was 95, and the song, "Natural One", peaked at 26 on the Billboard Hot 100. Basically, it simultaneously proved to be their swan song, rendering TFI yet another one hit wonder. Still, to me it's one of those sounds inextricably linked to the 90s, that dull era when life seemed to hold no challenges any more, a bestselling author claimed history had come to an end, and the single most defining act of the decade was a blowjob in the White House. Despite what we find ourselves in these days, I can't say I'm longing back for the time.





MFBB.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

CECI N'EST PAS UN COMBATTANT ENNEMI.

from MSNBC, March 13, 2009:

"WASHINGTON - The Obama administration said Friday that it is abandoning one of President George W. Bush's key phrases in the war on terrorism: enemy combatant. The Justice Department said in legal filings that it will no longer use the term to justify holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay."


TERROR CHIEF PAKISTAN


Prisoner at Guantanamo Bay.


From Wikipedia:

"Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was a member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization, although he lived in Kuwait rather than Afghanistan, heading al-Qaeda's propaganda operations from sometime around 1999. According to the 9/11 Commission Report he was "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks". He is also thought to have had, or has confessed to, a role in many of the most significant terrorist plots over the last twenty years, including the World Trade Center 1993 bombings, the Operation Bojinka plot, an aborted 2002 attack on Los Angeles' U.S. Bank Tower, the Bali nightclub bombings, the failed bombing of American Airlines Flight 63, the Millennium Plot, and the murder of Daniel Pearl."


Always nice to know that President Hussein does not consider the fella who orchestrated the slaughter of 3,000 innocent Americans, amongst others, an "enemy combatant".

Not.


MFBB.