Dub dot dash

Tribal thunder downunder
Lance Strickland (former drummer for SPUD, King Loser, now based in Oz) has got a blog over here. Got some good r'n'r stories on there, like the time SPUD supported Sonic Youth and Lance incurred the wrath of Kim Gordon by "1. I asked Kim about the song Steve Albini wrote called Kim Gordon's panties. 2. I asked Kim for her autograph." Nice.

ADDED just quietly, the programme for this year's Film Festival may not be out til Wednesday, but it's already online over here at the official site.

Skate or die
Edwards presents 'Retro Skate', an exhibition covering skateboarding in Aotearoa from 1976 to 2005 - photos, posters, memorabilia, on display at Boom shop, Queen's Arcade, at the bottom of Queen St, from June 9 to 23.


Brian Eno thinks Arab music will be the next wave. I'd love it if American kids were listening to Muslim music," he said. "Wouldn't that piss their parents off?" (via Coolfer)


Jerry Casale of Devo interview
Vale of ReSearch puts out a semi regular newsletter that's well worth reading. He included this excerpt from a recent interview with Devo's Jerry Casale from Vermont Review.

VR: Going back to your early days. You were present at the Kent State shootings in 1970. How did that day affect you?
JC: Whatever I would say would probably not at all touch upon the significance or gravity of the situation at this point of time--it would probably sound trite or glib. All I can tell you is that it completely and utterly changed my life. I was a white hippie boy and then I saw exit wounds from M1 rifles out of the backs of two people I knew. Two of the four people who were killed, Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause, were my friends. We were all running our asses off from these motherf&*$#ers. It was total, utter bulls--t. Live ammunition and gasmasks - none of us knew, none of us could have imagined... They shot into a crowd that was running away from them! I sopped being a hippie and I started to develop the idea of devolution. I got real, real p--d off. VR: Does Neil young's "Ohio" strike close to your heart?
JC: Of course. It was strange that the first person that we met, as Devo emerged, was Neil Young. He asked us to be in his movie, The Human Highway. It was so strange - San Francisco in 1977. Talk about life being karmic, small and cyclical - it's absolutely true. In fact I just got a call from a person organizing a 30th Anniversary commemoration. Noam Chomsky will be there and I may go talk there if I can get away. I still remember it so crystal clear, like a dream you will never forget . . . or a nightmare. I still remember every moment. It kind of went in slow motion like a car accident. VR: You said that the Kent State shooting sort of served as a catalyst for your theory of Devolution, which spawned Devo--
JC: Absolutely. Until then I was a hippie. I thought that the world is essentially good. If people were evil, there was justice...and that the law mattered. All of those silly naïve things. I saw the depths of the horrors and lies and the evil. The paper that evening, the Akron Beacon Journal, said that students were running around armed and that officers had been hurt. So deputy sheriffs went out and deputized citizens. They drove around with shotguns and there was martial law for ten days. 7 PM curfew. It was open season on the students. We lived in fear. Helicopters surrounding the city with hourly rotating runs out to the West Side and back downtown. All first amendment rights are suspended at the instant the governor gives the order. All of the class-action suits by the parents of the slain students were all dismissed out of court, because once the governor announced martial law, they had no right to assemble.

Link (via Boing boing)


Stevie Wonder keeps Motown waiting for his latest album, his first in a decade...
"It's a rainy April night in New York, and Sylvia Rhone, the new CEO of Motown Records, is lounging on an oversize bed and whispering coquettishly in the ear of her label's legendary star Stevie Wonder. They are at the chic nightclub b.e.d celebrating the birthday of his daughter Aisha Morris, whose arrival 30 years ago inspired his classic "Isn't She Lovely." But Rhone seems fixated instead on trying to charm Wonder into finally delivering "A Time to Love," his first studio album in a decade.

She'd already managed to coax the first radio single from him, "So What the Fuss." Rhone had also begun negotiations for a television special and visited Wal-Mart and Best Buy headquarters to trumpet Wonder's return. She'd spent some $200,000 for billboards. Yet on May 3, when the record was slated to go on sale, Wonder was still refining it. Alas, the CD won't even reach stores for the rescheduled release this week on June 14." More in Newsweek.


GELDOF, THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT
Pink Floyd to reform for Live8. Oh please, no.