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[PHXPhlyer]

The Rolling Stones announce release date for their new album and unveil lead single, 'Angry'
The album reveal was executed with the swaggering showmanship the Stones are famous for.

https://www.12news.com/article/news/nat ... 68981af502

LONDON, UK — The Rolling Stones are back, and they've brought a few famous friends.

“Hackney Diamonds,” the band's first album of new songs in 18 years, features guest appearances from the likes of Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder. Poignantly, it also features Charlie Watts, the stalwart Stones drummer who died in 2021 after almost six decades in the band. His drumming, recorded in 2019, features on two of the album's dozen tracks, with Steve Jordan playing on the rest.

Watts' absence lent a wistful note to the excitement of surviving Stones Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood when they came to east London’s Hackney district on Wednesday to unveil the new album and announce its release date: Oct. 20.

Of Watts, Richards said: “Of course he’s missed incredibly. But thanks to Charlie we have Steve Jordan, who was his recommendation if anything should happen to him.”

“It would have been a lot harder without Charlie’s blessing," he said.

The album reveal was executed with the swaggering showmanship the Stones are famous for. It followed a cryptic teaser campaign, in which a glittery, jagged version of the band’s iconic mouth and tongue logo was projected onto the façade of landmarks in cities around the world, including New York, London and Paris.

Hard-core fans lined up in a heatwave outside the Hackney Empire, where the band members were interviewed onstage by “The Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon in front of dozens of sweltering journalists and a global online audience.

Inside the ornate former Edwardian musical hall where Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel once performed, Jagger, 80, Richards, 79 and Wood, 76 gave details of the Stones’ first studio album of new songs since “A Bigger Bang” in 2005. The band released a set of blues covers, “Blue & Lonesome,” in 2016.

The lead single is called “Angry,” but Jagger said not all the songs are furious. The album also contains “love songs, ballads, country-type” sounds, he said.



Recorded in December and January at studios around the world, the album sees the Stones team up with Grammy-winning producer Andrew Watt, who helped assemble the starry guest list, which also includes former Stone Bill Wyman.

Jagger said Lady Gaga — who sings on "Sweet Sound of Heaven" — was recording in a next-door studio while the Stones were in Los Angeles and ended up on the album after she popped in to say hello.

“She walked in next to me and we started singing together,” Jagger told The Associated Press backstage. "She sang it live and then we went in and tidied it up a bit.”

The band screened the video for “Angry,” which has a classic mid-tempo crunchy Stones sound. The clip features “Euphoria” star Sydney Sweeney, shown cruising LA’s Sunset Boulevard in a red convertible, past billboards of the Stones from various eras.

As to why the band waited almost two decades between albums, Richards said the timing was largely down to Jagger.

“When you have a singer that wants to sing, you grab him and throw him in the studio,” Richards told the AP. He said when they did get in the studio, the songs tumbled out with “energy and urgency."

Jagger joked that the long gap between albums was due to laziness.

“I don’t want to be big-headed but we wouldn’t have put this album out if we hadn’t really liked it,” he said. “We said we had to make a record we really love ourselves.

“We are quite pleased with it, we are not big headed about it, but we hope you all like it.”

“Hackney Diamonds” is a slang term for shattered glass, and the band also teased fans with an ad in the local Hackney Gazette newspaper for a fictional glass repair business: “When you say gimme shelter, we’ll fix your shattered windows.”

Jagger said the phrase evoked “when you get your windscreen broken on Saturday night in Hackney and all the bits go on the street.”

Richards said the band hit upon the title after “flinging ideas around the table, and we went from ‘Hit and Run,' ‘Smash and Grab’ — and somehow between that we came up with 'Hackney Diamonds.'"

It was fitting, he said, because the Stones are a London band — though none of the members hails from Hackney.

Brazilian fan Taric Fioravanti, from Sao Paulo, was one of many who lined up to get a glimpse of the band.

“I love these guys,” he said. “Keith Richards is one of the biggest guitar heroes in the history of rock music.

”(And) they’re 80 years old. Most bands have stopped making new music” by that age, he said.

Founded in 1962, the Stones show no signs of planning to retire. The band played a 60th-anniversary tour of Europe in 2022, and Wood said they had an American tour “penciled in” for next year.

Wood said retirement would be “impossible.”

“You’ve got to keep playing," he said.



PP

[Karearea]

Akaroa New Zealand. Car trip from Christchurch to Akaroa [14:37]

- Years ago, I took the family to stay for a week at Oinako Bed and Breakfast which is a short distance along the road beyond the bridge seen at 7:57.
A biscuit-toss from the beach; a garden with bellbirds; an interesting little lighthouse further along the shore; a lovely place to just Be.



A brief history of the town:

Akaroa: New Zealand's French Connection [7:35]

[OneHungLow]

Listening to a BBC Radio 3 documentary about this black South African who has forged a successful musical career here in the UK.



https://www.abelselaocoe.com/

Abel Selaocoe walks into a bar in King’s Cross, London, with a small suitcase and a large, curvaceous silver case. “I’m sorry, sir, but you’re going to have to put that in the cloakroom,” the waitress says. “I can’t – it’s my life,” Selaocoe exclaims, and gives her a winning smile. She tries to insist, and watches, bemused, as he steers both cases into a corner. It is about his life that we are here to talk – his extraordinary journey from growing up in a township outside Johannesburg to becoming a classical cellist of international renown and a singer, composer and improviser of dazzling originality. Selaocoe (pronounced Se-lau-chay) has developed a music of his own into which he pours everything he is, his South African heritage and his ideas about life. His cello is a multitasker, often a percussion instrument. And when the cello is not supplying the percussion, Selaocoe uses his extraordinary voice instead: full of melodious yearning one moment, growling as if disinterred – an ancestral voice – the next.

I heard him play at Bold Tendencies, in Peckham, in a show called One-Man Medicine that could, given its effect on his audience, have been medicine for the masses. In a mulberry suit, dreadlocks swept up into a ponytail, he bent over his cello with intent concentration as if in conversation with it, his face reacting to every note: impish, frowning, radiant… His classical training seems like a safety net for the soul. At the end, the audience rose to their feet as one. Later this year, Selaocoe will perform at the Lucerne festival (for the classical elite) and at Womad. He is equally celebrated for his charismatic musicianship in both worlds. He has also recently been made an artist in residence at the Southbank Centre, and in September releases his debut album, Where Is Home (Hae Ke Kae).

Understanding I was significant has been difficult because there is a romanticising of the west in South Africa.

Settling into a sofa, Selaocoe explains that home, at the beginning, was Sebokeng, “a big township to the south of Johannesburg. I’m from zone 7 – Skelemeng.” There was a lot of singing in the house and his brother, Sammy – eight years older – played bassoon. On Saturdays, Sammy would take him to the African Cultural Organisation of South Africa, an outreach school run by Michael Masote, “the South African godfather of classical music”. Selaocoe started playing the recorder but was attracted to the cello because, he admits, it was “big” (a little boy’s fancy). The size must have seemed less of a bonus when the brothers had to lug the instrument nine miles to and from the station from which they travelled to Soweto.

The music school was popular with parents, he recalls, because it got children out of the township. But from the start, Sammy was serious about practising, and encouraged Abel to follow suit. Primary school would end at 2pm, they would walk the miles home, arrive at 4.30pm, watch a cartoon and then practise from 5pm to 8pm. Sammy told him: “Nobody goes through it with you, you have to do it yourself.” He’d add: “Just close the door, man, see what happens.”

What happened was that Selaocoe won a scholarship to attend South Africa’s equivalent to Eton: St John’s College, Johannesburg. Mary Selaocoe, his mother, did not live at home. She worked as a cleaner and lived in the quarters of a well-off family. In a YouTube mini-documentary, her employers, Rosheen and Chris de Kock, recall their disbelief on learning that their maid’s son was going to St John’s College. Their incredulity seems insulting now but could not, sadly, at that moment in South Africa’s history, be described as misplaced. Mary Selaocoe emerges as an exceptionally dedicated person: “She was raising two sets of children from different worlds: her own and those of her employer,” her son says, marvelling. She worked unflaggingly, supplementing her income by selling fruit and vegetables and sewing to support her children. He adds: “I have so much gratitude to my mother.”

At 13, Selaocoe was the only township boy at St John’s (he is 30 now), but was undaunted: “It was hugely exciting – a lifestyle of comfort in comparison with the township. And there was the prospect of making friends with people who were not like me, which was what we’d always dreamed of.” He is indebted to the school for “the habits that have kept me going. Like sportsmen, we were taught to understand when to practise, when not to, when to rest our muscles and how to understand where our motivation comes from.”

In 2010 another door opened: Selaocoe won a place at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester (where he now lives). He enjoyed it, “although there are a lot of rules I’ve had to unlearn to gain certain freedoms”. He especially cherishes the cello’s “ability to shapeshift”. Not only is it percussive, he says, it can be a “chanting” instrument. Asked about his musical tastes, he is thrown (they are wide) but picks out Bach’s C major Suite and “that sense of perspective in the Prelude – of going through all these other keys while you stay in the same space”. He sees groove as related: “If you’re a classical musician, you’ll say groove is a rhythm that repeats itself, but that is completely untrue – the perspective changes each time you do it.” And he loves ritualistic music: Tavener’s The Protecting Veil and Wagogo music from Tanzania.

His mother’s employers paid for her to come and hear her son at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall. What did she make of seeing him play? “I find this hard to answer. She was fascinated by the place but one thing she advocates for is groundedness. When she sees a lot of people, she has this idea that you can easily be taken by the current. She was really happy to see me but said: ‘Stay on the ground.’” For Selaocoe, the greatest challenge in staying grounded has been to do with self-belief: “Understanding I was significant has been difficult because there is a romanticising of the west in South Africa – it’s seen as the mecca of classical music. I needed to understand that what I possess is full of abundance, and that not many people express themselves this way. There was a lot of fear when I arrived.” When he asks himself what his musical purpose is, he finds the answer in a Zulu word: sithunyiwe. “It means ‘we have been sent by the ancestors’.”

And then came the pandemic. “There were some truly dark times where I felt cooped up. But if you come from the township, you’re taught how and where to direct hardship. For me, that meant into playing. It was like taking a long look in the mirror – the mirror was improvisation.” Every day, he still has “a few minutes of improvisational flow where I do not stop or impose judgment. It often starts with the voice, and if I don’t like it, I just carry on until I find the flow… I love improvisation because we can always have a fresh conversation. And I love composition because it’s everywhere. It’s waiting for you to take it. It’s about being conscious of what could be.”

The theme of his new album is solitude, and I want to double-check on the nature of that solitude. I’ve heard of the existence of a girlfriend, a viola player with Manchester Collective? “You do your research, man!” he laughs, but does not elaborate. How then would he answer his album’s question today – has the idea of home changed? “As an African cellist, I’ve always been looking for a home. But home is not a geographical space, it’s the places in life that empower you – and these are not always comfortable.”

It is not until the end of our conversation that Selaocoe introduces me to the cello that has slumbered in the corner throughout: “It’s a copy of an old Montagnana,” he enthuses, “made for me by [renowned cello-maker] Robin Aitchison.” He explains there is a garnish of “small grains of sand” in the wood to help the sound “come out as percussive”. When he first played this cello, it was not love at first sound because it seemed too loud. But today they are bonded: “It’s about understanding each other,” he offers. I tell him that watching him play, the cello seems a natural extension of his body, and he smiles. “That’s the hope,” he says.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/ ... ebut-album

[Karearea]

Haka is used throughout New Zealand by many, not only Māori, to demonstrate their collective thoughts. There is a haka for each of the Services, as well as the Defence Force. Units with the NZ Army have their own haka. This video shows the soldiers of 2/1 RNZIR Battalion performing their Unit haka, powerfully acknowledging the lives and feats of their fallen comrades as they come onto the Unit's parade ground. It is also an emotive farewell for they will leave via the waharoa (the carved entrance way) for the very last time.

As expressed by a commenter:

Putting the heavens on notice that a warrior is coming into their space.

2nd /1st Farewell Their Fallen Comrades With A Huge Haka [3:13]

Burnham Military Camp is the largest Army camp in the South Island. It is located 28km south of Christchurch.

Burnham Camp hosts around 1300 military and civilian personnel who work on base. 2nd/1st Battalion Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment, 3rd Combat Service Support Battalion, the New Zealand Army Band, and our New Zealand Defence Force Health School are some of the units that are based here.
....
History
Burnham Camp was established in 1923 and was rapidly developed to support NZ’s contribution to World War II. At the time it was envisaged the camp would last 15-25 years.

Between October 1939 and August 1940 Burnham was the mobilisation camp in the South Island for troops heading overseas with the main body of the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force.

The camp retained most of its WWII era and earlier buildings, including the original Industrial School. 1962 was the year that the first 1,100 National Servicemen entered the camp to begin their training.

The camp played a pivotal role in the devastating 2011 Canterbury earthquakes. At that time the main dining mess fed 3000 people at a sitting. Some of the first NZDF responders were medical, firefighting and military police personnel from Burnham Camp, who joined their civilian counterparts at numerous rescue and recovery emergencies around the city. The response became the largest humanitarian aid effort the NZDF has ever undertaken. ...

https://www.nzdf.mil.nz/army/where-we-are/burnham/

[OneHungLow]

Films like Withnail and I

‘It was a comedy without jokes’: The inside story of Withnail & I - https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente ... 05701.html




Richard E Grant is an alumni of the Michaelis School of Art drama school at UCT. Yet another person who banished his accent within nanoseconds of fetching up in perfidious Albion.

[Pinky the pilot]

Karearea; That MG shown in your post #787 looks suspiciously like the modern version of the German MG42.

According to a long deceased Friend of my Late Father, who had experienced being on the wrong end of such a weapon, the sound of them going off was scary enough!

[Karearea]

The Good, The Bad & The Rugby:

The Rugby World Cup is underway, so Tins managed to get us a meeting with the Patrons of the WRU, RFU & SRU at Windsor Castle.

Hask & Alex can't believe their luck at being invited along to have tea with Tins' mother-in-law + The Prince & Princess of Wales.

The Prince of Wales, The Princess of Wales & The Princess Royal at Windsor Castle [50:04]

[OneHungLow]

Films like this one...



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_or_High_Water_(film)

[OneHungLow]

Cosmology documentaries like these.

[OneHungLow]

More luck...

[Karearea]

^ looks good!

[PHXPhlyer]

The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
For the first time in 17 years, we've completely remade our list of the best songs ever. More than 250 artists, writers, and industry figures helped us choose a brand-new list full of historic favorites, world-changing anthems, and new classics

More like 300 when you filtre out the Rap Crap and most of the Funk and Grunge.
IMHO

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/musi ... e-1224767/

PP

[PHXPhlyer]

The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
For the first time in 17 years, we've completely remade our list of the best songs ever. More than 250 artists, writers, and industry figures helped us choose a brand-new list full of historic favorites, world-changing anthems, and new classics

More like 300 when you filtre out the Rap Crap and most of the Funk and Grunge.
IMHO

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/musi ... e-1224767/

PP

Edited to add: Very interesting the crosspollination and interaction amongst the songwriters and artists.

PP

[bob2s]

Some of these may have warranted the pilots to invest in some clean underwear.

[OneHungLow]

More people like John Conway...

[llondel]

Some of these may have warranted the pilots to invest in some clean underwear.

Judging by the number of times "*****" or variant thereof was uttered during that video, yes, plenty of clean underwear needed.

[Karearea]

I recognised this as the type appearing in Poirot, Peril at End House:

Agatha Christie's Poirot - The Internet Movie Plane Database

Classic British Aircraft - De Havilland Dragon Rapide [11:41]

[OneHungLow]

I recognised this as the type appearing in Poirot, Peril at End House:


Classic British Aircraft - De Havilland Dragon Rapide [11:41]

That database is fascinating. Thanks for posting Karearea.

[PHXPhlyer]

I already use IMDB and IMFDB (Firearms).
Now I will add in this one as well.

PP

[tango15]

Aaaaah, de Havilland! My first ever flight was in a Dragon Rapide, and later, I used to help fly mushrooms back from Dublin regularly in G-ANZP.

There is a story, (possibly apocryphal) about the Rapide in the service of the Scottish Division of BEA. The regular pilot had sent his uniform to the laundry, but had been called in to replace a sick colleague. He came in to work in civvies, did all the usual checks, and told the staff he was ready to go. However, he went and sat in the aircraft and began to read a paper. Departure time came, and people began to look at their watches. The pilot looked around and said, "Well, it doesn't look as though the pilot is going to turn up, so I'll take it myself."

This is actually an extremely good replica, that stood outside the old terminal building at Speke. (Now a Crowne Plaza Hotel). Eventually, the weather damaged it so badly that it had to be destroyed.