ASDA
A heavily
perspiring middle-
aged volcano
of a woman stood before me,
she was smiling and
it was friday afternoon
and
she said to me
in a well spoken tone,
‘I like
nothing better than to
put on
my head-phones whilst
I work,
it inspires me! I’m a web-
designer’ she brushed
some
beads of sweat from
her brow,
‘Classical music?’ I asked:
she frowned and
shook her
head and her
chins undulated
as she said,
‘I began with
The Stranglers and
then The
Clash, moved
on to the
Sex Pistols and then Joy
Division before
settling on
REM to lift
me a little’
I nodded my head
and said
‘Good taste, music
IS
the food of life’
she laughed and
her chins
wobbled as she
scooped up
the micro-wave
meals and
cakes into a
carrier-bag of
heart attack.
Benefits Supervisor Sleeping -- Lucian Freud
Guernica -- Ron English
The Asquith family were butchers based in Knottingley, West Yorkshire, who operatedd seven butcher shops in the area. A group of West Riding, Yorkshire, dairy farmers, including the Stockdale family and Craven Dairies, joined together in the 1920s as J. W Hindell Dairy Farmers Ltd., which diversified in 1949 to become Associated Dairies and Farm Stores Ltd, with Arthur Stockdale as the managing director. In 1963 Peter and Fred Asquith converted the Queens movie theater in Castleford and an indoor market at Edlington, near Doncaster, into Queens self-service supermarkets. Then they constructed a new supermarket in South Elmsall, near Pontefract on the site of the old Palace cinema. The Asquiths acquired three struggling US-owned Government Exchange Marts that had accumulated losses of £320,000 since they opened in 1964 in exchange for 20% of whatever the Asquiths could recoup as losses from the Inland Revenue; they recieved the entire amount back, thus getting the stores for free and increased GEM's £6,000 per week sales to around £60,000 per week in just six months. In 1965 they merged with Associated Dairies, under Arthur Stockdale's son Noel, to form Asda (Asquith + Dairies). By 1967 the company had moved outside of Yorkshire to set up a store in Billingham, Teesside. But in 1968 Stockdale bought out the Asquiths and the Asda Queens stores became became known solely as Asda, which was capitalized as ASDA in 1985. It was taken over by the American retail corporate giant Walmart in 1999.
ReplyDeleteIn 1972 teenagers Steve Jones (vocals), Paul Cook (drums), and Wally Nightingale(guitar) formed the Strand (sometimes called the Swankers). Two years later Malcolm McLaren, a visual artist, performer, clothes designer, and owner of the Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die boutique, became their manager, and one of his part-time employees, art student Glen Matlock, became the group's regular bassist. When McLaren relocated to New York (where he encountered the emerging punk genre led by Richard Hell of Television nd helped promote the New York Dolls) his friend Bernard Rhodes supervised the Strand and got their first gigs. After McLaren's return, in 1975, Nightingale was fired, Jones took over as guitarist, and the band started calling itself QT Jones and his Sex Pistols. Then Rhodes discovered John Lydon, wearing green hair and a hand-lettered "I Hate Pink Floyd" T-shirt held together with safety pins. Jones dubbed him Johnny Rotten, the band's new vocalist, and Rotten and Matlock began composing new songs. As they began performing more, Rotten and the rest became more outrageous, and they started attracting media attention, beginning with a reviw in the "NME" accompanied by an interview in which Jones declared, "Actually we're not into music. We're into chaos."
ReplyDeleteHoward Devoto and Pete Shelley, students at the Bolton Institute of Technology, read the article, traveled to London to see the Pistols perform, and formed the Buzzcocks; Devoto claimed, "My life changed the moment that I saw the Sex Pistols." Within weeks, the Pistols opened for the 101ers, whose front man Joe Strummer immediately converted to the new genre. In July, Strummer's new group (the Clash) and the Damned made their live debuts opening for the Sex Pistols; organized by Devoto and Shelley, the concert at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester (constructed on the site of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre) only had about 40 attendees, but they included Bernard Sumner, Ian Curtis, and Peter Hook (later of Joy Division), Mark E. Smith (later of the Fall), and Morrissey (later of the Smiths. The following month the Buzzcocks and the Clash opened for the Sex Pistols, and three days later the Pistols made their first TV appearance; they were only supposed to perform one song, "Anarchy in the U.K." but they did two more unscheduled tunes. In September they headlined McLaren's 100 Club Punk Special. This led, in October, to a contract with EMI, and they released "Anarchy in the U.K." the following month, packaged in a wordless, featureless black sleeve and promoted with a poster portraying a ripped up Union Flag safety-pinned together, with the song and band names clipped along the edges of a gaping hole in the middle. But their outrageous behavior on and off stage led to concert cancellations and public outrage, causing EMI to drop them. In February 1977 Matlock left the group and formed his own band, Rich Kids, with Midge Ure and Steve New, who had both briefly been associated with the Pistols in their early formative months. Matlock had been a crucial force in band's creativity: in the eleven months between his departure and the Pistols' demise, they composed only two songs. Rotten brought in Sid Vicious as an ally against McLaren and the other members; though he played bass with the Pistols, he was actually a drummer who had been with Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Flowers of Romance, two groups closely associated with the Pistols.
ReplyDeleteJulien Temple assembled a 25-minute mosaic of footage from various sources, much of it refilmed from television screens, to be screened at concert venues before the band took the stage. On 10 March, at a press ceremony outside Buckingham Palace, the Sex Pistols publicly signed to A&M Records, which dumped them on 16 March after cutting the "God Save the Queen" single; A&M destroyed most of the 25,000 copies. In May the band signed with Virgin Records, which released a new "God Save the Queen" disc to coincide with Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee celebrations. McLaren and several members of the band's entourage were arrested for hiring a boat for the Pistols to perform on while it sailed past Parliament two days before the queen's river procession. Though several major chains refused to carry the record, and the BBC and every independent radio station rfused to air it, the single sold more than 150,000 copies in a week and a half. The British Phonographic Institute, which oversaw the chart-compiling bureau, ordered that sales from record-company operated shops (such as Virgin's) be excluded for one week in order to keep "God save the Queen" from being listed at the top spot, though it hit number 2. Rotten told interviewers that he couldn't understand the controversy: "All we're trying to do is destroy everything." At the end of August the band toured under pseudonyms to avoid cancellation.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, the group was sporadically laying down tracks for their debut album, "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols." Due to Vicious' incompetence on bass, Matlock returned as a studio musician, though Jones did most of the bass parts on the album. Despite being banned by various chains, and refusal of the Independent Television Companies' Association and the Association of Independent Radio Contractors to carry ads for it, it climbed to no. 1. They played their last British shows in December and then embarked on a US tour that was marked by increasingly erratic behavior by Vicious: he was found in a Memphis hospital with the words "Gimme a fix" written on his chest with a marker, he called a San Antonio audience "a bunch of faggots" and struck an audience member across the head with his guitar, he received simulated oral sex on stage in Baton Rouge, and repeatedly engaged in fights. Their last show was at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom on 14 January 1978, when Rotten introduced the band's encore saying, "You'll get one number and one number only 'cause I'm a lazy bastard" and then launched into a cover of the Iggy and the Stooges' "No Fun." The band formally split 3 days later.
ReplyDeleteRotten reverted to his birth name of John Lydon and formed Public Image Ltd. with former Clash member Keith Levene and school friend Jah Wobble; they performed together until 1992. Cook, Jones, and Vicious never performed together again live after Rotten's departure, though McLaren arranged for recordings in Brazil with Jones and Cook and in Paris with Vicious for Temple's feature film, "The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle." In June, a new Sex Pistols single was released, with Vicious singing the Frank Sinatra song "My Way" over a Jones–Cook backing track and a string orchestra on one side, and Ronnie Biggs singing "No One Is Innocent" accompanied by Jones and Cook on the other. (Biggs was on the lam in Brasil for his role in the "Great Train Robbery" in 1963.) The single outsold all of those that Rotten had been on, though it only reached no. 7 on the charts. In return for agreeing to record "My Way" Vicious had demanded that McLaren sign a sheet of paper declaring that he was no longer his manager, but he let Temple film him covering "My Way" and Eddie Cochran's "Something Else" in August, which became the bigest-ever Sex Pistols single (#3). In New York he recorded "Sid Sings" with the Idols (former New York Dolls members), but his girlfriend Nancy Spungen, a sometime prostitute from New York and drug addict who introduced him to heroin, was found dead in their Chelsea Hotel room in October. Vicious was arrested for her murder, set free on bail, smashed a beer mug in the face of Patti Smith's brother, re-arrested for assault, and sent to Rikers Island jail, where he spent 55 days and underwent enforced detoxifcation. He was released on 1 February 1979 and died of a heroine overdose early the following morning. On 7 February Lydon went to court charging McLaren with nonpayment of royalties, improper usage of thename "Johnny Rotten," unfair contractual obligations, and damages for "all the criminal activities that took place." On 14 February the court put the "The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle" film and soundtrack into receivership to address the Sex Pistols' financial claims. The soundtrack was released by Virgin Records 10 days later and yielded four Top Ten singles, one more than "Never Mind the Bollocks." The movie came out in 1980, and Virgin released the group's last studio recordings, done by Jones and Cook in 1978, and the duo formed the Professionals; later Cook joined Man Raze. McLaren managed Adam and the Ants and Bow Wow Wow and, as a solo artist, released the UK's first hip-hop chart single, "Buffalo Gals." Jones played with Chequered Past, Neurotic Outsiders, and Chiefs of Relief, and recorded two solo albums. After the Rich Kids broke up in 1979, Matlock played with various bands, toured with Iggy Pop, and recorded several solo albums before joining Slinky Vagabond. In 1986, Lydon, Jones, Cook, and the estate of Sid Vicious were awarded control of the band's entire heritage. In 1996, Rotten, Jones, Cook, and Matlock reunited for a six-month tour; Temple made "The Filth and the Fury" documentary in 2000. After 2002 the group occasionally reformed. In 2006 they rejected their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but in 2010 they authorized the release of a Sex Pistols scent which (acoring to the cosmetics firm . Fragrance and Beauty, "exudes pure energy, pared down and pumped up by leather, shot through with heliotrope and brought back down to earth by a raunchy patchouli." In the 2 1/2 years of their original activity they only produced only four singles and one studio album, and "New Rose" by the Damned was the first British punk record, released a month before "Anarchy in the U.K.," the Sex Pistols were the motivating force behind the movement, directly inspiring the formation of the Clash, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Adverts, the Slits, and others.
ReplyDeleteBefore the Clash formed as a punk rock band in 1976, Mick Jones had played guitar in London SS, which had recorded a demo but had never played a live show. Paul Simonon had once auditioned as a vocalist for them, and Terry Chimes as a drummer, but London SS rejected them; Nicky Headon drummed with them for a week before quitting. London SS was managed by Bernard Rhodes. When London SS broke up in early 1976, Rhodes continued to manage Jones, who decided to form a punk band after he saw the Sex Pistols perform. At Rhodes' suggestion, he persuaded Simonon to learn to play bass. Chimes was also recruited, but he soon quit, and Keith Levene played guitar. Rhodes and Levene then persuaded Joe Strummer to quit as the rhythm guitar player in the 101'ers and join their new punk band instead. Strummer brought his old school friend Pablo LaBritain into the group to play drums, but he soon left and eventually joined 999; and Chimes rejoined. After briefly calling themselves the Weak Heartdrops and the Psychotic Negatives, Simonon came up with the band's permanent name. After less than a month of rehearsing with Strummer, the Clash made their debut supporting the Sex Pistols, but Rhodes did not book them for another show for 5 weeks. Meanwhile, Strummer and Jones began writing original music and sharing the vocal duties (though after they began recording Jones rarely sang).
ReplyDeleteTheir second performance was with the Pistols and the Buzzcocks, an event which crystallized the British punk scene into a movement, but Levene was fired a few days later; in 1978 he would form Public Image Ltd with John Lydon. Chimes left gain in November and was replaced by Rob Harper as the Clash toured in support of the Pistols. By the beginning of 1977 punk had become a major media phenomenon in the UK, and even though they had only played about 30 gigs, mostly as an opening act, the Clash signed to CBS Records for £100,000, though they had to pay for their own tours, recordings, remixes, artwork, expenses, etc., so they did not start to break even around 1982. They quickly released an eponymous album, with Chimes temporarily back on drums, which reached no. 12 on the British charts. Then the band hired Nicky "Topper" Headon on drums, another London SS alumnus, and recorded a new album, "Give 'Em Enough Rope," which hit the no. 2 spot. In August and September 1979, they recorded "London Calling," which produced their best-selling single in the UK while they were extant as a band (no. 11) and their first US hit (no. 23). Their 1982 album, "Combat Rock," again hit no. 2 in the UK and number 7 in the US. But Headon, who had written the album's biggest hit, "Rock the Casbah," was fired just before its release due to his heroin addiction. (So Chimes returned briefly until he was replaced by Pete Howard.) Jones was fired in September 1983 (he helped found General Public but left as they were recording their first album), and Nick Sheppard and Vince White were recruited as the new guitarists. Rhodes and Strummer, feuding for control, worked on the next album, "Cut the Crap,' in Munchen; most of the music was played by studio musicians, with Sheppard and White flying in later to provide guitar parts, and most of the percussion was made by drum machines. Strummer abandoned the project, and Rhodes remastered it, and the Clash finally disbanded in 1986. Soon Strummer contacted Jones in an effort to reform, but Jones had already formed Big Audio Dynamite; however, they worked together musically in 1986 in writing and production roles. In 1991 "Should I Stay or Should I Go" was re-released and became the only Clash number 1 UK single. In 1999, Strummer, Jones, and Simonon compiled a live album, "From Here to Eternity." Jones and Strummer performed three Clash songs at a benefit show by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros in 2002, and, along with Headon, they discussed a reunion show to coincide with their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but Strummer died suddenly on 22 December. In early 2008, Carbon/Silicon, a new band founded by Mick Jones and his former London SS bandmate Tony James, was joined by Headon for two songs, the first time they had performed together since 1982; the next year they joined Billy Bragg to record an early Clash B-side, "Jail Guitar Doors." Simonon and Jones also played on the title track of the Gorillaz' "Plastic Beach"album in 2010 and even joined their world tour. In 2013 Jones, Simonon, and Headon reunited for a BBC Radio 6 Music show.
ReplyDeleteIn 1974 Brian Duffy, a businessman in his mid-30s who had owned a fleet of ice cream vans and later ran The Jackpot, an off-licence (a shop licensed to sell alcoholic beverages for consumption off the premises) in Guildford, Surrey, decided to resume his long-dormant career as a jazz drummer. Calling himself Jet Black he formed the Guildford Stranglers with bass player/vocalist Jean-Jacques Burnel (a former classical guitarist), guitarist/vocalist Hugh Cornwell (a bluesman), and keyboardist/guitarist Hans Wärmling, who was replaced by keyboardist Dave Greenfield within a year. Operating out of The Jackpot, they quickly became associated with the new punk rock genre. Within a 13-month period, as the Stranglers, they released three successful albums, "Rattus Norvegicus," "No More Heroes," and "Black and White," and over four decades they scored 23 top-40 singles and 17 top-40 albums in the UK. Cornwell left the band to pursue a solo career in 1990 and was replaced by John Ellis, who had opened for the Stranglers in the 1970s as a member of The Vibrators, had filled in for Cornwell during his time in prison for drug possession in 1980, had worked with Burnel and Greenfield in their Purple Helmets side-project, and had been been touring with the Stranglers as a backup guitarist. Then Paul Roberts was recruited for vocals. In 2000 Ellis left the band and was replaced by Baz Warne, who sang in concerts the numbers that Cornwell had done, while Burnel resumed vocals on his old songs. As Black aged his health deteriorated, and he was often replaced on tour by Jim Macaulay. In 2013 Macaulay usually played the first half and Black the second, but for the North America tour Macaulay did the entire show. In 2016 Black made special appearances with the group, playing only four-song sets. He stopped performing altogether in 2015.
ReplyDeleteOn 20 July 1976, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Terry Mason saw the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and the Buzzcocks at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall. The following day Hook borrowed £35 from his mother to buy his first bass guitar; Sumner bought a guitar, Mason bought a drum kit, and the three friends formed a band. After advertising for a vocalist in the local Virgin Records shop, they hired Ian Curtis. Two days before their initial gig they hired Tony Tabac to play drums. Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks suggested that they name themselves Warsaw (after David Bowie's song "Warszawa") just before their first performance. However, Mason stopped performing and took over the band's management, and Tabac was replaced in June 1977 by Steve Brotherdale, who simultaneously played in the punk band Panik; Brotherdale persuaded Curtis to audition for Panik but could not get him to quit Warsaw, and after cutting some demo tracks Brotherdale was replaced by Stephen Morris, who was the only respondent to their ad. To avoid confusion with the London punk band Warsaw Pakt, in 1978 the band renamed themselves Joy Division, named after the Freudenabteilung concentration camp brothels in World War II, as described in Ka-tzetnik 135633's 1955 novel. In December they recorded their debut EP, "An Ideal for Living." In April 1979 they played at Manchester's Rafters Club, where the resident DJ Rob Gretton took over as their manager and local TV personality Tony Wilson agreed to showcase them on his program, and he soon signed them to his new Factory Records label as well, and they recorded their first album, "Unknown Pleasures," that same month. In October they supported the Buzzcocks on tour. After a European tour in January they recorded their second album, "Closer," in March. However, Curtis began having severe epleptic fits and in April tried to kill himself with an overdose of his anti-seizure medication, phenobarbitone. The next night he performed for part of a set, but when he was relieved by Simon Topping of A Certain Ratio the crowd started throwing bottles on the stage and Gretton leapt punching into the crowd. The band's last show was on 2 May. On 17 May, the night before they were to fly to the US, Curtis visited his estranged wife in an effort to persuade her to stop her divorce proceedings. He spent the night there and hanged himself in the kitchen the following morning. In June the band's single "Love Will Tear Us Apart" was released and climbed to #13, and "Closer" came out in July.
ReplyDeleteAt Gretton's suggestion, the bereft survivors renamed themselves New Order as a trio, with Sumner assuming vocal duties. In October, Getton hired Morris's girlfriend Gillian Gilbert as keyboardist and second guitarist (she had been a member of the Inadequates and had filld in for Curtis on one occasion when he had ben unable to play.) Their first single, "Ceremony," had been played for the first time at the final Joy Division concert and was issued with another Curtis tune. In November 1981 they released the "Movement" album, much in the same vein as their old Joy Division sound. However, in New York that year they had been introduced to post-disco, freestyle, and electro music, and the band started to listen to Italian disco to cheer themselves up while Morris taught himself drum programming. The singles that followed, "Everything's Gone Green" and "Temptation," and the 1983 album "Power, Corruption & Lies" saw a change in direction toward dance music. In May 1982 Factory Records and New Order opened the UK's first superclub, the Haçienda, and the band introduced the venue with a 23-minute instrumental piece "Prime 5 8 6" (which would be released 15 years later as "Video 5 8 6"). In 1986 New Order headlined a line-up that included the Smiths, the Fall, and A Certain Ratio during the Festival of the Tenth Summer at Manchester's G-Mex. Soon the group became influence by the Balearic dance music of Ibiza, and acid house. During the summer of 1989, New Order toured with Public Image Ltd, Throwing Muses, and The Sugarcubes, while the group members began engaging in side projecsts such as Sumner's teaming up with Johnny Marr in Electronic and Hook with Davyth Hicks in Revenge; Morris and Gilbert began to work on TV theme production. The band's only #1 song, co-written with comedian Keith Allen, was 1990's "World in Motion," the official song of the national football team's World Cup campaign. Factory went bankrupt in 1992, and New Order and Morris and Gilbert as The Other Two signed with London Records. But even as New Order evolved, Joy Division outtakes and live material continued to be released, beginning with "Still" in 1981, New Order's "Substance" in 1988, and "Permanent" in 1995. In 1998 the band reconvened after a five-yeat hiatus and decided to resume playing both Joy Division and New Order songs. In 2001 Gilbert quit to take care of her children and was replaced by Phil Cunningham of Bad Lieutenant, formed in 2009 by Bernard Sumner; Moris had drummed on their "Never Cry Another Tear" album. The band stopped playing concerts in 2006, and in 2007 Hook announced that he had left the group; two years later Sumner revealed that he no longer wished to make music as New Order. But in 2011 the group (including Gilbert but without Hook, who was replaced by Bad Lieutenant bassist Tom Chapman) reunited; their first Hookless album, "Music Complete," was released. In 2015 Hook sued his former bandmates for unpaid royalties.
ReplyDeleteR.E.M. is credited with marking the point when post-punk turned into alternative rock. In 1980, Michael Stipe met Peter Buck when Buck worked at Wuxtry Records, in Athens, Georgia. Soon after they met fellow University of Georgia students Mike Mills and Bill Berry, who had played music together since high school. Stipe randomly chose a name from the dictionary for their new band: R.E.M. (rapid eye movement, a sleep stage). At a gig in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, they inspired record store clerk Jefferson Holt to quit his job and move to Athens to manage them. During the summer of 1981, R.E.M. recorded "Radio Free Europe" at producer Mitch Easter's Drive-In Studios in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; it was released by Hib-Tone, a small local label, with an initial pressing of only 1,000 copies, but garnered critical acclaim and was listed as one of the 10 best singles of the year by "The New York Times." In October, Easter recorded their "Chronic Town" EP, which the British label I.R.S. Records put out the following August as its first US release. In 1983 they released their debut album, "Murmur," again produced by Easter. It only sold 200,000 albums, reaching no. 36 on the Billboard album chart, and "Rolling Stone" proclaimed it record of the year. Easter then did their follow-up album, "Reckoning" (1984), which again received critical praise but only reached 91 on the British charts, though it made it to 27 in the US. Their next album, "Fables of the Reconstruction" (1985), was recorded in the UK, produced by Joe Boyd, but it was poorly received despite extensive touring in support. Don Gehman did "Lifes Rich Pageant" (1986), which peaked at no. 21 on the Billboard album chart, and I.R.S. released "Dead Letter Office," a compilation of B-sides and unreleased tracks. At Gehman's suggestion, Scott Litt produced the band's next five albums. "Document" (1987) was their breakthrough album, selling 1 nilion copies and providing the single, "The One I Love," which charted in the Top 20 in the US, the UK, and Canada.
ReplyDeleteWhen the I.R.S. contract expired the band switched to Warner Bros. Records and released "Green" (1988), which sold 4 million copies worldwide. After a long hiatus, its first break from touring since its formation, R.E.M. reconvened in 1990 to record "Out of Time;" released in March 1991, it topped the US and UK charts, sold 12 million copies worldwide, and spawned the single "Losing My Religion," which reached #4 on the Billboard charts. The album and single garnered 7 Grammy nominations and won three, for Best Alternative Music Album, Best Short Form Music Video, and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. Late in 1992 the band released "Automatic for the People," which Buck and Mills regarded as their finest work; it sold 15 million copies. They followed up with "Monster" (1994), which sold 9 million copies and topped the UK and US charts .In January 1995 they began their first tour in six years, but on 1 March Berry collapsed on stage due to a brain aneurysm, though he was fully recovered within a month; in July, Mills underwent abdominal surgery to remove an intestinal adhesion; in August, Stipe had an emergency surgery to repair a hernia. But they nevertheless recorded moost of their next album, "New Adventures in Hi-Fi." In 1996, R.E.M. re-signed with Warner Bros. for US$80 million, at the time the most expensive recording contract in history, but though "New Adventures" debuted at no. two in the US and no. one in the UK, it only sold 5 million copies, and the band replaced Holt with the group's lawyer Bertis Downs. In April 1997 the band began to record demos for its next album. But just as the sessions were due to begin in October, Berry decided to quit, so Stipe, Buck, and Mills continued as a trio. As Stipe remarked, "I guess a three-legged dog is still a dog. It just has to learn to run differently." Recording resumed in February with Pat McCarthy as producer; Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin and Beck's touring drummer Joey Waronker to stand in for Berry. But "Up" only sold 900,000 copies in the US (2 million worldwide). The next year they scored "Man on the Moon," a film biography of comedian Andy Kaufman, and its soundtrack provided a single "The Great Beyond" which only reached no. 57 on the American pop charts but became the band's highest-charting single in the UK (no. 3). "Reveal" (2001) featured drumming by Waronker and contributions by Scott McCaughey (a co-founder of the band The Minus 5 with Buck) and Posies founder Ken Stringfellow, but its global sales only reached about 4 million, though the single "Imitation of Life" reached no. 6 in the UK. In 2003, in Raleigh, North Carolina, Berry performed backing vocals on "Radio Free Europe" and drummed on "Permanent Vacation." Joined by Bill Rieflin on drums, who had previously been a member of industrial music acts such as Ministry and Pigface, R.E.M. released "Around the Sun" in 2004, which only reached 13 on the Billboard charts, though the single "Leaving New York" was a Top 5 hit in the UK. Berry returned again in 2006 for the band's induction into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame and for a cover of John Lennon's "#9 Dream" for" Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur" and in 2007 he returned for the group's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. "Accelerate" came out in early 2008 and the band made their last tour. In 2011 they recorded their last album, "Collapse into Now," which debuted at no. 5 on the Billboard 200. They announced their dissolution as a band in September 2011, though they oversaw "Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982–2011" in Novemeber, which collecting songs from their I.R.S. and Warner Bros. years plus three songs from their final studio recordings.
ReplyDeleteOn 26 April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, Kampfgeschwader 53 (the Condor Legion) and the Aviazione Legionaria continuously bombed for three hours the Basque town of Gernika in the province of Bizkaia. It was at a major crossroads 10 km from the front lines, between those lines and Bilbao; any Republican retreat towards Bilbao or any Nationalist advance towards Bilbao had to pass through Gernika. The action was at the request of the Nationalist commander Francisco Franco to overthrow the Basque and Spanish Republican governments; 1,654 civilians were killed. Most of the men were away, engaged in fighting on behalf of the Republicans, so the town was populated mostly by women and children; since it was a market day they were concentrated in the town center and unable to escape because the roads were blocked by debris. In his journal the commander of the operation, Wolfram von Richthofen, wrote that his Junkers were unable to identify the targeted roads and bridge due to smoke from the preliminary attack, "so they just dropped everything right into the center. The 250s toppled a number of houses and destroyed the water mains. The incendiaries now could spread and become effective. The materials of the houses: tile roofs, wooden porches, and half-timbering resulted in complete annihilation." George Steer reported in "The Times" on 28 April that "Guernica, the most ancient town of the Basques and the centre of their cultural tradition, was completely destroyed yesterday afternoon by insurgent air raiders. The bombardment of this open town far behind the lines occupied precisely three hours and a quarter, during which a powerful fleet of aeroplanes ... did not cease unloading on the town bombs weighing from 1,000 lbs. downwards and, it is calculated, more than 3,000 two-pounder aluminium incendiary projectiles. The fighters, meanwhile, plunged low from above the centre of the town to machinegun those of the civilian population who had taken refuge in the fields."
ReplyDeleteIn January the Spanish Republican government had commissioned Pablo Picasso to create a large mural for the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris, where he acted as the Honorary Director-in-Exile of the Prado Museum. At first Picasso intended to depict an artistic studio, but the poet Juan Larrea urged him to make the bombing his subject. Picasso began sketching the painting's preliminary drawings on 1 May, and he finished the work on 4 June. The mural measures 3.49 m (11 ft 5 in) X 7.76 m (25 ft 6 in) and uses only gray, black, and white. "Guernica" was accompanied Paul Éluard's poem “La victoire de Guernica”
ReplyDeleteI
High society of shacks
Of night and fields
II
Faces fit for the fire fit for background
For refusal for night for insults for blows
III
Faces fit for all
Thus the void fixed upon you
Your death will serve for example
IV
Death heart overturned
V
They’ve made you pay for bread
Sky earth water sleep
And wretchedness
With your life
VI
They said they wanted good intelligence
They reasoned the strong judged the mad
Gave alms divided a sou in two
Greeted the corpses
Showered themselves with politeness
VII
They persevere they exaggerate they are not of our world
VIII
Women children have the same treasure
Fresh Spring leaves and pure milk
And duration
In their pure eyes
IX
Women children have the same treasure
In the eyes
Men defend it as they may
X
Women children have the same red roses
In the eyes
Each shows blood
XI
Fear and courage to live and die
Death so hard so easy
XII
Men for whom this treasure was sung
Men for whom this treasure was wasted
XIII
Real men for whom despair
Feeds the devouring fire of hope
Let us open together the last flower of futurity
XIV
Pariahs death earth and the hideousness
Of our enemies have the color
Of our night monotonous
We shall get the better of them.
After its display at the World's Fair in July it toured to rise funds for war relief. Picasso had left his native Spain in 1934 and never returned, and he refused to allow "Guernica" to be sent there until liberty and democracy were restored there; he continued to live in Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II; when a German officer saw a photo of "Guernica" in his apartment, he asked Picasso, "Did you do that?" Picasso responded, "No, you did." Later, at Picasso's request, the painting was entrusted to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. By 1968 Franco had expressed interest in having "Guernica" come to Spain, but Picasso refused. The painter died in 1973, the dictator in 1975, and Spain becme a constitutional monarchy. MoMA claimed that Picasso's wishes for the restoration of a republic had not been met but finally relented in 1981. Before being sent to a purpose-built gallery at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid in 1992, it was housed behind bomb-and bullet-proof glass screens at the Casón del Buen Retiro in time to celebrate the centenary of Picasso's birth; in its first year there it was visited by almost a million people. Nelson Rockefeller tried unsuccessfully to buy the painting from Picasso, so he commissioned a tapestry copy in 1955; it was loaned to the UN in 1985 and displayed at the entrance to the Security Council room.