from Editor and Publisher:

Trio of Papers Pull Today's 'Boondocks' Referring to Bush and Drugs

NEW YORK - At least three of the approximately 300 "Boondocks" clients dropped today's strip mentioning President Bush's alleged former drug use.

Aaron McGruder's comic showed one character saying: "Bush got recorded admitting that he smoked weed." Another character replies: "Maybe he smoked it to take the edge off the coke."

According to Universal Press Syndicate, newspapers pulling today's strip included The Detroit News and the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. The Poynter Institute's Romenesko site reported that the Chicago Tribune also dropped today's "Boondocks," with the paper saying the comic "presents inaccurate information as fact."

Universal said the Star Tribune also plans to drop tomorrow's "Boondocks," which again refers to Bush's alleged former drug use.

The syndicate further noted that The Miami Herald plans to pull "The Boondocks" when McGruder addresses a different topic this Friday and Saturday; Universal declined to say what that topic will be.

"We respect the rights of editors to substitute strips or not run them if they feel a comic is inappropriate," said Kathie Kerr, director of communications at Universal.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 05:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

We can't decide who we dislike more, rightwing anorexic douchebag Ann Coulter or the geriatric anti-socialite Liz Smith, so we'll just call it a draw.

Hats off to the usually apolitical Gawker for refreshing Liz Smith's botox-infected memory on Ann Coulter.

Liz Smith in today's NYPost:
"Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn," wrote Gore Vidal. Well, in that case, I suppose we can say the conservative writer Ann Coulter has lots of style."

And Ann Coulter in 2001:
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Our favorite blog, catch.com is back. Go say hello:

We missed you guys!

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 09:45 AM | Permalink

We're looking for an Williamsburg-based intern (or two) with experience in writing about food and/or bars. If this is you and you have some clips, write us here.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 05:10 PM | Permalink

We don't know if this is terrifying or really amusing.
Click on image to see Tony's collections.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 05:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Animal Collective at Todd P's club Llano Estacado

A lot of people have been asking us about Todd P's new space The Llano Estacado by the river in Williamsburg (NE Corner of Metropolitan & River St). We finally had a chance to investigate last night at the sold out Animal Collective show (check them out tonight at The Bowery Ballroom). It's a huge windowless 2-level warehouse space with its main stage in the basement. Piss before you arrive, there's a scary makeshift toilet behind a black plastic curtain. The upstairs has a smaller stage and there was some local art hanging. The club is impressively huge and refreshingly lo-fi. Definitely a DIY experiment. There were extension cords hanging from the ceiling. The sound was great even though we felt like we were in some weird post apocalyptic dungeon. Click here to go to promoter and owner Todd P's website.

Here's Todd's explanation of the name:
"The Llano Estacado is pronounced law-no ez-tuh-caw-doh, it's named after a region of West Texas, where the desert meets the Great Plains, and also a place where they willfully mispronounce Spanish words - hence the "L" sound at the beginning rather than a "Y" sound. The name was given by the conquistador Coronado, it translates as "the staked plain," referring (by legend) to the fact that the Spanish drove stakes into the ground to mark where they were, for lack of any natural landmarks."

Click here for upcoming shows and ticket info

more photos and a review of the show after the jump....

the main room downstairs

upstairs stage

we don't know if we were happy to see people smoking or annoyed

upstairs gallery

Opening act, the Icelandic Nix Noltes

animal collective

one of the 5 million hipsters in attendence

Animal Collective - Llano Estacado, 2.25.05
Review by Jeff Campbell

The opening band, Storsveit Nix Noltes, was pretty cool. They were from Iceland. There were like 9 people in the group (violin, cello, bass, trumpet, accordian, two or three guitars, and drums). To me, they sounded like traditional Hungarian folk music. It kind of reminded me of the Secret Chiefs 3's middle-eastern influenced melodies, but Nix Noltes seemed totally genuine and never really broke away from the traditional rhythms. Good stuff.

Animal Collective were a little disappointing, I thought. They were
really good, but I was hoping they would blow my mind or something.
Avey Tare had a cool delay effect on his voice, but it was like that
for their entire set. Same with the guitars...too spacey for my taste. I really enjoy the textures and harmonies on their records but there wasn't much of that last night. They were warmly received though... and it was a big crowd.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This is really disturbing. Click on the picture to read the full story. (Thanks shlonkombakazay)

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

photos by Jeff Campbell

The Animal Collective discuss Vashti Bunyan, drugs, Black Dice, George Bush, and their upcoming "love" record
[Don't miss them live in NY Feb. 24,25]

Following the release of their hugely popular Sung Tongs in 2004, The Animal Collective have been described in countless ways. Hallucinogenic campfire music. Cut-and-paste pop. Avante Folk. And don't forget the obligatory Brian Wilson comparisons. Animal Collective are a difficult band to categorize. Their sound is constantly evolving. Their sound is consistently unique.

The foursome met in Baltimore, where they attended high school together and have been good friends ever since. Like the Elephant Six collective, they record in various incarnations and sometimes even release solo records under the Animal Collective umbrella. The communal approach they take to their music seems in harmony with their humble personalities and their otherworldly aesthetic.

Adding to their mystique, they often wear animal masks on stage, but "only when [they] feel like it" to avoid being reduced to a gimmick.

Most of the members of the Animal Collective have aliases. David Portner goes by Avey Tare. Noah Lennox is Panda Bear. Brian Weitz is Geologist. And Conrad Deaken simply goes by Deaken. Though Noah is often credited as the primary songwriter (his solo release as Panda Bear last year was warmly received by critics) they insist the Collective has no leader. They have their own label, Paw Tracks, though their most recent releases have been with Fatcat.

We met with Avey Tare (above left) and Geologist (above right) at Union Square on an unseasonably warm day in early February. Avey lives in Brooklyn and went to NYU. Geologist was visiting from D.C. He received his undergrad at Columbia.

Avey Tare was wearing a shark tooth necklace. He had mysterious scratches on his hand which had to be the work of a cat or perhaps some more mysterious creature conjured from the netherworlds of their music. They were friendly and articulate, if somewhat aloof, and their comfort with one another made it obvious that they were old and dear friends.

Don't miss their shows this week:

February 24th - SOLD OUT
Storsveit Nix Noltes
Animal Collective
@ THE LLANO ESTACADO
NE Corner of Metropolitan Ave and River St. (in Williamsburg, Brooklyn) 8pm

February 25th
Jah Division
Storsveit Nix Noltes
Animal Collective
Bowery Ballroom (Manhattan) 8pm

***********************************************

People always describe your sound as being psychedelic. Are drugs a part of your music?

AVEY TARE: We record sober, mostly. It's important for us to get things to sound exactly the way we want and recording comes down to really concentrating on what we're doing.
GEOLOGIST: It's work.

How long has the band been playing together as The Animal Collective?

AVEY TARE: Well, as the Animal Collective we've been playing for about three or four years. We used to just call ourselves by our individual aliases, but as we began to play together more on the records it became easier to just go by The Animal Collective.

How did you come up with all of your aliases?



AVEY TARE: Mine is just Davey without the D. And then "Tare" is, like, tearing the name apart, only with a different spelling. A lot of people think it has something to do with "avatar" but I didn't even know what that word meant when I came up with Avey Tare. Noah's always used Panda Bear.... I don't know why....
GEOLOGIST: We all used to make 4 track tapes and the first tape he made he drew a panda bear on the cover.

How about Geologist?

GEOLOGIST: I studied science in college. Somebody thought I studied Geology even though I never did. Anyway it just kind of stuck after that.

Do you have any plans to work with Black Dice again?

AVEY TARE: We haven't talked about anything. We're both sort of on our own schedules.

Are you tight with them?

AVEY TARE: Yeah.
GEOLOGIST: Yeah, we're all really good friends.
AVEY TARE: I used to work with this guy who was gonna put out one of their records and he knew I recorded music. He asked me to record a bunch of their songs. It's called Cold Hands. After that, we started hanging out a lot. They were the first people in New York we felt like we were on the same wavelength with. It was cool just to hang out with them. I've lived with Eric [Copeland of Black Dice] for four years now.

What do your live shows involve? I've heard there's a lot of improv and you play one continuous song.

GEOLOGIST: It's not improv.
AVEY TARE: I think it comes off sounding like improv. We bleed the edges together. It's hard to tell where one song ends and another begins.

How have your live shows been received? I've read there were some conflicts with unreceptive crowds at some of your early shows.

AVEY TARE: Yeah, on one of our first tours, we were actually with Black Dice and there were a bunch of kids [in the audience] who thought they were 1977 Sex Pistols punks. I guess they were looking for a band that had more melodies and vocals. Whereas our focus was more about sounds, space, and environments.
GEOLOGIST: We cleared the room a bunch of times. The second band wouldn't have anyone there watching them.
AVEY TARE: But we play for ourselves when it comes down to it.

Did anyone ever get hostile?

AVEY TARE: We've had stuff thrown at us and we've heard comments like "who the fuck do they think they are, what is this?" But we came to terms with the fact early on that we may not be everyone's favorite band.

But you were a lot of people's favorite band after releasing Sung Tongs. Did the attention surprise you?

AVEY TARE: I think it's always a surprise because every record we do is different from the last one.

Do you enjoy touring?

We're all just the type of people who don't like that lifestyle. Being at home is really important to us. Noah and I toured in 2003 for like three months straight. By the end, we had just had it with each other. The tours we do now are shorter. We won't do a tour that's more than two weeks.

Do you have other jobs?

AVEY TARE: I don't
GEOLOGIST: I'm doing other stuff right now. We could probably afford to live off the band now, but poorly.

Will all four members of the Collective be on the next release?

GEOLOGIST: Yeah. But I'm not on the EP [out on Fat Cat - May 31]. They did it in Europe and I had to work.
AVEY TARE: We met this folk singer, well she's not really a folk singer, she's more of a cult psychedelic singer, Vashti Bunyan. She put out this record that's been one of my favorites for like six years now ever since it got reissued. And we happened to go on tour with this guy who had played with her before. So when we were in Scotland he was like do you want to go out to eat an meet her and we were totally psyched. We started a small friendship and asked her if she wanted to record some songs with us. We had some songs left over from Sung Tongs that we didn't get to record and thought they'd be great with her singing. Fat Cat got some studio time for us and we went in for a weekend and recorded three songs with her. The EP will be similar to Sung Tongs.
GEOLOGIST: It's mellower
AVEY TARE: Yeah, its mellower. And its got Vashti on the vocals.

Was Vashti really into it?

AVEY TARE: She's really shy as a singer so we had to push her. We just kept telling her that her voice is really amazing.

Does the Collective still hang out together or do you see too much of each other professionally?

GEOLOGIST: We're all close friends
AVEY TARE: Yeah, we try not to worry about the band so much and to just be friends.

Are you nervous about your upcoming releases given the amazing press you got on Sung Tongs? Your fans definitely have high expectations.

AVEY TARE: From the bands we like, we always expect something different with each new release. We would always want to do the same and just hope our fans will follow us. It's great that Sung Tongs got us some new fans because now we can bring those people with us and maybe they'll be more open too stuff they wouldn't have normally listened to.
GEOLOGIST: Yeah, and we normally do stuff backwards. We play songs live for a long time and then we release them. As opposed to bands who record a record and then go on tour to support it. Sung Tongs brought out a lot of new fans and some of them were surprised when they didn't see us playing with acoustic guitars on stage, but they were still stoked. Some people will be turned off by the new record if it doesn't sound like Sung Tongs but what can you do? Some people will always be turned off, no matter what you do.

So will you next full length release from The Animal Collective be something totally different?

GEOLOGIST: Yeah, it's gonna be the stuff we're playing live now. It's going to be mostly electric.
AVEY TARE: It's still song and melody oriented but maybe a bit more textured. It's our love record. It's all love songs.

So you're doing some slow jams?

AVEY TARE: Yeah, lots of slow jams. It will be the make-out record of the year.

Here's a question we always ask. What was your first concert?

AVEY TARE: Jackson Five
GEOLOGIST: Beach Boys

Would you ever let your music be played on the O.C. or in a Volkswagen commercial?

GEOLOGIST: I'm not sure about the O.C. My girlfriend watches that but I think its pretty bad.

So you'd be reluctant?

GEOLOGIST: I think I would be.
AVEY TARE: I don't even know the show you're talking about....

It's like 90210 for the next generation

AVEY TARE: ...but I suppose if someone approached us it would come down to what the company was about. The best thing about those opportunities, besides the money which I don't think it would be about for us, is the opportunity for people who wouldn't normally hear your music to be exposed to it.

Is there any public figure you have a lot of respect for?

AVEY TARE: Tom Cruise does everything right. (laughter)

On the flip, is there anyone you want to give a big fuck you to?

AVEY TARE: George Bush
GEOLOGIST: Yeah

I think we're unanimous there. Would The Collective ever do a political record?

GEOLOGIST: No. Some of us are political and others aren't. There's enough bands already doing political records. We got asked to do a show in support of John Kerry but couldn't do it. It was out in LA.
AVEY TARE: If it was a show to help the environment, we'd get involved. I guess that's our biggest issue.
GEOLOGIST: Definitely

So I can't resist a Barbara Walters-esque question. If you could be any animal what would it be?

AVEY TARE: Crocodile for sure.
GEOLOGIST: Shark, I guess. Or maybe something more playful and smart.

So why did you decide to name yourselves the Animal Collective anyway?

AVEY TARE: We've been asking ourselves that all along. It was the only name that encompassed what we wanted to do. And we used to run our own label called Animal. I don't know why, the name just seemed to fit.

--Interview by Robert Lanham

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 07:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

Korn guitarist finds God, leaves band

NEW YORK (Billboard) -- Korn guitarist Brian "Head" Welch has parted ways with the hard rock act, citing a recent religious awakening.

Welch broke the news Sunday on Bakersfield, California, station KRAB-FM.

"I had it in my heart to come here and explain to you," Welch said. "I'm good friends with Korn. I love those guys, and they love me, and they're very happy for me."

Addressing the aggressive tone of the music he made with Korn, Welch said, "Anger is a good thing, and if kids want to listen to Korn, good, but there's happiness after the anger. I'm going to show it through my actions how much I love my fans."

Welch added that he would be appearing at a local church on February 27, during which time he would "speak (about) how I got to this place in my life, and I'll answer all your questions."

On its official Web site (http://www.korn.com), Korn's remaining members said they respect Welch's wishes and hope "he finds the happiness he is searching for." The group is in the studio working on a new album, due in September, which will be its first since fulfilling its contract with Epic last year.

For now, no replacement for Welch has been named, nor has a new label home for the band.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

The New Yorker recently ran a very important, profoundly insightful, and achingly disturbing story on America's covert torture outsourcing program. It's long, like all of the New Yorker's stories, but worth reading every word. It's the most important story written by an American magazine since Seymour Hersch revealed the Abu Ghraib scandal. In case you missed it, Truthout has the full printable version, here:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/020905M.shtml

This one's too important to miss.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 10:04 AM | Permalink

We don't know if this guy actually plans on eating Toby, his cute little bunny, but what a great idea.

click her to visit SaveToby.com and read the whole story

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Check it out. This proves to be a great show:

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 01:13 PM | Permalink

From The Guardian:
A selection of the best-remembered quotes from the master of the one-liner

Hunter S Thompson on work ...

"Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism."

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

"Publishers are notoriously slothful about numbers, unless they're attached to dollar signs - unlike journalists, quarterbacks, and felony criminal defendants who tend to be keenly aware of numbers at all times."

"I have no taste for either poverty or honest labour, so writing is the only recourse left for me."

"I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like fucking, which is only fun for amateurs. Old whores don't do much giggling."

"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours."

keep reading

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 10:12 AM | Permalink

Hunter S. Thompson commits suicide:

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2723492,00.html

RIP Hunter. You are an inspiration.

WRITE YOUR OWN EULOGY IN COMMENTS

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 12:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

by Alexander Lauence
Bands are getting younger and younger these days. Smoosh are two sisters from Seattle who are ten and twelve years old. Their names are Asya and Chloe. With their combined ages, they are still younger than Joanna Newsom. Asya sings and plays keyboards. Chloe plays drums. ROCKRGRL describes them this way: "Imagine a stripped-down version of the first side of Pet Sounds (before Brian Wilson gets cynical) and you have some clue to Smoosh's sound. Musically they more than hold their own." Their effortless talent and imagination is astounding. This is a band that relies on instinct and plays music because it is fun. Needless to say, they're unaffected by the demands of indie cool.

Thus far, Smoosh has played shows with Pearl Jam, Cat Power, Death Cab For Cutie, Sleater-Kinney and Rilo Kiley.

Smoosh started about four years ago, when Chloe's drum teacher, Jason McGerr, the drummer of Death Cab for Cutie, encouraged her to begin playing more seriously. Her sister just happened to have some songs and energy. Years later their demo got around and was played on the radio station KEXP. Soon they were signed to record label Pattern 25. Their album came out in September 2004. I spoke to them on the phone during a lull before touring and recording their second album. I had to call them at 4pm because they didn't get home from school before then.

Their album, She Like Electric is out now. There have been rave reviews in Blender, Tigerbeat, and Alt Press. Their album was The Village Voice's #1 most overlooked record of 2004. Look for the band on the cover of magazines and TV this Spring. They are going to be on CNN with Wolf Blitzer very soon. I spoke to Asya and Chloe right before their big tour with Mates of State and high profile gig at Noise Pop 2005, in San Francisco.

******************************

AL: Hello.

Asya: Hello.

AL: I am Alexander. Who's this?

Asya: Asya.

AL: I am calling from Los Angeles.

Asya: Alright. Cool.

AL: I bought your CD a few weeks ago, loved it, and that's why I am calling you.

Asya: Thanks.

AL: How long have you been playing together?

Asya: Probably about four years. I have been writing songs all my life. I started when I was about five years old. Chloe got her drum set when she was six. She started to get better and she needed to play with another person. So that was the earliest time we started playing together.

AL: Did you take piano lessons before that?

Asya: No. I never took any piano lessons. I learned to play on my own. But after a while I tried to learn how to read music so I could take lessons. But I quit taking lessons with a teacher after a month each time because it wasn't very fun.

AL: You write all the songs in Smoosh?

Asya: I write all the lyrics and piano parts. After I do that Chloe kind of makes up her piano parts. We both contribute to every song.

AL: What are your songs about?

Asya: I never write songs about a person that I know. That has never happened. I just write about things that are around me. I write about going out and not being afraid to try stuff. That is what the song "Rad" is about. Some songs are sort of sad, like "About A Picture."

AL: Is that just because it's a ballad and it sounds more serious?

Asya: Yeah.

AL: What other bands have you played with?

Asya: Let's see. We have played Pearl Jam, Death Cab For Cutie, and Sleater-Kinney.

AL: I heard that Cat Power was dancing around onstage and lip-synching one of your songs.

Asya: That was last year. She was dancing around to "Rad."

AL: Did you see it?

Asya: No I heard about though.

AL: Did you meet Chan Marshall?

Asya: Yeah. She was pretty cool. She was really nice. I like her.

AL: Where do you live?

Asya: We live in Seattle by the University.

AL: Is there some club that you play a lot?

Asya: We like to play at the Showbox. That is our favorite place to play.

AL: At some clubs, you have to be 21 to get in.

Asya: Yeah. We have played at some bars. We have also played at some all ages clubs. When we play at the adult clubs we have to stay backstage the whole time while the other bands play. At all ages gigs sometimes we stay around a little bit and watch the other bands. We don't stay up too late.

AL: Do you know the Trachtenburg Family? There is a girl in the band and I think she is nine or ten years old now.

Asya: Yeah. We know her. She probably wouldn't remember me. She used to go to the same drum school in Seattle as us.

AL: What do you think of their record?

Asya: They are pretty cool. It's a different style of music. It's not what I would listen to.

AL: There are not a lot of people who have done a record who are your age. Bjork did a folk record in Iceland when she was ten. There is the girl in the Trachtenburg Family. Do you know of other bands?

Asya: Yeah. There is a band called The Black Peppercorns. They are from Oregon. There is a high school band called Capitol Basement.

AL: So you are in the Seventh Grade and Chloe is in Fifth Grade. What do people you go to school with think of the band Smoosh?

Asya: Some people think it is really cool. My friends ask me about it all the time. I try to not talk about it a lot or brag. Some people are not interested and act like they don't care. Some people don't like the band.

AL: They are jealous?

Asya: Yeah. I don't think about it too much.

AL: Do you plan on doing a lot of records?

Asya: Yeah. I want to.

AL: Some people in Junior High might think that since Smoosh already has a CD out, they better start hurrying up and get their own band together.

Asya: Yeah. It's possible.

AL: You have two other younger sisters?

Asya: I have three sisters including Chloe. One is a small baby. The other one plays bass guitar. Her name is Maya.

AL: Does she want to be in the band?

Asya: I think that she wants to be in a band. Maya doesn't always play the bass guitar. She does other things.

AL: You don't write love songs? What's up with that?

Asya: I don't feel comfortable writing about that. Some people might get the wrong idea. We are little kids. If I wrote a song about that people would be asking about it.

AL: You are playing a bunch of West Coast shows with Mates of State. Is this the first tour you done?

Asya: It will be the first real tour. We did play two shows with Rilo Kiley. That wasn't a tour, but that was the end of a longer tour fro them.

AL: Have you played anywhere else besides Seattle?

Asya: We have played in New York and in Los Angeles.

AL: Okay. So I have a few questions for Chloe.

(hands phone to Chloe)

Chloe: Hello.

AL: I was reading something about Smoosh in an article. It said that you had a Hilary Duff poster on the wall or something like that. So who do you like better: Hilary Duff or Lindsay Lohan?

Chloe: I am not sure. They are kind of the same. If I had to choose I would probably pick Lindsay.

AL: What do you think of their music?

Chloe: I have never heard Lindsay's music before.

AL: What bands do you like?

Chloe: I like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Death Cab For Cutie, Interpol, Smashing Pumpkins, and Arcade Fire. Bands like that.

AL: Do you like Hip Hop Because some of your songs like "Rad" and "Bottlenose" seem like they are Hip Hop inspired.

Chloe: I like all types of music except country.

AL: Why is the song called "Pygmy Motorcycle?"

Chloe: The title has nothing to do with the song. Asya was thinking about a song name after we recorded it. In school they were learning about animals that week. So when the recording guy, Jason, asked what the title of the song was, she said "Pygmy Marmoset." And Jason said "Pygmy Motorcycle? Okay."

AL: Why is this song called "La Pump?"

Chloe: We have a CD by this band called La Pump Group. They are funny. There's a guy with bushy purple hair and this girl. We were so into it that we decided to call our song "La Pump."

AL: What songs do you play live?

Chloe: We play "Massive Cure," "Pygmy Motorcycle," "Make It Through," "About The Picture," "La Pump." We have a new song we call "Rock Song." We don't have a real title for it yet. Our Dad calls it "Rock Song." He wrote it down. Asya said just call it that so we can remember it.

AL: What do you think of Meg White of The White Stripes? Do you like her drumming?

Chloe: Yeah. I like a lot of drummers. My favorite girl drummer would be Janet Weiss from Sleater-Kinney. I like Jason from Death Cab For Cutie. I like the drummer in the Presidents of the United States.

AL: What do you think of George Bush, the real president now?

Chloe: I don't like to be mean but I think that he has some really strange thoughts that are not really good.

AL: What is your favorite part of being in a band?

Chloe: I don't think it's amazing. I think it's normal. It's just want we do. I don't think it's a big deal that we are kids and there are adults playing. All that matters is that you are playing music. It doesn't matter how old you are.

AL: Well, people might go see Death Cab For Cutie or Mates of State, and they don't know Smoosh is opening for that band. They see you and wonder about these two girls who are ten and twelve. They might think it's a curiosity.

Chloe: I don't like it when people are walking around at a show. They see us playing and go "Those are kids!?"

AL: I was listening to a bunch of CDs last night. These are records with no musical talent and the people can't even sing. Smoosh is a lot better than these people who are twice your age. (laughs)

Chloe: Thanks.

AL: So it should matter what age you are. It's all about present the music and having fun.

Chloe: Yeah. If you are not having fun doing music, you shouldn't do it. You shouldn't do it for money either.

AL: How many records do you think you will do?

Chloe: We are getting ready to do our second one. Well, I don't know. I hope that people like our newer songs. There are a lot of bands whose first album is good and they are really popular and then they are not popular anymore.

AL: What do you think you will be doing in twenty years? Do you think that you will still be doing music?

Chloe: I am not sure. I'll be kind of old. I am not sure if our music will be popular anymore.

AL: Do you think about the future?

Chloe: I do. I will still be in a band in ten years. In twenty years I will just be staying around.

AL: You'll be old. Have you traveled a lot?

Chloe: Yeah. We have been around the United States. Our Mom is Swedish. We go to Sweden every year. We have a lot of fun there. I like it but the ants are big and they will sting you.

AL: Do you like any Swedish bands?

Chloe: I like Abba.

AL: We have been talking a while. That is pretty much all the question I have.

Chloe: Cool.

AL: Thanks for talking with me.

Chloe: Bye.

-----SMOOSH TOUR 2005-------
w/mates of state
2-19 - Los Angeles, CA - The Knitting Factory
2-20 - Long Beach, CA - Koo's
2-23 - San Francisco, CA - Slim's
2-25 - Portland, OR - Meow Meow
2-26 - Seattle, WA - Chop Suey

Downloadable Smoosh photos and mp3s
Live video up at http://pattern25.com
Noise Pop: www.noisepop.com

--Alexander Laurence

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 03:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (24)

From Reuters:
Nudists dine in New York style
By Claudia Parsons

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The diners arrived at a nice Manhattan restaurant on a cold February night and stripped off coats, hats, gloves and scarves. They didn't stop there.

Skirts, shirts, pants, underwear and stockings all ended up stashed in plastic bags by the bar as the patrons got naked for the monthly "Clothing Optional Dinner."

"It's exciting to be in a restaurant nude," said George Keyes, 65, a retired junior high school English teacher.

Nude yes, but not unadorned.

Keyes, a lifelong nudist, wore a necklace, earrings and a black leather "genital bracelet" with red studs. And white sneakers.

The dinner was started by a group of New York nudists who wanted something a bit more elegant than the wilderness getaways and beach resorts they generally frequent.

"When you go away on holiday it's more you're roughing it in the woods, whereas this is a really nice restaurant," said Keyes, a member of gay nudist group Males Au Naturel, or MAN.

John Ordover set up the dining club about a year ago, recruiting members through word of mouth and the Internet.

"Next month is our Easter bonnet event, where everybody has to come wearing an Easter bonnet," said Ordover, a heavyset man with a jovial smile and glasses.

SOMETHING TO SIT ON ...

Around 30 people arrived for the buffet dinner -- organizers specified no hot soup on the menu -- most of them middle-aged, several married couples, some singles, the youngest perhaps in their 30s.

"They're a good class of people, they're no different to you or I," said John Bussi, owner of the midtown restaurant. "They're not hurting anybody, it's not a wild Roman orgy."

Health regulations mean staff must remain clothed even if they wanted to join in. And diners must bring something to sit on -- a towel or, for discerning women, an elegant silk scarf.

The restaurant's manager covered the windows to maintain privacy at the strictly private party. Extra heaters kept the temperature at a comfortable level for nudity.

Ordover's wife, Carol, said they first went on a naturist holiday five years ago and she found the experience empowering. But, she explained, it's "the least sexual thing you can possibly imagine."

"Men in nudist resorts are striking a bargain. They get to see as many naked women as they like as long as they are polite and look them straight in the eye," she said.

Sherry Stafford, a petite and elegant 51-year-old with blond hair and high heels, brought brochures and videos advertising her travel business, Internaturally Travel.

One of the flyers was for a resort called "Hedonism II" whose slogan is "Be wicked for a week." But she said nudists should not be confused with swingers.

"Wearing clothes and going to church does not protect you from moral evil," Stafford said, lamenting what she saw as a tendency to demonize people just because they like to be naked.

Sandy, a slim woman in her 40s, said she never felt self-conscious about her body and was comfortable dining in the nude. But she did admit to being a bit more nervous before a recent naked yoga class attended by around 25 people.

"Everyone was a little concerned there would be people looking around but the good thing is nobody really was," she said, standing at the restaurant's bar before dinner.

"If you try to maintain a yoga position you're going to fall if you start looking around -- and that's more embarrassing than anything else."

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 03:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

News on Danger Mouse and the Gorillaz from the press release (see below). [Note, Danger Mouse remixing Dinah Washington verges on sacriledge. Whose idea was this? That said the Gorillaz project sounds cool.]

"Artist and Producer Danger Mouse has recently finished producing the highly anticipated forthcoming Gorillaz album. The album, titled Demon Days, is due out in May.

Danger Mouse was recently honored in GQ's Man of the Year issue and Entertainment Weekly's Album of the Year as well as 'year end' accolades from SPIN, Vibe, Blender, NME, Wired, Q and Village Voice to name just a few.

In a recent interview with NME, Gorillaz guitarist Noodle said of the album's Demon Days title: "Its' interpretation is completed by the instinct of the listener. In one sense the Demon is a disease and the disease is an absence of thought, a state where people make action without consideration. This is the invisible evil, with a million eyes. This is the return of the ogre, the rise of the beats. Its time is now. The moment we live in has agitated this slumbering giant, the dormant illness. These are the Demon Days, and the land it stalks is the on cusp of a thick fog. In another sense it is time to become the Demon. A time for an action, made with less contemplation, but from a disciplined and considered instinct. Strike with perfection and effect.These are Demon days we exist in. We strike to capture the moment. And hope to contain it, in a balance."

In other news, Danger Mouse has been tapped to produce a Dinah Washington remix for the upcoming Verve Remixed 3 CD. Verve Remixed 3 is due to be released in early April on Verve Records.

Danger Mouse picked the Dinah Washington classic "Baby, did you hear me?" for his contribution to the remix CD.

One of the finest jazz singers of the '50s and early '60s, Dinah Washington is best known for her performances of songs including "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes", "Unforgettable" and "This Bitter Earth". Her life was tragically cut short in 1963 at the age of 39."

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

From AP:

Iraqi Died While Hung From Wrists

SAN DIEGO (AP) - An Iraqi whose corpse was photographed with grinning U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib died under CIA interrogation while in a position condemned by human rights groups as torture - suspended by his wrists, with his hands cuffed behind his back, according to reports reviewed by The Associated Press.

The death of the prisoner, Manadel al-Jamadi, became known last year when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. The U.S. military said back then that the death had been ruled a homicide. But the exact circumstances under which the man died were not disclosed at the time.

The prisoner died in a position known as "Palestinian hanging," the documents reviewed by The AP show. It is unclear whether that position was approved by the Bush administration for use in CIA interrogations.

The spy agency, which faces congressional scrutiny over its detention and interrogation of terror suspects at the Baghdad prison and elsewhere, declined to comment for this story, as did the Justice Department.

Al-Jamadi was one of the CIA's "ghost" detainees at Abu Ghraib - prisoners being held secretly by the agency.

His death in November 2003 became public with the release of photos of Abu Ghraib guards giving a thumbs-up over his bruised and puffy-faced corpse, which had been packed in ice. One of those guards was Pvt. Charles Graner, who last month received 10 years in a military prison for abusing detainees.

Al-Jamadi died in a prison shower room during about a half-hour of questioning, before interrogators could extract any information, according to the documents, which consist of statements from Army prison guards to investigators with the military and the CIA's Inspector General's office.

One Army guard, Sgt. Jeffery Frost, said the prisoner's arms were stretched behind him in a way he had never before seen. Frost told investigators he was surprised al-Jamadi's arms "didn't pop out of their sockets," according to a summary of his interview.

Frost and other guards had been summoned to reposition al-Jamadi, who an interrogator said was not cooperating. As the guards released the shackles and lowered al-Jamadi, blood gushed from his mouth "as if a faucet had been turned on," according to the interview summary.

The military pathologist who ruled the case a homicide found several broken ribs and concluded al-Jamadi died from pressure to the chest and difficulty breathing.

Dr. Michael Baden, a distinguished civilian pathologist who reviewed the autopsy for a defense attorney in the case, agreed in an interview that the position in which al-Jamadi was suspended could have contributed to his death.

Dr. Vincent Iacopino, director of research for Physicians for Human Rights, called the hyper-extension of the arms behind the back "clear and simple torture." The European Court of Human Rights found Turkey guilty of torture in 1996 in a case of Palestinian hanging - a technique Iacopino said is used worldwide but named for its alleged use by Israel in the Palestinian territories.

The Washington Post reported last year that after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, the CIA suspended the use of its "enhanced interrogation techniques," including stress positions, because of fears that the agency could be accused of unsanctioned and illegal activity. The newspaper said the White House had approved the tactics.

Navy SEALs apprehended al-Jamadi as a suspect in the Oct. 27, 2003, bombing of Red Cross offices in Baghdad that killed 12 people. His alleged role in the bombing is unclear. According to court documents and testimony, the SEALs punched, kicked and struck al-Jamadi with their rifles before handing him over to the CIA early on Nov. 4. By 7 a.m., al-Jamadi was dead.

Navy prosecutors in San Diego have charged nine SEALs and one sailor with abusing al-Jamadi and others. All but two lieutenants have received nonjudicial punishment; one lieutenant is scheduled for court-martial in March, the other is awaiting a hearing before the Navy's top SEAL.

The statements from five of Abu Ghraib's Army guards were shown to The AP by an attorney for one of the SEALs, who said they offered a more balanced picture of what happened. The lawyer asked not to be identified, saying he feared repercussions for his client.

According to the statements:

Al-Jamadi was brought naked below the waist to the prison with a CIA interrogator and translator. A green plastic bag covered his head, and plastic cuffs tightly bound his wrists. Guards dressed al-Jamadi in an orange jumpsuit, slapped on metal handcuffs and escorted him to the shower room, a common CIA interrogation spot.

There, the interrogator instructed guards to attach shackles from the prisoner's handcuffs to a barred window. That would let al-Jamadi stand without pain, but if he tried to lower himself, his arms would be stretched above and behind him.

The documents do not make clear what happened after guards left. After about a half-hour, the interrogator called for the guards to reposition the prisoner, who was slouching with his arms stretched behind him.

The interrogator told guards that al-Jamadi was "playing possum" - faking it - and then watched as guards struggled to get him on his feet. But the guards realized it was useless.

"After we found out he was dead, they were nervous," Spc. Dennis E. Stevanus said of the CIA interrogator and translator. "They didn't know what the hell to do."

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 05:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

John Negroponte is best known for:
A. Overseeing covert funding of the Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s
B. Covering up human rights abuses carried out by CIA-trained operatives in Honduras in the 1980

From the WSWS:
Iran-Contra gangsters resurface in Bush administration
By Patrick Martin
1 August 2001

The Bush administration appealed to Senate Democrats July 27 to move ahead with the confirmation of two top-level diplomatic nominees whose appointments have been delayed because of their role in defending right-wing dictatorships and death squads in Central America.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Del) said through a spokesman that a hearing for John Negroponte, nominated for US ambassador to the United Nations, would be held as early as next week. No hearing has yet been set for Otto Reich, nominated for assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs.

Negroponte and Reich are two of the three Bush administration appointees with direct operational roles in the Central American counterinsurgency campaigns of the 1980s. The third is Elliott Abrams, named as director of the office for democracy, human rights and international operations at the National Security Council, a White House position which is not subject to Senate confirmation. Abrams was convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair, but was later pardoned by Bush's father in 1992.

Negroponte was US ambassador to Honduras during the years when the right-wing Nicaraguan Contra forces were based in southern Honduras, just across the border from Nicaragua, supplied and armed illegally by the Reagan administration. Abrams was assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs during that period and worked closely with Oliver North in organizing the illegal arms supplies to the Contras. Reich headed the Office of Public Diplomacy, a State Department agency which illegally funded pro-Contra propaganda both in the US and internationally.

The convicted liar

The selection of Abrams is the most provocative appointment by Bush since his nomination of John Ashcroft as attorney general. Appearing frequently at press forums and congressional committee hearings in the 1980s, Abrams was one of the most belligerent defenders of Reagan's policy of arming the Contra fascists, who waged terrorist assaults on the Nicaraguan population for nearly a decade, killing an estimated 10,000 people.

As Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory recalled, "Members of Congress remember Abrams's snarling appearances at committee hearings, defending death squads and dictators, denying massacres, lying about illegal US activities in support of the Nicaraguan contras. Abrams sneered at his critics for their blindness and naiveté, or called them `vipers'."

Abrams was not merely a mouthpiece or apologist, but an active collaborator in illegal actions which led to thousands of deaths and widespread devastation. He was a regular participant in meetings of CIA, National Security Council and State Department officials who planned the arming of the Contras. When Congress adopted two successive versions of the Boland amendment prohibiting such arms supplies, the operation continued in defiance of the law, at Reagan's direction, with Lt. Col. Oliver North, an NSC official, taking charge.

As the top Reagan foreign policy official for Latin America, Abrams repeatedly testified before Congress under oath that the government was complying with the Boland amendment and that only "humanitarian" aid was being supplied to the Contras. Given his operational role, Abrams was neither misled by other officials nor lying to protect others. Like Oliver North, he was lying to Congress about illegal activities in which he was a direct personal participant.

After four years of public vituperation against the investigation of the Iran-Contra affair, Abrams was finally run to earth in 1991, pleading guilty to two misdemeanor counts of lying to Congress under oath, in order to avoid felony charges. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer called Abrams "an outstanding diplomat" and said the president considered his legal troubles "a matter of the past."

It is a measure of the cynicism of the Bush administration and congressional Republicans that Abrams could be appointed to a high position with his record. They were willing to impeach Clinton as president for lying under oath about Monica Lewinsky, but no such standard applies to lies about an illegal US war which killed thousands of innocent people. Abrams, a collaborator with death squads, is now to be put in a high position with responsibility for addressing human rights issues!

The anti-Castro fanatic

Negroponte and Reich are equally odious figures, although less well known to the public because they did not become Iran-Contra defendants. Otto Reich, who left Cuba in 1960 at the age of 15, is a favorite of the fascistic anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Miami. His appointment was sponsored by the two Cuban-American congressmen from Miami, and by Senator Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations at the time Reich was nominated.

The joint House-Senate select committee on Iran-Contra found that Reich's unit of the State Department had engaged in "prohibited, covert propaganda" on behalf of the Contras and violated restrictions on State Department appropriations, but in keeping with the overall whitewash of the illegal activity, did not charge Reich himself with any specific offense. The agency was abolished and Reich was shipped out of Washington to a three-year stint as US ambassador to Venezuela, to avoid any further involvement in the scandal.

For the last decade he has worked as a Washington lobbyist for anti-Castro interests, including the US-Cuba Business Council and the US government-funded Center for a Free Cuba. He has also represented the liquor producer Bacardi & Co., whose Cuban distillery was nationalized by the Castro government. Bacardi has a long-running legal dispute with Cuba and the French firm Pernod-Ricard over rights to use the Havana Club rum trademark.

Reich's appointment marks, as one commentator put it, the "Cubanization" of US policy in Latin America, as all political issues in the hemisphere will be focused through the prism of obsessive hatred of Fidel Castro. Reich is an adamant opponent of any relaxation of the US trade sanctions with Cuba. He even denounced the baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Cuban national team, comparing it to "playing soccer in Auschwitz."

During his diplomatic posting in Venezuela he engineered the release from a Venezuelan prison of Orlando Bosch, the Cuban-American terrorist jailed there for plotting the 1976 bombing which destroyed a Cubana airlines passenger jet in flight, killing everyone on board. President George H.W. Bush subsequently granted a full pardon to Bosch.

Among Reich's other lobbying clients are the British-American Tobacco company and Lockheed Martin Corporation, which he assisted in the successful attempt to sell F-16 fighter jets to Chile, breaking a 20-year US policy of not selling high-tech weapons to Latin American countries.

The career criminal

The most important of the three appointments is that of Negroponte to the UN. Negroponte spent his entire working life in the service of American imperialism, participating in many of the bloodiest crimes of the post-World War II, including nine years as a State Department official during the Vietnam War and five years in Central America.

Much of his career itinerary reads like a dossier for some future war crimes tribunal:

* 1964-68, political affairs officer at the US Embassy in Saigon;

* 1969-71, aide to Henry Kissinger in the Paris negotiations with the Vietnamese;

* 1971-73, officer-in-charge for Vietnam in the National Security Council, under Kissinger;

* 1973-75, assigned to the US Embassy in Ecuador (he reportedly quit Kissinger's staff, opposing the Paris settlement as too favorable to the Vietnamese);

* 1980-81, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs;

* 1981-85, ambassador to Honduras;

* 1987-1989, deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs, reporting to Colin Powell;

* 1989-93, ambassador to Mexico;

* 1993-97, ambassador to the Philippines.

After retiring from the diplomatic corps, he took a well-paid position as vice president for global markets at McGraw-Hill, the big publishing company.

Negroponte's role is best documented for his term as ambassador to Honduras, a country dominated by US corporations and completely dependent on the US government politically and militarily. The US ambassador in Tegucigalpa is the de facto pro-consul who makes or breaks presidents and generals. At Negroponte's direction the Honduran military provided protection and assistance to the Contra terrorists. With his tacit permission, if not active encouragement, the Honduran military carried out systematic murders of refugees from war-torn El Salvador and among its domestic opponents in Honduras itself.

During Negroponte's tenure, US military aid to Honduras grew from $4 million to $77.4 million. Maintaining this aid required the US Embassy to regularly certify that Honduras was in compliance with human rights requirements set down in American laws. Although Jack Binns, who preceded Negroponte as ambassador, had warned about the repressive measures undertaken by the military-controlled regime, Negroponte consistently denied the existence of death squads, political prisoners or politically motivated killings by the Honduran Armed Forces.

He worked closely with General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, chief of the Armed Forces in Honduras, to send Honduran soldiers to the US-run School of the Americas, where they were trained in psychological warfare, sabotage and many types of human rights violations, including torture and kidnapping. In 1983 the US government awarded the Legion of Merit to General Alvarez.

A CIA-run death squad

The American CIA created the infamous Battalion 3-16 to carry out the murder of Honduran political opponents of the Contra war against Nicaragua. General Luis Alonso Discua Elvir, a graduate of the School of the Americas, was the founder and commander of Battalion 3-16. According to a detailed investigation in 1995 by the Baltimore Sun, Battalion 3-16 kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of Hondurans. The unit used "shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves."

The Baltimore Sun reporters found that in 1982 alone, during Negroponte's first full year as ambassador, the Honduran press carried at least 318 stories of extrajudicial attacks by the military. The US embassy, however, certified the country's record on human rights in such glowing terms that aides to Negroponte joked that they were writing about Norway, not Honduras. Rick Chidester, a former aide, revealed to the Sun that his supervisors had ordered him to remove allegations of torture and executions from his draft of the 1982 human rights report. When one Honduran legislator complained about the US refusal to denounce the repression, Negroponte told him, "You and others, what you are proposing is to let communism take over this country."

Significantly, several members of Battalion 3-16, long resident in the United States, were suddenly and swiftly deported after Negroponte's nomination was announced. In February the State Department revoked the visa of General Discua, the founder of Battalion 3-16, who had been deputy ambassador to the UN for Honduras and stayed on in the US after his term expired. Discua responded by publicly confirming the US sponsorship of his death squad operation.

A CIA-trained torturer, Juan Angel Hernández Lara, is in court in Florida facing a term of up to two years in prison for reentering the US illegally after being deported. He would be deported again after serving the sentence. The Honduran exile has sought political asylum, arguing that it would be dangerous for him to return to Honduras because his role as an interrogator in the US-sponsored death squads has become known, and relatives of the victims might take revenge. A US District Judge in Florida, Wilkie Ferguson, ruled in May that evidence about Hernández Lara's role in Battalion 3-16 would not be admissible.

Despite the massive evidence of Negroponte's grisly history, the nomination has considerable support from Democrats as well as Republicans. Clinton's last UN Ambassador, Richard Holbrooke, praised Negroponte, calling his nomination "terrific ... good for the UN, good for the foreign service, and I believe it will be good for the United States." Holbrooke was Negroponte's roommate in Vietnam and a coworker on Kissinger's National Security Council.

Holbrooke pointed out that Negroponte has already been confirmed several times by Democratic-controlled congresses, in 1989 and 1993, despite opposition sparked by his record in Vietnam and Central America. "He's gotten through before in a more liberal Congress, so I don't see why he'd have trouble now," the Clinton administration official said, adding, "We need a professional on the job. If professional diplomats are penalized for carrying out the instructions of their government, then we're all in trouble."

The selection of this trio of anticommunist gangsters shows the real face of American "professional diplomats," especially in Latin America. It is an ominous warning that the methods of the 1980s-death squads, subversion, terrorism-are being revived again by the Bush administration to deal with the mounting political instability in Colombia, in Ecuador, in Argentina and throughout that region, as well as internationally.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 01:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We all know that Napoleon Dynamite got robbed by the Academy. It was clearly the best movie of the year. Ok, maybe it wasn't. But it was damn funny. If you're a fan, this soundboard of clips is essential:

Napoleon Dynamite Soundboard

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Note that this is THE FIRST INITIATIVE Gonzales is pushing for. The most important thing on his evangelical agenda. Maybe S&M is OK Mr Gonzales, since it involves torture?

From Yahoo News:
Gonzales Seeks to Reinstate Obscenity Case

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration said Wednesday it would seek to reinstate an indictment against a California pornography company that was charged with violating federal obscenity laws. It was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' first public decision on a legal matter.

Billed as the government's first big obscenity case in a decade, the 10-count indictment against Extreme Associates Inc. and its owners, Robert Zicari, and his wife, Janet Romano, both of Northridge, Calif., was dismissed last month by U.S. District Judge Gary Lancaster of Pittsburgh.

Lancaster ruled prosecutors overstepped their bounds while trying to block the company's hard-core movies from children and from adults who did not want to see such material.

The Justice Department said it will appeal the ruling to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. While acknowledging the importance of the constitutional guarantee of free speech, Gonzales said selling or distributing obscene materials does not fall within First Amendment protections.

"The Department of Justice remains strongly committed to the investigation and prosecution of adult obscenity cases," said Gonzales, who pledged during his confirmation hearing to pursue obscenity cases.

If allowed to stand, Lancaster's ruling would undermine obscenity laws as well as other statutes based on shared views of public morality, including laws against prostitution, bestiality and bigamy, the department said in a statement.

Zicari said he was not surprised by the decision to appeal. "They touted my case for almost a year and a half about this being an important step in kind of stamping out the adult product as we know it," he said in a telephone interview. "You'd think our government has a lot more things to worry about with the war in Iraq (news - web sites)."

Prosecutors charged Zacari and Romano and their company with distributing videos to Pittsburgh through the mail and over the Internet. Mary Beth Buchanan, the U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh, has said the case was not about banning all sexually explicit materials, just reining in obscenity. Extreme Associates' productions depict rape and murder, Buchanan said.

When she announced the indictment in August 2003, Buchanan said the lack of enforcement of obscenity laws during the mid- to late-1990s "led to a proliferation of obscenity throughout the United States."

In his opinion, Lancaster said the company can market and distribute its materials because people have a right to view them in the privacy of their own homes.

Lancaster relied in part on the Supreme Court's June 2003 ruling that struck down Texas' ban on gay sex, which it called an unconstitutional violation of privacy.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 09:18 AM | Permalink

Robert Moses, Freemasons, and Fornicating Rabbits
This looks right up our alley!

Boozy: The Life, Death, and Subsequent Vilification of Le Corbusier and, More Importantly, Robert Moses ($15)
The Ohio Theatre
66 Wooster St, New York, New York
February 13-March 5
All Performances 8pm

Amidst a blaze of streaming media, ridiculous choreography, and dozens of live fornicating rabbits, famed French architect Le Corbusier inspires builder Robert Moses in his desperate battle to recreate New York," the Off-Broadway company announced. "Boozy: The Life, Death, and Subsequent Vilification of Le Corbusier and, More Importantly, Robert Moses tracks the life of Robert Moses, from idealistic youth to unstoppable power broker, able to turn parched land into glorious bridges, highways, and public housing with a mere flick of the wrist. With guest appearances by Benito Mussolini, FDR, and the ghost of Baron von Haussmann, Moses learns from the greats until true power is finally his. Freemasons dance, FDR levitates, and Daniel Libeskind silently weeps. None shall be spared.

Click here for all the Details

[Let us know in comments how it is.]

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 08:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Right wing douchebag Matt Drudge, finally pulls his head out of his ass and hears about this whole Greenhouse Effect thingee. Sorry Matt, the rest of the world has either already heard about Global warming or is busy denying it to help out their corporate buddies. And now that your head has been dislodged from your sphincter and you've entered the 21st Century, you may want to consider ditching the animated siren. Animated gifs lost favor around the time the Internet bubble burst. What? You didn't know about that either?! Yeah, your Pets.com stock is pretty worthless now, buddy.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 02:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

THE GREAT GAME
The Myth and Reality of Espionage
Frederick P. Hitz
A non-review by J. Stefan-Cole

In, The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage; Knopf, 2004, which compares the literature of spies with the real thing, Frederick P. Hitz writes, "In the world of espionage, as elsewhere, absolute secrecy corrupts absolutely." Daniel Patrick Moynihan might concur. In his 1998 book, Secrecy: an American Experience, he says secrecy is not only inefficient, it is bad for democracy. An example, the Venona Project broke the Soviet signal code toward the end of World War II, revealing the names of American agents at work for Uncle Joe; Alger Hiss, and the Rosenbergs among them. Both Hitz and Moynihan suggest the McCarthy witch hunt wouldn't have occurred had the secrets of the Venona code been revealed and debated. The military decided Venona was so sensitive even President Truman was kept in dark about the code with the result that Truman correctly doubted a huge internal Red threat, while J. Edgar Hoover and the McCarthy conservatives were convinced a Commie lay hidden beneath every D.C. bush.

Much has changed since the Cold War and the fiction it spawned. There was a bit of premature mission-accomplished zeal when the Soviet Union fell, leaving America the sole superpower. The Soviets were out, but the mind set did not readily shift from a Cold War attitude as stateless rogues with fundamentalist grudges against the infidel were gearing up. Just when it began to look as if the spies could come in from the cold, the game went low-tech with too few agents on the ground speaking Farsi, Urdu and Arabic. What happened to the INTELL that might have prevented 9.11? Was it there, but kept too secret to do any good? Where are the George Smiley and Alec Leamas fictional spy types, writer John le Carré's dogged, single-minded operatives when you need them?

If former CIA head, George Tenet really did give the go-ahead to preemptively invade Iraq, at least so far as a rational-the missing WMD's-we have a problem. Tenet's name is glaringly absent from Hitz's book, and the omission is probably CIA censorship. Agents can't seek employment utilizing their talents for three years after their careers end, nor can they write a book without prior approval of the Agency. While reading, I began to get why Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld wants a clandestine takeover of HUMINT gathering for the Pentagon, his own special forces snooping without so much as a whisper of Congressional oversight. You didn't know? Mr. Rumsfeld is right at home with superpower, and allergic, apparently, to trivialities like accountability. But no matter who runs the game, spying is a shady business and reliability of information hard to verify. That is part of Moynihan's point; a culture of secrecy can easily lead to critical policy mistakes. Hitz would site the failed Bay of Pigs adventure under President Kennedy as an example. Moynihan suggested, even more radically, the Cold War might have been avoided altogether if another bit of post World War INTELL had been made public: that Stalin's Russia was doomed to fail, which it did under the weight of its own collapsed economy. Vladamir Putin, himself a hard-nosed KGB man, has said the Cold War was a huge waste of money.

Espionage novelists haven't had to bother with cumbersome chores like Congressional oversight and the weight of history. Congress got involved with oversight after the 1976 Church hearings when the CIA was found out to be abetting, if not committing, assassinations, among other unsavory activities, like spying on us. It all came out in a New York Times article written by Seymour Hersh in 1974, exposing abuses; Hitz: "The guardians of U.S. liberty against the stealthy and all-out assault mounted on them by Stalin and the monolithic Communism were shown to be law-breakers themselves. The consensus which had existed from the earliest days of the Cold War to fight the spread of godless Communism had been shattered by the petering out of the direct Soviet threat, the tragedy of the Vietnam War, and the criminal behavior of an American president in the Watergate break-in. Now Hersh and the Times had revealed that Americans were being victimized by the forces they had unleashed to counter the Communist threat." CIA has had a black mark ever since. There was a recent piece in the Times about a criminal investigation (now dropped) against anti-drug CIA agents in Peru who were partly responsible for friendly fire shooting down a plane full of American missionaries mistaken for drug runners. The "tradecraft" in this case had grown sloppy; an eyeball check was required to confirm before shooting a plane out of the sky, that step, apparently, was skipped. One may not care for missionaries, but what are the "good guys" up to? What exactly is the role of the CIA in prisoner interrogations? Abu Graib comes to mind, and what of the reported extrajudicial policy of rendition, whereby the CIA turns suspects over for questioning to countries with no scruples against torture. This is not fiction.

The problem with Congressional oversight, of course, is how many people can keep a top secret? On the other hand, what's to keep a spy, or a defense secretary, honest? Secrecy breeds secrecy. Where was the internal oversight to interdict a traitor like Aldrich Ames, or Anthony Blunt, and most recently, Richard P. Hanssen, who sold FBI secrets to the Russians? What prevents a rogue agent? The answer is, not much. Periodic lie detector tests and lifestyle checks are supposed to keep agents clean. The literature is filled with counterintelligence genius, George Smiley again in le Carré's, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, worming out a British SIS mole. In the real world it took nine years catch Aldrich Ames, with much damage done in between as he got rich selling out fellow spies, who were usually executed. Hanssen, Hitz reports, asked the FBI agents who finally nabbed him, "What took you so long?"

What happens to retired spies who know too much? It seems a thankless job, spying; shadowy, double and triple lives, often a bottle of scotch for a best friend. If an agent dies in the field it's all hush hush. Eventually the name will be carved into the tribute wall at CIA headquarters in Langley, but there won't be a nice obit about dying for one's country, not if friends and even your wife and kids think you were something else, a diplomat or a foreign vacuum cleaner salesman, say. Case in point, not a mention in the book of outed spy Valerie Plame. CIA censorship again? While I'm guessing, I think at least part of the reason Hitz quotes so extensively from the spy literature is because real spies can't kiss and tell. The best retired spy, Hitz suggests, is one who sails out to sea, to an out of sight afterlife. Maybe there really is an island somewhere for retired spooks, like Patrick McGoohan's No.6, "The Prisoner" in the Cold War TV series that upset the whole spy-as-hero genre.

The Great Game (Hitz calls it the second oldest profession) left me with the feeling that stuff was being withheld. Hitz is now a teacher at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, but for twenty years was in government service, most of that in the CIA where for eight years he was inspector general. Is he trying to wink as he tells? As for the much quoted literature, Graham Greene looks more at human nature in books like, The Quiet American, and, The Human Factor, than truth in spying. Le Carré asks, in, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, what happens when the good guys employ the same dark methods as the enemy? Le Carré's attempt at an answer is that the West is not the aggressor, is benevolent even if it regretfully fights fire with fire. Is that still true? The real value of Hitz's book, beyond a voyeuristic look at spies, may lie in the brief chapter on espionage and terrorism which suggests improvements in our approach: "Many thoughtful observers believe it is high time now for the U.S. and its principal allies to take the religious terrorist threat for what it is: a wide ranging assault on the cultural and economic assumptions of the West and the globalization that is its manifestation." If the writer means what I think he means, we have an even bigger problem; the current White House, with its extreme secrecy and "us or them" stance, is not about to take a look at any of its own assumptions. We are probably due for a spate of new spy novels; maybe one of them will shed some light on the festering dangers of secrecy.

(c)2005 J. Stefan-Cole

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 11:40 AM | Permalink

In case you missed the sold out Westminster Dog Show live party at Tonic last night, we were there to provide you with highlights. The crowd was a strange mix of Upper East Side wankers and art school hipsters. The show commentators were appropriately crass and drunk. Nelly McKay (who performed briefly) was cute and very sweet. There was even a suspenseful 30 minutes where a broken projector interrupted the live broadcast. Luckily, the problem was fixed just in time to watch the show finale.

As per the results, we had all of our money on the Bloodhound, but were disappointed to see the 5-year-old German shorthaired pointer judged best in show.

the bitch who won

the food was disappointing




the lovely Nellie McKay

Dog Show Party Dancers


More Dog Show Party Dancers


We loved her hand-knitted hat


Future Folk


Future Folk band member


The dancing/jumping dog show dwarf

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A response to the Stylus reimagining of Summer Teeth:
Summer Teeth is Wilco's magnum opus. Their most accomplished record. Their Exile on Main Street. The most perfect record a band could hope to produce. Though critics flock to their more recent, "experimental" releases, most overlook the complexity of this richly rewarding record. Summer Teeth's best song, "Via Chicago," is one of the most intricate tracks they've ever recorded. Critics overlook the sophistication of most of the tracks on Summer Teeth because they get lost in their surface level catchiness. Nevertheless, this is more of a "studio album" than the uneven Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and the self-indulgent A Ghost is Born. Just ask a Wilco fan, this is the record that they actually listen too. Don't be fooled by the showy sonic bursts on their later records, Summer Teeth is the record Wilco will be remembered for. It's that good. [Note to Stylus.... how could you cut "She's a Jar?"]

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

From Pitchfork:
"OK, don't hold us to this, but it looks like those rumors and innuendo about the Unicorns' demise have not been greatly exaggerated. A history lesson, if you will: it all started with reports that the band's December 21 show in Houston, Texas was their last. The early days of 2005 saw the seemingly straightforward message "THE UNICORNS ARE DEAD, (R.I.P.)" posted on the band's official website, with the Latin postmortem sic transit gloria ("thus passes the glory") appended thereon.

And that should've been that. But that is never that with the Unicorns-- the inevitable Chinese whispers started wafting through the zeitgeist, claiming that the breakup was just another Andy Kaufmanesque prank along the lines of that wrestling thing the 'Corns did last year. Mere days later, the web obituary was replaced with a cryptic call from "HALIBUT CORN HORN" to "GET READY TO DANCE," among other nonsense. The band's publicist stayed as vague and tight-lipped as a North Korean apparatchik-- maybe he just wasn't in on the joke.

Then just last week, a post on the band's online guestbook led us to believe that the breakup was for real. Signed "Alden and Diamonds," presumably guitarist Alden Ginger and singer/keyboarder Nicholas Diamonds, the post verified that the band has indeed bought the indie-pop farm. Quoth they: "Thanks for all the support but the Unicorns are Dead... Sorry to say it but you all have to understand that touring and trying to produce a new album has taken its toll on our lives and the band. We want to enjoy making music but this process has made it impossible to do so. We are glad you guys love the music but we have a life too and being a Unicorn makes a 'normal' life impossible."

Plebes like us can only wonder at lives of such richness and depth that mere music-making cannot be allowed to disrupt them, but that's what they said. The message continues: "On the bright side there will be some new material forthcoming. Take it sleazy, th' corns." The rest of the site was, of course, absolutely no help, offering only a risible maze-game in which we are exhorted to rescue the boys from some sort of ransom kidnap situation. Every bit as tangled, maddening, and pointless as the band's long breakup tease, the maze makes a surprisingly suitable postmortem.

But it's been said that if you wait long enough, a light will shine through. And lo, a recent missive from the band's PR confirms that the band has in fact broken up and that two of its former members will continue on as Th' Corn Gangg-- the hip-hop side-project the Unicorns announced last year. What this means for lovers of the band's debut LP/swan song Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? is still up for interpretation, but for once the Gangg seems to be shooting straight-- the message says the band will soon be making mp3s available to the public ("w/ some very special guests"), touring the U.S. in April, playing SXSW, and presumably making a record sometime here. And we're not sure we believe it, but we do have one live date. L.A., they love you:

03-12 Los Angeles, CA - The Echo

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 01:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (30)

In support of their great new record:
The Matt Sweeney & Bonnie "Prince" Billy- Superwolf free instore tour of New York.

Saturday March 5th:

1PM: Sound Fix- 110 Bedford Avenue (Williamsburg)
3PM: Kim's Mediapolis- 2906 Broadway
5PM: Built By Wendy- 7 Centre Market Pl
7PM: Mondo Kim's- 6 St. Mark's Place
9PM: Other Music- 15 E. 4th St.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 12:46 PM | Permalink

From Dallas Morning News:
This is beyond messing with Texas

Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst, it seems, isn't a fan of Texas. He startled a sold-out audience at the Ridglea Theater in Fort Worth by slurring, "I don't know if you know this, but I hate your fucking state. I'd put a fucking gun to my head before I'd live in your state." Must have been kidding. Nah. If you went to see him, you weren't a "normal Texan," he continued, because "if you were a normal Texan, you'd probably be roping steers and raping Indians." Pretty strong stuff for a 24-year-old from Nebraska. Go shuck some corn.

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (97)

Don't miss the beautiful folk psychedelia of Grizzly Bear, playing in Williamsburg this Sunday. Local label Kanine Records strikes gold again with this great up-and-coming band.

Check out their site to listen to GB's music.

From their site:
"During a long fifteen-month hibernation in his cozy Greenpoint, Brooklyn bedroom, Droste laid the groundwork for Grizzly Bear's first album. Upon completion of this "demo," Droste enlisted the help of a real bear, Christopher Bear, who breathed new life and sounds to the work. Hailing from Chicago, Bear has worked in various musical projects ranging from laptop shenanigans to free jazz. He has provided a vast technical knowledge, a certain sonic polishing, as well as additional instruments and vocals to the initially primitive recordings.

The result, Grizzly Bear's debut album titled "Horn of Plenty." is a nostalgic amalgamation of found sounds and layered vocals bound to thrill followers of Animal Collective, Sufjan Stevens and Nick Drake."

See Grizzly Bear Sunday 2-13 at 9pm
Glass House Gallery (38 S 1st St, Wburg, 718.387.4942)
$5 suggested donation

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Thursday February 10th at 7 O'clock
at Spoonbill Books in Williamsburg
A star-studded gala event: Robert Lanham and Sam Lipsyte together on one stage at Spoonbill books in Williamsburg!

Robert Lanham, author of the bestselling and hilarious THE HIPSTER HANDBOOK, will start things off reading from and discussing his latest: FOOD COURT DRUIDS, CHEROHONKEES,and other creatures unique to the republic (Plume, 2004).

Sam Lipsyte, author of the classic short story collection VENUS DRIVE (Open City Books) and the criminally overlooked novel THE SUBJECT STEVE (Broadway Books), will be reading from his latest novel (and perhaps his magnum opus) HOMELAND. Written in the form of a high school alumni newsletter, HOMELAND manages to pretty much sum up the time we live in.

Spoonbill is located at 218 Bedford Avenue, between North 4th & 5th Streets, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Phone 718-387-7322. Call for further info.

Take the L Train to Bedford Avenue, take a left on Bedford and walk 4 blocks. Store is on the left

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 09:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Volvo wants them, but The Kills aren't interested. They're more concerned about being confused with The Thrills or The Killers than cashing in.

This minimalist indie duo are not here to resurrect Robert Johnson or Charlie Patton. There's no agenda to save ROCK. No, the Kills are camped out in the Chelsea Hotel to promote their new record, chain smoke some cigarettes, and work on their other hobbies: writing in their diaries and taking photographs with their digital camera.

We found The Kills, Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince, ensconced around a table littered with cigarettes, water bottles, an iPod, and a worn copy of Gunther Grass's The Tin Drum, a book about an "the eternal three-year-old drummer" that Jamie claims to have read dozens of times.

They were in New York doing interviews to promote their follow-up to 2003's amazing Keep on Your Mean Side. Alison and Jamie graciously sat down with us to discuss their music, those nagging White Stripes comparisons, and touring with Franz Ferdinand. Jamie is unpretentious and outspoken. He smoked a lot. Alison is beautiful, articulate, and a bit shy. She smoked even more. Their platonic affection for one another was obvious and endearing. Their chemistry will delight fans on their fantastic new record, No Wow.

NOW WOW. OUT MARCH 8 ON ROUGH TRADE/RCA.

**************************************

FW: How long were you in the studio with No Wow?

Jamie:We did in two parts. We wrote it in Benton Harbor, Michigan. We were there for four weeks. We then took a week off and then recorded the album in three weeks in New York.

FW: So you guys have a quick process then? Are you working a new album already?

Alison: Well, we didn't know that we did. That was part of the challenge because we've been on the road for so long and we don't write while on tour. It's not what we're drawn to doing. We just do art on the road. We take loads of photographs. We draw and do collages and paint and film and write constantly.

So we went to the middle of nowhere and spread out all of this stuff we rounded up. It was our inspiration. Really, we panicked because we only had two months to write the new album so we gave ourselves only a month to do it to make it even scarier. We sat down and spent about 80% of our time talking and about 20% talking and it worked.

Jamie:If you don't set yourself any themes or restrictions, it can be really hard to come up with something creative. Naturally we were drawn to set up boundaries so that we could operate within one area and explore that as much as we could.

The boundaries we set were the lack of time we had to make the record. It became the theme of the record. We didn't have time to think about what we were doing. We thought let's make a record purely from our guts and our heart and not over-think anything or rework anything. I was really fascinated by the possibility of making a record of 11-12 songs that represented 10 minutes of inspiration. Even if it meant sitting around day dreaming for two days and then getting up and writing something for 10 minutes and then sleeping for a day.

FW:Do you find American audiences are more or less willing to accept a band that plays with a drum machine and backing tracks?

Jamie:It's pretty similar the world over. Lots of people love it and it pisses so many people off.

Alison: A lot of people demand their money back. We do have a drummer; you just can't seem him.

Jamie:The drum machine is a massively integral part of our sound. It is an anti-rock thing for me. Rock music always has these tempo changes and these explosions; you know "FEEL THE ROCK" as it explodes in the chorus. With a drum machine it's like a metronome that keeps you from doing that. We found early on that it made us tense up when we played and we liked the sound of that tension.

But it really pisses people off.

FW: It seems there were a lot more electronics on this record. Was that intentional?

Jamie:I'm attracted to things that look good so if the recording equipment looks old and weird, I like it. There were these weird drum machines in the studio we wrote in so we used them. That's the gut instinct version of what happened.

There's an academic explanation as well. Our first record was mistaken as a celebration of the "BIRTH OF ROCK" or "PRIMITIVE BLUES ROCK." I felt like our set up and our dynamic has a bit more in common with the birth of electronic music. The drum machine is the heart of it. We're more affiliated with stripped down electronic music, like Suicide or Cabaret Voltaire as much as I did with Charlie Patton. I'm a white, middle class bloke from England. I don't quite have the blues in me [laughs].

Well Eric Clapton did.

Jamie:Yeah, he's terrible and that's why.

FW: What are you listening to these days?

Jamie:TV on the Radio

Alison: Fiery Furnaces

Jamie:TV on the Radio is a stunning band. They have such an amazing dynamic musically. I love that they have such an unorthodox set up, both musically and racially. They're coming from a very different angle. We met them in Iceland. It was weird. We were playing the same festival in Iceland and we were introduced to them a couple years ago. Meeting TV on the Radio in Iceland is really bizarre.

FW: Do you guys like the White Stripes? You guys get compared to them a lot. Do you think it's a valid comparison?

Jamie:Yeah, we love them. They kicked the door open for a lot of other bands. It's a good comparison. That's how people write. Validity is not necessarily what you want or pleasing. It's relevant and that's what people write.

FW: So you guys were formally married as well?

Jamie:I don't really mind it. It gets in the way of what we want to do. I'm sure there's a ton of people who write us off because of the comparison. I'm sure there are people who listen to us because of the comparison and then are disappointed. People like to compare bands to other bands. It's hard to describe music. It's always "a cross between 'blah blah' and 'blah blah blah', mixed with a little bit of Pink Floyd." Or "it's Patty Smith and Richard Hell's love child."

FW: Your voice often sounds a lot like PJ Harvey, which is wonderful. She's one of my favorites. Are you a fan of her? Is there anyone you don't like to be compared to?.

Alison: PJ Harvey is amazing and so is Patti Smith. If anyone said that I sound like Patti Smith, I would die because I think she's incredible. I'd like to think that I could stand apart, like any band wants to.

Jamie:I think it's always easier getting compared to bands that are way in the past than it is getting compared to bands that are around now.

Alison: Right, because people will say "You're the new PJ Harvey" but she's still alive. So I can't be.

Jamie:PJ Harvey is one of the reasons I ruined my life with music. When I heard the first PJ Harvey record I knew that's what I wanted to do. She turned me on to a lot of music I listen to now. Listening to her made me listen to [Captain] Beefheart, which made me listen to Howlin' Wolf, and then back to Charlie Patton. Then she brought out "To Bring You My Love" and I thought "What the fuck? This is unbelievable." It made me interested in Suicide.

FW: What was it like playing with Franz Ferdinand? Any crazy stories come out of that?

Alison: The tour was really good, actually. It was really fun getting to know them. It was a long tour so we went through all kinds of things. We had this bus problem - someone's bus would break every day. We'd end up being on the same bus with Franz.

Jamie:We had a single-decker bus and it kept breaking down so the company sent us a double-decker bus, which is insane for a band of two people. So we had this double-decker bus and we said "look at all this room!" Then Franz called us and told us their bus had broken down. They said ask if they could stay on our bus and we said "of course, we have a double-decker."

Alison: Paul [Thomson] would bring his portable record player everywhere so we'd have these little parties every night. It was really, really fun. It was strange playing to an audience that had never heard of us and were quite young. They were really waiting for Franz to come out on stage. It was like they were looking at their watches waiting for the band they came to see.

It was so challenging. You can easily become depressed think there's just no way to handle it because people do not care about you. Something happened to us, something evolved. We started to play very intensely - redirected our energy at the audience because you get lost in a room full of people who aren't supporting you. That tour made us so strong. We learned how to cope with that. We learned how to make it ours and make it fun. We got stronger and stronger and stronger.

FW: Do you guys often get mixed up with the Thrills or the Killers?

Alison: That's one of the most irritating things actually. It drives me crazy, especially with the Killers. I want to hit and punch anyone who makes that mistake.

Jamie:We received treatments for the video for our song The Good Ones and we were sent one that said "THE GOOD ONES BY THE THRILLS!" It was in the bin immediately. I like those bands; well I don't know those bands too well. The Thrills are really good songwriters, but it's not my thing. The Killers are one of those things I just don't get. This seems to be one of those times when there are these really huge bands that no one will admit to liking.

Alison: We were talking about that the other day. In America it seems like music isn't really for the public. It's so corporate and over the top. People end up not getting what they want, but what corporations think they want.

Jamie:America is the hardest country to just be a great band. It's hard for people to love your band and for you to do well because of just that. It requires so much more than that. It seems so mathematical and calculated here. It seems to operate outside of kids going to shows and freaking out.

FW: Most of the bands I've interviewed recently have a totally different perspective on the music industry than bands used to. I can't imagine that Sonic Youth would have agreed to be on The O.C. back in the 80's. But now it seems like pretty much any band would do it. It seems bands today are more busy savvy. Is there anywhere you would draw the line?

Jamie:I don't think playing on a TV show is wrong, but commercials are different. We get offered commercials all the time, in fact we were offered a commercial yesterday by Volvo.

FW: Are you going to do it?

Jamie:No, we're not.

Alison: We've been offered insane amounts of money. It's funny. I think the last thing you want as an artist is to be branded with a product. It's really a horrifying thought. I love the idea of being on film soundtracks, even TV shows. That doesn't bother me. I don't find myself offended by that.

Jamie:I don't really feel offended by music in commercials. The only time you know where your priorities are is when you get offered something like. We thought about it for about five minutes and said no. We thought what we could do with the money, but my instincts told me no. But if Sonic Youth played on the O.C., I wouldn't say "oh they sold out!" Things have really changed. We live in a world where gossip magazines are the new pop art. You can't apply the same rules or politics that applied to music about 10 years ago.

Interview by Robert Lanham and Jason Bell

WANNA SEE THEM PLAY?
> 3/18 + Austin, TX @ SXSW @ Emo's
> 3/21 + San Diego, CA @ The Casbah
> 3/22 + Pomona, CA @ The Glass House
> 3/23 + San Francisco, CA @ Independent
> 3/25 + Seattle, WA @ Crocodile Café
> 3/30 + Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
> 3/31 + Milwaukee, WI @ Mad Planet
> 4/1 + Chicago, IL @ Double Door
> 4/3 + Newport, KY @ Southgate House
> 4/9 + Hoboken, NJ @ Maxwell's
> 4/10 + Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club
> 4/11 + New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
> 4/13 + Washington, DC @ Black Cat
> 4/30 or 5/1 (TBA) + Coachella

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

From Time Magazine:

The Abu Ghraib Scandal You Don't Know

"[At Abu Ghraib] there was also medical disarray at the prison: amputations performed by nondoctors, chest tubes recycled from the dead to the living, a medic ordered, by one account, to cover up a homicide. That in itself would have made Abu Ghraib a scandal even without the acts of torture inflicted on the inmates by their guards."

Read the entire article

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

With the Superbowl coming up this weekend, the time has come to run our most popular story ever once again. A year later, we are still the internet's number one Google search for Janet Jackson's nipple! We still recieve thousands of visitors daily to this one story.

And for this we are proud.

The mystery lives on. The questions remain:
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FACE ON JANET JACKSON'S NIPPLE

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

OK, OK. Bush is more composed than he was four years ago. He's also scarier. In his State of the Union last night he reasserted his hatred of gays. Failed to mention Osama Bin Laden. Refused to talk about a timetable to depart Iraq. Used grieving parents who had lost a son in his war as a smokescreen. (The networks focused on them of course, instead of his inept policies and proposals). And hinted at the expansion of his crusade in Iran and Syria. Read this great article by Seymour Hirsch if you want to know what we are doing to expand our empire currently.

In case you missed Dubya's diatribe about the ownership society, we'll break it down for you.

Why Dubya's Ownership Society is bullshit:

1. People will have to choose from a small menu of stocks and bonds to invest in. (Mainly companies that are his buddies, presumably since Bush is so adamant about passing this "reform"). If you are told by the government what to invest in, is this ownership?

2. You cannot withdraw any of your money before retirement. Again, is this ownership?

3. From NY Times: "When workers retired, most would be required to use at least part of their accounts to buy from the government lifetime annuities, financial instruments that provide a guaranteed monthly payment for life but that expire at death. Despite Mr. Bush's declaration that money in the accounts could be passed on to children and grandchildren, the principal of an annuity cannot be inherited." Again, is this ownership?

4. It will cost more than $754 billion to set up according to NY Times. That's tax dollars out of your pocket, that you will not, um, own any more.

Bush's plan is an investment plan, which is by definition, less stable than an insurance plan. I'm all for less government control, but when people blow their investments, we're just going to have to reinstate a new incarnation of Social Security to bail them out.

--Robert Lanham

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Music Review by Monte Holman
(Sub Pop Records)

Snore-core Startled From Slumber

Guitar solos. Feedback. Screeching distorted vocals. Hand claps? These rock staples hardly come to mind when we consider the collaborative effort from Alan Sparhawk, Mimi Parker, and Zak Sally. What happened to our wholesome quiet-types, the musicians who draw silent crowds of earnest indie concert-sitters? Has Low found the devil?

With The Great Destroyer, their debut Sub-Pop release, Low generously give us thirteen tracks of sonic exploration. This is seemingly new ground for Low, though they aren't reinventing themselves completely. Fans will still find plenty of the old stuff in this album, the familiar instrumental sparseness, the velvet, marital harmonies ("Silver Rider," "Death of a Salesman"). But the Duluth trio adds a keyed-up electro layer and some fresh production elements to these songs, generating a recording that's nothing short of rock and roll.

The supplementary noise and urgency comprised in Destroyer obviously contradict Low's original intent: let's see how quiet we can be. So why break the pattern? Is the band headed in a new direction down the fatal path toward experimental obscurity? I don't think so. Rather, Low have a sense of humor; after all, this is a band who once played a set in character as the Misfits. So a big rock album from this band is actually pretty funny. Also in Destroyer, the band members toy with the reputation of being calm, honest folk; they lean toward the dark side. Basically, in Destroyer, Low gets louder, darker, and blithely introspective in order to continue to break new ground as a group. Quite an endeavor that will surely receive some negative criticism, but not from me. In short, it works.

Low good-naturedly mock themselves and their public perception by folking-up some of Destroyer's tracks. Low is famously quiet, unassuming, earthy even, and they exploit these traits. Examples of self-parody show in somber, heartfelt questions like "So what, pray tell, will save you now?" in "Cue the Strings" and "Where is the laughter?" in "Broadway (So Many People)." Earnest questions, yes—Low is beautiful, poignant, emotive—but on Destroyer, this seriousness is somewhat playful. Images of the Garden of Eden, children, and Noho crowds (all from the same song, "Broadway") suffocate us with innocence, sincerity, and dangerously stale subject matter. The song eventually drowns in ethereal ambiance. Low reinstate what they know, or are known for, with these images embedded in charming harmonies, and they proceed to rub some dirt on their squeaky-clean image.

"Monkey," the album's opener, jolts listeners with a fuzzy synth bass line that sets the tone for the record as darker and more demanding. Lyrics like "tonight you will be mine / tonight the monkey dies" announce the commanding nature of Destroyer. Another line in this one is "shut up and drive." Not the Low we know. "When I Go Deaf" (in the middle of which a wicked shredding, yes a wicked shredding, guitar solo tells everyone to fuck off) upholds the darker disposition of this record and the band members’ sense of humor. And frankly, it kicks ass. Then there's "Everybody's Song." Sparhawk and Parker fling their vocals into a Yorke-esque tantrum of repetition atop crunchy power chords and a metallic snare.

Low broaden their lascivious relationship with rock in Destroyer by exploring production ploys. They dapple this record with meticulous pans, fades, distortions, and soundscapes. This experimentation energizes Low's song-writing equations, breathes a new life into their craft, and emphasizes the interplay between lyrics and instruments. The dynamic crescendo in "Pissing" utilizes feedback and warm keys. The percussion in "Walk Into the Sea" features xylophones and bells chiming along with some far-off torn toms. And smallish additions, such as the dance club heartbeat and sonar pinging on "Cue the Strings," not to mention the looped strings themselves, revitalize the touching folk arrangements we expect from Low.

Speaking of smallish, the band takes chances with production kitsch in "Step." A child co-voices, not quite verbatim, two lines, "All the kids are sleeping / silent dreams beneath their heads," the only place on the record a child's voice can be heard perceptibly. (The child is the daughter of Sparhawk and Parker, Hollis Mae, who can be seen smartly signing records with heart-dotted i's on a link from Sub Pop’s website.)

Naysayers write-off Low's higher blood pressure and in-studio production antics as out of character and perhaps the beginning of an aging group's backslide. But that's simplification, and it fails to give a solid band the credit earned over twelve years of successful writing. Why should a band continuously be judged by old standards? Yes, overproduction litters most records, but Low totes discretion. They meticulously consider each string pluck and ride hit on past recordings. They take seriously the business of what belongs in a song, and it's no different with Destroyer. The production schemes here are interesting, and they sit precisely where they need to—if they were too subtle, Low wouldn't be trying anything new; if they were anymore obvious, they’d be annoying.

That's what makes this a truly great Low album: it encompasses the original band aesthetic, empty space and gravity, and adds more completely what the band members bring to the table: a wink, a nudge, and rock and roll. Consider the band members' side projects. Destroyer is more inclusive of what these musicians are capable of. The new Low record is a bit raucous, so what? It's got plenty of that celestial appeal we're used to, but this time around it's packaged more like the Hell's Angels.

SEE THE LIVE THIS WEEK:
2005-02-03 Bowery Ballroom w/ Pedro the Lion
2005-02-04 Bowery Ballroom w/ Pedro the Lion

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 10:27 AM | Permalink

Being threatened with a lawsuit by The Muppets might not generate the typical rock star mystique most bands desire. Few heavy rockers want the image of Fozzy, Kermit, and Miss Piggy associated with their band. Nevertheless, New York rockers Brian Rayman, Danny Tieman, Lisa Cuomo, and Than Luu were asking for trouble when they named their band after the bald Muppet scientist, Bunsen Honeydew. You know, the puppet in the white coat who terrorizes Beeker. The copyright holders caught wind of the band and they dodged a lawsuit by renaming themselves Four Volts.

However, having The Village Voice blame them (in part) for the closing of Coney Island High may have added a little edge to their reputation. Reportedly, one of their shows was so loud and abrasive it brought in multiple complaints that led to the ill-fated club's eventual demise.

Over the last couple of years, Four Volts have secured the reputation as one of New York's best live bands. The buzz has expanded with a four star review in NME, a critics choice write-up in Time Out London, and air play by John Peel. The band has even released several tracks on Transcopic, Graham Coxon's (Blur) label.

Four Volts are noisy enough to satisfy anyone longing for lively post-punk anthems. But it's their hooks and pop sensibility that will keep their music ringing blissfully in your head after you press the stop button on your iPod. They've been compared to everyone from Jesus and Mary Chain, to Blur, to My Bloody Valentine but soon people will be comparing new bands to Four Volts.

Their just-released debut record, Triple Your Work Force, was produced by Martin Bisi (Sonic Youth, Cibo Matto, Boredoms) on Williamsburg's newest label Kanine Records. It's an impressive debut. You can see Four Volts live every Wednesday in February at Pianos. We interviewed Long Island natives Danny Tieman and Brian Rayman via email in late January 2005.

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Where did you meet? What's your role in the band?
Brian Rayman: I went to high school with Danny. Been doing Four Volts for a year or two now.
Danny Tieman: I'm learning how to play guitar, how to contort my body on stage, and how to sing. I met Brian in High School. He was one of a whopping few friends I could count on. One of Django Reinhardt's mutated hands. Lisa Cuomo plays bass and sings. Than Luu plays drums and sings.

Has your music ever gotten you laid?
BR: Never. It usually scares the ladies away!
DT: Ha ha -2/4 of Four Volts are virgins, but I'm not saying who.

How did you get involved with Blur's guitarist Graham Coxon?
DT: Well we played this show at Coney Island High — if anyone remembers it before it closed down. We were threatened at that show by management because we were too abrasive and loud. Ha. Really, people couldn't order their drinks, etc. But anyway, some girl came up to us after the gig and was like "I know a good label for you guys, send them something." She claimed she knew Graham, so we thought "ohh shit, big in." But she didn't. In the end he wound up hearing our demo, and after quite awhile they released a 12 inch single/ep and we toured over there after that.

The press material states that "their fan list includes Calvin "K" Johnson, Beck, Blur and the Television Personalities." You must be great self-promoters. How did you hear they were fans?
BR: We met Calvin at a show in Williamsburg. He said he loved us and danced like he meant it! Super sweet guy. Graham from Blur released a Bunsen Honeydew record — which showed up in a photo of Beck's record collection. No joke! And we've befriended Sportique over the years — who are a great band and include former members of Television Personalities. They said they like us. I'll take their word for it. Oh, and as for "self-promotion", we're the f-ing best. Watch this one: we're the music industry's "best-kept secret". Just ask Beck, Blur or Calvin Johnson.
DT: Actually we only aim to have the world's most famous and celebrated musican's as our fans, no one else. We're retarded like that, that's how things work for us, it's not intentional in any way. Ha

When did the copyright holders of "Bunsen Honeydew" discover you? Did they have lawyers contact you?
BR: A couple years ago. I think they found us from the record released on Transcopic. We were contacted and told to stop by Jill Peterson. That's Jill Peterson of the Henson Corp., now owned by Disney.
That's JILL PETERSON:
1416 North LaBrea Ave.
Hollywood, CA 90028
Phone: 323.802.1500
Fax: 323.8802.1825
DT: Yah they threatend us pretty good. They ordered a cease and desist actually. They tried to strong-arm us to surrender the domain name bunsenhoneydew.com. Well, we didn't (ohhh noooo) but we did let it expire when we changed the band name. The funny thing was they were claiming we were defiling the goodwill/nature of their name/muppet. But funny enough... if your feelin' kinda randy (and your boss isn't around) see what's become of "cyber good will." Hats off to the law crew at Henson, heh heh. Can anyone say Italian porn??? [note, the site is under construction]

Do you guys ever hang out, or do you see too much of each other at practice/shows/in the studio?
BR: What? We hang out all the time! We even hang out with the people who did the [CD's] artwork and Martin, who recorded the record. We're all friends.
DT: We all want to get surgically attached — we're just not sure who would fit where — and how we'll use the potty — we all have shy bladder, but we're mapping things out.

Any pop vices like the O.C. or Elimidate?
BR: Ha! I think we were played on MTV's Made.
DT: Yah, I watched that episode, when it was on last week — funny I think the O.C. seems very late 90's which is odd... 90210 is infinitely cooler.

What band would you be most honored to be compared to?
BR: Hmmm... For me, maybe Roy Orbison?? If that's aiming too high, then The Buzz — a 60's group with one single, but well worth it.
DT: Most honored...oh man....that's crazy. Bands who survive thru time, and keep their cool I guess... the very few who manage to do it. Maybe TVP's or Sonic Youth?

Who was the first band you ever saw live?
BR: Either Judy Collins with my dad or the Beach Boys after a Yankee Game with the fam — I can't remember.
DT: Depeche Mode, was my first real concert. I was 13. I squeezed into my sister's Doc Martin's, which were about 3 sizes too small. My feet were like lil' loaves of bread bakin' in there.

What's you favorite New York restaurant? Bar?
BR: We ate at Moto the other day. That was good! Favorite bar? They're all the same to me.
DT: I know this is sick, but I've been on this insane San Loco kick, and Vegetarian Paradise will always hold a special place in my heart.

Is Four Volts a better live band or studio band?
BR: Studio.
DT: Live, more intense. for sure.

Do you guys ever get fucked up before going on stage?
BR: Sometimes we fuck each other up. Does that count?
DT: Than and I did jumping jacks once before a show, before we were told to stop But Lisa is really the only one who drinks before shows in general. I knocked two teeth out at a practice when I was completely sober. You know what I mean?

I hate the word "succulent." Any pet peeve words?
BR: "Succulent" sound gross! I hate it when a person says "negatory".
DT: I really really hate the words: meal, nest, snack, panties, puss, cuss...and many more.

What's next?
BR: More shows? Tour! I'm psyched to record again.
DT: Lots of live shows... build up our fan base, you know the works!!!!!

Extra Credit: What's on you iPod playlist (real or imaginary)?
BR: Suicide, the dB's, XTC, Paul McCartney and Throbbing Gristle.
DT: Johnny Cash, Mum, Husker Du, Psychic TV, The Beatles, Libertines, Swell Maps, Rebecca Shiffman, Jacques Brel, Wire.

-- Interview by Robert Lanham

Posted by freewilliamsburg at 02:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)