BigShinyThing

Indeed that’s the case, under new plans from London Police. Event organisers in 21 London boroughs are requested to ‘co-operate fully’ with police, by completing the new Form 696 before the event, in the interests of ‘risk assessment’.

Requested are not only details of promoters and onsite security, but also the contact numbers and real names of all performers, description of the ‘expected audience’ and the genre(s) of music expected to be performed, the examples given on the form being bashment, R’n'B, garage. No surprise then that many feel the Met is actually planning to use this data to focus police attention on clubs where such ‘dangerous’ forms of music are to be played, as well as for the profiling of the scene(s) and communities who organise and attend.

According to early reports, the form also included questions about the ethnicity of expected audiences. The current version on the Met’s site doesn’t include such information, so we can’t comment on that.

Concerns have been raised by many, including once-Undertone Feargal Sharkey, who now heads up the music campaign organisation UK Music. There’s a petition running on the 10 Downing Street website, a FaceBook group has been set up, and the mainstream press are paying attention.

Simply misguided urban policing, or the precursor of some modern day version of the 1994 Criminal Justice Bill’s rave-busting criminalisaiton of ‘repetitive beats’? Watch and wait. More importantly, act against this.

[Thanks for Helen Noir for tipping us off to this]

Everyone loves a bit of self-regulation. But what happens when world-views collide?

Today it has emerged that a ruling by Internet Watch Foundation — a charity-status QUANGO established to help self-regulate internet content in the UK — has led a number of UK ISPs to block access to a (community-regulated) Wikipedia page for heavy metal band Scorpions.

Why? Because the entry includes an image of an album cover which features a naked child. Internet providers began to block access to the page after the IWF warned them the picture may be illegal under UK law. An IWF spokeswoman said a reader had brought the image to the foundation’s attention last week and it had contacted the police before adding the page to their content blacklist.

The album cover itself is a pretty nasty piece of 70s schlock art but it is widely viewable elsewhere on the Internet.

Censorship is a big issue for the Wikipedia community, and policy is hotly debated. In July 2008, Wikipedia community editors then made a joint decision not to remove the Scorpions cover art from the site. According to the discussion page from that time, “Prior discussion has determined by broad consensus that the Virgin Killer cover will not be removed.” Indeed, the current Wikipedia page for Scorpions explains that in the United States (where the websites of the Wikimedia Foundation are hosted), the image is not considered obscene under the criteria of the Miller test, which requires that an obscene work lack “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value” (as album art is used to “brand” the album, it is considered to be artistic).

On the other side of the fence, the IWF is a UK-based charity, funded by ISPs and others, and endorsed by the UK Government. It was established in the mid-90s to self-regulate around the issue of USENET porn. Since then the IWF’s remit has expanded to include identification of racist and criminally obscene content, although its focus still seems to be on images of the abuse of children. Unlike Wikipedia, their process and website offers for no community discussion. There is apparantly no way to object to or appeal against their classification.

To us, the message of this story is plain. The kinds of ground-up regulation and consensual decision-making we value on-line only exist — if they exist at all — at the discretion of the State and its possibly-well-meaning but generally opaque proxies. If you want a voice, get out and shout. Yes, you.

Watch it on YouTube or buy on iTunes:

Video artists Addictive TV were back in town on the weekend, after a marathon session of live Olympic mashups in Europe. Braving the London weather on Friday night, they played to a crowd so enthusiastic that at least one of them had to be dragged half-naked off the roof.

This was Addictive’s third annual outdoor gig at the South Bank, which has become a highlight of the BST summer calendar. This year was even more fun for us, as they invited us along to document the evening photographically. Our photos are up on Flickr.

Evidently someone in The Guardian’s art department has some classic vinyl at home: compare the cover for yesterday’s Guardian Weekend (above) with the sleeve art from hard rock band Mama Lion’s 1972 album Preserve Wildlife (below):

Points to The Guardian for revisiting the timeless theme of long-haired, slightly-disheveled blondes suckling cute baby animals, but our vote goes to the original shot of Mama Lion’s lead singer Lynn Carey and the kitty cat.

If you’ve never heard Mama Lion, hunt them down for some Joplin-esque, bluesy rock. Carey also turned in a storming vocal performance as the singing voice of character Kelly McNamara (played by actress Dolly Read) in Russ Meyer’s cult film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

[Thanks to Helen Noir for introducing us to the music of Lynn Carey and Mama Lion]

UPDATE: More album-art suckling identified by our readers. See the comments, below…

Work from The Clipse, DJ Cam, Asbestos, James Dodd and many more. Dig in. Dig deep. Big up Adz!

Buster Bennett (previously of legendary Hoxton nights Antisocial and Family) has been running his latest night, Nuke Them All, for a while now. But he’s got a problem — he can’t keep a venue. Nuke was initially hosted at the charming Bethnal Green lapdancing joint, Images. But then the council got wind of it and pulled its licence. So it moved to The Edge, a basement venue on Commercial St. The council did the same thing (do they have clubkid spies or something?) So Buster, showing typical clubland enterprise, moved it to an an abandoned pub. Y’know, like the rave kids do. Then the police shut that down too. Buster’s positioning of Nuke as ‘the most lawless creative gathering ever’ is starting to look a bit too prescient.

We can’t resist quoting in full Buster’s comments on the original eviction, as reported over at Jonty Skrufff’s Skrufff.com:

“It’s the same old story, and exactly why we left the gentrified Shoreditch triangle in the first place. What happens is some wanky trust fund son of an estate agent decides to buy up a flat next to an already established strip club then complains about the noise; specifically; the noise, the giant walking pyramids, the cake fights, the glow in the dark horses, the nudity and our clientele generally. But still, why move there in the first place?”

Why indeed! We’re with Buster.

[Photo ©2008 Darrell Berry]

FEATURING: Street Art from Dr.D. Brad Downey, D*FACE, and Jerome G. Demouth, graphic agitation from OKAT, an interview with the legendary Danny Rampling, writing from Alexis Manning, and Harlan Levey, and Male Prostitute Phone Box Cards from Paul Hartnett, and a two photo essays from King Adz.

Go get it ….

We caught Punx Soundcheck’s mighty DJ/AV set last Friday at our favourite Shoreditch monthly, Film Noir. Launching their new album Black and Gold, they treated us to a storming 90 minutes of hard electro genius, with visuals from Machines are Gonna Kill Us, and Miss OddKidd guesting on vocals.

But don’t take our word for it — get on down to the NFT on Thursday 24th January, to catch them live at the Piccadilly Nite Versions #1 Launch Party. See you there.

[Photo © Darrell Berry 2008]

In 2006 EMI, the world’s fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. “That was the moment we realised the game was completely up,” says a person who was there.

Source: The Economist. Apologies to Don McLean.

If anyone asks me why I live in London, I always say, “For the culture, darling, for the culture”. Unfortunately my life usually revolves around working till I drop occasionally punctuated by wine fuelled loiterings in a pub. Recently, however, I managed to spend a couple of weeks soaking up culture enough to last a year.

Wagner was the major motif for this cultural overdose, with the added bonus of a visit from Father and Sister – long overdue and acting as the catalyst for the other events. Although the trip was organised a year in advance I made the significant sacrifice of giving them the two tickets allocated my “Friend of Covent Garden” status. With hawk-like concentration and swooping tactics I managed to get returns for all performances except the all important Walkyrie featuring Domingo as Siegmund. Undaunted, I queued for hours outside the ROH for the privilege of a daily return. (Note to anyone who queues for day return tickets: If the person in front of you asks if it’s okay for her friend to join her in the queue the answer is No. However, Karma made a brief visit and allocated me the next return two minutes after they got the last of the day release tickets – and a much better seat it was too. Ha!)

As an opera lover, I am amazed at how infrequently I manage to get myself to the ROH or ENO. Perhaps it’s a bit extreme to do no opera for 7 years and then cram 20 hours into 1 week – and since I thought I’d not be able to get tickets for the performance I also went to the rehearsals. Mmmm. 40 hours of opera in the space of 3 weeks. But absolutely worth it. Not for the fainthearted, what with all the naked rhinemaidens and incest, but a glorious celebration of some of the world’s most debated music. And the lights. My god the lights.

Not sufficiently sated with this mammoth Wagner-fest, I felt honour bound to offer my family an insight into all this culture I supposedly drown myself in on a regular basis. We went walking in Kew Gardens and admired the Henry Moore. I can recommend this to anyone as a fantastic day out – and if you arrive by 11:40 sign yourself onto the free guided tour.

We followed this up with a performance by Einaudi and Friends – and my, what friends he has. A real treat to hear Ballake Sissoko on the kora, and Djivan Gasparyan on the diduk.

All fired up with the washes of emotive sounds from one of the leading minimilists of our time, we hotfooted over to the Barbican for a little Sibelius. Nothing like Sibelius to rouse the blood. Throw in an entirely unexpected debut performance of Saarioho’s Quatro Instants with an inspired rendition by Karita Mattila and you have an evening of glorious culture which deserves extended wallowing.

And in amongst all this opera, symphony and art? Trundling over to nearby Peckham to attend the “Fall into Place” art event: an unexpected experience I am convinced could only happen in London. Housed in an unassuming terraced house on a quiet residential street accessed through the ground floor window, this innovative celebration of art and music was great fun. Unfortunately, I timed it badly to coincide with a non-musical half hour, but after a slightly ungainly entrance, and possibly more literal interpretation of falling into place than was wise, I had a jolly wander through the rooms. I particularly liked Alice White’s portraits in the main room, and the bathroom decorations.

All in all, a couple of weeks to remember. I live in London for the culture you know, darling.

[Thanks to Helen]

See more at SCOTTO.

Via WOW.

Dansistor launched 11th August and will run monthly. Horse Meat (like you didn’t know) is every Sunday. You can access our Dansistor photos directly on Flickr, along with our other London club photography. [Image © Darrell Berry]

[And thanks to Tim for last-minute Nikon CLS tech assistance!]

Singer songwriter and producer who famously collaborated with Nancy Sinatra dies aged 78. According to the BBC report, on being diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2005, Hazlewood gave away his gold and platinum discs to friends outside the music industry and started worked on his final album, Cake Or Death.

A couple of years ago, we pointed out that newspaper covermounts were shaping up as a huge threat to the music (and video) industry hegemonies (our word of the week, kiddies). Look and learn, children: today we read that Prince has done a deal to give away his new album with a future issue of the Mail on Sunday.

Coming as this does the same week that beleaguered retailer HMV announced a 73 percent drop in profits, the industry has responded in the only way it knows how, when faced with a challenge from the ‘talent’: with kicking, biting and scratching. The chairman of the Entertainment Retailers Association, Paul Quirk, is quoted in The Guardian:

It would be an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career [...] It would be yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music.

[...] The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday.

Ooo, get her. Like, after his long fight with the labels, here at the start of the 21st century, the Purple God really cares whether his music is on shelves, as long as his fans can buy it (and of course turn up to his gigs at The O2 later this year).

A lovely mesh of old and new(ish) tech. Via Chromaniac.

We’ve said before that last.fm and similar (but not as good) music recommendation sites are the future of music retail. Well it appears that CBS agrees with us – they’ve just forked out £140m for last.fm.

For those who have just joined us, last.fm was founded in the UK five years ago and it now has more than 15 million active users. It allows users to connect with other listeners with similar music tastes, to custom-build their own radio stations and to watch music video-clips. What we love about the site is that it invites music fans to stumble upon new music and new genres (New Weird America anyone?).

Unlike a lot of media groups who seem to be frantically trying to build their social networking sites (a glance at the marketing press shows that it’s the buzzword du jour), CBS has recognised that the best aproach is to buy one ready-made.

The firm’s president and CEO Leslie Moonves told the BBC: “Last.fm is one of the fastest growing online communities out there.” He said Last.fm’s strength in building communities around music and syndicating content was “central to CBS”. He added: “Their demographics also play perfectly to CBS’s goal to attract younger viewers and listeners across our businesses.”

As part of the deal, Last.fm’s managing team will remain in place and the site will maintain its own separate identity. Here’s hoping …

Another plea for help for a London music institution. For the last 12 years, The Spitz venue, restaurant and gallery in Spitalfields has been serving up a creative nightly schedule of non-mainstream music, and has established an international reputation for its festivals. Now the venue is facing closure before year end. Seems that their landlords have decided to serve notice on them. Given the rapid homogenisation of the area’s retail, our guess is that they’ve decided that they would make more money with an All Bar One or similar on the site — none of that edgy artsy nonsense, just a trustworthy, tourist-friendly franchise. Sigh. Read more details on their website, and sign their petition (1300 signatures and counting)

What else can you do to show support?

Up until the end of September the most immediate way to support The Spitz is by using it as much as possible. Whether you book a table in the restaurant for lunch or hold your party in the gallery or come and see a gig we would be delighted to see you. Please show your support by voting with your feet.

Off you go — it’s on Commercial Street. You know what to do, so do it.

Last night we went to Cybersonica’s Late at Tate night. Some very fine things, including loops of Illustrious’s spatialised audio in the Rotunda, accompanied by visuals from Body>Data>Space (shown above), and the Modified Toy Orchestra’s set of circuit-bending retro electronica, fittingly introduced by Brian Duffy as

No laptops, no MIDI, no instruments that work.

All good stuff. We’ll be uploading more pix after Easter. And of course there are already many photos from others on Flickr and some footage (not ours), on YouTube. Enjoy.

[Thanks as always to Lisa Devaney]