Vulnerable girls – barely in their teens mainly – working-class backgrounds, depressed towns, parts of which have been deliberately allowed to become dark rainy Northern ghettos for immigrants.
Add into this mix predatory men.
Yes, in towns like Oldham and Rochdale, and in so many other parts of Greater Manchester – and other parts of the country – there has been a culture of cowardice about facing up to Asian grooming gangs.
And those in power are to blame.
Unconscionably, today it is feared that many of these gang members are back on the streets.
How can our justice system allows it?
Why did the police turn a blind eye?
There is no doubt that the police looked away because they feared stirring up racial tensions.
And now it has also been revealed that gang members, finally out of prison, are continuing to exploit the legal systems to swerve deportation.
It is here that madness, secrets, lies and a kick in the teeth for victims and their families feels like a dull ache… the perpetrators of these horrendous crimes are invoking their human rights.
That’s right the Human Rights of the Scum of the Earth.
Adil Khan – he served four years after getting a 13-year-old girl pregnant – has invoked a legal challenge against deportation. Others are also going down that same dirt road.
Adil Khan says deportation would breach his human rights.
And the human rights he wants are to a family life. And to be a role model for his son.
It is the shame of our justice system for allowing this immoral behaviour.
Why do we so often put the rights of criminals before the reality of justice for victims?
And do you know, that if the police and the authorities stopped being cowards, stopped worrying about being ‘right on’ within racially mixed communities, if the Blond Arian Bimbo at the top started thinking about things beyond his own survival, then Britain might have a chance.
A chance to create the world of sustainable race relations and multi culturalism the UK began in the 1950s, a chance not to see crime as a skin-colour problem anymore…
But, what does Britain’s PLC public relations department do?
Along with the Blond bimbo, Pritti Patel and every pot-bellied, T-shirt wearing, ‘I’m not a racist but…’ thug and thug-ess we thought it was a good idea to send refugees to Ruwanda (innocent or not and still on the cards) to keep trafficking and sex-abuse gangs from arriving from Europe.
And yet it still goes on in the ghettos and back street terraces we allowed to grow un-hindered almost…
Now a pervert wants to be a role model for a child and we are willing to allow it to go to court…
I do have to say, people saw the advent of social media – in particular Facebook – as grand freedom, freedom of communication, freedom of speech, freedom of artistic expression, freedom to campaign and stand up for what’s right.
FREEDOM! The right to speak your mind out, yep, that is freedom, it is equality and an in-alienable right to say what you want.
However, FREEDOM is never the right to say what thou wilt – no! That is the Crowlian Law of Thelmena.
Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, the bard of Bagalore, opined: “Where the mind is without fear, where knowledge is free; where the world has not been broken up into fragments… into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake”.
He saw the earthly heaven of freedom, the freedom of the individual from social oppression.
So, why does social media offer very little more than social oppression.
The reason I’m writing this is because a friend of mine, a professional LA musician and writer, had the temerity to say what he thought about a Bob Dylan concert a few days ago in Long Beach.
Andrew Brel, was critical and analytical but fair, so I published it.
Then the black crows and howling hyenas of Facebook took exception to him.
No longer was he the Hollywood artist, who campaigns for families and children across the world.
As far as Facebook contributors are concerned he became amongst other things a c*nt and an imbecile.
Seriously, why did Andrew not have the right to speak his mind out about a concert given by one of the most controversial – and also endearing – performers in the world during the last two centuries?
And just as importantly, why do people on social media think they have the right to ridicule, insult and deride a man just doing his job. And having an opinion.
I say to you now, Facebook is not the new REAL media, it is a bear garden set on the edge of a painted desert in a Wild West town inhabited by the misfits and inarticulate pundits who couldn’t make in the real world of opinion.
There are of course millions upon millions of people on social media who are intelligent, sensitive and worth communicating with.
The trails and tribulations of boss who thinks Amin is ‘most popular’
Leigh G Banks remembers a short interview with one of the world’s biggest despots…
Welcome to the asylum! The day I spoke to Idi Amin, he laughed down the phone at me. In fact he barely stopped laughing.
It was almost like Madman’s Therapy – a booming voice that could blow a Gold-Crested Crane out of a bambuwa tree.
But it was the constant faux-affable bar-room laughter that got to me as I sat on the newsdesk of a leading daily and tried to fire a quick question in.
One eventually slipped between the guffaws: “President Amin, is it true you like to torture people?”
He howled like a broken bell.
“President Amin, why do starve people for weeks then electrocute them in chambers below your palace?”
He wasn’t unnerved by my question: “There are many things told to people about me that have never happened…”
And then he laughed out loud again.
Idi Amin’s was a tin-pot and mad murderous regime. More than 300,000 people died horrifically.
He liked having people tortured.
Stephen Asiimwe
So, he had real chambers of horror built in his palace grounds. Thousands up on thousands were executed while he had noisy dinner parties with his accolites.
The chamber floors were flooded with water. The victims, blindfolded, would cross the chamber in boats as music played from hidden speakers.
The boat moored, the victims got off, the lights went out and the music stopped.
The water was electrified.
Each chamber held more than 500 people. Idi could have a bit of a laugh while he decided if they would be left to starve to death or be zombied by electric water.
Okay, things have changed a lot in Rwanda since the mid-1970s and Idi Amin is barely a blot on the world’s landscape any more.
But his circus of sour will never be forgotten.
Particular if Stephen Asiimwe has his way.
This man, Stephen Asiimwe, the chief executive of Uganda Tourism Board (UTB). wants an Idi Amin tourism trail … he says: “Idi Amin is the most popular Ugandan ever but no one is making use of him. We have to develop this trail.”
The proposal announced by Asiimwe, wants to see the awful legacy of Idi Amin turned into an attractive and profitable tourism trail. He claims it will be as popular as the holocaust museum in Germany or next-door neighbours Rwanda Genocide. He also wants trails in Imbalu carnival, Kampala carnival and some schools. “In June we hope everybody participates in the Uganda Martyrs trail. We have cut Uganda into clusters – a sustainable domestic domain is critical for development.” Chief executive Asiimwe said that the ministry of finance was giving £1.5m to the project.
#idiamin #uganda #rwanda #boris #torture #asians
Despite a bit of a rough and rowdy show, Bob gives his heart to one great love… us!
Andrew Brel reviews Bob Dylan at the Terrace Theatre, Long Beach
Andrew Brel
It’s a 50 minute drive up Coast Highway from home to the venue. 8pm kick off for Bob Dylan.
We left at 5 to enjoy a dinner in Long Beach which has become an extremely vibey place for nights out. We arrived at the venue at ten to 8. A short line. Easy enough access.
First curiosity. When we entered they take your phone. And lock it in a secure lock box. This not only causes you to not have use of your phone, it also requires you to carry this weighty lockbox all night.
Uncool experience element #1.
The Terrace Theatre has three sections accommodating some 3,000 audience. I booked seats in the center, in the second half of the venue. $60 a ticket including the ticketmaster upcharge.
The event was almost sold out. Maybe 10% empty seats.
We entered at exactly 8.01. And the band had already started. Six players in shadows on a backlit stage.
In a compact venue of this nature, noticing two giant semi-trucks outside that would have brought in two tons of stage equipment, you would expect quality live sound. But that is not what greeted us on entry. Clearly there was an issue with the bass. Occupying some 80% of the sonic space at the level we were seated.
The drummer was evident to the eyes. He had a bass drum and a snare. However the ears were unable to find either in the bass heavy mulch of sound through which a atonal guitar solo meandered gormlessly, almost always missing the center pitch of the note. Surely, as this was just the start, this must have been intentional and not a guitar gone out of tune after two hours of sweaty thrashing.
The instrumental sound check warm-up completed and in the center of the stage an upright piano suggested that is where Bob would appear. And so it came to pass, without announcement as one of the six shadows sat down at the piano and began to sing.
Yes it was Bob.
Two things about the live sound on his voice. Heavy short tail reverb. Overpush on the upper-mid EQ to make it more or less one solid block of frequency that appeared just above the over-loud bass player and simply overwhelmingly too loud for the short shout phrases he uses now that his 81 year old vocal chords have that limited range.
My first thought was; why?
There was no joy in that sound, loud though it was. By the end of the first minute I could not tell you one word he sung. But then the words “Watching the River flow’ emerged from that sonic mess and I guessed it was the lyric to that song he was narrating in that gruff reverb tuneless baritone.
No words were spoken. Just sequing from one song to the next. Sounding largely like the same song, varying only slightly in tempo, with several constants. His over-loud voice, snatching at phrases in a for-fans-only approach to singing. His over-loud bass player, occupying most of the space where other parts would have been welcome. And the drummer whose bass drum and snare were not present throughout the show. Yes, perhaps I was in a sonic blip in the room, that the live sound guy had missed. But I don’t think so. It sounded just the same when I walked through for a toilet break.
So; uncool experience #2.
The live sound quality.
Had I been able to record the show on my now locked up iPhone, I fear what you would hear would be this. 80% bass boom interrupted only by overloud snatch phrases that were difficult to decipher.
At one point I heard “You go your way and I go mine.”
I think that’s what I heard although my familiarity with that recording from the 70’s found no other element to confirm this was the song he was playing.
During the drive up I played the Rough And Rowdy Ways album from the beginning. I admit I had not really made it through a listen previously.
The most fun part of this listen through was guessing the rhyming couplet. Bob is nothing if not formulaic.
I contain multitudes is a good example. Put it on. And then guess what he will rhyme the first line with each time. Bear in mind ‘Multitudes’ is a challenging choice for rhyme.
Mostly from there it’s a slog through limited production values and unspectacular rhymes drawing, as ever, from Biblical references, until the one surprise. A sweet Dylan love song. “I made up my mind to get close to you.”
In the canon of last albums by great artists, like Leonard Cohen and David Bowie, who said goodbye with an epitaph collection, this one struck home for me. The emotional harmony singers underpinning a message. Bob has given his heart to one great love. Us. His audience. He will keep on touring for this reason.
That was my take away – but more about this song later.
Our car drive listening session ended with Murder Most Foul. All 16.55m of it. (Link in comments below.)
Bob at his flow of consciousness streaming best. Beautiful couplets of thought provoking reminders that his is the voice of the civil rights movement, albeit it flawed by his multiple wrong turns since the transcendent messaging of his 60’s and 70’s writing. No single writer provoked more thoughtfulness in more curious minds learning critical thought than Bob Dylan.
His place as the GOAT of love song writers is secure. (I saw a shooting star tonight. And I thought of you.)
None of which would be evident to anyone attending the show I saw. No proper versions of the songs were performed. Even the one off Rough And Rowdy ways, the album he is promoting with this tour, ‘I made up my mind to get close to you’, was, basically murdered by this band.
The song does rely on those melodic harmony voices singing those simple few notes throughout. How hard would it have been to repeat that live. But no. Just a hack and slash though this beautiful song turning it into a painful experience in atonal nail scratching.
By the twenty minute mark I was fidgeting with discomfort. Looking around I noticed several people were literally asleep. Yet at the same time I watched as each song ending was greeted by rapturous standing ovations by the front five rows. Perhaps their expensive seats included a different sound mix?
I needed a break and decided to get a beer. That turned into ‘Any beer you like as long as it’s a can of Modelo.’ And that turned out to be $20. Hmmm. #Uncool experience #666
The one good thing about that break from the noise is that the toilets at the theatre overlook a yard below. In there were four vehicles. Two huge semi’s and two super dooper Residential Trucks. Both with five air cons units. Suggesting five separate rooms in each. Bob travels in style. I imagined he would have come out of his RV at 5 to 8, started at 8 on the dot. And closed at 9.30 on the dot to get back to his luxuriant accommodations just fifty yards from the stage, in time for his favorite Netflix show.
We did go back in for another fifteen minutes, because; he is a legend and to be in the same room as him is something.
But.
Uncool experience #3. The lighting. While the audience was brightly lit throughout, so any would be phone recorders could be spotted by the Dylan Gestapo lookouts, contributing to the uncomfortable atmosphere in the hall, the stage was backlit. Although I went to see Dylan, I didn’t see Dylan. Just his backlit outline. I couldn’t tell you if that was actually Dylan on stage or just a bad karaoke soundalike, heavy on the bass and reverb.
During my ruminations while this interminable mishmash of bad Dylan growls went on, I thought of two people.
Muhammad Ali. Like Dylan, the voice of an entire generation. A truly inspirational spokesman for critical thinkers, uplifting the consciousness of a whole generation. I remember all too well when he went back into the ring in his forties. Larry Holmes I think it was. Bashed his brains in. How I wished Ali would have used his superior intelligence to know. Do not get back in the ring.
Your time there is done.
Bob’s show had that same brain bashing element. Despite his assurance that “I made up my mind to get close to you” how I wish he would have done that in a less aggressive fashion. I remember being booked in pubs with bands playing Dylan covers. It occurred to me that this band applying for pub work playing Dylan covers would struggle to get booked at the Albion.
After all the great players populating his musical recordings, why does he not hire at least one great player to share the stage with?
The second person I thought of, to get away from having to process the unhappy noise, was Paul McCartney. Just a year younger than our Bob. And the man who 60’s Bob introduced to Cannabis with such a rewarding outcome.
Only weeks ago Paul sold out the LA Stadium. The reviews were outstanding. On stage for almost three hours. A band of great young players. Lots of tech videos referencing past glories. And singing only what he can still sing in a passable way. By all accounts, well worth the $400 ticket price.
Bob could almost certainly have chosen this same option.
I guess for many, the first five rows who gave every song a standing ovation, the intimate feeling of a small venue and a loud group of thrashing youngsters surrounding the overloud old growler, serves some useful function in the name of entertainment and respecting legacy.
I know all too well the role mystique plays in the Zimmerman biography. And will leave it there.
It’s a mystery to me why he does this. But some people like it. And I guess he just can’t get enough of those first five rows.
Bob’s bus…
#bobdylan #la #roughrowdy #bobsbus
Frail? Bob looks good in this happy birthday vid for Brian Wilson! (See vid inside!)
Well, between them they’re more than 160 years old, true rock survivors … the rockers of ages.
During Bob’s tour people have said his singing with passion and true invention … but he looks frail, moves gingerly and has taken to occassionally sitting on a stage bench.
There’s very little good footage of his Rough and Rowdy tour – but here in this vid, currently flying round the world, Bob looks good, steady and strong for 81… and his sense of humour is right there, dancing away.
Brian’s a year younger than Bob and all The Society has to say is Happy Birthday Brian!
#brianwilson #beachboys #bobdylan #happybirthday
Rodney is on the road again, Leigh’s stuck in Britain…the rants are outrageous
Tom Wood is a strange brew … a fairly conservative type of man with a predilection for the heat of the desert. A wanderer in trades too.
Tom is a showman, who a decade ago. took a gamble and moved to Vegas, yet had little interest in the Elvis look-alike culture, its plastic playground cities, its stretch limos and dime-a-dream casinos, fast food-at-the-speed-of-light and the cheap neons of Mammon.
Tom has a driving desire to become recognised for his music …oh, and he adores mangos. So much so, in fact, that he has named his record label Mongomon.
Sweet name that, once you catch on to the hidden meaning, it makes you smile. Mango Man.
And it is on his new label that Tom, now well in his Sixties, has released the strange fruit to come from his powerful and enigmatic creative world.
It is a good set of songs, so good in fact that here at The Society we are promoting his work wholeheartedly … and a mutual friend, LA film editor and director Bob Mori is set to make a video of Tom’s performances.
Bob too has seen the burning glory inside his work.
For instance, Peaceworld is about, yep, a peaceful world.
Tom said: “It’s not too unlike John Lennon’s beautiful Imagine. Mine came with the start of Putin’s war, I was so depressed and saddened by the lack of compassion for Ukrainian citizens’ lives, property, etc. War is only destruction and loss of life. Peace is the opposite of war. I believe that 90 percent of all humans want a peaceful world to live in, raise children, learn, experience, laugh, grow. Imagine!”
His grand view of peace doesn’t make him pull his punches though. He had this to say about Putin: “He is a dictator. He is probably a murderer as well. No compassion for anyone, or life in general. He is like Trump. Hateful. Narcissistic. His war is useless. Nothing good. Only death and destruction has been achieved.”
Tom was brought up in the ‘war zone’ of racism St Louis, but as the son of a middle-class couple in a suburb of the auction block city he says that it was something he mainly caught in his peripheral vision.
The way he tells it, as a boy in the 1950s and 60s Tom Wood never suffered from the St Louis blues.
His mother was an 8th grade English teacher and his dad was a post office supervisor. One way or the other his family had standing in a community where racism burned just around the corner.
He never really suffered from the St Louis blues.
His mother was an 8th grade English teacher and his dad was a post office supervisor. His family had standing in a community.
Lyrics in Where are you Going reflect the security and comfort he was afforded in the city that left blues hero and inveterate drunk WC Handy was ignored as he dossed on the streets. Lyrics like: “The comfort of family, more precious than gold, one love, one heart, loving the young and the old.”
Tom’s parents and he lived in the railway town of Kirkwood Mo, named after James P. Kirkwood who put it on the map when he planned a new route for the Pacific Railroad in 1852.
Tom said: “ My childhood was almost idyllic especially by the standards of today. My parents bought a home in Kirkwood Mo and I was able to walk to my grade school and middle school without worry. “Kirkwood High School is where I received my diploma. But I attended two colleges in the St. Louis metro area where I achieved a degree in Fine Arts.”
But still though, The Klu Klux Klan were all around him like terrifying ghost riders in the sky.
He rose above them all … but there is a darkness in his new song Rise which, to me at least, invokes the shackles of slavery and race hatred, murder and the postcards of the hangings: “You tell me why
I cannot fly as I ascend into the sky…”
And there is love and loss in 25:“I left behind everything I knew, to learn how to give everything to you.”
When Tom moved to Las Vegas, like we said, he wasn’t necessarily seeking fame and fortune, but went there for love.
Tom said: “I’m not an old bluesman with trauma after trauma behind me, but I have had broken hearts. And it was moving to Las Vegas that finally made me a happy man.”
He was reunited with his former St Louis lover from the 70s Tamara … they met up again in 2010 at a reunion of a band called the Homegrown Harvest One of the members was a mutual friend.
Tom said: “I am happily ‘married’ to my lovely, witty, and fun common-law wife Tamara. We live in a deluxe single story home 25 miles north of Las Vegas. Neither Tam nor I have children. We relish our privacy and home-life to it’s fullest.”
He said: “I worked a three day shift as a customer service representative in Red Rock Canyon.”
Red Rock Canyon, 17 miles from Las Vegas, was Nevada’s first National Conservation Area and is visited by more than two million people each year.
Now he is looking for work in the cannabis industry … and there is no smoke without the burning embers of ambition.
Read them and weep – then stand up and fight. Children are for life, not just for others, our boys and girls are not weapons of crass destruction for the bitter and twisted, children and exes are not there to be bullied … YOU failed in your commitment to a relationship, not YOUR son or daughter
IT’S FATHERS DAY … AND IT IS A FATHER’S RIGHT TO BE WITH HIS CHILDREN …
Below are six stories for today and our future together with those we love:
FOR FATHER’S DAY … AN IMAGINED TRIP ROUND DYLAN AND JAKOB, BY ERIC LASTICK
DYLAN AND SON, JAKOB…LETTERS OF THE RED JACK PINES THIS FATHER’S DAY. IN FULL FAMILY ARTISAN… In a real wind whirl minded Dylan basement avenue of guitar awakenings; Dad lays down all his rhythms and yarns—- wishful a Father’s Day holiday session of Bob and son, Jakob on Strat and old’ telecaster guitar.
A guided and gilded pair of eyes of Dad’s portrait painting of his son, framed and displayed of all good fellowship on the wall. Wallflower and roadie roundup to usher of the ride…form an avenue to the grand pianos of time.
Right round the dusty basement and cobweb of ‘’The Saturday Evening Post’’ A single little Lionel toy train near the corner liquor bar. Red jack pines sway and whistle these Min with the Minnesota winds… Roadie rally of the flags of course, band and structure. Tonight, a roast on a fine dine table for every hero that recipes the sound of Dylan’s footprints and these atmospheric blends of a certain and fine homecoming.
Dad’s tastes of the west coastal ocean waves of the great surf of the free. Poetic be of the pipeline. Photos to the bottom of the sea of dreams…and those that come true. Jakob old’ son, the Minnesota weather certainly will cheer you… and of your effects of home. Midnight never short of an acoustic blend of old and young. Father knows best when it comes to the most important life answers; yet you have already got the questions in lyric… and all the precocious ways to go far. Dad must be proud, as the wallflower rebound of these harmonic planes.
Jakob, with a journey’s pond of the well-fills—-Minnesota ice fish. Wows in all dad’s difference in age…yet we all see and feel the bite, the bitter salt… and the moves of steers of all those roads well guided. Well lifted. In the clearing reflect of the concise patterns of sing and in step—-as if of like minds.
And of both your fans…your writes…your riches are really of the passion of what you hear and what you play.
Embryonic basks too every new dawn you levin—-like a token to all those rows and carpeted across the silver screens. Hop along Cassidy. Share a father and son. One in which you’ve surely have seen… and hopefully together. So, dream steady aback—-to seat us all in your memories of a baby car seat. A safe retreat——straight up Catskill mountains. Overstretch little baby Jakob’s curious eyes of the look about of brown bear. The wonders of a father. Son to teach so much. So noticeably young of the dancing bear act…the circus comes to mind, the love and gift of thinking young. The forever nights of childhood perceptions. The speed of time as we grow old. Now a rest by a cool night and cozy fire; letters of the red jack pines this Father’s Day, you send …
WHO IS ERIC LASTICK?
Eric Lastick is a strange man. He looks lived in, like an old rooming house knocked out and loaded from the inside.
He’s spent his life inside this badly-built walk-on-stilts high-rise of rooms called things like Hope, Aspiration, Dream…
… and still, today, he stares from his rain-melting ancient windows into glistening streets and memories.
Eric Lastick was born in Zurich but never became a gnome… instead he went looking for a place to stay in Pennsylvania, a city built on handmade pretzels, whoopie pies and cheesesteaks
Personally, I’ve never been to Pennsylvania. And doubt I ever will, I have more of a New York state of mind, an Elvis poster across the grey-ness of the days, Minnesota moan and an Iron Range resolve.
But Eric is living in Pennsylvania in his rooming-house mind.
And he is writing in there all the time.
It’s as if there comes a knock at the door, the rent man and Eric’s jailer are standing in the rain. an old railway sign in their hand.
Eric drops a poem into a cup…
Here Eric Lastick writes three short pieces on Dylan, analysing the ways of life that made little Bob Zimmerman what he is today.
Once upon a time in Hollywood Brad Pitt decided to go and see his hero Bob Dylan…
Wait!
Yes, that’s what he had to do – because he turned up just too late.
Brad is such a major Dylan fan that he has part of the lyric of “When The Deal Goes Down” tattooed on his arm.
“We live, we die, we know not why, but I’ll be with you,” the tattoo reads.
Bob, who at 81 is turning the music, art, literary, film, live performance – and metal work – worlds on fire with his renewed creativity has for years banned filming and photographs at his concerts.
And latecomers also banned!
So, Angelina’s ex said farewell to a chunk of Bob’s enigmatic and powerful performance at the Pantages Theatre in LA as the doors to the auditorium stayed firmly closed!
It all hit the right note though as Brad finally got in to the concert. Right now there are no reports on who the A-lister was with but we’ll keep you up-dated.
Meanwhile, the show he finally managed to get in to was a stunner.
Los Angeles Times music writer Mikael Wood said: “As a musical experience, this performance felt like nothing so much as a gift: a thoroughly engrossing 90-minute outpouring of pulpy juke-joint roots music and spectral folk-soul balladry, with Dylan in richly expressive voice and his bandmates accompanying him with an almost superhuman sensitivity.”
And the David Lynch lighting and sets Bob has chosen for his Rough and Rowdy tour took on a distinctly Twin Peaks atmosphere and was described as ‘like a dimly lit ballroom’.
The Never-ending tour is parked for now … but the road is beckoning again.
