Five Appalachian People Who Rule by Nate Hall of U.S. Christmas

The Tea Party movement has already astonished observers with its meteoric rise across the US. But yesterday Twitter was buzzing with speculation about whether it had acquired an icon of cool as one of its supporters — a member of the legendary sixties band Velvet Underground.

A three-minute news clip from a local TV station in Georgia went viral on Friday, evoking alarmed responses from Velvet Underground fans that the band’s drummer, Maureen ‘Moe’ Tucker, may have joined the ranks of Tea Party followers.

This related article has some interesting comments regarding the alleged “racism” or “fascism” of various musical figures (Eric Clapton, Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, David Bowie, etc…)

Robert Lepage’s company Ex Machina and the Metropolitan Opera took Manhattan on Monday night, filling Lincoln Centre and Times Square with the sights and sounds of Lepage’s production of Wagner’s Das Rheingold. A glittering opening-night crowd gave the premiere a standing ovation, flecked with boos, as the Met launched its new Ring cycle with a performance unusually rich in stage magic and musicianship.

Who is Lemmy? A heavy-metal god, the lead singer of Motörhead, the subject of widly entertaining new documentary Lemmy, sure—but who is he really? “He’s the baddest motherfucker in the world,” says Dave Grohl, of Foo Fighters. Lars Ulrich, the drummer from Metallica, adds, “There are no words. He’s Lemmy. It should be a verb.” A Motörhead fan interviewed for Lemmy outside a concert venue is perhaps most eloquent: “They could drop a nuclear bomb on this planet,” the guy says, “and Lemmy and the cockroaches are all that’s going to survive”…

Lemmy collects, and occasionally wears, Nazi garb. When asked in the film if he’s a Nazi, he says, no, he’s had six African-American girlfriends.

Adorno attacked something that he called the “regression of listening,” which he believed had infected the entire culture of modern America. He saw the culture of listening as a deep spiritual resource of Western civilization. For Adorno the habit of listening to long-range musical thought, in which themes are subjected to extended melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic development, is connected to the ability to live beyond the moment, to transcend the search for instant gratification, to set aside the routines of the consumer society, with its constant pursuit of the “fetish,” and to put real values in the place of fleeting desires.

A comprehensive, visceral and raw collection of North American Black Metal…

Christopher Lee to release ‘symphonic metal’ album: The man who played Dracula, Saruman and the Man with the Golden Gun is now to portray Charlemagne – through the medium of song… telling the story of his own direct ancestor, the first Holy Roman Emperor.

“To my surprise and indeed great pleasure, I have suddenly found that there is another string to my bow“…

Due on 15 March, Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross features the 87-year-old singing and acting alongside a full orchestra, choir, and a large cast of undisclosed guest vocalists. “There’s a lot of characters in this particular album,” Lee explained. “A lot. There’s Charlemagne himself of course, which I sing, and then there’s young Charlemagne, Charlemagne’s father, Charlemagne’s brother, … [even] the Pope.”

Remarks on the Politics of Black Metal: “an unstable amalgam of Stirnerite egoism and Nietzschean aristocratism: a radical anti-humanist individualism implacably hostile to all the ideological ‘spooks’ of the present social order, committed to creating an ‘aristocracy of the future’ (Nietzsche 464), and auto-engendering a ‘creative nothing’ (Stirner 6).”

H.E.R.R. does it again! It’s a gorgeous piece of work, both in terms of the cover art and the music itself. I was pleasantly surprised at how light and jaunty many of the tunes were- they have the feel of authentic folk songs one might have actually heard in the Roman provinces during the times of the Caesars. They would also make a great soundtrack for an epic historical film or documentary based on the Roman period. Bravo! A wonderful creation!

The band’s connection with Aleister Crowley, plus Jimmy Page was a right-wing Tory.