Drone warfare - killing by remote control

Medea Benjamin
OR books
ISBN-13: 978-1-78168-O77-3

As far as this blog is concerned it goes without saying that the current upsurge in the use of drones for killing, making war as un-involving and casual as a shopping-mall game, is a genuine evil which too few people recognise as such. Medea Benjamin has been on the road introducing her book on the subject, and recently appeared at Bristol Foyles bookshop as part of that city's innovative Festival of Ideas.

Weeks after the 2002 American invasion of Afghanistan, she visited that country. There, on the ground, talking with victims of the strikes, she learned the truth about the “smart bombs” on which U.S. forces claimed to be increasingly reliant. Now, with the use of drones escalating at a pace unthinkable just a few years ago when this was science-fiction, Benjamin has written this highly readable, hard-fact book as a call to action: “It is meant to wake a sleeping public,” she writes, “lulled into thinking that drones are good, that targeted killings are making us safer.” 

Medea Benjamin is also a driving force behind Code Pink, which is well worth visiting if you want to know more or better still, be active.

Mumbo Sauce

Ron English and Clark Fox

Washington DC is well-known for its phoney classical  monuments and for links to Superman, through DC Comics or being a contender, with New York, for being the original of the City of Metropolis. But like any city of any size it has a life of its own, and its own cultural proclivity. A new show opening there in April, Mumbo Sauce, includes one artist personally known to this blog, Clark Fox, well-known for his finely-crafted Pop since his Manhattan days. Plus BORF, Richard Colman, Cynthia Connolly, Tim Conlon, Cool "Disco" Dan, Globe Poster Archive, Mark Jenkins, Rosina Teri Memolo, Mingering Mike and Robin Rose. It's called after a local favourite relish... I'll let the curators take over here: Mumbo Sauce is a part of the African American culture and is the flavour of home for true D.C. natives.The exhibition was planned in response to another local show,  Pump me up – D.C. subculture of the 1980s, an art exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art  It's a survey of artists who have, or once had, deep roots in Washington, D.C. The exhibition will be an exploration and commentary on how the environment of Go-Go, graffiti, punk, hardcore, graphic design and fine art has influenced their work.
Mumbo Sauce is a red, sweet, and tangy sauce, thinner than barbeque sauce and similar to plum sauce. Arguably indigenous to Washington, D.C., the condiment is found in carry outs throughout D.C. and the surrounding metro areas.
Like the sense of identity that Mumbo Sauce carries for the District of Columbia, the artists featured in the show will be creating new works and 'tribute' installations surveying their relationships and remembrances from living and working in the Capitol. The art will be in various media and (of course) for sale.
Visit them online at www.contemporarywing.com/projects/mumbo-sauce.
And if you're in Washington any time before April 21st, the place to head for is 906 H Street, NE Washington, DC 20002

The Art of Leaving

Anna Stothard
Alma Books
ISBN: 84688-237-1

After her hi-definition trawl of Los Angeles in'The Pink Hotel', Anna Stothard does a similar, fascinating, job on a recognisable corner of her home city, London. The story is also an in-depth study of someone, Eva, who doesn't take easily to closeness and is always looking for an escape route. As a way of life this only works as long as she is in control; and you, the reader, are free to roam at will through her mind as she copes with being left instead of leaving - while juggling the two men and the one, mystery, woman in her life. If you want more: although she doesn't happen to be a writer, Eva has the kind of feverish imagination many authors would kill themselves for .

Alvin Lee

Alvin Lee, in so many ways the embodiment of the 'Sixties, hasn't quite made it into his own seventies. He established the gold standard for speed as a guitarist - in fact, before Alvin Lee, speed just wasn't an issue except among small groups of competing musos. The term 'rock hero looks' wasn't coined until one or two guys including Alvin made pop music appeal to the big girls again. He combined his talents with the attitude of a Real Hippie: effortlessly generous and modest on-stage and off.  I base my sketch on  passing acquaintance: Ten Years After's performance of 'Crosscut Saw' at the Railway Hotel West Hampstead August 1968, featuring Roger Chapman on vocals and Cliff Hanley on harmonica.

The harp had its own story - it had spent a few years stuck in a saddle round my neck before I went electric, and saw some busking and partying in Germany and Istanbul, before allowing its owner a rare and memorable plug-in to a bit of the best of the Love Decade. TYA obviously had their night in the pub as a regular open mic thing - after us, John Mayall joined them for a tune. And the moothie?  It ended being given with some change to a very pleased beggar in Oxford Circus tube station around 1985.

Bristol International Jazz Blues Festival

This, the first Bristol international jazzfest, certainly lived up to its name with Colston Hall making room for gigs major and minor, plus the odd jam session - and international enough with the mighty Ginger Baker and Jazz Confusion, leaning heavily on the African roots of jazz.  And as James Brown alumnus Peewee Ellis, long settled in the West Country, took the stage, he got a special cheer for being himself and local too. He reappeared with one of the many bands gigging out front in the entrance hall, and headlined too, on Sunday.  Read the full review here:

John Schofield (here with his new Organic Trio) is a real all-rounder, easily moving from the kind of big-build-up and firey solo that a younger man would be proud of, to the prettiest of ballads with Tennessee Waltz. A real feast.

Arturo Sandoval

This was also a welcome opportunity to see Chris Barber, who was already a well-established Name when his end of the Trad spectrum was the breeding-ground for the Rolling Stones. When you consider what followed on from the Stones, you have to accept that some of Barber's musical DNA is swirling around in punk. His inbetween intros and band stories got extended into a virtual stand-up comedy routine. The weekend also gave welcome exposure to Clare Teal, local heroes Get The Blessing, serial collaborator Andy Sheppard  and 'New Orleans official musical ambassador' Lillian Boutté. 
The final big bang came from Cuban maestro Arturo Sandoval, whose sextet blew a swinging, roaring set, including his spot combining scat with beatbox and segueing into a vocal impersonation of all the instruments onstage. Generosity!

Kevin Ayres

So the sardonic king of sunshine has left us for good. A founder member of Soft Machine, he also led The Whole World (lead guitarist Mike Oldfield) and managed to record a string of charming, quirky and avant-garde albums although he claimed to be work-shy, and had a tendency to vanish between albums or tours. He told me once that he used to think living the easy life in the sunshine was the way to live. "Now I'm fucking sure it's the way!"

Ken Loach unbanned



The unlikely venue of Bath City Clubhouse hosted a rare showing of three banned Ken Loach films on Friday 1^st February, just the job for your blogger, who is a bit of a Loach completist. After the director identified himself as an unequivocal supporter of Bath City FC, the night opened with a trip back to the black-and-white 'sixties; a documentary made with Tony Garnett for Save The Children and London Weekend TV which turned out to be a call for an end to the injustices that put children in harm’s way, and the relationship between class politics and and charities; more polemical rather than the expected celebration of the Charity’s fiftieth anniversary; simultaneously an unintentionally funny exposure of the charity workers, no matter how well-intentioned they were, as upper-class and patronising. Also one made for LWT during the Miners’ Strike, which inescapably included lots of footage of police brutality. This was too hairy for Melvin Bragg and his fellows at the TV station; More embarrassing for them might have been the question implied: ‘If the police were only following orders, who gave the orders?’