I was very sad to hear the news that Mark Linkous has died. He and his band toured with us in Europe, at the start of OK Computer, and they were great every night. His first two records were very important to me, and I carried his music from the tour into my life, and my friends� lives too. He was softly spoken, with an Old South courtesy I hadn�t heard before: he introduced me to Daniel Johnston�s music, and the West Virginian writing of Pinckney Benedict. Mark wrote and played some beautiful music, and we�re lucky to have it. Rest in Peace.

For those who don�t know or remember, Senor Chieftain Mews,as he likes to be addressed now, was our slightly disturbing host on �the most gigantic lying mouth of all time� �. Well, his comrade in arms and occasional masseuse, Chris Bran (who has also been hugely involved in our webcasts since we started them back in 2000), has a pilot out of his new comedy called �This is Jinsy� .. it went out last Monday night on BBC 3 and you can still watch it on the BBC iplayer, but only for a few more days� hurray whilst stocks last� Go check it out .. It�s mental:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00r8z4r/This_Is_Jinsy/
If we are on the subject of things you should watch then allow me to point you in the direction of the film �1 2 3 4�. It was written and directed by an old friend of ours from Oxford, Giles Borg. Giles was a true mensch of the Oxford scene back in the day .. he directed videos (Colin starred in one he made for the Candyskins, and it's on youtube..),and made a fine documentary on Ride. Well, he�s made his first feature film and it�s the story of an indie band forming and trying to get a deal � Sound familiar?...I love it.. You can see a trailer of it at:
http://www.1234themovie.co.uk/

It�s showing around the UK at the moment:
http://www.nbcq.co.uk/

Spring is sprunging�

Mark Thompson, Herr Director General of the BBC, announced yesterday that 6 music was to be closed ... which is obviously a ludicrous decision for those who actually love hearing great music on the radio ... so I've written to the BBC Trust, who apparently have the ability to reverse the decision, and if you feel this way inclined the link is https://consultations.external.bbc.co.uk/departments/bbc/bbc-strategy-review/consultation/consult_view
Here's what I wrote:




To whom it may concern,

I am writing regarding the news today that 6 Music is going to be closed, in the hope that you reconsider this decision. To be honest I, along with a vast number of other musicians, music industry types and real music fans, are completely shocked and baffled by this news. I wonder if those who made this decision are actually aware of the hugely important role that 6 music plays in fostering and promoting new bands, as well as still playing the likes of the band that I am in. It literally is the radio lifeblood for music outside of the mainstream. Not to denigrate Radio's 1 and 2, but it really is the only station that puts music first, and that's from a punters point of view and not some bloke in a band. Nowhere else can you hear an archived session track from T Rex juxtaposed next to Midlake's latest release. As David Bowie, put it ... it keeps the spirit of John Peel alive.

Please realise the impact and severity of closing this station down. It will be a huge blow for new bands and their labels. It's not enough to 'refocus' Radio's 1 and 2 as 6 music does a very specific thing. What you have with 6 Music is a gem of a radio station, it is doing what no other station in the world does or can possibly do. Remember it is also still relatively young, give it time. You also finally have a fantastic and seemingly settled line up of DJ's. Please get behind it and from what I can gather about its annual budget of �6m, it surely punches way above its weight in terms of cultural relevance and importance.

Thank you for considering this.

Ed O'Brien (Radiohead)

so yes rumour has it that the canadians came to the copenhagen summit demanding to increase their co2 emmissions.
principally cuz of the tar sands and how much money the faceless motherfuckers in the oil industry stand to make out of it.. who are obviously bankrolling the government there.
i find it hard to correlate this all with the canadians i know who are very forward thinking..
the frightening thing about it is that just such a project could send the climate over the tipping point.
here's a link.. but just google if you wanna know more

people and planet on tar sands

....i try to imagine what it must be like to work in the political lobby office of BP or whatever (ok not often).. must be nice to not give a shit... i've met some people involved in the oil industry they seem nice enough... u know..
but hey, they might cry, were all answerable to the shareholders..
err hang on isnt that most of us? pension funds etc? tricky. but then again not really. what use is a fuckin pension when there aint nowhere to live?

an yway
this is an office chart for all u shareholders out there>>>>

Intro: Live At Skateland (1986) Cutty Ranks
Brothers Gonna Work It Out Public Enemy Fear of a Black Planet
Cyclic Bit Raymond Scott
Audience No. 2 Autolux
New York Is Killing Me (Original Clapping Version) Gil Scott-Heron
Natty DVA
Sing Four Tet
Ambre Nils Frahm
Take Me Back Aloe Blacc

As per Thom�s announcement below � w.a.s.t.e has a pre-sale allocation of tickets for each show. Info for this and the general on sale can all be found here.

hey everyone

ok so in April the other band.. that i got together to do the eraser and other stuff u know .. Mauro, Flea, Me, Joey and Nigel is going back out to do some shows in the US.. ending with playing with Coachella. we had too much fun to just leave it there...

it has been decided that we call ourselves Atoms For Peace. hope you like the name.. it seemed bleedin' obvious.

these are the shows & Flying Lotus is opening for us -
New York Roseland Ballroom 5th & 6th
Boston Citi Wang Theatre 8th
Chicago Aragon Ballroom 10th & 11th
Oakland Fox Theatre 14th & 15th
Santa Barbara Bowl 17th

for further details follow this link

all warmth

Hey-
I'm doing a low key solo thing at the Cambridge Corn Exchange on the 25th of Feb.

It's because a friend of mine Tony Juniper (who used to be head of Friends of the Earth and who i went to the Copenhagen Summit with) is hoping to become one of the first Green Members of Parliament in the UK.
And i wanted to help him out somehow.

I think he'd be a great MP as he knows a lot about dealing with the murky brown waters of politics when it comes to the environment, but has a positive energy with a healthy contempt for the way they operate. And wouldn't it be nice to have someone there who is actually doing more than paying lip service to climate change? And maybe rip shit up a little?

Now normally i wouldn't get involved in politics like this... but lets face it.. it aint labour or the tories is it?!? so..
and anyway he bought me a pint and twisted my arm. it's a slippery slope i know.

what else do i have to say? oh yes the proceeds from said event go to the Green Party of which Tony is a member.
and support will be offered by local person Pete Um.

tickets will go on sale from the waste shop tommoro at midday.

now remember it s a local gig for local people.............. err like me.

1. Murderer by Low from Drums and Guns
2. Hotel Freund by Black to Comm from Alphabet 1968
3. If you go away by Scott Walker from Scott 3
4. Ancestors by Gonjasufi from 2010 from Warp Records
5. Turn it on (instrumental) by Mark Pritchard & Steve Spacek
6. These Words ft. dbridge by Martyn from Great Lengths
7. I think UR a Contra by Vampire Weekend from Contra

Just to clarify times for ticket sales

Auction starts Thursday 21st January 08.00 pm PST
Auction ends Saturday 23rd January 11.00 am PST

Well, that's all clear now....

x

We're doing a show this Sunday (24th January) to raise funds for the relief effort in Haiti. The venue is The Music Box Theatre at The Fonda in Los Angeles, doors at 7pm. All proceeds are going to the Oxfam Haiti relief fund. We're trying to raise as much money as possible, so tickets will be sold by auction at this site from 8pm tonight until 11am Saturday (PST):

http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/09004434FC1C86AC

We're in the middle of recording at the moment, so you'll be catching us on the fly.... but if you're up for it, then we are too.

See you then
x

Willie Mitchell


He made some of the sweetest, slinkiest, soulful records ever. I remember years ago round at Jonny's listening to
" That Driving Beat ", then devouring all the southern soul records he made.

hey-
i guess this time of year is a time for serious reflection and i have been doing a lot of that since coming back from copenhagen.
you know what has stunned me coming back is the anger you can taste in the air about this, everybody i meet wants to talk about it.. everyone is angry and despairing and i have tried to remain positive when i talk to them about it.. it has perhaps awakened something in the back of the mind of sane people throughout the world who perhaps naively assumed that something positive would come of these talks.
with such a strong reaction i hope perhaps that people are starting to join the dots and our unquestioning worship of an unlimited gluttonous carbon based economy could unravel in just enough time.
sane people in government, in the media, and on the streets are being shaken reluctantly from a dream looking at the children around them and are getting angrier than they have ever been before.
but this energy needs a constructive channel.

i have been trying to write something about my impressions of being there etc, but then Ben Stewart from Greenpeace happened to send me something he wrote on the last night which is so much better than anything i've done so far so i'll leave it to him for now

and wish you a heartfelt joyful christmas.

"The most progressive U.S. President in a generation comes to the most important international meeting since the Second World War and delivers a speech so devoid of substance that he might as well have made it on speakerphone from a beach in Hawaii. His aides argue in private that he had no choice, such is the opposition on Capitol Hill to any action that might challenge the dominance of fossil fuels in American life. And so the nation which put a man on the moon can�t summon the collective will to protect men and women back here on Earth from the consequences of an economic model and lifestyle choice that has taken on the mantel of a religion.
Then a Chinese Premier who is in the process of converting his Communist nation to that new faith (high-carbon consumer capitalism) takes such umbrage at Obama�s speech that he refuses to meet � refuses, in fact, to do much of anything beyond sulking in his hotel room, as if this were a teenager�s house party instead of a final effort to stave off the breakdown of our biosphere.
Late in the evening the two men meet and cobble together a collection of paragraphs which they call a �deal�, although in reality it has all the meaning and authority of a bus ticket, not that it stops them affixing their signatures to it with great solemnity. Obama�s team then briefs the travelling White House press pack � most of whom, it seems, understand about as much about global climate politics as our own lobby hacks know about baseball � and before we know it the New York Times and CNN are declaring the birth of a �meaningful� accord.
Meanwhile a friend on an African delegation emails to say that he and many fellow members of the G77 block of developing countries are streaming into the corridors after a long discussion about the perilous state of the talks, only to see Obama on the television announcing that the world has a deal. It�s the first they�ve heard about it, and a few minutes later, as they examine the text, they realise very quickly that it effectively condemns their continent to a century of devastating temperature rises.
By now the European leaders � who know this thing is a farce but have to present it to their publics as progress � have their aides phoning the directors of civil society organisations spinning that the talks have been a success. A success? This deal crosses so many of the red lines laid out by Europe before this summit started that there are scarlet skid marks across the floor of the Bella Centre, and one honest European diplomat tells us this is a �shitty shitty deal.�
Quite.
This deal is beyond bad. It contains no legally binding targets and no indication of when or how they�ll come about. There isn�t even a declaration that the world will aim to keep global temperature rises below 2 degrees C � instead leaders merely �recognise the science� behind that vital threshold, as if that were enough to prevent us crossing it. The only part of this deal anyone sane came close to welcoming was the $100bn global climate fund, but it�s now becoming apparent that even that�s largely made up of existing budgets, with no indication of how new money will be raised and distributed so poorer countries can go green and adapt to climate change.
Not all of our politicians deserve the opprobrium of a dismayed world. Our own Ed Miliband fought hard on no sleep for a better outcome, while President Lula of Brazil offered to financially assist other developing countries to cope with climate change and put a relatively bold carbon target on the table. But the EU didn�t move on its own commitment (one so weak we�d actually have to work hard not to meet it) while the United States offered nothing and China stood firm.
Before the talks began I was of the opinion that we would only know Copenhagen was a success when plans for new coal-fired power stations across the developed world were dropped. If the giant utilities saw in the outcome of Copenhagen an unmistakable sign that governments were now determined to act, and that coal plants this century would be too expensive to run under the regime agreed at this meeting, then this summit would have succeeded. Instead, as the details of the agreement emerged last night we received reports of Japanese opposition MPs popping champagne corks as they savoured the possible collapse of their new government�s carbon targets. It�s not just that we haven�t got to where we needed to be, we�ve actually ceded huge ground. There is nothing in this deal � nothing � that would persuade an energy utility that the era of dirty coal is over. And the implications for humanity of that simple fact are profound.
I know we greens are partial to hyperbole. We use language as a bludgeon to direct attention to the crisis we�re facing, and you�ll hear much more of it in the coming days and weeks. But really, it�s no exaggeration to describe the outcome of Copenhagen as an historic failure that will live in infamy. In a single day, in a single space, a spectacle was played out in front of a disbelieving audience of people who have read and understood the stark warnings of humanity�s greatest scientific minds - and what they witnessed was nothing less than the very worst instincts of our species articulated by the most powerful men who ever lived.
I will leave the last word to the late Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who would have given voice to the insanity of Copenhagen better than I ever could, and whose poem Requiem is perhaps appropriate at this moment: �When the last living thing, has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up, perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, �It is done. People did not like it here�.�

I haven�t spoken to Thom yet, but judging by his entries here and reading today�s papers the outcome of Copenhagen is a bloody disgrace � I wanted to put something up on DAS, as a kind of personal round-up to the year (also because I rather pathetically don�t contribute much to this), so excuse me if I kick off in a somewhat dejected manner, because in fact none of what I write seems at all relevant or important in the face of serious climate change �. This is the bottom line for all our lives whether we choose to face it or not, and believe me I choose not to most of the time in the name of my own personal happiness and subsequently of those around me � anyway here goes ..
I read an interesting book in the Summer by a man called Terence McKenna, entitled �Food of the Gods� .. his hypothesis is that certain natural plants have been integral in explaining mankind�s development in the spheres of language, intelligence and culture� it�s really fascinating, but a particular passage popped out at me, whilst reading, and it seems particularly relevant now:
�Looking down on Los Angeles from an airliner, I I never fail to notice that it is like looking at a printed circuit: all those curved driveways and cul de sacs with the same little modules installed along each one. As long as the �Reader�s Digest� stays subscribed to and the TV stays on, these modules are all interchangeable parts within a very large machine. This is the nightmarish reality�.. the creation of the public as a herd. The public has no history and no future, the public lives in a golden moment created by a credit system which binds them ineluctably to a web of illusions that is never critiqued. This is the ultimate consequence of having broken off the symbiotic relationship with the Gaian matrix of the planet. This is the consequence of lack of partnership; this is the legacy of imbalance between sexes; this is the terminal phase of a long descent into meaninglessness and toxic existential confusion.�
Now, I don�t walk around with this stuff in my head every hour of each day, in fact the opposite would be true. I�m happy feeling so grateful to the deck of cards that I�ve been dealt. Yet it�s always there, this knowing that we are all living in �The Age of Stupid� � I�m sure most people feel the same way�.. Yet our leaders seem incapable of leading � managing would seem a better word, or rather mismanaging�� Leadership implies wisdom; it implies vision and dynamism; the ability to foresee problems, create solutions and see them through � does that sound like our leaders? NO it doesn�t� And why is this not the case? What is preventing them from leading? Is it the power of big business/corporations/ the financial industries? It looks increasingly like it � vested fucking interests, no degree of what�s fair for all � plain and simple self-interest. I don�t know about you but most people I know don�t make decisions solely on what works best for them � it�s a balance between what is good for others too�
This is officially a rant now and I may not post it .. apologies to my brothers in the band if they are reading this and don�t like it .. tell me I�m being an arse and I�ll take it down..

10 mins. Later:
Apologies for an about turn in mood here, but I want to write something positive �. When we returned from touring Mexico, Brasil, Argentina and Chile for the first time this year I intended to post something about the amazing experience we had .. well I didn�t of course, so here goes. Thank you to everyone who came out and saw us, those shows were particularly special .. there was something unique and marked about every night .. and to play our music in that magical continent .. what an honour .. Thank you so much for having us. I�d also like to add in the dates we did in the Summer, our first visit to Austria and Prague and our first Polish show since �94 �. And then of course there was Leeds and Reading � Amazing for us, particularly the last night at Reading.. it felt like a fitting finale to it all .. Thank you thank you thank you�..
The vibe in the camp is fantastic at present, and we head off into the studio in January to continue on from the work we started last Summer .. I am so genuinely excited about what we�re doing, but for obvious reasons I can�t divulge anything more.. anyway we all love surprises don�t we? 10 years ago we were all collectively (that�s the band) in the land of Kid A .. and although hugely proud of that record, it wasn�t a fun place to be .. What�s reassuring now, is that we are most definitely a different band, which should therefore mean that the music is different too and that is the aim of the game�.keep it moving.
Inevitably, there�s all this best and worst of the decade list type stuff going on at present and I was going to do my office chart for films of the year, then it turned into of the decade, but then having watched �Harold and Maude� again the other night it�s just 10 great films to watch over Xmas �..

1. Harold and Maude
2. Sideways
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey
4. Where Eagles Dare
5. Son of Rambow
6. This is England
7. Being There
8. The Year of Living Dangerously
9. Finding Nemo
10. Moonraker

There has to be a Bond film there and although definitely not the best I have a bit of a soft spot for Moonraker, � I always loved the Rio and South American scenes .. so much so that when it came out as a kid I went on my own and watched three consecutive matinee showings of it .. also those in the know will have noticed that Hal Ashby directed both �Harold and Maude� and �Being there� � he was an incredible director, well I only know those two films of his, but I intend to check out the others.
One last thing .. this year I got embroiled with the whole file-sharing issue� my whole angle has been is that it�s too easy to blame all the current ills of the music industry squarely at the feet of those who illegally file-share, which is what the major labels have been doing .. they don�t seem to want to take any responsibility for our current state of affairs .. well I think that�s bollocks and hypocritical, and of course the whole subject is not black and white, which they like to portray it as � there are no clear cut heroes and villains in this. But if you�re interested there is a fantastic podcast by one of our national treasures Stephen Fry .. he speaks so eloquently on the subject, with such good sense, reason and pragmatism .. here�s the link:

http://www.stephenfry.com/2009/07/27/series-2-episode-4-itunes-live-festival/

Here�s to you all having a peaceful and happy Christmas in spite of all the current madness � and good luck to us all in 2010�

well ... i am truly disgusted about the way things have ended here. if you read in tommorrows headlines that a deal was reached?? remember it was nothing like what was needed and was filed by a bored complicit press who needed to show something for two weeks of crap.. and that it reflected the wests inability to lead decisively.
that it will make alarm bells ring throughout the world.
we have no international agreement. this is all too too late.
i feel deeply traumatized by the whole experience. if you'd been there you would also have been.

and as i wrote the previous entry my battery goes dead and obama walks past with a very grim expression, everyone thought he was stroming out but no he'd just been in talks with the chinese. just now a french delegate tells me that brazil has stormed out of the talks. this is all so sad. still peace and goodwill to all men. love and understanding.
just no more business as usual ok?? this is all starting to really feel like some enormous vaguely pointless corporate expo.