#Warsaw Pact band

[nugothrhythms]

Los Angeles, California-based eclectic indie post-punk band Warsaw Pact performing "Still" off of their 2023 EP The Kompromat

#post punk #alternative rock #indie goth #shoegaze #Warsaw Pact #Still #The Kompromat #Warsaw Pact band #not the actual historical Warsaw Pact #apparently there was also another band by the same name in the 1980s #but this is the 2010s 2020s one #Los Angeles California #Los Angeles post punk #California post punk #Youtube

[themacabre70s]

joy division: goths that weren’t goth

content and trigger warning for discussion of suicide. it not graphically discussed but it is mentioned.

as the title says Joy Division is goth, but it's also not. Joy Division from what i have read is better classified as post punk today. i know the sub genre labeling in the punk/rock community is very nuanced but it would feel wrong not to include joy division in my blog. instead, this post is more about remembering the band's influence on the goth culture musically. a staple band for goths of the 70s.

there will be no style section in this post because while their utilitarian look was iconic they did not influence the fashion scene well enough for me to write too much about it. if you wish to learn more i direct you to these:

https://husbands-paris.com/en/joy-division-austere-sound-and-style/

anothermanmag.com/style-grooming/10919/ian-curtis-joy-division-lead-singer-frontman-style-fashion

https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/a38894373/joy-division-1970s-style/

music: gloom and doom

joy division released their first EP “An Ideal For Living” in June 1978

a year later their debut album “Unknown Pleasures” was released in June and sold over 10,000 copies, Jon Savage of Melody Maker described the album as an “opaque manifesto” and “one of the best, white, English, debut LPs of the year”

in November of 1980 joy division released a single called “Transmission”

joy divisions second and final album “Closer” was released in July 1980. Closer reached #6 on the UK album chart and peaked at #3 in the New Zealand charts.

since then many outtakes, live editions, and compilation albums have been released.

joy divisions music at first listen is undeniably gothic with haunting lyrics sung by ian curtis' low gravelly voice. joy divisions style helped influence a new era of artists famous today such as Radiohead and The Cure.

an article by the blog "Thred" comments on Unknown Pleasures saying, "It’s a monster of a record, one that embraces the complex suffering of human experience decades before we even began to talk about anxiety or mental health. Joy Division opened the door for punk and rock to express more than simply rage and frustration."

joy divisions sound is described as industrial. echoing bass with guitar waiting for its turn in songs about the bleakness of manchester life.

the imagery surrounding their albums reinforces this idea with black-and-white stone settings and shadowy figures.

they feel restless, almost ghostly, like they're waiting for something lurking behind the beat of drums.

its clear this style of sound mixing helped pave the way for goth bands of the future, those forming, and those who would form.

band history: becoming joy division

joy division was formed in 1976 by friends Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook after seeing the Sex Pistols live and being inspired to start a band. they recruited friend Terry Mason who had gone to the concert with them and Mason became the drummer, Sumner the keyboardist/guitarist, and Hook the bassist. after placing an ad for a vocalist they were joined by Ian Curtis.

joy division first went by the name Warsaw, a reference to David Bowies song Warsawa.

Warsaw would debut on May 29th 1977 and was received with a lot of praise. Terry Mason became the bands manager and they had two drummers Tony Tabac and Steve Brotherdale before settling on school friend of Ian Curtis, Stephen Morris in August of 1977.

later in early 1978 the band renamed themselves Joy Division to avoid confusion with a London punk band called Warsaw Pakt. in January of 1978 they had their first show as Joy Division.

tragically, on May 18th 1980 vocalist Ian Curtis took his own life.

the band disbanded because of a pact made earlier saying they would rename the band should any members leave.

Joy Division became a new band called New Order which released their debut single “Ceremony” in 1981. in New Orders early years they struggled under the shadow of joy division but achieved greater success playing in a different style & genre of music.

#joy division #ian curtist #stephen morris #bernard sumner #peter hook #new order #themacabre80s #post punk #goth #goth icons #utilitarian fashion

[rpgse7enx4]

When crime meets war; Yugoslavia, 1992 - By RPG.

1992 was a period of uncertainty; it was roughly a year after the Gulf War had started and finished, and 3 years since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.

Yugoslavia, towards its dissolving, started to experience political and economic mismanagement left by the power vacuum that was left to be "centralised" by what was supposed to be the continuation of the Yugoslav government. During the 1990s, specifically 1991, Yugoslavia held referendums to settle disputes with territories trying to claim their independence; citing that there was a rise in violent conflicts between certain nationalities, in this case between ethnic Bosnians and Serbs who of which were Bosnian Serbs and Serb-Croat.

Yugoslavia split in late 1991 into 1992, spawning six new constituencies within its former borders and a spate of civil unrest. As 1992 dawned, these what seemed to be riots turned into full civil conflict with religion and ethnicity as motivation to what sparked the fuse.

Bosnia, because of its geographical position within the former Yugoslavia, was hit the hardest; Croatian forces, and their Herzog-Bosnian counterparts from the north and north-west encroaching, and the Serbian militias with additional Yugoslav armies from the south. An explanation for this could be the fact that Bosnians were distrusted in the centralised government.

During the Croatian War of Independence and the Bosnia War, in 1992, a figure called Arkan placed his piece on the chessboard that war former Yugoslavia. Arkan had all the right hands in all the right places, in the government, security services and interior ministry; his father held a high position in the Yugoslav Air Force, and his connections with Slovenia's Federal Interior Minister granted him immunity from prison charges...so much so that when he was arrested for a burglary in France and deported back to Serbia, he was released by said Slovenian Minister as Arkan had built a repertoire for himself with Slovenia's state security. Slovenia's minister, chief of the Directorate for State Security had been quoted to have said "One Arkan is more than the entire State Security directorate".

This is where Arkan mixed his criminality with warfighting. He began a life of crime at 15 when he moved to France, committing acts of theft; and ended up dead in the year 2000 after he was gunned down leaving a hotel. Noted, his criminal activities did garner him some fame; and his close contact to other Serbs in the criminal underworld, those close to the Zemun Clan and associates of Joca Amsterdam helped him advance in his later life. In Zvornik, Bosnia, he was involved with the orchestration of the Zvornik massacre; placing him on the UNICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia) on crimes against humanity charges. The organisation he led, by the moniker of "Arkan's Tigers" or "Arkanove Tigrovi", went from being a "band" of football ultras to war criminals.

An additional thing to add about Arkan is that he had stakes in some major projects in Serbia, such as a football club that he owned called FK Obilic; which was based in the Vracar region of the countries capital, Belgrade. This team was at Champions League level when its owner was waging war.

Conclusively, war and crime coexist; where the evolution of evil acts becomes anything but a myth. In fact, war can be considered its own crime; a crime to those who experience its devastation.

RPG-7

[hydralisk98]

Multimedia BlurayDisk-pack (WIP mess)

That is it, I shall study my long overdue textual content threads / audio playlists / visual moodboards into a multimedia BD compilation for visualization and manifesting purposes. I still want to divide it into a audio media, a video media, a interactive game media and a documentation wiki media... but I guess I would be best just to mash them into Bluray media as data with K3B or something similar...

(I don't care how many of such I will use for 60FPS 480x288p, albeit I do want to make a custom slipcase, manual, feelies, labels, et cetera for the project)

I may use some flat-ish retro toon rendition of the Seventies gloss retro-futurism (plastics-home) aesthetic that won on the poll I ran some time back, with the sweet sweet one vote total I got.

My hand-curated YouTube playlists

My own media compilations & recordings

Digital storefronts content I own (Steam, Gog, Itch & DrivethroughRPG for example)

?

Inspiration list time!

Joint COMECON / 'Warsaw Pact' Venus future skyward colony proposition (alternate history inspiration)

Reichbürger scenario (Nazi victory world with mundane technological considerations)

Alien Isolation (overall aesthetic)

Halo 2 (Arbiter arc)

Kawaiik (/ Quake 1 concept as revised by Arne)

Portal 2 (Older Aperture chapters)

Hypnospace Outlaw (gameplay / narrative structs)

Helluva Boss (graphically stylized render style)

Solarpunk genre (upper optimistic attitude and uplifting mood)

The Stanley Parable (aesthetic props and scenery)

Exapunks (in-world metaphysics & fourth wall considerations)

FreeCiv (Chess tileset but both hexagonal, font-square and 3D vector-layered)

Monopoly / Prosperity (Loop game structure with economical variables to tinker with)

Civilization 5 Complete Edition (profound history simulation and modding scene)

Civilization Beyond Earth Rising Tide (sentient planetscape & exo-planetary machine futurism)

SimCity 4 + The Sims 2 (long-term rotational playthroughs & optimized simulationism taken to the extreme)

Heavy use of profound linguistics, religions, ancestries / dynasties, non-combat social, domestical / business playback and political intrigues

Toymaker asymmetric megamall-tower quest & data corruption of the far far away future

Skinwalkers, Small Lawful Hacking Matrices and Red Dwarves Universal Nihilistic Optimism Benevolent Upper End Simulationism era, Harvest Gold, Dieselpunk, Teslafunk, Iron Sky, Diseases, Guns, 'HexFlowerCrawl' exploration, fallen angels, lawful Goetia devils, Hivemind.SU, S.T.A.L.K.E.R Anomaly, vertically-inclined fighting, haywires, radioactive exclusion zone, open-source decentralized DAO infrastucture, Prospero sandbox, Homestuck circular hives, MUD political assemblies, governing bodies & player bands / gangs, peer-to-peer social experiments, benevolent GAI service grid nucleus network with some disjointed smaller AI agents opposing the overarching system, timeless terminator time-war time-sharing situation, Lambda calculus, privilege escalation, iXe, Wonderfall, nostalgia, several virtual layers of emulation, honesty, transparency, Paradise, Parade, Tape, alternate history of my own craft, cyclical narrative loop in spoke-and-hub structuring, the world operates like a time-sharing mainframe and is sub-divided in many competing ways, Tyranny, PETSCII-like assets.

Tier 0 (?), Tier 1 (1-6), Tier 2 (6-12), Tier 3 (12-16), Tier 4 (16-20), Tier 5 (>20);

Key elements for my very own TTRPG campaign

TAL-ELK-ENTROPY (16^12) Grand toymaker's asymmetric non-euclidian (X-wrap and Portals) megamall modular tower, with whispered bronze ghost songs, skin-walkers, Lambda Calculus erudition mainframes and FLOSS transparency. Restore, document & customize the full 48-levels tall tower into a history-logged encyclopedia. May include exploration, shopping and problem-solving. (Mixture between Cyberpunk RED, Talespinner and PF2E)

12 Nucleus Sectors, 36 Affixed Sectors, 12-16 Supplementary Sectors. (~60 sectors total, preferably ~48-50)

BronzeAge-era ghost songs

Lambda Calculus & heavy use of linguistics

Skinwalkers and profoundly erudite sapient Synthetic agents

(?)

Entropy (far far future meta-narrative set at the edge of time among sapient erudites)

Elk & Skinwalkers (rustic yet solarpunk tale of a witch coven)

Maynard Power-Ladies (historical mainframe-era story of computing engineer women in the 60s-70s)

Bronze (bronze age songs compendium of musings and curiosities)

Her Camera (van hex space & time & data exploration on a alternate world)

Grand Toymaker (transformational story in a mega-factory mall between Samhain and Yule)

Keywords: end of time, forest library, toymaker tower, transformation / self-customization, witch coven.

At the edge of time, you ask and wait for guidance and support. And while you wait for their coming, you browse a data library from the Toymaker.

A True Polymorph, a Chronokin, & a Toymaker meets in a forested space near a library.

#maskoch

[rz-rosszogg]

Zelensky.. Western Empire's best option for World Peace? Or/and, a confirmed War Criminal promoted by western empire interests as 'real good Ukrainian'?

Here, the independent research and media knows exactly what he is, and which is the world's only big empire.. but it's always better to ask the people of the world, for their true views.. And so we have been doing exactly that, ever since the start of the military battles, in February 2022:

Ok. For everyone that hasn't really thought about the Ukrainian conflict:

We have an ever expanding Western Empire, which is led by a weak and out of date Nato, a Cold war rusty old military band of liers and criminals. These people haven't honoured any agreement with any country, or opposing view, ever since forming against The Warsaw Pact.

Late last year, they even wanted to take over Ukraine, a longstanding territory of Russia, which Russia allowed an experiment with statehood. The result was, that after 32 years, Ukraine became a US brothel and centre of corrupt deals for western countries. It also became a territory from which the old Cold War geriatrics in Washington, conducted provocations on Russian interests, even within Russia. Also, from Ukrainian territory, the US distabilised all ex Soviet republics and Central Asia. It was one very important world area in which the US had no say. But not for want of trying. The US is still rejected as a player in that part of the world. Both, Russia and China won't ever allow the US in. So what did the US government do?

They attacked from the west, tried to take Ukraine by usual bribes, propaganda, installation of western regime governments in Kiev, and huge misinformation campaigns. But, it didn't work. Instead it all turned into a hot war, which the western empire of 30 governments and huge media propaganda machine, lost. They lost the military and the economic conflict. The Russian army, with just 80,000 troops took over 5 big, and the most important industrial regions of Ukraine. Which by the way, Russia had earlier given to Ukraine without any argument. Russia actually built the huge industrial complex that became known as the Donbas. Recent history tells us, that two thirds of modern Ukrainian territory was given to it's Ukranian province by Russia. That's why most Ukrainians are Russians..they all speak Russian and are soaked in local Russian traditions and way of life, for a thousand years.

But after 1991, western traitors in Ukraine, started to attack the local population, which was Russian by blood. That escalated to burning Ukrainian and Russian people alive. So, in 2014 the people of Ukraine rebelled, and organised themselves in the East and South into military resistance, fighting the western installed governments in Kiev. The Ukrainian people also asked Russia for assistance, since 2014.. and even before. Finally, Nato's arrogant regime of expansion into Ukraine, was answered from Moscow by military intervention..and in six months taking back into Russia the East and the South of Ukraine. Of course, there are more details of western empire extension into Ukraine and aggression against Russia in these 30 or so years..but in a nutshell..the above is the overall and most correct picture of the conflict.

Russia has already won all the major battles.. military and economic..but now it needs to clean up, and regroup after careful evolution of the situation. It needs to put forward next objectives and draw out the policies. Two original aims of Russia need to be fully finalised: Denazification and De-militarisation of Ukraine. Naturally, the Kiev regime will fall.

At the top, we see Zelensky caricature in German newspaper. And it's spot on: A young well fed teen on anti depressants, lecturing the world, why the western Empire must take Ukraine. However, that kind of western propaganda is having the opposite effect on the populations of the world. Politicians who support Washington and pro Zelensky EU governments are becoming more isolated everyday, from the public all over the world. They sound out of tune morally, economicly, and mentally. No wonder, as soon as they are tested at the polling box, they loose government.. even only after few weeks in power, they become unelectable. This winter we will see many Zelensky supporters fall.

We interview as many people as possible around all countries of our world, and consistently have found, that most of the world's public is firmly behind Russia. Most people report, that the west is the Evil Empire, and that Russia has given them hope. Also has shown them how strong it is, and has proven that by beating 30 western rich governments. It has also defeated them economicly. Everyone already knew that Russia is a top military superpower, but it took by surprise many, just how strong it is economically. However, many didn't know much about Russia. For example didn't know that Russia is the only Natural Resources Superpower, No.4 economy in the world, and No.1 economy in Europe (by IMF, PPP most accurate world rating). But now, many said that they are looking forward to learning more about Russia.

These findings weren't surprising, as we live in the age of the largest Propaganda, ever..and all directed against two Superpowers, Russia and China. No wonder that they are now partnering in most things.

For All Peace and Truth loving people of the World; Hold on.. Hope is Here.. and Freedom, Peace and Love Follow. We must get the governments we deserve.. as soon as we throw away the present crazy politicians, their ruling class and their Propaganda machine.

MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR ❤️💜💚💙☮️🌄🌅✨✨😘😘🥰😜😜☮️🇦🇺🇧🇬

#world #anti imperialism #anti capitalist #russia #australia #ukraine #europe #us #china

[cyanidetooth]

Funeral Party! Liquid Pink! Warsaw Pact! Spleen Ideal! Clair Obscur! Rythmo Populi! Pêché Mortel! Op De Koffie Band! Departure! The Voices! Into The Storm! U2! The Fireworks Factory! Rumbling Organs! Social Security! The. Blackout! The Brigade! The Megastars! Earth's Epitaph! Muscovite Five! Exotic Pets Erotica! Violent Marriage! Every New Dead Ghost! Chant! Chant! Chant! Backwards Into Paradise! Baby Sex Priest! The Threat! Unknown Creed! Very Mental! The Passive Factor! Placebo! Just So Stories! Cold! Deja Vu! Right Profile! The Ghost Orchid! Devil Nation! Entropy Guild! Discipline! Teenage Head!

#WFMU #spinageblasters #freeformradio #creamocoyl

[kb-p2730]

Lemmy & Lucas Fox_First MotorDaze

#Motorhead #Hawkwind #Ian Lemmy Kilmister #Lucas Fox #Warsaw Pact #Pink Fairies #70's #Speed Rock n Roll #One Of My Favorite Bands Ever #On Parole #1975 #1979 #kb-p2730

[retropopcult]

"It's a Mistake" is a song by Australian band Men at Work, released June 18, 1983 as the third single from their album Cargo.  In the US, it entered the charts at #42 and peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in August 1983.

It was written by lead singer/guitarist Colin Hay who said the message of the song was anti-nuclear war, of great concern at the time. The lyrics specifically deal with the mindset of military men across the world in the 1980s, wondering if and when the democratic countries of NATO and the communist states of the Warsaw Pact would end the Cold War standoff with conventional battle or a nuclear exchange. Hay sings in the persona of a mid-level officer wishing to learn from his commanders if his men are going to war or not.

The video, which had heavy rotation on MTV, told a satirical story of the outbreak of a war between the Eastern and Western blocs.  Hay said the second half of the video was inspired by the 1964 black comedy film Dr. Strangelove.

#It's a Mistake #Men At Work #1983 #song #Cargo #album #Colin Hay #nuclear war #NATO #Warsaw Pact #cold war #video #MTV #single #Dr Strangelove

[lactodebillus-bulgaricus]

it's ussr times. russia has gathered all ussr states and all warsaw pact states bc he wants to start a music band with everyone in it. the idea is for them to play instruments native to their countries so they can show the imperialist west that internationalism and communism can work.

after russia has explained why he has gathered them, he asks 'any questions?'

everyone remains silent. only bulgaria, clutching a bulgarian bagpipe under his arm, raises his hand.

'yes bulgaria?'

'is yogurt an instrument?'

'no bulgaria, yogurt is not an instrument.'

bulgaria raises his hand again.

'no bulgaria, qatiq isn't an instrument either.'

#hetalia #aph bulgaria #hws bulgaria #aph russia #hws russia

[nugothrhythms]

"Black September" by Los Angeles, California-based eclectic post-punk and indie goth band Warsaw Pact off of their upcoming 2023 EP The Kompromat, released next month

#indie rock #post punk #indie goth #gothgoth #Warsaw Pact #Black September #The Kompromat #upcoming album #music #2023 #Los Angeles goth #California goth #LA goth #2020s goth #August release #August 19 2023 #Bandcamp

[joezworld]

What’s the deal with the Class 47 locomotives that were exported to Cuba?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_47?wprov=sfti1

A persistent feather in the cap of communist nations during the Cold War was that they had better Locomotive Rights than the west did. 

Stalin, realizing that locomotives deciding to band together would massively derail the country if they went for a cause that wasn’t communist, had been mulling giving all locomotives citizenship in the 1930s, and eventually elected to do that in 1943, following a proclamation from Hitler that would give European locomotives German citizenship if they allied themselves to the Nazi cause. 

Since then, locomotives in just about every Warsaw Pact country are just about on par with humans as far as “civil rights” go. (They all have none, but are citizens!)

Many British locomotives have ended up in communist countries, including countless steam engines who fled the UK on Soviet, Polish, or East German freighters. Prototype locomotive HS4000, better known as Kestrel, was sold to the Soviets in the late 60s, and had by all accounts a very pleasant life in the USSR, fitting in well amongst the Soviets and eventually snagging himself a choice position in the Soviet national rail system before the fall of the Union in 1993. Since then, he’s been in and out of politics, partly retiring, partly being a member of Gazprom’s board of Directors. (And probably lining his pockets with lots and lots of oil money.)

This included Cuba, although it isn’t known if Castro was willing to do this himself, or if this specific idea was pushed upon him by the Russians. (It should be noted that the massive US cultural influence on pre-Castro Cuba meant that locomotives weren’t slaves, but Castro took a bunch of unwritten rules from the Batista dictatorship and codified them into law)

In either event, the new Cuban government wasn’t well liked by it’s prior trading partners in the US, and so had to look abroad for engines to serve in its new national railway. In what is hopefully an accurate representation of the phrase “Game Recognizes Game”, British Rail had no qualms about sending new locomotives off to a land of (what they considered to be) despotic horrors, and quietly arranged to ship 10 modified Class 47s off to Communist Latin America. 

Fortunately for the locomotives (and unfortunately for BR), Cuba actually treats its locomotives fairly nicely, and treated them like any normal citizen (Your mileage may vary when calculating the average Cuban standard of living in the 60s/70s). They also made significant amounts of propaganda about “rescuing” these locomotives from BR, which went over wonderfully on the world stage, as the UK was currently under fire for the whole “steam locomotive genocide” thing. The UK didn’t take especially kindly to this, and plans to import more of the locomotives fell through, leaving the ten engines on their own. 

Since arriving in Havana, they seem to have fit in well, leading relatively normal lives in the Cuban state rail network, with one of them even working his way into the Cuban Diplomatic Service, where he is now the Ambassador to Morocco.

#ask response #locomotive rights headcanon #sentient vehicle headcanon #sentient vehicles #cuba

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Yugoslavia's Cold War obsession with Mexican music

The Cold War is memorialized as a moment in which the world split into two: the east and west, the Warsaw Pact and NATO. But a sizeable number of countries sat out the Cold War, and many of them formed a third bloc called the "nonaligned countries."

The nonaligned movement's founding member was Yugoslavia, and it became a socialist republic on the USSR's doorstep that had a simmering (and at times openly) hostile relationship with its vast neighbor.

This betwixt/between posture left Yugoslavia cut off from both Hollywood movies and Soviet cinema: naturally, they turned to the Mexican film industry.

The 1950s and 60s were the Yu-Mex moment, when the nation thrilled to imported Mexican movies that glorified the Mexican revolution. On Global Voices, Filip Stojanovski tells the story of a quarter century of Yugoslavian Mexican music.

https://globalvoices.org/2021/01/14/remembering-the-mexican-parody-songs-of-the-former-yugoslavia/

Dozens of bands recorded covers of Mexican classics, but the niche that Yugoslavian musicians dominated was Mexican parody music: novelty songs that used Mexican musical motifs to mock everything from rock and roll to spaghetti westerns (as these trickled into the country).

"In 1983, singer-songwriter Đorđe Balašević, from Novi Sad in Serbia, released the album 'Celovečernji the Kid' (which could be translated as 'Wholevening the Kid') featuring the smash hit 'Don Francisco Long Play.'"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv9hBFPwODs

Another hit: Bajaga & Instruktori's "Tekila, gerila," a song set in Macondo, the fictional town of Gabriel García Márquez's novel 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwi104Uy_EU

As Yugoslavia began to unravel, songs like "Mi imamos lots of problemos" by the Croatian band Duo Pegla used Yu-Mex music to comment on the state of the nation, referencing classic Mexican films and also, uh, Speedy Gonzales (aired daily on state TV).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsyMbF2afzI

Speedy Gonzales isn't the only problematic element of Yu-Mex: there's a lot of "broad Mexican accents" in the classics of the genre, a lot of sombreros and mustaches in the videos.

This is weird and often terrible stuff that developed in a tidepool of history; but beneath the racial stereotyping is a region whose film and music were shot through with Mexican cultural products.

It's the tale of a land where a musician could reference a 30 year old Mexican movie and know that his listeners would all follow along and make the song a hit

(cc @brucesterling​).

#pluralistic

[struwwelzeter]

Stripped Making Of (not so) Liveblog, actually more of an aimless ramble

Ah the stripped video. One of my absolute favorites.The one I could say so much about and at the same time am so exhausted by even thinking about it ...

But basically this is why I don’t trust Philipp Stölzl. Because I honestly don’t buy that he couldn’t explain to them how controversial Leni Riefenstahl Material would be. I do buy that they were fairly unfamiliar, lots of people were and still are, and especially with their background, I think they genuinely might have not understood. But him? I mean in order to even think of that material he had to have known. And like, that means he is either way too comfortable with her proximity to the NSDAP, or he genuinely kind of just assumed that they knew what they were letting themselves in for. And that’s assuming a pretty arrogant position to be honest. I know he initially wanted to refilm all that but I genuinly don’t think that if he had explained to them more in-depth what this means that they would have still used it. Not with them always being so upset at being seen as right wing. @msgwendolenfairfax recently said something like that he’s jerking off to his own intellectualism, and ever since I do believe it’s mostly that, that he just assumed this “it’s an aesthetic choice, not a political one” position which I am very much on board with in principle, but in practice was letting the band walk into open fire imo. I mean I looked, and he has a clean reputation otherwise, so I do believe it must have been that. Which - giving him the benefit of a doubt - could have just been because he comes from a very intellectual (theatrical) background, that’s what he does nowadays, so it could have been genuine mistake, —- kind of expecting more from the audience than it could deliver, but really? A mistake that big? Why, Philip? It’s entirely possible that I read wayyyyy way too much into it, but like, I have seen people fired for a lot less in this country and I am just so suspicious.

All that being said, that video IS brilliant aesthetically, and anyone who wants to dispute Riefenstahls accomplishments because of it’s evil purposes completely misses the point to be honest. Some of these shots are filmed in a way that would be rare and astonishing even today. My grandmother was only a couple of years younger than her and one of the two first female students at the Munich School for Photography, and she was accused weekly of being too stupid for a camera. That’s the time we are talking about. She might have been a dirty opportunitist, but how much can you really blame her. Can you imagine saying no to these opportunities as a woman, with a camera, during that time? Honestly? People give Albert Speer more slack than her and it’s. Suspicious, let’s leave it at that.

Back to the actual making of, I should update on how my Depeche Mode exploration is going perhaps. I love those “works for everyone” acts, I mean how many of these are there even? What is comparable from later on? Gorillaz? Wu Tang Clan? Billie Eilish?

Richard being a smiling fan boy makes me squeal internally. I am making horcruxing a verb, because him hiding liking pop music is basically me hiding my Eminem records and my classical CDs from my punk friends and I start to be convinced he just flung a bit of his soul around he accidentally splintered off during the chaos of reunification and I had to catch it like the idiot I am.

God, them trying so hard to do it justice makes my heart so full. Schneider is so genuine, and look at Richard smiling, he’s so into that challenge I ... moving on, ok.

I think the stripped ... down to the bone might have been so hard for Till because it covers quite a big range from beginning to end of the line, and he doesn’t normally do that. Like it would be a fluid change from where his voice needs to sit in the beginning to where it sits in the end of it? Because in principle he should be able to hit it I think ...

Yeah see, they didn’t think about the consequences. But they should have and I genuinly do not understand why noone stepped in and made them.

I love how unwilling to compromise Paul is here. I mean I 100% agree with him, and to be honest I don’t think they should have decided against using it, it’s just that they seemed to have been so unaware of what they are using that makes me pause.

See I actully like how Stölzl explains this here. If you take those images on their own and recontextualize it, there is nothing wrong about it whatsover. And doing just that is an art historical constant. It’s just difficult because most people aren’t art historians and can’t sort their instincts away from objectivity. It’s a weird mix of simultaneously knowing too much and too little that makes cases like this so difficult.

See that’s the thing, yes there were (and are) alot of debates about the “who are we and how are we gonna deal with this legacy” thing, but just blindly starting that experiment slightly puts the answer before the question, or? And again, if this would have been a conscious decision of everyone involved I am all for it and I agree, but it just seriously seemed like that wasn’t the case? Or alternatively if he just stumbled over rolls of film and used it, that would’ve been fine too.

The aesthetic commonalities of Nazi Germany and the Warsaw Pact countries could send me into a whole other tangent but I’m gonna shut up about it other than “YES”, because I’m not actually knowledgeable enough about it.

God, I feel so sad for them for that fallout. :(

Yeah, Richard’s right. It is a pity that knowing that fallout going in, you wouldn’t make that video. So maybe it is a good thing in a way that it happened that way, because it is an aesthetic masterpiece, that otherwise would not exist. The ideal state would be when we could make a video like that, fully knowing what it means, and still being able to do it because the majority of people would understand how semiotics work, but I mean utopia isn’t real so.

God honestly ... that conflict of aesthetics and their emotional impact vs their history can fill dissertations (and already does), and it’s truly one of those things our society needs to learn to give people the individual freedom to draw those lines in the sand for themselves. It honestly goes both ways, people say “it’s not like the nazis” because it doesn’t wear neat uniforms but dirty shirts and red caps, and they say it causes school shootings even tho school shootings are caused by bullying and the music we listen to has probably helped more bully victim survive and stay sane than anything, and it’s all part of a huge “I think I understand something based on what it looks like and use that as a quick escape from actually making the effort to understand what it is” delusion.

Yeah see, Stölzl referencing the darkness and crossing of limits - he KNEW what he was doing. He completely derails his own argument, first he says those images are only negative if you know what they came from like it’s two completely seperate things and then he goes “yeah the darkness was needed” ... the darkness you only know if you know where it comes from ... ? What’s it gonna be Philip? I mean I can follow both arguments but like, using both simultaneously seems a bit ... hmm.

Aww Schneider and Paul being proud boys, look at them. It’s funny how Paul “I want to fling shit in everybody’s face” Landers actually gets quite flustered when people he likes love his stuff, no? He reacts the most impressed with the Lost Highway thing aswell, it’s really quite endearing.

I think I rambled on without conclusion even worse than usual but in fairness it’s a very complex issue. TL;DR: I wish they would have made that video knowing what they let themselves in for, because I do think it would have made the fallout easier to bear and I wish that hadn’t happened to them. Does that make sense? At some point very far into the future I will want to write an actual essay about this but we can jot this down as initial brainstorm before you jump on me with arguments I missed, ok! (Seriously tho, please discuss this with me I need arguments that aren’t my own to sharpen my opinion)

https://youtu.be/mImuguOghRM

#stripped #leni riefenstahl #rammstein #struwwel liveblogs #Youtube

[thespamman24]

A dumb thing I wrote when i was 13

Here’s a dumb thing I wrote for fun when I was 13. I was trying to be funny. Keep in mind that I was young and immature.

The History of Stravania

The history of Stravania is marked as beginning in 300 BCE when Ulc The Semi Decent united several tribes into a kingdom called the Kingdom of Norvella (Norvella being Ulcs mother) in present day Stravania. The kingdom grew for several decades until Roman general Pompeo attempted to conquer it. The current king, Talker IV was able to fend off the Romans by convincing them that Norvella was a spa.

   In 14 BCE Christianity arrived but did not take on since they thought that Jesus was a pants salesman. In 212 CE Norvella split into two parts Lurbengrald and Western Norvella. Western Novella eventually became a Christian nation while Lurbengrald split into several city states, tribes, and nudist colonies.  

      Both Western Novella and Lurbengrald spent most of the Middle Ages being conquered by groups such as the Goths, Byzantines, the Ottomans and a small band of nuns. When the Ottomans conquered it, they designated both Western Norvella and Lurbengrald as one territory under the name Stravania.  

        In 1733 Stravania got its independence from the Ottomans. In 1821 Stravania briefly became a democracy but changed back to a monarchy after the Prime Minister Veronic turned out to be a coconut. Stravania didn’t fully become a democracy until 1857 when a rebellion broke out with the rebels wanting to set up a republic. They were successful when they held the royals china hostage. To this very day the royal family is purely ceremonial much like the British royal family.

        The first prime minister or Salrek (literally: goat herder) was Alexander Alexander. Such was his popularity that he was re-elected for a third time in 1864 despite having been dead for 3 years. This time, in which Stravania was ruled by a statue, was seen as a time of peace and prosperity. 

In 1879 Stravania entered the 50 year war, which actually only lasted 5 weeks, where they fought Japan. The war was started when prime minister Lergund Bachrev fell asleep during a meeting and began visibly drooling on the ambassador to Japan's suit. War was declared, but due to the long distance between the two, both armies kept getting lost and eventually the whole thing was put off (to this day they still haven’t found all the missing soldiers).

In the late nineteenth century Stravania took an active part in world politics and made many alliances with other nations. However, this backfired when World War I happened and Stravania accidentally declared war on itself due to the tangled mesh of alliances circling Europe. This proved to be very messy with soldiers punching and fighting themselves. Eventually the decision on what side they would be on came down to a coin toss and they joined the allies. During the war, Austria Hungary briefly occupied it but they were fended off by the Stravanians playing polka polka music (polka polka music being used as a weapon was later banned in the Warsaw pact). 

    The 1920s as well as being a prosperous age for many countries was very good for Stravania. The economy was great and male pattern baldness was down to 7.5%. However, this all changed when the Great Depression hit. With thousands out of jobs and hundreds with male pattern baldness, Stravania followed other European countries' examples and turned to fascism. This is known as the most shameful part of Stravanias history (with the second being the soy cheese riots of 1832).  

    In world war 2 Stravania sided with the Axis powers but was still invaded by Germany because they did not notice it was there. After the war ended and the  horrors of Nazi Germany were revealed Stravania turned away from fascism to democracy. Then, in one of the biggest acts of apology made by a country, Stravania parachuted thousands of ferrets into France in 1951. Charles Gaulle (the prime minister of France at that time) was so touched by the act of regret he personally thanked the current Salrek, Ruzbek Huzbek and told him the country of Stravania was forgiven and they needn’t send any more ferrets. Today Ruzbek Huzbek is hailed as being arguably the best Salrek. However, his legacy has been slightly diminished due to rumors that he peed in the Prime Minister of Sweden’s shoes because he overheard him saying mean things about him. Ruzbek Huzbek died in 1956 from an overdose of poison.

In the 1960's a revolution broke out by several communist fighters wishing to take over the government. However they were thwarted when the rebels mixed up directions and the entire rebel army ended up in Italy. Over the course of the next 20 twenty years Stravania continuously had a tug of war between communism and democracy which was settled by an actual game of tug of war between the two main parties. The democracy party won and the communist side admitted defeat.

In recent years Stravania has made great strides in modernizing. In 2011 they legalized people identifying as an insurance salesman.

 In 1918 women got the right to vote but it wasn’t until 1954 that they got the right to recite Shakespeare in front of their husbands. 

This isn’t all of it, but if you want the rest I can deliver.

[catsnuggler]

Admittedly, I sometimes wish the establishment of socialism and liberation across the world was as simple as Leninist states banding together and conquering the West. I get lost in my revenge fantasies sometimes, wishing I was an East German tankist during the Cold War, in an alternate timeline in which the Warsaw Pact was much stronger than it was, and that I would be among the first to cut into West Germany, then further into France, laying the ground for the Soviets to push forward from there and end capitalist tyranny. Growing up as an American has been intensely emotionally damaging to me, and in unhealthy ways, I wish the nightmare would end. Of course, I recognize this is unhealthy, fucked up, weird, and against my politics. Which is why it's a fantasy I only entertain, indulge in occasionally.

[myraelvira]

Frank Zappa and the Montreux Fire

Just about everyone and their mama have heard of the song ‘Smoke on The Water’ by Deep Purple. Some may not know the origins of the story, let alone what happened afterwards.

As the story goes, Deep Purple were in the Montreux, Switzerland area at the time to record another album at the ‘Casino de Montreux’ once it was to be shut down for winter renovations.  The Mothers were going to be the last show before the venue closed. On December 4th of ‘71, Zappa and The Mothers’ equipment was destroyed by a fire that burned down the casino. The mothers had just started playing the song ‘King Kong’ (as can be heard in multiple variations on the album ‘Uncle Meat’) , and member Don Preston was starting to play his synthesizer solo, when an audience member fired a flare gun at the ceiling.

Zappa had described it at one time as a ‘sky rocket’. Frank stopped the band from playing so Don could do his solo, not noticing the flare that hit the roof. As Frank described it, a man came on stage and shot a fire extinguisher up to the roof causing the fire to come out of the ceiling, and part of the roof fell down. Howard Kaylan said, “Fire everyone, by Arthur Brown”. Frank stated that when they heard this, they thought it was a joke. Quickly, they realized that it wasn’t a joke, since the venue was burning fast.

As smoke filled the area, Frank told the audience to remain calm and go out the side exit. Everyone was calm, but when they went to the exit, the doors were locked. The people had take Orange amplifiers to bang the doors open. Other people jumped out a window that had a 10-15 foot drop. Overall, everyone was safe, and there were minor injuries.

The fire destroyed the entire venue and all of the band’s equipment. Except a cowbell.  

The fire resulted in Deep Purple creating the famous song ‘Smoke on The Water’ which was aptly named because of how large the fire over the nearby lake was. The title of the song was thought up by Roger Glover of Deep Purple, where it came to him in a dream three days later.

There never seemed to be any sort of convictions with the case, and even in the song itself the most mention of anyone was “some stupid with a flare gun”. There was one suspect named by the Swiss Police, a man by the name of Zdeněk Špička (Pronounced Zuh-den-yek Speechka). Zdeněk Špička was a Czech refugee that is speculated to have fled from (what was then) communist Czechoslovakia after the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion.

An article I found stated that Špička was on the run, more than likely out of fear from being lynched by the crowd. It is likely that his intention wasn’t to start a fire. Punishment would have been 3-20 years of imprisonment for intentional fire, while a fire from negligence was a maximum of 5 years. As far as I know, he ran away and was never found. Trying to find any trace of him doesn’t seem to show up anywhere, at least with his birthday (November 4th, 1949).  I have seen the name pop up for various dead people, but I cannot confirm whether they are really him or not.

If you want to see a video of the fire look at this video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VqHBgXNxaw

If you want to read more about it on the Deep Purple side, I recommend this blog post here: https://darkerthanblue.wordpress.com/another-service-from-darker-than-blue-magazine/machine-head-1972-2012-pt-1/

Now, what happened to the casino after the fire? Thankfully it was rebuilt and opened anew in 1975. The casino is still in use and has almost 3,000 google reviews with a 4 star rating. A monument to Deep Purple was built outside the building in front of Lake Geneva. There is a monument to Freddy Mercury also outlooking the lake.

[SOURCES]

https://news.expats.cz/weekly-czech-news/the-czech-man-behind-smoke-on-the-water/

wikipedia

#frank zappa #smoke on the water