#also the badman himself?

[thisaliennerd]

ben schwartz and rachel bloom on make some noise??? im so fucking excited

[gardenschedule]

A collection of Beatles quotes about the breakup

I know I'm preaching to the choir on tumblr.com because people here examine the breakup with empathy, nuance and critical thought. BUT these quotes are convenient if you ever get caught up in frustrating arguments online with male boomer beatle fans who think John and George hated the band and couldn't wait to escape while Paul was desperate to get back together. Sorted by band member and chronological order.

Quotes from/about Ringo:

1969:

People really have tried to typecast us. They think we are still little moptops, and we are not. I don’t want to play in public again. I don’t miss being a Beatle anymore. You can’t get those days back. It’s no good living in the past.

Ringo Starr, 24 March 1969 while filming The Magic Christian in New York

1970:

Ringo?  He was the peacemaker for John, George and himself to Paul and was shaken to find Paul intransigent to the point of saying some pretty blunt things.  But none of the Beatles is vindictive, and pettiness is their natural enemy, and when Paul released his album, Ringo sent a telegram congratulation him on “Maybe I’m Amazed” (one of the tracks) and meant it.  Ringo has a lot of heart and more soul than most and since he knows he will be a Beatles to the grave, he will cooperate should it all come together again.

The Party's Over for the Beatles - written by Derek Taylor

“The Beatles have not split up. We are waiting for John to get back and then we will have a friendly Beatle chat and see what we are going to do. I keep looking around and thinking, ‘Where are they? What are they doing? When will they come and talk to me?’ This is supposed to be a press conference to promote my new film. The other Beatles aren’t here, so I don’t want to be answering questions for them. I hope to see Elvis in Las Vegas before I return to England. But, I will not be in the States for very long.”

The Beatles Off the Record (Keith Badman)

1971:

The Beatles might yet stay together as a group. Paul is the greatest bass player in the world. He is also determined. He goes on and on to see if he can get his own way. While that may be a virtue, it did mean that musical disagreements inevitably rose from time to time. But such disagreements contributed to really great products. […] I was shocked and dismayed, after Mr. McCartney’s promises about a meeting of all four Beatles in London in January, that a writ should have been issued on December 31. I trust Paul and I know he would not lightly disregard his promise. Something serious, about which I have no knowledge, must have happened between Paul’s meeting with George in New York at the end of December. […] My own view is that all four of us together could even yet work out everything satisfactorily.

Ringo Starr’s affidavit – From “The Beatles Diary Volume 2: After The Break-Up 1970-2001” by Keith Badman

No one doubted that Starkey would go along with the majority.

You Never Give Me Your Money – Peter Doggett

Later/unknown year:

RS: But that’s only Imagine. You know what I’m saying? Paul with his Band on the Run. We all started on a bus and small clubs and things like that, but Paul is that type of person. Paul wanted to do it all over again, and he did. And he went through hell. He went through hell. I mean, now he’s not talking to me and that’s too bad, but he started again from the bottom to do the Paul McCartney show. I don’t wanna do it anymore. I did it once.

All You Need Is Love – Peter Brown & Steven Gaines

Quotes from/about George:

1969:

“Yeah, quite definitely, but I’d like to do it with the Beatles but not on the old scale, that’s the only drag. With the Ono Band and me playing with Delaney and Bonnie there’s no expectations because it’s really quite anonymous, you just go and do whatever you can do. Once the Beatles are advertised and all the crowds come along they expect too much. I’d like to do the Beatles thing, but more like Delaney and Bonnie with us augmented with a few more singers, and a few trumpets, saxes, organs, and all that"

Interview conducted by Roy Carr, NME, 20 December 1969

1970:

George was greatly disappointed that Paul should come off like he was injured by Klein (business manager) whom George believes to have greatly eased the effects of the present and insured the safety of the future. George view is “Did you have to be so nasty. You can go so far but you can never get back, and you can say things which get in the way forever. For me, I would be glad to play with all of us again.”

The Party's Over for the Beatles - written by Derek Taylor

Q: “You think the Beatles will get together again, then?”

George: “Well, I don’t… I couldn’t tell, you know, if they do or not. I’ll certainly try my best to do something with them again, you know. I mean, it’s only a matter of accepting that the situation is a compromise. In a way it’s a compromise, and it’s a sacrifice, you know, because we all have to sacrifice a little in order to gain something really big. And there is a big gain by recording together – I think musically, and financially, and also spiritually. And for the rest of the world, you know, I think that Beatle music is such a big sort of scene – that I think it’s the least we could do is to sacrifice three months of the year at least, you know, just to do an album or two. I think it’s very selfish if the Beatles don’t record together.”

WABC-FM, May 1, 1970

The Harrison quote that went around the world that spring was purely optimistic: 'Everyone is trying to do his own album, and I am too. But after that I'm ready to go back with the others.'

You Never Give Me Your Money – Peter Doggett

1971:

The only serious row was between Paul and me. In 1968 I went to the United States and had a very easy co-operation with many leading musicians. This contrasted with the superior attitude which, for years past, Paul has shown towards me musically. In January 1969, we were making a film in a studio at Twickenham, which was dismal and cold, and we were all getting a bit fed up with our surroundings. In front of the cameras, as we were actually being filmed, Paul started to ‘get at’ me about the way I was playing. I decided I had had enough and told the others I was leaving. This was because I was musically dissatisfied. After a few days, the others asked me to return and since I did not wish to leave them in the lurch in the middle of filming and recording, and since Paul agreed that he would not try to interfere or teach me how to play, I went back. Since the row, Paul has treated me more as a musical equal. I think this whole episode shows how a disagreement could be worked out so that we all benefited. I just could not believe it when, just before Christmas, I received a letter from Paul’s lawyers. I still cannot understand why Paul acted as he did.

George Harrison’s affidavit – From “The Beatles Diary Volume 2: After The Break-Up 1970-2001” by Keith Badman

“In a “Come back Paul, all is forgiven” mood, George Harrison said this week: “I wish we could all be friends again. It’s a drag that things are as they are, because Apple is now becoming much more what we originally wanted it to be. “Personally I’d like to see Paul back at Apple and let him do what he wants to do. After all the new studio is his studio, too, and I’d like to see it all happening for us all.”

October 1971 Record Mirror

When John finally hinted that he would be willing to play with George when he appeared at Madison Square Garden. “Well, maybe I can come and help ya,” he said. “That’d be nice.” George glowered at John. Then George’s anger really burst forth. “Where were you when I needed you!” he snapped. It was the first of a series of explosions, each of them followed by moments of tense silence. “I did everything you said. But you weren’t there,” he repeated. “You always knew how to reach me,” John would reply evenly to each of these outbursts. There was no doubt in my mind, watching those two, that George’s anger with John had been accumulating for years. It was exactly the kind of situation that John usually ran from. But I could see in that moment that he loved George enough to remain calm and still as George drilled away at him. George said that repeatedly in the past he had sung what John wanted him to sing, said what John wanted him to say. Because John wanted it, George had gone along with the decision to go with Allen Klein. In the nearly four years since, John had virtually ignored him, a fact that pained George deeply. George’s voice grew even more harsh as he blasted John for his sudden appearance, as if out of nowhere, to offer an evening’s worth of help. Yet again George said furiously, I did everything you said, but you weren’t there.”

May Pang, Loving John

1973:

"George came into the office and said, 'I wanted you to know before anyone else. We're leaving Allen.' I said, 'Why?' And he said, 'We'll never get together again with Allen managing us.' And that was it. They left. George always had that distant hope."

Allan Stecker, Mojo interview 2023 (on Monday April 2 1973)

"[Allen Klein] made [John, George and Ringo] feel financially and artistically secure,” Steckler reckoned. So why did they decide that Klein had to go? Steckler believed he knew the answer. “George called me and said, ‘We’re not re-signing with Klein,’” he recalled. “I asked him why, and he said, 'The only way The Beatles can get together again is if Allen isn’t there. I’m ready to do it, so is Ringo, and I think we can persuade John to go along with it. But if we’re going to work with Paul, we need to get rid of Klein.’"

Peter Doggett, You Never Give Me Your Money

1978:

Personally, I’m not opposed to the idea, if it’s done through mutual agreement. But the pressure seems to be bigger than any of us, and when they talk of sums like $50 or $60 million, it’s almost a farce. I know Paul’s booked for the next few years, and John may have lost interest in the idea. Ringo and I are closest on it; we both feel it’s not impossible, but it’s highly unlikely, if only because of the legal and business maze that would have to be resolved before the four of us set foot on stage together.

M. George Haddad interview with George Harrison for Men Only magazine (Nov. 1978 issue)

Quotes from/about Paul:

1970:

On the eve of the release of the Beatles new movie and album “Let it Be,” Paul McCartney said, “I quit,” or “I think I quit,” which is roughly the same thing. As a publicity stunt, it’s as good or bad as any stunt they ever appeared to pull. But like every stunt they never did pull, this isn’t one either. McCartney’s declaration of independence was entirely impromptu, spontaneous and personal and so far had the group’s lines of communication become crossed that none of the Beatles really knew when the album would be out, or whether, nor did they greatly care.

...

I guess the way it stacks up now and the way it was around the time when Paul dropped the big on is that he wants right out of it all and they don’t.

The Party's Over for the Beatles - written by Derek Taylor

"John's reply was that I was daft!" He then said he wanted to leave the Beatles and wanted an immediate divorce. None of us really knew what to do about the situation, but we decided to wait until our film 'Let it Be' came out in April. I got bored and made 'McCartney' instead!"

Paul McCartney, in his first magazine interview since the split, tells FLIP's Keith Altham... "THE BEATLES ARE FINISHED!"

When we had to go to the studios, Linda would make the booking and we’d take some sandwiches and a bottle of grape juice and put the baby on the floor and it was all like a a holiday. So as a natural turn of events from looking for something to do, I found that I was enjoying working alone as much as I’d enjoyed the early days of the Beatles. I haven’t really enjoyed the Beatles for the last two years.

Paul, Interview for Evening Standard • Tuesday, April 21-22, 1970

Klein tells George he will get him more money and he tells Ringo the same. He tells them all that there are four first-class Beatles, not two and John doesn’t mind being told this. Paul doesn’t like any of it, none of it. He has a father-in-law who is also from New York and his name is Lee Eastman. Lee Eastman is also a toughie, but his manners are more formal than Klein’s and some people like him. Paul would like Eastman to be the Mr Big Apple needs. John wants Mr Klein to be Mr Big. A year passes. It is 1970. Paul still doesn’t like Klein but John digs him more than ever and George digs him more than that and Ringo doesn’t mind him. Paul? He is so uptight about Klein he only leaves the Beatles, that’s all.

As Time Goes By - Derek Taylor

1971:

Klein: “If Paul McCartney doesn’t get his way, he bitches. He may have a choirboy image in the press and with fans, but I’m here to tell you its bullshit. If anybody broke up the Beatles, it was him.”

Allen Klein, Playboy: A candid conversation with the embattled manager of the Beatles. (November, 1971) (note: obviously we should not trust a word Klein says, but at this point why isn't he repeating John's party line that he wanted a divorce?)

I think John thought I was using this press release for publicity-as I suppose, in a way, it was. So it all looked very weird, and it ruffled a few feathers. The good thing about it was that we all had to finally own up to the fact that we'd broken up three or four months before. We'd been ringing each other quite constantly, sort of saying, 'Let's get it back together.' And I think me, George and Ringo did want to save things. But I think John was, at that point, too heavily into his new life-which you can't blame him.

You Never Give Me Your Money – Peter Doggett

1972:

“We planned a big festival for one afternoon in Central Park, and ‘Imagine’ was the theme. Each retarded person from an institution would be paired with one able-bodied volunteer – twenty-five thousand people in the park. The issue arose whether the retarded should come to the matinee concert at Madison Square Garden. Obviously it would be a huge revenue loss. So Allen Klein and John just bought $50,000 worth of tickets and gave them to the retarded kids and volunteers.” Suddenly John got cold feet, after the concert had been sold out for weeks. “John said he didn’t want to do it,” Rivera recalled. “He said he hadn’t played in public for years, he hadn’t rehearsed with a band, he was just too nervous. …When they had that rush of insecurity, Yoko told me that she and John called Paul and Linda. They said, ‘Let’s bury the hatchet and appear together at the concert.’ Why Paul said ‘No’ I’ll never know.” Rivera and others managed to calm John’s fears and get him to start rehearsing with Elephant’s Memory.

Jon Wiener, Come Together: John Lennon in His Time. (1984)

“A few months ago, John asked us to do a concert with him at Madison Square Garden (note: same concert as the above quote) and it’s a pity now that we didn’t do it. I didn’t want to do it at the time but we will do things, I’m sure. I don’t see any reason why all four Beatles shouldn’t be on stage at some time all playing together and having a good time. I don’t think you’ll ever get the Beatles reforming, because that’s all gone. The Beatles were a special thing in a special era and I really couldn’t see it all coming together again. But I think it’s daft to assume that just because we had a couple of business upsets we won’t ever see each other again, or that if John has a concert some time we won’t go up and play on it.”

Paul McCartney, interview with Ray Connolly in The Evening Standard, December 2, 1972 (source: The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive)

“Don’t ever call me ex-Beatle McCartney again. That was one band I was with. Now I’m not with them. I’ve got another band. We won’t do things the same way any more. We’re not so bothered in trying to please other people all the time even though we obviously don’t try to displease them. All we want, in Wings, is to please ourselves with our music, That’s all.

“If people start fan clubs for us, do that kind of thing from the past, well, fine. But we won’t start one. I just get irritated by people constantly harping on the past, about the days when I was with that other band, the Beatles.

“The other Beatles get together and that is fine, but I’m almost always in another part of the world. The Beatles was my old job. We’re not like friends – we just know each other. But we don’t work together. so there’s no point keeping up old relationships.”

“All I know for sure is that I’ll never be conned again. I’m 30 now and, after what I’ve been through. I should know my way around. I get angry with fans, who interrupt my life, even now. I get fed up with the feeling that I was losing my identity, becoming some kind of legend, not a person. And I’m downright angry with the people who keep trying to get me back with the others again.

Paul McCartney and 'that other band'' by Peter Jones, in the Liverpool Echo, 13 December 1972

There’s no hard feelings or anything, but you just don’t hang around with your ex-wife. We’ve completely finished. ’Cos, you know, I’m just not that keen on John after all he’s done. I mean, you can be friendly with someone, and they can shit on you, and you’re just a fool if you keep friends with them. I’m not just going to lie down and let him shit on me again. I think he’s a bit daft, to tell you the truth. I talked to him about the Klein thing, and he’s so misinformed it’s ridiculous.'

Paul interviewed by student journalist Ian McNulty for the Hull University Torch, May 1972 [From The McCartney Legacy, Volume 1: 1969 – 1973 by Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair, 2022

1976:

“The truth is very ordinary. The truth is just that since we split up, we’ve not seen much of each other. We visit occasionally, we’re still friends, but we don’t feel like getting up and playing again. You can’t tell that to people. You say that and they say, ‘How about this money, then?’ ‘Or how about this?’ And you end up having to think of reasons why you don’t feel like it. And, of course, any one of them taken on its own isn’t really true, but I was just stuck for an answer, so I said I wouldn’t do it just for the money anyway. And I saw John last time, he says, ‘I agreed with that.’ But there’s a million other points in there. A whole million angles. “I tell you, before this tour, I was tempted to ring everyone up and say, ‘Look, is it true we’re not going to get back together, ‘cause we all pretty much feel like we’re not. And as long as I could get everyone to say, ‘No, we’re definitely not,’ then I could say ‘It’s a definite no-no.’ But I know my feeling, and I think the others’ feeling, in a way, is we don’t want to close the door to anything in the future. We might like it someday.

Paul McCartney, Rolling Stone: Yesterday, Today, and Paul. (June 17th, 1976)

Later/unknown year:

“John phoned me once to try and get the Beatles back together again, after we’d broken up. And I wasn’t for it, because I thought that we’d come too far and I was too deeply hurt by it all. I thought, “Nah, what’ll happen is that we’ll get together for another three days and all hell will break loose again. Maybe we just should leave it alone.”

Paul, November 1995 Club Sandwich interview

“ELLEN: So was there ever a time when both you and John Lennon wanted to reform the Beatles? PAUL: There was a time… let’s put it this way: there was never a time when all four of us wanted to do it. And each time it was always someone different who didn’t fancy it And I’m actually glad of that now. Because the Beatles’ work is a body of work. There’s nothing to be ashamed of there. In the end we decided we should leave well enough alone. The potential disappointment of coming on and not being as good as the Beatles had been… that was a risk we shouldn’t take

Paul McCartney, interview w/ Mark Ellen for Radio Times. (October 20th-26th, 2007)

Quotes from/about John:

1969:

JOHN: The point is, if George leaves, do we want to carry on The Beatles? I do. [inaudible; drowned out by mic feedback] And I’d just get another member of the group and carry on. But if The Beatles split, well, I’ll get another group. [to Paul and Yoko?] I’m a singer not a dancer, baby! Woo-hoo!

January 10th, 1969 (Twickenham Film Studios, London)

Friday, 21 March, John: “Everything we do, we shall be doing together. I don’t mean I shall break up The Beatles, or anything, but we want to share everything.”

The Beatles Off the Record (Keith Badman)

MICHAEL: But funny enough, the other day, when we were talking, he said that he really did not want not to be a Beatle. He said he really looked forward – not, you know. Meaning he didn’t want that screwed up.

[T]he Beatles are always discussing, “Should we go on or shouldn’t we? Why are we together for now?” And what it gets down to is I like playing rock n’ roll and I like making rock n’ roll records. Now, I’ve got either the choice— if I want the whole LP to myself — is to get a few musicians together. Now, I know that— I’ve played with other musicians — just very rarely, but occasionally I’ve played with them — and it needs some work together to get anything going. I don’t like session men, so I try not to use them. I don’t like violinists or anything these days. I try not to use anybody but the Beatles. And if I wanted to make a record I’d chose the Beatles! I can say, “Give me a ‘Be Bop A Lula’”. So therefore, we’ve got that going. And even from a commercial point, when we discuss it, “What’s the biggest selling name? Beatles or John Lennon and The Fabs? Or George Harrison and The Fabs?” Which— Where’s our biggest market? It’s Beatles! Who are our closest friends? Beatles! Who do we have the most arguments with? Beatles. So Beatles is it!

John Lennon and Yoko Ono give a series of interviews at the Apple Corps building at 3 Savile Row, London (Friday, 12 September 1969).

JOHN: See they’re growing up too, you know. And uh, we all want Beatles still cause it’s, it’s a big power and it’s good power, you know. And we’ve no intention of splitting it, you know. Any of us. I can’t be specific about it, you know. But obviously, I’m deeply involved with Yoko, it has some…you know, maybe less reliant on the others but so it goes for the others too, you know. That as we’re all sort of branching out. Which we were occasionally all the time, you know. Like I did How I Won The War, I wrote In His Own Write and Paul wrote the music for Family Way, etc. and George went off to India with sitars and that. So it’s only, you know. We nip off and come back and do some work then nip off again, you know.

John and Yoko gave several interviews on September 12, 1969

[Will] The Beatles split up? It just depends how much we all want to record together. I don’t know if I want to record together again. I go off and on it. I really do.”

John Lennon, interview w/ Alan Smith for NME. (December 13th, 1969)

JOHN: I was really losing interest in just doing the Beatles’ bit – and I think we all were – but Paul did a good job in holding us together for a few years while we were sort of undecided about what to do, you know. And I found out what to do, and it didn’t really have to be with the Beatles. It could have been, if they wanted… But uh, it got that I couldn’t wait for them to make up their minds about peace or whatever. About committing themselves. It’s the same as the songs. So I’ve gone ahead – and I’d have liked them to have come along.

YORKE: Did you ever try to get them into the peace scene?

JOHN: I did a little at first, but I think it was too much like Yoko and me and what we’re doing and trying to get them to come along; and I think they reacted. I hassled them too much, so I’m really leaving them alone. Maybe they’ll come along, wagging their tails behind them, and if not, good luck to them.

John Lennon, interview w/ Ritchie Yorke. (December 23rd, 1969)

“This is why I’ve started with the Plastic Ono and working with Yoko . . . to have more outlet. There isn’t enough outlet for me in the Beatles. The Ono Band is my escape valve. And how important that gets, as compared to the Beatles for me, I’ll have to wait and see.

NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS DECEMBER 13, 1969

1970:

Why do you think he [Paul] has lost interest in Apple?

That’s what I want to ask him! We had a heavy scene last year as far as business was concerned and Paul got a bit fed-up with all the effort of business. I think that’s all it is. I hope so.

John Lennon interviewed by Roy Shipston for Disc and Music Echo (February 28, 1970)

John’s view is: “Okay. If this is it, this is it. We’ve all left the Beatles anyway.” If Paul were to approach him and say, “Let’s do it together again,” he probably would; with no more words, he probably would do it.

The Party's Over for the Beatles - written by Derek Taylor

Now even Lennon was prepared to hint at a positive outcome: 'I've no idea if the Beatles will work together again, or not. I never really have. It was always open. If somebody didn't feel like it, that's it! It could be a rebirth or a death. We'll see what it is. It'll probably be a rebirth.'

You Never Give Me Your Money – Peter Doggett

'Eventually,' McCartney recalled, 'I went and said, "I want to leave. You can all get on with Klein and everything, just let me out." Having not spoken to Lennon for several weeks, he sent him a letter that summer, pleading that the former partners 'let each other out of the trap'. As McCartney testified, Lennon 'replied with a photograph of himself and Yoko, with a balloon coming out of his mouth in which was written, "How and Why?" I replied by letter saying, "How by signing a paper which says we hereby dissolve our partnership. Why because there is no partnership." John replied on a card which said, "Get well soon. Get the other signatures and I will think about it.” Communication was at an end. Yet the press continued to believe, fired by hope more than evidence, that it was only a matter of days before the four men healed their wounds. The stories taunted McCartney, who fired off a letter to the prime offender, Melody Maker: 'Dear Mailbag, In order to put out of its misery the limping dog of a news story which has been dragging itself across your pages for the past year, my answer to the question, "Will the Beatles get together again?"...is no.' He had finally pronounced the verdict that was missing from his self-interview in April: the Beatles were no more.

You Never Give Me Your Money – Peter Doggett (note: John is stalling)

For McCartney, and maybe Harrison and Starkey as well, this signified hope. ‘For about three or four months,' he recalled years later, 'George, Ringo and I rang each other to ask, "Well, is this it, then?" It wasn't that the record company had dumped us. It was just a case of: we might get back together again. Nobody quite knew if it was one of John's little flings, and that maybe he was going to feel the pinch in a week's time and say, “I was only kidding.” I think John did kind of leave the door open. He'd said, “I'm pretty much leaving the group, but...” McCartney testified in 1971, ‘I think all of us (except possibly John) expected we would come together again one day.

You Never Give Me Your Money – Peter Doggett

John: George was on the session for Instant Karma, Ringo’s away and Paul’s – I dunno what he’s doing at the moment, I haven’t a clue.

Interviewer: When did you last see him?

John: Uh, before Toronto. I’ll see him this week actually. If you’re listening, I’m coming round. (Note: as AKOM point out, Toronto was before the divorce meeting. Why is he pretending it never happened?)

Feb 6th 1970 (audio snippet approx 1:14:00)

Interviewer: What about the Beatles all together as a group?

John: As soon as they’re ready, you know, we had half the Beatles on again at the Lyceum Ballroom. Uh it was George and me but we also had Delaney and Bonney and 17 piece band we had on, it was a great experience. Uh it should be like that you know, if we were doing that and all the Beatles wanted to come it would be great, and it would be no great thing about ‘oh the Beatles are coming back on stage’ like they expect, sorta of, Buddha and Mohammad to come on and play. I keep saying that, but that’s the fear the Beatles have, including me as a Beatle, about performing. It’s such a great – so much expected of us, you know, but you see George has been on tour with Bonnie and Delaney playing and I’ve been drifting around playing, it’s just playing isn’t the hang up. It’s going on as the Beatles that’s the problem for us.

1970 (audio snippet approx 1:23:00)

Interviewer: Do you care about making another Beatles album?

John: I think Beatles is a good communication media you know, and I wouldn’t destroy it out of hand or dissolve it out of hand. So that’s what I think about Beatles.

1970 (audio snippet approx 1:41:00)

Interviewer: Why do you think rumours like this start?

John: Because there was a lot of tension around the Allen Klein coming in days and the ATV thing going on, and the Beatles were under a lot of pressure and we had to be together all the time, fighting and arguing and listening to all the different business things. And so we’re taking a break from each other like we always did after a tour end. The business thing is like a heavy tour, in it we may get back in abbey road and a couple of singles and under a great strain you know, doing that business. And so now we’re just taking a break from each other.

1970 (audio snippet approx 1:41:00)

You can’t pin me down because I haven’t got- there’s no- it’s completely open, whether we do it or not. Life is like that, whether I make another Plastic Ono album or Lennon album or anything is open you know, I don’t like to prejudge it. And I have no idea if the Beatles are working together again or not, I never did have, it was always open. If someone didn’t feel like it, that’s it. And maybe if one of us starts it off, the others will all come round and make an album you know.

1970 (audio snippet approx 1:43:00)

In 1964 I produced a book, they were asking me that then, and why should I not write a book? The Beatles wanted me to do it, they wanted me to do these LPs, you know, they have nothing against it – I want George to produce and record any records he wants to. It doesn’t interfere with Beatle time, I use my own time to do other things and so do they. The Beatles will remain, there’s no doubt about that. And we’ve been saying it since She Loves You, we’re together and that’s it.

1970 (audio snippet approx 1:45:00)

I just uh I wanted to do it [announce the breakup] you know, should’ve done it. I think damn, shit, what a fool I was. But there were many pressures at that time, I think Northern Songs and all that was going on, it would’ve upset the whole thing. (Note: again as AKOM point out, the Northern Songs fight ended the day before the divorce meeting. Why would the pressure of Northern Songs impact John's decision not to announce the breakup?)

Lennon Remembers

1971:

INT: I asked Lee Eastman for his view of the split, and what it was that prompted Paul to file suit to dissolve the Beatles' partnership, and he said it was because John asked for a divorce.

JOHN: Because I asked for a divorce? That's a childish reason for going into court, isn't it?

John Lennon interviewed by Peter McCabe and Robert Schonfeld at the St. Regis Hotel, September 5, 1971

Well, there was this Japanese monk, and it happened in the last 20 years. He was in love with this big golden temple, y’know, he really dug it, like—and you know he was so in love with it, he burnt it down so that it would never deteriorate. That’s what I did with the Beatles.

John Lennon, interview w/ Alan Smith for NME: At home with the Lennons. (August 7th, 1971)

MCCABE: Let’s talk a bit about Paul’s aversion to Klein. From what we’ve read it seemed as if this wasn’t there in the beginning, even though Paul wanted the Eastmans to run things. But it came on later as things progressed. And yet despite this, we gather that Klein was still hoping that Paul would return to the group.

JOHN: Oh, he’d love it if Paul would come back. I think he was hoping he would for years and years. He thought that if he did something, to show Paul that he could do it, Paul would come around. But no chance. I mean, I want him to come out of it, too, you know. He will one day. I give him five years, I’ve said that. In five years he’ll wake up.

MCCABE: But Klein is still hoping?

JOHN: He said to me, “Would you do it, if we got your immigration thing fixed? Or if we could get rid of the drug conviction?”

YOKO: And people don’t understand, you know. There’s so many groups that constantly announce they’re going to split, they’re going to split, and they can announce it every year, and it doesn’t mean they’re going to split. But people don’t understand what an extraordinary position the Beatles are in, you know. In every way. They’re in such an extraordinary position that they’re more insecure than other people. And so Klein thinks he’ll give Paul two years Linda-wise, you know. And John said, “No, Paul treasures things like children, things like that. It will be longer.” And of course, John was right.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono, interview w/ Peter McCabe and Robert Schonfeld. (September, 1971)

It was true, that when the group was touring, their work and social relationships were close, but there had been a lot of arguing, mainly about musical and artistic matters. I suppose Paul and George were the main offenders in this respect, but from time to time we all gave displays of temperament and threatened to ‘walk out’. Of necessity, we developed a pattern for sorting out our differences, by doing what any three of us decided. It sometimes took a long time and sometimes there was deadlock and nothing was done, but generally that was the rule we followed and, until recent events, it worked quite well. Even when we stopped touring, we frequently visited each other’s houses in or near London and personally we were on terms as close as we had ever been. If anything, Paul was the most sociable of us. From our earliest days in Liverpool, George and I, on the one hand, and Paul, on the other, had different musical tastes. Paul preferred ‘pop-type’ music and we preferred what is now called ‘underground’. This may have led to arguments, particularly between Paul and George, but the contrast in our tastes, I am sure, did more good than harm, musically speaking, and contributed to our success.

If Paul is trying to break us up because of anything that happened before the Klein–Eastman power struggle, his reasoning does not make sense to me.

John Lennon’s affidavit – From “The Beatles Diary Volume 2: After The Break-Up 1970-2001” by Keith Badman

JOHN: Yeah, Gilbert and Sullivan. I always remember watching the film with Robert Morley and thinking, “We’ll never get to that.” [pause] And we did, which really upset me. But I never really thought we’d be so stupid. But we did.

WIGG: What, like splitting like they did?

JOHN: Like splitting and arguing, you know, and then they come back, and one’s in a wheelchair twenty years later—

YOKO: [laughs] Yes, yes.

JOHN: —and all that. [laughs; bleak] I never thought we’d come to that, because I didn’t think we were that stupid. But we were naive enough to let people come between us. And I think that’s what happened. [pause] But it was happening anyway. I don’t mean Yoko, I mean businessmen, you know. All of them.

October, 1971 (St Regis Hotel, New York)

Q: "Did Klein hope to get Paul back into the group?"

JOHN: (laughs) "He came up with this plan. He said, "Just ring Paul and say, 'We're recording next Friday, are you coming?' So it nearly happened. Then Paul would have forfeited his right to split by joining us again. But Paul would never, never do it, for anything, and now I would never do it."

St Regis Hotel Interview, September 5th, 1971.

John would say things like, ‘It was rubbish. The Beatles were crap.’ Also, ‘I don’t believe in The Beatles, I don’t believe in Jesus, I don’t believe in God.’ Those were quite hurtful barbs to be flinging around, and I was the person they were being flung at, and it hurt. So, I’m having to read all this stuff, and on the one hand I’m thinking, ‘Oh fuck off, you fucking idiot,’ but on the other hand I’m thinking, ‘Why would you say that? Are you annoyed at me or are you jealous or what?’ And thinking back fifty years later, I still wonder how he must have felt. He’d gone through a lot. His dad disappeared, and then he lost his Uncle George, who was a father figure; his mother; Stuart Sutcliffe; Brian Epstein, another father figure; and now his band. But John had all of those emotions wrapped up in a ball of Lennon. That’s who he was. That was the fascination.

I tried. I was sort of answering him here, asking, ‘Does it need to be this hurtful?’ I think this is a good line: ‘Are you afraid, or is it true?’ – meaning, ‘Why is this argument going on? Is it because you’re afraid of something? Are you afraid of the split-up? Are you afraid of my doing something without you? Are you afraid of the consequences of your actions?’ And the little rhyme, ‘Or is it true?’ Are all these hurtful allegations true? This song came out in that kind of mood. It could have been called ‘What the Fuck, Man?’ but I’m not sure we could have gotten away with that then.

Paul McCartney, on “Dear Friend”. In The Lyrics (2021).

Q: “If you got, I don’t know what the right phrase is… ‘back together’ now, what would be the nature of it?” JOHN: “Well, it’s like saying, if you were back in your mother’s womb… I don’t fucking know. What can I answer? It will never happen, so there’s no use contemplating it. Even if I became friends with Paul again, I’d never write with him again. There’s no point. I write with Yoko because she’s in the same room with me.” YOKO: “And we’re living together.” JOHN: “So it’s natural. I was living with Paul then, so I wrote with him. It’s whoever you’re living with. He writes with Linda. He’s living with her. It’s just natural.””

St. Regis Hotel Interview, September 5, 1971

1973:

My last question was inevitable… Any chance of us seeing the four Beatles on a stage or record together again? “There’s always a chance,” grinned John. “As far as I can gather from talking to them all, nobody would mind doing some work together again. There’s no law that says we’re not going to do something together, and no law that says we are. If we did do something I’m sure it wouldn’t be permanent. We’d do it just for that moment. I think we’re closer now than we have been for a long time. I call the split the divorce period and none of us ever thought there’d be a divorce like that. “That’s the way things turned out. We know each other well enough to talk about it.””

John Lennon, interview w/ Chris Charlesworth for Melody Maker. (November 3rd, 1973)

MINTZ: Would you want to initiate that happening?

JOHN: Uh… Well, I couldn’t say. [long pause]

MINTZ: If you could, I mean is it something you would like to see yourself doing?

JOHN: If I could… I don’t know, Elliot, because you know me, I go on instinct. And if the idea hit me tomorrow, you know, I might call them and say, “Come on, let’s do something.” And so I couldn’t really tell you. If it happens, it’ll happen.

MINTZ: So it’s not something that you would totally rule out as never taking place again?

JOHN: No, no. My memories are now all fond and the wounds are healed. And if we do it, we do it, if we record, we record. I don’t know. As long as we make music.

November 1st/10th, 1973 (Malibu, Los Angeles): For Eyewitness News on KABC TV Los Angeles, Elliot Mintz

1974:

“No, no, no,” he answered and he meant it. “I’m going to be an ex-Beatle for the rest of my life so I might as well enjoy it, and I’m just getting around to being able to stand back and see what happened. A couple of years ago I might have given everybody the impression I hate it all, but that was then. I was talking when I was straight out of therapy and I’d been mentally stripped bare and I just wanted to shoot my mouth off to clear it all away. Now it’s different.

“When I slagged off the Beatle thing in the papers, it was like divorce pangs, and me being me it was blast this and fuck that, and it was just like the old days in the Melody Maker, you know, ‘Lennon Blasts Hollies’ on the back page. You know, I’ve always had a bit of a mouth and I’ve got to live up to it. Daily Mirror: ‘Lennon beats up local DJ at Paul’s 21st birthday party’. Then we had that fight Paul and me had through the Melody Maker, but it was a period I had to go through.

John Lennon, interview w/ Ray Coleman for Melody Maker: Lennon – a night in the life. (September 14th, 1974)

John seemed to be in a very strange state of mind about the dissolution. From the hints he had dropped since we had been together, I had learned that John’s departure from the Beatles had essentially been Yoko’s idea. Without Yoko to drive him forward, he felt strangely ambivalent about officially ending the Beatles at that moment. By nature, also, he felt inclined to take a position opposite from that of Paul McCartney. Paul desperately wanted that agreement signed. Whether or not it was the best thing for him to do, John, on principle, was inclined not to want to sign it.

May Pang, Loving John. (1983)

I’ll tell you exactly why I said that. We had a business meeting to break up The Beatles, one of the famous ones that we’d been having — we’re still having them 17 years later, actually. We all flew in to New York specially. George came off his disastrous tour, Ring of flew in and we were at the Plaza for the big final settlement meeting. John was half a mile away at the Dakota and he sent a balloon over with a note that said ‘Listen to this balloon.’ I mean, you’ve got to be pretty cool to handle that kind of stuff.

George blew his cool and rang him up: ’You fucking maniac!! You take your fucking dark glasses off and come and look at us, man!!’ and gave him a whole load of that shit. Around the same time at another meeting we had it all settled, and John asked for an extra million pounds at the last minute. So of course that meeting blew up in disarray. Later, when we got a bit friendlier — and from time to time there would be these little stepping-stones of friendship in the Apple sea — I asked him why he’d actually wanted that million and he said, I just wanted cards to play with. It’s absolutely standard business practice. He wanted a couple of jacks to up your pair of nines. He was one great guy, but part of his greatness was that he wasn’t a saint.

Paul McCartney: An Innocent Man? (October, 1986) (note: John is STILL stalling)

At that moment, John was at his most unpredictable. Suddenly his fears that his money was going to be taken away from him, that he was going to be cheated, that he had to have as much money as possible, had all come into play. This was also John’s way of resisting the reality that the Beatles were officially about to come to end, and that Paul was about to prevail.

Loving John, MAY PANG (1983)

1975:

“At the time I was thinking that I didn’t want to do all that Beatles—but now I feel differently. I’ve lost all that negativity about the past and I’d be happy as Larry to do ‘Help’. I’ve just changed completely in two years. I’d do ‘Hey Jude’ and the whole damn show, and I think George will eventually see that. If he doesn’t, that’s cool. That’s the way he wants to be.”

John Lennon, interview w/ Chris Charlesworth for Melody Maker: Rock on! (March 8th, 1975)

1976:

“I’ve always felt that splitting up was a mistake in many ways” John Lennon has said, and he believes a Beatles revival “would undoubtedly produce some great music.”

Australian Woman’s Weekly, 1976

1980:

“I and the other three former Beatles have plans to stage a reunion concert…” (Part of a statement in the legal disposition brought by Apple Corps against the ‘Beatlemania’ stage musical for trademark infringement. John was referring to an event that was to be filmed for a documentary being put together by Neil Aspinall. It was abandoned/shelved after John’s death, but ultimately became the Anthology project)

John Lennon, 1980

“Just days before his brutal death, John was making plans to go to England for a triumphant Beatles reunion. His greatest dream was to recreate the musical magic of the early years with Paul, George and Ringo … (he) felt that they had traveled different paths for long enough. He felt they had grown up and were mature enough to try writing and recording new songs.”

Yoko Ono, quoted in The Beatles: The Dream Is Over - Off The Record 2 by Keith Badman

[ask-the-badman]

you live like a dog in a junk yard, why not become one? but better!

-Johnny is now a werewolf!-

"THE HELL I AM! I ain' no one's dog!! I- what..?"

Without warning, a strange itchy and tingling is all Johnny can feel all over his body, starting with his arms as he stares down at them, rubbing at his forearms to alleviate the sensation. Only to notice the sparse hair on his arms was thickening out and growing longer while his scarred hands hurt. He's ripping his gloves off in time to see his hands and nails changing shape and growing as more hair covers them.

Then there's that familiar tightening in his chest, a feeling he instantly remembers as a growth signal and is quick to try and get his pink BADMAN shirt off before it gets ruined in one way or another. He has to give up on the buttons half way with his hands changing into cumbersome claws and opts to rip the rest off before tossing his shirt asides.

Werewolves usually kept their pants, right?? If anything, he tears off his belt, just to be sure before pain is tearing through his body. Bones, flesh and muscles reshaping and growing to the werewolf form as he collapses to the floor in a heap, curled in on himself as the blood in his ears roared.

Crackling, crunching and even rather wet pops, coming from all over as well as his boots and the denim of his jeans ripping and tearing. Falling in tatters around him as his legs from the shin down stretched out and thickened followed by a wet spray of blood to his new tail popping free. His back arching forward and swelling up while his face elongated out into a thick muzzle. All finished up with a dark layer of black fur covering the man, his scars still there just buried under it all apart from the prominent scar down his forehead and over his cheek.

Once settled, he was panting for breath on the floor with long tongue lulled out of his mouth, huffing and whining. Soon as he could, he was sitting up and staring down at his dog shaped legs and thick arms before lifting up his paws to scrutinize. Then behind himself to a still wet tail sticking to the floor, his mind trying to figure out how to even work the extra appendage before giving up to try and stand.

New to balance, he swayed and toppled easily, feeling so top heavy while being on all fours felt... safe. Stable, but he grumbled in annoyance and kept trying only to fall face, well nose, first into the floor.

Ow...

He would get it eventually, until then he figured resting for now would be good... Get his strength back as he felt exhausted and sore just from the change alone as he flopped over onto his side, heaving out a tired sigh.

(No limit on this one, could go two days or a week though my work schedule has picked up since school started again, yippie... See how this goes, but have fun with the big puppy Johnny, lol

also any current RPs can remain the same or Werewolf Johnny can get added in, just leave a lil comment at the beginning or end :D)

[evilkitten3]

so in the anime version of the namek saga, there was a bit where ginyu stole bulma's body, right?

well... idea:

dark comedy au where bulma never gets it back and is stuck as a frog. but this isn't about that– it's about ginyu, who somehow no one noticed doing this, and is now stuck pretending to be bulma or getting insta-murdered by one of bulma's friends. except he has no fucking clue how to do any of what bulma does

so frog!bulma manages to communicate with him and convinces him to swap with her again in exchange for her keeping her friends from insta-murdering him once they catch on. aware that she might be playing him but also very aware that his other choice is death-by-steadily-increasing-number-of-super-saiyans, ginyu agrees

at which point they realize that bulma simply does not have enough ki for ginyu to use his body swap technique. and they can't risk using the dragon balls until after the androids are stopped. so they're stuck like this. unfortunately, they have this discussion within earshot of piccolo, who gets the lovely honor of being the only person in the present timeline aware that A) the kid from the future is the son of vegeta and bulma, and B) there is a non-zero chance that the bulma involved in said future kid's conception was actually ginyu

anyway i can't decide if it would be funnier for ginyu to pull off a perfect bulma while she insists she would never act like that, or for ginyu to be unbelievably bad at acting like bulma, only for extremely contrived coincidences keeping anyone from noticing. or if maybe yamcha starts getting suspicious and goku assumes he's jealous bc he can sense something between bulma and vegeta, who've been spending a lot of time together ("the woman calls herself a genius but the gravity room keeps fucking breaking" "uhhhhh it's a new product. i know what i'm doing. stop being such a little b–" *suddenly remembers that he has absolutely no way of defending himself* "badman. stop being such a little badman")

funniest idea: somehow no one notices until frieza gets resurrected in super, at which point frieza instantly figures out that it's ginyu based on something really small and absurd.

[nt-poindexter]

Playing Baldur’s Gate 3 and romancing Astarion for story reasons and also because from what I’ve gathered so far, his sex scene is possibly(???) the tamest(ish??) even though he initially presents himself as “ooh lookit me, the badman sexy man!” but as he gets more serious, that’s just a facade and a hug means more to him than any of that and it’s SO GODDAMN INTERESTING to me. I want nice things for Astarion. I want him to be able to CHOOSE nice things for himself.

And Karlach is Best Girl. If I play again, me and her are gonna be giant, berserker girlfriends, I will go to hell with this woman.

[haveihitanerve]

so um

sometimes when i watch tff vids i write commentary in my notes. and i stumbled across this little gem a second ago and thought i might share my crazed thoughts

Bro i just love seeing curt dancing and singing the songs in the background because he fucking wrote them and has heard roland sing them so many times now its their songs and i just love it and then when he steps up and they sing together…. Omg. their voices are so perfect for each other. Platonic soulmates. Meant to be. Their voices. Mwah. *chefs kiss*

AWWWWWW and that moment they played to each other OMG SO CUTE

AHHHH in everybody wants to ulr the world curt starts walking towards roland, ro,land looks at him, they grin, and curt slowly starts walking backwards away from him again. AHHH its too cute

Aw. but only curt did the slight fist pump. Roland moved his arm but only to play the guitar

OMG OMG THEY SANG SECRET WORLD??????? I DON'T REMEMEBER THAT BUT FUCK YEAH

Its 100% a him and curt song, look at how he looked at curt at that one part!!!!!!

LOOK AT HOW THEYRE GRINNING WHILE SINGING THIS SONG. BOTH OF THEM HAVE EAR TO EAR GRINS!!!!!!!!!

Ooh and roland tried to walk to curt but he wasn't paying attention. Oof

DAMN he can still hit those high notes!!! Whew. 

‘Primarily because its the nearest venue to my house’ gods i love their dry humor. Roland did it too.

Also i love that roland said ‘my house is ten minutes away’ and curt also said ‘close to my house’ are they talking about the same house? Are they neighbors? Is it really curts house and roland just considers it his? Like whats going on? Id like some answers pls

‘for those of you that can do math. Or maths as we call it in england’ like the dryness is unmatched

I really hate to say this, but curt cannot hear himself right now. At the beginning, then he gets it. They really ought to work on that.

Also rolands low bass mixing with his is beautiful. I know i say it a lot but hot damn

AWWW and i love how everyone knew immediately to pull out their cameras at the right song. So they all know the album. I love that for tff.

And yes they do sound amazing random lady who imma call stacy in the crowd

AND FUCK THE BLENDING OF THE VOICES AGAIN

Drop me in the infinite sea. -curt is a water sign….. Just saying -

Oop i remember this part of the concert- ‘our songs are more famous than we are’ ‘visa with special talent. I cant tell you what that talent is’ ‘and he says, ‘who?’’ also whoever that dude in the crowd is who yelled ‘he sucked’ aimed at the tsa agent, i agree ‘Young kids with funny haircuts’ 

OMG OMG OOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHH MYYYYYYYY GODDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THEY HAVE THE ORGINAL VID OF ROLAND DANCING PLAYING IN THE VDIEO BEHIND THEM IN MAD WORLD 

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

hrm. like i support the girl and all, but i dont think she should get the rights to sing suffer the children.

The new girl for oleta adams can sing tho. The other girl can too. She just shouldn't sing suffer the chilrden. My opnion at least

‘How do you follow that?’ ‘that was track one’ ‘probably best to follow it with trac two’ 

I cant with you roland

OOOOOH i love curts dancing for badmans song. And his mouthing of the words

And the way roland keeps checking on curt. Damn bro. Checking up on bae be like

AWWWW THEYRE DOING IT!!!!! CHECKING UP ON BAE

And fuck you roland. Curts looking at his hands and roland is just watching him, his fingers effortlessly moving across the frets. SMH. i wish i had that talents.

ND ROLANDS FACE AT THE END. LIKE 'hm good job'. And curt just fucking grins at him

OOOOOOOH FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HE FUCKING DID IT!!!! HE STILL GOT IT!!!!!! 

[the-light-of-stars]

If you stuck your ocs in the roles of Phantom of the Opera, who would be the Phantom, and also why do I really want Goodman and Badman to be the Phantom and Christine?

hoooh ok so funny you ask because I do have a "his friends get Jess to audition for a local production of Poto" AU >:)

so yeah if my OCs were to audition for Poto Jess might end up playing Erik. He is tall, profoundly sad, can sing well, is a dramatic dresser and at some point in his story gets part of his face burnt off (not entirely sure how that happens yet but not in a 'ooh he gets scars bc hes evil now' way or whatever, because those tropes suck). And he is technically an actual phantom

Personality wise he's not like Erik at all though, because he would never take his own pain out on others and while seeing himself as a monster would cause him to isolate himself it would not be to hide from the world's gaze but out of the misguided notion that the world would have to be protected from him (depression , baby). He's probably more like Christine?

and....actually you know what at some point in their story Jess crosses paths with Mirage and they end up having a relationship that does have "artist and their muse" aspects to it so Jess as Christine with Mirage as the phantom would work too hehe

you're right though Goodman and Badman in a poto au would be interesting since they both never take off their helmets 👀 definitely works with Erik's whole mask thing....jdbndjjs god imagine ...Poto but instead of Christine Erik falls in love with someone that pulls the same phantom bit as him but in the theatre next door

[blnk338]

people often write soap as a softie which i have a hard time agreeing with bcause hes legit a sergeant and a badass, like yeah hes nice but then i see shit like this and yeah the math aint mathing https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMYyhu2kX/ a literal badman. I need a blnk rambles on this topic

Hiiii here I am

I think soap's clear goodheartedness and happiness are important parts of his character. He's evidently a smiley guy who likes making other people happy, he's a positive beacon for the team who actively does his best to keep everyone on a good track.

he's also a well-respected SAS sniper and demolitions expert-- those are not easily gained titles. I think people often don't really know how to write kindness with rough careers like military special forces because of the vastly different sides of people when it comes to their jobs and who they are. you can be a badass and still be nice. Soap is confident in his shots and he definitely doesn't take any shit-- for fucks sake, he told his lieutenant to go fuck himself-- he isn't a fuckin doormat. I often see soap as this kinda wimpy, although physically built, guy who makes himself smaller around Ghost. If you watch how he acts in mw22, he is the complete fucking opposite. That dickhead gets so cocky that he has fun with it. Cracking jokes, clearing buildings, he's actively making it seem like these incredibly stressful situations are easy. And to him-- considering how much experience he has-- they kinda fucking are!

MacTavish ran around and overexerted himself all throughout Las Almas WITH A FUCKING BULLET IN HIS SHOULDER. Like I get it. I think it's nice to get a little silly with your ideas of characters, but you can have the silly and also have the aspects of a SAS sergeant at the same time.

I try to write that in RWYS, but it's hard to constantly highlight every team member's actions all at once without creating massive paragraphs

[legislative-assembly-sg]

FIRE

In a surprise move, attorneys from the Attorney General's office entered the Legislative Assembly to put on trial multiple members of the Assembly. First was Chief Minister David Marshall, who faced accusations of misleading the Legislative Assembly, False Police Complaint, Conspiracy to commit crime, among other crimes. He represented himself, which forced many awkward moments within cross-examination. He seemingly resigned before the trial began, sparking confusion.

Next, Mr Lim Chin Siong opted to be represented by Mr Saul Badman, a pro-bono public defender, who all but admitted to the prosecution, represented by Mr Saul Good man, that the client was guilty. Mr Lim Chin Siong was also thrown under the bus, spectacularly, by former business partner Mr Ahmad Ibrahim, who was represented by Mr Lim Koon Teck. Mr Lim Koon Teck's passionate defence of Mr Ahmad Ibrahim has showed off his intellect and showcases why he is the first Asiatic person to join the Colonial Civil Service.

Mr Abdul Hamid Jumat, who faced accusations of being an accessory to arson, was defended by Mr Saul Gooderman. The defence and prosecution fought with one another on the most details, ignoring every other detail, like the damage caused

Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who faced accusations of being aligned with radical interests, was defended by Mr William Tan Ah Lek, who vociferously defended his client, spamming objections

For the verdicts, all members, except for Ahmad Ibrahim, were found guilty, with the ruling stating that members have to either pay the 10, 000 pound sterling fine or face a prison sentence of 10 years. As convicted members cannot serve while in prison, they effectively resign from their positions as members of the Legislative Assembly and would be escorted to prison shortly

[withmight-blog]

dmc6 is just about dante and nero teaching vergil to direct his ambitions toward more productive, less omnicidal activities so they get him into super smash brothers brawl and hes, like, outrageously bad at it, which is frustrating enough but at first he chalks it up to ‘video games are fruitless and unworthy of my time’ but then he meets someone on an online matchup who wipes the fucking floor w/ him as Donkey Kong, and tells him to ‘git gud’, which fills him with such an unquenchable fury that he takes it upon himself to become the best super smash bros brawl player in the world. he mains ganondorf and thinks all cloud mains are pathetic bc hes broken af. of course u win as cloud theres no SUBSTANCE to cloud you cant take PRIDE in your triumphs with such an infallible unit. 

then super smash brothers ultimate comes out and he’s devastated that he has to relearn everything. he doesnt leave the house for days.

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

13 of the world's most stupid criminals

 Armed robber Andrew Hennells was caught after he boasted on Facebook about his plans to raid a supermarket in a post which included a selfie, a picture of a knife, and the words: "Doing. Tesco. Over." Police caught him 15 minutes later with the knife and £410 in cash stolen from a Tesco in King's Lynn, Norfolk. He was jailed for four years.

A retired couple from Lancashire returned home from a holiday in 2014 to discover a burglar fast asleep in their bed. Martin Holtby and Pat Dyson were amazed to find the intruder, Lukasz Chojnowski, had done their dishes, washed his underwear and even bought some groceries.

Two Welsh tourists landed themselves in court in 2012 after they got drunk and stole a penguin called Dirk from Sea World in Australia. Rhys Owen Jones, 21, and Keri Mules, 20, from south Wales, broke into the park on Queensland's Gold Coast, swam with the dolphins and let off a fire extinguisher in the shark enclosure, before making off with Dirk the penguin. They later released Dirk into a canal, but were spotted by locals who called police. A magistrate fined them 1,000 Australian dollars

A man suspected of arson and vandalism sent a selfie to police in Ohio in the US because he found the photo on his arrest warrant to be unflattering.

Officials were left baffled by an Afghan Taliban commander who gave himself up - and then tried to claim the $100 reward for his capture.

A man who tried to rob a Glasgow bookmakers while "armed" with a cucumber came unstuck when he was tackled to the ground by an off-duty police officer. Gary Rough brandished the vegetable - covered in a black sock - at a female worker at Ladbrokes in Shettleston and demanded cash, which she refused.

A criminal on the run took the ill-advised approach of taunting Gwent Police under a Facebook appeal post for his arrest, saying “"Haha catch me if you can wont see me slipping [sic]," James taunted, later telling a news agency: "I have been walking around near home so they're not trying too hard to catch me."

During his attempted heist, James Allan removed his balaclava, fell over a drinks display and then could not open the door to escape - because he was pushing it instead of pulling. The lady he had just held up with a toy gun had to come and open it for him. Not only that, but he had also tried to rob the same shop 10 days earlier.

Christopher Badman, from Bridgend in south Wales, used a carrier bag on his head as a disguise when he burgled a hotel in nearby Porthcawl during its annual Elvis Presley convention. Unfortunately for him, he was captured on CCTV taking the bag off his head, and looking towards the camera.

A burglar in China had to be rescued after his attempt to squeeze through a small fifth floor window of an apartment block left him dangling. It took rescuers 30 minutes to free him. He was eventually handed over to police

An aspiring bank robber who wore a "terrible disguise" of sunglasses and socks over his shoes gave the cashier his full name and address - half an hour before he attempted to hold the branch up.

A suspected car thief in Pretoria, South Africa, was foiled when the auto-lock system of the car he broke into trapped him inside.  The man was stuck for an hour and a half shouting for help, while amused passers-by pointed and laughed.

Ashley Keast used a stolen SIM card to snap a self portrait inside a house he was burgling. The man then posted the picture on the Whatsapp messenger application - but also unknowingly sent the picture to the victim's work colleagues.

[submission4]

Annie and the Rescue of Tag, Part 2

Once Frank was tied, Annie wrapped his own bandana around his mouth and manoeuvred him by his shoulders into a chair. She gave Tagg a severe look as she bound the hapless Frank to the chair. “You are not out of the woods yet, little brother,” she admonished, “but maybe you can ease your punishment if you help me capture Jake too.” Tagg looked shame faced and handed the sixgun he was handling unsteadily over to Annie. “Whatever you say, sis.” he muttered.

A few minutes later, Annie was sneaking up on an unsuspecting Jake who was still collecting water from the stream, cursing at the holes in his bucket. “Goddam it, Frank, fetch me another bucket!” he called out towards the cabin. There was no reply. “Frank?” said Jake again, puzzled. He headed back towards the cabin, his bucket oozing water. As he passed the hidden Annie, the girl leapt out in front of him, guns levelled. “Don’t make me shoot you, Jake!” she exclaimed. Jake yelped, dropped the bucket and took off. Annie stared at the retreating man, knowing she could not shoot a man in the back, even a buzzard like Jake Ferris. “Darn it, Jake!” she said to herself, holstered her gun and took off after the man, buckskin skirt flapping around her knees. Jake had a heck of a head start however.

Annie jogged after the outlaw, hoping her back up plan would not let her down. It didn’t. As Jake loped away from the trailing girl, smirking to himself, Tagg suddenly emerged from behind a large rock and barrelled into the outlaw, tripping him up. Tagg leapt on top of Jake, grappling with him, dodging the desperate man’s punches, until Annie arrived and also flung herself on the struggling badman. Between them Tagg and Annie held the man down. He tried to throw the two of them off, but Annie and Tagg were resolute. Eventually Jake stopped struggling and gazed up at his opponents resentfully. “Give up, Jake?” Annie asked the furious badman sweetly. “You win, ma’am.” he acknowledged through gritted teeth. Annie, still holding Jake down, grinned at her serious looking brother. “I guess you’re rescued, Tagg.” she smiled. “And you are caught, Jake!”

Source: Gail Davis as Annie and Billy Gray as Tagg in the 1950s TV series Annie Oakley

[ljblueteak]

May 1971: Paul, Linda, Heather and Mary McCartney as well as Ringo and Maureen on their way to Mick Jagger and Bianca Pérez-Mora Macías’s wedding via the private jet Mick had chartered (airport staff called it the “Jagger juggernaut” according to Keith Badman). Apparently this occasion was the first time Paul and Ringo socialized post-split.

It’s interesting to see how different publications played up (or didn’t) the ~drama of the meeting. Rolling Stone includes this: “A chartered plane load of guests arrived from Gatwick Airport, England, in the afternoon and joined the rest at the party in the evening. On the plane were Ringo and Paul, plus wives and children. One of Paul’s daughters showed her mother a drawing she’d just done. Paul looked at it too and the drawing was handed over to Ringo. He smiled, but the waiting eyes and ears of the press were disappointed. This wasn’t going to be the reunion. They were just going to a wedding.”

Tom Doyle’s Man on the Run mentions that “Paul and Ringo had hung out together at Mick Jagger’s wedding to Bianca in Saint-Tropez” (though Doyle also mentions that this didn’t keep Ringo from commenting negatively about Ram). 

This NY Post article (which I hate to link, because NY Post) has interesting details about the wedding, but plays up the potential for Paul and Ringo discord (because NY Post): 

“Jagger chartered a plane to fly 75 friends who only learned of the wedding the day before, including Paul McCartney and his family, Ringo Starr, Peter Frampton and Ronnie Wood (who wouldn’t join the Stones for another four years), from the UK to Saint-Tropez.As McCartney and Starr were embroiled in a harsh legal battle, they were seated far apart.“

Ringo himself said “That wedding was a bit strange because Paul and I hadn’t seen each other for a year but we both knew that everything was okay. None of us are going to punch each other or anything like that. It was just like, ‘Hello,’ you know, and we had to get warm together” (qtd in Badman’s The Dream is Over, but not clear if this is from Sydney Curtis’s account that was included earlier in the text or something he told someone else another time). 

[ask-the-badman]

“Fuck I know.” I exhaled deeply, running a hand through my hair with an amused scoff. Slumping back against the couch, listening too him speak taking it in the best I could. The alcohol seeming to have wore off some due to the fact my heart tried to jump out of my chest on multiple different occasions tonight. “I’ll ask don’t worry. Least be a lil more direct instead of beating ‘round the bush. AND sober.”

I emphasized on sober. Running both hands through my hair once more, trying to look a little less insane as the realization kicks in that I shouldn’t have been such a pussy to begin with. “Aye! I already want to crawl in a hole tonight.” I whined, gently swatting at his hand when he poked my forehead. I smile softly at his offer for me to stay in his shack, but I decide it’d be best to give him some space as well.

“Thank ya. But I think I’ll stay upstairs tonight. Let ya get some uninterrupted sleep for the first time in a couple days.” I chuckled. I also needed to shower and get the remnants of blood off of me before the smell of copper seeped into my pores for good. Wincing at the thought, I shed myself of his BADMAN shirt completely. “You’ll be needin’ this. And don’t worry ‘bout me, I’ve got my barins some now. Won’t be a stumblin’ mess on my way up.”

I chuck the shirt at him with a smirk and head towards the door, glancing over my shoulder at him. “Sleep. I’ll be back sometime tomorrow when I’m not a flaming hot mess.” I mused, heaving out a heavy sigh. Waving at him before walking out into the awaiting storm.

If I wasn’t drenched before I was now, water splashing up onto my legs with each step till I made it to the porch. I shake my hair out and fling water off of my bare feet before heading inside, hoping that no one else was awake when I opened the front door. Thankfully there wasn’t and I wasted no time herded my ass towards the guest room. Preparing myself for the dreaded hangover morning held for me.

"Alright, suit yerself. I would have taken up a spot in the basement." Johnny shrugged while accepting back his too big shirt to rest across his lap. Then waved to Kat, saying, "G'night, take it easy tonight. I know that hangover is goin' to be shit when ya wake up, plenty'a experience with that."

He laughed, knowing all to well how much fun the day after usually was after drinking heavily. Though the moment they left, he heaved out a tired sigh and looked down at his blanket sized shirt. Guess I'll need to ask a favor of the magic man... He mused, lifting it up to look over and marvel at just how big he must have been to wear it.

Shaking his head, he moved to dress down to his normal nothing for the night and flopped heavily on his couch, finding it heavenly to rest on compared to sleeping on the ground for the last few days. His clothes would need a wash but that was a tomorrow problem as he dragged his shirt overtop of himself. Least it still had some use while oversized.

[dustedmagazine]

Dust, Volume 8, Number 5

Circuit Des Yeux

Sanskit-versed death metal and minimalist saxophone reveries, beefy, muscular alt.Americana and African electro disco  — we run the gamut in this late spring edition of Dust.  Contributors this time around include Jonathan Shaw, Andrew Forell, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Justin Cober-Lake, Bryon Hayes and Tim Clarke.

Aparthiva Raktadhara—Adyapeeth Maranasamhita (Iron Bonehead)

It’s hard not to love a record that includes songs titled “Obsidian Noose of Naag-Paash: Ominous Ophidian” and “Nada of Creation Collapses onto Primal Bindu.” But Aparthiva Raktadhara come by death metal’s earnest (if sometimes also goofy) romance with obscure, multisyllabic locutions pretty honestly. The band comes from Kolkata, which they prefer to call Kalikshetra, the city’s much older Sanskrit name. That may be a nationalist gesture, or one inspired by more cultic intent. For certain, the death metal band is invested enough in the Hindu concepts at stake in Adyapeeth Maranasamhita to include a glossary of terms among the record’s promotional materials. The music? It’s dissonant and dizzying, highly technical death metal that knots and gnarls with vertiginous violence. The attendant complexity seems to complement the arcane weave and multivalent religious energies of Hindu myth. How that works in relation to the current, sustained wave of sectarian, political violence in India is likely an even more tangled, thorny issue. Simple stuff, this ain’t.

Jonathan Shaw

 Andrew Bernstein — a presentation (Hausu Mountain)

a presentation by Andrew Bernstein

Taking inspiration from minimalist composers La Monte Young and Terry Riley, composer/multi-instrumentalist Andrew Bernstein produces three highly technical yet compelling drone pieces on his latest album a presentation. Using circular breathing, electronics and unconventional intervals to explore the limits of his alto saxophone, Bernstein conjures clusters of notes that interact and mutate like the aural equivalent of wax in a lava lamp. They pursue an internal logic in which shapes shift in surprising, sometimes disquieting ways. Bernstein focuses on microtones and overtones, concentrating on the physicality and interaction of notes in time and space. Deliberate, almost glacial, in pace, his notes hang and sustain, with miniscule changes in tone to form tectonic sheets of sound that the warp saxophone’s dynamics. His ability to imbue emotional depth into these pieces makes a presentation a fascinating exploration of sound and a riveting musical experience.

Andrew Forell   

 The Builders and the Butchers—Hell and High Water (Badman)

Hell & High Water by The Builders and the Butchers

The Builders and Butchers, as you might expect from their name, make rough working man’s country rock, full of muscle and sinew. Their seventh full-length wreathes simple melodies in epic accoutrements, the songs rising in mutinous triumph about halfway through, kicking away the jangle and murmur for full-throated, power-chorded expressions of rage and hurt and sorrow. Ryan Sollee, who sings and plays guitar, sings with a grand busted tremolo, hoarse with sincerity (and also with volume), but though he often starts a song by himself, he is always joined by a brotherhood of hard strummers and bangers—Willy Kunkly on bass and guitar, Harvey Tumbleson on mandolin, banjo and guitar) and Justin Baier on drums. They’re especially good singing morosely beautiful campfire chants—like Will Oldham, they see a darkness—and desperate, rampaging road songs. “West Virginia” is maybe the best of these, a song that hurtles through the middle distance, banjo twanging, kick drum thumping in the most desolate sort of barn dance. (The band recorded Hell and High Water on a houseboat, and you can watch them lay down “West Virginia” there in this video.) Other states fly by in a blur, a melancholy, prayerful “Nebraska,” an amp-frying, frenzied “Montana,” and the sound is thick and visceral, full of drama, but grounded in the real.

Jennifer Kelly

Circuit Des Yeux — Live from Chicago (Matador)

Live from Chicago by Circuit des Yeux

Haley Fohr of Circuit Des Yeux is by no means alone in the experience of getting sick on tour. But you can’t just cough through the bus rides when you catch COVID-19; CDY had to cancel the middle half of a European tour, which stacked financial disaster on top of physical distress. Low-overhead releases like Live from Chicago, a digital-only EP that was originally tracked for the podcast, Music Is Everything!, are a chance to make back a little bit of that lost change. It is a live studio performance of four songs from last year’s album, —io. These performances confirm that their grandeur isn’t dependent upon the LP’s orchestral arrangements. The tunes translate rather handily to a four-piece rock band, probably because everyone in said band can double on strings and each other’s instruments, which balance complementarily with the wide-screen sweep of Fohr’s vocal delivery.

Bill Meyer

 Thomas Dollbaum — Wellswood (Big Legal Mess)

Wellswood by Thomas Dollbaum

Tampa-born, New Orleans-based artist Thomas Dollbaum has just released his debut record, Wellswood. Most of the eight songs come under the banner of unapologetically ragged country-rock, such as the defiant, clanging jangle of “Gold Teeth,” or the tumbleweed roil of single “God’s Country.” Dollbaum deploys well-worn chord progressions, digging into the performances so familiar changes are invested with fresh new life. The songs are populated by hookers and motels, whisky and cigarettes, signifiers of escapism that have proven to be sprung traps, Dollbaum singing with a forlorn twang that’s reminiscent of Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock on the morning after a bender. Though he often sounds as though he’s on the verge of giving up, there’s enough grit here to suggest drawing on precious reserves of hope. This is especially apparent on “All is Well,” which rides electric piano with a soulful slink, Dollbaum’s voice elegantly gliding up into an unexpected, elegant falsetto. At the end of closing song “Break Your Bones,” we overhear him ask co-producer and engineer Matt Seferian, “What did you think of that take?” Pretty good, Thomas; pretty good.

Tim Clarke

 Haunter — Disincarnate Ails (Profound Lore)

Discarnate Ails by HAUNTER

Haunter’s third LP Disincarnate Ails pushes the band’s black/death sound toward the blackened end of the subgenre’s sonic continuum, to some good effect. They have ditched the whacky wordplay of Sacramental Death Qualia (“Spoils Vultured upon Sole Deletion” is one of this reviewer’s favorite song titles, ever) and some of that previous record’s more pronouncedly death-driven aural qualities. Many of the guitar noises made by Enrique Bonilla and Bradley Tiffin on Disincarnate Ails may remind you of Hasjarl’s playing, c. Paracletus (without the national socialist baggage, thanks very much). The sounds are cold and spiky; the opening minutes of “Spiritual Illness” fairly bristle with it. Striking a different tone, “Chained at the Helm of Eschaton” suggests some serious time logged listening to Josh Raiken’s recent stuff with Suffering Hour, but Haunter doesn’t have that other band’s uncanny sense of tunefulness. That bites back a bit: two of the songs on Disincarnate Ails cross the ten-minute mark, and the band sometimes seems to be stitching ideas together, rather than following a trajectory through a sequence of necessary forms. But taken independently, they’re good ideas. The second half of “Chained at the Helm of Eschaton” is particularly hair-raising, passionate and intricate in nearly equal measure. When the band locates that combination of elements, the music is compelling.

Jonathan Shaw

Ibibio Sound Machine — Electricity (Merge)

Ibibio Sound Machine has always integrated African pop funk influences with electro, finding a very particular sound in melding various traditions. For Electricity, the group brought in Hot Chip for production work. The partnership works wonderfully. Ibibio Sound Machine brings the electronic sounds to the front, but always in service of a song's given energy. Whether leaning toward Afrobeat or disco or (more typically) both, the group performs with drive. Frontwoman Eno Williams moves between English and Ibibio in her lyrics, often so quickly as to be disorienting. That approach keeps the dizzying dance drive central, ideas floating in and out of focus even if steadily expressed in tone. “All That You Want” expressed connection as much in its horns and synths as in its verbal denotation. The group derives its power from maintaining a conversation between England and Nigeria, and it shares that power as a transnational dance party. The sound might feel a little updated on this one, but the central approach remains strong.

Justin Cober-Lake

 Catalina Matorral — Catalina Matorral (Via Parigi)

Catalina Matorral by Catalina Matorral

A woman’s voice, filtered by a vocoder, rhythmically intones deadpan cadences in French over a keyboard bass. A few string instruments occupy space in an otherwise empty mix. If X=X, Catalina Matorral=the francophone Laurie Anderson.

At least, that’s true of a few songs. Elsewhere, Catalina Matorral, whose name refers to a male-female duo rather than a person, dips into overt chanson, with the guy’s voice showing up on occasion, and the keyboard behavior eases into the 21st century. If you aren’t skilled in the language at hand, or just engage at a surface level governed by records that have been cool to American record collectors, the LP begins to sound like a Laurie Anderson/Brigitte Fontaine & Areski mash-up. And you can justifiably call this writer a shallow sort for staying at that level, but hey, it’s not a bad place to spend 32 minutes.

Bill Meyer

 McPhee Marker — DNA Parliament (Corbett Vs. Dempsey)

The folks at Corbett Vs. Dempsey remember when things were right, so, vinyl production realities be damned, they’ve gone ahead and made a 12”, 45 rpm single. In 2022, that’s either an act of madness or love, and this record’s touched by a little of both. The core partnership here, between saxophonists Ken Vandermark and Joe McPhee, is a mutual appreciation society that’s been nurtured by a quarter century of periodic collaboration, and both songs covered here are by performers that the former musician clearly loves. Vandermark’s most recent band, Marker, is a drums-keyboards-two guitars combo whose potential for clatter nicely matches the inherent staccato brittleness of DNA’s “Egomaniac’s Kiss.” However, it’s McPhee’s gleeful overblowing that loosens the hinges. It’s a nervy endeavor to perform Parliament’s “Night of the Thumpasaurus Peoples” without a proper bass, but Macie Stewart’s neon-accordion synth voices and Phil Sudderberg’s juggler-like aplomb do the groove credit.

Bill Meyer

 The Mutual Torture — Don’t (Non Standard Productions)

Don't - NSP 19 by The Mutual Torture

Veteran Berlin producer Tobias Freund taps bassist André Schöne and Chilean singer Javiera González to explore his interest in early electronic post punk on The Mutual Torture’s debut Don’t. Across 12 tracks of racketing drum machines, thrumming bass and declamatory lyrics, the trio channel the alienated paranoia of the Neue Deutsche Welle and the performative excess of some of the Wax Trax! roster. Don’t benefits from the temper of times, unfortunately as riven as that of early 1980s, and the presence of González whose vocals lend a credible edge to Freund’s songs about gender roles and nationalist violence. The Mutual Torture hit all the right notes but there is a gnawing sense that their seriousness is undercut by excessive respect for their musical forebears.

Andrew Forell   

 Bill Nace / Paul Flaherty — Touchless (Open Mouth)

Touchless by Paul Flaherty/Bill Nace

Title be damned, there can be no doubt that things were roughly touched in the making of this record. Bill Nace could not have obtained the peels of feedback that rip through the massive “Based On Letters Written To Their Children” without some hefting and shifting of his electric guitar. And Paul Flaherty could not have summoned the extinction event-level grief that he expels from his alto saxophone on the sparser “End Or No End” without pressing some keys. But what’s truly touching is the concentration of texture-sourced emotion on these two tracks. The seven-inch format forces you to get to the point, and Flaherty and Nace waste not a second of anyone’s time.

Bill Meyer  

 Tim Olive / Matt Atkins — Dissipatio (Steep Gloss)

Dissipatio by Tim Olive & Matt Atkins

Tim Olive, Canada’s master of the magnetic pickup, has broadened his palette. On this collaborative release with the London-based Matt Atkins, he wields shortwave radio, electronics, and tuning forks. Atkins deploys percussive implements and electronics. Since Olive calls Japan home, the pair likely interacted through telecommunications. Given the intricate nature of these soundscapes, you’d be forgiven if you believed that Olive and Atkins created their music in close proximity. Atkins’ clamor melts nicely into the prickly textures that Olive weaves, the percussive and electronic sonorities conjoining into a single uncanny entity. At times, one catches a whiff of Eli Keszler’s Catching Net, and at others it sounds like the pair are disassembling a radio with fireworks. Throughout, there’s a frenetic energy that never dissipates. Considering both artists tend to favor reductionism, Dissipatio surprises by brimming with sonic detail.

Bryon Hayes  

 Seedsmen to the World—S-T (Blue Arrow)

Seedsmen to the World · Seedsmen to the World

Seedsmen to the World aren’t in any hurry. This four-cut EP bends long, vibrating tones into shimmering edifices, letting the harmonium throb on, measure to measure, while guitar notes zoom in and out of focus. All five players are vets and, maybe, this has played into their willingness to let things play out on their own terms. Specifically, his Name Is Alive’s Warren Defever plays harmonium and tanpura. out-folk billionaire Ethan Daniel Davidson sings and plays cello while his wife Gretchen Gonzales Davidson (once of Slumber Party) plays guitar. Sponge founder Joey Mazzola plays another guitar, and Steve Nistor, who has worked with almost everyone, plays drums.

The first track, “Blood,” trudges on for nearly 13 minutes, a hazy chant about birth and death and suffering marking time as the instrumental bits shift in tectonic ways—that is to say, barely moving but massive. The second side, too, starts in an extended manner, with “Brown” surging lysergically, out of lingering guitar bends and elongated patterns of banjo. There’s a cosmos in it, wide-frame and ever expanding, but essentially unknowable. In between, some shorter cuts intervene, a raga-shot campfire song called “Home” and a droning cover of Creedence’s “Who’ll Stop the Rain.” Everything glimmers through a cough-syrupy haze, but there’s a kind of beauty in the indefinite hum.  

Jennifer Kelly

 Sister Ray — Communion (Royal Mountain)

Communion by Sister Ray

The Velvet Underground song may be the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the name Sister Ray, but this is far from noise-rock. Yes, there are guitars, plus drums and bass, but they’re deployed in the service of slow-burn rather than all-out assault. The artist behind Sister Ray, Ella Coyes, takes a sober approach, crafting slow, serious songs that explore the nuances of interpersonal dynamics. Coyes is a skilled lyricist and vocalist, akin to Sharon Van Etten or Adrianne Lenker, unflinchingly poking around in the most sensitive areas of the human experience. On album highlight “Visions,” the circling chord progression at the song’s climax is a real kick in the guts, more than matching the intensity of the words. Elsewhere there’s a definite sense of withholding, as if waiting for a pay-off that never comes, only serving to up the dramatic tension. In this regard, Communion is definitely a grower; at first it appears monochrome, but each listen reveals subtle gradations in color and unexpected depths.

Tim Clarke   

 Ches Smith — Interpret It Well (Pyroclastic)

Interpret It Well by Ches Smith

When Ches Smith, Craig Taborn and Mat Maneri recorded The Bell for ECM, the label’s typically reverberant production played up the potential cloudiness of their interactions. For Interpret It Well, the trio added guitarist Bill Frisell, a man who is acquainted with the ways of ECM in particular, and diffusion more generally. But the resulting music is more sharply focused, perhaps because their new label seems to have less of a brand consciousness when it comes to matters of sound, but also because the combo had plenty of time to rehearse, since COVID had taken everyone off the road. Even so, Smith’s compositions seem to be in the process of becoming as they are played. No one player overwhelms the others, and they know how to pull back and let a paradoxical moment of big delicacy materialize.

Bill Meyer

 Veneno — Camino des Espinas (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Camino de Espinas by Veneno

Everything old is new again. Cold War-style thermonuclear-apocalyptic anxieties? Check. McCarthyite Red Scare bullying of academics? Check. Satanic Panic narratives of rampant ritual child sexual abuse? You bet — that’s essentially an American political party now. Hard to know exactly what the guys in Veneno are hollering about in “Pánico Satánico” without a lyric sheet, but the song’s basic tonality may have you flashing on CoC’s Eye for an Eye and those halcyon days of 1984. The QAnon folks and their political-managerial partners in DC and rightwing media are a lot less subtle than their 1980s counterparts, who claimed professional training in stuff like psychotherapy and religious studies. Likewise, Buenos Aires-based Veneno makes hardcore that’s more bludgeoning, ugly and rancorous than just about anything pressed to vinyl in the 1980s (Stickmen with Rayguns got kind of close…). The weirdos at Sentient Ruin Laboratories have rereleased Veneno’s demo tape, so now we can groove with (or more likely: roll around in the broken glass and scummy ditch water with) this initial release from the Argentine band. It’s pretty good.

Jonathan Shaw  

 XV—Basement Tapes (Self-Released)

Basement Tapes by XV

The rawest sort of home-made punk comes direct from someone’s basement in Michigan at the height of the pandemic. Consider, “Light in the Woods,” where a dank, echoing bass line saws forward, as someone drums scattershot in the background. A young woman, well away from the mic, is shouting about something being purple, in perky way. Song is so loose that it feels like it’s falling apart in your ear, but also slyly, addictively hooky. It speeds up towards the end like a skittle in its final desperate whorls, spinning faster and faster until it crashes in a heap. From there, you can hear the soft, untutored sound of women singing a few lines from Madonna’s “Into the Groove.” It couldn’t be sillier, or more enjoyable. All three artists involved are loosely associated with Fred Thomas, the godfather of Michigan independent rock and the man behind Saturday Looks Good to Me and Tyvek. Claire Cirocco and Emily Roll also play in Cultural Fog, while Shelley Salant has recorded with Saturday Looks Good to Me.  “I Used to Have a Perfect Mouth,” wanders tipsily, low-end crunch of bass flaring and fading, as cymbals clash and the singer muses, on beauty and falseness (“I used to have a perfect mouth…until I lied.” Fourteen tracks, most under two minutes, not a second of self-doubt in the lot.

Jennifer Kelly

[orojuice]

Black Night Direction: Alternate Mix

Another comic by me and Sha-Y.

A pure Batman parody intermixed with a callback to Travis’ faux-pas against the CIA in Travis Strikes Again.

Luckily for Travis, while the CIA has updated its firmware so it can never be hacked again like it were in TSA, Black Night Direction hasn’t; something Juvenile’s AI makes clear to Travis’ captors before she hacks into Black Night Direction’s teleportation harness and transports him, Travis, and the Colonel way, way up in the sky.

Travis is able to break out of his bonds, grab his Beam Katana, and the Death Glove before latching onto BND before he recovers, which results in the both of them being teleported to safety. The Colonel isn’t so lucky and he winds up impaled on the top of the Thunderdome tower.

Once they’re back where they started, Black Night Direction tries to high road Travis, citing that his refusal to cooperate has probably set back diplomatic relations between the American Government and FU’s forces quite a ways. Travis retorts that FU executing the President of the USA on live television (and his Madame VP on FikFok) is going to be much harder for the aliens to walk back from. Sure, he didn’t vote for them, but that was still pretty rude to those that did.

Recovering Badman’s ashes is a secondary objective of Travis’. Which is rendered both tragic and absurd by how he’s pointedly unable to save any of the still alive civilians that Black Night Direction weaponizes.

Black Night Direction “dropping” people to death has been seen in superhero stuff before like X-Men: First Class, The Flying Man, and Brightburn. But I can’t recall it being a video game boss attack, so let’s put the Unreal 4 Engine to good and gruesome use! Litter the battlefield with collateral damage to distract and horrify assassin and player alike!

Native Dancer still plays a role in the actual boss fight, but it’s as a lead-up to the one you can actually replay in the Time Machine as he gives Travis new Death Glove Skills to counter a bunch of unfair tactics that Black Night Direction has at his disposal. These same principles can be used during his proper boss fight.

Death Force: Used to pull BND down while he’s hovering in the air and dropping “abducted” things on Travis.

Death Slow: Used to counter BND as he dashes around the battlefield with his trident, giving Travis an opportunity to lay the hurt on him.

Death Rain: Used to counter a numerous amounts of 1HP after-images that BND sends after Travis. Him getting hit by either Travis or the shower will call off the clone barrage completely.

The fight is meant to teach the player how to use the Death Glove Skills intelligently as they counter certain moved by BND, but there are always “outs” they can take (i.e. dodging and running away) if the proper skill isn’t charged. it’s just a less frustrating fight if you don’t recklessly spam these abilities.

Native Dancer’s boss fight can still be in the story as an unlockable secret boss fight if Travis follows a certain quest line (Syliva implies this post-fight whilst also chiding Travis for outdoing himself on collateral damage in battling Black Night Direction). Like Ryuichi but better programmed.

Travis’ shirt here is of Chicken Police, a fully-voiced and exquisitely acted noir fiction Visual Novel starring anthropomorphic animals in the style of Blacksad and Zootopia. Highly recommended.

The BND title cards are based on both Batman: The Animated Series and the character's various movies. I set the BND logo amidst a red leather backdrop to hint at BND's macabre combat tactics, echo his vaguely vampiric appearance, and to link him to Travis' own jacket in a kind of deconstructed version of the Batman v. Superman logo's compactness.

Incidentally, Joy Division's Shadowplay fits both Black Night Direction and Travis really well. Give that a listen if you have a couple of minutes to spare.