Friday, September 11, 2015

THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN INSTRUCTS

The Gonzo Daily - Friday/Saturday
www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/about.html
 
There is lots more than usual today.
 
Imagine no hyperbole. I wonder if you can.
 
It was interesting that Lauren Oyler writing in Vice magazine says: "Yesterday marked the 44th anniversary of the release of John Lennon's goody-goody solo album Imagine, on which he softly bleats for world peace and borderless harmony. Described by Rolling Stone as Lennon's "greatest musical gift to the world," the song of the same name fantasizes about a mankind without qualities of evil and suffering, such as possessions, greed, hunger, and war. Perhaps a less ambitious dream would be of a world in which people are not as monstrous as John Lennon." She then goes on to describe a druggy philanderer who cheated on his wife and smacked his young son for bad table manners.
 
Oh bollocks. Context my dear, context. None of this is news. Writing in The Lives of John Lennon well over twenty tears ago Albert Goldman write all this and more, and the account written by his mistress May Pang would make your hair curl. Particularly when he was drunk he was a very nasty piece of work, which is something that he admitted. "That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace" he said.
 
As for smacking his son, it was fifty years ago, in a time where most people still believed in corporal punishment, and as for him having a 'God Complex' because he believed that because he was on a macrobiotic diet that smoking would not cause him to die of cancer, is one to condemn everyone who has non standard health fads? If so, then practically everyone that I know would have a 'God Complex' and I truly do not believe that I am surrounded by deities.
 
Yes Lennon was a violent twat at times, but a monster? No. Hitler, Stalin and The Moors Murderers were monsters. Jimmy Savile was a monster. Lennon was just a deeply flawed human being who wrote some marvellous and inspirational music.
 
But Imagine is utopian bollocks and always has been.
 
IMPORTANT MESSAGE ABOUT RICK WAKEMAN
THE GONZO TRACK OF THE DAY: Karnataka - The Storm
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Gonzo Weekly #146
www.gonzoweekly.com
 
Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Bee and Flower, The Wombats, Joy Division, Fruits de Mer, Insect Ark, Pink Fairies John Martyn, Ringo Starr, David Bowie, Roy Weard, Dogwatch, That Legendary Wooden Lion, Hawkwind, Jon Anderson, and Yes fans had better look out!
 
The latest issue of Gonzo Weekly (#146) is available to read at www.gonzoweekly.com, and to download at http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/. It has Dana Schechter from Bee and Flower  on the front cover together with an interview with her inside, Doug looks at ELP, Lee dances with The Wombats, Jon muses about Fruits de Mer Records and reviews a book about Ringo Starr, John looks at the legacy of the English Underground on YouTube including music by John Martyn and the Pink Fairies. Thom waxes all poetical like, whilst the legendary Roy Weard continues his regular column. And there is a radio show from M Destiny at Friday Night Progressive, and the second of four Strange Harvest radio specials from the folk wot bring you Strange Fruit, and there is the latest episode of Canterbury Sans Frontières featuring Gong and Matching Mole. There is also a collection of more news, reviews, views, interviews and water opossums with something to lose (OK, nothing to do with small marsupials planning to pray to St Anthony of Padua for an intercession, but I got carried away with things that rhymed with OOOOS) than you can shake a stick at. And the best part is IT's ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!
 
This issue features:
 
Fruits de Mer, The Beach Boys, Miley Cyrus, Meat Loaf, Prince, Alan Lomax, Brinsley Schwarz, Mega Dodo, Galahad, Lana del Rey, Barbara Dickson, Strange Fruit, Friday Night Progressive, Canterbury Sans Frontieres, Owens Boomer Castleman, Joy Beverley, Wes Craven, Rick Wakeman, Hugh Hopper, The Pirates, Ducks Deluxe, The Pirates, Wilko Johnson, Dr. John, Johnny Winter & Uncle John Turner,  Billy Cobham, Brand x, Pete Sears, Frank Zappa, Bee and Flower, Dana Schechter, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Lee Walker, The Wombats, John Brodie-Good, Caravan, Hawkwind, Gong, Pink Fairies, John Martyn, Roy Weard, Lemmy, Yes, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Bring me the Horizon, David Bowie, Neil Nixon, Les Baxter, Midvinterblot
 
 
Read the previous few issues of Gonzo Weekly:
 
Issue 144 (Percy Jones cover)
Issue 143 (Billy Sherwood cover)
Issue 142 (Daevid Allen and Spirits Burning cover)
Issue 141 (Rick Wakeman cover)
Issue 140 (Jaki Windmill cover)
Issue 139 (Raz cover)
Issue 138 (Galahad cover)
Issue 137 (Chris Squire cover)
Issue 136 (Neil Nixon cover)
Issue 135 (FNP cover)
 
All issues from #70 can be downloaded at www.gonzoweekly.com if you prefer. If you have problems downloading, just email me and I will add you to the Gonzo Weekly dropbox. The first 69 issues are archived there as well. Information is power chaps, we have to share it!
 
You can download the magazine in pdf form HERE:
 
* The Gonzo Daily is a two way process. If you have any news or want to write for us, please contact me at jon@eclipse.co.uk. If you are an artist and want to showcase your work, or even just say hello please write to me at gonzo@cfz.org.uk. Please copy, paste and spread the word about this magazine as widely as possible. We need people to read us in order to grow, and as soon as it is viable we shall be invading more traditional magaziney areas. Join in the fun, spread the word, and maybe if we all chant loud enough we CAN stop it raining. See you tomorrow...
 
* The Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine (mostly) about artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But it also has other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also do a weekly newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about it at this link: www.gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/…/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit…
 
* We should probably mention here, that some of our posts are links to things we have found on the internet that we think are of interest. We are not responsible for spelling or factual errors in other people's websites. Honest guv!
 
* Jon Downes, the Editor of all these ventures (and several others) is an old hippy of 56 who - together with an infantile orange cat named after a song by Frank Zappa, and a small kitten totally coincidentally named after one of the Manson Family, purely because she squeaks, puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon which he shares with various fish, and sometimes a small Indian frog. He is ably assisted by his lovely wife Corinna, his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law, and a motley collection of social malcontents. Plus.. did we mention the infantile orange cat, and the adventurous kitten?

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