No point in this not being publicly available is there? Especially as setting it up in Blog format was a bit of a labour of love. Apologies for dead links and inserts. time takes its toll. #

and this

and this of  course

Drugged, hypnotic, sleazy throb

Jamerson requires his own post: Lazily I have cut and pasted this from http://www.bassland.net/jamersonhits.htmand this is only the single tracks he figures on:
My Girl - TemptationsBernadette - 4 TopsAint That Peculiar - Marvin GayeOoh Baby Baby - The MiraclesTo Many Fish In The Sea - The MarvelettesUptight (Everything Is Alright) - Stevie WonderHeat Wave (U) - Martha & The VandellasThis Old Heart Of Mine - Isley BrothersI Heard It Through The Grapevine (2 recordings) - Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight & PipsWhere Did Our Love Go (U) - Diana/SupremesSince I Lost My Baby - TemptationsFor Once In My Life - Stevie WonderMy Guy (U) - Mary WellsYour Precious Love - Marvin Gaye/Tammy TerrellYou've Really Got A Hold On Me - The MiraclesLove Child - Diana/SupremesI Guess I'll Always Love youDancing In The Streets - Martha & The VandellasDon't Mess With Bill - The MarvelettesWhat's Going On - Marvin GayeStanding In The Shadows Of Love - 4 TopsMickey's Monkey (U) - The MiraclesCloud Nine - TemptationsNothing's To Good For My Baby - TemptationsMy Baby Loves Me - Martha & The VandellasYou Keep Me Hanging On - Diana/SupremesYou Beat Me To The Punch - Mary WellsLittle Darling (I Need You) - 4 TopsI'm Ready For LoveThe Way You Do The Things You Do - TemptationsI Can't Help Myself - 4 TopsRoadrunner - Jr. Walker & The All-StarsYou're All I Need To Get By - TemptationsYou Can't Hurry Love - Diana/SupremesShop Around - The MiraclesAin't To Proud To Beg - TemptationsMy Cherie Amour - Stevie WonderIt's The Same Old Song - 4 TopsHow Sweet It Is - Marvin GayeTake Me In Your Arms (And Rock Me A Little While) - Brenda HollowayAin't No Mountain High Enough (2 recordings) - Marvin Gaye/Tammy Terrell, Diana/SupremesMy Baby Must Be A Magician - The MarvelettesLove Is Like An Itching In My Heart - Diana/SupremesBeauty Is Only Skin Deep - TemptationsAsk The Lonely - 4 TopsGoing To A Go-Go - The MiraclesI was Made To Love Her - Stevie WonderHitch Hike - Marvin GayeI Second That Emotion - The MiraclesPlease Mr. Postman - The MarvelettesJimmy Mack (U) - Martha & The VandellasI Hear A Symphony - Diana/SupremesShake Me, Wake Me (When It's Over) - 4 TopsI'm Gonna Make You Love Me - TemptationsGet Ready - TemptationsThe Hunter Gets Captured By The GameStop! In The Name Of Love - Diana/SupremesThat's What Love Is Made OfNowhere To Run - Martha & The VandellasSeven Rooms Of Gloom - 4 TopsPride & Joy - Marvin Gaye(I Know) I'm Losing You - TemptationsTwo Lovers - Mary WellsI'll Turn To Stone - 4 TopsCome See About Me - Diana/SupremesStubborn Kind Of Fellow - Marvin GayeHow Long Has That Evening Train Been GoneIf I Were your Woman Gladys Knight & The PipsMy World Is Empty Without You - Diana/SupremesThe Tracks Of My Tears - The MiraclesI'm Wondering - Stevie WonderCan I Get A Witness - Marvin GayeThe Girls Alright With Me - TemptationsShoo Be Doo Be Doo Da Day - Stevie WonderReflections - Diana/SupremesWhat Becomes Of The Broken Hearted - Jimmy RuffinBaby I Need Your Loving - 4 TopsQuicksand... - Martha & The VandellasReach Out...I'll Be There - 4 TopsYou Beat Me To The Punch - Mary WellsThe Bells - The OriginalsShotgun - Jr. Walker & The All-StarsFingertips (pt2)- Stevie WonderHey Girl - Stevie WonderWhat Are You Gonna Do When I'm Gone (U) - Kim Weston Still Water Runs Deep - Four Tops (Chuck Whaley)All in the Game - Four Tops (Chuck Whaley)My Baby - TemptationsThe One Who Really Loves You (U)- Mary WellsThis Old Heart Of Mine - Isley BrothersMy Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left) - David RuffinIt Takes Two (U) - Marvin Gaye/Tammy TerrellHoney Chile - Martha & the VandellasTo Busy Thinking About My Baby - Marvin GayeWhen Your Young And In Love - MarvelettesAin't Nothing Like The Real Thing - Marvin Gaye/Tammy TerrellStill Waters Run Deep - Four TopsIf I Were Your Woman - Gladys Knight & the PipsI Want You Back - Jackson 5It's Growing - The Temptations Agent Double O Soul - Edwin StarrI Can't Get Next To You - Temptations I want A Love I can Feel - Temptations Heart Breaking Guy - Supremes 

The man.

The legend.

The machine.


The slap bass.

As referenced previously by Ralph Dorey, very eloquently - http://andwhatwillbeleftofthem.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/free-your-mind-and-your-ass-will-follow.html

... the lynch pin of the Jam

Calling all contributors past and present  Carl and I have had a discussion about whether there could be a Best of the Decades Blog book. The blogs have featured some great writing over the years and it would be nice to give them some recognition. Also, Blogger will stop working at some point, people move onto other things, and it would be a shame to lose so many good posts.
Exactly what form this would take I don't know. We could follow Woebot's example and do it ourselves, or see if a publisher is interested.  But before going any further I would like to hear what other contributors think. So email your thoughts, pro or anti, to: belovedenemies [at] gmail.com
Even if you only posted one piece, I would still like your opinion. Readers who feel strongly are also welcome to express their views. 
Thanks,William

This looks like it will be a great project and of interest to readers of this blog. #

On Zardoz. Before I get on to Hayek (again). #

Right then, I am going to be sticking my oar in re Utopia Then and Now at AYA, and predictably enough using it partially as an opportunity to talk about neoliberalism and Film. Again. Starting with the 70's., of course. #

If you are wondering what I am up to these days, I am also over here. #

Via Tariq.

Right, we are Wetherspooning.
Here from 5
http://www.jdwetherspoon.co.uk/home/pubs/the-lord-moon-of-the-mall
then I guess
The Rockingham arms at approx 7:30
http://www.jdwetherspoon.co.uk/home/pubs/the-lord-moon-of-the-mall
then Hipster fun in New Cross at 9:30 ish
http://www.royalalbertpub.com/
and a late nightcap in the Greenwich Wetherspoons from 11-ish
http://www.jdwetherspoon.co.uk/home/pubs/the-gate-clock
this won't work out of  course. I don't have  a smartphone, Phil doen't even have a mobile so hopefully we will meet up at some point. Bring anyone  you like and remember we like meeting new people and have highly developed social skills. #

Phil and I are going to have a promotional pub crawl for Strangled and No More Heroes on the 27th of March. Quite what it will constitute remains to be seen. I intend to flog my author copies of No More Heroes out of my gym bag and  give the funds raised to Defend The Right to Protest. We will start in Central London around 5 then head south. London Bridge/ Elephant then New Cross/Deptford. We will figure out the exact pubs later. Essentially doing this solves one fundamental problem: the fact that I still like and get on with people who have now fallen out with each other. We will come to you, or somewhere near you, and you don't have to not come for a quick pint through the fear that you'll  bump into that ex-comrade who has turned out to be a psycho/ reactionary/ closet Tory/ leering Troll / treacherous Careerist, etc. If you ever contributed to the Decade's blogs it would be great to see you, but it would be great to see you anyway. This is an open invitation. I'll update the pub location nearer the date, after full consultation with Phil. He's dead fussy.
Facebook page here. #

Phil Knight's Strangled out tomorrow.



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Here's the actual best cover version of all time, btw:

Contains nothing but spoilers!


There's lots of impressive things about Christopher Nolan's Interstellar and to a degree it made me want to go back and re-watch some of his earlier films and think more about his recurring obsession with time (plus the frozen planet is highly reminiscent of his second movie Insomnia, which I hardly remember at all.) It's certainly all very clever, as you would expect, and technically accomplished but as per usual with Nolan you're left wondering why the political vision of the film is in comparison so abysmally lacking. 
The earth is running out of food due to The Blight, but despite this armies have been abolished. Oh aye? That seems unlikely. No ongoing resource wars then? No rich people stockpiling grub, no warlords sitting on top of dwindling fresh water supplies? Nope. But there is a benign secret NASA project to get man off the earth, this is despite the seeming loss of the questing American frontier spirit, as embodied by Cooper a last Man among Last Men, and his feisty daughter Murph, who gets into a fistfight over liberal revisionist histories that portray the moon landings as a hoax to sucker the Ruskies into a ruinous space race. Green liberals, here schoolteachers, would have us wallow in the dirt as farmers rather than head for the heavens, worrying all the time about squandering the world's last precious resources when the earth should really just be viewed as something we use up in order to get out into space, fulfilling our godlike destiny among the stars. So essentially, in this film the world's environmental problems are just absolutely insoluble but travelling through a wormhole into different dimensions then ultimately transporting the rest of humanity there, perfectly do-able. 
Brand, the head of the NASA project has told a "noble lie" there is no plan to ship earthlings out, but to repopulate the new planet from scratch with some frozen embryos. Brand couldn't tell the humans this, they would never agree to go if it didn't mean rescuing their own loved ones and so have had to be tricked into it, sheeple that they are, though from a genuinely, scientifically disinterested perspective, why is the continued existence of humanity as a species of any importance whatsoever, unless, as the Nolans obviously do, you regard humanity as having some kind of transcendent value, to, in effect, be the meaning of the cosmos itself, not merely the human as the integer of all existence, but specifically the ruggedly individualistic, American male, cornerstone of the divinely ordained American family, with his love for his daughter and his powerful will, embodied in his unbreakable "promise" a force powerful enough to shape and bend all of time space to his ends. Better this than sitting quietly alone, waiting for the end, eh? Ah, man and his pathological sense of dignity! 
 And here lies the heart of Interstellar's deep conservatism, remorseless natalism and nostalgia. Possibly the reason Cooper is so desperate to get those surviving on earth off planet is so that they can continue the great American project, maintain the sacred order of property, family, and tradition. The first thing Cooper sees on awakening in the space station at journey's end is some kids playing baseball outside his window in a dustless facsimile of 1950's USA. Paradise restored! Who knows, a whole load of awoken embryos might have decided to do it all differently? 

But then again of course, being human, they couldn't. We might plunge through the event horizon and wind up in a five dimensional Tesseract, but that other horizon, a life beyond home and family, beyond the inevitabilities of reproduction, property, the grand kids at your deathbed,  the couple, and that couple best expressed as love between a straight man and woman ( though in this the woman's love, rather girlish and not to be trusted, leads them almost into doom, whereas Cooper's love for his daughter is the force that ultimately saves us all), that horizon, internal, genetic, hard wired is impassable, breaching that, unthinkable.

 In this respect Interstellar is just another conservative vision of American Renewal, a highly unlikely prospect that requires all kinds of increasingly epic torsions of time-space to seem faintly credible. One day, on distant stars, we will sit swilling beer on the porch with our robots, secure in the knowledge that there was only ever one way to live, one form of life we were just bound biologically into, which reached its apotheosis and then presumably went out into the Universe like a great cancer, strip mining and devastating everything it found, humanity metastasising identikit McMansions into the cosmos's deepest folds.
This is almost certainly Elon Musk's favourite film eva.

Radical change is possible and necessary but only if alternative thinking has the courage to move out of the margins. Repeater is committed to bringing the periphery to the centre, taking the underground overground, and publishing books that will bring new ideas to a new public. We know that any encounter with the mainstream risks corrupting the tidiness of untested ideals, but we believe that it is better to get our hands dirty than worry about keeping our souls pure.
http://repeaterbooks.wordpress.com/

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The Stranglers' version of Walk on By voted third best cover of all time.



The stars aligning, the moon entering its fullest phase  ... #

These blogs of course were a mere pre-amble to this. #