All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

A Man Records The Northern Lights During A Superstorm, And What Happens Is Amazing

Any sighting of the Northern Lights is unforgettable, but this display is unmatched. How often do you get to see footage of a superstorm, the Aurora Borealis, and a shooting star all at once? Of course, the person filming this had the true experience, but it’s still pretty amazing to get a glimpse into what that must have felt like.

Source: A Man Records The Northern Lights During A Superstorm, And What Happens Is Amazing

SPIEGEL Interview with Primate Researcher Jane Goodall – SPIEGEL ONLINE

The chimpanzees taught me a lot about nonverbal communication. The big difference between them and us is that they don’t have spoken language. Everything else is almost the same: Kissing, embracing, swaggering, shaking the fist. I studied those things a lot in chimps, and I suppose that’s why I’m quite good at reading people. For example, if you catch somebody doing something wrong, he will just cringe away and curl up. He will not listen anymore. Instead, he will think of how he can counterattack. So the only possible way to get somebody to change is to reach into their hearts.

Source: SPIEGEL Interview with Primate Researcher Jane Goodall – SPIEGEL ONLINE

Hendrix Hits London – How Nine Months in London Made Him a Star

Born in 1942, James Marshall Hendrix grew up in Seattle and honed his craft as a guitar slinger in the South and New York City, but he became star in London.

In 1966 Hendrix was playing in Greenwich Village and struggling to find an audience with his group Jimmy James and the Blue Flames when ex-Animals bassist Chas Chandler saw him perform. Chandler promised he could make Hendrix a star if he moved to England. Hendrix agreed, on one condition: that Chandler introduce him to British guitar gods Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton.

Within a week of arriving in London, Hendrix and Chandler assembled bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell to create the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and the group quickly jumped into the Swinging London scene. Over the next nine months the trio toured endlessly, released three hit singles and a chart-topping debut album, and became darlings of the British music press.

For much of his time in the public eye, Hendrix called London home. Without the city, his musical gifts may never have reached a worldwide audience. Hendrix had the talent, the showmanship, and the ambition, while Chas Chandler had the clout and the connections. But Swinging London had the fashion, the music, and the unique culture that proved vital to Hendrix’s success.

Curator of ‘Hear My Train A Comin’ – Hendrix Hits London‘ and Hendrix fanatic Jacob McMurray guides James Lachno through the celebrated US musician’s explosive first trip to London and how it made him a star. Hendrix died in an ambulance on the way to hospital, apparently suffering from a drug overdose, on September 18 1970.

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Jimi Hendrix at the Saville Theatre, London, 1967 (Picture: Bill Nitopi)

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The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Mitch Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix and Noel Redding, promotional photograph (Picture: EMP Museum)

“In summer 1965, Hendrix quit Little Richard’s band for the second time and moved to New York. The story goes that Linda Keith – at the time Keith Richards’s girlfriend – saw Hendrix at Café Wha? in Greenwich Village with ‘Jimmy James and the Blue Flames’. She was impressed and told her friend Chas Chandler, who was doing his last tour as the bassist of The Animals. Chandler saw the band and thought Hendrix was amazing, so he brought him to London. From the first week, Jimi was jamming with Cream, and he met Andy Summers, pre-Police, on the first day. The Jimi Hendrix Experience formed about a week later, with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell.”

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Early lyrics to ‘Love or Confusion‘, penned while staying at Hyde Park Towers hotel, October-November 1966 (Picture: EMP Museum)

“Chandler set Hendrix up at the Hyde Park Towers Hotel. All indications suggest he wrote these lyrics to Love and Confusion in November 1966 while at the hotel, and supposedly he also wrote Stone Free early on in London. Maybe he had these songs in some form in New York, but his music there had been so different – it was rock and soul, R’n’B, blues covers. These new compositions were rave-ups, beat songs. They pushed the boundaries, but were essentially pop songs.”

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Acetate recording of “Hey Joe” / “Stone Free”, from November 1966 (Picture: EMP Museum)

“The band played its first gig in Evreux, France, on October 13, 1966, on a big package tour headlined by Johnny Hallyday. They recorded the Hey Joe/Stone Free single on October 23, not even a month after getting to London. Hey Joe was a popular song to cover in the US – The Leaves, Love, and Frank Zappa had covered the fast version, but Hendrix was one of the first to do it slow, from a version by folk singer Tim Rose.”

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Howlin’ Wolf, More Real Folk Blues, Chess Records, 1967, part of Hendrix’s personal record collection (Picture: EMP Museum)

“Hendrix owned dozens of records in London, and was heavily influenced by the blues. There’s a story about when Hendrix sat in with Cream within a week of getting to London, and started playing Howling Wolf’s Killing Floor with them. It’s meant to be an incredibly difficult song to just start jamming with other people on. Jack Bruce said everyone was raising their eyebrows, thinking ‘wow’.”

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Anti-austerity march draws 80,000 protesters to Belgium′s streets | News | DW.COM | 07.10.2015

More than 80,000 people on Wednesday took to the streets of Brussels to protest austerity measures implemented during the first year of the center-right coalition government’s tenure.The protest marks the second of its size within a year, with the last one occurring in November 2014.Three of Belgium’s main unions joined the protests on a common platform that renounced policies implemented by the center-right government under the leadership of Prime Minister Charles Michel.

Source: Anti-austerity march draws 80,000 protesters to Belgium′s streets | News | DW.COM | 07.10.2015

Roseburg, Reeling From Massacre, Finds Security in Gun Ownership – The New York Times

{Self-delusion is most addicting, as is doing “something” whether is will do any good or not or whether there is any necessity to “do” anything to be safer.}

 

A week has passed since J.J. Vicari huddled underneath a desk while gunshots exploded in the classroom next door. Now, he is thinking about guns. Not about tightening gun laws, as President Obama urged after nine people were killed at the community college here. But about buying one for himself.“It’s opened my eyes,” said Mr. Vicari, 19. “I want to have a gun in the house to protect myself, to protect the people I’m with. I’m sure I’ll have a normal life and never have to go through anything like this, but I want to be sure.”

Source: Roseburg, Reeling From Massacre, Finds Security in Gun Ownership – The New York Times