Tina

music

Saw her twice in this period. I made chums with Tina’s back up singer from Georgia whom I met in London 1986 (via his girlfriend who’d I met at Chemical Bank in the Strand) and who’d come over with the I+TB supporting the Stones in ’69. (He introduced me to James Brown). I saw Tina front row before she was reintroduced to a mass audience in the mid-80s (actually ’79). We were in the cheap seats and Tina called us upfront to fill the pricey seats (I was there two consecutive nights). The show was as a sharp as it could be — even with 40 year’s hindsight. I still have in my mind’s eye the moves of her backup singers, and the sound and the light show. The guitar (Ike) on “Nutbush” (the recording) still holds water with anything that Zep, Sabbath or Purple guitarists would come up with from 50 years back. Fundamental.

Gordon Lloyd

classical liberalism

An obituary by Steve Ealy/The School of Public Policy/Teaching American History. Gordon was a gentleman and a scholar and was amused by my knowing his birthplace, Mumbles.

Opium of the Elite

friedrich hayek


Jonathan Rée reviews Bruce Caldwell’s and Hansjoerg Klausinger’s Hayek: A Life, 1899-1950. In case there’s a pay gate, here is a pdf. At the page footer Jonathan Rée discuss this piece with Thomas Jones on the LRB Podcast.

Barry Humphries 

satire

The Guardian/BBC/The Telegraph. I had heard through a friend of Barry’s that Barry wasn’t doing well. I’d been in correspondence with this friend who alerted me to Barry’s appreciation of Frederick Rolfe’s Hadrian the Seventh, an edited volume that I’m currently working on. Barry was to have provided some blurb for the book. 

Aladdin Sane @ 50

david bowie

See The Guardian. Plus photographer Chris Duffy’s book Aladdin Sane 50. ‘Camille Paglia, a US feminist academic, described the picture as “one of the most emblematic and influential art images of the past half-century, reproduced or parodied in advertising, media and entertainment worldwide”’. Ken Scott the producer will be in conversation with Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy at Classic Album Sundays and which will be made available later online. Also worth checking out Chris O’Leary’s track by track analysis.