Monday, December 21, 2009

Biographies “Biographies shed light on music greats - Edmonton Journal” plus 3 more

Biographies “Biographies shed light on music greats - Edmonton Journal” plus 3 more

Biographies shed light on music greats - Edmonton Journal

Posted: 21 Dec 2009 12:53 AM PST

Looking for gifts for the music fans on your Christmas list? Several recent biographies offer some intriguing insights on the musician's life.

- -English drummer Bill Bruford has penned his own unique story. Bill Bruford: The Autobiography (Jawbone, 352 pages) offers the rare angle of a top musician who has worked in several very different musical contexts, from rock to jazz to pure percussion, over 40 years.

Bruford grew up with a fascination for jazz and improvisation. It was only after he had become known for bringing innovative work to art-rock groups like Yes and King Crimson that he finally formed his jazz band, Earthworks, in 1986. All that sets up the book for a series of contrasts.

Recording an album with a major rock band typically takes months in the studio, while many jazz groups can pull off an album in a few days. Then there's the touring. After doing international tours with a gargantuan travelling entourage, performing for stadium-sized audiences with rock bands like Yes, it was a vastly different experience for the drummer as his jazz group worked in the relative intimacy of clubs and concert halls. (Earthworks played the jazz festival here in 1988.)

Bruford spends considerable time on the group chemistry and methodology of both rock and jazz, but less time on the personalities than some fans might like. One exception is King Crimson's inscrutable leader Robert Fripp, who was clearly a source of frustration for Bruford even as the band's experimental ethic repeatedly drew the drummer back to the fold.

- -Journalist David Sheppard's book On Some Faraway Beach/The Life And Times of Brian Eno (Orion Books, 480 pages) is the most entertaining, best-written book considered here.

Born in 1948, Eno has become a legend in his own time for his innovations in turning the recording studio into an experimental realm. Somewhere between his beginnings as an art college nerd with no formal musical training and his current role in semi-retirement toying with "quiet-room" installations and lecturing, he's become an intriguing philosopher of the postmodern era.

The genre-crossing breadth of his own creations runs from innovative pop to the invention of ambient music and the groundbreaking use of sampling found sounds in My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1980). But Eno is probably best known as a Svengali-like force who has helped shape some of the most significant recordings by a long string of artists and groups starting with Roxy Music, David Bowie, Talking Heads and U2.

With access to Eno, his friends, family and musical collaborators, Sheppard fashions an amazingly detailed story, creating a vivid picture of the musical and social trends that surrounded him, putting punk, new wave, pop and electronica in perspective.

Far from a work of worship, the book offers a balanced critique of Eno's accomplishments and considers views that he's something of a dilettante. But even Eno's biggest critics grudgingly admit the man's gifts as a creative facilitator who thrives in a friction of creative personalities.

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Posted: 21 Dec 2009 03:23 AM PST

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    Russia's Communists mark Stalin's birthday - San Francisco Chronicle

    Posted: 21 Dec 2009 04:56 AM PST

    Nationwide, Stalin's popularity in Russia has been climbing amid Kremlin-backed efforts to defend his image.

    "We would very much like for any discussion of the mistakes of the Stalin epoch to be silenced today, so that people could reflect on Stalin's personality as a creator, a thinker and a patriot," Ivan Melnikov, the Communist deputy speaker of the lower house of parliament, said in comments posted on the party's Web site.

    The Communist Party is still the second most powerful political force in the country after United Russia, the ruling party chaired by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. At times, the Communists have defeated Putin's party in regional elections.

    But in their efforts to rehabilitate Stalin's image in the eyes of the public, the Communists are taking at least some of their cues from Putin and the Kremlin, which have been pushing for Stalin's accomplishments to be recognized at home and abroad.

    Putin has lauded Stalin's victory over the Nazis during World War II and his drive to industrialize the Soviet Union as deserving of respect, despite the purges and repression that killed millions of Soviet citizens in the 1930s.

    "In my view, you cannot make one gross assessment. ... Any historical events need to be analyzed in their entirety," Putin said during his annual call-in show with the Russian public on Dec. 3.

    A majority of Russians — 54 percent — have a high opinion of Stalin's leadership qualities, according to a survey released Friday by state-run polling agency VTsIOM, while only 23 percent rate his personal character traits as below average. The survey questioned 1,600 people nationwide Dec. 5-6 and gave a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

    In the late 1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, lifted the taboo against criticizing Stalin as part of perestroika, his sweeping campaign of political and economic reforms that precipitated the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Since then, the Russian public has been exposed to dozens of documentary films, books, memoirs and biographies detailing the atrocities committed by Stalin's regime.

    A hardcore of his followers, mainly elderly people educated before perestroika, nevertheless uphold the view that Stalin was a great and valiant leader whose repressive grip on the nation was needed to ensure security and industrial growth.

    Stalin was born Josif Dzugashvili in 1878 in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

    On Monday in his home town of Gori, now in independent Georgia, about 300 mainly elderly people gathered outside the Stalin museum to wave flags and his portrait as they celebrated his life

    Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says there can be no justification for the Soviet-era oppression that left millions dead at the hands of their own state. In a blog posting Friday, he said Russians must not forget the crimes of the Soviet era, and suggested young people were learning too much about the country's victories and not enough about the bloodbath that reached its peak under Josef Stalin.

    The remarks, following critics' claims that the Kremlin was whi8tewashing history, represent perhaps the Kremlin's strongest condemnation of Soviet repression since Medvedev's predecessor, Vladimir Putin, became president a decade ago.

    ___

    Associated Press Writer Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili contributed reporting from Gori, Georgia.

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    Founders’ real intent - Daily Herald

    Posted: 20 Dec 2009 11:05 PM PST

    Some time ago I read a letter to the editor. In this letter the person writing it made the statement that the "Democratic Party" presently in the congress was doing the same thing that the Founding Fathers were doing in 1787. Apparently this person writing this letter has never read the biographies of any of the writers of this document called the Constitution of the United States of America.

    I have not read all the biographies of the signers, but I have read four of them. Their thrust was on the freedoms the people of America will enjoy. As we read a copy of the original Constitution, the states will make the laws, the federal government will only enforce those laws that affect more than one state, and those that the safety of the nation will require. The Supreme Court will only make sure that any new bill will fall within the Constitution guidelines, they will not make any new laws.

    Pick up any newspaper and you will find that the bills before Congress now are for the taking away the freedoms of the people and putting all the populace under government controls. The present "Federal Government" has allowed, encouraged and funded certain groups that are fighting to remove parts of this "God Given Document": "Separation of Church and Government," "Freedom of Speech," "Right to Bear Arms" and "The Right for States to Write laws contrary to Federal legislation," are to name a few.

    •Vard A. Roper, Orem

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