Monthly Archives: March 2007

Am I Having Fun Yet, Master?

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Courtesy of Bovine Inversus comes this slightly disturbing news item from the Korea Times. The start-up may get some business, but somehow I don’t think it’ll be Sony, Nintendo, or Xbox who will be queuing up. Paging Donald Rumsfeld…

Acoustic Wave Prevents Game Addiction

By Kim Tae-gyu
Korea Times (Seoul), March 12, 2007

A Korean venture start-up has developed an inaudible sound sequence, which it claims can prevent obsessive use of online games, thus giving hope to game addicts.

Xtive on Monday said the sound sequence is based on subliminal effects.

“We incorporated messages into an acoustic sound wave telling gamers to stop playing. The messages are told 10,000 to 20,000 times per second,” Xtive President Yun Yun-hae said.

“Game users can’t recognize the sounds. But their subconscious is aware of them and the chances are high they will quit playing,” the 35-year-old Yun said. “Tests tell us the sounds work.”

Xtive, which was established in 2005, spent about a year to create the sound sequence geared toward addressing the concern that Korean teenagers spend too much time playing computer games.

The addiction to the network games has turned into a serious social problem and some gamers have even died after long sessions in front of the computer.

Experts point out roughly 10 to 20 percent of high school students can be categorized as Web junkies who need treatment. And many believe that is a conservative perspective.

“Experiences tell us kids or adolescents simply don’t stop playing games when faced with forceful measures. Such attempts can also cause many side effects,” Yun said.

“But our newly developed sound sequence tells them to stop playing on their own. We think this can make a real difference in the war against obsessive game play,” he said.

Yun said Xtive plans to commercialize the phonogram along with the government [emphasis added] and game companies.

“Game companies can install a system, which delivers the inaudible sounds after it recognizes a young user has kept playing after a preset period of time,” Yun said.

Xtive applied for a domestic patent for the phonogram and is looking to take advantage of the technology in other sectors.

“We can easily change the messages. In this sense, the potential for this technology is exponential,” Yun said. [Emphasis added.]

Aliens & Music, pt. 2: The Amazing Story Behind The Wisdom of Sun Ra

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Cover of the essential book 'The Wisdom of Sun Ra' edited by John Corbett (Chicago, IL: Whitewalls Press, 2006)As I only just posted about, Chicago’s Whitewalls Press published in the spring of 2006 a thin but essential volume entitled The Wisdom of Sun Ra: Sun Ra’s Polemical Broadsheets and Streetcorner Leaflets, compiled by John Corbett.

Following below is the amazing back-story, courtesy of the Chicago Reader and as written a year ago by Peter Margasak, in advance of what may well have been once-in-a-lifetime series of gallery exhibits, symposia, talks, concerts, and special events — alas all ended in mid-January this year. I just can’t believe I missed these events — this is what I get for not paying closer attention to my former hometown. I would have gladly flown there just to see this stuff (no offense intended to my friends there..though they certainly would understand). Dag blaggit.

Anyway, this article covers territory not addressed in Corbett’s introduction to the book, and provides proof positive that at least sometimes, the master finds the student — sometimes even from beyond the grave. Visit the title link below for some rare photographs. Also, see the end of this post for a link to purchase the exhibition catalog directly from the University of Chicago Press (among other delights).

Finally, note that Corbett expresses a desire to tour the exhibit. Seattle residents should begin pestering the Experience Music Project immediately and incessantly (see also EMP’s contact page) to pester-in-turn the good Mr. Corbett and convince him to bring it here!

Ra Materials
Hundreds of artifacts from Sun Ra’s Chicago years nearly wound up at the dump.

By Peter Margasak
Chicago Reader, September 29, 2006

ONE AUGUST DAY six years ago, John Corbett got a mass e-mail containing some disturbing news: a collection of artifacts related to the charismatic, radical jazz musician Sun Ra was in danger of landing on the trash heap.

A professional salvager — someone who gets paid to liquidate the contents of houses that are about to be sold or demolished — had uncovered the materials on the job and shown them to a friend who liked “spacey stuff. She immediately recognized that it was some stuff that had to do with Sun Ra,” Corbett says, and began e-mailing around to see if anyone might want to buy it.

Corbett, a music critic, co-owner of the Wicker Park gallery Corbett vs. Dempsey, and a teacher at the School of the Art Institute, is a Sun Ra fanatic, but he nearly deleted the e-mail after he read it — he figured that somebody else would save the stash if it wasn’t already gone. But instead he decided to meet with the sender, a former teacher at the School of the Art Institute who Corbett says wishes to remain anonymous. She told him the Sun Ra archive was still there.

The house being cleared out, it turned out, had belonged to Alton Abraham, Sun Ra’s business manager. Abraham had died a year earlier and the house was being sold by his ex-wife, Catherine Baymon. “By the time we got down there it was just three days before the house changed hands,” says Corbett. Baymon had already sorted through the materials and set aside some items she wished to keep. She’d also already disposed of some items that Corbett now thinks may have had historical value. “A lot of great stuff got thrown away before we were there,” he says. “And while we were there a whole wardrobe’s worth of clothes, which probably included a lot of the early costumes, was thrown away.”

But what remained was a treasure trove of Sun Ra ephemera: album art, recordings, writings, ledgers, and scraps of paper like ticket stubs and gig flyers. It’s this material that forms the bulk of an astonishing exhibit that opens Sunday [Oct. 1, 2006] at the Hyde Park Art Center, “Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-68.”

It wasn’t until Sun Ra and his band, the Arkestra, moved from Chicago to New York in 1961 that the world took notice of the bandleader, pianist, and philosopher. “Pathways” sheds new light on his lesser-known early years. Sun Ra, who died in 1993, spent years crafting an outsize persona, proclaiming himself an Afro-futurist visionary from Saturn who believed that, because planet earth was doomed, “space is the place.” His music was a singular mix of big-band arrangements influenced by Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, and Tad Dameron, free-jazz improvisation, hard-bop rhythms, experiments with electronic keyboards, and African and Latin grooves; his live shows were vaudevillian affairs featuring dancers, fire-eaters, and colorful costumes. But though he was a very active performer in Chicago during the late 50s, he was also an obscure one, playing mainly for small black audiences.

Corbett bought the lot from the salvager (he declines to say how much he paid), and for the past six years he and his wife, Terri Kapsalis, along with a crew of volunteers and advisers, have painstakingly sorted through his purchase, which filled two 10-by-12-foot storage spaces. “You had little eureka moments that were mind-boggling,” Corbett says. “I had the great joy of looking through a box and finding a manila envelope that said ‘one of everything,’ and it contained a huge collection of original manuscripts for Sun Ra’s broadsheets and leaflets that he made in the 50s.” Hundreds of hours of audiotape — including studio masters, readings, rehearsals, and interviews — are now housed in the Creative Audio Archive at the Andersonville nonprofit Experimental Sound Studio. They’re being transferred to digital formats and annotated; once that process is completed, says Corbett, the tapes will be available to scholars and a full list of their contents will be placed online.

Some of that material has already made its way to the public. Corbett has issued two CDs of previously unreleased music, 2002′s Music From Tomorrow’s World and 2003′s Spaceship Lullaby, on his Unheard Music Series label. And in August [2006] local publisher WhiteWalls released The Wisdom of Sun Ra, a fascinating collection of his broadsheets, which combined black nationalist philosophy, biblical allusions, and elaborate — if fantastical and absurd — etymological theories. (“Negroes belong to the race of Mu,” he wrote in one broadsheet. “Another way to spell Mu is moo. Moo means low. That’s the cow’s word. Negroes are Mr. Moo.”)

From the moment he discovered the material, Corbett wanted to keep it together as a singular archive of Sun Ra’s Chicago years, and he hopes eventually to find an institutional home for it. “It only articulates a story if it’s together,” he says. “Little bits and pieces of it are collectorfetish ephemera, but when it’s all together you start to see this interesting phenomenon . . . which is the way that Ra sort of fit into a southside Afro-futurist community of thinkers, designers, and musicians who were all pondering the future, independent businesses, and separatism.”

Corbett first learned about the existence of Sun Ra’s Chicago writings when he interviewed Abraham in 1993 for his ’94 book, Extended Play [Duke Univ. Press]. But until he came across this material, there was little documentation of Sun Ra’s life in the 50s in the public realm — the sole example of his writings from this period was a broadsheet he gave to John Coltrane. “[The archive] sheds some light and fills in a lot of details,” says Yale professor John Szwed, author of the definitive Sun Ra biography, 1997′s Space Is the Place. “It puts him in the middle of what was being discussed in the parks those days, where there was a real tradition of political and theological discussion.”

The show at the Hyde Park Art Center, which was curated by Corbett, Kapsalis, and WhiteWalls editor Anthony Elms, has multiple parts. “Pathways to Unknown Worlds” features more than 60 pieces of art on the walls and numerous display cases containing Sun Ra-related arcana, such as notebooks and homemade instruments; two multimedia rooms will present a pair of Sun Ra documentaries, a slide show of photos, and two hours of his music, most of it previously unreleased. Elms and Northwestern University art history professor Huey Copeland have organized a second exhibit that opens October 15 [2006], “Interstellar Low Ways,” which collects work by artists influenced by Sun Ra, including legendary Parliament-Funkadelic album artist Pedro Bell, composer Charlemagne Palestine, local cartoonist Plastic Crimewave, and members of the Destroy All Monsters art and music collective. Both exhibits run through January 14, 2007.

In addition, Corbett has organized a two-day symposium on November 11 and 12 [2006] called “Traveling the Spaceways,” where Szwed and other Sun Ra scholars will join artists and art historians to discuss his work. Actress Cheryl Lynn Bruce will read from his writings, and various musicians, including Nicole Mitchell, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Thurston Moore, and Ken Vandermark, will play music by and inspired by Sun Ra. Lastly, on December 3 the Chicago Cultural Center will host a discussion and performance featuring original members of the Arkestra and other associates.

Though nothing has been finalized, Corbett says he plans to tour “Pathways to Unknown Worlds” around the country and Europe as he begins to search for a permanent home for the archive. But for now he’s giddy about finally revealing what he’s been processing for six years. “Finding this stuff was like a lightning bolt hitting me,” he says. “It’s just about the most exciting thing I’ve ever done. It’s been a thrill, and I wanted to share it with as many people as I could.”

Related Links:

Aliens and Music — Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

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Somewhere in my web trollings I happened upon the song “Sky Men” performed by Geoff Goddard. An early ’60s British pop ditty with a for-me irresistible double KO of an alien theme and a killer gritty organ/proto-synth keyboard part, I can’t get the damn thing out of my head. It’s endearingly cheesoid, and I’m singing the thing in the shower, folks.

Photo of Joe Meek before early-'60s-vintage recording studio gear.Turns out, “Sky Men” was produced by one Joe Meek, an outsider producer lunatic genius (and slightly tone-deaf songwriter) who I’m now ashamed to say I was not aware of previously, although we’ve all heard his greatest hit, “Telstar” by The Tornadoes.

In addition to cutting-edge recording science, Mr. Meek had an abiding interest in space and aliens and the occult, to the extent that in 1959 he composed the concept album I Hear a New World — an Outer Space Music Fantasy, which he described as his attempt “to create a picture in music of what could be up there in outer space.” To realize his vision, Meek called upon a skiffle group he had worked with previously, The West Five, and re-christened them The Blue Men (a point of personal synchronicity I may expand upon some other time). Quoting further from Wikipedia:

“At first [Meek explained] I was going to record it with music that was completely out of this world but realised that it would have very little entertainment value so I kept the construction of the music down to earth.” This he (as producer) achieved by blending The Blue Men’s skiffle/rock and roll style with a range of sound and effects, created by such kitchen-sink methods as blowing bubbles in water with a straw, draining water out of the sink, shorting an electrical circuit, and even banging partly-filled milk bottles with spoons; yet one must listen carefully to detect these prosaic origins in the finished product. Another important feature of the recordings is the very early use of stereophony.

While the entire album was completed and slated for a 1960 release, only a 4-song EP ever saw the official light of day via the financially doomed label, Triumph Records. Fortunately, a few promo copies of the full album did circulate and were preserved by collectors, permitting grey-market releases many years later.

Meanwhile, the good folks of Comfort Stand Records, an internet label offering free music, offer a compilation of rare Joe Meek demo recordings which I commend to you. (Also available via Archive.org.) While you’re there, you may also wanna check out Comfort Stand’s 2-CD compilation, Interplanetary Materials, though I ain’t heared it yet and can’t attest one way or ‘tother.

Alas, Joe Meek suffered a singularly strange and tragic end. As related here, “Joe had a vision during a tarot card reading that his idol, Buddy Holly, with whom he was deeply in love, would die tragically on February 3rd, 1958. When the day came to pass, Joe informed Buddy of his prediction and told him how glad he was it hadn’t come true. Buddy Holly, of course, died on February 3rd 1959 [exactly one year later] in an horrible plane crash…”

Already prone to paranoia and manic depression, this incident apparently precipitated a further decline in Meeks’ mental health. This was not at all helped by the fact that he was gay — literally a crime in Britain in those days — and as the ’60s progressed there were increasingly draconian police crackdowns on “poofters.” In January 1967, police discovered a suitcase containing the mutilated body of a male prostitute who had at one time been associated with Meeks, though whether he was connected with the crime was apparently never conclusively shown. The murder became a public scandal, and with the police saying they would be interviewing all known homosexuals in the city, Meeks’ paranoia intensified still further. Whatever transpired, on the eighth anniversary of Buddy Holly’s death, Meeks killed his landlady and then himself with a shotgun.

Today, a line of top-notch professional mics and compression gear continues to carry the Joe Meek imprimatur.

CD/LP cover of 'Music of the Future' by Desmond Lesllie - early British musique concrete. Another amazing discovery I’ve recently made (and one unburdened by tragedy) is the wonderful and nearly-lost-forever musique concrete works of one Desmond Leslie (1921-2001). While Joe Meek was basically just an alien fan boy, Desmond Leslie was practically hanging out with them: he co-wrote George Adamski‘s landmark UFO contactee book, Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953) and, by his own account, had several UFO sightings while visiting Adamski in California in 1954.

Coming from an Irish aristocratic family — complete with castle in County Monaghan — that “can trace their ancestry back to Atilla The Hun,” Desmond Leslie was able to support other endeavors that included writing and directing a couple science fiction films and brief but very worthwhile travels in electronic music.

During the late ’50s, while living in London, Leslie built a small private studio where he created a number of really quite good musique concrete works, which have been released recently on the CD Music of the Future from Trunk Records. Quoting from that release’s liner notes:

“…[T]he recordings that exist were privately issued by Leslie himself (and just for friends) on a single acetate called Music of the Future, in 1959. These pressings are exceptionally rare and of very poor quality [due to the fragile nature of acetate records]. All Leslie recordings were later licensed to Josef Weinberger, the famous London publishers. Leslie’s extraordinary recordings were pressed onto a short series of 78 rpm library discs, and were put to occasional use in science and mystery based programming, such as the early Dr. Who episodes.”

Except for that extremely limited release (and much to the chagrin of Mr. Leslie), Music of the Future dwelt in unjust obscurity for some 45 years…until 2005, when Trunk Records stepped up to the plate (or platter, as the case may be) and released the entire album on CD, with very well restored audio and complete with Leslie’s original liner notes. These include the following clues to his composerly philosophy:

“It is possible, perhaps, to abolish melody, form and thematic development when writing for the conventional orchestra which, like the frame of an abstract painting, of its essence, sets some limits even to the most anarchal frenzy. Abolish the orchestra as well and you are a creator without reference points, a creator in a pristine void. ‘Musique Concrete’ therefore must set its own aesthetic limitations, discover its own rules, and discipline itself.

“…Some composers of electronic music, ‘Musique Exotique’ and ‘Musique Concrete’ shudder at the least hint of emotion, thematic development, or any sound the least pleasing to the ear. …Why shouldn’t a sound be beautiful? Must the cult of Ugly, and the Highpriesthood of Drears have the final word on everything concerning the senses? The world is so full of beautiful and subtle sounds; and to capture these and present them in an original form, unashamed if they happen to please emotion as well as mind, is the motivation behind this work.

“Put this record on a good Hi-Fi set. Twiddle the knobs till you find the levels you like. Tell the neighbors to go to hell (they’ll probably only think it’s the plumbing). Sit back and enjoy yourself.

“My MUSIQUE CONCRETE is meant to be enjoyed.”

And enjoyable it is, indeed, though not nearly as pastoral as the above might lead one to believe. The disc is divided into four sections: “Theme music from the [apparently unreleased] film ‘The Day The Sky Fell In’”, “Music of the Voids of Outerspace” [sic], “Sacrifice, B.C. 5,000″, and “Death of Satan” — the latter two being especially appealing to my ears. Highly recommended.

With this rescued acetate Leslie is proved to be a neglected and nearly forgotten early master of tape music. You can (and should!) buy the CD of Desmond Leslie’s Music of the Future online while it still lasts via Ye Olde Trunkshoppe. Based in Britain, prices are in pounds but I can attest that the shopping experience for us Colonists is painless, and delivery is prompt and well-packaged for shipment across the big pond.

Cover of the 'Secrets of the Sun' LP by Sun Ra and His Solar Arkestra (Saturn Records)

And naturally no discussion of aliens and music, or music qua aliens, would be remotely complete without a mention of Sun Ra. On that polyphonous note, I suggest stopping by the “sharity” site church number nine, which has been posting with some regularity complete, high-quality MP3 rips of otherwise long-unavailable limited edition vinyl LPs from Ra’s own Saturn Records label, complete with large-ish scans of the covers (though you have to grab those from the pages [click 'em for the big versions] — for some reason they’re generally not included in the downloadable zips).

Recent offerings have included Secrets of the Sun (ca. 1965), Sun Ra and his Arkestra, Featuring Pharoah Sanders and Black Harold (1976), Sound Mirror (Live in Philadelphia ’78), and The Antique Blacks (There is Change in the Air) (Interplanetary Concepts), recorded live in 1974. There are more precious Saturn Records offerings further back in the archives (not to mention all sorts of delightful out jazz rarities). The older download links may have expired — but if you ask very nicely they might get re-upped. Meanwhile, more rare Sun Ra is promised in the near future.

Cover of the essential book 'The Wisdom of Sun Ra' edited by John Corbett (Chicago, IL: Whitewalls Press, 2006)And while it’s not audio, I would surely be remiss not to tell you, dear interstellar reader, of an incredible new-ish book, The Wisdom of Sun Ra: Sun Ra’s Polemical Broadsheets and Streetcorner Leaflets (Whitewalls Press, Chicago; 2006), compiled and introduced by the noted Chicago-based music writer John Corbett.

Run, don’t walk. The Wisdom of Sun Ra is an anthology of some of Ra’s earliest philosophical and religious writings dating from the early and mid-’50s in Chicago. This collection of writings, originally distributed hand-to-hand as mimeographs and intended for an exclusively black audience, were discovered in 2000 (appropriately enough) at an unnamed location on Chicago’s South Side in a folder labeled “One of Everything.” Apparently, these priceless documents were nearly destroyed, saved only by some unelucidated cosmic providence. As such this slim volume provides an absolutely invaluable (superlatives fail me here) glimpse into Sun Ra’s cosmology, mysticism, and racial/political analysis just as it was taking form.

As Corbett explains in his excellent introduction:

“Parallel with his secret musical activities [in Chicago ca. the early 1950s], Ra became the focal point of a secret reading group, together with his patron and later business manager Alton Abraham and a small cluster of South Side intellectuals. This group would eventually call itself Thmei Research, and its activities included the composition of a new dictionary based on Sun Ra’s intensely creative revisionist etymologies and the scholarly findings of the group.

“Street-corner preaching was one of the primary outlets for Ra’s findings, both on his own and as part of Thmei. …In these early broadsheet writings Ra was exclusively addressing a black audience. …As such, he didn’t pull any punches in his assessment of race and power. …On other corners there were Baptist preachers and Nation of Islam proselytizers. Ra’s declarations were in direct dialogue with those other figures of affiliated African-American intellectual life.

“Ra’s preachings was accompanied by writings — booklets, pamphlets and broadsides some of which were mimeographed and handed out to people on the street as well as members of the [Sun Ra] band. They were sometimes unsigned, sometimes signed ‘Ra’ or ‘Sun’ or ‘El.’”

And these are them. What…you’re still reading this? Click the damn link above and buy the thing already!

[Update: If you're interested in Sun Ra, you should read my follow-up post with the back-story on the rescue of these papers and much else besides. I also failed to mentioned that The Wisdom of Sun Ra consists of photographic reproductions of the originals.]

And since I’ve already mentioned sharity sites — and after all that book readin’ — I should prolly point y’all to some easily digestible music singles courtesy of the UFOMystic blog, run by Greg Bishop and Nick Redfern, who have compiled (among much else) a number of entertaining posts devoted to Flying Saucer Music, each featuring one fine close encounter of the (often kitschy) musical kind. Even if a couple-few are also available from that Mugu Brainpan stalwart, WFMU’s Beware of the Blog and their 2007 edition of the 365 Days Project, it’s a bee-line to the alien mind, yo, and unlike WFMU you can either (usually) download or stream via Flash widget.

(Downloader tip: If one of the links below doesn’t include a download link do this [simpler than it sounds]: View Source, do a Find on “.mp3″, copy that full URL, then go here and paste that URL in the blank labeled “Encoded,” and click the “URLDecode” button, copy the new URL in the blank labeled “Plain,” and use that URL to download the audio file to your hard drive.)

Offerings include:

And finally, the true alien audio fanatic would do very well indeed to pay a visit to the Faded Discs web site, an “audio archive of UFO history” run by one Wendy Connors. Ms. Connors offers some astonishing MP3 collections on CD, each running anywhere from 24-35 hours of total running time, and consisting of primary audio documents of UFOlogy, including original recordings of witness reports (the holy grail of all true researchers) to contactee babbles to rare radio & TV appearances by all and sundry.

Some of the most alluring titles are inexplicably and damnably no longer available, but what’s currently offered is still worth your archival lucre. For example, Saucerology (35 1/2 hours) includes all sorts of interviews, lectures, and whatnot by first-wave contactees (including a 23 min. interview of George Adamski by the aforementioned Desmond Leslie); Project Blue Book (27 hours) features the recorded words of direct participants in the earliest official and secret USAF investigations, from Project SIGN through GRUDGE and right up to Blue Book — including recordings of J. Allen Hynek debunking UFOs (he who later did a 180 on that point), interviews with Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, and way too much more.

Not least of the Faded Discs offerings is Research Recordings of Robert Gribble’s National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), Seattle, WA, 1974 – 1977, an incredible 44-hour collection of recorded witness accounts and interviews. As Connors explains on her site:

Robert Gribble began his research into the unidentified flying object phenomena in 1955. He began the Aerial Phenomena Research Group (APRG), which circulated a newsletter detailing new cases. [Not to be confused with Jim and Coral Lorenzen's group, APRO.]
In late 1974, Gribble converted the Phenomena Research Reporting Center to allow the public a place they could call and report their experiences to a nonjudgmental researcher. Commonly known as the UFO Reporting Center or UFO Central during the early years, it became known internationally as the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC). First calls received began on November 11, 1974.

Over a period of twenty years, Gribble received thousands of telephone calls from witnesses of actual encounters with UFOs, which were recorded and data collected. On-site investigations and interviews were conducted by Gribble and his associates and accompanying documentation for cases were archived.

Robert Gribble retired from research in 1994 and Peter Davenport took over the on-going data collection of the National UFO Reporting Center. In 2004, Robert Gribble donated his research materials to Wendy Connors, culminating in this audio archive of research material. Documentation accompanying these recordings are maintained along with the original recording sources, including the names, addresses and telephone numbers of all witnesses. What you hear is raw, minimally edited, research. Most of the interviews were done within minutes of the encounter or while the encounter was happening.

These recordings are of actual witness interviews to UFO encounters and were selected to show a broad based overview of the UFO phenomena being observed and reported.

I’m sayin’. To get a taste, you can read a sampling of ARPG reports compiled in the undated article “ETs from ???” archived at think-aboutit.com.
Definitely give Faded Discs a visit!

Oh, gotta go — my sinus implant is humming. Be Seeing You…

Crazy But True: Al Qaida Penetrated CIA, FBI, & Special Forces Ahead of 9/11

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Little noticed at the time, less than two months after the 9/11 attack, was a positively jaw-dropping story in the San Francisco Chronicle which revealed:

A former U.S. Army sergeant who trained Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards and helped plan the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya was a U.S. government informant during much of his terrorist career, according to [US government] sources familiar with his case.

…[Ali] Mohamed, 49 [in 2001], is a former Egyptian Army major, fluent in Arabic and English, who after his arrest became known as bin Laden’s “California connection.” Last year [in 2000], when he pleaded guilty in the embassy bombing case, he told a federal judge that he first was drawn to terrorism in 1981, when he joined Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a fundamentalist group implicated in that year’s assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

For almost as long as he was a terrorist, Mohamed also was in contact with U.S. intelligence, according to court records and sources.

In 1984, he quit the Egyptian Army to work as a counterterrorism security expert for EgyptAir. After that, he offered to become a CIA informant, said the U.S. government official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“The agency tried him out, but because he told other possible terrorists or people possibly associated with terrorist groups that he was working for the CIA, clearly he was not suitable,” the official said.

The CIA cut off contact with Mohamed and put his name on a “watch list” aimed at blocking his entrance to the United States, according to the official.

Nevertheless, Mohamed got a visa one year later. He ultimately became a U.S. citizen after marrying a Santa Clara woman. In 1986, he joined the U.S. Army as an enlisted man. He was posted to Fort Bragg, N.C., home of the elite Special Forces.

There he worked as a supply sergeant for a Green Beret unit, then as an instructor on Middle Eastern affairs in the John F. Kennedy special warfare school.

…In 1989, Mohamed left the Army and returned to Santa Clara, where he worked as a security guard and at a home computer business.

Between then and his 1998 arrest, he said in court last year, Mohamed was deeply involved in bin Laden’s al Qaeda. He spent months abroad, training bin Laden’s fighters in camps in Afghanistan and Sudan. While in Africa, he scouted the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, target of the 1998 bombing. In this country, he helped al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s top aide, enter the country with a fake passport and tour U.S. mosques, raising money later funneled to al Qaeda.

According to Steven Emerson, a terrorism expert and author who has written about the case, Mohamed by the early 1990s had also established himself as an FBI informant.

“He agreed to serve (the FBI) and provide information, but in fact he was working for the bad guys and insulating himself from scrutiny from other law enforcement agencies,” Emerson said in an interview.

One particularly troubling aspect of the case, Emerson says, was that Mohamed’s role as an FBI informant gave bin Laden important insights into U.S. efforts to penetrate al Qaeda.

…In 1993, [a 1998 FBI] affidavit says, Mohamed was questioned by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police after a bin Laden aide was caught trying to enter the United States with Mohamed’s driver’s license and a false passport.

Mohamed acknowledged traveling to Vancouver to help the terrorist sneak into the United States and admitted working closely with bin Laden’s group. Yet he was so unconcerned about being arrested that he told the Mounties he hoped the interview wouldn’t hurt his chances of getting a job as an FBI interpreter.

(According to the affidavit, he had indeed applied for the FBI position but never got it.)

Later that year, Mohamed — again seemingly without concern for consequences — told the FBI that he had trained bin Laden followers in intelligence and anti-hijacking techniques in Afghanistan, the affidavit says.

In January 1995, Mohamed applied for a U.S. security clearance, in hopes of becoming a security guard with a Santa Clara defense contractor. His application failed to mention ever traveling to Pakistan or Afghanistan, trips he had told the FBI about earlier. In three interviews with Defense Department officials, who conducted a background check on him, he claimed he had never been a terrorist.

“I have never belonged to a terrorist organization, but I have been approached by organizations that could be called terrorist,” he told the interviewers.

According to the affidavit, he told FBI agents in 1997 that he had trained bin Laden’s bodyguards, saying he loved bin Laden and believed in him. Mohamed also said it was “obvious” that the United States was the enemy of Muslim people.

…“I think you or I would have a better chance of winning Powerball (a lottery), than an Egyptian major in the unit that assassinated Sadat would have getting a [US] visa, getting to California…getting into the Army and getting assigned to a Special Forces unit,” [Lt. Col. Robert Anderson, Mohamed's former commanding officer at Ft. Bragg] said. “That just doesn’t happen. “

Well…except it did. And more than five years later, most folks have no idea about it.

Ali Mohamed and his role as an Al Qaida mole within the US intelligence infrastructure is the subject of Triple Cross, a mammoth new book by Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist Peter Lance. I’ve not read the book (I’m waiting for the paperback edition, which I suspect will be revised and updated to whatever extent), so I can’t offer an opinion about it. But I’ve read portions of his two previous books related to 9/11 — 1,000 Years for Revenge and Cover Up: What the Government is Still Hiding About the War on Terror — and I would say that while he sometimes evinces a slight lean to the sensational and not-so-well-written (which I take to be a shadow of his broadcast journalism background), he’s not the conspiracy nut one might initially take him for. He digs up very interesting information and raises very pointed — and eminently relevant — questions.

Meanwhile, I recommend checking out this recent Metafilter post about Mohamed, which include numerous worthwhile relevant links. Also, this November 2006 Democracy Now! interview with Lance is worth absorbing.

Last summer, the National Geographic Channel aired a documentary based on Triple Cross. I have not seen it, but apparently Mr. Lance was pretty ticked off about the final product, saying it omitted the most important part of the story — how exactly Mohammed was allowed to operate with such impunity, and who exactly was apparently involved.

It’s probably obligatory to mention this (unquestionably biased) blog post by Larry C. Johnson, which seeks to discredit Lance and Triple Cross, in part by quoting from (and posting PDFs of) interrogation reports related to one Hakim Murad — whose relevance to the core tale is not made evident and, like I say, since I ain’t read the book I couldn’t tell ya. In this context, it’s worth noting that — in addition to getting very personal and nasty in his follow-up comments — Mr. Johnson beats his breast about a quote by Johnson that Lance apparently falsely cites as appearing in a NY Times op-ed piece on some date or other. In fact, the quote in question definitely does not appear in said cited op-ed piece, and Mr. Johnson thus calls Mr. Lance “a liar” and more than implying that he never uttered such words ever, amen. However, it turns out that Mr. Johnson did in fact utter the quote, which was indeed published in a NY Times article but on a different date and not in an op-ed piece. So while Mr. Lance is rightly chastised for poor citation work, Mr. Johnson’s own demonstrably selective assertions in the matter definitely make one wonder about his own agenda (especially since Mr. Johnson served as a counter-terrorism expert for the current Bush administration).

Piffle and whatever. Ali Mohamed — and just what the US government had to do with him and why — is obviously worth learning much more about.

Have they agreed on a Safe Word?

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From the Not Quite Thought All the Way Through Department. The image below came to my inbox as part of an announcement spam for an arts organization (which I shall not name and which, in all fairness, definitely does good work and is well worthy of support). The email proclaimed I should “SAVE THE DATE”…but I’m a little confused. Am I supposed to save the date, or save this woman from date rape? Is she being abducted, or do they just like it a little rough? I think this is where I’m supposed to say, “This situation is making me uncomfortable.”

Uncomfortable

Terence McKenna’s Library Destroyed in Sandwich Fire

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As reported in Erik Davis’ Techgnosis Journal, the archival library of the late psychonaut, author, and (dare I say) cosmologist Terence McKenna was destroyed Feb. 7, 2007 in a fire that consumed storage offices in Monterey, CA belonging to the Esalen Institute of Big Sur. The blaze began in a nearby Quizno’s Subs restaurant and spread into adjoining structures, also destroying other businesses.

The library was bequeathed to Esalen by McKenna, who died due to brain cancer in 2000. (Yes, everyone noted the irony.) Esalen reportedly planned to eventually move the archive to its main campus in Big Sur, but was storing it at the Monterey facility until that could be accommodated. The McKenna collection was totally destroyed.

In addition to his irreplaceable personal papers and manuscripts for some 13 books, the McKenna library included thousands of books spanning, according friend Davis, “mysticism and history, drugs and dreams, science fiction and systems theory, natural history and art.” Among the holdings were an original 1659 folio of Isaac Casaubon’s A True and Faithful Relation of what passed between Dr. John Dee and some spirits, and the entire collection of occult literature of a Theosophical library in the Seychelles.

Brother Dennis McKenna retains a surviving index of the archive but, as Davis noted, that’s “sorta like a playlist without the MP3s.”

For those unfamiliar with Terence McKenna’s work, my own personal favorites of his books are Food of the Gods: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution (Bantam, 1992; Rider & Co., 1999) and The Archaic Revival (HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), a wide-ranging anthology of essays, articles, and interviews.

Farewell Sun City Girls, 1981-2007. 26 Years of X+Y=Fuck You.

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Sun City Girls in 2003. Photo by Toby Dodds. www.suncitygirls.com/gallery/

Well, it’s now official. As widely suspected since the death of drummer Charles Gocher nearly two weeks ago, the legendary avant-something group Sun City Girls are climbing into Shiva’s arms and departing for planes unimaginable to mere mortals, although they do intend to send occasional transmissions back to us when they can, drawing from the group’s voluminous Akashic archive.

The public announcement was made on Monday (Feb. 26, 2007) via the group’s web site, and I quote it here in full:

Our sincerest thanks for the many letters, messages, posts, and tributes all of you have sent to us this past week in support after the passing of Charlie. There were simply too many of them for us to even begin to respond to personally.

We have decided to hold a private memorial in Seattle for close friends only to celebrate his legacy. At a later date, when we can collect our thoughts to properly honor him, we will pay tribute to Charles at a public venue by screening films and displaying some of his drawings and photographs, and possibly perform some of his songs.

As many of you have suspected, Sun City Girls will no longer exist as a performing entity. Nor will any new recording projects be created utilizing the name Sun City Girls. There are many unreleased recordings and videos that will surface when time permits to release them.

– Alan and Richard Bishop

To learn more about Sun City Girls’ epic 26 year journey, visit the official Sun City Girls Chronology and their positively vast discography, consisting of 50 full-length LP/CD releases, 23 full-length cassettes, 12 seven-inch singles and EPs, appearances on a couple dozen compilations, plus full-length video tapes, movie soundtracks, bootlegs, and even a 78rpm record released by a precursor of Revenant — in all, very nearly 100 releases…and that’s not counting related side projects or the stuff they just forgot about.

Sun City Girls had, I think, a significant impact on underground music. They introduced an entire generation of punk rockers to avant garde music and, many years after bands of the same (initial) era either sold out or gave it all up for neckties and martinis, they remained 1000% committed to their own vision — especially if it meant confusing or, better yet, completely pissing off their audience — and to that most important imperative of the punk ethos: Do It Yourself.

But while born from the early ’80s punk scene, they were never really of it at all — you might say they were so punk they didn’t even play punk. By the same token, they were an avant garde band, but they were never really of that sprawling universe either. So what the hell were Sun City Girls, then. Maybe The Fugs of free jazz? The Cecil Taylors of disco? The Captain Beefhearts of ethnic lounge music? The GG Allins of musical theater? The La Monte Youngs of crunk? The snake dancers of Gregorian chant? The truck-stop floor show on the Apocalypse highway? The Yippies of religious studies? The Winston Smith rat masks of situation comedy? The UFO contactees of square dancing? The James Chances of particle physics? The Mexican gynecologists of cabinet making? Yes, all of these and more. But whatever they were, all you really need to know is the group are revered far and wide by the most creative minds of fringe music — both influential (read: “famous”) and obscure. There was, quite simply, nothing at all like them.

The legacy of the Girls will continue, of course. Alan and Rick are (obviously) creative and driven guys and its impossible to even imagine them just fading away. Rick has been pursuing a rewarding and notable solo thing (as Sir Richard Bishop) for a few years now; and Alan has his Sublime Frequencies film imprint and Abduction label, and has been active in various musical side projects as well. Once they recover from the loss of their adoptive brother Charlie, the brothers Bishop will continue to warp our minds for many years to come.

But nothing can possibly replace Sun City Girls…and I imagine Alan and Rick would probably agree.

Meanwhile…just a couple weeks before Charlie’s death, it was announced that a new film by Harmony Korine (Gummo, Julien Donkey Boy) will feature music by Sun City Girls. Mister Lonely, currently in preparation for a Cannes screening, centers on a love story involving celebrity impersonators and will feature the on-screen talents of Werner Herzog and magician David Blaine (both of whom have collaborated with Korine in the past). To learn more, you can read a PDF (187 kb) of a Feb. 2, 2007 article from ScreenDaily.com here or here.

More on James Cameron’s 3D Sci-Fi Epic, Avatar

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The following article recently appeared in The Hollywood Reporter, covering the official announcement of James (Titanic, Terminator) Cameron’s next directorial project, Avatar — a $200 million science-fiction epic feature to be shot in 3D. I know sites like Ain’t It Cool News are all atwitter with more info and rumors of varying veracity, but you’ll have to troll those yourself (for now at least — tho it won’t help that AICN’s search is completely broken). For some additional dish on Cameron’s abiding love affair with 3D, see also my previous related post.

Meanwhile, there’s already a fan site devoted to Avatar. And see the end of the article for some a related links.

Cameron sets live-action, CG epic for 2009

By Anne Thompson
The Hollywood Reporter, Jan. 9, 2007

James Cameron is set to direct “Avatar,” his first dramatic feature since the Oscar-winning blockbuster “Titanic” in 1997.

Fox Filmed Entertainment chairmen Jim Gianopulos and Tom Rothman said Monday [Jan. 8, 2007] that Cameron will start virtual photography on the sci-fi epic in April, with live-action photography commencing in August, for a summer 2009 release. It will be filmed in a new digital 3D format for release in 3D.

The director already has spent years in R&D on the multiple processes needed to create a $190 million hybrid of live action and animation, which he vowed will never pass the $200 million mark. “I’ve been the busiest unemployed director in Hollywood,” he said. “We’re going to blow you to the back wall of the theater in a way you haven’t seen for a long time. My goal is to rekindle those amazing mystical moments my generation felt when we first saw ’2001: A Space Odyssey,’ or the next generation’s ‘Star Wars.’ It took me 10 years to find something hard enough to be interesting.”

Said Rothman: “Jim has taken the time to get it right, and we’re taking the time to do it right. It’s worth the wait.”

Neither Cameron nor Fox want to repeat the budget overruns that plagued the $200 million “Titanic,” the director said. “We are shooting only 31 days of live action, all onstage. It’s controllable. No weather conditions. No water on this one,” he said. “When you come back to the table years later to make a movie of a certain scale, you want to make sure you cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s. We’re 2 1/2 years out, and we’ve already shot 10 minutes of the film. The FX guys are working, the characters are designed, animators are already working.”

Partly through its work on six documentary features including “Ghosts of the Abyss,” Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment team has researched a potentially groundbreaking mix of live-action cinematography and virtual photorealistic production techniques for “Avatar,” which will feature virtual characters.

“Avatar,” with a screenplay by Cameron, will mark the director’s return to the sci-fi action-adventure genre. He first wrote an 80-page treatment 11 years ago. The film centers on a wounded ex-Marine who is unwillingly sent to settle and exploit the faraway planet Pandora. He gets caught up in a battle for survival by the planet’s inhabitants, called Na’vis, and falls in love with one of them. “Not only is this groundbreaking technologically, but it’s an intimate story set against an epic canvas,” Rothman said. “That’s what Jim does. You can’t compare it to anything out there. Its biggest upside, besides its revolutionary technology, is its newness. It’s not a sequel to anything.”

Cameron had been developing another sci-fi adventure, the comic book adaptation “Battle Angel Alita,” but when Laeta Kalogridis’ script for that project didn’t come together after many drafts, he dusted off “Avatar,” which he hadn’t touched for five years. He started designing the movie in May 2005, he said.

During the next year and a half, Cameron continued to develop “Battle Angel” alongside “Avatar.” Said producer Jon Landau: “We needed to prove to ourselves that we could make ‘Avatar’ and make it at the level of quality that Jim wanted. So throughout that early fall we went through a series of tests where we actually shot a scene from the movie to prove the process to ourselves.” After finalizing 45 photo-real seconds of a five-minute performance-capture test, Cameron and the studio were convinced that “Avatar” could proceed.

For the film’s lead role, the 22-year-old planetary adventurer Jack Sully, Cameron sought a new face. After global screen tests to satisfy the studio, he selected his first choice, Australian actor Sam Worthington, who has starred in “Somersault” and “Dirty Deeds” and had been considered to play James Bond. “He’s got the weight, he’s a tough guy — a young Russell Crowe. They grow them differently over there,” Cameron said.

Zoe Saldana, who appeared in “The Terminal” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” will portray Sully’s love interest, one of the planet’s primitive aliens. She will be a CG character, while Sully will exist in human (live action) and biological “avatar” (CG) form. As an avatar, the human Sully is able to project his consciousness into an alien body.

Both actors have signed on for possible future installments as well because Cameron and Fox see “Avatar” as a potential franchise. “If we make money, I guarantee there will be more,” Cameron said. “If we don’t, we’ll pretend it never happened.” Other casting will be announced shortly.

For “Avatar,” Cameron will use performance-capture techniques similar to those used by such films as “Superman Returns” and “King Kong” as well as a real-time virtual camera system, which will blend the actors’ performances and CG performances with real sets, miniatures and CG environments. With the virtual camera, the director will be able to look through an eyepiece and see his characters in their virtual world.

Saying the production process is similar to creating an animated film, Cameron estimated that the finished film will be 60% CG elements and 40% live action. He is aiming for the sort of photo-realism achieved by the CG sequences in “Kong” and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

“We had a number of processes we wanted to bring to maturation,” he said. “We wanted to kick up to the next level of cinematographic precision the 3D live-action photography we had been using on the documentary films. We refined the second generation of the Fusion camera.” The proprietary Fusion digital 3D camera system [by PACE Technologies] was developed by Cameron and Vince Pace.

The performance-capture side took longer, Cameron said, “because as mature as performance capture is for gross body motion, facial performance capture is still a nascent art.”

The competitive race among four VFX houses for the assignment to supervise the film’s visual effects was won by Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning Weta Digital, which worked on “Rings.”

“Any one of them could have handled the volume of shots, the scale of the project, and handled the technology,” Cameron said. “Joe Lettieri and his team had a history of translating facial performance capture to really good photo-real characters. The culture there is imbued from the head down with a passion for fantasy filmmaking. And they met us halfway on the price.”

“Avatar” will be produced by Cameron and Landau for Lightstorm. Principal photography will take place in and around Los Angeles and in New Zealand. Production designer Rick Carter, visual effects designer Rob Stromberg and visual effects producer Brooke Breton already have begun work. No director of photography has been hired [as of the Jan. 9, 2007 publication date of this article].

Being a little behind the curve, I’m still digging re: the aforementioned “proprietary Fusion digital 3D camera system,” but here’s some preliminary linkage:

  • NBA Goes 3D HD for 2007 NBA All-Star (NBA.com, Feb. 12, 2007) — a 5-camera PACE (Fusion) system will be used for live 3D HD “close-casts” of the 2007 All-Star games limited to invitation-only viewing parties in Vegas.

NY Times on James Cameron’s 3D Fetish

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Powerhouse director James “I’m king of the world!” Cameron is well-known to be a big fan of 3D film — he’s produced two 3D IMAX films (Ghosts of the Abyss in 2003 and Aliens of the Deep in 2005), and flogged the tech at industry events like the 2006 Digital Cinema Summit.

He is now in the final days of pre-production for a $200 million 3D science fiction epic titled Avatar (about which more later), which is slated for a 2009 release and will feature effects by Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital. And it turns out he’s also pushing 3D for music videos.

Yesterday, the New York Times ran an article about Cameron qua 3D in its arts section. I’m reposting the article here for those who are interested.

“A Comeback in 3D, but Without Those Flimsy Glasses”

By Jeff Leeds
NY Times, March 1, 2007

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 28 — A little past the two-minute mark, the music video for Gwen Stefani’s recent single, “Wind It Up,” finds her chained to a fence while a flurry of bubbles and snowflakes float by. Viewed from a certain perspective — that is, through 3D glasses — it is a dreamlike moment in which the flurry seems close enough to touch.

The video begins with Ms. Stefani yodeling, a homage to “The Sound of Music,” one of the her favorite films. But the idea of adding the bubbles and snow came from an unlikely source: James Cameron, the director behind effects-laden hits like “The Terminator” and “Titanic,” who visited Ms. Stefani’s set last October and shot a separate version of the video with 3D equipment.

“I had mentioned to the director that any kind of atmospheric effects like snow or rain usually play in 3D,” Mr. Cameron recalled.

While “Wind It Up” was not initially planned as a 3D video, Ms. Stefani probably won’t be the last recording artist to follow Mr. Cameron’s lead.

As part of a newly created venture, Mr. Cameron is working with Jimmy Iovine, the chairman of the Interscope Geffen A&M record label, to produce music films, concerts and other content in 3D to show in specially equipped theaters. Mr. Iovine and Mr. Cameron hope to deliver their first production by summer.

The two acknowledge that they have yet to work out many details: they say they don’t know how many productions will be created or which artists will be featured, but the idea has been discussed with Interscope artists including Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails. Many music fans may be too young to recall the last time 3D was in vogue: the 1980s, when hordes donned flimsy multihued glasses to watch “Jaws 3″ and other attractions. [sic: all those '80s 3D films were released as polarized not anaglyphic 3D.]

But the latest version of the technology has Hollywood buzzing again, particularly since 3D showings of animated fare like “Chicken Little” have racked up impressive sales. Mr. Cameron is at work on a $200 million 3D feature titled “Avatar.”

Mr. Iovine and Mr. Cameron are aware of the odds of changing consumer behavior. They are wagering that fans will be willing to trek to a movie theater and pay perhaps a few dollars more than the price of a regular ticket to see their favorite stars on the big screen and in 3D. The glasses now resemble standard sunglasses, and musicians may be able to make their own designs.

The venture, led by the film producer Gene Kirkwood, also represents a distinctive take on what both the music-video and the concert can be. If it works, the partners said, fans could experience a concert as if they were on stage next to U2′s guitarist, the Edge, or see the members of Kiss in full makeup perform a pyrotechnic show seemingly right in front of them, all for a fraction of the price of seeing a headline act on tour.

“What it does is put you, the audience, right there with the performer onstage, in their creative reality,” Mr. Cameron said recently during a break in production from “Avatar.” “The whole idea of a concert may change.”

Mr. Iovine and Mr. Cameron have discussed with executives at Harrah’s Entertainment setting up a night club in Las Vegas where visitors would be surrounded by 3D images and watch 3D performances, though no deal has been struck.

Mr. Iovine also said that 3D performances could become a new way for artists to build ties to their fans and generate much-needed revenue for the ailing music business.

“The record industry has to have lots of different revenue streams, and this just looks like one that’s creatively cool,” Mr. Iovine said. “And you can’t download it. You can’t get it anyplace else.”