Quote Of The Week

"But how can we venture to reprove or praise the universe! Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful nor noble, and has no desire to become any of these; it is by no means striving to imitate mankind! It is quite impervious to all our aesthetic and moral judgements! It has likewise no impulse to self-preservation or impulses of any kind; neither doe sit know any laws. Let us beware of saying there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is no one to command, no one to obey, no one to transgress..."

She Had Something To Say

Suze Rotolo

Rest In Peace

"The Village lost a life-long partisan and a true voice last Friday, with the passing of Susan Rotolo after a long illness, at home in her Noho loft and the arms of her husband of 40 years, Enzo Bartoccioli." ... Story continues here: Suze Rotolo, 1943-2011 (The Village Voice)

Dig: SuzeRotolo.com

Buy: A Freewheelin' Time

Radio Is A Sound Salvation

"WFMU-FM is a listener-supported, non-commercial radio station broadcasting at 91.1 Mhz FM in Jersey City, NJ, right across the Hudson from lower Manhattan. It is currently the longest running freeform radio station in the United States.

The station also broadcasts to the Hudson Valley and Lower Catskills in New York, Western New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania via its 90.1 signal at WMFU in Mount Hope, NY. The station maintains an extensive online presence at WFMU.ORG which includes live audio streaming in several formats, over 8 years of audio archives, podcasts and a popular blog.

Rolling Stone Magazine, The Village Voice, CMJ and the New York Press have all at one time or another called WFMU "the best radio station in the country" and the station has also been the subject of feature stories in The New York Times and on the BBC. In recent years the station has gained a large international following due its online operations and counts Simpson's creator Matt Groening, film director Jim Jarmusch and Velvet Underground founder Lou Reed, among others, as devoted fans of the station.

WFMU's programming ranges from flat-out uncategorizable strangeness to rock and roll, experimental music, 78 RPM Records, jazz, psychedelia, hip-hop, electronica, hand-cranked wax cylinders, punk rock, gospel, exotica, R&B, radio improvisation, cooking instructions, classic radio airchecks, found sound, dopey call-in shows, interviews with obscure radio personalities and notable science-world luminaries, spoken word collages, Andrew Lloyd Webber soundtracks in languages other than English as well as Country and western music.

All of the station's programming is controlled by individual DJs and is not beholden to any type of station-wide playlist or rotation schedule. Experimentation, spontaneity and humor are among the station's most frequently noted distinguishing traits. WFMU does not belong to any existing public radio network, and close to 100% of its programming originates at the station." [From wfmu.org]

Dig: WFMU Marathon 2011 (details and information)

Ox Cart Man

In October of the year,

he counts potatoes dug from the brown field,

counting the seed, counting

the cellar's portion out,

and bags the rest on the cart's floor.

He packs wool sheared in April, honey

in combs, linen, leather

tanned from deerhide,

and vinegar in a barrel

hoped by hand at the forge's fire.

He walks by his ox's head, ten days

to Portsmouth Market, and sells potatoes,

and the bag that carried potatoes,

flaxseed, birch brooms, maple sugar, goose

feathers, yarn.

When the cart is empty he sells the cart.

When the cart is sold he sells the ox,

harness and yoke, and walks

home, his pockets heavy

with the year's coin for salt and taxes,

and at home by fire's light in November cold

stitches new harness

for next year's ox in the barn,

and carves the yoke, and saws planks

building the cart again.

From White Apples And the Taste of

Stone: Selected Poems 1946-2006 by Donald Hall

A.I.T.A. Hall Of Fame: Serious Drinking

"The band that proved you don’t have to be a dickhead

to enjoy football, girls, and excessive drinking."

England's Serious Drinking formed in February 1981, taking their name from a Sounds headline referring to The Cockney Rejects. Band members were Martin Ling and Eugene McCarthy on vocals, Andy Hearshaw on guitar, Jem Moore on bass, and Lance Dunlop on drums, most of whom met while attending the University Of East Anglia. The band's debut EP, Love On The Terraces (produced by Madness' Mark Bedford) reached #9 on the UK Indie Chart in 1982, and the follow-up Hangover EP reached #4 the following year. Serious Drinking's fantastic debut album The Revolution Starts At Closing Time also reached #4, and was followed up in 1984 by a second album, They May Be Drinkers Robin, But They're Still Human Beings.

After another single, "Country Girl Became Drugs And Sex Punk," Moore and Dunlop left the band. The new line-up continued for a bit, and the Stranger Than Tannadice — The Hits, Misses And Own Goals compilation was released to coincide with the 1990 World Cup, followed by the Where Have All The Donkey Jackets Gone? EP (on Musical Tragedies), and a cover of the 1970 World Cup song "Back Home" on the Damaged Goods label. The band's classic "Bobby Moore Was Innocent" was also included on the Forever Blowing Bubbles: West Ham United And Supporters compilation, issued in 1997.

Download: "Love On The Terraces"

Download: "Bobby Moore Was Innocent"

Download: "Baby, I'm Dying a Death"

Download: "Hangover"
Download: "Weird Son of Angry Bastard"
Download: "Time Is Tight" (live)
Download: "World Service"
Download: "12XU"

Quote Of The Week

"Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall."

We Interrupt Our Regular...

Due to a corrupted/crashed hard drive, A.I.T.A. will be taking a short break from publishing. We are in the midst of recovering all of our files now, and hope to be back with a bang soon.

Quote Of The Week

"He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses."

L'enfer, C'est Les Autres

Photograph by Lee Greenfeld © 2011

Listen To The Silence

"I used to say some people make money and some make history — which is very funny until you find you can't afford to keep yourself alive." -Tony Wilson

Quote Of The Week

"In general you can't put a vaule on style because it's so personal. Perhaps that's it's appeal. It's like a million people telling me that Picasso was a genuis; well, I think he was shite and that a French Small Faces EP cover can piss all over any of his paintings"

In The Midnight Hour

"Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when every one has to throw off his mask? Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked? Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight in order to avoid this? Or are you not terrified by it? I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others that at last their true nature could not reveal itself... In every man there is something which to a certain degree prevents him from becoming perfectly transparent to himself; and this may be the case in so high a degree, he may be so inexplicably woven into relationships of life which extend far beyond himself that he almost cannot reveal himself. But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love, and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all."

From Either/Or, 1843

Rust Sleeps

Brian Rust

Rest In Peace

"Brian Rust, a discographic detective who compiled comprehensive guides to recorded jazz and other popular music, in the process setting the standard for the modern field, died on Jan. 5 in Swanage, in southern England." ... Story continues here: Brian Rust, Father of Modern Discography, Dies at 88 (NY Times)

Dig: Rustbooks Publishing

Dig: Brian Rust interviewed

45 Revolutions: Case

"Managed by the legendary Dave Long, championed by Gary Bushell (Sounds) and with their name painted on every prominent wall in South East London, Case should and could have been massive. Alas, the three-track Wheat From The Chaff EP [released by Sus Records and produced by the great Ted De Bono] remains their only official release though they did record loads of demos and a session for Radio 1's Kid Jensen show. The horn section later joined Spear Of Destiny whilst drummer Derwent became "Top Mod" playing with the likes of Long Tall Shorty, Joe Public, and The Rage (as well as The Angelic Upstarts)." -Mark Brennan, Link Records

Download: Wheat From The Chaff EP