#OUTPOUR Live Recording

[byjove]

The Italian restaurant in my mom’s hometown WAS definitely a mob front. The owner briefly served in the Italian military, immigrated to America in his twenties back in the early 70s, mysteriously had enough money to open a chain of Italian restaurants and was convicted for trafficking cocaine across the Virginia/West Virginia area and spent 15 years in prison.

My mom had worked as a waitress at the place while she was a teenager and throughout her 20s and she realized that when she was sent to the restaurant’s sister location in West Virginia in a mysteriously packed car by her mysteriously nice boss, it probably wasn’t pizza ingredients she was hauling. It was the 80s. She was a tiny, very naive, conventionally attractive church girl with no criminal record so she was the perfect unwitting drug mule.

The thing was, this restaurant and the man who operated it were locally loved. Beyond large scale organized cocaine trafficking, food was his other passion. Everyone waited anxiously for him to get out of prison and when he did this guy started a crusade against the corrupt local sheriff’s office. He started doing anti-police brutality advocacy work WHOLEHEARTEDLY. Donating to local families who had been victims and participating in local drives and awareness campaigns.

Made men usually do local charity work but the balls on this guy to take up sword and spear against shitty corrupt ineffectual law enforcement. Incredible. One thing about Appalachians is that we hate the cops and we love social agitators. This guy lived a long eventful life and died recently of natural causes and the overwhelming outpouring of love for him on Facebook was incredible, a uniting force that the town had not seen in decades, everybody was sharing their favorite stories about him and I’m sure local law enforcement was fuming.

[kingkatsuki]

Chubby!reader who goes to one of those hero dinners with Bakugo. He picked out a matching dress with fhe help if his mother, think you look gorgeous and thanks to the dress you were 20 minutes late because you couldn't help bending you over the sofa before you left. But then, someone makes a comment as you pick up the canapés and all hellll breaks loose.

"Should you be eating that?"

And you stop. You're used to this, he was a fit and muscled pro-hero, you were just you. And even though he loved your soft body, the lush thighs and the way your body felt in his hands, he hated shit like this.

"Huh? The hell did you just say?"

Shellz this has been in my ask box for far too long, but oh my god Bakugou would lose his utter shit.

There would be news articles and tweet after tweet about how Dynamight kicked another Pro-Heroes ass at the gala— literally post after post of people unsurprised that the number two hero got into another fight. Saying that he should be cancelled and that a villainous Pro-Hero like him shouldn’t even have a career or a platform to begin with.

And his PR team are losing their shit, frantically trying to draft up a scripted apology for him to read out on the Hero Channel live the next day— trying to give him a bullshit statement about how he’s just been stressed lately. And Bakugou is like “I ain’t readin’ this shit, asshole deserves to be in hospital after what he said.”

And you feel so guilty that even though it’s not your fault, he still got himself into this because of you. So you decide to set the record straight, and you tweet your side out to your small following so people can understand why Dynamight acted that way.

And the outpouring of love and support from the Internet is insane, anything from people happy that Dynamight is celebrating body positivity to calling him a chubby chaser😂😭 and people calling the other Pro a fucking idiot because it’s obvious how hot you are?

But of course you already know that, because Bakugou had your ankles above your shoulders immediately after the gala to show you just how much he loves your perfect body.

“Better not fuckin’ change because of one shitty comment, sweetheart. You’re perfect.”

[go-go-gojo]

Lifetime, My Time, a Sukuna One-Shot

Summary: Two Thousand Years after the Shinjuku Showdown, Sukuna goes North.

Read/Review on AO3

On December 24th, 2118, exactly one hundred years since of the fateful Shinjuku Showdown, Kenjaku finally succeeded in activating the merger, ending modern Japanese society as everyone knew it.

Despite finally achieving his goal of optimizing cursed energy, Kenjaku was…disappointed. Truth be told, he did not consider what the actual outcome would have been. He had expected something exciting but instead there was…nothing.

Nothing at all. No humans. No cursed spirits, even. The massive outpouring of cured energy caused by the merger had obliterated all life. There were no trees, no grass, even. Even the air around him was devoid of life, replaced by this musty fog, thick enough to cover the sun. Nothing existed but the mass of cursed energy around him. Like a thick fog, it even made the air difficult to breathe. Kenjaku looked at the barren wasteland that was once the Shinjuku district. Japan had spent one hundred rears restoring Shinjuku, Shibuya and all of Tokyo to undue the damage caused by the Culling Games. Kenjaku undid their tireless efforts in less than ten minutes.

"Well, that was boring,"

Kenjaku didn't consider the time wasted, nor did reflect on the countless of lives stolen, He simply changed course - after all, his plans were always flexible. He looked to America, its size and structure very different from the world he was used to. Perhaps a slow merger, state by state, would yield better results than merging the country as a whole. He took the knowledge he gained from the past eleven hundred years, and with tea, snacks, and Tengen's soul, Kenjaku sailed for Hawaii.

With the overwhelming, unmanageable cursed energy and complete lack of life, the country of Japan was from then on quarantined by the rest of the developed world. The years had passed — ten, then one hundred, then tens of hundreds, before the cursed energy caused by the merger finally settled down and allowed for life to return.

Nature, now uninterrupted, broke through broken concrete to bloom, growing trees strong enough to knock down the steel bearings that once filled the city. It took two thousand years for sentient life to return. From the invertebrates to the fish in the river, to animals on land, to mammals, then finally humans. In another thousand years, Man had returned to the top of the food chain, finding their innate instinct of community and growth to recreate society. Japan in the year 4118, save for some technological advances similar to classical society. The scholars, those who dedicated their lives searching for pre-merger records of human history, would call refer to the present day as the Neo-Heian Period.

Of course, with the rise of humans, the return of curses became inevitable.

--------------

The evolution of curses were just as fast, if not faster. Those who manifested near villages were able to take the form of humans, and they quickly evolved to mimic their mannerisms, speech and appearance. They even picked up the dialects of the villages they lived near, making them near impossible to tell apart from humans.

In the fight for the survival of the fittest, curses were catching up quickly.

As a Jujutsu sorcerer, one could never let their guard down. The prudent sorcerer kills them at first suspicion. Nine times out of ten, the assumption was correct.

Perhaps I can start with that , Sukuna thought to himself, mindlessly rubbing the bony gauge that sat in his earlobe. He repeated the script over and over, figuring that would convince —

A sound nearby returned him to the present. While he felt the cursed energy of something, but it was so low that he had a hard time distinguishing it from a curse or an animal. He glanced at Uraume, sitting at the front of the cart with the steering wheel in their tight grip. They leaned over to turn off the makeshift engine, letting the silence settle in.

They heard rustle of the wind through the leaves. Birds, high in the treetops, singing and ruffling their feathers. Nothing more. Sukuna flippantly waved his hand. "Leave it alone." he said. Whatever it was, it wasn't worth their time.

After all, he was already late.

Of course, no sooner did that thought pass through his mind did a several large pieces of something large fall from the trees, landing in front of them with a thump! Sukuna took a step and leaned over what was a man, sliced in half, eyes wide in terror and cries of pain escaping his lips. Sukuna looked at his left, a left arm, and to his right, the bottom half of the mans body, legs still twitching.

"That was fast even for you, Sukuna-sama." Uraume said, as the breath escaped them.

"Heh," Sukuna scoffed. "Wasn't me."

Sukuna turned and stepped into the cart, leaning over towards a wool blanket in the corner. He bent closer and used the hand of his lower arms to tug it slightly open,He met the large brown eyes of the child inside, who stared back at him unafraid. She was a young girl with short black hair styled with a hime cut. He glanced down at the markings that sat just above her cheekbone. They looked more like tattoos than what he suspected they actually were.

Those eyes haven't opened yet, he thought, but still…

She was at the perfect age where cursed techniques began to manifest.

"Chilly?" Sukuna joked.

The girl said nothing but gave a look like she had just been caught with her hands in the bread basket.

"Was that you just now?" Sukuna pointed at the man, still writhing about. "Don't lie."

She pursed her lips, puffing her cheeks out and nodded. Sukuna looked back at the guy. His eyebrows raised and he gave his signature, approving smirk.

"He was following us." the girl finally said, still pouting. "You weren't even looking!"

Sukuna returned his gaze back to his daughter, patting her on the head. He brushed her bangs that lay past her forehead. Little brat was just like her mother.

"Good girl," he said, reaching for the blanket. "I'll do the rest."

He covered her back up and leapt off the cart, standing over the dying man.

"And what's your excuse?"

The bandit tried to mutter something — probably some nonsense about Sukuna looking even scarier up close— but managed to only cough up blood.

Sukuna sighed, cursing to himself. He grabbed the arm, tossing it to the severed shoulder as he used his feet to push the torso closer. When the puzzle pieces of the dying idiot were as close as they needed to be, Sukuna bent down and placed a hand on the man's chest. A white glow left his fingers, spreading through the mans body until he was enveloped in a white light.

Reverse Cursed Technique was difficult technique to use on others— only a handful of Jujutsu sorcerers could use it in such a way. Sukuna would often think of the irony of how easy it was for him.

The bandit gasped as he realized that his body was completely healed. Scarred and sore, Sukuna had no doubt. The fool was lucky that was all he would manage to escape with. He rolled over in an attempt to get on his feet, making it to his knees before he stammered, "Sorry…some guy…offered—"

"Don't care." Sukuna slammed his foot in to the guy's abdomen, launching him off the beaten dirt road into a nearby shrub.

"Get lost," Sukuna called out," before I change my mind."

Sukuna turned around, not giving a damn until he recognized, in hindsight, one of the words he was trying to say.

What guy?

On instinct, Sukuna jumped onto the cart. He grabbed Uraume by the collar, and used both arms on his right to collect the child, still bundled up. As he leapt into the air, Sukuna watched as two giant hands came out of the ground, meeting each other in a loud clap!

Sukuna frowned as he watched the cart be crushed into bits.

It had seemed that someone paid that idiot to distract them. Sukuna wasn't shocked — he had a significant bounty on his head thanks to the great sorcerer families of the Neo-Heian period. It didn't matter how many times humanity started, those in power would always try to seize it. As he landed to his feet and set Uraume down, he had to admit that this failed ambush was the most creative.

"Here," Sukuna shoved the bundled up blanket in Uraume's arms. "Tell Wasuke that I'll be late."

As Uraume turned to leave, they leapt back, narrowly avoiding the giang hand that emerged from the ground, nearly snatching Uraume and the child. They ran back towards Sukuna and stayed behind him, holding the bundled up blanket like it was a precious gift.

"Like I'm going to let that happen!" A shrill voice responded, filling the air like a thick fog. It was high pitched, childish and grating. It was a familiar type of annoying, as if Sukuna had heard this voice before in an unpleasant dream.

Standing in front of them, emerging from the ground, was a young man with long, pale blue hair. He held an monstrous grin on his patchwork face. Everything about this creature, whether it was human or a curse, irritated Sukuna down to his very core.

"Long time no see," said the curse, "Ryomen Sukuna!"

Sukuna paused, eyeing the guy up and down then rubbed the back of his head, then raised a brow. "Have we met?"

"We have," he said, "But it's fine if you don't remember. Curses, unlike humans, remember our previous lives."

"Hm, "Sukuna crossed his lower arms, laying them right below his chest. "Interesting. I went under a past life regression with a shaman recently. But I didn't' see you at all."

"No?" The curse's thick brows furrowed as he kept his crazed smile. "The name Mahito doesn't come to mind?"

"I think," Sukuna gave a condescending grin, "You just weren't that memorable."

Sukuna chuckled at the suddenly angry face the curse name Mahito wore. This curse was a petulant child, no threat against him at all. Deciding to stroke the ire, Sukuna continued, "I do remember a cursed spirit named Jogo. Weak, but he was good for a laugh."

"What!?" Mahito screeched. "You remember Jogo and not me!?"

"You must have been boring."

Mahito tried to shake the aggression and move on with his own taunts. , but Sukuna knew better. He was still irritated.

"Past life regression….does that mean did you got to witness your countless atrocities?"

In every life, Sukuna grew up a cursed little wretch. He grew up feeling powerlessness in his powerful, deformed body. He credited his twin brother, Wasuke, as the only being in his childhood that kept him from performing violent retribution on the world. Wasuke, despite his lifelong frailty, never left his side, and became Sukuna's moral code.

However, despite his deep admiration for his brother, and the subsequent companionship he found in others as an adult, Sukuna struggled to shake his resentment. He felt an innate desire to destroy everything and everyone in sight, a feeling so strong that he felt his own curse destroy him. At that time, he decided to take the advice of his future wife and meet a local shaman.

It was then, in the old Heian era, that Sukuna saw his greatest worst self.

"I did." Sukuna sounded almost nostalgic. "What a sight it was."

"Heh. You told me at the end of your life," Mahito said mockingly, "That next time you would walk a different path. I'm just curious to see if you let your curse immolate you all over again?"

It always annoyed Sukuna when people made incorrect assumptions about him.

"Maybe," Sukuna mused. In that life, he slaughtered without reason. But this time it was different. After the ceremony, in an attempt to release the pain of his past, Sukuna made a binding vow to only kill with reason. Two reasons to be exact.

Not a strong moral code, but one had to start somewhere.

"Back then," Sukuna said, "I refused to allow those who tried to be near me. Suppose my different path has allowed myself to be blessed, rather than cursed."

"You? Blessed?" Mahito scoffed. "And what makes a wretched thing like you blessed?"

"Keh," Sukuna rached into the pocket of his thick, black robe, and removed a stack of photographs, bent and torn at the edges.

"I have brats now," Sukuna said, "Two, to be exact."

He held them up in front of Mahito, who carried a look of confusion and disgust.

"Aren't they cute?" Sukuna asked with a hint of sarcasm. Of course they were.

"I don't care about your ugly brats! " Mahito shouted, throwing up his arms. "I can't believe how boring you've become."

Sukuna watched Mahito throw a tantrum worse than the little girl Uraume held. He slipped the photos back in his cloak, thinking about the two reasons. This guy was obviously a curse, so it didn't' matter whether or not he even needed one. But in a moment of clarity, he found the humor in seeing that he had two perfect reasons to kill Mahito.

Sukuna looked at reason one, the destroyed cart. He frowned. That was for Wasuke and his family, enough food and supplies to last the winter. Sukuna's wife put tremendous effort putting it all together, and will definitely be pissed. In fact, she would most likely blame him for this. All of this was reason enough to kill the guy but whats worse —

Sukuna looked at Mahito's putrid face. How dare that thing call his children ugly! Were Mahito human, those two reasons were enough to sufficiently fulfill the binding vow.

Luckily, the vow wasn't that specific.

"I'm going to fucking enjoy killing you." Sukuna said.

"Careful, now." Mahito held his hands out, ready to attack, "When cursed spirits come back, they return even stronger. What's more," his wicked grin returned, "You've gone soft!"

Mahito's stretched out his arms and they extended out like they were made of rubber. His hands morphed into two long curved daggers and flew towards Sukuna. Sukuna didn't bother to actually move, simply raising his hand to give a finger a wave.

"Kachi."

Using cleave, Sukuna severed Mahito's arms, and the once dangerous daggers shriveled up into nothing. Mahito used the opportunity to appear behind him, but Sukuna was ready, landing a punch straight to his face.

"Trash is trash," Sukuna said, "No matter how many times it returns."

Mahito braced to his feet, ignoring the searing pain to his face. He prepared for another attack when he notices…something. A rustle above caused a few stray branches to fall, landing in between the two. As Mahito's eyes darted upwards, struggling to flow the flow of cursed energy darting back and forth among the trees.

The child in Uraume's arms popped her head of of the blanket, following the flurry of energy along with Sukuna and Mahito. Sukuna glanced at her, impressed. But of course she could follow such fast energy. She was his kid.

His large eyes protruding from the bony structure of his face glanced upwards. His eyes were so sensitive to cursed energy it was difficult for anyone to understand just how precise his vision was. He felt the kid coming from miles away, and before he completely obliterated Mahito, Sukuna realized that this wasn't his battle to fight.

Sukuna was right to be patient and not kill the curse immediately.

He glanced back down, stunned when he noticed Mahito's eyes. They were as wide and white as the dinner plates served in the great palaces. They were filled with horror, a horror that not even Sukuna himself could cause. The cocky, pompous, irritating clown was long gone, replaced with a fragile, terrified child who knew they were about to be punished in the worst possible way.

And then, Sukuna remembered.

The mouth on his belly, so silent this whole time that one forgot it existed, let out a huge, condescending laugh.

As the realization of Mahito's identity hit Sukuna like a bolt of lighting, his stoic composure crumbled. When Sukuna laughed, the world held its shaky breath.

Now, it was Mahito's turn.

"I remember you!" Sukuna exclaimed, darting his eyes at Uraume. "Uraume! You remember this idiot?"

Uraume, who had not done a past life regression, looked at Sukuna like he was nuts. "I--uh…no. I do not. However," They looked at the terrified Mahito and chuckled, "He seems, as you said, completely forgettable."

The girl whispered to Uraume, "Papa's funny when his belly laughs."

The two both chuckled.

"Shut up!" Mahito screamed as he morphed his right hand into a spike and sent it towards Uraume and the child.

Sukuna didn't react. He didn't' need to. Whether it was his talent for recognizing perfect timing or simple trust in the one who shared his blood — the one who seemed be destined to actually surpass Sukuna — Sukuna trusted his instincts.

After all, it was time to put that brat to the test.

Mahito realized too late that he had only hit the afterimage of Uraume and the child, and he cursed as his spiked hand hit nothing but air. Mahito and Sukuna both looked up and saw the being carried by a young boy with messy pink hair and a slim build. His yellow eyes were large, like those of the fawn, holding the same youth and innocence. He landed in front of Sukuna, and gently set Uraume to their feet.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Ah—O-Obviously!" Uraume snapped with burning cheeks, frantically patting their gown down with their free hand.

"Right on time," Sukuna said with a sly grin, "Yuji."

"Yuji!" The girl's arms slipped through the blanket reaching for her cousin. Yuji leaned forward, letting her pat him on the head. He pinched her cheek slightly, then turned to face Mahito.

His boyish face, normally happy and light, held a stern serious look that kept him locked on what lay ahead. He was ready to fight.

"Great Uncle," Yuji said, "Who is that guy?"

An old friend, Sukuna wanted to say.

"He's trash." Sukuna frowned. "Dispose of him quickly, or I ship you back to your worthless father."

"Jeez," Yuji said, cracking a small smile. "What would Gramps say if he heard you?"

"He would agree."

Yuji's smile dropped as he noticed the cart ahead, broken into pieces. He glanced back at his cousin, the frown on his face grew deeper by the moment. He then faced the curse in front of him, carrying not an ounce of recognition. But somehow, Sukuna thought, it didn't matter if the Yuji of now had any memory of his life as Yuji Itadori.

Two thousand years later, Yuji's very soul remembered that promise.

"I'm going to kill you."

Mahito, shell shocked dropped to his knees. He began to crawl, backing away like a terrified dog as Yuji approached him, walking, with no sense of urgency.

Sukuna looked to the sky, watching snow begin to fall from above.

Again, he laughed.

[fromgreecetoanarchy]

[ 📽️New Video] 🔴 Athens ablaze: From mourning to a massive riot, in the biggest protest ever recorded in Greece

On February 28, 2025, Greece witnessed an unprecedented wave of protests, as millions of people took to the streets in cities across the country and abroad, driven by grief, anger, and the urgent call for justice.

The demonstrations, the largest in at least the last 50 years and in some cities the biggest ever recorded in history, were sparked by the tragic train crash at Tempi, two years earlier on the night of February 28, 2023, which claimed the lives of 57 people, most of them students. The disaster was not just a loss; it was a devastating symbol of systemic failure, one that exposed the deep cracks in the country’s privatized railway system and, by extension, its political structures.

As protesters gathered in Athens' iconic Syntagma Square, and in towns and villages nationwide, their message was clear: this was more than an anniversary of a tragedy. It was a cry against a perceived cover-up of this mass murder by the ruling party and the governments before them, as well as a cry for accountability from a government they felt had neglected the safety of the peoples and failed to learn from its mistakes. The rallying cry was simple yet powerful: “Justice for Tempi.”

Two years after the crash, the pain, anguish and anger of those who lost loved ones, and of a population disillusioned with a government that almost completely failed to modernize the country’s infrastructure, reached a boiling point. The protests soon turned violent. Clashes broke out between riot police and demonstrators, as the frustration over the lack of meaningful action from the authorities boiled over. Petrol bombs were thrown, and fires lit, as the capital echoed with the pain of those who felt that injustice rules.

What unfolded in the streets of Greece that day was not merely an outpouring of grief but a profound rejection of a political system that had, in the eyes of many, failed. The cries for justice were not just for the 57 who died in Tempi, but for a place in the map that demanded change—not just in its railways, but in its institution, politics and everyday life.

The protests laid bare a deep crisis of confidence in Greece's political and judicial systems, with many people voicing their frustration over the lack of transparency and accountability. But it also spoke to something deeper: a population that feels its cries for justice have fallen on deaf ears, a society where the powerful are untouchable, while the lives of ordinary people are left to be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency and profit.

The Tempi train crash was a tragedy that cut deep, but the protests that followed are a reminder that the pain has not been forgotten. They are a testament to the determination of those who refuse to allow their grief to be silenced. No justice, no peace

[ukrfeminism]

At least 350 women have been killed by a man since the murder of Sarah Everard �� the equivalent of one woman dying every three days, The Independent can reveal.

Frustrated experts said the government is still failing to protect women as the sobering new figures came to light on the third anniversary of Ms Everard’s kidnap and murder by a serving police officer.

Her death was hailed as a watershed moment which sparked an outpouring of anger over women’s safety and shone a light on the epidemic of violence against women and girls.

But campaigners have said promises to tackle the crisis were “empty words” as they warned: “So much more needs to be done.”

The figures, shared with The Independent by the Femicide Census, showed at least 350 women have died with a man responsible or a principal suspect since Ms Everard’s death on 3 March 2021.

“That’s an average of one woman dead at the hands of a man every three days,” executive director Dr Karen Ingala Smith said.

Of these, eight in ten had a relationship with their killer, with 43 per cent killed by a former or current partner, 12 per cent by a family member, 15 per cent by a man who knew them.

Around 28 women – which accounts for eight per cent of cases – were killed by a stranger, like Ms Everard.

She added: “The figure of eight per cent of women killed by men in the UK being killed by a stranger is consistent with the average since our records began in 2009. So ask me whether anything has changed since Sarah’s murder, and my answer is no.”

The figures come after an inquiry into Ms Everard’s killer Wayne Couzens uncovered an astonishing string of blunders in the recruitment of the predator to the Metropolitan Police and eight missed opportunities to stop him in his tracks.

The 33-year-old marketing executive was walking home in Clapham, south London, when she was tricked by Couzens, who falsely arrested her before driving to Kent where he raped and strangled before dumping her burnt body in a woodland.

In the aftermath of her death, thousands of grieving women gathered for a vigil at Clapham Common calling for action to prevent to male violence against women and, simply, the right to walk home safely.

Anna Birley, co-founder of vigil organisers Reclaim These Streets, told The Independent: “We were promised that tackling violence against women and girls would be a priority for this government, but these figures show that this was all empty words.

“Women are still being murdered by men, demand for domestic violence services remains at record highs and rapes are still going unprosecuted.

“By failing to grasp the scale of the problem and failing to take meaningful action to keep us safe, this Government is failing women.”

Andrea Simon, director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW), said each of the 350 women who have lost their lives in the last three years have been failed by society.

“While we’ve heard lots of promises and seen top level commitments to tackling violence against women in the last three years, there is so much more that needs to be done,” she told The Independent.

“There is a failure to prioritise preventing violence in all the work promised to tackle it. We need to see the police response to all forms of abuse improve, with better detection, early intervention, and protective steps taken when women report violence to reduce the risk of femicide.

“Police and justice agencies must take action to stop known perpetrators from frequently re-offending against women and girls.

“We must also see work to shift attitudes across society, including the sexism and male entitlement that drives violence against women and sees it normalised and trivialised.”

This starts with high quality education and well-funded public information campaigns, she said, adding: “Until we tackle harmful attitudes and the inequality that puts women and girls in harm’s way, we won’t be able to improve women’s feelings of safety and freedom.”

The calls come after this week Labour MP Jess Phillips read out the names of every woman killed last year in House of Commons, warning the “epidemic of violence against women and girls has not abated”.

She said: “All of these women mattered, they need to matter much more to politics. And I urge again, as I have for years, for the Government to have a strategy for reducing femicide. Warm words and no political priority will never make this list shorter.”

It is the ninth year that the MP has read victims’ names to the chamber, adding each life lost was a testament to failure to prioritise women’s safety.

She added: “I am tired that women’s safety matters so much less in this place than small boats. I am tired of fighting for systematic change and being given table scraps.

“Never again do I want to hear a politician say that lessons will be learned from abject failure - it is not true.

“This list is no longer just a testament to these women’s lives, it is a testament to our collective failure.”

Jhiselle Feanny, co-founder of Killed Women - a campaign group of families bereaved by male violence against women, described the latest figures as “devastating”.

She said: “Each represents a life brutally taken. And a family facing the unimaginable, their whole world destroyed.  “Three years, so many lives, endless announcements, headlines, reviews, reports and lessons learned. And yet here we are, listening to the latest death toll read out in Parliament.”

She said attacks on women were “preventable crimes” after a survey of bereaved families last year found almost seven in ten believed their loved ones’ death was preventable, while two thirds said the killer had a prior history of violence.

“These deaths and injustices are not inevitable. The murders of women are not unavoidable tragedies, but preventable crimes,” Ms Feanny added.

“We urgently need decision and policy makers to act, so women can live free from fear, threat and violence.”

A government spokesperson said: “We are committed to tackling violence against women and improving the police response to these vile crimes. We have classified it as national threat alongside other threats such as terrorism and introduced the first ever dedicated national policing lead.

“The Angiolini inquiry has looked into issues around police culture and the government will continue to work with police partners to ensure that proper standards are upheld at all times.”

[chilling-seavey]

prompt 67!!

↳ A/N: Thank you for submitting! This was a fun one hehe <3

↳ Prompt: "Let me make this right."

↳ Prompt List | The Way It Goes Masterlist

You were sat on the couch in the disheveled living room, yet-to-be-hung birthday decorations scattered over the coffee table—streamers in various shades of blue, excess roles of tape, wrapping paper, a somewhat crinkled 'Happy Birthday' banner. Tears were streaking down your cheeks and your chest heaved for breath as if you were on the verge of an emotional breakdown. George stood in the doorway, suitcase in hand, an expression of stricken shock and about five hundred other emotions all over his face at the same time.

A poorly taped balloon detached itself from the wall and fluttered to the floor. You let out another pathetic sob, flopping your head against the back of the couch with your hands over your face. His sweatshirt you wore clung tight around your very pregnant belly, riding up just a little in the midst of your dramatic expression of hormonal outpouring.

"Why did you have to come home early?!" you cried, your tone that of someone who had just experienced the worst heartbreak known to man.

"Oh, love," George—who had come home a day early from pre-season preparations at Brackley to surprise you—spoke gently as he tentatively set his suitcase down and took a cautious step into the living room, "let me make this right."

"You can't! It's too late! You ruined your birthday surprise!"

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[sweetdreamsjeff]

The Observer, June 8, 1997, Page 69. via Newspapers.com

The Observer Review 8 June 1997 Inherited torment WE o Jeff Buckley swam out into the Mississippi and never came bad;. Did his father drag him under? Walking to the bright lights in sorrow, Oh drink a bit of wine, we both might go tomorrow ... And the rain is falling, and I believe my time has come ... And I feel them drown my name ... lm not afraid to go, butitgoes so slow ...

' - Jeff Buckley, 'Grace', 1994 have never heard anyone sing with as much emotional force as Jeff Buckley. When I saw him play in New York in 1994, 1 was in tears for almost the entire concert Why? The truth is, 1 don't know. Though the songs he performed (his own and other people's) were often sad, it was not the lyrics nor the melodies that were moving, so much as the singer himself. His voice, though it was often aqueously beautiful, also had the power to terrorise; he could shift from a melancholic sigh to a scream of despair or a howl of desire within the space of a line. He sang as though his life were flashing before his eyes, as though this might be the last chance he had to express what he felt inside.

He once declared, about the experience of performing: 'Sometimes it's like sex, when you transcend the physical and make something spiritual, when you fly ...'A Jeff Buckley concert was a slow-motion petit mort. Tou have to let yourself go,' he said, 'and it can scar you or destroy you. It's a bit like dying.' The man acclaimed by many as the most naturally talented rock vocalist of his generation gave his final performance to an audience of one. He was singing and laughing as he swam out into the Mississippi River on a spring Tennessee evening, before being pulled beneath the water's surface. His end, though tragically premature, was as musical and darkly romantic as his short life.

On Thursday 29 May, around 9pm, Jeff and a friend, Keith Foti, were sitting on the quay of the Mud Island marina, where the Mississippi joins downtown Memphis. They had an acoustic guitar and a ghetto blaster, and they were singing songs together. Buckley, In a playful mood', went swimming full)' clothed; Foti says he tried to dissuade him, as that stretch of river is known for its dangerous underwater currents. Buckley swam and waded for 15 minutes before a passing tug boat created a large wave. Foti turned away momentarily to move the ghetto blaster so it wouldn't get wet When he turned back, Ms friend had disappeared Jeff Buckley was 30 years old.

His body wasn't found until last Wednesday, but the outpouring of grief that followed the announcement of his disappearance was immediate and intense. There was a candlelight vigil in New York, at the site of the Sin-e Cafe in Greenwich Village, where he used to play, and 125 pages of emotional tributes and poems on the Internet. 'His music and voice were clearlv too beautiful to be from this by Sam Taylor humble planet,' said one. Another said simply. This really f ing hurts a lot' Though never a big star in commercial terms, and despite having recorded only one full-length album (Grace, released in 1994), Buckley will be remembered as a songwriter of great potential, a superb guitarist a charismatic man and one of the most extraordinary singers in rock history.

U2"s singer, Bono, declared: 'Jeffs voice was a pure drop in an ocean of noise.' He will also be remembered as the son of Tim Buckley - possibly the only other white male pop singer of the past 30 years with a comparable vocal talent. Father and son met only once in their lives - for nine days when Jeff was eight years old -and Buckley Jr hated being compared to a man he barely knew. But Jeffs premature death means the pair will be forever linked in people's minds: two months after he met his son, Tim Buckley died of a heroin overdose. He was 28. Perhaps inevitably, given his family history and the nature of his profession, there have been recurrent rumours that Jeff Buckley's death was a suicide attempt or an accident caused by drugs or alcohol.

As long as two years ago, there were mutterings that his record company, Columbia, had been pushing him too hard to promote Grace. 'People thought the company wanted their pound of flesh,' said a friend of Buckley's, that they'd put a lot of money into marketing him and were disappointed by the sales. The last time 1 saw him, in '95, he looked really tired - it was a gruelling schedule. But I talked to him more recently and he sounded much happier and more relaxed I'm just glad that he had time to enjoy life again before he died.' Buckley's last message to the world came in December 1996, when he posted this memo to his fans on his official Web site: Tm in the middle of some wild shit right now. Please be patient.

Tm coming soon to a cardboard display case near you and ni come out of my hole and will make bonfires out of ticket stubs come the summer.' Since then, the singer had been living in Memphis, working on his second album with producer Tom Verlaine, but. unhappy with the results, he had scrapped them and asked his band to leave town while he wrote new songs. He and the band were due to start recording again with a new producer last week. Buckley and Foti were on their way to the studio when they stopped at the marina. 'Maybe he was depressed about the recordings,' said Chrissie Hynde, lead singer with the Pretenders and a friend o: Buckley's.

'But all singer-songwriters ge: depressed - it goes with the job. All I knov is that he loved music. The feeling I got from him was that he was gonna be around for many years and produce i great body of work, that he was just star ingout The speculation now will concern in Photographs: Rex Tim Buckley was a free-flowing songwriter of the late Sixties. He died at 28. All he left for his son to love was his music recordings that he scrapped.

It seems almost inevitable that Columbia will release them in some form. The music industry and human nature being what they are, there is every chance that Jeff Buckley's death will transform him from a cult singer with huge potential into another rock icon - a sensitive, Keatsian addition to a pantheon of self-destroyed ghosts that includes Jim Morrison,'Kurt Cobain and, of course, Tim Buckley. One remark, made by Jeff Buckley around the time of Kurt Cobain's suicide, now sounds horribly prophetic. "You gotta make your own life,' he said. 'You can't leave it up to leaders.

Jesus, JFK, Kurt Cobain - they all got f ed up. Kurt didn't feel loved, or maybe he didn't know how to recognise it. But it won't ever happen with a leader; independence has to come or you'll die. You'll end up like someone's puppet and you'll be gone like a chump before you're 30.' Did Jeff Buckley 'go like a chump'? There are plenty of portents to suggest he committed suicide, but no evidence. Buckley himself was always wary of people reading too much into his life: 'Critics look at the complicated things and try to simplify them.

They think they can nail your whole life down just by knowing the bare bones of your history and partaking in 10 minutes of conversation.' One of the most persuasive arguments not to assume that Jeffs death was self-inflicted is the death of his father. Tim Buckley died of a heroin overdose: it looked initially like suicide, but evidence emerged that he had sniffed the heroin in the mistaken belief that it was cocaine. According to Buckley's guitarist, Lee Underwood, it was only because Buckley had recently given up drugs that the dose was enough to kill him. Another man was subsequently charged with murder for supplying him with the heroin. A charismatic troubador' of the late Sixties and early Seventies, Tim Buckley recorded nine adventurous albums of wildly varying quality, which mixed the bloodlines of jazz, folk, rock and soul; at his best, as on the morbidly beautiful 'Song to the Siren', he was better even than the young Van Morrison.

A free-flowing, inspirational singer -songwriter, he was never commercially successful, but his reputa tion remains extremely high. At 19, when he was still an unknown) he married a young Panama-bom woman named Mary Guibert. On 17 November 1966, Mary gave birth to a son. She nanie&amp;bim Jeff. Tim left her six months later.

Jeff Buckley spent his childhood moving from town to town around southern California with his mother and younger brother (the child of another relationship). He later recalled that he did not even have any luggage; he transported his possessions in paper bags. 'We lived in little white trashville towns overrunby Burger Kings and malls. It was a dislocated childhood . .

. moving from place to place, grabbing on to people, making fast friends, letting them go. I'd get a part in a school play and find out that evening that we had to leave. It made me grow up more quickly -I was the man of the house from a very young age. I feel I wasborn old.' Asked why his family was so nomadic, he replied: 'I guess my mother just always wanted to know what was round the next corner.' He met his father briefly in 1975, and his comments about him in interviews revealed a feeling of bitterness masquerading as indifference: 'I knew him for nine days.

I met him for the first time when I was eight years old, over Easter, and he died two months later ... We were born with the same parts, but that's all. I'm Mary Guibert's son, not his.' Those 'parts' included not just his looks (their faces were strikingly similar), but his soaring, wonderfully expressive voice. Music was Jeffs life from a very young age. His mother was a classically trained pianist, and they would sing together in the car.

When he was five, she taught him one of his father's songs, 'Once I Was'. 'There was my mother's breast, then there was music,' he once said. 'It's been my friend, my ally, my teacher, my tormentor. Singing just took me over.' Jeff left home at 17 and moved to Los Angeles. He lived there for four years, playing guitar in bars, but never felt comfortable with the city's superficiality.

At one point, feeling isolated, he tracked down his father's relatives. 'I talked to the whole cast of characters, and then I was done with it. It revealed a lot of ugliness that I can't talk about.' He never did. And so he moved to New York, a place he had always thought of as his spiritual home. Ironically, the first time he ever played in New York was at a Tim Buckley tribute concert in 1991, where he played 'Once I Was'.

This seems odd, given Jeffs comments about his father, but he told Boiling Stone: 'It bothered me that I hadn't been to his funeral, that I'd never been able to tell him anything. I used that show to pay my last respects.' Chrissie Hynde thinks that: 'Although he obviously had unresolved feelings about a man who had abandoned him, he really knew and loved his father's music. He never talked about him, but I think he was really proud of his father.' There is evidence to suggest that, for all his denials, Jeff was obsessed with his father, and with other people's identifica tion of the two. In an article posted on the Internet last week, he was quoted as saying: 'All this stuff about my dad . .

. it's so hard to live with. I'm Jeff, not Tim. Do you think what they say is true?' In 1992, Jeff began playing dramatic, sometimes disastrous, solo shows in East Village bars and cafes. His first record, the independently released EP Live at Sin-e, reveals Buckley's nascent talent in all its self-indulgent, undisciplined glory.

International recognition came in 1994, when, having put together a young three-piece band and signed for Columbia, Buckley released Grace, an astonishing debut album that he described as 'an elegy, sort of a child's coffin ... full of past ghosts, exorcised in song'. The only solid legacy of his brilliance, Grace sounds almost unbearably poignant now. It is dense with memories and prophesies, from the title track's eerie premonition of death through the delicate version of Britten's 'Corpus Christi Carol', to the final track, 'Dream Brother', about his lost father; 'Don't be like the one who made me so old Don 't be like the one who left behind his name 'Cause they're waiting for you like I waited for mine And nobody ever came. .

. ' It is convenient and romantic to assume that Jeff Buckley's death was not a freak accident but an act of desperate self destruction But the truth is, until the coroner's report is released - probably this week - we will not know whether the singing swimmer in the Mississippi was waving or drowning..

[opera-ghosts]

Claudia Muzio, nicknamed 'the divine' before Maria Callas, as Tosca at the Met (12/16/1918)

From More legendary voices by Douglas, Nigel:

She was born in a house on the Piazza del Duomo in the university town of Pavia, some twenty miles south of Milan, on 7 February 1889, and she was registered as Claudina Versati of unknown parentage. In fact her mother, a chorus singer, and her father, an operatic stage manager named Carlo Muzio, married at some later date, so that by the time their daughter’s career began she had been officially legitimised. She had a strange childhood, much of it spent backstage in the various opera houses where her father worked — all over Italy, at Covent Garden, where he was often engaged for the summer season, and at the Met, where he spent many of his winters. Most of her formal schooling took place in London, which gave her the ability, unusual in an Italian singer, to speak fluent English, and in her late teens she was sent back to live with relatives in Italy. She studied the piano and the harp in a music college in Turin, and subsequently moved to Milan where she continued her piano lessons with a lady named Annetta Casaloni.

Signora Casaloni was a most unusual piano teacher. She was at that time ninety years old, and in her younger days she had been a well-known operatic mezzo; indeed, back in 1851 she had created the role of Maddalena in RIGOLETTO. It is she who is usually credited with the discovery of Muzio’s voice, though Carlo Muzio had long predicted a great career for her in opera. ‘Since she began to toddle’, one journalist reported him as saying, ‘she has been in the wings watching my rehearsals. She knows all the dramatic roles, the lyric roles and the coloratura roles — nothing will come amiss to her.’ Certainly the extraordinary range of parts which Muzio did subsequently undertake, from the coloratura of Gilda in RIGOLETTO to the unbridled dramatic outpourings of Turandot, bears witness to his prescience, and few if any of her roles could be said to have ‘come amiss’.

Muzio’s début took place at Arezzo, near Florence, on 15 January 1910 as Massenet’s Manon, and within a couple of months she was singing Gilda and Traviata in Messina partnered by Tito Schipa— both of them had just celebrated their twenty-first birthdays. Muzio had no difficulty in establishing herself on the circuit of Italy’s smaller opera houses and it can clearly be taken as proof of her exceptional promise that only eighteen months after her début she was invited by the Gramophone Company in Milan to make her first two recordings. One of these, ‘Si, mi chiamano Mimi’ from LA BOHEME (the other was a passage from LA TRAVIATA), features on a Nimbus recital, NJ 7814, and it provides a fascinating glimpse of a great artist in the making. To set against the brilliant freshness of the tone there is a strange and not entirely attractive edge on the vowel sounds. They are very open and unrounded and in the upper register there is more than a hint of shrillness. The wonderful cornucopia of vocal shadings for which Muzio was to become famous is entirely absent, and although she does attempt an emotional gearchange as she glides into the big tune on ‘Ma quando vien lo sgelo’ — the phrase which to me is the litmus test for whether or not a soprano is worthy of this heaven-sent role — it is almost touchingly unsubtle. The same CD also offers us her recording of this aria made twenty-four years later, within a short time of her death. I shall return to it later; the difference between the two versions encapsulates a lifetime.

My strictures concerning this youthful recording would not be half so severe were it not for the standard which Muzio herself was to set as a mature artist, and the speed of her rise to prominence is a clear indication that even in those early days her virtues greatly outweighed her shortcomings. In the season of 1911-12 she reaped a rich harvest of success in Milan’s Teatro Dal Verme and by 1913 she was considered ready for her début in that holy of holies, La Scala. Her Desdemona there made a deep impression, and she was invited to repeat it the following year in Paris, where she was heard in rehearsal by Mr H. V. Higgins of the Covent Garden Syndicate. Mr Higgins surprised her by asking if she would come over to London the following week and sing Puccini’s Manon, which she did to the delight of one and all — ‘In turn voluptuous, seductive, defiant, passionate and tender, Mlle Muzio promises to be a great acquisition to Italian Opera,’ wrote the Pall Mall Gazette - and it is an indication of the short-term planning which characterised international opera at that time that she stayed in London to sing no less than six different roles at Covent Garden during the next ten weeks. Three times she stepped in as a last-minute replacement — once in OTELLO for Melba, who had to return to Australia because her father had been taken ill, once in LA BOHEME for Claire Dux who had eye trouble, and once in TOSCA for Louise Edvina, who was ‘indisposed’. For the TOSCA she found herself in formidable company — Antonio Scotti as Baron Scarpia and Enrico Caruso as Cavaradossi — but as one of the critics expressed it: ‘Edvina’s misfortune was Miss Claudia Muzio’s opportunity and right excellently she seized it. It was no light ordeal for a young and comparatively inexperienced artist to essay such a role in such circumstances, but Miss Muzio rose gallantly to the occasion and gave a very good account of herself indeed. Her acting and her singing were both really remarkably fine.’

The 1914 season at Covent Garden was an eventful one in many ways. At a Royal Command performance, in the presence of King George V and Queen Mary, a suffragette attempted to address the monarch, and when prevented from doing so locked her arms to a metal rail. According to The Daily Telegraph, when an attendant eventually succeeded in releasing her she struck him for his pains, and when she was bundled out of the building the crowd which had gathered outside ‘denounced her action in vigorous terms’. In sharp contrast to these unseemly goings-on the outstanding event of the season in an operatic rather than a political sense passed unnoticed. As Caruso took his curtain-call after the last performance of TOSCA no one could know that this was his final bow before the London public; nor indeed could anyone have guessed that after such a row of successes as Muzio had enjoyed, her first Covent Garden season would also turn out to have been her last. She was invited to return in 1915, but as things turned out it was to be five years before another season was mounted there, and inexplicably the post-war management never asked her back.

During the first two years of the war Muzio continued to distinguish herself in Italy. In September 1915 she was reunited with Caruso for two performances of PAGLIACCI in the Teatro Dal Verme under the baton of Toscanini, and the following year she was heard by Gatti-Casazza, the manager of the Met, in a piece called MADAME SANS-GENE by Giordano. Though Gatti made a tentative suggestion to her about singing in New York, he carefully refrained from formulating an actual offer, until he returned to the States and found that he was running into soprano trouble. Two of his stars had become unavailable, Lucrezia Bori because of a throat operation and Emmy Destinn because she was under house arrest in Bohemia for disseminating extreme Czech nationalist views. Gatti turned to Claudia Muzio and on 4 December 1916 she was introduced to the New York public as Tosca, once again sharing the stage with Caruso and Scotti. With her acting as much as with her singing she achieved the feat of rousing the traditionally icy Monday evening public to an unusual pitch of enthusiasm — ‘no finer acting has ever been seen on the Metropolitan stage than that offered by Miss Muzio last night,’ wrote the critic of the Morning Telegraph — and for six years she remained one of the company’s most féted prime donne.

One amusing aspect of Muzio’s appearances both at Covent Garden and at the Met was that although she was unknown to the public she was very well known indeed to many of the people backstage. To them she was Carlo Muzio’s little girl whom they had last seen running around amongst the stacks of scenery, and she was warmly welcomed in her new capacity as star performer. Indeed the Met went so far as to negotiate with the Geneva Opera, where Carlo Muzio was currently working, to have him released from his contract so that he and his wife could accompany Claudia to New York, thus turning the whole occasion into something of a family reunion. Carlo, who was a jolly, chatty fellow, unfortunately died the following year, and thereafter Muzio’s mother, who seems to have been Carlo’s exact opposite, tall, silent and forbidding, became Claudia’s constant companion. Several of Muzio’s colleagues felt that it was her mother’s influence which made her for the next ten years almost a recluse in their midst, the two women habitually taking their meals together in the furthest corner of any hotel dining-room and never even nodding to other members of the company as they came in. Frida Leider, who shared a dressing-room with Muzio in Chicago, has left us an intriguing picture of her arriving at the theatre for rehearsals, going straight to her dressing-room, donning an outfit which she used as a sort of working uniform (including hat and gloves), striding on-stage where she marked through the role standing stock still in front of the prompt box, then changing again and leaving the theatre without a word to anyone. The great Russian bass Alexander Kipnis used to recall how rapidly she would vanish from the theatre after a performance, and she herself was quoted in an interview as saying ‘I love my art and I permit nothing to interfere to its disadvantage. I can’t understand how singers can go to suppers and dinners and receptions and still keep in good trim for their work.’ Up to a point she has my sympathy — one hour in a noisy, smoky restaurant after a performance can put your voice under greater strain than three leading roles on the trot — but most opera singers, especially the Italians, are convivial people, and camaraderie is one of the profession’s chief attractions.

It was doubtless this determination of Muzio’s to keep herself to herself during periods of work which gave rise to some of the strange stories which grew up around her. One writer has left a graphic picture of Muzio spending her spare time in a room ‘from which all light was excluded’, brooding tearfully over the machinations of her rivals both in opera and in love; other witnesses, as we shall see, have presented a far more human and appealing picture. A contributory factor to this air of mystery and contradiction surrounding Muzio lies, I think, in the peculiar circumstances of her recording career. The only records which she made by what one might call the ‘normal’ method were the experimental titles of 1911, when her career had hardly begun, and the group of 1934-5 when it was almost over; during her glory years she sang for the Pathé and Edison companies which used a totally different recording technique known as the ‘hill-and-dale’ method. The effect of this was that once the machines needed to play the ‘hill-and-dales’ had gone out of fashion so too did the recordings which Muzio had made in her prime, and without them it has been hard to appreciate the potent spell which she used to cast over her listeners. Now, however, thanks to the advent of CD, they have become easily accessible and the story they have to tell is one of boundless fascination.

Thirty-seven titles are to be found on Pearl’s two-disc set GEMM CDS 9072, and thirty-five (all but one of them included on the Pearl disc) on an American two-disc set, Cantabile BIM-705-2.* These recordings were all made between 1920 and 1925 and I must immediately emphasise that in terms of hiss and crackle they demand more tolerance from the listener than most of the other CDs to which I refer in this book. Even the experts (and in this instance the Pearl company turned to one of the best) cannot make a ‘hill-and-dale’ sound as innocuous as a ‘normal’ 78, but I would urge all those interested in the intriguing subtleties of operatic interpretation to let their ears become accustomed to the surface noise — imagine that the singer was recording during a hailstorm and frying an egg the while — and allow this compelling artist to speak to them across the years and through the interference. To take one track at random, it would be hard to listen to Muzio’s rendering of the scena ‘Dove son? Donde vengo?’ from Catalani’s LORELEY and fail to recognise the sheer ability which it reveals. The dramatic singing has an arresting impact, the text is projected not merely with clarity but with genuine theatrical flair, the rapid passages are dispatched with sovereign ease and the tone quality is one of total evenness right up from the thrilling chest notes to the brilliant high C. This was the role in which Muzio made her début in the Teatro Colén, Buenos Aires, on 18 June 1919 and so overwhelming was her success that the piece was revived there specially for her in six subsequent seasons. To quote one of the reviews: ‘Outstanding amongst the cast was the new soprano Claudia Muzio. An elegant figure, beautiful posture, expressive gestures and a winning vocal style, all are hers. Her voice, so flexible and well controlled, though there are limits to its volume, is capable through its great brilliance of giving new life to less robust pieces such as this one of Catalani’s.’ To this day no other soprano has held sway over the Argentinian public as Muzio did. Known as ‘La divina Claudia’ or simply ‘La tnica’, she appeared at the Col6n in the course of ten seasons between 1919 and 1934 in no less than twenty-three different operas, including several whose names would mean nothing to the public of today, but which enjoyed considerable popularity as long as Muzio was there to appear in them.

[...] Another role which Muzio introduced to the Met* was Tatiana in EUGENE ONEGIN, with Giuseppe de Luca in the title-role, and her account of the Letter Scene, unfamiliar though it may sound in Italian, is gripping and intense. In music of this sort, with its very direct emotional appeal, she uses no artifice, but sings with her heart on her sleeve — it comes straight from her to you. In more florid pieces — the two TROVATORE arias, for instance, or the Bolero from I VESPRI SICILIANI — it is inevitable that one should admire the technique as well as the content, but even there the virtuosity never becomes an end in itself. In his review of Muzio’s first Tosca at the Met the critic Richard Aldrich wrote ‘It was to be noticed last night that she was always willing to sacrifice vocal display to the need of colouring a phrase to suit the dramatic intention of the moment’, and that does indeed appear to have been part of her artistic creed. It is _ also the clue to one of her outstanding virtues as an artist, her knack of shedding light on everything she sings, so that the old and trite can sound suddenly new and intriguing.

[...] Another of the New York critics, the representative of the Evening Sun, waxed lyrical about Muzio at her Met début, and he, too, made some interesting points. ‘She was the first Italian woman of importance that New York has heard in the one allItalian melodrama of Puccini.' [...]

But Muzio really was Tosca. Youth, that gem above rubies, shone like a Kohinoor in her modest crown. The drama, for sheer realism of actuality, had not been so visualised in years before.’ I do not know who it was who first bestowed on Muzio the soubriquet of ‘the Duse of Song’,* but it would not have clung to her as it did unless it had hit the nail on the head. Again and again the use of her huge dark Italian eyes, her elegant gestures and the intensity of her stage persona are singled out by the critics for as much praise as her actual singing. She was an impressive figure — at five foot nine inches tall enough, indeed, to be self-conscious about it, especially as so many of her regular partners, Gigli, Schipa, Martinelli and others, were noticeably shorter — and she possessed the ability to create an atmosphere of place and period in her performances. This partly came, no doubt, from the thoroughness with which she researched her roles. For her Tosca costumes she sought out those which Sarah Bernhardt had worn for the original Sardou play and had copies made; and when she was preparing the last of her new roles, Cecilia in Refice’s opera of that name, she read everything she could find about the life of Saint Cecilia, visited the church built over the saint’s old home and the catacombs where her statue lies, and based her costumes on portraits of her in various stained-glass windows. There was, however, much more to Muzio’s impact on stage than these external considerations. She carried with her the aura of the tragedy queen, and I remember a great British connoisseur of opera, Rupert Bruce-Lockhart, once telling me that when the curtain went up on the last act of Muzio’s LA TRAVIATA ‘you could almost smell the sick-room’.

[...] During the period represented by these recordings Muzio’s professional calendar underwent an important change. When she returned to the Met in January 1922 after one of her sojourns in South America she found that much had altered. For six years she had been Caruso’s most regular partner and now he was gone. His place as the company’s leading box-office attraction had been taken by the newly imported Maria Jeritza, who was, both as a performer and as a person, the very antithesis of Claudia Muzio. No longer feeling at home at the Met Muzio managed to get on the wrong side of Gatti-Casazza, who complained to his opposite number at La Scala that Muzio’s South American and Mexican triumphs had turned her head, and that now, unable to bear playing second fiddle to Jeritza, she, who had always been so obliging, had taken to presenting him with ‘tantrums, whims, long faces, rebellious attitudes worthy of a prima donna of forty years ago’. He did not re-engage her, and she transferred her allegiance to Chicago where she shared pride of place with the Scottish lyric soprano Mary Garden, another renowned singing actress, and the Polish dramatic soprano Rosa Raisa, famous for her clarion top notes. Despite the competition of these two established favourites Muzio had no difficulty in winning a secure position in the hearts of her new public, and she remained with the Chicago company until its collapse in 1932.

We remembered Claudia Muzio’s exceptional beauty of voice and gifts of temperament before she won for herself solid renown and substantial wealth in America. We have looked forward to her return, and now we can affirm that no damage has befallen her beyond the ocean, but that, on the contrary, her original gifts now bear the hallmark of perfection. Traviata sung by Muzio represents exquisite musical enjoyment, and it will long remain in the mind.

[covid-safer-hotties]

By Michael T. Kelly

On June 12, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul expressed support for a mask ban on subways and at protests while other politicians in New York City, Los Angeles and North Carolina are considering or have already passed laws that ban masks in public spaces. Disability, civil liberties and other activists have raised alarm regarding how mask bans, even with formal exemptions for health and religious reasons, offer no guarantee of fair enforcement and can stigmatize masking in general during an ongoing pandemic. This said, I argue that we should oppose mask bans due to two vital functions.

Firstly, banning masks will enable easier surveillance of oppressed groups. Surveillance technology to catch protesters has increased around the world in light of the visible outpouring of support for the pro-Palestine movement. Additionally, activists have used masks to protect themselves from repression, surveillance and doxing by right-wing provocateurs.

To quell campus movements, police and administrators have threatened protesters in Florida, Ohio and Texas with arrest for wearing masks. Students at several colleges face code of conduct charges for pro-Palestine protests, and there has been explicit targeting on prospects for future employment and student loan forgiveness. Indeed, these acts are consistent with the United States’ long record of state surveillance against Black, Indigenous, civil rights and anti-imperialist groups.

Secondly, mask bans downplay COVID-19 and thus avoid its social and political lessons. COVID-19 has been a world health crisis, taking the lives of at least seven million people globally and 1.2 million people in the U.S. COVID infections have risen in 38 states this summer, and some hospitals and venues have even reinstated mask mandates. Long COVID remains a widespread illness, affecting 6.8% of U.S. adults with fatigue, blood clots, lung, heart and neurological issues.

The first lesson of COVID some politicians are eager to bury is that combatting a contagious, airborne respiratory virus is inherently collective and interdependent. It requires a state-directed public health response. Discourses of individual responsibility, “choice” or risk assessment are ill-suited: Is the choice to not mask based on accurate information? Does this choice impinge on other people’s freedom to inhabit public space? Would a mandate affirm a social right to protect oneself and others from illness and make spaces more accessible?

While many people in the U.S. may have had COVID and been asymptomatic or recovered, this is simply not the case for many immunocompromised people, who have suffered isolation, hospitalization and death at significantly higher rates. As disability justice authors have long pointed out, people with disabilities always face the burden of adjusting their lives against an assumed, ableist normal. No assurance of masking effectively endangers many immunocompromised and high-risk people. Under the social model of disability, institutional neglect to enforce COVID mitigation is what creates disability as a form of social oppression.

The activist movements some politicians now condemn have led the way in public health practice. Participants at the Columbia University student encampment wore masks, while people with disabilities and activists have engaged in education and tough conversations regarding the importance of masking, even in leftist spaces.

Also, because COVID is a world-scale problem, it requires international cooperation that would weaken U.S. military, economic and geopolitical hegemony. In 2020, the U.S. and European Union blocked a proposal at the World Trade Organization to waive intellectual property (IP) protections so Global South nations could begin building productive capacity for vaccines and medical technology. Intellectual property regimes and patents have been a mainstay of U.S. policy since World War II through trade agreements and multilateral banking institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Patent holders can hoard technology and resources that Global South nations might otherwise access freely or more cheaply. This financial power allows the U.S. to impose unilateral economic sanctions on official enemy states – Venezuela, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Nicaragua and Zimbabwe – which block medicine, food and technology, harming the population. Moves away from masking and COVID awareness further downplay the ongoing urgency to end IP and sanctions regimes for the sake of global public health.

Thus, structural changes to U.S. society are needed to address the underlying social conditions that spread illness. We can learn from the 1951 Civil Rights Congress’ We Charge Genocide petition that defined genocide as the “willful creation of conditions making for premature death, poverty and disease.”

On housing, failure to extend eviction moratoria in 2021 – a gift to landlords and real estate capital who treat homes as financial assets or sources of rent revenue – led to over 10,000 additional deaths. On criminal justice, there were calls to decarcerate as prisons are incubators of COVID, and continue questioning the social function of prisons at all. On employment, vulnerability to COVID in the workplace helped catalyze a wave of labor organizing. By downplaying COVID and banning masks, its most visible reminder, politicians help bury these important lessons.

Universities remind students and staff that their policies are consistent with county, state and CDC legal guidelines. But adherence to the U.S. Government’s public health orders is not sufficient when laws are inadequate or unjust. We can and should define our own ethos around disability, national and social liberation. Mask mandates, political education on who is vulnerable as well as public health measures to provide masks can enlist, educate and organize people toward that political project. Legislation that does not protect the vulnerable needs opposition. People should be enabled and encouraged to think for themselves when it comes to contemplating the extent to which lawmakers have the responsibility to protect their constituency.

[fandomtrumpshate]

2024 Supported Org: Razom

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 triggered a massive humanitarian crisis. In the yearly two years since that initial military assault, more than ten million Ukrainians have been displaced: nearly 6.5 million are living as refugees throughout Europe, while almost 4 million remain within their country's borders but are displaced from their homes due to ongoing violence and the destruction of basic infrastructure.

Although the war was initially met with a near-global outpouring of support for Ukraine, other more recent crises have captured the attention of activists and humanitarians around the world, and the support and resources that Ukraine so desperately needs have been drying up.

Razom provides critical humanitarian war relief and recovery to address the most urgent needs as they evolve via an end-to-end procurement and delivery system that places all aid directly into the hands of the people in Ukraine. They also help local Ukrainian volunteer organizations provide immediate humanitarian assistance to the people affected by the war, working with trusted organizations that understand the local needs firsthand and have a proven track record of humanitarian service. They advocate for Ukraine by educating about policies that strengthen and support Ukraine. They have built trusted connections with civic leaders, activists, and elected officials in Ukraine and the US to relay critical information to the public, media, businesses, and government officials.  

Razom means “together” in Ukrainian, the name serving as a constant reminder of the community that it takes to create, build and do, to stay the path towards a more prosperous and democratic Ukraine.  

You can support Razom as a creator in the 2024 FTH auction (or as a bidder, when the time comes to donate for the auctions you’ve won.)  

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: France 24

Published: Jan 7, 2025

France on Tuesday marked 10 years since the terrorist shooting that targeted satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. President Emmanuel Macron and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo led commemorations at the newspaper's former offices, where two al Qaeda-linked gunmen killed a dozen people in January 2015.  

France marked on Tuesday 10 years since an Islamist attack on the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper that shocked the country and led to fierce debate about freedom of expression and religion.

President Emmanuel Macron and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo led commemorations at the site of the weekly's former offices, which were stormed by two masked al Qaeda-linked gunmen with AK-47 assault rifles.

Macron and Hidalgo also remembered Ahmed Merabet, a Muslim police officer guarding the offices who was executed at point-blank range as he begged for his life in one of the most shocking images recorded of the tragedy.

Twelve people died in the attacks, including eight editorial staff, while a separate but linked hostage-taking at a Jewish supermarket in eastern Paris by a third gunman on January 9, 2015, claimed another four lives.

The bloodshed signalled the start of a dark period for France during which extremists inspired by al Qaeda and the Islamic State group repeatedly mounted attacks that set the country on edge and raised religious tensions.

"Today is not necessarily sad," Frederica Wolinksi, the daughter of famed French cartoonist and Charlie Hebdo contributor Georges Wolinski said. "It's good that 10 years later we can still remember those who died on 7 January so well."

A retrospective of Wolinski's work went on display at a Paris gallery at the end of last year in one of several media events, from new books to documentaries, to commemorate the anniversary.

Charlie Hebdo has published a special edition to mark the 10-year anniversary that features a front-page cartoon with the caption "Indestructible!"

In a typically provocative move, the militantly atheist publication also organised a God-themed cartoon contest that invited submissions of the "funniest and meanest" caricatures of religious figures.

"Satire has a virtue that has enabled us to get through these tragic years: optimism," said an editorial by its director Laurent Sourisseau, known as "Riss", who survived the 2015 massacre.

"If you want to laugh, it means you want to live."

The attack on the newspaper by two Paris-born brothers of Algerian descent was said to be revenge for its decision to publish caricatures lampooning the Prophet Mohammed, Islam's most revered figure.

'Je suis Charlie'

The killings fuelled an outpouring of sympathy in France expressed in a wave of "Je Suis Charlie" ("I Am Charlie") solidarity, with many protestors brandishing pencils and pens and vowing not to be intimidated by religious fanatics.

[ Francois Hollande, then president, led a solidarity march in Paris joined by 40 other world leaders days after the 2015 attack. ]

Days after the attack France's then-president François Hollande led a solidarity march in Paris joined by 40 world leaders and millions of protestors in support of free speech.

Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, speaking on RTL Tuesday, acknowledged how far France has come, while warning of the persistent dangers.

“France has rearmed considerably, but the threat is still there,” he said, pointing to both external dangers and the rise of homegrown radicalisation.

“The nature of the threat has changed,” Retailleau added. “It is now primarily endogenous – young individuals radicalised through social media. Last year alone, our services foiled nine attacks, the highest number since 2017.”

The impact of the attacks continued to reverberate beyond France.

On the 10-year anniversary, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that Germany "shares the pain of our French friends".

The "barbaric attack ... targeted our common values of liberty and democracy – which we will never accept", Scholz said in a post in French on X.

Cartoons and controversy

The 10-year anniversary of the killings has lead to fresh introspection in France about the nature of press freedom and the ability of publications such as Charlie Hebdo to blaspheme and ridicule religious figures, particularly Islamic ones.

"Are we all still Charlie?" public broadcaster France 2 will ask in a special debate programme on Tuesday evening, with all major media organisations marking the event in some way.

Left-leaning daily Le Monde said the shock of the killings was comparable to that felt in the United States after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the country.

"How can we not deplore that the 'I am Charlie' has given way to a certain relativism with regards to freedom of expression and blasphemy, in particular among young generations?" it said.

Critics of Charlie Hebdo, foreign and domestic, are often puzzled by its crude humour and deliberately provocative cartoons that regularly incite controversy.

It has been accused of crossing the line into Islamophobia – which it denies – while its decision to repeatedly publish cartoons of Mohammed was seen by some as driving a wedge between the white French population and the country's large Muslim minority.

But a survey carried out by polling group Ifop and published in this week's Charlie Hebdo indicated widespread public support among French people for the freedom of expression to override concern for religious sensibilities.

A total of 76 percent of respondents believed freedom of expression and the freedom to caricature were fundamental rights, and 62 percent thought people had the right to mock religious beliefs.

--

[ "Indestructible!" ]

"If you want to laugh, it means you want to live. Laughing, irony, and caricatures are manifestations of optimism. Whatever happens, dramatic or happy, the desire to laugh will never cease." -- Charlie Hebdo director Riss

[extraordinaryhistories]

#28 - 'Jamila' (non-album track, 1998)

If you love someone, write a song about them. It’s real easy! Pick up a guitar, buy a tape recorder, learn three chords, scrape your fingers over the strings a few times, and sing about how you feel. It matters not whether you have the voice of Pavarotti or of Florence Foster Jenkins – all that matters is the intent. People are mortal, but art will endure long after we pass on; to record and release a song for someone is to let them experience a sliver of eternity. And if you happen to be Sufjan Stevens, twenty-something Australians from the opposite side of the globe will analyse your song decades later.

‘Jamila’ is not the first song that Sufjan wrote about a named individual, and it will certainly not be the last. It is, however, a rare unearthed document of a period in Sufjan’s career where writing about named individuals was just about all he did. ‘Jamila’ was recorded around 1998, which was a transformative year for Sufjan: the final stretch of his time at Hope College coincided with a torrent of musical productivity. To channel that productivity into tangible, skill-based gains, he decided to restrict himself for weeks at a time to writing songs concerning very specific themes. Sufjan has left the overwhelming majority of his work from this era unreleased – understandably so, given how limited his means of recording were back in the four-track days – and as such we are only privy to two of these themes. One was serial killers. The other was, less helpfully, names. Names of family, names of friends, names of strangers who, in an alternate universe, might have been either.

Strike one for the ‘family’ subcategory. The name ‘Jamila’ is an anglicised rendering of Djamilah, one of Sufjan’s sisters. Even ignoring interviews and Tumblr posts, there is plenty of evidence to demonstrate the life-long closeness of the Stevens siblings; observe songs like ‘Sister’ and ‘Djohariah’, or hear their voices wheedle their way through your speakers on ‘Godzukie’. These songs – their tenderness, affections and candour – reveal everything about this difficult family dynamic that Stevens’ biography could, or more. In the face of endless transience and a mother (their mother) who would be in, and out, and in, and out, and in, and out of their lives, it is no wonder that they share between them a bond worthy of encasing in song. Sufjan loves, and loves loving, his sisters. Can you really blame him?

‘Jamila’, unearthed and released by Sufjan in 2013 for his sister’s birthday, is a very simple song. It is short – clocking in at a hair over two minutes – and betrays its shoddy four-track recording in nearly every second; once you notice those astringent slides up and down the strings every time Sufjan changes chords you will never be able to un-notice them. The melody is sunny and endlessly cheerful, its highlights coming in the moments where Sufjan deviates from the main phrase (especially that jazzy little run at 1:45, a carnally satisfying moment). The vocal inflections are hugely indebted to Sufjan’s influences, notably Elliott Smith, in their mixture of nasally highs and obscured whispers. And to underscore all of this, the recording begins with an extended false start that feels less like a deliberate ‘Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream’-esque artistic choice and more like a genuine inability to hit that first chord change on Sufjan’s one-and-only take of the song.

The thing about a song like this is that you would not have it any other way. ‘Jamila’ thrives in its clear-eyed earnestness. It is one of Sufjan’s most honest pieces of music, back in the days when his biggest artistic concerns were remembering chord shapes and figuring out whether ‘sister’ could rhyme with ‘missed her’. The total lack of pretention on display here lends itself so well to a simple, celebratory outpouring of familial love, a folk singer’s ode to one of his life’s greatest joys. Even the violent way that Sufjan rips those chords out of his guitar feels ripe with genuine enthusiasm. Messy, but about the truest possible representation of a young man’s love. Look here, Djamilah, see what I can do!

Neither do the lyrics hide much in the way of subtext. These are adorable couplets that capture real feelings. A couple lines are clouded by odd rhymes (‘Eleven, like heaven’ is a lyric that remains more or less indecipherable), but there is no need to interpret ‘My sister, I missed her / She's always a good friend of mine’ or ‘Write her a letter, a letter / To tell her that I am just fine’. Real affection, delivered sincerely. The song’s cutest moment, though, is ‘My sister, my sister / She'll keep me from liquor and crime’ – both because the notion of sibling-as-moral anchor is beautiful and pretty much the platonic ideal of sisterhood, but also because of the implication that ‘liquor and crime’ are the worst evils that Sufjan can imagine. Absolutely not beating the ‘flower child’ allegations there.

By the time Sufjan finally released ‘Jamila’ – post-Age of Adz, pre-Carrie and Lowell – his art had long since matured. Heartbreak, sex, illness and death had now crept their way into his songs, and his images and turns of phrase had become fractally nuanced. He had become a better writer. But I don’t think he could have put together a song like ‘Jamila’ in 2013 – not with that same sort of innocent love spilling out of every lyric. Growing up necessitates certain corners of the self fading away, and as such, I’m glad Sufjan thought to immortalise Djamilah in song at the moment he did. Youth isn’t always wasted on the young, you know.

[sinceileftyoublog]

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Live Show Review: 4/30, Miller High Life Theatre, Milwaukee

Nick Cave

BY JORDAN MAINZER

At some point during Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' performance of "O Children" on Wednesday at the Miller High Life Theatre, my wife leaned over to me and asked whether his music was "religious." Her question was likely ingrained in her preconceptions of Cave as leader of a goth pack, in contrast with what was occurring before her eyes: a pseudo gospel show. Cave's songs have always concerned life, death, love, sex, and violence, I remarked--about as biblical as it gets--something that's remained consistent among his flirtations with no wave, art rock, blues, post-punk, and sleazebag garage rock. But her question got me thinking about the connection between their latest album Wild God (PIAS) and the sermon-like atmosphere of its tour. Wild God explores hope on the other side of--even because of--time spent grieving tragedy. Here was Cave, more explicitly than ever, aiming to uplift the audience.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Cave

From the get-go, you could tell that the crowd was ready to receive Cave's preaching. "Bring your spirit down," they chanted along with Warren Ellis and the band's backing vocalists (Janet Ramus (aka Cookie), T Jae Cole, Miça Townsend, and Wendi Rose). They reached out to touch Cave's hand as he traversed the edges of the audience during "From Her to Eternity"; unwilling to totally shed his tendency to tease before exploding, Cave quickly tapped the sea of crowd hands, like we was testing the temperature of a pan that had recently come out of the oven. Then, he let loose, peacocking across the stage during "Tupelo", rushing into the aisles in the middle of "Conversion". The Bad Seeds admirably built up the latter, allowing us to rest before its eruptive declaration that we were "touched by the spirit / touched by the flame."

Warren Ellis

The Bad Seeds

Thankfully, just as Wild God is not a record that's blindly optimistic, Cave & The Bad Seeds structured their setlist to follow up spirituality with realism. "Joy", in which the refreshingly hilarious, yet surreal image of "a ghost in giant sneakers" tells Cave “We’ve all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy," led into Skeleton Tree's eternal "I Need You". But instead of The Bad Seeds playing something similar to the studio version of "I Need You", expansive 6 minutes of steady percussion, gentle vibraphones, humming synthesizer, and comforting wordless backing vocals, Cave sat alone at the piano, outpouring over an odd time signature. The performance embodied the inherent rawness of the song, recorded after the tragic death of Cave's son Arthur. He repeated the refrain, "Just breathe," till he was out of breath as the lights gradually turned to black, the ultimate evidence of wounds never fully healing.

The Bad Seeds

Ellis

On Wednesday, I was blown away by the symbiotic relationship between Cave and the audience. Displaying complete trust, he guided the crowd in the complex clap-along during a sped-up "The Weeping Song", at various points straight up handing the microphone to folks in the front row so they could broadcast the sound of their neighbors clapping. Throughout the night, Cave introduced songs as being, "about a girl," yet their general nature rendered them universal. "I wrote this for you, I was looking at your face," he even joked directly to someone about "Song of the Lake". When another person inquired whether "Bright Horses", too, was about a girl, Cave replied, bluntly, "It's about us." The entire night seemingly headed towards a solo piano performance of "Into My Arms", from the devastating, minimal 1997 opus The Boatman's Call. In a way, it felt like he was reminding us, as he's done a thousand times before, of his ethos, once and for all answering my wife's question in the process. "I don't believe in an interventionist God," he sang, later clarifying, "But I believe in love / And I know that you do, too." Such a worldview transcends labels and has the potential to unite, and sometimes, it takes the person who has wallowed in darkness to help us to see the world a little bit brighter.

Cave

[fromgreecetoanarchy]

[ 📽️New Video] 🔴 Athens ablaze: From mourning to a massive riot, in the biggest protest ever recorded in Greece

On February 28, 2025, Greece witnessed an unprecedented wave of protests, as millions of people took to the streets in cities across the country and abroad, driven by grief, anger, and the urgent call for justice.

The demonstrations, the largest in at least the last 50 years and in some cities the biggest ever recorded in history, were sparked by the tragic train crash at Tempi, two years earlier on the night of February 28, 2023, which claimed the lives of 57 people, most of them students. The disaster was not just a loss; it was a devastating symbol of systemic failure, one that exposed the deep cracks in the country’s privatized railway system and, by extension, its political structures.

As protesters gathered in Athens' iconic Syntagma Square, and in towns and villages nationwide, their message was clear: this was more than an anniversary of a tragedy. It was a cry against a perceived cover-up of this mass murder by the ruling party and the governments before them, as well as a cry for accountability from a government they felt had neglected the safety of the peoples and failed to learn from its mistakes. The rallying cry was simple yet powerful: “Justice for Tempi.”

Two years after the crash, the pain, anguish and anger of those who lost loved ones, and of a population disillusioned with a government that almost completely failed to modernize the country’s infrastructure, reached a boiling point. The protests soon turned violent. Clashes broke out between riot police and demonstrators, as the frustration over the lack of meaningful action from the authorities boiled over. Petrol bombs were thrown, and fires lit, as the capital echoed with the pain of those who felt that injustice rules.

What unfolded in the streets of Greece that day was not merely an outpouring of grief but a profound rejection of a political system that had, in the eyes of many, failed. The cries for justice were not just for the 57 who died in Tempi, but for a place in the map that demanded change—not just in its railways, but in its institution, politics and everyday life.

The protests laid bare a deep crisis of confidence in Greece's political and judicial systems, with many people voicing their frustration over the lack of transparency and accountability. But it also spoke to something deeper: a population that feels its cries for justice have fallen on deaf ears, a society where the powerful are untouchable, while the lives of ordinary people are left to be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency and profit.

The Tempi train crash was a tragedy that cut deep, but the protests that followed are a reminder that the pain has not been forgotten. They are a testament to the determination of those who refuse to allow their grief to be silenced. No justice, no peace

[krispyweiss]

Saxophonist Casey Benjamin Dies at 45

- “I’m forever honored to have shared the stage and my life with him,” Robert Glasper says

Saxophonist and multi-instrumentalst Casey Benjamin, best known for his work with the Robert Glasper Experiment, has died.

Benjamin was 45 and was recovering from surgery when he died March 30, his family said.

“We are still gathering all the facts,” Benjamin’s family said. “We have been deeply touched by the outpouring of love and support from family, friends and Casey’s esteemed music community. Casey stayed true to the art of his music, and the energy of his spirit will live on in eternity.”

Benjamin was “one of the most gifted and talented beings ever,” Glasper told radio station WRTI.

“There is no Robert Glasper Experiment without him,” Glasper said. “The world lost a giant and I lost a brother. I’m forever honored to have shared the stage and my life with him.”

Glasper’s label, Blue Note Records, eulogized Benjamin as “a beautiful soul and singular musician” who was “integral” to the Experiment’s sound. Butcher Brown, meanwhile, called the late musician “one of the greatest of our time.

“Thank you for all of the inspiration, King,” the band wrote on social media.

Benjamin’s session and touring work - on sax, flute and electronics - included gigs with Blackout, Q Tip, Solange and Pusha T, among others.

“Rest in power, Casey Benjamin,” Jeff Coffin of Dave Matthews Band said. “You will be deeply missed, brother.“

4/2/24

[greensparty]

Remembering David Johansen and Joey Molland

Sad weekend for music fans as we lost two legends. I'm listening to a ton of New York Dolls and Bandfinger this week! Here is my combined remembrance:

Remembering David Johansen 1950-2025

Sad news that singer / actor David Johansen has died at 75. Just a few weeks ago he announced that he had terminal cancer and needed some financial assistance with medical bills and there was an outpouring of support.

He was the singer for seminal early punk pioneers New York Dolls. If you haven’t listened to the band’s 1973 self-titled album, go listen to it right now! It completely laid the ground work for punk and metal that followed. Saddest of all is that you look at that lineup of NYD and now they are all gone: Johnny Thunders died in 1991, Jerry Nolan died in 1992, Arthur "Killer" Kane died in 2004, Sylvain Sylvain died in 2021 and now Johansen. After the band's initial run until 1975, Johansen began a solo career. He was friends with Aerosmith and Joe Perry played on Johansen's 1978 debut. One song that Steven Tyler was co-writing with Johansen "Sight for Sore Eyes" made its way onto Draw the Line. Great song! They were also intertwined in that Johansen's first wife Cyrinda Fox and he married in 1977 and in 1978, she left him for Steven Tyler (their daughter is Mia Tyler). In the 1980s, Johansen reinvented himself as Buster Poindexter, a swing singer completely different from NYD. He made multiple appearances on SNL and had a hit with "Hot Hot Hot", which gets played at just about ever wedding and bar mitzvah you go to even today, and "Zat You Santa Claus?". In 2004, NYD reunited to the surprise of fans everywhere. In 2004, I attended Little Steven’s Underground Garage Festival at Randall’s Island in NYC and the newly reunited New York Dolls were one of the headliners. It was about two months after bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane had died (check out the documentary about him New York Doll if you haven’t seen it), but the band sounded great. Glad I got to see them with Johansen and Sylvain when I did. The NYD actually put out more albums from the 00s to 10s than they did in the 70s. Kind of cool to see they had a second act.

Johansen and Scorsese in 2023

In the mid-80s, Johansen began a long acting career as well. Beginning with an appearance on Miami Vice, as the Priest in Jonathan Demme's Married to the Mob, the Ghost of Christmas Past in Scrooged, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (I can never un-see his final scene in the Cat from Hell segment), 200 Cigarettes, and on A Very Murray Christmas. In 2023, Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi did an excellent documentary about Johansen Personality Crisis: One Night Only, which I included in my Best Documentaries of 2023 list.

The link above is the obit from Hollywood Reporter.

Remembering Joey Molland 1947-2025

Musician Joey Molland has died at 77. He was the singer / guitarist / keyboardist for Badfinger. Much like Johansen and the New York Dolls, Molland was the last of the classic early 70s lineup.

The band started out as The Iveys. Then in 1968, they signed to The Beatles’ record label Apple Records. They were pals with The Beatles and Paul McCartney even collaborated on some of their tunes. Molland joined when they became Badfinger in 1969. Between 1969 and 1972, they had a string of power pop hits: “come and get it”, “no matter what”, “day after day” and of course, “baby blue”. Check out No Dice and Straight Up if you haven't. The band broke up following leader Peter Ham’s suicide in 1975. They’ve reunited here and there since then. Molland started Joey Molland's Badfinger in 1981. I'm kinda kicking myself for having missed seeing him live when I had the chance.

It is also worth noting that in addition to Badfinger, Molland was a part of George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh, played acoustic guitar on Harrison's All Things Must Pass album (check out my review of the 2021 reissue), and he also played on John Lennon's Imagine album too. Not too bad to appear on both Harrison and Lennon's best solo albums!

Molland

In 2013, after Badfinger's "Baby Blue" was featured in the finale of Breaking Bad, I wrote a piece (an early blog piece here) praising Badfinger. To my surprise, Badfinger actually liked that on Facebook! In 2021, I got to review Badfinger's No Matter What - Revisiting the Hits, a re-recording of hits with various guests.

The link above is the obit from Ultimate Classic Rock.