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Robyn Hitchcock (full band) - Cambridge, Portland Arms - 6 September, 2024.complete.
"The Disciple of Psychedelia"
I read, copy & paste the entire article by Antonio Bacciocchi:


Robyn Hitchcock has always been a faithful disciple of the brief epic and sonic attitude of Syd Barrett, which permeated his first adventure with the Soft Boys and his subsequent solo incarnation.

It’s no surprise, then, that his autobiography 1967 (published by Hellnation Libri, translated by Carlo Bordone) revolves almost exclusively around that fateful 1967 that sublimated the psychedelic period, and around his fourteen years, when he discovered and fell in love with Bob Dylan, the Incredible String Band and, inevitably, the Beatles, in a sort of ramshackle yet fascinating coming-of-age novel.

The preadolescent flashes are blinding snapshots we have all more or less experienced: “I can’t wait for my voice to drop, to grow a respectable amount of fuzz, and to finally leave behind the creaking realm of childhood.” Alien entities such as David Bowie and Jimi Hendrix arrive too, sparking the ongoing change even further: “I am a teenager on fire, Christ almighty, this is music that makes you levitate.”

Clothes become bolder, hair grows longer: “I’m learning that the barber is the natural enemy of freedom.” Even though the transition period is still long and complex: “A culture where everyone is male and women are another species; they only exist behind glass, like a Mona Lisa. There are people, and then there are females.”

Suddenly a record player and a guitar appear, and nothing is ever the same again: “I’ve got my guitar and my cousin, bless him, lends me one of those life-changing objects: a battery-powered turntable.”

Even the much desired physical aspect changes: “I’m six feet tall with a Beatles mop-top”, but also a later, illuminating realization, one many can relate to, that remains the cornerstone of his existence: “I’m a teenager, and I’ll remain so for the rest of my life.”

He starts playing along with the much beloved records of his new idols: “My instinct was to play guitar long before I knew how to actually play it.”

In the end, Robyn would live off his music, travel the world, record excellent albums, and give interviews to the very magazines he frantically leafed through as a teenager, following that “spirit of 1967” from which he began. “All told, I’m grateful that the stopped clock of 1967 still chimes inside me. It gave me a livelihood for life.”

A simply delightful book. Il discepolo della psichedelia | il manifesto vissuto: corso: allungano: complesso: prima: vita: fisico: esistenza: idoli:

MONI OVADIA: HYPOCRITES, THEY PRETEND THE ONLY ONE TO BLAME IS NETANYAHU, AFTER 77 YEARS OF PERSECUTIONS TO EXPEL AND ANNIHILATE THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE
Gaza, il durissimo discorso di Moni Ovadia alla manifestazione pro Palestina
It’s too easy to put all the blame on Netanyahu alone: as if he were the exception, rather than the rule (the violent power that has been working for almost a century to expel and annihilate the Palestinians). “Netanyahu is the bad guy? And what did the others do? The Nakba was orchestrated by Ben Gurion, by Golda Meir. Ben Gurion had 500 Palestinian villages destroyed with a wave of his hand. Every trick was used to plunder the Palestinian people. There was a project that seemed beautiful, the reforestation of that land: it was called Keren Kemet Israel, but the truth is they wanted to hide all the devastation and bury the dead who could not be acknowledged.”

The voice of the Sephardic Jew Salomon Ovadia, known to all as Moni, rises up forcefully, as in a Greek theater: he expresses pain, indignation, pity. The outrage at the ongoing bloodshed rivals the fury at the whitewashed tombs: the European governments bowed to their master, the dormant citizens watching, unmoved, as an entire population is slaughtered, without anesthesia. The great Jewish intellectual warns: “Use the word genocide clearly, serenely—because that’s what this is. And it’s so plain that the first to break the taboo, in the Israeli milieu, was the top Holocaust expert in Israel, Professor Ramos Goldberg, who in a 20-line text repeated the word ‘genocide’ six times, and the last time wrote ‘intentional genocide.’”

Moni Ovadia insists: “It wasn’t a mistake, a loss of control. No, that was the plan: to erase a people, by any means possible; deporting Palestinians, destroying all their culture, all their education.” No discounts: “It goes right back to the origins, the problem: because when you present yourself with the slogan ‘a land without a people for a people without a land’ it means you want to get rid of the people you don’t see.” The people you don’t want to see, the ones you wish had never existed. The people you are literally erasing, even with the mocking mirage of the two states: with Gaza now reduced to rubble and the West Bank itself being devoured day by day by the savagery of the settlers.

One of them, the fanatic Yigal Amir, went so far as to kill Rabin, the only Israeli leader willing to make peace. “A well-constructed plot”: orchestrated by “the scum of the ultra-reactionary right,” unchecked by “a so-called left that is helpless, inept, lying, hypocritical, and complicit,” which has ceased to demand truth and justice. For Moni Ovadia, we have plunged “into the most atrocious barbarity”: the ongoing extermination tortures every day the remaining living consciences and condemns those who stay silent out of cowardice and opportunism.

“Humanity took centuries, millennia, to arrive at the declaration of rights...” Netanyahu: terra: greco: ebreo: genocidio: Ovadia: scopo: sconti: problema: Stati:

Carol Kaye has just turned 90, and with the resume she has, it’s only right to pay her the proper tribute. Carol Kaye 'BassCatch' Since she began her career in 1957, she has played bass and guitar on more than 10,000 records and with many pop rock legends, effortlessly moving from Frank Zappa (on Freak Out) to Frank Sinatra, from the Beach Boys to the Monkees, from the soundtracks of Quincy Jones, Henry Mancini and Lalo Schifrin all the way to Stevie Wonder, Barbra Streisand, The Supremes, Simon & Garfunkel, and on an endless number of hit songs (from These Boots Are Made for Walking by Nancy Sinatra to Time Is on My Side by Irma Thomas, Tainted Love by Gloria Jones, Do I Love You (Indeed I Do) by Frankie Wilson—the Northern Soul anthem par excellence—and the famous theme of the Batman TV series).

You can read the rest of the article here In studio con Carol Kaye | il manifesto