You do not defeat terrorism by rewarding terrorists, regardless of how many bleeding heart liberals argue otherwise. Want to know where that flawed approach leads to? Read UNIONISM DECAYED 1997-2007 - It's my first book and it explains what happens when you seeek to appease terrorists and call it peace. It's available right now for ATW readers so make sure you get your copy by emailing the editor! This is the book that dissents from the herd mentality that doing wrong can lead to being right. It doesn't and this book spells out WHY.
"I do remember... the corridors of Broadcasting House were strewn with empty champagne bottles. I'll always remember that", Jane Garvey, BBC Five Live, May 10th, 2007, recalling May 2nd, 1997.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008 at 10:07PM Pay attention to the second sentence. Over the years, the ATW roll of commentary honour has seen quite a few names come and go and I value each in their own way. I trust that our East Coast Mr Mahons will resume normal service asap. This election may be over, the issues aren't.
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Reader Comments (53)
it makes no sense for him to go
LOL, nice title David.
Or: "It ain't over till it's over here"
David I wondered how long it would take for you to post Elvis the terrible
Cheers David - I got more attention for leaving the scene than John McCain. I knew you'd get the post exit title from Elvis the C - searchin for a light in the darkness of insanity - not a bad line from a great song.
Elvis the Terrible?
What's so bad about Elvis Costello?
It's not like he's Abba or something like that.
Phantom,
Abba had a significant influence on Elvis Costello's biggest hit "Oliver's Army" with the distinctive piano flourish stolen from Dancing Queen. Now, what were you trying to say...;-)
Abba is the Antichrist. I can never retreat from this position!
Phantom,
Wait until Friday Jukebox, your soul needs purged of this terrible hatred..
I will seek to form an Anti Abba Alliance, following in the footsteps of other great moral leaders and hereby put out a request for allies.
Surely this is a matter on which all men of good will can agree.Speak now by signing or scrawling your name on the undersigned or forever hold your peace!!
Phantom
If we're choosing sides , I'm with the anti-Christ !
Et tu, Colm?
Patty, mahons, Daphne, percy, noel, maggie, alison,pinky--need response chop chop
I need your support on this one. Large cash bribes are not out of the question. I'm running a clean crusade here.
Phantom - To not like Abba is to not like pop music.
To not like Abba is not not like Milli Vanilli and all the other formulaic fakes to come down the pike.
ETT (as he is known in my house) Had one good song only because he had Robert Wyatt singing on it - Shipbuilding - watch and enjoy a great vocalalist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh6IwFhG8G8
Hear the Sceeming Blue Messiahs sing 'I CAN SPEAK AMERICAN' to 4 Stanley Kubrick film clips. Turn up the volume and dance......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-hDN-WHVu8
CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & FRANK ZAPPA - ORANGE CLAW HAMMER:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo_ZTbe4riI&feature=related
Screaming Blue Messiahs - Lie Detector
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwu2AtA7a_o
Phantom they can keep AbbA
All kidding aside, I love music and I really like a great deal of pop music. There's a lot of good pop music.
As Paul McCartney would be the first to tell you, the Beatles were pop music, and that's as impressive and lasting a body of work over the past half century as you'll ever find.
My beef with groups like Abba is that they hit upon a formula, that once found, was never really deviated from. They kept churning out bad sausage because they found that they could keep selling it. They never challenged themselves, and they surely never challenged their audience in any way. They "mailed it in" because they could.
Most current music that gets to the big media and maybe most music in any era, is like that. Boy bands, Hairdo bands, American Idols, Abba, Milli Vanilli. It's a desert on your radio and on mine.
Its pretty sad. If you want to hear good music, go to your local pub with a live band- the odds are much better.
Phantom
Abba are nothing like Milli Vanilli at all. Nor is it the case that they hit on a bland formula. OK they weren't experimental, but does avery act need to be. They wrote sublime songs with near perfect tunes attached and kept that level of excellence throughout their career. They broke up a quarter of a century ago yet can still sell in their millions because their songs have a timeless appeal (much more so outside the States) and even millions of youngsters who weren't born in their heyday will have learnt to love their music through the musical and film Mamma Mia. If you don't like their music fine, but it certainly isn't the formulaic candy dross that was Milli Vanilli and which lasted all of 5 minutes.
Phantom,
I LOVE ABBA.
(Colm explained their appeal much better than I can).
Dancing around the kitchen, mop in hand, with Dancing Queen playing LOUD, is great fun. Driving up the M1, or any motorway, with T'he Winner Takes it All" blaring, is steering wheel bashing worthy.
ABBA and Barry White are my favourite driving music.
Pinky,
"Barry White [...] favourite driving music."
That is so very wrong.
Pinky
You're half right. Barry White was great.
Colm
Hey, that's what makes horse races.If they're not Milli Vanilli, I'll say that they're the Monkees, only without the charm.
--
Define " driving " !
Define " driving " !
A Car!!! -)
Frank, don't knock it til you tried it.
I've always associated highway driving with the Doors for some reason.
A spring day,an open road, and "LA Woman" on loud. Dare you to do that and not drive 80 mph.
Pinky, I think that is how this guy got started.
LOL Frank, LOL
'That ain't no way to treat a lady"
Frank
Maybe Pinky used driving as a euphemism when referring to Barry White's music.
Colm,
Wicked!
Colm,
Wicked!
David H Vance ( H is a guess)!!!!!
Abba were utterly brilliant. "Dancing Queen" is one of my all-time favourite pop songs, not least because, hidden beneath the ostensible "up" melody, there's a strange hint of melancholy, a sense of "time squandered" contained in it's lovely, breathtaking "rise and fall" chorus. It sounds so effortless on the record, but by God, I only wish I had the talent to come up with a melody anything like that.
And it's not completely true to say that they merely "hit upon a formula and held it there". OK, they were a mainstream pop-band, their aim was always to create accessible chart hits, but towards their later years, their tunes experimented with bleak minor chord progressions (eg, the bridge from "Summer Night City", and that from "Lay All Your Love On Me", and the whole of "The Day Before You Came" - an awesomely tense song).
Tom,
The melancholia is the biggest attraction for me to Abba. The lyrics and the chord progressions are seriously sad - check out Knowing Me Knowning You, The Winner takes it all. Oh - and Anna did look pretty appealing to a teenage moi!
PS - Elvis Costello did a great live version of KMKY back in 1986 where he intensified the pain in the words, Sublime, I remember it well.
Agreed, DV. And "Dance (While The Music Still Goes On)" also deserves a mention in this respect. To say nothing of "Winner Takes It All"....(excuse me, I need to find a handkerchief...)
I think we're all in danger of making Phantom ill :)
Tom,
Dance (while the music still goes on) is a pop classic - criminally neglected. I would also point to SOS and The Day before you came - as wistful, reflective - and unlike so much else of other pop music. Benny and Bjorn were brilliant writers, and the girls sang like angels whilst exciting the devil in young males.
The other day, I went to McDonalds and had a Value Meal. It was utterly brilliant. The Big Mac is one of my all-time favorite culinary delights, not least because, hidden beneath the ostensible "special sauce" , there are notes of licorice, a breath of the high sierra of the American West, a sense of "time squandered" as I had to wait four minutes for them to cook the damned thing. It looks so effortless to do, but I'd give every last one of them restaurants six Michelin stars, or seven maybe.By God, I only wish I had the talent to come up with a dish like that on this Thanksgiving Eve night.
McDonalds makes better food than Abba makes songs. So there!!
I think Phantom as a hormone filled teenager wrote a suggestive fan letter to the Abba girls , and has been embittered by the brush off reply ever since ;)
Getting back to topic, though, I have to admit that I was a bit nonplussed by Mahons saying (in so many words) that now that Obama had been elected, he felt that "his job was done" and that he had no further reason to continue posting. Hmmmph..that's the attitude of a paid-up party political election campaigner, rather than that of an all-round interested blogger/political commentator.
There's a sense in which Mahons was a very slippery customer indeed. All that "Ooooohh, now who shall I vote for? I just can't decide at all" stuff at the start, all very non-partisan, as if hoping to represent the views of the undecided, intelligent voter. Then, just a few weeks before the election, a decision: It's Obama ("trust me, folks, I've truly had a long, hard struggle in coming to this decision, and I've weighed up all the options in a totally unbiased way...") But now that he's been elected, it's a sudden case of "right, OK, job done, C U later, all, I'm outta here".
Bulls**t, man, I see right through that card game. How much were you paid?
No, wait, I take some of that back. Mahons wasn't being paid, his position and postings came all from himself.However, I still regard this with a lump of cynicism.
Ah but Tom how do you in the space of half an hour suddenly and decisively change your mind about Mahons potential financial incentives. Are you an MI6 officer ? Have you hacked into the Democrat party finances and searched for payments to Mahons ? Have I just exposed a new Watergate Scandal . Are you working for the Russians ? Have I watched too many episodes of Spooks ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS2Fve72AZg&feature=related
Frank, just for you! Now just you try NOT to dance!
It's a National security issue, Colm, I can say no more at this moment. Harry wouldn't approve. It's all part of operation Sugar Horse.
Harry has more important things to worry about. He's about to be framed as a double agent traitor.
Pinky
You trying to woo Frank with a bit of Barry ?
Oh no he's not Colm, he's cleared. Team work gets him off.
Oh Thanks for revealing that Gosh! I hadn't even watched that episode yet. I was only going by the trailer :(
Sorry :( I thought everybody watched it on bbc 3.
You trying to woo Frank with a bit of Barry
Colm, if I was trying to woo Frank, I have better bits to do that with :-)
Gosh
At the moment I have a terrible reception for BBC channels on my TV. I havent got an outside aerial and can only pick up a few digital freeview channels so I have had to wacth all the Spooks episodes through BBC I Player on my PC. I only just watched Episode 6 tonight (the one with the teenager who stumbled upon the assasination), however I think I might have easily guessed how the Harry episode would end up. I will watch it when they put it on the I Player next week.
LOL Pinky !
The teenager was a brilliant one, but don't let me put you off, watch it next week. It's a brilliant episode full of intrigue. Harry even admits to being a traitor....
You'll not be disapointed.
Oh and a surprise mole, and one of the team gets it in the neck!