A fascinating if rather grim documentary, detailing the gargantuan forensic project that arose from the smouldering hell of ground zero.
Interestingly the global scale of the disaster is brought home through the story of Geoffrey Campbell, a British man killed in the attacks.
Geoff Campbell, at right, with his bothers.
Just as technology advances during war time, the science of forensics has been advanced by the unprecedented work required.
At one point, the investigation had to be halted, as the DNA work that could be done, had been done. Of the nearly three thousand victims, a little over half had been painstakingly identified.
The scale and intensity of the carnage was so extreme that very few remains – about 300 people – could be identified in the quickest normal ways: visuals, such as facial recognition, fingerprints, teeth, tattoos, scars, etc, yielded very few results.
Rubble is sifted for human remains.
Ultimately ground bones and the DNA they contain would be the key. Both in the initial investigation, and again in the second wave of analysis. And so a larger tranche of results became available. And in 2013 a third wave of new identifications occurred, but only four victims could be ID’ed.
So there’s a law of diminishing returns at work. And still there’s a pretty large number of relatives – about 40% – who have no remains at all with which to commemorate their loss. This is a very particular angle on these momentous events. Fascinating and heartbreaking.
Emotions and memories are funny things, are they not? I’ve just recently been given a load of mp3 files from the ‘family band’ I was in, for a few years as a kid, circa age 16-18 year old, perhaps?
The band went through many band name changes. Something I really disliked! At the point when these recordings were made, we were called The Minotaurs, and comprised my mum on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, my dad, on bass, and I was the drummer. Completing the line-up was Malcolm Heyes, on lead and rhythm guitar and backing vocals.
I’m 49 at the time of typing this, so this music is over 30 years old. It’s the best early record of my playing as a drummer that I have. And for that I’m grateful. But it also brings back memories of a lost era in my life when my family were still what one might call a solid nuclear ‘family unit’. It could be said that this band put paid to that.
But that’s another story.
Or is it? That’s the thing. I can’t really hear this music and not feel some of the pain associated with events that would unfold in the ensuing years.
Part of me might want to be able to just listen and respond to it ‘purely musically’. But then again, that’d be weird. One of the chief appeals of music is how it stimulates feelings.
My mum and Malcolm – that tells you something about what came to pass – recently contacted me asking if I’d like to hear these tracks. And also talking about songwriting credits, etc. I’m glad they did. It is nice, on one level, to hear this stuff again after so many years. It’s surprisingly good, in certain respects.
And it’s nice, if this music is to exist our in the real world, as opposed to languishing on a few cassettes in drawers here and there, to be credited for my part in it. I have to say that I’m rather proud of my number, Blue Claw Sky, and for my age (and considering how little schooled I was in the art) I’m quite chuffed with my playing.
I didn’t know this, but I think we owe John Garrad, a friend of my dad’s who ran a folk record label called Plant Life, and is I believe responsible for the surprisingly good recording quality, a debt of gratitude for capturing is so well. This was, after all, just a little local pub gig, in (I think?), Fordham.
But we also owe ourselves a big pat on the back for a decent set competently played. We were well rehearsed, from frequent practise and quite a busy giggling schedule. The set, mostly originals, with a couple of those being instrumentals, and one or two covers, is strong.
Also in our favour, we had a decent and appreciative audience, who can be heard digging out stuff. Very gratifying! If only all local pub gigs could be more like that!
Anyway, I found the impact of the complex bittersweet mix of emotions too powerful to do the whole thing in one sitting. In fact I had to dose myself carefully, and it took three sessions of listening to hear the whole thing.
I don’t think it can be the entire set, there doesn’t seem enough material? And as I recall we were the main (only act?) that night. I may be wrong!? It also seems to be in a random order, starting with what was the last song before we took a break between sets… we’re all the tracks recorded that night? If so, what’s become of the rest?
Anyway, I must admit I’m fairly proud of what we had going, and pleasantly surprised that it’s pretty good in most respects: songwriting, performance, recording. But listening to it isn’t too easy, thanks to the historical emotional baggage. But, hey… that’s life. And that’s part of the charm of music, that it sears the emotions into the synapses.
Based on a real story, Bernie mixes the reflections of real life ‘talking heads’ with actors delivering a very polished (and rather stylised) re-imagining or re-creation of events. Of the two quotes on the image above, ‘murderously charming’ is the better and more accurate. There is an element of gentle humour, but ‘absolutely hilarious’? Hmmm… not really.
Bernie Tiede was, if this film is any guide, a slightly odd but basically very nice guy, who ultimately befriended a rich widow, who, by all accounts, was not an easily likeable person. Bernie got an in on a ritzy lifestyle, and Mrs Nugent got a friend and dogsbody. Which, if either, of the two was using the other?
Was Tiede playing the long game, as a gold-digger? Or was he simply who he seemed to be, a loveable oddball? His behaviour after his arrest and incarceration suggests the latter. But then again, he shot and killed a defenceless old biddy, and stuck her corpse in a freezer!? And carried on living an ever deepening lie, whilst generously splashing her cash around.
Jack Black gives a great performance, and the entire cast conspire to make the whole thing both a little zany and yet totally believable. The ‘real people’ are worked into the fabric of the film expertly. And throughout – but especially when the camera lingers on the faces of Tiede’s jury – you feel this is a film that, as unusual as the subject may be, gives a glimpse of the real America so absent from mainstream Hollywood generally.
Not sure this a ‘great’ film. But it’s very good. And really interesting. Oh, and very entertaining as well.
I was working at the home of my illustrator pal Tim Oliver, on Sept 11th, 2001. I was outside the house, working in a wooden shed studio in the back garden. Tim came running in, clearly agitated and excited, saying I had to come inside and see what was on the TV. I think it was a sunny day in the UK/The Fens, just as it was in the US.
Now, 20 years later, it’s still very powerfully affecting, seeing the footage and images of that fateful day. And there are a number of interesting ‘twentieth anniversary’ type programs on TV and other media, about these unbelievable events. This particular program is particularly fascinating, as it’s a view into the nerve centre of the American government as it came under attack.
I remember the way one thing after another kept happening: first one plane, then another, hitting the first and then the second tower, then a plane crashing into the Pentagon, then one tower coming down, then the other. It was a series of hefty punches, raining down, one after the other. This program conveys that well.
As well as the panoply of illustrious and powerful talking heads – all the key players: Bush, Cheney, Rice, etc. – who so suddenly seemed rendered powerless, there’s a cleverly deployed visual timeline. The combination of source materials, such as footage of the events themselves, audio recordings, and stuff like the computerised data of aircraft in flight, is incredible, and very well presented. The whole adds up to a very powerful experience.
One could argue that this might be official and therefore hagiographic propaganda. And maybe it is? A joint production by Apple TV, and the BBC, it appears, at first glance, to be independent. Certainly it’s very candid, with full and frank admissions as to the unpreparedness of US govt’ for such events.
The chief protagonists come across very well. Bush in particular impresses. Compared to some of the buffoons that have disgraced high public office on both sides of ‘the pond’ recently, the levels of eloquence and dignified calm in the face of such trauma are salutory.
Bush was doing a meet ‘n’ greet at the Emma Booker Elementary School, Saratoga, Florida, when he learned of the unfolding events. Watching how he reacted to learning the news is powerfully compelling viewing. And as things escalated the President and his entourage had to work out how to react; where to go, what to say.
This programme shows how uncertain things were. Bush wanted to go straight to Washington. But the bureaucratic machinery around the President overruled him, and they went instead to USAF Barksdale, and then a secure bunker in Nebraska.
One thing that this brief but impressive doc’ doesn’t address, which is something many non-Americans will think about (hopefully some Americans also?), is how America is happy to use violence abroad, but is so shocked when it comes home to roost. And of course there’s the irony of violence begetting yet more violence.
NASA Astronaut Frank Culbertson‘s photos of 9/11, from way above Earth.
One of the things about Bush and his coterie of advisors at this point is that they were clearly very competent. It’s good to hear the former President acknowledge the importance of such resources as the teams of advisors he had around him, and to see that this was real and meaningful advice – willing and able to contradict him if need be – not just place-serving ‘yes men’ (and women!).
But after all of this, Bush felt, and undoubtedly rightly so, that he had to get to somewhere visibly ‘central’, which for him was Washington, and be seen and heard to be calmly in command. Bush, an assertive and competitive man, was psychologically exactly the right kind of leader for this ver challenging moment.
I may object to his religious platitudes, apple pie Americanisms and machismo, but Bush handled the unfolding events pretty damn well. On the day. But maybe the longer term legacy of such blue-blooded American posturing hasn’t been so good? To their credit, the production team don’t duck this issue (see below).
Bush aboard Airforce One, where com’s were not ideal.
BBC ‘Do you think your actions after 9/11 made the world a safer place?’ GB ‘I’m comfortable with the decisions I made.’
One particularly poignant thread, amongst many, is that of Ted and Barbara Olson. Ted was, at that time, a very high ranking official in the Justice Dept, and his wife, Barbara was a conservative journalist/pundit. Barbara took a later work-related flight than originally planned, in order to share Ted’s 61st birthday with him, leaving a love note to her husband on his pillow (which he reads, very movingly, in this film). A note he would first see and read very late on the very same day he knew she had died.
Towards the end of the documentary, and in real timeline terms, on the 14th Sept – so three days after the events – Bush and his entourage visited ground zero. ‘It was almost like Pompeii’, says journalist David ‘Stretch’ Gregory.
All in all, this is an excellent programme, that gives an incredibly powerful, unprecedented and surprisingly candid insight into some very powerful era-defining events. Definitely well worth watching.
Tom Jobim, or, in full, Antônio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim, was born in Rio de Janeiro, on January, 25th, 1927, and passed away December, 8th, 1994.
Widely acknowledged as Brazil’s greatest musical export, and one of the great composers of popular music of the twentieth century, his legacy is a corpus of beautiful and very distinctive music.
I first became dimly aware of him in my mid-teens, as I got into jazz. He seemed to be a ubiquitous name on the credits for the bossa and samba feel ‘standards’ many jazzers performed. It wasn’t long before I started seeking him out, as well as exploring his work on albums by Getz/Gilberto, etc.
This initial dalliance was further boosted by the friendship of Brennan Young, who I met at Goldsmiths, who loved Jobim and knew his oeuvre better than I did. And so my love for both Brazilian music generally, and Jobim in particular, grew.
I’ve been dabbling in writing and recording music of my own since my teens. And alongside that, as so many of us budding musos do, I’d seek to learn by studying the greats. And Jobim was a favourite, such that in my early twenties I pursued a project, under the working title Too Much Time, of recording an ‘album’ of jazz and bossa material, amongst which Jobim would account for about half to two-thirds of the material!
Now, sooo many years later, I still love Jobim’s music, and I still dabble with playing his stuff, albeit far less frequently nowadays. My most recent flirtation with having a crack at the maestro’s material has been to work out a guitar version of Remember, from the album Tide. I posted about that a little while back.
It struck me, whilst listening to Terra Brasilis recently, and, even more recently, Inedito, that I’d like to complete my collection of his major recordings, and survey them all with reviews. This is something I enjoy doing anyway, as it means revisiting all the music of someone I love and admire, and focussing my mind on transcribing my thoughts and feelings about their music.
So, starting some time soon, I’ll be posting reviews of the following Jobim studio albums:
The Composer of Desafinado Plays, ‘63 The Wonderful World of… , ‘65 [Love, Strings, & Jobim, ‘66]* A Certain Mr Jobim, ‘67 Wave, ‘67 Tide, ‘70 Stone Flower, ‘70 Jobim, ‘72 Urubu, ‘76 Terra Brasilis, ‘80 Passarim, ‘87 Antonio Brasileiro, ‘95 Inedito, ‘95 Minha Alma Canta, ‘97
At the time of posting this I have all of the above except two of the most recent, or rather latest, ‘95s Antonio Brasileiro (I believe Sting guests on this one, dueting How Insensitive with Tom!), and ‘97s Minha Alma Canta.
Another album – pictured above – that has piqued my interest, is a much more recent release, charting his most youthful work, as composer and arranger to other Brazilian artists.
*Quite why this album continues to be attributed to Jobim is beyond me. His face is on the cover. His name is on the title. But it’s not a Jobim album! According to the wiki entry on it, it’s title in Brazil is or was Tom Jobim Apresenta, or Jobim Presents.
Great characters, in a great set of silly scenarios. Written by Ben Elton, The Thin Blue Line ran for two series, totalling 14 episodes, airing in 1995-6. Rowan Atkinson is, of course, superb. And the rest of the cast are all very good too. My favourite, amongst the others, is plain-clothes DI Derek Grim (David Haig), who is just brilliant.
The chemistry between Fowler (Atkinson) and Grim is probably my favourite part of the show. Grim is just utterly hilarious: vain, uptight, dumb, angry, frustrated: ‘It’s my arse, and if you stuff it, I’m gonna end up very red in the face’!
Constables Goody, Habib and Gladstone are all great fun. And the series is thoroughly enjoyable throughout. There are cameos from numerous familiar luvvies, from Ben Elton as a crusty, to Stephen Fry as a deranged outdoorsman. It has a kind of quaint almost innocent old-fashioned vibe to it, which I love.
Throughout both series the marital goings on, or rather not goings on, between Fowler and his ‘girlfriend’, Sergeant Dawkins are a constant theme. There’s a similar ongoing thing between Goody and Habib.
In the second series Fowler gives a series of introductory talks to camera – as pictured above – as part of the format. Ben Elton, Rowan Atkinson and co. have given us all a terrifically sweet and very funny series. If only the police really were as silly and entertaining as this.
A shame there were only two series. Highly recommended.
Well, I’m amazed. I’ve made a bodhran, or frame drum. It’s made from a cut down 13” rack tom, from a cheapo ex-school beginner kit.
It’s quite high pitched and resonant. And I think a ‘true’ bodhran would have a bigger heavier frames and lower tone. But hey, it’s a first attempt. And I have to confess I’m chuffed. Chuffed it’s a playable drum at all!
Adding furniture tacks.
I’ve kind of jumped from the previous post to the finished thing, with this second post. I might at some point put up more pics and info’ on the complete build process.
Teresa seems happy with the results. Go on… give it a bash!
I don’t know how to play it. Leastways not in the authentic bodhran manner. And I don’t have a stick/tipper/beater thing. I’m trying (unsuccessfully so far!) to put up a short video or two, just for a quick sample of the tonal characteristics.
I literally just finished this excellent book. The two main characters in it are are Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. The titular Club was actually founded by painter Joshua Reynolds, to get Johnson out of one of his regular depressions. Boswell wouldn’t be invited to join for quite some time.
More than a history of The Club, this is really a group portrait of figures in the Johnson Boswell orbit, and of the places and times they lived in. It’s heavily illustrated, which is great, really adding several layers of warmth and depth to what is already interesting, helping one imagine the characters and the settings of their lives more vividly.
Damrosch clearly loves the whole era, and the great majority of the colourful cast. But this doesn’t stop him from giving a balanced portrait, warts and all, so to speak. Johnson is a cranky conservative prude, as well as the witty savant behind his famous dictionary. Boswell is an inordinately vain womaniser, in thrall to Johnson, and both are in many ways unattractively hidebound and old-fashioned.
But the chief attraction of this book is that it vividly and compellingly captures the multifarious facets of a kaleidoscopic era, populated by a diverse bunch of very interesting (if frequently flawed) people. And it does so with equal measures of detail, balance and excitement, such that it’s both very informative and highly enjoyable.
It’s perfect for me, as a way to start to learn more about a whole slew of folk I’m interested in, from Johnson and Boswell, to Adam Smith and Edward Gibbons, and many more besides. It’s pitched in the sweet spot between scholarly and suited for the lay reader. I loved this book, and would unhesitatingly recommend it.
Utter garbage. I’m amazed I bothered to watch it all the way through. How many lame ass Nic Cage films am I going to inflict on myself?
White-trash prick-tease Teena (Anna Hutchinson) gets gang-raped – with her daughter as witness – by four cartoon rocker ne’erdowells. The loathsome quartet are then acquitted, thanks to the biggest insensitive prick of a judge ever, oh… and Don Johnson, as the most oleaginous Harley riding lawyer ever.
Throughout this pitiful movie the heavily made up Nicolas Cage disappears from the screen for long enough – poss due to the time required attempting to make him look younger? – to call his star billing into question. The real screen time is shared by the white trash trio of Debs Ungar (as granny Agnes), Teena, and Bethie, the traumatised daughter.
I knew this movie was going to be complete arse when the Patriot Films part of the titles rolled. What passes for patriotism in the US of A these days seems to be gun-fetishism and vigilante ultra-violence. This film sho’ is patriotic, ticking both boxes.
Set in the Niagra Falls community … aw, shoot…I really can not be bothered spending any more effort reviewing such toss. Avoid.
I’m making a bodhran for one of Teresa’s special needs clients. He’s into Scottish/Celtic type music, apparently. I’m only making the drum. He’ll have to source a beater (or whatever the stick thing is called) elsewhere.
I’ve made it from an old 13” rack-tom, cut around the circumference to a suitable – guestimated! – depth. Added a single cross-bar (some have none, some one or two, others have a ‘T-bar’, etc).
Sanded off a band to take the glue/skin.
Our pal Ken routed a new bearing edge on the playing side (again, totally guessed at!). And today I had to sand back to natural wood after having sprayed and lacquered the raw birch black/gloss.
And then came the fraught process of gluing the goatskin head to the frame. Got in a bit of a panic over this. But I think we triumphed (Teresa helped!) in the end.
Goatskin head secured with elastic and spring clamps, etc.
Letting the skin glue overnight. Tomorrow I’ll be hammering in shortened (if not shortened they’d go straight through the shell) furniture tacks, and cutting the excess goatskin away.
Kind of scary, having no experience in this area at all. But fun as well. Hope it turn out alright!?
