GREEN DAY LIVE at SECC

Green day model themselves as the best live band in the world whose goal is to provide the greatest show the audience has seen.They achieve it quite easily.

The audience was treated to the unique special treat of seeing a full blown Stadium Tour geared for massive arenas like Wembley within the indoor setting of the SECC , they were quite blown away by the experience.

Some say the band are not what they were at the start and have sold out to being a bring all the Family band , these People are usually the ones who failed to get tickets.

Hamzah made the incredibly courageous sacrifice of missing the Spain world cup match to attend only his second concert , the other being Bruce Springsteen.After a debut like that he in for a very disappointing concert career as much else will be downhill.

The first song of the evening was 21st Century Breakdown:



A spectacular show of almost 3 hours also contained great favourites like Boulevard of Broken Dreams:



And the riotous delight Know Your Enemy:




The evening ended on an easy paced acoustic reflective note which gave a poignant end to the show with a version of Time of Your Life:



Being short-changed in not a feeling you get when seeing a Green day Concert.

JACKSON BROWNE and DAVID LINDLEY at GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL

Amongst Jackson Browne and David Lindleys other great exploits in the field of Music , the most ingenious of them has been his long time collaboration with Warren Zevon on many records and outstanding ground breaking projects.Along with Stevie Nicks , Jackson and Lindley provide the hypnotic background singing in "Under the Eaves" which is said to represent the steady hum which sends the subject of the song into a dreamy reverie.

Best of all David Lindley comes of with arguable the best guitar solo ever in the Zevon song "Play it All Night Long".

You know you are in for a very nice treat when the first song of the evening is a Warren Zevon cover and the next a Springsteen song about the after-plight of the Vietnam vets.


Below is the cover of the Springsteen song , played during the first set which was acoustic:



The second part of the concert was played with a full band , which is Sheryls Crows band which has been touring with Jackson on this tour.

Among the many highlights was this version of the quality "Before The Deluge" , a song about Hubris which has many connotations with the current Banking Crisis.




From his newer work the best one that stands alongside his perennial classics is the wonderfully harmonious "Giving That heaven Away" which harkens back to his memories of the 60s and how easily some precious things worth keeping can be given away cheaply for a trifling price.

TARTUFFE by MOLIERE adapted by Liz Lochhead

The sign of a truly classical play is that it can be adapted to local regional conditions yet retain a universal Human value that lasts for all times.

Molieres Tartuffe is one such play even though , and here is a testament to how good art can be treated at the time of making , rather like when good messengers are exiled from their home community, it almost failed to see the light when it was first performed.The King Louis banned it for general performances for the public he and his inner circle did like it and saw it on many occasions in private performance.The main reason of the ban by Versailles was the offence taken by the high church officials.

This version is adapted by Liz Lochhead uses the Glasgow vernacular to great comic effect , further enhancing the satire and universal message of the the abuse of power masquerading as virtue.

GIANNI VATTIMO BEING AND EVENT

As any practitioner of Philosophy will know , philosophers have great difficulty getting to the point or making themselves clear ,this can be sometimes misconstrued as the pursuit of philosophical constructs being a complex ; complicated and specialised discipline to be understood by the very few, yet alone practised.

The honest Prof. Vattimo has a special Hegelian exit strategy when backed into a corner when any person who tries to separate the ideas from the terminal terminological jargons , he shrugs his shoulders and states "dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum-D-Dum" with a great knowing look.Students of Philosophy immediately understand exactly what he means and begin scribbling with great passionate frowns as if having a eureka moment.

For a lecture on philosophy Gianni fast tracked todays talk and caught us on the hop by getting to the point early , we were snapped out of our nap after only 51 minutes.But once he got to the point it was well worth getting up for as what he had to say about the place of Heidegger to todays student is worth recounting.

In the main the Heidegger point of divergence with Husserl was over the role of impartiality over Being.Husserl was of the view that external property was the stronger component whilst Heidegger argued Being was central and perception was the reality even more pronounced than reality.

Though Heidegger did not cover himself with glory when he took advantage of the Wagner laws in the early 30s which expelled Jews in public positions , including "Jews" who had converted , to allow his predecessor Husserl to be unseated from his University Chair , and then taking up the position himself.This double-cross was compounded with the ever alert to the judgement of History , Heidegger , joining the Nazi Party.

Vatimmos point was this bizarre chain of "mistake" should not cloud the judgement of students to some important points Heidegger took Phenomenology into the field of aesthetics , though understandably was somewhat chastened in making overt political points.

According to Vatimmo todays student should be "understanding" if not forgiving to the "bizarreness" of 1933 , in order to get full value from Heidegger doctrine which had a sound base in religion and contained many aspects which need not be rejected wholesale.

It is on this predication that the sidelining of Heidegger allowed Sartre to take over for a spell.Sartre give the philosophy to Phenomenology an overtly atheistic slant with which Heidegger staunchly disagreed , leading it into a Camusian dead end.The religious base was lost and Phenomenology as we knew it petered out , giving over to a crass and lurid chauvinist doctrinal parody diatribe which is a brass anglo-saxon Atheism as expressed by the weird and unwonderful Dawkins and Hitchens.

And so Vattimos lecture concluded with the "End of" reality.He left off this lecture series with the birth of Post-Modernism , the concept of leaving off the big questions of life and enjoying culture and superficial arts.The only problem with that conclusion is , according to Terry Eagleton , Post-Modernism was dead in its infancy if not still-born in the first place.And so it seems Faith , if not religion has to make a comeback in Human Life , though preferably not with a generation of religious grounded philosophers who see value and progress in National Socialism.

THE SEAGULL by CHEKHOV at ORAN MOR

The venue of these lunchtime plays with accompanying Pie ( Quiche if you are a veggie) and Pint ( Irn Bru or Ginger Ale or some other soft drink if you are a non-alky) is in the basement of an old converted church on the corner of great Western Road and Byres Road.

The inside resembles the description in The Tin Drum when Gunter Grass describes a club in post War Hamburg in which the patrons go in and are served with a Plate;a Knife and an Onion.They find a suitable spot in which to sit , cut the Onions with the knife and start bawling their eyes out.The Glasgow lunchtime audience are a little more discerning than that , sure they take a plate no problem , can even be entrusted with a knife ( and fork to boot for that matter) without to many messy mishaps , but a pie and a pint has definitely got to take the place of a raw onion before they will part with the money.

Where the creators of this entertainment really hit the mark is , and where they follow away from the Hamburg model , the copying of an idea that really kicked of in Dublin of having a play rather than self-induced bawling and the Central piece of gratifying entertainment.

Director of the Glasgow Lunchtime Theatre Company David MacLennan , a veteran of superb Glasgow Theatre companies 7:84 and Wildcat , as well as the MayFest Festival which helped put Glasgow on the International cultural map explains the History behind the gloriously successful project in the video below:



A real point of success for this project which has now well over 200 successful production under its belt is that is is not an amateurs charter for a superficial form of blase entertainment , but rather a high calibre quality showcase for the very best experimental work of Scotland finest cutting edge creative writers;actors;producers to put to the public work which has profound deep-meaning ful value in a setting away from the self-censorship they would be obliged to give themselves to win the kind of funding from the ever-increasingly corporate bodies which are not partial to highly radical and hard-hitting politicised social dramas which the creators would ideally like to bring to the mainstream Theatre Market.

Todays production was a superbly adapted , incredibly acted , stunning piece of drama of Chekhovs Seagull.The production captured all the humour of Chekhov which is sadly the first casualty of any translation without allowing any of the profound points and themes to be lost.A very delicate and superbly carried of undertaking.

Because of the very high standards of commissionment and actors this project attracts , a large part of the audience is from within the theatre industry which helps fuel an ever self sustaining cycle which makes the project not only successful in the fields of substance and quality of themes , but also a very welcome inducement for all the community of actors and public to continue providing and attending work which is ever pushing out the boundaries.

You can get more details of this wonderful project in their website.

GIANNI VATIMMO - BEYOND PHENOMENOLOGY

Though the term was originally coined by Hegel , the philosophical template of the discipline of Phenomenology is a recent development devised just over a century ago by Husserl.It is quite important to map out the cultural and macro-national state of the first decade to put the background to the idea of phenomenology into perspective and to see how it developed for what is a short though explosive part of the Human Experience.

Firstly , Hegel has brought about the concept of "End of" into the lexicon of thought and its consequences in doctrinal and material worldwide application circles , this is important to bear in mind as it made philosophy and its acceptance and rejection the matter of the whole of mankind as opposed to a regional matter , this meant schemes hatched for World domination where not only achievable ,on paper at least , but the block powers competing for it would have to get a "doctrine" on their side to project the scheme as a civilisational and civilising force.In short the introduction of "End of" created the stage of the ideologies of "isms" , a clash of great doctrinal , as opposed to merely tribal , blocks with the power to change the world in their image clashing , sometimes to the death , to do so.

So with a stage like that set we had the works as far as ideologies and doctrines go , ranging from Science being brought in to justify slavery and colonialism , the development of varies hybrids of communism , the clash of Phrenology and Darwinism , crank pseudo-sciences ( such as the serious and respected branch of science called "niggerology" which enjoyed esteemed patronage and whose foremost practitioners were among the founders and first Heads of The Royal Anthropological Society) , as well as the early forerunners of modern day Banking and Capitalism in the form of Corporate entities with treasuries as big as some States , and the political clout in high circles to match.

With all these Doctrines for Universal domination being bandied about the concept of Phenomenology came about at a time when the current World Order of the time was beginning to buckle , The Ottoman Empire was listing ; Russia had a revolution in 1905 which didnt quite succeed but was a harbinger of the one that would a decade later ; The British Empire had reached its zenith but the cracks of over-stretch were clearly visible in the Boer war troubles in South Africa.

In the Germanic Heartlands , as Germany as we know was not to come about until later, the initial steps to find a "holding " doctrine to a Germanic Empire of the Spirit were being thought about with a belief , also shared by Marx and Engels , that Germany was ready to take of the reigns of Empire in the 20th century from the collapsing current World Order , but with better maintainable land Empire not dependent on supplies from overseas which can be disrupted by rebellious colonies in far of continents.This Empire , like the Roman , could technically be serviced by land forces not necessarily requiring a Navy , hence being more stable and easier to keep united with permanent access to resources.

With all these "World Domination" doctrines and philosophies using the Human Being as a mass Commodity , Husserls Phenomenology came at the time to take the swing of Foucault's philosophical pendulum back to the literal centre of Being.The process was to take the grand centre of Human thought from external doctrines to the Human understanding and perceptions.

According to Vatimmo , Phenomenology suffered when Heidegger made a catastrophic mistake of joining the Nazi Party ( quite a boob to make), and thereafter Sartre took the concept to an overt Atheistic trait.Recent developments have brought the concept back by getting it into a liberation-theological footing thus re-taking the Foucault's pendulum back not only to the Centre of Being but the centre of a Spiritual Being.Which is a good thing as the "End ofs" eminating from the Neo-Cons and their ideolgues are out in force and need to be challenged using arguments from the very Centre of the Spiritual Moral Being.

GIANNI VATIMMO GIFFORD LECTURE at GLASGOW UNIVERSITY

Italian Professor and politician gave a lecture on the Tarski logistical proposition 'p' is True if and only if p.

Vatimmo is a politician who recently signed a petition by Academics requesting the EU to recognise and negotiate with Democratically elected Hamas.

Giannis best points were made in the political applications to the principle.He very astutely perceived that there is no such thing as thought in an absolute vacuum.Every Philosophy and Philosopher operates in paradigm which can be substantially different in historical base from even a near neighbour , for example the Anglo-Saxon Paradigm has a radically differing filter than the Mediterranean rim , whilst the Slav Paradigm is from a character which would be unrecognisable from the Celtic Paradigm.This means , even within a small regional area such as Europe we would have substantially altered constructs to the Tarski Principle from the experiences and inter-relations of these , sometimes barely compatible Paradigms.

As can be surmised from this , the Anglo-Saxon paradigm has been on the rise for the past Century.This construct has been a savagely imperialist , domineering , non-negotiating , expansionist Paradigm reflected in this decade alone with the "Coalition of The Willing" being an axis of the US-UK and Australia , which pushed through roughshod its programme against all other objections of all the other Paradigms put together to kick start the Neo-Con project by invading Iraq.Alas , the Iraqi resistance , an overt clash of paradigms if ever there is one , along with the Anglo-Saxon Economic Block recession has somewhat neutered , though not entirely extinguished this haughty phenomenon