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Tuesday, 22 February 2011
A freewheeling neighbourhood which has remained largely self-governing since its creation by hippie squatters four decades ago has lost out in a legal battle undertaken by the Danish government.

The country's Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision from 2009 saying that the 900 residents of Christiania have no irrevocable right to use the former naval base as their home.

The decision ends a six-year legal standoff and means the government can go ahead with plans to "normalise" the neighbourhood and tear down scores of ramshackle homes built at the site without permits.

Residents say they will resist any attempts to evict them from the area, which has become a major draw for tourists.

"The court process is now finished," Christiania spokesman Thomas Ertman said. "We have to now look to the future and need to sit down with the state and work out a negotiation for Christiania."

Christiania was formed in 1971 when hippies moved into an abandoned naval base and built an alternative society with houses painted in psychedelic colours and hashish traded and smoked, while authorities turned a blind eye. Residents currently don't pay rent, but a fixed, monthly fee of 1,600 kroner ($180) for electricity, water and other municipal services.

A sombre mood descended on the normally cheerful enclave after the verdict. "Its terribly sad," said Iben Kramp, a frequent visitor to the neighbourhood. "Christiania is an oasis in a hectic modern world. We have something unique here in Copenhagen and we should not be killing it off in the name of normality."

Polish tourist Julian Jablonski, however, said change was inevitable. "Christiania needs to wake up and get into the 21st-century," he said. "This is a prime location and you cannot stop progress."
Source : The Independent

     Hot Tuna, the roots ensemble featuring veterans of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair and 1960s psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane, has finished recording its first new album in 20 years at a Woodstock studio.
    "For us, it's exciting to start going places we haven't been before … driving a new road in the old car so to speak," wrote Hot Tuna guitarist and vocalist Jorma Kaukonen, on his blog, www.jormakaukonen.com "I'm really excited about this new Tuna CD and I hope you all will be, too. In any case, as always, we try to do our best."
    Recording of the new CD at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock was completed in December. Information on a title and release date were not available.
    Hot Tuna has a long history in the Hudson Valley, performing numerous times over the years at the Bardavon 1869 Opera House and The Chance in Poughkeepsie.
    Kaukonen is a former Ulster County resident and recorded his most recent solo CD, "River of Time," at Levon Helm Studios.
    Larry Campbell, a member of the Levon Helm Band and former Bob Dylan sideman, produced and performed on the new Hot Tuna record, as well as "River of Time." Mandolin player Barry Mitterhoff — who has played in Hot Tuna for years — and drummer Skoota Warner also perform on the CD.
   "It's a very diverse choice of material," Campbell said of the new record, "that all fits squarely within the Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna legacy."
    Kaukonen and bass player Jack Casady anchored Jefferson Airplane, which like the Grateful Dead emerged from San Francisco in the 1960s, pushing rock music into new territory with extended, adventurous, improvisational jams.
    Kaukonen's haunting guitar licks and Casady's thumping bass lines give the classic Jefferson Airplane song, "White Rabbit," much of its dark, mysterious feel.
    Jefferson Airplane performed at Woodstock, the music festival staged in Sullivan County that more than 40 years later remains a crowning achievement of the baby boomer generation. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
    (Larry Campbell, a member of the Levon Helm Band and former Bob Dylan sideman, produced and performed on the new Hot Tuna record, as well as "River of Time." Mandolin player Barry Mitterhoff — who has played in Hot Tuna for years — and drummer Skoota Warner also perform on the CD.
    "It's a very diverse choice of material," Campbell said of the new record, "that all fits squarely within the Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna legacy."
    Kaukonen and bass player Jack Casady anchored Jefferson Airplane, which like the Grateful Dead emerged from San Francisco in the 1960s, pushing rock music into new territory with extended, adventurous, improvisational jams.
    Kaukonen's haunting guitar licks and Casady's thumping bass lines give the classic Jefferson Airplane song, "White Rabbit," much of its dark, mysterious feel.
    Jefferson Airplane performed at Woodstock, the music festival staged in Sullivan County that more than 40 years later remains a crowning achievement of the baby boomer generation. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996...Read more Opens in a new window

(www.poughkeepsiejournal.com)

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Roger Daltrey Plans To Quit,
But Not Retire

Roger Daltrey has enjoyed great success as one of rock’s most renowned and charismatic frontmen. While he still continues to keep his hands full with performances and charity work (including the upcoming performance of Tommy for the Teenage Cancer Trust), it looks like his days as a professional musician may be coming to an end.
According to Music-News.com the rocker, who is currently 66-years-old, plans to call it quits within the next couple of years:
"I’ve probably got two or three years left to do that kind of music and I want to make the most of it, because again I've been given a gift, use it, use it or lose it, so I'm going to do Tommy at the Albert Hall.
"I’ll start painting then, I do a bit of daubing in my spare time, but I know that when I start that seriously it's going to have to be serious, there won't be room for anything else."
With Beady Eye also performing for the upcoming Teenage Cancer Trust shows, Daltrey has gotten a chance to know and even like singer Liam Gallagher.
"Liam Gallagher, I love him, everybody says ‘Oh he's a bit difficult isn't he’, I've always found him an absolute sweetheart," Daltrey told Absolute Radio DJ Dave Gorman.
"Liam’s a very talented guy, very funny guy, very witty guy, and much cleverer than people give him credit for. Yeah, I love it... Liam is a real rock star. He is 100 per cent the real deal."

Gaddafi claims protesters are on hallucinogenic drugs!

Muammar Gaddafi set the stage for a violent, final showdown to crush Libya's popular uprising by urging loyalists to take to the streets to fight "greasy rats" in the pay of enemies ranging from the US to al-Qaida.
In an angry, ranting and often incoherent speech, the beleaguered Libyan leader ignored evidence of repression and bloodshed, including new reports of death squads, to insist that he would die in his homeland rather than flee abroad.
"I am not going to leave this land," Gaddafi vowed in a live broadcast on state TV. "I will die as a martyr at the end ... I shall remain, defiant. Muammar is leader of the revolution until the end of time."
- Never having much of a hold on reality anyway, Gaddafi's claim that his opponents are on drugs is fairly typical. His fate has been sealed since the protestors took over the country's second largest city Benghazi, and his refusal to acknowledge that shows just how far the Libyan leader has retreated from the real world.
The only question is how bloody and horrifying things are going to get. Some of the army is refusing to follow his orders but others have waded in to the massacres with guns blazing. He has also hired on an unknown number of mercenaries from Chad and Nigeria. Recent fighting in those countries where whole villages were massacred points to a willingness of these thugs to help Gaddafi maintain control.
The butcher's bill is already too steep to bear. Let us hope that his own people grant him his wish to die very soon.
Source : American Thinker (blog)

Hector's House : No More Hippies

From the day he inherited 6,000-acre Tapeley Park in Devon, he has run the Georgian mansion, its woodland and parkland as a hippy commune, not least because of the guilt Hector Christie felt about inheriting such a grand place.
But the Old Etonian’s louche lifestyle and hedonistic parties, as well as the rag-tag of travellers in caravans who descended on his stately pile, are finally a thing of the past.

For Hector, 49, son of Glyndebourne founder Sir George Christie, has succumbed to a makeover by a reality TV show.
Channel 4’s Country House Rescue team approached Christie last year, offering him the help of their restoration expert Ruth Watson. And instead of sending the producers packing, Hector welcomed them in.
   ‘I wanted to learn how Tapeley could be run profitably,’ Hector tells me. ‘The hippies have left — over the years there were just fewer and fewer people coming. And I wanted to change things. Ruth has given the house the kick up the backside it needed.’
Gone are the days when he welcomed all and sundry, thinking he was making a philanthropic gesture by inviting strangers to come and live on the land — one young woman memorably announced that she would pay her board through prostitution.
On another occasion, Sienna Miller’s older sister Savannah spent a week at the commune, having new age treatments.
   Now, ordinary tourists are being drawn to the estate instead. ‘The TV team improved our organic gardens and got us to introduce display boards at the entrance   explaining the house’s history.’
One, for example, charts Hector’s life as a wild child, with photographs of his legendary all-night parties. More soberly, another tells of his great grandmother Rosamund who was involved with the Socialist League.
   ‘We’re also going to put a shop inside the Orangery Tea Rooms so that people can buy our jams and other organic produce. They may seem small things but it has made a difference.’
   The show is being broadcast on Sunday but Hector tells me that the estate’s past alternative lifestyle has not entirely been erased.
   ‘We still have one remaining hippy,’ he says. ‘He is shoe-less and has been for many years. But I don’t like to call him a hippy any more because he actually does a lot of work at Tapeley.’
Source : DailyMail.co.uk