Watts, The big idea
This fortnight; Thin Lizzy as you’ve never heard them before, The Chemical Brothers go widescreen and American right-wingers predict the coming of Caliphate.
Stuart Clark, 10 Feb 2012
There have been some unlikely covers of Thin Lizzy’s ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ – we’re thinking Morcheeba, Jarvis Cocker and Belle & Sebastian – but they’re just about trumped by Reggie Watts’ big band take which he performed recently on Conan. See what a splendid job he did at bit.ly/zceCto.
In Dublin recently for a sell-out Whelan’s show, the Brooklyn comedian and musician has also got a tonne of cool stuff up at reggiewatts.com/info/videos, which warrants your immediate perusal.
Not to be outdone by their LCD Soundsystem rivals, The Chemical Brothers have just unleashed their Don’t Think concert film, which finds them entertaining 50,000 mad-for-it Japanese people – plus Keira Knightley, Matt Smith and Fatboy Slim – on the side of Mount Fuji. As you do. The dontthinkmovie.com trailer has well and truly whetted our appetites.
An accurate assessment of the ongoing terrorist threat to the United States or scaremongering Islamophobia? Both claims have been made of The Third Jihad, a new documentary funded in part by the right-wing Clarion Fund. Critics were left fuming last month when it was revealed that the film had been shown to NYPD cops as part of their training.
Giving it the thumbs up, though, is New York’s sole Muslim councilman, Robert Jackson.
“I initially thought from reading about it that it cast a negative image on all Muslims throughout the world,” he proffers. “In my opinion it does not. It focuses on the extreme Muslims that are trying to hurt other people.”
Make your own mind up at thethirdjihad.com.
Which just leaves time for quick visits to www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJbSxMt7oH8 (quality African Cup of Nations simulation); bit.ly/zpnmw9 (Haiti video from the same field trip Hot Press took to Port-Au-Prince); www.borneodiyhcpunk.wordpress.com (South East Asian punk blog); www.rosskempfolds.tumblr.com (a new art form is born!); and cookingwithskrillex.tumblr.com/page/4 (very silly but rather brilliant).
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