RADIOHEAD

Just to clarify times for ticket sales

Auction starts Thursday 21st January 08.00 pm PST
Auction ends Saturday 23rd January 11.00 am PST

Well, that's all clear now....

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We're doing a show this Sunday (24th January) to raise funds for the relief effort in Haiti. The venue is The Music Box Theatre at The Fonda in Los Angeles, doors at 7pm. All proceeds are going to the Oxfam Haiti relief fund. We're trying to raise as much money as possible, so tickets will be sold by auction at this site from 8pm tonight until 11am Saturday (PST):

http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/09004434FC1C86AC

We're in the middle of recording at the moment, so you'll be catching us on the fly.... but if you're up for it, then we are too.

See you then
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Willie Mitchell


He made some of the sweetest, slinkiest, soulful records ever. I remember years ago round at Jonny's listening to
" That Driving Beat ", then devouring all the southern soul records he made.

hey-
i guess this time of year is a time for serious reflection and i have been doing a lot of that since coming back from copenhagen.
you know what has stunned me coming back is the anger you can taste in the air about this, everybody i meet wants to talk about it.. everyone is angry and despairing and i have tried to remain positive when i talk to them about it.. it has perhaps awakened something in the back of the mind of sane people throughout the world who perhaps naively assumed that something positive would come of these talks.
with such a strong reaction i hope perhaps that people are starting to join the dots and our unquestioning worship of an unlimited gluttonous carbon based economy could unravel in just enough time.
sane people in government, in the media, and on the streets are being shaken reluctantly from a dream looking at the children around them and are getting angrier than they have ever been before.
but this energy needs a constructive channel.

i have been trying to write something about my impressions of being there etc, but then Ben Stewart from Greenpeace happened to send me something he wrote on the last night which is so much better than anything i've done so far so i'll leave it to him for now

and wish you a heartfelt joyful christmas.

"The most progressive U.S. President in a generation comes to the most important international meeting since the Second World War and delivers a speech so devoid of substance that he might as well have made it on speakerphone from a beach in Hawaii. His aides argue in private that he had no choice, such is the opposition on Capitol Hill to any action that might challenge the dominance of fossil fuels in American life. And so the nation which put a man on the moon can't summon the collective will to protect men and women back here on Earth from the consequences of an economic model and lifestyle choice that has taken on the mantel of a religion.
Then a Chinese Premier who is in the process of converting his Communist nation to that new faith (high-carbon consumer capitalism) takes such umbrage at Obama's speech that he refuses to meet - refuses, in fact, to do much of anything beyond sulking in his hotel room, as if this were a teenager's house party instead of a final effort to stave off the breakdown of our biosphere.
Late in the evening the two men meet and cobble together a collection of paragraphs which they call a 'deal', although in reality it has all the meaning and authority of a bus ticket, not that it stops them affixing their signatures to it with great solemnity. Obama's team then briefs the travelling White House press pack - most of whom, it seems, understand about as much about global climate politics as our own lobby hacks know about baseball - and before we know it the New York Times and CNN are declaring the birth of a 'meaningful' accord.
Meanwhile a friend on an African delegation emails to say that he and many fellow members of the G77 block of developing countries are streaming into the corridors after a long discussion about the perilous state of the talks, only to see Obama on the television announcing that the world has a deal. It's the first they've heard about it, and a few minutes later, as they examine the text, they realise very quickly that it effectively condemns their continent to a century of devastating temperature rises.
By now the European leaders - who know this thing is a farce but have to present it to their publics as progress - have their aides phoning the directors of civil society organisations spinning that the talks have been a success. A success? This deal crosses so many of the red lines laid out by Europe before this summit started that there are scarlet skid marks across the floor of the Bella Centre, and one honest European diplomat tells us this is a 'shitty shitty deal.'
Quite.
This deal is beyond bad. It contains no legally binding targets and no indication of when or how they'll come about. There isn't even a declaration that the world will aim to keep global temperature rises below 2 degrees C - instead leaders merely 'recognise the science' behind that vital threshold, as if that were enough to prevent us crossing it. The only part of this deal anyone sane came close to welcoming was the $100bn global climate fund, but it's now becoming apparent that even that's largely made up of existing budgets, with no indication of how new money will be raised and distributed so poorer countries can go green and adapt to climate change.
Not all of our politicians deserve the opprobrium of a dismayed world. Our own Ed Miliband fought hard on no sleep for a better outcome, while President Lula of Brazil offered to financially assist other developing countries to cope with climate change and put a relatively bold carbon target on the table. But the EU didn't move on its own commitment (one so weak we'd actually have to work hard not to meet it) while the United States offered nothing and China stood firm.
Before the talks began I was of the opinion that we would only know Copenhagen was a success when plans for new coal-fired power stations across the developed world were dropped. If the giant utilities saw in the outcome of Copenhagen an unmistakable sign that governments were now determined to act, and that coal plants this century would be too expensive to run under the regime agreed at this meeting, then this summit would have succeeded. Instead, as the details of the agreement emerged last night we received reports of Japanese opposition MPs popping champagne corks as they savoured the possible collapse of their new government's carbon targets. It's not just that we haven't got to where we needed to be, we've actually ceded huge ground. There is nothing in this deal - nothing - that would persuade an energy utility that the era of dirty coal is over. And the implications for humanity of that simple fact are profound.
I know we greens are partial to hyperbole. We use language as a bludgeon to direct attention to the crisis we're facing, and you'll hear much more of it in the coming days and weeks. But really, it's no exaggeration to describe the outcome of Copenhagen as an historic failure that will live in infamy. In a single day, in a single space, a spectacle was played out in front of a disbelieving audience of people who have read and understood the stark warnings of humanity's greatest scientific minds - and what they witnessed was nothing less than the very worst instincts of our species articulated by the most powerful men who ever lived.
I will leave the last word to the late Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who would have given voice to the insanity of Copenhagen better than I ever could, and whose poem Requiem is perhaps appropriate at this moment: 'When the last living thing, has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up, perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, "It is done. People did not like it here".'

I haven't spoken to Thom yet, but judging by his entries here and reading today's papers the outcome of Copenhagen is a bloody disgrace . I wanted to put something up on DAS, as a kind of personal round-up to the year (also because I rather pathetically don't contribute much to this), so excuse me if I kick off in a somewhat dejected manner, because in fact none of what I write seems at all relevant or important in the face of serious climate change .. This is the bottom line for all our lives whether we choose to face it or not, and believe me I choose not to most of the time in the name of my own personal happiness and subsequently of those around me . anyway here goes ..
I read an interesting book in the Summer by a man called Terence McKenna, entitled "Food of the Gods" .. his hypothesis is that certain natural plants have been integral in explaining mankind's development in the spheres of language, intelligence and culture. it's really fascinating, but a particular passage popped out at me, whilst reading, and it seems particularly relevant now:
"Looking down on Los Angeles from an airliner, I I never fail to notice that it is like looking at a printed circuit: all those curved driveways and cul de sacs with the same little modules installed along each one. As long as the 'Reader's Digest' stays subscribed to and the TV stays on, these modules are all interchangeable parts within a very large machine. This is the nightmarish reality... the creation of the public as a herd. The public has no history and no future, the public lives in a golden moment created by a credit system which binds them ineluctably to a web of illusions that is never critiqued. This is the ultimate consequence of having broken off the symbiotic relationship with the Gaian matrix of the planet. This is the consequence of lack of partnership; this is the legacy of imbalance between sexes; this is the terminal phase of a long descent into meaninglessness and toxic existential confusion."
Now, I don't walk around with this stuff in my head every hour of each day, in fact the opposite would be true. I'm happy feeling so grateful to the deck of cards that I've been dealt. Yet it's always there, this knowing that we are all living in "The Age of Stupid' . I'm sure most people feel the same way... Yet our leaders seem incapable of leading . managing would seem a better word, or rather mismanaging.. Leadership implies wisdom; it implies vision and dynamism; the ability to foresee problems, create solutions and see them through . does that sound like our leaders? NO it doesn't. And why is this not the case? What is preventing them from leading? Is it the power of big business/corporations/ the financial industries? It looks increasingly like it . vested fucking interests, no degree of what's fair for all . plain and simple self-interest. I don't know about you but most people I know don't make decisions solely on what works best for them . it's a balance between what is good for others too.
This is officially a rant now and I may not post it .. apologies to my brothers in the band if they are reading this and don't like it .. tell me I'm being an arse and I'll take it down..

10 mins. Later:
Apologies for an about turn in mood here, but I want to write something positive .. When we returned from touring Mexico, Brasil, Argentina and Chile for the first time this year I intended to post something about the amazing experience we had .. well I didn't of course, so here goes. Thank you to everyone who came out and saw us, those shows were particularly special .. there was something unique and marked about every night .. and to play our music in that magical continent .. what an honour .. Thank you so much for having us. I'd also like to add in the dates we did in the Summer, our first visit to Austria and Prague and our first Polish show since '94 .. And then of course there was Leeds and Reading . Amazing for us, particularly the last night at Reading.. it felt like a fitting finale to it all .. Thank you thank you thank you...
The vibe in the camp is fantastic at present, and we head off into the studio in January to continue on from the work we started last Summer .. I am so genuinely excited about what we're doing, but for obvious reasons I can't divulge anything more.. anyway we all love surprises don't we? 10 years ago we were all collectively (that's the band) in the land of Kid A .. and although hugely proud of that record, it wasn't a fun place to be .. What's reassuring now, is that we are most definitely a different band, which should therefore mean that the music is different too and that is the aim of the game..keep it moving.
Inevitably, there's all this best and worst of the decade list type stuff going on at present and I was going to do my office chart for films of the year, then it turned into of the decade, but then having watched 'Harold and Maude' again the other night it's just 10 great films to watch over Xmas ...

1. Harold and Maude
2. Sideways
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey
4. Where Eagles Dare
5. Son of Rambow
6. This is England
7. Being There
8. The Year of Living Dangerously
9. Finding Nemo
10. Moonraker

There has to be a Bond film there and although definitely not the best I have a bit of a soft spot for Moonraker, . I always loved the Rio and South American scenes .. so much so that when it came out as a kid I went on my own and watched three consecutive matinee showings of it .. also those in the know will have noticed that Hal Ashby directed both 'Harold and Maude' and 'Being there' . he was an incredible director, well I only know those two films of his, but I intend to check out the others.
One last thing .. this year I got embroiled with the whole file-sharing issue. my whole angle has been is that it's too easy to blame all the current ills of the music industry squarely at the feet of those who illegally file-share, which is what the major labels have been doing .. they don't seem to want to take any responsibility for our current state of affairs .. well I think that's bollocks and hypocritical, and of course the whole subject is not black and white, which they like to portray it as . there are no clear cut heroes and villains in this. But if you're interested there is a fantastic podcast by one of our national treasures Stephen Fry .. he speaks so eloquently on the subject, with such good sense, reason and pragmatism .. here's the link:

http://www.stephenfry.com/2009/07/27/series-2-episode-4-itunes-live-festival/

Here's to you all having a peaceful and happy Christmas in spite of all the current madness . and good luck to us all in 2010.