Stewart Home's Blog, page 20

World's best nudist beaches part 1 – Smiltyne, Lithuania

There are various beaches running down the Coronian Spit from the tiny port at the top: the common beach, men's beach, women's beach and, of course, the nudist beach. These beaches at Smiltyne at the top of the Spit appear to be quieter than those devoted to swimming at Juodkrante and Nida. This is the Baltic coast so it is strictly summer time swimming and sunbathing, but from June to August the water is warm and the sands are clean. There is a fairly strong current pushing you up towards...

The Magician – or why cokeheads make better film students…

The Magician is a 2005 movie written and directed by its 'star' Scott Ryan. It was issued on DVD in 2006 and is currently available for a couple of quid in a bargain bin near you (if you live in the UK anyway). This is essentially a no budget film shot on DV for about AS $3000  dollars, it is talk heavy and the dialogue is mainly improvised. Ryan plays Ray Shoesmith, a Melbourne hitman who will make anyone disappear for the right amount of money. Shoesmith's schtick  is that he kidnaps his...

One week of art strike activities in Alytus, Lithuania, 18-24 August 2009

The central HQ of the 2009 Art Strike Biennial switched constantly between Alytus Art School, Hotel Dzukija about five minutes walk away, and a bar-cum-restaurant located between these two venues in downtown Alytus. At the art school a lot of coffee was consumed, at the hotel innumerable bottles of wine, and in the bar industrial quantities of beer and cold beetroot soup. The Dzukija was an old school Soviet hotel, a concrete shell with stained class in some of the public areas and cantilevered

Blog strike – 17 to 30 August 2009

We call on all bloggers to turn off their computers and cease to post from 17 to 30 August 2009.

Blogging is an indulgence of a self-perpetuating elite; those who can afford regular access to computers and the internet. Those bloggers who struggle against the reigning society find their work either marginalised or else co- opted by the bourgeois net establishment.

Blogging creates the illusion that, through activities which are actually waste, this civilisation is in touch with 'higher sensibiliti

Manituana by Wu Ming

Following on from Q (authored as Luther Blissett) and 54, comes a new novel Manituana by the Bologna fiction collective known as Wu Ming. Verso are publishing Shaun Whiteside's English translation, the proof copies were circulated last month, and the book will be available in both the UK and the US shortly. Like the earlier tomes by the same authors, Manituana is a heavily researched historical novel that speaks as much about a future we have yet to make, as the past in which it is set. The main

Buck naked in Bergen!

Although I've been to Bergen four times in the past five years, I've never pulled the classic tourist move of arriving on a cruise ship. Known locally as the city of the seven hills, Bergen is in the language of love and tourist hype 'the Rome of the north'; as are also Riga, Tallinn, York and Sutton Scotney. Bergen's development as a Hanseatic trading port is a historical groove sensation, but today most visitors are more impressed by the bar prices; hot tip – take a bank loan before buying a r

Herman Brood – Rock And Roll Junkie

Since Herman Brood came up on a blog I posted a few days ago, I've been thinking about why I like his tune Rock & Roll Junkie. There are elements within it that on their own I would normally hate. Somehow the super-dumb boogie-woogie keyboards manage to become a non-irritating element in the overall racket. Brood's voice is acceptable but nothing special, with his cracked English lyrics and pronunciation being a definite plus element. I guess most listeners will connect the lyrical content to Br

New World – Believe In Music!

Here's a strange one pop-pickers, I was on the prowl for Viola Wills' cover of If You Could Read My Mind when I stumbled across a bargain bin copy of the New World album Believe In Music, which features a different version of the tune I was looking for. The band name rang a vague bell, and so I turned the platter over and immediately noticed the Gordon Lightfoot song in the track listing. The album is a 1973 RAK release, and the Mickie Most connection (RAK was his label) brought back vague memor

Another side of 1977 – Eddie Holman as Salsoul sound sensation!

I've liked Eddie Holman's A Night To Remember for a long time, and I guess it's familiar to me because it was one of the late Salsoul singles that contributed to a revival of interest in him. So when I spotted an original vinyl copy of the album that takes its title from this single in a bargain bin last week, I grabbed it with both hands.  The tune A Night To Remember alone is worth a round pound of my money, or anyone else's for that matter! And a quid was all I had to pay for a 12 inch 8 trac

Merseymania – a 'great' lost Lou Reed album?

Merseymania by Billy Pepper and the Pepperpots is an album I rescued from a bargain bin on the strength of the cover and the sleeve notes. It is also rumoured to be a Lou Reed and John Cale effort from their days producing crud budget music for Pickwick during the earlier part of the sixties. Can anyone substantiate this rumour? Cale and Reed worked at Pickwick, but I've never seen any documentary evidence that convinced me they are actually responsible for this particular abomination. The black