Gary Numan’s career began with a launch in 1979 that can only be described as meteoric, with two number one albums, Replicas and The Pleasure Principle, and the hit single Are Friends Electric in the same year. His use of make-up and elaborate stage shows hinted at Bowie, but Numan’s synthesiser rock sound was brutally mechanical, and the lyrics, inspired by William Burroughs and JG Ballard, painted an emotionally cold dystopian vision of technology and alienation. It didn’t sit well with the 1970s vibe of punk anger, or with the pop frippery of the 1980s New Romantics fad.

Numan entered a hinterland, experimenting with dance music and jazz-funk until the 1990s when he came back with a hard-edged and industrial sound that was truer to his earlier music. Sacrifice and Exile – dark and brooding albums, with lyrics delivering an angry, heretical attack on the god of Judeo-Christianity, re-made his reputation for a new generation.

A full 30 years after the launch of the Pleasure Principle, Gary Numan was at The Junction, Cambridge, still able to hold an audience, but more comfortable with his craft, less in need of proving himself. He is not now disdainful of coming out of ‘character’ to talk to the audience or dedicate a set of songs to his dead friend and Tubeway Army collaborator Paul Gardiner. The insanely huge light shows, electric cars and radio-controlled robots that filled Wembley have gone in favour of stripped-down show for small venues that focuses on the music.

Numan was never one to produce rich, complex music on albums only to offer up a thin facsimile live, and it took up to four synthesiser players to deliver the pure, fat synth sound of the slightly over-produced Pleasure Principle on stage. While faithful to album cuts, the remixes of these tracks for live performance have benefited from the dark industrial sound of his later work and have given them an edge.

The second section of the concert focused on the newer material, and with the stage stripped of two of the synthesisers, the mood animated and became more like a real gig than a recital. It was gratifying to see that Numan, after 30 years can still deliver a powerful performance, and, looking around at the other grizzled heads bobbing at the front of the stage, still command a dedicated and loyal following.

One quick word about the support band Dirty Harry. A confident, competent band delivering a tight hard pop-rock sound. Had they been around in 1979, when Pleasure Principle was launched, they would have stood a chance of having a shot at the charts. But in today’s download-driven market, where there are no charts to speak of, no singles to be released, and no network television programmes such as Top of the Pops or the Tube, how ever do good, hard working bands get a break and make themselves heard above the background noise?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/8290669.stm

This is further evidence that Christian ‘compassion’ and ‘forgiveness’ are in fact the selfish actions of people concerned only with ingratiating themselves with Jehovah and saving themselves from Hell.  In their rush to show themselves to be ‘good Christians’, they showed no concern for the need of  their child to be avenged (no-one asked the child if he forgave his rapist), or for the rest of the community to be protected.  All that mattered to them was their own faith and their own salvation.

At the risk of appearing obsessed… I have just seen another, and recommend anyone who has a spare hour in London tomorrow to go and view it on  its final day.

Exquisite Bodies, at the Welcomme Trust in Euston Street, is a fascinating exploration of phenomenon of medical models, usually made out of wax, that existed from 16th century Florence until the Victorian Period.

Designed to get around the practicality and often the legality of dissecting real bodies for medical study. These figures are frequently highly artistic and have uncanny resonances with religious icons.

While this exhibition does not feature any real specimens (except a two-headed cow), they represent real medical conditions in a real and graphic way.

Highly recommended and FREE… catch it if you can, the final day is Sunday October 18.

The Stuff of Thought: Human Ideas and Where They Come from

The Stuff of Thought: Human Ideas and Where They Come from

by Steven Pinker

More at the Opus Diaboli bookshelf:

… All my lyrics are talking about great stuff. Don’t invite this Satan guy into your life! That’s the one thing I have going through the whole show, this anti-satanic thing. If anybody should protest me, it’s the Satanists, not the Christians. Does anybody get this?

…But what they don’t realize is that these kids come home and they say, ‘Dad, Alice is totally anti-Satan. He’s against drugs and alcohol!’ And if that doesn’t work, ‘Dad, he can beat you in 18 holes. ”

An excert from an interview with Alice Cooper for the Sun Herald http://www.sunherald.com/living/story/1661729.html

Alice… Alice… don’t you realise that you’re playing the devil’s music, you’re borrowing his clothes, his imagery, his schtick… but not having the honesty to give Satan credit for all the positive things we get from him… like rock and roll.

Shame on you Alice, and if you came to my town I would ‘protest (against) you’.

Satan's Manifest III

Issue three of Satan’s Manifest is available to download free, now at Satanism-Today.com:
http://www.satanism-today.com/SM.htm

Bram Stoker’s, 1897 novel Dracula came towards the end of the Gothic novel’s popularity, but for many, it is the finest example of that genre.

Perhaps what makes it stand out, is that unlike many Gothic novels which feature what we might today call the ‘Scooby Doo’ ending – the  ghost in reality is the old caretaker in a sheet and the supernatural horror is defused –  Dracula is infused with the sense of  a real supernatural threat invading the ‘modern’ world of science and reason. There is no explanation at the end, only a last minute and costly victory over a palpable force of evil.

Those who travel to  Romania (the modern country which encompasses Transylvania) will find that Vlad Tsepes (the historical figure Dracula is based on) is regarded as a national hero and his picture adorns school walls etc.

While there is plenty of fabricated Dracula entertainment for the tourists (there is at least one ‘Dracula’s Castle’ – but the strongest claim that any can make is ‘Vlad Tsepes slept here’), the strongest link to Stoker’s novel is the harsh beauty of the Carpathian mountains.

Although it is almost certain that Stoker never went to Transylvania, he did visit Whitby in North Yorkshire on a number of occasions, and the locations he used in Dracula can still be seen today.

Whitby remains a working fishing port as it is was in Stoker’s day, with the town split by the harbour and a swivelling bridge allowing the passage of cars and pedestrians from one side to the other.

Climbing the 200 steps from the bottom of the town to the Steep hill on the Southern side of the harbour, one can command an imposing view across the bay.

From here one can see the beach upon which the hapless ship, The  Demeter founders with its dead crew and undead cargo.

At the top of the hill is St Mary’s Church, which features the cliff-top seat, facing out to sea, where Lucy is discovered at night with Dracula lowering over her.

The nearby ruins of Whitby Abbey loom over the entire town, adding to its romantic appeal.

When I first started visiting Whity by in the 1980s there was very little made of the town’s Dracula heritage, but now shops sell coffin-shaped candy, Dracula souvenirs and other tacky nic-nacs, there is even a multi-media Dracula experience on the seafront.  The Dracula association has also made it a magnet for Goths, and there are regular Goth festivals, horror movie weekends and the like.

However, the town still remains much of its  charm, and shops selling imported junk cannot subtract from the drama of the North Yorkshire landscape.

Opus Diaboli recommends:

The Dolphin Hotel.  Once a gastro-pub  now, sadly, under new management. If one can tolerate the incredible indifference of the staff (I checked in and out again without exchanging more than half-a-dozen words), even the modestly-priced rooms have a charming view over the harbour.

The Passage to India restaurant, excellent food, sensible prices and attractive decor.

For all things Goth, try Gothic Crafts, at Haggersgate, one of the few shops still selling quality items of a Gothic nature.

Whitby Jet:  Jet is a black mineral which is as light as wood.  Victorians loved it for mourning jewellery and Whitby is one of the few places in the world where it can be found.  Whitby has  a number of jewellers providing Jet jewellery both antique and modern, from the trashy to the exquisite.  However, while the best work is worth every penny, even the trashy end of the market isn’t cheap.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6145785/Scouts-to-no-longer-bring-penknives-on-camping-trips.html

A spokesperson for the organisation, whose motto is ‘be prepared’ said that: “I think it is safest to assume that knives of any sort should not be carried by anybody to a Scout meeting or camp, unless there is likely to be a specific need for one. In that case, they should be kept by the Scout leaders and handed out as required.”

So, you should only ‘be prepared’ for entirely foreseen circumstances.

Another spokesperson said: “We believe that young people need more places to go after school and at weekends, where they can experience adventure without the threat of violence or bullying and the need to carry weapons.”

The Boy Scout movement is clearly endorsing the common belief that the only reason that anyone would carry a knife is to use it as a weapon. You might have expected them to argue that whether you are in the wilds or in the city, a penknife is a useful tool with a variety of uses other than as a weapon (including a number of first aid uses).

Instead they are bowing to the current zeitgeist of Blair/Brown’s Britain, in which doing anything other than watch trash television is deviant behaviour.

When you have a nation of people whose experience of reality is limited to ‘reality’ TV, and who are increasingly protected from even moderate risk by  ’health and safety’ concerns (Asprin can only be purchased in maximum quantities of 16 in the UK), then the mentality of the chicken-coop takes over.  Someone taking out a pocket knife to alter the length of a shoelace in England runs the risk of arrest and jail:  ’he’s got a knife! he could stab me! why else would he have  a knife?’ and the Scout Movement has been stupid enough to cave in to this kind of thinking. If  you can call this thought.

Against this backdrop of adults living in a state of permanent adolescence , petulant, demanding, but still totally dependent on a parent (the state), being able to look after yourself and take responsibility for your own welfare makes you entirely unpredictable and therefore potentially dangerous.

Although there has not been one incident to my knowledge of a uniformed boy scout abusing his scout knife, children in the UK are killing each other at the rate of about one a week.  It seems that the scouts are an easier target to bully into parting with their knives than the feral teenagers produced by the Blair/Brown experiment.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8222689.stm

The Indian Supreme court has decided to overturn a previous court decision to give the girl an abortion, saying: “Nature will take care of the orphan mother and the child”.

When people in this kind of context talk about ‘nature’, what they mean is ’somone else’.  Let her keep the baby, someone else will take care of it.  Stop the abortion, someone else will feed the baby.

The last thing they want is for nature to take care of things – nature was taking care of the mother when she was found starving on the street.