Dissociates – Kick and Shove (video)

May 14th, 2012 § 0

So as we all know, because I mention it every six weeks or so, and because it’s on the submissions page which everyone obviously reads before adding my email address to their mailing lists, I don’t do press releases or puff pieces. What I do, or what I used to do before I ran out of free time, is write about records and occasionally gigs. The core of the audience experience, if you will. This is as opposed to telling you that some band you may never have heard of is going on tour, or has a new video out.

Of course, there have been exceptions. And this is one of them. It’s not for any particular reason in this case. It’s just that I actually quite like this song. The chorus is very lovely and hooky in a simple poppy way, but the verses have a bit of a mathy judder to them. Songs with parts, parts for all. It’s very much in the vein of Pulled Apart By Horses and Mclusky.

The video features moving pictures, which mostly appear to be of the band playing in a pub. It’s shot in monochrome so if you are colour-blind, like to attend gigs in pubs, and have a tendency to run around a lot to enjoy the action from different angles, it will be a familiar experience for you.

Linkfest: April 23rd – May 12th

May 13th, 2012 § 0

Del.icio.us links for April 23rd – May 12th:

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Linkfest: April 18th – May 12th

April 22nd, 2012 § 1

Del.icio.us links for April 18th through May 12th:

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Linkfest: April 1st – April 15th

April 15th, 2012 § 0

Del.icio.us links for April 1st through April 15th:

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Linkfest: March 27th – April 1st

April 1st, 2012 § 0

Del.icio.us links for March 27th through April 1st:

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Linkfest: March 6th – March 27th

March 12th, 2012 § 0

Del.icio.us links for March 6th through March 27th:

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Linkfest: February 28th – March 4th

March 4th, 2012 § 0

Last weekend I was at a wedding (it was awesome in a way that most weddings are not) and then was playing a show right after I got back to Brighton, hence this weekend’s double post. Bam!

Del.icio.us links for February 28th through March 4th:

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Linkfest: February 19th – February 28th

March 4th, 2012 § 0

Del.icio.us links for February 19th through February 28th:

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REALITY 86′d: Documentary of Black Flag final tour

February 27th, 2012 § 0

REALITY 86′d from KICK TO KILL on Vimeo.

There’s not a huge amount to say about this one; it’s an hour-long documentary following Black Flag on their final tour in 1986, including various pieces of live footage (you get ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’, ‘In My Head’, ‘Loose Nut’, ‘Drinking & Driving’ and ‘Louie Louie’), plus the same for Gone and Painted Willie who accompanied Black Flag on tour, interspersed with assorted interviews of punk kids and confused-looking locals, horseplay and bullshit. It’s cool to see the live footage and get a snapshot of how these bands entertained themselves whilst on tour (answer: just like everyone else with no money does). The volume is pretty low and inconsistent so be sure to crank it up.

Three bands and crew (a combined total of 13 individuals), 2 Dodge Ram extended cab vans, one equipment truck, one PA system traverse the continental US for six months. A road documentary shot from the inside of the last Black Flag tour ever (the 1986 “In My Head” US tour.) Greg Ginn along with Henry Rollins, Cel Revulta, and Anthony Martinez comprise the final line up of the band. Featuring behind the scenes proceedings and live performances from Black Flag, Painted Willie, and Gone (Ginn’s side project, then featuring Sim Cain and Andrew Weiss (later of the Rollins Band) . David Markey was along for the entire trip as the drummer / singer for Painted Willie (with Phil Newman & Vic Makauskas), documenting the six month tour with his Super-8 camera as it happened. Also features roadie Joe (“Planet Joe”) Cole, soundmen Davo Claasen and Dave “Ratman” Levine, and the tour manager who kept it all together, Mitch Bury. A crucial turning point in American underground rock. The end of the line for a trail blazing American band.

Shot in 1986 and completed by director David Markey in 1991 for We Got Power Films, approx. 62 min, Super 8 film.

Enjoy.

Beating the Hack

February 24th, 2012 § 1

Have you heard of the Pharma Hack? It’s a fairly widespread problem among PHP-driven websites, particularly those powered by WordPress or Joomla. I’m a WordPress user myself, and Nostalgia For Infinity, the Wrecktheplacefantastic bandsite and Arcadian Rhythms are all powered by the platform.

About a fortnight ago AJ, one of the writers for Arcadian Rhythms, noticed that some of our Google search results were a bit odd. The links themselves were fine but using the preview function (where you get a screenshot of the page to the right of the search results) revealed a ton of spam content. Another AR writer, Spann, who works in SEO, had a look and quickly realised that this was 1.) not good, and 2.) we had been pharma hacked.

After a bit of research from Spann he discovered that there was a vulnerability in the WordPress theme we use, Arras, that allowed code to be injected into the site via a file called timthumb.php. It’s not a malicious file itself – it’s supposed to enable thumbnail resizing via sites like Flickr, I believe – but the outdated version used in Arras was deeply insecure.

The onus was now on me to identify the exact nature of the problem and fix it. I decided to write up what I went about doing in the hopes that it might be of use to some other poor bastard who is frantically googling the symptoms they’re seeing, as the nature of the hack I fixed was not identical to the other guides I read (though I will of course link to these, especially as they contain all of the technical instructions on how to go about doing what I did).

I’m not really in the mood to write this all up as a nice friendly blog post, so what I will do is provide a bulleted list of what I did and the order in which I did so. At the end of the post I’ll link to everything I found useful so you can find out how to do what I mention, or learn more about why. Where I can remember the relevant links, I’ll also include them in the list.

Sorry this is a bit lazy. I want to be helpful but I have other things to write that are a lot more interesting than this!

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