Jonty Skrufff's Blog

Archive for February, 2010

A Labour politician who got so drunk he collapsed and vomited in front of 20 foreign dignitaries at a formal banquet, brushed off criticism this week, after the Daily Mail challenged his behaviour.

“I am just not making any comments,” Bill Etherington MP told newspaper, “Because it’s not a serious matter,” he added.

The Sunderland North MP got into trouble after staging a champagne drinking competition with MP Geraldine Smith in Paris some years ago, and ended up ‘babbling incoherently’ according to witness Paul Flynn (also a Labour MP).

Describing the incident in detail in his new book ‘The Unusual Suspect’, Mr Flynn said he feared Etherington could die.

“It was not the idiotic competition or the wild inebriation that left an indelible memory. It was the display of projectile vomiting across the top table,” he recounted.

“He slipped into unconsciousness. A doctor was called. The patient was spreadeagled on a couch in an adjoining room with electrodes attached to his nipple,” he recalled.

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Unbiased US news reporting (Youtube) click on the picture

Click here for refreshingly unbiased news reporting from America’s Insane Clown Posse

penis trousers on the catwalk: click on the picture for video footage (SAFE-ish for work)

Spanish fashion designer Isabel Mastache stole the show at this week’s Madrid Fashion Week when she presented models wearing trousers with a stitched on, partially engorged penis and scrotum bag.

Leading style blog Queerty was unimpressed, however, branding the ‘penis trousers . . . batshit crazy designs’ and decreeing ‘fashion is not about putting cocks on parade.’

Rival trend spotting portal Famespy.com were not so sure.

“Critics are completely two sided with this design,” Famespy suggested, “Some believe it to be a clever and genius way to express the beauty of fashion and the soul, while others are purely disgusted.”
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Click on the picture for more from Barefoot

Barefoot Doctor: “Just as every coin has a flip side and every chalice has its poisonous element, so popularity will inevitably include a measure of condemnation and notoriety bred from envy. But notoriety is only notoriety and usually won’t kill you.

However, seeking anything from life but peace is ultimately misguided.

By seeking the centered state of inner peace, which assumes all material conditions are in place to support it, including income and social inclusion, then all the details of how to achieve it will take care of themselves.

If you have to seek or aspire to anything more than peace, let it be social congruence, implying that the unique gifts you have to contribute, find their appropriate resonance in the most amount of people possible.

By contributing value, you gain value, the seeking of which after all, is the driving force behind craving popularity.”

Discover the Taoist super-skills and find out more about the Barefoot Doctor at

http://www.superchargedtaoist.com

Click here to listen to Jonty Skrufff's Gothic Horror Remix of Ghost Machine

“I don’t know what it is about the harder, faster style that grabs my attention more. It just seems more vital and alive somehow. It challenges you and pushes you to some amazing thoughts. The momentum and pulsating nature of music like this just makes me feel more fluid and patterns emerge in life that are otherwise invisible.”

With the likes of Slam, Chris Liberator and Dave Clarke already supporting his debut album ‘the Sinister Sound System’ British upcoming producer Martin Radcliffe’s views on techno carry weight, a point amplified even further recently by Britain’s Sunday Times.

“Dare & Haste’s music is proper techno, I didn’t know they still made it. Lovely,” The Times’ critic declared, “Weird how you can make decent techno now that’s not really any different from how it was in ‘94, and it still sounds bang up to date.”

With most of the album pounding away at a take-no-prisoners decidedly retro tempo of 135 bpm, his music has attracted suggestions he’s no fan of minimal, an assertion Martin’s quick to dispel.

“A review of the album in the Irish Daily Star said it ’sticks two fingers up at all things minimal’ but I wanted my album to be as hard as it is because that’s my personal favourite style as a producer, not because I hate minimal,” he stresses.

“I have even had to stop people from trying to mention me on some of these anti-minimal sites that actually exist. How the fuck can people say they like music if they only like one style? If all you like is hard techno you don’t like music, you like hard techno,” he snorts.

“I have lots of minimal-esque tracks that I have produced. Maybe I’ll put them up on my Myspace and confuse the hell out of people. The truth is I like it all but when I sit down to work the driving factors are usually hard, challenging and uncompromising,” he says.

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Jagz Kooner (photo by Mick Rock) click on the picture for more on Jagz

“I remember going out on Friday nights with Bob and a few other people and not coming home until Monday or Tuesday and I got to the stage where if I knew I was going to go out for the weekend I’d take my passport. Just in case. 90% of the time I’d get home fine, but for a while I just wouldn’t leave home without it.”

Sitting in his Wormwood Scrubs studio sipping tea, legendary dance/ rock producer Jagz Kooger looks remarkably well, particular since the party buddy he’s referring to as Bob is better known as Primal Scream’s hardcore party animal/ singer Bobbie Gillespie.

“Good times? Yeah they were GREAT times,” he laughs, “I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Starting his 20 year career when he teamed up with Andrew Weatherall to form Sabres of Paradise in the early 90s, the studio whizzkid would go on to produce and remix the likes of Oasis, Kasabian and in particular Primal Scream though not before his mid 90s career hiccup the Aloof.

“We make an album called Sinking, everybody loves it but it sells fuck all,” Jagz admits on his unusually candid official biography posted on Myspace, “We set ourselves on obliteration mode and duly implode (no body loves us).”

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Click on the picture for a classic news report on Czech drug 'cake'

Click here for a classic example of drug scares in the UK.

Compelling footage of HMS Sheffield being hit by an Exocet missile (Youtube) click on the picture

Danny Whittle from Pacha Ibiza chatted to Skrufff.com this week about his formative experiences serving in the Task Force that defeated Argentina in the Falklands War of the 80s and spoke out passionately against the prospect of future conflict.

“I would be totally against sending another task force. Believe it or not, I feel much closer to Argentinean people after the war than I did before. We went through the same horrors and we had the same life experiences,” said Danny.

“It was a very defining moment in my life. At the time I was 19 years old and nothing really bad had happened to me before,” he continued, “This situation showed me how bad life can be, how badly humans can treat each other and how totally removed politicians are from the reality of where they are sending their young servicemen to risk their lives for what is basically a political situation.”

Danny was chatting about the issue as Argentinean politicians increased their rhetoric against British possession of the islands as a row escalated over oil rights in the South Atlantic area. A British oil rig began drilling this week offshore and, while Argentina officially ruled our military action (BBC) newspapers such as the Scotsman suggested there are ‘chilling echoes of 1982’.

“At stake are an estimated 3.5 billion barrels and nine trillion cubic metres of gas. The current oil price is $76 a barrel. That means there could be more than a quarter of a trillion dollars worth of hydrocarbons off the Falklands,” said the paper, “And that, analysts are pretty sure, would be worth fighting for.” (

Serving in the Royal Navy as a weapons technician on the aircraft carrier HMS Hermes, Danny (nowadays brand director of the Pacha worldwide clubbing empire) insisted negotiation should remain the only option.

“The whole situation should have been worked out around a table,” said Danny, “More British servicemen were killed in the Falklands than both Iraq conflicts and the war only lasted three months. And even more Argentineans were killed which also is very sad. It’s crazy that people really can’t sit together and prevent these kinds of things from happening even when they can see that if they don’t sort it out many people will lose their lives.”

“When I think today about all those mums, dads and families that will never see their men again it makes me cry, even now 27 years later. One of my good friends was killed when a land based Exocet missile hit his ship about two hours before the surrender. Two hours more and he would have been OK. Very sad,” he said.
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Click on the pic for some great Kevin Spacey impressions (Youtube)

Kevin Spacey does Marlon Brandon, Clint Eastwood and more (click here)

UK Dance pioneer Piers Sanderson's excellent upcoming acid house documentary (click on the picture)

Click here for a trailer of Piers Sanderson’s upcoming documentary on the birth of acid house- Piers was there from the very start: looks like being a fantastic, as-it-was documentary.