We Can Stop It



What I like about Scottish anti-rape campaign is that it approaches it in the way a drunk driving campaign would. So whereas with traditional campaigns the mephasis is always on rape prevention by the victim, this campaign is talking directly to potential perpetrators, using the same sort of techniques that helped make drink driving from something you bragged about to something you do furtively, if at all.

Not that rape is anywhere near as accepted as drunk driving once was of course, but rather that the way most of us, especially blokes, think about rape is about the stereotypical man in a dark alley physically overpowering a random woman. What this campaign instead is saying that actually, there are quite a few situations in which no physical force is used that are still rape or sexual assault, that consent is always required with sex and that decent, normal men know when it can and cannot be given.

What it does in short is to denormalise all these situations in which you can fool yourself that you’re not actually doing wrong in forcing somebody to have sex with you, by explicitely stating that no, having sex with a woman too drunk to stand up of her own accord is wrong. And it does it largely without putting the hackles up of its target audience, young men, who can get very defensive when talking about rape, for obvious reasons.

Sarah Brightman wants to sing in space

Sarah Brightman wants to be the first professional singer in space:

British singer Sarah Brightman is to travel as a space tourist to the International Space Station.

The classical recording artist, once married to Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber, will be part of a three-person crew flying to the ISS.

After completing a tour in 2013, Ms Brightman will embark on six months of preparation at the Star City cosmonaut training centre in Moscow.

She will be the seventh space tourist to visit the ISS.

Once there, she says she intends to become the first professional musician to sing from space.

I say we let her do what she wants, as long as she sings this song:



Eleven months

Eleven months to the day since Sandra died. Time flies even when you’re not having fun. I thougt I’d keep it light today by just sharing some of the songs that would always cheer her up.

Sandra had always been a Paul Weller fan, but never more so than during his Style Council days.



From the Style Council’s Long Hot Summer it’s only a short step to Roy Ayers’ Everybody Loves the Sunshine:



Roy Ayers is one of those jazz/funk crossover artists that made the seventies such an interesting musical decade. The Crusaders are another example; their greatest hit Streetlife being not quite like their other work… Here they are at Montreux in 2003, with Randy Crawford:



I’ve talked about how much Sandra liked the Brothers Johnson’s version of Strawberry Letter 23 before, but here’s Shuggie Otis’ original version:



As for the Brothers Johnson, another favourite was Land of Ladies, which always reminded her of driving through France on a family holiday with the album on which this song appeared the only cassette available and hence being played over and over.



Stevie Wonder was another huge favourite of Sandra’s. Y’all know what this is.



Not quite as sophisticated as Stevie Wonder, but certainly as funky was Johnny “Guitar” Watson, who had had a long career already before he reinvented himself in the seventies. Here he is on Soul Train:



Speaking of funk and reinvention, Chaka Khan got her start with this lot, Rufus, long before she became an eighties pop diva:



Let’s leave with another summer song by another favourite, The Isley Brothers’ Summer Breeze: