Quantcast
Channel: BuzzFeed - Latest
Viewing all 214876 articles
Browse latest View live

These Men Are In Their 70s, And They Rock Harder Than You

0
0

In 1965, Tacoma, Washington’s The Sonics released a debut album of raw-boned, hemorrhagic garage-punk and maximum R&B called, simply, Here Are The Sonics. Exponentially louder, wilder, and weirder than their woolly-bully frat-rock brethren on the SeaTac teen club/roller rink/armory circuit, The Sonics sang about witches, psychopaths, Satan, and strychnine as a social lubricant, along with the more standard themes of hot girls and fast cars, or, even better, fast girls in hot cars. The 12 tracks on Here Are The Sonics capture the needle-pinning, speaker-blowing, tonsil-shredding, balls-to-the-wall mating call of five hormonal mid-’60s teenage savages forever in hot pursuit of Mad Men-era booze-cigarettes-sex-magic and the glorious din that made it all possible.

Fifty years after its release, Here Are The Sonics still sounds, as one wag aptly put it, “as raw as a freshly scraped kneecap.” On the continuum of rock ’n’ roll as a 20th-century art form, Here Are The Sonics remains a vital and important relic, the aural equivalent of a prehistoric cave painting, as primitive as it is seminal. It changed music. More accurately, it changed the people who would change music.

Jack White called it “the epitome of ’60s punk.” Kurt Cobain said it had “the most amazing drum sound I've ever heard...it sounds like he’s hitting harder than anyone I’ve ever heard.” On “Losing My Edge,” LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy concludes his itemized list of the essential artists in the definitive hipster record collection by invoking The Sonics four times in a row, as if casting a spell.

Feeble national promotion and ham-fisted distribution may have ensured that few outside of The Sonics’ Pacific Northwest stomping ground heard Here Are The Sonics when it was first released, but in the fullness of time its sphere of influence now transcends generations and spans continents thanks to the Esperanto of electrifying noise.

Just don’t tell The Sonics that.

“I think that’s overstating it a little,” says Larry Parypa, 68, The Sonics’ guitarist and de facto leader, when I recite some variation of the last two paragraphs to him. “I’m not sure how much influence we had on rock ’n’ roll.” “Parypa” is a Hungarian name that means “man of strong horse or something,” he says, but I just don’t see it. Parypa is more mild-mannered than you’d expect from a man whose claim to fame is playing guitar on a song called “Psycho,” and, it turns out, is suspicious of grand statements, especially about his band.

“I know we did some things that were very different, but to that degree? I don’t know,” he says with a shrug. We are sitting in the living room of Parypa’s house situated in a leafy suburban cul-de-sac outside of Seattle and paid for not by The Sonics’ paltry record sales royalties (about $4,000 a year) but a decades-long career as an insurance adjuster from which he finally retired earlier this year. He is only mildly amused when I point out that it only took 55 years for the guitar player for The Sonics to finally be able to quit his day job. Parypa is oddly joyless given that the thwarted rock star dreams of his youth have finally come true in his old age. Perhaps he senses, deep down, that it’s come too late.

Parypa is not a sentimental man. You have to look hard to find signs that the guitar player from The Sonics lives here. He doesn’t have copies of the original pressings of The Sonics’ ’60s recordings. No film footage of The Sonics performing live or even a video clip of their 1966 performance on Cleveland’s Upbeat, their one TV appearance. He doesn’t even have any old photos of the band from back in the day. “We just never kept that stuff,” he says, again with the shrug.

There are a few framed gig posters tucked away in an upstairs hallway — but nothing older than five years ago. Parypa never even bothered to tell his now-adult daughter that he was in The Sonics when she was growing up. She had to find out on the street when she was 14. “She must’ve gone to a record store and saw my picture and asked the guy behind the counter and I guess he made a big fuss,” he says, with that I-don’t-see-what-the-big-deal-is tone of voice he adopts when talking about the band. “She came home with a Sonics album and was like, ‘What’s this all about?’”

The reason we are debating the band’s place in the canon of rock ’n’ roll is that a reconstituted Sonics — Parypa, saxophonist Rob Lind, singer-songwriter-keyboardist Jerry Roslie, all three original members, plus bassist Freddie Dennis and drummer Dusty Watson (replacing original bassist Andy Parypa and drummer Bob Bennett, respectively) — are on the verge of releasing This Is The Sonics (out earlier this week), the first proper Sonics album in nearly half a century.

Wisely they enlisted the production services of Detroit garage guru Jim Diamond (White Stripes, The Dirtbombs), who laid down the law on day one.

“I told them, ‘You know, you’re not 19 years old, so it would be silly to try and copy your ’60s records; having said that, we have to stay true to the spirit of those recordings,’” he says a few weeks later, calling from somewhere in the ruins of the Motor City. “I want you to play like you haven’t gotten any better than when you were 19. Raw and mean. If it’s not punk as fuck, I’m not putting my name on it.”

Well, Jim Diamond put his name on it, as well he should. Despite the 48-year gap between albums and the fact that the median age in the band is now 70, one spin of This Is The Sonics makes a persuasive case that The Sonics are still The Rawest Band on Earth. Parypa can still swing a riff like a Louisville Slugger, the drummer still beats the drums like they owe him money, the sax player still honks as if he’s horny, and the singer still sounds like he gargles with gasoline and can’t be trusted with breakable things. All of which means The Rawest Band on Earth are now old enough to be your grandfather — and more popular than they ever were in the prime of their youth.

Anthony Bourdain, host of CNN’s Parts Unknown, used “Have Love, Will Travel” in promos for the current season. He emailed the following when I asked him why: "The Sonics were true originals, garage before garage, the way rock and roll should be: loud, dirty and dangerous."

Chona Kasinger for BuzzFeed News

The cruel irony of The Sonics story is that Jerry Roslie, the guy who screams like an electrocuted banshee on record and writes songs about guzzling strychnine for kicks and going psycho at the sight of a beautiful lady, is pathologically bashful, bordering on socially phobic, a condition that seems to have worsened over the years. It wasn’t much of an issue when he was living a quiet, anonymous middle-class life in the suburbs of Tacoma, laying asphalt for a living. But all that changed in 2004 when Land Rover licensed The Sonics’ version of “Have Love, Will Travel” for a TV ad, triggering a revival of interest in the band.

In 2007, after years of politely declining lucrative reunion tour offers, The Sonics begrudgingly agreed to reunite for one night and perform a completely sold-out show at the Cavestomp! garage-rock festival in New York. Backstage before they went on, everyone had butterflies — after all, it had been 40 years since they plugged in together — but Roslie was scared shitless. Could he still do this? Did The Sonics still have it? Would the audience laugh at these sad old men trying to relive long-past glories? “We heard that New York can be a pretty tough crowd,” he says. “I remember before we went on looking around for a garbage-can lid to shield me from the rotten fruit and vegetables. When they opened the curtain it was like déjà vu, spooky, we’d gotten older but the audience was the same age as they were when we played back in the 1966. And they welcomed us right away.” And 21st-century audiences have been welcoming them ever since.

In the eight years since they played CaveStomp, The Sonics have crisscrossed the globe repeatedly — not bad for a band that never got farther east than Cleveland back in the day. “We’ve played in European countries where they don’t speak much English,” says Lind. “And the crowd is down at the front of the stage singing every word of ‘Strychnine’ and waving their beer bottles.” When The Sonics played Mexico City last summer, they were so mobbed by autograph seekers after the show it took half an hour to go the 20 feet from the backstage door to the shuttle van. When they played in Spain, grown men cried in their dressing room, begging to touch the hem of their garments. Two months ago they flew to São Paulo, Brazil, for a completely sold-out one-night stand. The next morning they were mobbed in the hotel lobby by autograph seekers. One eternally grateful fan passed the band a handwritten note with the following message.

To The Sonics

Thank you for existing and the good job you did (and still doing) for mankind.

Big Respect,

Rodrigo

Sao Paulo, Feb. 2015

Not too shabby for an ex–insurance adjuster, retired commercial airline pilot, former proprietor of an asphalt paving business, laid-off Experience Music Project tour guide, and the guy who played drums for Lita Ford from 1980 to 1984.


Charlie Gillett Collection / Redferns

Hit rewind. The year is 1963, the place is Seattle-Tacoma and all points in between. Every red-blooded, non-jock male under 25 has a rock ’n’ roll band. Or wants to start a rock ’n’ roll band or just got kicked out of a rock ’n’ roll band or at the very least goes out to see rock ’n’ roll bands all the time. Because that’s where the girls are. Jerry Roslie and Rob Lind are no exception. Roslie plays keyboards and Lind blows sax. Their band is called The Searchers. “We started going out on Saturday nights on a dual mission and the mission was: hear rock ’n’ roll bands and meet women,” says Lind, a recently retired US Airways pilot, on the phone from his home in North Carolina. “We’d see something cool and then go home and try and play it and kinda get it wrong, but in the process make something that was ours.”

One Saturday night they met a guitar player named Larry Parypa, who had an instrumental band with his brother Andy called The Sonics — named after the sonic booms emanating from nearby McChord Air Force Base. But something was missing. Like Lind and Roslie, the Parypa brothers liked their rock ’n’ roll loud and mean. They quickly agreed to join forces and ditch The Searchers moniker in favor of The Sonics, which was wise because there was already a band called The Searchers in the U.K., with actual hits. By process of elimination, Roslie became the band’s lead singer. He was the least bad of the bunch.

“People always ask me how come you guys are so nasty and dirty, and I always tell them that Seattle bands were jazzy and swingy and really good musicians,” says Lind. “Down in Tacoma, where we grew up, it was a blue-collar city, our fathers all worked in mills and on the waterfront and all we wanted to do was rock ’n’ roll. We wanted to kick your ass.”

“We all wanted to play hard music, and it got so aggressive,” says Parypa. “We wanted loud drums and back then you didn’t mic the drum kit, so if you wanted loud drums the drummer had to hit really hard. That meant everybody else had to turn up to be heard over the drums, and Jerry would have to scream to be heard over the din. And that just became our sound.”

It was slow going early on, but soon they landed a regular Friday-night gig at a teen club called the Red Carpet, which would become for them what the Cavern Club was for The Beatles: the place where they got their chops from playing marathon four-hour sets nightly, learned their lessons about stagecraft the hard way, and began harvesting the fruits of their labor, namely girls and beer. “After a while, we’d pull up to the back to load in our gear and there would already be a line of kids waiting to get in that stretched around the block,” says Lind.

Some nights Roslie’s preternatural bashfulness would get the best of him and he’d succumb to debilitating stage fright. “He’d look out at a packed crowd and turn to me and say, ‘I’m not singing tonight!'” says Parypa. “I’d be like, ‘But you’re our singer!’”

The Sonics soon caught the attention of Buck Ormsby, bassist from The Wailers, who had started Etiquette Records to put out his band’s recordings and harvest local talent. He told them if they had a record under their belt, they could command at least twice the $500 they were pulling down a night at the Red Carpet. But to make a record you had to have some original material, and at that point The Sonics were still just a cover band. Roslie went home that night and wrote a this-evil-chick-done-me-wrong song, as was the style of the day, around a catchy stair-stepping riff that — when played simultaneously by the guitar, sax, and organ — sounded as menacing as the title. He called it “The Witch.” Ormsby liked what he heard and took the boys into a two-track studio in Seattle that was primarily used to cut ad jingles.

“We were all of 17 and so keyed up and nervous that when they pressed 'record' we played it three times as fast as it was supposed to be,” says Lind. “I remember afterwards laying on the living room floor at the Parypas house and listening to the master, and all of us were distraught. We felt like we’d totally screwed it up and we’d spent $500 of our own money to record it.” The Parypas brothers’ father was so incensed he called up Ormsby and threatened to drive over to his house and punch his lights out for ruining his sons’ budding musical career.

Six months later it was a hit.

Despite the phone ringing off the hook with requests for “The Witch,” the big Seattle radio station WKJR refused to play the song before 3:30 p.m. — when the kids were home from school — for fear this creepy, lo-fi song about a witch would scare off the lucrative daytime homemaker audience. Despite such restrictions, the single sold 20,000 copies in the first week of its release. “The record label was like, ‘Holy crap, you guys are hot! We have to follow this up with an album!’” says Lind. “And we were like, ‘OK, when are we going to make this album?’ They said, ‘Tomorrow.’”

That night after playing their standard four-hour set at the Red Carpet, they asked the owner if they could stay and rehearse for a few hours. They worked up a couple numbers that Roslie had been chipping away at: “Boss Hoss,” inspired by a bitchin’ red Mustang he saw in a hot-rod magazine; and “Strychnine,” a bitter white crystalline powder widely used as a rat poison that causes convulsions and death through asphyxia in humans. It was also widely rumored at the time that LSD was cut with strychnine, which turned out to be a myth spread by law enforcement types to discourage use of the hallucinogen. A third original, the aptly titled “Psycho,” was made up on the spot that night. The rest of the album would be fleshed out with covers from their live set, including their now-iconic version of Richard Berry’s “Have Love, Will Travel.”

Lind remembers the recording session was booked for the middle of the night to get a cheaper rate. “We used to call Etiquette ‘Cheap Screw Records,’” says Lind. “It was like 3 a.m. Everything was done in one take. We’d be like, ‘We could probably play it better if we did it again.’ And the engineer would be like ‘Naw, sounds great, let’s move on.’ I remember the top of the piano being covered with burgers and soda cups and there was this thick fog of cigarette smoke.”

Etiquette hired famed rock photographer Jini Dellaccio to shoot the band for the cover. Formerly a fashion photographer, Dellaccio had started turning her lens on the moody, hirsute young men that peopled the local music scene with striking results. Always shooting in black and white, Dellaccio eschewed the fussily arranged studio setups that were de rigueur at the time in favor of spontaneous shots taken in rustic outdoor settings near her home along the waterfront.

Mat Hayward / Getty Images


33 Of The Most Powerful Photos Of The Week

0
0

A life-size Godzilla head is seen through a window of the "Gozilla View Room" of Hotel Gracery Shinjuku at Kabukicho shopping district in Tokyo on April 9, 2015. The Godzilla is a main feature of the new commercial complex comprising a 970-room hotel, movie theaters and restaurants which will be open this month.

Toru Yamanaka / AFP / Getty Images

Dog owner Laura Aquilina strolls with her two year old Rottweiler Brutus, who was recently fitted with prosthetics on all four paws, and is currently learning to use them, near Aquilina's home in Loveland, Colo. Brutus lost all four paws to frostbite as a puppy while under care of a breeder, and Aquilina began caring for him about a year ago.

Brennan Linsley / AP

Japanese artist Nishida Jun presents "Hand Exoskeleton", gloves which transform the dimensions of the user's hands to reproduce those of a child, in order to understand their perception, on April 8, 2015, in Laval, western France, as part of the 17th international conference and exhibition of virtual technologies.

Jean-francois Monier / AFP / Getty Images

Catherine Walton on Ockey De Neulliac fall at Valentine's fence during the 16:05 Crabbie's Fox Hunters' Chase on April 4th, 2015.

Reuters Staff / Reuters

Participants wait backstage during a regional bodybuilding and fitness competition in Stavropol, southern Russia April 4, 2015. More than 100 people from the Stavropol region, Krasnodar, Moscow and other cities competed in several categories, according to organizers.

Eduard Korniyenko / Reuters

Andreas Mickosz celebrates the second place in the Men's 200m breastsroke finals on day 2 of the Maria Lenk Swimming Trophy 2015 at Fluminense Club April 7, 2015 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Ivo Gonzalez / Getty Images

Lorenzo Cain #6 of the Kansas City Royals is doused with water by teammate Salvador Perez #13 as they celebrate a 7-5 win over the Chicago White Sox on April 8, 2015 at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri.

Ed Zurga / Getty Images

A Crows fan is taken away by Police after a punch up during the round one AFL match between the Adelaide Crows and the North Melbourne Kangaroos at Adelaide Oval on April 5, 2015 in Adelaide, Australia.

Michael Dodge / Getty Images

Students cheer as the Cecil Rhodes statue is being removed from the University of Cape Town on April 9, 2015 in Cape Town, South Africa. The statue of British colonialist Cecil John Rhodes was removed from the University of Cape Town as a result of a month long protest by students citing the statue "great symbolic power" which glorified someone "who exploited black labour and stole land from indigenous people".

Charlie Shoemaker / Getty Images

Members of the Unified Workers' Central clash with police during a protest against a proposed law which would allow companies to outsource their labor force, in front of National Congress in Brasilia on April 7, 2015.

Handout . / Reuters

Demonstrators lie on the street in front of the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration on April 7, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. The 'Remember Me' march was organized in downtown L.A. for people who have been killed by law enforcement.

Ringo Chiu / Getty Images

North Charleston police officer Michael Slager is seen allegedly shooting 50-year-old Walter Scott in the back as he runs away, in this still image from video in taken April 4, 2015. North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey said state investigators decided to charge officer Slager, 33, with the murder of Scott after they viewed the video of the incident, which followed a traffic stop on Saturday morning.

Handout / Reuters

Peaceful protesters stand with candles as they gather outside the North Charleston City Hall in North Charleston, SC, April 8, 2015, after the latest in a series of police killings of black suspects was caught on video.

Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images

American Civil War re-enactors dressed as Confederate cavalry and artillery take part in a re-enactment of the Battle of Appomattox at the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park in Appomattox, Virginia. April 9 was the 150th anniversary of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia to Union forces commanded by General Ulysses S. Grant in the McLean House at Appomattox, Virginia. The surrender marked the beginning of the end of the American Civil War in 1865.

Win Mcnamee / Getty Images

Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, hold up their weapons as they attend a protest against Saudi-led airstrikes in Sanaa, Yemen, Friday, April 10, 2015.

Hani Mohammed / AP

A member of the Afghan security force holds a woman while rescuing her from the site of an attack in Mazar-i-Sharif, April 9, 2015. Militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons stormed a court in Afghanistan's northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Thursday, killing the district police chief and two other officers, authorities said.

Anil Usyan / Reuters

Girls who survived what activists said was a ground-to-ground missile attack by forces of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, hold hands at Aleppo's Bab al-Hadeed district April 7, 2015.

Stringer . / Reuters

A Badr Brigade militia soldier mourns along the Tigris River in the palace compound of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2015 in Tikrit, Iraq. Iraqi government forces continue to locate the corpses of up to 1,700 soldiers who where reportedly executed last year by Islamic State fighters when they captured Tikrit, with many shot and pushed into the river and others put into mass graves. Government troops and allied Shia militia retook Tikrit in early April with the aid of U.S. airstrikes, and they continue to push ISIS fighters out from the area.

John Moore / Getty Images

A man reacts at the site of an air strike in Sanaa April 8, 2015. A Saudi-led coalition air strike hit an office of Yemen's Houthi rebels near the pro-Houthi television channel al-Maseera in central Sanaa on Wednesday, witnesses said.

Khaled Abdullah / Reuters

Family members are overcome with grief after learning that a relative was killed by Somalia's Shebab Islamists during the siege on the Garissa Campus University, at Nyayo Stadium in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on April 5, 2015.

Nichole Sobecki / AFP / Getty Images

Participants dressed as angels march in the annual Easter procession during traditional Semana Santa (Holy Week) festivities on April 5, 2015 in Ouro Preto, Brazil.

Mario Tama / Getty Images

Prince Harry places a poppy at the Roll of Honour during a visit to the Australian War Memorial on April 6, 2015 in Canberra, Australia.

Lukas Coch / Pool / Getty Images

A Christian pilgrim dips in the water during her visit to the baptismal site known as Qasr el-Yahud on the banks of the Jordan River, near the West Bank city of Jericho, April 9, 2015. A day ahead of Orthodox Good Friday, the Easter period draws many Christian tourists to visit well-known religious sites, including Qasr el-Yahud, where it is believed John the Baptist baptised Jesus.

Amir Cohen / Reuters

An Israeli boy swims next to sheep belonging to a Palestinian farmer in the West Bank village of Al-Auja in the Jordan Valley on April 8, 2015 during the Jewish Passover holiday. Thousands of Israelis spent the day outdoors, picnicking and touring the country during the eight-day Passover holiday, which commemorates the Israelites' exodus from Egypt some 3,500 years ago.

Menahem Kahana / AFP / Getty Images

A construction worker holds a turtle for sale on a street near a construction site in Beijing April 7, 2015. In China, turtles are raised as pets, as well as food.

Kim Kyung Hoon / Reuters

Firefighters try to extinguish a fire at a petrochemical plant in Zhangzhou, Fujian province April 7, 2015. At least six people were injured after an explosion hit part of an oil storage facility on Monday at Dragon Aromatics, an independent petrochemical producer in eastern China, Xinhua reported.

China Stringer Network / Reuters

Crews search wreckage on the IL-72 after a tornado came through the town earlier in the day on April 9, 2015 in Fairdale, Illinois. According to reports, seven people were injured and one person was killed when tornadoes and thunderstorms passed through the northwestern suburbs of Chicago.

Jon Durr / Getty Images

The iconic gold suit worn by Elvis Presley on the cover of his album '50,000,000 Fans Can't Be Wrong' guarded by paratroopers at The O2 Arena on April 9, 2015 in London, England.

Tim P. Whitby / Getty Images

Koukokuji temple head priest Yajima Taijun walks through the Ruriden columbarium as glass Buddha alters are lit up on April 6, 2015 in Tokyo, Japan. The Ruriden took two years to build and houses 2046 futuristic alters with glass buddha statues that correspond to drawers storing the ashes of the deceased. An IC card allows the owner of the alter to access the building and lights up the corresponding statue.

Chris Mcgrath / Getty Images

Gallery technicians move Lichenstein's 'The Ring', 1962 (estimated in the region of $50m) into place, as the works go on show at Sotheby's on April 10, 2015 in London, England. The exhibition of masterpieces including works by Monet, Van Gogh, Rothko, Richter and Polke takes place from April 10 -14th before the works are auctioned in New York in May.

Mary Turner / Getty Images for Sotheby's

A child looks at a display of Apple Watches at an Apple retail store in Beijing Friday, April 10, 2015. From Beijing to Paris to San Francisco, the Apple Watch made its debut Friday.

Ng Han Guan / AP

Revellers take part in a giant pillow fight in Trafalgar Square on 'International Pillow Fight Day' on April 4, 2015 in London, England. Pillow fights have been organised in numerous other cities around the world simultaneously.

Dan Kitwood / Getty Images

A 19-day-old Spix's macaw is pictured on April 8, 2015 in the Association for the Conservation of Threatened Parrots in Schoeneiche, Germany.

Patrick Pleul / AFP / Getty Images



If Pennsatucky From "Orange Is The New Black" Quotes Were Motivational Posters

0
0

It’s a metaphor, you potato with eyes!

ThinkStock / Netflix / Anna Kopsky

ThinkStock / Netflix / Anna Kopsky

ThinkStock / Netflix / Anna Kopsky

ThinkStock / Netflix / Anna Kopsky


View Entire List ›

13 Reasons "Agent Carter" Should Live To See Another Season

0
0

ABC’s Agent Carter is in danger of cancellation. This is a terrible limbo to live in. Chant with me now: Peggy! Peggy! Peggy!

Hayley Atwell is an undeniable star.

Hayley Atwell is an undeniable star.

Dat charisma, tho.

Marvel Studios

There's so much of Peggy's story still begging to be told.

There's so much of Peggy's story still begging to be told.

Her story is just beginning; there's so much left to explore.

ABC

For example, we still haven't seen the founding of S.H.I.E.L.D.

For example, we still haven't seen the founding of S.H.I.E.L.D.

C'mon now, we've gotta get a glimpse of that.

Marvel Studios

The first season genuinely got better with each episode.

The first season genuinely got better with each episode.

Which means Season 2 will be even better than the first.

ABC


View Entire List ›

How Will Your Cat Kill You?

0
0

You’ve suspected for some time that your cat is plotting your demise but do you know HOW they will get it done?

23 Extremely Adorable Ceramic Pieces For Your Home

Who Said It: Kanye West Or Oscar Wilde?

0
0

Ego, outrage, and infamy. Which of these quotes were said by one of the most talented wordsmiths who ever lived, and which were said by Oscar Wilde?

17 Celebrity Instagrams You Need To See This Week


The Perfect Coloring Book For Busy People

0
0

Because you don’t always have time to add color.

Are you sick of time-consuming coloring books that expect YOU to do all the work?
Just print these illustrations and you're already done!

Andrea Hickey / BuzzFeed

Andrea Hickey / BuzzFeed


View Entire List ›

25 Reasons Why Labradors Are The Only Friends You'll Ever Need

Can We Talk About How Hot The Twins From "The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody" Are Now?

0
0

It is the suite life, indeed.

Mark Mainz / Getty Images

Mark Mainz / Getty Images

Or maybe you caught Cole as Ross Geller's son, Ben, in Friends.

Or maybe you caught Cole as Ross Geller's son, Ben, in Friends.

Adorbs.

NBC


View Entire List ›

How Many Of These Things Do You Let Your BFF Do?

10 Things That Look Exactly Like Kylie Jenner's New Hair

17 Iced Teas That Will Quench Your Thirst This Spring

That Outfit Is Terrible

0
0

Some people have style, some people don’t.

BuzzFeed Yellow / Via youtube.com


16 Ultimate Squad Goals Through History

People Try Celebrity Alcohols For The First Time

0
0

“This smells like feet and rubbing alcohol”

BuzzFeed Video / Via youtube.com

16 Celebs Who Grew Into Beautiful Swans

Former British Ambassador Claims MI5 Is Painting Nazi Symbols On Conservative Offices To Discredit Rivals

0
0

Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, claimed the intelligence organisation had undercover officers in Scotland who wanted to smear the SNP.

An office belonging to the Conservative party was branded with the word "scum", a swastika sign and a letter "Q" in what appears to be spray paint.

A "Q" was also spray painted onto the a Labour party office. The "Q" is meant to represent the word "quisling", or traitor.

But Craig Murray, a former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004, has claimed that the MI5 were responsible for the actions. He accused the intelligence organisation of having officers within the SNP.

"A sweeping SNP victory on May 7 is considered enough of a threat to the United Kingdom for the security services to use up some assets," Murray wrote on his website.

"Long term sleepers within the SNP will now be activated, so expect to find one or two such events traced to apparent bona fide SNP members".

Murray, who was sacked from his role as ambassador by Tony Blair's government, said these alleged intelligence officers would attempt to provoke nationalists into carrying out "vandalism or violence".

He wrote: "A major thrust will be agent provocateur activity. Security service agents within the SNP will be trying to initiate and to egg on [a reference to Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy getting egged during the independence referendum campaign] impressionable members to vandalism or violence.

"Be very, very wary of such people and do not be tempted".

Murray wanted to stand in the general election as a candidate for the SNP but was deemed to have a "lack of commitment to party discipline" after he went through a vetting process by the party.

In September last year – during the campaign for the Scottish independence referendum – research for BuzzFeed News by polling firm YouGov found that 26% of Scots thought it was "probably true" that security services were trying to stop Scottish independence.

Officials believe the graffiti was spray painted either on Friday night or early on Saturday.

"Once again we see the ugly side of nationalism on display," Thompson told STV.

"People should engage in healthy democratic debate but attempts like this to try and intimidate and bully political opponents are utterly disgusting."

He added: "I do feel a bit intimidated, seeing it gives you a horrible feeling that you're being targeted."

A spokesperson for the Home Office said it would comment on security matters. The SNP did not respond for a request for comment by the time of publication.

LINK: Want more politics news? Follow BuzzFeed UK Politics on Facebook


View Entire List ›

Can You Name These Jack Black Movies From A Single Screencap?

0
0

Are you ready to rock?!

Viewing all 214876 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images