Katenu ikusa ni ikigirashi

Anata ni mi wo kogashita hibi

Wasurechattara watashi ja naku naru

Oshiete tadashii SAYONARA no shikata wo

 

PENAL, CIRCA 1958

Indentured labour from India began arriving in the colony in 1845. In order to establish and propagate a local source of cheap labour, they were offered a cash incentive of five pounds in lieu of a return passage between 1860 and 1880. The incentive programme was abolished since by 1880 , Indians were fully 30% of the national population and therefore were established. Many Indians made use of their five pounds to purchase crown lands at one pound per acre. In the sugar rich Naparimas, the south border comprised a series of marshlands which were poorly drained and mosquito infested. These lands were surveyed by Warden of Siparia, Otto Radcliffe Clarke and sold to Indians who were expert at draining the marshes for the cultivation of rice. Watercresses were also grown in abundance and in a drier area of the swamp called the Pengyal (a Tamil word I am told) , a small agrarian settlement had sprung up with enough Indians to warrant the Presbyterian Church’s Canadian Mission to the Indians, setting up a school and chapel here in 1905. A mosque and cemetery also existed in the village in a place called Batchiya. The area was adjacent to hilly places to the south and east, being just four miles from Siparia. In these hills, small plots of cocoa cultivation began and soon flourished as a cash crop. Cocoa spread as far as a track laid out from the settlement to the Rock River in Moruga. Since the settlement had become Penal on government ordinance maps in 1910, the track was called the Penal Rock Road. On this road were several significant cocoa estates. One was owned by a Scotsman named McIntyre who established a prosperous holding, and constructed a lovely residence, complete with indoor plumbing (a marvel for those days) and archetypal gingerbread fretwork in 1918. His descendants, sired with an Indian woman, still live in the old family home. Another important estate was the property of the German , Wilhelm Meyer, who was stripped of his lands under the Enemy Alien Ordinance of 1914 which saw Germans in the island pressed into a concentration camp at St. James during the hostilities of WWI between Germany and England. Meyer’s estate also had a quarry for gravel in a hilly area off the Penal Rock Road in an area called Morne Diablo or Devil’s Mountain. This became the present Morne Diablo village. The estate was advertised for sale by Siparia warden, Otto Radcliffe Clarke in 1914. Along the Penal Rock Road, a Canadian Mission School was erected in 1920 for the children of the dozens of Indian families who settled and grew cane in the area. The peasant cane farmers had their cut canes carted to a scale in nearby Barrackpore where a terminus of the Usine Ste. Madeline railway existed. Back in Penal, development came when the Trinidad Government Railway extended its line from San Fernando to Siparia in 1913. This was no mean feat of engineering since it meant pushing the line through marshy areas near the hamlet of Cooliewood (now called Ghandi Village) and Debe. The line had to be laid on a bank of gravel to raise it above floodwaters which rushed over the lowlands during the rainy season and two strong bailey bridges were constructed over the Godineau and Curamata Rivers. Since the trajectory of the line passed a bit north of Penal, the Penal Railway station was almost a mile east of the main settlement on a road which led to cocoa and sugar cane growing areas in San Francique. The coming of the railway meant that vast quantities of rice and vegetables could reach the market in San Fernando and Penal flourished. In 1930 oil was discovered around Penal and in Barrackpore. A large tract of land on Clarke Rd. (named for Otto Radcliffe Clarke) was cleared and offices, bungalows, a medical centre, clubhouse and mess hall were constructed by United British Oilfields Trinidad (UBOT). Oil was secured in tank farms at Barrackpore , Penal Rock Road, San Francique and Clarke Rd. and then piped to the refinery at Pointe-a-Pierre. A small power plant supplied electric lights and a large dam was built in 1939 to supply the facility with water. Since the almost completely homogenous peasant Indian population of the area was inadequate for the brute labour of the oilfields , hundreds of negro labourers flocked in and formed a distinct neighbourhood in the area of Penal Rock Road ½ mile mark. Unlike Pt. Fortin where UBOT shared the better amenities of life with the native population, its presence in Penal had no impact whatsoever on the locals who continued without electricity and pipeborne water. In 1939, Sunbeam Cinema was opened , powered by a Delco generator, and was followed by Regent on Clarke Rd. in the 1940s. The latter catered mainly to the white expatriates of the UBOT installation (later assimilated by Shell) by showing the latest Hollywood flicks while Sunbeam aired primarily Indian movies. In the early 1950s, a market was constructed for the large number of produce farmers in the area. Previously, a makeshift market had occupied the triangle of land formed by the SS Erin Rd., Clarke St. and Penal Rock Road where a mall exists today. In 1962, Penal broke from Siparia Parish when the Penal RC. Chapel and School were opened along with the prestigious Holy Name Convent for girls. Nearby on Clarke Rd. the state constructed the Penal Junior Secondary School while a mile northwards in Abdool Village, a government primary school was established. Penal grew by leaps and bounds in the 1960s and 70s both as a centre for the nearby oilfields and became famous for its Saturday market which became something of an attraction. In 1965, the railway closed , but the SS Erin Rd. had already replaced it as the main artery into the village. In 1990, Penal became its own municipality and ceased being part of the Ward of Siparia, when the Wards and Counties system of local government was dissolved and the Penal Debe Regional Corporation came into being. In 2001, the Shiva Boys’ Hindu College was established on Clarke Rd. Today, Penal is a bustling and growing commercial centre and is a far cry from the sleepy village pictured in this 1950s photo.

 In 325, at the Council of Nicaea, Constantine the great creates the Catholic Church after a genocide of 45.000 Christians, where he tortured them to renounce Reincarnation. At the same time, religious books of all the villages of the empire are compiled and thus create THE BIBLE.

In 327, Constantine known as the Emperor of Rome, orders Jeronimo to translate the Vulgate version into Latin, changing the Hebrew names and adulterating the scriptures.

In 431, the cult of VIRGIN is invented.

In 594, PURGATORY is invented.

In 610, the title of PAPA is invented.

In 788, worship is imposed on Pagan deities.

In 995, the meaning of kadosh (subpar) was changed to saint.

In 1079, the celibacy of priests is imposed>> totally Catholic.

In 1090, the Rosary is imposed.

In 1184, the Inquisition is perpetrated.

In 1190, indulgences are sold.

In 1215, confession is imposed on priests.

In 1216, Pope Innocenzo lll was invented, the tale of terror of bread (a god of Greek mythology), which turns into human flesh.

In 1311, the batty is imposed.

In 1439, the non-existent PURGATORY is dogmatized.

In 1854, the immaculate Conception is invented.

In 1870, the absurdity of a infallible pope is imposed, inventing the concept of hiring

There are more than 2500 things made up by this religion to enslave human beings with Christianity...

Religions and their Gods were created as a means of MANIPULATION and BUSINESS. As part of the EVOLUTION of human being is the RELEASE of these means of manipulation. Therefore human being are in the era of WAKE UP.

Young people each day are LESS RELIGIOUS two more generations and Catholic religion will be on its sunset.

Muslim religion will prevail for a little more time but in the end its fate as all religions and their Gods will be the same. DISAPPEAR.

It will all be part of our EVOLUTION.

 1974

acquaintance rapeAfropopagony auntalternative musicAmes testanthropic principleazidothymidinebiofuelbioreactorbirthing roombluelinerbody wrapbottom-fishingboy shortsbromocriptinebunker mentalitybuprenorphinecargo pocketcarpacciochaichalkbroodchop-sockychroma-keyclickerclosetedcoinfectioncolorpoint shorthaircomputed tomographycomputerphobecontrollingcoronal mass ejectioncorporate-wideCT scancyanobacteriumcyclooxygenasecytokinedanazoldark-eyed juncodecade-longdigitizing tabletdirect depositdisc golfDiscoverers' DayditzyEast Caribbean dollarendarterectomyexotic shorthairfibroblast growth factorflavivirusfly-on-the-wallfourth worldgearheadgentleman's clubgeotechnical engineeringglass closetgonadotropin-releasing hormonegotchaGPSgratinéeguilt-tripgulagHeimlich maneuverHiggs bosonhousepersonimmunocompromisedindexingindividual retirement accountInuktitutIRAjunk bondKeogh plankinakneecappinglife supportlilangeniluminismmefloquinemegavitaminsmemory cardmetoprololmicrogravityMoonienanotechnologynonaspirinNuyoricanOort cloudOriental shorthairoverservedpass-through entitypedorthicsposter sessionpost upprobioticpsi particleqigongribavirinringetterotavirusSandinistashuttle diplomacyslumpflationsmoking gunsnow crabSTDstring cheesesupermomsupersymmetrysyliSyrahT4telecommuteteletextTok Pisintouch padtouch screentramp arttransgendertransposonultralightunderdiagnoseunnilhexiumunrevolutionarywake-up callweatherpersonwhatabouterywimp outzin

 

THE TRINIDAD WE ONCE KNEW

DAYS BEFORE SELF SERVICE GROCERIES AND SUPERMARKETS

THE VILLAGE SHOP ERA

When one examines the past, it can often be broken down into specific eras. In each of the eras there are clearly times when both types of food retailing existed. For example the village shops though still in existence today began fading away gradually , making way for supermarkets and groceries.

Food retailers of long ago tended to be small corner shops spread throughout an urban area or village. The owners of these shops knew all their customers as in many cases the travel distance to the village shop was only a few blocks and most people walked. The shops carried basic non perishable items and grains , which were exactly what the clientele wanted back in the 50s and 60s. These village shops mainly sold non perishable food items and grains which did not require refrigeration . These items they brought from wholesalers.

Usually, the shopkeeper and his family lived in the building over or behind the shop. This was the era that customers , including young children will walk with their lists and would ask the shopkeeper for what they wanted . The shopkeeper served them over counter.

Instead of glass doors the village shops had two large wooden doors which when opened served as the main entrance and exit points. When it was closing time the doors will be pulled in and a long , heavy wooden bar would placed into two heavy duty metal clasps at each end across the doors .

A must in every village shop was a scale like the one shown in the photo. Today most of these ancient village shops have been replaced by groceries and supermarkets.

This photo was taken inside a village shop in Grande Rivierre in 1970.

Can anyone explain why village shops were closed half days on a Thursday of each week?

 This is my story: 

 In April of this year get the first shot of the Pfizer vaccine, then in May I receive the second shot.

After receiving the first shot I spent about 10 days with a mild fever, mild headache and alternating periods of being too hot or too cold.

In May I received the second shot and starting about 1 hour hour later I started experiencing joint pain and weakness in my muscles. while shopping I fell down in the store because my legs just gave out, something that’s never ever happened to me before. This progressed for about a month until I was barely able to stand, walk or use my arms. I have spasms at the neck and shoulders and twitching in my face. My hands and feet are swollen and I can barely hold a pen to write.

Went to the doctor and they did a few blood tests’ and the only thing the blood test shows is elevated calcium levels, my A-1 C is high and my cholesterol is a little bit high. 

I’ve been put on muscle relaxers(Tizanidine) and A mild pain killer(meloxicam), but these are barely helping.

 The only thing it may be considered a positive is that the symptoms haven’t gotten any worse, of course though they’re pretty bad right now.

The doctor keeps saying that it may be my A-1 C it’s affecting my parathyroid glands which is causing the elevated calcium levels and that is causing the issue with my muscles. She did also say that the vaccine may have triggered this since there are documented cases of it affecting people negatively.

All I know is that I’m in that lot of pain and it is extremely difficult to move I still have to get up and go to work and stand on my feet for 10 hours a day.

I don’t see an end to this suffering in sight and I don’t think I’m going to make it through.

 

  "8/3/21: Nasa finds a mirrored Earth, opposite gravity, physics, motion."

."9/14/21: A Category 6 hurricane hits South Carolina, the worst in history."

"10/20/21: 8 humans receive superpowers from extreme energy of the Sun."

"12/14/21: 3 Teenagers find a T-Rex egg and a device to open a portal to an alternate universe."

"2/2/2022: Atlantis is found in the Atlantic Ocean, housing human-fish life."

 In Full: The ‘Independence Day’ Speech 2021 Needs

“Good afternoon.

In less than a week, we hope to fire up our grills,

And launch one of the biggest Fourth of July celebrations

In the history of the United States.

The United States. Those words have new meaning for us all today.

And whether you drive a pick-up or a hybrid,

You live in the heartland or on the coast,

Or whether you pronounce it ‘America’ or ‘Murica,’

We’re all Americans.

Seldom on the same page but reading from the same book.

On holidays, anyway.

Perhaps its fate that this Fourth of July, we gotta’ once again come together

To lend a hand to those less fortunate.

To those whose fate still lies in the balance.

We’re fighting for freedom for all.

Not from alien invaders.

From separation.

From being cooped up while baking bread.

And ignoring basic hygiene.

The time has come for us to get fresh,

Gather the crew, and eat veggie and meat burgers until we sweat.

And then, let’s work together towards a future

Where everyone can come to the party.

And should we win the day,

The Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday,

But the day when the world declared in one voice:

‘We will not go quietly into the night!’

We will fill the sky with so much light and freedom,

This thing will rue the day it ever messed with us.

Together, we celebrate out Independence Day.

Go Forth, America.”

BORDEN'S DAIRY

4010 Lois Ave at Tampa Bay Blvd

In 1960, a new state of the art, ultra modern, multi-million dollar Borden's plant opened in Drew Park. 

The facility at the corner of Lois Ave and Tampa Bay Blvd covered approximately 450,000 square feet with more than 100,000 square feet devoted to processing operations, buildings and offices.  

The remaining 350,000 square feet was laid out in parking areas, loading facilities and maintenance shops.

Spread over the 15-acre site, it would become the largest milk and ice cream producer in the Southwest.

The plant was officially dedicated to the public on November 19, 1960 by Mayor Julian Lane. 

Following the dedication ceremonies, an open house celebration was held with plant tours.

The new plant replaced the former location at 3319 Florida Ave and the Borden's Farm Products Company at 13th and York St

 

 I have no gay pride because im not gay... i also couldn’t care what you fuck. throwing your sexual preferences in the face of others isn’t normal either so fuck off and act normal if you want to be treated normal. stop with the WOOHOO BIG SUMMER BLOW OUT

 White evangelicals are the American Taliban.

 Nations that have the highest secularization rates, including Scandinavia, Australia, Canada and Japan, also are among the healthiest, wealthiest, and safest in the world. Secularization highly correlates with belief in science, higher education levels, increased vaccination rates, stronger societal safety nets and greater protection for minority groups.The decline of reactionary organized religion can clearly be a progressive force for good.

One early morning.

Lifting the dark

misty veil of the night.

From the pillow of its mountain

peak, the sun rose and saw..

The valley is filled

with the season of love.

And the branches of

memories have sprouted..

..innumerable

blossoms of past moments.

Unspoken, unheard yearnings.

Half asleep, half awake.

Rubbing its eyes, it watChes.

As it flows in wave after wave..

At once new, also the same.

Yes, the very same life which

encompasses love and desire.

Meeting and also parting.

And a sense..

..that time is flowing like a river,

whispering as it flows..

..that the valley is

filled with the season of love.

And the branches of

memories have sprouted..

..innumerable blossoms

of the past moments.

 

 "All I know is that in this world, you have no choice but to either be an oppressor or be oppressed and I don't want my child to be either."

 Paul David Hewson turns 60 years old today. You will know him better by his stage name, Bono.

The lead singer for U2 has been praised and criticized for his activism and involvement with U2. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, was granted an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, and, with Bill and Melinda Gates, was named Time Person of the Year in 2005, among other awards and nominations.

And, he has sold a couple of records and a few concert tickets....

Happy Birthday Bono!!

 the collective psyche is indignant at being forced to be born only to swim incommensurably more often under an ice pack of dissatisfaction than in a lagoon of completeness.

 

 

 

TRINIDAD's RAILWAY

The first railway line was between Port-of-Spain and Arima, the center of the island’s expanding cocoa industry, a distance of 15.5 miles, was opened on August 30, 1876. 

The first known railway on the Trinidad island was a horsedrawn line called the Cipero Tramway, which was built in the 1840s by a Scottish planter named William Eccles to transport produce from his sugar plantation to the wharf at San Fernando, 30 miles south of Port of Spain.

In 1859 the Cipero Tramway, an agricultural line from the Cipero Wharf in San Fernando to Usine Sainte Madeleine sugar factory was completed. The tramway used mules as motive power. In 1861 the line was extended east to the town of Mission (later renamed Princes Town). In 1864 the first steam locomotive, “Forerunner”, was introduced.

The Trinidad Government Railway (TGR) was originally built in to connect Port of Spain to Arima.  The railway was extended to Couva in 1880, San Fernando in 1882, Cunapo (now Sangre Grande) in 1897, Tabaquite in 1898, Siparia in 1913 and Rio Claro in 1914. Siparia was the last destination on the train line and the site now serves as the panyard of the Siparia’s Deltones Steel Orchestra.

December 28th, 1968 is recorded as the last day of passenger train services in Trinidad. But railway historian and researcher Glen Beadon has discovered that a train did run one last time after that historic date. Beadon said that on Tuesday 7th January 1969 Engine No. 42, was seen steaming for one last outing.

The railway system was put out of commission to make way for motor vehicles, as they were seen at the time as the future of transportation, a poor judgement on those incharge at the time. The railway covered 173 km (107 mi). After the end of World War I, the appearance of the automobile led to changes that culminated with the phased closure of the railway.

On 11 April 2008 the Trinitrain consortium was chosen to plan and build two new Trinidad Rapid Railway passenger lines. This plan was cancelled in 2010, the government said Trinidad could not afford such a project as it was estimated to cost more than $10 billion.

The rapid railway trains could help Trinidad with its traffic problem, everyday drivers are stuck in traffic costing them 2 to 3 hours of their valuable time. High-speed trains can generally reach 300–350 km/h (190–220 mph). On mixed use HSR lines, passenger train services can attain peak speeds of 200–250 km/h (120–160 mph). These trains can hold as much as 400 passengers.

We may never see another functioning train system in Trinidad in our lifetime, some researchers estimate that in the years 2035 to 2040 Trinidad may be financially stable to start a rapid railway system.

SOME PHOTOS TAKEN FROM MR RONALD RAGHUNANAN FACEBOOK POST

 Frankly those who don't have children should be given extra for saving the planet from more parasites

 

THE EDGE’S 20 GREATEST GUITAR MOMENTS, RANKED

A uniquely creative guitarist who has powered one of the world’s biggest bands for 40 years and counting, let’s trip through the wires to look at 20 guitar highlights from the strings and pedals of the man they call The Edge.

It’s four decades since U2’s debut album Boy introduced the world to the angular, delay-soaked guitar lines of The Edge. Since then, the band have gone on to conquer the world’s airwaves and arenas in a number of different incarnations, ranging from earnest, politically charged new-wave flagbearers to wide-eyed art-rock musicologists to purveyors of irony-laden alt-rock and ever onward.

At the heart of their sound, U2’s guitarist has undergone his own process of constant reinvention. But even as his gear stash has grown from a couple of guitars, a handful of pedals, a Vox and some gaffa tape to become a touring rig that looks like a Guitar Center warehouse, he’s stayed a step ahead of his imitators, managing to refine but never jettison the simplicity and directness of his playing.

The Edge has often referred to being “at odds” with the guitar; and has characterised his playing as a “struggle or a fight” with the instrument. Here, we choose 20 battles he most definitely won, some against all the odds, among an exhaustive back catalogue of sonic explorations.

20. One

By the end of their first all-conquering decade in music, U2 may have been the biggest band in the world, but all was not well. Reconvening to record the follow-up to the bloated misstep Rattle And Hum at the Bowie-haunted Hansa Studios in Berlin in October 1990 (the month Germany officially reunited), the band found themselves stalked by the dreaded cliché – musical differences. Bono and The Edge wanted to experiment with dance elements, while Clayton and Mullen wanted to return to the old sound, and they disagreed over the quality of their new material.

However, they got over it when a song descended on them in a jam session to uncover their old chemistry and reunite them. One began life as a proposed middle section for a different song, but underwent further transformation when producer Brian Eno persuaded them to deconstruct it; Daniel Lanois and Edge removed the acoustic parts and instead added more aggressive guitar to undermine the “too beautiful” overall sound. They achieved their goal, with The Edge wrapping the song in layers of Gibson-branded cotton wool for its intro before adding a layered, heartrending soundscape of lachrymose Les Paul bends from Daniel Lanois and a series of modulated licks, forever building to the song’s anthemic outro figure.

Did you know?

The Edge began exploring the Gibson model catalogue beyond the Explorer and Les Paul in earnest during Achtung Baby and One also features The Edge’s 1959 Tobacco Sunburst ES-330, which can be seen in one of the song’s three videos.

19. Mysterious Ways

With the jam-tune they’d titled Sick Puppy having already provided the seed of One, which would eventually become perhaps their greatest song, the band returned to the idea to see if they could turn the rest of it into something. Sick Puppy consisted of Adam Clayton’s rolling bassline over a dance beat from a drum machine, but a breakthrough was made when The Edge found a soupy auto-wah-based preset on his Korg A3 Performance Signal Processor, with SPC-01 Guitar to hand he came up with the song’s disarmingly simple but mighty two-note, one-chord riff and funky solo interlude. The lessons seem to be you should never abandon a sick puppy, and you should never dismiss a preset, even if it is called ‘Funk Wah’.

Did you know?

Live, The Edge uses a Rickenbacker 330-12 model for Mysterious Ways, tuned to E♭.

18. With Or Without You

Another song, like One, that came together in the studio while the band were harbouring fears of creative drought, sonically speaking, With Or Without You was a great leap forward for U2. It’s the first U2 song to feature Bono singing in a confessional lower register and Larry Mullen experimenting with an electronically enhanced drumkit; but the key ingredient was once again The Edge, whose use of a prototype of the Infinite Guitar he’d just received in the studio added an EBow-like haunting quality that elevated its sound.

It’s another example of winning simplicity and it was the band’s first US No. 1 single. The Edge believes the triumphal riff at the song’s ending is an encapsulation of his minimalist guitar approach, telling author Bill Flanagan in 1996: “The end of With Or Without You could have been so much bigger, so much more of a climax, but there’s this power to it which I think is even more potent because it’s held back.”

Did you know?

The prototype Infinite Guitar was created by Edge’s friend Michael Brook. It was a kit based on a modified Squier Stratocaster with an inbuilt sustainer created from the feedback between an electromagnetic transducer and a Seymour Duncan pickup, paired with a dedicated rack-mounted unit. The setup has given guitar tech Dallas Schoo several electric shocks.

17. Desire

U2 followed the phenomenal success of 1987’s The Joshua Tree with what was pretty much the most back-to-basics statement possible: Desire, their first single from Rattle And Hum, began with a clattering open E chord before ripping into a raw and fiery interpretation of the Stooges’ 1969, itself based on the timeless Bo Diddley beat. The Edge, however, seemingly couldn’t resist subverting the simplistic formula by using one of rock ’n’ roll’s most lavish guitar creations – the Gretsch 6137 White Falcon – to deliver this burst of refreshingly unadorned, in-your-face rhythm. He also added a frantic John Lee Hooker-on-speed solo and a middle section with a faux killswitch-style effect and some neck-bending modulation – all a far cry from the Starship Enterprise-style guitar effects he’d become associated with.

Did you know?

Desire won the 1988 Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocal and was U2’s first UK No. 1.

16. A Sort Of Homecoming

After the stark and earnest 1983 War album and tour had turned the band into an arena-rock monster in waiting, U2 saw the predictable path mapped out before them and collectively decided on a creative volte-face that would take them in an artier direction. Producer Brian Eno and engineer Daniel Lanois were persuaded into the fold, Eno left cold by their bombast but intrigued by the notion of experimenting with the band’s sound in the ambience of Slane Castle in County Meath.

Album opener A Sort Of Homecoming leaps out of the speakers with the results of their many experiments. Driven by more sophisticated rhythms than before, it’s an astonishing soundscape awash with layer upon layer of heavenly reverb and delay: its shimmering arpeggios collapse into waves of lush harmony, tempered with the physicality of strummed string scrapes, open strings, delay trails, fingerslides, acoustic and the piercing top end of The Edge’s Vox… it’s an underrated monument to the atmospheric sonic powers the guitarist can summon from his setup.

Did you know?

Coldplay’s Chris Martin is a fan, telling Rolling Stone: “The first song on The Unforgettable Fire, A Sort of Homecoming, I know backward and forward – it’s so rousing, brilliant and beautiful. It’s one of the first songs I played to my unborn baby”.

15. Love Is Blindness

Bono wrote this song during the Rattle And Hum sessions on piano, intending to send it to Nina Simone, but although the band decided it wasn’t ‘U2 enough’ to put on that album, they kept it nonetheless. The song resurfaced during the making of Achtung Baby, when Edge was going through a divorce. When it came time to record his guitar solo for the song, he poured all of his emotion into a frenzy of angry, cathartic tremolo picking. Bono recalled that: “When we went for the take, one string broke and he just kept playing harder and harder. Another string broke. And he has such a light touch, ordinarily, he’s so gentle. All that left him for a kind of rage. And yet there’s not one bum note in there.”

Did you know?

The Edge recalled to The Times: “There was this idea going around during the session that distracting musicians during the course of playing can sometimes, especially on solos, knock the musician out of a predictable path, so they were trying to knock me about and I was not enjoying this concept at all. So I stopped and more or less told them to leave me alone. Then I put down the solo that we ended up using, and it’s one of my favourites”.

14. Zooropa

Beginning with a dramatic sci-fi sound collage of piano, bass, sampled snippets of radio voices and other sound sources, Zooropa is soon dominated by its mighty main riff, combining a filter pedal with two delays on different settings to render what’s being played underneath practically unrecognisable. A prime example of U2’s fastidious approach to recycling, The Edge put together the song’s demo of two halves by compiling a recording of a Dublin jam session with the best bits from a cassette recording of a soundcheck from a few years prior, a collage approach to composition perfectly in keeping with U2’s postmodern aspirations at the time.

Did you know?

The Edge earned his first production credit on a U2 album for Zooropa, appearing as a co-producer alongside Flood and Brian Eno.

13. Unknown Caller

2009’s No Line On The Horizon featured a number of songs created in a makeshift studio in a Riad in Fez, Morocco over a two-week period, a fruitful time for the band. One of these, Unknown Caller, exemplifies the anything-goes mindset. Beginning with the sound of birdsong – that most typical of arena-rock clichés – it puts The Edge’s doubled guitar parts front and centre; unusual pinched chord rhythms contrast with bold chiming arpeggios and single-note lines, while Bono intones surreal mystery text messages before giving way to an interlude featuring a French horn and church organ. The song’s guitar solo, a soaring melodic improvisation that’s as close to conventional rock playing as The Edge ever strays, is the one from the tape of the original single-take performance.

Did you know?

Guitar tech Dallas Schoo told Q this was “one of Edge’s major solos in his life – you won’t hear better than that on any other song”.

12. Gone

1997’s Pop was retrospectively described by Bono as “really the most expensive demo session in the history of music” and the tour’s postmodern stage show, featuring giant lemon-shaped mirrorballs and olives on towering cocktail sticks, was an ambitious but confusing experiment in irony. But it was, for The Edge at least, an opportunity to extend his sonic reach, deploying sounds like the violent, ghostly swoops used throughout Gone. Album producer and engineer Flood described the tone, nicknamed the ‘747 sound’, in an interview with Guitar Player in 1997: “It’s him using his Korg SDD delay heavily fed back and then going into a couple of different fuzz pedals and a Whammy pedal. One of the fuzz pedals was a Fuzz Face. I can’t remember what the other one was, to be quite honest. But the way he’s got it set up, the guitar starts feeding back in a controllable way that sounds very uncontrollable,” adding that he used a semi-hollowbody Epiphone or Gretsch with the setup.

Did you know?

Pop has many experimental guitar moments: Discothèque’s opening sound is an acoustic through a filter pedal and an ARP 2600, for example.

11. New Year’s Day

The Edge is not just a guitar player, either, as this first UK Top 10 hit released in 1983 demonstrates. Live, he’d have to play sustained 12th- and 7th-fret harmonics through delay, then switch deftly back and forth between the piano and guitar within a single beat of a bar, while seated. It’s a tricky switch of mindset to segue from plangent piano melody to playing the song’s searing guitar solo, beginning on the 19th fret of the high E string, and while it may be an ergonomic challenge of his own making, it’s still an impressive stunt to pull off.

Did you know?

The Edge switched from playing his black 1973 Fender Stratocaster on this song to his faded Alpine White 1975 Gibson Les Paul Custom, which he bought in 1982 and is thought to have used on the original recording: the latter instrument was auctioned for his Music Rising charity in 2007, fetching $240,000.

10. Bad

This U2 fan favourite from The Unforgettable Fire soundtracked the moment in Live Aid that spurred them to megastardom – Bono pulling a fan out of the audience and dancing with her as the band looped the song’s riff became a defining moment in the rock mythology of the era. Though it was a spontaneous act, the moment couldn’t have been better chosen to demonstrate The Edge’s ability to transform a handful of simple notes through a delay into a rich, hypnotic, quasi-religious experience: the band had chosen to record in Slane Castle to make their album as live-sounding as they possibly could, and now it was out in the world, the Live Aid performance had shown exactly what they were trying to capture.

Did you know?

The Edge told Guitar World: “[With Bad], I remember working with Brian Eno, and the idea was to keep this two-chord mantra going, keep it going, keep it going, as long as we could stand it, and then bam! We made this chord change, and it was dramatic. Songs like that fascinate me”.

9. Sunday Bloody Sunday

The opening track from 1983’s War album was written by The Edge during a period of self-doubt: in the It Might Get Loud documentary, he recalls: “I remember feeling, well, can I write? Am I a writer? Or am I just a guitarist?” The piece of music he “scrambled to put down” became Sunday Bloody Sunday, an audacious, nonpartisan political statement, partly inspired by the 1972 incident in Derry where British troops killed unarmed civil rights protestors. Over Larry Mullen Jr.’s martial drumbeat (recorded in an echoing stairwell in a Dublin studio), The Edge picks out a clarion-call arpeggio, adds strummed barchords and a ringing harmonic interlude before his solo, which encapsulates all his anger and frustration in a descent and then rise along the second (B) string, milking the dissonances of the ringing open first (E) string for all they’re worth along the way.

Did you know?

The electric violin on the song was played by Steve Wickham, who met The Edge at a bus stop in Dublin and asked if U2 wanted any violin on their album.

8. Even Better Than The Real Thing

What a difference a pedal makes. Initially little more than a Rolling Stones-like riff from the Rattle And Hum sessions, Even Better Than The Real Thing came to life when the Edge bought a DigiTech WH-1 Whammy pedal and added the song’s startling two-octaves-up intro. Ultimately, the finished product is a tour de force of catchy riffery, culminating in a masterfully constructed slide solo where The Edge builds the song’s energy anew, progressing from languid beginnings to a Doppler-effect climax: incidentally, even his slide style is unconventional, given that he plays his slide parts in standard tunings and uses the bottleneck on his middle finger, rather than the more conventional choice of third or fourth.

Did you know?

The song was originally called The Real Thing, but was retitled when Brian Eno insisted the song needed to be “more ironic”.

7. I Will Follow

The very beginning. U2’s first track from their debut album is an instant classic of post-punk and is their most-performed live song. Featuring a sophisticated and enigmatic lyric that Bono wrote from his mother’s perspective, I Will Follow’s mesmerising lick and menacing bassline combine to leave an indelible impression: the famous clip from It Might Get Loud, where The Edge teaches the riff to Jimmy Page and Jack White, underlines its timeless rock ’n’ roll energy. Not that the song didn’t hint at hidden depths to their sound – producer Steve Lillywhite added judicious glockenspiel, and Bono revealed that: “The percussion in the drop was a bicycle spinning, wheels upside down and played like a harp with a kitchen fork.”

Did you know?

The Edge used his 1976 Gibson Explorer for the recording of the first album, and says its lack of bass response was a factor in defining his sound. “I used to stay away from the low strings, and a lot of the chords I played were very trebly, on the first four, or even three strings. I discovered that through using this one area of the fretboard I was developing a very stylised way of doing something that someone else would play in a normal way”.

6. Until The End Of The World

Judas Iscariot betrays Jesus Christ in this biblically proportioned riff-fest from Achtung Baby – no apologies for the number of entries from that album in this list, though: The Edge had taken his playing to a higher plane of expressiveness and creative freedom. Until The End Of The World begins with a red herring squeal of torturously EQ’d Whammy before launching into a series of pneumatic hard-rock hammer blows, octaves, tremolo-picked flurries, characteristic picked harmonics and a guitar solo full of string slides and Slash-esque legato that launches itself out of swells of noise pollution. The It Might Get Loud excerpt where he demonstrates the song unaccompanied offers a fresh appreciation of the craft involved.

Did you know?

Note the capo on the 3rd fret, altering the song’s tonality and enabling The Edge to access the ringing open strings to give his licks extra character and grit.

5. Beautiful Day

2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind reconciled the old and the new aspects of U2’s sound, reuniting the band with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Bono asserted more than once that the band were “reapplying for the job… of best band in the world”, and after the trials of previous album, Pop, it was a much-reinvigorated U2 that unleashed lead single Beautiful Day on the world. The most exultant rock song to mention tuna fishing ever written, it tastefully mixed the electronic experimentation of Eno while resurrecting the classic Edge guitar sound: when Edge switched in his Explorer, Vox and delay units to create the song’s icing-on-the-cake final riff, the band were initially reluctant to return to such a heartland signature of their past. But The Edge won out, adding the final piece to a guitar symphony that blended disparate tones and parts into a triumphant whole.

Did you know?

Michael Stipe of R.E.M. is the song’s biggest fan, saying: “I wish I’d written it, and they know I wish I’d written it. It makes me dance; it makes me angry that I didn’t write it”.

4. Pride (In The Name Of Love)

U2 sound engineer Joe O’Herlihy recorded an Edge chord progression during a soundcheck on the War tour and the idea eventually became the seed for Pride (In The Name Of Love), the centrepiece of The Unforgettable Fire album and one of U2’s torch songs. The Edge had recently upgraded his erstwhile Memory Men in favour of the superior clarity and modulation possibilities of two Korg SDD-3000 rackmounted digital delays, and on this, their triplet repeats enable The Edge’s deceptively simple parts to either chime out across the mix or provide a storm of percussive propulsion. The guitarist has said it’s one of his favourite guitar parts and it’s surely one of the most outright epic guitar performances ever committed to tape.

Did you know?

Chrissie Hynde from The Pretenders contributes backing vocals, though she’s credited as Mrs Christine Kerr.

3. Where The Streets Have No Name

The documentary It Might Get Loud has a sequence where The Edge listens to his old four-track demos of Where The Streets Have No Name, and even at this stage of its development, it’s blindingly obvious that the circling, cathartic opening lick the guitarist had summoned from his sonorous 1973 Strat was a ready-made classic. Perhaps it was the pressure to do it justice that meant the song’s birth was a painful one – it took two weeks of work to get it across the line, frustrating producer Brian Eno to the point that he wanted to erase the multi-track. “He’d actually decided to do it,” The Edge recalled. “But the assistant engineer wouldn’t go. He stood in front of the tape machine, saying, ‘Brian, you can’t do this.’ And so he didn’t, but it was close.”

Did you know?

Daniel Lanois recalled to Mojo: “It was a bit of a tongue-twister for the rhythm section, with strange bar lengths that got everybody in a bad mood. I can remember pointing at a blackboard, walking everybody through the changes like a science teacher”.

2. Bullet The Blue Sky

Jarringly sequenced straight after With Or Without You on The Joshua Tree, Bullet The Blue Sky found The Edge channelling the spirit of Hendrix to soundtrack Bono’s impassioned lyric about the effects of punitive US foreign policy on the people of Central American countries such as Nicaragua and El Salvador, where he’d witnessed military jets and gunfights on an Amnesty trip in 1985. Bono had pointedly asked Edge to “put El Salvador through an amplifier”, and the guitarist slathered Larry Mullen’s Bonham-esque drums in howls of feedback, descending scrapes of slide,  atmospheric sound effects and hard-edged funk stabs with a fire to rival that of Band Of Gypsys’ Machine Gun.

Did you know?

The Hendrix connection was strengthened by the inclusion on Rattle And Hum of an excerpt from Jimi’s rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner preceding a live performance of the track.

1. The Fly

Famously described by Bono as “the sound of four men chopping down The Joshua Tree”, The Fly encouraged the singer to invent a new ‘persona’ to deliver the song’s pithy aphorisms, his voice ranging from a menacing breathy telephone-EQ’d whisper to a soaring gospel falsetto. But bug-eyed sunglasses or not, even his contribution to the track is decisively upstaged by the abrasive six-string soundscape that spikes the song with regular jolts of electrifying energy.

The tone used is an unholy fusion of flange, wah, delay and dirt, and as producer Daniel Lanois has confirmed that many of Achtung Baby’s guitar parts were created using one of the two Korg A3 processors Edge brought to the sessions, it’s safe to assume the unit is involved somewhere in the signal chain. Live, The Edge has varied the guitars he’s used to play it over the years, including a Strat, a Les Paul and even a Line 6 Variax 700 acoustic. Additional guitar sounds were added on top of the original mix, on the fly as it were, to create the phasing artefacts in the song’s intro.

Yet it’s the track’s solo section where the Edge really outdoes himself, using the springboard of a complete cycle of the song’s verse-to-chorus section to create a series of licks that range from whammy-bar swoops to descending and ascending runs that seem to reach their apex before finding new places to go. The ultimate example of The Edge creatively rinsing his guitar effects for every drop of emotional content, The Fly is his crowning six-string moment.

Did you know?

When David Bowie visited the band after they’d finished The Fly, he told them they should re-record it.

 Why do you think taxes and prices go up the same day? 

The cost of living keeps rising to make sure people keep suffering. 

How else could there be men with millions when most suffer.

The truth is, there’s more than enough. 

No one has to suffer.

 I'm going to go out on a limb and say, based on your casual use of the word "libtard" (which is clearly derived from the derogatory term "retard" and is clearly meant to be derogatory in this instance) and your assertion that a transphobe with a persecution complex is a "strong female role model," that you probably have a *little* more in common with the goose-stepping pro-eugenics crowd than most folks to your left do.

 Knollys Tunnel was named after the acting Colonial Govenor of Trinidad and Tobago, Sir Clement Courtenay Knollys, who officially opened the new railway tunnel on August 20th, 1898

 

In the original Old Testament eve was not Adam’s first wife. God made Adam and his first wife out of clay. She was part human the top half part snake the bottom half. She was a disobedient wife so Adam had god kick her out of Eden which the name Eden being the garden  that started man was taken from the Sumerians they had it first by thousands of years. Then god took Adams rib and made eve his obedient wife. It was Adam’s X wife that tricked eve into eating the apple not Satan a talking snake but Adams X wife half woman half snake. That entire story came from the Egyptians. They had a half snake half woman in an apple tree poring apple juice down from the tree on to a man and the ancient drawing speaks volumes. The fact the Bible changed it self from that earlier story to a talking snake shows how fake it is just changing its story to suit the priest as they go along. 

 

Joseph Charles, the creator of Trinidad and Tobago’s famous Solo soft drink, was born Serjad Makmadeen in Princes Town in 1910. 

The son of an East Indian immigrant father and Martiniquan mother, Charles became a gardener at age 10 in order to assist his family financially. In 1922, he moved to St. James and began working at a bakery, where he became a top salesman by cultivating a loyal clientele. 

In later years, he purchased the “Delaware Punch” soft-drink company on Patna Street, St. James. He and his wife bottled their drinks manually, producing one bottle of soft drink every two minutes. He sold the drinks to customers while continuing his bread delivery service. 

When Charles attempted to market the drink to foreign investors, no one responded to his letters signed with his given name. He decided to change his name to Joseph Charles, which immediately garnered investors. 

During World War II, Charles decided to purchase the entire stock of a Canadian bottling company that was shutting down because there was a shortage of glass bottles. When he received them, they were all printed with the word “Solo” and the image of a pilot having a drink after completing a solo flight. Charles decided to keep the bottles and have the name “Solo” become the brand name of his soft-drink company, with their trademark heavy glass bottles. This is how Solo Beverages began.

Solo Beverages has consistently supported local endeavours such as sports (The Trinidad & Tobago Great Race), music (the Solo Harmonites) and talent shows like Scouting for Talent and Mastana Bahar.