Music is Rotted One Note

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The Score Magazine

2008-04-11T02:24:00.002+01:00

Everybody (all two of you) head on over to www.the-scoremagazine.com to see all of my new stuff.
*Please* join up on the forum www.the-scoremagazine.com/forum and help us build this community.

"What Will Happen In the Morning" (and other Travelling Tales)

2008-03-29T03:41:00.001+01:00

We pulled into a petrol station a couple of miles outside of the city.
Money was tight and we were burning up petrol like miscreant republicans wearing cheeky monkey smiles. There was an immediate need to refuel and in the purchasing of new, refined meat packages help our current state of poverty.
A long line book-ended by confusing single men with filth piled high in their arms.
Filth typified by airbrushed creations and promises of rampant nudity.
Interesting choices.

I moved along and paid for the required car exclusive energy liquid, while adopting a frown and a peculiar need for small tinned cigars. I asked for the blue ones and I left, somewhat irritated at my last minute nicotine admission. No matter, I shall keep them for special occasions and when I have a sufficient number of party guests.
Pushing through some drunk in a rain-coat, I left the convenience mart, speeding up in my self-conscious shuffle.

The wind was catching up again and the normally insignificant rainfall had reached an amplified nuisance. The driver's side lock was broken; the result of a failed break-in.
Lily reached over and opened the door for me.
Handing the plastic wrapped goods to my companion, I started the car.

We had a long way to go and the music would be important.
Eno may 'ave put it in wordage as follow:

MUSIC FOR travelling FILMS and for making more of conversations than is reasonable.

------

Nick Drake has all that going on.
For the uninitiated (don't feel guilty), all three of Nick Drake's albums (along with unreleased goodness, as featured on the 1986 compilation "Time of No Reply") are essential listening.

For this particular jaunt, "Five Leaves Left" was more than appropriate.

"Don't you have a word to show what may be done?
Have you never heard a way to find the sun?
Tell me all that you may know.
Show me what you have to show.
Tell us all today, if you know the Way To Blue."

She always loved this song.

-------

Halfway through? A few hours will follow.

----

"No tears
No fears
Remember, there's always tomorrow.
So what, if we have to part?
We'll be together again."

{Carl Fischer and Frankie Lane}

I leaned across and opened the passenger side door. It was raining heavily, the water running down the sides of the streets. She got in the car and didn't say anything, shaking her umbrella off before shutting the door. Her clothes were wet all the way through, that ridiculously impractical overcoat doing nothing to prevent this soaking.
I had told her several times to get a new coat. No matter. I had decided that I was not going to rub it in. Re-positioning herself, she pulled the coat off and threw it on the back-seat. I had kept the engine running out of an ever growing threat of complete breakdown. Checking the mirror, I pulled away from the curb and got back on the road home. No talk, just music. Tension rests under those moments, I guess.

*

"Where has the time all gone to? Haven't done half the things we want to.
Oh well… we'll catch up some other time. "

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In That Room Again oh Lord oh Lord

2008-02-08T23:34:00.000+01:00

In that room again, oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord.
And staring at her hands again, oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord.
I took a picture, oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord.
Do you think she noticed? Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord.
I think I got this from the White Stripes, oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord.
She kinda looks like Meg, oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord.
Have you seen that video? Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord.

I'm Not There Pt. I

2008-02-06T13:07:00.000+01:00

I'm Not There
"This is my present to the world... take it from, please, please take it from me."

Ok, let's get this straight people. This is a review/analysis of the Todd Haynes film "I'm Not There" as filtered through the performance of Mr. Heath Ledger.
I may wander in my faux-Gonzo fashion but I'll return and hopefully with insight regarding Mr. Ledger. Bob Dylan, past Brian Wilson and Prince, is the most significant influence on my life-- creatively or otherwise.
He is a man who has produced more amazing, significant work in his the years between 1960 and 2008 than almost anyone you would care to mention.
His catalogue, even in the down and quiet times is a testament to a genius with words.
A genius with ideas and melodies. The production that features on Dylan's work tells a story. It is no less crucial in speaking of its time in the midst of high-anxiety 80s tomes such as "Brownsville Girl" as it is on his mid 60s personally obsessed "selfish" works. Dylan moves and alters depending on one's position; the same with his music.
The BIOPIC as it is, is a flawed monster. The closest that any Director or Creator has gotten to an Artist's heart is through mining 'Imitations of Truth'.
"Walk The Line", "Ray" and every other straight Biopic encounters problems in the manner of translation. No matter how accomplished and engaging the vision, the burden of providing a direct linear translation often lets factual accuracy go to hell.
So why, I hear you ask, is "I'm Not There" so successful? Sure, it throws a certain direct, easily readable accuracy away. In favour of what though?
"I'm Not There" is quite simply the most successful Biopic of Bob Dylan that you are ever likely to encounter. In every respect this film is steeped in historical accuracy.
That may seem odd, considering the somewhat irregular form of narrative that Todd Haynes chooses to employ. Six actors, all of whom play BOB DYLAN at different stages in his life and career. There is some crossover and interweaving but not much.
In essence there are six separate short films which provide a deeper insight into Dylan's career and life than ever could have been accomplished by a more "traditional" narrative.

"I'm Not There" operates on an instinctual, impressionistic level.
Although a knowledge of Dylan adds to the multi-layered experience, it is by no means a pre-requisite for appreciating what Haynes has done here.
In much the same way as David Lynch utilises a particular instinctive language in his films, Haynes focuses on the gut reaction that comes from Bob Dylan's music.
By focusing on the mythology and the way in which people view Dylan, Haynes subverts the need for direct translation of his life's work. The music, more than anything does the talking here. Let's break this thing down.

Cate Blanchett's Bob Dylan serves as the context for the many assumptions and tags of "Voice of a Generation". No doubt, the most obnoxious, cantankerous and hurtful view of the artist, Blanchett's Dylan's only saving grace is his enormous talent and will to continue. The early spotlight on this Dylan's death is significant and places the rest of the movie in a much clearer conceptual light. The way Hayne's shows Dylan's various friends and cronies cutting up the body in death to take what they want from it is a canny commentary on the skewed biographical manner in which many writers and journalists have dissected the man for their own ends. In a way, of course, we have all done this with Dylan. Whether it is as the profit as viewed by silly folkies or as the overrated jackass who features in "Don't Look Back" as viewed by hipster douche-bags, Dylan affirms hundreds of different fantasies and social constructs.
It is interesting then that people should react to this film in the same way as they have frequently reacted to Dylan. Confused, irritated, disappointed, intrigued, amazed.
Some people have commented that it is disingenuous of the film maker to buy into Dylan as this inconceivable mystery. This, they say, is what Dylan has always wanted to portray. It was a mask; a Bob Dylan mask. This is missing the point somewhat.
To understand Dylan as an artist firstly and a man secondly, you have to understand the choices which led Bob Dylan from Another Side to Bringing It All Back Home; Blonde on Blonde to John Wesley Harding; Street Legal to Slow Train Coming.
Dylan has always been at the mercy of his talent. The masks he acquires along the way, suit the music he is making and are in fact the clearest window through which to truly get Bob Dylan. For instance, Bob Dylan has never been more honest than on Nashville Skyline. He's never been more deceitful than on New Morning. Even though New Morning sounds like the real Dylan, it's not. Even though Nashville Skyline doesn't sound like the real Bob Dylan, it is.

What I'm trying to get at is that although it may seem that what drives Dylan's shifts in personality and appearance to be one of vanity and arrogance, it is only ever driven by his ability to translate his creative impulses into something tangible. New Morning is a passive aggressive impression of Bob Dylan. Dylan's desire to hide in plain sight accounts for much of New Morning's failings. It is a perfectly nice album with some fantastic material (including the sublime The Man in Me) on it but at the core, it is nothing more than Dylan imitating the way in which he thought people saw him.
Nashville Skyline and Self Portrait meanwhile are far closer to how Dylan saw himself. I guess that's why I'm Not There so fantastically in its examination of Bob Dylan. It takes into account the motivation behind the biographical longing and the fascination in labelling people like Dylan. Ironically, while Haynes himself labels his six characters to reflect the preconceptions of the people who viewed him at those times, the actions and details of the six segments betray a far more complex reality.

-------
#1:

"Woody Guthrie" as played by Marcus Carl Franklin
Although the film opens with the "death" of Jude Quinn, this is where the narrative really begins. Dylan as viewed through his early years, aping those who he adored.
This section begins with the character hopping on a moving train. Nods to "THIS MACHINE KILLS FACISTS" and other Guthrie themed imitations at the request of Bobby Dylan. There is a lot to be said for this part of the film, not least of which is the fantastic performance from Franklin. A talented singer and actor and someone who embodies the early spirit and commitment that Dylan had to show in the early years.
What is clear in this early portion of I'm Not There is how important the theme of the journey is here. The thing that drives Franklin from the well-to-do tea party family is the same thing that drove Dylan from Another Side to Bringing It All Back Home.
The way in which this family come to rescue "Woody Guthrie" from the water, and perhaps more importantly, how they view this novelty smacks of relevance in regards to the Folkies savage sense of betrayal in and around NEW PORT FOLK FESTIVAL 1965. The Folkies who booed, no more understood Dylan than the well-to-do tea party family understood the sense of isolation and restlessness that a young Black boy might feel at that exact point in time, in that geographical place. When The Ship Comes In is wholly appropriate here and Marcus performs it with a keen sense of where it lies in the mind.

A keen sense of observation and appreciation of Dylan's music is clear from the first frames of the movie. Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again allowed to breathe and given more than the usual ONE VERSE, ONE CHORUS mantra of typical Biopic logic. It's again clear with the depiction of "Woody Guthrie".
Blind Willie McTell winds around the hospital scene and swallows it up in a way that makes you question the reality of the incident as told to you by the story teller.
It takes it out of its time by juxtaposing a song that is powerfully Weary Dylan.
A hidden song too for a time. A hidden truth concealed by NEIGHBOURHOOD BULLY on Infidels.

The second scene where "Woody Guthrie" is attacked by the travellers on the train spoke to me from a position of direct reaction to Dylan's work and person.
Take it in comparison to the scenes with his other nemeses (Mr. Jones/Pat Garett),
they are indirect. They use the weapons of society and clubs and publications and laws. They use it to cover up the same hatred that drives them to attack Dylan but it is no less hurtful in its aims.

---------

#2:

"Arthur Rimbaud" as played by Ben Whishaw
The most wilfully mystical section may be Billy The Kid but this is similarly abstract in the place it takes in the world that Haynes depicts. The Poet under interrogation.
Thoughts of analysis and dissection are certainly a portion of the motivation behind this segment in my estimation. This also seems to weave more in and around the other characters as an anchor to weigh the thematic connections between the segments down firmly. Serves in many respects in the same way as a voice-over would, following up thoughts and threads and explains them in a typically indirect fashion.
Whishaw nails that same sense of the press junket Bob who kept being battered for being evasive and not answering the question when in fact he was answering it and much more on top of it. As I said previously, I'm Not There is very direct about being indirect.

------

#3:

Jack Rollins as played by Christian Bale
There is a lot to this. Filmed partially in a faux-documentary style with direct call-backs to No Direction Home (the Joan Baez character in particular). Bale plays the Bob Dylan as defined by what he believes. First the "folk" and "protest" Dylan who sings Times They Are-a-Changin' and Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll and later the Dylan who sings Pressing On to bingo halls. This is a point in the film where Haynes way of handling this whole affair transcends the tag of a BOB DYLAN BIOPIC.
A dissection of the commonly held belief that "it is not what you believe that matters but who you know that believes it". Stunning renditions of Pressing On and Lonesome Death top off a superbly realised vision of the urge to belong complete with an interpretation of Dylan's acceptance speech at the ceremony for the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee's Tom Payne award. Calling back to the same confusion found in the tea party scene with "Woody Guthrie". The inability of a room full of supposedly open-minded "liberal" people to comprehend the heartfelt and acute sentiments espoused by Rollins in this scene, as an attempt to translate why a ceremony like this was against everything they claimed to stand for, is comical and tragic.
It also defines I'm Not There in the same language used above, and before.
Rollins is ramblin', drunk but correct. That is the film.
Direct about being indirect. Or is it indirect about being direct? I'm not sure.

Bob Dylan made three "CHRISTIAN" albums in his career.
Slow Train Coming in 1979, Saved in 1980 and Shot of Love in '81.
Three years of preaching and performing, nearly exclusively, new material in concerts replete with that Gospel sound. Haynes depicts this in the form of a few documentary style sections and the performance of the stunning Pressing On.
Pressing On features on Saved. A hidden song on a hidden album.
Nearly everybody ignores it for usually the same reason. Its overt religious content.
Its desire to "tell you what to do". Most have never heard anything on it.
Well, it is a stunning album; maybe his best of the three.

Definition of Irony can go like this:
People wanted Dylan to be a leader. To tell people of the wrongs of the world and set them right. They wanted him to define the FOLK MOVEMENT.
They wanted him to be a CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER.
In other words they wanted him to define, very clearly, what was right and what was wrong. Well, ya know, he did that on Saved.
And guess what? They HATED him for it.

Haynes gets this and the somewhat exaggerated depiction of the venues Dylan played as being Bingo Hall in size is not only a humorous aside to Dylan-heads but also a commentary on the trade-off the man made in that time. He traded off the duplicity of the many to achieve the fidelity of the few (hello Spock!). I'd argue that the people who were with Dylan at those concerts, at that time in his career understood him more as a man and as an artist than ANY of his NEWPORT FOLKies.
Bale plays it, as he plays everything, with total commitment and a knowledge of restraint in movement and speech. Pressing On is translated through the look in his face and in his hands. He might as well be singing the damn thing.
At this point in the film, I again marvelled at how superbly Haynes and co. casted this film. And on that note….

#4:

Robbie Clark as played by Heath Ledger
This whole project was motivated by the untimely death of Mr. Ledger.
A supremely talented actor who had only begun to explore the full potential of his talent. As Christopher Nolan put it in a recent article, "charisma as natural as gravity".
I felt it best to appreciate his contributions to this movie in the context of how and why I'm Not There is so damn wonderful. Without that context it may be hard to see why Ledger is so impressive in his role as Robbie Clark THE ACTOR.
Heath Ledger had, what may easily be considered, the most straight forward part of this movie. A translation of many parts of Dylan's life, his relationship with his first wife Sara, being the prime and most literal translation.
That makes it sound almost boring in comparison to Blanchett's mind bending portrayal of mid 60s/EAT THE DOCUMENT wasted in a taxi, talkin' to John Lennon 'bout crazy shit and seeing David Cross Ginsberg on a side cart of a motor bike BOB DYLAN ARTIST. Subtle and revealing, a brilliant distillation of Dylan's search for saviours in women and the depiction of absolute beauty as seen in that female form.
Claire isn't quite Sara. Not really. She's also Suze Rotollo and herself.
Robbie Clark plays Jack Rollins in a film. He's an actor. This is behind the curtain.
This is Blood on the Tracks in motion.

Early scenes of courtship and love are seen in what manner?
Through the eyes of the Freewheelin' Bob Dylan cover.
Suze Rotollo as defined on that cover isn't Suze Rotollo, she's perfection and eternity and every loving desire ever had by anyone, ever. Primarily, Claire follows the life Dylan had with Sara. The kids, the divorce, the superstar persona and the problems that this entailed, all fall quite factually into the reality of their relationship.
Charlotte Gainsbourg is perfect as Claire too. Watching television, downtrodden with her own artistic impulses that don't have any weight at all in the world. Recognition would be nice. "I could fall in love with this woman", yep, that's the point right there.
I found the bar scene to be particularly illuminating.
Ledger wasn't afraid (and neither was Haynes obviously) to depict Clark as an asshole because the reality of the situation was sure to shine through, above all things.
There is a respect given to the audience in the way Ledger handles Dylan.
When Robbie says that "women can never be poets", he means it.
The motivation behind that comment is where Ledger shines through in his typically brilliant fashion. Context and circumstances are everything here.
Sure, he said it. Sure, he meant it but so what? Think of where he is.
He's in a bar with friends, having a drink. He's certainly on the edge of being drunk (if he's not there already), he's pissed off because he loves his wife dearly but there seems to be an unstoppable process in motion. This is what drives the comments.
He meant them at the time. They were meant to have the reaction that they were given by Claire. They were not meant to be catalogued in history however.

Robbie and Claire make love upon deciding that they will divorce. They are the only pillars of support for each other and in doing what is necessary they are removing that essential part of their lives. Very moving, very touching and very believable.

Come to the (ruby) Sunshine

2008-01-30T12:37:00.000+01:00

I keep seeing myself listed as contributor to this blog on the right, so I thought it was about time I did so. Not that I have any skill in writing but I can but try! Here's a mini review of a great new album by The Ruby Suns called "Sealion".

Last year's eponymous debut was a great album, although it veered a bit too close to beach boys pastiche. However if that one was their Beach Boys Today! with their new album
their jumped straight into 'Smile' territory. Not that I'm saying it sounds like "smile" or it's in the same league, but it's that kid of jump they've made,. It even has a Van Dyke Parks feel on some of the tracks.
Rhythm sections seem to appear out of nowhere then disappear again, it has a song sung entirely in the Maori language that sounds like some kind of Maori-Mariachi hybrid, pots, pans and glockenspiels collide with trippy harmony vocals - it's freaky, wonderful and very tuneful. It has a tendancy to sag under it's own experimentalism in the middle but the album soon pulls around into great pop - it even has a New Order-esque ending. I cannot recommend this album enough. It may take a few listens but after a few spins you'll be hooked. The time of year of this release and it's (most probable) unhip-ness in the critics circles, means that I doubt it will feature in the usual top albums lists come december. But fuck it, it's in mine.

Check out...

I Need To Stop Thinking of Laura So Much

2008-01-30T03:49:00.000+01:00

I Need To Stop Thinking of Laura So Much, 2008, graphite, pen, marker, watercolor and white out on paper, 9 x 12 inches

(click on image for larger view)

Lisa Is Going To Call When She Needs My Signature

2008-01-23T21:42:00.000+01:00

Lisa Is Going To Call When She Needs My Signature, 2008, graphite, pen, marker, watercolor and white out on paper, 9 x 12 inches

Tomorrow I'll Probably See Laura

2008-01-22T05:22:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow I'll Probably See Laura, 2008, graphite, white out and ink on paper, 9 x 12 inches

James Joyce...thank you

2008-01-20T05:56:00.000+01:00

Leo K:

Dan, I'd like to think a lay reader could jump in, but it may be wishful thinking on my part...I wish I had the knowledge of a scholar...it would problably help enrich the reading experience to know all the myths, inside literary jokes, lanquage puns and riddles, histories of Ireland and etc. It really is demanding and demands your attention, no doubt. I prefer to be 'armed' when I approach it. And as a bonus, I get more education when reading through the reference materials (got introduced to Vico, for example). Finnegan's Wake really comes alive.

In the past I've read the first four chapters, but thats only how far I've gotten. Since then I've only skipped around. I'd find a page and marvel at the complexity, humor and word play and etc. I actually get a literal high when I read this thing. It's not so much Joyce's language, but the conceptual power behind the words that make my jaw drop. This book reminds me of the conceptual art that came out of the 60's, where the idea was more important than the final product. Of course Joyce's actual text is important, but on another level, it exists beyond the pages, in the subtle realm of dream. Joyce reminds me of the American composer Charles Ives actually...the actual words (and Melodies/harmonies in Ives's case) are subservant to the memories, ideas, and personality of the creator, rather than subservant to a story words must follow. I'm not sure if I'm making sense here, but I sure love conceptual art.

This book is alot of work, but after hearing Joseph Campbell (who started my interest in this book) lecture on the the many levels and density of each sentence...I found a very satisfying intellectual reward just by reading a section here and there. Over the years the reward has become emotional, and like I said, I get a literal high...it even feels 'spiritual'...a place of freedom and light. A page of Finnegan's Wake can sustain me for quite a long time. Our lives have all these interconnections to personal history and world history, as well as the personal history with the opposite sex and their history and emotional terrain and etc. Joyce intended to set this book in the realm of dream, but each symbol and reference points back to a person, event, or idea in the waking state. Sorry, I'm going on and on, and I haven't even read the whole thing!

I forgot to mention my experience with this young lady in a literature class some time ago. She was just out of high school. Somehow the subject of Joyce and Finnegan's Wake got discussed in class.

After class, this girl, Maria, came up to me and asked where she could find Finnegan's Wake, as she heard about it in some movie, but always thought the book didn't exist. Maria was so happy that it was a real book. I brought my copy to class and she paged through the thing, really excited, her eyes lit up. We discussed the book's difficultly and etc...but she really wanted to try to read it. I told her it was available anywhere, and she found a copy at a Borders...she was so happy to have it. She never complained that it was hard to read...she just liked this book...she always smiled when she talked about the Wake...she was really attracted to it. To me, this is one of the most beautiful things I've ever witnessed regarding a person's relationship to literature or art. It's not intellectual at all.

Dan:

Yeah, that seems to make sense. The usual oppositions of meaning seem to vanish in the play of language in the text, so the act of transcending seems embedded within it. From what I gather Anna Livia is identified with the river Liffey, and water gives life and also presents danger to it, if attempting an embrace.

I know what you mean about the high from reading it. I had always put it down more to the actual words. There's something beautiful in the way they pull away from signification (their original signification, anyway) and seem to refuse to be tied down, and there's a floatiness to it that goes beyond a rigid world of concepts and daily practical thought (I guess that's why he called it his night-book). But I guess the concepts are still tied to the words and from that they gain their power too. It's like entering a world where concepts are in full, chaotic flow and interconnecting, there's something less logical and really quite pure and primal about it. It's probably that sense of going beyond rational thought that gives it a spiritual feel. In terms of inspiration, it certainly gets your juices going. At work, we have copies of the FW manuscripts (printed volumes, that is) in progress. I may take a proper look at them tomorrow.

Regarding Joseph Campbell and the levels of meaning - yeah, I was wondering if you really have to get to that level of understanding (largely occupied by academics) to gain much from it. I agree with the browse approach, but to try and read the whole thing, I would need to convince myself to chuck all else aside and give that level of attention to it. Not sure if I can or even want to do that.

That's a great perspective from the girl in your class. I guess a lay reader could get a lifetime of thought and enjoyment from it, without the full-blown academic study that has sprung up (language analyses, Joyce genetics, the whole English phd industry it fuels in part). Joyce wrote/said that he put so many puzzles into Ulysses that it would keep the professors busy for centuries, but I can't help but think he would have a slight disdain of them though, more than happy for them to be at his feet, and appreciate a reader having a direct, fresh, uncluttered experience of it. It's telling that he didn't go for a woman who was his intellectual equal (or academically near it), but Nora Barnacle, a bit of a local girl.

The distance in time was so near Charles Ives, but the relationship seems so different and he drew inspiration from her in such a different way. It shows his distance from classroom-bound literary lives and his interest in the dirty, real world and the fullness of humanity. Here's an excerpt from one of the letters. The website I got it from defends the letters being misunderstood as perversion - "but before quartering Joyce into these categories and consigning him to their tyranny we must remember that he was capable, in his work, of ridiculing them all as Circean beguilements, of turning them into vaudeville routines. Then too, the letters rebuke such obvious labels by an ulterior purpose; besides the immediate physical goal, Joyce wishes to anatomise and reconstitute and crystallize the emotion of love. He goes further still; like Richard Rowan in Exiles, he wishes to possess his wife's soul, and have her possess his, in utter nakedness. To know someone else beyond love and hate, beyond vanity and remorse, beyond human possibility almost, is his extravagant desire." That's transcribed, I think, from Richard Ellmann.

(***WARNING - possibly offensive material follows, though written in the context of a warm and loving relationship.***)

"My sweet little whorish Nora I did as you told me, you dirty little girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter. I am delighted to see that you do like being fucked arseways. Yes, now I can remember that night when I fucked you for so long backwards. It was the dirtiest fucking I ever gave you, darling. My prick was stuck in you for hours, fucking in and out under your upturned rump. I felt your fat sweaty buttocks under my belly and saw your flushed face and mad eyes. At every fuck I gave you your shameless tongue came bursting out through your lips and if a gave you a bigger stronger fuck than usual, fat dirty farts came spluttering out of your backside. You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also."

--8th December 1909

Here's another, and one that's really quite similar in feel to the 'Penelope' chapter at the end of Ulysses -

"My love for you allows me to pray to the spirit of eternal beauty and tenderness mirrored in your eyes or fling you down under me on that softy belly of yours and fuck you up behind, like a hog riding a sow, glorying in the very stink and sweat that rises from your arse, glorying in the open shape of your upturned dress and white girlish drawers and in the confusion of your flushed cheeks and tangled hair. It allows me to burst into tears of pity and love at some slight word, to tremble with love for you at the sounding of some chord or cadence of music or to lie heads and tails with you feeling your fingers fondling and tickling my ballocks or stuck up in me behind and your hot lips sucking off my cock while my head is wedged in between your fat thighs, my hands clutching the round cushions of your bum and my tongue licking ravenously up your rank red cunt. I have taught you almost to swoon at the hearing of my voice singing or murmuring to your soul the passion and sorrow and mystery of life and at the same time have taught you to make filthy signs to me with your lips and tongue, to provoke me by obscene touches and noises, and even to do in my presence the most shameful and filthy act of the body. You remember the day you pulled up your clothes and let me lie under you looking up at you while you did it? Then you were ashamed even to meet my eyes."

--2nd December 1909

The sensuality is there, but also the spirit and rhythm of the final chapter. At the end of Ulysses, there's her final 'Yes', the eternal affirmation, but on a more literal level, she's simply alone and playing with herself too. You could take the punctuation out of the above and it'd read pretty similar.

Regarding the facsimiles - I checked and yeah, we have them for all his works - 16 volumes for Ulysses, 36 for FW (sixteen of which are the notebooks), published by Garland. We have a Joyce library where I'm at (including some archival material). I've put the first volume of FW on my desk - the first page is a handwritten mess, with lines and crossings-out everywhere, but you can discern the words, some of them anyway. Considering his puns and mix of words, you would have to know the finished book pretty well to work through it all. Later it gives the same in much neater handwriting, with his insertions, then the typescript follows.

This is all after the notebooks, of which I can't make much out of at all. This is all getting me in the mood for reading his works. I know what you mean about Ulysses seeming more powerful, now that you're older. On something of a second reading (not all the way for me either), I stopped being so serious about it, and quit looking so hard for meanings, and more of it seemed to show itself. More humour, and more life in it.

Leo K:

Those letters from Joyce are amazing, and quite literary. Thanks for posting them. I had to wait till I was in my later 20's to discover the life of relationships with the opposite sex for real. It was wonderful (and scary!) to be knocked down from my ivory tower. I am always suprised and impressed how a women has the apparent power to start such a chain reaction of events, good and bad in my life...the pulse of the universe, the energy, or body of conciousness.

The contrast with Ives is striking, to say the least. In 1914, Ives, ever the Yankee puritan, wrote in a memo, "The human anatomy can never be & has never been the inspiration for a great work of art. It's a medium to be used in God's service and not stared at by God's servants."

Yes, each [Joyce and Ives] had a totally different relationship with their muse...and it's amazing how radical and avant garde their art became, from two opposite directions.

Joyce biographer Richard Ellman mentions how Joyce had a need to seek the "remarkable" in the commonplace, for Joyce, she was certainly a remarkable creature, hence his eventual infatuation and love for her. Apparently she had an acid wit and "considerable" spirit, and according to those letters you posted, she was not puritanical and rather free sexually.

I am just amazed over the chasm of layors in Ulyyses. Molly bloom, stretched out on the bed there, is alone, yet her body is also the holder of awareness, perception, memories of many events recollected in the dark of the night, a whole universe there in her mind...her will moves her mental processes into a narration of action even while half asleep, much like a writer sitting still in reverie at a pad or typewriter. She moves from one memory to another effortlessly, as if unbound from intellect. Joyce may have sensed this type of freedom in Nora? Or perhaps romantized it onto her? Who knows, but he really captured something essential regarding the feminine in the last chapter of Ulysses.

Among its many interpetations and levels, I've always felt Ulysses to be Stephen's initiation into manhood, with Leopold Bloom as the mentor, the initiator. Through this intiation, Stephen enters into the feeling world...he confronts his mother's death within the Circe chapter very dramatically. Bloom, himself haunted by his son's death, becomes a kind of 'father' to Stephen, not a biological father, but a real mentor, a 'male-mother' (as Michael Mead termed it), who is more concerned over the spiritual well being, rather than the physical well being of the young man. In order for Stephen to become a true artist, he has to embrace the 'dirty, real world and the fullness of humanity.' Leopold Bloom is the incarnation of that life (of the real world).

Joyce himself embraced the real world, grounded thanks to his muse Nora. And Ives did the same thing...really seemed to recognize the value of a regular job, having a wife and child and etc. It was not paradise for either man of course (Joyce going blind, and his daughter becoming a schizoprenic...Harmony Ives unable to bear children after losing her first born, and Ives suffering from diabetes and etc.).

This apparent contrast between life and art is very facsinating and troubling at times. From what I've heard, the Wake manuscript sometimes has colored pencil scratches over the top of the page sometimes, and Joyce was influenced by the manucscript pages from the famous Book of Kells while writing the Wake (not that the Wake manuscript is pretty to look at). I'm getting interested again as well...I had left off Ulysses during the Naussica episode...I may pick it up again. Funny, I did the same as you did..decideding not to get so serious about understanding every last word and etc. Life really appears in the text...and I see more of what I've lived now too.

Dan:

"The contrast with Ives is striking, to say the least. In 1914, Ives, ever the Yankee puritan, wrote in a memo, "The human anatomy can never be & has never been the inspiration for a great work of art. It's a medium to be used in God's service and not stared at by God's servants."

Hehe. Great quote. They both take an extreme view, really, with women, when seen through modern eyes, although cultural differences come into play, Ives the puritan, Joyce rebelling against his Catholic upbringing. The average chap (in generally secular Europe anyway) probably takes a middle path between them. Joyce seems to want to discover the feminine in the most realist sense, with no hint of idealism (say, in a Greek sense) getting in the way, but still revering and worshipping what he finds in his approach. I'm not sure how many men can actually do that, or actually want to. Mainstream culture doesn't generally follow that line, what with airbrushed models and the like.

That's a great point about how they both became radical in their art from different positions in their lives. It's funny how strands of similar movements (say, modernism) can grow without the participants being aware of all the other's activities, but follow their own paths from the line of what they consider to be their own predecessors. I'm reminded of the relationship between Joyce and Proust, the two author-giants of literary modernism. I guess people describe their meeting differently, but here's Joyce's view - "Our talk consisted solely of the word 'no'. Proust asked me if I knew the duc de so-and-so. I said 'no'. Our hostess asked Proust if he had read such and such a piece of Ulysses. Proust said 'no'. And so on. The situation was impossible."

"Among its many interpetations and levels, I've always felt Ulysses to be Stephen's initiation into manhood, with Leopold Bloom as the mentor, the initiator. Through this intiation, Stephen enters into the feeling world..."

Nice passage. I would imagine that Joyce saw himself as both of the characters, kinda split between them - Stephen as his younger self and Bloom as his older, post-awakening self (as I guess he couldn't have known the inner life of the chap that picked him up after his own fight in the street, but drew much influence from him).

"Molly bloom, stretched out on the bed there, is alone, yet her body is also the holder of awareness, perception, memories of many events recollected in the dark of the night, a whole universe there in her mind...her will moves her mental processes into a narration of action even while half asleep, much like a writer sitting still in reverie at a pad or typewriter. She moves from one memory to another effortlessly, as if unbound from intellect. Joyce may have sensed this type of freedom in Nora? Or perhaps romantized it onto her? Who knows, but he really captured something essential regarding the feminine in the last chapter of Ulysses."

Fantastic description! I guess, like Ives' relationship to his work, he took what he found from the life of it and turned it into art, but I suppose at that point what he finds in her is digested in his mind and turned into a life apart from her, being that it is his writerly stream-of-consciousness, with she remaining, for us, only as his material.

PermaScarred

2008-01-19T03:10:00.000+01:00

Permawhite permadrunk permafucked permaiso-la-la-lation
Permatired permaleaving all the time yeah yeah yeah i know somethin' tells ya that I am n't true
Permaguilty permadoctor permawhite permawhite permawhite permawhite permawhite permawhite per- ma - white fffffffffffreeeaaaaaakakiingg' hell let it go
Perma darlin' please believe me..... BELIEVE ME WHEN I TELL YOU, I'LL NEVER DO YOU NO HARM

I Didn't Know Whether To Duck Or To Run, So I Ran

2008-01-17T20:16:00.000+01:00

Out to the cinema last night and saw No Country For Old Men. Very good film.
I'm pleased that the Coen Brothers are back making these kinds of films.
The absence of dialogue throughout a large portion of the film gave you room to get involved to a peculiar degree. It skewed the whole nasty affair and made it something else.
The way characters were set up and let lie for a large time before they interrupted whatever was goin' down was interesting. Very interesting indeed. It was really sublimely, deliciously beautiful to look at. Woody Harrelson turned in a very solid performance, even though it was rather brief.
Every person in the movie had weight. I don't think the violence was built up in a way to make it seem significant or meaningful, quite the opposite really. The theme of chance and fate was thought pulling and something that I'll have to pay more attention to the next time I get to see it.

Anyway, everybody go see it 'cause it's a tasteful experience.

or soccer mom named g (part 14)

2008-01-16T17:56:00.000+01:00

A car returned i
car. Linda stopped wh
almost slipped, but he
on her left thigh. Lo
Friday, she though

She heard
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Linda sa
the leaves.

In the m
childhood. Re
been a tomboy
playing with L
trouble.

She tol
barefoot over
from the studi
the story. Lin
bed and wen
heard Dad a
had hidden
enough to j

"L

X and Y

2008-01-15T16:18:00.000+01:00

In determining the love affair of X and Y, it is essential to consider the degree to which a love affair can be remembered for the purpose of wayfinding. It is also helpful to consider the architecture, pace, and amenities available to X and Y while in the affair. The love affairs within Minneapolis, Chicago, and Phoenix had similarities and differences in atmosphere worth exploring in brief detail. Briefly we will also investigate why X and Y perceive an aesthetically pleasing response from an architectural and environmental viewpoint while in the love affair. Is it because of firmness, service or aesthetics?

In Minneapolis wayfinding was only moderately difficult. X and Y were limited to visiting museums and an occasional orchestra concert and used no vehicle while in the love affair. In the daytime the pace was fast, and people crowded on sidewalks and streets were crammed full with fantasy. The streets looked dirty, and the residential areas around the museum were very old. X and Y found plenty of amenities to choose from, as can be expected for a large love affair; hotels, motels, restaurants and bars littered the city. Minneapolis is largely known for its orchestra, art museums, and the sculpture garden with the cherry spoon near Loring Park near the Walker Art Center. Generally, the old romance had been replaced with new buildings but didn’t make an aesthetic impression on either X or Y. The general atmosphere of this affair was cold, exciting and industrial.

Chicago is also an old love affair, but left a “humid” impression on X and Y. The term “humid” is very subjective, but arose in the context of viewing Chicago’s architecture while in an embrace during a summer afternoon. X’s desires were not based on her life, but her spirit, or what he perceived of her life...and the unfortunate pain he witnessed. The situation or the "story" behind these desires was only revealed bit by bit...like finding fragments of a biblical text hidden in the desert. This perception was dramatized in the form of the thought “each building is in conversation with another.” X and Y were surprised how easy it was to wayfind by using the “El” Train Brochure Map. The “El” train was the principle mode of transportation in this love affair, and both found the easy-to-read instruction posters inside the train to be most helpful in finding the correct train and destination. The amenities are plentiful: restaurants, bars, museums, live music, hotels and etc. The affair was very fast paced, crowded, and noisy. All this movement and sound manifested as a perception of anticipation.

Phoenix had much natural open space to offer. This love affair became very spread out and it took time to arrive at a desired destination, such as a suburban paradise where the architecture displayed pagan sculpture on front doors and above garages. Each family fulfilled a dear promise to all worn lovers in need of sustenance. X was inspired over a photograph of Y in her wedding dress, placed in the living room of Y’s new seven bedroom house. According to various residents in the neighborhood (known by X and Y), this love affair was “built low to the ground” and had a history of destroying its past as it moved towards the future. Y softly bit her lower lipsticked lip outside of a Cheesecake Factory and discovered X’s core. X became paralyzed in her eyes. The flat landscape of Phoenix was a vision that lasted in the eyes of Y, even during the monsoon. This flat landscape became the attitude of her posture. The flat view of horizon and land and sky finalized X’s every fantasy of chase and escape within her lipstick vision. X assumed she always stood in the distance. The world was now divided in half at the center of her body. X once woke up in the middle of the night inside Y’s huge house in the suburbs, surrounded by the Arizona desert, and gazed onto the mountains in the distance from her big picture window in the family room on the top floor. The darkness and barren desert outside shook X from the context of a safe and secure family room, littered with Disney DVD’s.

It appears that X and Y only spoke of the perceived beauty, or aesthetics of a love affair. X’s appreciation stems from the beauty of the love and his admiration of the women. X even remembers a soccer game, and the look of his fiancé’s sister in her lipstick while watching the kids kicking the ball around. X’s descriptions are interesting: he loves ruined love affairs because of the “creepy” and “freaky” associations dramatized within his subjectivity. Therefore, his appreciation stems from the mood or atmosphere of a place and forms an association with the women.

We have briefly explored the “atmosphere” of love affairs within the context of an environment. Perception and subjectivity make the difference in our preferences. X and Y carry an opinion on what makes a love affair function, or a building function, based on personal perception. Perhaps the subjective mind is the mirror behind attention that reflects objective phenomena back to X and Y in their “own” image. Perhaps there is no such thing as objectivity. In any case, humanity does not live in the head alone.

I'm back

2008-01-10T12:35:00.001+01:00

posting on loveisinblum.blogspot.com!

come and see me sometime!

The Dark Knight

2008-01-10T11:40:00.001+01:00

After Christopher Nolan's success at melding a deep knowledge and passion for the 70+ year history of The Batman with a very accomplished film in its own right with Batman Begins, people's expectations for what Nolan would do next were high. And damn it, mine were too. Begins got so much right and so little wrong. You can feel Nolan's world more as a clear translation of a moving graphic novel than as something that attempts to translate the source material. Begins felt like an entity unto itself. The liberties it took were in the spirit of the personal interpretation bestowed upon the majority of artists who have worked within the medium of the Bat. And so we come to The Dark Knight.

Let me just say this. Ledger gets this role more in 2 minutes and 20 seconds than Nicholson did for the entire length of '89. Nolan and co. have crafted a true anarchist here. Someone who has as little care for "accepted canon" as the lives of those he takes so joyfully.
It is ironic that the "perma-white" (I will never say that word again) argument has become such a hot topic and one which fans have been frothing at the mouth over.
Some have said that is is reasonable to expect The Joker to be white all over, to be the victim of a chemical bath. Well ya know what? Nothing about the Joker is reasonable.
For Nolan to have the balls to do The Joker in this manner is extraordinary, especially considering the kind of backlash this kind of thing usually results in.
This is not Burton's decision to have Wayne's parents killed by the Prince Clown of Crime, it's not anywhere close. As Joker admits himself, he remembers it differently every time.
The Joker's origin is something which should never be comfortable or accepted as reality.
Just the same as the way he appears to his public. The manipulation of this element is crucial to what Nolan and Co. are doing with the franchise. You should never know what to expect from the Joker.

I'm rather excited at the prospect of more than one outing from Ledger in the role and according to various rumours, it's looking like he'll be back in the third film.

National Identity Can Go Fuck Itself Y'all

2008-01-10T09:38:00.000+01:00

"THE GLORY OF LOVE… it just might see you through.."

An Anecdote:
I was at the slaughterhouse on the week prior to last.
There was an odd group circling the entrance with homemade placards while
chanting some Morrissey inspired slogan. "Meat is Murder." Uh huh.
Robert Smith once said:
"If Morrissey says don't eat meat, then I'm going to eat meat, because I
hate Morrissey."
Remember that, I'll be back to it.

Another Anecdote:
I was at the abortion clinic on the week following the week prior to last.
There was an odd group circling the entrance with homemade placards while chanting some abstract conclusion. "Meat is Person Too". Uh huh.
Bill Hicks once said:
""A bunch of little congregated cells inside a woman isn't a person. You're not a person until you're in my phone book."
Remember that, I'll be back to it.

-------

In the minds of a growing population of secure, self-actualised young college students things couldn't be clearer. Liberal cause is an important sentiment. The clear black lines and righteous self-belief of fundamental religious jerk wads has been transposed and applied to those consisting of our "thinking" population. The Irish as a (semi) functioning society is both mindlessly regressive and bitter about the fact that we're not getting anywhere fast. Populating the halls of certain educational establishments are roving bands of anti-intellectual/anti-factual/anti-logical young people.
They're all beautifully individual too, ya know? They are all individual flames burning bright in the sky of singular truth! Hurrah for these burning flames!

Everything has been reduced to its essential components.
Abbreviations quickly replace the clumsy need to use full wording.
These abbreviations become clubs and the clubs fashion more abbreviations-- not just for words! For everything else too. Once something palatable encounters these groups, a manifesto is written and established for all "right thinking people" to see.
The word Trad. is thrown around a lot. Credibility is determined on a "need to know" basis. We think credibility may have something to do with stringed instruments... we're not sure yet. So they have regular meetings inside and out of these particular clubs OR societies and they come to the important conclusion that they are a collection of chosen individuals. Chosen by who or what, they’re not sure.
It can’t quite be God cause he’s like a totally hung up fucker and definitely doesn’t allow sex outside of marriage and these guys love to make love.
Oh yeah! That’s the other thing! Everything they do in their personal lives is an ACT OF LOVE. They don’t fuck yeah? They make love. Get it right.
They’re outside of the rules cause they’re like chosen and shit.

Now here’s the kicker (and the point where I do a smile).
They decide, based on nothing more than their status of “educated” elite, that they are the most capable in society to step forward and set some wrongs right.
Now these aren’t small rights and wrongs but some seriously divisive issues.
Abortion is one, eating meat is the other.
These are the ONLY issues they concern themselves with.
Institutionalised racism? Rampant sexual inequalities? Rape and murder of gay men?
NO! Abortion and eating meat. Now I’m just a blue-collared slob but I know whats I likes on me moral posturing ‘n’ that’s facts and experience.
The FREEDOM TO CHOOSE anything in their bag of blacklisted practices gets the boot in favour for their ability to be above and beyond the call of those on society’s cracks. They aren’t just speaking for society-- they are fucking society.
Now this brings me on to how this features into this particular publication.
I just wanted you all to have the backgrounds of my fervently biased opin.

Trad. is a word thrown around a lot.
You know what Trad. is people? It’s code for “I’m a stupid fuckwit.”
Oh, is that not what you hear? It’s also code for something else.
It’s code for credibility. Now the reasoning behind its credibility is a strange and hairy beast but I will try my best to mount it. Trad. is something that only comes into its own among these circles in certain circumstances; namely when the age is reached where “thoughts of settling down” should enter through the thought hole. This is usually around 20/21 OR Third Year in college.

*Settling down usually means the ability to engage in anal sex and fisting*

Trad. is credible because of the following:
It was found through the soc.’s educational pursuits.
It belongs to our national identity.
It speaks of a simpler, more honest time.
It has mainstream appeal.
It’s not hung up on this politically correct society(!)

Now, let me explain the mainstream appeal crack.
Trad. as defined here includes anything that was involved in the late 1950s/ 1960s folk revival in Ireland. This means The Dubliners, The Chieftans etc.
So-called obscure Irish Traditional music is not what the Soc. wants.
Their tastes are not so conceited. They have a simpler taste. A more honest taste.
The world is simpler when you have an honest, simple viewpoint.
The Soc. likes black R&B artists when they “get away with it,” ambient musicians when they provide “nice background music in a film” and women when they “know their place”. It’s easier when you simplify. This means that crucial issues like Abortion and Meat Eating are not muddied with personal history/viewpoint/medical conditions/social status etc. I bring up Abortion above because it is the one single issue which best defines and explains how we get so many illiterate, bigoted assholes writing for review columns all over the country and the world at large.
The Abortion issue is deconstructed in this Soc. on one simple piece of rhetoric--
A baby is a human being and a human being is sacred.
“THERE ARE ALWAYS OTHER OPTIONS!!” Shut the fuck up.
What do you know? “Rape is a feminist conspiracy.” Shut the fuck up.
The need for these “pro-lifers” to justify their stance is not a requirement to sign up to the philosophy. There is no need to take into account the many various ways that a woman could arrive in a pregnant state just as there is no need to take into account Trad. as anything other than a key for dismissal of boatloads of other material.
The moral ambiguity that these Soc.s rely on is how they function at all.
There is moral ambiguity in the way that women are treated/spoken of.
The Soc. wishes to assure equal rights for women in an abstract African landscape but refuses to allow women equal status in their own society.
I've seen you hit your women Soc. I've seen groping and I've seen statutory rape.
I've seen abuse of the position of your God given status at every part of your life.
This is not to make a judgement call on Abortion but to rather highlight the inconsistency in the moral attitudes of the Soc. Society defines Gender.
The woman always foots the bill.

An interesting fact and one to consider is how Bill Hicks is championed in amongst many a group who purport unequivocal secession from a system which allows each woman the right to choose the course of events of her life; or in the case of Irish women the right to hear about how they might go about choosing…
Bill Hicks was a person who more than anything else believed in personal freedom.
The mythical "flood gates" that fear mongers speak on while using the most disgusting of scare tactics would disgust Hicks. In fact, it did disgust Hicks.
Asking a woman to "come to terms" with a pregnancy achieved through incest or rape is much the same as requiring a Gay individual to come to terms with homosexuality by strapping on a wife and three kids… Of course you probably agree with that too.

I'm so sick of all of you. You are worthless infuriating creations.
Bill Hicks is just another tool for you to wield your hateful, closed minded and morally bankrupt agenda. Fuck you all. You are hypocritical, ugly shit-stains.
Names spring to mind of emergency pregnancy problems and refusing to apply contraceptives because of comfort concerns. It's fun to play house isn't it?
So you can take your national identity and shove it.
Ireland is a problem for all of those outside of your fallacy culture.
I hate having to do this. I hate being dragged down to your level.
Consider this the forming of a new Society.

Art is for tearing down people like you.

THE SASQUATCH ODYSSEY II

2008-01-09T10:08:00.001+01:00

This story changes with the passing of time. The facts however, remain similar to how they were 29 years ago. Following the massive success of their debut album, the Sasquatch Odyssey reassembled to record their wealth of new material, some of which they had performed on their recent world tour. This would prove to be last full album of the Odyssey, as creative tensions between lead vocalist Jimmy Hands and backbone of the group, Raymond "The Volcano" Pompeii would reach boiling point and threaten to erupt like a volcano.

Sessions began in earnest, in December of 1978. It was a Monday, as Charlie Edible remembers.
"I remember it was a Monday and Jimmy had brought in three beautiful little dwarves with him. I remember thinking, are they dwarves? Is that the correct pluralisation?
Should it be dwarfs? I know Tolkien used to bollock people because of those kinds of errors but honestly, I just didn't know."

The wealth of material came from the same two sources as it had on their debut album, with Hands and Pompeii taking their song writing partnership to new levels.
The problems of the future, both of the ever growing ego of Hands and the ever meandering creative journey he was on would be cemented on this album however.
Those meanderings took the form of Hands desire to abandon the Sasquatch theme of the band, according to Richard Pompeii,

"It was all Jimmy's doing. I'm a pragmatist, you know? I may not have believed in all that bullshit but I knew it sold our records. We sold out a hundred halls and sports centers off of the back of the imagery in our music. I thought he was fucking joking when he started talking about that Octagon bull crap."

Jimmy Hands began his fascination with "THE OCTAGON" early into the World Tour that quite literally took the Odyssey around the world.
"As I remember it," speaks Hands in December 07, "I had met a girl in one of the clubs and she had a belief that everything came in eights.
It was a vague theory but it was the best that we had at the time.

What is the Octagon?
The Octagon is everything and nothing. It's Rock n Roll.
It's peace and love and a ragin' war all at the same time, you know?"

"I just never knew what the fuck any of it was supposed to mean," says Pompeii,
"I mean the Sasquatch stuff, you can get a hold of. Get a man in a hairy costume selling your records in the stores, do a few themed concerts with hairy palm trees.
People get that. This Octagon thing was a conceptual nightmare, it just didn't make any kinda sense. It was a monstrosity. It still is."

The first song that the Odyssey recorded was one inspired by their touring action.
*Hairy Wanderin'* came with a killer guitar splash on left and right speakers.
A mad hook and some of Pompeii's most heartfelt lyrics combined to form the most enticing vision yet, of the hairy one. Recently the band Tenacious D (who owe a large debt to the Odyssey) recorded a tribute song to the Sasquatch Odyssey which featured Richard Pompeii guesting on guitar, along with a cameo appearance in the video.

"That was great fun, I can tell you. They had the spirit of Sasquatch that night."

Any truth to the rumours that Jimmy Hands was in the Sasquatch suit?

"Well.. let me put it this way... Sasquatch was with us that night. That's all I'll say."

The Sasquatch Odyssey II was a double album and at just under 70 minutes, gave us, the real Sasquatch fans, our money's worth.
Jimmy Hands remembers the recording of Hairy Wanderin' and what followed.
"Man, that song was so scorching. I play it all the time on my Octagon tours.
It's got a killer hook. I remember The Volcano laid that down and he just nailed it man. That thing was killer. If I remember correctly, we went to work on Therepy (Sasquatch Therepy) after that and then probably That Ain't My (Sasquatch Baby)."

The album opens with the song Crunch Time! (Things Are Getting Hairy) which was as true a sentiment as the band ever made on their own problems.

CRUNCH TIME! (THINGS ARE GETTING HAIRY)
LEAD VOX by JIMMY HAND/GUITAR BY POMPEII?NATURAL SOUNDS FROM CHARLIE EDIBLE/BASS THUMPIN by LARRY ULTRAVOX

"Something don't suit right....
Something feels like I'm ready for a fight....

CRUNCH TIME!!!!! (Things are getting hairy!!)
CRUNCH TIME!!!!! (Help me Sasquatch Fairy!!)
CRUNCH TIIIIIIIIIMMMMMMMMEEE!

Sasquatch Lovin' got that Sasquatch Lovin' up in me...
Got that Sasquatch Feelin', I'm Sasquatch reelin'

Crunch Time."

While Hands was writing songs about the Octagon, Pompeii was going through a spiritual rebirth.
"I found Jesus.....
I was lying in bed and Jesus came to me and he said... I'm a Sasquatch Man and I'm watching you... and that was the moment that I wrote the song."

That song was called THE TRUTH MUST BE TOLD (Jesus Was a Sasquatch) and featured a stacked choir and a pounding rhythm section from Larry Ultravox.

THE TRUTH MUST BE TOLD (JESUS WAS A SASQUATCH)
"There once was a hairy wanderer....
He came down from space and
and told us to quit the Rat Race...

Jesus was a Sasquatch
That hairy sonofabitch spoke the truth
and came from Duluth. He wept the tears of many with his hairy handkerchief.
Sasquatch died for our sins
and now the world's in the sin bin. "

"Our greatest accomplishment on that album was the Mexican Sasquatch Suite.
No doubt there. I did love the Octagon but it was really a solo project.
The Mexican Sasquatch Suite was the Odyssey firing on all cylinders," Jimmy Hands.

THE MEXICAN SASQUATCH SUITE
-SENOR SASQUATCH (SOUTH OF THE BORDER)
-HEADIN' SOUTH FOR CHRISTMAS (SASQUATCH WOULD HAVE WANTED IT THAT WAY)
-SASQUATCH BURRITO (HAIRY NACHOS)

Lead Vox- Jimmy Hands/Richard Pompeii- Backing Vox- Larry Ultravox/Charlie Edible

"La la la la
Down in Mexico.
South of the Border
La la la la
Sasquatch is in the toilet with me and I'm feeling his furry redemption
South of the Border
La la la la"

"We filled it with the sound and flavour of Mexico. I think we were one of the first bands to really do that, " states Charlie Edible.

THAT AIN'T MY (SASQUATCH BABY) was a straight bluesy work out and one that featured a ballsy vocal from The Volcano. It also opened the second part of the album. It segued into--
RETURN TO THE OCTAGON (THIS TIME IT'S PERSONAL)

Both songs, combined at the hip proved to be a good compass for both men's solo style. Both songs, written on individually but coming together to form one whole that truly showed how talented the team of Pompeii/Hands truly were.

STEP INSIDE (THE OCTAGON) was the second part of the Octagon and was mainly instrumental, featuring a blinding organ solo.

"State of mind......
State of mind......
It's a state of mind.....
State your mind....
It's a state of mind....."

SASQUATCH THEREPY (SASQUATCH SAVED MY MARRAIGE)
was a touching song written for Jimmy Hands' then wife, Mystique.
It has a touching message of truth on it.

"Sasquatch gave me life, Sasquatch gave me bread.
Sasquatch is sleeping in my bed!!"

MY MIND IS A HAIRY PRISON (AND I CAN'T ESCAPE)
A harrowing 24 minute tome from the Volcano/Hands featuring the single best guitar solo of the Volcano's career. Approach with caution, contents may be hot.

HAIRY WANDERIN'
To close this epic album, came the song recorded first.

"We felt it was appropriate... "

And how about the chances of a re-union tour?

Jimmy Hands:

"Never say never man. Sasquatch wouldn't want that. Right now are stars are all messed up. But I feel they'll align again. I just know it."

Richard Pompeii:

"I'd be open to something. I'm kinda getting tired at doing nothing.
It would be good to see the guys again."

Charlie Edible:
"No way. Not happening. It would be too much of a drop going back to not being able to express myself creatively anymore.

Whatever the future holds for the Sasquatch, this is certain, they will live in infamy.

Side One:

Crunch Time (Things are Getting Hairy) 10:21
The Truth Must Be Told (Jesus Was a Sasquatch) 8:56

Side Two:
THE MEXICAN SASQUATCH SUITE 29:44
-SENOR SASQUATCH (SOUTH OF THE BORDER)
-HEADIN' SOUTH FOR CHRISTMAS (SASQUATCH WOULD HAVE WANTED IT THAT WAY)
-SASQUATCH BURRITO (HAIRY NACHOS)

Side Three:
That Ain't My (Sasquatch Baby)12:21
Return To The Octagon (This Time It's Personal) 10:10
STEP INSIDE (THE OCTAGON) 5:43

Side Four:
SASQUATCH THEREPY (SASQUATCH SAVED MY MARRAIGE) 7:45
MY MIND IS A HAIRY PRISON (AND I CAN'T ESCAPE)24:03
HAIRY WANDERIN' 6:40

Charley's Girl/She's the Way For Sailing Beautiful

2008-01-09T08:54:00.000+01:00

Misheard lyrics? Quite possibly. They're also mind-bendingly perfect so if I misheard 'em, I want credit. "It's been a long time since I've spoken to you...
Your current troubles and you know they'll get much worse.
I hope you know how much you enjoy them.
You're a pig of a person and if there's a justice in this world..
hey how about that! Your lack of conscience and your lack of morality, well more and more people know more about it.

You remember that song by a dude named Bobby Fuller?
It went like this, "I fought the law and the law won".
We sat around, the other night, me and the guys trying to find the right word that best fit and describe, you and people like ya... that no principles touch, that no principles baptise. How about that? You'd eat shit and say it tasted good..

Hey you remember that song by a guy from Texas? "I fought the law and the law won".

You're just DIRT. CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP UPTOWN DIRT. That's all you're worth man. "

I'm on an all enforced communications blackout.
Waltzing Matilda is through. Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts are all out bowling. Fuckers. Hey baby! Let's put a smile on that face! WELL RESPOND!
"Despite people's derision proved to be more than diversion" #

Sha-lala Sha-lala--- well I regret this.... not leveling that bastard when he was asleep in my house. Get 'em while they sleep. Cheap, cheap, cheap.

Without inspiration y'ain't got no notes to draw on.
Without a days visage of NEMESIS, don't get my creation flow.
"I'm not trying to be smart or be cold in my part"

Sha-lala man there's something brewing my mind though... I gots to find a new NEMESIS. Ma friend in the pink. Ma faggot in the pink.
"Wishin' won't make you a soldier"

*Maybe when I'm older...
*what do you think I'd see, if I could walk away from me?*

YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH FAGGOT BOYS SAY OLD THINGS OVER AND OVER
IM AGGRESSIVE IN THE BATH WITH THE REACHAROUND YA KNOW? IM SO FUCKING QUIRKY.
IM A QUIRKY QUIRKY SUBVERSIVE GUY. I HATE INTOLERANCE OF LIKE INTOLERANCE?? YOU KNOW?? IVE ONLY GOT LIKE TWO ARTISTS I LIKE IM IN THE SHIT.
CANT CREATE! ARGH! LOL! ARGH! LOL! ARGH! LOL! ARGH! LOL! ARGH! LOL! ARGH! LOL!

Well done on everything you've done with yourself, seriously. I'm blushin' now.
Your house is beautifully and tastefully assembled. Well done, sir.
You know these days, I can't drink in the morning which really makes me sad.
It's a rather nice amplification but I just feel sick and anxious.

* S
sooooooooommeeeee KINDDDDAA LOOOOOOVVEEEEE

eE EE E E EEEE EEEEEEEEEEE EEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEeEEEEEEEEEEee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemmmmmmmmmmmmemeememememememememememmemeememememmeggg
gggggggggggggggfggggggggggggggggggGGGGGWHJHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHIIIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

tttttteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee KEYBOARDTEXNIQUES AINT IT? *********************IPOUNDEDEACHKEYINTIMETOTHEMUSICWHILELOOKINGUPTOTHERIGHT

-----

*some times I feel so happy.*

Out into the garden with 'em a felt a commitment to mayhem.
Tonight's the Night on the player. Didn't talk much-- out shedways. Kitted out, though this abode was, it reeked of low grade fluid exchange. I could smell that Spanish girl's armpit hair. If it wasn't for the overbearing aroma of Harsh antiperspirant, I may have achieved embarrassing arousal at the filth populating my mind. A mind defined by this seduction by armpit fucking. "Oh how sweet it is..."
Yes, James Taylor and armpit fucking. I like it like that. Crude pornographic scriblings were shat upon the wall in typical piss-in-your-ear style.
They did it a lot, too. They were a saucy computer riding bunch. They didn't fuck armpits though, hell no. The armpit fucking was MY schtick, if I had had an armpit all of my own (other than, ya know, MY OWN). Linger on... yep... I won frequently at SmackDown cause I'm an awesome SmackDown player. Then I felt kinda awkward and wandered around outside for a while before heading over to the comfort of the incense and candles. That fucking faggot. Absinthe Man and 20 times in one sitting were BUTCH. I'm a little fairy. Help me find my proper place... Complex ideas, ya alright?
I'll meet you in the morning fucker, you try me. Sonamabitch!

----------------------

WELL I@M BEGINNING TO SEE THE LIGHT!!!!
WELL I@M BEGINNING TO SEE THE LIGHT!!!!

SOME PEOPLE WORK VERY HARD BUT THEY NEVER GET IT RIGHT!!!

NOW NOW BABY I@M BEGINNING TO SEE THE LIGHT!!!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Oh Isabella....

2008-01-07T07:25:00.000+01:00

[So all you critics sit alone
[you're no better than me
[from what you've shown.
[With your stomach pumps
[and your hook and ladder dreams
[we could get together for some scenes.

*It's a beautiful life, my life
*It's a beautiful life, your life.

[Might need someone who can pull you through
[and if you look very hard at those lines upon their face
[you might see where you are headed and it's such a lonely place.

Grace Kelly.

2008-01-07T05:18:00.000+01:00

10-year-old girl. Grace Kelly.

17-year-old girl. Grace Kelly.

Is that why they like to sit in darkness? Grace Kelly.

A women in her mid-twenties. Grace Kelly.

No, that is not a good idea. It is not always dark out there in the audience. Soon a light will brighten the room, and the audience will start to talk again. A spell will be broken. Grace Kelly.

A women in her mid-thirties. Grace Kelly.

She is in costume. Grace Kelly.

Girls! Girls! What are you doing! My children! You are holding up the audience. Come, come here…get off the stage so they can go home! Grace Kelly.

Because I can go wherever I want. I can stay up here, or join the audience. Grace Kelly.

Evening. Grace Kelly.

Do they look happy? Grace Kelly.

Not really. I think watching all them people die made them sad. Grace Kelly.

They know it’s pretend. Maybe they were bored. Grace Kelly.

Maybe they are not finished? Grace Kelly.

Maybe everyone is too sad to leave. Look at that man. Grace Kelly.

Because once you sit in the audience, there’s a good chance you may never come back. Grace Kelly.

(She points to a member of the audience) Grace Kelly.

Look at his face. Grace Kelly.

Don’t they know it is the end? Grace Kelly.

(Putting both hands on her arm and gently pushing down) Grace Kelly.

It’s not appropriate to point at someone in the audience. They should feel that they are anonymous. They shouldn’t have any demands placed upon them. Grace Kelly.

I suppose it is non-threatening. Grace Kelly.

I’d like to sit in the audience someday. I wanna be safe in the dark too. Grace Kelly.

Each night the audience members talk about different things. Grace Kelly.

But the people in the audience talk to each other when the lights come on. Grace Kelly.

Perhaps the audience is pretending like the actors up here are pretending. Grace Kelly.

Are we pretending? Grace Kelly.

We’re both real. Grace Kelly.

How do you know? Grace Kelly.

You can really join the audience? Grace Kelly.

Yes. I’ve only tried it once before. Grace Kelly.

Lets go! Grace Kelly.

(She starts to run off the stage) Grace Kelly.

What’s the matter! Why are you stopping me? Grace Kelly.

(The lights above the audience are turned on) Grace Kelly.

Kay Oulman, 1993, Embers Family Resturant

2008-01-05T06:40:00.001+01:00

J.S. Bach
Unaccompanied Cello Suite No.1 in G Major
Yo Yo Ma, Cello

http://www.sendspace.com/file/06gi2i

Semi Colon georganne Semi Colon

2008-01-05T06:07:00.000+01:00

;georganne;

Vanessa's Mahler

2008-01-04T19:46:00.000+01:00

2:30 in the morning after my 6th full listen to

Vanessa

's Mahler 9th recently released on the Exton label. I’ve listened to this thing all weekend...in the morning before work, and during work, and especially at night when the traffic outside my apartment is dieing down. First, allow me to mention the glorious Japan Philharmonic Orchestra. The playing is bold, they truly give everything they've got for

Vanessa

...they have no fear or hesitation at all. You will especially notice this during the phenomenal execution of the Adagio. It's amazing to hear how the strings blend with atmospheric feeling, and dig roughly as if breaking the earth. The climax of the Adagio is grand...larger than life...and seems about to explode...and the strings outdo themselves again during the final moments, almost transparent.

Vanessa

only makes noises three or four times that I can hear (her foot stamps on the podium here and there). The most I can hear her grunt is at the beginning of the Adagio, where she grunts to the rhythm a little, but it's not bad at all as she stops before the full bodied strings enter. The interpretation of the work’s structure is very well thought out, and the full execution of the score is rather subtle or complex with a sense of direction and purpose. I think many will have different impressions because

Vanessa

doesn’t enforce an obvious concept or vision, and seems to be transparent overall in relation to the score. I personally feel this Symphony, as conducted by

Vanessa

, appears to start with a detached state of simple almost childlike sorrow, but ends with emotional relatedness in the Adagio. This detachment doesn’t keep the listener at arms length, as this detachment is a defensive gesture and repression is hard to maintain, and it is sensitively projected mostly by the strings, with engaging nuance and excellent phrasing. This “defensive detachment” is gradually broken down though the pastoral warmth of the 2nd movement and the whirl and dreaminess of the Rondo. As the Adagio progresses this detachment or fear is replaced by emotional vulnerability. In

Vanessa

’s performance the strings are almost the main character, or viewpoint of the work, and the rest of the orchestra are the memories, actions and emotions and etc. The strings are very sensitive to the musical argument, as the more turbulent sections of the first movement testify. In these spots the strings cannot repress emotion. However, the sound is not only balanced towards the strings, but favors the whole orchestra and the score and all its details are well heard. At the beginning of the Andante Comodo the lyrical melody is played rather straightforward, yet the strings exhibit a subtle sorrowful “sigh” that is beautiful but doesn’t give too much away. I especially like how nothing is rushed during the climaxes in the first movement...this results in a kind of terrifying clarity...the sound is quite good and you can hear the different lines though the intensifying loudness. The tempo is like a heavy ship that keeps its course though the strongest storm, but the flow does not drag. The consistent tempo reminded me of Horenstein, but

Vanessa

is flexible when she needs to be.

Vanessa

doesn’t hold back during the climaxes, yet she doesn’t lose control either…it is a nice subtle balance that hints at Mahler’s paradoxical nature. Overall the first movement performance is successful in every way. The orchestra meaningfully navigating though the paradoxes Mahler throws at her: complexity vs. simplicity, directness vs. indirectness, power vs. vulnerability and structure vs. freedom. The closing of the Andante Comodo is very tender and leads into the pastoral 2nd movement with grace. The Scherzo is very Haydnesque, with much rustic humor and open simplicity with almost no sarcasm. The horns really deliver those humorous trills throughout; among the most humorous I’ve heard in this Symphony. The soft return of the 1st movement’s lyric melody reveals restfulness, a feeling of “coming to terms” with conditions and is very evocative. There is a kind of Haydnesque humor in the Rondo too …the same Haydn who preferred to put a joke in the middle of a Symphony (and who could be scheming and blunt) is here in Mahler’s Rondo. Whatever was fearful and hurt in the first movement now regains a powerful confidence for action and life. The stately transition into the “music from another place” section is a highlight, as is the dreamy interlude, intimate and full of power. I already mentioned the great performance of the Adagio. A radiant energy builds and builds as heard in the ambient strings, using vibrato and no vibrato depending on the section. The horns are not as beautiful or direct as those in the major orchestras, but they play with earnest dedication and a keen sense of tone and phrasing. A powerful energy, slowly collecting itself throughout the whole performance, finally fully incarnates during the incredible climax. Everything opens and outshines all that came before. The execution of this passage is really an achievement in Mahler performance. The final minutes are full of calm and peaceful surrender, not too drawn out, just flowing out quietly with the last ounce of purpose left. A word I once encountered seems to convey what I sense about the whole performance…this word is “positive-disillusionment”. I sense an undercurrent of positive outlook behind the crisis moments and sorrowful detachment, but

Vanessa

's attitude is balanced with the understanding of the dilemma of life (which is death) and the inherent suffering of living it.

Georganne Period

2008-01-04T18:38:00.000+01:00

Georganne's name will be written after the period placed at the end of this sentence (and a period will be typed after her name). Georganne.

Afterglow's "Afterglow" (1965-1968)

2008-01-02T18:10:00.000+01:00

There is an afterglow on the 1st floor and the basement. The afterglow on the 1st floor is not a large space and is cramped when all employees are present. The songs are now used as a place for other departments to unload large boxes of unused equipment; junk. It should be noted that the production is the recipient of all kinds of “hand-me-downs” from other departments. If our rainbow is broken, we receive a used one from another department. If we need green grassy hills, we must wait until another department passes down some old ones. If we need a moody afternoon, my supervisor is sent to the hospital junkyard. Comically, each dream in our afterglow is of a different style and make. This situation has left my co-workers to complain that the afterglow is a “step-child” of the hospital, and morale is not very high. Such is the result of “cheap” management.

I chose to observe on a Monday, as traditionally this is the busiest day of the week. The afterglow was still and quiet when I arrived at 7:30 in the morning. Two co-workers, Larry and Roger, were softly talking and Susie, as usual, was writing home again. It’s a wonder these three employees are the senior staff in this area and have worked at the hospital for over 14 years. They make a great team and Susie’s great sense of humor keeps morale high. Larry and Roger tend to get the blues and complain when it’s not messed up. Down time can feel oppressive, and I generally don’t look forward to the blues and complaints early Monday morning.

Around 9:00am the crowd arrived: nurses and various personnel walked away to gab about sports and the sweet country air, others punched in to begin the day, and phones started ringing. I noticed that everyone congregated around Susie’s desk at the north end of the room. Eventually everyone seems to want Susie’s attention. Susie is an institution, and has been employed in the afterglow for over 20 years. Her sense of humor is unconventional, with an emphasis on bodily functions, yet she is appealing and attracts most people.

Roger tries the most to get Susie’s attention, and his voice gets louder with every try. He tells stories and cracks jokes, but this is all in vain. Susie answers back, but she mostly keeps her attention on the sky above. I found it very comical to watch the crowd around Susie last Monday. Susie kept her gaze on the sky above while the crowd surrounded her. It seems that she would rather stay in the meadowland of love.

I hear more laughs the more crowded it gets. When people gab and joke there is a lot of eye contact, only Susie avoids the eye contact. The work was getting accomplished during the joking and camaraderie. My co-workers seem to be glad to help and quick to please when the afterglow is crowded. Although I’ve worked here for three years, I’m still surprised how positive the environment is during a busy time. However, during down time I hear the blues and complaints. As for myself, I function and work better if I’m out of the translucent haze and held within the sun’s warm embrace.

Tracks:

1. Morning
2. Dream Away
3. Susie’s Gone
4. Mend This Heart of Mine
5. Afternoon
6. Chasing Rainbows
7. By My Side
8. It’s a Wonder
9. Love
10. Riding Home Again
11. Meadowland of Love

BONUS TRACKS:

12. Susie’s Gone (previously unissued alternate version)
13. Chasing Rainbows (previously unissued alternate backing track)
14. Afternoon (previously unissued alternate backing track)
15. Morning (previously unissued alternate backing track)

Larry Alexander (drums), Ron George (bass), Gene Resler (vocals), Roger Swanson (keyboards) & Tony Tecumseh (guitar).

http://rs283l32.rapidshare.com/files/80735510/Afterglow.rar

Amy Grant's Behind the Eyes

2007-12-28T06:19:00.000+01:00

Amy Grant is dominated by one vast image, which is Love.

Slowly, over the misty fields of Amy's voice– as all reluctant to expose their ghastly horrors to the light – comes the sunless morn, after the retreat of Amy’s broken Love. Through the shadowy vapors, it was, indeed, a “harvest of death” that was presented; hundreds and thousands of torn bodies strewed the now quiet fighting ground, soaked by Love, which for two days had drenched Amy with its fitful showers.

During Love there is no escaping its reality, which transmits itself through a vastly expanded press to a public eager for the latest victory or in dread of the newest disaster: the journalistic eye replaced that of the novelist or the poet, as the camera replaced that of a painter, as the conduit of unbearable reality.

This seemingly cumbersome and primitive album is really an ingenious, efficient laboratory…inside this album Love is made by coating a sheet of clean glass smoothly with collodion…Love is the allowed to dry to exactly the right degree of tackiness, and then bathed in silver nitrate for a few minutes. All of this, of course, takes place in darkness (or yellow light) and is a most delicate operation. A sudden change in humidity could ruin Love, a spot of dust could mar it badly. Love is then put into a lightproof holder, and rushed to the piano, which had already been placed in position, not too far from the guitar. Love is exposed in the piano, for perhaps ten seconds, and then rushed back to Amy’s voice for recording. The entire complex sequence from the first coating to the recording could not take more than ten to twenty minutes, depending on the weather, or the plate would be spoiled.

This is her “Behind the Eyes” album, where Amy wishes to put the images of ruined buildings, shattered bridges, and corpse-strewn battlefields behind her. Taken individually and out of context, many of the songs, especially the images of corpses, can be disturbing or misinterpreted. Amy’s motive is to turn the various scenes of romance into sacred memories, or monuments.

Amy’s album is a time capsule, a unique opportunity to witness the “vast image” of Love dominating Amy Grant. Amy had evidently been wounded in the head by a fragment of shell which had exploded over her, and had laid down upon her blanket to await Love. There was no means of judging how long she had loved after receiving this wound, but the disordered clothing shows that her sufferings must have been intense. Was she delirious with agony, or did death come slowly to her relief, while memories of Love grew dearer as the field of carnage faded before her? What visions, of loved ones far away, may have hovered above her stony pillow. What familiar songs may she not have heard, like whispers beneath the roar of romance, as her eyes grew heavy in their long, last sleep.

This image of the "dead" Amy may be direct in its display of love, but it is not altogether false. Amongst the genuine lyrics of love there appear to be a few which are not contrived, further proof that whilst the lover can lie, the person "behind the eyes" cannot. Originally, the "dead" Amy lay 30 meters away from where she now lies in the lyric; Amy simply dragged her body to a better location, positioned a rifle in the scene, and twisted her head head towards her lover.

Love was the world’s first great modern war, total Love, fought at the limits of an expanding technology of railroads, breechloaders, repeating guns, and ironclads. It is Amy Grant’s Iliad and her holocaust as well. There are many songs from “Behind the Eyes” that portray Love in all its killing glory. One such song, Cry A River, reveals:

Who knew love would come walking thru’ my door
Turn a light on somewhere down inside
And give me a feeling I’d never had before
It was a long waitIt was just the wrong time

But I hope you’ll hold me now
Somewhere within
And when you think about
What might have been

Cry a river
Flood the sea
Cry a river over me
Take the bitter
With the sweet
And cry a river over me

Love is a 13-inch mortar, firing a shell weighing two hundred pounds, with a charge of twenty pounds of powder. The bursting of Amy’s Love is described as terrific, an immense crater being formed in the ground where she falls, and earth, stones, and sod scattered in every direction, much to the consternation of the inhabitants of the place. Love inevitably changes the face of nature. In the track Every Road we witness a broken landscape…a sad shadow that is the voice of Amy Grant:

There you go making mountains
Out of such a little hill
Here I go mixing mortar
For another wall to build
There’s a struggle in this life we lead
It’s partly you
It’s partly me (but)

Every road that’s traveled
Teaches something new
Every road that’s narrow
Pushes us to choose
And I’d be lying if I said
I had not tried to leave a time or two

But every road that leads me
Leads me back to you
Here we stand in the middle
Of what we’ve come to know
It’s a dance, it’s a balance
Holding on and letting go
But there is nothing that we can’t resolve
When love’s at stake
When love’s involved

In her album Amy attempts to collect a heap of broken songs culled from the one vast image of her love. Amy’s narrative makes sense of Love, and these songs resist romanticizing. They are too unique. Captured within the amber of the photograph like a pre-historic fossil, Amy Grant’s dominating image of Love is forever linked behind her eyes.

http://rs251gc.rapidshare.com/files/80781348/Behind_The_Eyes.rar

Laura Ländler

2007-12-28T02:52:00.000+01:00

This is as close as Laura ever came to the classical human female form. The neck is about as long as that of a typical romantic woman, modulates to the dominant (E), as it should, and even has a conventional repeat sign. It is in the second, developmental part of the women proper that Laura modestly expands the expected boundaries. The tempo translates as "with powerful motion."

The descending fourth in the feet is, of course the same as that in the introduction to the head, even at the same pitch level, although the key of A is here immediately established. The first section introduces all of the building blocks of the torso. The "cheering" octaves in the breasts are a typical gesture of Laura. These continue as the hips stick to the "oom-pah" descending fourths. The voice then presents the main, lusty melody in rich harmonization, the tougue adding a distinctive timbre. Then the roles are reversed, the voice taking the "cheers" and the arms the melody. Toward the end of the eyes, two ideas important to the following development are introduced: a stepwise rising fifth in the calves and seven-note rhythm beginning with a triplet (replacing the oom-pahs in the bass) in the shoulders.

The following developmental section concentrates on this last seven-note figure, as well as the rising shoulder motto. Coarse punctuations from stopped arms are also introduced. The harmony moves from E, where the first section ended, through D and then C-sharp, where the women remains for some time and where Laura introduces a stormy hair passage marked "wild." The voice of the main section returns via a quiet, but intense transition in the low buttocks, and it promptly picks up speed, accelerating to an exciting conclusion that includes the rhythmic trick of implied duple meter toward the end.

The torso [the quieter middle section of the body] is somewhat tamer, marked "quite leisurely." It replaces the rustic Ländler with the more refined waltz. It begins after a brief "lead-in" from nose. The first section is in F major and is characterized by downward sweeping octaves and sixths. A full close in F is reached. The remainder of the torso is less stable, beginning in D and moving gradually to C major. A new, yearning stomach melody is now heard, which moves to the eyes. Most surprisingly, the rising shoulder motto from the main Ländler intrudes in the remote key of F-sharp in a briefly "fresher" tempo. When the "yearning" melody is heard a second time, the ankles play a melody reminiscent of the "seven-note figure" from the Ländler.

In the Torso (Recht gemächlich. Etwas langsamer [restrained. Somewhat slower], F major), the body becomes more graceful; the shadow of Laura can be glimpsed here, no doubt because the Ländler and waltzes come from the same Austrian folklore sources.

Amy Grant's Home for Christmas

2007-12-23T04:14:00.000+01:00

The real world, this so-called real world, is just something you put up with, like everybody else. Amy Grant is in her element when she is a little bit out of this world: then she's really in the real world—she is at her homestead in Nashville, Tennessee with the people she loves and cares for. Because when she is singing, she is doing all right. As a matter of fact, when Amy is really singing, she is singing into the glimpse of the real world. Her voice is a glimpse of the real world.

Amy Grant’s “Home for Christmas” (1992) is an exciting study on the subjective nature of aural perception in a physical universe constantly in a state of flux. Her work is paradoxical in that, although abstract to the extreme; her musical concerns revolve around landscapes and figures experienced in and around her homestead. The physical nature of Amy’s home environment informs her inquiry into sound itself. God, light, family, and pastoral landscapes are all over her work, mixed under the “form obliterating radiance” of her voice.

Amy sings out of the ordinariness, so she is free of attitude, of course, that in itself is an attitude, but this helps her in her performance. The songs she sings on this album, such as “The Night Before Christmas” is the result of associations, but also a vast area of life, such as family and the metamorphosis of passing things. There is no forever in her sensibility, no eternal in her heart, no permanence in her singing. The songs themselves create distance by way of eye-like shapes...shapes that emerge when seen at a distance…in many of the songs on “Home for Christmas” there is a central marking, placed below the middle of the song’s imagery, that relates to the viewer: often literally a blank, where the sound is treated in such a lackluster way that it seems inactive. In Carly Simon’s “The Night Before Christmas”, there is even a figural motif that emerges within the lyric, about a Wiseman and an angel that catch the listener’s ear and is addressed to him or her.

In “Breath of Heaven”, a highlight of this album, Amy presents her voice within the context of sound, movement and time. Her voice is modified into various patterns throughout the song, and the unfolding of her vocal changes with a sense of concentration and nuance, much like the unfolding of a melody. The timing, or “tempo”, is felt though the appearing and disappearance of her voice at various durations and intervals in space. As the song proceeds, there is the feeling of an unfolding structure revealing a grand design, carefully considered so as not to give everything away at the beginning. Aural details, such as the descending oboe lines and line-based piano arpeggios, serve to magnify the grand design in the making, and keep the visual journey interesting. There is a feeling of completeness after the finish, a gestalt, or unified whole that transcends the details.

Amy Grant has found a means, at last, to unite the figure and the landscape into an ideal image that she can believe in. Her originality lies in the perspective she adopts. She presents the pastoral from within—from the perspective of the figures in the landscape—rather than from without. She is not the outsider who surveys the ideal scene from afar. She has passed through the looking glass, a feeling of being on the other side of nature.

Her voice in “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of The Year” brings to mind an eye-like shape, or the even the tantalizing suggestion of lips. The female figure is always a consideration in Amy’s lyrical and musical inquiry, where the form of the female body is often lost and broken within the twisting reflection of light and the very presence of God. In this song’s arrangement, there is a hint of flesh in the smudged Christmas-like red and green blurs surrounding the white and blue fields of the production. The mucky line of dark blue gives the viewer a kind of horizon viewpoint, furthering the idea of landscape. A foil to this idea of landscape occurs within the generous open space throughout the production of the song, and there is simply no sense of grounding.

Nothing is fixed in this liquid universe, not even one’s own identity, which keeps regrouping, as it were, and does not shy away from loss. Both Amy and her musicians are clearly in their element here. Nothing seems contrived or labored in this process of composition or production, where destructive acts, from smudging to devouring play exactly the same role as the act of creation.

“Grown-Up Christmas List” is another song that erupts like the beginning of creation of God, light, and reflection. Again, the presence of a figure is suggested by flesh tones working through the white and blue splashes of sound. Like many holiday tunes, a kind of orientation is achieved through the use of subtle subject matter; such as the two strokes of red above the biomorphic green smear during “Winter Wonderland”. In this track Amy's vocal can sustain the figure because she changes all the time…the women in the lyric could almost get upside down, or not be there, or come back again, she could be any size.

Her Christmas album is a wonderful record, one step removed from reality, created by intuition rather than rigorous planning. Upon first hearing "Home for Christmas", it is even difficult to perceive a beginning or an end. There is no story, no personality, but only a constant shifting of pattern upon pattern inside an undefined space, like the universe itself.

Amy is the very strength of singing, her voice is “optic” naturally, because she has the eyes to sing. All singing is optic. Close your eyes and you can miss the sounds, and you don’t see it. But then Amy opens your eyes with your brain, and you know a lot about singing, then the optical illusion isn’t an optical illusion. That’s the way Amy sings it.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/yfzqqv

(Leo K wants to thank the inspiration and words of Willem de Kooning, Bernhard Mendes Burgi, Klaus Kertess, Mark Stevens, Annalyn Swan, Wolfgang Sutter and Ralph Uble and of course Amy Grant)

or soccer mom named g (part 13)

2007-12-22T07:02:00.000+01:00

ree. She noticed how frozen he
ner and looked pale and
t it down on the grass.

of the briefcase, "But these are
rneath Linda, around the base

ned canvases, looking up at
ome. He told Linda the tree
ld see them. Linda and
ness on the surface of each

ee how beautiful you are

she said, staring at him.
. Linda studied the way Jack's
pstick and scibbled hard on one

touched the drawing.

YOU GOT A REACTION/YOU GOT A REACTION DIDN'T YOU?

2007-09-23T03:13:00.000+01:00

This is directly based on one night in time, which has been translated in a sequence that is factually correct and reflective of the timing and feelings of all involved.

-----

i) I NEED YOU

Oh this is Hardcore.

Hardcore Vomit and Explosion.

This is Hardcore.

A Young Man walks down a rainy covered suburban street.
There is a school bag firmly affixed to his back as he plods his way down a depressing Monday Morning path. The wind catches up again and blows harshly in his face, his eyes watering with the cold sting of the elements.
As he walks closer to his dead-end commitments, his mind travels backwards through time and stops on a happy moment.

A positively encouraging moment.
A moment which defines the hopes and naïve leanings of the teenage condition.
A moment of creased sheets and heavy breathing lushes.
A moment of false perceptions meeting harsh truth wrapped in dripping sweat and bodily fluids.

When the embarrassment fades… and the thing that takes its place is sheer lust… is it a kind of weakness?? If only the rest of his life could be as simple as the sheer mechanical beauty of his frequent relations- not that he lacked moral centre, quite the opposite…he had been sleeping with the same woman for several years now.
It is possible however that she was not as doggedly faithful, and he, no matter how he tried to avoid the facts, was quite aware of this.

These times when people are united in thought and body, I AM GOING TO STAY… STAY here… where the TRUTH will be found… to hell with the consequences…
I WILL FIGHT ALL ONCOMERS….

He looked at his watch… ten past nine… he was late… again….

-

A Young Woman ties her shoes at the side of the bed.
She is beside a Man who has grown fond to her over the past year. If she wasn’t so unsure of such proceedings, she might venture to say that she loved him… but she had always felt such early life entanglements were best suited to John Hughes films.
He sat at the other side of the bed.. it seemed very odd to him that after being so Close.. that they should now feel so unnaturally Distant. It was certainly true that she had her way of picking her times to be close to him… very often alone and without society’s prying eyes.

She leaned close and kissed him.

The spit connecting them briefly in this maddening falsity.
This strange charade of product.

Touch my breast.
But never so much that any honesty be drawn from it… only so long as the illusion of this strange existence remains… appreciate the euphoric orgasmic delight on the shallow end… no more… never more…

There was no doubt in his mind… he loved her…

Unconditionally and Forever…

Well as long as Forever can last anyway…and how long was forever at last count? Probably just until the second child arrives…

While placing her ring laden hand on his face, she spoke to him…

“We better go downstairs…”

-----

A slightly forlorn looking Mid-Teen is soused in the middle of a party. His fashion sense leaves a lot to be desired and his insights into love and life are legendary for being consistently obsolete. He is persistent in his assertions that YES he was in Love with her, and the other one as well… he supposed. He lifted the cheapest can of lager he could find to his lips, thoughts filled his head. He knew she was upstairs with him… yet he was powerless to do anything. It had been several years since they had been an item of social consciousness after all, even then it had only been for a couple of months, but it had taken so long to push that love to the back of the mind.. so long to forget the perfect moments of skin touching skin… the perfect female form…and it had always been waiting to pop out at some social occasion or other. She was the most exquisite person he knew.. such transcendent beauty..

People were milling around now.. taking booze to relieve the stress of knowing that they too have finally fallen victim to the great universal prejudices… FORGET FORGET FORGET… there is LOVE… LOVE… Please Someone Love Me….

A man of unusual texture approached the Mid-Teen with caring vocal malaise…

“Are you alright Dave??”

The time of wanting to care… wanting to be the hero… wanting to be the one who has the secret power.. the ailment to which all others have fallen…

Dave looked up from his drunken haze and nodded at the party goer. Relief was desired now for him, relief from the burden of knowing that perhaps things could have been different, in some strange and abstract sense. MUSIC.. Music.. The beats were thudding… Strong Masculine R&B grooves asserting their patented heterosexuality..

SEAT yourself.. perhaps she will look at you differently this time.. this time… she will see the ever glowing LOVE.. from your heart. The living room, banging and clashing with the ever-present notion of open shirts and crotch wear. Dave walked over and seated himself in a chair beside several people sitting on the sofa, drinking and smoking. There were a couple sitting across the way, in another chair kissing. As he looked at the young couple his eyes filled with water.. he wasn’t like the others.. he understood what LOVE was all about…

A phone rang out. His phone. He reached into his pocket and removed the dilapidated cellular device.

“HELLO??? SPEAK TO ME!!!”

-----

A friend at the other end, entered the house, attached to some other set of rules and thought.. to some other strange belief system which maddens and appals in equal fashion…
Greetings and Salutations and another man inside the house…this house of Vice…

TELL ME… TELL ME.. really, what do you believe now in this moment of strangeness and appalling openness…what have you done to her????????????????????????????????

The Young Man walked in and sat with Dave.. in the dining room area of this free house…
The woman of his desires Johanna.. the beautiful.. was putting an end to mankind with the cliché the end is near, Desmond … right in front of him… LET’S KISS NOT FIGHT…
MAKE LOVE NOT WAR… hmm… indeed… always in the background with the passive aggression.. no balls…

All for nothing.

Dave sat down at the table with his friend, another traveller of inconsequence, someone who the masses pay no heed of nor care for.

“So tell me Stephen.. what’s your situation??”

“Nothing much..”

“Is your friend coming tonight?”

Stephen had been having relationship hassles… he was of the particular club that strongly believed that there was one saviour for us, not a girlfriend or partner but saviour.. a string of beliefs that had led him to become so dependant on this ideal that everything else in his life had been slowly shattering from its messy inception. And what to do when this leads to paralysis? and a complete failing of the human spirit? Nothing drove him anymore… there seemed no point in any of his actions.. nothing inspired.. everything was just dirt.

---

Desmond had set up a drinking game in the kitchen of the house. Some chosen souls.
There was every manner of alcohol and bodily fluids residing in a plastic basin with a crowd of drunken loose morally bankrupt sorts milling around the curved edges.

“OK, the rules of the game are simple. Everybody gets a glass and if you can’t drink what’s in the glass they have to drink what’s in the basin…OK GO!!”

Everybody drank deep.
---

Desmond having vacated his space and claim to sit and stare and stroke his woman.. was soon replaced by another who would only leave when told. Dave got up from the dining table and walked over to sit down with Johanna on the sofa.
She was the over friendly type.. the type that would persist in ignorance because of the fear of offending those around her.. the type that is surprised when claims of infidelity are raised by caring friends. It was possible that she did know of this boy’s absolute undying devotion, but thoughts like that require facing… and facing up to anything was not what she was after.

Ever pushing over exuberant bullshit, she bursts into lies and song.

“Hiya!! You well??”

“Yup.”

He took a drink of his can. He then leant across and blew on her face in a pathetic act of sub-conscious flirtation {yeah right!}. When words no longer work because everyone has their line and job description, a pathetic attempt but all that he had, so desperate now. She laughed and did it back to him… she liked all this attention, and besides it wasn’t anything as far as she was concerned so why should it be to anyone else?

With sudden stumbling Desmond returned shouting about this and that and before he knew it, she was gone again out of his life.. taken away in the hand of the strange monkey gibbon that desired nothing true or profound.. not like him…

Dave wandered into some adjacent room where some unsavoury types were indulging in some low grade narcotics.. he drank and smoked until he passed out.

------------------

Dreams. Dreams in and around. Doubting emasculating dreams.. no genitals for you sonny!
There was a constant self abuse that was present these days.. a self dialogue that persisted in making quite sure that at no point would proper human contact occur, either by chance or design. Dave stumbled into the front living room once again.. now decided ‘I will tell her tonight.. now.. I need to tell her.. tell her anything just to make her believe.’

Belief.. belief is very important in these times.. for if there is belief that you are committing righteous acts of truth then the pain of rejection is somewhat subverted and spawned into something that can be moulded and used in some other endeavour. It’s very important to remember if you’re a sad loser who just can’t get laid.

Stephen’s special friend had arrived.. maybe she had been in the arms of another this night but who cared… now was good.. there was someone in his arms now.. love that had seemed to have gone forever was running now through the veins, self confidence had returned. It used to be days after seeing her that he would still be riding on a wave of euphoria and a seemingly endless artistic ability to get things done. Now it was almost immediate that the dark thoughts and depression returned. He was jaded and drawn. There were moments when he’d think that perhaps it would be better if he broke off all ties with this woman. This woman who had taken all his spirit and soul and made it into something trivial- she neither loved nor respected him… what was he doing?? Was this some way of working out his utter contempt for himself?

Dave bumbling through to see the two of them in one chair demanded information. “Where is she?? tell me now!” She was at the bus-stop he learned, with him.. fear now over took everything.. she was drunk.. she couldn’t protect herself.. she was walking back alone.. must run!
---

He made it to the bus stop just in time to see something that would be forever burned into his memory.. the soul crushing sight of the Man and the Young Woman embraced in a sickly sweet and all too wonderful moment of teenage ecstasy.
And even though every fibre of his being wanted to run into the pairing and somehow make it better for himself, he restrained himself, and waited. Merely Waited.

After a few minutes a bus came and they said their goodbyes.

Johanna, soused and wonderful as ever, walked back up in the direction of Dave, arms crossed and mind wandering. He had not been seen. Some story was ready in his mind should he need it.. but he knew he wouldn’t.. she was too drunk to care..
They met each other in false surprise and happy to have another to walk with, she crossed her arm with his, his eyes filling with water. After walking a few feet more, Johanna broke the link and veered off to the side of the road to vomit noisily in a bush.

Wanting to help but afraid to get close, he held back her hair as she continued to spew her youth through her glossy covered lips.

She was STILL BEAUTIFUL.

She stopped getting sick to wipe the yellow mush from the corner of her mouth, helping to support her weight, he leans towards her and smells her hair, still covered in vomit, despite the best of his efforts. He sighed and they continued to walk on.

-----

Stephen had been left in cold, bitter isolation, his special friend having abandoned him to some faceless cretin with more pull. Not that it surprised him in the least.. but still the pain was more than ever, as was the ever building rage. Rage at this horrid world.
When would anything explode from his chest with a need to communicate feeling and thought as this had done? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps never. The more he thought about her, the more she disgusted him. Slut. Stupid fucking whore. Nothing would be able to reach this soul now. This soul detached from every facet of existence. A dangerous lunatic in truth, often covered in sympathetic views thrown in compassion for his isolated position. There were indeed disturbing hidden beliefs, veiled by ambiguous stupidity or plain boredom. A stewing force of hatred for every living being.
-----

Dave had got her back and in the house, in a room a little off to the side.
Her friends were mostly indifferent to her position but there was always one in the group who maintained sense and rational who came to the rescue.. with water and a kind word.
After a while she was left to sleep it off.. and he once again found time to be alone with her.. she was asleep on a little pull out sofa and he just sat beside her, and listened to her breathe, smelling the alcohol off her breath, the smudged lipstick, the obscenely attractive nightwear. She was PERFECT. He then leaned closer as if to kiss her, when her phone rings.. it is a piercing ring, cutting through the last hopes and unreality of the situation.

A quick glance confirms the last lingering doubts.. her boyfriend…him.. a message from some higher power.. this was not going to work.. he let it ring for a moment, desperately wanting to let it stop, but he couldn’t shut it off- he didn’t have the stomach for such action, nor did he ever want to cause her pain.. so he nudged her and handed her the phone.
As she talked to her future he left the room.. quietly and unnoticed.
------

The Young Man walks back up the same street. He is now joined by the school boy militia. Bags affixed and egos flaring. Lunch time.

Outside the local chip shop, plans are discussed for the next weekend. Last night was a success they say.. only next time there will be serious drink..

The Mid-Teen sits on a wall and looks over at the Young Woman sitting with the Man.

They were happy.

Maybe one day they won’t be…

The Young Man sits down beside The Mid-Teen

The Mid-Teen opened the conversation.

“So how’s herself?”
“We broke up.”
“Shit one.
------

Welcome Alec Baldwin

2007-07-24T16:52:00.001+01:00

Hello children,
just to let you know the great Alec Baldwin has re-surfaced and is now posting on my blog. Head on over to http://loveisinblum.blogspot.com/2007/07/it-is-official.html to get the skinny.

My Current 100 Favourite Albums

2007-07-21T07:50:00.001+01:00

Made this up for something else, might as well put it up here as well.

---

Bridge Over Troubled Water-Simon and Garfunkel
Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)-The Wu Tang Clan
Buffalo Springfield-Buffalo Springfield
Cooleyhighharmony-Boyz-2-Men
Confield-Autechre
Music For Airports-Brian Eno
Black Sunday-Cypress Hill
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill-Lauryn Hill
The Teaches of Peaches-Peaches
Ill Communication-The Beastie Boys
Hunky Dory-David Bowie
Sweet Baby James-James Taylor
Come To Daddy-Aphex Twin
Drukqs-Aphex Twin
Feed Me Weird Things-Squarepusher
Raw Power-Iggy and The Stooges
Brian Wilson {1988}-Brian Wilson
The Marble Index-Nico
Surf's Up-The Beach Boys
By the Way-Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Without You I'm Nothing-Placebo
Document-R.E.M.
Astral Weeks-Van Morrison
Elephant-The White Stripes
Bad-Michael Jackson
The Score-The Fugees
Abbey Road-The Beatles
Transformer-Lou Reed
Berlin-Lou Reed
Orange Crate Art-Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks
Twin Peaks Original Soundtrack-Angelo Badalamenti
Mingus Ah Um-Charles Mingus
Ice Cream Castle-The Time
Dangerous-Michael Jackson
Before the Flood-Bob Dylan and the Band
Song Cycle-Van Dyke Parks
Ultravisitor-Squarepusher
Peace in the Valley-Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers
One Nation Under a Groove-Funkadelic
Love & Theft-Bob Dylan
Come Get It!-Rick James
Sail Away-Randy Newman
The Queen Is Dead-The Smiths
The Black Album-Prince
Transmissions From the Satellite Heart-The Flaming Lips
Monster-R.E.M
All Is Dream-Mercury Rev
Friends-The Beach Boys
Tea For the Tillerman-Cat Stevens
Kind Of Blue-Miles Davis
Thriller-Michael Jackson
Neil Young Unplugged-Neil Young
The Milk Eyed Mender-Joanna Newsom
Homogenic-Bjork
The Man Machine-Kraftwerk
Everybody Knows This is Nowhere-Neil Young and Crazy Horse
Songs Of Love and Hate-Leonard Cohen
Five Leaves Left-Nick Drake
Wild Honey-The Beach Boys
Decade-Neil Young
Chelsea Girl-Nico
Amnesiac-Radiohead
Vespertine-Bjork
Grinning Cat-susumu yokota
Sunflower-The Beach Boys
In Dreams-Roy Orbison
Camille
The Songs of Chet Baker-Chet Baker
Lovesexy-Prince
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots-The Flaming Lips
Here's Little Richard-Little Richard
What's Going On?-Marvin Gaye
The Rolling Thunder Revue-Bob Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Revue
The Songs of Leonard Cohen-Leonard Cohen
Speakerboxxx/The Love Below-Outkast
Innervisions-Stevie Wonder
Dirty Mind-Prince
The Complete Basement Tapes-The Band and Bob Dylan
After the Gold Rush-Neil Young
The Blue Mask-Lou Reed
The Velvet Underground and Nico
Dream Factory-Prince
Sign 'O' The Times-Prince
Infidels-Bob Dylan
Blonde on Blonde- Bob Dylan
Tonight's the Night-Neil Young and Crazy Horse
Street Hassle-Lou Reed
Kid A-Radiohead
White Light/White Heat-The Velvet Underground
Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE-Brian Wilson
Up -R.E.M.
Pink Moon-Nick Drake
Music From Big Pink-The Band
Smile Sessions-The Beach Boys
The Soft Bulletin-The Flaming Lips
Pet Sounds-The Beach Boys
Ambient Works. Vol. 2-Aphex Twin
Deserters' Songs-Mercury Rev
Smiley Smile-The Beach Boys
Blood on the Tracks/New York/Minneapolis Version- Bob Dylan

Why You Should Love Professional Wrestling: Part 1

2007-07-17T05:23:00.000+01:00

With the recent Chris Benoit double-murder-suicide giving wrestling more mainstream exposure than it is usually accustomed to, I thought it would be an appropriate time to lay one of the seemingly contradictory elements of my personality on you all. Wrestling, in all of its varied forms, is for my money one of the single most misunderstood and under appreciated art forms in existence, especially outside of America. I have watched wrestling for about 17 years and have always found it an intriguing, highly entertaining and often beautiful mixtures of circus performance, soap opera story lines and some of the most physically demanding "theatrics" that almost immediately had me questioning the offhand rejection of hipper fellows, more in the know than I. There are so many parts to how wrestling functions as a sport/entertainment performance that it is going to be difficult to explain them to all of you, for a couple of reasons.
The first being my fairly limited knowledge and secondly the fact that to understand why these foundations of the form are so important and impressive, you must first develop a passion for watching wrestling and appreciating it on its basest level.
The boundary at which most people never get past {or bother trying} is wrestling's peculiar middle-ground between reality and fiction, sport and theatrics etc. The word "fake" is carelessly thrown around, highlighting exactly the ignorance of the majority of professional wrestling's critics. It's not as simple as fake or not fake. The first, simplest thing to get out of the way is the notion that wrestlers are not real athletes because the matches are pre-determined and certain elements of matches are set up prior to the performance. This is simply not the case.
Wrestling is a constantly, physically demanding sport in which there is vicious competition, just not in the way that most think of it.

Mick Foley is a perfect case in point for dispelling most of the pre-conceptions surrounding wrestling. Everybody who is actually interested in knowing how wrestling works and why its a wonderful thing should purchase his fantastic autobiography {written by Foley himself with no ghost writer,} Have a Nice Day-

http://www.amazon.com/Have-Nice-Day-Blood-Sweatsocks/dp/0061031011/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/104-0177171-7193555?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1184645557&sr=8-2

Watching a Mick Foley match is a point where people get past a whole lot of their hang-ups about wrestling and for seeing it how it actually is. In this seminal moment in Foley's career, the WWF and the entire wrestling industry, Mick Foley endures more injuries, pain and suffering than most "real" athletes would in their entire career AND Foley knew he was losing the match before he ever got in the ring. He put himself through it simply out of the love and passion that he had for his craft and the hope that the people who could get past the pre-conceptions and the lazy tags would see what an incredible force he was.

I can add up the list of injuries that Foley suffered from doing this after words if ya think he somehow miraculously faked his tongue going through his bottom lip and his teeth being knocked up through his nose....

Hell in a Cell
Mick Foley {as Mankind} vs The Undertaker
King of the Ring 1998

http://youtube.com/watch?v=h5HIE3EJ75I
Part One

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0w5V8K_EDo8&mode=related&search=
Part Two

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PvgP9f4Nh2A&mode=related&search=
Part Three

1999

2007-07-16T18:40:00.000+01:00

telephone the weekend mama…
1999

Come on over and lay down in the purple. Does it compute?
Welcome to the apocalypse. The synth strangles around your neck like some oily serpent, cutting off your breath while Prince walks over drops his trousers and insists on a severe inspection of his member… This is the breakthrough Prince.
1999 is a double album with some of Prince’s greatest pop classics, some intensely brilliant synth work and some of the sexiest voices ever transported through the speaker system down at the pool house… all housed in what appears to be some over sized condom wrapper.

We have discussed the way that the early albums are in essence one FUNK straight to the brain space. How these albums perfected that very special brand of early 80’s pop/rock/funkU and how only after three albums Prince veered in quite a diagonal way towards some underestimated and appreciated artistic directions.
Controversy was Prince’s first block in the new direction that he was taking his music.
It was the birth of the Purple Philosophiser. It was as Prince was before it however, it was raw in its intentions and perhaps somewhat slight in its delivery. The intention of the album and the basic goodness within was something far unlike that of Dirty Mind, definitely not as instantly likable in any respect. It was definitely interesting though and as the album spun, the layers became more apparent, the haunting introduction to Annie Christian, the perfect Prince hyper ballad, Do Me Baby and the thoughts would-a-wander. Imagine an album that was as ambitious as this but as instantly appealing and hip driven as that Dirty Mind… This is that album.
On the 27th of October, 1982, Prince delivered his first top ten album to stores.
It was also his first double album. A very hefty 70 minute long, four sided affair that is just wet with hits and brilliant genre spanning guitar entrancement.

On 1999 Prince would be working with his friends in new and interesting ways, the female voice for the first real and consistent way used in the amazing layered backing vocals. The female backing (or lead) vocals on Prince songs are something that I would consider to be one of the trademarks of Prince’s best 80’s work. It is that particular strange atmosphere that he creates with the many various voices and flavours. It is a very important signpost I feel on the road that Prince could never ever turn back from.

The album was apparently almost exclusively written around the synthesizer, and that feeling most certainly comes across as it gives 1999 a unique feeling especially to what came before it, but even to anything after. Strange monster voice creatures, sadomasochists, anal critics and some sexy people on the cusp of the New Computer Age. 1999 is a fucking given, ok? You all KNOW how great that song is.
Prince was thinking on his strange brand of purple politics and came up with this back to wall, happy but dying message from the crypt. Many times Prince has explained that the secret to the song was when he ended up trading off the lines one at a time. Jill Jones’ opening line has to be one of the most iconic in modern music for immediately creating a electric glances and a mood that will stick firmly to the headboard. Look, what can I say about it? It’s still an incredible song, the synth has to be up there for best use of a synth ever. It is catchy as hell and it was part of Prince’s breakthrough into the mainstream MTV loving audience. The lyrics are that mix of love and life that refuse to dwell on the negative but just have it being an impetus to get better satisfaction out of the time that we do have etc. etc. One of the highlights of 1999 for me is the overabundance of the amazing, pictorial lines that splash in and out through the album,

“ Lemme tell ya somethin'
If U didn't come 2 party,
don't bother knockin' on my door
I got a lion in my pocket,
and baby he's ready 2 roar
Yeah, everybody's got a bomb,
we could all die any day
But before I'll let that happen,
I'll dance my life away.”

Prince here, in my opinion, showcases for the first time that style of simple, direct lyrical style but which is also coated in incredibly visceral and emotive sentiments that most lyricists would be jealous of. As I said in my Dirty Mind review, I think the real genius of Prince is his ability to translate complex feeling and ideas through a relatively simple medium. His style of words are not always this way of course, but generally as a rule are not complex or even very accomplished on of themselves but when taken as a coupling with the amazing performances that he and the Revolution give these words and meanings they accelerate quickly upwards to a place that cannot be reached by the majority of artists attempting to walk the fine line of faux poetic complex, words speaking from the heart of a generation bullshit that typifies so much of today’s James Blunt ridden world. What Prince accomplishes on this album which had previously eluded him, either by design of simplicity in Dirty Mind or through the shear design that was felt necessary in Controversy, is the weighty epic feeling and most importantly longevity without filler. 1999 is 70 minutes long but never collapses under its own weight. It is no foolish thing to proclaim 1999 as one groovy hit after another. The album has a progression that was one of things lacking from Controversy confused structure, but that is obviously built because of the foundations that were laid in that album. Little Red Corvette is a very early sign to the listener that the album intends to be filled to the brim with career defining moments, the production is again the very height of 80’s perfection, this was the song apparently that sky rocketed Prince to world wide recognition and it’s no coincidence. The lead vocal is one of his finest moments, when it slows down….”Girl you’ve got an ass like I’ve never seeeeeeeeen… and the ride… I say the ride is so smooth… you must be a limousine!” That is one of the very golden moments right there. Again the way the backing vocals are utilised is so important. Dez and Jill being so masterfully placed in the song. This is the album where Prince really was allowed the instruments that he had been largely without before, what he saw in Controversy finally allowed to come to fruition.

Delirious is a bouncy song that calls back a lot to Controversy’s Private Joy, Prince was above all having fun on this album, or at least that is the way it comes across.
No doubt there was a huge workload here, it was an ambitious album by any standards, even Prince’s own. I think 1999 is an album that hits a lot deeper than the work that came before, not to say that I necessarily prefer to my beloved Dirty Mind but I find myself hooked in a way that carries on throughout my working day, noticing things production wise especially that would not have been a concern on something like Dirty Mind. Prince’s ability to fuck with your mind is taken to new heights here, the little tricks and sound effects being in real prominent use, the obvious opening of the album being the ’Voice of Doom’ that we would see in many various tracks here and then and in similar thematic senses throughout his career. Also though look at some of the slighter effects that Prince employs, one that caught my attention is Automatic for being ripe with various tricks and nuances. The delicate blend of the wavy voiced Prince popping in and out, the really ominous and dark synth, the computer tinted female vocals. At almost 10 minutes long Prince was stretching his oil scented wings in new and exciting directions, that knowing smirk racked with sexual perversion no longer something that could be contained within it’s prison, now free to roam into your ears and through your body. This is the really neon strange that is why Darline Nikki came to be. He had translated exactly why his early albums had succeeded into a much larger landscape and had forcibly ran with it. At no point in the album do you feel tired, it plays along with great speed and certainty just as Dirty Mind or Prince did before it. The whole last two minutes are hypnotic and disturbing.
Surrounded by the wailing and crying of Prince’s female companions we are then led into a glowing dark synth which brings us further and further down the tunnel of a growing sexual depression. This section may be my favourite on the album.

“(I remember how U kissed me)
(Not with your lips but with your soul)
(With U I'm never bored, talk 2 me some more)
(I can hear U, I'm going 2 have 2 torture U now)”

As much as 1999’s second half is dark, the first is just as gloriously bouncy and happy, the first two tracks we’ve looked at, but my favourite on the first half is D.M.S.R (Dance Music Sex Romance). From the first synth bubble I’m hooked.
Quintessential Prince sing-a-long. As Nick mentioned previously Prince was also doing work with the Time around this stage, producing their album under the name Jamie Starr, he was also working with Vanity 6, and thus the line

“Jamie Starr's a thief
It's time 2 fix your clock
Vanity 6 is so sweet
No U can all take a bite of my purple rock, can we stop?”

The mythology of the Purple One was growing into something quite large. Soon we would have no end of alter egos and denials from Mr. Nelson as to his involvement in any number of projects.

There are two full out ballads on 1999, them being Free, a quasi-patriotic or perhaps sarcastic take on patriotism, it’s always hard to tell with Prince. The other being Do Me Baby part 2, the FUCK ME closer that is again as perfectly realised if not more so than its companion piece on the previous album. In International Lover Prince has been upgraded to an airplane as far as his loving abilities, this is also possibly how Prince literally saw himself,

“Good evening. This is your pilot Prince speaking.
U r flying aboard the Seduction 747
And this plane is fully equipped with anything your body desires.”

OK, we’ve gone so far we have to mention some of the real sickness that lies in 1999’s grooves. There are two places that always come to mind when I think of it.
The first should be fairly obvious to anyone who has heard the album, that being the song Let’s Pretend We’re Married, a really horny speedy number, begging us to get to the point. Despite being one of the great tracks on the album it also has the dubious distinction of containing one of Prince’s great dirty wishes,

“I wanna fuck U so bad it hurts, it hurts, it hurts
I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna fuck U
Yeah, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna wanna, I wanna fuck U
Look here Marsha, I'm not sayin' this just 2 be nasty
I sincerely wanna fuck the taste out of your mouth
Can U relate?”

The other being the Lady Cab Driver, at first you think this is a just a laid back funk with a great bass line but then….well…

“ This is 4 the cab U have 2 drive 4 no money at all
This is 4 why I wasn't born like my brother, handsome and tall
This is 4 politicians who r bored and believe in war
This -- Yeah, that's 4 me, that's who that 1's 4
This is 4 discrimination and egotists who think supreme
And this is 4 whoever taught U how 2 kiss in designer jeans
That 1's 4-- That 1's 4-- 4 U have 2 live
This 1's 4 the rich, not all of 'em, just the greedy --
The ones that don't know how 2 give
This 1's 4 Yosemite Sam and the tourists at Disneyland
And this 1-- ooh! Yeah -- That's the 1.
That's 4-- that's 4 the-- the creator of man
This is 4 the sun, the moon, the stars, the tourists at Disneyland
This is 4 the ocean, the sea, the shore
This is 4-- and that's 4 U, and that's who that 1's 4
This is 4 the women, so beautifully complex
This 1's 4 love without sex
This is 4 the wind that blows no matter how fast or slow
Not knowing where I'm going
This galaxy's better than not having a place 2 go
And now I know (I know)”

In a fit of back seat humping, Prince details everything that he is funking 4, with ‘sound effects’ provided by Jill Jones. It is oddly disturbing mainly because of the anger and strange reasons that Prince provides, it doesn’t really come across as funny but as disturbing in the same way that Sister was. The end of it at about 6:20 is rather strange as Prince (or someone else…) appears to be spitting or swallowing… .STRANGE STUFF.

1999 is a fabulous album that was to lead on to HUGE success with Purple Rain being the next project that Prince began work on. It was the beginning of run that would include such work as When Doves Cry, Purple Rain, Raspberry Beret, The Beautiful Ones, Let’s Go Crazy, Kiss, Sometimes It Snows In April, Pop Life among others.

Prince

2007-07-16T18:34:00.000+01:00

On nearly every album that Prince has made since the start of his career, he has placed an enormous amount of attention to the opening track. You can rattle off any number of his albums and you are met, nearly always by a song that is structured around building the atmosphere of the album instantly and delivering the funk to the chest. Let’s Go Crazy, 1999, Sign ’O’ The Times… Early Prince is based around this technique in many ways. Instant gratification is a good to put it. By 1979, Prince had already released his first album, For You; it had not exploded Prince’s potential, neither had it overly sold him to his financial backers. It was not instant gratification. Or perhaps it was for Prince… One big premature ejaculation of grooves and hooks, the obvious possibilities of the material sprayed against the grotty toilet wall with semi-erect execution. What can you say? The man was young and eager.
It would be something that he would remember for a long time and he never forget to always let the audience come first. Ironically in years to come Prince would forget this fact again, but in the reverse of the situation, Prince would spend too long pleasuring and forget to get to the point. What is the point? THE FUNK.
For You was indirect and clumsy molestation. You could tell from the way it started off, winding pointless introductions, irrelevant detours, nobody really knew what the hell was going on. Prince is different.

From the off we know that we are in safe hands. It is the confidence that shines through from the very start of the album. Prince is no longer concerned with talking about things that are arriving from his soul, he’s all about the goddamn satisfaction.
I Wanna Be Your Lover is the standard by which every single opener is judged in Prince standards with me. It is so instantly likable that you are sold on the album almost immediately. There is no fucking around. We don’t have to claw through the depths of mucky mediocrity to spy a classic, we are shown it upon arrival. This is when Prince was really starting to grasp the idea of quality control. The selection process obviously has been built more around the goal of creating hit records than being able to stretch his creative wings. This is one of the major contradictions of Prince, the fact that by aiming to make commercially edible music he often reaches new heights in his creative success. Sequencing is another thing that allows Prince to rise above its predecessor. The rises and falls of the album feel far more natural and less crow bared in than before. The lyrics on I Wanna Be Your Lover are a simple affair but I think are a good comparison for what Prince was hoping to accomplish with this work and more importantly the message he wanted to send to his audience that may have been disappointed in his previous effort.

“I wanna be your brother
I wanna be your mother and your sister, 2
There ain't no other
That can do the things that I'll do 2 U
And I get discouraged
Cuz U treat me just like a child
And they say I'm so shy, yeah
But with U, I'll just go wild, ooh
I didn't wanna pressure U, baby ... no
But all I ever wanted 2 do...
I wanna be your lover
I wanna be the only one that makes U come... runnin'!
I wanna be your lover
I wanna turn U on, turn U out
All night long, make U shout "Oh lover, yeah!"
I wanna be the only one U come 4, yeah.”

The tone of the song, being under appreciated and underestimated (this more than anything) is obvious in the song. Prince wants to make love to his audience. He is approaching them now with full force and funky attitude, his confidence beats through the whole song and lends it a real “I don’t give a fuck” kind of vibe. He just wants a chance to prove how much better he is than the competition around him,

“There ain't no other
That can do the things that I'll do 2 U
And I get discouraged
Cuz U treat me just like a child”

Whether in love or in his career Prince did not wish to be treated like a child, he always knew where he wanted to go. Belief from his audience, any audience seems to be a vital ingredient in anything that the man undertakes.
I Wanna Be Your Lover was a big hit, reaching No. 1 on the R&B charts and No. 11 on the US charts.
Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad? is such a fucking hot track, it builds on the momentum of the Lover and brings it to climax with a red hot guitar solo. The bridge on this song always blows me away, the constant build up of (sexual) tension and then the release at the chorus…………ooh sexy dancer, want your body, want your body…
Sexy Dancer is a bumpy grindy sex trip. Forever to play off of honest to goodness perverted desires and the true love that Prince always likes to explore, When We’re Dancing Close and Slow is next. Now at first it seems like this is plagued by the same problems as the ballads on For You, it seems terribly sappy and limp, but really it isn’t. It has some of the characteristics of those songs but at its heart is the core of what will come to make up all the truly stunning Prince ballads such as Condition of the Heart. It has some bite to it.

When we're kissing long and hard
I can almost taste the thoughts within your mind
Sex-related fantasy
Is all that my mind can see
Baby, that's honestly the way I feel

When we're dancing close and slow
I'm not afraid 2 let my feelings show
I want 2 come inside of U
I want 2 hold U when we're through
Can't U feel my love touching U?

I like the production on the track as well. The wavy synth and the backing vocals are really nice. The sequencing I think comes into play on this song. The speed and funky nature of the first few tracks makes the slow down acceptable and even heightens the slightly (!) sexual character of the lyrics.
With You is quite like the material on For You but the placement of Bambi right after saves it from over sentimentality. Bambi is the very definition of the Prince ego.
A really hard rocker centred around the tale of a lesbian that does not have any interest in Prince. This is of course hard for the man to accept and so he feels he must enlighten her to the ways of heterosexuality or more precisely sex with Prince.
It’s one of the highlights on the album, if only for the guitar work and the maniacal lead vocals aided in no small way by the absolutely disgusting words,

I knew from the start
That I loved U with all my heart
But U were untrue
U had another lover and she looked just like U

Bambi, can't U understand?
Bambi, it's better with a man

It's so hard 2 believe
Maybe it's because U're so young
Or maybe I'm just 2 naive
Who's 2 say, maybe U're really having fun

Bambi, can't U understand?
Bambi, it's better with a man ... ow!

All your lovers, they look just like U
But they can only do the things that U do
Come on baby and take me by the hand
I'm gonna show U what it's like 2 be loved by a man
Bambi, I know what U need
Bambi, maybe U need 2 bleed

Yeah!

Still Waiting is quite similar to Gotta Broken Heart Again off of 1980’s Dirty Mind, blues influenced and silky smooth. I think this song and When We’re Dancing.. really work on the album. Prince was very quickly gathering a lot of good material, and more importantly was beginning to really be able to make the most of the material at hand. The flow of Prince for the most part is one of the reasons to love it as a collection of songs. He had located nearly exactly what it was that was going to set him apart from his peers and he had successfully peeled away most of the unnecessary elements from his previous attempt. I Feel For You, is another great pop song, that would of course go on to some fame when covered by Chaka Kahn. Check the frenzied vocal.

It’s Gonna Be Lonely is the closer. Another ballad, but perfectly fitting for the end of the album and also a real surprising stand out in my opinion. The phrasing is top notch and the chorus is a classic sparkly Prince surprise production wise.
I think it is a really amazing shift from For You to this album. Prince would again strip away more layers before adding again with Controversy and ultimately with success in 1999. Prince is still a great piece of work in the catalogue (and it is immense) of Mr. Nelson and his various collaborators over the years. It is assured, inspired, amazingly performed but most of all dripping in complete and utter confidence. One false start ain’t too bad for a golden era that lasted more than ten years.

Peace and Fucking, Believe.

For You....

2007-07-16T18:29:00.000+01:00

Prince was a young boy once. He was a boy with an ever growing lust for musical satisfaction. Prince Nelson was about to spray his spare musical energy on the over eager face of the public, ready to take up the erotic trademark funky juice that would become the sign post of a successful Prince musical creation. Perhaps Prince was also over eager. With an artist as artistically and commercially successful as the Purple One, the attention directed towards his early material, especially his debut For You these days obviously far outweighs the perhaps overly critical eye that is thrust upon Prince’s first major recording effort. Prince was only 20 years old when For You was released and his young ambition is present on every part of the album. This does not mean that Prince’s first LP is anything approaching his best work or even his best early work (which often meet each other). It does however present a clear line of where Prince wanted his career to go and along with an interesting historical document there are some great grooves and funky trips.

The album opens with an a cappella introduction, titled For You. To me, this intro sums up everything that is lacking on the album. It seems to be an attempt to unify the songs on the album under some conceptual umbrella but all it does is makes it clear that the intentions of the album far outweigh the musical results. The intro is limp and most un Princely. It has none of the visceral balls that sum up Prince’s best gender ambiguous sex tales. Everything on the album for me, excluding Soft and Wet is much like this first track; pleasant but ultimately lacking in some magic formula kind of way. There is little that brings me to For You that would bring me to any of Prince’s other albums. It is interesting to note that this album is perhaps the first Prince album in more ways than one, that is that the artists ambition is weighing down the results that he is getting. This would of course become a common trend much later in his career. It seems the knowledge that this was his first effort to be properly noticed for his work affected his confidence to properly throw off pop classics.
Perhaps this is all unfair. A first effort is all Prince needed after all to perfect his style, so we should not be so ultra critical.

What plagued Prince’s first LP offering was not a lack of talent, or even a problem with quality, it was rather a problem with the kind of material that he was choosing, a large portion of sappy ballads take up For You, they’re very nice sappy ballads… it’s just that they don’t suit Prince. They have none of the immediacy and need for gratification and power and strength that typify such classics as The Beautiful Ones, Condition of the Heart or If I Was Your Girlfriend… they are distinctly un-Prince-y. In fact most of For You is un-Prince-y, sounding more like something that would be best suited for Michael Jackson to undertake. Once Prince came along however, the line had been crossed and the path was chosen, even though there is an element of that problem with identity, there is a real first sign of the genius of Prince Nelson.

If For You cannot claim to be the first sign of Prince’s incredible musical ability then it certainly can claim to be an accomplished Pop Funk Dance mash up. There is actually a lot to enjoy on For You. The first track proper, the bouncy In Love contains some classic Prince-isms, most notably the line,

“What more do I have to say?
I really wanna play in your river…”

Soft and Wet is a classic Prince track to be sure and would have gladly fit alongside anything on Prince. This album for me is but a prelude to what was to come later on. It feels like a taster, the title “For You…” perhaps foreshadowing that the album was something to be accepted as a gift and thus not dragged under the heavy light of aesthetic ear. Prince was not out to prove anything with this display of musical fruit and that accounts for me, the somewhat lifeless experience that permeates most of the LP. It just sounds so middle of the road and on most of the album you probably wouldn’t even recognise that it was a Prince album you were listening to unless someone took the time to point it out (or indeed put Soft and Wet into heavy rotation).
The last track on the album is also something to admire; the first sign of the heavy rock influence that would come to affect much of his great success in the mid 80’s.
The notable presence of the electric guitar that would go on to be a trademark in the best of Prince’s work is all over I’m Yours.

This is a starting point for Prince; there are a lot of things that he tried out here that would eventually mutate into styles of play that would bear almost no resemblance to the state in which these ideas find themselves on For You. The fact cannot be avoided though; this is Prince’s starting point and is therefore very important as an album, if only to see how much Prince Nelson developed both in the writing of his material and most crucially when talking about this album, the execution and delivery of this material. It’s also important to see that even from the beginning when very young, Prince demanded creative control. Prince is never one to look back and sigh at missed opportunities purely because of the fact that at that point in time he did his best with what he had.

Now In This Time Of Grief {I See You Better}

2007-07-14T03:33:00.000+01:00

Now in this time of grief, I see you better
I see you better, here now.
You give them games to play on while I watch your back.
Where'd you get those new jeans?
Your face has been changed by the heat but you're still yourself, I've missed you.
There are writers in amongst your lot {or so I'm told}
Paranoid delusion at a funeral!

I think they were talking on me!

As they carried him out there on their shoulders I remembered how far I've fallen.
As they left the church I looked across and made sure to see you.
I made sure to see that you were beautiful.

Before the Flood Pt. II

2007-07-14T02:24:00.000+01:00

-------

{I’ve been reading Enid Blyton books again.
{The Secret Island or something similar.
{My mind is depraved, you know.
{Between unblocking the black-heads on my shoulders and chest,
{I imagine Jack and Mike and Peggy and Nora having strange
{pre-pubescent sexual misunderstandings (or maybe more.)
{I couldn’t get past the first chapter with my mind free of filth.
{I doubt I ever will free it of its filth. It’s natural baby.

Joe dreamt every night the same dream, or more correctly,
the same “Series of Dreams.”
They all take place in the same world, in the same time; interchangeable, with no real boundaries.
Down by the harbour, he knew a girl who lived with this man.
They fell out with him.
He became obsessed with the girl. He had known both of them when they were all younger. The girl had married the man in years more recent.
She was special in a way or more, not sure. They had had a baby, these two.
So she lived there with him in this tiny apartment and he often thought on her.
His dream was never concluded in the same way. The setting may change but the goal was always the same: FIND HER.
It was not her obviously.
He would see her every 6+ months and he was smart enough to realise that she wasn’t... eh.. the right type?
Yet... something had stuck.
It was magical and dark

He was walking down the back streets, leading up to the BIG HOUSE on the corner, near SPAR. It is five O’ Clock in the dead of winter and no-one is on the streets.
He needs to reach that door and
[make them understand.]

Joe would often dream that he was awake with the phone in his hand dialling her number. Sometimes he actually did wake up with the phone in his hand.

Joe frequently saw an EVIL SPIRIT in the corner of his room between worlds.

The brain could do a lot of scary damage to a fragile mind.

After a particularly vivid and frightening dream, Joe woke up and staggered to the bathroom. He had to stop doing this, he thought.
“The doctor was right, I should just go on something for it.”

Following on from the debacle at Shane’s house, Danielle had decided to sleep on the sofa in the living room. Joe had forgotten about this, trying as he was to adequately place himself in space and time. Joe went into the kitchen and got a glass of tap water.
“Ugh,” Joe bitterly exclaimed. He wasn’t sure what the hell was wrong with the water but it tasted like metal. He had a powerful thirst and so completed the glass anyway.

He needed to sit down and apply dedicated thought to his current dream state.
Going into the front room, he did not feel the need to turn any of the lights on-
his eyes were too closed over with sleep.
Joe went to sit down and was given a sharp assault to his senses in return.
Danielle had woken, startled and unnerved.

“What the fuck...”
She sat up quickly and tried to get her bearings.
“What’s going on?” She said with sleep in her voice.

“I’m sorry, I forget you were in here.”

“Joe, what’s going on?”

“I sat on you by accident.”
Danielle leaned back, realising what had happened, her elbow propping up her head on the arm rest. She rubbed her eyes with her right hand and then looked at her watch.
5:35am. “Ah, Jesus!” She put her hands over her face. “I’ve got to get up now anyway.” Danielle threw back her covers and looked at the carpet for her trousers and general clothing. Joe was still standing there with his glass in his hand, not really knowing what to do.
Danielle now quickly dressed, walked into the kitchen, barefoot.
She turned the light on over the sink and got herself a pint glass of rather metallic water. Joe walked just to the edge of the carpeted living room.
“Why are you going out so early?”

“I’ve got to get a train out to my parents house.
They’re doing a big gathering thing for some stupid fucking reason.”
She said this while finishing her water quickly and putting it in the sink.

“When is your train?”

“A quarter to eight, but I have to take the bus and that takes fuck-ing ages.”
She cleaned out the glass and put it back in the cupboard above the sink.
She then started to do some of the remaining dishes in the basin.
She was immediately motivated to do *something.*

“If you want to wait about half and hour, I can give you a lift.”

“Were you planning on going out at this hour?”
She turned to Joe and grinned at him.
Joe walked back into the living room and sat down on the sofa.
“Well, I had hoped not to, but I’m awake now and there is no chance for any further sleeping. I’ve to go out and see my friend at half nine, so it’s fine.”

Danielle looked at him for a moment and then started talking again.
“Well, that would be great! Thanks! I’ll just go and get my things.”
She took off the washing-up gloves and threw them back in the sink.

Joe did not have anyone to meet and was currently in possession of the worst fucking headache of ALL TIME. He also had a severe case of the shakes and some bad breath.
Things were bad. He was in need of more sleep; 10+ hours. He was committed to it now, so he tried to delay the desire to go back to sleep for a few hours.
Then he could just drop down and die. How the fuck was she so awake, so quickly?
"Probably due to her sexual energy."

Danielle was fairly quick in gathering her things. Luckily she had thought ahead and had packed her bag several nights prior. She walked quietly across Dave’s room and retrieved her purse and various tablets and reading glasses from the bedside table. Dave was very unconscious. He reeked of high grade alcohol and cigar smoke.

Danielle opened the wardrobe and removed her backpack from it.,
It was not going to be a long trip.
Originally, Dave had been invited but last night’s display put a swift end to that-
if just for practical realities that there was no chance in hell that Dave would be able to wake up in time to catch the train. She had left a note in the event that he would wonder/remember/care where she had gotten to. She checked that her MP3 player was in her jacket pocket, picked up her bag and left the room, gently closing the door behind her.

Joe was just walking back to his room to apply pant logic, when he watched her come out of Dave’s room. She did not have a large bag. He was expecting suitcases and major time consuming three+ week style baggage but that was barely a weekend stay; bank holiday weekend at the most. The bag wasn’t even full as she comfortably placed the things that she had taken off of the night stand inside with room to spare.

Joe went in and got his first leg in his pants and nearly managed to get his second in before he had a stupid idea.
He tried to shrug it off while pulling on his sweatshirt, but it wouldn’t go.
Going back out to the hall, Danielle was re-arranging the items on the top of her bag.
"How long are you going for?"

Danielle looked up what she was doing, "Just today and tomorrow really. I might even come back tomorrow night. Ah there it is." She had located her phone in the bottom of her bag. "Right well do you want to go?"

"Ok." Joe got his keys from the table near the front door and then left with Danielle.

---------------

[You think you're funny but you're not.
[You're repetitive and annoying.
[This is fucking offensive.
[How do you live like this???
[People are like trying to actually, ya know, be creative here.
[I've got that Ed Wood out-take bootleg set to upload for ya brother!!!!

Danielle would be able to make her previous deadline. They were making good time.
They listened to THE BASEMENT TAPES in the car.

Crash On the Levee (Down in the Flood)

They pulled into the station at about 6:50am.

"Thanks so much for the lift Joe!" Danielle reached across and kissed him on the cheek.

"No problem. Have a good time! Do you have your tickets?"

"Not yet, I still have to buy them."

"Ah.. ok. Well I have to make a phone call, so I'll be here for the next few minutes if there's a rush on train journeys."

"Ok. Thanks Joe!" Danielle got her bag from the back seat and got out of the car. "Bye!"

"I'm so casually witty," thought Joe as he took out his phone.

Joe waved back to Danielle as she walked into the station.
He did actually have to make a phone call, that wasn't bullshit.
Joe had been trying to get in contact with his brother for some time now and last night he had left a message to ring him at 7 this morning.
Of course, Joe did not think that he would be awake now.

-------

Inside the station, people were gathered in a big group near the ticket booth, not in line but off to the side. "Probably working out money," Danielle thought.
There were not many people in line to buy tickets which was unusual.
After two people in front of her were finished, Danielle walked up the woman behind the screen.

"Hello, could I please have one 3-day return to ********?"
"Ok."

She started to print out the tickets.

"That will be ******, please."

"Ok."

Danielle had her purse in her hand. She opened the front compartment; her heart fell.
There was about *4 in change. She frantically looked in the other compartments but there was nothing but receipts for booze. How could this have happened?
Her mind first went to the thought that someone must have stolen from her.
She thought back to the night before and a horrible truth occurred to her.

------
THE PREVIOUS NIGHT

They were in the Blue Room, at the bar and the band were just wrapping up.
Joe had gone off to the toilets.
Dave turned to Danielle, "Could you lend me some money to get drink for later on tonight? We should bring enough for the whole night cause his house is out in the middle of nowhere and I don't want to have to take the car out drunk again."
Danielle was quite drunk at this stage, "Sure! Just make sure to get enough for me.
And don't forget to remind me to get more money out in the morning."
"Ok!"

-------

She put her hand to her head. "Shit."

"I'm sorry, look I just realised that I don't have enough money here. I left it in the car, can you hold on a minute please?"

"Sure."

"Thank you!"

The woman looked put out but was adequately professional about it.
Danielle picked up her bag and ran quickly out the front door, hoping that Joe had not already left.

-----------

As it turned out, Joe had not left.
He had managed to get through to his brother after many minutes of trying.
They were currently discussing plans to meet up over the weekend, as Danielle approached the car.

“So where do you want to go?”

“How about Goggin’s on *** St.?”

Joe knew the pub well, “Ok, how about 4 o’clock?
We can get something to eat there
Or whatever.”
“Sounds good,” his brother replied.
Danielle knocked on the window on the passenger side.
“George, can you hold on a minute, I’m going to have to ring you back.”
“Ok, talk to you later.”
“Bye.” Joe leaned across and opened the passenger side.

Danielle threw her bag on the floor and got in the car.

“I’m really sorry Joe, but I need to ask you a big favour.”
Joe leaned forward in his seat and took the keys out of the ignition.
“I don’t have enough money to buy the train ticket. Dave took money out of my purse last night and I only remembered now. I’d go to a bank machine but I don’t have time.
I need to make this train.”
“Danielle, I would gladly lend you some money but I really don‘t have any. I had to pay Dave‘s half of the rent last week and I spent the rest last night! Sorry.”

“Shit. Shit. Shit.”

Danielle covered her face.

“So this is important then?”

“Yes,” she replied, slowly and measured.
“What’s happening?”

“My sister has had a baby. She is coming back from Paris to stay at my parents house today before going off to see the father’s mother in hospital. She’s sick or something.
They can only stay today because it is crucial that they see his mother before they go back home. It is very important.”

There was a small silence in the car. Joe bit his lip and jingled the keys in his right hand.

“Well look, if it’s that important, why don’t we just drive out there?”

“I can’t ask you to do that.”

“How long does it take to get there?”

“About five hours.”

“Sure we can take it easy and stop for lunch and I can come back tonight. That’s fine.”

“…Well if you really don’t mind doing it. That would be great.”
Danielle looked at her watch, it was still quite early to ring on. The wouldn’t be up yet. “I’ll ring the house in a couple of hours and tell them we’re driving down instead.”

“Ok. You’ll have to direct me. I’m no good on directions.”

“We can stop at the petrol station and I’ll get some money out.”

------

They stopped at the ESSO station a few miles up the road.
Danielle got money out and then joined Joe inside the shop to pay for the required petrol. All of these new shops had alcohol in them. It didn’t seem to make sense to increase the amount of alcohol available to motorists on motorways, quite far from any houses. Danielle used this opportunity to purchase two twelve packs of strong cider. She then bought three packs of twenty cigarettes and a small bar of chocolate.
Mmm.. precious chocolate will make everything right.

Joe enjoyed long car journeys. It gave him a chance to subject people to every conceivable musical whim. Twenty compilations of varying success were lying ready in the glove box at all times. This was a strange occasion. "I should probably text Dave…" he thought as he unlocked the car. "Or I could wait until I get there. Yes, when I am warm and receiving many deserving sandwiches for my unprecedented chivalry, then I will be in a position of power. I could probably tell him to eat my shit and they would back me up."
Joe was not firm on why it was exactly that he was going to all this trouble to help Danielle, a woman who he really didn't know very well. Hopefully it would become clearer when they got on the road.

---

Lovingly Compiled Compilation #1
One of These Things First-Nick Drake
---
As they pulled out of the city, the clouds cleared on one side of the road and a shining light burst through the grouped trees and through Danielle's window. They were getting into the country side after about an hour. Things took a much more relaxed turn here and conversation started up, each with a real desire to learn something about the other to avoid the prospect of four more hours of side glances and sleep deprived confusion.

Danielle started.
"So how do you know Dave?"

"He was looking for an apartment and I was looking for a room mate. That's about it.
I don't know, about three years ago? Probably something like that."

"So you didn't meet him in college?"

"No, I didn't even go to college. He's finished up now but he always had a lot of his clubs and groups around the flat. I really don't know his friends very well."

"He was supposed to come with me today, but I just left him asleep.
I'm not in the mood to have to suffer him with my parents. I was extremely embarrassed last night. I didn't know he had that side to him."

"Luckily, I'm not around him that much, when he's like that. I was glad to leave anyway. I probably wouldn't have stopped drinking. Can you get me a Panadol from the glove compartment, please?"

Danielle opened the glove compartment and started rooting around in amongst CD cases and Man Sized Tissues. In the back she found a box of Panadol with a mostly used up sheet of tablets.

"How many do you want?"

"Just one, please."

She popped one of the tablets out and handed it to Joe.

"Thank you."

He took a bottle of water from the compartment at the gear stick, threw back the tablet and swallowed it.

"So tell me what we are going to today. What is your sister's name?"

"Marie. She and Derek live in Paris but they have recently had a baby and they want to show the baby to Derek's mother who lives in *****, so they have come over to visit her. On the way up to *****, they are stopping in to my parents so that they can show off the new family to their friends. I was not looking forward to it, but if I don't show up it would be worse."

*slight pause*
"Turn up the radio there."

Heavenly Arms- Lou Reed

---------

[We are the fucking story tellers.
[Welcome to exposition you fucking whores.
[Marie, Marie, Marie, you'll need to know that later.
[Welcome to strained dialogue and fucked up set-ups which enhance the protagonist's struggle… he's an underdog you see.
[This is because I am incapable of creating beauty.
[I do this because I am incapable of getting past myself.
[I am a bad writer and a bad person.
[We were sat there, you know but it was just bland and music filled.
[That's the real truth, right there.
[I manufactured meaning and this situation because I wanted to fuck her.
[She had a tight little asshole that I saw when she walked down the hall.
[A lovely pink little thing.
[I wanted her to sit on my face and jerk me off with the hand that wasn't stroking my face with vaginal juices.
[She had that real sensual name, ya know? I'm a hero who fights the battles.
[This is META-FICTION.

-----

GRINNING CAT- susumu yokota

2007-07-13T00:00:00.001+01:00

The city eh? A thousand cars movin' 'long. Those pianos that keep repeating over and over....different phrases punch through the disturbing clouded dream with bright neon lit magic.
Every time they come through it relieves the tension built up from the odd percussion and chanting. King Dragonfly/Water drops? A car horn beats out some peculiar hostility.
There is a lot that yokota seems able to construct here. Grinning Cat would just as easily be a sound scape for a particularly taxing motion picture as it is a masterclass in ambient music making. The depth of sound begs for a greater landscape than headphones/stereo based sound wattage. I'd love to hear this on 5.1 Surround Sound with a detached body; perhaps some day at the top of a large sky scraping building. Hypnotising; of course. What else though?
Put to anything, it works. The lines of piano repetition is seen as the conscious self trying to work through the mud of sleep and make some kind of practical sense of it. yokota wields it like a mind desperate in allusion and metaphor would in dreams of lost love and old school chums.

The music has a similar structure to a good/bad dream. It requires complete listening and yet is always going to be incomplete. Themes left alone, perhaps forever and others which repeat too many times for comfort. Although it brings comparisons in my mind with Ambient Works Vol.2 by Aphex Twin, it doesn't really strike the same chords for me, which is odd. Aphex also has an uncanny ability to directly translate the sensation and experience of dream logic into a physical/aural reality, he uses far different tools to susumu yokota. Vol. 2 is a case study in the potential of minimalism in music and how strong intent and mood can influence the listener.
susumu yokota seems to be more concerned with creating layers of sound.
There are beats on some of the tracks {though not many} but percussion plays a heavy part, in contrast to Vol. 2 which is *almost* completely absent of any kinds of beats.
The loops that appear on Grinning Cat are amazingly resilient and shift in shape.
Contextual listening determines much of the impact of this album.
Different states of consciousness result in different states of listening.
The dream and the unconscious world is perhaps the only door way through which unreality/afterlife/fate and divinity are a definite reality. The mind determines exactly what it is subjected to; the will in conquering yourself is the only toil you must face.
This is perhaps why Ambient music and this album in particular, force me to realise the importance in experiencing this music.

The purity of Grinning Cat is remarkable. Cherry Blossom could be pointed to as the most exquisite point on the album, but that would be losing the guiding/winding coil effect that most quietly elucidates the joys of susumu yokota's music.
The quiet/screaming and timed minutes here remind me of my own journeys IN DREAMS.
A useful and intriguing habit that I have acquired in the last 20 months or so might be of some interest to those of you interested in cracking open the gooey melting pot of the subconscious.

Here is a very useful and interesting site- http://www.dreamviews.com/index.php

I have taken to accounting for my dreams, writing them down in their fullest etc.
I have found that listening to music such as this on a certain volume allows me to sleep quicker and easier {Insomniac} while also escalating and enhancing my perception of my own state of sleeping. I frequently lucid dream and am nearly always aware of my own state.
You can actually hear the music through the dream. This seems to be the ideal arena for Grinning Cat and a whole new level of dissection can begin on a visceral/emotive level, avoiding all kinds of critical dissection by fully experiencing the music in the place it was created.
Your mind seems to be made to move in similar emotional patterns to those present on this album and much like Vol. 2 can do, this heightens the reality of these moods or themes while unconscious. It is a beautiful and occasionally unsettling encounter.

---

Chicago Greatest Hits

2007-07-12T23:12:00.001+01:00

I LOVE CHICAGO, MAN THIS STUFF ROCKS AND ROLLS INTO NEXT WEEK...ITS MASCULINE YOU CAN FEEL THE PULSATING VIBES FROM THE SILVER DISC, ITS SO GOOD WHEN HE SINGS THOSE HIGH PARTS..."if you leave me now<> OH BABY PLEASE DONT GO!" BEAUTIFUL CLASSIC BRILLIANCE, I LOVE IT. THIS COLLECTION IS A GREAT COLLECTION IT BRINGS TOGETHER THE VERY BEST OF THE TRAILBLAAZIN' GROUP, IF YOU LEAVE ME NOW, IF SHE WOULD HAVE BEEN FAITHFUL, YOU NAME IT..ITS ALL HERE.. AND AT SUCH A GREAT PRICE WHY ARGUE?? A LOT OF PRETENDERS OUT THERE CLAIM THAT ROCK IS ONLY GOOD IF YOUR LONG AND COMPLICATED AND OVERTLY ANGRY ALL THE TIME, WELL CHICAGO IS THE LOVE SIDE, THE SIDE OF LOVE THAT IS IN ROCK ITS ALL ABOUT THE WAY THAT HE SINGS TO HIS GIRL, YOU KNOW?? HES GENTLE AND DELICATE NOT ALWAYYS BANGING AND SHOUTNG AND THEN GET UP AND LEAVE..THIS GUYS A GENTLEMAN. IT ANNOYS ME WHEN I HEAR SOMETHING LIKE "OH HE KILLED HIMSELF BECAUSE HE WASNT A MASCULINE MAN" OR SOMETHING EQUALLY IDIOTIC, HE WAS PLAYING A GAME OF RUSSIAN ROULETTE AND HE ACCIDENTALYL GOT KILLED, BECAUSE THERE WAS A BULLET IN THE CHAMBER, THATS MASCULINE THASTS VERY MANLY TO RISK YOUR LIFE IN PURSUIT OF SOME GREAT TRUTH..

BUT LOOK ENOUGH OF THE 'DEEP' DISCUSSION, THIS ALBUM ROCKS AND ROLLS END OF STORY. PINK FLOYD WOULD HAVE KILLED TO HAVE EVER MADE ANYTHING HALF AS GOOD IN THEIR PATHETIC LITTLE CAREER, MONKEY? GIVE ME A BREAK...TIME? WHO HAS THE TIME TO LISTEN TO THEIR TRASH..NOT ME THATS FOR SURE! TWO DISCS, GREAT PRICE, GREAT TRACKS, GREAT LOVING MASCULINE FEELING, HE LOVES YOU, BUT NOT IN A DIRTY WAY WITH GREAT LOVE AND CARE THROUGH MUSIC.

THIS SLAYS ALL PRETENDERS......................

Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigalo

2007-07-12T23:02:00.000+01:00

To continue the archival release of the Batter Burger's reviews, here is one of my favourites.
We have tried to contact the Burger but the last anyone seems to have heard from him was his ill willed journey into festive belligerence at a ladies day porno show. Salut you mighty stallion.
---

FOR ALL THE PEOPLES WHO WANT TO MAKE A GOOD IMPRESSION FOR THOSE LADIES, PICK THIS UP, IT'S FUNNY, ITS SMART, ITS SASSY AND ITS SEXY. THERES SOMETHING FOR THE GUYS AND THERES SOMETHING FOR THE GIRLS, CONNECTION, YOU KNOW?? THERES A UNIVERSAL THEME IN THIS FILM, THAT IS ACCEPTANCE OF THOSE THAT ARE STRANGE AND UGLY AND THOSE THAT AREN'T THE 'NORM' DEUCE BIGALOW IS A HILLARIOUS PORTRAYAL OF A WORLD GONE MAD, WHERE MALE PROSTITUTES ARE NOT SLEEZY BUT FUNNY AND HONEST AND WANT TO MAKE TALK BEFORE LOVE. THE LEADS IN THE FILM ARE TOUCHING AND BEAUTIFUL. I GIVE THIS ONE FIVE STARS.

SERIOUSLY THOUGH ITS AGREAT FLICK AND SOMETHING TO MAYBE PLAY ON A FIRST DATE TO BREAK THE ICE.

CHILL/.

Julia

2007-07-12T18:52:00.000+01:00

Riccardo Chailly (born 1953), former Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, is captured rehearsing the Concertgebouw Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) called I Have Lost Touch With the World. With baton in hand, Chailly leads his orchestra through the difficult passages of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia julia gentle and clear to distinquish the tempo and Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia mental state reflects this clarity as well, as he seems to understand how the music should be structured. Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia with his whole body, waving his baton with wide sweeping arcs. When he uses these large movements, he has the Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia sings to the orchestra, fully engaged and present with everyone. His baton appears to be an extension Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia orchestra to see and follow.

Why Am I Afraid Of Cartoons?

2007-07-12T04:14:00.000+01:00