Thursday, November 29, 2007

"Um Yeah, That's What I'm Talking About!"

Two Marble Giants (+ Synth) in their Salad Days


Salad Days

Think of salad days
they were folly and fun
They were good, they were young

- Alison Statton, Young Marble Giants



Thursday, November 22, 2007

It's brown, lives in the ground, it's myopic... [Canned laughter], or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Matching Mole



I've been planning to do a long post (à la my long Shirley Collins "Folk Roots New Routes" breakdown) about my new found obsession w/ Robert Wyatt's second Matching Mole album "Little Red Record" but every time I start I get bogged down in research(HA!); looking at pictures of him, or reading (or listening to or watching) interviews w/ him, or reading about his mother and future father in Robert Graves' diaries that are online, or (and I'm not particularly proud of this) Google Earthing the street that he lives on in Louth, Lincolnshire, or reading about the synthesizer (i.e. the much lusted after by me EMS VCS 3) that Brian Eno plays on "Gloria Gloom", and of course all the while listening to over and over again "Little Red Record".

Maybe looking at these pictures and scribblings will get my ass into gear but I highly doubt it?



Robert looking like a Bolshevik in a wondeful recent picture


Saturday, November 10, 2007

. . . It's not quite that time yet - but



Hoarfrost


I put my feet deep in the tracks that you made
Walked behind you off into the wood
"We'll know where when we get there" you said
And we both knew we would

High above like a spider
The colors turning brown
Freeways passing by us
I took your hand and we knelt down

Wheels paddle, wheels paddle
Movement as we go
Trees passing, trees passing
Signs along the road
A view thru the trees to a couple in the snow
A view thru the trees
To a couple standing in the snow

Suddenly the trees were flashing by us
Clouds reflecting fast across your eye
We turned into a frozen meadow
The wind the only sound
"We'll know where when we get there" you said
"We'll know where when we get there" you said




"Hoarfrost", a Sonic Youth song sung by Lee Ranaldo from their great 1998 album Mille-feuille "A Thousand Leaves". Perhaps my favorite Sonic Youth song from perhaps my favorite of their records. I just picked up a used copy of that album recently and have been reliving hazy memories of painting to it years ago. My joke about "Hoarfrost" is that it's the best Michael Stipe song that he never did.