Is it too late to name my album of the year for 2007?

I recently filled in most of the holes I had in the Ghost Box catalog and today instead of downloading the whole world, I remembered that I had some new Ghost Box material to listen to. Anyway all i can say about the most recent Focus Group disc, "We Are All Pan's People" is WOW! Great Great Stuff!

. . . Huh, What War?

PEACE ATTACK

3 FEB O3 PEACE
PEACE ATTACK
EARLY BOOK WHISTLING
WHISTLING EARTH
WHISTLING EARTH DAY OFF
NATURE SEX
NATURE SEX YAWN WINKING
REMINDER

OF THE GREAT
OF THE GREAT ANTI-HATE
SPRINGTIME IS WARTIME
ALL EYES TO THE CRIMEBOSS
ELECTRIC GUITAR STRING
BELLY FLOWERS

Really what is there to say on this fifth anniversary? SO MUCH BULLSHIT!

I don't know. That Thurston Moore/Sonic Youth song always reminds of the beginning. I think, I read somewhere that Thurston was writing a poem a day for a month or something which is where this song comes from, explaining the "3 Feb. o3" line. And then the "Belly Flowers" line comes from a protest sign Allen Ginsberg made that Thurston has in his collection,I can't remember the rest of what was on the Ginsberg protest sign, though.

Posted too soon, I found the text of the 1964 Ginsberg protest sign:

Down with Death!
War is Black Magic!
Belly Flowers
To
North and South Vietnam

Those lines were originally from a much longer protest sign/poem from Ginsberg's first protest in October 28, 1963 demonstrating against Madame Nhu when she came to San Francisco. As far as I can tell the poem is uncollected? I found it along w/ the above information in a contemporary interview from the period, the complete poem is:

Man is naked without secrets armed men lack this joy
How many million persons without names?
What do we know of their suffering?
'Oh how wounded, how wounded! ' says the guru
Thine own heart says the swami
Within you says the Christ
Till his humanity awakes says Blake
I am here: saying seek mutual surrender tears
That there be no more hell in Vietnam
That I not be in hell here in the street

War is black magic
Belly flowers to North and South Vietnam
include everybody
End the human war
Name hypnosis and fear is the
Enemy—Satan go home!
I accept America and Red China
To the human race
Madame Nhu and Mao Tse-Tung
Are in the same boat of meat

Can I get a w00t w00t . . . (w00t?)

I noticed that it was that time of year again, the little blog turns three!!! So, I guess that means time for a few slices of détourned Birthday Cake!!!!!!11


Like I said, I noticed that it was birthday time, this Blog's birthday is the same day as Rosie O'donnell's wedding anniversary and seeing that was what reminded me. Anyway,seeing as I finally did a post just yesterday (when it rains it pours!?!).


I was just going to let the day pass w/o recognizing it but then I got the détourned Birthday Cake idea and it gave me a chuckle so I figured I'd do one and that would be it, Ha-Ha!



Well once I began I just couldn't help myself so that is the reason for the four cakes. Too much fun. It's funny the blog's birthday was just a day or so after it's 2000th page visit, which was of course someone (I believe from Greece) searching for the clock w/o hands image I have up.



Apparently people can not get enough of that image? Whatever, I guess in my own retarded little way I'm giving back to the internets!?! I doubt I'll be getting any hits for the above images but here's hoping. The next big milestone for the blog will be the 100th post, which at my posting speed probably won't be until sometime in late august of this year.

Fair Play To You . . . (or my favorite 2008 Academy Awards moment, which I actually missed!?!)

Anybody that knows me knows that the Academy Awards broadcast is a big deal to me.

I make a big vat half-assed cheese popcorn and some type of dessert, this year's was chocolate chip bar cookies w/ pine nuts (which next time I make that I have to remember to toast the pine nuts first b/c they kinda got lost taste-wise being raw) and I have my score card and I tally up all of the winners and I sit there making myself sick w/ too much popcorn and I watch the whole damn thing loving every minute of it. I haven't missed one since I started watching them regularly in 1991. I don't really care about any other awards show and really I usually don't even care too much about 75% of the hollywood movie up for the awards. I don't know, I love movies in general and I like the whole community of it and the history. I always really like all of the movie montages in the show and I love the acceptance speeches (especially for the lesser awards) and it's just a nice thing to look forward to in the winter time?


So, I found this year's show pretty enjoyable, it was nice that nothing really completely swept and all of the big pictures are ones that I'm actually looking forward to seeing. All of that said, I actually missed the best moment of the broadcast (I can't remember if it was b/c I was tinkling or that I had changed the channel for the commercial and didn't quite turn back in time?), it was when Jon Stewart brought back out the cute little czech girl, Markéta Irglová from the movie "Once" who had just won for the best original song but got cut off at the microphone just as she was about to speak. I remember noticing that and feeling badly for her. I was really happy for them winning although truth be told I was only lukewarm about their movie. I thought it looked nice and I liked the story but the two big ruiners for me were that I didn't like most of the songs in it (which is tough w/ a musical) and I found the main character a little too earnest for my liking. Which I think I could have looked past if I would've liked the songs? Anyway,here is some Youtube-age of what I'm babbling on about:


I had put the Youtube clip of the acceptance speeches here but my html skills are lacking to say the least and somehow everything got screwed up, I hate fooling w/ youtube. Anyway, the clip would probably have gotten taken down but while it lasts (and if you are interested you can find it here)



And here are the transcripts of both of their speeches, Glen Hansard's:

"Thanks! This is amazing. What are we doing here? This is mad. We made this film two years ago. We shot on two Handicams. It took us three weeks to make. We made it for a hundred grand. We never thought we would come into a room like this and be in front of you people. It's been an amazing thing. Thanks for taking this film seriously, all of you. It means a lot to us. Thanks to the Academy, thanks to all the people who've helped us, they know who they are, we don't need to say them. This is amazing. Make art. Make art. Thanks."

and Markéta's:


"Hi everyone. I just want to thank you so much. This is such a big deal, not only for us, but for all other independent musicians and artists that spend most of their time struggling, and this, the fact that we're standing here tonight, the fact that we're able to hold this, it's just to prove no matter how far out your dreams are, it's possible. And, you know, fair play to those who dare to dream and don't give up. And this song was written from a perspective of hope, and hope at the end of the day connects us all, no matter how different we are. And so thank you so much, who helped us along the way. Thank you."


Two really nice speeches and really a big part of why I enjoy the Oscars, moments like those. What I especially enjoyed about Markéta's speech though (and pretty much the whole reason I'm even posting this nonsense) is her use of the Irish-ism "fair play" (which translates(?) to kinda "way to go" in blah english english) I love that expression to no end. It always makes me think of the great Van Morrison song funnily enough titled "Fair Play" from his underrated classic 1974 album "Veedon Fleece".

FAIR PLAY

Fair play to you
Killarney's lake are so blue
And the architechure I'm taking in with my mind
Is so fine

Tell me of Poe
Oscar Wilde and Thoreau
Let your midnight and your daytime
Turn into love of life

It's a very fine line
But you've got the mind child
To carry it on when it's just about to be carried on

And there's only one meadows way to go
And you say Geronimo
And there's only one meadows way to go
And you say Geronimo

A paperback book as we walk down the street
Fill my mind with tales of mystery, mystery
And imagination
Forever fair
And I'm touching your hair
I wish we would be dreamers in this dream
Oh, oh let it be

And there's only one meadows way to go
And you say Geronimo
And there's only one meadows way to go
And you say Geronimo

Fair play to you
Killarney's lakes are so blue
Hi ho silver tit for tat
And I love you for that

Hi ho silver tit for tat
And I love you for that

. . . And to make this pointlessness even longer, I just recently saw the Mumblecore tiny masterpiece "Quiet City" and it was pretty much everything that I wanted "Once" to be but wasn't.

Pop Quiz! (No. 2)

Hands up, Who Loves Buttermilk?

Buttermilk?
	Love It
	LOOOOOOOOOVE IT!!!!!!!!11
Free polls from Pollhost.com

LOLPUGZ* (XMASS Edition)

I'm sorry but I do sort of love the aesthetics of the Lolcats meme and I couldn't help but subject our little dog to the indignities of LOL-ization . . . you know for the holidays!?!

* Inquoris would like it to be known that she finds
this image to be demeaning reactionary bullshit
and that if she would have known to what end her
image was to be used she would never have posed so
nicely for her picture to be taken. And especially that
if there were some fantasy universe where she could
actually speak, she would speak proper grammatical
English albeit w/ a cute Daffy Duck lisp.

That's Right Bitches* . . .

I just found Luboš Fišer's soundtrack for "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders"!




Now, granted this wonderful aural delight was something I didn't know that I was looking for less than an hour ago but that doesn't take away from the fact that I'm enjoying the hell out of it now.



I saw the classic Czech coming-of-age gothic surrealist creep-fest a few years ago and I'm sure I enjoyed the soundtrack being as it's so completely right up my alley musics-wise. As w/ most things (especially those that I enjoy) though, I completely forgot about it. Until a little while later Broadcast had a tribute song called "Valerie" (funnily enough?) on their great 2003 release "Ha Ha Sound".



Now Listening to the "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders" soundtrack I can hear the melody used in the Broadcast song was lifted from a motif Fišer uses throughout his soundtrack. The lyric of the Broadcast song is pretty much just a synopsis of the movie, which w/ the movie being so crazy actually makes for a great song.

. . . Now I have see if there's a soundtrack available for that other Czech new wave classic "Daisies",which I actually liked better than "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders" but I don't know about how the soundtrack will stack up?

* At this point do I really have to say NOT THAT ANYONE CARES!?!

MERRY XMAS III

IMAGINE PEACE

Auf Wiedersehen Karlheinz

I just found out a little while ago about Karlheinz Stockhausen's passing. I've never really ventured that far into his massive body of work but he'll always hold a special place in my personal music listening history.

When the internet was still a new thing for me and I started exploring music that wasn't familiar to me, he happened to be the first composer that I started reading about. I have a very distinct (hazy) memory of reading something about his early work w/ tape recorders when they started becoming available right after World War Two and it fascinated me. It was something about him taking a second or so of recorded material and stretching that to last an hour and how it would take him an incredibly long period of time to do that in those tape splicing analog golden days.



It must've been in that same article (or around that time), talking about his use of ring modulators or something else I was reading at the time? But I developed a pretty healthy obsession w/ ring modulation; what a ring modulator actually was, what they looked like, and more importantly what they sounded like. A little while after that mini-obsession began I chanced upon a used copy of Stockhausen's 1970 piece Mantra. I bought it I'm pretty sure just b/c it was by Stockhausen not knowing that it was utilizing ring modulators (and two pianos and various small percussion instruments). I've listened to that piece so much since I first bought it that I can hear it in my head now as I type this nonsense and I'm sure it's been at least two years or so since I actually listened to the disc. Finding that disc though is still one of greatest used disc finds among a handful or so that I still remember fondly but w/ some disbelief.



After Mantra though I never really pursued Stockhausen much further, I moved onto other things Messiaen and Minimalism and then I found Morton Feldman and that re-awakened an interest in John Cage. I think though that if more Stockhausen discs would have been available when he was still new to me I would have listened to him more.

After just having read an article in the New Yorker about the resurgence in classical music sales or something(?), that article though, had this great passage by a pianist talking about an ecstatic experience he had while playing Messiaen's "Quatuor pour la fin du temps" that was so beautiful, it got me thinking about how little modern classical, avant garde (whatever you call it) musics I listen to anymore. Maybe once I dig out my copy of Mantra and give it a few listens that will get me listening to that type of music more?

Karlheinz Stockhausen
August 22, 1928 – December 5, 2007

Ne Travaillez Jamais

"A Girl With A Leika" snapped by the Leica of Alexander Rodchenko

Some pictures and quotes, the products of a day and a half of television and internet drifting. Like any other day and a half just w/ a little something to show for it - of course for no particular reason.



"Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant to know how to realize his wishes. Now that he can realize them, he must either change them, or perish." - Bertrand Russell byway of William Carlos Williams



"Suicide carried off many. Drink and the devil took care of the rest." - Robert Louis Stevenson byway of Guy Debord byway of Richard Linklater from his film "Waking Life"




"A functioning police state needs no police." - William S. Burroughs





I keep thinking what did I do before obsessively looking at the same dozen or so blogs all day and night and of course before the gloriousness that is Wikipedia?

. . . Oh yeah, obsessively download music.

"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

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

. . . 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.

. . . Continuing w/ the cartoon-age

Michaelis is at his best articulating the appeal of "Peanuts" through the decades. In the 1950s it struck a chord with people feeling guilty over their vague discontent amid historic postwar prosperity (Linus watching a leaf fall: "Nobody's happy where they are"). In the 1960s it expressed the struggle of young people reaching for inchoate freedoms and pondering the meaning of existence (Snoopy, wondering why he was put on Earth: "I haven't got the slightest idea"). More than anything, "Peanuts" upended the belief that childhood is a time of innocence and happiness, for a child's pain is more acute than an adult's. "Charlie Brown reminded people … of what it was to be vulnerable, to be small and alone in the universe, to be human," writes Michaelis, "—both little and big at the same time."

-- From Sharon Begley's review of David Michaelis' "Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography,"

My favorite New Yorker cartoon

Mesostic III (Ulysses edition)

. . . But first, here are a couple of pictures of Ettore Schmitz (A.K.A. Italo Svevo) an Italian businessman/author and friend James Joyces' in Trieste, who he used somewhat as a model for his character Leopold Bloom. That's how I always picture Bloom to look.

. . . And here's a mesostic of the 4th episode (Calypso) of Ulysses w/ an index spine from a phrase in the 15th episode (Circe).

li	Ked
g	Iblet
stuffe	D
mutto	N
gav	E
faintl	Y
m	Oved
break	Fast
	But
gent	Le
m	Orning
c	Oals
	Mr
	Prr.
sc	Ratch
he	Ad.
curiousl	Y,
	Form.
t	O
he	R
b	Utton
fla	Shing
mil	K
sa	Id.--
un	Derstand
tha	N
w	E
mockingl	Y.
	Of
	Filled
warm	Bubbled
mi	Lk
	On
sl	Owly
ti	Mes
cli	P
afte	R.
l	Ap.
kidne	Y
	Fried
p	Ork
sauce	R
tong	Ues
	So
crea	Ky
sta	Ircase
pause	D
somethi	Ng
br	Ead
softl	Y
g	Oing
break	Fast? a
	Brass
jing	Led.
th	Ose
fr	Om
i'	M
	Proud
b	Rains
m	Ake
propert	Y
o	Ffice
sec	Ondhand
pictu	Res.
m	Utely:
pla	Sto's
quic	Kly
	Inside
hea	Dband.
safe.o	N
th	E
da	Y
cl	Othes
	Feel
	Black
ref	Lects
g	O
	Of
war	Mth.
	Prefers
yeste	Rday's
lo	Aves
	You
	Feel
y	Oung.
ea	Rly
s	Un,
	Steal
	Keep
	It
	Day
tech	Nically.
com	E
cit	Y
	Old
	Faces
	By.
cross	Legged
sm	Oking
c	Oiled
	Might
	Pillars:
sc	Roll
	A
sk	Y.
	From
d	Oorway.
he	R
lang	Uage.
	Strings
li	Ke
	It
rea	D:
i	N
th	E
larr	Y
	O'rourke's.
	Flabby
	Bar
m'au	Ley's
d	Own
p	Osition.
tra	Mline
u	P
ove	R
c	Anvassing
m	Y
o	Ff
t	O
sc	Rewed
	Up.
what'	S
o'rour	Ke?
russ	Ians,
they'	D
o	Nly
b	E
sa	Y
w	Ord:
	Funeral
a	Bout
fresh	Ly
thr	Ough
d	Oorway:--
	Mr
u	P
	Redheaded
	And
the	Y
	Findlaters
	Or
gene	Ral
p	Uzzle
cro	Ss
	Kelomen
	Inishboffin.
halte	D
stari	Ng
th	E
b	Y.
uns	Olved:
	Fade.
	Breathed
tranqui	Lly
	Of
c	Ooked
ite	Ms
sli	P
he	R
h	And?
denn	Y's
wi	Fe
	Oldish.
pai	R
sa	Usages
	Snipped
li	Ke
he	Ifer.he
mo	Del
ki	Nnereth
th	E
	Young
th	Ose
	Fall
	Breeders
	Litter,
	On
	One,
pri	Me
three	Pence
fo	R
c	Atch
slowl	Y,
	First
m	Orning.
hu	Rry
	Up,
	Shines.
wea	K
w	Ithin
	Duty
i	N
	Eccles
la	Y,
int	O
	Fire
	Better
wa	Lked
d	Orset
c	Ompany.
i	Mmense
	Pay
ma	Rks
	And
the	Y
o	F
y	Ou
cheape	R:
yo	U
	Sending

. . . And all of this Ulyssesmeshness is in celebration of my having just read it again completely (not an hour ago).