Robert Wyatt & Bertrand Bergalat - This Summer Night

Why couldn't this wonderful track have been on the last Wyatt album (or for that matter the last Stereolab album?)

. . . Oh, That's Rich!

Screencap Maddness Pt. 2: The Many Faces of Special Patrol Group**

"Amazulu!" . . . 'Am a Glaswegian?

My little ode to Special Patrol Group*, the glorious anarchic Glaswegian bête noire rouge(?) of the "Young Ones" in all of his many incarnations (and ultimate demise).

*Maybe my favorite piece of détournement ever
let loose on the mainstream?

** Plus a few flash frames à la Series 2
thrown in for good measure!

Ozu Screencap Madness!!!1*

This is a little project that I found myself making very late last night (this morning) for almost no reason when I really (REALLY) should have been sleeping.

I've been working my way through the Eclipse Late Ozu boxset and these images, mainly of Chishu Ryu, (Ozu's filmic doppelgänger?) are from the master's 1957 movie "Tokyo Twilight". It's kind of funny b/c this movie is actually the first Ozu movie that I've seen that I'm not completely crazy about, I found it a little bit more melodramatic than his movies usually are. That said it's still a Yasujirō Ozu movie, so it's memsmerizingly beautiful at least to me. Since I've been on my Ozu kick I've been meaning do a post about him and/or his movies, in fact the other day (week?) I was going thru the archives and I found not one but two files started for an Ozu post. maybe I'll wait for his birth/deathday?

Yasujirō Ozu self-portrait

*Somehow, all the nonsense of this post
has to do w/ my daydreaming that somebody,
(Eugene!) would get off their ass and start up
American Cinéaste already!

While We're at it Two More Early Clips of Our Bob . . .

These two clips are from French TV in 1975, I'd love to know more about them, what the show was they were on? The two songs, "Sea Song" and "Alfib" are from Robert's seminal 1974 album "Rock Bottom", his (second) first solo album. I go back and forth w/ his first two albums, "Rock Bottom" and "Ruth is Stranger Than Richard", as to which one is my favorite. It usually just come down to the last of the two I listened to is my favorite. I believe that it's going on ten years that I've been loving Robert's work and I still haven't gotten sick of his first two albums. I remember they took me almost a year to get into but once I did, that's all she wrote.

I guess I've been Wyatting the last two days b/c of the announcement that all of his solo albums are being rereleased. I'm not so interested in that so much b/c I already have everything and then some, the two bits of Wyatt news that I'm intrigued by are rumors of a boxset (which will probably just be some discograhy but they might get to buy it just for the linernotes?), the other rumor is that he has a new album in the works for next year sometime. The new album news is always great to hear although, truth be told I didn't really care for his last one. I've tried hard to get into it but there are just no songs on it that jump out at me. I don't know, I think I like his stuff better when it's more just him doing everything on it?

The great clip of Robert doing "Shipbuilding" in the previous post reminded of a somewhat recent article I read about the history and legacy of that song, which I'm sure I had meant to do a post about after I first read it. Anyway for those interested you can find it here. And while I'm at it here is the uncut version of a very interesting Uncut interview w/ Robert from last year.


As for the sad new of the great Paul Newman's passing yesterday, I really have nothing to say. Not only do they not make them like that anymore, I don't think it's even possible!

. . . Another Piece of Completely Escapist Light Entertainment







Here's To . . .

Another Horrible Day In The History Of The World*

At least I have a ripe Tomato (and a waning case of Olympic Fever).

* Made just that little bit worse, R.I.P. Bernie Mac.

Enough W/ All of That Tinkle Already . . . Well Mostly

The other night I was fooling around a little bit w/ this new site Wordle and in doing so I generated the two word clouds below:





I used this blog as the address, it only seems to be using the top few posts, I lost interest in it before I could figure out how to get it to input more words. Anyway from doing that I remembered that had this screen capture widget (how I made the above images) and that made me remember this other site that I used to fool around w/ a couple of years ago but I can never remember the name of. It's Java applet thingie that makes graphs out of websites, I find it kind of neat and every so often I remember about it and I have to go wading through my bookmarks to find the site again. The reason the screen capture widget reminded me of that site is b/c I never had any kind of screen capture thingie so I could never save the the graphs that the applet generates. Well, I did and here are some of the fruits of my endeavor again using amnihilist as the input:

I don't know what happened w/ that last one but it's pretty neat none the less. the key to what it's showing is:

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

Piss-Bottle Man . . . and Spiel about his recent pilgrimage to see 'The Prick w/ the Stick'

PISS-BOTTLE MAN

There are some things a guy gets from his Pop
Some of those things get spaced, others are never forgot
I got such a tradition, I keep in my truck cab

Oooo Oooo Oooo
Piss bottle man
Oooo Oooo Oooo
Piss bottle man

Miles and miles and all the while I feel secure
Even when the fuse gets short I can keep my nerve
Believe in such a tradition, I got in my truck cab

Oooo Oooo Oooo
Piss bottle man
Oooo Oooo Oooo
Piss bottle man

Piss bottle man
Piss bottle man

Oooo Oooo Oooo
Piss bottle man

Piss bottle man
Piss bottle man

Oooo Oooo Oooo
Piss bottle man

Driving in his shoes, using the bottle he used
Every time I pop I think of my Pop and pay my dues
Respect such a tradition, a shrine in my truck cab.

Oooo Oooo Oooo
Piss bottle man
Oooo Oooo Oooo
Piss bottle man

Oooo Oooo Oooo
Piss bottle man
Oooo Oooo Oooo
Piss bottle man

(repeat to fade)

— Mike Watt

This post is kind of a response to the recent post by Brotha' G., over on Sunnyside Dr., that just snuck up and smacked me in the face so to speak.

. . . I been had that CRAZY picture of WATT w/ said bottles (from god only knows where originally?) . . . I love the man, WATT . . . and I had been recently thinking about him, reading a freshish tour diary . . . and knowing that he was going to be in Dublin again for this past Bloomsday, He's a big fan of "Ulysses". I had been meaning to read his spiel about it this time around, which I remembered to read just now. . . . Oh Yeah, I just remembered this, I also recently had a dream where I was telling my 'meeting Mike Watt story' but as dreams usually go I don't think I ever got to the punch-line of it, not that there is one really?

An interesting fact from what WATT wrote about being in Dublin this time around, he says that two-thirds of the songs he did for "Double Nickels . . ." were influenced by his first reading of "Ulysses", I knew about the instrumental on the album titled "June 16th" but I'll really have to go back over the rest of his songs on that classic.

UPDATE:

Not only did I find the picture below of Watt and the statue of Joyce but I also saw an article about Watt being on an album of artists setting Joyce's "Chamber Music" to music. I'm going to have to track that down.

Watt & said Prick w/ said Stick

June 16, 2008

My 2nd Favorite New Yorker Cartoon

. . . This one has made me laugh out loud.

I Am So Feelling You CC!

"Chocolate City"

Uh, what's happening CC?
They still call it the White House
But that's a temporary condition, too.
Can you dig it, CC?

To each his reach
And if I don't cop, it ain't mine to have
But I'll be reachin' for ya
'Cause I love ya, CC.
Right on.

There's a lot of chocolate cities, around
We've got Newark, we've got Gary
Somebody told me we got L.A.
And we're working on Atlanta
But you're the capital, CC

Gainin' on ya!
Get down
Gainin' on ya!
Movin' in and on ya
Gainin' on ya!
Can't you feel my breath, heh
Gainin' on ya!
All up around your neck, heh heh

Hey, CC!
They say your jivin' game, it can't be changed
But on the positive side,
You're my piece of the rock
And I love you, CC.
Can you dig it?

Hey, uh, we didn't get our forty acres and a mule
But we did get you, CC, heh, yeah
Gainin' on ya
Movin' in and around ya
God bless CC and its vanilla suburbs

Gainin' on ya!
Gainin' on ya!
Gainin' on ya! (heh!)
Gainin' on ya!
Gainin' on ya!
What's happening, blood?
Gainin' on ya!
Gainin' on ya!
Gainin' on ya!

Yeah!
What's happening, black?
Brother black, blood even
Yeah-ahh, just funnin'

Gettin' down

Ah, blood to blood
Ah, players to ladies
The last percentage count was eighty
You don't need the bullet when you got the ballot
Are you up for the downstroke, CC?
Chocolate city
Are you with me out there?

And when they come to march on ya
Tell 'em to make sure they got their James Brown pass
And don't be surprised if Ali is in the White House
Reverend Ike, Secretary of the Treasure
Richard Pryor, Minister of Education
Stevie Wonder, Secretary of FINE arts
And Miss Aretha Franklin, the First Lady
Are you out there, CC?
A chocolate city is no dream
It's my piece of the rock and I dig you, CC
God bless Chocolate City and its (gainin' on ya!) vanilla suburbs
Can y'all get to that?
Gainin' on ya!
Gainin' on ya!
Easin' in
Gainin' on ya!
In yo' stuff
Gainin' on ya!
Huh, can't get enough
Gainin' on ya!
Gainin' on ya!
Be mo' funk, be mo' funk
Gainin' on ya!
Can we funk you too
Gainin' on ya!
Right on, chocolate city!

Yeah, get deep
Real deep
Heh
Be mo' funk
Mmmph, heh
Get deep
Bad
Unh, heh
Just got New York, I'm told

— as preached by the maven of funk mutation
George Clinton, back in the day and hopefully
applicable again soon.

LaWanda Page

Happy 60th Birthday Brian Eno (A. K. A. GOD)

"Portrait of Eno with Allusions"
by Peter Schmidt

I just saw on one of the other blogs that I read daily that today is the great Brian Eno's sixtieth birthday. It's kind of funny b/c for the past few days I've been fooling around w/ this EMS Synthi AKS emulator soft-synth thingie and just yesterday (after successfully installing the English version, I had the French version installed and could not uninstall it) I finally got it to make a noise. The Synthi was Eno's synthesizer of choice back in the day and b/c of that I've always been fixated on them.

(the late) Peter Schmidt and Eno
strategizing obliquely

Be Reasonable Demand The Impossible! Pt. 1