PEVERELIST & HYETAL: "rrr" / "THE HUM"

"The Hum" starts off sounding like a cloud of metal smoke drunkenly swirling over a mosaic of tiny broken glass fragments. Everything's tinkly, shiney, forever shifting. Trapped in a snow-globe with nano-machines.

Around a minute in, there's a modwheel-warp'd Casio fanfare and it's all change: all aboard the bus to Sayasuwedo! I just made that name up: the percussion-rhythm has a loping bounce of uncertain provenence, an imaginary ethnicity that might be Latin, might be African, might be Bristol on a stoned tuesday night - a 7-wheeled kartoon taxi axle-clacking its way dn Park Street. Bongos ahoy!

More Casio-ish interjectns; more tinkling-glass loops; flangey-sounding flute preset type sound darting around like a stoned dragonfly. Sounds fall out their own pockets - trickle, drip and slide - the track leaving a musical spoor-trail behind itself, a trail of glassy sand fragments.

It's like visiting a country that you'll never visit. A street-scene that doesn't exist.



"rrr": Oooooh, I really like this. Pitch-shifted kazoo, ethno-reed-instrument or a grizzling insect-baby? Don't know, don't care. A string-pad wobbles slowly, chasing its own shadow into the bottom of the mix. Ghostly / ghastly fanfare. Ratatatattting pecussion. Clunks / clicks.

Oh, yes. Where's this going now: shimmering echo-perc, a snapshot cross-section through a Latin drum kit. Ghost horns going upstairs, one step at a time, up to a landing. A gallery. The mosquito baby returns. A cascading motif of tinny-sounding Casio squarewave synths.

And just when you think it can't sound any better / cooler / more interesting, the track seems to find another layer, some other little alleyway to explore.

Immaculate programming / labyrinthine arrangement.

Cor: Result!

Man Like Me am v. happy.

Out in Mid=Oct. Buy it, pogo-people! Progressive ol' Punch Drunk, innit.

BENEFIT FOR IRA COHEN

A BENEFIT FOR IRA COHEN - Poet, Publisher, Photographer, Filmmaker, Media Shaman.

September 8, 2010 7-10pm

Yes, it is the first night of Rosh Hashana!


Bowery Poetry Club

308 Bowery New York, NY 10012
(212) 614-0505


The evenings suggested donation is $20.... or more if feeling compassionate and generous.

We will do a draw among the donating guests for one of his signed prints.

Ira Cohen himself may appear in the beginning of the evening and there will be a 9:30 showing of Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagaoda.

Readings by poets and music of magicians, friends and peers of Ira.

performing:

IRA COHEN
ALLAN GRAUBARD
CANNON HERSEY
DEER FRANCE & Friends
JIM FEAST
JORDAN ZINOVICH
COSMIC LEGENDS : SYLVIE DEGIEZ, WAYNE LOPES, PERRY ROBINSON
MARIANNE VITALE
PETE DRUNGLE
ROBERT GALINSKY
STEVE BEN ISRAEL
STEVE DALACHINSKY
SHIV MIRABITO
VALERY OISTEANU
& others

We'll be selling special CD's of Ira's past readings ($10) and signed photo giclees of a few images from his mylar series of the 60's.

The giclees start at $250 each for 8x10's, $600 for 11X14: Hendrix or William S. Burroughs with cobra).

(I will take pre-oreders on these and you can pay now with pay pal by contacting me: omfineart AT gmail DOOT com )

We need to raise money for Ira Cohen and his archives that have been displaced by the effects of the bedbug condition of his building. It has been an expensive and torrential experience.

Though Ira is for now staying peacefully at the Chelsea Hotel until he can return home.

This night is dedicated to Him. Be inspired by his work. Come and support this Benefit.

HANGIN' AT THE FIRING RANGE

Just one final post, I think, then I can probably ditch this M.I.A. / Shellshocked / Straight-to-DVD Namsploitation Persona I've adopted in recent days. I mean, just because I've been living in a tent lol...which has been alternately Fun / Not Fun. I mean, it's just an inconvenience; it's not forever - but some people don't, y'know, have that option...

Not Fun was getting flooded-out a few nights ago, waking up in a couple centimetres of water after 7 hours of torrential rain and having to bail the tent out. Not Fun was wednesday, when the girders turned up and yet more ceiling stuff was knocked out and there was an hour or two worrying whether the fucking house might fall down. (It didn't) My bike got nicked that day too - I've since got it back, which makes for an amusing story in itself (though not tonight) - so I had to walk back in pouring rain and then spend two hours trying to make the living-room vaguely habitable again, ready for when the kids came back. It was like one of those Army gas-shed things, if you know what I mean. I'd got used to 7 weeks of dust, but this was Pompeii levels, plus they'd been welding on site, so the whole house was filled with ozone or acetylene or something. Wednesday was not good, no siree. Thursday was only slightly better: more girder work, blahblahblah.

My family had finally fled the house a week or so ago. I'm glad they weren't there during the worst of it. The house was pretty much uninhabitable.

They're back now and I'm very glad to see them. I spent a really nice morning with my daughters on saturday. They are sooo cool.

The sun came out today, so we had a barbecue with some dregs from the bottom of the freezer while the builder laughed at my inability to light the damn thing. We've no kitchen, see?

I've spent so much time working in a local cafe recently that the Cafe Nero chain are offering me a Writer-in-Residence Post.

Anyway... just this, then this blog goes back to, er...whatever it is we normally do round here.

I've lived in Yeovil all my life and never realised we had a firing-range in the town - and it's only about 400yds from my house (or what's left of it). It's kinda hidden away, which is even cooler. Yeovil is a place of many secrets. I never get bored with it.

I guess any American readers who might've grown up around guns will find this hilariously low-key. I loved the down-to-earth Englishness of it all - that it was target-shooting and pellet-guns - not poshboys shooting quail or something. Alright, alright: I know you don't really shoot quail.

Their club-hut was completely awesome, I thought.













Turns out I'm a pretty lousy shot - look at that drift to the right! Mind you, at my age I'm amazed I could even see the target! Kid Kid Shirt (Aged 9) is waaay better than me; she's like a Black Ops sniper or something.

BLACK SABBATH: "WAR PIGS"

Sabbaff live in 1970. You can still hear them Bloooze influences rolling around in the riff-mud...

STAN RIDGWAY: "CAMOUFLAGE"

WORLD PEACEKEEPERS

"I am an empty house longing to be haunted." - Darren Bauler.

Beautiful, man. Just fucking beautiful.

Nails a feeling that's chasing my ass right now.

I'm here, laying down by the imaginary stream inside my head, listening to James Toth's "Ballad of Squeaky Wheels" - remembering why he's one of a handful of the best songwriters around right now (his demos piss on your overproduced campfire hisssss, boutique-label boys...) and D's phrase just nails that tone - that catch - in James' voice perfectly, as if he's sing-talkinging along to the CD-r; an overdubbed talk-over across impossible distances.

Quantum-entanglement of the soul.

The wind in the trees, the chill in my bones. Dogs barking somewhere in the distance.

The damp smell of leaves, prefacing the onset of autumn.

Perfect.

ACTION MAN HIPPY

The Action Man Hippy Playset: ideal for acting-out pre-teen fantasies in which Private Security Company Specialists beat the crap out of eco-squatters, environmentalists, Gaza protesters, etc. Comes with fatigues with Greenpeace logo, a tie-dye T-shirt or in a std jeans and plaid-shirt configuration. Bearded / non-bearded version. Hair pulls outwards, so that it seems to 'grow'.

Can be used in conjunction with the Israeli Trigger-Happy Teenage Conscript and Zionist Settler Variants, and - of course - the Catapillar D9 Bulldozer Set.

The new American Drone-Band Playset will be launched in time for Christmas 2010.

CHUCK NORRIS ACTION JEANS

Via kill-crazy MIA twitter-blogger @whuddafugger

KID SHIRT: FIRST BLOOD

Fallen on hard times. Living in the woods now...sleeping out in the open, living off the land. I'm constantly on the move, one step ahead of my pursuers. Just me, a boot-knife, cross-bow and an ASUS laptop. Just me and the sound of birds and running water. I'm writing on the run.



I've set wires...traps to catch those who are hunting me. Soon, I'll turn the tables on them. They'll rue the day they...

Wait. Was that a twig snapping? Or just my imagination. No...

Snnnf. Snnnf.

Ha. I'll gut them like pigs. Hahaha. I'll...

Ever since I got back from The 'Raq, the editors have been pushing me...they kept on pushing me. I said, "Don't push me, man!"

But they keep on pushing me. Wouldn't stop pushing me. I know...I know my writing style don't fit. I...I saw stuff over there - saw my writing-buddies get butchered - and now I can't write no pretty stuff no more.

"I SAID: DON'T YOU FUCKING PUSH ME, MAN! AND YOU - WHAT YOU LOOKING AT, HUH? - DON'T YOU BE FUCKING LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!"

Write another paragraph, save it. Shut the lid of the laptop, bury it next to a tree. Douse my camp-fire. Smear myself in dirt and rabbit blood. Someone's coming down the cycle-path! Cock the cross-bow and crawl down into the bottom of the stream.

"HAHAHAHAHA! YOU CAN'T SEE ME, BUT I CAN SEE *YOU*! I'M INVISIBLE NOW, YOU FUCKERS! I'M THE COLOUR OF THE EARTH! THE COLOUR OF BLOOD! HAHAHAHAHA..."

RICO SLADE WILL FUCKING KILL YOU

Interview with writer and Kid Shirt pal / ally Bradley Sands on The Authors Speak site.

TOO POSH TO PUSH

UK Prime Minister David Cameron's wife Olive Oyl - er, I meant Samantha - has just given birth in an NHS Hospital. Is that what India Knight, writing in The Times last week, meant by her being more "socially elastic" than her husband?

Not that I'm suggesting that this was just some huge PR opportunity to show that the Camerons are just like us 'normal' folk and are happy to be *eww* touched by UnPrivate Healthcare workers - thus sending a subliminal message out to the Great Unwashed that the NHS is safe in Tory hands (it's not). Buuuut: if people had any idea how much it cost in terms of security and so forth to stage-manage that - espesh in a time of much belt-tightening and austerity for the rest of us (Cameron's very fond of telling us we need to "muck in" - volunteer, all pull together, as if near-financial collapse was just some Eton stage production of Olive Oyl - er, sorry, I meant Oliver Twist - "You gotta pick a pocket or two" - yeah, ours !) - then there would be riots in...somewhere or other.

When Princess Anne visited Yeovil Hospital some years ago - they bloody well redecorated the whole hospital - even disinfected one of the lifts - before she and her armed guards, courtiers, etc turned up for a flying 2 hour visit. Operations were cancelled, sick people discharged (they were making the place look untidy!), the whole hospital's routine disrupted - just for a Photo Op.

I went on a short holiday to a tiny bay in Cornwall a few years back with some mates and Thatcher stayed in a house nearby. I'm not kidding: there were guards with machine-guns everywhere and guys who looked like MIBs outside the house. PMs don't do unobtrusive.

I wouldn't want to be a local woman who went into labour at the same time as Mrs. Cameron.

(Yes, I know, that sentence is sooo wrong on so many levels)

Deputy PM (and scabby Liberal sell-out) Nick Clegg said later, "I'm sure the whole country will join me in wishing David well..."

Well, no, actually.

Cameron was looking for names for his daughter and asked for something with a hint of Cornish.

Howabout: FuckorfbaktoLondonyufukkincunt, in a gruff Kernow snarl.

NUNSPLOITATION: MORE THAN SLIGHT RETURN

Just for Tank, in case he - you know - thought I was making up Nunsploitation.

More religious hysteria than you can shake a crucifix at!

"Killer Nun":



(and wasn't that just the best soundtrack ever!? Must get a copy of that!)

"Flavia the Heretic"



(Heh. Much head-rolling and hysteria!)

"Nun of That"



"Haxan"



"Nympha"



..and, of course, "The Devils"



(Another great soundtrack! Sounds oddly prescient, as if it had just come out in 2005 or something.)

I wanted to put up "Sister Emmanuelle" but YouTube have taken it down. Spoilsports.

THAT BLOODY SOUND

Someone loaned me some Hungarian Metal-Prog today. It wasn't very good.

I'll spare the band some blushes by not naming them, because there was nothing wrong with the playing or anything - they were fairly tight and energetic (tho the vocals were a bit weedy tbh; sounded like Sophie Ellis-fucking-Baxter), so nothing gained in unfairly slagging a band who're just trying to grind out an honest buck to a disinterested world - but my biggest gripe w/ their fare was that gawdawful digitally-distorted/overdriven-yet-clipped-sounding compressed-to-fuck guitar-sound that seems to have infected 80% of Nu Metal / Thrash / Heavy Rock / Emo from bloody Metallica onwards. It fucking winds me up. Can't bear listening to it.

Part of the problem is the digital-FX pedals that all the guitarists use - the presets make everything sound the bloody same: it sounds like the same single guy is playing the same riff on the same guitar on 15,000 different records around the world.

The other problem is that, I dunno, choppy/clipped technique they all use; riffs get foreshortened into the same shorthand dakkadakkadakka grind. Sometimes they slow it down a bit, boost the distortion / bottom-end and growl, if they wanna sound, y'know, intense, man.

I can't bear it. I mean, fuuuuck off.

I wish I knew the etiology of That Bloody Sound - the exact moment it entered the Metal pallette /canon. I think it maybe appeared around the late-80s - there were Thrash bands playing those sorts o'riffs a bit earlier than that, but then That Bloody Sound gradually became prevalent. I suspect that maybe digital pedals became more commonplace, so may have played a part in its evolution, especially if the guitarists started playing off of certain tonalities inherent in this new generation of digi-pedals. By the 90s it was everywhere, but I was too busy listening to Techno so I didn't much notice or care.

Maybe someone more knowledgeable than me in such things could explain the evolution of That Bloody Sound. Even tho I don't much like it, I'm curious about how it developed. I'm sure my theory's flawed.

If I mention this to anyone under, say - errrm - their late thirties, then they just give me a look. That Bloody Sound is all they've ever known. Entire sub-genres and musical lineages have grown up around it.

I'd love to go all reductionist on y'all and just blame Metallica - Gawdknows they owe us all an apology for a whole bunch of things - but I'm sure it's far more complex than that; a case of slow Musical Natural Selection.

It started off as a form of shorthand for a certain harshness of emotion - a rising inner anger - but now, after 30 years, it just sounds fucking boring.

And if Exorcisploitation is making a mainstream comeback, then can Nunsploitation be far behind.

Yeah, NUNSPLOITATION!

EXORCISPLOITATION

The return of Exorcism / Exorcist type movies?

I really didn't expect that to happen.

The last Exorcisploitation movie I watched was probably a Jess Franco one - make a name up - but Hollywood...? Woah.

Just goes to show you can't write off any genre.

I'm less interested in this than the slew of low-budget imitations that'll probably surface in its wake.

XYLITOL REMIX BIZNIS

Something else that'll be appearing - fingers crossed! - in the autumn is the Orchestra Intangible '73 remix of Xylitol's "Incidental Person".



Many thanks to the mighty Jim Backhaus aka Xylitol for bravely taking a punt on me.

The remix album "I Shouldn't Be Here" features an absolutely stellar cast of musical remolders (plus, er, me) including - or so I'm told - folks such as Nocturnal Emissions, Woebot, Pete UM, Nochexxx, Strange Attractor and Sculpture amongst many others, and features sleeve-notes from *eeek!* the one-and-only Martin C.

This'll be a handsome package indeedy.

A big thanks to those of you who helped me out by providing some much-needed (and wonderful!) crowdsourced vocals, including: Pete UM and Syd, Jayson and Ma Densman, Shaky Kane, Darren Bauler, April Larson, D Harlan Wilson...super-stars, one n all!

And many thanks to Nochexxx for so kindly putting in a word on my behalf.

THE UNQUENCHABLE MR. CHARLES SHILLING

FLURB #10

Extremely proud and chuffed to announce that my story "Six Days on the Road and I'm Gonna Make it Home Tonight" will be appearing in issue 10 of Rudy Rucker's ever-excellent eZine FLURB.

If you've never read FLURB before, then dig in and explore its back-issues; there's an awesome array of talent to be found - some extremely cool names - it really is one of the best reads/resources on the web for that genre that was once known as Science Fiction. It's a real labour of love.

Every ish is special, but Rudy says of #10: "I'll be going for a rabble-rousing Election Year theme with an all-star roster."

My own story dovetails into the election theme, but I've come at it sideways, approaching it from a direction that I hope you'll dig. I'm very pleased with the end-result. Hope you enjoy it.

As well as being a terrific writer (and if you've not checked any of his work, then what are you waiting for? Jump in!), Rudy's an incredibly astute and intuitive editor who has a great feel for Story. And his blog is one of my favourite reads on the web.

FLURB #10 drops in September and I'm very proud to be part of it. I'll holler when it arrives. Meanwhile, get reading...

HYPERCOMICS EXHIBITION

Warren Pleece and friends are showing their artwork at the Paul Gravett-curated Hypercomics Exhibition at The Pump House Gallery in Battersea Park, London over the next month or so.

Warren will be running an animated installation which includes work from his wonderful Montague Terrace strip (which I've mentioned on this blog before). Y'should go n check it out.

FEAR-SQUAD FIVE

BLUBBBER CEL #6

Night #2 in Base-Camp Shambles '73:

Sky ridiculously bright last night, despite clouds. Apocalyptically bright. So bright I didn't need my Scaredy-Cat LED Night-Lamp tm.

Rained all night, off and on, but tent dry. No were-animal attacks, tho a fox started yelping at 3am fairly near the tent, either in our garden or the neighbours. It was a weird cross between a quasi-dog noise and a mentally-disturbed child. My wife says that when some Londoner types moved down to The Marsh, the first time they heard a fox they phoned the police and told them "a baby was being murdered".

I think it was a fox. But it might've been Loki, lost and out of his mind at a Prefuse 73 gig.

Prefuse 73. Might have to have a word wi' that fella - Scott Whatsisname - about his appropriation of my own personal sacred.numerology thing. I am kinda curious where he got that number from.

Going for a piss behind a bush in the rain-smeared small hours is a bit of a drag, tho this whole experience is starting to become strangely life-affirming. Little differences - breaks from the life-cycle ruts - can often become almost Nietzschian.

Need coffee.

SLEEPING ROUGH

So, yeah, I'm reduced to sleeping in the garden now in a six-quid tent.

Six quid!!! - how low can you go? I didn't know you could buy a tent for six quid. It's probably made from human skin or something. Off-cuts from the abattoir in West Camel. Ed Gein & Sons, camping equipment by Leatherface, etc, etc.

The next-door neighbour took pity on me and loaned me his blow-up mattress. I was quite happy with the foam thing I'd got - four quid: what a rip-off - almost as expensive as the bloody tent.

Six quid!!

He also loaned me a lamp. "In case I got scared."

It's really comfortable though, the tent. And warm. Though there's a bit of a dew-leakage issue.

Something weird sorta attacked the tent at about 3am - an animal of some sort - threw itself at the back of the tent 4 or 5 times, kinda rammed it. Kuhtrhussh! Booosh! Good job I have absolutely no imagination whatsoever. Probably just the cat.

Or some sort of undead thing.

Think I'll start decorating the tent tomorrow. Customise it.

Pigeon feathers and bones. That sort of thing.

Yeah.

ONE-EYED MONSTER

Not sure how this one passed me by - only heard about it today - but it looks a lot of fun.

Basically, porn-star Ron Jeremy's dick gets detached from his body and is possessed by a sex-starved alien life-form. No, really. The penis-creature ("Juan" !!!???) then goes on a murderous rampage, attacking the cast and crew of an adult movie, who try and trap it - Scooby-Doo Style - "when it is limp and at its weakest." Their plan involves 'circumcising' it with an axe.

Well, you would, wouldn't you?



"If you see it coming - you're already dead."

JACK THE HOUSE

Actually, there's been another reason - apart from some heavy work / deadline pressures - why postings have been a bit thin n bitty round here recently: we're currently 7 weeks into an (at least) 12-week rebuild of our house, which has involved some pretty major demolition work.

Yesterday, they literally started jacking up the house, to support the first floor while they take out some steel beams and replace them with newer, bigger ones in a brand new configuration. Unfortunately, this meant they've now had to pull up the floorboards in the bedrooms in order to slot the jacks into the walls - which makes sleeping kinda...interesting. They're also replumbing under the floorboards upstairs too, so it means we're pretty much living in one room right now.

The boiler got taken out yesterday, prior to being moved to a new spot (which hasn't been built yet!), so now the water's off as well. Luckily the builder kindly plumbed in a cold-water tap to tide us over the next couple weeks!

My wife's been a complete star keeping the kids amused during the school holidays and what has been a pretty stressful time for the whole family. Over the weekend we went to my brother-in-law's wedding down The Marsh, but then had to rush back sunday afternoon to rearrange what little furniture is still in the house, ready for the jacking-up process early monday morning. Hectic doesn't describe it!

The good news is there is now a roof of sorts on the new / rebuilt bit at the back of the house.

I promise this blog won't turn into Grand Designs, but here's a few pics of some of the recent mayhem. It's actually kinda cool in a perverse way.

"FIGHT ON, MY SISTERS, FIGHT ON!"

UM STUFF

Assorted editions of the Bumskipper series.

"If YA WANT OUT - GET OUT AND GET IT ALL" - IN PRAISE OF GRUNT RECORDS

Somebody aimed you when you were young

But nobody ever fired

Now you're just sitting there inside the gun

Bullet, you're getting old and tired


Across the Board, Grace Slick 19F3


I fucking adore this album ("Baron Von Tollbooth & The Chrome Nun") - that whole inbetween Airplane / Starship period of the Kantner / Slick Anti-Empire - and this song in particular. If you're looking for a Patti Smith-before-Patti Smith type deal, then Grace Slick's your gal. Passion, fury, fire.



I first bought Sunfighter (71) (another great LP of theirs) in the mid-70s, sold it in the 80s (stupid me!) - bought it again around 2005 and it sounded like it should've come out a year or two earlier; it niched in perfectly with everything that was happening around that time - Stoner.Folk, backwoods pickin', bluesy, but strident PsychRock, Moog space.drones. The Kantner-Slick Red Army Faction feature in my forthcoming Post-SF novella "Episode ∞ : Blows Against The Empire" (they also semi-provided the title) and their daughter China Slick is both a protagonist and an antagonist in the story - a Maoist freedom fighter / double-agent who infiltrates Lucasfilms.

Chris Ethridge - who's part of the seam I've been recently mining both musically and fiction-ally - coincidentally plays on the track Across the Board, so that all dovetails in together nicely in terms of personal.mythos-streams, etc. You really do need to hear this shit on vinyl and cranked up louuud, not on YouTube, Spotify, etc.

Unrepentant hippy and proud of it.

THE BARISTA WHO DRANK TOO MUCH OF HIS OWN COFFEE

I hit the local coffee-shop this afternoon to write up some notes, only to be greeted by this:





The Barista Who Drank Too Much of His Own Coffee.

Everyone should come and live in Yeovil, if only for the day.

(Forgive the on-going self-indulgence, but sometimes you just need to holler out, especially when something's been so tightly internalised for a few days and you can't really show it to no one or talk about it or nuffink, but:)

Whoooo!! I'm done!

New story finished. A couple sentences that need fixin' - and a maybe-paragraph insersion if that don't end up over-egging it.

This is good, I think. I'm pleased with it. It reads pretty well, without sounding like anyone else. And I think - hope! - it hits the right spot without resorting to sentimentality.

Time to put it in the shoe-cupboard for a couple days and then tighten its laces slightly, ready for a walk to what will hopefully be its new home.

*slow exhalation of breath*

(back to writing about other people now)

LIL B: "RAIN IN ENGLAND"

Meant to blog about this earlier in the week, but been too busy; a v. interesting twist on the whole, uhm, Reclaimed Quasi New Age tropes of Oneohtrix Point Never / Emeralds saga (wh/ I've kept kinda quiet about in recent months, tbh, because believe me you really don't wanna hear my thoughts on this - my gripes're not about the music (Klaus Schulze never went out of favour round these parts and I'm a long-time fan of Emeralds) but more about its rapid uptake in certain critical corners. Huh? Colour me cynical, boys! Actually, the thing that perhaps fascinates me the most about this microphenomenon is how recent releases have rather groovily repositioned Mego. Peter Rehberg, by the way, is someone I have a lot of time for.)

Anyway.

New Lil B LP features rapping over reconstituted New Age / Ambient. No, not Illbient v 2.0.

Didn't see that one coming.

Hopefully on home-stretch now with new story. One more shortish section to complete, then I'm done except for tweaks / polishes / blahblahblah.

Gosh, that was really interesting, wasn't it?

GRAM PARSON'S ROOM

Gram Parson's room at the Joshua Tree Inn.

"Room 8 still offers a quintessential "Cosmic American Experience" to fans of the father of country alternative rock." LOL

What's that - a couple shots of morphine and some ice-cubes up your butt-crack?

DJ YO-YO DIETING: "DORMANT MIRRORS", BUBBLETHUG, SCREWGAZE, GLAMOROUS PAT, ETC

Thanks to Dave Quam for pointing me at this, afer I made some lameass comment about ScrewRap beats welded to an FX-pedalboard chassis (Dave had been talking about the concept of "Screwgaze", I think). Anyway, this is utter Genius.





"Bubblethug" via Weird Forest Records. PitchShiftedGhettoRapNoisePsychMulch overlap/overdrive. What a fucking great cover (by Glamorous Pat!)

I'm definitely gonna have to score a copy of this album!

And here's GlamPat Live in de Living, back in the day.

RICHARD KADREY: "SUSPECT ZERO"

The mighty Richard Kadrey is serialising a new story over on his blog this week.

Just recieved some s.p.a.m. marked:

From: "Scheman Rataczak"

To: "Ouillette Pirnie"

What brilliant names. I mean, who wouldn't want to meet those people? I think I need to fold these two folks into something I'm doing - some project or other - just to give them life outside the digital zombie.domain. Scheman Ratacza, I think, might turn up in a story I'm currently writing - tho he feels like he ought to be an Orchestra Intangible '73 reservist or something. Ouillette: holy fuck, where to start, even?

BTW: I'm not ignoring those folks in my comments-box goading me on to play at an engagement party lol ; I have got a reply ready for them - a sort of answer record type post - but it'll take me a lickle while to set it up and - since I'm, errm, kinda uber-busy at the moment - I'm not sure quite when I'm gonna get that hour. Tho maybe If I hadn't typed this, then I might've started doing it already.

(Lots of things going on right now - either kicking off or starting to come to fruition. Busy summer and an even busier autumn ahead. Interesting, tho. Tons of cool stuff happening. You'll see, I promise.)

It's funny just how much I realllly want to blog when I'm not able to. Weird.

A Love Triangle involving Lulu, Maurice Gibb and Davy Jones of The Monkees?

Wow: I never knew that.



Stopress: (Ah, shit...you know I've just remembered - can you believe it! - my late mum telling me years and years ago that Gibb and Lulu were married....)

On friday night I played a few records at a friend's party. My record-box is too heavy so I get a taxi down to his house.

The taxi-driver says "I've get an engagement party in a couple weeks; how much do you charge to play?"

I'm like - eyebrow up - uhhhhhh, well....

He says "What stuff do you play?"

"Well, tonight...mainly late 70s / early 80s Disco, Funk...some old Pop records..."

"Oh, that's exactly what I want. I hate all this fucking new stuff..."

I'm not exactly sure what he means. This is Yeovil, so it's probably some new sub-variety of Trance that I'm not aware of. "What's that, then?"

"That fucking Drum n Bass rubbish." He pulls a face like he's just licked a turd-flavour lolly. I wonder if I've blacked out and lost the best part of two decades. Though "best" is probably the wrong word; you can have most of 1995 - 2004 back to be honest. I don't want it. I'll take a refund. (Cash, if you've got it. Or some mid-70s Czech Free-Jazz/Prog LPs.) Though that No U-Turn night in that basement was pretty good and I'll keep some of those later Pavement LPs too.

"Disco, Funk....yeah, that's exactly what I want."

He drops me off and gives me his card. "Let me know if you can do it..."

Loving (for all the wrong reasons!!) this rather wonderful and slightly creepy painting of Tiesto - the world's dullest "Super-DJ". Was done by a drunken Tunisian fan, apparently.



I'd really love for him to do my portrait.

There is no sound more beautiful in my mind - except the first sound uttered by your own newborn child, or perhaps the sound of the ocean heard in a moment of sorrowful solitude or tender togetherness - than that of a needle tapping against the locked out-groove at the end of a really great album.

Mechanical repetition translated into sound - forming not a full-stop, but an on-going series of ellipses - a temporary suspension of time; a "What-If"; a space in which your heart / mind / soul can digest what it has just heard.

But it also acts as a summons, a sonic cue to stand up and respond...and this act of standing-up is itself part of the ritual; an act of appreciation, of supplication and silent applause; a re-engagement with the world.

It is both an ending and a trigger.

MIKE POST: "THE ROCKFORD FILES"

Thanks to Mark for reminding me about this in my comments-box below:



(Mike Post worked with Kenny Rogers in the 60's and also with Dolly Parton, tho much later on when her career had already crossed over.)

Funny how Country-Rock grew from just a few hardcore afficiandos (Parsons/Hillman, Mike Nesmith, Leadon, etc) round the cusp of 60s/70s into a mid-70's behemoth that was relatively widely accepted, reaching its zenith/nadir with mid-period Eagles; meanwhile, Country influences spilled out into popular music, TV, cinema in all sorts of ways as execs realised that Southerness could be exported out into the mainstream via Burt Reynolds' films, The Dukes of Hazzard, Convoy, motifs n codas n memes in Pop Music (The Carpenters, Streisand gittin' jiggy wit Kristofferson, blahblahblah); We were still only a couple generations away from The Source and already Country Crossover Potential was King.

For a while it was Hip to be a Hick.

BUCK OWENS: "TOGETHER AGAIN"

The awesome Buck Owens.



S'masterclass in narrative economy, innit? And what an awesome pedal-steel break.

I've been reading up (a bit) on pedal-steel tunings recently - for reasons I really don't wanna go into (mostly because they're...silly and kinda anal; annnnnd, I'm not even a musician *gak* but I'm fascinated by this kind of minutae...): I was kinda turned on to all this when I recently read a piece about Sneaky Pete Kleinow's choice of tuning / methodology in The Flying Burritos Bros. His tuning was the reason why he got that great spacey, almost Sun Ra-ish out-there sound. Also, he was the first guy to play a pedal-steel thru a fuzz-pedal.

He was an animator too, apparently - it was his day-job - which is why he kept himself relatively straight n dry compared w/ the rest of the band. A quick Google on the topic reveals the fact that he worked on episodes of The Muppet Babies. Just when you think the world can't get any weirder, huh?

#KANYENEWYORKERTWEETS

This is genius (and very funny):

Old cartoons from The New Yorker recaptioned with text from Kanye West's tweets.

via @danhancox

Got extremely confused a few minutes ago when a real lawn-mower started up outside whilst "I know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" was on the stereo.

It kinda freaked me out for a few seconds 'til I realised what was going on. Thought it was some sort of demented 5:1 mix or something.

However, my next-door neighbour is bald as an egg and looks a bit like Peter Gabriel as he is now.

Also, he was dressed as a Slipperman.