200 YEARS OLD

Tbh, I wasn't planning on posting here any more - the blog felt like it had come to a logical end-point - along with a handful of other things in my life - how fickle am I to renege on a self-made 4am promise?...but, well, I couldn't not comment on Don van Vliet's passing.

Actually, I heard "Lick My Decals Off, Baby" before...before the, uh, the other one. I was in my mid-teens and...well, if I'm honest, hearing it really didn't change my life or nuffink - I'd be a liar if I said that it did - I think I was already well-and-truly doomed by that point. Hearing Beefheart just sort of, well, confirmed what I already suspected about...things. It was like someone sort of slapped me on the shoulder, really hard, and sent me staggering down the garden path slightly faster than I intended.

I was exactly, totally, absolutely...ready for it, y'know?

After that I could look certain people who were older than me - people like Rob Bacon - I could look them in the eye. I was in on the joke, I thought I knew what's-what (I didn't, of course; still don't...but...). They'd smile and nod slightly if they caught you checking out "Safe As Milk" in the rack. They wouldn't take the piss out of you.

Liking Beefheart or Nico or whatever in a small provincial town in the Mid-Seventies was, like...well, it wasn't like Punk; there was no gang - no mates to back you up - it was just one or two Others... then slowly, you meet another Other, then another...a couple mates get into it too and become Others...blahblahblah...

I'm still meeting Others.

I still define people by whether they're an Other, or not. I know I shouldn't, but that's engramm'd into me now...

Beefheart was a calling-card, a gentle nudge-down-the-garden-path, a nod-and-a-wink...

BY HIM WE SHALL RECOGNISE YOU.

WE SHALL KNOW YOU.

The music was pretty fucking good too.

Why, when Kid Kid Shirt was kneehigh to a grasshopper, I...I was pretty ill round that time, but when I was well enough I used to bottle-feed her in the early evening and sometimes I used to sing-talk this song to her:

Said the momma t’ the baby in the corn
You are my first born
You shall here on in be known as The Spotlight Kid
‘n the mornin’ cry of the rooster
The baby lay alone
‘n the old cow in the green grass
Shed white tears in the red hot sun
‘n The Spotlight Kid stood under the moon that evenin’.

Nobody knows that 'cept you. Ssssshhh

My choice of song is not 'classic', canonical Beefheart, but it's my choice, my song, so humour me, huh? Actually, I always liked "Upon The My Oh My" for reasons that I'm not - ever, never - gonna share with you. Somethings will always remain mine. So, no, it's not that, but...



Thank You and Goodnight.

"YOU'RE A GHOST, LA LA LA"

"There is nowhere anything lasting, neither outside me, nor within me, but only incessant change. I nowhere know of any being, not even my own. There is no being. I myself know nothing and am nothing. There are only images: they are the only thing that exists, and they know of themselves in the manner of images...I myself am only one of these images." - J G Fichte.

I was reading these very words in a cafe when - in one of those moments of unexpected superimposition - John Cale suddenly started singing over the house sound-system: "You're a ghost, la la la / You're a ghost / I'm the bishop and I've come / To claim you with my iron drum / la la la la la la..."

I should explain (because this makes the moment doubly strange for me, okay?): they normally play noodly post Kenny G Jazz-FM type cack or bland US Indie/Singersonger fodder that was already pretty embarrassing even back in the era of Friends or Buffy...and the Cale microcast was, in fact, completely bookended by the usual reheated 8th-gen digi-Stan Getz drool. There was no warning, no indication, that reality had temporarily skipped a track. I immediately got goosebumps - I mean, reading those words as the soundtrack switched; woah! - and when normal service was resumed I actually sat there for a minute, looking round the room, thinking: fuck, did I just imagine that...?

Of course, I now have to ghostdump that moment out via HTML - via an image - a moving one, with sound, but an image nevertheless - to all you imaginary people - to all you...images that I have in my head that pretend to be people.

I made you all up, didn't I? It's okay: you can tell me; I don't mind.

You're not real. And I'm not really here anyway.

You imagined me; you made me up.

Projected me out onto your non-existent inner eyeballs.

We're all contingent.



If I was a real person, I'd almost certainly now tell you something comforting - something familiar and in keeping with my character - something real - like, errrm: "Paris 1919 is probably one of my favourite albums..." that it scores pretty much a straight 10, though "the title track isn't my favourite song on the LP."

Little details like that...plausibly-familiar character tics filtered through a writer's eye and squirted down a tangle of copper-wire; HTML / XML compressed into data-packets and reassembled as images - as wordtext...a couple sentences of needless detail designed to lure you into thinking that I actually exist, that I'm not a ghost, not an image.

La, la, la.

NOCHEXXX: CONCEPTO MIX #15

Yas, here.

"...direct-from-vinyl mix, built specially for the good folks at Concepto Radio, smelly-scratchy-black-moles-tunnelling through-dank-funky-detritus, with cheap needles type trax."

Yep, roger that!

Also, an interview.

MOOMBAHTON

Moombahton, innit.












Undownpitched / De-Afrojack'd "Moombah":

COMPANY FUCK (SLIGHT RETURN)

Our old friend Scott - aka Company Fuck - recently hit the UK for a few spontaneous happenings / shows, but since I've been away and, uh, otherwise occupied with various...things, I completely forgot to give his tour a shout-out.

Apologies, Scott! So, to try and make up for this, here's a montage of various CF, er, events...



CF - you'll be unsurprised to hear - will be appearing on the long-anticipated "Local Horse Artist" CD from 19F3.

DRIVE BY TRUCKERS: "DANKO / MANUEL"

Had this song going through my head all day. Not sure why - it's five years old - but it's come back to haunt my memory today.

Well, actually...

It feels oddly...Of-and-About-Now: an opaque wasteland of a song; an almost pitch-perfect soundtrack to a freshly Assangesised World.

The Anti-"Hotel California".



"Something else you can't believe."

ROCKETS FALL ON ROCKET FALLS

Awww, come on....

Who wouldn't want to see Godspeed You! Black Emperor three days in a row with three of the best people in the world?

(It's vaguely conceivable that there might even be two or three of you out there who are unfamiliar with their music, in which case I kinda envy you if you're hearing this for the first time.)



Three two-hour sets.

I am tired.

Me go to sleep now.

OKKYUNG LEE

Okkyung Lee.

Improv cello, innit.