5/31/11
5/30/11
5/29/11
Another One Gone
please rest well...
Gil Scott-Heron, the poet and recording artist whose syncopated spoken style and mordant critiques of politics, racism and mass media in pieces like “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” made him a notable voice of black protest culture in the 1970s and an important early influence on hip-hop, died on Friday at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 62 and had been a longtime resident of Harlem. (NY Times)
Just sucks that much more when the artist is still relevant and making new work!
via Dr. Robert
5/28/11
Narcotica Vexations
Vexations is a noted musical work by Erik Satie. Apparently conceived for keyboard , it consists of a short theme in the bass whose four presentations are alternatively heard unaccompanied and played with chords above. The theme and its accompanying chords are written using strikingly eccentric and impractical enharmonic notation. The piece is undated, but scholars usually assign a date around 1893 on the basis of musical and biographical evidence.
The piece bears an inscription which says that "In order to play the theme 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities". (wiki)
this video is a time lapse example of the basic idea. (with none of the FANTASTICS that the 'Living Room' had. ie: couches , Oriental Rugs everywhere .... a very "opium den" look. drugs were just not needed!)
i had the fortune to see the only performance ever in Los Angeles 1992 at the Asher-Faure Gallery, Beverly Hills.
As part of the ''Living Room Series'series.(featuring Randy Hostetler)
Beginning at 7AM and running close to 24 hours, Vexations is performed by a
team of piano players. Satie wrote Vexations as a one-page piano piece in the
1920’s. In the 1970’s, John Cage noticed that Satie had written “to be performed
624 times.” This has been done ten times since, and only once in Los Angeles.
photo of the New York performance. (explain below)
i miss 'The Living Room Series'. a great community of talent. note: (The Dick Slessig Combo is a product of The Living Room)
Randy Hostetler Rest In Peace
...
First public performance; John Cage, John Cale, Eric Satie, Andy Warhol (The Long Weekend)
all text via the Living Room Page. links all over the fuck. enjoy!
5/27/11
secret sandwich
vegetarian masterpiece: beets, sprouts, avocado, cucumber , fresh made white bread and much more...
a tale of nonconformity.... for kids
Nilsson :: The Point (Me And My Arrow) 1971
“I was on acid and I looked at the trees and I realized that they all came to points, and the little branches came to points, and the houses came to point. I thought, ‘Oh! Everything has a point, and if it doesn’t, then there’s a point to it.’” — Harry Nilsson
Directed by Fred Wolf, Nilsson’s tale of nonconformity first aired on ABC in 1971. Reportedly (wiki) Dustin Hoffman originally narrated the special inhabiting the role of the father until legal hassles led the producers to bring Ringo Starr on board to replace him. If memory serves, I believe when I first saw this on television in the early ’80s, it was a decidedly British accented narrator, which leads me to believe I got to know The Point v. 2 via Ringo.
Below: Watch part one, of eight, of The Point below, and listen to Nilsson’s brilliant “Me And My Arrow” which clocks in at about seven minutes and twenty seconds. watch whole thing here.
THIS is a Vinyl recording from the original LP. Comes with original whole cartoon and booklet! all via this dude.
pass= JD_070121
...
otherwise for the fst dl & straight up lp...
An animated story of an unusual kingdom in which everything and everybody is pointed - except for a young boy named Oblio(provided by Mike Lookinland, an actor best known as young Bobby Brady on the television series The Brady Bunch). Despite his round head, Oblio has many friends. But an evil count, jealous that Oblio is more popular than his own son, says that without a pointed head, Oblio is an outlaw. Along with his faithful dog Arrow, Oblio is exiled to the Pointless Forest. There, he has many fantastic experiences (including encounters with a 3-headed man, giant bees, a tree in the leaf-selling business, and a good-humored old rock). From his adventures, Oblio learns that it is not at all necessary to be pointed to have a point in life. Music composed and performed by Harry Nilsson ("Me and My Arrow"), who also wrote the story. Ringo Starr narrates.
There have been, so far, at least three different renditions of The Point!, each featuring songs written by Nilsson to accompany the story. There has been an animated film, an album, and a musical play.
Side one
1. "Everything's Got 'Em" 2:25
2. "The Town" (Narration) 1:31
3. "Me and My Arrow" 2:04
4. "The Game" (Narration) 1:49
5. "Poli High" 2:41
6. "The Trial and Banishment" (Narration) 2:11
7. "Think About Your Troubles" 2:49
Side two
8. "The Pointed Man" (Narration) 2:42
9. "Life Line" 2:21
10. "The Birds" (Narration) 1:58
11. "P.O.V. Waltz" 2:12
12. "The Clearing in the Woods" (Narration) 1:53
13. "Are You Sleeping?" 2:17
14. "Oblio's Return" (Narration)
look and ye shall still find
handmade castanets w/ Chinese relief figures. .25
alive and functioning.
i will boldly say those "American pickers" are amateurs in the game.
although ,TV thrifting (as concept) is radness for the lazy and disillusioned thriftsters of yesteryear.
nothing like criticizing from the couch, i say.
5/26/11
Cha Cha Foot
MADE IN NEW YORK 1950s
This crazy pedal operates two maracas. Step on it and the left one goes forward, the other one when you let go. Takes you back to the early fifties when Mambo was the craze. It's not easy to play, build for careful use but has stoprubbers top and bottom.
i don't think i could handle hanging one in my home, yet i do want him to paint me a drum head for lighting.
http://www.wolfgangbloch.com/
5/25/11
Tooth & Nail (1979) LP Vinyl Rip
V
Early LA /SF/ OC punk rock: Germs, Flesh Eaters, Middle Class and Negative Trend stand out. Classic compilation.
A must.
Ripped from beautiful vynil at 320kbps
Enjoy
1] The Controllers "Another Day"
2] The Controllers "Electric Church"
3] The Controllers "Jezabel"
4] The Flesh Eaters "The Word Goes Flesh"
5] The Flesh Eaters "Pony Dress"
6] The Flesh Eaters "Version Nation"
7] U.X.A. "Social Circle"
8] U.X.A. "U.X.A."
9] Negative Trend "I Got Power"
10] Negative Trend "Mercenaries"
11] Middle Class "Love Is Just A Tool
12] Middle Class "Above Suspicion"
13] Germs "Manimal"
14] Germs "Dragon Lady"
15] Germs "Strange Notes"
Max Flemming Combi
Rumor has it that Alan Myers (Devo's most prominent drummer) used a similar pedal in '76 when working out the magic 'Satisfaction' beat. A simple sounding, yet funky robotic pattern than was classic Devo. (recorded by Eno)
5/24/11
Building the Farm
The Soundtrack to George Greenough's 1968 surf movie written and performed by Dennis Dragon (before the Surf Punks ), his brothers Doug and Daryl, (the Captain before Tennille ), and Denny Aaberg, (before Big Wednesday ).
The lead guitarist Denny Aaberg was a keen surfer and well known surf writer from Pacific Palisades ("Big Wednesday" was based on Denny Aaberg's surfing youth, with Bill Pritchard who is also in this soundtrack band), while others in the band have been Beach Boys-connected in the 1980s-90s. Ernie Knapp played bass with the Beach Boys for a year or more, while Dennis Dragon did sound work for them.
THE INNERMOST LIMITS OF PURE FUN … DENNY AABERG.
By Mark Bannerman.
The year was 1968. The place, Lennox Head, on the North Coast of New South Wales. A blonde-headed man in a black wetsuit is standing by the shore as a cool, offshore wind combs the top of the waves that wrap around the headland, running down its boulder-strewn point. The world of surfing and surf photography are about to change forever.
The man in question is George Greenough.
Californian by birth, but drawn to the empty waves of Australia. He has a plan. It’s simple really. To make a surf film like no other.
Since the late 1950s, selected surfers had taken their film cameras, set up on the beach, and captured the art of riding waves. What they came up with delighted thousands, but what those films could not capture was the most frequently asked question from a non-surfer to a surfer ... What’s it like to be out there?
George Greenough wanted to answer the question. Not just what it was like to be out there, but what it was like to be in the tube or the “tooob” as Americans preferred to call it.
Strapping to his back what now looks like a very bulky film camera, in a waterhousing, Greenough kick/paddled his kneeboard out into the ocean, caught a wave and hit the button. The results are startling. The movie that delivered this incredible experience to surfers and non surfers alike was appropriately called The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun.
That footage alone would be enough to make this film a must-see, but Greenough has something else to boast of. When he began filming the band of surfers who called the North Coast home in the winter of 1968, the boards were around eight and half-foot in length. By the time he came back to finish the film, in 1969, they had shrunk to less than six feet. As he watched the rushes of his film it became clear he had, by luck, caught what’s now known as the shortboard revolution, in living colour. One more thing needed to happen though.
Greenough was an innovator and eccentric, and he wanted no dialogue, no script. Music would be the narrator. To create a soundtrack he needed a like-minded soul who understood music. For that he turned to a young college student he knew in Santa Barbara, California. His name was Denny Aaberg. George told his friend he wanted a soundtrack that would enhance the movie. Aaberg had no experience at all with soundtracks, and not much knowledge of studio recording techniques, but he wasn’t daunted.
Aaberg immediately contacted some local musicians he knew, the Dragon brothers, Dennis, Daryl and Doug. As he told me this week, “They were real pros. Dennis would sit by his drums with a four-track recorder, hit the record button, count the band in and presto. But there was something they all needed. If they were to do a soundtrack for specific scenes they needed to see the movie. George’s answer was simple. Project the movie on a sheet wherever they set up to record. Sometimes they would convene in a house, sometimes an empty cinema. One some occasions they would record outdoors when the light was right, with George rolling his projector and the band jamming on a musical theme or riff.
They needed a name for the band. According to Denny the name wasn’t hard to find. “The music we had was organic and our crop was music so we simply called the band ‘Farm’.”
It’s a wonderful picture. George Greenough would come to Denny and say, “I want the feel of groundswell coming across the ocean. Get the base to go boom ba-boom, you know Denny?” And Denny of course did know, because he was also a surfer. If you listen to the soundtrack now you can hear the interaction as the music and the pictures mesh perfectly.
In one marvellous scene George Greenough is driving his V-12, that’s right, V-12 Cadillac to the beach. The music drops immediately into 12-bar blues that perfectly reflects the scene before us. Famously too, as the surfers head for the beach, they come across a smashed-up, old car, and the song crumpled car comes to life. At every step the band is right behind the images.
The finale though is creating the music for the scenes where George and his camera drop into the tube, riding inside the wave. Years later Greenough would borrow a Pink Floyd track called Echoes for his excursions inside the tube on a film called Crystal Voyager. Remarkably Farm create a Floyd-type piece of music way before Floyd had done it themselves.
Talking to Denny Aaberg, down a crackly mobile phone line this week, I asked him was he amazed looking back how they were able, with no experience, to do all this. He paused for a moment and said, “The times were different. It was cheap to live, you could try things. Santa Barbara was a good place. I miss those times.”
Talking to him I was keen to know what happened to The Farm. Nothing much it seems. They were offered a recording contract but the other musos said, “No”, they wanted to do other things. Denny himself ended up writing the screenplay for the film Big Wednesday. Daryl Dragon became the Captain from Captain and Tenille ( a ’70s pop act).
“It was a shame,” says Denny, “Everyone went their own way.” His voice drops, and there is a short silence down the line. It’s easy to understand his reflection. The Innermost Limits captures a time, a simple time. It captures too a moment of magic, when people rode waves for the fun of it and fortunately people like George Greenough and Farm were there to document it. It’s now 40 years since the movie was released, but it’s no less powerful for the time that’s passed. It left its mark on Denny Aaberg, and it will almost certainly leave a mark on anyone who watches it. It was a time, Denny Aaberg says, “Anything was possible.”
Cooder’s second album was another trek back into the most obscure corners of American roots music. Dust bowl folk, blues, country and calypso got the Ry Cooder treatment, being recast in innovate new arrangements featuring various diverse instrumentation, but dominated throughout by his fantastic slide guitar work. Features Van Dyke Parks and Jim Dickinson on keyboards, Fritz Richmond and Chris Ethridge on bass, John Craviotta on drums and Milt Holland on percussion, along with various backing singers and horn players.
...
Track listing
"How Can You Keep Moving (Unless You Migrate Too)" (Agnes "Sis" Cunningham) – 2:25
"Billy the Kid" (Traditional) – 3:45
"Money Honey" (Jesse Stone) – 3:28
"FDR in Trinidad" (Fitz Maclean) – 3:01
"Teardrops Will Fall" (Dickey Doo, Marion Smith) – 3:03
"Denomination Blues" (George Washington Phillips) – 3:58
"On a Monday" (Leadbelly) – 2:52
"Hey Porter" (Johnny Cash) – 4:34
"Great Dream from Heaven" (Joseph Spence) – 1:53
"Taxes on the Farmer Feeds Us All" (Traditional) – 3:52
"Vigilante Man" (Woody Guthrie) – 4:15
[edit]Personnel
Ry Cooder - guitar, bass, mandolin, vocals
Van Dyke Parks - keyboards
Gloria Jones - vocals
Claudia Lennear - vocals
George Bohannon - horns
John Craviotta - drums
Joe Lane Davis - horns
Jim Dickinson - piano
Chris Ethridge - bass
Milt Holland - percussion
Jerry Jumonville - saxophone
Fritz Richmond - bass
Donna Washburn - vocals
Donna Weiss - vocals
Ike Williams - horns
Producer Jim Dickinson, Van Dyke Parks and Lenny Waronker
5/23/11
documenting the soul of Memphis and New Orleans
| William Eggleston's "Stranded in Canton" Directed by William Eggleston Twin Palms Publishers, 2008 Buy from Twin Palms. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
William Eggleston's pioneering video work "Stranded In Canton" has been restored and reformed by Mr. Eggleston in collaboration with film-maker Robert Gordon and is finally available, almost thirty-five years later.
The book from Twin Palms Publishers contains forty frame enlargements from the digital re-master, a brief appreciation from filmmaker Gus Van Sant, and a DVD of the 77-minute film itself, along with more than thirty minutes of bonus footage and an interview with Mr. Eggleston and Mr. Gordon conducted at the Toronto Film Festival.Shot in 1974 with a Sony Porta-Pak, the crazily careering Stranded in Canton documents a cast of hard-drinking Southerners with the intimacy, ease and instability of a seasoned participants. Whiffs of Southern Gothic are not new to Mr. Eggleston's work, but here they rise to the surface--fierce, tragic and proud." -- The New York TimesSome brief excerpts from the film may be found below:
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