Visions of Bowie danced in their heads

I'm a sucker for traditions and it's that time of year again! When we make some hot cocoa and snuggle up to watch Bing Crosby's Christmas Program. Oh wait - what's this? Bowie lives next door to Bing's Christmas palace? Oh, marvelous! Really fine.

Electric Miles and Miles and Miles

"We're not going to play the blues anymore. Let the white folks have the blues. They got 'em, so they can keep 'em. Play something else."
- Miles Davis in Notes and Tones, interviews with Arthur Taylor

Miles Davis went electric with In a Silent Way (1969). He followed that up with Bitches Brew (1970), A Tribute to Jack Johnson (1971), and my fave, On The Corner (1972).

On the Corner's personnel is stacked with the usual Davis suspects: Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, Mtume, et al. And it's like Jazz, Rock, and Funk are strutting down the street together on Grounation Day and they run into the three hot chicks Freedom, Space and Love and they just start dancing... Oh hell, I can't describe. It's a vinyl slab of party sugar?
Nevermind...Just look at the cover above (which is amazing). And watch the vid below, which is live in Vienna 1973. (Pete Cosey and Reggie Lucas on guitar, Dave Liebman on sax, Michael Henderson on bass, Al Foster on drums, Mtume on percussion).

When Children's TV was Weird, and We were Weird Too

Bad news: I could not find footage on the internets of Buffy Sainte-Marie performing "Codine," which I was singing all day.
Good news: Back when Sesame Street was balls-out weird, Buffy and Fred the Wonder Horse mouth harp jammed "Cripple Creek."


UPDATE!
Next, Buffy explains breastfeeding to Big Bird! YES! When 100% hippies ran public television it was obviously AWESOME. The name of Buffy's babe is Dakota "Cody" Starblanket Wolfchild.

Freakfolk community, how have you not yet produced a band called Starblanket Wolfchild? Slackers.

Happy Bday Kenneth Patchen!

Tomorrow (december 13th) is the 97th anniversary of the birth of Kenneth Patchen. Let us all raise a glass for this man. Were my records not in storage I would throw the Folkways Love Poems side on the 'table and have a plain supper and be wonderful.

"A great deal has been said of the handless serpents
Which war has set loose in the gay milk of our heads
But because you braid your hair and taste like honey of heaven
We go together into town to buy wine and yellow candles."

(We Go Out Together In The Staring Town)

Peter Brotzmann has released some beautiful interpretations of Patchen's poems - 14 Love Poems (FMP) and Be Music Night with his Chicago Tentet (Okkadisk). Be Music... features Micheal Pearson reading the poems while the tentet shwrils around it. (Shwrils=weird typo that I have allowed to become a word. A volunteer, if you will.)

Here's a link to a Poetry Foundation blog entry on Patchen's sweet sweet painting poems. Love the little animals!

And finally, here is a Robert Creeley reading with a little shout out to KP.


May your Kenneth Patchen Birthday be sweet.

Erica Pomerance is a documentarian in Montreal?

I apologize to those of you who are more tuned in to the beat of progress and history, but I'm blown away by my recent googling of Erica Pomerance. She released You Used to Think on ESP in 1968 and then faded away, her happy weirdness never to be heard again. You Used to Think is a head-scratchin beaut - a healthy stew of 60s New York folk groove, free jazz and awesome drug induced usage of studio technology. I'm a sucker for a double-tracked vocal, and the title track may be my fave use of the ol' double track ever.
I was told, and I believed, that she had disappeared like a puff of the goodsmoke that fomented those tunes. BUT DUDE that is not the case.

Blastitude published a great interview with the lady a few years ago that I apparently missed. She is a documentarian! She lives a normal life in Quebec! She sings to her kids!
The Blastitude interview also has some juicy anecdotes about the album sessions. Apparently it was all recorded in two nights - one with jazz guys and the second a "snowy, acid-laced night." Excellent.
And here is her imdb page - where her best-known film appears to be Dabla! Excision, a film about the movement to stop Female Circumcision.

She's going to be Ms. March in my "Gone Ladies" Calendar for '09.

Life Changing Decision

Here it is. I'm going to tell my parents that I'm going back to law school next semester but instead I'm going to follow the Dead with Lindsay Weir and Kim Kelly. DO NOT be an asshole and nark me out.

(there's prob better footage than this, but I was in a hurry...)

More Greatest Moments in Dylan at the Grammies

While we're on the topic, let's relive the Soy Bomb Incident from the 1998 Grammy Awards.
Bob Dylan performed Love Sick from Time Out of Mind and around about the 3 minute mark, a young "multimedia artist" named Michael Portnoy swooped in to share a little What with us all.

Dylan's sideways glance is described by some as "startled" ... but I submit to you this evidence. Dylan kind of just ignores Soy Boy, he keeps the jam alive.
Oh, and PS: Kelsey Grammar is kind of a queef, isn't he?

Locusts Sang: Bob Dylan Tells Us What

As this country was just one month into Operation Desert Storm, we celebrated our recording industry with that annual pile of turd The Grammy Awards. Phil Collins took home Record of the Year, Mariah Carey won Best New Artist. And Dylan slammed down a multi-guitared version of Masters of War as a prelude to his "Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award." (You can watch the song, but the real treasure starts at 04:35)



Somehow, he managed to castrate the entire room.

"It is possible to become so defiled in this world that your own mother and father will abandon you. And if that happens, God will always believe in your ability to mend your own ways. Thank you."

Sparks: More Than Just a Tasty Bev

'Number One Song in Heaven' : More goodness outta '79.

Giorgio Moroder is all over this piece and that is groovy.

Cabaret Voltaire: More than just a Dada HQ

cabaret voltaire Nag Nag Nag - a danceable single way outta '79.

Lennon: More than Just the villain of my Yoko post

I'm sorry if it seemed as though I was poopoo-ing John Lennon in my Yoko post. I didn't mean to hurt you. You wrote a lot of great songs.
Like this one:


This was Roxy Music's only #1 hit, topping the UK charts in March of 1981 and my research reveals that they were unseated by Buck Fizz's "Making Your Mind Up." Ouch. Because I was but a babe and living in the American States at the time, I did not know this song. So I just looked it up and HOLY COW. It's like an Up With People B-Side.

Vinyl Upgrading: One Dude's Trip to Amoeba

me: what records did you sell back?

Ben: the dead ones 7"

cut the shit 7"

social coma 7"

ruination 7"

down in flames 7"

ds 13 split 7"
me: What did you buy?

Ben: listening to dylan's Saved right now

me: WHOA

Ben: i'm pressing on

Yes, my man just traded a shortstack o Hardcore for 80's Dylan. The way life should be.

Only Squares Hate Yoko

No. She was not just a famous dude's girlfriend. No. John did not introduce her to music. And No, she did not break up the Beatles. The squareness of anti-revolutionary culture suffocated the Beatles. It was you, dude. KNOW THIS.

Let it be known: if you dis Yoko in front of me I will snap at you. Not only because Yoko Ono was an accomplished artist before she even set eyes on John Lennon; not only because she was hell of ahead of her time. Because I see it as part of a larger problem: marginalizing women in music and art to the position of girlfriend/groupie.
Lady Yoko is the "high preistess of happenings." Dig.
Yoko was all up on the NY art scene in the late 50s: her loft was a hotbed of performances and art frequented by the likes of John Cage, LaMonte Young and other hip illuminaries. She began collaborating with George Maciunas in NY and together they sparked up the Fluxus movement - an international avant-garde movement that remains challenging and influential. She met JL cuz she had been flown in to London to perform Cut Piece (which she released as a film in 1965 - just one of the 11 she directed during the 60s), and was setting up her accompanying exhibit at a London gallery when that bespectacled dude walked in. Check out this essay on Ono by Robert Palmer. So dudes. Educate yourself or I will drunkenly blow up at you at some smoky nightclub situation. I will gesture wildly and point at you. I might even spill a little bit of my drink on you. Just be ready.

Her FluxFilms are great; I saw most of them recently at a Fluxus exhibit. EXAMPLE: Bottoms, 1966 (5:30 long)


Moral of the story: You squares better stop hatin'.

Jefferson Airplane: Rooftop Rudeness

The following is an amazing scene outta One P.M (Godard and Pennebaker 1972). The sounds are downright RUDE and Grace Slick looks hot in trench and boots. Did The Airplane beat the Beatles on the surprise roof show idea? I think so.* DIG THE AIRPLANE.

"Hello New York! Wake up you fuckers! Free Music! Free Love!"
Oh, for the days when hippies wore leather and fur....
Here's another crazy ripping performance from 67 in Holland. Or '70? There seems to be 'tube dispute.
*My internet research has confirmed. This scene was filmed in 1968 and The Beatles did their thing in '69. Know This. Trailblazers ain't just a team in Portland.

Ich, Ein Groupie (1970)

Another film about two chicks gettin free by goin bad, but more in the vein of psych-drug-sex-trip-B-movie. Scope the opening sequence and you will realize how much you want to see it. No German required, they speak the international language of 4:20Lovin'


Post Script: If anyone tracks down a legit copy of this that will play in the States, please share. My friend had this on a disk in an envelope kind of bootleg... I think it may be hard to find.

SEDMIKRASKY!

I finally watched Daisies (Vera Chytilová, 1966) last night! Crazy Czech New Wave, where have you been all my life? It's a film that cannot be categorized...but if I were to try: a Surrealist masterwork with all the decadence of Kenneth Anger crossed with the experimental visuals of Brakhage and the goofy-giggly antics of Godard all wrapped up into a beautiful film about two chicks gettin' free by "going bad." Apparently the film was banned by the Czech Parliament because too much food - "the fruit of the work of our toiling farmers" is destroyed in the film. Chytilova is my new hero. Read an interview here. See this movie as soon as you can get your paws on it. Die, Die, Die:

Mousetrap

This is my only post today because it is Saturday and I am in a law library with a law migraine and this makes me laugh:

I feel you, kid. Getting a Mousetrap is so patty.

Spanish dudes also do Dylan

I present to you "The Highlights" from Spain. The best part occurs at 0:40 :

Cheap Trick does The Basement Tapes

And it's either buttwipe terrible OR entirely awesome.

Henson does 70s Southern Butt Ballad

From the Golden Years of Sesame Street


"I haven't seen my body since 1962"

And thus my tubin' day comes to an end

Because I have found this:

Antony and the Sappy Blog Post

I first saw Antony when he was touring with Lou for the first time. Lou announced that someone named "Antony" was going to sing "Candy Says" and the audience was a-grumble "...cmon Lou! You do Lou Reed better than anybody." Then Antony stepped up and sang and I cried.

Yes. Antony makes me cry and I love him.

Neil Young 'Puter Love

Trans is weird, but Trans live is weirder.


Scope the lyrics here "Fabricated from the curl of the hair / To the tip of the nail"

I've been wanting some Klaus live footage since years!

FRIGGIN RIGHT ON KLAUS


CENTO PER CENTO ROCK

Joe Dallesandro Again and Again

Here's Joe Dallesandro in Blood For Dracula (1974). He plays a gardener for a wealthy Italian family it what seems to be the 1930s. This may be the most rewind-worthy scene EVER.

Terence Stamp Review Haikus

I love Terence Stamp... not just because his foxy mug appears in many a great flick, but also because he is the proprietor of "The Stamp Collection" - a line of gluten-free food in the UK which is all DELISH.

As a Tribute, I will be penning a haiku for every Stamp film from the 1960s. (My apologies to Byron Coley and Thurston Moore - I'm totally stealing your "Trash Tanka" model)

Term of Trial (1962)

Alas! O.O.P.!
Olivier as a drunk
teacher: I want it.

This film looks great on paper, but maybe there's a reason it's not out on DVD? IMDB says it got two BAFTA nominations. That means quality.

Billy Budd (1962)

Young and pretty a
flower among brutes, you were
wearing mascara.

"We don't deal with justice here, but with the law."



The Collector (1965)

If Stamp drove up in
a van and tried to "collect"
you, would you run?

Stamp plays a cardigan-wearing weirdo who decides the only thing he needs to complete his killer butterfly collection is a real life lady. Weird and disturbing and great.





Far From the Madding Crowd (1967)

Mustached, you danced
with your sword in the moors and
Christie was so psyched

Epic and stacked: Stamp and Alan Bates vying for the love of Julie Christie's Bethsheba? Dude - its 60s British Cinema porn. The scene I pay tribute to here is a perhaps too long sequence of phallic sword play that Stamp's soldier character uses to woo Christie. Rewind-worthy hilarity.



Poor Cow (1967)

I've tried to find this.
A Loach film where Stamp is an
abusive thief? YES PLEASE.

This looks so great - a Ken Loach film set in working-class London set to Donovan tunes? Sign me up! It had been a while since I'd looked for it - this haiku exercise just inspired me to check on Netflix and voila! It has been released on DVD! More on this later...

Blue (1968)

Spaghetti Western
Sans plot - but with Stamp as Brit
cowboy with mission.

As a testament to the heavy Stamp phase I went through a few years ago, I actually purchased a used VHS copy on ebay for a few buck so I could watch this. It's pretty amazing; Stamp doesn't even try to shake the Cockney off his voice. Please see the following:

Teorema (1968)

Stamp knocked on the door
and then proceeded to doink
the whole damn family

This is my fave Pasolini film. Experts say there are only 923 words spoken through the whole thing. Terence Stamp plays a stranger who one day shows up at the door of an elite Italian family and then messes with them. Must see.



So ends my tribute. Eat Gluten Free.

WHAT IT IS

Here is where I will attempt to keep track of the things that butter my biscuit.