Kira Roessler

Black Flag 1983: Kira, Bill, Greg, Henry

Kira at work

Kira Roessler holds her own in the hardest working band in show biz: Black Flag 1983-85.

Stereo Sanctity

I'm keeping my commission to faith's transmission
Two speakers dream the same and skies turn red
Satellites flashing down orchard and delancey
I can't get laid cuz everyone is dead

Hey - gold connections
Analog soul waving in yr hair
Hey - hylozoic directions
She's talking blue streaks everywhere

Your spirit is time-reversed to your body
Stereographic mix-up field on field
It started growing up the day your body dies
Only apparently, real to irreal

Hey - stereo stations
Perfect image, kneel down
Hey - hypostatic information
Come on let's hear you turn it around


--Thurston Moore

(Phase 4 Stereo information card, from Children in Crisis shop, Abingdon, UK)

Pipeline/Kill Time

stretch me to the point where i stop
run ten thousand miles and then think of me
i think you know the place we should meet
don't worry if it's dark and i'm late

run me out a thin wire
help me to kill this, love
i'll join you tonight at the bottom of the well
feel around in the dark until you get the idea

i'm not moving doesn't mean i can't
flame on in my head
my best friend sucked his wife's blood and shriveled up
he was mistaken for sane

we move and groove and cut loose from fear
we should kill time, we'll shut it down
i've got a pipeline straight to the heart of you
opening in my head

bright glass on a chain being wound around us
the toiling of idle hands
dripping,
with guilt
a secret form of punishment
axes through skulls
shadow of futility
endless revolt
the shifting of light and shadows
dividing each existence

no-one is right
nothing is solid
nothing can be held in my hands for long
discontinuity

sandy beaches
bridges sinking into the sea
beautiful confusion
you're a fading memory

we should kill time


--Lee Ranaldo
(photo from Sonic Death #1)

In A Station

Richard Manuel and friends

Once I walked through the halls of a station

Someone called your name

In the street I heard children laughing

They all sound the same

Wonder, could you ever know me

Know the reason why I live

Is there nothing you can show me

Life seems so little to give

Once I climbed up the face of a mountain

And ate the wild fruit there

Fell asleep until the moonlight woke me

And I could taste your hair

Isn't everybody dreaming!

Then the voice I hear is real

Out of all the idle scheming

Can't we have something to feel

Once upon a time leaves me empty

Tomorrow never came

I could sing the sound of your laughter

Still I don't know your name

Must be some way to repay you

Out of all the good you gave

If a rumour should delay you

Love seems so little to save


--Richard Manuel

Tears of Rage

Richard Manuel and Bob Dylan

We carried you in our arms
On Independence Day,
And now you'd throw us all aside
And put us on our way.
Oh what dear daughter 'neath the sun
Would treat a father so,
To wait upon him hand and foot
And always tell him, "No"?
Tears of rage, tears of grief,
Why must I always be the thief?
Come to me now, you know
We're so alone
And life is brief.

We pointed out the way to go
And scratched your name in sand,
Though you just thought it was nothing more
Than a place for you to stand.
Now, I want you to know that while we watched,
You discover there was no one true.
Most ev'rybody really thought
It was a childish thing to do.
Tears of rage, tears of grief,
Must I always be the thief?
Come to me now, you know
We're so low
And life is brief.

It was all very painless
When you went out to receive
All that false instruction
Which we never could believe.
And now the heart is filled with gold
As if it was a purse.
But, oh, what kind of love is this
Which goes from bad to worse?
Tears of rage, tears of grief,
Must I always be the thief?
Come to me now, you know
We're so low
And life is brief.


--Bob Dylan Copyright ©1968; renewed 1996 Dwarf Music

Last Night's Listening

I fired up my old Dual 505 record deck last night and with an improvised mess of laptop, computer speakers, bits of wire and cheap stereo jacks bought from Amazon we managed to listen to a few of the survivors of my once great LP collection. Though my days of vinyl fetishism are long past it is lovely to hear again the natural intimate sound of the black disc with just enough snap and crackle to remind one of the old days. These are all quite special recordings in their different ways but Schwanengesang with Hans Hotter and Gerald Moore is a marvel of the age, two immortals making music as though they merely breathed, naturally and truly.

Dimitri Mitropoulos

(1 March 1896 – November 2, 1960)

I had intended to post this on Maestro Mitropoulos's birthday, but forgot. Consider it the first of my 'Smoking is Cool' posts. Also a great conductor, inspirational musician, etc...

the poetry of Leif Segerstam

Esteemed Finnish conductor and wildman Leif Segerstam has a unique insight into the expressive possibilities of the English language:

"I have words for everything that can be expressed:

Coincidentimently
Embryomalic
Electrifically
Fiveishness
Flimmer
Inexclickable
Fenugrish five things
I am fluxating in 8.
It is a Valsefy."

Graham Nasby has an extensive archive of Segerstam's astonishing neologisms.

Vintage album art

Ted Coconis, Album cover for RCA Records, c. 1971

Kitsch but striking sleeve art for my favourite Shostakovich symphony, in a sort of Klimt meets Hammer Horror style. I'm not sure about the big skull, which appears to have been painted with toothpaste, but I like the interlocking nudes and crosses just below and to the right of it:

A quick Google search reveals that illustrator Ted Coconis is still around, though his recent paintings lack the period charm of works like this Jefferson Airplane sleeve, featuring a clever parody of Hugo van der Goes' Fall of Man:

Ted Coconis, Album cover for RCA Records (detail), date unknown

A film poster, Dorian Gray, yields this characteristic detail, which would have made an excellent, if trashy, cover for Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita:

Ted Coconis, Film poster for Dorian Gray (detail), c. 1973

Bulgakov brings us back round to Russia and Shostakovich's 14th Symphony, a harrowing, death-wracked song-cycle for soprano, bass, strings and percussion. Composed in 1969, it sets poems by Lorca, Apollinaire and Rilke. Much as I admire it, I can only bring myself to listen to it every two or three years, so tormented and tormenting is it. Perhaps I'm due another hearing.

The Isle of the Dead

1883

All day I have been listening obsessively to Rachmaninoff's symphonic poem "The Isle of the Dead", the composer's response to the famous painting by the idiosyncratic Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin. Rachmaninoff was obsessed with and terrified by death, and his music is mournful and doom-laden enough. Böcklin's intentions were perhaps somewhat different. He did not give the painting its title, and declared that he painted in order to make people dream: “Just as it is poetry's task to express feelings, painting must provoke them too. A picture must give the spectator as much food for thought as a poem and must make the same kind of impression as a piece of music. Who would ever have been able to anticipate the effect of music before having heard it? Painting should pervade the soul in the same way, and as long as it does not do this it is nothing more than a brainless handicraft. There is no end to the poetry of the beautiful.”

I have indeed dreamt long over these depictions of what seem, in my gloomier moments, ideal places of exile. If it is not, after all, a tomb-island, it would make a perfect retreat. I have left off the customary titles so as not to impede the dreaming.

1878


1886

Crying Raincoat

Wanderlust

How to make musk oxen

The Genius of Will Oldham

One of my heroes these days...

"Can't Take That Away From Me" - a Mariah, uh, Carey cover of all things. Not sure about the song but the vid is real pretty

"Workhorse" - brilliantly simple video directed by Harmony Korine

"Lay and Love" - song and story splendid

Iron & Wine - Lion's Mane

run like a race for family
when you hear like you're alone
the rusty gears of morning
and faceless, busy phones
we gladly run in circles
but the shape we meant to make is gone

and love is a tired symphony
you hum when you're awake
and love is a crying baby
mama warned you not to shake
and love's the best sensation
hiding in the lion's mane

so i'll clear the road, the gravel
and the thornbush in your path
that burns a scented oil
that i'll drip into your bath
the water's there to warm you
and the earth is warmer when you laugh

and love is the scene i render
when you catch me wide awake
and love is the dream you enter
though i shake and shake and shake you
and love's the best endeavor
waiting in the lion's mane

The Love of Three Oranges

Magnificent Gypsy Fiddle for Romantic Nomads


Roby Lakatos

The Innocence Mission continues

The Innocence Mission

current obsessions and multimedia blogging experiments

download lovely track 'Brave'

see lovely video 'Bright as Yellow'

Effervescing Elephant