Monday 31 October 2011

Dispel Dances - Anstam (50 Weapons)



They're dispelling something here...I'm not sure what...perhaps the notion that modern electronic music must be either 'intelligent', ie complex home listening, or 'dance floor-friendly' (you know what that means). Either way, this is big, meaty, bouncy album that carries the weight of what you want from butt-shakers (did I really say that?) with a lot more going on in terms of arrangements and ideas. With the big bursts of cheesy quaver strings on 'Handsome Talks The Talk' come thundering drums, cymbal breaks and all manner of mixological shenanigans (yes, shenanigans, I've been wanting to write that for ages). Many influences, but thankfully no absolute genre-bound numbers here. 'I Shouldn't Even Be Here' sounds like a title to suit anyone who's been in the wrong club, and it starts as a sluggish, distorted beat before gradually taking off at a brisk march towards a kind of ecstatic triumph that's still tinged with dread. They programme a mean break, one strong enough to carry a tune and constitute it's core, on 'In The Bull Run'. Boomkat compares the piano on 'Statical' to Keith Jarrett, but I don't know which of his albums they've been listening to, and it doesn't matter because any reviewer of a modern electronic album who can shoe-in KJ is all right by me, even if it isn't appropriate. Can I mention Bud Powell, just for the hell of it? They end on a Schaefferesque note, in which there aren't many notes at all, but lots of silence, and what sounds like the non-silence of a record running in music-less grooves. Just fine, that is. Oh, and an electric bass gets a look in, a lovely touch on 'Watching The Ships Go By'. File under 'Post-Shackleton Next Level Prog Beat..er...whatever...but don't quote me, please.

Sunday 30 October 2011

Miscellany: Illustration, Miles, Buddy Rich, Machine Brain, Improvised Writing

Here's a lovely illustration of finches:



Here's Buddy Rich smoking a pipe whilst playing drums. Perfect Playboy music...



Incongruous Yamaha product placement tie-in with Roman Polanski's 'Rosemary's Baby':

Playboy July 1968

The clocks having just been turned back here in the UK, I marvel at the computer's ability to do so automatically. I think it knows a lot more than I give it credit for. It probably knows a lot more than I do. It knows about many things, except my life story, and my thoughts, which are deeply personal and sacred... unless I put them all into the computer and into the public domain. People do this. They feed the machine. Perhaps one day the thoughts people feed into the machine will be used against us all...the machine is learning from us...learning how smart, stupid, frail, creative, strong and boring we can all be. One day it may start to sing 'Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do...'...



The art of improvising in music is best illustrated by America's great Jazz musicians, as you know, although I recently had a little online debate about their qualities compared to those of UK exponents, and whilst comparisons in competitive form are somewhat stupid, it lasted a while, and at the end of it neither of us had changed our opinion, as is so often the way in debates. My friend suggested that the works of Nucleus were equal to what Miles Davis was doing around the same time, to which I responded: 'Rubbish!', without saying 'Rubbish!'. But it is rubbish, because for all the admirable efforts of UK Jazz Fusioneers they did not produce anything like the genius of 'In A Silent Way', or the 'Jack Johnson' sessions...or the music that can be heard on several 'live' albums made by Miles back then. No-one will ever convince me otherwise.


I was going improvise on this keyboard but got distracted by having to make a coffee, then clean part of the kitchen floor 'cause it was filthy and by the time I'd say back down the desire to do that had subsided - then I thought I'd write about not improvising, and how I'd love to be the writing equivalent of Charlie Parker, which, contrary to popular opinion, would not make me another Kerouac because Kerouac was more like Sonny Rollins in his later years, ie, improvising at length, don't you think? Whereas an improvised poem, brief, would be more in tune with Bop - and perhaps Lester Bangs fancied himself as an improviser, and no doubt was, more in the mould of late-Coltrane, Sanders etc...now I'm thinking that all writing is improvising to start with, but the parts that musicians cannot leave out are what get edited out by either editors or the writers themselves, which you could call 'mistakes', or meanderings, or longueurs if they prove 'boring', that being a subjective term, of course, because I don't know about you but I like the fact that blogging is a form of freedom of expression without an editor interfering unless the writer's internal editor gets to work and that, they say of novels, is very necessary in the end, and I agree to a point, but only a point, which depends on the writers attitude, philosophy, intent since, I do believe, that some of the most interesting parts of anyone's writing, should they be allowed to remain, are those free-range passages. Too much writing is the equivalent of factory farming.

Friday 28 October 2011

Album Cover Of The Week - Italian Hits 101 Strings


Magnifico. I picked this up months ago without even checking the record (it was so cheap, 50p), only to get home and find something else inside; a very scratched Nat King Cole album. And I really wanted to hear 'Cha-Cha Italiano'. No matter, this sleeve is a knock-out.


Thursday 27 October 2011

Warne's Pleasure Book For Girls no.6


Look how far this has travelled down the long dusty road of time...the handwritten dedication almost brings a tear to my eye. Eileen may be gone now, but her artwork lives on...see how she amused herself one day with the egg and spoon race illustration. No credit for the real artist, but I hope you'll savour these colour plates as much as I do since they have all the style of a Vogue fashion shoot. Some of you may find the story title 'A Muff At Games' amusing. Those who are bewildered, look up 'muff' in a slang dictionary. I couldn't resist scanning it!


 

 

 

 

Tuesday 25 October 2011

Books Do Furnish A Room...Questions The Magic Robot Cannot Answer







I was walking down the street thinking ‘I should do something other than leave a trail of gas emissions as I walk, but more than that, do something great, like what?’ So I think about writing a new book that probably won’t be a book at all but pages online instead. To write a great book! Then again, how many book covers have I read in shops carrying lofty claims to greatness yet they’re not famous books, they’re books loved by a few critics, that’s all! And the author no doubt still works in a full-time job, teaching, I imagine, not even literature, but science, biology, maths, history...perhaps thinking about his next book whilst his pupils are quiet, studying...yes, the next book...the last one didn’t sell very well despite all the reputable witnesses to its greatness, no matter...and so on...
  


Book titles on the middle shelf in front of me (from left to right):
It’s a Bitter Little World
French New Wave
Apollinaire
J. G. Ballard Conversations
J. G. Ballard: Quotes
Noir Fiction
War And Peace In The Global Village
I Seem To Be A Verb
McLuhan Hot And Cool
The Book Of Bond
The Global Village
Image – Music – Text
Meatphysics
Striking Images
The Human Province
Welcome To Mars
Rhythm Science
Pulp Culture
Anti-Story
Bodies Of Work
This Is Not A Novel
I Walked With A Zombie
Audio Culture
The Pocket Muse
Ernest Hemingway On Writing
Music And The Mind
The Hidden Persuaders
The Great Pulp Heroes
But Beautiful
A Life In Pieces

The Magic Robot rests in his box. I should ask him some questions...such as: ‘Since I know I will never read all the books I own, shouldn’t I sell some of them? But what would be the criteria for choosing those to get rid of?’ Perhaps not sell, since the amount a bookshop pays is such a paltry sum...give them to the local community shop, which sells all paperbacks for 20p, where someone may one day find ‘The Monkees Annual’ and be over the moon.
   Or ‘Does the presence of an unread book still add something to a room simply by being here? Or is that nonsense?’
   Or ‘Who should I bequeath my book collection to before I die? Should I list those worth a fair bit of money so that LJ may benefit from them? Would she bother putting them on eBay anyway?’ The Magic Robot is clever, but not that clever.

Books do furnish a room, as I tell LJ often when she complains about the space they take up, and reminds me that I probably won’t read them all. Look at the multi-coloured spines sitting there! Now, as so many book-lovers must have done, I dream of a method (a machine?) by which they can be read as quickly as an album can be heard...

In 1894, Kenneth Grahame, of ‘Wind In The Willows’ fame, wrote:
‘In book-buying you not infrequently condone an extravagance by the reflection that this particular purchase will be a good investment, sordidly considered: that you are not squandering income but sinking capital. But you know all the time that you are lying.’
He could not have foreseen the advent of eBay, and the breed of bookseller who haunts second-hand shops for the very purpose of buying books only to sell them. Another kind of book-buyer, such as myself, deludes himself that because the book he buys is worth considerably more than the sum paid, he may well one day profit from its sale on eBay. This rarely happens in my case, partly because I cannot be bothered with doing what’s required, and in a recession, the chances of anyone spending a great deal on a book are greatly reduced. Perhaps now is a good time for buyers. 

A book I once wrote is currently being offered at this price on Amazon. If that is not the definition of optimism on behalf of an online book-seller, I don’t know what is...

Monday 24 October 2011

Mah Fellow Americans - Ron Cobb Cartoons, Sawyer Press 1968


'I've always been uncomfortable around people who are very certain about their world and their values no matter how defined: left, right, in the middle, religious, irreligious, etc. So I find security in pointing out any valid example of contradiction or paradox within their framework of personality orientation or belief.'
                                                                                                                                         - Ron Cobb

'Edited and published by Art Kunkin, the Los Angeles Free Press was one of the first of the underground newspapers of the 1960s, noted for its radical politics. Cobb's editorial/political cartoons were a celebrated feature of the Freep, and appeared regularly throughout member newspapers of the Underground Press Syndicate. However, although he was regarded as one of the finest political cartoonists of the mid-1960s to early 1970s, Cobb made very little money from the cartoons and was always looking for work elsewhere.
Among other projects, Cobb designed the cover for Jefferson Airplane's 1967 album, After Bathing at Baxter's. He also contributed design work for the cult film,Dark Star (1973) (he drew the original design for the exterior of the Dark Star spaceship on a Pancake House napkin).
His cartoons from the 1960s and 1970s are collected in RCD-25 (1967) and Mah Fellow Americans (1968) (both Sawyer Press), and Raw Sewage (1971) and My Fellow Americans (1971) (both Price Stern and Sloan). None of these volumes remains in print.' - Wikipedia

I've tried to scan what I couldn't find on the 'net. Apologies for some shading, but the spine is unbroken and deserves to be kept that way. This is the 'First Printing, 5,000 copies'. I don't think it was ever reprinted.







Sunday 23 October 2011

My Wife The Dancer LP - A Vile Exhortation To Ignore Domestic Tasks


Look at this disgusting long-playing record. Here is a shameful strumpet who has fallen prey to the plague of immorality that has ruined the civilised world! Since the so-called 'emancipation' of women they have become slaves to base behaviour such as baring their flesh for profit and the pleasure of men. Contrary to the creator's claim, this is not a 'fun album', but a vile exhortation to ignore domestic tasks in favour of doing the 'Take-It-Off-Polka' and 'The Zip Strip'. I purchased this album in a charity shop having chastised them for peddling such filth. Had I not done so, it may well have fallen into the hands of an impressionable man who would have then set about corrupting his wife. Lest I be accused of promoting this kind of thing, I have not presented the whole image. I felt, however, that it was my duty to show you the depth to which the recording industry will sink in the name of financial gain. Shame on them!







Saturday 22 October 2011

Swinging Topless Tunes For The Playboy Pad - Frank Pleyer's Uberdimensionale Orchestra




'Uberdimensionale' is the word of the week, no question.

I know, you’ll think having all those Playboy magazines has turned me into a right smutmonger, but I swear this is a great album. Not great as in Stevie’s ‘Innervisions’ or Coleman’s ‘Shape Of Jazz To Come’, of course, but you guessed that by the sleeve, didn’t you?  For prime, swinging big band sounds circa 1969, however, you need look no further. Right from the off with ‘Sunday Love Affair’ the tone is set with a funky feel, then ‘She’s Gotta Have Soul’ takes things down tempo into that easy-but-hip groove. OK, there’s a blatant rip-off of Q’s ‘Big band Bossa Nova’ in the form of ‘Make Up’, but in the context of all that’s fine and dandy here, it’s forgivable. It’s all just right for life in a Playboy pad too, of course. 
   In ‘No Country For Old Men’ Carla Jean asks Llewelyn  where he got the pistol from. ‘At the gettin’ place’, he replies. Well as you know the ‘net’s full of gettin places when it comes to music. I got this album from here


Friday 21 October 2011

Neatniks, Playboy Dream Pad, Skateboarding In Style - Playboy Oct 1968


Another scantastic Playboy session...

Neatniks must be a new movement...I demand it.
 

A line worth trying?
 

Phwoar...
 

 

 


Predicting the future.

Skate punks take note...


 

 

'My Music, My Life', memoir by Ravi Shankar

Now this is a pad.
Uncropped to give you a real feel of the magazine...!


 

 
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