Serious Serial Vol. 2: Titular

OH PART TWO!!!
As I just posted, new things happened (which is, of course, the same old story: new things Just Keeping Happening).
I got some new-old books, all with great titles (hopefully, they read well too):
Middlemarch, by Georg Eliot. (Georg is a GIRL!, by the way.)

Diary of a Madman, and other stories: Gogol. This is the actual cover of the book that I bought: used, very, I'm sure you can see.

N. Gogol is well-known for his novel, Dead Souls, ahem:



An Even Better song, everyone's new favorite Joy Division song, is below. Be a deary and listen to both, why don't you? You ask: why put both then? I reply: because the theme of today's blog revolves around TITLES- that is what 'titular' means, you little dirty- and so I was compelled to post the song enTITLEd "Dead Souls". You recognize the decisive and deciding logic now, I'm sure.



More Books. Thomas Mann's Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man.

Flounder, by Günter Grass. The Flounder of the title is a character:

a talking fish.

I started watching movies again. Recents: Jesse James meets Frankenstein's Daughter, and Hour of the Wolf (another great title); this movie is a little more serious than the other. It is directed by Ingmar Bergman, and deals with
Love,
Art,


and Madness.


Oh, how very Euro.


Both were worth watching. Well, JJ VS FD is worth it, if you are me (you aren't) and were sick (you might have been). Don't tell me if you were- I don't want to hear about it. I get enough detailed descriptions of my students' illnesses, thx.

Serious Serial Vol. 1: Decisive

Lots of news on my end. Really important stuff has been going down, such as:
New Toilet and Toilet-related Environs!
New Records!
New Books!
New Lifestyle: watching movies!
----- I'll be talking about these in a two-part installment. Exciting, this serial blog action, correct? -----



(download Willie Hutch: "Get Ready For the Get Down" )

The above Willie Hutch track, or jam I should say, is in the vein of the Supafly and Black Caesar jams I posted back a little bit. (back a bit'tle?) It's from his album, "Mark of the Beast" (nice title...)
But on the toilet front (even though this song is decicedly and decisvely NON-TOILET), I got a new toilet the other day. Mine was cracked... don't know how. But now I am repainting my bathroom, which means that we have to say goodbye to the bathroom art.
No more classic chalk line-drawings, a la the Lascaux caves.

At one point, the above drawing morphed into the one below...


Here is Jeffrey's thoughful contribution:

Like normal Jeffrey Stuff, it appears to be merely scatological. Now, it is that, but it also has other aims: The Eternal Question, "Why do 'I' Exist?" has been thoughtfully integrated into the three headed Penis Monster. Thus, the Penis Monster has achieved its own species of eternity.

Willie Hutch has achieved his own species of eternity, through sampling. He's been amply sampled by West Coast hip-hop producers; horns, a little swagger and swing, a lightly dark cinematic feel. Tracks called stuff like "Vampin'" and "Mack's Stroll". If I were a producer, I'd be into it. He wrote songs all over the place; he partly wrote the Jackson 5's "I'll Be There", which is so very a stone cold classic. (If I were a jungle producer, I would have sampled a little of The 5, and lots and lots of Diana Ross and the Supremes; just getting that out there.)

Roughly on the topic of me being a producer (I would be so good at it: true, obvious- I'd be decisive, you see?)-
There is one more, as-of-this-moment final AMX mix in the pipeline. It is giving you the soulful tunes a la Pulp Fiction. Soul comes in two varieties here: sad old country and soul jams. Quick heads-up: James Brown, Ricky Nelson, Dionne Warwick, Al Green, and of course, my recent favorite, Jerry Butler. It'll devastate ya; decisively, naturally.

Get Loose, Philadelphia

This weekend, Love Train pulls into town. Love Train will have tons of great soul and RnB acts (about many of whom I've dropped knowledge before) playing, all under one roof. All represent the classic "Philly Sound"; smooooooth jams from mostly the 70's and mostly penned/produced by legendary producers Gamble and Huff.


Download "Get Up Get Down Get Funky Get Loose" by Teddy Pendergrass

You should go, but you can't: tickets start at $55. (One site selling tickets insists that the cheap tickets have "awesome" views though; the mid-price tix have merely "great" views, and the most dear tickets have "brilliant" views.)



Love Train is a concert supporting the recent compilation of the same name, which aims to put the musical descriptor "The Philly Sound" into people's minds, right up there with "Motown" and "Stax".
Playing are Jerry Butler,
The O'Jays,

the Delfonics, the Jones Girls,

Harold Melvin's Bluenotes (which used to have Teddy Pendergrass in it), and the (new) Stylistics.

I've told you about Jerry Butler multiple times before; Internet tells me that he has an album called "Sings Assorted Sounds With The Aid of Assorted Friends and Relatives"

and Internet implies that he is a Freemason.


The Delfonics had a bigBIGbig hit with "Didn't I Blow Your Mind (This Time)", which I believe the New Kids on the Block re-recorded. So, you've heard the song before, guaranteed, whether old or "New" (Get it?). You also might have heard it when I included it on this mix, which is about how I am the best thing going these days.

The Stylistics were the first of these bands that I knew by name, way back in college. Not surprisingly, my knowledge/ownership of "The Philly Sound" much expanded once I actually lived in Philadelphia.


The first song by the Stylistics that I loved is called "Pieces"; I still love it but am usually annoyed by the rest of their jams. A little saccharine, a little cloying, a little treacly. All the lead singing is done in a falsetto, FYI, which you either like or don't (I like).