Halloween: Rockabill-o-ween edition (twang!)

With Halloween coming, c'mon, you gotta listen to The Cramps.
(listen to darn near all of it, if you wanna)


Grab that DL on the DL

It might hurt, burn, sting, a little-- yet "when the devil drives, you needs must go".

If that song brings you to a dark place, friend, try this version instead: Roy Orbison's more upbeat and swinging version. This is closer to Casper the Friendly Ghost (in the best possible way).

Download Domino by Roy Orbison




And to finish, an earlier Roy Orbison version, that sort of splits the difference between Casper and Lux:

See, everybody loves sunglasses. "Sunglasses: Not just for Albinos Anymore!"

Literally Quite Shitty

My new place is shitty. Quite shitty. For instance, just seconds ago, the front door is open, as it sometimes is. There is of course snow on the ground right now, but sure, let’s get a little fresh air in here.


Dowload J Mascis, "If That's How It's Gotta Be" (ripped from vinyl, FYI)


The place is literally so shitty, that when we were unloading the moving truck,

There was feces in the toilet.

And there was no handle on the toilet.
There was, generously, a coat hanger attached to a string for flushing…
but the water was off.

That is sort of the low- highlight. But there’s more.
One day, someone let the air out of both my bike tires in the hallway.
The door is left open randomly, and is almost never locked until sometime after dark.
Actually, maybe it’s best that they let air out of my tires- since the door is wide open, flats would make my bike more difficult to walk away with!

There is a full size window in the shower. I have since painted over the window (to keep the children at the school across the street from learning too much); the previous solution, which was left for me to remove, was car window tinting.
I doth not jest! The car tinting had a wonderful dual nature: I could see out, and, right, we have to trust, still be unseen as I looked out on the neighborhood!
So the trashy local kids who drink and shout and cuss and spit and cough and yell and laugh (the demons) directly under this window, could perhaps be spied on while I take care of my hygienic needs.

Right after I moved in, someone left a couch (too big for the stairs) in the hallway.
For ten days.
Eventually, we all stopped being polite (like the Real World!) and shoeprints and bike tires began to leave their marks.

When I moved in, no cleaning or anything resembling cleaning had been done. Compounding this, I have a Chinese-style oven, which means two fans, high gas flames, and… covered with wok grease. The fans and hood had so much ‘ambient grease’ covering them, that there were little stalagtites of (somebody else’s!) fat hanging down. (still can’t remember difference between ‘tites and ‘mites)

On the food tip, it’s South Philly, so there are plenty of bugs. And the fridge, until I divined the Goldilocks temp, alternated between freezing my lettuce solid and melting my just-bought ice cream. It also runs all the time.
Ah yes, the fridge also is in front of one of two electric outlets in the entire house. None in bathroom (how am I to curl my hair?), one in bedroom, just one plug left in kitchen, so my sous-vide process must be done in the bedroom (not really).
But there are two cable outlets in the bedroom, so we have the essentials covered.

The cabinets were perhaps put in by a sadistic child with a learning disability, since one door opens into the side of another cabinet (i.e. opens 2 inches), and all of them have an inaccessible top shelf, unless you have a step ladder. They were not so kind as to supply a step ladder, although they did leave other furniture.

There also was no working smoke detector (took them a month to replace it), which became an even more pressing issue when my brand-new flouro bulbs kept burning out, just weeks after I put them in. I looked at the lighting (as if I’m some fucking electrician) and the copper wiring was so old, it was green.

There is a lot of great stuff about my neighborhood (not so much ‘a lot’ about my house though), and maybe I will share that with you all later. But right now, I feel like complaining, because I am like that wiring:
old and fussy and smoldering.

Which is why I played you J Mascis: he’s like that too.

Amanda Knox: JailBait, or JailBreak??

(jail)BREAKING NEWS
Amanda Knox's prior conviction just overturned!
(--> USA wins again! <--)


Live Motörhead: "Jailbait"
You can download the studio version here

Here are the headlines that I've come up with so far:
"Foxy Knoxy Bounced From Box"
"Foxy Knox Walks Free From Cell Blocks"

Note that at about 4:15 in above video, Motörhead also plays their song "America." It's about how you can't get good meth in Canada; you have to bring it up from the USA for any proper Canadian tour.
As I said: AMERICA wins again!

OR, you can celebrate her freedom with the Irish rather than the British.


Live Thin Lizzy- "Jailbreak"
And you can download (a non-live version of) the above track here

This song title is a bit more accurate as a descriptor of Knox, yeah?, since jailbait causes, rather than suffers, jailtime. Of course, her boyfriend also went to jail... well, he's her ex-boyfriend now... and he's been freed too.

So I'm not sure if she can qualify for "jailbait" status-
What do you think?

Allergic to People? Then "Be Your Own Pet"

I was just wondering, can cats be allergic to people? Why not, right?


"Wildcat!" by Be Your Own Pet

Think about it:
when my allergies are really bad, I rub my face a lot. Putting pressure on my nasal passages feels good.
(Ironically, putting pressure on them relieves pressure.)

Now think about THIS: cats rub their faces on things all the time. Margeaux's cat, which is now our cat (because we moved in together, which is great), not only demands that I rub her face, but if I am remiss in my face-rubbing-duty, she will rub her own face on anything: a table leg, say.

That darn cat seems to have a lot of pressure to relieve. Either she is highly stressed (...hiiighly doooubtful...) or allergic to humans.
These are the only two options.

Speaking of two options, here is another video of the same song.

(another Be Your Own Pet clip)

Now, this one is more fun, but distinctly more odd. As video background, it has what I'm guessing is Eraserhead (ne'er seen it). This plays for 30 seconds before the music starts, and then, hey wow, more clips!
Crazy clips! from the movie Freaks, more from Eraserhead, something with Brigitte Bardot in it (she's racist), and something which has to be a Russ Meyer film.

I Fought the Road- and the Road Won

One more from the Summer mix... more mixes in the pipeline too. Going to make one about girls, one very disco-y, and one about my birthday.

The mix re: my birthday may involve songs about bikes, since I fell off my bike while riding to get my birthday presents.
Falling = fighting the road and losing
Damage = minimal cos I'm tuff

(That is my arm- look at my Popeye-ass forearms. What can I say- I invented muscle!)
Presents = DVD player and new CD/DVD burner for computer
-- {both stopped working months ago- I was utterly without lazerz in my house : laserless}
-- {but no longer: thanks Mom and Dad!}

Bobby Fuller Four: "I Fought The Law"

( Various versions can be found here )



Here is the original version of Bobby Fuller Four's "I Fought The Law". Well, theirs is the original; this is a sweeeeeeet live version.
Except on old TV, so, probably not really even live. I dunno; old stuff is fun, but confusing, yeah?
One of the Four is sitting on a (prison-style) bunk bed; there is a woman in a cell, but dancing; the warden eventually starts dancing; etc etcet etcetera...

Oh, and you probably want to see my wound again:


You know the expression "Zounds!" (it is used much like "Gadzooks!")?
It's short for "God's Wounds"; lotsa expressions are just not-really swearing substitutions for for-real curses. I mean, even 'curse' is the word for bad words, because heathens used to invoke their gods in order to destroy their enemies. You used to curse when you wanted someone destroyed, essentially.

When you wanted them smote with holy hellfire, justly turned to dust.

And that reminds me- a girl stepped out in front of me on this fateful bike ride
(on purpose)
(before I fell)
and then when I said "YO!"
(honestly said just that)
because I nearly hit her
(but didn't - I'm a real aware rider, okay? My control is super-right)
she then replied, "You on a bike, Bitch!"
(which can be interpreted in various ways)
-- {as, 'you are a little bitch because you are on a bicycle- what are you, ten?'}
-- {or as, 'I can step out in front of you, because, Rock Paper Scissors style, walker beats biker')

So I think she cursed me. I sure the hell cursed afterwards.

One for the Road (heh) : Live (really live) Clash version too:

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.

Oh Boy! Obey the Oboe

Just wanted to mention that, because of my 'research' for the last post, I knew that mayflies have two penises.

2!

And at Quizzo in West Philly last Sunday, we were asked about it! And I knew! And we got a point!

Other than that though, you could say we were 'down and out' in West Philly.



youtube got it: James' Brown - Down and Out In New York City

This is from the James Brown-scored movie soundtrack I mentioned last time. See, he's using 'movie-style' instruments here- orchestra, flutes, etc.
Say which you prefer: Curtis' Junkie or James' ...Out In.. in the comments

I think somebody is rocking the oboe?


Which is of course a vaguely phallic instrument. So, if you had two of them, battling it out, dueling banjos style,
or a la "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" (which is a song I like, but do not like at Oscar's, which you can no longer smoke at, at all),
then it would look a little like a mayfly.
Because they have

2!

Oh, and please do not ever forget that oboe players have a posse:

Philadelphia From Salem - Romulus and Remus

I'm trying an experiment:
I'm writing two blogs simultaneously, so that you will have shorter posts, and more of them. We'll see if this works.
They are opposed twins, so we'll call them Romulus and Remus.

One is posted today, the other soon after.

I first was going to have one of my oft-postponed "X-Battles", where I pit two songs in band-to-band combat. This battle then morphed into these twinned posts; which then morphed into a different X-Battle.
There are a series of battles running here:
Oregon X Pennsylvania; (both posts)
Rain X Sun; (next post)
New band X Old band (aka blogbuzz vs reissues); (next)
New band doing a Cover X the Original; (this post)
Scuzz production X Cleanroom production (both).

Now, we will have drugged drugged drugged band SALEM trying to outdo the BOSS himself (who is probably really sober) .

Brustreet - SALEM

Above is Salem covering Bruce Springsteen's great "Streets of Philadelphia". Salem has an EP called "Yes I Smoke Crack". Here is a picture of an historic building in Salem, Oregon, with a crack in it:



This band Salem is probably named after Witch-Trials Salem, but Salem is also the meth-addled capital of Oregon. (I'm more concerned with getting things stolen in OR than PA: meth = stealing, and meth is not much of a drug out here in PA, because meth also = country.)
Salem the band sound like (recently legalized) Absinthe mixed with Oxycontin instead of sugar; like cough syrup mixed with boxed wine; like My Bloody Valentine mixed with the Knife and with strains of chopped and screwed Southern/Midwestern hip-hop : CHOP the pill; and unSCREW the wine.
Oregon is the only state with a two-sided flag. The flag, other than that, is very boring, and why are the letters all crooked??.

Salem is the capital of Oregon- and you ask, "Why not Portland, which I've actually heard of? Or at least Eugene, which has a big ol' university in it?"
Almost all state capitals are the not-biggest city, and this is done on purpose: it is to counteract the very real and very natural power (economic, cultural, geographical) that cities possess more of than do rural areas. This discrepancy occurs even when the cities hold significantly less people in them than the countryside.

(In Oregon, it is a rough balance, #-wise, between quasi-libertarian rightists and "Little Beirut" leftists: left lives in cities, and so has the upper-hand. IT'S A FACT!!)

Placing the capital outside of the largest city helps to strike a balance of the "naturally opposed humours"; the haves and the haves-less.
I steal this idea from Machiavelli. It occurs in both "On Principalities", his most-famous text (aka "Da Prince"), and his "Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius" and is key to uniting his championing of both quasi-tyrannical power and quasi-democratic republicanism.

--this is Prince on a high-school b-ball team:


Ahem! But, see, Rome's battles, with external enemies and with itself (have X have-less; city X country; Citizen X slaves), are appropriate here:
Rome itself was a productive clash of discipline (the Boss- how long has he been around? about as long as Rome itself: this requires discipline),
and the insanity of a dark violent youth: what do you think propelled and compelled them to take their many older neighbors as enemies, again and again? What do you think pushed citizen against citizen, time and again? (It wasn't drug disputes.)
What do you think drove Rome, with little rhyme or reason (but with plenty of instrumental rationality), to move from ruling nothing, to ruling 7 hills, to ruling from England to Africa to India?.
So Rome itself must be understood as a clash between Salem and Bruce Springsteen- this much has obviously been established- and the question is, who gets the greater share of the legacy?

Streets Of Philadelphia - Bruce Springsteen


Who won the battle? I expect you to argue, to battle this out in the comments section.

Dead-Metal (Turbonegro and Betty Page)

Betty Page died the other day. (These things do happen.)



The above song, retrospective of her passing, must be considered a loving, rather moving tribute.

Download TURBONEGRO's "(I Fucked) Betty Page"

Turbonegro are a sorta punk, sorta metal band. I just got into them recently, but supposedly they have 8 albums. (That's more than you.) This is how the lead singer typically performs:

(With that physique, you might be forgiven for being surprised that he didn't die BEFORE Betty Page...)
They are somewhat daffy, but it stays fun and doesn't get old. Partly because, musically, they are way rad. But even the lyrics, which are where the tomfoolery enters into it, rarely are straight-up stupid.
Turbonegro are daffy in that they talk about sex and coke and erections (independent of sex- see below) and "ROK und ROLL" and ask questions like "Do you do you Dig Destruction?" (to which they answer "Latino lovers often do" ???). They obviously aren't taking it all so very seriously, but they aren't in it just to joke either. So when, in "I Got Erection", they say:

"Every time I walk down the street - Erection -
When I think of blood I think of love - Erection -
When I set a house on fire - Erection -
When I dig a hole in the ground - Erection -
When I hear that death punk sound- Erection"

they are probably mostly joking. But when they say that 'Turbonegro Hate The Kids' (you know, 'the kids'), I get the feeling that they mean it.



They played at Madison Square Garden a little while ago, which is a slightly odd venue for them. And, slightly related: when uploading "(I Fucked) Betty Page" (click to download), A pop-up ad informed me that The Hold Steady (who I don't know about, but am sure that they are "The Kids" and very dumb and bad and all that) and their tour are sponsored by Duracell. they are sponsored by the Pink Rabbit!



This is why we all need bands like TURBONEGRO, by the way.
Well, one more for the road- and I promise, you all will like this song; it has homoeroticism, international travel, the bars of "New York, New York" (they call it that because they are from Norway, by the way).

Futurist Revelations - the Second (secular) Coming - Be Thankful!

Yeeeeuh... another mix, matched so mean! This one is the originally planned mix for The Second (Secular) Coming: this one deals not with my colossal narcissism, but rather with the purity of spirit which is my Divinity Proper.
HELL YES!

Link it up : The Second (Secular) Coming.zip

As a mix, it moves from slow-burning but intense/driven (1-3), to sprawling dirty grandeur (4-5), quietism without passivity (6-8), a darkness (9-11) pefiguring The End and Resurrection (12-13). Quite a history here...


Here is the cast of characters, in the order in which you ought to listen to them:
1 Eternity Is Here *The Gun Club* Danse Kalinda Boom
2 Coded Language *Krust (Featuring Saul Williams)* Coded Language
3 The Prophet *The Make-Up* Untouchable Sound—Live
4 Revelations *Panthers* The Trick
5 Dead Souls *Joy Division* Permanent
6 My Body Is A Cage *The Arcade Fire* Neon Bible
7 City Of Refuge [Acoustic Version] *Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds* B-Sides And Rarities Volume I
8 Be Thankful For What You've Got (orignially by Devaughn - live cover) *Yo La Tengo*
9 Death To Everyone *Bonnie "Prince" Billy* I See A Darkness
10 Share the Fall *Roni Size and Reprazent (Grooverider's RMX)*
11 I Swear *Tulipomania*
12 Back *Alpha* Come From Heaven
13 I Am The Resurrection *The Stone Roses* The Complete Stone Roses

DOWNLOAD : The Second (Secular) Coming.zip


Share the Fall- sparse and epic. Like Fitzgerald, as 'read to me' (i.e. quoted) by Deleuze:
"twilight on a deserted range, with an empty rifle in my hands and the targets down. No problem set — simply a silence with only the sound of my own breathing." The sound of a faraway, lifeless planet: it bakes during the day and it freezes at night.

Body is a Cage: Church organs, giving the grand sweep, the operatic heights, appropriate to the Declaration of Divinity.


Eternity is Here: Once started, this song begins to instantly, insistently proclaim itself. Whipcrack drums, plaintive guitars. Its insistence is almost a prosyletizing.

Death to Everyone: see the cover for a picture of the aforementioned planet.



Lyrically, this songs does this:
"Stars turn, balls burn / Coming kids are raging

Death to everyone is gonna come / And it makes hosing much more fun"

"So strap me on and raise me high / Cause buddy I'm not afraid to die
But life is long and it's tremendous / And we're glad that you're here with us".

Dead Souls- Joy Division made this song, which later was covered by NIN (on "The Crow" Soundtrack). You know what this one sounds like. It sounds like JoyDiv, so how could it not go on a mix about the Second (secular) Coming?:
Ian Curtis died by his own hand (as did Jesus- well, His Dad asked Him to die, and He consented - since He is, in a mysterious but essential fashion, His own father. He consented to His own death: that is, He is a suicide),
and the Crow character COMES BACK FROM THE DEAD to avenge wrongs done him. And what is Divine Justice if not supernaturally aided punishment of the wicked?

DOWNLOAD : The Second (Secular) Coming.zip

Back- Alpha is always slept on: I told you this already. Some fantastic male crooning here; you'd do well to check it out if you like Rufus Wainwright, or the more sedate Morrissey even. This song has a hazy quality: incense floating through a still afternoon.
But In A Barn.
A barn with a record player. And records (for sampling): old ones, very scratchy and mellowed with age.

I = Resurrection- Manchester Madchester : Woodblock like the cowbell in a Will Ferrel SNL skit. "I put my raver-sized corduroy pants on the same way you do, mate: except when I put on my pants, I make GOLD RECORDS!" (cue laugh track)

(please?).

Coded Language - Man, when this one breaks, it B R E A K S out for real. Massive world consuming clattering drums. Some lyrics (By the great poet Saul Williams):
"Motherfuckers better realize, now is the time to self-actualize.
We have found evidence that hip hop's standard 85 rpm, when increased by a number of at least half the rate of it's standard, or decreased at a third of its speed, may be a determining factor in heightening consciousness.

[somehow, he is actually rapping all these words -
- believe, brudda, It Works]

Thus, in the name of:
Robeson, God's son, Hurston, Ahkenaton, Khalo, Kali, Whitman, Baldwin, Ghandi, Gibran, Shabazz, Hamer, Holiday, Davis, Coltrane, Morrison, Joplin, Gaye, Hathoway, Nostradamus, Nefertiti, Shiva, Ganesha, Yemaja, Kennedy, King, four little girls, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Marley, Cosby, Shakur, Those Still Aflamed, and the countless unnamed!"


By this point of the song, trust me, we are all aflamed. Lit up by millenia of song and millenia of thought, all compressed into (the Coded Language of) quantized drums. INTENSE.

DOWNLOAD : The Second (Secular) Coming.zip

Be Thankful- a mellow little interpretation of the ol' soul-ish/reggae-ish classic. Be Thankful that I put this on there. (You might even snap your fingers during it!) Yo La Tengo is supremely good at covers- get into it and see what I mean...

Revelations- Panthers started out super-Futurist, very much in the vain of !Nation of Ulysses!. The Kids wanted their revolution, by gum, and they were going to knock on the squares until they got one. Now, Panthers seems more gripped by the ennui of being a hipster who knows that he's a hipster, and who also knows what this means: they have become nearly paralyzed by awareness of self-awareness. But the music hasn't frozen - oh no - they have moved away from any formulaic punk and added that rad heavy stoner drone psych grind that the Kids these day like so well: more Black Sabbath and less !Nation!. It's a good mix- heavy, but still with momentum/propulsion.

DOWNLOAD : The Second (Secular) Coming.zip

DEATH TO ALL KINGS
LONG LIVE THE PRINCE OF PRINCES