More Beethoven, Mule!!

More rippin' of Ludwig the V: okay, you know the riff that powers "Paint it Black," right? Put the whole thing in a major key, instead of a modal minor. Whatcha got? That's right: pretty damned close to the famous "Ode to Joy." To illustrate: here's a version of each...(credit to Pete Seeger, Half Japanese, and Morgan Fisher's 1980 Miniatures compilation).

Mercury Van?

I've always thought the chords in Mercury Rev's "Lincoln's Eyes" were suspiciously similar to those of the Allegretto from Beethoven's 7th Symphony. Do you?

a planet where apes evolved from...the Troggs?

Musical apes! (Thanks to Superpaulafragilisticexpialidocious for the link...)

rhetorical inattentiveness

One car, two bumper stickers:

"I love my country but fear my government"

"Fearful people do stupid things"

...vanishes like a dream

Thursday was an unexpected treat. I'd gone to hear a talk at the Milwaukee Art Museum by Jon Langford, and thought it would be just that: a talk. The talk portion of the evening (led by WMSE DJ and station manager Tom Crawford) was entertaining, albeit covering much of the same ground as this week's Langford interview in The Onion - although the interview doesn't quite convey how funny Langford can be in person, nor does it contain one of the best explanations he offered for the Mekons' interest in classic country music: he'd noticed that a lot of country was about "drinking and failed sexual relationships, and we in the Mekons had quite a bit of experience with both."

The unexpected part of the evening was a brief acoustic concert, featuring not only Mekons cohort Sally Timms on vocals and what looked like a briefcase but proved to be a concertina, but also ex-Pere Ubu bassist Tony Maimone (playing an acoustic bass built on a banjo body (it looked kind of like this) and a woman playing violin and adding background vocals whose name I didn't catch (Jean or Jeanette something? an Asian woman but not an Asian surname... anyone have a clue?). Langford and friends did a few songs from The Executioner's Last Songs projects as well as a couple of Langford's solo tracks (the Hank Williams tribute "Nashville Radio" most memorable among them). The presentation featured a bit of a preview of the multimedia version of The Executioner's Last Songs, being presented this evening, in fact (for too much money). Basically the film projections, of Langford's paintings and other images, were more distracting than engaging; I'd rather just see his paintings, one of which was on display and proved far more compelling in person, in its detail and gritty yet shimmering texture, than in reproduced form. So an enjoyable evening with several of my musical favorites...

A couple of semi-obscure Mekons numbers: both sides of the Elvis-quoting "Untitled" ep: Untitled 1 and Untitled 2.

Hello, Dunsinane? My name's Birnam Wood

So I finally got around to watching the DVD half of the new Wire release, The Scottish Play (which is being sold as a 2-disc CD/DVD combo...an increasingly popular option, it seems). Filmed primarily in closeup, the CD and DVD halves document the same performance, from April 30 of last year. It's fascinating to see the bandmembers' different approaches to the material. With Graham Lewis's voice nearly shot (sadly), he's taking fewer lead vocal turns than ever before, leaving Colin Newman to act even more as a frontman. Newman plays up the role, capering up and down and moving about more than anyone else in the band. He's looking rather professorial in his glasses, while Lewis seems bulked up, and still looks as if he could knock over cinderblock walls merely by glaring at them. I wasn't certain that wasn't a Bruce Gilbert cardboard cutout over on stage left...until I realized his hands were, in fact, moving! And then there's drummer Robert Gotobed, or Grey as he's now known, whose head looks like one of those da Vinci sketches (as seen in the album cover photo at the "being sold" link above) and who does an extremely impressive imitation of a drillpress, especially for a man in his mid- to late fifties. In fact, all members are positively inspiring in their energy and intensity. There are very few examples of successful rock artists in their fifties and older who have not blanded out, turned to country or blues, etc.

Musically, while there's no let-up in intensity from the earlier work of Wire mk. 3 (in fact, if anything the version of "Surgeon's Girl" here seems faster than Wire mk. 1's original), there's also very little change. If the rumors are true and Bruce Gilbert has left the band, it may be because this version of Wire, in marked contrast to the first two, hasn't seemed to progress from its starting point. That's not really a complaint, from me - but if your conception of "Wire" is a band that does not stand still (except literally, if you're Gilbert), then I can understand a degree of disappointment.

The DVD also features four tracks not represented on the CD (including this version of "Comet"), from an installation by Es Devlin for the band's Flag: Burning show recorded in April 2003. This is filmed as one static shot, with each bandmember behind a scrim on which is sometimes projected extreme closeups (Lewis's eye, Grey's nose, Newman's mouth, Gilbert's eye) and behind which additional film or video is projected. I think you would have had to have been there...but the music is, again, bracingly done.

advice to terrorists: choose the right victims

If I were the New York Times, I'd watch out: the courts' treatment of Eric Rudolph might give Ann Coulter the idea to put her preferences into action. She might end up in one of those cozy "Club Fed" cushy prisons she and her ilk are always going on about...but how bad can that be, right?

my back pages

For your listening pleasure (or displeasure, as the case may be), I've added mp3 links to a handful of older entries:

Of Scientific Correspondence

Concerning the Disorienting Effect of Rapid, Repeated Circular Bodily Motion

A Peculiar Real Estate Stratagem

Extreme Guitar Hatred

Concerning the Identity of a Caretaker

Reasons to Stand Closer

Concerning the Unemployment of Generals

A minor Fall, a major lift

yet another addictive website

This one courtesy of the Editrixie: Wordcount. Because it's based on both written and spoken language, it's probably more reflective of actual frequency of usage than a purely written sample would result in. (Although since it's based on British sources, it probably skews Britward.)

Amusingly, certain words in sequence create some telltale phrases: "America ensure oil opportunity" is a sequence from 992-995, for example. My favorite so far? "Beefheart chambered royally resonating" (68447-68450).

Also: while "Beatles" (12851) is not, in fact, more popular than "Jesus" (1845), "John" (266), "Paul" (884), and "George" (913) are. Poor "Ringo," though...bringing up the rear at a lowly 40490.

if you should make a sound...

So, I finally found a CD copy of an album I've coveted for quite a while: the "original soundtrack for a video-film by WonderProduct" entitled Fuck Your Dreams, This Is Heaven. (Has anyone ever seen this "video-film"?) This is an album of covers, mostly Syd Barrett songs, but also two Velvet Underground songs, a Jefferson Airplane song, a Yardbirds song, and a Patti Smith (!?) song - all done by various combinations of folks from Minimal Compact and Tuxedomoon. Except for the version of "Ocean" these versions aren't revelatory - but they do offer a Euro-post-punk take on psychedelia...which proves to be an oddly blocky, strange concept. Here, for example, is Peter Principle's version of "No Man's Land": instead of Barrett's swirling confusion, Principle offers, first, an almost militaristic setting (that grim bass drum, and the low-register, doubled vocals), but offset by rambling glockenspiel (an instrument featured quite a bit on this CD) and later, a disorienting drop into some odd sort of conversation. Partly, this seems almost tongue-in-cheek - "Ha, this is what psychedelia was all about!" - but it also offers, by other means, a similar sort of entry to a mental playground...even if this one is outfitted with rusted shards of rebar jutting from broken concrete blocks rather than plasticine porters with looking-glass ties.

Around the same time (1986), Colin Newman recorded with a musicians from the same, Belgium-based crowd (including the immortally named french horn player, Rino Christ) on the decidedly odd Commercial Suicide. (In fact, the two albums were released on the Belgian label Crammed Discs only three catalog numbers apart.) No one should have been surprised that Newman ventured quite far indeed from any of the sounds he'd put out with Wire...but a mix of orchestral instrumentation and booping, bleeping synths was still probably unexpected. Unexpected, but not unsuccessful: somehow, on "Feigned Hearing," for example, he manages to combine the most obnoxious, fakey synth sounds, arrange them in a near-minimalist style, and come up with an oddly affecting pop song. At least it works that way for me.

What's this? Yes, you are correct: those are links to mp3 files above. I'll occasionally be posting sound files here from now on. I have no particular program in mind for what I'll post, although I'll probably avoid in-print stuff on major labels (gee, I wonder why...). At any rate, should anyone with any legal rights to anything I've posted here object, please drop me a polite e-mail, and I'll take it down. They'll generally be up only for a couple weeks at a time anyway.

yes, but could he have defeated the vampire women?

More on the religion beat: apparently, a movement is afoot to make Pope John Paul II a saint. While this seems to be yet another symptom of the kind of thinking that puts everyone who anyone's ever heard of in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, I think it's really just a case of media misinterpretation. Newspaper reports claim that crowds were shouting, "Santo! Santo!" - and assumed that (being Italian) they meant that the Pope should be sanctified.

In fact, they were simply expressing their devout wishes that this man be made the next Pope.

Coming This Fall!

Here's my idea for a sitcom. It's called That's My Jesus! and it's based on the concept that Christ's Ascension into heaven was just a cover story, a sort of divine Witness Protection Program, and that Jesus really went back into business as a carpenter, under a different name. The show picks up Jesus's life twenty years on, after he's built up a successful carpentry business ("Joshua Josephson Carpentry, Inc.").

Peculiarly (or fittingly), Israel circa 50 CE looks a lot like the mythical Southern California of sitcom fame (of course, that's also where it's filmed), and the overall look is a cross between '60s/'70s SoCal sitcom and The Flintstones (the cartoon - even though this is live-action - not the movie).

The fifty-three-year-old Jesus (played by John Goodman) turns out to look quite a bit like Elvis in his later years. He's put on a good amount of weight; he's shaved his beard, cut his hair, and slicked it back into a jet-black dyed pompadour, accompanied by classic 1970s Elvis sideburns. He even has a propensity for heavy rhinestoned sunglasses and blinding white sequined, uh, robes. (This is still the first century CE, you know...) He's now semi-retired and has married a nice Jewish girl, Mary (played by Rhea Perlman). Mary's sort of a new-agey, former hippie type, with long, graying hair - and her involvement in various pseudo-mystical isms drives Jesus bats. Several secondary characters provoke situations and drive plots: Jesus's old buddy, Nick (played by Ringo Starr, in a bald wig, beard, and long stringy dark hair) - who's constantly trying to get him involved in various harebrained schemes a la The Honeymooners - most prominent among them. Jesus also has an uptight, idiotic young employee (played by Christian Slater), only ever seen in a suit and tie, whose conformity and utter cluelessness motivate a few plots and always provide the butt for jokes. (Yes, here it's sorta All in the Family with generations reversed.) Periodically, the Old Man (who is never named, not even called "Dad" - we just assume who he is) drops by...even though he's omnipotent and all, he insists on being embodied as a decrepit Floridian elder...faded plaid Bermuda shorts and Izod polo, sandals with black socks pulled up to his knees, big ugly thick plastic glasses, and a walker. (I'm seeing George Carlin with some age makeup in this recurring guest role.) He is nevertheless always accompanied by the usual choral swells (which might just be what he's listening to on his special silvery gleaming iPod) and glowing light. He's a bit demanding, of course, and is a bit disappointed that Jesus never really lived up to his expectations.

(Note: I needed divine intervention just to get Blogger to work these days...)

my carpenter's out and running about...

Okay, hie thee over to Fluxblog immediately, and listen to the live R.E.M. track Matthew's posted.

Makes me remember when they were a great band. If only there'd been even one track with this kind of energy on, well, at least the last two albums. Sigh...

oops - she did it again

Shortly after this photo was snapped, a feral Britney Spears piddled on the carpet and greedily devoured the small, rodent-like dog she is seen grasping here. Britney's trainers expressed befuddlement, claiming that she hadn't acted up like this in public for at least a year.

ps: a follow-up on the April Fools comics thing (see that day's entry).

when comics collide

St. Patrick's Day. Darby Conley persuades Stephan Patsis to pretend he's Irish and go out for a "few" drinks. Hours later, as the bartenders glare at them and get ready to flex some closing-time butt-kicking muscle, the cartoonists are overheard discussing this "great idea" for a comic - each of them convinced it's his idea. Notes are scrawled on beer-stained coasters; cabs are called; drunks are slept off and, next day, a hangover haze fails to prevent each man from executing his "great idea."

Two weeks later, the strips are published on the same day. Fellow cartoonists snicker, and gather around both Patsis's and Conley's houses hoping to see the two duke it out - and provide fodder for more strips.