The Serpent's Wisdom

Have you seen Jack-In-The-Green?
With his long tail hanging down.
He sits quietly under every tree ---
in the folds of his velvet gown.
He drinks from the empty acorn cup
the dew that dawn sweetly bestows.
And taps his cane upon the ground ---
signals the snowdrops it's time to grow.

July 30, Boston: Ian Anderson fronts an orchestral concert of Jethro Tull's music. I'm going. Anyone want to join me?

I saw Jethro Tull live in 1992 with layitlarge; Anderson is a marvelous entertainer. As i watched the concert i could picture him wandering from town to town as a bard, the kind of person who's company is so easygoing and enjoyable people will ply them with food and drink just to keep them around for an evening or two.

My record collection was lost in the flooding after Hurricane Katrina. I haven't written about it before because it seemed like a pathetic kind of thing to whine about, what with all of the horrible things that people went through after the hurricane, and after that it hasn't lingered in my consciousness long enough for me to write about it.

When i moved to Boston from New Orleans last year, i moved by mail. That is, i mailed what i could afford to mail, and gave away or threw away most of the rest. My album collection, about 300 LPs, were left -- safely, i thought -- in my friend JJ's closet, because i didn't have the money to mail them (or any idea how to actually mail that many LPs). Since we'd been planning to go to Mardi Gras in 2006, i figured i'd bring along some extra money to take care of that then.

JJ's house took on three feet of water in the flooding after the hurricane. I haven't actually conversed with her regarding my albums -- she has enough to worry about. But i've written them off.

Most of the music was replaceable. It was a great collection of music -- 70's metal (Blue Oyster Cult, Black Sabbath, etc.), a lot of punk and avant-garde, quite a bit of new wave, and jangly mellow stuff from the 70's which i went through a phase of listening to. When i was an angsty teen, music was hugely important to me, and every record in that collection was agonized over and carefully hand-picked.

I haven't actually had a working turntable in years, so i'd spent my adult life schlepping them around from place to place, with the intent of setting up a turntable so i could perhaps digitize or at least copy to cassette my favorite records.

Some of it is irreplacable: a copy of Psychic TV's Album 10, for example, one or two Joy Division bootlegs, an early pressing of George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, Current 93's In Menstrual Night, various extremely-hard-to-find avant-garde industrial records, things like that.

But at the top of the list of irreplaceable items is a copy of the record i made in 1987 in Charlotte, NC, with my band, Waffles Can Kill. (That was the best name we could come up with, i swear it.) We recorded a few songs in a studio and then paid a vanity record publisher to print 200 copies of it. There was some problem with the records and we sent them back, and never followed up on it, and then we disbanded and i went back to Austin to go to college, so it seemed pointless to pursue the matter further.

Before we sent the records back my bandmate Brent and i took one copy each of the records for ourselves. They were flawed, but it was our record.

All things must pass, indeed. I just wish they had passed after i had digitally copied some of it.

Moby (who's new song "Lift Me Up" has quickly become one of my favorites) recently wrote a powerful entry in his blog about misogyny in music. As seen here in feminist:

i respect the prodigy and i respect eminem as talented and relevant musicians, but i spoke up because i found the misogynystic content of their lyrics(among many others) to be deeply offensive. even if they themselves are not misogynysts i found it irresponsible that they, and many others, would release music that glamourized misogyny.
2 months after 'smack my bitch up' was released i went to visit a friend of mine who was in hospital after being beaten by her boyfriend. she had brain damage and multiple fractures due to his pushing her down a flight of concrete stairs.
misogyny is not funny. it is not a joke. and it should not be treated lightly.
[snip]
it's disgusting that people in the media and the press have celebrated and glamorized music and musicians who write lyrics that glorify misogyny and homophobia. there is nothing glamorous about homophobia and misogyny. homophobia and misogyny are disgusting and vile and represent the worst and most atavistic elements of the human spirit.
i asked a rhetorical question a few years ago, which was: 'if a musician made a record wherein he talked about killing blacks and jews would he get covered in the press and played on radio and mtv? if the answer is 'no'(as it should be), then why is radio and mtv filled with music that has lyrics about killing and brutalizing women and gays? is it somehow less offensive when women and gays are brutalized and killed?
any employee of a record company or journalist or radio programmer or mtv employee who has promoted and celebrated misogynystic or homophobic music should be ashamed.
you have blood on your hands, and you should be deeply, deeply troubled at the culture that you've helped to create.

I was going to do the "six favorite songs" meme, but I can't narrow it down. Instead, here are the 18 songs I have rated "100" on my Launchcast station.

( Read more... )

Recently, Launchcast became the second internet service (after LiveJournal) that I actually pay for. It has become a big topic of conversation for the entire household, since secret_willow and I became excited about it. It works well for me, because most of my music is still in analog formats which I cannot easily listen to. (I still have a large collection of LPs in a friend's closet in New Orleans, too.)

First, it greatly amuses me that they have material from artists like Nurse With Wound and Einstuerzende Neubauten. The music business has changed a lot; to get LPs by these artists back in the day, you had to go to special record stores or go to record conventions. Furthermore, friends or schoolmates looked at you funny or laughed out loud if you tried to talk about it.

Another way in which this has been interesting is that it has enabled me to listen to music which has been important to me at all stages of my life, side by side. Many different songs or styles of music call up emotions and memories from different parts of my life. It is strange, for example, to listen to a song by Christian Death or Sisters of Mercy (which were my favorite groups in the late '80's) and note that it doesn't have nearly the emotional impact on me that it did back then.

I can also see that it is inspiring some evolution in my music preferences. For example, I've discovered a strong new interest in a few artists I had decided previously I didn't care for, such as Tori Amos and Tears for Fears. I've rediscovered a few groups I'd lost interest in a while ago, like Joy Division and Killing Joke. Some of my past favorites have held up (Jethro Tull and Blue Oyster Cult) while others haven't, so much (America). I've become interested in a few new groups I hadn't heard before, like Thievery Corporation and Levinhurst.

I also have now, for the first time in a while, a clear "favorite song:" "Playground Love" by Air, from the Virgin Suicides soundtrack.

Say, does anyone know how if there is a way to recommend a specific song for someone?

Question. Is this a "meaningful and artful expression of calm and peace in a hectic time," or is this a waste of a good pipe organ?

BERLIN - In an abandoned church in the German town of Halberstadt, the world's longest concert was coming two notes closer to its end Monday: Three years down, 636 to go.

The addition of an E and E-sharp complement the G-sharp, B and G-sharp that have been playing since February 2003 in composer John Cage's "Organ2/ASLSP" — or "Organ squared/As slow as possible." The five notes are the initial sounds played on a specially built organ — one in which keys are held down by weights, and new organ pipes will be added as needed as the piece is stretched out to last generations.

The concert is more than just an avant-garde riff on Cage's already avant-garde oeuvre, which includes a piece consisting of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence and one for a piano rejiggered with screws and wood stuck between the strings. "It has a philosophical background: in the hectic times in which we live, to find calm through this slowness," said Georg Bandarau, a businessman who helps run the private foundation behind the concert. "In 639 years, maybe they will only have peace." ...

After debates in Germany about what exactly "as slow as possible" could mean — anywhere from a day to stretching on infinitely — the group of German music experts and organ builder behind the project chose the concert's 639-year running time to commemorate to the creation of the city's historic Blockwerk organ in 1361.

from World's Longest Concert Adds Two Notes

This summer, as many of you probably recall, I was stricken with a case of chickenpox.

When one contracts varicella as an adult, there is a 25% chance that a neurological or respiratory complication will develop. But I avoided that fate, spending the week spaced out on atarax (as the itchiness caused by the vesicles was right up there with the worst agony I have ever suffered) and playing around with Acid 3.0.

The song V.I.T.R.I.O.L. was one result of the stuff I did that week. It is a blend of Indian rhythms, deep synth pads, and house rhythms. At the time, I was perplexed by the deepness of the trance this song inspired when I listened to it. I was highly skeptical that anything like a song could actually induce a trance. It seemed more likely that it was an effect brought about by the medicine, or virus, or both.

Now that I've learned more about the parasympathetic nervous system and the way it works, I understand that ritual or indeed even music can indeed bring about altered neurological states. And so, this song, as something which accomplishes that, is one of my proudest creations.

I am in love with this song. I liked the radio version Seal did with Jakatta a little more, but the album version retains most of the "zing." The hopefulness and feeling of purpose and vision in this song is infectious.

I feel like the sun, I feel like the rain
I feel like I just found reason for living again
'Cause what I've been dreaming, I know that it's real
I know there's just no changing the way I feel
You're into my head, I'm out of my mind
I feel like I've just found reason for being alive
And I have a secret I think you should know
I feel like I just can't keep it, it's deep within me and I feel like I'm losing control

Can you see my vision
Of a red hot summer in wine?
When love was the feeling
With no indecision
We were turning that key inside
To get in the moment