Head Rattle

I.I was surprised to see that my new car's manual starts out with a poem extolling the manufacturer's products. I imagine the technical writer was surprised to be asked to include a few lines of verse -- or maybe even to compose it. Or not? Maybe all manuals start out with a poetic invocation in Japan.

II.Samovar, odalisque, balustrade, mesallied: The Decemberists are clearly a band of logophiles.

III.I downloaded the Twin Peaks Archive -- an eclectic collection of over 200 tracks, ranging from jazz to country western to dark ambient. It amounts to 10 hours of previously unreleased music from the extremely melodic TV series Twin Peaks and its prequel film, Fire Walk With Me. If a sample track title like "Log Lady Presence" doesn't resonate with you... I can't explain it.

Link Mania

Sing Along with Webster

Dictionaraoke.org, aka "The Singing Dictionary," is a collection of downloadable mp3 files created by combining karaoke versions of pop songs with audio pronunciation clips from online dictionaries. Pretty amusing. I especially enjoyed the site's versions of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" and the Beatles' "Martha My Dear." You. Silly. Girl.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

Ambivalent; I don't have strong feelings one way or the other about iPhone 6 rumors. Ho hum.

Rankled by the continuing presence of a "Johnny on the Spot" in front of the construction site next door. I have never seen anyone use it. Why can't they make the first thing they construct in the building a rest room?

Disconcerted by the heavy police presence at the train station I use. Clearly, it's considered a potential target.

Distrustful of various politicians suddenly taking a pseudo-interest in me. There's a local election looming next month.

Sheepish about tripping and falling in public recently.

Gratified by finally getting a break, late in the game.

~~~

Meanwhile....

Take a sad song: 'Hey Jude' reworked in a minor scale.

Photo of the Week

Well, we're at the end of the holiday season, and it's time to take down these Xmas lights from our front portico -- returning it to the dull, ordinary front porch we're used to during the rest of the year.

Actually, I just made that up. This isn't my house, although it's a short walk from where I live in glamorous Jersey City. My own manse is more of a "New England salt box" style, to put it charitably. Well it's a box anyway. And we didn't put up any Xmas lights this year, for a change, being too busy with various complications involving our extended and not-so-extended families. Here's to a better 2013.

(Click the pic for a close up view. You won't be sorry.)

~~~

Meanwhile....

Random Sequence

[random phrases (from here) worked into a story]

Inexpedient Frippery

Hallucinogenic faker or godforsaken messiah? Dennis -- bearded, bony, age indefinite -- seemed to alternate between the two with svelte plasticity. Known to thousands as His Holiness Sri Swami Satchikrishnanandadananda, he lived in a yurt deep in the Adirondacks. "No inexpedient frippery for me," he said, explaining his lack of incense and yoga mats to Magda, an insectivorous chambermaid and inveterate spiritual seeker. "Only a true ascetic can offer enlightenment." "I seek halcyon perspicacity, oh master," Magda said, repeating a phrase she'd memorized from a meditation CD. Dennis felt a sudden, shamefully materialistic desire: he wanted a dictionary.

[not to be continued]

~~~

Meanwhile....

Honey or apiphobia?

The new album by two of my work colleagues, plus others, is here.

Much Ado about NOTHING

I was thinking today that I need some mood music, an extra-diegetic soundtrack for the quiddity of my daily existence. Feeling vexed yesterday, I could have used thumping, repetitive grunge rock. Today was busy as hell, and the hypothetical soundtrack should have included a Bach fugue or a Mozart sonata. Speed walking to the train station each morning? A loop of that amphetamine trumpet from "Penny Lane". Sleeping or meditating or daydreaming could be scored with Eno's Music for Airports. Low-grade frustration (a frequent companion) demands something minimal and repetitious. An excerpt from Glass's Koyaanisqatsi maybe? Feeling calm and self-possessed brings to mind the Twin Peaks instrumental theme, also called "Falling", although I find it uplifting. Writing, blogging -- just some random piano noodling, "tickling the ivories”, I think it's called, would do -- the sound of fingers tapping on a very different kind of keyboard.

Brain Dump: Priory Parkway

Here is the track listing for my album (if I had an album).

1. Aggregate Together
2. Idiosyncrasy
3. Maxwell's Argentate Gavel
4. Oh! Honeybunch
5. Cephalopod's Cultivation
6. I Want You (She's So Recondite)
7. Here Comes the Luminous Sphere of Plasma
8. Whereas
9. You Never Give Me Your Remuneration
10. G-type Main Sequence Star Sovereign
11. Mean Mr. Dijon
12. Thermoplastic Polymer Pam
13. She Came in Through the Lavatory Fenestration
14. Aureate Suspension of Consciousness
15. Convey That Albatross
16. The Terminus
17. Her Illustriousness

'Saturday'

Listening to a lot of Sparklehorse today, including Saturday.

And Sad & Beautiful World....

"Sometimes I get so sad
Sometimes you just make me mad"

Algorithm and Blues

Codeorgan is a site that takes any URL (which means virtually any site on the Internet), analyzes the content via an algorithm, and then composes a melody for it. This here blog apparently sounds like a meandering piano tune in the key of A accompanied by a drum loop. Disappointing! I was hoping for something more along the lines of "The Blue Danube" or even "I Am the Walrus". But I guess I do a lot of meandering here. That's sort of the point....

The Weather Channel's site produces a much nicer piece. Maybe I should write about air pressure and storm cells more.

Moon Tunes

Interesting band, with an interesting name, that I saw on Friday night at the Art House.

Moonchild is a novel by Aleister Crowley about a magical war between a white lodge and a black lodge (!) over an unborn child -- the "moonchild" of the title.

For information about rocket scientist and occultist Jack Parsons, go here and here.

There's something incantational about this group's songs....

Bang! Bang!

Watch an animated version of The Beatles' bizarrely jaunty little ditty about a serial killer here.

"Pataphysical"? I always thought it was "metaphysical".

'YOU are the Plastic Ono Band'

I guess everything comes back in some form if you wait long enough.

I used to play the album Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band in college just to freak people out. As you may have heard, the POB has reformed (reunited?) and even performed in concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last night, with original band members Ono, Eric Clapton, Klaus Voorman, Alan White, new member Sean Lennon, and a bunch of guest stars. I would have liked to have seen that, but there are videos of recent performances on YouTube, and maybe some of the BAM show will show up on there eventually as well.

Give them a chance -- Mummy's only looking for her hand in the snow....

The Beatles Never Broke Up...

...in another dimension, if you can believe this website. I can't, really, but the mash-up "tape" of post-Beatles solo songs you can download there is worth a listen. If the Beatles had kept going in the direction of the Abbey Road side 2 suite, they might have come up with something quite similar to this, but better of course. Still, it's very well done and amusing, in its way. So is the story of how it was obtained.

(via The Presurfer)

Number 9, Number 9, Number 9

It's 9/9/09, and the remastered Beatles CDs have finally been released, about a dozen years after they should have been, but oh well. With them, it's almost always worth the wait. I'm looking forward to buying the "White Album" again (for the third time), my favorite album of all. I like every song on it (except maybe "Wild Honey Pie" and "Don't Pass Me By", sorry Ringo), including "Revolution 9". I like eclecticism. I like collage. Culturally, in the West at least, we live in a fragmented time (still), and this double album, more than anything I've heard, captures the essence of that while still being engaging, entertaining, and fun.

The illustration above is the rejected cover art for what eventually became known as the White Album. I wonder if, had they used it, we would be calling it the "Animal Album" today.

Postscript: It sounds great. The muddiness of the original CDs is gone, and it almost sounds like you're in the same room with them. This is especially evident on the quieter tracks, like "Julia" and "Blackbird".

Yoko Ono / Plastic Ono Band

The Sun Is Down! (Cornelius Mix)

Your move. Yoko is like the Energizer Bunny.

'Fox Bat Strategy' Considered

I received the CD today. It has that 1950s-meets-1990s sound that I find appealing in a lot of, uh, Lynchian music (for want of a better term). "Ricky Nelson on acid," someone said to describe the Fox Bat sound, and I think that's somewhat apt. The band is the same one featured in the jaw-dropping Pink Room sequence in Fire Walk With Me, and if you're familiar with that music (which is on the FWWM soundtrack), you know what this group is capable of -- though nothing here is as heavy or ominous as "The Pink Room" or "Blue Frank." The album is dedicated to the late Dave Jaurequi, who provided the smoothly appealing lead vocals and guitar work. Lynch produced and wrote the surreal lyrics.

For some reason, the (ahem) online retailer I ordered this from sent me two copies, though I only ordered and paid for one. Have to think about who to give the extra one to....

'Fox Bat Strategy'

David Lynch and the Thought Gang band (I think that's their name) are about to release an album at the end of this month: Fox Bat Strategy. There's a stream of one of the songs, "Shoot the Works", at the Entertainment Weekly site here. Retro surreal.

'Falling'

Quite nice....

'Dark Night of the Soul'

This is an NPR page with a link to a stream of the recent album collaboration by Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse, David Lynch, et al ("one of the year's most mysterious albums"), that EMI has banned from release.

Give Peas a Chance

I've always had a taste for "weird" music -- I'm the only person I know who has actually purchased a Yoko Ono album, and I have a thing for obscure film scores. So I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the mp3 samples available from the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra. The orchestra "consists exclusively of vegetable-based instruments, although where necessary, additional kitchen utensils such as knives or mixers are employed."

The mp3s I listened to all had a nice beet (sorry!). Rather than an orchestra, the music made me think of a chorus of joyful mutants on some very damp alien planet.