BlogAtomic Jukebox

Dead people dead people. What’s the obsession with dead people? It’s pathetic, long term sentimentality dressed up as cultural nostalgia; disguised more often powered beneath a thinly veneered cash mongering. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow – that’s the future; surely?

Somewhere amid the stolid ennui and drab 50`s architectural hangover of public housing, terrace drudgery and its impressive English expanse of 70′s decay, a monochromatic, glamrock, Bowie addled Ian Curtis drops offline like a broken photocopier, lost in a slow, teenage, pill-popping, post empirical breakdown; desperate to escape the concrete, the mindless cups of tea and the cookie cutter future of working class Northern doom.

This is the beginning of Anton Corbijn’s (clearly) well cut above the rest, zonked out yet fully loaded period biopic of troubled Wordsworthian conjuror and reluctant, walking medicine chest Ian Curtis. Charming period parochialism and flashes of brilliance dance like the gleaming of a shield across the screen with a subtle social commentary and an almost dreamlike documentary neo-realism.

Featuring an amazingly together, but probably fictive & unique Pistols moment, this film rises above the usual rock pop biopic manure eight miles high through soaring performances, beautifully shot sequences and absolutely stellar dialogue; somehow combining a gritty council estate of mind realism between panic attacks, unemployment and a hatred of hot dogs with the natural descent into family disintegration brought about through the vigours of being in a band. The highs, the lows, the guilt, the shit, the rubbish and the sycophantic bollocks – the vigours of keeping a promise, the failure on a personal level: it’s engaging enough to feel almost like living inside the intense dramatic narrative of your own life. If you have ever been in a gigging band North of London there is much to recognise, and, masochistically enjoy.

The sound alone receives beautiful treatment and the music, actually played by the cast, is superb. The band come across as an amazing Anglicised version of the Doors – without all the West Coast plastic trash – and as the unique messengers of New Mancunian pharmacological synth-rock and roll.

Sam Riley delivers an unbelievably convincing & metamatic Ian and Toby Kebble the fast talking Gallagher-esque, cock-sure hyperbole of their manager Gretton. The whole cast is on a slow burn. There is a delicately balanced harmony of realism and production value: no over mythologising, no glamour and  this film is almost entirely devoid of cliché.

Ian Curtis’ personal sorrow and struggle to make it from adolescence into adulthood is thoroughly and tangibly realised as he slowly and inevitably becomes a misfit in his own life. His final exit removes any polish from the cult of rock suicide and proves that in the fervour of performance and the tumult of success humanity is often the first casualty – that the power of music performance bends reality beyond its true perspective. This is a f**king fantastic film that is so good it absolutely aches with plangent, almost tactile realism and could stand up on its own if it was about nobody at all. As it is, it’s about Ian Curtis and Joy Division and also about the best music film around.

Being an artist is a bit like being on the run. Not from yourself or even from the law; not always from the cliches of tortured absinthe and psilocybin soaked outsider nightmares on the edge of sanity, society, reality and relegation to the infinitessimal depths of obscurity’s abyss. It’s more often about fleeing compromise, the nasty white envelopes from the bank and that ugly grip of responsibility’s black hand. It’s a foolhardy game, a minor war of attrition in the psyche between self belief, worth, recognition, ego and the inferno of fame and fortune. Everyone wants to set the world on fire, and we all have flint in our souls, but seas of regret and the menacing, damp, earthen creep of age soil our wayward journey and leave us shipwrecked upon strange shores time and again.To this end I have begun to paint and the journey starts right here.

Lots of new photographs from a trip around Aotearoa are appearing on the photo page

Shine a light. Well, it aint no euphemism.

At first I thought it was saved by Buddy Guy’s vocals, Richards’ face, Jagger’s gob iron (that means harmonica baby) and the rock steady, self effacing solidity of Charlie Watts combined with the amazing Woody. That’s Ronnie Wood of course, who, proves exactly why he was stolen from the Faces and given an offer that was probably impossible to refuse. That was aeons ago but he can certainly paint: with a guitar too. It’s a paintbrush of gargantuan proportions though with these fellers – they’ve been to the moon and back.

Bill Clinton introduces the band and a member of the crowd gives it the cigar treatment. It smacks of big-business but 45 odd years in any business has got to make it big. And initially seems a loose performance, a bunch of scruffy, ragamuffin, raven like millionaires; taking them back to Richmond in ’63 (my old man said they were terrible); suffering from the usual all-star guitar-jam over subscription and self indulgence as a dark circled Jack White is wheeled out for the ‘yoof’ (he was so incredible with Jeff Beck in London; though far less ‘Hackneyed’!). Oh yeah…what’s happening? It looks as though the hot chicks in the front 5 rows have been hired from Models One – by Bill Wyman, because he isn’t playing. But the backing band, including the stellar Bobby Keys are on form. I saw the Stones in 91? at Wembley and they blew the f**king sky clean off. The truth is it just gets better and better. Hotter and Hotter. Seeming far too well lit at the beginning, especially for a giant boudoir (is that a film thing?). Ron Wood sounds so damn good, especially on that reverse head Firebird and the old strat’ – it’s a slow burner of a gig and ultimately it’s still pretty f**king brilliant – despite being RUINED by a ridiculous audio mix that makes very little sense of Richards’ guitar, overexposing it in places. There isn’t much Guinness about which is odd, cause I met Ronnies’ driver in the nineties and he was made of that stuff…and more…

They’re a clever bunch, don’t ever think it was any other way dude, and they know exactly what they’re doing despite the swagger. These cats are too smart to die.

An absolutely stunning array of guitars, and clothes, are borne across the gig as an almost emaciated Sir Mick Jagger, ermine absconded in fear, but telecaster ahoy, preens, poses, perennial vanity perpetuate, prances and oscillates his way through the set: “You made the goat man cry” he wails. Poor Satan – he might have the best tunes but he can’t dance half as well Mick. He’s the xxxx ghost of Spike Milligan in Michael Jackson’s body.

Richards sings and it’s an ode to joy, hilarious but brilliant, beautiful too, in an almost self reflexive parody of decay, a carbon copy of my old man’s ancient south London bricklayer, just as comical, humble, track marks (I mean warts) and all, he delivers some stellar moments in rhythm guitar whilst smirking behind the evil twin. Thank God for Christina Aguilera – what an arse (ask Keith); apologies again, I meant voice.

But Jagger is great – the whole thing is all a bit tongue in cheek, and Keith even looks like he’s trying to remember which song he’s going to sing at one point, ‘cause strangely it ain’t “Happy”. He is however, amazing: like Max Miller, like Chaplin. They were once but they aren’t ordinary people anymore, these Rolling Stones.

I listened to it through a mono guitar amp which gave the whole thing a very honest, up close and dirty, directional sound, unlike it should sound in the cinema, as though Keith were right here in the room – you’ve got to wonder what the onstage monitor mix is really like.

The film should have really been called “Million Dollar Smile” because you can see it in their Faces: “I love this!” Richards seems to effortlessly convey, as he always does – and there goes another 500k or so. That’s what makes them Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the world, and the most downright real and honest. It’s great to see the Union Jack flying in the big Apple (“I hope THEY don’t get back together”) because understandably God might bless the Americas and although their greatest gift  to the world was ‘the blues’ (not FREEDOM);  he actually lives in the South East Surrey Delta.

And he owns a bloody great library.

The “extra” material is absolutely magnificent and it is worth seeing the film for this alone; I’m not a director – why is it an extra? Especially Paint it Black featuring Brian Jones’ ghost on guitar and Undercover of the Night. Rock the Hell On. Get the film out. Break out the vino, and rip a string off the tele’, but just don’t get yaself arrested in Toronto. Very Awesome and if you get to a chance to see them  – go.

The character of Bad Blake takes Jeff Bridges back, very briefly, to the Lebowski bowling alley for one more whiskey soaked, sweaty and alcoholically haemorrhoidal performance for a small crowd of old local cowboys and girls before he embarks on a biscuits and gravy tour heading for the horizon to follow an inebriated and swaggering sun as it slips, slides and tumbles beneath the horizon.

Blake is no bowler though but a washed out country singer whose rusty star is both faded, yet still feted, as he drives from one small time gig to another in his ageing Silverado. A chain-smoking but heart-warming slob of Dude-esque proportions; overweight, cynical yet sanguine, Blake just about survives on his back catalogue, eking a marginal living in the poverty stricken cryptography of his own myth. Bridges even breaks the frame for a split second; but it doesn’t matter, Bad Blake, despite his all too human fallibility and cliched propensities remains a charming wreck of a man and Bridges is as hypnotic as warm apple pie and French vanilla ice cream.

Beautifully shot with the rich, faded glamour, old glory, and stylized nostalgia of country and western mythology the entire cast (including Maggie Gyllenhaal, Harry Zinn, Robert Duvall and Colin Farrell) turn in an engagingly magnetic performance built around T-Bone Burnett’s awesome songwriting, Bridges’ magnificent portrait and a solid, albeit atypical story. Humourous, human and real, if you’ve ever loved, forgiven, failed, or maybe even been saved this one’s for you. If you haven’t it is still a fantastic film and the music is great.

The problems of recording. Apparently you are only supposed to be as good as your last recording, but what if no-one pays any attention to your latest effort at all? What is it like to be remembered most predominantly for something you achieved aeons ago?

Horrible…but seriously though if someone kept on banging on about something you had achieved ten years ago, let alone 30, you would be mortified and quite frankly bored and bemused by it. It might continue paying the mortgage, but really, that’s all you’d want from it. Any musician knows that by the time you’ve written the stuff, been to the studio, and recorded the songs you’ve more than likely moved on as an artist/band etc.; but has the audience? Probably not – cause they’ve just got the damn recording…at which time you are usually tired of and ready to move on from? Yes, it might be paying the mortgage but aren’t you a much more developed and experienced artist than the one who cut your “wonderful tonight”, or your “Purple Haze”. Dying is not always the most appropriate solution to this problem for some of us.

The wisest friend I have right now is a homeless drifter; he lives on the western hill, in the freezing, blasting wind, the rain and the cold. He has one bag, some thermal clothes, a hat, a sleeping bag…and that’s all. He has drifted around, since 1988 perhaps, from Greenwich London to Australia were he worked the tables as a croupier in some big shot joints and finally washed up here in New Zealand . He’s an artist, a highly knowledgeable and capable raconteur and a man of strange experiences – wonderful colloquialisms, aphorisms, self penned epithets and general wizened language….a creator of worlds. He is almost beyond caring – about himself. He accepts the slings and arrow of outrageous fortune, the vicissitudes of time’s smarting grip and the Devil’s fork with the sanguine air of a battle worn Lieutenant General at the Charge of the Light Brigade. He must have fallen out of the unlucky tree and hit every branch on the way down; when he hit the ground he still had a smile on his face. He’s up there in the cold and wet right now, under that silent, howling, watery crescent moon beneath the old granite remnants of Waterloo bridge, a tiny slice of home, of London – out here 35,000 kilometres away. Fighting his own personal, quiet battle to make it through each day. He doesn’t ask for nothing. He doesn’t want for much. He’s as honest as the day is true and the night is dark. He’s never been a criminal and he’s probably lost out for it. Alot of the things he says are filled with the quantum genius of a pandimensional time traveler like Jesus or an Elijah and he’d give his right arm to help you out if he could. And these are the people you need.

Who are the people in your life that really make it worthwhile? The fuckwitted, selfish arsehole, charlatan with the flash car, job, suit, contract etcetera (to hide behind) and a big mouth full of hollow promises, bullshit and posturing? Or that guy down the street with the big heart on his sleeve and absolutely nothing to prove, with nothing to win or lose?

If I had an ounce of happiness he wouldn’t borrow it, beg for it, lie, cheat or steal for it, nor find a way to buy into it, divide it, or even hide it. Just smile about it, laugh about it, share it around a little…let it grow, let it glow, let it all go…and smile a little, laugh alot…

My first encounter with big country outside of Europe was in Washington State. The sheer scale of the western country seemed to surpass anything before. The vast distances and spaces seemed immeasurable and the mountains even further beyond seemed impossible. We drove an old bronco out beyond Loomis and up into the mountains. Across a huge mid-alpine plain with one lonely old shed and climbed some more, high into the trees, a treacherous primitive road, littered with old rusty machinery from another era and pockmarked with bullet holes. We were walking up toward the summit at the end of the track when the temperature suddenly dropped, a heavy, heavy snow started falling; thick and fast. It only took five minutes before the ground was white. Visibility was poor, about 20 metres, If I guess correct. “We gotta get moving! Fast.” Dewayne was shouting from up the track. We threw our guns into the back of the Bronco and started the treacherous journey to the ground. I was thinking about the invisible drop into hundreds of metres of nothing at the side of the track. I was thinking about Dewaynes driving. I was thinking about THE SHINING.

I once met a girl in a Sauna, told her I was a musician, she invited me back to her place; besotted with fame, glory, cinema and singing. She played her music, it was all wrong, she couldn’t sing, the lyrics were meaningless. She read some of her screenplay – it was plotless, unfinished rubbish and she couldn’t tell me what it was actually about. She popped some pills and told me she was an actress destined for great things. Apart from being on the unwholesome and anorexic side of thin she was also mildly delusional. Her imaginary world existed quite wholly and was manifested through her sacred laptop. It would deliver her into the welcoming arms of global success and wealth; her screenplay was going straight to Scorcese or Jackson or some other cinematic mogul. She was going to ring them up and email it through. No sweat, it was going to be that easy for her. I slyly asked if she had Bob Dylan`s number `cause I  just wanted a quick chat.

I met her again six months later in a different city and her laptop had been stolen, and now she couldn’t write. I laughed, sardonically, I laughed out loud, said she oughta use a pen, it would help her, the theft was a gift in disguise. A chance to write properly, a chance to become productive, a chance to lose that fucking laptop-reliant-cant-face-reality-mindset. Its very easy to think you are working when you aren’t, being productive when really you aren`t. The mind has a great way of tricking itself, like an ear will always try to hear in tune or in time, to make sense from disparate, dissonant elements. She said,

“What the fuk do you know you`re hardly famous are you?”

No one worth a damn is doing anything for those reasons. I laughed again and left. It`s easy on a long journey like art or music or in developing your life’s work, your oeuvre, or discovering and beginning your mission to become waylaid by bad reasoning, to taste a bit of glory and start doing things for all the wrong reasons. If you are involved in something just for the glory, the fame, the gold and all that other “rockstar bullshit” you will probably fail. I spent the nineties working so damn hard and furiously towards some kind of selfish ego-driven success but it was only when I finally relaxed and started to do things for all the right, altruistic, selfless reasons that things started to come together. I started doing things for no reason at all in fact. I threw my ego away; smashed my old life and self to pieces, picked up the good bits and hit the road on a Kerouacian road trip mission of discovery with no real plan apart from the experience itself.

Live in Brighton circa 04.

Unfortunately they didn’t sound like the NEU of Hallogallo. Although it was a  very good live mixing performance, the overall timbre of the sound seemed marred by an over reliance upon digital technology, complexity, an overfrenetic proficiency in mixing, manipulation and the sounds it tends to produce. There were some great moments but in the same way that NEU have always seemed like CAN’S conservative brother, their modern show felt like a paper tiger. More soon.

Apparently, “the White Stripes saved rock and roll from the deathlike grip of Britney Spears in the 90`s”. Total. Bullshit. I can’t name names but the S.O.B. who came up with that one needs his head read.

Rock and Roll has never been on goddamned holiday in any of its nefarious or even more saccharine forms. In England in the U.K. the Nineties period proved a massively tumultuous period of rapid social change and upheaval underpinned with themes of social revolution, unrest, a national and evolving drug counter-culture and a genuine music underground all supported by a never ending kaleidoscope of Anglo-American musical crosscurrents, change and styles: grunge, brit-pop, shoegaze, baggy, hip-hop, house, rave, acid house, garage, techno, dub, space-rock (version 3?), techno-punk etcetera…etcetera.

Satan threw down his guitar, stayed home with some phat chronic an Atrai S.T. and bust his evil moves out across the surface of a Roland Groovebox but it didn’t matter he was still taking no prisoners and creating martyrs.

….Madchester…New york….Seattle….Camden….L.A…..or a field in Gloucestershire – that’s where it all came together. Do you remember when your Sister threw a party and 5000 people turned from as far afield as Birmingham? From bloody Scotland. Hitchhiking down the M6 with a photocopied ticket, a couple of E’s, and a mind that had quite recently and quite simply, just lately, been blown to merry fucking bits. Funded and powered by illegal narcotics, pharmaceuticals and whatever else anyone could get their hands on for kicks, the decade itself was set to self destruct. Maybe the Police got their kicks out of violence: bashing the crusties, moving the REAL filth, the youthful, the unemployed and the lazy; sending in the horses when the New Agers stuck around too long for the wealthy landowners. God Bless the Hippies? They were about as Green as a burning tyre in an Iraqi oil fire. God bless the NIMBY’s too. It was all still kicking in 1997 despite the government’s abolishment of public groups greater than 3 people – what a fucking riot? And what were seen to be the social ills of the time, ACID for example,  through a range of laws and the sudden disappearance from the press of anything to do with the counter culture,  the underground, or even the Shamen. Extinguish the lot m’lud. And what have we got now. Smoke Free Rock Quest. Quaint. and SHIT. I haven’t seen an ashtray for 7 years.

Did the White Stripes Save Rock and Roll in the mid to late 90`s? No f**king way.

Anyway some of White’s lyrics are spectacularly inventive without being too contrived; as many modern songwriters seem to be – as is some of his guitar work. Occasionally they fall down, as with Son House’s Death Letter; a schoolboy error. And the bullshit “garage” song with the LEGO video. It’s got no bollocks to it, and I mean in a PISTOLS sense – the video won a few awards though so it must have been good for the director, his lackeys, the Record Company cronies and a few other f&^%s laying about who needed an easy accolade or two. Dont forget the spotty dudez on the apple macs who put it together. Hell yeah!

…But on the whole they often deliver. Icky Thump – bloody heck – why can’t I pimp myself out? In a world of increasing homogeneity and gratuitous eulogising of the mediocre by the media simply for the sake of it it’s a beautiful sight to behold aberrations to the norm’ especially in the form of unique and uncompromising talent. When the marketing machine itself seems to become more a part of the product it promotes than the product itself, when the inherent qualitites of individuality have been crushed under the weight of commercialism and when all the corners have been knocked off, rounded down and filed into a useless dust by the “machine” then what is there left of real, intrinsic value. Luckily some artists are born with a respect for their art and instrument and a no holds barred approach to quality control. But SELLING OUT is actually freaking hard to do. Achieving both – magnificent.

Would it be true to say their production emphasises old school performance ethics over cut and paste digital laziness together with a clear and natural songwriting bias, and the sonic embrace of analogue equipment and techniques? Always Healthy. More music should be recorded on 2 inch tape & the like. Whether they saved rock and roll or not, which they didn’t, only malodorous & elitist platitudes say “it aint blues”, “it’s manufactured”; Admittedly Son House is unsurpassable.

The entire blues tradition is built from begging, borrowing, stealing, re-appropriating and ya’ll know it…
The same could have been said regarding the Stripes about Led Zeppelin in 1969. Critics probably did. I’m not saying they are equal, however.
Much blues seems to rely upon the cult of personality and myth most probably because much of it is so motif driven and intertextually incestuous it could even be argued that it therefore ceases to have much originality beyond the stylistic brilliance of the delivery/performance whatsoever. Perhaps that’s why there’s no shortage of blues greats to chose from and perhaps that’s why the Stripes can speak to a young modern audience. Undoubtedly their record company have the intelligence to serve them up in the right way – there are only a few performers who really fell out of heaven…(little richard, elvis etc.)
MUch of Dylan’s oeuvre is also a complete re-appropriation of numerous blues/folk/traditional works – and that’s the polite synonym for plagiarism. No one is really adding to the lexicon, it isn’t possible – we live in an increasingly intertextual musical world of only 12 notes. As you know I saw them in London with Jeff Beck and they were tight, on fire and white hot…shit hot, as we used to say, not shite hot – there’s a difference.

Son House’s unsurpassable Death Letter should be sent into space, or buried in a time capsule as it encapsulates almost perfectly the human condition…No one will ever come near it.

But what irritates more than anything else is
everyone banging on about Robert Johnson – none of you are even listening to him at the right speed:

As usual Jeff Beck treats us to some great tonal and highly controlled guitar playing….but you just cant trust him to do anything too damn predictable, which in itself is an accolade. Symptomatic of much orchestral collaboration is “the dreadful and woeful opera cover”. There is very little that Beck has ever recorded that hasn’t proved edgy enough in one way or another to warrant admiration of the highest order but this may change that – but only momentarily. It’s no ditty or rag either this piece, and it’s certainly an emotional country mile from the “classical LITE wish wash” of the usual pop crossover M.O.R. bollocks. However, for those of us who don’t dig Puccini it’s a bitter-sweet pill to swallow. Me? I’ve never turned down the Beck medicine. BUT in a world populated with so much laudible, deific and majestically titan classical music and where previously Beck has proved his mettle pairing his incandescent skills with great cover choices from the traditional ‘Greensleeves’, ‘Nadia’ by Nitin Sawhney, ‘Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers’ by Stevie Wonder and ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ by Mingus or delivered such sublime pieces as ‘Where Were You’, etcetera etcetera he has chosen Nessun Dorma, which just feels a little bit hackneyed, overblown, populist and bromidic. After such a brilliant performance at Ronnie Scots what the hell is going on here? Nothing that can’t be forgiven. It’s more than likely that in the live situation this could really flow like water and cut like sunlight through the trees. It just sounded so measured and deliberate on the recording: at least he’s always doing something new. Some Gesualdo please Mr. Beck. Or Handel. Or Bach. Or…

That’s the soulful sound of Darren Watson, a resonator, a valve mike and a truckload of talent turning up the heat!

Last year I had the lucky chance to interview Darren Watson when I was writing for the Jamarama Guitar Blog and this year I was lucky enough to see Darren just recently cooking up some great blues tunes at the Ruby Lounge in Wellington whilst enjoying some fine, fine ales amongst the company of like minded blues rock afficionados.

What particularly caught my attention was Darren’s band. They were tighter than two coats of paint, never overplayed and the bass man was definitely off the hook – as fluid as a lavalamp in zero gravity.

Darren also cooked up some serious glass finger bottleneck on the stratocaster that really had the place buzzing. Every now and then the band segued into classic guitar motifs, such as Jimi Hendrix‘ melody hook from Third Stone From the Sun; and, I was pleased to see Darren bashing the ole guitar with his fist every now and then to generate some feedback. Something we can ALL relate to. It was a versatile set and a great show with plenty of varied pace and Darren’s range, tone and fidelity are something else – not only that Darren Watson is a great guy so go to his show – say “hello”, and  check out his records at www.darrenwatson.com.

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…look out for this in your friends – do they change colour around money? if so – ditch them.

Don’t limit yourself and think that playing the guitar is all about technique – and don’t for one second think that
open tunings are really all about slide guitar glass finger playing. The idiosyncratic style of seminal folk maestro, peace messenger and Woodstock Festival icon Richie Havens illustrates a far more expressive and luminous, emotionally complex language born of a primitive, feeling based approach to music and the guitar that speaks effortless volumes. Havens is as deep as the sea and as wide as the sky when he picks up the guitar and he plays it like he means it, like he can save us all with it.

His opening performance at the 1969 Woodstock festival in New York is something so inspirational to behold it’s nothing short of a call to arms, the divine fiat heralding the apocalypse, the second coming, the end of time encapsulating all the hopes, dreams, tragedies and fears of the festival, the decade, the generation and the human race. It is an epic moment in musical time.

Coming on first at the Woodstock Festival Havens held the audience mesmerised and was called back for encore after encore. Having run out of tunes, he improvised a song based on the old spiritual “Motherless Child” that became “Freedom”. By the tiem Hendrix headlined at the end of the festival playing the apocalyptic “Star Spangled Banner” to a thinning crowd, it was all over. At the end of the day when you pick up that guitar, you have to play it like you mean it, make it yours and own it; no matter how you play it.

Lists: ‘handy’, convenient; essential for buying vegetables, but absolutely hopeless when it comes to music, that is of course unless you ARE a vegetable…All too indicative and symptomatic of the atrophied, leprous A.D.H.D. riddled malaise of the modern mind which when flooded with such a multiplicity of choices, can’t make up its own….mind…..anyway…nevermind…
I thought I would have a go at listing a few favourite records of the decade about to close…it was difficult…very difficult…After 5 minutes I began thinking in terms of genres, then I began thinking about exactly where I was between the mock apocalypse of the millenium and circa 2005: in hell, for a while approximately. Then I began to consider artists I liked, those whose music I wanted to buy and not steal, those who were cool, those who were not..the usual self indulgent, self reflexive rubbish. During the latter half of  the decade I had been on the other side of the world with nothing much at all and had more or less stopped buying music listening to music mostly made prior to the millenium – 30`s, 40`s, 50`s, 60`, 70`s, 80` and 90`s…ad I mean from the previous 4 centuries as well…so what I am listening to….

Cheik Lho – lamp fall – click here
Dunjen – ta det lungt – click here
The Late Great Daniel Johnston: Discovered Covered – click here
Various – now is the winter of our discount tents – click here
Radiohead – in rainbows
Townes Van Zandt – texas rain – click here

Facebook -are they really keeping all that conversational crap ? BUT it’s better than lonliness isn’t it?
Is it? Or does all that social media bullshit just mean we have huge internet bills, no real friends and another dirty habit?
At an interactive shindig last week a very smug and “high on my own geek bullshit job” ad-rat in a cheap suit told me that web 3.o is on the way. Man, I had to laugh:

“Well, maybe 2.5″
“Does that mean its only half fucking baked?”

Apparently A.I. means “sites” themselves will “do the talking”; sounds great. BUT will they do the dishes and mow the lawn too? I haven’t visited many sites intelligent enough yet to make toast. The concept of a “site” really s(l)ums it up as an area of containment, but what the hell, we’ve built most aspects of our culture to contain and imprison, like our cities.

Unless one is reading being trapped in 2d is poor experientially: transforming electric into magnetic or other energy forms means we can permeate the air with data and subsequently  display information in “air”  or in mind: then we will be free from the tyranny of the screen/device; able ultimately to control/manipulate/communicate data in a telepathic omnisphere. Which is problematic -  at what level is thought language (signs and signifiers)? “Machines” using organic chemical reactions could match speeds of (self?) reflexive sentience. In what could be an organic/digital/biological symbiotic technolosphere people universally connected through thought consciousness create infinitely realtime instantaneous “social networks” (freed from hardware/ownership/cost/expense/control -or trapped by them) meaning natural collective egalitarian change effected through consensual ideas at the speed of the synaptic / immediate…heads will explode.
Sometimes though when I look at our dirty, filthy world with its entrenched notions of war and violence, a “media” focus upon shallow consumerism, greed, an industrial complex that values fossil fuels and pollution combined with disease, inequality, suffering and overpopulation, plus our inability to coexist with each other and the hollow conceit of our self annointment as “king of the animals”, and the privilege of the few over the may then I think we are, if not as a species, but as governments/controlling bodies dumb, selfish and stupid enough to f*&k it up.

If there was ever a soul sacrifice made to the celestial guitar gods, it was Hendrix himself…exploding into flames at the Monterey Festival; Hendrix burnt away in a three year vapour trail of psychedelic drugs, hard touring, alcohol, groupies, invention, and innovation – notwithstanding the management, money and alleged mafia troubles that followed in his infinitely surfed wake.

If you are baffled by the countless re-iterations and compilations floating endlessly around; the remixes and terrible bastardisations such as the “Midnight Lightning” album (Alan Douglas hiring modern musicians), or “Loose Ends” (which clearly showcases shallow greed in using out-takes from the cutting room floor), add to this the blatant mis-branding of Hendrix’ work with Curtis Knight and the many more myriad compilations on offer – take heed herein…

To help you navigate the shark infested waters of the Hendrix legacy here are 6 Essential Hendrix albums that distill the the soaring, expressive talent and vision of Hendrix’ legacy both live and in the studio…

1.Are you Experienced – 1st album – : FIRE & BRIMSTONE

The Jimi Hendrix Experience first album fuses gritty rock, psychedelia and feedback in a blistering rocket fuelled journey to the centre of the cosmos. This is as close to ‘classic’ rock as Hendrix gets with pumping riffs, weird chromatic guitar solo’s (“Purple Haze”) and a lyrical disposition (especially in “The Wind Cries Mary”) that combines Dylanesque surrealism with the hip acid talk of the American Summer of Psychedelic Love. This album is filled with triumphant feelings of revolution, victory and optimism, which burn like bright flags amongst a speudo-existentialist spacescape that flirts with ideas of depression and death beyond time. It’s a fervent and heady mix of grass roots psychedelia and Jimi’s earthy hands on approach to tonal exploration, distortion, feedback and elemental urgency on the guitar ensures it burns white hot, like magnesium at midnight.

2.Axis Bold As Love – 2nd album – : WATER

Despite leaving the original mastertapes of side one in a London Taxicab The Experience Second album is another triumph.

The second Experience album leans more heavily towards a more complex lyrical mysticism and lucid poetics with songwriting of a more deliberate meaning and intent in opposition to the hard rock rattle and hum combustion or interstellar immediacy of its feedback soaked predecessor. Hendrix also blends the fervant science fiction, metaphysics and exploratory lyricism of his psychedelic ideology and imagination with a more refined approach to instrumentation and a more nuanced style. The tentative, fragile lyrical tragedy of “Castles Made of Sand” hones more Dylanesque metaphor through the collapsing time of backwards guitar, whilst “If 6 was Nine” screams the experimental battle cry of the counter culture, like the dissembling miles of a bullet from a revolutionaries’ musket in slow motion.

Hendrix of course still manages to coax never before heard techniques and sounds from his guitar, more melodic jazz funk influences (from his R&B chitlin’ circuit days) whilst channeling his mysticism and revelatory existentialism across a range of genres. There are unmissable ballads that exemplify the fragile duality of the time; the hopes and fears, the real and the unreal as much as showcase his unique melody / chord phrasing: the birdsong love poem Little Wing and the homesick art-rock of Spanish Castle Magic. The final track Bold as Love is arguably one of the greatest arrangements of synaesthetic, lyrical metaphor, melodic rhythm guitar and majestic lead ever written and recorded.

There’s a similar re-appraisal/review to this just appeared on Rollingstone.com here. Read it.

3. Electric Ladyland – 3rd album – : TRANSCENDENTAL

Take the previous two Jimi Hendrix Experience albums and throw in some voodoo blues, low down groove, funk, rock and roll, orchestration and then blend into a transcendental, love apocalypse masterpiece of songwriting, guitar playing prowess, musical exploration, ufology, time travel and the foreboding sense that the world is coming to an end. The sheer emotional intent of the guitar playing alone on this double album  absolutely shines through as Hendrix delivers masterpiece after expressive masterpiece.
The stellar guitar piece “Come On” hermetically seals Hendrix’ Rock and Roll prowess, expression and technique beyond time and space as he launches through a blistering high octane guitar marathon whereas “Voodoo Chile”, featuring Steve Winwood, pushes the blues guitar envelope to the end of the universe and back again with such archetypal and quintessentially natural phrasing wrapped within a live studio performance that literally kicks out the jams and destroys them.  “The Burning of the Midnight Lamp” features more sonic experimentation recorded in a vacuum of depression, until it breaks into a vivid and wildly oscillating wah wah solo while “Gypsy Eyes” conjures up the rattling bones of African witchcraft with Hendrix’ dead blues spirit traversing the ghostplane in search of his lost love.

On “Long Hot Summer Night” Jimi fuses colourful story telling with more achingly soulful and fluid guitar then amplifies Bob Dylan’s skeletal masterpiece “All Along the Watchtower” with the sonic emotional import and smouldering sound and fury of God and some of the most memorable guitar playing ever.

By the time we reach side three Hendrix extends his themes into the soulfull jazz grooves of a “Rainy Day” before embarking on the ambitious philosophical, revelatory opus of “1983′s” melodic escape from the apocalypse into the sea. Through an undulating series of musical meditations, phrases and undeniable hook sequences that range from delicate washing tremelo descents beneath the tides to swinging grooves, the war chaos noise of the machines above, and heraldic anthemics of emotional release and salvation; Hendrix single handedly invents ambient and closes the chapter on the decade with an ambitious contemporary guitar symphony. The musicianship from all throughout is unparalleled and this record doesn’t date because of its scope, resounding energy and ambition. If you were to own one Hendrix disc, this is it.

4. Nine to the Universe – studio jams – rare jazz-blues improvisations – awesome and tight

This is what happens when Jimi Hendrix rocks into the studio to have a jam and the sonic results are absolutely off the hook. With more of a leaning towards  a modal approach to the guitar Jimi proves that literally everything is in his hands as he manipulates his stratocaster and amp to deliver a huge tonal range within the context of a progressive jazz-blues fusion jam session. If you are new to Hendrix this might be a little too like abstract expressionism for you but if you’re looking to expand your musical expression on the guitar without resorting to gratuitous effects and cheap tricks this is a great place to start taking lessons from the master.

5. Band of Gypsys – live – the once in a lifetime guitar mastery of epic sonic genius that is machine gun

After disbanding the original experience Hendrix returns to New York with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox to deliver a more loosely organised series of extended songs and groove laden hooks centred around the opposing themes of war and peace. Never to be underestimated, Hendrix is at the peak of his sonic creativity and effortlessly recreates the sonic palette and experience of the Vietnam war on Machine Gun, producing some of the most mesmerising guitar tones in the history of rock in an astonishingly complete performance. Hendrix flaunts acres of infinite sustain and tonal feedback control, combined with tremelo induced ufology and science fiction sounds in an engaging live performance that proves EXACTLY why he is history’s most mind blowing rock instrumentalist.  Hendrix’ intent though is not only to transport you into a world of complete sonic guitar mastery but also to inspire spiritually through the kyuss of great hooks, timing and melody (Power to Love).

6. The Jimi Hendrix Concerts – a great compilation of live recordings

This collection of recordings showcases the original experience at their best and includes the absolutely monumentous tonal mastery and feedback genius of Are You Experienced performed live – possibly another one of the greatest moments in guitar history. You can hear the feedback soaked guitar bouncing off the back of the auditorium and feel the hairs stand up on the back of your neck too as Jimi manipulates his signal in ways that the original studio recording could never achieve. This has to be heard to be believed. This is what the Experience sound like live on a great night and they’re absolutely burning it up. If you cant get this disc then get the LIVE AT WINTERLAND album instead.

7. Beautiful People  – If 60`s were 90`s

Some old friends of mine throw the War Heroes offcuts into the remix liquidiser to repackage Hendrix for the early 90`s chillaxation-house groove scene. If you like the idea of Hendrix with “modern” beats then this might be right up your street. The stand out cuts are “Get Your Mind Together” and “Sea Eventually”. Remixes with PM Dawn sounded absolutely incredible at the time but never officially materialised. If you want your Hendrix licks, melodies and riffs  served up in a dreamy, groovy back-beat sauce with a focus upon the nouvelle cuisine sampling of a chillaxed club mix then this is the gelato h’ors d’oeuvre you’re after. Rilly Groovy. Rilly, Rilly Groovy.

Back in the late seventies, prior to the arrival of PUNK ROCK, with its garland of spit, safety pins, anarchy, piss, shit and the dirty, unkempt rebellion of anti-authoritarian posturing, Steve Hillage took the psychedelia of the late 60`s and infused it with the kind of production techniques it really deserved. Hillage took multitracking, phasing, and sequences of fractalised incandescent echoes to a new level and combined them with more formal song based hooks and ideas with a lexicon firmly focused upon metaphysics and what everyone nowadays calls new age spiritualism. What makes his music even more interesting is that it occupies a holistic space somewhere amongst Pink Floyd and the Canturbury sensibilities of remarkable song writers such as pyschedelic pioneers Kevin Ayres and formidable lyricist Syd Barrett.

Despite his psychological unravelling Barrett’s songwriting capabilities remain some of the most superlative, exciting, individual and exceptional in the history of English music – after the Beatles. And,  although there is very much to be lauded in Pink Floyds work many ascertain that without Barrett they became nothing more than the exegesis of Waters’ paranoia and latterly nothing more than a Gilmour solo act.

Towards the dying days of the 70’s Hillage’s progressive guitar-rock and psychedelic fusion leanings helped build a reputation that became synonymous with spacey, ambient soundscapes and musical “excursions”. 1978’s Green album, which was co-produced by Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason is an exemplary and landmark recording in this respect that, with both power and sensitivity focuses upon a pantheistic ecological message of oneness, salvation and elevation. Of course Hillages “hippie” music was eclipsed, perhaps even smashed into a dust, by the D.I.Y. auto destructive madness of anarchy, punk rock and “dissent” at the end of the decade. Via way of Can, Kraftwerk and Faust the echoes of the Steve Hillage sound remained immortalised in the consciousness of a whole new generation in the UK dance scene and “Festival” bands like The Ozric Tentacles. Ten years after Hillage released “Green” the Ozrics and a host of tripped out, acid soaked bedroom beat messiahs, pill poppin’ D.J.`s. in the fields, across the hills and the clubs together with the “sorted” radio stations pioneered a new wave of acid soaked, techno space grooves into the 90`s “dance” and festival scene updated with hard pounding beats, shifting time signatures, the use of eastern and exotic modes and instruments. After the collapse of Thatcherite ethics in the 80`s the British music underground, fuelled by political unrest and the flood of drug fired madness exploded across the media and across the country in revolutionary fervour. Looking back from here, you can clearly see the high tide mark etched across the British landscape and we’re now living after the flood….

The Decade from Hell is drawing to a close…

…this one has been an indictment of humanity, and one that cast a curse across the death of the American dream and the end of the American century before it. One in which they dug up the fathers of freedom and the ideals of liberty and justice, made of them straw martyrs; soaked in the oil and blood of heroes, innocents, war and greed; lay them out to burn for all of us to witness. God bless the American corpse. The Devil take the warmongers, the banks, the silent few…

It’s been a decade of increasing surveillance, political correctness in the name of control and the slow insidious exercise of government interference into our lives. Controls on alcohol, smoking, parenting, the internet, drugs, medicines, war. What a f**king waste of time…and all the while the rotten American dream weeps bloodied yellow stars and failure across the pages of history and poisons the global economy…A decade of complacency. Of interference. Of economic & ecological suicide; Of pride and hate and greed.

I spent time in the great American Northwest. Beautiful rolling plains, mighty snow capped mountains, the grand Columbia river and vast damming ahievements to man’s stature. A topology of god and a testament to the wilderness. I shot a lot of brass from alot of fine firearms, drank strong beers in the bars and quality bourbon with Sheriffs and Huntsmen, ate like a king, high on the hog. The British American coalition in Iraq was strong. At dusk fragrant logsmoke filled the crisp cool air, before the dark ink of night time’s star filled chasm descended and a bright sun exploded from the horizon, trees, eagle soaring  at dawn. All the while gold and yellow stars hung from the  windows of the neighbours smalltown windows. In memory of those killed in service abroad. Two stars hung from the porch of the house flying Old Glory at the bottom of the street.

“Im not exactly sure why the hell they were over there – fighting for what I can’t say, I am an American and a patriot – that my sons died for nothing?”

A friend writes of songwriting, and I`m presuming he means  quality songwriting of prescient import like Townes Van Zandt or Bob Dylan…and in quality writing I prefer to mean writers like Faulkner,  Steinbeck, TS Eliot, Shakespeare and the like? Certain genres create different spheres of discipline though it is true – but if we consider Like A Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan to be the hyperion of writing achievement then I don`t think just anyone can do it and I don`t think everyone has something to say. Certainly not of value. Alot of people substitute melody, production  or style for lyrical content and allow marketing in all its myriad guises to persuade them of qualities that are simply nonexistant. We live in a world in which people are increasingly ignorant of history, sacrifice, emotion, trauma and the hurt of others. We live in a world divided into those who think and feel with their hearts and minds and those who think they can feel. Some people have a god given talent with a pen and it clearly shows they have been around and experienced what life has to offer -  without this experience there is nothing to offer the song writing pantheon but secondhand echoes  and dull inarticulate reflections of life`s mirror.

More on songwriting here.

I first saw House when I was maybe twelve or thirteen years old, and,  it changed everything for me.

House`s sounds are characteristically steam driven rhythmic explorations of disturbingly apocryphal and intense gothic desolation, loss, isolation and spiritual retribution. His early experience as a baptist preacher
bleeds through and informs his vocals empowering them with an incantatory, mesmeric resonance that borders on Native American shamanism. House`s lexicon occupies a position of such emotional lucidity and trail blazing acuity that much of what followed after him could be viewed as incomplete, inchoate gestural cliches. It was House who, speaking to awe-struck young blues fans in the 1960s, spread the legend that Johnson had sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his musical powers…but he musta been talking about hisself.

I got a letter this mornin, how do you reckon it read?
It said, “Hurry, hurry, yeah, your love is dead”

So, I grabbed up my suitcase, and took off down the road
When I got there she was layin on a coolin’ board

Well, I walked up right close, looked down in her face
Said, the good ol’ gal got to lay here ’til the Judgment Day

Looked like there was 10,000 people standin’ round the buryin’ ground
I didn’t know I loved her ’til they began to let her down

You know I didn’t feel so bad, ’til the good ol’ sun went down
I didn’t have a soul to throw my arms around

You know, it’s hard to love someone that don’t love you
Ain’t no satisfaction, don’t care what in the world you do

You know, love’s a hard ol’ fall, make you do things you don’t wanna do
Love sometimes leaves you feeling sad and blue

The mighty Son House. The real deal; spent the first half of his life in the Steam Age and the later half working on the New York Central Rail line. If this man`s music doesn’t move you – nothing will. You must be dead. In my humble opinion Son House is the greatest blues player of all time…

House was born in 1886 (officially) 1902 in Clarksdale, Mississippi and in his mid twenties, inspired by Willie Wilson, he bought a guitar and played alongside Charley Patton and Robert Johnson. Son House even spent time on Parchman Farm for killing a man in self defence.

House`s sounds are characteristically steam driven rhythmic explorations of disturbingly apocryphal and intense gothic desolation, loss, isolation and spiritual retribution.  His early experience as a baptist preacher bleeds through and informs his vocals empowering them with an incantatory, mesmeric resonance that borders on Native American shamanism.

House`s lexicon occupies a position of such emotional lucidity and trail blazing acuity that much of what followed after him could be viewed as incomplete, inchoate gestural cliches.

This is the voice of the Wicked Messenger, when he rolls back into town.

In the sixties people were mobilised against the war in vietnam, youth culture was finding it`s footing…but the world has been reduced to a quintessence of dust & there`s a recession – perhaps it`s economical, perhaps it`s intellectual, perhaps it`s at the heart of everything, Mr. Kurtz – quantum thought, belief and mysticism. Does anyone read Kerouac or Steinbeck?  What the heck? Is everyone wrapped up in a load of irreverent Hollywood plastic surgery necrophiliac celebrity lifestyle televisual bullshit? Another day another city…. or, lost in the wilderness writing lyrics of disposition and seeking unification through re-immersion, or reconnection with landscape…Mindless plastic hollywood necrophiliac overload? No one forces you to watch that rubbish. No one forces you to regurgitate the rain forest burgers down at McWombles. The world is dying, you are dying: who gives a damn? Designer labels will save your anorexic ass. You’re toxic. Generation Y.
W.T.F? 5 year olds treated like adults. bullshit.

“It`s peculiar and unnerving in a way to see so many young people walking around with mobile phones and iPods in their ears and so wrapped up in media and video games. It robs them of their self identity. It`s a shame to see them so tuned out to real life. Of course they are free to do that, as if that`s got anything to do with freedom. The cost of liberty is high, and young people should understand that…” Bob Dylan.

Everybody has a love-hate relationship with plenty of things. I think we all do – if we`ve got our heads turned on at all. Acceptance of things because they are new or modern is a blind faith & preserve of shallow, hollow hearted fools. Just recently I read a Dylan interview in the Sunday Times, & although Dylan is around twice my age, I have to completely echo and agree with his sentiments.

Technology has so much to offer and yet can take so much away, remove us from real experience and right now perhaps, it`s creating a generation of automaton`s who live their lives through the vile excreta of mass media. A generation that can`t read or write and with no comprehension of the ideals of individualism, courage , rebellion and struggle. We have to fight homogenisation – everywhere on every level.

a “method” of songwriting? Of course there is no one method, subject, genre, approach or way; no set of rules, no map or compass and that`s what makes songs so fantastical,  interesting, different, invaluable. One mans turgid, drone is another mans celestially illuminated supernova of clustered genius. ZEN.

Watching No Direction Home I was not surprised to learn that Dylan himself had methods or ways – visit the library, search and research, read the classics, look through old newspapers &cetera. I happened to be watching the film with someone of Dylans age, who was there in the early Sixties and I was highly surprised when he commented: “I had no idea he worked so hard to produce that material. I thought he just did it.”

Well, it is true that in a way song will “just come together” but you have to have that kernel of an inspirational idea and Conrad quite succinctly elucidates this in his metaphor at the beginning of Heart of Darkness :

“…Marlow was not typical … and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of those misty haloes that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.”

So, the meaning is illuminated by context rather than the immediately internal and this works on many levels. It is quite clear in listening to Dylan`s earlier material that the personal musical & lyrical context from within which he writes is one encompassing the earliest blues/folk forms both lyrically and sonically, but also that of popular Fifties music and movies. If you want to make these connections yourself you can do no wrong in listening to Smithsonion Folkways collections and reading Michael Gray`s “Song and Dance Man III – the art of Bob Dylan”. My personal feeling is that a great song should have at its core narrative elements, be borne of some sublime experience, a time and a place, historicism, meter and rhyme but these are only elementals. But no matter how hard I try to ignore it I feel the real context within which a song operates, the luminescent, spectral halo of moonshine is the mind of the reader/listener.

[[Use what you've got to capture fleeting moments and ideas - if you've got a hook use your telephone, if you can get to a computer just video your performance. Move damn fast, get your idea down and review. improvise a song & threw it together -  move fast `cause the world is moving quicker than you are - also that way, you can dodge the bullets. Get the right tools for you. If you wanna write a song, write it , SO don`t write a song about the equipment, the set up, don`t let that get in your way. You can`t feel a mixing desk, you can`t emote a machine or elaborate a microphone set up - leave that for  Ron, later on.]]

This of course is not to imply Roland Barthes `Dead Author` but it`s worth considering if it is actually possible to free a text from the socio-historical tyranny of its author or the Intentional Fallacy ? What of the contexts from which the listener emerges ?

IF then the author`s meanings and intentions are wholly irrelevent then is it mere coincidence that texts which upon the face appear pared down and oblique e.g. Dylan’s “Wicked Messenger”, speak such vast volumes to so many ? The Wesley Harding album exudes a reductionism as though Dylan had taken complex song-mythologies and fed them through some kind of shredder or put them on a fast diet.

If the song [as narrative] is to be freed in this way then surely it would be a previously unheard song from an artist unknown to the reader? Bob Dylan has intimated that he is merely a cipher, that the songs came from the ether and in some way every song one writes does appear or concretise through some kind of osmosis – but he is talking specifically from within the realm of the rock cliche perhaps. And he has a track record within which his material effloresces.

THE TRUTH ABOUT really great SONGWRITING is that it HAS NOTHING TO DO with industry, money, production, success, acceptance…

The truth about great SONGWRITING is that it HAS EVERYTHING to do with PEOPLE, and their stories, OUR STORIES, the past the present and the future. It’s about having something important to say about matters greater than oneself.  AND a song can be whatever you want it to be as long as you mean it; that way a song takes on an energy and a life of it’s own beyond the here and now.

It’s that simple. Like riding a bicycle.

You still have to find inspiration, play an instrument, form a melody…have something different to say, especially if your material will be a verisimilar material of ideas, rather than some bland, insipid, secondhand, wallpaper. Sitting in front of a ghastly can sometimes be stultifying; inspiration comes from elsewhere – NEVER directly from the machine or its environment. Its just a box. Machinery will never replace the emotional complexities and responses of people – not least until we start building “machines” from things like proteins or cellular material, utilising chemical reactions rather than the simplicity of binary. Imagine the speed and capabilities. ON or OFF is that as complex as we can make it? Perhaps what makes us human is that we are blessed with self awareness and from that springs the capability for evolutionary ideas. So, simply put, maybe you want your song to have inspirational and therefore human qualities and that requires an inspired writer, someone who lives on the edges. Someone with an idea. It doesn`t have to be the biggest idea, or the best idea but it ought to be your idea, one that you OWN. The kernel of an idea will more likely come from an experience external to the writing medium itself; a book or a painting or a conversation or a place. It may be melody, one word, a name, a sound, an event, a roadsign…it`s up to you to find it…a guitar listens as well as talks too, so you have to feed it the best poetry you can. If not just stay at home and listen to the microwave or type something into google and get the kind of dull, dry, paint by numbers songwriting advice; a sawdust that will just smother your flame and leave the taste of boredom in your mouth.

Messing about using a loop recorder to play all the instruments…
Maybe read the rest of this short little story whilst having a listen…click more below.
One of the few things I brought with me was a hat; an old `50`s or 60`s black felt trilby with a real makers (paper) stamp inside the worn leather band & it stank. It had a straight sided crown and a slight pinch at the front with a flat curled brim. I took it from the tar stained, tobacco honking, yellow ceiling collection above the bar at Ye Olde Thurlowe Arms and I drove all around, like a hobo,  wearing it. I never saw another one here. And I never saw another public house like that one. I spoke to Yankee Paal, about hats and here`s just how it went, god’s honest truth….

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Paal: “Oh is that your hat?”
Jake: “Yeah man…”
Paal: “I could never wear a hat like that.”
Jake: “Ha, Well I gotta mustard yellow broad brim top hat but it ain’t fit for public consumption…”
Paal:  “Well I`ll tell you about my old hat…”

“Once I had a hat for a whole twenty years; trilby style, light tan felt, white striped band; with a blue feather. I loved that hat. When I bought it I flipped it upside down and pushed out the crease so it had a nice tall, rounded top, like a derby hat, then threw it on the floor and stamped on it a few times…ripped the band off…any good hat needs some serious wear and tear, you have to kick it up and down the road.

Anyway the salesman thought I was mad and so did my mother. She HATED it. Anyway after around twenty years wearing the battered old thing she offered me a thousand bucks for the hat, so I gave in and took the money – I was broke. Anyway she never threw it out and one day I figured to get that hat back out of the attic, out of the dusty old loft. Needless, it was like meeting an old friend from way back.

Well, time goes by and she caught me out wearing it around town one day and she threatened to cut it in two, she was on fire about it, especially after the deal with the money. I pleaded and pleaded for the hat`s life; almost got down on my knees. She was adamant. The hat had to go. What about Lars? I asked; he`d always loved that hat, loved the tattered brim and the tatty lining. We struck ourselves a deal: I didn’t forfeit the money, Lars took the hat and everyone was happy.

Few years passed and I hadn`t seen Lars for awhile and I`d never come across another hat that I really liked, hats were disappearing. Back in Canada Lars said things were hunky dory. His mother picked him up from the airport.

“Where did you get that disgusting hat?” She asked. He never even gave her the courtesy of an answer. And, she never said nothing else about it. No matter – he was gonna wear that hat of mine come rain or shine.

Winter comes along and with it the evenings drawing in. The snow started in to settling on the top of the mountain and the creek with a thin veil of ice on its surface, so, Shaky Harry brought the medicine round and soon, soon after on the last January weekend Willow George brought the lumber for the range and the fire. Day Previous Lars cuts his hand in the small bandsaw at the mill. God did that hurt him so he left that hat at home thinking he just couldn`t see past the brim properly and he sure didn`t want to lose a whole hand `specially not in the cold season. Anyway back home that night, pork and beans ready on the table and Mama in the rocking chair, there it was, smoking gently over the fire. Aw Dennis “I`m so sorry” he whispered to the God up in the ceiling and sat right on down and armed himself up with the sharp knife and spoon. He was hellish hungry, like a lost dog on the trail of a toothesome chicken.

He just couldn`t bring himself down to eat it though, not like his old Ma’ , lips smacking and tuckin` right in with a big grin on her face.

Robert Johnson; there`s a lot of hoodoo wrapped up around the man, in particular that he sold his soul to the devil down at the crossroads in Clarksdale. Originally, Son House suggested, Johnson was not regarded as a good musician at all but after the trade with Satan he returned with the blazing skills and blues mastery of a demi-god. Much of the early blues protagonists framed their content within the context of african american hoodoo/religious belief wrapped up in the historical context of migratory diaspora and most of the cliches of the blues narrative are more culturally rich in meaning than they might at first appear. The simple cliche alone of “the highway” is extrapolated and interpolated by numerous artists over the last 90 years by Bob Dylan alone many times across his recorded work. A great bridging work for the blues to the present date is Michael Gray’s ‘Song and Dance Man III’, which illustrated Dylan`s reappropriation of the blues through other song forms.

The narrative and folk tales, the telling of lies or competitive tales, the healthily obscene “putting in the dozens”, the long and witty toasts and the epigrammatic rhyming couplets which enliven the conversation of folk negro and harlem hipster alike, have their reflections in the blues.

Paul Oliver`s book “Conversation with the Blues” (1965)

There`s a great thesis here about the concept of the Trickster, which leads me onto what I`ve talked about previously with regards to Radioheads re-appropriation of the blues through a series of post modern metaphors and the Sublime. Eric Clapton himself has suggested that Johnson`s cross tempo work is unparalleled and Johnny Winter makes use of this technique also.

In the following video Eric Clapton, another “guitar hero” whose early songwriting capabilities and exploration of new genres (e.g. Cale & Marley) seems to be wholly forgotten now, talks about Robert Johnson and plays “Stones in the Passway”.

It`s a great place to start exploring what Robert Johnson has to offer and why he is who he is. It also illuminates the sheer technique, the impact of the unusual, that is often confused with something arcane, mythical, metaphysical, divine and otherworldly or more specifically in the blues with superstition, an encounter with the Devil or other dark force and the conceit of a conspirational universe.  It’s also interesting to note that the cross tempo section Eric Clapton discusses is a technique that many artists have plagiarised or emulated: Johnny Winter and Rory Gallagher have used it in varying degrees throughout their careers.

At any rate as much as Johnson’s technique was formidable and undeniably unique recordings have always sounded odd: his voice always seemed pitched too high and anyone who owns a gramophone knows that speed is ultimately the choice of the listener. Anyway, it seems that we may been listening to Robert Johnson at too many revolutions.
Touched.co.uk are offering Steady Rollin’ Man – 24 tracks of Robert Johnson slowed down – click here. I.M.H.O. this is the way Robert Johnson should sound and you can read all about it here.

My Space is one of the most popular destinations for musicians. I`ve used it; but never to listen to anyone`s music really – it just fails miserably for that. What is clever is that despite having a clunky interface with a fairly poor usability quotient the site is popular. Why? Probably because it allows its users to develop and customise an identity and to talk sh** with each other.
Now, this is not a post about My Space being a large spam portal run by a huge global media corps of greedy manipulative suits tracking the populace or any other dark practices. What this post is about is the fact that success on  My Space is inversely proportional to communication efficacy. It`s very simple: the more friends you have the less likely any of your messages will stand out. If you bulletin 500 friends and each of these friends have 500 friends then your bulletin has a very slim chance of being noticed.

Yeah – thats right. The more “friends” you`ve got , the less successful any bulletin will be, lost in a sea of meaningless, ubiquitous, homogenous bulletins that all look the same.

I received an email just today regarding my comments on My Space and how it was actually a poor platform for audio distribution. Some people did not like this. Well, unless you are Lilly Allen who seems to have the fucking thing sewn up quite nicely  (an example of the industry using social media to continue the interruptive model of blanket advertising) how can it work? To my mind anything that makes it onto the front of My Space warrants ignoring because it must have be paid for. And there`s so much damn stuff – the new this , the next that, god it`s boring.
SO for those of you who think my space really works consider this:

If you want to hide a tree – hide it in the forest.

No-one has anything much to really say, unless it’s to complain; babies cry, people come and go, dogs sniff. There are the late, the tidy, the punctual, the forlorn, the forgotten and the frequent.The professionals looking slick adjust their chunky watches and loosen their ties. The youth pretend it isn’t happening: bullet proof they are.

The Depature lounge. Are you ready for take off? You might never come down. Do the ghosts of the dead in crashed airliners roam endlessly like a broken malfunctioning Jesus across the watery surfaces of the worlds carnivorous oceans? Or do they drown too, leaving their traumatised bodies in the great deep watery grave?

Flight 666 is currently boarding destination Davey Jones’ Locker. This is the Last Call for passenger Jake Edwards – please make your way to gate 888 immediately.

The plane is late and there are a lot of people sweating it out in the departure lounge. It’s hot and humid. I’ve flown hundreds of times but the more frequently I do it lately the less I trust the technology.

On the ground observing aeroplanes in the southern sky, they appear so low, look so surreal, impossible, too huge as though the whole thing is some elaborate sham, some kind of fake illusory moon landing confidence trick. I’m not ready yet to make my departure from the planet. I haven’t finished. I don’t want my body torn to ribbons at 500mph in an explosion of water-concrete, shearing shards of metal.

The emergency position is just a convenient way of ensuring that your spine is driven quick-fast into and through your skull and brain when you hit the ground. Lean forward, place your head between your arms brace yourself against the seat in front…and relax. Leave your seat in the upright position and keep your seatbelt on so we can identify you quickly and easily, by row and number… This is the inconvenient, tiring bullshit I’m putting myself through just to get a few songs done.

In the studio my personal choice is to never settle for just a click track – always use a rhythm section if you can. At the check in I want an option for a parachute but just settle for getting stung another 25 bucks because of my guitar instead.

Good morning everybody Welcome aboard todays flight 666 I am captain Ahab and we will be cruising at an altitude of 35,000 feet but don’t worry we have issued each and everyone of you with a small yellow life jacket should we plummet mercilessly like a comet from the calm blue mediterranean sky toward earth below.

I need to get a few more expensive guitars & I’m still finding it “challenging” throwing away 20 years of blues styled guitar techniques and sonics when it comes to modern studio work…. Just lately I’m looking at a 2000 year old kauri parlour bodied hand made 6 string with a narrow neck. It costs 2000 dollars so that’s a dollar per year for the wood. Not bad and nearly as old as I feel after a week of media work and flying back and forth. Reach under your seat. As long as I’m floating dead in the water my lifejacket will help the clean up teams pick me out.

Dehydration air conditioning

… there is nothing more dangerous than a book.

A book is a bomb. A book is a time machine.
A book is a recruitment device. A book is mantra. A book is terror.
A book is enlightenment. A book is life. A book is death.
&cetera

read – change your life, open your head up like psilocybin and travel across the universe. If you aren`t forever changed, go back and find books that work.  If you think books aren`t one of the secrets to understanding the universe then you are wrong…. the work of the cosmos, that’s secret number one.

Genius is a word that`s bandied around these days as though it`s something that`s free, something to be found in the bottom of a packet of cornflakes. Not that rare gleaming like the flashing of a comet in the surface of a calderan lake. Unfortunately we live in an age of arch-mediocrity masquerading as noesis…….mostly through the perceived synonymity of marketing and meritocracy.
Achieving genius is often paraphrased as being “99 percent perspiration and 100 percent inspiration”.

A genius is a person who successfully applies a previously unknown technique in the production of a work of art, science or calculation, or who masters and personalizes a known technique. A genius typically possesses great intelligence or remarkable abilities in a specific subject, or shows an exceptional natural capacity of intellect and/or ability, especially in the production of creative and original work, something that has never been seen or evaluated previously. Traits often associated with genius include strong individuality, imagination, uniqueness, and innovative drive.

Achieving genius is more like evaporation, like boiling water. It takes more energy for water temperature to lift from 99 degrees to 100 degrees than to reach 99 degress from ambient temperature.
There`s a vast difference between “almost” and “all”; that extra last percent is worth 100 times the 99 that went before.

I spent the weekend swimming with friends off the epic East coast ocean, beneath the stars above the rivermouth and Honey  Bay. Extra thanks to Pete who aqualunged for half an hour to return with crayfish which we all cooked, fresh on the beach fire: an iconic day at the beach…Sleeping on the clifftop above the spit and exploring the startlingly varied coastline of geographical collapse and debris, collecting stunning Abalone shells, plus swimming and cooking al fresco is a great way to recover from the clinical confines of ten days in the studio. Sure there`s a correlation between the rhythmic waves of the ocean and differing states of consciousness. No television, no telephones, no problem -  god.

Do what you want – in music, art, work, wherever possible. If someone notices that`s great. But, if they dont , so what? You are still doing what you want. No man is an island and it`s always great to be involved in a scene, NOT a CLIQUE, a scene. Cliques are unhealthy, stagnant, dead end waters, tired, old, lugubrious and baleful – they tend to kill off creativity in their own incestuous way. A scene is open. A clique is egotists high on their own smug bullshit. Ego kills: you cannot do it all on your own no matter how good you are. Some hide behind loquacious blaggardry, specious claims of achievement, almost sociopathic tendencies and cetera. BE surrounded by PEOPLE who actually care about you. People who are beautiful on the inside. You need to care very deeply about the people around you and also about yourself if you really want whatever you are doing to fly. If vague posturising, bandwagon jumping and self centred goals are what drives your vision, prepare yourself for failure…If you have something great be prepared to forgive those around you…One of the deadly traps hidden along the road to creative success:  Perfectionism.

… I have been blasted in the stomach with a 12 gauge shotgun. An almost constant fiery, burning sensation and high loss of mobility means I`m reduced to lying or sitting down and minimal movement. Sometimes movement is nigh on impossible but I`m improving already, although my wallet is dead. The anaesthetic rapidly sent me into a state of amnesia and suspended animation with no recall or recollection whatsoever, to awake feeling euphoric, because of the morphine /heroin but several hours later began to wear off, resultant in burning, aching pain and low mobility. What is interesting about some amnesiacs is that those with a damaged hippocampus cannot imagine the future, cannot use past experiences to construct possible future scenarios. I have 150mg of Codeine to get through each day (plus panadeine) and anti-inflammatory drugs. Codeine is an alkaloid found in opium and other poppy saps like Papaver bracteatum the Iranian poppy.

Dell`s new blog. In the brave new world there is no ‘career’ as far as I can see, no job for life and therefore no reason to want either of these things. I’ve been moving around, relying upon my wits and the luck of the draw. Work here, work there. We live in an unstable existential world… if you think you’ve got a future, you’re the lucky one. I can remember when I was paid for things I performed, created, action and movement, thought. Not paid to sit inside a cube. Someone toss a grenade in there please.

I think there are different degrees to what being a digital nomad means obviously. Sometimes it isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity. If you want the low down on hardcore tenets, principles and reasoning head over here. I dont believe a word of it, the human being is becoming phased out of the economy, redundant – unless he is a number in a foreign oil war game somewhere on the other side of the screen.

Fluctuations of the employment market, the rise and fall of firms, design tools, software and technologies going out of fashion, salaries, working hard, being laid off because a rat in a suit couldn`t sell the product properly…all of these things helpto bring into focus and really question what we should already be suspicious of, that is, there is no centre, certainty, regularity, guarantee or even sphere to exist within but rather that turning away from conventional paths and forging your own is the way forward. It doesn’t suit everybody, the sacrifices are huge, you pay one way or another for whatever lifestyle you choose….but one thing is for sure, happiness is available, if you can define it, if you want it and the digital revolution may have brought freedom, expression, creativity and the power to choose to those who want it…just remember to look through the window and observe the real world passing you by…

Change the world or go home.
What does it really mean? nothing at all.

Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in the 15th century changed the world, fed the Renaissance and powered the scientific revolution – where once the pre-Copernican earth was a flat disc in a heliocentric universe it was now a mere spherical satellite at the dependent mercy of the ever raging Sun, the death of God, Aristotelian physics, and the triumph of Paine’s Age of Reason.

Gutenberg’s invention also precipitates the archetype of mass communication where publishing power remains squarely in the hands of the elite. If we consider that modern advertising perhaps had its foundation in the military propaganda created during World War One, but was really born through the spread of television in America, propagated through the NBC introduction of the commercial break rather than a single programme sponsor then technologies such as television and radio support elitism & further transform media into commercial opportunity.

The current media overload, saturation, and the whole ad` space shouting match basically means that advertising and marketing has been forced to evolve from the interruptive, intermittent, high frequency, WOW factor linearity of the early Fifties and the ungainly mass media signals of print, billboards, radio-television commercials, and even online banners to Permission based programmes that build upon reciprocal loyalty, and in doing so ethically and respectfully, create greater permission and therefore increasing opportunities.

Intelligent conversational media projects illuminate just how smart, positive and responsive technology becomes socially responsible, or even how mobile technologies, for example an iPhone or digital camera are intrinsically creating new social fabric; that both social change and technology seem to have become reciprocal entities built upon choice, consent, collaboration and inherent networks that grow smarter & faster. The mobile phone may provide the next truly big ad space, and perhaps bolster a new elite in Telecommunications companies.

Social media sites depend upon integrating technology with and creating interaction and conversation between people to build shared-meanings, values, dialogue and to challenge inertia through the power of collaborative conscience (embedded in the web) to create change. Closed social habitats like MySpace hinge upon the almost televisual, hermetic relegation of choice, freedom, movement, compatibility, independence, and transparency to concepts of audience numbers & advertising. Okay most social media sites such as Facebook and Myspace are economically neutral, but that`s perhaps because they are closed social habitats; contained, linear and dependent upon a traditional & therefore traffic fed advertising model. This is obviously a catch 22 for them and hard to resolve both technically and economically – membership dependent and selling poor quality, non personalised interference and static – these sites feel hideously outmoded already but, no-one knows quite how to step up to the next rung.
If only they could all talk to each other simultaneously…

Apart from having a ridiculously pretentious name – which these days sounds about as refreshing as New Labour, or perhaps New Prosthetic – what is it with ambient media? If used correctly ambient could really challenge traditional forms and create new, dynamic messages. In effect it`s merely the same old advertising in new non-traditional places. At your dentist, on your beermat, bus ticket, plasma screen at airport… The thing is it just cannot deliver on the level of personalisation and control we already expect to encounter and don’t receive in real life or on the interweb. Perhaps it`s too guerilla for some companies, perhaps it’s too  hard to track the impact, make it accountable, deliver the figures, too expensive – it takes a leap of faith….and until supratechnologies such as digital paper, digital air even, universal unlimited bandwidth wi-fi and intelligence/choice/personalisation really arrive, and twist our  heads into knots, still a fucking clumsy old fashioned pile of ugly screens and boxes plastered around the place; it’s the leprosy of the advertising world.

Most ambient hardware quite rightly collects nothing much more than the attention of vandals; kiosks filled with Coca-Cola and chewing gum, dogged with errors and built like monolithic storm trooper Daleks the screens were so high only giants could read their intended messages. Yeah the ambient medium is different but it`s still essentially someone shouting in your face. In this sense all advertising is subliminal programming and will become ever more nefarious in attempts to command our attention.

The mobile phone will probably represent the next breakthrough in advertising space inheriting the internet`s latest “intelligent strategies”. Mobile companies are probably looking forward to a time when their virtual real estate becomes the most sought after. But again there is still no excuse for poor quality advertising even if it is highly targeted – we are resistant to bland, poorly encoded messages.

If I want to be advertised to I`d like it to be so personalised, so INVISIBLE: I choose it myself and moreover when I want it too. Myspace take note, your advertising is crass, vulgar and irritating, it is still SPAM. Anyway, when it comes to selecting a platform for your art think on this: if you want to hide a tree – hide it in a forest. Advertising ceases to become so irritating the moment it is targeted at exactly the right prospect through the right means. But this vision encapsulates a nightmare of Orwellian implications.

… it happened around 1995.

I attended University in the 90′s, wrote with an inkwell and fountain pen; a what ? Okay a pen….on paper…..Anyway; I emerged from the classical enclaves of academia to a world where the stylus was invisible, mobile phones illiterally ubiquitous and a preternatural digital goldrush heralded by neu-optimism and championed by dot com VC up-starts, code-yuppies and hipper than hip web-dee-zynaahz with blue hair threatened to kill itself off at 11.59pm, 1999, Millenium time. In those 3 years  the planet had become quite wholly unrecognisable and obviously inoperable; until 12.01 p.m. 2000, when the BUG thing emerged as an expensive hoax of sorts. Change. Change. Change. Where was the planetary “change-management team”?  Nowhere! Can traditional business and advertising respond intelligently, to infiltrate and/or build exclusive tribes, deliver products, accountability, honesty, to drop that shout in your face old fashioned advertising pitch? Or die a slow lingering death in the invisible centre of nowhere trying to look cool while flogging a dead horse? We`ll find out.

The web 2.o social media phenomenon is looking “economically neutral”. Until it slowly fills back up with advertising  and turns in on himself. Maybe, maybe so, but, these sites allow the idea and word virus to propagate quickly and speedily, to build connections from the previously dissolute, to exist without traditional CENTRES of exchange…Web 2.0 perhaps embodies a need to make more real world sense, utility,  and impact from the online one- to create purpose, meaning, fullfilment and change from the individual through to the global; distances collapse and old fashioned models dissolve. For the creators of these ideas, the scions of change, evolution is inevitable? One day these “faster than market” networks will become truly multilateral, instantaneous, conversational and so responsive and adaptive to communities that they may become like thought.

Does this mark the death knell of the individual as a component in a useful society?

…life made more sense when we paid for DOING things that could be properly measured, not just for f**king around on yawn…facebook.

I just had the pleasure of watching Smoke only twelve years too late. If you fancy mixing the intertwining intertextuality of Paul Auster`s genius, the engaging idiosyncrasy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo`s Nest, the cinematography of Down By Law with Mercurial storytelling and superlative acting performance then this one`s for you;baby. If you dig mixing metafictional metaphor with True tales of American Life then, man you`ll dig it the most. Loose identities, shifting nomenclature, fantastic dialogue,  realism & character shine through this film made with stolen cameras and shot by the blind. Harold Perrineau (the awesome Mercutio in Luhrmann`s Romeo And Juliet), Harvey Keitel, William Hurt, Forest Whitaker, Ashley Judd, Stockard Channing & Victor Argo are directed by Wayne Wang and Paul Auster (screenplay).

[click to continue...]

I used to own a Hendrix biography, an interesting part of which was mention of Hendrix` fascination with Bob Dylan. Buying a copy of “John Wesley Harding” rather than food is a noble move as far as I can discern and wholly more palatable than a trip to Walmart. Helps to keep the fashionably thin look too. But Hendrix` is often eclipsed by his own guitar focused genius and I’d like to offer some feedback on why Jimi Hendrix is actually a man of ideas who, beginning with the simple ideas of other worldliness such as UFOLOGY,  extended his sonic, lyrical and experiental palette to encompass and map a far more complex journey, beyond playing the guitar, that is both personal and political.

That Hendrix was able at points in his career, such as the Machine Gun performance on the Band of Gypsies Live film and record, to encompass the entire journey into singular moments is testament to his greatness not only a a guitarist but also as an artist per se – at points like these Hendrix is able even to dispense with vocabulary itself and really paint with sound.

What is more interesting is the broad transition from Are You Experienced ( A.Y.E. ) to Axis:Bold as Love and beyond to Electric Ladyland especially in terms of Hendrix` lyrical expression, lexical development and what appears to be efforts to develop coherent meaning and make sense of “the experience” rather than simply to detail “the experience” itself.

To illuminate; the song “Are you Experienced” Hendrix` eponymous first album opener takes Dylan`s “Like A Rolling Stone” and makes it a call to action, a call to begin “the experience”.

I know, I know
you’ll probably scream and cry
That your little world won’t let you go
But who in your measly little world are trying to prove that
You’re made out of gold and -a can’t be sold.

So-er, Are You Experienced?
Ah! Have you ever been experienced?
Well, I have

The subject of Dylan`s Rolling Stone and the failure expressed therein upon so many levels, to understand, to see or gain awareness is offered here a solution directly through “experience”. The “er”`s and “-a”s have a distinctively Dylanesque time and feel no doubt.

More traditional blues lyric cliche content  (Highway Chile) or simple psychedelia (Purple Haze) all but disappears on the Axis disc. “If 6 was Nine” furthermore introduces politics and social commentary into the equation. I`d say the Axis album represents a move away from a perspective of psychedelia towards one of entheogenic purpose.

The song “Bold As Love” most especially marks a continuing departure from the fundamentally direct, acid soaked expressionism of A.Y.E. and a move towards defining a more positive, transcendental cosmology beyond simple psychedelia, time or space and extend earlier natural metaphor and imagery as found in “Wind Cries Mary” and “Third Stone from the Sun” towards a development of meaning or perhaps a system of belief.

This finds its logical conclusion in the third and final album “Electric Ladyland”; especially side three and the song “1983″. One might argue that “1983″ actually represents a defeat in the face of real world concerns, that the hope of defining such a meaning or system of belief had failed – war  still raged upon the land mass – and escape into the sea to avoid holocaust the only conclusion – OR,  that submersion into what is ostensibly another dimension beneath the waves represents a triumph of consciousness, belief and will over political and physical impossibilities.

Strangely enough certain parts of the piece 1983 bear melodic parallels with the Chilites chicago sound.

On the album “Electric Ladyland” we find a song such as “Voodoo Chile” formulating a pantheistic fusion and microcosmic omniscience in an attempt to reach enlightenment – lyrically it perhaps metafictionally encapsulates the journey from “Are you Experienced” through to “Electric Ladyland”.

In “Voodoo Chile” Hendrix takes the traditional blues structure and explodes it using the tonal and expressive palette later heard in Machine Gun. Lyrically beginning with traditional hoodoo, blues and gypsy superstition, fiery moons, night time birth, and resuscitation from strange instantaneous death Hendrix fuses and describes the intervention of messengers or gods in animal form, lions and eagles, from traditional AmerIndian and European paganism, a journey through infinity, science, and space (“Venus”, “Jupiter”), love, desire, union, transcribes the transcendent microcosmic omnipresence of his mind and finally the collapse of civilisation.

This post is in its infancy, this is as much as I can write before breakfast. I am going to expand this post to try and examine the movement across Hendrix` three studio albums from psychedelic rock to entheogenic purpose, the formulation of successful meaning and understanding with a few glances in Bob Dylan`s direction – can “the experience” form a remedy? If a visionary artist like Hendrix looks to the oeuvre of Dylan then maybe we all should….

Played a few numbers last night by Jimmy Buffet,  Jerry Jeff Walker & Bob. Quality song material. Interesting to consider the parallels and dissimilarities between the sentimental American iconography of Dylan`s cannon and that of Jerry Jeff Walkers lyrics – for instance Eastern Avenue River Railway Blues.

The early 20th Century Hobo Folksinger Itinerant features but tonally Walkers perspective is different, perhaps more urbane, positing the protagonist trapped within the urban wasteland seeking escape through the boxcar. More later perhaps: I have to take a deeper look inside Walker`s catalogue. In (a lazy) comparison the Dylan protagonist would be moving or not moving from an opposite direction.

“Where another man`s life might begin is exactly where mine ends.”  I am a Lonesome Hobo, Bob Dylan.

Dylan positions the OUTSIDER within the traditional outsider contexts. Riding the rails.

Click here for some great articles on Dylan`s use of melody, lexicon, voice, blues tradition etcetera & are easier to consume than Michael Gray`s exhaustive Song and Dance Man III. Radiohead by contrast position the outsider existentially within all of us and more occasionally it seems within a technology that is at the root of this loss of self, disconnection, otherness. If not at the root technology serves, as in Iron Lung to highlight the futility and tragedy of the human condition. Technology that serves as a control mechanism through surveillance, technology that replaces metaphysics? Escaping an existential life of Orwellian nightmare seems only possible in the In Rainbows song Videotape through suicide perhaps? (“I can`t do it face to face”) or death with videotape judgement or a video record in (8-bit) red, blue and green…is it syllogism?

Radiohead perhaps make their modernism plain through a vacuum where romantic ideals, icons, traditional themes and historicism would once have been evident but have been replaced by songs that metafictionally recreate a bleak, unwholesome, wasteland of soulless corporate control, governmental, terror, solipsism and lonely existentialism? There are echoes of the traditional gothic sublime across the In Rainbows recordings but as usual concrete themes seem obscure.

Briefly, it`s interesting to note the sense of the Sublime (Edmund Burke) in the Lyrics of Radiohead`s “In Rainbows”  – particularly  the use of gargantuan scale – there is “falling off” in three songs that I have noticed thus far.

This spatial exaggeration and use of outsized objects reminds me of  “Castle of Otranto” and “House of Leaves” (Mark Z. Danielewski / Horace Walpole respectively).

A house of cards, an organization, structure, consciousness even,  or plan that is weak, fragile and liable to collapse. Household objects suddenly take on vast proportions at a particular junction in the song:

“Fall off the table and get swept under” – House of Cards by Radiohead.

Similarly in “Weird Fishes”, which is highly spatial, the protagonist falls off the end of a (pre-copernican?) earth. There is also a parallel between Hendrix` “1983″ (Electric Ladyland side C) and “Weird Fishes” in overall schemata – escaping through immersion into the depths of the sea.

Listening to B-sides from several Radiohead singles – e.g. “Melatonin”, “Pearly”, “Lozenge of Love”, and  “A Reminder” the effect of the In rainbows record isn`t surprising at all. Stereogum.com suggest that “Radiohead’s lexicon is all about bureaucrats telling you you can’t succeed.”

If lyrically perhaps Dylan is singing the 20th century song of ideas – themes of money, women, class, race, politics etcetera, where would  a modern band like Radiohead be lyrically? Radiohead’s modern antihero illustrates/transforms the song of ideas into a song of images…? Have songs moved away from ideas to images? They would be closer to Paul Auster`s City of Glass than Frank Norris? ..maybe not.  Dylan`s seems to be interested in romantic ideals:

The 19th Century Western Pioneer, The early 20th Century Hobo Folksinger Itinerant, The enigmatic Poet,  Wordsmith and balladeer, a Pioneer of  “cosmic consciousness”, the political dissenter and Angry Young Man…There are degrees to which these stereotypes may have been imposed upon the artist, perhaps most wholly by the media….because, primarily the lexicography and musical style of Dylan reveals an understanding of blues and folk forms reinvented (lyrically) in the post war plastic of the 60`s. Dylan`s a good advert for intertextuality, but, times are increasingly intertextual. Is there a tendency in modern music lyrics toward ….anaesthetised, minimal, modern to the point of being hard, tableaux Keatsean samples for a world with a short attention span ?

I was reading Hank Williams blog about the music business here. Its an interesting page & Hank suggests that traditionally record labels act in a very fiscal sense, much like banks…..

Hank says “there are precious few artist that are anything close to successful (i.e. at minimum able to sustain themselves from just their artistry) without having had a label deal.”

Responses include the accurate and sharp:

“...this is because there are many artists who are not really artists… and they fail in ‘engaging’ their audience.They are romantic lifestylers whose communicative ability is too poor to even reveal that they have nothing much to communicate, other than their self-deluded visions of artistic significance. Their self-awareness is too meagre to allow them to see that their art is inspired by their inner emptiness…..

Given the masses of drivel that the creatively mute pump out, the real challenge is identifying the ‘real artists’ … the artists who perceive the world in a different way, and have the ability to communicate that and engage/enlighten their audience.”

And,

“In a related vein, a research aricle recently published by HBS found that the “long tail” phenom is a steeper curve – meaning the disparity between big artists and developing acts is even greater. All the choice creates too much noise in the system for most people – so even more just default to the hits.”

Plus,

“I think one of our biggest problems has been losing this relationship where record sales determined air play over the past couple decades.The funding model worked because it was a real meritocracy where cream could rise to the top. Nobody being able to afford cattle anymore puts a pretty big damper on the future for cream.”

This is what I have to say about THE COST ACCOUNTANT BLUES:

What`s happening here ? Too often people equate financial success with artistic merit. You either do what you love or you are wasting your time whether you get paid or not. What`s fascinating is doing what you want musically, when you want with no smallprint, no middleman, no obligations, no genre limitations, no debt, no big flash production &cetera….I think it`s called freedom but freedom/expression is not concomitant with quality. The unsigned bands want to be signed, the signed bands want to be unsigned – you have to laugh…And even the great and good sometimes miss the boat. Exactly how does Jandek pay the bills ?

Yes, there seems an awful lot of (money) great production skill invested into polishing artists – producers are the intelligent, skilled, elite here. We`ve all heard fantastic records from bands who can`t really even play – that`s production. But we also hear great records from highly talented artists of genuine capability.

Some artists get it all right somehow and none of it is as easy as anybody thinks.

And yes, the industry gives us some material that might be considered overly crass – but no-one forces you to listen to it. Supply and demand or Hype and Advertising – these are diminishing factors perhaps. Is the affordability of technology + cheap global publishing inversely proportional to a musical meritocracy ? Sounds like a specious contradiction to me. Okay we have a hyperconnected world with an almost infinitesimal multitude of choices and no discernible quality control. Is that not an improvement on the old fashioned paternal linear model where you tended to buy from a chart, or to put it more transparently, an oligarchy.

Maybe music shouldn`t be ceaselessly commoditised ? Record companies need to enter the “new conversation” that is occurring globally, but the nature of traditional companies themselves is now very much under threat. (Perhaps we are beyond No Logo and moved on into a realm of utter mistrust, or connectivity [?] means that we just don`t need or rely upon those dark satanic corporate mills any more ?).But then again, surely the cream will still always rise to the top. Will it become the place of the (formerly known as) “record companies” in these perilous future-times to begin to have to find and produce the most exciting, challenging and BEST new work ? Maybe not, find it yourself, IF YOU CAN, and pay less for it – sounds okay to me. But I know that Highway 61 Revisited cannot be recorded and produced in anyone`s bedroom, not even Bob`s.

So fundamentally nothing sounds as good as something that has been well produced – I take a terrible recording of a two dollar guitar with a weak vocal on a dodgy old-cassette to my producer. He plugs in a mic` gives me a decent plank to strum and 1 hour later we`ve got some very high quality audio, hooks, lines, he`s got the skills to pay the bills etcetera….

This model works: I go and get my inspiration, write, record low-fi, go back home, refine, compress, alter, play-around with my ideas, lyrically, musically, sonically etcetera but I cant get that magic production quality out of it without his input. Similarly he needs my song, chords, idea, hooks, lyrics, riffs etcetera to really get cooking. You find a producer who digs your material – you are onto a winner. He lives in a shiny, clean, hi-tech, capital city, with vast screens, bigger machines and chrome plated dreams – I spent the last 3 years living a loose, disorganised hobo-esque itinerant lifestyle on floors, besides rivers, in vans, on the road, drifting around a long way from home…you get the picture. I want to write songs with a sense of urgency, lyricism but also a sense of place / historicism, songs of time and place, narrative, and experience – you cant really do that withoutgetting out there, you have to experience something.

Can a company still survive delivering superior quality product amid a sea of mediocrity ? Hope so – because it makes a change from concentrating upon the bottom line + creating closed cyclic channels. As an aside; Radiohead cut the ropes/walked the plank and surely their label had previously aided their growth. That the label published a “best of” in some tawdry tit for tat retaliation simply proves that human nature doesn`t change even when the world does. People want money. People are deluded. People are greedy. People get lucky. Some people dont. Lets face facts: we live in an era of Bob Dylan coffee mugs and other kitsch – does Bob control this tawdry marketing of gewgaws? Surely not ? Does Bob care ? Who cares. No-one cares. Life is expensive, cheap and short – mortgages are long and stultifying. IS it nostalgia that suggests stars were real stars in days of yore and that nowadays they have been simmered, reduced, garnished and served vacuously up as mass market commoditised Pop Idol media fodder and being often, therefore, irrelevant crapola?