blog news …

BLOG  IS  NOW BACK! … New visitors: please use the drop-down menus above this post to gain direct access to excerpt from books (under construction) and articles about this and that. Alternatively, scroll down to see posts in reverse chrono.

Recent Posts :

The Fairies and the Dead put flowers in their hair and head for the west coast and an encounter with the  Dead – although this lot are more likely to be eating a spoonful of spinach jam than brains!

Greek Fairies : A romp through a Greek classical myth – with Fairies.

Pregnant Aliens : The truth about Roswell and the death of Mama Cass.

How to be an Assassin : The Assassin returns to London in another exciting excerpt from ‘The Stem-Cell Killer’.

Las Vegas Night Life : Jack meets Mona in another smoking-hot excerpt from ‘The Stem-Cell Killer’.

American Institutions : A growing collection of short articles with an American flavour, sorry flavor.

Existentialist Pop : A series of short posts featuring those lyrics which manage to sum-up everything about life in a couple of lines.

++ don’t forget you can click on the top menus as well as the sub-menus …

Welcome

Welcome to new visitors from the Ealing Volunteer (Lido) Centre.

Please feel welcome to look around the blog and get the feel of what I’m about. If you’ve looked around other BLOGS (or have one of your own), then probably the first thing you’ll notice is that, as well as the usual reverse chronological “what’s going on in my life” approach, my BLOG has more of an intranet / database feel. (Having worked in computing for over 30 years, this is not surprising.) Hopefully it shouldn’t take long to orientate yourself – remember if you click on a link, you can always click on the ‘back’ button at the TLH side of the browser.

If you have any comments or queries, please drop me an email.

One veil over us all …

The End

… of our elaborate plans, the end
… of everything that stands, the end

I’ll never look into your eyes again

Can picture what will be – so limitless and free

(The End – The Doors)

Whether you choose to believe this is about Jim Morrison breaking up with  girlfriend, dropping a ‘snake’ in a road-side bathroom (so big no-one could survive it – hence the end), acid-induced madness or just a sound-track to a movie, this is surely one of the most emotive songs every written. Camus would have been proud of him.

 

 

 

 

 

More Doors stuff : L.A. Woman + Riders on the Storm … and if you’re not a Doors fan, you may not know that they’re named after a book (The Doors of Perception) written by Aldous Huxley, whose death is covered in : A Double Date with Death.

Dream on …

I am tired, I am weary, I could sleep for a thousand years.
A thousand dreams that would awake me.
Different colours made of tears.

(Venus in Furs – Velvet Underground)

 

For the full (English) text of the book

“Venus in Furs”

by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

 

+ articles about the Velvet Underground  +

reviews of their music + lyrics + one or two fairy stories + lots and lots of pictures, follow the links … starting here.

Schrödinger’s Car

Hi Honey - today car park funny ... not get mad nah?

A car, along with a gender-neutral person of no particular ethnicity holding a Zippo and a can of gas, is placed in a sealed box shielded against environmentally induced quantum decoherence. If an internal handbag mirror detects a V-sign, the Zippo is sparked, igniting the gas that sets fire to the car. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the car is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when we look in the box, we see the car either alive or dead, not both alive and dead.

Fairies with flowers in their hair …

Sometimes the cards ain’t worth a dime If you don’t lay them down.
Sometimes the light’s all shining on me; other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it’s been.

(Truckin’ : Grateful Dead)

San Fran jam band the Grateful Dead are the Marmite of the pass the album cover set. Formed just after (some would say before) the dawn of time (actually 1965) they go on and on and on and on. On the face of it, their music (or at least their sound) would sensibly be placed at the other end of the spectrum to that of the Velvet Underground (as different as acid is from smack) but there are a couple of connexions.

One of those connexions would be the free-flowing avant-garde and improvised style; the other, of course, is none other than those east-coast Fairies we’ve been hearing so much about. Shortly after uncovering one group of Warlocks in New York and turning them into the hard edge of Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll, a second flock of fairies were sent to investigate when fairy senses started to tingle with altogether softer vibrations coming from the bay area of San Francisco.

The city was not totally unfamiliar to Fairy eyes (having previously visited in 1849 and 1906) but what they found there was a welcome change from the mayhem of the New York World’s Fair (Peace through Understanding my fairy ass – smack bang in the middle of George Wallace lauding segregation and the assassination of Malcolm X, neither peace or understanding was visible in the US – even via the new satellite technology!)

However, notwithstanding the civil unrest which was still extant (and more to come) and although still three years away from the Summer of Love (this was 1964), there was definitely love in the air. San Fran’s north beach was awash with beatnicks, although the fairies preferred to stay in the (then) relatively underpopulated and cheap district of Haight-Ashbury. (This suited the fairies as their finances had been neglected of late – what they made in 1848 they lost in 1906) .

The fairies followed the progress of the Warlocks, throughout ’64 and early ’65, enjoying the fusion of country, blues, jazz, and bluegrass. After a gig in Magoo’s Pizza in suburban Menlo Park, California (May 5, 1965) a banjo-obsessed fairy came to Jerry Garcia at night and whispered in his ear all about Venus in Furs and an Austrian gentleman by the name of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. When he woke up in the morning (as blues musicians are apt to do), Mr. Garcia decided he’d be better off dead, and thus the Warlocks metamorphosed into the Grateful Dead.

Never judge a mallet by its punch operator …

If you close the door – the night could last forever
Leave the sunshine out – and say hello to never

(After Hours – Maureen Tucker – Velvet Underground)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘After Hours’ is the closing track from the Velvet Underground’s 3rd (eponymous) album, a sublime mixture of supreme gentleness; “anti-production” was the phrase used by Maureen Tucker. Produced in 1969 (the same year as the double live album), this was the first album to feature Doug Yule (vocal harmonies and bass guitar). John Cale and Lou Reed had had a falling out and Reed presented the rest of the band with a ‘him or me’ ultimatum.

I’ve been looking around for the release history of this album and it seems there must have been several releases. As well as the different mixes (Lou Reed’s so-called “closet” mix and the Val Valentin mix) the album was also released by both MGM and Verve. I bought my (original) copy in England and I seem to remember seeing the MGM logo (although Verve is/was a subsidiary company of MGM so …). The track listing was definitely different, in that it featured ‘Black Angel’s death song’ and (I think) ‘Venus in Furs’ both tracks that featured the electric viola of John Cale (or so I thought). Interestingly, these tracks are the obverse of the quieter all together less frantic style of this album (sans Cale) and I thought at the time that they seemed out-of-sync.

Maureen Tucker is quoted as saying that she hoped the new “calmness” would cause people to “smarten up and give us the recognition we deserve” – obviously she was referring to the commercial success that was still eluding them – sadly, it was never to be. It was also around this time that person or persons unknown stole all the bands equipment but I’m sure the quieter sound is more a reaction to almost ultimate mania of White Light / White Heat (although, unlike most speed come-downs, more romantic than depressing)

The US (Verve) version features the tracks ‘I’m Set Free’, ‘That’s the Story of My Life’ and ‘The Murder Mystery’; none of which I remember. If anyone knows exactly how many of versions of this album there are (they all seem to have had the same cover) I’d be pleased to know.

More Velvet Underground stuff : prequel, parallel, sequel

When you really, really can’t sleep …

so a zombie bites your ass an’ you got an hour lef’… wha’cha gonna do man?

-cheeseburger an’ a cigarette
-no sex?
-OK sex, no, … take too long – only 1 hour right?
-you need more than an hour to have sex man?
-maybe a blow job then … then a cheeseburger
-where you gonna find a woman in an hour give you a blow-job ?

-I’ll pay as per
-wha’s  money if you’re gonna die in an hour
-well if we all bin bit … I’d have to pay her in cheeseburgers

-ok so you have a blow-job then a fag …
-no together man …have a fag an’a blow-job at the same time … then a cheeseburger – an’ another fag
-and then what?
-and then? … whack some smack
-do wha’ man?
-shoot some heroin
-some heroin?
-yeah man an’ some acid
-what acid like LSD?
-yeah heroin and acit
-where you gonna get that – you got about 20 minutes left man
-inna Boots – they sell an’ acid
-yeah zombie acid – I wan’ somma dat …

The girlfriend of random …

Russian Roulette is not the same without a gun.

(Poker Face – Lady Gaga)

If you’re gonna play – play real! … more pics, lyrics etc.

It’s better to be going down the drain than coming up it …

To determine whether something is a gas, a liquid or a solid, apply the following test: place the test substance (X)  in a closed container (Y), which is larger than the substance (X). If (X) retains is shape and volume, it is a solid. If (X) retains its volume but assumes as much of the shape of (Y) as it can, then (X) is a liquid. If (X) retains neither its shape nor its volume and completely fills (Y), it is a gas.

All of which proves that water is air with holes in it.

Sideways through time …

You know I’m born to lose, and gambling’s for fools,
But that’s the way I like it baby, I don’t wanna live for ever …

(Ace of Spades – Motorhead)

Lemmy, a man who has witnessed most of the seminal events of the 20th century: Hendrix wigging out; Mick Farren writing DNA Cowboys and Stacia Strobo getting dressed.

Review of Silver Machine with pics, lyrics etc.