Jack Vaughan: Art - Poesy

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 01:45:48 GMT

Hey the radio thing is over and out. Have moved blog to http://www.moontravellerherald.blogspot.com.

Cant say will be there that long. It has flaws of the technical order too. But it does not have the same flaws that tire me here. Hard to upload and synch. A site where question marks have replaced apostrophes going back three years. I voiced my complaints [on synch arch] to Radio HQ. But interaction is not human. Its mechanical mouse machine missives.

Looking back on Radio Weblog: Some decent stuff. But scattered. Scattered notes in desk drawers was what I hoped to better. This is only slightly more neat. Got complaints from my readers about too much computer stuff. But what the hell else can I write about? So may fork into two sites in future. Good news is RSS and XML are here and the Web is ready to explode again. Short Google! Remember the words of Manny Ramierez: "I dont believe in no curses. You make your own destination."

Sun, 09 Oct 2005 03:11:59 GMT

Blistering attack on Open Sores
"My ambition, with producer Mary McGrath, is to thread the seeming chaos of the Web into a coherent skein of ideas and argument," says Lydon. "We want to launch the smartest, most wide-open, democratic conversation anyone's ever been invited to join, in any format. The Internet transition we're living through is a boundless opportunity. It extends the rim of the roundtable and the range of the give-and-take to the whole planet."

Christopher Lydon is something of a Boston institution. He is relaunching his career with a radio show with the high concept of merging blogs and radio, not a bad idea.. but not easy to do. That's him talking above in ital.. and here's more

"Open Source will be the first radio program truly fused to the Internet, and it will have a lively Web presence. We expect to create a community online that can take part in the production process before, during, and after the program, helping us to surface new views and new voices."

The trouble with the Open Source show is that Lydon constantly has to bring in the blog concept. As if explaining the show concept. A story on DeLay, eg, has a blogger among guests, and when Lydon turns to him he says something like "So what's the word for the blogosphere on DeLay?" and the guy has to be cool, or course, and he says something like "I cant speak for the blogosphere." Last night Lydon: "Web, Dresden Dolls, what's it mean." Like McLaughlin seeking context.

Friday, Oct 7, 2005

John Tushcen died this summer
John Tushcen died this summer. When I got to Madison, he was the top poet. For my part, there was great envy. I thought he was like Joe Dallesandro, only articulate. When Jeff invited me to join in a Madison poetry bash {Paul and Jim joined in the music} in 1988, John was also on the bill, which made it great. Lotta Robitusson over the sidewalk curb since then. Now he is with John Berryman.

JS Online: On Madison's longtime poet laureate
http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/aug05/347027.asp

John's Under Construction page
http://members.aol.com/jjtuschen/poet.html

The Capital Times chimes in
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/index.php?ntid=49786&;ntpid=1

Poeticvoices.com July 1999 Feature: John Tuschen
http://www.poeticvoices.com/Features/9907Tuschen.htm

MadPoetry John Tuschen pages
http://www.madpoetry.org/madpoets/tuschenj.html-
Thursday, Sep 29, 2005

Dylan on PBS
The whole family sat down and watched Dylan the American Master miniseries on PBS last night. As I suspect many of the Whole Sick Crew across America did too. It was very fulsome, Lowell.

I liked the considerable access to Dylan..and the characters he grew up with. Tony Glover, Paul Nelson, Al Ginsberg [mighta liked to have heard from Bobby Vee], Maria Muldar [the Jug Band footage was priceless], Liam Clancy and Dave Van Ronk... all of interest. Footage of influencers Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie eerie.

Fun:Van Ronk desribes how Dylan took his version of House of the Rising Sun and kind of hurt his feelings..and how he couldnt play it anymore..and how gladly he chorttled when Eric Burton and the Amimals took it .. so that Dylan couldnt play it anymore..

The bits on the cold snowy Midwest resonated...and him listening to radio signals in the night. The influence of cabaret show biz on his style [by way of people he shared bills with] became more apparent as it did in Chronicles.

It seems this is apt topic for Gangomine blog .. so how do you make that community thread stuff happen? PBS is giving helpful questions for wouldbe coffee klatchs --

Dylan began dissociating himself from fame at an early age. Do you think it helped or hurt him? How? What is your favorite Dylan song? Why do you find it appealing? If Dylan had come onto the music scene 10 years later, do you think he would have had the same impact? Why or why not?

But that dont make it. I think maybe I will ask..do y0u remember a time when you saw Dylan perform?

Actualy the PBS people are setting up a Flash map to absorb such stories.

Maybe I will ask if and how Bob Dylan music/poetry changed your life. I remeber vividly Jim Cusuamno saying "I would have been a lawyer if I hadn't heard Dylan."
Tuesday, Sep 27, 2005

When we were seven and a half up on Baltimore .. still we worried
So tony c. his comeback fails
And rico’s disabled with migraines

So fred lynn hasnt seen his mother in 12 years
And pole’s face with his vision shattered

Pudge fisk is unlucky and
theyll call the spaceman insane if he ever stops winning

Derron johnson smokes too much
And tiant just throws the baseballs
He dont know the politics

Like roger moret 4am in connecticut
Before the biggest game in his life

Like the yaz-razzer
wants to beat his wife

Our red sox are handicapped heroes
Our red sox are no bigger than life

Our faith in them is not undiluted
Can we forget that they fall apart?

O sportswriters
with your documented breakfasts

O fenway junk hawkers
selling those pennants

O kenmore square
ratskellar

The trolley driver moans
to think of the ball game crowd.

Looking for one thing and found another. Oddly while i was watching sox play orioles. A way back poem of red sox.. Many of these players now mostly forgotten. It’s what i saw new to town looking. Great faith. Great doubt. In dance. I submitted this to Belmont-Watertown Sun through a former roommate who was editor...but he kind of punked out at last and ran it as a letter to the editor to my great disappointment. The sox have been in first most of the season but the yankees overtook them this week. The old town cogitates again on fate. On buses. At the office microwave. With car radios in traffic. At the dark brown watering hole.
Saturday, Sep 24, 2005

Entry for September 19, 2005
LA. Electricity was out. Walked at least five miles that day... just briefly during time was on bus. Up from my W Sunset motel to Echo Park. All the way to Staples Center. Was like old days, when I had no money but had time, was as then thinking about money, a penny for your thoughts. This is after flying cross country to cover Microsoft Professional Developers Conf. In evening on TV there was Perry Mason. Which was perfectly black and white, and confined drama as I would have it construed. But this cheap hotel is weird. Prostitute stares at my window for hours... just like out of the Twilight Zone. Is this where Sal Mineo died? I find out later; no. In San Diego for Tech Ed year before last I thought I’d ended up in the Hotel Lorraine. This life is getting too poor too poor just a little too poor to quote Detroit Junior. It is an insect life fixated on small matters.

--*--

Saw the Dodgers. That was fun. Dodger Stadium was as I expected. Friendly confines. Kept score for a few inning, Herb, just so I had a feel for the context, and was primed for alertness to detail and progress. Saw – I am sure for first time live – a suicide squeeze. Was executed by Dodgers. Saw fielding and running of bases all from stellar vantage. They played the Colorado Rockies, with Korean Kim, formerly RedSox, pitching, ensuring action – but unfortunate for Dodgers, Rockies manager knew to pull him after four.

Sat very high but directly behind backstop. Shared row of seats with nice folks doing Sculley talk.

What is Sculley talk? Well, it is a style of baseball chatter. Very positive, very endearing. Encapsulating essentials. Vin Sculley is one guy who should not retire. He has no partner. And his banter is thus more pure. It’s him talking to you –talking you through the innings of the game.. and he covers the game – and all is fun and clean and good there in the game.

So my bud down the way – and damn but I lost most notes – gave my program box score to a kid [well his mother for him] - bud grew up with this radio or TB chant – and this is him speaking...

“It got away on him.

“It’s a brand new game, 6-6.

“A long noisy out – that’s all that was.

“He ran a country mile for that one.

The old fellow sitting in my row gabbing a bit here and there like that with a young fellow – some kind of relative, because the alternate between wht the Indians and Red Sox are doing, the game at hand, and their shared blood relations’ doings ... is just talking Vince talk .. all of one cloth... and having a good time. This is the most fun I’ve had since first few times at Fenway, since old County Stadium, and since the day Jeff and I went to Wrigley.

Anyway leaving .. palms hear the bullpen.. the scoreboard viewed from behind haloed. As I score a cab. The Dodgers lose [per Sculley] a “wild game”, maybe 8-7, their pitching appearing worse than the Rockies.

“It got away from him”

Happy kids, many in blue, many Mexicans, alive to the buzz, and attendance at the game.

--*--

Strange trip to be taking...on Sept 12.. just slightly less strange than travelling on Sept 11... with the memorials on CNN and headlines in USA .. and a nice verbal brickbat warning from Al Kaline Queda to coincide .. disconcerting

I recall the days of Wescon .. an electonics convention-exhibition from 20 years ago.. the feeling that there were endless possibilities in semiconductors.. and capacitaors, and thermistors, and heat sinks, and design automation tools... I was new to the business and had the boundless hope of the youngster on the rise... now at the press room at PDC, with tech writer and scifi writer Jerry Pournelle pontifacting loundly [more oudly than in press room at Comdex in 88] and endlessly.. and providing an objective correlative for my inner doo-dad cowboy... I am tired.

Robert Wise, director of my favorite Sci-film, The Day the earth Stood Still, died...I learned this poolside with LA Times at a Hollywood bar [at the Roosevelt Hotel] on Hollywood Blvd..where I saw all the stars’ sidewalk images... Julie London, Scatman Crothers, Pola Negri...]

And Gatemouth Brown, one of Slim’s favorites too, passed.

There is stuff afoot in technology as always.. Rich clients from IBM and Microsoft are examples. Also of note: The Next or Semantic Web, as visible right now in blogs and RSS. Unfortunately, RSS is just like the early web was. You build it and hope they will come. Fair to say that, like the web, some will build and many wont come. Like email newsletters, RSS is a push medium. It's inflection point stuff.

--*--

A poem courtesy of LA cabbie:

Big town – everybody’s a machine

Nobody has time for anyone.

--*--

http://searchvb.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid8_gci1123253,00.html
Links to page with technical stuff I wrote on Microsoft PDC.
Monday, Sep 19, 2005

Sat, 04 Jun 2005 23:21:42 GMT

The King of the Chicago Feedback
Lately I've heard Elmore James anew. He could fix on a single note, but make it ring. Shame he died at 45, his heart exploded, with little mention. But he was in approach to music acutely aware somehow of a universal harmonics, a chord Elysium. And no one had it better. One extended chord that came up from Afrik to Greece by way of Hawaii and Mississippi. Circled the globe, Jack. No one dug more into the musical values of electric signals though they still be trying.

Always felt: ''It was Elmore James invented musical electricity.'' But the one-note-ness of Elmore I'd kind of come to take for granted as a limitation. The note bloomed, expanded, of late. Who know why? There is a ringing wood chime at my neighbors where I park my car, and all of music can be spawned from it essential sound. Dust my Blues too is inevitable.

Fleetwood Mac you know I've been listening too, I mean what they now call the Original Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green. I was under-astounded when I first heard Fleetwood Mac in 1969 – that was because I'd already heard Elmore James. I dont think any group has more dedicatedly attached its star to one source artist. Now I love Fleetwood Mac, who were not too proud to do a dozen to two dozen Elmo songs on their first four or five records, Cream be damned. Listening to Peter Green, Mic Fleetwood, John McVie and friends –their stuff was hard to find -- set the table for my return to Elmore. [Too: I kind of rediscovered Elmore descendant Hound Dog Taylor again in years recent. And would footnote this discussion with the note that I did closely encounter disciple J.B. Hutto in the couple of years [circa 1978] before J.B. died.]

Classical distortion, that is what Elmore found. That is an intrinsic quality of blues music, where the note is bent and beautifully hurts, and the blues approach to life. And electronics provided a means.

Reading recently Jas Obrecht edited 'Rollin' and Tumblin': The Postwar Blues Guitarists,' [gift of Peter Bochner], I found it remarkable to learn that Elmore worked in his brother's Radio repair shop after getting out of the Navy. I can only guess that nonlinearity in amplitude response and non-uniform phase response caught his fancy. In harmonic electronic distortion, output tends to hold not only the fundamental frequency but integer multiplies thereof. The note that ripples like wavelets upon water. Call and response. Touch was key as well. But note: ELmore's select choice of slide implement was A METALLIC VACCUUM TUBE HEAT COVER SHEATHE!

If you trace It Hurts Me Too from Tampa Red through Elmore James to Hound Dog Taylor you see the abstraction unwinding and the resonance abounding. With Elmore scholar Hound Dog, the hum of his overpowered amp became the fourth band member.

Besides his cosmic control of feedback, Elmore had instrumental style. Plucked strings with bowing Hawaiian [sacred steel-like] chord shimmering - augmented intervals indefinite pitch, glide - portamento - sliding for purpose to blend notse - glissando... smooth in a gliding manner.

I remember hearing ''Dust My Blues'' – one more riff on his epic trademark flagship ''Dust My Blues'' -- on the grey Kent 45 thanks to Norman, who would select my free 45 to accompany an LP I'd buy at Soulville Records next to the Rialto theatre on Main Street in Racine in 1967. I've put a lot of miles on, and seen many ramifications and enhancements and extrapolations. But I've come back to that chord.

Click to enlarge Elmore

Mon, 09 May 2005 02:33:27 GMT

Memphis Minnie
Memphis Minnie I listened to one snowy Sunday in January.
So here is a poem writ, as the Minnie music unfolded.

Tue, 19 Apr 2005 01:38:35 GMT

Atlantic slinks out of town
The Atlantic Magazine announced it is moving to Washington. D.C., and this has sent a fiery javelin into the mufti camps of Boston arts and letters. Alex Beam, the best writer in town, lampooned the move by creating a few working analogies and stretching them. His ludicrous vignettes include Harvard moving to Nebraska. He's right. If the New York Times were to move to New Jersey, nay, [as the Gints did that], to Indiana, the effect could not be more telling. This is sure the end of the road of something just like the closing of Chess records - or the move of Motown [or the Dodgers] to L.A. The Atlantic would be better off throwing in the towel, one feels.

This place could be a center, certainly for politics, science, technology, and art. Beats anyplace I've been from these points of view.

But Massachusetts has taken a lot as Texas has ascended. Boston was once the Hub of the Universe. No less, in its mind at least. It was the brains and [mostly Puritan] moral compass for America, as New York was really about commerce [well the kind of commerce where the money would break a sweat]. You probably heard the joke describing U.S. newspapers: The Washington Post is read by the people that run the country, the New York Times is read by the people who think they run the country. The Boston Globe is run by the people who used to run the country. Guess ustabe is better than never was. Boston defined American culture .. but now, maybe, it is most defined as a sports town. And save haven for Senators red-nosed Kennedy and pouty Kerry.

Anyway, today was Patriot's Day, a true state holiday. Unlike Evacuation Day, which is only Boston only. Eat your heart out world, these are our days. On both, the boys of Mission Hill start early.

I always like Harpers better than the Atlantic. But I got a feeling that its offices were there on the edge of the Public Garden. Still, those offices moved a while ago. Never got accepted by Atlantic. But once Jeff Hull asked for some of my poetry [Phantom jets flew constantly over the city], which he cut up and applied to his wilderbeast grey-black-and-white oil paintings, and those were hung in the Atlantic antechamber. Hail, Atlantic!

Tue, 05 Apr 2005 03:38:16 GMT

Test
http://radio.weblogs.com/0115044/images/bathers.swf
Test link [links to swf file... a reading of hart crane poem]

Test result: Sound dont work. Probably some bloody software component.

Sat, 26 Mar 2005 14:42:20 GMT

It's a King o' Kings Thing
Directing your attention during this holy week season to the writing of Gordon A. Thomas. Gordon recently scribed a piece that looks at the spectacle that the spirit can sometimes be heir to. That is: Bible stories in the hands of Mr. Cecil B. DeMille.

Gordon and I go back a long way .. to the concrete pastures of Boston University in 1974. He is a great painter, photographer, librarian, pianist, recanter, and writer-critic. Back in 1977 or so he and I co-penned ''Wheels on Fire: A Mnemonic Approach to Dylanology,'' that, while rejeted by the Jounral of Dylanology, really set the tone for subsequent Dylan studies.

[The mistake we made was to trace Dylan's inspiring source to Verdi, while the more hip Greil Marcus was able [in The Basement Tapes] to trace it to the Carter Family] [-gotta put that up on this site one of these one of these.] Gordon continues to ponder the unponderable as his paean to DeMille demonstrates. Read it and weep.

Thu, 17 Mar 2005 12:46:56 GMT

HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY 2005!
When money's tight and is hard to get
And your horse has also ran,
When all you have is a heap of debt -
A pint of plain is your only man. - Flann O'Brien

St Patrick's Day 2004
St Patrick's Day 2003

Flann O'Brien's Pub - Tremont St. - Boston

Mon, 21 Feb 2005 02:39:41 GMT

Eulogy
My dad passed..and it's been coming. Most of what I am is what he made me, or pointed me toward. What a hole now! And only for a bit of luck that we were able to get on, and get over historic obstacles.

Church Eulogy
Patriot Ledger Obituary

Sun, 06 Feb 2005 02:41:55 GMT

SLIMWHITMAN FLOAT AT SUPERBOWL HALFTIME SHOW OF MIND

HALF TIME SUPERBOWL DREAM
deniros apearance as the boxer jake la motta again with britany spears in tow
the slim whitman float's chorttle began to waft
love song of the waterfall that beat the martians read poem

BEFORE THE SUPERBOWL HALF TIME SHOW BECAME A FIGURE OF CONTROVERSY..AND BEFORE PAUL MACCARTNEY CAME TO IT'S RESCUE..I WONDERED WHY COULD IT NOT REPRESENT SURREAL ART OF NOW.

Fri, 14 Jan 2005 01:56:56 GMT

I Remember Mr. Briesmeister - ll tak a cup o' kindness - A Poem
Theres something pretty
And something oppressive
That hits me on some summer morning ..
When I see the dew hanging and spider webs drying
And hear the cars fire up and go [Full Poem]

It is winter, and many years later, and I think I even posted a version of this 7 or 8 years ago on MoonTraveller. But this poem is a story of day that just stays with me. We twa hae paidled i' the burn, Frae morning sun till dine ... Did you ever have one of them?

Sun, 12 Dec 2004 03:03:11 GMT

In collaboration with Sam Burckhardt and Airway Records

Sun, 12 Dec 2004 03:00:35 GMT

A Christmas Hymn

By Richard Wilbur ©

A stable-lamp is lighted
Whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
And straw like gold shall shine;
A barn shall harbor heaven
A stall become a shrine.

This child through David's city
Shall ride in triumph by;
The palm shall strew its branches,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
Though heavy, dull, and dumb,
And lie within the roadway
To pave his kingdom come.

…

But now, as at the ending,
The low is lifted high;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
In praises of the child
By whose descent among us
The worlds are reconciled.

CHEERS!

The last few Christmases I posted an old high school poem on the subject. This year, at left I present something I found by Richard Wilbur in A Controversy of Poets (1965). I had the book way back, but dont remeber this specific poem. Who knows maybe it flashed by and I later spewed a version out in starts. Good seasoning all!

Sun, 12 Dec 2004 02:25:08 GMT

The Hit We Almost Missed - NYT, Dec 3, 2004
"I listened to the radio a lot," says Dylan on 60 Minutes - CBS Dec 5, 2004
Sony to Disclose Details on ISSCC Computer Chip Forbes, Nov 29, 2004
Moon remains a mystery Daily Times of Pakistan, Nov 29, 2004

Sat, 04 Dec 2004 14:28:02 GMT

Cannon fodder
Recently viewed and really enjoyed the Pride and the Passion. I remember seeing it as a kid - I'd say it was the summer and ABC Sunday Night at The Movies. The reason I never found it is no wonder - I thought it was called The Gun. Why it stayed in my mind all these years is a quandary.

No wonder I thought it was The Gun. It is a strange dream. They haul that gun across the plain in Spain. [The trailer: "Blistering hands drag their only weapon."] It often seems to be night. They have to hide. They have to do some obscure engineering. A bit of near medieval religiosity. The people are seconds to the gun. Cary Grant is a royal British navy pain - never breaks character. Frank Sinatra is somewhat trapped in a Hoboken state. And Sophia Loren, is women. [As the trailer says:"A woman on fire - a woman to be loved."] Does not live up to Goya, a clear objective; but I was not disappointed after many many years of chewing on the cud of that recuerdo of Avila.

I think the music has something to do with it. You know score-smith George Antheil was a rebel avant-gardist in his early years. [And in the strangest technological episode Hollywood ever saw, he and Hedy Lamar invented a forerunner of modern frequency carrier hopping, which is key to today's cell phones, after a party concert]. Cannon fodder
Recently viewed and really enjoyed the Pride and the Passion. I remember seeing it as a kid - I'd say it was the summer and ABC Sunday Night at The Movies. The reason I never found it is no wonder - I thought it was called The Gun. Why it stayed in my mind all these years is a quandary.

Sun, 21 Nov 2004 03:39:01 GMT

Classical music is a feeling, Jim!
When the Victrola was invented and first commercialized, and music was needed to play on it, classical music was the only candidate. The people who ran the companies that sold the stuff thought that way. Things changed, of course, but the notion that classical was music carried down. In our house in the 50s we had a couple of Bing Crosby, a few Broadway show recordings, and a slew - well 10 or so - of classical discs - that nobody played. The classical era was over by the time Leonard Bernstein began his Young People's Concert series with the New York Philharmonic.

I had to take interest in it when Leonard Bernstein was on the TV. I recall, I could be wrong, it might have been a Sunday morning, and I was babysitting my sister when the folks were at church. The kids going into the Philharmonic looked really cool, like New Yorkers - but kids! Bernstein himself was a wigged-out cat.

I remember one evening at dinner making conversation with my father, and remarking, after perhaps he said something about cartoons in disparagement, that cartoons were good, in fact, they brought classical music to kids. Where could I have learned that except from Leonard Bernstein? [For his part, dad explained to me that the cartoon makers were probably out to avoid paying composers and music publishers.]

Bernstein's Young People’s concerts are out on DVD and reviewed last week in NYT Critic's Notebook. The writer gets Tom Wolfe's scathing depiction of Bernstein out of the way – Wolfe called compulsive Leonard The Village Explainer; says writer Anthony Tommasini: 'Our global village could use him now.'

He describes the first program. The question was: What does music mean? Bernstein leads the orchestra in the William Tell Overture. He asks the kids to identify the music and what it is about. Well of course it is about the Lone Ranger.

The kids shout out 'Cowboys, Indians, Bandits, The Wild West.'

No, says Leonard. 'Music is never about anything. Put images out of your mind.' Music is, says Lenny. He conducts the Strauss tone poem Don Quixote and makes up a story to go along. It I a silly story of snoring and prisons, but the kids can buy it. His premise as told by Tommasini is

Our feelings are often so deep, difficult and confusing that there are no words for them. Music names them, says L.B., but in notes and movement.

Concurs Jake: 'Like Looney Tunes.'

Related:
When Network Television Was Willing to Educate - NYT, Nov 18, 2004

Also of note:

Monitors of North Korean News Note Dip in Reverence for Kim - NYT, Nov 18, 2004

Dayton Allen, 85, Cartoon Voice Actor, Dies - NYT, Nov 18, 2004

Mon, 01 Nov 2004 00:25:57 GMT

Fenway sausage song

i.
I was going to go down
To Fenway, man
-it’s just 20 minutes away

to hear and record them tout
their sausages

they don’t sell
frog legs

at this year’s
last game

with the yankees yknow
but my recorders were broke

and the backyard was so beautifully solemn
like those old redwood days in Arcata
and when we was kickin bottles of wine over
with the Springs

in my garden right now
I got yellow tiger there

Outta work 6 weeks
And I finally found bliss

Waxed half the car
To listen to this

But the mind plays
tricks

ii.
Sprawl spleen deet
When I get to the town
In my mind

And I throw apples
Again with all my old townies

I will be glad
Oh to hear Italian sausage in the air!

Sweet sausage cries
My home boy
From Eastie
I’ll be blathering there

I’ve been up on the hill
I’ve been watching the planes
Dragging their banners
Like skirts that lift across my blank sky consciousness

And blimps
too

And I got to tell you
I was hungry

iii.
Was a tiger in my garden there
Butterflies dancing
I was listening - listening
To the ball game
But only heard the organ
It drifts
yknow

I thought about those
sausage criers

And where we were in the
Standings

iv.
So we are 4 ½ back
Hope and despair
Spring eternal links of air
In infernal time

In my
town

My ship came in
But I was at the airport

I’ll mess with texas boy
If it puts down Massachusetts

v.
we we are down to our
last doodad out
and facing the Yankee king clout

and my tape recorder wouldn’t pick up
and me CDMD had been too much dropped

so yknow it came
on the wire

what would
Johnny daman do?

Though he may field like Mary,
He singled
And stole second
Like old brother jesu

Then Bellhorn walked
They shoulda called it a balk
Manny doubled to Centre st
Scoring damon - jeri curls flowing

-Bellhorn moved
To
Third
And
Crouched

Ortiz was walked
Blessed ignominy

Off the bench
Varitek
doubled to right
-that’s trouble

Rameriz scores
Pokie Reese
Running now sprightfully for bellhorn
Scores
aNd ortiz huffs into 3^rd

vi.
then trot
is hit by a pitch

and hot dogs
hiss
gabriel comes in to run for someone
and the beer -- baby -- the beer is flowing
and doug mirabelli hell if he don’t double
and alls the hell well in mudville

vii.
we had the glass
at the very moment
extended
truthfully
to the buxomost bartendress of doom
yet
and alas

we
are ahead

and lo mama
it’s the blimp above peddling wares
Italian sausage hee-ya
for train wait I underground in Kenmore
please move to the ree -ya

viii.
thewindupthepitch
yes forever
doug has doubled to left

scoring ortiz
scoring vritek

and we live on
and we are back
and we breathe
and we are
and
the inning ends with
damon like christ
again
flying
to that endless void of center

x.
on jersey st sprawl
when I get outta town
I’ll write it down
life is not fair
but
there is sausages
in the air.
Last home game oh
How can it be other
On this day
But that we don’t just bop it out of here.
Beating the evil empire 11 to 4?

Wed, 20 Oct 2004 01:15:50 GMT

Kerouac Journals are out. Just when I was finishing the Letters. And finishing off Dylan's autobio. ''Windblown World,'' [aint it so?] a collection of Kerouac's early journals is edited by Douglas Brinkley, who is an able type of guy, but one would not think of him first for actually editing K.'s journals. Haven't seen any chatter yet on why not Ann Charters. Meanwhile, the goofy challenge to K's Greek in-laws' tutelage of estate is still about to be going to trial.
Read review of Windblown World NYT, Oct 10, 2004
Read about The Trial - Lowell Sun, Oct 11, 2004

Sat, 16 Oct 2004 15:20:53 GMT

In collaboration with Sam Burckhardt and Airway Records

That's alchemy!
Let's condense things: The point of alchemy for most people over the ages was a] turn lead into gold; 2] create a lizard out of potion; or, 3 ]make a little man arise from a potion. I've always missed the point, and saddled up to a subsidiary angle. Alchemy has been of interest TO ME because it was probably the last specific point where art and science were of one essence. If we were to return to the alchemist era, we might be able to start over and evolve things out a little differently this time, with science and art better entwained; but alchemy - and medieval science, for that matter -- is a morass, and you cant go back. Any hoo, these issues are dealt with in Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature by William R. Newman [of U of Chi], reviewed at American Scientist. see related link
Related
Art versus Nature - American Scientist Online, Nov-Dec 2004

Sun, 19 Sep 2004 18:54:11 GMT

HOUND DOG’S HOWLIN AMPS HUMMIN’

The handful of Hound Dog Taylor records have seemed so far to suffice to paint a picture of the Chicago Blues guitarist. He spun a very concise and intense sound, like his lineal antecedents Elmore James and JB Hutto. We only had a few records, but they were pure, and might be enough. If you’d seen him play, you could flesh it out. Yet, it turns out, a bunch of live stuff was in the can – festering, because the production quality of the sound seemed deficient. And this stuff comes out now and IT MUST BE HEARD. The recording is called: “Release the Hound” and it derives mostly from performances in 1974 and 1975 in Cleveland, Evanston, Cambridge and Sydney.

The stuff was sitting around because it sounded rough – but the world – witness the obits last week for Johnny Ramone has become a place more use to the rough sound. With Hound Dog and his House Rockers, the amps were on 11 and the buzz was palpable. But, like Elmore James before him, amplification I was not there just to amplify, it was a means to discover new harmonics.

Hot tracks: What I say? Wild about you, baby, She’s gone, It hurts me too, Things don’t work out right. It hurts me too, if you compare it to Tampa Red’s, then Elmore’s, then Hound Dog’ version, provides an instant lesson in the evolution of abstraction in this blues form. And the direction was always toward higher abstract representation of a feeling.

The House Rockers were a stripped down ensemble on the order of today’s White Stripes. Hound Dog on guitar, Brewer Phillips on guitar, Ted Harvey on drums.You’re your missing a classic piece or two. Don’t worry about the line up they say…go for the sound. Brewer Phillips played a second guitar, but mostly used it for bass parts. But often Brewer used it, something like Jimmie Rogers did in the original Muddy Waters ensemble - for something else altogether. The fourth member of the band at times was those amps, violently humming. But this guitar and blues vocal approach of Hound Dog is what makes it vastly compelling.

Related
Hound Dog - on amazon
Johnny Ramone, 55 - NYT [reg req], Sept 17, 2004

Noted
Back in Korea - NYT, Sept 18, 2004
Sky Capt Reviewed - NYT, Sept 17, 2004
Cacophony of India - NYT, Sept 17, 2004

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Listening to Hound Dog today conjured up a blues:

Maudie

Calling, calling

In the night

Calling, calling

In the night

Let’s go riding

Where the moon

is shining bright

Come with me

Leave the child at home

Come with me

Leave the child at home

I want to ride with you

On the 41 road

Off the highway

We turn the bright lights off

Off the highway

Turn the bright lights off

Turn on the radio

Hear the music from the north.

All night

Counting nothing but the stars

Counting

Counting nothing but the stars

Following amber old chief Pontiac

Ornamenting this old car.

Sun, 22 Aug 2004 14:35:50 GMT

A poet with the pulse of Jazz
Radio days again. Nat Hentoff reviews the poetry of B.H. Pete Fairchild, author of "Early Occult memory Systems of the Midwest." Hentoff posits Fairchild in a line with Langston Hughes and as a Kansas Plains' radio listener, hearing the distant Big Bands, and finding poetry. This is a Radio Log through mere chance .. seemed the best Blog software that day [John Udell's endorsement played part], but Radio keeps arising as topic. Even on our own planet, radio transmissions have the tracer marks of transmissions from other planets. Read review -WSJ [reg req], Aug 19, 2004
See John Sinclair's recollection of Flint, Michigan pre-60s.
See Jack Vaughan's recollection of Nashville radio in the late 60s.

Also
Olympic basketball: Lithuiania beats U.S. - San Diego Union Star, Aug 21, 2004
More clues hint Mars watery past - New York Times, Aug 18, 2004
Cassini finds two more Saturn moons - BBC, Aug 18, 2004

Mon, 26 Jul 2004 02:30:04 GMT

American Master John Sinclair on Blues Poetry II
This includes the second installment of my interview with John Sinclair. We discuss the R&B singer dervish. That is: Jackie Wilson, and Andre Turner. Click to read.

John Sinclair, the Olympia Oyster Bar, N.O., LA, 1999

Sun, 11 Jul 2004 02:18:41 GMT

Standing at the Crossroads

I was walking down the street the other day when I saw my brother. And we decided to get a bite to eat. I said hey how ya doin man and he says to me man I volunteered and I got to take some Democrats around down for the convention you know and I dont know where to take them. Says I take them to Doyles. Well that’s an idea yknow he said. Then I said I’ll tell you something though, I got the new Eric Clapton record and it’s pretty good. And he says to me I dont know what I think about Eric Clapton. And I say what’s to think. So I tell him the records got great musicians doing great material. Robert Johnson is Shakespeare. Clapton knows this stuff totally. Yeah conceptually Peter Green and Splinter Group did this same thing a few years ago. A couple of Peter’s Johnson songs were better but overall this is better. Put it on! It is the blues baby - would that it were on the radio.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001HAHXW/qid=1089508679/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-6052155-4448845?v=glance&;s=music

Mon, 05 Jul 2004 00:06:29 GMT

American Master John Sinclair on Blues Poetry
I came to know Sunnyland Slim through Harry Duncan and Paul DeMark. It was through Harry as well that I came to know John Sinclair. John was doing a radio show in New Orleans, and writing and performing what I called "Blues Poetry." He heard of my book, "Sunnyland Blues'" through Harry, and was very generous in compliments.

Years later we were able to hook up, and to converse for the magnetic media. Click to read.

One year ago on this site
Estimation of Lowell

Other patriotic commentary form this site
Ezra Pound and John Adams

Three years ago today
Jacob's writeup on the late Chet Atkins - MoonTraveller

Ft Summter Flag

John Sinclair, the Olympia Oyster Bar, N.O., LA, 1999

Blimp over my back yard, going to Esplanade and Pop Concert July 4, 2004

Wed, 30 Jun 2004 02:40:27 GMT

Sharing: When Jim CHones discovered I liked R&B, and that I had no R&B when the sun went down and Milwaukee and Chicago R&B stations went dark, he told me about WLAC, Nashvile and "The WOnderful Randy!" and then I had window into Freddie King and O.V. Wright, and Otis Clay, and stuff unknown before [to R&B in the tubes in the evening ether]. ANd it is better in the air than on the disk! Sharing is good.

Hoarding: Late 60s was it WLS or WILD or WVON? Anyway, SoulShake came over the waves like Seltzer! Had an electric sitar. "Grooving with you baby really turns the soulshake on...I am awful impressed by the way you move/there is nothing about you that I dont approve/DoitDOitDoit/Turn the Soulshake on."

Boom! I was there with Peggy Benson and JoJo Scott and went down to Soulville and got it. And this,like ther follow up Wild Mountain Berries, was a great depiction of my [young] sense about love . Went back to my room and jacked up the volume. And had this 45 all these years, and now its available to the world again. In a big way. CBS Sunday morning gets hip one day in 2004.

I want to horard. I want to tell you about it. Will play it for you if you come over. But if someone else with influence does... well in my heart of hearts like any hoarder I blanch ... CBS's Bill Flannagan put it better than me: "The roof-raising soul music is strung together with a loony electric sitar, played by the great country picker Jerry Reed. The fact that Reed is playing sitar on an R&B record is nonsensical at the offset, but sounds magnificent." Now it's the worlds again, I blanch, I am miffed, but still standing.

Well it's out there now WLAC! Is depicted. Go!

nighttrain
to
nashville