This is the first of a new monthly series of interview by music writer Jeanette Leech, who is currently finishing her book on far-out folk, Shifting Sands, to be published autumn 2010 by Jawbone Books. During the course of her research, Leech has had the opportunity to speak with some of the genre’s most dynamic artists. She was introduced to Molossus by Editor Jenny Lewis, a longtime friend and collaborator of Vashti Bunyan. Leech has selected the interviews herself, and to honor our internationalism Molossus will maintain British spelling and punctuation.

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Jeanette Leech

The Far-Out Folk interviews are conversations with some of the most innovative musicians of the last five decades.  As folk music began to cross-pollinate with other musical styles in the mid-1960s, new sub-genres arose – acid-folk, psych-folk, outsider folk – and it resulted in some breathtakingly original visions.  This creative burst lasted until around the middle of the 1970s.

Within the last decade there has been a huge revival of interest in these artists from the 1960s and 1970s.  This has helped to inspire a whole new clutch of artists who have made folk music both radical and contemporary once again.  Commonly tagged ‘freak-folk’ (although the term is not well-liked by the musicians themselves), this new strand of folk music has proved itself to be equally pioneering.

This series of interviews, with musicians from both eras, was conducted for my forthcoming book Shifting Sands, the story of acid, psych and experimental folk music over the last five decades.  It will be the first full-length chronicle of this outstandingly inventive genre, and will be published in autumn 2010 by Jawbone Press.

In 1968, after a series of disappointments in the London music industry, the singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan took to the road in a tiny horse and cart with her boyfriend Robert and they headed for an artist’s commune on the Isle of Skye.  The songs she wrote during that journey were to form the 1970 album Just Another Diamond Day – however, the album was not a commercial success and Vashti ceased making music shortly afterwards.  In the intervening decades – particularly after Just Another Diamond Day was reissued in 2000 – the album’s reputation grew considerably, and it now rightfully regarded as a classic British album.  Vashti herself is seen as one of the great British folk icons, despite her reluctance to consider her music as ‘folk’.  She released her second album, Lookaftering, in 2005 to great critical acclaim and many contemporary artists, including Devendra Banhart, Adem, Animal Collective and Joanna Newsom cite Vashti as an important influence on their own work.

Vashti invited me to her house in Edinburgh, and we enjoyed a lengthy conversation that reflected on her experiences within the music industry, both of her albums and her journey in the horse and cart.

I thought we could start by discussing Lookaftering, and how you came to write the songs on that album.

I think the thing about Lookaftering is that it was the bookend to Diamond Day.  It was the result of thirty years.  I hadn’t done any writing, at all, or really anything.  I guess that made the songs quite intense.  I hadn’t been able to play guitar or listen to my own voice for all of those years, ever since Diamond Day.  But just after Diamond Day came out [as a reissue], my brother died.  That was a big thing.  And with the first royalties of Diamond Day, I bought a Mac and a little keyboard and a mixer and I started playing my guitar again, and I started to write those songs.  And very, very slowly they started to come by.  I had imagined that I would write something more urban, because I’d moved here [Edinburgh] from twenty-five years in the country.  I was brought up in London, and I lived in London until I was twenty-three.  And I thought, coming back into the city, all of those pastoral ideas would go.  But they didn’t, and that was the imagery I drew on, without thinking really.  And two of the songs I recorded with Simon Raymonde of the Cocteau Twins, we were going to do a whole album together.  I said to him that I wanted it to be as unlike Diamond Day as possible because, even two years after its reissue, I was still kind of embarrassed by it.

Really?

Because it had been so ridiculed when it first came out.  Just totally dismissed as songs for kids or whatever, I couldn’t listen to it without cringing, for all of those years, and I didn’t have a copy of it.  Whyn [Vashti’s daughter] told me that she and her brother used to take the tape that I had hidden in the back of a drawer out to the car to play it, because they knew that I wouldn’t let them play it, because I couldn’t bear to hear it.   So I asked Simon to make [the new material] as unlike Diamond Day as he possibly could.  I didn’t want any acoustic guitars, I wanted lots of percussion, lots of bass, lots of everything else except no choirboy vocals and no acoustic guitar.  Which is what he did, but it didn’t work.  It really didn’t work.

I carried on writing and eventually I met Animal Collective.  I had been asked to go and perform at the Royal Festival Hall by Stephen Malkmus, who was doing a Meltdown festival there.  I was absolutely petrified.  And Simon said that he would come and play piano for me.  And then he said: ‘Oh.  I’ve got to do something in Barcelona on that night.’  But he knew Kieran Hebden who’s Four Tet, and Adem, and he put me in touch with them.  And they happily agreed to do the guitars and they brought in another friend, Fiona Brice, to do the violin.

I remained friends with Kieran and Adem.  Kieran was coming up to Edinburgh, and he had a band called Animal Collective with him.  And he introduced me to them, he said ‘you know, these guys all have your album.’  I said, ‘why?’ – that’s what I mean by still being slightly embarrassed by the whole thing.  Then a few weeks later I got a call, asking if Animal Collective could record with me, just three songs for an EP, for a label called Fat Cat.  That was when I met the Fat Cat label and Dave Howell.  Dave said ‘What are you doing now?’  I said ‘Writing, and I’d like to make another album one day, but it doesn’t seem to be going very well.’  And he said, ‘Send me the demos and I’ll see if I can advise you.’  And a few weeks later, he said, ‘would you like to make Fat Cat your home?’.  I was so delighted.

He and another Dave from Fat Cat said, ‘oh – didn’t Max just move to Edinburgh?’  And that was Max Richter, who became the producer.  And as soon as I heard his stuff, I knew that that was what was missing really.  We immediately hit it off and started working together in his studio.  But I had these demos that I’d done in my room, on my own, every note in the right place, and Max wanted to do all the songs with real instruments and real musicians and I said, ‘But I like my demos’.  So, we kind of compromised, and that’s why there are a lot of electronic sounds on there, that you might think are real instruments, but actually they’re not.

I only had six songs when we started working together but the rest of them just came in a rush once we were on track.  There were all of those years, and the children, and the life that I had had inbetween.  I had an awful lot to draw on for the songs because an awful lot had happened.  Diamond Day was really looking forward and dreaming of this fantastic pastoral future.  And Lookaftering was, having done all of that, survived it, come through it, and it had given me a lot to think about, and a lot to write about.  It’s as if those two looked at each other across the years.

Those songs are so personal and when I was writing them I had no idea that anyone was going to hear them.  Same with the Diamond Day songs, I had no idea if they would ever really be recorded.

How has it been to work with the new generation, the musicians who admire you?

All the people, that I’ve met, people like Andy Cabic and Devendra Banhart, those musicians that it’s tempting to put under the umbrella of New Weird America, freak folk and all of that, I’ve just found that they have a sensibility that was totally missing when I made Diamond Day, when I was writing those songs and when I was living that life.  They seem to have something about them that is what we were trying to be.  My generation, we had the ideas, but we hadn’t grown up with those ideas, they were all new, we were in unchartered waters.  And we weren’t really full of peace and love.  We just thought that should be the way we should be.  But these people, actually they are really generous to each other, and have this amazing sensibility about the world and how things should be.  That’s what I found so lovely about them.

So maybe it took a generation to make those ideas happen?

A couple of generations, really.  So that gives me enormous hope – that it is maybe an evolutionary thing that is happening.  And the music is the most obvious manifestation of that.

Do you still think you’re idealistic now, in the way that you were then?

Yeah, ridiculously so.  I’m obviously not as cluelessly innocent in the way I was when I was writing those songs, but that whole journey that led into the songs, was such a huge education that by the end of it I certainly wasn’t the innocent person who’d started to write those songs.

When you were growing up, were you a big pop fan?

Oh yes.

What was your first record?

Oh God.  ‘Travelling Light’ by Cliff Richard.  My daughter said she’d kill me if I ever admitted to that!  But at that time he was an immensely talented kid.  His first records were absolutely extraordinary and his way of singing I think was extraordinary.  It’s just that he was deeply uncool, and there was nothing he could do about it.

I didn’t have access to much of the American stuff, really.  But after I did get access to it that’s definitely what I veered towards.  Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers and Ricky Nelson.  Those incredibly neat pop songs that said everything that needed to be said.  When I first started writing songs, when I went to art school, my roommate had a guitar, that was what I was writing, but I was trying to make it say a little bit more than the usual pop songs.  She and I both wrote together.  Some of those early songs I wrote I’m really very proud of, because they were so simple and so concise.

I went through absolutely torturous pathways to try and get some of those songs out.  But I was so not the right person to try and do all of that.  I was horribly shy and I was just this little tiny figure, cowering in the corner, watching this amazing pantomime going on all around me.  I didn’t have the personality to be confident around those kind of people, Andrew Oldham, The Rolling Stones.  I doubt if they even noticed I was there, really.  But it was an extraordinary experience to have been around those people, and to also have been in London at the time, when young people were grabbing the music industry back for themselves.

I’m always surprised and impressed just at how young everyone was, at that time.

I know.  When I first met Andrew Oldham he was 21 and I was 20.  And he’d already made The Rolling Stones into the biggest thing on the planet.  Everyone was really young, but incredibly strong and ambitious, unflinchingly ambitious, to take the reins.  It was an immensely exciting time.  An awful lot got thrown out with the bathwater, but it was a complete restructuring of morality in a way.  I was born at the end of the war, and my parents obviously had been horribly traumatised by all of it, and their generation had been horribly traumatised by all of it.  And they wanted to keep us safe, they wanted to keep us protected.  And we were, amazingly protected from the realities of life and very, very spoilt in that we didn’t have to worry about going hungry, or that something was going to drop out of the sky and kill us all.  We had the luxury of being able to take it all apart and put it all back together the way we thought it ought to be.

You were on that London scene for two, three years was it?

Yeah.  Constantly trying to get a single out.  When I first met Andrew Oldham and he gave me ‘Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind’ I was appalled.  I got into big trouble because on the radio, I said something like I didn’t want to do Mick Jagger and Keith Richards songs because I thought I wrote better songs.  So when I went into Andrew Oldham’s office the next day, I was in big trouble.  I hadn’t meant that exactly.  But he did put one of mine on the B-side, so that kept me happy for a while.

But then I joined up with this Canadian producer called Peter Snell, who made ‘Train Song’ with me.  And I thought, I’ve done it all wrong, I don’t need Andrew Oldham and his huge orchestra.  I need to do just what I set out to do, to try to bring some kind of acoustic music into mainstream pop, that’s what I really wanted to do.  But without Andrew Oldham’s huge this and huge that nothing happened to it at all.

When Andrew started up Immediate Records they asked me to come back and I’d written a whole lot more songs by that time and we recorded ‘Winter Is Blue’, again with an enormous orchestra, and I wasn’t sure about it, because the arranger had changed my tune a bit.

They shelved ‘Winter Is Blue’.  And with that happening too many times, really, I couldn’t stand it anymore.  My parents were going ‘when are you going to get a job, when are you going to get married, when are you going to…’  I was either living at home or I was living with my brother, depending on who was most fed up with me.

I didn’t have a lot of friends in the music business.  Which again, coming back to now, the way that people like Devendra and Andy are is that they are so generous with each other’s music.  It’s as if people like Devendra and Andy imagine that that’s what we were like, and they are enacting that wonderful generosity of spirit that they imagine we had.  What I was doing was neither folk nor pop, and I found it very difficult to find my way at all.

I have read that you didn’t consider your music as folk.

I didn’t have any feeling for traditional music, and I didn’t consider myself a folk singer, I had never entered a folk club in my life, but I loved the melodies.  I just thought I was a pop singer, I wanted to be a pop singer, but I wanted to bring this otherness to it.  It was partly the classical music that I had been brought up with and the choral music that I heard my father play, but not folk music, other than the stuff that we’d all been taught at school.

So, you were getting fed up in London by this point?

I was just getting more and more dispirited.  I’d got a job at a vet, but that was a disaster as well because I just ended up with stray dogs in the house, and I think we had a monkey at one point.  I had this friend, Robert, and he knew people who had horses and wagons, these very young romantic children of aristocratic families.  They were amazing, and they looked incredible.  Robert was at school with one of them and he was also at school with a friend who had grown up with Donovan.  I was fed up and upset, my mother was in hospital, my father got fed up with my dogs and threw me out, and so I went to see Robert who was, at the time, a penniless art student whose parents weren’t supporting him either, and so he was living in a wood behind the art school.  And he’d made a little house under a tree, and I just went to live with him there, at a time when people didn’t just move in with each other, and it was an absolute scandal amongst my family.

We had this beautiful place in this wood, where we had a fireplace and little seats around the fire out of fallen trees.  I had my guitar, and we had an oil lamp, and it was gorgeous.  But then we got thrown out, because these guys arrived who said the land belonged to the Bank of England.

We had a friend who had an old car who came and collected us and took us to his mother’s house.  Anytime we went anywhere, we ran out of petrol.  When we got out to push the car once, there was a gap in this big wooden fence and through that gap in the fence was a little horse-drawn wagon.  We ended up buying it, and the horse that went with it from this traveller guy.  The other bit of the story was that Robert knew Donovan and Donovan had bought these islands off the West Coast of Scotland and he wanted to people it with artists and musicians – we thought this was a grand idea.  Donovan lent us the money to buy the horse.  He and his friends all set off in their Land Rover and we didn’t arrive up there until the end of the next summer.  So, I don’t know what we were thinking, really.  We probably thought it would take us a few weeks.  We soon learnt.

Were you moving further on with the journey every day?

Pretty much.  Finding places to stop was difficult.  And that’s when we became incredibly aware of what people are like.  The people who would say, yes come in, or those that wanted to call the police because the gypsies were coming.

And yet some of the people that we met were so generous and open and excited by what we were doing.  People would give us corners of fields sometimes, people even gave us their gardens to stay in, or we would stay at the side of the road if the verge was big enough, or we’d sneak into a field.  We tried to do ten miles but if we couldn’t find a place to stay at the end of ten miles we’d end up doing twelve, thirteen, and the horse would be getting really tired.  So sometimes we would do less, if it looked like a good place to stay.

How did you keep going with food and provisions?

A lot of it was people’s generosity.  We had very little.  We budgeted for about two pounds a week, but that had to cover the horse getting shod every fifty miles or so.  I remember looking in a sweet shop window and it was like a psychedelic experience.  They were so forbidden.  Who needs acid?

I know that we were denying ourselves, in a way.  It wasn’t something that we had to do.  We put ourselves through it.  But at the time we felt that it wasn’t a choice.  There was no other way of living.  For us it was serious life, and we kept at it.

When did the songs start to come?

‘Glow Worms’ was the first and that came when we were living in the wood.  And Robert and I weren’t really so much of a couple at that point, we were almost partners in it, rather than a romantic couple.  We became so as the journey carried on, it became that we were the only ones really, that understood what we were doing.

‘Glow Worms’ was probably the last love song I wrote because Robert said ‘why don’t you stop writing all these miserable little love songs and write about the world around you and all these wonderful things that we’re finding’.  And that’s when I started writing.  I think probably ‘Timothy Grub’ was the first one because that was the story of being in the wood, being chucked out by the Bank of England and finding the horse and wagon.  Robert wrote the words of three of the songs, and I think that’s not often acknowledged.  It was his idea to get on the road with the horse and although we came to it together, it was definitely his vision.  But I think in the end I probably took it more seriously than he did.

The songs were a way of keeping going really, because we were going through some really grotty bits of Britain.  Songs like ‘Jog Along Bess’ were written in one of the most bleak places I’ve ever lived in my entire life.  It was a glen up in the Highlands on the way to Skye.  And it was raining, and there were midges – I don’t know if you know anything about Scottish midges?  Well, they’re worse than mosquitoes and they’re very tiny and they bite, and they hurt and they itch, and they are horrible.  And there we were, in the rain, and we had an American friend with us who was completely dumbfounded as to why anyone would want to live in this country.  And I wrote ‘Jog Along Bess’, sitting against this wall.  It seemed that the more lightweight songs came from a time when it was really horrible.

Then we lived in a house in the Lake District which these amazing people gave us.  It was extraordinary!  Some people were just so wonderful… I don’t know if you want that bit of the story?

Yes please!

The wagon was in a field and it was getting cold, it was November, and we didn’t know what to do.  Somebody told us about a caravan site that was closed for the winter, and that they might rent out a caravan that had a stove in it.  We stopped this guy on the side of the road to ask him if he knew where it was.  We said that we were on our way to Skye, and that we were with a horse and wagon and it was going to take us a long time to get there, but we needed somewhere to stay for the winter.  And he said, ‘Oh, that’s funny.  Me and my wife, we’re setting off for the Hebrides tomorrow, you better come in and have a cup of tea’.  And we’d been in the house for twenty minutes and they offered us the house to stay in.

That’s quite incredible.

And it would not happen now.  She was an amazing woman, Iris Macfarlane, a children’s author.  She wrote one of the songs on Diamond Day.  Extraordinary people.  They were so excited about what we were doing.  We did leave in March, but we had a fantastic winter.  But my mother died while we were there, so that made the second part of the journey much more difficult.

And then when you got up to Skye…?

I remember Robert and I just looking at each other, we knew almost straight away that there wasn’t going to be a place for us there.  There wasn’t a place for the horse, there wasn’t a place to put the wagon even, and there wasn’t a place in the heart of it for us.  We had become travellers, we had learned so much, we had become road people.

It was back to the horse and the wagon and we thought – ‘now what?’  And what we did was to carry on to North Uist, and we then found a place on an outer island, called Berneray, a little tiny island, we found a ruined house there which we bought, for £150, which was an insurance settlement from when somebody had gone into the back of the wagon.  And we’d been there a few months in this crazy, crazy ruin of a house, but at least it was a house and it had a roof of sorts, an old thatched, turfed roof which moved in the gales.  We went down to London in November to make Diamond Day with Joe Boyd.

What was it like to have other people suddenly in on those songs?

Very strange.  Because I’d been playing them by myself for all that time.  And Joe brought Robin Williamson in, who I’d only met once before.  We did Diamond Day in three separate evenings.  The first evening was just with Robin and another couple of friends, John James who had travelled with us, playing piano parts and dulcitone, and we just improvised that first night.  And I think the second night was when Robert Kirby was brought in with his amazing arrangements.  The third day was when the Fairport guys came, Simon Nicol and Dave Swarbrick.  When they started playing on ‘Come Wind Come Rain’, mandolin and banjo – it’s one my favourites now, but at the time I was very uncertain – I thought it a bit folksy.  I didn’t see Joe again after that third session, he went back to America.  I went up to the Hebrides and carried on my life.  Anyway, I was pregnant.  I’d found out while we were in London, that I was pregnant.

I didn’t hear anything from Joe for ages and ages and ages.  Eventually he sent us the acetate of it.  There were lots of things in there that I couldn’t bear – the fiddle on ‘Jog Along Bess’, and the whole folksy nature of it, it felt like it had been recorded round a campfire.  Which was obviously what Joe had the idea of but I didn’t, I didn’t want it to sound handmade.  I was very much into the depth of well-produced music.

Now I appreciate it, I understand what he was trying to do, and he did what he wanted to do.  I liked some of it.  I loved ‘Rose Hip November’ and I loved the ones that Robert Kirby did, but the ones that gave it that folky edge I couldn’t relate to at all.  I understood what Joe was doing with his other musicians, but I just didn’t feel like I was a part of that school, of Fairport and the Incredible String Band.  I felt much more related to Nick Drake and what he was doing.

As soon as I knew I was pregnant I never wrote another song.  Which to me was significant.  It wasn’t that I didn’t try, because I did, but nothing happened.  I felt as though I had wanted this child so much and that desire had been the songs, really.  That all of that need had gone into the songs.  And once I had my child the songs – they never came again.  And they really, honestly, didn’t until my last child left home, two years before I made Lookaftering.

And you mentioned you were thinking of writing a book…

I had an offer from a publisher three years ago.  It was the person who published Joe Boyd’s book, and one of the editors that had worked with Joe, he’d read a bit that I had written on my website and he thought that I should do the whole thing.  And I would like to, I would really like to.  But I don’t know where I’d begin and where I’d end.

El director David Lynch, conocido por películas como Mulholland Drive o Inland Empire, pretende volver a hacer de las suyas con una película sobre el fallecido Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, el fundador de la Meditación Trascendental, famosa por los beneficios que logra sobre el cuerpo y la mente.

Puede que te preguntes, ¿esto qué tiene que ver con la música?. Pues resulta que Maharishi Mahesh Yogi tuvo mucho más que ver en la música de lo que a muchos les hubiera gustado.

Como dato destacado fue el gurú de los Beatles, quienes asistieron a sus clases de meditación en Rishikesh (India); en alguna ocasión McCartney mostraba el pleno convencimiento de que esta práctica les ayudó a dar estabilidad al grupo.

De hecho, a Maharishi Mahesh Yogi le debemos canciones como “Sexy Sadie” o la primera versión del tema de John Lennon “Child Of Nature”, conocida después por “Jealous Guy”.

Pero no solo estos músicos sucumbieron al arte de la MT, como se conoce de forma abreviada. Por ejemplo, Le Luthiers le hicieron su particular homenaje hace tiempo.

Nunca se llegó a saber la verdad, pero se decía también que la ruptura de Mia Farrow con Frank Sinatra fue provocada por la MT, se tomó en aquel entonces como una especie de efecto secundario. Otro de los que se interesaron por la práctica fue Mike Love, el cantante de los Beach Boys.

El guitarrista y cantante de la década de los 60 Donovan fue otro de los artistas que sucumbieron ante esta forma de relajar la mente. Éste junto con Lynch no solo reconocieron su convicción acerca de esta práctica, sino que han intentado más de una vez difundir la MT entre los jóvenes londinenses. Esta película es solo un paso más en esa ardua tarea.

BY IAN MENDES

sportsnet.ca

It appears Shean Donovan’s knee injury is not as serious as the Ottawa Senators initially feared with the winger expected to be out of action for at least six-to-eight weeks.

“It’s just a matter of making sure the MCL heals and then you put a brace on it. I’ve had it hurt before, so it’s not that big of a deal,” Donovan told reporters on Saturday morning.

At first, it was feared that Donovan could miss the remainder of the season but an MRI on Friday did not reveal any significant structural damage to the ACL. However, head coach Cory Clouston said there may be further testing on the knee once the swelling goes down.

“There’s a good chance there could be some ACL damage as well,” cautioned Clouston. “So it might take six to eight weeks before we know what the complete extent of it is.”

The injury occurred when he was hit by Matt Cooke in the third period on Thursday night in a 6-2 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins. The hit drew the ire of many Senators players and general manager Bryan Murray, but Donovan refused to publicly condemn Cooke for his actions.

“Obviously, I let my guard down. I’ve played against him many times and he finishes his checks. It was a hit and he finished it with his knee — but it’s not the dirtiest check I’ve ever seen,” Donovan said.

Keita ordered to restDemitra suffers shoulder injury setback

I thoroughly enjoyed the MLS Cup Final this past weekend – and congrats to Real Salt Lake on their first trophy. I’ve got lots of thoughts on the game, but want to voice my opinion on what was in my mind the most unbelievable moment of the night – Landon Donovan’s penalty-kick miss.

I was extremely disappointed with Donovan’s performance in the 2006 World Cup. I’ve always thought his status as the savior of American soccer to be a bit overblown and a good deal undeserved. Seeing the negative reaction to this latest PK miss, however, I can’t help but speak out against what I see as much more overblown and undeserved criticism being heaped on Landon over the past few days.

First of all – Landon Donovan did NOT blow the MLS Cup for the Galaxy. His miss certainly didn’t help things, but it was his perfectly-executed cross that set up Mike MaGee for an easy goal to put the Galaxy on the board. Without that cross, the Galaxy would never have gotten to PK’s in the first place.

Second – although this miss was an unfortunate one, it cannot undo history: Landon Donovan is one of the USA’s most dependable players when it comes to penalty kicks, especially in international play. In any sport, the greatest players sometimes fall short – and Donovan is no exception. But to doubt the deservedness of his position as the designated player for penalty kicks for the national team – as some people have since this weekend – is foolish. Landon Donovan should and will continue taking PK’s for the national team – and given his past record, he will miss them very, very infrequently.

Third – despite the miss, and in spite of what his critics say, Landon Donovan is still the best player the USA has. Like him or not, the USA’s success in the 2010 World Cup will hinge largely on his performance. When he’s in form, he can control the pace of the game like no other midfielder on Bradley’s roster. His passing instincts are good, his speed and fitness are top-notch, and he has demonstrated the ability to convert scoring opportunities into goals rivaled only by the injured Charlie Davies. I can only hope that Donovan can rise above his critics – and any self-doubt misses like this are sure to create – and realize his full potential in South Africa next summer.

Now playing: jmvdono

A radio documentary about Paula Stone and the AQVA – L’Association quebecoise de voile adaptee – recorded on location at the Point Claire Yacht Club in Montreal

Chart Position: 35

• Written by Donovan Leitch
• The song is told from the perspective of an American soldier in Vietnam
• This is the ‘b’ side of ‘Atlantis’ (1969); it was originally the ‘a’ side
• Produced by Mickie Most

“Were I asked to focus the New Testament message in three words, my proposal would be adoption through propitiation, and I do not expect ever to meet a richer or more pregnant summary of the gospel than that.”

—J.I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: 1993), 214

Amen! I think that is the very best summary one could give with only 3 words.

Why is this so, though? Isn’t forgiveness the primary message of the gospel? It’s true that forgiveness is central, but it is only part of the picture. We are not just forgiven and brought from a negative relationship into a neutral relationship with God. Christ’s propitiation (His death on the cross which satisfied God’s wrath against sin), wins for us not only forgiveness, but eternal, intimate relationship with God as our loving Father… The wonder of the gospel is not just that I don’t go to Hell, it’s that I do go to Heaven – to be with God, who I now enjoy intimacy with! Adoption assumes forgiveness, but it includes much more. There is so much that could be unpacked about this theme, such as God’s grace and His active role in bringing us into His family, His provision for His children, His discipline of them for their good, His attentiveness to their prayers, understanding the bond we share as believers, etc. Adoption is an incredibly rich truth!

If I were permitted 5 words instead of 3, I’d add another emphasis I think is also quite central to the promise of the gospel and I don’t think is captured by Packer’s 3 words:    

“Adoption and regeneration through propitiation”

One of the wonders of the gospel is the new, genuinely transformed life it promises! The doctrine of sanctification is encapsulated in these two truths, for God gives us a new heart, making real life change possible (regeneration), and then He grows and disciplines us toward maturity (an aspect of our Father-son relationship with Him through adoption).   

If I gave myself a whole sentence in order to say the same thing in more understandable terms:

“The gospel is the good news about Jesus and what He has made possible for sinful people who deserved nothing but God’s wrath for their sin: because of the perfect life Jesus lived and the death He died on the cross in our stead, we can enjoy an intimate Father-son relationship with God Himself, forever, and real, lasting change can take place in our lives, from the inside out.”  

It is wonderfully good news, isn’t it?! Praise God!!

~Donovan

HT: The packer quote is from Jason Kovacs, who gleaned it from First Things

Tinha planejado escrever um texto sobre a palestra de Tom Wolfe no Fronteiras do Pensamento em Porto Alegre, mas o resultado final do encontro entre o jornalista e “a aristocracia charmosa” da cidade foi tão vazio, que nem sei o que falar.

No ano passado, fui na edição com David Lynch e Donovan (absurdamente ignorado pela aristocracia charmosa, precisaram até apresentar o cara: “era um cantor dos anos 60…”) e saí com a mesma sensação: uma noite vazia. Um palestrante falando algo que não parecia interessar a ninguém. Depois uma série de perguntas que não pareciam interessar ao palestrante.

Não havia diálogo. David Lynch queria falar sobre o processo criativo, a imaginação, a platéia queria saber quem matou Laura Palmer. E no fim, Donovan a sós com seu violão cantando pérolas como Mellow Yellow e Season of The Witch enquanto as pessoas levantavam das cadeiras e corriam para casa. Foi um embate entre uma experiência maravilhosa e um momento angustiante ver um dos gênios da música folk tocar naquele evento.

Segunda-feira foi a mesma coisa. Tom Wolfe começou nas previsões apocalípticas, na insistência das pessoas em buscar “o fim das coisas como conhecemos” e acabou desfilando sua ironia em tudo: sexo nas universidades, a realidade como uma fonte de absurdos muito maior que a ficção, a loucura que é a identificação do ser humano por equipes esportivas, Pablo Picasso fora da escola, a arte do “no-hand”, e por aí vai. Depois, espaço para uma meia dúzia de perguntas dispensáveis e ponto final.

Novamente senti o encontro entre a experiência maravilhosa e o momento angustiante. Ver o sujeito que me fez acreditar que o jornalismo poderia ser algo interessante ser engolido pela falta de interesse da aristocracia charmosa de Porto Alegre foi tão forte quanto a imagem de Donovan, um ano antes, cantando para quase ninguém. Duas noites que guardarei para sempre, é claro, Donovan e Tom Wolfe são referências eternas para mim. Mas também serviram para aumentar meu desprezo por um tipo de gente que entope palestras, salas de cinema, debates, exposições, seminários, cursos de pós-graduação: os consumidores de cultura.

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Audience Goes Wild for James McCartney

By Bob Saar

Rocker James McCartney played his U.S. debut last night at Fairfield’s new Sondheim Center. The two shows were part of the David Lynch Foundation’s fourth annual “Change Begins Within” weekend at Maharishi University.

McCartney, son of Beatle Paul, opened a three-ring musical circus that included Iowan Laura Dawn and folk legend Donovan.

“It’s very different having a famous father,” film director Lynch quipped when introducing McCartney. “My father was Elvis Presley.”

The audience, heavily weighted with aging ’60s boomers, went wild when the 32-year-old singer/guitarist walked on stage with Light, his band.

The four-piece slammed right into their first number as a video crew taped the show for the DLF Web site.

McCartney’s’ music was racy and frenetic, and the 400-plus seat Sondheim has well-designed acoustics that allowed the amps-on-stage rock band to deliver without overwhelming.

James looks a bit like Paul with a shaved head. Ah, those eyes. He is not left-handed, and he played a Fender Stratocaster given to him by Carl Perkins.

His voice was high and clear like his father’s, but at times, he sounded more like John Lennon when roughing things up.

“James has a way with melody and a set of pipes which are more than a match for his dad’s,” Lynch said.

His songwriting style has eerie nuances of the Beatles. “Spirit Guides,” featuring McCartney on piano, bore a haunting resemblance to “Lady Madonna.”

Every song charged ahead with strange melodies flavored with grunge, perhaps like Nirvana covering side two of Abbey Road, backed by the Ramones.

McCartney was stoic, mumbling only song titles between songs.

Laura Dawn and her New York blues-rock band Little Death came out blazing away and had the audience on its feet and dancing before their first song was 12 bars deep.

Dawn, a native of Pleasantville, is a stunning vocalist at the wheel of a powerhouse. She’s somewhat like Janice Joplin before the booze and cigarettes, or perhaps Martina McBride after a night of heavy pubcrawling.

Little Death and their sweetly trashed-out backup duo – the Death Threats – blasted the audience into happy submission, a road-and-bar band with a refined stage presence.

1960s legend Donovan closed the show with a set of hits, from “Catch the Wind” to “Sunshine Superman,” delivered in his trademark quavering voice. Donovan, along with the Beatles and the Beach Boys, brought Transcendental Meditation out of India into Western thought, which ultimately brought Fairfield to the forefront of the practice.

Little Death and the redressed and fully sequined Death Threats backed the folksinger for most of his set. The finale featured the entire cast, including McCartney, singing “Mellow Yellow” with Donovan and the crowd.

After the show, someone asked McCartney if he enjoyed playing in Iowa.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” the taciturn singer said. “Definitely.”

—————————————————————————————————————

My Comment:

*WOW! Saar nailed it-every part of it! And the second set was even livelier. Donovan invited Fairfield guitarist Arthur Lee Land on stage for his last two finales, that had Dawn’s husband, lead guitarist Daron Murphy, trading solos with Lee Land, leading to a coherent close, which brought the audience to its feet. What a night! Thank you David Lynch and Fairfield!!

SOURCE: http://www.thehawkeye.com/story/McCartney-review-111509

“Hey boys! You’re doing it wrong – watch me!

Another tough loss last night where it sounded like the team’s ‘give-a-damn’ level was missing. I’ll leave it to the guys from Black Aces to do the recaps.

What I wanted to look at was the interest the Ottawa bloggers seem to have ‘chum’ Shean Donovan. For a fourth line guy, he has a lot of fans, with Jeremy Milks from Black Aces claiming:

Another head scratcher is Clouston’s unwillingness to dress Shean Donovan, a player who at least gives a damn about what he gives on the ice. He was part of a very effective fourth line which was helping the Senators win games early in the season. He won’t be the difference between winning and losing, but the Senators seem to perform better when he’s in the lineup giving his all on limited shifts.

I wanted to see if this was true so quickly crunched the W/L record with Donovan, and without.

First, Donovan’s stats:

For a guy that only has 3 points and 5 PIMs, you wouldn’t expect him to have a very big impact in the win column. Surprisingly, that isn’t the case. The Senators have a .666 win percentage with Chum in the lineup, and only .400 without.

I recognize that this may not be the only issue with this team, but it does seem like Donovan is able to give the team a bit of a spark – and after last night’s loss, it looks like we might need it!

Houston. LA. Donovan. Beckham. Holden. Clark. Ching.
It’s going to be a classic!

A few videos to prepare you for the game.

Top 10 Dynamo Playoff Moments.

Dynamo/Galaxy 2007 at HDC

Dynamo/Galaxy 2007 in Houston

Dynamo/Galaxy 2008 at HDC

Dynamo/Galaxy 2008 in Houston

Dynamo/Galaxy 2009 at HDC

Dynamo/Galaxy 2009 in Houston

In case you forgot how we got here.

A Review

Famous Groupies Of The Sixties Series

Faithfull: An Autobiography

by

Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull

Review by R.E. Prindle

Season Of The Witch

All night, all day, Marianne

Down by the seaside sifting sand.

Even little children love Marianne,

Down by the seaside sifting sand.

-Terry Gilkyson And The Easy Riders

     Technically Marianne Faithfull wasn’t a groupie.  Her early years resembled one but in her later years she was sought after as a conquest by men of the groupie mentality.  I’m sure as everyone knows Marianne Faithfull began her career as a very successful pop singer.  Produced originally by Andrew Loog Oldham she was among the first of the new breed of Rock singers, as opposed to Rock n’ Roll.  She belongs to the new rather than the old school.

     Her first song was As Tears Go By.  Single and album were very successful, more or less establishing her reputation for all time- or at least until the generation passes away.

     My first knowledge of  Marianne Faithful was when the strains of As Tears Go By wafted into my study window.  They continued to waft all day long for weeks.  The girl in the apartment next door was fixated on the song.  A little fat girl.    So after the 7000th rendition  of As Tears Go By I had my first nervous breakdown.  Marianne Faithfull was a sour taste.

Mick Jagger

 Then as far as I’m concerned she dropped out of the pop scene.

     Her auto was first published in 1994, I just read the paperback the other day so the book is probably old hat to most of you but as I didn’t find any real reviews on the internet I decided to give it a try.  I don’t see any reason to do the whole book so I’ll concentrate on the three Bob Dylan incidents, aspects of her relationship with Mick Jagger and Donald Cammell and his movie, Performance.  The book is highly readable and entertaining until after her divorce form Jagger about two thirds of the way through the book when she falls into a drug stupor.  At that point it is necessary to avoid falling into Marianne’s own depression.  Too late for her to get over it now.

     Her career began when she was selected for her looks by Andrew Loog Oldham, producer of the Stones, who saw her at a party.  Asked if she could sing she said yes.  Next, there she was behind a microphone lisping As Tears Go By.  Thus she was an established big pop singer when she first met Dylan and later came under the thumb of Mick Jagger.  She brought something to the table, she didn’t come empty handed.  She was an equal.  To be treated as an appendage enraged her probably contributing to her drug addiction

     She met Dylan during his ‘65 tour.  You can see her sitting in the corner in the movie Don’t Look Back.  She has some trenchant comments to make of the various prticipants in the Savoy Hotel debacle.  She’s very intelligent.  She was a young girl at the time, Dylan being five years older.  She was in awe of Dylan who she considered the hippest god on the planet.

     Dylan is supposed to be a master seducer.  It wasn’t that Marianne wasn’t ready and willing, she was.  In her mocking portrayal of the scene Dylan rather than complimenting her beauty and talent made an attempt to overawe she who was already overawed with his own wizardry.  In the process the seduction fell through.  Mazrianne skipped merrily away.

     Now, this is a girl who a year or two younger , while on tour with a review including Roy Orbison responded to him when he knocked on her door and said:  Hi.  I’m Roy Orbison.  I’m in room 602.  And Marianne skipped on down the hall.  How could Dylan have missed? 

     Later in the book, the year was 1979 when Dylan was going though his Jesus years, while Marianne had entered clinical depression doing heroin and sitting on her wall like Humpty-Dumpty all day, every day, Dylan arrived for another tour.   His dealer was a friend of Marianne’s and he asked if she knew where Marianne was.  Oh yes.  Demelza, the heroin dealer got Marianne to come over.  Dylan and Marianne’s second verse was worse than the first.  By this time depressed, enraged and seeking vengeance against the men in her life Marianne was far from compliant.  She had recently released Broken English, I’ve never heard the record so I can’t comment on the lyrics, so she mocked the Wise One by asking him if he understood her lyrics.  He couldn’t explain hers any better than she could his.  A little drip on the name of Bob, a little triumph for Marianne.  Dylan went away unfulfilled again.

     Oop, there is a third meeting.  Marianne now beyond depression walking down railway ties none of us will ever be able to see.   She overdosed on heroin, staggered and fell breaking her jaw.  Complications arose requiring serious surgery.  Pins were put in her jaw along with some contraption to hold the two parts together that apparently went

Keith Richards

through her cheek sticking out like a water spigot.  Had to sleep on one side.

     While Dylan was playing in Boston she presented herself backstage in this grotesque appearance.  Too weird for Dylan.  Three strikes and he was out.  Never spoke to him again, she says.  (To 1994 when the book went to press.

     After the first meeting Marianne hooked up with Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones for whom we have to thank for As Tears Go By.

     In late 1966 the great Donovan included a song on Sunshine Superman called Season Of The Witch.  The song epitomized the era.  At the time the song made little sense to me but in reading Faithfull it all began to fall into place.  While the sixties were terrific they were also horrific.  Today the horrific impressions dominate my mind.  All standards, all morality disintegrated before our eyes.  It was the end of the world as it dissolved into stange and perplexing LSD fantasy.  Hell, I never even took LSD and I think I know the feeling perfectly.  I’m still getting flashbacks.

     Nothing was real, it was all an illusion.  You could turn yourself inside out right before everyone’s eyes and get no reaction.  Hey, everyone was living through their own movie.  Marianne captures this feeling perfectly in 300 pages but so did Donovan in three verses:

When I look out my window

Many sights to see.

When I look in my window

So many different people to be

That it’s strange, so strange,

Must be the season of the witch,

Must be the season of the witch.

     Marianne’s succession of people to be began in childhood.  She as well as all these musicians, singers and dancers came from humble backgrounds with low expectations  but grand hopes and dreams.  Picked for the size of her bust to be a rock star, piles of money were thrown at her.  Inevitably dissociation occurred as the possiblity to be anyone appeared possible only to be held back by that humble past of low expectations.  how to behave in these new circumstances, not so easy, not so easy.

The rabbits are running in the ditch

Beatniks are out to make it rich.

Sang Donovan.  Standards and barriers were down, libertines crawled out of the woodwork nd there stood Mick and Keith, two libertine beatniks who could actually wallow in money.

     Mick took a fancy to Marianne and moved her in.  Married in heart if not in law, but she was to lose her independence.   There was Swinging London or the tail end of it and swinging is what Mick and Marianne did.  However Marianne did not come to Mick as a nameless groupie.  She was a somebody that the fans admired and wanted to get close to also.  Marianne Faithfull, all in capitals.  All that was submerged into the personality of Mick Jagger.  At first her own money was coming in allowing her independence but as her catalog grew old her money had to come from Mick.  Her lost independence  made it impossible to function as a wife and expect a joint account where she didn’t have to ask for money, it was hers by right.  A conflict and contest arose.

When I look over my shoulder

What do you think I see?

Some other cat looking over

His shoulder at me.

And he’s strange, sure he’s strange.

Oh no, must be the season of the witch.

     And the witching got serious.  All kinds of users, abusers and losers followed the libertines out of the woodwork, masters of manipulation they knew how to easily hypnotize whacked out marijuana smokers, cokeheads and general druggies to get them to do various things, sex things, criminal acts, whatever to gratify their evil schemes.  People did things they never thought they would do and fortunately some or a lot them couldn’t remember doing them.  Such a character was waiting in the ether to snare Mick and Marianne.  The movies, ah, the movies, what a way to snare unwary souls.  Everyone wants to be a movie star.

     Donald Cammell, one such, had his nose to the wind and the wind brought the sexual antics of Mick and Marianne wafting his way.  Truly, it was the season of  the witch.

     Cammell had a novie he wanted to make;  Mick and Marianne and assorted friends were just the libertines to bring Performance to life.  Oh no, oh no, must be, must be the season of the witch.

     According to Marianne, Cammell replicated the sex scene the set had had as though he had been there. Uncanny?  Maybe or maybe it was such a far out thing participants talked and word got around and Cammell’s imagination was inflamed.

     According to Marianne the filming brought disaster into  the actor’s lives.  Cammell, the manipulator escaped, of course, as his kind always does.  The pleasure was all his, you may be sure.

     The filmwas a turning point in the relationship of Marianne and Mick.  Perhaps the film stirred memories of when she had been The  Marianne Faithfull, since submergeed into Mick’s identity.  She had been unable to adjust to the new circumstances.  Pentulantly she just walked away.  Immersed in drugs the downslide slow and pleasant became precipitous until she could be found sitting on her wall of the bombed out building not rebuilt as yet.

     Could it be that the remaining wall of that Marianne Faithfull of low expectations was bombed out by the force of a success undreamt of in her pleasant teenage dreaming?  Was that the fascination that kept her glued to the wall in pleasant heroin dreams?  Would Humpty Dumpty fall into the abyss or not?

     This was now the seventies.  Hard realities existed on every side.  It was’t fun anymore either.  The actual season of the witch had passed over.  This was hell.

     After Marianne left Mick drugs are the topic of her converstation.  What is more boring than a junkie talking drugs.  Shoot up and shut up.  Who wants to hear?

     But she did regain her identity,  she had shed Marianne of the little m and was Marianne Faithfull again.  Men sought her out.  Producers came around again, there was still money in that drug wracked carcassof Marianne.

When she walks along the shore,

People pause to greet,

While little birds fly round her,

Little fish come to her feet…Marianne.

     Somehow from that drug drenched state Marianne was able to cobble together enough strength and concentration to begin doing a Mick and Keith.  Maybe her time had not been wasted by the proximity to Mick and Keith.  While still with Mick she had written Siser Morphine, later recorded by the Stones.  She got no writing credit because of old contractual problems with discarded agents but she did receive a third of the royalities which were considerable. 

     And now she began to string words together to make songs.  The stuff was nothing I would ever listen to.  I mean, choice lyrics like ‘Every time I see your dick I imagine her cunt in my bed.’  Maybe that’s  why Dylan couldn’t understand the lyics.  I’m not going to try.  It worked for Marianne though.  Today she’s proudly known as the Edith Piaf of her generation.  I’m happy for her that things worked out for her after a fashion.  Her smile still photographs well but I’m not going to buy her records, CDs, whatever they’re called nowadays.  Time has gone by and I can’t get As Tears Go By out of my head. I’ll carry that tune to my grave.

All night, all day, Marianne,

Down by the seaside sifting sand.

Even little children love Marianne,

Down by the seaside sifting sand.

Bob Dylan

I was lucky enough to score tickets to the game tonight and will be there with a buddy cheering on Pascal Leclaire’s birthday. Bet you his wish is that his boyhood idol, Martin Brodeur, doesn’t break the all-time shutout record tonight…

According to Brent Wallace, Winchester will be in tonight, while Shannon and Donovan sit out. I’m excited to see how he’ll play.

Paul McCartney’s son says he’s ready to follow in dad’s footsteps

November 4, 5:29 AMBeatles ExaminerSteve Marinucci

James McCartney, son of former Beatle Paul McCartney, will play his American debut concert Nov. 14 at Maharishi University in Fairfield, Iowa. The younger McCartney will perform during the fourth annual David Lynch “Change Begins Within” Weekend, Nov. 13 to 16. Also performing will be Donovan, who joined the Beatles in Rishikesh. Blueser Laura Dawn and her group The Little Death will fill out the bill.

The concert comes a little more than 40 years after James’ father, Paul McCartney, traveled to Rishikesh, India, to study Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

“James has a way with melody and a set of pipes, which are more than a match for his dad’s,” a recent article in the UK Sun declared.

In a statement issued for the concert, he said this is something he’s been working towards for a while.                                                                               

“I have been playing music since I was nine and writing along the way. I met my band about a year ago. Producer David Kahne introduced us — and my dad, Paul, helped.”

McCartney says his father played a big role in helping him develop his musical talent. “My dad taught me guitar when I was nine. I play a Fender Stratocaster, which Carl Perkins gave me from the seventies, and a Gibson Les Paul that my dad gave me — heart red.

“The band consists of me, 32, on guitar, piano, and vocals; Brian Johnson, 28, on drums; Steven Bayley, 32, on guitar, synthesizers, toy piano, and harmonies; and Charles Turner, 27, on bass and harmonies, McCartney states. “I am from London and Sussex, Brian and Charlie are from Allerton, Liverpool, where my dad grew up, and Steve is from Birmingham. Brian and Charlie used to be in the Dead 60s and Steve used to be in The Open.”

The group is touring and also in the midst of recording an album. “We are mixing our album in Hog Hill Studio, Sussex. The words on the album refer to spirituality, love, family, trying to sort out one’s own life, and many other things. I have written the songs over a ten-year period,” he says.

“The music was inspired by the Beatles, Nirvana, the Cure, PJ Harvey, Radiohead — and all good music. It is basically rock ‘n ‘roll, clean sounding, and vocal.”

Just like his dad.

Imagínense por un momento, un simple instante, que alguien viene y les recuerda todo lo que eran y sentían hace 10 años, como dicen “el niño interior” que se decepciona de verse adulto, por haber perdido el camino y no haber alcanzado, ni siquiera intentado alcanzar sus sueños.

Ayer publiqué una Imagen hecha en 1997, y cuando la estuve buscando me encontré conmigo mismo, el Miguel de hace 12 años ya, encontré todas las cartas, los poemas, las correos, toda mi vida está guardada en una carpeta dentro de un CD-ROM.

No quiero ahondar mucho, pero como ya les he platicado desde el año 2000, he estado perdido, y sólamente sobreviviendo, y ahora me siento lo suficientemente desahogado para compartir recuerdos con ustedes.

En el momento que Zetzer me perdonó por algo bien gacho que le hice, y que no tengo las tripas siquiera para contarlo, he dejado una carga muy pesada, y ahora puedo buscar en mi propio pasado cosas de las que no quería recordar.

Yo a los 12 años.

Yo a esa edad ya sabía que quería estudiar y trabajar en cualquier cosa que tuviera que ver con las computadoras, tuve una noviecilla Karina, y era muy feliz en cada aspecto de mi vida en ese tiempo, a excepción de las cosas que pasaban donde vivía.

Yo a los 16 años, ya en el segundo semestre de la Facultad de Ingeniería

A los 16 años, había sufrido una descepción amorosa de Ana Martha (¿Por queeeeé, por qué no me quisiste?), mi ídolo era Alejandro Sanz, que todavía no era famoso, de hecho era miembro de un club de fans en España, estaba aprendiendo italiano, en la facultad tenía varios compañeros y algunos muy buenos amigos, además estudiaba una carrera técnica de programación, donde destaqué y puse los estándares en el cielo.

Y… estaba enamorado de Fey!!! 

Para mi en aquellos días, no había nadie más hermosa que ella.

De hecho mi primer CD que compré fue de ella el de “Tierna la Noche” que ¡casualmente aquí lo tengo a mi lado!

A mis 18 años, el pelo apenas me crecía, después de que me rapé para las fotos para la cartilla militar.

A los 18 años tenía un SERIO problema, fuera de agarrarle la mano a Karina, no había tenido ninguna novia ni nada parecido, hubo unas vacaciones de semana santa que me las pasé sentado en mi sillón solamente pensando, planeando, haciendo líneas de posibles diálogos con alguna mujer, se podría decir que estaba desesperado por no tener novia, fuera de eso tenía una vida muy plena, me iba excelente en la facultad yo era una promesa, y ya me ofrecían la beca a Japón, trabajaba con mi Tio Bárbaro y con Zetzer, y yo los quiero mucho a los dos, porque vivimos tantas cosas, que increiblemente hace apenas unos días me llegan como golpes a mi mente, el dinero para nada me faltaba, era tan feliz.

Mi meta en la vida, aún lo recuerdo, era graduarme, titularme y hacer una maestría en electrónica, y en lugar de poner un Ing. pedorro poner un M. C. (Maestro en Ciencias), ir a Japón, no recuerdo si en esas fechas ya andaba con el japonés, y en mi etapa otaku.

Bueno, así era yo de “chico”, nada que ver con lo que soy ahorita, espero estar a tiempo de ajustar velas y corregir el curso de mi navío.

Off Topic: En Aquellos días mi pseudónimo era “Donovan Appleyard” so, si encuentran algo, cuentos, poemas, canciones, etc con ese pseudónimo, son mías, aunque casi todo murió y se perdió con Geocities, pero tengo copias (y copias de copias de copias), luego les comparto.

“daca noi am fi impreuna, totul ar iesi fie perfect, fie un dezastru..n-ar exista cale de mijloc” – extracharged quotation -

“nici nu ar trebui sa existe cale de mijloc” – extracharged.. response -

Paul McCartney’s son to perform in U.S. concert in November

James McCartney, son of former Beatle Paul McCartney, will perform with his band Light Nov. 14 in a concert during the upcoming Visitor’s Weekend at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa.

The 6:45 p.m. Nov. 14 concert will also feature Laura Dawn and Little Death and singer Donovan. It’s part of Visitor’s Weekend Nov. 13-15 at the University that acts as an open house for prospective students.

Film maker David Lynch will be host for the event. A concert benefit for his David Lynch Foundation earlier this year at New York’s Radio City Music Hall featured Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Donovan.

For more information, see the university’s website.

This is the first of two Halloween mixes I’ll be posting this week. The present mix, timed to fit on standard CD-R, is supposed to comprise vaguely creepy or eerie music. The kind of stuff that might  freak out Bart, Lisa and Milhouse in their treehouse. Ghosts, spooks, witches, devils, murderers, weird people (like the coffin-building boy in Florence and the Machine’s excellent song), voodoo and so on. Marie Floating Over The Backyard apparently still scares Any Minor Dude’s friend, two years after he first heard it.

The second mix, which will go up mid-week, will be a bit more lighthearted, and even without the overcooked Monster Mash and Rocky Horror Picture Show.

TRACKLISTING
1. The Go! Team – Phantom Broadcast (2005)
2. The Never – The Witch (2006)
3. Dr John – Gris Gris Gumbo Ya Ya (1968)
4. Jim Stafford - Swamp Witch Hattie (Back Of The Black Bayou) (1973)
5. Alan Price Set - I Put A Spell On You (1966)
6. Tony Joe White – They Caught The Devil And Put Him In Jail In Eudora, Arkansas (1971)
7. Donovan - Wild Witch Lady (1973)
8. Fleetwood Mac - The Green Manalishi (With The Two Pronged Crown) (1970)
9. Eels - Marie Floating Over The Backyard (2005)
10. Violent Femmes – Country Death Song (1984)
11. Florence And The Machine – My Boy Builds Coffins (2009)
12. Godley & Creme - Under Your Thumb (1981)
13. Alan Parsons Project – Raven (1976)
14. The Box Tops – I Must Be The Devil (1969)
15. Sidney Hemphill – Devil’s Dream (ca 1942)
16. Howlin’ Wolf - Evil (Is Going On) (1954)
17. Louvin Brothers – Mary Of The Wild Moor (1956)
18. Squirrel Nut Zippers – Hell (1996)
19. Mazzy Starr – Taste Of Blood (1990)
20. Imogen Heap - Getting Scared (1998)
21. Iron Butterfly - Real Fright (1970)

DOWNLOAD

I have a good few songs left over for a mix next Halloween. But there are two ghostly soldier songs I’ll want to add to this lot, one as an antidote to Warren Zevon’s more ubiquitous Halloween song:
Warren Zevon – Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.mp3
Stan Ridgway – Camouflage.mp3

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More mixes