-Kegan

Syd Barrett at his Barrett photo session, by Mick Rock

David Gilmour: “I remember I really started to get worried when I went along to the session for ‘See Emily Play’. He was strange even then. That stare, y’know! He functions on a totally different plane of logic, and some people will claim, ‘Well yeah, man, he’s on a higher cosmic level’, but basically there’s something drastically wrong… I don’t know. Maybe if he was left to his own devices, he might just get it together. But it is a great tragedy because he was an innovator – one of the three or four greats along with Dylan. I know though that something is wrong because Syd isn’t happy, and that really is the criteria, isn’t it? But then, it’s all part of being a legend in your own lifetime.”

The dark side of the moon

Estaba escribiendo un post y a la par decidí escuchar el disco Dark Side of the Moon remasterizada en 2003 en formato SACD y DTS, aunque hace una semana compre mi versión para Itunes me sorprendio como la version DTS contiene muchos sonidos y efectos escondidos que no podran ser apreciados con la versión stereo para Ipod Nano G5.

Asi que voy a dejar ese post para el fin de semana y decido hacer mi semblanza sobre este disco tan importante para el Rock y conclui que me declaro incapaz para ello, por lo que mejor comparto estos excelentes videos que van a detallar todo lo que quieran saber sobre esta obra maestra del rock universal.

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About a year ago, long before “going to the gym” was even a seed of a thought in my mind, I walked into Montgomery Cyclery and took an instant shine to a bike called the Electra Townie 7D.

I took it out for a spin around the store’s car park and streets and found it a most comfortable ride indeed.

Many of the bikes in Electra’s range – including the Townie - are made using what is known as “flat foot technology”, where the frame sits you in a more comfortable upright position and the pedal location is ahead of (rather than below) you. It’s a little akin to a recumbent bike, if that makes sense?

I temporarily got quite enthusiastic about owning a bike again, this Townie becoming a little bit of a “Holy Grail” for a while. I was only put off by the outlay; it carried a price tag of almost $450 which was way outside my financial comfort zone at the time.

Plus, when we first moved to Newport, I nabbed a couple of cheapo bikes for me and the wife only to have them ‘waste away’ in the corner of our garage through a distinct lack of use. In retrospect we both decided that was essentially because they weren’t really sized correctly for us. I’d bought them very much on the spur of the moment and it turned out that the wife’s was too big for her and mine was too small for me. Neither of us felt comfortable in going out on them. I eventually tarted them up a little and sold them for a profit on Craigslist.

Since then, and certainly since joining the gym, the idea of cycling has again nagged at me, even moreso after I read a couple of books about urban biking habits. David Byrne’s “Bicycle Diaries” (about cycling round the major cities of the world) ramped up my interest, whilst Jeff Mapes’ “Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities” made me remember how I used to cycle everywhere all the time when I was a skinny little teenager. It also made me yearn for being part of a similar ‘revolution’ in the Greater Cincinnati region.

Byrne’s book suggested that wannabe cyclists should buy as good a bike as they could for the least amount of money, recommending that no-one getting back in the saddle needed a state-of-the-art titanium framed affair costing a fortune. A simple three-geared comfortable bike was all that was necessary to pootle around the neighbourhood.

I took his advice to heart and started scouring the local pages of Craigslist on a daily basis. A few bikes that fitted the bill (priced anywhere from $25 to $170) popped up from time to time but they were either too distant to travel to or had already sold by the time I’d phoned or e-mailed the sellers.

Then, on Thursday, it happened. Someone in Hamilton offered up an Electra Townie 7D for sale at $300. It seemed a little too expensive but there was no way I wasn’t going to go and take a look at it. We made arrangements yesterday, where I discovered it was less than two months old, had been bought locally, was in near pristine condition and yes, the seller would come down to $250.

I decided ‘gift horse’ and ‘mouth’ and came away with it, despite it being Friday 13th.

I took it out for a spin this morning and…. well, let’s just say it will take a LOT of getting used to! I cycled about a mile and came back with extremely achy upper thighs and wheezy breathing rhythms. The latter is probably the result of my cold not completely disappearing yet (the bike ride potentially proving a mistake I know) but the former surprised me in terms of the amount of time I spend on the recumbent bike at the gym. Obviously there’s a new set of muscles at play here?

So, the revolution I spoke of earlier may be several months off – maybe years? – but I am hoping the purchase of my Townie 7D will encourage me to do a little more exercise outside the walls of the Urban Active. Time will tell.

Anyway, here she is in all her resplendent glory… I have nicknamed her “Syd“

In time she’ll get some fenders/mudguards and a bike rack of some description. In keeping with her name however, she might also need “a basket, a bell that rings and things to make her look good“, a reference which will be totally lost on anyone not familiar with the late 60’s output of Pink Floyd.

Pink Floyd in Amsterdam, 1967

I Love The Music

OK I will write this blog, was not going to attempt it tonight as I rather feel my brain is taken apart, I’m coming off Tamazepam again, and large great chunks of flying faeces are hitting the fan with horrible regularity in my life, and especially in the lives of those close. (PS Which impacts on me. What touches those close to us seems to touch us very much). I came to the conclusion recently that life, is about making hay while the dark clouds amass above us. Because, they never stop for long. Or to put it Lou Reed’s way, ‘make a point of having some fun’. Things can go along quite well for a good while, but I think life’s ever shifting kaleidoscope regularly turns to monochrome and this is why my new philosophy, is to take this into account and put some splashes of colour into life’s mix from now on. I mean, all sorts of shit is going to happen. I used to be the sort of person who thought my life a horrid mess because the sky was never free from clouds, whereas everyone else’s life seemed relatively sunny. Sorry for obvious metaphors. Whereas now, I have no reason to assume my life is particularly bleak. I now think most people’s lives are, frankly rather bleak, and that therefore lets all make hay, and sun, as a deliberate policy amidst the grey skies.

Thank you Marcus Rossi, an extremely clever, good looking, intelligent man who writes for Shindig! Magazine, for the following review of England’s Dreaming Spires, my LP available now from villagegreenmachine.com:

VILLAGE GREEN MACHINE
England’s Dreaming Spires
Paisley Arcade CD
www.paisleyarcade.com

Village Green Machine is to all intents and purposes a one-man operation, the man in question being the estimable Mark Lemon: and a man of considerable taste and refinement he is.
England’s Dreaming Spires, as its title readily suggests, taps into a very specific and cherishable vein of UK popsike. However, while Marks unadorned English singing voice betrays a loving debt to Syd Barrett and often calls to mind David Gedge of The Wedding Present, oddly the finished product utilises a considerably broader palette than one might expect. The super-clean guitars and splashy drums, deliriously awash in a bath of reverb, are closer in essence to Joe Meek than George Martin, while Marks lyrics throughout are sharply observant, wholly contemporary, insightful and witty.
You Make Me Feel That Way, Rollercoaster and The Whole Of My Heart, all effortlessly immediate, would be hit records in any truly civilised society, while My Eccentric Cousin is what 65-era Dylan would have sounded like sharing a travelling rug with Phil Spector in a rainy Birmingham bus shelter.
Marco Rossi

Thanks Marco.
One thing is for sure, I always use 60s sounds. Usually I experiment as well. The truth is beyond this what I do is difficult to pin down, as I never stay still for long. So England’s Dreaming Spires echoes Cliff Richard one minute, The Ramones the next, while being made to sound like early Beach Boys. And I mean, I sing in a British accent. I utilise whatever influences come to mind, I mix everything up but ofcourse one has to be able to write a good song. A certain plugger recently accused me of being reliant on other people’s material as the basis of my work, this is complete arse. I celebrate my influences but, if he had bothered to listen to the substance which is mine alone, I think he would have found some worthy original substance. Great that Psychodrama has been played on Radio 6. Wiithout the assistance of a plugger.

This week, we got in despite some heavy personal issues and got recording, I did a song called I Love The Music, kind of Beatles folky/sea shanty style. But I let go of this blueprint and experimented with the types of overdubs, and just generally experimental….the muse flew in the window when I was producing and its a happening track, its got this very distorted fuzztone guitar- the one given to me by a close personal friend from a very cool famous group from the 1960s lol- . Describing music is plainly like trying to describe a colour, … but I am glad because I am never secure, in as much as I can never sit back and think, the next recording will be really good. That would just be a dangerous conceit, and not everything I do turns out. I am still not happy with English Cafe, and I’ve recorded that maybe 6 times or even more. If you like Village Green Machine I will tell you though, I am really thrilled by the way the second album is shaping up. Doing this thing is my life, any money I’ve earnt before VGM has been snorted up someone else’s nose, or worse, and music, is all. I think album 2 will be on its way in spring next year. File sharing, I can’t condemn that since I expanded my own musical landscape a lot by copying albums onto tape when I was a kid, but, supporting us with an album purchase will help keep this thing going.

Did anyone see that interview with Cliff Richard recently by Piers Morgan? Why ever doesn’t that bloke come out of the closet- and Cliff Richard as well.
I have criticised Cliff in the past, for having made a lot of bad records, but now with my blog apparently being read by several hundred people a week, (look I’m not Rupert Murdoch) I think I had better be careful incase I offend the over 70s, Cliff fan club. There is a Monty Python sketch where the Conservative women’s institute or some such decide to sort out lazy working class men, and people interested in sex, and go on the attack with their handbags- (ps pre Margaret Thatcher) I am shaking in my shoes at the thought of the very real possibility of offending at least one Cliff fan I know – but anyway I’m sorry but I am going to speak my mind. I think, he was, and is, a great bloke. No, hold on hipsters, don’t go yet. I was in a band with a drummer who was also a security guard at a major UK venue, and apparently when CR played there, he gave them all T Shirts (which they wore of course) and was really nice and allright. Well, it does count for a lot and I’m not being ironic. Whereas when Barry Manilow played, allegedly, he made all the security guards turn their backs when he mounted the stage. The thought of being mounted by Barry is enough to make me thrash around in search of something, anything, less horrific to distract and console- where was I, yes, Cliff Richard’s good records. Now I defy anyone- to you know, tell me I’m talking crap on this. I think, Move It, In The Country, When Blue Turns To Grey, Miss You Nights, We Don’t Talk Anymore, Carrie, Wired For Sound, and especially Devil Woman are great records.WBTTG and ITC, I take that sound as a role model, among a thousand others in the Village Green Machine mix. Its no good being snobbish, if a record is good its good, however dodgy the image, dance routines etc. And with Cliff, I suspect a choreographer was to blame for some cringeworthy performances. Also I have to say, I was disappointed by that clip of the latest Shadows reunion. They’re 70 and looking amazing, but they had these girls doing the hand jive for a song called guess what Willie and the Hand Jive, and it was kitsch nostalgia taken a step too far. I mean, theres no need for that. Because, among musicians, guitarists at least, who are into old pop, The Shadows are, I don’t think I am exaggerating to say, iconic. Hank leading all those hits with great melodies, on guitar? And Brian Bennett, a very class act on drums with a great sound. I happen to know the tickets for these shows were £60 a head- (I didn’t go) but I have 2 original copies of greatest hits on original vinyl, looking cool sounding even better, and anyone who knows Village Green Machine stuff will surely recognise the influence of The Shadows ”The Rise And Fall Of Flingel Bunt” on my guitar playing. (Cliff and the Shadows on tour)

Thanks for enquiries about Jacobites and related, it was great, we had a lot of fun. All go and listen to It’ll All End Up In Tears on youtube, that’s incredible.

Three times a week is a lot for anything (l o ******* l) no thats nasty but it is – and I’ve watched The Anniversary starring Bette Davis and Sheila Hancock three times, not in a week but in as many days. I got a DVD of it on ebay. Made in Britain in 1968, Bette Davis plays the tyrannical matriarch a few of us may recognise in our own experience. With a patch over one eye, she waltzes down her staircase dressed in an orange Crimpelene mini dress to greet her 3 family business sons for an anniversary gathering. One son is a ‘knicker snatcher’ ooh er, another a regular workman with his own children and wife sheila Hancock, the third a dapper young mod with a beautiful fiance to introduce to mother. It is a black comedy period piece without conceit, every aspect exuding conservative sixties style aesthetically.The knicker snatcher speeds away in a Vauxhall Victor FC estate with chrome bumpers, ofcourse. The mod son wears a double breasted jacket with small high lapels, a ‘pea coat’, and has a good haircut unlike myself (bad hair day thanks to Christos) The film looks old, in an indescernable way which I, we?, like. Basically, Bette Davis plays this dragon who runs the family building firm, the entire plot being a study, an hilarious disturbing observation of family politics, when a tyrannical nasty woman is in charge. High entertainment. I won’t disclose the plot further, but I highly recommend this film as a suitable companion to Entertaining Mr Sloan. It is pithy, direct, unpredictable, outrageous and funny. I found it on UK ebay.

For more reviews and the usual news, come back soon ie next week

Cheers

Mark Lemon

Village Green Machine

At home with Syd Barrett.

From The Madcap Laughs photo session by Mick Rock and for which Syd had specially painted his floorboards alternating colours of yellow and purple.

Without further adieu, Trevor’s blog begins.

1967 was a rather good year for music. Not many arguments there. It featured the summer of love, and everyone rocked out to Sgt. Pepper’s and its earth-shattering production techniques. Truly, music was progressing at an enormous rate. But at the same time, some musicians were regressing. Namely, I will be examining Brian Wilson and Syd Barrett and what the hell they were doing around this time, because, well, it’s interesting to me. So, on we go…

I’ll start this off by saying a few days ago, I stumbled into one of many fan-made mixes of the long-fabled Beach Boys classic SMiLE, which, as everybody knows, never ever came out ever. Oh, that’s right, Brian Wilson rerecorded the whole damn thing a few years ago with his touring band. Anyways, a “complete” Beach Boys recording has never surfaced, but fans over the years have gotten bits and pieces from various bootlegs and official releases. And bits and pieces is truly what they are, because, for the whole album, Wilson adopted the recording methods he’d achieved with “Good Vibrations”. Small, seemingly unrelated parts would be recorded and re-recorded at multiple studios with different musicians in an effort to capture the sounds that Brian heard in his head. Unfortunately, Brian’s head was not in excellent shape at the time, as he had been dipping into LSD and other mind-altering drugs since before Pet Sounds. Reports from the SMiLE sessions don’t often cast Brian Wilson in a sane manner. In fact, many of the well-known anecdotes portray him as a paranoid, deluded man. My personal favorite bit of Brian insanity was his deep and real fear that a song he had written that was meant to embody fire was actually causing fires around Los Angeles. Even in interviews long after the fact, he claimed that the song haunted him in his dreams for years. Having heard this song finally, I can see how a paranoid, drug-damaged person could be truly terrified by it. It’s without a doubt one of the creepiest songs I’ve ever ever heard. I can only imagined what it would sound like had it truly been finished back in 1967. Listen:

The themes of the album as a whole were meant to act as a sort of sequel to Pet Sounds in that it was overall an attempt to return to innocence once it was gone, much like the question that wraps up “Caroline, No”. In an effort to get closer to God and nature, Wilson and chief SMiLE lyrics man Van Dyke Parks wrote and composed many of the songs in a sandbox that Wilson built inside his house. That innocence was such a dear subject to Wilson had always sort of shone through in his work, from the early surfin’ Beach Boys hits and on. Only now, it was prominently front and center on songs such as “Wonderful” and “Surf’s Up”. Wilson wanted it back, even if he destroyed himself in the process.

Overall, as far as craziness is concerned, I’d say Brian Wilson’s case is a rather severe one. After this project fell through, he seemingly dropped out of the group, only occasionally getting a few songwriting credits here and there over the next few years; mostly from leftover SMiLE songs, too. Lucky for him, he would indeed return to the spotlight in the 2000s, and you can thank SMiLE for that, too. Perhaps it is irony that the project that helped to kill him caused him to rise from the ashes as well. I guess that makes Brian Wilson a phoenix. A smiley phoenix.

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And now, onto my next observation in supposed mad-genius craziness. Everybody knows Pink Floyd. It’s very nearly a law that every household is required to have a copy of Dark Side of the Moon, of they’ll be smote by the taste police. Not that I’d say it’s an all-time classic. Good, yes, but not the best. Back to my point, however, and that’s the forgotten genius of original Pink Floyd frontman, Syd Barrett. As an early and prominent example of psychedelic music in the London underground, they grew from an R & B covers band to a full-fledged psych freak-out act. As their mystique grew, so did Syd’s LSD use, although he was still very much a functioning songwriter, writing all their early singles and most of their much-loved debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Much has been made of Barrett’s mental state at the time, with many commentators pointing to the childish lyrics throughout Piper as an indication of his dementia. Gnomes and cats that can’t be explained and scarecrows infiltrate the whole album, and the title of the record itself is a reference to the childrens book The Wind and the Willows. The album feels like a haunted childrens book, with Barrett pairing up lyrics like “I’ve got a bike. You can ride it if you’d like. It’s got a basket, a bell and rings and things to make it look good” with an insane mix of oddball instruments and huge reverb that make the listener feel as if they might not exist at all but are in fact floating in nothingness where only bikes and mice named Gerald exist to fill the void. Have a listen:

Ultimately, SMiLE and Piper are very different albums all-around. However, in my opinion, they do share one crucial similarity. Both share a sense of wonderment and revel in the power of innocence. SMiLE with it’s desperate hunt to recapture it, and Piper with it’s child-like joy and atmosphere where anything is possible. It’s probably a coincidence that these two albums have that in common, but perhaps it has more to do with the drugs. I’m really not one to say. At any rate, these two men both “lost it”, so to speak, during or not long after these two albums, and one is left wondering why that is. I’m not stating that there’s a connection. I merely find it interesting that, in this case, it seems that innocence = mental illness = beautiful music.

-Trevor

Posted via email from HikiCulture – A Forum For Reclusive People

Ça y est, le numéro 3 du fanzine Speak to m(E) est sorti ! Si vous ne l’avez pas encore commandé, honte à vous ! Allez, un petit aperçu du numéro :

COUVERTURE

HOMMAGE A RICHARD WRIGHT
Un an déjà !

ACTUALITÉ
Syd Barrett le premier Pink Floyd / Syd Barrett, le Rock et autres trucs – interviews avec les auteurs!

DOSSIER
24 pages spécial rétrospective 2006-2007-2008 pour replonger dans l’actu de ces trois années exceptionnelles

MAIS AUSSI…

• La Black Strat
• A Momentary Lapse of Reason
• Oh By The Way

• Coffret Piper
• Look Of The Week ‘67
• les claviers de Rick part 1 – Les orgues
• Madcap’s Last Laugh

• The Australian Pink Floyd Show en France
• Sorties livre et DVD
• Figure libre
• etc…

Ça fait envie hein ? Ben moi je l’ai déjà lu^^ Vous pouvez le commander depuis le site du fanzine. Tarifs (frais de port compris) : 8€ pour la France / 10€ pour le reste de l’Europe.

Chapeau-bas et merci à toute l’équipe du fanzine pour ce beau projet

…well it was a very close-run thing, but just edging half a point ahead (and actually due to his specialist subject rather than his expert knowledge of the Large Hadron Particle Collider) is A Ben Baker Of Keighley – congratulations on becoming the Out On Blue Six Telly Addicts Champion Of Champions 2009. And here to present your prize is Annwan Glover, TV ”Slim Charles” (Wire):

‘Normal’ Out On Blue Six will resume shortly…

Pink Floyd, un nom qui rappelle pas mal de choses à pas mal de monde. Bon, il y a les inconditionnels de l’époque Syd Barrett, j’en suis pour une grande partie. Vissé devant mon écran de télé un jour du début 68, je me rappelle d’avoir vu cela. Un de mes titres favoris toutes époques confondues, “Set The Control For The Heart Of The Sun”, ah on savait planer en ces temps reculés! Planons encore et revoyons tout cela.

Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll

Rock ‘n’ roll music isn’t important anymore.  I mean—it’s not really important.  It’s nearly irrelevant.  Download a song, a bunch of ones and zeroes for a buck.  (Do people know the names of the tunes or just the playlist number? ‘Play number five!’) It isn’t changing the world; wars are not stopping, cultures are not shifting seismically, freedom isn’t expanding, lives are not being changed and revolutions are not happening because of music—not like they did back in the day.  At least not like the way we like to think it all did.

So.  Anyone for a play about the Czech experience between the Prague Spring of 1968 and the Velvet Revolution of 1989?  Here’s a play that it is tightly woven with the threads of the music—played at concert level volumes no less—of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd, the Beach Boys, the Velvet Underground, the Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa and a nonconformist Czech rock group that was at the centre of Czech society—the Plastic People of the Universe.  Here’s literature that counts, a play that pokes and prods the comfortable and callow in the West—saying, wake up!  This music can change the world and like that Beatle song said—you don’t know how lucky you are.

I saw my first play by British playwright Tom Stoppard (Jumpers) in Washington DC in the winter of 1974—the winter of the beginning Watergate’s final denouement when revelations of presidential plumbers in dark and inappropriate locations where coming hard and fast—an American president was about to resign in disgrace. There were long lines of cars waiting for expensive gas, inflation was rampant and the economy stunk.  Grim times. And on top of all that, an ever present and low-level sense of doom was draped over us thanks to Soviet ICBMs aimed at the invisible targets painted on our young longhaired heads.  There was a sense of things running down—fear, loathing and deterioration—entropy. Love that word.

Tom Stoppard--rock 'n' roll star

And just as it’s true that rock ‘n’ roll always sounds best played in a dump of a joint, the music in those dark times was sounding good; rock ‘n’ roll music was at the center of American culture—it was kicking holes in the bland beige walls of what had been a comfortable dumbed-down society and new records were like letters from the front lines of the avant garde.

Stoppard’s latest is Rock ‘n’ Roll and I saw it at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago a few months back.  Like all of his work, it is an explosion of ideas, wordplay, puns, allusions to history, literature and obscure bits of philosophy–you gotta be on your toes.  Loosely based on the experiences of various Czech dissidents of the time—Vaclav Havel included—the play traces the lives of a young Czech student, Jan, studying at Cambridge in 1968 and the family of a beleaguered English Marxist professor who’s as Red as Red Square who says things like, “I’m down to one belief, that between theory and practice there’s a decent fit—not perfect but decent: ideology and a sensible fair society, it’s my double helix and I won’t be talked out of it or done out of it or shamed out of it.  We just have to be better.”

But young Jan is the focus—he goes back to Prague in 1968 after the Soviets crushed the reforms of the Dubcek government, he goes back to look after his mother.  He’s a lovable longhaired kid who pores over his vast collection of albums and studies and quotes them as thoroughly as Max quotes Marx.  Later, in 1969 says:

“You can’t face life without a guarantee. So you convince yourself everything’s going to end badly.  But look—when the Russians invaded, you would have bet on mass arrests, the government in jail, everything banned, reformers thrown out of jobs, out of the universities, the whole Soviet thing, with accordion bands playing Beatle songs.  I thought the same thing.  I came back to save rock ‘n’ roll, and my mother actually.  But none of it happened.  My mum’s okay, and there’s equipment held together with spit.  I was in the Music F Club where they had this amateur rock competition.  The Plastic People of the Universe played ‘Venus in Furs’ from Velvet Underground, and I knew everything was basically okay.”

As the play ends in August 1990, as Jan and Esme—the beautiful and now grown-up rock ‘n’ roll nymph of ’68—go to a free Rolling Stones concert in Prague, following the bloodless Velvet Revolution overthrowing the Communist regime, Jan is happy yet gently laments the loss of his old world, replaced by a new one where the central question is “Who will be famous?  Who will be rich?”   Esme says, “I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.”

And the stage goes black as Keith Richards and Charlie Watts kick off the thunderous and exhilarating guitar and drum driven opening to You Got Me Rocking—it reaches down to your spine and you shudder to the yes of rock ‘n’ roll and know that the music is important.

Keef rips this joint in Prague

Yes, it’s the absolute 100% final round of Telly Addicts, by the end of which we will have discovered who is the Out On Blue Six Telly Addicts Champion Of Champions 2009 Xtreem! So, finalists, here are your questions on your chosen specialist subjects…

1. What ‘number’ was Cutthroat Bitch?

2. Which member of the team refused to assist when House was taken hostage?

3. Why was Ridiculously Old Fraud considered unsuitable for House’s team?

4. Which of the following is not a genuine remix of Teardrop by Massive Attack – Scream Team Remix, Mad Professor Mazaruni Mix, Teardrop ‘88 by thewomb Featuring MC It’s Never Lupus?

5. What did House name his pet rat?

6. Which semi-regular character from season five was considered for their own spinoff series?

7. How did Kutner get himself into the Guinness Book Of Records?

8. In 1986, Phil Cool made a guest appearance in House as a ‘rubber-faced’ patient whose face had become locked in position – true or false?

9. Which Hitchcock film does Wilson have framed poster art from on his office wall?

10. How many superconducting magnets – not counting the conducting magnets – are installed in the Large Hadron Particle Collider?

South Park (Garreth):

1. Which Monty Python sketch did Cartman and Kenny re-enact for BBC2’s Python Night?

2. What were Roostallion, Lambtron and Shoe?

3. How, according to the episode Cartoon Wars Part II, is Family Guy written?

4. What was the b-side of Come Sail Away by Styx?

5. What was the name of Randy Marsh’s former boy band?

6. Who introduced the episode Pip as ‘A British Person’?

7. What is the Tynacorp RG-400 Smart Towel better known as?

8. In 1986, over six thousand viewers complained to the BBC over the ‘inappropriate’ scheduling of South Park The Movie: Bigger Longer Uncut on Christmas Eve – true or false?

9. How did Cartman’s Confederate Army plan to blackmail Bill Clinton?

10. What occurs in the Large Hadron Particle Collider at discrete intervals of 25 nanoseconds?

The Tomorrow People (Bob):

1. Where was Spidron’s spacecraft hidden?

2. Which character was supposedly the son of a policeman?

3. What was the official spelling of Elizabeth’s surname?

4. Which band recorded an unused updating of the original theme music intended for the 1992 revival?

5. Which of the following is not the title of one of the tie-in novels – Three In Three, Four Into Three, Three In Four?

6. What was the name of the painting that alerted The Tomorrow People to the alien plot in The Blue And The Green?

7. Under what name did Mike Holoway’s band Flintlock appear in the series?

8. In 1986, the original cast reunited for a ‘Where Are They Now?’ feature on Max Headroom’s Worl-Worl-World Of Tomorrow – true or false?

9. Nicholas Lyndhurst made a guest appearance in which unlikely guise?

10. At what percentage of the speed of light do particles move in the Large Hadron Particle collider after achieving a Lorentz Factor of about 7,500?

So, there are your questions… let’s have your answers!

Scenes from Syd Barrett’s last ever interview.

“Syd is 25 now, and worried about getting old. “I wasn’t always this introverted,” he says, “I think young people should have a lot of fun. But I never seem to have any.” Suddenly he points out the window. “Have you seen the roses? There’s a whole lot of colours.” Syd says he doesn’t take acid anymore, but he doesn’t want to talk about it… “There’s really nothing to say.” He goes into the garden and stretches out on an old wooden seat. “Once you’re into something…” he says, looking very puzzled. He stops. “I don’t think I’m easy to talk about. I’ve got a very irregular head. And I’m not anything that you think I am anyway.”
- From Mick Rock’s final interview with Syd in Rolling Stone, Dec 1971

Cherrywood Cafe
10-3-09

The idea behind Freewater is a simple fuck you to the annual Austin City Limits music festival which gives you the same old pop money bands playing the same old stagnant riffs we’ve all heard ten trillion fold enough times to put a gun to our heads. Oh, and the water bottles are 4 dollars a pop. Hence the name Freewater. Austin’s highly prolific music booker Polly Smith (and when I say prolific I’m not kidding, I’ve seen about 20 bands almost every night of this past week of amazing variances in the psych realm in my new neighborhood, the Eastside of Austin, thanks to her. ) Muggafuggin bad-ass Polly did one last year and did it again this year. Featuring a handful of the truly inspired experimental Austin tone floaters around. A nice crowd of earful minded freaks showed up and gave their love. Hear is a rundown of the sparks that flowed, exploded and drained the aural flux.

NIGHT VIKING

After you’ve seen this band a few times the songs will slowly start etching into yr skull as you walk down a careless street, hitting you like infectious bolts in order of songs sung in rapid shots of whats wrong with all the upside down nonsense floating in the ether. Consisting of a horn player, two keyboardists, a singer-guitarist and yes!! Drum roll please!!! A drummer that plays a drum kit made of fucking luggage!!!!!!!!!!! The whole result is pure perfect ridiculousness that I anticipate with boggled worms to harbor again.

VENISON WOULD

An offshoot of ultra-longtime experimental musician Lisa Cameron’s project Venison Whirled with guests Jonathan Horne of  Plutonium Farmers and L.A. brought the unexpected strange no meddle feedback machine to a coffeehouse!? Ha! Young children were interested but the parents were quickly out the door. More info on Lisa Cameron soon! (PS- toured Japan with the Boredoms, played in Daniel Johnstons band and other adventures you and me will never know!

RALPH WHITE

Ralph White plays acoustic covers of classic rock-psych-pop (Syd Barrett, Jimi Henrix, etc.) songs on banjo, accordion and a sweet gentle voice with a finely tuned Smithsonian Folkways at-home spirit. He balances a line of putting one in perfect peace in starry connects of near sleep-dream alpha awoken animated waves of pondering clouds, foggy streams, yellow tinted frogs, a misty island, sleepy trains and magic raga-inspired fingers on strings and wooden vox wind pointed at yr souls center collection point where yr probably asked …. Swimming? Anytime!

Missed the majority of TED SERIOS and RAINING IN SHANGHAI.

Philip K Dick on why this happened.

“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”

TED SERIOS

RAINING IN SHANGHAI

VC CHILDKRFT

A boy-girl duo facing each on synths like young scientists telling a stoned tone tale of what diamonds might taste like on planets shaped out of triangle cookie cutters. I cornered its mastermind Juan Cisneros in a elevator to Frolix 8 and asked him the frequency shifts of VC Childkraft.

“VC Childkraft has developed over the last 4 years as solo recording project. A very sequestered, bedroom 4 track effort. I had a growing reverence for the use of synthesizers in music as instruments as opposed to the faceless electronic analog modeling sound of modern dance music or throw away pop. So I started writing long exodus or odyssey ballads for the cosmos, adopting the kind of emporer of the studio sage a la Jean Michel Jarre, Klaus Schulze, or Vangelis, while modifying the entitlement of musical heirs with of a more poor mans pragmatism/mysticism along the lines of Moondog, or Hermeto Pascoal.”

TELEPATHIK FRIEND

Psychotic reactions within a collective dream mind is a tough road to walk sometimes my friend…..

Thanks to Tina F. for the digitial eyeballs.

“Theres nothing left of yr depression. As long as yr entertained. Sometimes its just best to lose. Then play the same old sorry game.” -D.J.

Yes folks, it’s time for the super-tricky quickfire round, with twenty five questions designed to fox even the addicts-est of Telly Addicts. See how many you can get right, or failing that, see how many you can get wrong…

1. Who or what was Slim John?
2. What was the only record owned by ‘Radio Goodies’?
3. What was unusual about Bell’s house in Nightingales (apart from the fact that he lived in it)?
4. On which two programmes was Roland Rat seen to be hit with a cricket bat?
5. What was the first power, other than Empathic Mimicry, displayed by Peter Petrelli in Heroes?
6. In which magical kingdom would you find Queen Caroline, Pongo The Dragon and Mr Weatherspoon?
7. Name one of the three ‘other’ tenants that made more than one appearance on Rising Damp.
8. When Kenny remarked “e’s dead, chief!” in The Tomorrow People, who was ‘E’?
9. What were A Tune For Lucy and Sara’s Tune?
10. Russell T. Davies’ reinvented Doctor Who was great – True or False?
11. What was the name of the Parishioner who asked Father Unwin to look after the miniaturisation device in The Secret Service?
12. What was the name of the local policeman in Trumpton?
13. Who was the first of The Delegates to be exterminated in Doctor Who And The Dalek Masterplan?
14. By what names are Reginald Cousins, Remy Hadley and Rene Son Of Guilliame better known?
15. “There’s Baron Von Butcher, you’d better beware, he’s ruthless and he’s cunning and he don’t play fair” is a line from the theme song of which series?
16. Who were Benjamin Knox Washington, Jesse Murphy, Flint Gordon Jnr, ‘The German’, Baron Samedi, Eric Doyle and Stephen Canfield?
17. Similarly, who were Big Love, Grumpy, Ridiculously Old Fraud and Cut-Throat Bitch?
18. In which series was ‘Strom’, the invented language from A Bit Of Fry & Laurie, first heard?
19. “Hiding in the bushes was a watchful pair of eyes, and living in the valley were people lost in time” – where?
20. How did Dexter help Camilla Figg to commit assisted suicide?
21. How did Baron Bartram sabotage Mr Benn’s hot air balloon?
22. Which of the following were still alive at the conclusion of The Wire – Namond Brice, ‘Slim Charles’, Nick Sobotka, Spiros Vondas, Commander Stan Valcheck?
23. Which of The Two Ronnies dressed up as Adam Ant for the most baffling musical parody of all time?
24. What did WPC Annie Cartwright study at University?
25. What were the names of the three other children (apart from Florence) in The Magic Roundabout?

…and there you have it! Get your answers to this, and any other round you haven’t entered yet, in by the end of the week, and the three highest scoring contestants will go on to their own chosen specialist subjects in ‘On The Box’…

‘Shine On’ é o título deste reportaxe biográfico sobre a banda Pink Floyd emitido no programa Rockumentary da MTV en 1989, onde se fai un repaso sua carreira dende os comezoss con Syd Barrett ata a última etapa xa sen Roger Waters, coma sempre con entrevistas e material en directo.

Rock God Cred Report:

Click here to check David Bowie’s cover of Pink Floyd’s “See Emily Play”

Buy “Pin Ups”

The Laughing Gnome!

Let’s come straight to it: yes, “The Laughing Gnome” is about a man meeting a gnome, with sped-up gnome voices (à la Alvin and the Chipmunks) by Bowie (as the Laughing Gnome) and engineer Gus Dudgeon (as Fred). For the chorus, Bowie and the gnome(s) duet. There are gnome puns, many of them.

It recently came to light that in 1995 Boris Yeltsin was found on a Washington DC street in his underwear, dead drunk, trying to hail a cab because he wanted a pizza. Many consider “The Laughing Gnome” to be something of an equivalent for Bowie. “Undoubtedly the most embarrassing example of Bowie juvenalia,” wrote Charles Shaar Murray. “Downright stupid, though perversely endearing” scowled David Buckley. “WORST SONG EVER LOL, know SERIOUSLY WORST,” wrote Techtester45 on Youtube.

Stuff and nonsense, I say. Instead,

Why “The Laughing Gnome” is brilliant

1. It rocks. The beat’s the strongest Bowie’s had to date. Drums, piano, bass, guitar locked in, with a thick bottom end. Rhythm guitar hitting against the beat. Drum fills that kick into the chorus. You could dance to it, and you should.

2. The puns. Come on, they’re not bad. Some are even inspired. My favorite collection:

“Haven’t you got an ‘ome to go to?”
‘No, we’re gnomads!’
“Didn’t they need you to get your haircut at school, you look like a Rolling Gnome!”
‘No, not at the London School of EcoGnomics!

It’s a quadruple gnome pun score! Eighteen points, plus a bonus one for making an LSE joke about the Rolling Stones.

3. Credible dark interpretations. Momus, a commenter on this ILM Bowie thread, offered the intriguing theory that “Laughing Gnome” may be about a man losing his mind, a schizophrenic’s conversation with himself. The storyline fits. The man’s walking down the street, hears a strange voice, sees a vision. Then he starts having visions at home. He tries to rally, puts the gnome “on a train to Eastbourne.” No luck. The visions return and multiply: there are two gnomes now! Finally, descent into utter madness. The man’s at home, believing his gnomes have made him wealthy and famous, but is actually curled in a ball on the floor. If you come close you can hear him whisper “HA HA HA…hee hee hee…”

4. Gnomic synchronicity. Pink Floyd recorded Syd Barrett’s “The Gnome” a mere two months after Bowie cut his “Gnome.” Barrett’s gnome is named Grimble Gromble and is more of a stay-at-home than Bowie’s. Both gnomes like their booze, though. They’re color-coordinated, too: Grimble wears a “scarlet tunic [and] a blue green hood” while the Laughing Gnome sports “scarlet and grey.” Barrett offers something of a general benediction honoring the other meaning of the word gnome, that is, “a brief reflection or maxim; a wise pithy saying” (Webster’s Unabridged 20th C):

Look at the sky, look at the river,
Isn’t it good?

5. The Gnome saved Bowie from a life of cabaret. “Bowie included the song in his ill-fated cabaret audition, with the assistance of a glove-puppet gnome.” (Nicholas Pegg; my emphasis.)

6. A bassoon is a lead instrument. And as Buckley notes, it’s playing a riff that, mutated, would crop again and again in Bowie tracks, like “Speed of Life” and “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps).”

7. It’s a testament to a lost friendship. Gus Dudgeon, architect of “Gnome,” became close to Bowie over the course of making Bowie’s first LP, as while the producer Mike Vernon was bewildered by the end of the sessions (he basically gave up and let Bowie do “Please Mr. Gravedigger” on his own), Dudgeon had become Bowie’s eager collaborator and straight man. He recalled Bowie walking into his flat at Christmas and shaking a branch of Dudgeon’s tree in greeting. (“All the bloody pine needles came off.”)

For “Laughing Gnome” Bowie and Dudgeon spent days coming up with puns and experimenting with tape speeds. They even were proud of the single until the world told them it was a mistake. “For a brief period I enjoyed it, but then when the record came out and everyone said how awful it was I realized it was pretty terrible,” he recalled in 1993. (From The Bowie Companion.)

Dudgeon and Bowie eventually had a falling out, in part because Dudgeon believed Bowie owed him money for “Space Oddity.” But when Dudgeon was killed in a car crash in 2002, Bowie sent flowers to his funeral with the note “Farewell to the Laughing Gnome.” Because Bowie, deep down, knows that the track’s one of the best things he’s ever done.

Recorded on 26 January 1967 and released as Deram DM 123; on Deram Anthology. It flopped upon first release, but reached #6 in the UK when Deram reissued it at the height of Ziggydom in 1973. And the Gnome will rise again, one day.

Heh, tonight is the kind of night I should be staying well away from this blog. It would be nice to find a song that would sum up how I’m feeling, but that would be one crazy-arsed bit of tunage.

Hey! Crazy-arsed? Sounds like a job for Syd Barrett.

Hmm… Nah. Heartfelt, fragile, yearning, mental song and all, but it doesn’t quite sum things up.

You know that feeling… you’re watching a beautiful girl playing “loves me, loves me not”, as she delicately plucks the petals from a summer meadow daisy, before she steps back and takes a flame-thrower to the entire fucking field? And you’re standing so close, the inferno nearly engulfs you? And you don’t know whether to laugh or cry, be angry or understanding, run away or stand there smouldering hoping somebody will rescue you? And you don’t know who’s crazier, her for doing it or you for standing there and watching for so long? And you wish with all your heart you’d never given her the fuel that the flame-thrower has converted into that all-consuming destructive liquid fire? But you know if she didn’t have the flame-thrower she’d probably just have started lobbing petrol bombs eventually? But you’re still drawn to the warmth and the colours even though the fact that the place is on fucking fire should be telling you to get the hell away? You know that feeling?

Sing about that, Syd.

Belong somehow fell below my radar in the past years I’ve been in New Orleans. My roommate came across the page by total accident the other page, and I am thankful. It’s like Eno’s “Music for Airports” but with pulsing distorted guitar rhythms off in the distance. Bongripper also comes to mind as a comparison. “Late Night” is the standout track. Listen here.