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Archives for January 2013

Wind on a willow: from Primrose to Primrose Hill

Frank Auerbach - Primrose Hill
Frank Auerbach, “Primrose Hill,” oil paint on board, 1967-8. Collection: Tate, London.

Though they likely never met, British painter Frank Auerbach (b.1931)  and American poet William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)  are seen here walking the primrose path together up and around Primrose Hill.

Primrose
By William Carlos Williams

Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow!
It is not a color.
It is summer!
It is the wind on a willow,
the lap of waves, the shadow
under a bush, a bird, a bluebird,
three herons, a dead hawk
rotting on a pole–
Clear yellow!
It is a piece of blue paper
in the grass or a threecluster of
green walnuts swaying, children
playing croquet or one boy
fishing, a man
swinging his pink fists
as he walks–
It is ladysthumb, forget-me-nots
in the ditch, moss under
the flange of the carrail, the
wavy lines in split rock, a
great oaktree–
It is a disinclination to be
five red petals or a rose, it is
a cluster of birdsbreast flowers
on a red stem six feet high,
four open yellow petals
above sepals curled
backward into reverse spikes–
Tufts of purple grass spot the
green meadow and clouds the sky.

I think I love you, I think I’m mad: Actor Out of Work, by St. Vincent (3 versions)

Annie Erin Clark, better known by her stage name St. Vincent, is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. She began her music career as a member of The Polyphonic Spree and was also part of Sufjan Stevens’ touring band before forming her own band in 2006. Above are three versions of her great song, Actor Out of Work. The first one is the official video of the song; number two is a live version performed in a chapel in the middle of a Brooklyn graveyard; and the third is a cover by the New York disco group Escort. After you’ve watched/heard them all once each, try playing them all together, in different phases, and in different combinations. It’s better than sleeping. (If you’re an out of work actor, that is.)

Actor Out of Work
St. Vincent (Annie Clark)

You’re a supplement, you’re a salve
You’re a bandage, pull it off
I can quit you cut it out
You’re a patient, I am love

You’re a cast signed broken arm
You’re an actor out of work
You’re a liar and that’s the truth
You’re an extra, lost in the scene

You’re a boxer in the ring
With brass knuckles underneath
You’re the curses through my teeth
You’re the laughter, you’re the obscene
Uhhh uuuuh

You’re a supplement, you’re a salve
You’re a bandage, pull it off
I think I love you, I think I’m mad

You’re a cast signed broken arm
You’re an actor out of work
I think I love you, I think I’m mad
You’re a boxer in the ring
With brass knuckles underneath
I think I love you, I think I’m mad

Escudero Etchebaster Solidad Casals: Style, by Marianne Moore

This morning serendipity caused me to trip over and into this wonderful poem by the great American modernist poet Marianne Moore, “Style” (c. 1956). Revel in the language and the waltz of words. Revel, I say. Revel too in the names of Moore’s characters and allusions, some of which Ms. Moore elaborated upon in end-notes to her poem; I’ve added my own explicatory revelations and links at the bottom of this post.

Follow the plumbline past the tilted hat…

STYLE

revives in Escudero’s constant of the plumbline,
axis of the hairfine moon–his counter-camber of the skater.
No more fanatical adjuster
of the tilted hat
than Escudero; of tempos others can’t combine.
And we — besides evolving
the classic silhouette, Dick Button whittled slender–

have an Iberian-American champion yet,
the deadly Etchebaster. Entranced, were you not, by Soledad?
black-clad solitude that is not sad;
like a letter from
Casals; or perhaps say literal alphabet
S soundholes in a ‘cello
set contradictorily; or should we call her

la lagarta? or bamboos with fireflies a-glitter;
or glassy lake and the whorls which a vertical stroke brought about,
of the paddle half-turned coming out.
As if bisecting
a viper, she can dart down three times and recover
without a disaster, having
been a bull-fighter. Well; she has a forgiver.

Etchebaster’s art, his catlike ease, his mousing pose,
his genius for anticipatory tactics, preclude envy
as the traditional unwavy
Sandeman sailor
is Escudero’s; the guitar, Rosario’s–
wrist-rest for a dangling hand
that’s suddenly set humming fast fast fast and faster.

There is no suitable simile. It is as though
the equidistant three tiny arcs of seeds in a banana
had been conjoined by Palestrina;
it is like the eyes,
of say the face of Palestrina by El Greco.
O Escudero, Soledad,
Rosario Escudero, Etchebaster!

[Read more…] about Escudero Etchebaster Solidad Casals: Style, by Marianne Moore

Hazy cosmic jive: David Bowie performing “Starman” on TV, 1972

Here’s a great clip of David Bowie performing “Starman” on the TV show “Top of the Pops” in 1972. This is the height of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust phase, and he’s backed by the Spiders from Mars: Mick Ronson on guitar and backing vocals, Trevor Bolder on bass, and Mick Woodmansey on drums. (Via Pitchfork)

Starman
by David Bowie

Goodbye love
Didn’t know what time it was the lights were low oh how
I leaned back on my radio oh oh
Some cat was layin down some rock n roll lotta soul, he said
Then the loud sound did seem to fade a ade
Came back like a slow voice on a wave of phase ha hase
That werent no d.j. that was hazy cosmic jive

There’s a starman waiting in the sky
Hed like to come and meet us
But he thinks he’d blow our minds
There’s a starman waiting in the sky
Hes told us not to blow it
Cause he knows it’s all worthwhile
He told me:
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie

I had to phone someone so I picked on you ho ho
Hey, that’s far out so you heard him too! o o
Switch on the tv we may pick him up on channel two
Look out your window I can see his light a ight
If we can sparkle he may land tonight a ight
Don’t tell your poppa or hell get us locked up in fright

There’s a starman waiting in the sky
Hed like to come and meet us
But he thinks he’d blow our minds
There’s a starman waiting in the sky
Hes told us not to blow it
Cause he knows it’s all worthwhile
He told me:
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie

Starman waiting in the sky
Hed like to come and meet us
But he thinks he’d blow our minds
There’s a starman waiting in the sky
Hes told us not to blow it
Cause he knows it’s all worthwhile
He told me:
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie

La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la

Frank Zappa on The Steve Allen show, 1963, playing music on bicycles

This a great. A young, unknown Frank Zappa (Allen and the announcer keep pronouncing his name “Zoppa”) on the Steve Allen show creating an interactive music happening with two bicycles, the studio band (playing “non-musically”), and recorded electronic music. Obviously inspired by John Cage, but very funny. Steve Allen makes some funny jokes, but has adds a nice, respectful coda, and Zappa cracks up repeatedly.

Zappa takes the opportunity to promote his new album, How’s Your Bird, due for release one week later, and the “world’s worst move” — The Worlds Greatest Sinner — for which he composed the score. The movie, by iconoclastic “grindhouse” actor/writer/director Timothy Carey, was not released, and would not be seen by the public for 50 years. So of course we’ll have to hunt it down and see it. Carey’s biography is very interesting, and among his many strange appearances on the fringes of popular culture, he is on the iconic Beatles Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, album, in a still from Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing, though all but a small part of the back of his shirt (seen directly behind George) is obscured in the final version released with the album. Check out “The Sgt Pepper Album Cover Shoot Dissected” for more fascinating details about the murkier aspects of this most famous of album covers.

See also:

Sightings: Bigfoot, Elf, and J.D. Salinger

Bigfoot, Elf, J.D. Salinger
Three mysterious creatures in the wild: Bigfoot, Buddy the Elf, and J.D. Salinger (photo: Paul Adao, 1988).

The classic Bigfoot image is from a 1967 film by Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin, at Bluff Creek in Northern California (see video below). The Bigfoot might be fake, but the scarred and battered film stock is the real deal, real enough perhaps to inspire a few new Hipstamatic filters. The movie Elf is a Christmas classic from 2003, starring Will Ferrell as the feral elf, Buddy, seen here in Central Park in homage to Patterson’s Bigfoot. And the alleged and unverified photo of the late great J.D. Salinger was snapped by Paul Adao in 1988. Another Adao photo illustrates a wonderful New York Magazine story by publisher Roger Lathbury from 2010, Betraying Salinger. I scored the publishing coup of the decade: his final book. And then I blew it.

Bonus: there’s been another Bigfoot sighting — in our portfolio.

Dum Dum Boys by Iggy Pop

“Dum Dum Boys,” from Iggy Pop’s first solo album, The Idiot, 1977, produced by David Bowie. It is a tribute/lament for Pop’s former Stooges band mates, which Pop’s biographer Joe Ambrose, calls “an exceptionally insensitive use of old colleagues for theatrical effect” (via Wikipedia). No information on when and where the live recording in the YouTube video above was made.

Dum Dum Boys
by Iggy Pop

What happened to Zeke?
He’s dead on Jones, man
How about Dave?
O.D’d on alcohol

Oh, what’s Rock doing?
Oh, he’s living with his mother
What about James?
He’s gone straight

Well, things have been tough
Without the Dum Dum Boys
I can’t seem to speak the language
I remember how they
Used to stare at the ground

They looked as if they
Put the whole world
Looked as if they put
The whole world down

The first time I met the Dum Dum Boys
I was fascinated
They just stood in front of the old drug store
I was most impressed
No one else was impressed, not at all

And we’d sing
Da, da, da, da, da
Dum, dum day

Well, where are you now my Dum Dum Boys?
Are you alive or dead?
Have you left me the last of the Dum Dum daze?
And then the sun goes down
And then the boys broke down

People said we were negative
They said we would take but we would never give

But we’d sing
Da, da, da, da, da, da
Dum, dum, day

We’d sing
Da, da, da, da, da, da
And hope it would pay

We’d sing
Da, da, da, da, da
[Incomprehensible]
Dum, dum day

Well now, I’m looking for the Dum Dum Boys
Hey, where are you now when I need your noise?

Now, I’m looking for the Dum Dum Boys
The walls close in and I need some noise