playlist, kspc 2-4 p.m.

"are you ready for star time?" james brown -- intro/i'll go crazy/try me/think -- live at the apollo shout out out out -- don't you feel electrical -- not saying/just saying (normals welcome) jel f/wise intelligent -- wbd -- 12" (anticon) novalima -- zambo lando -- afro (quango) linton kwesi johnson -- it noh funny -- reggae greats (mango/island) unique poody -- front stage gyul -- exposer ep (coral) syclops -- mom, the video broke -- fourtet dj kicks comp (k7) richard buckner -- lucky -- meadow (merge) [hmm, doug gillard and steve goulding as sidemen] buckner/langford -- the inca princess -- the dark invader vs. the fanglord (buried treasure) [man, I'm blowing it today; first 30 secs in 'cue' mode = dead air] weird weeds -- nose to the wind...in your arms -- weird feelings (saa) meat purveyors -- hot blooded -- someday soon things will be much worse (bloodshot) [see, the classics work in any genre] archie bronson outfit -- rituals -- derdangderdang (domino) NEW WAVE TIME CAPSULE the doll -- cinderella with a husky voice -- 7" (beggars banquet) [1979; BB26!] moroccos -- 3d sound -- 7" (t.m.i.) [philly, 1982; more of a proto-jangle/bongos thing] public servants -- jungle hotel -- 7" (j. edible) [1980; apparently an early project of philip johnston's, w/ shelley hirsch, bill horvitz and other downtowners in a rare almost-pop moment; think yoko fronting the waitresses) davey payne -- saxophone man -- 7" (stiff/horn) [1979; seems to be some short-lived stiff sub-imprint; beggars description] shapes and sizes -- island's gone bad -- s/t (athsmatic kitty) [practically the only thing I've ever liked on this label] modern life is war -- first and ellen -- my love my way (deathwish) men's recovery project -- the couch -- the very best of (5rc) head -- i can't stop (mental metal mix) -- i can't live without my radio, comp. dj morpheus (tigersushi) [the dj's note to bambatta/lydon's "world destruction" says: "b52's-like."] soft pink truth -- make up -- do you party? (soundslike) [vanity 6 cover w/ bevin blechtum] fab five freddy -- change the beat -- the celluloid years (collision) glass candy -- life after sundown -- 12" (troubleman) cause co-motion -- only fade away -- 7" (cake shop split w/ jowe head; how does a lower east side band in 2006 sound this much like meat whiplash?) the isles -- summer loans -- perfumed lands (melodic) everly bros. -- why not -- the new album (warners) [great j.d. loudermilk song; prob. rec. about '60, not released until a later odds/sods rec]

good lines

Rodney Koeneke: "Poetry should be at least as well-written as spam." Joe Massey: "Do you think anyone ever asked John Wieners, before the publication of The Hotel Wentley Poems, 'is it a full-length, or a chapbook?'" "Swap Meet" party annoucement, BetaLevel: "Please note: According to recent legal decisions, inducing anyone to use physical space for the purpose of sharing music may render the space-time continuum illegal. Use the space-time continuum at your own risk." And this whole post of Tony Tost's.

update

* With thanks to Douglas, who led me to the ridiculously convenient mac audio-recording app WireTap, here's Carole Landis doing "Flame Song" per below. * The Dean makes his debut as a content provider for MSN. (Went up a week ago, but it doesn't usually occur to me to check MSN for, well, any reason at all. Better there than nowhere, is all I can say; it should be beyond question that he wouldn't be doing it if he were editorially compromised in any way.) Shouldn't be in any way related to the above item, but: the chatty orientation to CG (a user's guide to a user's guide!) led me back to this q&a from a couple years back. Several pages in, he's asked what the first single he ever bought was: Good question with an answer that would embarrass me if I got embarrassed about such things. First single: Doris Day, "Secret Love" (loved the B side, "Deadwood Stage"). Both are from the film musical Calamity Jane (1953, David Butler), a pleasant Annie Get Your Gun knock-off. (I've always assumed this film came into existence because Day coveted the latter role; she and Robert Goulet eventually did all of the Berlin show's songs as an LP). In any case, "Secret Love" was a million seller, and won Best Original Song Oscars for Sammy Fain and...Paul Francis Webster.

playlist

kspc: 2-4 p.m. fats domino -- blue monday -- the fat man's frenzy (rev-ola) [recently noticed that this is one of the greatest songs ever] pit er pat -- no money = no friend -- pyramids (thrill jockey) dead prez/sun rise above/t-kash -- throwyahandzup -- paris presents "hard truth soldiers" (guerrila funk) saint paul and the coalition of the willing -- more akron than cleveland -- everyone is wrong (old 3c) [columbus rock vet paul nini] ~ viva voce -- helicopter -- get yr blood sucked out (barsuk) oh no f/lmno -- hank -- exodus into unheard rhythms (stone's throw) [madlib's brother, apparently] the insect trust -- reciprocity -- hoboken saturday night (collector's choice reissue) violins -- stare down the walls -- pink water (contraphonic) [my chicago pal mike lyons, nice to see it in rotation] ~ larry houston -- i'm coming back to you -- soul jewels v. 1 (demon-westside) [only great song on this dusty comp; I think I'll have to post it] the champs -- sky high -- 45 (challenge) magic slim & the teardrops -- cummins prison farm -- that ain't right (delmark) anne feeney -- we just come to work here, we don't come to die -- classic labor songs (smithsonian folkways) [surprisingly rock, considering the source; annoyingly, no date given] ~ casper & the cookies -- kiss a friend -- the optimist's club (happy happy birthday to me) [twee but arty; stamey-ish] panacea -- freedom theory -- thinking back look forward 12" ep (glow-in-the-dark) dosh -- mpls rock and roll -- the lost take (anticon) ~ NEW WAVE TIME CAPSULE tom dickie + the desires -- competition -- competition (mercury) [1981; prod. martin rushent; beat crazy rip] amy bolton -- talk talk/tres chichi -- 7" (importe/12) darkworld -- MORONS R coming -- artsy annoyance/boring contrivance ep (ambiguous) [1982; prod. ric ocasek] denied remarks -- she don't know -- 7" (landmind) [teens from downer's grove] as mercenarias -- alem acima -- the beginning of the end of the world (soul jazz) [kinda the brazilian slits, hence...] ~ the slits -- kill them with love -- kill them with love (s.a.f.) [new studio ep, not bad at all, tho i gather this is a redone ari up solo song?] les georges leningrads -- track 6 [titles covered by stickes, thanks genius] -- sangue puro (tomlab) tom verlaine -- shingaling -- songs and other things (thrill jockey) [gee, the gtr line is a bit like that larry houston song] triffids -- one soul less on your fiery list -- in the pines (domino) [upcoming reissue] ~ jedi mind tricks -- put em in the grave -- servants in heaven, kings in hell (babygrande) gift of gab -- the writz -- 12" (quannum) [whoa: i don't know what the sample is, but the vocal hook is based on "puttin' on the ritz."] busdriver & radioinactive w/ daedalus -- pen's oil -- the weather (mush) ~ forward russia -- nine -- give me a wall (mute) jay reatard -- hammer i miss you -- 45 (goner) the everly brothers -- man with money -- beat and soul (warners/collector's choice) [great phil & don orig. from their post-hit period (1965), later covered by the who]

word of the day: "surge"

So that's the new vision/option/change of course being contemplated, after nearly 3 years of not even trying to face the fact ("-on-the-ground," if you must) that Plan A sucks: "increasing more troops"? There are many sins for which I might have supposed Rumsfeld to have been relieved from his post, but I admit that my imagination has failed me once again: it hadn't occurred to me that the problem might have been his failure to recommend more death, more quickly.

you can't spell 'anodyne' without 'anyone'

I'm sure most of those who care hear these things before I do, but check out Diplo's remix of Justin's "My Love," (you want the zShare link; the YSI's over limit already) courtesty one of the mp3 blogs Steve just added. (I liked "Promiscuous," and Justin's goofy turn in its video, somewhat better than the strangely anyone-coulda-sung-it "SexyBack," and Justin's cologne-ad Bond turn in its video, and this sweet song better than either.)

applied music

Feeling better: doing ok w/ the differently-delivered nicotine (remind me to explain how I came to start smoking, like an idiot, when I was 27), and it turns out that I didn't have tonsillitis (no redness = no bacteria) but a mild, similarly-symptomed virus. *** "Some girls go for flowers and romance/I'm not taking a chance/my flame is for a general." Carole Landis as "Sweet Loretta" pantomimes "The Flame Song" from A Scandal In Paris (1946, Douglas Sirk). A strategically placed wave of the candle -- -- and she steps through the screen: a decade before Imitation of Life and "Stop acting, Mother!" As metacinematic as the above scene is, this assured and completely enjoyable film has little of the distinctive above-the-material quality we call "Sirkian" -- which suggests that while auteurists might have been right in discerning a "system" in the '50s films, it might have been more accurately called "Sirk-Hunter-Hudsonian"; the compromise/collaboration of directorial "genius" with a producer and bankable star with agendas of their own is exactly what made those films possible. Here, the star is George Sanders, classical Hollywood's greatest cad/dandy long before All About Eve (see, for one, the nearly contemporary The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (Alfred Lewin, 1947)), and the tone is for the most part light and Lubitschy, as are the aphorisms ("The chains of matrimony are sometimes so heavy they must be carried by three"). But there are also passages of entirely non-comic suspense, which Sirk would master immediately afterward in Lured (also 1947), and a violent scene involving an outlandish "Chinese carousel" that anticipates Strangers on a Train by a few years. The song? As you might have guessed, it's styled after "Naughty Lola," with Landis' hoarse vocal making the object of satire hard to misrecognize. All this is fairly anachronistic, as the film is set in 1770s Paris, where "cabaret" as we understand the term was not invented for another century or more, but it's still a good number. The music is by none other than Hanns Eisler: the score, not his last for Hollywood but close, is unchallenging but notably well-integrated (that "Chinese carousel" gets a theme of its own), and this is the only free-standing song of his from such a project that I've come across. The lyric -- which is serviceable but not brilliant -- is by Paul Francis Webster, whose name is far less well-known than those of his co-writers (Ellington, Carmichael, Previn) or his songs: "I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good," "Baltimore Oriole," "The Shadow of Your Smile," "Love is a Many-Splendored Thing," and, of most personal significance to me, the 1967 theme song from Spider-Man. (Its composers, Bob Harris, Stu Phillips, and D. Kapross, are truly obscure.) I'd have liked to include some audio, but the only result of an hour of fussing with DVD-ripping programs has been that I learned a new word. (Tech-tip/intellectual property digression: even the frame captures were tricky. Mac's own screengrap app, you may someday notice, has the lovely "feature" of disabling itself while a DVD is running. Of course, no one can stop you from taking a digital photo of your own computer; but downloading a program called SnapNDrag is even easier.) Given my failure, we'll both have to rest with Vernon Duke and Ogden Nash's "The Sea-Gull and the Ea-Gull"; not especially a Dietrich parody as written, but certainly as performed on a recently reissued 1955 LP by Charlotte Rae. (Let's not forget that Mrs. Garrett has played both Brecht and Beckett.) Listen below and/or download here. *** I said I was feeling better, not that I was 100% coherent.

get this over with/I tee off in an hour

Oh, wait -- you're supposed to post to these things now and again. Please bear with me: I'm making a run at not smoking as of earlier this week, and the Commit lozenges are messing with my head. Also, I think I have to spend this morning figuring out if I have tonsilitis. With the time you've been saved by the absence of content here, you may want to read: *This "history and theory" journal out of a Jerusalem art school. (Pic on front page, related to a piece on Japanese advertising, NSFW; "English" link at upper left.) *Some recent poems by the always interesting Tyrone Williams (look for the individual links, at 9.12 and 6.20) at a site I should check more often. *Girls Aloud's interview with New Statesman.

bay poetics cento with first, last, and middle lines from kari edwards (1954-2006)

maybe at the next stop; a double feature with buttered popcorn ~ a city in which order is not yet established there are those who pronounce flaneur and sent geek armies to reinforce language but consumed by patchwork for the smack so personal bleeds color from the mind the clumsy flutter surfacing to air of crashing it unites the way of unites to spare you the Palo Alto allegory in the place where computers come to die “cut ways in it,” they said ~ narcoleptic parking lot/in my head street cleaning in my cocktail uniform a partnership or a criminal action will always get a seat on the bus coupled legs/and a birdbath in the corner and vegetable crates risotto of morels, spring onions and chervil cut edge of spring grace knocks on my door, too ~ two lines of pencil seal the same true thought try and encompass and you cannot a health of the mass, from which to register the mostillusion mainstream to be in California another bogus radicand an abstraction grounded in the material sensibility of division a mixture of stock footage and miniatures connected by passages of poetry without even an imaginary or dead person (attached) ~ they grew apart and he wrote a song did we ever live without music and the act of being selfish they would rather it was not there at all “we are not required to agree” to pronounce Britney stupid (or co-opted, if you must) It is satisfying to cut, cut, cut she cannot spin straw into gold she reads to me about utopias ~ I am the word the available thing I am connected to a phone tree it is my country and I am sorry I do own a shoe rack I too cut my hankerings, but promptly “I’m channeling some heavy shit” I worked as a ghostwriter for an illiterate I am not able to get off work I think I still believe that i knew i would dream ~ i keep asking for a door with meaning ~ I think of poems that founder that are mid- Repetition. Day’s lily like this. BlakeOfEquinox sings to Numb the -------- of gravity iblical tea timed TV cut glish scratches Words like dreck make the scene their suffering [meaning a self] ~ no set hours to go in and work but they are paying me $75 an hour and water was my dirty name she cut the thick substance forming between them the whirlwind drawing in one was born trackless having survived, because of the hard seed we report flash floods in north north of market’s shopping center mecca’s the power plants and dams – containers made of steel ~ you read the spines from the books jig-sawed through a vivisection a smoothie wasn’t so smooth the second time we can feel it in our lungs in practicality’s overpass where charred bodies now hang they certainly like nausea where divine things factor their dicks out grace = cash could have been spent on dentistry ~ the forced door of weather cuts the thought, at once wine forces your focus one never gets to say so anymore and you my bright particular thank you is that where music functions as frosting one song, the song added or cakes in great number the refusal of the birds to change their ways ~ this is how to cut it the granite grace of terror not like gardens, but underneath the popcorn seller is shown to possess the same character been raped is getting up again to go on, past the draperies the extended season of mandarins incomplete without her pencil and circular “o” can’t fuck with bedrock, so good thing it’s not bedrock like having the power to move around taken away ~ i am lollygaggin’ towards separation, going west, following the sun 11.30/12.06 [more on kari edwards, with further links, here and here]