'Celebration'

Joe Bonner & Linda Sharrock

(Joe Bonner) Muse 1976

Nine minutes
Twenty nine seconds
Of implausibly beautiful
Fire music

Joe Bonner (piano), Linda Sharrock (voice),
Leroy Jenkins (violin), Billy Harper (tenor saxophone)
Junie Booth (bass), Jimmy Hopps (drums)

That Little Sports Car

The Shaggs

(Dorothy Wiggin) 1969

I had longed to hear 'The Philosophy Of The World' for years.

Frank Zappa, Jad Fair and Jonathan Richman loved it

But could not really describe it

And there is no way to describe The Shaggs

I expected something childlike, maybe something distressed

I did not think the inner clock of Shaggs-time

Would take quite so long to fathom

The downstrokes on the guitar and snare are insistent

But never accent anything

Directly

Things appear to speed up and slow down

But not necessarily in unison

Rasheed Ali could not replicate the drumming if he tried for a million years

There are moments of intense precision

Like the singing on 'Who Are Parents?'

And moments of stiff recklessness like 'Shaggs Own Thing'

Shaggs-syntax is at once mannered and natural

There is a definite purpose to everything

But it remains discrete

There is something very difficult about 'Philosophy Of The World'

Three stages people go through when they first hear The Shaggs

Stage one: silence - mouth and eyes remain open in a frieze of shock

Stage two: laughter - disparate parts register and fall in and out of place

Stage three: silence - brows furrow as listening fails to reap any understanding.

They are similar, in the grand scheme of classification, but they are not the same

I can't think of the 1960s or the history of popular music in relation to The Shaggs

I have to tell myself "This is The Shaggs"

This is The Shaggs

They don't fit

Tomorrow Won't Bring The Rain 

Dion & The Wanderers

(Dion DiMucci/Carlo Mastrangelo) Columbia, 1965

Dion Di Mucci wrote '(I Was) Born To Cry' when he was sixteen

On the recording he sings seven bells out of the song

It's in a minor key but sounds like two legions of pop

Kicking the door in

Then beating you up

I saw him play live a couple of times in 1990

I was right at the front

He wore sunglasses and a peaked cap

And a black leather jacket

Which he took off

Theatrically

The enormity of his talent made him seem a little inhuman

Like little Michael Jackson singing 'Who's Loving You?'

The precocity is overwhelming

Distancing

Sickening

When it should make us stagger and swoon

I remember him playing 'Make The Woman Love Me'
Which I then searched for on record for 10 years

It's on 'Born To Be With You'

The record Phil Spector lovingly built for his idol Dion

It is the Taj Mahal of pop

With bells on

Dion's voice is like a miraculously cast bell

His singing is utterly fearless

And open

On 'Tomorrow Won't Bring The Rain'

Heroin has given his voice

The patina of mortal ruin

Only the marble-hearted

And the deaf

Should remain

Unmoved.

Jad Fair - Monster Island

Tori Kudo - Three Clay Figures

Breon O'Casey - Untitled

Red Hearts On My Fur

We are harmless my Queen and I
The world can't see us for what we really are

What with our ermine and the crowned heads

And our long robes and the rolled gold

Oh oh oh oh you're all alone

We were faceless my Queen and I

The world could not see us for what we really were

We were walled up in our outer selves

And we longed to escape into the outside world

With its goosebumps and the bubblegum

And the right from wrong where there are half measures

Oh God I wish I could put my thoughts down

Oh oh oh oh you're all alone in ante chambers

So you think it's like a cell

It's just as well you never left home

We are helpless my Queen and I

The world cannot see us for what we really are

On the Ile de France and on the puppet piers

My mask is white with rabbit ears

With a felt nose and black clubs

On my hind legs I'm all yours

With red hearts on my fur

I'm all hers I'm all hers

Oh oh oh oh you're all alone in ante chambers

So you think it's like a cell

It's just as well you've never left home

The Lark, The Rising Tide

Heard the northern cap is melting

Soon I'll be all at sea

We'll hike to higher ground

Haul our boats uphill

Sink our oars on three

What larks there are there on the wing

Have never meant a thing

For the love of being crude

And if Hades scares you now

You must be one lucky cow

To choose to chew and move

We'll traipse around the woods no more

Or picnic on the forest floor

We'll know we're insecure

And know we're in for more

We'll roll in the stems no more

And blow through the blades of yore

We'll know we're insecure

And know we're in for more

Heard the southern seas are swelling

Soon they'll be overhead

We'll get out on a rocket ship

Sure it might cost a bit

It's better being poor than being wet

And if hell fire scares you still

It'll seem run of the mill

When your friends are going up in flames

What larks there were there on the wing

Never meant a thing

If there won't be larks again

We'll traipse around the woods no more

Or picnic on the forest floor

We'll know we're insecure

And know we're in for...

We'll wade in the tide no more

Or sunbathe on the golden shore

We'll know we're insecure

And know we're in for...

We'll roll in the stems no more

And blow through the blades of yore

We'll know we're insecure

And know we're in for...

We'll traipse around the woods no more

Or picnic on the forest floor

We'll know we're insecure

And know we're in for...

We'll slow down to a stop

Hope it'll be enough

We're Out On Our Own

Nobody is thinking about joining

Joining in with her and him

Well wall flowers are peeling

Off the wall again this evening

For her and him

Coming here in winter well it's not much to look at

I've been running 'round the woods with somebody stuck fast

To my side there's a meadow with a brook and a bridge

That I have seen once before but I can't think where now

And the dream in the ward was wintry and upright

So we pulled up the drawbridge and scissored our frostbite

With a fire made of birch twigs, silkworms and ermine

I've heard this once before but I can't think where now

I'm not convinced I remain

In my castle high above the town

O yeah yeah yeah we're out on our own

We're out on our own

Everybody is feeling

Feeling themselves again

And it's great to have you you around

Ages, that's how long it's been

Since you last sailed through town

Being here in summer well it's not much to look at

Freisan middle distance is always dead flat

To our side there's an inlet with sails and peaks

That I have seen once before but I can't think where now

And the castle on the hill was somewhere quite different

We had stones in our sandals and the sun hit the steps

The black pines on the slope were always dripping with sap

I'd smelled it once before but I can't think where now

So cottontail don't complain

When I curl up beneath your feet

O yeah yeah yeah we're out on our own

We're out on our own
You're not convinced yet you remain
In our castle high above the town
O yeah yeah yeah we're out on our own
We're out on our own
So cottontail won't you stay
In this hutch I built high above the town
O yeah yeah yeah we're out on our own
We're out on our own

Rabbit In Aspic

(a recipe)

Take farmer's gun from the moss skin woodshed behind the trellis rot remains.

Grease the barrel with compound suet.

Load with pinprick leadshot.

Tramp bracken underfoot and clear the copse cursing.

Take aim.

Fire.

Tap last bolt of consciousness from the skull.

Peel the rodent.

Remove the head.

Cut slit above gaping neck vent and draw out innards.

Separate liver and gall bladder.

Hang for 24 hours.

Older rabbits should be braised or stewed.

Divide the rabbit into neat pieces.

Rinse mould with iced vim.

Harvest jelly from seasonal sap in the aspic arbor.

Line mould with flabby layer of cold, liquid aspic solution.

Allow 72 hours to set.

Fancify the jelly with hard-boiled egg yolk.

Arrange the rabbit, bacon striplets, and remaining egg in layers in the mould

interpsersing each layer with jelly.

Allow each inner layer to partially congeal before adding another.

Turn out the mould.

Garnish with hand-carved trysts of chutney and fig.

Serve cold on Delft or similar.

(next week: Gift Horse In Brine)

    Song titles and notes from The Inseparable Santa Sprees

(click to see with your naked eye)

In a juicy veil of unconsciousness I dreamt that I would have

to start writing something down and should not rest until the

forever amen took me to deeper vaults of reasoning where things

would no longer lie shivering in indifferent middle distance

a goosey forearm away. On that day answers would press and insist

and re-ravel as they sloped from their mould. And of the schemas

I have flinted from this rock of pages, well they are as slight

and brittle as those worried from a rock face by a fruitblack ant.

Bits of memory that I want to restitch before they fray.

Indiscipline carved in sapless bark.

What else is in there?

Some guts. No spine.

What can you see now?

Any bright white lights?

'Your fruit trees will bear no fruit

Your fields will lie fallow'

What the hell does that mean?

Who are we being driven out by again?

My princess

I thought we'd never leave

Oh no, we do sympathise

My magic paws will put you to sleep

for two thousand years

At least we still have each other

So I'm in my counting house, you know...counting...

and er...this fucking peasant strolls in wearing a big feather hat

and he starts going on about ill-gotten this and stolen that and I just thought....

Don't take on so daddy he's probably just jealous

There's a lot of it about

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