New bad poetry!

 (In which our hero returns, only to befoul the fair interwebs with vengefully vain verse.)

ODE TO A SHOE

O fair foot clothing,

Laced and intertwined through happy holes,

That no aglet could bear to avoid.

The very sole is the very soul of my every step,

Joyously jostling o'er the grey asphalt or the rich soil.

Of canvas or leather, encasing the lower extremities,

The tarsals could ne'er wish

For a warmer or safer coat than this.

Atop a heel, always healing my sorry need 

For greater stature.

O fair foot clothing,

How could I ask for more?

My feet beseech thee--

May they embrace thy glorious tongue,

Forsake them knot.

(Please direct all complaints to your friendly Poetry Police, or to a gullible publisher.)

ABBA for adults

Guess I'm back.

Had a major experience this morning with the song "When All Is Said and Done" by ABBA. These things struck me:

This is quite a sad song to be in the mainstream (or at least in the mainstream in 1981).

Unlike earlier ABBA songs, this is for adults, not tweens who might swoon by "Dancing Queen."

Somehow the melody manages to be both poppy and elegiac at the same time. The lyrics are quite sober. There is no irony here--the intention is sincere. This is an adult and clear expression of sadness and emotional exhaustion, that is beautifully crafted.

Something for one to aspire to, not necessarily in the same genre, medium, or discipline.

Dear readers (all both of you), let me know what you think. (I can't watch the clip on this computer, so I'm not sure it works--if not, let me know.)
 

Still "Loveless"

Still thinking about My Bloody Valentine. I discovered this brief article which mentions the move away from machismo, and movement toward androgyny. I think this could be an important thing to consider, and I will probably write more, but after reading the "33 1/3" book about Loveless, which is due to arrive in the mail any day now. Please read the piece I've linked to here and tell me your thoughts.

I've also been thinking about the song "To Here Knows When," and I might write some stuff about that too.

Loving "Loveless"

Hey, it's been over a year since I last posted! Good to be back 'n' babblin'.

Just got the remastered double disc reissue of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. I don't think I've ever mentioned it here, but this one is in my Top 10 fave albums of all time, so this was pretty exciting to me.

So I've only listened to the version mastered from the analog tape, which by all accounts is the better of the two (the other is the original digital master).  There has been some discussion about a glitch in the song "What You Want," but I found it incredibly smaller than I expected. Folks are saying that Kevin Shields (a storied perfectionist) should have noted this and corrected it before being released. In my own perverse way I think it's kinda cool and wonder if maybe Kevin left it in intentionally. After all, it might fit the aesthetic (More below.).

So it does sound pretty amazing.  There's a whole new clarity and crispness on the high end, making subtleties audible for the first time, and there's an increase in the stereo separation. You can really hear the acoustic guitars on "Loomer" and "Sometimes," and the little keyboard melody that begins "To Here Knows When," just to mention a couple of those aforementioned subtleties.

And how about that aesthetic? Great pop melodies of which one can't make out most of the lyrics, the songs apparently hidden behind walls of distorted sound. This is the immediate impression, but I find more. In the early '90s a piece in the magazine Artforum appeared, which seemed to me to be somewhat insightful. (Sorry, I can't find it online.) The main thing I took from it was when the writer described their sound as "imploding crescendos." Implosion is key.

For me this music is largely about the promise of transcendence that rock & roll makes, at the same time proving that impossible.  When one feels promised the explosion of catharsis, this experience implodes instead, which I find significantly meaningful, and even enjoyable in a way that may be taken as nihilistic or not. One takes a journey, only to realize one is nowhere at all. Postmodern? Definitely. Ironic? Not sure, but I don't think so.

There's a kind of sincerity about this music, without sporting some personal kind of soul-baring. Despite its yes/no quality, I don't think it's meant to even refer to some other music. The approach is pretty straightforward.  That said, of course it's VERY confrontational, even in its strange beauty.

And for me the backwards/forwards guitar loop between "To Here Knows When" and "When You Sleep" says something profound about rock & roll that I can't possibly verbalize.

Wow, babblin' is right. Never thought I'd write that much! Maybe it's the beginning of a trend--one can only hope.

More on Pierre Fournier and Bach

As promised, here's a YouTube page with lots of fun stuff, including a live clip of Fournier playing the Sarabande from suite No. 3....

Another thought I forgot to mention: I once read that Pablo Casals practiced the suites for thirty years before he felt ready to play them in public.  I still have yet to hear his recording (from, I think, about 1936).

Pretention alert! On my close friends J.S. and Pierre...

Some random thoughts about the Bach solo cello suites....apologies if this comes out pretentious....

Miles Davis said that hearing Paul Buckmaster practice them in the morning helped him finally understand Ornette Coleman.  Something about viewing a melody from all different angles.  Maybe like some sort of aural cubism?

Being a single line (with some double stops), the melody is untethered to rigorous harmony, introducing a wonderful ambiguity and surprise that is not in Bach's other music.  I could see how Miles could have this realization, because the effect of the suites to me is similar to Ornette's first quartet, which had no piano.  Without chords underneath, the soloist could play pure melody regardless of overruling harmony.  "Harmolodic" indeed!  Some months ago I saw Ornette live for the first time - basically what he does is stand and play beautiful melody, regardless of key.

Pierre Fournier's recordings from 1961 present Bach as living and breathing.  There's an obvious physicality to the sound, but there's also an energy and presence to it which I haven't heard elsewhere in most other Bach recordings (although I really haven't heard many, compared to many other people).  I remember thinking a long time ago that much of Bach was meant to be played the hell out of, to be rocked.  That's what one's got here - kind of amazing for a 50-year-old recording of 300-year-old music.  (It's a strong contrast to the only other version of all six I've heard all the way through, which is Yo-Yo Ma's ice-cold rendition).

BULLETIN: I just did a YouTube search for Fournier and Bach and much to my surprise a whole page of links appeared!  More thoughts after viewing....

Verbal constipation

I'd post more if I didn't mentally edit everything I write before I type it.  I'll also type something, realize I hate it, and never post it.  I probably type too slowly to let the words flow.  O, for the benefit of verbal diarrhea...

But I didn't quite express it correctly....