This is really something. Dagmar Krause from Art Bears and Slappy Happy sings the songs of Hanns Eisler. The fact that it was never released in the US is of no consequence now - get it from Amazon or Emusic.
The first of these two fine albums, I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight by Richard and Linda Thompson, has been a favorite of mine since I was eighteen years old (I’m forty-two at the moment). It’s hardly obscure - it’s famous, really. Yet aside from its cult following it seems to be just barely in view. I still have my vinyl copy but when I purchased the CD a few years ago I had to buy an import.
Richard Thompson has been more successful as a solo artist than he ever was when married to and collaborating with Linda Thompson, (nee Linda Peters). Linda, as his muse, (she’s not credited for writing any of the songs) added a kind of gravitas to his work that has since dissipated. By the time of 1991’s Rumor And Sigh, his most popular album, he was writing clownish ditties like Psycho Street. It’s dark but it’ll make you laugh. I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight by comparison is a lot more likely to make you hurt. These songs have never seemed exactly sad to me. They aren’t desperate and pleading either. I guess they are resigned, really - the characters in these songs are trapped within their circumstances without a suggestion of redemption or escape.
The title track is like a weekend escape from all this despair. But it’s the final track, The Great Valerio, that is my favorite. I’m your friend until you use me and then be sure I won’t be there.
The Sweetness of the Water is the fourth tenth album by the duo of John Coxon and Ashley Wales known collectively as Spring Heel Jack. Their various collaborators bear as much mention. Evan Parker, Matthew Shipp, Wadada Leo Smith, William Parker, and several others have contributed to their recordings and live shows. This one is particularly lovely. Contemplative and exploring, it’s improvisational but tight. John Coxon’s guitar is compelling and unconventional. The electronics on Lata and Autumn and the repetitive keyboard on Track One, the fifth track, nudge free jazz beyond its normal conventions. And who knew it had any?
…is a cookie. And, of course, a Frank Zappa song.
As an online climate change debate grows longer, the probability that denier arguments will descend into attacks on Al Gore approaches one.
Our last summer in Chicago.
David Hume advises us not to take shit so seriously:
The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. Where am I?, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.
Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when, after three or four hours’ amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any further.
