Backland

Five pop stars from Paris

Edith Piaf - Non, je ne regrette rien (1960)

Manu Chao - Me gustas tu (2001)

Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot - Bonnie and Clyde (1968)

Claudine Longet - Holiday (1968)

Goretex Weather Report

Until recently, I assumed that jazz rock (or fusion) could never equal the breathtaking intensity of the Mahavishnu Orchestra's first LP, The Inner Mounting Flame. I was wrong. There's a Norwegian jazz-rock group called Shining (not to be confused with the Swedish metal group of the same name), and although they're even more eclectic than the Mahavishnu Orchestra was (in fact, they're probably the most eclectic group I've ever heard), they're equally intense. Here's the first song from their delightful 2005 record, In the Kingdom of Kitsch You Shall Be a Monster, which balances jazz and heavy metal beautifully; their 2007 album Grindstone is much more metal-oriented, and they have a new record out in January 2010 called Blackjazz which they describe as "more punishing and extreme than ever before." But I have a reservation: Shining replaces Mahavishnu's seriousness with a smirk, and I doubt that's a good thing. 

Shining - Goretex Weather Report

The Mahavishnu Orchestra - Vital Transformation

Who cooks for the dead?

Who cooks for the dead?
Are there restaurants in the underworld?

Do they stir the soup with your bones
and serve it in your skull?

Are their ovens fueled
by putrefaction?

Or do the dead
only eat worms?

Prelude 22

Here is a PDF file of Prelude 22, a piano piece I wrote in 2005. It inaugurated my current composition method. I hope to eventually compose 24 preludes before turning my attention to longer pieces.

Cold Water Sheets

In 1992, at the age of twenty-nine, I recorded a cassette tape of twelve songs I’d written. It was called Cold Water Sheets. I have now made MP3 files of these songs, eight of which (the first and last four) I’ve posted below. (Warning: “Fieldsong” has a bad word in it so you might not want to listen to it around youngsters.)

The Party

Coming Around

Poolside

Shameface

I'm Not Sorry Yet

Fieldsong

Warm

Heaven Knows

I’d been making these cassette tapes for about five years—I think Cold Water Sheets was my sixth or seventh. It was also my saddest, my best, and my last. I haven’t written a song since—I felt like I could never top this. I haven’t even touched a guitar in years.

On the cover of the cassette case was a melancholy panel I xeroxed from Chester Brown’s Ed, The Happy Clown, which was and remains my all-time favorite comic book. On the inside was written the names of the songs and “In memoriam Ivan Brown.”

I had been volunteering for GMHC, and Ivan had been my first “buddy.” He was pretty near death when I first met him, and he never left St. Vincent’s hospital during the months I spent with him. He seemed like a saint to me. He was from Bushwick, an unpleasant Brooklyn neighborhood, where he had lived with his sister. Not many people came to see him now except, occasionally, his brother. I later found out that this was because it was simply too painful for those who loved him to see him in such a state.

Near the end he was in the ICU, hooked up to a ventilator and a large number of tubes. They ran cold water under his sheets to keep his temperature down (hence the title of the cassette). One day I came to see him and saw that he was unplugged. I was surprised and delighted and came close to him. His eyes were open, and maybe I said something to him. Then I noticed he was dead. I was alone with him in that room for a few seconds before death, like a wave, pushed me out.

The funeral was in the South Bronx, and I got lost. I arrived an hour late, but that was OK—his family arrived an hour or two later, their limo having gotten even more lost. I was the only white person there, but nobody cared. I said a few words during the service. Afterwards we took him to the crematorium; his cousin was planning to scatter his ashes over his mother’s grave in North Carolina.

A few weeks later his ex-boyfriend, Sterling, a fireman who lived in Prospect Heights, held a post-mortem birthday party for Ivan, and served crabs and Alabama slams. I had a great time talking about Ivan to all his old friends and family and dancing to tapes he had made. That’s what the first song, “The Party,” is about—well, that, and the day of his death (“the change in your eyes”).

Some of the other songs have nothing at all to do with Ivan, but are about other things I was going through and doing at the time. And I’m pretty sure Ivan wouldn’t have liked this tape at all. It’s whiny straight-white-boy music. He preferred Prince.

The best dance songs of the decade (well, five of them)

It's that tiresome time again: time to sum up the past ten years. But rather than the usual trite remarks, I'd like to simply offer five MP3 files of songs to which we can dance the decade goodbye.

Amp Fiddler - Ridin' (2007)

Parno Graszt - Rávágok a zongorára (2002)

The Sea and Cake - Weekend (2008)

Tego Calderon - Ni Fu Ni Fa (2008)       

Von Sudenfed - The Rhinohead (2007)

Hey, I just realized that the cats who created these now sounds are all over 35. So just to prove I'm not an old fogie, here's a bonus track from some true youngsters.

Klaxons - Atlantis to Interzone (2006)

The Greek gods

The Greek gods would have never allowed
the Hebrew God to go unpunished.

Even the most powerful idols
get lost in the streets of Jerusalem.

Mystery requires
the possibility of evil.

(Apply that to your God
if you dare.)

The seam

Best to hoard your holy cries, since God does not come through the front door, but from the seam where the wall meets the ceiling.

--Milo Miles