version of alright

"A fairly stupid thing..."

Monday:
Pierre Moerlen's Gong, Time is the Key
National Health, National Health
The Wilde Flowers, The Wilde Flowers
The Deviants, Ptooff!
Various Artists, Root Damage
Greg Ashley, Medicine Fuck Dream
Charlie Megira, Rock-N-Roll Fragments

Tuesday:

Whitey, The Light at the End of the Tunnel Is a Train

itsnotyouitsme, Everybody's Pain is Magnificent

Oneida, Rated O

Black Math Horseman, Wyllt

The Alchemysts & Simeon, The Alchemysts & Simeon

Wednesday:
Patti Smith, Just Kids
Cormac McCarthy, Child of God
Lou Reed, Sally Can't Dance
Pink Fairies, Live at the Roundhouse
Twink & the Fairies, Do It
Antony & the Johnsons, I Am A Bird Now
Nico, Chelsea Girl
Gerry Rafferty, City to City

1969: Patti Smith, photographed in New York by Norman Seeff

http://www.1972projects.blogspot.com

I like Sally Can't Dance even though you are not supposed to. It's a silly declaration to make, but among Lou Reed People, you are really not supposed to like it.  It's alright. It's a version of alright.


Just Kids reminds me of Memoirs of a Geisha, a reiteration of "At that moment I knew everything would be different..." at everything. From a quantum perspective, she's right, but c'mon. There is a point where things just happen. Still, it's engaging, come hither and ghost skinny like Patti Smith was in 1969.  You can't say no to that Patti Smith. Look over there and say "no."


Child of God is, so far, as funny as a harrowing incest Western Southern can be. In fact, just now I was mixing up details of it with those in Faulkner's Sanctuary, and that is making me which the authors/books were switched. Or they were one book or something.

My night writing class is coming to a close, and the two guys in it have done a great job. Things are gearing up for the fall semester at work. I went to my first guitar class in a month and did all right, if squeaky rustiness is a version of alright.  I feel like a version of alright. I feel like Nico mooing along with her string section and it works in its way. I feel like whoever  actually plays on "NY Stars" that hits the right reverby note against Lou Reed's dispassionate recitation and its the kind of vibration that looses a moon free from its planet's orbit. None of it is all great; but parts of it are right on the money.

I like how Cormac McCarthy describes "swales in the broomstraw" in Line Goddamn Two of Child of God and you are all, OH NO, WRITER IN THE HOUSE.  And then later, at a funeral, he was all

They buried her up at Sixmile and the preacher he said a few words fore they thrower dirt over her and old Gresham stood up, had his hat in his hand and all. Stood up and sung the chickenshit blues. The chickenshit blues. No, I don't know the words to it but he did and he sang em ever fore he sat back down again.

And what do you do with "the chickenshit blues"? It is so stupid a phrase, a plastic grocery bag blowing up against those swales of broomstraw, flapping and cracking in the sharp wind but indelibly stuck there in the weeds. One of the things that got to me about living in Kansas City was the wind. Every fenceline had a fine line of garbage at it, like caulk pressed into a seal. Yet, I don't know if I know what swales of broomstraw looks like whereas I know precisely what the chickenshit blues looks like.

Seeing it there in its own little sentence loosens it, frees it from the world. I think that's the idea behind  funerals.  In guitar class, Dave keeps going to questions and answers as how a melody works and how sometimes the best musical thing to do is to not play a note at all. We played two versions of the theme from The Jeffersons in honor of crazy old Sherman Hemsley's passing, a gospel version in F and a hillbilly stomp version in E and while I liked the hillbilly version better + it was easier to play, the ending came out cleaner in the gospel version. Everybody around me has fallen asleep including the dog.  I'm gonna read a little of this book and do the same.