Tuesday, April 20, 2010

speed freaks took my statues



Chocolate Milk, Actions Speak Louder Than Words (lala)
Rodriguez, Cold Fact (lala)
Allen Ginsberg, First Blues (Book: Amazon; Album: lala)
William Basinksi, The Disintegration Loops I (lala)

I dug Brett Milano's Offbeat piece on the other New Orleans funk band, the long forgotten Chocolate Milk. I don't know where I heard about Rodriguez, but as bug-eyed, Moog-friendly folk goes it's a stunner. Everyone knows Allen Ginsberg. William Basinski I know from lots of places, but this Rick Moody story in The Rumpus about his Disintegration Loops, pieces about digitizing tapes so old they disintegrated in the player, started just as the Word Trade Center went down in view of his window got me. I don't know if this degree of provenance of information will ever be valuable or even useful or if it does becomes so, the sites will still be behind the links, but here it is, playing out its own disintegration loop.





NEW YORK BLUES

Walking blues (adante)

I live in an apartment, sink leaks thru the walls
Lower Eastside full of bedbugs, Junkies in the halls
House been broken into, Tibetan Tankas stole
Speed freaks took my statues, made my love a fool
     Speed freaks took my statues, made my love a fool

Days I came home tired nights I needed sleep
Cockroaches crawled in bed with me my brain began to creep
My work will never be done, my rest will never begin
I'll be dead and buried and never pleasure win
     I'll be dead and buried and never pleasure win

Lover boy threw meat at me cursed the day we met
Speed freaks and bedbugs New York City's what you get
Someday they'll build subways get rid of all the cars
Cops kill all the bedbugs speed freaks land on mars
     Cops kill all the bedbugs speed freaks land on mars

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, that Rodriguez record is top shelf. It is amazing that it never took off in the US. I guess we should be thankful for that though or we would all be sick of hearing it from decades of classic rock radio.

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