| INTERNET STALKERS Part 1 (Work in Progress) |
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So here you are again at your computer, looking at a submission form from some Internet Porn company. You know, "Hot and Nasty Sex", "Boobtropolis", "Horney Teens". Whatever. You're looking at this stuff and wondering if you might have gone mad. Because you don't remember ever having been to any of these Internet sites.
I mean: you can't deny that you have visited porn sites in the past. It's just curiosity really. Most people do. You get access to the net and you know there's all that porn stuff floating around out there, wafting about on the airwaves like rags on a line, and you do: you take a look. It doesn't take long for you to realise that it's all nonsense, or worse than nonsense: all these flickering sites offering strange possibilities that never amount to anything, women you know you will never meet, in rooms you know you will never visit, doing things that would make anyone ashamed, with objects designed for other purposes. Short, ill-focussed films with grainy music. Creepy photographs like illegal scientific experiments carried out by madmen in backstreet rooms. Images that creep into your brain like snotty ectoplasm, which then impose themselves on you, invading your thoughts and dreams like flies.
But - you know - you do it occasionally. You play peek-a-boo with your conscience and then forget it.
And then there's all this stuff in your inbox. Submissions from porn sites you don't remember ever having gone to. And it's all just crazy and maddening, making you look like some porn freak or something, like some lonely old tosser with nothing better to do with your time.
You erase it all, of course, but it just keeps coming.
Now you know that this technology can do all sorts of things. So maybe you did visit some porn site once and it took your details somehow, even though you never gave them out, and stored your e-mail address in its computer, and has handed the address on to all sorts of other porn sites, and now you're well known in porn circles and they're all plying you with their adverts. Except that one of them says it saw your name in a chat room, and you've never been in a chat room of any description (even assuming you know what a chat room is). And then another one says that you made an application to join this porn site at 2.00 am the morning of whatever, and you think, "hey, hang on a minute, I was round my Mum's at 2.00am that night. How can that be?"
That's when you realise that you have a stalker. Someone is out there, flitting about in the digital landscape, using your name and address, subscribing you to Internet sites you never even knew existed.
This is all for real. It really is happening.
Actually, it's much, much more than this. That stalker has been on your case for years. A bit of Internet Porn is only an irritation compared to what's happened to you in the past.
The story goes way back. Back to a time when you thought you were in love with someone.
That's how it was for me. I thought I was in love with someone.
And now the years are winding back, back, like an old reel-to-reel tape recorder, hearing the speeded-up backwards music of your life being replayed, to a time when we were innocent maybe: innocent enough to make love with a hungry passion in the back alleys of our town, standing up, leaning against a fencepost, in the evening, where the yellow streetlamps splash radiant flashes across your face and torso, you with one leg raised, skirt hitched around your waist, feeling the sly beauty of your thighs against my prickled skin, as we stormed to orgasmic conclusion in the thrusting recesses of the night.
Yes, and we did. We did. We did. We made love. We made love. We made love. In the morning. In the evening. In the afternoon. In the fresh air fields by sunlight, in the long grass, in the hidden places where ants scurried and bit your back, in secret overhanging copses in daylight, by the golf course, as worried, hurried golfers scooped their balls into the sky and cried "fore" to the four winds. In the late summer morning of our days when dreams were born, when I was a poet and you were a dreamer and I fed your dreams with words. When words were like magnets sifting iron filing patterns on a tray and there was a strange electrical invisible force sizzling in the airwaves sending sprays of blue-light sparks into the ether. And we were neither here nor there nor either were we inbetween. And maybe I loved you once, and then maybe you were gone.
It lasted for a summer. One bright, endless summer in the wafting sunlit air, when were were both still young and had our dreams and nothing could betray us. And then something did betray us and you were gone.
CJ suffers paranoid delusions. He seems to think that these memories he has were once real.
That was years ago, in a time and a place that no longer exists. How do we know that it ever existed? If they redeveloped Eden to turn it into an out-of-town hyper-market and shopping complex, could we ever be certain that Eden had existed? Could you even say that it was the same place?
So we lost touch and the memories faded, and you became yourself and I became myself and we forgot who we once had been.
There was no Internet back then, of course. They were only beginning to think about inventing it.
So there were no Internet Stalkers.
The Internet Stalker comes much, much later.
(To be continued...)
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| NEW MUSIC FROM THE MIGHTY MARQUIS |
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This all new, re-recorded version of the '80s mega-hit "Obsession" was written by and performed by Michael Des Barres as a duet with Teal Collins Zee. The track is now available for immediate download along with limited edition commemorative panties!
michaeldesbarres.bandcamp.com/merch/michael-des-barres-obsession-2013-panties
Michael Des Barres (along with Holly Knight, who was recently inducted into the Songwriting Hall of Fame) penned the hit song "Obsession" in 1983. The song reached number one in over twenty-seven countries as recorded by the Los Angeles group Animotion and has been featured in countless movies and television shows throughout the years.
For thirty years now, this well-crafted track continues to stand the test of time, "Obsession" by Michael Des Barres is a true touchstone of the mid-eighties, a time period which strongly influences the modern music and fashion of today.
Listen to the single and get more information
Check out an interview I did with Michael at the end of last year:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four |
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| AN AUDIENCE WITH MR AVERELL |
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In my various guises I get an enormous number of emails each day. The other day, in between a selection of pdfs about a new species of lizard and emails trying to sell me a Far Eastern mail-order bride, I received an intriguing email from a man called René van Commenée. I dug a little further and found this statement:
"As a musician I work mainly as a percussionist, electronic music performer and sound designer. I am a member of the trio The Art of Doing Nothing with Pipe Organ master Willem Tanke and MIDI-wind-controller/flutist Martijn Alsters. With Alsters I formed a duo for live-surround concerts and installations also. Separate from this I create visual sound art installations. I always like to use my voice though. I was a singer in several Dutch rock bands in the seventies and eighties, and like to write, record and perform more song-based music as I call it. But if you do so many diverse things I think you have to make clear to your audience what it is they can expect when buying your work or attending your concerts/performances. Therefore I chose to give my song-based projects a separate name, Mr Averell; a band in which I am the main writer and performer."
I then received a copy of his smashing new album Gridlock and wrote THIS.
I was so massively intrigued that I arranged an interview.
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HAWKWIND NEWS
(The masters of the Universe, do seem to have a steady stream of interesting stories featuring them, their various friends and relations, and alumni) |
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FEEDBACK ON LAST WEEK'S ITEM ON THE STRUGGLE FOR THE HAWKWIND NAME
I saw the early HW logo--the 2-headed Hawk. I always thought, and told Nik in 1995, that the 2 heads were he and Dave. BOTH were integral to the Wonder years of the band.. These days, Nik has more of the key members aligned with his HW projects than Dave, in spirit, as well as actual playing, sorry .. the XHawkwind is truly HW.
Sorry to disagree, but I must. I love both, and, despite the court findings, feel that Nik has equal rights, as the band has always been about Freaking-----not commercial name ownership..
Forgive me for any malfeasance.
spacehed |
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| Of course we forgive you. You used the word 'malfeasance'. JD |
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Supporters of the Sea Shepherd protest group (the folks who sometimes ram whaling ships) will likely know there's an upcoming fund-raiser gig, featuring the Elves of Silbury Hill, one of the many performance disguises used by members of Hawkwind. The gig's on Friday 3rd May in Portsmouth.
The lineup was announced as Mr Dibs, Niall Hone, Richard Chadwick and Dead Fred - that is, Hawkwind minus Dave Brock and Tim Blake. However, "HawkwindHQ" on Twitter has just tweeted, "Breaking news! Dave Brock to appear with Elves of Silbury Hill for a special, one off benefit show for Sea Shepherd." An earlier tweet had referred to rehearsals and said, "Sounding fab...a few surprises on the cards."
Gonzo's Graham will be attending the show and hopefully will remember something about it the next day. |
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| THE YES CIRCULAR - DIVING IN THE TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS |
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| The Court Circular tells interested readers about the comings and goings of members of The Royal Family. However, readers of this periodical seem interested in the comings and goings of Yes and of various alumni of this magnificent and long-standing band. Give the people what they want, I say |
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And that, boys and girls, was just about that for this week.
I am probably getting a bit OCD about all of this, but I find the Yes soap opera of sound to be absolutely enthralling, and I for one can't wait to see what happens next! |
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| ROOTS - organically OCCUPYING |
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Solutions demand energy /attention
Open stage with poets and musicians
Organic food available/this is a benefit
for after-school classes@ECO-SCHOOL(South Austin)
Young, bright, digital youth stage manage professionally
Each act two songs or two wings of poetry
Each listens as the air is active as belly dancing
swirls Egyptian Isis movements in significant feng shui
Gardens growing green behind us/bicycles and a bus
This evening is clear, attentive, conscious
Conversation like a river builds its banks
Investing in a positive future/for which we give thanks
Those who have already started knew this all along
Part of tomorrow is art, smiles, poems, songs..
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In Victorian times every well-bred Gentleman had a 'Cabinet of Curiosities'; a collection of peculiar odds and sods, usually housed in a finely made cabinet with a glass door. These could include anything from Natural History specimens to historical artefacts. There has always been something of the Victorian amateur naturalist about me, and I have a houseful of arcane objects; some completely worthless, others decidedly not, but all precious to me for the memories they hold..
I used to be a collector of rock and roll memorabilia, but most of my collection went into my solicitor's pocket during my divorce from my first wife, and I never had the stomach to build the collection up again. However, people send me pictures of interesting things such as this..... |
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Of all the items that we have chosen for the 'Cabinet of Curiosities' this - so far - has got to be the most valuable. On eBay yesterday for a whopping $7,995 this gold bracelet is alleged to have been owned by none other than Keith Emerson. You know, him out of ELP.
The package does, apparently, include a 'letter of authenticity', but who has signed said letter remains a mystery, mostly because I haven't got eight grand to spare, and if I had I would be more likely to repair my leaking roof than to buy a piece of dodgy 1970s bling.
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| GUEST EDITORIAL FROM KRISTY HERNANDEZ |
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Austin International Poetry Festival
What a weekend! Where do I start! Friday, I found myself listening to Bob Schneider, at a show in Austin, called "Unplugged at the Grove," which was free. My cousin, Lisa LOVES, LOVES, LOVES Bob Schneider. He was pretty good! I had a lot of fun, even though it was too crowded to get in. People brought their blankets, and sat on the grass on the side of the venue, and others were dancing on the sidewalk. After the concert started, I thought "Who would want to be in that crowd, where you can't even move." I watched the concert from the perfect spot!
Then I was asked to be a volunteer for the Austin International Poetry Festival, which was A-MAZING!!!! I saw some amazing poets, who came in from all of the U.S., Australia, India and the rest of the world. I'm sure I'm missing several countries. But holy hell, the talent was worth the price of volunteering, and getting to know some very talented poets!
Suzy Q (from Colorado), Candy Royalle, (from Australia), and Viplob Pratik.
One of the venues that AIPF was held at was Nature's Wonders, a store that sells various kinds of stones (i.e. quartz, granite, opal, agate, etc.). For those of you who have never been to this store, it is a sight to see. I've never been, and I've lived here on and off, for about 5 years. I absolutely loved this store, and the lady working there, said she bought all of her Christmas gifts for her kids there. I plan to go back to buy a wind chime there, made out of some of the types of stones. It is BEAUTIFUL, and only $18. This was Friday and Saturday.
Also on Friday and Saturday, there were many poets holding workshops on how to write better poetry. I wasn't able to make it to any, since I was volunteering. I did, however see a lot of poets who are already very smart in the art of poetry, who I would take lessons from any day. The workshops were held at Austin Community College, and on Saturday, all of the guests of the fest were given breakfast, as a thank you from ACC. I think we are the ones who should be grateful, as ACC had a great venue for us to use. Saturday night, there was a poetry slam, and the best of the best competed, making it extremely difficult for Allen Small to win, but he did it, and he did some incredible poems!
We then headed over to Strange Brew for an ALL NIGHTER--of poetry, that is. Hosted by Thom World Poet, who resides in Austin (but is from Australia, too), this was an amazing night! I met new poets (new to me) like Michael Cesares, and many others. I fell asleep for a couple seconds (CHEATER!), and at the end of the night, we took a photo of all the survivors, who made it through the night. What an inspiration!
Sunday was the best day of the festival, ending at Kick Butt Coffee, and holy hell there was some great, great talent. Poets kept walking in and out and as they walked in, every single time, my eyeballs would almost pop out to see who would be coming up to the stage. The best (in my opinion, anyway), was Candy Royalle. She asked me who my favorite was and seemed surprised that I said she was, and I told her that everyone else is living in Austin, so I could see them whenever I wanted. She found that funny. :P
So if you live in Austin, come hear me "get on the mic," as we say. I can feel myself becoming stronger in my poetry, and I'm grateful that the people who I started with, are the ones that are still around, give or take a few (Gabrielle Bouliane, who passed away from cancer), and the rest are looking down on me, watching me grow into an AMAZING poet, like those of my mentors. So definitely check out the poetry scene, even if you're not in Austin. After all, they are worldwide!
And if you're in Austin, and you'd like to volunteer with AIPF, get in contact with me or someone in the poetry scene. It's a great opportunity, and you can put it on your resume! :) Kristy Hernandez
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- DAEVID ALLEN SOLO WITH MICHAEL HOROVITZ:
-Mon April 29 : THE GRADIDGE ROOM, ARTWORKERS GUILD , 6 Queens Sq, LONDON WC1N 3AT www.artworkersguild.org
- YOU, ME AND US : Daevid Allen + Chris Cutler + Yumi Hara
- Thu May 2 : Club Integral
The Others
6-8 Manor Road, Stoke Newington, London N16 5SA
-Sun May 5 : OLD ROAD TAVERN ,Old Rd,CHIPPENHAM SN15 1JA
-Wed May 8 : ZU STUDIO
7 Phoenix Place , Phoenix Industrial estate LEWES BN7 2QJ www.zustudios.com
-Fri May 10 : LEICESTER GUILDHALL
Church Rd , LEICESTER LE4 5PE
-Mon May 14 : THE RED LION
Wharton Rd , WINSFORD ,CHESHIRE CW7 3AA
- GLISSANDO GUITAR ORCHESTRA:
-Sat May 18 : Midland Arts Centre
Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham B12 9QH
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| INTRODUCING THE NINE HENRYS |
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| I think Peter McAdam is one of the funniest people around, and I cannot recommend his book The Nine Henrys highly enough. Check it out at Amazon. Each issue we shall be running a series of Henrybits that are not found in his book about the nine cloned cartoon characters who inhabit a surreal world nearly as insane as mine... |
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| COMING SOON FROM GONZO: Gringo |
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You may not have heard the name, but I am sure that if you are reading this you have heard his music. John G Perry is best known for his session work, most notably forCaravan on "For Girls Who Go Plump in the Night" and "Caravan and the New Symphonia," but he has performed with many other Prog and non-Prog artists. Although he was born in America, his parents were British and soon moved back to the UK, and as PERRY grew up, he became more interested in music.
One of his first projects as a musician was called Gringo. Evolving from student beat groups, Utopia and Toast, in '60s Bath; Gringo also featured Henry Marsh who later sampled chart success with Sailor, and Simon Byrne worked with – of all people -Brotherhood of Man among others. Perry describes the early days of the band:
It started out as Utopia, a five-piece copy band doing all the hits from the Beatles and the Searchers and lots of stuff playing at college and parties. Everybody in the band had been at private school and sung in the choir, so it was a terrific vocal band. We used to do wonderful renditions of Beach Boys songs, we were really rather good at that. It was basically the same band all the way through, the three of us : Henry Marsh on guitar and keyboards, Simon Byrne on drums and myself... That first band unfortunately split when everybody went their way. I went off to become a farming student, working on different dairy farms in the West country of England. But I kept in contact with Henry and Simon, and they approached me one day, saying they'd have a year off in their studies, and would I join them to form a new band, you know, rather than go grape-picking in France, which I thought would be wonderful... I actually had also decided to have a year off before I was going to go up to the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester. So we elected to get this band together, which was called Toast. We hired one of the farmers' cottages, locked ourselves away and worked very hard, rehearsing or whatever, built up a repertoire and then we came up to London, and three months later we're on television! The show was 'Colour Me Pop' and we did three songs on that... So none of us went back to college, and we all carried on in a musical career.
Gringo toured in Europe and even made a living with a club residency on the south coast of France. They were opening act on a UK tour featuring Barclay James Harvest andCaravan. Perry takes up the story:
We were there a sort of opening act, and got to know both bands and kept in touch with them. It was a good tour actually, very successful, cause Caravan were very well-known in the South of England and BJH were very well-known in the North of England, so all the way round the country we had the crowds and stuff, so for us that was taking us out of the small clubs into concert halls and theaters and stuff like that, so that was a good experience for us.
Their recorded legacy is a quality album of pop-tinged progressive rock that still sounds fresh, with a lightness of touch and many distinctive twists. The song-within-a-song piece, Emma And Harry, is worthy of note, but all nine tracks are good. It is tempting to wonder if “Land of Who Knows Where” may have been inspired by a certain Caravan album released the same year. |
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| COMING SOON FROM GONZO: Roll over Prokofiev |
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Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev is one of the best loved pieces of children’s music in the world. Although known by millions, far fewer people realise that the piece had its origins in a canny slice of Stalinist-era Soviet Propaganda. In 1936 Sergei Prokofiev was commissioned by Natalya Sats and the Central Children's Theatre in Moscow to write a new musical symphony for children. The intent was to cultivate "musical tastes in children from the first years of school". Intrigued by the invitation, Prokofiev completed Peter and the Wolf in just four days.
The original story tells of the adventures of the eponymous Peter, a ‘Young Pioneer’ (a sort of Communist boy scout) and his friends; a bird, a duck and a cat, and of what happens when they interact with a wild canid of the species Canis lupus. It was intended to show the resourcefulness and courage which all young people acquire from a spell in the Young Pioneers, and the wolf (who ends up tied up, and sent to a zoo after Peter saves his life) is very probably symbolic of the forces of counter-revolutionary reactionism (or something like that).
The first performance of the story back in 1936 was inauspicious to say the least. In the composer’s own words: "...[attendance] was poor and failed to attract much attention".
Over the years there have been many recorded versions of the piece, starting with a 1939 recording by Richard Hale with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and continuing out throughout the cultural landscape of both sides of the quondam Iron Curtain like ripples on the ocean after someone has lobbed a nice big stone into it. There have been several adaptations of the piece featuring rock musicians, most notably one narrated by David Bowie (who insisted on changing the script because he thought that children would prefer that the hunters were armed with shotguns rather than rifles.
Gonzo Multimedia are just about to reissue an unjustifiably obscure version from 1975. Masterminded by Robin Lumley and Jack Lancaster it is a truly rocking adaptation Their music makes use of some of Prokofiev's original themes. Along with Vivian Stanshall as the narrator, the staff is illustrious (among others Gary Moore, Manfred Mann, Phil Collins, Bill Bruford, Stéphane Grappelli, Alvin Lee, Cozy Powell, Brian Eno, Jon Hiseman); the music is very heterogeneous: from psychedelic rock music to jazz (Grappelli's violin solo on the motif of the cat).
It works surprisingly well, two aspects in particular working – to my mind – better than in any other version. Firstly, the section where the wolf swallows the duck is truly terrifying. The music is truly brutal, and Viv Stanshall is just as good as one might have hoped.
And secondly, the ending. On most versions the listener is told that "if you listen very carefully, you'd hear the duck quacking inside the wolf's belly, because the wolf in his hurry had swallowed her alive." As a child, and even as an adult I found that to be immensely disturbing. The idea of the poor bloody duck being slowly dissolved by the wolf’s gastric juices was not the sort of concept that I would want my children to hear about. On the other hand, the 1946 Disney version that had the duck just hiding in a tree was not only a reversal of the concept of the story, but also didn’t really make much sense. The version on this album which has the imprisoned wolf opening its mouth and the duck hopping out is both child friendly, and true enough to the original concept not to be a major conceptual irritant.
This is a jolly good album, and some of the playing on it is absolutely extraordinary. Would I play it to my kids? Hell yeah. Would I listen to it myself? What do you think I am doing now? JON DOWNES |
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