CollisionWorks

Long day today that involved a lot more slogging around in snow in a very heavy winter coat for long periods of time than I had anticipated (or certainly wanted).

It was, however, kinda pretty most of the time, even while I was sore and annoyed.

This is the second recent snow that has come down in big, puffy, soft flakes that blow attractively and collect softly. I think this has maybe happened only twice before (if that) in the nearly 7 years B & I have lived out here. Brooklyn doesn't quite always look as I think many of my family, friends, and other out-of-town readers may think it does.

It was lovely again on Avenue S when I went out to the Duane Reade on an errand this morning . . .

And also on East 2nd Street . . .

But I was still not all that happy about walking around in the stuff . . .

I was cranky, but I thought the neighborhood looked nice from the subway platform . . .

And, zoning out on the F Train, I looked out and felt myself flying over Brooklyn. I hadn't tried out the video mode on the Xmas Camera yet, so I decided to do so and attempt to capture the flying feeling of zooming over McDonald Avenue . . .

( Now behind a cut for easier loading . . . )

Once in Tribeca, I was sent off on an errand that wound up being, for the first part, a wild-goose chase as I walked up and down Broadway from Walker Street to 4th Street and back, finding one (pitiful) item out of six or seven needed. I was achy and unhappy, but a Broadway Snowman in Soho cheered me up . . .

And once the show was up and running, and my box office duties were complete, I was able to leave Walkerspace and go home -- and as I hit Walker and Church, there was one of those views that bring back years and years of NYC memories, and songs, and feelings, and make me feel oh so good about living here sometimes . . .

Sometime in December of 1987, I went out and bought Brian Eno's albums Here Come the Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain (by strategy). I hadn't heard any of the songs from either, but I was familiar with his following two "song" albums, so I thought I should get the first ones. I decided to listen to them for the first time while on an evening walk - I was trying to lose weight by walking at least 90 minutes an evening; I'd bring two CDs and my immense, heavy, early-model Sony Discman, walk away from my dorm for the length of one record and return with the other.

So I started up Warm Jets and started out from Washington Square South.

When I hit Canal Street and Broadway, walking West, "Driving Me Backwards" came on, and music and view came together suddenly in a perfect synthesis. It pretty much looked like the photo above, but more so - more steam, more mist, more shafts of light, more reflections. And that, with the insistent piano driving the slowly-grinding song, sparse but wide, seemed to connect the NYC I was now living in with all those images from the movies I had seen for years. Most of all, I felt like I had walked into Taxi Driver. Scary, but alive.

Then, the beautiful "On Some Faraway Beach" came on as I walked around some beautiful buildings in Tribeca, and the spell changed.

A couple of years later, I got Eno's book of lyrics (with paintings by Russell Mills), More Dark Than Shark (but one deadly fin), and he doesn't say much about "Driving Me Backward," but I was surprised to see he does say that when he saw the film Taxi Driver (the song predates the film by 2 years), he felt a kinship to this song in the film . . .

Ohohohohohohoh oh

Doo doo doo doo doo doo dah

I'll be there.

Oh driving me backwards

Kids like me

Gotta be crazy

Moving me forwards

You must think that I'm lazy

Meet my relations

All of them

Grinning like facepacks

Such sweet inspirations

Curl me up

A flag in an icecap

Now I've found a sweetheart

Treats me good just like an armchair

I try to think about nothing

Difficult

I'm most temperamental

I gave up my good living

Typical

I'm almost sentimental

Ah Luana's black reptiles

Sliding around

Make chemical choices

And she responds as expected

To the only sound

Hysterical voices

And you - you're driving me backwards

Kids like me have gotta be crazzzzzy i-i-i-i-i-i-i

Doo doo doo dodoo dodah I'll be there

And another, for you and yours . . .


1. "Reality" - David Bowie - Reality

Recently, mainly in regards to Bowie's hysterically funny appearance on Extras, I've been hearing the "Bowie hasn't done anything good in 20 years" line a lot. I assume this is from people who haven't been paying any attention to him in the last fourteen years. First, if you're going to use the "no good work since [whenever]" line with DB, you might as well go for saying it's been 27 years since he did anything good (Scary Monsters and Super Creeps). Second, though no album or project from 1981 to 1993 is fully up to the quality of what he was putting out from say, 1970-1980, the best of it is as good as anything from his "classic" period, and the worst of it is nowhere as bad as the worst material from that time.

Third, since 1993, the man has recorded some of the best albums he's ever put out, and no one's paying any goddamn attention to them in the USA (I was pleased recently to discover they are at least selling respectably in the UK; I thought they were flopping everywhere). The Buddha of Suburbia, Outside, Earthling, Heathen, and Reality are all excellent albums (there's another album in there, 'hours', which would go fourth on that list, but it isn't all that good, though it's not as bad as it's sometimes made out to be by Bowie fans; the songs on it are much better live). And no one cares.

I saw Bowie live after each of the last two albums, and watched audiences only come alive when he did "Changes," "Fame," and "Ziggy Stardust." "Changes" especially. That's going to be THE SONG that Bowie is remembered for. "Changes." I have almost all of his recorded work in the iTunes and iPod, from "Louie Louie Go Home" to "Bring Me the Disco King" -- 244 songs; I've left out very, very little from his entire career, really -- and you know what songs are among the ones I DON'T have in there? "Changes," "Fame," and "Ziggy Stardust," because they're not all that good and I wanted to leave room for all the better Bowie songs.

Now I didn't like either Earthling or Reality much when I first heard them, but repetition made me "hear them" better -- Berit likes to take credit for the fact that she "got" Reality first, after I had dismissed it as "scattered" and far inferior to Heathen, and it was only her playing it over and over that got me to actually listen to it. Yes, she's right. The songs on Reality, including this title track, tend to jump around and feel at first like parts of several different songs put together. The more you listen to them, the more cohesive they are.

Bowie's still doing great work, and should be paid attention to. I'm still waiting for the next one, anxiously (though he'll probably change direction and break my heart, AGAIN).


2. "Following You" - Pierre Dutour et Son Orchestre - Chappell Dance and Mood Music, volume 9

Late '60s slick, cool library track. Organ, guitar and horns. Big hard frantic drums. Exciting.


3. "King Kong" - Tarantu1a Ghoul & The Gravediggers - Las Vegas Grind! volume 2

Cheesy lounge-band "rock" with a great groove despite itself. Almost an instrumental, but occasional interjections from a female voice (and then calls from the band). "I'm goin' ape!" Good dancing or driving music.


4. "No One Receiving" - Brian Eno - Vocal (box set, originally from Before and After Science)

Isaac Butler recently asked at Parabasis if there was as important figure in post-Beatles rock as Brian Eno.

No, there isn't.

Besides his own solo song albums (this is the first track from the fourth one, from 1977, and sounds like the state-of-the-art in the "avant-garde" rock music of 1982), his influence, not only on the bands he produced himself, but on the music producers who either came up as his engineers and proteges, or who simply learned by example, has affected almost ALL popular music since 1980 or so. Wish he'd keep making song albums himself, though, those are my favorite work of his (his recent Another Day on Earth was okay, with fine moments, but thin altogether).

Here the groove takes over, predating his work with the Heads and David Byrne by a few years, but not sounding that different, and featuring the great vocal stylings of what I think of as "The Brian Eno Chorale" (as Bowie has said, "Brian, he sing all mix down and multi-tracked lik' a lil' girl!"). I noticed recently that Eno also has the BEST bass guitar sounds in all of his work. I don't know what he does, but no one gets the great bass sounds he does. Firm, solid, undistorted, driving without being bossy. Not easy.


5. "Steps in the Dark" - Gert Wilden & Orchestra - I Told You Not To Cry

More soundtrack loveliness. I don't know how many shows I've used this track in. Maybe not as many as I think. Slow, languid, sexy sleaziness, with a few peppy bits. Vibes and alto saxophone.


6. "Carolina in My Mind" - James Taylor - Those Classic Golden Years 07

Once again, the hated James Taylor shows up because I downloaded a comp of pop songs from a certain period that included him, listened to a bit of the song, thought, "Well, this is actually a kind of pretty little pop song," and kept it in the iTunes and iPod.

Well, this is actually a kind of pretty little pop song. His voice does get on my nerves, but the song is pleasant, and the arrangement is good. Nice change up from all the other stuff I have in here.


7. "Just Like a Woman" - Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde

Came nicely out of the previous song. Bob during the Great Time. Don't think I have anything to say about those two years of Dylan now except, listen to them.


8. "I Won't Cry" - Little David & The Harps - The Roots of Doo Wop - Savoy Vocal Groups

A histrionic without being quite over-the-top vocal performance enlivens this solid little track. Nothing special about it. Good, but there are dozens and dozens of sides like this.

This is from a comp that's meant to document the transitional period between "Black Vocal Groups" (The Ink Spots, The Mills Brothers) and "Doo Wop." This track is full-on doo wop. Close to actual rock & roll actually, with the drumming going on. Rock & roll drums.


9. "The Day the Devil" - Laurie Anderson - Strange Angels

Anderson's remake of a song she wrote with Peter Gordon for his 1986 album, Innocent, where it was done as more of a straight, slower, blues/gospel number as I remember (Gary Lucas on bottleneck guitar, vocal by Clarence Fountain). I have that on vinyl, and haven't listened to it in 15 years or so, so the memory is fuzzy.

Anderson's remake from 1990 is faster and peppier, lots o'synth, but scores big points for her wonderful distorted vocal as "The Devil" (whose monologue includes references to both Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man" and the Spuds McKenzie Budweiser ads) and for the full gospel choir that comes in for the chorus and finale.

I love this album of LA's, right from when she was learning to really, really sing. She's still holding back a bit on the record, but her voice is beautiful (I saw her live at BAM a few months after it came out, and she was vocally cutting loose on some of the album's songs, singing to the rafters, in a way she doesn't on the recording). Where's another great record from her? I've been waiting.


10. "Little Orphan Nannie" - Kaleidoscope - Side Trips

Music designed to make you say, "Man these guys are stoned!" Flagrantly "offbeat," "psychedelic," and "experimental" in a massively self-conscious way (catch the album title), though not quite (JUST not quite) so smug about it as to be annoying or unlistenable. Huge Zappa influences in use of sound effects bridging different song styles in different sections, weird little talking and comments off on the side, and a kind of snide quality to the harmony vocals. Fun, sure.


More work to happen to the car today; have to get out and get to it. Almost everything on it is fixed and working great now, just some "cosmetic" work to happen now (the side sliding door is broken and fastened with tie line to keep it closed).

Glad the car is working, we've got traveling to do. Tonight, off to The Brick to see the two plays by Thomas Bradshaw. Tomorrow, up to Garrison, NY to a gallery opening (paintings by Ivy Dachman, my stepmother). Sunday, up to Portland, ME. Maybe more later today. Don't know about the Friday Cat Blogging. I need new photos. Oh, I can't skip a week of that; I'll find something.

My old friend Vanessa Veselka, whom I've known for 24 years but haven't been in any contact with for the last 9, found me last night through email (via The Brick), and we're back in touch. She has had several wonderful bands over the last 15 years (Bell, The Pinkos, The Red Rose Girls) and now has a MySpace page HERE. Due to dial-up/computer issues, I can't listen to her songs there now, but if you're interested, please do. I'm glad to be in touch with her again. It's good to have friends going back that far (thanks to this blog, I'm back in touch with a friend I've known for nearly 30 years, too). I'm beginning to feel like this intarweb thing actually might bring people together rather than keep them apart . . .