Four good things today

1. Starting work on the two Russian translations I have at 8.30 this morning.
2. Wong Kei for dinner.
3. 12.08 East of Bucharest.
4. Mike Leigh in the next urinal at the cinema.

Greta Garbo

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.

Schopenhauer

Today's albums

whilst cleaning the flat:

The Clash - London Calling 25th anniversary edition

Various - Dynamite Dancehall Style

Barrington Levy - Shaolin Temple

Koop - Koop Islands

Neu! - Neu!

The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

You can read the rest and generally Poe yourself to death here.

Chocklik

is making me feel better - shame they have not yet released one with NightNurse.

Is it normal?

Find out here...

This week's CD

Is not going well with the fuzzy headache I have as the latest strain of the flu struggles to overcome my immune system. New York in the late 1970's - mid 1980's was a real melting pot of musical styles and fashions. I'm sure all of us know the clumsy cross pollination between early rap, disco and punk/new wave in the ever blissful 'Rapture' by Blondie, whilst Talking Heads were again melding soul, jazz and funk with rock guitars.

Anyway, I digress, as these bands are merely the tip of the iceberg (and, of course, the most commercially successful). This compilation brings together some of the more underground sounds of NY in this period. Proto-electronica, jazz, dub, cavernous hiphop, very unusual lo-fi production techniques, mergers of music with performance art, and just about everything in between appear here. Arthur Russell, a classically-trained cellist, created expansive, almost ambient dance-inflected soundscapes, Sonic Youth went on to become one of the defining bands of the late 1980's, and Glenn Branca wrote symphonies for the electric guitar. Of course, alongside these more avant garde musicians, there are of course some delightful 3 minute punk-pop tracks - The Ramones, were, of course CBGBs stalwarts.

This is the third in the series (part one is excellent, part two still has to be delivered), and has once again deepened my knowledge of this period in NY's musical development, the repercussions of which can still be heard not only in the recent slew of pop-punk bands, but also in the electroclash fashion of a couple of years ago, and in some of the more expansive dance music and hiphop. And it has the second best version of 'Jailhouse Rock'. Ever.

The back streets of Ealing

yielded the following on my walk home tonight:

1 drunken man kicking his way through the newly fallen leaves - I would imagine it was his first day at a new job. The hangover will hurt tomorrow.

2 engineers from Clancy Docwra trying to find the source of the large water-filled hole caused by a burst pipe (this would explain the water being cut off across Ealing yesterday).

A mist reminiscent of Gogol''s descriptions of Nevskii Prospekt.

Unseasonably warm weather - no coat yet and it's almost November!

No traffic at all.

A smell of cider vinegar beneath the apple tree just up the road from my flat as the windfall slowly decay.

Re-energised

Seems that 17 hours of sleep has done wonders for me. I have managed to come home from work and don't feel the urge to pass out. Now, if I can just get 17 hours a night, I should be able to get some research done... Watching 'Kubanskie kazaki' tonight (again)...

The Excluded Ones

10/11/2006
Disagreements

Already as soon as it hurt. It arrived almost always behind schedule, yes, but never one dared to ask to him from where. Not to find out something that it wanted to hide itself to itself but by gentleness, not to abruptly alter the so fine balance in which their lives were sustained. Who knows with whom it would walk now. Before they had been happy. It does not do so much. How to draw up with a piece of chalk the exact line that indicates the point of flexion of the things: everything slipped little by little towards the worse thing, without haste. A day, perhaps, began to find its less graceful jokes of the habitual thing, another one realized that was less intelligent of which always it had thought, another one discovered it balder. They wanted to be a modern pair and always they decided tacitly that to leave separately from time to time with its respective friends it would not be a problem. What friends, he asked himself, who had been acquiring to the force the habit to speak with the objects that populated their house. Before it read, but to read is bad because sometimes it makes think, so it finished always in front of waiting for it the television set, if it were possible submerged in some program aid of high tension: that managed to maintain it in a state of well-being near the idiotez, that is, to innocence, out of danger temporarily of the martyrdom of the doubts.

Translated by Mozilla from Los Excluidos

Евгений Рухин

Без названия
Рухин, Евгений
1975
Коллаж

Thanks to Moskovskii Muzei Sovremennogo Iskusstva for the image.

I've started reading John McPhee's 'The Ransom Of Russian Art' - I had come across parts of the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Soviet Nonconformist Art in the past, but this book details how Norton Dodge, an American professor of economics built this collection by meeting with these artists, buying their works and smuggling them out of the Soviet Union.

The figure of Rukhin looms large in the early parts of the book as he was a Petersburg-based geologist, polyglot and anti-establishment figure at the centre of much of the non-conformist art world during the 1970's. He was, of course, killed by a fire in his studio started in mysterious circumstances in 1975. There is a much more complete biography in Russian here, as well as an electronic gallery of his work.

The book also seeks to engage with the material conditions of these non-conformist artists, most of whom had little access to the basic materials required by artists, and so would paint using towels in place of canvas, and using paint designed for cars rather than the more traditional oils. They were also frequently compelled to work as labourers to avoid charges of parasitism. In the meantime, their wives, often artists themselves, would be working two or more jobs, as well as painting 'officially' to support their husbands.

Sharms

In a Soviet-inspired advertising mood recently, so enjoy....

Moskau

Dschingis Khan

God

I want to go home. Work makes me want to puke.

IT

Spent 5 hours today trying to fix issues caused by the stuff we were doing last night. Fortuntely the piece of string can be used as a noose. Aretha is currently seeking to soothe my soul. Feeling the urge to watch some Bergman or read some Camus.

A piece of string

Still at work. Working on mail server. What we are doing may not work. Or it may. No idea when we will leave.

Joseph Merrick

Crappy weather and spots, as well as a glut of new CDs and the rediscovery of some older tracks, have inspired me to produce a new set of CDs this afternoon. I will send them next week (along with any replacements for older CDs - sorry Pavlik). In the meantime, though, enjoy this:

Zaphod Beeblebrox

One of the more concerning parts of this proto-flu I have been suffering from for the last few days is that I have suddenly broken out in a series (I would say rash, but that would be an awful pun), of very large, deep lying spots. Not you usual teenage style breakout. Not acne either. Just red lumps that sit there painfully. On my back. In my ear. But most worryingly of all, on the very tip of my nose. Like an extra head. Only more noticeable. Another 2 months and I could have had gainful employment in a department store with a pair of these:



Now the issue for me is, clearly these appear when I am run down, so does this mean I am to resemble an overly hormonal teenager (I already do, some of you may add) each and every time I get a cold over the winter. This could be a never ending cycle. I look after my skin these days (as a true metrosexual should), and I've been using Witchhazel to try and draw the crap out, but to no avail. I eat healthily. I even exercise. So what is one to do? Answers on a postcard please...