INCONSIDERATE BITCH

You just won't find 'em any cooler than Lisa Germano.  Is she even still making music?  I never know.  Each of her albums seems to get more claustrophobic, desolate and hopeless than the one before, tho, and that's saying something.

Do you love the fact that she fiddled for Little Johnny Cougar Mellencamp for a few years?  Of course you do.  Compare her lyrics to his ham fisted pronouncements.  Pretty funny.  Worlds apart.  

I think she was too scary for the Lilith Fair crowd, and too iconoclastic to get swept along in the whole alterna-music thing of the early/mid 90s.  She was her own niche, and more power to her.

Here's hoping she found some non-ironic happiness.....

          

           

book of saints, age of despair

man rapes a
nine month-old baby and

leaves it for dead and
all i want is for this thought to
stay with you forever

all i want is for you
to know that the baby lives

all i ask is that you

teach your god to crawl

CATEGORIZE IT...... I DARE YOU

New Landing album out (yes, I will call them albums until the day I die, and possibly even after that).  It's not bad, by any means, but it's also not as immediate a knockout as their other recent work.  Which is funny, because  a lot of that recent work is fairly droney/experimental, yet still seems to grab me from the get-go as opposed to, say, early/mid 70s Tangerine Dream (which I love), where you would sometimes have to slog through 5 or 10 minutes of noodling before getting to the good stuff.  Landing seems to know how to start right in the middle of the good stuff, and then just progress from there.

I thought they were gone for good after 2006's exceptional Gravitational IV, but they were apparently just recharging for 6 years.  Landing, Wave Lair, Body Diffuser and Third Sight have constituted an amazing hot streak.   Maybe Complekt will earn its place beside them.  I'd like to think so. 

NEW WORK @ STANZAIC STYLINGS

http://stanzaicstylings.blogspot.com/2016/11/having-learned-nothing-by-john-sweet.html

a deeper meaning in the age of crucifixion

ST GILLIAM

These two movies alone raise this guy's stature above wankers like the pope and santa claus......

NEW WORK @ IN BETWEEN HANGOVERS

https://inbetweenhangovers.wordpress.com/2016/11/27/a-room-of-truths-a-house-of-rage-by-john-sweet/

bed of nails

you are emptiness

and then you're everything

you sleep without violence
or you drown

slowly
like a phone call from
your father's doctor

slower

a car ride in december from
one dying town to another

seventy five miles of nothing
but powerlines and crows

of nothing but anger and
despair and
when you get to where you're going
no one knows who you are

when you leave again
no one says good bye

you call this place home
and all it ever does is burn

NOVEMBER SKIES

DIK PIX

Nice to see someone finally put into words what I've thought for a long time.  Photography is tricky as an artform.  What (or who) exactly makes the distinction between a shutterbug and a capital "A" Artist in the photography world?  And, more specifically, how does Mapplethorpe's work qualify as "art" when there are a million images just like it on the internet that are considered softcore porn?

Dude never really impressed me.  I assume the whole "shock" aspect had a lot to do with it, and the s&m trappings but, still......... so what?

Oh well.  On a similar note, I always thought Patti Smith was insanely overrated, too.  That whole incestuous NYC artsy fartsy boho scene.  Verlaine, Reed, Carroll, Sonic Youth, yawn yawn yawn.....

Well, SY had a string of damn fine albums ('85-'88), but their lyrics were always pretty embarrassing when removed from the context of the music.

Anyway, good article.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2016/nov/18/robert-mapplethorpe-juergen-teller-alison-jacques-gallery-London

someone's god, but not mine

BEATLES AND STONES

So, ultimately, I gotta go w/ the Stones.  The Beatles were truly amazing, and helped open the door for the Stones, but they were just never convincing as a gritty, down & dirty ROCK band, which I put some value on.

George was too spiritual, John was too much of a dilettante and Paul was too infatuated with cheesy showtunes.  They definitely had a wider range of music, but the Stones were the best at what they did, at least for 5 or 6 years.



I do have to say, tho, that I can fit all of their truly excellent tunes from the first single up through Satanic Majesty on 1 cd.  It took them a while to really hit their stride.  Once they did, tho....

I agree with the general consensus that Beggar's Banquet through Exile was just one huge orgasmic blast of musical perfection.  I'll go one further, however, and include Goat's Head Soup on that list.  I love the dark, claustrophobic, wasted feel of the music.  It was a perfect follow up to Exile.

Rock & Roll was still pretty good, but putting a faceless cover song on it was kind of an ominous sign.  Black & Blue sucked ass.  Some Girls was a good comeback but, I gotta say, I really don't think it was the return to form that many others claim it is.  Sure it was better than B&B, but I put it on about the same level as Emotional Rescue (which I like, so that's not an insult), and I think Tattoo You was better than both of them.    After that, with the exception of the song "Undercover of the Night", you can feel free to ignore them.  Jagger turned into a camp version of himself, the songs were never more than mediocre, and I really have to question the commitment of people who meet in the studio every few years to slap an album together just to give them an excuse to tour and make some $$$$$ for heroin and parties.  They quickly went from being THE MOTHERFUCKING ROLLING STONES, to sort of a lame-ass tribute band.

In any event, I'm listening to Mazzy Star at the moment, so maybe I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.   You wouldn't be the first to put forth that possibility.

NEW PIECE @ ASCENT ASPIRATIONS

http://www.davidpfraser.ca/fridays-poems.html

NEW WORK AT THE RECUSANT

http://www.therecusant.org.uk/#/john-sweet-poems/4593300051

Andrew McIntosh

http://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/where-we-belong-artist-paints-caravans-in-the-highlands-with-portals-to-sunnier-climes/

SURREALISM, MOTHERFUCKER!!!!

Definite allusions to Ernst, Bosch and some of those early Buzzcocks flyers.....

http://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/bizarre-collage-art-inspired-by-surrealism-the-pop-art-movement-and-album-covers/

AMPHETAMINE CHRIST at RUSTY TRUCK

https://rustytruck.wordpress.com/category/john-sweet/

Low, y'know?

NEW WORK AT KRITYA

A cool multicultural journal from India, so I'm psyched about it.

http://www.kritya.in/01001/En/poetry_at_our_time8.html

WORDS FAIL

An ebook from a few years ago that I started, then apparently got sidetracked on.   Here it is, in all its glory.....

https://issuu.com/bleedinghorse/docs/words_fail_dc50ea90670e5d

MERRY MEN

A flawed but worthwhile read.  She really hammers on the idea (in ALL of her books) that the poor are noble and morally righteous while the rich and powerful are corrupt, evil and weak.  She deals too much in absolutes to be a truly effective writer, but the scope of this novel is impressive.  She actually manages to create some pretty well-rounded & sympathetic characters, too, despite the limitations of her convictions. 


The 2 books before this were also pretty good (although much more intimate in scope), but after this she got even more rigid and preachy.

This book is interesting in that the young female artistic, smart character who stays true to her poor & humble origins is a heroic character, while the artistic, smart young man who leaves town to pursue fame and fortune with his art in SoCal ends up a drunken failure after he flees the real world to come back to his estranged family.   In his backstory he was always sneaky and conniving, no doubt because of his artistic aspirations.  Very odd coming from a woman who was able to turn her own backstory into a pretty decent artistic statement.

DEAD LINKS UPDATED

So, whoever published some of my collections through NING apparently chose the free plan,  'cuz I just noticed that all of my NING links over to the right side of the page there were dead.  I replaced Uriel, Joy and Sorrow and Beautiful Ghosts over on ISSUU (and updated the links), but it looks I lost or misplaced or deleted my original copy of All Signs Point to Sorrow, so that one's just gone for good.   I found some other collections during my searches, tho, so I'll probably post a few of them here at some point.

And what about that Jessica Bailiff?  That's some ass-kicking abstract, blurry music there....

quetzcoatl

or this trick of
putting fire to the priests

of driving red-hot metal spikes
through the eyes of the king

it's an old story
and it starts like this —

you take what you want
because you can

you understand that gods are frail

that gold is worth more
than human life

and what about poetry?

what about the fools who write it?

ask lorca if he begged for his life

look at what good it did him

another pointless fucking death to
consider in the purplegrey light
of a late november evening

another child lost in a burning house

this woman in bed next to you
who says she has to go soon

who says she needs to
be home before her husband

her footsteps fading down the hallway
and whatever reasons you have for
ending up alone in
this two room apartment

whatever it is you wait for
to happen next

the fact that it never comes

the empire, returned to sand

nine months pregnant and found in
the dirt, in the weeds, found murdered
like you knew she would be, and
the killer is her boyfriend, like you
knew it would be, and we are never
good enough at pretending, none of us,
and the sunlight at six thirty in the
morning is soft and unfocused but
already filled with the threat
of violence

already heavy with the promise
of crucifixion, and i am kissing my
sons goodbye at their mother's front door,
am telling them that i'll see them
tomorrow afternoon, and in the back of
my mind there is always a list of people
i hate, of people i would like to see
dead, and by three in the afternoon the
storm is almost here

by four, it's already gone

the heat come back like a lover who
never gets tired of beating you

PLUS, IBM SPENT YEARS POISONING THE SOIL, TOO

I've been in this house for almost 20 years now.  Landlord of the apartment next door was a decent guy way back when, we got along good, eventually he decided NY sucked and he moved down south.  Since then, the apartment has gone thru a series of shady, mysterious owners.

I know a few landlords at work, what they're telling me is that NYC slumlords have been buying up the empty properties in this area to rent to all the dirtbags that are being deported out of the cities.  Now we've got this artificially inflated population of welfare recipients and junkies, none of the assholes in local gov't seem to have any plans for dealing w/ the problems.  We average about 1 meth lab bust per week.

So, the place next door isn't as bad as that, the tenants are pretty quiet, but there's a detached garage w/ a 2nd story apartment that abuts my back yard, it's always been the ugly duckling of the property.  Lots of miscreants and oddballs have moved through it over the years, but they've ranged from agreeable whackjobs to non-violent shut-ins, so no biggie.  After every storm or heavy wind, tho, I find chunks of rotted shingling all over my back yard.  Finally, after about 10 years of this, the guy who does the maintenance (says he's never met the owner) tells me that the roof inside has begun leaking. 

Different people have been in and out of the place over the past few weeks, looking around taking notes, I assumed they were all contractors, but then me & Dawn noticed this sign (don't want to get anyone in trouble) on the door a few nites ago.  Good fun.

WHO THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE?

Just read a gushing review for the 25th anniversary re-issue of REM's Out of Time.  God, that album was crap. What the fuck was this person blathering about?

Losing My Religion was beat to death, by radio, totally lost its appeal.  Shiny Happy People sucked as bad as all the other "goofy" REM tunes, that lame-ass instrumental was lame-ass......  I'll take Belong, Country Feedback and Me in Honey, and you can keep the rest.  I remember hearing Me in Honey on some album preview on the local rock radio station and being quite impressed.  I missed the song title, tho, so when I bought the album I kept waiting for it.  Listened through a whole lot of crap before I found out it was the LAST FUCKING SONG. 

I loved REM, but I tried and tried and couldn't even like that crappy album.  Wasn't happening.  It sucked so hard, I almost passed on Automatic for the People.  Which is insanely good.  And then Monster sucked.  And then Hi-Fi was about 60% lame, and then I just stopped caring.  What a letdown.  Great hot streak up through Green, though.....

FUCK ART, LET'S ROCK

What I dig are those artsy types who work extensively with labels and bands to create an extensive catalog of groovetastic images.  Pettibon w/ SST, Oliver w/ 4AD, Saville w/ Factory, and so on and so on.  Yes sucked for the most part, but Roger Dean did some excellent work for their album covers.

Nyree Watts takes some amazing photos, excellent covers for various Badman and Mark Kozelek projects.  Similarly, Bruce Licher has done some amazing work for Lanterna.  Just wish they were more prolific.

I also wish Deryk Thomas did more work for Swans/Angels of Light.  Those dad and burning bunnies rule!

No point mentioning Hipgnosis, of course, so I won't, even if I just did.  Always surreal and pretty spectacular, I've got a coffee table book by Storm Thorgerson (RIP) floating around somewhere.  Good shit.

All of this, of course, is just a lead up to showing some cool work by James Marsh, who worked with Talk Talk.  Spirit of Eden?  Laughing Stock?  Fuck, yeah.  Brutally gorgeous music, I think Marsh's art compliments it perfectly.

CHROMATICISM

Dawn got a pretty good picture of this one, out in the back yard.  I'm working in limited palette's.  Much less confusing.  Colors seem pretty close to what they actually are.

IRONY, FOR YOU LOWBROW TYPES

PRICES SO LOW, YOU'LL THINK WE'RE INSANE!

Some odds and ends available from me, limited editions and whatnot, payable thru paypal.

FAMINE is $5, DROWNING is $10, DREAMING MONSTERS is $12, everything else is $8.  As always, postage is included.