Requiem to a Dream

“Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era---the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time & place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run...but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there & alive in that corner of time & the world. Whatever it meant... History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of ‘history’ it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now & then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time---& which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened. My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights---or very early mornings---when I left the Fillmore half-crazy &, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts & a Butte sheepherder’s jacket...booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland & Berkeley & Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change)...but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high & wild as I was: No doubt at all about that... There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda...You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning... & that, I thinks, was the handle---that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old & Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting---on our side or theirs, We had all the momentum; were were riding the crest of a high & beautiful wave... So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas & look West, & with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark---that place where the wave finally broke & rolled back.” from the chapter “Genius ‘Round the World Stands Hand in Hand, & One Shock of Recognition Runs the Whole Circle ‘Round”, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson, 1971. 

 

H. P. Lovecraft - Live-May 11,1968, recorded live at the Fillmore Auditorium.

Hey Mr. President

Haven't been too inspired to post lately. I've been getting caught up on the best(s) of 2009 recently. Haven't really heard a hella lot that I'd call BEST any ole year, but that's just me. Also been filling in some gaps in my Muslimgauze. Just got twelve more, making a total of: 101 Muslimgauze releases; plus all four E.g. Obligue Graph; five splits; Muslimgauze meets The Rootsman Al Aqsa Intifada remixes...but there's never a bottom to that well (anyone interested in any, let me know, I'll get ya the list, we'll talk). Got the idea of posting this from Brother Ib. 

 

The Electric Prunes - Hey Mr. President b/w Flowing Smoothly, Reprise RV 20198, 1969.

 

Enjoy, NØ

Live Lady Day

UPDATE: This post was re-uploaded Winter Solstice 2014. Enjoy, NØ

 

I’ve never been much of a couch potato. Never really got strung out on the stuff the Church of the Cathode Ray Tube peddled as the opiate of the ‘new masses’. Recently did away with cable TV altogether following the Media Domination of so-called 'REALITY’ programming. Just couldn’t see the point of paying money I can scarce afford for mass quantities of somebody else’s reality. Since I strive in all else I do to escape self-same reality, it seemed kinda counter-productive. Switched instead to Netflix new system that allows me to instantly watch movies & TV episodes online on my computer or streamed instantly from Netflix over the Internet right to my TV via a Netflix ready device.

Now whenever I have a few moments with nothing to do but absorb some mindless input, I can flip on the tube & there’s Theo Kojak, Carl Kolchak, Dr. Who (yes, Tom Baker) anytime I want. Way kool.

Lately been mostly watching Ken Burns great documentary series, Jazz. It’s been absolutely fantastic. I remembering watching parts of it when it was aired on PBS some years back, but to be forced to week after week free up the same time slot is always too much for my kinetic sporadic life. I’ve never been good with any ‘mini-series’ type event. Shit, it took me years to finally see all the Twin Peaks episodes & that’s David Lynch, for Satan’s sake. So I missed a fair share of the Jazz series the first time around. This new ‘on-demand’ way of viewing is perfect for me. I can watch, enjoy, & absorb at my own pace.

All this in way of preface to this great slab of musick history, inspired by Ken Burns & Lester Young (who gave young Billie her ‘Lady Day’ sobriquet). This material was recorded in 1951 in Boston at Storyville, a night club owned by George Wein (the man behind the Newport Jazz Festival). The recording was discovered after more than a decade (& after Billie’s untimely death in 1959) & finally released in 1964 by Recording Industries Corporation on their Posterity Series (RIC...not just a recording...an experience). Not only was this a newly discovered unreleased recording, but it was also one of the relatively few occasions when Billie Holiday was recorded “live” during an actual set at a club.

Nat Hentoff writes: “One of the Holiday myths, as perpetuated by some critics, is that Billie had declined as an artist by the 1950s. It is true that her range (never more than about one octave - NØ) had narrowed & that there were nights when the texture of her voice was bruised & torn as her spirit sometimes became. But the essence of Billie Holiday’s nonpariel skill & the power of her impact never came primarily from only technical expertise. Far more than any jazz singer of her time (or any time - NØ), Billie’s strength was in her capacity to so deeply personalize the songs she sang that the very act of performing was a fragment of autobiography.”

One of the wonderful things about this recording is the variety here, the range of mood & style encompassed by these songs. The bitter anger of “Strange Fruit”, the resilient toughness of “Billie’s Blues”, the sensuality of “Miss Brown to You”, the rueful memories of “Lover Man” are all represented here & given that otherworldly touch of the great Ms. Holiday. She gave musick a universality that is unequaled, in the history of jazz or any other musickal genre. She was & is simply the best.

& remember, though you may know these songs from other sources, you heard this great recording here first.

Billie Holiday - A Rare Live Recording of..., RIC Records M2001, 1964.
decryption code in comments

Side One -
Billie’s Blues
Lover Man
Them There Eyes
My Man
I cover the Waterfront
Crazy He Calls Me
Lover Come Back to Me
Side Two -
Detour Ahead
Strange Fruit
Drivin’ Me Crazy
Ain’t Nobody’s Business if I Do
All of Me
I Love You Porgy
Miss Brown to You

Enjoy,
NØ