I call 'em complaining machines. Things are never right with a guy to them. And man, when you throw that hysteria in there ... forget it. I gotta get out, get in the car, and go. Anywhere. Get a cup of coffee somewhere. Anywhere. Anything but another woman.
I guess they're just built different, right? The hysteria starts ... they're gone. You go to leave, they don't understand ...
"WHERE ARE YOU GOING?", they scream.
"I'm getting the hell out of here, baby!"
(click to view full size)20 years of Ryan Giggs: I may have 11 titles, but I'm not done yet!
By Ian Ladyman
http://www.dailymail.co.uk
2nd March 2011
" I had no idea of what I might do with the material, but I didn’t want those evenings to be lost. As I don’t like formal interviews, I tried to get him started on a topic and then keep from interrupting him. The result was often a monologue of three minutes or longer. "
"There'a a woman who's not a hooker."
"That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen."
(from "Women: A Novel")
“I was over in Australia and they were asking me: ‘You proud to be an American?” Well, um, I don’t know. I didnt have a lot to do with it. My parents fucked there. That’s about all… I hate patriotism, I can’t stand it, it makes me fucking sick, it’s a round world last time I checked … in fact I’ll tell you how we can stop patriotism. Instead of putting stars and stripes on our flags we should put pictures of our parents fucking … see how many boot and rally mentalities can circle around that image!”
"And then we die. But, death has not earned us. It hasn't shown any credentials -- we've shown all the credentials. With birth, have we earned life? Not really, but we're sure caught with the fucker...I resent it. I resent death. I resent life. I resent being caught between the two. You know how many times I've tried suicide? .... Give me time, I'm only 66 years old. Still working at it."
Tough Guys Write Poetry: Charles Bukowski by Sean Penn
Editor's note: Time magazine has called writer Charles Bukowski "the laureate of American lowlife." It is in Europe, however, that the author has found his greatest admirers. He is the most widely read living American writer in translation in the world today. More than 2.2 million copies of his works have been sold in Germany alone.
Now 66 years old, Bukowski has written 32 books of poetry, 5 collections of short stories and 4 novels. His best-known works are Ham on Rye, Women, Hot Water Music, South of No North, Post Office, The Tales of Ordinary Madness, War All the Time and Love Is a Dog From Hell. His latest collection of poems is entitled You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense.
This fall a film made from his first screenplay, Barfly, will open around the country. Starring Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway, directed by Barbet Schroeder and presented by Francis Ford Coppola, the film is an autobiographical account of Bukowski's early years as a writer. Barfly's two main characters, Henry and Wanda, are "immersed in an effort to escape the embalmed method of living which grips most of American society," according to Bukowski. "It is that fearful desire to continue to exist at any cost, their lives or anybody else's. Henry and Wanda refuse to accept the living death of acquiescence. This film is a focus on their brave madness."
We asked actor and poet Sean Penn to visit Bukowski and focus on the brave madness of the great man himself.
One by one, the lights are going out. Names are forgotten. There’s darkness in the house
Yap, the great Tom Verlaine who, with his masterful work with Television and with his many solo outings, almost single-handedly defined Post-Punk.
A guitarist extraordinaire and a writer of songs full of evocative poetry, power and beauty, without a f*cking doubt Tommy Boy's right up there in the pantheon of modern music!
There's a nice piece below from Johnny Bacardi’s Off the Record on Tom's sophomore solo outing, one of my favourite Verlaine albums, the sublime "Dreamtime" from 1981.
Dreamtime - Overview:
Released: July 1981
Track List: There’s a Reason, Penetration, Always, The Blue Robe, Without a Word, Mr. Blur, Fragile, A Future in Noise, Down on the Farm, Mary Marie.
Dreamtime was the second solo album to be released by musician Tom Verlaine, late of the seminal Velvet Underground-inspired art-punk group Television.
Television was critically acclaimed and legendary in Punk circles but didn’t sell much, plus the band just wasn’t big enough for the egos and creative ambitions of Verlaine and co-guitarist Richard Lloyd, so they split up in 1978 and Verlaine released a self-titled solo album in 1979, which came out on Elektra and didn’t really cause much of a stir.
Dreamtime - Track By Track:
THERE’S A REASON: “Reason” ushers in the album with a staggered, slashing guitar lick that is soon joined in lockstep rhythm by another set of chords, and on top of the whole thing Verlaine sings, in his gulping, Ric Ocasek-like voice about a love interest which fascinates and frightens him all at once. The slight chorus (“You’re my thrill, my dear/but I can’t keep still, I fear”) benefits from a slight rhythmic change which provides a moment of calm before we go back into the rollercoaster of cacaphonic guitar/bass/drums. This track is a real smorgasbord of different guitar sounds; it’s as if Verlaine intends to serve notice that he was gonna play a whole lotta guitar this time out. He didn’t really, as subsequent tracks bore out, but there is a lot of great work just the same, especially on this cut.
PENETRATION is a reggae with a slight 50’s slant to the melody and a distorted clutch of guitar notes accompanying each repetition of a bridge in which he repeats the chant “Deep pulsation/deep penetration”. Lyrically, it seems to be about performance anxiety of a kind, with fear, unease and dread forming a theme which seems to run throughout the whole album with very few exceptions. I’m not usually a reggae fan, but this track does skank along quite agreeably and provides a nice contrast between the chaotic opener and the next track.
ALWAYS begins with a driving drumbeat and a slashing duel between Verlaine’s guitar and Donald Nossov’s bass, and continues on in this vein until the chorus, when it’s joined by chiming piano notes, almost achieving a Springsteen-ish effect, albeit Springsteen produced by John Cale. Essentially a love song, with the singer pleading for understanding and attention from his object of desire, it rides a relentless groove all the way until the fadeout which features some astringent, ringing guitar licks.
THE BLUE ROBE is essentially an instrumental, with a Beefheartian rumbling beat from drums and bass, and Verlaine spraying licks all helter-skelter, singing “Hi-Fi” at the 2:28 mark.
WITHOUT A WORD is another atmosphere piece, a story-song about someone named Laura who seems to be dealing with an unspecified heartbreak:
I’ve been given a fortune
a fortune in lies
so spoke Laura
as she closed her eyes
One by one
the lights are going out
Names are forgotten
There’s darkness in the house
It’s also got one of the more conventional song structures on the album; minor-chord notes and a verse/chorus/verse/repeat chorus until fadeout. Compared to the fireworks on the previous songs, it’s a bit of a letdown but is still a strong enough track with a decent melody.
MR. BLUR seems to find Verlaine snarking anonymously at someone, Lloyd perhaps? Anyway, it’s got a fuzz-tone stop-and-start riff at its center and is driven along nicely by the bass and drums into a relaxed, but insistent beat. Again, nothing really explosive as far as guitar fireworks go, but it’s a catchy tune just the same, almost Cars-like.
FRAGILE brings us back to the unease with a chorus that states
Fragile/Handle with care
I’ve got to face what’s never there
again, the bulk of the lyrics are directed to another affection object, and there’s a feeling of missed connections and miscommunication. Early verses are sung against Byrds-like chiming guitar notes that seem to work against the beat; the chorus, and the second set of lyrics are at a sped-up tempo. It’s an oddly-structured song that works well in spite of this.
A FUTURE IN NOISE has Tom casting invective at a “Graduate of the Reemco School of Knowledge…(who) walk(s) in here with your fifteen degrees”, some music biz type I’m sure that drew his scorn. Someone more knowledgeable about Verlaine and the Televison story could perhaps cast more light. Anyway, this is another guitar showcase track as it opens with that classic Television guitar/bass/drum interlocked, dueling structure, and rocks on throughout, especially in the sections in which he sings “I’ve gotta keep about a mile from you…arm’s length, that won’t do” against a pounding tom-tom beat. Verlaine does some magnificent, delirious rave-up licks as the song fades out.
DOWN ON THE FARM is once again back in reggae territory, as Verlaine basically says “I’ve paid my dues, now will you love me like I love you” in a fashion that sounds kinda creepy as sung in his voice. Anyway, it gets away from the reggae beat only on the chorus, as he repeats “Long and lonely years…down on the farm” against a backdrop of guitar pyrotechnics. For some reason, this one reminds me a bit of similar stuff XTC was doing at this time.
MARY MARIE is a gorgeous, atmospheric song with a Duane Eddy-style lick and some felt-more-than-heard organ as its foundation. Mary seems to be a young lady who is determined to carry on despite long odds and no support, and a sympathetic Verlaine works the farm metaphor again in support of this idea. The arrangement builds into a sway-along tempo at the chorus, providing outstanding dramatics throughout. Verlaine once more plays confident guitar solos, especially after each repetition of the chorus and as the song works towards the fadeout. This one’s pretty much my favorite track on the album.
Outro:The record-buying public was slightly more receptive for Verlaine’s sophomore effort - according to Wikipedia it did chart at #177 on the Billboard Pop Charts, something I don’t think his other albums did.
Myself personally, I had only read about Televison and Verlaine in CREEM (and was intrigued by Christgau’s remark in his review of the self-titled debut that Verlaine played guitar “…like Captain Marvel”) until pre-Nashville music biz fame Bill Lloyd, who worked in a Bowling Green record store in the early 80’s, recommended this one to me. He was far more attuned to the Punk and New Wave sounds than I, and I knew that he knew whereof he spoke, so I bought it and took it straight home to listen, and was captivated immediately by “Always”, after kinda-sorta liking the first two cuts.
Thereafter, I had this one on constant rotation on my turntable. The next year, though, I bought its follow-up Words from the Front, and was very disappointed - the tracks on that one were nowhere near as strong as the ones on Dreamtime, and I lost interest a bit after that, even though I did get the next three releases Cover, Flashlight, and the instrumental Warm and Cool, all of which were better than Words and strong albums overall, Television’s classic Marquee Moon and its underrated, if fractious follow-up Adventure, and the self-titled debut, which didn’t make much of an impression although I didn’t hate it.
Television reformed in the mid-90’s, and I duly picked that one up as well, but by then I had lost my enthusiasm for Verlaine’s music and haven’t picked up anything since. He’s continued to record and perform, and I understand some of it is quite good - maybe one of these days I’ll get around to giving it a listen. One thing is certain- I’ll continue to play Dreamtime as much as I’ve played it in the last 28 years, which is to say very often.
Here’s a comprehensive site with shitloads of info on Television and Verlaine.
He lay listening to the water drip in the woods. Bedrock, this. The cold and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone.
- from "The Road" (2006)
What did Christ really do? He hung out with hard-drinking fishermen.
"Alcohol is probably one of the greatest things to arrive upon the earth -- alongside of me. Yes...these are two of the greatest arrivals upon the surface of the earth. So...we get along. It is ultimately destructive to most people. I'm just one apart from that. I do all of my creative work while I'm intoxicated. Even with women, you know, I've always been reticent in the love-making act, so alcohol has allowed me, sexually, to be more free. It's a release, because basically I am a shy, withdrawn person, and alcohol allows me to be this hero, striding through space and time, doing all these daring things ... So I like it...yeah."
Posts
All Comments
