Zabib's favorite redneck climatologist sired his first E.L.F. member child. In honor of Woodrow and his new boy, drink some hooch tonight and enjoy Big Dick Beaver and Turtle Man:
Baseball's Hall of Fame and Bobby Beausoleil's Ambient Masterpiece
Winter is in full swing and I miss baseball. Pitchers and catchers are getting ready to report to camp and all the free agents have found their new homes for 2013.
Oh and you may have heard the baseball writers declined to vote anyone into the Hall this year from a list of eligible players such as Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Curt Schilling and Barry Bonds. Many of the "big names" that failed to earn the requisite 75% of votes did so because of their alleged use of steroids.
Baseball has a long history of admitting individuals of questionable character: Bob Feller (asshole), Kenesaw "Mountain" Landis (racist), and Ty Cobb (racist asshole). Simply put, their performances on the diamond or in the office were too spectacular to exclude them from Cooperstown. Their flaws are viewed as "off the field". This new crop of candidates' sins are very much "on the field" and it remains to be seen how history will view their wrongdoing. Baseball forgives bad character, racial prejudice and even crimes, just don't mess with the integrity of the record book.
Music has it's own hall of champions. The Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame elects artists and bands every year, but there is no quantitative analysis of their merit. It feels more like a gold pension watch. Bands that only had one great album and were never heard from again or those that achieved little commercial success despite magical songwriting will likely never make it in: the Nick Drakes, the Morphines, the Mark Hollises or the Jeff Mangums. And with the cliche "sex, drugs and rock n roll" there is virtually no character clause that would bar someone from commemoration, and rightly so. For example we have Phil Spector (alleged murder), Chuck Berry (statutory rape) and Pete Townshend (child porn). Many don't care about their favorite artists' convictions or alleged indiscretions, case in point: Michael Jackson. His body of work is simply too spectacular to ignore. But what about the artist whose suffers from both a small discography and who committed a horrible crime?
Bobby Beausoleil committed a horrific act of violence. He also composed one of the best ambient records of all time. In July of 1969, acting on orders from Charles Manson, Beausoleil stabbed Gary Hinman to death. Hinman had already had a portion of his ear sliced off by Manson and sewn back on with dental floss. Beausoleil then used Hinman's blood to write "political piggy" and draw a paw print on the wall in an attempt to frame the Black Panthers. An imminent race war was one of Manson's many paranoid obsessions.
Beausoleil's arrest on August 6 triggered Manson to start the "Helter Skelter" two days later, killing Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski and Abigail Folger. Beausoleil was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment.
Prior to the murder, Beausoleil was briefly a member of the band Grass Roots from 1965 to 1966, later renamed Love. During 1966, Beausoleil began to act in and compose the soundtrack for Kenneth Anger's film Lucifer Rising. Filming ended in 1967 and much of the footage was used for another of Anger's films.
Filming resumed in 1970, with Chris Jagger, brother of Mick Jagger, acting as Lucifer and Jimmy Page composing the score. Page befriended Anger after he agreed to help exorcise Page's Loch Ness home of what Page believed to be a headless man's ghost. While shooting the film, Anger had a falling out with Page's wife Charlotte and all of Page's material was dumped.
Beausoleil and Anger would later reconcile and Beausoleil, with the permission of San Quentin State Prison, wrote and recorded the final score for Lucifer Rising. The film was released in 1972, yet Beausoleil's soundtrack wasn't released until 2004. It remains the only film score composed and recorded wholly from a prison.
The Lucifer Rising soundtrack is a masterpiece of psychedelic ambient rock. The album is early Gilmour Pink Floyd guitar with Gregorian chant-like organs and a recurring trumpet line that mixes spaghetti western maestro Ennio Morricone with Bitches Brew era Miles Davis. On the third track Beausoleil's mix of droning pulse and delicate flurries on the organ feels like the perfect soundtrack for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Again comparisons to early Pink Floyd, specifically Meddle, are apt.
"Part II"
"Part III"
Part IV is a strange, frenetic piece built around a sinister carny organ grinder sound. It is the most jazz like and unsettling two minutes of the record. It sounds like madness. Parts V and VI close out the work returning to the sci-fi sound and spaghetti western trumpet, but feature more conventional late-60s psychedelic guitar jamming and keyboard play. And at 25 plus minutes, they are the centerpiece of the work.
"Part VI"
So what do we make of this record, it's auteur and backstory? Despite a desire to separate Beausoleil and his crime from the music, his story does add to the work, both in its recording location and his deranged, paranoid genius. If this was not an instrumental album and contained violent lyrics, I believe many would be repulsed by the recording. Instead, Beausoleil created the perfect psychedelic soundtrack and one of the best ambient records of all time.
Bobby Beausoleil will never make it into the Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame under the current standards of enshrinement. He never went platinum, he didn't pioneer a new genre or recording technique, he never sold out Madison Square Garden. Nevertheless, I can appreciate his work and yet still regard him as a terrible monster. His sins have no bearing on his musical creation. His crime didn't enable his composition. Music fans should regard Beausoleil the same way that many baseball fans do Charlie Hustle. Rose is a flawed man, but his sins were committed while managing, not playing, and his skills on the field are too brilliant to ignore.
In 2006, just as most Americans were drowning themselves in adjustable rate mortgages and learning how to efficiently use 140 characters, Will Oldham went to Iceland, bathed in volcanic waters and recorded The Letting Go. Like most Bonny 'Prince' Billy albums, it is something to be wrestled with and confounded by. On this record Oldham's typically sparse arrangements of acoustic guitar and piano are lightened by the vocals of Dawn McCarthy and produced by Valgeir Sigursson (frequent Björk collaborator). For me, this is classic winter music-- seasonally depressed and reclusive.
NEW UNRELEASED MUSIC FROM THE CHROMATICS' KILL FOR LOVE SESSIONS Jet lagged & buzzing from Friday's show in Paris, I couldn't sleep...so I stayed up all night with Oko talking about color based dreams while blending these tracks together. Since the album came out, a lot of people on the road have been telling us they are curious to hear some of the unreleased music from the Kill For Love sessions...Recorded November 2009 through December 2011, these songs were all mixed between 4 & 6 a.m. After hours of tracking at the studio in Montreal, we'd clear the channels on the mixer, open a bottle of wine, & feel around in the dark...working our way through the atmospheric elements & peeling back layers of rhythm...throwing the songs into the abstract pile & playing them while driving home in the snow. In Amsterdam right now trying to upload it from the hotel. Fingers crossed...
This is a lullaby for you...
Sweet Dreams!
xo
Johnny Jewel
Track Listing
Dreaming In Color (00:23-03:08)
Red Car (03.09-07:27)
Kill For Love (07:27-11:30)
Last Wish (11:31-15:01)
Running From The Sun (15:02-19:13)
Disintegration (19:14-22:31)
These Streets Will Never Look The Same (22:32-30:53)
Blue Moon (30:54-34:38)
RED CAR
Do You Feel So Blue In Your Shiny Red Car ?
Will You See Your Friends Burn With You In The Fire ?
Standing Alone On A Beach
Slipping Away From The World
Or Did You Find Your Heaven Pass Beside The Road ?
Oh Red Car
Now That Your World Is So New
Hang The Tears From Your Grave
Spend My Nights Driving In Circles
Can I Still Feel The Same ?
Steering Off Of This Road
The Flames Become Glass
The Shadow In The Distance
You'll Never Pass
Oh Oh Red Car
Oh Baby Girl
KILL FOR LOVE
Everybody's Got A Secret To Hide
Everyone Is Slipping Backwards
I Drank The Water & I Felt Alright
I Took A Pill Almost Every Night
In My Mind I Was Waiting For Change
While The World Just Stayed The Same
I Can't Remember If I Like What I Said
I Can't Remember It Went Straight To My Head
I Kept A Bottle By The Foot Of The Bed
I Put A Pillow Right On Top Of My Head
But I Killed For Love
You Say You See It Almost Every Time
A Little Number Counting Back To Nine
I Can't Remember If I Like What I Said
I Can't Remember It Went Straight To My Head
But I Killed For Love
RUNNING FROM THE SUN
The Burning Flame Is Flickering Now
I Say Walk With Fire
It's The Same Dream Every Night
Don't Be Scared It'll Be Alright
& If You Hold Your Thoughts Too Tight
They'll Say You Can't Keep Running From The Sun
Morning Comes & They're Waking Up
Drinking Blood From A Paper Cup
It's The Same Old Dream We All Had Last Night
& They'll Be There Burning Next To You
If You Say Your Prayers Tonight
Be Careful What You Ask
& If You Lock Your Windows Tight
Daylight Still Peaks Through Cracks
Running From The Sun
THESE STREETS WILL NEVER LOOK THE SAME
Spent My Life Inside This Room
& Disappeared Some More Each Day
The Screen Stayed Flashing In My Mind
I Couldn't Run Away From You
You Kept Me Hanging On The Line
I Get So Lonely All The Time
I Try To Find My Way Back Home
These Streets Will Never Look The Same
My Broken Heart Erased Your Name
The Screen Stayed Flashing In My Mind
BLUE MOON
You Saw Me Standing Alone
Without A Dream In My Heart
Without A Love Of My Own
You Knew Just What I Was There For
You Heard Me Saying A Prayer For
Someone I Really Could Care For
Without A Love Of My Own
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads (Mute Records, 1996)
"Stagger Lee"
On Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' 9th studio album Murder Ballads, the Aussie pairs up with several mustache deficient artists P.J. Harvey, Kylie Minogue and (gasp) the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The album consists of traditional and original murder ballads, traditional ballads with lyrics that form a narrative around crimes of passion.
"Stagger Lee" is a traditional number concerning the murder of William "Billy" Lyons by Stagger Lee Shelton in St. Louis on Christmas night 1895. Stagger Lee has come to embody the symbol of a tough black man; one who is sly, streetwise, and defiant of white authority. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat wrote this of the crime in 1895:
William Lyons, 25, a levee hand, was shot in the abdomen yesterday evening at 10 o'clock in the saloon of Bill Curtis, at Eleventh and Morgan Streets, by Lee Sheldon, a carriage driver. Lyons and Sheldon were friends and were talking together. Both parties, it seems, had been drinking and were feeling in exuberant spirits. The discussion drifted to politics, and an argument was started, the conclusion of which was that Lyons snatched Sheldon's hat from his head. The latter indignantly demanded its return. Lyons refused, and Sheldon withdrew his revolver and shot Lyons in the abdomen. When his victim fell to the floor Sheldon took his hat from the hand of the wounded man and coolly walked away. He was subsequently arrested and locked up at the Chestnut Street Station. Lyons was taken to the Dispensary, where his wounds were pronounced serious. Lee Sheldon is also known as 'Stag' Lee.
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