mardi gras (fahey week 2017 ends)

happy mardi gras people. make those pancakes (round and golden like the sun that is coming). fahey week ends for 2017. if they have it where you live go and celebrate.

this year horsemouth has mostly concerned himself with general notions of creativity (as well as listening back through to the john fahey he actually owns - ok ok he can’t find his copy of fare forward voyager right now but it will come when the time is right).

now he’s on to iko iko...

it’s a beautiful world right now (horsemouth would like to do more tunes you can dance to).

accessions diary - ivo andric bosnian chronicle (two squid oxfam).

gigs, books, films, events february 2017

gigs 

• snufkin, stick in the wheel (west) 
• l'ocelle mare, kelly jane jones (sarf) 

books

• colerdige on shakespeare (ed. terry hawkes), 
• unto this last (ruskin), 
• recollections of rosetti (hall caine), 
• 12 gothic tales (usual suspects), 
• industrial society (raymond aron), 
• the midnight disease , 
• the music of angels (michael tippett papers vol.2), 
• christ stopped at eboli (carlo levi), 
• here comes everybody (encounter therapy), 
• folk revival: the rediscovery of a national music - fred woods 

films

• finding vivian maier, 
• blood simple, 
• mademoiselle (jean genet), 
• zatoichi, 
• illuminacja, 
• akira, 
• wiseblood, 
• horns, 
• sin city, 
• do widenia do jutra, 
• the gleaners, 
• the lighthouse (mayak) 

events

siobhan's birthday do. fahey week, cough goes, cat-sitting in walthamstralia.

the various collaborations of john fahey (the end of fahey week 2017)

well there’s the singer and bassist from spirit/ jo jo gunne (mark andes and jay ferguson) together with an ex-member of the byrds (kevin kelley drummer sweetheart of the rodeo) on the yellow princess, there’s red krayola (horsemouth believes - see live 67 and apparently there are lost studio recordings), there’s cul-de-sac (the epiphany of glenn jones), there’s flautist linda mclean, there’s tape-collager barry hansen (and then there’s the people he had on tape - like fiddlers hubert thomas and virgil willis johnston), there’s a pre-canned heat alan ‘blind owl’ wilson and then there are the three (to my knowledge) john fahey orchestra albums - of rivers and religion, after the ball and old fashioned love.

that’s a start - more soon.

tomorrow horsemouth will be busy (though he is free wednesday) so this probably wraps it up for fahey week this year. horsemouth has conducted a re-listening exercise to the fahey albums he owns (and plans to go buy some more). 

saturday there may be more house watching (out in sunny walthamstow).

the village band of grassano

the village band of grassano was returning from nearby sant’arcangelo when the bus skidded and went off the cliff - the local shepherds still avoid the area at the base of the cliff claiming they can hear brass instruments playing. sant’arcangelo itself has the horns of the local dragon in the church - killed by a nearby feudal lord for the grazing rights to the meadows alongside the nearby river. to do this he required the assistance of the virgin mary. ‘the village is built of the bones of the dead’ says the town crier/ grave digger of gagliano - in his youth he was a wolf tamer. (this much and more we learn in carlo levi’s christ stopped at eboli, carlo levi the exile in lucania an area even more remote and fucked up than grassano - a region that  that not even christianity had properly reached. gagliano is (like akenfield) a fictionalised version of a real place).


there is a photo of late era (cleaned up) fahey on his way to a gig (from the front cover of womblife) - or is it? it looks suspiciously like he is moving, he looks suspiciously like the fahey of santa anna days. horsemouth has continued his fahey week celebrations by listening to death chants, breakdowns and military waltzes, and the dance of death and other plantation favourites (volumes 2 and 3 respectively). the downfall of the adelphi rolling grist mill was a live recording with flautist nancy mclean (she plays on lewisdale blues off voice of the turtle also) - allegedly recorded in march (so perhaps an anniversary) but horsemouth cannot yet discover the date.

years have gone by (ninety years without slumbering)

'many years have gone by, years of war and of what men call history. buffeted here and there at random I have been not able to return to my peasants as I promised them when I left them, and I do not know when, if ever, I can keep my promise.’ - carlo levi, christ stopped at eboli.

horsemouth was listening to days have gone by - repackaged as volume 6 of the fahey experience by takoma from 1967. there is a photo is fahey from oregon in the 90ies - drinking like a fish and into prescription painkiller darvon. horsemouth has found a link to a description of his funeral (his last earthly gig before the great gig in the sky). the photo on the cover of days have gone by is of john fahey when he was a) good looking and b) liked annoying people - the a didn't last very long. the b lasted him to the end of his life

the album opens with an instrumental named revolt of the dyke brigade (fahey annoying people) and ends with the hymn we would be building by jean sibelius. in between there’s a sounsdscape piece with manipulated whiporwill noises and a version of ‘old-timey’ tune my grandfather’s clock (by henry clay work author of marching through georgia) . it allegedly features one r. grubbert gardner on additional guitar.

my grandfather’s clock features in the 1963 twlight zone episode ninety years without slumbering whose pay-off line was the following; ‘ clocks are made by men, god creates time. no man can prolong his allotted hours, he can only live them to the fullest—in this world or in the twilight zone.’

john fahey’s body lies a mouldering in the grave but the truth (of his playing) is marching on - just as the tune of john brown’s body became the battle hymn of the republic.

revelation by the side of the charles river dam (‘the opposite of writer’s block’)

this is where it happens for alice w. flaherty in boston (home to riverside records sometime distributor of john fahey records coincidence freaks) near to the science museum (so the wonder that is the internet tells us). graphomaniac/ hypergaphia ‘sufferer’/ neuroscientist/ aspiring writer alice hears the phrase ‘the opposite of writer’s block’ and her book the midnight disease is born in flurry of scribbled notes.

yesterday horsemouth had a much needed day off - he listened to john fahey (for it was the start of fahey week) and had a veggie breakfast in a very west ham cafe next to the old ground. he was quite taken by brenda’s blues by fahey (particularly since pianist george winston has thoughfully told us the chords).

horsemouth’s hands (and nails) are still a bit fucked after his two recent ‘gigs’ but soon he will be returning to ‘form’ and try to make some progress on it.

as well as being big on the motivations to write, alice is also big on eureka moments,k the moments where life suddenly makes sense or we make sense of life or we at least come up with a plausible story/ metaphor. 

horsemouth is slightly off balance at the moment (but everything is great).

‘hark from the tomb’ (the midnight disease)

today is the anniversary of the death of john aloysius fahey guitarist and curmudgeon (and possibly the biggest influence on horsemouth’s current musical trajectory).

in honour of this horsemouth has been listening to volume 5 of the fahey ouevre - the transfiguration of blind joe death. originally recorded for small boston distributors riverside this release was eventually repatriated to takoma records. it begins with the song beautiful linda gretchell (a joint piece with banjo player and guitarist l. mayne smith) this seems to use the same tune as a number of son house tracks excepted from his comeback session (incidentally recorded in the same year 1965) - was fahey at this session (his running buddy al ‘blind owl’ wilson certainly was)?

the album also  features a number of g open tuning guitar pieces - I am the ressurection (largely lifted from one-man-band jesse fuller’s hark from the tomb here in dgdggd), the death of the clayton peacock, how green was my valley, and perhaps most famously (for fahey fans) on the sunny side of the ocean (as sean points out this is probably the top side).


last night horsemouth watched do widzenia do jutra - our hero (looking a lot like lethal) falls in love with a french girl but it is gdansk in poland in the 60ies, he’s not going to make it out and she’s not going to stay, she agrees to stay saying that she will see him the next morning (but in the morning she is gone). he continues making theatre instead.

the author of the midnight disease (that of writing) has finally cracked and is sharing with us why she writes, (and also why george orwell, joan didion, milan kundera etc. write). (spoiler - to transfigure the dissatisfying material of our own lives into something outside of ourselves). this morning horsemouth was all fired up to write (but he’d forgotten the library was closed) - of this (the wednesday morning) and of the sunday horsemouth must make a veritable sabbath, he may contemplate things, he may even write them down (though technically this is not permitted) but he may not publish them to the wider world (as if the wider world were even listening).

one drop (the importance of musical education)

it’s half-term, horsemouth was out drinking and making music til late and he now faces a little bit of work in the afternoon (he also needs to go and recover his diary). no hangover to report.

horsemouth was thinking about music education - at school he never received any but later the LEA enabled him to study with guitarist folo graff of orchestre jazira at jenako arts in the balls pond road in hackney.

he was watching footage of students of hackney bsix college making music (tarrus riley’s one drop - nice crisp drumming horsemouth must say - and a portuguese rap crew getting evil on the mean streets of stamford hill) and growing sentimental (bless the youth).

horsemouth was also thinking about the hymn singing (possibly the one bit of music that escaped the fact that horsemouth wasn’t quite posh enough for music lessons in the valleys of south wales in the 70ies) - it was a bit of a mixture of the good solid victorian (once in royal david’s city, all through the night and welsh language variants ar hyd y nos etc.) and the evangelical happy clappy (kumbayah). there was probably some separation between the CofE anglicanism and the hymnody of ‘chapel’ (but horsemouth couldn’t tell you much about it). the hymns he didn’t learn then he’s learning now how great thou art, power in the blood, peace in the valley.

there was one lesson of music a week for one year taught to all the students (by the clearly disgruntled music teacher) but it did at least provide horsemouth with the basics of learning to read music (giving something for him to build on later).

horsemouth - the rise of the shitgibbon

horsemouth is hiding up out up in the forest - thanks dave and claudia. the snow falls (maybe even on the cedars) - no really. it may even stick.

in shitgibbon we have the most significant new coinage in our shared language in years - quite why horsemouth is unsure - maybe an interest in the shit flinging behaviour of other higher primates is indicating of an evolutionist perspective. ‘we all got duck (when the shit hits the fan)’ sang the circle jerks (and now it’s being flung by shitgibbons).




horsemouth went to see l’ocelle mare play in a converted giant metal water tank in south london (jesus the cold nearly killed him). l’ocelle mare works an interesting area between flamenco footwork and timings (3s against 2s), improv, tap dancing and the one man band routine - horsemouth was really impressed. kelly jane-jones  and naama schendar also played - nice and ritualistic.

next week is very busy - horsemouth still has a shocking cough, he still sounds like he’s at deaths door. tonight he’s babysitting. sunday he’s making music (very probably).

horsemouth would like to end with an impromptu poem (inspired by dave social control);

horsemouth - rise of the shitgibbon

there's just not enough songs about
spontaneous human combustion
and where's his 'the end is nigh' coffee mug?
we write to escape our prisons but then there's
the inhibiting effect of external reward
(which is probably why they're reducing the amount of
external reward to which we will be exposed).

horsemouth has been writing recipes for
the cookshops of the future -
he knows he shouldn’t
(but the money they were offering
was just too good).
he was also applying for work on the new
frictionless seamless border
between the north
and the republic of ireland
(it sounds like a doddle).

so if all MPs
are the MPs of the people already there -
tell me again -
where does the political will come from
to build more housing?
leaving us
reading thoreau by firelight
('you'll ruin your eyes')

the end is nigh (no really)
and
(you know this already)
it will be a relief...

zatoichi illuminacja

the free spirit must be hurried onward (as the serpent)

saturday night an ill horsemouth (TB, COPD, lung cancer - you know the score) went out to see stick in the wheel play way out in sunny battersea (if not actually on sea). the gig was an evil promoters trick - 3 of the best young folk bands (snufkin, stick in the wheel, the langan band) randomly picked out of the hat and stuck on the corner of a youth pub to compete in volume with the rugby club with an inadequate PA. all this to be followed by a disco til 2am.

horsemouth was stuck behind small asian girl and tall hands everywhere rugby prop forward (next to entire rugby team - they don’t travel far from each other).

nicola regarded the crowd with a baleful (and yet strangely murderous) blue eye. they played well (so did snufkin from bristol - now called little.. something or other, nice tight harmonies dudes). but nothing could make up for the indignity of playing to an audience to mean to pay in after 8pm.

horsemouth relished the contrasts (but he didn’t try the allegedly magical back garden). they mentioned something about a benefit gig on the 17th - horsemouth will keep his ears to the ground.

last night horsemouth watched takeshi kitano’s version of zatoichi. this was decently murderous (lots of arterial spray) and ending with an awesome tap dance finale - kind of like an agricultural version of the bjork one where the sound of the machines turns into music - post ghost dog style soundtrack by RZA. also good in a soundtrack sense (and others) was illuminacja ( krzysztof zanussi 1972) staring stanislaw latallo (later to die during an unsuccessful attempt to climb everest) - physicists (scientists) as freethinkers, the first ever time the events of 1968 made it into a polish film (and then only as a news report on the radio and one still photograph). the DVD came with a film by latallo’s son.

horsemouth has been reading raymond aron and coleridge on shakespeare. he dreamed. more on both these things another time.