‘dance on, you pigs, what concern of it is mine?’ / ‘guilt is not such a simple thing’

 the john coltrane festival calender continues - please forgive the ads, crescent recorded this day in 1964, also recorded that day a short version of song of praise, they returned to the studio on June 1, 1964, and recorded versions of the title track and bessie's blues.


title of post franz kafka undated diary entry 1914 / michael haneke

horsemouth was watching michael haneke’s hidden. 

this morning he has taken to reading w.b.yeats a vision - automatically written (and later dream dictated) from the spirits by his wife. bells would ring. there would be a smell of roses or cat excrement. they tell the servants the house is haunted by a whistling ghost.

 but the voices are not reliable. the ‘frustrators’ would (if asked) reveal that they had been lying.

‘from such and such an hour, and such and such a day, all is frustration.’ 

when it is published he finds connections with spengler’s decline of the west. perhaps horsemouth will get further with it this time around. he has more shelving - he has sorted out his russians onto a separate shelves. this afternoon he returns to his main gig - not long to go now.

creation rebel (blackstar)

horsemouth forgot to mention that creation rebel played at the adrian sherwood gig friday night with some of the musicians who played on starship africa one of the most amazing dub albums ever - though not the late lamented style scott.

saturday night horsemouth traveled down to sunny pop(u)lar (said popul vuh) to meet denise, darsavini, john and ant-knee (thanks for feeding him). they consumed food and beer and caught up and became trapped in electoral politics. john was reading sigizmund krzhizhanovsky.


sunday horsemouth wanted to curtail the beer drinking and expense (but was persuaded anyway) - a few bottles supped round howard’s whilst they listened to music and howard got on with some art. howard was playing the new kendrick lamar (2017), horsemouth replied with blackstar (2004) and the slightly earlier soundbombing compilation (1999). of course both of these generations of hip-hoppers owe a debt to the 1990 era tribe called quest, the jungle brothers etc.

towards the end horsemouth and howard got the instruments out and had a little jam - then horsemouth proceeded to sing and play his way through chunks of an imaginary set.

later horsemouth watched time of the wolf (michael haneke) - it’s your standard post-apocalypse (a cold, hungry war of each against all). horsemouth has been stocking up on food (5kgs rice, 2kgs sweet potato, 4 tins of chick peas, 1.5 litres of olive oil)

it turns out raymond aron and george lichtheim had heard of each other (of course they had).

later (today - this evening) horsemouth goes to a meeting - tomorrow he works (and thursday and friday), thursday is the anniversary of the recording of crescent by john coltrane, sunday (evening) horsemouth is off down south (rats as big as cats apparently) to a friend’s comicbook launch (horsemouth is himself immortalized in said comics).

the suicide of george lichtheim (olatunji concert)

so horsemouth and sten went out to see adrian sherwood play - there they bumped into former bush house’ers ross and andy (cheers for the squeeze dude). let’s reform the band they all quipped. lou and mike were around (and paul loader - who horsemouth failed to catch up with). everyones kids are now taller than they are (ok at least some of them).

one person confessed to reading what horsemouth writes.

what did the band do next? : - the singer (noma) went on to win olivier’s for best supporting actress (twice now), appeared regularly in doctor who (and is rapidly moving in the direction of national treasure), the bassist (andy) went into the music industry (tour managing, now record label managing) and did well, the drummer (ross) continued working in community health provision (the day job) and played in a number of other bands, horsemouth you know about. sadly pete (the percussionist) died as a result of hepatitis contracted while travelling in india.

various other people stood in for andy on bass (when he was off touring) - nick lacey (snatch foster band) notably, various other people helped out, appeared with, sound engineered and recorded the band etc.

today is (or would have been) charles mingus’s birthday. tomorrow is the anniversary not only of the last recorded john coltrane concert but of the death of george lichtheim critic and historian of marxism. horsemouth has a lot of time for non-believers (raymond aron is another one), for people who won’t just succumb to the poetry of marxism and its vision for humanity but instead want to check the small print and the articulations.

‘they’re not wrong... they just can’t explain why they are right’

so opined suburban bushwacker of recent political events at breakfast (7am) . horsemouth just had coffee (and a glass of water).

horsemouth has returned to the seaside towns (did you miss him?), attended a meeting and then gone out for a post meeting pint (or three). his initial plan was just to go with one person but as a result of a failure of security (insufficient planning, lack of clarity about the goals) they ended up dragging the rest of the meeting out. they hid in the beer garden and shivered a bit before being driven back indoors to face their co-operators.

it’s not a bad pub (as far as pubs in the new london go) with a beer garden out back and decent fixtures and fittings (in the hipster style) inside (and decently cheap) . horsemouth believes that once upon a time it was the balls brothers port emporium - where gilbert and george once went to drink themselves stupid (and photograph themselves doing it).

horsemouth can afford a night out at the pub because he’s had two weeks (with only two bottles of beer) living abstemiously at his folks in the countryside, going for walks, reading the daily torygraph. his paycheck should be arriving soon. it’s the babysittee’s birthday.

if you count the trip to ireland planned for june horsemouth will have been out of the barrio for 55 days (slightly over one seventh of the year) - he, of course, wants to do better than this.

horsemouth has to get a band together to play a gig - his own stuff he thinks and some covers.

alice coltrane documentary (can't work out how to embed)

‘long live the weeds and the wilderness yet’ / ‘the customers’ yatchs are rather rare’

gerard manley hopkins / saying popular in the city of london

sunny morning (horsemouth should be out the door soon).

last night black sabbath (boris karloff slumming it) then homeland - evil US president, loose canon in the white house, but a woman (nice synthesis).



‘tell me how did you feel (when you come out the wilderness)’ ask the husband and wife gospel duo (very much in the style of blind willie johnson and his wife willie b. harris - though some of his duets are with an unknown female singer thought to have been a member of the reverend j. m. gates’s congregation). he found it on alan lomax's website.

a friend has visited one of the james turrell skyspaces in cornwall - horsemouth was reminded of these tracks recorded there - sounds generated by getting the air inside the skyspaces to resonate.

the anaesthetist is always right (black sunday)

this was a line in a dream horsemouth had yesterday (casting of the runes day - the day on which the action, in m.r. james’s gothic chiller begins). casting of the runes becomes (by the process of film-making) night of the demon - which becomes (by the process of sampling) the hounds of love by kate bush.

except the line in the dream was this morning - horsemouth in his sleep fuddled state has elided the two together.

horsemouth has been contemplating a reissue for the summer - a fifteen years since the making of horsemouth and goatboy (possibly with the additional track - the one from the second phoenix compilation).

outside it is sunny (and yet horsemouth is farting about indoors). yesterday he went for a walk on the common, read the daily torygraph (his parents choice of newspaper), and watched black sunday (aka the mask of satan) - not to be confused with black sabbath - the first mario bava film (losely related to viy by gogol).



Mask of Satan [aka Black Sunday] by MargaliMorwentari

a chapter from an historical novel

'There is nothing better than the hackney road, at least not in the seaside towns; for there it is everything. What does this street – the beauty of our seaside towns – not shine with! I know that not one of its pale and clerical inhabitants would trade the hackney road for anything in the world. Not only the one who is twenty-five years old, has an excellent mustache and a frock coat of an amazing cut, but even the one who has white hair sprouting on his chin and a head as smooth as a silver dish, he, too, is enchanted with the hackney road. And the ladies! Oh, the ladies find the hackney road still more pleasing. And who does not find it pleasing? The moment you enter the hackney road, it already smells of nothing but festivity.' - adapted from gogol's 'the nevsky prospect' (a short story much concerned with mustaches).

the last time horsemouth and howard were in the pub (slightly over a week ago) howard opined that the beard (as social phenomenon and facial appurtenance) was dying back - nevertheless horsemouth could immediately count 7 in the beer garden.

horsemouth has been reading gogol and has to modify his previous opinion - gogol’s technique works with/ against just about any type of material - it is just that the recognisably modern world of the nevsky prospect and the overcoat is closer to us  than the ukrainian tales ( flying to st. petersberg on the back of a devil to steal the tsarina's shoes). (he has been neglecting the return of the political - chantal mouffe for a gogol compilation).




two and a half hours of john fahey

and his label takoma records - commencing with fahey playing 'in christ there is no east or west' ending out with robbie basho playing 'mountain man's farewell'. along the way there's harry taussig, homegas, bukka white, leo kottke, robert 'pete' williams, peter walker, bola sete, richard ruskin, william ackerman, six organs of admittance, cul-de-sac and calexico.

the king of hay in exile in high germany

on 1 april 1977, bibliophile richard booth conceived a publicity stunt in which he declared hay-on-wye to be an 'independent kingdom' with himself as its monarch and a national anthem written by les penning. in 1978 hay led the world by being the first european nation to quote ‘free itself of the tyranny of the bureaucrats in brussels’ by quitting the EEC. the tongue-in-cheek micronation of hay-on-wye has subsequently developed a healthy tourism industry based on second hand books and is currently twinned with timbuktu.

to think it all began with a pamphlet entitled ‘abolish the wales tourist board’ .

there was a celebratory parade recently (but horsemouth missed it). king richard is in exile in high germany having sold-up in 2005 and even selling up the honesty bookshop (where books go for sky burial) in 2012 (though there’s still the king of hay bookshop in castle street).

hay’s has other claims to fame - mally from hackney scene stalwarts zip zip undo me was a farmer for many years in nearby clyro, john ellis (one of the last hangmen) retired here...

restringing guitars

meanwhile horsemouth has nipped into town with his dad to pick up some guitar strings for the classical guitar he found on the way home one night (left out on someone's front garden wall and thus clearly intended as a donation to the common good). he’s lubed up the tuning gears (er... the machine head he believes) and restrung it, disassembling and putting back together a recalcitrant tuning peg - so far he’s only tuned it up to a d while he waits for the tuning to stabilise.

best outcome - he’s got a new guitar (to add to his collection and replace the almeria bm nylon strung guitar on which he recorded most of the musicians of bremen stuff. worst outcome - he’s got a temperamental, difficult to tune, guitar that he can leave at his parents for when he comes to visit.

internal label was squareish but is long gone (is there any chance of identifying it from the rosette or machine head my guitar peoples?)

it will now be added to the horsemouth guitar museum.

another life / oh allah

this and sita ram recorded on this day in 1971 - alice coltrane, jack DeJohnette, jimmy garrison and string section. oh the perils of relying on wikipedia - actually the sleevenotes say oh allah, universal consciousness (track) and hare krishna recorded this day - sita ram not recorded until 14th may (rest of album recorded june 19th)

actually horsemouth is visiting his parents in the countryside and will not be back for a while.

so another life (yuri trifonov) has ended - we are told the husband is dead, a tale told in flashback, the husband gets interested in spiritualism, then one day there’s a workers outing to the forest (to pick mushrooms) they got lost but are directed back towards the road - the daughter appears aged 12 - and then we realise the husband is dead. the end. like the mill on the floss they are dead before they know it. (curiously enough it was almost exactly a year ago that horsemouth was reading this).

he’s a right awkward cuss the husband (in another life). horsemouth became convinced he was someone he knew - present company excepted of course.

horsemouth is  plotting his escape to ireland for the summer (if they’ll let him in by that point). very little left to do workwise now. he’s sort of in the wrong trade. horsemouth is a little bothered by the prospect of upcoming summer poverty (but he doesn’t really have a solution at the minute - get a job he can hear you yelling).

horsemouth thinks the reason for the dip in his mood recently is twofold - first he has played and sung and had a social life but this hasn’t resolved his problems because there is still more to do, secondly he hasn’t played, sung etc. for a while so this is making him angsty too. whe he returns he will have to steam into preparations for a gig.

books, films, gigs, events march 2017

books 

• homo sacer (agamben), 
• folk revival, 
• the private life, 
• the lost honour of katherina blum (boll), 
• revolution and war (marx), 
• gramsci (james joll), 
• london's pride: a glorious history of the capital's gardens, 
• into the woods, 
• in the prison of her skin (violette le duc), 
• the mayor of macdougal street (dave van ronk), 
• another life (yuri trifonov) 

films

• semikrasky, 
• conversation piece, 
• cosmopolis, 
• repoman, 
• cross of iron, 
• eagles over london, 
• inglorious bastards (original), 
• sleepless, 
• two days and one night (dardenes brothers)
• be glad for the song has no ending (incredible string band), 
• control (joy division), 
• gaslight (couldn't watch it), 
• the tunnel, 
• demons, 
• foxy brown, 
• the cat o' nine tails, 
• chungking express. 

gigs

•  caesura/ acceso launch (theresa may and her 'my little pony') 

events

•  equinox, visit of the spirit of igor stravinsky to alice coltrane