horsemouth fails in his duty

so where did the blue oyster cult steal the chorus for flaming telepaths from?

murray krugman (the 'in the trenches' producer of their records, unlike sandy perlman who was the ideas man) spills the beans.  murray is admirably clear eyed about where the talent lay, what worked and why (if a little disgruntled). horsemouth also read an interview with joe bouchard (the bassist), the glue, the band's moral centre, the one who brought the tune for astronomy. there's a lot of instrument swapping going on, joe writes about one song on each album (but they're usually good).  hot rails to hell, 7 screaming diz-busters, wings wetted down,  astronomy, morning final, nosferatu.

horsemouth generally subscribes to attali's theory (to some extent it is adorno's theory also - at least as far as his ghost writing in doctor faustus) that music prefigures wider economic and social forces rather than reflecting them later. 

personal computers, the internet and mp3 profoundly altered the musical commodity, the changes are still working their way through the complex network that is the music industry and through the wider social function of music. 

similarly the pandemic has essentially halted live music and whether that will recover to its previous form is also a matter for debate. now you can stay home and gig / now you can stay home and jam but now also songwriter performers are selling off their rights because of the collapse of live gigging incomes. 

musicians, song-writers, record company owners may or may not be best placed to see what is happening but it is important to remember that in attali's theory the economy of music is predictive of the wider economy.

we are in the world of the gig economy and a 'piecework' work from home but also a world where everybody is creative and an artist. if we are not having our five minutes of fame but instead our digital long tail.

horsemouth hasn't kept up with contemporary art world debates (and their distressing habit of declaring everything a non fungible token NFT). howard was remarking that lots of people have a phase where they read the wire  and it was similarly with horsemouth and art theory. something interesting was going on with the commodity status of art and people were discussing it. 

here is maria lassnig's life as a song. she's pretty much famous as a painter but she would also dabble in films (as you know horsemouth has an interest in slightly surreal artists films and would like to make some more). 

yesterday horsemouth was supposed  to watch various things but he failed in his duty. instead he finished off the curry he got from howard and watched an LRB documentary on eric hobsbawm. he may post it here another time (it was pretty good).

the sun is shining (it's a pretty good sunday morning).