first post of the (new) year (when the faun met alice)

horsemouth did four gigs last year (two solo (thank you albino, thanks max) , one with howard, and one with peter as horses of the invisible).

he recorded some songs that have been hanging around a while (and some new ones) with howard and an indian harmonium (tuned plus 40% - so the guitars had to be retuned to that). they are just finishing off mixing them. you can hear a fragment on one of them (when the faun met alice) above.

hopefully there will be more gigs this year, they will get the recordings out (on both cd and download), and move onto the next set of recordings in the summer...

the stuff with andrew minty, morven and siobhan from the start of the year has ground to a halt - perhaps temporarily (shame, horsemouth was enjoying it - he likes singing with people, he likes the repertoire).

work continues to roll on ok - horsemouth has effected the transformation into new improved electronic horsemouth (the better to ensure his survival in future decades), he’s paying into a pension (the better etc. etc.), he should probably diversify his sources of work (the better... but he probably won’t - he’s a bit lazy).

financially things are tight (but not impossible) squeezed between rising rent and stagnant wages.

his homestead (the gaff) - horsemouth remains very pleased with (it has been - so far - almost entirely hassle free).

politically horsemouth expects it all to come to a head early in the new year (and this will set the pattern for subsequent years).

horsemouth has, since the summer, been putting himself about a bit more, hopefully it will all pay off.

right, on with the year.

Duncan - of horsemouth and goatboy  has been back in touch, he too has been recording, here are some of his more recent recordings.

gig done and dusted 4 (thanks to all)

horsemouth’s friday 13th celebration gig for the season is done and dusted (thanks to all who came along and all who played - particularly max, david, micalef, adam, all who howled like wolves, the few who sang along to satan... (under their breath) and samanta for the pasta).

 

 

 





the werewolf went well as an opened, the devil song went over ok, worldes blisse got an honourable mention, satan... was perhaps a tune too far, under the pressure of events horsemouth forgot he had prepared crisis in the credit system (ah well another time).

horsemouth suggested to max that he receive guests lying in state (but it was not to be). there was a discussion with adam of the terrible economics of touring (and the terrible economics of living in london - compared to say leipzig).

horsemouth tempted john cunningman out for a late beer with max, micalef, adam and crew (but they closed the bar before horsemouth could compound the error). at one point a name was mentioned and horsemouth ran around the room barking (he apologises for this).

on the way home he rewarded himself with a falafel wrap (it used to be groupies and cocaine what’s going on horsemouth?). today - babysitting. sunday - ben’s movie

so horsemouth has a gig (maybe)

so horsemouth has a gig (maybe) - 21st july the beehive in bow 8-8.30 (hopefully not AM). he should now embark on a description of the venue and how to get there (ok it’s near bromley by bow tube - just up the hill from the gentrifier’s arms - but horsemouth can’t find the number of the bus out of hackney for you lot right now). he should be able to give you a description of the venue because lots of his friends have played there (suke, the rantipoles etc.) er... but he didn’t go so he can’t.

it has made him get the guitar out and sing and play a bit at least - and to start thinking about a set-list. it looks like andrew minty is working and howard may be ill - hmmn it may be an actual solo gig.

this morning is a grey morning (but that doesn’t prove much round here) - yesterday was perfectly sunny in the end. horsemouth only made it out as far as the garage to refuel his stash of euros. he drank one of jon’s beers to celebrate (and very tasty it was too).

today horsemouth will have to go shopping - his eaten all the obvious food only leaving the stuff that must be cooked. he will also refuel his bus card that he has rinsed with all his visits to the seaside and to cork.

he’s (nearly) finished off ship of fools from whence the unknown knowns - the stuff everyone knows but no one will say (abuses in the church, bent financiers, corrupt poiticians etc.) - fintan gives the example of an old lady asked if she believes in the fairies - oh no sir! but they’re there... the cockney equivalent is probably the charge of stating the bleedin’ obvious - laboriously pointing out what is better passed over in silence as it is assumed to be common knowledge.

last night he watched american sniper -it’s good to see people who are good at what they do (even if you think what they are doing doesn’t do any good). not sure what film this is from - any ideas?

‘the world is a den of thieves (and night is falling)’

the alice coltrane festival calender continues - sunday - the anniversaries of the recording of a monastic trio and cosmic music.

your beloved narrator horsemouth has a filthy cold (he does not believe it is physically possible to get more snot up into his nostrils - ewww gross).

so how are his new year resolutions going?

well he has played a gig (morven, siobhan and the silver ravens) but he has not got the recording apparatus out of its box and checked if it is still working. his resonator guitar is a bit of a one trick pony - clanking country accompaniment at volume (true it can manage sweetly reverbed single note playing horsemouth should try more of this), he has had his laramie hummingbird copy tuned standard but the strings are old and knackered and will need to be replaced before horsemouth proceeds, similarly with the dreadnaught, after an unfortunate accident the nylon strung guitar needs the bridge and nut replacing and then new strings fitting. he thinks he needs to purchase new headphones as well.

horsemouth is waiting for the mischevious and unpredictable monkey year to end and the more reliable year of the fat domestic bird (rooster or turkey according to choice) to begin.

 ‘horsemouth’s house is falling down, falling down, falling down....’

monday (parking peritting) the structural engineer comes to assess horsemouth’s dwelling - it has some cracks that may be the result of bodged/ skimped modernisation work undertaken before the house was sold on to the generous generous people who house horsemouth. horsemouth will be out earning a crust (as they say) and will miss the -told-you-so’s.

last night horsemouth watched nobody knows a japanese film about a group of kids whose mother abandons them - being illegitimate they have never been registered for school and the neighbours only know of the existence of the eldest boy - and so aren’t missed - and so the power and the water are cut off - eventually the youngest girl dies in an accident (and they bury her in a suitcase in the park). this all sounds quite depressing (but it is in fact very sweet) the trouble is it is based on real life. he also watched 35 shots of rum but he couldn’t get the soundtrack working so he was left trying to work out what was going on based on his limited french (and his even more limited german).

morven, siobhan, and the silver ravens

saturday night and the secret gig - morven, siobhan, and the silver ravens (horsemouth, andrew minty, sam leon with the help of a few friends voices and percussive skills - myk, lisa, howard / john smith). the weather outside was cold but in the kitchen it was nice and toasty - two e strings snap.

of course (once again) horsemouth should make more effort to stay sober and compus mentis unto the very end.



the rock and roll stuff went over well (opined howard / john smith when horsemouth visited him for pizza and a beer on sunday - me n’ bobby mcgee, lucille). later (in response to a request for motorhead, and having attempted deep purple's smoke on the water) horsemouth sang an impromptu version of ace of spades in the style of elvis.

where to next? maybe a birthday (or two) or a pub back room on a sunday probably.

horsemouth is reading unto this last by john ruskin - as ruskin points out what we have is not a division of labour (tuesday I am a lawyer, wednesday a musician, saturday a sanitation engineer) but a division of men and a reduction of work to mindless demeaning and atomised tasks. but isn’t the modern artisan form of boutique capitalism a kind of ruskin vision (one that still leaves people reduced to mere factors of production even as it farms their innovation).

ruskin’s political insights are lost in his life story - no wonder at the end of his life he wrote ‘an autobiography from which he deliberately excluded the memory of anything which caused him pain.’

in further reading horsemouth also found a copy of arthur c. danto’s the transfiguration of the commonplace - on that duchamp/ andy warhol moment (25p sarf lunun charity shop on horsemouth’s long march to camberwell. danto borrowed the title from that of a book written by a character in muriel spark’s the prime of miss jean brodie (horsemouth is ashamed to say he has never read it).

it is the anniversary of one of howard's mixes.

public opinion descends upon the demonstrators

ok another day another thing learned (so that’s what seuil means - now horsemouith just has to find out how to say it). he watched agnes varda's l'une chante, l'autre pas dayglo feminist protest movie (with musical numbers) - a fitting cousine as part of a double bill for les stances a sophie.




horsemouth is playing a secret gig (at secretly celebrated the hackney music club) message him if you wish to apply for tickets and there will be a strict vetting procedure involving a blood oath with something to do about never visiting naples or venice. of course the gig may not be happening at all (for real) it may just be some email harvesting scam.

wednesday night horsemouth and his co-conspirators rehearsed (you know the drill). the band name is still undecided - on reflection they forgot to rehearse most of the tunes they are likely to actually play - there will be other musicians performing also and karaoke opportunities.

‘with the widespread use of ‘canned’ music (radio, phonograph and tape playback in serious music...) the visual or theatrical aspect of the performance of music has lost much of its significance’ says gordon mumma.

from the same era robert ashley titled a piece public opinion descends upon the demonstrators.

horsemouth once attended a live demonstration of au seuil de la liberté with a giant wax firing canon blasting away at the walls of a ‘white cube’ art gallery (it may have been the gugenheim in bilbao - it may have been a rainy day). he has to admit that he enjoyed it (it went bang!) even though he thought the institutional critique involved was utterly feeble.

‘our life is frittered away by detail (simplify simplify)’

says thoreau in walden (ok, ok - horsemouth has modified the punctuation again, as is his wont). he lifted if from volume 3 of hoggart’s ‘autobiography’ an imagined life - and an amiable academic walk around it is. 

phew. horsemouth is done for the day and done for the week. his life has been frittered away in detail (yet again). he has failed to simplify (yet again). but one day they will simplify him and then he will have to go and get a proper job (boo hiss). until then horsemouth continues with his life’s labour of fitting square pegs into round holes.

‘people before the public live an imagined life in the thought of others and flourish and feel faint as their self outside themselves grows bright or dwindles in the mirror’ - more hoggart.

today is the anniversary of the founding of king crimson in a basement underneath a cafe in fulham palace road in 1969. horsemouth is a big fan both of their prog bombast years and their wannabee talking heads years.

wednesday night he jammed with andrew minty - soon there may be another ‘performance’. tonight he may go out (he doesn’t know to what yet). sunday he may rehearse again. next week he works (not his usual beachside donkey portage bookings). he would like to be more available to do other things (babysitting, holidays, checks on collapsing buildings) but he’s not.

‘well you say you got money... you’d better be sure...’

horsemouth has been much concerned with two songs of late - skip james' hard time killing floor blues and 13th century monk’s complaint the worldes blisse last ne time no.



horsemouth is currently putting some work into learning the former (well no he’s bodging it with Em, G, B7 rather than playing it in the open Dm tuning people say skip james used) and once upon a time he put some work into learning the later - having first arranged it for the chords G7, Bflat7, now this he plays using an open D5 ‘nashville’ tuning - it would probably work dadgad too).

worldes blisse he learnt from edward lee’s music of the people (second hand bookshop/ library sale - somewhere/ sometime) laboriously ‘translating’ the dots without an audio recording to help him along - he could therefore have got it hideously wrong. this makes it a trad.arr. - a traditional tune, arranged by___, in songwriting terms.  in any event he played it live (and explained his arranging techniques) at the solo (plus guests) musician of bremen gig some time ago.

since then he has discovered at least two other attempts to make use of this tune. peter maxwell davies played a 40 minute orchestral version at the proms in 1969 provoking a near riot, soundtrack (and choral music) classical composer geoffrey burgon did a version with two counter-tenors, and it looks like ancient and traditional music singer and lutenist john fleagle has done a version. none of these has horsemouth heard yet.

for the writer of worldes blisse the world is a fallen creation, life is mired with care and sorrow, you are better off dead really. for skip james it’s just hard times - better times may come, but even then ‘well you say you got money... you’d better be sure...’

horsemouth particularly liked gary lucas’s introduction (he has picked skip james’ blues as one of his three favourite things);


"in the darkest hours of my life, when I felt completely alone in the world and without hope, I found a tremendous solace in listening to skip james."

horsemouth live at the wild hare club (and off to portugal)

once upon a time horsemouth played a gig at the wild hare club in stretton sugwas (this was maybe about 2005). this was horsemouth’s first solo singing/ guitaring gig after his 2001 relaunch alongside goatboy.

the wild hare club are just in the process of relaunching their website and now has a hall of fame (into which horsemouth was inducted upon his recent visit to herefordshire).

a photo exists of the event courtesy of john clarkson - it was summer (you can tell this because horsemouth is wearing a t-shirt).

unlike horsemouth the wild hare club have worked hard at it and have built up an impressive roster of gigs (horsemouth on the other hand has not played live since 2014).

horsemouth is away to (he hopes) sunny portugal.

a friend has been battling the tide of stuff - horsemouth faces that battle upon his return. (there he just looked in his cupboard - matresses and all sorts). the fact that horsemouth is something of a womble and a hoarder and a book collector does not help. ok - horsemouth has realised he will need a travel adapter for his netbook (which he is taking with him).

horsemouth ass button - his most used words on facebook decoded

of course (as friend london happy dance hastened to point out) most of the words from horsemouth’s posts on facebook are actually not horsemouth’s at all but from nuclear war by sun ra (it’s a long song it counts disproportionately).





this is what horsemouth has gained for parting with all his account details (he feels so sullied). fortunately -as you know horsemouth is largely a fictitious character.


ah data data data

and ah photographers and their ethics - there was good (ethical) taking of the photographs of people without their consent for the purposes of categorisation (of the mad for example, of criminal types revealed through the bumps on their skulls and by their ugly criminal features) and there was bad (unethical) taking of photographs for the purposes of classification. of course now we know better (so that’s alright then).

ah data data data next week you will have been subjected to nine whole years of horsemouth’s blogging and willful self-exposure on various platforms largely alibied as an attempt to promote his music. horsemouth suggests you cut out the middlemule and listen directly to his music. alternatively you could write an app to continue posting on social media in horsemouth’s already existing pattern and the same for all your friends - in fact who is to say that this has not already happened.

the monkey in the mirror

When and why did you first write music? 

 It would be when I got my first guitar when I was 15. I thought it would attract the girls if I could sing some songs but I couldn’t sing anyone else’s (so I set out to write my own). Later I was told that I couldn’t sing - so I just concentrated on playing the guitar (even though I was terrible at that also - at first).

What’s your composing method? (a) sitting at a piano (b) computer (c) pencil on manuscript paper (d) improvisation with musicians (e) other. 

Mostly (e) Other - guitar, pen, various bits of paper, my voice. Normally I’ll have a few guitar parts sitting around for ages and then some ideas for a topic will come and then I’ll sit down and work at it until I have all the lyrical bits and all the instrumental bits stuck together in kind of the right place. Then once I can play it through I stop work on it. Jarvis was right - lyrics are kind of like the homework that has to be done so you can play the song - this is why I favour songs with repeated choruses, wordless lyrics..., working with other people to write either the music or the lyrics, or both. I spend a lot of time arranging, working on other people’s stuff, trying to find the useful thing for the guitar to do in the tune, or for any other instruments. I’m quite quick at writing lyrics - normally songs come very quickly but take a long time to be finished.

Usually I don’t write enough lyrics to tell a story - but perhaps enough to suggest that something is going on. Really I think you only need a few really good lines - and the rest just have to be good enough so that they don’t let the song down.

When I was in a band (bush house) playing electric guitar the bassist was incredibly inventive - whatever I played (or thought could be played behind it) he’d come up with something better, sometimes (though less often) other members of the band would come up with smart things and I’d respond to them. I’ve never really done improvised music and I don’t much like doing it really. I’ve written on computer (but I was always thinking about what the guitar, the bass or the lyrics would be doing) - it’s fun (it gets rid of a lot of that haggling with other musicians to get your ideas played that you get in male bands).

Music is an irrational activity so song-writing partnerships don’t tend to last long - the ease of recording that technology affords means the song can be quickly completed (and then it’s on to the next project). Now that you no longer need to be in a band to play some tunes they tend to stay together for less time.

Where do your ideas come from? 

 Life, books, newspapers, other people’s songs. I keep lists of good lines, good titles, ideas for playing things, ideas for songs, lyrics.

“Noah’ (which I co-wrote with Howard Grange) came because we were opening a book at random at picking out lines - once it was about Noah - once we had the chorus, the rest of the lyrics wrote themselves - for me it’s about loss, the world has been swept clean and can begin again but somebody is missing. The chords came (both verse and chorus) because they fitted with the ukulele part. Howard wanted a longer version of the song with more lyrics and a bigger overall production on it - so we did a version like that that’s on volume one - but there’s also a shorter version arranged much more how I would like it online (we’ll probably put it on my EP when i get round to recording it). The second guitar I wrote in the studio and started improvising out over the end of it - I’ve always been interested in layering guitar parts, it’s something I picked up from african music and my brief studies with Folo Graff at Jenako Arts in Hackney in about 1988.

Do you find inspiration from other composers? Which? 

Since about 2002 I’ve started learning other people’s songs from sheet music, chord guides etc. and listening to more classical music and learning some of it (or at least trying). In particular french classical music written for the piano- debussy, satie, faure, messiaen. Conversely I’ve worked on learning country and folk songs because they are straightforward - the guitar is just there to support the singing and singing has become more important to me than fiddly guitar parts. In general I’ve been inspired to simplify.

Which non-musical influences are important to your music?

Life, books, newspapers, politics, sex, death. Death is big (I’m a bit of a goth really).

What do you say when asked to describe your music?

 ‘Post-apocalyptic folk’, ‘I play in a guitar and ukulele duo’, ‘Slide guitar versions of french parlor piano.’ 

Do you think about the listener when you’re composing?

Not really. Sometimes I imagine me playing it and people really liking it.

When did you feel ready to call yourself a composer? 

 Well I don’t. I don’t really call my self a song-writer either (I just don’t write enough songs). Musician for hire - Guitar, Bass, one finger keyboard, backing vocals, arrangements.

What’s your musical guilty pleasure? 

Metal. Big cock-rocking guitar solos. Gangster Rap. R n’ B. Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Yes, Mike Oldfield, ECM airbrushed jazz ... I’ve always been told I had ‘bad’ taste in music. I can’t say I care very much. 

What’s your ideal night out?

Old school Drum and Bass - I like to dance. Failing that a decent pub dancefloor. Failing that beer and friends. These days staying in and not having the hangover the next day.

One last question: What are you doing musically at the moment? 

Working on singing a version of world turned upside down for the phoenix 35th anniversary party (and learning the lyrics), working on a slowed down version of bad moon rising by creedence (strangely apocalyptic), failing to finish writing a song that’s a cross between ghost town/ mac the knife and erik satie’s gnossienne no.1.

Failing to get on and record an EP with me singing and playing new versions of songs I’ve written, co-written or arranged, country, folk and early music. Plenty of Death and a little sex maybe. And slide guitar versions of french parlor piano songs.

'this is a box, a musical box'

it's a grey unhelpful morning while horsemouth has the windows open he's also wearing a jumper.

horsemouth has dedicated a red metal file box he found to music. It now contains all the various lyric sheets, sheet music and scores for various things that horsemouth found in the course of his wanderings (at library sales, in second hand shops and alike).

 

 

 
     

horsemouth has been playing la fille au cheveux de lin a lot (well he stretches out some bits and omits others and plays it on a slide guitar tunes sebastapol maybe he'll rename it in the manner of tomita). he's thinking about making the first thing he records. then there's fanfare for the common mule. satie's gnossienne no.1 is a bit too obvious. over the years he has made many lists of tunes to record (and indeed recorded many of the songs on those lists). there was a piece by messiaen prelude no. 2 'chant d'extase dans un paysage triste' it was very satie-like (and for this reason it works for horsemouth). but first he has to learn to use the recording equipment and to do that he needs to get it set up.

 horsemouth has proposed moving to the hills and growing potatoes, corn and beans.

horsemouth and noah (and horsemouth's self-inflicted beer injuries)

horsemouth's head hurts. last night (to celebrate horsemouth's getting a guitar part in time and a general freedom from work) horsemouth and howard went out for a beer at the murder mile. they drank and they drank and they drank. at about 9pm the music seemed to get better and horsemouth and howard went from being their dads (sitting in a pub with glasses of bitter bemoaning humanity) to becoming the sad old dudes you see dancing in pubs while pissed. howard thought it might be better if the people danced (it wasn't).

horsemouth is slightly barbecue flavoured as the result of a small fire they had in the back garden after - they listened to music on the laptop dream baby dream by suicide, the kiss by judee sill, superstition stevie wonder.

horsemouth was there to put a guitar part on noah but they couldn't get it to sit in and stay in time - the tempo seemed a touch too fast, the initial ukulele part a little too roughly timed - they decided to scrap what they had and re-record it to drums rather than to click track using cubase to loop the verses and choruses and using the best takes for each. horsemouth layed down two simplified rhythm guitar parts (using howard's acoustic and his own resonator) and then a track of solo. he also double tracked the main vocal. there will be two versions of the song - one for horsemouth's upcoming solo plus guests recording (with a horsemouth lead vocal) and another extended version with drums more in the line of howard's recent recordings. both howard and horsemouth will be going out separately as the musician of bremen (there that should confuse them) and perhaps sometimes combining forces to become musicians of bremen.

horsemouth's blog post today was going to be about boredom - but he's feeling a little too rough to discuss such weighty topics.

bah humbug!

"how difficult it is to tell even a millionth part of the truth and how harshly one is punished for doing so." - edmond de goncourt.

so merry christmas one and all. god bless us each and every one. bah humbug. at this point horsemouth would usually be going  'having survived yet another year...' 
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having survived yet another year horsemouth is pleased to have played and recorded an album of songs with john smith as musicians of bremen, he's pleased to have released it (both online on bandcamp and as a physical cd), he's pleased to have played three gigs in this line up and a fourth as musician of bremen - combining the best of musicians of bremen with the best of his horsemouthfolk days and all in 30 minutes - and all these gigs in some kind of alignment with the heavens. he is pleased with the progress of various songs he's involved with writing and arranging (worldes blisse dirge and noah), though he really should hurry up a bit with all this. he plans to continue with it all in the new year.
horsemouth thanks the people who put them on (gertrude, tim goldie, albino).

horsemouth has blogged daily (or nearly) and continued with the promulgation of yam zombies but he has not, so far, managed to get his theoretical endeavours going again.

horsemouth has been pleased to go out and see more music this year (thanks to john clarkson mostly) in no particular order idiot saint crazy, georgina brett, the owl service, stick in the wheel, a reformed les ambassadeurs internationaux, richard skelton, the bohemianauts, pelt, richard youngs, rick tomlinson, united bible studies, aine o'dwyer, gertrude, daniel rosen, david thomas broughton, adam sherry, com(in)us, arthur brown, jonny halifax & the howling truth, tim goldie, jah wobble, various improv'ers and jazz improv'ers. (kevin davy, dreamtime etc.).

on youtube/ spotify/ i-player he made some good discoveries - judee sill, more karen dalton and robbie basho, gene clark etc. mc5, sonic'.s rendezvous band and some working musicians robert curgenven, sproatly smith.

tv wise. (not that he has a tv you understand) treme, true detective.

books? akenfield, michael jeffries - wild england, cobbett rural rides, kilvert and anais nin, diaries, john hillaby,  anna kavan - ice, albert camus  the plague, imogen holst gustav holst,  lillian hellman the unfinished woman, and a threefold cord - alex la guma, memories, dreams, recollections - marianne faithfull, the prisoner - thomas m. disch, magic hour - jack cardiff, hadrian VII - fr. rolfe. denis johnson train dreams, anton chekov letters, dubravka ugresic the ministry of pain, george lois damn good advice (for people with talent). re-reading pkd -do androids dream of electric sheep?, rousseau - reveries of the solitary walker, the lover - marguerite duras, blues people - leroi jones, beneath the visiting moon - david grubb,   ...

healthwise.  horsemouth (a vegetarian already let us remember) has reduced the amount of cheese and pastry he consumes and walked more - moving towards a term time 20 miles a week.(if only he could face the tedium of jogging).  his frozen shoulders have unfrozen and he has not been coughing his lungs up, the only downsides are that he is balding rapidly and his teeth continue to be a bit rubbish. ( but hey never look a gift horse in the mouth).

at work. he has been revisiting material that gave him trouble in his youth and (at last) being able to see the wood for the trees. he is generally pleased with the work-life balance, while his unemployed friends are being mercilessly fucked with by job club etc. at least horsemouth doesn't have this. sadly the ideology of capitalist austerity finally arrived in beachside donkeymule land (friends have lost their jobs already, pay and conditions have been cut and there may be further trouble ahead).

gentrification. housing wise the seaside towns continue to gentrify at an astounding rate ('how much?') but at least there have been some signs of effective resistance (e15 mums, new era, ASS), horsemouth's housing co-op has continued to lose housing and to lose people - the longer this particular can can be kicked down the road the better. he doesn't want the street food but (secretly) he quite likes the craft beer (motherfuckers - 'how much?' ).

horsemouth made 50 this year (he outranks you all) some people have left the party, some have arrived, some have got ill, people's kids continue to grow. he's off for a walk with his parents soon. merry christmas.

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'in my journal I have tried to collect all the interesting things that are lost in conversation.' - say the two goncourts (edmond and jules) united as one writer (as one I) in the process of 'dual dictation' . they would go out to the parties and make notes on the comments and on the bad behaviour - frankly their friends (the daudets mostly, theophile gautier, balzac, sand, zola, flaubert...) were glad when they stopped doing it (not that they ever did stop it really).

early on they give us the typical end of an evening - 6am, a friend drunk and in tears over a showgirl who doesn't love him, another showgirl semi-naked, drunk and vomiting, cursing loudly, the goncourts (drunk) taking notes (well jules taking notes on the cuff of his shirt).

they begin their journal with the coup d'etat of louis napoleon. in 1856 the read poe and recognise his genius. in 1857 theophile gautier tells them how he writes (he's under considerably less economic pressure than balzac clearly). their novel germinie lacerteux (a thinly fictionalised account of their housekeepers bad behaviour) paves the way for zola (but they themselves do not follow it up).

'low income londoners won't be priced out for a while'

says a headline in the grauniad (that's good to know).

horsemouth rose at 3pm (having been up earlier between 10 and 12 to see sean out of the door and off to the bus). having played the gig horsemouth proceeded to get terribly drunk and stay up late and so was hungover and vomitous in the morning. he hopes he was chatty and made sense enough at the gig because he was paying for it the next morning.

by 3pm the hangover had abated and horsemouth began to shuffle round the flat and to check out reports.

horsemouth thanks everyone who came out and commiserates with those who couldn't make it or arrived late. he particularly thanks john smith and andrew minty for singing a song each with him. horsemouth was once again cursed by feedback and microphone placement issues - he opened with the werewolf (by michael hurley) with john smith on backing vocals and then into gentleman john (lyrics by horsemouth, music by rust groat) which went tolerably well excepting that his fingers were being mutinous and he was assailed by feedback issues. really horsemouth lost the audience for a while here and took a while to recover - the mercifully short guitar instrumental went ok as did the golden one taken solo (largely written by john smith but with some input from horsemouth) , as did I still miss someone (johnny cash) wth andrew minty of the duvals singing. but recover horsemouth did with the devil song (entirely written by horsemouth) and worldes blisse dirge (a trad.arr. - a traditional 12th century song arranged by horsemouth - in fact he'd only finished working it out the morning of the gig) and with a first airing of noah (written by john smith and his good self with the aid of book divination). horsemouth fucked up the second line and so had to comp about for a bit until he could repeat the verse again (he hopes no one noticed - john smith noticed but said it sounded good). finally horsemouth indicated the approaching solstice and got the audience to sing in the bleak midwinter (they were really good) with him singing the bass and when he forgot the words again he simply got them to repeat the first verse. by reincorporation we reach the end.

horsemouth wishes he could give you a great helpful blow by blow description of the other bands but he was off getting drunk and talking shite to people - fake teak were good in a heaven 17ish, early Depeche Mode kind of way, monteagle had a good trancey americana thing going on. in between that horsemouth was mostly out in the carpark - he thanks albino for putting him on again.

he starts referring to himself in the third person (right to buy)

the day of the gig dawns bright and clear - horsemouth has just avoided prayer for the day (always worth doing). in the courtyard a magpie is running off the pigeons.

today is the anniversary of the bringing in of the right to buy policy. not the right to build policy or the right to have enough money to buy policy or the complete supression of the value form policy etc., but a policy that decimated social housing stock by forcing councils to sell off their housing and one that enabled the government to raid the proceeds of those sales while denying councils the right to use them to create social housing to replace (or at least ameliorate) the loss of stock.

horsemouth is conflicted on how best to faff out the day (they can't expect anything productive of him surely, he's an artist and a musician) - he could go and faff it out up in hackney or he could shuffle round the foreshore of the seaside towns.

john hillaby's journey through love has reached the point where his wife dies. his watch keeps stopping. hillaby takes to drink (he always liked drink, it gets him through rainy days when hiking). all of a sudden he starts referring to himself in the third person - horsemouth knows this one, 'who's there?' asks the cyclops, 'no-one' replies odysseus. his wife was a psycho-analyst (like lampedusa's wife), he realises he knew lots of people he could ask for help but had not. he finds a cutting in his files to distress himself with, a terrible flies trapped in a web resorting to cannibalism kafka-esque nightmare (the spider by frans vans pauen). he begins the journey down the chain of books and songs and associations and to question his walking and writing.

he travels to the US to walk the appalachian trail (5000 miles of backwoods - maine to georgia) and gets lost in his memories almost immediately. the wildlife is different it makes little sense to him. the forests are already logged out. after a brush with hypothermia and lost again he makes straight for the nearest road, bus and airport out.

augustine of hippo says 'when a thing is everywhere the way to find it is not to travel but to love.' 

apparently noah (like the vikings) first released a raven to guide him to land but it did not return - then he released a dove, the loon (or great northern diver as it is known here) was apparently one of the few birds to survive the flood independently (4004 bc according to bishop usher).

the revelation of the sources of power to be found on the back of the clayton peacock

horsemouth is a little disturbed to find that not only did he unconsciously (honestly) lift part of john fahey's the death of the clayton peacock for his extended slide guitar piece (roughly up to 0.42), he also lifted part of his revelation on the banks of the pawtuxent (roughly 0.17 to 0.20). the first he suspected it was fahey - he just couldn't remember which one, the second he was surprised and horrified when it popped out of the speaker at him.



horsemouth's magnum opus (as recorded a few years ago in mr. nick's bathroom) goes a little something like this:
first the main theme from jean renoir's film partie de campagne (kosma/ monteiro),
an interlude from deep river (trad. arr. fahey - either a showtune adopted as a spiritual or a spiritual adopted as a showtune horsemouth can't remember which),
the statement of two themes from the death of the clayton peacock,
 an answering theme from (as horsemouth now discovers) revelation on the banks of the pawtuxent, the re-statement of the peacock themes with interpolated chords moving in minor thirds.
some (horsemouth hopes) original material involving ascending chords in minor thirds (bearing a similarity to something by the bartok influenced jonas hellborg's the word album),
a pause,
some material from gustav holst's mars -bringer of war played in four time, variously re-titled the martian war-machine stomp by hawkwind or 14-18 mechanised warfare blues by horsemouth.



horsemouth's guitar is tuned daddad (nashville).

of course the whole thing is too long and bloated with pretension - if it were a dead sheep it would float downstream.

horsemouth is reading gary klein's sources of power - an account of intuitive, or naturalised, decision making - rather than the rational choices model of peer soelberg (1967). soelberg taught a course in decision making at MIT's sloan school of management - when it came time for the students to choose their career he expected them to use a rational choice model (you know, identifying options, evaluating options, and then choosing between them, picking the one with the highest score), instead they went with gut feeling, there was one that just felt right. when soelberg asked them how it was going they pretended to have not made the decision yet or to be using rational means, or engaged in fiddling the evaluation weightings to achieve their predetermined goal.

this (of course) contrasts quite nicely with samuel smiles' (of self-help  fame) well brought up victorians and marks the rolling back of rationality - and option evaluation (think of myers-briggs). instead people simply recognise the situation and then go for a solution similar to the ones they used before or go for the first option that looks like it will work (rather than the best optimised option), visualising what the consequences will be, if the visualisation involved too many steps they will think again. only if all else fails will they retreat to a rational choices model.

outside it is a beautiful cold , chrisp and blue day. horsemouth will probably go for a walk. it looks like work is over.

'satan your kingdom must come down'

horsemouth is up early - his body now wakes him up at about a quarter to seven - later he goes to work (he will walk in to save money and to get fitter). the national guard occupies ferguson. the capitalist system countinues to bump along the bottom with low interest rates and low returns. serco have been reawarded the contract to run women's deportation centres despite currently being investigated for sexual assaults upon inmates.



 horsemouth has been working on satan your kingdom must come down (daddad 'nashville')

- he's bodging it a bit but it's sounding pretty good, he needs to get the repeat pattern smooth (and effortless) so he can sing strongly over it (it's a straightforward set of blues cadences). horsemouth is mainly thinking of the willie nelson version above - he should give a listen to the earlier gospel versions.

condensate flower (the wheel of the year)

horsemouth spent some time listening to waylon jennings last night particularly the early stuff. he's a good guitarist and the band are tight. horsemouth likes the generic nature of the music. after listening to merle travis's original of dark as a dungeon, he also checked out his picking I'll see you in my dreams was particularly amazing. outside it is sunny and bright but cold and damp. horsemouth has cropped about 10 cherry tomatoes from the tomato plant he brought indoors - there are about 8 left that are still green horsemouth hopes they will get the 'opportunity' to go red.

it looks like having played a gig for samhain (well halloween - with john smith as musicians of bremen) horsemouth will also be playing a gig for the winter solstice (well on the 20th anyroad - this time on his own as musician of bremen) - he should probably make a cycle of it samhain -winter solstice- imbolc - spring equinox - beltane - summer solstice - lughnasadh - autumn equinox - (and it all goes round again and again). horsemouth has no idea what the result of this operation will be (but he's prepared to try). he'll have to work out a set list and get practicing - it's only a month away.

if horsemouth were to play a solo gig

horsemouth (in addition to his 'musicians of bremen' project with howard that is going very well thank you) has been thinking about songs he could play in a solo set (or maybe even record).

he would have to have the three songs he has authored or co-authored,

 1) the devil song

2) gentleman john (with rust)

3) all my dreams (with howard)

 then he'd have to have a number of his more successful cover versions,

4) blue crystal fire (robbie basho) or a la luna yo mi voy (eliades ochoa) but definitely

5) je te veux (erik satie and henri pacory),

 then he'd have to have an instrumental, probably,

 6) la fille au cheveux de lin (debussy) rather than gnossiennes no.1 (satie),

 and then from the songs he hasn't learnt/recorded yet he'd probably have,

 7) the werewolf song (michael hurley).

this is where the wolfsbane poem would come in handy
'Even a man who is pure in heart 
and says his prayers by night
may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
and the autumn moon is bright.'