does horsemouth play american primitive guitar?

John Fahey 1981 Santa Monica from Creative Differences on Vimeo.



...or APG as he has seen it.

but does he? what’s the definition? could be.

'every man do his thing a little way different' - there's a kottke clip where he hails fahey as the founder of it and mentions charles ives. but if everybody cooked with the same recipe - something like 'solo steel strung acoustic guitar incorporating classical music elements into old blues and folk tunes' - then it wouldn't it get dull and same-y very quickly?

the guy at dying for bad music seems to be able to find acres of this stuff (and most of it is fairly decent and interesting) . but basho is not fahey is not lang is not kottke - even fahey is not fahey (look at his later electric phase). and horsemouth definitely prefers some things to others.

the day before yesterday horsemouth walked up through the valley of the agapemonians to walthamstow and bought books - a history of mermaids in art (with illustrations - down boy) and a. alvarez’s bluffers guide to samuel beckett in the fontana modern masters edition (sally army opposite the william morris museum - one pound). he could have doubled down - four books/ CDs/ DVDs for a pound - but as you know he has storage/ hoarding issues.

he was due to be babysitting (but the gig got cancelled - maybe tomorrow). yesterday he helped howard move some stuff and an old friend came to visit (and pick up a copy of musicians of bremen volume one). sunday the clerkenwell festival with andrew minty (probably).

the great san berdino facebook spam algorithm debacle

Is horsemouth posting spam? discuss

someone (or some algorithm) at facebook seems to think so because nearly everything horsemouth posted there yesterday has been labelled as spam at some point. facebook seem to be testing some algorithm because lots of people have been having this problem.

so how was your day on facebook horsemouth?

Our reply Today

Thanks again for letting us know about this post. We've taken another look and found that it doesn't go against our Community Standards, so we've restored your post. We're sorry for the trouble and appreciate you taking the time to get in touch with us so that we could correct this.

Our reply Today

Thanks again for letting us know about this post. We've taken another look and found that it doesn't go against our Community Standards, so we've restored your post. We're sorry for the trouble and appreciate you taking the time to get in touch with us so that we could correct this.

and,

Our reply Today

Thanks again for letting us know about this post. We've taken another look and found that it doesn't go against our Community Standards, so we've restored your post. We're sorry for the trouble and appreciate you taking the time to get in touch with us so that we could correct this.

ladies and gentlemen anything that stops you from meditating or going for a walk or making love is spam - all of facebook is spam, all of web 2.0 (remember that) is spam, the bits not labelled spam are just better bits of spam, accept nothing less than total immediate gratification of your desires (even your desire to have no desires) right now... in other words is it not (in the big picture of things) all spam?

now piss off and leave horsemouth alone he's just a boring old sod and find someone more entertaining to annoy (I know it's not possible, but try)... of course this is a firstworld problem.


spam today was brought to you by the sir coxsone outernational sound system (1986), the uk government ministry for brexit (23/08/18) and the guardian newspaper (23/08/18) - of them only coxsone can be argued to have improved the lot of humanity...

this is not spam. this is a comedy routine for the education and upliftment of humanity. horsemouth thanks you (spam label-er) for showing him the true meaning of S-P-A-M.it may be a processed meat product (but it's the processed meat product of champions) - facebook (on the other hand) is just processed meet

signed; the spam fritter

no new material was created to enable the writing of this post.



on the plus side horsemouth has been enjoying the 'new' john coltrane both directions at once album big time (cheers howard) - for once a big and bad and heavy jimmy garrison, elvin jones doin' it (these dudes are cooking with gas on this one - fucking bopping), coltrane, mccoy tyner, some familiar stuff - vilia, impressions, nature boy, some new, unfamiliar, not even named...

good old father time is dragooned into the revolutionary forces (universal love as terrace chant)

your humble interlocutor is here. outside of the window it is a grade A grey day. who knows - maybe it will clear.



horsemouth's musical item of choice today is   everybody get together by the dave clark five (and the youngbloods) but actually originally by dino valenti of quicksilver messenger service. in the dave clark version it is universal love as terrace chant.


horsemouth first found it as a shortened live from big sur (joni mitchell, crosby, stills, nash (no young?) and a crowd full of hippies) version.

horsemouth’s book discovery of the day was time for revolution (by antonio negri) in which it is suggested that not only is it time for revolution but that good old father time is dragooned into the revolutionary forces because what is equivalent in capitalist exchange is not merely money but the labour time involved in making it, so time not merely measures work but reduces it to a homogenous substance - time is thus the form of productive power, the thing that makes the workers necessary, the thing that gives power to the workers. today - more reading.

tomorrow back to the city (and beers with howard probably).

‘whether autumn should follow’

horsemouth's gig of 2015 - long pike hollow-  it was a raw february and freezing in the chapel.

------------------------------

‘I hear people say we have to stop and debate globalisation. You might as well debate whether autumn should follow summer.’ Tony Blair, October 2005. 

the first iteration of globalisation/ triumphant neo-liberalism/ the end of history has fallen - capitalism and competition will no longer solve all your problems, for it has produced its enemy from within it, an economic nationalism. the wise leader appears on the balcony in the sensible costume of the way things used to be and promises to protect his citizens. a grateful populace applauds. such is the dream of not just a political class that has not yet achieved irrelevance but a people that hasn't learnt better yet.

the putative my people first economy is still within the world of capitalism as a world system, the planes will still fly, the container ships will still sail, emails will still arrive from distant lands. (maybe)

but of course just because the bus’s destination board says economic nationalism/ britons (or whoever) first it doesn’t mean it is actually going there - to achieve this dream will require hard sacrifices says our leader (a little later) as the costs of doing business rise (in customs fees, in tariffs, in increased currency fluctuations, in skills shortages, in ratings agency downgrades of the nation’s credit-worthiness, in increased costs of servicing national and personal debt).

horsemouth should of course welcome a world where the tail of economy doesn’t wag the dog of politics - but that isn’t the world that is coming - we are witnessing a rebalancing of the forces between economics and politics and between the state and capital but ultimately it is merely the replacement of one ideology by another, an earlier one, one that is already dead. it is a game of dress-up played with a rapidly ageing cast, the bumptious middle-aged eton boy, lord snooty, the frightfully loyal head girl of her grammar school, the little swot, and a whole dorm of lesser sneaks. (here horsemouth gives it you as geoffrey willans, ronald searle’s molesworth books of public school folly, where a younger person might give it you as harry potter).

once again workers will confront national capitals (like they did in the 20ies and 30ies - and we all know how well that went).

and it is (as are all transitions) a time fraught with risk - the dealmaker appears on the balcony but he’s ti-jean the trickster god of business, the old gods cry when they come (because no-one summons them any more). he strides backwards into the future wearing the costumes of the past (like he’s in a jean cocteau film) his speech stripped of all causality and puffed up with will instead.

there’s an nip in the air today (but is it autumnal?) after the summer of sunshine and football and beaches, and  soon winter will come, but for now warmth above the seasonal average.

horsemouth has no truck with people’s sentimental nationalisms the proof of the pudding is in the eating and we will soon be on short rations (and school dinners).

it would be nice (or at least more logically satisfying) if capitalism developed in a straight line (ok no it would be terrible) rather than this zig-zagging, half-stepping, towards the future in the costumes of the past bullshit. the leninists and althussarians tell us to look for the weakest link in this conjuncture - but horsemouth cannot see it yet.

back from ireland (sideways into august)

horsemouth is back amongst you (though he still hasn’t as yet unpacked). he must plan for august - he needs to get a musicians of bremen duo gig in before howard goes back to school (and then some solo gigs to give him an opportunity to sell the musicians of bremen volume three CD to the masses). he’s listening to the CD now - it sounds good.

there’s a nice diagram online - a juxtaposition of two diagrams it has
A) the plan - a nice straight line moving directly to the goal and it has
B) what actually happened - a meandering route with many doglegs and loops leading to an outcome roughly 50% lower than the direct route.

life is of course way more B than it is A (horsemouth should know this as a derridean). but it doesn’t suit him - he’s way more an A type person than a B type person - he just wishes he could relax and enjoy the meandering more. the journey as he believes it’s called. sadly horsemouth is an anxious person, he is not someone who swims confidently out, he is someone who inches round the swimming pool of life holding onto the side (hence all the planning and theorising - attempting to make all that flux and mutability bearable).

today a quick run up the supermarket (aldiidllidl aldilidllidl) in pursuit of more erstwhile bargains before it gets too hot. yesterday horsemouth researched various versions of katy cruel - he has a version of it he can play but he’d like to extend it out with more lyrical and musical material.

‘letters of a deceased person’ (religious visions after a meal in cork)

the day before yesterday horsemouth mainly sat about and read - sometimes there was sun (in which case he was out on the patio toasting himself). he did some shopping but he’s rapidly come to the conclusion he doesn’t have time to eat it all before he goes (see you only have to show horsemouth a bargain and he’s off - aldilidllidl aldilidllidl).

as others saw us: cork through european eyes is a book on what visitors thought of cork that leaves out british writers (and the normans - excepting bernard de clairvaux, and the vikings). in this it prefigures the post-brexit city, forget about fishguard, forward to bilbao and santander. it’s side-by-side original text and translation (so there’s half the book horsemouth can’t read and comment on).

brother marcus, an irish monk, writes, in 1149 in latin and in ratisbon bavaria, of the impious knight tnugdal who dies for 3 days and then comes back with stories of hell and a noticeably improved attitude, noted german travel author (and gardener) hermann von puckler-muskau’s letters of a deceased person is an account of his journeys through ireland in 1828. bernard de clairvaux our earliest visitor (1090-1153 ad) writes of the miracles of st. malachy.

broadly the visitors are a snobby bunch (complaining of the beggars and the lack of anything to see) - the french (including de toqueville) blame the british and imperialism (when not applauding the prisons), the germans, dutch, czechs and scandanavians (mostly) blame the irish and the want of protestantism. sometimes the grand houses and thoroughfares and shops are to their taste (sometimes not). all praise the situation of the town (in the arms of the lee river, in the valley) and the natural advantages of the harbour and the bay.

victorian cork is a giant slaughterhouse and buttery sending first salted and later tinned beef (and cannon-fodder) to the british army all over the world (now there’s some lucrative contracts me boys). the food all goes for export, the merchants of cork get rich, the poor in the countryside starve and save for emigration or sign up. like dublin there’s a huguenot community.

in the 20ies there’s the agitation for home rule and the border war - the black and tans murder one mayor of cork, burn down half the centre of town as a reprisal for a bomb thrown at one of their armoured cars, a second mayor (terence macswiney) dies on hunger strike in brixton jail. he becomes a hero to galician nationalists. it was events by these that probably helped strengthen henri beraud’s hatred of the english - in the second world war he wrote for vichy newspapers and after it was sentenced to death by de gaulle (later commuted to life imprisonment).

eventually there are trade shows and factories on the road to cobh.

july 2018 gigs, books, films list

  gigs

•  5th - gwenifer raymond, john mcgrath 

 books

• gogol (biography of) - vsevolod setchkarov 
• church fathers, independent virgins - joyce e. salisbury, 
• writings of the desert fathers (introduction), 
• felix holt (stuck in the middle)- george eliot, 
• the ghost rider, the siege, palace of dreams - ismail kadare 

 films 
sicario, ripping yarns, the train (burt lancaster), faster (2010), true grit (coen brothers), iron sky, high rise, 12 monkeys (series), picnic at hanging rock (series - first episode)