Rory Gallagher Redux

 Seriously not stonewalling here, but I got another pop/rock/blues playlist for y'all. I'm a huge fan of Rory Gallagher's first two solo records. I first became aware of them from a Polydor compilation of the highlights of the first two released in America under the name Sinner . . . and Saint. I'd had records of his pass through my possession before, but this is the one that stuck, until I realized it was actually a comp & just picked up the first two on CD. I have to say that they were dead on with the track selections. I love the songwriting on this: after these albums, he mostly stuck to white boy blues and boogie, loosing the variety of songwriting that he demonstrated here.

For my money, he should have been the white blues boy who got all the accolades that fell into Eric Clapton's lap . . . part of that is I just never understood what made Clapton such a god-like guitarist to so many people, and part of it is about Clapton being a lazy, generally bad songwriter. On the last count Gallagher too ended up being a slacker, but this is some quality stuff right here. In the end, like all guitar heroes, he wasn't really called to account for his songs, as long as he played that guitar.

And indeed, while I consider the songwriting a couple steps above decent, the main reason I'm here is for the guitar. Despite all the dissimilarities, there is something about Gallagher's best solos that remind me of Coltrane . . . though for the life of me, I can't put my finger on exactly why. Perhaps it's the fact that the solos are simultaneously explosive and economical: that for all the notes, there doesn't seem to be a lot of excess.

Anyway, here's a playlist, essentially Sinner . . . and Saint re-imagined as a double LP. If you are interested, I have written about Rory at greater length elsewhere.

Liner Notes to *The Materialist*

On October 2nd, I will be releasing a spoken word recording on Bandcamp: almost 60 minutes of poetry from my last 20 years if writing. As a bit of a preview/teaser, here are the liner notes. Won't make much sense out of context, but that's ok. Previews never do. I will, of course, update on this site when the album drops.

The Materialist: Selected Poetry 2000-2020

NOTES

 

You’ve heard the phrase “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual”? Well, I’m neither. I’m the Materialist. I write immanence. Some will have you believe poetry is spiritual, but I write the dirt of existence. I have no interest in castles in the sky.

·        Slipping Perhaps the oldest poem of the batch, it originally ran three pages. Those three pages said nothing more than these five lines.

·        Eileen Myles She’s a swell poet. For real; if you don’t know, check out Not Me. First published in Industrial Lunch no. 1

·        RONA Fragment The bourgeois denouement, the soft apocalypse. 

·        Wallpaper Fires are lit & graves are filled by the kaleidoscopic moods of old white men staring into mirrors.

·        Strangers Talk Only About the Weather (poems 5-25) You may hear that in Tom Waits’s voice, I will always hear it in Marianne Faithfull’s voice. Or sometimes I hear it in Lotte Lenya's voice, though to my knowledge she's never sung it. Not much to be said that wasn’t said in the spoken intro. All poems are untitled & identified by their first lines.

·        from The Bridge God, this one makes me sound old. Charley Anderson staring down into the swirling gingerbread river in The 42nd Parallel, only older and more alienated than lost.

·        John Cage One of the few surviving Desert Poems from the early aughts.

·        Recasting an Elliot Prelude That night not long after the operation where I accidentally doubled up on Percocet.

·        Variation I: Ezra Pound Driven Batshit Crazy For Want of Sound Money Seriously, dude goes on and on and on. The Lyndon LaRouche of modernism.

·        Variation II: Ol’ Ez Thinks Them Could Be Useful, After All Essentially a mildly altered version of a chunk of Canto XXXII. Don’t try to pin this shit on me.

·        Man Who Loves Scenery A true story. First appeared in Industrial Lunch no. 4

·        Darkness & the Percocet In-Between A cut up: sources Hardt & Negri’s Empire; Raymond Rousell’s Locus Solus; and Harry Cleaver’s Reading Capital Politically. Probably see this one overhauled at some point . . . still feels a little like raw material to me.

·        Moving Into Lent Ash Wednesday is the last Catholic Mass I attended of my own volition. I have a handful of Lent/Ash Wednesday poems.

·        Busted Loop Really wish I had a recording instead of a poem.

·        from The Ethics Another long poem that will likely remain unfinished, starring Spinoza as Zarathustra. Root source is a cut up of Spinoza’s Ethics, though this section is virtually unrecognizable as such.

·        A New Kind of Television I was on a poetry-writing binge during the early RONA days, as I recovered from my first knee replacement. I had a few lines of this in the notebook . . . and then the murder of George Floyd, the news of Breonna Taylor’s murder, the video of Ahmaud Arbery’s assassination . . . I could no longer write. I had to speak, I had to face these atrocities, but I could not bury them under artifice: so you get it straight. I did my best with the names; I looked up pronunciations on all I could find. I sincerely apologize for any that I did not get right – the last thing I would want to do is profane your memory.

·        A Small Thing From Industrial Lunch no.1 . . . there is always a spring.

Texting Frantz Fannon

the cafes are forgotten, the arguments about elections,
the spitefulness of some cop or other
ears that hear wind through the trees
eyes that see the broken shacks
time has been wasted on the colonial regime,
liberation only to be seen in terms of violence
in terms of neighborhood struggle
in terms of armed struggle
 
militants running from the police
learn the hard lessons of the people
peasants bowed too long
generous, and ready to sacrifice
driven by stony pride
rebels by instinct,
swelling into the villages
to test the strength of their own muscles
to push the leaders into action
 
the militants in turn tutor the people
in ways political and military
 
the second-in-commands,
the rank and file proletariat
foot soldiers for intellectuals & consolationists
no longer, no longer willing to absorb rebellion

*** please see the author's note in the comments ***

We've Got the Seventies Covered

  So, what we have here is songs of the seventies, covered. I mean, in case you couldn't figure that out from the clever title just above. 

  The big joke in the 80s and 90s was to take an incongruous songs and do "punk" covers of them: virtually every punk/alt rock/roots rockabilly/experimental/indie rock band had a cover or two in their pocket. The covers ran the gamut from jokey to sincere, to mark sharp contrasts or deep affinities. Sometimes bands would ditch incongruities and shout out similarities, or even do tributes to favorites: my own 80s/90s band, The Belgian Waffles!, covered God and State, Pere Ubu, Flipper, Crass, Joy Division, the Ramones, and the Flesheaters, among others. These were all meant as tributes, and they were songs that were important to us. I would say the "jokiest" cover we did was of Nancy Sinatra's "Lightning's Girl", though we were all fans of that song as well.

  The Dickies pretty much made a career out of the goofball side of the coin, with covers of "Nights In White Satin", the theme to the Banana Splits ("The Tra La La Song"), and "Paranoid" being much more memorable than their original material. On this playlist, they are represented by their Sabbath cover. Killdozer as well had a reputation for destructo covers (of which they did many, including an entire album called For Ladies Only), though fans of the band are generally at least as interested in their original material. Here they are represented by their ridiculous version of the 75 Jessi Colter country crossover hit, "I'm Not Lisa" . . . and while the absurdity of Michael Gerald's growled vocals are the first thing you notice, it's the sweet guitar work that really closes the deal. On the flip side, covers like Big Black's "Heartbeat" (Wire), the Minutemen's "The Red and the Black" (Blue Oyster Cult), Nirvana's "Man Who Sold the World" (David Bowie), and Galaxy 500's "Isn't It a Pity" (George Harrison) not only shout out their subjects, but show affinities between the bands covered and the bands doing the covers. Metallica in particular is known for their "Garage Days" covers, and that remains my favorite Metallica work, by and large.

  Then there are the more or less contemporary covers, which for reasons not clear to me, tend to get called "versions" instead of "covers". There are three popular versions of Bob Dylan's "If Not For You": Bob's original, George Harrison's version on All Things Must Pass, and Olivia Newton John's 71 version, which had the most chart action. Harrison's cover is included here. Also of note: Gloria Gaynor's 74 disco hit version of the Jackson 5 hit "Never Can Say Goodbye", and Viola Wills's disco (?!) version of Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind".

  There are some brilliant re-interpretations here: Corrine Bailey Rae does a deep, soulful piano & bass cover of Led Zeppelin's "Since I've Been Loving You" (Jimmy Page's slow blues were always a guilty pleasure for me, and I can't tell you how nice it is hearing one of them without having to put up with Robert Plant). The Contortion's ripping no wave funk version of Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough" is legendary. "Damned for All Time", Judas's song from Jesus Christ, Superstar, is a perfect vehicle for David Yow and Scratch Acid's blitz (and honestly not too different from the original). Shockabilly's explosion of T Rex's "Life's a Gas" is similarly faithful and revelatory. Jon  Langford and his Waco Brothers manage to overhaul and improve one of Neil Young's best songs, "Revolution Blues". And there is probably no version of a song more destroyed and at the same time more appropriate than the Butthole Surfer's "American Woman".

  I could go on, but y'all are getting the point by now. My favorite cover here: the Jesus Lizard's Chrome medley. The cover that gets to the very soul of a song, essentially beating the original at its own game: American Music Club's "Goodbye to Love" (Carpenters) and Thou's "Supernaut" (Black Sabbath). The most epic cover: Television's "Knocking on Heaven's Door" (Dylan). The most brutal and disrespectful: The Resident's nightmare fat Elvis rendition of "Burning Love". The worst cover here: The Bongos take a totally "meh" cover of T Rex's "Mambo Sun" and make it intolerable by mispronouncing the word "mambo" all the way through the song. If you follow this playlist, don't be surprised to see that one disappear at some point.

  And finally, what are all y'all's favorite 70s covers? I'm taking suggestions. No more versions by bands already represented - yes, "Sweat Loaf" is brilliant, but "American Woman" is even better, so that's the Butthole Surfers song included - unless you can convince me that they do another cover that is even better, in which case it will replace my choice. Make sure to put it in the comments, and I may well add it to the playlist. Let me know what I have missed!

70s Covers Power Rankings, Original Artist

1. David Bowie
2. Bob Dylan
3. Michael Jackson/Jackson 5
4. Elton John
5. T Rex
6. Black Sabbath
7. Neil Young

Ezra Pound Driven Batshit Crazy For Want of Sound Money: Variation I

“the temple is holy  because it is not for sale”

 

                              The crucified Jesus

                              of the prosperity bible

                              bleeds green through red

                              interruption of pale skin.

 

droplets water the ground like the blood of tyrants

water the tree of liberty

Sound Money

 

green viral nutrients seed & animate the capsid of the

 

               pathogen capital

 

(don’t worry, you won’t catch it – it’s under

 control – it reduplicates but accumulates

 rather than spreading)

 

“the temple is not for sale because all the flows have been shut down”

 

tl;dr: it’s a cash flow problem