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I do hope you dig this here MixTape as it features some fine, fine music! There’s a couple of selections from the album Universe. Envisioned and created by an artist that alternately goes by the monikers Wynn, W.Y.N.N., and ANON, Universe is an assemblage of brief bursts, soundscapes, scrapes, sodden ambiance, demented little diddies, digital bumps, bedroom tapes, and soft moments of sweeping beauty. These fragmented tracks all seem to step on each-other’s toes as often as they rub elbows. You can catch Wynn playing live on Sat. June 3rd, 2017 around 9PM at the gallery/performance space Orgy Park:
Located in Bushwick Brooklyn between Wilson and Knickerbocker Ave
237 Jefferson Street 1B
Brooklyn, NY 11237
929 234 1277 (p)
orgypark(at)gmail.com
Elsewhere on the mix there’s the incredibly funky “Cheshire Cat Cry” by then 80 year old Yoko Ono, featuring Lenny Kravitz and her fluid group Plastic Ono Band helmed by her supremely talented son Sean Lennon. “Cool Papa Bell” comes from Paul Simon‘s last record, the fantastic Stranger to Stranger released a year ago in June of 2016. I highly recommend picking that one up! You’ll also hear Leon Russell‘s re-imagining of the great George Harrison tune, “Beware of Darkness.” This version closes out Russell’s second solo album Leon Russell and the Shelter People, released in May of 1971. Along with Russell’s inventive, kinetic take there are Harrison’s incredible lyrics, like:
Watch out now, take care
Beware of soft shoe shufflers
Dancing down the sidewalks
As each unconscious sufferer
Wanders aimlessly
Beware of Maya
and:
Watch out now, take care
Beware of greedy leaders
They take you where you should not go
While Weeping Atlas Cedars
They just want to grow, grow and grow
Beware of darkness
You’ll also hear two versions of the Paul McCartney diddy “3 Legs.” There’s the original from the 1971 Paul and Linda McCartney record Ram, and then there’s the orchestral Percy “Thrills” Thrillington version. Under this pseudonym, and alongside arranger Richard Anthony Hewson, McCartney served as producer for the record Thrillington, which is an instrumental cover version of the entire album of Ram recorded during the sessions for the album proper itself in 1971. It would be released with little notice 6 years later in 1977, but I think it’s a ton of fun! This mix has got “Fekete Beat” (Black Beat) which can be found on the compilation of Hungarian star Sarolta Zalatnay‘s finest work of the seventies, put out in 2007 by one of my favorite record labels, Finders Keepers and their US distribution arm, B-Music.
Featured here as well is a long, unnerving triptych by The Flaming Lips from their 2013 LP, The Terror. On this record the group strip their usual sound of vivid squiggles and leave it as something skeletal—shards of brittle metal made tactile with silver glitter and a patina of chemical compounds. Lead vocalist Wayne Coyne described the album’s general idea as thus:
“We want, or wanted, to believe that without love we would disappear, that love, somehow, would save us that, yeah, if we have love, give love and know love, we are truly alive and if there is no love, there would be no life. The Terror is, we know now, that even without love, life goes on… we just go on… there is no mercy killing.”
The group’s multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd explained its premise with:
“The terror is that internal feeling you get that you and everyone you love is going to die.”
Yes, this record is not a pleasant listen, yet I still think it’s an incredible piece of work. You can find the lyrics for the three The Terror selections below:
The Terror
–
However long they love you, we are all standing alone
The terror’s in our heads, they don’t control the controls
I turn to face the sun, we are still standing alone
At last we’ll stand by the terror, it helps us take the controls
–
We’ll save the last sunshine, the way I long to go
We’ll save the love, you’ll still love, we’re searching through the dark
We’ll save the last sunshine, the way I long to go
We’ll save the love, you’ll still love, we’re searching through the dark
–
We’ve all tried to come through
We’ve always tried to come through
We all stretched to come to this
———–
You Are Alone
–
Hold on, we long for the bell
Our time is showing our respect
Can I handle the decision needed?
And I have to lay on reality’s dream
Oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh
Just as I want your ecstasy appear
Just enough to make me wanna feel
Through the love we sacrifice now
It’s the only sound of your own fear
Oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh
–
You’re not alone, you are alone
You’re not alone, you are alone
–
Oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh
Oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh
–
You’re not alone, you are alone
You’re not alone, you are alone
–
Oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh
—————-
Butterfly, How Long It Takes To Die
–
If you’ve ever really seen the sun rise
You will see how many times it tries
If you’ve ever really seen the sun set
You will see how long it takes to die
–
You can see the butterfly has landed
Landed on your prison plates, you’re out
You can feel it’s trouble making a teardrop
You will see how long it takes to fly
–
You can see the universe beginning
Making all the sun and the sky
You can see the universe is ending
Making love darker than the night
The penultimate song here on this MixTape is one that has long been one of my favorites by the band Soundgarden: “The Day I Tried to Live.” Recently departed frontman Chris Cornell (R.I.P.) has seemingly always been praised for his stunning vocals, however, I feel that he’s never received the deserved respect for his gifts with phrasing, melody, and poetic craft in terms of his lyrics. These are all on powerful display here on this song released in 1994 as the second single from the band’s fourth studio album, Superunknown. Just listen to the adroit manner in which he curves and pulls the song’s attention grabbing opening of:
I woke the same as any other day
except a voice was in my head.
It said, “Seize the day, pull the trigger,
drop the blade and watch the rolling heads.”
This song to me (and so appropriately for a fourteen-year-old boy in NYC) has always seemed to be about someone struggling to overcome their anti-social behaviors and the perverse superiority complexes that blossom from them—perverse in that they stem from a territory of mental anguish and depression turned vicious even if withdrawn. It’s a belief that, no, you are not better than anyone, but yes, they are worse than you. (Now that I think of it, this might have been the predominant mood of adolescents in the early 90s, and of the culture that appealed to them, such as supposed Grunge music). The singer here summons the courage to “one more time” go out and “try to live,” even if that life requires him to “wallow[…] in the blood and mud with all the other pigs.” Yes, even if he detests the society he is attempting to join, one that leaves him declaring with a shout:
The day I tried to win
I dangled from the power lines
And let the martyrs stretch
Even though it all seems so pointless and futile, because:
Words you say
Never seem to live up to the ones inside your head
The lives we make
Never seem to ever get us anywhere but dead
Yes, even though this attempt at life leads to an awful confrontation, a realization that he confesses with:
I learned that I was a liar…just like you…
Yes, even despite all this the singer tries to live, because the alternative is always and only just a lonesome anguish with your own abysmal brain. Yes, even though at the end of the day he will fail “to live” and dismally wail:
I woke the same as any other day you know
I should have stayed in bed
Yet, you get the sense that the singer will try again tomorrow, that tomorrow it will again be:
One more time around
(Might do it)
One more time around
(I might make it)
This is truly a stunning song on a phenomenal album. The experimentation in musicality, narratives, and odd melodies featured throughout Superunknown are pushed even further on their next record, which has always been (unfashionably, I know) my favorite by them: Down on the Upside. If down in my basement I can find my copy of both that and Cornell’s first solo studio album, the beautiful Euphoria Morning released in 1999, well then I’ll certainly be featuring them on future mixes in tribute of a talented, sensitive artist that succumbed way too young.
On a somewhat more silly yet no less earnest or appreciative note; at sixteen-years-old as soon as the thin whiskers on my face began to grow a bit thicker and dark I started to shape them with a razor into a disconnected mustache and a sloped tuft on the chin that ran tight along the jaw line, curving up to meet the sideburns. Essentially this is a scruffier version of what is known in Queens by the dysphemism of Puerto Rican Chin Strap. I have more or less sported this same look for roughly twenty years. I would guess that my adolescent friends assumed that this was a result of my admiration (infatuation, I’m sure they’d tease) for the actor Johnny Depp. When news broke of Cornell”s suicide on the morning of May 18, 2017, I suddenly recalled how as an awkward sixteen-year-old boy (as I’m now sure they all are) I really wanted to be sexy and cool (as I’m now sure they all do). From March to November of 1996 (I turned 16 in July) Soundgarden released three music videos to accompany songs used to promote the record Down on the Upside: “Pretty Noose;” “Burden in My Hand;” and “Blow Up the Outside World.”
I can now clearly remember seeing the pensive and handsome Chris Cornell (and his beard) in those videos and thinking something along the lines of, “now that is a cool American male, now that is a sexy American male,” with all the poetic sensitivity yet artistic power and artistic aggression that I believed went into that. Now it might seem trivial or even disrespectful to discuss facial-hair fashion choices in the context of someone’s tragic death, but I will forever be grateful to this wonderful artist whose presence helped a suffering young man feel a little confidant, a little sexy and a little cool.
Again, Chris Cornell thank you and may you rest in peace.
____________———-_
Well, there’s all this and a whole bunch of other fantastic sounds so go on down and press play !
[The Terror/You Are Alone/Butterfly, How Long It Takes To Die – The Flaming Lips (art by Steven Fiche)]
[The Best Is Yet To Come – Bob Dylan (composed by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Carolyn Leigh)]
[Let Me Be – Parliament]
[Steer Your Way – Leonard Cohen (art by Jenny Holzer)]
[Sister I Need Wine – Guided By Voices]
[Cool Papa Bell – Paul Simon]
[Fekete Beat – Sarolta Zalatnay]
[Big Black Monster – Scott Weiland (photo by Brie Childers, 2008)]
[Star Dream Girl – David Lynch]
[Wampyr (finale) – Goblin]
[Beware Of Darkness – Leon Russell]
[Bluebird of Delhi (Mynah) – Duke Ellington And His Famous Orchestra]
[The Day I Tried To Live – Soundgarden ]
[Goodbye – Anon (aka Wynn)]
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___________________))))))))))))))))
All the best to you and yours!— – ————-______-________ ->BOBBY CALERO[—+=-_________________If you dig the mix then please feel free to pass & post it along; if you dig an artist then please support them and go out and pick up some of their stuff. Oh, If you dig the blog overall there’s always the “FOLLOW BLOG VIA EMAIL” button somewhere down at the bottom.
A Mouthful of Pennies 