Category Archives: Music

Music Performance Poetry

Michael Hedges

July 30, 2013 – 1:17 pm

MICHAEL HEDGES (1953-1997)

TUESDAY, July 30, 2013

The longest single job I’ve held was as a typesetter at Radio & Records, from 1985 to 1995; every couple years the tedium of production work on a weekly newspaper would be reinvigorated by the brief appearance of a famous performer or songwriter. A few of the “stars” who dropped by included Tina Turner, Julian Lennon and Michael Jackson. Jackson was perhaps the biggest surprise in terms of his personal presence. As he made his way around the large production room with its paste-up tables and camera equipment, he seemed to acknowledge each of us without any sense of distraction or yearning to be elsewhere with someone else. In making eye contact as he shook my hand, he held as tight to the brevity of our greeting as anyone in his position could possibly manage. He seemed guileless in doing so. He had nothing to gain from extending himself even that much and he earned my respect for that as much as for his slithering choreography and the soothing turbulence of his music.

One week we all received an invitation to attend a performance by Michael Hedges at A&M studios.  I’m not sure what the occasion was, although it was obviously an event intended to be an industry gathering. No tickets were for sale nor was it advertised. Hedges performed his compositions with a passion and verve that I have rarely encountered in any artist in any medium. I would not trade this memory of hearing Hedges perform for being at any performance by any contemporary musician. At the time, I was working on the title portion of my long poem, “Barely Holding Distant Things Apart.” While Hedges was playing, the only words I could come up with to describe the effect of his music were “Tibetan / marching / band.” Afterwards, Cathay Gleeson (my first wife) and I went to a back room to talk with him. We were complete strangers, but he listened to our comments on his music as if we were friends from his days as a student at the Peabody Conservatory. My recollection is that Cathay spontaneously gave him a small crystal assemblage she was wearing.

He was in his mid-40s when he died as a result of an automobile accident in 1997. In the decade and a half since, I’ve thought continually not only of his music, but of the integrity he brought to its expression. I’ve always been dismayed at how few poets seem to know his work. Anyone who is reading this blog should immediately start using their computers to become familiar with the musical visions of Michael Hedges.

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Ground Level Conditions Music

Idyllwild Evacuation

July 18, 2013 – 7:22 pm

Idyllwild Evacuation

July 18, 2013

At 6:30 p.m. yesterday, Steve Fraider told all of us who assembled at Bowman Theater at Idyllwild Arts to keep in mind John Wooden’s advice: “Be quick, but don’t hurry.” I hustled back to my cabin and managed to pack everything into my car with a nimble dexterity that I thought had forsaken me 20 years ago.

Not every civilian, however, left Idyllwild last night upon hearing the announcement that fire officials wanted the town evacuated. A couple of men, for instance, were still hammering away on a new dwelling on Marion View Drive as I headed back to campus at 7:15 p.m. to join the convoy to Hemet High School.  One of the main reasons I fell in behind a half-dozen school buses was that I wasn’t in any mood to have a kite-string of pick-up trucks tailgating me on the way down the mountain. The school busses would be under obvious restrictions of taking the curves slowly enough to ensure the students’ safety, and so any traffic behind me wouldn’t feel that I, and I alone, was somehow impeding their escape route. It almost felt like a luxury to be able to “draft” down the mountain at such a casual pace.

Although the evacuation was framed as a precautionary maneuver, it was necessary. Unfortunately, it’s all too possible in the next couple days that winds could rear up and use this conflagration to play razzle-dazzle with another 10,000 or 15,000 acres of chaparral; in that contingency, the firefighters hardly need to be worrying about recalcitrant civilians who fantasized that lingering at the circumference of an inferno earned one the dog tags of valor. I certainly didn’t see staying as a feasible option. Even if I were foolhardy enough to lurk behind and dally in my cabin with its rolodex of cable programming, the air quality was getting sour enough by yesterday afternoon that Long Beach’s diesel-oil saturated air shimmered in my thoughts like a mirage of rejuvenating oxygen.

A fire on this scale in the San Jacinto Mountains is long overdue.  As Steve pointed out at an initial faculty meeting two and a half weeks ago, the mountaintop has a cycle of burning every 75 to 125 years. He mentioned that it had been 150 years since the area Idyllwild is built on has had a comprehensive scouring. From the point of view of the fire, the 22,000 acres it has devoured (as of this moment) are the appetizers at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Despite this context, Steve reassured us yesterday that the odds favor the survival of Idyllwild Arts and that we shouldn’t give up hope that we’ll be able to return and finish this session.

After reconnoitering at Hemet High School with the staff, I decided to head on home for the evening and I arrived shortly after midnight. As I drove on Stevenson Road from Hemet towards Beaumont, David Bowie’s “Serious Moonlight” blasted out of the car’s radio. That may be the last song I ever played on a jukebox. A chain of fast-food stands called Fatburger was just getting started up when this song came out. Fatburger served a paper basket full of chile fries that was the best in Los Angeles at the time. The ricocheting percussion snapping across the rhythmic keyboards and horns backing Bowie’s invitation to dance remains indelibly associated with the taste of those chili fries. I know this sounds like a stereotypical instance of commodity addiction. However, we always have a splendid potluck dinner at Idyllwild on Wednesday evenings, and the sudden cancellation of this weekly festivity meant that I hadn’t eaten since lunch, when I started home at 9:00 p.m. Bowie’s song evoked a repast not so much out of nostalgic fixation, but just sheer yearning for a hot bite of food. Fortunately, the poet Ed Skoog had brought to Hemet High two pans of cornbread he’d made for the potluck, and he graciously let me help myself to two substantial pieces before I headed out. Many thanks, Ed. I thought of that cornbread as I looked up at the waxing moon on my way home to Linda’s welcoming embrace.

 

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Music Poetry

The Unfamiliar Subjunctive

July 1, 2013 – 6:50 pm

Monday, July 1, 2013

About two years ago, Neil Young released an album of live performances from the mid-1980s. During an interview that addressed the long delay in making this material available at a better quality than whatever bootlegs might be floating around, Young commented, “The only thing I can do is go forward. It’s the only place that doesn’t have any ghosts and shadows from the past.”

I’m less confident about the vacancy of the future. In fact, creativity can find a renewal in the ways that “ghosts and shadows from the past” reiterate their claims. “Remorse is memory awake,” Emily Dickinson wrote. In that spirit, my response to Neil Young would be that the future’s where the unfinished grievances have to hide in places as unfamiliar to them as it is to me. The imagination is most comfortable – and can be most comforting – when that which haunts us has to struggle with an unfamiliar terrain. Enter, stage left, the subjunctive.

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Music Performance Poetry

Take the Red Line: Poesia para la gente

June 26, 2013 – 12:21 pm

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Poesia para la gente

Except for Billy Burgos, I’ve never heard or read the work of any of the poets who will be taking part in “Poesia Para La Gente” this coming Sunday. I did hear Burgos read at Beyond Baroque a couple of years ago, though, and enjoyed it very much. He is definitely one of the “young” poets whose work has already significantly gone past the stage of “promise” and “potential” and begun contributing to the conversation about contemporary poetics.

The posting for “Poesia Para La Gente” has the subtitle, “Subway Edition,” which made me wonder if there is another edition or version of this project; indeed, a quick use of search engines brought up a poster for an event just last month, “Poetry under the Freeway,” which featured Iris De Anda, Rebecca Gonzales, Abel Salas, Matt Sedillo and Julio the Conga Poet at the Cypress Park Community Job Center. Jessica Ceballos appears to be the main organizer of these events.

It is heartening to see public transportation continuing to be used as a mobile venue for cultural work. One of the ways that poets have availed themselves of this platform is to have advertising-sized placards of poems on buses. I believe George Evans once set up such a program in San Francisco, and certainly New York has had these kinds of displays over the years. Smaller cities shouldn’t be overlooked as potential outlets, however. Santa Monica, for instance, in the late 1980s, sponsored a poetry-on-the-buses program. Some of the poets who were featured in a series of poetry placards on buses in 1988 included Stephen Rodefer, Eloise Klein Healy, Charles Bernstein, Ruben Martinez, Hugh Seidman, Sesshu Foster, Terry Wolverton, and me.

I suppose that one could argue that having posters of poems on a bus or a subway car is not necessary anymore. After all, can’t people just use their hand-held devices to dig up a poem to read? First of all, there is an assumption here about capital (the means by which these devices can be acquired and their functions made use of) and culture that seems a little too blithe. Internet access on a bus or subway car is not necessarily free, at least the last time I checked. I don’t know about other cities, but I remember a survey a few years ago noted that the riders of L.A.’s bus system were in the bottom five percent of the economic hierarchy. Furthermore, is there not something to be said for reading something on the “big screen” of a placard and experiencing a gaze at language that broadens one’s peripheral vision to include those who are riding the bus with you, perhaps a few of whom are also reading the poem at the same time. I hope that someone steps forward and helps Jessica Ceballos expand the reach of her events to include at least the temporary posting of the work being read at the events.

Here are the details for the “Subway Edition” of “Poesia Para La Gente”:

Poesia Para La Gente: Subway Edition

Poetry Reading

June 30, 2013

12:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

A one-time event on a Sunday afternoon, to stimulate and encourage artistic expression throughout the Los Angeles area…via the metro lines. $5 for all day metro pass. Meeting at the RED LINE platform LA Union Station. FEATURING: Billy Burgos, Yago Cura, Sean Hill, Karineh Mahdessian, Ryan Nance, Conney Williams. Hosted by Jessica Ceballos. w/ OPEN MIC & musical accompaniment FOLLOW US LIVE – or hop on the nearest train by finding out where we’ll be – by using the hashtag -> #PPLG. We’ll be live tweeting/facebooking beginning at 11:30 AM #PPLG

 

LA Metro Rail System

Red Line Platform

800 N Alameda St

Los Angeles, CA

 

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Books Music Poetry

The Thingz (Part Two) – Flem Snopes and Imperial Beach

June 24, 2013 – 8:29 pm

MONDAY, June 24, 2013

Yesterday, Linda and I drove down to Imperial Beach to see my mother. Technically, she doesn’t live in Imperial Beach anymore. The far eastern portion of the “most southwesterly city in the United States” was annexed by San Diego a couple of decades ago, but the house I lived in when I graduated from high school was in Imperial Beach in the mid-1960s and it’s hard for me to think of it as otherwise.

On the way down, Linda and I listened to several CDs, a couple of old favorites (Bob Dylan’s LOVE AND THEFT; Dire Straits BROTHERS IN ARMS). We also played the first album by The Thingz. Much to my surprise, one of the songs contained a reference to Imperial Beach. It’s one thing for Patti Smith to entitle a song “Redondo Beach”; it’s near enough Los Angeles to have some of L.A.’s peripheral aura adhere to RB’s reclusive sense of self-possessiveness. Imperial Beach, on the other hand, has no access to anything other than military culture whatsoever, and no one who lives in San Diego has any interest in pretending otherwise.  To have the closest thing I ever had in my peripatetic childhood to a hometown mentioned in a pop song, therefore, caught me completely off-guard. The song, “Wine Country Safari,” begins in Long Beach:

 

Made a wrong turn on 10th street

And I lost my way

Turned down a blind alley

Heard someone say

 

wine country safari

wine country safari

you’re in whine country

where the winos go

 

drove down the 5 freeway

nothing else to do

ended up in Imperial Beach

guess I missed the zoo.

 

But it wasn’t the mention of Imperial Beach that made me want to photocopy the lyric sheet and pass it around to my colleagues in Literature at CSULB. Right next to “Wine Country Safari” is a song entitled “Flem Snopes.” I would have loved to have heard that song this past Saturday, and I hope The Thingz will consider it a personal request to play this song at their next concert.

For those who have yet to visit Imperial Beach, I would recommend digging into the New York Times archives for an article in 2002 on bow and arrow fishing from the public pier in Imperial Beach. In the third paragraph, the reporter cited “the town’s rough-and-tumble character.” When I read the article a little over ten years ago, I wondered what terms the reporter would have used to describe the city back in the 1960s, when “rough-and-tumble” would have been taken as an insult that demeaned the city’s well-earned nickname of “Whiskey Flats.” The reporter obviously had no idea of how far up the food chain the city had climbed in order to achieve the status of “rough-and-tumble.” As for imagining a story about a person who might run a bait shop on the pier, by the way, why not make use of a little loan from William Faulkner, in the song I mentioned above?

Here’s the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/19/us/as-bowmen-hunt-surfers-feel-like-targets.html

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Music Performance

THE THINGZ (Changed Upon a Garage Guitar)

June 22, 2013 – 10:46 pm

Saturday, June 22, 2013

THE THINGZ (Changed Upon a Garage Guitar)

The usual claim about popular music is that one is primarily interested in the bands that were on the play lists of one’s adolescence. While retaining an enormous affection for the glory days of Motown, I would prefer to devote what little time I can spare for contemporary pop music to younger musicians. In particular, I’m interested in those who are picking up the legacy of bands and songwriters between 1975 and 1995 who refused to let the corporate music business determine the future of guitar-oriented art. Part of that curiosity is simply sympathy for a similar goal in the small press world I was a part of back in those years. I remember Elvis Costello in the late 1970s saying that his goal was to destroy the record business. Of course, some of that was only the rambunctious bluster of self-promotion, but that attitude also reverberated with more sincerity than many people realized. Certainly, many of the most interesting bands that came out of that period were as little interested in getting signed by MCA as poets on the West Coast were in being aligned with Harper & Row.

If I have kept listening to popular music at all, it’s largely driven by the hope of hearing lingering strands of resistance to the ever-expanding commodification of culture. I’ll grant that my extremely fragmentary knowledge of current music is largely an intermittent act of overhearing at this point. There’s only so much time that one can give to all the many things that are worthy of our attention. Just as it’s now impossible for anyone to keep up with all of contemporary poetry, there’s no way that anyone can possibly keep track of pop music bands. That shouldn’t be used as an excuse for those whose blogs are primarily devoted to poetry to neglect commenting on the work being done in the field of popular music. One thing I’ll try to do in this blog is to give some minimal attention to popular music.

A few weeks ago, I walked over to the Prospector Bar at Seventh and Junipero in Long Beach at 11:00 p.m. to see one of my favorite “local” bands, THE THINGZ. I had listened to their second CD earlier this spring and wanted to find out how they sounded live.  Unfortunately, the band went on a bit later than the scheduled time, and I couldn’t stay for the whole set, which was a shame because the band was really kicking in as I headed home to get some sleep. I think Linda and I had an early dental appointment the next morning and I can no longer function on less than six hours sleep. My one reservation about the performance at The Prospector by the Thingz was that the drummer didn’t seem quite in synch in the opening numbers, but I was told the next time I saw the band members walking their dog that he had played sets for two other bands earlier in the day and was still trying to shift gears.

The Thingz is a three-member band, and one could think of them as a kind of stripped down version of X, with Billy Zoom being dropped from the line-up. The overall sound is an extremely melodic post-punk convergence of well articulated chord shifts with vocals traded back and forth with simmering dexterity. In a song such as “Secret Chamber,” for instance, I hear echoes of the B-52s as channeled through an impeccable garage band ethos. I’ll have more to say about this song later on. By chance, Linda and I saw them again the other day as they were walking home from a shopping trip and they mentioned they were playing this afternoon.

Today’s show was in a huge dirt lot near Sixth and Pine in Long Beach and this time they not only went on stage fairly close to the announced time, but the drummer was in fine form from the very first lick and the whole band seemed to glide effortlessly from song to song. The Thingz were kind enough to give me a copy of their set list, which included five songs from their new album, STEP RIGHT UP.

“She’s a Piranha”

“Human Pancake”

Mothballs & Bloodmeal

Old Arthur

Song for Sam

Your Misfortune

Lay Me Down

Bacon Slap

Thingz Theme

Secret Chamber

Clara Belle

Not Mean (Just Soured)

I enjoyed their show too much to spend time taking notes, but want to give special praise to “Bacon Slap” and “Clara Belle,” which was old-fashioned rocker of a number that made our rear ends twinkle with energy for a minute and a half of non-stop delight. Both songs served as a contrast to my favorite song of the afternoon, “Secret Chamber,” which featured guitar work by Michael that pushed far past the ordinary expectations one has for a pop music song. The song seemed longer live than on the new album, so the music in the instrumental portion at the end of the song may well have been improvised. If so, it coiled through a taproot that was close to being profound composition. Brief as it was, it sent a suction jolt of perfectly fermented antagonism through the resolution chambers of an inner dance that cannot be choreographed, but only passed through and released. Very well done.

If you want to download their latest effort, “Step Right Up” go to thethingz.bandcamp.com. You can get a code to download it with if you write the band itself at info@thethingz.com.

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Music Performance Poetry

Barely Holding Distant Things Apart

June 12, 2013 – 1:19 pm

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Music Performance Poetry

Vehemence

July 22, 2012 – 6:31 pm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Alliance Records 1993

 

 Act One: The Rival

1. In Line at Pancho’s Tacos[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/01-In-Line-At-Panchos-Tacos.mp3|titles=In Line At Pancho’s Tacos]
2. Earthquake [audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/02-Earthquake.mp3|titles=Earthquake]
3. Naked Chef [audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/03-Naked-Chef.mp3|titles=Naked Chef]
4. Your Skin[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/04-Your-Skin.mp3|titles=Your Skin]
5. After Many Years of Love[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/05-After-Many-Years-Of-Love.mp3|titles=After Many Years Of Love]
6. Cro-Magnon[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/06-Cro-Magnon.mp3|titles=Cro-Magnon]
7. The Rival[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/07-The-Rival.mp3|titles=The Rival]
8. Sunset Blvd.[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/08-Sunset-Blvd..mp3|titles=Sunset Blvd.]
9. Tough to Please[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/09-Tough-To-Please.mp3|titles=Tough To Please]

 

Act Two: Vehemence

10. The Drop[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/10-The-Drop.mp3|titles=The Drop]
11. Preparation of the Canvas[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/11-Preparation-Of-The-Canvas.mp3|titles=Preparation Of The Canvas]
12. Doubleheader[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/12-Doubleheader.mp3|titles=Doubleheader]
13. Complexities[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/13-Complexities.mp3|titles=Complexities]
14. Odd Duck[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/14-Odd-Duck.mp3|titles=Odd Duck]
15. Obscentiy Oath[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/15-Obscenity-Oath.mp3|titles=Obscenity Oath]
16. Navy Brat[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/16-Navy-Brat.mp3|titles=Navy Brat]
17. Flooding the Engine[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/17-Flooding-The-Engine.mp3|titles=Flooding The Engine]
18. The Man Who Got a Tattoo the Day His Mother Was Buried[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/18-The-Man-Who-Got-A-Tattoo-The-Day-His-Mother-Was-Buried.mp3|titles=The Man Who Got A Tattoo The Day His Mother Was Buried]
19. Vehemence[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/19-Vehemence.mp3|titles=Vehemence]
20. An Answer[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/20-An-Answer.mp3|titles=An Answer]
21. Broadcasting[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/21-Broadcasting.mp3|titles=Broadcasting]
22. For Roy Orbison[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/22-For-Roy-Orbison.mp3|titles=For Roy Orbison]

 

Act Three: Heart of the World

23. The Trampolinists[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/23-The-Trampolinists.mp3|titles=The Trampolinists]
24. The Kites[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/24-The-Kites.mp3|titles=The Kites]
25. Apt. No. 6[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/25-Apartment-6.mp3|titles=Apartment #6]
26. Fireshadow[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/26-Fireshadow.mp3|titles=Fireshadow]
27. Scorpio in the Summer[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/27-Scorpio-In-The-Summer.mp3|titles=Scorpio In The Summer]
28. The Other[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/28-The-Other.mp3|titles=The Other]
29. Landscape With Cows[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/29-Landscape-With-Cows.mp3|titles=Landscape With Cows]
30. Nameless Dread[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/30-Nameless-Dread.mp3|titles=Nameless Dread]
31. The Contestant: Medusa’s 10am Game Show[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/31-The-Contestant-Medusas-10Am-Game-Show.mp3|titles=The Contestant- Medusa’s 10Am Game Show]
32. Cnadles/Wishes[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/32-Candles-Wishes.mp3|titles=Candles-Wishes]
33. Sotel 13[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/33-Sotel-13.mp3|titles=Sotel 13]
34. Monk[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/34-Monk.mp3|titles=Monk]
35. Radio Solitude[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/35-Radio-Solitude.mp3|titles=Radio Solitude]
36. Heart of the World[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/36-Heart-Of-The-World.mp3|titles=Heart Of The World]
37. Good Weight[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/37-Good-Weight.mp3|titles=Good Weight]
38. Growing  Bones, Growing/The “Om” Poem[audio:http://www.billmohrpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/38-Growing-Bones-Grown-The-Om-Poem.mp3|titles=Growing Bones, Grown-The ”Om” Poem]

 

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Music

Waiting for the Paint to Dry

June 7, 2012 – 6:22 pm

 

 

 

 

Click to hear “Waiting For The Paint To Dry”

 

 

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