Black Golden Buzz

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” ― Albert Camus

Ever since marking the 25th anniversary of the Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka release, I have been on a little bit of a ‘Lips kick…and given that they will be coming to town in a few weeks, the first time the kids will get to see them when they are not so young that they will actually remember the show, I could see this kick to go on for some time. It manifested itself today as I was worrying….worrying about the election tomorrow. And I started thinking, in a somewhat doomsday fashion (with hope STILL in my heart), about one of the final tracks on The Flaming Lips record Cloud Taste Metallic, Evil Will Prevail:

With loving smiles and their mouths are stretched so wide
They can't even take a breath
Knowing evil will prevail
And the magic bullet is the glowing mothership
And the mother zaps you dead

If you have not heard the song (and you should listen NOW) it starts with a sweet conversation between an electric guitar and acoustic rhythm…almost meandering…and ends (with the lyrics above) with a full-on dramatic Ziggy Stardust power play only to fall apart at its finalé with Wayne standing alone, sounding like he is looking into the abyss meditating on each word of the final line: Evil……Will…All…Ways……..(sigh-ED) Win.

And let’s hope that is not the prophesy. And maybe it is always the prophesy.

So since I am listening to Clouds Taste Metallic, I decide to start back at the beginning with The Abandoned Hospital Ship, the opening track that like Evil Will Prevail, starts small with the sound of a film projector and a lonely piano player, pondering one key at a time. I always thought of the song as the Lips’ answer to 2001, A Space Odyssey, a lost voice speaking to us somewhere in the Universe, hoping to he heard. As the lyrical part of the song ends, and it seems almost to fade with a lonely guitar looking for some planet to land on, the whole band blasts in with the most fuzzed out bass and distorted lead guitar, cleaning the outer reaches of the listener’s mind, preparing the glorious ride that the record is about to unleash.

I remember getting the cassette tape of the song sent to me at Warner Bros. I was lucky enough to still be working with Roberta Peterson at that juncture and we were preparing to head out to Oklahoma City to hear what the band was concocting in the studio, to follow up their hit record Transmissions From The Satellite Heart. I was sitting in my office in the Ski Lodge in Burbank when the cassette was brought in with four new songs fresh off of the board. I closed my door, threw the tape in, and put it up REAL LOUD, and for the next twenty minutes got to experience something that I ALWAYS knew was one of the luckiest aspects of my job and life: getting to be one of the first people to listen to incredible songs by one of my favorite bands. It all sounded fantastic…but when the whole band came crashing down on Abandoned Hospital Ship, it was like the heavens were opening up inside my office.

Bert and I went to Oklahoma City soon after, got there while the band was recording Guy Who Got a Headache and Accidentally Saves the World, right in time for Wayne to record his Circus Ringmaster soliloquy near the songs end. The current iteration of the Lips: Wayne Coyne, Michael Ivans, Steven Drozd and Ronald Jones were hitting a creative peak, scattered around the make-shift studio, loaded with guitars and affects and mics and chords and drums umbrellaed by a giant tent…putting together what would be both one of their finest achievements to date, and the swan song of their 4-piece band rock and roll (alien-style) era.

Bert and I sat at the recording studio’s console and listened to everything they had recorded. It was the last record the two of us got to work on together, before Roberta left Warners to head up the Geffen A&R staff. We had no idea of our future, of the bands future…all we had was the incredible music in front of us. And it shined metallic.

As for tomorrow…vote vote vote and as Wayne says during that last talking part of Guy who Got a Headache…with hope….

Looks like brighter​ days are ahead for the whole planet

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Climate Activists Glue Themselves to Goya Painting at Madrid’s Prado Museum

On the heals of climate protesters going to prison for gluing themselves to Vermeer’s Girl with the Gold Earring, other protesters are gluing themselves to a Goya. This is a big year for glue, that is for sure. I wish it leads to a big year of reform around specific laws that could help save our planet and allow us to continue to enjoy these paintings…not just the people involved in the gluing going to jail.

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How to Reclaim Our Humanity, through Poetry

Great, short read from Rob Casper, head of the Poetry Center at the Library of Congress. Poetry CAN save us. I know it. The article features a poem by our current poet laureate, Ada Limón.

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Low’s Mimi Parker Has Died

The love affair between Mimi and her bandmate Alan Sparhawk which began in grade school created a beautiful legacy of music, and a musical style (slow-core….never liked that title) that was unique in its calm power. The pitchfork article above includes a live video from one of their festivals where Low plays one of my favorite songs of theirs, Just Make It Stop, that yes: it is so very Velvet Underground-y in the best of ways. My heart goes out to Alan.

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The Trobades Camus de Menorca boost their international presence with activities in Morocco and Germany.

I didn’t know: “In view of the dramatic situation currently being experienced in the world, the organisers of the Trobades Camus, which celebrate the writer's legacy every year in Menorca, have considered it essential ‘to restore the Camusian legacy and give a voice to journalists and artists who use information in their attempt to shake up general indifference and build, as Camus demanded, a journalism of ideas’.” (Happy Birthday Camus).

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AC/DC - LIVE London, England, October 27, 1977 Full Concert

I am not sure if anyone ever notices, but at the bottom of every newsletter is a link to a curated video that I happened upon. Todays, which is also here, is an incredible live performance by 1977-era AC/DC with Bon Scott, Angus Young and the rest of the band in top form. It is a multi-camera shoot…sounds incredible…and besides the strange, seated, somewhat docile crowd, the show is just drop dead fantastic.

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On the Road to Paradise

(Part 4 of the poem “Cruising 99”)¹

By: GARRETT HONGO

Distances don’t matter

nor the roll of the road past walnut groves.

It’s sky that counts,

the color of it at dawn or sunset,

a match more true to the peach

than a mix of oils by Matisse.

Or maybe it’s actually the weather

we love most, the way it shifts

and scatters over the state

like radio waves bouncing off the face of the moon.

The one over there, near Yuba City,

rising over a backyard garden

of onions, tomatoes, squash, and corn.

The one with the spider

scrambling through celery,

harvesting moths and mayflies

from the web it has strung between stalks.

Sometimes I wish I could harvest the weather,

reap it like wheat or rice,

store it in a silo

announcing steady rain or clear skies on its sides.

When the prices rise,

I could ship hailstorms or Santanas in orange crates,

make Safeway go broke,

do something politically efficacious for a change.

But all I really do besides write these poems

is allow my mind to wander while I drive.

There it goes, down the arroyo,

through manzanita and Mormon tea.

Or there, up the mustard and Indian pipe on the hill.

Might as well let it.

Nothing but God and Country on the radio now.

Wolfman Jack’s syndicated and the Dodgers

haven’t made it to Vero Beach.

I wish this road would turn or bend,

intersect with a spy movie some Spanish galleon,

or maybe a Chinese poem with landscapes

in brocade, mist, wine, and moonlight.

This California moon is yellow most of the time,

like it was stained with nicotine,

or sealed in amber like an insect.

Why is it always better somewhere else?

Why do I always wish I were Tu Fu?

Jan Matulka: Surrealist Landscape, 1935

1. Thank you Armando Bellmas from Ecléctico for introducing me to the poem!