SOUNDTRACK: MARTIN TIELLI-Jane Bond, Waterloo, Ontario (September 29 2001).
The second Martin Tielli solo show on Rheostaticslive comes two years after the first one. It’s a new band and Martin’s debut solo album We Didn’t Even Suspect He Was the Poppy Salesman is due out soon (or just came out, it’s hard to be sure). Although interestingly, he plays some songs that will wind up on his next solo album (which is years away). The show is at Jane Bond in Waterloo, and unlike the previous show, this one has massive audio problems. There are 4 songs that are nearly inaudible and the whole set is recorded very low. Which is a bummer because the set is very good.
As seems to happen a lot to Martin, he is having all kinds of technical troubles and he gets shocked a number of times during the set (I don’ think I’ve ever heard of this happening to people before, but it seems to happen to him a lot.) He also asks the crowd quite often if they can hear okay.
The show opens with the backing music of Talking Heads (which is quite loud). And then Martin and company open the show with the slow Scott Walker song “Farmer in the City.” Then they play a Nick Buzz song, “Love Steams” and Martin gets shocked so bad that he takes a break. He re-starts the song and it sounds really good.
Then inexplicably, Martin’s voice drops out and the bass gets really loud. And the next four songs are really hard to enjoy. You can also hear the crowd really loud. (Did Martin almost fall or something? there’s a big gasp from the audience at one point. You can also hear someone loudly ask “You want a beer?”).
The audio slowly starts to improve from there. By “She Said ‘We’re on Our Way Down'” it’s quiet but it’s very good otherwise.
Then Chris Gardiner comes out to help on “Waterstriders,” which is bit louder. By the time “My Sweet Relief” comes in, the sound has gotten better (probably because it is a full rocking song) with a very country/twangy feel). He tells a little story about the history of “That’s How They Do It in Warsaw” which is for Kasia (she recites the Polish on the album). He tells a funny story about how she went to Warsaw and developed feelings for her cousin).
There’s a lot of funny banter in this set. Martin talks about a movie he was watching in a bar. It was presumably on Show Case, and he described a woman being tied up and a man masturbating and then someone collects something in a syringe (presumably semen) and injects it into a vagina. What could it possibly have been? It sounds like someone might have given him the answer, but we can’t hear it–so we’ll never know! One of the band members shouts out that it was “Who’s the Boss.”
They play a great version of “Digital Beach” and “Shaved Head.” “How Can you Sleep” has a great solo.
Also at the end of “Sgt Kraulis” (which is from the next album) they say it is last call (for everyone who is not on the stage). There’s a funny comment where someone says, Watch how this law gets broken. And they all order rye and cokes. “Sgt Kraulis” has a funky opening (they play some of Abba’s “Mama Mia”).
The set ends with a nice version of “Take Me in Your Hand.” And then a surprise (to me) of “Blue Hysteria.” Then he plays the second part of “Wet Brain/Your War” (just the “Your War” part).
And he ends with a great version of “Record Body Count” and “a stolen song from borrowed tune,” the opener of the next album: “Beauty On.”
There’s so much great music here, it’s a bummer the quality isn’t better.
[READ: June 13, 2015] The Ondt & The Gracehoper
This fascinating book is an excerpt from Finnegans Wake (Book III Chapter I). Thomas McNally has taken one of the fables in Joyce’s Wake and has illustrated it. The book includes a few essays about the Wake and about expressionism and why McNally illustrated the book the way he did.
I have never read Finnegans Wake. And I am fairly certain I never will. I feel like this is a minor failing on my part, and yet it’s not pushing me to read this largely incomprehensible book. So I was excited to see this weird little excerpt of the fabled difficult book (with pictures!)
In the introduction, McNally explains that despite everything we’ve heard about the Wake, it was, in fact, meant to be read and it is indeed, quite funny. Joyce is playing around with language in incredible ways–throwing in multiple meanings in different languages in all kinds of words. He says that for a first read, one should just read it–preferably aloud–and not worry about the various meanings that you are undoubtedly missing.
In addition to the text and pictures, there is an essay by Danis Rose (“A Lesson in Wakese”). Rose tells us about the origins of Joyce’s writing of the Wake and how this twist on the Aesop fable “The Ant and the Grasshopper” came about (and why there are words like Ondt and Gracehoper in the text).
So the fable (as best as I can tell) is designed to make the two characters (Shaun and Shem) correspond to the two creatures in the fable (ondt and gracehoper). The gracehoper was a wild hopping creature who was always flirting with Floh (a flea), Luse (a louse), Bienie (a bee) and Vespatilla (which McNally renders a caterpillar, but which he says he later learned was something else). Meanwhile, the ondt was preparing his house for the winter
not being a sommerfool, was thothfolly making chilly spaces at hisphex affront of the icinglass of his windhame, which was cold antitopically Nixnixundnix.
The Grachoper overindulged
Now whim the sillybilly of a Gracehoper had jingled through a jungle of love and debts and jangled through a jumble of life in doubts afterworse, wetting with the bimblebeaks, drik-king with nautonects, bilking with durrydunglecks and horing after ladybirdies (ichnehmon diagelegenaitoikon) he fell joust as sieck as a sexton and tantoo pooveroo quant a churchprince, and wheer the midges to wend hemsylph or vosch to sirch for grub for his corapusse or to find a hospes, alick, he wist gnit!”
and was sick.
When he stumbles upon the Ondt, the Ondt is seated on a throne and is being seen to by the ladies:
as appi as a oneysucker or a baskerboy on the Libido, with Floh biting his leg thigh and Luse lugging his luff leg and Bieni bussing him under his bonnet and Vespatilla blowing cosy fond tutties up the allabroad length of the large of his smalls.
The end section has the Gracehoper being gracious in defeat.
As you can see from the quoted text, Joyce was having a ton of fun with wordplay. To really enjoy what he’s doing you will have to devote a lot more time to reading it than he did to writing it. If you keep it on a surface level it is pretty funny (and baudy) but it’s still very hard to follow.
In McNally’s essay “Philosophy, Art and the Search for Meaning in Finnegans Wake” he talks about Joyce’s use of language and how he seems to be trying to create a universal language by adding all the elements of different languages toegther (he contrasts it to C.K. Ogden who tried to make a universal language by simplifying it like Esperanto and calling it Basic English. Joyce and Ogden had the same universality as a goal but went about it in a very different way.
Another important touchstone for McNally is the Upanishads, which he says Joyce was intimately familiar with–especially the language of sleep and dreaming. It is in this section that he shows how Joyce referenced Germanic philosophers in the text itself (Kant, Schopenhauer, Schelling and Hegel):
- The Gracehoper was always jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant of his joyicity,
- till she was puce for shame and allso fourmish her in Spinner’s housery at the earthsbest schoppinhour so summery as his cottage, which was cald fourmillierly Tingsomingenting, groped up.
- The Ondt was a weltall fellow, raumybult and abelboobied, bynear saw altitudinous wee a schelling in kopfers.
- The June snows was flocking in thuckflues on the hegelstomes,
The final part of the essay talks about modern painting and why McNally chose the modern style for his illustrations. He says he intended not to illustrate the text but to go beyond it, and I think he succeeds. His style is simple but also dramatic.
After reading all of this I feel like I have the first ever grasp I’ve ever had on Finnegans Wake (not that I have any idea what the whole book is about as this excerpt is 7 pages out of over 620 pages of the novel). But the essay and the illustrations finally focused the novel a little for me. And maybe someday I really will try to read it? No, probably not.
There is a full text of the Wake (with hyperlinks) at FinnegansWiki.
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