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Archive for the ‘Jack Kerouac’ Category

William S. Burroughs–“The Only Sane Man in a Nuthouse” (Harper’s, November 2008)

Posted in Architecture, Eli Keszler, Excerpt, Field Recordings, Harper's, Jack Kerouac, LGBTQ, NPR/PRI/PBS, So Percussion, The Saturday Evening Post, William S. Burroughs on November 1, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ELI KESZLER & SO PERCUSSION-“Archway” (Field Recordings, July 12, 2013).

This Field Recording [Eli Keszler & So Percussion: Making The Manhattan Bridge Roar And Sing] takes place under the Manhattan Bridge. Installation artist and drummer Eli Keszler wonders, When does an instrument become a sculpture?  Or can it become something architectural?

I didn’t know Eli, but I know his partners Percussion [Eric Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski and Jason Treuting] from a fantastic Tiny Desk Concert.  But this was my first exposure to them in the real world.  Their combination of crotales and big strings is at once bizarre, otherworldly, interminable and very cool.

There is magic in pure sound. And few know that truth as well as the quartet called So Percussion and the installation artist and drummer Eli Keszler — artists who, before this spring, had never met. We thought that they might find kindred spirits in each other.  So as a matter of artistic matchmaking, we at NPR Music decided to invite them to meet and collaborate on a new work that would have its world premiere at Make Music New York, the annual summer-greeting festival of free outdoor concerts across the city. And along the way to creating a world premiere, they brought a New York landmark in as a sixth instrumental partner: the Manhattan Bridge. They named their piece Archway.

So Percussion says that they wrote this piece just for the installation.  The drummers are present at their drums, but what about the rest?

Using a scissor lift, Keszler and an assistant began the long process of fastening piano wires attached to two large weighted boxes to the tops of lampposts near the DUMBO Archway beneath the bridge. More wires stretched from one of the lampposts up to the Manhattan Bridge itself.

The piece juxtaposes light otherworldly rings and deep resonating, almost mechanical lows.   Complete with occasional drum smacks.

By the time that their performance rolled around at 6:30 PM, Keszler and So Percussion created fascinating layers of sound. The shimmering, nearly melodic lines produced by bowing small cymbals called crotales offset sharply articulated snare drums and the grunting roars, squonks and groans of the piano wire installation. It was urbane and thoroughly urban music for a signature city setting.

And so for about 11 minutes you get a combination of low grunting sounds–the engines or the wires?–and chiming crotales.  Occasional snare hits punctuate the sound.

It starts with the mechanical sounds and the sounds of the crotales reverberating.  About 3 minutes into the piece a snare drum and rhythm is added, but very minimally and only for a instant.   Around 4 minutes the drummers start adding more percussive and less tonal sounds, but that is brief and soon enough everyone is doing his own thing, while Keszler plays a very jazzy style of drum on the drum and crotales.  Others are hitting snares and sides of drums.

But by the 10 minute mark it is a full-on drum solo with the gentlest/flimsiest drum sticks around–making little taping sounds (but a lot of them).

I feel like not enough is made of the piano wires –I would love to hear more from them.  I assume that in a live setting all of the cool sounds (ones that become more audible around the 10 minute mark are just reverberating around and around the arch–something that even the best mic’s can;t pick up adequately.

It’s still neat to watch, though.

[READ: January 28, 2008] “The Only Sane Man in a Nuthouse”

This is an excerpt from And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, a novel he wrote with Jack Kerouac.  They alternated chapters.  It was written in 1945 but unpublished until 2008.

On a Wednesday night, he went out with Al, Ryko and Phillips.  Agnes didn’t want to join them–she was broke–some people have some pride.  He joked at Philip that he was an artist so he didn’t believe in decency, honesty or gratitude.

They went to diner and a movie and then went to MacDonald’s Tavern, which is a queer place and it was packed with fags all screaming and swishing around.

The rest of the story is a tale of an older gay men checking out the younger men, straight men howling for women, and men hitting on anyone that moves. (more…)

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George Saunders reads Isaac Babel’s “You Must Know Everything” (New Yorker fiction podcast (#4) “Listen and Learn” August 2007)

Posted in Ernest Hemingway, George Saunders, Interviews, Isaac Babel, Jack Kerouac, New Yorker, New Yorker Fiction Podcast, Podcast, Short Story on November 27, 2013| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: November 21, 2013] “You Must Know Everything” podcast

podcastIn the fourth New Yorker fiction podcast, George Saunders reads Isaac Babel.  I know Saunders very well, although I knew next to nothing about Isaac Babel.

Saunders sets up this story very briefly before diving in to the read.  There’s something fantastic about the way Saunders read the story–full of emotion and affect.  He absolutely made the story come to life and his commentary at the end made the story even better.

Babel was 21 when he wrote this story (he was amazingly prolific–his Complete Works is over 1,000 pages), and Saunders is blown away by the amount of depth such a young writer fits into the story.  Saunders says that for him Babel is a combination of Hemingway and Kerouac–Hemingway because Babel edited his storied very intensely and Kerouac because he wasn’t afraid to add the occasional poetic touch.

In the story, a young boy is going to visit his grandmother.  As the story opens, he explains that he was always very observant.  He knew everything about the streets of his city, Odessa.  He knew the stores and the anomalies in the buildings.  He observed every new window.  Until someone teased him for looking in a lingerie store. (more…)

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William Gibson–“Olds Rocket 88, 1950” (New Yorker, June 4 & 11, 2012)

Posted in Depeche Mode, Essays, History, J.G. Ballard, Jack Kerouac, Michael Moorcock, New Yorker, Nostalgia, Outer Space, Sci-fi, Surfer Blood, Technology, The Future, Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson, William S. Burroughs on June 17, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SURFER BLOOD-Tarot Classics (2012).

I really enjoyed Surfer Blood’s debut album.  This EP is a little stopgap until the next one. Although the sound is unmistakably Surfer Blood–poppy hooks and a very recognizable singing voice, the band sounds a little bit different here.  They haven’t lost any of their catchiness–there may be even more on the opener, “I’m Not Ready” (who doesn’t love when the guitar and vocals match each other?)  “Miranda” has that fun thumping chorus that is always fun to sing along to.

“Voyager Reprise” moves away from the surf-styled songs of their debut into an alt-rock of the 90s sound–when guitars were noisy (until they were quiet for a bit) and guitar solos happened between verses instead of as the third verse.  And “Drinking Problem” has a kind of early Depeche Mode (in vocals, not synths) feel–quite a departure from their debut.

In the way of EPs, the final two songs are remixes.  I’ve never been a fan or remixes and these don’t do much for me, but i do wonder if they will have any impact on their future sound.

[READ: June 14, 2012] “Olds Rocket 88, 1950”

All this time I thought there were only five of these short essays in this sci-fi issue of the New Yorker.  And yet tucked away near the back was the sixth one by William Gibson, a pioneer in science fiction.

Gibson’s recollection is of being a child and having everything seem like science fiction–something that is notably absent these days.  Like the chrome trim on his father’s Oldsmobile Rocket 88, the prevalence of spacemen and space-themed ideas everywhere.  Even the word Tomorrow was capitalized.

Then he recounts a personal incident.  He got in trouble with his parents for arguing with an Air Force man.  The man said space travel would never happen. But Gibson knew it would.  How could it not?  And science fiction shaped this worldview.  Not that he believed the stories would come true, but that his entire mindset was that in the future “things might be different…and different in literally any way you could imagine, however radical.”

What a wonderfully freeing notion.  To me, this sort of future-looking lifestyle accounted for the unprecedented achievements of post 1950 America.  Now that we no longer think of tomorrow with a capital T, we don’t seem as enchanted by the future.  Perhaps it was a naive outlook, but you need a certain degree of naiveté if you hope to do anything radically new.

Gibson ties in the sci-fi books he bought for a dollar to other fantasists: J.G. Ballard, Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Moorcock, and how these thinkers weren’t all that far off from the likes of Kerouac and William S. Burroughs.  And he believes that without science fiction, he might not have been interested in what these other radical writers had to say.

It’s a short piece, but it really made me wish for more chrome and space-age technology in our lives–when people weren’t afraid to dram big.

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Jonathan Lethem–“To Catch a Beat” (New Yorker, October 10, 2011)

Posted in Aerosmith, Allen Ginsberg, Cheap Trick, Essays, Gene Simmons, Herbert Huncke, Jack Kerouac, Jonathan Lethem, Katey Sagal, Kiss, Memoirs, New Yorker, Shoplifting, Steely Dan, Village People, William S. Burroughs on October 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KISS-Gene Simmons (1978).

Even all these year later I feel like there is something very “polished” about this album.  It feels different from the others for an intangible reason.  I like it quite a bit,and yet it doesn’t sound like a record from a demon with blood leaking out of his mouth.  Maybe it’s the surprisingly faithful (and delicate) cover of “When You Wish Upon a Star”?  Maybe it’s the cameo by Cher?  Maybe it’s the weird effects on “Radioactive”?  The whole things just seems different to me.

It starts out menacing enough with the creepy laughing and the crazy strings (like a Disney nightmare) and the chanting (what is that chanting–its sounds demonic but they seem to be saying Hosannah?).  And it all swirls into a…disco sounding guitar?  “Radioactive” is a wonderful ditty and shows that Gene, while not exactly a good singer, has more range than the God of Thunder would have suggested.   (That’s Aerosmith’s Joe Perry on guitar).  “Burning Up with Fever” opens with a bizarre, really out of tune guitar intro (that’s two songs with crazy intros).  This feels much more Kiss than anything else on the album, although again, it’s very slick feeling.  And surprisingly, I like the backing vocals on this track–especially the solo that the woman takes–hey is that Katey Segal?  No evidently it is Donna Summer (!!).  I guess Katey was one of the backing chorus on some other songs.  (And that’s Steely Dan’s Jeff “Skunk” Baxter on guitar).

Musically, I rather like “See You Tonite,” but I find his vocals a little weird on this one.  It’s such a sweet song…again, unusual for the demon (Skunk Baxter on guitar, again).  “Tunnel of Love” seems quite sinister in the beginning with a great bass line.  And then the chorus kicks in with these delicate la las (Skunk Baxter on guitars again–Katey Sagal must be in there somewhere).  “True Confessions” has a pretty hilarious choir in the middle of the song.  My mom felt that “Living in Sin” was bad publicity for the Holiday Inn.  Although I thought it was a very funny line (and yes, Cher is the squeaking fangirl and Joe Perry is on guitar again).  “Always Near You/Nowhere to Hide” is a really slick track in which Gene shows of his more delicate singing style.  The first half is a gentle acoustic track but it builds into a high concept highly produced track–and let’s not forget the amazing high notes he hits (is that really him?).

“Man of 1,000 Faces” is another song with sinister sounds in the verses (cool strings, and is that french horn?) and then a gentle, swelling chorus.  “Mr Make Believe” begins the delicate ending of the album (Skunk Baxter, again).  This is a sweet ballad, showing a very gentle side of Gene.  There’s a little diversion in his cover of Kiss’ “See You in Your Dreams.”  This version rocks harder than the Kiss version, and the backing vocals lend a weird edge to the song which is why I like it better than the one on Rock and Roll Over (that’s Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen on guitar).  And then yes, “When You Wish Upon a Star.”  My dad laughed about as hard at the demon guy singing this song as he did about the butch biker guy singing “Oh Danny Boy” in the Village People movie Can’t Stop the Music (which we watched as a family.

Gene’s solo album charted the highest when they were released, although now Ace’s has sold more.  It’s pretty great.

[READ: October 8, 2011] “To Catch a Beat”

There were four one-page pieces in this week’s New Yorker under the heading “Sticky Fingers.”  Each one was about theft in some way (this being the money issue, that ‘s a nice connection).

Lethem, who now appears here twice in just a few short days, also breaks the mould set up by Miranda July (so I guess 2 of four stories about shoplifting is not so much a mould as a half).  Indeed, Lethem goes against all the conventions of the other pieces, for in this story, Lethem is not the thief at all.  There is hardly any thieving going on here.

This story is about Lethem working in used book stores in Brooklyn as a kid.  He mentions several different places where he worked, nut the story focuses on one in particular.  The name isn’t important to the story (in fact it doesn’t exist anymore).  But what happens there is the crux of the story.  It’s basically about a friend of Allan Ginsberg’s armed Herbert Huncke (who I’ve never heard of).  Huncke was a major fixture for the Beats, and is written about (in disguised form) by Burroughs and Kerouac.   But he was also a junkie and an ex-con.  And he came into this bookstore regularly. (more…)

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