quarta-feira, 30 de junho de 2010

The Secret History




Pop music formed by ’60s girl groups are often subjected to ancient stereotypes. Joyous harmonies, lyrics consisting of nothing more than multiply layered “doo-wop-da-doo-wop”s, and a subtle sway of the hips for sex appeal (or the most of what was allowed of it on TV at the time). While much of what was considered “mainstream” at the time did confine to these characteristics, left-field girl-groups like The Shangri-Las expelled emotions with somewhat of risk through the inclusion of thematically appropriate music without regard for radio popularity. Contrary to the bouncy fanfare of rock hits or the romanticized demeanor of ballads on the radio, several decided to pursue artistic expression without regard for what the general public was seeking: talented women producing a brand of pleasantly engaging pop that fit nicely next to the works of contemporary pop from The Beatles, The Zombies, and other then-bustling British invasion bands.

The Shangri-Las’ devastating “Past, Present and Future”, which has been covered with adoration by Jens Lekman, details the abandonment of love’s pursuit after the ending of a first relationship. The theme is common today and even with rock groups at the time, but the way The Shangri-las delivered this song with its gritty first-person narrative, somber touch of strings and keys, and utter disregard for radio-friendly structural optimism was entirely unique for groups of their vein at the time. It felt realer than anything else on the radio at the time, and simply listening to it will make one understand how Jens Lekman moved the audience to tears after his rendition of it. Referring to the fate-dependent fortune of love, the song ends with a gloomy “I don’t think it will ever happen again” before abruptly concluding. Sure, any artist can be rebellious in regard to attaining commercialized exposure, but few can take as many risks and succeed as often as The Shangri-Las did.

The Secret History is a stylish trio from New York City, one that deals in an interesting fusion of girl-group pop and glam-rock that combines the subtle emotional rawness and prevalent capriciousness of each respective genre. The former is labeled as one with a history of restraint, categorized both by gender treatment and a time that was more conservative than today. Glam, on the other hand, is one of the more prominent forms of artistic expression that truly had no boundaries. It took place in a period of cultural reprieve, in the ’70s and ’80s when the baby boomers of the ’60s had grown accustomed to more flexible treatment of previously “inappropriate” aspects of media. To find both of these periods and genres collide is certainly interesting, and I applaud The Secret History for producing a sound that is both infectiously over-the-top and emotionally representative; it does both movements justice.

In the spirit of the World Cup, the intro to the anthemic “Johnny Anorak” sounds no different than a frenzied pub at kick-off. Appropriately enough, as the song lacks nothing in terms of achieving its expectations as a pulsating opener. The pulsating guitars and vigorous percussion in the early goings suggest the looming presence of a domineering voice, one that disproportionately and disappointingly steals the spotlight from the music. Lisa Ronson, the daughter of glam legend Mick Ronson, prevents this from happening with her utterly perfect voice, at least for the style of music her band is attempting. Her lack of submissiveness to predictable melodic patterns excludes her from typical girl-group comparisons, but her harmonic capabilities and stylistically aligning pitch make the presence more girl-pop than glam-rock. This is a very fortunate twist, as it is what truly creates the cohesiveness within the relationship between glam-rock and girl-group pop for The Secret History.

The instrumentation in most of their songs is definitely more on the glam-rock side, recalling specifically the earlier work of Manic Street Preachers in their simultaneously catchy and thought-provoking mixture of glam and alt-rock. Ronson has more of a Morrissey-like deepness vibrato in “Death Mods”, going as far to echo his overly dramatic delivery in the lyrics. “Life is hard but death is harder,” she sings seemingly tongue-in-cheek, “So I took up with an underage martyr.” Then she speaks of children killing the babysitter and, well, the effort is entertaining at the very least. Not exactly in the vein of the immediately accessible “Johnny Anorak” or “Our Lady of Stalingrad”, but it will have its fans. This track could perhaps earn them an opening slot for Morrissey, though honestly at this point after the release of their excellent second album The World That Never Was they are destined for greater things. Their music is polished and insanely addictive, all while avoiding the generic production tendencies of modern indie-rock.

Related artists: My Favorite, Cats on Fire, The Aislers Set, Les Savy Fav, Sambassadeur, Gigi, The Lodger, David Bowie, The Shangri-Las, The Mynabirds, Another Sunny Day, The Orchids, The Indelicates, The Field Mice, Beulah, Language of Flowers, Rose Melberg, Stars, The Long Blondes, The New Pornographers, Comet Gain, Saturday Looks Good to Me

terça-feira, 29 de junho de 2010

Robby is writting a book about the Doors

Take a look at the video, see robby's black eye. For years I was curious were he get it...


In a recent interview, Robby mentioned that his book will be done sometime soon and that the black eye he was sporting on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour came as the result of being hit by Jim.

"One last question: When I saw the Doors on TV playing “Touch Me,” you had a huge black eye. What happened?

I had a fight with Jim and he hit me. You’ll have to read my book to find out what happened. I’m writing it myself and it’ll be done sometime soon. Ray and John both wrote their own books about the Doors, so I figured I should write one too."

segunda-feira, 28 de junho de 2010

Jim in 1981, ten years after his dead

Jim Morrison: Ten Years Gone was originally published in article form with commentary by Ms. James in the 1981 Creem Magazine Special Edition devoted to the Doors on the tenth anniversary of Jim Morrison’s passing. An unedited portion of the interview also appears at the end of the article - this section of the piece is uncorrected, the original being unavailable. Parts of this interview were also published in The Doors Illustrated History.

I met Jim Morrison for the first time in the winter of 1968. He as more alive and afire than I would ever see him, and I was a moonstruck groupie. It was a recording session for Waiting For The Sun, their third album. I was with a writer who was interviewing Morrison for the New York Times.

Jim was coming out of the studio "to get a bite to eat" with Pamela, his lady. His hand shaking mine was firm, enthusiastic, running a current of controlled power. My writer friend and I went inside and sat with he others, waiting for Jim to reappear.

Soon we were watching him from inside the tracking room while he sang Not To Touch The Earth on the other side of the soundproof glass. Most of the time his rich, urgent voice was unheard, while engineers and producer Paul Rothchild frittered and fettered down the instrumental track. Along with Ray Manzarek's searing organ and the sinister chords of Robby Krieger's guitar, we watched Morrison dance and sweat, the stallion muscularity contracting inside the glove-tight black leather jeans, while he wailed and belted out, "Nothin' left to do but run, run, let's run…."

That night, his face shaped pleasure - his eyes held light, interest, intensity. His mouth moved in motions of pleased surprise. He was all there. He argued, criticized, consented, refused, laughed, suggested. Pamela in a green velvet coat, waist long red hair, jerking her delicate jaw from side to side, followed his movements with her heavy-lashed urchin eyes, providing cigarettes, chain-smoking.

When he came into the tracking room, his body radiated heat. He seemed to glow in the dark, with a hot red aura. His presence was abristle with electricity, and he was in total charge of that massive voltage.

The last time I saw Morrison was in April of 1970 - almost fifteen months before he would slip on through to the other side, out of the lonely back door of Parisian hotel bathtub.

That April day, the 14th, he had just got in from Phoenix, where he had contended with an obscenity and disorderly conduct rap - the result of some clowning with a stewardess on board a flight to Phoenix several months before. He called and said he had "gotten out of it." We went to a house high in the windings of King Canyon, a house chilled and dust-veiled from a long absence of human presence.

In the front room, shriveled oranges like mummified heads filled a bowl, books lay split open on their spines, and dust made the print faint, greyed the picture of the Greek deity Themis, and beneath the book, a shiny rectangle of dustless wood. I replaced it carefully.

Moldy bread lay in the kitchen; on an empty refriderator, a lone, unopened bottle of cognac. In the bedroom, a wine glass by the bed had evaporated to a ruby drop at the bottom from a thin red line close to the rim. The sheets on the tousled bed smelled of coldness and mildew. Ivy reached its tentacles across the doorsills on the porches and across windowpanes as if seeking entry, stretching instinctively to take over the forgotten citadel. On the mirror in the bathroom, a message in red lipstick began, "You bastard…"

He moved more slowly that day, as though he carried an onerous weight with every motion, and this, maybe, was what made him look heavier. His eyes were duller, and he was tired, cruel and stubborn, inflicting pain with dumb frustration, barely hoping to shatter the blind boundaries and plastic facades that shut him out from all women he had ever known that were at that moment incarnated into this one puzzling woman.

His tenderness and brutality shoved each other aside, ursurping his mood by turns, battling through the motions of a lost cause, a defeated was against the pretenses that make people unreal.

Fifteen months later he gave up entirely and formally, conceding in body what he had granted in spirit, victory to the forces of decay and duplicity. The people close to him buried him quietly and private. They refused to allow an autopsy. An exhumation was prevented despite rumors of mysterious, deadly drugs, which continued to flourish and swarm pestily among the L.A. fringe circuit for years afterward.

If they had examined his dead body, I think surely what they would have found was that the cause of Jim Morrison's death was simple despair.

That April afternoon up in King's Canyon, he said, "I rely on images of violence, which bring the shock of pain, to penetrate the barriers people erect and defend, not simple defenses; the phony facades people live behind. Blocking their perceptions from coming in, and blocking their feelings from coming out. There are two ways I try to shatter those facades, or at least make a hole where something can get in, to let the trapped feelings out – one way is violence, pain. The other is eroticism."

At one point, taking the stand of "erotic politician" to the ultimate, Miami was Morrison's attempt to fuse the erotic with the violently shocking, taking up the bloody cloth from Lenny Bruce and straining it beyond its proprietary limits.

It was not the extradition tangle, the legal battle with police, lawyers, judges, that delivered the mortal wound and drained his spirit, so much as the failure of his revolutionist call to rise up and overthrow the shackles. Although detractors said that he lost control and "blew it" at that fatal Miami concert, it was neither accidental nor a mistake. He felt this, but few would share his view. Badly timed, maybe; not carefully calculated, granted – but it was the logical culmination of everything he was trying to say in words that seemed to go unheard.

To the city fathers, what was "indecent" exposure and "obscene" was at the same time, and more accurately, an overwhelming insurrection of instinctual, primal invocation, the animal-language, body-language pleas to the "television-children fed, the unborn living, living dead" to recognize their true nature, the reality of blood, nerves and feeling life.

He screamed, "WAKE UP!" a hundred times, in a hundred ways and verbatim - and few eyes had flickered. There was only one thing left to try, and he tried it, and it only served to show him how obstinately society would cling to it's shackles, protect its blinders, and publish those who unlock the doors if its cells.

"It my poetry aims to achieve anything," he told me, that April night, "it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel."

What destroyed him was their refusal to set themselves free.

Miami and the early months of '69 were some kind of turning point for him. When I saw him in September of that year, he was beginning to recover a mild current of the charge which had galvanized his work on those first three albums. Soft Parade had appeared that summer, and it was distinguished by a paucity of Morrison's dynamite presence and raw nerve lyrics; in style and content, it was a striking departure from its three predecessors.

But Morrison's energies were opening channels through fields less pop. His poetry, privately printed, handsomely bound, was making its way from hand to hand by that fall, 1969. The following spring, 1970, those poems were published in one volume called The New Creatures* by Simon and Schuster. Also, that was the season of creating Morrison Hotel, and Jim's deep interest in the blues had dug in and was filling him with renewed hopes and plans. He talked excitedly about the possibility of presenting a TV special on the history of the blues.

He indicated that he was setting his sights on a new audience, somewhat more canny than the ones who screeched for Light My Fire in big concert halls. He suspected strongly that if he could not shudder the masses with his vision, he might be able to reach a chosen few.

He had shaved his beard and looked almost like Morrison of early "ride the snake" nights at the Whisky. But there was a certain daimon that had left him and not returned. He was more solemn, smiled less readily, moved with low vibrancy, without the coiled, ready-to-spring tension, no longer weightless. He seemed almost saintly - calm, thoughtful, resigned. The bow string held back for 23 years and abruptly released - as he once described himself - was vibrating less intensely. He said, with a mocking laugh, "The love-street times are dead."

We walked down to the Garden Spot on La Cienega for dinner. That was the evening we talked about drugs. I told him about stories I'd heard of his acid escapades, and he laughed and said, "I'm not interested in drugs," almost scornfully, and lifted his martini glass towards me, rotating it slightly with a smile that said that this was the "Crystal Ship." Another time I offered him some speed, pot and once or twice some very superior downers, and he declined always, once with a derisive shake of his head, saying, "I don't need any pills."

That September night at the Garden Spot, we also talked about his lyrics, Nietszche's Birth Of Tragedy From The Spirit Of Music, the history of the blues, and William Blake. Are some really "born to sweet delight." and some "to endless night." Is flesh our prison? Morrison's questions and ideas were similar to Blake's in many ways, as were the two poets' conceptions of the human spirit, its entrapment in blind deadened flesh, and that the five senses are but atrophied filters of knowledge.

Jim said, "I think people resist freedom because they're afraid of the unknown. But that unknown was once very well known - its where our souls belong. The only solution is to confront them - confront yourself - with the greatest fear imaginable. Expose yourself to your deepest fear. After that, fear has no power, and fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You ARE free."

I asked what he meant by "freedom."

He said, "The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade your senses for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first. You can take away a man's political freedom and you won't hurt him - unless you take away his freedom to feel. That can destroy him."

I needed to understand how anyone could have the power to take away the freedom to feel.

Jim explained patiently, "Some people surrender that freedom willingly - but others are forced to surrender it. Imprisonment begins with birth. Society - parents - they refuse to allow you to keep the freedom you are born with. There are subtle ways to punish a person for daring to feel. You see that everyone around you has destroyed his true, feeling nature. You imitate what you see. Our culture mocks 'primitive cultures' and prides itself on suppression of natural instincts and impulses."

Over the sound system at the Garden Spot came the just released Beatles' Come Together - Jim was listening. "I like that song," he said.

We went back to the blue Shelby and he looked through the L.A. Times for a movie.

I asked a ponderous question: "Jim, does civilization have to be sacrificed to reclaim our freedom?"

"What is civilization?" he asked.

"City life, technology, habits, behavior, social rules, institutions, all of that."

"How important is `all that' to you? Is it more or less important to you than your freedom? If it's less important, then you can leave it alone. If it's more important, then you have to destroy it. By yourself - for yourself. Each person for himself. If you want your true self to survive.

In November of that year, on a rainy afternoon, Jim, his brother Andy, Jim's Irish pal Tom, publicity man Leon Barnard and I sat drinking boilermakers at the Palms Bar on Santa Moncia Blvd. Periodically, two or three of us would get up and shoot some pool. There was almost a fight between Jim and a big redneck pool-shark who got a little too belligerent.

Part of the time Jim sat and talked with me against the background din of the others - especially Tom - getting progressively more rowdy. Occasionally Tom teased me playfully, with phrases in foreign languages and dirty little jokes.

Jim was a master at holding his liquor. After seven or eight boilermakers (whisky shots with beer chasers) he was smooth, even, self-contained, articulate. But desensitized, no. If you looked closely, or brushed his consciousness with a slightest touch, there was that psyche like an exposed nerve, his raw, bare awareness, that nothing could muffle or shelter or insinuate.

He saw too much. Too seldom did he find respite in the sweet blindness that overtook the others. Something Tom said made Jim think of The Birth Of A Nation. Jim observed that this film was a classic, a definitive American epic. "America was conceived in violence," Jim said. "Americans are attached to violence. They attach themselves to processed violence, out of cans. They're TV-hypnotized. TV is the invisible protective shield against bare reality. Twentieth Century culture's disease is the inability to feel the reality. People cluster to TV, soap operas, movies, theatre, pop idols, and they have wild emotions over symbols, but in the reality of their own lives, they're emotionally dead."

We walked through the rain to Elektra Studios on La Cienega. Outside, Andy and Tom wrestled playfully, rolling in the mud below the steps. Paul Rothchild stood in the doorway and scolded them like a schoolmaster.

Inside, "Roadhouse Blues" got cooking with John Sebastian wailing on harp. Pamela was waiting with two of her women friends, all vogueishly dressed, amidst a crowd of L.A. ultras, "Strange Days" survivors, meandering around the tracking room, while Jim uttered his primal scream, "WAKE UP!!" in a vacuum, writhing and jerking in useless gestures of thwarted rebellion.

One thing Jim taught me that I never lost is to forget or dismiss shame over suffering, and in the same way, to fight fear of pain.

"Pain is meant to wake us up," he said, that night. "People try to hide their pain, but they're wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It's all in how you carry it. That's what matters."

I had heard plenty about Morrison's dealings with women. The L.A. gossip circuit was as rife with these legends as with those of his consumption of prodigious amounts of acid prior to mounting a bike and careening down the narrow windings of Laurel Canyon, screaming.

"I'm no biker," he said to that tale, and if the drug myths were inventions too, how reliable could the sex myths be?

I might have considered myself warned, but dismissed the hearsay. Even if it was that extreme, I had to find out for myself.

I am sure I was an anomaly among groupies, in beguiling him to spend so much of our time through the night talking, and playing with, of all things, his sexual philosophy.

"Sex is full of lies," he said. "The body tries to tell the truth, but it's usually too battered with rules to be heard, and bound with pretenses so it can hardly move. We cripple ourselves with lies."

But he was like a captive performing tiger, never quite tamed, never safe to turn your back on: at any moment could come the surprise lashing out of the big paw full of claws. He could be tender and funny and in the next instant, arrogant and mean.

At one point, I told him, "You look like a Greek god." He shook his head, laughing with the bashfulness and insecurity of any ordinary guy.

Between Waiting For The Sun and the day I closed the door of the ivy-netted house in King's Canyon, I talked with him, drank with him, spent nights with him, but most of all, took a moonlight dive into the "wet forests" and blue deeps of his mind.

Because my admiration for him stretched beyond carnality and beyond rock-star fixation into an overwhelming interest in the man's words, his ideas, his written and sung poetry, I found something more. He would astonish me with delight and with pain, and surprise me anew each time he gave me a chilling glimpse of his loneliness.

At three or five in the morning, sometimes, he called and said, "Come and get me. Come and take me away…" as though it was some winged denizen of heaven he had dialed.

He was a stranger, a "rider on the storm" thrown into this world. There was a shop on La Cienega, "Themis," where Pamela sold candles like giant unended root systems…and there was the argument over whether Jim was allowed to crash there at night. The first time he took me back to his hideout, we both struggled to pull his boot off a purple swollen foot, sprained when he kicked in an eight-by-ten plate glass window at the Doors' headquarters the previous night and jumped to the floor, ever in search of a "soul kitchen" to sleep all night in, refuge from the "stumbling neon grooves."

He was surrounded by an ever-present, teeming collection of buddies, gofers, groupies, associates and hangers-on. But when I said that I wanted to be his friend, he put his arm around me in quick acceptance, thanking me with feeling in his voice that I seriously recognized to be nothing other than need.

After he was gone, I was sorry about nothing except that I hadn't given him more. For what I did give. which was to plunge my greedy curiosity and eagerness into his mind in thirst for his ideas, had seemed to me no gift at all. But it was clear that it had seemed so to him, because he gave me so much in return - desperately careful in his explanations. only because he saw my craving to understand.

He always betrayed surprise when he saw that he had made himself understood, that his message had flown true and reached home and beat its wings in my innards. Of course, that was in the later days, when he felt his messages so fractionally received.

Jim Morrison was a revolutionary. He pitted the politics of eroticism against the bastion of unfeeling, rigid, insentience. He stormed the institution of flesh "that chains us," and "eyes that lie."

"The shaman is similar to the scapegoat," he said, as we walked through the rain on La Cienega and leaned inside a doorway against the wall, watching the cars crawl past. "I see the role of the artist as shaman and scapegoat. People project their fantasies onto him and their fantasies come alive. People can destroy their fantasies, by destroying him. I obey the impulses everyone has, but won't admit to. By attacking me, punishing me, they can feel relieved of those impulses."

"Isn't that what you meant about people having a lot of wild emotion over symbols - pop idols, for instance?" I asked.

"That's right. People are afraid of themselves - of their own reality - their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that's all bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they're afraid to feel?"

"Is that why you said, `my only friend, the End?"

"It's strange that people fear death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend."

We started walking back. The rain was coming harder, and we were lightly dressed. But the session break was over and he had to be back at the studio. It would be a long night.


* The Lords and The New Creatures

UNEDITED INTERVIEW SEGMENT: Lizzie: I think fans of The Doors see you as a savior, the leader who'll set them all free. How do you feel about that?

Jim: It's absurd. How can I set free anyone who doesn't have the guts to stand up alone and declare his own freedom? I think it's a lie – people claim they want to be free – everybody insists that freedom is what they want the most, the most sacred and precious thing a man can possess. But that's bullshit! People are terrified to be set free – they hold on to their chains. They fight anyone who tries to break those chains. It's their security…How can they expect me or anyone else to set them free if they don't really want to be free?

Lizzie: Why do you think people fear freedom?

Jim: I think people resist freedom because they're afraid of the unknown. But it's ironic…That unknown was once very well known. It's where our souls belong…The only solution is to confront them – confront yourself – with the greatest fear imaginable. Expose yourself to your deepest fear. After that, fear has no power, and fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.

Lizzie: What do you mean when you say "freedom"?

Jim: There are different kinds of freedom – there's a lot of misunderstanding….The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your senses for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first. ….You can take away a man's political freedom and you won't hurt him – unless you take away his freedom to feel. That can destroy him.

Lizzie: But how can anyone else have the power to take away from
your freedom to feel?

Jim: Some people surrender their freedom willingly – but others are forced to surrender it. Imprisonment begins with birth. Society, parents – they refuse to allow you to keep the freedom you are born with. There are subtle ways to punish a person for daring to feel. You see that everyone around you has destroyed his true feeling nature. You imitate what you see.

Lizzie: Are you saying that we are, in effect, brought up to defend and perpetuate a society that deprives people of the freedom to feel?

Jim: Sure….teachers, religious leaders – even friends, or so called friends – take over where parents leave off. They demand that we feel only the feelings they want and expect from us. They demand all the time that we perform feelings for them. We're like actors – turned loose in this world to wander in search of a phantom…endlessly searching for a half-forgotten shadow of our lost reality. When others demand that we become the people they want us to be, they force us to destroy the person we really are. It's a subtle kind of murder….the most loving parents and relatives commit this murder with smiles on their faces.

Lizzie: Do you think it's possible for an individual to free himself from these repressive forces on his own – all alone?

Jim: That kind of freedom can't be granted. Nobody can win it for you. You have to do it on your own. If you look to somebody else to do it for you – somebody outside yourself – you're still depending on others. You're still vulnerable to those repressive, evil outside forces, too.

Lizzie: But isn't it possible for people who want that freedom to unite – to combine their strength, maybe just to strengthen each other? It must be possible.

Jim: Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself – and especially to feel. Or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to – letting a person be what he really is….Most people love you for who you pretend to be….To keep their love, you keep pretending – performing. You get to love your pretense…It's true, we're locked in an image, an act – and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image – they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it – they feel like you're trying to steal their most precious possession.

Lizzie: It's ironic – it's sad. Can't they see that what you're trying to show them is the way to freedom?

Jim: Most people have no idea what they're missing. Our society places a supreme value on control – hiding what you feel. Our culture mocks "primitive cultures" and prides itself on suppression of natural instincts and impulses.

Lizzie: In some of your poetry, you openly admire and praise primitive people – Indians, for instance. Do you mean that it's not human beings in general but our particular society that's flawed and destructive?

Jim: Look at how other cultures live – peacefully, in harmony with the earth, the forest – animals. They don't build war machines and invest millions of dollars in attacking other countries who political ideals don't happen to agree with their own.

Lizzie: We live in a sick society.

Jim: It's true….and part of the disease is not being aware that we're diseased….Our society has too much – too much to hold on to, and value – freedom ends up at the bottom of the list.

Lizzie: But isn't there something an artist can do? If you didn't feel you, as an artist, could accomplish something, how could you go on?

Jim: I offer images – I conjure memories of freedom that can still be reached – like the Doors, right? But we can only open the doors – we can't drag people through. I can't free them unless they want to be free – more than anything else….Maybe primitive people have less bullshit to let go of, to give up. A person has to be willing to give up everything – not just wealth. All the bullshit he's been taught – all society's brainwashing. You have to let go of all that to get to the other side. Most people aren't willing to do that.

Lizzie: In your early, first album, stuff, there's a definite feeling of an apocalyptic vision – "break on through"- a transcendence. Do you see this as a still existing possibility?

Jim: It's different now. (Pause) It used to seem possible to generate a movement – people rising up and joining together in mass protest – refusing to be repressed any longer – like, they'd all put their strength together to break what Blake calls "the mind-forged manacles."…..The love-street times are dead. Sure, it's possible for there to be a transcendence – but not on a mass level, not a universal rebellion. Now it has to take place on an individual level – every man for himself, as they say. Save yourself. Violence isn't always evil. What's evil is the infatuation with violence.

Lizzie: What causes that?

Jim: If natural energy and impulses are too severely suppressed for too long, they become violent. It's natural for something that's been held under pressure to become violent in it's release…a person who is too severely suppressed experiences so much pleasure in those violent releases…they're probably rare and brief. So he becomes infatuated with violence.

Lizzie: But then – the real source of evil isn't the violence – or the infatuation with it – but the repressive forces.

Jim: That's true – but in some cases, a person's infatuation with violence involves a secret complicity with his oppressors. People seek tyrants. They worship and support them. They co-operate with restrictions and rules, and they become enchanted with the violence involved in their brief, token rebellions.

Lizzie: But why is that?

Jim: Tradition, maybe – the sins of the fathers. America was conceived in violence. Americans are attracted to violence. They attach themselves to processed violence, out of cans. They're TV - hypnotized – TV is the invisible protective shield against bare reality. Twentieth-century culture's disease is the inability to feel their reality. People cluster to TV, soap operas, movie, theatre, pop idols, and they have wild emotion over symbols. But in reality of their own lives, they're emotionally dead.

Lizzie: But why? What makes us run away from our own feeling?

Jim: We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.

Lizzie: I don't really understand.

Jim: Pain is meant to wake us up. People try and hide their pain. But they're wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It's all in how you carry it. That's what matters. (Pause) Pain is a feeling – your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you're letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.

Lizzie: Do you still see yourself as the shaman? I mean, lots of Doors fanatics look to you to lead them to salvation. Do you accept that role?

Jim: I'm not sure it's salvation that people are after, or want me to lead them to. The shaman is a healer – like a witch-doctor. I don't see people turning to me for that. I don't see myself as a savior.

Lizzie: What do you see them turning to you for, then?

Jim: The shaman is similar to the scapegoat. I see the role of the artist as shaman and scapegoat. People project their fantasies onto him and their fantasies by destroying him. I obey the impulses everyone has, but won't admit to. By attacking me, punishing me, they can feel relieved of those impulses.

Lizzie: Is that what you meant before, about people having a lot of wild emotions over symbols – pop idols for instance?

Jim: That's right. People are afraid of themselves – or their own reality – their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that's bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they're afraid to feel?

Lizzie: Is that why you said, "My only friend, the End"…..?

Jim: Sometimes the pain is too much to examine, or even tolerate….That doesn't make it evil, though – or necessarily dangerous. But people fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah – I guess it is a friend…..

Lizzie: People see sex as the great liberator – the ultimate freedom. Aren't a lot of your songs pointing the way to freedom through sex?

Jim: Sex can be a liberation. But it an also be an entrapment.

Lizzie: What makes the difference?

Jim: It's all a question of how much a person listens to his body – his feelings. Most people are too battered with rules to be heard, and bound with pretenses so it can hardly move. We cripple ourselves with lies.

Lizzie: How can we break through the rules and lies?

Jim: By listening to your body – opening up your senses. Blake said that the body as the soul's prison unless the five senses are fully developed and open. He considered the senses the "windows of the soul." When sex involves all the senses intensely, it can be like a mystical experience….

Lizzie: In some of your songs, you present sex as an escape – a refuge of sanctuary – like "Crystal Ship" or "Soft Parade" of "Soul Kitchen." I've always been fascinated by the way your lyrics suggest parallels between sex and death – "Moonlight Drive" is a beautiful example. But isn't this an ultimate rejection of the body?

Jim: Not at all – it's the opposite. If you reject your body, it becomes your prison cell. It's a paradox – to transcend the limitations of the body, you have to immerse yourself in it – you have to be totally open to your senses….It isn't so easy to accept your body totally – we're taught that the body is something to control, dominate – natural processes like pissing and shitting are considered dirty….Puritanical attitudes die slowly. How can sex be a liberation if you don't really want to touch your body – if you're trying to escape from it?

domingo, 27 de junho de 2010

Jim Morrison's house and garden on love Street in Laurel Canyon

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Here, listen to this while a naked Indian tells you all about this house in Laurel Canyon where Jim Morrison once lived with his girlfriend Pamela Courson. Rothdell Trail is the "Love Street" of the same-named Doors song. The three bedroom, one and three-quarter bathroom house, built in 1922, sits right behind the Canyon Country Store and comes furnished "with custom pieces designed for this home."The listing also mentions the "distressed floors, Iron fixtures, open beam ceilings," an "outdoor gym" (bit of a stretch there), and the "outdoor shower, located on the upper terrace" (with mature trees to block your bathing). But we're wondering if the most valuable thing in the house isn't "the 'hidden shower,' the home's original shower where Jim Morrison scrolled his writings, preserved and hidden behind the bathroom wall." Asking price is $1.199 million, and this is interesting--it last sold in 2001 for $535,000.


sábado, 26 de junho de 2010

The National: O rock perigoso


Eles não fazem as meninas tirar as cuecas e os meninos tomar drogas. Eles fazem as mulheres divorciar-se e os homens irem à farmácia buscar medicamentos. Os National são assunto de gente grande. E isso sim, é perigoso

Não é propriamente lisonjeiro para o rock'n'roll que a frase paradigmática que marca o início da sua história seja "A whop bop-a-lu a whop bam boo". E não deixa de ser sintomático que quem melhor a proferiu, Little Richard, fosse um homossexual que aí fingia ser um galifão com uma mulher em cada esquina.

Nessa maravilhosa canção traçou-se o caminho do rock'n'roll durante décadas: gente com esqueletos no armário transforma-se numa outra coisa que sempre desejou ou sempre achou que devia ser, e o sexo era laudado como objectivo único da vida. A mitologia transformou o rock'n'roll na banda-sonora do sexo, usando para isso todos os truques possíveis - menos palavras bem medidas.

Tivemos décadas disto e, acima de tudo, tivemos a mitificação "ad nauseum" disto, que atingiu o zénite quando alguém se lembrou de dizer que os Rolling Stones eram perigosos. Porquê? Porque faziam as meninas tirar as cuecas e punham os rapazes a tomar drogas. Destruíam os lares.

Não se duvida, mas falta acrescentar um pormenor: um pouco de literatura diz-nos que as meninas sempre foram céleres a tirar as cuecas, mesmo que sempre tenham sido magistrais a esconder essa sua excelsa qualidade. Em "O Cálice e a Espada", Riane Eisler fala-nos mesmo de sociedades mais próximas de regimes matriarcais em que o amor era livre e poligâmico. E recordando a "Medeia" será difícil sustentar que os lares só começaram a ser destruídos no dia em que as cachopas viram um sujeito de lábio de boi a berrar.

Que não se diminua o valor do rock'n'roll, tanto musical como sociológico. Mas que não se lhe atribua qualquer perigo - a explosão do rock na década de 60 é simples consequência da moral sufocante dos anos 50 que por sua vez é consequência da grande guerra. O rock estava no lugar certo no momento certo.

A questão é que para não se ser alinhado é preciso ter-se consciência do que está em jogo e para se ser rebelde é preciso - ao contrário do título do filme de Nick Ray - alguma causa. E isto implica inteligência e capacidade de usar as palavras.

Com a devida excepção do primeiro álbum dos Velvet Underground, isto só surgiu, no rock, no final da década de 70 com os Joy Division. Ian Curtis fez o favor de acabar depressa com qualquer veleidade intelectual que o rock pudesse ter e ainda assim dificilmente se poderá sustentar que os Joy Division não fossem uma banda adolescente. Os seus seguidores, com o suposto poeta maldito Ian McCuloch à cabeça, idem.

Andámos muitos anos assim até que os Radiohead conseguiram um feito extraordinário: fazer com que tudo na sua música, do uso de ruídos passando pela forma como o seu vocalista usava a voz ou as suas estranhas imagens literárias, se tornasse um símbolo da desagregação emocional que é marca do século XXI. Foi a primeira vez que o rock esteve próximo de ser adulto sem ser balofo (ao contrário, por exemplo, dos Pink Floyd).

É por isso que dizemos sem o mínimo pudor que os National são verdadeiramente a primeira banda de rock'n'roll perigosa que existiu ao cimo da Terra.

Todos os discos dos National são uma variação "ad infinitum" sobre aquilo a que poderíamos chamar "os indiferenciados": gente que se destaca pela sua absoluta falta de destaque, gente que não hesita em hesitar, que caminha passo firme para o tropeção, gente desconfortável com a sua temperatura, que não suporta o pouco peso que tem na vida dos outros.

Mas ao contrário dos Stones, as meninas que ouvem pela primeira vez os National não vão a correr trocar fluidos ou experimentar os simpáticos efeitos do Rohypnol. A descarga épica e emocional que os National produzem, associada à constante repetição de aforismos eficazes, levam a uma segunda atenção ao texto. E o texto, que à partida pode ser lido como simples confirmação de que a vida é por norma uma merda, revela-se de uma complexidade rara, abraça o erro, a queda e o disparate, sem nunca os glorificar (e isto é extraordinário no rock), comove-se por quem tropeça, não sabe se há-de ser hedonista e quando o é arrepende-se.

Isto é: está ideologicamente contra tudo o que os Stones representam. O discurso dos National é o da dúvida incessante, da culpa e do horror à culpa, do questionamento constante da ideia de identidade, do desdobramento constante das encruzilhadas que se apresentam ao ser humano.

Eles não fazem as meninas tirar as cuecas e os meninos tomar drogas. Eles fazem as mulheres divorciar-se e os homens irem à farmácia buscar medicamentos. Pela simples razão de nunca ninguém no rock ter pensado tanto e de forma tão apelativa com Matt Berninger.

Os Stones sempre foram uma brincadeira de adolescentes da mesma forma que tomar drogas sempre foi brincadeira de adolescentes, mesmo quando praticada por adultos, se não for pensada, se apenas for hedonismo puro.

Ao contrário, os National são assunto de gente grande. É a diferença entre um tipo sentir-se um super-homem porque toma a droga X, ou aguentar as angústias e calar porque tem crianças para tratar. E isso sim, é perigoso, e agora sim, há perigo numa guitarra eléctrica.

fonte:
http://ipsilon.publico.pt/musica/texto.aspx?id=256173

quarta-feira, 23 de junho de 2010

Manuscrito de John Lennon para a canção "A day in the life"


A letra manuscrita de John Lennon para a canção A day in the life, dos Beatles, foi vendida num leilão da Sotheby"s, em Nova Iorque, por 1,2 milhões de dólares (969 mil euros).

É uma página escrita dos dois lados, com notas a tinta azul e marcador de feltro, incluindo correcções e outras notas a vermelho. A canção, escrita com Paul McCartney, veio a constituir a faixa final do álbum Sgt. Pepper"s Lonely Hearts Club Band, de 1967, o oitavo da banda.

A Day in the Life ficou em 26º lugar na lista das 500 melhores canções de todos os tempos da revista Rolling Stone.

O comprador foi um anónimo norte-americano que licitou pelo telefone. O manuscrito pertenceu a Mal Evans, um empresário dos Beatles que morreu em Janeiro de 1976.

Segundo a leiloeira, o anterior recorde para uma letra do conjunto pertencia a All you need is love, vendida em 2005 por um milhão de dólares (808 mil euros).


Beach Boys again...




Os membros originais ainda vivos dos Beach Boys deram a entender que podem vir a reunir-se em breve. A mítica banda formada pelos irmãos Brian, Dennis e Carl Wilson (estes dois últimos falecidos) e o primo, Mike Love, pretende assinalar os 50 anos de existência com uma série de concertos, em 2011.



A revelação foi feita por Mike Love, o único membro original que ainda resta no grupo, em declarações ao Las Vegas Sun: «de certa forma tem sido non stop desde 1961. Estamos agora a afinar motores para o 50º aniversário para o qual vamos contar com o Brian Wilson. É muito triste que tenhamos perdido o Carl [Wilson] para o mesmo cancro de pulmão que matou o George Harrison [Beatles]. Foi uma época horrível para todos nós. Mas agora estou contente por o meu filho, Christian, estar no grupo».



Recorde-se que Dennis Wilson faleceu em 1983, enquanto o seu irmão, Carl, morreu em 1998. Além de Love e de Brian Wilson, os Beach Boys originais contavam ainda com Al Jardine, um dos membros actuais da banda de Brian Wilson. Espera-se agora o veredicto dos dois músicos sobre a reunião proposta por Mike Love.

David Fincher ~www.thesocialnetwork-movie.com

"Não se chega a 500 milhões de amigos sem fazer alguns inimigos" — podia ser o lema ambíguo das vertigens comunitárias desse fenómeno contemporâneo a que foi dado o nome de redes sociais. De facto, trata-se da sugestiva frase promocional do primeiro (e espantoso) cartaz de The Social Network, novo filme de David Fincher. O assunto é, precisamente, o nascimento do Facebook, com as figuras fundadoras de Mark Zuckerberg e Sean Parker interpretadas, respectivamente, por Jesse Eisenberg e Justin Timberlake.
Fincher baseia-se no livro The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal, de Ben Mezrich, adaptado para o cinema por Aaron Sorkin (criador da série televisiva The West Wing). A estreia americana está agendada para 1 de Outubro — o site oficial do filme, www.thesocialnetwork-movie.com, também pode ser acedido através do sugestivo www.500millionfriends.com.

quinta-feira, 17 de junho de 2010

«U2 360 at the Rose Bowl», U2


A lesão de Bono foi um pau numa engrenagem que não pode parar. «U2 360 at the Rose Bowl» é a antevisão do que poderão os concertos de Coimbra. E as notícias não são animadoras.
Há muito que a carreira dos U2 é alavacanda no marketing mas desta vez as contas saíram-lhes furadas. O lançamento de «U2 360 at the Rose Bowl» - gravado no ano passado - tinha como missão promover uma digressão norte-americana que acabou adiada devido à operação a que Bono foi sujeito. Os concertos acabaram reagendados mas este documento de palco não.

No regresso às grandes produções, os U2 seguem uma tendência óbvia da sociedade da informação: o desenho 360 do palco tem como objectivo criar um clima de proximidade com os fãs que esgotam os concertos meses antes de eles se realizarem mas por muito que a mensagem se dirija ao esbatimento de fronteiras, o palácio em que a banda vive não se compadece com comportamentos de classe média.

Em «U2 360 at the Rose Bowl» tudo é grandioso menos o mais importante. Por muito que os U2 se esforcem por não soar passadistas, há uma década de canções sofríveis que obriga a que os momentos gloriosos se situem antes do ano 2000. Uma das poucas excepções é «Magnificent» que, não por acaso, é uma criação recente com sabor a nostalgia.

O compromisso com o passado é mais forte que o presente e os únicos sinais de futuro da digressão que irá trazer os U2 a Coimbra em Outubro estão no embrulho do espectáculo, isto é no desenho do palco. Tudo o resto está demasiado dependente de um piloto automático, cansado de interpretar pela enésima vez «With Or Without You» ou «One».

U2
«U2 360 at the Rose Bowl»
Island/Universal

fonte: http://discodigital.sapo.pt/news.asp?id_news=38910

terça-feira, 15 de junho de 2010

Wendy & Lucy


Estreou na última semana entre nós, ao mesmo tempo que chegava ao DVD a edição (também local) de Old Joy (que tem como figura de destaque no elenco Will Oldham, ou seja, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy), o filme Wendy & Lucy. Ambos os filmes são assinados por Kelly Reichardt, realizadora com obra de grande relevo no actual panorama do cinema indie norte-americano.

Wendy & Lucy é a história de uma inesperada paragem numa viagem em busca de um novo lugar (a meta apontada ao Alasca). Wendy (Michelle Williams) vê-se obrigada a parar algures no Oregon, o seu velho carro recusando-se a dar mais um passo em frente, a reparação na oficina ao virar da esquina revelando-se tão fora do seu orçamento que o melhor é mesmo deixar a carroçaria por ali... Consigo viaja Lucy, uma cadela, que desaparece quando a deixa de trela amarrada frente a um supermercado onde é surpreendida a fazer “compras” sem as prever pagar… Sem telefone, sem carro, a procura de Lucy é então a agenda única no futuro imediato de Wendy. Do reencontro resultando depois uma decisão que fará o retomar do percurso uma viagem diferente.

fonte: http://sound--vision.blogspot.com/

segunda-feira, 14 de junho de 2010

Nothing Personal

Uma das velhas regras romanescas, eventualmente românticas, pode condensar-se na expressão clássica: "boy-meets-girl" — é uma promessa de ficção e, mais do que isso, a possibilidade de advento de um novo mundo. Nothing Personal, produção Irlanda/Holanda, escrita e realizada pela holandesa Urszula Antoniak, apresenta-se como uma peculiar variação sobre essa regra: porque ela (Lotte Verbeek) não quer encontrar ninguém e ele (Stephen Rea) não quer ser encontrado...Os Pet Shop Boys já cantaram tudo isto de forma exemplar, e exemplarmente irónica: I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Anymore. Em todo o caso, a musicalidade interior de Nothing Personal nasce, antes do mais, de um invulgar trabalho formal com as paisagens irlandesas [ver trailer]: através da sua presença, sentimos e pressentimos o labirinto de afectos em que dois seres se encontram, perdendo-se, vivem lidando com a proximidade da morte. Na sua singeleza e depuração, eis um filme que nos ajuda a resistir ao naturalismo agressivo das televisões, mesmo que isso seja mais um factor de solidão.



fonte: http://sound--vision.blogspot.com/

sábado, 12 de junho de 2010

Nico: A Short Biography











Nico was one of the most fascinating and mysterious women of the multimedia revolution of The Sixties, and long after that till the present day. She was born on October 16th, 1938, in Cologne, in Nazi-controlled Germany. At the age of two she was taken to the little town of Spreewald on the outskirts of Berlin where she lived together with her mother and grandfather, a railway man, through the end of World War II. Her father died in a concentration camp.
Fleeing from the Russian occupation in 1946, mother and daughter wound up in the ruined American Sector of Berlin where Christa (Nico's real name is Christa Päffgen) worked part-time as a seamstress. She was sent to school till she was 13 years old, then took a job selling lingerie. After a year, her mother found her work as a model with a Berlin fashion house.
At 15 she was sent to the Isle of Ibiza on assignment and met the photographer who gave her the name Nico after a recently departed boyfriend of his, called Nico Papatakis. Later on she also met him as the owner of a night-club in Paris. She first appeared in For the First Time, starring Mario Lanza and directed by Rudolph Maté in a short scene shot in Capri between June and November 1958. At Ibiza Nico began a lifelong involvement with the isle. On holidays at a friend's villa in Rome, Nico was invited to the set of La Dolce Vita. Fellini noticed her standing off in a corner and offered her a sizable role in the film on the spot. It was 1959.
Her reputation grew and she and her mother left for Paris where Nico was signed to a much larger modeling agency. Soon her picture was appearing in magazines and commercials all over the world. Paris was her home for the next five years, with frequent holidays in Ibiza.
In 1960 Nico went to New York to model and enrolled in Lee Strassberg's Method School, joining the same class as Marilyn Monroe, in preparation for a career as a serious actress. In November 1962 she had a big role in a French movie called Strip-Tease, where she did an act with a doll on stage at a club. She made her very first recording with Serge Gainsbourg producing the title song Strip-Tease, but it was Juliette Gréco's version that was released instead.
In 1964 she met Brian Jones, through him she met Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, and made her first record for his Immediate label: I'm Not Sayin, a Gordon Lightfoot song, produced by Jimmy Page.
Returning to New York later in 1964, Nico went back to work as a model and landed a job singing at the Blue Angel Lounge on 55th Street (all drinks 85¢). She had an affair with French actor Alain Delon, whom she had met in Italy in 1962, and had a child. Nico called the boy Ari. In that period everybody wanted to know that mysterious blonde girl, and gave her short but complete adoration.
Afterwards in Paris, Nico met Bob Dylan who urged her to pursue her career as singer and gave her a song: I'll Keep It with Mine, later recorded on the solo debut-album Chelsea Girl. Dylan wrote her a tribute on his album Blonde on Blonde called Visions of Johanna, later he introduced her to Andy Warhol who began to feature her in his and Paul Morrisey's experimental films.


Legend has it that Nico told Andy: 'I want to sing' and he introduced her to his latest protégés, The Velvet Underground, a part of Warhol's mixed-media Exploding Plastic Inevitable troupe until 1967. At that point Nico gave up modeling and spent a year touring with them. She joined then to sing in long improvisations as well as the classic Lou Reed compositions Femme Fatale, All Tomorrow's Parties and I'll Be Your Mirror. Even before the legendary Banana album was released she went her own way; the band worried about being eclipsed by her haunting, charismatic presence and forced her out of the line-up. The main reason was trouble between her, Lou and John Cale, jealously in love and hate, something Andy loved to witness.
But she had already begun singing at the downstairs bars of the legendary Dom Club, backed up by an ever-changing cast of guitar players including Tim Hardin, Tim Buckley, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, even three of The Velvets and most often the 16 year old Jackson Browne. For a while she lived with the young songwriter and recorded several of his early compositions in 1967 along with the song Dylan gave her, unrecorded Velvet Underground tunes like Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams and new Reed/Cale compositions for her solo-album Chelsea Girl.
The tone was set: her deep narcotic monotone voice became one of her trade-marks, as well as her low moans, high cheekbones and heavy make-up, a style resurrected by the goths, who anticipated the 'Nico From The Grave Look'. With John Cale as her producer she made three albums full of mysteries, loaded with strange sounds and feelings and she started touring in a small scale, mostly in France and Spain, sometimes in the early Seventies in New York's CBGB'S. Her performances in those times were unforgettable experiences; her singing, her playing on the old Indian pump organ, almost in a mystical intensity, echoing around the mind of the listener.
In 1969 she met film director Philippe Garrel in Italy and made ten movies with him over the next five years, shot on location in Iceland, Egypt and Death Valley. Most of these movies were long improvised scenes at the strangest places with a very hazy story, built around the main character.
1976—1979 found Nico more or less down and out in New York, she even had lost her manager and friend Lutz Ulbrich. She moved to London to record the Drama of Exile album in 1981, a record with an history of stolen master-tapes, re-recorded versions and most of all an unhappy Nico. But from that time her touring was more regular, mostly with young musicians, who brought a universal mystical oriental sound on stage, sometimes in contradiction with Nico's cool and static approach, always smoking and drinking, but always very intense and fragile in her performance. During this nowhere really at home. She loved things that were part of that.
After nearly a decade's wait she released in 1985 a new album, Camera Obscura, once again produced by John Cale. It was an album that placed Nico right in the middle of all the experiments that took place in the eighties. Some of the younger audience saw her as the return of a 'punk goddess', singing about the dark side of the street, but her performances became more and more a tribute to dead friends, a requiem-like atmosphere.
On 18 July 1988, she went for a bike-ride on the isle of Ibiza, she was visiting again, a bike rider of a healthy-living woman, almost clean of her narcotic past. people found her unconscious by the side of her bike, and took her to the Cannes Nisto Hospital, where she died at 8 pm of a brain hemorrhage. Not the thing we expected from the woman who always was living in places the sun couldn't reach, she remained in fact where she was, her whole life a mystery!
Her ashes were buried in Berlin, in a small cemetery in the Grunewald Forest, at the edge of the Wannsee, in to her mother's grave, Margarete Päffgen (1910-1970) on 16 August 1988, with a few friends playing a song from Desertshore on a cassette recorder ...


Liebes kleines MütterleinNun darf ich endlich bei Dir seinDie Sehnsucht und die EinsamkeitErlösen sich in Seeligkeit.
Adapted from Nico Songs 1965-1988.

sexta-feira, 11 de junho de 2010

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti

Este é o primeiro disco do resto da vida de Ariel Pink… Não só porque representa a sua estreia no catálogo da 4AD (recordemo-nos que em tempos foi a primeira força criativa exterior aos Animal Collective a editar pela Paw Tracks), mas também porque resulta de um trabalho de composição com um disco novo em vista (e não apenas um acumular de gravações anteriores, como acontecera em várias edições anteriores) e, mais que tudo, porque traduz o mais “arrumado” conjunto de canções alguma vez apresentado pelo músico que, desde há cerca de dois anos se apresenta integrado num contexto de banda, editando e actuando sob a designação Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffitti… Um dos principais rostos de uma atitude criativa centrada numa prática de trabalho solitário, atrás da porta fechada de um quarto, Ariel Pink venceu a fronteira desse isolamento. Mas nem por isso rompe definitivamente com as marcas com as quais foi talhando a sua identidade. Apesar de mais “limpo” que nunca, o som ainda revela afinidades com a cultura lo-fi. E pelas canções (e há aqui grandes canções!) correm ecos de um gosto de horizontes largos que abarcam tanto as heranças da luminosidade de um Brian Wilson nos anos como o gosto pela complexidade cénica do progressivo de 70 ou um interesse pelas formas da cultura pop/rock alternativa dos oitentas. Round And Round, o cativante single que antecedeu o disco revelara já um sentido pop que aqui conhece novas sequelas. Before Today é disco cujo retrato é impossível de tirar a uma primeira audição. Pelo contrário pede reencontro, a cada qual as formas ganhando maior nitidez, revelando aos poucos os recantos um dos mais desafiantes álbuns pop/rock dos últimos tempos.
Publicada por Nuno Galopim em http://sound--vision.blogspot.com/

quinta-feira, 10 de junho de 2010

Flaming Lips to release Pink Floyd covers album on CD


Dark Side Of The Moon' out this summer



The Flaming Lips are set to release their 'Dark Side Of The Moon' covers album.The tribute to the Pink Floyd classic was recorded with the likes of Henry Rollins, Peaches and their friends Stardeath and White Dwarfs.The album has previously been available digitally and as a limited edition vinyl, but will now be available on CD from June 28.The band have only performed the record live once, in their native Oklahoma City last New Year's Eve

quarta-feira, 9 de junho de 2010

Norte no Cineclube de Aveiro

FESTIVAL DE BERLIM 2009: PRÉMIO DA CRÍTICA INTERNACIONAL
Jomar Henriksen é um ex-esquiadguarda numa pista de esqui, vivendo sem propósito nem objectivos, com a bebida como única companhia. Até que descobre que é pai de um menino de quatro anos que vive no Norte e, decidido a mudar o rumo da sua vida, põe-se a caminho. Na maior jornada de toda a sua vida, com as belíssimas paisagens da Noruega como pano de fundo, Jomar vai encontrar pessoas capazes de lhe ensinar uma nova maneira de encarar o mundo.
Primeira longa-metragem de Rune Denstad Langlo, venceu o Prémio da Crítica Internacional no 59º Festival de Berlim, onde foi o filme de abertura da secção Panorama.

“(...) não se antipatiza com "Norte". (...) Parece irreverente, sem nunca deixar de ser inócuo. O gosto do dia, portanto.” Luís Miguel Oliveira, Público

Título original: NordAno: 2009Realização: Rune Denstad LangloInterpretação: Anders Baasmo Christiansen, Kyrre Hellum, Marte Aunemo, Mads Sjøgård PettersenOrigem: NoruegaDuração: 78 minClassificação: M/12

terça-feira, 8 de junho de 2010

Em Agosto, os Arcade Fire chegam aos subúrbios


Na semana passada, os irmãos Will e Win Butler explicaram à rádio americana NPR Music o significado do nome do disco, "The Suburbs"


Continuamos a aguardar ansiosamente o novo álbum dos Arcade Fire, e a contagem decrescente tem sido fértil em novidades. Os canadianos revelaram finalmente a data de lançamento do novo disco (2 de Agosto), embora sublinhem que "ainda estão a terminar" o álbum (começaram a gravá-lo no mês passado).

Na semana passada, os irmãos Will e Win Butler explicaram à rádio americana NPR Music o significado do nome do disco, "The Suburbs" (correm rumores de que será um álbum duplo). "Nascemos numa cidade muito pequena da Califórnia, na fronteira com o Nevada", explicou Win, citado pelo "New Musical Express". "Mudámo-nos para Houston quando éramos novos. Sendo nós crianças tão pequenas, foi como ir para Marte. [No álbum], tentámos falar sobre esse sentimento". Mais um regresso à infância, portanto. Sobre a música do disco, Will disse que "há dois pólos, um mais rock'n'roll, o outro mais electrónico", e que o álbum se situa "entre esses dois extremos".

Enquanto esperamos por "The Suburbs", o site da banda dá-nos muito que fazer: podemos encomendar o álbum, descarregar as canções "The suburbs" e "Month of May" (uma edição limitada dos singles foi despachada para lojas de discos independentes), ver algum do trabalho gráfico do novo álbum (incluindo uma fotografia antiga dos subúrbios de Houston), e ainda ler a letra da canção que dá o nome ao disco (e brincar com ela...).
fonte:
http://ipsilon.publico.pt/Musica/texto.aspx?id=258192

segunda-feira, 7 de junho de 2010

Harlen ~ Friendly Ghost

Fica aqui "Friendly Ghost", é ou não é uma ida ao parque na Primavera.
Like a walk in the park in Spring

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sexta-feira, 4 de junho de 2010

Harlen

Só dançar é preciso


Os Harlem são das melhores coisas que o rock'n'roll tem para nos oferecer. Querem dar alegria a quem os ouve. Sem idolatrias: como nos diz Michael Coomers, eles não são assim tão importantes
Os Harlem, que vivem em Austin, no Texas, e que intitularam o seu segundo álbum "Hippies", apesar de não haver neles um grama de incenso "peace & love", são uma banda de guitarras. O impulso que os guia parece o mesmo que animava as bandas americanas que, depois de apanharem o turbilhão da "British Invasion", se enfiaram em garagens e, com meios precários, desataram a anunciar a libertação. São filhos do punk que dinamitou os pés de barro do mastodonte progressivo (e a "voice box" de Peter Frampton) para devolver a música ao povo.
Esclarecido este ponto, acrescente-se que os Harlem são, a par de Strange Boys e Black Lips, das melhores coisas que o rock'n'roll, arte de guitarras, tem para nos oferecer nestes tempos. Tudo reduzido ao essencial: uma batida e uma voz cantando sobre as coisas importantes da vida. No caso deles: romance em cemitérios, "strippers", cães de três pernas, "babys", outro tipo de alegrias e um par de irritações.
Ora, quando apanhamos Michael Coomers do outro lado do mundo, o vocalista, guitarrista e baterista (vai trocando de posição com o vocalista, guitarrista e baterista Curtis O'Mara; o baixista José Boyer não larga o baixo), dir-nos-á algo curioso. No seu discurso torrencial, com as ideias atropeladas pelo entusiasmo, exclama: "Há álturas em que gostaria de me livrar da porra da guitarra. Experimenta passear numa lixeira e de certeza que encontrarás, no mínimo, três guitarras. Se quiseres partir um côco e não tiveres nada mais à mão, pegas numa pedra grande. Com a guitarra é o mesmo". Depois fala-nos de música japonesa que ouviu recentemente, "completamente atonal, só címbalos, nada de guitarras" - está muito insistente neste ponto -, e de como adorou aquela novidade. E há-de acabar a dissertação com uma proclamação: "Adoraria ver uma banda nigeriana de sintetizadores. Dois gajos nigerianos e dois sintetizadores... Passaria o tempo a ver concertos deles. Seria tão bom, tão incrível."
Que possa existir algum tipo de contradição entre a banda que tem e as declarações acima nem chega a ser para Coomers uma questão a discutir. Tem uma certeza: "Queremos fazer música áspera e sem adornos" - e por isso, para gravar "Hippies", a banda recorreu a "um gajo que nem era produtor, era o gajo que carregava no 'rec'". Tem ódios de estimação: "Agora anda tudo com a conversa do 'há novos sons no ar' por causa da 'chillwave' [designação recente para bandas como Neon Indian ou Toro Y Moi]. Podem dizer que é um novo género, que são pessoas a arriscar, mas não passa de música terrível, horrorosa." E tem um método: "Queremos canções que soem como se as tivéssemos feito ontem - porque é exactamente o que fazemos". Assim nos aproximamos daquilo que torna os Harlem uma grande banda.
Estamos perto quando Coomers dispara uma provocação: "Não faço a mínima ideia como o Phil Spector fazia as suas canções. Não me preocupo com música o suficiente para que isso me interesse. Reajo a música da mesma forma que reajo a uma pintura. Se tem impacto, não me interessa se foi pintada a óleo ou com merda de cão. É uma pintura." Ora, os Harlem pretendem precisamente isso. Provocar uma reacção imediata: dar alegria a quem os ouve. Sem espaço para idolatrias. Como Coomers não se cansa de afirmar, eles não são assim tão importantes. E eis-nos por fim chegados à grandeza dos Harlem: talento unido a um total despojamento de ego. "Aquilo que nos diverte quando tocamos é ver as pessoas abandonarem-se ao momento, pegarem nos seus amigos e dançarem sem sequer olhar para o palco. A banda é quase secundária."
A "cena" de Austin
O primeiro álbum dos Harlem, "Free Drugs", foi lançado em 2008 numa edição de autor de 500 cópias que eles pensaram mais do que suficientes. Mas as pessoas reagiram àquele espírito efusivo e contagiante, as cópias esgotaram, a Matador correu a contratá-los e, agora que têm uma editora que lhes paga bons jantares, sentem-se como "a banda que invade uma festa indie para a qual não foi convidada": "Estão lá os miúdos ricos, todos a usar Chanel e nós aparecemos, despejamos refrigerantes sobre toda a gente e divertimo-nos até que, inevitavelmente, acabem por nos expulsar".
Os Harlem vivem em Austin, terra do festival South by Southwest, dos Strange Boys ou dos Black Angels. Nos últimos tempos, é habitual ouvir falar de uma "cena" na cidade, protagonizada por bandas ancoradas nas raízes do garage e do psicadelismo. Eis a famosa cena de Austin, descrita por Michael Coomers: "Ensaiamos na velha casa sem ventilação e cheia de gatos onde vivo. Os vizinhos são simpáticos e só alguns é que chamam a polícia. Há uma mulher que costuma entrar-nos em casa com a guitarra para 'jammar' e uma rapariga de 14 anos que vive ao fundo da rua e que põe sempre a nossa música a tocar quando passamos. É porreiro." Atentem no espírito de colaboração entre bandas: "O Ryan [Sambol, vocalista dos Strange Boys] aparece lá por casa de vez em quando, mas não vem de guitarra ao ombro para nos mostrar uma canção ou para tocar connosco. Quando o vejo, pergunto-lhe com quem tem andado a foder."
Pode ser que os Harlem façam depois uma canção sobre os casos de Sambol, pode ser que a ouçamos num concerto da banda. Claro que, para eles, tudo isso é secundário. Só dançar é preciso. Olhar para a banda não tem interesse nenhum.

fonte:http://ipsilon.publico.pt/musica/entrevista.aspx?id=257167

quarta-feira, 2 de junho de 2010

Rita Red Shoes ~Lights & Darks


O segundo álbum de Rita Redshoes tem como título «Lights & Darks» e data de edição marcada para 14 de Junho. De acordo com a artista, o disco foi «inspirado em sítios por onde passei nos últimos 10 meses e em livros que fui lendo ao longo deste mesmo período«. Parte dessas inspirações foram retiradas das mais variadas áreas: na pintura, de ambientes e texturas do Renascimento; na literatura, de escritores como D. H. Lawrence, Albert Camus ou Florbela Espanca; e na música, de alguns compositores como Les Baxter, Henry Mancini ou Arthur Lyman.
«Lights & Darks» contou com a produção de Nelson Carvalho, também produtor de «Golden Era», sendo composto por 14 temas. O tema de abertura do album é «Captain Of My Soul» – o primeiro single já a rodar nas rádios nacionais.
A ficha técnica do novo disco de Rita Redshoes apresenta Filipe Cunha Monteiro nas guitarras e no baixo e Rui Freire na bateria e percussões. Depois, há uma extensa lista de convidados como Dana Colley, Pedro Gonçalves, Paulo Furtado (The Legendary Tigerman), Ricardo Fiel, Paulo Borges e José Pino.
Em «Lights & Darks», Rita Redshoes convidou alguns criativos das mais variadas áreas da imagem com quem ao longo da sua carreira se tem cruzado artisticamente para a elaboração de curtas-metragens em torno dos temas deste disco. O resultado é o DVD que integra a Special Edition e que se chama «Thirteen Films About Lights & Darks».«Lights & Darks» será editado no dia 14 de Junho nos formatos Special Edition, Standard Edition e Special Digital Edition.Os compradores destas edições terão ainda a possibilidade de efectuar o download de um tema extra no site da artista.