there was a young man from tassie..

Get Back [1969]

As the Beatles continue to crack,
Paul produces a plan to Get Back.
But the tensions intrude:
John and Yoko pose nude,
And the two of them struggle with smack.

Get Back, the lost Beatles album of 1969, went through two track-listings but was never released in either form. Over a year later it emerged, reworked, as Let It Be.


Much much more of the The Beatles’ Discography in Limerick Form at Speedysnail by Rory Ewins, expat living in Edinburgh.

customer service

Here in Aberdeen my nephew at Uni does casual work at a large UK wide discount sporting clothes chain. All staff were paid to go to a meeting the other night. The subject was the new manager and some new rules.

One rule was not putting your own favourite music on the store system. A rule enthusiastically supported by my nephew as “we were getting crap from Radiohead, through to Metallica and Artic Monkeys”

My favourite new rule was: “No Swearing at Customers”

A hard rule for Scotland but hey it’s an EU country now.

Uncle FX’s advice: “Fuck that for a joke”

history quiz

kinky jew governor conspiracy

"Sadly, we Texans are beset by what is best described as a stale smorgasbord of choices for governor that is enough to turn the stomach of any right-minded resident of the Lone Star state.

The only bright spot is Kinky Friedman, who wears a cowboy hat, smokes a cigar, and tosses off one-liners. He can sing, play the guitar, and writes mystery novels. Kinky is often downright funny. He has a day job, so he doesn't have to suck up to special interests. He is clearly the most qualified to serve.

Therefore, our endorsement goes to Kinky Friedman for Governor of the State of Texas." ..more ....Round Top Register


"The Daily News endorses Richard “Kinky” Friedman, independent, for governor of Texas.........."..The Galveston County Daily News

practical mystical

Cathedral Killarney

euroland

Greetings from Skibbereen http://www.skibbereen.ie/
I'm just off to the Famine Museum: http://www.skibbheritage.com/

We have been soaking in the true Celtic experience - Australian barmen in Scotland, Polish waitresses in Ireland and Scotland and Swedish bargirls and B&B managers in Ireland. A glass of wine is always Hardy's, Wolf Blass or Jacobs Creek and a small Irish flag is made in Pakistan.

In other unfamiliar news, TV and newspaper comentariat is concerned that housing prices are too high, the boom can't last, a nursing home has been exposed for bad care of the elderly and there are concerns about teenage binge drinking.

We are heading up to Dublin to day for a couple of days
and will visit Newgrange then back to Aberdeen on Monday
http://www.knowth.com/newgrange.htm

We have been at Dingle for a few days http://www.dingle-peninsula.ie/

At Dingle there is a political row over the name change to Irish only:
read here: http://www.dinglename.com/

dunnottar castle

Dunnottar Castle. As seen in various films. Just up from Stonehaven - home of the deep fried mars bar.

rebus edinburgh - oxford bar

This is the favourite bar of Rebus in the books of Ian Rankin, who also likes to drink here. Front bar holds about 8 people standing up, back room about 15 at tables.

Afterwards we had coffee at The Elephant House also mentioned in at least two Rebus books. The Harry Potter first book was also written here at a back table.

Late at night we went to a session to listen to a famous scottish fiddler at the also famous Sandy Bell's Pub.

adam smith grave - swept clean

For Nic Gruen, Quiggin and the catallaxy boys: Adam Smith's grave in Edinburgh. Hard to find in graveyard, according to a local 'tha's te stop busloads of ignorant yank neo-cons tramping in and oot of graveyard'.

Below a snap of the headstone - above a snap of a yellow £4.32 price tag on slab - I couldn't make up my mind if the tag was an accident of wind or a deliberate political, or philosophical statement or some post modern irony or even art.

myth busted

It's always used as an example par exellence of how bad Scottish eating habits are, and in a land where the Health Minister has just proposed giving people lessons on how to eat fruit, one could be forgiven for resisting the taste test.

Visiting Stonehaven, the birthplace, a typical cute place just above Aberdeen that's probably 'had a film made here', I wasn't going to miss the opportunity to sample.

Place didn't open till 4 pm and there was a small queue waiting (what else do queues do but wait I wonder). Was clean and modern inside. We shared one amongst 5 of us. I can report it was surprisingly good and tasty.

Surrounded in a thin crunchy coating of clean, light coloured, flakey, tempura type slightly sweet batter, it was melted in the centre and broken into 5 pieces. We all were shocked at the layered tastes and texture. We decided that as an after meal tidbit with coffee that a half one would be a sensation.

We were reassured, however, by the token teenager present that it was indeed possible, nay, likely, to find that most places selling the DFMB were delivering a greasey, limp lump of gooey chocolate slop.

Note: Back from checking out Rebus landmarks and bars in Edinburgh and generally having too much fun to post about things at all.

blog meet pictures melbourne

The photo above is of the blog meetup in Melbourne on the occasion of Mark Bahnisch coming down to the southern delta. The bloggers were behind the camera so you can see what they saw. Going clockwise there is Nic Gruen, Lucy Tartan, C.I Balcony, B. Oynton, Gum OTrosky, Nab Akov, Will Typeforfood, Rex Ringschott, Door Ian, B. Arista, A. Grogblog, Mark LP, Will Burroughs-Baboon, and others.

Then we had a meal of chilies.

The chilies must have hopped people up because when we went back to the bar it all seemed to go downhill fast. It might have also had something to do with the crystal ice they were all smoking and the vodka being swigged out of the bottle.

Barista had a jibe at After Grog Tones about the doof music and then Tones said it wasn't his bloody idea anyway and why didnt barista jump on his bloody bike and peddle off to listen to Johnny Farnham. With that barista headbutted AGB then kneed him in the vicinity of the groin area.

Well Toney being a big fella straightened up and grabbed barista around the neck and they fell to the floor, somehow barista got to his feet again and stared laying the boots into Tones while he was down. Boynton, Lucy Tartan and Balcony started screaming, and although dressed in short tight summer skirts of flimsy material and tottering around on stilettos they all started flailing into barista with their handbags.

Typeforfood made some comment to nabakov pertaining to Nabs 3 piece worsted tweed country suit and tie and something about the pearl handled walking stick. With that Nabs clocked him with the stick, Willtype went down as well, knocking over Dorian and Lucy in the process. Nic Gruen who had been collecting cigarette butts out of the ashtrays in order to roll a bumper, tried to pull people off but was floored when Rex Ringschott whacked him over the head with a half full bottle of Corio.The women were yelling and screaming and bonyton broke her high heels and pushed Gummo into the melee, WBB was asleep on the couch when something caused a table full of empties to crash on to him he woke with shout and came up punching.

Just then the bouncer came running in from outside and tackled Nic Gruen and threw him out the door, next there was a siren and the paddy van arrived. The uniformed boys looked like the ones who had been rejected from the Armed Robbery Squad for lack of sensitivity to clients needs and they proceeded to throw Tones on the floor face first and cuff him, then they moved on and thwacked Gummo over the head with a truncheon, grabbed one of the women and cuffed her, then spotting the ringleader, barista, grabbed him, frog marched him to the divvy van and chucked him inside face first along the floor, but not before he had given one of them a black eye.

Just then I realized I hadn't said much to Mark. Crunching across broken glass and skidding on blood and mucus I put out my hand "Welcome to Melbourne Blog Meet Mark, sorry its not as exciting as Sydney mate". I never heard his reply as he was tackled from behind by the steroid enhanced bouncer and thrown in the divvy van.

I picked up a loose shoe or two off the floor, someones wallet and a packet of quick eze and walked outside into the side lane putting as much distance as I could between myself and the writerly ones.

As I walked past the games arcades on Russell Street near MacDonalds, I spied Rex Ringschott staggering around, blood dripping from his left eye, and trying to score a bag of scag whilst hanging onto the arm of a huge maori transvestite. I wriggled him away, poured him into a taxi, gave the driver a $50 and told Rex "C'mon look smart mate."

I walked around to Collins up the steps of the Melbourne Club and as I sat in the lounge, cognac in hand, cigar in ashtray I pondered if this blogging caper would ever take off.

friday cat blogging

Seeing as the week after next I'll be in Ireland, and the other day Barry Jones quoted from The Second Coming in an interview and suggested it might help understand these times, I thought I'd post an Irish Cat.

The worst are full of passionate intensity - indeed

William Butler Yeats - Cat of the Week.

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

and peace be with you too

Yesterday’s funeral mass was held in the chapel. The seats were padded. As it is part of a retirement complex for church professionals I wasn’t altogether surprised to see nuns and priests. I was just surprised to see about 6 elderly priests all in vestments and 15 nuns in habits.

Not being a regular attendee at mass the use of English still seems new to me and I follow the kneeling, sitting, standing rituals as clumsily as a bemused proddy. The turning around and shaking hands greeting bit startles me and feels uncomfortably like a hug from a concerned marriage counselor.

Nevertheless I was impressed that they were using incense and I was moved by the look of serenity that washed and rejuvenated the faces of the frail priests and nuns in wheelchairs when they received the communion wafer. The combined effect of the incense and orqan music induced the reverie from old and I was thinking about death, my funeral, other funerals, belief in after-life and especially transubstantiation. My thoughts went to the communants who accept that this is the body and blood of Christ, not a representation. For some reason I drifted to Lacan, postmodernism and the hours we spent at school discussing transubstantiation, then back to belief, death and spirituality. It was a good mood, solemn, thoughtful, sad but not unhappy.

Then, just as the incense was swinging again, the silence was punctured by a mobile phone chirping in the chapel. I looked around for the idiot with a disapproving frown.

Even though it was only micro seconds, I’m still red faced at the thought of how long it took me punch off the phone after I registered that the vibration on my mobile was connected to the ringing.

friday cat blogging

"Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it."

Abe Saffron, "colourful Sydney racing identity", died on Sept 14, 2006.

In 1962 Abe bought out Lenny Bruce, who walked out on stage in his first show in Sydney and said "What a fucking wonderful audience". He was promptly arrested and banned from performing in Australia.

On Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band 12" (1967) the cover art depicts Lenny Bruce, top row, fourth from left.

His last performance was on June 26, 1966 at the Fillmore in San Francisco, on a bill also featuring Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention.

Lenny Bruce - Cat of The Week

friday cat blogging

Talking about the weed, as we were last week with Cat of the Week Stuff Smith, who wrote the most famous weed song, "Youse a Viper", in the "who'd have ever thought it" category:

On Sept 18 last week the police pulled over a tour bus on the highway in Louisiana and searched it. The search turned up 1.5 pounds of marijuana and 0.2 pounds of psychoactive mushrooms.

Willie Nelson, 73-years-old, and his 75-year-old piano-playing sister, Bobby were busted with for possession of marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms. Willie was on the road again after performing in Montgomery, Alabama for a tribute to Hank Williams. Hank would have been 85.

it's easy as abc

I only just tuned in about 30 minutes ago after getting home late. I'm listening to Lucinda Williams Live right now. I had to check the station. Yup. It's ABC AM local radio. Seems there is a strike on. No idea why they are on strike but the music sure has improved. As far as I can tell they are re-broadcasting DIG.

Keep it up. One out all out. Never give in.

Now with a bit of luck ABC FM will go on strike and music will improve there too. I wish they had a PayPal site so I could donate to keep them out.

modern times poetry in motion

At 63 Bob is still making waves, and MP3s (small digital music joke). The highlight for me is the 20 or so Theme Time Radio Hours on XM Radio I have where Bob oozes mesmerisingly and seductively through the airwaves as a late night radio DJ, in the old sense of the word, like say Wolfman Jack. The highlight for others has been his completion of the trilogy of recent albums with Modern Times. Yet to be reviewed by me, or Floppy, or the 3 Ss, Sheil, Soon and Shaun. Perhaps we'll all do it on the same day.

Not today. Today I've noticed this snippett in the Belfast Telegraph via the New York Times. The Times has talked to a bob watcher, Scott Warmuth, a radio disc jockey based in New Mexico, who has picked up that many of the lyrics on Modern Times bear a similarity to lines by Civil War poet Confederate Henry Timrod. Warmuth said he found 10 instances on the album where Dylans lyrics are similar to Timrod's poetry.

Warmuth told the New York Times: I think thats the way Bob Dylan has always written songs. Its part of the folk process, if you look from his first album to now. But he said he still considered Dylans work to be original. You could give the collected works of Henry Timrod to a bunch of people but none of them are going to come up with Bob Dylan songs, he said.

Mr. Warmuth noted that Mr. Dylan may also have used a line from Timrod in Cross the Green Mountain, a song he wrote for the soundtrack to the movie Gods and Generals, which came out three years ago. Mr. Warmuth said there also appeared to be passages from Timrod in Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, a song on Love and Theft.

Born in 1828, Timrod worked as a private tutor on a plantation before the Civil War. Many of his earlier poems were about nature, but with the outbreak of war he started to write about the hardships caused by the conflict and its impact on peoples lives.Though he is today considered a minor poet, the Victorian poet Alfred Lord Tennyson described him as the Poet Laureate of the Confederacy. Timrod died of tuberculosis in 1867.

Mr. Dylan does not acknowledge any debt to Timrod on Modern Times.The liner notes simply say All songs written by Bob Dylan (although some fans have noted online that the title of the album contains the letters of Timrods last name).

Nor does he credit the traditional blues songs from which he took the titles, tunes and some lyrics for Rollin and Tumblin and Nettie Moore.

This isn't the first time fans have found striking similarities between Mr. Dylans lyrics and the words of other writers. On his last album, Love and Theft, a fan spotted about a dozen passages similar to lines from Confessions of a Yakuza, a gangster novel written by Junichi Saga, an obscure Japanese writer. Other fans have pointed out the numerous references to lines of dialogue from movies and dramas that appear throughout Mr. Dylans oeuvre. Example: Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word echoes a line from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. [Just today I heard Bob say on Themetime that Tennessee Williams was his favourite playright - fxh]

For instance, the lines in his song When the Deal Goes Down, in which Dylan sings: More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours, bear a striking resemblance to lines contained in Timrods A Rhapsody of a Southern Winter Night, which reads: A round of precious hours, Oh! Here where in that summer noon I basked, And strove, with logic frailer than the flowers. Elsewhere in the same song, Dylan sings Where wisdom grows up in strife very similar to a line in Timrods poem Retirement, which reads: There is a wisdom that grows up in strife.

Christopher Ricks, a professor of the humanities at Boston University who wrote Dylans Visions of Sin, a flattering study of the musician, said, I may be too inclined to defend, but I do think its characteristic of great artists and songsters to immediately draw on their predecessors.He added that it was atypical for popular musicians to acknowledge their influences.

Mr. Ricks said that one important distinguishing factor between plagiarism and allusion, which is common among poets and songwriters, is that plagiarism wants you not to know the original, whereas allusion wants you to know.

When Eliot says, No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be, to have a line ending to be when the most famous line uttered by Hamlet is to be or not to be then part of the fun and illumination in the Eliot poem is that you should know it, he said. But he added: I dont think Dylan is alluding to Timrod. I don't think people can say that you're meant to know that its Timrod.

No doubt about it, there has been some borrowing going on, said Walter Brian Cisco, who wrote a 2004 biography of Timrod, when shown Mr. Dylans lyrics. Mr. Cisco said he could find at least six other phrases from Timrods poetry that appeared in Mr. Dylans songs. But Mr. Cisco didnt seem particularly bothered by that. I'm glad Timrod is getting some recognition, he said.

James Kibler, a professor of English at the University of Georgia who teaches the poetry of Timrod in his Southern literature classes, was delighted to hear of Mr. Dylans use of the verse. If I were Timrod, I would love it, he said. I would say hes doing a great honor to Timrod and lets celebrate that. Mr. Kibler said he planned to share Mr. Dylans references with his classes because his students probably know more about Bob Dylan than Timrod.

Dylans debt -

Henry Timrod
A round of precious hours
Oh! here, where in that summer noon I basked
And strove, with logic frailer than the flowers ...
(A Rhapsody of a Southern Winter Night)

Bob Dylan
More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours.
(When the Deal Goes Down)

Henry Timrod
There is a wisdom that grows up in strife
(Retirement)

Bob Dylan
Where wisdom grows up in strife
(When the Deal Goes Down)

Henry Timrod
Which, ere they feel a lovers breath,
Lie in a temporary death
(Two Portraits)

Bob Dylan
In the dark I hear the night birds call
I can hear a lovers breath
I sleep in the kitchen with my feet in the hall
Sleep is like a temporary death
(Workingmans Blues number 2)

Henry Timrod
How then, O weary one!
Explain
The sources of that hidden pain?
(Two Portraits)

Bob Dylan
Cant explain the sources of this hidden pain
(Spirit on the Water)

FXH says: Me. I'm old skool, I'm following it on r.m.d, (rec.music.dylan) where I started trading tapes years ago. Others will be stoushing on Dylan Pool. Join in.

friday cat blog

Stuff Smith, whose birthday was yesterday, was originally named Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Smith (September 14, 1909 - September 25, 1967).

He commenced playing at age 9 in the Calument Entertainers, his fathers 12 piece band. He won a music scholarship to university and worked in various bands as a vocalist and violinist in the mid 1920s. In 1927 he moved to New York to play with Jelly Roll Morton. He left NYC, got married and swung the catgut in a few bands until 1936 when he took up a residency at the Onyx Club on 52nd street. His Onyx Club Boys had a minor novelty hit, "I'se a Muggin' on Vocalion in 1936, also covered by Mezz Mezzrow, and Jack Teagarden.

Smith was one of the great swing jazz violinists alongside Joe Venuti and Stephane Grappelli. Inspired and influenced by Louis Armstrong he worked with Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and for a short time took over Fats Wallers group after the big man's death. Some sources credit him as being the first violinist to use electric amplification.

He was a respected contributor to one of my favourite genres around that era, or any era: the weed song .

He recorded Youse a Viper in 1936
Dreamt about a reefer
Five feet long
Mighty Mezz, but not too strong
You'll be high, but not for long
If youse a viper..

and Here Comes the Man with the Jive [sample Windows Media]

Another example of the genre: When I Get Low, I Get High [MP3] by Ella Fitzgerald

Stuff Smith - Here's hopin' it's a smooth Mighty Mezz on your big day.
Happy Birthday Cat of the Week

blog-oreeney not a flat foot floogie

I was reminded after the Louis Jordan cat post last week that I had been meaning to recommend a blog for those who like swing, or jazz dance music generally, or those who think they might like to explore it a bit more.

dogpossum is hip to the vout and writes knowledgably as a Melbourne fan, DJ, academic and most dauntingly of all, as a dancer. dogpossum has a special love for Duke Ellington, who will surely be a Friday Cat blogging subject one week in the future.

abc tv 6.30pm tonight sept 4 anne kirkpatrick

Australian Country Music is a funny old thing. To use the old cliché it’s a broad church, an uneasy coalition of the bush balladeers, talentless and tuneless Country Talent Club members, pop-rockers like Lee Kernaghan, bluegrass, rockabilly, real country, alt country and many more. Ask anyone who has tried to program a community radio station and had to arbitrate between the warring factions in country. As a side note, it's this balancing act that I admire John Nutting, Saturday Night Country for.

The sad part is that amidst all this it is often the artists with depth who get overlooked. Anne Kirkpatrick is a one example.

She has one of the best voices in country and a way of song delivery that puts her up with the best worldwide. She’s managed to steer through all the factions mentioned above to deliver the real thing, modern and of these times while respectfully nodding to the past and to her own past in particular.

I assume it hasn’t been an easy road, and maybe still isn’t easy, being the daughter of her father, Slim Dusty and her mother, Joy McKean. The place of women in the old school Australian country is little acknowledged and I’d guess most people don’t know that it was Joy McKean who wrote two of Slim’s greatest songs, Lights on the Hill (also recorded by Del McCoury) and When The Rain Tumbles Down in July. In Anne's song One Of A Kind she sings of her father and says: “He’d blow them all away when he’d hit the stage.”

Anne Kirkpatrick has recorded with Slim, played with Bill Chambers and performed songs by Cold Chisel member Don Walker, who also wrote songs for Slim.

I don’t know how good the program will be or if there will be enough music in her interview on Talking Heads - ABC Television, Monday 4th September at 6.30pm, but I do know I’ll be running the tape to catch it. Do yourself a favour.