31/12/2007





Vampires in business suits. Parties every night.
Neon lights.

Alone in hotel rooms, licking their fingers clean.

Better than hell.

Lifeless bodies walking around.
Trading fake smiles.
Living double lives.

It’s all the same.


Everything’s for sale.

Everything’s poisoned.










See The Sky Set To Crash?









http://www.myspace.com/swansaredead
http://www.myspace.com/mgira
http://www.myspace.com/younggodrecords

30/12/2007

Everyone Else's Opinion Is Wrong



Below are quotes from the book BLABBERROCK. It's stuff that famous musicians have said. Some quotes I connect with, some I don't, some of them had me thinking, some are just fun.

1- I believe that a performer sometimes lives in this netherworld for the benefit of those who can't go there; the listeners' lives are made richer by getting the feeling from the artist, but they can't join him at the source.

2- There's nothing worse than a whiny musician. Make your work, stay committed to your work, stand by your work and shut up.

3- I have to create. I have to dig in the earth; I have to make something grow; I have to bake something; I have to put something out. It's not a real need to prove anything . It's just my way of life.

4- I'm the one that's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.

5- A rock 'n' roll band needs to be able to get under people's skin. You should be able to clear the room at the drop of a hat.



6- You see cowards a lot when you're doing something that's honest, because you remind them of their own dishonesty.

7- Well, living is dificult, period. Being happy and serene and all that stuff doesn't necessarily get any easier just because you're more mature- or sober.

8- I believe that you learn more from failing than from succeeding. Yet we have a built-in fear of failure, a shame of failure, which I think is pretty harmful.

9- Knowing that everything's futile but still fighting, still raging against the dying of the light- that's what motivates me all the time...... If you hold that sense of futility in your head for too long, it can begin to eat into you. You can still be aware of it but find a place for it where you can actually exist comfortably and enjoy things. So it still doesn't matter if we all die, but given that, you may aswell do something that's really good fun.

10- Without reservation I think it's very important for youth to have anger and awareness of the nowness. I think all those things are part and parcel of being young. But I think that's just a passing grace and then you shift to another viewpoint in life that's tempered by experiences, and the future becomes very important. But you need all the rest, that vortex of mess and misbehaviour, to then straighten up and see where the future can go.



11- I'm sure if there's a new fascism, it won't come from skinheads and punks. It will come from people who eat granola and believe they know how the world should be.

12- For a while it was assumed that I was writing women's songs. Then men began to notice that they saw themselves in the songs too. A good piece of art should be androgynous. I'm not a feminist. That's too divisional for me.

13- The best stuff is primitive enrgy and has no bullshit. Rock 'n' roll gets through to you. It got through to me of all the things that were happening when I was 15. Rock 'n' roll then was real; everything else was unreal. The thing about music, good music- whatever good means and all that shit- is that it's real, and realism gets through to you despite yourself. You recognize something in it which is true, like all true art.

14- Virgin offered me a deal in 1979, and I turned 'em down.... offered me a lot of money. I asked Richard Branson (founder of Virgin) to name two songs off my last album, and he couldn't do it. So I told him to fuck off.

15- When you play from your heart, all of a sudden there's no gravity. You don't feel the weight of the world, of bills, of anything. That's why people love it. Your so-called insurmountable problems disappear, and instead of problems you get possibilities.



16- Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything.

17- In my performances I don't consciously perform. I find that when I consciously do it, I make mistakes. When I don't think and just go for it, it all works out and it's basically flawless. When I second guess it and think "Well, what am I going to do here, or what note an I going to sing or which place am I going to move?" ultimately I always mess up.

18- I think the whole conception of love is something that the previous generation invents to justify their having created you. You know I think the real reason children are born is because parents are bored... they have children to amuse themselves... Then, to justify to the kid the reason he exists they tell him there is such a thing as love and that's where you come from.

19- You get inside the music to such an extent that you kind of are the music, or the music's you. You're thinking about it but you're not thinking about it. Sometimes I think it's almost a flashing backwards and forwards of intellect and intuition.... You're just sort of flying along, and then you have another conscious moment.

20- I think most people are very insecure and attention is being loved, almost. It's being fulfilled. When you reach a point of success you find yourself as empty as you ever were., because nothing outside of yourself could ever make you feel whole. And that's when people put guns in their mouths or become drug addicts or whatever addiction they choose.



21- I thought I was used to everything. But yesterday it dawned on me that there's a possibility that I'm becoming.... everything.....I.....detest.

22- Although we have this divinity, or creativity, within us, it's covered with material energy, and a lot of the time our actions come from a mundane level. We're like beggars in the goldmine, where everything has really enourmous potential and perfection, but we're all so pre-occupied with the dust of our desires on our mirrors.

23- I assume that we will blow ourselves up. I don't think people are gonna smart up in time. But on the other hand, I don't deny the possibility of hope. Action is the antidote to despair.

24- The reason I latched onto this whole folk thing is, similiarly to punk, it's of the people. It's subcorporate music. The whole problem with folk with me is it's so folky. But then I show up at these folk festivals, and everybody's so laid back, everybody's so unpretentious- as oppossed to when I'm playing at rock festivals, and it's like "I would like to smile at you, but I'm trying to be really cool."

25- Live Aid makes us feel a bit more comfortable to slightly relieve the discomfort of a nation in famine. But really the only way we can make them much more comfortable is by enduring a much higher level of discomfort ourselves. And we're not willing to do that. I'm not willing to do that. And I think that is evil.



26- Politicians are necessary, and it'd be foolish to blame them for our troubles. They're just doing what they've always done- looking to survive, looking to climb, trying to please everyone at once, and grinning and lying while they're doing it.

27- Mold your world, don't let it mold you.

28- Stardom and fame is bullshit that sucks you in and if you're not fortunate you can get so sucked in that you start believing it.

29- Somebody said to me, "But the Beatles were anti-materialistic." That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, "Now, let's write a swimming pool."

30- You wonder about people who made a fortune, and you always think they drank it up or they stuck it up their nose. That's not usually what brings on the decline. It's usually the battle to keep your creative child alive while keeping the business shark alive. You have to develop cunning, and shrewdness, and other things which are not well suited to the arts.



31- The world don't need anymore songs. If nobody wrote anymore songs from this day on, the world ain't gonna suffer for it.

32- I'm only interested in heavy metal when it's me who's playing it.... I suppose it's a bit like smelling your own farts.

33- If some people had their way, they'd just want me to weep and suffer for them for the rest of my life, because people live vicariously through their artists.

34- I don't listen to music. I hate music.



1- bryan ferry
2- tori amos
3- bette midler
4- jimi hendrix
5- paul westerberg
6- sinead o connor
7- bonnie raitt
8- peter gabriel
9- robert smith
10- david bowie
11- brian eno
12- joni mitchell
13- john lennon
14- elvis costello
15- carlos santana
16- bob dylan
17- teddy pendergrass
18- richard hell
19- richard thompson
20- boy george
21- bjork
22- george harrison
23- joan baez
24- ani difranco
25- pete townshend
26- ray charles
27- daryl hall
28- george harrison
29- paul mccartney
30- joni mitchell
31- bob dylan
32- john entwistle
33- joni mitchell
34- john lydon

28/12/2007



I Want To Be Alone



Anthony Gormley's Blind Light exhibition.
Hayward Gallery, London, July 2007.





Basically, it was a box maybe 20 by 40 ft(?) filled completely with dry ice (thick vapour mist/fog). As soon as you walk in you can barely see a few inches in front of you. Pretty stunning. I've experienced something similiar at Sunn0))) shows but this was much more powerful.





As you can see from the photos, dry ice was flowing just outside of the box entrance. The excitement was shared by most of us waiting to go in, although a woman before me decided not to enter at the last second because she'd seen other people's hair frizzed a little by the moisture and didn't want to look imperfect. Ha.
When I reached the front of the queue, I stepped forward slowly and in a couple seconds was completely immersed in the fog.





A strange feeling of panic almost instantly overwhelmed me. I guess it's from the combination of losing sight of where you are, and adjusting to the vapour in the air which for a little while made breathing feel kind of weird. There's a strong instinct to turn around and return to the safe environment of outside. I couldn't resist looking back to see behind me but there was no way I was leaving just yet.





The loss of sight can't be exagerrated. Same as closing your eyes only it's light (not bright like looking at a bulb though) and every now and then someone else's blurred faded form will pass or even bump into you. Even when you approach a wall you can't see it till you make contact and nothing beyond the wall was visible.
Once I overcame the initial panic and calmed down, a new effect began to happen. I knew I was in a box but there's a feeling of being in an infinite space.





The entrance girl said most people usually find a wall and follow it around but that seemed too easy. I roamed about for a while in different directions, maybe trying to get lost. There was pretty much a constant supply of laughing, talking and other vocalisations from others exploring in there. Kind of imposed on my experience.

I wanted to be alone.

Decided to leave before the effect wore off. Soon as I came out I had to re-adjust to the outside again but there was a sensation I've never had before and probably never will again. A total clearness in my mind and through all my body. Like I was in the air, part of the air, a ghost, not flesh and blood. It lasted for 15 minutes or so and I'd have gone in again to come out and feel that ...but we had to leave and meet friends.
It's purity and simplicity will be one of the bolder memories I keep through time. Was fun to see adults return to looking around with wide eyes and curiosity exactly like the children around them.




http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/gormley/light.html
http://www.antonygormley.com/viewwork







No thoughts

No thoughts at all

Just faster through the dark

It's not enough

I want more than this

I want to feel more than this

Let's go too far and faster

Drive too fast into the dark

No thoughts in my head

No memories replaying again

No taste in my mouth

Or words from my lips

I'm alive and it's not enough

Free from the burden of caring

and nothing to live for











True Art Is Dead


















Burned Out





















27/12/2007


All I Want Is Everything




Shred Earthship


Orthrelm


Mick Barr











Close your eyes.


Imagine infinty.


Life's so crazy, it can't be real.















Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants

In 1976, pioneering Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes wrote a Golden Guide. The subject of Schultes' Golden Guide was Hallucinogenic Plants. For those who don't know, the original Golden Guides were a fantastic series of profusely-illustrated educational books for elementary and high-school age students. Usually about nature or science, the books were most popular in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s and are now collectables, depending on the title. Copies of Hallucinogenic Plants are available on AbeBooks from around $50 for a paperback in fair condition to $500 for a scarce hardcover.



Fortunately, http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/golden_guide/ has a scan of the entire book online. From Schultes's introduction:
Hallucinogenic plants have been used by man for thousands of years, probably since he began gathering plants for food. The hallucinogens have continued to receive the attention of civilized man through the ages. Recently, we have gone through a period during which sophisticated Western society has "discovered" hallucinogens, and some sectors of that society have taken up, for one reason or another, the use of such plants. This trend may be destined to continue.

It is, therefore, important for us to learn as much as we can about hallucinogenic plants. A great body of scientific literature has been published about their uses and their effects, but the information is often locked away in technical journals. The interested layman has a right to sound information on which to base his opinions. This book has been written partly to provide that kind of information.

No matter whether we believe that men's intake of hallucinogens in primitive or sophisticated societies constitutes use, misuse, or abuse, hallucinogenic plants have undeniably played an extensive role in human culture and probably shall continue to do so. It follows that a clear understanding of these physically and socially potent agents should be a part of man's general education.

Thanks to www.boingboing.net/2007/04/29/richard-evans-schult.html for original post.