Thursday, June 25, 2009

pushin' too hard



Sky Saxon - The King of Garage Rock (listen) Word is Sky Saxon of the Seeds is in bad shape. Best wishes to one of our finest inner space cosmonauts.


Townes Van Zandt - Flyin' Shoes (listen) It is cliche to sing the praises of Townes Van Zandt, but I'll sing them anyway. I forget how sonically rich his studio albums are; I came to know his music through his more spectral solo live records and other people's versions of his songs and more than anything, people gravenly talking about them in the late whiskey moments when people rhapsodize/eulogize Real Country Music. When other people do his songs, they pull out their darkest glasses and set corn out for the ravens to perch on the necks of their guitars. When he does them, he fills these sad sacks of life with as much joy as they can hold, even if it is just a loose handful. Which is how you do it.


Lou Harrison - Suite for Violin and American Gamelan - Lou Harrison went about it differently, but I think in his weathered, rustic suite, he was after similar non-suffering existential expression like the two above, something that expressed our anguish but was not our anguish. Fate booms out in slow gongs while the violin threads a narrative against yet subject to that fate.

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