American Limericks (which I made last February)

454




Miss Missouri

A beautiful miss from Missouri
just said with a laugh "Oh, I'm sorry!"
as she changed her tights
by a castle where knights
in stiff silence begged her: "So, 'r we?!"




Mrs Mississippi

This chambermaid from Mississippi
in longstockings tried look like Pippi
with lips made of kisses
as Miss becomes Mrs
her hair floats away - goodbye hippie!




No Color Colorado

A cowboy from high Colorado
chased rainbows, such dry desperado

well he tried to stay cool
but from hill fell the fool

All colors soon melted like snow in his eyes Soleado




Never Ending Nevada

Those horses deserted deep in Nevada
they dreamed about riding Roulette Autostrada

However no clouds of sand they found
never helped leaving that land, went round

just lost as they bet on themselves in Las Vegas, won nada




Illinois Toys
or Chicago Chick

Hot gangster chick from Illinois
she gladly played cards with the boys

as they got four queens
the fifth in her jeans

was not some trick, just a real toy





454

Old Records I Rediscover or just Discover

First Elevator of 2011


1
IF NO ONE SANG
Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich (-68)

WHERE FROM - WHERE TO
= Song that Speaks most Strong to me Now



2
PLASTIC ONO BAND
John Lennon (-70)

I FOUND OUT
= Song that Speaks most Strong to me Now



3
ALL THINGS MUST PASS
George Harrison (-70)

BALLAD OF SIR FRANKIE CRISP (LET IT ROLL)
= Song that Speaks most Strong to me Now



4
BUTTERCUPS & RAINBOWS : THE SONGS OF MACAULAY & MACLEOD
many different artists
Tony Macaulay I know through Edison Lighthouse, but didn't realise he's done so many good motownish songs!

BURNING IN THE BACKGROUND OF MY MIND
with Tina Tott
= Song that Speaks most Strong to me Now



5
GOLD : MARTHA REEVES & THE VANDELLAS
Martha Reeves & The Vandellas (1963-...)

IN MY LONELY ROOM
= Song that Speaks most Strong to me Now



6
"JUMP FOR JOY" : ORIGINAL RECORDINGS 1941-1942
Duke Ellington
as conductor and for the most part composer

THE BROWN-SKIN GAL (IN THE CALICO GOWN)
= Song that Speaks most Strong to me Now



7
THE NORTH STAR GRASSMAN AND THE RAVENS
Sandy Denny (-71)

BLACKWATERSIDE
= Song that Speaks most Strong to me Now



8
TOTO IV
Toto (-82)

AFRICA
= Song that Speaks most Strong to me Now



9
SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND
George Harrison (-81)

BALTIMORE ORIOLE
= Song that Speaks most Strong to me Now



10
SUNSHINE SUPERMAN
Donovan (-66)

THE FAT ANGEL
= Song that Speaks most Strong to me Now



11
HERE TIL THERE IS THERE : AN INTRODUCTION TO THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND
The Incredible String Band (1966-74)

ANTOINE
= Song that Speaks most Strong to me Now







011

Having One of Three of Newsom

Joanna Newsom's latest masterpiece is not so new anymore. But it's three, and that's always a good thing. I appreciate when creations comes in clearly divided parts. That is the only phenomenon I think is really missing since we left the LP:s with their A/B sides*. Actually a double filled to the edge would be more difficult to grasp. Well well well, I listen to "Have one on me" in my mp3-player, often forget to even notice each title shift as I'm walking in the melting snow. So how would I feel the benefit of having to take a paus while turning side?!? Well, I like to know that the idea is there, being able to reconstruct it's structure my mind.

For the third time since Newsom started I struggle to get a clear picture of her magic songs. That takes alot of time, since they run away like children with her voice, slips between someone's fingers. I mean the originality and beauty shows from the beginning, but making each melody an individual memory craves repeating and repeating and repeating. Within each song floats many melodic elements, but they are more homogeneous than you first may believe. Besides there lives some potential pop pearls or timeless folk songs on this third planet. So far I've discovered "Easy", "Esme" and "Good Intentions Paving Company" to be the most "easy"ones.


When she and her harp first reached my earsphones some years ago (while ultimately walking in the medieval quarters of a modern city) she was just Joanna Newsom. Now I really wonder were she's got her inspirations from. Harp pieces I don't know enough to compare with, however her voice, style and compositions reminds me very very much of Kate Bush.These muses must be orbiting around the same star.

On the other hand Joanna is strangely enough not a british but a californian girl. Put this fact together with her fairytale tendencies in lyrics and appearance. That gives Newsom a natural connection to Joni Mitchell, yes the earliest, lightest Joni. Parallell to their string instruments they both play piano. But I don't hear the jazz that others hear in some tracks here, and will not compare Joanna to Joni's later, more dark-voiced and drum-based music, far from the folkish psychedelica that makes her queen of the same woods where Newsom may be princess.

90's influences could be Björk, or would but could hardly be swedish Stina Nordenstam, with same kind of naively twisted voice, jumping from impression in and out of expressiveness, combined with complex music for being pop, an ingredient practised by many womens during last decade, but seldom as consequentely ambitious as by Newsom.





* I just read that "Harrison's All Things Must Pass" originally was a tripple LP!!! Do you know any more???

Recently seen seVen new Movies

I give from 1 star to 7 stars
by 8 cathegories they become maximum 56 stars






INCEPTION
(creating dreams inside dreams)
by Christopher Nolan
USA -10
with Leonardo diCaprio and Ellen Page


6 Beauty (SnowWhite)

3 Joy (Happy)

2 Humour (Dopey)

6 Conflict (Grumpy)

7 Action (Sneezy)

7 Timeline (Sleepy)

7 Idea (Doc)

7 Mystery (Bashful)

= 45






HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON
(Animation)
by Dean DeBlois & Chris Sanders
USA /Canada -10


5 Beauty (SnowWhite)

7 Joy (Happy)

4 Humour (Dopey)

6 Conflict (Grumpy)

6 Action (Sneezy)

3 Timeline (Sleepy)

6 Idea (Doc)

4 Mystery (Bashful)

= 41






THE WHITE RIBBON [Das Weisse Band]
in Black & White
by Michael Haneke
Austria /Germany -09


7 Beauty (SnowWhite)

4 Joy (Happy)

1 Humour (Dopey)

7 Conflict (Grumpy)

6 Action (Sneezy)

5 Timeline (Sleepy)

3 Idea (Doc)

7 Mystery (Bashful)

= 40






MARY & MAX
(Animation)
by Adam Elliot
Australia -09


5 Beauty (SnowWhite)

5 Joy (Happy)

7 Humour (Dopey)

6 Conflict (Grumpy)

4 Action (Sneezy)

3 Timeline (Sleepy)

6 Idea (Doc)

3 Mystery (Bashful)

= 39






THE JAPANESE WIFE
by Aparna Sen
India -10


6 Beauty (SnowWhite)

6 Joy (Happy)

5 Humour (Dopey)

5 Conflict (Grumpy)

3 Action (Sneezy)

3 Timeline (Sleepy)

4 Idea (Doc)

4 Mystery (Bashful)

= 36






WALTZ WITH BASHIR
(Animation)
by Ari Folman
Israel -08


6 Beauty (SnowWhite)

1 Joy (Happy)

1 Humour (Dopey)

4 Conflict (Grumpy)

3 Action (Sneezy)

6 Timeline (Sleepy)

7 Idea (Doc)

5 Mystery (Bashful)

= 33






TEARS [Yan-Lei]
by Wen-Tang Cheng
Taiwan -10


4 Beauty (SnowWhite)

1 Joy (Happy)

1 Humour (Dopey)

5 Conflict (Grumpy)

4 Action (Sneezy)

2 Timeline (Sleepy)

1 Idea (Doc)

4 Mystery (Bashful)

= 22










011

Reaching Resurrected Rainbow

Nowhere I find lyrics to the song RESURRECTION by The Aerovons (from same time as Beatles crossed the universe)

so I've tried to write it down here, just from listening
Some words can be wrong, but the main picture is clear:




Sunday drives and ferris wheel
something inward, something real
Now sunday's really monday in disguise

Floating down a stream of smiles
You take some time to stop awhile
Resurrecting every thought a mile


And I reached out for you
in the sun
of our love

We're gonna bring it back
We're gonna bring it back


Paper cups and love affairs
gliding through the open air
gently riding off from every care

Ocean skies with rainbow kites
goes soaring on from mind to mind
tomorrow and tomorrow onto time


And I reached out for you
in the sun
of our love

We're gonna bring it back
We're gonna bring it back


?? what I see today
till everywhere's the other way
and no one hears the words I seem to say [hey!]

Floating down a stream of smiles
Now take some time to stop awhile
Resurrecting every thought a mile


And I reached out for you
in the sun
of our love

We're gonna bring it back
We're gonna bring it back


And I reached out for you
And I reached out for you
reached out for you










011

Reminding Most of Beatles' Abbey

Resurrection 1969


Probably you've never heard The Aerovons, or even about them? Yet they've made a record, Resurrection, sounding more like Beatles than anything I've ever discovered. The main reason seems to be The Aerovons were invited to spent months in the same Abbey Road studios as the masters themselves. You immediately can hear that on the whole sound, and in every sound. The best there was (in sense of production) of british 1969 this album contains.

In spite of them being an american band, and the album never being released until later years, you could easily have thought you were listening to The Bealtes. Appearently so very much does the sound and social environment give rise to. Alan Parsons also in real time and place pointed out them as future beatlesque torch-bearers, which they never became since they went different ways after first album.

Onthe other hand Tom Hartman's compositions are truly beatleque too, without being bad copies, not even good copies, just charmingly personal imitations, really close inspired. Maily he sounds McCartney, but a bit of all influences can be retraced. However if Beatles had made exactly these melodies, I can see they never had grown as big and original as they did.

I now will figure out one Beatles song for each song on Resurrection, which I think shows the most similarity. Of course every Aerovons' track includes traces from at least four or five Bealtes' tracks. Anyway I try to hear the most arcetypical ones lying behind. The title track is most obvious, since it deals lyrical themes [paper cup] and unmistakable chords with Lennon's masterpiece, though if possible sounding more McCartneysque here.

A

1. World of You
reminds me of Hello Goodbye

2. Resurrection
reminds me of Across The Universe

3. Say Georgia
reminds me of Oh, Darling!

4. With Her
reminds me of And I Love Her

5. Quotes and Photos
reminds me of While My Guitar Gently Weeps

6. Words From a Song
reminds me of If I Fell (in love with you)

B

7. Bessy Goodheart
reminds me of Good Morning Good Morning

8. Something of Yours
reminds me of When I'm Sixty-four

9. She's Not Dead
reminds me of She Said She Said

10. The Years
reminds me of I Will

11. Everything's Alright
reminds me of Good Day Sunshine

12. The Children
reminds me of A Day in The Life










011

from Kimono Fusion

Visited an exhibition in Gothenburg
with japanese creations and creatures























But the last picture is just me (in the museum's toilet)

Between Her Buttons

listened to the UK version, with some tracks differing from US version


I've tried last year to like Rolling Stones. I've come a bit closer, but never really close. Their record Between The Buttons (1967) includes the biggest bouquet of those kind of songs I like. Especially "Who's Been Sleeping Here?" seems a nice investigation story, "Back Street Girl" is beautifully french, "Cool, Calm & Collected" plays funny with comp and tempo.

So far this record feels most solid and variated, but Aftermath comes right after (though right before in time). For me it seems as BtB is a more relaxed, full-grown and melodic version of Aftermath, and a little more humorously cosy in style of Kinks. Anyway not so blues-bleeding as Stones was before and became after. Though some tracks here stomps rather simply, like "My Obsession", "(I Can't Make a) Connection" and "Complicated", but they feel just natural to do so, in sexy funky contrast to the more sweetly smiling things.


They begin with asking "Who wants yesterday's news?" and answers "Nobody in the world". But I do! It feels much more present to analyze the past than try to capture the latest future. No matter how many girls you experience, it's better to have one at a time. And then why not choose yesterday's girl - her you never really knew, until now when you got time?

"Something's Happened To Me Yesterday" is a good, slightly sarcastic ending, taking a turn with Radio London speaking voice, maybe already inspired by Who's contemporary concept, greeting the listeners if we happen to be out on our bikes tonight.


I would call it "Between The Beatles", because the album is quite beatlesque for being Stones. Probably that's the main reason I appreciate it more than any of the quite early, at least seven Stones album I've heard. As well as the reason that solid built Stones-diggers don't do it. I think there's enough space between the women's buttons for Jagger to be both cocky and funny, but maybe I just haven't experienced that real heavy roll yet...










011

The Universe's Reversed DocuSoap (now with even more travellers)

stuck inside a cloud


Human Captain is speaking:

OK, now we must do this episode in english. The thing is that our space ship has crashed into a cloud. And the cloud thinks we are a green submarine on a mystical magic trip. The cloud's imagination is very british. So now we have to tell it which our favourite psychedelic rock bands are. Unfortunately (I mean luckily) we aren't supposed to get out of the cloud until each one of us has mentioned their group. By now we have become seventeen people, so I hope all you animals know your Beatles?!

Well, the cloud is most interested in what we can't live without. Picture yourselves alone in a desolated space shuttle! Which music would you keep on board if you only could have one? Otherwise the rules are easy. Each band has to be started in the 60's (even if very late) and remind a bit of Beatles. An advantage but not a demand is that your band was born in Great Britain. You also have to give a motivation for your free choice. So, the cloud looks forward to join our psychedelic love for a while. I will begin myself.


1

Human Being's choice

THE BEATLES

because you can return to them as many times you like without getting bored, rather more and more fulfilled.


2

DragonFly's choice

TAGES

since they made an album as good as any Beatles', already in -67 when no one hadn't heard the best of Beatles yet, and Tages were much younger than them. Besides they come from world's most beautiful land Sweden, where I have flown many wonderful waters.


3

Walrus's choice

PROCOL HARUM

A confident band to rely on even in the coldest sea. (Besides, those Beatles never were real walruses, pretended to make magic and mystery, just happened to wear walrus costumes in a silly way, when they should have sticked to real sorcerers.)


4

Owl's choice

DONOVAN

O, sorry, he ain't a band. Not the less he was first hippie who went to India. Donovan inspired Beatles more immediately than human beings know...


5

Mushroom's choice

THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND

Surprisingly not cello-bound, but tied with indian strings, abstractly etherical though still with many small roots in mother earth, I must discover their symbiosis with me.


6

Snake's choice

ROLLING STONES

for makin' so sexy music that I just have to put it on to make it with myself forever really bad.


7

StarFish's choice

BEACH BOYS

Los Angeles' shining cousins to those Liverpool guys, though sang more beautiful. Started surfin' but soon was deepest into space. Could have picked Bee Gees too, the are as good brothers and singers, but I am no kangaroo who would move to Australia and jumping around that way.


8

Octopus's choice

VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR

because they made music about octopusses. I don't give a fucking limb if they play in a different, darker division than Beatles, for to me VDGG captures both beauty and harshness of the universe.


9

Rabbit's choice

JEFFERSON AIRPLANE

since they came first, first into psychedelica, first out to some kind of progressive punk, even before Velvet Underground, growing in the mountains of San Fransisco. Also they created the song about the rabbit, sang by that woman in wonderland.


10

Robot's choice

ELO [Electric Light Orchestra]

Captain Jeff Lynne took Beatles music into the electronical era in an incredibly natural way, even worked with Harrison, continued to travel back in time, passed the 60's into the 50's.


11

Flying Squirrel's choice

DAVE DEE, DOZY, BEAKY, MICK & TICH

not only made a legend of Xanadu, they fixed even more exotic themes, seemed as kindly lost in their breakfast as any british boys, but possessed the power to jump down jungle trees by, more awaken than most of them spoiled and spaced-out bands.


12

HummingBird's choice

LEMON PIPERS

Yes, you don't know them, and yet you don't know what instrumentational mastership is before you've discover their both albums, filled with almost too sweet fantasy.


13

Bat's choice

DEEP PURPLE

since they started as soft, as catchy, as spiritually deep as any pink floydfully psychedelic band, but got devilish wings and succeeded to grow really heavy...


14

ELEPHANT's choice

Who

WHY? OF COURSE 'CAUSE THEY POSSESS MOST ENERGY!


15

Ant's choice

THE MAMAS AND THE PAPAS

Rooted in folk music, dealt their work equally between two men and two queens, forerunners for the 70's, bearers of the 50's, as talanted singers as any group should include but few do.


16

Pig's choice

KINKS

cause most cosy


17

Camel's choice

TRAFFIC

Who else could make a sun of paper shine so joyfully fantastic?! And by empty pages have written songs that makes you already ridden to another solar system before you even thought of leaving...










011

Tages' STUDIO compared to Beatles

Discovery of an incredible album (should be Rediscovery)



Once upon the times there really was a swedish master band, somewhere in between happy rockpop and twisted psychedelica, like on "Penny Lane". They could have been not as big as Beatles, not as broad, not as original, but quite as good as Beatles. Or actually were as good! By november 1967 when Studio was released, the members were not older than 20, compared to closer to 30 for each Beatle. What if they could have stayed in the flower power time and helped evolving it even deeper, even more far...?

Their name was Tages (later Blond) and their tremendous instrumentations are getting better all the time, well, every composition becomes more and more fantastic for every time I listen. Though I should be potentially tired of the genre, hard to delight even more, it really surprises me that this Studio album didn't gave more remaining impressions on the world than it did. In a cultural way I can understand the fact, since Tages still obviously catched inspiration from glad "old" Beatle-songs like "We Can Work It Out", "Got To Get You Into My Life", and "Nowhere Man".

Tages' most mystic portrait, the sixth track"She's A Man", seems like either "Eleanor Rigby" or "Norwegian Wood" if their sound had been dressed like a deliriously foggy sequence from "A Day in The Life". The absolute single from the end of Studio, "She's Having A Baby Now", shows a strong bond to Beatles even earlier "Eight Days A Week".

This perfectly pre-psychedelic band didn't do much fixing holes for the darker, harder rock to helter skelter through. Next album The Lilac Years (Blond) goes no further, instead it's even prettier than Studio, at the same time more whiskey-confident, reaching rather to Procol Harum or the growing number of folk singer-songwriters (lending a hand from John Cameron) than to progressive experimentations of Hendrix or King Crimson.

Tages never made any big rhapsodical patchwork like White Album or second side of Abbey Road. But in the middle of Studio, through at least three tracks, they treat the indian-instrumented discoveries of Sgt. Pepper as naturally as they already had been to India and brought home pieces to fill a half white album. However they never possess the guitarist/sitarist's focus of Harrison or his companion Donovan, seldom unshells their pearls to the bone. Tages rather shows their love for strings (the album can't wait a second to introduce some folkish swedish dance). The guys also have a good hand with woodwinds and brass (transformed into deep sounds I remember from "Octopus's Garden" and it's neighbour tracks, though they hadn't been created yet, so maybe it derives first from "Yellow Submarine").

Much on Studio is uptempo piano-beat owing to McCartney's "Lady Madonna", "Your Mother Should Know", "Lovely Rita" and very much "Hello Goodbye". But Lennon is seldom far around the corner, both in his most imaginative mood of "Lucy in the Sky", like in manifests like "Tomorrow Never Knows" and his less dreamlike dreams of the immediate
"And Your Bird Can Sing".

Among possible influences from other groups I will point out The Kinks (comes closest on fifth track "I Left My Shoes At Home") and The Who (most on the second "It's My Life") and The Zombies (especially on seventh "Seeing With Love"). Rolling Stones is a relatively distant star here.

And my personal favourite by now is... well, I always find myself willing and able to pick out the best pieces in almost every pie. But this one IS so tasteful in every little bit and big bite. Also the bonus tracks could easily had been baked in to almost a double album. At least right now I have to choose EVERY track, which is something I normally find extremely boring to do. Since even though I'm swedish, strangely enough Tages is such a fresh experience.





A splendid introduction to the band (in swedish)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeoJWFLttlM






011

Review of Flandres by Bruno Dumont

with almost unknown actors

Adélaïde Leyroux (Barbe)
Samuel Boidin (André)

made in France 2006




For many viewers at least the first quarter of this film seems to feel more boring than anything else. They seem unwilling to fill a straight, unromantic shot with imagination. Maybe because André's gazing silence reminds too much of reality, of any passive moments in anyones life...? Even though it contains sex!

There is almost no city life present, simply the farm, the woods, the desert, the war, the ruins. One single bar scene could have led to something more social. Anyway Barbe's behaviour of seeking intimacy with every boy in the neighborhood, reflects more of a need for company than for actual kicks. She can bee like the bee queen. However the man who kisses her best (or the only one who does it) becomes during wartime the object for her longning love.

Suddenly though two more quarters have passed, and feels like I have already experienced a full rich movie. Few but surprising intrigues are what drives and spins the film around. Bruno Dumont can be a brutal movie maker. His abrupt changes between "indifference" and "chock" I regognize from his earlier film Twentynine Palms (from 2003, three years before Flandres). There the main theme was nudity in nature, sex everywhere, much more overwhelming than here. Maybe he wants to portray animalism by humans, like a dense version of Paradise, with some complete cruelty. But this time the cruelty comes a little more from the main characters, not pure victims.

I love movies with actors just moving around, not talking much, as in this one. On the other hand I'm not into action films. No, I appreciate the deep emotions of drama, as in this one. It feeds on unclear expectations of what will meet the persons, then lives on facing the pain of what really did.

No clothes, settings or intrigues can be linked to the real war of Flandres in early 20th century. The anonymous war in this movie some french guys are going to Tunisia to fight. There we can follow the karma of treating strangers "like holes", even though not always the right person gets the bad karma here. Probably there grows misinterpretations from both sides.

What I would be most interested in is which other movies viewers could compare Flandres to. Roger Ebert named Mouchette by classic Robert Bresson. My friend forced to compare, mentions that Kim Ki-duk's south korean films can contain similar ingredients, moral conflicts, showing them in rather physical than mental scenery, through seasons of the year. An imdb-guy sees similarities to the finish climate, full of silence, wrath and just being in the woodland. I can agree, there is a concrete mystery, like in Sauna of Antti-Jussi Annila.

However for my eyes Tarkovsky comes as close. Of course not the whole register of Tarkovsky, cause he possesses spoken philosophy and spiritual ideas in a way that Dumont didn't even want to do. Not at least the worlds of Stalker or Mirror reflects "the same" relation to nature, internal processes growing through an unspecified time which seems endless and unbroken. Had Bruno Dumont instead of accepting consciously "ugly" camera-angles struggled to make his masterpieces beautiful, the resemblence to Tarkovsky might have been very big. Now it's more like they happen to meet in similar fields of art.










011