Barış Manço ‎| Ben Bilirim (1990) (FLAC)

 

I found this compilation cassette, published by Yavuz Asöcal in 1990, in a dusty old record and audio parts store in the Kadıköy neighborhood of İstanbul -- a fitting place to pick up a keepsake by one of Turkey's most beloved rockers, given that my primary goal for the day was to visit his old house (now a museum) in the same neighborhood. 

The cassette highlights Manço's 1970s and 80s psychedelic-tinged work, from the scorching Gönül Dağı, to twisted B-sides like Estergon Kalesi, to the disco-era curiosity Fransızca, which closes out Side 2.

I inadvertently picked up a CD of this very same album, but upon listening, the cassette appears to have just slightly superior sonic quality. Which is not to say that it's ideal. The title track that leads off Side 1 is a bit rough-sounding.

But it's listenable. More importantly, it includes some of the greatest rock music ever captured on tape.

Get it here.

LIKE A ROLLING STONE

On Wednesday, October 12, on Bodega Pop Live, the world responded to the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band with feminist revisions, politically savvy samples, cuckoo covers, pharmaceutically fueled tributes, and more!

Listen to the show now in the archives

WFMU's 2016 Silent Fundraiser runs through the month of October. If great music you'll likely hear nowhere else is something you care about, if you're a listener of my show or any of the nearly 100 other programs the station offers up every week, please make a tax-deductible donation. Every amount helps!

Asakawa Maki | 18 albums

[Re-upped once more on April 25, 2015, at a reader's request]

When I was in Tokyo in mid-2010, I spent a couple of full days wandering around almost all of the 9 floors of the massive Tower Records superstore in Shibuya. 

When I got off the escalator at floor 2, which houses Tower Shibuya's extensive J-Pop and J-Indies stock, I was immediately struck by a kind of mini-shrine made up of of the CDs of Asakawa Maki, most of which seemed to feature grainy black & white photographs of the singer on the cover, often smoking.

I had no idea who this mysterious enshrined singer was, but after a bit of YouTubing and Googling, I was able to figure it out. Asakawa Maki was born on January 27, 1942, in Nagoya--she'd have been 70 years old this month had she not died in 2010, just shy of her 68th birthday. She got her start singing in U.S. Army bases, but got her big break in a series of concerts organized by avant-garde poet and playwright, Shuji Terayama in 1968. (Terayama would write lyrics for a number of her early songs.)

Over the next 40 years, Maki (as she was often referred to) released some 30 records, only slowing down in the aughts. She continued to perform live up until her death. She was one of the greatest, most expressive singers of all time, not just in Japan, but in the world.


Listen to "House of the Rising Sun" live

FILE ONE
Asakawa Maki II
Asakawa Maki no Sekai
Black
Blue Spirit Blues
Cat Nap

FILE TWO
Darkness I
Darkness II
Darkness III
Darkness IV

FILE THREE
Hitomoshigoro
Live
Maboroshi no Onna-tachi
Maki
Nothing at All to Lose

FILE FOUR
One
Rear Window
Ura Mado Maki V
Yami No Naka Ni Okizari

Guitar Vader | 5 albums, 2 EPs

Reupped again on March 26, 2015, at a reader's request, here.

If someone put a gun to my head and forced me to choose just one Japanese rock band to listen to until my retirement years, my first impulse would be: "Just kill me." For, how could I--how, indeed, could anyone--choose just one? My second impulse, tempered by the desire to continue living, would be to flip a coin: Heads = Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her; tails = Guitar Vader.

Formed in 1998 as a male-female duo, Guitar Vader was largely influenced by the Beatles and the Pixies, though they also learned and/or borrowed from every late 20th century act from Guitar Wolf to Beck. Their first album, Die Happy!, was released on cassette and never had a proper CD (or LP) release. (It is, I would argue, the single most perfect example of Japanese pop rock ever recorded.)

In 2000, they added a drummer and a couple of years later added a(n American) keyboardist. They broke up in 2007 when their drummer began to have serious health issues related to his heart; they had been working on a sixth studio album, which was abandoned. So far as I know, none of them seem to have pursued solo musical careers.

I found most of these albums on other, now-defunct sites, wiped out in the Megaupload action. They are, so far as I can tell, all out of print and impossible to find.

Included here are:

Die Happy! (1999)

Wild at Honey (2000)

From Dusk (2001)

Baby-T/GVTV/Shimanagasgi (2001)

REMIXES_GVR (2001)

Dawn (2003)

Happy East (2004)

Watch an interview with Guitar Vader's Ujuan Shozo and Miki Tanabe:

Josie Ho | Hell's Kitchen

Reupped a second time on Feb 25, 2015, here.

[Originally posted June 24, 2011.] A keen advantage of listening to "other" people's pop music is that, to the extent it's possible, doing so affords the listener at least the illusion of a far more visceral experience than listening to the music of one's own culture.


There is, alas, no such thing as a purely visceral experience--absent cultural, semiotic, etc., cues--not of anything human-made. We read, interpret, translate, bring our biases to everything. And everything is coded, even if we don't have the key, or have only part of it. There is, I'd argue, as a great a pleasure in completely misunderstanding something as there is in "getting" it--maybe even more so. Just ask the poets.

I bought the CD above--Hochiu (aka Josie Ho)'s "Hell's Kitchen"--in Manhattan's Chinatown one Saturday afternoon before straggling in to the Bowery Poetry Club to host a Segue Series reading. Once at the BPC, I spotted Franklin Bruno, a musician and music critic as well as a poet. I pulled out the CD in question, handed it to him and asked: "Okay, Franklin; you're an expert: What is this CD cover trying to tell us?"

Franklin chuckled a bit and then slowly flipped the CD cover back and forth a few times, before handing it back to me. "I'm picking up Patti Smith," he finally said.

As it turns out, despite "Hell's Kitchen"'s obvious nod to the cover of Patti Smith's "Horses," no one could be further from working-class androgynous hippy-dippy Romantic poet cum rock icon Patti Smith than Josie Ho. For one thing, Ho is the daughter of the purportedly richest man in Macau, casino tycoon Stanley Ho. The differences don't end with class background. Whereas Patti is also a poet, Josie is also a movie star. (And movie producer.) Whereas Patti's music is instantly recognizable for its shaggy, emotive intensity, Josie's music is slick, aggressive Canto rock and pop.

Look again into first Patti's eyes and then Josie's on those covers above. Patti looks soulful, vulnerable, almost frightened, even in what looks like "defiance." Josie looks something in between bored and simmering with sadistic energy. There's a way in which her cover feels as much of a nod to "A Clockwork Orange" as it is to "Horses." Take, for instance, this video, of "自衛術" ("Self-defense Art"), a song from the CD above, the only music video I'm aware of with a cake-fisting scene:



There aren't, to my knowledge, any other female pop artists who express this kind of energy (beyond the cake-fisting, I mean: the dancing with dogs in the tub, the messing with the fish, the singing to sock puppets, etc.). How, I want to know, do Hong Kongers "read" her? Is she a kind of Alex-from-Clockwork-Orange figure?

Various Artists | Red Rock

Reupped once again (on Feb 15, 2015) here.

[Originally posted in early 2010; first reposted in August 2011. See recent articles I wrote on Chinese punk here and here.]

After 10 years of bodega diving, very little surprises or shocks me. When I picked up, last summer in Brighton Beach, a Russian CD featuring on the cover two large shirtless orthodox Jewish guys made up to look like walruses, complete with huge tusks, I pretty much figured I'd seen and heard it all.

Not so, as it turns out. I found Red Rock in one of my favorite Bowery Video stores, all way the in the back of the joint, where they keep the stuff from Korea and mainland China.

The rock versions of these communist songs are intentionally ironic; artists include Cuī Jiàn, whose "Balls under the Red Flag" I posted here.

In addition to a lot of the music on this admittedly uneven collection, I love the list of songs as translated into English on the back cover:

The long march newly on the road shakes to roll
The Chinese people's liberation army army song
Socialism is good
The internationale
The small bird
Member of a society all is a light exposed to the sun
Brother
Colorful clothes clothing
Ideal and peace
Leave oil lamp light
The Chinese people's volunteer battle song
The detachment of women even song
We walk on the main road
The egg under the red flag
Nanniwan area
Not own a thing in the world [this is actually Cuī Jiàn's legendary anthem "Nothing to My Name"]
Feel too ashamed to show the face
Is not that I am in vain unknown
The end rises lucky its tommy gun
The tunnel warfare
The holding in arms armed forces flower drum
Learn the good good example of Lei Feng
The rambles in the sky
Big production
Mans and wives are in pairs the family still
It is full of water
Greenhouse girl
Together Hong Bu
Girl is handsome
Elder sister
The ant ant
The river water of folk song in the spring of Caing be compared to
Beijing that good night
The beacon-fire Yangzhou road
The bird hovering

Check out this fabulously punked out video of Communist classic "She Hui Zhu Yi Hao" ("Socialism is good," the third track in Red Rock):

Rock Simera! (Rock Now!) | 1971

Listen to "They All Mean Bad"

Listen to "Imaginary Doctor"

Grab the whole collection here

Found today at the Greek Music Superstore on 31st Street here in Astoria. Hopefully this mostly awesome Greek psych-era collection makes up somewhat for my relative neglect of this blog this year. 

I promise a Best of 2014 before the end of the year. And I know that most of the links here are dead. I'll get on it. All. Soon.

You Forgot Poland | Bodega Pop 14

Just reupped the 33-track Bodega Pop exclusive album here. You'll never forget Poland again.


Listen to "Tatuuj Mnie"


Listen to "Welcome to Poland Asshole"


Listen to "Artbroken"


Listen to "Nie Ma Nic"

 
Listen to "Rosol"

A collection of ear-blistering alt Polish pop, rock and new wave found over the last couple of years at Music Planet in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I compressed the album in a ZIP file rather than a RAR because at least one person I know who will love this album has complained in the past that she can't open RARs. (Yes, I know; hush.)

Various Artists | Punk Islam

One of the all-time most popular Bodega Pop DLs, reupped a second time here.


 

Tracks:

1. Suicide Bomb the GAP | The Kominas

2. Thaleo Vi Chumero | Noble Drew

3. Hey Hey Hey Guantanamo Bay | Secret Trial 5

4. War Crimes | Diacritical

5. Gaza- Choking on the Smoke of Dreams | Al-Thawra

6. Sharia Law In The USA | The Kominas

7. I like you | The Fatsumas

8. Teri Assi Ki Tassi | Dead Bhuttos

9. Rumi Was A Homo | The Kominas

10. Ignorance | Diacritical

11. Years Ago | Edifice Al-Thawra

12. I Want A Handjob | The Kominas

13. Dirty Looks | The Fatsumas

14. The Exile of Hope | Al-Thawra

I haven't been so excited about music coming (mostly) out of the USA in a long, long time. The bands in this 14-song compilation share at least two things: they're punk and--whether practicing or lapsed, straight or queer, sober or stoned--Muslim. They're also writing some of the funniest, most outrageous and, without question, politically savviest lyrics in English (and Urdu and Punjabi) since The Clash. 


Musically, they're all over the map, drawing from 70s punk, 80s rap, ska, rock, bhangra, Bollywood, metal, noise, folk, disco, etc.--the sum total of which almost convinces me this might be the missing LP between London Calling and Sandinista!. 

I put this compilation together after watching Omar Majeed's documentary, Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, which I highly recommend. The moment the DVD ended, I started hunting around online for songs, the result of which, pared down to this blogger's personal favorites, you can now listen to yourself.

The Olympians | The 45s 1966-1971

Reupped by reader request, here.

[Originaly written and posted November 1, 2012.] So, contrary to my rather cavalier pre-Sandy post last Sunday, here I am about to talk about the storm. Not to reiterate on the enormous damage it has caused up and down the east coast, but to turn your attention to the magazine I've been writing for since this summer, Open City. A number of writers associated with that online journal were asked yesterday to report on the storm's impact on New York's immigrant cultures by editor Kai Ma, who is a personal hero of mine for having started a magazine that focuses on immigrant culture in New York City in the first place. 

Now Kai is assembling and editing these reports from around the New York City area on the special impact the storm has had on these immigrants who, frankly, make this city (as well as this humble music blog) what it is. The first report, from Sukjong Hong, just went up today; you can read it here. 

My neighborhood, Astoria, didn't fare as poorly as others, though there is at least one tree downed on every other block. (Some 10,000 trees reportedly toppled in Queens alone.) We were lucky. Very, very lucky.

Today, while one of my co-workers relocated to Brooklyn with her family from their powerless, waterless apartment on the easternmost edge of Manhattan's Chinatown, I had the relative luxury of wandering around Astoria, surveying pockets of damage here and there, and marveling at the number of businesses--pretty much all of them--that have reopened in Sandy's wake. (Truth be told, most reopened yesterday.) Including one of my go-to immigrant-run stores: GMV, or Greek Music & Video Inc. (25-50 31st Street, Astoria, NY 11102).

As you'll remember, back in February I found this fabulous CD by surf-garage-psych band The Olympians at GMV; today, I returned to the same spot in the stacks and discovered the subject of today's post: A collection assembled in 1996 of the band's earliest 45 records.

The CD includes original songs and covers in both English and Greek (including a Greek version of the Kinks' "Lola") spanning the first five years of the band's existence. It's a rock-solid, life-affirming collection that I'm going to guess many of you, regular visitors and those who may have stepped in to the Bodega for the first time today, will enjoy.

And for everyone whose lives were affected by this truly unprecedented storm, our thoughts are with you ...

Girls Sazanami Beat! | Vols. 1+2

Listen to "Chou Gutsu Terrorist" by The Let's Go's

Listen to "Yeah Yeah" by The Portugal Japan

Make off with Vol. 1 here

Listen to "Hello!Hello!!" by The Helloes!


Listen to "Yes, No Blues" by Gaijin

Get your paws on Vol. 2 here

Nobody does retro like the Japanese. Which is to say: Whatever it was, whoever invented it, they'll play it like they own it. 

Sazanami, a Tokyo-based label that celebrated its 10th anniversary last year, is one of the archipelago's leading purveyors of backwards-glancing garage, go-go, pop, rock, surf and pseudo-punk, and these two high-voltage volumes focusing on contemporary girl-group grooves are must-haves for all of you retrophiles out there -- as well as anyone seeking a musical alternative to caffeine. 

Niemen | Sukces (1968)

You are listening to first track of upsettingly groovy Polish psych album from late sixties

You are grabbing whole thingy here.

Not to make excuses, but I was in the middle of a longish post about this nothing-short-of-thrilling CD I discovered earlier today at a Polish media store in Greenpoint, Brooklyn  (Music Planet, 649 Manhattan Ave), when I hit a button or series of buttons that erased everything but the last two letters of the word "and." 

I can't rewrite it. I just can't. I'm exhausted. I have too many things going on right now. But neither can I wait to share this sublime gem with you for another moment.

Did you see the cover of this album? That's not a bullshit irony retro cover, dear reader. Oh, no. It's the original 1968 cover of Czeslaw Niemen's second album, Sukces (Success). Does the music live up to it? Oh, yes. Niemen (born Czesław Juliusz Wydrzycki in 1939 in what is now Belarus ) was one of Poland's most important rock stars and his voice, the arrangements, everything sounds like some filthier--or perhaps merely moister--chain-smoking East European reprobate version of James Brown. 

Hoo-wah!

10 Best Albums of 2013

Merry Christmas, everyone. With a mere week to go until the ball drops in Times Square, listeners all over the globe have been compiling their Best Of lists for the year. For the Bodega, 2013 was a complex but often exciting time to be paying attention to international music. In early March our superfriend Carol hipped us to a program at BAM that would change our lives: Mic Check: Hip-Hop from North Africa and the Middle East. Later in the month, the Bodega returned the favor, taking her to see pioneering Palestinian rap group DAM at Drom on New York’s lower east side.

As more of our regular CD-findin’ haunts in the city dried up, new doors were opened, including two previously undiscovered stores selling Czech and Latin music, allowing us to exponentially grow our stock of both, literally overnight. For more recent music, there’s the endless rabbit hole that is Bandcamp. In fact, most of our 2013 faves came from this revolutionary end-run around the terminally ill Music-Industry-As-Such.

Above all, our fellow music bloggers kept their little rooms on the Internet warm even when the sun wasn’t shining anywhere else. Special Big Love to stalwarts Awesome Tapes from Africa, Jenny Is in a Bad Mood (Japan), Jewish Morocco, Jugo Rock Forever (former Yugoslavia), Madrotter Treasure Hunt (Indonesia), Monrakplengthai (Thailand), Moroccan Tape Stash, Music from the Third Floor (India), My Passion for Ethiopian Music, and Turkish Psychedelic Music 2, to say nothing of fellow eclecticists Flash Strap, Ghost Capital, Global Groove, Inconstant Sol, Kadao Ton Kao, Music for Maniacs, Snap Crackle & Pop, and Terminal Escape — to name but a few of the dozens whose offerings fill our hours and ears.

Two great but seemingly dead blogs got new life this year: Brain Goreng (Indonesia) and Voodoo Vault (Japan), though whether either will keep up the good fight into 2014 is anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, Interstellar Medium | Foreign Lavish Sounds stormed onto the scene to raise the bar unconscionably high and show us just how awesome a music blog can really be. We’re humbled, shamed even, but genuinely grateful for their existence.

2013 was a year of personal triumph for the Bodega: We not only published some of our least egregious nonfiction to date (in Burning Ambulance, Indiewire, LA Review of Books and Roads & Kingdoms), we received the ultimate worldly acknowledgement of our humble efforts in poetry: Inclusion in a Norton anthology. 

But there were setbacks. In April, our then-host, Divshare, kicked us out of the file-sharing playground, citing multiple complaints about our *cough* copyright infringement *cough*. Tail between our legs, we hooked up with ADrive and began to restock the shelves, offering customers a new feature: The Bodega Pop Comp (see “hot comps” in the sidebar to the right).  

Then, in May, Super DJ, creator and director of WFMU’s Give the Drummer Radio stream, and music blog supporter extraordinaire, Doug Schulkind asked if we’d like to bring the bodega to WFMU in the form of a weekly broadcast. Our ego said yes, yes, oh god let us, yes. Our ego has never been the brightest bulb in the tulip patch, but he tends to get away with pretty much whatever he wants.

So, every Wednesday evening from 7-10pm ET, starting on January 15, we’ll be hosting Bodega Pop Live on the aforementioned stream. Shout outs are due to several fabulous people—in addition to Doug, of course—who helped make this happen: Brandon Downing, Andrew Maxwell, Andrei Molotiu, Sianne Ngai, Mel Nichols, and above all, Carol “Craftypants” McMahon, who donated a Macbook we desperately needed to do the actual streaming. 

Still awake? Hello? Awrighty, let’s move on to the sole reason you’re even here tonight: Bodega Pop’s Top 10 Albums of 2013 …

DAM
Dabke on the Moon ($8.99)
December 15, 2012
As we intimated earlier, middle eastern and north African hip-hop reigned supreme in our ears this year, including this album, technically released last year, but for all intents and purposes not readily available until 2013. It wasn’t the first album we’d heard by the pioneering Palestinian rappers, but it was easily the best of their work to date. The album blasts off with the unlikely-sounding rocker “Street Poetry” and doesn’t let up, kicking out jam after jam all the way through the anthemic “I Fell in Love with a Jew” and final deep groove of “Handcuff Them War Criminals.” If I was Christgau (“Christmas with Christgau” has a nice ring to it, eh?) I know three very talented young men who’d be getting a big ol’ A+ in their stocking.

The Girl
UR Sensation ($8.99)
January 9, 2013 (planned December 19, 2012)
I almost can’t breathe when I think about the awesomeness that is Aiha Higurashi. Her first band, Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, was easily the best rock group of the Aughts, and with every subsequent project Aiha has shown us a new or at least slightly different side of herself.  The Girl, who released their second album this year, brings it back home to the stripped-down, noirish rock Aiha first explored with SSKHKH—but the sound is grittier, more disconcerting. Our sole complaint? Try setting up a Google alert for “The Girl.” 

Various Artists
Spanish New Wave, The Golden Age (6 Vols.) (Free)
January 20, 2013
See, I told you music bloggers were awesome this year. Compiled by Sebi and Jose Kortozirkuito for free download on Boozetunes, this six-volume set of post-punk music from Spain is everything the bodega dreams of: A vast, and vastly entertaining panorama of pop from a faraway time and place, lovingly introduced with a smart and relevant preface. 

Various Artists
Khat Thaleth (Free)
January 22, 2013
Goodness gracious: The year really started out with a bang, didn’t it? This late-January Arabic hip-hop compilation, released two days after the awesome comp above, is pretty much the coolest international rap collection we can think of since 1988’s Brazilian overview Hip Hop Cultura de Rua. And the download is gratis on Bandcamp. Yep, you heard us: Free.

Satanicpornocultshop
Picaresque ($10)
February 2013
The Japanese sound-collage trio put out seven albums and EPs in 2013, which makes them among the most prolific groups of … dare-we-say all time? A perennial favorite here, the shop’s funked-up February release had the bodega rawkin out on the 7 train as we rode it in to work every morning. 

Various Artists
Harafin So - Bollywood Inspired Film Music from Hausa Nigeria ($5)
April 23, 2013
Holy crap, but Christopher Kirkley’s label is amazing. 2013 was a stellar year for Sahelsounds, beginning with a January release of the second volume of Music from Saharan Cell Phones. This Bollywood-inspired, auto-tuned Nigerian pop was a real revelation to us, having had no prior idea that such a thing even existed. 

Nisennenmondai
N (iTunes store, $9.99)
July 2, 2013
OMG I love these women, who put out what was easily my favorite music video of the year. (Don't stop watching before the 3:20 mark, seriously.) A must-have for all fans of the N-group and for any lover of the industrial / instrumental / experimental wing of J-rock. 

MWR
Because I’m an Arab (Free, if link works)
August 14, 2013
A publicist for this Palestinian rap trio sent me word of this album—a retrospective of the band’s brief but thrilling career-to-date. Hailing from Gaza, these guys are as sonically rich as they are politics-forward. I’m not sure if the Dropbox link I’ve provided is going to work for you — but I have no earthly idea how else to get a hold of this album, let alone pay for it. (If you know, send the info/link our way.)

P.K.14
1984 ($8)
September 13, 2013
The fifth album by one of Beijing’s oldest post-punk bands, formed all the way back in 2001. (It must be liberating having such a short music history.) Though they’ve mellowed slightly with age, they’re still awesome—in fact, even more so this decade than last. You can listen to the whole album on Bandcamp for free … so go listen to it, not to me.

Various Artists
Sounds and Colors: Brazil ($11.43)
November 25, 2013
I have heard the future, and it sounds an awful lot like the República Federativa do Brasil. Seriously, this record is fabuloso. Also, this label looks like it’s gearing up to give Sahelsounds a run for its money. Blaspheme? No, blashphe-you. Get over to their Bandcamp page and start digging around — and don’t miss out on their earlier “name your price” collections. You won’t be disappointed.

Boddega | Lo Mejor De Boddega

Listen to "Dame Tu Amor"


Listen to "Seremos Dos" 

Get the whole album here.

A super-group formed in late 1971 in Guayaquil, Ecuador, Bodegga was made up of former members of sixties bands Los Hippies, Los Picapiedras, Los Vanders and Los Cardenales. They recorded two albums (1973, 1975) and an EP (1974), toured incessently while going through numerous personnel changes before disbanding for good in 1980. They came up with their name because their first practice space was a bodega--though I'm not sure from the Spanish-language Wikipedia page where I gleaned this fact whether the bodega in that instance was a wine cellar or a storage room. (Seriously.) The present collection, which draws its two dozen tracks from those three records and previously uncollected singles was published in 1983.

I found this gem literally on the street in east Jackson Heights; I bought it for from a woman who was selling all manner of Ecuadoran goods from a table she'd plopped down on the northwest corner of Roosevelt and 85th just outside of what I recall being a phone card store. As the 7 train rattled overhead, I managed to talk the woman into selling me 10 CDs for $4 a piece--no small feat, considering that I don't speak Spanish and she didn't speak English. I can't remember how much she was asking for them, but I know I wanted all ten I'd set aside, but that I couldn't really justify that many at her asking price.

I almost didn't post this record; as you can probably imagine, the gears in my brain were clicking when I picked it up: How awesome would it be to manipulate it in Photoshop (wouldn't be too hard to remove one of the "D"s in BODDEGGA) and use it as the cover of some comp or other--perhaps even a comp of Ecuadoran music? It's a tribute to the awesomeness of the actual CD that I finally broke down this evening and have posted it for you, instead. 

Little Fujiko | White Peach Jellyfish (1996)

Dare you eat a peach? [Reupped b/c you simply can't live w/out it.]

The radiant prayer of steel bursts between your ears. There it is, outside of sorrow. Inferior to the click beetle. 

Things that have poured, of light. That were born in soft legs and the rain that no longer rains. Into the arc lamp above, the "crazed moon." When it arrives and wraps.

Wraps the ocean? The shape of a poem. And horses, larvae. The dung peacefully eating its surroundings. 

The water of mayhem wrapped in the palm of your hand, twisting itself. FOR THE FIGHTING SPIRIT OF THE WALNUT. Nipped by the air creatures everywhere, bewildered, nut-cracking. Able to melt this cloud like a ringing ear.

The quick leaps have a fire!

You would like to stand yourself up, as humans did, long ago. Without gazing and is not here. To think poems are always thunderclouds with our blind eyes and folded branches. Fog descending stairs? 

Wonder what kind of deranged scratch marks resist dyed "Chinese" signs, food displays,  the right to read in any order? Shy twitch where the leaf mulch spreads.

Poetry continues to differ from what people believe the bar tilts, a cheerful hustle, the spirit torn apart by the swirl it's just lived through.

Little Fujiko | Little Fujiko (1998)

Freshly reupped here.

Just then I noticed the thin edge of words thinly glowing of wood. They stumble around with fingers rooted in the ducts of these creatures everywhere, hanging between branches of mistakes. Little Fujiko, little bolt of lightening, lease this illusory space closing in on you.

You believe you really saw this, these vacant bolts randomly passing you by, these blocks of cloud hanging from shoulder. We are all unexploded shells, wrapped around an inner field of nettles. You can't even listen as much as has been sung. You can't even sing as much as has been heard.

They pass it now from their lips to yours.

Les Calamités | C'est Complet

Reupped by special request here.

[Originally posted on December 20, 2012.] God knows what led me to pluck this gem from the dollar bin of the record store around the corner from my friend Rodney's house here in Portland a couple of days ago, but I'm beyond super-Xtreme giddy that I did. Les Calamités formed in Beaune in Côte-d'Or in the early 1980s and released their first and only record, À bride abattue, in 1984. They broke up the next year and I've no idea what may have happened to them after that. This CD collects the songs on the first album along with all other singles/B sides the group recorded in their short-but-life-affirming career. 

Today is my last day in Portland; at around noon my mom & stepfather are driving up to take me and Rodney out to Pok Pok and then whisk me south to Corvalis for the holidays. I expect to have a bit of downtime while there; if so, you can be sure I'll be uploading a number of other Portland scores.