Burroughs: Issa's Sunday Service, #170

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A number of weeks back, I promised a return to the new, self-titled debut album, Chelsea Light Moving, so here we are. The CD arrived in the mail, it's over on the Samsung now and it is quite remarkable. 

"Burroughs" was the song promised and it can be heard above and 'seen' below. The clip contains some historic footage, presented with quick cut and paste ('cut up style') lyric whimsy, and so is historic on its own terms. 
 

    And, a little confirmation that Chelsea Light Moving is the real deal, try this live rendition on for size - it seriously rocks: 

   

Reputedly, or at least in the last entry in Last Words: The Final Journals, here is Bill Burroughs final words:

“There is no final enough of wisdom, experience- any fucking thing. No Holy Grail, No Final Satori, no solution. Just conflict.

Only thing that can resolve conflict is love, like I felt for Fletch and Ruski, Spooner, and Calico. Pure love. What I feel for my cats past and present.
Love? What is it?
Most natural painkiller what there is.
LOVE.”

  -----------

Photo by storrao

cats yowling
separated by a wall--
tragic lovers

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don   

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Bug Powder Dust: Issa's Sunday Service, #98

Let's see, there are more allusions to literature, song and pop culture than is really imaginable in this one 7 minute Bomb the Bass song.  Here's a list of what I've ferreted out so far:

Bill Lee (protagonist, Naked Lunch), Beatniks, the musical Hair, Kurtz  (The Heart of Darkness), William Tell (Burroughs), Agent Cooper (Twin Peaks), Mr. Mojo Risin' (Jim Morrison of The Doors), Mugwump (creatures in NL) Exterminator (Burroughs short story collection, Cronenberg film of Naked Lunch), Interzone (early draft of NL), Annexia (place NL), Houses of the Holy and Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), Jane (Jane Bowles),  black meat (drug in NL), Big Brother (Orwell), Ginsberg's Howl, Lulu/Top of the Pops (British pop star/TV show), Abbey Road (Beatle album, cover pic), Men at Work (Aussie pop group), "Waiting for the Sun" and "Spanish Caravan" (Doors songs), Serpent and the Rainbow (Davis book and film re: zombieism), Jeff Spicoli  (film Fast Times at Ridgemont High), The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh (film!), Great Space Coaster (children's television show), and Dr. Shrinker (from a segment on the TV show The Krofft Supershow)

I didn't include any references that duplicate previous ones.  I'm sure that I missed a whole bunch in this song, but there you go.  Pretty incredible.  Bomb the Bass is new to me - evidently the collective name for the work of musician/producer Tim Simenon.  He says the name came about this way:

Though large sections of 'Beat Dis' were lifted off other people's records, the drums and bass were written by Simenon. It's a credo to which he's remained faithful to this day: he doesn't like to adapt rhythms or bass lines from other people. Programming them himself -- or having them played by live musicians -- is a working method that's essential to him: "It's how the name Bomb The Bass came about, because the samples were either scratched in live or sampled and looped on top of the rhythm section. So the concept was one of bombing the bass line with different ideas, with a collage of sounds. Bombing was a graffiti term for writing, like people would 'bomb' trains or whatever."

Here is a very different, very fine version of the same song "Bug Dust Powder":






Fine work, indeed ...

To ratchet up the vibe a notch, here is William Burroughs spoken word collaboration with Kurt Cobain titled "The Priest They Called Him" - this one gets a bit intense, even for ol' Cowboy Bill ...





There is a recent documentary out on Burroughs, William Burroughs: A Man Within, that was just recently released on DVD.  Here is something of a trailer for the film:





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This week's feature poem comes from Lilliput Review, #99 from October, 1998.   Enjoy.

recognizing the
emptiness

seeing it as
holy.

Mark Terrill

the holy man leaves
them behind...
cherry blossoms

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Sharkey's Night: Issa's Sunday Service, #54

Laurie Anderson & Husband

Saturday June 5th was the birthday of avant-garde performance artist Laurie Anderson. There is a lot by Anderson that might find its way onto Issa's Sunday Service, but I've always been particularly fond of this little number, which was one of Mr. Burroughs's, Mr. William Burroughs that is, first forays into "mass media."

Paging Mr. Sharkey, white courtesy telephone please ...

And here is a special little treat:

As good as that performance is, it just is missing something without the big guy's voice. See here is another little oddity by Big Bill, called "Ah Pook."

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This week's poem comes from the broadside spectacles of poverty, by scarecrow (Charlie Mehrhoff), published as Lilliput Review, #80, in June 1996. Additional poems from this broadside may be found in this earlier post.

words
each word a letter,
a mirror
held up to the soul.

or better: writing is the scratching
of ancient dust from mirrors.

(even the words of others
(sometimes
(part of your face.

scarecrow

Mister Monkey too
wears a funny face...
plum blossoms

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

What Keeps Mankind Alive: Issa's Sunday Service, #32

This week's Issa's Sunday Service features two repeat offenders: Tom Waits (as musician) performing the work of Bertolt Brecht (as inspiration), in this case "What Keeps Mankind Alive," a devastating little ditty if ever there was one. Monday, December 7th is the birthday of Mr. Waits, hence this week's selection. The song comes from The Threepenny Opera, with lyrics by Brecht and music by Kurt Weill. Here's the words:

What Keeps Mankind Alive

You gentlemen who think you have a mission
To purge us of the seven deadly sins
Should first sort out the basic food position
Then start your preaching, that’s where it begins

You lot who preach restraint and watch your waist as well
Should learn, for once, the way the world is run
However much you twist or whatever lies that you tell
Food is the first thing, morals follow on

So first make sure that those who are now starving
Get proper helpings when we all start carving
What keeps mankind alive?

What keeps mankind alive?
The fact that millions are daily tortured
Stifled, punished, silenced and oppressed
Mankind can keep alive thanks to its brilliance
In keeping its humanity repressed
And for once you must try not to shriek the facts
Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts

Happy birthday, Mr. Waits. And, as a little present, here is ol' Uncle Bill, of Naked Lunch fame, to give his rendition of same:

*****************************

This week's feature poem comes from issue #48, a broadside entitled Tibetan Gun Flower by the poet Charlie Mehrhoff. Back in August, I read one of the poems from this broadside, "springtime in a city park,"(page down a bit to see) at the Six Gallery Press reading. Recently, I posted another, entitled "fact:", at the daily Twitter feed (which cross-posts to Facebook). For those of you who don't lean in those directions, here it is:

fact:

to think that god had to become me
in order to throw his cigarette out the window,
write these words.

Charlie Mehrhoff

And here's another from that same broadside, previously unposted:

leaf, green leaf
her shadow
upon the silence of an empty road
that is poetry.

Charlie Mehrhoff

And, of course, the last word goes to the master:

a wood fire--
her shadow in the window
pulling thread

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Anne Waldman Rips It Up, Corso and Ginsberg Interview Doctor Benway

Here's Anne Waldman setting the place on fire - real nice to have the quality of the material match the poet's all out delivery. Many thanks to Christina for pointing the way.

And, because, that's just not enough, try this one on for size:

To round out a Beat kind of post, check out Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg "interviewing" William Burroughs in 1961.

Finally, the Twitter Lilliput Poem-of-the-day - actually, 2 poems, in just 140 characters, one by W. T. Ranney and one by John Martone.

Where else will you get that, folks?


best,
Don

Dining with Bill Burroughs at the Circle Nine Cafe

The Boys in the Band

Well, today we might as well party like it's 2099: it's the anniversary of Beat prophet, poet, huckster and general gad-about-town, big Bill Burroughs. For those looking for the gory details, The Biography Project is happy to oblige.


For the real, nitty-gritty goods, check out this fantastic full length documentary (129 minutes), entitled simply Burroughs, directed by Howard Brookner in 1983. Worth your time, you ask? The NY Times review would be a big fat yessir. Simply put, it's great.





Burroughs (1983)

In line with all this magnanimous goodness (well, ok, badness, for the Crowley inclined), there is more to explore in the nest of sites around the Burroughs-themed Interzone.

And, finally, though it might be a chilling, Tibetan Book of the Dead full-bore fear method of dying, you could do worse than listen to the dulcet hypnogogic droning of William Burroughs audio at the Internet Archive on your stroll down that white light tunnel to a rebirth of decidedly questionable resonance.

Or not. But, really, ya gotta love a huckster, especially when the stakes of that shell game are a might steeper than a cup-a-joe at Dante's Circle Nine Cafe and Entomologic Parlor of Elusive Delight.


best,
Don

Burroughs: A Junky's Christmas

Holiday Elf card by William Burroughs

Thanks to Dennis Cooper for gathering together the two parts of William Burroughs' A Junky's Christmas, a perfect little tale for a different kind of Christmas. O. Henry and Dickens it ain't ... but, you know, in another way, it most certainly is.

With a nod to all, and to all, a good night.











best,
Don

McCartney Cuts-Up Burroughs (& Ginzie)

So, Sir Paul has just simply lead a life of willful irony, no? For fans, he can do no wrong; for everybody else, he hardly gets anything right. Working his avant side project, The Fireman, he's headed into decidedly looser territory. Interviewed recently about what it is, he had this to say about how the lyrics were written:

How we do it on The Fireman is we just sit down and I can be talking to Youth about this that and the other. He sometimes will carry around a few of these poetry books. I might say, ‘Let me have that book’, and I’ll look through it and choose a couple of words at random.

Like ‘use this approach’. And we start working on the word ‘approach’. So I’d nick two words off [Allen] Ginsberg, two words of [William] Burroughs, and it was like Burroughs’ technique, the cut-up. So it was a very random process but it is very liberating.

"this that and the other"? "use this approach"?

Yes, I suppose we have once again entered the irony-free zone with Macca, bless his always lyrical soul. Meanwhile 'Down Under', Burroughs' worship of the Dark Side is paying off better dividends than Wall Street, Main Street, or any other paved with (fill or sketch in your adjective of choice here or here) intentions street.

Here's your chance for a preview of what really gives: amazon's free mp3 download of The Fireman's Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight.

The jury will be right back.

Hopefully, they'll be bringing the poems.


best,
Don