Evelyn Glennie rocks the Lake District

Article about cool new stone xylophone.

MP3 of it playing.

Video all about it:

John Lilly lecture from old thrift store tape

A noisy, but audible bit of found audio of Dr. Altered States himself.

solitude & the inverted fedora

I'm Learning To Share speaks volumes on Jughead's hat.

Yes, Jughead of Archie comics fame. It's like a doctoral thesis on American Studies in a tasty Flintstones chewable.

the music of sound posts the coolest article ever on The End of Solitude. Recommended, as in very.

If that sounds like no fun, FABULON will show what your friends really think of you no matter how much you text them.

In any case, whatever your state of popularity, please consider doing this:

Stand up and walk away from your computer and go outside somewhere where the birds vastly outnumber the people. Phones and iPods off, just you alone with whatever's happening.

black and white and read all over

I've pestered the heck out of friends with one emailed URL after another from VietNamNet. (Who knows why, as I'm the same provincial East Coast American who digs Kung Pao FM.)

Here's a story about Vietnam's National Poetry Day festival held this past February.

And another quite fascinating human interest story/fable/poem of sorts about a farmer, his wife and the field they've given over to 10,000 storks. An eco-tourist spot has come of their work.

As one visitor observes: "It’s nice to relax in a hammock in the garden and feel the wind from the river. At sunset the land turns white with all the returning storks."

Meanwhile, one reads in AOL of Ruppy the red fluorescent puppy.

where the grazing is good

Tho' the whole cows and country deal is more of an uberkayness thing, ub' is wearing a bit of a black armband these days.

So here's some bucolic decay. The architecture's cool (and should be preserved, ideally), but I'm here to see & hear the cows convene.


(courtesy undweller)

Feel free to stay a spell for whatever reason.

grid worthy

InfraNet Lab posts about the electrical power grid both as big damn infrastructure and the natural world's marginal respite from humanity.

Also mentioned is the On The Grid photo show ongoing in Providence RI, which seems more than a good case for the latter.

My agoraphobic, Stilgoe-esque reaction is that the world is too much with us sentient bipeds as well.

If you too are ready to switch off/on/out/whatever, you'll see me there. But only if I don't see you first.

what I didn't know about poinsettia

Plenty.

reading or just read

The Velvet Underground and Nico by Joe Harvard

Fun 'cause of Joe Harvard's interjections about his wild teen years in East Boston or chatting with Jonathan Richman. Interesting 'cause there always seems to be another story or another point of view on the Velvets, Warhol and all that.

Sudden Music and Why Birds Sing, both by David Rothenberg

Sudden Music is fun 'cause of the folk stories the author uses. Interesting because I don't know if I agree with his eco-aesthetics, but who wants to read a xerox of one's own notions.

Why Birds Sing is fun & interesting because Rothenberg goes at birdsong with science and poetics.

Both books (or at least the editions I borrowed from the library) have CDs of Rothenberg's music which I haven't truly listened to yet. Entirely an indication of my unwillingness to load a CD player (even greater than my hesitation to crack a book).

Back to napping . . .

put the metal to the pedals

Synthtopia posts about the transcription/live performance of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. Includes video clip of the performance with Lou sitting in.

Both Sickmalls and BrandlandUSA post re the closing of Bennigan's and Steak & Ale restaurant chains. No comment on this from Butters.

FABULON has Fun With Flowers, a host of flower constructions that deftly conjoin the words "pretty" and "trippy".

I'm Learning To Share! tosses out a florid bouquet of covers from '60s men's magazines.

Pruned meditates on dinosaur skeletons semi-installed and under wraps.

strutting now and then

On uberkayness a turkey gobbler prevails. And can be heard in quietude or storm on audiokayness.

Also on uberkayness, the Spirit of 17.76 can be found in old print ads from a July 4, 1976 newspaper.

pruned and multiplied

Pruned just posted some interesting links, including a Subtopia post on the Green Belt created along the former East/West German border.

And if I understand correctly, Au carrefour étrange has a new sister blog, french book covers.

painters pointers gleaners

Time for yet more special mentions/E for Excellent Blog Award recipients.

Dennis Hopper in one of his typically manic effusions quoted Duchamp while talking about Warhol. He said something like: the artist of the future will just point. As in the context of Warhol, the Campbell's soup can, the images of Marilyn, Jackie--that's art asserting their value. Or past a '60s pop purview, the idea is simply to point out or gather up wonders for others to see.

Artists, pointers, gleaners or all of the above, there really are a lot of people out there gathering up the pieces. And what shiny things they bring.

Having long wielded a spray can, Catherine Carter's been breathing easier with less airborne media for her gestural, calligraphic approach and using more collage. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there's her desire to get the resulting paintings out into the world. All on view in Catherine Carter's Art Blog.

John Borowicz favors the 000 brush. But as you can see in
son of the forest, most anything from post-mod allegory to closely rendered portraiture issues forth.

ConcreteBeat takes a video camera into the NYC streets & subways to appreciate/document/help promote public performers. Many but not all are musicians like Melissa the Loud playing the Hurdy-Gurdy. There are performance videos, interviews and info on club dates.

The Boat Lullabies and Swapatorium are giving us & numerous old found photos a chance to get acquainted. In a world where continuity is hard to come by and a blurry forgetfulness is legion, this is very good indeed.

In like fashion, the Roadside Architecture blog brings us along for the ride with new photos of old signs, old places.

In service of sonic dispersion, Awesome Tapes from Africa, Boot Sale Sounds and different waters all bring the knowledge & good vibes. And tho' my aging computer/OS won't do rar files, I visit A Closet of Curiosities just to see what crazy, cool records will show up next.

the music of sound gathers some vibes of its own.

Paleo-Future is ever sifting & digging deep into what was once imagined as the shape of things to come. And Pruned deals what being imagined in landscape architecture.

Other pointer/gleaner blogs of distinction would be The World of Kane, PCL LinkDump, BibliOdyssey and MusicThing. All of them are so good at what they do that surely they've gotten the Excellent Blog Award ten times over. Well, here's their eleventh . . .

All the above blogs get the E for Excellent awards with special mention. (And if some blog slipped my mind, remember what I said . . .)

groundhog & WeaslThrum

WeaslThrum on audiokayness: yr garden variety pinging, spronging, buzzing, humming in 4/4 time.

groundhog!!! on uberkayness: goofy grayed out pics of the indomitable Chucky, now arisen from her winter torpor. Skunk cabbage and something resembling warmth to follow for sure.

sound from Bali

the music of sound posts more about a recent trip to Bali. Included are good stories, great photos, and excellent Zoom H2 recordings of natural sound, Balinese Gamelan, cool street music etc.

Once saw the MIT based Gamelan Galak Tika perform some years ago at Roger Williams University. Great show with a hands on session afterward for interested audience members.

The matched but subtly detuned pairs of instruments give the music its shimmer.

the long & short of it

Having posted ten- or twenty-minute field recordings of geese and frogs and such on audiokayness, here come lo-fi recordings not even 20 seconds long.

Meanwhile in the city: busker, bus and transit announcements keep it moving.

one minute tops

Boot Sale Sounds just put up a selection from the 1980 LP Miniatures, a cool collection of tracks each lasting no longer than one minute. It was put together by Morgan Fisher who got folks like The Residents, Robert Wyatt and Fred Frith to contribute. Check it out, fer sure.

I've mentioned somewhere before the one minute vacations at quiet american. These are one minute field recordings submitted by folks all over.

(Way longer than one minute are my own field recordings . . .)

everyone's gone to the picture show

Once the province of the Creature From The Black Lagoon, now in a Flickr wonderland: the Theatres pool.

FABULON proclaims Viva Maria! and viva Gabor.

Attack of the Killer Insects: also on Flickr, the cool set bug of the day.

Deadlicious spaces out in the best way with cool gear used to traverse the celluloid galaxy. All that and the most excellent images from the Francophone regions of sci-fi imagining.

Meanwhile, I try not to favorite every other photo I see on Flickr.

on uberkayness--pixels aplenty

Seeing the neat stuff on Flickr, I've had the perhaps unfortunate impulse to upload some pics of my own.



As part of my experimentation with worldwide media hegemony (wheeeee!), much of this has been posted on uberkayness:

just starting to dawn on me

to Flickr into view

all yawns great & small

also the unFlickr-ing one frosty morning


If you like photos of dawn or snow or cats, you're prob. safe. Otherwise, check back later . . .

point & run

With Super Tuesday coming up, it's all I can do:

Swapatorium reflects on the mirror image.

Deadlicious goes to Mars.

I'm Learning to Share! bespeaks the "thrum" of many geese and other fun, tripped out stuff. (Shameless link: goose & geese & distant sounds field recording.)

PCL LinkDump presents Sputnik the mag.

on the other kaynesses--twilight & geese

on uberkayness--photos of twilight revisited

on audiokayness--a field recording of geese & distant sounds at night