Wishing anyone who still happens by a Happy New Year.

Still here

still here

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Driving into work the other morning with 'Village of the Sun' playing & humming & drumming along  & thinking there really isn't anything or anyone to touch Zappa when he is in this kind of form when ... what do I discover but ... a 7CD box set of the Roxy residence had been releazed ... releazed? ... released.

Could I justify it? No.

& so, of course, I bought it. 

At the time of writing I haven't listened any further that Disc One, Track Two - Cosmik Debris - but that alone is justification enough. Highly essential. Trust me. 

Still wearing in fifty-four. It feels OK ...

Here are three more additions to the current Ear Food ...

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these two featuring the utterly wonderful Patricia I-always-need-to-check-the-spelling- Kopatchinskaja

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... to be honest ... not as good as I'd hoped ... but the last three tracks (Eat That Question, Peaches en Regalia & Uncle Meat) are pretty spiffy. To my mind & ears the drums are too up front in the mix.

bottled over the yes but only 

cold of anyhow cracking 

beneath assumptions

                       you’re crumbling mountains

dear friend, 

                      & the rain drops ache with forbidden words

unfortunate,

                       poetry will always adore you 

                          

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Began my 54th year with a quick jog followed by a swim. Glorious sunny morning with snow like a mild case of dandruff.

The Wales win yesterday counted as an early birthday present. Sadly Italy didn’t cause the upset I was hoping for against England.

Rumours afoot that a ‘dream team’ is being formed to depose May - Boris plus Gove & the Rees-Mogg. Just imagine ...

New month. New notebook.

“Be there but out of the way” as working principle.

Yes?

And he showed me more, a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, on the palm of my hand, round like a ball. I looked at it thoughtfully and wondered, ‘What is this?’ And the answer came, ‘It is all that is made.’ (Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, 5)

Sunday Breakfast on Radio 3 with Elizabeth Alker.

Startling, but gratifying nonetheless, to hear a micro tribute to Mark E. Smith.

The predictable phrase “he will be sorely missed” does, though, strike a false note. Were he listening (who knows what the dead get up to?) I can imagine the guffaw.

“Another fookin pint, Gabriel, and switch that bollocks off.”

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I bog down    dusk evidence

cross my palm for sighs

totalized wholes reflected in the kitchen windows

rhythm fresh as ankles legging it

grammar & referent

the burgeoning twig

“things”

                  thrust into an aggregated phrase

(i.m. Mark E. Smith) 

I got my last clean dirty shirt outta the wardrobe
I got my last clean dirty shirt outta the wardrobe
And all the good people know

That's hip hip hip hip hit hit hit Hip Priest ...

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“... intention is always to write something,

not necessarily to write about something.”

                                                                        (Ray diPalma – adapted)

No ideas. Button things. Tenderly.

“Give us this day our television ... but deliver us from freedom.”

(Madeleine, quoted by Richard Roud, Godard)

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Scratch that thought.  Sniff this.

Current ear food ... 

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Still not clear what is going on.

.... still not sure what's going on ...

... there seems to be a problem with this blog - something to do with the account.

If it continues this might mean the end of posts ...

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... & I was doing so well - eleven in a row.

“Does not a good man consider every day to be a festival?”

One tries, one tries ...

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The Musicians’ Union Restaurant

Boozy & Forks

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The Chef at Prospero’s motto

 My every third thought shall be my gravy

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i.m. Fats Waller

born astride a grand piano

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Proof Reading


Fear always trumps greed

Fear always Trump’s greed

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Asked to sub for a colleague in the Art Department this morning I sneaked an opportunity to draw for twenty minutes (while intermittently checking no one was slitting their wrists with Stanley knives or sniffing tubes of glue). 

It must be a good six or seven years since I last took up a piece of charcoal in earnest. Silly really. 

Have I got news for you

            two beards

            chewing the fact

            that

            manner

            “get a woman on it – “

            flat share

            “got 80 quid

            off a mate of a mate – “

            bar maid (Pole)

            thumbs her phone

            doorbell dings

            the dumb waiter

(Fitzroy Tavern, Saturday 1pm)

“Should the street be considered as one of the fine arts?”

(Fernand Léger, 1928)

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Found collage 

(Chausée de Boondael)

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Having just watched Spinal Tap for the umpteenth time - but the first with the younger Wafflette - I’m left wondering whether Christopher Guest (Nigel Tufnel) is, in fact, related to Barbara Guest?

I met Stuart Calton some years ago in Liege during a Zappa conference. He very kindly gave me a copy of his Pence Eleven CD - How The Nimrods Stopped Me From Sinning. (It’s brilliant by the way.)

I chanced upon it again this afternoon while rearranging stuff upstairs & intend giving it another spin. Wondering what he was up to these days I found his ‘official’ site as T H F Drenching  at:

https://thfdrenching.bandcamp.com/

I absolutely love this stuff. The Zappa I cherish most (Lumpy Gravy, Uncle Meat) lives on in these recordings.

For those with ears (& other hairy organs) to hear.

He spent his days sipping weak tea in his kitchen as he wrote his journals and mused on ballerinas

Practice the precept : find without seeking (Robert Bresson)

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Wishing anyone who still drops by a Happy New Year ... 

... I'll skip the usual (empty) promises to post more consistently. 

Here is a Top Ten list of ear food - the kind of music I have been enjoying during the past year:

• Pacal Dusapin (String Quartets & Item in particular)
• John Lurie/ Lounge Lizards (anything I could get my hands on)
• Philip Glass (the Olafsson Piano Etudes recording)
• Frank Zappa (Crux of the Biscuit plus early vinyl reissues)
• Beatrice Rana (that Bach Goldberg recording) 
• Mahler (starting to listen again with fresh ears - Symphony No.2 conducted by Solti is sheer joy)
• Ron Miles (I Am A Man) 
• Hans Abrahamsen (String Quartets) 
• Thomas Demenga (his new recording of the Bach Cello Suites)
• Haydn (the op. 76 String Quartets - thanks to a lucky find of Hans Keller's book in a Camberley charity shop)