07 March 2013



The cover of David Bowie's new album The Next Day is actually the cover of Bowie's 1977 album Heroes, with a white square placed over the singer's face. It's a brilliantly simple yet shrewd piece of appropriated art, a gesture announcing that Bowie will not try to break with his past, but instead will transmute it, refract it and, if he's lucky, deepen it. Because depth is something David Bowie has usually, often wisely, resisted. In taking on, over the decades, different costumes and guises — Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke — and in gliding across the surface of genres such as glam rock, hard rock and disco, Bowie has proven a surprisingly durable artist. He's someone whose best songs allow him to make emotional, even moving music without becoming maudlin or melodramatic or, heaven forbid, sentimental.
The song "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" proceeds from the title pun to suggest that stars — celebrities — haunt the lives of us ordinary folk, and that they're as jealous of our lives as some of us are of theirs. The video for the song, co-starring Bowie and Tilda Swinton, finds them playing a happily aging couple who shop for groceries and chuckle unironically at TV sitcoms, even as their mundane activities are observed by young, glamorous people literally dying for such contentment. The music of "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" is all guitar- and drum-driven urgency, with Bowie yelling with deliberate hoarseness over the instruments, his voice a metaphor for the exhausted dread contained in the lyric.
By contrast, the lovely croon he uses in "Where Are We Now?" evokes life in Berlin, a reminder that the album itself reunites Bowie with producer Tony Visconti, with whom Bowie made his so-called "Berlin trilogy" of albums: LowHeroes and Lodger. But Bowie and Visconti don't merely reconnect with some of the sounds of that late-'70s period, extending even to the use of some familiar Bowie musicians, such as guitarist Earl Slick. No, they also acknowledge other albums, including what I consider Bowie's finest, Station to Station, and other producers who've helped in Bowie's evolution — most notably Nile Rodgers, who guided the star through one of his best albums, Let's Dance.
You can hear this confluence of influences in a jittery, hammering song such as "Love Is Lost." "Wave goodbye to the life without pain," Bowie sings there, and in a song that offers a mock-hymn to that ceaseless modern quest for "the new," it's also an acknowledgment of the physical pain of aging, as well as romantic agony.
In general, I find the structure of The Next Day significant, because it plays like a collection of discreet singles — songs each in a different style, genre, mood — very much in the current mode of consuming music, downloading one hit (or potential hit) at a time. Yet the music also coheres as an album in the classic-rock sense: a unified statement that can be listened to at full length, to tell a story about one man's progression through innocence, experience, arrogance, cynicism, doubt, redemption and inspiration. Yes, that's overstating it a bit, but not much. Yes, some of these steps falter in melody, or in sustaining the desired effect. But in general, The Next Day is a thriller, not merely a return to form — partly because David Bowie never took one form to begin with. This is his now-continuing contribution to pop music: the notion that restlessness and melancholy can yield more pleasure than anyone might reasonably expect.

-Ken Tucker

02 April 2012

splash

the illusion is that you are simply
reading this poem.
the reality is that this is
more than a
poem.
this is a beggar's knife.
this is a tulip.
this is a soldier marching
through Madrid.
this is you on your
death bed.
this is Li Po laughing
underground.
this is not a god-damned
poem.
this is a horse asleep.
a butterfly in
your brain.
this is the devil's
circus.
you are not reading this
on a page.
the page is reading
you.
feel it?
it's like a cobra. it's a hungry eagle circling the room.

this is not a poem. poems are dull,
they make you sleep.

these words force you
to a new
madness.

you have been blessed, you have been pushed into a
blinding area of
light.

the elephant dreams
with you
now.
the curve of space
bends and
laughs.

you can die now.
you can die now as
people were meant to
die:
great,
victorious,
hearing the music,
being the music,
roaring,
roaring,
roaring.

Charles Bukowski

15 March 2012

syriana

mercy killing arabian nights
street fighter style

my father is a kalashnikov
my mother is an unmanned drone

the golden child remains silent
choking on a tin spoon

i'm going to get a tattoo on my face
that says, "for you're amusement"

15 September 2011

magic



Come see the magic happen this Saturday at Oranje 2011...

http://www.oranjeindy.com/

KANYE WEST LYRICS

"Lift Off"

(with Jay-Z)
(feat. Beyonce)

(All engines running)

[Beyonce:]
We gon’ take it to the moon, take it to the stars
How many people you know can take it this far?
I’m supercharged
I’m ’bout to take this whole thing to Mars

Now we gon’ take it to the moon, take it to the stars
You don’t know what we been through to make it this far
So many scars
‘Bout to take this whole thing to Mars

[Kanye West:]
Lift off
Lift off, takin’ my coat off
Showin’ my tattoos, I’m such a showoff (Huh?)
I feel the pain and then rolled off
I got the whole city, they about to go off
How many niggas wit’ me up in this bitch?
How many people wanna roll with me now?
Like you know na na na, you know me by now
Know me, know me by now

[Beyonce:]
We gon’ take it to the moon, take it to the stars
How many people you know can take it this far?
I’m supercharged
I’m ’bout to take this whole thing to Mars

Now we gon’ take it to the moon, take it to the stars
You don’t know what we been through to make it this far
So many scars
‘Bout to take this whole thing to Mars
(Lift off, ahh, ahh)

[Kanye West:]
Like you know na na na, you know me by now
Know me, know me by now
You know me know me by now
Know me, know me by now…

[Jay-Z:]
Lift off
Rappers hear watch the throne
They gon be pissed off
Earth is boring to em
Shit is making my dick soft
When you Earnhart as me eventually you hit a big wall
5-4-3-2 we need fuel
Lift off

[Beyonce:]
We gon’ take it to the moon, take it to the stars
How many people you know can take it this far?
I’m supercharged
I’m ’bout to take this whole thing to Mars

Now we gon’ take it to the moon, take it to the stars
You don’t know what we been through to make it this far
So many scars
‘Bout to take this whole thing to Mars

(20 seconds and counting)
(T-minus 15 seconds, guidance is internal)
(12, 11, 10, 9)
(Ignition sequence start)
(6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1)
(Zero, all engine running)
(Lift off, we have a liftoff)

(We gon’ take it to the moon, take it to the stars)
(We gon’ take it to the moon, take it to the stars)
(How many people you know can take it this far?)
(Take it to the stars)
(How many people you know can take it this far?)
(Now we gon’, now we gon’, now we gon’…)

23 August 2011