May 23, 2006

• I think someone in my family had the LP this came from. A gatefold with lots of trippy artwork.
• Sounds about right (the artwork I mean) - the LP was released in '74.
• oh. my. god. someone has put "la linea" on youtube. I'll see you in the spring.....
• i had no idea. amazon.co.uk entry for the album, with some more background information.
• glover on the release of a dvd of the butterfly ball concert, from here on rogerglover.com:

  My first impression was not good; as I opened the box, I found the DVD plastered with a huge photograph of Glenn Hughes (who also features on the box’s spine). Huh? Ah, now I get it; some dolt in the art department (if there is such a department) was informed that this was the work of Deep Purple’s bass player. Now I have nothing against Glenn, he’s a fine bloke, but… this was not a good omen.

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• I used to have the children's book this was based on. No, wait, I STILL have it... somewhere.
• That's what comes of licking toads.
• I was okay right up until the five-headed frog plant started playing the lute. Then I began wigging. ... Seriously, that's one of the more fucked up pieces of animation I think I've ever seen. The animals wearing each other's heads and happily eating one another during the festivities seems wrong on so many levels, I need acid to process it. Compared to this, "Holy Diver" is a model of logic and coherency.
• But wait--there's a DVD. This performance at the Royal Albert Hall had Ian Gillian replacing RJ Dio, people dancing around in animal costumes, and lots of 70s jam band bonding. Also, it was released in the 70s and quickly withdrawn because people hated it. Sounds great! And how did I know Vincent Price would be involved somehow?
• Thanks for this, I've loved it since wee small days. Good post.
• Now, after having had a chance to watch it... Totally inappropriate music for the poems and drawings of the books it's based on. The animation is interesting, but man... the music downright ruins it.
• I said I love it, Nickdanger. Are you calling me a tasteless know-nothing putzensniffer? Is that what you're calling me? Do you think I go around sniffing putz all day because my taste in music is so terrible that I can't tell the difference between listening to good music and sniffing putz? Eh?
• Hold on... Hold on... Let me see here... Er.... Yes. Yes, quid, that is precisely what I meant.
• I keep trying to deny it, but the 70s were no less weird than the 60s. Great.
• And here I thought it was going to be a commercial for some lame '70's toy. This is the greatest non-monkey thing in the world. I have found Nirvana. Thank goodness for my curiosity. And thank you Polychrome. Thank you.
• Looks like a furry party to me.
• I'm not sure whether to be horrified or terribly amused.
• MonkeyFilter: Are you calling me a tasteless know-nothing putzensniffer? MonkeyFilter: I'm not sure whether to be horrified or terribly amused. *turns up volume, looks for brownies
• Se Me Olvido Otra Vez after Donald Justice I sit in bed, from the linen your scent still rises. You're asleep inside your old guitar. A mariachi suit draped on a chair, its copper buttons the eyes of jaguars stalking the night. I sit in bed, from the linen your scent still rises. Through a window a full moon brings to mind Borges, there is such loneliness in that gold. You're asleep inside your old guitar. Are your calloused heels scraping its curved wood or are there mice scurrying in its walls? I sit in bed, from the linens your scent still rises. I flick on a lamp, yellow light strikes your guitar like dirt thrown on a coffin. You're asleep inside your old guitar. I sit in bed, from the linens your scent still rises. -- Eduardo C. Corral
• Ah, for the days when you had a bowl of drugs for breakfast. When I was a kid in the 70s, I couldn't figure out why all the adults didn't seem to give a crap about, well, anything. It all makes so much more sense now.
• This is a useful site for those interested in online poetry.
• To Grief Oh other country which we never left rich in anniversaries each in turn wearing your crown how many of them are there like stars returning every one alone from where they have been all the time each one the only one and to whom do you belong incomparable one recurring never to be touched again whether by hand or by understanding familiar presence suddenly appproaching already turned away reminder hdden in the names back of the same sky that lights the days as we watch them what do you want it for this endless longing that is only ours orbiting even in our syllables why do you keep calling us as you do from the beginning without a sound like a shadow -- W.S. Merwin
• Seventies goodness, with a few other decades thrown in for good measure.
• The Last Waltz The orchestra playing the last waltz at three o'clock in the morning in the Knights of Pythias Hall in Hartland, New Brunswick, Canada, North America, world, solar system, centre of the universe -- and all of us drunk, swaying together to the music of rum and a sad clarinet: comrades all, each with his beloved. -- Alden Nowland
• Fairy Tale Offer me a peach and a fork. Offer my sadness a small box. Red or gold or white, it doesn't matter. Please don't touch the lit candles on the tree. Store the box until I want it, then tell me a story, the one where I'm happy as a trout because no one catches me. The trout wants a box to call its own. The red fox wants to swim across the river. The bear ran away from the woodsman, then fell asleep in the honey tree. If only we had a brand new axe! Open my box, and you'll find my brand new child. I've been wanting the two of you to meet. -- Kathleen McGookey

•          I think 
   the moon is pregnant again.
  
     I hope she won't sue
            me this 
             time.
          -- Tukaram, trans D. Ladinsky

• The Holy Longing Tell a wise person, or else keep silent, Because the massman will mock it right away. I praise what is truly alive, What longs to be burned to death. In the calm water of the love-nights, Where you were begotten, where you have begotten, A strange feeling comes over you When you see the silent candle burning. Now you are no longer caught In the obsession with darkness, And a desire for higher love-making Sweeps you upward. Distance does not make you falter, Now, arriving in magic, flying, And, finally, insane for the light, You are the butterfly and you are gone. And so long as you haven't experienced This: to die ands so to grow, You are only a troubled guest On the dark earth. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, trans Robert Bly
• Poet Who else erects monuments to dead insects?
• Magistrate When I was made the magistrate Of this benighted town I had not thought to spend my days In bobbing up and down. How can so dwarf a township Produce so vast a crowd Of visitors concerned to brag That we have met and bowed? Greetings, flatteries, farewells: One bows and bows again. No wonder magistrates are rarely Seen as upright men. -- Chong Ch'ol, trans Graeme Wilson
• Poems of This Size In poems of this size, so little might happen, one wonders if such brevity can matter -- as when I strolled, thirty years ago, with my wife (a year before she was my wife) in her first neighborhood, and we heard that familiar, horrible squealing of tires down the block. And because she was a young nurse, no doctor in sight, when we reached the small boy lying on the red-brick street with many people gathered around, she had to step forward and kneel, had to be the one cradling him and wondering, most closely, at how quick and full an end may be. -- Stephen Corey
• Channel It has come up from the night depth of the lake to bend and chatter the rod as it lunged under the boat, and now it flopped in the net until I had it in a slippery scrimmage on the aluminum floor: suave as a satyr's haunch, but Appaloosaed with dots, treble-spined, and whiskered like Confucious. And now, as I pliered open the jaws and took the hook it had taken, it made something like a bee-buzz. From deep in its mouth that was white as a Ping-Pong ball, it made something like absolution; and then it curled in the icebox, whacking the beers with its tail; and still, there it was. I do not like to hurt a thing alive, even a catfish, so slow to perish not even Saint Thomas Acquinas or W.C. Fields could raise the eloquence to free its killer of guilt. In Florida, catfish walk. Nailed to an oak, skin peeled like wallpaper, catfish won't stop talking with twitches. But what they say improves on guilt. You have to have waited many nights, with your face blackening from the smoke of burning tires, and shined your light on a belled rod ringing over stones and going fast into the river, to know that their lives mean as much as your life. And what is your life? The bottom of a shallow place? Magnificences? You hold them carefully. You listen, and they say your name in ancient Catfish. -- Rodney Jones

• I met a lady
       on a lazy street
  hazel eyes
       and little plush feet
  
  her legs swam by
       like lovely trout
  eyes were trees
       where boys leant out
  
  hands in the dark and
       a river side
  round breasts rising
       with the finger's tide
  
  she was plump as a finch
       and live as a salmon
  gay as silk and
       proud as a Brahmin
  
  we winked when we met
       and laughed when we parted
  never took time
       to be brokenhearted
  
  but no man sees
       where the trout lie now
  or what leans out
       from the hazel bough
  
  --Earle Birney

• Haywire When I was a kid, there was always someone old living with my friends, a small, gray person from another century who stayed in a back room with a Bible and a bed with silver rails. They were from a time before the time the world just plain went haywire, and even though nothing made sense to them anymore, they'd gotten used to it, and walked around smiling vaguely at the aliens ruining the galaxy on the color console television, or the British invasion growing from the sides of our heads in little transistorized boxes. In the front room, by the light of tv, we were just starting to get stoned, and the girls were helping us help them out of their jeans, while in the back room someone very tired closed her eyes and watched a wheat field where a boy whose name she can't remember is walking down a dusty road. No sound but the sound of crickets. No satellites, Or even headlights in the distance yet. -- George Bilgere
• Poem: There Might Be Beauty There might be beauty. The wind outside may be A face really quite plain, But as a daisy 10,000 miles away, A stirring, the beginning Of a beginning to end the world, And a free hand for innocence. I have a friend translating Rimbaud. What's it to you? To me, he is the horizon of a horizon. Small creatures conspire and smile Into a rainbow he is building For them alone. There might be beauty. To me, it feels like 10,000 miles of daisies. -- Donald Revell
• The Spider's Web The spider, dropping down from twig, Unfolds a plan of her devising, A thin premeditated rig To use in rising. And all that journey down through space, In cool descent and loyal hearted, She spins a ladder to the place From where she started. Thus I, gone forth as spiders do In spider's web a truth discerning, Attach one silken thread to you For my returning. -- E.B. White
• Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth, And spotted the perils beneath, All the toffees I chewed, And the sweet sticky food, Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth. I wish I'd been that much more willin' When I had more tooth there than fillin' To pass up gobstoppers, From respect to me choppers And to buy something else with me shillin'. When I think of the lollies I licked, And the liquorice allsorts I picked, Sherbet dabs, big and little, All that hard peanut brittle, My conscience gets horribly pricked. My Mother, she told me no end, "If you got a tooth, you got a friend" I was young then, and careless, My toothbrush was hairless, I never had much time to spend. Oh I showed them the toothpaste all right, I flashed it about late at night, But up-and-down brushin' And pokin' and fussin' Didn't seem worth the time... I could bite! If I'd known I was paving the way, To cavities, caps and decay, The murder of fiIlin's Injections and drillin's I'd have thrown all me sherbet away. So I lay in the old dentist's chair, And I gaze up his nose in despair, And his drill it do whine, In these molars of mine, "Two amalgum," he'll say, "for in there." How I laughed at my Mother's false teeth, As they foamed in the waters beneath, But now comes the reckonin' It's me they are beckonin' Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth. -- Pam Ayres
• Dancing on the Moon 1935 cartoon (YouTube).