And now for the news

Bjork's entire Coachella set can been seen at Google Video.

Esquire offers tips on how to make the perfect mix tape.

Rolling Stone lists the 25 best ever road trip songs.

The New York Sun examines the Jesus and Mary Chain reunion.

The New York Times examines the music of ice cream trucks.

A New Jersey woman gives birth to twins at the age of 60, making her the oldest woman to give birth to twins in the United States.

Quentin Tarantino takes his newest film to the Cannes Film Festival.

Björk at Shoreline Amphitheater, May 19th in Mountain View, California. I was one of 25,000.
Check out the "All is Full of Love" video, directed by Chris Cunningham, 1999.

One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)

Your breath is sweet Your eyes are like two jewels in the sky. Your back is straight, your hair is smooth On the pillow where you lie. But I don't sense affection No gratitude or love Your loyalty is not to me But to the stars above. One more cup of coffee for the road, One more cup of coffee 'fore I go To the valley below. Your daddy he's an outlaw And a wanderer by trade He'll teach you how to pick and choose And how to throw the blade. He oversees his kingdom So no stranger does intrude His voice it trembles as he calls out For another plate of food. One more cup of coffee for the road, One more cup of coffee 'fore I go To the valley below. Your sister sees the future Like your mama and yourself. You've never learned to read or write There's no books upon your shelf. And your pleasure knows no limits Your voice is like a meadowlark But your heart is like an ocean Mysterious and dark. One more cup of coffee for the road, One more cup of coffee 'fore I go To the valley below. Bob Dylan, 1975

THE GARDEN

En robe de parade.
Samain

Like a skien of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anaemia.

And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.

In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.

Ezra Pound

"The City of New Orleans"

by Steve Goodman

Riding on the City of New Orleans,
Illinois Central Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail.
All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out at Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms and fields.
Passin' trains that have no names,
Freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.

CHORUS:
Good morning America how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

Dealin' card games with the old men in the club car.
Penny a point ain't no one keepin' score.
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
Feel the wheels rumblin' 'neath the floor.
And the sons of pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their father's magic carpets made of steel.
Mothers with their babes asleep,
Are rockin' to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel.

CHORUS

Nighttime on The City of New Orleans,
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee.
Half way home, we'll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness
Rolling down to the sea.
And all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain't heard the news.
The conductor sings his song again,
The passengers will please refrain
This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.

Good night, America, how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

Dinosaur Jr.

Last night I saw Dinosaur Jr. rock out at Amoeba Records on Haight. They are fucking awesome, and to say that they rocked is a slight understatement. They're the definition of three-piece destruction! Check out their new album, Beyond which is their first studio album since their reunion, ten years after their last studio album. Check out Mascus' signature purple and silver Nikes. Yeah, the man's got style.

"In Back of the Real"

railroad yard in San Jose
I wandered desolate
in front of a tank factory
and sat on a bench
near the switchman's shack.

A flower lay on the hay on
the asphalt highway
--the dread hay flower
I thought--It had a
brittle black stem and
corolla of yellowish dirty
spikes like Jesus' inchlong
crown, and a soiled
dry center cotton tuft
like a used shaving brush
that's been lying under
the garage for a year.

Yellow, yellow flower, and
flower of industry,
tough spiky ugly flower,
flower nonetheless,
with the form of the great yellow
Rose in your brain!
This is the flower of the World. 


Allen Ginsberg                        

San Jose, 1954

"The Mutes"

Those groans men use
passing a woman on the street
or on the steps of the subway

to tell her she is a female
and their flesh knows it,

are they a sort of tune,
an ugly enough song, sung
by a bird with a slit tongue

but meant for music?

Or are they the muffled roaring
of deafmutes trapped in a building that is
slowly filling with smoke?

Perhaps both.

Such men most often
look as if groan were all they could do,
yet a woman, in spite of herself,

knows it's a tribute:
if she were lacking all grace
they'd pass her in silence:

so it's not only to say she's
a warm hole. It's a word

in grief-language, nothing to do with
primitive, not an ur-language;
language stricken, sickened, cast down

in decrepitude. She wants to
throw the tribute away, dis-
gusted, and can't,

it goes on buzzing in her ear,
it changes the pace of her walk,
the torn posters in echoing corridors

spell it out, it
quakes and gnashes as the train comes in.
Her pulse sullenly

had picked up speed,
but the cars slow down and
jar to a stop while her understanding

keeps on translating:
'Life after life after life goes by

without poetry,
without seemliness,
without love.'

Denise Levertov

I'm living out my dreams.

Oh boy, do I miss house shows!
Erik from the Swedish band, The Vicious, at Thrillhouse Records on Mission Street.
Good times, rock!

R.I.P. New Order

The great English post-punk band New Order has called it quits, after 27 years of touring.

From bass player Peter Hook's myspace blog, May 9th, 2007:

i suppose it was the interview with clint boon that started it all off hed asked me for a few words on perry farrells satellite party single dogstar [which he thought was great] so i went on and lo and behold mentioned the N>O> split so i suppose because it was me sayin it it was out at last. im relieved really hated carryin on as normal with an awful secret so lets move on shall we? played the openin of rios in leeds on friday great crowd and considerin theyd been through 5 local bands already had an amazin resilience/ some kid came up and gave me a hug and said "sorry to hear about new order hooky" i was really touched its like your budgie dyin! great drive back [dont tell the rozzers] 47mins beat that!

Another great band now history. They were inactive from 1993-1998, so perhaps there is hope of a reunion somewhere down the road, but they are getting old...


New Order - Blue Monday, live in Barcelona, 1984 for Estoc de Pop.

Tribulations

LCD Soundsystem

"There is a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as satisfying as statistics; but in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells."
-Flannery O'Connor, 1963
from Mystery and Manners, part 5

H. R. Giger

The Gettysburg Address

Delivered by Abraham Lincoln
at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
on November 19, 1863

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . . can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . . we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . . and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . . shall not perish from the earth.

I am very proud to be able to say that I was alive when this was created.

Song: "Take My Breath Away"
Artist: Berlin
From the Top Gun Soundtrack, 1986

If you ask me, the summing up of the decade.

Could you? Would you?
City of New York, New York.

Can anybody else appreciate this?

Please take a moment

to look at a few paintings by Mark Ryden.