August 31 - September 2, 2008

Horses

by Philip Shaw

33 1/3 Books, 2008, paperback

19 cards

The first time I saw Patti Smith was on R.E.M.'s Monster tour in 1995. I was in high school. I didn't know much about her yet but I knew that she was someone to find out more about, much like R.E.M. pointed me towards The Velvet Underground. I don't remember the quote exactly but I recall Michael Stipe saying once how when he heard Horses he realized anyone could sing, that he could sing. R.E.M.'s music and interests gave me a perspective beyond the one-traffic light town I lived in. Because of Horses significance to Stipe, the bits I know about Patti Smith, and the concerts of hers I've seen since, I was excited to see that the 33 1/3 book about her focused on Horses.

Philip Shaw's story of musical discovery and research bears some similarities to mine, though his was guided by Ian Curtis and Joy Division and Patti Smith, who he knew first through the Horses cover. The format and approach for 33 1/3 books varies with the author. Shaw writes about Horses as a fan, as well as the necessary invocation of Rimbaud while also discussing it through other texts. As he says, "...Horses is about what happens when we listen as well as read."

Selections:

3- "...but from Patti Smith I learned that the loss of control, a key word for Ian Curtis, need not lead to a suicidal walk 'upon the edge of escape' (She's Lost Control Again) As Land taught me, the loss of control could lead, equally, to the sea of possibilities."

7- Velvet Underground and Warhol

8- Bob Dylan

9- Robert Mapplethorpe

13- rigor and taking music seriously

-"Elvis Costello line (the attribution is disputed) 'writing about music is like dancing about architecture.'"

15- "unlike other cultural forms, music is where we are most likely to encounter ourselves"

16- "What music offers is the promise of release from the restrictions of everyday life. But such a release is, of course, illusory, and just as ideology works to convince its subjects that they are, in fact, outside ideology, thus rendering itself immune to critique and to the potential for revolt, so music, by concealing its origins in commerce, and by providing a sense of escape from the workaday world, operates as a lure to critical consciousness. To be lost in music, released form the nine to five, is to feel alive, but also, as Sister Sledge adds, to be 'Caught in a trap': for who, once they have experience such freedom, would wish to reflect on it? Might the act of close critical engagement ruin the illusion?"

19- "nothing is more heady in the sense of intoxicating, than the champagne froth of a radical new idea."

22- Benjamin

23- the Situationists

24- "With each song, Smith presents a sort of photographic negative, her characters inhabiting a shadow version of the land of the free."

28- Lacan: "A certificate tells me that I was born. I repudiate this certificate: I am not a poet, but a poem. A poem that is being written, even if it looks like a subject."

-"Patti Smith always distrusted the idea that human beings possess a fixed or stable identity."

29- "Yes, she is a poet, and she is a poem that is written."

-eye patch

30- Rimbaud- self-fashioning

33- Alice in Wonderland

37- Philadelphia Museum of Art

41- Illuminations

44- Piss Factory

-that photograph

49- drawings

52- "death by water"

-"how many tears on your pillow. crocodile or real. watershed."

52- T.S. Eliot

54- "the night stretched like a cloud"

55- (questions) "Perhaps all of these or none of these things."

56- PS: "I had to go to Paris to find myself as an artist, but I came back to New York filled with words and rhythms."

56- close alliance with Lenny Kaye

60- Sam Shepard- PS: Shepard's "whole life moves on rhythms. He's a drummer."

61- street angel

62- "her stress on the act of reading"

63- words, language

66- longing

67- Rimbaud quote- women

70- Artaud

72- Richard Hell: "The art-form of the future is celebrityhood."

76- Gross: "She was a woman who dared to get up on stage and not smile- not aim to please."

77-78- silences

86- Patty Hearst- "I am nobody's million dollar baby."

97- John Cale- mirror quote

98- Horses read as artifact

102- "Again, who is singing here, and to whom?"

106- Lacan, Zizek

121- album "form of memento mori, an artistic meditation on the limits of mortality."

122- Jim Morrison- the task

128- Voltaire- back to England- Louis XV- said to have asked him: 'What did you learn over there?' 'To think, sire.' (penser- to think), to which the King replied, 'Horses?' (panser- to groom horses)"

129- "Horses, then, is about thinking; or rather, it is about allowing oneself to be thought..."

131- Barthes

132- Lacan- child- mirror

June 25 - 28, 2008

A Series of Small Boxes

Thomas Devaney

2007, paperback

3 cards

Thomas Devaney is a brilliant poet. He writes of life and life lived in such precise ways while not forgetting stamps and refrigerator boxes from childhood. I discovered his poetry also through the June issue of the Believer. The review offered a few lines of the title poem, A Series of Small Boxes (which you can read in full here). After reading those lines I knew I needed this book. While the title poem is still my favorite many gems and brilliant lines linger throughout the entire book. He even writes about Nothing in a well-informed wrestling with John Cage. The fabulous photographer Zoe Strauss, whose work I saw at the Whitney a few years ago, even took his photograph for the back jacket.

Selections:

1- "Which I also love in a way one can love

A City one has loved and been loved in

Because it enters you, in a way, as you walk,

Buy stamps, tell time..."

3- "Does silence have to mean a lack of silence?"

4- eyes, saying hello

6- "Is this what 'half' looks like?"

8- "all those times we never kept meeting"

10-12- A Series of Small Boxes

12- "corrugated magic"

13- "Clouds replace the clouds."

18- donuts

22- WE STILL REFOLD MAPS

23- "New Jersey is the greatest poem never written."

35- "Birdwatchers had nothing on what the birds saw."

39- "The most remarkable love poems in the world have nothing to do with it."

-"The calm, late-night companionship of a book.

Assured in words not to be reassured in words.

No promises past the page only all the moment can hold."

41- One Hour, October

-skyscraper

43- "Like records when they were records and letters letters."

46- Rimbaud

54- "Everything I had to say I didn't need to say."

55- John Cage

-"the Wallace Stevens line: 'Nothing that is not there and nothing that is"

-"Nothing + Nothing = Something, that is 'Nothing' which is really something," I said not knowing where that came from.

-"Here is a line for not talking, which isn't silence"

56- "I am only describing, as words are one way, and walking is another."

-"new John Cages get added"

May 26 - 31, 2008

Famous for Fifteen Minutes
My Years with Andy Warhol
By Ultra Violet
1998, hardcover
9 cards

I picked up this book about Warhol, written by one of his Superstars Ultra Violet. Partly about Warhol and partly about Ultra Violet's own life an experiences, a quote at the beginning points out that all conversations are reconstructed, warning one to not take some of the quotations at their word. While interesting in parts, Ultra Violet was out for publicity, in fast pursuit of the media, and the name dropping gets a bit overwhelming at times. She knew (and dated) lots of people including Dali and Ed Ruscha and while she has some great insights, at other times it seems like she's trying to hard to make sweeping statements about the time.

1- "In death, as in life, Warhol deals in contradictions."
3- "I met the King of Pop years ago. His name was Marcel Duchamp. To me, Andy was the Queen of Pop."
5- (Warhol) "He changed the way we look at the world, arguably the way we look at ourselves."
6- "The primary creation of Warhol was Andy Warhol himself."
7- "Magic was a word Andy gargled with for hours."
8- gimlet eye
-"There is no taking of Polaroids in heaven: the ineffable light precludes it."
11- "Here in the Factory the mirrors have come out of their frames and merged into a total environment of silvery reflections and refractions."
12- "...a wonderland where you step in and out of yourself, where memory and fantasy race into each other at full tilt."
-"Maybe what you're creating is artifact not art."
13- "Mirrors- they have the most memories. I am quoting John Graham."
18- Billy Name- "trained in the spirit of Black Mountain. 'All of us carried Rimbaud under our arms.'"
28- doughnuts
31-33- screening of Blow Job
42- worked in a five and dime store
89- luncheonette
90- "In the Factory, Andy always works with loud rock music on. In rock, repetition is the leitmotif. ... the drum, a replica of the heartbeat."
92- "But for Warhol, photography is not just a helping hand. It is a replacement of the chosen object. The photograph becomes the painting. ... no original painting; from the start, there are multiples."
95- "It amazes me that a country as liberal as the United States allows itself to take on the burden of capital punishment."
96- Red Race Riot- "the repetition produces an action painting."
97- subliminal art- "takes objects people are fascinated by and turns them into art."
98- quadruple impact
-"John Cage uses graffiti sounds in his pieces and Merce Cunningham uses everyday noise in his dances."
102- "The Velvet Underground plays so loud you never hear the music."
103- Nico- "She looks like a girl- but when she sings, it's hard to be sure of her sex."
-"The decibels are so deafening that talking is out of the question. That's why Andy loves it so much."
104- "The Velvet Underground is going with music what Andy is doing with images. They repeat and repeat and repeat the same word or phrase until someone screams out, 'Shut up!'"
105- "Minimal music echoes minimal art."
110- Empire "It is a picture postcard of the building transferred to the screen."
125- Duchamp
John Chamberlain- orange corduroy pants

142- Max's Kansas City

144- Brasserie in the Seagram Building

198- "The moon is no cheap date."

205- "Since the sixties people workshop the rock singer more than the song and the dancer more than the dance, everyone starts at the beaming energy of Edie..."

214- Ed Ruscha

216

221- Polaroid camera

254- "And his camera is still an integral part of his clothing."

273- Fiesta ware

February 26 - March 19, 2008

Chronicles, Volume 1

Bob Dylan

Hardcover, 2004

25 cards

One would expect Bob Dylan to be a great writer, but it is a delight that he is this good. These works shed light on Dylan, his process, his music, as well as his tussles with critics, interviewers, the public and language, and more. Hopefully there will be a volume two.

Excerpts from the cards

p. 7 Conversation with another man:

"What kind of music do you play?"

BD: "Folk Music"

"What kind of music is folk music?"

"I told him it was handed down songs. I hated these kind of questions. Felt I could ignore them."

p. 9 New York City

p. 11 description of the acts at Cafe Wha? and mention of Hubert's Flea Circus

p. 18- strumming-driving people away or drawing them in closer- "There was no in-between."

"Folk songs were the way I explored the universe, they were pictures and the pictures were worth more than anything I could say."

p. 20 (grandmother ) "...told me once that happiness isn't on the road to anything. That happiness is the road."

p. 32 "There were a million stories, just everyday New York...you'd have to pull it apart to make any sense of it." and also his comment about romance.

p. 34- On the Road and Howl- 45 records being incapable

"LPs were like the force of gravity..." staring at their covers

p. 35 "I just thought of mainstream culture as lam as hell and a big trick."

p. 36 "I was looking for the part of my education that I never got."

p. 39 "The folksingers could sing songs like an entire book, but only in a few verses."

p. 40- art books and artists

p. 42-43 (grandmother) "There are some people you'll just never be able to win over. Just let it go- let it wear itself out."

p. 45- morality and politics

-Vom Kriege Clausewitz's book- "If you think you're a dreamer, you can read this stuff and realize you're not even capable of dreaming. Dreaming is dangerous."

p. 46- "Horde your energy."

p. 52 "I never looked at songs as either 'good' or 'bad,' only different kinds of good ones."

p. 54- protest songs- "...You have to show people a side of themselves that they don't know is there."

p. 55 "Picasso had fractured the art world and cracked it wide open. He was revolutionary. I wanted to be like that."

-"I watched it intently, thinking I might not see it again."

p. 55-56- tv, destroying minds, "the three-minute song also did the same thing. Symphonies and operas are incredibly long, but the audience never seems to lose its place or fail to follow along. With the three-minute song, the listener doesn't have to remember anything as far back as twenty or even ten minutes ago. There's nothing you have to be able to connect. Nothing to remember."

p. 56 "I didn't feel the need to examine every stranger that approached."

p. 57 corduroy trousers

p. 60 Remington typewriter

p. 65 Peter Schumann, Bread & Puppet Theatre

p. 71 "Folk songs are evasive- the truth about life and life is more or less a lie, but then again that's exactly the way we want it to be."

-"A folk song has over a thousand faces and you must meet them all if you want to play this stuff. A folk song might vary in meaning and it might not appear the same from one moment to the next. It depends on who's playing and who's listening."

p. 73 T.S. Eliot poem description

-"...Nietzsche talks about feeling old at the beginning of his life... I felt like that too."

p. 77 snowy streets and NYC as a magnet

p. 79 importance of spelling

p. 80 (New York City) "Lot of walking. Got to keep your feet in good shape."

p. 84 NYPL and microfilm- language and rhetoric of newspapers

p. 85 "It's all one long funeral song."

p. 86- different concepts of time in the North and the South

p. 87 Metro Diner, near 6th Ave

p. 88 "Semantics and labels could drive you crazy."

p. 93 "Polka dances always got my blood pumping."

p. 96 "I'd never seen a robin weep, but could imagine it and it made me sad."

-Hank Williams' songs "the archetype rules of poetic songwriting."

p. 99-100 Woody Gurthrie and the box of lyrics that Billy Bragg and Wilco would record

p. 112- Archibald MacLeish- sacrifices

p. 113 1968 "the cities were in flames"

p. 115 "As far as I knew, I didn't belong to anybody then or now."

"...spokesman, or even conscience of a generation. That was funny. All I'd ever done was sing songs that were dead straight and expressed powerful new realities. I had very little in common with my generation that I was supposed to be the voice of."

-"Being true to yourself, that was the thing."

p. 118 "Privacy is something you can sell, but you can't buy it back."

p. 122 Chekov

p. 123 "The press? I figured you lie to it."

p. 133 "...though he is approaching the perilous age of 30..."

p. 146- live performances

p. 147- keeping his word with himself

p. 148 "My own songs had become strangers to me."

p. 150- lying

p. 153- crowd, cutouts

p. 155 "They came to stare and not participate."

-"...the kind of crowd that would have to find me would be the kind of crowd who didn't know what yesterday was."

-"Most music journalists had become nothing more than a public relations staff anyway."

p. 156 "My bright eyes were dull and I could do nothing."

p. 158- Number 2 and popular music

p. 163 "As long as I was alive I was going to stay interested in something."

p. 165 "A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true. They're like strange countries that you have to enter." "You can write a song anywhere...it helps to be moving."

p. 180- New Orleans "The city is one very long poem."

p. 182- Mason Ruffner- libraries- "reading Rimbaud and Baudelaire to get his language down."

p. 189 "...but the only way to find out, it to find out."

p. 195 "When it's right, you don't have to look for it."

p. 199 small print comment

p. 200- old water tower

p. 201 "...she was never one of those people who thinks that someone else is the answer to their happiness. She's always had her own built-in happiness."

p. 202 "Sometimes you could be looking for heaven in the wrong places."

p. 220 "Sometimes you say things in songs..."

p. 221 "Sometimes the things that you liked the best and that have meant the most to you are the things that meant nothing at all to you when you first heard or saw them."

p. 226- advice from his Dad

p. 235 "I supposed I was looking for was what I read about in On the Road..."

p. 243 Flo Castner introduced him to Woody's solo music

p. 244 "...his voice was like a stiletto."

p. 245- Woody's book Bound for Glory

p. 247 (Woody) "He painted with words."

p. 265- Suze- "We started talking and my head started to spin."

p. 269- Red Grooms

p. 270- drawings

p. 272 Bertolt Brecht

p. 275 "The audience was the "gentleman" in the song."

-comparing the song to Guernica

p. 283 "Twenty-four hour news coverage would have been a living hell."

p. 284 "When December rolled around, everything slowed down, everything got silent and retrospective, snowy white, deep snow."

p. 288 Suze introduced BD to Rimbaud "Je est un autre."

March 12, 2008

Highway 61 Revisited

Mark Polizzotti

2007, paperback

6 cards and notes on back cover

Highway 61 Revisited is the type of 33 1/3 book that I love. It gets into the album, the history, the musician, the cover and more while shedding new light on Bob Dylan. Polizzotti's book about Andre Breton has been on my bookshelf for a long time since I picked it up years ago. After this book I look forward to reading his take on Breton. Polizzotti writes about Dylan as "the thinking person's rock star," and also quotes Joan Baez, "Some people are just no interested. But if you're interested, he goes way, way deep." I'm interested. Polizzotti also keys into the simple but profound workings of Dylan and songs with statements like "Every great song has one moment that stands out above the rest..."

Highlights from the cards

p. 5- opening line about gaze

"The outer photo is as much performance as the music inside"

-glowering rock stars

p. 6 "...he knows the music is good, the best he's ever made, but he doesn't expect you to recognize it and he's gearing up for a fight."

-baby stroller

p. 7- Sergei Eisenstein

"Music that still has the rare quality, after all this time, of making us hear what we want to hear."

p. 8- this record being "too good"

p. 9 "The album is a road map into new territory..."

-"As the thinking person's rock star..."

-"...it pushes one to confront is again and again..."

-Joan Baez, "Some people are just no interested. But if you're interested, he goes way, way deep."

p. 10 "...the supposed turn toward electric music was really a return"

-Dylan, "...I played all the folk songs with a rock 'n' roll attitude..."

p. 12 Dylan, "'Protest' is not my word." ... "amusement-park word"

-"...There are many sides to us, and I wanted to follow them all."

p. 13 "poetical" approach

"he not busy being born and then reborn, is busy dying"

p. 14 Harry Smith

-Greil Marcus

p. 16- Suze

Dylan to Nora Ephron in 1965, "Folk music is the only music where it isn't simple."

-vegetables and death

p. 17 and 18- painters including Red Grooms

p. 19- singing when he writes

-Al Kooper's organ playing

p. 20- Kant and Mallarme

p. 21- Freud

p. 23- Midwestern

p. 24 BD "I left where I'm from because there's nothing there."

p. 25 Bessie Smith

-flipping the record

p. 31- Greil Marcus misses...

-boredom and the writing of "Like a Rolling Stone"

-D.A. Pennebaker

p. 32- "rhythm thing on paper"

-interviews as theatrical performances

-ghost writing "Like a Rolling Stone"

p. 33 "Also rare for a chart-topping hit, the lyrics focused not on love but its opposite."

p. 35- discussion of who Miss Lonely is (makes a good case its not Edie Sedgewick who I was thinking it was)

p. 37- ultimately...

-any of the phonies

p. 38 "It's up to you to figure out who's who"

-language used in Like a Rolling Stone

p. 39- French Symbolists

-Rimbaud, "I is someone else"

p. 41- Tarantula

-"the sun is still yellow. some people would say it's chicken" from Tombstone Blues

p. 43- writing songs

p. 52- Al Kooper's organ story

p. 53- the result...

p. 55- promo copies

p. 62- did sound check at Newport

p. 63 "sellout jacket"

p. 65- "...the sound of the street..."

p. 70 Woody Guthrie

p. 71 "Woody made each word count. He painted with words."

p. 75- names famous and obscure

p. 85- magpie's nests

p. 89 his voice

p. 90 (voice) "...it exists on its own terms..."

p. 92 "Love Minus Zero"

p. 93 Chelsea Hotel

p. 94 "If he was really serious about her, she had to be unknown..."

p. 110 "...the man Dylan's listeners swore to themselves they'd never become, and with whom most eventually all grew all too familiar."

-Jones vs. Smith for rhyming

-songs on the album- "those addressed to someone...and those...that flash by like glimpses through a car's window as it speeds across this frantic carnival of a nation."

p.111 "Once we have walked into this room, it is not certain we will ever find our way out.

-"Thin Man" song he often performs live

-rhyme scheme

-"Every great song has a moment that stands out above the rest..."

p. 117 BD "My songs are just me talking to myself."

p. 128- Rimbaud's "My Bohemian Life"

p. 129 warning "stepping off the road can leave you very lost"

p. 130- Kooper playing a Hohner Pianet

130-131- Tom Thumb

p. 134- postcards, cultural memory

p. 135- circuses and carnivals and carny life

p. 144