Astronomy Domine

Craziness. Telekinetic powers. A Tintoretto-ish sense of ascension/descension (moving the music, moving the audience). But, most of all, Syd Barrett, as a signifier in rock music, had and has so much to do with mind expansion, over and above anything else. Syd Barrett: a human conduit for expanding your mental, or hyper-mental, parameters. The Philly Free School wanted that energy around us. The shows at the Highwire Gallery we staged, as I have written about, were meant to be as mind-expanding, awareness-expanding, as possible, and by any means necessary. Spectacles. So that, helps to understand that as the initial audience began to shuffle in, what they would hear, more often than not, is Syd. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. This embedded, is the first track from the album. And this is relevant to what just went up on P.F.S. Post, and elsewhere, about the incredible debauched ambience of the shows, because we put the right talismans out, like Syd, and bang! Presto! They worked! Syd was what was most representatively spun at the Highwire. The Khyber, btw, didn't give us enough control to spin anything. You couldn't do that there. But the Highwire was boundlessly about what we boundlessly wanted it to be about. Some people took that energy, Tintoretto-style, and ascended, some, like Anastasia in the piece, went into descent mode. Odd intervals. Chromatics. Our translation of UFO in 1967. There aren't many authentic ways to recreate that energy, if anyone is interested in doing so. This song is one. 

I'm Waiting For The Man

About New York in the Nineties, there could be a lot to say. There could be, if Manhattan for me was more than a series of near-misses. Something big almost happened for me in Manhattan, a number of times, as a writer and an artist, but in the end, nothing really coalesced. All of which means that I have to cut against a number of conventional grains to tell my story the right way. Where and how it was that, over the course of the twentieth century, New York was able to take a formidable lead over Philadelphia culturally on the East Coast, I know. It's a tangled story, and it involves the government, the racier, nastier parts of Europe, and the will of the founding fathers. Not to mention, also, what has been built into New York as an ultimate purpose from the beginning. It's not a nice purpose. But suffice it to say, the true-blue writer, uncorrupted by willingness to dilute himself in any way to express himself, has always been persona non grata in New York. That's me. Whatever ground was broken for me in Manhattan at the end of the Nineties, would have to be the kind of sideways and backwards ground that expressed something inessential, incidental, if also intriguing to some. Thus, what I now have on Art Recess 2. Abby has to come up, but here I speak for myself, not Abby. Time will tell what records were kept to really understand what Abby thought of her home town. My home town too, sort of: I was born in Manhattan. Or, rather, I arrived in New York, on February 7, 1976.

Alright

If you were wondering if there ever would or could be a Philadelphia riposte to Sex and the City, you need look no further than the Philly Free School. A little coyness would seem to be appropriate, because we  were always about doing serious work, and having our work be taken seriously. But as I have written about Mary on Art Recess 2, we were all extremely serious about playing, being players, too. If you want to stick us with the geek mold for having been classicists, you are going to have to get the fuck out of our way. We played, played for real, and played for keeps. About matters of the flesh, Mary was a gaming avatar. The city that gave some real kids, like Mary and I, a stage on which to really play happens to be Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, babes. New York up close is a chastity belt kind of place. We spent the Aughts with steam coming off the streets, out of the bars, issuing even from the galleries. The whole game, as this piece addresses, starts for Mary and I in the Nineties. As we learned the ropes, subconsciously we knew we would be ready for each other. And for whoever else came along.   

Hungry Like The Wolf

Not much to say that what Abby & I do relates to Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran. It doesn't. Yet I call us Neo-Romantics, and the aegis thing we have going for the Aughts Neo-Romanticism, for complicated reasons. Then, there were the New Romantics in pop music in the early-to-mid-Eighties. They are worth bringing up here, because, on both musical and fashion levels, they were Gaetan Spurgin's bag. Gaetan, as I have written about in The Seattle Star and Scud, resembled Mary H in that he cared very much about self-presentation. His clothes were a part of who he was, and he related to them as such. The band he was in when I met him as of 1999, Metro, played music more tilted to straight rock, but their fashion moves were a Goth-ed out version of the Neo-Romantics. Not the posh side of the New Romantics, as it were, the racy side of them. A heavy emphasis on Eighties fashion meant that Gaetan's studio, as was later established, always had the New Romantics lined up to be played at key times. Gaetan's thing with glam meant, along with other things, that he was often the most elegantly wasted human being on the East Coast. Nineties grunge passed him by, and he had nothing to say to indie rockers either. Watching Gaetan share venue space with indie rockers was always amusing, because he was a stickler for sharp dressing and indie rock dudes in those days dressed down. Also interesting to understand that Gaetan was real, human, and had some depth to him. He could turn off the New Romantic persona whenever he needed to. Mercurial. And, with lots of European experience, an interesting contrast to the rest of Aughts Philadelphia.  

Blow Out (Don't You Want Me?)

Can't not notice the balls-out, extraordinary resemblance this classic vid holds to Brian De Palma's Blow Out, from 1981. In terms of what a song/video can do, a milestone. Not to mention the female lead (Ms. Sully), her also extraordinary resemblance to Justine Caskey. Word up.

Feel 2

Over several years, Feel 2 is the most popular track I've placed on hearthis.at. 

If Only (Beyond Dolorem mix)

 Speck tackles the creepy side of things, in this Opera Bufa carrying opus.