"The House of the Rising Sun" - Nina Simone

When I was twelve or thirteen my family and I visited New Orleans. We stayed in a faded old relic of a place and spent a lot of time walking around the city. There’s a lot of history to be found in that town, lurking in its seedy alleys and upstairs rooms. It’s one of those places that gets name-checked in pop music all the time and a bunch of great musicians have lived and played there going back for centuries probably. Today, Alex Chilton, for instance, and I believe Ray Davies both reside in the Big Easy. Anyway, when I was there we went on a horse-and-cart tour through the streets with a local guide, and as we were nearing the end of our journey he pointed out a dilapidated building along the way that he claimed was the inspiration for the song “The House of the Rising Sun.” I was a little too young to appreciate the brief conversation he had with my parents about it, but from what I remember, the place was a brothel and it was really called the House of the Rising Son. Interesting, stuff, I know…

Anyway, here’s a version of the song by the incomparable Nina Simone. It’s a live performance from some unknown concert on the Young, Gifted, and Black compilation by Dynamic Entertainment (2003).

The House of the Rising Sun - Nina Simone


Buy Nina Simone CDs on Amazon.com


"House of the Rising Sun" and "Go to Hell" live at the Bitter End Cafe (1968)

Yeeah...

Extra!

I've started writing music reviews for the website PopMatters, so if you're thinking to yourself, "Wait a minute! You're a terrible writer; a dull-edged tool; a thumb-less gardener at best!" you probably won't want to click on this link:


Spencer Tricker | PopMatters

"Waving Flags" - British Sea Power

This is the first single from British Sea Power's latest album, Do You Like Rock Music?. It's been out for a while now, but I think you should all give it a listen, since you probably haven't heard it yet. People have been saying it sounds like Arcade Fire, because it's sort of "epic" sounding and BSP's an indie band, but honestly, it doesn't sound a bit like Arcade Fire, because they're completely awful.

Following the sneering squall of Noble's lead guitar in the intro section, co-frontman Yan bleats, "You are astronomical fans of alcohol, so welcome in," beginning the theme of camaraderie that holds this track together like a close-knit gang of teenagers. In the second verse, it's a similar sentiment. "Are you of legal drinking age? On minimum wage? Well, welcome in!" "Waving Flags" is a song about the joy and sense of invincibility that overtakes you in those flashing moments when you feel as though you've got the whole world at your back. It's not working-class pride, it's something much more--something universal. In the chorus, Yan moves into a lower tone as he sings, "You, you're only here for a while, and it's all a joke," and you know he's right. It's a song that's encouraging even when it’s sober—it’s morbidity with a hearty slap on the back from your mates. It's a song that comes from an understanding that we all need something to take the edge off, and yes, we do like rock music.

"Waving Flags"- British Sea Power
BSP's Official Website
Buy Do You Like Rock Music? from Newbury Comics


Live on Later...with Jools Holland

Daniel Day-Lewis / There Will Be Blood

With the awards season having just ended, and the dust haze now settling (as much as it can ever settle in a place like L.A.), I think there’s just enough time for me to throw in my two cents on one of the best acting performances of 2007.

Being in London, where movie tickets cost about as much as a good bottle of wine back in the States, I was pretty much ready to give up on the idea of seeing P.T. Anderson’s There Will Be Blood on the big screen, when, quite literally out of the green, I came across a great little theater in Islington that was still showing it. The sheer convenience being too much to refuse, I paid the 8 pounds and sat down for what turned out to be two hours and thirty-eight minutes of pure cinematic gold. If there’s one thing that this movie proves beyond Clint Eastwood’s long shadow of a doubt, it’s that Daniel Day-Lewis is a living legend.

The more astute among you have, perhaps, known this for quite some time. Sure, I caught him rockin' it in Scorcese’s Gangs of New York, but I wasn’t convinced. Marty’s gangster flicks aren’t my cup of tea, you see, and I’ve never been much of a Leo D. fan either, so you’ll excuse me if I’d made up my fifteen-year-old mind beforehand. Still, it seems that ever since 1992’s The Last of the Mohicans he’s been a casting agent’s wet dream. Go figure.

But reputations are meaningless, and Daniel Day-Lewis must know this better than anyone else in the motion picture industry. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be the masterful method actor he is today. Submerging himself totally in his roles, he’s known to isolate himself completely during filming, dedicating his time off-camera to living the way his characters would. When he was doing Mohicans he built a canoe, learned to hunt and trap, and perfected the use of an ancient, 12-pound flintlock. When he did Gangs, he got sick because he refused to exchange an historically accurate 19th Century coat for a warmer (anachronistic) replacement. I’ve heard of actors getting into their roles, but the lengths to which Mr. Day-Lewis consistently goes put him in a small Hollywood elite.

In There Will Be Blood, he’s secured this position. As the film’s main character, Daniel Plainview, Day-Lewis turns in a performance that’s both magnetic and utterly explosive. Very few times in one’s life is it truly appropriate to use the word “cathartic,” but that’s best way to describe the strange brew of emotions that he conjures with this role. For some reason, he’s been given the incredible gift of being able to turn his entire body into an instrument of expression. From the first dissonant chord of the magnificent Jonny Greenwood score to the moment the credits roll, this guy actually is Plainview. You can’t help but get the feeling that the role was written for him. I’m tremendously happy he won Best Actor. I can’t think of anyone in recent years who’s deserved it more.

Go and see There Will Be Blood. You won’t be disappointed.

From Day-Lewis’ acceptance speech:

My deepest thanks to the members of the Academy for whacking me with the handsomest bludgeon in town.

CCTV 2

Somewhere in the Chelsea area, not far from the Thames


"Does the body rule the mind? Or does the mind rule the body?"


Still Ill (Peel Session) - The Smiths

Chelsea / Battersea Park

Great War Memorial

I set out this morning with the intention of eating breakfast at one of my favorite cafes and getting some reading done at the library. Unfortunately, its being Sunday today, both places were closed. Irritated, but undeterred, I got it into my head that I would just get on a bus and take it to the end of the line, figuring it would be as good a substitute as any for a warm place to read.

For the most part, I was right, although with all the bumping around I was feeling slightly queasy as I alighted somewhere near Victoria Station. I walked around Westminster Cathedral, where services were just ending (or else I would have lingered a bit longer), and then headed to the station with the idea of keeping up the day's theme of public transport.

Soon gathering that a train ticket was pretty much out of the (financial) question, I sauntered off in the general direction of an opening in the skyline. I hoped I might reach the Thames, and, miraculously, I did.

A few blocks walk and I was met by the sight of the Chelsea bridge. Subsequently, I made a happy crossing and came upon Battersea Park, the finest public space I’ve yet seen in all of London. Perhaps you won't be able to glean this from my photos, you'll have to excuse my awkward sense of what's important and my thinking that taking pictures of the lovely green and the flower patches might be a little redundant, when you consider that there is so much of this kind of stuff to be found upon any random postcard, but I hope you will take my recommendation to heart.

It was a beautiful day, the sun baking down on one of the scenic squares where panting dogs dove into a long fountain playing fetch, children hitched rides on bike carriages, and mismatched couples with European accents basked in golden rays, talking either of sweet nothings or various unknown controversies, I know not which.

Speaking of mismatched couples... Typically, perhaps, I spent most of my time reading Bleak House, a novel that I have come to regard with a kind of easy disdain. If you've read any of it, you probably know that the central irony of the book is that it concerns a court case that’s as seemingly endless and labyrinthine as the book itself. It’s a shame I wasn’t assigned something a little less stuffy, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned as an English major, it’s that brilliant writers love their stuff. Close rooms, intolerable pleasantries, ancient, gloomy tradition—it all forms the backdrop against which the protagonist of every significant work of art must nobly struggle (All of Jimmy Buffet’s albums excluded, obviously). Still, sitting out in the sunshine on a day like today…it just made me wonder about a few things…Priorities, in the main.

So, dear, dear friends, I pray that you will consider going someday to Battersea Park. It's not as tourist-y as Hyde Park and not so austere as Regent's.

-Peter Crickners, Esq. ca. two-thousand and eight.



Peace Pagoda

Regent's Canal

Having once again the means to charge my camera, I'm now able to get back to more of my usual riveting photojournalism. Above, we have a pair of indifferent ducks, one gnawing himself absurdly and the other screwing up his gangly neck in the late afternoon sun. Below, a barge loiters listlessly. Rather picturesque, is not it? Bah! It's all in a day's work for Peter Crickners, neo-Victorian explorer and conservationist.

CCTV 1

from dailymail.co.uk


Aneurysm - Nirvana


incesticide for sale online


brrrrrrr....

Astronaut's Log: There is the Flower

3.0

In the oxygen garden I have seen a lovely flower. It has pallid blue petals that remain crisp even when the misters run. The light in the garden is unkind; the white, numbered walls austere and uninviting. Still, the delicate beauty of this lovely flower draws me back and back again. I stand, even now, gazing upon the precariously poised blossom. I am reminded of a dream I once saw hanging in a now long-forgotten gallery. It was a riverside scene in pastels. Another reverie comes to mind, this one painstakingly recorded in the visions of Chaucer. The young poet lies in a merry field, his eyes heavy with the tiresome strain of “the olde bookes,” and he contemplates the dandelion. How he adores the precious wild dandelion! For a long time he is perfectly happy there, enraptured, whiling away the happy hours and making love to his happy flower. The faery court arrives. The poet is chastised. He is grave and, perhaps like Dante, near the point of swooning. The faery king defers to his devastatingly beautiful kinswoman. A ghastly pale blossom upon her cheek, she charges the poet to write on the works of good women, so that he might atone for untold wretched libels.

3.1
Hands, that cut the rose. Bleeding hands, that have too much felt the barbed stem. Funny how the rose is our favorite flower. We can’t resist it. It’s too poetic. I think about some frozen roses in one of the supermarkets back home. How lonesome can you get? Try to think about dried up rose petals. Some pressed in a book. Some crushed into weird open house potpourris. I think of many things to say to a rose. I think to myself, “This is the day I shall speak my mind,” but even Churchill struggled with speech impediments in his youth.

I dream of the day. I imagine the soft-filtered reel of the unreal running in a smoky movie house before my mind’s eye. The day never comes. Never comes the day, and other clichés. If I wrote one ode to a rose I must keep it short, spruce. Not more Petrarch, not mere romance. Just some simple, objective words upon the usual subjects.

3.2

I gather my thoughts like so many fallen petals, and resume my duties on one of the upper decks. In the research labs and conference rooms, my colleagues and I scour endless data reports and star maps into the wee hours of another stealth morning. There is a ceaseless furrowing of brows and smearings of hands over faces as we push ourselves harder, and ever closer to the brink, in a race against time. Time.

“If we had but world enough, and time.”

…TRANSMISSION ENDS.


"This Is A Low" - Blur


explain to me the concept of purchasing power parity, again, for it does comfort me so

Astronaut's Log: Laika

2.0

On 3rd November 1957 the Soviet Union sent a mongrel dog into space aboard the Sputnik-2 spacecraft. They smoothed her coat with rubbing alcohol and they attached electrodes to her body. Once in orbit, she lasted from about five to seven hours before succumbing to the extreme temperature and stress of being catapulted into space. Her name was Laika. The word means “barker.”

From the portal in my bedroom I can see the earth, huge and magnificent, turning in oblivion. I imagine Atlas struggling beneath its terrific weight and for a minute I’m completely overcome with sympathy. I try to imagine all the lives that are beginning and ending on the planet below, but I do not shut my eyes. I tell myself, “This is your home. This is the place where you were born.”

I keep staring through the little pane of glass until I lose focus and I am suddenly presented with my own reflection. My features are taut and I have high cheekbones. My hair is buzzed almost to the skin and I can hardly recognize the face that returns my gaze. I turn away from the window and try to fix my mind on vague events of the distant past.

I am a child of seven. The sunshine floods the empty street and I am riding my bicycle around the pagoda of the neighborhood park. Then I’m eighteen again, sitting on the hood of my dad’s car and staring up at the moon on a humid summer night. Next, I am lying in a bed freshman year of college. A girl is singing something from The Phantom of the Opera.

Images rise and fade. Voices echo and die. I look back through the portal—back at the earth. I let my mind go blank. Then I rest my eyes on a random, distant star and I think about Laika hurtling through the deep void.

They smooth her coat with rubbing alcohol and they place electrodes on her body. She barks and wags her tail. One of her trainers strokes her head gently and, I hope, has shed some tears. She gazes from the portal. The last man out averts his eyes.

5…4…3…2…1…

...TRANSMISSION ENDS.

"Isolation" - Joy Division

Astronaut's Log: Forbidden Fruit

1.0

The very same weightlessness that once seemed so liberating has now become utterly toxic. That there is gravity in nothing here—that all is in a constant and furious state of flux (hurried ‘how are you’s’ and awkward quiverings of the lips)—is the root cause of this unusual depression.

1.1

In the canteen Lt. S---- prepares frozen berries for a late night snack. She offers me some in a bowl at the end of one slender, feline limb. I gratefully accept a few and I sit there, talking and talking. Nothing lost, nothing gained.

Eventually, I take one encrusted raspberry from the bowl and its inky juice stains my thumb and index finger. I begin to chew and taste only a trickle of sweetness. I try to savor the little that is there.

My patience at an end, I take another, and mash the bloody blue-black currant between my freezing teeth. I look towards S----, who has her back turned, and I watch with shameful attention the way that she prepares the fruit. She turns now, and I let my guilty gaze wander over the comfortless furniture of the place. I glance back, and for a single moment it seems to me that there is more than a little of Mother Nature left to us still. It is like a sleeping lion, or a panther waiting to pounce, and for a short while I can feel something stir inside of me. My heart begins to beat to a faraway drum.

The ruins of life are there. Somewhere, buried in a heap at the bottom of some Marianas Trench, it lurks undetected. Only, time is of the essence. A spring is pressed between two great providential fingers, and when will they let go?

…TRANSMISSION ENDS.

"After the Gold Rush" (Neil Young Cover) - Thom Yorke