The Place That Never Rains is an odd autonomous zone on the outskirts of Yeovil that gradually got swallowed by the death magick of Housing Developments... me and and old friend used to go there, to drink cheap wine and talk poetry, thinking we might be Jack and Neal, Duluoz and Mad Fast Cody... we'd sometimes play a poety game that I can't ever remember the rules of now except it involved throwing large stones above our heads and it was called Decomposing Donkeys after Un Chien Andalou...
Yeah, I know. Enough of this.
The thing is...this track sounds like the bike ride in Un Chien Andalou, done via Alfred Jarry's bicyclections, like Ubu Noir was a portent of things to come, of things not yet available... It's a nod towards Europe After The Rain/Reign that would veer off into the abyss for two decades before returning to this; Brecht and Coil slapping fleshbits and turning in circles like a bird with a nailed wing.
It's a fancy-dress bike ride done via the slowly unpeeling brain of Albert Hoffman, the Sandoz Tabman, as he headed into a future of a thousand Californian kids rattling across the Golden Gate Bridge on spray painted tandems... Or maybe that's unfair/misleading because this isn't as obvious as that seems; there's nothing deranged in this song, save a few deformations of Jhon's voice at the start where he sounds like Scatman filtered through a Ken Russell film (not just any: Altered States)...
It's what Sleazy does best, a very subtle uncurling of the norm so that pieces of this start to sound very normal, very cabaret until you realise how you've got there and what you've had to plough through on the way. And besides, Coil always had a way of making their friends feel at home.
It's an anniversary thing, of sorts.
This is definitely where the Coil of Tattooed Man were going. I still can't truly express how sad it is that they never got there. It's from the Operatt Amorale album by Black Sun Productions.
A Yousendit bicyclathonic workitout
5 comments:
Another fantastic post. Un Chien Andalou. Brilliant..utterly brilliant. Thankyou for the pictures and ideas.
I've just posted a piece for you, Kek and Dom....an essay. Hope you like it....
...turning in circles like a bird with a nailed wing - nice
You might enjoy this site with Ballard's version, side by side with Jarry's original. Fantastic!
http://www.evergreenreview.com/102/fiction/duo.html
the ballard/ jarry site is amazing... i'vbe read them both before but never figured out how close they were... sampling never got it so good...
Svhat! is the WV code... kinda Jarryesque I think... I can imagine Pere Ubu rattling that off in amongst the ballocks and pshitts...
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