This is a pretty big world. Until the last decade most people were unable to really find out a whole lot about other cultures and peoples. Sure there was TV and other media, but those avenues tend to show the masses what marketers have determined will attract the viewership of ’the masses’. Now we can sit on YouTube and watch videos from other places, seeing what life is like inside the living room of someone across the world. We can watch music videos of ‘strange’ musical styles that would have little or no market appeal in the States. MTV would not play the haunting ethereal ballads of QNTAL of Germany, with their German, and ’Old French’ lyrics that even modern Frenchmen cannot understand.
I miss Europe, I’d like to travel back there again, but time and finances argue against it. So instead, I spend the time before morning light watching videos to heal some of the pain of separation.
I can watch the video below, and think about the Eberbach burg in Baden Germany we used to explore as children…. the ancient stone walls overgrown with ivy, and roofless for hundreds of years. And the old stone watch tower built by the Romans. And from my years in Spain… the ancient cliffs with their hundreds of holes, homes to Gypsies, and the long aqueduct, again built by the Romans, and still carrying water.
It is in looking back that we can see some of the direction we are going. When walking an unfamiliar trail… stop and look back often, memorize the topography you have travelled, because when you come back later, the trail will look different than initially travelled due to the different direction you saw it from.
To see and know the past, will reduce dismay in the future.
QNTAL is a German band that utilizes ancient instruments and lyrics to foster a sense of Renaissance in their songs. They saw themselves as tackling a new subject, and they wanted no ‘pre-conceived ideas’ about their band and its focus, therefore they chose the name QNTAL, which has no meaning in any language.
QNTAL, Entre Moi Et Mon Amin
The music is soothing, yet there is an edge to it….
The scenic backdrop of the ruins is great. In Europe, almost every town has some ancient ruins…..
It’s quite a thing to see.
We have a tendancy to impart a certain amount of ‘good, and learning’ to the ancients. We are amazed at the works they did without modern machinery…. but they were just people, no different than now. People who woke in the morning, and went to turn the wheels of their industry, perhaps literally inside a giant wheel giving the power to move giant stones up a fortress wall to nest onto the stones below it. Then as now they were compelled to work to build their society…. to be cast beyond the walls of ancient Europe put one at the mercy of lawlessness, and in their minds, more prone to the mercies of witchcraft. While I appreciate the stone work of the ancients, and find intrigue in how they were able to manipulate their environment, invent tools, and engage in learning to be passed on…. I’m much more content in this modern time with eyes that can travel the world, and see so much. I lived in a castle for years in Germany….. I think in the old days, with the xenophobia of the walled cities, it must have given a ‘siege mentality’ to the people. I’m sure there were times that things were good, and people were happy. But I think we tend to impart too much of a romantic attachment to the old days. We’re much better off now.
Mirrors on the ceiling
and pink champagne on ice
she said “we are all just prisoners here,
of our own device”
And in the Master’s chambers
they gathered for the feast
they stabbed it with their steely knives
but they just can’t kill the Beast
Welcome to the Hotel California
such a lovely place
such a lovely face
Forty two years ago this summer, a fortuitous series of events delivered me to California. California… like nectar rolling off the tongue… the name itself is exotic… unreal. And the place is mythos. There is hardly a day I don’t realise my great fortune at being able to live here… and the great places I get to see. I am so blessed, and it is on the efforts and exertion of others that I was allowed this opportunity. Thank you to my parents for all the work they did, to get us to this place.
The world is big and huge, and getting smaller every year
A good example of this is the collaboration between two fellows who’ve put up a great cover of ‘The Eagles Hotel California’. The unique thing about this collab is the fact that these fellows have never met… one lives in Colorado, and the other in the Netherlands (Holland).
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Dani California
~Red Hot chili Peppers~
Getting born in the state of Mississippi
Papa was a copper and mama was a hippie
In Alabama she would swing a hammer
Price you gotta pay when you break the panorama
She never knew that there was anything more than poor
What in the world does your company take me for
Black bandanna, sweet Louisiana
robbin’ on a bank in the state of Indiana
She’s a runner, rebel and a stunner
On her merry way sayin; baby whatcha gonna
Lookin’ down the barrel of a hot-metal .45
Just another way to survive
California rest in peace
Simultaneous release
California show your teeth
She’s my priestess, I’m your priest
YEAH, YEAH
She’s a lover baby and a fighter
Shoulda seen it coming when it got a little brighter
With a name like Dani California
The day was gonna come when I was gonna mourn ya
A little loaded, she was stealing another breath
I love my baby to death
California rest in peace
Simultaneous release
California show your teeth
She’s my priestess, I’m your priest
YEAH, YEAH
Who knew the other side of you?
Who knew what others died to prove?
Too true to say good bye to you
Too true, too sad, sad, sad..
Push the fader, gifted animator
One for the now and eleven for the later
Never made it up to Minnesota
North Dakota man was a-gunnin’ for the quota
Down in the badlands she was savin’ the best for last
It only hurts when I laugh
Gone too fast..
California rest in peace
Simultaneous release,
California show your teeth,
She’s my priestess, I’m your priest
YEAH, YEAH
I’ve lived in Alabama and North Dakota
and they are both beautiful places..
but yeah, I like California best.
I’ve been a bit pre-occupied with the nearby La Brea Fire, which is finally going to be put down due to the efforts of the firefighters and the co-operation of the weather. We’ve gotten a rare occurrence… rain in August. We’ve had no rain since May… now while a firestorm is raging… in comes some rain to dampen the fire. I can relax a little now.
Now I can listen to one of my favorite songs without breaking into a sweat and starting to catalogue our possessions and plan escape routes.
The original lyrics are from the Marshal Tucker Band….
but I do like the banjo and mandolin in this version by the Roundhouse band.
Plus, the stunning visuals in the video are great.
‘Fire on the Mountain’
~Marshal Tucker Band~
Took my fam’ly away from my Carolina home
Had dreams about the West and started to roam
Six long months on a dust covered trail
They say heaven’s at the end but so far it’s been hell
And there’s fire on the mountain, lightnin’ in the air
Gold in them hills and it’s waitin’ for me there
We were diggin’ and siftin’ from fiveto five
Sellin’ everything we found just to stay alive
Gold flowed free like the whiskey in the bars
Sinnin’ was the big thing, lord and Satan was his star
And there’s fire on the mountain, lightnin’ in the air
Gold in them hills and it’s waitin’ for me there
Dance hall girls were the evenin’ treat
Empty cartridges and blood lined the gutters of the street
Men were shot down for the sake of fun
Or just to hear the noise of their forty-four guns
And there’s fire on the mountain, lightnin’ in the air
Gold in them hills and it’s waitin’ for me there
Now my widow she weeps by my grave
Tears flow free for her man she couldn’t save
Shot down in cold blood by a gun that carried fame
All for a useless and no good worthless claim
And there’s fire on the mountain, lightnin’ in the air
Gold in them hills and it’s waitin’ for me there
Fire on the mountain, lightnin’ in the air
Gold in them hills and it’s waitin’ for me there
Waitin’ for me there
Europeans often say we in the US have no history to our country and culture. I disagree completely.
My dad was a youngster in the early forties when his great grandfather was on his deathbed on a farm near Troy Missouri. Each day the family would gather dressed in black, and they would all sit around the bed quietly. The boys of course were restless and fidgety. One thing that always impressed my dad about the old man, who was born in the 1850′s was his revolver he kept hanging on the corner post of his bed. He’d kept it there always, even when civilization came to Missouri at the turn of the century. My dad says it was a huge gun… he was of course young and small.. and just like the snowdrifts over my head I recall as a child… when you grow up the scale of things changes.
My great great granddad had told my dad that in the old days “life was cheap. Men would get killed in the saloons and alleys of Saint Louis, and every morning a wagon would roam the streets to pick up the men who had been killed overnight and thrown into the streets.”
We’re all descended from people who’ve gone through hell.
There’s plenty of good videos out on the Internet….
Some on Youtube are being posted by the record companies. This is good as it gives more exposure for the artist… oddly however, most of the record companies don’t allow viewers to embed the code into their own web pages and blogs. Allowing such embedding would naturally give a wider viewership and possibly a larger potential market for the sales of the songs.
HBO has put up a snippet of scenes from the first season of ‘True Blood’, and they have allowed the embed code to be given out. So I present you with what is one of the most popular shows on TV this year….. True Blood
but Emmy Lou is always good enough to listen to again!
June 29, 2007
Sweepin’ out a Warehouse
~Emmylou Harris~
‘Two More Bottles of Wine’
Ain’t gonna let it bother me today
I been workin’ and I’m too tired anyway
But it’s all right ’cause it’s midnight
And I got two more bottles of wine
Well, I’m sixteen hundred miles from the people I know
Been doin’ all I can but opportunity sure comes slow
Thought I’d be in the sun all day
But I’m sweepin’ out a warehouse in west L.A.
But it’s all right ’cause it’s midnight
And I got two more bottles of wine
Yep, I’m back to my old job. Like the majority of small American Family Farms, we make most of our money from off the farm, both of us holding jobs in town.
So we are picking up materials from one place, and hauling it to other places. Sometimes it goes to the recycle yard, sometimes to the dump, sometimes to venders. ‘Moving Stuff’ is how I describe it when asked. But this is all done under the loose supervision of knowledgeable people who have the information as to what goes where, but today, all ‘Adult Supervision’ was gone for the holiday. Us ‘Workin Boys’ didn’t have anyone to tell us what goes where, so we were instructed to sweep out the warehouse. Yep, acres of smooth concrete with pallets and materials that needed to be moved aside to sweep under it. Hours of pushin’ broom and driving forklifts moving stuff around. All the time sad country songs kept coming into my head, Roger Miller and especially Emmylou Harris (who I always love to picture in my mind) filled my thoughts as the dust and torn-off labels arranged themselves into neat piles for eventual disposition.
Music has a way of taking our thoughts and arranging it into the neat rows like the dust I sweep. Perhaps it is the focusing effects that I appreciate. It takes away the sadness of being away from home, or maybe it just lets that sadness share itself with a kindred soul who had the wordsmith ability to arrange it all into poem and prose with accompanying music. The soft angelic voice of Emmylou will be forever in my mind, reverberating through the spaciousness inside like the cough of a backfiring engine reverberates through the cavernous space of a metal clad multi-acre dusty warehouse…one that still needs sweeping.
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~Roger Miller~
‘King of the Road’
Trailer for sale or rent, rooms to let fifty cents
No phone, no pool, no pets, I aint got no cigarettes
Ah but, two hours of pushin broom buys a
Eight by twelve four-bit room
Im a man of means by no means, king of the road
Los Angeles has a great number of large attractions…. but it also has a million little things to see…
L.A. is just waaaay to big to take in during a short vacation stay….. go back to L.A. time and again…. each time you’ll find new wonders you passed in the first rush of excitement.
I’ve been up and down Melrose Avenue in LA many times… it’s a more ‘upscale’ and less ‘provocative’ version of Venice Beach. The stores are often high-end retail outlets…. but there is a huge amount of strangeness and excitement in some of the stores themselves…. Melrose has a large number of piercing and tattoo shops…. sometimes it seems as though almost everyone has ‘inked sleeves’. Some of the stores themselves deal with strangely unique subjects… the store ‘Necromance‘ for instance is filled chock-a-block with skeletons of animals… skulls of everything from beavers to rats, X-Rays of animals so you can see the skeletons… fully articulated snake skeletons… dried creatures…. skins.. etc. The people running the shop are similarly as unique as their merchandise…. people with lots of black make-up giving a cadaverous appearance….. it’s all quite interesting to a country boy with an interest in anthropology.
They say ‘if you want to make a living… you’ve got to put on a good show’.
I met a showman yesterday on Melrose… Richie the Barber has been cutting hair at a barbershop/tattoo parlor with the tattoo artist ‘Adam’ for some years now. Richie cuts quite a figure on Melrose where he stands out even amongst the regulars on the avenue. The bowler hat… the waxed mustache (I’ve got to try that one day), the clothes he wears.. reminiscent of a 1920′s silent film guy. I am sure he appears on film on occasion….. and he’s got a friendly, open and genuine way about him that makes him seem quite approachable and a regular decent guy.
I was ambling along Melrose visiting some of the trendy restaurants to see if any might be interested in our cactus when I passed him on the street. When he saw my long hair he perhaps thought he’d be able to cut it… but nooooo…. I haven’t been in a barber shop for over twenty five years… not even walked in! He was a bit put out about that…. as though he was offended… so I stepped into the darkly light shop… the walls festooned with photos of celebrities they’ve tattooed or cut the hair of. Artworks adorn the shop…. I think he must trade artwork for a haircut sometimes, there is so much interesting stuff to look at in that shop while he cuts your hair.
Okay now… after a quarter of a century I have once again set foot into a barbershop… but my hair is still on my head (what hasn’t fallen out naturally yet anyway)…. but I did get to see a showman at work.
If you are on Melrose and want to get a custom haircut by Richie, and a tattoo by Adam, you can find them at 7303 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood CA 90046. You can find their website at www.kiksnink.com
Richie the showman barber
‘Cherokee Fiddle’
~Michael Martin Murphy’
When the train pulled in to the station
He’d slick back his hair, rosin up his bow
Fiddled upside down, ‘Orange-Blossom Special’
If you want to make a living, you’ve got to put on a good show
And when he’d smell the smoke and the cinders
He rolled his up sleeves, and opened up his case
Played Cherokee Fiddle, he played it for the whiskey
Good whiskey never let him lose his place
He was always there, playing for the miners
‘Devil’s Dream’ was a song they understood
Then he’d go back to Oklahoma
And he’d wait ’till the trains were runnin’
and the weather was good
And when he’d smell the smoke and the cinders
He rolled up his sleeves, and opened up his case
Played Cherokee Fiddle, he played it for the whiskey
Good whiskey never let him lose his place
Now the Indians are dressin’ up like cowboys
And the cowboys are puttin’ leather and turquoise on
And the music is sold by the lawyers
And the fools who fiddled in the middle of the stations are gone
Some folks say they’ll never miss them
old fiddles squealed like the engine brakes
Cherokee Fiddle is gone forever
like the sound of the whistle that the old locomotives made
This ole house once knew my children
This ole house once knew my wife
This ole house was home and comfort
As we fought the storms of life
This ole house once rang with laughter
This ole house heard many shouts
Now she trembles in the darkness
When the lightnin’ walks about
Ain’t a-gonna need this house no longer
Ain’t a-gonna need this house no more
Ain’t got time to fix the shingles
Ain’t got time to fix the floor
Ain’t got time to oil the hinges
Nor to mend no window pane
Ain’t gonna need this house no longer
I’m a-gettin’ ready to meet the saints
This ole house is a-gettin’ shaky
This ole house is a-gettin’ old
This ole house lets in the rain
This ole house lets in the cold
On my knees I’m gettin’ chilly
But I feel no fear or pain
‘Cause I see an angel peekin’
Through a broken window pane
Now this ole house is afraid of thunder
This ole house is afraid of storms
This ole house just groans and trembles
When the night wind flings its arms
This ole house is a-gettin’ feeble
This ole house is a-needin’ paint
Just like me it’s tuckered out
But I’m a-gettin’ ready to meet the saints
And my old hound dog lies a sleepin’
He don’t know I’m gonna leave
Else he’d wake up by the fire place
And he’d sit down, howl and grieve
But my huntin’ days are over
Ain’t gonna hunt the coon no more
Gabriel done brought in my chariot
When the wind blew down the door
Ain’t a-gonna need this house no longer
Ain’t a-gonna need this house no more
Ain’t got time to fix the shingles
Ain’t got time to fix the floor
Ain’t got time to oil the hinges
Nor to mend no window pane
Ain’t gonna need this house no longer
I’m a-gettin’ ready to meet the saints
I’m ready to meet the saints
There’s some very nice musical styles out in ‘The World’. And we are privileged nowadays in this culture to be able both technologically and culturally to ’pick and choose’ what we like and want to listen to…
One of the musical styles that is reaching the world now, much due to the advance of the Internet into our lives is Celtic…. that lively musical style said to be influenced by the ancient Celts themselves… a people of huge swings in temperament… as well as being a restless migrating people (said to have been the most expansive ancient peoples). Due to their wandering inclinations, the Celts necessarily picked up a lot of traits both cultural, technological and physical from the disparate peoples they traveled to and amongst. Just as in agriculture, we fondly and lovingly endorse the concept of ‘hybrid vigor’… it is this very same mechanism that allowed the ancient Celts to be so widely spread, powerful and full of richness in their culture. The same thing is the greatness behind the USA…. we are composed of a great number of peoples from all over the globe… each one tossing some cultural riches and DNA into the big huge melting pot/salad bowl that is the people of the US.
A Canadian folk singer of Celtic origins and possessing the voice of an angel has been doing her part to spread the richness of the Celtic peoples to the world… Loreena McKennit has one of the crispest, cleanest and most ethereal voices I have ever heard….
The video below has her singing ‘Skellig’, a story of a monk in Northern Europe who travelled for several years to move to another monastery in the Mediterranean area… an area called Romany. It is told at the end of his life.. and he bequeaths all he owns, his books to an acolyte. I suppose it touches me on a deeper level because as a youngster I considered a move into the priesthood… into the Franciscan order…. but in the end I did not get the ‘calling’ that comes from deep within… and externally.
The video is homemade with photos taken from the web… photos showing old art of the Renaissance times…. fortresses.. etc.
It makes me think of the Europe I grew up in as a child…. and while I love the freedoms we have here in the US… the ability to do whatever and take the consequences we have here… there’s something about Europe that still touches me…. and to listen to this song brings some nice memories of warm sunny afternoons roaming through fern covered mountain hillsides under towering confers.. and happening upon ‘undiscovered’ fortresses, stone walls, covered in ivy… the roofs long decayed…. silent passageways…. beauty, intrigue and romance all enshrined into one mass of stone worked by thousand-year-dead hands.
Another fine song by Loreena is ‘Night Ride Across the Caucasus’
Sadly, as much a I love this nation… I am saddened that probably most US youngsters don’t know anything about the Caucasus Mountain range… we are woefully ill-informed on other places and peoples….
The shops and stores have the names of ‘the Big Boys’ of fashion and such… even though I’m very simple and plain and would not recognize a Versace ‘whatever’ from a ‘knock-off’…. I do recognize the famous-designer names on the buildings as I drive by. I also like the architecture….. all-in-all, regardless of your interest or lack thereof in fashion and jewelry, I’d recommend a little drive down Rodeo Drive the next time you’re in Beverly Hills.
Rodeo Drive
Rodeo Drive
Rodeo Drive
Beverly Hills on Santa Monica Ave
Versace on Rodeo Drive
The entrance to Beverly Hills
`Beverly Hills’
~Weezer~
Where I come from isn’t all that great
My automobile is a piece of crap
My fashion sense is a little whack
And my friends are just as screwy as me
I didn’t go to boarding schools
Preppie girls never looked at me
Why should they?
I ain’t nobody
Got nothing in my pocket
Beverly Hills
That’s where I want to be
Livin’ in Beverly Hills
Beverly Hills
Rolling like a celebrity
Livin’ in Beverly Hills
Look at all those movie stars
They’re all so beautiful and clean
When the housemaids scrub the floors
They get the spaces in between
I wanna live a life like that
I wanna be just like a king
Take my picture by the pool
’cause I’m the next big thing
Beverly Hills
That’s where I want to be
Livin’ in Beverly Hills
Beverly Hills
Rolling like a celebrity
Livin’ in Beverly Hills
