down in the basement

Another Music Video.

I really like this, the Carolina Chocolate Drops. I'm all for live music, and for people who sing, play, write.
People who have absorbed traditions, learned from the older guys, then taken what they've learned and made it their own. The Carolina Chocolate Drops come over as having done that, they're proud to be interpreting history, keeping a tradition alive. They talk of their music as embracing black history and experience, but say that the music grew out of other cultures and histories too, they're about pride, about self-knowledge, but not about separatism, not about racism, not about us and them, they are clever articulate, great!

Hit 'em Up Style was a big hit for Blu Cantrell, of whom I'd never heard... About five years ago.
The lyrics were by Dallas Austin Ha, ladies, it was written BY A MAN!

Rant: I'm really tired of all those "superstars" out there who go on stage and mime to their studio recording, which has been cleaned up and adjusted by the musical equivalent of photoshop.
And when it gets to the star's choreographer, personal trainer, hairdresser... We're missing the point these days, it's more about the on stage spectacle, the lights, the lasers the fireworks, the rotating stage, dry ice....
Stadium shows? Blargh... When I was a lad, etc.....
When I was a lad, the Rolling Stones played in the University dining hall.
So did David Bowie.
I prefer, if i go to see live music, which I do less and less these days, a band in a pub or bar, with at most a couple of hundred in the audience. I really can't see the point in being in a sea of people, so far away from the stage that you can't see the band direct, you have to look at a big video screen. Well, if I'm going to watch a video screen, I might as well save the ticket price and watch it at home. I like the repartee that develops with a small venue, between musicians and audience, when you find the acts queuing at the bar with the punters.

Anyway, all that was a digression. I really like this, what say you guys?

Carolina Chocolate Drops, check 'em out on their website and go listen more. http://www.carolinachocolatedrops.com/

Treated Balls

A Fence is an Imaginary Barrier

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After Rain , by P.K. Page

I'd never read any poems by P.K. Page, never heard of this Canadian poet, writer, and painter, until Red Dirt Mule posted one, I'll be sure to read more, this one is simply beautiful, layered with imagery.

The snails have made a garden of green lace:
broderie anglaise from the cabbages,
chantilly from the choux-fleurs, tiny veils-
I see already that I lift the blind
upon a woman's wardrobe of the mind.

Such female whimsy floats about me like
a kind of tulle, a flimsy mesh,
while feet in gumboots pace the rectangles-
garden abstracted, geometry awash-
an unknown theorem argued in green ink,
dropped in the bath.
Euclid in glorious chlorophyll, half drunk.

I none too sober slipping in the mud
where rigged with guys of rain
the clothes-reel gauche
as the rangy skeleton of some
gaunt delicate spidery mute
is pitched as if
listening;
while hung from one thin rib
a silver web-
its infant, skeletal, diminutive,
now sagged with sequins, pulled ellipsoid,
glistening.

I suffer shame in all these images.
The garden is primeval, Giovanni
in soggy denim squelches by my hub,
over his ruin
shakes a doleful head.
But he so beautiful and diademed,
his long Italian hands so wrung with rain
I find his ache exists beyond my rim
and almost weep to see a broken man
made subject to my whim.

O choir him, birds, and let him come to rest
within this beauty as one rests in love,
till pears upon the bough
encrusted with
small snails as pale as pearls
hang golden in
a heart that know tears are a part of love.

And choir me too to keep my heart a size
larger than seeing, unseduced by each
bright glimpse of beauty striking like a bell,
so that the whole may toll,
its meaning shine
clear of the myriad images that still-
do what I will-encumber its pure line.

Extreme Indoor Motor-Biking

Dougie Lampkin, 12 times world trials champion, takes his bike for a ride around one of England's stately homes, Goodwood House.
Goodwood is home to the Earl of March, and the estate is famous for motorsport, aviation, and equestrian events, Glorious Goodwood Horse Races, And the Goodwood Festival of Speed .
Dougie Lampkin appeared at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, this video was shot to publicise the event and the venue.
Dougie makes it all look so easy. Me? I fall off bikes. They do not behave as nicely for me as they do for him. Ones that I have had dealings with all seem to be badly affected by inertia, and gravity. His seem to be immune to both.

The Mole

Moles.... The Red Dirt Mule had a bit of molery on her blog, which got me to thinking of moles and stories, I have a few mole stories in my head, and one in the blog so far, I wrote a story about moles who made pottery, a story called "The Industrious Mole", it was written...... ohhh, before the internet, blogs, and so on. On paper. With drawings... for my nieces, who are no longer small children. The words survived, the drawings are lost. If you're interested click the.... LINK.

Here, however, is a story not by me, but by comedian, Jasper Carrot, on the subject of trying to get rid of moles. The under the ground type.


Both of these are the same narrative, one is sound only, the other accompanied by an animated video. I recommend the video.

But some of.... well ONE of this blog's readers eschews YouTube, shuns it in fact.
I have to say, if your internet connection is not so good, or your computer is slow, or short of memory, youtube can be frustrating. And of course, YouTube has a vast almost infinite store of annoying or boring things. To you, this may be one of those.
If you hate TooYube, then you can just listen.

(Jasper Carrot is from Birmingham. And NOT the one in Alabama. blamalama. Awopbopaloobop.. Bamalam, Wo-ohh! Black Betty, Bam a Lam...... sorry, got diverted.

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