My Dark Life
COSTELLO.25
Songs in Our Heart # 52 My Dark Life (Elvis Costello) (written by Elvis Costello and Brian Eno; released March 1996) [Like a musical version of a Ray Bradbury Story – e.g. While Earthmen Sleep. In other words, quite uncanny, vaguely dissonant, and lethal in intent. “She smiles so very sweetly when – she – wants to kill him…”]
Continue Reading →“Scratchy” Impasto
'Scratchy' Impasto on banjo, 'Rudy' Wiedoeft (clarinet), 'Marco' Woolf (violin), 'Buster' Johnson (trombone), 'Arnold' Johnson (piano), 'Keith' Moon (drums).
The Varnished Culture celebrates the life of obscure but influential Jazz Genius, Elroy “Scratchy” Impasto (15 January 1923 – 3 February 1966) Born Elroy Raymondo Fillibecker III, son of Myron Elroy Fillibecker II (a veteran’s disability pensioner) and his third wife, Mayvis Jo-Anne Minniver Fillibecker (cleaner) in either Hawaii or Kenya, he was raised in an atmosphere made for Jazz. Plagued with the childhood ailments eczema, asthma, scrofula and tinea, Scratchy grew up in the experimental ‘projects’ of Cleveland, Illinois, surrounded by the hydroponic vertical and roof-top gardens which enlivened the drab apartment buildings of ‘Hypo-land’, as his estate was known. Myron…
Continue Reading →The Ghost by Robert Harris
The Ghost - unconvincing
We at TVC have read only two of Harris’s novels – The Fear Index and The Ghost. We hope that the books in his esteemed Cicero trilogy are better than the two which we have read. It’s not that they are bad or boring – Harris knows how to plot a page-turner – but in the end they are disappointing. They are rife with lazy, unlikely coincidences and the big reveal in each of them is a let-down. The ghost-writer in The Ghost doesn’t have a name and often doesn’t get any acknowledgement in the “autobiographies” he writes for washed-up rock stars and monosyllabic…
Continue Reading →Roll Away the Stone
Leon Russell (2 April 1942 to 13 November, 2016) Leon features among our selection Funerary Songs, and now it’s his turn. Rock and or Roll is one of the few areas where a guy from Comanche country, Oklahoma, can become a star. He was a superb session musician who also crafted great songs, and eventually, his work with Joe Cocker on the “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” tour and his increasingly popular brand of heartfelt, nasal gospel with a slice of piano honky-tonk-boogie added, elevated him to legendary status. At a Bluesfest a few years ago, he smoked the big tent with a wonderful…
Continue Reading →Hey, St. Peter
Songs in Our Heart # 51 Hey, St. Peter (Flash and the Pan) (written by Harry Vanda and George Young; released 1976) [Weird and wonderful. ‘Done my time in hell…’](Trivia note: the B side to the single was Walking in the Rain, later made famous by Grace Jones.)
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