indiepixie
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"We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets- we remember only." -Henry Miller
So here goes folks. I posted a while back about what festivals are worth traveling to in Europe. You guys gave amazing tips- and I got inspired.
I've decided to embark on a petit tour/adventure/music-infused beatnik odyssey from July 4th till July 23rd. With a little luck, creative karma & street smarts, I hope to capture some of the sun-burnt beer-beaten, sweat-covered, reckless tunes of summer in Europa. I've counted my piggie bank, rung up some friends, and consulted some guidebooks. I tried to pick festivals that didn't require camping (tho I am a trouper, as I am traveling alone- camping is not so ideal this time round), ones where the acts peak my interest, ones near locations where I have friends (and hence a couch), some that were maybe a bit more off the beaten path, others that were in such ideal locales I couldn't turn em down (i.e. Barcelona?). Along the way- I'm snapping whatever peaks the interest (or airs on the side of irony; or tinkles my conscience; or just flat out smells of ire/mucus/melancholy/maddness). After all, what would the world be like if everyone had a month vaca- dedicated to the enjoyment of music? What state will my brain ressemble after these 3 wks?
The little trick is I need a bit of your humble guidance- you mog music sages.Part of the beauty of Mog is that it's got moggers spread out like a fine, invisible web around the world- hands in all the musical honeypots if you will- and I am a bit of naive (or naf? as I believe I was reprimanded the other day by a Brit?) So I'll need your help with suggestions for side-shows, acts to see, meals, travel tips, etc...you London cats, you wanderlusters, you Catalans, you divine french fiddlers.....
DAY 1:
Today I kick off the journey by attending the 02 Wireless Festival in Hyde Park London. I'm heading there now- late- and deliriously hungover (green really, literally green)- to join and support Nicole Atkins, the fellow New Yorker I keep raving about. She's performing tonight- along with Morrissey, The National, Beck, etc...so I'll be doing some photo-journalism backstage- and along the sidelines, perhaps half lying face down in the grass at this rate :) .....We're hoping to get a peek at Morrissey on the sidelines....and raise a bit of fuss.
Phew, that said, you're probably wondering when I'll shut the fuck up- but the rest of my slidshod festival schedule is below...So here goes, countdown starts now, wish me luck
Faith-Ann's Rough-hewn Guide to Europe's 'underground'/backstage/bootalish scenes et festivals de la musique ? (translate as needed)
LONDON: July 4-7th 02 Wireless Festival
MONTREUX, SWIZ: July 8-10 th Montreux Jazz Festival
LEIGE, BELGE: July 10-11th Ardentes Festival
PARIS: July 12th-15th Festival Des Artistes
DORDOGNE: July 15th-18th S France ?
ANGOULEME: July 18th-19th Garden Festival
BARCELONA: July 19-23th Benicassim Festival/Summercase
peace peace, off to the park!
a slobbering hung-over indiepix
..."....there was about him a suggestion of lurking ferocity, as though the Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept." - Jack London
I watch about a concert every other day. There are some hallmark performances and some disml ones. But if I ever saw anything close to this, I'd be reduced to tears or drop to my knees kutowing. Let me know if you know an artist out there today that compares to this live.....(Hung-over Glastonbury folks I am looking at you)
Till then, I send out a little reminder and bit you to enjoy on this tuesday
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This is great. I love watching the Woodstock footage where they go into the town and the local folks are like they took all our food and by "they" they mean hippies, like they are some vermin or something.
Yeah I am talking about smack, junk, horse, china white, chiva, H, tar, black, fix, speed-balling, dope, brown, dog, food, negra, nod, white horse, and stuff of which Dionysus’ dreams are made. The little white angel that sits on your shoulder and rocks you to sleep, returning you to the soft, pillowed encasement of the womb, warm, satiated, arms jelly, thoughts fluttering, creative synapses trickling like sweat down your forehead. I'm not talking about the cluttering in the kitchen, the droopy eyes afterwards or the sniffing, inhaling, injecting, or smoking that comes with it. Instead, I am talking about heroin and its influence music… the songs in which heroin is a heroine.
"Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously."
~ Henry Miller
Would Miles Davis’ jazz have been as soulful without opiates? Would you weep to Jerry Garcia so easily sans black? Would you groove to "Ride the White Horse" by Goldrapp if it were really about a goddamn my little pony? Can the history of rock and roll be rewritten through the eyes (and ears) of heroin?
This whole heroin-and-music charade started with my buddy Dave who has got this theory that he can hear each time Jerry’s on junk in a song. We were driving in his car a few weeks back listening to a long and slow riff of Jerry’s and Dave says "hear that? Jerry taking his time? That’s the junk." Cautiously, I heard the chords gently transitioned, almost chiming and bell-like from half-comatose finger fluttering. I heard something- ethereal- untouched- raw- and almost feminine about his playing. Dave laughed and said "Just try listening to "Help on the way." It’s complex music with total clarity." I did. And I heard the horses.
Grand fucking beautiful. The golden chalice of musical legends was instantly bulldozed by the little white angel known as H. Dave reassured me: "Junk doesn't mess up your head like weed and shit. It brings clarity and inner peace, till it destroys you for life. The entire dead sound was that, but Jerry's solos were the meat of it."
Truth is I’ve not pricked my hands with the stuff (yet); evidently I haven’t succumbed to the William Burroughs/Lester Bangs junkie beat journalism- banging down Lou Reed’s door with research and drugs in hand. So I’d have to take his word on what it feels like. I remember reading Courtney Love saying heroin is "the drug you do if you're in a fuckin' four-star hotel and you can order all the goddamn room service that you want and you can just lay in bed and drool all over yourself because you've got a million bucks in the bank. That's the drug you want to do if you want to be a kid forever." But when Dave started to list some of the greatest albums and artists of all time- I realized heroin could be seen as the steel propeller added to the sailboat of rock and rock riffing, the J in Jazz, the fruit that gave P-funk it’s Funk. Fuck weed. Fuck cocaine. Those get you in the mood or though the tour. But I never conceptualized about (or I suppose did the math on) the countless immaculate melodies I placed on my Hall of Fame pedestal that were spurred and woven by the dust of a white horse- a horse that created the gallant gallop- the dramatic pause- and the added finesse of musical magic. And after some experimenting- (on listening, not injecting), I began to train my ears to hear the heroin. I started to see its white armor blazing in between the power chords- (though it's more like a loose wild cowboy riding bare-back.) The loss of control, the spontaneity, the jam, I started to wonder if I grew up addicted to heroin without even knowing it.
Let me talk you through more examples…………….till you hear it too...
Take Keith Richards. Again taking his time. His drone sound on "Gimme shelter." In comes Dave: "Weirdest riff ever, but we're all just used to it. I'll play it for you with just a guitar. Total junkie shit that was brought back to planet earth via keith. Most people can't capture that." Pretty much the whole album Exhile On Main Street has got that loose recklessness on there....(um, oh and on another tangent- Wild Horses anyone? Couldn't drag me away?)
Next up? Charlie Parker. Big time Junkie. "Meandering, but with total clarity and purpose. Best horn player who ever lived because he created that sound, and WAS bebop. It's deceptive with Charlie because his shit is so straightforward that you'd think he was clean, but that's junk. He's like the perfect housewife in the perfect home, except she's a fucking undercover pill addict. Check out Relaxing at the camarillo or Billy's bounce. Charlie created bebop on his own." Trees wizzed by and I was swept in by the vision of Charlie Parker’s eyes rolling back after a grand inhale.
Miles Davis – Dave bid me to check out Filles de Kilamajaro. "That album says it all. He's in a different place. If you check the most famous jazz album in history, Bitches brew, you'll realize that junk works. The tune "so what" is the first on the album. It has no cord changes, just one modulation. He wrote it on a napkin for the band or something like that. Weird, except for the fact that it's the #1 jazz song ever. He tapped into the collective unconscious. Genius or junk? Your call. Probably both." Junk has ruled the jazz-laced world. Dexter Gordon, Tadd Dameron, Art Blakey, J. J. Johnson, Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, Sonny Stitt, Bud Powell, Fats Navarro, Gene Ammons, Joe Guy and Billie Holiday. Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, Red Rodney, and Chet Baker—Fuck the 70s, we are talking about the 40s. As Miles Davis said "the idea was going around that to use heroin might make you play as great as Bird." 1940s baby, all those popped collared and juiced dapper dandies and the innocent dolls red-lipsticked and smacked up. Did you ever wonder why Billie Holliday always sung like she was on holiday?
Bill Evans. His sound = peace and tranquility . Outer space. Nirvana on tape. I just keep it playing in the background for the feeling.
Lou Reed. "When I'm rushing on my run And I feel just like Jesus' son."
Nikki Sixx. even wrote "The Heroin Dairies" of recent.
Slash. November rain live cut- "Taking his time. Solo feels like Jerry. Not genius stuff, but a good example of a rocker cooling out and feeling it. Result, one of the only singable solos that everyone knows. The video helped. So did the junk."
James Taylor. "Voice like butter. He's in a happy place on junk. Bring you there. This music speaks to most white collar folk but they have no idea that he was totally warm and junked out while writing and preforming it."
Nirvana, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins, Alice in Chains, and Stone Temple Pilots are some of the better known users who craved that quick burst of intense euphoria, most often compared to sexual orgasm, then the continued aura of warm and pleasant relaxation. Their songs mimic it.
The common thread is that these guys all crafted spectacular music on junk that relates to people on a base, carnal, soulful level. According to my sensei on opiates Dave, "They bring sounds to us that we all instinctively know, but somehow have forgotten. Again, the drug helps connect to a peaceful place and helps tap into the collective unconscious." Listening to a plethora of recommended (mostly live) tracks, I felt it. I felt that weird sensation of relaxation, it’s the equivalent musically to being a light-weight drunk- a bit of slurring, legs a little farther apart, shirt unraveled, lights dimmed. It’s provocative and alluring. Everything's was bit fuzzier but it was ok. I bid you- sit down with some of the records of artists mentioned above and let me know if you feel it too. Take you back somewhere you may never knew or forgot you knew. Somewhere between innocence and abundance. Sweet dreaming- weeding through poppies along the rocky road. It may be the cheapest trip you'll ever take.
PS AFTERWORD: For reference, I am not endorsing the drug. The heroin overdose list is a dramatic list of lost, wasted musical genius: Frankie Lymon, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix - Barbiturate overdose, Danny Whitten (Crazy Horse) - Suicide or accidental heroin overdose, Nick Drake - Suicide or accidental overdoes, Tommy Bolin (Deep Purple, The James Gang, Zephyr), Tim Buckley, Sid Vicious, Timm Hardin, the list goes on. It doesn’t help that in our society, dying young from an overdose inducts you instantly into musical matrydom. Lke being eaten by a lion due to your faith- it almost legitimates and brandishes stars' glory- sadly, morosely, pathetically.
Comments
I once made a similar argument to an ex-musician/ex-junkie. She told me to go fuck myself. I took that to mean that she disagreed.
I read an essay on Charlie Parker several years ago in which the author claimed that things "sound different," or maybe that one "hears things differently," while under the influence of heroin, but I have never found anything to substantiate that claim.
what about makes musicians play differently tho? i don't think u need to be on heroin to hear the heroin...
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indiepixie:
There's a great band from Manchester, England called The Whip that is playing the Wireless Festival on Saturday, July 5th. I hope you get to check them out. The Whip's single "Trash" is one of the best pieces of dance punk I've ever heard.
Wow, now THAT is a trip! A shame you're not coming to Holland, though our biggest festival is in August with camping. (Though if you ever have the time, there is one without camping, indoors, and is held twice a year with the newest mostly British acts. Alas, that's not in the summer.)
Anyway, wow! It's a pretty heavy trip though, hope you manage all the travelling and stuff. It's gonna be a real event though, this trip will. Have fun! Looking forward to the tales off the road. ;)
It's lucky for you I've already come up with Joxley's Patented Festival Survival Tips ;)