Friday 30 November 2018

THE GONZO TRACK OF THE DAY: Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto No. 1 (Zimerman, Ozawa) (via Jim Jackson)


CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM GONZO
His Letters
DVD - £10.99

The Harvest of Sorrow
DVD - £7.99

SPIRITS BURNING REVIEW

http://www.the-rocker.co.uk/

71o2upihmol-_sl1044_SPIRITS BURNING & MICHAEL MOORCOCK
An Alien Heat
Gonzo Multimedia
If I take a handful of painkillers and close my eyes I can almost remember being young. Before life destroyed everything I held dear. Back then I was a Michael Moorcock addict. Not that he benefited as nearly all the 100+ books of his I owned had come from second hand bookshops, mainly Bobbies in Dalry Road and Morrison Street. Fast forward a few decades and it turned out they were worth a blooming fortune. So they helped the late Mrs H move to her dream house shortly before she died.
As befitted an MMhead I was also a Hawkwind and Blue Oyster Cult fan, attached to the boc-l mailing list and following HW around on tour. Strange days. “An Alien Heat” is volume one of the “The Dancers at the End of Time” trilogy which sees mastermind Don Falcone ably assisted by Albert Bouchard, and Michael Moorcock. As well as the main instigators there is also room for Blue Öyster Cult family members Joe Bouchard, Richie Castellano, and Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser, Hawkwind family members Harvey Bainbridge, Adrian Shaw, Mick Slattery, and Bridget Wishart, plus Andy Dalby (Arthur Brown’s Kingdom Come), Monty Oxymoron (The Damned), Ken Pustelnik (The Groundhogs), Jonathan Segel (Camper Van Beethoven), Andy Shernoff (The Dictators), Lux Vibratus (Nektar), Steve York (Arthur Brown), and more. So that’s going to make a lot of people very happy.
And there is some very good spacerock on offer here as you would expect. What it’s missing, though, is a good vocalist. A few folk have a bash including the Bouchard brothers and Buck Dharma but no matter who it is the voices aren’t substantial enough. Now I’m not saying they realised that but the record does come with a second disc comprising an all instrumental version of the record. They kick things off with a fine Hawkwind sounding number in the shape of ‘Hothouse Flowers’. It’s one of the more powerful tunes here and sets you up for a diverse tour through spacerock territory. There’s a wee bit of Gong now and then, some synth driven tunes, the best of which is ‘Dark Dominion’ and plenty of detours into ambient, electronic and psych sounds.
There is a lot to enjoy here especially if you liked the Calvert era Hawklords approach to music mixed with some vintage Cult. It’s not essential but there is an awful lot for classic spacerock fans to enjoy.
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Spirits Burning is one of the most unique entities in the space rock galaxy. The group consists of one main member, Don Falcone, and many other participants from various  bands and projects...



Healthy Music In Large Doses is the latest offering from the Spirits Burning space rock collective, this time featuring keyboardist Cyrille 'Clearlight' Verdeaux. Clearlight is a project of French son..

LEONARD COHEN AT SUNDANCE AND MORE

Annette Bening plays Senator Dianne Feinstein, Zac Efron takes on Ted Bundy, Awkwafina dives into a dramatic role, and Harvey Weinstein gets a ...
Leonard Cohen hides a sneaky message in his lyrics, and it's all amazingly reflected in the music. Below are the somewhat confusing lyrics of the first ...
Those in attendance will have the opportunity to catch the world premieres of documentaries about Leonard Cohen, Miles Davis, and our uncle David ...
The Canadian songwriter, singer and poet and his Norwegian muse are the subject of a new Nick Broomfield documentary Marianne & Leonard: ...
New Leonard Cohen documentary has been announced and is preparing to be premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The film, which follows ...

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On The Track (of Unknown Animals) Ep. 97 (Mystery martens, marine men, Evelyn's song activism etc)



Here we have the sixteenth episode of the relaunched webTV show by the Centre for Fortean Zoology, written and presented by Jon Downes and Charlotte Phillipson, their families and other animals. This episode contains: • A brief note of explanation • Wally the Comedy Rhinoceros • Habitat degradation • Mystery martens • A pine marten in Warwickshire? • A job for Charlotte • Mysterious aquatic humanoids? Surely not • Environmental music • Evelyn's song • New environmental activism • Corinna finds something nasty in her soup • PRODUCT PLACEMENT - Animals & Men • Watcher of the skies • New and rediscovered: New frogfish • New and rediscovered: New batfish • New and rediscovered: New megophrys • New and rediscovered: New coral snake • New and rediscovered: The vampire anole • New and rediscovered: Brown anoles on Ascension island • New and rediscovered: New parachute gecko • Fair use • Coming next month • The Patreon campaign • The team says goodbye until next month You can support us, and help us make this show ever more bigger and better at our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/CFZ

THOM THE WORLD POET: The Daily Poem

Rob Ayling, yer Gonzo Grande Fromage, writes:

"Thom the World poet is an old mate of mine from way back in my history. Even pre-dating Voiceprint, when I was running "Otter Songs" and Thom's poetry tapes and guest appearances with Daevid Allen, Gilli Smyth and Mother Gong are well known and highly regarded. It just felt right to include a daily poem from Thom on our Gonzo blog and when I approached him to do so, he replied within seconds!!! Thom is a great talent and just wants to spread poetry, light and positive energy across the globe. If we at Gonzo can help him do that - why not?


MAXING OUT ON MINIMALISM
FRIENDS I KNOW ARE DE-MATERIALIZING
If i give them a book,they give another one away
Ditto with gifts-it is hard to gift a vegan non-materialist-
Pistachios being the one comestible they enjoy
And they shed books like cat fur.So-how to live as a thin man?
Yesterday,i delivered a sack of my shoes to the Sunrise Community Church
(i only have one pair of feet,and they can only wear two shoes @any one time)
Today ,i will see how best to deal with a plenitude of costumes
Most folk tend towards black &gray.Men's clothes so drab and dull.
To remember John Berry,i wore bright yellow.To remember sunshine,i wore rainbows.
Core truth is utility.I have too much and must divest.Time laughs as i seek to edit
Always some bright object will insist upon stories,regaling me with memories
of venues long past,and people ,too..What can i do?Even my poetry has become

lugubrious

Thursday 29 November 2018

THE GONZO TRACK OF THE DAY: Elgar - Enigma Variations, Op 36 - Temirkanov

CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM GONZO
The Man Behind The Mask
DVD - £10.99

Jon Anderson - Old Grey Whistle Test 1976 (Olias Interview)



CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM JON ANDERSON AT GONZO

SOME LEONARD COHEN NEWS



CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM GONZO

THOM THE WORLD POET: The Daily Poem

Rob Ayling, yer Gonzo Grande Fromage, writes:

"Thom the World poet is an old mate of mine from way back in my history. Even pre-dating Voiceprint, when I was running "Otter Songs" and Thom's poetry tapes and guest appearances with Daevid Allen, Gilli Smyth and Mother Gong are well known and highly regarded. It just felt right to include a daily poem from Thom on our Gonzo blog and when I approached him to do so, he replied within seconds!!! Thom is a great talent and just wants to spread poetry, light and positive energy across the globe. If we at Gonzo can help him do that - why not?

AUSTRALIA STORMS
CLIMATE DISRUPTION
affects Australia greatly-
as an island surrounded by waters
as a Continent with five climate zones
and a pattern of Wet and Dry has now become
unpredictable storms,floods and drought
Of course,storms cause most damage
where people are concentrated together.
This may have been happening in the Outback
but no one was there to report it...

 

SPIRITS BURNING DUTCH REVIEW TRANSLATED

http://progopinion.blogspot.com/



What a week ... CD SPIRITS BURNING - An Alien Heat (2018) A wonderful space picture ... ... has delivered Spirits Burning under the inspiring leadership of Don Falcone. Here, together with sci-fi author Michael Moorcock (ao vocals, harmonica), on whose book 'Alien Heat', part of the trilogy 'The Dancers at the End of Time', this double album is based. Falcone likes to gather all kinds of guests around them. Again members of Hawkwind (Wishart, Chadwick, Bernand) - Spirits Burning sometimes sounds like a later version of their legendary source of inspiration - and members of the hard-rock band Blue Oyster Cult (including Albert Bouchard). Spacerock with an assertive sauce I would like to call it. It is wonderful to float away on the 16 tracks on CD 1. The hovering increases again on CD2 where all tracks are recorded in instrumental performance. I like this double album in a nice cover and it offers a great opportunity to escape the hectic daily life at regular intervals. That is possible without mind-expanding means. A few capsules of Spirits Burning also comply! Harry de Vries (what a week 27)

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Spirits Burning is one of the most unique entities in the space rock galaxy. The group consists of one main member, Don Falcone, and many other participants from various  bands and projects...


Healthy Music In Large Doses is the latest offering from the Spirits Burning space rock collective, this time featuring keyboardist Cyrille 'Clearlight' Verdeaux. Clearlight is a project of French son..

Wednesday 28 November 2018

THE GONZO TRACK OF THE DAY: Freddie King - Have You Ever Loved A Woman



CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM GONZO
Live at Liberty Hall
CD - £7.99

Texas Cannon Ball
CD - £7.99

SOME LEONARD COHEN NEWS


October saw the arrival of two treats for fans of the late Leonard Cohen. The first, Matters of Vital Interest: A Forty-Year Friendship with Leonard Cohen, ...

It took several tries over the course of a decade for Luciana Souza to convince Leonard Cohen to let her set several poems from his 2006 volume, ...

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SPIRITS BURNING GERMAN REVIEW TRANSLATED


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11 of 15

As some friends and sympathizers of Spacerock's own eclectic nature already know, Spirits Burning is a collective of musicians led by US musicians Don Falcone and Albert Bouchard (formerly at Blue Öyster Cult).

In the run-up to Spirits Burning's fourteenth album, Falcone has contacted British science fiction and fantasy author Michael Moorcock. The goal was to use the "Dancers" trilogy by Moorcock as a text template for Spirits Burning. "An Alien Heat" is the name of the first part of the "Dancers" trilogy by Moorcock. After a meeting and some sessions with Moorcock, it was discovered that the collaboration worked well, so Moorcock was allowed to contribute his lyrics and to compose some pieces. In addition, Moorcock has been involved in vocals in most pieces, even though it is often just the background vocals. (Too bad that the lyrics were not printed anywhere, so that you can probably only guess the sung content of Moorcock).

In addition to Moorcock, Falcone and Bouchard, "An Alien Heat" involved around 30 musicians, including Cyrille Verdeaux (Clearlight) and members of Blue Öyster Cult, Hawkwind, Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come, The Groundhogs and The Damned. Even after up to eight musicians with different backgrounds were allowed to write on the pieces, the result sounds pretty homogenous to me. In vocal technique, several singers are involved as well, though most often the voice of Albert Bouchard, sometimes pressed and sometimes reminiscent of Robert Wyatt, can be heard.

According to the self-description of Spirits Burning, the music is output as a spacer rock. However, it is not always easy to classify what is required stylistically. Some pieces seem to offer a fusion of psychedelic rock, folk, and pop rock with a pinch of spacerock and postwave, akin to Hawkwind's time with Robert Calvert (as heard in "Hothouse Flowers," "Doomed," and "In the Future," among others). In the pieces like "Dark Dominion" and "To Steal a Space Traveler", you go one step further in the direction of psychedelic experiments and add some weird sounds, as if Daevid Allen's spirit was present.

"Geronimo" again has to offer psychedelic-folky style pop, in which the chant is in constant dialogue with the melodic violin lines. It seems very difficult to find traces of Spacerock here.

Featuring the charming female vocals of Ann Marie Castellano, the "Soiree of Fire" seems to combine the trance of Spacerock with the ease of Artpop and the mysterious mood of psychedelic folk. Colorful and lively-looking psychedelic-spacy folk prog can also be heard in "Fall in Love" and "Any particular Interest".

(If anyone needs it, there is also a bonus CD to the full package that includes the instrumental versions of each piece, so you can of course follow the detailed arrangements better and at the same time think about whether this music is justified even without the vocals. Without singing, sometimes even other stylistic assignments of the individual pieces could result, which can happen with such a musical tightrope).


I find it very exciting to watch over the entire length of the album, how creatively the pieces from the above-mentioned musical puzzle pieces were put together, so that pigeonholing is made almost impossible and at the same time new ways for the musical expeditions are opened.

CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM GONZO


Spirits Burning is one of the most unique entities in the space rock galaxy. The group consists of one main member, Don Falcone, and many other participants from various  bands and projects...


Healthy Music In Large Doses is the latest offering from the Spirits Burning space rock collective, this time featuring keyboardist Cyrille 'Clearlight' Verdeaux. Clearlight is a project of French son..

THOM THE WORLD POET: The Daily Poem

Rob Ayling, yer Gonzo Grande Fromage, writes:

"Thom the World poet is an old mate of mine from way back in my history. Even pre-dating Voiceprint, when I was running "Otter Songs" and Thom's poetry tapes and guest appearances with Daevid Allen, Gilli Smyth and Mother Gong are well known and highly regarded. It just felt right to include a daily poem from Thom on our Gonzo blog and when I approached him to do so, he replied within seconds!!! Thom is a great talent and just wants to spread poetry, light and positive energy across the globe. If we at Gonzo can help him do that - why not?



OLD MAN DECEMBER /
YOUNG CHILD JANUARY
ASHES OF CAMPFIRES/BELTANE RITUALS
Hideaway Tuesdays young circle jamming musicians
They do not need to know the history of music
They create and re-create in every mistake
Identical to their elders' human errors...
You may believe in Reincarnation/Past Lives/Karmic Regression
I believe in Future Lives-that which is created in the seeds of today
The Harvests of Tomorrow.(@its worst/Child Worship..
@its best-Trust in a Better Tomorrow.Stock Markets rise and fall
on Futures Markets.Why not us?Trust that we can improve

and that every perceived end-is just another Fabulous Beginning?

JOHN SHUTTLEWORTH CHRISTMAS SHOW


BBC Radio has today announced its on-air highlights for the festive period. Bob Shennan, BBC Director of Radio & Music said: “This Christmas BBC ...

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England's Heartbeat
CDS - £3.99

Monday 26 November 2018

THOM THE WORLD POET: The Daily Poem

Rob Ayling, yer Gonzo Grande Fromage, writes:

"Thom the World poet is an old mate of mine from way back in my history. Even pre-dating Voiceprint, when I was running "Otter Songs" and Thom's poetry tapes and guest appearances with Daevid Allen, Gilli Smyth and Mother Gong are well known and highly regarded. It just felt right to include a daily poem from Thom on our Gonzo blog and when I approached him to do so, he replied within seconds!!! Thom is a great talent and just wants to spread poetry, light and positive energy across the globe. If we at Gonzo can help him do that - why not?

ODDLY SATISFYING
AUTONOMOUS SENSORY MERIDIAN RESPONSES
Perhaps you,too,have fallen through the YOUTUBE
into a cavalcade of oddly euphoric visual repetitive experiences
like watching hours of slow motion sports-soccer,tennis,golf..
or factory processing or watching slime,sand,soap making...
Or kitchen cooking-slicing,shredding,cutting,dicing
In fact,all cooking programs  as they slowly reveal their processing...
Here is where your life gets lost-in clips and memes and gifs
that are sweet and colorful eye candy/so much so/you become addicted..
Hypnotized by ads with the sound turned off-or cat videos-or babies playing(or both..

LIFE means more than a meme.TIME means more than an online magazine..

KEITH CHRISTMAS NEWS


... and has toured with such legends as The Who, Frank Zappa and King Crimson and played with Roxy Music, The Kinks and Captain Beefheart.

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Live at the Pump
CD - £9.99

THE GONZO TRACK OF THE DAY: Barbara Dickson - Answer Me



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Time And Tide 
CD - £7.99

In Good Company
2CD - £10.99

Live in Concert 1976/77
DVD - £10.99

7 Ages of Woman
CD - £9.99

Barbara Dickson in Blood Brothers
CD - £9.99

John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bert
CD - £9.99

More Brecht Than Broadway
4CD Boxset - £49.99

Morning Comes Quickly
CD - £7.99

Answer Me
CD - £7.99

Winter
CD - £9.99

Che Faro
DVD - £10.99

B4 74 - The Folkclub Tapes
2CD - £10.99

Full Circle
CD - £7.99

Into The Light
DVD - £10.99

SCHOOL OF ROCK WITH DWEEZIL


Dweezil Zappa learned from an early age the magic of performing live music, watching his father, Frank Zappa, lead his band through treacherous ...

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Frank Zappa is considered to be one of the most influential rock musicians of the late twentieth century. Between the start of his career in the late fifties and his death in 1993 he recorded and rele..


On September 19, 1985, Frank Zappa testified before the United States Senate Commerce, Technology, and Transportation committee, attacking the Parents Music Resource Center or PMRC, a music organizati..

MORE LEONARD COHEN NEWS


The recent publication of Leonard Cohen's The Flame: Poems and Selections from Notebooks is a project that was begun when Cohen was alive, and ...

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Sunday 25 November 2018

STEVE VAI ON FRANK ZAPPA


In his 40-year career working with such artists as Frank Zappa, Whitesnake, David Lee Roth and Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Steve Vai has come up with ...

CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM GONZO

Frank Zappa is considered to be one of the most influential rock musicians of the late twentieth century. Between the start of his career in the late fifties and his death in 1993 he recorded and rele..


On September 19, 1985, Frank Zappa testified before the United States Senate Commerce, Technology, and Transportation committee, attacking the Parents Music Resource Center or PMRC, a music organizati..
...BECAUSE SOME OF US THINK THAT THIS STUFF IS IMPORTANT
What happens when you mix what is - arguably - the world's most interesting record company, with an anarchist manic-depressive rock music historian polymath, and a method of dissemination which means that a daily rock-music magazine can be almost instantaneous?

Most of this blog is related in some way to the music, books and films produced by Gonzo Multimedia, but the editor has a grasshopper mind and so also writes about all sorts of cultural issues which interest him, and which he hopes will interest you as well.