A somewhat interesting article on Gerald and Sara Murphy, who you may know as Dick and Nicole Diver, who you may know as the patrons and champions of the lost generation who did not look like a catcher's mitt (see Gertrude Stein), who you may not know at all...

It's Friday in NY. Spill it, Tuna...

Rake by Townes Van Zandt

I used to wake and run with the moon
I lived like a rake and a young man
I covered my lovers with flowers and wounds
my laughter the devil would frighten
The sun she would come and beat me back down
but every cruel day had its nightfall
I'd welcome the stars with wine and guitars
full of fire and forgetful

My body was sharp the dark air clean
and outrage my joyful companion
whisperin' women how sweet did they seem
kneelin' for me to command them
And time was like water but I was the sea
I'd have never noticed it passin
'except for the turnin' of night into day
and the turnin' of day into cursin'

You look at me now, and don't think I don't know
what all your eyes are a sayin'
Does he want us to believe these ravings and lies
they're just tricks that his brains been a playin'?
A lover of women he can't hardly stand
he trembles he's bent and he's broken
I've fallen it's true but I say unto you
hold your tongues until after I've spoken

I was takin' my pride in the pleasures I'd known
I laughed and thought I'd be forgiven
but my laughter turned 'round eyes blazing and
said my friend, we're holdin' a wedding
I buried my face but it spoke once again
the night to the day we're a bindin'
and now the dark air is like fire on my skin
and even the moonlight is blinding

Let me suggest a microcosm for Camus' Sisyphisian universe- housework. Increase rock size exponentially if your home has small children. Any thought about the futility of one's efforts only leads to straitjackets, so I marched down to the basement and grabbed a random handful of cassettes to prevent any synaptic activity. Beginning with the making of breakfast and ending with the last scrubbed morning dish, tape sounds be doing their best to distract me from the final meltdown. Here are the ten best so far-

10. Thelonious Monster- Beautiful Mess- Tom Waits sings on this, the only production money that didn't go up Bob's nose or in his arm.

9. Tav Falco and Panther Burns- Life Sentence in the Cathouse- I own a cassette from Triple X Records.

8. SF Seals- Truth Walks in Sleepy Shadows- Barbara Manning has a beautiful voice.

7. R. L. Burnside- Mr. Wizard- "Snake Drive" is a monster, and it strangely drove Lucas to sing, "Do you really wanna hold my dirty hand?"

6. Roky Erickson- You're Gonna Miss Me- I finally got the Roky documentary today- a welcome release from Barry watch- why does anyone care if Bud Selig attends?

5. Andre Williams- Mr. Rhythm- it's never too early for "Jailbait," until your son asks what it means

4. Alex Chilton- A Man Called Destruction- "What's Your Sign, Girl" is the best 70's song written in the 90's.

3. Stud Cole- hello, dark and scary morning

2. Skip James-"Daddy, is that a ghost singing?"

1. Hank Williams- the perfect soundtrack to your dirty floor

Let me recommend a new punky type record to you - Eddy Current Suppression Ring outta Aussieland. These gents put fun and bounce into their aggression and, even more shockingly, groove. They ain't afraid to lengthen out a fat riff and let you enjoy it for awhile- they ain't afraid to let the punkers dance. Go watch this live thang and cry a puddle for your lost youth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VdoVPmMTI4

Philip Larkin - Vers de Société

My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps
To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps
You'd care to join us? In a pig's arse, friend.
Day comes to an end.
The gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed.
And so Dear Warlock-Williams: I'm afraid -

Funny how hard it is to be alone.
I could spend half my evenings, if I wanted,
Holding a glass of washing sherry, canted
Over to catch the drivel of some bitch
Who's read nothing but Which;
Just think of all the spare time that has flown
Straight into nothingness by being filled
With forks and faces, rather than repaid
Under a lamp, hearing the noise of wind,
And looking out to see the moon thinned
To an air-sharpened blade.
A life, and yet how sternly it's instilled

All solitude is selfish. No one now
Believes the hermit with his gown and dish
Talking to God (who's gone too); the big wish
Is to have people nice to you, which means
Doing it back somehow.
Virtue is social. Are, then, these routines
Playing at goodness, like going to church?
Something that bores us, something we don't do well
(Asking that ass about his fool research)
But try to feel, because, however crudely,
It shows us what should be?

Too subtle, that. Too decent, too. Oh hell,
Only the young can be alone freely.
The time is shorter now for company,
And sitting by a lamp more often brings
Not peace, but other things.
Beyond the light stand failure and remorse
Whispering Dear Warlock-Williams: Why, of course -

Despite my lithe frame and Euro connections, I'm the last person to look to for dance recs. That said, somehow, I can imagine Tuna boy lost in a deep X cloud swirling around the video secs/slaves at some Soho movengroove to the sounds of !!!'s Myth Takes. See, I can't even introduce the fucking music, but I'm moving through the kitchen with the boys' frozen pizza on kitty feet and an Astaire twirl. I may shop for a boa after this post. I'm thinking perm, lipo and lift. Discover the left coast of move. All that darkness and inebriation might make these desert face crevasses less horrifying. You know, hang around in the corners, lurking. Tuna lad, place your ears upon the loving vibrations of your d-load screen, lose yourself and then wait for the repulsed screams of your loving wife. Exclaim three times and please resume your grooving. It is your right.

According to an industry insider, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck are going to tour as The Yardbirds this fall alongside founding bassist Chris Dreja and drummer Jim McCarty. The tour is said to kick off this October. It’s unclear who will be the reformed Yardbirds' lead singer (original vocalist Keith Relf died of electrocution in 1976). Eric Clapton, the Yardbirds' founding guitarist, has no plans to participate, according to the source.

Cormac McCarthy has signed a two-novel deal with his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. “We don’t know anything about them,” Paul Bogaards, a spokesman for Knopf, said. “But two new novels by Cormac McCarthy is good enough for us.” Knopf has published Mr. McCarthy’s work since his breakout novel, “All the Pretty Horses,” in 1992. “The Road,” which was published last year and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, was selected for Ms. Winfrey’s book club earlier this year and has sold about 225,000 copies in hardcover, according to the publisher. And there are 1.1 million paperback copies in print.

Over the last year, I've found obsessive listening far more rewarding than brief attention to the latest latest. Neil Young, Townes Van Zandt, and now Dead Moon all have a few things in common- each aims for the gutcords and heartstrings, with occasional nods to the funnybone. I wish I had a list of great new bands I could deliver but, well, checking it out and checking it out and checking it out salves curiosity but don't always do much for that needy and extremely demanding visceral voice crying out for some touch in the late night dark. I really like the new Demon's Claws record, but I can't imagine putting it on in the wee hours and settling in for the big eye-close. That new Final Solutions sounds purty dandy after one listening but it ain't getting the push when the alligators need feeding. It's a gas downloading but I can imagine buying 200 bucks worth of Dead Moon vinyl and lying down on the couch to die.

Seeking it all out is wonderful, but like the mad bomber Daryl Lamonica, sometimes you gotta go deep. After hearing Lucas deliver an unsolicited and note-perfect, "I'm pissed off, pissed off pissed off, it's just the way I am," I gotta believe the benefits fall forward.

Your next tattoo...

Bunch of things to cover:

Tuna, I'll be in NY August 7-10.

I bought an original, unplayed copy of T. Rex's The Slider, and it's so fucking good. Fuck Steve Jobs and digital music. Nothing comes close to the original.

I need to buy some wedding presents this week. Send on suggestions.

Redshark, where the hell are you?

Pick my next tattoo...

I ain’t no literary historian, but I’m guessing we have the boomers to blame for the disappointment memoir. Let’s see, if your lollypop-eyed expectations include changing the world into a love playground filled with Maslowian self-fulfillment, you might end up with failed hopes. Who could have imagined that? Now, we get seemingly endless middle-age where-did-it-all-go-wrong confessions, and if my eyes rolled any harder, they’d be in my ass.

Tim O’Brien, a man who delivered one masterpiece (The Things They Carried) and two other first-rate novels (Going After Cacciato and In the Lake by the Woods), has written his Big Chill book, and I’ve finally gotten around to reading it. July, July recounts a 30th reunion (what else? - it even includes a memorial service for fallen compadres) that focuses on ten classmates and how badly they perceive they’ve screwed up their lives. O’Brien alternates chapters from the reunion with those that tell the ten individual stories, so we can see the dashed hopes, the crumbling marriages, the dark secrets, etc. Marriage gets hit particularly hard, as even so-called perfect husbands get cheated on and verbally abused for failing to sustain perfect and abiding passion. Commitment isn’t easy for these folks- nobody told them it requires sacrifice- and boredom. There doesn’t appear to be any middle ground for these people between cynicism and despair. They are either defeated by their perceived failures or else the shell has hardened to allow only the jaded quip to exit those pouty mouths. That raises another problem- what comes out of those mouths rarely sounds like what comes out of the mouths of people I’ve encountered outside the printed page. The comebacks are too fast and too glib. We get no ordinary conversation about nothing, the kind you would expect to dominate a reunion in which people are getting to know one another again until the booze kicks in. It’s as if everyone is trying to one-up each other in the world-weariness competition by delivering only the sardonic jibe. So much of the conversation calls attention to itself by its spunk or its folksiness or its homespun “wisdom.” People just don’t talk like that, especially when they’re plastered or frying on acid, as two characters are near the end. And still they have a quip-off, no matter how many ellipses O’Brien employs to indicate normal, stuttering human speech.

I’m being harsh, because there is some psychological insight and some fine writing, but I simply don’t recognize these people. If they are genuine representatives of this generation, you just want to slap ‘em or shake your head. If not, well, O’Brien ain’t going for fantasy. It’s amazing with this guy, because he’s masterful when writing about Vietman, but he has produced two of the worst novels I’ve read (Tomcat in Love, The Nuclear Age), when he steps outside that arena. July, July is much better than those two, but it’s a long way from The Things They Carried. Comparing novels from a writer is never fair, so let’s just hope he either hangs out with more folks who didn’t believe in revolution in 1968, or else he lets folks talk like folks in the next one. Of course, there's always Vietnam...

The second best movie of the decade (after Hustle & Flow) is called Dreamland (2006) and concerns two young girls in a New Mexican trailer park. Since I'm an authority on the wants and needs of young women, and have a decent ear and sound BS meter when it comes to hack work, I cant believe how good this movie is. The plot is hokey but the dialog these kids hit is first rate. The girls are hot but of a different sort, and I hope the two leads go on to do better work, but it's likely they'll be humping an oiled exercise ball in the August issue of Maxim. This is not the OC nor is it your mother's TV movie of the week. It's the best movie I've seen about young people making a go of things since...I can't even finish that thought; I don't think another movie comes close.

Off to Tahoe, I leave you with the words of E.M. Cioran-

"Once I forget I have a body, I believe in freedom, but I immediately abandon such belief when my body calls me back to order and imposes its miseries and its whims."

"If a government decreed in midsummer that vacations were to be indefinitely extended and that, on pain of death, no one was to leave the paradise in which he was sojourning, mass suicides would follow, and unprecedented carnage."