Petites Annonces, France 1981 (by request)

Here's an album that was requested not so long ago which I dug up and then had to leave on the back burner due to the series of American posts followed by the Japanese ones and the great Masahiko Satoh.

As you can tell from the cover, perhaps very unfamiliar to anyone under the age of 30 (aka a so-called (oddly enough) millennial, the term petites annonces refers to the classified section of the newspaper.  This is where, unbelievably to the aforementioned 20-year-olds, people had to type and write up their own personal ad to send by mail to the newspaper to be published, which they had to wait weeks for, or even more astonishingly, they would call up the newspaper from their home phone and verbally describe (to another live human being! in real time! in real life!) what they wanted written-- for example, they would say, "I need someone to mow my lawn, preferably from the local neighbourhood" (uber didn't perform this service for you back then).  They would also leave a home phone number as a communication.  That's a phone that you don't carry around with you, in fact, it's physically stuck inside your house.  It doesn't move.  Doesn't leave the house.  Doesn't use Uber to go out.  Like grandma who has Parkinsons.  Incredible, right?  Btw, for the really young folks, a newspaper is a (physical) piece of paper with news on it you receive on your doorstep, and, believe it or not, this really happens-- sorry I meant this really happened, once upon a time.  (You get it on your doorstep, because it doesn't come via internet instantly.  Someone has to throw it onto your doorstep, usually at 6 AM, thereby waking you up, and the kids too, when they hit the front door.  It's not Uber.  It's a guy who drove around the neighbourhood, in a car, throwing newspapers at peoples' homes.  Not delivering food to them.  Just delivering the news.)  And furthermore, the news was reliably true.  It wasn't half fake information.  How did we know that?  Well, we didn't, but people tried really hard to make sure it was true.  Who were these people?  Well, they were called journalists.  They went around looking for things that happened, for real.  They didn't just make things up like you guys do in school, or look on wikipedia.org and copy and paste.  They had a job where they looked for things that really happened, not made-up things for amusement, or things that instagram, facebook, twitter, were paid to write.  We believed those newspapers.  Why? Well, because if you don't believe anything, you might as well be living in a fascist dystopian conspiracists' reality (which, today, we call Trumpworld) where the news is made by snapchat, Tiktok, and Whatsapp.  I guess you kids know that things are true on youtube because real people are doing really important, newsworthy things, like swallowing laundry detergent pods.  I mean, it must be so so hard for you younger folks to understand this.  It must be so weird.  Especially the part about information written on paper, that people trusted.  We didn't even rate them with stars, like Uber drivers.  Not even once in a while when we were bored.  We never did.  And then you actually had to turn the pages, to go from one story to another, and move your whole arm to do it, not just your thumb, right.  People had to turn their necks to read that stuff.  Btw, paper is this hard flat thing that was made from trees, it was white, and you put ink on it to read.  Can you believe it?  Yes, the ink is like those multiple tattoos on your body, you know how you had 20 of them by the time you were 20 years old and they say all these really deep things that you've never read?  You know, or like those pictures of Justin Bieber just after he vomited that you put on your butt?   Btw, trees are those big brown things with green leaves next to you, if you look to the right of your phone over there, not the ones with the electric wires, those are transmission poles.  They make the oxygen you breathe, not amazon.com and Jeff Bezos.  Although you can probably ship it through amazon, if you have a prime membership.  You can give oxygen a five star rating for keeping you alive.  (And give trees a 'like' too, they really need it, much more than Uber.)  Alive is like when you're looking at your phone, you know, like when you're taking selfies in the bathroom mirror to post instantly on instagram, and you're not a bot, or a robot.
Can you imagine????  omigod, you millenials...

Now for the older folks, the classifieds have disappeared of course and were at one time replaced by craigslist, which became taken over completely with ads for local prostitutes, thereby being replaced in turn by kijiji, which is now over-run by thieves and crooks who will do anything to steal what you are selling, the latest scam using fake certified checks-- you know those checks that in the old days were impossible to fake...   Yes, it's really quite amazing how technological progress has improved our society.  Just look at the evolution of porn, once an underground thing that was completely hidden from everyone, especially children, for example magazines were kept high up out of their lines of sight in corner stores, then it became mainstream in the mildest manner with Playboy, etc., which was replaced by videos, you had to rent those in a seedy store where kids were not allowed, which was replaced by pay per use sites where you had to have a credit card, presumably children didn't yet have those back then, which led today to completely free internet porn available to everyone, even 2-year olds.  In this way now a ten year old girl can easily watch the most sick and perverse intercourse, if she wanted to, with complete freedom, with zero restrictions, in her bedroom.

Yes, the progress of our society is truly a miracle.

Anyways, back to the music, which is 40 years old, way older than a millenial, thank god.  The opener is quite auspicious without a doubt, unlike what one would have said about the decade-starting year of 2010:





Its title means one measure, two tempos and three movements, obviously.  So it starts quite strong out of the gate.  We have progressive fusion ideas chock-full. Thereafter a track called Experimental really gives you an interesting sound, perhaps derived from library tracks like Teddy Lasry's, with an ostinato on piano plus bass and swirling spacey synths and an acoustic piano improvising about:





Unfortunately, side b is more in line with basic, simple jazz, and disappoints the further you go-- a bit like the way the old newspapers transformed into facebook's fake news and network tv became (nausea) youtube.

Information can be found here.  Note that the guitarist is Voindriot, who has appeared before on this blog, here and here.  The compositions are collective.  To my complete shock, a very familiar keyboardist appears on certain tracks, Cyrille Verdeaux.  Everyone should be familiar with his work.
At any rate, we have here a beautiful side one.  Enjoy it, along with your kijiji, 5-G or perhaps 8-G smartphone, and tiktok fake news.

(I know what tiktok is, that's just a joke. And apologies to anyone insulted by the above rant.)

Masahiko Satoh, Part 4 (Belladonna 1975, Electro Keyboard Orchestra 1975, Multispheroid 1977, YaKsa 1985, Twilight Monologues 1984, Silky Adventure 1986)

I post all of these after Christmas and the three other M. Satoh packages, amassing together essentially some leftover albums which range from a bit more disappointing to a lot more disappointing-- kind of like the guilt of looking at your credit card statement after the binge buying of Christmas sales and Black Friday, or like looking at the expensive presents your extended family, hopefully not close family, wasted money on that you will hide away in a mothball-filled closet for the rest of eternity and never look at again. Gotta hate your mother in law, even if there weren't a million other reasons, just for that awful tendency of buying the worst Xmas presents.  (And for myself, for Xmas I'll once again pray my wife doesn't look at this blog.)

Going through it quickly, to minimize the discomfort brought on by this wide-bore needle injection unfortunately medically necessary for your survival, the soundtrack Belladonna from 1975 is totally and completely by the numbers OST/library stuff, I almost want to write him a letter to say, 'what were you thinking; why couldn't you come up with better music?  Why can't you be more like Morricone?? Or your compatriot Jun Fukamachi???'  Like we say to our kids.  The track called Mr. London gives you an idea, once again, bearing in mind this is the best composition:

On the 1975 keyboard album called Electro Keyboard Orchestra, wherein he is accompanied by 7 other pianists including our old fave Yuji Ohno (note there were several Ohno posts back then on this blog, what wonderful music that was), there is some delightful fusion here and there, witness Mother of the Future:





Note that this track surprisingly was written by Carlos Garnett.  His original rendition and album were garbage, if I recall correctly.

Moving right along to the next big bowtied box of nuthin', we have the piano improvisation called Multi-Spheroid etc., which on top of being purely solo grand piano, is completely extemporized in a non-key or atonal manner with nothing at all familiar to cling to (unless you're one of those third world children of the garbage dumps that lives on top of a pile of refuse).  As usual it amazes me that this kind of 'music' would be put out as a real LP back in the day, when better music is thrown out as 'tax scam releases' and never sees the light.  Absolutely deplorable.  And unlistenable.  The best thing is without a doubt the artwork that graces the album, which entranced me for quite some time, trying to understand what it was all about.  Have a look at it above.

Then Twilight Monologues features 4 pianists, again on solo acoustic, again uselessly boring.  Please, give me back the ten minutes I wasted on this, or I will break the record over your heads, you four.  Get back over here, you wimps.  The album from 1986 with bamboo flute player Yamamoto (we saw him too before here) is piano plus bamboo, and surely you are begging for a couple of giant pandas to eat all of his bamboo instruments to relieve you from this torture by the time you get to the end.  Although, instead of free atonal garbage, we are dealing here with simplistic folktune-like garbage.  A familiar thing to those children of the dumps.  The Iberian track at least is good:





And that leaves us with Yaksa, another OST, from 1985 this time.  Here it's Toots Thielemans (on harmonica of course and as usual) who is accompanying Satoh and the music is at least approachable and occasionally interesting, though once again he falls into the death-trap trash compactor of simplistic composition, so unlike the packages 1-3 in our pre-Christmas Satoh Special.  In fact, where the hell did all the good music go, oh-Satoh-San????

It's unfortunate in particular that the theme song sung by Nancy Wilson, which resembles the James Bond songs, is so disappointing.  For example the Prologue starts so promising, quite Dave Grusin-like in sound, and then when Toots tries to get in on the action, it becomes reduced to the worst sort of big band / library jazz track from the standard American jazz bin:





It's like you want to slap him on his back while he's playing his harmonica so he swallows it by accident, or it gets stuck in his mouth like the stick the road runner put in the coyote's mouth that keeps his jaw open so he can't play any chords anymore except G7 and C while breathing in and out.

So obviously I won't be pursuing any more Masahiko Satoh, and we will just try to remember those glorious albums that were so full of creative and wonderful ideas and so progressive in their melding of jazz and classical with electric instrumental energy: All in-All out, Chagall, Amorphism, and the two Medical Sugar Banks.

I'll continue in the next couple of weeks with some more fantastic Japanese progressive music that was totally new to me, maybe not to you.

Back to Dustar with their 1983 fusionary outpouring Carousel [with a lossless]

On the strength of the previous posting in these pages, Black River, I bought this one with not a little trepidation since the experience of purchasing from anywhere in the former (and future) Soviet Union can be somewhat chilling, comrades-- actually I swore I would never buy a record from the country of Russia itself, but I had to relent, finding that Russian records are one of the very few things you can only find in Russia...  And let me add that I also will never buy a record from Mexico after getting badly ripped off with those Batiz LPs I posted earlier, to the point of having to use a paypal complaint that dragged on for months to get my money refunded.  I mean I have nothing against Mexicans, but I will never buy a record from one.  And I won't buy anything from Italy either, partly because everything is quadruple the 'normal price'-- their library records are treated like lost Renaissance paintings from Botticelli-- I guess people are getting sick of the quattrocento and they've moved on to the 1970s. Just like they charge twenty euros to walk into tiny churches which elsewhere in the world are perfectly free to walk into.  I guess the fact they elected a stand-up comic to head a political party says it all about how seriously they treat comedy.  (Of course that's nothing compared to the United States.)  And while I'm at it, I swore I would never return to France after experiencing the rudeness that every visitor is well aware of (as I've described in many previous posts) particularly the time we went to a toy store near the palais elysee and my young kids got screamed at for looking at some toys.  They're famous for their food?  Today, only if you happen to be a dog, whose bathroom privileges extend to every street-- the worst croissants and macarons I've ever had were in Paris.  There the cappucinos were so awful and expensive we were reduced to going to Starbucks for decent coffee, shamefully (which at least never happened in Italy).  In Spain, world-famous for its paella, I had not only the worst paella I've ever tasted, but I never had a good one.  National dish, you say?  Why don't you offer it (along with that over-rated manchego cheese and terrible dessicated iberian ham) to the space station astronauts in lieu of freeze-dried foods as a great scientific experiment, & see what they prefer.  Maybe they'll go for the Parisian croissants and coffee then, and then jump out the airlock for a spacewalk. Thank god for the US of A, where I had the best paella of my life, in Las Vegas (!), and where you are always guaranteed service with a smile and a handgun...

Anyways, after the rant the music, as George Santayana once said.  A pastiche of quotes from the stupid orchestral Star Wars theme song by Williams to the Layla riff plus others I can recognize but can't call up names for along with the customary slavic folk songs opens this set somewhat inauspiciously and the title of the first track presumably might translate as 'messed up'.  But don't worry, it gets better (otherwise I wouldn't have bothered to purchase this), very quickly, and by track A3 the introduction is just so lovely it's impossible for me to focus on anything else in my vicinity once I hear the synths pick up that nice fat melody atop very delicately layered electric guitar chords and a nice syncopated rhythm:





And I'll let you discover the other Soviet riches in here so far completely unknown to mankind-- sorry, humankind, but really mostly the male gender, on this LP... to paraphrase the great Putin's "Russia has the best prostitutes in the world:" they certainly have some of the best music in the world...

More Thermaenius with Copenhagen Boogie from 1982

Notice that on this subsequent album, Pierre Dørge the guitarist/leader shares compositional credits with Irene Becker, pianist (who was present previously).  All the bad habits of the previous instalment are still in evidence and (un)duly entertained: the interminable jams, ridiculous almost joke-like sax solos, live acoustics and in case you didn't have enough of the silliness, overlengthy sides, yet there is a bit more experimentation and complexity to the compositions which is a welcome sound for tired ears.

First notice that each side is named after a cardinal direction e.g. side one is South with its African percussive beginning and the excellent composition on the subject of the peacock (by Becker), ending in the West-- though certainly the leaders of the UK, the USA and soon France will perhaps ignore everything except the North, to their loss, as that first Southern side is quite strong (unlike their economies).  

So here's the (presidential) Peacock in honour of them:






...oh how simple the world was back in 1982, 34 years ago...






Well, let's not forget those fears of nuclear war were pretty terrifying... remember the evil empire and star wars...

Happy Fathers Day!

As I've said before, Fathers Day is, in some sense, the diametric or perhaps bipolar opposite of Mothers Day: where the latter is full of guilt and angst, womblike dark reflections on existence, the unforgiving brutality of having been brought into this world in a puddle of blood via the appropriate obtuse angle of two legs, the obligation of the siblings and their cuckoo nest-mates to the master feeder who kept them alive when none else could, though not from love: purely from an instinctive drive powerful enough to self-sacrifice as we see in certain spider species whose mothers let their children feed on their own body after birth-- can we then argue those mothers love their spiderlings more than a human mother? are their Mothers Days not far superior to those of humans, who are not permitted to feast for taboo reasons on the maternal body before her death?-- on the other hand Fathers Day can correctly be regarded in its proximity to the summer solstice as full of light, indeed a maximal amount of illumination, representing as it does the opening door of summer, the memory of sunburns and fishing, meat in fires and the celebration of the great unparalleled and ancient human invention of the controlled fermentation of sugars.  Rather it is the anti-guilt, the duty of forgiveness, a kind of confession of mortality which is to be inherited by the younger ones, as can be seen in the fact that where the day for Mothers must perforce be planned ad nauseam without involvement from the celebratee (else she instantly develops a bad mood that persists through the day or even the next few, often exploding into anger over trivial nuisances), the day for Fathers to the contrary must be completely organized by the king oops I mean the man himself without any obstruction from the all-too-human forces of shame, guilt, or even moderation, nor should there be any deviation from its proper course of complete life-enjoyment by the influence of any mothers in the extended family who understandably will through the effect of a bit of jealousy, or, sometimes, protection of the little ones, attempt to redirect the festivities in a more austere, controlled direction.  And if the Father doesn't receive either a gift or a card in the morning, because he probably doesn't even deserve either, who cares? it will hardly be remembered by the next day after the party...  For the spirit of Fathers Day is the spirit of receiving from oneself, giving to oneself, celebrating sperm and life, and if after all the bbq ribs and lobster and the debts his family has incurred on his credit cards cause him to have a heart attack by night's end, what does it matter?  At least his family will wake up tomorrow the beneficiary of his insurance policy...  So let us celebrate Fathers Day!

The Machines Have Landed, Part One, in 1981

Hard on the heels of the bombshell Tetelestai comes this other proggers' dream platter.

"They were all males, and well-built, their hair was white, cut short, their eyes were blue, their skin was white, thus-- they were caucasians..."  Goes the intro describing the aliens exiting their UFO-- wow-- what a relief they were not black or god forbid-- Asian!  or if they had arabic features?  

Side two is the progific monster-- the prognificent masterwork AOR'ing through a bombastic prose of dissonances and tritones, FM-(the Canadian band)-style synthplay and outright lyrical silliness.  The first side definitely has more of a Klaatu art rock workaday aspect to it especially with the overlong Walter Cronkite-like intro excerpted above.  But revel in the finale of the work from these one-off Burlington, Ontario, Canadians here below which casts all the energy of amplified music into one melting pot of hot compositional alchemy:







Yes: the machines have landed, America... they landed long ago...

Claude Perraudin's Rumeurs (Patchwork MC 82) by request

Hard on the heels of the last library entry that was so popular here's another famous name and another marvelous little album that I take it was missing.  An unusual feature is the musique concrete or real-life sounds that begin each track.  Mercifully these noisy interludes are quickly over (on the order of 65 seconds) so we can focus on enjoying the music.

All compositions are by Claude, obviously.  More information can be found in discogs.  For those unlucky souls not familiar with this artist, here is his extensive discography with his masterpiece, universally acknowledged, being Mutations 24 -- a work that I have listened to hundreds of times and could listen again the same number of times.  If you haven't heard it, please do so!

The first track called Cities is described as Heavy-repetitive:





As indeed it is.  Whilst notice the synthesizer sounds evoking locomotives on the Train track (pun obviously intended though as is customary, categorically denied):





Some tracks, of course, are simple throwaway, as might be expected on any library album, the song called "Vagues" or waves sounds like something Jean-Michel Jarre would have done but never released as it was too inferior to the rest of his admittedly poor work.  And the last track referring to "Foules" or crowds could easily have been the Hollywood soundtrack to a Pinocchio remake starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as the title character action hero wooden puppet with the hardest arms ever and Angelina Jolie as the old professor, with the whale created by CGI animation out of an old sardines can.   Needless to say when he gets down to the children's hell he beats up all the bad kids and even closes hell down by the deputy sheriff, along with real life authority and friend Steven Seagal.  Cameo by Megan Fox as the love interest: a living barbie doll called Malisa with plastic breasts.  You go, Jean-Claude!

Oscar Rocchi Piano and Orchestra with Ladies from 1978 with lossless

It's rare to see a review this lengthy, not to mention any review at all, on discogs.  But here we go, here it is in all its misspelt gloury:
(don't bother reading it all, just scroll down to see how long it is)

"  August 13, 2014   edited 3 months ago 
In the midst of Summer i would'nt miss to check this Library Lp, with a big L as first letter as this record is supa, for production details and sessions musicians high skills, above all the bass wich is abvsolutely gorgeous and put up front in the mix.  But we have here not just the disco flavoured italian 80's style, but "Ladies" is full of some very intimate dramatic melancoholic melodies wich easily would fit a film or even a sensitive listening pleasure at resting.Some of the tracks really got me inside a very "spleen" state of that kind of meditative sadness wich is greatly enhanced by every single perfect note in the music. 
So what about the musicians here?
I'm sure to rightly guess the main line up is the one wich Edizioni Minstrel has builded up his professional rooster and filled many other libraies records, better signaled under the name "Modern Sound Quartet" and their tight and steady distinctive sound.
First among all,and it is hard to not to notice, overcoming too the wounderful mellow work here by the S.Cecilia Strings Orchestra, is "The Bass" and the Bass Player.
Infact Gigi Cappellottos' suggestive playing (particularly in this Lp) is ABSOLUTELY off the ground, delivering a strong circular and pointillistic singing bass sound , one of the best Sound+Player i have evr come across in my 20 yers of music listening.So what !
Maybe is the dramatic ingredient of the tracks but here the bass melodies are purely physical pleasure.
This "all wide all round direction" bass playing is totally remarkable because as his playing style do appear in other Ed.Minstrel lps's like "Floreama", "Erbe Selvatiche", but even more in the libraries related to Fabio Fabor and Arena.
But again in this library he adds so much to the tracks like being "a solo" bass voicing and the overrall music is totally absorbed by this sensual/sensitive touch and deep skill who incredibly is a totally "must hear", where amazingly these wisphering lows are widely resembling a jumping circular shape wich add meat to every parallel melody and total harmony, with that superb "circular sound" every bassist would achieve to obtain from his ampli, a mid way between contrabass and electronic bass, with a bit hand played touch softness wich retain a manuality fused with movement wich in its steadiness marks every best music steps.
The wonderful production sound obtained at Barigozzi's Cinemusic makes this Library a true gem for 3 things: music craftmanship, musical drama ambient and overrall highly suggestive mood.
The bass layers do play a preminent /eminent first role into this music, seeming to be an alone identity wandering through the tracks' sound space, a softly balance the honey & spleeny taste of the marvellous strings ensemble provided by the only and best ever S.Cecilia from Roma.
Together they totally cover the sound spectrum to the extremes leaving the mid to the same soothing fast piano arpeggios and acoustic guitar, wich merit a chapter aside for his incredible magic intrusion.
For example in one track it just comes in with that crispy sound and the magic fully goes up!
I really do not know where the musicians mind was..... but they achieved some really high quality standard for a simple library music, it would have been an amazing Italian "strappalacrime" drama OST.
I think Oscar Rocchi here was really high into his idea of being inspired...the piano and all electronic keyboards to add a superlative fast array of shining notes..... .
But let's see the rest.
For the percussive side, the Surdi drumming is the equal other ingredient wich near touch the perfection of keyboard and piano by Rocchi: this has the best overral result, topped with some "ahead -on" electronic effects wich raises up all the emotional degree of music.
The drums is thin where needs and steady fast where it has to adds up, it do let thing sgoing on and then it makes the best coming up with his multiple "rullato" passages.Jazzy and precise and heavy where needed.
The piano is touching, really.... with a top fast fingering work and the flowing arpeggios it follows the emotional degree at very increasing rate with the role of topping everyhthing with strong remarkable emotions .
So this music here, building up with the above mentioned session palyers craftmanship, do suggest a pleasant relaxant mood for quietness but its best influences can be obtained when there is raining weather outside in Autumn evening, when the tracklisting order for each side can oppose a totally heart warming and lovingly performance for Summer drunky bright nights.
The fastest tracks ,"Sharon" "Jane" "Giada" "Cindy", are purposely put in the tracklisting for a balanced listening pleasure step after step, meanwhile other tracks are deeply evolving a same kind of song formula, where a central melody is easily treated with enough creativity to let the musicians evolve their approach retaining the main idea of the primary instrument here, the keyboard and piano enriched by the bass and strings.
One parallel group of evolving sound layers, is the one wich comprises the synthesizer, one acoustic guitar, and the string orchestra, they put every emotional bit to their maximum stretching possibilty, adding a special effects just there where it need, and in this record there's no one single moment wich is not filled with alternate moviments wich raise up a omni-comprhensive unity purpose of harmony represented by the use of each instrument.
For example when listening to the fresh season happiness of "Geraldine" the acoustic guitar is absolutely here to fill the rhythm and the same point is appropriate in the thoughtful deepness of "Ambra" and the epocal sense of drama in "Lisbeth" and the loving atmosphere of "Sarah".
The electric guitar instead with his fuzzy licky effected wackiness is primary in the spacey percussive "Sharon" to sustain the abstract speeding of piano arpeggios and bass and drum tight beat.
The acoustic guitar makes his entry in absoult color manner and bright timbre.
In "Jane" the perfect disco style fastness shows the never boring distinctive part of the bass, wich is alterning on high and low frets meanwhile the piano is snoozing out some long percussive array of keys, all fused in one efficient emotive sonic ambient.
So where it has gone the best modern easy listening of the eighties wich wouldn't appear in the pop radios?
It is here, always relaxant and pleasant, luscious and attractive as fascinant as young ladies are.
Depicted in the cover with a sensual "bleue", these international female names do reports a bunch of seductive ideas and do suggest Italian female names equally for the attentive listener.  It is obvious these femalia are the uttermost of the spicy, the wet, the hairy best of all the women in the disco-univers! si si, ragazzi!  Hard to skip in the mind that last track last resonating bass note...epic and crazy...absurd and figurative....cinematic and emotive.... .For such an achievement i bet the players where in a SUCH BLU MOOD !

Neither I have found elsewhere in some other libraries sucha quality put into production studio sound plus at the same time combined with the sensitive "aural aspect" of music that is able to deliver so strong dramatic emotions, in a really imaginative way, totally suppressing the background purpose of music
So, believe me, this remains a "Unique, Totally Worth Library", with many future listening for little chosen emotional moments (mostly when it rains down, it works so fine!), when we want strongly enhance our mood in our memory for "historic" moments of our lives.

So when Libraries Lps sometimes do overcome the pure "back track" purpose, here it is a surprising "something" for your $oul, wich will enhance and soothe your spleen, and the film is YOUrs.

Ecco...grab a listen...the season is cold and soul have to be warm to express...  And I will send you twenty euros if you actually read through all of the above! "


Can you believe it????   I should probably not be too far off the mark in guessing the influence of some neurotransmitter-like chemical reaction had taken place in the moments just preceding.  What about reality, which, as is well known, must always interfere towards the finish line of these ecstatic pronouncements like the bottom of the wall which just refuses to budge upon the accidental embrace of your toe?  Well, this music is the much-maligned muzak style of orchestral easy listening with keyboards playing melodies which was such a hated part of the shopping experience back in the day.  The fact that this has been replaced by the same stupid Beatles and pop hits from the seventies like Dancing Queen by Abba or Fernando or Candle in the Wind (personal most hated song) is not a step in the right direction, in my opinion.  At any rate it really brings back memories for myself, particularly since rather than instrumental orchestral cover songs of well-known melodies like Yesterday by McCartney, you get well-composed music altogether.  Note the presence of compositional collaborators: Grande and Raspani, in addition to Rocchi.



And some of these ladies sound like they were pretty easy pickin' esp. back then in the seventies before HIV completely changed the genital landscape, track A4's Ingrid for ex. I can imagine lying back on a bearskin rug (anybody still have those?) with a long cigarette holder and a pubic area hairier than a baby hedgehog-- good luck finding her clitoris in there, whilst her powerful flowery perfume assails your coke-burned nose, and her pants that flare out to two-feet bell bottoms at one foot just lifts up from the wind of her thighs moving and the smoke from the incense stick but you know what, baby, she sure knows how to moan and yell when it's time to cash in those food stamps at the train station when the locomotive comes right on time-- over and over and over again-- it's German not Italian, so there's never a delay, baby.  So please, let me introduce you to Ingrid, and her two sexy sisters, and don't worry: she don't believe in monogamy, except if you're ugly, or non-caucasian:





B5's Giada is a real disco queen, as you'd expect from her name and the square footage of boob hanging out, B1's Sarah is the pensive, intellectual type, probably wears glasses, definitely uses an all-natural cumin-based deodorant unfortunately, B3's Sharon is a little bit slutty, a little bit secretarial, after a nice interesting progressive intro, you are struck with electricity at the thought of marrying her, but after the inevitable sex, suddenly you realize there is less depth to her than you thought plus her habitual halitosis-- just can't understand where that comes from-- really gets on your nerves and now she keeps calling you day after day thinking you're in love with her, she just won't go away, she's one of those girls you were really just hot for before you laid her, so why did she give in so quickly, didn't she realize she shouldn't have?  Oh well, gonna be real awkward now at the office when you see her-- I guess that's your punishment...





B1's Sarah sounds just like the 6th interval melody of Love Story, too bad the ending of the song is not quite as good as the movie with the chick dying, while A5's Giselle sounds like her favourite movie was Marlon Brando in "Last Tango in Paris" --especially the part where he used a stick of butter to lubricate her then fried a sunny-side up egg on her ass.  Meantime A3's Cindy sounds like she watched too many reruns of TV's  Love Boat with Capt. Stubing hitting on coked-out-social-director Julie McCoy, who was said to have slept with so many men on the course of the cruiseship's travels that if every grain of sand on every beach was named after one of them, there would still be men's names left unused; it was said, she was so vaginally well-known that all anatomy textbooks were based on her and the usual reaction of medical students looking into Grey's Anatomy book is to say, oh, wait, that's Julie!

And I think B6's Lisbeth is the kind of chick you could really fall for: delicate, smooth skinned, ethereally sophisticated and educated with a thin nose and hopefully as much into music as she is into sucking dick:






So I guess I agree with the Italian reviewer above-- these women are just sooo easy!  no, just kidding, I mean, this record is very good and very enjoyable and for me, it really brings back memories... uh, musically I mean.

Another hospital visit

Another year, another visit to the hospital...  this time a tiny piece of glass stuck in my wife's left foot caused persistent pain for weeks until we got her to check it out on Xray and ultrasound (nothing there, not even a small pearl) and to see the plastic surgeon, who excavated a big hole in her foot but came up empty-handed.  Sure enough a day later as she started screaming in pain we observed a large red area develop on the dorsum of the foot that kept getting visibly larger and larger by the minute Saturday night as her mother massaged it utterly in vain, and then we realized, coupled with the increasing fever, she had developed a serious infection.  I had some leftover antibiotics called suprax in the house which I urged her to take in order to avoid an unpleasant and stressful trip to the ER and the next day it improved somewhat but thereafter each day it seemed to get angrier and worse, with the fevers never relenting.  The original plastic surgeon prescribed a similar antibiotic but after two days she was tired of waiting, rightfully so, and went to the local emergency dept.-- now you would expect we would think twice about such an act knowing as we do what health care is like here. And we did, we thought a hundred times about it.  But there really was no choice.

As usual in the ER there was a lineup for triage, about an hour's wait.  Luckily this time the government had installed an internet website to track these times similar to what you see in border crossings so you could look up the community hospital and see, for ex, there's a two-hour wait for triage for here, there's a two-hour wait to enter the sliding doors from outside at the central hospital, etc., a ten-hour wait at the inner city hospital to see the MD, a twenty-hour wait at the rural hospital to get a drink of water at the fountain, etc., etc.  Eventually she did see the ER doc, who was utterly puzzled by her case, repeating incessantly how surprised he was by her non-response, by her allergy to next-best drug clindamycin, which were the correct ones according to the book; every hour, as he ordered tests including bloodwork and a swab of the open wound in her foot, he repeated how puzzled he was.  So much so that he called the infectious diseases consultant for advice and a visit.  Of course they never did show up that night, presumably having something more important to do, somehow that wasn't a surprise.  Then, some 6 hours later, he told her how puzzled he was by what abc to administer, took off his white coat, put on his thick fur-hooded winter coat, almost picked up her black purse by mistake thinking it was his big house-call bag and walked out the front door.  "Uh, is he going for a smoke?"  asked my wife to the triage nurse.  "Oh no, his shift is over.  He's gone.  Outta here!!!"  she said, laughing at the sheer hilarity of the situation as she wandered off to tell others, no doubt, about the wonderfully funny story.

And of course, predictably, another emergency doctor then came onboard and repeated all the tests the previous one had done. "You know, I've already had a swab done"  said my wife.  "Really?" said the new guy, as he swabbed her foot.  'Uh, yes."  "You did?"  he said.  "Yup.  I would know!" She said.  But of course, it was too late.  They started her on intravenous toradol (a strong antiinflammatory (NSAID) similar to naproxen) which had proven effective for her pain relief as an outpatient.  And the new doctor, inevitably, told her he was puzzled by her lack of response.  But he had the heart to admit her to the hospital rather than have her sit on a stretcher in the middle of the ER in a blue gown, open at the back, where anyone could, if they wanted, see her underwear if she adjusted her position or moved at all.  So instead she was transferred to the middle of the hall of the west wing of the fourth floor, a very busy hall in fact where there was constant traffic.  (Of course we knew that already: that hospital is just another word for humiliation.)

The next morning the attending doctor came by to say hello.  And that's almost all he said, other than "You're not going anywhere now"  when she mentioned she had two very young children who needed her at home and a job she could barely afford to miss for financial reasons.  "Oh no, you're staying here.  NO WAY you're leaving here.  I just wish you were on the right floor.  You're not on my floor.  You're on the WRONG floor!"  he said, almost yelling, apparently not realizing he was standing in the middle of a busy hallway just outside the nurse's station.  Then he interrogated her about the original suprax prescription.  "Where did that come from? How did you get it?  It's not available anywhere!" he said looking at her suspiciously. "I've already explained this twice in the ER, I took it, I had it at home, I wanted to avoid a hospital visit on a Saturday night.  Is that hard to understand?"  "Yes it is" he said, "you don't like hospitals?  Why??" and without letting her answer, he left.

She was also puzzled that morning she hadn't received her daily thyroid medication as she had again twice already mentioned she took a daily dose, for years.  Luckily just then a bright young pharmacist came up to say hello, cheery and pleasant.  "Hi, I'm your pharmacist liaison.   My job is to provide YOU with something called, continuity of care!  It means all the health professionals on the big team here involved in your care as a client of our hospital are on the same boat!" She spoke as if lecturing a first-grader and inanely made a large boat with her index fingers.  "Oh that's good," said my wife, "then can I get my daily thyroid pill, and the pain medication, toradol, I'm in a lot of pain again."  "What!!!?!?  I don't have any record of those!"  she said, frantically searching the paperwork... how quickly a smile can be wiped off a face sometimes...
"Yeah.  I need those.  I haven't had any yet.  I'm in pain.  And tired, I haven't slept.  I mean, I have to sleep in a noisy hallway, right?  Look at me here!"
She stared at the chart.  "We don't have any toradol, what are you talking about?" said the pharmacist.
"I've just received toradol for the last twelve hours.  IV, two or three doses already."
"No you haven't, we don't have toradol."
"I just got two doses!"  said my wife.
"Uh-- I'll go check on that,"  and she walked out.
"It doesn't make sense-- I'm trying to fight off this nasty infection, and these people keep stressing me!'  she exclaimed.  It was all cleared up some hours later-- it turns out the doctor had made a mistake in prescribing my wife toradol, the hospital didn't really have it, they gave it to her wrongly, by iv, or perhaps ordered it incorrectly, as both IV and PO, which was absurd, of course-- something like that.  So the pharmacist clarified that issue right up nicely but returned with more for the interrogation.
"So what about that suprax, how did you get it?  It has been back-ordered for years... no one has any anywhere.  Where did you get it from????"  she asked.
"I've answered this question so many times already...  I had some at home."
"You had some at home...  hmmm... really..."  she said, looking furtively, as if about to call the police.  "Are you sure?"
"Yup.  I'm pretty sure that's what happened."
"Now, as regards the pain meds, we don't have toradol, AS I SAID TO YOU BEFORE."  She paused and looked straight at my wife.
"You have a choice between morphine and naproxen.  OK?"
"Isn't morphine much too strong for me?"
"I don't know how much pain you're in.  So you want the naproxen?"
"I don't think I can take morphine.  I don't want to be nauseated and knocked out."
"OK naproxen then??"  she was becoming visibly impatient.
"Is that really all you have?"  My wife implored.
"YES!  You have a choice! morphine or naproxen!  WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR DINNER?  I mean, what do you want, for your pain med?"
"Is that all this pharmacy carries?"
"Yes!"
"Why does my local drugstore have more options?"
"Hahahaha!!!!  This is a HOSPITAL!!"
"OK, then there's no choice then, it has to be naproxen."
"Wow.  OK.  Finally. Thanks!!!  Phew! wow!"
'"Isn't naproxen the same as aleve, which I can buy off the shelf anywhere, even the grocery store?" But she had walked off before hearing out the last question-- luckily.

Sometime later that day her attending came back for all of ten seconds, and, without looking at her open wound, asked if she was better.  Then without waiting for a response he said,  "I really wish you were on my floor.  I have to walk all the way here to 4W for you!  Just for you!  I don't have any other patients here, just you!  Well, you're not going anywhere, anyways. No way.  You are stuck here!  Uh anyways your bone scan is tomorrow"  and he started to rush out the door.
"Can I ask you something?"  my wife asked, hoping to engage him in some kind of human contact, to see if maybe, somehow, he considered this attractive young mother clothed, absurdly, in underwear and an open blue gown to be a human being rather than an object to be fixed.  He turned without speaking-- but then, as so often happens to us in these circumstances, she had an absurd sort of brainfreeze: "Um--.... what time is the bone scan?"
He laughed at her as if she was an idiot: "That's what you want to know??  Whenever!  I don't know!"  He shrugged his arms up and he walked out.

The nurse was very sympathetic.  "Too bad you're not on his floor.  He does complain about you a lot.  I mean that you're on the wrong floor.  Poor Doctor E-- I feel bad for him. You're just on the wrong floor....."
"You mean I'd get better treatment if I was on his floor?"  my wife asked.
"You never know, maybe..."
"Ouch, that hurts!"  my wife said as the nurse injected fragmin into her abdomen.
"Yes poor Dr. E--..."  repeated the nurse to my wife's grimaces of pain.  But then the nurse screamed.  She had dropped the nightly dose of naproxen on the floor.  "Oh no...  Oh no no no..."  shaking her head.  "What!!??" my wife said, worried something serious was amiss.
"I dropped your naproxen on the floor!  Oh no.  I'll try to get you another dose.  But it might take a while.  Would you do me a favor and tell them you knocked it over yourself, carelessly?  As you were eating dinner?"
They both looked at the bedside table full of trays of untouched food.
"Uh-- make that knocked over your water bottle there. Oh god.  Pharmacy is NOT going to be happy about this!" and she ran out.

And indeed it took a while.  So she suffered in pain again for a half day: because of the dropped dose the pharmacy was not able to provide another pill until some twelve hours later.  Apparently this substitution was completely against protocol usually patients are not permitted to make up for a spilled pill in that hospital but are taught, like small children, to suffer without for their error, as it is good for character-building.  Thank god for small mercies: although she again vainly offered her morphine instead, at least the pharmacist didn't come up to interrogate her about the case of the missing dose.  For we surely would have told her it was missing with the toradol she had received the night before just to infuriate her further.

Thus it goes without saying the thyroid medication, which the pharmacy liaison had made sure she was on, never arrived.  It would have been more of a surprise, in fact, if it had arrived without any expenditure of work and complaint.  When this person arrived later and explained the many reasons why toradol didn't exist at that hospital, again, my wife asked about the thyroid pill.  "You're on thyroid pills?"  she said, checking her notes.
"Uh, yeah, you checked that yesterday.  You checked it with me. You even called up my two pharmacies I used and they verified it.  Remember?  You told me I got percocet on Sunday at an area pharmacy from the original plastic surgeon and asked me if I was a narcotics abuser, remember?  then you mentioned the thyroid as well which was on their records for years-- unlike the percocet, which was the first time I got it, Sunday"  my wife said.  "Oh.  Right.  Obviously the porter made a mistake bringing it to another floor.  You know you're on the wrong floor, right?  Maybe that's what happened"  and she quickly walked away, to never reappear again (perhaps swallowed up by an unfortunate discontinuity of care).  So my wife took a break from all this and went to the starbucks in the lobby because she was dying for a coffee.  There, by chance, she noticed the pharmacy was located across, walked in, and bought 20 pills of naproxen-- at the same dose they so carefully rationed to her upstairs-- for a few dollars to bring up with her.  And in that way the pain relief situation was resolved to the satisfaction of everyone concerned.

This talk about wrong floor and such was making us both increasingly agitated, particularly since there was no information forthcoming on when she would leave which was our primary concern (I leave out the parts about the children crying at night and in the morning asking where their mommy was and if she would be OK) so finally I called up her attending doctor one morning after he had ordered an ultrasound on the large open wound on her foot, a procedure she refused to do for good reason, on the grounds that no one could put gel and push a probe on such a painful lesion without ill effects.  But the worst was he had never even warned her that he had ordered it.  Though, to be honest, he had never even looked at the hole in her foot, after 5 days in the hospital on the wrong floor, so it's unlikely he even knew about it.
"Yes who is this?"  he said.  "I'm the husband of M--- who is your patient, and I wanted to tell you she is very upset."  "Look" he said "I'm doing a procedure right now.  I'm very busy.  What do you want?"  "Why does she need an ultrasound?"  "Well uh we need to know if there's fluid there.  There could be a lot of fluid there.  Then it needs to be taken out, you know.  A  LOT of fluid!"
"Have you looked at her wound?"
"You know, I don't know why she's my patient.  She shouldn't be.   She's on the WRONG FLOOR!  Look, I don't like talking when I'm doing procedures. Bye."  And that was it.  End of story.  I guess I was on the wrong floor with that phone call too.

Needless to say my wife is still in there, begging for her thyroid medication from anyone who would listen, terrified of knocking over her pill in that little styrofoam container and being accused of stealing a naproxen, even as I have to buy over the counter aleve to provide her with pain relief (at the same community drugstore where I was able to verify that they were all wrong: it turned out suprax is no longer back-ordered and now, for the last month, is easily available again) as the pharmacists are too busy checking her past history going back many years, to verify she gets her medication delivered to her room today (it's called 'continuity of care') and the attending is too upset about her presence on the wrong floor to see her...

La Camargue from Germany 1982 (gorgeous acoustic guitar duelling)

A gorgeous cover painting as we can all agree.  The Camargue of course is that French marshy park that is as famous to them as it was boring to us upon visiting it some years back.  Of course to this we will hear the French say, "Je suis la Camargue!" to which I can only answer, "super, vachement chouette!" and "s'il vous plait garcon, ne pisse pas dans mon cafe!"  But truly, we love the French, especially their toast. How could we forget the time we brought our two kids there many years ago and were told strollers were not allowed on the grounds of the aeroport Charles de Gaulle and our six-month old boy was forced to walk even though he had not yet learned to crawl?  We all learned so much that day! Or the time the Starbucks in Paris near the city hall told us they didn't have milk for our coffees?  Or recall that beautiful cafe in front of la Cathedrale de Chartres where we couldn't sit because children were not allowed on pain of arrest?  Or when we went to Galeries Lafayette and fed our kids croissants to keep them occupied and were told to clean up their crumbs in the womens shoe department or we couldn't purchase anything?  How quickly we ran away from that floor-- a tragedy for my wife, less so for myself.  Or that time we went to Versailles and my wife suffered a nosebleed and rushed to the only washroom on the palace grounds (which cover 100s of  hectares) but had to stand in line for half an hour behind dozens of uncomfortable women who didn't permit her past?  And then some kilometers down the grounds I finally found another washroom to my relief-- but upon entering saw all the toilets had overflowed and poop was seeping down the floors?  Sure, I thought, this must be an authentic evocation of the revolution, when the peasants stormed the palace...  or what about that little chichi toy store behind the Palais Royal where the owner yelled at our children for touching the rubber giraffe toy?  No, they certainly were not welcome there, and yours wouldn't be either, unless you go to Fauchon at Place Madeleine and pay 8 euros for one little eclair au chocolat, 2 cm long.  Perhaps it seems a little impolite to make fun of the French at this time, but I am Charlie too, aren't I?  ...aren't I?  Non?  Well OK it's obvious I will never be accepted as Charlie, not even if I spoke the language perfectly, wore a beret, and bought a baguette every morning and carried it in the back of my bicyclette, no, they will still sneer at me behind my back and behave as if I am trampling all over their precious land, me and my kids who spilled crumbs all over Paris next to the never-picked up dog poop on sidewalks...  so I guess it's time to start a new movement here, "je ne suis pas Charlie, monsieur!  et ne pisse pas dans ma biere-- merci!!"

Oddly enough this record is from Germany.  The players are Rainer Pomplun and Uwe Schreckenberger (what a name!)

The beautiful title track:

Vesselin Nikolov with White, Green and Reds in DON JUAN from 1978, Bulgaria -- wow!

Is there anything more beautiful than the curves of a female shape?  For us men, we must admit that not even music can come close...

Special from my dear friend:

"We all know of the excellent Seventies/Eighties prog-fusion groups from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, even Romania... but what about Bulgaria? The only name that comes to mind is that of Vesselin Nikolov, who made the great "Jazz and something more" in 1987 - and it is he who leads this group, a decade earlier: another really good record!"

And I thank him for introducing me to this astonishing artist!!  Note that the oddly named group he is playing with made quite a few interesting looking records, of which I posted a folky one last time.

This record is different though, it's 70s style fusion of the highest calibre.  Let's hear the track generically called "Riffs" with its gorgeous dissonant chords and powerful electric piano sounds that make me squirm in ecstasy:





But listen all the way to the end, where you hear an Om-like (Rautionaha, etc.) soprano sax wail above the thick electric eel of a piano riff, screaming in its poetic monologue a passion of exciting city nights and glorious emotion never held back, reminding me of walking New York City at midnight with my wife that time years and years ago when we were looking for a famed little-known Malaysian restaurant called the Fatty Crab that we had heard served the best spiced seafood outside of Southeast Asia and the hot tires and dizzying lights of the East Village were a vortical blur after a few drinks as we kept asking those well-meaning city folks with their hand-pocketed purposes and aims the way for us ahead while they laughed at us and we eventually found it some two hours later and it was oh so beautiful to sit down from the January cold and have a hot hot curry bowl full of seafood and laugh together in the tiny place being, as we were at the time, newly married as of a month before...

So please savour this record, astonishingly full of invention, from my friend who 'rediscovered' it for us...

___

Furthermore, I apologize in advance for this record being excessively scratchy, one must always be so careful with these Eastern European purchases, they are always NM, though when received they are horrifically etch-a-sketched just like a scuffed up pavement tile recently removed from a grand central railway station installed in the nineteen-twenties--and they were installed already used at the time.  Always they are scratchy, perhaps due to the heavy Russian winters... (or is it the relative scarcity of toilet paper?)  But no, according to sellers, of course, in Russia, there are no scratchy records.  "Nyet, nyet, nyet, there is no scratch on record," Igor will pronounce, "there is no scratch!  where do you see scratch!  is no scratch!  we do not have scratches on record in mother oops in Russia!  HA HA HA HA HA!!! Nyet!  HA HA! hey, you want cheap ipad mini too?  Is real cheap.  Is new.  No scratch."

In fact didn't Vladimir Putin himself once declare the same?  "There is no scratch in long-player record in Mother Russia.  Now you stupid reporters you stop asking this stupid question.  Is not happen here.  Is not important, like which beautiful woman I make love to last night, or whether Ukraine is now part of Putin empire (was not Jennifer Aniston! No!  Ha ha ha!!!  OK maybe.)  Yes you colonialists, you American hegemonial people with you army bases in pacific islands you use to bomb muslims, you have scratches on record like you have the blood on your hands.  Perhaps you want to scratch the Bear's back?  watch out-- for he will eat your liver... !  Is american invention, no? we have wax here, is best, is purest in the world, it has no scratch, is Russian wax, is made by Baba own hands in fish factory.  NO SCRATCH!  when you people you bring us capitalist 33 speeds and negro jazz music, you ruin mother Russia.  We had 78, is best speed for gramophone! fast fast fast! fast like when I ride snowmobile over tundra rabbits! perfect! you stupid american 33 speeds, is not even make sense, it is fraction, what school kid doesn't know 33 is not real speed for LP record?  78 is real speed!  HA HA HA HA!   You are babies, you, you no wrestle with siberian tiger like me, you afraid of radioactivity in North Sea, and nuclear explosion in reactor, maybe you europe people, you mother still wipe you behind?  yes? is it? radioactivity!  ha ha! It is use in russia soap, the radium, with strong vodka.  Use to clean chest hair real good."

And then I believe president Putin proceeded to drink a quart of crude petroleum sitting on the table.

But seriously, I love Putin.  I mean for those of us who used to laugh at cold war craziness, it's like being back in the eighties all over again, and who doesn't miss those eighties?  Now if only the mullet would come back too....  or what if Putin had a mullet? even better!


Addendum: a cleaned rip was posted thanks to a wonderful listener...

Happy Hallowe'en (Again) ...

I have to apologize for again interrupting the blog due to the ceaselessly recurring problem of catering to another seemingly useless and unnecessary manufactured holiday, much like (not really in chronological order anymore) Fathers Day, Mothers Day, Boxing Day, Labour Day, Hallowe'en, Easter, oops, it looks like I might have already discussed the anthropological scatology of today, but perhaps, a year having gone by, no one remembers what was said, that's assuming of course the post was read at such time as was present versus past, which is doubtful in the extreme; at any rate, I shall continue as is my prerogative to do, though said prerogative does not flow into a right for complaint if readership predictably drops utterly abruptly: today in North America we are told to take our children for a healthy walk around the neighbourhood, post-twilight, where random strangers, for once not likely to be sexual molesters, will proceed to stuff candy and chocolate, hopefully some BBQ chips too, into a bag with which our human larvae will be equipped for the express purpose of gorging themselves thereafter with upwards of 9,000-20,000 calories (this total being dependent on the alacrity and stamina of said child for area coverage) of various combinations of sugar, fat, and salt, purposefully providing themselves with the means of hastening the inevitable onset of type II diabetes mellitus and hypertension, which are such scourges of the Western world, as opposed to starvation, vitamin deficiencies, diarrhea, and Ebola haemorrhagic fever, which are confined at present mostly to the developing countries of Africa, and meantime forcing upon them such oddities as outmoded pagan fears like sorcery and witches, goblins and ghosts, as if encouraging in the immature gullible those very superstitions with which we ourselves are so disgusted or perhaps transferring that nausea which should be associated with gastric overconsumption to artificial figures, scarecrows: completely invented apparati of nonexistence, fairy tales; then, focusing for a moment on the skills with which these haplessly naive kids (mine of course included) arrange to provide themselves with enough plain calories (I dare not say nutrition), to feed a Somalian child for a year in one two-hour period, at the convenience of people with whom I don't share even a hello in daily life, I become filled with stupefied wonder at the idea that our capitalist society has achieved such a condition of useless self-created and procrastinated tedium punctuated with over-satiation of artificial needs, combined with self-caused diseases such as lung cancer appearing in smokers, or arthritis in women with breast implants who proceed to sue the manufacturers of said flotation devices so they can get newer implants, as well as the flipping to virtue of the original sins which today are entirely encouraged for example lust with Britney Spears-like performers encouraging the oversexualization of prepubertal girls (who dress up as hookers today), gluttony in the aforementioned case, pride in the case of daytime TV hosts encouraging us to look only after ourselves, anger for all those seeking lawsuits for damages as a result of accidents they are themselves the cause of, etc., I have to reflect on how humanity hardly deserves the second chance which we are being encouraged to seek as an escape from the cumulative problems of resource depletion, climate change, habitat destruction, miscellaneous novel viruses such as MERS, and one is tempted, almost forced, to believe that a problem like the Ebola virus is simply the wrath of god applied to us collectively as a plague to finally diminish us in our stupidly arrogant minds and on the earth we have invaded like the metastatic ass cancer that is currently endangering the life of famed Toronto, Canada mayor Rob Ford, recently re-elected as councillor for a year by an idiotic populace despite a 50-50 chance of surviving a year.  And perhaps it might turn out that God himself has a sense of humour if we are all struck down with metastatic buttock cancer too, instead of Ebola, like the tasmanian devils (that big favourite of our childhood disney cartoons), who are being decimated and may well go extinct as a result of facial tumours caused by over-fighting....

Anybody want to split a twix bar with me?  My kid hates those.

A. R. Luciani - Eventi (Italy, 1978)

A very Mahleresque, sometime baroque, purely orchestral entry from this master of library music whose discography I will try sporadically to complete.  Note that a large no. of these have already been ripped, albeit poorly, for mp3 listening, which I appreciate since it allows us to decide whether spending 50-100 dollars on a record is a waste or not.  Specifically I became interested in his music when I heard the shockingly gorgeous "Leggenda del lago" on the Aspetti della Natura collaboration with Melchiori which I will reproduce here for those who don't know it:





I was always puzzled as to whether this particular song was used as a soundtrack theme on a movie somewhere, and if so, where exactly, maybe someone out there knows and can clarify.  It will always remind me personally of driving through the North of Italy when we decided to stop to see the gorgeous Castle Scaliger on Lake Garda.  At the end of a little peninsula there stretching into the lake like a finger are the ruins of an immense roman villa which I ran through quickly as we were in a rush to get to Milan.  I will never forget the beauty of those ruins on the lake and the sadness of loss it represents.  The pictures you can see here don't quite do it justice, particularly with regards to the extended scope of them, but you can see why the song reminds me of this trip.

Evidently some of these library LPs are still quite rare, like the interestingly titled "Allarme Ecologico" which I hope will not be too pricey if and when it turns up, considering I have just returned from a long sojourn on a road trip to the beach where my family spent a lot of money, not just on toys for the children and toys for my wife (like her Louboutin shoes).  Expecting it to be cheap to stay near the ocean proved overoptimistic of course, as I found the concentration of tempting amusement parks and arcades too much for my young kids who were attracted like moths to outdoor lights (as always it was father moth who got most burned there in monetary terms) to the loud sounds and stuffed animals that broke after one day's handling and the rides they were far too scared to enjoy but which nonetheless cost plenty of money for a few tears and an anxiety attack-- maybe next time I can just feed my kids coffee and cigarettes till they get a much cheaper panic attack?  And of course no family holiday is complete without my wife going shopping to those damned outlet malls in the United States where you can easily spend thousands of dollars on the basis that you're saving money by getting great deals, and I have to listen to my wife saying each time "I'm just looking in this store!!" each look of course costing me a few hundred dollars, after a few hours, I'm begging her to stop looking, those looks are just too expensive-- like the way a porn star needs constant plastic surgery maybe... I guess that's what being married is all about... daddy better work hard and overtime too when he gets home and stop buying those expensive records...

Here's a really beautiful track: