NEIL YOUNG ~

Don't take my word for it — I grew up on Neil Young, Art Pepper and Woody Guthrie — and although Neil Young's Waging Heavy Peace may not be quite the masterpiece (when he finally finishes writing his memoirs: he seems to be threatening many books) as these two other guys' classic autobiographies, it's as fine-feathered as Dylan's Chronicles volume one, and almost Levon Helm's This Wheel's On Fire. Almost. Helm's is trimmer, leaner, spookier, biting. Neil Young is a horse that runs to greet you at the fence.

If you told me he dictated the 500 page book as he tooled around in one of his Cadillacs, I'd say, "Makes sense." The book reads that way. If you grew up in the 60s and aren't bitter (not many left) and are interested in the 60s (some youngsters are), you might not be able to put the book down. I only do because eventually I have to get some sleep. And do some work.

Yes, Neil Young is wealthy, lives on a ranch he's owned since the early 70s on the Pacific coast, has been married three times and seems quite content with his third wife Pegi. One can feel this throughout the book and when watching them on stage performing. Young also bows with grace to his two previous wives, even some of his girlfriends, adores his children, has come to love many of his old musician friends as he's faced his own mortality, and no matter the riches and fame and drugs and serious medical seizures that have plagued him throughout his career (starting when he was cutting "After the Gold Rush" — at least — did any of us know? No.) his childhood, parents, siblings and extended family out of Canada are as close to him now as they have ever been. I believe it's the wide berth of Canada in the center of all his best songs, edged with an American dream broken, glued back, and broken again.

He broke a toe, and seems to be in Hawaii recuperating, songless, and trying to etch out this memoir. Much of the text reads as remembrance and likewise Live! talking-right-at-us from across the room, or in the driver's seat, out of the corner of the mouth, long sideburns. Young's a train lover, big cars and vintage trucks connoisseur, admitted materialistic fella, family man, and storyteller spinning out tales, vignettes, appraisals, strong opinions about the music industry (more power to him), and portraits. Some guys get all the breaks. More power to him. Power given to us.

The ultimate rich hippie, but with hard work, and dreams.
Plus the many songs that penetrate. . .let's not forget.
Long may he (we) run.

__________________________________

Waging Heavy Peace
Neil Young
Penguin/Plume/Blue Rider, 2012 


 photo  ©   Susan Arnold
5 Aug 2013

JOSHUA BURKETT ~

Our good friend Josh Burkett is heading over to the United Kingdom to play some shows and is asking anyone to lend a hand in support to the Josh-cause.

Here are the dates so far scheduled for Josh. If you're close by, you might well want to scuttle down or around or in for a show or two. Josh is the author of a Longhouse booklet published last year showcasing some of his travel journals on the road from another concert tour. See here:

http://longhousepoetryandpublishers.blogspot.com/search/label/Joshua%20Burkett

Knock'em dead, Josh.

~

JOSHUA BURKETT/1ST SOLO UK SHOWS!

Aug 13th      CAFE OTO,         LONDON(w/Jon Collin & Eric Arn)
        14th       KRAAK,             MANCHESTER(w/Jon Collin & more)
        15th       V TONGUE,       GLASGOW(w/Jon Collin)
        17-18th  WOOLF FEST,   WILTSHIRE(w/Alisa Sufit & more)
        19th       ULTRA E Space  ANTWERP(w/Byron Coley & Head Of Wantastiquet)
        20th       GOLD POODLE  HAMBURG(w/Ron Schneiderman & Head Of Wantastiquet)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
JB:

" better exemplifies the original free-folk impulse than any of his more celebrated contemporaries. And while he may not be doing four page fashion spreads in 'underground' style bibles, he remains *a* keeper of the flame"- David Keenan Wire Magazine/Volcanic Tongue
                                                                                                          .

Thou never playing a show in the UK before, Burkett has been making solo lps in the states for 20+ years. He has also played  in the following groups/collectives: Vermonster, Tower Recordings, Shrinnirs, Parrotprobe, Borb, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Wormdoom, & Tarp... & has played solo sets on bills with folks like: Charalambides,  Jack Rose,  Chris Thompson, Ed Askew, Michael Chapman, Cherry Blossoms, Steve Gunn, John Fahey, Corsano/Flaherty, Daniel Higgs, Red Favourite, Sun City Girls, Ralph White, Michael Hurley, Son Of Earth, Bobb Trimble, Fursaxa, Thurston Moore, Circle, George Stavis, Michael Yonkers, Dredd Foole & more.

"Joshua Burkett is one of the rock’s of the New England rock underground. He got his start in the Bimbo Shrineheads at just 16 years old, playing bass and saxophone. Burkett later played sax and served as cover artist for Vermonster, Wayne Rogers and Kate Biggar’s outlet before Major Stars. Beginning in the mid 1990s, he released solo material on his own Feather One’s Nest label, including the masterpiece Gold Cosmos, which featured both Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance and Pat Gubler of P.G. Six. Spirit of Orr Records recently reissued Owls Leaves Rustling, Burkett’s 1995 solo debut, along with testimonies from Thurston Moore, Chris Corsano and Wolf Eyes’ John Olson." - Dusted Magazine

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Joshua+Burkett

Songs for Bob ~

Birthday Cheer!

for Bob posted by Sweetheart, with love, August 5th

NEW FROM LONGHOUSE, SUMMER 2013 ~ KIM DORMAN ~

( and HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KIM!)



Kim Dorman

In the Hour of Cowdust

$10 postpaid, US addresses
Please inquire as to international orders
poetry@sover.net

Available from
 Longhouse
 PO Box 2454
West Brattleboro, Vermont
 05303 

 credit card or check ~

Buy now through Paypal with this link for domestic addresses.

ROBERTS BLOSSOM ~

Roberts Blossom at home with his books

http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Home-alone-with-his-words-Retired-actor-2622962.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberts_Blossom

JANINE POMMY VEGA ~

from Poems To Fernando



It is written on the walls of the mountain
though I have not seen it:
I Love You Fernando.

Everytime a departure, another
eye not seen again, to make it easier;

But it must come from inside
this knowledge that I will live
      though you are not with me, here
      where I can see you.

Riding this broken road away, more alone
than even the beginning, when you were
Gone. Suddenly, & I clung to you, sending
messages direct to your heart
      where we are one
      & you must receive
these goodmornings to the clouds
this oneminded unrelenting reach to you
love & you only leaned over abysses
Holding onto pain : Let time not
change me! hanging into death
                                                    — til now
I have let flow a flicker in the sea
& it rushed forth giving,
so great is the need in the heart
for healing
      Love the prominence
      love the perfect measure
      we, just two frail receptacles
      & love the transforming splendor.

So this departure also
      how can I tell you good-bye?
Having loved another eye & leaving behind
this also, I am most alone.

Why is it I travel this road, this stark of sky
     & a musician walks to work
      his hands perhaps in his pockets
      music animates his step, gauging his life,
& go down over snows to a train
I don't care about?

Still alive, & yet to learn, or I would not
be here
penetrating pain itself to find you, uncover
what must be true
that you are not here and I must know
      who is half my life & deep
      as the blood runs in me.

What length of days before I lay down
      & the sorrow is turned upon itself,
that its depth be the source of joy
and I rise, unsevered?

                                                 french alps / 1-66.

Janine's passionate poem to her husband, the painter Fernando Vega, who would die suddenly in Spain in 1965, was written when she was twenty-four years old and published in her first book, from City Lights: Poems to Fernando (1968).

At that time, a book of poems issued by a woman from the legendary Beat household was uncommon. This untitled poem has been extracted from Janine's personal copy of the book, with her corrections and additions. See pages 22-23 for the poem — the two lines under the line "& it rushed forth giving" had been added in pen by Janine.

Please retool your own worn and much-loved copy of the book.

Janine Pommy Vega  ©  Bob and Susan Arnold

self-portrait drawing of Fernando Vega

photo of Janine Pommy Vega by Kenneth Pate

SAADI YOUSSEF ~

 
I Saw My Father




I was walking


with my father


through a palm grove,


I was light


like a feather,


my father was light,


he was a cloud


and in the cotton of the cloud


I shut (just as in the dream)


my father's eyes.



London, 7-2-2002






Cloves




Where is the scent of cloves coming from?


her hair?


armpit?


or her dress


thrown on the Tunisian rug?


From the third step in the house?


Layla


makes everything smell of cloves.


Layla


is the orchard when it's wet.


She is

 
what the orchard breathes

 
when it's watered at night.


Layla knows now


that I am drunk with the scent of cloves,


she stitches together my clouds


and then scatters them together


in a sky like a sheet


as she clasps me.


Layla


feels that my fingers are numb,


over the dunes she knows


my pulse is hers,


my water is here.


Layla


leaves me sleeping,


rocking between clouds


and cloves.



London, 12-20-2002






Evening By the Lake



Yesterday


by the lake


the rain was warm,


soft,


like your skin after a dip in the sea.


I thought of you a bit


and swore right away:


I have to catch the evening train!


But I'm lazy,


as you know,


so I forgot about the train —


thought of you a lot,


and brought my face closer


to the surface of the water,


to watch how the sky's waters go home,


how this evening is born.





_________________________

translated from the Arabic 
by Sinan Antoon and Peter Money


Graywolf Press 2012
Nostalgia, My Enemy
Saadi Youssef

Saadi Youssef was born in 1934 near Basra, Iraq. He has published more than thirty books, and is considered one of the living masters of Arabic poetry. 
He lives in London, England.

ALBERT CAMUS ~

( ALGERIAN CHRONICLES )

"Albert Camus was born in Mondovi in 1913 to a mother of Spanish origins who was both deaf and illiterate. His father died in the Battle of the Marne when Camus was barely a year old. Young Camus grew up in a three-room apartment in the working-class Belcourt neighborhood of Algiers with his domineering grandmother, his silent mother, who supported the family by cleaning houses, his brother Lucien, and his uncle Etienne, a barrel maker. A grade school teacher, Louis Germain, recognized his talent and saw him through to the lycee, and after completing his under-graduate studies in philosophy at the University of Algiers, with a thesis on Plotinus and Saint Augustine, he turned to theater, to journalism, and to the literary career that led him to Paris, the anti-Nazi resistance, and the many books we know, until his life was cut short by a car accident in 1960, when he was forty-six years old. Long after Camus left Algeria, his writing remained imbued with his intense love of Algerian landscapes — the mountainous Kabylia, the Roman ruins of coastal Tipasa, the shining port of Algiers, and the modest blue balcony of his mother's apartment on the rue de Lyon. Those places were his wellspring."

~ from the introduction by Alice Kaplan

Albert Camus

Algerian Chronicles

edited with an introduction by Alice Kaplan

translated by Arthur Goldhammer

Belknap / Harvard, 2013

MARIE THARP ~

In 1959, Marie Tharp and colleague Bruce Heezen completed their first map of the North Atlantic

Marie Tharp, oceanographic cartographer, at the drafting table

http://www.gebco.net/about_us/gebco_science_day/documents/gebco_sixth_science_day_felt.pdf





 

NEW MORNING ~

photo : Carson




susan

LIMELIGHT ~

"Limelight" ( Charlie Chaplin and Claire Bloom ) 1952

photo : W. Eugene Smith

photo © bob arnold

susan

MERCURY ~

I always thought Daniel Kramer took the finest photographs of Bob Dylan's world

susan

SKY CAT ~

. . .then Sweetheart went out and saw Kokomo up in the sky!

photo © susan arnold

OVER THE RAINBOW ~

susan

YOUME

 

YOUME




 
All of life

is convincing





[ BA ]

photo  ©  bob arnold

susan

SONG IN THE AIR ~

susan

BLUEBERRIES ~

(see you soon, off to pick)

(where we picked enough for the week — winter's crop is already stored away — and had enough saved from the picking to have a picnic supper in one corner of the orchard with food we brought with us, finding two cinder blocks discarded in the tall mowing grass and sat there and the rain had stopped in time to pick but the leaves were all wet. And later we visited Eleanor, in the village, and talked of time's past, which is timeless.)

susan

SONG IN THE AIR ~

susan

MARC CHAGALL ~

The Circus Rider, 1927

susan

SONG IN THE AIR ~

susan

SONG IN THE AIR ~

susan

BIRTHDAY CHEERS, SUSAN ~

"Susan - Happy Day of Birth and a beautiful new year for you!"

Cheers, Edie and Kathy

chalkie art ©  Edith Platt

SONG IN THE AIR ~

susan

SUMMER DAYS WITH ~

( KUTIE )

Happy Birthday! Susan!

© Bob Arnold

CRISTO REDENTOR ~

( HARVEY MANDEL )

George and I have been writing back and forth about music. Again. This time it was Harvey Mandel, who blew our collective minds when we weren't yet 16 years of age. A beautiful time to have the mind blown, even if it was to last forever. For me, this is the album that did it. The LP cover art alone, in 1968, stopped me breathing.

 
yesterday

today

_____________________

Solo discography


    1968 Cristo Redentor, (Philips Records PHS 600-281) LP

    1969 Righteous (Philips PHS 600-306) LP

    1970 Games Guitars Play (Philips PHS 600-325) LP

    1971 Baby Batter (Janus Records JLS-3017) LP - also released as Electronic Progress on Bellaphon Records, Germany

    1972 Get Off in Chicago (Ovation) LP

    1972 The Snake (Janus JLS-3037) LP - with Don Sugarcane" Harris

    1973 Shangrenade, (Janus JLS-3047) LP - with Don Sugarcane" Harris

    1974 Feel the Sound of Harvey Mandel (Janus, JLS-3067) LP

    1975 The Best of Harvey Mandel (Janus, 7014) LP

    1994 Twist City (Western Front WFE 10022)

    1995 Snakes & Stripes (Clarity Recordings CCD-1013) CD

    1995 Harvey Mandel: The Mercury Years (PolyGram, 314 528 275-2) 2-CD anthology

    1997 Planetary Warrior (ESP/Lightyear/WEA, 54215-2) CD

    2000 Emerald Triangle (Electric Snake Productions, Inc., ESP-9701) CD

    2000 Lick This (Electric Snake)

    2003 West Coast Killaz (Electric Snake)

    2003 NightFire featuring Harvey Mandel/Freddie Roulette (Electric Snake)

    2006 Harvey Mandel and the Snake Crew (Electric Snake)

    2009 Harvey Mandel and the Snake Crew (LIVE) (Electric Snake)

"His (Harvey Mandel's) guitar work on the legendary Stand Back! Here Comes Charley Musselwhite's South Side Band (1967) rivaled the playing of both Mike Bloomfield and Eric Clapton and brought blues and rock and roll another step closer to one another with his relentless fuzz tone, feedback-edged solos, and unusual syncopated phrasing."


—  Pete Prown; Harvey P. Newquist, Jon F. Eiche (1997). Legends of Rock Guitar: The Essential Reference of Rock's Greatest Guitarists (Hal Leonard Corporation)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/movies/born-in-chicago-tells-of-titans-who-taught-young-proteges.html?hp