Richard Hell’s autobiography I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp is hitting the streets on March 12. But you can read the first chapter here right now.
I wanted to have a life of adventure. I didn’t want anybody telling me what to do. I knew this was the most important thing and that all would be lost if I pretended otherwise like grown ups did.”
The first chapter is devilishly good with a similar feel to Patti Smith’s wonderful Just Kids.
Before you rush off to read Hell, check out Richard and The Voidoids doing “Love Comes In Spurts.” From Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong’s video and film archives.
Today is Robert Burns’ birthday, and across the world traditional suppers are held to celebrate the life and poetry of Scotland’s national Bard.
I have never been one for those couthy ritualistic gatherings, where toasts are given to the lads and lassies, and where some elder with a tartan to match his face, gives an address to the haggis. For me these suppers have little to do with Burns the man and poet, who could write such beauty as:
But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom
is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white - then melts
for ever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow’s lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm. -
Nae man can tether time or tide;
No, I prefer to see Robert Burns as great poet, a revolutionary, a socialist, an egalitarian, who believed ‘a man’s a man for a’ that’ and wrote to inspire a better world:
Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a’ that,)
That Sense and Worth, o’er a’ the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an’ a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
That man to man, the world o’er,
Shall brithers be for a’ that.
Burns’ idealism was often compromised by the financial demands of his everyday life - and what a life. A poet, a ploughman, a lover, a drinker, a revolutionary, a government lackey, a hero, a destitute. As Andrew O’Hagan points out in this excellent documentary Robert Burns: The People’s Poet, Burns was the equivalent of a rock star in his day, a writer of songs (“Auld Lang Syne”, “Ae Fond Kiss”, “My Luve is Like a Red, Red Rose”, “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye”) and poems (“Tam O’Shanter”, “Holy Wuillie’s Prayer”, “To A Mouse”, “Cock Up Your Beaver”) that enchanted a nation and the world.
It was his ability to touch the heart and mind of his readers and to make them empathize with his subject matter, whether this was love, revolution in France or simply a mouse:
That wee bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!
But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an ‘men
Gang aft agley,
An’lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Still thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e’e.
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!
He was idolized by the public, and was a hero and inspiration to the likes of Beethoven and Byron. At a time of great oppression he spoke out against slavery, inequality, and poverty. Burns wanted liberty and fairness for all. Yet he died in poverty, hounded by creditors, and near-broken as a man.
That Rabbie Burns is still read, performed and celebrated 200 years after his death, says all about his importance as a poet and the relevance of his belief for a better world, where all are equal and share the common wealth.
O’Hagan’s documentary Robert Burns: The People’s Poet is no hagiography, but controversially questions many of the assumptions made about this radical poet, and examines the incredible dramatic and often tragic circumstances of his life.
I suspect a lot of “rare” poetry is rare because it’s not very good. Its significance rests not with its quality rather with the importance of its author. Philip K. Dick was a brilliant author of speculative science-fiction; but of poetry, not so hot.
These 3 “rare” poems by PKD were posted on Reddit by thegoslings, who explains:
A little background: I saw six poems listed in a PKD bibliography, and couldn’t find anything more about them online. It took me a little searching to track down the original publications, and I finally got three of them through an Inter-Library Loan!
These came from Child’s Hat, which was published in San Francisco in 1966, and I don’t think they appeared anywhere else.
THE ABOVE AND MELTING
Soft as tin,
Melting in the rain,
Melting and dripping down,
Soft as stones that are limp,
That can be bent into shapes
And stretched out,
Soft as bones,
Mashed into paste,
Mixed with pale milk,
Soft as crystal,
Dug from sweet soil,
Slowly stirred,
It is soft as these:
The moon on a warm wet night.
WHY I AM HURT
Stung by a jewel!
Piercing the hand,
Clinging against the flesh.
Stung by a jewel!
The point deep into the hand,
Driven in allowed.
Stung by a jewel!
The child shouts out,
Shattering the jewel.
Amber bottle-caps rain down,
Fragments of grief
Lost in the ground.
AN OLD SNAKE
Philosophy is an old web
Long deserted, The dreams
The spider wove into it
Glimmer weakly during night
In the sun they are only this:
Fragments of dread leaves.
thegoslings will be posting more of Philip K Dick’s poetry when available.
I like to say I’m a connoisseur of vintage pulp. I like to say “connoisseur of vintage pulp” because it sounds a lot better than “I like rifling through bins of moldy old porn at antique shops,” but I digress…
While high camp is (obviously) the appeal of this sort of pulp novel, 1963’s Commie Sex Trap is the only example I’ve ever seen with an explicit Red Scare plotline. My copy is still en route to me in the mail but I kind of don’t need to read it to know what’s going to happen. In case the brief synopsis on the front cover wasn’t enough, they got a little more scandalous on the back!
“Sergeant Joe Guthrie was in love, but he was also an American soldier in the all-important Berlin decoding room. Would an American sell his country short for the woman he loved? Could the Communists force a healthy man to surrender to their army of sex sirens—trained rousers schooled in every area of erotic abandon?”
Joseph McCarthy—and Michele Bachmann—eat your hearts out.
While under the influence of laudanum (tincture of opium), a young and very stoned Thomas De Quincey put pen to paper and attempted to capture the elusive moment:
In a clock-case housed in a warm chamber of a spacious English mansion (inevitably as being English, so beautifully clean, so admirably preserved, [noise there is none, dust there is none, neither moth nor worm doth corrupt] how sweet it is to lie! – If thieves break through and steal, they will not steal a mummy; or not, unless they mistake the mummy for an eight-day clock. And if fire should arise, or even if it should descend from heaven is there not a Phoenix Office, able to look either sort of fire (earthly or heavenly) in the face ... Mummy or anti-Mummy, Skeleton or Anti-Skeleton, the Phoenix soars higher above both, and flaps her victorious wings in utter defiance of all that the element of fire can accomplish—making it her boast to ride in the upper air high above all malice from earthly enemies….
Bonhams Fine Books And Manuscripts in San Francisco was offering De Quincy’s ode to O for sale but it appears to have been sold. The expected going price was between $800-1200.
While my interest in heavy metal music is peripheral at best, I’m incredibly fascinated by one of the great incongruities of music subcultures: how can an outcast group, formed on the margins, manage to marginalize people?
Much has been made of Riot Grrl, formed as a response to hyper-macho punk scenes, but Girlschool and Lita Ford, aside, metal has never really had its own ladies’ auxiliary, so to speak. Compounded with the fact that metal, of course has an overwhelmingly white fanbase, black women have certainly never had much of a visible presence in the scene.
Laina Dawes is a black music journalist from a small city in Ontario, and the author of What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal. Adopted by a white Canadian family, and raised in a fairly monochromatic town, her musical tastes developed initially around pop radio. As she was exposed to the heavy metal bands favored by boys in her neighborhood, she quickly became a life-long fan.
Laina talks at length about her issues with the scene. Aside from a general lack of diversity, no subculture is immune to explicit racism or sexism. When there were women at shows, there was an expectation of a certain type of sexpot hesherette. When Dawes wasn’t the only black girl at a show, she often felt the palpable subtext of female competitiveness heightened, belying the comradely atmosphere she sought out in metal in the first place.
She portrays the scene unflinchingly, despite her connection to it. Black fans and artists were sometimes subject to racism from white fans and artists, alike. When actress (and part-time metal singer) Jada Pinkett-Smith got on the Ozzfest bill with her band, fans noted a sudden volley of unselfconscious racist diatribe, the likes of which hadn’t been overt in shows past. Dawes compellingly compares the presence of black women in metal to the election of Obama: while it may be progress, it still exacerbates the nastiest of reactionary tendencies.
Ultimately, however, Dawes is writing about her love of heavy metal, and the community she seeks to foster within the scene:
I was dying to find other black female metal fans who were equally passionate about their ethnicity and their metal. I was always proud to be a black girl, but I struggled with people perceiving me as not being black enough. I traveled to as many concerts I could afford, and I collected albums, concert t-shirts, and metal buttons. I encouraged others to use the music to create personal freedom, to get them to acknowledge their feelings of anger and aggression. There was a lot of rage around me, and I knew that it could be channeled into the positive energy that I found through metal.”
What Are You Doing Here? isn’t an academic study, just a memoir of how one music fan navigated a scene, and an interesting look at how it feels to be an outsider in a culture already on the outside.
The first in what I hope will be a series of “Shockingly Bad Book Titles”:
I wonder who came up with this epic (and why?) - the questionably titled: Helping the Retarded to Know God. I think we can guess what the content is like, but I’d still like to read a copy…
David Sedaris is one of my favorite writers, and I love absurdly bad smut. So when you have a best-selling author (and National Public Radio darling) reading some of the worst, most unsexy erotica ever written (in his trademark voice, natch), ladies and gentleman, that is comedy gold.
And Sedaris really commits to it! This was recorded for a Dutch Television show (which may be why they can’t spell his name correctly).
IAN SVENONIUS’S EXPERIENCE AS AN ICONIC underground rock musician—playing in such highly influential and revolutionary outfits as The Make-Up and The Nation of Ulysses—gives him special insight on techniques for not only starting but also surviving a rock ‘n’ roll group. Therefore, he’s written an instructional guide, which doubles as a warning device, a philosophical text, an exercise in terror, an aerobics manual, and a coloring book.
THIS VOLUME FEATURES ESSAYS ON EVERYTHING the would-be star should know to get started, such as Sex, Drugs, Sound, Group Photo, The Van, and Manufacturing Nostalgia. The book will also have black-and-white illustrations. Supernatural Strategies will serve as an indispensable guide for a new generation just aching to boogie.
You can order Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock ‘n’ Roll Group: a how-to guide at Akashic Books.
is the only example I’ve ever seen with an explicit Red Scare plotline. My copy is still en route to me in the mail but I kind of don’t need to read it to know what’s going to happen. In case the brief synopsis on the front cover wasn’t enough, they got a little more scandalous on the back!
. Adopted by a white Canadian family, and raised in a fairly monochromatic town, her musical tastes developed initially around pop radio. As she was exposed to the heavy metal bands favored by boys in her neighborhood, she quickly became a life-long fan. 
