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‘Sonnet Youth’: Jeffrey Lewis pens poems based on Sonic Youth album tracks


 
A lot of people have written sonnets, but nobody in the English language is more associated with the form than William Shakespeare.

In 1609 Thomas Thorpe issued a quarto edition containing Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. The first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man, but the final subset of sonnets are mostly addressed to a “dark lady.” A fun fact that is not very well known is that not all of the sonnets are actually sonnets in the technical sense. The sonnet forms Shakespeare was using have 14 lines, but Sonnet 99 has 15 lines and Sonnet 126 has only 12 lines.

When Jeffrey Lewis noticed that the words “sonic” and “sonnet” have a certain acoustical similarity and went so far as to imagine a series of mini-zines called Sonnet Youth based on classic Sonic Youth albums, it followed naturally that he might write a Shakespearean sonnet for each track of the albums he chose to highlight. Lewis has been active as a comic book artist and musician since the late ‘90s and likes nothing more than to poke fun at his musical heroes in songs like “The History of The Fall” (which appeared on the comp Perverted by Mark E) and “Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror.” Since 2004 he has put out a self-published comic book called under the title Fuff.

On his website has put up three mini-zines for the Sonnet Youth versions of Confusion is Sex/Kill Yr Idols, Goo, Daydream Nation. The first two are a dollar apiece but Daydream Nation is two dollars.

As the website explains,
 

Each line is in iambic pentameter (the rhythm of “To BE or NOT to BE, that IS the QUEStion…”) and each poem is structured into the sonnet structure of three quatrains and a closing couplet.  Naturally there’s also accompanying illustrations by Jeffrey.

 
Here’s Lewis’ sonnetic version of the song “Kill Yr Idols”:
 

It fills me up with anger and depression
There’s more to art than being on a list now
So why still try to make a good impression
On any music critic, even Christgau?

Leave behind all former tags and titles
Slay them with your brutal sonic force
As Nietzsche said, you have to kill your idols. 
All uncertainty is intercourse  

Keep skepticism strong and un-suspending
Perhaps that’s what the message of this tune is
The world you knew is coming to an ending
So kill it and embrace the crazy newness.

And kill me also, if I get too preachy.
Treat no one sacred—me, Christgau or Nietzsche.

 
It may not be great poetry but it is a damn sonnet and it does engage intelligently with Sonic Youth’s work.

All of the zines obviously come with a great many doodles drawn by Lewis—Shakespeare is prominent in the reworked album covers.

Images from Lewis’ Sonnet Youth zines after the jump…...

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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10.15.2018
11:29 am
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‘Try to Be Joyful’: Jeffrey Lewis’ wonderful tribute to the Fugs’ Tuli Kupferberg
03.28.2018
10:16 am
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Call it “Freak Folk,” call it ”New Weird America,” or call it nothing since one-size-fits all genre taxonomy is rarely adequate to contain most art forms anyway, but there’s an identifiable strain of American independent singer-songwriter music that can draw a very direct lineage to some of the strangest expressions of the Mid-Century folk music revival that was sparked by the Smithsonian Folkways release of the utterly essential Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music. While late ‘50s traditionalists like Dave Van Ronk and the New Lost City Ramblers took very reverent cues from the Smith anthology, the early ‘60s produced the likes of Dylan and Baez, and after them, just straight-up Greenwich Village weirdos like the Fugs and the Holy Modal Rounders emerged to define a form of folk befitting the burgeoning psychedelic era. Those two bands had overlapping memberships and were also united by a gonzo approach. The Rounders tended to be more traditionally musical, while the Fugs were just utterly bereft of a single care for ANY convention—their heavily satirical lyrics could be unabashedly vulgar, their music could be fearlessly, purposefully tuneless and noisy (in 1964, mind you) and from a certain vantage point they can plainly be seen as a very early proto-punk band.

While those bands still have devotees over fifty years later, few artists are flying their flag quite like New York’s Jeffrey Lewis. We’ve told you about him before here on Dangerous Minds, in both of his guises as a folk singer and a comix artist. He’s been releasing music, mostly for the storied Rough Trade label, since 2001, and he’s been fortunate enough to have connected personally and creatively with HMR’s violinist Peter Stampfel and the Fugs’ larger-than-life lyricist/singer/co-figurehead Tuli Kupferberg, one of the Village’s most outrageous figures despite being pretty much twice everyone’s age—the Fugs were his first band, and he started it in his forties, after he’d already had a long career as a poet, activist, and provocateur. Actively creative even after a stroke in 2009, Kupferberg died at age 86 in 2010. Lewis has since been organizing annual concerts in his memory, and those concerts have led directly to his forthcoming album Works by Tuli Kupferberg (1923-2010)—a fun, boisterous and anarchic tribute that captures Kupferberg’s ethos well. We got Lewis talking about his relationship with early gonzo folk, with Kupferberg himself, and the new album.

Jeffrey Lewis: I have a deep love of ’60 weird stuff, since I was a teenager and I first discovered music. My first love was classic rock, the Rolling Stones, stuff like that, then I developed more and more of an interest in the weirder, more psychedelic side of ‘60s rock. As it generally happens when you’re a record nerd, you fall deeper and deeper into these different rabbit holes, and new doors start to open. But specifically talking about things like the Fugs and Holy Modal Rounders, that stuff has a different appeal, a purely regional element, in that it was the music of the neighborhood where I grew up, which is once again the neighborhood where I’m currently living after many years in other places. It’s the countercultural music of the ’60s Lower East side, and the Fugs especially were THE Lower East Side neighborhood band. And the Holy Modal Rounders to some degree, but the Fugs were more extreme, and more specific in talking about the neighborhood as well. There aren’t that many ‘60s bands that were that specific about their extremely local cultural neighborhood experience, and it just happened that one of the bands that was, was from my own neighborhood, so that combination—it was weird music, it was ‘60s music, and it was actually talking about the streets and the people that were, like my parents, my parents’ generation, the beatnik and hippie people of the Lower East Side. That was irresistible to me.

DM: Tuli Kupferberg in particular was such a fascinating figure, too, given his age at the time he started making music and the history he had before that. I understand you got to meet him and work with him before he passed?

JM: Yeah! I was a fan from afar for a number of years. He was often out and about—and here’s a great thing about New York City, as opposed to Los Angeles or other places where lots of famous people might live: New York City is a great equalizer because you’re not in your car all the time, isolated, you’re walking the sidewalks, you’re in the subway. So when you live here you see Patti Smith, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, Richard Hell… they’re just there when you’re going to the supermarket, looking in an art gallery. That is part of why I got to connect personally with Tuli was that I would just see him at events, and he was such a recognizable figure, such a weird looking guy in his way, so striking, that he was just instantly recognizable to me. So first as a fan it was like “Oh my God, there’s Tuli Kupferberg across the room, should I talk to him?” Just being a groupie, essentially. The same way every time when I’d see Lou Reed or whatever, like should I bother him? But when it comes to people like Tuli or Peter Stampfel, they’re idols of mine, but they’re not mainstream celebrities at the level of like David Byrne, who obviously, to the average person, is much more famous.

So I could talk to them about what sort of stuff they were into, and they were approachable. Also I think it was easy to see that what I was doing, the music I was doing, was in a tradition of stuff they would have been into, our aesthetics were a match, so I wasn’t just some random fan giving them a CD. So one thing would just lead to another, so by 2005 I was getting Tuli and Peter to participate in recordings I was making, like having Peter come by and play some fiddle, or I would try to get Tuli to speak about something, just get his voice on a recording, and they were so open and welcoming, and you find connection. You see the books on each other’s shelves and you see things you’ve read too, stuff like that, it’s everybody’s dream, isn’t it? To morph from a fan into a friend? Like I think a lot of Michael Jackson fans or Harrison Ford fans would love to be those people’s friends. In my case, I was fortunate to be able to collaborate with some of my idols.

DM: You really do have an enviable track record of getting to work with your heroes.

JM: It helps to have accessible heroes—if I idolized Steven Spielberg it probably wouldn’t have happened!

Much more after the jump…

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Posted by Ron Kretsch
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03.28.2018
10:16 am
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‘The Legend of the Fall’: A slapdash cartoon love letter to Mark E. Smith
04.01.2016
12:09 pm
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Panel #12: “And Mark said the three R’s were ‘Repetition, Repetition, Repetition….”
 
I learned recently that antifolk musician and comix artist Jeffrey Lewis is a huge fan of the Fall, which, as it happens, I am as well. Lewis tends to celebrate his artistic heroes in his songs and artwork; some of his song titles are “Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror” and “The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song.”

One senses in Lewis’ love for Smith a respectful acknowledgment from one ultra-prolific artist to another. Lewis has fashioned a kind of “Where’s Waldo” poster involving many, many, many Fall tracks, under the title “100 Fall Songs,” which actually contains visual references to 112 Fall ditties. You can buy that at his website, and it even comes with a key so that you can test your Fall knowledge.

In 2007 and 2008 Lewis was given to a quickie “documentary” (his term) about the Fall that he would do in his live shows; maybe he’s done it since but he was definitely doing it at that time. The title of the piece is “The Legend of the Fall,” and if that puts you in the mind of a certain Jim Harrison novella that was turned into a Brad Pitt movie, you’re not alone.
 

Panel #16: “...who worked hard writing, touring, and recording….”
 
The “documentary” consists of twenty-odd panels drawn by Lewis himself, that were concocted to accompany amusing doggerel of rhyming couplets that Lewis had written describing the tumultuous history of the Manchester band.

Here’s an example of the couplets: 
 

Mark and his friends bounced ideas off the wall
He was gonna dress up & they were gonna call themselves “Flyman and the Fall”
Then they settled on “The Fall” after the Camus book
Though Mark couldn’t sing a note & didn’t care how square he looked

 
Panel #19 refers to a gig in 1998 when Smith punched a band member onstage and got arrested—DM published an in-depth chronicle of that memorable gig (complete with video!) last year.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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04.01.2016
12:09 pm
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‘What Would Pussy Riot Do?’
10.30.2013
12:40 pm
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wwprd
 
Anti-Folk mainstay Jeffrey Lewis is having a busy year. Not only has he released a collaborative album with bizarro-folk founding father Peter Stampfel (who just celebrated his 74th birthday yesterday, incidentally), he’s also released the “WWPRD” E.P. and toured extensively with his band The Rain. The centerpiece of the E.P. is an idealistic, poetic tribute to Pussy Riot, the female punk band famously being held captive in Russia for the “crime” of staging a protest. Here’s a partial transcription.

Pussy Riot went to prison
Just to make some people listen
They say church & state’s corrupt
It must be true ‘cuz they’re locked up
Before we lose democracy
You ask yourself, and I’ll ask me -
WWPRD?

Put in jail for two years each
Just for punk rock public speech
What is this, the middle ages?
Let those women out of those cages
Before you choose complacency
You ask yourself, and I’ll ask me -
WWPRD?

Minds can open in a flash
when hit by art or hit by cash
Money wins as like as not
Imagination’s all we’ve got
So let’s just have the decency
For you to ask yourself, and I’ll ask me -
WWPRD?

‘Cause progress is not guaranteed
I say Pussy Riot is what we need
This ain’t the old Red Army Faction
This is bold, non-violent action
To change the world, the biggest hint is
art is really what convinces
That’s why they always try to buy it
But they couldn’t buy off Pussy Riot
So when you see bands on TV
You ask yourself, and I’ll ask me -
WWPRD?

Permit me a mild irony in posting commerce links after that last bit, but in case you might want to support Lewis’ work, the E.P. is available digitally from Amazon and in multiple formats from Rough Trade.

Here’s the poem, performed in Cologne by Jeffery Lewis and the Rain, posted by YouTube user haengendegaerten.

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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10.30.2013
12:40 pm
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