Growing Up in Utopia

I learned how to fly when I was 17.

I’m not talking about a plane, and this isn’t some euphemism. “Yogic flying,” which is basically meditation at the black-belt level, offers the potential of human levitation — although in actuality it looks more like energetic, if not rather effortless, cross-legged hopping. Needless to say, most kids who grow up in the small-town Midwest do not learn how to fly. But in my hometown of Fairfield, Iowa, much of the community is devoted to creating heaven on Earth through group meditation. In Fairfield, teenagers fly.

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[sleeveen spell]

Sleeveen slip
and sleeveen slide
Sleeveen, slow
Your Sleeveen side

Sleeveen slide
And Sleeveen slip
Sleeveen, have
A lovely trip

Sleeveen sees
With sleeveen eyes
Sleeveen spin
And sleeveen lies

Spin it, Sleeveen,
Spin it small
Until there’s nothing
Left at all.

Fillum

“Don’t You Know Who I Am” is an enjoyable and funny short film that follows rock and roll guitarist Rick Rossi (played by Alabama 3‘s Larry Love) on a trip to the West of Ireland to get away from it all and grieve for his deceased friend Peter.

All does not go according to plan however and he ends up in Galway, dealing with an endless parade of idiots, toerags and obnoxious chancers.  Fancy that! 😛

No sound on the horizon

Apple’s Devious U2 Album Giveaway Is Even Worse Than Spam

Wilko Johnson’s Response to Pancreatic Cancer? Album With Roger Daltrey, More on the Way | Billboard

“I can’t arrange things too far in the future ’cause I don’t know whether that future will exist, so we have to do things kind of step by step,” says the Dr. Feelgood alum, who was diagnosed with cancer in early ’13”

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300 fans demand money back – Beach Boys in Ireland – May 1967

Brand New Retro

The Beach Boys came to Ireland in May 1967 for gigs in the Adelphi, Dublin and the ABC cinema, Belfast.

Brian Wilson had long stopped touring so wasn’t with them. But unexpectedly absent was lead sing Carl Wilson who, days earlier, had appeared in NY Court accused of evading US Army draft & ordered not to leave the country. The court later relented and he was allowed to travel and arrived at the Adelphi just as their second show was about to start.

The night wasn’t a success. Some 300 fans demanded their money back! (read all below).
View set list for the gig here.

Article and pix all scanned from New Spotlight, May 1967. This was the first issue (vol 1, No 1) when it moved from monthly to weekly. The article & interview with Carl Wilson is by John Coughlan (RIP), Managing Editor of New Spotlight. John is pictured…

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Facts about Bloomsday and Joyce’s Ulysses

Interesting Literature

Every year, 16 June marks Bloomsday, the day on which fans of James Joyce’s 1922 novel Ulysses celebrate this modernist masterpiece. June 16 was selected for this celebration because it is the day on which all of the events in the novel take place (June 16th 1904 to be precise). Here are some interesting facts, in honour of the event, and the novel it commemorates.

Joyce’s novel is by no means the only novel to use the device of setting its happenings on just one day: Herman Melville had already done this in his 1857 novel The Confidence-Man, the first novel to be about the new phenomenon of the ‘con man’ (a term that had only recently been coined). Melville’s novel was published on April 1st 1857, and would appear to take place on this date too (April Fools’ Day – because of the link between con men and…

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R.I.P. Pete Seeger

“To everything (turn, turn, turn)

There is a season (turn, turn, turn)

And a time for every purpose under heaven…”

RIP

The 13th Floor

Folk singer Pete Seeger has passed away at the age of 94. The singer-songwriter and political activist was a friend of Woody Guthrie, a member of The Weavers and the writer of songs such as Where Have All The Flowers Gone, If I Had A Hammer and Turn, Turn, Turn.

Click here for more details about Pete Seeger.

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The Fruitsmelling Shop

The Fruitsmelling Shop

I’m taking part in a musical challenge elsewhere to write a song based on a scene or a character from a book of my own choice.  I have a couple of ideas, but the one I really wanted to do has been done already, and beautifully.  It’s a musical setting by the band Scullion of a passage from James Joyce‘s Ulysses.  The character Blazes Boylan pops into a shop to buy some pears for Molly Bloom, flirts with the girl who’s making up his order, and gives her a flower.  It’s part of the Wandering Rocks chapter.  It’s gorgeous, and so is the musical interpretation by Sonny Condell, Philip King, Greg Boland and Jimmy O’Brien-Moran, linked above.

Nicely done… I guess it’s back to the drawing board… 🙂

Lee Hazelwood & the Wrecking Crew

No tag exists yet for “awesome studiosity”. I think I’ll invent one now, if no one minds.

Seriously. This fine clip is worth checking out, listening to, and learning from.