Tuesday 30 October 2012

Captain Beefheart's Universal Vibrations

I have just discovered a blog by a 20-year-old who writes like a dream. I have no idea whether the person who writes is male or female, black or white, able bodied or in a wheelchair, but whoever (s)he is (s)he can write like an angel:


This has happened before: the experience of American music transforming England into a facsimile of the American landscape. Once, listening to Bat Chain Puller, the title track of Captain Beefheart’s Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller), on the way back from my grandmother’s house, down some obscure Sussex road, I heard the lyrics
In the hollow wind of its stacks
Ripples felt fades and grey sparks clacks,
Lunging the cushioned thickets.
Pumpkins span the hills
With orange crayola patches.
Green inflated trees
Balloon up into marshmallow soot
and for a moment Sussex was transformed into that place, an American scene right out of the blasted landscapes of George Herriman’s Krazy & Ignatz comics. In that moment, I knew that those pumpkins were all around me, buried under the darkness.
There are only two entries on the blog so far, but as this one mentions Captain Beefheart, and there is a jolly good Captain Beefheart DVD available on Gonzo, I think that I am perfectly justified in giving Universal Vibration a plug. I l;ike the mixture of geomancy and music which conjurs up all sorts of glorious visions in my head.
I am so loonking forward to seeing what comes next.

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