[EclecticSeizure] Re: doing a radio show about you man (fwd)

[William Gillespie]

Tonight at 8

---------- Forwarded message ----------

yo, william,

hey, my pain pill hangover was lifted by the news about the upcoming radio
show

seriously, i'm honored

some quick responses to your queries:

i'll see if i can track down a copy of the original abr essay, though the
entire text is included inside the "White Noise" essay

bruce, let's see, of course, there's a zillion options, depending on the
context but here are a couple of recommendations:

"lost in the flood" (killer vietnam song presented in vbruce's early
"experimental" psychedlic collage method, with lines like "nuns run bald
through vatican halls, pregnant, pleading immaculate conception") or the
sheer strutting exhuerbance of "it's hard to be a saint in the city"  (key
line:  "with my black jack and jacket and hair slicked sweet, silver star
studs on my duds, like a harley in heat, when i walked down the street you
couild feel its heart beat"  (both songs on his first album, GREETINGS FROM
ASBURY PARK, 1973)

"i'm on fire" (most people know this song, or think they do, and haven't
really noticed that just beneath they hey-hey-baby pop veneer lurks a child
molester (key line: "sometimes it's like somebody took a knife, baby, edgy
and dull, and cut a six inch valley through the middle of my skull")  it's
on BORN IN THE USA (did you see the new rolling stone issue with the
simjpsons album covers, featuringt homer on the cover of born in the usa?
there's a great cover of this song by johnny cash on BADLANDS, which has
covers of all the songs on NEBRASKA.

if you want meta-rock, check out his felinni-meets-dylan early masterpiece,
"Uncle Billy's Circus Song" (on THE WILD, THE INNOCENT--which is the album i
believe i referred to the most in "White"), great extended tyreamtnet of the
rock-band as circus performers motifr (key line: "hey son you wanna try the
big top?  all aboard nebraska's our next stop"--this song appearing a decade
before bruce wrote the songs for NEBRASKA)

or if you want topical, check out the goregous, middle-eastern flavors (with
Pakistani singers, etc. and killer guitar solo) of "World's Apart" (on his
recent 9-11 extrvanganza (THE RISING).

your palimdrome has arrived safely, with no vocabularial fuck ups

i'll file a complete report on this and much much more once sinda and i get
back from loreto (on the gulf side of the baja, way way down there, it's
supposed to be faculous), a little vacation trip (complete with Leonid
Meteor shower) that we're doing partly as a way to officially celebrate my
recovery

which is going great, by the way, as you can probably sense

i'm going out for hikes every day now

hey, make a copy of the radio show for me if you can--would love to hear it

stay tuned, william--appreciate your sticking with me through the past few
months

onwords, upwords,

larry

ps.  you really NEED to do a show devoted to terry allen, the last great
undiscovered genius of american music (now that tom waits has pretty much
been adopted by yuppies)(that isn't preventing me and sinda from going to la
next month to see waits perform his blood money soundtrack to that play,
wozniak (?)

pps.  if you don't already have a copy, go out and immediately get coover's
master avantporn novel, the adventures of lucky pierre , 30 years in the
making, in which bob somehow manages to get his walking-talking dingdong to
do and say just about everything a dingdong might do or so, in this world or
any other...





see if you can l
on 11/15/02 10:27 PM, William Gillespie at gillespi at uiuc.edu wrote:

>
> Dear Professor McCaffery,
>
> My next radio show will feature your essay White Noise White Heat with
> glitches and lots of musical interruptions from bands you cite. I'll send
> you a cassette, unless I forget, but I'll probably remember.
>
> 1. Is the original ABR article available anywhere?
> 2. What Bruce should I play? I don't think I have a single Springsteen
> record but I might be able to find a song. Maybe two. I've got plenty of
> Zorn though.
>
> I sent you a palindrome. I hope that stuff I mail to Borrego is able to
> get there this year. I imagine that mail is packed in on burros down
> there.
>
> My radio show is called Eclectic Seizure:
> http://spinelessbooks.com/eclecticseizure
>
> ONWARD!
> W
>
>
>
>