#tusk recording sessions

[goldduststevie]

Stevie's essential demos and outtakes:

 S - songs, Part 2.

* indicates unreleased songs.

Sorcerer - this is a Buckingham Nicks demo from 1971. Stevie demoed it for her Wild Heart album but decided to give it to her back-up singer Marilyn Martin so that she could sing her version for the soundtrack of "Streets of Fire" in 1984 (Stevie provides background vocals). In 2001 Stevie would finally record her own verson.

Storms - this beautiful demo comes from the Tusk Expanded Edition, I love Lindsey's guitar work here, here's another, slightly older demo.

Starshine - fun demo from the Bella Donna recordings that was shelved untill Stevie recorded it in 2014 for her 24K album.

Space Needle * - unreleased early demo from the TISL era.

Straight Back - very underrated Mirage song, imo. It was rehearsed for the Mirage tour but ultimately not included on the setlist.

Something Exquisite * - undated demo, possibly intended for TITN or early OSOTM, could've been a great song.

Sleeping Angel - leftover song from the Rumours sessions, Stevie demoed it again for Bella Donna, it was included on the soundtrack of the 1982 movie "Fast Times at Ridgemont High".

[doomedandstoned]

MAMMOTH CARAVAN Perform Single ‘Siege in the Stars’ in The Anvil Sessions

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

As the rapid evolution of technology takes its grip on every aspect of our existence, monitoring our lives, tracking our whereabouts, and yes listening to our conversations, MAMMOTH CARAVAN reminds us of a more primitive time, when the essence of survival was scraping by and worrying about the fundamentals of existence. Yet even in the world of the woolly mammoth, strange things can happen.

On a recent episode of The Doomed & Stoned Show, we speculated what a mammoth in outer space would entail, drawing implications from the cryptic name of Italian band UFOMammut.

Now Little Rock, Arkansas trio Brandon Ringo (harsh vox, bass), Robert Warner (clean singing, guitar, synth), and Khetner Howton (drums) answers our questions with the second single from their upcoming record, 'Frostbitten Galaxy' (2024), which sees this Mammoth Caravan heading toward the stars, as is now the ambition of humankind.

Fontman Ringo had this to reveal about the song:

“Siege in the Stars" is the first song that was written for the new album and it was conceived during a time when we had just changed our lineup and had 10 days to create a setlist of new material. Robert came up with the riffs and I started working on lyrics and once Khetner wrote his drums parts, the song became something massive and special. Lyrically the song represents the bloodthirsty mammoth king’s journey through space on his way to achieve his violent quest.

The atmosphere begins with swarthy bass and guitar swirling about like a bowl of incense, perhaps the gaseous precursor to the massive rocket flames that erupt 35 seconds later. "Siege in the Stars" vessel of fury and mad determination, with massive swing and groove 2:01. It's a motif we're happy to see return as the song progresses, this time accompanied by sparks of psychedelic doom guitar emitting from the ship as it jetsons into cold, black space, with massive deep beats that mete out the distance along the way.

Mammathus clan overtakes mars Now we must fly Martians will die Empires of rust Driven to dust Nothing can stop this siege in the stars

"Siege in the Stars" was captured live for The Anvil Sessions by Holy Anvil Recording Co. in Fayetteville and broadcast by KUAF 91.3, showing us that the band can absolutely deliver on their sound. In an age of AI fakes and phonies, Mammoth Caravan is the real deal.

Look for Mammoth Caravan's 'Frostbitten Galaxy' (2024) emerges October 4th on Blade Setter Records on vinyl, CD, cassette, and digital formats (pre-order here). It's a formidable sound and a must for your next playlist with High on Fire, Forming the Void, Ape Vermin, and Black Tusk.

SOME BUZZ

Little Rock doom trio MAMMOTH CARAVAN is set to unleash its second full-length album, Frostbitten Galaxy. With a revamped lineup, a retooled sound, and a violent tale of mammoths in space, the band’s next offering promises to be their heaviest and most diverse material yet.

Frostbitten Galaxy by Mammoth Caravan

Frostbitten Galaxy was recorded and mixed at Wolfman Studios by Jason Tedford, and mastered by Justin Weis at Traxworx. Album art by Tony Koehl.

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[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Kacey Johansing - Year Away

This past summer, I popped into Gold-Diggers in East Hollywood for Anna St. Louis' In The Air record release show. St. Louis' set was great, of course — but the evening was made even greater by the opener, Kacey Johansing, who was also playing tunes from a new album, the masterful Year Away. It's a pretty much perfect collection of classic pop, with a sound that ranges from grand Bacharach-ian moves to expertly rendered Tusk-era Fleetwood Mac grooves (I love the "Sara"-esque "Not The Same," though it quotes Joni rather than Stevie). To call the sound that Johansing and her cohorts have cooked up "soft rock" still feels like less than a compliment, but trust, this is REALLY GOOD soft rock, with the songwriter's aching vocals and (occasionally somewhat barbed) lyrics ensuring that the affair adds up to much more than melodic mush. The only thing missing from Year Away is the cover of John Cale's "Andalucia," which Johansing played at Gold-Diggers. Can we get a Lagniappe Session going for that one?

[frank-olivier]

Fleetwood Mac - Brown Eyes

"Brown Eyes" the first song that McVie presented to the group for the Tusk album, having done so in April 1978 at the band's rehearsal on Mulholland Drive. The song's structure consisted of three chords across two verses and a wordless chorus. McVie originally claimed that the song was about her dog, although she later confided in Ken Caillat that the song was about Dennis Wilson, who actually had green eyes.

During the song's initial tracking, Mick Fleetwood played a full drum kit and employed rim clicks on his snare drum, Lindsey Buckingham used his white Alembic electric guitar through a volume pedal, Christine McVie played a Yamaha electric piano, and John McVie played a bass guitar through an amplifier as opposed to the band's usual method of sending the bass directly to the mixing console. The backing vocals were not conducted until October 11th, so Stevie Nicks instead danced in the control room as the rest of the band recorded their parts. Additional vocal overdubs were recorded in early December.

Caillat characterized "Brown Eyes" as "a simple song with lots of space that made huge demands on the rhythm section and the melody instruments to fill it with color and ambiance." The band ultimately completed 37 takes before settling on their master recording. During the recording process, Dennis Wilson was present in the control room and provided opinions on how to approach the song, although several people, including Fleetwood and John McVie, dismissed these ideas.

Peter Green, a founding member of the band, also took part in the sessions for "Brown Eyes", but his guitar playing on the track is not credited on the original album release. Mick Fleetwood, the band's drummer, remembered that Green still remained in contact with the band and occasionally joined them in the studio. At Fleetwood's request, Green overdubbed electric guitar on "Brown Eyes", although his playing was only included on the fade-out for the official release. The full recording session, dated 20 September 1979, appears on disc three of the 2015 deluxe edition of Tusk, which contains alternate recordings of the album's 20 tracks. This version has McVie singing different lyrics to those on the original album.

In a 1999 interview with The Penguin, Green said that he had no recollection of the recording session, which he attributed to his deteriorating health in the 1970s, but said there was still a possibility that he played on it. Buckingham also did not recall the sessions taking place. “I don’t remember Peter Green coming in, so I don’t think I made any judgement on whether to use [his part] or not. Mick would ultimately have had the decision to use his playing or not. And it was Christine’s song to do with as she wished.“ However, Caillat recalled in his 2019 book, Get Tusked, that Buckingham was unpleased with Green's blues guitar licks, so his parts were muted with the exception of the outro.

-- Wikipedia

Tuesday, May 7, 2024

[mariacallous]

Meduza's The Beet: The artist, the shoes, and the death camp

Hello, and welcome back to The Beet! 

I’m Eilish Hart, the editor of this weekly dispatch from Meduza that brings you long-form journalism from across Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. As it happens, our newsletter’s audience is just 275 subscribers shy of its next round number — and I’d love to reach that milestone before the year ends. So, please take a moment to subscribe to The Beet or, if you’re already a loyal subscriber, forward this email to a friend. Our newsletter is free, but Meduza’s reporting relies on support from readers like you, so spreading the word is a big help!

After last week’s conversation with Ukrainian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk, we’re returning to our usual format with a report from Poland, courtesy of journalist James Jackson. As you may recall, James last wrote for The Beet on the eve of this fall’s Polish parliamentary election, which saw opposition parties collectively win more votes than the far-right Law and Justice Party (PiS). Having fallen far short of a parliamentary majority after eight years in power (in an election with record turnout, no less), the PiS cobbled together a doomed government that lasted all of two weeks before succumbing to a no-confidence vote on Monday. This paved the way for a new government under returning Prime Minister Donald Tusk, which had its swearing-in just yesterday. 

In the brief interregnum on Tuesday, another, far gloomier event in the Polish parliament grabbed headlines: Just before the vote of confidence in Tusk’s new government, lawmaker Grzegorz Braun — the hard-right, pro-Kremlin leader of a fringe monarchist party — disrupted the proceedings by taking a fire extinguisher to the candles on a menorah lit for Hanukkah. Braun’s fellow lawmakers roundly condemned the stunt, handing him a maximum financial penalty. The parliament’s speaker, who suspended Braun from the day’s session, also promised to report him to prosecutors. In the end, the incident only served to speed things along, as lawmakers withdrew their lingering questions for Tusk and got on with the vote. Meanwhile, a rabbi relit the menorah’s candles. 

All of this occurred while I was in the midst of the final edits for this week’s story, which is about none other than Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, a Polish poet and musician who has dedicated himself to raising awareness about his country’s Jewish history. Hailing from the northern port city of Gdańsk, Kwiatkowski has become known for his sharp criticism of Poland’s memory politics, particularly concerning the Holocaust and the thorny topic of Polish complicity. On his blog, Kwiatkowski said Tuesday’s incident in parliament was like a “big dark cloud” over Poland’s collective memory. And it’s precisely this type of cloud — one formed by hatred — that he’s been so actively working to sweep away. So, without further ado, over to James. 

Grzegorz Kwiatkowski at the site of the former Jewish ghetto in Gdańsk

BARTOSZ BAŃKA FOR THE BEET

The artist, the shoes, and the death camp

By James Jackson 

one of my forefathers must have had the gift of foresight:

I’ve only ever seen my closest in the animal light of their needs

which probably explains my isolation and loneliness

my last birthday observed in a rented bedsit

on the former Adolf Hitler Strasse in the Langhfur district

that day I took my life by turning on the gas taps

— Extract from on a hill by Grzegorz Kwiatkowski

Trudging through the soft earth of an autumnal forest, Grzegorz Kwiatkowski stops in a clearing. His trademark black jeans with gold ringmaster trim contrast against the greens and browns of the trees that rustle like the sounds of the Polish language in the wind.

Kwiatkowski is a man of many hats. He is a poet, the frontman of the post-rock band Trupa Trupa, and a critic of Poland’s memory politics.

For Kwiatkowski, this deserted spot just outside the grounds of the former Stutthof concentration camp encapsulates Poland’s complex and traumatized relationship with its past. Scattered on the forest floor and partially turned to mulch are the remains of hundreds of thousands of shoes taken from Nazi German death camps like Auschwitz.

Though Poland was a battleground for much of its history, today, the battleground is history itself. Debates about the extent of Polish collaboration in the German occupation and the Holocaust led the Law and Justice Party, which governed for the last eight years, to accuse critical historians of a “pedagogy of shame.” The courts even went so far as to prosecute scholars like Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski for defamation and order them to apologize for a factual inaccuracy about a long-dead mayor accused of handing over Jews to the Nazis. (The apology was later overturned on appeal.)

In 2022, the Law and Justice government demanded the equivalent of $1.3 trillion in reparations from Germany for damage done during World War II, when Poland lost 17 percent of its population — the highest proportion of any country — and saw cities like Warsaw bombed to rubble, with 85 percent of the capital destroyed.

Destruction in Gdańsk after World War II, 1945

ERICH ENGEL / ULLSTEIN BILD / GETTY IMAGES

Kwiatkowski explains that Stutthof, less than an hour’s drive from Gdańsk, was the leather repair center for all of Nazi Germany’s concentration camps in Europe. The shoes were stolen from their mostly Jewish owners — men, women, and children — and taken here to be converted into leather goods. When the Red Army liberated Stutthof in 1945, they found half a million shoes piled into mountains. These stood neglected until the 1960s, Kwiatkowski says, as Poland’s Soviet-backed communist regime suppressed much of the horror of the Holocaust from popular memory.

Established in 1962, the museum features an exhibit at the entrance with one pile of the shoes, but the rest were given a shallow burial in the forest and left to rot. “It’s the insanity of human beings,” Kwiatkowski says. He and a friend came across the decaying soles in 2015 and later told the story to the international press. After The Guardian and CBC reported on it, nothing changed. But when reporters from the German radio station Deutschlandfunk gave notice that they were coming, the museum staff reportedly panicked and had these artifacts of genocide dug up. 

The barracks at the Stutthof camp, photographed after the liberation

FLHC 20214 / ALAMY / VIDA PRESS

Two cremators at Stutthof, photographed after the liberation

COLLECTION OF THE UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM

“The museum workers were frightened and ashamed because the Germans would see it — it’s so paradoxical,” Kwiatkowski tells me, frustrated at this apparent attempt to brush history under the carpet. Unlike the museum curators, he sees confronting the crimes and neglect of history as his duty. “It’s a privilege to be a curator of this bloody past,” he says. “You can make an anti-hatred message from it: No killing, respect others.”

Later, a chance encounter at a car repair shop led him to doubt the local government’s claims that these artifacts had been disposed of respectfully. Allegedly, the local garbage dump turned away a truck carrying some of the shoes, so they burned the macabre cargo in a field next to the mechanic’s workshop. “I was very nervous and started to ask questions, but I was too curious, and then he [the mechanic] didn’t want to say more,” Kwiatkowski recounts as we drive away from Stutthof. “This is the story of Polish history.”

The shoes on display at the Stutthof Museum

BRUCE ADAMS / GETTY IMAGES

The mounds of shoes Grzegorz Kwiatkowski found in the forest near the former Stutthof camp

GRZEGORZ KWIATKOWSKI’S PERSONAL ARCHIVE

Victims and perpetrators 

The Stutthof camp isn’t just abstract for Kwiatkowski; it’s intimate. At age 16, his grandfather Józef was imprisoned there for the crime of secretly learning Polish, or for refusing to work as a forced laborer for the Germans, according to conflicting accounts from Kwiatkowski’s family members. Józef’s work was unimaginable, carting dead bodies from the camp hospital to the crematorium, a grim task he would later have to repeat while working as a forced laborer in Hamburg after Allied bombing raids.

One of Józef Kwiatkowski’s documents from the Stutthof camp

GRZEGORZ KWIATKOWSKI’S PERSONAL ARCHIVE

In the interim, he was forcibly conscripted into the Wehrmacht for a short stint, a common experience for men living near what was then the German city of Danzig. 

Years later, when visiting the Stutthof museum with his grandson, Józef “started crying and screaming,” Kwiatkowski recalls. “He was [reliving] the trauma,” the poet explains. “He affected my life in the biggest way because he was a broken, calm person.”

Kwiatkowski’s wife’s family suffered terribly, too. Many years into the couple’s marriage, his wife’s grandmother let slip that they had spent the war hiding in the forest. Initially, Kwiatkowski was confused — the German occupation was awful, but this wasn’t normal for ethnic Poles. Eventually, his wife admitted that her family was Jewish, but she had been raised to keep this quiet. “Will it help us here? No,” Kwiatkowski recalls her saying matter-of-factly, though he adds that she’s been more open about her Jewish identity in recent years.

A banner hung on a large synagogue in Danzig (Gdańsk) that reads “Come, beloved May and make us free from the Jews.” June 1939.

AUGUST DARWELL / PICTURE POST / HULTON ARCHIVE / GETTY IMAGES

Even after World War II, anti-Jewish violence in Poland continued to claim lives. In the town of Kielce in 1946, an angry mob, together with Polish soldiers and police, killed 42 Jewish refugees after a child falsely accused them of kidnapping. The massacre triggered a mass exodus of Poland’s surviving Jews, marking the first of four emigration waves during the communist era. The final outflow came as a result of an antisemitic campaign the communist authorities initiated in 1968. 

But it’s hard to talk about memory in Poland without running into contradictions, Kwiatkowski finds. “Poland has a victim complex,” he says, and the country was indeed a victim of aggression at the hands of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. “It’s very complicated because Poland was devastated in a huge way, but on the other hand, [Law and Justice’s] historical narrative is that of a country that is only a victim and innocent.”

Nazi police and soldiers attack a Jewish man in Gdańsk after the German occupation of Poland in 1939

UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE / UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP / GETTY IMAGES

Kwiatkowski mentions the recently beatified Ulma family as an example. Nazi German occupiers and local police summarily executed Józef Ulma, his pregnant wife Wiktoria, and their six small children in 1944, along with the eight Jews hidden in their home. “The point of the Ulma family is they were killed because [their] Polish neighbors told the Germans that they were hiding Jews,” he explains — an inconvenient fact often left out of this story of Polish Catholic heroism.

“Jewish people were shocked because the Poles were their neighbors. Many say the Poles were worse than the Germans. [Hearing this] shocked me — but they felt betrayed,” Kwiatkowski says. 

At the same time, he maintains that the main perpetrators shouldn’t be forgotten. “Germany and Austria are great at whitewashing history,” Kwiatkowski maintains, referring to the praise the two countries have received for their handling of Holocaust memory. “They did it as a nation, and they should feel bad.”

Beating the system

On top of being an outspoken critic of Poland’s nationalist memory politics, Kwiatkowski and his band Trupa Trupa provided music for director Agnieszka Holland’s award-winning film Green Border, which President Andrzej Duda and other leading government figures attacked for its depiction of Polish border guards mistreating refugees. But Kwiatkowski doesn’t want to be put in a box politically and says he supports the Law and Justice-backed demands for reparations from Germany. 

Granary Island, located on the Motława river in Gdańsk, is where the city’s Jewish ghetto once stood

BARTOSZ BAŃKA FOR THE BEET

“I don’t care about the left side or right side,” Kwiatkowski says, “The Polish political class is very corrupt, from left to right. In the 1990s, they were in one party,” he continues. “Polarization helps them. It’s a cynical game that benefits them.”

During the highly-charged campaign season for this fall’s parliamentary election, the brains behind the nationalist government, Law and Justice leader Jarosław Kaczyński, made increasingly wild statements, describing his arch-rival Donald Tusk of the center-right Civic Platform as the personification of “pure evil.” He even accused the opposition of harboring secret plans to ban Poles from mushroom picking. 

After the Civic Platform-led coalition won the elections, however, the musician’s tune changed. “I didn’t realize it would make me so happy,” Kwiatkowski tells me, praising the fact that his country had rejected nationalism and its accompanying rewriting of history. “The atmosphere after the elections is really great,” he continues. “If the new government wants to change positively and ethically and talk about [history] openly, I can use their positive attitude and build beautiful ethical works [of art].”

Of all Poland’s politicians, Kwiatkowski remains an admirer of Gdańsk’s most famous son: former dock worker and union leader Lech Wałęsa, who led the Solidarność movement to defeat communism and became Poland’s first president elected by popular vote. In recent years, Wałęsa has been mocked for his down-to-earth manner, celebrating his 80th birthday with a cake made of breaded pork cutlet and taking baths in beer. “He’s like a clown. He’s like Don Quixote,” Kwiatkowski says. “From his perspective, he was a nobody, and then he beat the communist system in Europe. It’s amazing.”

Even though he’s a father of two and now approaching his forties, there’s something similarly boyish about Kwiatkowski’s fascination with the history of his hometown, which produced such notable figures as writer Günter Grass and the country’s new prime minister, Donald Tusk. 

The Jewish cemetery in Gdańsk

BARTOSZ BAŃKA FOR THE BEET

The Red Mouse Granary building, which served as a ghetto for Gdańsk Jews

THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

The new memorial plaque on Granary Island

BARTOSZ BAŃKA FOR THE BEET

Back in Gdańsk, Kwiatkowski takes me on a tour of Jewish cemeteries that the local council demolished after the antisemitic purge in 1968; long grass has grown over what was once holy ground. A small community group now funds the maintenance of these ruins, which antisemites desecrate with tragic regularity.

As well as cheering on the change in government, Kwiatkowski is currently celebrating a rare victory in memorializing the past: Alongside local journalist Dorota Karaś, he successfully campaigned for the site of the former Red Mouse Granary — where the Nazis imprisoned local Jews before transporting them to concentration camps — to be officially commemorated. The local authorities have now installed a plaque marking the spot where “the German Nazis created a ghetto for Gdańsk Jews,” written in Hebrew, Polish, German, and English. 

But for every victory, there’s a new controversy, it seems. On Tuesday, far-right lawmaker Grzegorz Braun doused a menorah in Poland’s parliament building, lit with candles for Hanukkah, with a fire extinguisher — to near-universal condemnation. Kwiatkowski called for action in response to Braun’s antisemitic attack and promptly received an invite from Gdańsk’s mayor to take part in a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony at city hall alongside representatives of the local Jewish community. 

Grzegorz Kwiatkowski at the site of the former Jewish ghetto in Gdańsk

BARTOSZ BAŃKA FOR THE BEET

Primo Levi and Theodor Adorno disagreed about whether there could be poetry after Auschwitz. Perhaps it takes not just poets but also musicians, historians, and even quixotic jesters to preserve the memory of the Holocaust in the lands where it was committed. As Kwiatkowski wrote on social media after the ceremony at city hall, Gdańsk is a city that remembers. 

[fleetwood-mac-news]

👀 from @popmusicto • Fleetwood Mac: The Alternate Albums Collection [RSD] This 8LP or 6CD box set features alternate versions of Fleetwood Mac's six biggest albums: 'Fleetwood Mac', "Rumours', 'Tusk', 'Fleetwood Mac Live', 'Mirage' and "Tango In The Night'. These curated albums feature unique alternate takes of each song taken from the original album sessions. They are sequenced to mimic the original tracklisting of each album, thus creating an 'alternate' version of the album. Many of these versions appeared on Super Deluxe packages on CD but have only ever been put together as individual albums on vinyl for various Record Store Day events over the past decade. This box set brings them all together. 😍 Let us know in the comments if this is something you’ll be picking up on RSD Black Friday. #FleetwoodMac #RSD #AlternateCollection #RSDBF #Rumours #Tusk #Mirage #FleetwoodMacLive #TangoInTheNight #FleetwoodMacVinyl #StevieNicks #blackfriday2022 https://www.instagram.com/p/ClPBM_EvaOV/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[thoughtlessarse]

Massive flooding in Central Europe has killed five people in Poland and one in the Czech Republic, officials said. The number of flood victims in southwestern Poland rose from one to five after the body of a surgeon returning from hospital duty was found in the town of Nysa, firefighters said. Earlier, the bodies of two women and two men were found separately in the towns of Bielsko-Biala and Lądek-Zdroj and in two villages. Water has subsided in those areas since then, but experts are warning of a flood threat in Opole, a city of some 130,000 residents, where the Oder River has reached high levels. Concerns have also been raised in the city of Wroclaw, home to some 640,000 residents. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has convened an emergency government session to consider special measures to speed up financial and other support to flooding victims. Police in the Czech Republic said one woman drowned in the north east, which has been pounded by record rainfalls since Thursday. Seven other people were missing on Monday, up from four a day earlier. The floods have already killed six people in Romania and one in Austria.

continue reading

[tailsrevane]

[comic review] aliens vs. predator (1989-91)

writer: randy stradley artists: phil norwood & karl story 

as the story goes, the first alien vs. predator comics were the result of a brainstorming session between writers and executives at dark horse comics. they were apparently initially discussing doing some sort of crossover with dc comics, and as we’ll see in part 2 of this review that would eventually end up happening. but during the meeting they apparently realized that they could get started with a pretty big crossover between two entities they already owned. it would be simpler to pull off, and more profitable for them if it worked out.

the first alien vs. predators stories appeared as in issues 34-36 of the dark horse presents anthology series in 1989. with the success of this trial balloon, dark horse would move on to give alien vs. predator its own 4-issue miniseries in 1990, with the previously anthologized short story collected as alien vs. predator #0. the last story considered part of this run was another short that appeared in the dark horse presents fifth anniversary special in 1991. collectively, the two short stories acted as a sort of prologue and epilogue to the miniseries.

the story here is understandably quite straightforward, but considering some of the media tie-in comics i’ve slogged through recently (robocop vs. terminator…) i was pleasantly surprised by just how well-executed the whole thing is. i’m on record as a paul w.s. anderson stan and an unironic fan of his avp movie in particular, but i gotta say i actually think the story in this comic makes a lot more sense and i’d love to see a movie somewhat closer to this. (i still want the paul w.s. anderson movie though. i’m greedy.)

i appreciate the setting being alien’s futuristic one rather than predator’s contemporary one. the mechanics of getting the xenomorphs and yautja to fight each other are pretty similar between this and the movie, with the yautja dropping some xenomorph eggs on a world to hunt them for sport. and machiko being adopted by broken tusk–the yautja she befriends–is also echoed in the movie with lex being adopted by scar.

so the broad strokes are similar, it’s mostly just the setting and details that are different. plus the comic was able to be a bit less restrained with huge clashes between multiple xenomorphs and yautja. i’m really glad this crossover is as good as it is, and it’s got me looking forward to further stories set in this continuity.

b-rank

[brn1029]

On this date in music history. Not a lot of stuff, but some milestone moments frozen in time….

November 10th

2015 - Allen Toussaint

Allen Toussaint the American musician, songwriter, composer, record producer, and influential figure in New Orleans R&B died aged 77 while on tour in Madrid, Spain. Many artists recorded his songs including; 'Mother-in-Law', 'Fortune Teller', 'Ride Your Pony', 'Working in the Coal Mine', 'Here Come the Girls', 'Yes We Can Can' and 'Southern Nights'. Alison Krauss and Robert Plant covered 'Fortune Teller' on their 2007 album Raising Sand.

2014 - The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones faced a battle to win a $12.7m (£7.9m) insurance claim for concerts they postponed when Mick Jagger's girlfriend died. L'Wren Scott took her own life in March, prompting the Stones to postpone a tour of Australia and New Zealand. The group had taken out a policy to be paid in the event shows were cancelled due to the death of family members or others, including Scott. But underwriters said Scott's death may not be covered by the policy.

1997 - Tommy Tedesco

American session guitarist Tommy Tedesco died of lung cancer aged 67. Described by "Guitar Player" magazine as the most recorded guitarist in history recording with The Beach Boys, Everly Brothers, Supremes, The Monkees, The Association, Barbra Streisand, Elvis Presley, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Zappa, Sam Cooke, Cher, and Nancy and Frank Sinatra. And played on many TV themes including Bonanza, The Twilight Zone, M*A*S*H and Batman.

1979 - Fleetwood Mac

Fleetwood Mac scored their second UK No.1 album with the double set 'Tusk', the 12th album by the British/American rock band.

1979 - Eagles

The Eagles went to No.1 on the US singles chart with 'Heartache Tonight', the group's 5th and final US No.1. It made No.40 in the UK.

1975 - David Bowie

David Bowie was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'Space Oddity' the track was first released in 1969 to tie in with the Apollo 11 moon landing. Rick Wakeman (former keyboard player with Yes) provided synthesizer backing. Bowie would later revisit his Major Tom character in the songs 'Ashes to Ashes', 'Hallo Spaceboy' and 'Blackstar'.

1975 - Patti Smith

Patti Smith released her debut studio album Horses. Produced by John Cale, Horses has since been viewed by critics as one of the greatest and most influential albums in the history of the American punk rock movement, as well as one of the greatest albums of all time. Horses has also been cited as a key influence on a number of acts, including Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Smiths, R.E.M. and PJ Harvey.

1973 - Elton John

Elton John started a eight week run at No.1 on the US album chart with 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road', the singers third US No.1. The album which had the working titles of Vodka and Tonics and Silent Movies, Talking Pictures, is his best selling studio album with worldwide sales of over 15 million copies. Recorded at the Château d'Hérouville, the album contains the Marilyn Monroe tribute, 'Candle in the Wind', as well as three successful singles: 'Bennie and the Jets', 'Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting' and the title track.

1967 - The Beatles

The Beatles filmed three promotional films for their new single ‘Hello Goodbye’ at the Saville Theatre in London. Each of the three film clips featured different costumes and Beatle antics. In the first film they wear their Sgt. Pepper uniforms, for the second The Beatles are wearing everyday clothes, the third film clip features shots from the first two films, plus additional shots of (especially John) doing the twist. A Musician's Union ban on lip-sync broadcasts prevented the films being used on British television.

1955 - Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley attended the fourth Country Music Disc Jockey Convention in Nashville Tennessee. Back at his hotel Mae Boren Axton played him a demo of a new song she had written with Tommy Durden called 'Heartbreak Hotel'. Presley released the track as a single on January 27, 1956, his first on his new record label RCA Victor. The song gave him his his first No.1 one pop record.

[thewildbelladonna]

Photos from the recording of Tusk, courtesy of engineering assistant, Hernan Rojas.

PART 1 - PART 2 - PART 3 - PART 4 - PART 5

[todaysdocument]

Letter from Abraham Lincoln to King Samdetch Phra Paramendr Maha Mangkut of Siam, or, how to write a thank-you note (and gracefully decline a gift you don’t want), 2/3/1862

File Unit: Communications to Foreign Sovereigns and States, Volume 3, 1856 - 1865

Series: Letters to Foreign Sovereigns and Heads of State, 1829 - 1877

Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State, 1763 - 2002

Transcription:

Great and Good Friend:

     I have received Your Majesty's two letters of the date of February 11th, 1861.

I have also received in good condition the royal gifts which

accompanied those letters, - namely, a sword of costly material and an ex-

quisite workmanship:  a photograph likeness of Your Majesty and

of Your Majesty's beloved daughter;  and also two elephants' tusks of

length and magnitude such as indicate that they could have belonged

only to an animal which was a native of Siam.

     Your Majesty's letters show an understanding that our

laws forbid the President from receiving these rich presents as  personal

treasures.  They are therefore accepted in accordance with Your Majesty's

desire as tokens of your good will and friendship for the American

People.  Congress being now in session at the capital, I have had

great pleasure in making known to them this manifestation of Your

Majesty's munificence and kind consideration.

     Under their directions the gifts will be placed among the

archives of the Government, where they will remain perpetually as

tokens of mutual esteem and pacific dispositions more honorable to

both nations than any trophies of conquest could be.

I appreciate most highly Your Majesty's tender of good

offices in forwarding to this Government a stock from which a supply

of elephants might be raised on our own soil.  This Government would

not hesitate to avail itself of a  generous an offer if the object were one

which could be made practically useful in the present condition of the

United States.

     Our political jurisdiction, however, does not reach a latitude

so low as to favor the multiplication of the elephant, and stream on land

as well as on water, has been our best and most efficient agent of

transportation in internal commerce.

[page 2]

I shall have occasion at no distant day to transmit to Your

Majesty some token of indication of the high sense which this Government

entertains of Your Majesty's friendship.

     Meantime, wishing for Your Majesty a long and happy life.

and for the generous and emulous People of Siam the highest possible

prosperity, I commend both of the blessing of Almighty God

                                      Your Good Friend,

                                      Abraham Lincoln

Washington, February 3, 1862

By the President:

      William H. Seward,

      Secretary of State

------------------------------------

Abraham Lincoln,

President of the United State of America

To Her Majesty Dona Isabel II

By the Grace of Lord and the Constitution

of the Spanish Monarchy Queen of Spain,

                                  etc., etc.

Great and Good Friend:

     I have received the letter which Your

Majesty was pleased to address to me on the 28th of October, last, announ-

cing that Her Royal Highness the Infanta Dona Maria Christ-

ina, spouse of His Royal Highness the Infante Don Sebastian

Gabriel, had on the 20th of the preceding August Safely given birth

to a Prince upon whom at the baptismal font had been bestowed the

names of Francisco, Maria Isabel Gabriel Pedro.

     I participate in the satisfaction which this happy even has

afforded Your Majesty's royal Family, and offer my sincere

[goldduststevie]

Stevie's essential demos and outtakes:

 S - songs, Part 1.

* indicates unreleased songs.

Sable On Blonde - ever since the Deluxe Edition of The Wild Heart was released in 2016 I've been obsessed with this outtake.

Sanctuary * - a great song from the Bella Donna recordings, for some reason Stevie has never recorded it again.

She Loves Him Still - this is from the Rock A Little recordings in 1984. Stevie rerecorded it in 2014 for 24 Karat Gold.

Secret Love - cute demo from the Tusk recordings that became the lead single of the In Your Dreams album in 2011.

Smile At You - probably Stevie's angriest song. This is from the Mirage sessions but there's also a beautiful demo from the Tusk sessions. A toned down version was eventually recorded for Say You Will in 2003.

Sisters Of The Moon - I went with the piano demo because it's absolutely wonderful but every version of this song is great, like this other demo with background vocals by Christine.

Silver Springs * - This demo is from February 1976. The live version from 1997 made this song famous but it was also performed live around the time of this demo, like here in 1976 and in early 1977, this performance was even filmed.

[1962dude420-blog]

Today we remember the passing of Peter Green who Died: July 25, 2020 in Canvey Island, Essex, England

Peter Allen Greenbaum (29 October 1946 – 25 July 2020), known professionally as Peter Green, was an English blues rock singer-songwriter and guitarist. As the founder of Fleetwood Mac, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. Green's songs, such as "Albatross", "Black Magic Woman", "Oh Well", "The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown)" and "Man of the World", appeared on singles charts, and several have been adapted by a variety of musicians.

Green was a major figure in the "second great epoch" of the British blues movement. Eric Clapton praised his guitar playing, and B.B. King commented, "He has the sweetest tone I ever heard; he was the only one who gave me the cold sweats." Green was interested in expressing emotion in his songs, rather than showing off how fast he could play. His trademark sound included string bending, vibrato, and economy of style.

In June 1996, Green was voted the third-best guitarist of all time in Mojo magazine. In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked him at number 58 in its list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". Green's tone on the instrumental "The Super-Natural" was rated as one of the 50 greatest of all time by Guitar Player in 2004.

Peter Allen Greenbaum was born in Bethnal Green, London, on 29 October 1946, into a Jewish family, the youngest of Joe and Ann Greenbaum's four children. His brother, Michael, taught him his first guitar chords and by the age of 11 Green was teaching himself. He began playing professionally by the age of 15, while working for a number of East London shipping companies. He first played bass guitar in a band called Bobby Dennis and the Dominoes, which performed pop chart covers and rock 'n' roll standards, including Shadows covers. He later stated that Hank Marvin was his guitar hero and he played the Shadows' song "Midnight" on the 1996 tribute album Twang. He went on to join a rhythm and blues outfit, the Muskrats, then a band called the Tridents in which he played bass. By Christmas 1965 Green was playing lead guitar in Peter Bardens' band "Peter B's Looners", where he met drummer Mick Fleetwood. It was with Peter B's Looners that he made his recording début with the single "If You Wanna Be Happy" with "Jodrell Blues" as a B-side. His recording of "If You Wanna Be Happy" was an instrumental cover of a song by Jimmy Soul. In 1966, Green and some other members of Peter B's Looners formed another act, Shotgun Express, a Motown-style soul band which also included Rod Stewart, but Green left the group after a few months.

In October 1965, before joining Bardens' group, Green had the opportunity to fill in for Eric Clapton in John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers for four gigs. Soon afterwards, when Clapton left the Bluesbreakers, Green became a full-time member of Mayall's band from July 1966. Green made his recording debut with the Bluesbreakers in 1966 on the album A Hard Road (1967), which featured two of his own compositions, "The Same Way" and "The Supernatural". The latter was one of Green's first instrumentals, which would soon become a trademark. So proficient was he that his musician friends bestowed upon him the nickname "The Green God". In 1967, Green decided to form his own blues band and left the Bluesbreakers.

Green's new band, with former Bluesbreaker Mick Fleetwood on drums and Jeremy Spencer on guitar, was initially called "Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac featuring Jeremy Spencer". Bob Brunning was temporarily employed on bass guitar (Green's first choice, Bluesbreakers' bassist John McVie, was not yet ready to join the band). Within a month they played at the Windsor National Jazz and Blues Festival in August 1967, and were quickly signed to Mike Vernon's Blue Horizon label. Their repertoire consisted mainly of blues covers and originals, mostly written by Green, but some were written by slide guitarist Jeremy Spencer. The band's first single, Spencer's "I Believe My Time Ain't Long" with Green's "Rambling Pony" as a B-side, did not chart but their eponymous debut album made a significant impression, remaining in the British charts for 37 weeks. By September 1967, John McVie had replaced Brunning.

Although classic blues covers and blues-styled originals remained prominent in the band's repertoire through this period, Green rapidly blossomed as a songwriter and contributed many successful original compositions from 1968 onwards. The songs chosen for single release showed Green's style gradually moving away from the group's blues roots into new musical territory. Their second studio album Mr. Wonderful was released in 1968 and continued the formula of the first album. In the same year they scored a hit with Green's "Black Magic Woman" (later covered by Santana), followed by the guitar instrumental "Albatross" (1969), which reached number one in the British singles charts. More hits written by Green followed, including "Oh Well", "Man of the World" (both 1969) and the ominous "The Green Manalishi" (1970). The double album Blues Jam in Chicago (1969) was recorded at the Chess Records Ter-Mar Studio in Chicago. There, under the joint supervision of Vernon and Marshall Chess, they recorded with some of their American blues heroes including Otis Spann, Big Walter Horton, Willie Dixon, J. T. Brown and Buddy Guy.

While touring Europe in late March 1970, Green took LSD at a party at a commune in Munich, an incident cited by Fleetwood Mac manager Clifford Davis as the crucial point in his mental decline. Communard Rainer Langhans mentions in his autobiography that he and Uschi Obermaier met Green in Munich, where they invited him to their Highfisch-Kommune. Fleetwood Mac roadie Dinky Dawson remembers that Green went to the party with another roadie, Dennis Keane, and that when Keane returned to the band's hotel to explain that Green would not leave the commune, Keane, Dawson and Mick Fleetwood travelled there to fetch him. By contrast, Green stated that he had fond memories of jamming at the commune when speaking in 2009: "I had a good play there, it was great, someone recorded it, they gave me a tape. There were people playing along, a few of us just fooling around and it was... yeah it was great." He told Jeremy Spencer at the time "That's the most spiritual music I've ever recorded in my life." After a final performance on 20 May 1970, Green left Fleetwood Mac.

Green was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent time in psychiatric hospitals undergoing electroconvulsive therapy during the mid-1970s. Many sources attest to his lethargic, trancelike state during this period. In 1977, Green was arrested for threatening his accountant David Simmons with a shotgun. The exact circumstances are the subject of much speculation, the most famous being that Green wanted Simmons to stop sending money to him. In the 2011 BBC documentary Peter Green: Man of the World, Green stated that at the time he had just returned from Canada needing money and that, during a telephone conversation with his accounts manager, he alluded to the fact that he had brought back a gun from his travels. His accounts manager promptly called the police, who surrounded Green's house.

In 1979, Green began to re-emerge professionally. With the help of his brother Michael, he was signed to Peter Vernon-Kell's PVK label, and produced a string of solo albums starting with 1979's In the Skies. He also made an uncredited appearance on Fleetwood Mac's double album Tusk, on the song "Brown Eyes", released the same year.

In 1981, Green contributed to "Rattlesnake Shake" and "Super Brains" on Mick Fleetwood's solo album The Visitor. He recorded various sessions with a number of other musicians notably the Katmandu album A Case for the Blues with Ray Dorset of Mungo Jerry, Vincent Crane from The Crazy World of Arthur Brown and Len Surtees of The Nashville Teens. Despite attempts by Gibson Guitar Corporation to start talks about producing a "Peter Green signature Les Paul" guitar, Green's instrument of choice at this time was a Gibson Howard Roberts Fusion guitar. In 1986, Peter and his brother Micky contributed to the album A Touch of Sunburn by Lawrie 'The Raven' Gaines (under the group name 'The Enemy Within'). This album has been reissued many times under such titles as Post Modern Blues and Peter Green and Mick Green – Two Greens Make a Blues, often crediting Pirates guitarist Mick Green.

In 1988 Green was quoted as saying: "I'm at present recuperating from treatment for taking drugs. It was drugs that influenced me a lot. I took more than I intended to. I took LSD eight or nine times. The effect of that stuff lasts so long ... I wanted to give away all my money ... I went kind of holy – no, not holy, religious. I thought I could do it, I thought I was all right on drugs. My failing!"

Enduring periods of mental illness and destitution throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Green moved in with his older brother Len and Len's wife Gloria, and his mother in their house in Great Yarmouth, where a process of recovery began. He lived for a period on Canvey Island, Essex.

Green married Jane Samuels in January 1978; the couple divorced in 1979. They had a daughter, Rosebud(born 1978).

Green died on July 25, 2020 at the age of 73.

[dndeed]

Critical Role Miniature Rollout: C2E99

With Andrew Harshman

An archive and review of the minis used on Critical Role.

So no peace talk battle royale, no kraken attack, no Cerberus Assembly coup. Tis a shame, could have been a combat map for the ages. 

But that’s alright, I’m willing to give peace a chance, it’s time for Critical Role Miniature Rollout Campaign 2 Episode 99!

Closing Thoughts and Predictions

I am chomping at the bit to see what miniature we get for next episode’s dragon turtle battle. Critical Role has a track record of featuring impressive massive creature minis. Thordak, Vecna, and the Kraken come to mind. This dragon turtle is sure to make a splash, if you’ll forgive the pun. Let’s take a look at some picks that may appear in Episode 100.

Legendary Adventures #031 Dragon Turtle

This is a prepainted 3x3 inch base from the latest Pathfinder Battles Miniatures set. Even includes a translucent water effect. This is a very affordable miniature at a cool $12 at the time of posting. But I don’t think it quite has the scale to live up to the “island” DM description.

Reaper Bones 4 Dragon Turtle

This is a bit closer to island-sized. The campaign 1 Kraken was also a Reaper brand figure. There is however an issue of availability. This figure has been sent to Reaper Bones 4 Kickstarter backers, but is not yet available on reapermini.com. However, CR has some legit hookups when it comes to unreleased products. I would not be surprised to see this figure. In fact, I am willing to throw down a formal prediction. 

Reaper Bones 4 Dragon Turtle painted by Iron Tusk Painting, this Thursday. Be there.

Lastly, I wanted to quickly mention the possibility of a resin printed mini. There are several readily available dragon turtle models online. A quick search of Etsy reveals three such models available for physical purchase. Despite the general lack of resin prints on Critical Role, still theoretically possible.

On Thursday we shall see just what kind of dragon turtle the Mighty Nein has drawn the ire of. Ought to be an exciting 100th session.

#criticalroleminiaturerollout

[mariacallous]

WARSAW, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Poland's parliament backed Donald Tusk to become prime minister on Monday, ending eight years of nationalist rule and putting the country on track for a thawing of relations with the European Union.

Poland has seen tens of billions of euros of European Union funds frozen due to a dispute with Brussels over democratic standards, but Tusk, a former European Council president, has vowed to mend relations and unblock the cash.

Tusk got the votes of 248 lawmakers while 201 were against.

"I will be indebted to all those who trusted in this new, wonderful Poland, to all those who trusted us ...and decided to make this historic change," he told the chamber after the vote.

Earlier in the day former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party lost a vote of confidence.

His party came first in the Oct. 15 election and got the first shot at forming a government, but it lacked necessary majority and all other parties had ruled out working with it.

PiS has cast itself as a defender of Poland's sovereignty and identity that has also improved living standards for millions by boosting social benefits and the minimum wage.

Critics, however, say PiS undermined judicial independence, turned state-owned media into a propaganda outlet and fomented prejudice against minorities such as immigrants and the LGBT community.

In a sign of the deep personal animosity PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski feels towards Tusk, he stormed onto the podium following the vote and told the new prime minister - "I know one thing, you are a German agent!"

During the election campaign PiS regularly painted Tusk as Berlin's stooge.

Tusk will give a speech to parliament on Tuesday laying out his government's plans and will then face a vote of confidence.

CHALLENGES

While the mood among Tusk supporters in parliament and beyond was jubilant, events elsewhere in Warsaw highlighted the challenges he will face in unblocking the frozen EU cash.

Poland's Constitutional Tribunal ruled on Monday that judicial reform legislation which Poland needed to pass in order to access the funds was unconstitutional.

It reached the same conclusion about penalties imposed by the European Union's top court before it reaches a final ruling, known as interim measures.

While Tusk is seen in Brussels as a leader who can set the bloc's largest eastern member back on a pro-EU course, officials have said that no funds will be released without judicial reforms.

Analysts say this task could be complicated not only by the presence of judges appointed under an overhaul implemented by PiS which critics say politicised the courts, but also by the veto power of President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally.

Nevertheless, congratulations poured in from abroad, including from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

"Your experience and strong commitment to our European values will be precious in forging a stronger Europe, for the benefit of the Polish people," she wrote on social media platform X.

RECORD TURNOUT

Poland's October election saw a record turnout of 74% with people in some locations queueing for hours to vote.

"They didn't give up in these lines, they just stayed there until midnight and they still wanted to be part of this change," parliament speaker Szymon Holownia told reporters.

"Dear members of parliament ... the power that we showed on Oct. 15 is in our hands."

There has been huge interest in the parliament's workings since the election and subscriptions to its YouTube channel have rocketed.

Certain sessions have attracted well over a million viewers on the platform and one Warsaw cinema showed Monday's session on the big screen, attracting so much interest that around 2,000 people were on a waiting list for tickets.

Some observers have also attributed the surge in interest in part to the appointment of Holownia as speaker. His wise-cracking while running debates has charmed many who first got to know him as a host of a prime-time talent show.

Lech Walesa, Poland's first democratically elected president after the fall of communism, who led the Solidarity trade union and won the Nobel Peace Prize, was in attendance and received multiple standing ovations from the coalition set to take power.

Dressed in a sweater bearing the word "Constitution", which opponents of PiS wear to show their condemnation of what they say was democratic backsliding under the party's rule, Walesa, 80, had just left hospital after a bout of COVID to attend.

[pwpoetry]

Q&A with Dan Chiasson

M: How would you describe the arc of The Math Campers, and what was the process like shaping the collection?

D: It came together in two intervals of intense concentration, both informed by place. I stayed for a few weeks in the James Merrill Apartment in Stonington, Connecticut, as their Merrill fellow. This was the Fall of '17. I took with me maybe a dozen finished poems, hoping to write more. The experience of being in Merrill's home, among his books and objects, was, for me, deeply strange, almost frightening. All of these objects, paint colors, wallpaper, the light itself--these were things I knew from Merrill's work. It was like a sustained dream or deja vu.

I've never been able to fully unbelieve in the occult. I'm just totally drawn to the ambience of the supernatural. I always have been. As a kid I had satanic books, artifacts, a copy of the Necronomicon which I bought at Waldenbooks in the Burlington Square Mall, in the aisle with the calendars and thermoses.

Merrill's home is full of presences, ghosts. His ouija sessions were held right there in the dining room. The voices in his great long poem, “The Changing Light at Sandover,” do not feel like brilliant confections. They feel real. I felt his presence as real. That's one source for the eerie call and response format I use in the book. There were also literal calls and responses. I pulled down from one of Merrill's shelves a book by Frank Bidart, inscribed to Merrill. I then, while sitting at Merrill's desk, wrote an email to Frank, who wrote back. It's all quoted in the book! Then in the Spring of '19, when I thought the book was finished, I had another intense spate of working. I was home in Vermont a lot that spring, driving around in the mountains. It was too cool to swim, but I drove out to Greensboro, the most beautiful town in Vermont, my favorite place, and looked at Lake Caspian. A vision of civic rectitude, hope, trust, citizenship came to me. There's a circus camp in that town. I thought about teenagers, misfits, artsy kids, queer kids, about the dangers of life skidding off the tracks when you're that age if you're not appropriately supported. We have teenage sons, so I thought about them. I wrote most of the title poem in that period, and it's really very simple, what it's about: Vermont. (It's also about the joke that is the meritocracy, and about the climate emergency...) M: The finely layered atmosphere and nostalgia of Bicentennial is palpable in parts of the Math Campers; likewise, the concern with how memory informs meaning. How do you see the two books speaking to one another? 

D: Thank you! The Math Campers begins by casting back to Bicentennial. They are linked in so many ways. Both are about the falsified or forged or forfeited vision of America, which we see, every day, exposed as a delusion. But I'm delusional, so I buy it more than I really should. Maybe, again, it's because I believe in the occult, or almost believe, or don't not believe. Both are about fathers and sons, and about the threat that toxicity will emerge between them, the necessity of abiding and imagining that relationship properly, so we don't get more violence or loneliness. I'm working through my life almost chronologically. Bicentennial is about my early childhood, which came back to me when my father died in 2009. In The Math Campers we pick up around high school. Parties, drinking, drugs, driving. Some of the best parties, the biggest parties, were in fields, so it's also about the stars and the mountains and the lake. One family had become very rich by selling bull semen. They're in the book. I had a job as a breakfast cook in high school. That's in there too. All of it cast as very sad and vanished now. M: I love the idea that the books are slowly chronicling your life in this way. Can you talk a bit about your relationship to form, and how you settle on some of the more so-called "experimental" modes you've worked in? Did you set out to write versions of plays, or did the poems naturally guide you to that more dynamic form? 

D: In this book, I wanted to show the process of composition that gets effaced when a poem is finished. Dreams, drafts, errors, all of it. I have several "poems" in the book that aren't poems, more like attempts at poems, things I might not sign my own name to; they're written by a poet who is both me and not me. I also wanted to show the process of reception: how a poem relies on readers, how it takes shapes in a stranger's mind and life. The arc of a poem from conception to reception, and on and on. I wanted to show both the hidden unconscious life of the poem and its social life, its existence in the real world. The play allowed me to write "verse" as distinct from poetry, if that makes sense. Lines of poetry I wouldn't write, but that a character might speak. And to distribute my feelings about Big Themes--love, betrayal, passing time--across multiple perspectives and motives. You can do that in a play; it's harder to do in the univocal space of a lyric poem.

M: I usually end by asking "Are there any particular texts or works of art with which you feel the book is in conversation?" but I suppose, on some level, that question/answer is enacted throughout the Math Campers. Nevertheless, is there anything you found yourself returning to as you wrote and shaped the book that might be pulsing beneath the more visible invocations? 

D: As you say, the book wears its influences on its sleeve! Not just books and poets. Fleetwood Mac's record Tusk; A Clockwork Orange; Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne; Lawrence Welk; they're all there. And there's no high/low distinction in my poems or in my life. What's better, "East Coker" by T.S. Eliot or "Think About Me" by Fleetwood Mac? Who knows, who cares. The truest autobiography of an artist is what they love, the songs and movies and lines of poetry they carry around in their heads. My work is autobiographical in many senses, but that's the truest and most powerful meaning of the word to me.