One third of the followers of this blog are former members of the Ragged Bags...

(Actually, the blog just lost one of its six followers, so now 40% of the followers are former members of the Ragged Bags...)

Which is neither here nor there. Right now I am blogging in a vain attempt to hold onto what's left of my sanity. I would have liked to be at this gig:



Eli Keszler/Adam Bohman/Steve Beresford live at Cafe Oto, Dalston, London, 04/01/11

Or at any of the three performances of the musical that Talibam! wrote and performed with Sam Kulik: "Talibam! Goes To Bed with Sam Kulik and Discovers Atlantis" (click on the header and read more, if you care, or dare, to...)

YOKO (ONO), w/ Mirror and Dash

Plastic Ono Band w/Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, "Mulberry," 02/16/10

Update: the link in the header now leads to Mirror's new blog, NYC Ghosts & Flowers & Cream, instead of a clip of Henry Flynt holding forth in front of 112 Chambers Street, site of the building where Yoko Ono had her loft and produced a historic series of concerts in the early sixties.

Weasel hits the Big Apple...

But on the Planet Brooklyn, not the isle of Manhattoes, belted 'round by wharves...



Talibam! with Weasel Walter @ Zebulon, 12/23/09

Talibam! consists of Matt Mottel on synthesizer and Kevin Shea on drums & percussion. Weasel Walter joins them in this short clip filmed at Brooklyn's Zebulon club. Weasel Walter is on the far left playing electric guitar, small percussion instruments, drums, and bass clarinet. In the middle is Kevin Shea on drums, Matt Mottel is at the far right playing keyboards or synthesizer.

Skronk on the Run

"With anything, my aim seems to be to distort it. Distort it from what we know it as, even with music, with visual things. But the aim is to change it from what it is to see what it could be. To see the potential in it all. The point is to take a note and wreck the note and see in that note what else there is in it that a simple act like distorting it has caused." ---P.M., 1966

One born every minute.

3:AM Magazine has published an excerpt from Michael DeCapite's second novel, RUINED FOR LIFE!; here is an excerpt from that excerpt:

Cooper started out as my drinking buddy in New York and became my closest friend there. Or the one I spent the most time with. The first Friday after Flo threw me out was his birthday. I was driving the van, I decided to get him a book. I looked for it all over town and wound up on 18th Street. I walked into a used bookstore. The place was crowded with old books: they were falling off the shelves, they were stacked on the floor.

The clerk said “Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Struggles and Triumphs, the autobiography of P.T. Barnum.”

He pointed to a woman who was working in the stacks. “Ask her. She’s our circus expert.”

So I walked up——“’Scuse me, are you the circus expert?”

She stopped what she was doing.

Slowly, she came down a stepladder she was standing on. I hadn’t noticed that part. She was a midget. Her eyes were burning up at me.

Back at the counter, the guy was covering his face. He couldn’t believe I’d repeated this. What could I say? “He told me to say it”? She had to work with the guy. I told her what I was looking for. Without a word she led me to the back of the store, I followed her. She pulled Barnum off the shelf and handed it to me.

The clerk was shaking his head as he rang it up, we couldn’t even look at each other, we were too embarrassed.

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http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/senseless-nights-in-williamsburg/

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