NOTES

I’ll be in Stuttgart and Berlin until March 6th: and thus offline.

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Hungerik Dajn Ketsele Lin Jaldati Jiddische Lieder
Vanite des Vanite tout est Vanite Le Taximen Djossou Francois EP
San San Boys Pierre Tchana (feat. Poly-Rythmo) EP
Four Instruments – 1975 Cantilene Chamber Players Morton Feldman
Mo Awie Meyo K. Frimpong & His Cubano Fiestas EP
Java Plus Prince Buster The Message Dubwise
Give Her Banana Tony Johnson and His Carousel Band Jamaica Before Ska

Direct download: econ.mp3

…..uh….. well there’s an elephant around somewhere…..

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Tabouret (Claude Royet-Journoud and Alain Cressan) Privately printed
VIII Stepping Poems & other pieces (Fergal Gaynor) Miami University Press
Typographical Tourists: Tale of Tramping Printers (edited by Alastair M. Johnston) Poltroon Press
Everything Else (Darrell Gray & G.P.Skratz) Poltroon Press
… (Essays by Alastair Johnston) Poltroon Press
Life of Crime (Pat Nolan & Steve Lavoie, for the Black Bart Poetry Society) Poltroon Press
Anemones
Kuchela (Trinidad & Tobago)
Maria Dolores Salsa Habanero (Mexico)
Sriracha Super Hot Chilli Sauce (Thailand)
Pierde Almas Mezcal (Oaxaca)

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Eddie Woods has an interesting batch of his photographs on his site: including this of piero heliczer outside Ins and Outs Bookstore in Amsterdam in 1980.
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photo copyright © eddie woods 1980, 2012

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Whenever I need a prose-shot I turn to Tom Leonard’s journal. Read the entries for February 6th and January 27th.

Amused by Les Coleman’s witty sentences and drawings in Afterthunks I drifted to its publisher, Boekie Woekie in Amsterdam and their interesting list. Which reminded me I’d never linked to the excellent Coracle Press (whose Journal I also enjoy).

link

27’10.554″ for percussion Amadinda Percussion Group John Cage – Works for Percussion vol. 4
Abusua De Frank Baby Don’t Play Me Wayo

Direct download: writhm.mp3

pictures here.

Thinking of the bankruptcy of Kodak I was reminded of this paragraph from Mark Twain’s King Leopold’s Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule – and if you’re as ignorant of Leopold and his fiefdom as I was it’s worth a little research.

The kodak has been a sore calamity to us. The most powerful enemy that has confronted us, indeed. In the early years we had no trouble in getting the press to “expose” the tales of the mutilations as slanders, lies, inventions of busy-body American missionaries and exasperated foreigners who found the “open door” of the Berlin-Congo charter closed against them when they innocently went out there to trade; and by the press’s help we got the Christian nations everywhere to turn an irritated and unbelieving ear to those tales and say hard things about the tellers of them. Yes, all things went harmoniously and pleasantly in those good days, and I was looked up to as the benefactor of a down-trodden and friendless people. Then all of a sudden came the crash! That is to say, the incorruptible kodak — and all the harmony went to hell! The only witness I have encountered in my long experience that I couldn’t bribe. Every Yankee missionary and every interrupted trader sent home and got one; and now — oh, well, the pictures get sneaked around everywhere, in spite of all we can do to ferret them out and suppress them. Ten thousand pulpits and ten thousand presses are saying the good word for me all the time and placidly and convincingly denying the mutilations. Then that trivial little kodak, that a child can carry in its pocket, gets up, uttering never a word, and knocks them dumb!

I couldn’t sleep, so after doing some odds and ends I went out, before 6am. for a short walk. Still dark, no traffic yet on the main road beside the sea. As I reached the kerb, two foxes trotted by, following the white line in the centre of the roadway. They noticed me and the smaller flashed off into the dark towards the beach. The larger paused, regarded me calmly, then just continued to trot westward along the crown of the empty road, looking healthy, tail raised, seeming almost white and ghostly under the yellow sodium lamps.

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