Robert Frost - Nothing Gold Can Stay [1923]

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Redbone - Wovoka [1973 - USA]

Redbone is a Native American rock group that formed back in 1969 in Los Angeles, California. Some might remember their big hit "Come and Get Your Love" that reached #5 on the US Billboard charts in 1974. What I like most about this group is their creative incorporation of Native American musical elements into their songs. Wovoka is their 5th and most successful album.

My fav track on this album is definitely "Clouds In My Sunshine" which hip-hop producer Hi-Tek cleverly chopped up for "This Means You" (featuring Mos Def) off his and Talib Kweli's 2000 album, Train of Thought.

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Edgar Degas - L'etoile (The Star) [1978]

2pac - Keep Ya Head Up [1992]

sing along...



Some say the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice
I say the darker the flesh then the deeper the roots
I give a holler to my sisters on welfare
Tupac cares, if don't nobody else care
I know they like to beat ya down a lot
When you come around the block brothas clown a lot
But please don't cry, dry your eyes, never let up
Forgive but don't forget, girl keep your head up
And when he tells you you ain't nuttin don't believe him
And if he can't learn to love you, you should leave him
Cause sista you don't need him
And I ain't tryin to gas ya up, I just call em how I see em
You know it makes me unhappy (what's that)
When brothas make babies, and leave a young mother to be a pappy
And since we all came from a woman
Got our name from a woman and our game from a woman
I wonder why we take from our women
Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?
I think it's time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women, be real to our women
And if we don't we'll have a race of babies
That will hate the ladies, that make the babies
And since a man can't make one
He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one
So will the real men get up
I know you're fed up ladies, but keep your head up

oooo child things are gonna get easier
ooooo child things are
get brighter

I remember Marvin Gaye, used to sing ta me
He had me feelin like black was tha thing to be
And suddenly tha ghetto didn't seem so tough
And though we had it rough, we always had enough
I huffed and puffed about my curfew and broke the rules
Ran with the local crew, and had a smoke or two
And I realize momma really paid the price
She nearly gave her life, to raise me right
And all I had ta give her was my pipe dream
Of how I'd rock the mic, and make it to tha bright screen
I'm tryin to make a dollar out of fifteen cents
It's hard to be legit and still pay tha rent
And in the end it seems I'm headin for tha pen
I try and find my friends, but they're blowin in the wind
Last night my buddy lost his whole family
It's gonna take the man in me to conquer this insanity
It seems tha rain'll never let up
I try to keep my head up, and still keep from gettin wet up
You know it's funny when it rains it pours
They got money for wars, but can't feed the poor
Say there ain't no hope for the youth and the truth is
it ain't no hope for tha future
And then they wonder why we crazy
I blame my mother, for turning my brother into a crack baby
We ain't meant to survive, cause it's a setup
And even though you're fed up
Huh, ya got to keep your head up

To all the ladies havin babies on they own
I know it's kinda rough and you're feelin all alone
Daddy's long gone and he left you by ya lonesome
Thank the Lord for my kids, even if nobody else want em
Cause I think we can make it, in fact, I'm sure
And if you fall, stand tall and comeback for more
Cause ain't nuttin worse than when your son
wants to kno why his daddy don't love him no mo'
You can't complain you was dealt this
hell of a hand without a man, feelin helpless
Because there's too many things for you to deal with
Dying inside, but outside you're looking fearless
While da tears, is rollin down your cheeks
Ya steady hopin things don't fall down this week
Cause if it did, you couldn't take it, and don't blame me
I was given this world I didn't make it
And now my son's getten older and older and cold
From havin the world on his shoulders
While the rich kids is drivin Benz
I'm still tryin to hold on to my survivin friends
And it's crazy, it seems it'll never let up, but
please... you got to keep your head up

Gabe Soriano - Demo 2005 [2005 - USA]

Collect all three!

Here's Gabe's first album, appropriately titled Demo 2005. Once again, all songs written by Gabe Soriano; all instruments played by Gabe Soriano.

BTW, stay tuned- Gabe tells me he's recording a new album this month.

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Día Prometido - [1971 - Spain]

This is the kind of stuff crate diggers freak out over, and not to mention pay big bucks for. But guess what? I'm kind enough to share it with you.

Día Prometido is comprised of a Chilean and an Iranian who live(d) in Spain. As you can see in the picture they get down on some interesting instruments including the santur which is an Iranian hammered dulcimer.

I dug up this 45" back in '05 in Madrid at El rastro (a really cool flea market that goes down every Sunday just outside of downtown).

I've been looking for the LP for years, so if anyone has it, let me know!

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Langston Hughes - Juke Box Love Song

I could take the Harlem night

and wrap around you,

Take neon lights and make a crown,

Take Lenox Avenue busses,

Taxis, subways,

And for your love song tone their rumble down.

Take Harlem's heartbeat,

Make a drumbeat,

Put it on record, let it whirl,

And while we listen to it play,

Dance with you till day-

Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.

Lô Borges - Lô Borges [1972 - Brazil]

For years I wondered- How is it that Milton Nascimento's album, Clube da esquina, is so much more amazing than his numerous other albums? Well, I finally figured it out. Clube da esquina is a collaboration with Lô Borges; and after listening to Lô's solo albums, you can really hear how he's responsible for what I would say are the most creative parts of that album.

So, if you're a fan of Clube da esquina, you need to give Lô a listen.

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Does Life Have Any Meaning?

From a church pamphlet:

Does life make any sense? For many people, it means only a slow death, agony that never ends. To be born, to suffer, to have hearts betrayed and broken, to labour simply to find food and shelter, then for it to disappear...Does life really have any meaning? We must never doubt!

Life, especially human life, knows its seasons. The gloom of autumn and the cold of winter are replaced with the living spring and an enchanted summer. Even though there is often rain and even hail in life, there are also rays of sunshine.

However, the highs that alternate with the lows, the return of health after an illness, prosperity, or the happiness of loves ones, these are not the true reasons that give my life meaning. I uncover the true sense in life by the power of my faith.

Gabe Soriano - Into the Noise [2006 - USA]

Prepare yourself as Gabe Soriano takes you Into the Noise!

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Cartoons in Graff

Ewok [New York]

Bons [Italy]

M. C. Escher - Three Worlds [1955]

"The only way to keep it is to give it away."

- Dr. Grant Henderson

Gabriel Soriano - The Love Juice Sessions [2008 - USA]

In a perfect world, Gabe, along with many other hardworking musician friends of mine would be full-time professional rock stars. I had the pleasure/curse of meeting this guy back in freshman year of college at Chico State and eventually rooming with him our sophomore year until he dropped out for what he calls "The School Of Rock" aka vagrancy. Not only is Gabe one of the most hardworking musicians I know, he is also one of the most talented. Gabe plays bass, guitar, piano, drums, percussion, and can figure any other instrument out once he gets his hands on it. On all three of Gabe's albums he writes the songs, sings them, and plays all the instruments. He truly is a one-man band. On stage, Gabe plays with a nifty device called a Loop Station that allows him to play each instruments one at a time and progressively layer them to give the effect of an entire band playing. Although still unsigned, Gabe has accomplished a lot on his own. He has self-funded 3 albums and 5 tours all in the past 4 years. He's also generated a small fan base through shows and MySpace. How does he do this without the aid of wealthy parents or sponsors? Shitty jobs. Gabe works at fast food restaurants for about 9 months out of the year and saves up, then uses that money to record, promote, and tour. On tour, he actually manages to make enough money on tips to get to his next destination and pay for the essentials: food, beer, and pot. He doesn't have to worry about lodging in his budget since he sleeps in his van.

Currently, Gabe is living in Santa Barbara, California- doing his own thing as well as playing in a pretty dope group called Wrong Again. Catch him live by checking his MySpace for upcoming shows or go harass him at Quiznos.

Here's his latest album The Love Juice Sessions.

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More From Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn [1938]

...And then there is the one cunt which is all, and this we shall call the super-cunt, since it is not of this land at all but of that bright country to which we were long ago invited to fly. Here the dew is ever sparkling and the tall reeds bend with the wind. It is here that the great father of fornication dwells, Father Apis, the mantic bull who gored his way to heaven and dethroned the gelded deities of right and wrong. From Apis sprang the race of unicorns, that ridiculous beast of ancient writ whose learned brow lengthened into a gleaming phallus, and from the unicorn by gradual stages was derived the late-city man of which Oswald Spengler speaks. And from the dead cock of this sad specimen arose the giant skyscraper with its express elevators and observation towers. We are the last decimal point of sexual calculation; the world turns like a rotten egg in its crate of straw. Now for the aluminum wings with which to fly to that far-off place, the bright country where Apis, the father of fornication, dwells. Everything goes forward like oiled clocks; for each minute of the dial there are a million noiseless clocks which tick off the rinds of time. We are traveling faster than the lightning calculator, faster than starlight, faster than the magician can think. Each second is a universe of time is but a wink of sleep in the cosmogony of speed. When speed comes to its end we shall be there, punctual as always and blissfully undenominated. We shall shed our wings, our clocks and our mantelpieces to lean on. We will rise up feathery and jubilant, like a column of blood, and there will be no memory to drag us down again. This time I call the realm of the super-cunt, for it defies speed, calculation or imagery. Nor has the penis itself a known size or weight. There is only the sustained feel of fuck, the fugitive in full flight, the nightmare smoking his quiet cigar. Little Nemo walks around with a seven-day hard on and a wonderful pair of blue balls bequeathed by the Lady Bountiful. It is Sunday morning around the corner from Evergreen Cemetery.

Gustav Klimt - Mäda Primavesi [1912]

Streaker Art on Trains in Chico, California

Emily Dickinson - #315 [1862]

He fumbles at your Soul

As Players of the Keys

Before they drop full Music on-

He stuns you by degrees-

Prepares your brittle Nature

For the Ethereal Blow

by fainter Hammers- further heard-

Then nearer- Then so slow

Your Breath has time to straighten-

Your Brain- to bubble Cool-

Deals- One- imperial- Thunderbolt-

That scalps your named Soul-

When Winds take Forests in their Paws-

The Universe- is still-

Shades Of Joy - Music of El Topo [1970 - USA]

Shades of Joy was a short-lived supergroup of a bunch of hippies jamming out some funky, trippy, and soothing grooves on a plethora of instruments. It's a mystery who was actually in this loose-knit group but supposedly Jerry Garcia was part of it. If you notice on the cover it says "arranged and conducted by Martín Fierro". After a little research I learned that Martín Fierro was a saxaphonist who played with not just The Dead but also The String Cheese Incident, David Grisman, Yonder Mountain String Band, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Sir Douglas Quintet, and the Allman Brothers, just to name a few- holy cow. Sadly, Matín Fierro aka "The Meester" passed away just last year.

El Topo is a concept album covering the soundtrack to cult director Alejandro Jodorowsky's film with the same name.

If you arn't familiar with Jodorwsky's movies, I recommend starting with La Montaña Sagrada (The Holy Mountain) and maybe a tab or two of acid- it's really really tripped out shit.

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An excerpt from Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn [1938]

...Again the dance hall, the money rhythm, the love that comes over the radio, the impersonal, wingless touch of the crowd. A despair that reaches down to the very soles of the boots, an ennui, a desperation. In the midst of the highest mechanical perfection to dance without joy, to be so desperately alone, to be almost inhuman because you are human. If there were life on the moon what more nearly perfect, joyless evidence of it could there be than this? If to travel away from the sun is to reach the chill idiocy of the moon, then we have arrived at our goal and life is but the cold, lunar incandescence of the sun. This is the dance of ice-cold life in the hollow of an atom, and the more we dance the colder it gets.

So we dance, to an ice-cold frenzied rhythm, to short waves and long waves, a dance on the inside of the cup of nothingness, each centimeter of lust running to dollars and cents. We taxi from one perfect female to another seeking the vulnerable defect, but they are flawless and impermeable in their impeccable lunar consistency. This is the icy white maidenhead of love's logic, the web of the ebbed tide, the fringe of absolute vacuity. And on this fringe of the virginal logic of perfection I am dancing the soul dance of white desperation, the last white man pulling the trigger on the last emotion, the gorilla of despair beating his breast with immaculate gloved paws. I am the gorilla who feels his wings growing, a giddy gorilla in the center of a satin-like emptiness; the night too grows like an electrical plant, shooting white-hot buds into velvet black space. I am the black space of the night in which the buds break with anguish, a starfish swimming on the frozen dew of the moon. I am the germ of a new insanity, a freak dressed in intelligible language, a sob that is buried like a splinter in the quick of the soul. I am dancing the very sane and lovely dance of the nostalgic gorilla. These are my brothers and sisters who are insane and unangelic. We are dancing in the hollow of the cup of nothingness. We are of one flesh, but separated like stars.

"Tell me what you need and I'll show you how to live without it."

- Warren Miller

Andy Warhol - Muhammad Ali

Antonio Carlos e Jocafi - Mudei de Id [1971 - Brazil]

A MPB masterpiece!

Thanks to Marcel Cruz of SacundinBenBlog for sharing this gem. Antonio Carlos e Jocafi are another one of my top discoveries of 2009. The opening track, "Você Abusou" floats me off to my happy place every time I listen to it. I once read Antonio Carlos and Jocafi were a rather popular duo in Brazil back in the 70s, but I can't seem to find much info on them. And to the best of my knowledge, this album is out of print. Definitely pick this one up.

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Hindu

probably my fav writer in the area.