Sad songs week, day three: KLAUS NOMI - Cold Song

In December 1982 Klaus Nomi performed ‘Cold Song’ from Purcell’s opera in Munich, Germany.

The audience were unaware that Klaus was suffering from AIDS.

Although frustrated with shortness of breath and fatigue Klaus was determined to perform to his home crowd.

6 months later Klaus Nomi died.

He was 39 years old.

Lyrics to Cold Song:

What Power art thou,
Who from below,
Hast made me rise,
Unwillingly and slow,
From beds of everlasting snow!

See'st thou not how stiff,
And wondrous old,
Far unfit to bear the bitter cold.

I can scarcely move,
Or draw my breath,
I can scarcely move,
Or draw my breath.

Let me, let me,
Let me, let me,
Freeze again...
Let me, let me,
Freeze again to death!

Sad songs week, day two: ABBA - The Day Before You Came

Guardian Music blog, Abba made Joy Division sound like Jive Bunny: LINK

The Church of Me blog about Abba: LINK

Sad songs week, day one: NICO - Frozen Warnings (1969)

YouTube comments:

JoelDionysus (1 week ago)
Nico is haunting and beautiful, her music is so mesmerizing and enthralling, it reaches out and pulls on me like a ghost from the Middle Ages demanding that I feel the pulse of the haunted spirts of the after live, and recognize the yearnings of those that have already die before us, pleading that we will acknowledge their dreams and help them to live on to into eternity.

Dennis Cooper blog about Nico: LINK

Harmonielehre

Mick Peter: Harmonielehre, Generator Projects, Dundee

What's another word for a telephone conversation? Really you'd need the renowned Inuit dictionary of snow to compare the hefty (reckoned, by conservative estimates, to approach around a million million) number of names firing across the synapses in a single half-second, and that figure arrived at on a brisk November afternoon when the mind is less wont to wander. Of these many phantoms the collection in Mick Peter's glossy Jesmonite menagerie Harmonielehre is but merely a selection of especially striking examples.
His Telephone Conversation is a mutant human/telephone hybrid whose coiling cords meld into striding limbs, flex bound tight over a muscular torso, high heels marching onward over a land peopled by his fellow monochromatic forms. The floor of the Generator is painted a lustrous black to highlight the vivid figures writhing for supremacy in a series of playful brawls, their slapstick conflicts played out before us between a parade of irreconcilable opposites, looking lively like a melange of playful paradox.
In the near corner an elegant white tribal sculpture, its brow furrowed by the effort of a thousand years’ inert solitude, has lost the nature vs. culture face-off against a perching eagle whose majestic lilac shit streams victoriously down his forehead. This is no abject humiliation, as that inscrutable face is offered as a blank canvas whose scars of avian discharge serve only to provide us with the prettiest of pictures.
The centre of the room is divided into two by the shiny grey Interference Pattern Screen, the barrier’s outlines appearing as undulating soundwaves carving up the wall’s surface, partitioning the room as it casts shadows of white noise against the gallery’s lights.
Meanwhile in the far corner a concrete-grey boxy-fingered hand bids a weary teary fond Wednesday Farewell in a state of languid resignation, waving what might be a snot-caked hankerchief or maybe just a loosely packed rolly-upper. Any sentimentality in the gesture is undermined by the figure’s bulky outsized awkwardness, its swollen touch ill at ease with delicate expressions.
Over in the smaller of the two spaces, the two drawing boards of Moldenke Fiddles On fight a brave battle against marauding hacksaws and the stabs of their setquare brethren. Bladed instruments melt and bend against the structures’ support, yet still they stand stoic, sliced-out holes forming windows of negative space in their resolute angled planes.
The sculptures stand with a bright cartoony charm, a playful stark graphic clarity, each insisting on its own lumpen materiality even against this sleek silken stage set. These objects seem to hint at a withheld narrative, a suggestion that their internal conflicts might yet be granted a happily smooth resolution, for after all everyone likes a happy ending, don’t they? Whatever the outcome, however intractable such problems might appear, these would still be engaging encounters to stand on the sidelines and cheer.

this is the end

Now here's a rather lovely and poignant photo set on Flickr. It's a collection of vintage "The End" cinema title cards and no matter how varied the series might be, there can only ever be one outcome.

Dill Pixels:
"The End: What started as a lark has turned into a collector's obsession. Just the typography alone attracted me first, but also I am fascinated by the variations on a very simple, limited theme. Looking at them in the The End pool, they make a kind of story of their own, of Hollywood (mostly) and the movie industry changing with the times. And every once in awhile you come across an end title treatment that dares to play with the convention or even poke fun at it. I must admit to feeling a bit of wistfulness, too: "The End" as recurring theme of life and death and saying goodbye to the wonderful fantasy, until next time..."

File under: Exotica/Esoterica

I've managed to whittle down to an easily digestible album-sized portion the playlist from last week's launch party.

File under: Exotica/Esoterica

1. Alain Goraguer – Ten Et Tiwa
2. Martin Denny – Cobra
3. Dick Hyman – Topless Dancers of Corfu
4. Alain Goraguer – Strip Tease
5. White Noise – Firebird
6. Martin Denny – Was It Really Love
7. Les Baxter – The Ancient Galleon
8. Delia Derbyshire – Gothic Submarine
9. Flamingos – I Only Have Eyes For You
10. Vladimir Ussachevsky – Wireless Fantasy
11. Delia Derbyshire – Environmental Studies
12. Ennio Morricone – Terrazza
13. Martin Denny – Quiet Village
14. Fabio Frizzi – Suono Aperto
15. Nurse With Wound – Coolorta Moon
16. Glenda Collins – It’s Hard To Believe It
17. Dick Hyman – Total Bells and Tony
18. Linda Scott – I’ve Told Every Little Star
19. Delia Derbyshire – Science and Health
20. Alain Goraguer – Piste 03
21. Claude Denjean – United We Stand
22. Mort Garson – Plantasia
23. The Blue Rondos – Little Baby
24. Alain Goraguer – La Femme
25. Martin Denny – Let Go (Canto de Ossanha)
26. Darlene Love – Strange Love
27. The Electronic Concept Orchestra – Misty
28. Earl Grant – Imitation Of Life

trinket

So the 2008 Turner prize was won by Mark Leckey, a fair result I think. Me and my mum went round the show on Monday, and we saw all the tables and chairs laid out in the Duveen galleries ready for the evening's ceremony. Too bad the dark horse Wilkes couldn't triumph, but she was always an outsider and my own attempt at a wager came to naught anyway.

There's an interview with the victor here, and he seems a nice bloke. His idea for a Two Ronnies-style variety show is an intriguing one.