orbis quintus

Apparently as people of North America grow older, the music that they are exposed to is so simple that they lose the innate ability to discern rhythm. I don’t even know how to react to this (as i know that i have no rhythm,) but find it very damned funny that the cultures used in comparison to the monolithic North American culture are Balkan.

The Aerovons were a bunch of kids, led by 16 year old Tom Hartman, who accidentally became the Dukes of Stratosphear, over 15 years too early, and with a single color on their palette.

Aerovons “World of You” this is the song that Hartman originally wrote, earning the Aerovons the ecstatic attention. Hartman could have been another Michael Brown, but then everything went wrong…..

Aerovons “Resurrection” This song should explain everything that went wrong with the Aerovons. They were a bunch of impressionable kids. They were jetted across the Atlantic to record in Abbey Road, and heard “Across the Universe” being recorded. “Resurrection” resulted, and “Across the Universe” hadn’t even been released yet. They were put under such a burning lamp of expectations that Hartman wilted, and turned into a mimic instead of a songwriter. Almost every one of their songs is a lush, soulful pastiche or reinterpretation of a Beatles song.

Poor bastards. If only they stayed home in good old St. Louis, they probably would have had a chance to grow naturally, and develop their own style.

I neglected to post what happened on Tuesday. Lou & I went with Stanislav & Sarah down to the bookstore with all of the remaindered books at the outlet mall in Gonzales. I bought Crossing California (with some crazy notion that it might be the lost second half of Fortress of Solitude, beamed from the ether into the mind of another author,) and Joan Didion’s White Album (as i was too ignorant to know that it’s the second collection, as Slouching Towards Bethelehem turns out to precede it, and it was on the shelf too,) while Lou bought a few Alan Bennett books which i swore that she already had. I don’t know whether my books are going to be anything i can embrace, but i cannot pass up cheap books.

Since we had the rest of the day to kill, we went for a drive across the Sunshine Bridge, where i intended to go up Hwy. 1 to Port Allen, to cross back over the Mississippi. Somehow, with the overcast, foggy weather, i managed to get turned around in Donaldsonville, and took us past Thibodaux, the exact opposite direction. Everyone was pleased with the outing except me, as i’m still wrestling with my belief that i rarely get lost. It’s even more frustrating that i used to drive this route when picking up those offshore rig samples from heliports.

Teardrop Explodes “Camera Camera” This is the version from the Zoology compilation. This sounds like the band Cope was describing in Head On! All of his ranting about how Balfe dragged the band down always seemed believable, but i thought it was just about him making them seem more tinny and dated in their end production. There’s some real muscle and menace in this, even if Cope sounds just a little flatly detached… not a complaint… i’m so happy to have them dragged into Nuggets territory where they seem to have belonged.

Teardrop Explodes “From Five Miles Up” An instrumental, but it’s a slightly dissonant little headtrip. Kinda filler here, but would have been great as part of live act. I’m amused with the obsession with the horror movie keyboards.

It’s strange to realize that the part of the book that took me ages to read, making me question whether i was even connecting with the book at all, turns out to be my favorite part. I must have been savoring the first half of Fortress of Solitude. For over a year, i’d read some passages, put down the book, return days later to an earlier potion, and might make it back up to where i left off the previous time. I was completely absorbed in Lethem’s Brooklyn. Somehow i’d stopped just short of the switchover of the narrative. When i realized one act had closed, and another was beginning, the fictional liner notes for Rude’s music seemed promising, but everything after…. damn it to hell!

The first chapter of Prisonaires portion had me aching with disappointment. What the fuck is up with the endless namechecking of the different CDs that Dylan’s putting in his wallet? And this is while he carries on a deconstructed, entirely too preciously self-aware fight with a girlfriend? How Hornbyesque is this? No, no, no…

From the dustjacket, i know that there is to be redemption. What really happened in the Rude house, the unveiling of who Dylan’s father really is, the hint of what happened to his mother, what is Mingus’ final fate…. all of these are in Prisonaires, but i hate the first person narration so much that I could have been (immensely) satisfied with Lethem ending the book in darkest ambiguity, right at what is currently the halfway point.

I still believe that the last few chapters of Fortress of Solitude will be worth the time, but it feels like half a great book is here, diminished by its second half.