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NEIL YOUNG AND CRAZY HORSE

 He opened the bookshop, wearing a torn red T-shirt a girl made for him. It was nine, mood; contemplative. Yep, he'd purchased the new Neil Young from the pier's record store. The wind beat your brains, waves crazed, time for the surf very, very soon. Flicked his fringe, opened eyes wide, no customers yet, an Irish writer, old Ireland on top the book stack. Two floors stocked and burnished with dust, switch on the computer with sales, notes and Psychedelic Pill blasted out, to get lost, like Chet, even if get and just were meant to be swear words according to a Yorkshire teacher hallucinating on the rebel poets.

Scholars kiss the heat, Neil and the Horses chewing grass by the beach, with blurry clouds overhead, float flow, random associations blew, a piercing of sky to let loose a blissful rainfall. Ah, yeah, nostalgia, what used to be, head glow, sadness, you remind me of your ancestors, ethereal but underneath, spitting, angry. Sunset burn, blinded us, could not see anything, music placed in disbelief and aspiration. Way of life, turbulence, to commit or not, to another who loves you. Yes, a romantic ideal, gone to crimson flesh or golden screen saver, arisen from ashes bare. Heavy daydream, amp hiss, suggestion of harmony, put the silver gem into the mouth and see how the bloodstream takes it.

She walked in quietly, with the bell. Her hair once blond, face porcelain, grey-green evening gown, on a trail to the boat club convention, full moon beckon. He had seen her last night on television, plasma screened, a feature from when she was an actress. Oh goodness, she said, your playing Neil Young, that's my husband's hero. Yes, he said, it's the album of the year. Oh excellent, she said, I've ordered it online. You should support the pier, he retorted, did he stutter, might have been nervous. Anxious perhaps. Yes, she responded, I have given in to the needs of the ardent consumer. Break. I only know Harvest, she confessed and paused, wonderful memories. 

She bid farewell, no books, walked down the promenade. How odd, she thought, could of been my son, how confusing, perplexity, where had she landed, displaced, out of bounds, did she belong in movie land or here? Harvest, she remembered, yes, that was a former boyfriend in Los Angeles, the guy who other sweethearts dreamt of. Competition killed that romance. She sat beside her husband, steady and strong, watched the revival acts. Women were dancing, men drinking, some ancient and smiling, others awkwardly in bloom, and then, those, striving to make a place in the world, baffled by their greeting weans. I met a bookseller today, she said, he could tell our story, as if it were real.

YOKO ONO

      There is still a sense of forceful danger to Ono's early records, crystallised in Plastic Ono Band and Fly. When the needle crashes onto the vinyl and Lennon's guitar sparks into action, an incredible freedom flight emerges, which almost kicks Ono into a frenzy of screaming and screeching in retaliation, stretching beyond rock's safe language into free jazz assault. Spread across those albums is an intense physicality and an enjoyment of textured, studio experimentation. More uncontrolled than most of her far more valued contemporaries and less regular than some of the punk rock she was supposed to have been a pioneer of, she later fell into writing songs that weren't as daring or spontaneous but were pretty off the wall and once in a while she'd create something invigoratingly strange and thrillingly catchy. Ono is an outsider, despite her fame and age, she has a much needed arrogance to fight conventional derision and a continuous urge for adventure.
       
      On her collaboration with Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore she explores an unsteady, ceremonial territory which links back to her initial Cage inspired improvisations. Her guttural, harrowing  yet tender voice often setting fearful words against Gordon's sombre intonations. Layers of guitar tones map shivers and drones, ghostly whispers for her to build a waste landscape which sees the idyllic through challenge. There is a feeling that she has been stripped of her positivity and been left to experience a cold emptiness perturbed by strangled notes between the silence. It is sometimes rare for seasoned players to allow an element of worry in their music, an uncomfortable, disturbed concern of where the tunnel might extend. Often arid confrontation can be expected from forms of so-called oppositional interruption, Ono here does not devour chaos but instead seems to internalise it's force, casting a shield with vigilance, armed and amorous.

 

HOLY MOTORS

 The couple sat on wooden chairs in the old library, waiting for the writer to arrive.

 'I wonder what he'll say,' he said.  

         'I don't even know him,' she said.
                        'So your staying with a host family?'
      ' Yeah, they are fresh from Ohio. So I'm not learning much French.'
'I'd sooner get an apartment.'
                   'Why are you here then?'
                 'For the great, inexpensive wine and a music festival that's quite reasonable.'
      'Oh yeah, how could you tell I was an American abroad, I mean I'm not wearing a baseball cap.'
'I can sense things.'
           'Why must you always follow me round Europe when I'm trying to gain independence?'
                            'It's part of the game.'

The biographer turned up but he wasn't quite there yet. He had written a book on his famous cousin who had fled to Paris and an early demise. This was his first trip to France and his view from his hotel window was so fantastic it made him feel melancholic. He'd done the research, told the story from the contrasting viewpoints of the women in his cousin's life; a mother, a wife, a mistress, a sister. Although, when he read the extracts alone and aloud he realised that he'd prefer to publish his own diaries from the early days before they went their different ways to unknown futures.

A guy in a creased white shirt looked at his silver watch and left the room. He walked through the streets to a nearby cinema. Unsure if to watch Loach's La Part des Anges or Carax's Holy Motors he visited the pitch black bathroom and considered the choice before the match was struck. Glasgow would have been too much of a shock. The mysterious Carax presented a magic show, where the central being shifted identities, his dressing room driven by the elderly lady from Eyes Without a Face. He could be anybody with anyone in any situation at anytime in the city; a father, a phantom, a fetish, a dying man. While the limousines were talking, undercover.

Strolling back through the gardens he saw a pretty brunette ardently stretching and holding positions, balancing herself on a stone balcony. Her younger brother sat over there by the blossom tree, on the park bench, humming to himself, engrossed in video games.

CAT POWER

 When I first heard Ruin and Cherokee, the digital singles, I wondered if this was Cat Power's reinvention as a commercial artist. But with time, the songs revealed an unusual dichotomy. On the surface, there was a facade of pop thrills. You could hear a certain excitement, Marshall playing about with subtle dance constructions, moving forward into new, busier realms of communication. However, the themes were in unison with her sparse, past work. A mournful self-contemplation, dancing alone on a nightclub floor, swaying, the traveller, never quite satisfied, searching for the ideal state of being but still rooted in sadness and muffled remorse.

Sun, the album, is curious. Her intriguing manifestation of combining real and electronic instrumentation isn't solid, it's rather dislocated in places and primal as her most vital work often is. What threads the pattern, the emotional lucidity, is the way her voice has that roaming passion of the great soul singers, where everything is personal and universal. The heart cries out with a triumphant empathy in Nothing But Time while Iggy Pop gargles in the background. Yes, she has made edgier records before, descending into the core of love and pain and not all of Sun comes together yet I'm sort of thankful it doesn't. The knock and buzz of wild solitaire, modern designs for her, is met with an inevitable experience and ultimate wish for sublime resolution.

LOTUS PLAZA

The five smoked and sat on the beach. Between toes, dry sand. Throwing sticks, for the dogs. On the mountain was a giant bat, his huge wings caressing the air. They squinted at the sea as the sunlight swirled amongst them. Eight black boats trailed into view, slow, ominous, but of what tale did they tell? A blue canoe with frozen passengers nervously swung back on it's hind legs. Submarines, they were, distant ants, military. A private demonstration. One of the entourage switched on a portable radio. Journey into the unknown intentions of a stranger's smile. This contemplative feeling breezed right on by, you couldn't quite catch what the singer meant, ephemeral yet comforting, someone joked that he was armed with soft rocks.

"Alright folks, let's wrap it up and go for a break," the director said. The actors made their way out of the red gaffer lines stage left, some stretched their legs on ballet bars, others took a damaged elevator to the ground floor, a melody was played on a wooden piano. The green room was stocked with refreshments. But their clothes and their hair had become riddled with wet sand. The rehearsal studio was quiet, an invisible cobweb awaiting life. Pulsating, silent props. An unused laptop dribbled sound materiel. No one here now, an after event.

BLACK BANANAS

Slide one. Tall, striking, walking down the street, big hat over fringe, fringe over eyes. Slide two. Jeans with masking tape, shades, girl says to me, she's disgusting, she hates her audience, yeah, I say, you gotta problem with that. Slide three. Worse for wear here, peroxide, knocking back champagne, dancing, not singing, while the band go through their motions. Slide four. Furred up, hitting it, more beers backstage, she says to the organiser. Cops got in the car, put the blue light on the roof. Walkie talkie says she might be in the gold encrusted arcade, near the casino, on the boulevard, know what I'm talking about, you been there.

Those cats are cooking, Miles might say. But they are frying through a muggy mix. And that mix isn't accidental, keeping you removed, distancing the listener to the funked, metal frayed dynamics. Sure, the call-outs, filth melt guitars, elastic bass and aroma of zonked heat recalls George Clinton's endless empire. Though Herrema's couch empress struts in time to her own distinctive, asphalt ideology. Side A is effortless, not songs, blurred mood. Side B is memory, when the guests left the party.