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Blll's Interests
General
...that portion of the soundscape occupied by non-human creatures. Italian football. Doors (not principally but not entirely excluding The Doors) and walls (not including the icecream, but not excluding walls composed of gelati bricks). That's toasted almond, pistachio or green tea ice cream bricks. 'Underground' (or, as I prefer, 'Stuffed into large boxes and lost in the storage space') comics of the 80s and 90s from the likes of Kim Deitch, Terry Laban and those ones who got famous; also incredibly gory Japanese samurai ones like Kamui and Lone Wolf & Cub, but I can't honestly say I've looked at those for a decade (or gained a new interest in the meantime). STOOP REST: I'd forgotten all about Doug Allen and the magnificent Steven, but then I looked in an old Sainsbury's bag and was told to 'Eat some paste,' and it all came back on me. It can all come back on you at http://www.dougallencomics.com/ Diving with giant white slugs...
Music
From this year's purchases (as best as I can remember them): Edwyn Collins, The Magic Piper; Daft Punk, Human After All; The Doors, LA Woman (Remastered); Bjork, Volta; Von Sudenfed, Tromatic Reflexxions; Chinese Turkestan, The Muqam of the Dolan; Mukam Art Troupe of Xinjiang, Don't Torment Me, Dear (my favourite title so far); Evanthia Reboutsika and Politiki Kouzina, A Touch of Spice (Soundtrack); The Stooges, The Wierdness; Grinderman's first album; Giorgos Koumentakis, Loudovikos Ton Anogion, Nikos Xydakis and Psarantonis, Four Approaches to the Erotokritos; something by Ross Daly I can't remember the name of (it's _still_ downstairs); Xainides, O Karagiozis sti Giourovigiou (? my Greek is terrible); Southern Bitch, Strong Medicine; Fred Schneider's first solo album; Deerhoof, Friend Opportunity; The Olivia Tremor Control's Dusk at Cubist Castle. And Bill Frisell, even though it was only a download -- still, Bill Frisell! Lots of Motorhead. To celebrate the new series of Rome, Rubycon by Tangerine Dream on scratchy vinyl to do my ironing to. What do you mean, do I buy things purely because of what they are called? That's not going to apply to Mesopotamia by the B-52s (another download). Jarvis for a fiver out of T****'s -- every little **** helps, as he reflects on Running the World.
These just in: the remastered Piper at the Gates (for Astronomy Dominie really) and Siouxsie's Mantaray. Explosions in the Sky of course; Beta Band/bastard son of Beatles offshoot The Aliens so that I can sing 'We are the Aliens' and imagine the sitcom where they all live in at least seven houses like in Help or the Ten Houses of Eve. Still further reduced resistence to the notion of poverty has resulted in panic buying of the new Nick Cave so I can promenade in public doing that silly walk from Lazarus (which is genuinely how the resurrected stroll), plus Elbow because they managed to fit the expression 'of late' into a (great) song, 'Grounds for Divorce'. In fact all recent purchases are single song led: Guillemots 'Get Over It'; Hot Chip's 'Made in the Dark'. Got Black Francis's 'Seven Fingers' but haven't listened to it yet. Back to Barrett for 'See Emily Play' and the phrasing on 'Bike'; back to Scott Walker for general tilting, drifting and donkey-punching. Back to Faust for downloaded toothache.
..
Movies
I was an usherette at the Regal possibly from 76-78 (if only I could remember the past or indeed the future in any detail). So I must have seen Abba the Movie a lot, and Grease and Saturday Night Fever. A lot. 'They speak strangely but I understand.' Seeing something more than 23 times tends to erode your sense of taste, and you certainly stop watching for plot or character, you just look over their shoulders at the settings. So now when I go to the pictures as I still longingly call it, I turn into a giant wet eyeball that gets its lashes stuck to the seats and can't speak coherently about anything it sees. There was an early Cronenburg about a sharp rabid thing in people's oxters, an excellent Elvis movie about shrimps, and possibly some Emmanuelle films, but I stayed out in the corridor for those. And a fantastic ad for G & Ts that was just a big green bubbling screen with an electronic soundtrack (Jeff Wayne's finest few minutes -- and possibly the Human League's too.) In my head that goes on for hours, while the films take a few minutes each. That seems about right, unless you're Tarkovsky -- and you're not. Le Diner de Cons.
Television
Yes, but not as wholeheartedly as during the 80s, when I don't appear to have done anything else. I once walked past a video store in Hartlepool and they had a whole display devoted to 'Dirty Pingu' -- I think about it every now and then.
Books
Of course I have to read all the poetry being published in the UK at any given time, and then there's my problem with makie-up people (or at least people who haven't been makie-upped by Dostoevsky). So it's detective stories mostly: Block among the harder boiled, Camilleri, Pennac and Akunin among the foreigners. Alongside D there's always Scenes from a Hunter's Album by the marvellous Turgenev, and Oblomov's endless struggles with getting out of bed (a book it took me 20 years to finish). The Steppe by Chekhov -- why has this not been made into the original road movie? What do you mean nothing much 'happens'? Behind Camilleri, Sciasca and Leopardi. My fixation on the Russians and Italians means there's only room for Pamuk and the occasional Japanese novelist (or David Mitchell in his Japanese phase).
Heroes
Buster Keaton, Mark E.Smith, Jim Woodring, Captain Crinkle, Pnin.
About me: I am a series of Bill impersonators who are not really committed to their work. There are three types of Bill: Previous Bills, who are responsible for all ills, still or otherwise; Poor Blll, who cannot be expected to cope with that number of 'l's; and Future Bills, who shall inherit the dearth or possibly the hearth. But not the rug, that goes to your cousin.
I am seven-sixteenths Cherokee. None of these sixteenths is inside my body. I don't have the time to be as obsessive as I would like to be. It is only by not being able to do anything right that I have ever got anything done. I am a Time Peasant.
I am relieved to know I am not a Golem. Nor, apparently, am I the King of the Echo People. (Though this may go to tribunal.) The great thing about nowadays is that you can talk to yourself in public and everyone thinks you're on the phone.
....
I've got a fever and the only prescription is COWBELL.
I used to shave elephants. Elements. I used to shave elements. My favourite was fire, because the red hot stubble was immediately ash. With water I only got that brown foam that washes up on non-Blue Flag beaches. Air didn't care, but I only took its oxygen molecules. If you shave earth you get chocolate.
I'm totally mired.
Who I'd like to meet:
The long-maned stumpy horses eating grass between the yellow mini-pylons arranged in a grid before runways. An old schoolfriend with a moustache where his teeth should be (that's right, growing from the otherwise empty ridge of his gum).
Jelly Ibrahim! Hands of Shine!
Babies that double up as cameras and MP3 players. Thomas Jones: a great painter of Mediterranean walls. Men who buy the model aeroplanes of the planes they are sitting on in the hope of completing their collection (of model aeroplanes of the planes they have sat upon).
Yes I floated in the Dead Sea then dipped in the hot sulphur pool. The others reported five years vanished from my wrinkles. Once I trusted enough to float it was hard getting out. Didn't get to Qumran but Jerusalem was powerful (all in one day). We spent four days by the Lake of Galilee in a Druse village amongst ancient olive groves.
Hi Bill, I too was an usherette in the distant past while at art school. I had to do "dark sales" during Emanuelle, and I got to know each frame of Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Vanishing Point, Jaws etc. Good job though for a film lover or a hungover art student. I also used to eat the ice creams and blame it on mice to get my own back on the manager for making me wear tights and skirts instead of trousers in winter. PS is the mudbath a kind of sunblock?
