OK, spagyricus, you've thrown down the gauntlet ….

1. How does the world see me?
She Is - Tim Buckley
(this makes me out to be a beacon of camp profundity - it lies … well, about the camp bit at least)

2. Will I have a happy life?
Just Like This Train - Joni Mitchell
(is it coming towards me? am I tied to the rails? am I on it? maybe I've missed it?)

3. What do my friends really think of me?
Waking The Witch - Kate Bush
(i'm not that short-tempered, am I?)

4. Do people…

For some reason I thought I could live without Last and have spent four weeks away from you all.

It couldn't last (or I couldn't last without Last) as I missed you folk far too much - and as I was quickly reminded when I claimed I was trying to spend more time in the real world:

We ARE the real world, silly!

Inspired by Spagyricus (who sent me a charming ode by Christopher Smart), I have just been on an enjoyable musical, poetic and illustrative journey back into the world of Edward Gorey a.k.a. Ogdred Weary, Mrs. Regera Dowdy and many more besides.

I'd recommend his work to anyone who likes their life slightly surreal.

Amphigorey is a great place to start, containing the deliciously (un-)pornographic The Curious Sofa.

Also found in Amphigorey is the best possible way to teach any child the alphabet, The Gashlycrumb Tinies:
http://users.aol.com/emarko/n.jpg

So, what is the musical connection?

Well, there's a bunch of people that have…

OK so it is only a mild cold, but boy do I feel rough. Not been out running. Now it even seems like Golden Brown doesn't even have the courtesy to call a general election, which at least would give me a let-up at work.

So, it is a day for music by artists who have committed suicide or otherwise had untimely deaths:

The Carpenters, The Associates, Nick Drake, father and son Tim Buckley and Jeff Buckley, Manic Street Preachers, Janis Joplin, Joy Division, Curtis Mayfield, Mama Cass and The Mamas and…

Ok, it's time to admit all those deep dark secrets that never quite appear on my Last playlist: who is really my top artist?

Well, judging by my iShuffle the real answer isn't Christopher Plunder, The Triffids, Rufus Wainwright or The Flaming Lips. Not even some pleasant diversion from 4AD or el.

Nope.

The real truth is DJ Steveboy / DJ Steve Boyett and the pumping army that is available from beatport.com.

Most nights you'll find me blazing a trail down the canal towpath: me and pooch and 165bpm of something repetitive to keep my ageing…

September 2007

This month pooch is visiting the depiction of Hygieia in Gustav Klimt's lost classic Medicine:

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc67/pantherpants/aint-klimt-hygieia.jpg
http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc67/pantherpants/klimt-hygieia.jpg

August 2007

August saw pooch a little the worse for wear, popping into L'Absinthe by Edgar Degas. Oh the evil wormwood:

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc67/pantherpants/aint-labsinthe-elsa.jpg
http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc67/pantherpants/degas-labsinthe.jpg

July 2007

July saw a visit to Frida Kahlo's astonishing My Nurse (Lamiabaliaeio):

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc67/pantherpants/aint-Lamiabaliaeio.jpg
http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc67/pantherpants/Kahlo-1937_Lamiabaliaeio.jpg

June 2007

June was an opportunity to reclaim her femininity in Dante Gabriel Rosetti's Venus Verticordia:

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc67/pantherpants/aint-rosetti.jpg
http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc67/pantherpants/rossetti_verticordia.jpg

May 2007

The gender dysphoria that manifested itself in April continued into May as pooch once again absolved the distaff in Jan…

http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/9641/aintlabsintheelsaru2.jpg
She does look sorry for herself, doesn't she. Well, I told her that a wayward life of drink and drugs would only lead to disaster and peculiar hats.

I think she'll need to go somewhere thoroughly wholesome next month to make up for this excess. Maybe some religious iconography would instil a suitably pious disposition.

You can tell that I'm appalled at her, can't you.

What can I tell you about el records?

Well, as their website so eloquently puts it, "el is one of only a handful of genuinely original and important record labels in the history of popular music. el was the brainchild of mike alway, who envisaged a seamlessly artifactual indulgence/essay in façade; imagine an ambitious cultural montage drawing on references unheard of within the traditional scope of pop including food, travel, costume, leisure and sensuality. like the visual fantasies of the avengers and patrick mcgoohan's prisoner and using the recording studio as a time machine, el would simultaneously charm, educate, confuse…

There's something quite fitting about Sixteen Days-Gathering Dust by This Mortal Coil being my wonderfully symmetrical eight thousand eight hundred and eighty eighth track on Last.FM.

As a kid in rural Suffolk I wasn't exposed to the richest mix of music, but I picked up It'll End In Tears one day in Morlings in Beccles on a whim.

Through that album, and then Filigree and Shadow and Blood I was drawn further into the artists they'd covered: Tim Buckley through Song To The Siren/Song To The Siren, Roy Harper with Another Day/Another Day, the…

Pixieguts raises important issues when she asks What is a real artist?

Art can only ever be about connecting with your anima/animus/animal.

That is why all true art must be animalistic, passionate, true.

Every truly artistic person - visual, musical, terpsichorean - must find a way of releasing this inner spirit, sharing it with viewers, readers, observers listeners.

Antartism developed from the dadaist movement in the 1920s. The antartist subverts the artistic process by making the animal explicit, part of the art.

An early example of the development of antart is the work of C.M. Coolidge:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f2/Hisstationand4aces-coolidge.jpg

But possibly the…