The First Day of Spring (Risshun), from the series Fashionable Poetic Immortals of the Four Seasons (c.1768) by Suzuki Harunobu. Risshun in Japan begins on the 4th of February.
• “…after centuries of imbibing alcoholic beverages as their main source of potable water, European’s new fondness for boiled drinks—coupled with the psychoactive properties of caffeine—swapped societal tipsiness with a mindstate primed for the Enlightenment’s intoxication with reason.” Hunter Dukes on A Treatise Concerning the Properties and Effects of Coffee (1792) by Benjamin Moseley.
• Steven Heller on John Wilcock, Master of the Underground: “[He] was one of the great ‘happening’ characters of midcentury America, beat myth to Hippie legend. He was founder of half a dozen underground papers, and started one of the first citizen-access cable television shows. His achievements are a dense package.”
• At Fonts In Use: Florian Hardwig explores the origin of “the Dune font” as used on the covers of Frank Herbert’s novels during the 1970s and 80s.
• At Smithsonian Magazine: “Hundreds of Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs were never built. Here’s what they might have looked like.”
• Mix of the week: Fact Mix 893 by KMRU & Aho Ssan & Sevi Iko Dømochevsky.
• New music: Hypnagogia by Martina Bertoni, and Cosmos Vol. II by Ran Kirlian & Jaja.
• “Forgotten ‘Stonehenge of the north’ given to nation by construction firm.”
• At Aquarium Drunkard: Soft Machine live at Jazz Bilzen, 1969.
• RIP Tom Verlaine.
• Goofin’ At The Coffee House (1959) by Henri Mancini | Bring Me Coffee Or Tea (1971) by Can | Starfish And Coffee (1986) by Prince
It’s too bad so many of the hipsters apparently stopped paying attention after Marquee Moon. Tom Verlaine had a fine solo career. The release referenced in the article, Flash Light, is actually one of his best, bright and melodic and stinging. Extremely hard to find now but well worth seeking after is an instrumental only release from 1992, Warm & Cool. It’s a primer on the tones available from a Fender Jazzmaster, his guitar of choice. Verlaine also had an interesting later career performing live accompaniment for silent movies. Boots of these performances exist but I’m not sure there’s ever been an official release.
I’ve always had the impression that Verlaine generated suspicion among the more ideological proponents of punk for being too proficient. And Marquee Moon (the song) is also probably the longest song to be tagged as punk, which generated further suspicion when long songs and extended guitar solos were seen as the province of the dreaded progressive rock.
I think of Television as being like one of my favourite British bands from that time, This Heat, who were active before the cultural winds had shifted (Charles Hayward was in an actual prog group, Quiet Sun) but got caught up in the punk thing. Punk gave bands like this more of a context but didn’t define them.
I didn’t know Verlaine had recorded any silent scores. I’ll have to see if any of them match films I own on disc. I often watch Metropolis with some other music playing instead of the orchestral score.
Tom Verlaine’s first five solo albums are brilliant. The closing track on the first one, Breakin’ in my Heart, remains my favourite song of all time.
In 2007 Kino released a DVD called Tom Verlaine and Jimmy Rip: Music for Experimental Film which features several short films from the 1920s with music by Verlaine and Rip. Unfortunately it’s hard to find a cheap copy now.
Thanks, Robin, that would be this release: https://www.discogs.com/release/12284713-Tom-Verlaine-and-Jimmy-Rip-Music-For-Experimental-Film
I’ve seen most of those films, even written about a couple of them in previous posts. All are copyright-free today so if you had the music it would be easy to assemble your own version.
There’s a trailer for the DVD here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD67NYpplBI
Sounds great but if it’s Kino as they used to be then the visuals may not be so good. I used to regard the old Kino as the Anti-Criterion, their quality control was so poor. But you could always rip the music and synch it to better copies of the films.
Thanks John. I actually have the DVD. I just thought I would alert people to its existence in case they wanted to track it down, and because Stephen said “I’m not sure if there’s ever been an official release”. The music’s OK but, perhaps inevitably, it’s not as good as the stellar material on Verlaine’s solo albums or the Television albums.