We were in the middle of tracking the ultimately aborted Tony Conrad, Fat-Ass, and had just recently wrapped Peter Criss vs. Peter Christopherson, but two of the three songs assayed were composite renderings (or, palimpsests, if you must) of material written for (the still unreleased) Commmiinnggg! and Practis'd the Black Art.
(The first was taken from The Wigmaker.)
Just listening to this set's exposed, ulcerous tonalities nearly makes me ill. Not in a wholly malign way, mind. In my estimation - please note the obvious bias - the music has improved with age. I think it was rather daring of its time, prescient even.
But emotionally? Fuck, I feel tremendous sympathy for these stray dogs - I hope they found their way home, or at least scared up safe haven in redoubts less tumultuous than the bleak, windswept ports of their souls. The air seemed heavy, the mood rather less salutary than we probably would have preferred...
Thus, one of our best performances from the 1990s.
--
01 When My Rifle Went Sour with Preposterous Headdress
02 Was She Can, Magma Despoiled?
03 Pharmacological and Dead, or Both
credits
released March 2, 2007
Recorded at Pez Ner, Lyon, on February 28, 1998. Original soundboard in-house CD remastered by Tom Smith at Microgroove, Atlanta, May 1998. First posted to TLASILA Blog in 2007. Remastered by TS at KSV, Hannover, May 6, 2015.
Rat Bastard - bass
Greg Chapman - casio
Julien Becourt (aka Eva Revox) - tape manipulation
Andy Bolus (Evil Moisture) - interference
Tom Smith - voice, texts, shortwave
supported by 4 fans who also own “Pez Ner, Lyon (28 Feb 98)”
It's as if I'm standing in a foggy field, but I can feel the sun warming me still, somehow, despite the sky being completely cloudy and overcast. Stranger still, I'm content here, not afraid or even curious, but happy to just stand still, surrounded by the alien warmth. Then, I close my eyes, as if to look inward, into some deeper space and time beneath the terrestrial, an ink black sky under the Urth, opening downward. At last, a voice, barely emanating from a small radio - contact. Tom Rimshot
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