“AUM” The Indica Project — “Devi's Song of Everything"

AUM

The Indica Project

“Devi's Song of Everything"

Devi’s Song of Everything

"When Wood's daughter Devi was very young, she came by the studio and told me she had learned some Shlokas and mantras. So I asked her if she wanted me to record her. She was really excited and we recorded it.”

—Storms

This album has the most thoroughly disarming opening I have heard in recent memory. The voice of young Devi singing the “AUM" mantra penetrates me to the core. Not since the field recordings of Alan Lomax in the forgotten cabins of Appalachia have I heard what sounds to be like an honest voice without ambition, voice correction, of any detectible sense of guile. I played this opening voice on my patio and by chance I had inadvertently clicked the single song repeat button. Devi’s voice played her 30 second song for several minutes before I noticed that the music wasn’t moving to the next song. 

Composer Gavin Bryars famously played a field recording of a homeless man singing on repeat “Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet” in the studio when he left to fetch some equipment. When he returned the studio was calm, and a sweet spirit filled the room. Bryars composed a piece underneathe that recording adding instruments one by one until a little orchestra supported the repeating voice. This piece became his most effective piece. I have heard it “live” and it silenced the room and silenced my mind.  I felt that same spirit listening to Devi sing this “Saraswati Shloka.” 

It is the same feeling I got listening to Ralph Stanley singing a hymn with the instrumentation removed, or when George Martin played John Lennon’s voice track singing, “Cry Baby Cry” to a live audience at The Palace in Hollywood. This voice of Devi is an invitation for me to “Come on inside where everything is AUM.” I am AUM. Devi is AUM. My doubts and fears are AUM. All time and substance is AUM. This paragraph is AUM. YOU are AUM, too. The opposite of AUM is contained in AUM. And blessed AUM makes all those most important things that have been keeping me awake at night too small to matter in the vast ocean of AUM. 

A Musical Stream of Consciousness in Meditation

The recording of young Devi sat on the shelf for awhile until it became the catalyst for this album of Indian Global Fusion deeply infused with the long tradition of Indian Classical and both Hindu and Buddhist devotional music. This is interesting to me, since I have been learning to meditate once in a while lately. What does the meditation on AUM sound like? Well, I know it isn’t a drone. For me, it sounds like a rushing mighty wind of extraneous thoughts invading the meditative landscape. 

This album proceeds with the stories in the mind of meditation that flow from AUM when a life-long meditator contemplates the four parts of A-U-M. My little research leads me to the understanding that is (A) waking, (U) sleeping, (M) dreaming, and the silence after the (M) which is transcendence. It can also be experienced as birth, life, death and the Beyond. It has structure, and it always has something to say that fits the exact moment. This album illustrates that silent story inside of a quiet, but not inactive, mind. I thought I was supposed to experience silence and a drone. What a relief! The quieter the mind, the better the story. 

"The structure of landscape is infinitesimal,

Like the structure of music,

                            seamless, invisible.

Even the rain has larger sutures.

What holds the landscape together, and what holds music together,

Is faith, it appears—faith of the eye, faith of the ear."

—From Charles Wright’s “Body & Soul II (For Coleman Hawkins)”

This album occupies the sweet spot between Bollywood and Indian Classical. It is a satisfying album of Indian jazz with seamless fusion savvy and a playful but deeper meaning. D. Wood and Storms have a musical sense of humor that never undermines their expansive musical and spiritual intent. 

These guys aren’t trying to prove themselves anymore. They did that long ago. This album is a grab bag full of hymns jumping with joy. This “AUM” most certainly wants to take you higher, and deeper, with plenty of laughs along the way. Boom laka laka laka Boom! The story never ends, it resumes!

"Saraswati is the Goddess of art, music etc. So we began the album with a Shloka dedicated to her and Brahma is the God of creativity. We ended with a Shloka for him….  

The Meaning of the Saraswati Shloka: 

    1: Salutations to Devi Saraswati, Who is the giver of Boons and fulfiller of Wishes,

    2: O Devi, when I begin my Studies, Please bestow on me the capacity of Right Understanding, always." 

—Storms from a chat with Billy on Messenger

1    SARASWATI SHLOKA

This song is described in the text above. I recommend putting this one track on repeat for a few minutes. Try it and see! You might feel something wonderful. Then you may be open to hear the composition that follows. 

Devi Giannetti – Voice

"The ‘AUM' symbol symbolizes the Universe and the ultimate reality. It is the most important of Hindu symbols. At the dawn of creation, from emptiness first emerged a syllable consisting of three letters – A-U-M (often written as OM). AUM is considered an original (primal) sound that rang out in the created universe. It is the root mantra.”

—Storms from a chat with Billy on Messenger

2    AUM

You might expect a drone or an improvisation, but...

"Expectation closes the door to what is happening in the moment.” 

—Robert Fripp 

Billy:  Feels like music from a chart. Not improvised entirely. Too much unison for improv.  

Storms:  Absolutely. 80% is written.  Like a small Chamber Music ensemble.

What follows surprised me! S. Shivkumar’s violin takes the lead with a line similar to a nuanced fast raga and a tone that is closer to Appalachian folk than Yehudi Menuhin’s sweetness. This is a voice! All the instruments which follow sing without dialogue! We are meditating and we are following a story supported in one supportive voice in this chamber ensemble. This Indian Classical Jazz storytelling including D. Woods fine electric guitar, and the rhythmic speechifying of S. Sundar on Mirdangam (pictured below). As in my own meditation, the story unfolds without call and response and without contradiction. 

"I'd say that what we hear is the quality of our listening."

—Robert Fripp

Storms – Bass
D Wood – Guitar
S Shivkumar – Violin
S Sundar – Mirdangam

 

Vimāna are mythological flying palaces or 

chariots described in Hindu texts and Sanskrit epics. 

"Freighters on the nod on the surface of the bay

One of these days we're going to sail away,

Going to sail into eternity

Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me"

—Bruce Cockburn from the song “Wondering Where the Lions Are”

3    VIMANA

Right of the bat, we have taken flight. Thought can do that. S. Sundar invites us in for a sweet quirky slight of hand ride into the sky. Maybe you didn’t know that there are floating and flying houses called “Vimana” in tradition and folklore and in the sky (of course). 

This aerial ballet has the sly dance qualities of a Bollywood unison dance in the temple of the mind. Storms joins in with a chordal chat and a vocal quality to his bass that has a lyrical quality once owned by the transcendent jazz master from Weather Report. 

D. Wood’s guitar takes chameleon forms throughout the album. Sometimes his contributions are so varied and subtle that I miss them. Everybody in this chamber group supports the other with one voice like a string quartet by Ives, Bartok or Carter. There are no “showboats” in the ensemble, and the music is largely written to ensure equanimity and focus. 

Fly Captain fly upon your Mystery Ship!

Storms – Bass

D Wood – Guitar

S Shivkumar – Violin

S Sundar – Mirdangam

4    DREAM WITHIN A DREAM

"In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone? 

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream."

—Edgar Allan Poe from the poem “A Dream Within A Dream”

We are in Inception territory here, but it is sweet and never scary. The voices here are having some fun, and the disorientation they embody is a joy like at the side show of a roadside attraction. The journey of mindfulness has reached a comfortable place. Everybody is having some fun.

Storms – Bass

D Wood – Guitar

S Shivkumar – Violin

S Sundar – Mirdangam

JT Lewis – Drums

Invocation

An address to a deity or muse that often takes the form of a request for help in composing the poem at hand. Invocations can occur at the beginning of the poem or start of a new canto; they are considered conventions of the epic form and are a type of apostrophe. See the opening of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Alexander Pope mocked the convention in the first canto of “The Rape of the Lock.” A contemporary example is Denise Levertov’s poem “Invocation.”

—Glossary of Poetic Terms from the Poetry Foundation

5    INVOCATION

That definition from the Poetry Foundation says it right. This is an opening, a mouth, the doorway, etc. In meditation at my very best, the opening comes for me near the end, and it doesn’t end when I return to my day. That is what this song is about. This is the point when everything that follows can be seen from point of view of the vastness of AUM. This is the point when we can all take a moment to dance at the brink of eternity. It is the view from above. I want to, I want to, I want to take you HIGHER. Boom laka laka laka Boom. My life seems to flow better in that view from above.

Storms – Bass

D Wood – Guitar

S Shivkumar – Violin

S Sundar – Mirdangam

6    MUMBAI TRAIN TRACKS

We have a visiting Mirdangam player. P. Suresh has a different voice on the Mirdangam. He is also a storyteller in rhythm. S. Sundar has a lovely voice of his own, but this new perspective is welcome. It’s a family affair. 

"Mom loves the both of them

You see, it's in the blood

Both kids are good to Mom

Blood's thicker than the mud

It's a family affair (it's a family affair)

It's a family affair (it's a family affair)"

—Sly Stone from “It’s A Family Affair"

P Suresh – Mirdangam

7    WHERE RIVERS MEET

"The open mouths of rivers where they join the sea.

The places where water comes together

with other water. Those places stand out

in my mind like holy places."

From Raymond Carver’s poem called:

"where water comes together with other water"

S. Shivkumar’s violin voice gets quiet and slows down a touch to evoke the convocation of waters. This combining ballad feels mythic throughout. There is wisdom here. This is wisdom literature in sound. Once again, D. Wood sings his support like a wind in the trees. S. Sundar and JT Lewis speak with one rhythmic voice like water flowing together! An improvisation could hit all the points along this journey of a song, but it would take too long. This chamber group tells the story with concision and subtle grace.

Storms – Bass

D Wood – Guitar

S Shivkumar – Violin

S Sundar – Mirdangam

JT Lewis – Drum Kit Percussion

"Brahman or the Supreme Self is beyond time and space, causation. 

He is limitless. He is tranquil. He shines with equal effulgence in 

all bodies. He cannot be any particular thing."

—Quoted from Divine Life Society

8    BRAHMA SHLOKA

“BRAHMA SHLOKA

"brahmārpaṇaṃ brahma haviḥ brahmāgnau brahmaṇā hutam .

brahmaiva tena gaṃtavyaṃ brahmakarma samādhinā ..

Any means of offering is Brahman, the oblation is Brahman, the fire in which the offering is made is Brahman, and the one who offers is Brahman. Such a person who abides in Brahman indeed gains Brahman.”

—Storms from a chat with Billy on Messenger

This album which started with young Devi’s disarming voice, could not end any other way. Once again, with a different mantra, her subtle voice permeates the crude. Resistence to such honest song is futile. Her voice gets in before you have time to shut the door.

Devi Giannetti – Voice

Recorded at Bodhi Tree Studios – Mumbai

Recording Engineer – Storms

Mixed at Bodhi Tree Studios – Mumbai (Songs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8)

Engineer – Storms

Also recorded and Mixed at – Studio K – New York (Songs 4 and 8)

Engineer – Carlos Pereira

Mastered at Double D Music Inc – New York 

Mastering Engineer – David Darlington 

All Tracks Written and Produced by Storms and D Wood

Mix and Mastering Consultant – Brian Bacchus 

Cover Art – Devi Giannetti

LINKS

The Indica Project (Website)

Spotify

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Amazon

Twitter

Apple Music

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Storms

Storms has worked as bassist, singer and producer. Also as composer and producer/engineer for TV, Radio and Film projects.
Co-founded the Indica Project with American musician D Wood.

Collaborated with and recorded as a session musician with Talvin Singh, Point Records, The Master Musicians of Jajouka, Flying Rhino Records in London.
Worked with Greg Osby, Tony Cedras, J.T. Lewis, Morris Goldberg, Cyro Baptista and Bob Weiner Paula Braga, Cafe, Ron Miles, Bashir Athar, Sabine Kabongo, Dafnis Prieto, Udo Demandt, and Edsel Gomez.

Performed and recorded in India, including with A.R.Rehman, Vishal Shekhar, Salim Suleman, Shankar Mahadevan, Louis Banks, Ranjit Barot, Sriram Iyer, Divya, Lezz Lewis, Roy Venkatraman, Loy Mendonca, Ehsaan Noorani, Ronu Mazumdar and others.

Collaborated with Protima Gauri Bedi and the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble. Performed at the Vasantahabha Festival in Bangalore, 1996.

Collaborated with Dutch musicians Ben Van Dan Dungen, Eric Hoeke, and Wiboud Burkens in Jazz/World Project also featuring Dhanashree Pandit on vocals and Sunilkant Gupta on flute. Has a solo album, “Always Here” featuring Dhanashree Pandit Rai, Ashwin Srinivasan, Manas Kumar, Pramod Nair, and Sanjay Divecha.

Worked as a voice-over and singing artist in over 3000 TV commercials in India. Also did the music for the film Loins of Punjab directed by Manish Acharya.

D Wood

Robert Giannetti aka D. Wood has been a professional musician since his graduation from the prestigious Berklee College of Music in the late 70s.

His musical studies brought him to the British Isles, West Africa, and to India as a Fulbright scholar.

He co-founded The Indica Project with India-based producer Storms, aka Sanjay Swamy, and has since then created a formidable body of work.

The Indica Project has brought together musicians from India, Africa, NYC, and Latin America resulting in a fresh, exciting contemporary sound.

Wood currently lives in India performing, producing, and teaching.

Presently he is a faculty member at Whistling Woods International in Mumbai.

Email: billymwb@gmail.com

Submissions accepted. Send a link, not a CD. Lyrics and artwork plus any information is appreciated. Access to artists for interviews encouraged.

"Mercy" John Cale — Hymns to the Heart

MERCY

John Cale

Hymns to the Heart

Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and 

Pagans alike—for we are all somehow dreadfully 

cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.

—Herman Melville

Perhaps the Welch church organist John Cale might have written an album of prayers to God for HOPE. God can perform miracles when things are bad. Things are bad. 

Anger has been a staple of John Cale's creative life. He has made friends with it, and smiles when he says it gives him the freedom to create. The man is 80 and he was at the core of the proto-punk hip art street scene. 

He was a Classically trained budding composer who hit the streets hard with an avant garde La Monte Young drone and fire … FIRE in his belly. 

"I think anger is a very good point to start and if the 

anger runs out the sarcasm will work and then

 downright rudeness and then straight on to brutality."

—John Cale Sound City Interview 2014

But this current hatred in the news this decade isn’t that energetic anger and the fire in the belly. This culture has slipped into the darkness of a climate of murder as a means to find acceptance. There is a climate of doubt and fear pervading in this world. A “party” of people has adopted ignorance and hatred as a source of fuel. Mass murder has become a commonplace. We need a new voice to cut through the fog in this War of Hate. We need a new vision, because people are perishing. Without a dream, people get killed in shopping markets, schools, theaters, churches, synagogues and amateur baseball games. 

Cale stopped making sense long ago as a defiant act of art in the face of a rigid, frigid, and f?#”ked up proto-fascist hate-based divided culture. These Mercy songs reflect his deeper understanding of the deeper message contained in contradiction as perhaps the only possible response to this level of collective pain.

Sometimes I wish I wrote more songs, I don't write anywhere outside the studio. That's where it always gets done – going blindly into something. To me that's always been important. To go blindly into it.

—John Cale

We are killing ourselves at a higher rate than war in the United States and United Kingdom and the European Union and the whole damn world. Each mass shooting, every murder, is a domestic dispute in our family, "The Family of Mankind."  John Cale, the former Welch church organist, has chosen to provoke hearts with the shock therapy of images, contradictions, nonsense, and the articulate 80-year-old sweet tenor howl of a human animal who has had enough, and felt too much to be silent any longer. His is a cry to the collective hatred and that is a humanist prayer to the enemies among us, and the enmity within us.

 

John Cale and all of us post-punk hipsters taught the world how to live without a God, so now when we pray, we pray to the forces of evil in the eyes of our neighbors who have pointed their M-16s or AK-47s at children to kill the future before it can grow. We pray for mercy. We pray for mercy for our brothers and sisters. We pray for mercy. Please. No more. Give us back a future, right now!

Lift me up! Lift me up!

Mercy. Mercy once again.

John Cale’s high tenor voice chimes in big several times in this album. His voice is a bell. He sings “Lift me up!” He sings, “Have mercy on me.” You don’t have to ask for whom that bell tolls. I sing the body eclectic. We chime together or we hang separately. Join together to sing with Cale like a bell of warning, or a bell of mourning. When John Cale’s voice soars above the meaning of the song a little louder than everything else, we all join in and become that bell. 

For Whom the Bell Tolls

by John Donne

No man is an island.

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent, 

A part of the main,

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less

As well as if a promontory were.

Each man’s death diminishes me.

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

 

SONG BY SONG REVIEW

1.  MERCY feat. Laurel Halo [Lyrics]

        Featuring, Effects, Synth [Synths], Vocals [Additional] – Laurel Halo

        Mixed By – Mikaelin "Blue" BlueSpruce*

        Vocals, Synth [Synths], Piano, Drums, Bass – John Cale

I'm looking for mercy, more and more

Colder, colder, colder, cold

Lives do matter

Lives don't matter

Nothing, nothing at all

John Cale sings, "Please have mercy." Images come to mind of shootings, hateful protest, times we live in, but not okay, not okay. It hurts. "Days and days were spent in anger." The words build a dark collage. Slow and dark. Echoing like the subconscious does in movies. It gets sad, but at the bottom there is a plaintive cry: "Lift me up, lift me up." Those words ring out like the cry is coming from inside. It is a chorus of a plea. That plea might as well have come from me. I needed it too. The fitting end: "Mercy, mercy one more time."

It’s official! Marilyn Monroe has the most iconic legs in history

2. MARILYN MONROE’S LEG (beauty elsewhere) feat. Actress [Lyrics]

        Cello – Matt Fish (2)

        Double Bass – Ian Walker

        Featuring, Synth [Synths], Effects, Producer [Additional] – Actress

        Mixed By – Seven Davis Jr.

        Vocals, Synth [Synths], Piano, Drums, Noises – John Cale

I never did see, never did see, much
Always, always
Beauty, elsewhere
Elsewhere, elsewhere

Seven times seven and forty-nine
The cube of nine seven three
Seven times seven and forty-nine
The cube of nine seven three

The most famous legs on earth. By actual count. Whatever that can mean after her untimely death. I don’t know what the numbers in this song mean. But when I was a small boy the first measurements I ever learned were 36 24 36: Marilyn Monroe’s measurements. She was not a commodity. She was beautiful. But I was a young boy in a Pentecostal family in California going to church three times a week and I knew those numbers. Go figure. Her legs were famous and beautiful. She was lonely, but I didn’t know that as a boy.

3.  NOISE OF YOU [Lyrics]

        Bass – Joey Maramba

        Cello – Matt Fish (2)

        Double Bass – Ian Walker

        Drums [Acoustic Drums], Timpani – Deantoni Parks

        Guitar – Dustin Boyer

        Mixed By – Mikaelin "Blue" BlueSpruce*

        Synth [Synths], Vocals, Keyboards [Vintage Keys], Drums – John Cale

        Viola – Caroline Buckman, Leah Katz, Rodney Wirtz

        Violin – Daphne Chen, Eric Gorfain, Jenny Takamatsu, Marissa Kuney*

Noise of you. Yup, it's a love song.

When I started sketching this song, it was all about the atmosphere.

It made me recall wintertime in Prague.

Once the instrumentation came together, 

it felt like something I wanted to hear on a 1960s A.M. radio

About a guy trying to get the love of his life back.

Yup, it's a love song.

When does love start, and when does love END?

The words above are spoken on the video, and not included in the lyrics to the song. The video is above, and you will see it features pictures of Cale over the decades. The song is as stated a love song, but the video makes it more. It is about making a song as well, as the narration begins with that statement about the creation of the song. The words of the narration are printed to the screen in the video. The song takes two roads and the music fits both. The reverberated Cale is one voice in this song, and just like "Mercy" a clarion call of a doubled voice blasts like a chorus of trumpets. The song does all those things, and it would diminish the song and video to reduce the meaning of the song to one thing. Sometimes the closer you look the less you see. If I sit back and blur my eyes a bit, this song and video are about the love song of John Cale's career in music. The lyrics of the song (not written here but linked above) could be taken as the longing for a missing lover, much like Janis Ian's song "Jesse" ("there's a hole in the bed," etc.). The narration picks up again at the end of the video, and here I feel Cale is telling me (and all of us) that he is passing the baton out of love to US to move into the future. A song means what it means to me. And it will mean what it means to you. But I believe John Cale wants "to be the one to hand you the future starting now."

When does love start? Even when you are thousands of miles away, you can hear their heart beat. 

I want to hear your footsteps

in the dark

This is all a love affair.

Don't forget

I want to be the one to make you dance

Even if I make you cry

I want to be the one to fill your heart with joy

I want to be the one to hand you the future starting now

4. STORY OF BLOOD feat. Weyes Blood [Lyrics]

      Bass – Dustin Boyer

        Bass [Bowed] – Joey Maramba

        Cello – Matt Fish (2)

        Double Bass – Ian Walker

        Drums [Additional] – Nita Scott

        Featuring, Vocals – Weyes Blood

        Mixed By – Mikaelin "Blue" BlueSpruce*

        Viola – Caroline Buckman, Leah Katz, Rodney Wirtz

        Violin – Daphne Chen, Eric Gorfain, Jenny Takamatsu, Marissa Kuney*

        Vocals, Piano, Drums, Bass – John Cale

It's the color of midnight where we lie

Sinking in the sand

Watching the rain come pouring down

On the other side of life

Swing your soul, swing your soul

It moves all around

It moves all around, brings you down

It moves all around, wakes you in the morning

This is the story, the story of blood

Is that a spooky video or what? There sure is a lot of red on that screen, and skulls, and baptisms. I believe these songs are stories meant to include the images of the video, much like Bowie's last album cannot be understood without the videos. I think Cale is making art here, but that doesn't mean making sense. Whatever Cale is up to, the part on the video when he does a cracked version of scratching with the record, well, that is just inspired including his delighted half smile at the end of it. Just great! Swing your soul! I don't see that catching on. But it is cool!

Being a living legend is such a precarious 

livelihood. It’s like being a bar of soap in a 

shower which doesn’t have any water in it.

—John Cale

5. TIME STANDS STILL feat. Sylvan Esso [Lyrics]

        Acoustic Guitar – Nick Sanborn*

        Bass – Joey Maramba

        Featuring – Sylvan Esso

        Mixed By – TOKiMONSTA

        Synth [Additional] – Deantoni Parks

        Synthesizer [Swarmatron], Vocals, Keyboards [Vintage], Drums, Bass – John Cale

        Vocals – Amelia Meath

The Grandeur that was Europe

Is sinking in the mud

The savagery that was the Church of God

Has already joined the club

The melody that was language

Was the hook that caught the fish

Did you realize how late it was

Later than you think

I have set out nearly the entire lyric, because this verse contrasts quite different statements and the meaning can be found in the contrast. In my own experience, I have felt a depressing downward tug at my heart while watching the news, and the best antidote is always something in nature. Cale's two-lines following sum that up nicely.

The roses in the garden are growing in the rain

Competing with the poppy for the sun

Then returning to the state of society, things look bleak. 

I don't want to hear about heartache or dancing in the snow
We've all been there, so many times before

I guess I'm rather self-destructive, and I like to give 

other people who are self-destructive a song to sing.

—Nico

6.  MOONSTRUCK (Nico’s Song) [Lyrics]

        Backing Vocals – Destani Wolfe*

        Cello – Matt Fish (2)

        Double Bass – Ian Walker

        Mixed By – Seven Davis Jr.

        Viola – Caroline Buckman, Leah Katz, Rodney Wirtz

        Violin – Daphne Chen, Eric Gorfain, Jenny Takamatsu, Marissa Kuney*

        Vocals, Keyboards [Keys], Bass – John Cale

Quote

Nico is beautiful. Nico takes heroine. John Cale produced some albums she did and they were disturbing and good.

You’re a moonstruck junkie lady staring at your feet breathing words into an envelope to be opened on your death.

He must know her very well. He must be the kind of friend who can say these things and not get sued. Still it is shocking, isn’t it? 

So afraid of your own shadow following close behind.

This isn’t a Taylor Swift kiss off song. This is maybe more of an intervention. I don’t know. John Cale has done Nico a lot of good, and they are close, so I will let her respond to this song as she chooses. Christa Päffgen was born on October 16, 1938. She died on July 18, 1988. Nobody told me. Ah well. Christa’s stage name was Nico. So. I’m not gonna say what John Cale should say about his dead friend Nico or Christa. Christa died. Maybe Nico is still with us. You know how that goes. Memories and such. She was a moonstruck junkie lady. I think John loved her. 

7. EVERLASTING DAYS feat. Animal Collective [Lyrics]

        Cello – Matt Fish (2)

        Double Bass – Ian Walker

        Drums [Acoustic & Electronic] – Deantoni Parks

        Featuring – Animal Collective

        Mixed By – Justin Raisen

        Noises – Dustin Boyer

        Synth [Synths] – Brian Weitz

        Viola – Caroline Buckman, Leah Katz, Rodney Wirtz

        Violin – Daphne Chen, Eric Gorfain, Jenny Takamatsu, Marissa Kuney*

        Vocals – Dave Portner, Noah Lennox

        Vocals, Keyboards [Keys], Piano, Bass, Drums – John Cale

Quote

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8.  NIGHT CRAWLING [Lyrics]

        Backing Vocals, Producer [Additional] – Dustin Boyer

        Drums [Additional] – Deantoni Parks

        Mixed By – Seven Davis Jr.

        Vocals, Synth [Synths], Piano, Drums, Bass – John Cale

I can't even tell when you're putting me on

We've played that game before (We've played that game)

I can't even tell when you're putting me on (I can't even tell)

We've played that game before (We've played that game) 

Sounds so very cool. This is an opportunity, it seems, to go out dive hopping with David Bowie and John Cale. Ah yeah!  There sure is a sense of repetition in this song. Like we have done this before. By the end of the video, we HAVE done this before. The animation repeats exactly. Been there. Done this. Been there again. Done this before.

9.  NOT THE END OF THE WORLD [Lyrics]

        Effects – TOKiMONSTA

        Mixed By – Seven Davis Jr.

        Percussion [Additional] – Nita Scott

        Vocals, Synth [Synths], Piano, Drums, Bass – John Cale

With the camels standing senseless

From driving through the night

Not so strong and not so fearless

It's not the end of the world tonight

“Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining,” writes Samuel Beckett. And yet I think about the night and the raining throughout chapter. Is it a sunny day? Can’t rule that out. Same here. 

    John sings that it is not the end of the world. But isn’t it? How does he know. There is a river traveling by carrying the hopes of many. River of hope flowing by. That doesn’t sound good.  Gloomy. That is what the critics will say. So I am thinking that if I visit my buddy John, and we get to talking, and he breaks out with “It’s not the end of the wold tonight.” I think I might get tired all of a sudden and make an early exit. First make sure our buddy John isn’t contemplating anything. 

    That conversation isn’t going anywhere, but just shuffling off to the edge of Eternity. 

10.  THE LEGAL STATUS OF ICE feat. Fat White Family [Lyrics]

           Backing Vocals, Drum Programming [Additional] – Nita Scott

           Drums [Acoustic], Backing Vocals – Jack Everett

           Featuring – Fat White Family*

           Guitar, Backing Vocals – Adam J. Harmer*, Dustin Boyer

           Keyboards [Juno], Backing Vocals – Nathan Saoudi

           Mixed By – Justin Raisen

           Vocals – Lias Saoudi

           Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards [Keys], Bass, Drums – John Cale

What is the legal status of ice

Floats on the bottom very nice

Liquor in the bottom

I don't know

Pour that liquor, pour it out

Floating to the North Pole leaving tonight

Swimming in the North Sea under the ice

Floats on top with vanilla

What is the legal status of ice

What is the legal status of ice

I cheated on this one. John played this one live, and he introduced the song by saying that he wondered if a block of iceberg cut loose and moved below the equator, would that still be the property of Iceland? Best song I know about Maritime Law, to be honest. What does it mean for a block of ice to be the legal territory of one country and not another. Sounds like a hint at Stoic Cosmopolitanism, but that it probably just something I read about recently.

11. I KNOW YOU’RE HAPPY feat. Tei Shi [Lyrics]

         Acoustic Guitar – Dev Hynes*

         Featuring, Vocals – Tei Shi

         Mixed By – Mikaelin "Blue" BlueSpruce*

         Rhythm Guitar, Guitar [Guitar Solo] – Dustin Boyer

         Vocals, Synth [Synths], Acoustic Guitar, Drums, Bass – John Cale

Oh boy! I know this one! Theodore Roethke cleverly said that whenever he was down the dumps, he simply looked at his contemporaries and he was forever encouraged. It is comforting when other “friends” falter, and when you have not. So that may be why John Cale sings about this “zero sum game” thing that we may not admit to, but might be participating in when we do a little charity, or give a little advice, or lend a hand in certain underhanded way. Ah well. Some of the joys of being human are darker than other joys.

I know your happy, when I’m not happy.

 

12. OUT YOUR WINDOW [Lyrics]

         Cello – Matt Fish (2)

         Double Bass – Ian Walker

         Guitar – Dustin Boyer

         Mixed By – Justin Raisen

         Viola – Caroline Buckman, Leah Katz, Rodney Wirtz

         Violin – Daphne Chen, Eric Gorfain, Jenny Takamatsu, Marissa Kuney*

         Vocals, Piano, Strings [Additional] – John Cale

Quote

The closer! A piano number. Time is somewhat suspended for bad behavior.  The benediction. Please stay in the cathedral as long as you like. Listen to the album again, if you want to. But when you leave, please please don’t go. Don’t go gentle into that good night. Don’t go out the window. Don’t check out. Don’t leave your body behind. Stick with the program. Just stay with me. Don’t die. You don’t know what may come next, and I will hold your hand. John Cale has always be the punk Vicar in my book. He is the punk father you can count on. He keeps it real, but he doesn’t choose death, and he sang about it, and he write a Classical score about it. So have a huge sarcastic angry attitude all you want, and God bless you for it, but stay. That close to the core makes you worth something. You can’t do all that attitude dancing when you are dead. We would miss your bad self.

If you jump out your window, I will break your fall. 

I will hold you close and keep you calm wherever you decide to go.

Please please don’t go.

Please please don’t go.

Please please don’t go.

 

YouTube

Apple Music

Domino

Companies

Record Company – Double Six Records

Phonographic Copyright ℗ – Domino Recording Co. Ltd.
Copyright © – Domino Recording Co. Ltd.
Recorded At – ARM Studio

Credits

Artwork – Abby Portner
Graphic Design – Rob Carmichael (2)
Mastered By – Mike Bozzi
Producer – John Cale, Nita Scott
Recorded By – Dustin Boyer
Written-By, Arranged By [String Arrangements] – John Cale

Email: billymwb@gmail.com Submissions accepted. Send a link, not a CD. Lyrics and artwork plus any information is appreciated. Access to artists for interviews encouraged.

Walker Guitar – Dustin Boyer Mixed By – Justin Rais