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moshkito

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Topic: Books I Would Like to Read (Updated)
Posted: January 16 2016 at 13:06

Hi,

UPDATED POST AT THE END OF THE THREAD AS OF 10/2017

Andy Partridge

"Complicated Game". So far very interesting and fun read. In the vein of Robert Wyatt kind of fun reading and humor. And he knows his music history, too! Kinda hard to write about this one, and I have not figured out how to do it yet.

Still trying to get Daevid Allen's CD/DVD's of him talking about his early days, but they seem to be impossible to get and one of them was on sale for over $200 ... way over my head and budget! Mine is the used book variety for the most part, or I can't get anything!

Kinda running dry of reads lately, but sadly some of that German stuff is not getting translated, so I'm out of luck on those German books, Italian books and (probably) Japanese books. A compiled book with the stuff from the videos from YMO and Sadistic Mika Band, would be an interesting thing. Ryuichi, seems to have a lot of material and videos on the tube and for all intents and purposes these make a nice bunch of chapters, and my favorites are actually his solo piano stuff, and that is yet another thing that is more than just the progressive/experimental material that he was doing.

Edited by moshkito - October 28 2017 at 12:09

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micky

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Posted: January 16 2016 at 18:24

Steve WIlson's bio - tentatively titled..

how to become famous, beloved, and make a million all while duping supposedly intelligent music fans with sh*t music LOL

The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip

TeleStrat

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Posted: January 16 2016 at 18:33

I have always wanted to read the memoirs of Vo Nguyen Giap but I just never get around to it.

It would probably just piss me off but that's never stopped me before.

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Posted: January 16 2016 at 18:35

that would be an interesting read actually Thumbs Up

The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip

moshkito

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Posted: January 19 2016 at 11:48

Hi,

I read a lot ... probably more than I should or am able to see with bad eye sight, but it is stuff that I love to eat all day long.

On deck:

- Gilliam on Gilliam

- Gilliam's Autobiography -- it will take forever just to go through all the cartoons!

- Godard on Godard -- Still reading it 20 years later! It can be "tough" reading to make sense of anything he says, when half the time he is intentionally saying it backwards!

- Luis Bunuel _ Autobiography -- just finished ... awesome!!! Incredible on history of the Spanish Civil War and the other artists and friends of his. I wish, honestly, that progressive music folks would read this to realize how valuable and important some of these events can be to one's art!!!!!

- Peter Brook - The Empty Space (awesome books on the art of directing -- another one The Open Space)

Passing on Kubrick, Bergman, Lean, Hitchcock, Scorcese and Fellini because there are way too many critics that kiss and not review.

Finished Kim Gordon's. Not sure I wanted another "victim" book, but it's starting out that way. But it got better, although I think that things are simplified too much to the 4th and 5th grade levels, to ensure we do not see anything past the veils and curtains. Uploaded a review. Very different! She's more honest about her "art" than she is about the music, that I think that she sometimes does not know where it comes from.

Just kinda sad that the "progressive" journalists, are not able/capable of writing serious material on the artists that gave us so much great music ... they are no different than any film maker, or writer, or painter in the 20th century ... but we refuse to look past the "popular music" and top of the pops concepts to find something else more valuable.

Now reading Nick Mason's book ... the pictures got me interested! Graphics ... Art ... grrrrr !!!! know what I mean?

SW, would not make an interesting read, I do not think. While I know he is very widely knowledgeable of music, I think that his take on it might be a bit too simplistic, however, if his own music improves beyond just a song, then I am totally wrong. It's strange to see him talking to Klaus Schulze, for whom he obviously has an appreciation, but on the same DVD I can not imagine him listening to those technicians, define one thread in the middle of Klaus' piece, the way they do. I'm not sure that SW is that detailed yet, although he might appear to be. He comes off as too much of a rock'n'roller to actually take music that seriously.

But he might have interesting comments on the various folks he worked on, although I did not find that he improved any of them whatsoever, except clean them up!

Edited by moshkito - February 19 2016 at 10:58

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moshkito

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Posted: February 06 2016 at 13:29

Hi,

Interrupted ... that dang'd "Gilliamesque" book! Nick Mason is on the back burner now!

Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
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octopus-4

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Posted: February 13 2016 at 15:02

The best Pink Floyd bio Mark Blake's "Pigs Might Fly", IMO.

I'm currently reading "Making it: famous names and silly girls" by Francesca Garnett and Lisa Bankoff

(aka Chimera http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=5780) Nick Mason plays a part here, too.

I agree that a book about Vangelis would be interesting

I stand with Roger Waters, I stand with Joan Baez, I stand with Victor Jara, I stand with Woody Guthrie. Music is revolution

moshkito

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Posted: February 17 2016 at 09:56

octopus-4 wrote:

The best Pink Floyd bio Mark Blake's "Pigs Might Fly", IMO.

I'm currently reading "Making it: famous names and silly girls" by Francesca Garnett and Lisa Bankoff

(aka Chimera http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=5780) Nick Mason plays a part here, too.

I agree that a book about Vangelis would be interesting

On a taped interview that was offered radio stations in the 70's, he talks for over an hour about "heaven and hell" and music in general. My favorite part is about the spoons. And he says that the spoons are in ALL of his albums!

It's lovely fun to just listen to try and find the spoons ... but yeah, they are there for sure! And some of his stuff on the tube is also nice ...

Edited by moshkito - February 17 2016 at 09:57

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chopper

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Posted: February 17 2016 at 10:45

moshkito wrote:

Roger Dean

Other than the covers, there really is no good book on him. And his time is coming to an end

I hope he doesn't read that!

Replayer

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Posted: February 17 2016 at 22:25

moshkito wrote:

Tangerine Dream

It's been now ... something like 2 years, and it is not done. I think that Edgar Froese's death created a huge vacuum, but I would rather have an "unfinished symphony" or an "unbegun symphony" (as PDQ Bach would say!), than wait for a book that ends up with too much nail polish and perfume. maybe I am being unreasonable and expecting it to be more than it needs to be, but I have a feeling that Bianca and other folks are heavily editing/censoring some parts of this book, otherwise. We all know that Edgar also had a very tart tongue and was not afraid to use it. And it is possible that many folks did not like it, or enjoy the comments, and they do not want them published. Sadly, this could kill a quarter to a third of the book, when it comes to Chris Franke.

I've ordered the book over a year ago and have been annoyed at the slow progress.

However, last month an admin on the official TD forum mentioned:

"NOTHING WILL BE CHANGED IN THE BOOK, it will be AUTHENTIC.
This was Edgar's wish.
And you can be sure that Edgar would not monkey around with vanities and gossip. FULL STOP.

EB (ADMIN)

PS: The book will be finalized this year, hopefully in summer. Thanks for your patience so far."

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Posted: February 18 2016 at 06:51

I would like to read the fictional books Stanislaw Lem reviewed or wrote the prefaces to in his books "A Perfect Vacuum" and "Imaginary Magnitude". The authors are fictional as well.

Those are:

In "A Perfect Vacuum":

"A Perfect Vacuum" by Stanislaw Lem (the only non-fictional work and author, yet treated as fictional by Lem himself. Lem was always quite self-ironic).

"Les Robinsonades" by Marcel Coscat.

"Gigamesh" (no typo for "Gilgamesh") by Patrick Hannahan

"Sexplosion" by Simon Merril

"Gruppenführer Louis XVI." by Alfred Zellermann

"Rien du tout, ou la conséquence" by Solange Marriot

"Perycalypsis" by Joachim Fersengeld

"Il Idiota" by Gian Carlo Spallanzani

"Do Yourself A Book" (a literary kit)

"Odysseus of Ithaka" by Kuno Mlatje

"Toi" by Romain Serrat

"Being Inc." by Alistar Waynewright

"Die Kultur als Fehler" by Wilhelm Klopper

"De Impossibilitate Vitae; De Impossibilitate Prognoscendi" by Cezar Kouska

"Non serviam" by Arthur Dobb

"Die neue Kosmogonie" by Alfred Testa

In "Imaginary Magnitude":

"Nekrobie" by Cezary Strzybisz

"Eruntics" by Reginald Gulliver

"History of Bitic Literature" by Prof. Dr. J. Rambellais

"Vestrand's Extelopedia in 44 Magnetic Tapes"

BaldJean and I; I am the one in blue.

moshkito

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Posted: February 18 2016 at 10:24

Hi,

Lem is a very interesting author ... that defied a lot of descriptions. I first got to hear about him when Tarkovsky did "Solaris" way back in the day, when AD2, Can, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Cosmic Couriers, took my attention. I liked the ideas in "Solaris" a lot more than the ones that were presented in 2001, both the book and the film.

I forgot about those fictional books, but I remember that our library in Santa Barbara had a handful of them, which my dad thought was funny, when I asked him about Lem. I, no longer, have access to that library, since it was absconded by the Portuguese Government a year plus ago, part of my mom's this and that ... and it will probably mean that all these books will be buried in crates for the next 300 years or more! No one will see these again, and there were many things in Brazilian and Spanish literature in there that were not even catalogued by any Portuguese, Spanish or Brazilian Literature library in the world. There is a sort of "blah blah" that is one wall big around dad's work in Lisbon that includes a couple of items and what not, but all in all, it is all gone, and buried and wasted.

Will look for some of those Lem works for sure.

Edited by moshkito - February 18 2016 at 10:31

Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
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moshkito

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Posted: February 18 2016 at 10:27

Replayer wrote:

...

However, last month an admin on the official TD forum mentioned:

And it was posted after so much ... and many comments ... by many of us, myself included. I'm still concerned that somethings are going to be left behind and hidden. I can not see how any words about Chris Franke, will help. His own silence on the whole thing is one of the saddest things I have ever witnessed. The other is Peter Baumann's silence after leaving the present configuration ... and I believe it had to do with the experimental side of things ... the current group is not capable of exploring and experimenting with "sound", and I think this had a contrary effect with Peter, directly or indirectly.

The samples are nice, but not great. More of the same, really! Just another song, really!

Very sad ... totally sad, because I think that Edgar was hoping to be able to experiment again, and break the cycle of "song". The very title and idea of it all was to break the known concepts ... only to return to a song? ... yeah ... bad interpretation of it all!

Edited by moshkito - February 19 2016 at 11:09

Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
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InstrupsychedeMental View Drop Down

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Posted: March 30 2016 at 17:09

I really want to read Lee Smolin & Roberto Mangabeira Unger's The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time: A Proposal in Natural Philosophy.

I haven't scored a copy, yet. Apparently quite large. One half written by each author, apparently, both making the same argument (Smolin as physicist and Unger as philosopher). In essence it might just be an elaborate attack against the 'time is an illusion' fad that some neo-logical positivists argue but I suspect it would be a little more enlightening than that.

Smolin's previous arguments against modern physics (I'll grant him the contra-String Theory stuff) are interesting but his laws of physics evolving over time arguments don't sway me outside of any potential phase transitions from an earlier, much hotter period. Too bad he doesn't have the rhetorical ability of a Lawrence Krauss as Smolin's ideas are much more interesting; Krauss' take on why there is something rather than nothing will leave future historians far less interested than those still intrigued by Descartes skepticism; that basically boils down to a quantum fluctuation in the void went 'Presto!'.

Comes highly recommended by Massimo Pigliucci, if anyone is familiar (teaches in NY and did a long-running podcast called Rationally Speaking). The guy is brilliant, in my opinion, and I had my eye on this potential reading before, so why am I waiting until Richard Wright gets reincarnated?

I'm currently way too self-conscious of my posts, here, to be doing this in my current state.

I need a (longer) vacation.

Anyways, if anyone has read then drop word, and convince me either than the book is worthwhile or that Timothy Leary may have been onto something.

Also, just ordered a copy of Nick Turnbull's book, Michel Meyer's Problematology: Questioning and Society. I heard an interview with him at New Books in Philosophy (more podcast Shiite cookie bombs) and it sounds like an interesting take on epistemology, a subject that has fascinated me ever since I came to the realization and acceptance that I was likely insane. Barring the less likely scenario where it is the rest of the world that is insane. Ockham's razor, I suppose.

If I ever use the word 'apparently' more than once in a post, again, then please ban me.

Edited by InstrupsychedeMental - March 30 2016 at 17:11

octopus-4

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Posted: March 31 2016 at 01:40

I think the Smolin's half about the reality of time has been released independently.

I stand with Roger Waters, I stand with Joan Baez, I stand with Victor Jara, I stand with Woody Guthrie. Music is revolution

moshkito

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Posted: April 03 2016 at 10:39

Hi,

Just finished reading "Inside Out" by Nick Mason.

Now to figure out a review for this place. Lots of piccies, and many of them a memory since I saw many of those big shows.

One error, I originally thought ... the "Wall" movie was premiered in SF not LA. It opened there later for a few days I think. I confusing a hitchhiking trip that Guy and I had to the Bay Area to catch something or other by Pink Floyd ... have to find the "tickets" for it ... have them somewhere ... to find out what it was.

It was a wonderful trip, except of having to do pantomimes and funsies at 2AM in Santa Cruz trying to get a ride to 101 back to Santa Barbara ... I think we made it back around 10AM or noon. Can't remember that far back, but the pantomimes and jumping and standing still on the sensors to change the traffic lights, ends up being a ... interesting memory!

Cartoon like, too!

Next, is finishing the one on Klaus Schulze, and then Archie Patterson's Eurock which I have read more than halfway. Lovely history ... if anything for feelings on various ideas at the time ... very with it, even if some of the ideas are so out there, that one wonders where in the universe it comes from. Don't ask about Richard Pinhas, for me!

Edited by moshkito - June 13 2016 at 06:34

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Posted: April 04 2016 at 08:53

moshkito wrote:

One error, I think ... the "Wall" movie was premiered in SF not LA. It opened there later for a few days I think, and both Guy and myself hitchhiked to SF to see that premiere in quad and all that.

Cartoon like, too!

Hello Pedro. How are YOU?

Not to be contrary, but I don't think this happened... PINK FLOYD-THE WALL came out in 1982, and I saw the premiere of it in London at the Empire Theatre, Leicester Square, when I was working on my SPACE PIRATE RADIO/ VIDEO pilot. In 1982 our roommate days had ended by two years. I was on my own at The Chapel, aka Altair-4. I had my car, the Datsun B-210, so we wouldn't have hitchhiked North.

I think the Santa Cruz memory belongs to another On The Road adventure. Something madcap, as we often encountered?

BTW, I'm doing a blog on The Melting Watchtowre later this month about our record store adventures, searching for the latest stuff on Tuesdays for the weekend's broadcast of SPACE PIRATE RADIO on Sunday

night. Monday morning. I even will mention the mornings at the Downtown L.A. Pussycat Theatre.

Wait till you see my t-shirt. "Ventura Highway..."

cheers.

moshkito

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Posted: April 05 2016 at 23:22

Guy Guden wrote:

Hello Pedro. How are YOU?

Not to be contrary, but I don't think this happened...

Fixed ... definitely had the dates incorrect. I have to find my PF file that has tickets and all that to see what it was. I do think it was for a PF something or other, but not sure what. MORE was 1969 and I think it was brought to the Arlington to catch, and "La Valle" was 1972, but I think that our hitchhiking sojourn was around 1976 or 1977, then?

Guy Guden wrote:

...

I think the Santa Cruz memory belongs to another On The Road adventure. Something madcap, as we often encountered?

...

It was one of those "on the road" adventures. I still have fun with that one, and laugh like crazy over it, though it was exhausting by the time we got back.

Ohhh ... wait ... you took care of the English Muffin and tea at Denny's? Or just tea ... !!!

Guy Guden wrote:

...

night. Monday morning. I even will mention the mornings at the Downtown L.A. Pussycat Theatre.

...

Wooootttt ... this Portuguese dayglo cook gets a mention? Let me break another bottle opener ... that would be just fitting.

On the Nick Mason book, it says one funny thing that kinda makes sense ... Tower Records was EMI's American enterprise ... and that would explain their very large selection of imports in the early days, and how many times we stopped there? I also enjoyed the Warehouse near UCLA. I got to visit Tower in SF, Seattle and the one here in Portland. They stopped carrying foreign things and imports around 1993 or 1994, and the first thing I told them was that it was the end. The Portland Tower closed a few years later ... and of course, these days, you can get just about anything on Amazon and the like ... but yeah ... I even scratch my head about the choices that were made.

BTW, the car, that 1968 Valiant, made it all the way up north with all my records and books, and then later all the way to Pendleton, OR, and in the following year, 1984 in the spring, I finally gave it away, and got me my first Volkswagen 1975 bus. I had a 2nd one all the way to summer of 2001.

I miss my bus!

Guy Guden wrote:

...

Wait till you see my t-shirt. "Ventura Highway..."

cheers.

Oh my word ... I need you to get me one ... make it a 3XL ... so it will last me forever.

Those were the days indeed ... and wouldn't you know it ... playing a show from 07/22/1974 ... right now. I'll send you my spreadsheets on what I have.

Edited by moshkito - April 05 2016 at 23:31

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moshkito

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Posted: April 14 2016 at 22:07

micky wrote:

Steve WIlson's bio - tentatively titled..

how to become famous, beloved, and make a million all while duping supposedly intelligent music fans with sh*t music LOL

I don't dislike SW, but his solo work is not as valuable to me as Porcupine Tree's work is. I'll evaluate why more on another thread.

I do think that his work is a lot like top ten ... super clean and over studio'd, making it look like that it is better than it really is ... I would like to just go up to his place, unplug everything, and just give him an acoustic guitar and tell him to play it and sing. I get this feeling that he wouldn't be able to do it ... without his ideas of what makes music better and more important to him!

It's just a thought ... not a disrespect in any way!

Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
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pianoman

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Posted: April 14 2016 at 23:48

Codex Seraphinianus.

Though no one can read that, except Luigi himself, if its not just gibberish.