RELEASES: SPITTING AT THE GLASS (five03 records, 2010)TOURIST (2009 re-release) :: MOTORMAN (Patchogue Records, 2007) :: iii (Patchogue 2006) :: JACQUES RIGAUT (Patchogue 2006) :: Other songs in performan
SONGS FROM SPITTING AT THE GLASS
- judy davis lips
in a town like a swamp here’s a map and a gun/second hand mayan can split yr tongue/camera rays are pointless games/but dyeing yr mouth can get you laid/color yr past and flash yr sneer/lost in the spectrum it’s so queer/judy davis lips dictate the words/judy davis lips destroy the world/in the cars and the pain here’s a pharmacy bomb/agony codes cry when yr gone/poison vines have swallowed la/we never sleep and we don’t get paid/at a party that’s dead there’s no gun to yr head/shivering flesh on an unmade bed/in the flames of the crash the shadow of sex/she’s still cool on the lipstick index// - flat planes
flat planes dc-10/allows no broken windows/inside the roof of yr mouth/she makes a killer billboard/her face a silver bullet/in this occupation/you gotta stay young/flat planes dc-10/stuck in a metal corset/she hates her fucking office/she’s like a fly in a can/inside her black sunglasses/i’m not a homosexual/i’m not a heterosexual/i’m just an angry person and you’ve gotta stay hungry/flat planes dc-10/pissing the propaganda/upon the frozen airfield/allows no broken windows/inside the roof of yr mouth/shadows on the window/someone is at the window/she’s waving from the window and you know that means something// - scatter
a nation’s like a bath to die in/mechanisms haunt yr every waking hour/sleeping in the cold enamel/kamikaze kids go swimming/from the radio beyond the lines/there’s acetylene on the camel’s back/wedded by the coldest welding/you will be the bride to the concrete/sunglasses swan around hiroshima/bikinis tangled in the vodka/i count the love i count the loss/i feel the heat los alamos/i saw the plans i saw the wave/as i was fused in yr arcade/now they dress in drag and vampire teeth/and they comb their hair with science fiction/posing in the radar plaza/karaoke kids surviving/there’s a discotheque inside their minds/where a little boy never fell on them/her graffiti kiss is luminescent/he’s a bunker boy but he’s coming out/i hear the beat inside the skulls of nature’s better animals/i won’t go gentle to the grave/what the wind scatters the wind saves// - ghostmouth
all time ago like a child outside my head i sang with the wild dogs/but my spirit jades like the sugar dissolved under absinthe/i’m still a boy/my lies are fair/take these ghosts from my mouth/let me feel like i’m alone in this house/i did my time in the gaol of yr expectations/i danced with the hanged man/my liberty just as tender as bruised as the meat hook/i’m still a boy/please cut me down// - permanent notice
she’s a gorgon/face like a klimt/she’s losing time/in a tailspin/it’s the skin you shed that lets you get away/we’re in detention now/we’re on permanent notice/signs and omens surround/we’re on permanent notice/paranoid authority/vienna’s on permanent notice/superstitious academy/everybody’s on permanent notice/amazon queen/too smart for school/yma sumac/recessive gene pool/split personality/liberates her/lost siamese twin/in the shower// - the spectrum (instrumental)
- spitting at the glass
spitting at the glass/biting at the latch/that’s when you know you are an intellectual/ shivering in texas/packing heat in libraries/you’ve got to watch yr back when yr sophisticated/in the internment camp/dressed like roxy music/you’ve got to sow dissent/you’ve got to sew dissent like babies in the tree line/barbed wire/boredom is my mother/irony’s my father/i am my own best friend/well wouldn’t you be/hanging by a thread/kick against the pricks/you could have been a star but then you think too much// - gulf of mexico
the knife has fallen bloodied these hands/exiled on morphine the money’s gone/pinned to a fly’s wing painting a chic death/the touch of the sun disgusted us/gulf of mexico/we shake and scream here/drink that dream in/disappear like/it even matters/the mural shattered tired of our hands/under a black sun this ocean/two in the blood stream four in the morning/feeling the shark’s intelligence// - mouth to hand
sometimes we feel we’re really living mouth-to-hand/part bone china part machine gun/they look around and the fashion gets better/like beatles colliding with a mohair sweater/yeah right/let’s pretend there’s no geisha culture/you don’t get on yr knees you don’t lap it up/she says it’s time to go with the fluxus/it’s time to bite the hand that feeds us/truth ain’t advanced/pornography/sometimes we feel we’re really living in japan// - from here to eternity dissonant and shaking girl goes down/and loses his lunch/all the spandex meathead men explode/in castle lightning/reading kitchen crochet kids are thread/and panoleptic/art theory magazines contort/new feminism/from here to eternity/artrocker and the nme/come dressed in raging rags like cale/and betsey johnson/embrace the therapeutic rock/of screaming truncheons/feedback through turkish bath and steam/koranic dripfeed/brought on by robert mapplethorpe/and foucault’s flipflops/pitchfork and mtv/take stabs at movie poetry/a spearmint chelsea/on a synthesizer ski blade riff/supergirltalk/in a nutmeg neon nightshade flash/old jazzmaster/alice coltrane firebird looking glass/for panther sunsets/there’s nothing here for you and me//
- exiles velvet machine theatre jerk/leather coated stripshow clerk/birdland and saucer streaks/trashed tubes and gravel beaks/shred soho sci-fi scam/basquiat and the spray can clams/gamelan groove skin slap jam/real poets eat from cans/constant struggle to be yrself/rocking out yr roman á clef/television screens turn red/magazines want to see you dead/fuzzy finger disco date/fraud shots and fashion plates/anti-bourgeois anti-blues/little turfer girl can’t lose/below the radar horoscope/the neo-punker starless dope/dada sonic patti horse/arto/artaud/flirt/divorce/exiles commiserate dot dot dash//contract communicate rot rot rash//
- brett smiley pile-up …we braced ourselves and waited for the news of a brett smiley pile-up on the m4//
- flat planes (radio edit, sing along without the word ‘fucking’)
- ELEVATORWe have something to do with the city
Dark dress and a Chrysler (crystal shake)
All night in a diademed chrome stem
Tall buildings and parties to penetrate
We crawl into the elevator
We just want to get off (get off)
Our love was made in a Factory
Kiss Couch and Empire StateCulture/ruin
Photo/physics
Future/novel Don’t look/don’t lookThat witch on the next floor breaks down
Broadway wig and murder gown (dead star)
Wall Street howling with animals
Manhattan, bad seeds and caviar
Back crawl into the elevator
We just want a good time (good time)
And I dreamed the gargoyle fell
Spitting teeth across the sidewalkCan’t afford to leave here
Can’t afford to stay
Don’t want the city
Just want it our wayWe’re not attracted but we try to blend in
It’s like you know, we’re so so, (yeah yeah yeah)
All night in a high-rise horror show
Hip rumours and black tie conspiracy theories
We crawl into the elevator
Blueprints for an arthouse dance craze
Good view of the President’s necktie My wife is an architect (we get by) - ISABELLEYou want oblivion Strange flowers in the Judas trees – Scorpions in the Embassy
Nomad distinctions
Melancholy in your photograph – The two of us in an eidograph
They want an answer
Wire money for investigations – smoke dreams of annihilation
In your rejection
As rich as any girl can be in – Your nihilism and your poetryNew hipster mixtape hell
Projection: me and Isabelle
Write off the wasteland over me
Our ghosts are moving constantlyRemake the city
Top down on a screaming Lincoln – Zapruder loops on the television
She’s theoretical
Jackie crawls on an open casket – Back brace and a murder jacket
In suspension Blank stares from your trench coat zeros – Strange wounds when they screen your ego
Penetration
Sex static in a painted kiss – Why keep running round like this?Erotic landslide
Strange drowning in Algeria – Some travel is immediate
Across the water
Collisions of our atavism – A spider’s house of anachronism
It’s in our language
Minarets of the occupation – Lost journals of the destination
We are out of here
Disguised in an atonal friction – We’re dreaming an eternal fiction - CORDOBA (©CALE/ENO)
- 5 OUT OF 6 Anaesthesia
The more and more is less and less
Euthanasia
The money shots, the drastic fleshDANANANAOh, now the world is filled
With a million screaming things
But there is no one here
Telling them what it all means
But hey, she worked it out on her own
Hey, she finally understands:
Hey, no pain when yr in the zone
She’s gotta take it like a manPedal down to catch obscene
Missed the part that turned your head
South Pacific beauty queen
Wipe your eyes, yr almost deadNo kiss-kiss/machine-head shift
Behind aroused electric walls
She wrote it on her fist:
Everyone just wants to be loved
Slow drowning: please, not this
Everyone just wants to be loved - TOURISTStrange clothes in the desert Red nights in the new transvestite sunThis my dress this my sex
This Tangier this Marrakesh
Your ache becomes a film
But so does everything
Snakes around my flaming hair
This my hex malaria
Labour pain of snow
Gorgon letting goThis heart of leather jackets
Red nights in the jackal-headed sunThis my pass this my port
This my dream this New York I am a forgery
I dress transparently
Nostalgia for yourself
Hydra hungry in Times Square
Don’t please anyone
Don’t be anyone - FIERCE 70S TOMBOY Mohawks
Buzz cuts
Pompadours
Virago
Watch your mouth, sailor
Drowned girls are tough, like Norman Mailer
Ostracism spits the lighter fluid
They told you no, so you want to do itFierce 70s Tomboy
Fierce 70s Tomboy (pirates the thrift store)Drag king jeans
Grip test machines
Shipwrecked skulls
Bathroom stalls
From the Siam Straight to Brighton
She abandoned her, left the light on
Motorcycle spits the lighter fluid
They told you no, so you want to do itFierce 70s Tomboy
Fierce 70s Tomboy (pirates the boys’ fear)Abandon ship ladies! - 2 SERIOUS LADIES [READ IT]The game is called: “I forgive you for all your sins.”Trade for a shack – kiss the family home goodbye
Oh, Lucy, I have to have you by my side
We’ll live on water and bread – I find it necessary
To do this right, like I used to play with little MaryOh, Jane! Where have you been all my life?
Solitude is only stronger with you
Oh, Jane! Where have you been all my life?
We stand outside the walls of fearOcean at dawn, kiss Pacifica’s thigh
Wilder and wilder and then he’s gone
Drink and grab – but everything slips by
The girls and monkeys in my ColónI AM NOT AFRAID OF THE DOCKS AT NIGHT
SOLITUDE IS ONLY A GAME WE PLAY
I AM NOT A FLY IN YOUR VASELINE
SOLITUDE IS ALL WE EVER FINDSalvation! Goering’s on the move again
Preoccupation! Frieda’s fading fast, now
Blind journeys – Two Serious Ladies
Lost in New Jersey without a car - NEW *GLAM* UNDERGROUND [namesake]I fell asleep for a month! It’s more glamorous, anyway! Cut the brakes!
No repair, no solid chain! (Watch out!)
Once was fine
Swiss models rust in the rainI’m not buying anythingHe doesn’t say much, does he? It’s more glamorous, anyway!How much for a Sex Pistols ticket
If I use remote control?Remote control
Put your old money where my mouth is
Remote control
Put your old money up my assholeWe do it all ourselves – it’s more glamorous, anyway!Escape, escape!
Dream caddies and Super 8
A scalpelscape
An open vein and a piece of cake (and a free bar)
NOTES TO THE ALBUM: Spoken-word tracks (3, 7, 10) and extracts (1) are from the 1972 novel Motorman, read by the author, David Ohle, and set to music composed by Venus Bogardus (interview here). David Ohle is also the author of the 2004 novel The Age of Sinatra. Some inspirations include the shutdown of the analog signal, Billy the Kid, works by Steve Reich and Philip K. Dick, beachside acrobat-hustlers and more.
- MOTORMAN [demo version appears on The Wiretapper 17 (March 2007), the compilation CD of The Wire Magazine]Dry shit in the fire
Off to find my doctor
Find Cock in the pollen
I’m approaching human
Remoter and distant
The motor insistentThis trip never stops this door never opens
the jellyhead outside my room repeating scene that signals doomThree suns have come up
Government ballgames
In a real month I lost electrical power
And consecutive Sundays froze me overnever pick up the same
jellyhead twice
I did and the features
Fell off the lobes
I opened the jellies
In an ether grove - BIRDSTorn curtain of birds, and poster stain
An actor’s voice like porcelain
She trades him for death wax and pirouettes
Spotlights skulls and silhouettesBirds, birds, birds, birds.Silk sockets of dress, cochineal
Hot line to bloodbank, oh, god you kneel
Cruel moons and elision, stuttered line
Make up for the lesions, switchblade spineI brought you souls
Like a bird brings worms.
They never listened to me
When I said: Don’t let me outCut theatre of doll parts, anodyne
Automatic deportment, lantern time
Wings hiding the revolt, wings crowded with noise
Preparing the ghost girls, preparing the boys - MR. BUNCE’S JELLYHEAD AGENT (extract)
- AUTOCLAVEIn motor cars we were émigrés
We write from a broken needle gun
They want to take our memories
The text on you and meMemories won’t get you out of gaol
But they might fetch you a cigarette
Autoclave, autoclaveThe poet and the ingénue
The run with a stolen tattoo gun
They’re poisoning the shopping mall
The waste of you and meYou cannot bring us back again
We’re feral girls and rocket boys
We’re gonna strike the different trains Erasing you and mehow much like a child
this machine - ANALOG UNDERGROUND Ten thousand leagues, a sea of dead signal
They killed the transformers, we put up our own
One town, a thousand – the digital blanket
A cathode ray tube trying not to drownBlack and white/underground/analog/all around
Black and white/underground/under waves/all aroundPounding the pavement, plumbing the junkyards
Stop when they’re all safe: every last screen
There’s no government performance – let’s say we forgot that
Screaming with white noise, time to play meanWhat’s in there? I only want my analog
My glowing catalog, my bygone days
New pirates braving the seas of forgetting
They’re bringing me home now in the good old fashioned way - VENICE VINCE He slingshots over the sand
Tight shirt and PCP
Like a fraction of a magazine
An athlete tying offVenice Vince, do you remember?Native pickups telephones
Coffee shops and personal ads
Burns a hole in your horoscope
Bars shine in mercuryOn leather boots like diamond dust
On your raunchy father’s horse
On leather boots like your mother’s ash
On your father’s raunchy horseDo you remember Vietnam?
Do you remember K D Lang?
Venice Beach beneath a grey sheet
Silver kids twisting in the windHanging from grey rings
Venice Vince and his Better
Sling through targets of last night,
Last year or never - TAKE WING, MOLDENKE (extract)
- THE AGE OF SINATRA [READ IT]Sinking, but singing from the radio
This is raw meat this is a crystal set
This is a pistol this is a death egg, nowIn the age of Sinatra, things were good – but no one remembersSignals a new riot in a winter skull
Eating the sirens eating the necronauts
Eating the remedies eating the Kennedys, nowThe age of Sinatra is sickening in first class furs
The age of Sinatra is shivering inside syrettes
The age of Sinatra rides a ship inside a curse
The age of Sinatra will not share its cigarettesNo one, no one but the radio
You, you in your hair-smoke high - QUIEN ESWho is that spitball shadow?
Who is he who rides the gallows?
Who is that harelip buckshot bastard?
I took them downNail me a pitbull picture
Nail me a lacquered future
Nail me to something like a childhood
Then tear it downJaw crack the jackdaw crypt
Let me pretend it’s Egypt
Scream my soul against the stars
Just like a shell
A cannonballWrite me a poison letter
Write me and I’ll be better
Write me the poster boy of zeros
You sold me outJaw crack the jackdaw crypt
Let me pretend it’s Egypt
Scream my soul against the stars
I will not die
I took them down
iii is an album of songs recorded by James Reich and Hannah Levbarg, using programmed drums, in the living room above Secession Books, the shop the couple used to run. The songs were recorded in the week between Christmas and New Year, 2005/2006. The album is thus entitled as reference to preface pages of a book, as it was the third home-recording iteration of several songs, but before the ‘formal’ start of the band (namely, with first drummer Annie Gardiner). Several of these songs have appeard on BBC radio and various compilations released since 2006. This album received numerous glowing reviews, except from Chuck Eddy, who slagged it off in his 8/10 review of Motorman. Songs on iii and unpublished songs, at end, include reverence for John Rechy, the close plexus of Fire Island society in the 70s and its reverberations through later decades and generations, William Burroughs, the lives and deaths of dadaists Jacques Rigaut and Arthur Cravan, Valerie Solanas, Anne Sexton, Le Tigre, adolescence, Kaspar Hauser, urban American freeways…
- WHAT YOU KNOW I’m tired of living in the city If you don’t know what that means, I’m not telling you London in her death throes Scenes from the afterglow Downtown the cracks will show The bastards in Soho Hold on to what you know Don’t let them take it, no They don’t tell you so Girlfriends are good to go Tigers on the radio Feminist electric show Take back the neon glow Remake your punkrock show This is the scene you know Hold on the undertow
- JACQUES RIGAUT (see JACQUES RIGAUT single lyrics)
- TALES: FROM A FIRE ISLAND (dedicated to Felice Picano)From Tennessee to puberty And the boredom of Paul America Egon’s erotic elite The blind joy of his little angels En masse entourage Burning art and sand and drugs Tales: From a Fire Island En masse entourage Burning skin and sex and drugs Heroes of all we could have been But wouldn’t you know It’s 20, 30, 40, 60 Cut to a fraction Of what we could have been Asleep upon the neon sands Like washed up sailors dragging the anchors through an arm A safety painting to ward bad news This is not a test, but, here are the results The castaway survivor tale He’s here alive with me, away and well Like hustling John and his shirtless hotel Age’s triumph in ocean’s swell. Standing up.
- THE AGE OF SINATRA (see MOTORMAN lyrics; video on home page)
- WE SHOULD KILL NATUREI turned my back on some bleeding stations I won’t denigrate my heart with love What a bloody scandal When you say that nothing dies, shut up Oh, you’re a liar, shut up, shut up There is no noose like distance No knife like diffidence Mine was a new wave murder Suicidal art mausoleum Now we should kill nature Just like JK Huysmans For a generation of teenagers that won’t eat When you say that we won’t change, shut up, Oh, you’re a liar, shut up, shut up, When you say that nothing ends, shut up, Oh, you’re a liar, shut up, shut up
- CREATURES Creatures of habit beat in the vein Shoulder-pin-shoulder nightclub in gray Don’t care what’s outside I’m not coming out This space is all that I have behind a hanging doubt Ghosts in the closet porcelain trade You’re an adjective, well that’s what you say Don’t care what’s outside, I’m not coming out This room is all that I have behind a hanging doubt Paint in the darkness spoiling your face Portraits grow older Dorian Gray Don’t care what’s outside I’m not coming out This picture’s all that I have behind a hanging doubt
- HOW EVERYTHING FALLS So at last you’re alone with your gas inhaler You’re a vacuum, just scum, but you’re sharp as glitter Turn your eyes to the floor cause you don’t belong Once you had the excuse, but you lost your nerve This is how everything falls: satellite ash, existential This is how everything falls: modernism – fades to Prozac And this new wave panic is the new dysphoria Nylon and infrasound, short hair and breaking down And your lipstick today gets in the way Hang on to your fictitious sickness This is how everything falls: satellite ash, existential This is how everything falls: it just fucking does
- SPACE, THE BIG DIVIDER anaerobic king sweating in mudflats radioactive needs and something smells You’re never there there’s no reason, no consequence or fairplay I’m signing my name to every little problem A lycanthropic bullet a never-healing knee something smells you’re in it deep Space is the biggest divider of every living creature Your playthings on the floor I tell you I think Space is the biggest divider of people and their heroes A stack of plastic rings I tell you I think I’ll stand on my head a little bit longer It’s my performance you’re upside-down, not me I won’t be back, there’s no reason, no golden ring no nothing, I’m signing my name to every little problem Baby can’t tell which end is up row your little boat in lather I’m all aflutter Tell me the truth: no you can’t unlock my secret hideout The young get their revenge for every creeping sorrow Sweating my moods my hands come creeping out two eyes four eyes six eyes eight eyes Berserker spinning hairs come creeping out the lycanthropic kitsch ausgezeichnete Haut Space is the biggest divider of breathing bastard my orange plastic horse, I tell you I think Space is the biggest divider of every bleeding breeder my playthings on the floor your hands all in my Space is the biggest divider
- RATS LIVE ON NO EVIL STAR Valerie’s gallery fantasy lost its sheen she lost her sheen call the office and rat on me kill yourself with Maybelline call the office and rat on me drown yourself in Vaseline go to work say nothing Between machine and smeared insect lies crisis Anne said: rats live on no evil star
- WOLF SPLINTERSwolf splinters stink in the dollhouse wolf splinters shave like a young man wolf splinters strike in the matchbox wolf splinters stitch her together take your red eyes from my room take your tongue back to your babies you look Victorian wolf splinters stink in the dollhouse wolf splinters she takes it to heart wolf splinters stuck in her underwear wolf splinters seem to be everywhere all this furniture goes down like your lipstick like your history you look Victorian
JACQUES RIGAUT, EPOCH ZERO & SAFETY PINS – VINYL SINGLE AND DOWNLOAD
- JACQUES RIGAUT – A-side Vinyl & Download 2006 (video on home page)Rigaut in rubber sheets climbing his golden rope My mouth on him, he’s dead After an afternoon of stealing grapes and being refused Although it’s our clinic, death Hold the rule against my breast Strangers, illustrated We plot the entrance of the bullet Mark it, picturing our black scorched vortex And permit salty lips to burn together Best friends powder burns the charcoal of our hair Shading the sheets as feathers fall Don’t illustrate it
- EPOCH ZERO – B-side Vinyl & Download 2006 I’ve seen hollow distress Once smothering and charred Inside-out for the sugarlight I ran across the yard Downtown with yr hairshirt on Saying nothing’s hard See the stupid clientele In their stupid bars Still life in an ancient room Sailors no holds barred Now divorced from their sheets they keep ringing Fists against the stars So this is the modern world – thank you very much
- SAFETY PINS – Download only, Rigaut recording session (video on home page)I’ve sealed my eyes with safety pins Doctor, you cannot get in In yr miner’s lamp yr a lighthouse With yr cyclops ray you diagnose my sheets Someone said you can’t get back What the hell ya looking at? All this emotion shaking around in the mirror Unseen hands taking me down won’t let me go All these fears shaking around in the mirror Vinyl hands training my eyes to see clearer Institution paradigm VCR loops truncheons shine Pain is just a state of mind Somehow you get left behind Somehow I got left behind What the fuck ya looking at?
OTHER SONGS PERFORMED OR RELEASED IN LIMITED FORMAT
- RESEARCH (demo version recorded with Motorman demos 2007)Concrete tears this car right out of the sky The boulevard throws it back again: Texas Blown light the Harlowe shape of your mouth Asphalt twists the nexus and burns like the South She’s driving a rental tank He’s driving a private eye Shadow stain on the shoulder The screen ages You believe that Hollywood is a place You believe the unconscious has nothing to say You believe to be modern is to fuck with disinterest You believe that God exists in a crashed car This part of the city did not exist Now we glide like weapons between the abutments This freeway killed my heart I drive cause I believe in nothing
- DOG STAR/SHAKESPEARE SQUADRON (performed in 2006 live shows w/Annie Gardiner – drums)Girls with rayguns down at the thrift store
Shave their scalps and dance to the arclight radio
Adrenal ghosts with ripped up lipstick
Torpedo faces frug to the stupid rocknrollConfidental blah blah blahBilly’s poems flap like a manta ray
Kick against the pricks and the arclight radio
Dirty jrnls abstracts of future meat
In apprehension, how like a god – we love nothing
It’s hard when you’re pretty in prison
Damaged goods are machines for boredom radio
It’s hard when you’re pretty in prison
Damaged goods are machines for boredom radioConfidential blah blah blah
