From wikipedia:

The Battle of Waterloo, fought near the town of Waterloo in Belgium on Sunday 18 June 1815,^[5] was the decisive battle of the Waterloo Campaign, and Napoleon Bonaparte’s last. Waterloo marked the end of the period known as the Hundred Days, which began in March 1815 after Napoleon’s return from Elba, where he had been exiled after his defeats at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813 and the campaigns of 1814 in France. The defeat put a final end to Napoleon’s rule as Emperor of the French.

…The battlefield is in present-day Belgium, about eight miles (12 km) SSE of Brussels, and about a mile (2 km) from the town of Waterloo. The site of the battlefield is today dominated by a large mound of earth, the Lion’s Hillock. As this mound used earth from the field itself, the original topography has not been preserved.

Should you find real history dull and uninteresting, I offer you history gussied up with sequins and satin and platform boots:

My my, at Waterloo, Napoleon did surrender
Oh yeah, and I have met my destiny in quite a similar way
The history book on the shelf
Is always repeating itself

Waterloo - I was defeated, you won the war
Waterloo - promise to love you for ever more
Waterloo - couldn’t escape if I wanted to
Waterloo - knowing my fate is to be with you
Waterloo - finally facing my Waterloo

My my, I tried to hold you back but you were stronger
Oh yeah, and now it seems my only chance is giving up the fight
And how could I ever refuse
I feel like I win when I lose

Waterloo - I was defeated, you won the war
Waterloo - promise to love you for ever more
Waterloo - couldn’t escape if I wanted to
Waterloo - knowing my fate is to be with you

And how could I ever refuse
I feel like I win when I lose

Waterloo - I was defeated, you won the war
Waterloo - promise to love you for ever more
Waterloo - couldn’t escape if I wanted to
Waterloo - knowing my fate is to be with you
Waterloo - finally facing my Waterloo
© ABBA, 1974

I fell in love with Rinfy the gypsy.
He said when I grew up he’d marry me,
Carry me away on his steed.

“Don’t worry, my baby!
Don’t die, my funny little darling!
I’m going away for a little while,
And shouldn’t be gone for very long.”

Ooh, then I really fell for Geoffrey, our gardener.
He said he’d marry me, too.
Oh, and I believed him, just like a fool.

“Don’t worry, my honey!
Don’t die, my funny little doll!
I’m going away for a little while.
Shouldn’t be gone for very long.”
(Ooh, long, long, long…)

Playing canasta in c-cold rooms,
Playing canasta in cold rooms,
Playing canasta upstairs, downstairs,
And in my lover’s…ooh…

I met a boy who took me upstairs,
Then took me in his arms and told me
I comforted him, uh-huh.

“Don’t worry, my dear,
Don’t cry, you weird little stranger.
I’m going away.
You probably won’t ever see me again.”

Oh, yes, I know, I’m always falling,
Gazing at hazy goldfish in your swimming eyes.
How could I not lie there with you?

“Don’t worry, my darling!
Don’t die, my silly little baby!
I’m going away for a little while,
And shouldn’t be gone for very long.”
(Ooh, long, long, long!)

Playing canasta in c-cold rooms,
Playing canasta in cold rooms,
Playing canasta upstairs, downstairs,
And in my lover’s…ooh…

© KaTe Bush

I can’t come up with a better title for this post, which will have nothing to do with party crashing in the least. I’ve just been listening to The B-52s almost exclusively for days. For the most part, everything else just makes me want to crawl out of my skin or simply desire no audio stimulation at all. Yes, even I need a break from KaTe every once in a while, although this last run was probably one of the longest on record.

At any rate, I’ve been thinking about wonderfully timed unemployment situation and comparing it to the last one back in 2004. If 2008 will be known as the Summer of My Cybertent, 2004 should be called the Summer of My Wanna-Be Subversive-tent.

I’ve even created a mix CD in honor of this summer, although it’s technically not summer just yet. I don’t think I’ve ever done that, created a CD to memorialize the music I played over and over in a given season. Nope. I can guarantee I’ve never done this. But it’s a good mix and hopefully the sister will be of a mind to listen to it at least once while I’m visiting. The track listing has been uploaded to artofthemix.com.

No, it hasn’t. AOTM has been down for two days and instead of waiting for them to get their act together, I proudly present The Summer of My Cybertent 2008:

Games People Play - The Alan Parsons Project

Give Him A Great Big Kiss (remix) - The Shangri-las

Telefone (Long Distance Love Affair) - Sheena Easton

Deadbeat Club - The B-52s

Eye In The Sky - The Alan Parsons Project

It’s Too Late - Bob Mould

Want You - The Bangles

Modern Girl - Sheena Easton

Out In The Streets - The Shangri-Las

You Want Alchemy - KaTe Bush

Loch Lomond - The Real McKenzies

Don’t Answer Me - The Alan Parsons Project

Leader of the pack (remix) - The Shangri-Las

Aquarius/Let The Sun Shine In (The Flesh Failures) - The Fifth Dimension

Eyes Wide Open - The B52s

As I was listing the songs, I realized making a mix CD without at least one KaTe song seems an impossibility for me. There’s obviously little, if any rhyme or reason for any particular song’s inclusion (if you discount the whole KaTe factor), except it’s a snapshot of the bands/singers I’ve been playing over and over. I’ve even left behind Pink Striped Sox and A Sonic Lipstick in favor of this for listening in the 40-ouncer. That mix CD is a story unto itself; I don’t even know what version I’m up to.

If you’d like a copy of either - or both, let me know and I’ll get one to you.

Can there be any others? Absolutely not.

I’ve spent eighteen years of my life disliking this album to the point of insanity. There’s no good reason I can offer for this, no excuses, nothing tangible. I just didn’t like Never for Ever (circa 1980) and could have lived without it for the rest of my life. In fact, I have lived without it for quite a few years; oh, it’s been in my collection and there are a couple of songs I do like quite a lot, but NfE was never the first, second, or last KaTe album I ever chose to play. I thought of it as an aberration, an odd little detour taken before she got back on track and released Hounds of Love (1985)…yes, I know The Dreaming (1982) came between these two, but I didn’t like that one for a long time, either, save just a couple of songs (does this sound familiar?)

I’m not sure what got stuck in my craw a week ago, but I absolutely had to listen to Never for Ever. I haven’t stopped since, at least in my car and I recognize the obsession I now have for it. Obsession is definitely not too strong a word, either. For the time being, this is the only KaTe music I want to hear. Over and over and over, to the exclusion of even Rinfy the Gypsy (you weird little stranger), but not including Rocket Man (on a mixed CD with which I am also currently obsessed, but that’s another story).

I’ve got all sorts of jumbled thoughts regarding NfE being the only album KaTe could have done before The Dreaming, which many consider to be her finest work. NfE, I believe, gives the listener a good idea of where she’s going musically, but simply can’t because of limitations created by not having her own studio where she would later create incredible sounds and effects for the songs that would act as our very own passport to carry us over and even more deeply into her world, vis a vis Hounds of Love and Aerial (2005). The Sensual World and The Red Shoes are, in my opinion, pedestrian albums lacking the raw power of the three albums preceding them and the one following. There’s no one song in particular on NfE to which I can point and say, “That’s the launching pad for KaTe’s trajectory, without question,” however; each of the ten tracks on NfE play a bit in that trajectory leading to The Dreaming, Hounds of Love, and finally, Aerial, even Night Scented Stock (where there are no words, just that magnificent voice ooh-ooh-oohing and la-la-lahing without the aid of any instrument that I can discern). I’m not even sure explaining the parts each plays would be possible, at least not today. This is definitely something I’d like to explore a bit further, so consider this to be continued.

Aside from all that, the album cover itself is definitely the most interesting of all eight studio albums KaTe’s released. Click on the picture to enlarge it.

All We Ever Look For

Just look at your father

And you’ll see how you took after him.

Me, I’m just another

Like my brothers

Of my mother’s genes.

All they ever want for you

Are the things they didn’t do.

All they ever wanted–a little clue.

All they ever wanted–the truth.

All they ever wanted–a little bit of you.

All they ever wanted,

But they never did get.

The whims that we’re weeping for

Our parents would be beaten for

Leave the breast

And then the rest

And then regret you ever left.

All we’re ever looking for

Is another open door.

All we ever look for–another womb.

All we ever look for–our own tomb.

All we ever look for–ooh, la lune.

All we ever look for–a little bit of you, too.

All we ever look for,

But we never do score.

All we ever look for–a god.

All we ever look for–ooh, a drug.

All we ever look for–a great big hug.

All we ever look for–a little bit of you.

All we ever look for–a little bit of you, too.

All we ever look for,

But we never do score.

Does it ever happen to you that there’s a particular singer you absolutely adore and can no more imagine a life without that singer’s music than you can a life without, oh, I don’t know…your head? Eventually adoration interruptus takes place and the singer you believed would play in your walkman/CD player/tape deck for the rest of your natural life is shoved to the back burner for a year, two years, maybe more, like, well, more years than you’d like to admit.

Then one day, you’re listening to a k-RAY-zee mixed CD you’ve burned that includes one song performed by this particular musician and you’re thrown back to a particular time (or times) in your life as if you’re almost reliving them, but as an observer and not as a participant. You remember peeling up the driveway and out to the road, squealing the tires because you’re so angry with your parents for what seemed a life-shattering incident at the time, but now, some years later, you realize it totally wasn’t.

Or perhaps you remember pulling out of a certain midwestern city on a Greyhound bus, earphones clamped to your ears, your eyes filled with tears because you’re leaving the one person in the world you think understands you and loves you for you. Later on, this same artist would play a huge part of the soundtrack to a deeper relationship with that person when it was still in its infancy. Maybe there was a particular birthday you don’t remember as being especially noteworthy, except one of the gifts you received was the newest album by this very much adored singer.

How about the time in college when you might have been poking around a cheesy chain record store in a little podunk mall in a little podunk northeastern town and happening upon the singer’s first album. You’re very green in the admiration you feel, for that’s what it is at this point: admiration. Adoration is still a ways off. You know you don’t have the cash to buy it…but you do have a credit card. Of course, the credit card is linked to your parents’ account and you wonder if your father will ask why you’re spending the little bit of money you might have on something as frivolous as a CD. But you throw caution to the wind and snap down the credit card and the CD (still packaged in the old-school cardboard boxes).

Of course, by this time, you actually own a CD player…very much not like the time the summer previous when you bought a new CD by another performer on your short list of absolute favorites and had to buy the cassette tape, too because you didn’t have a CD player yet.

And then, the years pass, music comes and goes with a few performers cementing themselves onto your psyche in more than a crumbling and weeds-growing-through-the-cracks cement type way. Most music becomes transitory, brief obsessions whose fuses are burnt out as quickly as they start.

Then one day, you’re listening to a k-RAY-zee mixed CD you’ve burned that includes one song performed by this particular musician and all you want to do is immerse yourself in the music they’ve recorded for days. You want to drown yourself in it, in the words, in the music, in the memories. The singer is brilliant and quirky and has a beautifully strange and unique voice, as well as a way with words not many have and you realize you love this performer as much now as you did then, maybe even a little more because life has taught you more than you’d like to know sometimes. It’s a bittersweet reunion almost, for it speaks to you as you once were and you can never again regain the you from then.

I’m still quite unclear as to how this 13-year-old KaTe song remained totally undetected by my radar until just last week…I’ve been searching up and down and sideways for it and have even pressed a couple of factory-mates into the same search. Our luck so far has been nil.

I’ve found it mentioned on many a site and many a site has the song’s lyrics. When I read the lyrics, it seemed very, very vaguely familiar, but I can chalk that up to no more than the opening lines of the song: one had been used in a previous song and another was to be used in a later song.

Can I find it for download?

Absolutely not.

Fun. Weird. Informative, to a point.

Another album found via boingboing and pulled from the dusty vaults of my external hard drive in order to danger up my listening experience.

Download Music for Robots here, if you’d like.

I had no idea Ackerman was so…famous, until wikipedia came to my rescue.

I love you, wikipedia!

And I love you, too, Uncle Forry.

Here’s another album of the odd variety, straight from the really weird mp3s collection. I listened to the entire album for the first time a couple of nights ago and although it doesn’t have a good beat, it’s not something I’m soon to forget. And obviously there’s something about it pulling me back to the lessons Louise Huebner teaches here, since I find myself listening to it again this evening.

Seduction Through Witchcraft is twelve tracks of spoken word entries, complete with trippy, spaced-out sounds in the background. Louise herself has an intriguing voice, although I wonder how much of it is hers and how much is due to tinkering in the studio. Regardless, and with the addition of those trippy effects, it’s a very entertaining listen.

Luckily, Seduction Through Witchcraft can be found for download on the internets, even though I’m given to believe it’s no longer in print. You can download it at Scar Stuff, where you’ll be able to find some other sonic oddities, including the L’Etrange Monsieur Whinster album I blogged about late last month.

This is the song that keeps me breathing
Under the water a distant light
From Monday morning to Friday night
–Black Box Recorder

I’ve made no mention of the factory in a long time and not because there’s nothing to say. There’s a lot to say and much of it would be sad. Then there’s a lot more to say and much of that would be happy.

First things first, I suppose: things are much better than they were even a month ago, at least for me. PB and I are getting along quite famously these days, which makes the eight hours a day we sit across from each other go that much quicker. I’d forgotten we share the same slightly left-of-center sense of humor; there is a lot of laughter these days, much different than the Buster Keaton I was pulling for a while, i.e. adopting the modern role as Old Stoneface, sans the pratfalls, flat hat, and slapshoes.

He’s taken me into his confidence a few times in the past couple of weeks and surprising to me was when we found some common ground to share when it comes to others’ actions at the factory. I’ve an idea of when and why this change came about and although I am loathe to admit it, my take on it is wrapped up in my (former) astute assistant and her subsequent dismissal.

To counter this is the state of the economy in general and how that is affecting us. It’s not a pretty site at all; there were fourteen employees let go on Friday - without getting into too much detail, the fourteen were not factory employees but part of the larger family. I’m scared there will be more across the larger family, again not the factory per se. Nonetheless, it’s still unnerving. The tension at the factory last week was palpable and I was thankful to have taken Friday off.

My goal is to keep complaining about the factory at an absolute minimum in the newest incarnation of Strange Cousin Susan; this decision is based not so much on fear, as it was one time, but because the constant bitching wasn’t helping a goddamn thing. It didn’t change anything in the least and frankly, it was tiring me out, the constant bad attitude and such. Naturally, there are still some things I find vexing, but in the grand scheme of things, these irritations are inconsequential.

Most things are, aren’t they?