My Lautbild for Oppermann Discussed at Length

Here is the Oppermann Playlist:

1 "The beast in me" is played by a singer whom I do not know the name of. The twang of his voice is middle America, possibly a slight southern drawl. He is not Johnny Cash, he is a little gentler, and not as famous. "The beast in me" should be self explanatory: Oppermann is a Steppenwolf. Maybe he does not like the beast in him pointed out in this way, but I had to do that, as a musical symbol.

2. "April Fool's Day Morn" brings up Louden Wainwright's words "My Mom is here." And with this we can feel a trembling, something taking us down that we feel in the pit of our stomach. Something that the people laugh at, some of the callous ones laugh at the increasingly brutal imagery: till we get to the woman on the bathroom floor: "I threw her out, screaming bitch and whore!" This got only one laugh, and that was the saddest laugh I have ever heard. I do not know if Wainwright's song could be called Nostalgic, because the brutality is so keen to this music I think that the sentimental is actually washed away in an unbelievable medium of un-differentiated grief.

3. "Love is Blind" is a little bit of rock and roll from Annie Lennox: it is crisp and clean, but it shouts, momma poppa it shouts all to the heaven: "oh sugar, when you gonna come?" I suppose the line is sung because the whole damn thing is getting so fucking bitter: "I spend my days getting colder, I still want you all the time," this points to the ice of Isis, that I keep pointing to and that Oppermann is entitled to take issue with. But the question is of whether the turning away: the Abschied of Tarkovsky/Handke's work: whether the turning in some way can endure this:

Tired of being down on luck
Tired of being beaten up
Tired of being so screwed up
Tired of all this desperation
Tired of all this mad frustration
Tired of all the aggravation
Sick and tired of devastation
Give it some consideration

Tired of being so screwed up…

4. Then we have Apocalyptica. A group of Norweigan musicians playing Metallica: "Nothing Else Matters," this sentiment is itself funny to the likes of Oppermann and Ayres: it is too much sentimental jackassery, and as I have said all this sentimental jackassery is "a kicker." I still really like all the extremely earnest cello strokes in this one: and you can say that this earnestness is great for the nubiles in us all.

5. Patti Smith, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is even more of a risk with Oppermann because I have a feeling he loathes Nirvanna. But I think that Patti Smith actually does a beautiful number, and renders poetic what Kurt Cobain simply rendered pathetic by virtue of his ego's concerted effort to cease to exist: the really optimistic bastard thought he could get out of all this burning boredom that is in this bath: everything changes, and nothing changes. I think that Patti Smith actually evokes for us the boogie man: the mother of all nightmares is this bogeyman. The mother is a man, now that is a terrible equation to work out, and it really sometimes fucks with me. Me I am trying just to keep it together, picking through the rubble, keeping it just enough of being a metaphor, "not all of this has to be real." And... "not all of this happens to be a just a bad dream either."

6. "Indiscipline" I believe is something every self-respecting angst filled idiot should have at his free disposal. This is Adrian Belew at his absolute quirky weirdest that he can possibly be: and the matter keeps getting wrapped tighter and tighter and tighter until you just cannot take it any more! The lyrics describe the quintessential object. And one could say that with the words:

I do remember one thing...it took hours and hours,
And by the time I was done with it
I was so involved I didn't know what to think...
I carried it around with me for days and days,
Playing little games,
Like not looking at it for a whole day and then...
Looking at it to see if I still liked it...
I did!

One can say for certain:

"Put it there pal!"

Richard Thompson may himself be a more sublime, and a better poet, less caged in by some kind of thin pale of new wave electronica that Belew tends to reckon with in his song. Nonetheless the full force of this song is simply not to be missed. Nothing is right in this one: the madman is let out of his cage: its a matter of blood in the bath and about teen-thousand electric volts pouring through your veins: in this manner we have no time to ask about animal warmth: and with the final words:

"I like it"

It doesn't matter how cold you get: the colder you are the better electric conductor you can be.

Then there is

7. Frank. We cannot say Frank Sinatra without thinking simultaneously about tinkling ice cubes and a bottle of whiskey, somewhere in Murakami's terrible hotel in "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle." Frank should really send you there: standing in the elevator, listening to fucking elevator music. "I get a kick out of you" is an acknowledgment of the total sentimental jackass. It was like Frank sang these words as they dropped napalm on the natives in Vietnam with b-52's. I mean heavy man.

8. Rachid Taha: "Barra Barra." I think that I subjected you to this song before: the blood will rise. That is the message of this song to me: the blood will rise. After we have seen the full weight of this capitalist filth dropping cluster-smart-bombs in Iraq: after we have gotten sick on over 100,000 dead in Iraqui blood: can we start to wonder if we have really lost it: really lost any control of our ability to fight this cold that invades us: the external "solutio" is psychoid, cold as the coldest freon, psychotic material that goes beyond any animal warmth. The song "Barra Barra" I believe means "outside." I do not know much about the outside except that it is outside of any shelter: it is in a place where business is business: and one day the shadow, the Vandal, the Visigoth will get us and cut our throat, speaking at once the paralyzing, petrifying, terrifying words: words that turn blood to ice: "I ain't mad!!"

9. Christopher O'Riley: "Karma Police" by Radiohead interpreted for piano. I think you probably don't care too much for this piece. For me this piece glides and holds an unforeseeable delicacy to lament. I think that within the unsung lyrics to this piece is the same searing brutality, the same searching as you might find in Louden Wainwright's confession: "My mom is here."

Karma police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, hes like a detuned radio
Karma police, arrest this girl, her hitler hairdo, is making me feel ill
And we have crashed her party
This is what you get, this is what you get
This is what you get, when you mess with us

Karma police, Ive given all I can, its not enough
Ive given all I can, but were still on the payroll
This is what you get, this is what you get
This is what you get, when you mess with us
And for a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself
And for a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself

For a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself

Radiohead always plays chill: mathematical "interest" that occludes the survival that we seek in turning away from the iron monkey of civilization toward some bare life calling it "love" an interest that still holds the vestiges of animal warmth.

For a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself

10. Bohuslav Martinu's 1942 quartet III (allegro) is played at the introduction to Jim Sjveda's musical program here in Los Angeles, from KUSC. I think it may be the tenderest, sweetest voice that I have ever heard in the opening two minutes of the piece. The music itself then tends to flit and fly away into birdlike fountaining away: the spirit ascends. And this ascent actually takes itself to a sweet complication, contradiction, exhaustion that descends into a rather ... optimistic conclusion. Life is possible. I figure that at least one of the pieces should not be so deeply evocative of the negative. Radiohead, whatever it is, throws not a single line of recourse. In a sense we could say that the resolution of Martinu's 1942 quartet III allegro is very much like the clamber of students at one of these college halls at the conclusion of a concert. It may be a bit naive, and that is rather an unusual thing to say of Sjveda, who tends to prefer his own bitter twist of being a connoisseur and a cognizant. I think that the book I sent Oppermann of Sjveda's comments on music is probably one of Oppermann's favorites. It is for the sake of this incredibly wry, and incredibly funny and incredibly tasteful man that I entrust the tenth track of my small musical compilation to Sjveda's choice. My hope is that despite its optimism and naivete there is still room for a dizzy, brilliant, profound walk in the snow, our ability to show our steaming breath in order to keep warm.

11. "Cold Song" by Purcell is appropriate to this collection. I first heard Klaus Nomi sing this song and I was utterly entranced by his rendition. I found the collection in Oppermann's compilation bore out Nomi's sense of this song excellently. Cold brings the temperature back down a great deal.

12. "Seeman" by Ute Hagen and Apocalyptica may be too much for Oppermann, I know he has a high tolerance for Purcell. I really enjoyed a CD called "Welcome to all the pleasures" which Oppermann described as some sort of rich and decadent banquet. However in all likelyhood Oppermann finds Hagen kitsch. I think that the song is beautiful, moreover Deborah and I discovered the song when our cat "Stimpson" was dying. And this particular viking burial kind of song is the perfect thing for a dead kitty. It is both something that provokes chuckles for its grandiose metalic theater, combined with our silly cat, whom I miss very much. Maybe it is important to simply say that this song reminds me of how much I miss my cat, badly, and that hopefully this is "equitable enough" regardless if the song is listenable to any one else!

13. "All these things that I have done" by "The Killers" is a song that appeared on "Southland Tales" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbzZDGOgJSc
with no less than Justin Timberlake providing a profound comment. I got the song because of the line

"Ive got soul but Im not a soldier
Ive got soul but im not a soldier
Ive got soul but Im not a soldier
Ive got soul but Im not a soldier
..."

Which to me says enough of George Bush's fucking foreign war of pouring coldness and hate into the hearts of our fellow men. That is all that our "fearless leader" has done. I ain't a soldier in this fucking guy's army. I still have soul. I am not that soldier.

14. Mouserocket "Alone again or," I know that Oppermann will probably skip over this as trivial. But I thought that this group offered an equal or better rendition of the song than the Damned: which on 30th or 40th listening in my case has become a tad bit whiny. Oppermann will not like it. "Fuck it dude, let's go bowling." And in this you could probably go bowling to this song and it would contain the situation. Nuff said.

15. Lo and Beholden: Patti Smith again. These two pieces earn Smith enough respect from me to put her on the level of Richard Thompson. That as we know is saying a lot. And maybe if Oppermann finds this song distasteful, somehow superficial, then we can simply acknowledge that we have a different sense of taste. OK I will admit that given a choice between Thompson's "Season of the Witch" (10 minute version) and "Lo and Beholden" I might have to choose Thompson. However this song is brilliantly bitter: "the naked truth..." in Leonard Cohen's fated and ultimately great word: "....which we can't reveal to the innocent youth, except to say it isn't worth a dime." Here is the deal, as you deal with your life dropping her veils: you can tell everyone that it isn't worth a dime: but it's your bloody life, and it's your naked truth, and if you have gotten this far then I guess that no one can take your truth from you: they can kill you but they cannot take this truth away.

16. "Water of Love" Dire Straights: introduced with a kind of drawl that makes me wonder if the lead singer of Dire Straights might have been a little drunk or intoxicated when he sang this song. Water of love is about warmth, animal warmth, added to the solution. Even if this poor bastard, like you, and in some ways like me, is dying of thirst, caught looking, "crying out for some scenery," some vestage of animal warmth in the midst of all this spiritual exhortation. Well that is all we can hope for, maybe just a little shelter, a little friendship... before the heat or cold extinguishes us for certain.

Water of love
Deep in the ground
But there ain't no water of love here to be found
Someday baby when that river runs free
Gonna carry that water of love to me.