Dave: I'm not sure what a primitive rhythm is. The drumming coming out of
non-literate West Africa that I heard in Cuba at a santeria ceremony--5
hours of intricate cross-rhythms with scarcely a repeat, banged out on
wooden boxes-- is probably not what you mean. I know that this is a side
issue, but it caught my eye.

Mark

At 11:00 PM 10/18/2001 +0100, david.bircumshaw wrote:
>Dom
>
>'s a very pertinent thought, that repetitive broad power - surely there is a
>ghostly element of that in poetry, even the most sophisticated, of the pull
>of primitive rhythms and the natch-all catch-all snatch of nursery rhyme,
>advertising jingle, closed couplets before explosion.
>
>(btw even people +my+ age call university 'uni' y'know!)
>
>
>Best
>
>Dave
>
>
>David Bircumshaw
>
>Leicester, England
>
>Home Page
>
>A Chide's Alphabet
>
>Painting Without Numbers
>
>www.paintstuff.20m.com/index.htm
>
>http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "domfox" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 10:30 PM
>Subject: th'power of cheap music
>
>
>> Sometimes you badly need to hear again something you listened to for a
>while
>> a long time ago, and haven't heard for ages since.
>>
>> At uni, as everyone my age who went to university calls it, I listened a
>lot
>> to Come's "Eleven Eleven" album, which I bought on CD. I don't remember
>> buying it, or why I thought I might like it - probably a review in the NME
>> or something - but it was an amazing experience listening to it the first
>> few times, aged eighteen or so, really raw and secretly rather terribly
>> afraid of the world my educational ambitions had pitched me into. Along
>with
>> American Music Club's "Mercury", that album was one of the places I lived
>> when I wasn't at home in my own skin.
>>
>> There was a solo track by Thalia Zedek, Come's singer, on the cover CD for
>> the UK music mag "Uncut" the other month, and when I listened to it I
>> remembered what an amazing thing her voice was. Infinite dyke-sadness is a
>> powerful affect, and it made perfect sense for me to identify totally with
>> it when I was a lot younger and hadn't a clue about anything.
>>
>> Now I have all those songs from that CD in my head every five minutes or
>so,
>> I pick up a guitar and I start trying to figure out one of the guitar
>parts,
>> I try singing like that and of course I can't and it's ridiculous, and I
>> suddenly want to get hold of all the other Come CDs and listen to them
>too,
>> all the time.
>>
>> Gonna scratch you a letter
>> just like you did to me
>>
>> was on one of them I got out of the library once;
>>
>> I don't remember being born -
>> I'm not from where my mother's from
>>
>> is from "Fast Piss Blues" on Eleven Eleven. Or there's
>>
>> It's just a
>>                 power failure.
>> and it's a matter of time -
>> why don't you hold me
>> and find the switch? Why don't you
>> hold me
>>                 and feel the switch?
>>
>> from "Power Failure". So the lyrics could be pretty good, too. But you
>have
>> to hear them in the right voice. I couldn't sing that stuff, which really
>> annoys me but there you go.
>>
>> - Dom
>>
>