Enjoy.
Swans – sounds that gently build up to a great ferocity!
04 Tuesday Feb 2014
Posted in Music
Tag Archives: Swans
Happy Birthday to me!
30 Wednesday Oct 2013
Posted in Family History, Music
As another year passes and I grow older and probably unwiser, I remember all the wonderful people I have met in my life, and all the wonderful people that fill it now.
To top the day off my new Swans CD, ‘Not Here/Not Now, arrived today, and if you venture down to the centre of the universe (Woodside and South Norwood Social Club) you may even see some funky dancing like Gira.
Has George Osborne gone insane?
10 Tuesday Sep 2013
A little growth, that could have happened three years ago is nothing to be proud of. If I was chancellor, did fuck all apart from cut everything, I’m sure at some point a little growth would happen.
A Song dedicated to him!
Now I just want to thank you
For going insane
Every second that you suffer
Is a loss that I gain
Every breath is a drain down
Down into a hole
And your mind is a shrinking thing:
It was crushed by your skull
Now you f eel time unfolding
Deep in your chest
And your body’s expanding
Now there’s none of you left
So I just want to thank you
For losing your mind
Yeah you burned just like joan of arc
Purified by the flames
You re alive! you re alive!
Now just want to thank you
For the light that you spread
And magnesium and sulphur
And the fear in your head
And I just want to tell you
You’re nothing so new
Every time that you touch it
It’ll turn against you
Now your future’s a cold thing
Down in the damp ground
And your memory’s a lead room
Containing this sound
So I just want to thank you
For killing your mind
All the life that you bleed out
Well I steal it for mine
You’re alive! you’re alive!
M Gira
The Final Sac – Swans
13 Monday May 2013
Posted in Music
Tags
OH JESUS,OH JESUS,
YOU’RE MY ONLY GOD.
OH JESUS, OH JESUS,
YOU’RE MY ONLY GIRL.
I FOLLOW YOU NOW.
I’LL FOLLOW YOU DOWN,
TO A DIRTY BLACK ROOM,
WHERE THE AIR IS GONE.
I’LL LIE DOWN ON THE TABLE,
AND I’LL WAIT FOR YOU,
TO STEP INSIDE ME NOW.
STEP INSIDE ME NOW.
COME ON, COME ON IN.
OH JESUS CHRIST, YOU’RE MY ONLY, MY ONLY GOD…
IF I DRINK YOUR BLOOD, I WILL BE LIKE YOU.
GIRL, I WANT TO BE LIKE YOU.
I’LL LOOK INTO YOUR EYES,
AND CLOSE MY MIND.
GET OUT OF MY MIND. GET OUT OF MY HEAD.
OH JESUS, OH JESUS, YOU’RE MY ONLY GOD…
Michael Gira
Yay, Norman Westberg emailed me…….how sad am I.
18 Sunday Nov 2012
Tags
Norman Westberg, (far right) with Swans @ Koko, London
After my ecstatic heavenly experience on Thursday, I decided to investigate what solo stuff Norman Westberg has released. I found his online shop on Etsy, as every CD is handmade and personally signed.
I have purchased his CD Plough, coupling Guitar and Banjo with Drum Machine; can’t wait to hear it.
Thanks Jason,
I am glad that you enjoyed the gig. Hope that you like my music. My wife will or has already shipped out your cd.
Best, Norman
Swans: An aggressive yet beautiful attack and my body and soul.
16 Friday Nov 2012
After two and a half hours and music so loud your body literally moved, Swans were at their brilliant creative best. At the end I thought they had done eight songs, but it actually turns out to be seven. Yes seven songs in two and a half hours – this was Swans in full sonic scope ecstasy; the music was at a level that your body didn’t know what had hit it. No commercialism here, no self promotion – only three songs of new album, three new songs, and one from many years ago – this was just music for the live of music.
Michael ‘Justin Beiber’ Gira conducted the group through a journey of powerful aggressive yet the most beautiful gentle music that you felt in the pit of your stomach. If you are an aspiring musician your motto should be ‘When I grow up I want to be a Swan!”‘
Setlist: To Be Kind, Avatar, She Loves Us, Coward, The Seer, Nathalie, The Apostate
For a taster:
Swans are back at the Koko……and so am I.
15 Thursday Nov 2012
Posted in Music
Tags
alternative, Gira, koko, Swans, westberg
Their previous London gig in 2010 was classed by manner as the greatest gig of the year – this was no reunion tour to milk the profits from nostalgia. Michael Gira and Norman Westberg were just as ferocious with the new line up, as they ever were in the 80’s. If anything Swans have become more technical, more complicated music structures bur still deliver the intensity that they became renowned for.
This time on the back of the release of ‘The Seer’, tonight promises to be another spectacular. Gira hasn’t dismissed the past but older songs are usually reworked if they are to be played.
Review tomorrow
Kickstarter – crowd funding the way forward
30 Wednesday May 2012
Posted in Music, Social History
Tags
As a fan of Amanda ‘Fucking’ Palmer, I became intrigued by what Kickstarter was and the whole concept surrounding it. It appears to be a fantastic way for people to raise funds from the people that will enjoy the end product!
AFP has offered various packages from VIP tickets to upcoming concerts and even the opportunity for you to have her perform at you own concert in your backgarden. Swans have also similar things recently by selling limited edition albums with various additions, to help fund the recording of the new album. The only downside is that these items can sell really quickly and you miss out. I emailed Michael Gira and he explained that they underestimated as everything sold out in 24 hours.
This is a way for artists not to be controlled by the music industry and will allow for an influx of music that isn’t purely based on commerciality.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/amandapalmer/amanda-palmer-the-new-record-art-book-and-tour
An Apostate – revolutionary or heretic?
25 Wednesday Apr 2012
Posted in Religion
Tags
apostate, death penalty, human-rights, islam, martin luther, religion, Swans
The dictionary definition is a person who abandons his religion, party, cause, etc. In some countries it is punishable by death – can you imagine living in a country where not to believe in the national religion you would be put to death! Most people I know wouldn’t be here now. However today’s Apostate could be seen as tomorrows revolutionary.
Martin Luther, the founder of Lutheranism, was considered both an apostate and heretic by the strict definition of apostasy according to the Catholic Church. Most Protestants would naturally disagree, calling him a liberator and revolutionary.
That’s what I love about religion is freedom of thought!
Religious Imagery in it’s true form.
13 Tuesday Mar 2012
These are the things I hold onto
These are the things I use to deceive myself
I line them up in front of me
I judge them carefully
Then I throw them all away
I throw them all away
I am a small man
I am not a dangerous man
I love a child
I love a beautiful child
I love a child
I love a beautiful child
I will hold this child in my arms
And caress his soft head
Listen to him cry
Listen to him cry
I can kill the child
The beautiful child
I will kill the child
The beautiful child
This is my life
This is my choice
This is my damnation
This is my only regret
This is my life
This is my life
This is my sacrifice
This is my life
This is my only regret
That I ever was born
This is my sacrifice
Get out of my head
Swans – Beautiful Child
It is believed this song is a reference to the book “Les Chants de Maldoror” by the Comte de Lautreamont.
It is difficult to summarize the work because it does not have specific plot in the traditional sense, and the narrative style is non-linear and often surrealistic. The work concerns the misanthropic character of Maldoror, a figure of absolute evil who is opposed to God and humanity, and has renounced conventional morality and decency. The iconoclastic imagery and tone is typically violent and macabre, and ostensibly nihilistic. Much of the imagery was borrowed from the popular gothic literature of the period, in particular Lord Byron’s Manfred, Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer and Goethe’s Faust. Of these figures, the latter two are particularly significant in their description of a negative and Satanic anti-hero who is in hostile opposition to God. The last eight stanzas of the final canto are in a way a small novel dealing with the seduction and murder of a youth: a passage about growing your nails out for weeks on end until they are razor sharp, and then finding a young child and holding him and making him feel safe. When the child is comfortable, Maldoror (the ‘protagonist’ of the book) tells you to slice the child open with your nails, but not to kill him. Instead, you are supposed to let the child weep, and then taste his blood and tears.
Maybe Mr Gira could confirm if this is true?
Jason E Cooper 