Fuck YouTube.

Closing the night with “The Velvet Underground live at Max’s Kansas City” on vinyl, featuring the foreground natterings of Jim Carroll, two Yules, Lou, and Sterl.

This has been my favorite VU record for years, because an old girlfriend left a partially demagnetized tape of the record with me some long time before it was reissued in the late 1980s. The demagnetization, plus tape failure, plus the live recording itself, meant that the performance was well less than 50% audible, and I listened to it over and over again. The dropouts became part of the tunes, and the warbles of tape failure became what I wanted to hear.

Forty years after the show was recorded, Jim is among the people who died, and one of the Yules is a guy I know. There’s an expanded CD of the show, which explains how Jim was involved with the recording, and how the original shows were compressed to the first 40 minute vinyl, and how it may have been Lou’s last show with the band.

Well before any of that, I developed a love for “Sunday Morning” from this record that cannot be eroded save when St. Alzheimer comes for me. The band itself, all the hairy incarnations, is my delight, and the only song that ranks above “Sunday Morning” for me is “Who Loves The Sun,” for reasons which shall not be recorded upon the face of the internet.

Bayerische Staatsoper: spacesuit posters.

I so love this project. Listening to these works is like spacewalking, in our minds. Or the advertising is like that. Or something. Can you hear me Major Wagner? Von Braun? Whose space race was this, anyway?

My friend Kineta made this in remembrance of a friend who is now long passed.

Wierd, dunno why it wouldn’t post from the phone.

Oh man, there is so much here I haven’t listened to for like twenty years.

I must have ten seven inch records given to me by various artists I haven’t been able to listen to, including a song which I was privileged to hear at its first public performance, one given just for Viv and me.

Totally have no recollection of picking this up but YAYY

Here’s a cheery shoutout to all you financial services providers out there: go fuck yourselves.

Well, not all y’all. But the industry in general, absolutely.

Five minutes later I’ve picked up another complete run on eBay for about $25. Yes, I looked for torrents but the series was not well-known enough to generate reliable hostings. Sad, really.

My original Starstruck 1-6 set has been washed out the culvert of time. I laid hands on the graphic novel, but down the long box that holds the Watchmen and the Dark Knight and a substantial percentage of Eclipse’s output circa 1984-1988, no space rangers and galactic girl guides.

Come to think of it, no Rocketeers either, and that makes me nearly sure I pulled ’em and failed to put ’em back to bed. They lurk here yet.

You know, I am almost sure there is an issue or something missing from that Starstruck book. Imma hafta dig up the originals and see.