Rosenbush Cafe

Rosenbush Café now has music thanks to Playlist

Mixing a wide range of personal favorite musical selections including: Vangelis, Hot Tuna, Pink Martini, Enigma, Chavela Vargas, Harry Nilsson, Tangerine Dream, The Mills Brothers, Maria Callas, The Ink Spots, 10cc, Hot Tuna, Blue Oyster Cult, Shel Silverstein and The Alan Parsons Project readers can now choose a musical background to enhance their Café experience. Tunes will be changed monthly to keep the playlist fresh and daring. Check the bottom right side bar for the player and enjoy.

Note: I set it on shuffle so you’ll never know what comes next…Grand Funk or Maria Callas? Heh.

As the latest temporal warp begins to descend from space I am diverting it from my state to encompass the states of Rhode Island and Georgia only, because, well, it’s my warp and I can direct the energy wherever I chose and I have friends in those areas that need it more than ever. With some music selections to merge my space time continuum into a different stroke I am sharing a few jewels in the dark skies to give solace to those who need it. Music plays an important role in my life and whenever I transcend the borders of the third dimension for higher planes I bring the tunes with me. Tonight I mix the Tangos with Maria Callas and Irene Papas to produce ethereal and unexpected results. Well, unexpected for you perhaps but I know exactly where all this leads….into the 15th Dimemsion.

Starting with a sensual Tango (are there any other kinds?) to get your blood raging through the veins before Maria Callas and Irene Papas sing, respectively, from Carmen and Menousis. These ladies of the muse of song have imparted legacies to the finest art of singing and still give me shivers of joy whenever I hear them. Callas, before a very appreciative live audience in 1962, and a more contemporary Papas tune, with music by Vangelis, takes me back, especially to those familiar with their collaboration in the very early seventies on Aphrodite’s Child 666 allowing the great Greek singer to bring orgasmic pleasure to the album. While not for everyone’s tast, “666″ was - and is - one of my favorite Vangelis vinyls and it took years to find it again after losing it in 1980 to theft. Callas was a favorite of my dad’s and whenever she was on television I sat with both parents and enjoyed her arias and opera stylings even if I needed later translations of what she was singing. So, dear friends, enjoy while the portal remains open from 6:17 p.m. EST Saturday until it begins closing at 1157 p.m. EST Sunday night. I’ll be preparing another warp later this month so tune in again for further details.

(continue reading…)

Bilingual
Bisexual
Ballerina
Bicycling
Balancing
Balinese
Bifurcated
Bison
Briefly
Broadway
Beauty
Bound

In my backyard
Brought back briefly
Boarded briskly borne
Beavers broadcasting brevity

Turn of the screw
Hammer the nail
Stirring the brew
Dodging the hail

Up in the sky
Down on the ground
Blurry the eye
Lost in the mound

No more dreaming you are awake
Celebration of mass and confirmation, too
Lovers baking your futile cake
Consecrated turtles paint the rocks blue

Your stranger lover
Tasting of her
In a manger, undercover
Covered in fur

Fantasy
Ecstasy

Aching and breaking
Waking and taking
Giving and living
Caring and bearing
Soul to soul
Heart to heart
Lips parting softly and swiftly

Rain washes tears away to be replaced by more
Thunder in my mind and lightning at the door
Return to the meadows and light a candle
Windy mirages of change we handle

Within the womb of change there is rebirth and the lovers returned the bison whole and were happy they had shared in the knowledge that the world was better because they were free to be themselves. No longer dreading the sunrise the man took his sword of promise and returned it to her so that she could wield her love unashamed and with her inamorata.

Two souls entwined in gossamer sheer satin he let her go as she dissolved into the tapestry of sunset while he solidified into a portrait of selfless devotion for tomorrow they will begin the dance again.

Profound no more, standing naked before the sea and feeling the spray caress and rejunvenate as its saltiness of change taste sweet in the mouth as honey. Afraid no longer as metamorphosis delievers the butterfly into the phastasmagoria of uncertain and shadowed landscapes. Tomorrow will fly away unfettered for freedom is a sacrifice only worthwhile when it is genuine.

The Obsessive Collector invites you to relax, even if for milliseconds as he takes you on a musical journey, courtesy of Vangelis, King Crimson and the music of the Seventies. As typical of my love of convolution in writing, there are detours into my back lot tour of MGM in 1977 with actor Sidney Lassick, and almost meeting Richard Dreyfuss, recalling Irene Pappa’s orgasmic chanting on an early Vangelis (Aphrodite’s Child: 666) LP and seeing the Empire State Building but not going into it! If you enjoy Savoy Brown, and who doesn’t, Tangerine Dream, Todd Rundgren, the golden eras of music, or the many other pop culture references I can muster check my archives of The Obsessive Collector, where I go off the planet to relive retrospectives musically and hopefully entertain the masses, or at least one lonely person in need of a smile!

Long day at the office on Wednesday or perhaps school was a drag. Drink too much coffee or not enough or no proper meals? Is your wife, husband, boyfriend or girlfriend, lover or acquaintances displeased with you as a person? Did the dog chase the cat unto the keyboards again, only this time erased pictures of your favorite Suicide Girls? Did you buy tickets to see Von Iva at The Mod Club in Toronto only to learn it was last month? Out of soap, toothpaste or time? You last pair of pantyhose has a run, forget them, it’s too hot to wear them anyway and if gas prices are too high for you, ride a bicycle, take a hike or just stay home and read. If you read this entire post your reward is a Lizard Treat at the very end!

Whatever the reasons today doesn’t seemed to go your way there is always tomorrow. Ignore your dopy horoscopes promising the good, the bad and the indifferent. Time to give your neurons much needed entertainment, a bit of surrealism and explore the world of obsessive collecting as only the collector himself can provide. Before your journey into Dadadadadadadada, allow Vangelis the opportunity to soothe your nerves, massage your back and teach you some science with the title track from his 1976 LP, Albedo 0.39. Thanks to the world wide ether and YouTube for saving me from recording my LPs, uploading and downloading and getting another migraine with embedded codes!

Maximum distance from the sun: 94 million 537 thousand miles
Minimum distance from the sun: 91 million 377 thousand miles
Mean distance from the sun: 92 million 957 thousand and 200 miles
Mean Orbital velocity: 66,000 miles per hour
0rbital eccentricity: 0.017
Obliquity of the ecliptic: 23 degrees 27 minutes 8.26 seconds
Length of the tropical year: equinox to equinox 365.24 days
Length of the sidereal year: fixed star to fixed star 365.26 days
Length of the mean solar day: 24 hours, 3 minutes, 56.5555 seconds at mean solar time
Length of the mean sidereal day: 23 hours and 56 minutes and 4.091 seconds at mean sidereal time
Mass: 6 thousand 600 million million million tons
Equatorial diameter: 7,927 miles
Polar diameter: 7,900 miles
Oblateness: 1/298th
Density: 5.41
Mean surface gravitational acceleration of the rotating earth: 32.174 feet per second per second
Escape velocity: 7 miles per second

Albedo: 0.39
Albedo: 0.39
Albedo: 0.39
Albedo: 0.39
Albedo: 0.39
Albedo: 0.39
Albedo: 0.39
Albedo: 0.39
Albedo: 0.39

In 1976, I purchased Albedo: 0.39, my first album by Greek composer Ευάγγελος Οδυσσέας Παπαθανασίου (Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou) better known to the world as Vangelis and I have been a fan and collector since. It started with late night weekend radio broadcasts on KAAY Little Rock, Arkansas The Mighty 1090 with Beaker Street. Intro-ed with a spacey tripped out version of “The House of the Rising Sun,” that wonderful cover song by Eric Burdon and The Animals, they played full length albums and had the most eclectic line up one could imagine, especially for AM.

In my dorm room in 1972-74 I would have to keep a note pad handy because the deejays often sounded so stoned it was difficult to understand who and what they were playing. Thanks to Carl Sagan’s 1980 PBS Series, Cosmos I finally realized Création du Monde was a track from L’Apocalypse des animaux, a score for documentary film maker Frédéric Rossif’s 1973 TV series and I knew I’d heard it years before, but: “That was Vangelis? Wow!” Probably the most romantic track on that great LP is La Petite Fille de la mer, which still to this day can evoke horripilation, tears, a sense of awe and make one want to make love immediately.

Well, to me anyway.

Don’t believe me? Listen and judge for yourself

If you thought that was weirdly beautiful….

What you didn’t listen? Go back and click the link, surely by now you know you can open more than one window at a time. I’ll wait.

….there is always Greek actress Irene Papas having an orgasm while chanting “I was, I am, I am to come” repeatedly during the song ∞ (infinity) on 666 by Aphrodite’s Child. This 1972 LP, which took much searching to find again, after I lost it in a break-up with a girlfriend eons ago, along with Phos, another AC LP, was a niced bit of Vangelis psychedelia. The record label was none to pleased but I loved it and whenever I watch The Guns of Navarone (1961) I get a warm feeling whenever Maria Pappadimos (Pappas) is on-screen.

In a bit of off-track reminiscence, as if I haven’t already derailed, and which is better suited for my El Cine Entree, in our break-up, I also lost my picture of me with my cousin, Emily and Sidney (Chesswick in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) Lassick from our meeting in 1977. He was friends with my cousin and her husband, Ben, who I visited for my Southern Miss graduation gift from Aunt Gin and Tonic (Virginia) Bridgewater who offered the four nephews $1,000, which they took and I didn’t. All younger and more interested in possessions: JJ bought a Rolex, Delmar and Floyd invested and lost in the stock market and I took a trip to visit my mother’s relatives in Los Angeles and my dad’s side of the family in New York City.

Sidney, who died some time back, was a very nice fellow and somewhere, unless Dorma got it too, is my cassette interview with him that may well be lost in the myriad of miasma that is my swamp of a home.

We sat at the house at the corner of Pico and Rimpau, at the end of the busline, playing cards while I recounted my love and knowledge of movies and how Sidney should have won an Oscar, and then he offered to take me on a “tour” of MGM Studios. “I know everyone there,” he told me.

He did.

I knew my trip was better than a watch or investing in stock; years later, I found out I wasn’t good at investments so there! Not only did I get to go onto a movie set - there is something cool about walking up to a guard standing by a sign that says CLOSED SET, near the famous red light that meant they were filming inside, who says “Hello, Sidney. Who’s your friend?”

I would later get a a job offer as a runner, well gopher, that was circumvented by my parents in Alabama. “You’re not staying in Hollywood! You’re not an actor.”

“Gee, but ma…” Actually, I said something like “I’m staying here and there isn’t a fucking thing you can do to make me come home.” That went over well.

Once the light went off we went inside. Sidney knew every tech guy and we had a wonderful time especially when we stepped onto the set of The Goodbye Girl and I stood mere feet from Richard Dreyfuss and Quinn Cummings (the sweet little girl), who winked at me, during a break from filming. I stood quietly, and while I wasn’t going to ask for an autograph - which I would have lost, anyway - I enjoyed having the fantasy of movie-making deconstructed before my eyes. I also enjoyed watching Dreyfuss, who made me feel tall, while he gave grief to the assistant director. The director, Herbert Ross, was not there. Quinn just leaned against the kitchen table, looking bored, while she waited for the disagreement to be resolved, which when I finally left the set to almost fall to my death in a darkened carvernous room full of fake computers, was still ongoing.

As an avid movie lover, who dreamed of working in films, not as an actor because my high school Thespian days proved I was more suited for pulling open the curtain for my “talented” school mates in The Crucible than portraying Thomas Puttman. I would never return to the Bama Theater, where, as usher and assistant manager, I once stood on a ladder to put up the letters on the marque for movies like Walking Tall, The Mack or Deliverance to see Starring Henry B. Rosenbush in a Martin Scorsese Film.

Actually, I wanted to play the judge so I could say, “God damns all liars,” but that went to a black football player instead, who while he wasn’t bad he only wanted to say god damn in a school play. The school administration made us delete “Fart on you, Thomas Puttman,” which after the first showing - we had three more - was returned to the glorious applause of our school mates who all made farting sounds in the audience! Aaaah, off-off-way-off Broadway!

Whew. Take a breath.
(continue reading…)

Vangelis score from film Cavafy; Sir Connery recites poem

Eno gets clear