http://zoka.com/audio/splitlip/limerick.mp3
(rather but not totally)-Unwittingly, the ensemble gathered by Lucio Menegon ran though Ted Kaczynski's limerick last Sunday at Old Ironsides in Sacramento. Ever since Ojai I had been working through this sad episode of K's life (true? too sad to be true? too sad to be false?) in which he punishes a co-worker who would not date him a second time by writing limericks about her in the factory they both worked, and which his brother headed.
I'm sure they were classic limericks, all triplets and filth, but the tuning I wrote on the face of the fleamarket guitar went directly to another hell: two bars of eight, two bars of five, one bar of eight, all performed slowly outside of meter, like a bell ringing quite clearly over a valley, but still unfindable.
On guitars: Lucio Menegon and Wayne Grim
On drums: Jon Brumit and me
On tenor saxophone: Jeff Hobbs
I just wanted the limerick to be un-limerickable, and it shows such promise that it will end up that way. Split Lip did an astonishing thing turning its attention to it, especially after I meticulously scored it, printed it, then left the scores on the counter instead of bringing them to the gig. So I wrote it again at the burrito place and handed it out.
two things:
- I realize now that lying there listening to Coltrane's (recorded) Ascension with the Yugenites at Ojai actually penetrated me, although at the time I felt I had been Rova'd into some immunity from the original, and
- I have never, ever forgotten Larry Och's Tracers, which I heard first at Kimball's Carnival, the beleagured second room of Kimball's East in 1994, when the 100 days of the first Gulf War were still unforgettable to us. It was the night of Figure 8, a thundering octet of saxophones (Rova plus four). Heard again at Mills College in the form of Secret Magritte, and I couldn't take my ears off of it. Ever. I actually think I respond to it the way people of corresponding age respond to For What It's Worth, but, and this is important, in a post-Beck Loser way: I'm attached to the loss, the insensate grief, the six feet under, instead of the rage and indignation.
I feel these two things are deeply in the Limerick.
-so'k
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