The grim ..eh..guy with the lawn mower

The Thing & Joe McPhee in Brazil

The Thing & Joe McPhee dedicated Mongezi Feza´s beautiful "You Ain't Gonna Know Me 'Cos You Think You Know Me" to Nelson Mandela, when they played in Santos, Brazil (27 June 2013) (YouTube).

Peter Blegvad live at WFMU

A new CD with Peter Blegvad´s best recordings from visits at at the radio station WFMU (1988-89), has been released. To get it, it seems like you must donate at least $75 to WFMU.

Peter Blegvad (guitar, vocals)
Kristoffer Blegvad (guitar on 14, 15 & 16)
Kaye Blegvad (cover art)

Here are the tracks, and Peter Blegvad´s discography is right over here.

4'17 Wife of Usher's Well
3'51 Naked Shakespeare
3'44 Let Him Go
3'22 When the Work Was New
4'09 Real Slap in the Face
4'12 Strong Simple Silences
3'53 The Great Escape
4'12 Card to Bernard
1'20 Improv Tune
3'38 Crumb De La Crumb
3'49 How Beautiful You Are
4'22 Model of Kindness
3'25 Powers in the Air
5'31 King Strut
2'18 Vermont
3'48 The Incinerator

Lindsay Cooper

Let´s hear it for Lindsay Cooper (bassoon, oboe ++) today. She is perhaps best known from Henry Cow, but has played in numerous projects and bands (News From Babel, Art Bears, Hatfield and The North, National Health etc etc), and has released several solo albums too.

The other night I was listening to "Rags" (ARC 1980), her first solo album (and I´m sorry to say the only one I own so far). The album is a tribute to the needle women and workers of London of 1830s and 1840s, and the music is some kind of radical prog in the neighborhood of Henry Cow and Art Bears (please don´t hate me for that one). On "Rags" Lindsay Cooper is joined by Georgie Born, Phil Minton, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler and the singer Sally Potter, who is also a well known film director.

After playing "Rags" I found "Oh Moscow" on YouTube, recorded during the "Unidentified Movement" Festival in Volgograd (1991).

Musicians in the video:

Lindsay Cooper - bassoon, alto and sopranino saxophones;
Alfred Harth - tenor saxophone, clarinet;
Hugh Hopper - bass-guitar;
Phil Minton - trumpet, voice;
Sally Potter - texts, voice.
Veryan Weston - piano
Chris Cutler - drums

Wikipedia says that Lindsay Cooper was active until 1998. If you have other info, please comment.

And we have a Robert Wyatt link: "The Last Nightingale" (1984) with Chris Cutler, Tim Hodgkinson, Lindsay Cooper, Robert Wyatt and Adrian Mitchell, released to raise money for striking miners.

Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto - By This River

We had a pretty peaceful blog post yesterday, and we are still taking it slow!

Here you may enjoy Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto do Brian Eno´s "By This River", from "Before and After Science" (1977), and we are still at Yoko Ono´s Meltdown in London.

Meltdown 2013

London´s Meltdown 2013 is over. The festival was curated by Yoko Ono, and there are lots of videos from the happening on YouTube (surprise!), if you feel like getting a taste.

Here in Robert Wyatt and Stuff we have chosen a couple of quite quiet moments for you this time. First you will see and hear Bill Frisell and Marianne Faithfull do "As tears go by", and then Yoko Ono´s "Sky piece for Jesus Christ".

Sketches of Pain

Now is the time to check out how rusty your German is (German readers should be fine!)!
Head on over to Un Discopgraphie De Robert Wyatt to read German Rolling Stone´s piece on Robert Wyatt from October 2007.

I have told you this several times already, but Un Discopgraphie De Robert Wyatt is THE place to go, to get info on all of Wyatt´s releases.

Me, I stole the picture there too.