Arty Moderne

One of my favorite albums ever. It's a "Concept" album to some degree, paying homage to the "Beat Generation" of Kerouac, et. al. The Balinese gamelan textures made famous on the previous album "Discipline" are again brought out wonderfully in the opening track "Neal and Jack and Me", which gives an impressionistic rendering of "On the Road". Sartori in Tangier is exotically transformative... I must go on.

Richard Brautigan is a first-rate American genius. At least I think so. He uncovers subtle truths and tickles funny bones that are out of reach. He has spanned the generation of the Beats and the Hippies and has left a mark on me that I can't shake. Maybe I can get a tattoo. "The Return of the Rivers" costs $25,000. So, I didn't read it. But I did travel to San Francisco on the train and I took a bus to the Haight Ashbury where I found a bookstore. In it, I found a copy of "The Abortion" and in there I found the address of the library in the photograph on the cover of the book. So I got on the 43 Masonic and somehow transferred to the 1 California, and counted off the addresses of buildings at the sidewalk's edge. There was no such library in sight, until all of a sudden the block opened up to a majestic Carnegie Library, like a temple of Faith in Capitalism. Up to the steps I pilgrimaged, to peer inside where the shelves were all knocked over and disheveled. It had been a rough week for San Francisco, the week of the Loma Prieta earthquake. Also, the Giants lost the World Series to the A's. San Francisco is like a dream and Richard Brautigan is like it's fortune teller.