Pack some sandwiches and power bars, we are going to the town fair

 

Let's look at this mystery for a moment. I had noticed this glitch as well during the COVID-19 lockdown, following the first live streaming of Curtis Mayfield Radio by his son Cheaa on May 14, 2020. Wait a minute, that's not Curtis at all !

When I learnt about Curtis Mayfield's death, I was on the metro subway. It was displayed on the electronic screens providing passengers with information about the next stations, giving out the current time and temperature or sharing some news. Curtis had died on December 26, 1999. I was back to work after the holidays. Not too much later, Bran Van 3000 released their song Astounded, based on 1980s archived vocal samples Mr. Mayfield had granted access to.

Notice the man driving the taxi. That's Benicio del Toro. The video is directed by Paul Street.

(This is the best version I could find, not the official source but from a channel belonging to a dude in Poland)

 

The album cover is by the Peruvian-born artist Boris Vallejo, a drawing titled Profile from 1982.

Curtis was not born in a field in May. He was from Chicago.

My town is older. Pierre-François Rigaud de Vaudreuil received the seigneurie de Maska from the king Louis XV in 1748. He in turn sold it to Jacques-Hyacinthe Simon in 1753. Accompanied by 6 men and his wife, this guy started work on the land in 1757, renaming the place based on his patron saint Hyacinth of Poland. Although technically a catholic myself, like the vast majority of people living in the province, I don't know shit about what catholicism even means (I did all the rites alongside my fellow schoolmates, not knowing we could have opted out... it was just another one of those school things we were asked to do). The province of Québec became very secular and most people from my generation didn't even make the decision to become agnostic or atheist, it's just the way things are. These rites were cultural remnants. It pretty much always felt akin to matters such as: "Have you ever heard about dunkleosteus or have you ever mused about what Grand Teton National Park means in French?" You know, random stuff... To me, meeting practicing religious people has always been an alienating phenomenon, never really knowing if I should behave a certain way for fear of causing them permanent damage. I've never known what is really allowed to discuss or do around them. The perception was that this was a very fragile species you could easily shatter by not caring about eternal damnation (whatever that means) and just being (without that fear of the shady dude watching everything you do or monitoring everything you think, basically). I thought my grandmothers were weird, and I've never much spoken with them. Try becoming friend with someone who behaves in accordance to what a fictional entity would approve or disapprove of when you have never spent any time learning about those so-called rules yourself. It occupies too much space to build anything upon. 

(Very good automatic English subtitles)

This is from the newest list at Infosurr. I have not a single clue about how they know I live in Saint-Hyacinthe. Who told them? I have never corresponded with Richard Walter and I'm not subscribed to their bulletin (I'm fucking poor, guys...). So yeah, if the Potawatomi of the Prairies were sometimes known as Mascutens, residents of Saint-Hyacinthe are called Maskoutains.

During our first time (Belinda and myself) at the Café de la Tour Saint-Jacques, the first member of the GPMS to arrive was Jean Terrossian. M-D Massoni hadn't notify anybody there would be guests. I had contacted her from a internet café nearby our Crous on blvd Saint-Michel.

If you look at this map, taking Road 116 starting from Saint-Hyacinthe, there's nothing but agriculture lands until you get to rang St-Simon where the small (invisible) municipality of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine is located. That's where I spent the first five years of my existence. There was a strawberry festival there. Yeah, that's it. We had our house next to an empty lot right next to Road 116 and on the other side of the road is the VIA railroad running alongside it. Then it's back to farm fields until you reach Mont-Saint-Hilaire.

Saint-Hilaire is where Borduas grew up and owned a house, where the Automatistes would spend parts of the summer vacations prior to the publication of Refus Global. Borduas was teaching design and ornamentation at École du meuble (School of furniture), and in order to inspire his students he found copies of Le Minotaure at the school's library (I don't know if the name of the person who brought these publications there has ever been revealed.. because it's certain that a publication such as this was not distributed in the province... a situation which hasn't changed much since). Some months ago, I ordered a copy of Annie Le Brun's L'Infini dans un contour at OUR local bookstore and I needed to spell Annie's name because the lady had never heard about her (let that sink in for a minute... having learnt in the days following her death that Annie Le Brun also wrote a postface for Alfred Jarry's Le Surmâle, I had to do the same with him... that maskoutaine bookstore owner has never heard about Ubu Roi.. fuck, I've even seen this play in an adaptation during which every characters were portrayed with the use of kitchen utensils... and so yeah, Jean-Christophe Averty, but also remember when I mentioned those early weeks of ARTV before it turned to shit, well they managed during that short time window to broadcast this documentary. 

(Sadly the youtube AI generated automatic subtitles on this one are also garbage)

(this album is made up of 3 scores for plays staged by the theatre company UBU in Montréal)

Clueless or not, dear madam, Viva la 'pataphysica !!

(Another Polish Royal Review featuring Jan Hathaway, LaDonna Smith and the late Davey Williams... and for more)

Fernand Leduc, Thérèse Renaud and Jean-Paul Riopelle were in Paris in 1947 when André Breton invited the group to submit material for the international surrealist exhibition. The Automatistes declined, stating that they were trying to go beyond surrealism. 

Eventually, Borduas went to live in Paris. He had a solo exhibition organised by Tristan Tzara but died on February 22, 1960.

Who else remembers this from television?

 

During my research for this, I found out there was a short-film about this situation released in 2023.

I used to read the arts & culture news more proactively when I was in Montréal. In Saint-Hyacinthe, there's not a whole lot of point for that, other than getting frustrated you'll miss out on absolutely everything happening. My sources were free papers like Voir, Ici, Mirror and Hour. On the 6th of July 1999, Belinda and I attended our first Montreal International Jazz Festival event. It was the Carl Craig's Innerzone.

It was that year's free outdoor Grand Event. Also in connection to that year's launching of the DJ Nights at Club Savoy where acid jazz events took place at the beginning of the decade.
 

André Ménard (you've seen him in the Harmonium documentary) is the co-founder and artistic director of that festival. He said he was disappointed by the event, going as far as stating Carl Craig didn't abide properly to the directives given, and that he wanted Laurent Garnier instead. That was also the year Laurent Saulnier left Richard Martineau behind, at Les francs-tireurs, to become the artisitic director of the outdoor programs at the festival (where Afrodizz became his favorites).

Some years earlier, I was deeply into 1970s roots reggae and psych/prog rock (ask many heads and they will tell you that rap music post-1995, you have a noticable shift in how that music was made now and how increasingly formulaic and commercialized things were getting, so I started moving towards these other spaces. In order illustrate that, for those who watched the mini-series Shifty on the BBC recently, here's a little ditty draped in the words and illumination of Pierre Champ-Péché). Remember when King Crimson added guys like Jamie Muir (une large tranche de gelée de langues d'alouette) or Keith Tippett (un grand bol de bouffe pour chat) on their menu, or when they snatched Bill Bruford from Yes? But let's not get all bloated with that sort of delicacies right now.

Although the video was very interesting to watch (from the very first time I saw it on MusiquePlus), I didn't very much like that next type of music, contrary to now. The video is directed by Spike Jonze whom will soon marry Sofia Coppola and stay with her basically between the year she released her first and her second movie (1999-2003). 

Around that time (turn of the century), if we are to discuss electronic music, Amon Tobin was the shit. His album Supermodified is a masterpiece. That said, if you go check it out on streaming platforms, you will not find the second track Four Ton Mantis. Due to sample clearance issues, he had to get rid of it.

(This is the deleted song's official music video, directed by Floria Sigismondi)

In May, there was a new documentary about Carl Craig.

I was intrigued by that concert because it was announced that a former Sun Ra Arkestra drummer would be among the lineup.

Also on stage with Carl Craig you had the Montréal DJs A-Trak and Kid Koala. The latter soon to release the awesome first Deltron 3030 album in the company of Dan the Automator and Del tha Funkee Homosapien (a member of the Oakland collective Hieroglyphics). Dan the Automator co-founded the label 75 Ark, the first one to sign a distribution deal with Napster.

If your first official album has rappers like Aceyalone...

Aceyalone is the one going insane at the end of this track.

... and you have Pharoahe Monch...

...I'm just saying that something took place.

As an aside, Antipop Consortium took part in Matthew Shipp's experimental Blue Series Continuum on Thirsty Ear Records.

One of the best concerts I have ever attended was without a doubt the David S. Ware Quartet at La Sala Rossa for the festival Suoni per il Popolo 2002. David S. Ware on tenor sax, Matthew Shipp at the piano, William Parker on bass and Guillermo E. Brown at the drums.

That evening with Carl Craig also featured Mr. Jamaaladeen Tacuma.
  

That's right, Ornette got together again with the Master Musicians of Jajouka and the Toronto composer Howard Shore for the original soundtrack to David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch.

But doesn't anybody remember about The Cell? Namibia...

That was an enjoyable enough ride, wasn't it? Great music, for sure.

Alongside his fellow Ornette's Prime Time Grant Calvin Weston on drums and Living Colour's Vernon Reid (co-founder in 1985 of the Black Rock Coalition with Greg Tate).

Been following Living Colour since their album Times's Up back in 1990. Besides Cult of Personality, every other songs in that Tiny Desk concert are from that album. 

You might enjoy activating the subtitles...

You remember Francis from Oliver Stone's Platoon? That's Corey Glover in 1986, two years before that Vivid album. 

Not to brag but, have a glance at my tape collection.

What was not to like about them?

As you saw, Time's Up ended on that next song, revived in 2020.

Why does the Wikipedia page mention James Earl Jones? I'm not the only one to have figured out that this voice sample heard in History Lesson is Ossie Davis, right? I have mentioned it in this blog's 4th publication back in February. 

To finish that Innerzone Grand Event with Carl Craig: there was also four Sufi whirling dervishes and yes, Craig Taborn on keyboards. Here from Matthew Shipp's Blue Series on Thirsty Ear.

Apparently, back to February it is...

This is probably the first record I was ever given (besides Michael Jackson's Thriller), just prior to our move from Sainte-Marie-Madeleine to Saint-Hyacinthe. Obviously, I didn't speak English at 5 years old, but the sound effects were making me visualise my own movie. These vinyls came with a book, the text (read aloud on the record) on one side and a single picture taken from the movie on the opposing page. You needed to make up the rest with your imagination.

I never owned a car, don't have a driver's license. In Saint-Hyacinthe, we moved in the Saint-Joseph neighborhood and at the nearby Lalime hardware store, my father bought me a silver Rapido RMX bicycle looking a lot like this one (apart from that ridiculous seat).

These are manufactured in Czechoslovakia (still in existence to this day), and apparently their Montréal distributor at the time was under surveillance by the CIA as a potential communist front for espionage under our red maple flag. So it was those times, aren't we having fun?

What a gift, though. And it wasn't even Christmas or something.

Usually, Christmas or birthdays were the only times I could ask my parents anything. Outside of that, I was pretty much told to "Go fuck yourself, kid." The stuff I was into wasn't important, according to them. I was always told to wait until I become an adult and get it for myself then. Or if I saw a book I was curious about, I was told to get it from the public library, where of course they never had anything.

But what about streaming during COVID-19 ?

I had fun with Craig S. Wilson over this one. After leaving the Portland Surrealist Group, Craig is now living in Carbondale, a college town south of Chicago (and south of St. Louis).

 

I know, most people don't know what poetry is about.

(from the Euphoria special episode Trouble Don't Last Always, Part 1: Rue, aired between seasons during COVID lockdown in December 2020)

About two years before getting shot dead, Henry Dumas was at Slug's for this interview.

 

So, we now need to mention that. Beware, the sound in this video can suddenly leap right at you. It was poorly mixed. 

I know, the distinctions tend to blur.

Last October, D. Scot Miller decided to pull the plug on that. Here's his explanation.

Well, it's also funny how so many people describe what surrealism is about. The automatism... All of that oneiric stuff.... And the unconscious. Surrealism is about the absurdity of everyday life. Is it, though? 

So many only pay attention to the definition and pay none whatsoever to what exactly follows it in the manifesto:

 Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain neglected forms of association prior to now, in the omnipotence of dreams, to the disinterested current of thought. It tends to definitively ruin all other psychic mechanisms and to replace them in resolving life's main disputes.

What is dream? What are these psychic mechanisms? What is a liberated (disinterested) thought from all these inner mechanisms and societal expectations? You all know André Breton read Freud, well, why didn't you?

On August 26 last year, I had this dream:

There was an old, seemingly defective vacuum cleaner my parents wanted to get rid of. A young African man living not far from us came to ask me if he could get it. Passive, I doubted the validity of such a request but assured him nonetheless that I would try to determine the real reason why my parents had just consigned this appliance to the garbage.

My father handed me not only the vacuum cleaner's (removable) power cord, but also the instruction manual and warranty card, as well as a mysterious jar of tomato sauce that had once accompanied it. Upon examining the printed materials, I noticed that the instruction manual was of a completely different nature. It was closer to a brochure with an introduction written by none other than the great soul singer Nina Simone. I was immediately (and literally) drawn with enthusiasm toward the African who was, at this point in the dream, surrounded by his family, simultaneously leaning over the roof of a car, busy inspecting the vacuum cleaner. I, in turn, handed the power cord and the jar of tomato sauce to two of his relatives and hastened to reveal the contents of my discovery to the young African.

He was completely indifferent to the information I was presenting him, clearly unaware of who Nina Simone was, while the man who was most likely the patriarch of the family automatically started heating up the tomato sauce he had obviously grabbed at the beginning of my recounting. In any case, he was positively disappointed with the taste of the sauce. I think the sauce captivated the entire gathering because I also noticed that the power cable was lying abandoned on the floor.

I leave the restitution of the last act of the dream to your imagination, as I try to explain the importance of this American soul power kit to an African family, who came to North America in pursuit of the “American dream”, and that comical last image in the dream, as I show them the poor substitute of my fist, clearly inappropriate in conveying to them the symbolic magnitude of the Black Fist.

One thing I can tell is that before going to sleep, I was listening to a Bootsy Collins album with this in the accompanying booklet.

****

As Laetitia said in the BBC interview, this is her favorite song on the new album.

Particular intersection Dark immanence, scintillation Guides out of the realms of oppositions Least likely places, reconciliations Exploration of inner world, the bountiful tap Not perfection yet wholeness, divides the poles as to Restore completeness, the place where dark and light touch Unison of all odds Where the magic Insufferable contradictions Paradox's creativity A full embrace, revelations (Powerful embrace, reality, streaming leafy revelations) Exploration of inner world, the bountiful tap Not perfection yet wholeness, divides the poles as to Restore completeness, the place where light and dark touch Unison of all odds, where the magic pilots It's dark, it's dark I will abide, it's dark It's dark, it's dark I will abide, it's dark It's dark, it's dark I will abide, it's dark Abide until I see the light I finally addressed Filled with pain and darkness Blessed obstacles, the kiss that awakens Capacity to love that shatters the ego Guides out of the realms of oppositions Least likely places, reconciliations It's dark, it's dark I will abide, it's dark It's dark, it's dark I will abide, it's dark (I will abide) It's dark, it's dark I will abide, it's dark (I will abide) Into the portal Abide The light

Addendum December 30th, 2025:

I thought it would be fun to add another Stereolab song from their classic 1997 album Dots and Loops.

Here's the lyrics and their english translation:

Part 1

Ce qui est n'est pas clos / What is, is not closed

Du point de vue le plus essentiel / From the point of view of what's most essential

Ce qui est ouvert, est à être / What is open, is to be

Part 2

Ce qui est n'est pas clos / What is, is not closed

Ce qui est, est ouvert / What is, is open

Peut être / Able to be

Part 3

Dans une action sans fin / In an action with no end

Sans trophée et sans gloire / Without trophy and without glory

Une création sans fond / A fathomless creation 

Sans profit ni victoire / Without profit nor victory

Part 4

N'est pas clos (Ce qui est) / Is not closed (That which is)

Ce qui est, est ouvert (Ce qui est) / What is, is open (That which is)

Ce qui est, est à être (Est à être) / What is, is to be (Is to become)

Ce qui est, n'est pas clos (Ce qui est) / What is, is not closed (That which is)

Ce qui est, est ouvert (Est à être) / What is, is open (Is to become)