The Counterforce No. 43

Robyn Hitchcock's memoir, RIP Shelley Duvall, Dory Previn, and more

As with all my characters, the names I gave to the cast of The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass were chosen with meaning behind them. Wanting to evoke the fairytale-ness of Rock N Roll - which a life in music usually is, though with an all-too-often tragic ending - I decided upon Hans ‘Floral’ Anderson and Hans ‘Floral’ Nightingale as a nod to Hans Christian Andersen. Whom my introduction to at a young age was thru Faerie Tale Theatre. The Nightingale being one of the most striking episodes, what with Mick Jagger as The Emperor and Shelley Duvall voicing the titular bird and narrating. Whenever I hear Shelley Duvall’s name, it is this series, her series, that my mind immediately harkens back to. A time of bliss, something my sisters and I would agree on and sit before the old television set enraptured. My dad took me to see Popeye shortly before these began, and that was extremely exciting too, going out just me and my dad to the big time show of the movie screen. So Shelley Duvall is associated in my mind with early childhood, with innocence and a time before one sensed life could be difficult at all. Or maybe it’s the other way around, that those stretches of childhood wonder are inseparable from Shelley Duvall. But too as the years have gotten tougher, especially these last four where I’ve been pushing my hardest on every front to seemingly little avail, Ms. Duvall’s words - “No matter what it is, pick yourself up and go on to the next project.” - are often on my mind. The above photo has been shared many times in recent days, but I will share it here again, iconic and gorgeous as it is. And damn, what a look in Nashville too

More with those eyelashes, from Brewster McCloud:

I’ve often said that Robyn Hitchcock’s between-song-banter is as interesting and entertaining as his songs. His lunar leaps between islets of grey matter where one can just about see the angle of connection. A magnificent way with words, Mr. Hitchcock. I once had the pleasure of attending his first ever reading of his poetry at the Anaconda vintage shop in Nashville (right behind Grimey’s), and have since been looking forward to that volume being published. So when his first memoir - 1967: How I Got There And Why I Never Left - was announced, I have been eagerly awaiting getting my hands on it. Or rather ears, as the case may be. For Robyn reads the audiobook himself, which is really what you want. He even gives the origins of his voice, in both senses of the word, and how they were shaped at Winchester College in that spectacular year of the title. There’s a wonderful line concerning the physical sound of such - “I had a shot at achieving true grooverdom” - in the midst of regaling us with a clandestine pre-dawn journey to hear the first Velvet Underground album. He talks a lot about being an ‘earnest groover’, as differentiated from the meatheads and the semi-groovers (who were into both sides of things), and also how a groover mocks one’s own grooverness.

There’s a couple brief encounters with Brian Eno, what it meant to have the name Joe Boyd on a label (Hitchcock would later record the excellent The Man Upstairs with the producer), as well as the self-expanding experiences of hearing The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Pink Floyd for the first time, and continuing to bask in their imaginations. But most of all, that comes with Dylan of course, and how ol’ Bobby Z seemed to hold the key to understanding Life, knowing as he did how ‘sadness is the shadow of beauty’. There’s a great line that T.S. Eliot may’ve gotten there first but he couldn’t sing it. Most of this comes through Desolation Row, Robyn’s cover of which is still my preferred version.

Dylan even makes a few brief appearances in the text via fanciful Hitchcockian inventions - explaining to aging English visitors what the breakfast menu means at a Nashville Ramada Inn. Robyn does an excellent job evoking the spirit of being 14 and all that music means to you at that age, as you’re coming into your own, and how majestic it must have been to experience that with all the new sounds of 1967. He even touches upon this in the Epilogue, how this may be a universal thing - that spirit of your first teenage years - but do kids nowadays appreciate it like we did?

And with all that use of the word ‘Groover’, do you know the song by another English eccentric genius?

Last week I was invited to be part of a Sagging Meniscus panel at Rosemont College. I loved it. The event took place in the above castle-like structure. I was greatly looking forward to eating at one of my favourite vegan restaurants, Nourish, when I got to Philly, and planned to do just that before the panel, leaving with what I thought would be plenty of time. Philly should take around 3 hours to get to from my place. But as I entered my fifth hour in the car on that 90+ degree day, it was with a heavy heart that I had to remove that stop from my navigation, getting to Rosemont with about 20 minutes to spare. I had been listening to Will Self’s Why Read essay collection on the drive down, particularly his one on William Burroughs, so it was quite a coincidence when - starving as I was - 0.3 miles down the road, with just enough time to grab a bowl of brown rice with half a sweet potato and some vegan garlic aioli drizzle, was a counter in the local supermarket named Naked Lunch.

I hadn’t realized we’d be reading too, so I offered the audience - and it was a decent-sized one - a choice of which story they’d like to hear. After showing them the accompanying illustrations, they chose ‘An Early History Of The Three-Faced Race’

It’s like the three-legged race, but they tie their moustaches together too. The tale was received quite well. I only read about a third of it - always leave them wanting more - but I did explain that as the event grows from 1972 thru to the present day, in 1985 a team does wear black armbands to show they’re in mourning for David Lee Roth having left Van Halen. I enjoyed the other panelists readings as well - Lee Upton, Charles Holdefer, and Lee Klein. I’ve had my eye on Lee Klein’s Chaotic Good and Neutral Evil ))) books for a while now. He left before I could ask to trade (I love trading books). I did find myself drawn in whilst Lee was reading from his latest, Like It Matters: An Unpublishable Novel, writers discussing writing and more one particular Bloomsday at a dive bar in Philly. The passage he read was one writer going on and on (and on) about quitting writing so he won’t have to talk about quitting writing anymore. And I found myself really relating to this. I think about quitting more days than I don’t. But during the course of Lee’s diatribe I remembered that I also used to feel this way about making music. And it came to me then that while I do still consider this often enough, now that I’ve built up a body of work, I pay heed to such thoughts less and less.

And building a body of work is something I discussed with Allen Crawford lately. Allen is the artist of the above illustration, as well as all the ones accompanying the Sporting Moustaches stories, and our association began with his art for my Young Southpaw Ouroboros cover:

After being friends for almost 20 years on the internet, since the days of LiveJournal and reading about him hanging with Momus, we finally met in person the day after the Rosemont panel at my event at Head House Books in Philly. It was a pleasure. I highly recommend checking out Allen’s books - his latest, A Wild Promise, is a an illustrated celebration of the Endangered Species Act - and his Instagram.

I first learned of Dory Previn through Jarvis Cocker & Steve Mackey’s The Trip cd, which featured The Lady With The Braid. Wonderful tune.

So I sought out her Mythical Kings & Iguanas LP, the title track full of magic.

My favourite, however, is the album’s closing number, Going Home, which combines these two songs lyrically. Don’t you love it when songs do that? This record, and especially Going Home, kept me company on some very ‘low and lonely’ solo cross-country drives

Very pleased to learn recently that there is a Dory Previn documentary now showing.

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