RADIOPHONIC CREATION DAY: Sheherezade’s Diary. 23 May 2009

RADIOPHONIC CREATION DAY

On May 23rd 2009, from midnight to midnight, we will celebrate the first international Radiophonic Creation Day, a 24 - hour transmission organized by Association JeL , devoted to radio creation.

More than 50 radios and artists, coming from 12 different countries, produced sound pieces that will be broadcast in streaming on the festival website: http://www.shakerattleroll.org/ - on RAM LIVE and more web radio partner, and on FM via 9 radios in Europe.

Ore 22.45 :

Sheherezade’s Diary. 23 May 2009

RAM LIVE is PROUD! to participate to the Radiophonic Creation Day with Sheherezade’s Diary. 23 May 2009 - Art Rock Literature written and performed by American artist Holly Anderson, voices and all songs by Lisa Burns e Peg Simone.

INTERVIEW WITH HOLLY ANDERSON.

RAM, LIVE wrote:>> why Sheherazade?

Holly Anderson: I love the idea of a storyteller who tells tales to save her own life. Many of my poems & stories make reference to this sort of narrator --a woman who is spinning tales out of thin air and telling intimate, private details that may or may not be true.

**

Here is a necklace of six amber beads resting on a small-boned woman's clavicle :

Poet drives away hard to heal her body Breaks up with somebody loudly Retreats to sanctum of her mother's pastFinds carnal life againFalls forward and forgets almost everything Marries for love but gets mugged on the honeymoon This is a blow-by-blow description: *Sheherezade's Diary* starts with a 3rd person account *Time To Drive* wherethis *She* and/or the honorific *Bobbie* represents so many women lovedand admired for their fierce grasp on life. After *She* leaves that Great Lakes island in springtime*Shattertrees* has Peg Simone delineating another drunken break-upwith her blues guitar and dark-sky-full-of-broken-stars voice. These lyrics were writtendirect to her rough audio track. Our first song together. Then comes*Boilermakers* from a series of family stories -- a fractured fairy tale take ontall tales we've heard since childhood. Peg created eerie sonics that fit the blue bruisedmidwestern gothic text. She lays the words into her music deftly so no seams show.*Swallows Song* is solid sexing and satisfaction as heard in Lisa B. Burns voice &guitar. Sal Maida provides that gorgeous bass line - all pelvis and grace. Landscapeis almost always another character for me and Lisa responds deeply to that. She knowsprecisely that dirt road she sings about in our song.*The Theory of Everything* is an account of a dystopian road trip with two women who areperhaps bound by blood. Peg's piano is the perfect bed they can't find. Her voice is their wool blanket.The diary ends with one mesostic poem that prefigures the A capella *Honeymoon* as sungby Lisa B. Burns. I end it with a quote from *O Pioneers* by Willa Cathers about human storiesrepeating themselves as if they'd never happened before. Lisa & I perform this in our *New Randy*set and it works well as an ending. And so the stories begin again.

RAM, LIVE wrote:>> Holly, Peg and Lisa, how did you meet?

Holly Anderson: Lisa and I met in '97-98 when our 2 kids were in pre-school together. She was the only other wild-haired mommy wearing leather pants andlooking like she definitely had something else going on in addition to her motherhood! We must have started working on some songs late in 2003 based on the eroticlives of women. This suite of songs was recorded for a self-released disc titled *New Randy*in 2006. We started performing in NYC as *New Randy* within a year and still do with a mix of my stories, poems and these hot, high-lonesome songs as sung by Lisa. And it was Lisa who introduced me to Peg 2 years ago --Lisa had *met* Peg on mySpace --was raving about her music which she thought sounded like my husband's music: Jonathan's Kane's *February*. He not only agreed, he promptly put her in his band as one of 3 guitarists! Peg & Lisa duet on February's very first vocal track, a cover of New Randy's *Up In Flames*on the newest record *Jet Ear Party* so alot ofcreative stuff is bound & be-ribboned pretty nicely. Peg and I started working on a series of storysongs just this past endless winter and 2 of them will be included on her forthcoming record from Table of the Elements/Radium later this year.

RAM, LIVE wrote:>> what about gender rock?

Holly Anderson: There were plenty of women who rocked plenty hardprior to glam rock boys wearing femme make-up &fabulous outfits: Janis Joplin took the top of myhead right off with all her fierceness and wild finessein 1968-69 when I was still in middle school. After that - there was the super cool Italian girl from Detroit, Michigan, Suzi Quatro (Quatrocchio) who definitely pointed the way for other bass players likeTina Weymouth (Talking Heads) and Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth)Suzi had an all girl band in 1964 when she was just 14 years old! Her sister Patti Quatro ended up playing in *Fanny*,the 1st all -female band to get a major label deal withReprise in 1969. Sadly, Fanny's been all but written out of thehistory of the form. David Bowie -- who probably took ALOTof notes from their playbook has said in interviews...' they're as important as anybody else who's everbeen, ever; it just wasn't their time.' How often have weread that about female artists of every discipline?

*******************

Holly Anderson ’s poetry and prose has been anthologized in Up is Up, But So Is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992 (NYU Press) The Unbearables (Autonomedia) First Person Intense (Mudborn Press) Her limited edition books Lily Lou (Purgatory Pie Press) and Sheherezade (Pyramid Atlantic) are in library collections including MOMA, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Victoria & Albert Museum, Brooklyn Museum.Recently online or in print at Admit Two, Conduit, Critjournal, FlashFire 500, Fringe, Gargoyle, MungBeing, Qarrtsiluni, Rampike, Six LittleThings, SmokeMusicTV, Switched-On Gutenberg,Tattoo Highway.Anderson's lyrics can be heard on Consonant (s/t), Love and Affliction (Fenwayrecordings) Mission of Burma's VS, OnoffOn (Matador) Jonathan Kane's FebruaryJet Ear Party (Table of the Elements/Radium) New Randy (http://www.newrandy.com/) Lisa Burns Unadorned, Katharina Frank's On the Verge of an Autobiography (Premium) & Chris Brokaw's My Confidante+3 (12XU) She lives in NYC and Bovina, New York. http://www.smokemusic.tv/content/mission-burma-holly-anderson

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Peg Simone, based out of NYC has several releases under her belt including the most recent The Deeper You Get. She has toured throughout the UK and plays regularly in NYC. Peg is also a guitarist in Jonathan Kane's February. Her upcoming release due in the Fall of 2009 will be released on Table of the Elements. Peg has collaborated with Jonathan Kane to record their version of the old blues song When The Levee Breaks by Memphis Minnie & Kansas Joe McCoy. The album will have a conceptual narrative throughout with two of the pieces based on stories written by Holly Anderson and another based on a Harry Crews novel. Additionally, Peg also works with Chris Becker for their project Silver Threads. More information can be found at www.myspace.com/pegsimone.

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Lisa Burns began her recording career on MCA Records recording the high romantic wall of sound Lisa Burns produced by Craig Leon. She and Sal Maida (Roxy Music, Cracker) formed the new wave group Velveteen and released After Hours on Atlantic Records. By 1990, bored with pop music, they formed The Lovin' Kind as an exploration/ mutation of traditional country music. In collaboration with poet Holly Anderson as New Randy they have had songs recorded by Chris Brokaw, Berlin artist Katharina Franck, and Jonathan Kane's February. Lisa has studied experimental composition and Pro Tools production with performance artist Elise Kermani, producing tracks for her forthcoming record Channeling Mary at home on her laptop. www.myspace.com/lisabburns

*Shatter Trees* and *Boilermakers* (Peg & I)

ore 17:45

*Shatter Trees* and *Boilermakers*

Ciao Ilari,

Here's two tracks by Peg & I -- our first collaboration -- it's called *Shatter Trees*.
Peg sent me a rough audio file and I wrote lyrics directly to it: a song about drinking & fighting under a night sky.
*Boilermakers* a file sent in a separate email was the opposite process: I sentPeg the text and she made the music around it. That's her voice onthe track as well.

A kiss to Roma from frigid NYC.

xxx Holly


SHATTER TREES BLUE FEARS PUSH TEARS UNDER SHATTER TREESWITH THE RED WINE DONE THE STAGGER HURT'S FOR FREEBENT MOON WEARS A TRAIN OF DIRTY CLOUDS RED STARS SKIP ON COLD SATELLITE CROWDS MAKE HEAVEN'S BED -SHAKE THESE BLANKET STARSTWIST SO TIGHT ON SHEETS OF BLAZING LIGHTTWIST AND TREMBLE WE TIPTOE AND REELDUMBSTRUCK WORSHIP SHAKE HER LIT UP WHEELBLUE FEARS PUSH TEARS UNDER SHATTER TREESWITH THE RED WINE DONE THE STAGGER HURT'S FOR FREETWIST AND TREMBLE WE TIPTOE AND REELDUMBSTRUCK WORSHIP TRACE HER LIT UP WHEEL


© 2008 Peg Simone: vocals, guitars & slide / Holly Anderson: lyrics


Boilermakers
Up ‘the Range’ there was the rescue mission that reeked of too many brandies with beer backs in a car traveling too fast. And she was there -- bent rigid in the back corner of her brother’s Chrysler with a sprung seat pressed up hard against a Great Blue Heron with a broken wing flapflapflapping in her screwed tight 13 year-old face. Guys with names like Buckshot or Rosebud or Ironhead were always riding along bellowing‘morebeergoddamnit and where were they taking this should-be-dead-by-now-animal?’ Another winter night the first-born,older than her by 20 years ran full speed up Sheridan Street with a dead timber wolf high in his bent arms hollering the whole time about the wonder he’d found frozen mid-lope at the side of the road. Her drunken herd of brothers demanded all attention all the time. They packed the little white house on White Street with whirling curses and chaos. She wasn’t the baby they were.Was it ever any different after she went away on that eastbound bus the day she graduated high school? Was it? She packed up and left behind all the diamond embroidered skies tea colored lakes pitch pines scale skittered fish tables slammed together with a mouthful of nails lye soap fire towers tobacco cans daddy ghosts in the fresh snow and stalagtites of blood glistening in the gutted caves of deer hanging in the trees.


All guitars & voice: Peg Simone http://www.pegsimone.com/

Text: Holly Anderson http://www.smokemusic.tv/content/mission-burma-holly-anderson

Time To Drive - Holly Anderson

From: Holly Anderson mythco@earthlink.net
To: "LIVE" live@radioartemobile.it
Date: 02/19/2009 07:45 PM
Subject: Re: hello (from NYC)

Dear Ilari,
I was delighted to meet you and hope you got to see the 100 Guitars in performance on Tuesday night. Hope your fever has burned away & you're feeling better now. Let's start with a story called *Time To Drive* about a woman who gets smashed up in a car accident in LA then drives east to Wisconsin to heal herself on a frozen islandin the deepest of the Great Lakes, Lake Superior. The mp3 is attached here somewhere!

best best wishes from New York,
Holly Anderson

Ore 19.10

Time To Drive by Holly Anderson

November. Bobbie gets real banged up by a Buick at Pico and Carmona. Broadsided by a 90 year old gnome driving a yolk-ey yellow Skylark . She loses the baby later that day at Cedars-Sinai and by the end of the month sheds the boyfriend she sadly dreads as well. Way too late for them to try again. Bobbie loads her books into empty wine boxes and buys some tires. Waiting.

Somewhere on an island in Lake Superior a timber wolf runs a yearling deer down. Bobbie decides there’s no more time to waste and heads north on I-15 and picks up eastbound 80 going 85.

Near Cheyenne, Wyoming route 80 skates to a shuddering, stuttering stop. 4 lanes of black ice and a herd of Chicago-bound semis surround Bobbie’s car. She’s been driving for 15 hours on a quart of Bucky’s and a catnap. The rearview is filled with halogen stamps and yellow spins.

Bobbie sees cherry colored bars of brake light that look like licorice and gnaws her lower lip. She fidgets the dial looking for anything but more Lord-Jesus-deliver-us chat or cheesey chorals. Then, between the steel needles of static a small miracle occurs. Steve Reich is on the radio, filling all space and polishing the crazy stars outside the idling car. ‘Music for 18 Musicians’ same as 20 years away far on the dusty floor of a teensy walk up. There she was, flat on the boards and floored by the coherency of what was pouring out of the radio. First hearing. Calmness nearing. This is the piece that can patch the new dark and dim numb she carries in an overheated car with California plates. Hundredth hearing. Calmness nearing. Same as it ever was.

Bobbie drives the just salted lane slow at break of day through a jumble of jackknifed trucks and sirens. The windshield reflecting the blue ribbons of a so shy and a so rosy dawn.

One island within a curving necklace of 12 islands keeps calling out hard to Bobbie. But no budding trees beckon and no loosened, singing water invites her to wade. It is Winter’s chant cajoling her ever northward.

Bobbie can hear the banging black plates of ice and she floors it. So close now to the place where her becoming began. She drives at a creep across the groaning ice to sleep all alone and emptied in a one room peeled log cabin. Seedling pines planted one once ago Arbor Day now stand 40 feet tall. Their shadows swallow the snug cabin whole.

December. The couple who built this cabin have been buried for years already. Bobbie knew this as a kid but swam at their thumbnail of sandy beach anyway. Now she’s back eating a crust of diamond snow. Waiting.

Within three weeks of arriving this time she knows that the dead couple were both taken in sleep, just shy of a year apart, both hollering out loud about 100’s of sapphire blue snakes and a long-gone dog come to meet them at the driftwood gate. She knows all this because she sleeps on the floor where their bed once stood. She sleeps in a bleached square of wonder and enters their odd, old dreams willingly and every morning reluctantly swims away from the dreaming. When first light breaks she drags herself arm over arm back to consciousness and remembers there is no one beside her, and not much work to be done but tracking the sun across that washed out sky. Bobbie waits for the sun to set.

When night drops down straight and hard the stains that reach over into the southern sky begin to spread. Ladders and stairs of light shoot up and sideways across the sky. Bobbie swears she hears murmurs, heart beats and symphonies all going at once under these timeless, crooked klieg lights . She lies flat on a bench she’s dragged outside, breath steaming like a horse. She’s stitched tight to dumbest, wordless awe, pinned down under that open endless window. Bobbie watches the billowing curtains of light sweep and flutter acid greens, iron reds and sulphur yellows all across the star smashed sky. This is the one film she never tires of. She stays out most nights until hands and feet freeze bluegrey then tiptoes indoors with a stumble to sleep deep again. Hard beside the hearth in a leaky down bag that still smells of old sex and eucalyptus.

Bobbie eats the canned venison and clouded jars of wild blueberry jam she found stacked tidy in the dug cellar No guessing when it was put up but she never gets sick and she never wants for much more than that night sky and her backseat filled with books.

She starts writing tanka in the snow: This high holy show - Unfurls in sweeping curtains - Flying lights burn green - Heaven’s pulsing heart beats hard - Deep within a blackened sky.

She writes tanka in the snow and knows she is home. Home until the cracking lake ice sounds like gunshots. Then it’s time to drive.

http://www.smokemusic.tv/