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  • The Gravity’s Rainbow Deathmarch, Week 12

    It’s Week 12 and I can literally feel the back of the book in my hands when I’m reading. That’s how close to the end we are. By my admittedly rough and unreliable calculations, just 4 weeks remain. Der Jinkeys!
    Enough of us marchers have fallen a little bit behind that I think this would be a good time for a demi-catch-up week. Instead of tackling the usual 50, let’s target around 36 pages, which will take us all the way to the end of the Zone and the start of Part 4.
    Next week: See you at page 616 (p/v), which rumor has it “is done on paper….”

  • Project “Fun-Time Challenge Project” Presents: Straight Up: Cauliflower

    About a week and a half ago I posted a short piano number and asked folks to mess around with it. Here’s a brief recap of the excellent and harmonically vivid versions we’ve gotten back so far:

    Today we post our first third-generation remix, in which Panamanian strongman Jake Vortex weighs in with Straight Up: Cauliflower, which starts with eb’s vocal mix and then lays down a smokin’ sax intro and outro. Dig.
    If you’re taking the challenge, feel free to start with any of these versions, then email whatcha got to: vortex@mediajunkie.com.
    Thanks for listening, a tip of the reed to Jake for this latest rev, and please, watch the skies, -CV
    Jake Vortex’s Remix – Straight Up: Cauliflower
    time: 1:12; specs: 1.1MB
    Press Play to play.

  • Sleeping in

    Lying in bed
    scooping a little more sleep
    into my bowl, like soup
    until the soup goes cold
    and starts to overflow
    onto the table.
    There’s the metal
    of the ladel and it clinks
    as a thin carrot wedge
    rotates past
    following the current
    toward the table edge.

  • Project “Fun-Time Challenge Project” Presents: Tower of Cauliflower

    To briefly recap, a week ago I posted a short piano piece and asked folks to mess around with it. Bob and eb tossed down swank slide and vocal interps respectively. Now the Dread Pirate Yaniv Soha joins the fray.
    For handy compare and contrast, here’s the original piano piece, Bob’s slide, and eb’s piano/vocal spectacular.
    Yaniv’s take gets funky with it, adding beats and bass and slicing things around. The result is a subtle hypnogroove guaranteed to help you stop smoking.
    Hope you’re enjoying the sequence. I’m really enjoying how different these three versions have ended up. There’s still time to join the adventure and live the dream. And really, Yaniv’s version is just begging for some latter-day Biz Markie to mix in a little poetry.
    On that note…if you’re taking the challenge, feel free to start with any of these versions, then email whatcha got to: vortex@mediajunkie.com.
    Thanks. And watch the skies, -CV
    Yaniv Soha’s Remix: Tower of Cauliflower
    time: 57 seconds; specs: 900K
    Press Play to play.
    (For more Yaniv Soha-infused musical experiences, be sure to drop by Yaniv Soha Central.)

  • Project “Fun-Time Challenge Project” Presents: Melancholy Flower

    Last week I posted a wee chordy piano piece and asked folks to mess around with it and send me the results. First in was a sweet slice o’ slide from Bob Myren. If yer just joining the fun, here’s the original piano piece — Cauliflower Melon — and here’s Bob’s remix — Cauliflowermelonslide.
    Today we’ve got eb’s take, with words, melody, and fairly spectacular vocals. You really have to hear this. She took my lil’ piano piece and made art.
    I’m just enjoying the hell out of this whole thing so far. Hope you’re enjoying it too. Speaking of which, if you’re out there and planning on taking the challenge, feel free to funk around with any of these three, then send the results to vortex@mediajunkie.com) and posted shall they be.
    Thanks!
    eb’s Remix: Melancholy Flower
    time: 47 seconds; specs: 700K
    Press Play to play.

  • What is wrong with me?

    That place in my heart
    where I should want a tattoo —
    that place where my tattoo desire
    is supposed to brood —
    it’s a dead place.
    No. Worse.
    I don’t even have that place.

  • The Gravity’s Rainbow Deathmarch, Week 11

    Week 11. I mean, are you kidding me? Seriously. 11? This is ridiculous!
    I my own self have fallen back behind. Caught a wee spot of the old TB this last week. But I’m bouncin’ back (coughhack!) bouncin’ back I tell ya!
    On to next week: Let’s make camp at page 580 (p/v) where “Jamf was doing it in the least obvious there was.”

  • Project “Fun-Time Challenge Project” Presents: Cauliflowermelonslide

    Yesterday I exhorted folks to take this wee chordy piano piece I’d recorded (aka Cauliflower Melon) and mess around with it — add guitar, verb, drums, guitar, slice it up, and what have you.
    Lo and behold, this morning — the very next damn day! — my old and excellent pal Bob Myren came through with the first remix. It’s a slice of slide guitar that, quite frankly, I ultra-dig. It’s amazing to me the difference in mood and atmosphere that slide guitar can make. All I’m saying is, when I die, I hope I come back as a sustained note played on a slide guitar. That’s all I’m saying.
    If you’re taking the challenge, please feel free to screw around with this one, with the original, or with both. Then send whatcha got to vortex@mediajunkie.com). I’ll keep posting them as they arrive.
    Thanks! And enjoy…
    Bob’s Remix: Cauliflowermelonslide
    time: 48 seconds; specs: 1.1 MB
    Press Play to play.

  • x-post: Reactionary Dander

    All this prurient Pynchon appears to have nudged me into a reactionary dander. Read the results (“The Mainstreaming of Vice“) over on the mighty, the mighty, the mighty Edgewise. Unless you’re intimidated by my clear-thinking, straight-shooting, uninhibited sense of moral superiority. In which case, you know. It’s cool.

  • Cauliflower Melon: A Collaborative Fun-Time Challenge Project!

    Tune-making and MVRT have both been considerably waylaid of late by hard disk problems and assorted other distractions. But last night I got Pro Tools working (yay!) and recorded this wee, chordy piano piece.
    And with this piece comes the following open invitation to a collaborative fun-time challenge project: if you like to screw around with sound, please — screw around with this sound!
    Then send me the results and pretty much anything non-obscene, I’ll post here. Add guitar, voice, drums. More piano. Verb it up. Slice it up. Whatever. And then send to Vortex (that is: vortex@mediajunkie.com).
    Thanks! And enjoy…
    time: 51 seconds; specs: 800K
    Press Play to play.