Just saying out loud: my birthday dream for August (aside for a blood flow brain scan on 8月4日) is to finally get some hang out time in kura and tinker with multi-track recording set-up to make spoken-songs with drums/percussion, ukulele, found soundscapes, & vocal layers.
An artifact from DIY punk rock days
Just tinkering for some poetic spoken word ambient experiments mixed with soundscapes of gathered around the world and put on cassettes but… If I connect the wires and the microphones properly, I can record my wife doing “American songbook classics” eventually… we’ll see, might just lay flat.
Riffs about the glory of journals, diaries, notebooks full of musings and importance of turning off inner-critic and not overthinking while savoring the process of transcription, curation and further creative wonderment from Kura barn in provincial Japan. With evidence with my own process.
Items are Marty Thurston’s backyard studio for “Personal Archeology – Postcard #88”
Plus sorta re-cap how far I got about Circumnavigation poetry book project, tips and tactics for enjoying and “doing something with” your diaries, scrapbooks and so on, having multiple books on the go (and mixing up with all manner of stuff all at once, notes about semantics of freeverse, lyrics, short stories and prose poems, and probably a riff about remembering to forget, questioning “who are you making this for” and where I place the ghosts.
Finally, I read straight from some barely legible poetry scribbles with meanderings about sensory depravation chambers, menthol smokes with Leonard Cohen, Pan Am flights with Zeus, Buddha, Glen Canyon, and solving algorithms with nuclear fusion.
Ambient video version of a Postcards from Gravelly Beach podcast “Nepal Stupa Choruses” with a cycle of poems written on a lake heading towards a temple and tea in shadow of Annapurna – the audio in the *actual pod* is much better but just happened to film whilst recording and added a few snaps from the journey for amusement and colour, so here we are, in my kura barn studio in provincial Japan, ergo:
“Washing dishes and busted spectacles lead to rowing a lake in Nepal figuring out deity, enlightenment, peace and power with choruses fresh from diaries – plus Royal hospitals, poetic devices and question mark eyebrows. Your turn Buddha, your turn.”
Washing dishes and busted spectacles lead to rowing a lake in Nepal figuring out deity, enlightenment, peace and power with choruses fresh from diaries – plus Royal hospitals, poetic devices and question mark eyebrows. Your turn Buddha, your turn.
Let’s not lose each other amidst the table cloth being pulled out from under glasses and dishes. Meaning: some technical jibber-jabber about claiming feeds sparks a history of these sporadic, occasional (yet somehow charming, right?) literary dispatches from hand-written XML to various blogs and feeds and meanderings. Plus, about me! My name is Dave Olson (hi, more below). So, let’s continue to spend time together shall we?
My pal Cameron Uganec of Lynn Valley hit 50 so i made a spoken-song-arts-and-crafts-thing / its not long because he suggests “brevity is key” so i tried to not ramble on as per usual – making a “Ramones-sized song”.
Sharing here so i remember the fun making this for a great pal including: my Mom’s heavy duty pinking shears; Dymo labeller; scribbling “lyric and chord” writing; and a pink insta-camera + mighty hat a’la Richard Brautigan (made in Utah), and a Royal Stewart tartan jacket.
Thanks for being a top-notch gent Cam (and always driving and getting coffee etc).
Dave working on healing at Peacock Ayurveda near Galle, Sri Lanka (with Dr.)
Amidst a thunderstorm at 4AM on a balcony in Chiang Mai, Dave discusses – with excessive frankness and emotion – various medical conundrums (Fibromyalgia and CFS-ME) and details the physical feelings of “crash mode” as well as the mental strain in dealing with self de-identification and inter-personal relationships, confusion in seeking help, and various alternative treatments.
audio story about #MECFS & #Fibro, just click play below
I made some “spoken word with loops and samples” songs somewhere along the way, released on various channels/media (under Archeology Records), and now making more songs with other people who are recording and releasing.
As such, i duly registered with SOCAN (Society of Composers, Arrangers something something) – the Canadian analogue to BMI or ASCAP in USA (all rather confusing).
Anyhow, i have a few songs published. SOCAN will collect royalties on my behalf for live performance and radio transmission. Mechanical royalties (physical media) are another story, again confusing but duly noted.
Fire em up. Find under “Uncle Weed” on usual streaming channels.
Bad Wougar is/was a hard rocking band in Vancouver BC with four fine gentleman who practised diligently in a room called the “the Den” which I’ve visited several times – occasionally playing some drums, especially extended jams to “Cortez the killer”. The name “Bad Wougar” came from a campfire myth about a dangerous animal which was a mix of a wolf and a cougar.
Artifact: Bad Wougar album, 2014, cover
On a trail walk one day, I recorded a myth about the creature for the bands use and amusement. They then invited me into the glorious brand-new Monarch Studio (which has an origin story to share another time) to record a few snippets from the riff for the songs. In all, my voice/words appear in two tracks on this final release which was distributed on CD with a paper gatefold cover (i have 2, Mac Kobayashi has 1).
For the record, released: February 28, 2014 (noting this was a high point in an otherwise tough tough year). As mentioned, the four members of the band (including a non-related Olson) were each fantastically kind, interesting fellas as well as quality musicians and it’s a privilege to know them.
So it goes, folks have other commitments and adventures in life so they don’t play anymore but I hope this CD/album is more widely distributed in future / Kind of band that would be big in Europe.
Artifact: Bad Wougar album, 2014, back with track list
… every time I sling this album on the stereo I can’t but feel like I’ve been transported to a wood-panelled backwoods bar where the band are plying their gnarled rock ‘n’ roll trade in such a fashion that the venue’s customers are worried that the whole place will go up in flames, the sounds so incendiary….
There’s a grubby charm to this band and its self-described brand of hard charging rock ‘n’ roll. It’s garage rock by way of the forest and you can’t really ask for anything dirtier, earthier than that.
As the stoner-like riff of final track, ‘Spoke Too Soon’, rattles the fillings out of my teeth I’m left wondering if maybe what I just listened to was part of a crazed fever dream. Then I look up and see the album cover, the eyes of the Bad Wougar appearing to follow my every move…..
Another review in Permanent Rain references my spoken-word bit, ergo:
This spoken kick off made me realize I was in for a fun ride, just as if I was watching a movie–and I was not disappointed. …
The album itself has a delightfully punk element to it, often mixing with elements of classic and progressive rock. It could have been released in 1984, 1994, 2004, or 2014 and reflected the music of its time period.
