today was rainy, beautifully so, and i finally picked up the linda perhacs album from downtown music to celebrate. that store is so wonderful and cheery that i might become a regular - i always buy more than i mean to and never feel bad about it cause i know the album is going to be good. perhacs' voice is thin, reedy, over pure 70s smooth jazz bass and elegant fingerpicking - folk with a psych fringe and weirdo neo-country tendancies. i prepared the song 'who really cares' to play at a show once but backed out at the last minute cause the vocal part bouces over an octave as the bass line slips around. too hard for me at the time.

perhacs disappeared from the world after this one album. the reissue people can't even find her to give her the royalties.

also bought henry cow, intentional prog rock sounding more like pierre boulez and the worst free jazz mashed together with occasional guitar lines. scary that parts are actually acceptable - the album's called 'unrest' which makes me wonder. the downtown guy told me that cow was english and when they broke up in '77, members came to nyc to jump start american prog. thanks henry cow.

he also told me about this 20 band festival that happened at an art center in 1977 with bands featuring bill laswell and all the brewing nyc downtown underground artists - not no wave or punk or anything of the type - and it occurs to me that even subculture history has a hegemony. and sub-sub culture, etc.

lunch with a friend today, talking about the power of a real performer - 'focused energy' versus the unfocused nervousness of people like cat power. its completely random who has it and who doesn't - and i'm sure it switches depending on the music being played.

never want to think about siouxsie and the banshees again after this dive into the '77 world for q. having read england's dreaming, watched the filth and the fury and dumpster dived thru every '77 or siouxsie site on the web, i feel totally spent on the energy of that time and i still haven't heard a 1/10 of that music. mainly i feel like i never need to listen to the clash again. odd the presentation of class in england vs. the alignment with the avant garde in new york city. very much still the same way, even for pop bands in the UK. jarvis cocker as caste exploder.