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#Post#: 281--------------------------------------------------
GINGERBREAD MAN (Project of the Week for 20th of February)
By: moleshow Date: February 20, 2017, 12:10 pm
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Run, run, fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the
Gingerbread Man.
a real gloomy piece of work, and this week we are talking about
it... since The Gloomy Season is coming to an end... sorta.
:^)
#Post#: 282--------------------------------------------------
Re: PROJECT OF THE WEEK (20th of February): GINGERBREAD MAN
By: eggoddleo Date: February 21, 2017, 8:00 pm
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I always took the Gingerbread Man as representation of an ear
worm -- a brain virus -- that runs from head to head, affecting
each of its victims with a neuroses unique to that character.
Since many of the tracks feature guest personnel, you could say
the Gingerbead Man is The Residents, affecting their guest
musicians and voice actors with their madness, and perhaps,
controlling the listeners as well. That's all I really have to
say on this one. Sorry, folks!
#Post#: 286--------------------------------------------------
Re: PROJECT OF THE WEEK (20th of February): GINGERBREAD MAN
By: moleshow Date: February 26, 2017, 3:38 am
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this one is a bit of a toughie for me. i have to really be in a
mood to be able to listen to this. it has a certain vibration to
it as a whole. it's something low and rumbling. they set quite a
mood in this one, and it signals heavily to their methods and
habits further up the road. the mood is something sticky, swampy
and dark. the characters all seem to have a resentment, a fear,
a hunger within them that practically oozes out. in fact, i'd go
as far as to say that oozing out is exactly what it does! it
drips and leaks. but just as the spirit of death itself has not
manifested itself traditionally, something replaces that
clinging, slimy liquid. music.
for MIDI, i think the sound is unexpectedly alive. the
modification to the GBM tune for each character as the rhyme
turns into the songs of troubled minds feels clever to me, each
and every time. they communicate complexity with elegance
straight out of the gate. so, about the characters...
The Weaver: The Fool And The Death-Maker Die Alone
The Weaver seems aggressively neurotic. her isolation reinforces
her worry as she reinforces her isolation through placing the
individuals in her life up to unattainable standards. while she
is never satisfied with others, her anxiously critical nature
bleeds over as she traps herself in endless cycles of desperate
self-doubt. she frets about the future as she sees the potential
in each incoming moment. the potential for disaster, the
potential for a miracle. of course, she focuses on the potential
disasters and becomes lost in the hypothetical situations. as
with all of the Gingerbread Man's favorites, we only hear how
she thinks for a moment, and we're off again to the next
individual.
The Dying Oilman: Blinded By The Hostages Of Fortune
The Dying Oilman rapidly goes between futility, regret and
resentment. by allowing himself to lead a life in a singular,
straight line, he only sees the opportunities that passed him
by. but he is detached from those who were at the center of
hopeful opportunities. no, instead he fixates on someone who he
believes has wronged him. someone to blame, at the very least.
as he is forcefully pulled into the hopelessness of the present,
the resentment that allowed him the momentary illusion of power
disappears and futility manifests once again in his mind. he has
desires that will clearly never be realized. it is no wonder why
he feels like a bug about to be squished - he sees no use in
moving from beneath that which comes down upon him.
The Confused Transsexual: Stamen And Pistallate Together Again
i will admit that the name of this track makes me a little
uncomfortable (this is the part where those that are inclined to
voice such an opinion complain about "PC culture"). she faces a
certain difficulty - she is as she wanted to be in only one
sense, but her confusion is rooted in her isolation. not much is
fixed for her, despite her efforts. so, she wonders. she wonders
if any other creature - in this case, crows, experience the
nuances of interaction as humans do. she questions if all that
they do is instinctual and out of their control. from there, she
wonders if they feel regret for that which they cannot control.
it would seem that she is projecting onto them in an effort to
relate to anything at all.
The Sold-Out Artist: Black Are The Legs Inside The White
Sepulcher
The Sold-Out Artist is bitterness embodied! he has learned what
works and how often. he has broken the code of the art business
and becomes cynical at the sight of its inner workings laid bare
before him. his isolation is only deepened by his cynicism as he
believes the areas of the world that he has found his place in
is filled with those who cater to desires outside of their own.
he must find something to admire, something or someone to
elevate to a status bordering on holiness. Ted Williams. the
appeal may be that, in baseball, success does not involve
gauging the tastes and trends relevant to your audience. it
involves skill. and if one had enough skill, they would become
admired and loved. seems like our Artist chose the wrong thing
to pursue.
The Ascetic: Shadows Doubt The Strength Of The Sun
The Ascetic becomes detached from the world in the hopes of
controlling his doubts and fears. he subsequently is alone to
share a space with no one but himself. going through the motions
of accomplishment without reason, it would seem that he is
reenacting a lifestyle that is not his own. he longs for the
sureness attached to that which he left behind. he is trying
desperately to find the choice, the act that will bring him to
the certainty that he so desires. but he, himself, has ceased to
exist in an active sense. he moves through life in a way that
surely had been the key for someone else. but within his
headspace, he cannot understand why such behaviors fix nothing
for him. and he has no one to suggest a possibility. he climbs
the mountain, and then will be brought down by doubt. he will
climb it again, and be brought down again, and again.
The Old Soilder: Safety Sells, But War Always Wins
The Old Soldier is gripped tightly between resentment for the
present and sorrow for the past. he cannot help but recall
instances that remind him wholly of his insignificance to
someone he loved. he puts himself in places where he invites the
past to linger over him, to sit upon his shoulder, to crush him.
his reality is one where he sees those who he surely seems
identical to from the perspective of an outsider. its the
internal aspects of his being that differentiate him. he has
settled for less to enjoy an illusion of stability around him.
this choice leads him to be isolated in a way that can (and is)
easily hidden.
The Aging Musician: Narcissus Knows No One Naked
The Aging Musician has a hatred for all that he is surrounded
by. his life revolves around remnants of his past. it is not
about who he is, but who he was. now shoved aside by an
environment, an industry that has chewed him up and spit him
out, he cannot help but feel massively resentful. he could
surely never blame his own inability to adapt and so he believes
that no fault could be placed upon him - the industry must be
guilty. change is the thing that, as he sees it, discarded him.
as new trends manifest, his conclusion is that no validity or
worth exists in the "now". he considers his situation. he has no
control over the world of music, unless through his own death.
he subsequently seeks out the illusion of control in the thought
that he would be seen once again. the thought of gun control
exists, to him, more as a presence threatening to take from him
that which could return even a singular aspect of his existence
to his ideal. he recognizes that he would not be able to fully
bask in the spotlight as he so desires, to be seen in the
present that he despises. yet, he wishes to be able to exist
once again in the now, if he could only put in the effort. of
course he doesn't. he just shifts the blame for his
circumstances out onto the world surrounding him, never seeing
him.
The Butcher: The Flesh Of Animals Angers Anew...And Moos
The Butcher is probably my favorite of these folks stuck in the
pits of isolation and despair. The Butcher has seen into the
mouth of the beast and managed to escape. he, like all the
others, is alone. the cruel spirit that lies within him is one
of resentment... and fixation. a man known only as "Buddy" is at
the center of his obsession. The Butcher sees him as a true
menace; doing all that he does to spite the one that has shaped
his worldview around him. minor annoyances become much more than
just that. they become symbolic and hateful. one can only see so
much and remain the same. The Butcher is past the point of no
return. at his core, he has been twisted and morphed into
something else entirely. having come so close to the end (one
that invalidated anything he had been told would be there,
waiting, for him) only to be pulled back from whence he came
leaves him grasping for a constant. that constant seems to be
Buddy.
since The Butcher is alone in what he has seen, resentment
bubbles up within him. he doesn't believe that he deserved to
see the horrific disappointments that lie in wait for him, but
he believes that Buddy does, for he has committed such
irreparable, terrible acts. and The Butcher wishes he would have
stayed there. but his fixation shifts in tone. it becomes
evident that Buddy's existence contains all that our frantic
narrator desires. his life is a pleasant, unknowing one, filled
with the joys of connection. and yes, there seems to be a want
for that. but The Butcher doesn't seem to stop at longing for
the pleasantries of that life. he seems infatuated with the man
himself. he is stuck inside the whirlpool of obsession - one
fully equipped with a bear trap (obviously clamped down upon a
Butcher's brain, definitely not a jolly one). he goes around,
and around.
The Old Woman: Kissless Are The Isolated, Rootless Are Their
Tongues
our last miserable individual is The Old Woman, an excessively
critical woman staring bitterly in the face of where she has put
herself. much like The Aging Musician, she sees no possibility
that anything could truly be her fault. despite having pushed
away her family with her behavior, it seems impossible to her
that she could truly do any wrong - it was simply that others
viewed her noble, necessary actions in the wrong light. but she
wonders if, in her isolation, her absence from this plane would
be noticed? would anyone notice at all, and if so, when? she of
course backs away from such a thought. her reasoning being the
incompetence of others. she believes that only she is capable of
adequately caring for her plants. any life to control is good
enough for her. it becomes evident that something more exists in
the substance of her isolation. more than the rejection of a
critic. no, it would seem that she has done something
unspeakable. in her eyes, out of necessity. she believes that
somebody had to do it. in her self-sacrificing ways, she did
what she had to do. unfortunately, she seems to be the only one
who sees necessities where others do not. how miserable.
Ginger's Lament
Ginger's Lament has the feeling of an outsider looking in upon a
carnival of misery from which many cannot escape from their
adopted roles. the Gingerbread Man observes this, without any
outright judgement. although, the cookie man, as we now know,
doesn't hesitate to take a closer look at acts that set
themselves apart in some way. but he doesn't just see them as he
does all the others. he listens in.
#Post#: 287--------------------------------------------------
Re: PROJECT OF THE WEEK (20th of February): GINGERBREAD MAN
By: CheerfulHypocrite Date: February 26, 2017, 3:39 am
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Imagine a world with only two television channels, where the
television had a coin slot on the front and you could watch up
to six hours for six pennies. The coin slot only accepted
sixpence pieces. On the weeks that people did not work you did
not see the television. Which was frequent. Dockworkers, in
Liverpool, were hired on The Lump. Men queued up at the Dock
Gates to get a single day's work and then retired to the Pub at
the end of the Day. There were over 300 Pubs in a mile of the
Dock Road and Scottie Road (Scotland Road). The skill in getting
work was in knowing which Ships were in and so which Dock needed
Dockers. The skill in getting paid was in knowing which Pub the
Gangmaster drank in and in putting a drink behind the bar for
the Gangmaster when you got paid - in order to ensure getting
work the next day. The skill of the Dockers wife was to get to
the money before the Barman. Gangmasters got rich. Dockers got
drunk. Dockers' wives got beaten.
The sixpence for television meant that it was a treat. More
often than not it was the adults who got the treat. Should you
have friends who were allowed to watch television all the time
then they were Middle Class. If their television had no coin
slot then they were Rich. Posh, in fact. I saw Billie Whitelaw,
Samuel Beckett's favourite actress, on Jackanory in about 1969.
It was 1969 because Men landed on the Moon later in the year.
The television screen was tiny - about twelve inches or perhaps
fifteen - and the image black and white. The image quality was
so poor that we were, in essence, listening to Billie Whitelaw
reading. Not quite the galloping horror of Not I but neither was
it a comfortable thing. There was also the tension of waiting
for Adults arrive to throw you out to go home to "eat dinner".
Which is where I first heard Billie Whitelaw's voice telling a
story. In a house near Upper Stanhope Street in Toxteth. An air
raid took place on 10 January 1942, destroying several houses on
Upper Stanhope Street. One of the houses had been the home of
Alois Hitler, Junior, half brother of Adolf Hitler and the
birthplace of Hitler's nephew: William Patrick Hitler. The
demolished houses were turned into a grassed over garden.
Visible from the houses where Billie Whitelaw was intoning some
story or other. The story of Hitler in Liverpool was probably
one of the subtle, cultural, motivations for embracing Third
Reich 'n' Roll: like it or not, Hitler is part of the Liverpool
historical landscape. Like slavery.
It was getting on for a decade later that Billie Whitelaw
terrified me as Mrs Baylock in The Omen. This was before I
discovered the even more terrifying Not I but after I discovered
the joy of Jamaican Ginger Cake and Ginger Nut biscuits. For a
while, because of the slurry left after dunking biscuits of any
kind, the Armadillo Tea Rooms in the environs of the Liverpool
School Of Language Music Dream And Pun, frowned upon the
biscuit. Ginger, being generally derived from the West Indies,
was the produce of slavery. Which was never a reason given for
banning dunking.
The Ginger Bread Man was, at one point, a Pub in Ormskirk. A
supposed viking settlement in West Lancashire once famed for its
Ginger Bread. The name Ormskirk is Old Norse in origin. Derived
from Ormres kirkja, from Ormr (which means "serpent" or
dragon), kirkja for church. Ormr may have been a Viking who
settled but, equally, may have been a Dragon. Ormr became a
Christian and founded the church. Without records or
archaeological evidence to support this, Ormr's identity is
unknown. Ormr is merely one more Jon Doe in a wide variety. But
the Viking John Doe, whose settlement became famed for Ginger
Bread is more a John Dough - a kind of anonymous protagonist.
Ormr is unlikely to have invented the Ginger Bread Man - that
achievement was Queen Elizabeth I. She kept a Baker who make
likenesses of visiting dignitaries.
[quote]
There was once a little old man and a little old woman, who
lived in a little old house in the edge of a wood. They would
have been a very happy old couple but for one thing - they had
no little child, and they wished for one very much. One day,
when the little old woman was baking gingerbread, she cut a cake
in the shape of a little boy, and put it into the oven.
[/quote]
This modern story dates from the Saint Nicholas Magazine of May
1875. It was a well known story that had been circulating orally
for a century or so or three. The Ginger Bread Man had even
picked up a name in some places - John Dough - and the entire
story is about the anonymous boy running faster and faster to
evade capture. Everything about The Gingerbread Man is steeped
in tradition and mythical potential. The traditional chant for
the story was
[quote]
Run, run, as fast as you can
You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man
[/quote]
To which the Residents have added a couplet that develop the
essential anonymity of the Gingerbread Man
[quote]
You can look, look, hard as you can
You can't see me, I'm the Gingerbread Man
[/quote]
And then a further couplet that makes it ever clearer that the
Gingerbread Man is not quite the same as the small boy eaten by
a fox in the 1875 version.
[quote]
Poor old family of man
Never mind me, I'm just a Gingerbread Man
[/quote]
Which is different in tone to the 1875 Gingerbread Man whose
escape is a source of joy rather than a portent of Fates
visiting.
[quote]
I've run away from a little old woman,
A little old man,
A barn full of threshers,
A field full of mowers,
A cow and a pig,
And I can run away from you, I can!
[/quote]
The Residents Gingerbread Man does not simply run away but, on
departing, takes something away. The Weaver loses, or seems to
lose, a child. The Dying Oilman all he as lived for: his work.
The Sold-Out Artist loses everything except money. The Old Woman
is in the process of losing herself. When the Gingerbread Man
visits it is like Death of traditional folklore: departing as
soon as arriving. Leaving only the shadows behind. Rumours and
stories. Like the parkland where Hitler used to live.
In the abbreviated version there is no babbling of each of the
characters. Just a run through of a fairly straightforward song.
Each track begins with the Gingerbread Man[.i] theme and then
collapses into a kind of [i]Jackanory story but approaching the
lense of Not I. Unlike Freak Show the characters are being
touched by the anonymity bringing John Dough and fading into
obscurity. They are not becoming famous or even pretending to be
famous. These are the lives of people pretending.
[quote]
If you like to pretend that you'll never get old
You got what it takes to rock and roll
[/quote]
Yet each one loses the ability to pretend as the Gingerbread Man
visits like some kind of Edward Elgar of the soul. Elgar created
fourteen variations - which may correspond to the fourteen
stations of the cross in a Catholic Rosary - on a theme:
Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36 known as the Enigma
Variations. Each variation is dedicated to a friend or
acquaintance. Elgar called these the Enigma Variations - his
dark sayings for reasons that have not been fully explained. The
same sort of thing happens with the Gingerbread theme.
The memory of voices winds through the characters' reflections
after they are visited by the Gingerbread Man. The Old Woman has
the memories of her family merging into the angel of death
visiting her in the form of the John Dough. In the end she is
the one who voices the greatest concern of all of the characters
[quote]
Angel, answer my prayer
And tell me if anyone else
Knows how much I am scared
That I might murder myself
[/quote]
The enigmatic variations on a theme are all different ways in
which they murder themselves. Not always literal, as the
Sold-Out Artist illustrates. The Sold-Out Artist refers to
Marcel Duchamp's n_de Descending The Staircase - which was
something of a revolution. It annoyed the Cubists and the
Futurists because it was neither Cubist nor Futurist. Later in
his career, Duchamp worked for twenty five years, in secret, on
Étant donnés (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas,
French: Étant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau / 2° le gaz
d'éclairage.) Which was only revealed to the world after
Duchamp's death. Like the Theory of Obscurity: only making the
work available once the creator has forgotten it.
[quote]
Coulda sat out the last game with a .3995
And gone in the book as .400 but he played
And he went four for five
[/quote]
Like the field in Stanhope Street. Ted Williams could have sunk
into obscurity. But he went on to have a career in Fishing.
Which is just what John Dough sees all of the characters denying
to themselves: the opportunity for anything other than a single
life with an increasingly diminished circle of existence. Like
the mouth in Not I which is the most abbreviated presence Billie
Whitelaw could have had after being the Storyteller to children
in Jackanory.
The Gingerbread Man is the compassionate, enigmatic, variation
who laments, much in the vein of Godsong from Fingerprince:
[quote]
There once was a species who filled up the world
With lust, love, confusion, talk, tacos, and turds.
[/quote]
[quote]
One of His favorite things
Was man's believing in Him, and then not believing in Him
[/quote]
As the Gingerbread Man runs across the landscape, there is much
of the not believing. The theme weaves through like a noose.
Anybody who pulls the thread of the rope notices it unwinding
even as the noose tightens. Which is what the music offers: can
we get to the end before it kills us. Like the viking Ormr, we
might disappear with our name enshrined in a place without any
physical trace. Toxteth has some etymological ambiguity. Local
theory is that the etymology is "Toki's landing-place". Toki
being some Viking or other. Much like Ormr. Toxteth is mentioned
in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Stochestede from the Anglo-Saxon
stocc "stake" and Anglo-Saxon stede "place". As if there is a
frantic desire to say names of people instead of being engulfed
in the anonymity that John Dough is scattering across the whole
work.
Which is where the Gingerbread Man becomes part and parcel of
the psychogeography of Liverpool. The sliding names and protean
geography of a city full of immigrants where Hitlers rub
shoulders with Lennons makes the cattle market, Gangmaster
culture all the more understandable. Where the Gangmaster calls
your name you are chosen. You are privileged. You will; work and
drink and fight and never be more than poverty allows you to be.
The theme - the recurrent theme - being your poverty not your
person. Yet, underneath all of that, is the muttering, mumbling,
mania of the Lennons and the Hitlers who, like the egomaniacal
minds of Third Reich 'n' Roll seek to imprint their presence on
the world. Like the Old Soldier says:
[quote]
I can't come to another one of these ridiculous reunions
And watch old men getting drunk on nostalgia
Reliving their imaginary glory
And making me realize that I must look exactly like them
[/quote]
There is no nostalgia for Toki or Ormr or the Gangmasters or the
Ginger imported from the slave plantations of Jamaica. There is
a desire to be a Gingerbread Man. To stop running endlessly.
Yet, nobody ever does. Which is where Ginger's Lament becomes
all the more poignant.
[quote]And I can run away from you, I can![/quote]
The Gingerbread Man is a cumulative tale: we find little plot
but a lot of rhythm and repetition, with a new element added on
to a list of events until the climax and end of the story. But.
like the Old Junkyard Lady in Jim Henson's Labyrinth, who piles
things onto Sarah, the accumulations are not in the words but
the sense of the songs. Each of the songs adds something to the
sense of who the Gingerbread Man actually is. But we never find
out. The Gingerbread Man runs too fast. Leaving only the
remarkably catchy theme and the words
[quote]
Run. Run. Fast as you can...
[/quote]
#Post#: 288--------------------------------------------------
Re: PROJECT OF THE WEEK (20th of February): GINGERBREAD MAN
By: Meisekimiu Date: February 26, 2017, 9:27 pm
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Don't really have much to say about this one except that I love
it! I put off listening to it for a while but was very happy
when I did. I don't listen to it all the time, but whenever I do
it certainly affects me. Partly because it's a gloomy album, but
also because it's just a truly great one.
I do want to talk about The Confused Transsexual for a moment
though. It's always been kind of a weird one for me (but hey, if
there's one thing I'm not confused about, it is SEX!). It's a
bit more abstract than the other songs... most of the songs you
could at least try guessing their title, but this one would be
very difficult to guess. The song also sounds like it could have
evolved from Cry of the Crow from Prelude to "the Teds". I
wonder if the whole album was developed from the ideas from that
cancelled project or if this song is the only remnant? Anyway, I
sometime listen to The Confused Transsexual out of context from
the rest of the album. I really like the almost "gothic" sound
it has, and its more abstract and symbolic lyrics don't really
require the structure the rest of the album has. And... well, it
was played during the WoW show, and that being one of my
favorite live performances by the Rz, I have a soft spot for all
the songs in that show.
The song may use a word that is a bit outdated, but I feel like
the feelings of this song are a bit genuine. I don't think that
this is the reality of most people who transition, but rather
what they fear might happen if they transition. Part of the
anxiety transgender people go through is because of this fear.
Do they actually want to completely change the way they present
themselves to the world, including their family friends...? Or
do they simply have no choice?
Anyway I like this album, and the rest of the songs are great.
Especially The Old Woman. Especially the Talking Light version
of that song.
#Post#: 387--------------------------------------------------
Re: PROJECT OF THE WEEK (20th of February): GINGERBREAD MAN
By: moleshow Date: April 20, 2017, 12:33 pm
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OLD TALK ^
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NEW TALK v
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