“That’s Motivation,” from the Absolute Beginners soundtrack LP.

“God Only Knows,” Ava Cherry and the Astronettes, 1973 (not released until ‘95).

Best video of 1984.

“Dancing With the Big Boys” (extended vocal mix, 12” (Arthur Baker)), 1984.

“When Balzac was working, he would get up in the middle of the night and write for 18 hours at a stretch, subsisting on water, fruit and, most famously, strong black coffee. Aided by coffee, he said, “great ideas swing into action like battalions in the Great Army on a battlefield.” He drank it…”by the potful, by the bucketful, despite the terrible cramps wringing his insides, the nervous eye twitches, and the burning in his stomach.”

Once his book proofs had been approved for press, Balzac would head out to a restaurant to celebrate. In one sitting, he was said to have put away a hundred oysters, four bottles of white wine, a dozen salt-meadow lamb cutlets, duckling with turnips, a brace of roast partridge, a Normandy sole, dessert and Comice pears. Afterward, he would send the bill to his publishers.”

Moira Hodgson, on “Balzac’s Omelette”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203499704576622861421337184.html

mrstsk:

Someone called Susan emailed me a link to a fragment of colour film of David Bowie entering a building somewhere in London sometime in the 1960s.


The scene, brief and looped, has the elusive appeal of a new Yeti or Bigfoot reel. Joe Salama, who posted the fragment, says: “This exceptional…

When springtime came and the sea was blue
(Her heart kept beating so)
There came on board with the last boat
A girl called Evelyn Roe.

She wore a hair shirt next her skin
Which was unearthly fair.
She wore no gold or ornament
Except her wondrous hair.

“Oh Captain, take me with you to the Holy Land
I must go to Jesus Christ.”
“We’ll take you because we are fools and you are
Of women the loveliest.”

“May He reward you, I’m only a poor girl,
My soul belongs to Christ our Lord.”
“Then give your sweet body to us, my dear.
The Lord you love cannot pay for you
because He is long since dead.”

They sailed along in sun and wind
And they loved Evelyn Roe.
She ate their bread and drank their wine
And wept as she did so.

They danced by night, they danced by day
and they loved Evelyn Roe.
She ate their bread and drank their wine
and wept as she did so.

They danced by night. They danced by day
they left the helm alone.
Evelyn Roe was so sweet and so soft:
They were harder than stone.

The springtime went. The summer passed.
At night she ran in worn-out shoes
in the grey light from mast to mast
and looked for a peaceful shore
Poor girl, poor Evelyn Roe.

She danced at night. She danced by day
and she was sick and tired.
“Oh Captain, when shall we get there
to the city of our Lord?”

The captain was lying in her lap
And kissed her and laughed too.
“If someone’s to blame if we never get there
That someone is Evelyn Roe.”

She danced at night. She danced by day.
And she was deathly tired.
They were sick of her from the captain down
to the youngest boy on board.

She wore a silk dress next her skin
which was rough with scabs and sores,
and round her blemished forehead hung
a filthy tangle of hair.

“I shall never see you, Christ my Lord.
My flesh is too sinful for you.
You cannot come to a common whore
And I am a bad woman now.”

She ran for hours from mast to mast
and her heart and her feet were sore
Till one dark night when no one watched,
she went to find her shore.

That was in chilly January,
she swam a long way in cold seas,
and it isn’t till March or even April
that the buds come out on the trees.

She gave herself to the dark waves, and they
washed her white and fair.
Now she will reach the Holy Land
before the captain is there.

In spring, when she came to Heaven’s gates,
Saint Peter slammed them to.
“God has told me he will not have
the harlot Evelyn Roe.”

But when she came to the gates of Hell
she found them bolted to.
The Devil shouted, “I will not have
the pious Evelyn Roe.”

So she wandered through wind and through starry space
not knowing where to go.
Late one evening I saw her crossing a field:
She stumbled often. She never stood still.
Poor girl, poor Evelyn Roe.

Bertolt Brecht, “Die Legende der Dirne Evlyn Roe,” 1917. (trans: Muriel Rukeyser). Included in the first version of Baal. “Ludwig Prestel is said to have written a tune” (which hasn’t survived).

“People Are Turning to Gold” (early version of “Ashes to Ashes,” studio demo). Fragment w/Tony Visconti interview.