KS & the Ferns – foto Smith

I like this one. Recorded it today with Peter Ball . . . his music, mix, recording, my words and singing.

A nursery rhyme from our time … BIG BAM on Many more Ball & Smith musical musings at reverbnation.com/mutantsmith, all freely downloadable. It be an odd lot of assorted oddities..

Big Bam

Whatcha gonna do when your oughts run round?
Whatcha gonna do when your thoughts dip down?
Whatcha gonna do when your heart ticks tight?
Whatcha gonna do when it’s not all right?

Darned if I know. Do you?

It’s not the fall but the getting up.
It’s not the fail but the making up.
It’s not the fault of the other folk
If you’re the butt of some cosmic joke.

Ring around the rosy pocketful of money
Ruining rusty time has gotten all sorta musty
Government not trusty, all our air gone dusty
If we don’t break through we’re gonna all fall down

All fall down

Forget the outer, it’s the inner view.
Regret’s your master unless you renew.
They say yesterday gone round the bend.
But tomorrow chance to make amend.

Yea go for it. Yes. Do it

It’s here and now, this not that
No matter what jumpstarted this act.
Work in to out till sparkle clean
Then start fixing this social machine.

And boy do it need fixing

Run around the rotten, good time forgotten
Government still plottin bad air for our coffin
Stealing from our pockets much much too often
It ain’t so swell at the bottom of this well

It ain’t so swell at the bottom of the well
It ain’t so swell down bottom of this well

Mary had a little lamb
Turned into a piece of ham
Doesn’t matter what I am
It’s all because of Big Bang Bam

whatcha gonna do
whatcha gonna do
whatcha gonna do
just whatcha gonna do
yea
wah

— Smith, 2012

Many more Ball & Smith musical musings at reverbnation.com/mutantsmith, all freely downloadable. It be an odd lot of assorted oddities.

Pre-butterfly – foto Smith

Poetry at Pat’s in the Flats 5.27.2012 – foto Smith

We pulled some data from the internet to create bios of our seven poets and 2 musicians headlining Poetry at Pat’s in the Flats tomorrow Sunday May 27, 2012 from 11am-3pm.

If tomorrow’s gathering is a success, this will be the first in a quarterly poetry/music series organized with support from Brandt Gallery.

~ ~ ~

Our MC Steven B. Smith was born in Bitterroot, raised on Paradise Prairie. Farm boy, car thief, Naval Academy, expelled for dope, high society marriage, armed robbery, jail, escaping the cops, illegal loft dweller, ArtCrimes, rat attacks, overdose, overdose, overdose, celibate, remarried, expat. — www.agentofchaos.com

~ ~ ~

Mary E. Weems, PhD, is a poet, playwright, author, performer, and imagination-intellect theorist. She is currently the Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights (April 2007 – April 2009). Dr. Weems is the author and/or co-editor of several books including Poetry Power (Silvermoon Press, 2003), her educational text Public Education and the Imagination-Intellect: I Speak from the Wound in My Mouth (Peter Lang, 2003), Working Hard for the Money: America’s Working Poor in Stories, Poems, and Photos (Bottom Dog Press, 2002), and a book of poems An Unmistakable Shade of Red and the Obama Chronicles (Bottom Dog Press, 2008). http://uncrownedcommunitybuilders.com/person/mary-e-weems

~ ~ ~

Katie Daley is a poet, performer, and teacher. Katie Daley has hit the road countless times to bring her word-music to theaters, schoolrooms and nightclubs across the US and Canada. As a backup plan, in case she ever runs out of poetry gigs, she keeps a suitcase in her trunk overspilling with circus outfits and confetti. — www.katiedaley.com

~ ~ ~

Jim Lang is parts: artist, poet, photographer, potter, philosopher and Cleveland’s current reigning curmudgeon. He has a new chapbook titled “Coyote Moon” published by Nightballet Press.

~ ~ ~

R.A. “Rafiq” Washington is a poet, artist, entrepreneur and musician into rock, hip-hop, free jazz, poetry, novellas, art shows, book publishing and is the guy behind Cleveland Tapes, a hip-hop label whose recordings are sold via Web site (clevelandtapes.com) and in independent record/book stores. His latest chapbook is “Primer for the Vanguard Youth” published by Crisis Chronicles Press.

~ ~ ~

Christina Brooks has been an integral part of the Cleveland poetry scene for years, which is amazing since she lives in Detroit Michigan. She recently had her chapbook “A Thousand Voices – a city shaman’s notebook” published by The Poet’s Haven Chapbook Series.

~ ~ ~

This will be Christopher Green‘s first feature reading so I don’t know a lot about him except that he’s a delightful young man who’s been my brother-in-law for the past six-plus years. His poetry is slice-of-life and economically consciously concerned. He follows this up philosophically by refusing to have a car and bicycles everywhere.

~ ~ ~

Wendy Shaffer is a veteran of the Cleveland Poet scene, Wendy has been involved with such projects as the annual Thompsonian reading at Shaker Lakes in remembrance Cuyahoga County’s Poet Laureate Daniel Thompson, the Women and Words series of the early 1990’s, and went on the represent Cleveland on the Poetry Slam Team to San Francisco and Boston, to name but a few.

Wendy will be reading from her recently released book of poetry 22 Years: a book of relationships, family, friends, money, soap opera, sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, love, life, and one’s self. Between her habits of nasty men and assorted debaucheries lies the philosophy of good waitressing and bleach, from a woman of age with an honesty from an adroit practitioner of the language who has lived her without apology.

~ ~ ~

Tom Orange, PhD, has designed and taught introductory and advanced literature and writing courses at four nationally-ranked universities: (Cleveland State, Georgetown, George Washington and Vanderbilt), including “Literature and Jazz,” “Postmodern American Poetry,” “American Women Poets in the 21st Century,” and “Introduction to Creative Writing.”

Appearances in print and online poetry journals including Ambit, Anomaly, Big Game Revue, Boog City, Court Green, 88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry, The Gig, Phoebe, The Poker, Primary Writing, Queen Street Quarterly, Rampike, Sulfur, Typo, and Wheelhouse.

3 poetry chapbooks: American Dialectics (Oxford, OH: Slack Buddha Press, 2008); A Day in Switzerland (Schaffhausen [Switzerland]: Dusie Press, 2006); 25 Poems (Washington, DC: The Interrupting Cow, 2004)

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These things are known about Davide Andras Imburgia: he was an itinerant coffee worker, a South American adventurist, and gravitates to sound. He has described himself as a woollybrained unprofessional journalist interested in noise, spirituals and as a stranger in a strange land.

Poetry at Pat’s in the Flats 5.27.2012 – foto Smith

Pat’s in the Flats calls itself a “Working-man bar by day, blue-collar rock-club at night.” From an online user review by M.M., “Pat’s, and Pat herself, are Cleveland institutions. I’ve been coming here on and off since the 1980s and have had some of the coolest times of my life here. If you look up at the record covers posted on the wall you’ll see 20-25 years of underground Cleveland music history, right there. And then if you cast your eyes downward you’re likely to see a couple of the people who are on those record covers, in their 10-20 years older incarnations, staggering around with beers in hand. Pat has met all those people in person, served them drinks, in some cases gone to their funerals. She’s truly the grand old dame of Cleveland punk and, now that Mitzi of Mitzi’s has passed on, probably the last great lady of the 1900’s Cleveland bar scene.” — http://www.patsintheflats.com/

~ ~ ~

Sun May 27 11-3pm Poetry at Pat’s in the Flats at 2233 West Third Street (at the bottom of Literary Ave Hill, in Tremont). Doors open 11am, sandwiches for sale 11:30, poetry/music noon to 3. Pat’s is a bar so alcohol likely for sale.

(the 1st 2 chapbooks below use my fotos for cover art)

Primer for the Vanguard Youth by R.A. Washington – foto Smith

A Thousand Voices by C.M. Brooks – foto Smith

Coyote Moon by Jim Lang – foto Smith

GlowSmith – foto Smith

Here’s another moldy goldy oldie song from Ball & Smith from 7 years ago. Began recording 10 years ago and am still sublimely unknown to the music world, for many a valid reason.

This is a multiple-tracked version of Bye Buy with me on me and Peter on Peter on Peter with loops and such like added

Click on Bye Buy (version 2) . . . or if that doesn’t work, cut and paste “reverbnation.com/play_now/song_8051383“.

Bye Buy

The Man keeps knocking
Down my front door
Wants to sell me some
Sorta social spore
Says grits & groceries
Ain’t enough
In the modern life
You need much more stuff
Made me want to crow
And flap my thing
Chase the hole
Outside wedding ring
So I cut my hair
De-furred my face
Gave the Man a chance
To show a better place
Where the air was clear
The water free
The fair folk there
Accepting me
But when they pursed my lips
To kiss an ugly place
The Man above unzipped below
I said sorry sir I gotta go
Get out of my face
You can keep your fairs
Your free fatted Fraus
The lure of your lair
Is lacking in now
I’ll take the stair
It’s quicker somehow
Cleaner too
Thanks to no you
You can unstab my back
Cuz you’ll need your knife
Rat back to the pack
That leads your life
It’s hit the road Jack
Be ass & back
Or tap tap taps brutal bell
I bye buy’s black burden
I lay down your load
You ain’t no at
For this gone cat
As for is
You’re due your due
You can go to Hell
Be your own fondue
Drink dropping lake
Eat rising grape
Work rolling rock returning
Dirt burning

— Smith 2005

To hear it more as it sounds when I recite it to audience as a poem, try Bye Buy . . . or if that doesn’t work, cut and paste “reverbnation.com/play_now/song_8051284“.

Music, mix, recording by Peter Ball; words and voice Smith.

You can hear and download free 40-some Ball & Smith songs at reverbnation.com/mutantsmith and around 200 of Peter’s collective at reverbnation.com/apartmentone.

More oldy goldy moldy riffs to follow.

Heart jag – foto Smith

Reigning Sound – foto Smith

13 months ago I started putting my songs on ReverbNation.com. Now in the category for local blues bands, I’m #11 with 2,405 online listens (2,404 of them are probably me listening to me). There are 44 tunes available for free listen and free download.

I started jamming with Peter Ball of Apartment One in 2002 after he’d been at me for 20 years to record with him. I resisted because I can’t sing or carry a tune but Peter convinced me with enough joy in your heart everything is possible.

We have a very strange process. I bicycle over to Peter’s with my words. Peter starts playing music and I start vocalizing. I have no idea what music he’s going to play and mostly neither does he; and he has no idea what’s going to come out of my mouth and neither do I.

It’s a one-time once-through live jam, although lately we’ve been going back over and adding another track or two of my vocals and 3-4 tracks of his music.

Some of them turn out right fine; others are too strange for words; and more than a few are cringe-worthy but still interesting, sort of like watching road kill dry.

I’ve blogged only a few of the 44 songs online and decided it’s time to post some of the stranger experimental pre-song stuff. By pre-song, I mean we used to just record my poems as songs, but lately I’ve been adding choruses to make them more like songs.

According to my bio on the site, “I met Peter in the Warfarin mines beneath the Cleveland Warehouse District in 1982. I was serving time for bad taste, while Peter was the entertainment director. He needed a monkey to front his tin whistle band and I applied and got the job.”

All music, mix and recording by Peter Ball, with words and vocals by me.

So here’s one of our earlier attempts >>> Unknown Nipple . . .or if that doesn’t work cut and paste http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_8051121.

Unknown Nipple

Your nipple
Though we’ve yet to meet
Must surely seek to touch
My tongue’s erectile tissue
Which seeks south to nether musk
Past inward looking navel
Which wise in eastern ways
When rocked in western rhythm
Knows what in Maya may
Be only sleek illusion
Wonders reaped and sown
In peaks before the valley
Down treasure’s traveled road
Where promise wraps forgiven
Its penis premised trap
Where truth in life is hidden
And minor deaths enact
Their furtive nightly burden
When joy it should be danced
And future fear forgiven
Like past purveyed by chance

Your eyes so solemn watching
Your lips promised pursuit
Your soul silent searching
Your heart no kindness fused
To form for wanting giving
To life its lift and shine
My love it spurts in wanting
Your flesh your spirit wine
Within your skin whenever
Blessings cross my brow
Profane in sacred wanting
Pure light enough for now
But o o unknown nipple
O mind of supple bliss
O soul unsullied, simple
On me bestow your kiss

— Smith, 1992

You can hear 199 more of Peter Ball’s “Apartment One” collective at reverbnation.com/apartmentone, and 40-some of our own collabs at reverbnation.com/mutantsmith.

3-D Rolling Stone Cover – foto Smith