My Beloved Anti-Divas Pt. 3: Diamanda Galas by Kevin M.Hibshman

        No listing of anti-divas would be complete without Diamanda Galas as she personifies the term.

        During the past four decades of her career, She has used her singularly astonishing vocal abilities as a weapon. She has been labeled “a mourner for the world's victims” by exploring and revealing the terrifying realities suffered by AIDS patients, the mentally ill, and those killed by genocide in different locations and also by attacking those who would choose to ignore these crimes against humanity. 

        After playing in a few bands with musicians that included Henry Kaiser, Mark Dresser and Stanley Crouch, she made her solo stage debut in the role of a Turkish woman who was tortured and killed for alleged treason in Vinko Globokar's Un Jour comme un autre. This was part of the 1979 Festival d'Avignon held in France. She released her first album The Litanies Of Satan, an electronic opera in 1982. Her second album Diamanda Galas followed in 1984. She then began devoting her work to exposing and condemning the early  prejudice and exile forced upon AIDS suffers after her brother, the playwright Philip Dimitri Galas contracted the disease and died from it at age 32 in 1986. In 1989, her AIDS-related operatic trilogy, The Masque Of The Red Death was

released by Mute Records. This master work consists of three separate albums: The Divine Punishment (1986), Saint Of The Pit (1986), and You Must Be Certain Of The Devil (1988). Two of her recordings appear in Derek Jarman's 1987 film, The Last Of England and she appears in the 1990 documentary, Positive, about the AIDS crisis in New York City. She became an outspoken advocate and activist for AIDS victims and was arrested along with fellow members of ACT UP during a performance of her Plague Mass at Saint Patrick's Cathedral ,NYC in 1989. She has also done voice-over work for the 1982 film Conan The Barbarian, Wes Craven's 1988 horror film, The Serpent And The Rainbow, Francis Ford-Coppola's Dracula (1992), 2005's The Ring 2 and her unique version of “Dancing In The Dark” closes Clive Barker's 1995 film, Lord Of Illusions. Her most recent voice-over appearance was in James Wan's 2003 film, The Conjuring.

      1992 saw the release of her tribute album to the spirituals and blues songs she had grown up listening to and performing in her father's band. Her Greek Orthodox father, an accomplished musician, had taught her piano at the age of three. He would not allow her to sing, claiming singers were tone-deaf and mostly “idiots and whores.” In 1993, she released the live album, Vena Cava.

This recording deals with the psychological effects of isolation. She teamed up with John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) for 1994's The Sporting Life. This was an unexpected foray into rock although the intensity of her vocals, including the use of glossolalia and the darkly humorous subject matter, landed the album squarely in avant-garde terrain. 

        For those wanting an introduction to her work, I recommend  her 2003 album, La Serpenta Canta. Culled from live performances from around the world, this collection showcases the unbelievable versatility and range of this powerful artist. Accompanied by her own fierce piano playing, which combines classical, jazz, blues and avant-garde flourishes, Diamanda soars into previously unforeseen heights and leaves the audience breathlessly purged. Her rendition of Hank William's ballad “I'm So Lonely I Could Cry is utterly unforgettable as is her take on Ornette Coleman's “Lonely Woman” and her haunting delivery of The Supremes' classic, “My World Is Empty Without You.” 

        In addition to her recorded work, she also offers her neo-expressionistic paintings and has created installation pieces and a film, Schrei 27, with Davide Pepe in 2011. In 1996, The Shit Of God, a book of her lyrics was published. Diamanda was awarded

Italy's Demetrio Stratos International Career Award in 2005. Her work is not for the faint of heart as she goes to places few artists ever attempt. There has never been a singer as powerful and as versatile and doubtless ever will be again.

GAS Featured Poet: Jared Morningstar

 

 Jared Morningstar is a high school English teacher and adjunct English professor. He writes poetry and short stories that reflect his interests and observations of the world. In addition to literature, Morningstar loves music, playing guitar, late night diner experiences, and long road trips. His first book, American Fries: Poems and Stories, was published in July of 2020 by Alien Buddha Press. He lives in Mount Pleasant with his wife and children.

Happily Married in Sweatpants

We’re not Instagram glamour filters

or a knee-jerk flight to Vegas; 

we’ve never liked bad buffets 

or empty pockets.

We’re not a sweaty night out 

at the club every weekend

or some drunken bender 

so we can pretend we aren’t aging:

we have no desire to be YOLO 

when we have to be grown-ups tomorrow.

We’re no pity party 

because we can’t afford 

European vacations,

and we certainly aren’t the latest fashion,

Louis Vuitton bags or Rolex watches.

We’re picnics on the floor 

after the kids go to bed,

Ben and Jerry’s and Netflix,

a Target shopping trip,

family zoo adventures,

hyperventilation over 

catching a Snorlax in Pokemon GO,

and falling asleep to Golden Girls.

We’re the real deal:

best friends,

happily married in sweatpants,

with nothing to prove. 

21st Century Poetry: Poetry and the Internet by Beau Blue #2

Before the world wide web, was the networking computers of FidoNet and the Crossroads Board of one of those early Fido branches. Eight or thirteen or who remembers .. but it was early. And the board had a poetry group. It was 1985.

    I worked for aerospace and it was hooked into DARPA, or ARPA, or MILSTAR, and a bunch of think-tank universities. Floating around on the net they used was the topic fa.poetry. Teeny, tiny topic hardly ever used and a complete mystery to most of the nerdy engineering types that populated the cyber wires back then.

    In 1987 because of the growth of what we called UseNet and how many people each day complained of the arcane structure of it, the great USENET reorganization happened. "rec.arts.poems" was born out of that reorganization flame war and subsequent re-ordering.

    A few mathematicians, engineers, physicists, teachers and software tricksters showed up in RAP and started to play.

    In the early nineties the 16 million user USENET turned into the more than half a billion member World Wide Web. Lately, I'm told the internet is half the planet. More than three billion.

    Internet poetry is humongous and diverse and dribbling out at every seam the thing has got. But "rec.arts.poems" is one of its roots. In the earth of the web.

A Review of Thasia Anne’s “Subtle Shade of Bruise” (Alien Buddha Press, 2019) by Heidi Blakeslee

 

    

 Have you ever wondered how victims of domestic violence see the world?  Or perhaps, how they can rebuild after living periods of their lives in daily terror?  Thasia Anne’s work, Subtle Shade of Bruise takes up the call.  Visceral, Thasia’s poetry in this book is intensely personal, courageous, and necessary.

    After her harrowing experiences with her first husband, Thasia began to rebuild her life.  With two children to raise and no money coming in, she writes about how she persisted through challenges to ultimately become a social worker who helped others every day.  Though Thasia is also an artist, poetry gave her the vehicle she needed to fully express what she had gone through and build a strong bridge to connect her story to other survivors.

    Though many of the poems here lay plain the horrors of domestic violence: the loss of self, the giving up of hope, and physical pain, Thasia’s strength pulls us to the end of the book with a new admiration of human fortitude.  

    Through her healing process she took off like a rocket, turned her life around, and today is a vocal advocate for victims of interpersonal violence.  Thasia also is a community producer of Women of Word, a yearly production of poetry, dance, and music that is going into its tenth year.  She also shines in her cable access TV show “Poetry, Prose, and Personalities.”

    Subtle Shade of Bruise is an intense read, a strong autoethnography that forces the reader to stand in the footsteps of a woman warrior.  As a survivor of domestic violence, Thasia cuts through the red tape of society’s excuses for interpersonal violence and skewers the idea that anyone belongs to their partners.  She also points out that domestic violence can happen to anyone and provides empowerment tips and phone numbers that victims can call for help.

“Hurricane Husband” 

Hurricane husband/ battered at the door of my heart/ with his wild wind words/ that sliced and diced at 100 miles an hour/ and stripped my soul bare/ His voice forced my eyes closed/ to protect them from splinters and slivers/ that cause my psyche to shiver/ in the corner of my brain/ In his wind tunnel world/ where those words/ stretched the skin back from my face/ I lived with gale force words/  which left our relationship/ barren of any life/ Listless and breathless I waited/ on the roof of my soul waving my white flag/ Where was my rescue crew?

Thasia Anne is the producer, director, and participant in “Women of Word featuring a few Man Made Words, or (WOW)” on Edinboro University of Pennsylvania campus. “WOW” has a troop of poets reading individual poetry woven into powerful conversations, with 2019 being the ninth year. She has been published in “Picture This Anthology,” “Word Stock,” and “Delirious, a Celebration of Prince, as well as several Alien Buddha Press anthologies and Rust Belt Review #1.” Her most recent poetry books available on Amazon through Alien Buddha Press are “The Past is Calling,” “Broken Branches” and “Poetography,” which was created in collaboration with her photographer son and grandson. Thasia Anne also has a program on (CAM) Cable Access Media called “Poetry, Prose, and Personalities.” in Erie Pennsylvania where she lives contently with her videographer husband Bear. The program features interviews with local poets, artists, and people with big creative personalities from the community.

sent Today at 8:55 AM

GAS 10: Poetry, Art and Music

by Soheyl Dahi

 GAS 10 Features:

Gabor G. Gyukics: poet, jazz poet, literary translator born in Budapest. He is the author of 1 book of original prose, 9 books of original poetry, 6 in Hungarian, 2 in English, 1 in Arabic, 1 in Bulgarian, 1 in Czech, and 13 books of translations including A Transparent Lion, selected poetry of Attila József and Swimming in the Ground a Contemporary Hungarian Poetry (in English, both with co-translator Michael Castro) and an anthology of North American Indigenous poets in Hungarian titled Medvefelhő a város felett. He is Hungary Nation Beat Poet Laureate (Lifetime).

Michael Rothenberg is poet, artist, and co-founder of 100 Thousand Poets for Change (100tpc.org) and the “Read A Poem To A Child" initiative. His most recent books of poetry include Drawing The Shade (Dos Madres Press, 2016), The Pillars (Contagion Press, 2020), and I Murdered Elvis (Alien Buddha Press, 2020). He lives in Tallahassee, Florida where he is currently Florida State University Libraries Poet in Residence.

Joshua Michael Stewart is a poet and musician. His books, Break Every String, and The Bastard Children of Dharma Bums and albums, Three Meditations and Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy can all be found at Amazon and elsewhere.

Angelina Bong is a poet and visual artist. She represented Malaysia at the 3rd Delphic Games 2009, South Korea in Poetry. Since then, she has read in ten countries with poems translated into six languages. Her recent poem wins the Poetry-Adult category of Georgetown Literary Festival’s ‘Wake Me Up When This Is Over’ contest. She chirps on social media at @swakgel.

Emocat is the synthwave project started by Heidi Blakeslee in 2020.  It is music for cats and cat people made by a cat person.  

More music by Emocat can be found for free on www.Soundcloud.com under Emocat2380.

Soheyl Dahi has lived in San Francisco since 1979. He paints and writes every day when he is not reading or publishing poetry (Sore Dove Press).

Pankhuri Sinha is a bilingual poet and story writer from India. Two books of poems published in English, two collections of stories published in Hindi, and five collections of poem published in Hindi. She has won many prestigious, national-international awards, has been translated in over twenty one languages. After doing her BA from Delhi University, and PG diploma in Journalism, from Symbiosis Pune, Pankhuri did her Master’s in history from SUNY Buffalo, and has an unfinished Phd from the University of Calgary, Canada. 

Tali Cohen Shabtai is bilingual poet from Jerusalem, Israel. She has three poetry books: Purple Diluted in a Black’s Thick, (bilingual 2007), Protest (bilingual 2012) and Nine Years From You (2018). Her work has been translated into many languages.

Ken Clinger is a composer, musician and photographer living in Pennsylvania.  His music is in the intro and outdo of GAS shows. His music often accompanies slide shows and poetry on GAS.  You can download his music from many sites including https://kenclinger.bandcamp/music

Belinda Subraman, your host, has been writing and publishing a long time.  Over the years she has edited and published books and magazines, podcast internet radio shows, blogs and recorded with various musicians.  Her main current project is this GAS video arts show and its accompanying blog: GAS:  Poetry, Art and Music. 

Left Hand Dharma

Blue Rooms, Black Holes, White Lights.

My Beloved Anti-Divas, Pt.2: Nina Hagen, Lene Lovich by Kevin M. Hibshman

No two women personified post-punk adventurism more than Nina Hagen and Lene Lovich. Not only did they look the part with outrageous make up and dress, they made music that was utterly unique and at times, challenging. It was only natural that they would align, waving their brightly-hued freak flags for the world to see. In addition to their own recordings, they teamed up to star in Dutch junk-rocker Herman Brood's iconoclastic film, Cha Cha in 1979. They often appeared as guests during each other's  live performances and they recorded a duet, “Don't Kill The Animals” for P.E.T.A. in 1986. Lene also duets on “Where's The Party” along side Lemmy from Motorhead on Hagen's self-titled album from 1989.  Nina recorded a cover of Lene's top 3 UK hit, “Lucky Number” for her second album, Unbehagen (“Ill at ease”) released in 1979. Nina was born in Germany, Lovich in Detroit, moving to England at age thirteen. 

        After singing with a few bands and dubbing screams for horror films, Lovich recorded a demo of Tommy James's hit from1967, “I Think We're Alone Now.” She was quickly signed to Stiff Records and her debut album, Stateless appeared in 1978. Her recording career was sporadic but she did put out the albums Flex and No Man's Land in 1979 and 1982 respectively. New Toy, a six-song stop-gap EP, with title tune written by Thomas Dolby, was issued in 1981. 

        Lovich's songs were often slightly bizarre, occasionally ethereal explorations of love, loss, and the supernatural. She did pen the lyrics to French disco star Cerrone's 1977 single, “Supernature” which she herself covers on the aforementioned P.E.T.A. Album. Her style was quirky new wave with plenty of charging rhythms and percolating synthesizers. The main attraction was her unique vocalizing. Her voice ranged from smooth, haunting lower registers to piercing soprano shrieks. If you have never heard her, I recommend you begin with Stateless. This album shows off her incredible versatility and is the strongest batch of songs she has presented. Lene has continued to record, releasing the excellent Shadows and Dust in 2005. 

        Nina Hagen studied ballet as a young child in East Germany and by the age of nine, was considered a promising opera singer. Her stepfather, an anti-establishment folk singer, was kicked out of East Germany and Nina reportedly was granted permission to leave the country in record response time after declaring she wished to follow in his footsteps. She first landed in Poland, age sixteen but later ended up in London at the height of the punk rock movements, befriending Johnny Rotten (Lydon) of The Sex Pistols and Ari Up of The Slits. After being signed to CBS records, she released her debut Nina Hagen Band in 1978. Her second German-language album, Unbehagen followed in 1979. it would be her first solo and first English-language record, NunSexMonkRock that would introduce her to the world. 

        The sound of her first two records was a blend of 70's hard rock, reggae, punk rock with operatic flourishes. Nothing could have prepared her audience for the masterwork that is NunSexMionkRock. Here all of her disparate influences meld together with her odd, amusing personality to create an aural assault unlike anything you will ever hear from a major-label artist. The album is a new wave post-punk opera with Hagen singing in what seems like an endless array of voices that range from demonic to operatic usually within the course of one song. It has to be experienced to be believed.

Be prepared for a mind-altering trip if you decide to dive into this stunning album. Nina's music is not for everyone. You either get her or you don't and NunSexMonkRock is certainly her most divisive record with subject matter that includes religion, addiction, motherhood and UFO's. Of course seeing her live was also quite a mind-bending experience. She often throws in unexpected cover tunes from artists like David Bowie, Sweet, The Monkees, Janis Joplin, Norman Greenbaum (She covers his one hit “Spirit In The Sky” on her 1985 album, In Ekstasy.) 

     
  There will never be performers like these two fascinating women again so if you are not yet aware of their singular talents, I urge you to make their unearthly acquaintance.

        

GAS Catfish McDaris, Featured Poet

Catfish McDaris is an aging New Mexican living near Milwaukee. He has four walls, a ceiling, heat, food, a woman, one cat, a daughter, a typing machine, and a mailbox. That’s enough for him. He writes for himself and sometimes he gets lucky and someone publishes his words. He remains his biggest fan. He’s been sliding in the shadows of the small press for 30 years. Catfish McDaris won the Thelonius Monk Award. His work is at the Special Archives Collection at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is listed in Wikipedia. His ancestors were related to Wilma Mankiller from the Cherokee Nation. He’s on vacation from selling wigs in a dangerous neighborhood in Milwaukee. Van Gogh and Catfish were both born in ’53 and Vincent died on his birthday July 29^th. Cat’s hometown is Clovis, New Mexico, Gauguin’s father and son were named Clovis.

The Man That Brought a Singing Fat Lady and a Violin to a Gunfight

Of all that is written I only love what is written in blood. Nietzsche

 

Surrounded by dead guardian angels

listening to: The Mephistopheles of

Los Angeles by Marilyn Manson

 

Warming hands and face above a hell

fire in a 55-gallon barrel dreaming of

dancing with a senorita in Guadalajara

 

Palm trees figs and dates in Damascus

driving Thunderbirds through a sequoia

and zebras and swallowtails in the Mojave

 

Shackled by my years, gravity sucking

my energy, the sky, and ceilings piss

on my head, the walls yawn in boredom,

Nobody laughs at the ugly mirror, guns

mean noise and chaos, death should be up

close and personal with a lovely serenade.