#billy johnstone

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[vertigoartgore]

Jennifer Connelly as Jenny Blake in The Rocketeer Movie (1991). Alongside the lesser known Billy Campbell as Clifford Secord).

[redhairclara]

Billie Dove photographed by Alfred Cheney Johnston, c. early 1920s

[vintagewarhol]

[silveragelovechild]

The rocket pack from “The Rocketeer” (1991) directed by Joe Johnston

[musicandoldmovies]

Billie Dove by Alfred Cheney Johnston

[coffeejoshy]

M. Ward - A Man in the Moon, or, An Attempt at Translation

Music, theatre, canvas, the ballet or the screen; these are luxuries for so many of us. ‘Privilege’ might even be more apt given the notion that art is largely seen as ‘a thing to be enjoyed but which is not essential; a frivolity’. Ethan Hawke (of all people) recently gave my favourite articulation of why the arts are so necessary: because until you experience a feeling so incredibly deep that gives you cause to wonder, to think “has anybody else ever really felt like this?”, you have no way of knowing just how essential art can be.

“That’s when art is not a luxury, it’s actually sustenance”, he puts it.

Recently I got to see M. Ward perform his 20th anniversary tribute to his indie-folk magnum opus ‘Transfiguration of Vincent’. It’s a dark album peppered with fleeting spots of bright, written in the throes of grieving after the titular Vincent O’Brien, a friend of Ward’s, passed away. We don’t learn much of anything specific about Vincent over the course of the album, and nor should we. What we do experience over the album’s course, however, is the breadth of emotions Ward experiences in relation to his friend, and the downward spiral that accompanies those feelings as he watches Vincent’s gradual slip from the mortal coil.

Describing the album is difficult for me, because I find it difficult to ‘rate’ (a silly thing music lovers occasionally do), or ‘praise’ a work of art so subsumed in the grief of its artist and the tragedy of its subject. Talking about art in this way feels insulting at times, and never more so than for works as intimate as this. These are songs to be felt, not described.

And yet here is the paradox; I feel so strongly about this album and its artist that not evangelising it feels as impossible a task as explaining the effect it has on me.

Anyway, here we are.

On stage, Ward has a curious presence. He’s more idiosyncratic than charismatic, and instead carries himself with quiet confidence, and his guitar with a crooked left elbow. He isn’t particularly talkative, but the little he did say gave the impression of an incredibly humble man, and his husky voice and greying hair gives him this air of folksy charm that’s really quite, well, charming.

In interviews this seems to be much the case as well; in one radio interview from 2009 when asked how he would describe his then new album ‘Hold Time’ he answered (hilariously) “well, it’s my new album and some people will like it, some people won’t”. Other interviews also see him coming across as reserved and painfully shy about his creative process, not because he’s afraid of giving away trade secrets, but because he’s almost dismissive of the validity of his methods and his art. He’s wilfully determined to refrain from explanations of his art’s ‘meanings’ beyond vague outlines, as was the case for 2020’s ‘Migration Stories’, in his words a “sci-fi fast-forward to a more silent night many generations from here to a maybe-era where movement is free again”.

While much of this likely amounts to wild postulation about a man’s internal feelings, if there’s one accusation that’s easy to level at Ward, it’s that he’s an old soul. He’s cited Neil Young, Daniel Johnston, Billie Holiday, Howlin’ Wolf, and John Mahey as influences (“Transfiguration” is a reference to a Mahey album with a similar title), he records everything analogue, and even completes his demos on a Tascam four-track that he’s owned since his teenage years. Sonically his music evokes shades of Nick Drake, early Dylan, Jackson C. Frank and even Bowie at times. In today’s context, even the model of a solo singer-songwriter writing intimate analogue guitar music feels like an archetype on the brink of extinction.

Above all, Ward seems captured by the task of creating music as timeless as that of his predecessors.

The point that I suppose I’ve been dancing around in all this exposition is that M. Ward’s music has affected me very deeply.

I’ve spent so much of recent years trying to consume as much music as I can, chasing new sounds and bizarre voices to fulfil some craving of curiosity that is never truly satiated for more than a short time. In all that noise, it’s a fortunate wonder I didn’t overlook Transfiguration of Vincent and other M. Ward projects for their unassuming modes. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully explain to someone the inward-puncturing existential grief that a song like “Dead Man”makes me feel, or the utter stillness that “Real Silence” gives me.

Crucially, though, I don’t think I need to try anymore. Writing this helps, for one, but it’s music like this that gives me the kind of unfathomable joys and sorrows that our friend Ethan Hawke was referring to. It’s music like M. Ward’s that reminds me why I need music, and though it may seem fairly obvious an observation (I suppose all the best ones are), it’s the reminder that some things cannot be described; they must be felt, transfigured by poets and writers into an essence distilled for the rest of us.

[pcificoceanblue]

brian wilson, bruce & harriet johnston, billy hinsche and david cassidy

[rhythmislifeandlifeisrhythm]

[ambersadventuresinwonderland]

The Rocketeer 🖤🎬🎥🎞️

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Art inspired by the music video for Beecake’s “Harbour”-one of my new favorite songs

[spilladabalia]

Billie Holiday - Pennies From Heaven

[acmecorpgraphicsarchive]

 via  Gridllr.com   —  making Likes beautiful again!

Billy in the Darbies: A Facsimile from the Manuscript of Herman Melville's 'Billy Budd, Sailor', [plate 4], Edited by Dennis Marnon, The Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA, 1991 [From the Collection of William Palmer Johnston. The Grolier Club, New York, NY]

Exhibitions: Melville's Billy Budd at 100, The Grolier Club, September 12 – November 9, 2024; Oberlin College & Conservatory Libraries, Oberlin, OH, November 17 – December 20, 2024

[filosofablogger]

♫ China Grove ♫

I just played this one last June, but back by special request … According to Doobie Brothers singer/guitarist Tom Johnston … “The words were written last, and they were made up around this whole idea of this wacky little town with a sheriff that had a Samurai Sword and all that sort of thing. The funny thing was that I found out in 1975 in a cab in Houston that there really was a China Grove,…

[ms-demeanor]

I see Behind the Bastards on your most played podcasts list, I’ve been listening to a fuckload of it recently! Any particular favs? Bonus points if they’re kind of unexpected- I tell new listeners to start w Henry Kissinger or L Ron Hubbard, but the Cambodian King was very much a sleeper hit kind of episode for me

G. Gordon Liddy, the Dulles Bros, John Wayne, Stalin, Libertarian Sea Nations, the British Genocide of Ireland, the John Birch Society, any episode with cracked alums (jason pargin, cody johnston and katie stoll, michael swaim, robert brockaway, seanbaby, daniel o'brein, soren bowie, etc) and anything with Billy Wayne Davis as a guest.

(Another throughline in podcasts i listen to is "are cracked writers involved?")

[asoftepiloguemylove]

Hi! Could you do a web weave of unreciprocated love?

Michelle K. But I am Selfish / Jane Seville Zero at the Bone / pinterest / Salma Deera Letters from Medea / Miles Johnston Disturbing Dreams / Sea Wolf The Garden That You Planted / Christa Wolf (tr. Jan van Heurck) Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays / Billie Eilish Billie Bossa Nova / Boygenius Bite the Hand / W.S. Merwin