A quick note from yours truly to begin. It took me 11 days to listen to 29 record albums by 14 artists and to write a poem-like thing for each songwriter or band filed under the letter A in my collection. There were, in that 29, a couple of double albums, but I have only counted those as one record, with the exception of Laurie Anderson’s United States, Live, a five record box. I count that as five simply because of the commitment. I’ve been rather obsessive about this project. I could be doing other things, but today, for example, feeling the appropriateness of being able to start on a new letter in the new month of November, I burned toward the “A” finish line and listened to and wrote about the three last artists filed in my collection under the first letter of the alphabet. This last thing, the eponymously titled record by The Average White Band, seems like a totally appropriate conclusion to my little private dance party. If you’ve been following along, thanks for that. I really appreciate it. In November we will proceed with the Bees, the B’s.
A Funky Haiku Pairing
I
These guys were Scottish!
And all of them were white guys.
Pick up the pieces.
II
I’ve got work to do.
I’ve spent all day listening,
and things got funky.
Notes on the vinyl edition: Average White Band, Atlantic Records, 1974. It’s a bit noisy in the margins, but the record is still in great shape even though the inner sleeve has totally fallen apart.
Postscript in Bullets
- I’m listening to all of my records, from A to Z. Writing a “poem” about each artist. It may take me a long-ass time to complete this project.
- I’m trying to write poems, not reviews. It’s not always gonna work out that way. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be working out very often. With this last one for the letter A, I landed on a haiku–that forced me to try on something different. I’d like these pieces to be more digressive, autobiographical, discursive, associative. It’s been difficult to avoid simply describing.
- I will only “cheat” when I come to a record that I have listened to recently.
michael jarmer 