November Challenge Thread: All-Stars Edition!

I'll play catch-up on my missing @jamieanderson1968 prompts later, but for today I'm very much in the feels for today's prompt.

17. On November 17th, 2009, my good friend Tempest Grace Gale was murdered and dumped in the water of Ford’s Cove, where she lived on her boat. She was a musician, marionette maker, stilt walker, unicyclist, and one of the best road trip companions I’ve ever had. I miss her every day.
  • Play some folk punk
Jeff Andrew – Hobo Postcards



I have a dozen, or more, copies of this CD in storage but I'm using the Bandcamp app to stream it at the morning. This, Jeff's second, album is entirely dedicated to Tempest. In fact, it's Jeff's guitar she's playing in the video attached to the prompt. It'd on the folkier side of folk punk, but don't let that fool ya – the punk is deep in this man.
 
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avecigrec said:
I did wonder for a second or three if I was maybe bringing too much heavy, but ultimately landed on this being a perfect space to celebrate her spirit. I can pretty much guarantee she wouldn't have taken part in our shenanigans, but she'd love that this gathering place of freaks and weirdos exists. And would especially have loved how much joy it brings me.

I'm so glad the person who recorded the video I included posted it after she was killed; that was an incredibly special evening. I liked to joke with people that we kidnapped Tempest to that gig in Ucluelet. Two nights prior she had set up a show for my buddy Jeff's and my folk n' spoken word duo, Ghosts of the Highway, on Hornby Island—a place I'd wanted to visit for years but hadn't yet been; my second visit to the island was 11 months later for her funeral. After Hornby, we hopped back over to the big island to do a show with her in nearby Courtenay (which my mom and stepdad attended while visiting my Nana up that way; it remains the only gig of mine they've ever been to) after which she planned to "get back to my island," but we kept insisting she should come to Ucluelet with us. Thankfully peer pressure worked and even more thankfully we have this video! We dropped her off at the ferry back to her island the next day and made our way back down to Victoria. The house where our gig happened was a friend of one of Jeff's treeplanting buddies, and the video does not even remotely do justice to that seascape mural on their living room wall!

Y'all, this young woman was so amazing we needed to have TWO funerals for her. The first was a harrowing affair full of weeping, moaning, and wailing (and eventually song) as we all who had gathered took turns filling in the hole to which she had been lain (appropriately from around the time she died until pretty much the moment we finished burying her the weather around the islands was blustery, miserable and wet; then, when the last of the dirt had fallen, the rain stopped and, within a few minutes the sun had shaken loose of the clouds. No shit!) Her grandparents had come up from California, but shit was waaaay too heavy for them to really meet her people at the time, so they came back a few months later and we put the fun back in FUNeral with a PeStival to celebrate her life: a weekend for the freaks and weirdos to frolic in her honour and properly celebrate. There were all kinds of music, from punk to folk to metal to jazz, there was poetry, there was art, juggling, stilt-walking, fire-spinning, and an amazing collection of of her special things (I forgot to mention in my brief description of her that the marionettes she would make were out of scavenged animal bones she would find on the beach and in the woods Her collection of bones that had yet to be used was gifted for us to each take one—I still have the jawbone of what I assume was a young deer.) There was merriment and there was mirth! The way it should be.
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avecigrec said:
I am so grateful.

And I have quite literally had her with me every day for the past 15 years:
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Not just in spirit, but in body. This symbol, now a sigil on my calf, is how she signed her art. I can't recall whether it was night 2, or 3, or 4, of mourning for me, but over the week a bunch of us got and gave stick n' poke tattoos of her symbol; each given deeper meaning by who we had to them. Mine was done by my high school bestie, who has, basically, never left Hornby since the PeStiva,l and who was the puppet master behind my wife and I being introduced. The only thing remotely resembling regret about that tattoo, sometimes, is that it's not somewhere more visible to me.

Anyhoo, these posts went longer and deeper than I'd originally intended. The gummy kicked in and I'm revisiting so many good memories right now. Thanks for joining the ride.
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Everything here is just beautiful. Our world desperately needs more of this.
 
18. On the topic of death, one of my favourite characterizations of Death of the Endless from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman Universe comics. An immediate hit from her first appearance in The Sandman #8 she went on to star in two mini-series of her own, among many other appearances. The trade paperback for her first mini-series Death: The High Cost of Living featured an introduction by Tori Amos.
  • Play something goth-y
Going with a personal under the radar fave.

Sergio Leone x Bauhaus + the post apocalypse = ...





Fields Of the Nephilim - Dawnrazor

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nolalady said:
I have a lot of catching up to do. Last week was a doozy for me and I was having trouble wanting to play the punk albums I had for war. I really needed something a lot more mellow due to some unforeseen migraines. I did play day 12 as a record that @zomgbear hyped in JQBX.

I promise to play day 11 next.

Elliot Nang - Gaijin
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wasn't me, but I'm gonna have to check this out now!
 
18. On the topic of death, one of my favourite characterizations of Death of the Endless from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman Universe comics. An immediate hit from her first appearance in The Sandman #8 she went on to star in two mini-series of her own, among many other appearances. The trade paperback for her first mini-series Death: The High Cost of Living featured an introduction by Tori Amos.
  • Play something connected to Tori Amos, or
  • Play something goth-y, or
  • Play something by somebody who is dead.
I guess I'll connect to the third prompt, but this play really connects to the character of Death from The Sandman. If you haven't read The Sound of Her Wings, I highly recommend it. The following passage from Magician (internally) is similar thematically to The Sound of Her Wings.

Magician, take my spirit
Inside I'm young and vital
Inside I'm alive; please take me away
So many things to do; it's too early
For my life to be ending
For this body to simply rot away

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Lou Reed ~ Magic & Loss

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November 16
We Built This City hits #1 in the Billboard charts today in 1985. This (Jefferson) Starship song is often called (by me at least) the worst #1 in history.

Play the worst you got.

First a comment on We Built This City. It's a terrible song, and I thought everyone agreed, and yet it still gets terrestrial radio play. It's tops on my list of disliked songs, right with Pour Some Sugar on Me.

So, I know I have some bad albums stowed away, but since I recently redid my shelving/organization I purged many. Instead I'll go with this record. What's worse than spelling the artist's name wrong on the cover? Not much.

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17. On November 17th, 2009, my good friend Tempest Grace Gale was murdered and dumped in the water of Ford’s Cove, where she lived on her boat. She was a musician, marionette maker, stilt walker, unicyclist, and one of the best road trip companions I’ve ever had. I miss her every day.
  • Play some folk punk
The original folk punk.

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Almost felt spicy and used a PIF/SS gift for this prompt. Biting my tongue for now.

November 16
We Built This City hits #1 in the Billboard charts today in 1985. This (Jefferson) Starship song is often called (by me at least) the worst #1 in history.

Play the worst you got.


Bengalfuel -  Auriemma

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Was tossed in for free by the label in the replacement package after a cheap ambient record in the Online Vinyl Deals thread arrived damaged brought to the forum's attention by TheThinWhiteDuke a few years ago. Some of the most dry drone/ambient I've heard.
 
17. On November 17th, 2009, my good friend Tempest Grace Gale was murdered and dumped in the water of Ford’s Cove, where she lived on her boat. She was a musician, marionette maker, stilt walker, unicyclist, and one of the best road trip companions I’ve ever had. I miss her every day.
  • Play something by somebody who was murdered.

Lee Morgan - The Sidewinder

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Murdered on February 19, 1972 by gunshot wounds from his then girlfriend.
 
18. On the topic of death, one of my favourite characterizations of Death of the Endless from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman Universe comics. An immediate hit from her first appearance in The Sandman #8 she went on to star in two mini-series of her own, among many other appearances. The trade paperback for her first mini-series Death: The High Cost of Living featured an introduction by Tori Amos.

  • Play something by somebody who is dead
As long as we're getting heavy, I'll post this...
Two years ago yesterday a very close friend took her own life. My wife and I knew she was in a really bad mental state, and yet we couldn't break through. She was over just a couple nights before that, having a beer. It may sound silly but we can't bring ourselves to get rid of that last can of IPA she had, it still sits on the bar.

Her favorite artist was Prince, and we first listened to this record together back when I got it.

RIP Lisa.
Sorry for your loss @avecigrec

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19. On the topic of comics, there is the sequential art kind, as referenced in yesterday’s prompt, and there is the stand-up kind. But stand-up is not limited to just comedy, as my friend Mighty Mike McGee has spent the last quarter century making a career of being a stand-up poet!
  • Play some comedy, or
  • Play some poetry, or
  • Play some instrumental post-rock that would make a great backdrop for performing spoken word.
I originally found Kae Tempest via The Comet Is Coming / Blood of the Past and was intrigued by their voice and delivery. That led me to this album of their poetry over an intense electronic soundscape.

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