Re: Album sleeve notes don’t have to be boring: Just look at those written by Thomas Pynchon, Hunter S Thompson and other literary greats

[David Ewers]

I've got an album jacket (I lost the vinyl many years ago - ? - ; the jacket now holds the copy of White Light/ White Heat I've had since I was a kid...) by an outfit called Barefoot In The Head (Jim Sauter, Don Dietrich, Thurston Moore; Forced Exposure 1990; FE-015).  I've wondered for many years whether the Pynchon liner notes on its back side are legit.  I tried sending photos of them but I don't think they made it through the visiferous aether, so here they are: 


One night Johnson, Coley and I were sitting in the backyard with a bucket of sangria and a few bongloads of some very righteous boo.  I'd brought out a box of my live Sonic Youth tapes and we were arguing about Ranaldo's tongue vectors in the third quadrant of "Society Is A Hole" (Folk City, NYC 12/1/82) when one of T. Moore's downstrokes caught our attention.  We ran the tape and listened to the passage a few times.  The subtly monstrous and mindless GUSH with which T. Moore hit the "E" chord made it obvious that his playing was not coming out of a complete spiritual void.  This was a real revelation.  It meant that he was capable of actually unclenching his brain and loosing demons of soul creativity.
	Because we hate to see anyone lackeyed to the jive-ass, pop-structure, white-man a-motionalism, a plan was immediately sprung for freeing T. Moore from the shackles of Peggy Lee-descended dogshit that were obviously off his TRUE HUMAN FORCE.  Deciding which hominid cudgels might best be wielded against these procedural chains was a lead pipe cinch.  Who but Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich?  These two men are the freest, loudest, swingin'est white motherfuckers to ever jaw-cleave an industrial strength reed.  Their work with Borbetomagus has long been a raucous fountain of tonal explosion and aesthetic purity, as well as a black-gloved fist up the diz of all conservative musical architects.  If anyone could blow the lock off of T. Moore's creational emo-safe, Jim and Don were it.
	The rest was a snap.  I had my agent get in touch with all the parties.  She explained the points of our proposal in no uncertain terms.  The results are presented here.  Two free men meet a slave.  Everyone goes home barefoot.  Right-fuckin'-on.

--Thomas Pynchon
  Somerville, MA
  January, 1990



What do you all think?



On Aug 7, 2015, at 12:02 PM Jolly good day we are having, Dave Monroe wrote:

> http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/album-sleeve-notes-dont-have-to-be-boring-just-look-at-those-written-by-thomas-pynchon-hunter-s-thompson-and-other-literary-greats-10445086.html
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l