Saturday, July 1, 2023

Going Global

I have, for all intents and purposes, gone global. What does this mean? Well, I made a distribution deal where my poetry albums Minstrels Anonymous and Sea Level Drive can now be streamed all over the world on every streaming service imaginable: roll call, Spotify, Pandora, You Tube, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and even the dreaded Tik Tok, home of the anime nymphets. Don’t see them shaking it to Halloween Birthday, but I’ve been wrong before.

In addition, both hard media CDs are now issued on my imprint Jinx Records in lavish glossy Digipak editions, which can be bought either on Amazon, CD Baby or on eBay. Copies can also be purchased at a reduced price if you DM me and pay via Paypal or Venmo funds. What this means is that neither record will be streamed on SoundCloud or available for purchase via Bandcamp.

In other news I’m hard at work on the next album, tentatively scheduled for November release. I’ve also pondered the possibility of doing a few spoken word shows. Needless to say, records will be available there. And sooner or later, probably later, I will finally complete my new novel. Dammit.

Sunday, March 12, 2023

High Speed Chase

High Speed Chase

YOU CAN’T CATCH ME
YOU CAN’T CATCH ME

Concrete canyoned freeway
flickering lights atop chiaroscuro blur
down the highway

SIRENS! CRYING! WAILING! LIKE BIRDS OF FIRE!

Pistons pumping petrol
the master cylinder moves & grooves & slips & slides
all aboard for crime time

YOU CAN’T CATCH ME
YOU CAN’T CATCH ME

Run baby run
GTA in the Chevrolet 10-80 in the Ferrari
high octane zebras running after the little GTO metal rodeo

THE LONG ARM OF THE LAW IS BROKEN-UNSPOKEN

Dashcam dashcam battering rams
bodycam bucking backfire a rebop
throttling down with wheels of fire

YOU CAN’T CATCH ME
YOU CAN’T CATCH ME

“We’ve had enough of this shit”
“Come on guys lay out the freeway nail strip”
and then it all crashed
crashed and smashed, the inevitable end

Monday, February 20, 2023

New Poetry Videos

I've decided to begin performing poetry readings around town, but before I begin rehearsing in a proper studio I've started recording myself reading some of my work. For the curious out there, here's some excerpts of poems I'll be reading sometime somewhere:

The Hardcore Kid - Andy Seven Ltd.

The Hardcore Kid is a poem about a die-hard punk who still thinks wearing a leather jacket with Exploited stenciled still carries impact. You can find kids like this on Hollywood Boulevard when they're not boosting punk product at the touristy Hot Topic at the mall.

I'm not really ready to post these on You Tube just yet, and if I do I'll do it in a separate account than the one I have, which has 50,000 followers. They're accustomed to my weird films and and commercials, not my weird poetry. I am, however, posting some of it on Vimeo.

Disc Over America - Andy Seven Ltd.

Disc Over America is another poem from Sea Level Drive about the American Nightmare, not much has changed since Ginsberg's Howl but at least sometimes the good guys won back then. Imagine the Scopes Monkey Trial or Naked Lunch obscenity trial nowadays. Do you really think the verdict would be the same now as it was then? Think again.

Many of these videos have been posted on Instagram and I've received a lot of encouraging feedback from my friends, so it's just a matter of busting into a rehearsal studio and sharpening up my presentation and all that. See you at the clubs.

Ghosts of Hustlers - Andy Seven Ltd.

Vimeo's announced it will shut down operations in late June, so get it while you can.

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Sidewalk Camp

This was a poem I wrote in response to political candidates using the homeless as a scapegoat in their pursuit of wininng votes. As someone who was once homeless himself I wanted to say something about this.

By the way, if you like what you hear please follow me on SoundCloud.

Friday, October 28, 2022

Sea Level Drive Spoken Word Album Available Now

Halloween 2022 marks the release of my second album Sea Level Drive. A definite labor of love, it’s my continued foray into spoken word recordings with soundscapes created by me and helped with by my two friends, Sad Boy and Robodyke.

Tracks from Sea Level Drive can be listened to on HearNow (andysevenltd.hearnow.com) and a few will remain on SoundCloud (Soundcloud.com/andysevenltd), too.

Not only do you get to hear me read my own poetry but I also read two pieces by the legendary Maxwell Bodenheim, Death and The Ballad of Jack Rose. Let’s go straight to the beginning and talk about the album:

Sea Level Drive begins with Ghosts of Hustlers, an abandoned gay horror novel I started years ago about a young man moving into an apartment off the Sunset Strip where his evenings are haunted by ghosts of murdered young runaways. It wasn’t bad but concepts are hard to sustain over 160 pages. I made it a poem instead. That wah-wah sound you hear is a trumpet, not a guitar. Too much!

Velvet Candybar comes next and I went for a sweet English melody while chanting about making love in a graveyard. The goth boy can’t help it!

The Hardcore Kid is my poem about the hooligan who refuses to give up the hardcore ghost long after the riot’s ended. “He tied a rag around his boot, spare changes for his loot, still lamenting the dead of Sid, he’s The Hardcore Kid.” The legendary 1-2-3-4 countdown runs the gamut from Johnny Thunders, Wilson Pickett, Little Richard, and Sir Paul McCartney.

Disc Over America (DOA) is a political song about murder in the name of church and state. This country feels more and more like a drug store that’s quickly going out of business.

Sea Level Drive finishes the first half of the album. It’s a small road on the extreme end of Malibu right after you pass Zuma and before you enter Ventura County. You could say it’s technically the very end of Malibu. It’s right by Lechuza Beach, which might be the narrowest beach in Malibu. It’s a poem about a couple strung out on drugs who have nothing but the ocean singing for them at night.

The second half of the album begins with Teethgrinder, a poem about the tension, anger and anxiety pouring out on the internet from all sides. People are angrier than ever, exhibiting not a single note of sensitivity or sympathy for each other. Savaging one another for the sake of winning a worthless argument, and most arguments are worthless in the long run. Everybody’s wrong.

The Ballad of Jack Rose by Maxwell Bodenheim features my Ibanez electric mandolin with a strong delay on my voice. It’s a pretty intense poem about a drug dealer who falls in love with an addict’s sister. This poem reminded me of The Panic In Needle Park and some Hubert Selby prose, too.

All The Madwomen is based on the Sam Fuller film Shock Corridor, specifically the scene where Peter Breck wanders into the nympho ward of the insane asylum he’s committed in. Naturally there are soundbites from the film floating all through the track. The original poem appeared in Horror Sleaze Trash Quarterly.

Sometimes people ask me why there's no guitar on my records, and it's like this: once I saw Allen Ginsberg on a TV show reciting his poetry backed by a punk band, and in theory it should have been awesome, but it was horrible. Poor old Ginsberg read his poetry with all his heart and this band behind him were playing so loud, especially this douchebag guitarist cranked so loud like he was Shitface Ramone and ripping out a solo while Grandpa Beat was trying valiantly to have his prose heard. A real shitshow, but lessons learned. Leave the fucking guitar in the corner, preferably in the garbage bin.

In Bed With The Bomb is about the early days of the atomic bomb, its development and testing. “I’m in bed with the bomb, I’m about to kingdom come, Drop it now! Stop it, how? Duck and cover, my atomic lover”. I enjoyed adding the “Andy, are you okay?” soundbite from Happiness.

Oh, My Love Is Like A Rose is a small abstract piano frisson with some sped-up saxophone and trumpet tracks for the Frank Zappa fans. That sound never gets old.

Death by Maxwell Bodenheim is the first Bodenheim poem I ever read, and I was immediately hooked. Goth to the max with its reference to Death’s longing for me and silver braids of hair, well...I laid down some backwards synthesizer for extra death texture. I also made a video of it, which you can see here.

So that’s my new album, Sea Level Drive. Give it a listen on Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music, Apple Music or your favorite streaming sevice. If you’re going to listen to poetry/spoken word give it some electronic skronk with some free jazz horns and some lovely mandolin-driven folk to boot.

The tracks:
Ghosts of Hustlers
Velvet Candybar
The Hardcore Kid
On Her Bed of Roses
Disc Over America (DOA)
Sea Level Drive
Teethgrinder
The Ballad of Jack Rose
All The Madwomen
In Bed With The Bomb
Oh My Love Is Like A Rose
Death

Sea Level Drive is available for download or CD format via Bandcamp.com at https://andysevenltd.bandcamp.com/album/sea-level-drive. Meet me there.