Spring is here, and a young man’s fancy turns to poetry, indie poetry, punk poetry slam, darkwave poetry, a dying rose by any other name and all that. Two years after my last audiobook I’m here with the new opus, Oldboy. And as Sir Humphrey Pengallan (Charles Laughton) defiantly sneers, “What are you waiting for? A spectacle? You shall have it!!!” So polish up your spectacles, Andy Seven Ltd. has returned.
Oldboy is my fourth audiobook of poetry, fifteen prose poems that up the ante from previous efforts. While past audiobooks featured poems with more traditional soundscapes, the new work features dark ambient, industrial neofolk mixes and drum and bass rhythm tracks.
All music mixes aside, Oldboy is a wild mosaic of sonnets dedicated to horror films (Sadako, Succubus), Robert Williams-inspired sports sleaze (Demolition Derby, Bantamweight Vs. Flyweight), and a triptych of Southern California gothic (Bougainvillea, California Boyfriend, The LA River).
The title, aside from the movie, comes from my theory that some males are men from the day they were born and always remain men, while others will always be boys, even when they’re pushing their Seventies. Some boys always inhabit an adult form. The same goes for females. Some women will always be young girls no matter how old they age.
Making the transition from punk singing to poetry recital wasn’t a Herculean task. When I sang with my band Trash Can School the most common remark I heard was that my vocals were “monotonous”. Whether I was aware of it or not, the monotony of my vocals probably meant that I chose to recite my lyrics as poetry.
I could make a case for it by saying that singing was never the objective but just reciting my prose. So, in a very loose sense I’ve always performed poetry recitals back in the days of my band and I’ve continued to this day.
Islington High Street was about my all-nighter at Islington Screen on The Green spent fifty years ago watching The Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and other future superstars like Billy Idol and Siouxsie Sioux. Slumgullion is a piss-take on Willy the Shake’s classic plays, some of my favorites. I love the surrealism of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Saints and Sinners was about a real saloon in the heart of sleepy Culver City. Transfigured Night is my surreal take on a dream where I walked through a forest accompanied by mutilated lab test animals. The dream world continues with Succubus, nocturnal eroticism let loose upon the bedroom walls.
Those expecting sermons from the mount taking a political stand will be disappointed, as the only track that shows a political angle at all would be Carrot in The Donkey’s Eye, which criticizes the punishing exploitation of the average worker, the most offensive culprit being factory and warehouse environments. I suppose Smog lies somewhere in social commentary, too.
While I’m on the subject of poetry, what are your favorite movies about poets? We don’t get a lot of cinema space, I see movies about Bukowski, Kerouac, Sylvia Plath, but I’d like to see a film about Anne Sexton or Rod McKuen. Rod McKuen was an awful poet but his life story is utterly fascinating.
My favorite movie about a poet is Orpheus by Jean Cocteau about a popular poet despised by the hipster cognoscenti because his work is too successful. His best friend is a poet so jaded with writing that his next book will be a volume of nothing but empty pages. Doesn't get more existential than that!
But back to Oldboy, ahem: Some poems have been published in the past, i.e. Bantamweight Vs. Flyweight, Succubus, and California Boyfriend were featured in Horror Sleaze Trash. Other poems like Slumgullion, Transfigured Night, and Sadako were included in several Dawn of Darkness witch house compilations, available for listening at The Internet Archive.
Oldboy can be streamed on You Tube, Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, Amazon Music, or Deezer. Hard media CDs can be purchased at Bandcamp. I’ll merch a few on eBay, too. Friends, Hollywood Babylonians, and countrymen, lend me your ears.
