this is one of my favorite photos. matthew alexander henson was a member of the peary expedition, and may have been the actual discoverer of the north pole. and just look at that face. where the heck is he, a cave made of cotton whisps?
at the lamplighter on monday there was a band called no gold that i really liked. nice to see the kids kicking it up to the old talking heads style african pop.
site stuff appears to be getting better, thanks to weston’s work. he thinks he’s figured out the ordering problem, which is always hard with intermittent problems but i think we’re back on track. and the other problems were just my failings in the language of html. i always try to put punctuation where there should be no punctuation. anyway, to celebrate figuring that out, here’s a demo version of cowper’s folly. the album version has worked out well, but i continue to have a fondness for this demo. particularly the way we made larissa and patsy (the other singers) sound like tiny little compressed birds. from another century.
Another beautiful art-song by the great Veda!
hey, that turned out very well!! hope you guys are enjoying the summer!
Thanks Veda!
Nice story. Lovely music. 🙂 !
Matthew Henson – polar explorer and (little known fact) innovative marionetteer, founder of the Creature Shop dynasty. The photograph shows him modelling the prototype Fozzie suit, and he’s actually standing in front of Behemoth, the monster who once memorably tried to eat Shakey Sanchez whilst singing “Under My Skin”. It’s a great photograph until you remember that Behemoth was bright orange. Frankly, The image works better in monochrome. The enigmatic expression is due to Matthew humming the musical phrase to which the lyric “It’s time to put on makeup” was subsequently set.
Interestingly the polar leader himself was the inspiration for “Peary Piggy�, first sketched on the 1909 exploration amidst rumblings of team discontent after a large portion of the chocolate ration mysteriously disappeared one night. Although it is not known whether Peary studied karate, he was renowned for his impressively long eyelashes (often captured on celluloid sporting tremendously extravagant icicles). The character evolved into a female some time in the 1950s around the time when Matthew’s grandson James was going through puberty.
Another of Henson’s creations, Rowlf, was originally modelled as a husky who would drag his piano onto stage with half a dozen or so friends, unless visiting Britain when he would invariably lug it round on his own – a tradition meticulously observed to this day by certain Canadian percussionists…
oh my god duncan, your research is impeccable. i’m splitting my sides.