Velvet Donkey

Artist: Ivor Cutler
Label: EMI Int'l
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Format: Import
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 077778716228
EAN: 0077778716228
ASIN: B00013BOBA

Release Date: 2004-01-08

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Tracks:

If Your Breasts
I Got No Common Sense
Useful Cat
Oho My Eyes
The Dirty Dinner
Yellow Fly
Mother's Love
The Meadows Go
Phonic Poem
Live In A Scotch Sitting Room Vol. 2
Birdswing
Nobody Knows
Uneventful Day
Little Black Buzzer
Bread And Butter
A Nuance
Go And Sit Upon The Grass
The Even Keel
Pearly Gleam
The Best Thing
Life In A Scotch Sitting Room, Vol 2
Once Upon A Time
There's Got To Be Something
The Purposeful Culinary Implements
Gee Amn't I Lucky
The Curse
I Think Very Deeply
I, Slowly
Sleepy Old Snake
Titchy Digits
The Stranger

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Customer Reviews:

Waking one night with a nuance in my brain: my unexpected discovery of Ivor Cutler.......2006-01-10

Unexpected discoveries. You gotta love `em!

I stumbled on this album in the mid-80s in a used record store. I still don't know why I stopped to give it more than a cursory glance. I had, after all, but a vague recollection of Cutler's portrayal of Buster Bloodvessel in the Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour" - vague, hell! It was hazy at best, my memory more of the character's name than of Cutler himself. Still, as I browsed in the spoken word section, this album with the primitive art work & somewhat pretentious name (Velvet Donkey??) unexpectedly grabbed my attention. I first noticed that the cover's crudely drawn donkey had four legs, yet it mysteriously cast five shadows. Flipping the record over, I was immediately caught by an incongruity: the back cover announced a slightly different title - Velvey Donket. Hmmmm. After a quick perusal of the titles ("I Think Very Deeply," "Titchy Digits," "Gee, Amn't I Lucky," & "The Purposeful Culinary Instruments" to name just a few), I was intrigued enough to ask the man behind the counter to put it on. He glanced at it warily, but what could he do? He put it on.

At once, Cutler's thick Glaswegian accent spilled from the speakers like a second helping of Saturday night haggis, giving eight seconds of advice that was thought-provoking yet absurd, mildly irritating yet profoundly entertaining: "If your breasts are too big," warned Cutler, "you will fall over -- unless you wear a rock sack."

At this point, my peripheral vision allowed me to see the incredulous look that had erupted on the face of the man behind the counter. He opened his mouth to speak, but it was too late - accompanied by Fred Frith on viola, Cutler almost immediately launched into a short ditty whose lyrics confirmed what I had already begun to suspect:

"I got no common sense/and neither has nobody else/I spread my brains out on the table/and poke them about with a fork."

"I'll take it," I said to the man behind the counter.

Ivor Cutler is a man whose main vocation was teaching. Now retired & in his 80s, Cutler was an unorthodox teacher (African drumming, movement, drama & poetry) who spent 31 years in that profession even as he hobnobbed with the Beatles & recorded albums. His pupils, it has been said, unlocked creativity in him. "I used them, but they used me," he said. "It was a mutual thing." And it was precisely his exposure to his young imaginative students that allowed Cutler to pick up the pen & write his first poems at the age of 42. Certainly he had written witty songs before (& continued to do, some of his tunes included here either accompanied by Frith or my Cutler himself on harmonium), but it was Cutler's surreal poetry that stood out. Witness this:

A man,
Brought up on simple sounds and easy thoughts,
Woke one night with a nuance in his brain.
Unable to deal with it,
He spoke it to a business associate
With whom he was sharing the room
And who dabbled in semantics for a hobby.
"Are you ill or something, Harry?" he muttered,
switching on the light. "Let me fetch you a glass of water."
"It's alright. Just a nuance," whispered Harry.
"Go back to sleep.
I'll be alright in the morning."

Cutler is, admittedly, not for everyone. His thick Scottish accent & his winking humor baffle many listeners (e.g., the man behind the counter), but repeated listenings reveal that even his longer pieces, such as "The Dirty Dinner" which clocks in at 3 & ý minutes, have many tasty morsels just waiting to be savored. Like scotch, Cutler is an acquired taste.

Cutler is aided in this album by the wonderfully proper Phyllis April King, whose crisp British accent make her dark poems that much spookier. Additionally, the CD packaging faithfully recreates the original including the wonderfully perverse "Popularity Chart" that suggests this: "Play `Velvet Donkey' to your friends, then write their names & ask them what they think of you, out of 10. You will soon have a useful chart. E.g.: Anna - 8"

Unexpected discoveries. You gotta love `em!

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