Read this Wash Post interview of Kurt Vonnegut (by Bob Thompson) during the morning ritual and made an alternate mix for the reading...
"Oh, I've made a recording of that -- to music," he says. He unfolds his lean, 82-year-old frame, locates the CD, hits "play."
American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses, took off backward from an airfield in England, the voice of a somewhat younger Vonnegut intones.
Sounds of rain and thunder fade into background jazz. A female vocalist wails along.
The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. . . .
The recorded Vonnegut keeps reading as women in factories dismantle those containers and separate their contents into harmless minerals for return to the ground. The present-day Vonnegut lights the cigarette he's been fondling for half an hour.
The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. . . .
"Same Mistake Man" - Indian Jewelry
"Little Wethead" - Minus Story (h.t. LHB)
"I Got Your Ice Cold Nugrape" - The NuGrape Twins
"Blue Bird" - The Rosebuds
"Step Away from the Cliff" - Blue Eyed Son
"Cutting Daisies" - Buttercup
more Vonnegut photos here
read the actual passage from slaughterhouse five here
1 comment:
thanks for the nugrape twins . i knew the song from an a capella version by michael cooney on his late 60's lp, Michael Cooney or: "the Cheese Stands Alone" , Folk Legacy FSI-035. it was as far as i know an advertising promo in the sense that a vendor would sing it to push sales (like bells on an ice cream wagon.)
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