Albums of the week October / November

[king ubu]

Here we go:

Dmitry chose SEK, Big Al got in between (thanks for keeping up the process ), I was Dmitry's second choice, and SEK has been so nice as to choose me to follow him.

Now I'm going to be on vacation from October 4th to 20th, so I will choose AOTW for 10/19-10/25. I chose our host b3-er to choose another AOTW, as a way also of expressing my gratitude for his keeping up this great site!

And now let's start from the beginning.

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SEK will announce his AOTW soon (10/5-10/11)

b3-er's turn, then is to choose AOTW for 10/12-10/18, and to pass it on to...

... someone choosing AOTW for 10/19-10/24,

then here enters the king ( -_- ) - I will announce my AOTW (10/25-11/1 before leaving for my vacation,

and the AOTW for 11/2-11/8 belongs to someone who's picked by the one in charge of week 10/19-10/24.

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This is it. Pretty complicated, but life gets to be complicated sometimes...

And (obviously) I won't pass on my holiday for an AOTW

Glad to be around you, folks!

ubu

[Big Al]

Makes perfect sense! Glad this all got straightened out.

[catesta]

I'll take a stab at it.

[Jim Alfredson]

All right... since I've already done an AOTW and there are folks that haven't that want to, how about this solution:

1) SEK will announce his AOTW soon (10/5-10/11)

2) I am giving my turn to soulstation1, since he so desperately wants to pick one. He will do it for the week of 10/12 to 10/18. I am keeping my right to pick the next person, however, as part of the deal (kind of like giving up a spot in the NBA draft, you dig?)

3) I pick connoisseur series500 for the week of 10/19 to 10/25. He then has the right to choose someone for the week after (ie, 11/2 to 11/8).

4) king ubu has it for 10/26 to 11/1.

5) connoisseur series500's pick (whomever that might be) goes here for 11/2 to 11/8.

6) He/she from step 5 picks the person for this week and everything is back in order.

Sound good?

[catesta]

You obviously understood couw's chart.

Your solution seems logical and more than fair.

[Man with the Golden Arm]

I myself was thinking more along these lines, probably yours is much clearer

Yeah go ahead and pick an Anthony Braxton AOW?

[J.A.W.]

Yeah go ahead and pick an Anthony Braxton AOW?

Now there's an idea...

[Big Al]

Sound good?

Personally, I can't WAIT to see what these guys have up their sleeves!

[Soulstation1]

"I ain't got nothin' up my sleeve, just some big guns........"

[Soulstation1]

"It's 'bot time my boy,ss1, got a pick".

"i almost had to raise alittle ruckus, around this joint, like i WILL this nba season".

[Soulstation1]

maybe shaq can explain those graphs and shit.

he did graduate from lsu. Love Shaq University

[Rooster_Ties]

Same procedure as always, for if the AOTW is only available on CD from Japan???

[connoisseur series500]

Thanks B-3er for nominating me for 10/19-10/25. Since we are moving along here very nicely, allow me to nominate the fellah for week 11/2-11/8 (my birthday!! ) ahead of time: Mr. Jacknife! Will let him know by pm.

This will be fun.

I do have something in mind for AOW, but will take suggestions and bribes! -_-

[Rooster_Ties]

Good think this AOTW thing is relatively simple now. Cuz remember when we had these procedures in place, and how everybody used to get so damn conflused all the time!!!

Edited September 29, 2003 by Rooster_Ties

[Rooster_Ties]

I myself was thinking more along these lines, probably yours is much clearer

Yeah go ahead and pick an Anthony Braxton AOW?

That reminds me --- does anybody remember which Anthony Braxton album this tune was originally on??? I checked the AMG, but haven't been able to find it yet...

[Rooster_Ties]

Good god almighty, right here and right now, let's all agree NEVER to do anything with the AOTW that's anywhere near this damn complicated:

(I do not have the heart to link the picture directly into this thread, so you're all just gonna have to CLICK HERE.)

Edited September 29, 2003 by Rooster_Ties

[Rooster_Ties]

My Google image search for the search key "complex chart" returned this.

Edited September 29, 2003 by Rooster_Ties

[Jim Alfredson]

Who the hell is that guy?

[Jim Alfredson]

Here's one that's actually musically related .:.

[jacknife]

allow me to nominate the fellah for week 11/2-11/8 ahead of time: Mr. Jacknife!

Thanks Conn, I hope this isn't some sort of dirty trick to pay me back for that Dodo disc! ....hmmm...I think I have an idea for my pick

[.:.impossible]

How do I get on the list? I participate when I can, but I don't always own the disc. Some of them, I inadvertently skipped on accident without meaning to.

[jacknife]

How do I get on the list?

I hereby nominate impossible for week of 11/9 - 11/15. Is this the correct week for my nomination? Or is it supposed to be for someother week, so confused

Edited September 30, 2003 by jacknife

[connoisseur series500]

How do I get on the list?

I hereby nominate impossible for week of 11/9 - 11/15.

See how Jacknife cuts through the Gordian Knot of bureacracy?

Yeahhh!

[jacknife]

See how Jacknife cuts through the Gordian Knot of bureacracy

"I came, I saw, I conquered", and "to cut the Gordian Knot".

[king ubu]

Alright guys. The king has seen you had some fun at their expenses.

So please allow us to introduce myself:

Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi was translated for the Gaberbocchus Press by Barbara Wright and illustrated by Franciszka Themerson. It has been described as "undoubtedly the most acclaimed book of the Gaberbocchus Press", and is radical both in its choice of text, as the first English edition of the play, and in the design of the book.

Ubu Roi created a scandal when it was first performed in the Theatre de l’Oeuvre in Paris in 1896 and was described by André Gide as "the most extraordinary thing seen in the theatre for a long time". Having seen the play, W.B. Yeats said: "After us, the savage god." Critics were divided between those who compared it to Rabelais and Shakespeare (Père and Mère Ubu like the Macbeths without consciences or poetry), and those who dismissed it as rubbish and a degenerate schoolboy joke. With its bad language and schoolboy humour, the play tells the farcical story of Père Ubu, an officer of the King of Poland, a grotesque figure whom Jarry saw as epitomising the mediocrity and stupidity of middle-class officialdom. Aided and abetted by his wife, Père Ubu kills the King and claims the throne. Having amassed a great fortune by executing his subjects and seizing their property, he is finally driven out by the ‘Whole Russian Army’ and flees across Europe.

Despite the simplicity of the plot, the influence of both the play and the writer has endured. Born in Laval, Mayenne, France in 1873, Jarry wrote Ubu Roi at the age of twenty-three, and it remains his best known and most influential work. Derived from a schoolboy play called Les Polonais, Ubu was inspired by M. Hébert, a school teacher and the butt of schoolboy jokes at the Lycée in Rennes which Jarry attended. Lacking both authority and dignity, the physically grotesque figure of M. Hébert became for Jarry, as Barbara Wright relates in her introduction to the book:"the symbol of all the ugliness and mediocrity he already saw in the world", and he in turn became the inspiration for Père Ubu. The figure of Père Ubu was to be a potent one for Jarry, who became obsessed by his creation, to the point that he began to imitate him, adopting an odd way of speaking, referring to himself as ‘Père Ubu’ and behaving in a highly eccentric, Ubuesque manner.

Absurdity became the hallmark of Jarry’s style. Hailed as the father of the Theatre of the Absurd, he told a friend that "talking about things that are understandable only weighs down the mind and falsifies the memory, but the absurd exercises the mind and makes the memory work". It was through writing Ubu Roi that Jarry became the creator of the science of Pataphysics, a logic of the absurd, and "science of imaginary solutions", enshrined since 1948 in the Collège de Pataphysique.

However, the importance of the play lies not its plot but in its anarchic presentation in the theatre. A precursor of Dada and Surrealism, Jarry was to be of influence to Picasso, Satie, Cocteau and Apollinaire, and as a critic noted "almost everyone has seen in Jarry — and especially Ubu — an intimation, if only a shadow, of the future... His spirit… can be seen in all the Absurd Art, Anti-Art and so forth, which has obsessed the art of this century".

It was the anarchic theatrical experience of Ubu Roi that Gaberbocchus Press sought to portray in the presentation of the book, making its design as subversive as its text. Barbara Wright was persuaded to adopt the unconventional technique of writing her text by hand on lithographic plates, on which Franciszka Themerson later made her drawings. This, together with the yellow paper on which the book is printed, already gives a suitably anarchic appearance, which as one writer has noted "graphically communicates the play’s wild (and often scatalogical) irreverence".

Ubu Roi attracted critical acclaim, puzzlement and curiosity."...as exciting a piece of modern book publication as we have ever seen" claimed New Directions Books in their catalogue in January 1952; a "striking example of brains and imagination in book production" commented a writer in Ark, Journal of the Royal College of Art, 1954). Andrew Sinclair in Time and Tide (30 November 1961) wrote: "Jarry’s Ubu is perhaps even more powerful a satire today than it was 65 years ago…The weird and wonderful Gaberbocchus Press have dashed in where others fear to print". A columnist in Times Literary Supplement, (18 August 1966), commented on "the wit and the precision and the merciful economy of Mrs Themerson’s drawings" that capture the spirit of the play.

The success of the publication led to the production of three subsequent editions. The role of the Themersons was duly acknowledged by the Collège de Pataphysique and they were awarded honorary titles, Franciszka became Commendeur Exquis Petits fils Ubu, and Stefan Commandeur Requis ou Capitulaires Quatrièmes fils Ubu.

In 1952, Franciszka created masks for a dramatised reading of the play at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London; she designed the stage production with life-size puppets by the Marionetteatern of Stockholm in 1964, and finally drew her own comic-strip version of Ubu in 1969. This tour-de-force of a comic strip consists of 90 episodes, with each drawing measuring one metre.

Finally, when the Gaberbocchus Press published Ubu Roi, time had added another irony. Both in the play and in reality, Poland was a 'nowhere'. In 1896, Poland was not on the map of Europe. From 1939 to 1945 it vanished again, and was under foreign, Soviet, control after that. The murderous and stupid Ubus had one thing in common with the multitalented Themersons: all had had to flee from foreign invaders of Poland.

Items on display

1. Franciszka Themerson, drawings for Gaberbocchus Press logo, c.1950.

2. Alfred Jarry Ubu Roi

London : Gaberbocchus Press, 1951

3. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi, 1951, title page

4. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi,

London : Gaberbocchus Press, 1961.

Second edition.

5. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi,

London : Gaberbocchus Press, 1966.

Third edition.

6. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi,

London : Gaberbocchus Press, 1976.

Fourth edition and limited edition, no. 9 of 50, with an original drawing by Franciszka Themerson

7. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi,1951, p. 31.

8. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi,1951, p. 67

9. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi,1951, p. 78 and 71

10. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi, p. 78 and 71. Lithographic plate.

11. Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi, 1951, p. 104 and 93

12. Ordre de la Grande Gidouille, College de ‘Pataphysique.

Copy of the certificate electing Stefan Themerson as ‘Commandeur exquis’ of the Order, dated Sable 84 (10th December 1957).

13. Ubu Roi, programme of a dramatised reading, ICA, London, 18 February 1952, produced by William Jay, with Harold Lang and Selma vaz Dias.

14&15. Papier mâché masks made by Franciszka Themerson for dramatised reading of Ubu Roi at ICA, London, 1952.

There is also the orchestra of us, found here.

And of course, you can buy our original Polish Ubu Posters.

And acclaimed spanish painter Joan Miro made some nice Paintings of us.

By the way, there have been some instants in history, when we had been dubbed cowards, stupid, or also "père" (as in "...goriot") - BUT HELL WE WON'T TOLERATE SUCH THINGS HERE, will we?!

best regards & thanks for reading

ubu