to blog the impossible blog (Move it)...

Birthday Greetings to Gary on June 20th from his friends the Russian artist Irina Roon and Scottish cartoonist Nulsh

above illustration by Nulsh

above illustration by Irina Roon
Click to enlarge (illustrations hosted by flickr)

The Times last Sunday ran a front page story about employers snooping on potential employees by scanning their blogs for tell-tale signs of (supposed) aberrant behavior, wrong-thinking attitudes, non P.C. party-lines tread and tippytoed...as Uncle Frank Z so eloquently put it in 1966--"Who are the Brain Police?"--indeed? I mean, this is a Democracy, ain't it? (Step outta line, the Man come, and take you away--to the Priory of Sion, or Butlins, or Tommy's Holiday Camp--or to the funny farm, where life is beautiful all the time and I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats and...and...)

...and actually, a situation not that far afield from the creeping paranoia served up by Philip K. Dick's "A Scanner Darkly", about to open here in the Richard Linklater roto-scoped animated version, which is about the best new film I've seen since "Capote", my number one favorite film of last year.

Saw "A Scanner Darkly" in a preview last March 13th accompanied by Caroline and my guy Richard Porton (Cineaste editor/ stellar author of "Film and the Anarchist Imagination"/ talking head brainiac on the new Criterion DVD edition of Bunuel's "Viridiana", well worth your investment) and I was shook, shaken and stirred to say the least by the fidelity which Linklater rendered this dark vision writ all too large in contemporary skies (just keep reading that newspaper). Dick is one of my favorite authors (check his short story "Faith of Our Fathers" in Harlan Ellison's "Dangerous Visions Vol. One" anthology which you can order at amazon.com--macht schnell!) and we all left the Broadway Screening Room shuddering at the disquieting cautionary tale of surveillance in the not too distant future rendered therein, a tale which has more than a passing reference to the current reality grid on which we gambol, in a play "Very Well Acted by You and Me"...

I've been after my friends Max Rudin and Geoffrey O'Brien (publisher and editor at the Library of America respectively) for awhile to do justice to Philip K. Dick's considerable oeuvre with a spiffy LOA edition (or two) which would give considerable imprimatur to this genius American maverick Cassandra, and actually ran into Geoffrey last night at the the Film Society of Lincoln Center's gala opening of their Benoit Jacquot retrospective (luscious hors d'oeurves at the lavish reception afterwards--wonderful to see Richard Pena, Kent Jones and all the nice folks from the French Embassy there, not to mention VA Musetto, Brad Balfour and other good people) and Geoffrey (great writer--"Sonata for Jukebox" is about the best damn book about Music per se--pop, jazz, classical, you name it--and what it actually FEELS like, the texture and taste of it, as you engrain it into the luminous fibers of your nervous system, and most likely your DNA molecules, plus all the socio-philosophical ramifications that precede and follow from this liberating electrochemical miracle), Geoffrey says they're considering publishing a PKD edition (why not 2? Dick wrote incessantly, as if his very life was at stake-- which it actually was...) so keep those cards and letters coming in to the LOA, kids (Paul Williams--yes, that Paul Williams, not the cuddly songwriter, but the Crawdaddy grandaddy of rockwrite, wrote a splendid appreciation of Dick's work the research on which should have given him plenty of pointers on how to cope with the various New Age shucksters and jivesters--Timothy Leary, please don't call home-- who came upon this fair land in the wake of the great mid 60's Psychedelic Evolutionary Shift--as Beefheart was fond of saying, "a little paranoia is a good propellor"...but Williams too was no match for scary Avatar Mel Lyman and his Fort Hill Communitarians) (speaking of which, BAM is running Antonioni's "Zabriskie Point" right now starring Fort Hill foot soldiers Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin--also note that John Fahey wrote a very funny story about Antonioni hiring him to score some of this particular film in his "How Bluegrass Destroyed My Life" book of short stories, well worth checking out...)

and speaking of the great mid-60's Psychedelic Evolutionary Shift, Tom Stoppard's new play posits the Dionysian, pipes 'o Pan, Giles Goatboy spirit of "Rock 'n Roll" (the play's title--check this Guardian review) as being the primary engine of political change/cultural ferment in the 60's western world, rolling East over time and eventually resulting in the Prague Spring/Velvet Revolution when the Russkies finally cut and run, to eventually succumb themselves to the seductive power of rockroll itself (and select Uriah Heap, for Pete's sake, as their favorite band!). Stoppard's play throws Syd Barrett (Syd's musical setting on his "The Madcap Laughs" album of James Joyce's Pomes Pennyeach ditty "Golden Hair" is referenced and heard in Act 1 apparently-- as is music by the Stones, Pink Floyd et al throughout), Mick Jagger (Mick and Vaclav Havel attended the London premiere last week), my buddies the Plastic People of the Universe (a band who were imprisoned for a song, and whom I have played with), and Karl Marx into the theatrical mix...a strange brew indeed for Stoppard after "The Invention of Love", whose AE (I owe you) Housemaniacal drift I confess bored me to death ("like mortar board"--pace my late friend Viv Stanshall).

But--I really want to see THIS play--not only as an early Rosencrantzian fan, but because a) I can get behind the play's thema, no problem, and b) as a rock guitarist, bandleader and songwriter (among other things that go bump in the night) of actual Bohemian descent (Stoppard's a landsman as well) who has played and toured extensively in the region (the Czech Republic and Slovakia and Poland and Hungary and Slovenia and Serbia and let us not forget Austria and Russia), and as someone who has actually covered Syd Barret-era Pink Floyd tunes on his albums (check my version of Syd's "Astronomy Domine" which is up at the free downloads part of my website), and one who has indeed performed Syd's haunting version of "Golden Hair" in his own shows (at the Brotherhood of Thieves, Nantucket, summer of '74...at The Idea House, Taipei, summer of '75...and at The Roxy--the beautiful crumbling old art-deco former Yiddish Theater in the heart of Mala Strana, Prague, where I performed this song by request as an encore--one of 6-- at a marathon 3 hour solo concert I gave there in November '96--fans wouldn't let me off the stage, and there were 4-500 of them...)--let us say, in light of That, I think I can, uh, relate to this particular play...

and would like to think that maybe, just maybe, this Eastern-moving whirlwind 'o change is still moving out there, and sweeping further East (could be the worst thing that's ever happened, pace the current administration and the Ann Coulter/Bill O'Reilly/William Bennett neo-con axis of weevil)...but I respectfully (well not too respectfully) disagree.

Some more whisked broomed and groomed tidbits:

Playing up in Woodstock last weekend was a real pleasure, Fred Perry's new Reservoir Music store was filled with fans and lovely attentive listeners for my acoustic guitar performance, and Fred is no stranger to pushing the cultural paradigm himself, in fact my meeting him at random on the street in Syracuse in '68 caused an evolutionary shift in my own musical consciousness: there he was, the longest haired person I'd ever seen at that point, and he approached and started talking to me up on Marshall Street (nexus of the Syracuse University freak scene) because I was carrying the first album by The Move under my arm (available at that time only as an English import--The Move a band of English import for sure--Andrew Oldham and Joe Boyd both agree on this point...group should have been of world import) ..and he was astonished to see that someone else was hip to The Move as well...

Fred was carring an acoustic guitar case under his arm on which he'd hand-written in red magic marker: "Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band"..."Who's that?" I innocently asked (not realizing that a good chunk of my life was destined to be put at service to this particular Avatar and his merry men). "A group my brother's just produced in LA," Fred answered, and knitting my brow and wits together, I replied "Wait a second-- is your brother Richard Perry?" (the producer of Tiny Tim's first album on Warners, which I loved--an album which includes the brilliant song "The Other Side", cited in an earlier blog contest, the refrain of which goes: "The ice caps are melting, ha ha ha ha haaaaaa, all the world is drowning ha ha ha ha haaaaa, the ice caps are melting, the tide is rushing in, all the world is drowning, to wash away our sins..." --a song which should have been used in Al Gore's new film "An Inconvenient Truth"--good film it is too). Turned out Fred was Richard's brother, and it was Richard Perry who produced with Bob Krasnow the first Beefheart album "Safe as Milk" (shoulda been Gary Marker, but that's another sad story--we love you Gary!), Richard now has about 250 gold and platinum albums under his belt, including Rod Stewart's latest, but according to Fred, still maintains that "Safe as Milk" is his favorite...

Anyway Fred pushed lots of buttons in the 60's by bringing English import copies of "Are You Experienced?" and "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" (Syd Floyd's first elpee) up to Scott Muni at WNEW, who played them on his mainstream radio show, and thus a whole generation of Long Island and New York City area and Jersey kids had minds blown and hearts opened wide to the whole universe (and found it was Loving...sometimes)...and the rest is History still being writ, mene mene tekel upharsin...anyway it was wonderful to see Fred and his lovely wife and family and friends, plus my old friend graphic design supremo Janet Perr stopped by and was looking good and...

Gotta go and "Awake and Sing!" now and check out the revival of this classic Clifford Odets play uptown at the Belasco starring cool Mark Ruffallo (his turn in Jane Campion's "In the Cut" was so appealing) and the great Ben Gazzarra...

but let me leave you with a tip to please check out the debut album of my friends Super700, a fantastic Berlin-based band by way of Kosovo who sound like nobody else (and I'm not saying this just 'cause I played on their album), a band fronted by the exquisite Ibadet Ramadani and her two lovely sisters Ilrjana and Albana--their self-titled album (produced by Gordon Raphael, producer of The Strokes' first two albums) is out in Germany only now but you can order it through Amazon.de-- meanwhile, enjoy this clip of their song "Here Goes the Man" here (very subversive lyrics, not that easy to make out in the track) ((but easy to make out to...)

xxLove

Gary

The Bloom is On the Wry/Wear That Jimmy Hat!

"Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish, ketchup, and Jamaican Pickapeppa Sauce the inner organs of beasts and fowls..."

and so do I partaketh also as I write (namely, chopped chicken liver from Citarella, spread thick on Pepperidge Farm Party Rye--au naturel actually, minus the aforementioned condiments) ("wouldn't be surprised if it was that kind of food you see produces the like waves of the brain the poetical") here on this lovely, sunny June 16th, a/k/a Bloomsday-- a day where I traditionally masticate (haha) in honour of my favourite novel; namely, James Joyce's 'Around the World in a Day' Quality Lit headtrip known as "Ulysses".

Never ever 'nuff said about this masterpiece...I remember flying to Italy with my folks in the 80's, with the UK Penguin paperback edition on my knee (the Bodley Head version--the Godly Head as far as I'm concerned, fie on that suspect German academic Hans Walter Garbler's so-called revised definitive edition which came out to much faux hoopla some years back-- and which Johnny Kidd and the Pirates (of pen rants) eviscerated thoroughly upon publication, see http://www.nybooks.com/articles/4379-- much shakin' all over in the litcrit camp afterwards), yep, flying by the seat of my chance with said novel on my knee, banjo-like, the airborne reading of which producing multitudinous licks of love (haveta say John Updike was restored recently in my good Graces--somewhat-- for tearing Houellebecq for his bad verses--and rude animadversion to Joyce--in Updike's NY Review of Books review of Well Bech's "The Possibility Of An Island" last month, a review which I anticipated/concur with, check my blog of 1/4/06)-- okay, there I was on my way to Florence wirh Giacomo Joyce's richest, most musical knee's up on one knee entwined in harmony with Richard Ellmann's biography on another knee and also a Skeleton (at the Feast) (House of) Key (s) explication/concordance to the novel on any empty seat beside me written by, ur, um, uhh, can't recall the name of that author at this precise moment, as mmmmmmmmmmrkngao I hear a rumble (above) (and) below (o aye, those inner organs of smale fowles maken melodye in mellifluous concord with my own)...

speaking of Giacomo Joyce, played the Teatro Miela in Trieste once with "The Golem"--lovely Trieste a home to Joyce from 1904 through the First War, where he wrote much of Ulysses..and there was a statue of the Great Man permanently seated in the center of the orchestra stalls, I could swear it was a real live person when I walked onstage for the first time in the semi-darkness, unnerving me the performer setting up my own gear for a soundcheck in the (seemingly) empty theatre, yes, there he was a Stone Guest so lifelike and creepy, and me being there with my Golem and all (me own portable statue..."Comin' at you like a Living Statue"--lyric from my song "Hurly Burly", from my forthcoming Gods and Monsters album "Coming Clean", out Sept. 4th on Side Salad/Universal) (and divers other labels which shall be revealed once the ink is dry on the page).

There was a time when I could cite "Ulysses" Chapter and Verse, knew it inside out almost as well as me own brother knew his Olde Testamental screeds when studying to become a rabbi in Jerusalem (sure and bog horror, my face flushes the colour of the cistern Chappelle to recall this..."Two clots from the same egg" we were, pace Joyce's reference to his friend Wyndham Lewis in the Shem and Shaun section of "Finnegan's Wake"). (Memo to meself: must pick up much ballyhoo-hah'ed new 'Gospel of Judas' tome...or was it "Seth Speaks"? A descent into "the Realm of Chaos and the Underworld" is promised...a not so unfamiliar milieu, come to think of it, in my line of work). (Just kidding--I do not know that Other World).

Anyway methinks I will take a breather from my current reading of Pierre Louys's "The Woman and the Puppet" (the Arthur Symons translation-- the literary basis for Von Sternberg/Dietrich's "The Devil Is a Woman", also Bunuel's "That Obscure Object of Desire"), James Hillman's "A Terrible Love of War", and Andrew Loog Oldham's "2Stoned" (second read-through of this one) (Joe Boyd's "White Bicycles" musicbiz memoir, just out in the UK, is a good 'un too)-- Yes, I will yes take a breather as Summer is a cummin' in, birthday's almost upon me again (oy!), time to succumb once more to the seductive blandishments of Jimjoyce (not to be confused with Lou Reed's "jimjams"--as in, "all the jimjams in this town")...yes I said yes once more again into the breach of dearest Molly Bloom (yr head it simply swirls), one mo' time to devour those Sweets of Sin (for Raoul!), another chance to explore the bigoted mind of The Citizen, to run with Garryowen (to Laugh-in the Dark), to fly by Their nets and dance with Steven D on the Hamlet-head of a Jesuitical pin-- to join once more in a rousing chorus of "Love's Old Sweet Song"...

Indeed, it's time to revisit/re-read/rediscover "Ulysses" (for an apostate Irish gentile, Joyce really gets deeeeep into the mind of a gentle and sensitive Jewish person. Certainly as deep as Bellow and Roth--also Mailer, in his non-fictive/ "history as a novel" narrative voice). (Perhaps more accurately, "histrionics as a novel").

Nearly as deep as Singer...

Yes, I said yes... Ulysses!

I do not know that other Word...

xxLove

Gary

ps Attended a superb New York party last night at my old Yale pal Bob "Rocket" Rubin's pad 28 (floors) UP in the art deco arcadium known as the El Dorado (number 9, number 9, number 9...) on 91st and Central Park West (Bono lives there...so does my old pal/radio magnate/man about town Josh Feigenbaum, in Faye Dunaway's old crib). Spectacular views abound all around the Park, and the lazy old sun setting 'oer the Hudson, its refracted light streaming through the wrought iron windows of Bob's humble abode (!) nearly outshone Bob's jaw-dropping art collection which fest-tuned the substantial pre-war walls of his rambling multi-chambered lair (an art moderne groaning table, in other words--from Basquiat to Joseph Cornell to Andre Breton).

Bob, epicurean owner of The Bridge Golf Club in Southampton, writ large here in these blog pages a year ago (as well as in the Times, aRude Magazine, & Manhattan Inc.), recently unloaded Jean Cocteau's old Parisian pad (also singer Mireille's apt. upstairs) situated near the Comedie Francaise, trading up and purchasing La Maison de Verre, architect Pierre Chareau's 1920's feverdream of a modernist townhouse right off Boulevard St. Germain. Bob and his lovely wife Stephane's wangdangdoodle of a cocktail party was in honor of Bob's latest acquisition, a scarily detailed Tussaud-like statue (that living statue thing again) I could have sworn upon walking in was an actual tableau vivant--but no, it was an extremely life-like mannequin designed by the artist Charles McGill, an imposing life-size replica of a black "ex-militant" pro golfer cast in McGill's fierce spitting image (Tiger Woods this was not), a very impressive sculpture to be sure whose eyes followed you all around the room, and whose apocryphal motto (uttered in a performance art ceremony upon the official unveiling by one of McGill's buddies who was in on the wheeze) read "Why be on the Front Line, when you can be on the Front Nine?" (Only in New York, kids, only in New York...) (To find out more about Charles McGill's satiric provocations, check out this review from Art in America at www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ mi_m1248/is_5_89/ai_74439437 - 22k -).

Here Comes Everybody: Legendary film director/actor Melvin Van Peebles (a big McGill fan) was at Bob's do and looked to be having a ball, and I am delighted to report that the genius auteur behind the classic 70's early blaxploitation film "Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song" is hard at work on a new one entitled "Ex-Dufus Mother Blues" (exactly). Hip young homeboys Inderbir Riar and Cesare Birignani (fellow members of Bob's Columbia Grad School History of Architecture program--Bob's about to get his Ph.D there) were also on the scene and looking good, and near the party's finis the dashing, sartorially splendid aRude editor-in-chief Ike Ude made a spectacular entrance swinging a golf club in the company of his glammed-up entourage (special mention of Ude's elegante Russian model girlfriend Larissa and Ude's Swedish portraitist friend whose name escapes me, sorry!)

and then Caroline, Inderbir, Cesare and Caroline's beautiful assistant Bettina and I hightailed our way back Downtown for a late supper at Les Deux Gamins on West 10th Street, then home to bed...

have to bone up now and prepare for a special acoustic instore performance tomorrow afternoon at the grand opening of my pal Fred Perry's new Reservoir Music joint in Shokan, up near Woodstock on Route 28... much as I love New York, I rejoyce in the coming and going from it, too :-)

"Riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to... "

Redrum, Redrum (Release the Bats!)

Cosmo and Gary backstage at the ICA London for Bacardi B-Live throwdown, 5/31/06

Click to enlarge (photo hosted by flickr)

Played the Bacardi B-Live promotion this week at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London with my old pal Cosmo (Colleen Murphy)--an absolute pleasure, a delightful gig! Felt like I was on holiday (for a change...). Totally first class accomodations in the 5 star Trafalgar Hotel off of guess where, very conveniently situated near all my favorite West End haunts (such as The Cinema Store on Upper St. Martin's Lane, and the antiquarian booksellers of Cecil Court), and also right around the corner from the ICA itself. Gig was the kickoff hyper-launch for a new series of global promotions for my favourite rum (way way tastier even than David Johansen's preferred Mount Gay brand--I mean, you can't go wrong with a company whose main logo is emblazoned with the image of a Cuban Fruit Bat, now can you?), and it was a dream gig really, I got to blaze forth and improvise on psychedelic electric over a series of scintillating funk and soul rare grooves culled by Cosmo from all over the map, deep in the cut with the great percussionist Shovell from M-People (winner of the British Mercury Awards a few years ago). And we closed a bill featuring legendary vibester/ all around beatific dude Roy Ayers--plus uber-diva deluxe Chaka Khan (looking and sounding really good, these days resembling nothing so much as a kind of chocolate Montserrat Caballe)--both of them backed by Los Amigos, a NYC based club band from Venezuela, and mixed by the immaculate Dimitri from Paris...suffice to say it was HOT in there, joint was packed with scenesters, liggers, jiggers (of free rum--place was swimming in it), press touts, international marketing tipsters hipsters radio flipsters (was interviewed before the show by the very cool XFM's Matt Everitt), fashionistas flaunting it and a Pisgah sight of a good looking young crowd (in fact we were not that far from Nelson's Column), multi-facial/multi-racial all bedizened bespoke and ursprache (Zarathustra!) (unfortunately the gig was closed to the general public, my sincerest apologies to Jenny Thompson and Timothy Parkes)...

and after Roy and Chaka and co. left the stage Cosmo, Shovell and I stirred things way way Up, the Light Surgeons started surging with myriad disorienting clips running round us cameras were flashing dancers trancing gogglers goggling and the whole sensorium whirling madly, me too during the tracks I was Out for feeling like the Count of Bacardi crossed with Ghoulardi (that Bat logo again...come to think of it those were similar bats I spied soaring over the skies of the Brisbane outback last November at that Aussie Earthcore Global Carnivore thingy--a recurring motif) and I was riding the crest of a great bi-amped set-up into wah wah Valhalla the better to flagellate/redecorate tracks like Tina Turner's version of "Whole Lotta Love" and club anthem "Underwater" ...pictures at 11 courtesy web mistress Tanya...

ICA London, 5/31/06

Click to enlarge (photos hosted by flickr)

Cosmo and I go way back to the mid-80's when she had a regular slot on WNYU FM's beloved New Afternoon Show (in fact, I think her show was the first I ever played on that estimable commercial free station...used to come down there regularly to hang out and play, was where I first ran into Marc Riley and Jon Langford--and Sally Timms-- making the American radio rounds promoting their tribute to Johnny Cash album for Red Rhino, also Bjork back in her Sugarcubes days, I pleasantly surprised the Icelandic imp by correctly identifying the source of her lyrics for their brilliant "Birthday" single as deriving from a passage in Jo Imog's scabrous novel "The Demon Flower")...

anyhow Colleen got deeper and deeper into dance music as the 80's melted into the 90's and used to invite me to play at a late night hang she organized in the bloody tranny hooker hub of the 14th Street Meat Market district when it was still louche and dangerous (before it morphed into Stella McCartney-land, in other words), she presided over a weird ambient club scene known as the Departure Lounge (not that far afield from the present-day Nu-Blu actually) with futuristic dj's Perry Brandston and Adam Goldstone mixing up the medicine, and that's where we really honed our chops jamming together as she found I could respond instantaneously to whatever platters she threw down for me to slice and dice...and judging by the response to our set Wednesday night in London..."We've only just begun..." (in fact, we're collaborating on a cool new tune for Cosmo's 12" vinyl label Bitches Brew)...and hey, Bacardi's sending us to Mumbai and Hyderabad this July to further shake things up inna Murderer Style (redrum, redrum)...anyhow thank you thank you thank you indeed to Snowy and Sarah and Adam and all the great folks at Bacardi and Think Espionage who masterminded this intoxicating hurly burly of rock 'n soul and funky grooves...

I was only home for about 12 hours when I drove up with Caroline to Big Indian (near Woodstock) to the Full Moon Lodge to play solo acoustic for my dear friend Glenn Kenny and his lovely bride Claire Evans at their wedding under a big tent in the Catskill woods... a wonderful event, best wedding ever in fact--met such warm friendly folks, I can't really do justice to the joyful vibe of the entire weekend, which despite intermittent rain shone forth brilliantly everlasting...Glenn is a senior editor at Premiere Magazine where his "Ask Glenn" column regulalry displays his dazzling erudition on all things cinematic (from Godard to Gojira), he is equally as knowledgeable a critic on matters musical (from the top of the popper-most to the truly arcane) )...Glenn's one of my closest confidantes/confessors--he is also one of the wittiest (and sweetest) persons to walk the earth...I don't really know Claire that well yet, but she's a young raven-haired beauty and seems perfectly in synch with Glenn's sensibility, all of their friends (including Premiere editor Peter Herbst, former Island/Def Jam head Davitt Sigerson, and screenwriter Brian Koppelman) and family were charming and nice (I like Nice...)

at Glenn's request, I performed my arrangement of Gershwin's final great song "Our Love is Here to Stay" (the Frank version), as well as the deliquescent theme from the film "Sex and Lucia" by Alberto Iglesias...Caroline was still whistling them as we pulled into Manhattan this afternoon, and I got alot of positive feedback on my performance from various guests last night, so I guess I struck a chord :-)

Off to Big Mike's (Complete Music Services) now for band rehearsal...we hit Chung King Studios on Varick Street tomorrow where we start recording the next Gods and Monsters album in the Red Room (redrum, redrum)--with the great Jerry Harrison producing (Yes!)

xxLove

Gary

ps I'm very very sad to report that Charlie Gillett, the great British dj/world music and r&b authority/force for good in the world of music has had to relinquish his weekly Saturday night Sound of the World show for the BBC due to health reasons. Charlie is a beacon of light in the wilderness, and his show will be sorely missed. The good news is that he will continue his weekly show for the BBC World Service. As a one man world service unto himself, here's hoping for a speedy recovery, Charlie!

pps Jerry is profiled in Apple News this week for his work on the Talking Heads catalogue reissues featuring his new 5.1 surround sound mixes--http://www.apple.com/pro/techniques/harrison/