B C N C: A MAP OF BLACK CONGO NC

And with that, we bid you adieu. Yes, A Map of Black Congo NC, is shutting it down. We did it. Made an album. Went on a successful tour. Talked on end about our band and the things we like. Now, we look out at the horizon, ready to serve once again, in whatever form, as vessels of human creative energy. Thanks for listening.

Live in Miami 1984 is way for sale. To obtain a copy, please email Charlie Hearon at FrequeNC: frequenc@gmail.com

Or email Bo White at Kinnikinnik: kinnikinnikrecords@gmail.com

And you can now find me HERE.

BCNC - Dot

To begin each trip we throw a dart
At the world map
It takes us to the town where you were born
Now how we gonna get there?
By next year
Next year, the highlife
Next year
Who cares if it never gets warm here
And we’ve sliced all our slacks into shorts?
If everyone says that we’ll die here
We’ll find other ways to keep warm
The pumpkin starts as just a dot
In your hot hand
Plant it in the ground
Behind the house
Where you were born
But it’s freezing there
The highlife, next year
This thing weighs a ton
But with the help of everyone
We can get it to budge
With the help of everyone
And violin strings
Grow strangled and tied
And saxophone keys
Blow dusty and dry
And bongo drum beats
Play deadened and tired
While the bloodgoldred leaves
Keep piling up higher and higher
And the band sounded just fine

Nearly two years passed before these songs were pressed into vinyl. That makes for a whole, whole lot of time to name an album. Here are some of the terrible titles we tossed around over those 20-some months:

The Yauhaus Sessions
Astral Weekends
Live in Key West 1978
Well-Known Pleasures
It Takes a Village to Raise a Nation of Children to Hold Us Back
Malayja
Graucho
Tranny & Blowy
The Ghetto Address
Afro the Goldrush
After the Bumrush
Tusk II
Haiti: A Very BCNC Tribute
Automatic for the Peephole
What in the World Would Carmen San Diego Do?
Wrestlemania XXLI
Gaze Anatomy
Dutch Coffin
Sanford & Sun Ra
Christmas on Easter Island
Alice in Coltranes
Mojito Hour
Calling Out a Kotex
Pippi Longstephenhawking
Naked Brunch
Pissing on Summer Lawns

For one night only in August 2008, BCNC called itself The French & Indian War and rewrote/reimagined every song on Paul Simon’s classic album, Graceland. The project was called New Graceland, and the image above was the rough draft design for the t-shirts we hoped to make. We got a keg instead of making t-shirts.

Check out this jazzhole. I deeply miss the boys of BCNC, and so does the music.*

*Lose that Budweiser cap, fratass.

BCNC — Joni

You say “Our love is lost.”
I say “Well, there never was a map anyway.”
And so we burned some heart-shaped holes
in every single map we had
We even burn heart-shaped holes
in that great antique atlas
Our love is art
So let’s stay in tonight
And make art
And then we’re contacted by the curator
Of a downtown folk art gallery
She swears our art could sell there
For five grand apiece
And we say, “Hell five grand
could buy us everything we’d ever need,
probably.”
Our love is art
So let’s stay in tonight
And do crafts
Make art, a tattoo
Of you, on my arm
So it’s been fifteen years
And we’re forced to live
In different hemispheres
Because the whole world has gone to war
Me, Tropic of Cancer
You, Tropic of Capricorn
And they’ve blown heart-shaped holes
In the museums where the art works once were
Yes, they’ve burned heart-shaped holes
In the museums where the art works once were
Our love is art
So let’s stay in tonight
And make art
A tattoo of you
On my arm
Is my beauty mark
A tattoo of you
On my arm
Is the flag under which
My rebel armies will march

It’s Dark in Here
by Shel Silverstein

I am writing these poems
From inside a lion
And it’s rather dark in here.
So please excuse the handwriting
Which may not be too clear
But this afternoon by the lion’s cage
I’m afraid I got to near
I am writing these lines
From inside a lion
And it’s rather dark in here

Philip Cohran and The Artistic Heritage Ensemble — Malcolm X

Time is for white people.

beenlookingforthemagic:

In a feature-length piece, The Sunday Times were granted a rare interview with the reclusive Sade:

Reviewers here meanwhile complain that she can’t really sing. The first time I put this to her, she giggles, the way she often does when fending off jibes. “It can be very hostile, England. Not just to me, to everybody. England’s like a sour old auntie. You go and stay with her although she criticises you all the time and doesn’t treat you right, even when you’re doing your best. But you keep on loving her, in a certain way. And then you die.” She laughs. “Those bitches always outlive you!”

COMING SOON TO A GHETTOBLASTER NEAR YOU.

Can’t stop. Won’t stop.

B C N C: A MAP OF BLACK CONGO NC

Live in Miami 1984: Names We Passed On

Broetry: Shel Silverstein’s It’s Dark in Here