FATAL FLOWER GARDEN
A 1920’s song by Nelstone’s Hawaiians, an Alabama-based group that specialized in songs featuring Hawaiian steel guitar; “Fatal Flower Garden” is included on the essential 1952 “Anthology of American Folk Music,” assembled on 78 rpm records by Harry Smith; Harry Smith was the truest American cultural scavenger of the 20th century; Smith gave birth to the 1950’s-60’s folk movement, was an important experimental filmmaker, occultist, maven of the Beat scene, synesthete, jazz champion, shaman, world-class collector of paper airplanes and Ukrainian Easter eggs, and the finest alchemist in North America; Harry Smith spent the majority of his adult life pursuing the philosopher’s stone, but despite the tireless joint-efforts of Smith, the faculty of the Naropa Institute, and the Boulder City Council, he was unable to ever locate pure carmot; while Harry Smith never successfully created gold or a homunculus, he was reputedly able to transmute dust containing rat feces into a chocolate powder similar to Ovaltine; in Weirdo Heaven, Harry Smith operates a phonograph while Tiny Tim sings in a cartoon falsetto and Moondog bangs on drums; if you like songs about famine, infanticide, infidelity, God, drought, drowning, Satan, or moles in the ground, the “Anthology of American Folk Music” is for you; “Fatal Flower Garden” is my favorite song on the collection; several years ago, I flew into BWI airport in Baltimore; my then-girlfriend picked me up in a silver Isuzu Rodeo; while driving to the Eastern Shore, we found ourselves in a minor monsoon; we pulled off the road and parked; the stereo in the automobile was broken, so I took out my Mac laptop, opened iTunes, and put on the “Party Shuffle”; the rain outside came down so heavy that we could not see ten feet in front of the Rodeo; my then-girlfriend and I moved to the back seat, got frisky, depantsed, and while we were in a state of physical communion, “Fatal Flower Garden” began to play; this song is in no way sensual or erotic; “Fatal Flower Garden” is spooky and haunted, as if dead peckerwoods performed at a Leper Colony Luau in Hades; I shut my laptop, then we put our clothes back on and began our drive through the storm; it was the beginning of an unpleasant weekend; little is known about the southern Alabama duo of Nelstone’s Hawaiians, but it is approximately 1,030 miles from Baltimore, Maryland, to Mobile, Alabama; it is approximately 4,300 miles from Mobile to Honolulu, Hawaii; it is unknown if Nelstone’s Hawaiians ever visited Hawaii; I do not know where my ex-girlfriend is now; the opening lyrics of “Fatal Flower Garden” are: “It rained, it poured, it rained so hard, it rained so hard all day”; the rest of the song concerns a Gypsy, a diamond, and a Bible.
[...] found also this on the net, wich evokes the figure of Harry Smith [...]
2 Fatal Flower Garden by Nelstone’s Hawaiians « The old, weird america said this on November 26, 2008 at 12:27 pm |