So as I was out on the lawn, slowly clunking and chunking my way through knee-high sodden grass, I reflected on a particular train of thought I’d had earlier today. Now my trains of thought are not your express City A – City B rapid and simple style… Oh no. Rather, I deviate off common tracks and end up in random stations in the middle of lazy outback towns and countryside – nowhere near where I had boarded the thought. It often happens that I say something to Storm and she says ‘how did you get there’. Upon hearing the various leaps and steps sideways through thought passages and detours, it is concluded that I am, indeed, a little ‘special’. And because my thought train took me to some really cool things today, I thought I would take you on the journey with me. Let’s stamp tickets and be off.
I returned home at lunch today to await the arrival of a ‘new’ fridge for the house. A return to shelf space and fresh (fridged) food was thoroughly welcome and appreciated. Due to logistical inconveniences, I contrived to stay at home and work on a report for work rather than trundle off through the rain to work (again). As I did so, I pondered the perfect musical choice. I decided on ‘An Acoustic evening with Ani Difranco’ from 1994, an album I’ve owned for some time but barely leant an ear to in its entirety. As Ani muttered and rambled through silence and poesy and partly tuned her guitar, she mentioned that ‘It’s a good thing I have such good friends in the business and that Artis will be selling cds and casettes for me as I play”. She went on to refer to him as “the fucking shit” and worth checking out.
So I did… Typing ‘Artis’ and ‘Ani Difranco’ into google delivered our train to its first destination – www.artisthespoonman.com. A wiki search on Artis the Spoonman reveals that, not only could he play two flutes simultaneously with his nose, the Soundgarden song SPOONMAN was written about him and that he features in the song and film-clip. And so the thought train set off to Youtube station for some visuals. A search for spoonman revealed the following fantastic video,
As amazing as it was – the man turned out to be a gentleman called Hannes Coetzee with quite a devotional following on YT – it was not what I was searching for. And so off I went to find a video of Spoonman. Sure enough it was there,
And then I found the video I was looking for -
So, from a word mid-song to a video of a guy playing guitar with a spoon, to the revelation that Spoonman (one of THE songs of my teenhood) was written for a guy that literally plays spoons (and plays them well).
Now, to find a video of him playing two flutes simultaneously with his nose!
. 