I am chest-swellingly proud to announce the release of a double CD of my theatrical and dance music, 2007-13 called “Commissions” on the newly re-booted Les Disques du Crepuscule. The double CD contains 29 new tracks composed and performed by me, recorded here in my own studio in Athens, Greece. The music was commissioned by various directors and choreographers here in Greece.
It may be acquired from Les Disques du Crepuscule.
Here is a teaser from the cd
(I originally published this in 2002. I periodically dig it out on this same date. Now we have a 50th anniversary coming up.)
JACK, WE HARDLY KNEW YE
November 22, 2002
I just realized that tomorrow is the 22nd of November. On November 22, 1963 John F. Kennedy was put to death before the eye of the world. I was ten years old at the time. Like many people, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard this news. I realize that a fairly lightweight little bulletin that reaches a number of people comparable to that of a small Baptist church in Kentucky or a reasonably full Airbus is hardly the place for great moaning polemics on the snuffing by force of liberal ideals or the insidious refusal of fascism to just die of embarassment, but what the hell.
I just didn’t want to let another anniversary go unobserved by me. This little missive is my JFK memorial.
I remember when Jack Kennedy came to my hometown of Pueblo, Colorado in the summer of 1963. Maybe it wasn’t even summer. Maybe it was on the same fatal trip. It would have made sense for him to stop in Colorado before heading further South. He had come to speak upon the allocation by Congress of funds to build a dam and reservoir in Pueblo, a stubbornly arid place.
East 4th Street was the way to Pueblo’s little airport. It was also the main street to the Barrio, the Mexican neighborhood, my neighborhood. All of us mexicans loved Kennedy because he was Catholic like us and because we perceived him as being on the side of those of us outside the grace of white America. We all lined up there on east 4th street, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. As it turned out, he didn’t stop, but he did slow down.
I remember seeing him there from the corner of East 4th and Fountain, backlit by the glare of the Colorado sun. I was amazed to see that his hair was red. The sun in that red hair made him look like very Apollo himself, Dionysos, Balder, the hung god come to perish for his beauty.
I had been standing on that very corner when I heard of his death. I was in 5th grade. One of the “Patrol Boys”, the 6th grader traffic wardens dispatched by the school to help students cross safely had let me wear his white Sam Brown belt and stand there while he went home and ate lunch. (Fifth graders were not strictly allowed to do this.) I had been feeling all grown-up when a passing student told me the news. I didn’t weep. I got angry.
It doesn’t matter that Kennedy turned out to be another Irish machine politico, a spoiled frat boy with a bad back. Like the Russians after Stalin, we were all basking in the thaw after so many numb years under Eisenhower, and like the Russians we would have to learn what it felt like to have the cage door slammed back in our face.
Now we have empty suits like Clinton and Blair and Schroeder and Bush, fronting like the pimps they are for the fascist reptiles who truly call the shots around here. Ah well, I will nip this diatribe in the bud before it goes on too long.
I remember you, Jackie boy. I remember November 22nd. There. I have said enough.
bye now
blaine
Starting in September 2012, I went to Brussels, my former home of 18 years in order to work with Thierry Smits’ Compagnie Thor together with Steven Brown and a Belgian musician named Maxime Bodson. The resulting work has resulted in a dizzying whirl of travel, back and forth from Athens to Brussels, over to Beirut, Zagreb, Germany, all over Belgium and Holland, Poland, and France. There is also a trip to Normandy and our summer visit to Siros, not to mention a quick trip to Giessen, Germany with the Greek company from “Danton’s Death”. I took lots of photos.
These photos are captionless for the time being since I was experimenting with a means of downloading a whole Facebook gallery and then re-uploading it to somewhere like Picasa or Flickr in an effort to save work and to confound the Facebook “walled garden” approach to content stored there.
I have also posted this self-same gallery to the mundoblaineo home world at the following location.
http://www.mundoblaineo.org/2012-14BIG-TRIP.htm
//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.jsBlaine L. Reininger
Blaine Leslie Reininger (born July 7, 1953) is an American post-punk, new-wave and alternative pop singer, songwriter, musician, multi-instrumentalist (particularly violin), writer and performer.
Yes, I am now listed in wikipedia. Now I feel real. Before Wikipedia, I was often transparent in bright light. Often, while riding public transit or having dinner with friends my resolution would become pixellated or noisy. Now, I am on an equal footing with Britney Spears and Sea Cucumbers, Twinkies and Black Holes.
Inside Mundoblaineo 