Bands that drop Bukowski's name or reference his work... (1 Viewer)

i'll start the list...

-modest mouse (song called 'bukowski')
-the good life (first song on 'album of the year', bukowski and fante get mentioned)


keep em coming, i know there must be a bunch...
 
modest mouse also had a song off their album "the lonesome crowded west" titled "long distance drunk" which is also about Bukowski.

and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kedis mentions Bukowski on the album Blood Sugar Sex Magik, the song is...well i forget the name actually.

Edit:Song is called "Mellowship Slinky in B Major"

the lyric is "pick up my book, I read Boo-kow-ski"
 
U2 has a Buk reference in a song off of Zooropa (I think). It uses the line The days run away like wild horses over the hills. bad song.
 
hahah that chili peppers line has gotta be worth hearing!

and i guess i am not suprised about bono swinging off buks nuts... that seems to be his m.o. (dahli llama, leonard cohen, etc)
 
The Dogs D'Amour had a song on one of their LP's (can't be bothered digging it out to check...it was the semi-acoustic one..."Graveyard of Empty Bottles"?) called 'Bullet Proof Poet'. The back cover said something like "for Bukowski..."...Tyla (their singer) also referenced Bukowski (and his reading of Bukowski) in the spoken word B-side, 'Heading for the Target of Insanity'.
 
Dave Alvin and The Guilty Men did a song called "Burning In Water Drowning In Flame." It's on his "Museum of Heart" album. There may be, probably are more Buk references in his work. Alvin (a great songwriter/musician) hung out among the poetry crowd down in Long Beach in the late 70s/early 80s, when he and his brother Phil got their start as THE BLASTERS. He was a Buk fan, as many of us were.
 
I only discovered Bukowski and it was quite by accident. I was listening to my old album of "Hair" and heard Bukowski and figured they mentioned someone from history. I looked it up and got to this group, read Women last week and now am half done with "War All The Time". I now realize that the characters name is Claude Bukowski from Hair...how's that for a weird discovery?

So, maybe or maybe not, the writers of the play got his name in there.
 
actually the band HIM from Finland has a song on their new album Dark Light...and the chorus goes..."I've been burning in water and drowning in flame, to prove you wrong and scare you away.."
 
Dave Alvin and The Guilty Men did a song called "Burning In Water Drowning In Flame." It's on his "Museum of Heart" album. There may be, probably are more Buk references in his work. Alvin (a great songwriter/musician) hung out among the poetry crowd down in Long Beach in the late 70s/early 80s, when he and his brother Phil got their start as THE BLASTERS. He was a Buk fan, as many of us were.

That's interesting. All i've heard from Dave Alvin so far (not too much) has been great. Better still knowing he's into Bukowski.
 
Yes, I heard of them before Bukowski. I was surprised to find the book, and more surprised to find that it was written 30 years before I found it. I tried to get a girl I had a crush on at the time (more than a year ago now) to read the book because she was crazy about the band. That never happened.
 
Yes, and I'm afraid I handled it terribly. If it wasn't for the fucker getting arrested for trespassing I think I was well on the way to breaking her up with her annoying, loser boyfriend. I took my chance before they broke up and honestly didn't work my game right on the whole. She hasn't taken me up on hanging out (as friends at this point) and got a new boyfriend. Whatever.
 
Apollo 440 - Tears Of The Gods.

Here's the text:
All right - oh babe
Tears

She always talked about the gods
She had a direct line with the gods
You've been selected by the gods
She told me
Ok, babe, let's make it then

(Looking for trouble? Have you got it?)

What a man has to go through for a piece of ass in a modern age it was highly ridiculous

Oh babe
Hey, what's that shit?
The tears of the gods?
The tears of the gods
Yes, the tears of the gods!

It was surprise for me, when i heard this for a first time...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Sorry for the movie reference

In "Swingers" (which I dig), there are several scenes where the Jon Favreau (sp?) character has a Buk book in his apartment within camera shot.
 
A great band from the UK called, "Jack" have a song on their second LP "The Jazz Age" called Kid Stardust which opens with Buk reading one of his poems "...there's never any escape from anything at all..."
Great song.
Their third LP - has a great spoken word vocal from Dan Fante.
A really good band.
Also, Dan Bern the troubadour namechecks Buk on his New American Language LP.
 
i wish i could post this song somehow so you all could hear.
it's a bukowski writing, reworked into a song.

The artist is Buck 65 - and the song is called: The Floor.

i hope you all find a chance to hear it somehow.
i think he did an amazing job.

I can remember being seven years old
Having goldfish that circuled around in a bowl
I would watch the forest burn
and listen to the wind blow
I remember the table, the drapes, and the window
The dark brown everything: decoration, styling
Most of all, I can remember my mother smiling
Worn out and faded, my hometown was scrappy
More than anything she wanted us to be happy
Little to eat and back and forth to the hospital
She was right, it's better to be happy if possible
But the old man was under attack and was weak
And continued to beat us several times a week
He lived like a king even though we were piss poor
I tried to be strong and careful what I wished for
My outside ached, my inside stung
The long leather belt had replaced his tongue
Not knowing how to run or how
to hit the brakes
A white picket fence was built
around a pit of snakes
Both a wonder and frightening,
the thunder and the lightning
These were the sounds and sights
of a thousand fights
My mother, the poor fish, staging eternal
Charades and parades, for the raging inferno
Wanting to be happy, beaten all the while
Asking me always: "Why don't you ever smile?"
And she'd show me how to do it,
mother and wife
It was the saddest smile I ever saw in my life
It hurt worse than death but for her sake I tried
And one day all of those goldfish died
Hurricane, forest fire, out of control
Eyes open, floating on the water in the bowl
And when my father came home,
he walked through the door
And threw those fish to the cat
on the kitchen floor
And the wind died too and I was still a child
And the three of us watched as my mother smiled
 
Buck 65 is excellent (maybe I'm biased because he's a local boy)....the cd "The Floor" is from was one of my favourites from 2005

here's the song...

 
sorry, I forgot to mention that the above song is based on Buk's poem "a smile to remember" from the night torn mad with footsteps.
 
Razorlight - "In the City" on Up All Night

Well it's a close one, a real close one
And no-one gets hurt, but she's got twice the fun
But now they kiss in the rain
And did someone call out someone's name
From a white cadillac on a wide wind
To her white dress across the great divide
Into the warm moonlight
And she's been reading Bukowski for days
And she leans over, spits her name in my face
And says "Well now you know how it feels"
Well now you know how it feels
 
Wayne Kramer (he of MC5) on his 1995 solo LP "The Hard Stuff" has a track called "So Long Hank".

Starts off:

"It's March 10th 1994 and Charles Bukowski has died. Heartbreak. I'll miss that man of poems, short stories....etc" and continues in a spoken word style with some sharp guitar shapes thrown in.

Really heartfelt tribute. Not listed on the album sleeve though.
 
Wayne Kramer (he of MC5) on his 1995 solo LP "The Hard Stuff" has a track called "So Long Hank".

Starts off:

"It's March 10th 1994 and Charles Bukowski has died. Heartbreak. I'll miss that man of poems, short stories....etc" and continues in a spoken word style with some sharp guitar shapes thrown in.

Really heartfelt tribute. Not listed on the album sleeve though.

I've got to hear this................
 
Tom Russell
I believe that the title of the cd is Hotwalker. It is a made up story about little Jack Horton a carnival character talking about how Bukowski and himself had travelled on a runaway train. It is worth owning.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top