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57 stars of the air almanac (2007)

by Stephen Hero

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  • Signed Rag004 - "57 stars of the air almanac"
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Original digipak CD of "57 stars of the air almanac" (Rag004) hand-signed by Patrick in black marker pen.

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1.
12 stars 04:01
If you knew them all you'd know where you were And you'd know where you were going Peacock and Pollux Vega and Sirius Rigel and Betelgeuse Spica and Nunci Deneb and Altair Markab and Regulus Named studied taught and forgotten No wonder this day feels like fog Mars has been close and bright and red An awkward neon sign Some messiah is born tonight Dragging himself to the wounds
2.
Where is the guide? The cop with the light? Get him up front for we can't see We have lost the map and there are no signs Someone's left with all the supplies And in this desert the stars They look strange to me They're upside down and there's a hole in the North We're in the desert where they never turn out the light Barbed wire confines us day and night Next we're in the woods bitten harpy trees Next we're burning men for their different beliefs Take off these bandages that might help Where will he lead us now? They're upside down and there's a hole in the North Your head's on fire your heart it burns This tight suffocating universe The galaxy is fixed and we cannot move I'm getting vertigo from open blue skies I am my guide Here is my light It's OK nurse I can see I can fall in love with the green world again Fall in love with his dark brown skin ~ but the memory? There isn't enough therapy The head's on fire your heart it burns This tight suffocating universe The galaxy is fixed and we cannot move I'm getting vertigo from open blue skies Open blue skies
3.
The heavenly flower has just opened Centrifugal to the core Hear St Bernard describe loving With perfect light issuing Up past the planets we jump so high To where the fabled beautifully spin In a joy of their own making May we please join in? The heavenly flower's a white rose Spinning saints, golden winged Hear St Bernard's silvered murmurs Hear your dead love plea-bargaining Up past the planets, there!, so high Is where the saints eternally spin In the joy of divine presence May we please join in? The heavenly flower is closing I feel cold settling in While we wait to join them baby Kiss me hard kiss me with sin Up past the planets we're so high Mercury is humble Venus of course is love Mars is strength of conviction Neptune contemplative
4.
back to bed 01:55
Let's go back to bed until the rain has fled And the electricity is back on Then we'll climb up the hill with blankets against the chill And sip hot chocolate warm beneath the moon Can you see the stars are burning? Listen! the sparks the fireworks Can you see the stars are burning down? Listen the sparks the fireworks For you
5.
oh, frank 04:21
Springtime comes storms and showers daffodils surprise You wake and walk with a lighter step This could be your day Come the night the demons take flight Whispering doubt, unmerry havoc Pegged out to drown in the rising tide Nothing gets out alive This is not what you want This is not what you expected The passing of time, those stupid cloks Going tick fucking tick fucking tock There is so little time in which to love The tide pulls out leaving guts behind And your precious poetry collection You cling to paintings of abstract flailings The day lady died Here come the waves those high deep spring tides Pegged out to drown in the rising tide Nothing gets out alive This is not what you want This is not what you expected The passing of time, the stupiod clocks Going tick fucking tick fucking tock Oh frank, oh frank, love's not your's to have You drove too fast and crashed it The drive from new York to nowhere Going fast fast faster still Gone There is so little time in which to love
6.
58th star 04:32
You are my 58th star You know you are, you know you are You light up the night You know you do, you guide me right You are the heavens above The planets surround You are the north, the south The circle around which All brightness spins You pull it toward yourself You are the firmament My source of strength You are my son, you are the sun My 58th star
7.
Everyone's gone quiet It's either hope or despair As the meat course is served He remembers the morning, first thing Before it came back clear They chose a parade, he'd have gone for silence Allow the birds their twitter Later in the bar, (why must it be a bar?) They sprawl behind dark glassed He curls inside the meadows grasses We drove home listening to the putter Of a possibly failing engine But we got home, picked up the mail and messages He picked a flower for the table As if routine were the great soother As if routine could soothe *** Later in the park she snowed as we shook her And through the mobile phone muteness Came what we swore was a whisper Picked out in a sunny moment's respite From this awful July weather
8.
Keep the tablets coming in You will be fixed, it can't be long Till we see you old familiar smile You woke to find the harbour gone The animals and you the zoo Feed them with those flying messed up thoughts Oh close you r eyes to lost at seaness Feed yourself on memorized meals Remembered drinks, all those dumb hangovers In your world in your world In your tiny little world In your world made of clouds and hope As if this thing could be rewritten Back there behind your shoulders wing The ghosts of what you had to trample down Here you are in middle years Between what was and now what must be Still convinced you've got some fight to give In your world, in your world This occupies your world In your world, you tiny fucked up world Look on back and try to find The one mistake, the single act That turned such easy gold to nowt A little puff, a simple kiss, a promise under influence You woke up crazed, full of hope
9.
Welcome home! Count the stars! See the constellations move They rotate so you are sure This is now and this is where you belong Welcome home Back from the brink, out of the coma A week of our holding our breath open (A bike, a car, the tissues between Scarred scared hurt but somehow) Somehow still alive Somehow you stayed alive Somehow still alive Your twisted tiny small neck bones Back together, holding their own Welcome home One minute here, whistling tunes Next minute blood painting the road Put to sleep, helped to breathe Please don't leave, we prayed, please don't bleed Come on home Please come home Come on home You made it back, opened your eyes No more smokes, no more booze'n'fags This is it, you want to be clear A second chance, continue life (and how to live it) Welcome home Welcome home Welcome home
10.
Uncurled, unfurled, a story from the sky I reached up and pulled a story from the sky A big stretch It starts in the middle of poor sod's muddle (You have such big arms) Homesick for what? (All the better to tame me) The sheep search the grasses their heads down in the sway The sailors search the oceans deep compass and astrolabe "Oh where the stars that light their path? In the city they're on poles that light the road.." Hello rosebay willowherb Tarmac and railway lines The solace of Small ad obscenities in this bucolic fantasy Oh throw me soft from tree to tree And feel the moon pull elastically The new (nude?) sea bathes my town toes it flicks my city feet But I am not welcome here and once again desirous to leave Am I a bad man, am I? 40 years round the sun and still nowhere's home to lie What's become of Nick since he gave us all the slip? Choosing distant mountainscapes not pacing up and Down through Camden Town He ran away to join some circus The last we heard he said: "Come for I have found the clue I sought so long Nourished henceforth by my celestial dreaming" And "Poems vaguely wafting, lilting in night air Uncaught, unwritten." "What makes this ship run us so fast to ground?" What is the foolish boy doing? Clinging to life as if death too shall die? "We saw him go over the Alps alone." (Stealings from: Browning, Whitman, John Hardwick, Hans Christian Anderson)
11.
The polar bear's white hours By the small genetic pool Contemplating his furred reflection And the mass of life reproducing below With patient claws he preens and cleans Those that float up dead Another cold experiment That failed to take a satisfying breath At the bottom of the pool They fold their hands and pray Up through the water And beg to be allowed to survive Ask the Great Bear's eyes The Polar Bear's blank hours White in the museum hall Another display case, another white card Explaining how it all works His paw takes my open hand And we fly to the frozen north Where his children gash themselves on soft drink glass He tears out my liver and we gawp at it's size He takes out my kidney and we know soon I will feint Removes the stomach and pancreas Large intestine too He climbs inside the cavity this evisceration has caused And asks to be sewn up inside I stitch his mass into me and sigh The Polar Bear's white hours By the small genetic pool Contemplating his furred reflection Are over And I am warm
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about

57 stars of the air almanac
Ragoora Records (Rag004)
Originally released in August 2007

Track Listing:

1. 12 stars
2. open blue skies
3. early astronomy
4. back to bed
5. oh, frank
6. 58th star
7. a death in June
8. crazed, full of Hope
9. welcome home!
10. other men's flowers
11. the polar bears


MOJO Magazine****, UK, Issue 166 - September 2007

Former Kitchens Of Distinction mainman's stellar return.

So uncannily do Interpol and Editors recall the signature epic emo-scapes of Kitchens Of Distinction that one readily imagines erstwhile members of that undervalued '80s/'90s south London trio ruminating bitterly on the concept of intellectual copyright. Not singer/bassist Patrick Fitzgerald, however, who has forged a successful new musical identity as a composer for theatre and film, while gradually priming his Stephen Hero alias for great things. 57 stars... is an 'adult' work in the old-fashioned sense, with material as evocative of Stephen Sondheim's opaque psychodramas as any contemporary touchstones. while also gently reclaiming 'his' sound over a mighty opening trio of portentous piano balladry; KoD guitarist Julian Swales contributes trademark iridescent vastness to Early Astronomy. Heartfelt and exotic - closer The Polar Bears sees its protagonist subjected to an ursine dissection - here's proud validation of a most distinctive voice. Keith Cameron


The Times ****, UK, August 4th, 2007

The era of Interpol, Editors and Bloc Party is as good a time as any for Patrick Fitzgerald, aka Stephenhero (one of James Joyce's leading characters), to release his first album in five years, especially given the fact the that his underrated band Kitchens of Distinction helped to refine the template in the late 1980s and early 1990s. After four solo albums of stripped-down folk, he has gone back to a band sound (self-played except for the drums) based around piano rather than guitar. What he has ended up with is an edgier version of Elton John's early 1970s albums. Early Astronomy and Oh, Frank recall KoD's soaring brand of sensitivity, but this subtle and spacious record is one of the year's finest. Martin Aston

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released December 22, 2011

*
© + ℗ Patrick Fitzgerald

Patrick Fitzgerald - Challen Acoustic Piano, Yamaha P-80 Digital Stage Piano, Squire & Longson Acoustic Piano, Gibson 335 Guitar, Takamine Acoustic Guitar, Fender Precision Lyte Bass, Charvel Surfcaster Acoustic Bass, Vocals

Dave Morgan - Roland Virtual Drums, Gretsch Acoustic Drums, Tambourine

Julian Swales - Gibson 347 Guitar on 'early astronomy'

Recorded at various locations on an AppleMac G3 Laptop using Logic Audio Express 6, MAudio Firewire 410, Drawmer Valve Compressor, AKG Tubevalve Microphone with a PodXT. Mixed on a MacBook Pro using Logic 7.2. Finalized by Pascal Gabriel at the Strongroom, London.

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PATRICK FITZGERALD Manchester, UK

Patrick Fitzgerald was the singer and bass player in Kitchens of Distinction. After Kitchens he was: Fruit, one half of three fabulous duos - Lost Girls | The April Seven | Oskar's Drum - and Stephen Hero. He has been releasing records under all these guises and more since 1987. ... more

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