Bio:

Catch me here: museslave(at)gmail.

Glam of the Zombies...

Free Downloads

I've now made it easier to stream and download my studio recordings. Just click the link and use the index. To download for free, set your "Buy Now" price to "0". I've also embedded my books of poetry in the "Poetry" album.

Just passing through? Take, absorb, SHARE. I strive to put my current best creative work into the realm of free media and human awareness. I strive to create, share, and create sharing communities.

Just LOVE what I do? Support FREE CULTURE! Donate when you download "Booty Music for Zombie Swingers", "Street Corner Gothic", or "Cold Clay" to support me in my art. And feel free to otherwise creatively and/or costless-ly improve my life... museslave(at)gmail. I can always use support in way of kind words, baked goods, your art, your collaborations, your sharing these works. I love when people do that!

IF A LINK DOSN'T WORK please please please send me an email about what you were trying to download. Sometimes I need to update them.

Booty Music for Zombie Swingers (swing rhythms, old blues, drum and bass) My new (June 21, 2010) concept album of dance-able murder ballads, and pop-jazz-noise fusion blues. Our band is pre-booked for your demise... devils, angels, and big booty zombies coming at you from every direction! Hide in your headphones!



Street Corner Gothic (gothic jazz album, a dark and catchy plague of fun!) (Ocotber 2009) An album of super-bleak and yet so often hilarious jazz tunes! It's the most depressing lyrics that will still make you laugh with smooth jazz accompaniment. Think: 19th century gothic poetry fused with blues jazz.



Here's the "Street Corner Gothic" album with video-tracks on youtube.. Bleak as fuck, funnier than hell, its stories are told here with montages of images and scenes from East Vancouver, Seattle, Victoria, and interior B.C.



Tongue of a Living Skull Vol. 1 (industrial-beatbox spoken-word album) Inspiring, challenging, beautiful, frightening... How much can you get out of a voice with lyrical conviction and a love of high distortion beatboxing? Find out.



The Ogre and the Fairy (a beautifully tragic fairy tale... audiotext with score) This story is beautiful and tragic, a cautionary fairy tale that will take you to another world of humour, magic, and reflection. It combines writing and music in a way that even young children will enjoy.

Cold Clay EP (psychedelic folk and a prayer... dark, brooding, poetic) This is trippy. I re-write "The Rising Sun", I begin the "Cold Clay" epic, and I pray in a way you have never heard before.



Notes from the Silver Lining Cafe (poetry book; mystical punch with some beatuifully bleak comedy) This contains the mystical sucker-punch "Crucifixes" and more post-modern spirituals, as well as "Consumption" and more darkly delicious treats.

Peacock Lepers (poetry book; sassy and beautifully bleak comedy) The most characteristically hilarious darkness I've put out. Lots of playfulness and surrealistically brooding cynical commentary.

Breakthrough (poem) An artist turns her son's suicide into an art installation. Weird dark trip. Quick read.

Spin the Handle (poetry book; beauty, shadows, a bit of the bitter and biting) It's got gems like "Fee Fie Foe Fum" and ironic statuary like "Cowboys and Indians".

Unfamilar Streets (poetry book; darkness, beauty, and a laugh or two) My first book and still my pride and joy. It contains "My Punk Girl", "Grassroots Xianity", and so many portraits of the world reflected in the word.

.. There was a time, there was a year; once, it all began. Yes, that was the time, and that was the year; yes, it all began.

Since that time, a plethora of events, and near brushes with madness, have left me the quirky 29 year-old writer, musician, spoken word, and new-media artist whom you may know by the name of Clinton John Leon.

Or you may know me by some other name, some pet name, some curse, some moniker, all naturally depending on our level of intimacy.

And maybe you find me not much of an eccentric, but then, you may not know me well.

I have written 4 book-length collections of free-verse poems (Unfamiliar Streets; Spin the Handle; Peacock Lepers; Notes from the Silver Lining Cafe) and one chapbook containing a long poem about a woman who turns her son's suicide into an installation art piece (Breakthrough).

I am thrilled to be releasing my first children's book "The Ogre and the Fairy" which has been illustrated by Rebecca Gindin-Clarke. It is a tragedy written in the style of a Romantic fairy tale. I have recorded an audiotext with a score and it is now available above in the "Free Downloads" section.

On stage, I am a button-pusher. My frequent jokes are bleak, my subject matters often haunting. I am a beatbox poet, comedian, and dark as night gothic songwriter. My songs have been described as "Beautiful if you don't listen to the lyrics; otherwise, depressing, but still beautiful." (Lady Jessica of the Foxy House)

I have been making beautiful collisions of sound with industrial noise artist Andrew Scott, aka The Whip of the UFO, and look forward to more live performances and recordings with this most fascinating human.

A fifth book-length collection of erotic verse is forth-coming.

Also, some form of the work that kept me alive on my 27th birthday: The Mansion is on it's way into the larger conciousness. It is a long poem about a murderous megalomaniac who has a clone farm to continue his artistic legacy (autobiographical). I am looking for the right scary artist to illustrate this; so please feel free to post scary art to the comments section!

I am the organizer of all kinds of fun shows, some darker than others including: "The Apocalypse Roadshow: Cabaret for the End of the Word". These events usually take place at Cafe Deux Soleils and are multi-media dark, strange, and wonderful nights of song, story, poetry, visual, and performance art shows. Here's a mash-up/re-mix of the third Apocalypse Roadshow. Enjoy!





A current project of mine involves the creation of a youtube channel and facebook group for the East Vancouver Network of Love. The purpose of this endeavour is to promote Vancouver artists who are obviously amazing. Please check them out here: the EVNWL youtube channel

I have lived so many lives, from frequenter of Suser's (which with 4 and 1/2 stars is the highest-rated restaurant in Toronto), to finding my necessities on the roadside, come what may (the no frills approach).

All lifestyles have had their advantages and motivations, their disadvantages and desperations.

Or maybe it is just that these have always been me.

Member Since:

July 25, 2006

Members:

Army-Of-One: Clinton John Leon.

I'm not trying to lower the bar. I'm trying to lower the brow. I was on TWILIGHT!!! Did I mention that? I'm still broke, so no biggie.



Here are some kitchen-style live performances from the "Saddest Songs" playlist on my youtube channel



But truth be told, several childhood traumas speak through me, the Ages, my cousin ID, God and the Devil, (whereas saints tend to leave me alone...) several demons whose names may not here be known, growing up Roman Catholic, Hermes, Dracula, Dionysus, a bunch of grapelike and screechy cherubs, dakinis of various flares, and whatever else may be lurking in the air about my Ouja board.

And on more than one occasion I have been victimized by a muse, made to sing her song just the way she wanted it, no compromise.

Here is the proof of one of the most fun times making art I've ever had in my entire life...

Influences:

The Moon, the Muses, Life. The sensation of flying. Gods. Goddesses. The lucid dream.

Poets: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Issa, Basho, Seamus Heaney, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Rilke, W. H. Auden, Lord Byron, Anais Nin, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Sylvia Plath, Nietzsche, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Baudelaire, Rumi

Here are poetic pieces dealing with a vast array of subjects from Punk rock-love, to clouds and grass, to the End of Times, to radical re-interpretive Christianity, to anal sex cherries my youtube channel





Singers/Musicians: Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Leonard Cohen, John Lennon, John Kay, Devendra Banhart, Morrissey, Georges Brassens, Ella Fitzgerald

Films: The Happiness of the Katakuris, The Neverending Story, The Matrix, Repulsion, Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves, The Idiots, Hara Kiri, Fargo, Pi, Batman, Enter the Dragon, The Crow, The Lion in Winter, Risky Business, Interview with the Vampire, National Lampoons Christmas Vacation, Amazon Women on the Moon, Terminator 2, Elizabeth, Trainspotting, The Sword in the Stone, Pulp Fiction(!!), Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2, As Good As it Gets, The Aristocrats, Zatoichi, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas(!!), Die Hard, Bloodsport, Marked for Death, Drunken Master 2, Half a Loaf of Kung-fu, Iron Monkey, The Devil's Advocate, and Ghost (though I will never-ever watch it again, not even for sex).

Sounds Like:

Incarnation 1: Leonard Cohen meets Nine Inch Nails.

Incarnation 2: Bill Hicks with a guitar

Incarnation 3: Some guy talking. There seems to be enough resolution and authority in his voice to convince yourself that he thinks what he is saying makes sense.

Here's what some slammers and patrons and patriots of the Republic of East Vancouver have said:

"A brilliant writer, a brilliant performer, and a spokesperson for new media and the internet. He's taking poetry somewhere I've never seen it go. Never before has a major literary figure done what he is doing. When he breaks through he could become the leader of a revolution. Poetry needs this kind of genius." - Bob Holman, the original slam promoter, poetry activist, and professor at NYU (April, 2010)

"He's the Emily Dickinson of youtube! He is putting great works of literature and performance on youtube but very few people seem to know. He is one of the most profound and talented cross-media artists I have ever met in my entire life." - Regie Cabico, 2-time national slam champion and theatrical avatar (April, 2010)

"CJ, I don't know whether you're a genius, or just a bad person." - Clint "Fathergoose" Wilson (2006)

"...this pushes some kind of 'weird' button..." - Magpie Ulysses (2007)

"...seriously skilled... extremely well-written" "one of the quirkiest, most interesting artists I've encountered..." - Nathan Stafford, the Skinny Magazine

'This is Art, and despite his self-deprecating humour, Leon is serious about his Art.' - Jeremiah Sutherland, Bullfrog Music Reviews bullfrogmusic.com

"Well, you're not pretending." - Jess Hill (2007)

"He writes verses as men breathe." - Meredith White

"... one of the few true geniuses I've ever known." - Clint "Fathergoose" Wilson (2009)

"CJ, the dirtiest boy I know." - Ruth Jessica Joyce Mason-Paull

"He smokes too much pot." - Sean McGarragle

"...a creative force." - Jess Hill (2009)

"A great performer!" - T. L. Groves

"You are the only writer here who is consistently, shockingly good! Even your anal sex poem." - anonymous fleeing female patron

"Thank-you, CJ!" - written in permanent marker over the urinal in the men..s room at Cafe Deux Soleils, probably about my anal sex ice-breaker

"You may change the way people do this." - Barbara Adler

"Inspiring!" "An invention madman!" - Al Mader, the Minimalist Jug Band

"Brilliant! I like where you're going." - R. C. Weslowski

"I've met you eight or ten times. What's your name again?" - Shayne Koyczan

"I'm so happy you're a part of our community!" - Magpie Ulysses (2010)

"The voice of a generation?" - Mark Harris

"BOOOOOOOOO!" - The Victoria Slam Team

"He's worth it!" - Mighty Mike McGee

THIS IS FUN! Here's an interview I did on thatradio.com. The interview with me starts at 1:30 (or 90 minutes in), so just click and watch. ..



This is the bomb! Please, please checkout my feature on the Wax Poetic Radio Show, that aired live May 7th, 2008, and brought to you by the magic of digital archiving! The files are small and the interview begins 47:30 into the first file.

Interview part 1

Interview part 2

The interview includes several readings of never-before-performed works and a discussion of my belief in the social responsibilities of art, mathematics and poetry as linguistic games, and self-cutting: Biblical and contemporary.