The news came this evening like a bolt from my YahooMail: The Gymslips are now on MySpace. I feel like I have arrived somehow, now that I receive unsolicited e-mails from strangers in the UK with news about my favorite bands. I do not worship at the church of MySpace, so I am sadly unable to do as the mystery e-mailer urged and "come say hi." I can, however, exhort YOU to comment up a grrrl band fanstorm in my eager stead. I had not heard any Gymslips post-1983, round about Rockin' With the Renees and the Silly Egg EP, but apparently they soldiered on to eke out a gloriously trashy mid-80s spew romantic existence in the manner of Hyaena-era Siouxsie and Duran Duran. Gone is the Oi! bristle of Rockin', synth-bombed by hand claps, fingerless gloves and bass drum rolls. Says the official (not the old) M'Space case:
The second incarnation of the all girl punk/pop band The Gymslips. the new line up did a Radio One John Peel session to include the tracks, Evil Eye, and Lead Me On. The girls also played several gigs including The Marquee in Wardour Street, London and supported Aswad at Leicester Square, and also supported New Model Army, Fields of the Nephilim. They used to rehearse in the same studios as Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Paula Richards now lives in Cornwall Karen Kay lives in Cornwall and sings with the Daughters of Gaia see www.daughtersofgaia.com
Honestly, anybody Frankie told to relax is ten times worthy of yr fandom, but if that's not enough incentive, consider that the Gymslips list among their followers one Alex Bowie, a MySpacer so excessively musically knowledgeable he finds it necessary to list his picks alphabetically. He likes all yr favorite bands AND the Nipple Erectors! Personally, I think he's dreamy--almost as dreamy as Pants. Resemblance to Shane of The L Word not a drawback.
Oh, and in case you couldn't tell, I'm back from Minneapolis. I brought some records with me kindly donated by ex-coworker Don of Midway Books. One is from Pants' parents, though--guess which.
The Raincoats - s/t
The Raincoats - Looking in the Shadows
Bush Tetras - Beauty Lies
Emily's Sassy Lime - Desperate, Scared but Social
Erase Errata - At Crystal Palace
Ear Candy - Chante Le Femme...JUST LISTEN NOW
The Third Sex - Back to Go
The Softies - Winter Pageant
The Dials - Flex Time
Heavenly - Heavenly vs. Satan
Infinite X's - s/t
Free to be You and Me - Marlo Thomas And Friends
And lastly--for Pazz & Jop's sake, people, my year-end list was fake. It's heartening to know that you think there really is a band out there called The Near-Sighted Nepalese Stock Brokers, but you won't find them in an old Elephant 6 mailorder catalog no matter how hard you look.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Pogo Pazz & Jop / Jackin' Pop
Kudos this year to Idolator for challenging the Voice. Until their poll results come in, acquaint yrself with the Pogo equivalent. This year's ballot, like last year's, aims to showcase those artists and records so groundbreaking, so inventive, so unfairly overlooked and ignored that they don't technically exist. Because as everyone knows, the quality of a song is inversely proportional to the number of people who know about it. And according to this law of music crit, the following releases truly are
THE BEST MUSIC OF 2006
Albums
1. Mr. Fistopheles, Bend Over Backwards
2. The Oliver Cromwells, No Irony Here
3. Lil' Tiny, Serendickity
4. The Pallbearers, It's Your Funeral
5. Socratease, Maybe I'd Rather Just Go Home After All
6. Stupider Every Year, Stupider Every Year
7. Lionel Bennett-Jones, Not Bloody Likely
8. Pamplemousse!?, A Little Death (Goes a Long Way)
9. Linzeylee Carter, Linzeylee Doesn't Pole Dance Here Anymore
10. Black Wolf, Swan Parade Mother and the Hot-Eyed Dice Chip Snakes, Critical Acclaim
Singles
1. The Oliver Cromwells, "All Our STDs"
2. Dirrtee Duchess feat. Vanity Fairy, "Emancideclapatriation"
3. Gross Domestic Product, "Eat My Economix"
4. The Near-Sighted Nepalese Stock Brokers, "Hanging In There (The Sherpa Song)"
5. Mourning Becomes Electro, "If Only We Were Actually From A Slum in Rio" (DJ Dirigible Remix)
6. Jim Henson Folk Catastrophe, "Me & Miss Piggy"
7. The Sad Sacks, "Screamotional Is A State of Mind"
8. Lil' Tiny, "In My Pants" (Radio Edit)
9. Kittens Not Cadavers, "Tell Me a Bedtime Story Without Bacon In It"
10. The Perverted Soccer Referees, "Halftime in the Equipment Shed"
I will be in Minneapolis with Pants for the next two weeks; reports may ebb. Don't forget to keep pogoing while I'm gone.
THE BEST MUSIC OF 2006
Albums
1. Mr. Fistopheles, Bend Over Backwards
2. The Oliver Cromwells, No Irony Here
3. Lil' Tiny, Serendickity
4. The Pallbearers, It's Your Funeral
5. Socratease, Maybe I'd Rather Just Go Home After All
6. Stupider Every Year, Stupider Every Year
7. Lionel Bennett-Jones, Not Bloody Likely
8. Pamplemousse!?, A Little Death (Goes a Long Way)
9. Linzeylee Carter, Linzeylee Doesn't Pole Dance Here Anymore
10. Black Wolf, Swan Parade Mother and the Hot-Eyed Dice Chip Snakes, Critical Acclaim
Singles
1. The Oliver Cromwells, "All Our STDs"
2. Dirrtee Duchess feat. Vanity Fairy, "Emancideclapatriation"
3. Gross Domestic Product, "Eat My Economix"
4. The Near-Sighted Nepalese Stock Brokers, "Hanging In There (The Sherpa Song)"
5. Mourning Becomes Electro, "If Only We Were Actually From A Slum in Rio" (DJ Dirigible Remix)
6. Jim Henson Folk Catastrophe, "Me & Miss Piggy"
7. The Sad Sacks, "Screamotional Is A State of Mind"
8. Lil' Tiny, "In My Pants" (Radio Edit)
9. Kittens Not Cadavers, "Tell Me a Bedtime Story Without Bacon In It"
10. The Perverted Soccer Referees, "Halftime in the Equipment Shed"
I will be in Minneapolis with Pants for the next two weeks; reports may ebb. Don't forget to keep pogoing while I'm gone.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Looking in the shadows
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 12
LIVE @ PJ's (102 S. First, Ann Arbor MI)
URGH! A MUSIC WAR (96 mins, dir. Derek Burbidge)
With peformances by: Police, Wall of Voodoo, Toyah Willcox, OMD, Oingo Boingo, Echo & the Bunnymen, Jools Holland, XTC, Klaus Nomi, Go Go's, Dead Kennedys, Steel Pulse, Gary Numan, Joan Jett, Surf Punks, Au Pairs, Cramps, Devo, Alley Cast, Gang of Four, 999, Fleshtones, X, UB40
The movie is heavily male, but the female singers -- Willcox, Carlisle, Jett -- distinguish themselves by their clarity. Joan Jett screams as fiercely as anyone, but you can understand everything she's saying, whereas many of the male singers rant unintelligibly (which can be its own kind of hostile fuck-you lyricism). The viewer/listener comes away thinking that Jett and the other women -- remember, this was 1980 and 1981, long before Courtney and Alanis -- have fought too hard to be on that stage to waste the opportunity to be heard; the men, accustomed to being heard, let their words clatter and fall every which way.
Rob Gonsalves
LIVE @ PJ's (102 S. First, Ann Arbor MI)
URGH! A MUSIC WAR (96 mins, dir. Derek Burbidge)
With peformances by: Police, Wall of Voodoo, Toyah Willcox, OMD, Oingo Boingo, Echo & the Bunnymen, Jools Holland, XTC, Klaus Nomi, Go Go's, Dead Kennedys, Steel Pulse, Gary Numan, Joan Jett, Surf Punks, Au Pairs, Cramps, Devo, Alley Cast, Gang of Four, 999, Fleshtones, X, UB40
The movie is heavily male, but the female singers -- Willcox, Carlisle, Jett -- distinguish themselves by their clarity. Joan Jett screams as fiercely as anyone, but you can understand everything she's saying, whereas many of the male singers rant unintelligibly (which can be its own kind of hostile fuck-you lyricism). The viewer/listener comes away thinking that Jett and the other women -- remember, this was 1980 and 1981, long before Courtney and Alanis -- have fought too hard to be on that stage to waste the opportunity to be heard; the men, accustomed to being heard, let their words clatter and fall every which way.
Rob Gonsalves
Saturday, December 09, 2006
B-side of my heart
The week in review, pogo-style.
On Tuesday, rockism was back with a vengeance. Synthetic! the critics cried. Sampled, catchy, shallow! Illegitimate, dishonest, disingenuous! I was appalled, prepared an extensive and eloquent feminist defense of G-Stef, remembered the whole contractual enslavement of Japanese girltoys thing and shelved said defense pending further analysis.
On Wednesday I found the first Bis album and a Nina Hagen EP at Encore. They also have two copies of Chicks on Speed Will Save Us All. I left all four (Pogo treasury not what it used to be), so they're totes yrs if you beat me back to them.
On Thursday the Organ broke up, three songs into recording their second album. A noticeably pained Jenny Smyth told CBC Radio 3, "Basically, we're going to keep it all private. It's kind of a sensitive subject...and I think I'd leave it at that."
On Friday I got off work, hopped into the elevator and started singing at the top of my lungs. I do all of my best singing in elevators. But only on the condition that I'm riding alone. I had just ripped into the chorus of "Sheila Take a Bow" and was really letting loose when the doors opened on the fourth floor and a woman came in, catching me mid-bellow. This never happens--I always get to go down all five floors by myself. I immediately shut my mouth, stared at the floor and enjoyed one of the more awkward and embarrassing 20-second silences of my life.
We rode to the ground floor together and when the woman got off I finally looked up, noticing she had short dyed hair and glasses and a peacoat and a purse with a clear plastic sleeve. The sleeve had a 12" record inside with IS IT REALLY SO STRANGE? across the middle. Oh, for heaven's bloody sake, I gawped. You have got to be kidding me. I ran outside until I caught up with her and blurted, Excuse me, er, your purse, blah blah blah, kind of rare single in this country blah, where did you get it, blah blah? She smiled, said re: the purse, Oh yeah, it's nice, isn't it? My friend made it for me. It originally had Donny Osmond but I switched him out.
I agreed that this was indeed an inspired idea and let her go on her way, setting off purposefully in the opposite direction so as not to seem stalkerish.
I then tripped on a pine cone and fell on my face.
On Tuesday, rockism was back with a vengeance. Synthetic! the critics cried. Sampled, catchy, shallow! Illegitimate, dishonest, disingenuous! I was appalled, prepared an extensive and eloquent feminist defense of G-Stef, remembered the whole contractual enslavement of Japanese girltoys thing and shelved said defense pending further analysis.
On Wednesday I found the first Bis album and a Nina Hagen EP at Encore. They also have two copies of Chicks on Speed Will Save Us All. I left all four (Pogo treasury not what it used to be), so they're totes yrs if you beat me back to them.
On Thursday the Organ broke up, three songs into recording their second album. A noticeably pained Jenny Smyth told CBC Radio 3, "Basically, we're going to keep it all private. It's kind of a sensitive subject...and I think I'd leave it at that."
On Friday I got off work, hopped into the elevator and started singing at the top of my lungs. I do all of my best singing in elevators. But only on the condition that I'm riding alone. I had just ripped into the chorus of "Sheila Take a Bow" and was really letting loose when the doors opened on the fourth floor and a woman came in, catching me mid-bellow. This never happens--I always get to go down all five floors by myself. I immediately shut my mouth, stared at the floor and enjoyed one of the more awkward and embarrassing 20-second silences of my life.
We rode to the ground floor together and when the woman got off I finally looked up, noticing she had short dyed hair and glasses and a peacoat and a purse with a clear plastic sleeve. The sleeve had a 12" record inside with IS IT REALLY SO STRANGE? across the middle. Oh, for heaven's bloody sake, I gawped. You have got to be kidding me. I ran outside until I caught up with her and blurted, Excuse me, er, your purse, blah blah blah, kind of rare single in this country blah, where did you get it, blah blah? She smiled, said re: the purse, Oh yeah, it's nice, isn't it? My friend made it for me. It originally had Donny Osmond but I switched him out.
I agreed that this was indeed an inspired idea and let her go on her way, setting off purposefully in the opposite direction so as not to seem stalkerish.
I then tripped on a pine cone and fell on my face.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
"Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva--whateva."
Just in time for the balls-to-the-wall commercialization of [insert yr preferred religious winter holiday here], Criterion has released a fancy-pants repackaging of G.W. Pabst's 1929 silent stunner Pandora's Box. Don't be fooled by the "silent" tag; this movie practically wails a 2000s sensibility, as the creator of the video below seems to realize. I do not in any way condone the Killers or exonerate them from past crimes of wankery; still, the fact that their song syncs up so effortlessly with the spirit of the film gives an indication of just how ahead of her time Louise Brooks truly was. There are multiple opportunities for feminist reclamation--though perhaps not quite as many as in Diary of a Lost Girl. Watch! Marvel!
In fact, the only thing on YouTube that can compete in terms of inspired visual-musical synchronicity is this little wonder. It's my entire Jem concept condensed into 3-minute video form. Thanks to Tali for the original tip, and to Mairead for reminding me again later:
Also magically, gloriously and newly available on YouTube: the entireties of Aimee & Jaguar, Fucking Amal/Show Me Love (without English subtitles) and High Art, the film that does for gutsy New York photography magazine editors what Newsies did for paperboys (best line: Greta, Fassbinder's DEAD, okay?). Seriously though, it's a pre-L Word-writing Lisa Cholodenko at her sharpest and best, and the mood of this movie is so heady and meditative and palpable and thick it makes To Kill A Mockingbird look like a Warner Bros. cartoon. The strung-out-as-all-hell Shudder to Think soundtrack helps, too.
And finally, before I forget, I've just been reading Edmund White on Genet:
Whereas the narrator in Proust's novel is heterosexual and Gide published anonymously and Cocteau never fully acknowledged his authorship of Le Livre Blanc and Montherlant and Mauriac were closeted, Genet wrote novels in the 1940's in which the homosexual narrator is called "Jean Genet" - what's more startling, he's a passive homosexual (for if anyone were to admit to being gay it was naturally to strut about as a top man, whereas it's well known almost all writers are bottoms).*
Hmmm. And hmmm. And HMMM again. I like the idea that writers are people who are, erm, receptive to the world's inspirational stimuli, and that a writerly temperament harnesses that receptive spirit and uses it to create art. But what about people who like to get all Foucauldian and switch things up according to how they're feeling on a given day? Does that mean that if you're a bottom Monday through Wednesday, and a top Thursday through Saturday (Sunday being yr day off, natch), you're only a writer for half the week? What if you like to switch in medias res? And can't we apply this to the ladies as well, please? I know it's a throwaway line and purposefully glib, but there are eerie resonances at work here.
*Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review (3:1), Winter 1996
In fact, the only thing on YouTube that can compete in terms of inspired visual-musical synchronicity is this little wonder. It's my entire Jem concept condensed into 3-minute video form. Thanks to Tali for the original tip, and to Mairead for reminding me again later:
Also magically, gloriously and newly available on YouTube: the entireties of Aimee & Jaguar, Fucking Amal/Show Me Love (without English subtitles) and High Art, the film that does for gutsy New York photography magazine editors what Newsies did for paperboys (best line: Greta, Fassbinder's DEAD, okay?). Seriously though, it's a pre-L Word-writing Lisa Cholodenko at her sharpest and best, and the mood of this movie is so heady and meditative and palpable and thick it makes To Kill A Mockingbird look like a Warner Bros. cartoon. The strung-out-as-all-hell Shudder to Think soundtrack helps, too.
And finally, before I forget, I've just been reading Edmund White on Genet:
Whereas the narrator in Proust's novel is heterosexual and Gide published anonymously and Cocteau never fully acknowledged his authorship of Le Livre Blanc and Montherlant and Mauriac were closeted, Genet wrote novels in the 1940's in which the homosexual narrator is called "Jean Genet" - what's more startling, he's a passive homosexual (for if anyone were to admit to being gay it was naturally to strut about as a top man, whereas it's well known almost all writers are bottoms).*
Hmmm. And hmmm. And HMMM again. I like the idea that writers are people who are, erm, receptive to the world's inspirational stimuli, and that a writerly temperament harnesses that receptive spirit and uses it to create art. But what about people who like to get all Foucauldian and switch things up according to how they're feeling on a given day? Does that mean that if you're a bottom Monday through Wednesday, and a top Thursday through Saturday (Sunday being yr day off, natch), you're only a writer for half the week? What if you like to switch in medias res? And can't we apply this to the ladies as well, please? I know it's a throwaway line and purposefully glib, but there are eerie resonances at work here.
*Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review (3:1), Winter 1996
Monday, December 04, 2006
We didn't start the fire
A house on my street caught on fire this morning. My bus had to take a detour around all of the fire trucks and police cars, but the three people sitting next to me didn't seem surprised. In fact, they were strangely jolly and talkative. "I saw plumes of smoke coming out the back door of the yellow house when I got up," one woman reported gleefully. "A lot of it, and dark black, too. I won't...I won't say they deserved it." "No," agreed her friend, her eyes gleaming. "No one deserves this, not three weeks before Christmas." They sat in quiet smugness. "I won't say anyone deserves this."
Who lives in the yellow house? What did they do to so clearly (not) deserve to have their house burn down? What kind of second Sodom did they create inside, and why wasn't I invited?
Who lives in the yellow house? What did they do to so clearly (not) deserve to have their house burn down? What kind of second Sodom did they create inside, and why wasn't I invited?
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Daintier! Smarter! Better-dressed!
Recommended: listening to Rasputina with earphones. Piping the sound directly into yr ears lets you pick up on all the painstaking aural details that Creager & Co. crochet into every track but that get lost when they're competing with background noise. Like the xylophone frill in "AntiqueHighHeelRedDollShoes" at 0:52, and the sound of PJ Harvey's head hitting the wall. Cabin Fever is still their best record to date, but 2004's Radical Recital doubles as live comp and career retrospective, so use it as soundtrack to yr Victorian babydoll bonnet-mending until they midwife out a new one. Creager is one of the best pop lyricists of the last ten years, and one of the least recognized; take a gander:
GIRLS' SCHOOL*
A primary academy, we're a secondary seminary
teaching finishing rinse, and dancing tips, and scorn.
Always concerned with plummeting virginity rates,
we lecture young girls on how babies are born.
Children, make a chain! Oh children, make a chain!
The staff here is severe, yet so altruistic
(it hurts us more than it hurts them!).
The new girls are tender, the old ones sadistic--
The late janitress was a gem.
Don't belive what the boys from next door heard--
requirements do include math.
We draw straws and put our best foot forward
down the straight and narrow path.
*No relation.
GIRLS' SCHOOL*
A primary academy, we're a secondary seminary
teaching finishing rinse, and dancing tips, and scorn.
Always concerned with plummeting virginity rates,
we lecture young girls on how babies are born.
Children, make a chain! Oh children, make a chain!
The staff here is severe, yet so altruistic
(it hurts us more than it hurts them!).
The new girls are tender, the old ones sadistic--
The late janitress was a gem.
Don't belive what the boys from next door heard--
requirements do include math.
We draw straws and put our best foot forward
down the straight and narrow path.
*No relation.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Pop baptism, or, Who's afraid of Natalie Portman?
It has become terribly gauche, in this post-Garden State world, to say that a pop song saved or changed your life. Still, the fact remains: I listened to three songs this weekend (none of them for the first time), and they saved my life. I think it helped that I was in an airport for two of them. Transience has a way of making choruses stick.
Islands, "Rough Gem"
Client, "Down to the Underground"
The Smiths, "Ask"
If you listen hard enough, you can hear each of these songs--the music, not necessarily the lyrics--dripping the same holy water on yr forehead, slipping the same annunciatory whisper in yr ear: live, you silly fuck. Starting now.
Islands, "Rough Gem"
Client, "Down to the Underground"
The Smiths, "Ask"
If you listen hard enough, you can hear each of these songs--the music, not necessarily the lyrics--dripping the same holy water on yr forehead, slipping the same annunciatory whisper in yr ear: live, you silly fuck. Starting now.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Little Hans isn't so little anymore
Apparently, Freud can show up in some random-ass places:
Magnetic and optical carriers are used for analogue and digital signals while in practice mechanical carriers, in the form of cylinders or discs, have only been used for analogue signals and MO-disks solely for digital recordings. Metal matrices - negatives (fathers), positives (mothers), and stampers (sons), are used for the production of mechanical carriers as well as for CDs and DVDs.
The Safeguarding of the Audio Heritage: Ethics, Principles and Preservation Strategy
Magnetic and optical carriers are used for analogue and digital signals while in practice mechanical carriers, in the form of cylinders or discs, have only been used for analogue signals and MO-disks solely for digital recordings. Metal matrices - negatives (fathers), positives (mothers), and stampers (sons), are used for the production of mechanical carriers as well as for CDs and DVDs.
The Safeguarding of the Audio Heritage: Ethics, Principles and Preservation Strategy
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Asking for it?
In what is still one of the best dissections of Courtney Love ever written--a coup of rhetorical economy at 200 words--Cintra Wilson reported in Salon in 1998,
She was able to sucker-punch the whole beauty myth, thrash horribly like a half-dead fish through her personal tragedy and rampant displays of public fucked-upness and still end up on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. The thing everyone is talking about now is what a tragic political disaster she has become...She didn't want to be a world-beating feminist rock symbol after all. She has surgically transmogrified into anti-woman Claudia Schiffer. Instead of a loud angry girl with ideas, Courtney turned out to be a horribly vain sociopath who venally choked enough money out of the world to transform herself into a "pretty lady."
The scariest thing about Courtney 2006 is that she makes Wilson's Courtney look like a picture of sanity and healthy living. There was the 1998 round of surgeries, yes, but since then the Love-ly one appears to have embraced the frequent customer card philosophy of plastic surgery. Why settle for one new face when you can buy five and get the sixth one free?
Even so, there's something admirable and almost-still-feminist about Love's consistency; she will not shut up, or back down, or be a lady, no matter how many judges wag their fingers and Armani sheaths get ripped. Which is why I'm glad so many critics (Joshua Clover, Danny Kelly, Lisa Levy, Ariel Levy) have adopted relatively pro-Love stances, either in general or for the release of Dirty Blonde. Overrated, desecrated, still somehow illuminated, Love clings to defensibility through sheer force of will and the survival skills of an Eagle Scout.
What has sustained the heartbeat of Love's persona, through the publicity wrecks and sugar comas, has always been her undistilled faith in the power of pop music. She's a student of pop history, and most people don't give her credit for that. She is, to use her own word, "pornorific," but she's not the junkie bimbo she pretends to be. Yet.
She made her bed, she'll lie in it:
Kurt Loder: Was punk any kind of a rebellion for you?
Love: No, because the punk thing, for me, was more my geography. I was a total Bunnymen, Psychedelic Furs, then later Smiths freak...but I lived on the West Coast, so that was my pool to pull from. The guy from Pavement came up to me and he was like, "You're so brave." I was like, "Why?" He was like, "To cover a Bunnymen song! I wouldn't have the nerve." Nobody admits that the Bunnymen were the greatest band. I like Social Distortion because they were melodic, but I like Cheap Trick better.
One time, KROQ was having their Flashback Weekend, and I was singing every word to "The Killing Moon," and Kurt was like, "Man, this music you like is so romantic." I was like, "Yeah, alright?" But I did like Flipper, we were on very common ground with Flipper. But I mean, none of that--Black Flag--it wasn't me, and I'll be the first to admit it.
Loder: Not many people will anymore.
Love: Well, that's what I think. I think you should admit the embarrassing stuff. I think the embarrassing stuff makes you more vulnerable, and it's cooler. [People say,] "Stooges, Velvet Underground: my influences. Butthole Surfers." Oh, shut up! You know every word to, like, "Pretty in Pink." Backwards.
Joe Strummer said to me [when I told him I was moving to Minneapolis to start a band], "You are the worst guitar player I have ever heard." I had only just started in earnest, and I have gotten a lot better....I'm fine, I'm fine. I am fine. I have a style. What's funny is that a lot of my songs are complete Bauhaus rip-offs. My guitar playing is totally picked up from Will Sergeant and Johnny Marr, referenced from these British bands, and nobody would have guessed that, because of the persona that's been foisted on me.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Jiving us that we were voodoo
Ellen Willis' death last week prompted me to read through some of her old criticism. Particularly noggin-expanding is her no-snarks-barred New Yorker profile of David Bowie, to wit:
Part of the problem is Bowie's material. Hunky Dory, the first of his albums to get much critical attention, has become one of my favourite records, but his more recent stuff bores me.
This seems reasonable enough, until you remember that Willis was writing in 1972, so Bowie's "recent stuff" is actually, um, Ziggy Stardust. Ziggy is many things, but it's the rare critic who can stare that record in the face and call it BORING. Her greatest praise? "Some of the songs are OK." Yikes! Then again, Willis was not one to be intimidated by rock's pretensions to subversion:
What cultural revolutionaries do not seem to grasp is that, far from being a grass-roots art form that has been taken over by businessmen, rock itself comes from the commercial exploitation of blues. It is bourgeois at its core, a mass-produced commodity, dependent on advanced technology and therefore on the money controlled by those in power. Its rebelliousness does not imply specific political content; it can be—and has been—criminal, Fascistic, and coolly individualistic as well as revolutionary. Nor is the hip life style inherently radical. It can simply be a more pleasurable way of surviving within the system, which is what the Pop sensibility has always been about...The truth is that there can’t be a revolutionary culture until there is a revolution. In the meantime, we should at least insist that the capitalists who produce rock concerts charge reasonable prices for reasonable service.
Good to remember. Although hopefully, the shows in heaven are free.
Part of the problem is Bowie's material. Hunky Dory, the first of his albums to get much critical attention, has become one of my favourite records, but his more recent stuff bores me.
This seems reasonable enough, until you remember that Willis was writing in 1972, so Bowie's "recent stuff" is actually, um, Ziggy Stardust. Ziggy is many things, but it's the rare critic who can stare that record in the face and call it BORING. Her greatest praise? "Some of the songs are OK." Yikes! Then again, Willis was not one to be intimidated by rock's pretensions to subversion:
What cultural revolutionaries do not seem to grasp is that, far from being a grass-roots art form that has been taken over by businessmen, rock itself comes from the commercial exploitation of blues. It is bourgeois at its core, a mass-produced commodity, dependent on advanced technology and therefore on the money controlled by those in power. Its rebelliousness does not imply specific political content; it can be—and has been—criminal, Fascistic, and coolly individualistic as well as revolutionary. Nor is the hip life style inherently radical. It can simply be a more pleasurable way of surviving within the system, which is what the Pop sensibility has always been about...The truth is that there can’t be a revolutionary culture until there is a revolution. In the meantime, we should at least insist that the capitalists who produce rock concerts charge reasonable prices for reasonable service.
Good to remember. Although hopefully, the shows in heaven are free.
Monday, November 13, 2006
You may applaud now
Holly Hughes has tri-colored hair and a laugh that fills up a room. She sat three rows behind me and to the right and chortled loudly and jarringly, like a joyful parrot (it takes a sense of humor to fight the NEA). In his introduction to the introduction, David Halperin pointed out that she was in attendance and called her "insanely brilliant," but all I could do was stare at his head and think about how much knowledge was inside. You wouldn't remember me, I telegraphed silently in the direction of the head, but we had lunch together four years ago. We sat in a booth and ate potstickers. That summer I read the first 30 pages of Saint Foucault while kneeling on the floor of a public library and crying. There's no way you could know this, but it happened.
Someone asked during the Q&A whether At Swim, Two Boys was a gay book. O'Neill responded, "Let me put it this way. One night I put my book on a shelf next to Edna O'Brien's book and went to sleep. When I got up the next morning and looked, nothing had happened."
Someone asked during the Q&A whether At Swim, Two Boys was a gay book. O'Neill responded, "Let me put it this way. One night I put my book on a shelf next to Edna O'Brien's book and went to sleep. When I got up the next morning and looked, nothing had happened."
Sunday, November 12, 2006
So many times a day in danger
Oh, unintentionally homoerotic mainstream advertisements. You make life worth living. More choice diamonds from the pre-Yahoo dark ages:
underwear
Listerine
whiskey
pillows
soap
On a related note: Lars von Trier suddenly seems slightly less problematic.
underwear
Listerine
whiskey
pillows
soap
On a related note: Lars von Trier suddenly seems slightly less problematic.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
So kind of me to be interviewed by you
I’m hung over. I’ve never eaten sushi. I don’t know how to order it. I can’t use chopsticks. I’ve never conducted an interview before. And I’ve come away without my bloody glasses.
JAMIE O'NEILL
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 4:00 PM
THE MICHIGAN LEAGUE (Hussey Room)
U OF M Main Campus
O'Neill will be at the League this Monday to talk about his writing process and be characteristically awesome and inspiring. Read his 2003 profile of Cate Blanchett as a teaser--it burns new life into the tired "I'm a nervous fan!" interview framing device, in which the subject always arrives an hour late and the writer is left to sweat and wring napkins in neurotic anticipation. Hell, it just about resuscitates the entire interview genre. O'Neill comes recommended by major-league smarties, and he wrote At Swim, Two Boys over ten years while working the night shift as a porter in a London psychiatric hospital. If ever there was a hero for the struggling, disenfranchised writer, this is yr Stevie Dedalus.
I tell them about my postman. When I came to Galway, he knocked on my door.
‘O’Neill,’ says he, reading the envelope, ‘that’s not a Galway name.’
‘No,’ says I.
‘There was a good hurler named O’Neill, you’re not related?’
‘I’m not,’ I say. My boyfriend comes down the stairs.
‘That wouldn’t be your brother now,’ says the postman, peering in. And I think to myself, Right, I’m going to do you, mister.
‘This is my boyfriend,’ I say. ‘He’s French. We’ve moved to Galway on the head of a novel I’ve written. It’s about two Dublin boys who fall in love, getting mixed up in the Easter Rising.’
‘Well,’ says my postman and he shakes my hand, ‘isn’t it just what Gortachalla needs?’
(At Swim in Canada)
JAMIE O'NEILL
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 4:00 PM
THE MICHIGAN LEAGUE (Hussey Room)
U OF M Main Campus
O'Neill will be at the League this Monday to talk about his writing process and be characteristically awesome and inspiring. Read his 2003 profile of Cate Blanchett as a teaser--it burns new life into the tired "I'm a nervous fan!" interview framing device, in which the subject always arrives an hour late and the writer is left to sweat and wring napkins in neurotic anticipation. Hell, it just about resuscitates the entire interview genre. O'Neill comes recommended by major-league smarties, and he wrote At Swim, Two Boys over ten years while working the night shift as a porter in a London psychiatric hospital. If ever there was a hero for the struggling, disenfranchised writer, this is yr Stevie Dedalus.
I tell them about my postman. When I came to Galway, he knocked on my door.
‘O’Neill,’ says he, reading the envelope, ‘that’s not a Galway name.’
‘No,’ says I.
‘There was a good hurler named O’Neill, you’re not related?’
‘I’m not,’ I say. My boyfriend comes down the stairs.
‘That wouldn’t be your brother now,’ says the postman, peering in. And I think to myself, Right, I’m going to do you, mister.
‘This is my boyfriend,’ I say. ‘He’s French. We’ve moved to Galway on the head of a novel I’ve written. It’s about two Dublin boys who fall in love, getting mixed up in the Easter Rising.’
‘Well,’ says my postman and he shakes my hand, ‘isn’t it just what Gortachalla needs?’
(At Swim in Canada)
Thursday, November 09, 2006
You hate me, you really hate me!
Thanks this morning to the Washington Post for its stellar headline-writing skills. Other lessons from the election: (straight) Americans really hate gay people right now, but they hate Republicans even more. Personally, I see this as a missed opportunity to ban Republican marriage. Because honestly, if Republicans can get married, it makes my own marriage mean so much less.
In my new home state of Michigan, voters struck down a referendum that would have allowed the seasonal hunting of mourning doves, inclusive of "participation in mourning dove hunting by youth, the elderly and the disabled," ostensibly because nothing lifts spirits and builds communities quite like pumping animals full of lead. And to be fair, it's not like doves are symbols of anything.
In my new home state of Michigan, voters struck down a referendum that would have allowed the seasonal hunting of mourning doves, inclusive of "participation in mourning dove hunting by youth, the elderly and the disabled," ostensibly because nothing lifts spirits and builds communities quite like pumping animals full of lead. And to be fair, it's not like doves are symbols of anything.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
The thrill of discovery
Oh, the things you can find out while not interviewing software developers. An end-of-week roll call:
-All of CSS's videos contain segments where the film runs backwards. It's a comment on the fiercely nostalgic, pereptually backwards gaze of the pop subcultural zeitgeist, surely. Or something. Observe: 1) "Alala"; 2) "Let's Make Love etc."; 3) "Off the Hook". Y'all are getting an early Bjork vibe off of Lovefoxxx too, right? Right.
-You can Hollywoodize anybody, including maverick misfit genius photographers and the virgin mums of religious prophets.
-Popular mystery writer Anne Perry is the same person as Juliet Hulme, sometime convicted teenage co-murderess whose relationship with Pauline Parker was dramatized in Peter Jackson's gonzo-fantastic and bravely sympathetic film Heavenly Creatures.
-Using the word "dukes" as a synonym for fists originates in Cockney rhyming slang: Duke = Duke of York = fork = how you hold your hand when you hold a fork, i.e., in a fist. I grew up 5,000 miles away from the East End and yet, somehow, kids at my elementary school were able to run around the playground starting fights by shouting, "put up yr dukes!" I never knew what the hell it meant at the time. Blimey.
-Linda Perry is totes Pope Leo X:
"Like the Protestants of the Reformation, indie fans continue the rebellious narrative first put forth by the punks, the paradigmatic British music performers. They present a narrative of the deviation from true musical encounters through a hypertrophic growth of institutional machinery to benefit corporate executives who exploit the faithful and debase music itself...the notion that at the heart of indie lies what many feel to be a conservative and repressive religious ideology would be distasteful to those who embrace one of the fundamental and widespread folktales of youth culture, namely, that participating in a music scene constitutes a form of rebellion rather than a recapitulation of the dominant cultural ideology and narratives."
(Wendy Fonarow writing in Empire of Dirt: The Aesthetics and Rituals of British Indie Music)
-All of CSS's videos contain segments where the film runs backwards. It's a comment on the fiercely nostalgic, pereptually backwards gaze of the pop subcultural zeitgeist, surely. Or something. Observe: 1) "Alala"; 2) "Let's Make Love etc."; 3) "Off the Hook". Y'all are getting an early Bjork vibe off of Lovefoxxx too, right? Right.
-You can Hollywoodize anybody, including maverick misfit genius photographers and the virgin mums of religious prophets.
-Popular mystery writer Anne Perry is the same person as Juliet Hulme, sometime convicted teenage co-murderess whose relationship with Pauline Parker was dramatized in Peter Jackson's gonzo-fantastic and bravely sympathetic film Heavenly Creatures.
-Using the word "dukes" as a synonym for fists originates in Cockney rhyming slang: Duke = Duke of York = fork = how you hold your hand when you hold a fork, i.e., in a fist. I grew up 5,000 miles away from the East End and yet, somehow, kids at my elementary school were able to run around the playground starting fights by shouting, "put up yr dukes!" I never knew what the hell it meant at the time. Blimey.
-Linda Perry is totes Pope Leo X:
"Like the Protestants of the Reformation, indie fans continue the rebellious narrative first put forth by the punks, the paradigmatic British music performers. They present a narrative of the deviation from true musical encounters through a hypertrophic growth of institutional machinery to benefit corporate executives who exploit the faithful and debase music itself...the notion that at the heart of indie lies what many feel to be a conservative and repressive religious ideology would be distasteful to those who embrace one of the fundamental and widespread folktales of youth culture, namely, that participating in a music scene constitutes a form of rebellion rather than a recapitulation of the dominant cultural ideology and narratives."
(Wendy Fonarow writing in Empire of Dirt: The Aesthetics and Rituals of British Indie Music)
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
No one's little girl
Q: What does a radical feminist librarian do?
A: She makes this. (To be fair, I also made a page for Laura Ingalls Wilder).
A: She makes this. (To be fair, I also made a page for Laura Ingalls Wilder).
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Halloween costume party: suicidal literary edition
When Virginia Woolf took the picture I had my hand up the back of Anna Karenina's dress. "Try going through this hole here," suggested Anna's girlfriend, a fairy princess ballerina wearing a tutu, rhinestone eyelashes and a tiara. We were all congregated in Anna and the ballerina's bedroom, the place where, as Anna put it, "the magic happens." Anna was standing facing the wall while we worked, patiently reading her encyclopedia of lesbian pulp novels. Virginia stood a few feet away from us and waved her digital camera excitedly, making the stones in her pockets jangle. "This one shot is awesome! You guys have to see this!"
Anna's dress was made out of brocade and it was hard to work the crochet needle through the fabric without coming close to her skin. I like to sew and I'm more or less okay at it, but until that night I hadn't had any experience stitching railroad tracks to people's clothes.
....
I followed the fairy ballerina out the back door of the house. It was raining and we had to pick our way carefully across the muddy lawn. When we got to the garage Anna Karenina and Virginia Woolf were clustered around a beer keg with the Crocodile Hunter and a codpiece-endowed police clown, admiring the fake blood they have just poured down the front of Anna's dress. "Honey!" exclaimed the ballerina. "You look amazing!" "Yeah," agreed Anna. "I look much more dead now."
We stayed in the garage for a long time, shivering and watching the rain and discussing the stingray attached to the Crocodile Hunter's chest. Virginia smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and looked depressed but Anna was perky and upbeat. I turned down offers of beer and thought about the only reason I ever go to parties: to remember that I don't like going to parties. Miranda July wrote something once about looking at pictures of famous people at "events" and thinking, that is where life is exciting and real--there, at that moment. But it's a time and place we can't ever get to. Real life is something that is always happening somewhere else, to other people.
When everyone had gotten cold and bloodied enough we went back into the house. I wandered into the living room and met a teddy girl in eyeliner and a beehive wearing black heels, cuffed jeans and a leather jacket.
"I wanted to be a boy, "she explained. "But I couldn't find any Converse. So I had to be a girl."
"Oh, that's too bad."
"I know, isn't it?
Anna's dress was made out of brocade and it was hard to work the crochet needle through the fabric without coming close to her skin. I like to sew and I'm more or less okay at it, but until that night I hadn't had any experience stitching railroad tracks to people's clothes.
....
I followed the fairy ballerina out the back door of the house. It was raining and we had to pick our way carefully across the muddy lawn. When we got to the garage Anna Karenina and Virginia Woolf were clustered around a beer keg with the Crocodile Hunter and a codpiece-endowed police clown, admiring the fake blood they have just poured down the front of Anna's dress. "Honey!" exclaimed the ballerina. "You look amazing!" "Yeah," agreed Anna. "I look much more dead now."
We stayed in the garage for a long time, shivering and watching the rain and discussing the stingray attached to the Crocodile Hunter's chest. Virginia smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and looked depressed but Anna was perky and upbeat. I turned down offers of beer and thought about the only reason I ever go to parties: to remember that I don't like going to parties. Miranda July wrote something once about looking at pictures of famous people at "events" and thinking, that is where life is exciting and real--there, at that moment. But it's a time and place we can't ever get to. Real life is something that is always happening somewhere else, to other people.
When everyone had gotten cold and bloodied enough we went back into the house. I wandered into the living room and met a teddy girl in eyeliner and a beehive wearing black heels, cuffed jeans and a leather jacket.
"I wanted to be a boy, "she explained. "But I couldn't find any Converse. So I had to be a girl."
"Oh, that's too bad."
"I know, isn't it?
Thursday, October 26, 2006
When she walks, the revolution's coming
HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY to my twin soul sister Mairead. She's most recently the author of this, but do browse her greatest hits.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Pop calculus
Noted:
1. Mekons' "Never Been in a Riot" = Cold Cold Hearts' "5 Signs: Scorpio"
2. The Clash's "Clash City Rockers" - Strummerly urgency = the Who's "I Can't Explain"
3. (T. Rex's "Metal Guru" - glitter) x (children's chorus + genius) = the Smiths' "Panic" (this is by no means breaking news, but listen, it's stunning)
4. DIY bedroom electro x (Them's "Gloria" - casual phallocracy) = Julie Ruin's "V.G.I." = embryonic Le Tigre
5. Spinal Tap's "Gimme Some Money" + determined tambourine wankage + severe page boy haircuts + matching mariachi outfits = The Lords' "Don't Mince Matter" = HOW CAN THIS BE REAL?
1. Mekons' "Never Been in a Riot" = Cold Cold Hearts' "5 Signs: Scorpio"
2. The Clash's "Clash City Rockers" - Strummerly urgency = the Who's "I Can't Explain"
3. (T. Rex's "Metal Guru" - glitter) x (children's chorus + genius) = the Smiths' "Panic" (this is by no means breaking news, but listen, it's stunning)
4. DIY bedroom electro x (Them's "Gloria" - casual phallocracy) = Julie Ruin's "V.G.I." = embryonic Le Tigre
5. Spinal Tap's "Gimme Some Money" + determined tambourine wankage + severe page boy haircuts + matching mariachi outfits = The Lords' "Don't Mince Matter" = HOW CAN THIS BE REAL?
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Too good to make up
October 22nd, 2:33 AM
Hello?
Hi, what’s up [inaudible]…Have you seen Jody?.
I think you have the wrong number, I don’t know anyone named Jody.
You must’ve seen him. Don’t you…[inaudible]
No, I think you have the wrong number. My name is Lizzie.
Ohhh. [a pause] Do you wanna suck cock?
Ha! No. Goodnight.
Voicemail, 2:36 AM
Hey Lizzie, how are you doing? It’s me again. I don’t know why you didn’t pick up, you picked up the first time. I really liked your voice. You know, I’d really like to get to know you. You can reach me at tumari9000@hotmail.com. Please, baby, I really liked the sound of your voice. How old are you? I’m, like, 25. I’ve got a Beemer. It’s a Z3. That means it’s a convertible. So I could bang it with the top down. That’s right, bitch! Okay, so, I love you, and I miss you, and…goodnight.
AN OPEN LETTER TO TUMARI9000
Oh, friend. There's no need to pretend with me. You aren't 25, are you? Confess--you are actually a 37 year-old investment banker from East Lansing, and your Beemer Z3 is a 1997 Ford Fiesta. Furthermore, I can tell from your halting and embarrassed use of "baby," "bitch," and the idiom "bang it" that you are familiar with the complexity of these terms, and their embeddedness within the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy as problematized by bell hooks in "Sexism and Misogyny: Who Takes the Rap?" You obviously feel a need to hide your sensitive true self in order to be attractive to women. Do you think no one will love you if they know you stay at home every night knitting and reading Shulamith Firestone? I mean, Firestone is, admittedly, problematic, but you should be open about your radical feminist sympathies! This can only help you! (And while we're on the subject, how do you read "The Women's Rights Movement in the U.S." in light of emergent third wave feminisms? That first graf has some crazy resonances with our contemporary situation, right?).
What I'm saying, Tumari9000, is that you shouldn't ignore your romantic and compassionate instincts. Calling strangers in the middle of the night may not be the best strategy, but one day soon you will meet someone who appreciates your shy smile, honey whole wheat french toast recipe and stunning collection of Bea Arthur memorabilia. That someone, I'm afraid, just isn't me.
In sisterhood,
Lizzie Pogo
P.S. What do you think of the new Tanya Donnelly record? Yeah, it makes me miss Throwing Muses, too, but this is good in the meantime, wouldn't you say?
Hello?
Hi, what’s up [inaudible]…Have you seen Jody?.
I think you have the wrong number, I don’t know anyone named Jody.
You must’ve seen him. Don’t you…[inaudible]
No, I think you have the wrong number. My name is Lizzie.
Ohhh. [a pause] Do you wanna suck cock?
Ha! No. Goodnight.
Voicemail, 2:36 AM
Hey Lizzie, how are you doing? It’s me again. I don’t know why you didn’t pick up, you picked up the first time. I really liked your voice. You know, I’d really like to get to know you. You can reach me at tumari9000@hotmail.com. Please, baby, I really liked the sound of your voice. How old are you? I’m, like, 25. I’ve got a Beemer. It’s a Z3. That means it’s a convertible. So I could bang it with the top down. That’s right, bitch! Okay, so, I love you, and I miss you, and…goodnight.
AN OPEN LETTER TO TUMARI9000
Oh, friend. There's no need to pretend with me. You aren't 25, are you? Confess--you are actually a 37 year-old investment banker from East Lansing, and your Beemer Z3 is a 1997 Ford Fiesta. Furthermore, I can tell from your halting and embarrassed use of "baby," "bitch," and the idiom "bang it" that you are familiar with the complexity of these terms, and their embeddedness within the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy as problematized by bell hooks in "Sexism and Misogyny: Who Takes the Rap?" You obviously feel a need to hide your sensitive true self in order to be attractive to women. Do you think no one will love you if they know you stay at home every night knitting and reading Shulamith Firestone? I mean, Firestone is, admittedly, problematic, but you should be open about your radical feminist sympathies! This can only help you! (And while we're on the subject, how do you read "The Women's Rights Movement in the U.S." in light of emergent third wave feminisms? That first graf has some crazy resonances with our contemporary situation, right?).
What I'm saying, Tumari9000, is that you shouldn't ignore your romantic and compassionate instincts. Calling strangers in the middle of the night may not be the best strategy, but one day soon you will meet someone who appreciates your shy smile, honey whole wheat french toast recipe and stunning collection of Bea Arthur memorabilia. That someone, I'm afraid, just isn't me.
In sisterhood,
Lizzie Pogo
P.S. What do you think of the new Tanya Donnelly record? Yeah, it makes me miss Throwing Muses, too, but this is good in the meantime, wouldn't you say?
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Tell me we're not better off
I went to the MSP last weekend and bought/inherited some records. Pairing Pussy Whipped and Bona Drag was revelatory and satisfying and suddenly obvious--like eating bananas and chocolate together for the first time. You can decide which one is the banana.
~OMD, Architecture and Morality
~Malaria! compilation, 1981-1984
~The A-Lines, You Can Touch
~Bikini Kill, Pussy Whipped
~Morrissey, Bona Drag
~Tender Trap, Film Molecules
~Mutant Pop compilation [PVC]
~Today's Top Girl Groups Vol. 1 [Spinout]
~The Mo-dettes, The Story So Far
~Patti Smith, Radio Ethiopia
~Les Rita Mitsouko, "C'est Comme Ca" b/w "Stupid Anyway"
~XTC, "Life Begins at the Hop" b/w "Homo Safari"
~OMD, Architecture and Morality
~Malaria! compilation, 1981-1984
~The A-Lines, You Can Touch
~Bikini Kill, Pussy Whipped
~Morrissey, Bona Drag
~Tender Trap, Film Molecules
~Mutant Pop compilation [PVC]
~Today's Top Girl Groups Vol. 1 [Spinout]
~The Mo-dettes, The Story So Far
~Patti Smith, Radio Ethiopia
~Les Rita Mitsouko, "C'est Comme Ca" b/w "Stupid Anyway"
~XTC, "Life Begins at the Hop" b/w "Homo Safari"
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Anatomy of a pop song - or - When Jonathan Demme thinks like a riot grrrl
Most mainstream films and music videos don't do a very good job of demystifying the artistic process. Kidman-as-Woolf, Winslet-as-Murdoch and Paltrow-as-Plath brood attractively behind their writing desks, and Hayek-as-Kahlo glowers behind her faux unibrow, but nowhere do you get a fog-free tour of the thoroughly unglamorous business that is sitting in one place for six hours and making a painting, or a poem, or a song. This is partly a matter of aesthetics (Hayek throwing tantrums is more filmable than Hayek staring at a canvas) and partly a result of a cultural tendency to mythologize and deify artists.
Jonathan Demme's 1985 video for "The Perfect Kiss," New Order's nine-minute Ian Curtis eulogy, didn't buy in. It's fiercely, radically populist simply by virtue of being so instructional--like the new wave video equivalent of the Free to Fight LP, or Bikini Kill #2. There is no mystery here, no distance between art and artist and audience, no capitulation to the myth of the inscrutable genius pop band--just fingers on keys, hands on knobs, guitar picks in mouths.
There's also something distinctly RG about Demme's agenda. "Look, boys and grrrls," his camera says. "You can do this, too. There is nothing superhuman about these people. Yes, they are New Order, but they are also just some blokes and a lady making music in a room. That's all you need--a room, an idea, and some stuff to make it with. See this riff Peter Hook's playing here? He's barely using more than one string. And this other keyboard part over here? It's just three notes. Hear that rad explosion/croaking frog sound? You can make it with some synth drums/a special setting on yr Casio. You and yr friends can all play lots of different instruments and bang on cowbells in between verses. You can do this."
Cf. this scene from Gus Van Sant's Last Days, in which Mikey Pitt as Un-Kurt Not-Cobain improvises a song. He crawls around, turning on amps; he plays some guitar parts, loops them, screams into a microphone, loops that, then plays a second guitar part and finally a drum kit. A song blooms in front of our eyes and ears, and if it's not exactly "Be My Baby" (OR "Teen Age Riot"), it's okay, because the beauty is in the transparency of the performance process, not the final product.
Jonathan Demme's 1985 video for "The Perfect Kiss," New Order's nine-minute Ian Curtis eulogy, didn't buy in. It's fiercely, radically populist simply by virtue of being so instructional--like the new wave video equivalent of the Free to Fight LP, or Bikini Kill #2. There is no mystery here, no distance between art and artist and audience, no capitulation to the myth of the inscrutable genius pop band--just fingers on keys, hands on knobs, guitar picks in mouths.
There's also something distinctly RG about Demme's agenda. "Look, boys and grrrls," his camera says. "You can do this, too. There is nothing superhuman about these people. Yes, they are New Order, but they are also just some blokes and a lady making music in a room. That's all you need--a room, an idea, and some stuff to make it with. See this riff Peter Hook's playing here? He's barely using more than one string. And this other keyboard part over here? It's just three notes. Hear that rad explosion/croaking frog sound? You can make it with some synth drums/a special setting on yr Casio. You and yr friends can all play lots of different instruments and bang on cowbells in between verses. You can do this."
Cf. this scene from Gus Van Sant's Last Days, in which Mikey Pitt as Un-Kurt Not-Cobain improvises a song. He crawls around, turning on amps; he plays some guitar parts, loops them, screams into a microphone, loops that, then plays a second guitar part and finally a drum kit. A song blooms in front of our eyes and ears, and if it's not exactly "Be My Baby" (OR "Teen Age Riot"), it's okay, because the beauty is in the transparency of the performance process, not the final product.
Monday, October 09, 2006
Monk rock
The new White Magic record is coming. It's called Dat Rosa Mel Apibus, which means The rose gives honey to the bees in Latin, and if the curiously monastic Drag City site photo is any indication, it may amplify Through the Sun Door's droney, riot-in-the-refectory dirge-jams. Mira Billotte harbors skills both vocal (Quix*o*tic) and actorly (she starred to fingernail-biting effect in Jem Cohen's 16mm anti-corporate marvel Chain) and guarantees a listen worth yr while.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
From the desk of Mr. Lizzie
Virtual post-its for yr brain.
Planningtorock
Janine Rostron does sound like Robert Plant, but on "Think That Thought" you also get echoes of Janis Joplin and Rasputina. Rostron wields one of the most stunningly androgynous vocal presences of '06, matching Antony, Jeff Hanson, and Thom Yorke on Eraser.
Girl Monster
Chicks on Speed genius-bricoleuse Alex Murray-Leslie's 3-CD girlpunk compilation to end all compilations is set to explode stateside October 31st. The zine-style liner notes are readable online and feature amazing essays by scene vets/writers Lucy O'Brien, Jason Gross and Shirley O'Loughlin.
Moe Tucker
She revolutionized drumming by opting for mallets instead of sticks, minimizing rolls and ignoring cymbals altogether, clearing the way for punk and hard rock. So why did she have to work at Wal-Mart to support her family in the mid-90s? "Someone who walks into a record store doesn’t think of me. But if they saw that poster, they might buy the record. You might check the Stones or you might check Dylan, but you don’t check Moe Tucker."
Capitol of Punk
Allison Wolfe! Ian MacKaye! Ian Svenonius! Former Mayor Marion Barry talking about a strip club! Exploiting Google Maps to structure a documentary film about DC punk history and gentrification! "I don't even think they had an oven. Everything they cooked was in the microwave."
Warped Reality Mag
Quality music crit, mp3s, and interviews. Really great interview with the Raincoats from 1994, just after Kurt Cobain's death axed their scheduled comeback tour opening for Nirvana.
Planningtorock
Janine Rostron does sound like Robert Plant, but on "Think That Thought" you also get echoes of Janis Joplin and Rasputina. Rostron wields one of the most stunningly androgynous vocal presences of '06, matching Antony, Jeff Hanson, and Thom Yorke on Eraser.
Girl Monster
Chicks on Speed genius-bricoleuse Alex Murray-Leslie's 3-CD girlpunk compilation to end all compilations is set to explode stateside October 31st. The zine-style liner notes are readable online and feature amazing essays by scene vets/writers Lucy O'Brien, Jason Gross and Shirley O'Loughlin.
Moe Tucker
She revolutionized drumming by opting for mallets instead of sticks, minimizing rolls and ignoring cymbals altogether, clearing the way for punk and hard rock. So why did she have to work at Wal-Mart to support her family in the mid-90s? "Someone who walks into a record store doesn’t think of me. But if they saw that poster, they might buy the record. You might check the Stones or you might check Dylan, but you don’t check Moe Tucker."
Capitol of Punk
Allison Wolfe! Ian MacKaye! Ian Svenonius! Former Mayor Marion Barry talking about a strip club! Exploiting Google Maps to structure a documentary film about DC punk history and gentrification! "I don't even think they had an oven. Everything they cooked was in the microwave."
Warped Reality Mag
Quality music crit, mp3s, and interviews. Really great interview with the Raincoats from 1994, just after Kurt Cobain's death axed their scheduled comeback tour opening for Nirvana.
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