Furtanic's Fantastical Vision

the switch in time that saved nine

2011-12-05T12:58:00.000-08:00

Well, no, this isn't about the supreme court or court-packing.

it's fascinating to watch this clip and think that at this point ian curtis had died less than a year before, this was new order's first US tour & first time in NYC, they would make Power, Corruption & Lies (and Blue Monday) about a year after this. How rarely you get to see things in transition such as this. Such awkwardness as well. Possibly the worst charisma to success ratio ever.

Lester Bangs Speaks

2011-11-08T09:29:00.001-08:00

Didn't know stuff like this existed. Fascinating:

And he let's it blurt:

DAC in prison

2011-10-30T16:20:00.001-07:00

There's a joke in here. I'm not sure what it is or who it is on, but there's one there. I'll ruminate on it and get back to you.

ten Can tracks, in no particular order

2011-10-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

Father Cannot Yell

From their first album "Monster Movie." In general I find this period of Can kind of bring and listening to Malcolm Mooney's quasi-"deep" gibberish is annoying and I find distracting. Especially on the album closer epic Yoo Doo Right. It also probably reveals Can's biggest weakness, repeated on later albums, (and probably symptomatic of the times and place they existed) that when they try and get "out" and "avant-garde" it comes off awkward and silly. I'm thinking of Aumgn on Peking O on "Tago Mago." I know on of'em "studied with Stockhausen" but if your strength is groving, grove.

All that said, I think this track rocks and is the most successful on "Monster Movie."

Mother Sky

Early Damo grooving.

She Brings the Rain

Not to say I hate all Malcolm Mooney's vocals. I can see people disliking this for begin a jazzy, beat nonsense jam from un-groovy Germans. That's probably fair criticism, but I've always found track to be pleasantly transcendent of its awkwardness.

Both of these tracks are from the "Soundtracks" and one of the movies that they're soundtracking is this one: http://youtu.be/9lqnJwowNg0 Deadlock. "Wo ist das Geld?" indeed! I really want to find this movie now. It looks like a great mash-up of quasi-philosophical exploitation spaghetti western-ish gangster movie tropes (in the vain of The Shooting). Ahhhhhh, the 60's! (i could see this leading my back down that rabbit hole of exploitation film nirvana).

Oh Yeah

Halleluwah

Both of these are from "Tago Mago" which highlights both the best of Can (the first 4 tracks) and the worst of Can (the last 3) which nicely divides between the two discs of this double LP. Oh Yeah is probably the easiest to get into and the grooviest. I actually prefer Halleluwah. And somehow I find the 18 minute version *less boring* than the remixed 5 minute version on "Cannibalism". You'd think this be'd the inverse, addition by subtraction, but the trance like long version works better for me. Neither of these benefit from too-focused listening, one probably needs to let it wash over and not focus to much for them to work. (Kind of weird to recommend that something is better when *not listening* to it, but fuck it, I'm sticking with it.)

Also new to me (the joy and pleasure of discovery, oh so sweet.):

Turtles Have Short Legs

a "pop" track from the same period as "Tago Mago." Similar if not same groove as Halleluwah! Fantastisch!

Spoon

Vitamin C

The blather of Tago Mago is refined down to a fine edge on Ege Bamyasi. This was my first Can album and has a special place in my heart. I think these two tracks sort of highlight why mid 00's folks jumped all over Can. Eminently dj-able, dance-able, and decidedly weird and exotic.

Also a fantastic live version of Spoon.

what a jump suit. what a bass playing style. Only Karoli looks like an annoying rock-n-roller cool guy. Everyone else are obviously FREAKS.

Spray

From Future Days. I like this album, but it's kind of a mix of the She Brings the Rain jazziness with the groove of Tago Mago & Ege Bamyasi. I could see the "boring" tag fit fine on this one. WEEEEEEEELLLL THHEEEEEENNNN I'll just move along.

Stuff after that, well. I like Soon Over Babaluma, but it definitely drifts towards the more proggy boring side of things. For folks who already drank the Kool-Aid. I've never heard Saw Delight or Flow Motion (so can't speak on them) but there are a couple more non-boring tracks to feature:

I Want More

Can does disco pop and scores! I love this song. Maybe another one to wait until you've drank the Kool-Aid but I just love that this was their most commercially successful single and album (flow motion).

Cool youtube clips:
I'm Too Liese

Paperhouse (from Tago Mago) on live German TV:

Um, that's what I got. ENJOY.

john cale explains it all

2011-10-13T23:05:00.000-07:00

fascinating stuff.

slip sliding in the arizona heat.

2011-08-16T13:49:00.000-07:00

I'm currently spending the week in Phoenix and found a used copy of Meat Puppets II on CD at Zia record exchange (in fact there were several used copies of several of the Meat Puppets albums for sale.) It seemed to be the perfect soundtrack for lazy days driving around in the +100 degree heat going from strip mall to strip mall, air-conditioned refuge to air-conditioned refuge. Perhaps great things are a foot in Phoenix, but I can't see how it'd be. Besides the heat there is so many things that are oppressive about the city. The car dominated landscape wide and straight roads gridding out the whole metropolitan area cut through by constantly busy massive freeways. The half empty city blocks, even in the "reviving" downtown area, where half of the blocks are either empty lots or empty buildings. The constant xenophobic paranoia against almost half the population that literally build the mortgage backed sprawl, ever growing and desert consuming.

Two of the big topics of debate in the mayorial debate held last night were how to prevent blight from un-maintained forclosed-upon homes and (non-existent) gang violence (read hispanic youth).

Oh well. What better to do than chill out, take it all in an listen to some psychadelic zztop-influenced post-hardcore american punk rock?

dada in the year now

2011-08-03T21:40:00.000-07:00

In becoming a committed rock and roll fan, and realizing it ain't going anywhere, you gain the benefit of taking the long view of rock'n'roll history. You can continue mining the same 50 years or so of music you keep discovering random gems. Within the mass of music already made, new things slowly come out that were not appreciated before. Things previously seen only in passing or in the background come to the forefront. Old bands you thought you knew reveal sides that you never appreciated or thought you'd hate.

Another thing I've learned, is always bet on an artist you trust, even, or especially as they move into later albums and intentionally change their music. Think the Rolling Stones "Some Girls," late Byrds' records, Lou Reed's "Blue Mask", Captain Beefheart's last record. Often not crackling with the energy of having to show off one's new idea of rock-n-roll, but always interesting and often a slow burn take on one's place in the world.

That's all a pitch for me discovering Pere Ubu's "Cloudland." Good record.

That is also to say, you should embrace the freedom of not having to track down the latest or coolest teenagers

Happiness.

2011-03-20T14:47:00.001-07:00

This makes me very happy. I can spend hours perusing this website.

Peeron.com

The Units Suck EP

2011-02-03T20:34:00.000-08:00

For the true fans, the flame tenders, the basement of west-enders, on the tenth anniversary of its release, I give you a digitized version of the Units first tape.

On the A side are 8 tracks recorded in the practice room of Lerner Hall (or the basement of 47 Claremont - I can't remember). On side B is the live recording from the basement of West End. I believe it is our third show ever.

Unfortunately I do not have an actual copy of the tape w/ a sleeve and can't remember all the song titles. (if you do, please scan a copy of it and/or correct my song titles) The cover itself was a work of art. Hand made sleeves. For those w/ the original cassette, do not fear - the secret track remains a secret.

The Units Suck EP

German-ness on the TUUUbe

2010-12-18T01:42:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the 'tube surprises you.

Sometimes you surprise the 'tube.

Time to go to Church

2010-09-21T08:17:00.000-07:00

Gonna try and revamp the Vision. As time permits.

TRansCendental

2010-04-25T23:49:00.000-07:00

http://twitter.com/david_lynch

RIP

2010-02-23T23:53:00.000-08:00

[blank] reggae

2009-12-03T23:53:00.000-08:00

Most Compelling in Rock'n'Roll or otherwise?

2009-11-01T19:47:00.000-08:00

On AWK's youtube channel there's tons of these. www.youtube.com/user/andrewwk

On a related note. Has anyone heard the solo piano record on ecstatic peace?

Nostalgia

2009-10-08T23:03:00.001-07:00

A little '02-'03 Kim's Nostalgia. Perhaps the best 15 minutes of film. EVER.

(the last five minutes of this one & the whole second one).

Confusion.

2009-07-08T16:21:00.001-07:00

Dave, rein it in buddy...

2009-06-09T14:40:00.000-07:00

This article makes me barf a little in my mouth.

"Two years ago he won over critics and bloggers with “Rise Above,” a song-by-song reworking of Black Flag’s “Damaged,” the bilious punk classic, which broke down the emotional and musical rigidity of the original with razor-sharp harmonies and sinuous West African-influenced guitar lines."

"Even in a practice with Mr. Byrne, he seemed perfectly comfortable as boss and musical director, telling the women at one point to make their harmonies more “Slavic.”"

"“The music I’m making is not terribly easy to apprehend,” he said. “The people I really admire, like William Blake and John Coltrane and Richard Wagner, had these ridiculously full universes that took their entire lives to describe."

"“When I would go over to friends’ houses, and they would be zoning out to Mario Brothers, I just found it the most distasteful thing,” he said."

"For the lyrics to “Stillness Is the Move” Mr. Longstreth had Ms. Coffman watch the Wim Wenders film “Wings of Desire” and write down lines of dialogue that intrigued her; other lyrics were drawn from an Excel spreadsheet of hundreds of pop clichés."

I'm changing my look.

2009-06-03T15:36:00.000-07:00

and practicing my sax more.

just stuff.

2009-05-28T23:19:00.001-07:00

If I wanted to make a music video I would use this one as my inspiration.

RIP

2009-05-25T11:41:00.000-07:00

How do you do something for so long and then stop?
When is enough enough?

USAISAMONSTER performed one of the greatest shows I have ever experienced. Not all their shows were cataclysmic, but the few that were, damn. I kept going to their shows to have another experience like that, and there were always glimpses, or to at least be reminded of that moment when it all came together so well. The me that was at that show doesn't exist anymore, neither do the USAISAMONSTER.

Bummer.

if only i had this video when i was a kid

2009-04-28T22:44:00.001-07:00

ahhhh Texas. What an interesting place.

2009-04-10T18:54:00.000-07:00

I really like Manny Ramirez

2009-03-06T16:44:00.000-08:00

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=3958555

oh, and more about world music too...

2008-12-13T22:59:00.000-08:00

Like a 70's German Sun City Girls, Embryo jammed around the world in a van to dig the unheard in the west world music vibes and get down w/ them. Adding and learning and collaborating w/em on the way.

and so also was birthed a documentary, that from which all three of these clips come. It's called Vagabunden Karawane and it was directed by Werner Penzel (of who I had never heard of before but looks interesting.) There can be more said about Western musicians going to the non-West and doing their thing and how that communication/appropriation/exploitation/cooperation works, but for now I'll say that these three clips look pretty cool.

Not Embryo, but also interesting. maybe latter i'll talk about kraftwerk -> neu -> la dusseldorf/harmonia <- cluster

I've been casually thinking about New Age music lately?

2008-12-01T12:35:00.001-08:00

Oh Really? Yeah. How many name-dropped krautrockers went on to new age-y careers? Popol Vuh? Ash Ra Tempel? & new to me (as above) - Deuter?

What does that have to do w/ Vangelis? I'm not sure, but I love this video. For a video for a song from a movie about athletics, Vangelis is chilling w/ a grand piano - Smoking & Drinking & looking generally unfit. He can barely take a break from smoking his cigarrete to play his pap.

First pass similarities? Ala krauters, and others), Vangelis is a post-prog rocker (via Aphrodite's Child) turned new age mystic musician.

And maybe in the end new age music isn't All Bad? At least the visuals are sometimes good. Is it not possible (a la some fusion (though I've never bought into it re:fusion) or even I don't know, some Mainstream Pop) that the Sound result is divergent from the Sound agenda?

In the end, also, what is Popol Vuh, if not, essentially, and actually, equivalent to Vangelis? Or if Can is not, essentially, and even actually, equivalent to King Crimson? (in many ways if not clearly NOT ALL) Tangerine Dream and whatever?

Does this diminish Popol Vuh, Klaus Schulze, Cluster? or lift up (unknown to me) new agey 70's musics?

(don't even get me started on the Ash Ra -> techno -> futuristic mysticism apparent in many dance musics lineage. or is this what punk/rock is totally reacting too? overt & also implicit mysticism w/r/t music? misplaced mysticism either outside or inside aspects of music making/listening?)

a new genre in collector-dom?

2008-11-30T21:09:00.000-08:00

A few years ago a friend of mine who frequented a closed password protected punk record collector board (why?) told me about the phenomena of people posting pictures of their rare records. Granted, why have rare records if yr not gonna show'em off, right? She then tried to get me to do the same on a email list we both frequented. (no i didn't do it)

And then the other day I was looking up jandek on youtube and found these videos. maybe it says something about me, but i found these very watchable. Of note 1) this dude is from Maine 2) his looks (and tattoo) make him look like a recovering punk rocker, how'd he become Big Deal jandek collector now? There's a part where he shows off his wall of Jandek correspondence but doesn't want the camera to disclose the contents of the letters. What could be personal in a Jandek correspondence, is this DEAR JANDEK time?

D) its seems like it's his GF doing the filming who also made him the Jandek cake and also gave him a Jandek related stuffed animal present. V) why does he have records framed and put up on the wall? who does that?

and most importantly WHAT HAPPENED TO PART 4?

2008-11-23T17:38:00.001-08:00

two faces of the coin:

Fahey Folk Fuckin'

2008-11-21T19:14:00.000-08:00

Something that I haven't gotten into before, but now is opening my cranium to the light of truth = John Fahey, and in a farther extension, folk,blues,americana. This is not something that a music snob college rock'n'roller would listen to in 2000 (at least I didn't). This is moving into the realm of record store nerd, record collector delving that the last 5 years has seen move into the mainstream of (or periphery of) hipster parlance & paraphernalia. or perhaps I have moved more into the periphery or more into the realm of record collector nerds & snobs.

Oh, Well, it don't matter. Point is, this is what I've been exploring lately. Not just Fahey, but the whole sort of (for lack of a better classification) Sun City Girls realm. Fahey, obscure Americana, Sublime Frequencies, Mississippi records, non-"world music" world musics.

Is it weird that Mississippi records also release Animals + Men & Clean represses? I SAY NO. This the realm of what is good therefore true (actually inverse) that is obscured by a lot of what gets talked about in music. This isn't crate-digging (well, it is) but the criteria is not obscurity (well not the only one) but closer to what is not heard, and what can be heard/made/expressed, in what the LCD of music, even hipster music HAPPENS. If a cultural signifier of anything (I do not pretend that it is decloaked of distracting who does it & why we do it & what that says about us & what that says were trying to say about ourselves) but at least it is more honest about that (or was Madonnnnnna the honest one about that, or SY? I always forget.)

Not to belabor the point, but Ravi... but Fahey & Raga & Ravi, that's one thing to listen for no?

There's a lot of problems with that too (yeah for closer to 20/20 hindsight!)

2008-10-18T13:04:00.000-07:00

Wait wait there's SUICIDE live footage?!?!?!?!

Wait wait wait BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN covers SUICIDE?!?!?!?!?!?!

Dylan in the 70's

2008-10-01T19:10:00.000-07:00

I once claimed (I think on this page, if not somewhere else on the internet) that the 70's were the best decade for rock'n'roll, or even the best for pop music, or maybe better said I find that some of the most interesting records I own are from the 70's. That's to preface the fact that these days I'm almost exclusively listening and pursuing are records from the 70's. In particular Roxy Music, 70's Lou Reed, 70's John Cale, 70's Iggy Pop, and yes 70's Bob Dylan.

I guess write now, especially about Dylan, is how wierd it is. Why is his face painted white? Why is Mick Ronson part of the Rolling Thunder Revue? I'm sure there are people with perfectly constructed arguements about why Dylan was doing this and what it all means, but the fact of the matter is that Renaldo and Clara was a 4 hour movie that everybody wanted to see but no one liked what they saw. The success, both culturally and artistically and politically and commercially, of the 60's was not only a surprise to the squares, but also to the rock musicians who rode it on the top. They didn't know why suddenly Bob Dylan was selling millions of records. They were also under the gun to keep it up. And all that unknown bought them a lot of FREEDOM.

So they make some weird shit that some people dig, but given the time, most people don't remember and it's all washed over the boards w/ the ultimate art rock success of punk.

More on this later.

tom ze, caetano veloso

2008-05-30T15:26:00.000-07:00

oh brazil! oh tropicalia!

tom ze, dor e dor....

The babelfished lyrics>>>> enJOY!

You I want I want you wanting I want well I want I want you wanting I want well. Chiclete chiclete, I chew pain and pain clete chiclete, I chew pain and pain. You I cry I cry you, chuvinha chuviscou. I cry I cry you, chuvinha chuviscou. Chamego chamego, me left it leaves me. Mego chamego, me left it leaves me. Pain pain, pain pain … …… But wait I you because the shout of your eyes it is more long that the arm of the forest e appears behind of mounts, the winds e of the buildings e the brightness of your laugh it is more hot that the sun of the noon e more and more and oh oh oh oh oh But wait I you in the door of the mornings because the shout of your eyes it is more and more and more e later that you left the honey of the life apodreceu in my mouth apodreceu in my mouth Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

and Canterbury silliness w/ Gong

and Soft Machine

and more to say on this LATER.

The world opens like a flower.

2008-05-30T13:07:00.000-07:00

Maybe YOU, The HIP cat that you are, are already down w/ this.

I was not. Now I AM.

loathe to get off of 69, onward to 489

2008-05-27T15:30:00.000-07:00

It's an ol' chestnut, but seemingly, in my case, kinda true, that the older I get the more similar to my dad I become. No, that doesn't mean I've started playing golf or voting republican, but it does mean that I've come to appreciate two things that used to cause me to cringe: Meatloaf and Bob Seger.

Really, I can thank Dan J for the Meatloaf love more than my dad, and in particular the drive up through Marin to Pete & Nancy's wedding when we jammed BOoH II. How often does it take one moment, one listening session to open the doors of perception to hear and appreciate a band? Once that threshold is crossed the rest, what previously seemed impenetrable or just not interesting, folds out like a clear map of what is good & bad. And having said that, I don't know what about the Loaf that was the trigger. How does one come to like music? Any external description of the facts or of the elements of the music or the history in which it falls is insufficient. None of that can create the feeling of or the realization that YES, I LIKE THIS. They can lead the way, writing can create the context in which one hears the music, and give the vocabulary to talk about it, but it can't BE the music. Or better said, they can't BE YOUR EXPERIENCE OF THE MUSIC. (I think this distinction is important - experience of v. the thing itself.) Everything else is external to that.

All that said, I should be clear that I am not saying that what is not the music (ie the sound & silence in time) is not part & parcel (or in fact *part* of the music, in the sense that, the not sound *is* just as much of it as the actual sound is). Why is context so important to appreciation? Why was it the fiftieth time and not the fifth time that I heard Meatloaf that my ears/mind was opened? What changed between/during that at one point I would have said 'meh' and the point when I would say 'rock'?

But as per the usual I've digressed. Meatloaf's BOoH is great. BOoH II has some super jams. and more to the point the Bob Seger System's '2+2=?' is the sweetest new-to-me heavy psych jam I've heard in a while. You don't believe me? Check it out...

So no, I'm not into the Silver Bullet Band Seger like my dad. No 'Ol' Time Rock and Roll' or 'Like a Rock' for me just yet. 2+2=? is late 60's Detroit Seger w/ the Bob Seger System. Much loved by Lester Bangs in his Creem years, it's said that the Seger System could really bring it. On top of that 2+2=? is an anti-war song ala 'Fortunate Son' (I think the CCR/Fogerty & BSS/Seger similarities are telling).

And one more heavy psych rock youtube tidbit...

next up GOLF!

Kim & Dawn. Fucked'em Both.

2008-05-13T15:05:00.000-07:00

Still my favorite Youtube clip evvvvvvveeeeerrrrrr...

does 'girl's on my mind' exist in recorded format somewhere? It was on some tape I made from my brother's cds back in the day, and was included as a hidden track on one of the Teenbeat samplers, but what I'm asking is Can I get some prime Butch Willis & the Rocks on VINYL somehow? PLEASE?

a good interview w/ the man himself

Old Tom Clark

2008-05-12T14:18:00.001-07:00

Ah the random walk of passed down histories and anecdotes with their related connections and lineages embelished with half-heard/felt recommendations and overstatements that is my ever-growing (but also ever diminishing through lost thoughts) understanding of rock'n'roll. As mentioned previously, my current life mode involves change/movement which equals parts nostalgia, remembrance and future-planning. Why did I get this? or better Who recommended it? Who was I trying to impress, who did I want to get to know better? What still holds true? For long periods the records I pursued and desired where ones mentioned by friends (with which I would compare notes --> macho bullshit collector caveats to some degree telling) or guides who's taste I trusted/envied. First my brother, through Ed & Stefan, and shared record scavenging w/ Dan or Golnar or whoever, and while at Kim's Loy. (the last couple of years this has become less my mode of listening to music, as it's become more of a solitary journey through disco & electro & the world's music & whatever - not as many of the "guess what record i just found" or "have you heard of" conversations).

Ah, Loy, talker extraordinaire, at heart a mid 90's indie/college rocker grown to be lover of Jazz & Punk & everything else. These days he does things like running a small improv/noise label and being a DJ on WFMU as well as being a father & lawyer (i think; i'm not good at keeping in touch). In my post college NYC-Kim's days, he worked part-time in the music department and we shared DJ sets at the Ding Dong Lounge. While we djed (on Thursday nights to an audience of four or five TOPS) he loved to sing along to Pere Ubu's Navvy ("I've got these arms & legs that flip flop flip flop") and expound on the greatness of the John Coltrane Quartet ("best band ever"), Joni Mitchell, the first Hawkwind record, etc all the while getting plastered on free drinks & talking out of his ass half the time. Music Snob/Elitist in the good way and very GOOD GUY.

One of the records he would play, and which I've looked for (on vinyl) since, was Mayo Thompson's "Corky's Debt to His Father." A solo record recorded after Mayo (temporarily) put the Red Crayola to bed in the 60's. It's always pitched as a skewed 'pop' record, but it's really not that far from the second Red Crayola record on International Artists - the songs are a little more composed and expanded, but it's not like the difference btw Bowie "Low" and "Young Americans" or Whatever. This has been available on CD (and in limited quantities on Lp) from Drag City for a while - probably since RC (now RK) reformed for the third time w/ Chicago post-rockers. I never bought the CD, considered it many times, but waited for vinyl. Obviously not the original Texas Revolution pressing, and luck for me (and $20 in the till for them) Drag City recently decided to repress it. (egging me on was a drag city 7" of 'old tom clark' from the same group of folks - also og on Texas Revolution, a quirky country great).

The song that Loy loved the most was "Horses," a lopping song w/ a quasi bossanova-ish beat & mayo's wandering warble over the top and some sweet simple acoustic guitar hooks. Loy playing it while Djing, blissfully singing along, was a beautiful thing that kept me looking for the record since.

Three years on, and me not having heard it since, the song still rings true to my ear.

"In my heart..."

PostScript: Did you know that George Hurley drummed on a couple v3 Red Krayola records? GREAT!

a good interview w/ Mayo
another one on Unterberger's site

the lost continent of MU

2008-05-06T13:03:00.000-07:00

An unintended side benefit of my, as of yet not really started, record purge/ship/just-an-excuse-to-look-at-all-my-records-individually is that I've found some hidden gems in my own record collection. Which is a little ludicrous, I should know the records in my own collection, but this is a consequence of periods of buying more records than I could consume, mostly listening to exclusively new additions, and my own evolving tastes. OH WELL. (though obv. this makes it harder to get rid of records, because, what if, you know in 3-5 yrs I'll really like that USA-Europe Connection Lp or that Clikitat Ikatowi live Lp on Gravity even though right now my reflection on these lp's is that I bought them after a certain vein or push had already run dry.)

First up for rediscovery - MU's self-titled first album. The story on MU is definitely out there, and I had heard of them from Unterberger's Unknown Legends(once saw him at Amoeba - it kinda freaked me out), the lead dude Merrel Frankhauser following the (one?) CA rock trajectory going from early surfy/garage rock (the Impacts) to byrdsy folk rock (Fapardokly) to psychadelic folk/country rock (HMS Bounty) to bluesy space rock (MU) to a move to Maui embracing a new agey cosmos vibe; all of this w/o any real commercial success. Granted, other than MU's first album, I haven't heard any of these bands/records, so your guess is as good as mine at their quality, though several of them have been rereleased by Sundazed (a good sign).

The first incarnation of MU includes Jeff Cotton on guitar, otherwise known as a member of v2 Cpt. Beefheart bands (post Safe as Milk through Trout Mask - I think...), and he also throws in some bass clarinet.

When I first bought the MU album three, maybe four, years ago I liked first song on the first side "Ain't No Blues" - which despite it's title, Is a blues riffer in a maybe more soulful CA heavy rock sort of way w/ weird proggy digressions, and then I had trouble w/ the rest of the album. Mostly with the songs on the first side that follow "Ain't No Blues." It wasn't wierd enough, or maybe too CA trippy fey in a way that I DID NOT DIG. Golnar was also digging through the Unterberger book around the same time, and I remember making her a mixtape around then that had "ain't no blues" as well as some CAN on it, that sort of fell flat. In a way that I didn't have a grasp of the songs so they just sounded lame when ripped out and placed on a mixtape, where they sounded like the HITS of their respective albums (the CAN sounded boring - a reasonable complaint, and the MU kinda weak and jokey (my POV not theirs) in a way that didn't click into the groove). I suspect I may have focused most of my listening on the first side and only given the 2nd side a couple of cursory listens - filing the Lp away as a footnote on how to trust rock critics ONLY SO FAR.

NOT SO FAST THOUGH, last week I was going through my record collection pulling lp's that were on the fence to keep (fewer than I'd hoped) and pulled the MU lp thinking "if i only kinda liked one song on this record, why should I keep it? for archival sake?" but threw it on the turntable anyway this time STARTING W/ THE SECOND SIDE. And WTF, the first track on the second side is a cosmic jammer. It opens normally enough and then transforms into a cosmic drum track w/ chanting & droney sax (or maybe bass clarinet) & blissed out greatness. The KEY to the LOCK of MU had been found and the rest of the album opened up like a book to my, now, more open ear. I'm sure my recent journeys through jazzy & folky krautrock have only helped in my appreciation of MU, where before it just didn't make sense and I wasn't into it.

Now the question is what if the same thing will happen in the future w/ Cromtech's Gravity 12"? How can I get rid of anything? DAMN.

I tried to find some links to this period MU w/o success. Though I did find this --> FUCK THE DEAD AND ANN COULTER.

addendum...

GREAT!

2008-03-27T12:35:00.000-07:00

Youtube Greatness.

see Twin Peaks & Cookie Monster

Apology/Warning:TYPICAL BLOGGER FARE

2008-03-25T14:56:00.000-07:00

WTF?

= ???

from the upcoming G. I. JOE Movie

I can handle Sienna Miller=Baroness (though it's not perfect), I can handle Ray Park=Snake Eyes, but Joseph Gordon Levitt as Cobra Commander? That doesn't work at all.

on a Lazy Thursday...

2008-03-20T09:47:00.000-07:00

Seemingly random musings on a slow work day...

1) Sonic Youth sucks. Last night I was listening to a tape of a Space Monkey Rock show from my senior year. At one point I played a set going Knoxville Girls -> Honeymoon Killers -> Sonic Youth (death valley '69) -> Blonde Redhead. Which is fine, but is revealing of the wonky-side of my then approach to planning out my radio sets. (ie Bob Bert played drums on both K-Girls and that SY song, the lead singer/guitarist is shared between K-Girls & the H-Killers, SY and BR are forever linked.) Hearing death valley '69 is always a binary experience for me. Either I think it's the fucking rockingest song ever or (more typically) I found it extremely boring and kind-of an overwrought bullshit navel-gazing, trend-spotting, shallow song about Manson & the end of the California Love generation. And that really is my winnowed-down critique of SY; how blatant and icky is their trend-spotting, sign-waving nature. Do they have value outside of that? Do they have commitment to their thing other than keeping their place as cool-kid insider king-makers?

2) THIS reflects poorly on this band. Can you imagine a more boring hipster bands responses to these questions? Oh, yr in a hipster electronics/noise (but not really that noisy) duo who like Animal Collective and Black Dice? Oh, you like punk and to you that means Black Flag & the Stooges? Oh, you think Rough Trade is the best record stores in the UK? You called your band WHAT? And what about these make you interesting AT ALL?

Begging the question, how often do bands shoot themselves in the foot w/ these sort of things. I was somewhat interested in hearing what Fuck Buttons sounded like before reading their 'guest list', now not-so-much. To see an even worse example: VW's Rostam's Guest List (and yes, I still read pitchfork regularly.)

3) from the Other Music description of the Crystal Stilts
"... With primitive girl group stand-up drums and reverb-heavy and melodic surf/rockabilly-soaked guitar lines, the four songs on the EP are the perfect amalgam of the pop immediacy of C86/Flying Nun and a DIY take on the spacious '60s sounds of Spector and Nitzsche."

I like this band but um... wouldn't the one phrase encapsulation = They sound like early Jesus and Mary Chain.

Why moving to Pittsburgh won't be that bad.

2008-03-19T14:31:00.000-07:00

ANTHROCON! ANTHROCON!

which is not about this.

but this.

random Elect

2008-03-17T13:48:00.000-07:00

The last two times I have seen my brother, to whom I almost exclusively owe the direction of my worldview/taste compass, he has mentioned the American author Richard Yates. During his lifetime he had moderate success and acclaim (mostly among fellow authors), reaching an early peak with his debut novel Revolutionary Road. Interest in Yates has recently(-ish) been revived and lots of his books and a collection of stories are now in print. A revival causing and/or caused by a Leonardo Dicaprio & Kate Winslet film of RR. (interesting aside/biographical note: for a period of time my brother almost exclusively recommended novels that were being made into movies Fight Club, The Beach, The Talented Mr. Ripley, which I thought at the time was both cool and appropriate - and moderately led to my own interests in genre fiction.) Where and how my brother got into Yates or how interest in Yates became revived is unknown to me, but more importantly it led me to borrow and read RR from my brother a week ago.

While most synopses of RR say it's a book about an idealistic couple being consumed & destroyed by the suburban conformity & dreariness (a reading even Yates approves - though he focuses on only one half of the couple), I read less an indictment of suburbia than an indictment of those who presume to be excepted from the undertow of conformity, taking a critical but uncommitted viewpoints of the drones and squares around them. An indictment of a strain of American intellectualism & liberalism & cosmopolitan exceptionalsim that is all smoke and little fire. A deep sense of exceptionalism that is as or more deluded than the content republican-voting anti-intellectual reactionary suburban "conformity." Though part of the problem with talking about this book is the still ever present squares v. non-squares sort of dialogue in the American culture realm. What would it mean if squares, you know, don't actually exist?

Other quick follow-ups:

I've continued to think about comic book continuity and still marvel at the fact that it's foregrounded so much in discussions about comics and yet has very little to do with why individual comics are successful. Well, that is, I'd hope that the writing and the art have more to do with a comic's success than it's place in the canon or the multiverse. And to undercut that again, some of the best mainstream comics are ones that are all too aware of the role in the multiverse and are able to do interesting things with it. Though arguably the enjoyment of the original Secret Wars is a different thing than that of the Watchmen or Swamp Thing or Y:the Last Man (though all of those rely on connections and deviations from the history of SuperHero comics for their critical power) and it'd be interesting to parse that out. ANYWAY - what I wanted to draw a comparison to was the way continuity works in other genres, namely science writing. Where in comic books continuity is sometimes foregrounded in lieu of content, in science writing content is foregrounded before continuity (and the power of each genre is derived (maybe?) more from what is hidden than what is shown). The genre limitations of both work to misdirect the way they are talked about and how they pack their truth/power content. and again that's qualified w/ a big ol' maybe? or at least it's something to think about it.

TWO: another champion of insider/outsider re: techniques for the reproduction of art and a revived interest in painting that YOU can do, John Kilduff. How much do I love Let's Paint, Mix Drinks, & Excercise? A LOT.

Side note thanks to wikipedia: Larry David once dated Richard Yates daughter. Wierd.

Art: For the PEOPLE

2008-03-13T11:27:00.000-07:00

now crowned as another champion among all, Steve Keene.

Over the weekend I picked up some more SK paintings from his studio (it's open for selling paintings every Sunday in Brooklyn, most paintings are $2). Two as gifts (a version of the Bowie's Heros and a cutout Banana) and one for myself (my civil war). I also have a couple other's buried in my brother's house and one other (my first) that my brother gave to me when I was in high school. This is not to say 'look at me', but well, as SK sez for himself:

“I want buying my paintings to be like buying a CD: it’s art, it’s cheap and it changes your life, but the object has no status. Musicians create something for the moment, something with no boundaries and that kind of expansiveness is what I want to come across in my work.”

Word. The dude could write a manifesto about the role of Art in life, but instead, or mostly, he just paints and sells paintings (cheap). In fact, at $2-10 his paintings are decidedly cheaper than any CD or record (although maybe not vs used tapes or thrift store vinyl), you could possibly find. SK is theory in practice. (about art production, the art market, ideas about fine art) SK is ethics in practice. (about access, how to live one's life in relationship to your work and your product, about doing) SK is good art. (versions of album covers, art history greatest hits, landmarks, historical figures, in copious copies & translations - moving something from one point to another which shows it in a different way) This is Showing, not Telling. This is not aloof exceptionalism or intellectualism or wonkiness or post-whatever play of signs/symbols/theories/revolution, this understanding (or at least actively trying/acting on) what folks like W.Benjamin would say about art & mechanical reproduction, and bringing it to the world. Sure it's still exclusive and bourgeoisie in it's audience (as in this is still the ART WORLD - not sidewalk art) but it is pushing the borders.

Also I don't think his art is about His method, that is in the way that most contemporary art does not allow for reusing approaches & techniques. I think it's completely valid and appropriate to buy your own plywood, paint & make your own paintings. Hang'em on yr wall, sell'em, make ART practice and seeing part of everyday LIFE. (see the same re: computers & music making & folk art/music etc. etc. etc.)

"No one was really into the paintings, but I was really into painting them, so if no gallery was going to show my art, then screw 'em, I'm going make people see it, just by painting so many, and making them so cheap that people have to buy it."

and a cool little video about SK

Spaziergangswissenschaft: Kirby & Lee = Pynchon & DFW (or maybe at least Eggers)?

2008-02-20T10:13:00.000-08:00

I'm sure this has been commented on, analyzed, deconstructed ad nauseum elsewhere, but is there a connection to the similarity between the penchant for comic writers to use footnotes & po-mo hip lit authors to do the same? If I had a scanner this would be the appropriate time for me to scan a representative page of DFW/IJ and of late-80's marvel comics (maybe, because I was reading it over the weekend, the W.C. Avengers?) and mark up the number of times they footnote, or refer to other works, or qualify, or are generally self-aware (and therefore self-undercutting) about the overwhelming amount of history and back-story that weighs on 1) writing a marvel comic in the 80's (in the mainstream marvel universe) and 2) a novel in the 90's. That is to say that when there is either a 400 year history of the novel or 400 issue history of the Avengers it's a lot to resolve, work with, deal with, that's either burdensome or empowering. It can lead to awkward po-mo crap (see Godland, Eggers) or greatness (see the Watchmen, some (not all) DFW). It became almost the Marvel style, as even comics not in Earth 616 (google it) like G. I. Joe (my childhood fave) were equally steeped and aware of their own history and backstory. Like over the first 100 issues of G. I. Joe there is more backstory to the Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow/Cobra Commander/Zartan/(and later fucking Firefly) epic story than there is of actual story!! (though the high period of Billy & the Circus Bear & early Cobra Island stuff = not so weighed down and more actual fucking in-the-present storytelling. - though you could talk about, parse out a 'what's the diff twix backstory & story?')

It also is a huge burden on the reader. What!?! you haven't read Avengers #12 with WonderMan's origin story about how he was a rival of Tony Stark's Stark Enterprise's, then later died, had his consciousness put into the Vision, revived as a villain, w/ his bro the grim reaper, was brought of of his coma/death, became a movie star, etc. etc. etc. ? OR You haven't read Dickens & Proust & Pynchon & Melville & pulp novels & etc. etc. etc.?

and as an extra - a crazy DFW bibliography

*Spaziergangswissenschaft means something totally unassociated - just marvelling at German's ability to make cool words for niche concepts.

Brought to you by gmail's directed advertising

2008-02-11T13:08:00.000-08:00

the future of the neighborhood (which apparently is the Prescott/Oakland Point Neighborhood - wha? I thought it was called West Oakland) I live in.

http://www.pacificcannerylofts.com/index.html

get in cheaper as a "founder" RIGHT NOW! (or is that pioneer?)

or for the masterplan... (thanks Jerry Brown)

http://www.pacificcannerylofts.com/images/central-station-large.jpg

Does anything reflect the schizophrenia of the present/future/past in West Oakland than the $.99 store sharing a building w/ the future location of the Mandela Co-op? Which one is more popular w/ the current residents of the neighborhood? the future residents?

How does the economic/housing downturn/recession effect these loft/condo plans?

All this leaves me conflicted. In-fill = good. Diversity, mixed housing = good. Urban living, better infrastructure = Good. Profiling, Rising Housing Prices, Gentrification = Bad. Ugly, non-family, commuter-friendly, gated/walled, lofts/condos = Bad. Who is going to live in these condos in ten years? twenty years? for ten years? for twenty years?

Oh well.

Sucking Blood.

2008-02-11T09:34:00.000-08:00

To keep up the trend of projecting on this band, here goes my 2 cents on Vampire Weekend. (Like an ivy league Madonna for the oughts, Vampire Weekend lets everyone play out their expectations & ideas & passions etc. From disregard, to hate, to disdain, to love & rapture, to class warfare, to whatever see here here here here here here here, & here. And maybe like any good thing, where you stand might say more about you than anything about the band, because really, is there really that much to say about VW? They're fine, their album is good (not great), they really don't seem to have any big agenda and/or deeply insightful things to say. People like to about their look, their ivy league cred, their clean sound & their open use of world music garnish (among other non-typical indie-rock touches - these guys aren't stupid (hopefully), so i imagine they are aware the borderline offensiveness of the ironic descriptor of Upper West Side Soweto - the deeper irony being that I've heard race residential/class divisions in Manhattan described being as stark as SA apartheid aka seriously kind of fucked when you look at it). The other story pitched about'em is the internet king-making hype machine which frankly is NOT-THAT-INTERESTING. They do something a little new, pretty well, and have a concise BRAND (which might be revealed as poorly developed in the future as it gets a closer look. How willing is Ezra to put the hammer down on his phish head buddies when the brand needs to be saved and/or XL starts pitching in their two cents on their newly minted possible cash cow?)

What purpose does VW serve for their fans/critics/etc? A tough question that probably has something to do with class/structure/power & I don't know if I want to venture there (ask This Blog if you really need to know).

But what do I think? I really like their album. Are there better indie-pop bands right now? Is this better than Pants Yell! or the Shot Heard Round the World album or even close to classic B&S? Yes, No and really is that really the point? And luckily for me (and maybe unexpectedly and unlike my political allegiances) the closer I get to bands and music that I kind of like - even when based on shallow signifiers - the more I like them. These guys are actually piddling around w/ out good idea of what they're doing or what they MEAN? GREAT! Give me some more. Unless yr Cpt. Beefheart or Mark E. Smith or something, I kind of prefer fumbling to proclamations of WE ARE MAKING SERIOUS ART from my rock'n'roll (or even from my art).

Roar Lions Roar!

2008-02-07T15:19:00.001-08:00

as a preview to intended long musing on Vampire Weekend.
Vampire Weekend Debut in the top 20 of the Billboard Album Chart

Crazy?
Crazy.

Harvard's Push Kings and Yale's Holiday never pulled off anything like that! The brothers Gerety must be steaming.

LIVE (for Nothing) OR DIE (for Something)

2008-02-04T14:18:00.001-08:00

A couple of things re: the most recent Rambo that I've talked about a lot w/ friends: 1) my feeling that Sylvester Stallone GETS IT. That is, he understands his appeal & the appeal of his movies; shoots for that target and hits it. What do people want from a Rambo movie? Not action, but violence. Not suspense, but people getting blown up. Therefore we get the movie we wanted. A completely unredeeming movie which is really just a frame around two scenes of massacre via modern weaponry.

Is there a less redeeming movie than the new RAMBO? There's really nothing to take away from it; none of the characters are developed, it doesn't give you any reason really to root for the "good" guys v. the "bad" guys, except for the generic - southeast asians are obviously generally "bad" either because/or the cause of their constant living in squalor. Maybe there is some meta-critique about the way racists characterizations work (not to mention the wierd homosexuals are evil (or was it evil leads to homosexual pedophilia) shit in the middle) - as in why develop the evil bad guys when we already know that Rambo is going to kill them all - or maybe even a comment about the moving goers expectations. The game played in the middle by the "bad" guys being a microcosm of what the movie goer is expecting from the movie. Indiscriminate and random violence (those two scenes being the most suspenseful and cringe-worthy in the whole movie).

I've seen a lot of very violent, unredeeming movies, (perhaps i've lost my edge) but Rambo made me uncomfortable in a way a lot Zombie and Cannibal and Gore movies have not. Which nicely leads into my second talking point about this movie... 2) do you think Stallone has seen Cannibal Holocaust? It's not out of the realm of possibility, and I'd even say it's likely, given that Sly's son Sage Stallone is 1/2 of Grindhouse Releasing (also home to Cannibal Ferox & Fulci's the Beyond) that was the force behind the recent Cannibal Holocaust DVD (and limited theatrical run.) Cannibal Holocaust is a movie that I know well (the year I worked in a video store I only went to the theater three times - once to see Miike's Ichi the Killer and twice to see Cannibal Holocaust) and, depending on yr stomach, more unsettling than Rambo. On the short list of MOST GORY MOVIES EVER Cannibal Holocaust is FUCKED UP, but really, more nuanced/self-aware than most gore-for-gore's sake movies and more nuanced (though maybe not more self-aware) than Rambo.

It's an interesting question, because the similarities between CH and Rambo are there. From the plot = group of 1st world we-can-beat-the-world-with-our-1st-world superiority types go into the jungle and get fucked with & the canny world weary one has to go in after them, to certain uses of music (esp. in the first massacre scene where the symphonic music cuts in while the killing continues - see the "massacre" in CH) and other cinematic techniques. Most importantly the "BIG" question of both movies being Who is the real Savage? (obviously undercut in both movies by the exploitive/voyeuristic use of violence.) I think Stallone wants to awkwardly propose a visual connection between the two massacres esp. w/ the pan over the post-massacre bodies that is almost identical after both (which in Rambo is further undercut by the Hollywood touches of the "good guys" winning and Rambo-going-home endings.)

All that said, I think Rambo would have been MUCH MUCH BETTER if Stallone had stolen even more from Cannibal Holocaust, in particular the plot structure (but not more violence/gore). I think it could have elevated it from OK (and awkward/discomforting) to Great (and awkward/discomforting). Oh Well, His Loss.

I had planned to tie this all into another gore movie, Beyond the Darkness, the DVD extra interview that I had a life-changing effect on me, =ing my redemption/non-redemption, to now my epiphany-maturing-to-lameness re: gore movies (tied into other Stuff) but I'll save that for another time.

BELL BOTTOMS!

2008-01-18T13:17:00.000-08:00

no more of this addressing brooklyn & p-fork drivel - WHAT THE HELL WAS JON SPENCER GOING ON ABOUT? Why was the first track on Orange (I think it was jsbx's 'commercial' breakthrough) an ode to Bell-bottoms? Except for the brief pop-disco revival that happened in the mid-90's (though maybe it was limited to Phx or even just Royal Palm Jr. High), have Bell-bottom pants ever been revived as cool?

Well regardless, more interesting to me is the not the Blues Explosion, but the Blues Brothers. The Akroyd/Belushi SNL duo backed by SNL band & soul luminaries such as Steve Cropper & Duck Dunn that spawned a movie, a couple of albums, a tour and a revival of interest in 50's & 60's R&B & Soul. Can you imagine such a (maybe shallow but) reverent movie about early Rock'n'Roll & Soul being made today? The movie featured James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker as well as other Major Major Soul/Blues artists. Apparently Peter Guralnick (in Sweet Soul Music - his book about Memphis Soul) disses the movie, and there is some stink of exploitation, but it honestly seems like Belushi/Akroyd started the Blues Brothers out of love for the music, and as SNL comedic performers it probably seemed like a reasonable way to do it. (Akroyd later went on to start the House of Blues) It's not reverent or deferential or stale, instead it's living, blasphemous, funny and a damn good time. And this seems totally in the spirit of the music itself, which was irrevent, salacious, slapstick, silly, serious, vulgar, sanctimonious, and wierd all at the same time. Why shouldn't a second order appreciation be any different?

Obviously they are two white (insider) guys copping the moves and sounds of (mostly) black musicians. Obviously they tread a dangerous line of co-opting, or attempting to bask in, the "authenticity" of soul music, or soul musicians, or the down-trodden lives of soul musicians. The whole thing of beauty created in the shadow of oppression. Importantly though I don't think 1) this is the story soul musicians tell of themselves, 2) this is not the story the music tells and 3) that's an even reasonable story to tell. Yes, the conditions of blacks in America (then and now) are lamentable and need to be addressed, but this doesn't make them victims. The dialog of authenticity says more about guilt and the position of the privileged than it does about soul musicians themselves.

What the Blues Brothers do is more sincere, and true to the form (in a limited way), than what any Blues or Soul archivist can do. And more to the point, Don't you think Aretha Franklin, James Brown and Ray Charles wanted to be in a Hollywood picture?

And damn it, the movie is a FUN TIME, that lets the music BE, but also has the great mainstream 80's comedy (Landis, Ramis, et al) feeling of fun & silliness & irreverence.

(The unspoken thing here being trying to understand, position my own tastes in 60's soul and funk. I'd think it fair to be on the same side as Elwood and Jake.)

Excepter Heart Parappa the Rapper?

2008-01-17T10:15:00.000-08:00

from pitchfork review of excepter 12" "burgers":

After seven minutes of "'Burgers", the half-assed funk drumming and woozy bell tones that at first sounded silly become disorienting and weird; Fell's mechanical back-and-forth with female chorus of Clare Amory and Lala Ryan about flipping burgers ("Flip those Burgers" / "Turn the patty over") ...

Does the reviewer not know these are lyrics from a song on Parappa the Rapper 2?
Specifically Bread Burger Masters A Parappa Town Tradition? Did the members of excepter encounter Parappa from through the same source as me - one Ike Turner (its definitely possible)? How much does this make me want to 1) like Excepter and 2) write/record a response song "Noodles"?

just give me some Truth

2008-01-11T10:02:00.000-08:00

To pull back from the Sophomoric Philosphizing abyss a bit, let's get back to ROCK (of a sort). A common argument/discussion amongst overwrought rock nerds is "Who is the best Beatle?" These days my answer is a pretty solid John. (It used to be a precarious Paul or John) How can it not be? He was obviously the coolest. Though a matter of subjective taste (how could it be otherwise), John's Beatles songs are stronger and numerous, his bad Beatles songs are fewer, and really, is there any comparison between the solo careers? You can argue how much McCartney contributed to John's Beatles songs or vice versa, or how the various members skills made the songs happen in the manner that they did, or how John's political and artistic pretensions were overwrought, undercooked and silly, or even that Paul had actually more sophisticated art/music/political taste, or George was dissed the whole time, or that Ringo is the best person (as if that's knowable by you or me) but in the end I think any discussion has to begin and end with John. It's like if you argue about who is the best baseball player of all time (Babe Ruth), it is impossible to have any discussion of it with out including Ruth, which, you know, says something.

All that's to preface a recent my recent personal discovery that not only is John's Plastic Ono Band a good album, but so is his second Imagine. Like a lot of Beatles songs, feelings about the title track, being the first of a few Lennon solo tracks that most have heard, are difficult to disentangle from all the cultural/historical morass that enmeshes it. Get past that and there are some good tunes. I could do without the juvenile Paul-diss of "How do you sleep?" but the closing one-two punch "Oh Yoko", as heard in Rushmore, and my current favorite Lennon jam "How?" is fucking great. The Lennon's confessional style can get to be a bit much and contrived (he's a serious artist!) but most of the time, it hit's right on. And with these two albums Lennon easily trumps any and all of George, Ringo and Paul's solo output. Add up John's guitar work on Ono's album and Ono's pre-kraut, pre-no wave of her Plastic Ono Band & Fly and FUCK these two were smoking in those early 70's. Forget Eno's love of ambient Harmonia, the Ono/Lennon/Voorman/Starr band was picking up on the BEAT big before everyone else was hip to it.

Put me in Lennon's camp.

(Sorry this isn't a post how I rediscovered previously maligned late John or Paul or George and tapped into their unappreciated depth. I know Imagine and POB are the crit faves, but fuck are they good.)

TRUTH I say TRUTH

2008-01-09T16:12:00.000-08:00

So of course on the heels of killing over an hour in the afternoon reading the 3 parts of that Errol Morris essay/blog about truth in photography, I go to see Rashomon at the Castro yesterday evening.

Morris, in responding to some of the comments to his original pieces, talks about Rashomon briefly. Asserting that it is not in fact about Truth, as commonly quick-crit-hit will tell you, but about human weakness /inability to see or tell truth. That is to say, something did happen in the grove btw the bandit, woman & samurai and that is the Truth. The physical evidence and stories could all be put together to reveal this Truth of what happened. The conflicting stories of the four different eye-witness accounts only reveal how people try to skew and hide and manipulate the Facts to their own ends.

Later he extends this when discussing "post-modernists"

That “step further” you refer to is a significant difference. I do not believe — contra the postmodernists — that truth is socially constructed. There are big differences between each of the following claims:

(1) Truth is socially constructed or, worse yet, subjective;

(2) Truth is in principle absolute but we cannot know it; and

(3) Truth is knowable, but there are endless impediments to knowing it. (One of the greatest impediments is that people tend to ignore it or reject it even when presented with it.)

I am a proponent of the third view.

Is this just Morris' "God doesn't play dice" or is he just being a stick-in-the-mud? How can something be both knowable but knowing endlessly impeded? Perhaps he means seemingly endless, or just sort of endless, but not really, but if endless=infinity doesn't that = unknowable? In the end I think he's trying to make one point, Sontag's interpretation of Truth in photography by making a lesser related, but not identical point Sontag was stretching when she used the 'posing' of early photography to make a point about the Truth of photography. Why go to the Crimea when all you really wanted to say was something about how Photography (like All representation) has no truth value other than that assigned to it by a frame? Why determine, or try to determine, whether one photo came first? The only product is that it concretely shows the point that what we see in the photograph is determined by our perspective.

Erg. So my laziness leads to more confusion and no real point other than I think Morris is relying on the "hard work = validity, worth" crutch to make a not to solid or interesting point about how he doesn't feel comfortable with the destabilization of Deterministic Truth.

Oh, what to do when wasting time at work...

2008-01-08T14:52:00.000-08:00

Read this LONG essay by Errol Morris about cannonballs, war, criticism, photography and Truth.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

More

Highly recommended.

And for Shits & Giggles, Who thought this was a good idea?

Response to Confusion to Add Confusion

2008-01-07T10:43:00.000-08:00

Dan commented on my recent confused (as typically done) post about Reggae. Yes Reggae, outside of Bob Marley, has never charted well in the US (unless you count the relatively recent Dancehall crossover successes), but that really was not my point. I wasn't confused as to the why the general U.S. ear dug or got bewitched by reggae, but particularly why *I* am more into reggae (at least currently) than even u.s. soul or funk, let alone music from other caribbean islands. My limited theory was that the wierd cross breeding fusion with u.s. styles & the pragmatic nature of it's development as a Party music, a sincere Functional music, was more interesting to me than that of those other musics.

(Pragmatic in that Reggae served a purpose in the community that seems more honest, or at least more aware of itself w/o Art pretensions, than any post-60's middle class rock'n'roll can even pretend about. Commercial interests, entwined with cultural identity issues, mixed with POVERTY and EXPLOITATION leads to REVELATION and INVENTION. No, I'm not talking about sufferer Truth, but just the truth of how Culture is made as Pragmatic Truth. As it serves a purpose that doesn't pretend to more. Not that this doesn't happen with U.S. art rock, but I think if we thought about that too much we'd be decidedly disappointed about the function it serves. )

Yes, it had a bigger impact in the UK, but No, there really wasn't a crossbreeding from native UK styles into reggae. The biggest impact of the UK in reggae was as a commercial audience.

Getting into dancehall, it becomes even more confusing. Having developed contemporaneously with Hip-Hop, the cross-breeding, cross-thread nature between NYC & Kingston has been explored A LOT, but is still interesting how Party music in the Bronx v. Party music in JA informed each other, and developed into similar but extremely different end results. And to spin the functional thread, Dancehall was a Rejection of the trend to imperialistic appropration of the JA ghetto truth dialogue by the JA ghetto subjects themselves; as a community, as a market, as a culture, as a dancehall. Fuck you with your white dread rasta bullshit - this is Our music. (Though I tread a slippery slope, being a cosmo whitey reggae listener myself, but... at least I'm trying to be critical, right? right?)

One reason I love Baseball Prospectus...

2008-01-07T09:42:00.001-08:00

And no, it's not the fact that they helped me win my fantasy league, but some sane talk on the whole Baseball-Steroids thing.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=720

And relatively sane talk on stats, baseball, etc.

Negation, Affirmation

2008-01-03T09:34:00.000-08:00

While driving through Oakland last night listening to my recent tape acquisition (Sleeping Bag's Reggae Dancehall II) I wondered why Dancehall is so weird. I'm passingly acquainted with the history of djing/toasting in Reggae, but that said, the difference btw early US Hip-Hop and Dancehall vocal styles is so huge that it's hard to reconcile the closeness btw US Soul and early Rocksteady & Ska. Most often it seems to be a string of nonsense syllables tied together and then repeated, with a little rude talk thrown in and then repeated. And any narrative or themes or threads seem only happenstance and LOOSE. But maybe I just don't understand it enough to follow. With Rocksteady & most Reggae at least I can understand the vocals which have repetitive verse/chorus/verse parts and are not heavy Jamaican patois.

But besides all that, why is it that Jamaica has such an interesting pop music history from Ska up until now? It's a pretty small place and all and you don't hear as much about Puerto Rico, the DR, Haiti or even really Cuba. Granted Cuba has a STRONG musical history, but nothing that piques US ears as strongly as Jamaica. My passing theory was that because Jamaica it has to do with Jamaica being Anglophone & close to the US that it is so tied into US Black Music and pushed out such a crazy hybrid Soul/R&B/Mento stew. Compared to the probably strong ties to South American music of the other islands (although I don't know what the story is with Haiti, being francophone and war torn). At least something to think think think about.

Baseball Aside:

The A's trade Swisher after trading Haren. All the prognosticators are pointing to this equaling bad baseball in Oakland for the next couple of years. Well, if they weren't watching, except for Haren and Blanton (and Bradley, why'd they trade him again, 'cause Beane's a megalomaniac?), that's what they've been getting. True, the A's probably won't compete for the AL West next year, False, this is a big change from last year and False, this will mean they'll be unwatchable this year. Most importantly, False, that Swisher is sure to be a superstar. I'm sorry 20 hr/80 rbi last year looked more like the norm for Swish than his 30/100 year before that AND he batted under .270!!! Beane could see that Swisher was not a offensive leader, but a crucial support part, which the A's last year was all they had. There was no-one last year who opposing pitchers were scared of every time they came up to bat. What the A's got back from the White Sox was a gold mine too. Three of their top 10 prospects for someone who is projectable AT MOST 30/90/.270 for a couple of years, but probably a decline after that. On top the Haren trade, the A's farm is now packed. Carlos Gonzalez! Brian Anderson! Gio Gonzalez! Learn these names A's fans because in '09 they're winning the AL WEST!

This year they'll finish about the middle of the pack again, with some moments of brilliance interspersed. I guess this is the result of some bad bets (Crosby, Chavez, Harden, Kotsay, Piazza), but count me IN for A's baseball this spring and especially a year from now.

AFRICA MUST BE FREE

2008-01-02T15:11:00.000-08:00

Lilith, the questionably legal and questionably russian reissue label, has started reissuing crucial tropicalia and krautrock lp's. So far this has included both Harmonia records, the 2nd and 3rd Cluster records, Faust's first lp (on clear vinyl), 4 Caetano Veloso lp's and Os Mutantes debut lp. Who know's what the future holds? I suspect at least the 2nd and 3rd Mutantes lps and hopefully the early Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa and Tom Ze lps (and is the original tropiclia v/a comp too much to ask for?) and maybe a couple of the other Faust lps and maybe Amon Duul. Perhaps it has something to do with what label they were licensed too in Russian and that's how they got the rights. With all that, it means a lot of record purchasing and hard decisions because all these lps go for $20+ in US record stores. But since they're all CLASSIC, it's a reasonable price to pay.

One of the other threads in my recent listening (besides a 77 punk revival streak- Pagan's 'Shit Street' = great) has been a wandering path through African musics. Besides a little bit of the Awesome African Music Tapes this has been solely a practice of seeing what comes through Amoeba and buying then. Therefore this equals an awesome comp on Portland's Mississippi Records (very cool boutique/bedroom/analog only label) of seemingly random African obscurities, Sublime Frequencies' Tuareg Guitar Revolution (from Sun City Girl's Alan Bishop - i think), and the two recent Afrobeat 3xlp single artist collections from Vampisoul (Munster's soul side?), one I have - Orlando Julius, and one i desire - Tony Allen. Sure there's a bit of voyeuristic exoticism involved, but there's also some ear opening. Really there's not much tying all these together other than a shared continent and the fact that they aren't folkways 'tribal' field recordings. Sure I should be more systematic and more adventurous, but these days I listen/acquire for my own ears and not to prove or share or one-up my fellow listeners. Recommendations for further things to pursue needed! I'm probably going to try to track down the (john atkinson recommended) Indestructible Beat of Soweto next or maybe some of those Ethiopiques or fuck it and finally break down buying boogaloo lps and comps.

As an aside: In conversation I've recently thought about how Damon Albern has been the successful (at keeping his youth cool) where David Byrne had previously failed (and now appeals mostly to World Music (ewwwwwww) Yuppies. Though arguably it's silly to think of twenty something post-napster money-burning world music gourmands (like myself) to be really any different then the less hip thirty something putamayo types. At least it's something to ponder. I'd say something, and do, to defend the way I (we) listen versus the jam band and putamayo types, but my cynicism shoots through any claims to difference. And the stakes are high! So the blood boils to build the wall and broaden the (perceived) schism.

Oh, and Sleeping Bag's Reggae Dancehall II $2 tape = gold. My reggae ear is now starting to favorably hear dancehall.)

Just Passing By...

2007-11-28T13:00:00.000-08:00

Maybe this is Common knowledge but... Did You Know that both the Velvet Underground & the Grateful Dead used the name the Warlocks before deciding on their eventual (and better) names?

Also a new feature on nytimes.com (from the bottom of any article)

"Tips

To find reference information about the words used in this article, double-click on any word, phrase or name. A new window will open with a dictionary definition or encyclopedia entry."

How cool is that?

& how fucked are we when myspace and facebook become THE point of debate in the nytimes tech blog? um, time to check out and read................................................................................

Libraries, Mine

2007-11-26T14:04:00.000-08:00

Recently I have been obsessed with getting rid of records. As this impulse is closely tied into anxieties of consumption and collection and hoarding it is hardly a departure from the previous need to hoard/acquire records. Not that I have stopped finding and acquiring new records, but there is hope to reach a point of stasis. Keep the number of records constant (or constant at a lower level). Get rid of as many crap records as good records I keep, therefore increasing the per record quality of my collection. Part is driven by logisitical problems. I have overwhelmed the shelving space available for records. Instead of buying new shelves (though I would like to get rid of my IKEA shelving and get some proper record storing shelves), I'd rather get rid of some records. Though the real motivation is that I've NEVER GOTTEN RID OF ANY RECORDS. As a certain amount of gamble is made on every record purchase, it is reasonable that I have some clunkers. And by now the number of clunkers has grown as my taste matures. I have appealed to the library justification for my collection in the past (that is a collection that encompasses good and bad with symbolizing more or less my "knowledge" of music (or maybe more shallowly the visual justification of my "taste")) that's just not reasonable. Why should I keep records I don't like? Why should I keep records I'm unlikely to listen to? Although if I take that logic to an extreme (on keeping records I'll listen to with any frequency) I'd have cut my record collection in half (or more). Especially because these days I don't have any outlet for this accumulated "knowledge" of music; no radio show, no dj night, not really any mixtapes to make.

Interestingly, a coworker who is a fellow hoarder (of comic books) suggested that it would be more appropriate to get rid of some of my books (along the lines of the likelihood of practical usage) but that just seemed wrong to me. Maybe at this time, my need for propping up my self-image of being "well-read" is more deep/shallow than my need to prove anything re: my knowledge of esoteric punk/post-punk/whatever. Maybe my anxieties have just moved in focus?

Oh well. Of course the first thing out of most people's mouth when I tell them my record purge plan is "Let me see the records yr getting rid of..." Don't they know I'm only getting rid of crap? Does it surprise anyone that it's a reasonable estimate that 10% of my collection is crap?

Misfits & Rebels

2007-10-19T15:27:00.000-07:00

according to wikipedia...

Kerouac invented his own fantasy baseball league when he was a child. He continued playing this game well into adulthood.

What?

And the fusion of two great things.

Tacos & Baseball.

This is the end of substance.

OH WELL. I GUESS IT'S WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR.

2007-10-16T09:48:00.000-07:00

Man, that sucked. Diamondbacks didn't exactly play poorly over those four games, but they also didn't exactly play well. Lots of errors and mental mistakes (and a few calls that went the wrong way); you change all those and at least the Dbacks are still playing. But man, the last top inning against Corpas kinda optimized some of the problems w/ this team. Down by two, Chris Young hits a one-out double to start a possible rally, but then Stephen Drew pops out to the 2nd baseman on a 3-0 count and Eric Byrnes grounds out (and proceeds to slide into first!) to end the game. Demonstrating that 1) Stephen Drew still has some growing up to do (3-0 down by two, YR NOT BARRY BONDS - TAKE THE FUCKING PITCH) and 2) Eric Byrnes all-out-idiocy is going to get tired FAST. With both Carlos Gonzalez and Carlos Quentin having a chance to take his spot, I hope we eat his contract, because this year is the best we're going to get out of him.

Oh well. At least I don't have to spend as much time by myself in bars now. Weird vibe that...

DBacks v. Rockies Attendance

2007-10-12T12:30:00.000-07:00

As there has been a little blather blogging about the various Colorado and Arizona fandoms (following a little ugliness and a late arrival by AZ's 98% of sellout crowd for a 5:30 start time game) it might be insightful to look at the actual NUMBERS.

Diamondbacks attendance this year: total of 2,325,249 w/ avg per game of 28,707
Rockies attendance this year: total of 2,376,250 w/ avg per game of 28,979

umm... those look about the same, no? and you look at the data going back for the past couple of years, both teams attendance patterns are fairly similar (and upward trending). You field anonymous young teams that are home grown while ditching overpaid "franchise" players like Larry Walker and Luis Gonzalez, a dip in attendance isn't unexpected. I predict that the fan bases of both these teams will get stronger as this core ages & improves.

A reason to cheer for the Diambondbacks over the Rockies.

2007-10-12T10:02:00.000-07:00

"I don't want to offend anyone, but I think character-wise we're stronger than anyone in baseball. Christians, and what they've endured, are some of the strongest people in baseball. I believe God sends signs, and we're seeing those."

What the Fucked Up?

2007-10-05T16:03:00.001-07:00

Everyone's favorite limited edition 7" pressing Canadian "hardcore" band Fucked Up has taken some interesting turns lately. Putting out a long winded 2xlp on Jade Tree, releasing a mix tape w/ professed love for c86ers the Shop Assistants (can't find a link to the tracklist), putting out a long winded PROG-HARDCORE 12" on home-of-Cause Co-Motion label What's Yr Rupture, and covering hip-for-now French House duo JUSTICE via VICE RECORDS. WTF?

Who are they targeting? Who likes indie-pop, techno, prog & hardcore? Unfortunately it would be someone like me (or most hipsters cool kids these days who have post-napster omnivorous taste). Unfortunately because these new paths, new directions, new fusions could be good, but aren't. Or better said the fusion is not inherently bad, just not successful because the songs are CRAP. So I'm not saying Fucked up needs to stick to 1:30 hardcore ragers, but if they wanna branch out they got to do better than they've done. The "Year of the Pig" 12" might be the least listenable piece of music I've bought this year (after the new Circle LP Katapult - how's that for hype/buzz leading to kill dick crap) and the Justice cover does nothing for anything. I wanna cut them some slack because they recorded some ragers, but when they jump in bed w/ Vice (which is fine, doesn't seem to have affected Black Lips, yet) but don't back it up w/ more raging good tunes, ummm, it's kind of a killjoy. (and to claim allegiance to mid-80's brit guitar rock and to stop at the shop assistants is a typical travesty of punk/hardcore branching out myopathy. Um, you think there might be some other good bands in that realm?)

oh yeah. Diamondbacks in 7. (can the baseball prospectus & espn & other prognosticator types stop using the d-backs run for various pro & con BS around the value/non-value of sabrmetrics? I haven't read it, but I imagine Men At Work is short on statistical analysis, and wouldn't that be a better ideal for sports (and especially) baseball writers?)

More BEISBOL

2007-10-05T10:30:00.000-07:00

shitbox! read it here... THE DIAMONDBACKS ARE NOW ODDS ON FAVORITE TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES!

(don't know if the link will work, but postseason odds from baseballprospectus.com as of this morning)

---------- October 5 --------------------
 Win DS   Win CS   Win WS 
BOS  63.3779  33.7454  18.3451
CLE  70.6525  33.2108  19.0125
LAA  36.6221  18.8789  10.2515
NYY  29.3475  14.1649   7.2306
ARI  88.1299  48.7947  19.5415
PHI  12.5620   5.9838   2.8516
CHI  11.8701   6.3129   3.2755
COL  87.4380  38.9086  19.4917

a word on method

2007-09-26T10:46:00.000-07:00

Somethings are obvious; others are not. Obvious - my intention to write about the facts of music is loose; not obvious - my commitment to the experience of music doesn't ignore the facts.

That is to say, the point is not to not tell The Music Story, but to tell my music story; and those two can overlap - the storyline and my music storyline. And why? If only because the experience of music art anything is not universal; why hide that by trying to convey meaning through facts. No band or piece of music value can be defined by the facts of its creation or the notes that are played. Or properly said not even by the music itself as a fact. Only the experience of the music, and those facts, can lead to meaning in the space between me and them, it and us. So by trying to draw out the framework of what is important in my experience in the music hopefully shines some light on why I like the music, the logic/non-logic that gives any thing value and meaning. MORE IMPORTANTLY I'm not trying to convince you of why something is great, I'm trying to show the where's and with-alls of IT when IT shows ITself - which takes WORK WORK WORK & SWEAT SWEAT SWEAT. I'm not trying to build the canon or share the perceived wealth of musico knowledge, but trying to tap a toe into meaning (for ME).

Oh oh oh, so it is that I avoid editing and facts and dates and rigor (and mp3's and such). What value does rigor have in this little blog pond?

TWO NOTES:

THE DIAMONDBACKS still get no love. I can't wait till they make it to the NLCS w/o the requisite superstar to profile and weigh as the ONE and TBS and FOX and everyone else remains confused about what to do with this team. Up one game and everyone still says the Cubbies are gonna win it. Does no one remember when Doug Davis used to be good? No not on the Brewers, but more recently when he threw 9 Quality Starts in a row this spring and has as just one less quality start then Ted Lilly this year. Now you can quibble over Micah Owings v. Livan Hernandez but today's game has to be a toss-up on the starters. And the Cubs bullpen? Marmol had a great year, but as someone who had him on his fantasy baseball team, I know full well that he hasn't gotten better as the year moved on, but worse. A young guy who probably has never pitched this much in a year = 2 runs in the 7th. I'll take the Dbacks last three plus Juan Cruz over whoever the Cubs wanna throw. And the offense last night demonstrated how they can make enough runs to win. It is not a MYSTERY how the Dbacks won 90 games this year, this is a young Talented team that is only going to get better.

Currently the Rockies are killing the Phils in Game 2. NLCS Rockies v Diamondbacks anyone?

I AM CONTEMPLATING the big dig; the big purge. Cut out the fat and leave the meat of my record collection. The only hope would be to document it, if I do.

What time is it? NATION TIME!

2007-09-24T15:56:00.001-07:00

Sure sure, this wasn't supposed to be a baseball thing... but I've always liked Milton Bradley. He seems like an appropriately angry guy who doesn't take people being dicks. He over-reacted and consequently got injured, but I do not doubt that what the umpire said was out of line. Is it unbelievable that umpires are racist, or that Jeff Kent & Billy Beane are assholes? Kent's proved it again this year and all reports that Beane is a cult-of-me kind of guy who didn't even produce a winner this year (and puts boring, if productive, baseball teams on the field).

That is to say, Bradley calling bullshit means it's NATION TIME. (that what the umpire, ie the Man, said doesn't matter, but that he was asserting his Man-ness to Bradley's Object-ness calls for a reaction. In the clips, you definitely see the moment when Bradley, and the first base coach, hit pause and say WTF, that's fucked up.)

Appropriately (or not) I've been musing about writing something on Joe McPhee's Nation Time. At the junction of New Black Music and Black Power (although I'm never quite sure how deep the connection is between free jazz as the black avant garde goes. for most of the free jazz artists - pharaoh sanders, don cherry, art ensemble, albert ayler - the connection is explicit and clear. for others it's not so clear - see ornette coleman (this is Our music does not = this Black music. see Charlie Haden) and cecil taylor (and maybe athony braxton). if anything this may have to do with the various perceptions said artists were trying to convey less than about the actual music. Though Ayler and Sanders and others did try to make the explicit connection between Now Popular Black Music and the avant garde of Jazz. Bring the Mountain to the People.) Bundle Joe McPhee in with Ayler in that, at least in this session, this free jazz + funk. No it's not as funky as James Brown, the free jazz element makes it a little too cluttered to make the funk POP. (The tension-connection between new expression and clutter (and virtuosity), not a necessity, but commonly the case.) But the foundation is there. Maybe it's giving to much, rhythmic rigidity, to push the jazz beyond, but it does have power. And anger!

And why shouldn't Joe McPhee and company not be angry? Why shouldn't Milton Bradley not be angry? The world (and America) is still fucked up in a lot of ways. (At least this time the rabble-blog seems to be leaning against the Umpire) I do think Milton Bradley is a good baseball player and probably a good guy, he's not tied to any off-field anger issues/foibles compared to a lot of baseball players. The man just leaves it all on the field and doesn't take shit. Maybe he won't succeed as much as others with similar skills, but fuck it, at least he's righteous.

Bonds retires and other thoughts thoughts thoughts

2007-09-21T16:13:00.001-07:00

An era is over... Bonds will not be a Giant next year

One thing I haven't understood in my time in SF is the seemingly unconditional love that Giants fans give Barry Bonds. Having been to a fair number of Giants games in that time it is pretty often that you see Barry not running full out for a ball and standing with his arms crossed in the outfield. I do think he is unfairly pilloried for the steroid thing and maybe he isn't actually an Asshole, but for he definitely comes off as one. Oh well.

Speaking of cheating in pro sports and steroids, I have two reactions. 1) Sports writers/journalists are idiots. Watch any episode of PTI or Around the Horn on ESPN or read any how-could-they-do-this sports column and it is amazing how stupid these people sound. Why do athletes cheat? Why are they held up as icons of virtue? Why does this even matter? Sports writers only sound reasonably intelligent when they talk about what they now and that is sports performance. Talk about strategy or winning or in game action, do not talk to me about morals and right/wrong or american values or what's good for the country/kids/whoever.

2) Ho-Hum. Why is it surprising that sports figures cheat at all? or CEO's? or Cops? or Politicians? or Teachers? Bill Belecheck is filming the Jets offensive signs? Why isn't every team doing that? Football/baseball players are taking undetectable performance enhancing drugs? Why aren't all athletes doing it? Maybe I'm just jaded by my experience in High School baseball where we had plays in our playbooks that involved some form of cheating and almost everyone on the team was trying out creatine to add body/muscle mass. I don't think we ever actually cheated, but we did push the limit. And we won. We were the best team that North High had ever produced. If any athlete is not pushing the limit to get any and every advantage over their opponent their not trying hard enough. And you had the millions of dollars that hang in the balance - who wouldn't cheat?

More than anything though is that even if baseball players are taking PED's it has very little effect on my enjoyment of the game. I still enjoy watching the game and following the results. Maybe that's not a particularly nuanced view of sports, but it works for me.

let's go D'backs, LETS GO

2007-09-12T11:01:00.001-07:00

Has the baseball fan world become so enamored with sabr-metrics and pythagorean records that we can't notice a team that is 19 games over .500? Why is that the Diamondbacks still get no respect after proving over the course of 140 games that they are a good team, if not the best in the National League West, at least as deserving as the other four contenders to that title?

I appreciate that Runs Allowed v. Runs Scored is a reasonable way to judge the "actual" quality of a team, but why grossly favor that over other metrics or frankly the only metric that "actually" counts, Wins and Losses?

For the none baseball fans, the story is like this. The Arizona Diamondbacks are currently leading the National League West by 3.5 games over the Padres (and more over the Dodgers & Rockies) with the second best record in the National League, 83-64. The Diamondbacks have scored 643 runs this year and allowed 666 runs. The current state of baseball and fandom (post-Moneyball) insists and quantifying teams "real" record by the method of a formula similar to Pythagoras famous one, such that teams that have been outscored have an expected record that is below .500. All-in-all a valuable tool to judge whether a team is underplaying it's skill, is unlucky or inversely a team is overplaying its skills or is overly lucky. One example being the Cubs over the first couple months of the season in that they were outscoring their opponents generally, but not specifically and had a losing record despite an expected winning record. Later in the season they turned it around and are now battling for a playoff spot.

The opposite example should be the Diamondbacks or so Stat Folks would tell you. Near the middle of the season the D'backs were 48-43 but were outscored by 25 runs ERGO they should move back to the mean and start losing over the course of the season. Damn D'backs didn't comply and now they have a winning record and are in the driver's seat for a playoff spot.

Two big problems with this sort of analysis:

One - one of the biggest fallacies (in my mind) is Regression towards the Mean. Maybe I'm just revealing my ignorance of mathematics/statistics but why should a team (or a coin flip) (with a history or not) be automatically as unlucky in the future as it was lucky in the past? That is to say, if I flip a coin 25 times and get 25 heads, the likelihood that I will flip a head on the next toss is 50% and the next one and next one, etc. If I want to predict what the outcome (or total) over the next 75 tosses will be I should guess 50% of those tosses for a total that is still +25 heads.

So to relate this to the D'backs, who were lucky over the first half of the season, why should they then be unlucky over the second half of the season? If they have an equal number of runs scored and runs allowed over the second half (which they do) shouldn't they be as likely to outperform that as they are to under-perform that over the rest of the season?

So the Diamondbacks, who have a POSITIVE run differential over the second half are still being burdened with the negative run differential from the first half and are quoted as being overly lucky and over performing their "actual" quality for having a winning record in the second half and overall.

Which leads nicely into point number 2.

Shouldn't the D'backs success reveal, not confirm, the foolishness of putting to much faith in statistics? So the D'backs have outperformed their run differential, obviously they are still doing something right because they've still been winning. They have an extremely good record in one-run games (another classic luck team stat but maybe also revealing of the D'backs strong and wisely used bullpen (three of their relievers are in the top 25 of WXRL - a reliever stat quantifying success in pivotal game moments)), they have two of the longest winning streaks of the season (8 a piece), they've gotten better as the season has gone on (not surprising given the number of 25 or younger players on their team), and they WIN WIN WIN! What I'm not saying is throw out the metric, what I am saying is treat the metric appropriately and be happy with what you got - A WINNING BASEBALL TEAM!

Which leads to my bigger point, why does no one seem to care? Baseball writers are still choosing the Padres to win the division, no one is seeming to write up glowing reviews of Bob Melvin the manager or Brandon Webb the star or any number of reasons why this team is one of the best stories of the year. (blame "boring" players, blame playing in AZ, blame "expected" record, blame whatever) - but right now this is a good team that is going to the playoffs. And will be a good team for the next couple of years as the develop one of the strongest cores of young talent. Josh Byrnes (GM) is doing something right, let's get on this bandwagon and root root root.

Let's go D'backs. LET'S GO!

Erg.

2007-08-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

Not that this is THAT kind of thing, but this is the greatest thing I've read this week...

Man Lights Burning Man on Fire 4 Days prematurely, Arrested for Felony Arson

the MAC

2007-08-27T10:55:00.000-07:00

Yet instead of ranting about this
whatever I think about this, and I tend to think the problem this sort of journalism is obvious,
some people don't. All the talk about filth and homeless and crime and addicts and privilege and property rights and ownership and whatever; isn't it obvious the vocabulary used here is FUCKED (seeing NYC as a positive example is not a good idea); yadda yadda yadda, it's you and me, us and them, etc.

More importantly, and natural progression from championing mid-70's David Crosby, let's talk about Fleetwood Mac. No, not early Mac with actual blues credentials (though albatross is a good song), I'm more concerned with the late 70's super-blockbuster Mac: S/T, Rumors and most importantly Tusk. How good is Tusk? Pretty good. Does it matter that they were soulless coke-heads trying to bash out top 40 hits (though arguably in their coke-addled way they were making ART)? No. Haven't we learned anything in that the birth of the reader kills the need for an author.

I had my doubts, but upon listening to Tusk I was surprised to find that 1) it sounds great - in a production quality way and 2) it's totally weird. No real pop hit with proper verse-chorus-verse to be found and a lot of repetitive trance jams. Sure I can do without some of the schmaltz, but it isn't laid on that heavy. Some like to point at the song Tusk, with it's USC marching band and apparently someone's response to Go4 post-punk, as the rhythmic wierdo of the bunch but really the whole record is like that. Maybe it's just my ongoing love of songs that, if you lose focus, lose their center and feel as if they have/could gone/go on forever. (See luv of Reggae and Krautrock) I get caught in these songs not knowing whether it's coming or going and in fact ends & beginnings lose their importance. Shape becomes amorphous and sound moves to the front.

Erm, maybe that's over-stating it, but oh well.

I Almost Cut My Hair

2007-08-23T11:50:00.000-07:00

California post-60's dismay, ah millionaire Cali-rockers riding the acid revolution all the way to the bank (w/ David Geffen leading the way). I'm looking at you GD and CSN&Y. Ah if the 60's weren't DEAD by Altamont, they were definitely dead by the time of Deja Vu. But this is retroactively pinning down all those post-Woodstock albums as automatic bummers or faux-non-bummers, and who cares when the 60's ended, more importantly when did the musicians realize it ended? or better, did it ever really matter? Better, it seems that by the time of Woodstock and CSN&Y and the Stones' Altamont most people on the inside were already seeing that the Magic was gone. Calls of it being over started as early as 1966 in SF (the year before the Summer of Love), with the various busts and bad acid and MONEY-MAKERS (very few contemporaries of Bill Graham seem to have a problem with him, but he seems like a Grade-A profiteer at best) and the overwhelming number of carpetbagging kids trying to touch-down into enlightenment but were really just bumming everyone out. It must have been confusing to decide if the newcomers didn't and couldn't get it or if they were pilgrims to be converted, the proto-revolutionary middle class caucus to turn everyone on. Not that psychedelic SF defined a unified vision; it encompassed acid missionaries, anarchist revolutionaries, absurdists troupes and more. And there weren't many big on "NUANCE".

It's hard, in retrospect (esp. for someone like me born in '79), to have any sense for when people started to feel things were OVER for the 60's. It is easy to see when people started to profit on the end-of-60's rhetoric. Look at all the 60's are dead albums/statements. Let it Be and Get Back, all of the Stones "roots and country" albums, most Neil Young, most CSN&Y, Prog, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. None of this stuff seemed to be trying to sustain the mid-60's vibe, but trying to define the new Spectacle. Who could pin the new trend, recapturing a past/beginning that never existed. By the time the Stones got to Altamont they weren't even making Psychadelic Rock anymore. Gone were the ragas and fairies; it was all rough and tumble Rock and Roll. Why shouldn't it end in Death. The Stones didn't have a progressive agenda to end class war or have harmony between Hell's Angel's thugs, middle class teenage late-comers, druggies, Black hipsters, etc. They need rough to touch up their post-60's dystopic image and they GOT IT.

All of this is a digression from what I was gonna talk about. How much I like David Crosby's If I Could only Remember My Name (and on top of that, the album of the summer Deja Vu). Honestly being artists part and parcel with the 60's rebellion commerce spectacle, most of the 60's icons made just as good or better music telling us it was over and all a sham, as when they were selling it to us in the first place, if only because it's more honest. There's no room for you and me in the all-star cast of hip rock luminaries (ie INSIDERS) that make up everyone who contributes to Crosby's album (most of GD, CSN&Y, Joni Mitchell, Jefferson Airplane, etc). So the curtain has dropped and that can make you either angry and disillusioned OR okay to appreciate who it was all a sham to begin with and can't we get down with that. We're not included (making PUNK necessary) but we can still watch (what they show us) and sometimes Fake Can Be Just As Good.

Next up: why C.W. Nevius (and most San Franciscans) can suck a big Dick.

Dark Prince?

2007-08-22T14:13:00.000-07:00

One the most striking features of Keith Hudson's album Too Expensive is the sleeve. Both the front and back feature a shot of Hudson from the knees over a white featureless background. In both Hudson in affect and behavior, if not actually partaking in the sacrament, definitely signifies as much. Most important is not the front image, though Hudson's suited-up mod Rastaman look predates similar fashions in Dancehall by at least five years, but the Back image. Hudson is wearing a blue two piece track suit over a cardigan but more importantly the outfit is TIGHT; and the bulge of Hudson's "frank and beans" is decidedly apparent and in your face.

Perhaps a sly commentary on the typical east-west/"other" imprinted on black men and women's sexuality? The nature of a British record labels (Virgin) exploiting, and white middle class progressives getting off on, music and musicians from Jamaican ghettos for authenticity and realness? If anything it definitely gives the heads up that Hudson is going to fuck with our expectations of what we want from a crossover reggae record. (And this is while Marley has just started to blow-up on American college campuses!)

And so it is with the music. American R&B and funk tracks and not "authentic" reggae, not a lot of sufferers righteous lyricalness but wierd and deceptively pandering and simple and stupid lyrics. Fuck connecting to American white audiences, Hudson's shooting for fellow suffering disenfranchised American blacks.

Even now this record is difficult (as are all the Hudson records I've heard). Right on.

KeepKeepKeeping up!

2007-07-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

How hard is it to stay in-the-know these days? Damn near impossible sez me (unless you circumscribe the know by (non)willful ignorance). How can I (or you or them) keep up with everything on the Art Front, the Rock Front, the Front Front w/o leaving something behind (like actual experience)? I can't even keep up with my own blog promises let alone keeping tabs on what 'the jam of the summer' is going to be. Failure is assured.

This becomes especially true when your mind expands to allow for the possibility (the reality) of more and more and more worthwhile human artistic endeavors outside what you already know. Limited by time and experience it is guaranteed that there are genres and scenes and subgenres and microscenes that will burst on to yr radar with the brilliance of their pilus-like connect to the deep oneness of the perfect art wave. How can it be otherwise? If you deny this and refuse to dig you limit yourself and circumscribe and stagnate yr world. And that equals Death.

So where to look first?

The most obvious place to expand to is into the Other. As a white indie rocker this means (at least) 1) Soul & Hip Hop (and Funk and Reggae and non-western musics) and 2) Dance. Or Both in one (Diiiissssscccccccccooooooo).

Dance Dance Dance

Oh Dance music how I've flirted with you so! I pick up those Basic Channel and DFA 12"'s on the sly and hide my Disco rarities between my Post-Punk credibles. But no more hiding because if you hadn't heard Dance is back. No longer are hipsters hiding behind post-dancey-punk or cerbral german techno to strut their moves but going straight for dirty dirty house and dancing in the front. ED BANGER I LUV U. Oh if you want to make take a little of the decadent edge off their's today's DFA DC recordings. (FYI DFA has jumped the shark. It was offish w/ LCD's boring 2nd album). Is this stuff any good? Can it last? Don't ask me 'cuz I'll be on the dance floor.

Rolf, Lance, Al, and Lars, as well as Axel.

2007-05-02T17:35:00.000-07:00

Hm, according to my friends over at Righteous Dudes and Cats w/ 'Tudes I'm the defacto defender of the worth of the Fusco Brothers. And as that I can make no defense for the strip. I thoroughly enjoy it, but wouldn't know what to say to those who don't. The humor of the Fusco Brother's is so consistent and bland that it is either the worst comic on the page or (where my opinion would fall) the best. If anything it is one step beyond Garfield in the meta-comic scale of funny w/ out being explicitly a meta-comic (like say Pearls Before Swine).

In trying to read Fusco Brothers' comics online I realized that they're really not funny out-of-context. I can't read them outside of the comic page, the demand that they be funny w/o being treated within the rest of the comic page is too much to bear. But this is probably true of most of the comics on the page. Well, let me retract that. There are some comics that make sense outside of the comic page (in collections, on the web, by themselves) such as Calvin & Hobbes, For Better of For Worse or Get Fuzzy, but others that do not, Garfield, Blondie, Beatle Bailey or The Fusco Brothers (and maybe even Peanuts). That may seem like a debate about genre, episodic vs. serial debate (w/ outliers like Peanuts having elements of both - an episodic serial?) and maybe it is. The difference in genre for Fusco and Garfield makes them much more difficult to talk about because there is no real story or string or development instead you have to talk about the nature of the humor/comedy in order to validate the comics worth. What you see in one strip is what you get. And I'm not going to try (and fail) w/r/t the Fusco Brothers.

That all said I think the Fusco's work because of this and not in spite of this. That's what it's all about. It's funny because of it's awareness but not in a way that is kooky (Zippy) or overly self-aware (PBS). It's as confused about the nature of its humor as I am.

And it has a wolverine.

Critical Mastadon Rampage

2007-04-04T12:58:00.000-07:00

Another 'only in SF' type of story.

Bicycle Riders go on a RAMPAGE!

And the people respond here here and here and here.

And the Noose is already making a play.

My initial reaction was that the original story as it ran in the SF Chronicle was skewed and 'not the whole story' and well...it turns out I was right. As everyone will say, not that it gives anyone an excuse to whatever, but suburban soccer moms ain't saints and this isn't a story about critical mass at all, but two groups of people with overheated senses of entitlement getting in each others faces over a minor fender-bender. Is it surprising that questionable activities by a soccer mom with kids in the car precipitated an argument that escalated into a little violence.? In fact most people who are given credit for being good people generally follow the same distribution of assholes as any other group of people (as in there's a lot, possibly more than the population average). Mothers, nurses, teachers, priests, you-name-it.

And as the the reporters of the Chronicle and the commenters noted this was a perfect incident to sound-off on Critical Mass, Cyclists, Liberals, SF, Car Drivers, Everything. And fuck that. This isn't really about critical mass. It's a bullshit little squabble that has really nothing to do with Critical Mass or what CM is about but about how people are assholes. It's a bullshit little backdoor way to use Victim Politics into something that really irks you but really isn't substantial enough to hold it's own weight w/o the Victim. A little blemish on yr self-centered world that AH NOW YOU CAN BITCH ABOUT 'cuz the rabid mob of cyclists are attacking WOMAN AND CHILDREN. (not that the cyclists are any better)

This all coming the same week that the Duke 3 are proclaimed innocent of rape but does that make Duke and you and me and the rest of'em innocent of sitting by in a world where blacks still get the shit end of the deal? No one was shocked when the Dukies were accused, why should we be shocked now?

And Imus gets canned, but that doesn't change our persistent culture of racism and misogyny? And anybody remember those Victims in New Orleans? (I guess it doesn't matter now because it didn't stop Mardi Gras.)

Whatever. Nothing's changed this week, don't see it happening any time soon.

Hippy Punks, no Punky Hips

2007-03-04T01:32:00.000-08:00

It always seems silly the pitched battle twix hippies and punks. Pre-punk (in the current understanding of punk) musical radicals - often long hairs - cast off and dissed as dirty hippies not hip to the new Now sound. Now the divide between the Grateful Dead and the Velvet Underground is seen as vast (which it really sort of was) but in '69 or '70 it really was seen as the same piece of pie. The Doors and The Stooges occupying the same side of the spectrum of "hip" music.

Maybe teds and mods fought it out on the Beachs in mid 60's and Hardcore thugs beat down on longhairs and wierdo's in rough-and-tumble early '80's OC, but is that something to aspire too?

Ah, but here's the rub, when you look closely the distinction between righteous late 70's hippies and righteous late 70's punks is gray at best. Mark Perry, punk fan boy who printed one of the most prominent early punk zines Sniffin' Glue (I've heard - I've never read it) got in the mix and formed his own band Alternative TV. There recorded a couple classic punk gems and did all the UK punk things buuuuttttt they also covered Frank Zappa songs and Perry was an unrepentant fan of wierd 60's music like Beefheart, Zappa, etc.

Between their first and second albums they released a live record that was a split with the Here & Now. Who were the Here & Now? Some other righteous forward thinking punk band? Of course not, they were a hippy jam band who played the free concert circuit and played with the likes of David Allen (of Gong, of Soft Machine). Maybe they were just thumbing there noses at the already prevailing punk dogma of '78, but maybe they were also pointing out the obvious. As Far as People Doing Righteous Things With Music in a DIY Manner - PUNK WAS NOT THE FIRST KID ON THE BLOCK. There was a history, at least in the UK and on the continent, of 60's hippy bands trying to live and play with the 60's progressive politics. They were established musical anarchists years before Johnny Rotten birthed Anarchy in the UK.

Even furthermore Punk bands like Zounds and the Mob even opened and shared members with the Here and Now. If anything Anarcho-Punk is the child of two parents: the Anarchists unfufilled spiels of the Sex Pistols and Clash with the actually living Anarchy of the Free Music radicals of post-Hippy UK Scene.

Not surprisingly the closes ties between Punk Scenes and Hippy Scenes are were the edges of Punk and Hippiness that highlighted the politics of the process of making music. DIY, anarcho-punks, post-punks all had closer ties to anarcho hippies and burn-outs than the leather and stud crowd or the the beads and peace/love crowd.

All that is to say two things: it really is not all that surprising that Tim Yohannon owned a copy of the Grateful Dead's first album and two it is foolish to dismiss all non-punky pre-punk stuff out-of-hand, esp. because punk's founding fathers definitely weren't. Punk wasn't musical ground zero.

Roxy Music -> King Crimson -> Yes (& Genesis, ELP, Soft Machine, etc.)

2007-02-19T12:12:00.000-08:00

Having an (currently) unhealthy fascination/obsession with Krautrock it was natural to start revisiting that other bastion of 70's out-there rock, the UK. Krautrock is great and requisitely wierd & exotic, but they *all* (ok, maybe not all) were taking more tips from bands like Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, than from the more oft reported Ayler, Stockhausen or Dada. And if you open your ears and listen to what can be easily ignored as Prog you can hear even more of the greatness that is 70's music (the best decade for rock music?).

Retrospectively it's easy to clump British Art/Prog/Post-Psychadelic Rock off into little sectors or genres. Roxy Music goes there in Art-Rock/Glam (throw Bowie in there too), King Crimson & ELP go in here in Prog, Soft Machine and Gong go over in the Cantebury scene, etc. The reality is not so simple. Not that these classifications are worthless but they don't reflect the reality on-the-ground, in-the-trenches, that is I don't think Phil Collins and Brian Eno and Robert Wyatt and Robert Fripp saw themselves as working in different genres. Sure they end up sounding vastly different but in essence they were approaching the same problem, with generally similar POV. That is say taking the (middle-class striver) gauntlet thrown down by the "ART" of the Beatles late-60's album. (I got yr ART right here!) Driving it home is the fact they cross-pollinated heavily. Phil Collins and Robert Fripp played on Eno's solo albums. Eno and Fripp played on/produced Wyatt's 2nd Matching Mole album.

It's not like it these groups weren't successful either. College kids (in the UK) ate this stuff up as a sign of rock'n'roll sophistication in the face of the oncoming onslaught of (percieved) dumbing down of rock via Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. The still-another-step-down-the-cool-ladder and mega-selling prog groups of Yes and ELP can just as well included in the 70's art rock scene. Greg Lake of ELP was in the first incarnation of King Crimson. Bill Bruford (of early Yes) was in King Crimson mk 2. (on a side-note; How great is the Lark's Tongue -> Red version of KC? Fucking Great.)

Maybe significantly in the UK the Beatles were a *cultural* phenomenon as opposed to more of a *pop* phenomenon in the US. I'm sure heads were opened by the psychadelics in the US, but most were to worried about following the Grateful Dead or dancing in the rain at Woodstock, unlike in the UK, where the Beatles were serious Artistes. An aspirational Goal to shoot for.

Not surprising then the UK art-rockers weren't trying to make a new Outside statement, but trying to make the next great step in Inside statements up until when the mask was pulled off (via Punk and Time) and prog rockers shunted off into more LCD pop friendly territory. Indie labels not being a thing in the 70's art rockers generally recorded for major labels. The M.O. being working with Virgin/Richard Branson or Island Records (the analog to hippies working with David Geffen). With the changing times people moved to the poles, with a previously united art-rock camp split twix insider strivers and outsider pioneers. See Phil Collins/Genesis. See Peter Gabriel. Even see Eno working w/U2. On the other side of the coin you have Robert Wyatt at Rough Trade and Fred Frith trudging through the DIY underground with the Art Bears. One way to look at it is a culling posuers from not; another (and more proper) way is the times changed. The cynic says the curtain was dropped away from the Wizard; the even more cynical that the Wizard just changed his look. Oh Well I digress.

(another side note -> I'd argue that US Punk: Ramones, Talking Heads, Pere Ubu, Blondie (and frankly VU too) was working from this same Art-Rock paradigm. Even David Thomas says as much. They weren't making prole music but instead they were making the new edge-y establishment music.) (And one last thought; maybe it wasn't the musicians/music that changed but the market and the labels?)

To sum it up: check out King Crimson, Roxy Music and Soft Machine.

Yale Beat Down

2007-02-08T15:38:00.000-08:00

For those of you not in the Bay Area (or an Eli) presumably this big bay area story has passed you by:

Yale A-Capella group gets beat up by San Francisco Prep school students on New Year's Eve, Yale students SHOCKED

and a month later it's still on the FRONT PAGE OF THE SF CHRONICLE

and a month after that the story's changed a little

When this story was first pointed out to me I had read it as Yale students beat up in Richmond, a rough & tumble community north of Oakland, which popped out as a ridiculous class conflict vignette (aka Yalies sing A-capella to working class youths; get the shit beat out of them) but in fact it occurred in the Richmond, a middle-class/upper-middle class neighborhood in San Francisco, the spill over of an preppy underage new year's eve drinking party. The Eli "victims" thus painted in a decidedly less sympathetic light. Now it seems as if there's more to it with some soon-to-be-shipped-to-Japan Marines involved in the melee.

After reading this story it was almost clear to me what happened. Though I would not endorse violence (and the preppy punk thugs (or marines) who put the beat down on will hopefully be punished (though probably less than is deserved)) I would say it is probable that this was not a RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE. Yale dudes and privileged kids at a party start a little trouble and a juvenile pissing match escalates in to a brawl. This sort of thing happens all the time. Maybe not on the Yale campus but probably in New Haven just as well as SF or Oakland or where-ever.

But that's not even what got my blood really boiling. The story reminded me of how much I HATE ACAPPELLA (obviously not the type of singing, but the genre of Prep-School/Ivy League lets-all-get-together-and-circle-jerk Acappella). The fact is, which I've discussed ad nauseum, is that a-cappella's only function in the world is to verify among upper middle class twits that they are indeed upper middle class twits. A whole "hey look at me - this is what good-old-timey-when-only-the-moneyed-went-to-college college students do, we're 'those' kind of college students." Which is the only reason anyone performs or listens to acappella given the fact that no one actually enjoys it. Not the people who go see to the concerts, which are limited to on campus events that can only count on friends of the group to attend, nor the people singing it, which if they in fact did they'd probably continue to do it after school (how many non-college acappella groups are there?). From their selection process, to how they present themselves, to the whole fucking thing sucks.

And people eat this shit up. Being in an acappella group counts towards someone being involved or interesting or creative, when it's really the biggest cop-out, least creative thing one can participate in while in college.

Not that there aren't other activities in college and out that can't be accused of the same thing (Crew, Frats, Debate team) but it's the one with the least substance (none) behind the actual motivation for participation. There is no reason to participate other then the fact of participating. Furthermore it's not like other social groups don't have "activities" that help identify members that they are part of the group (punks, hipsters and on to EVERYONE), but at least in other cases those groups aren't trying to identify themselves as upper middle class whitebread social climbers, that is to say guilty of striving to be THE status-quo MAN.

And I'm also guilty of this but really do try (to a fault) and not overly identify w/ a group or set. Sure I'm a hipster who does hipster things as well as a WASP who does WASPy things but it's far from exclusive and far from how I identify myself.

Whatever, the anger seethes.

Inner Spaaaaace

2007-01-31T12:58:00.000-08:00

I have pledged allegiance to various music genres described as space musics/head musics/psychadelic musics and the such (and generally will want to hear and judge for myself anything defined as 'space rock') but that does not mean I subscribe to all the mumbo-jumbo space and spirits BS, and it's questionable if the 60's space rockers did too, but it does mean I luv bands like Hawkind, UFO (early), Ash Ra Tempel, the Cosmic Jokers, Spacemen 3 and I'd even throw in some songs by the Thirteenth Floor Elevators & the Byrds and newer bands like Om and lots lots more (but not so much groups like Bardo Pond, Flying Saucer Attack, less-and-less-with-each-passing-day-Stereolab, Spiritualized, etc.)

But lets not talk about that, but instead a whole other kind of Space music, or better said space *in* music. In the larger scope silence itself as a musical element is pretty standard issue, often as a gimmick or a song-wrencher/a point of change, but that's not the particular I'm concerned about here. I'm talking about use of space in a repetitive manner and even more particularly two groups I think explore it the greatest: Black Sabbath & Kraftwerk.

With Sabbath it's most apparent on the first side of "Paranoid" between the twin towers of "War Pigs" and "Iron Man", both songs that push the past the six minute mark, but could easily be longer. The power of the riffs work because of both their simplicity and the space between them. Black Sabbath isn't slow, they just know how to make their point.

Kraftwerk were hip to this too and you can see it as they develop it over the course of their first six records. Their first record is experimental heavi-ness and has huge breaks and "breaks" all over it, but never really fall into a groove. 2 -> autobahn, they fall in love w/ repitition, but w/o much space. (I've never like Autobahn as much as the records that came before and after it.) Until they hit it with their electro masterpiece "Trans-Europe Express". The beat gets broken down to 3 points in space and the melody/riff three more. Kraftwerk then lose the thread as they start to write 'pop' songs, but you can still hear it in the electro-funk of "Man Machine."

And the two are tied together not just in method but in theme. As in it's not about ghouls and goblins nor is it about driving and mechanization. It's about Boredom.

It's then not surprising that a '71 era radio recording (on the boot Ruck Zuck!) of Kraftwerk sounds like nothing if not Black Sabbath. (Granted that it's not Rolf & Florian era Kraftwerk, but effectively Rolf + Neu!, but you can hear it still in later Kraftwerk and later Neu!) Heavy space rock indeed. You can hear this era Kraftwerk on youtube clips; it's highly recommended.

And they weren't by far the only people working on this axis and frankly it wasn't a new thing. Early rock'n'roll rocks more the fewer the elements, the fewer notes. And if you listen to enough James Brown, especially the early 70's heavy funk, the funk comes not from the adding but from the taking away. Creating space in the riff opens it up and locks it in. Ditto w/ Led Zepp. Ditto w/ Dub (or Can - and as sidebar I think this is key to Can's greatness and not any connect w/ Stockhausen-esque experimentalism. The noise collages on Can's mid Damo era records are the worst parts!) (or Joy Division (on record at least) a la the famous Hannett quote "only this time make it faster, but slower?" and when in 24 hr party people Hannett is introduced - he's recording silence). Just to me they're, Kraftwerk & Sabbath, the first ones to put it in the Front. As in w/ them it's not a piece but the Point.

the importance of music

2006-12-31T15:37:00.000-08:00

"We exchanged a lot," says Roedelius, his face gently creasing into a grin. "The main thing we exchanged was don't take music too serious. Life is more serious."

Roedelius of Cluster, from here.

A true-ism if there ever was one. And being a counter-dominant-culture type in West Berlin in the late-60’s/early-70’s there were definitely other things to worry about. You were in the shit w/ the Baader-Meinhof, in the shadow of the Berlin Wall and the iron curtain, a generation removed from yr parent’s Nazi-ism and you're around post Paris '68 and various other 'revolutionary' 60's things. A tru-ism but also against the grain of the general 60’s ethos that Rock and Roll was the revolution (or at least part of it).

And if making music is relatively un-serious fare, how less serious should writing about music be considered relative to Life? It seems almost silly to sit here in ’07 as I still waste too much of my resources (time, money, brain-space) on knowing as much about, or thinking about music as much, as I do. And mostly music that was recorded before I was born. Granted there are other things that I worry about and other things that I do with my time, but really why worry about music at all. Why try to construct taxonomies and rankings and connections for music that had borderline revolutionary credentials at the time and even less now? Erg.

In the end this is a fret over the what & the where for; the why I am doing this. But on the other hand, why not?

********************************

One benefit of rolling back on serious-ness when worrying about music it brings down the rigid walls 'twix genres that are un-neccessarily contructed by the too-serious. From earlier posts: Led Zeppelin & the Grateful Dead. Today: Fusion.

Almost as taboo as jam-band music, fusion is slightly redeemed by association w/ bonafide genious Miles Davis as well as others. But like the fellow evil step sister of Prog it stinks of trying to herald unwarranted and unsuccessful pretension into rock. But being a Punk champion and snubbing your nose at the middle-class upittiness of 70's musicians to take the Rock as art pretension brought in by the 60's deeper is unfairly revisionist. As much as Punks like to disdain artiness in rock, or ring in a back-to-basics (back-to-stupid) rock ethic they are conceptually closer to the heady early 70's art-rock paradigm than to that of any early rock rockabilly or jump music thumper. Not that punk's aspire to a Elvis rock purity (leave that to rockabilly stoopids), but Punk's do hold up 60's grungy garage rockers as the true rock flame holders through the 60's, cause they were simple and stupid. But 60's garage rockers weren't trying to be Big Joe Turner but trying to ape the Byrds and the Beatles who were arty middle-class climbers themselves. Just we don't see it that way now.

Whatever, I really wanted to talk about Fusion (and how Serious music fans build walls; walls that are unneccessary and artificial, having nothing really to with the music (or how music is really made or heard) but everything about being serious about something that is resistant to seriousness) so I'll get back to that.

Not only is fusion a post-facto impercise genre category but it is also unfairly broad. Even different late era Miles Davis' bands sound completely different. And one degree farther removed the bands that late era Davis alumni moved on to cover even a broader breadth of musical ground (not a lot of it good); Mahvishnu Orchestra, Weather Report & Herbie Hancock being three that I can think of off the top of my head that cover a lot of sonic ground but all "Fusion". Coming from the other direction in American jazz-rock fusion are folks like Zappa, Paul Butterfield & Santana; also relatively diverse sampling. And when you get out of the US the fusion map gets even broader and somehow more hipster credible: Soft Machine, Henry Cow, King Crimson & (ick) Chicago. And then onto Germany, and my current musical fascination, with nominal Krautrockers Xhol Caravan, Embryo and Anima. All "fusion" but not in the end fusion at all.

And so here the Fusion descriptor is revealed to be the hole-y beast it is. Anima is random -ish noises in a free mess of "untrained" music making. Xhol Caravan sprung out of a motown-style soul band (then known as Soul Caravan - german soul, wha?), took some drugs and started playing extended psychadelic jazz-rock jams. Embryo includes some Amon Duul hangers-on and is the most conventional fusion-sounding band of them all, but listening them next to Guru Guru &amp; Can & Amon Duul (I & II) & on to Soft Machine & King Crimson & Roxy Music & Hawkwind & Miles Davis & the Red Krayola & the 13th Floor Elevators & whoever else you want -- the effect is not of constricting music into genres and styles but instead the effect is of unfolding the musical map so everything is fair game. And why shouldn't it be? Not that styles and genres don't have a function but they're not the end, they are a beginning, or better said a tool, and not even the only beginning/tool, but one of many. The only "beginning" beginning is making sound.

Not suprisingly open-ness comes back in (in 70's Germany) where figurative walls serve less function (not much culture industry $$ pie to be shared) and literals walls are more apparent. Too bad they made a little money (Tangerine Dream, Amon Duul II, Jane, Kraan) and it's like the walls build themselves. Kosmiche, Berlin-School, Krautrock? Funk dat.

chance and not-chance

2006-12-14T12:37:00.000-08:00

Recently it has felt (although this isn't a recent manifestation) that I spend too little time cultivating interest in a genre before I flit off to a new genre to be obsessed over. From DIY to Disco to Electro to Early Hip-Hop to Hardcore Punk to the Dead to 70's funk to Reggae to Psych to Prog to Techno to Krautrock to my most recent fixation, 20th century classical or in my case Minimalism specifically. I don't know if this is a problem per-say but it seems problematic or at least symptomatic of a problem in the general way I go about things. Like how it seemed that every week on the bus on the way to work I'd fall in love with a different girl. A girl who'd I'd never meet, but for the course of time that our bus (or bart or muni) trip coincided I'd be transfixed. This doesn't seem to happen much anymore but I suspect this is more a side-effect of having more typical commute hours. Maybe during typical commuter hours there aren't fewer beautiful women but definitely more mid-30 and up women; that is a density problem. Or maybe typical office hour wage slaves like me are just resistant to being fashionable/good-looking and are just too oppressed/bored to be otherwise (or maybe I am.) And this isn't even a proper analogy as I don't really expend any effort on the bus ride crushes, but I'm not gonna sacrifice truth for sake of logical elegance.

All that is a long-winded introduction to a couple of minimalist (and not minimalist) records I've picked up recently. primarily a Philip glass' first collection with Music in a Similar Motion & Music in fifths, Terry Riley's In C and a collection of John Cage piano works.

The early Glass is if anything to me oppressive. With the exuberance and cocksureness of youth both compositions are a simple idea repeated over and over w/ little or no concession to any pleasure derived by the listener, something that Glass can be accused of doing too much later in his career(conceding to the pleasure principle) . It's an idea about music executed in broad forthright form. Already by Northstar, his rock-star debut on Virgin, his composition is no longer as stringent and puritan, but again it is more experienced than enjoyed. More talked about than listened too. The defrost is even more in effect on his first opera Einstein on the Beach but more than makes up for any lack of minimalistic rigueur by it's more than obtuse "plot", settings, costuming and choreography (or at least what I can derive from the book that comes with the disk). Whatever, the chances of me seeing Einstein performed are slim. Not that I would avoid it, but that I'm not gonna pursue it. One culprit being the before mentioned reasons, but the tide always comes back in, no?

Terry Riley, who was in league with Philip Glass (I think he performed in some of Glass' ensembles or vice-versa) and the other early minimalist that I've heard Steve Reich, seems less systematically rigourous than Glass and to In C's benefit. Maybe it has to do with Riley being based in 60's San Francisco where he was known to give all-night solo harmonium concerts (I *would* go hear that if I had a chance) or his more firm rock bonafides (a collab w/ John Cale - which is very good from i've heard & you know BABA O'REILLY). Whatever, instead of feeling oppressive the minimalism of Riley feels organic and inviting. Within the simple compositional rules, handily explained on the inner sleeve of the record, there is a great opportunity for chance and unexpected occurrence with in a set of constricted rules. A variable envelope of tonal color opening up from a simple theme, ever shifting in unexpected directions or better said surprising directions. But even that is unfair description as it doesn't have the feeling of being unexpected as each part builds on the previous and themes are repeated on different instruments it feels like growth. The final state and character of a stalk of corn is hardly unexpected but none-the-less surprising. Maybe something to do with the sublime or the seemingly unspeakable/ ununderstandable.

But maybe I'm blowing smoke up yr ass w/ all this mumbo-jumbo talk. It's on the page, it's not inscrutable. But can't it be both? Truth & Fiction, Fantasy & the all-to-real? Don't ask me.

Cage, another Californian but not a minimalist, also through/threw the I-Ching realized some chance to open the doors of modern composition (an oriental conceit shared w/ Riley & Glass & Reich). And more, much much more, can be said about him and I had planned and ruminating on his connections to Merce Cunningham and Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg but that'll have to wait for another time. Wouldn't want to out my (lack-of) art theory bonafides just yet. And frankly I have to get on to thinking about the next genre to pillage. No more of this art-music crap on to Rolling Stones bootlegs or Baile Funk or dubstep or peace-punk or music made by inmates or whaaaaaatttttttteeeeeevvvvvvvveeeeeerrrr.

double deckers of delicious

2006-12-09T11:36:00.000-08:00

double decker tacos .

The double decker taco was added to the Taco Bell menu at some point in the early-to-mid 90's (at least I think it was pre-high school for me). And in the line of many things that I latched on to in my pre-HS and HS years double decker tacos were something that my older brother also had professed love. whatever, show me a younger sibling who was not extremely affected by their older sibling's tastes (to the positive or the negative). it's jus' not gonna happen. It be interesting to interrogate my brother on how much he realized that i was biting his style AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. (this changed when i entered college, but more as an evolution than a new track.)

again, i'm getting sidetracked. double decker tacos. really the pinnacle of taco bell culinary achievement. i like other things at taco bell (classics like simple tacos, bean burritos and 2nd in line tostadas) but nothing as much as the double decker taco. the primary appeal is the textural interface between the soft taco & beans and the hard shell topped w/ lots and lots of TB hot sauce and meat/cheese/lettuce interior. as stated by others (above links) it is crucial to eat the double decker taco within 5 minutes of purchase as the beans begin to soften the shell and render the appeal moot (no longer crunchy). other things TB menu item favorites follow from the same appeal hierarchy (crunchy tacos, same ingredients minus flour tortilla tostada, beans & hot sauce bean burrito). there is also the double decker supreme but the uptick in flavor, sour cream/tomatoes, is lost in the tradeoff in increased structural damage, soggier crunchy tacos, and is therefore not worth the extra 30 cents.

further other taco bell culinary inventions have not done it for me. grilled stuffed burritos = no good. they've added some new funky sauce that DOESN'T DO ANYTHING AT ALL BUT BAD THINGS. any of the things w/ funky shells (gorditas et al) = bad idea. they also introduced some tostada spin-off that had similar architecture as the double decker, tostada wrapped in flour tortilla and grilled stuff, and it is no more successful than their other creations. whenever something new at TB comes on the menu i end up intrigued and venture in to try it hoping for another double decker revelation but TB always fails me. the double decker taco was one of their first deviations from traditional TB menu and the only one to stand the test of time.

the other key to taco bell appeal is the hot sauce. (i'm known to eat hot sauce packets by themselves) and remember reading in the phx new times about some one trying to unsuccessfully ween themselves of TB bean burritos and coming to the conclusion that the key was the hot sauce. i'm not gonna disagree. okay it's probably loaded w/ sugar but that doesn't bother me. i eat taco bell at most once every couple of months, but it will always have a place in my heart. (even with the recent e. coli scare which affects me NOT ONE BIT)

dum dum dum dum dumb dumb

2006-11-28T14:12:00.000-08:00

erm, one of the least effective criticisms of any rock act is that they're too stupid. a lot, if not all, good rock and roll is stupid. or at least has elements of stupidness. And it doesn't have to be knowingly stupid (prog) or even knowingly not smart (electric eels) or even just plain stupid (most rock). stupidity is ingrained in rock given that at it's most effective it's just riffs and rhythm and maybe a hook. the music of the rolling stones is stupid, the ramones is stupid, the beatles, elvis, chuck berry, modern lovers, hawkwind, and prog heads are actually stupider than most (given their self-deception) and ultimately just make stupid music too, or bad music.

whatever, i'm getting distracted, because the two significantly stupid rock records i've purchased recently are the recent 3xcd live led zeppelin collection 'how the west was won' and the afterbirth 7" "who's in there?" with the classic song "mr. louis". stupid in two different ways and not of equal merit in rock terms.

Easy one first: Afterbirth are idiots, the music is sub-moronic, the lyrics are offensive, and generally the whole affair has the feel of really stupid guys with really backward ideas trying to make the most offensive record possible. I showed someone the lyrics and then tried to explain the appeal being "You know, the lyrics are borderline misogynistic/homophobic but...," the reply being "Borderline?" Yeah, so this isn't something that you play for your parents or a future soulmate on a first-date. That is unless you really want to test'em, separate the wheat from the chafe, etc. There is some debate about the sincerity of the whole affair but at least it can be said with certainty that Afterbirth intended to be offensive. Oh well, it does have the single greatest guitar solo ever written. How far is this really from say the Electric Eels, or even early Half Jap or saaaaay everyone's favority GG Allin.

On another point of stupidly offensive music (for cool kids but you know, not most people) is stuff like Led Zeppelin (or Grand Funk Railroad or Iron Butterfly or Jimi Hendrix (for different reasons) or Cream). Blatantly LCD music for the masses, or actually not lowest common denominator, because wouldn't that be MOR pop of some kind. Led Zepp is nothing if not extreme in it's stance, maxed out on stereotypical dude rock. But low and behold, if it rocks it rocks 'cuz for me it's all about the riffs. and if you like your riffs in your hardcore and faux-pseudo revival rock, most recent Load release, etc, how can you not honestly, with a straight-face, like the biggest riff monster of all time? They didn't invent the riff, or even the heavy riff, but they did a lot with it. And Bonham plays some heavy funky beats.

This is me calling out all you folks who swear by Black Sabbath and choose to dismiss Led Zeppelin. It's just inconsistent.

grateful dead and raga raga raga shankar

2006-11-20T12:10:00.000-08:00

Recent Acquisitions: the Genius of Ravi Shankar and 80 min. live Dead mix cd from co-worker.

In other words: Head Muuuuuusic.

among lots of hip folks, at least since punk and on, getting into sincere 60's hippy music is tre-uncool. liking grateful dead era 67-75 was tantamount to liking phish (or for most of punk-time to being a deadhead still) which is downright anti-punk. or digging non-western fusion world music (aka not fela or baile funk or tropicalia) is to be on the same side of the fence as middle age liberal whole-foods yuppies. no thank you.

but these days that seems to been thrown out the door. or at least some what. as there are hipster coalition approved hippy bands to get into and ones not too. psychadelic acid folk = okay. i don't know if the grateful dead have made it yet. i thought i saw it coming around the amount a couple of years ago, but not having my ear to the ground any more, i think i was off the mark. and i don't know if it will happen, unlike incredible string band or christopher cross, gd is a monolith to penetrate that a lot of (un-hip) people are laying bricks on still. and there's a wide variety in their output, they never really rocked and they made a fair amount of bad music that hardcore deadies even acknowledge as no good. (apparently songs by the female vox in the disco-dead era are taken off of bootleg concert recordings because people don't like them that much.) so i don't think it'll ever reach hipster critical mass as that would require, you know, talking to uncool folks to find out what the good jams are as well as acknowledging that deadheads might actually have decent taste in music despite other questionable lifestyle/outlook-on-the-world choices. AND don't tell me yr going to be a better dead fan than a dead-head cuz that's just rude.

so the live dead mix by my co-worker dead-head is totally worthwhile. it's safe to say i might listen to it multiple times. it doesn't jump out at me as something i need to chase down a lot of (see comments above) but it is perfectly enjoyable and a lot to hear. (same could be said for fleetwood mac (for different reasons) and, as the original premise of my heading would indicate, ravi shankar (but i'm to lazy to write anymore)).

symphonic rawk

2006-11-09T15:59:00.000-08:00

Is it possible to have a Glenn Branca today? In the early-80's there was still fluidity between the edges-of-pop scene & the academic avant-garde. Branca, who was in a couple of different no wave bands started making guitar compositions that pushed into the academic "new music" scene. on recordings it loses some of it envelope pushing because it ends up sounding like reich or glass, you know repetitive minimalism from the late-sixties/early-seventies. Live i think it had much more purpose because it was LOUD. the whole point being the overtones and all and the shear volume of it. I mean, you don't get 100 guitar players together bashing away to make minimalist music but only to make something big. LOUD in an outside way that is typically only possible in a small venue inside way.

I digress... but is do people make this move anymore? From underground pop to insider 'new music' circles? Glass and Reich both played rock venues/shows in the sixties. Branca moved over, John Cale was an avant-garde composition person, etc. etc. But now I don't see this fluid shift happening. For one, the underground is now so big, it's not a small group of people pushing the envelope for a small bunch of fans, but it's a high stakes game. Arcade Fire, or even worse Radiohead, aren't going to be even listened to, w/ good reason, by 'new music' folks if they tried to push-it. that type of stuff would be steve howe solo records-ish, not really progressive in anyway (that's not a dig at prog, but a statement'o'fact.) secondly, new music is bigger too. Bang on a can etc are more entrenched and get props & mainstream classicism coverage. Koch records and all. Bigger for both breeds more factionalism twixt the two. the harsher you define your lines the more you're going to be heard. harsh lines = harder borders to cross.

but you say: whattabout dj spooky? i say SHUT UP! he talks but he can't walk. he sees but he can't breathe.

but you say: mike patton <3 john zorn; john zorn <3 mike patton. i say getting warmer, but really? really?

but you say: FORCEFIELD. i say, you have a point i will concede and that says something.
that's the real branca crossover we're left with today. on the real edge of both real art and real music and real experience. POINT!

mika miko errrrrrr........ i mean i blurt a swell map(s)

2006-11-06T13:01:00.000-08:00

sometimes bands are all the rage and sometimes all the rage is a band. mika miko are from LA, all girls ~20 yrs old (some of them hotttt), make a racket that reminds people of both early punk and early post-punk and which all equals that they are the bee-knee's to some folk. for a band w/ only a 7" to their credit (though on a reputable la hipster label, ppm (don't know the who's label, but he's hip)) have moved up to the big leagues of kill rock stars to make there shot as the next sleater-kinney or whatever. or the next erase errata. though i see them cleaning up a little and writing some tunes and being bigger and bigger and bigger, taking there street-cred, good back-story and good looks into the big time indie world. maybe they'll save music as the next generations NIRVANA. so i expect greil marcus to be all over this (former champ of kleenex &&& sleater-kinney - don't know where he stands on erase erratta, but i'm sure he loved'em, he's in sf/berkeley and all.)

but probably not. i don't think i'll buy the album but i did buy the 7" and it's fine. okay. not overly memorable because they have the sound but not the tunes. and they're not, in the end, that post-punk, more just a racket, but i want more memorable songs, something that'll jump out and stick. there's a chance that 'oh i get it' moment with MM will still come but for now IT'S NOT THERE.

not that it's surprising, but an example of jumping out at ya moment is demonstrated by the other two records i bought at the same time as the MM 7". the swell maps 'jane from occupied europe' lp and blurt's s/t lp. the swell maps i already owned the repress and had decided it to be my fave SM moment w/ that last two tracks being the real this-is-better-than-Blamm! moment. my good friend dan has always ridden Blurt as a Good band so I was happy to find their decided upon Best record. all killer, no filler. sax, drums, guitar and rhythms. more like Can than SM (who always said they wanted to sound like Can but kinda failed from lac'o'skills). dan says fela + james chance, I say maybe, but it's good. makes me want to buy a sax more than buy more blurt records.

birth control and gina x performance

2006-11-01T13:35:00.000-08:00

it wouldn't be the worst thing i've ever done, but i feel like this starting to become like James Burke's Connections. If you've never seen it (it's BBC show) or read it (for a while he was writing something for Scientific American) it involves him drawing a thread of connections between historical thinkers and events and persons, starting with one to seemingly take a random course of connections only to lead back to the first person in the end. Connecting different, superficially disparate musicians and thinkers it was i've done in a couple of posts so far. Downtown no-wave to hip-hop to mancunian electro etc. And so I do it again.

This time is a little different because I haven't actually heard the performer I'm starting with, Gina X Performance. Apparently she recorded, or properly they, a classic of early synth-dancey-electro which electroclash types still dig. The tracks No-GDM and Nice Mover fit in nicely with the first Soft Cell or DAF or other Mute folks. Obscure-ish dancefloor smashs. The intersting part is that the producer Zeus B. Held/music guy behind the act started out as the keyboardist of non-canonized kraut-rock/boogie-rock band Birth Control, though he joined the band right as they went down hill and was not on their high point album/song HooDoo Man/Gamma Ray, which I recently tracked down. Apparently Gamma Ray can still be found as a obscure dance-floor filler today.

And the whole story reminds me of the Ike Yard, DCC guy who also recorded the seminal NYC electro hit 'the Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight'. Similar story, similar result, similar people still digging it today. Who knew?

this one is called natures duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuub

2006-10-23T11:51:00.000-07:00

god, i've really gone over the cliff w/ the dub madness. my unendorsed opinion is that this shit is mind exxxpppaaannnding, though i never have and never will endorse a transcdental, chemically derived or otherwise, opinion 'bout the role of good art. so, nature's dub, is a mid-80's dubber from JA ex-pats living in n-y-c. not on this record, but other wackie's records, they incorporate digital sound (and my general lack-o-knowledge re:dancehall may be revealed here) but not in the way that resident JA artists did in the 80's. wackie's is more of a straight continuuuuum from 70's reggae in another direction. lots of the same musicians, singers and lloyd barnes who *was* a 70's producer in ja before moving to the u-s-a.

and it's good. i've never been very good at describing why one song is better than another etc. but this is good stuff. perhaps i should think more critically about my music (and i try, a la this f'ing blog) but the value in that is limited. it might add to my sure-ness of opinion (but who could it) but it definitely won't help me find more music to enjoy. if anything you run the danger of starting to appreciate music for non-musical reasons. because you can justify it in the way that you justify something you do like.

so i don't know how to make it happen to let it be known and why i like this nature's dub lp, but needless to say, i do, like it, and it is, good.

kraut kraut kraut kraut

2006-10-16T12:51:00.000-07:00

My current musical fixation has been krautrock. In the 90's, when stereolab was first mining the motorik neu-beat, kraut-rock was more obscure and less talked about. Since then, and I think somewhat to do with the new york/brooklyn rock revival (liars, dfa, black dice, animal collective) and a general record-collecting -> hipster convergence (along with other obscuro-psych genre hipster cravings -- psych folk anyone) kraut rock has become more talked about, less obscure. This is also fed by the reissue of some classics: the first three neu albums on astralwerks, can reissues, etc. and going from my heavy rock to hawkwind to pink floyd to amon duul II getting into krautrock is only natural. here are some of the more obscure records i've heard so far:

agitation free - malesch: berlin freak-hipsters travel to egypt and at that to their psych brew. good stuff. i saw it compared to the greatful dead somewhere but it's closer to trippy parts of early/mid floyd.

cluster & eno (and eno's before and after science) among the big early boosters of krautrock, which was reasonably popular in the uk where prog/heavy bands like hawkwind, king crimson, man already treaded, but the first wave of popular outside-the-de kraut was amon duul and faust and tangerine dream. the wankier or the heavier. i don't think can, neu sold a lot of records in the uk. that said, eno was one of the first boosters. jumps on the bandwagon lauding harmonia/cluster/neu as the 'most important band around' and the neu beat as one of the most important beats of the 70's (along with jb and fela (i think)). but late 70's he makes the trip to berlin, along w/ bowie & iggy & reed, to start tapping into the forward deutsche sound. out of this comes more ambient stuff, a collab w/ the cluster boys and the b&as record, which members of can and cluster are also involved with. all said it's typisch eno ambience ala the 2nd side of low/music for airports etc. pretty good stuff. need to listen to it more.

and somehow they all come together ( http://www.jahsonic.com/ManuelGottsching.html ). Gottsching the guitarist of Ash Ra Tempel - and pretty soon Ash Ra itself went on to write this 30' electronic jam that is heralded as a seminal techno moment. who knew?

and that links to the new track from lcd soundsystem/dfa. a 40 min nike jam. wierd. i picked up the new black dice lp used, yet another techno/kraut/noise confusion. great. and some more wackie's dub (reissued by basic channel) and some seminal dancehall -sugar minott. looking forward to finding the white mice lp to hip myself to seminal digital dancehall. what is it all about?

contemplation on suicide and techno

2006-10-03T14:23:00.000-07:00

In part to stem my impulse to buy more records than I can listen to and part a desire to put my critical think-cap on I once decided to write a brief review of every record I purchased. A review that'd be required before venturing to the record store again. I'd be forced to actually listen to all the records I buy and form a thought-out opinion on each, hopefully becoming a better music listener with more records that I'd something to actually say about than just bulk records to flesh out my record collection. and well...it hasn't happened yet, but that doesn't mean I can't still try.

Yesterday I bought Suicide's first lp. I found it used for $6 and was happy to pick it up. I've owned the cd for awhile, but along with Trans Europe Express it's a record that I've owned on cd and wanted to own on lp, because now when I DJ (god forbid that ever happens again) I'll be able to break it out on thew wheels of steel. Nick Hornby, in his book about music or maybe it just collected his music crit., sort of panned Suicide. His point being that maybe Suicide was provocative, forward-thinking and all but he wanted something more life affirming for his rock dollar. Not that I listen to "Frankie Teardrop" every time I wake up to get me ready for the fight in the urban jungle, but me and Nick just don't listen to music the same way and Suicide ain't all doom and gloom. More than anything it rocks. It's music that moves forward and through. The eternal rock equation of repition repition pushing on and on and on. Hornby quips "I don't want to be terrified by music anymore" and though I wasn't at ground zero punk rock, but has punk rock really ever scared anyone in the last 20 years? Least of all people, like Hornby and me, who are hip that punk rock isn't the ahistorical id it purpots to be? Maybe GG Allin was scary, but I've never been to a GG Allin concert and most of the time punk rock performance always has the requisite distance that makes it performance/representation/etc w/o ever being "real" violence or scary. The distance is even greater when put on record. I can't be freaked out by a record because it's obviously an art construct. Something someone put a lot of time and thought into being as it is. It's not reportage of frontline violence. That said I'm not proposing that music aspire to the real violence of war but the opposite, that it embrace the fact that it is performance and construction. A commodity in the marketplace and all. Another tool for the man to keep you DOWN. I think Suicide appreciates this fact too ... or should.

I've also been tracking down some mid-90's Berlin Techno from Basic Channel. So far that includes two of the nine total 12"'s released by the label. The "i love music" board recommended a few so I picked up Octagon/Octadre and Phylps Trak. And there good, don't know if I'm ready to go full bore into techno, but this is a good start. Although I don't have a strong opinion or deep reasoning why I find them interesting, they're intringuing enough to continue persuing dance music though the well might end up dry before too long. In general that's how it seems to work out when exploring a new genre. I'll buy a couple "seminal" releases on whispers in the air or recommendations of people who'd know and either think their great or not-so-great but keep buying them until the curiousity runs out or I'm the next BIG techno fan in the world. For example: I own around 15 disco records and right now I don't have any desire to buy anymore but for a while I was tracking down obscure disco and every piece of a scent of a good record I could get my hands on. Though I might return to disco at some later point, right now I'm not tracking'em down, because you know, a lot of disco is boring and I already own too many boring disco records that I don't listen to. Probably the biggest thing that happens to prevent me from persuing a genre is when I later listen to something I was over-excited about to be underwhelmed. Was "Push in the Bush" always this so-so, did "Get on the Funk Train" sometimes lack the moving sound? Whatever, it happens, maybe techno is doomed to the same fate.

this is really tedious

2006-09-28T14:36:00.000-07:00

Although I blame the lack of pressure to write as a youth on my feable writing skills, it probably also has to do with just me. Unfortunately the more pressure I put on myself the worse and more labored my writing gets. Writing quick emails or reports or even blogposts come relatively easy where any writing that will be more thoroughly judged and read I freeze up. And freezing up only leads to forced BAD WRITING.

It is true that writing was never a focus of my HS or pre-HS learning. Sure I wrote reports here and essays there, but there was never a focus on "this is good writing" and "this is bad writing." Never a lets write an essay and then edit it and then re-write it and then make it better kind of stuff. And not being any authority on elementary education who knows if there was space for it. Well there probably was as I also think I could have been pushed into more and harder math, more and harder science. It's tough competing from a out-west urban public high school where you're lucky to learn Spanish and get a couple of years of science against northeastern schools where the kids get shit like Latin and are pushed into doing real science research, etc. Though who knows if the results would be any different. I could hang with the best of them at Columbia but maybe I would of kicked there ass with better prep. And maybe I would have been a bigger asshole than I already am.

Ah Proust!

2006-09-26T12:22:00.000-07:00

Ah Proust! In an effort to be more lettered, more well-read, I decided to read Swann's Way the first volume of Proust's In Search of Lost Time. And although I enjoyed I don't know if I enjoyed it immensely and further I don't know if I appreciated it's genious. In form and style it is different from most novels I have read in the past year, which has been limited to hard-boiled detective novels and non-fiction about music. The short punchy prose of Chandler and the long digressive flowery prose of Proust might as well be of different forms they are so far apart. Though they both rely on metaphor and colorful description, one just taking it's time a little more.

Is there any inherent value in being well-read or as in my case of having read Swann's Way in lieu of whatever. I don't have a strong opinion on it. With some irony it can be noted that In Search of Lost Time is itself about growth and learning through rememberance. It is fair to say that I found more to relate to every day life than I have in most other novels. And what is the role of the novel? And what to expect of one? In reading a classic should I have expected the sky to open and God to come down and tap me on the brow? Of course not. In enjoying the novel I have gotten all that one can expect.

But what to read next? I've already picked up another book I've unsuccessfully tried to finish in the past, Foucault's Birth of the Clinic, and it promises to be more difficult and the nuggets to be deeper buried than any of Proust's. Then after that is it more Proust? or on to other things? Steinbeck and Sterne? Oh well we'll see and so I will continue.

rough and tough times are a'coming

2006-09-22T15:20:00.000-07:00

Maybe its just something in the air or my growing cynicism and pessimism but it seems that more crazy things are happeing every day. Random and undirected violence. People getting shot for no reason. Hit and run rampage in downtown San Francisco. 9-11 conspiracy theories. Growing white nationalist movements. Anger. Rage. Impotence. The kids are out of control.

Is it a function of the continued presence of the U.S. in Iraq and GWB's continued and increasing delusional functioning as the President of the United States? Is it the ever more evident lack of progress for the working poor? The lack of substitantive art being made? No clear national resistance to the status-quo? Unfortunately I have no answers but only a proposal.

The politico-kids love to quote true-isms like "the personal is the political" and though this is definitely true I don't think that means shopping at Whole Foods is kosher. It means dealing with and making your community better. It is up to us to create the new paradigm of self-sufficiency and doing things right on a real level. Why worry about the national good when we need to deal with the local problems? I refuse to feel guilty and I also refuse to feel impotent. Change can happen and we can all help it along. Individuals dealing with individuals to make our individual situations better.

the tide of opinion raises all boats

2006-09-14T12:37:00.000-07:00

Much like voting and such things, writing about music on yr blog or playing a groups songs on yr radio show doesn't do much of nothing. That is it really doesn't mean a whole hill of beans. Or at least it's only one bean in a whole hill of beans; and that give or take that one bean it doesn't mean much to the total number beans. It takes a lot of bean all getting together in the same spot to make a pile and only a pile means much of anything and only a big pile at that.

The consequence being that if one of those beans want to seem to have power, to seem to affect the whole pile or the perspective of the pile, they need to be in line with the rest of the pile. If you back the winner, you become a winner. Your actual minority opinion might be disnonant with the pile core opinion or the other pole of pile opinion but to assure your own position as a "taste-maker" and "early adopter" you toe the line. A whole LCD equation of opinion. Leaving two options for the streetlevel college radio dj or indie rock blogger. Toe the line or strike out alone. Striking out alone is lonely, doesn't reap recoginition, requires more work and rends you more vulnerable to attacks. But in the end is more rewarding, right? RIGHT?

a brief downtown disco discursion

2006-09-13T15:01:00.000-07:00

Though it hasn't caught on with the hipsters looking into the '80s nyc scene with an open mind towards disco has reapped big benifits. How can one appreciate New Order w/o listening to Moroder and Italo-Disco or NYC electro produced by Arthur Baker who worked with them? Oh well. New York in the '80s was so furtile and pop culture is still reaping the benifits.

Example: south bronx teenage Jellybean Benitez djs in manhattan, does the Roxy, meets Madonna because shes in a band playing drums (drums!) that he's gonna remix. They do it, she becomes famous, he helps remix tons of tracks on her first album. whatever. She also asks the Beastie Boys to open for her on her first tour. Appropriate enough because they're both taking '80s nyc innovations to the pop masses. She - disco electro pop w/ sligh sexuality/awareness, They - Hip-Hop w/ jokester comic sexuality. Both with a wink-non-wink. The Beasties first album is produced by Rick Rubin who also co-produced Jazzy Jay's track It's Yours that was released on Arthur Baker's Streetwise (or some subsidiary thereof). Baker also co-produced Bambattaa's Planet Rock which Jellybean remixed. Baker also release the Dominatrix's Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight which was recorded by a fellow who was also in Ike Yard, with releases on Factory America, and the Death Comet Crew, ground zero enlightened hiphop with Ramalezee on vocals. Ramalzee, B-boy and graffitti writer, also records seminal hiphop hit Beat Bop with k-rob that is co-produced by Jean-Michel Basquiat who was also in a band with Vincent Gallo called Gray. Gray also played the no-wave/post-no-wave downtown scene with Arto bands, Jim Jarmusch bands, SY, etc. Don't forget Madonna's band Breakfast Club later goes on to record for ZE records one of the few nyc labels releasing no-wave and other downtown detrus: Contortions, Suicide, Arto, Rosa Yemen, Lizzie Mercier Descloux (bff of Patti Smith), Kid Creole, etc. A lot of that produced by Bob Blank at his Blank Tape Studio where he also helped produced Disco along the lines of Arthur Russell's Dinosaur L stuff. Arthur Russell also releasing disco and not-disco and electro on his Sleeping Bag records, stuff like Mantronix's first couple of albums. Mantronix, like Jellybean, another Harlem/South Bronx teen riding the wave, making the wave to musical greatness. I'm sure he knew Madonna too. Time to ride the wave, eh?

Cedric Im Brooks v. the Monolith

2006-09-12T15:54:00.000-07:00

For most, and for most that people are aware of Jamaican music equals Reggae. And most would allow for the fact that the current reggae doesn't sound much like classic '70s reggae, it at least follows a logical growth from historical reggae to the current JA sound and therefore can still be classifiable as "reggae." Not surprisingly this simplistic statement "JA music: Reggae :: Reggae: JA music" is far from true. The most well-known JA export yes, but all the music created? Far from it. There's jamaican jazz, rock, funk, soul, etc and I'm even sure there is JA rap and punk, the middle class youths have to seperate themselves somehow right? That's not even to mention the other inidigenous JA/carribean sounds: Mento, calypso, etc. Which esp. in the '70s was probably more prominent in actual clubs and performance than reggae, also true of disco in the '70s. There's a crucial scene in Rockers where the Rasta horsemouth and friend (another reggae luminary, I don't remember who) invade and take over a disco where their playing western disco to a a receptive jamaican middle class audience. Not surprising for a music made in the ghetto by the underclass and dominated by a cult-ish un-recognized, by larger world church standards, to be unrecognized for the importance and dominance and creative power that it was by the middle and upper classes. It was probably fuel for the creative fire and now that roots reggae and rasta are more recognized by the gov't, its not surprising that its more tepid now and that the sufferer youth have moved on to other musics that are not yet synthesized into the approved sanctioned state identity.

The key musicians on the classic reggae sides of the '70s also were not limited to reggae and most (being pro musicians) were well aware of musics being made outside the island. One of them being Cedric Im Brooks who as the story goes traveled to the US/Philly and was exposed to some of the out there jazz of Sun Ra and the other musics coming from around the world. And even though Reggae was the bread and butter he decided to start cutting out there musics at Studio One and decidely non-reggae music. On the two records I've heard, Flash Forward and United Africa there is a fair amount of reggae. All of Flash is Studio One reggae rhythms with Brooks sax doing the vocal work. United Africa has one long reggae track, an instrumental of the rasta anthem (also recorded, possibly written by the Abbysinians) Satta Massa Ganna but than it ventures all over. Afro-beat, other carribian rhythms, Jazz, etc. THIS IS NO REGGAE RECORD. and it's good, but it's not as out there as the notes would indicated. This is not cosmic free jazz. This is just cosmic re-thinking of what it is to be a dispora musician. Cosmic United African World Music. not so cosmic, but all godly rasta united.

-White Man

Pimp My Ride

2006-09-11T13:33:00.000-07:00

While spending time in P****** at my parent's house and in S** D***** at my grandmothers house it was a complete gorge fest. I gorged myself on Ice Cream and Soda and lazing about and TV. Cable TV. While my parents of super-cable with 20 movie channels and one porn channel (what? why do they have that?) and millions of crappy things to watch my grandmother only has basic cable. And in the four days I was there I decided to focus on watching MTV. As has been the case for a while they no longer play many music videos on MTV and late at night they usually string together series of cheaply made shows. In the past this would be the cribs and jackass slot, this past week it was the slot for their def comedy show (don't remember the title) and the godly PIMP MY RIDE.

I'm sure I've heard of this show before but this was my first exposure to Xibizits gift to his fellow man of pimped out rides. The premise is they take beaters, serious serious beat-up cars, often nice-ish cars (muscle cars, range rovers, limos) that have seen far better days. They're not pimping out beat-up mid-90's Escorts (I can only dream) but they are pimping out cars for people who obv. care about having a cool car but no where near the means/time/real inclination to make it happen.

The real draw though is not the good-hearted feel good aspect, nor really the how-to-ish aspect as they pimp out the ride nor even some revelling in pimped out cars. Thats because, though the real appeal is the end product, they don't pimp'em out to normal people standards but do bizarro things that have no place in cars. Multiple 30 inch monitors, computers of all kinds, 30 ft projection screens popping out of trunks, trunks turned into rumble seats, absurd gaudy paint jobs, pnuematic message tube systems, water beds, water purifiers. This isn't a ghetto fantasy approaching anything near reality but a fantasy world where people aren't just defined by their cars but disappear in the presence of their cars. They no longer are imprinted by their cars nor have any real imprint on the car. The equation of pimped out car plus driver equals pimped out car; the driver is so miniscule in presence next to the ridiculousness of the car that all is left is the car. AND THIS IS NOT A CRITIQUE. THIS SHOW IS GREAT. WE SHOULD ALL BE SUBSUMMED BY OUR CARS.

Rap, Electro, Disco

2006-09-01T12:58:00.000-07:00

It all started with a vague interest in disco stemming from hints dropped by New Order, ACR and the '80s downtown nyc art music scene as well as the records repressed by the guy who runs gimme gimme records. If cool people thought disco was cool, maybe there was something to it. And then Soul Jazz pressed that Arthur Russell collection and new york hipsters were throwing disco parties at Tonic. I was convinced that disco was going to be the next big hipster craze. And it was sort of, but really wasn't. Kids were not scouring record bins for obscure disco records but obviously the dance thing was already big with the kids. Chk Chk Chk and Rapture records were effectively punk disco records and those came out before my interest in the genre and that's about as far as it was going to go. There might be Disco Not Disco comps but not much else. But that doesn't mean my interest wasn't piqued and I just continued down the path that no hipster would follow. Pursuing disco records.

So far it's been hit/miss and day-to-day as far as my love of this music goes. Moroder's records are all good but can be a bit much on somedays. Some of the shit is crap and most of the used 12"s in the stores are crap too. Luckily it has also lead easily into early new york hip-hop which came out primarly on new york independent disco labels that played it as the fad it was in the downtown discos. Sugarhill, P&P, Streetwise, Tommy Boy were all more or less disco labels that happened to have bigger success with early hip-hop releases and subsequently became hip-hop labels. Furthermore, since most of the early hip-hop records were just rap over recycled disco breaks it was more-or-less disco from the recorded music perspective. Party music with a dance beat. I think my deepest interest is in the early electro sounds from new york. Soul Sonic Force's first couple 12"ers, Marley Marl's first productions and such. Kraftwerk meets Boogie Down Bronx.

Dan played a group in Munich called Warp 9 on Prism records. Prism being another nyc start -up jumping from the disco beat to the electro hip-hop hits. Electro jams produced by Jellybean Benitz. And it's good so I think I'll continue to pursue it. Good stuff.

a goal set, a goal not reached

2006-08-30T14:45:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately I have established a trend of making many many "goals" and then failing to acheive most of them. This can be from "I won't buy any records for the next couple weeks" to "I'll finish this piece of work today" to "I'll ask that girl out on a date next time I see her." Invariably I don't really have any excuse for not accomplishing said goals due to being sidetracked by you-know "checking the internet" and "wasting time." ho-hum, so it goes. In some hard-boiled novel I've read there is a discussion about not keeping promises to oneself and goes to say that it is much much worse to not keep a promise to yourself than to not keep a promise to someone else. If you see someone who as said "i'm quitting smoking" and than fails in their attempt they are a broken man (in some way) and have little hope of ever really accomplishing anything because they'll never be able to keep a promise to themself ever again. Hard-boiled novels really don't mince words when it comes to moralistic black&white, so the protagonists can fail miserably or lose a lot to keep some arcane code, so this story can be taken with a grain of salt, but there's still a nugget of something there. So do my various failed personal commitments make me a failed person, no, not quite, but i would like to get more done.

One small goal I do hope to keep is to work on my writing. This blog being a manifestation or realization of that desire. If every couple of days I can write a couple paragraphs about some odd subject here or there it'll equal practice writing. and hopefully my writing will improve. And from there the sky's the limit.

This will also be my last post addressing my failings. it's not meta, it's crap.