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I'm supposed to be guest-posting for Tom today but he laid down so many rules for his page I kind of don't feel comfortable saying much. I predict much of the action will be on my page where Tom is posting as me, I mean, guest blogging for me in a reciprocal arrangement. Please check out this post-9/11 red state inspirational music video, it's way better than the arty stuff I, I mean, Tom posts. And scroll down to see what Tom, I mean I, and others have to say about it. Abraham Kalashnikov's reading is especially good. --bill schwarz
This song was popular in 1972 (at least on FM, "underground" radio--I was thinking it was Cheech and Chong but it was David Peel). It's all this page has to contribute by way of commenting on what is surely the Most Momentous News Story of Our Age, the passing of you know who:
The Pope Smokes Dope
David Peel and The Lower East Side
Chorus:
The pope smokes dope, God gave him the grass
The pope smokes dope, he likes to smoke in mass
The pope smokes dope, he's a groovy head
The pope smokes dope, the pope smokes dope
(oh yeah! 3x)
*
God is high on mescaline, Satan's high on smack
Popes in Rome get stoned on grass, Jesus freaks are back
Jesus Christ a super-hippie never shoot up junk
Popes in Rome get stoned alone, priests, in church get drunk
(Chorus)
Now Jack 'n' Jill went up the hill, to fetch a pail of water
Jill forgot to take her pill, now she's got a daughter
Taking pills is not a joke for a groovy Pope
Birth control can be a toke of marijuana smoke
(Chorus)
The pope is getting higher (re: higher! higher! - 4x)
(Chorus)
Cha! Cha! Cha!
Two interesting discussions of electronic music:
Kim Cascone on glitch music
Kelefa Sanneh vs Ben Neill on Moby [via NEWSgrist]
Both talk about music as "post-" something--Cascone uses the term "post-digital" and Sanneh/Neill hash out the meaning of Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" in the pop music context. Also, both use the dreaded term "electronica." Yes, it's just shorthand but it still violates a major tenet of Ishkur's Guide (now in version 2.5!):
This quote from Neill is especially good:
...um, Classifications Consortium.
With design superseding art, art appropriates the commercial because otherwise it feels obsolete, and art changes from a product industry to a service industry. Dematerializing, if you will. Is that bad? Is that why we have “the end of music”? I think it’s more because in today’s sensational story-driven world, how can something as mental as “Music” (especially instrumental music, which is nearly impossible to write about and therefore to sell) compete with gang wars between rappers and Michael Jackson’s sex scandals?He's defending Moby as a symptom of something good that almost happened in pop music in the '90s (anonymity, decentralization, no more friggin rock stars). Sanneh is somewhat knowledgeable (but snide) about the "paradigm shift" electronic dance music almost pulled off back then, but is still attached to the "great man" view of history--and the paradigm of newspapers needing stories on said friggin rock stars--and thus gives Moby disproportionate credit (on the up-side of his career) and blame (on the down) as a "shifter."
"hiphop_guitar (fragment)" [mp3 removed]
"free_alpha" [mp3 removed]
“darkest_nerk_scanner” [mp3 removed]
Starting tomorrow, I'll be having a guest blogger. It's Bill Schwarz. That will be taking up most of his time, so I'll be guest blogging over at Schwarz. Be sure to let us know if you can tell the difference.
Advil Box, 1994, acrylic on promotional display box, 16.5 x 8 x 8.5 inches
"Drum Thing" [mp3 removed]
"Mutated Drums" [mp3 removed]
"Drum Thing" is played with six sampled drumkits--sort of like chamber music with the same beat; "Mutated Drums" is another pattern played live through an analog filter--more of a "knob workout," as we say.
Here in New York the fall of the twin towers etched a pretty deep scar in the civic consciousness. Everyone was affected by it in some way, and people still have a hard time talking about it. Unlike the millions around the U.S. who goggled at the event over and over on TV, in this city it was a lived thing. Ironically it was those TV-gogglers, with no direct experience of the tragedy, who bayed most loudly for war. People here just wanted Bush to stop stirring the pot. (Not everyone, but hundreds of thousands turned out for demonstration after demonstration.) Below, images of New York artist Matt Freedman's work at vertexList, from a two person show with Jude Tallichet. Shades of Richard Dreyfuss and the Devil's Tower in Close Encounters of the Third Kind: the damn things get to you.
