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This is a piece of mine, not a .GIF based on John Parker's work. I'm using it as reference.
I am working on a collaborative project with John Parker for a show in Toronto. It will be both music and video--details to follow. He has been remixing some of my Mac SE tunes. I'm going to try some animated GIFs based on images of his artwork from his website. We'll see where it goes.
Plug: S.I.D.S. (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome--these kids today and their band names, why back in my day...oh, yeah, whoops) from Athens, GA, is playing at Capone's in Brooklyn tonight, 221 N. 9th, betw. Driggs and Roebling. If you can't make it, check out some of their music at the myspace link above. Punkoid sound featuring overdriven keyboards (with bass, drums and enraged vocals), as opposed to the dreaded ubiquitous g***tar.
There is a place in the far North where the ocean periodically bulges up and actually breaks free of Earth's gravity. A few grazing sheep, the only witnesses, flee whenever this happens. The sea becomes a water moon, flies into the sky, enters a wormhole in the atmosphere, and returns to Earth as a floating Magrittean rock. The rock hits the ground and becomes the Earth, the sheep return, and thus are sea and land always kept in balance. Or at least that's how it seems in this Sally McKay video (be sure to watch the Quicktime--it has suitably understatedly un-apocalyptic music).
This cartoon by Gary Panter makes me laugh. I'd classify it as "stealth stoner" humor. (On the other hand, the title of the strip *is* Smoke Wagon.) I love the way he draws the protagonist bird slightly differently in every panel, with varying degrees of pen nib shakiness. By the third panel we are seriously wondering why this feathered maniac is driving a kiddie jeep from town to town. It also makes me think of the Michael Smith/William Wegman video "World of Photography," which combines wacked-out devotion to a universally available medium with a finely tuned sense of the pathetic.
The Washington Post has a story today about how hard people work at the White House and how exhausted everyone is. Bush chief of staff Andrew Card is especially praised for his "stamina." Steve Gilliard puts this malarkey in perspective:
You know I'd feel bad for them if they weren't incompetent morons getting people killed. Who gives a fuck about Andy Card's schedule. Some kid wakes up in Walter Reed and has to figure out how to live the rest of his life without a leg. So you think Andy Card really has problems?
This makes these people seem more human to the Beltway folks, when to most Americans, they could give a shit. Andy Card could quit tomorrow and be a multi-millionaire betraying America for the Bush family's Saudi friends. If he's tired, he can quit any time. Hopefully, he isn't running a scam on Wal Mart.
Thinking about buying this DVD. Looking at that picture makes me blissfully happy. I keep waiting and hoping that rock will die. That something will replace the three chords, the verse-verse-chorus, the drum-bass-lead, and the stupid iconic image of the slouching boy or girl clutching the ax as the ultimate avatar of coolness. The early '80s (documented in the film), and then again the early '90s, hinted that it was possible, but stupid cock rock cliches always come back, like the crabs. This blog page is dedicated not so much to the keyboard as an alternative, or even the "dj" (another kind of anti-authority authority figure), but rather abstract, orgiastic, authorless, soundcentric but still tuneful music, the unfulfilled promise of rave. House music, at the very least, with the dj/knob twiddler barely visible behind the record crates.
Now that that's out of the way, please note that Simon Reynolds discussed his book on postpunk last week on Slate.