...more recent posts
the bush dyslexicon - I heard another much more indebth interview yesterday (laborday) with the arthor which will apear here archived in 8 days for a relisten.
What’s with George Will? Now he’s stargazing in Hawaii, pondering the mysteries and trotting out Terence’s favorite quote about “stranger than we can suppose” (though without attribution to Haldane.) Has he been listening to the Shamen?
WFMU, New York/New Jersey's prime purveyor of freeform radio sounds, is
sponsoring a station benefit on Saturday, September 21st, at 8:00 PM at
Southpaw, 125 Fifth Avenue between Sterling and St. John's Place in Park
Slope, Brooklyn.
On the bill: ESG, Outhud, Brother JT3, the Styrenes. DJing provided by
David Grubbs. Tickets are on sale at Ticketweb.com, and Other Music (15
East 4th Street, New York City), and are $12 with all proceeds to benefit
the nonprofit, independent, listener-sponsored station. Tickets will also
be on sale at Southpaw the night of the show.
About the acts:
ESG began as four sisters and a friend emerging from the South Bronx with
trancy, minimalist grooves, scratchy guitar, and heady funk rhythms that
wound up influencing multiple musical camps from indie rock to hip hop to
No Wave. They've been sampled umpteenth times by higher profile names than
themselves (see their 1992 single "Sample Credits Don't Pay Our
Bills") and rarely play out these days, which makes it more of an honor to
have them on the WFMU bill. They have a brand new album forthcoming on the
UK Soul Jazz label, which also issued a compilation last year of ESG's
older material. The band has had quite a cult in the UK as well, even back
to their inception, where Factory Records' Tony Wilson was blown away
by the band and got them in the studio with Martin Hannett (Joy Division,
A Certain Ratio).
OUTHUD are a New York group of transplants from Sacramento (where half of
their other project !!! remains), and specialize in danceably rocking
grooves laden with processed effects, heavy echo, repetitive rhythms and
respectful nods to like minds as Gang of Four, Joy Division, New Order,
PiL, King Tubby. They have a forthcoming disc on the Kranky label.
BROTHER JT is a true purveyor of psychedelic soul, hailing from Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania, where he also fronted garage-pop legends the Original Sins
for most of the 80's and 90's. Backed by drummer Jamie Knerr and bassist
Bill Melcher, Brother JT's live sets swerve from classic Nuggets fuzz
rock to pure bubblegum to all-out acid-soaked psychedelic rants and are
amazing events to behold. He has two new discs out right now: Maybe We
Should Take Some More (Birdman) and Spirituals (Drag City, produced by
Neil Hagerty or Royal Trux and solo fame).
THE STYRENES are the one band that can wear the overused publicity tag
"artpunk legends" and not be challenged. Hailing from Cleveland, called
the "fertile dungheap of 1970's punk rock" by giving birth to such
luminaries as the Electric Eels, Rocket From the Tomb, Pere Ubu, and the
Dead Boys, the Styrenes crawled from the ashes of those bands with ex-Eels
and Mirrors members and now reside in our fair city. Not content to be
stylized into a genre, the band melds punk, prog, psychedelia, jazz, and
even pure 20th Century classical composition into its sound. There is a
new release of their early recordings out now called It's Still Artastic
(ROIR) as well as a newly recorded and quite rocking take on Terry Riley's
famous In C (Enja Records). Members John Morton and Paul Marotta are also
featured in the band Amoeba Raft Boy, whose recent release Bad Fuggum From
the Mysterium (Smog Veil Records) features a healthy chunk of tunes
recorded live in WFMU's studios in 1996.
DAVID GRUBBS knows a thing or two about good music, having been a member
of the Red Krayola, Gastr del Sol, Bitch Magnet, and Bastro as well as
producing many fine solo records. He'll be manning the wheels of steel at
the WFMU benefit tonight.
Axis of Evel
One (fleeting) regret on the Montana trip was missing Evel Week in Butte. That’s Evel as in Knievel, favorite son of the tapped-out town. NY Press sent a reporter. Paints too pretty a picture if you ask me. But what do I know: I went to Maloney’s.
Sad to hear that Bill's beloved mutt, Mother, has died. I'm not the biggest fan of dogs, but Mother was as sweet as they come. Good owners make for good dogs, and maybe she was grateful for being rescued from a hard life, but she was about as laid back as a canine could be. I'll always remember tromping around Buck's County with her in the Autumn leaves. Our sympathies go out.
In better pet news, we hear that Polycat is doing well in Montana, and two slightly irregular kittens have found a home…
NY Post gossip guru Neal Travis, the original Page Six editor, is dead. The Post is no longer a down-and-dirty tabloid, having repositioned itself as a secondary read to the Times. I guess it's the "ironic" paper. Guys like Travis, shown here (at right) with drunken Steve Dunleavy, a fellow Murdoch running-dog, were transitional figures who retained something of the aura of the old dailies.
better killing through chemistry
the sunny side of the street
I was wondering about those ubiquitous Chevy ads, the "walking on the sun" campaign. Did they buy a Zombies song and re-write it? No, Christopher Caldwell of NY Press explains that it's Smash Mouth, in the process of selling out. (see "In Any Event" down the page) But I don't buy his critique. It's not that these folks don't understand irony; the situation is the height of irony, or what irony used to mean. In fact, it's so ironic it's subversive, but in the wrong direction. Nowadays irony is just the echo chamber of meaninglessness; postmodernism's aversion to any commitment requiring a value judgement. 'Course I knew that years ago, which is why I thought the Clash were a joke even then. Smash Mouth and the admen are all of one condition: nobody sells out anymore; they just buy in. And the moral is: the only thing you have to pay the Zombies is homage.
Get your war on, page 13: Get your Exx on.
live set and interview with "big al anderson" of the wild weeds and nrbq
Thomas Friedman is at it in the Times again, this time attributing
the cooldown of nuclear tensions over Kashmir to GE,
American Express, Dell, and other enlightened companies
who job out white collar coolee labor in India. Seems those
companies would have to take their high tech crap jobs
elsewhere because of the danger, so the indentured
servants put pressure on the Indian government to stand
down. To Friedman this is another example of how wonderful
global capital is. Not a word is said about all the money and
jobs and training being exported from the US because the
Indians are willing to work for so much less. On the subject
of Hindus, we can only hope Friedman will be reincarnated
as a minority American in an inner city with poorly funded
schools and no industrial base.
Pardon me for raining on Steve Fossett's parade, but isn't
his "world record solo balloon flight" a bit of a cheat? First, it
took him, what, eight tries? Second, he had bottomless
funding to keep making high-tech improvements on his
balloon technology. And finally, and most damning, if you
start in Australia, fly to New Zealand, and keep going east till
you hit Australia again, that's circumnavigation, sure, but not
so impressive and lengthy a voyage as starting and ending
on the equator. And the "southern route" is basically what he
did. I wince every time I hear some media ho refer to him as
a "world record holder." Oh well, at least it wasn't Richard
Branson.
memo from samoa : According to a drunk guy who residents at Bellevue Hospital in New York
City, It will be an another strange lounge act will be committed by Samoa a
front man of The Lonely Samoans and NYC's latest lounge band sensation "The
Mood Illusion".
This Sunday August 11th at The lakeside lounge
162 Avenue B. 212.529.8463
7:00 till 8:30 It's friggin FREE!!!!!!!
Starts 7:00pm sharp! as razor which you could use for suicide or could use
for plastic surgery.
i only caught the last few minutes of this documentary about a young vietnamese girl who comes to study in america but wish i had seen more. can you imagine the image of america one would construct if you were plucked from your home and stuck with a family of uncaring rednecks for your senior year of high school in rural mississippi?
Summer in the City
Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city
All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head
But at night it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come-on come-on and dance all night
Despite the heat it'll be alright
And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights
In the summer, in the city
In the summer, in the city
Cool town, evening in the city
Dressing so fine and looking so pretty
Cool cat, looking for a kitty
Gonna look in every corner of the city
Till I'm wheezing like a bus stop
Running up the stairs, gonna meet you on the rooftop
But at night it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come-on come-on and dance all night
Despite the heat it'll be alright
And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights
In the summer, in the city
In the summer, in the city
Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city
All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head
But at night it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come-on come-on and dance all night
Despite the heat it'll be alright
And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights
In the summer, in the city
In the summer, in the city
-the spoonful
Mr. Wilson I just discovered that it is not possible to post on your page, what's that all about? I have been experiencing that flit, unfortunately the flit's are cock roaches. Where are you? Do you know what night it is?
I rarely regret cable TV, but I would like to see this one: a documentary focusing on Detroit in the late sixties, and how the World Series winning '68 Tigers salved the wounds of the previous year's race riots. I was nine that summer, and barely cognizant of such matters, but I do remember the remarkable nature of that season. It was the year I got socialized. I'd never had any interest in sports, but that spring they had us playing T-ball at school, and as the Tigers gained momentum the interest among my peers was so pervasive that I couldn't help but become a fan. It was one of the few times I've wholeheartedly been involved in something so unabashedly mainstream. It was the year that Denny McLain won 31 games. That was (and remains) an amazing figure. My Dad told me stories from his childhood about Dizzy Dean, the St. Louis eccentric, and the last pitcher to win as many as 30. That had been in 1934, thirty-four years earlier; an unfathomable gulf for a child to contemplate. Now it's thirty-four years since '68, and while I've got a broader perspective on time, I'm no closer to understanding it. McLain seems as far away as Diz, yet I can recall the year's events as if it were last season. Mostly I heard them on the radio, narrated by Ernie Harwell, Detroit's Hall of Fame play-by-play man, who is retiring this year at age 84. Despite dominating the American League, the Tigers were Series underdogs against the champion Cardinals. They had Bob Gibson, who set the ERA record that year, but "only" managed a record of 22 and 9, which goes to show why '68 is remembered as the "year of the pitcher". He easily defeated McLain in their two series match-ups, but our number two guy, pot-bellied southpaw Mickey Lolich, emerged as the hero, winning three games. He beat the invincible Gibson in the deciding seventh game, pitching on short rest, as the Tigers came back from a 3 games to 1 deficit to win their first series since 1945. It remains one of the most satisfying experiences of my life. The next year, I found out that (Yankees aside) sports is really about your team losing more often than it wins. Denny McLain ended up in jail as a two-bit mobster, and I haven't had much satisfaction from the mainstream since.
i forgot how sucky daytime tv is.
From NY Press, John Strausbaugh talks to Richard Metzger about the travails of Disinformation.
oh yeah, lomax died
help your country, spy on your neighbors