"In the film [Valis] Brady schemed constantly on Linda, Goose's wife (in the film, for some reason, Goose used his real name, Eric Lampton; so the tale narrated had to do with the marginal Lamptons). Linda Lampton wasn't natural; that came across early on. I got the impression that Brady was a son-of-a-bitch despite his wizardry with audio electronics. He had a laser system set up which ran the information -- which is to say, the various channels of music -- into a mixer unlike anything that actually exists; the damn thing rose up like a fortress -- Brady actually entered it through a door, and, inside it, got bathed with laser beams which converted into sound using his brain as a transducer. / In one scene Linda Lampton took off her clothes. She had no sex organs. / Damdest thing Fat and I ever saw." —PKD, Valis
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Monday, January 5, 2015
Monday, December 29, 2014
fall I: thematize me
"Your spirit is time-reversed to your body / stereographic mix up field on field / it started growing up the day your body dies / only apparently real to irreal" —Sonic Youth, "Stereo Sanctity"
Now it was winter.†
For weeks this last fall I had been listening to Converge’s “Predatory Glow” several times a day; it’s the finale to their recent All We Love We Leave Behind, and its lyrics begin, "I've found myself / running out of time / relating to those that / just stopped trying / clinging to those little things / and the light they bring / I bow down to you / extinguished youth" (for more, this transcription seems mostly correct). It’s disappointing to me when the closing song on an album doesn’t sound like a ship on fire in the middle of the ocean. Converge know how to end an album:
Parenthetically, do we not seek out “new” music to listen to because it is unburdened by memory associations, for listening to “old,” “familiar” music always seems to draw us back against the current? New music isn't yet tied to a life time or place or stratum. Surely now, thanks to my overplaying, “Predatory Glow” will be October of 2012 whenever I hear it.
(Cobweb or chain of memory. At once I recall struggling to explain to M.S. between sets at a “Neue Musik” piano performance why a blog should take “belated” as its title. But then, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that my first website, from ye olde late 90s, in the end became a way for me to share the lyrics from songs that were affecting me most urgently at a given moment; I need only think of a pretext for their use or display. Epigraphs are always handy. I also recollect struggling with Elliot Carter’s “Insomnia.” The occasion for the struggle was a paper for a course called “Music since 1968,” which was taught by an accomplished student of Carter’s! The paper was about the relation between Carter’s music and the poem of Elizabeth Bishop’s that it set. Soundtrack, “a mirror on which to dwell.”)
Personally, I am not averse to bombast.
Why do I find some pop songs so compelling? As though the lyrics were written by someone sneaking into my room at night, ghost writing my high school diary. As though “the shadows are really the body.” A circle between high school journal and pop song lyric whose most crystalline expression is the kid writing during class, from memory, the full lyrics of an Iron Maiden song on his trapper keeper.
What is the relation between the lyrics and the music they “accompany?”
Footnotes? at first ridiculing, then destroying the main argument of the piece. Or the lyrics could figure what the music seems to be doing abstractly. Then pop singers always say: the lyrics have a personal meaning for me; individual fans will make of them what they will. Everyone shall have their own interpretation that I am not responsible for! Or the lyrics are a kind of de-figuralization that allows anyone to inject some semantic something into them? And how does that complicate our notion of the physical force of music? the way it moves the body despite its abstractness, and of the words, which seem to rip away from the flesh and float over like ashes. High school diary, high school poetry.
Song lyrics are supposed to be abstract enough to enable individual interpretations, and at the same time, they do not sound meaningful and invite such interpretation without seeming to figure the music they “accompany.” That's a question.
And we haven't yet accounted for the voice. Perhaps the voice is precisely this site or relation between lyrics and music?
And if song lyrics are so important to me, then why am I so terrible at hearing what they are in the first place – I always need the booklet, the text – let alone deciphering them?
It took me twenty years to realize that “split” could mean divide and leave.
Now it was winter.†
For weeks this last fall I had been listening to Converge’s “Predatory Glow” several times a day; it’s the finale to their recent All We Love We Leave Behind, and its lyrics begin, "I've found myself / running out of time / relating to those that / just stopped trying / clinging to those little things / and the light they bring / I bow down to you / extinguished youth" (for more, this transcription seems mostly correct). It’s disappointing to me when the closing song on an album doesn’t sound like a ship on fire in the middle of the ocean. Converge know how to end an album:
Parenthetically, do we not seek out “new” music to listen to because it is unburdened by memory associations, for listening to “old,” “familiar” music always seems to draw us back against the current? New music isn't yet tied to a life time or place or stratum. Surely now, thanks to my overplaying, “Predatory Glow” will be October of 2012 whenever I hear it.
(Cobweb or chain of memory. At once I recall struggling to explain to M.S. between sets at a “Neue Musik” piano performance why a blog should take “belated” as its title. But then, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that my first website, from ye olde late 90s, in the end became a way for me to share the lyrics from songs that were affecting me most urgently at a given moment; I need only think of a pretext for their use or display. Epigraphs are always handy. I also recollect struggling with Elliot Carter’s “Insomnia.” The occasion for the struggle was a paper for a course called “Music since 1968,” which was taught by an accomplished student of Carter’s! The paper was about the relation between Carter’s music and the poem of Elizabeth Bishop’s that it set. Soundtrack, “a mirror on which to dwell.”)
Personally, I am not averse to bombast.
Why do I find some pop songs so compelling? As though the lyrics were written by someone sneaking into my room at night, ghost writing my high school diary. As though “the shadows are really the body.” A circle between high school journal and pop song lyric whose most crystalline expression is the kid writing during class, from memory, the full lyrics of an Iron Maiden song on his trapper keeper.
What is the relation between the lyrics and the music they “accompany?”
Footnotes? at first ridiculing, then destroying the main argument of the piece. Or the lyrics could figure what the music seems to be doing abstractly. Then pop singers always say: the lyrics have a personal meaning for me; individual fans will make of them what they will. Everyone shall have their own interpretation that I am not responsible for! Or the lyrics are a kind of de-figuralization that allows anyone to inject some semantic something into them? And how does that complicate our notion of the physical force of music? the way it moves the body despite its abstractness, and of the words, which seem to rip away from the flesh and float over like ashes. High school diary, high school poetry.
Song lyrics are supposed to be abstract enough to enable individual interpretations, and at the same time, they do not sound meaningful and invite such interpretation without seeming to figure the music they “accompany.” That's a question.
And we haven't yet accounted for the voice. Perhaps the voice is precisely this site or relation between lyrics and music?
And if song lyrics are so important to me, then why am I so terrible at hearing what they are in the first place – I always need the booklet, the text – let alone deciphering them?
I had a dream
and it split the scene
but I gotta hunch
it’s coming back to me.
It took me twenty years to realize that “split” could mean divide and leave.
Monday, October 27, 2014
tweet #15
my tiny, tinny, inner adorno is very angry with me, but what can i say, pops? i like lana del rey a lot.
— Seth Young (@autresy) October 27, 2014Friday, October 24, 2014
bit of contagion
Jeff Hancock was our guest at today's "Databite." His spiel concerned the Facebook emotional contagion study, about which, justly, many people continue to write. A tidbit fell out of Jeff's talk and caught my attention.
The Facebook study grew from prior work that challenged the contention that emotional contagion, observable in face to face interactions, doesn't happen in text-only situations. You know: no one can tell you're being sarcastic in email! The prior work was undertaken in a lab setting. Subjects would communicate through a text-based chat program. One subject would be manipulated so as to be in a negative emotional state, and then the researchers would measure whether that negative feeling spread to the interlocutor. But! In order to overcome the therapeutic effect wherein simply communicating with someone else helps you feel better, researchers had to devise a means of maintaining half the dyad in a persistent negative state.
The Facebook study grew from prior work that challenged the contention that emotional contagion, observable in face to face interactions, doesn't happen in text-only situations. You know: no one can tell you're being sarcastic in email! The prior work was undertaken in a lab setting. Subjects would communicate through a text-based chat program. One subject would be manipulated so as to be in a negative emotional state, and then the researchers would measure whether that negative feeling spread to the interlocutor. But! In order to overcome the therapeutic effect wherein simply communicating with someone else helps you feel better, researchers had to devise a means of maintaining half the dyad in a persistent negative state.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
11:11
Happy birthday. Did I tell you I finally saw Come play live? on some kind of reunion tour, narrowly missing the flooding in Central Europe, staying just ahead of the flooding in the Czech Republic, they arrived in Berlin in June of last year and played Festsaal Kreuzberg. OF was with me, and his partner J, and some new German friends, VS and FR. Come threw themselves into all the songs from eleven:eleven and then some. I'd waited twenty years to hear Thalia Zedek singing "I'm in orbit, baby, and I can't come down." And you and me were driving midnight on the P.C.H. again. It was glorious. I smoked some cigarettes with the bass player after the show. A pack is twenty new friends, remember? During the show Thalia Zedek said that it was great to be back in Berlin: "so many old friends...brought together by music...music is how I made friends at least." A few weeks later, Festsaal Kreuzberg caught on fire. I miss you.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
open triad
February 7, 2013
Blonde Redhead's "Bipolar" Shuffles on. Before the song really gets going I recognize it by its initial drumstick clicks. How are we able to do that? identify a recording merely by an opening percussive tchk or three? I'm certain that I could correctly identify, within a click or two, any song in my large mp3 library that has a drumstick start. What a miracle of memory and perception! when the silence changes, and the click rends it, and within such a small caesura, we anticipate a whole song. When did we all start dying?
Blonde Redhead's "Bipolar" Shuffles on. Before the song really gets going I recognize it by its initial drumstick clicks. How are we able to do that? identify a recording merely by an opening percussive tchk or three? I'm certain that I could correctly identify, within a click or two, any song in my large mp3 library that has a drumstick start. What a miracle of memory and perception! when the silence changes, and the click rends it, and within such a small caesura, we anticipate a whole song. When did we all start dying?
Saturday, December 22, 2012
("shouting the poetic truths of high school journal keepers"*; or, The Ultimate Blogpost
My hair had become long again, as long as it was when I graduated from high school. Seattle long, fifteen months long. Then, after kvetching about its inconveniences endlessly, I paid a young person named Steffi fourteen Euros to cut it all off, leaving only fifteen sleek millimeters around the sides and back. Precision. Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz. Catharsis by haircut; feels great out.
Blogger of the Year
Friday, November 30, 2012
Herbst II: "Leaves Turn Inside You"
"Only in October / now it's nearly over / maybe in November / if you can remember / when it rains it feels like shame / remind yourself after work / to find a new city to blame / lock yourself in the house / sometimes / you'll laugh / so hard / you'll cry / only in October / now it's nearly over / maybe in November / if you can remember / broken teeth for months it seems / like you like hell / weekend comes and now you feel / like your after life / sometimes / you'll laugh / so hard / you'll cry" —Unwound, "October All Over"
I didn't smell fall arrive in 2012. Unlike every other autumn that I can remember, that sudden undercurrent of crisp rot in the air,—I missed it somehow this year, that smell that madeleines one's mind directly into the cycle of all falls, always fall, the season of live-in decay. Cycles are forever; we are not, even with respect to ourselves.
(For me, fall has been the only season that I experience as a season, as recurrence. Winter is a time to get through, but it never feels like a déjà vu. Spring is filled with clichéd potential but never provides the temporal gap for reflection. Summer is so preoccupied with right-here-right-now that the past and present dissolve. And fall falls on us like a ravenous but patient vulture. We will always be dying our one death, which lasts forever.)
Maybe I was clinging too tightly to the rhythms of this summer's summer, when we forgive ourselves for our need for pleasure and revel in doing nothing. Lists of things that "must be done" bleach in the sun; by Labor Day, we cannot recall what was so pressing about all those things.
Indeed, it's been many, many years since the autumn that I am living in has not followed a very hot and muggy August. By contrast, fall was barely welcome this year: it brought no relief because, apart from a pair of truly warm days, the summer's summer, there was no heat in Berlin from which to be relieved.—Which is to say that fall wasn't even negatively determined this time around.
But if this is the first fall that arrived without my catching its scent, then perhaps I have finally been freed of the after-effect of so many years of school. Above all, autumn has always smelled like the first semester of a new school year, even long after I had stopped going. This is the year, then, when that ghostly feeling released its grasp, finally, belatedly, but does this also mean that I am ready to return?
Or, as Unwound sang in another song from 2001, "The future was invented back when you thought you were human, and now it's only getting better every day that we forget."
I didn't smell fall arrive in 2012. Unlike every other autumn that I can remember, that sudden undercurrent of crisp rot in the air,—I missed it somehow this year, that smell that madeleines one's mind directly into the cycle of all falls, always fall, the season of live-in decay. Cycles are forever; we are not, even with respect to ourselves.
(For me, fall has been the only season that I experience as a season, as recurrence. Winter is a time to get through, but it never feels like a déjà vu. Spring is filled with clichéd potential but never provides the temporal gap for reflection. Summer is so preoccupied with right-here-right-now that the past and present dissolve. And fall falls on us like a ravenous but patient vulture. We will always be dying our one death, which lasts forever.)
Maybe I was clinging too tightly to the rhythms of this summer's summer, when we forgive ourselves for our need for pleasure and revel in doing nothing. Lists of things that "must be done" bleach in the sun; by Labor Day, we cannot recall what was so pressing about all those things.
Indeed, it's been many, many years since the autumn that I am living in has not followed a very hot and muggy August. By contrast, fall was barely welcome this year: it brought no relief because, apart from a pair of truly warm days, the summer's summer, there was no heat in Berlin from which to be relieved.—Which is to say that fall wasn't even negatively determined this time around.
But if this is the first fall that arrived without my catching its scent, then perhaps I have finally been freed of the after-effect of so many years of school. Above all, autumn has always smelled like the first semester of a new school year, even long after I had stopped going. This is the year, then, when that ghostly feeling released its grasp, finally, belatedly, but does this also mean that I am ready to return?
Or, as Unwound sang in another song from 2001, "The future was invented back when you thought you were human, and now it's only getting better every day that we forget."
Friday, November 9, 2012
sprung
In honor of a newborn niece, I am freeing up some fragments that concern my own baby (my own baby and ears, apparently, both the things and what you do with them), i.e. liberating them from FB and bringing them over here:
Friday, May 25, 2012
whisper in the Net
I haven't thought about A Whisper In The Noise for a long time. iTunes tells me that I last listened to Through the Ides of March two years ago (since Z bought it for me around the time it came out, 2004, I've listened to it about 25-30 times, or so says iTunes' play count).
Thanks to the magic of Shuffle, I just happened to hear "Seeing You" and was transported back to AWITN's show in Allston several (many?) years ago – and recalled the personal errand I ran in connection with it. Through the Ides of March is a great album. That show at Great Scott was also great.
And I heard "Seeing You," and I thought: I wonder what AWITN is up to now. And lo, their band page on Exile from Mainstream's site says that they are playing in Berlin...tonight. This bit of the uncanny is itself consistent with the atmosphere of Through the Ides of March.
Thanks to the magic of Shuffle, I just happened to hear "Seeing You" and was transported back to AWITN's show in Allston several (many?) years ago – and recalled the personal errand I ran in connection with it. Through the Ides of March is a great album. That show at Great Scott was also great.
And I heard "Seeing You," and I thought: I wonder what AWITN is up to now. And lo, their band page on Exile from Mainstream's site says that they are playing in Berlin...tonight. This bit of the uncanny is itself consistent with the atmosphere of Through the Ides of March.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
offsprings
The following first appeared on Facebook, October 14, 2011.
when, after our midday nap, rjky and i are sitting on our respective potties, facing one another with a basket of magazines between us, rjky always insists on taking Der Spiegel and The Economist for herself, as she pushes Elle été and old issues of Brigitte into my hands...
The following first appeared on Facebook, February 18, 2012.
rjky has added the word "tower" to her vocabulary -- usually in reference to the massive spires that have become her stock in trade when we're playing legos. so i'm teaching her the chorus...a perfect song from a perfect album (an album, what's more, that often dominated my late night, high school joy rides of alienation and boredom): indeed,
"radio waves curve and cross / I stand below them / lost // above me is a black obelisk / and the dangers that I risk // here gather the ghosts of the mind / that tear my heart and here I find / all the traps that have been set / everything I would forget beneath / The Tower The Tower The Tower The Tower The Tower The Tower The Tower The Tower"
when, after our midday nap, rjky and i are sitting on our respective potties, facing one another with a basket of magazines between us, rjky always insists on taking Der Spiegel and The Economist for herself, as she pushes Elle été and old issues of Brigitte into my hands...
The following first appeared on Facebook, February 18, 2012.
rjky has added the word "tower" to her vocabulary -- usually in reference to the massive spires that have become her stock in trade when we're playing legos. so i'm teaching her the chorus...a perfect song from a perfect album (an album, what's more, that often dominated my late night, high school joy rides of alienation and boredom): indeed,
"radio waves curve and cross / I stand below them / lost // above me is a black obelisk / and the dangers that I risk // here gather the ghosts of the mind / that tear my heart and here I find / all the traps that have been set / everything I would forget beneath / The Tower The Tower The Tower The Tower The Tower The Tower The Tower The Tower"
Friday, April 27, 2012
Myanmar rocks
This post first appeared on MOG, February 11, 2008.
[...]
I recently returned from Asia, including two weeks in Myanmar (which I loved, despite the political context), where, as is my habit, I tried to track down some local music. I was invited to a punk show at a shopping mall by some enthusiastic male students from an English class I randomly led for a couple of mornings; but, as it turns out, it was a day or two before Independence Day, and the authorities were not likely to let the show take place. I skipped it. On the other hand, I did attend the most bizarre New Year's Eve party of my short life; imagine: a high-class hotel; reserved, numbered tables; an all-you-can-eat buffet; unlimited drinks; a rowdy crowd (mostly from Singapore and other parts of the Malay Peninsula, not to mention lots of Thai and Chinese, plus some South Asians from the RoI, and a pair of fat tourists, probably Germans); an emcee who can only be described as a pastiche of Chris Tucker's character in "The Fifth Element"; crowd participation (couples tug-of-war, female wrestling, an endless raffle (I won two nights in a luxury hotel in the Shan state, close to the Golden Triangle, that I couldn't use because they expired, well, a couple of weeks ago)); the weirdest dance thing I've ever seen, complete with midget and scrawny, overdriven Asian belly dancer; and a dozen or more live music performances.--All tied together by the theme of this particular New Year's Eve bash: The Gladiator (I shit you not).
The music ran the entire pop gamut, from covers of midwestern bar jukebox classics like Kenny Rodgers to odd, punky, Avril Lavigne (I think) type stuff (with some rapping thrown in, heh). The English-language hits sung in Burmese were by far the most interesting. The setup was two bands, each of which played along with the many individual vocalists and pairs of vocalists, who would all dutifully present their sheet music to the band before turning to the audience, mic in hand. One thing I really enjoyed: no vocalist could sing more than a few bars before audience members would begin streaming to the stage to pin flowers in their hair and to give them helium balloons to hold (picture, if you will, a long-haired rocker guy, with fingerless gloves, studded denim jacket, daintily holding a pink balloon). Some vocalists finished their performance completely weighted down by the outpourings of the audience -- something like putting dollar bills in the g-string of a stripper, only G-rated. The smoke machine was in heavy, heavy use. I couldn't understand the performers' names, but some of them seemed to be famous, at least in Yangon. The situation of a single band playing with multiple vocalists is more or less the norm, from what I can tell.
Myanmar's biggest band (for a decade now), Iron Cross, is a hard rock outfit with several singers. I bought two Iron Cross disks on a shopping trip with a student from the English class I mentioned. They are, to wit, Lay Phyu's "Kha Na Layy Myarr" and Myo Gyi's "Nate Sa Du Wa," and their schizophrenic trajectories, from almost Pantera-like heaviness to Hong Kong film soundtrack sappiness, is apparently completely unsurprising. I've actually really begun to enjoy all of the songs, though, even the cheesiest of them, but the standout is Lay Phyu's amazing "Ma Mayt Pyit Net" (yes, even with the string section).
I also picked up some tapes on the street that I hope to digitize soon, the first of some traditional music (which I don't expect to differ radically from the Burmese folk music available through the totally amazing Sublime Frequencies), the second, "Emperor Oasis," by a singer who looks kind of like a Burmese Sonny Crockett (that promises to be fun: though the jacket is nicely printed, the tape itself is a regular old 60-minute unit you could pick up in a drugstore (or maybe not, anymore)).
My big purchase, though, is hiphop heartthrob Sai Sai's "Happy Sai Sai Birthday" album, a recording of a show Sai Sai played on, yes, his birthday (the closer is the audience singing happy birthday to him). Much of the music sounds vaguely like something you've already heard (scraps of Eminem, what have you), but the Burmese rapping is -- pardon the expression -- totally awesome, particularly the ghetto superstar (re)remix "Chit Thu Tan Ta Tha Chin" feat. Kaung Myat (of "My Name Is Kaung Myat" fame) and Nge Nge. Sai Sai's website is http://www.saisaionline.com.
All of this music was purchased on the recommendation of one student I spent some time with while in Yangon. I asked him to take me record shopping, and it was his help that resulted in me getting to hear the disks before buying them (I mean, in the first place, he took me to the right store). Thankfully my wife was traveling with her laptop, and I was able to return the favor, loading him up with music that is completely unknown in Yangon (Pixies, El-P, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Blonde Redhead, and so on). He wrote me an email a couple of weeks ago to say that he really likes everything I gave him.
[...]
I recently returned from Asia, including two weeks in Myanmar (which I loved, despite the political context), where, as is my habit, I tried to track down some local music. I was invited to a punk show at a shopping mall by some enthusiastic male students from an English class I randomly led for a couple of mornings; but, as it turns out, it was a day or two before Independence Day, and the authorities were not likely to let the show take place. I skipped it. On the other hand, I did attend the most bizarre New Year's Eve party of my short life; imagine: a high-class hotel; reserved, numbered tables; an all-you-can-eat buffet; unlimited drinks; a rowdy crowd (mostly from Singapore and other parts of the Malay Peninsula, not to mention lots of Thai and Chinese, plus some South Asians from the RoI, and a pair of fat tourists, probably Germans); an emcee who can only be described as a pastiche of Chris Tucker's character in "The Fifth Element"; crowd participation (couples tug-of-war, female wrestling, an endless raffle (I won two nights in a luxury hotel in the Shan state, close to the Golden Triangle, that I couldn't use because they expired, well, a couple of weeks ago)); the weirdest dance thing I've ever seen, complete with midget and scrawny, overdriven Asian belly dancer; and a dozen or more live music performances.--All tied together by the theme of this particular New Year's Eve bash: The Gladiator (I shit you not).
The music ran the entire pop gamut, from covers of midwestern bar jukebox classics like Kenny Rodgers to odd, punky, Avril Lavigne (I think) type stuff (with some rapping thrown in, heh). The English-language hits sung in Burmese were by far the most interesting. The setup was two bands, each of which played along with the many individual vocalists and pairs of vocalists, who would all dutifully present their sheet music to the band before turning to the audience, mic in hand. One thing I really enjoyed: no vocalist could sing more than a few bars before audience members would begin streaming to the stage to pin flowers in their hair and to give them helium balloons to hold (picture, if you will, a long-haired rocker guy, with fingerless gloves, studded denim jacket, daintily holding a pink balloon). Some vocalists finished their performance completely weighted down by the outpourings of the audience -- something like putting dollar bills in the g-string of a stripper, only G-rated. The smoke machine was in heavy, heavy use. I couldn't understand the performers' names, but some of them seemed to be famous, at least in Yangon. The situation of a single band playing with multiple vocalists is more or less the norm, from what I can tell.
Myanmar's biggest band (for a decade now), Iron Cross, is a hard rock outfit with several singers. I bought two Iron Cross disks on a shopping trip with a student from the English class I mentioned. They are, to wit, Lay Phyu's "Kha Na Layy Myarr" and Myo Gyi's "Nate Sa Du Wa," and their schizophrenic trajectories, from almost Pantera-like heaviness to Hong Kong film soundtrack sappiness, is apparently completely unsurprising. I've actually really begun to enjoy all of the songs, though, even the cheesiest of them, but the standout is Lay Phyu's amazing "Ma Mayt Pyit Net" (yes, even with the string section).
I also picked up some tapes on the street that I hope to digitize soon, the first of some traditional music (which I don't expect to differ radically from the Burmese folk music available through the totally amazing Sublime Frequencies), the second, "Emperor Oasis," by a singer who looks kind of like a Burmese Sonny Crockett (that promises to be fun: though the jacket is nicely printed, the tape itself is a regular old 60-minute unit you could pick up in a drugstore (or maybe not, anymore)).
My big purchase, though, is hiphop heartthrob Sai Sai's "Happy Sai Sai Birthday" album, a recording of a show Sai Sai played on, yes, his birthday (the closer is the audience singing happy birthday to him). Much of the music sounds vaguely like something you've already heard (scraps of Eminem, what have you), but the Burmese rapping is -- pardon the expression -- totally awesome, particularly the ghetto superstar (re)remix "Chit Thu Tan Ta Tha Chin" feat. Kaung Myat (of "My Name Is Kaung Myat" fame) and Nge Nge. Sai Sai's website is http://www.saisaionline.com.
All of this music was purchased on the recommendation of one student I spent some time with while in Yangon. I asked him to take me record shopping, and it was his help that resulted in me getting to hear the disks before buying them (I mean, in the first place, he took me to the right store). Thankfully my wife was traveling with her laptop, and I was able to return the favor, loading him up with music that is completely unknown in Yangon (Pixies, El-P, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Blonde Redhead, and so on). He wrote me an email a couple of weeks ago to say that he really likes everything I gave him.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
blast beat?
Excerpted from an email to BT, April 17, 2012:
...when I arrived as a first-year [student] myself, I was delighted to tape two new CDs from you...: they were Painkiller's "Guts of a Virgin" and "Buried Secrets." I remember there was some controversy with the album cover of one of these, but I don't remember what it was ["Guts of a Virgin" was censored in the UK]. I still had the original cassette copies of those albums until this summer when, in the moving "process" (i.e. apocalypse), I shed a large number of tapes -- to the sidewalk. Hopefully some East Cambridge neighborhood kid is having his mind blown right now by Scud Attack, having stumbled into the pile of cassettes and fished out a few that looked interesting.
I remember you saying to me knowingly: It's John Zorn and Bill Laswell with the insane drummer from Napalm Death. And, since I had some passing familiarity with Napalm Death, I nodded knowingly.
Years later, in NYC, [PK] was trying to open my mind to drum and bass and other electronic musics. Of the many, many disks he loaned me...a few stayed in my library. Two were Mick Harris projects (including a perennial, personal favorite, "Total Station").
Two or three days ago, I was reading a record review that mentioned blast beats and thought to myself, "All these years I've told myself I know what a blast beat is, but do I really? I think I have to confess to myself that, as a technical matter, I do not know." The Wikipedia entry on blast beat features Napalm Death prominently, and so, at last, I learned that Mick Harris, of Total Station and many other electronic projects fame, was the drummer in Painkiller and Napalm Death, among other live bands.
...when I arrived as a first-year [student] myself, I was delighted to tape two new CDs from you...: they were Painkiller's "Guts of a Virgin" and "Buried Secrets." I remember there was some controversy with the album cover of one of these, but I don't remember what it was ["Guts of a Virgin" was censored in the UK]. I still had the original cassette copies of those albums until this summer when, in the moving "process" (i.e. apocalypse), I shed a large number of tapes -- to the sidewalk. Hopefully some East Cambridge neighborhood kid is having his mind blown right now by Scud Attack, having stumbled into the pile of cassettes and fished out a few that looked interesting.
I remember you saying to me knowingly: It's John Zorn and Bill Laswell with the insane drummer from Napalm Death. And, since I had some passing familiarity with Napalm Death, I nodded knowingly.
Years later, in NYC, [PK] was trying to open my mind to drum and bass and other electronic musics. Of the many, many disks he loaned me...a few stayed in my library. Two were Mick Harris projects (including a perennial, personal favorite, "Total Station").
Two or three days ago, I was reading a record review that mentioned blast beats and thought to myself, "All these years I've told myself I know what a blast beat is, but do I really? I think I have to confess to myself that, as a technical matter, I do not know." The Wikipedia entry on blast beat features Napalm Death prominently, and so, at last, I learned that Mick Harris, of Total Station and many other electronic projects fame, was the drummer in Painkiller and Napalm Death, among other live bands.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
old school detritus
This post first appeared on MOG, March 19, 2007.
The Maggot will be having a house guest while I am away next week visiting The Fam, so I’ve tried to clean up my desk area, which is in the living/guest room. Part of the clean up has been to reorganize the piles and piles and piles of tapes in light of my new motivation for continuing with the tape digitization project, mainly MOG. Yes, these MOG posts are affording me some focus on the process. And in the process I came across some (7) low hanging fruit, i.e. had already been captured and just needed to be cleaned up and tagged...
5
Two tracks, one from Coffin Break, the other from Skin Yard, from an old Kiss covers compilation (from vinyl to tape to mp3: the results sound, mmm, iffy).
Two more tracks, one from Coffin Break again, the other from the incomparable Alice Donut (Brooklyn?), from an old Buzzcocks covers compilation (again, from vinyl to tape to mp3).
A side of an old Coffin Break 7”, Freebird/Pop Fanatic.
So that’s five covers of quote-unquote classics from predominantly Seattle bands. In fact – though without the original sleeves I’m only guessing – I’ll bet all of these were recorded by Jack Endino. If the so-called Seattle sound exists then it’s determined exactly by the tireless work of Endino in the 80s and 90s. Anyway. I must have more covers compilations featuring Seattle bands lurking in the towers of tapes. I recall that they were all the rage among the SubPop/related folks.
2
Two tracks from Tad’s 1989 “God’s Balls,” which still fucking rules (and was also recorded by Endino, natch). When you buy the “Salt Lick” CD you get a chunk of “God’s Balls,” but for some reason these two gems, “Hollow Man” and “Nipple Belt,” aren’t there (along with the first couple tracks on the album). “Nipple Belt,” especially, totally rocks me...and not in a nostalgic way. I love this song – long, throaty yells from Tad and a punishing two guitar attack over a simple and fuzzy bass line: “And I need some kerosene / I need some antifreeze / to keep my girls young.” Word.
The Maggot will be having a house guest while I am away next week visiting The Fam, so I’ve tried to clean up my desk area, which is in the living/guest room. Part of the clean up has been to reorganize the piles and piles and piles of tapes in light of my new motivation for continuing with the tape digitization project, mainly MOG. Yes, these MOG posts are affording me some focus on the process. And in the process I came across some (7) low hanging fruit, i.e. had already been captured and just needed to be cleaned up and tagged...
5
Two tracks, one from Coffin Break, the other from Skin Yard, from an old Kiss covers compilation (from vinyl to tape to mp3: the results sound, mmm, iffy).
Two more tracks, one from Coffin Break again, the other from the incomparable Alice Donut (Brooklyn?), from an old Buzzcocks covers compilation (again, from vinyl to tape to mp3).
A side of an old Coffin Break 7”, Freebird/Pop Fanatic.
So that’s five covers of quote-unquote classics from predominantly Seattle bands. In fact – though without the original sleeves I’m only guessing – I’ll bet all of these were recorded by Jack Endino. If the so-called Seattle sound exists then it’s determined exactly by the tireless work of Endino in the 80s and 90s. Anyway. I must have more covers compilations featuring Seattle bands lurking in the towers of tapes. I recall that they were all the rage among the SubPop/related folks.
2
Two tracks from Tad’s 1989 “God’s Balls,” which still fucking rules (and was also recorded by Endino, natch). When you buy the “Salt Lick” CD you get a chunk of “God’s Balls,” but for some reason these two gems, “Hollow Man” and “Nipple Belt,” aren’t there (along with the first couple tracks on the album). “Nipple Belt,” especially, totally rocks me...and not in a nostalgic way. I love this song – long, throaty yells from Tad and a punishing two guitar attack over a simple and fuzzy bass line: “And I need some kerosene / I need some antifreeze / to keep my girls young.” Word.
after images
This post first appeared on MOG, February 10, 2008.
In response to my post about Ben MacMillan, Pleaseeasaur wrote to say, "It's so wild to me how certain albums or bands conjure up specific eras and even specific moments in my memory." I agree. I am always blown away by how microscopically certain bands/albums/songs evoke moments and stretches of time. I can't listen to "Joe's friend's band" (that was how Pleaseeasaur's Superchunk, "Foolish" tape was labeled) without seeing the two of us, driving in his yellow Volvo, on Sportsman Club Road on Bainbridge Island, on a relatively sunny day, with a small cassette deck between our two seats. Where were we going that day? The destination cannot be recalled. The journey unfolds in my mind with radical clarity: we turn off 305 onto Sportsman Club, the car begins to climb a long, gradual hill, the song is "Like a Fool."
In response to my post about Ben MacMillan, Pleaseeasaur wrote to say, "It's so wild to me how certain albums or bands conjure up specific eras and even specific moments in my memory." I agree. I am always blown away by how microscopically certain bands/albums/songs evoke moments and stretches of time. I can't listen to "Joe's friend's band" (that was how Pleaseeasaur's Superchunk, "Foolish" tape was labeled) without seeing the two of us, driving in his yellow Volvo, on Sportsman Club Road on Bainbridge Island, on a relatively sunny day, with a small cassette deck between our two seats. Where were we going that day? The destination cannot be recalled. The journey unfolds in my mind with radical clarity: we turn off 305 onto Sportsman Club, the car begins to climb a long, gradual hill, the song is "Like a Fool."
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
d-beat?
yeah, at about 1:18 into "blossoms from boils," the split cranium album pretty much forces you to stop what you're doing and hear it out..all of it...including the freaky intro in "black binding plague"...all the way to the weirdass, mesmerizing finale...
RIP, Ben
This post first appeared on MOG, February 9, 2008.
Ben MacMillan died recently. I am really saddened by this news. My sincere condolences to Ben's fiance, family, and friends -- and fans.
My friend and fellow fan Pleaseeasaur wrote me yesterday to point me to a Seattle PI reader's blog with some songs and videos from the two bands Ben sang for: Skin Yard and Gruntruck, both of which I adored when I was growing up.
I still love both of these bands, though, for me, Skin Yard's music has aged better. Or perhaps it's simply that Skin Yard was one of the first bands, along with another SY band, Sonic Youth, to obsess me completely, and not only, of course, because of our shared initials. I have almost all of the albums and singles recorded by Skin Yard and Gruntruck. My favorite Skin Yard incarnation is the lineup of Ben, genius Jack Endino, drummer Norman Scott (who also drummed for Gruntruck), and amazing bassist Daniel House. Their '88 album "Hallowed Ground," which I'm listening to right now, is a classic. Every time I listen to Skin Yard, "Hallowed Ground" in particular, I get choked up on a wave of memories and flashbacks from my youth in the Pacific Northwest. It's raining, I'm driving through a seemingly endless tunnel of evergreens.
I tried to go to every all ages show Skin Yard played in the Seattle area during my last two years of high school. Once I stayed for an especially long encore and missed the last Winslow-bound ferry. I slept on a wooden bench at the Coleman dock. I was sweaty, it was cold, but I didn't care. There was always a large pit when Skin Yard played, but I always felt that it was a safe space, that someone would pick you up if you fell, people were smiling, laughing. I credit Ben's community-minded, almost fatherly, regard for his fans as the reason for these slam dancing utopias. I can't number the nights that my friend Josh and I drove around Kitsap County in his old Audi, listening to Skin Yard and smoking nasty Benson & Hedges menthols.--Or, driving along in an altered state, having to pull over during the song "G.O.D." because I was experiencing something like an epiphany. The song remains one of my favorites: the way Ben's saying "talk" over and over organically fuses into the rhythm of the song's opening moments to become a "tock," a haunting, extra bit of percussion, of time.--Or, driving with Josh to Olympia to see Nirvana, singing along to "Drunk on Kerosene" at the top of my lungs. Ben's long scream in the song "Hallowed Ground" is one of the most spine-tingling rock vocals in my vast music collection. I had the Skin Yard t-shirt with the Giger image on the front and "too much acid / too many people / too little to do" on the back. My mother refused to touch the shirt, and so its purchase marked the moment when I began doing my own laundry. I wore the shirt so frequently that, when it was retired (to a cedar chest with other scrapbook-like objects), only the printing was holding it together, the cloth having more or less disintegrated.
I think Ben was from Poulsbo, the tiny town where I grew up, but, at the very least, he hailed from the same vicinity, Kitsap County. I think I wanted to be Ben MacMillan. After my first Skin Yard show, I started wearing jeans and black leather belts and shoes like Ben. I grew my hair, had earrings. I formed a band with friends, The Dorx. Whether unconsciously or not, I modeled my vocals on Ben's. Lots of delay, tight versification, some religious themes. I listened to Gruntruck's album "Push" on a daily basis during my sophomore year in college. It was the soundtrack for my bout with a certain addiction and of my coming to my senses several months later and recommitting myself to my studies.
One of my birthdays coincided with a Gruntruck show at the OK Hotel (I can't quite triangulate the date, probably my 18th, spring of '92). The logic of the coincidence was compelling: I took the ferry to Seattle for the occasion. Gruntruck played with savage precision that night. "Move in Silence" was perfection itself and listening to it now, years later, still gives me chills. Ben high-fived me when I was being squeezed against the stage by the moshing crowd behind me. He was drenched in perspiration, his long hair matted to his forehead. I was ecstatic. The evening is captured in the black and white photo inside the "Push" jacket: the top of my head can be seen just below Ben on stage; I am facing the crowd, as though part of the performance, which I was, for, despite the aural brutality of his music, there is beauty: Ben had a way of linking himself to the audience to create a momentary antidote to alienation. He will be missed.
Ben MacMillan died recently. I am really saddened by this news. My sincere condolences to Ben's fiance, family, and friends -- and fans.
My friend and fellow fan Pleaseeasaur wrote me yesterday to point me to a Seattle PI reader's blog with some songs and videos from the two bands Ben sang for: Skin Yard and Gruntruck, both of which I adored when I was growing up.
I still love both of these bands, though, for me, Skin Yard's music has aged better. Or perhaps it's simply that Skin Yard was one of the first bands, along with another SY band, Sonic Youth, to obsess me completely, and not only, of course, because of our shared initials. I have almost all of the albums and singles recorded by Skin Yard and Gruntruck. My favorite Skin Yard incarnation is the lineup of Ben, genius Jack Endino, drummer Norman Scott (who also drummed for Gruntruck), and amazing bassist Daniel House. Their '88 album "Hallowed Ground," which I'm listening to right now, is a classic. Every time I listen to Skin Yard, "Hallowed Ground" in particular, I get choked up on a wave of memories and flashbacks from my youth in the Pacific Northwest. It's raining, I'm driving through a seemingly endless tunnel of evergreens.
I tried to go to every all ages show Skin Yard played in the Seattle area during my last two years of high school. Once I stayed for an especially long encore and missed the last Winslow-bound ferry. I slept on a wooden bench at the Coleman dock. I was sweaty, it was cold, but I didn't care. There was always a large pit when Skin Yard played, but I always felt that it was a safe space, that someone would pick you up if you fell, people were smiling, laughing. I credit Ben's community-minded, almost fatherly, regard for his fans as the reason for these slam dancing utopias. I can't number the nights that my friend Josh and I drove around Kitsap County in his old Audi, listening to Skin Yard and smoking nasty Benson & Hedges menthols.--Or, driving along in an altered state, having to pull over during the song "G.O.D." because I was experiencing something like an epiphany. The song remains one of my favorites: the way Ben's saying "talk" over and over organically fuses into the rhythm of the song's opening moments to become a "tock," a haunting, extra bit of percussion, of time.--Or, driving with Josh to Olympia to see Nirvana, singing along to "Drunk on Kerosene" at the top of my lungs. Ben's long scream in the song "Hallowed Ground" is one of the most spine-tingling rock vocals in my vast music collection. I had the Skin Yard t-shirt with the Giger image on the front and "too much acid / too many people / too little to do" on the back. My mother refused to touch the shirt, and so its purchase marked the moment when I began doing my own laundry. I wore the shirt so frequently that, when it was retired (to a cedar chest with other scrapbook-like objects), only the printing was holding it together, the cloth having more or less disintegrated.
I think Ben was from Poulsbo, the tiny town where I grew up, but, at the very least, he hailed from the same vicinity, Kitsap County. I think I wanted to be Ben MacMillan. After my first Skin Yard show, I started wearing jeans and black leather belts and shoes like Ben. I grew my hair, had earrings. I formed a band with friends, The Dorx. Whether unconsciously or not, I modeled my vocals on Ben's. Lots of delay, tight versification, some religious themes. I listened to Gruntruck's album "Push" on a daily basis during my sophomore year in college. It was the soundtrack for my bout with a certain addiction and of my coming to my senses several months later and recommitting myself to my studies.
One of my birthdays coincided with a Gruntruck show at the OK Hotel (I can't quite triangulate the date, probably my 18th, spring of '92). The logic of the coincidence was compelling: I took the ferry to Seattle for the occasion. Gruntruck played with savage precision that night. "Move in Silence" was perfection itself and listening to it now, years later, still gives me chills. Ben high-fived me when I was being squeezed against the stage by the moshing crowd behind me. He was drenched in perspiration, his long hair matted to his forehead. I was ecstatic. The evening is captured in the black and white photo inside the "Push" jacket: the top of my head can be seen just below Ben on stage; I am facing the crowd, as though part of the performance, which I was, for, despite the aural brutality of his music, there is beauty: Ben had a way of linking himself to the audience to create a momentary antidote to alienation. He will be missed.
Monday, March 26, 2012
four old friends
This post first appeared on MOG, March 18, 2007.
As I mentioned in my second post, for months I have been digitizing my old cassette tapes, which number in the hundreds. The population is uneven and mostly marked by various periods of poverty: from albums I taped in college before selling the disks for cigarette money to rare and out of print vinyl I taped over the years. Some of these, of course, will not be digitized because, hearing them now, I think they suck. Others are cause for disbelief: how could I have gone for so long without hearing this? Last night's digitizing falls into the latter category:
Jesse Bernstein, "The Sad Bag" (1) an out of print 1990 Trigger Recordings cassette-only release, recorded live at COCA (Seattle), with a cover designed by Madame Talbot. (Does anyone know what the fifth track is titled?) I originally copied this from Ben Blankenship (2) back in the very early 90s; I was just finishing high school. Ah, the stories I could tell about seeing Bernstein read. His "opening" for Jello Biafra at the OK Hotel back in, uh, 90? 91? sticks out in my mind: it was very crowded and hot, and Bernstein repeatedly dowsed the crowd with water from a plastic gallon jug.
Steel Pole Bath Tub, unidentified cd5 (3). I have no idea when this came out (and haven't been able to ID it; offers of help gratefully accepted), and the sound quality is awful. But, hey, I was able to preserve two of my favorite SPBT songs. In college, tens of times, I saw SPBT at the apparently now defunct Satyricon (Portland). They frequently appeared on the bill with Heavy Johnson Trio (whose bassist was a cook at the then recently opened Delta Cafe in SE and whose diminutive guitarrist usually appeared wearing a huge viking helmet, complete with horns), as well as the fucking amazing Gern Blanston, long since broken up -- a huge loss for PDX music. This SPBT is a very special recording for me, as I copied it from a dear friend who passed away a few years ago and who was my constant companion and driver for all those nights at the Satyricon: Julia Harrison, peace be upon her (4).
Both Bernstein and SPBT have significant online afterlives: here and here, respectively.
As I mentioned in my second post, for months I have been digitizing my old cassette tapes, which number in the hundreds. The population is uneven and mostly marked by various periods of poverty: from albums I taped in college before selling the disks for cigarette money to rare and out of print vinyl I taped over the years. Some of these, of course, will not be digitized because, hearing them now, I think they suck. Others are cause for disbelief: how could I have gone for so long without hearing this? Last night's digitizing falls into the latter category:
Jesse Bernstein, "The Sad Bag" (1) an out of print 1990 Trigger Recordings cassette-only release, recorded live at COCA (Seattle), with a cover designed by Madame Talbot. (Does anyone know what the fifth track is titled?) I originally copied this from Ben Blankenship (2) back in the very early 90s; I was just finishing high school. Ah, the stories I could tell about seeing Bernstein read. His "opening" for Jello Biafra at the OK Hotel back in, uh, 90? 91? sticks out in my mind: it was very crowded and hot, and Bernstein repeatedly dowsed the crowd with water from a plastic gallon jug.
Steel Pole Bath Tub, unidentified cd5 (3). I have no idea when this came out (and haven't been able to ID it; offers of help gratefully accepted), and the sound quality is awful. But, hey, I was able to preserve two of my favorite SPBT songs. In college, tens of times, I saw SPBT at the apparently now defunct Satyricon (Portland). They frequently appeared on the bill with Heavy Johnson Trio (whose bassist was a cook at the then recently opened Delta Cafe in SE and whose diminutive guitarrist usually appeared wearing a huge viking helmet, complete with horns), as well as the fucking amazing Gern Blanston, long since broken up -- a huge loss for PDX music. This SPBT is a very special recording for me, as I copied it from a dear friend who passed away a few years ago and who was my constant companion and driver for all those nights at the Satyricon: Julia Harrison, peace be upon her (4).
Both Bernstein and SPBT have significant online afterlives: here and here, respectively.
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