Angle of Parallelism

Edward Ruscha

2012-02-01T14:25:00.000-06:00

Most noted as Pop Artist, Ruscha has created a great deal of work from the Southern California area where he has taken up residency. He received training at the Chouinard Art Institute which would Later be joined with Ahmonson by Walt Disney to become The California Institute of the Arts. A large percentage of his works contain text as a prominent feature, California itself has also made "a few" appearances. There is no shortage of work by Ruscha, most of them are large and he has been extremely prolific. Here are a few works

The Making and Breaking of Woodstock 1969

2012-01-09T16:57:00.006-06:00

Who could have possibly imagined that a "Music and Art Fair" dreamt up by four young men would become one of the most talked about events in recent history?
Many skeptics believed that an event supported by a bunch of drug crazed youths would inevitably turn violent, after all the organizer were advertising a gathering of about 60,000 people. However, as a slap in the face to dumbstruck elders, the festival now known world wide as Woodstock, turned out bigger and more peaceful than anyone could have ever imagined. Not to say there were no problems, but considering that an estimated 500,000 people from many different walks of life were mixed together for almost four days with a limited food supply, few restroom facilities, an abundance of drugs and alcohol, a show stopping rainstorm, and don't forget the evil loud music, things were basically positive. Elliot Tiber referred to Woodstock as, "a Counter-cultural mini-nation in which minds were open, drugs were all but legal, and love was 'free." Although Woodstock was not the first outdoor festival it set the stage for all outdoor festivals that have since followed. Woodstock can not be acurately imitated ever again, but it sets an extraordinary example for those who would try and follow.

In 1968 at the age of twenty-three Michael Lang got into show business after running one of Florida's first head shops. One of his first tasks in show business was to organize the Miami Pop Festival. The festival hosted the Jimi Hendrix Experience as well as several other bands. The spark for Woodstock was ignited in the Capitol Records office of twenty-five year old Artie Kornfeld, the second party involved with the concert. Micheal Lang walked into Kornfeld's office and walked out with the idea of an upstate retreat for touring musicians. Great Ideas, however, do not become reality without funds. So Kornfeld and Lang enlisted the help of twenty-four year old John Roberts. John, the heir to a multimillion dollar pharmaceutical empire supplied the money. In order to introduce their "upstate recording retreat", the four men decided to host a concert, and profits from that concert would help fund the project.

The four men met at the recommendation of Kornfeld and Lang's lawyer.   After discussing a $500,000 budget they formed a cooperation entitling each party to a twenty-five percent cut of the proceeds. They called the cooperation Woodstock Ventures, Inc. after the New York town where Bob Dylan and several other musicians had decided to call home.

They then started trying to gather the tools and people necessary to have a concert for at most 100,000 people. First they needed a place to have the concert and in march leased a 300 acre Industrial park in Wallkill New York for $10,000. Although they were unhappy with the l, they felt that they needed to have a place to host the concert secured. Then they turned their attention to performers. They wanted the biggest names in the 1969 music industry, but because bands didn't think the festival would be anything much they ended up having to hire the bands for double their standard rate. Eventually ended up costing over $180,000 to hire the entertainment. Creedence Clearwater Revival was hired for $11,500, Jefferson Airplane was paid $12,000, The Who were hired for 12,500, and Jimi Hendrix, who's contract specified a performers fee of $18,000 was paid $32,000. All the other performers were told he was playing two sets for $16,000 a piece. Jimi also agreed to a $12,000 fee from Wadleigh Productions for the film rights to his set. Lang wanted Bob Dylan, but Dylan declined he had no interest in being the savior sought by the political mass at the time.

The sound system was the next challenge to tackle after the acts were signed.   So in early May, Lang went to see Allen Markoff, and when Lang told Markoff they needed a sound system for 100,000 to 150,000, Markoff thought Lang was crazy. Markoff has since said that it would be like "doing a sound system for 30 million people today." but he did it anyway.

Because the big name studios would not film the festival, twenty-seven year old Michael Wadleigh, a cameraman and independent film director was chosen to film Woodstock. He personally used $50,000 of his savings to get a crew together for the weekend. Finally everything was falling together.

In early April the Woodstock advertising campaign started, First in the underground press, publications like the Village Voice and the Rolling Stone magazine. In May ads began running in the New York Times and the Times Herald-Record. Soon after Radio stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Dallas, and Washington D.C. began spilling the message. When you bought a ticket you also received a campsite. Later, the slogan "Three Days of Peace, Love and Music" was settled on and sent to the artist Arnold Skolnick. Skolnick recalled
"I was staying on Shelter Island and I was drawing catbirds at the time, as soon as they called with the 'Three Days of Peace, Love and Music' copy approved, I just took the razor blade and cut that catbird out of the sketchpad I was using. First I sat it on a flute. I was listening to jazz at the time and I guess thats why, but anyhow, it sat on a flute for a day and I finally ended up putting it on a guitar."

Stan Goldstein who worked with Lang on the Miami Pop Festival was asked to help. The members of Woodstock Ventures, Inc. knew that some kind of organization woould be needed to have that many people gathered in one place at one time. Goldstein took the initiative and called the Hog Farm, a communal pig farm. Hugh Romney A.K.A. Wavy Gravy, a clown and peace activist, lead the charge with what he called the "Please Force" because their way of dealing with security was to say "please don't do that or please do this instead." In this manner they would set a good example for the crowd and show everybody how to make things work for the weekend.

While the coordinators were working out all the details of the festival, the people of Wallkill were begining to get worried about having a three day concert in their town. They Imagined the worst, combining long haired hippies, drugs and rock concerts had to be a bad idea. On July 15, 1969, after many heated debates between the venture boys and the Wallkill city government, the Wallkill Zoning Board of Appeals officially banned Woodstock. This was perhaps for the best. The banning stirred up a good deal of free publicity, an industrial park is not really the ideal spot for a festival dedicated to hippie Ideas of Love and peace. Everyone seemed to agree that the People of Wallkill were not ready for a concert of this size and that the town folk would turn violent and destroy the ideal of peace that Woodstock had come to represent.

After reading about the banning Elliot Tiber became Woodstock's savior. Tiber just happened to have a permit to run a festival to increase business at his families resort. He offered their land but only had 15 acres, and so contacted another local named Max Yasgur, who owned a dairy farm In Bethel. Yasgur took his time figuring out what he would loose in crop and also what It would cost to reseed the field, and came to an agreement with Woodstock Ventures Inc. for $75,000. The Venture boys also had to go in for another $25,000 for the land around Yasgur's place. This time they tried to keep the location secret to prevent a replay of what had just happened in Wallkill, but while having one of their private meetings at a restaurant they heard the radio announce that Yasgur's farm was to be the new location. The cat was out of the bag.

It didn't take long for the hand lettered signs to start popping up around the town of Bethel. "Buy no milk. Stop Max's Hippie music festival." After hearing all the worries from Wallkill, Bethel residents inherited that worry. A prominant resident offered to help get Woodstock Ventures what they wanted for $10,000 but the boys thought it would ruin the karma of the whole event and so decided to chance it instead of paying bribes. There were lawsuits and petitions trying to stop the festival but none succeeded. Ken Van Loan, the president of the Bethel Business Association threw his support behind the concert and ecouraged others to do the same. Van Loan realized that Woodstock could make their town and county famous.

Woodstock Ventures tried to win over the town of Bethel by providing free entertainment and a pre-festival show. In some instances, it seemed that music might have soothed the savage beast. However, there is always an uptight faction that inevitably will refuse to cooperate on every front. A group who did not want the festival to take place formed a human blockade across Route 17B on the Thursday before the concert. Unfortunately these intellectual giants failled to realize that people had been arriving since Tuesday backing up traffic on rout 17B for ten miles. They also didn't think about how much hippies like to play red rover...in a car.

Friday, August 15, 1969, the day that the past 7 months had built towards, finally arrived. A couple that lived a quarter of a mile from Yasgur's farm said that when they looked outside they saw, "Nuthin but cars and people. Saw a trooper. Ten kids were on the hood of his car, people were camping all over the yard." Lang discovered Friday morning that ticket booths were never positioned because there were too many people on the roads already by the first week when they tried to move the booths. Because of the sudden move to Bethel and a fear of upsetting Yasgur's cows, $21,000 of hurricane fencing was never erected and ended up wasted. Only a few barbed wire "restraints" served as the boundary of the festival. However, before the concert even started, the barbed wire boundary had been dismantled by a New York Acid Street Gang known notoriously as The Motherfuckers. Woodstock never collected a single dollar at the gate. over 200,000 people had entered the festival so the decision was made to remove the remaining fences and Woodstock was declared a free concert.

Late Friday morning, three buses with 100 hand picked police officers showed up despite the New York City Police Offices official disapproval of the officers working the concert. Furthermore, the officers arrived to the warning that if they did participate, they would be subject to departmental censure. Many left, but some stayed under false alias's. The remaining police demanded because of the risk that they need be payed $90 instead of $50. In the long run the officers turned out to be a waste of time and money as they refused to enact the festival's traffic plan or do anything else they were paid to do. Eventually twenty Rockland County deputies Mounted on horseback were brought to help with crowd control. People complained to the Governor but he would not consider the area a disaster area and wanted to "play it by ear".

The organizers had planned for Joan Baez, Tim Hardin, Arlo Guthrie, Sweetwater, The Incredible String Band, Ravi Shankar, Bert Sommer, Melanie and Sly and the Family Stone to start performing but because of the traffic jams the bands were no where to be found. In order to kill some time the spokesman for the concert took to the stage Chatting with the audience and informing the audience that some bad acid was going around and the people in charge recommended staying away from the acid. He concluded with "Its your own trip." since the crowd was growing impatient Richie Havens was given the go ahead and sent out on stage at 5:07 pm. He played for 3 hours before a U.S. Army helicopter showed up with more performers. It was stated that, "With out the U.S. Army, Woodstock might never have happened." ironic considering the anti military establishment of most of their concerts attendees. The organizers trying to keep the crowd happy were scrambling to keep the music playing and that there is how Country Joe McDonald ended up on stage performing a short set including the anti-war Fish Cheer.

The food situation was organized until the mass showed up leaving two different food sources; Food for Love for people with tickets and the Free Kitchen for everyone else. Neither of them lasted long. While on rout to the concert a Food for Love truck got stuck in traffic and was raided, it never even made it to Bethel. Some residents from Sullivan county heard there was not enough food and made sandwiches with 200 loaves of bread, 50 pounds of cold cuts and 2 gallons of pickles. Food was being airlifted in from everywhere, including Newburgh's Stewart Air Force Base. By Saturday there was no place for helicopters to land. Goldstein said they had 200 people join hands to form a circle for one helicopter to land. Some of the surrounding neighbors started feeding people they put food on boards out in the driveway left to roaming scavengers. They also started a soup kitchen in an old building. Wavy Gravy had a recipe called "Breakfast in Bed for 400,000". Recipe: "Rolled out bulgur wheat - cook until mush. Add peanuts for taste - cook until texture of goulash. For a side dish stir-fry any vegetables that can be scraped together. Scoop mixtures onto paper plates." They scraped together anything they could find.

Rain came sprinkling a little around midnight Friday and and swelling to a raging thunderstorm by Saturday morning. In the space of about three hours, five inches fell. The sky dripped chaos. According to Gary Krewson "From the instant the storm blew in, there was no order, no security, no sense of what was happening or who was in charge."
When the Greatful dead took the stage in standing water and were treated to the wonderful combined effects of LSD and being electrocuted by their mics and guitars.
The music was planned to stop and start again at 7:00 pm but It was decided that if the crowd became bored and sought their own forms of recreation damage or injury could occur. The organizers begged performers to double their set lengths.

There was a medical tent set up for emergencies but the organizers, offering $50, a day had poor luck in finding many medical people who wanted to be associated with the controversial event. The head nurse divided the tent into three sections. The first section of the tent was the the largest and was used mostly for people who had cut their feet walking barefoot on the broken glass strewn about everywhere. The second section was for people who had burnt their eyes tripping and laying on their backs staring at the sun The third, "The Freak-Out Tent" was for people experiencing imaginary symptoms or bad trips. Hendrix spent about 30 mins in "The Freak Out Tent" before roadies hauled him out. They didn't really know who he was just some black guy on a stretcher until some body started saying, "Hey, isn't the Jimi Hendrix?"

Saturdays line up consisted of The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Greatful Dead, Canned Heat, Mountain and Santana. Though the organizers worried that the louder the music got the more rowdy the crowd might become, their fear of silence leading to boredom was quite greater. Problems arose with Janis Joplin, The Who, and The Greatful Dead refusing to play without cash in advance. Promoters begged Charlie Prince, manager of the White Lake branch of Sullivan County National Bank to put up the money and keep the show going. Roberts wrote prince a personal check that night for 50 or 100 thousand dollars and prince payed the performers and the concert continued.

Sunday morning the sun came out with a vengeance so strong people began to worry about heat stroke, but by the afternoon it was raining again. The Sunday Line up was The Band, Joe Cocker, Crosby Stills and Nash, Ten Years After, Johnny Winters and Jimi Hendrix. Iron Butterfly was also scheduled but but a helicopter failed to pick them up and so they went back to California. The Organizers it turned out were afraid their music might be too dangerous to crowd control. Jimi began Playing at 9 am Monday morning. People were getting tired of being amongst the masses with little food, standing in mud, coming down from the trip of it all, and were starting to go home. Many left with strangers unknown before Woodstock.

In the Aftermath, The partners were left with a plethora of money problems. Ventures was at least $1.3 Million in debt. Kornfeld's promotional expenses were more than $150,000 (70 percent over budget). Lang's production expenses had soured to $2 Million (more than 300 percent over budget). On Tuesday, Prince who had written the checks for the performers learned that Woodstock Ventures was short 250,000 covering their expenses to him. Roberts pledged $1 Million in in stocks to the bank to cover the $250,000. Roberts' father and brother paid off the debt with the wall street bankers. Then there was the lawsuit and refunds on 12,000 to 18,000 ticket holders unable to attend due to traffic jams.

Woodstock Had 5,162 medical cases, according to a State Health Department report release October 4, 1969. The report listed 797 documented instances of drug abuse. No births were recorded in the medical tent but Dr. Abruzzi told the Health Department that there were 8 miscarriages. The report lists two deaths by overdose (a 20 year old by way of heroin and and 18 year old marine) and one by tractor accident involving 17 year old Raymond Mizak who was sleeping in a sleeping bag and crushed by a tractor towing a tank trailor to haul away sewage. In late fall a Sullivan County Grand Jury declared that there was not enough eveidence to indict anyone for anything, The driver of the tractor was never identified and thus was not charged. Outside the farm, Monticello Hospital doctors and nurses set up a clinic in a school. Gladys Berens, helped deliver three babies there only miles from festival grounds.

Six weeks after the festival Rosenman and Roberts bought out Lang and Kornfeld for $31,240 each. Lang, Kornfeld, Rosenman and Roberts; the four young men who had produced and promoted Woodstock, were separated for almost 20 years after the Woodstock fallout. They argued about who received the most attention and who received the most credit, but must have occasionally stopped to think about the music or the people or the peace that could never again be recreated. Altamont proved that. Positioned to be the Woodstock of the west coast, Headlined by The Rolling Stones and Jefferson Airplane, with the Hell's Angels acting as bouncers. The Idea of "Three days of Peace Love and Music" dashed in that single night when the integration and togetherness of Woodstock became the disaster at Altamont. A black boy brushed against a motorcycle belonging to a Hell's Angel and was beaten to death for pulling a gun to a soundtrack of "Sympathy for the Devil". All hell broke loose, several fans were maimed and trampled even Keith Richards, guitarist for The Stones was hit in the jaw. Altamont marked the end of that idealistic era the 60s had been. Flower children displaced by the weeds of greed and hate, and a whole new counterculture of beats and disco to dethrone psychedelic rock. Jimi Hendrix died September 18, 1970, Janis Joplin a month later. Jim Morrison the legendary vocalist of the Doors died in 1971.

In Saugerties New York, August 12 1994, 350,000 people attended the Twenty-Fifth anniversary of the Woodstock rock festival. Woodstock '94 was symbolized by two doves on the neck of a Stratocaster Gutiar in homage to the original Woodstocks iconic image. In hindsight it may just be considered a marketing tactic, tickets cost $135 and the concessions were certainly not free either. By 1999 they had set up the thirtieth year anniversary in Rome, New York featuring the likes of Metallica and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. And again in 2008... It took thirty years to really cash in on the original but there will never again be anything like it.

535 Words on Charles Baudelaire

2011-12-16T14:12:00.000-06:00

1.crouds

2.there

3.they

4.stand

5.chit-chatting

6.drinking

7.wine

8.talking

9.about

10.themselves

11.But

12.here

13.I

14.am

15.a

16.complete

17.stranger

18.hidden

19.blending

20.in

21.to

22.the

23.scenery

24.yet

25.I

26.am

27.seperate

28.I

29.can

30.take

31.the

32.role

33.of

34.anyone

35.i

36.feel

37.like

38.I

39.can

40.choose

41.my

42.interaction

43.with

44.them.

45.They

46.bore

47.me.

48.They

49.enthrall

50.me

51.they

52.are

53.a

54.unit

55.I

56.am

57.seperate

58.I

59.am

60.a

61.loner

62.an

63.artist

64.a

65.poet

66.their

67.meager

68.motivations

69.do

70.not

71.move

72.me.

73.however

74.i

75.can

76.be

77.amuzed

78.by

79.watching

80.their

81.debauchery

82.smirking

83.at

84.their

85.expense.

86.I

87.walk

88.alone

89.like

90.a

91.bad

92.ass

93.like

94.i

95.am

96.something

97.special

98.but

99.i

100.am

101.aren't

102.I?

103.its

104.funny

105.when

106.I

121.think

122.of

123.being

124.in

125.a

126.room

127.full

128.of

129.people

130.and

131.yet

132.I

133.still

134.feel

135.alone

136.I

137.have

138.no

139.connection

140.i

141.don't

142.belong

143.any

144.group

145.beyond

146.a

147.pair

148.words

149.are

150.pointless

151.mindless

152.chatter

153.i

154.was

155.never

156.one

157.for

158.small

159.talk

160.I

161.am

162.the

163.loner

164.at

165.the

166.party

167.i

168.set

169.myself

170.above

171.i

172.am

173.the

174.egoist

175.missing

176.out

177.on

178.the

179.possible

180.beauty

181.of

182.being

183.anonymous

184.and

185.intertwined

186.with

187.this

188.living

189.organism.

190.one

191.has

192.all

193.the

194.freedom

195.one

196.needs

197.to

198.do

199.anything

200.all

201.desires

202.can

203.be

204.partaken

205.every

206.door

207.is

208.open

209.and

210.if

211.its

212.not

213.then

214.its

215.to

216.a

217.room

218.that

219.i

220.didn't

221.want

222.to

223.go

224.into

225.any

226.way.

227.I

228.don't

229.want

230.to

231.be

232.an

233.egoist

234.anymore

235.to

236.me

237.all

238.the

239.doors

240.are

241.closed

242.and

243.i

244.shut

245.them

246.myself

247.i

248.want

249.to

250.be

251.that

252.other

253.character

254.when

255.i

256.am

257.in

258.the

259.crowd

260.i

261.want

262.that

263.swagger

264.i

265.want

266.to

267.make

268.love

269.to

270.it

271.all

272.i

273.desire

274.the

275.intoxication

276.that

277.could

278.be

279.mine

280.if

281.i

282.would

283.just give

284.in

285.to

286.it

287.whole

288.heartedly

289.take

290.a

291.plunge

292.be

293.someone

294.else

295.to

296.where

297.the

298.most

299.beautiful

300.or

301.the

302.most

303.pale

304.mask

305.and

306.just

307.move

308.through.

309.hey

310.as

311.a

312.side

313.thought

314.there

315.are

316.only

317.thre

318.hundred

319.and

320.fifty

321.two

322.words

323.in

324.crowds

325.baudelaire

326.was

327.more

328.brief

329.than

330.i

331.am

332.going

333.to

334.be

335.being

336.a

337.smart

338.ass

339.some

340.times

341.makes

342.things

343.a

344.lot

345.harder

346.on

347.you

348.than

349.you

350.think

351.it

352.will

353.anyhow

354.the

355.picture

356.that

357.i

358.chose

359.is

360.a

361.Edouard

362.manet

363.painting

364.called

365.Music

366.at

367.the

368.Tuileries

369.to

370.me

371.it

372.represents

373.the

374.crowd

375.of

376.people

377.and

378.I

379.am

380.the

381.stranger

382.observing

383.the

384.canvas

385.unlike

386.baudelaire

387.I

388.cannot

389.be

390.a

391.part

392.of

393.this

394.painting

395.or

396.time

397.and

398.what

399.a

400.different

401.time

402.it

403.must

404.have

405.been.

406.i

407.can

408.however

409.picture

410.myself

411.walking

412.through

413.that

414.world

415.tipping

416.my

417.hat

418.to

419.the

420.ladies

421.and

422.speaking

423.in

424.an

425.aristocratic

426.air

427.to

428.the

429.gentlemen.

430.its

431.so

432.dignified

433.its

434.so

435.quaint

436.one

437.could

438.wonder

439.through

440.this

441.painting

442.into

443.infinity

444.among

445.the

446.trees

447.and

448.the

449.people

450.bumping

451.into

452.them

453.they

454.are

455.pilled

456.in

457.so

458.thickly

-------------------------------------

459.i

460.picture

461.central

462.park

463.in

464.new

465.york

466.ever

467.jostling

468.with

469.life

470.and

471.i

472.am

473.dressed

474.in

475.black

476.me

477.who

478.does't

479.fit

480.in

481.with

482.my

483.little

484.texas

485.town

486.but

487.they're

488.dressed

489.like...

one of them

no tourist

i belong

i am alone

I am solitary

i am the poet

i am the artist and they are my playground.

that is Baudelaire's meaning this environment was his painting.

490.wow

491.is

492.this

493.five

494.hundred

495.word

496.thing

497.for

498.real?

499.i'm

500.stupid

The Future of Noise Music and Childrens Rebellion

2011-12-13T12:49:00.002-06:00

In this time of Miley Cyrus, Beiber boinking Selena Gomez, American Idol, Rhianna getting beat up over a herpes incident, Lady Gaga's fashion use to gain stardom, Green day getting old and political, Chocolate Rain and the Double Rainbow Song blasting to insane YouTube heights, remixed and remashed media overload, shortening attention spans, the flooding of the markets by the amateur, the birth of indie music. the death of indie music, a label driven genre called indie. Where are we headed? Blending backwards and round we go again, shifting each pass with a new hue to collide with the old. Musical trend cycling has placed us in an 1980s shit warp. The music industry has been shaken in so many ways by technology since the early nineties, the advent of digital music, freeing up the market to the underdog. What began as an assault on the damage already done by the big record labels has backfired by the the "Do It Your Selfers" flooding the market with thoughtless mediocrity. The recording of music was once difficult when proper facilities and the knowledge of their operation was required... now any Joe can do it with programs that come standard on a MacBook or in an iPhone app. Quality control right out the window.
So now the trick is to get noticed amongst the rubble... somehow... and the musical revolution has been reduced to a media manipulation popularity contest. To have the time to create quality creations often means the neglect of the realities of the day: kitten comments, Chuck Norris, drunk babies and the ruthless recycling of media on and on, though the concept of Memes has become a digital virus, its not really a new idea is it? Warhol was doing it and now you can too with the war hole preset on Mac Photo Booth. Complain about it as much as we can, this reality is here to stay. What is? What is just stupid? Indifference and small thought. It has all been said before.

There is rumor on the wind of Americana bursting through the earth and back into the mainstream, but the nature of revisionist roots music is inherently reproducing a much further back past. So we wait for a movement, in which something unique will bubble its way into the Echelons of Popular culture.

But there is hope, Ruscha knew it 40 years ago.

There is possibility the future must be opening towards, and rebellion must certainly play its part in the midst of the brainwashing seeking to render us all thoughtless at the mercy of Murphy's Glee recycling. Some massive cataclysmic shift away from the American Idol prototype of stardom. Thought is hoped to prevail, but it is rebellion which is unavoidable. If you like the music your parents like, most likely it's not cool. For those fortunate enough to have parents with good taste, there will probably be a period of rebelling into something else in between. So that you can come back to it with a mature mindset shaped and renovated before being allowed to think its cool. Noise is the path, the disturbance in the status quo, like Obi Won Kenobi It's our only hope. Just wait and see. The pure opposite of pop... but as pop?

It has begun rising up through the Cracks especially in Electronic music like Mr. Oizo, The Books, Matmos, Lexanculpt, Hrvatski, The dirty synthesizer, the Digital Concréte manipulation of audio files. Despite being ideas Explored By Pierre Schaeffer, Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis in the early 1900s they have not fairly found their way into the public sight. Merzbow with his monstorous forward thinking, leads Japan as a beacon of hope to the underground success of noise followed by such names as Melt Banana, The Bordoms and then the much more highly musical Worlds end Girlfriend who pulls no punches when it comes to being noisy. Add this all to The Underculture of Industrial, Einstürzende Neubauten, Diamanda Galas, Skinny Puppy, Wolf Eyes, Yellow Swan, this stuff makes the Ultimate act of musical rebellion of the 70s seem like kids with guitars. Not to subtract from Punk music in any way, It has most definitely paved the way. And is probably the greatest example of how a countercultural movement can swing its way into becoming a Pop culture phenomenon.

Mark my words, It will not be too long before noise rises. The economic situation is ripe, people feel unsettled, it leads to needing an outlet, something aggressive perhaps they will take to the streets perhaps they will burn things. We can hope that a creative outlet overwhelms the destructive one. Street art carries the poetic terrorism inherent in boundary pushing, and doesn't something so underground rising to popularity deserve its own special soundtrack. New is needed, something is going to have to give, Kids will only put up with so much of what they are fed. The standard quality of music has become flaccid, There is just not enough time to practice being a real musician. The tools exist to turn everyone into a walking sampler. And this will truly be the failing and breaking point of the noise movement. The copy cats who think that noise has no shape or form. The limited mind space to look at the abstract painting and say I could do that and regurgitate with out the background. But none the less this is the nature of Pop, and the blanket it will weave will ever grow. and in the end perhaps computers will make music only for other computers to hear.

Pilgrims and Indians and all that Ensued

2011-11-24T13:37:00.002-06:00

Which leaves us at the question:

After stuffing the turkey should we hang it by the Moose over the fireplace?

Midwestern activities demand of youth, school plays detailing the peaceful relations of the the Pilgrims fleeing religious oppression and the kindly indians who helped them survive their first winter. The kindness repaid by a philosophy of manifest destiny, rail ways and broken treaties.

Beyond tracing the hand to make construction paper turkeys, the luck of the draw that dealt either the big black poster board hat or the head band with the blue or green feathers, and long accounts of the voyage of the Mayflower, plymouth rock and the growing and preparing of corn.

There is the togetherness of family and friends with food a plenty. Hearkens more true than most other holidays, born of hype and shopping.

God lay mercy upon the kid who got stuck in the turkey outfit or even the cornucopia for that matter.

So surely, we must indeed find cause to be thankful.

Better men have tread before and I give you some of their words:

Turkey: A large bird whose flesh, when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast. ~William Shakespeare

I have strong doubts that the first Thanksgiving even remotely resembled the "history" I was told in second grade. But considering that (when it comes to holidays) mainstream America's traditions tend to be over-eating, shopping, or getting drunk, I suppose it's a miracle that the concept of giving thanks even surfaces at all. ~Ellen Orleans

Give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way. ~Native American Saying

Happy We-Stole-Your-Land-and-Killed-Your-People Day! ~Thanksgiving toast, from the movie Sweet November

If I have enjoyed the hospitality of the Host of this universe, Who daily spreads a table in my sight, surely I cannot do less than acknowledge my dependence. ~G.A. Johnston Ross

Thanks, for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business. Thanks, for a nation of finks.
-- William S. Burroughs, "A Thanksgiving Prayer".

There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American. ~O. Henry

For flowers that bloom about our feet;
For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet;
For song of bird, and hum of bee;
For all things fair we hear or see,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee!
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

What Exactly Is Americana music?

2011-11-11T23:11:00.001-06:00

I think its time to face it... Country music has failed us (at least the label). There are a few artists trying to redeem the genre but most are just riding that horse into the ground. One can see the trajectory, and our favorites are amongst the culprits as Country music mutated from Bill Monroe, Hank Williams,Woody Guthrie, and Carter Family, to Johnny Cash, Ray Price, Waylon Jennings, Dave Dudly, Merle Haggard, then Barbara Mandrell, Alabama, George Strait, to Garth Brooks(We will just Pretend Chris Gaines never happened), Clint Black, Shania Twain, Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban and then to Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift. Country has pushed towards rock ever since it was put on the radio, and taken out of the hills and barns, Rockabilly, the world influenced by Buddy holly, and Elvis Presley, It was a sign of the times the wash of the conglomerate on everything. Honky Tonk lead to Rhinestone Cowboys and disco slipped its hand into the faded blue jeans of the dance hall. Popular means plastic despite the substance underneath.   The interesting paradox of the migration of the genre "Country" to the Viacom stereotype of pop music phenomenon (complete with rock guitars, highlit hair, and perhaps a cowboy hat and an embroidered plaid) has left many artists struggling for a way to label the music of the current underground (and soon to be very popular) movement returning to roots directions.

"Oh Brother Where Art Thou?" was perhaps the turning point where mainstream culture breathed a new breath of past into a young generation, resetting the trajectory at the mark. Some artists were there before but, only a small contingency of people were into it. I think the revival that injected the old bluegrass or hills blues soul back in a big commercial way hails back to the Coen Brothers who made that world relevant in a huge way.  The ripple has been spreading ever since spawning the birth of a huge contingency of artists who are now creating western themed "Americana" Music, yet are having a hard time trying to define themselves, There seems to be this huge revival of Roots centered music, as is supported by sites like No Depression, and a random splattering of blogs. It seems to be leaking out into the mass media and mainstream. and becoming fashionable once again but we can't really call it "Country Music" anymore. The thousands of roots country variations unsure of what to call themselves have turned to labels like Roots Music, Americana, Folk, Alternative Country, Insurgent Country, Folk Noir,   there is even a contingency advocating a genre called XXX after moonshine bottles of yore. The greater harm here though is that "Country"seems to have been clamed by the Nashville camp, who redefined the genre with a steady evolution into bleached hair, designer clothes, pop rock music with a drawl etc. and somehow lost itself In the process.

It all goes back to Tin Pan Alley

Songwriters handing over songs to big name producers, producers polishing, artists into the cookie cutter cutout of "What Sells." the remaining struggling CEOs pushing last ditch efforts to make sure their artists get the exposure on the last of the dying radio airwaves. Since the 90s the distance between R&B Radio and country Radio has been growing smaller and smaller, Granted there is still a difference, I heard a country song that felt the need to claim it was country music lyrically because it was obscured in the timbre and production( i think it was called "This is a Country Song".   Songs like "I swear" by Baker & Myers pounded the charts in 1994 crossing genres and released by both John Micheal Montgomery and All-4-One. Take Townes Van Zant, writing from the rough he may just be considered folk though he wrote Pancho and Lefty which turned out to be a huge country hit in the hands of Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard. but the Willie and Merle version is pretty electric. That should set the stage for where things are coming from and how they are sold.

Now that "Americana" is becoming popular, it is finding itself in a similar identity crisis as its older relative, "Country". But to be fair, Americana is a lot more ambiguous. Technically all things made in america are "Americana". Not really fair because hip-hop, jazz and blues have their own genre, folk too i suppose is its own thing. Furthermore there are a lot of European bands knocking on the door of the american sound and doing it well where america is faltering. So the American sound, must captivate the american Pioneer spirit, perhaps the popularity exists because economically we the hipsters like to think of now as our own great depression. Perhaps we are hung up on the Idea of the wild west, outlaws and anarchy but that comes from the Italians. Is "Americana" defined by instrumentation, using acoustics or sounding old? No matter what we end up defining this as, It is happening, it is growing and it is a counter-cultural phenomenon. It is also a repetition of the past and where the Noughts reminded us of the 80s, I am pretty sure we are gearing up for some mixture of this and 90s grunge for the Teens. I would continue to speculate but I am interested to see how this plays out.

Angels of Light - How I Loved You

2011-10-24T12:51:00.002-05:00

Micheal Gira ranks high on my list of all time greats, gaining a great deal of stature through The Swans while refusing to budge on artistic stances. He is no stranger to experimentation and forward thinking. With Angels of Light, Gira moves into melodic territory, soft croonings, lazy days on the beach, spaghetti westerns, and maybe even church, while remaining firmly grounded in dark post rock and noise origins. Droning and pounding as if in a slow motion heat with a low only slightly toned voice broken and swelling, spilling out dark text like a twisted lover. Each song carries a sense of growth and forward motion as acoustic instruments combine with electric guitars and the occasional percussive elements, pianos and organs and strange electric textures weave their way around each other. There is a definite place for lyrics and the voice as the chords slowly strum along yet the music insists on reaching higher as if searching for heaven and always expanding. It's a serpent in the sky that lifts you up and leaves teeth marks on your skin, but left to one word Angels of Light is... lingering.

Faun Fables - Family Album

2011-09-19T23:02:00.000-05:00

With an acoustic pagan sound well versed in the lore of old, Faun Fables trespasses on ground reserved for Pan's dark forest dances in seduction of witches. Upon first hearing "Eyes of a Bird" I incorrectly assumed that the group hosted a single singer, Equating the voices to that of Yes frontman Jon Anderson, but on PCP. I later learned that Dawn McCarthy was singing with Nils Frykdahl of Sleepytime Gorrilla Museum and the brilliance of Faun Fables and particularly "Family Album" began to become fully understandable.

www.faunfables.net

Bjork's new App/Album - Biophillia

2011-08-17T22:34:00.000-05:00

It looks like Bjork has been busy, and just to show the world she hasn't lost her touch for pushing the industry forward, she is releasing her newest musical work as a complete album/application for iPhone and iPad. In addition to stop motion videos,

Biophilia as a 3-D multimedia collaborative effort made possible through a large group of artists, scientists, designers and instrument building programmers. Some notables are Scott Snibbe and Michael Gondry and M/M design in Paris who she has worked with many times before. Science Icon David Attenborough narrarates the opening introduction.

The listener is invited to wander through constellations in order to access Album art, games, notation, lyrics and music. The interactive approach allows full multimedia immersion in the entirety of the ideal presented in the work, primarily How nature music and technology interact. The album presents itself as an instrument to be played, toying with organic ideas exploring space and microscopic environments alike. The games allow the listener to become involved in actually creating the music building rhythms chord structures out of the earth, and fighting mutating viral rhythms. Then of course you can also just listen Bjorks above par music. In a world where pop artists try and try to be different but still make mediocre cookie cutter songs Bjork shows up and shows Mother Monster she has a lot to learn about being an artist.

A Few More Images That Make Browsing For Stupid Stuff Stimulating

2011-08-10T15:23:00.004-05:00

2nd New Los Angeles Folk Festival

2011-08-07T15:38:00.001-05:00

The social networks have all been a buzz in the weeks leading up to the event held at the amazing Los Angeles hide away, "Zorthian Ranch", and it was in fact quite a day. Daiana Feuer and the rest of the gang did an amazing job of setting this all up and making it effortless fun for all of us in attendance. I need not say too much as the event organizers have their elite team spreading word of the success through the blogosphere and press. Be sure to check out lafolkfest.com for a rundown of the events and for some links to recordings of the performances.
As for my thoughts and impressions, We all know what I think of TSK, further to be expected were the singer/songwriters traditionally expected at this type of event. Some stand outs were Ana Caravelle, perhaps because this was my introduction to her music, perhaps due to the harp. I should avoid comparing her to Joanna Newsom with a more soulful voice and sensitive style, but there is that similar meandering song structure. Dust bowl Revival I may have to side with as my favorite of the day, with their old New Orleans folk jazz sound, collective musical talent (so tight) and instrumentation combined (I have more to say and certainly will in time). I have also come to redefine Folk in the last day, into an all encompassing cloud involving world music (it wouldn't quite be Los Angeles if the powers that be didn't sneak it in), The Psycho-Spaghetti Western group Spindrift left a really good impression with their Ennio Morricone gone rock style. All in all it was a great party with some great artists.

Amanda Jo Williams (11:05-11:40pm),
Ana Caravelle (10:15-10:50pm),
Cowboy And Indian (8:10-8:45pm),
The Djin Aquarian Band (11:15-11:50pm),
Dustbowl Revival (2-2:35pm),
Emily Lacy (6-6:35pm),
Fabiano Do Nascimento Trio (7:35-8:10pm),
Ferraby Lionheart (3:30-4:05pm),
Frank Fairfield (7-7:40pm),
Ghiant (2:35-3:10pm),
Julia Holter (8:45-9:20pm),
Jenny Luna And The Moondogs (4:...05-4:40pm),
Matt Taylor And His Laurels (2:15-2:50pm),
Nasambu And The Mystic Nomads (6:55-7:30pm),
Radical Face (5:50-6:25pm),
Ramona Gonzalez (9:20-9:55pm),
RT N' The 44's (10:30-11:05pm),
Ruthann Friedman (5-5:35pm),
Space Comes Soft (7:50-8:25pm),
Spindrift (11:40-12:15pm),
Stone Darling (4:40-5:15pm),
The Stevenson Ranch Davidians (10:25-10:55pm),
Tommy Santee Klaws (9:55-10:30pm),
Triple Chicken Foot (9-10pm),
Very Be Careful (2:55-3:30pm),
Yellow Red Sparks (5:15-5:50pm)

Tommy Santee Klaws

2011-08-04T13:45:00.001-05:00

"In Formation" is one of those soft sanguine songs that grabs the listener and leaves them hooked on it like a drug. It's the type of song that ends up breaking charts for a band and getting played 20+ times a day. I've seen often a great song becoming a definition, but Tommy Santee's music lives in much deeper places and demands a look at the overall picture. The Depth of sound is refreshing and unique, eerie with a dirty undercurrent of western influence juxtaposed with violent beauty in the lyricism. Furthermore, Tommy just has a haunting voice that seems completely honest, not to mention the well executed harmonies. I find myself bouncing back and forth between "Rakes" and "Gloria" Trying to figure out which I like more.
"Rakes", Tommy's eighth record, is being distributed by Imaginary Music, a label started by The Cure's Lol Tolhurst, and has a tightly polished sound and immaculate instrumentation as well as host of great songs. "Gloria" comes from a more raw place with dirty prominent melodic lines and a home grown character that might make it seems less perfect than "Rakes", but things like the children singing harmonies on the last track("Lame Dude") prove that the depth and the grit has always been a perfect part of the picture. They may, in fact, be the greatest of saviors to the blooming Los Angeles folk scene.

Production Techniques used by The Beatles producer George Martin

2011-08-01T16:17:00.000-05:00

Nothing will quite change the trajectory of a band's music, and career, like a great producer. This can be seen with Radiohead after teaming up with Nigel Godrich for OK Computer, and with a slightly less positive but even more tidal shifting collaboration of Mutt Lange and Shania Twain(which ruined country music forever more.) Then there is Dr. Dre. and the list especially in Hip Hop, Rap, and R&B goes on and on and on. However, one relationship stands out above all others:

The classically trained producer George Martin teaming up with the rock and roll band The Beatles in 1963, producing every Beatles recording from "Love me Do" the first single released to "Abbey Road" - the last album that The Beatles recorded (With the exception of Phil Spector's post production on the Let It Be album). Martin recorded the first album stereo in eleven hours beginning his legacy as the fifth Beatle. I would venture to say that without Martin's orchestral arrangements, instrumentation choices and the general use of the medium of recording, The Beatles would have just been a British Band imitating the music of American artists like Buddy Holly. So where better to look for inspiration than this very fruitful relationship?

What techniques were used to attain the sound ?(miking, mixing, etc.)

Tips from Geoff Emerick the engineer

Geoff sees audio as color, high treble as blues and silvers, with treble being green, and bass as browns and golds. He also chooses to place a small amount of EQ in the recording chain before going down to tape when multi-tracking.

Separation is really important for the purposes of presence.

Tracking should start with the rhythm track and he generally won't mike the hi hat unless its a featured part because there will be enough in the snare and overheads. He also doesn't like taking a direct in from the bass because he sees it as lazy and prefers hearing the interaction between the bass and rhythm guitar. In the studio he would also record piano stereo and add leads later. It's best to go for a great performance here than to worry about perfection with the exception of really bad mistakes.

Next overdub a guide vocal to show where to fill in the instrumental overdubs and in the end re-record the final and harmony vocals, double tracked, if you want orchestral overdubs do that also.

Tips From George on being a producer.

Diplomacy is your first requirement to be a record producer the second is good judgment. He believes in a firm rapport but questions his place in actually shaping the song. but also feels that every one needs to listen to another voice to question and strengthen the creative process

Its up to the record producer to figure out before hand how the recording will go. It is good to know:

The arrangement and if there will be orchestra.

If you want to get people together and the studio and play heads.

How many tracks are going down.

Martin likes the separate roles of Engineer and Producer.

You must be able to know how far you can go creating the sound you are looking for with out making it muddy or having your sounds run together. The most important part is that the voice be heard and the song must have a clear interpretation

Be careful not to take out to much or mix too mechanically when using multi-tracks and close miking techniques

Multi-tracks are a blessing from god, but coming from a limited background where you are mixing from one four track down to another to get more tracks gives you a great sense of forward thought to not get serious degredation problems.

Sequencing is important also once every thing is recorded. Figure out the best order for the songs to be played in to create interest in the listener. Allow the whole thing to flow together well to sustain that interest then leave them feeling amazing with a last track. Be conscious of the silence as well.

Another important ability of a producer is getting inside of the artists head to understand their desire Mcartney was always very definite in his ideas and came up with most of the creative ideas

Lennon didn't like dealing with detail and bringing his ideas to fruition and he wasn't easy to please. George referred to working with John as an archeological dig.

Example pieces

Yesterday - 1965 Paul recorded his vocal in two takes to his own guitar accompaniment. George Martin offered the suggestion to add strings and with that Martin's relationship with the beatles began.

In my Life -1965 George Martin played a piano solo in the middle of the track and then sped it up to twice the speed, acheiveing a baroque sound. This was the first time that the beatles used tape manipulation to create a special effect

Strawberry Fields Forever - used tape speed to make the George Martin string and brass composition be in the same key as John lennon's original song which were then merged together to create the song starting with johns intro and ending with the orchestrated part.

Tommorow Never Knows - John Lennon wanted a chorus of a thousand Tibetin monks chanting from a mountain top. Lennon didn't like the sound of his voice and wanted the words but not him to be heard. Martin rose to this challenge by sending Lennon's voice through a revolving leslie speaker.

All you need is Love - for the world wide live broadcast entitled "Our world" the Beatles were chosen to represent Great Britain. george martin played the basic rhythm track through a four track machine while the fab four overdubed vocals and instruments live with an orchestra playing martins score which started out with La Marsellaise, the french national anthem, and closes hinting at Bach's Greensleeves and glen miller's in the mood

I am the Walrus - 1967- parts of Shakespear's King Lear are being fed in from a live radio broadcast during the mix session

A Day in the LIfe - 1967- Paul suggested that there be a 24 bar section of a orchestra gone wrong. Martin asked each of the forty members of the orchestra to start on a predecided note and ascend to the highest note that their instrument could play starting softly and finishing loudly playing seperately from their neighbors. They recorded it four times onto four tracks of a four track tape.

Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite - 1967- always had the spirit of an appropriation piece. John took the lyrics almost directly from a victorian promotion poster printed in 1843 for Pablo Franque's Circus Royal. John initially wanted a hand opperated steam organ but couldn't find one George Martins fix was to compile a tape of steam organ recordings from sousa marches and othe circusy sounding tracks. then he had Geoff Emmerick to cut the tape into about sixty foot long pieces and then toss them into the air and reassemble them at random. George Martin "any that sounded too much like original were turned around and added backwards until finally I arived at a whole amalgam of carousel noies which we used as a background 'wash' to give the impression of a circus" for the swooping swirly sound that john wanted organ sounds had john play the organ part on one piano at half speed and an octave lower sow that Martin could play chomatic runs fast enough to get the desired effect when the tape was sped up.

With all of that John had the swirly circus sound that he was looking for.

George said of production, (from eleven hour records to three week records to records that take years)"What's most important is that a recording have soul. It must lift the emotions of the listener and come from the heart."

Martin G. (1983)Record Production. G. Martin. Making Music, New York, N.Y. William Morrow and Company (257 - 265).

Emerick G. (1983) Recording Techniques. G. Martin. Making Music, New York, N.Y. William Morrow and Company (257 - 265).

A Vision to Go with the Sound: Tears of the Moosechaser

2011-07-30T12:42:00.002-05:00

Cried the voice in the wilderness.

Tears of the Moosechaser

Once upon a time country stood for more than singing with a drawl and wearing flannel. Because of the last 14 years of country artists with bleached or high lit hair playing disney quality pop songs it was only matter of time before the creative youth began to rebel and return to their roots. Which means, if you are looking for a better type of country music, the kind that hearkens back to the good old days, modern reproductions of olden style are popping up across these here Great States.

For a better type of country music with a modern blending old with something forward thinking check out Tears of the Moosechaser, The young start up group out of Los Angeles has embraced the fiber of anarchy of outlaw country western lost in the days since country turned sterile and cross pollenated it with the noise propelling free jazz and industrial music for the 50 years. They define themselves as Avant-Americana. I am not sure whether they are trying to salvage or obliterate the splinters of country western music, but It is nice to see a group of classically trained musicians knock at the door of something so home grown. It holds no irony that a band like this would form in the west. Los Angeles has been budding for some time now with both alternative country and experimental and the LA Folk scene is no stranger to the CalArts connection. TotM holds a cast covering a huge demographic of the US The primary songwriters Blanton Ross and Antony DiGenarro hail from Texas and Connecticut. Other members of the band bring with them the character of Kentucky, Alaska, California, and Missouri. They also have a token German, Ulrich Krieger who holds some notoriety playing with Lou Reed, and his Metal Machine Music trio.

In some world, county evolved naturally from the 60s till now picking up some small portion of what Coltrane contributed to Free Jazz and sharing in the forward thinking of the British Invasion's influence on America's popular rock, eventually allowing rock to step away from itself and bring something like Radiohead into the mainstream, Country Western Roots music now offers the intellectual and yet listener friendly explorations of Tears of the Moosechaser - www.moosechaser.com.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

videos edited by KBR

for more see:

www.moosechaser.com

2083 – A European Declaration of Independence

2011-07-24T14:02:00.004-05:00

Here is the Manifesto in pdf (straight from the monkeys mouth) of Anders Behring Breivik (the gunman connected to oslo massacre) to make your own opinion as opposed to hearing the media's spin.

Opinions expressed in the manifesto belong to the writer and not me. My heart goes out to the people of Norway in light of these horrific events.

2083 – A European Declaration of Independence.pdf

I have also included the video he made, the video was originally taken down but it has been reuploaded with an age restriction confirmation.

David Sylvian

2011-07-19T23:37:00.001-05:00

David Silvian has had a great number of avant-guarde and esoteric collaborations since his days in the Glam Rock group "Japan". His solo projects are varied in their emotional content. His maturity as an artist has had a proper period of gestation and he brings a certain quality of truth to his musicwithout fear of how it might be percieved.

With Blemish, Sylvian crooning voice seems to wander aimless and introspective in an eerie landscape of desolation. Noise and electric guitar drones become dunes and jagged rocks. The album is open, well done and quite soothing.

Download the title track off Blemish by David Sylvian

Amy Winehouse Joins Forever 27 Club

2011-06-23T23:36:00.001-05:00

AMY WINEHOUSE - September 14, 1983 - July 23, 2011

Image by BTOY

Her music and voice were modernism clashing with the past. Her story was a constant rollercoaster of drugs and drinking and sex and all the things that the legends of rock and roll martyr themselves for. So now on July 23, 2011, Amy Winehouse joins in the elite Forever 27 Club where she is latched into the eternal party with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Kurt Cobain, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeremy Michael Ward, Ron McKernan and Robert Johnson who purportedly sold his soul to the devil and is considered to be the first initiated into the club, Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man", also died at age 27 but unfortunately was not beautiful enough to make it on most lists. In honor of her we shall skip over "Rehab" and leave with "Back to Black."

Modernist Primitivism

2011-05-14T16:37:00.000-05:00

Our humanity took us in the wrong direction. Our modernism, our concepts of Utopian society, city life, progression remove us so far from our virtues. Removed from the self, being filled with so many things that cloud the mind distracting from a path placed before by an unseen and often neglected hand.   I have come to see the reverse of tolerance. People tolerate the things they choose to. Through toleration we come to find appreciation in our separateness in the way that we stand out, unique individuals amongst a sea of similarity. Perhaps our toleration stems from our own desire to be accepted and thus to become anonymous, but left to fit into our niche and to be respected. The twist is the darkness ever present, picking at our thoughts, changing our perspectives, chasing out of our heads the innocence of being separate from the beast which compels us to be how it sees fittest or most desirable. Note here that using words like darkness and beast to represent this something that is not modernism but is coupled with it, intermingled, sinking in tentacles and infusing itself parasitically into the host of positive spirit and human energy. The big city comes with a view of itself based on values created to perpetuate the mass. The metropolitan comes complete with chic. Well tailored and carrying itself in an aristocratic way. The wisdom generated by the harshness of this soulless and blasé environment gives this particular human power, thought, over its "dumber" less educated parallel which I am going to here label as 'Savages."   That it is important to keep the gears cranking and turning is propagated by the media which is suppllied to build an entire economic system on falsity.
We can all see it...
Actually, I am afraid that all we cannot see it. There is the basic Calvinist idea which was predestination. Some humans are meant to be saved and some are meant to burn, the separating of chaf from grain. It sometimes seems so apparent. In Isaiah, around chapter forty-three, it talks about the good of the servant who is able to see and is bothered by those who proudly wear their veils with closed eyes moving in unison and chattering imitations of wisdom. They chop down a tree which has lived for years. They make lumber from it and build a fire then praise the fire for the warmth it provides then taking silver and gold from the earth they melt it in the fire and shape it in the form of a human. In reality we shape it into Mcdonalds signs and concrete and little peices of colored paper we call currency.    Humanism has always been about replacing God, that's the whole point, to deify ourselves or our creation. We want control of the thing controlling everything, the further we evolve the more we build, the fewer baby steps still remain between us and the prospect set by the serpent in the Garden of Eden. The more we eat from this tree of knowledge the more quickly we become Gods.
So Post religious bird walk, If you are trying to figure out how this is relevant to modernist primitivism then please proceed to room G 604 where Gauguin leaves for Tahiti in 1891... In the jungle, City Culture is only a byproduct of the western idea of conquest and claiming possessions presumably originated in Egypt thousands of years ago. So in a modern world the only thing left or even vaguely important is to possess the game, to possess more than the person standing beside you. Realistically the city life forces this standard upon us, excepting those who refuse the concept of the ever expanding mass of concrete constantly forcing the "less sophisticated savage to the outskirts to perpetually carve out the next piece of gold. Once discovered This new wonder will serve as grounds for the next rape of the natural world to create space for our ever feeding parasitic virtual modern world.   Setting oneself apart from this world is met with the highest of opposition. But unlike the self or god ordained opposition to take part in the world, worldliness calls and nature yields.

The intrigue of primitivism lies in its separation from any system resembling control. Its almost a desire for anarchy, a desire to be truly free to live life in any way that one feels compelled to partake of. To be an artist one cannot allow themselves to be caught up in the flow. The savage is an individual, savages are individuals relying on each other for protection, safety, food, shelter, all the things that modern society claims to hand out to you as long as you have some way of obtaining possesions which serve to perpetuate the system. The Savage's system contains no way of feeding a beast such as the city. The savage system relies only on the ability to be small, moveable and adaptable. The City system is about duration, about lasting, growing roots and using the right amount of recourse to jump start a self sustaining environment. Every day for the savage may be his last. This gives a perspective on the importance of every moment, every meal, every action and interaction. The non-savage holds no desire for life on that level, he drifts through life following signs that say stop and go. Failure to respect the cold rigid line of these signs will result in an unfavorable end. While the savage seeks, explores, and struggles, the metropolitan goes through motions and performs mundane tasks to perpetuate the system, which in return feeds the individual's need for temporary escape from the system he helped create.
So why does the soul disappear in the metropolitan system. Is it a currency sign that eats it or that search for personal identity in the statistic sea. Is it the repetitive tasks or propaganda posing as guide posts to freedom. Diving back into religion: When Jesus Christ walked and taught his message was rebellious, it went against the structure of the Romans and of Jewish tradition, it was about separating the self from the beast. His message was savage, it was about living life in the best way you could, not blindly accepting what ever was thrown your direction. Christianity fell victim to the same curse and merged with the ideals of the Roman empire, The apposing beast it found its way to incorporate and destroy the soul, as it does any system that comes in contact with the mass. Christianity was used as a tool of control taken out of context and used without relevance to the text in order to control an illiterate society. What was once a lifestyle became a cog, a gear wheel in the system more relevant to class than philosophy. When Primitive Art was introduced, the concept of an untamed world was allowed to re-sneak into the imagination of the mass. It turned heads, averted attention, was met with opposition riots, it was unacceptable, maybe even revolutionary. Unchecked it could have brought the created world to its knees, but the beast quickly seized its opportunity and swallowed the savage, plundered it, squeezed it like a wash rag until every drop of its life was gone. Then they sold cups for a penny a piece and society obliged saying "Yes' I will have a sip". When the world drank from the cup the rush of the spirit no longer held sweetness, but instead tasted bitter, but the hope of possibility exists that something free lives out there, that adventure is possibility, that there still exists something of the idea of a circle of life and that maybe having control is less important to being in control than not having control forcing oneself into the situation of surviving.
I want to leave with this thought "Modern is now, life is passing by." Times spent in mountains trying to find what has been beat out by the city are never long enough. It's like allowing a callous to wear away. One of my friends who moved out of my small hometown to Dallas introduced me to the analogy of the big city callous or the blasé attitude if one wants to use big fancy french terms. Growth happens on more than just one level, there are are many ways to gage the worth of a person. The metropolitan man is no better person than the man from the small town. The man from the small town tends to have more soul and love to tap from. Cities deal in dollars and cents you get what you pay for, sometimes you get screwed. In the ideal you have a community, small, interconnecting, you build a family with those that surround you, the good of one is the good of all and at the end of the day you eat or you go hungry and you all do it together. Ayn Rand leaves this scenario as taboo due to moochers and others that refuse to pull their weight. Yet in the end of Atlas Shrugged those who shrug off the weight of the world end up in a small community of equally driven individuals. The cold and slicing city seems more savage than savage to me. The extreme fix says "Utopia will not exist as long as people do. So buy an uzi and start mowing. Better days are ahead." It is true there is no going back, giving up our modern conveniences. But I like to think that we can adopt the community of our savage ancestors and use the fractured togetherness in our modern setting. In any case, "Goodness is not what has been it is ever what shall be".

Kurt Cobain Suicide Note

2011-04-05T14:11:00.006-05:00

Kurt Cobain (February 20, 1967 - April 5, 1994)

Surely we all have some grievances with the music industry. However, this being the anniversary of a Rich Rock Star that couldn't be happy and thus performing felatio on a shotgun. I highly recommend not letting the business get to you. Instead focus on more enjoyable things like Music. Oh, and kick the heroin. Its a bad habit.

Letting go of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

2011-04-02T17:22:00.005-05:00

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum came like a storm out of Oakland California, as shouting expression of Experimental Metal brilliance. Being a group most often seen in smaller venues, SGM delivers one of the most powerful shows I have ever seen live, and I mean ever. I have witnessed performances including costumes, make up, performance art, specially built custom instruments and always an extremely tight band playing complex intellectual and powerful music. They have managed, despite their creativity and musical superiority over most bands, to stay humble, true, and approachable to their fans. As seen in their farewell announcement.

"If you go to these shows, You will have seen 

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum for the last time.  

As it turns out,  we are being replaced.

 April 7th, 2011

 Casbah, San Diego, CA (21+)

 April 8th, 2011

 Troubador, Los Angeles CA (All Ages)

 April 10th, 2011

 The Independent, San Francisco, CA (21+)

It has been an honor to make music with you,  

both in the room and not."

It was a shock to be presented with the news that this amalgamation of gifted musicians is pursuing an alternate future from their life spent almost endlessly in the old bus that they have known as a home since 2001. The Museum is closing its doors after a triad of forward thinking albums which are Avant-guard and Classical combined with progressive metal, and in the end indescribable as anything other than amazing.

As fortune allows this breaking of the SGM fellowship has left behind a legacy of music, including side projects like Tin Hat Trio, Faun Fables, Book of Knots, and the newly formed Causing a Tiger which will continue to carry the flame.

YOU WILL BE MISSED BUT NOT FORGOTTEN SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM.

How Does Radiohead Do it?

2011-03-16T13:06:00.006-05:00

Radiohead is a special case in music.

One day after their album "King of Limbs" came out, It had already taken its place crowning the internet top searches. Millions of YouTube hits and hundreds of bloggers offered interpretations of lyrics, comparisons to previous albums, reposted and otherwise cashed in on the success it was destined for. 'The Robotanists' even went about making a cover album of the newborn baby within the day.

Fans of Radiohead can't seem to get enough, conservative music listeners (the kind that listen to Top 40 radio) are eager to patiently listen to it and try to understand it, marveling in the evolution of the megagroup and relishing in how they (the listeners) are now "Artful" because of the new sounds they are privy to. 'King of Limbs' feels like something that you know shouldn't be alive but keeps looking at you in the face, very much existing.

Many hail "King of Limbs"as Experimental, yet it has become vastly popular with listeners who seem to have missed that memo decades ago re: The arrival of Experimental music. (Bjork, Sigur Ros, Autechre, Lexaunculpt, Hrvatski, Matmos, Venetian Snares, Boards of Canada, IDM, the list is long). Many are quick to pigeon hole, or expect something else, be it the next level on the Experimental ladder, or a retreat back to the good sing-along Karma Police days. I see it as a step on a obvious trajectory, Radiohead has been on this path beyond cult ever since teaming up with producer Nigel Godrich for 'Ok Computer' back after they proved that they could be your everyday true rock band.

'Ok Computer' opened the door to the change that nobody was expecting. The jazz influence snuck in but carried on its back something far more whimsical: Ambiences, open song stuctures, electronic beats, layers upon layers, found woven through out anything Godrich touches. 'Kid A' and 'Amnesiac' dove deeper in the new electronic direction and everyone flipped out because 'Techno' was no longer the only electronic music. But truth be told the music to this day is very specific to Radiohead, it has always been specifically Radiohead and will continue to be characteristically Radiohead.

So let me get this out of my system once and for all. If you think this new album "King of Limbs" is experimental go listen to Pierre Shaeffer and see where tape music came from, if you want great pop music with noise overtones and actual depth Radiohead fits the bill. I have to give props to them, Radiohead keeps opening the ears of those that are unaware of what is out there. Ok. so is not new, but it is very good and the more times I listen to it the deeper in I go. In my humble opinion, this one hits the mark right where 'In Rainbows' missed... They have created a thick luscious environment, hung on to instruments, chopped up some live drums and put them back together. My first impression is how old the music seems classic, retro like "Baba O'Riley" by The Who. The textures though are far more complex, back masking guitars, delay units, and feeding into that stumbling Art Blakey Jazz drum segments, Living in poly-rhythms, colliding with this lounge exotica sleek swing thing. And at the top everything delays like dub music fading into an atmosphere to set the stage for more and more looping offset to pretty much obscure the fact that this is thus far extremely minimal repetitive music in standard 4/4. "Little by Little" sounds like a throwback to Nirvana back in their "Bleach" days, however Radiohead is still very much there, amongst the whining and through all frequencies.

The Confusing Racial Implications of the Goat Rider Party

2011-02-06T04:06:00.001-06:00

Strange musical economy... the rules never changed. Instead the method to the madness mutated in a most dismaying manner. It does make some sense though, and the blogs really are doing a service to the musicians at this point. Especially because everyone is an artist now, Garage Band musicians are falling out of the trees like shaken up termites chewing at the rims of media formats. and Double Rainbow is getting the most plays.

Strange musical economy... Maybe the rules did change, but still The artists remain poor at the bottom of the money net, and instead of spending money in studios which used to separate the chaff from the grain, they now pay for marketing and promotion or to submit their music through some third party who managed to convince venues a tollway between them and the artists was a good idea(quality control, you know?)

I did so think that the world of Americana music would have divorced itself from such silliness as that which spawns Lady Gaga's embryonic form of Miley Cyrus, that doomed offspring of my Achy Breaky Heart. The entirety of the Disney clan now fully aware of the sordid lives they must lead in the aftermath witnessing their star role model Brittany Spears and sister sliding down awkward paths.

Indeed the Justin Beiber Selena Gomez Sex Tape is only the beginning. After all with Usher producing it and Demi Levato lending a hand(quite literally) the show should be spectacular. "But they are still children" the Christian right wing will cry out uncertain who to blame for the actions of those left in charge of babysitting their own lost children trying so hard to be grown up versions of their idols. They rapidly duplicate every move of virginal experimentation detailed by the Twitter play by play and steal mommy's credit card for the new Disney Porn Site selling subscriptions by the millions. Indeed, the mouse will sell everything after the hostile acquisition of Hustler. Amy Winehouse toasts from her "Snuggie" on heroin couch, While Madonna bitterly explains to her manager "I did that years ago." Sex always sells the most of everything, Its the lowest common denominator that the media craves, and because the market is now set to be based on media, the ad campaign must be original... Much like The Avant-Americana Stylings of TEARS OF THE MOOSECHASER...

Yes You too can be on the on the Frontline of the Phenomenon Known as Moosechasing.

Join Tears of the Moosechaser at Facebook and share it with your friends.
Listening and sharing with 10 or more of your friends will help you find a girlfriend/boyfriend in 6 weeks or less, Guaranteed, or you can have your "Like" back!!!

Just click This Link to Facebook! And watch watch what happens.

And don't forget to head on over to WWW.MOOSECHASER.COM where you can spend your parents money on some Good Old Fashioned American Music.

Aronofsky Reimagines Swan Lake with Black Swan

2011-01-31T17:49:00.005-06:00

I witnessed Aronofsky's Black Swan back before the turn of the year, It was angled to be a psycho sexual thriller about ballerinas with some super human overtones, along the lines of transformation. After a month of being a stage hand for Nutcracker after Nutcracker, one would think I had enough Tchaikovsky or even enough ballet for that matter. However, because Of Pi and Requiem for a Dream I had some extraordinarily high expectations for this one, and by my first impression I was not disappointed at all.

My tendency to judge films starting with the first frame was quickly annihilated by the long shot of a dancing ballerina that turned out to be Natalie Portman, Her acting through out the movie continued to push boundaries and what impressed me most was her dedication and dancing as a ballerina. Mila Kunis as the free spirited sexual dancer posed in a position between honest friend and rival for the glory of the Swan Queen was...well, Sexy. Vincent Cassel also plays his role perfectly though I think his character merits some unfair judgment as the villain. Winona Rider also delivers as the ousted former lead and serves well to cause no end to the angst of all involved. The movie plays with psychology like clay, Mirrors through out the story testify to changes real or imagined, And truth hangs out in the edges to be viewed from a variety of visages. Further twists in the story telling reveal, that the arch of the story line drifts out of a movie about competition in the world of ballet and deeper into the actual fable of Tchaikovsky Swan Lake.

Coming home after it was over had left me struck dumb. Maybe it was the jerky camera movements the graphic nature of the story, tangles of fear, sex, repression, Fingernails, the pace of the trajectory, the quality of the music, or the sound and picture in the Archlight Theater in Hollywood. I was wobbly kneed when I walked out, lost between real and delusion. I literally felt high when I left the theater, Like I popped MDMA with the girls in the bar. The film most definitely got under my skin and got my adrenaline going. I was weary to write this lest I ruin any sort of surprise for anyone who has not seen it. Truth of the matter is I think I know what happened but I'm not sure. I am going to have to watch this one again to fully comprehend the brilliance that went into it. Probably the best new film I saw in 2010. Well worth a view.

I would also like to mention in post script the way the Europeans handled the Art Deco promotional posters, Very nice...

I thought Russian Constructivist or and then of the Nick Gaetano cover art for the Ayn Rand books. Its really good stuff though. Would to have loved to see this all over LA, really would have fit in over by Wilshire. Some digging and you find out about LaBoca who this can be credited to. So much good stuff out of the UK, but that deserves its own time and place.

However the chips fall...
Bravo to all involved with every part of this living piece of art that is Black Swan.

Shine Little Star Shine: a quote to think about.

2011-01-26T19:59:00.002-06:00

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves 'who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. " ~ Marianne Williamson

A Few Images That Make Browsing For Stupid Stuff Stimulating

2010-11-29T14:15:00.002-06:00

Who doesn't like Ninjas?

Nothing quite like misleading the youth of tomorrow...

indeed...

Aw, they are just so gosh darn cute, aren't they?