Thursday, February 19, 2004
Standard Schaefer (author of Nova, editor of the now-vanished Rhizome) is moving to SF; recently sold his house in South Pasadena to....Bruce Dern. Says Dern talks and talks, and that he found him standing in the rain in his (Standard's) front yard a couple days ago, staring up at a tree.
Philip Sherburne, of all people, plays the screamo card. What, all that Gravity and no Clickatat Ikatowi, if that's how you spell it? And where's Honeywell? I didn't care for the band they turned into (Los Cincos; soundboys-do-drumcircle), but the one time I saw them under the old name, they defined my modest understanding of the genrelet. (I'm shamming here, a little; I saw more of these bands than I bought records by.) Claremont's currently extant The Mae She carry this torch ably, with the addition of a very old synth designed by the singer's dad for Morton Subotnick.
The closest place with an AirPort connection is a Starbuck's, so sometimes I go there to download something large efficiently, say The Grey Album, which I'll let you find yourself. This made me think about file-sharing in another light: Not only is none of my money flowing to Jay-Z or whoever currently owns the Beatles catalog (I lost track), which is fine, none of it's going to Dangermouse, who maybe doesn't care, but some of it is ending up in the hands of Starbuck's and T-1 Mobile, which is owned by God-knows-who. Maybe this is obvious, but I've never thought of it: P2Pers want to starve 'the industry,' all good, but they're happy to feed internet providersl, not to mention utilities. (If they're at college or their parents, they're not spending 'their own' money, but they're making it the case that someone gets paid.) I suppose some could be hacking into the grid for power, or generating their own, but I assume few are. Complicity, ho!
Title over-read in same Bucks' (the one where I saw Tom Waits about a year ago, even though there's an utterly Bukowski bar right across Western, visible from the display window): "Your Body's Many Cries For Water."
Which would not be a bad Jandek title. Saw the new documentary Jandek on Corwood this evening; movie has some pacing problems (and the filmmakers, in attendance, expressed surprise that it has laughs, which is troubling), but how often do you get to see Douglas Wolk's head that big? More on this later, maybe. Essentially: One would like to find a way to take an interest in this music without subscribing to some, ok any, of the assumptions of the community around it -- I don't mean the Jandek cult in particular, but the whole Milstien/Coley/Unterburger (especially) take on 'the uncommercial.' (This is coming from someone who finds 'song-poems' enjoyable.)
Philip Sherburne, of all people, plays the screamo card. What, all that Gravity and no Clickatat Ikatowi, if that's how you spell it? And where's Honeywell? I didn't care for the band they turned into (Los Cincos; soundboys-do-drumcircle), but the one time I saw them under the old name, they defined my modest understanding of the genrelet. (I'm shamming here, a little; I saw more of these bands than I bought records by.) Claremont's currently extant The Mae She carry this torch ably, with the addition of a very old synth designed by the singer's dad for Morton Subotnick.
The closest place with an AirPort connection is a Starbuck's, so sometimes I go there to download something large efficiently, say The Grey Album, which I'll let you find yourself. This made me think about file-sharing in another light: Not only is none of my money flowing to Jay-Z or whoever currently owns the Beatles catalog (I lost track), which is fine, none of it's going to Dangermouse, who maybe doesn't care, but some of it is ending up in the hands of Starbuck's and T-1 Mobile, which is owned by God-knows-who. Maybe this is obvious, but I've never thought of it: P2Pers want to starve 'the industry,' all good, but they're happy to feed internet providersl, not to mention utilities. (If they're at college or their parents, they're not spending 'their own' money, but they're making it the case that someone gets paid.) I suppose some could be hacking into the grid for power, or generating their own, but I assume few are. Complicity, ho!
Title over-read in same Bucks' (the one where I saw Tom Waits about a year ago, even though there's an utterly Bukowski bar right across Western, visible from the display window): "Your Body's Many Cries For Water."
Which would not be a bad Jandek title. Saw the new documentary Jandek on Corwood this evening; movie has some pacing problems (and the filmmakers, in attendance, expressed surprise that it has laughs, which is troubling), but how often do you get to see Douglas Wolk's head that big? More on this later, maybe. Essentially: One would like to find a way to take an interest in this music without subscribing to some, ok any, of the assumptions of the community around it -- I don't mean the Jandek cult in particular, but the whole Milstien/Coley/Unterburger (especially) take on 'the uncommercial.' (This is coming from someone who finds 'song-poems' enjoyable.)
