an american biography

7:33am: thoughts about films ive seen recently
1. vertigo and persona - someone should compare these two. the score to vertigo is the best score ever made. the sense of women as coming from male fetishism is great in vertigo - and the identity switch-a-roos hitchcock pulls off should be compared to those in bergman's masterpiece.

2. the scene in sweet movie when anna prucnal does the striptease for the pre-pubescent boys wearing white lace that she hangs all over them is the sexiest thing ever. the idea of a floating free candy store with beds made out of sugar run by a communist pirate is also rather exciting - especially since a ghost from battleship ptokemin is her playmate. too bad the ideological treatment of her in the movie is so awful... interperated without the metaphor the writer/director wants you to take her as - she's so spectacular, so amazing. especially seeing as the storyline involving her is a thousand times more interesting then the other one following miss world virginity 1984. aside from the peek inside otto muehl's commune - and the imagery associated with the communist pirate beauty, not her unsympathetic representation (and an ill thought-out reichian inspired critique of communism) - there really isnt much going on in this movie that cant be chocked up to just sexual revolution hippie shit. its so weird to love the the novelty of her political project (and the eroticism that coheres it), but its too bad that director just wants to paint communists as being genocidal maniacs. what a fucker.

3. detour - although the acting by that hitchiking chick is sort of subpar - this is one of the more fantastic pieces of noir irony. not to mention the ruminations on memory, fate, and chance are all extraordinarily well written. some parts of it fell prey to the obvious b-movie noir traps, but the parts that rise up are angelic.

4. fallen angel - did people really talk about marriage after knowing each other for least than a day back in the 1940s? love the sense of desparation that comes from each character in this.

5. carrie - who doesnt love sissy spacek? how were those kids so mean to her? the choice to cut out all sound except splatter during the pigs blood scene - and then the shift in lighting very rapidly - as well as the split screens - are great.

6. kurt kren - make otto muehl easier to digest (pun intended). his editing style is so well suited to the content of whats going on - i dont really know what to say about it. except that everything from 1964 on is perfect. and a few are on ubuweb.com for free viewing.

7. d.o.a. - the zaniest fucking noir ever. i can't tell why i'm partial to it. it could be because it's part crime thriller part existential slapstick part noir melodrama. the entire concept is really well thought out. what's amazing in these films is that it's always the most forgetable thing that gets you in trouble - the hands of fate pulling strings - only those hands will also reach out and kill or kiss you. the romance is beautiful - and the shift from him taking her to granted to her name becoming his last words is so genuine and beautiful it's not corny at all.

8. double indemnity - love this shit. the perfect femme fatale. the part after he meets her - and he stands in the window watching day turn to night - the anticipation and electricity in that moment - whoa. the dialogue in this one is also impeccable.

9. pick up on south street - samuel fuller is a good place to pick up archiac slang. and sexy babes spying for answers.

10. the postman always rings twice - not the best movie - but may have the hottest babe ever. im serious about that. she is hot the things i want to do to her would make prince blush. the interesting thing about this movie is the way noir tropes involving women get inverted with her constantly. sometimes she's a femme fatale, sometimes she's the goodhearted stand by yr man type, and then she'll turn to the self-sacrificing girl-child. her character is incredibly difficult to pin down - and i think shes just as confused as everyone else is. at the end is she trying to commit suicide? is the accident on purpose - the final fuck you she promised to the drifter that rattled her so? oh also - this has one of the best little details of any murder in any movie i've ever seen. when they take the husband on the top of the mountain to kill him, he drunkenly sings loud tones in order to hear his echo. after he belts out one especially loud note they kill him. the camera shows us him dead as his voice still resounds through the mountains. holy shit that part was awesome.

12:18pm: where have all the lisa suckdogs gone?
where have all the sadie bennings gone?






...in my bed.

8:11pm: cyberpunk dilemma

5:58pm: George Brecht R.I.P.
i'm a bit too distracted at the moment for proper mourning. brecht was a pioneer in expanding the boundaries of what is considered musical sound. more importantly, he was one of the earliest composers to radically alter what the domain of musical composition entails - expanding into a form dealing with the ontological/performative play/manipulation of objects.

from his works that introduced duchampian readymades into the everyday situations - thereby fulfilling the promise of duchamp's works - the destruction of aesthetics as domain from the outside of aesthetics - to his more zen-like compositions, filled with humor and simplicity, delicacy and an inexhaustible abundance of possibilities - he not only set into motion the operative field explored by most good artists since - but created significant works within a new canon.

play with water in his honor.

7:51pm: mark stewart "as the veneer of democracy starts to fade"
ok, for whatever retarded reason, i've just assume i got the deal with mark stewart. i mean "y" by the pop group was such a good album, who would even know he would have another one in him? well, motherfucking shame on me. shame on me so hard i should lose my license as an amateur music critic and listener for the next six months.

"as the veneer of democracy starts to fade" is not only easily one of the best albums i've ever heard, but it may be the most overlooked album of all time. combining the love of american and post-colonial black music on display in the pop group with an equal love of pure noise materialism, mark stewart takes an already deadly formula into the fucking stratosphere on this one. the early hip hop form of big beat plus sound collage here collides with pre-tlasila add noise musique concrete free glam antics; proto-excepter electro-dub-fuzz mish-mash; proto-rave bombast - i mean jeez louise - i can't describe - it's like it came out of my most spastic post-punk/early hip-hop dreams. a noise album that grooves(?) - and without sacrificing the noise - thats the key part.

it's really just too much. anyone who doesn't seek it out immediately - well, youre only hurting yrself. i'm kicking myself for not hearing this fucking brilliant album sooner.

if youve ever wondered why politicized music can't be as sexy, daring, funky, and as militantly noisy as its people-power ambitions then hear this lost gem.




seriously, guys, sell yr souls to hear it.

11:57am: readings
1. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia - Deleuze and Guattari


2. Dogwood - Mary Ellen Solt


3. I Ching


4. Nova Express - William S. Burroughs


5. Journal of Albion Moonlight - Kenneth Patchen


6. Multitude - Hardt and Negri


7. Compositions - ed. John Cage and Alison Knowles
(no picture)

6:46pm: five albums with impeccable drum programming
1. So - Peter Gabriel



2. Face Value - Phil Collins



3. Operation Doomsday - MF Doom



4. Colossal Youth - Young Marble Giants



5. Supreme Clientele - Ghostface Killah

3:44am: 5 albums that are the fucking best albums
multitopia - james ferraro
alternation - excepter
drugs are nice - suckdog
twin infinitives - royal trux
daydream nation - sonic youth

what all of these have in a common is a sense of refusal - a refusal of the mandates of a cultural position or subcultural scene as well as the dominant culture at large. hence, they are all demonstrative of a type of politics of protest that stems from everyday life - the pouring over of minutiae; a rejection of the little moments of coercion; a desire for new relationships to merge from the rubble.

they are all sexy as hell, insofar as they pick the bones of like a million definitions of sexy.

soundwise - they all mine territory that is exploratory, veering very close to aleatory. and in the compositional blitzkrieg each asserts elements that move beyond the dichotomy of music/sound to the point where it feels a little stupid to even point out such a distinction.

3:31pm: Townes Van Zandt in Heartworn Highway

HOLY HELL.

8:35am: ten hard bop/free jazz albums
for a long time, the only jazz i really listened to was the strata east type of stuff or the lonnie liston smith/roy ayers set or the funk fusion type of stuff (catalyst, black heat, doug carn, etc.). but i'm beginning to return to my old favorite hard bop and free jazz records. ill list a few...

crystals - sam rivers (really this is too achingly beautiful for words, big band avant-garde has always been difficult to pull off and from ornette's double quartet experiments to the jazz composers orchestra no one was able to maintain grade a composition while allowing the proper framework for improv than sam rivers on this album. the rush of simultaneity, the intricacy of a million different counterpoints and rhythms - the melodies, the harmonies - it is truly such a mature work - i dont understand why sam rivers isnt popular amongst free jazz listeners today, who tend to play it safe with either european sounding stuff like braxton or stuff thats easily related to other african american traditions like sun ra or hippie dippie esp label stuff - but sam rivers, my god, what a fucking genius.)

live in paris - art ensemble of chicago with fontella bass (the shambling percussion waves along with the pan-diaspora reading of primitive jazz plus fontella's wailing makes this easily my favorite record in the art ensemble's massive and great catalogue.)

3 compositions of new jazz - anthony braxton (the bell!)

one step beyond - jackie mclean (total haunted and slowly, but tightly wound exploratory free jazz. bobby henderson's vibes set the atmosphere and counterpoint mclean's wonderful compositions giving it an empty street spectral presence. of course, mclean was just finding his voice - and what a voice it is - so sophisticated and so filled with raw emotion. tony williams is mindblowing on the kit as well).

last date - eric dolphy (really my favorite by him.)

alabama feeling - arthur doyle (what robert pete williams is to the delta blues, arthur doyle is to free jazz... a shambling primitivist who finds ghostly poignancy in the forms handed down to him)

everything by ornette coleman (yes, and i mean everything by ornette coleman, the obvious atlantic years stuff - and crisis, friends and neighbors, and science fiction are my favorites - but everything by him is mindblowing. if bebop jettisoned melody for chordal structures, ornette coleman found melody again but threw away the chords, allowing maximum space for pure unadulterated expressive communication - while so much free jazz became about modality, texture, avant garde collusions, or gesture, ornette has always remained able to come up with a theme that will completely stun. hell even his guest work has been the best - see his work with jackie mclean or yoko ono.)

conference of the birds - dave holland (duh)

a monastic trio - alice coltrane (listening to her, rashied, and jimmy play in john's absence is so painful - and this only adds to the fragile majesty of this album - it is an album of mourning through the type of pan-african spirituality that was thriving in the late sixties. it is such an amazing work.)

intents and purposes - bill dixon - (what a sad, lovely song found here. reminiscent of shostakovich and ornette's experiments with string instruments. highly underrated.)

all this not to mention the obvious - skillfulness by alan silva, giblets by sunny murray, spirits rejoice by albert ayler, fire music by archie shepp, liberation music orchestra - charlie haden, miles smiles by miles davis,and point of departure by andrew hill have been making up my play lists as of late.

4:17am: media pranksterisms?

what that little cunt white girl did today making up the story about the scary black man who carved a b into her face - b for barack - is awful, but it gives me ideas.

pretty soon, something i had my hands in will be on fox news everyday and will be refuted by cnn later in the evening.

no manifesto.

10:34pm: Blondie - Dreaming

8:53pm: Misconceptions of Obama fuel Republican campaign - 13 Oct 08

INSANE

7:10pm: Conversations with History: Michael Hardt

around minute 30 shit gets sick.

much love to hardt and negri of course.

5:46am: list
-costes
-twin infinitives
-alfred hitchcock's television series
-worlde
-jerome rothenberg
-recordings of bird song (why do i feel like i'm tripping when i listen to these?)
-antonio negri
-marx's writings on technology and nature
-early r&b/deep soul http://www.sendspace.com/file/2jwvms (personal megamix)
-kenneth patchen
-c. bremer
-heat wilson
-nite jewel's "artificial intelligence" music video
-chairlift's "planet health" music video
-heaters/sweating indoors
-"cactus" - the pixies
-the black panther party
-metaphors involving spider webs
-metaphors involving virus/viral imagery

3:37am: Obama turns heckling into a discussion at a townhall

you know, as much as i hate the democratic party and the spectacular politics - this type of thing is so damn sexy on the behalf of obama. a politics of responsiveness? really? in mainstream america?

really my hope is that hell galvanize the young to renew the leftist experimentation we lost in the eighties.

10:41am: you know what the worst is? when a real corny song knocks you on yr ass real hard... leaves you all swelling up with memories and emotions.

thanks joanna newsom for writing peach plum pear. its real funny because i have never intentionally listened to yr music before, but for some reason when that song came on it reminded me of all the times i unintentionally did and a lot of pretty bits of memory to zoom in on.

5:23am: i guess i got over hating music pretty fast. maybe it was just that perry was relentlessly playing hardcore and every song reminded me of unnamed rotten girl.

i have so many blank c-10's that i'm probably not going to do anything and a split with blood stereo due on the up and up. by and by, probably just make field recordings en route and in new orleans.

get an actual job. or learn mad voodoo and set spells on everyone... dangerous time to cross me, copy?

3:14pm: Lenin is for us not the nostalgic name for old dogmatic certainty; quite on the contrary, to put it in Kierkegaard's terms, the Lenin we want to retrieve is the Lenin-in-becoming, the Lenin whose fundamental experience was that of being thrown into a catastrophic new constellation in which old coordinates proved useless and who was thus compelled to reinvent Marxism. Recall his acerbic remark apropos of some new problem: "About this, Marx and Engels said not a word." The idea is not to return to Lenin, but to repeat him in the Kierkegaardian sense, to retrieve the same impulse in today's constellation. The return to Lenin aims neither to nostalgically reenact the good old revolutionary times, nor to opportunistically-pragmatically adjust the old program to "new conditions" but to repeat, in present worldwide conditions, the Leninist gesture of reinventing the revolutionary project in the conditions of imperialism and colonialism. Or, more precisely, subsequent to the politico-ideological collapse of the long era of progressivism founded upon the catastrophe of 1914. Eric Hobsbawn defined the concept of the twentieth century as the time between 1914, the end of the long peaceful expansion of capitalism, and 1990, the emergence of the new form of global capitalism after the collapse of "really existing socialism." 13 What Lenin did for 1914 we should do for 1990. "Lenin" stands for the compelling freedom to suspend the stale, existing (post)ideological coordinates, the debilitating Denkverbot in which we live. This simply means that we obtain the right to think again.

-Zizek

4:56pm: favorite listens
-twin infinitives - royal trux... i cant believe i had never heard this before, its a mind bombing, body embalming masterstroke easily on par with shit like second edition or wigmaker. should be required listening for fans of lamborghini crystal, as it take the same sort of junk dreamtime vibes but turns up the nightmare quality way too high. reminds me of everytime ive heard something that gave me that feeling like "oh shit, i identify with this."

-various tapes - lamborghini crystal (very entertaining)
-awesometapesfromafrica.blogspot.com = holy shit
-hoarse whisperer - argumentix

-various alan lomax comps including the land where the blues began and his anthologies of cajun music. but the most astounding is BLUES IN THE MISSISSIPPI NIGHT, wherein sonny boy williamson, memphis slim, and big bill broonzy have a discussion about race so revealing that the record wasnt released until ten years after it was recorded in 1958 and only then under fake names for fear of violence. america was/is a pretty rough place.

-solo drums and talking - baby dodds... usually in terms of jazz i stick to the free stuff or the spiritual, soul electrified strata east type stuff, but because i'm moving to new orleans, ive been researching its musical history. baby dodds is a pretty obscure figure, a drummer with several underrated big band and trad jazz folks in the 30s - 50s, this is his solo record from 1952. on it, well, theres solo drums and talking. the solo drum tracks are great exercises in bursts of rhythm, but when hes joined by an unintentionally droning horn section sans bass and piano things get real heavy and a warped, hyper primitive version of big band blues unfurls. i cant understand the talking, the accents are too thick.

-two great songs "planet health" - chairlift and "kim and jessie" - m83

-two one man bands = "bongo joe" george coleman, who wrote bizarre songs for voice and 55 gallon oil drums and sang his weirdo blues all over louisana/texas and paul blackman, a new orleans to nyshitty transplant who made hyper-percussive kazoo and voice jams. paul blackman is bluesy where george coleman is whacky.

-cat o nine tails score - ennio morricone = wickedly beautiful; wonderful exercises in dissonance and clattering rhythm fragments for a dario argento giallo movie i have not seen, but imagine is pretty fucked judging by the music.

-"i am sitting in a room" alvin lucier = fucking stunning.

-a lot of vanity records stuff... those super minimal bass hijinks are definitely something i love.


i need to figure out what to do for a crown now split with blood stereo...

i'm moving to n.o.

tonight is the fatima procession.

10:16pm: now since isaacs off livejournal, i doubt anyone reads this. so i'm sort of talking into a void.

weird.

anyways,

great new band.

heat wilson.

http://www.myspace.com/heatwilsonny

just evidenced by those three trax, something awesome is afoot.

11:00pm: why mark e. smith rocks my world
‘I feel a bit sorry for kids these days. They’re obsessed with animals and all that that’s quite nice I suppose. I've got two cats myself. But they’re putting the frighteners on kids these days. Giving them anxieties they don’t need. l saw something yesterday. It was horrible. These kids in tears about elephants. I blame the fucking teachers.’ - Mark E. Smith

Davey tells us about the time Mark E Smith got into an amphetamine-fuelled argument with a promoter. Promoter bloke pins Mark E to the wall by the throat. Mark E cries: "You can't hit me! Look!" and pulls out his false teeth. Promoter bloke pulls out his glass eye and holds it aloft.
It'd make a great children's TV show.

i want to sing for a fall type band where i just rant and fire musicians often. have lyrics, will travel.

4:50pm: oh, what has miles been listening to lately?
-v/a - anthology of american folk music (harry smith)
-any and all crank sturgeon i can get my hands on, particularly "MY ENDANGERED EXPRESSIVE SOIL"
-v/a - foam (japanese minimalist electro dub from the early 80s)
-v/a - crooklyn cuts (dj premier)
-lots of rudolf eb.er

theres a weird interconnection between dj premier and harry smith in my mind and it might be mediated by crankst.

12:19am: Keith Olbermann Special Comment *MR BUSH YOU ARE A FASCIST!*

you know, olbermann is sort of pretty alright.

12:03am: muhammad ali and george bush

ALI