intellectual properties

everyone so intimately rearranged (music)

listening these days:

.::.

i love both of these songs by silversun pickups:

panic switch

/when you see yourself in a crowded room
do your fingers itch are you pistol whipped
will you step in line or release the glitch
can you fall asleep with a panic switch/

+ lazy eye

/everyone so intimately rearranged/

.::.

i don’t generally like bands like this. i mean, i really do not like postal service or death cab for cutie, but i think they have similar sound. but i could be wrong and comparing dissimilar things here. maybe SSPU remind me more of smashing pumpkins.

.::.

anyway!  i do still really like Sleepy Sun from SF and have i mentioned enough how much i still love the song Marina? listen to them!  If you are in California they on  tour there starting next week on May 1 in SF and if i were you i would go.

.::.

mike doughty: pleasure on credit:

/Well, I’m a coaster, you’re a flume
Yes, I blossom, yes, I bloom

Get wide because I’m spacious
Got words but not loquacious/

{smart girl, not the crazy one}

.::.

nirvana: bleach (1989).  i like to do yoga to this after i’ve had a big cup of black coffee.  because that’s how i stretch. cobain allegedly hated this first album saying they were forced into being grung(ier) (they do sound more like pearl jam here i think) and that the lyrics suck, and i agree it’s not the best, but 1. about a girl  2. and there’s something raw about it that i like despite its very bad poetry.

/i need an easy friend/

.::.

and also, upset with trent reznor for saying coachella is “the coolest festival” in this vid from How To Destroy Angels @ coachella2013. if by “coolest” you mean “most popular”, then yeah. it’s objectively popular. but that’s what it is: coachella is a consumerfest of angst and popular opinion. i mean, watch the Jimmy Kimmel show interview Coachella hipsters about fake bands. sorry trent. i think you lost me there.

moan (see the sun set with no sleep at all)

{trentemoller: moan: 2006}

it’s dark and hot and humid with the smell of summer and we’re wearing only tiny bits of black scraps and our makeup is smeared and our hair is sticking to our necks and our bodies are soaking wet and we’re drunk and dehydrated and thirsty, our mouths dry and needy, and the lights are too much so we have to keep our eyes closed and we hold onto eachother and move in the rhythm that comes from the music but only we can feel together

(please, i need dancing.)

musical abstractions

tonight i met my thesis advisor at the MoMa (……more to come on that. eventually.) and then he enlisted me to attend the evening musical performance related to the current “Inventing Abstraction” exhibit. the music selected was to somehow relate to abstraction and dissonance, and how music following these later developed in New York.

first, Schoenberg’s Herzgewächse (1911), a short piece that responds to the Maeterlinck poem of the same name “Foliage of the Heart“.  dissonant and strange and intense but really fun to watch/listen to.

second, a live 1hr solo vocal performance of this Morton Feldman minimalist piece Three Voices (1982). There was one soprano woman singing over a recording of herself having prerecorded the other two parts. whoah. this was pretty intense for an hour.  this piece responded to the Frank O’Hara poem Wind.

Who’d have thought
that snow falls

strangely, a few minutes into it i was like…..i totally recognize this somehow. this is totally something i have heard before. which was confusing because as far as i know, since i haven’t sat around listening to strange minimalist vocal compositions all that much, i have never heard of Morton Feldman or listened to his music before tonight. but it was so familiar…… and then i read the program. the man who designed this musical pairing to Inventing Abstraction is David Lang, who composed the score to The Little Match Girl Passion, in which you may recall my friend Anastazia was the solo butoh performer in the ODC production in San Francisco last year, and was haunting and devastating.  crazy.

in short, David Lang’s composition for The Little Match Girl Passion sounded so much like Feldman’s preceding work that i instantly recognized it. which leads me to want to say that even the most avant garde repeats itself or something else…..

fiona apple: jonathan (my little fist)

Jonathan, call again
Take me to Coney Island
Take me on the train
Kiss me while I calculate
And calibrate and heaven’s sake
Don’t make me explain

Just tolerate my little fist
Tugging on your forest chest
I don’t wanna talk about
I don’t wanna talk about anything

Jonathan, anything
And anyone that you have done
Has gotta be alright with me
If she’s part of
The reason you are how you are
She’s alright with me

Just tolerate my little fist
Tugging on your forest chest
I don’t wanna talk about
I don’t wanna talk about anything

You like to captain
A capsized ship
But I like watching you live

Jonathan, call again
Take me to Coney Island
Take me on the train
Kiss me while I calculate
And calibrate and heaven’s sake
Don’t make me explain

Just tolerate my little fist
Tugging on your forest chest
I don’t wanna talk about
I don’t wanna talk about anything

suzanne

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she’s half crazy
But that’s why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you’ve always been her lover
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind.

And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said “All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them”
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you’ll trust him
For he’s touched your perfect body with his mind.

Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that you can trust her
For she’s touched your perfect body with her mind.

–Leonard Cohen

(youtube)

on repeat

last friday night things happened like they do and i woke up late saturday with a bunch of texts between 3 and 4am wherein i/we agreed and acquired tickets to see Mike Doughty at City Winery in NYC the following night that neither of us really recall agreeing to.  considering other texts exchanged on my phone during these hours i’d say that only ending up with surprise concert tickets was fortunate.

15 hours later we were there and it was a good show.  Mike was great but  it was probably the bougiest thing i have ever done for live music.  it was inside a winery. with linens and table service and candlelight and people in khakis. you can imagine.

mike just published a book about his years on drugs while with Soul Coughing etc.  i had to wonder how many of those nicely-dressed middle aged people sipping pinot also had a long history with drugs.

anyway, just last week we bought tix to see The Faint at Terminal 5 next month.

these are both musicians we like and are in the regular rotation even though it’s been a lot of years since they were famous or whatever, so this wouldn’t all be that weird of a succession except for the fact that when i just went to add these to the list, i discovered this:

in April 2008, we saw Mike Doughty at the Fillmore in SF.

the next live show we saw after that, in November, was The Faint.

.::.

considering

1. the number of bands we see; and

2. that neither of us really recall agreeing to go to see Mike Doughty the night before- it was not a planned occurrence – this pattern kind of freaks me out.

either we are eerily statistically predictable without conscious participation or the universe is on a loop.

I got the will to drive myself sleepless.

So much time is cashed.
So much smoke is wasted.
Sudden disappearance
In the air is thick and cool.
I can’t approach myself
Skidding over this perdition
And now I’m out on the verandah
When I should have gone to school.

Well I call for sleep,
But sleep it won’t come to me.
Shuffling in the hallway,
I can hear him on the stairs.
I hear his lighter flicking.
I hear the soft sigh of his inhale.
And the whole width of my intentions
He exhales into the air.

I got the will to drive myself sleepless.

the stairway to heaven

QOTD:

If you consider any set of data without a preconceived viewpoint, then a viewpoint will emerge from the data.

–William Burroughs, in reference to…..Led Zeppelin?

“Rock Magic: Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin, and a Search For the Elusive Stairway to Heaven
By William S. Burroughs, Crawdaddy Magazine, June 1975″

so much to quote here. i think you have to have been William Burroughs to write a review of a Zeppelin concert with such laizzez-faire:

” A few special effects are much better than too many. I can see the laser beams cutting dry ice smoke, which drew an appreciative cheer from the audience. Jimmy Page’s number with the broken guitar strings came across with a real impact, as did John Bonham’s drum solo and the lyrics delivered with unfailing vitality by Robert Plant. The performers were doing their best, and it was very good. The last number, “Stairway to Heaven”, where the audience lit matches and there was a scattering of sparklers here and there,found the audience well-behaved and joyous, creating the atmosphere of a high school Christmas play. All in all a good show; neither low nor insipid. Leaving the concert hall was like getting off a jet plane.”

…

and this:

Since the word “magic” tends to cause confused thinking, I would like to say exactly what I mean by “magic” and the magical interpretation of so- called reality. The underlying assumption of magic is the assertion of ’will’ as the primary moving force in this universe–the deep conviction that nothing happens unless somebody or some being wills it to happen. To me this has always seemed self-evident. A chair does not move unless someone moves it. Neither does your physical body, which is composed of much the same materials, move unless you will it to move. Walking across the rooom is a magical operation. From the viewpoint of magic, no death, no illness, no misfortune, accident, war or riot is accidental. There are no accidents in the world of magic. And will is another word for animate energy. Rock stars are juggling fissionable material that could blow up at any time… ”

…I found Jimmy Page equally aware of the risks involved in handling the fissionable material of the mass unconcious.”

this interview is chock full of amazing anecdotes and weird cultural references. what ever happened to this idea of INFRA-SOUND (music you can’t hear but you can feel)??

dreamstate

i feel really out of sorts. just so much is……what is going on? the familiar turned uninviting, shifting and without solid ground. unsettled. uncertain. i’m generally into marginal, liminal, elusive, slipstream consciousness, but lately i feel like my whole life has been taken over by someone else’s dream.

this is an edge.

.::.

i just had a 8:15 ecstatic-dancing-with-myself to Seahorse.

if you’ve never put this song on (loud) and listened to the whole progression, i highly recommend it, either dancing free or still with eyes closed.

I’m high and I’m happy and I’m free
I got my whole heart
Laid out right in front of me
And I finally can see
The way it’s always been
The need for peace
Starts from within

So I leave my possesions to the wind
And I’m done with ever wanting anything
Well I can die satisfied
No desires do I hide
Not today, not today
Nor for the next one thousand lives

I want to be a little seahorse
I want to be a little seahorse
A little seahorse

I want to be a little seahorse
I want to be a little seahorse
I want to be a little seahorse…

Well I’m scared of ever being born again
If it’s in this form again
Well I wanna know how why where and when and then
I wanna see you be the bright night sky
I wanna see you come back as the light
I wanna see you be the bright night sky
I wanna see you come back as the light

rolling in the past (re:childish gambino)

re: my tweets about Childish Gambino last night: i want to clarify that i was not just being a hater. i went in with an open mind.  random experience! i was ready for something new.

the Fox was all lit up for a show, and watching the crowd walk by in the time we were having dinner outside @ Rudy’s, i was trying to guess what kind of music it was (since i had no idea from the name on the marquee) based on the superficial look of the crowd – age, gender, race, fashion = 20ish, 50/50, super mixed, hoodies and skirts . collegiate. i realize that this is a tricky game, stereotyping.

there were a lot of flannel shirts, which doesn’t really scream hip hop to me, but maybe that’s because i’m a generation too old, so i guessed something grunge/punk-ish. jay said, no, it’s hip hop. so then we googled it. and yes, it is hip hop. and then a staff guy came out of the Fox and asked if we wanted free tickets to the show, and we said YES! but when we got inside, they were singing a version of Rolling in the Deep. the whole crowd was singing a capella. it didn’t seem hardcore is what i’m saying. it felt a little…..awards show.

also, my observation about the punk/grunge element was not wrong – 3 out of 4 dudes in the live band (not pictured anywhere on the websites) looked like Dave Grohl and they were playing hard rock as the backing for the MC. one was a guy with a violin. as a plus, i did totally appreciate the live band element.

there was, also, as visual reference to the tour name/theme, Camp Gambino, stage decoration in the form of some tall but fake pine trees and a small tent staked at each edge of the stage, and some background visuals of the moon/sky now and then, so as to look as if the band were playing at a campsite.

i’m all for mashups, but at a certain point i feel like the patchwork of cultural references/sights/sounds is too much. too overtly mimetic. like one of those spoof movies where the visual and character references come at you in a heavy stream of hyperbolic pop nostalgia, but with strobe lights.

i think Donald Glover is maybe overacting the part. and that is sort of where i start to define the essence of hipster: unabashedly revisionist.

In fiction, revisionism is the retelling of a story or type of story with substantial alterations in character or environment, to “revise” the view shown in the original work. Unlike most usages of the term revisionism, this is not generally considered pejorative.

i would agree that this review seems hella jaded/youkidsgetoffmylawn, and maybe it is, but i am not the only one feeling it. see: the 40-year cycles of pop culture nostalgia (kottke):

If you combine this with Kurt Andersen’s recent piece about the slowing rate of change of pop culture, perhaps there’s another lesson here other than Gopnik’s assertion that we’ll be nostalgic for the Obama age 40 years from now. Maybe we’ve reached Peak Nostalgia and in an effort to find more and more nostalgia for an ever-increasing audience, culturemakers are mining more from those eras outside of the appointed 40-year era and as a result, pop culture is feeling more timeless, echoing all eras, until it becomes a culture that can’t draw upon anything but itself.

anyway, we left before the show ended.