by geeta on October 31, 2003
I checked out Liars tonight, having heard they were an incendiary live act, but was left pretty cold. After a long wait, the lead singer came out wearing white velcro sneakers and this too-small white jumpsuit with something about Sauron painted on the front, and later stripped down to reveal a too-small red rayon thrift-store dress covered with some Op Art-ish pattern. He had this annoying habit of letting his shoulder-length orange hair fall in front of his face, and would then sing through his hair, reminding me of early 90s grunge, aka ewww. He’d dance and pose around the stage as if possessed by the music in a way I found really irritating in this bad-performance-art way — ‘I am the tree’…I found him dull and grating, so I spent all my time focusing on the drumming, which was ACE. In fact now that I think about it, that’s what I really liked about Liars when I first heard them — their sense of rhythm. I can usually find something about any live act, no matter how dire, to admire, whether it’s the drumming, the basslines, or even just a cool bit of gear or an interesting outfit. I then focus on what I like and tune out all the things I don’t like. This strategy has carried me through hundreds upon hundreds of below-par live shows. (Much as I hated ‘em live, I still think that full-length album of theirs from last year — or was it the year before? — was pretty damn good.)
After Liars, I swung by Tonic and saw Otomo Yoshihide play a turntable-noize set with Martin Tetreault. They sat on stage making a furious din with their mangled Technics decks, while the assembled crowd sat in chairs, watching them quietly and utterly RESPECTFULLY, sometimes speaking to each other in awed hushed tones between sets. That is what unnerves me, I think, about improvised music in that sort of venue, and is why I prefer to get my noise fix from going to Lightning Bolt shows. You’d think with that kind of extremely ugly and powerful music — and I really like a lot of Otomo Yoshihide’s work — you’d be pushed by it into the physical realm, to dance or at least move, but not just sit there. I couldn’t bear sitting down so I stood up, drinking beer and fidgeting while watching them spin warped records, scraping tone arms into grooves under extreme amplification. After the set I went up and looked at their setup; the tone arms had been cut and gouged and taped up with springs hanging out, the 45s used for the performance had titles like ‘Lesson #29′. When I looked at the wrecked decks I couldn’t help but feel like it was a waste to ‘adjust’ a table like that, even for a noise project; I’d been so conditioned by a lifetime of loving record players and fixing broken garage-sale ones to treat them with care and calibrate them precisely, so to see expensive Technics 1200s with their guts hanging out seemed, well, so decadent, and shocked me in a way that seeing a wrecked guitar wouldn’t. (I remember reading an interview with Kraftwerk from the late 70s where they bemoaned people who smashed guitars, talking about how long it had taken them to save for Hohner amps and how they couldn’t comprehend smashing up their own gear.) I think another reason why I feel this way about tables is that in DJing, you’re often interested in smoothness, perfection, a continuous mix, getting things beatmatched exactly. (in other words, a lot of work in an attempt to make everything look effortless!) Even in scratching, perfection is key; there’s good scratching and bad scratching, and in hip-hop you still have to stay within the bounds of rhythm. But seeing the brutalized Technics being forced to vomit up horrible noise made me realize that they’d made the record players their own, that they were, after all, just machines to be used by people, not people to be used by machines, and that the flinching they provoked in me when they smashed an expensive tone arm into a virgin piece of vinyl was perhaps part of the point.
by geeta on October 30, 2003
Pop quiz answer is here! Thanks to all contestants!
The correct answer is not ‘their girlfriends all have better hair than they do’ nor is it ‘haha they all suXoR’ but: they all used a Fairlight sampler.
The winner has been notified.
by geeta on October 30, 2003
What common thread connects all the following artists?
Stevie Wonder, Keith Emerson, Jean-Michel Jarre, Supertramp, Heaven 17, Hardfloor, ABC, Hall & Oates, Thomas Dolby, Jon Astley, Michael Jackson, Yes, Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes, Vince Clarke (Yazoo/Yaz), Peter Gabriel, Paul McCartney, Devo, Julian Lennon, The Cars, Lindsey Buckingham, Jan Hammer, Herbie Hancock, David Gilmour, Kate Bush, Elvis Costello, Scritti Politti, Starship, Teddy Riley, Brian Wilson, Foreigner, Madonna, Debbie Gibson, Jane Child, Eurythmics, Mike Oldfield, Prince, OMD, Steve Winwood, Duran Duran, John Paul Jones, Queen, Alan Parsons, Fleetwood Mac, B-52’s, Pet Shop Boys, Stewart Copeland, Yello.
Winner gets a prize! Oh come on this one is easy.
by geeta on October 30, 2003
Haha — Douglas Rushkoff, the NYU media studies professor, is a member of the latest incarnation of Psychic TV. He’ll be playing keyboards and doing backing vocals! My god I wish I was joking but I’m not.
Gen sez on his official blog: “We’ve been rehearsing and thee old feeling ov an extended, joyful famille is already there. Thee first gig IS confirmed for December 3rd, in New York City.”
My guess is that Rushkoff might be a bit rusty. From his blog: “Having sold my trusty Roland just last year (on Ebay), I landed my spot as as keyboardist for PTV owning no keyboard. It has presented me with an interesting dilemma, because things have changed a lot since 1984 when I bought my last one.”
I love it when reality is stranger than fiction!
by geeta on October 29, 2003
I was so petrified when I read the title ‘The End of TWANBOC’ that Matthew was going to stop writing that I wrote him straightaway and begged him not to! Fortunately, the end of That Was A Naughty Bit of Crap marks the start of something new — Woebot, Matthew’s latest creation. Expect great things. His comics are hilarious and fantastic, too.
by geeta on October 27, 2003
Drum machines! I love ‘em. I don’t have the mad dough though so the only drum machine I’ve got is the fearsome PLAYSKOOL brand — purchased at Dollar-A-Pound back in Cambridge for 70 cents! (it weighs 0.7 pounds.) Yeah it can only do 2 beats and one lame fill but it’s got a line out (!!) and there’s a crude tempo adjustment and pitch adjustment!! With a little bit of fiddling I can play ‘Come As You Are’ on it — can you say that about your toy-store drum machine?
But oh, the beautiful drum machines of back in the day! Back when they looked like Atari 2600 consoles!
The Linn LM-1 ‘Drum Computer’! As used by the Human League, Art of Noise, Thompson Twins, Prince et al. Hey is that fake wood paneling on the sides? (cool!!) Each card for the Drum Computer had 32K of memory (32K!! i get emails longer than 32K now!)
And look it’s the Obie DMX — the “Blue Monday” drum machine! Also used, of course, on lots of hip-hop.
More machine gawking (the Roland 808! etc.) to come! Check out vintagesynth.org for your fix in the meantime. I’m going to get back to playing my Coleco-Vision.
by geeta on October 26, 2003
here is where i further my Damo Suzuki + Morrissey = Andrew WK theory
by geeta on October 25, 2003
Suggestion for Simon’s prog chart: Whitehouse! Apparently William Bennett is a total Yes-head. Or so it says in Forced Exposure #17 dated 1991, in an article by Steve Albini. Quote:
Whitehouse “Thank Your Lucky Stars” 45 and LP: William Bennett can effortlessly play almost any Yes song you could be pained to mention on Spanish guitar. I shit you not. Each of the songs Whitehouse recorded was structurally mapped by a famous heavy metal song. So much so, in fact, that all Bennett used as a headphone cue was a cassette recording of whichever Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden or Deep Purple song the track was based on. Tidbit — three guesses which later-famous synthesizer guy that is on the back of that Prag Vec record you haven’t listened to since 1980. Ding! Give that man a banana. Fee: $600.
by geeta on October 24, 2003
Spotted at that DFA party I went to last night — Pharrell from the Neptunes talking to James Murphy. Perhaps they’ll produce some tracks together?!
by geeta on October 23, 2003
Good lord — after putting in a bunch of work today on a certain postpunk project (cough) I see that Simon’s gone full-guns-ablazin’ with a progstravaganza! Jesus man it’s like the ‘Stairway to Hell’ of prog! The urgent and key question, then, remains: is Teena Marie prog? Go read Jon’s blog too, while you’re at it.
Which reminds me — did any of you London types check out the Acid Mothers Temple/Gong live collaboration the ‘Acid Mothers Gong’ earlier this week? I wish I could’ve been there!
