Am I missing out on the world's biggest racket here? Hell, ol' L. Ron wasn't kidding when he said that religion's where the money is. What's stopping me from declaring myself Son of the Big Guy and getting fat off the misdirected donations of simple-minded marks? And how dare you besmirch the good names of my followers! They may be uneducated, isolated, semi-sociopathic outcasts, but it's not like J.C.'s O.G. crew weren't a little rag-tag & rough around the edges themselves. So what if Saul, a.k.a. Paul, a.k.a. Ghostface Vanilla, was a thug who enjoyed ostracizing & executing peasants?
Anyhoo, here's a catchy little ditty over the farcical panic of facing Judgement...
And finally, in the interest of giving you something more than just other people's writing, here's other people's music! This is my current dose of aurally-administered enlightenment.
I'd been listening to a lot of heavy drone music lately (g_d bless the unedited version of "Diamond Sea"), particularly stuff inspired by micropolyphonic "cluster" composers. But this piece really swept me away, I think, for the same reason that people continue to express awe at the physiological power of live classical music: raw sound. No delay pedals or phase manipulation, no stompable loop boxes - just the kinetic energy of air being pummelled by wood, metal, and flesh.
And don't think that by skipping willy-nilly through the piece, you'll "get the picture." Music is a purely temporal art. Not allowing it the allotted time is like trying to take in a painting without looking at it.
Afterthought - Don't forget to check out some of the other hilarity over at the AV Club, specifically the post about John Mayer's (yes, THAT John Mayer) stand-up moonlighting. Jesus on a polar bear, y'all.
Who knows, had these guys arrived a decade earlier, I probably would have really really dug 'em. As it stands, Bear Vs. Who Cares (evidently, 'cuz they broke up already), but I just had to share this little tidbit culled from another sublime Onion list.
I Just Watched XXX And It Was Awesome by Bear Vs. Shark's Derek Kiesgen
he jumped barns he jumped avalanches he jumped jumps I kept throwing up and crying because it was so awesome.
Well, here it is, folks: the final curtain on that muddled Year of (Someone's) Lord Two-Thousand and Six. I'm not even going to begin to dissect the mixed bag of political conflagration that marked the past twelve months, nor will I divulge details about any personal emotional roller-coastering. Not that that's what we want during the winter Festivus. We want ENTERTAINMENT, and that is what we shall receive!
MUSIC AIN'T DEAD IN '06: EXHIBITS 1-5
Not to say that music is exactly in a healthy state of affairs. Postmodernism has been delcared dead on several occassions, but I have yet to see any of that spine-tingling futurist momentum last evident in the Clinton era. Even the best of the new fails to point forward, untterly incapable not only of escaping but surmounting the past - theoretically pure anterograde amnesia. So until we find someone capable of forging a capital-N New sound, let's at least focus on the least retrovisionary, postmodernist crap...
SHOULDERS OF GIANTS: THE PAST THAT POINTS TO THE FUTURE
I had the most hellacious time composing my Top 25 of '06 list for one of my financially-unrewarding freelance gigs, because almost all the records that blew/continued to blow my mind were older records. To find a freshman band that could surpass this material is certainly asking a lot, but can't anyone at least come close?
Should you feel the need to purchase products by any of the above artists - and you should - check out Aquarius Records and, obviously, Amazon.
WASTING TIME WITH THE PERSON OF THE YEAR
Yeah, I spent way too much time on YouTube too. Here's some of the better bits of digital detritus I've sifted through.
The "24-Hour Room" episode of Gaki No Tsukai, my favourite Japanese show with a hysterical Old Testament streak. I've learned more about Japanese culture analyzing and overthinking this talk show than I have from two years of living in Tokyo.
Magma rocks "De Futura." Which is more intense: the album-version (posted above) full 18-minute epic, replete with monster-movie organs... or this live performance from French TV, with its Mad Max-meets-Jonestown "White Night" cast, operatic gibberish, and peerless Drummer-Mug?
Oshiri Penpens perform "引き止め男と去る女." One of the best live acts I've seen in Japan. Deeply, importantly strange.
In the most brilliantly ironic and self-aware ad campaign ever, Einsturzende Neubauten bandleader Blixa Bargeld does dramatic readings from the Hornbach home-improvement catalogue. For added cultural context of Mr. Bargeld, go here.
One of the reasons I've been so seriously M.I.A. around here is because I've been working on something almost (but not completely) like a film. The good news is that we've got the trailer up & available, and it's a tripartite epic unto itself. Observe:
PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
Now, one small caveat to save you some time and head-scratching: only the third of these is indicative of what to expect of our Film Proper. The good news is that, though I'm currently knee-deep in sound design, the final cut of our debut film is almost in the can. In the meantime, drop by our website and let us know what you think.
(Yeah, it's not a real website. Bite me. You think we got cash to throw around on shite like domain names and hosting? Hell, does this LOOK like the work of people with real jobs?)
Yeah, so it's been three months since my last post. So? Life has a way of not stopping, and Murphey's Law dictates that the first time my modem breaks, it'll be in a country where the languages spoken by myself and tech support will be mutually exclusive.
Now the internet's back up and running, but I still don't have the time to post anything of consequence just yet. I've somehow managed the small miracle of (a) not having a real job, and (b) not having a day off in approximately nine weeks. Draw that Venn Diagram, why doncha?
If nothing else, I promise to have posted a bunch of the great music I've been listening to by the end of the year. Deal? In the meantime, dig on the above...
This has to be the single most entertaining bit of web detritus I've seen in donkey's years. Ladies and gentlemen, the Onion A.V. Club (if it's this good, of course it's the Onion) presents...
Personally, I'm shocked that Lubricated Goat didn't make the list. But hey, bad band names have existed since Engelbert Humperdink first slunk onstage. The Fugs, Echo & the Bunnymen, the Butthole Surfers, the Dismemberment Plan, TV On the Radio... let's face if, if we didn't know and love these lads, those monikers would surely land in the Bad Name Hall of Fame.
Here's a short list of embarrassing/amusing Japanese band names I've come across...
Guitar Vader Angel'in Heavy Syrup (yes, that apostrophe is supposed to be there) 54 Nude Honeys Bonkin' Clapper Idea Of a Joke Missing Girl Scoot Glay (apparently, that L should have been an R) Mummy the Peepshow The Portugal Japan Rip Slyme Bathtub Shitter Father Moo and the Black Sheep Mr. Children Sweet Robots Against the Machine
...and, naturally, Melt Banana. Don't believe the veracity of the above list? Feel free to fact-check here and here.
So, kids... what's the worst band name you have ever heard?
In other matters unrelated to all things infernal, I've started contributing to the Stylus Magazine blog. To be honest, I don't really know which of their various columns qualifies as the no-hyphenated-classification-required Blog, but my best guess is the Turntable. Stay tuned for various updates and contributions.
Please note that the bottle actually breaks over Yow's head when it knocks him out. I don't recall even G.G. Allin performing a show with a concussion.
I know, I know... what's with the sporadic posts full of empty promises of more constant content? Well, out of the myriad of ways I invest my time, blogging is, shall we say, low-yield. I'm not saying I'm giving up; hobbies, after all, are part of a balanced habitual agenda. But just don't shake yer skinny fists at me if a week slips by sans update.
The big news is that I'm rediscovering guitar-oriented indie-rock, but not those limp-wristed, moustachio'd, histrionic charlatans who send college kids' hearts atwitter these days. I'm talking about back when the guitar was still considered an instrument flush with potential, before computers became the dominant tool of the day, when our heroes expended energy physically wrenching demons and ideas from their instruments instead of breaking a sweat striking poses. This retrovisionquest has led me back, inevitably, to a city fundamental to my musical growth: Washington, DC.
One band I had the pleasure of seeing on two occassions in the mid-'90s were fish out of water in any pond, more theatrical and arch than their Dischord labelmates and certainly too strange to survive for long on a major label. Though they were unceremoniously relegated to the long list of '90s Ones That Got Away, their influence rippled throughout the rock underground. So singular was their sound, though, that their imitators could be used as a frame of reference for themselves: a sincere & retrained Brainiac, or perhaps the Dismembermant Plan squared.
Nobody fucks with de Jesus...
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