May 2004 Archives
Watched Game Six down the block from my house in a sports establishment called CHANCES. The experience was epitomized when Luther Vandross' "Power of Love" came on jukebox during Kevin Garnett post-game crying shots.
Sole Lakers fan in bar, talking junk to Timberwolves fan: "My family's made up of PIMPS; your family's made up of PIMP ASSISTANTS."
"The man who wins the pissing contest loses at life."
this has been a public service announcement from the Disciples of Kokopelli
My friend Jen Davison: designer/visual & performance artist. An only child, obsessed with being a twin.
Also, some back history on lowrider culture (which is rooted in post-WWII Mexican migrant worker's necessity, as an outgrowth of then-emerging American car culture, and a mimicking of paseos.) Cesar Chavez, it must be noted, really did drive a 1940 Chevy with the back-end chopped & lowered; he also began wearing zoot suits after it developed unfairly-earned negative connotations. Disturbed by 1. presence of US Army at car shows ("Yo Soy El Army" = selective bilingualism) 2. lady-portrayal in magz like Lowrider; I used to joke I was putting hydraulics on my Honda Civic wagon and airbrushing a supine, abnormally endowed honey-man across the hood, as counterstatement to all the boobed-out lowriders at the car show.
But I will not.
In fact, if you live in Portland, and want to purchase my non-low Honda Civic wagon, please email. I am tired of cars.
above strip copyright Dave Gonzales, creator of Homies
Excerpt from an interview I had with Ralph Fuentes, editor Lowrider magazine.
What got you into lowriders?
"For me, it was the love of cars at an early age. My mother says when my toys were old, I would go to my father's tools and repair my own toys with paint jobs from spray cans. As I got older we were not as well off as some of my friends in the neighborhood, but would take my faithful '60s Derby bike and transpose it into what ever was the style trend for my era.
But it was actually the day I saw a lowrider firsthand come down my block. I was watering my parents' lawn in Lynwood, California, a neighboring town next to Compton. I knew what lowriders were, but had never seen one go up and down with hydraulics. Most had cut coils our a ton of junk in the trunk to weigh them down for a lowered stance, but to see one move at the touch of a button—it was amazing to see it scrape down the street."
What was your first lowrider?
"My first lowrider was my father's '72 Grand Prix; he would use it for work during the week and I would switch the rims for the weekend. At that time, hydraulics were still the newest craze, and the only way to get them was to find one from a friend, or modify a pump from a truck-lift gate, and modify aircraft cylinders. In the beginning, when I was 17 years old, my lowrider was my daily driver, and so for a long time I was struggling to make ends meet. My new family kept things on hold for a long time. It wasn't til me and my brother Anthony both got laid off at different jobs in '93 that we decided to open our shop and cater to lowrider needs. Since then, I have built 23 Rides that now populate the growing lowrider trend in Japan."
How did you go from owning the shop to editing Lowrider magazine?
Before opening the shop, I managed to work at a GM dealer as a technician; good pay, got me a little extra cash, and I joined a car club, Imperials, and started attending shows. I had managed to place in my class; at most high school shows, prize money was between $500 and $1000 per show. So I went a little further with modifications, like a complete chromed undercarriage, candy paint, and custom-made hydraulics with a wild matching interior.
This started an evolution of trends that rejuvenated the lowrider culture into what we have today. It was this involvement along with the success and popularity of the work and cars that came out of our shop Homies Hydraulics that kept my brother and I involved in the lowrider culture. It was Ricardo Gonzales [Lowrider'spublisher] who would ultimately have to search for a successor to the editor position. Based on comments about my steady contributions to the industry, he narrowed it down from a group of 40 hopefuls. Must have been a head full, but I'm honored to represent lowriders and Lowrider Magazine. I have dedicated my life, good and bad, to what I believed in. This is my reward."
So what's the hottest, newest thing you've seen on a ride that has blown your mind?
For about 6 years heavily modified vehicles, with suicide doors, tilt front ends, and wilder interiors, et cetera, gave an artistic approach that dominated the shows. The trend seems to be going back to the tradition style. What do I mean? Well, in the old days it was considered the ultimate to take a new vehicle—generally two-door vehicles—and turn them into lowriders, complete with hydraulics and paint. That was considered insane, pre-1985.
Since 1986 American automobile manufactures did away with two-door rear-wheel drive vehicles—the suspension type was great and easy for hydraulic installs. With the introduction of performance and after-market parts, older vehicles were given new life that add reliability to a car that originally could be found for about $500, adding value to what usually was a non-running vehicle. Because of the availability of replacement parts, you can now get a 'bucket'—a raggedy Impala—for around $6000. When it's all said and done, you've made that $3500. Original MSRP hardtop now worth about $24,000—without the lowrider accessories.
Now, with lowriding entering mainstream, the underground culture has sparked interest around the world; [we have] sister publications in Japan and Indonesia and are very popular in countries like United Kingdom, Sweden, Austria, Australia, West Africa, Germany. The Prince of Saudi Arabia has two lowriders. We send troops in Iraq a taste of home, when we supply their care packages with Lowrider magazines. They say it keeps them in touch."
What do you think of a show like Pimp My Ride—does it damage or help the culture, like as far as retaining a sense of history?
Hopefully it will open doors, giving visual support to what we print, and the full excitement to what lowriding is about. Granted, there is still no way to experience the adrenaline rush you get behind the wheel 'hittin switches'—but gives better opportunity to see and hear more about a the vehicle and expose the myths and stereotyping lowriders get."
What's the most important part of lowrider culture to you?
"Unity. Not just ethnic diversity, but the positions that some lowriders hold, like your average nine to five Joe, lawyers, policemen, doctors. A handful of politicians that can relate but have not stood up for our needs thus making shows harder to have in California and some other areas.
This might be a dumb question, but... have you ever seen anyone actually PLAYING the Playstation in their glovebox and driving at the same time?
"Thank God, no! The game is not only addicting but could have you tightening your butt cheeks up as you try to gain momentum! But the rush from the game can be equal to being behind the wheel of a real Low-Low, only with two hands."
Was the name of an ex-boyfriend's Sonic Death-loving noize band ca. 2000. Oh Baby was only a side project; his main project was the band "Fuck Yes." They had better posters than music.
In case you are not keeping track of such things, last weekend was the six-month anniversary of Thanksgiving. (Not the band, the holiday.) In our house, where we do things differently, Sat May 22 was "Mayflower." My housemate Connie Wohn (a tour de force marquee lady who doesn't sit right without the rhythm of her surname) is Thanksgiving-rabid, and coordinated a 15-person meal complete with THXGV/MAYFL spread: turkey-bird, tofurkey, cranberries, stuffing, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. To celebrate further, Chantelle held a gianormous four-person birthday BBQ where we were compelled to A. play truth or dare (NO one picked dare) B. watch a home video of her housemates Emil and Alex play drums and guitar in a Led Zeppelin cover band at the Blackbird Halloween party ca. 2003. They were actually convincing, except the Robert Plant's wig was too 16th century/ shirley temple. (Don't matter. Bass parts were rippin.)
Saturday DJ'd briefly at Aesthetics Records storefront for super low-key mini-party: Eternals listening session, Monika Records DVD screening. Stats:
audience fave nostalgia track, which still bangs: 808 State "Cubik"
single that label head and the record-store owner flock to decks like I was spinning liquid honey: M Sayyid "Outside the Box"
track that makes Paul Dickow twitchy-dance: Sticky/ Viper "I'm on the Mic"
amount of Monika Records tracks played: 0
amount of B-Pitch Control-related tracks played: 3
times a listener became openly nostalgic for hardcore, spurred on by the above audience-fave nostalgia track: 1
percentage of party attendees who are DJs: 84%
amount of attendees who are in some way employed or released by Aesthetics, including Ken Dyber: 4
amount of women in attendance, including myself: 3
On the rest: more and constant effusing RE: my fave live band of all time, why the Scott Bakula character in the US Maple movie can only be played by Scott Bakula or Paul Ruebens (Scott DRACula vs. Buffy, and huge news on the JShep life iCal.
amazing email from my friend Marie, who grew up with me in Wyoming, but now holds it down in Severance, Colorado:
"Severance is just like 8 miles east of Fort Collins. The
population sign says 106, but there are like a couple-thou hicks there now,
I think. There are two liquor stores, a gas station, and a 'world famous' bar
called Bruce's where they serve Rocky Mountain Oysters, and every September, seven thousand bikers show up for the annual 'Nut Run'.
At least it is not Fort Collins, which is so saturated with green-preaching, black-living yuppies that anywhere is better. Fort Collins, and more and more Colorado in general, is like a cloud noir of anti-matter that sucks culture in and destroys it. There is not one goddamn radio station in this town that plays any decent indie music, except the college station, and even then you have to root through 6 hours of Lagwagon throwing up Pennywise after having some bad NOFX for lunch in order to find a song worth listening to."
missive from teeny lucky bass player, in Japan: "ate a smoked egg -- it-s a miracle -- hardboiled egg and a veggie dog\smoked meat in one great taste.... my love to the kids and the blogosphere"
('s tough to type on a non-English keyboard; punctuation intact, to exemplify the touring genius' labors)
The Nation on Punkvoter, Project Democracy, and this year's movement
to register kids to vote at punk shows.
This paragraph was of particular interest:
"It is hard to measure the increasing acceptance of brutality in American life, but its evidence is everywhere, starting with the video games of killing that are a principal entertainment of boys -- can the video game ''Interrogating the Terrorists'' really be far behind? -- and on to the violence that has become endemic in the group rites of youth on an exuberant kick. Violent crime is down, yet the easy delight taken in violence seems to have grown. From the harsh torments inflicted on incoming students in many American suburban high schools -- depicted in Richard Linklater's 1993 film, ''Dazed and Confused'' -- to the hazing rituals of physical brutality and sexual humiliation in college fraternities and on sports teams, America has become a country in which the fantasies and the practice of violence are seen as good entertainment, fun."
While I'm always skeptical of the lionizing of video games-as-scapegoat and pop culture nature-vs-nurture argument, the notion is accurate. I don't think it's a right-wing notion to reconsider the agents of our death culture, to hold them and ourselves accountable to basic standards of humanity. I think it's a radical notion. We in fact have a duty, as Americans or progressives or as humans, to reject the glorification of power and conquest, of what is tantamount to a global caste system. Hard evidence: today's NY Times front page on black-market kidney sales in Brazil; on the military's claim that imprisoned Iraqis are somehow less deserving of human treatment; shit, read about Shaq's housekeeper stabbing his own mother—all suffocating entanglements in complex oppressed/oppressor dynamic, even at this late stage of human evolution.
My COLLEAGUE IN ADVENTURE calls RJD2 “commercial music”; last night, homeboy was selling manta rays and jellyfish, screening The Blue Planet behind his four-turntable/MPC feast. Fish schools beckoned with Latin American psych (the "Istanbul" song being the best). The sub-woofers sat waist high and I pressed my hips to them, rave-casualty style, in order to feel it, but there wasn’t enough. He keeps his beats private and lets melody softly inflate to rhythms. That is the part for the adverts, but I’d be more likely to charge a hammerhead shark if RJ let us in on the low end.
During Diverse’s set, a white girl with a permanent wave hollered, “I LOVE UUUU!” Diverse flustered, laughed and stammered. He is already the most humble (too?) emcee ever; after every song (often campfire singalongs, he does all the hits—“I love/soul music” “Hip-HOP/HIP/hop,”—but omits my fave, “all the ladies say OOWWW/OWWW!”)
(Diverse, wanting for diction)
After every song, Diverse 1. thanks us 2. tells us who he is 3. says if we are feeling him, it might be kind of cool maybe if we bought some merch—that is if we are feeling him, you know. But to the “I LOVE U” permanent wave girl, Diverse coos, “Come visit me at the merch table.” And I thought how, as per The Nation interview, Toni Morrison purposely used the word “love” only ONCE in her new book—towards the end, after her characters had earned the right to use it—in an attempt to revalue the word “LOVE,” to reassign it with appropriate gravity. It felt right to me in that context—but then again, LOVE is never one thing and I don’t think it should be either. So anyway, I’m glad Diverse got some much-needed validation from the white lady with the permanent wave.
Like, in Joanna Newsom’s “Bridges and Balloons” she sings “O my love” in the hook and makes the Love in question sound a parakeet, a WHOLE chirpy thing that deserves the simple definition of That Word. We debated Joanna Newsom at Colin & Carson’s inaugural summer BBQ. Unsurprisingly, Colin (a man who makes a living writing sea shantys) LOVEs her. I do, too, love a helium-ballooned Mad Hattie carting harps and unicorns. And when I say Mad Hattie I mean Neil Gaiman's Mad Hattie, a gal who lost her heart and wanders, seeking it over spaces and times. She's like, 437 years old or something, but childlike and scratchy. And big-boned and fey.
Chad disdained her off-keyness and normally I’m Game Uptyte ‘bout shifting pitch but this is what I like about her; she makes the harp’s timbre less dainty.
A Grand Don’t Come For Free, and neither does this Lifesavas verse: “The Streets? The Streets can go to hell; I want freedom. The Streets is watchin’ the idiot box and Cops reruns.”
Lifesavas guest-performed new Libretto single, “Volume”—Jumbo's hottest production, a little grime in the soulfunk cause Libretto’s from Portland but really, he’s from Watts. He told me he can’t get inspired here, that he has to see a movie and read three books before he can write some lyrics. Tell me about it, stud. It can be a docile place, Portland. Again, I repeat ye olde fable imparted to me by Jessica, via her tour manager: "Portland is the place where ambition goes to die."
I must also point out that Jumbo was rocking this suede-jacket/leather top-hat look w/JUMBO belt buckle, and while it is true I wrote-him-in on the ballot for Portland’s Sexiest Manhunk” in the Portland Mercury’s 2001 Sex Survey, well— Maybe it is cliché, but a sole gold tooth and dapper trousers make the ladies go "OWWWW!"
No, not the horrifically dysfunctional fakeality show. This blog. Curt Merrill, He of the Merrills Honking, has reformatted C'n'P by his own volition, but based on my nitpicky requests for brown, pink, and cowboyz and poodles. Thank you Curt for putting up with my vague demands. Is everyone liking it okay? Yay? Nay?
You want vague? Help me ID this track. It's probably an electro/disco (possibly acid house?) single from ca. '86-'88, bottom-heavy with low-voxed dude chewing hook "S.O.S." My friend David, resident archivist, suggested it might be this, but it's not. Come on, listing masses! I know you know it!
Jessica and I, flamethrowing the ivory tower/your office with our gut-mincing cerebral gymnastics. HEED THIS—we are ladies of the lake, we will samba on yr desks of walnut. And also, give us jobs.
Lizzy Mercier Descloux, in psychic sisterhood with a band that sang about Tony Randall. RIP, all around.
And Gloria Anzaldua, too...
PDX vs. Seattle laptop battle redux, boycotted by many local veterans for its cutthroat techniques and lengthy nature, jumped off with lovely new acquaintance Eric Prado going, "Hey, you write Cowboyz 'n' Poodles, don't you?"
Dude, I got called out for my blog while judging a laptop battle. The implications are not beyond comprehension.
I was accompanied by four other judges, perched display-like on backless barstools, one of whom was Fourth City's Zapan. The nice fellow seated to my right, Radium-Z, has Tourette's, grabbed the mic and riffed; I will not glamorize such an affliction, but I will say that operating at manic level and spitting any ole thought outside the paradigm of social convention makes for good judge banter.
Especially considering some competitors were coming with compressed drum 'n' bass. My judging partners were surprisingly hyped on that; I personally would rather be chewing the leg of a live badger than hearing isolated d'n'b in two-thousand-oughty-four. One fellow by the name of "Shizzle" pasted formal, radio-shiny beats to the vocal track of "Yeah"—a quasi-okay remix move but completely out of context. Barring local faves—electro spazzmaster Senor Frio, Deceptikon—it had less energy, enthusiasm than the first and I was missing Angie Stone in Seattle.
Not to bitch totally; battle champ Rrine had the textured, graceful Cascadian IDM vibe on lock. He is also THEE laptopian doppelganger of a certain Spin staffer (Not Ultragrrl!!).
Links/video/photo/links courtesy Eric Prado, documentarian of ZooBombing, one of Portland's more exhilarating activities. [Stupidly flagged (and harrassed) by PDX terror task force for its danger potential ("bomb," as in "the"), it's basically a bunch of kids in helmets blasting down the hill at the Portland Zoo on minibikes.]
from my boss: a Shakira poseable action figure. Language on the box:
"Shakira (TM)... voice of a new generation
Her music is energetic and powerful
And has a unique Latin sound"
questions:
1. Shakira has a TM?!
2. Is Matt Cibula's haikunymous alter-ego moonlighting at Mattel?
Only one lady could get Snoop rhyming reverently about "making love": the forthcoming Angie Stone long-player is fucking phenomenal, even WITH Floetry. I must hoard elaboration for my official review, but holy crap... you know how Mahogany Soul had the cheesy lyrical moments you forgave because she's so Angie Stone (i.e. "Bottles & Cans")? Here, there are none, just like 97 solid R&B bangers. AND a Betty Wright cameo!
I've been stewing on this one for awhile, but the last paragraph of this review sparked motion. CoCoRosie are two pretentious white NYC/Fraunch fakesters, regularly described as "delicate" and touted as genre-crossing innovators for their four-tracky pairing of rubby field recordings (rain, popcorn, original!), beats taped with grit, and most of all an affected zigzag of vocal layering, often sung in a victrola-taunting style of warblier Ella Fitzgerald. This would simply annoy, if it weren't for their song "Jesus Hearts Me"—a kind-of plantation spiritual, complete with N word. Passed off by many as "theatrical" (you mean, like Al Jolson?), there is something innately evil about this song... another review called them "ironic" and if so, their next album better come with fifteen pages of liner notes explaining their wherefores, 'cause right now, the only thing they're challenging is me not to ream them a l'oignon nouveau.
By the way, it is my birthday. I'm finally 19!!!
Yeah, why won't the US Military pony up for a soldier's handicapped child?
My employer-daddy, The Stranger, lost their hip-hop columnist (last time I saw him, he was totally selling Vast Aire's merch). Until they find another, Dan Savage—lover of showtunes, tooth fetishist, moderately sadistic advice columnist—has taken over, and it's a hopeless trainwreck. A hilarious one, for the time being. But someone should apply for the job, like, yesterday.
S-NNAAAP! Sasha whips up Dave Grohl cauldron-style.
The comments section of the "hippie" entry, below, has reached boiling point. As with the irony trend, I will posit the "new hippie" thing is territory largely relegated to white males with class leverage. I will now quote E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and remind all to "be excellent to each other" (or, um... was that Bill and Ted? christ), and request that, like Lenny Kravitz, C'n'P commenters let love rule, and that everyone minds their manners.
In the new issue of The Nation, there's a transcript of a conversation between Cornel West and Toni Morrison; it's not online (yo, lefty mags gotta make rent), but it's tres pertinent:
West: "There are certain structural processes at work that make it difficult for us to maintain the kind of web, the care and bonds of empathy with not just the vanilla/chocolate city distinctions in the empire, but also with the materialism, the careerism, the individualism that make it difficult for us to even conceive of ourselves as a part of some larger communal project."
...later, on 9/11 and the failure of our government to call upon us as CITIZENS, and not just consumers:
WEST: "It's a sick civilization that would be so obsessed with the sexualization of its children, the targeting of its children as a constituency to consume, and think that somehow the future is going to be in mature hands when they're 100 percent of the future. That's not just shortsighted, it's pathological...
In the history of black people, we've been so hated that love takes on subversive status."
MORRISON: "It's renegade. Totally renegade."
I highly recommend buying the issue for this interview (it's the 5/24/04), because it busted my mind several times over, complete with verbalized "whoa"s. I guess what I'm hoping for the hippie microcosm as outgrowth of irony is that people realize irony-as-movement was a product of insecurity, disillusionment, dysfunction, and in the worst cases, hate. And hopefully it means that, even living with a terrifying government, people are genuinely inspired to reach out to one another, outside an oppressive materialist culture, even if they are propelled there by a hit of acid and seven minutes in Acid Mothers Temple.
how's that for some fucking hippie shit.
What's Up Portland: Tonight, Dennis Kucinich and SEAN "most depressing movie ever" PENN will appear on the corner of 37th and HAwthorne, campaigning and JUST HANGING OUT, from 7:30 to 8:30 pm.
The last time I was on 37th and Hawthorne, I was accosted by a dreadlocked crusty punk wearing a nightmare b4 xmas patch grafted onto black hoodie, who asked me to sign a petition legalizing marijuana, and then totally spanged (spare changed) me! I am not stereotyping Hawthorne, THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED!!
Okay, and then if you wanna go see the A Frames and Pizza Party 2nite w/me at Porky's Pub (to non PDXers, ALSO A REAL VENUE), email.
You know how irony as trendy M.O. is cooked-er than turnovers-for-change at Popeye's? How it went the way of the MIA Fannypack gal—who knows where, who knows when, but we prolly won't be seeing it 'til the 2032 reunion tour? Okay well. I think hippie is the new ironic, unironically.
The hippie supplanting irony thing has been coming for awhile—and for awhile, I thought it was a joke. Blame it on the time frame; the first post-millennial wave of hippie as-behavioral-value and musical-social ideology overlapped with irony's death rattles, so it was hard to believe they were mutually exclusive. By mid-'03, symbols and actions were so fucking appropriated up at Hipster Berry Farm, it made sense that in a social group programmed toward misanthropism and self-deprecation... so given-over to meaninglessness... the ACT OF LOVING would be the final, dramatic act of irony. A sort of identity suicide.
But love makes people weird, and this was no exception. Almost directly coinciding with the US gov't's Iraq invasion, Love, or at least a no-longer-repressed desire for acceptance/harmony/inner peace, began actualizing itself among even the most stringent of millennial-irony casualties. However, even as the US gov'ts imperialist/corporate colonization efforts become more dire, folks have not necessarily mobilized (partially because, as this is lefty pdx, "hipsterism" is nearly synonymous with "activism"). It's just that—what with the Cascadian secessionist mentality and all—the trend towards smaller, tighter-knit social groups with cooperative values of love, support (as reaction to disenfranchisement) has ballooned. It's tribalism in technology's era, even VIA technology. (This is a microcosm of the larger, HEALTHY American trend towards localized economy and increased self-sufficience [see: various NYTmag articles on organics, decrease in fast-food profits, ReadyMade magazine].)
I want to give partial credit A. Forkner, and Jona Y.A.c.H.T. and Steve State's Rights et al for ushering in the truth—DOLPHINFEST '03 (a celebration of the dolphin) kicked it off, tho I wouldn't say they were consciously trend-prescient so much as just feeding off their own hot vibrations. But in many ways, LOVE inna hippie stylee as behavioral concept has spread its wings into the PDX noise jock fest. I knew it was all over when J4m3s Sqw34ky*** [SEE ADDENDUM] shifted his focus from a1arM1zt—the noise proj in which he expressed confrontation to gratuitous heights—to his newer band, S3x w/grls is rad—a duo with his "brother," on acoustic guitars, in which they celebrate their social ineptitude and proclivity to self-embarrassment (a '90s concept, but in this analysis, J4m3s Sqw34ky's short attention span for artistic endeavors is an important sociological tool). Other signs: tie-died t-shirts, and last summer's LSD trend. Whether dropping acid or simply mugging psychedelic, we are probably one of the last generations to truly experience the hot-fried twitch of strychnine-pinched tracers, before LSD joins ephedra and fen-phen on the "extinct" placard at the zoo.
However, as nu-hippie further manifests as real-applicable values, music is deeper and deeper OF THE EARTH, and I'm not just talking Portland's disproportionate faction of white reggae (whiggae) or the old-timers throwing hoe-downs and converting Wobblies in publick houses. I am talking some true-value, rjyan.com, Jodorosky double-entendre tribalism, as though the ravaged path leads to one end: mysticism, truth, reflection, love. I was thinking of this while reading about the Nahuatl, who "use disfrasismos, a complementary union of two words or symbols which express one meaning to communicate the most profound thought or feeling" (Rodriguez). I thought of this after talking to Pete Swanson, of noise improvisation duo Das Yellow Swans, and who co-propriets the CD-R label Collective Jyrk, which works with the mentality of a block party. (I said, "So Pete, if I made a tape of myself barfing and put the Collective Jyrk stamp on it, it would be a Collective Jyrk release?" He said, "Totally!")
Pete and Gabe (co-conspirator) make magical mystery tones both tall and small, abrasive and delicate; they collaborate with John Wiese, think Sharon Cheslow is the greatest person on earth (cause, like, no doy) and are opening a basement show for Thurston Moore on their tour later this month. For Yellow Swans, Pete is not into being gratuitiously assaultive. "We’re not trying to confront people with sounds. We’re trying to make positive and kinda fun music, but be challenging at the same time. We feel that when our music is really successful, it's ecstatic, and more like a celebration than an assault."
Then we talked about how it's weird discussing improvised music, to concretize it in language, because improv is nebulous as shit. Somehow I was going to tie this into concepts of post-apocalyptic sound vs. hippie idealogy, in regards to Crash Worship/Sleepytime Gorilla Museum/Freedom-From/Rjyan Kidwell, but my mom just called and now I've forgotten. Happy mom's day to everyone. I hope this makes ANY sense to people besides me, Rjyan, and The Alchemist. Signed, Art Bell
***[ADDENDUM: J4m3s Sqw34ky would like to clarify:
"On only one song do we use an acoustic guitar and
we've only played that song live once. (ok, on the cdr
there are a couple of weird covers thrown in towards
the end that feature acoustic guitar, but we've never
done any of those live)..."
antifolk vs. guitar ok.]
In the context of Spanish and Anglo-American conquest of Mexico, a passage from Our Lady of Guadalupe: Faith and Empowerment among Mexican American Women (Jeanette Rodriguez, 1994):
"It is true that within Mexican-American culture the Mexican-American woman is burdened by machismo. Men who show machismo are alleged to boast a great deal about their male conquests and to refuse to do 'womanly' things such as dishwashing, cooking, diaper-changing, or minding the children. One way of understanding this concept is that machismo is an over-compensation for a feeling of inadequacy as a man within a racist system. And what is a Chicano man supposed to do?—provide for, protect, care for, and defend his family. When these needs are truncated and reinforce feelings of inadequacy, this overcompensation may take the form of excessive fighting, drinking, or bragging about conquests, and thus may render the family or relationships dysfunctional...
"However, Chicana scholarship suggests that Chicano culture is not as male-dominated as the original researches would have had us believe. Research by Lea Ybarra and M. Baca Zinn contends that relations between the sexes are more egalitarian—perhaps more egalitarian than in the dominant Anglo-American culture."
ADDENDUM: guess this needs clarification, da? It's about operating outside stereotypes, and translates to other cultures. Book points out that often Mexican American women are seen/portrayed as untrustworthy (as manifested in misinterpretation of La Malinche, even in the writings of Octavio Paz) or nurturing/ self-sacrificing. As a general example, I'm interested in how disempowerment and misrepresentation is harmful to everyone.
I'm co-teaching a class with my indomitable housemate Ms. Connie Wohn, at the Rock & Roll Camp for Girls this summer. [On media / PR, and how to handle/ become us.] The Rock Camp always needs donations, so if you have extra money or cool crap lying around you could send it and write it off yr taxes.
I have now seen New York Minute, one of many psychic blows I've collected for Team Mercury in my four years of servitude; I haven't felt this traumatized since that rave documentary in '00, the one with DJ Keoki blathering on about The Oneness to a proscenium of sparkly, slobbery dosed masses. I was not particularly opposed to the Olsen Twins as an entity, apart from thinking their "Let's Visit the Day Spa" dolls are creepy, and my inherent distrust of any two people making $300 mill off hawking tie-dyed bikini skorts at Wal-Mart. Based on the full spread in People, and the fashion blurb in Teen Vogue, tho, mostly I just felt sorry for them; anyone raised as they were is statistically bound for Baby Jane moments midlife. It is cool that Ashley's NYU app essay compared their lives to a Jackson Pollock painting, but dudes. Wealth. Beauty. Pain. They didn't even reap the full impact/ deep emotional ditch-digging of their parents' divorce, cause they were too busy working to notice. And you thought ole Crunky had it bad.
NYM makes near-obligitory Hilton sisters jokes—winky ones, supposedly funny 'cause the OTs are so light-years NOT the H-squad—but they're just two sides of the same busted neo-con Benjamin. Hiltons flash the dirty glitterati, the sloppy riche; Olsens got crosshairs on Xtian values for the Schwarznegger social grinches. Needless to say, the film includes an underdeveloped yet firm sub-plot regarding downloaders, and the evils of music piracy.
Mid-filmic antics, which are discernable by varying levels of Olsen twin surprise-face (learned, presumably, from Kimmy Gibler), the twins ACCIDENTaLLY come up from a sewer on East 152nd street, which NYmaps.assist tells me is somewhere Harlem-ish, in the direction of Washington Heights. They miraculously ingratiate themselves to "Bling Palace," or some hair salon of a similar title (definitely with "Bling"). After charming the place's denizens, including the stereotypical gay black hairdresser, they are allowed to fashion-show a barrage of ghetto-fabulous costumes, from rainbow zebra Donna Summer dresses to so-not-Juicy-Couture tracksuits and fake afro puffs, while the Bling Palace's owner sagely advises to keep their pretty heads up, the day will start anew. Then she lets them leave without paying—a gift for just being them ?—and borrow her son's cab. Freshly BLINGED, they run into stalking antagonist Eugene LEvy; when he flashes his truant-officer badge, all the black men around them, simultaneously, put their hands up.
Never meant to join the ranks of wanton MK&A-hatertude, but I saw this movie with a theater-full of mostly preteen ladies age 6-15; the lack of imagination/plot/neo-con message was horrifying enough, but here's hoping tween internalization stops after the Olsens iron out their little caper.
Spotty French.
The talented lady Shannon Wright, whose whorls of drama and unraveled piano-grappling mysteries are close to what I'd be making if I had time, has relayed to a C'n'P representative (aka ME) that, after she releases Over the Sun and tours this summer, she will fly to Frahnce to collaborate with composer Yann Tiersen. Yes, the selfsame Yann Tiersen of 2001's Band Originale Amelie Poulain, and many other balletic, ice-castly melodies which deserve attendance and wonderment.
As for Ms. Wright, well, I'd recommend Dyed in the Wool first, but Over the Sun is immediate and cathartic, like the open flesh wound that is her live show.
Fave trooper O-Dub has further endeared himself by posting some Clube de Esquina for all to cherish.
Mary J. Blige: "more affirming than a chick flick." More "liberating and empowering than your favorite episode of Oprah." But wait!! Live, she is "more cathartic than a week of Oprah... like Oprah, Blige does this girlfriend-to-girlfriend thing." (INCREDULOUS ITALICS MINE.) So, which is it, Jon Bream? And have you ever conversed with a woman in your life?
Only 15 more days 'til Theo Parrish reissues!
Mean Girls also depicts the inevitable, unenviable strata of alpha malehood, and how it finds home in even the least culturally "masculine" of worlds: the Mathletes. It's worth seeing just for the aggro Mathletes captain, identified by his business card as "math captain/bad-ass M.C.," whose raps brag that his math genius found him in the horizontal mambo with your wife. Not unlike how male rock critics see who's king bee.
Now for the real update.
Mean Girls is an imperfect work, but god how I felt the distant ulcer of teen girlhood revisiting uncomfortably like a birth mom. So nasty, we ladies can be to one another, typecasting ourselves, forming identities via who reads the part with most conviction. I realize I just wrote "an imperfect work" about a teen dramady penned by an SNL writer (a talented one) and starring Linday Lohan. But oh how it landed, swept girl battles from freshman year up from the bile of my memory, when my best friend Ashley threw me into a mirror over a boy and I punched Amber in the jaw in the hallway, and so-so-tough Katy Valdez whupped me with a shiner the size of a softball for reasons I still do not know, other than we were in Wyoming, and high school in small towns means boredom and big punchin'. I stopped fighting after she kicked my ass, in front of, like, the whole school, or at least all the B-listers whose parents kept loose locks on the liquor cabinet. Boones Farm is a good joke now, but then it was sacrament.
I am pretty sure Ash apologized to either Diamonds & Pearls or Doctor Feelgood. She had a baby when we were juniors and transferred schools, but by that time I was Sisters of Mercified and had given up fighting for fanzines. Just think, if I weren't blogging right now I might be brass-knuckling some sad lady in a Hardee's parking lot.
There have been debates on whether Mean Girls is a feminist film and listen, it
MAJOR SPOILER ALERT
ends in utopia; as though Tina Fey wanted to right all her wrongs, with all the Mean Girls (the A-list, got-it-all beauty clique known as the Plastics) in a gymnasium, reconciling with their friends in one giant affirmation of sisterhood, reading apologies to their comrades and then doing the "trust" backwards stage dive, Ani DiFranco concert-style—presumably and accurately representing academic feminism because, for some of the bitchiest apologies, the crowd parts and alpha girls are left to crush each other or slam hard, alone, onto the gym floor. Lindsay Lohan's character, who has flirted with coolness but learns the big lesson—the cutest dude will like you more if you're smart—please let it be true—ends up winning after growing up and reclaiming her one love: calculus. It's funny and the nice girl finishes nice, and first, winning the Mathlete championship, the Cutest Dude, and the spring fling crown. She ends up HAVING IT ALL. I loved it and laughed my ass off—but would definitely rather watch real-life-in-action, like Real Women Have Curves or even the painful truth of the girl characters in Raising Victor Vargas.
Even still, somehow it's realer than the Hilary Duff klutz crap, because with Hilary Duff's character we are asked to ignore the fact that Lizzie McGuire Can't Lose.That, for every time she takes a spill or rams her face into a locker in front of Prince Charming or handsome Italian suitors, there is nothing genuinely underdoggish about either Hilary Duff or Lizzie McGuire—they are gorgeous and talented and smart and charismatic and their waspy upper-middle-class married parents are supportive and kind. But look, even now I am putting Hilary and Lindsay on separate sides—two girls whose publicized beef is based on Aaron Carter, the debatably talented younger brother of a debatably talented Backstreet Boy, and who doesn't even seem like a fun date.
what a weekend.
Quasi-DJed Strategy CD release on Fri.; Nice Nice keeps cauldrons of musicology inside 99-cent megaphones, which Jason spits into the little amplifier thing behind the strings, on the guitar, whose name I used to know back before I gave up guitar for the Kawai ESX digital piano. BTdubs, if anyone wants to buy my tobacco sunburst Gretsch Duo Jet Stetsasonic or whatever it's called, you know how to get me.
Strategy, known to commonfolk as Paul D., played no ambiance, but put down eentsy disco house morsels; I am constantly amazed at his ability to keep the funk in the micro. (Vladislav knows, it has been said before and will be said again that the smaller the pants, the smaller the pockets; in what crannies do deep, nasty basslines hide when rhythms are no bigger than a bleep on the heart monitor? So boys who bring it pack magic wands.)
These trapeze artists had an early show so all these parallel bars were CASCADi(a)ng down, plus magic blue light, like cirque de soleil goes to Berlin. I spun, like, four songs, including my signature track "Two of Hearts" by Stacey Q, who according to VH-1 Divas is living out massive crimped updos with the Dalai Lama and has channeled grand jetes into master yogism. I love how we can lead many lives.
Last night Vast Aire gifted his set to Karniege (who came like the Chicago Manual: "spelled like K-A-R-N-I-E-G-E, that's Karniege, I'm on Def Jux 3, make sure it's italicized when you blog it later"). K-A-R-N-I-E-G-E rhymed the bulk of Vast's lyrics. Vast himself, amped on hefty plates-full of Oregon Duck, simply had us "do that shit" on the half beats. Either the monitors weren't up loud or there was an echo in the room, because his rhythm was cooked like the Blazers in double OT. It's cool, though, I'll keep reading the liner notes. Then back to Holocene, where DJ the Incredible Kid killed the dancefloor with Latin house and hiphop (from Latin America, not Latino Americans). I did what I do (second?) best—played like I was God's hybrid of Rita Moreno and Cyd Charise—while my new dance partner, a bona fide capoeirista, told me all about his job, none of which I understood because a drunk American dude spitting Portuguese was mushier than garlic in my mom's molcajete.
