Punks not dead!
May 28, 2005 11:49 PM
In the latest blogman video, you remember with awesome nostalgics the summer of 1994, and this also was a truly momentous year for myself. I am thinking that perhaps it will be in your interests to see and hear how things was on the other side of the world in that era, ok? And I must say that it was also massive hardcore, full power and total throttle!
The Jarocin festival for music of the young generation was the bigest and best rock festival in the East block. Here, in the dismal 1980's, young people could gather in sonic rebellion against the dictatorships of communism. Those years was very grey for everyone, but in this magical place you would find people that contradict and, dare I say, subjugated their realities in multifarious manners of dress, talk and dancing habits. Here, the people put the safety pins into their cheeks, consumed copious amounts of alcohol and enjoyed punk music to the oblivious point! It was a time to spit in the face of the totalitarians and marxism-leninism in particular. You would meet people here that you rarely saw in everyday life. Awesome people. Awesome music. Awesome struggles. And I, for one, was digging it!
It happens that the epochal summer of '94 would be the last time I make the pogo at Jarocin. Of course, at that time we believed - as does your Bryan Adams - that "it would last for ever", but the times were changing in radical ways and it was dawning on everybody, notwithstanding the mayor of Jarocin town himself, that the festival was part of the bygone eras. In the tender years of slavic punks, the rebellion was directed at an evil regime and the prevalent conformists of that era. But with the emergence into capitalist democracy, there was much factional violence, as the punks spent most of the time in organizing urban warfare against the, at this time very fashionable, skinhead movement. And so it was in '94 that the violence swept the festival. 
This was not radically inhabitual for me then, I remember many streetfights and vandalisms, and as a young anarchist, it was dangerous to walk about the town in small numbers, because you must always risk ambushes by the opponent guerillas. Personally, I think I was maybe a little lost at that time. I didn't see the impending gloom that struck at Jarocin '94 until it was too late: 70 seriously injured (of which 40 policemen), 300 metres of vandalized buildings, many anihilated vehicles, 6 volleys of rubber bullets, tear gas, water cannon, 3 hours of battle... and, worst of all this: the end of an epoch.
Because of these tragic events, the Jarocin festival received a bad name, but it was not always like this. Above all, it was a place for young people, for anarchist counter-culture, for music. Of course, there was always a deal of violence, but it rarely made results as bad as that of '94. 
Eight years before, maybe the best band of Polish New Wave, Republika, played their show that started with many large quantities of tomatos and soured milk being projected onto them, so that the musicians had to ask the public "Does somebody have the rag so that we can clean the instruments?" and surely enough a rag soon was thrown at him. Fifteen minutes later they begun to play and blew away the audience, so that, in the end, everybody was asking for an encore, but the singer says: "You are not a public that is deserving of us! Go to hell!"
Maybe the most powerhouse of the punk bands, titled Dezerter also made great concerts here, in the epochal festival of 1984. Many of the songs I have posted on here is by them, and as you can feel inside your bones, it is like being in contact with God, or maybe rape, or something truly awesome that will never make you untouched and mollusc as you were before! 
I was too young to partake with Jarocin when it was King. This is probably something I will always regret. But I acquired multifarious cassettes of the concerts there and I have digged them so much, the tape is getting thin! Ah yes! For you Americans this is exotic, but 1994 is also the first appearance of the CD in my regions (but no one was really buying it until some years later, because the pirate cassettes were cheaper and also the CD players were expensive). After Jarocin, the people also became rich, the punks became fewer, the skinheads (thank god!) also dissapeared and they were replaced by these rich kids the "skates" who wear the big trousers and Vans (I think it is also very popular in USA, yes?) and urban thug, which we call "sportswear", that beats you up but without any political motivations, just to retrieve wallet and watch. I myself also abandoned my radical attitudes that year. The apocalypse of Jarocin was too much for my brains. Later that year, I discovered Miko Mission and Ryan Paris, and thus was another adventure begun: the more smooth, classy and trendy of Italo Disco, to which I adhere until this day.
May 29th 2004 - May 29th 2005
May 28, 2005 11:12 PM
today i celebrate exactly one year of living in taipei city, taiwan. besides being host to many significant pop culture events, this last year has been a period where i have seen the most significant changes in myself. to mention a few, i now know a considerable amount of chinese, have lost nearly 45 pounds, shaved my beard, sold my first photo set, played my first solo show, gotten my first well paying job (and quit it), started dating a girl i've secretly liked for ages, and completely changed some of my life goals. this is also the first year where my interests actually seem contemporary (as opposed to being several years behind). this year has also certinaly been the busiest for me. taiwan isn't very big, and only staying here a year has encouraged me to attend as many 'happenings' as possible.
my first date with my first taiwanese girlfreind brought me to my very first taiwanese art exhibit; friction love. In fact, if this girl and I hadn't found a common love for large crudely painted girls with menacing looks in their eyes, she would have never given an american a chance. of course, the visit to taipei's museum of contemporary arts was more than just a first date to me, it was proof that taiwan had an extravagant contemporary culture that in some respects proceeds larger nations in the west.
the exhibit explored "the conversion between comics and contemporary art" and featured some of the most exciting young artists in east asia, including my favorite yoshitomo nara.
lately, taipei seems to be a hot spot for new and exciting film festivals. the first one i attended was the tailly high film festival featuring young directors from taiwan, japan, thailand, and korea. the tickets were cheap, so i was able to attend nearly every single film on the program, and soon got intimate with the doorman/projectionist (sweet! no ticket, no problem). i'd sit through three or four of these films in a row, jotting down notes and critiques in a little brown notebook. the most inspireing for me, was peep show tv from japan, the collection of korean shorts (man that country has problems), and the washing machine from taiwan. it was refreshing to see these young and critical voices in east asia, making films with the same materials and budgets i have available to me.
bands such as VARO, peppermint, chasing sparrow, the nipples, nylas, LTK commune, and the ladybugs are just a small piece of the incredible new music coming out of taipei. synth-pop, shoe-gazer rock, and (the less desirable) metal are very prominent growing scenes in taiwan, and great new venues for these shows are popping up all over. one of the significant events for me, was promoting the lucky dragons & nylas show in november. though i didn't do that great of a job as a promoter, i did get to spend time with luke and met an incredible amount of young musicians, distributors, labels, and producers. the second big event for me was the childish music multimedia concert, where i was introduced to lullatone (whom i've adored for several years now), kazumasa hashimoto, sora, yuki hayashi, and mondii (of spekk & plop). this re-evoked my passion for melodicas and simple melodies, and reminded me that you can never own enough nobukazu takemura.
one thing i was hoping to investigate while i was in taiwan, was children's literature. my ex-girlfreind introduced to me, 'jimi' (a full name in chinese, i promise), who is now my all-time favorite writer/illustrator. since i first read his book... um... the one that looks like this, last october, i've been recognizing his paintings in advertisments, commercials, stationary, subway tickets, juice boxes, and record covers all over taiwan. his art is colorful and imaginative, and his stories... well.. i don't know how to explain them, but they make me cry more than i'd like to admit. although i have yet to find english translations, sitting down with 10 year old students and have them translate each page for me has been one of my fondest memories teaching here.
so... i hope that wasn't too long. i'd hate to bore someone. its just horrible to try and choose three significant pop culture events out of this last year, when my whole year was built off of them. every single significant event in my life in taiwan either occurred during, or as a direct result of such an event. and... god. im going to stop now... i feel like im writing a five paragraph essay for WRT 150. anyhow... if you haven't heard of any of these artists/directors/authors/musicians, then please check them out. let me know if your interested, i'd be more than happy to send cd/dvds or an email packed full of juicy hyper-links. ok? ok.. bye bye
The Death of Popular Culture
May 28, 2005 07:31 PM
Pop Culture is what we think of when we think of America. Blue jeans, Coca Cola, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Andy Warhol… America is condemned for irrevocably wiping out the corner shop and individuality, and replacing it with sameness, with mass-marketed produce, with stereotypes. And then it’s simultaneously hailed for contributing to the world economy, for giving us a fizzy drink in a can we all recognize and feel safe with. America confuses me. The inter-relationship between event and the consequent spawning of low-brow culture as an offshoot confuses me. It confuses me that everything in America becomes a commodity, something we all recognize, we can all buy in a store, we can all slag off publicly but go home and enjoy privately. Giddy consumerism, laissez faire attitudes, hard partying, excess… this defined New York up until September 11th 2001. New York itself was a product of popular culture. And then it all changed when the twin towers came crumbling. And the twin towers were chosen because they were the defining emblems of that braggart assuredness of the 80’s and 90’s, that untouchability the United States exuded to the poorer countries in the world, that hated and exhorted machine of globalization consuming us all.
So there, I mentioned it, my first ‘pop culture’ event, an event which has been written about to death, photographed, studied, argued over, which started a war, which gave birth to a sickening new 21st century. Although 9/11 wasn’t pop culture, what happened afterwards was - the newspaper articles, the books, the films, the TV articles, even the War. It started a chain of events which has led to the irrevocable sadness of this once exuberant city that I love, that I desperately want to call my home.
I sat with a gay friend in an Italian restaurant several days ago and the more Martinis he consumed, the more the words flowed, words you never say until the alcohol unleashes them.
“The city changed immediately. You hugged people in the street, people were holding hands and singing in Union Square. I came out of the subway three days afterwards, and suddenly I’m praising Jesus and praying to God with a fat black lady from Harlem who I’d never met before. The streets were always crowded in New York, people were spending, and then they weren’t. And it’s still recovering. It’s still going on. I don’t know if it’ll ever recover.”
I went for a sedate journalist’s lunch with some photographers and writers for Harpers and Outside magazine at the weekend. The travel writer who was hosting the lunch suddenly whipped out a picture he took of the planes going overhead his apartment. We were all of us non-native New Yorkers, and sat quiet and sickly fascinated as he described waking up, looking out of his window, seeing a plane go careering past, getting that first phone call, heading up to the roof of his building, watching, watching in silence with the rest of the city. There are some things you never forget, some stories you will repeat over and over again, and some stories which become engrained into the consciousness of the people, into the popular culture, transforming it irreparably, affecting the government, the economy, the social make-up of the people.
What 9/11 means to myself and my friends is immigration. After that fateful day, the United States government issued a call for ‘Special Registration’ – the demand that men over a certain age from predominantly Muslim countries come forward for interview. Kamal Essaheb, a talented young law student from Morocco who I interviewed for an article several weeks ago, took his family along. He recalls how undignified the procedure was. The waiting. The questions. “Do you know Osama Bin Laden?” “Do you hate the United States government?”. Special Registration resulted in a deportation order going ahead against Kamal and his family – they had slipped out of status through his father’s employer screwing up his visa application. He’s an amazing young man. He volunteers for victims of domestic violence, and has the potential to be one of the country’s top lawyers. His story was finally picked up by the New York Times this week. I wonder if it’s too late for him though.
After 9/11 popular culture changed. It became ferocious. It was OK to hate – to hate the French because they opposed the war, to hate Muslims because ‘they’ had instigated the attack, to hate immigrants because they were responsible for the loss of lives in the tragedy, to hate Mexicans, to hate anything or anybody who disagreed with certain accepted doctrines, beliefs, behaviors. And it spread across the world. It’s OK to hate Americans now, it’s OK to blame every American for an unfair war, for the fact a McDonalds replaces your favorite local coffee shop, for the decisions one man makes regarding the lives of millions of others. It seems like the heady consumerist days of the 20th century have just led to unmitigated anger, indiscriminate fury, a Greek tragedy of national proportions, the desire to strike out as if that could assuage all the fear and the anger and the confusion of 2001. The Patriot Act was passed. Immigration laws tightened. The number of work visas was reduced, if you got married the wait time for a green card was extended from 3 to 6 months, it became a more convoluted, bureaucratic procedure to gain even a tourist visa, immigration backlog increased dramatically. Even in 2005 the REAL ID act is a direct consequence of the fear gripping the US after 9/11 regarding immigrants and ‘difference’. It’s a racial fear. And it’s ironic that one white girl from the UK can recognize that, at the same time as suffering because of it despite my ‘preferential’ color.
The fear is irrational. The killers of 9/11 were all in the United States legally. One even got issued a visa posthumously after the attack by the INS. Special Registration didn’t reveal a single thing about Osama Bin Laden’s whereabouts. Iraq had no relation to 9/11. Immigrants rarely take American jobs – we take the jobs American’s don’t want. We all know this. We’ve all argued, attended demonstrations, read The New York Times and the BBC. But it needs repeating. It has led to a terrifying concentration of power in a government who are telling their people it’s OK to hate, and who are holding them continually in fear. The popular culture I see around me now thinly veils a predominant feeling of hatred and suspicion. I see this more than the average person because I’m an illegal, and like my friends Kamal and Amy, we’re the ones who don’t have a voice. We can observe though, and observe we do. We’re the butt of society, because now there’s no Iraq to hate, or Afghanistan to hate, they need somebody else – the people who make this country so different from the blonde-haired, blue eyed, apple-pie ideal. ‘They’ isn’t all ‘you’. I would never be so presumptious as to lump in all the Liberals and brave people who deplore war and sympathise with those who’ve suffered needlessly because of extremist Al-Qaeda supporters. But the facts have to be faced. The driving force in the United States are those who started a war, who sent messages to the people directly after the 9/11 attack that ‘muslims’ were ‘to blame’, and have increasingly concentrated power into one solo, clown like figure, to the detriment of many honest, hardworking people – the man who read ‘My Pet Goat’ on that fateful day.
2001, 9/11, Special Registration, the War and fear of difference – this saw popular culture turn into exclusive culture, a culture just for ‘real’ Americans, ‘non-muslim’ Americans, Americans who were born here. Indirectly, it’s led to me being stuck in this country while my visa gets mulled over by INS officials, and probably rejected. It's led to Kamal facing deportation proceedings. It's led to my friend Amy having to work in a retail store despite her 23 years in the United States, her college degree, her intelligence and her ambition. They can’t be too careful you see. After 9/11 and all.
It makes me so sad.
The Star Wars Era
May 28, 2005 04:21 PM
There are few pop culture eras that more accurately define the spirit of my childhood than the "Star Wars" era. Yes, there was the Cabbage Patch Kid era, the later Garbage Pail Kid era, and of course the Capri-Sun era. There were also the: Jelly Bracelet era, the "Lunchables" era, the "Madonna True Blue" era, and the time I saw "Thriller" on MTV and had nightmares for months. But really, when I think back on all the eras of my life it is truly the "Star Wars" era that sets my heart free to soar with the eagles. My childhood friend Michael had a light saber that he would fill with gravel and hurl at passing cars. I had a Darth Vader action figure that was destroyed first by my little brother, then later by our dog. I coveted the Millennium Falcon model, but never received it. One Christmas all my cousins got stuffed Ewoks but I got a Casio keyboard and I didn't know if I was disappointed or not. "Return of the Jedi" is the first film I can remember seeing in the theater, and it was followed immediately afterward by the first spanking I am aware of receiving (the two events are implacably linked, for it was my behavior at the one which led to the other). Although I am not one of those supra-nerds who know who Admiral Akbar is (the guy with the fish for a head), nonetheless, whenever I hear the music from this trilogy (note: I will not say sextupulgy, for it is only the first (or rather, the last) three which count in this discussion) my heart pounds and I shed a single tear of joy. I am posting my entry first because I must leave now to drive to San Francisco to play a show. This show is in honor of the era of my life that is now ending--the Santa Cruz/awful paralegal job era. It is also in honor of the era that is about to begin--the Grad School/carjacking era. If the show is in honor of this current era-spanning occasion, then let us now return to the peaceful era of 20 years previous (also known more unfortunately as the "Reagan era") and pay homage to what was surely the greatest pop culture event(s) of the earth's history. I bring you my three "things:"
Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
as paid homage by my very first completely solo filmic effort (albeit co-written by Andrew Peterson):
Marianna Ritchey Presents: George Lucas' The "Star Wars:"
