The Freelance Mentalists.
Monday, March 05, 2012
On Mike Kelley's "The Uncanny" (uncut)
¶ 3/05/2012 0 comments
As
a special tribute to Mike Kelley, who last month checked out way ahead
of schedule, we're posting the full, unedited version of John W.'s
review of Kelley's 'Uncanny' exhibition in Vienna from 2004.
The Uncanny Exhibition of Mike Kelley
I. The Main Exhibit
"The
Uncanny", Mike Kelley's exhibition at MUMOK, is utterly brilliant, with
something to delight everyone from John Waters to Walter Benjamin.
Sizewise, it would fill a floor of the Whitney and then some, and
offers a motley and maniacally assembled collection of statues,
ventriloquist's dummies, mannequins, reliquaries, anatomical models and
so on. In part it's intended to suggest the "Wunderkammer", or
"cabinets of wonder", which originated in the Renaissance and were
popular through the end of the 19th century.
The
exhibition, whose themes come from Freud's 1919 essay on the uncanny,
is actually a "re-configuration and extension" of a show that Kelley
assembled in Arnhem (the Netherlands) in 1993, but with one crucial
difference which I'll explain below. This new version appeared at the
Tate Liverpool earlier this year and now — since Kelley reportedly
conceived the exhibition during several past visits here — it has "come
home" to Vienna. Also, as a complement to the exhibition, the movie
theater up the street from me is presenting a series of films selected
by Kelley — basics like "Frankenstein", "Freaks", "Eraserhead", "Dead
Ringers", and the like.
Roughly
half of "The Uncanny" comprises works by contemporary artists, with the
other half constituting objects found and collected by Kelley. The
press materials claim that he himself is not actually credited as an
artist for any of these objects, although in view of the way that
they've been assembled and displayed, this is a slippery point. A few
years ago Luc Sante mentioned to me that once in an interview he had
posited a link between "postmodernism" and "shopping" — with DJ'ing and
curating being prime examples — and much of this exhibit appears to be
the result of Kelley's gleeful and canny shopping sprees at various flea
markets and thrift shops.
My
previous exposure to Mike Kelley's work was rather limited, e.g. the
cover to Sonic Youth's "Dirty" and a few isolated pieces. As a result, I
assumed that one aspect of "the uncanny" being explored here was sexual
ambiguity: specifically, the way that, in childhood, certain otherwise
ordinary objects can be (mis)taken to have a sexual meaning and even
cause sexual arousal. I suspect that, if one were to take a group of
first- and second-graders on a tour of the exhibition (and NOT
fifth-graders, who by then know what the game is about and would titter
and hoot at many of the displays) and then quiz them 10 or 20 years
later, a significant portion of them will in the meantime have developed
tastes for amputees, rubber raincoats, and anatomically correct male
mannequins.
On
the day after the opening there was a podium discussion with the
artist. At the Q&A session that followed, I asked the artist
whether the ambiguity of strangeness-vs.-sexual-content was intentional.
He denied that the exhibit had anything to do with childhood
sexuality. (And incidentally, when another member of the audience then
asked about the significance behind the couple dozen rubber squeeze toys
on display in a glass case, he explained that he simply happened to
collect them as noisemakers for his band, Destroy All Monsters, and that
they are "outside what I consider appropriate to the rest of the
show".)
Still, there are certainly many childhood Sexual Tales of Terror to be seen:
For
the guys, there's the installation by Kristian Burford, whose point of
departure is that old horror story from sleepaway camp: "During the
later period of Christopher's residence at boarding school he learnt
that if the hand of a sleeping boy were to be submerged in tepid water,
the boy would be made to wet his bed. This has provided him with the
subject for a short video," which is shown on a TV set "in a chamber
that once served as his mother's sewing room." Inside the tent-like
room, itself suggesting a canopy bed, a full-size and decently endowed
male mannequin lies with the tips of his fingers dangling into a bowl of
water. It's hard to say whether he is in modified fetal position or a
state of erotic languor — after all, he's on his mother's spare bed.
The artist manages to turn the museumgoer's voyeurism back on itself,
since in order to view the lushly furnished piece, it's necessary to
peek through holes in the surrounding drapes.
The
girls are offered their own Sexual Tale of Terror in the form of Ron
Mueck's hyperrealistic sculpture, "Ghost" (which, among several other
webpages, can be seen at:
www.doffay.com/external_mueck.htm
). It depicts an adolescent girl in a bathing suit, still not yet at
ease with her own beauty. Here's one version of the way the scene plays
out in real life: this month in phys.ed. they're doing the swimming
unit. When the co-ed group files out to the pool, the Nice Guy in class
says to her, "Hey, I never realized before what nice long legs you
have." The girl answers, "No I don't. I hate my legs." He replies,
"That's not true! You have NICE legs." Turning her head and holding
back the tears, she says, "Please don't ever say anything about my legs
again," and immediately resolves to start another diet as soon as she
gets home. The punchline is that Mueck succeeds in turning the viewer's
pathos back on itself: when you see the piece up close, in its full
seven-foot-high scale, the temptation is to say, "Gee, she really _does_
look rather homely after all."
More
horrors can be found in Christo's "3 Nudes on a Bed" (wrapped, of
course, and guaranteed to induce claustrophobia) and Paul McCarthy's
"Garden Dead Men" (castration anxiety — although this is not to overlook
several dozen other items such as mummies, severed heads, limbs without
bodies, and vice versa).
As
for artistic intent: the first 30 or so minutes of the podium
discussion between Kelley and John Welchman (an art professor and critic
who has collaborated with Kelley on books and other documentation)
consisted of a sober and quite recondite examination of the history of
polychromatic figurative sculpture and its recent revival. It's useful
to know that this is the focus of the show, since Kelley is deliberately
concentrating on "what gets repressed from the culture and erased from
art history" (e.g. several centuries' worth of statues found in Roman
Catholic churches). However, the FORM-related criterion in turn goes a
long way to explain the CONTENT of the show, since the renewed interest
in polychromatic figurative sculpture happened to come at a time when
certain topics also emerged: hence, we get none of George Segal's staid
white monochromatic businessmen, but do get Nancy Grossman's bondage
mask.
At
the end of this very erudite public discussion I asked the woman
sitting next to me, who was reporting on the show for the Süddeutsche
Zeitung, whether Kelley and Welchman had been talking about the same
show that I saw. She admitted that she was wondering the same thing
herself, and then asked me why the people who attended the opening
didn't seem to find anything there funny. She was right: I had
observed that about half of the hundreds of people looked on in mild
appreciation, while the other half exhibited a poker-faced cluelessness.
I myself was bursting into belly laughs for days afterwards at not
only the pieces themselves, but the various juxtapositions:
—
In a glass case, we see plastic models of the death masks of Napoleon,
Lincoln, and Beethoven; placed in a privileged position ABOVE them on
the wall, however, is an anonymous "Death Mask of an Executed Robber and
Murderer, circa 1900" (Luc Sante, call your office).
—
The four aforementioned masks are positioned across from a "Portrait of
Dennis Thompson" by Cynthia "Plaster Caster" Albritton, the ultimate
groupie.
—
In the main gallery a typical parish-church statue (read: tacky) of the
Blessed Virgin Mary herself, with outstretched arms, faces a contented
yet inscrutable stuffed baboon.
—
Sitting unobtrusively off in one corner is a robot model of Andy
Warhol: when he was invited to a TV show to plug his book, "The
Philosophy of Andy Warhol", he chose not to appear live and instead
commissioned someone to construct this model, which was also equipped
with a tape recording of him reading excerpts from the book. (And note
that (i) he was thus hearkening back to his Czechoslovakian roots, since
the word "robot" was first coined by Karel Capek in 1923; and (ii) this
same idea would later be taken up by Kraftwerk, who have gone on entire
concert tours by sending robots in place of themselves.)
—
Ironically, in a gallery full of human figures, the only piece
involving human language is a life-size Erector-set-style robot by
Jonathan Borofsky, which continually pronounces the word "chatter" in a
mechanical voice.
—
And towering over the entire main room of the exhibition is
"Übermensch", a sculpture by Jake & Dinos Chapman, which consists of
granite-grey plastic crags, on top of which is precariously perched a
cartoonish life-size figure of Stephen Hawking.
II. The "Harems"
As
I mentioned above, compared with the original 1993 conception, there is
one crucial new addition to this version of the exhibition. At the
very end, after viewing the main room, a passageway, and a smaller
gallery, one enters the chamber containing "The Harems", whose title is a
term taken from classic psychological literature, where it is used to
describe the fetishistic activity of the collector.
In
this room, Mike Kelley has gathered several of his own personal
collections, including horror and monster bubblegum cards (several
series), marbles, soup spoons, shot glasses, business cards, a
half-dozen unbent wire hangers which had been used to break into cars,
and the aforementioned squeeze toys. At the podium discussion, Kelley
explained that "When you grow up in America, you're surrounded by things
like this" and that this aspect might not come across to a European.
Covering
the four walls of the room are the homemade flannel banners used at
Catholic Mass (e.g. "He is arisen!", "Are you ready for Jesus?",
accompanied by appropriate symbols such as chalice, host, lamb, etc.).
The banners not only imply sacred space, as do the various saints'
statues and relics elsewhere in the exhibit, but immediately negate this
sacred aspect through their status as banal "folk art".
Placed
in the four corners of the room are video monitors which play back DVDs
of Kelley's other collections: comic books (from back when they were
still in the 12- and 15-cent price range), postcards (several thousand
of them), pinups (with hardcore porn stills far outnumbered by fashion
shots and cosmetics ads) and, best of all, HIS RECORD COLLECTION.
The
viewer not only gets to see the covers of all 3000-plus LPs of it, but
hears a one-second sample from each one. Entire decades of your life
will pass before your eyes. The added bonus, however, is that in
addition to the historical and autobiographical, there's a hermeneutic
level: when you hear 12 consecutive blasts of James Brown and
Parliament/Funkadelic samples, you're also hearing what amounts to a
cut-up and condensed history of hiphop. Likewise, when 15 snippets of
Donna Summer and/or Giorgio Moroder go by, it becomes a mini-survey of
house and techno.
My
friend Joe Herter, a Friend of Dorothy who, like Kelley, grew up in
Detroit and studied at the University of Michigan, insists that "In
life, there are two kinds of people — those who are size queens, and
those who wish they could be size queens!" If that's the case, Mike
Kelley's is not much bigger than mine: he has more James Brown, I have
more Parliament & Funkadelic; he has more Sun Ra on vinyl, I have
more Ornette. Though with that said, props are due: he's got every
record released on JCOA, along with most of Arista Freedom — not to
mention all the 90s metal I never want to hear again (NiN, Ministry),
exotica like Yma Sumac (are 5 really necessary?) and scads of African
folk records from before the days of "world music", when they
constituted a form of anthropological documentation.
I
myself propose the dichotomy that in life there are "list-makers", and
there are those who consider listmaking to be an unfathomable mental
aberration. And the various anti-listmakers and anti-collectionists
will simply fume and froth at "the Harems" (Melissa Pierson, call your
office) or, at best, view it with the condescension that a pathological
condition deserves. Kelley openly states that he considers collecting
to be a form of compulsion, but I suggest that "the Harems" itself
carries additional aspects of the Uncanny:
"The
most profound enchantment for the collector is the locking of
individual items within a magic circle in which they are fixed as the
final thrill, the thrill of acquisition, passes over them." (Walter
Benjamin, "Unpacking My Library")
"For
what else is [a] collection but a disorder to which habit has
accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order?"
(Ibid.)
I
would go one step further than Benjamin and propose that the
uncanniness of a collection lies in its illusion of TOTALITY. This is
the same principle by which the I Ching posits that there are only 64
possible situations in the universe; the Tarot has it covered with 72
cards. To the mind of the 10-year-old collector, having the entire
American League laid out in front of you is something greater than the
Britannica and the O.E.D. put together.
Moreover,
still another aspect of the Uncanny is that of infinity (for example,
in the realization that in order to collect the entire set,
theoretically you really might have to buy an infinite number of packs
of cards, or at least every single one ever manufactured), and likewise,
of the process by which something is assigned an imputed economic value
(the entire set seems to immediately take on a value at least one order
of magnitude greater than the price of the packs of cards that make it
up). And lastly, there is a kind of stochastic uncanniness here, in the
illusion that assembling (any?) 3000 albums can somehow sum up an
entire musical culture.
While
the mania of the collector, within the context of the exhibition, is
meant to suggest repetition compulsion, I think that Kelley is also
unintentionally drawing on another aspect of the Detroit myth. After
all, to a stoned Surrealist, the assembled array of business cards
suggests an aerial view of finished cars outside a Michigan factory. To
quote Kodwo Eshun quoting Juan Atkins (one of the three Detroit bruthas
responsible for creating techno): "Berry Gordy built the Motown sound
on the same principles as the conveyor belt system of Ford ... Today the
plants don't work that way. They use computers and robots to build the
cars ... I'm probably more interested in Ford's robots than Berry
Gordy's music." So all at once, the Detroit auto industry suggests
repetition AND robots AND the noise so beloved by not only the Stooges
and MC5, but Mike Kelley's own noise band, Destroy All Monsters.
I
myself experienced two different senses of the uncanny on separate
viewings of "the Harems". One standing case displays a couple dozen
announcement flyers of the sort that can be found in any college-town
coffee shop or laundromat: "Apartment to Share", "Tutoring in
Japanese", "Actor Needed to Play Pier Paolo Pasolini" (yikes). The
first time that I visited the show, I was struck by their collective
uncanny quality, since one has to look very closely to spot any clues as
to time or place (all but 2 or 3 don't list any year whatsoever; only 2
or 3 indicate UCLA as a location). Kelley cited Edward Hopper as an
influence on the exhibition, and the flyers suggest an informational
analogue to the visual aspect of a Hopper painting: life somewhere in
America, in some unspecified decade in some unspecified college town.
On my second visit, however, I took a much closer look and discovered
announcements for EVENTS THAT I HAD ACTUALLY ATTENDED — specifically,
concerts by Sun Ra, James Newton, and Cassandra Wilson at Koncepts
Cultural Gallery in Oakland (and to make it even weirder, I was wearing
one of my Sun Ra T-shirts when I noticed this).
Most
importantly, however, the inclusion of "the Harems" means that there
are two very different ways of reading the exhibition. At the podium
discussion I mentioned to Kelley that, since the visitor generally
reaches "the Harems" only after he/she has seen the entire exhibition,
it seems to be a culmination of the entire thing, and is thereby a
commentary on the processes of valorization and canonization with regard
to the works on display elsewhere in the show. Kelley demurred, and
apparently considers "the Harems" to be almost an afterthought.
Nevertheless, one interpretation is that, in a show which is so
concerned with representations of the human body, this final sanctum of
fetishes and cultural memorabilia amounts to the "brain" of the whole
operation.
III. Final Comments
After
the opening I thought about the notable absence of camp at the
exhibition (with the exception of Cindy Sherman, who is of course camp
by definition). Kelley's reason for this, given at the podium
discussion, is that camp is simply not uncanny. But moreover, I
maintain that a camp item always has quotes around it, whereas with the
show's chockablock arrangement of artworks and non-artworks, EVERYTHING
is in quotes vis-à-vis everything else. And there are no camp-style
inside jokes here, because Kelley genuinely likes all this stuff; we all
do.
And
commendably, aside from the pinups of cosmetic ads, there are no brand
names to be seen anywhere: given the trash-culture orientation of the
show, this is an achievement in itself. Kelley explains, "Mass media
has no psychology -- it's [only] a psychology of money."
Lastly,
there's the issue of where Uncle Sigmund fits in with all of this. For
those of you outside Austria, I need to emphasize that, as I was once
told, "Freud is not taken seriously here — he was FROM here," i.e. he
had to go elsewhere in order to be taken seriously. A couple of years
ago, the Sunday book section of the main Vienna newspaper published an
article about Freud; the lead to the article basically read, "After
nearly a century, Freud's ideas are being seriously contested, while in
Austria they never achieved acceptance in the first place" (i.e. "see?
we were right all along"). His concepts are not common currency here,
and the entire psychotherapeutic culture in the U.S. which derives from
Freud exists in a far different form, if at all (and believe me, living
in Austria while the term "passive-aggressive" is entirely unknown is
like living among a tribe of Eskimos who don't have any words for snow).
Nevertheless,
I imagine that Kelley's exhibition would be utter catnip for a number
of Central European writers who appeared around or just after Freud —
e.g. Rilke, Musil (cf. Törless), Gombrowicz, and especially Bruno Schulz
(cf. his "Treatise on Mannequins"). And meanwhile it's one trashy,
trippy delight for the amateur semiotician in all of us.
--John Wojtowicz
(for the ‘04 Andy’s Robot Mix of this piece, see the link posted below in “Jukebox Reflections (Paasing By)”
¶ 3/05/2012 0 comments
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Music's Everywhere
Mad Men's signature Falling Man is now amidst the bare mists of a billboard, which is atop a relatively low building on 30th Street. It looks practically eye-level, as photographed by the NY Times' David W. Dunlap. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/a-season-premiere-a-falling-man-and-memories-of-911/ Understandably, some see this as an exploitation of 9/11, ditto the animated sequence heralding each
M M episode. But the animated Falling Man also resembles his comrade in Vertigo's opening, though the Vertigo guy is a cut-out, voided by his panic attacks, going nowhere fast. Meanwhile, Don Draper plummets through good luck and bad, the card-like panes of his building's suites winking by. (Once again, he's born as boondocks misfit Dick Whitman,"too smart for your own good"/given a chance to escape by North Korean incoming/a way into the Good Life via Roger Sterling's black-out drunk hire/overachieving sex/etc./etc.) Draper lands bull's eye, in his easy chair and the afterglow of another crisis, cigarette ready for skywriting. He's back and his back's to us. Like, Miles is in concert, don't bother to knock. Dig? don allred ¶ 3/04/2012 0 comments
M M episode. But the animated Falling Man also resembles his comrade in Vertigo's opening, though the Vertigo guy is a cut-out, voided by his panic attacks, going nowhere fast. Meanwhile, Don Draper plummets through good luck and bad, the card-like panes of his building's suites winking by. (Once again, he's born as boondocks misfit Dick Whitman,"too smart for your own good"/given a chance to escape by North Korean incoming/a way into the Good Life via Roger Sterling's black-out drunk hire/overachieving sex/etc./etc.) Draper lands bull's eye, in his easy chair and the afterglow of another crisis, cigarette ready for skywriting. He's back and his back's to us. Like, Miles is in concert, don't bother to knock. Dig? don allred ¶ 3/04/2012 0 comments
Friday, March 02, 2012
Hotel War Be There Now And Be Here Then
The following, recently exhumed, had its truncated remains displayed in '09 (print-only, the only mercy). Hopefully, the reduced result might still have led some to check out Hotel War. But they deserve the restored corpus, and so do you (though you may not agree).
"I got my 45/I got my mind right/I got it all inside/They took it all away!" Columbus OH trio Hotel War's new single, "45," tracks metal moments of real life, erupting into yesterday's news. The vengence-seekers of "45" are shells of their pre-victimized selves, re-running final solutions through every black-and-white, security-cam verse. But the chorus eternally rolls into a well-timed and textured, smokin' hole, which preserves and holds the "45" guys, though hollow-pointed be their naked "I"s! don allred ¶ 3/02/2012 0 comments
"I got my 45/I got my mind right/I got it all inside/They took it all away!" Columbus OH trio Hotel War's new single, "45," tracks metal moments of real life, erupting into yesterday's news. The vengence-seekers of "45" are shells of their pre-victimized selves, re-running final solutions through every black-and-white, security-cam verse. But the chorus eternally rolls into a well-timed and textured, smokin' hole, which preserves and holds the "45" guys, though hollow-pointed be their naked "I"s! don allred ¶ 3/02/2012 0 comments
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Loan Me A Shadow
"Somebody load me a dime/So I can call my old-time/Used-to-be." Right, so Boz Scaggs sings Lowell Fulson's "Loan Me A Dime," while rising and falling in the well-fed bosom of blues orchestration. This is from the late 60s, more or less the same era as what I (with little exposure) regarded as the fat times of his fulsome Marin County homegrown elevator easy listening hippie make-out music (as I may have described it in zine prose). But as this song begins, his almost halting eloquence always accosts me, has me floating on the sidewalk several minutes later, when Duane Allman shows up, and the whole squadron strides forth, from the pathos of the blues into its boldness, with no disturbance of the (say it) vibe. Somebody loans him a dime, he knows now he can fix things up with his baby, or maybe he buys a cup of coffee (then also a dime, in some quarters). Anyway, he's energized, but not overstating his case, at least not before the phone call, or whatever the next pitch might be. No big resolution of the story arc, but he's resolved, and going somewhere. Young John Lee Hooker can do that alone-together thing with his guitar, and his foot, as the rest of the '50s go off to a party: young old dude lying in the alley, muttering and gathering his strength, until he's ready to stalk some shadows .And there's no overcrowding in JLH's '72 version of "T.B. Sheets," here credited to Hooker as well as Van Morrison It's on Never Get Out Of These Blues Alive, a roomy house party (with a couple of mornings way after mornings after). Guests include Morrison, Elvin Bishop, and in this case, Michael White's electric violin, wings over the bed, in the ceiling. All in Hooker's head, his ears, his chest, his room. Population one, and the sign's still up. don allred
¶ 2/19/2012 0 comments
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
jukebox reflection (passing by)
Good, intense thoughts about Whitney Houston orbiting The Singles Jukebox nowadays, check it out. Here I am from the comments (awaiting moderation, might not make it through)
¶ 2/14/2012 0 comments
Thursday, February 09, 2012
Renaldo and Clara: Can This Marriage Be Saved?
Renaldo and Clara is currently streaming in its midwinter, mid-'70s, sufficiently sharp and spacey or spacy entirety, Rolling Thunder 'cross the YouTube. I haven't heard the Bootleg Series Rolling Thunder, don't know how it compares with the movie's music (the old Hard Rain live LP has some good R Thunder performances). The flick's three hours-thirty-odd minutes, but very episodic, no prob with breaks. Don't know why it got such bad reviews: you get mostly really good, already speculative re-arrangements of songs from early 60s to recent past, and the whole thing is also a continuation of the troubled relationship dynamic re Blood On The Tracks--not a rolling cinematic break-up album, but scenes (before and after a voice-over of tourmate Anne Waldman's "Fast Talking Woman"), with restless women,sometimes impulsive, sometimes ready to bargain, yet wry, sly, not buyin' any alibis (this time!), and somewhat befuddled men, the latter (and mebbe the former) inching towards middle-aged crazy.
Meanwhile the already middle-aged men, like Ronnie Hawkins, Allen Ginsberg and Ramblin' Jack (ditto a certain well-seasoned, singing, guitar-playing gypsy hostess) thrive in the spotlight. Lonesome campfire cowpoke Ramblin' Jack has no problem fronting a big old electric band (a generation before A Stranger Here, where he's equally at home with the likes of Van Dyke Parks and David Hidalgo). Ginsberg recites from "Kaddish," one of his best long poems, in a hospitable mash-up with the tweaked beat of live "Love Minus Zero/No Limit", as Sarah D. delivers the word to a cabbie: time to throw Harry Dean Stanton a lifeline over the wall. He gets out, keeps doing great "Who Mee?" attempts at being casually on the lam, either before or after Dylan trades him Baez for a getaway horse. She settles down with Harry, explaining that the ever-budding Renaldo is like a jumpy burro, rolling stone etc.
Folkie nostalgia, the middle-aged macho implications of then-recent Outlaw Country (before and after a Columbia Records office guy blasting Willie's "Time of the Preacher"), even a tinge of Southern Rock, Scarlet Rivera's pre-Starbucks violin, visits to a Rez and urban New Jersey (African-Americans on the street discuss and sometimes argue about Hurricane Carter, who's also interviewed), Kerouac's grave and elsewhere in the neighborhood--it's all mulch fiction of Dylan's turf, which is surprisingly juicy in the Age of Punk and Disco (Gins also quite comfortably reading to the beat of the latter, and maybe the former, have to check again [so much slips through here]).
Only the late performance of "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" seems ( though measured, so perhaps deliberately?) overdone, in terms of bellowing the chorus, despite previously unnoticed, maybe recently added details of sensitive piety (sung by McGuinn, natch) in the verses. Doctrinal implications now ride with the usually universalist-seeming chorus, in context of possibly re-written verses, the whole song strapped to pale horse delivery, approaching sheer white light arena amplitude(compare this rendition to the much more agreeably affecting performance on the '74 BD&TB tour's wonderful Before The Flood). Hindsight here re-affirms (and re-invigorates) the impression that the Endless Tour, preceded by cash and interest re-infusions via treks and slogs with The Band, Rolling Thunder, TP & Heartbreakers and the Grateful Dead (expectations thus pressure of GD also led to glimpse of Endless Tour's rhythmic re-alignment, according to Chronicles) all have something to do with road as solution/counterworld to/for relationship and other ongoing crises/ impasses.(Not to mention Carnegie Hall, 1964: "It's Halloween, I got my Bob Dylan mask on." Now more than ever, fearlessly blasting through melting whiteface, icing on the cake.) Plus, this last part of the film also portends certain signposts just up ahead, especially when Ginsberg recites from Gospel, re the women taking up His body and bathing it--Dyl's all ears.
Great sound and pungent 70s visuals. BD had already made the Scorsese connection after all, and maybe thinkin' (studies of) Cassavetes, director of antsy Dylan docs Pennebaker natch, and hoping for success like that of Altman's Nashville, or Led Zep's Song Remains The Same? RAC's droller moments keep its Rolling Thunder rolling between those last two. Altman and Dylan even have Ronee Blakley's good work in common, so whaddaya want?.Why was it panned so deep, so decidedly, decisively (til it came ba-ack, via YouTube, at least) derisively, even young and youngish plain ol cranky about it? Maybe because you couldn't hit Pause or Stop and come back to it three hours or three days later in '78. But more to it than that, or maybe less, in another way. Your thoughts? don allred ¶ 2/09/2012 0 comments
Meanwhile the already middle-aged men, like Ronnie Hawkins, Allen Ginsberg and Ramblin' Jack (ditto a certain well-seasoned, singing, guitar-playing gypsy hostess) thrive in the spotlight. Lonesome campfire cowpoke Ramblin' Jack has no problem fronting a big old electric band (a generation before A Stranger Here, where he's equally at home with the likes of Van Dyke Parks and David Hidalgo). Ginsberg recites from "Kaddish," one of his best long poems, in a hospitable mash-up with the tweaked beat of live "Love Minus Zero/No Limit", as Sarah D. delivers the word to a cabbie: time to throw Harry Dean Stanton a lifeline over the wall. He gets out, keeps doing great "Who Mee?" attempts at being casually on the lam, either before or after Dylan trades him Baez for a getaway horse. She settles down with Harry, explaining that the ever-budding Renaldo is like a jumpy burro, rolling stone etc.
Folkie nostalgia, the middle-aged macho implications of then-recent Outlaw Country (before and after a Columbia Records office guy blasting Willie's "Time of the Preacher"), even a tinge of Southern Rock, Scarlet Rivera's pre-Starbucks violin, visits to a Rez and urban New Jersey (African-Americans on the street discuss and sometimes argue about Hurricane Carter, who's also interviewed), Kerouac's grave and elsewhere in the neighborhood--it's all mulch fiction of Dylan's turf, which is surprisingly juicy in the Age of Punk and Disco (Gins also quite comfortably reading to the beat of the latter, and maybe the former, have to check again [so much slips through here]).
Only the late performance of "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" seems ( though measured, so perhaps deliberately?) overdone, in terms of bellowing the chorus, despite previously unnoticed, maybe recently added details of sensitive piety (sung by McGuinn, natch) in the verses. Doctrinal implications now ride with the usually universalist-seeming chorus, in context of possibly re-written verses, the whole song strapped to pale horse delivery, approaching sheer white light arena amplitude(compare this rendition to the much more agreeably affecting performance on the '74 BD&TB tour's wonderful Before The Flood). Hindsight here re-affirms (and re-invigorates) the impression that the Endless Tour, preceded by cash and interest re-infusions via treks and slogs with The Band, Rolling Thunder, TP & Heartbreakers and the Grateful Dead (expectations thus pressure of GD also led to glimpse of Endless Tour's rhythmic re-alignment, according to Chronicles) all have something to do with road as solution/counterworld to/for relationship and other ongoing crises/ impasses.(Not to mention Carnegie Hall, 1964: "It's Halloween, I got my Bob Dylan mask on." Now more than ever, fearlessly blasting through melting whiteface, icing on the cake.) Plus, this last part of the film also portends certain signposts just up ahead, especially when Ginsberg recites from Gospel, re the women taking up His body and bathing it--Dyl's all ears.
Great sound and pungent 70s visuals. BD had already made the Scorsese connection after all, and maybe thinkin' (studies of) Cassavetes, director of antsy Dylan docs Pennebaker natch, and hoping for success like that of Altman's Nashville, or Led Zep's Song Remains The Same? RAC's droller moments keep its Rolling Thunder rolling between those last two. Altman and Dylan even have Ronee Blakley's good work in common, so whaddaya want?.Why was it panned so deep, so decidedly, decisively (til it came ba-ack, via YouTube, at least) derisively, even young and youngish plain ol cranky about it? Maybe because you couldn't hit Pause or Stop and come back to it three hours or three days later in '78. But more to it than that, or maybe less, in another way. Your thoughts? don allred ¶ 2/09/2012 0 comments
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Top Tens and some that maybe shoulda been
Don Allred's P&J 2011 plus:
main comments below, but almost listed Boston Spaceship's Let It Beard: shameless Midwestern Anglophilia from Bob Pollard & crew, frontloaded with a few throat-clearing gob-duds (get 'em out of the way, thanks Bob) and then steadily stirring up a trenchant tempest in ye beardmug, spinning me toward Mott The Hoople's Brain Capers (complement complement complement) Trombone Shorty has been known to imply or me to infer that jazz is just part of his job, and he can handle it, period. But the jazz on For True has more immediately gratifying purple and gold candy skull brainiac head rush than the pop tracks, as nicely flashy and guest starry as those can be (big deal) Another killer EP in the guise of a good album (sure are a lot of those).
Hey why wasn't this on there? (more than a certain number of well-known covers makes me uncertain)| 1 | (various artists), Dirty Water 2: More Birth of Punk Attitude Year Zero | Points: 10 |
| 2 | Lydia Loveless, Indestructible Machine Bloodshot | Points: 10 |
| 3 | David Murray Cuban Ensemble, Play Nat King Cole en Espanol Motéma | Points: 10 |
| 4 | (various artists), Live From the Old Town School Old Town School Recordings | Points: 10 |
| 5 | Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Telesterion Rodriguez Lopez Productions | Points: 10 |
| 6 | tUnE-yArDs, w h o k i l l 4AD | Points: 10 |
| 7 | (various artists), Golden Beirut: New Sounds From Lebanon Out Here | Points: 10 |
| 8 | (various artists), Note of Hope: A Celebration of Woody Guthrie 429 | Points: 10 |
| 9 | Emperor X, Western Teleport Bar/None | Points: 10 |
| 10 | Jay-Z and Kanye West, Watch the Throne Def Jam/Roc-a-Fella/Roc Nation | Points: 10 |
Singles | ||
| 1 | Sonny Rollins (ft Ornette Coleman), "Sonnymoon for Two" Emarcy | |
| 2 | Buddy Miller (ft. Lee Ann Womack), "Meds" New West | |
| 3 | John Doe, "Moonbeam" Yep Roc | |
| 4 | DJ Shadow, "Give Back the Nights" Roc-a-Fella | |
| 5 | Tom Waits, "Hell Broke Luce" Anti | |
| 6 | Lady Gaga (ft. Clarence Clemons), "The Edge of Glory" Interscope | |
| 7 | Wolves in the Throne Room, "Woodland Cathedral" Southern Lord | |
| 8 | John Doe, "Peggy Sue Got Married" Hear | |
| 9 | They Might Be Giants, "The Lady and the Tiger" Idlewild | |
| 10 | Adele, "Rolling in the Deep" Columbia/XL | |
The Jolly Boys, Great Expectation The Jolly Boys are one of the first and last leading bands playing mento, the 50s style sometimes marketed as "Jamaican calypso", and while it does have the sassy, party hearty social commentary of calypso (not always to the liking of politicians, police and thieves), the Jolly Boys' mento rolls the chunky, butt-thumping agility of homely percussion, banjos and guitars (a rougher cousin of the pre-Beatles and their budding generation's early skiffle influences). The social commentary's mostly first person on this album, well-chosen covers provide,explicit and implied narrative, via Albert Minott's eloquent growl. Winehouse's "Rehab" is the centerpiece, pumping into Iggy Pop's "Nightclubbing","You Can't Always Get What You Want", and increasingly less obvious choices, as "Ring of Fire"," Hanging on the Telephone", "Blue Monday", " Perfect Day" and "The Passenger" get swept and bounced along. They don't sound so old, but old enough to know themselves, their hopes, fears and appetites pretty well. Hell, even "Riders in the Storm" seems to fit, I think. Some good originals and Jamaican covers too.
¶ 1/28/2012 0 comments
Dirty Water Sandwich: some P&J Comments and then some
Dirty Water 2: More Birth of Punk Attitude doesn't have the sometimes spectacular transitions of its recent forerunner*, and isn't quite as abrasive, but compiler Kris Needs sets the same pace and perspective right off, veering from Captain Beefheart's lean and loping "Zig Zag Wanderer" to the cooler rifle range poise of The Human Expression's "Love At Psychedelic Velocity." Zig-zagging from familiar to emerging landmarks continues as Death's "Freaking Out" shrugs over over the cliff, with its stop-start momentum spun around some more by Dizzy Gillespie's "Bebop", with the spiraling electric guitar of (I think) Charlie Christian (there's no "punk jazz" per se on here, but Diz and the live MC5 dig deep and deliver quickly, gratifying rock-head attention spans and appetites). Yeah,doo-doo-wopping Silhouttes, strutting off to the poorhouse, smirking "Strange as it seems, all my money turned brown") Suicide suggestively crooning about a "Creature Feature", the Velvet Underground's Live in Texas 69 version of "I'm Waiting For My Man", with its sly classic spoken intro and brown narcotic boogiemorphic tendencies bleeding through the VU's better known distinguishing marks--yea, just when all those guys rushing to a peak of cool, we get the one-two punch of Patti Smith's "Piss Factory" and Wayne-to-Jayne County's "Man Enough To Be A Woman" Concise epics,bluntly bum-rushing the enemies of promise, and challenging themselves too. And just in case the Misunderstood's truly flower punk (acid in at least two senses) "Children of the Sun" seems a little too grand, the Unrelated Segments' "Story of my Life" immediately brings us back to itchy grievances, warty warning signs and the still-fresh zits of tombstone testimonials. Sometimes it seems like "right band, wrong track", but even then, context can fortify, as Blondie's (lyrically blurry but sonically tonic enough) late 70s "X-Offender" zigs back to the United States of America's "Hard-Coming Love", where chanteuse Dorothy Moskowitz and the USA's male geeks lure each other though shuddering psychotronic blossoms of (what turns out to be) foreplay, or at least something left gracefully for generations of imagination, in mid-air. Back to street level again, for the Godz' heartfelt, country-busking serenade, "C'mon little girl turn on" (that's the whole lyric, and all that's needed). These thrift store cowboys get washed through the Lower East Side by the alley waves of Holy Modal Rounders' "Indian War Whoop." So it goes, jumping back to the late 70s for the rattling b-movie tumult ("I do this every night") of "Imagination" by the sic and aptly named Rudement. Contextual momentum or not Some of the daring juxtapositions just doesn't fit (Woody Guthrie, Big Star, the Flamin Groovies, --possibly more examples of right artist, wrong track). But squinting as sternly as possible (and okay, Faust and some others are growing on me) these two discs still seem to have at least 97:26 of keepers. (sorry this is so long, but it's an involving album)
I'm totally infatuated with David Murray Cuban Ensemble (important to credit the Ensemble, not only the maesto) Play Nat King Cole En Espanol(some of these songs are Portuguese too, maybe). According to the promo materials, Cole's original versions, replete with stiff phonetic phrasing of fluid melodies, were received with affectionate amusement by his Latin fans (re Airto Moreita on Brazilian response to Getz's bossa nova). But IKC and/or his producers chose songs of amazing potential--there's no sense of Murray imposing his own thing, and/or renovating from the ground up. Stuff, frequently new stuff, happens every second, with zero hyperactivity or claustrophobia. He likes to feature different sections of his Ensemble on diff subsets and recurring approaches--the horns don't ride your ass into the ground, the accordion doesn't perk you into terminal Stsrbucks. A Yoda-like tango singer pops up at just the right moments. Murray's string arrangements alone are worth the price of admission.
Comments on Lydia Loveless and Live From The Old School: please see the Country Comments in previous post, Son of Deed Poll
Thought I had more about Omar Rodriguez Lopez and Telesterion, but it's sharp-edged, fluid (sawtooth waves employed?), analog musk, more astute than noodley, any purple more blended than The Mars Volta's reigning peacock screams. Latin rock with jazzy tendencies, rec to fans of early Santana, Rock En Espanol, whatever just went out of print on Shadoks. A personal Best-Of; you can stream it and a ton of his other albums here:
http://omardigital.rodriguezlopezproductions.com/
(Zechs Marquise,Omar's younger brothers' band, also has a 2011 album. Getting Paid. It's uneven, but worth checking out here: http://zechsmarquise.bandcamp.com )
Golden Beirut takes various routes, but the taut caution times boldness, straight ahead as far as possible and always ready to veer, evokes Wanna Buy A Bridge? at different points in every listen (so far).
Wondering about the sweetly unpretentious undercurrent of words in tuneyard's SXSW set ( spare, intimate, hopefully still archived on NPR) and greedy for more wonder< I dove through the rippling, gritty, snapping stripes of whokill to lyrics, and uh-oh. Something about a woman confronting the male invader of her ghetto courtyard, with a naive indignation and other elements which seem unlikely, in a woman who hasn't gotten killed yet. Kind of the wrong whiff of arty thing, combining badly with the tough textures. But tough cookies, listen to the music, try not to, Garbus and crew have got it (what does she do, construction-wise? George Clinton as Laurie Anderson as George Clinton?)
Western Teleport instantly evokes a post-budget, post-the-latest-Disaster Radiohead fan, sailing his flapping rig over the mountains like "Gyro Gearloose of the desert," as my drive-in colleague described the helpful hermit in 60s (70s?) high speed b-movie classic Vanishing Point. But the movie's supporting character gives our rebel hero some means to go far beyond the sandy inventor's test drives, most likely. On Western Teleport, Son of Gyro has himself become airborne, seeking his own fugitive muse babe in areas nailed by Robert Christgau: "where dystopian sci-fi is indistinguishable from democratic-socialist realism." Yep, he's kind of a Woody Partch Beefheart character as well, though no kind of musical geezer, necessarily traveling too light for that. Emperor X has also left another album's-worth of musical Easter eggs on both (or anyway two) sides of the screen: hidden all over the real-time USA, and as free downloads on his website.
Comments on Lydia Loveless and Live From The Old School: please see the Country Comments in previous post, Son of Deed Poll
I'm totally infatuated with David Murray Cuban Ensemble (important to credit the Ensemble, not only the maesto) Play Nat King Cole En Espanol(some of these songs are Portuguese too, maybe). According to the promo materials, Cole's original versions, replete with stiff phonetic phrasing of fluid melodies, were received with affectionate amusement by his Latin fans (re Airto Moreita on Brazilian response to Getz's bossa nova). But IKC and/or his producers chose songs of amazing potential--there's no sense of Murray imposing his own thing, and/or renovating from the ground up. Stuff, frequently new stuff, happens every second, with zero hyperactivity or claustrophobia. He likes to feature different sections of his Ensemble on diff subsets and recurring approaches--the horns don't ride your ass into the ground, the accordion doesn't perk you into terminal Stsrbucks. A Yoda-like tango singer pops up at just the right moments. Murray's string arrangements alone are worth the price of admission.
Comments on Lydia Loveless and Live From The Old School: please see the Country Comments in previous post, Son of Deed Poll
Thought I had more about Omar Rodriguez Lopez and Telesterion, but it's sharp-edged, fluid (sawtooth waves employed?), analog musk, more astute than noodley, any purple more blended than The Mars Volta's reigning peacock screams. Latin rock with jazzy tendencies, rec to fans of early Santana, Rock En Espanol, whatever just went out of print on Shadoks. A personal Best-Of; you can stream it and a ton of his other albums here:
http://omardigital.rodriguezlopezproductions.com/
(Zechs Marquise,Omar's younger brothers' band, also has a 2011 album. Getting Paid. It's uneven, but worth checking out here: http://zechsmarquise.bandcamp.com )
Golden Beirut takes various routes, but the taut caution times boldness, straight ahead as far as possible and always ready to veer, evokes Wanna Buy A Bridge? at different points in every listen (so far).
Wondering about the sweetly unpretentious undercurrent of words in tuneyard's SXSW set ( spare, intimate, hopefully still archived on NPR) and greedy for more wonder< I dove through the rippling, gritty, snapping stripes of whokill to lyrics, and uh-oh. Something about a woman confronting the male invader of her ghetto courtyard, with a naive indignation and other elements which seem unlikely, in a woman who hasn't gotten killed yet. Kind of the wrong whiff of arty thing, combining badly with the tough textures. But tough cookies, listen to the music, try not to, Garbus and crew have got it (what does she do, construction-wise? George Clinton as Laurie Anderson as George Clinton?)
Western Teleport instantly evokes a post-budget, post-the-latest-Disaster Radiohead fan, sailing his flapping rig over the mountains like "Gyro Gearloose of the desert," as my drive-in colleague described the helpful hermit in 60s (70s?) high speed b-movie classic Vanishing Point. But the movie's supporting character gives our rebel hero some means to go far beyond the sandy inventor's test drives, most likely. On Western Teleport, Son of Gyro has himself become airborne, seeking his own fugitive muse babe in areas nailed by Robert Christgau: "where dystopian sci-fi is indistinguishable from democratic-socialist realism." Yep, he's kind of a Woody Partch Beefheart character as well, though no kind of musical geezer, necessarily traveling too light for that. Emperor X has also left another album's-worth of musical Easter eggs on both (or anyway two) sides of the screen: hidden all over the real-time USA, and as free downloads on his website.
Comments on Lydia Loveless and Live From The Old School: please see the Country Comments in previous post, Son of Deed Poll
.Can't find my notes on Note of Hope, but they (Ani Di Franco, Lou Reed, Studs Terkel, most others, incl connective bassist Rob Wasserman and Van Dyke Parks, who composed the opening instrumental) find the music in Guthrie's words and def vice versa. This time, the words aren't only unpublished lyrics, also diary entries, maybe letters, jottings on envelopes, whatever may have gone through the melodist's mind while browsing this stuff--maybe next time from his pictchas? (G. drew, in some periods earned more from signpainting etc than music etc)
Not too far from Scrooge McDuck or Shakespeare's royals, Watch The Throne strives, jives, thrives and dives deeper into a vast vat of illusions and realities, in a way I haven't witnessed since Brian Wilson Presents Smile. The ultimate Bubble Boy-to-Man focus of which I'll take any day over The Smile Sessions' endlessly charming, endlessly endless blurfest (yeah, even the double-discs edition, much less the box)
Not too far from Scrooge McDuck or Shakespeare's royals, Watch The Throne strives, jives, thrives and dives deeper into a vast vat of illusions and realities, in a way I haven't witnessed since Brian Wilson Presents Smile. The ultimate Bubble Boy-to-Man focus of which I'll take any day over The Smile Sessions' endlessly charming, endlessly endless blurfest (yeah, even the double-discs edition, much less the box)
I can't find any bad music inspiring/requiring me to write, much less listen. Once upon a time, the Four Seasons, Lou Christie, the Bee Gees faithfully delivered new, horrible harvests of glory--but no more! And, beyond the ever-budding catalogs of Bob Dylan and Neil Young, where are the golden apples with worms and soft spots, so ripe for the plucking of tough love? There are some happy exceptions. Bad metal vocals can be abrasively stimulating, handier than coffee for already multi-tasking drivers, especially those of us with (so far) non-metal bladders. But oops that's all I got to write about those.
*From late 2010 ( for Dec 7--why were DW and DW2 released so very close together?)
Past several recent deadlines, I was all set for a hazy shade of winterlude, but immediately started burning turkey calories with Dirty Water: The Birth of Punk Attitude (Dec 7), 23 cannily programmed known (at least to collectors) milestones and revelatory rarities.Starts with the title track, which doesn't sound that great now, then the Seeds--but instead of "Pushin' Too Hard", it'd "Evil Hoodoo", crackling with full-bodied fuzz, no thin garage bluster, but headed out in mirrorshades Milky Ways and leather ripples you can live in: your home away from home, turns out that's the first theme established, to be developed in all sorts of vivacious variations.
¶ 1/28/2012 0 comments
The second theme comes from the next track, the Deviants' "Garbage." It's not as flashy, it's kinda dumptruck Bo Diddley and some spare air interspersed with gobs of reverb, but all shaped by characterization, as are the words. Mostly spoken: "Garbage! Get yours today. (sung) C'mon and feel it (speaker) IIt'll maek you feel good like it thinks you should. C'mon and feel it. It'l make you large, it'll put two cars in your garage. Garbage! c'mon and squeeze it. Garbage! c'mon and stroke it. Garbage! c'mon and suck it. Garbage!" No more instructions, too obvious to bother(this whole thing is also kind of asend up of drug commecials like the Standells "Try It" and of rock operas, reminding the Who they may have been better off with "A Quck One" mini-opera) time to just "Do It!" as Deviants' offspring Pink Fairies instruct, streamlining toward spirit of '76--but instead of Pistols and Dammed, we get Gene Vincent! Well, he did make it into the UK's mid-60s, and even had Billy Zoom in his last American band, but also it's a floating oasis (like I said cannily programmed also includes timing, so we don't get burned out or expect the obvious), and set-up for the Flaming Groovies' "Teenage Head", which gallops along like Vincent's colleague Link Wray, calmly (home away from home) characterizing, in first person, a bit like the Stooges and also going back to high school, so it's okay that he brags about his jailbait girlfriend, even with grown-up proficiency, then calmly transferring, re-branding with a hot pokerface: "I'm you." Like if only! Then T.Rex's girl-happy "Elemental Child", with Bolan's new toy, his electric guitar, making its live and lengthy debut. (home away from home can also remind us a lot of these guys were ex hippies, still jamsters, although re-wired with newer self-tied leashes)
Things get darker but back to Deviants' absurdism with lung-wounded march of the Monks" "I Hate You", then Jook's Slade-inspiring suedehead harmonies ( also harmonizing with Monks' high wild pitch and Deviants mock operatic tendencies, but Gene Vincent's sweetness too)"Oo oo Rudi", prob influenced the Clash's angels-with-dirty-faces moments too, But scarier characterization in Mott The Hoople's "The Moon Upstairs", where a lad damaged by head police "roams free as a bird with broken wings" and "those who laugh let this be your epitaph, and you'll feel every blow" it's punk and metal vengence, but also the frustrated idealism of "rejected neglected" ex-hippies and their family members in home away from home:"not trying to bleed you just trying to feed you, but you're too fookin sloww!" Also, "for those who laugh", Ian Hunter's own mad laugh back in arc of triumph (say like Vincent Price. getting revenge on reviewers in
Theatre of Blood), then immediately to extremely rare Hollywood glamsters Zoltan X's z-movie celestial butt patrol: "Humans are fu-u-un! Ahhh hah hah!" Then Sun Ra's "Rocket Number Nine," MC5's Ra-inspired" Rocket Reducer No.62", live with their brothers and sisters of course, MC5 little sibs the Up's "Sisters Sisters", I thought they were the set's only girls, but they just sing that way out of respect. Disc 2 takes us back to Earth, sort of with David Peel and the Lower East Side's wino park art, Silver Apples, streetwise Tom Sawyer philosophy, a bit like Rounders here, as they ease up on the home-grown electronics; Also the New York Dolls' "Subway Train", Last Poets' "On The Subway", Suicide, Silhouttes, Sensational Alex Harvey Band Rocket From The Tombs, Red Krayola Dictators ("Teengenerate" 's self-mocking goon party sounds like a precursor of "Jackass",etc) it all fits, even the lesser tracks (Can, Saints) and true dud (Peter Hammill), make it back to that home away from home.
"Do You Love Me?", apparently no relation to the one that goes "Do you love me, now that I can dance?", although might be an extremely mutational descendant, rhythmically--it's by the Stooges, when they had James Williamson and Ron Asheton both, with Asheton's groove and Willamson's more impulsive approach to guitar-touching. Sort of a cyclonic, peyote boogaloo conga line, with no stress, and this is what I mean about a home away from home, or one thing it can mean: not only the overall stance, but an extended, hard-charging, skull-rattling, yet reassuringly, invigoratingly steady ride. Don AllredTheatre of Blood), then immediately to extremely rare Hollywood glamsters Zoltan X's z-movie celestial butt patrol: "Humans are fu-u-un! Ahhh hah hah!" Then Sun Ra's "Rocket Number Nine," MC5's Ra-inspired" Rocket Reducer No.62", live with their brothers and sisters of course, MC5 little sibs the Up's "Sisters Sisters", I thought they were the set's only girls, but they just sing that way out of respect. Disc 2 takes us back to Earth, sort of with David Peel and the Lower East Side's wino park art, Silver Apples, streetwise Tom Sawyer philosophy, a bit like Rounders here, as they ease up on the home-grown electronics; Also the New York Dolls' "Subway Train", Last Poets' "On The Subway", Suicide, Silhouttes, Sensational Alex Harvey Band Rocket From The Tombs, Red Krayola Dictators ("Teengenerate" 's self-mocking goon party sounds like a precursor of "Jackass",etc) it all fits, even the lesser tracks (Can, Saints) and true dud (Peter Hammill), make it back to that home away from home.
--(name withheld) Saturday, 18 February 2012 (Yesterday)