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Graphic Design
When I was in my very first years of school, I remember
sitting around the breakfast table, eating my cereal behind a wall of cereal
boxes I had made using three packages to hide myself from the rest of the
family so that I could wake slowly while examining these marvels of graphic
design. In those days breakfast cereal would even come with a 45 rpm single on
the back, which you could cut out and play on your record player, which is precisely
what I did with the Bobby Sherman song that came on one such box, playing ‘Easy
Come, Easy Go’ till my Mickey Mouse player wore its grooves into nothing.
This close scrutiny and curiosity of product packaging has
continued all my life. Later things like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon,
with its bold prism cover, fold out sleeves and poster were treasures I would
nearly give my young life for. Fonts, colors, shapes, images all in the service
of selling something. Maybe this is what Marx meant when he said, ‘the
metaphysical niceties of commodity fetish’
Still I somehow value a book a bit more, regardless of
content if it has a pleasing and unique size, harmonizing color, and a spine
with a title that calls out just a bit more to be picked up and read. The
revolution of silk screening has spawned and endless sea of banality in regards
to T-Shirts, but the simple image of a gun on a tank top of a gangster in the
TV show, The Wire was brilliant. Graphic design as self-expression; I am a
weapon. Indeed the merging of politics and popular culture bled into the 1960s
and 70s, from Black Power to Punk through graphic design
Acid Mothers Temple
A Friend of mine visited me in San Francisco once.
Throughout the 80s he was a research engine on anything ‘underground’, and
though he was never the type of person to wear it on his sleeve, being more
interested in the contents of his passions more than personal credit, he is
probably one huge force in supplying ‘cool people’ with their tastes in film
and music.
This particular trip we made our customary trips to record
and bookstores, and when we got back to the house we put on a copy of Acid
Mothers Temple. Pataphysical Freakout. Within seconds I asked him to take it
off, knowing that what I was about to hear would blow me away, and that moving
around the house and cooking dinner would not be compatible with such an
experience. I later bought my own copy and entered a universe that would change
me forever. It was all there; the connection to the past in the form of mind
bending psychedelia, and even to Dada it the reference to Alfred Jarry’s
Pataphysics. I submerged myself in the waters of Japanese underground as the
underground dried up here on this continent, morphing first into Grunge, then later
Indie Rock.
Whether it is the masterful musicianship and arrangements of
Tsuyama Atsushi’s troubadour albums that sound as if they came from the middle
ages, or the psych/drone, aggressive minimalism of the solo works of Tabata
Mitsuru,, the lovely shimmering light on water sound of Higashi Hiroshi, and
Cotton Casino’s project, Pardons, powerful drumming of Shimura Koji (who could
very well have fit into Coltrane’s world), or the searing, ripping guitar work
by the group’s leader Kawabata Makoto, AMT remains a strong and vital force, both live and studio,
working their asses off with constant touring, being a huge inspiration to me
in my own work. Indeed it was after hearing a side project, Mainliner years ago
with Kawabata and Nanjo called Imaginative Plain, that I felt I needed to
attempt an answer in my own record with Jerry Blue, Mark Gergis and Cheryl
Leonard, The Pixie Kitchen’s RIOT 00:00, a record that also was in my own way a
tribute to one of my favorite records of all time, Sly Stone’s, There’s a Riot
Goin On.
Mainliner, in a new lineup put out the most amazing record I
have heard in years in 2013. It is called Revelation Space. It sounds like
predator and prey, or the song of oil on water fucking. The Ouroborus with a
contact mic on its tongue!
Savory and Sour
I prefer these tastes in both beasts and in the bounty of
our earth. Warm squashes, baked with butter, maybe stuffed with nuts and other
things, Tender little quail are among my favorite fowl, living or on my plate.
Rich stews, Kale sautéed with onion, garlic and tossed in mustard. Quince pies,
lemon tarts. Music played while preparing this feast could be begun with
Coltrane’s Favorite Things
Francis Bacon
I can make sense of the 20th century by looking
at his canvases. The blood, and the fear exist in a clean, modernist
background. He paints the Utopian dream of Modernism as a failed project, or at
least an impossibility. One thing I did not know until seeing many of his
paintings up close is that much of what I thought was white space painted was
unpainted canvas, absence as part of the composition. Clean nightmares.
COIL/Genesis/TG
I first heard Throbbing Gristle at a record shop on Burnside
in downtown Portland called Singles Going Steady. They had a turntable
available for customers to play records before buying them. A friend was with
me and he was taken with the name of the band. It was a 45 rpm, but I no longer
remember the name of the song. We both were familiar with punk, but were
completely unprepared for what we heard. My friend laughed his head off, and
gave me the headphones. What I heard would change me forever. It was noise
alone, aggressive and anarchic, but done on purpose and committed to vinyl, and
with art on the sleeve. What could this be, or mean? It instantly had me
questioning everything; what is music? What is political? What is Art? It took
me some time, a couple of years in fact to wrap my brain around what I heard
that afternoon, but TG became MY Velvet Underground, and an inspiration and
soundtrack to my life. Various other, later projects and offshoots I would
follow sporadically, but to this day always returning. The symphonic,
diabolically beautiful music of COIL is a wonderful trajectory to follow from
beginning to end. Genesis’ Psychic TV Theme records are among my most cherished
records. It was an amazing birthday brunch in 2009 where my friend, Marie
Losier brought Tony Conrad, AND a copy of a record he had just finished with
Genesis. It was through Marie that I met Genesis later, and had a chance to
personally thank for helping make me a musician and artist.
The Arcades Project
Begun in 1927, Walter Benjamin began collecting a variety of
texts relating to life in the 19th century. These texts range from
political tracts, letters, essays, bits of advertisements, newspaper articles.
His aim was to use collage of various sources to paint a critique of life as a
whole when Capitalism was consolidating itself into a great and fearsome force
during the Industrial Revolution. It began as an idea for an article and grew
into a massive, unfinished tome. The book is a dizzying one, best read
non-linearly, and is by turns exhilarating and heartbreaking. As well it is an
important book for us, laying down a history which we are connected to as
Capitalism revolutionizes itself again in our post information, post
speculation days in the 21st century.
Lewis Mumford
Though I love all the books I have read by him, the one I
will talk about here is Sidewalk Critic, a collection of article he wrote
during The Great Depression for New Yorker magazine. Nothing escapes his gaze,
he will review a local diner, a Laundromat, a row of houses or something as
ambitios as the Rockofeller Center. He examines how these structures impede, or
help life flourish, and of the forces creative or monetary which shaped what we
know to be the New York today as it was being built. Sometimes hilarious,
always entertaining and sometimes very sharp. But when Lewis Mumford shows his
fangs is sometimes when his writing is its funniest.
Tsai Ming Laing
I first saw The Hole, a musical set during a pandemic where
humans were ‘turning’ into cockroaches. It is a love story of two who refuse to
evacuate, and the erotic center is a hole in the floor between their
apartments. Fantastic! Later I saw The Wayward Cloud, also a musical and a love
story, where thwarted lovemaking due to porn shoots ends in what could possibly
be necrophilia. This film comes complete with dancing penises coming out of
toilet stalls and having sex with watermelon helmets! Also Fantastic!
Feedback
Maybe guitar feedback is the Dark Matter of rock music, and
those who wield it, shape it and coax it out are alchemists. Feedback is chaos speaking. Playing with feedback is dangerous, like feeding the big predators at
the zoo. Hendrix at Monterey pop Festival, John Fahey on his revelatory
Womblife. I always have kept an archive of feedback to season any new music
with, like garlic or hot sauce.
Women behind the more famous men
Unica Zurn/Hans Bellmer
Yoko Ono/John Lennon
Dorothea Tanning/Max Ernst
Alice Coltrane/John Coltrane
Laure/Georges Bataille
Beverly Conrad/the Warhol Scene
Diane Arbus/Allan Arbus
Yes this could go on and on, and while most of these women
are famous as well, the stories of these relationships fascinates me, and I
would love for someone to write this book (I am too lazy, but would eagerly buy
it)
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