Throbbing Gristle's April 25/26th, 2009 Chicago shows

“We aren’t interested in show business, so shut the fuck up.” --Genesis P. Orridge

I had the extreme pleasure of seeing both sets of the April 25th show in Chicago this year. There were several Chicago musical "luminaries" there--most incognito--but I recognized a few here-and-there, just as I had at Psychic TV's 2004 Empty Bottle gig where I literally bumped into Genesis P. Orridge on the way out the front door for a smoke.

The Logan Square Auditorium concerts were the first time that TG had ever played the windy city on what was a four city tour (major ones only) of the United States. The last time Gristle played America, that rough beast heading towards Bethlehem was...residing in the White House, but that era's finally coming to a screeching halt as many of us suspected it would. America looks-the-grimier for it, maybe we'll avert ecological catastrophe, maybe not, but besides ourselves, we'll know who to blame: industrialists, and not the kind that play concerts. Logan Square Auditorium is a pretty old room and it was becoming apparent just a few minutes into the set that the structure of the building was never going to be the same, ever again. If you loved extreme music, this was going to be your night, and I spotted people in "Coil," "Can," "Kraftwerk," and even "Popol Vuh" (the last three being "krautrock" groups) t-shirts, something I'm certain to never see again in one place.

You didn't need to be on drugs to feel your consciousness being altered at the show, it was riveting, devastating, and in a way that's beyond rare. From the first set, which was an improvised soundscape to the late Derek Jarman's "In the Shadow of the Sun" (1980) made expressly for the group to score, to the second, comprised of a mix of oldies and new material, it was very much as the accounts of TG had always said they were: they were so powerful that they will change your consciousness forever, a completely immersive and subversive experience all around. Nietzsche said that there were only two Christians: "Jesus and St. Francis." Many have said that there was only one industrial group ever, Throbbing Gristle, and I would be hard-pressed to disagree with them. There's an unmistakable feeling when one bears witness to artistic truth, and like some kind of religious experience, it's irrefutable, and likewise, immutable. The occasion was truly historic, like having the good luck of catching the Velvet Underground.

The speaker columns were possibly some of the tallest I've ever seen and with every air-molecule vibrating violently, and the sensation within the crowd was akin to what it must be like to swim in a pool of jello, you could literally feel your innards moving. Beyond that, there was the sensation of something much bigger than the people creating the music, the sounds, and the people witnessing it, something you cannot put a price tag on, nor something you can sully with money. It was a shared and communal experience.

The link below will take you to a downloadable file of the second set, enjoy (or don't). Play at as high a volume as possible. It won't be exactly the same, but it should give you a pretty good idea of what it was like. TG allowed audience members to come into the Logan Square Auditorium without any searches. Read the quote above, and it will all make sense. Public music is public. You put it out there, or you do not, because once it is out there, it's no longer entirely yours. If money is all an artist is concerned about, it's no longer about the music or connecting with people anymore, it's just more business-as-usual, over-the-counterculture, commodified and dead at your door. Downloads don't seem so evil after that, but please support your favorite artists anyway.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/zmw4ndwkozk/Throbbing%20Gristle%202009-04-26%20Chicago.rar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_8Q7mOnn-8

Ron Asheton (1948-2009)

Ann Arbor, Michigan--Last night, it was announced that Ron Asheton, primary guitarist for the proto-punk group the Stooges, had died. Apparently, Asheton had been dead for a few days of natural causes. He was 60.

Asheton, James Osterberg (Iggy Pop), and Scott Asheton formed the nucleus of the Stooges from 1967-1974 when the band imploded over a lack of interest and the vagaries of heroin-addiction. There's nothing like that first time hearing their three albums from that era, it's a stunning experience, and nobody has sounded quite like them, either before or since.

My own personal favorite album is "Fun House," from 1970, which still sounds like the future. The Stooges were the "sister" group of the politically radical MC5, a band whose ranks have been decimated since 1991 with the death of lead-singer Rob Tyner.

Ron Asheton's place in rock and music history as an influential guitarist is secure. While too many lousy garage bands were spawned from his style (which really, was inimitable), those rare successes were worth it, from Killing Joke, to Minor Threat, to groups like the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and even Joy Division, Asheton's style has and will continue to endure.

He was an unsung-part of punk, one of the true founding fathers of what was once a viable and important musical form, and he sat on the sidelines while others made a fortune copping his style. Asheton was beyond mere punk rock, a cultural form that ossified long ago. That's been over for a long-time, and now it's truly over. In 2007, the Stooges released what will be their final album, "The Weirdness," barring another barrage of "unreleased" material. Anything else will be posthumous, after-the-fact. It's barely known to most, but Ann Arbor and the environs of Detroit produced the earliest forms of what's known today as punk rock. That was forty-years-ago.

Think what you want of the Midwest, but we've produced a lion's share of relevant American culture over the last 100 years. Rest in peace, Ronnie, it should have been Ted Nugent. Three albums that changed the world: "The Stooges" (1969, produced by the Velvet Underground's John Cale), "Funhouse" (1970), and "Raw Power" (1973).

Postscript, 01.08.2009--NPR corrected itself today at the end of a program, noting that they had played a song from "Raw Power," which Asheton only played bass on. The main guitarist at that time was James Williamson, who last reported, was a business executive. So, NPR did an outro of "I Wanna Be Your Dog," which became incredibly subversive with the voiceover of all the contributors (money) to the show. I didn't expect anyone at NPR to know the difference, but they tried, they tried.

The Saddest Song Ever Written: "The Bed," by Lou Reed

No, it's not the "Hungarian Suicide Song." In 1973, Lou Reed was riding high. He had scored a reasonably popular single in the last year off of the LP "Transformer," produced by glam rockers David Bowie & Mick Ronson . That song was "Walk on the Wild Side," and it charted at #16 in the U.S. and #10 in the U.K. What would Lou Reed follow-up his commercially successful glam rock LP?

As Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore so aptly put it, Lou Reed followed-up "Transformer" with the most depressing album ever made. I would add that it also included the saddest song ever written on it: Berlin. The album tanked.

Making the album was so depressing that producer Bob Ezrin, who produced Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper, and a gaggle of others, told Reed to "put the tapes in a drawer and forget about it." Everyone plays on Berlin: Steve Winwood, Jack Bruce, the Brecker brothers, Aynsley Dunbar (fresh from Frank Zappa), Steve Hunter, and even Tony Levin! Almost all of them hated the album and the experience.

Before this album, rock just didn't deal much with truly adult themes, and its time had come. After Berlin, things would never be the same. It reflected the horrible disillusion of 1973. Watergate was everywhere, and the war in Vietnam was ending in a very ugly way. Heroin was everywhere. Cynicism was rampant. I don't know how you write a song like "The Bed" at the age of 30-31. You have to lose a lot of people before you even begin to understand what loss means, but it's a testament to Reed's sensitivity to understand the themes in "The Bed."

I never would have started if I'd known

That its end this way But funny thing, I'm not at all sad
That it stopped this way
This is the place where she lay her head
When she went to bed at night
And this is the place our children were conceived
Candles lit the room brightly at night
And this is the place where she cut her wrists
That odd and fateful night
And I said, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, what a feeling
And I said, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, what a feeling
("The Bed," Lou Reed, 1973)

In all of American songwriting--at least--I cannot think of a sadder song. Sure, there are a few uplifting moments on Berlin, but they're hard-won. That's just like life, and it's OK to recognize this in our culture. Just two-years-later Reed would foist "Metal Machine Music" on the world, once again rejecting superstardom. Yet, he was just doing what he had with the Velvet Underground--his own thing. Maybe Lou's burned-out nowadays, but he's always going to be the voice of the Velvet Underground and the man who wrote "The Bed."