Smolensk

WWW--Here are a couple of tracks from my music project, Smolensk. "Support" features the Gristleizer, a box co-created by industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle. Enjoy (or don't). Let me know if it works or not. You might have to "friend" me on Myspace to listen to them or have a preexisting account.

http://music.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=music.singleplaylist&friendid=164391063

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

The Return of Throbbing Gristle, and the death of Reagan and Thatcherism

WWW--On April 25th, I'll be going to see industrial pioneers, Throbbing Gristle in Chicago. Not everyone knows who they are, but they are essentially the creators of "industrial culture" and beyond. For years-and-years all I've been able to do is read about them and lament that I never got to see them perform live since their last show was in San Francisco in May 1981.

But several years ago, they finally decided to put things from the past aside--all the slights, issues, and arguments--and regrouped, doing a few shows in London, then throughout most of Europe and parts of the rest of the globe.

It's hard to describe the sound of TG, but an old college acquaintance put it best when he wrote, "TG is like a drug...you either like it or you don't." I don't just like TG, I love them. Having seen PTV3 in 2004, this is going to be part of a surprisingly fulfilled wish list.

When TG broke-up in May 1981, the Reagan revolution was in its infancy. England was suffering under the same kind of marketplace fascism, and as they've been a virtual economic satellite of the United States ("51st State"!) since the late-1970s, we've had a shared fate as cultures. Groups like TG have been that much needed antidote to obsolete conventional wisdom and thinking, a genuine part of our Western counterculture.

TG ended where Reaganism began. Now TG begins anew as Reaganism ends, dies. As above, so below, so mote it be. The final show in Chicago will be in a Presbyterian church, it couldn't be more fitting. Welcome back.

AP: "Opening of ABBA museum delayed"

Stockholm Syndrome, Sweden--In the nation that gave the world one of the earliest examples of a social safety-net, socialized medicine, and women the right to vote, we have...ABBA.™

Today, we're hearing that the opening of the ABBA museum™ in the capital city is being delayed. ABBA™--a pop group with an extremely irritating name and sound--are loved by...well, millions of simple nimrods worldwide. Gay men who have no taste love them for reasons of trite camp. Dumb women love them because--why do you think?! Why do most chick flicks suck? Nooooooo claaaassssss.

These dames, they're stupid, Jesus Christ you know it, and these goobers and mooks are going to vote for that cheerleading Sarah Palin wacko like they did for Warren G. Harding in 1920 for no other reason than "because." John McCain will become infested with tumors, and she's going to be the first unqualified woman president who takes us all over the cliff. Anyone who would want a former glamor queen or a cheerleader to be president is batshit crazy.

Let's face it: Women have a way of doing incredibly stupid shit that's unique to their gender. Men aren't the only predictable and superficial ones out there, and to think morons are isolated to one gender (or party) is utterly ridiculous and absurd.

You know, in the 1970s, industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle had a "thing" for these Swedish pop whatchamacallits, and it was done out of an extreme irony. Some of it, I assume, was simply to annoy punk rockers which is always good for an easy larf when you're bored. You have to remember that ABBA™ was created by a Swedish millionaire--they weren't a real "band" or "group," but a fiction-of-sorts. Kind of like George W. Bush or any presidential candidate, they were just puppets with a script singing to a playback.

But Throbbing Gristle had a good point: this kind of pop music is so vacant, so hollow, so insincere, that bands like TG, NON, Coil, SPK, Cabaret Voltaire, etc., could never compete with the subversive nihilism behind such an obvious expression of the spiritual abyss of this era. No more fucking ABBA™ indeed. 370 million (they bought multiple-copies) ABBA™ fans can be wrong, so very wrong every single time. Go read Oscar Wilde, some Pasolini, Gore Vidal and peruse the autobiography of Quentin Crisp. You'll actually get something out that.

"Opening of ABBA museum delayed," AP, 09.11.2008: http://enews.earthlink.net/article/ent?guid=20080911/48c897c0_3ca6_1552620080911-1516566394

Postscript: I've been informed that numerous porn production houses are searching desperately for Sarah Palin look-alikes. The Gods must be qwazy...

Postscript to the postcript: The Food Channel's delightfully cynical Anthony Bourdain had an episode in Sweden where he and a group of Viking-bikers threw battle-axes at an ABBA cd. "Mama mia that, you son-of-a-bitch! yelled Bourdain to the applause of the "Vikers." Goddamn if I don't love that guy. Ramones forever (just no copies, punk is over).

"No more fucking ABBA!"

ABBA--Drag queens, Toni Colette, and Throbbing Gristle are sad. Babs is glad, and I couldn't care any less (OK, I lied). When Terence Stamp made his historic proclamation in the sleeper, "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," a lot of us had to agree: no more fucking ABBA, indeed. Camp doesn't mean it doesn't stink.

Postscript, 07.14.2008: The Guardian's Ben Child has kinda-sorta quoted from my piece, making a similar observation! I'm sure that the Terence Stamp quote came to him as well--it just had to be said. I can recall being blasted daily by the neighborhood rednecks, over-and-over again, with that pestilence called "ABBA," that Swedish supergroup created by a millionaire...a little like KISS, that.

Postscript, 07.15.2008: Toni Colette was more likable plump. Still, Colette wasn't as fat as my ex when she was in "Muriel's Wedding." No more fu...you know the drill.

NO MORE FUCKING ABBA: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/07/you_review_mamma_mia.html