Category: Tuesday Post

You may not be aware of this, but people on the internet can be very mean and very stupid at times.

Look through the comments on any social media post, especially one that has controversial or political subject matter, as I’m sure you all have, many times. You will see that everyone seems to be collaborating on making everything just a leeetle bit more awful.

I’m guessing that if we were to be truthful, we would all have to admit that we’ve contributed to that mess. Sometimes flame wars can be fun, but tbh I think there are diminishing returns on this.

And let’s admit this, too – those idiots we’ve been whacking over the head with our most refined rhetorical flourishes? They deserved it! When I called someone a human carbuncle the other morning, I was simply telling the truth. As we say on the internet, “No lies detected.”

Of course, I deleted that comment almost immediately. I realized the fascist moderators would put me in internet jail if I didn’t. I just had to hope that the human carbuncle in question saw my comment before I exxed it out. It’s important to point out the errors of other people’s ways

Also, I kind of like saying “human carbuncle.” It fills me with a mixture of disgust and righteousness. That mixture of disgust and righteousness is one of the many pleasures one might hope to experience while doom scrolling and simultaneously sniping in the comments. A kind of satori, if you will.

Only, not really. I know better. I know I’m spreading poison. But it feels so good! It’s like… power.

The other night, Donald Trump posted 160 zingers in a single evening. As you might surmise from this, he is the most powerful man on the planet, except for Vladimir Putin, who hardly seems to post on social media at all, now that I think about it. At least not from his own account. The exception that proves the rule, I suppose.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I were to be nicer to people online. My fear is that I would disappear. I’m compelled to ask, “If I’m not poking the bear, will the bear remember to poop in the woods?” And how would I know if he did?

–

Hey, what do you think about liking this post and subscribing to my blog? Might be pretty cool, right? Give it a shot, what the hey. I also really love getting comments. Even on my political posts.

Neon Heat Disease is my jam

What would an all-yankee King Crimson sound like, you ask? Here’s the answer.

Belew/Levin/Vai/Carey

Not to limit myself to a single answer to this question, but Beat is my favorite currently-active band. I hope (they’ve hinted) that they’re working on an album of original music. The primary work here, covering the music of King Crimson’s 80s ouvre, lends itself to a lot of things that I resonate with in terms of a creative approach to rock music.

They have the deepest pocket of any rock band I can think of, and I love their mathy-ness. They’re algo-rhythmic®! I hear the Beatles in this music. King Crimson’s next phase would be more overt about the connection, but the basic sonics of this band harken back in the melodicism, the collaborative writing process between Fripp and Belew, and the exacting approach to arrangements.

On the other hand, I can note the similarity of “Neon Heat Disease” to “Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish” by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band off of Trout Mask Replica. So.. is 80s Crimson a perfect amalgam of Revolver and Trout Mask with a forward-looking technical bent? I think the case could be made by plunking the needle down on this album.

Tony Levin is the second vocalist on this, and he’s also taken over keyboards from Fripp. He also provided many of the photographs of the band that grace the inside of this triple gatefold and booklet. His presence in this re-imagining of the original music is vital to its success.

Steve Vai’s replacement of Fripp works because there’s a line he treads between copying and originating. He has to honor that huge presence that would otherwise be missing without disappearing as a separate entity. One early indication of how he approached this is his solo in Heartbeat. It sounds like electric erhu. That’s a really cool way to interpret Fripp’s playing and take it somewhere else entirely at the same time, by adding an unexpected third element. There’s nascent world-music ambitions in the 80s Crimson music sourced here, and adding sonics that suggest new contexts is absolutely in keeping.

What Danny Carey adds most significantly here is that he plays all of these songs on a set of acoustic drums. I think the music from the later source albums is greatly improved by this one change. I don’t recall seeing any electronic drums in Carey’s setup from the show (you can correct me if you know different) and the essential liveness of the sounds he provides raises all of the music from the second and third albums up to the sonic level of the first album. I get that Bruford wanted to push the envelope on the sound palate he was using, but this live recording makes an excellent case for the irreplaceability of percussion sounds coming from skin and bone, not curated electrons.

This is one of my most important objects from my move back to analog music. I love vinyl in all its machine-age glory. Carey’s drumming here is evidence for my case. Music must be made by flesh and bone and all of the worldly materials. I fully believe that, and here’s some strong evidence.

–

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, please leave a comment and a like, and as always, subscriptions are welcome and encouraged!

Sometimes I Wonder if I Will Live to See the End of This Era.

A Show-and-Tell

If, if Reagan played disco
He’d shoot it to shit.
You can’t disco in jack boots.

High upon a white horse
He’d sing lame lyrics
To try to reach the working man.
–The Minutemen, 1982

That’s the entire lyrics to If Reagan Played Disco by southern California punk band the Minutemen, released as one of five songs on a seven inch vinyl record entitled “bean-spill e. p.”

Here’s my copy: Sorry, I will only be posting the non-obscene label here…

        

This cultural artifact from 43 years ago shows that the issues that seem so immediate and emergent right now have been with us for decades. The Republican conservative project has been the same for all this time. The Democratic response has been just that – a weak, ineffectual response. The Democrats initiate nothing. All they seem to do is talk in the least effective/offensive way about vaguely lefty ideas they never enact, while governing like diet Republicans.

The real response to what’s happening in the world now comes from outside the corporate infrastructure, in places like the LAVA Center, citizen political groups, spaces that hold independent artists, writers, musicians and other creatives, who exist outside that structure. We are purified in our intentions because we exist outside the mainstream.

The mission of mainstream cultural money and power is to blind us to what’s real, to create an artificially rarified sense of what qualifies as legitimate cultural contribution so that anything real – anything you’d recognize as coming from someone’s real life and intention is seen as substandard — grubby and grimy, faulty, unwashed and obscene.

Because the truth is obscene. We see the IDF shooting Palestinian children in the head, carpet bombing and starving an entire people out of existence. And in the Palestinian people we should see ourselves. The big money, the power of industry, and world leadership supplies the bullets to, as our president says, “finish the job.”

“The job” is to diminish working people, out of existence if necessary. Their mission is to fill us with artificial hopes and synthetic mass-manufactured bullshit dreams, all the while eroding all of the real value – the compassion and care, the pride, the willingness to work to better each other and ourselves together, the simple beauty of the world around us – and turn it all into a zero-sum game, a race to gobble up that which has more value if left alone, those things that will grow if nurtured but can only wither if exploited.

Our job is that nurturing, and we’re doing it now: sharing our hearts, hearing each other. It’s the same job the Minutemen were doing decades ago. “If Reagan Played Disco.” In those words, there is a dream. It’s the same dream that had that lone student standing in front of a line of tanks in Beijing not so long after this record was made.

Some say that student’s name was Wang Weilin. The Chinese government says there was no such person. It’s said he was 19 years old when he stood in front of those tanks. It’s said he was arrested for “political hooliganism,” whatever that means. Now, nobody can prove he existed or if he exists still, in some gulag somewhere. But we know who he is, because of what he did – what we all saw him do, even though his country’s government denies it ever happened.

D. Boon, the guitarist and singer of the Minutemen died in the band van when it rolled while they were on tour, three years after this record was released. These grooves are part of his corpse. After he died, his fellow band members George Hurley and Mike Watt continued on.

Years later, they recorded a drop-dead gorgeous instrumental called “Tien An Men Dream Again” as fIREHOSE, with guitarist Ed fROMOHIO.

Barrett by Syd Barrett

A reminder of what might have been

Syd Barrett was the original leading light of Pink Floyd, but succumbed to debilitating psychological issues that began around the time of the release of the band’s first album. He left the band under a cloud after a short struggle to continue contributing, and after two erratic solo albums, left the music business entirely. Barrett, his second solo album, was the end of the road for Syd as a recording artist.

It’s sssssooooo wwwwweeeeiiiirrrrrddddddddd, but it’s also surprisingly good considering the problems involved in making it, and different from anything else you might care to name in rock music.

The first thing I think of with Syd’s solo stuff is wild tempo shifts and a casual attitude towards pitch, but there’s less out-of-control-ness than you might think on Barrett. I mean, it’s loose, at times almost chaotic, but I think Syd was a lot more on top of things for this record than his rep might suggest.

“Gigolo Aunt,” for instance is prime late-sixties pop rock, as is “Baby Lemonade.” The shuffling beats, the psychedelic brightness, the unique phrasing and viewpoint — all are trademark, and testament to Barrett’s distinctive creativity.

The band is Syd on vocals and guitar, Richard Wright on keys, Jeff Shirley from Humble Pie on drums, and David Gilmour on bass and backing vocals. Gilmour and Wright are the producers. At Gilmour’s insistance, Syd plays all the guitars.

Ultimately, it’s both its own thing – loose and immediate, quirky and streamlined – and a reminder of what might have been.

10/28/24

I’m listening to Hand. Cannot. Erase. by Steven Wilson and it’s a remarkable experience.

My copy of Hand. Cannot. Erase. by Steven Wilson

It came out in 2015. Wikipedia tells me it’s his fourth solo album, since deactivating Porcupine Tree after the less-than-successful The Incident (an album I liked, though they’ve made better.)

This album is proggy af. Synths, time signature shenanigans, lots of notes, two 10+ minutes-long tracks… and yet it feels contemporary. If Classic Rock™ were still a thing as of 10 years ago, this album would definitely qualify. I hear the influences, and the originality. This is a Contender, an album that should be in the pantheon.

I’m listening now and it soothes me. The election THE GODDAMN ELECTION is 8 days away and I have little hope that things are going to be OK. There is a charismatic cult leader openly running for president, describing the fascist policies he intends to implement publicly, and the supposed “normie” (but also authoritarian and a genocide) alternative is barely hanging on to a lead in the current polling. The only person in the race whom I think might have a chance of setting this country on the right path has absolutely no chance of winning. It’s a scary time.

But this album is good, thoughtful, and human. The playing here reminds me that there is virtue in people, and that that virtue… great musicianship, great music production, a clear eye expressed in the lyrics of these songs, originality… can still happen.

Steven Wilson gives me hope.