Category Archives: Doing

In word and deed.

But why the rush to judge­ment on Land­ed? Two albums after the depar­ture of CAN’s native shaman Damo Suzu­ki, CAN evolved into man machines, refin­ing their entranc­ing psy­che­delia with stereo fix­es. Can the crit­i­cism reduced to a ques­tion of nov­el­ty that favors the organ­ic and roman­tic over the cal­cu­lat­ed advances the band made in this period?

Maybe Land­ed is a water­shed moment for CAN for all the wrong rea­sons. Hol­ger Czukay engi­neered the record on a 16 track, a first for the band, giv­ing their mul­ti­lay­ered ideas and com­po­si­tions more sep­a­ra­tion and clar­i­ty. Few bands can boast as much musi­co­log­i­cal sophis­ti­ca­tion as CAN, but it’s not until Land­ed that their tech­nol­o­gy catch­es up with their abilities.

As CAN’s sto­ry unfolds in their per­for­mance DVD, the images of each mem­ber in gar­gan­tu­an head­phones are reas­sur­ing and dis­ori­ent­ing: astro­nauts need their space­suits to live, don’t they?

CAN — “Red Hot Indians”

The music busi­ness is a cru­el and shal­low mon­ey trench, a long plas­tic hall­way where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a neg­a­tive side.

- Hunter Thompson

It’s a ques­tion of extreme pric­ing and sale. If there is no indie retail to help build new bands, we are left with MySpace, the unfil­tered Inter­net, and ad/TV/movie place­ment to intro­duce peo­ple to new bands. Retail would be left to the Best Buy/Starbucks axis. That’s not too appeal­ing of a sce­nario to me.

- Patrick Mon­aghan, Pres­i­dent, CTD, Ltd.

Is there no alter­na­tive? The par­a­site’s only fear is the death of its host. Mairead Case’s arti­cle at Pitch­fork on Best Buy’s loss leader maneu­vers illus­trates how des­per­ate the record indus­try has become in recent years. But as I mouthed off at Her Jazz, not only is there a big­ger pic­ture, there are many pictures.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Sym­pa­thy for the Mid­dle Man”

A con­tro­ver­sy? It seems almost a shame that AIDS Wolf would get such a cur­so­ry dis­missal con­sid­er­ing the rich, con­tentious dis­cus­sion that brought Jes­si­ca Hop­per and Drew Daniel into the mix. Maybe the sig­nif­i­cance of invok­ing AIDS as a half-baked noise con­cept was­n’t worth the atten­tion; con­sid­er that teach­ing ABC’s has­n’t made Amer­i­ca more lit­er­ate (via NPR).

Would they be less offen­sive with­out a pub­li­cist (tree, for­est, no one around)? To what extent does a band’s flippancy/absurdity/whathaveyou reflect the gen­er­al malaise/ignorance/handwringing char­i­ta­ble spirit/willful hatred of affect­ed populations?

To some extent, AIDS gets treat­ed today as though it were an ’80’s arti­fact — a cul­tur­al prob­lem and locus of shame and pity rather than a sci­en­tif­ic and med­ical one. This demon­strates the over­whelm­ing rhetor­i­cal suc­cess of the Rea­gan con­tin­u­um — a focus on fam­i­ly, per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty and the impor­tance of the indi­vid­ual over every­thing else. In many respects Rea­gan’s entered his twen­ty-sixth year in office, but this just isn’t semi­otics. It’s big phar­ma and insur­ance lick­ing their chops, com­mod­i­fy­ing ill­ness, bul­ly­ing the FDA, and cel­e­brat­ing dereg­u­la­tion in a grotesque orgy of suf­fer­ing. (Dan­te’s Divine Com­e­dy has been on my mind a lot late­ly. So has Boc­cac­cio, but that’s almost all the time.)

Where to begin? Sure­ly not with these jok­ers. They’re Cana­di­an! They have sin­gle-pay­er! That’s not very Dick­en­sian noise, right?

(Keep in mind that Greil Mar­cus point­ed out in Lip­stick Traces that Richard Huelsen­beck once told an audi­ence at Cabaret Voltaire that there was­n’t enough suf­fer­ing, and Ger­man WWI vets, dis­fig­ured by the fight­ing and mus­tard gas, were in atten­dance. Kin­da makes John­ny Rot­ten and Mal­colm McLaren seem a lit­tle pre-school by comparison.)

AIDS Wolf — “Vam­pire King”

Things are hec­tic. This is cryp­tic. Con­tem­plate Male­vich’s Glit­ter­ing Grinder and Kafka’s tor­ture machine in “In the Penal Colony”. There’s a per­verse seren­i­ty there, some­thing Fou­cault­ian, some­thing Marx­i­an and more than just a lit­tle Weber­ian. In short, it’s heavy and work-related.

Behold…the Arc­to­pus — “PAINcave”

Parts & Labor — “Time­line”

Tonight @ First Uni­tar­i­an Church, 7:30 p.m. Pre­view here (via Youtube.)

No sur­prise, right? Wrong. Even after Blessed Black Wings marked met­al’s resur­gence into the main­stream along with Mastodon and Isis, it seems that they’ve joined the flot­sam and jet­sam.

For me, Blessed Black Wings remains an album for these times: the oily gui­tars revive Sab­bath’s Satan­ic moral clar­i­ty, lib­er­tar­i­an lean­ings and des­per­ate mes­sage, all of which are cru­cial anti­dotes to the xeno­pho­bic theoc­ra­cies con­sol­i­dat­ing pow­er around the globe.

Rest assured that the post-scripts are wel­come nonethe­less.

Pre­pare your­self for a sweaty, stoned night! Let’s revis­it the argument:

High on Fire — “Broth­er in the Wind”

Thrones — “Epi­cus Doomi­cus Bumpitus”