Emperor, no clothes, you can sort out the rest.

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”

Cometh Down Hessian

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”

Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine

When I next real­ized that the Philip­pines had dropped into our laps I con­fess I did not know what to do with them… And one night late it came to me this way…1) That we could not give them back to Spain — that would be cow­ard­ly and dis­hon­or­able; 2) that we could not turn them over to France and Ger­many — our com­mer­cial rivals in the Ori­ent — that would be bad busi­ness and dis­cred­itable; 3) that we not leave them to them­selves — they are unfit for self-gov­ern­ment — and they would soon have anar­chy and mis­rule over there worse than Spain’s wars; and 4) that there was noth­ing left for us to do but to take them all, and to edu­cate the Fil­ipinos, and uplift and civ­i­lize and Chris­tian­ize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fel­low-men for whom Christ also died…

- Pres­i­dent William McKin­ley, The Chris­t­ian Advo­cate 22 Jan­u­ary 1903 (pub­lished posthumously)

A hope­ful soci­ety has insti­tu­tions of sci­ence and med­i­cine that do not cut eth­i­cal cor­ners, and that rec­og­nize the match­less val­ue of every life. Tonight I ask you to pass leg­is­la­tion to pro­hib­it the most egre­gious abus­es of med­ical research: human cloning in all its forms, cre­at­ing or implant­i­ng embryos for exper­i­ments, cre­at­ing human-ani­mal hybrids, and buy­ing, sell­ing, or patent­ing human embryos. Human life is a gift from our Cre­ator — and that gift should nev­er be dis­card­ed, deval­ued or put up for sale. (Applause.)

- Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, State of the Union address, Jan­u­ary 31, 2006

Jesu — “Your Path to Divinity”

The Face of Battle

Occu­pa­tion: Dream­land, dir. Gar­rett Scott and Ian Olds @ Int’l House, 7 p.m.

A few days lat­er, when every­one is more relaxed, the inevitable necrophilic humor of impe­r­i­al war-mak­ing comes out: “How much mon­ey would it take for you to have sex with a male corpse at the fifty-yard line dur­ing the Super Bowl half­time show? What? Five million?

Chris­t­ian Par­en­tiThe Free­dom: Shad­ows and Hal­lu­ci­na­tions in Occu­pied Iraq

Vad­er — “This is the War”

Juelz San­tana, fea­tur­ing Cam’ron — “Kill ‘Em”