I Want My Avant-Garde TV

This video is great (hat tip to WFMU). I'm a bit dismayed by some of the comments on Youtube, though. For instance, someone remarked, "I really wanted to mute all idiots laughing... bunch of ignorants." To which someone else replied, "I think Cage considered the idiots laughing as part of his music." 

Now, I totally agree that Cage considered the audience reaction as part of the music. But I don't think he would have considered them idiots. Why? Because art is supposed to be stone cold serious? Do you think they laugh because they don't "get it?" Do you think you get it?

If you do, then you don't. If you don't, then you do. Get it?

These comments completely ignore the influence of Zen on Cage's work. This is the musical equivalent of a koan. There's no "getting it," as in rationally understanding it. It is its action. It is what is happening. You either enjoy that or you don't, and there's no prescribed way to enjoy it (though Cage himself says he prefers laughter to tears, and hear hear for that). The only people who really don't get it are the dildos who pay to go see/hear 4'33" and then just sit there in silence. The piece isn't supposed to be four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence, it's simply four minutes and thirty three seconds. Cage didn't believe in silence, so that's actually the one thing the piece can't be.

By explaining the music this way, have I indicted myself along with people who think they understand it and look down upon others who don't? Perhaps, but I don't mind the paradox. I find it appropriate, and it amuses me.

Humorlessness, pretentiousness, and conformity is destroying the arts. I want my avant-garde TV.

Calling All Mutants!

Os Mutantes are coming to Salt Lake City! "Os" is the second-person familiar plural pronoun in Spanish (and I assume Portuguese as well), so there name translates roughly to "You Mutants." (Or, as I like to translate it, "Y'all Mutants.") So I'm calling on all you mutants out there in SLC to come join me at Urban Lounge on May 10.

Also check out my "Song for Sunday" entry, in which I do an impromptu and ill-informed occult reading of "Bat Macumba."

Experimental Sunday: Einsturzende Neubaten

Howdy folks. Are you having a good time? Enjoying the chants, the drones, the sacred noise? Good. More is forthcoming. More writing will be forthcoming as well. Which you might not care for. But this is not about you. Just gloss over it and crank up the jams.

Y'know, I do like to read from time to time. Too bad the internet distracts me from the fact that I have an amazing library of mostly unread books. I could be spellbound by Fearful Symmetry or The Golden Bough, but no I'm on goddamn twitter or ok cupid trying to impress people with my stupid nonsense. Anyway, one of the things I've most enjoyed reading recently (last night, until 5am, because somebody left a case of PBR at my house, and I am a madman) is a blog called "Fuck Theory." You love it already, no?

There's a great post on the German industrial band Einsturzende Neubaten. It's a band I keep hearing about, but have yet to really investigate. Till now. Love it. Like a postpunk Faust. Here's the part (of the post) that really got to me:

I was not a happy teenager.  Without too many maudlin details, suffice to say that the domestic situation I grew up in left scars quite a bit deeper than the average teenage angst.  By the time I was 15, every fucking day was a wild oscillation between nuclear rage and terrible, self-loathing depression.  I had all of these pent-up energies, and no idea what to do with them.  And then, at the age of 14, I discovered two aesthetic investments that would change my life forever - Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs, and Einstürzende Neubauten. 

Replace "Einsturzende Neubaten" with "The Velvet Underground," and I could say the very same thing. But I'm not going to get into that now or here. This is about the music. First though, I'll say that while I'm just an amateurish idiot who don't know shit about crap, I think what this guy's doing with this blog is very interesting, entertaining, and there's a lot I can endorse here. For instance:

On the one hand . . . 

. . . but on the other.

This is a philosophy blog, btw. Again, I don't know Deleuze from my own dick, but I know authentic writing from academic wankery. I keep finding bloggers, who make no money and have no cultural capital to speak of, but who can write and think glorious blazing circles around the New York Times, New Yorker, et al. Chuck that shit, my friends. They aren't smarter than you, they aren't cooler than you. They're privileged and therefore clueless. (Oh, and did you know they lie, like all the time?) What you think is valid, is beautiful, is true. They're main street. They're a park bench on main street. We're in the fucking jungle, the fucking desert. We're in fucking space.

But, oh yeah, this is about the music. Which is about everything. Here's Neubaten:




One of the band members plays the shovel. Neato.




Now I know what "industrial" music actually means.

Balinese Monkey Chant

From the film Baraka. Hat tip to Space Cadet Jason.

Charles Ives: The Unanswered Question

Here's an excellent video from NewMusicXX explaining the composition and intent of the great American composer Charles Ives' "The Unanswered Question."

Channel Interplanetaire

I've started a YouTube channel for some videos I'll be making from Interplanetary Music episodes. It's under my own name, because I'm too lazy to start a new channel under Interplanetary Music.

Sign up, space cadets.

Where has pop surrealism gone?

Down with boring "indie" music (and film)! Up with pop-punk surrealism! Let us stop being cool and start getting weird.

Why can't you have your cake and eat it too? 
Why believe in things that make it tough on you? 
Why scream and cry when you know it's through? 
Why fall in love when there's better things to do?

[Check out the appearance of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs at 1:11.]