4TEEZ N' BLUNSE

mmmhmm

2006-07-21T15:12:00.000-04:00

2006-05-03T02:21:00.000-04:00

Grizzleblanc.

2005-11-28T23:39:00.000-05:00

Here's Werner Herzog, director of awesome movies, getting shot at in the middle of an interview. Says Herzog upon being capped: "Oh, someone is shooting at us. We must go. It was not a significant bullet. I am not afraid." Afterwards he speaks eloquently of his duty to cinema, and shows off the wound, a purple welt square in his lower abdomen.

2005-11-28T23:26:00.000-05:00

vkvk

Haiku Revieu: Boredoms, "Vision Creation Newsun".

2005-08-10T10:33:00.000-04:00

Boredoms, VISION CREATION NEWSUN (Warner Japan, 1999).

Their intention? To
induce my first ‘cid flashback.
Mission accomplished.

Haiku Revieu: Joe McPhee, "Nation Time".

2005-08-09T12:07:00.000-04:00

Joe McPhee, NATION TIME (Unheard/Atavistic, 1970).

Tenor gets no love,
except from nerds who dream of
being his spit valve.

Haiku Revieu: Center of the World, "Center of the World, Vol 1: Live, 1972".

2005-08-08T09:18:00.000-04:00

Center of the World, CENTER OF THE WORLD VOL. 1: LIVE, 1972 (Fractal, 1978).

Ali / Silva / Few / Wright
get me through train shove. Daft notes,
all savored, few right.

Haiku Revieu: K. Abe / M. Yoshizawa / T. Kondo / D. Bailey, "Aida's Call"

2005-08-07T03:36:00.000-04:00

Kaoru Abe / Motoharu Yoshizawa / Toshinoro Kondo / Derek Bailey, AIDA’S CALL (Starlight Furniture, 1978).

Soulseek? Soulsought. Found.
Jazz abrazzive, brass and guitar squawk
hard vowels: H-bombs.

Haiku Revieu: Afrirampo, "Kore Ga Mayaku Da".

2005-08-05T13:04:00.001-04:00

Afrirampo, KORE GA MAYAKU DA (Tzadik, 2005).

Naked on the sleeve,
placed there to make me ache, two girls
sing like car alarms.

Wolf: A Popular Modern Word!

2005-08-02T16:27:00.000-04:00

Edan is white, so white in fact that his last name is Portnoy. Edan looks like Oasis, but he would have you believe otherwise. Race is a construct.

Great, amazing, great again piece on Sun City Girls that you should read as soon as you have about nine hours of free time. The only way to care about this band is to see them live. A billion page article about them tripping in Morocco is nothing like seeing them live: paradox. A great way to read articles this long at work is to e-mail them to one’s office inbox, so that one looks like they are reading interoffice e-mail. I put “Important: Rush Memo Flash Product Standard Ship It” as the subject line of mine.

Heathen Shame has their second real album (nerds taping shows and putting them on Soulseek so that I can download them and then mock them for it in my internet diary = not an album) coming out in a couple weeks. It is the first Twisted Village record to not look retarded.

David Lynch is on a mission to get taught Transcendental Meditation taught in public school and is willing to start an insane foundation to do so. He has also eaten the same lunch in the same restaurant every day for twenty years. David Lynch wants to make your life into a dream sequence.

You know how almost everyone who writes in McSweeney’s writes their McSweeney’s material in a fairly identical style, and how the monarchy of font and temperance in everything they publish is beginning to make their schtick ring false? “We don’t have an agenda, we’re guys and chicks like you… you know, how you like the way the words ‘Death Cab’ and ‘Valencia’ look in Helvetica, and we can just hang out, or you know, whatever!” The weird part is that the publication is now getting much funnier, more interesting material out of their readership than they have from their bande a literati in years. Observe today’s Reviews of New Food and tell me you’d take Robert Coover’s thirty-ninth retelling of The Wiz over sharp beats on “the Blade Runner of dumplings”.

The vice president of Sudan died in a plane crash. The first thing I thought to myself upon reading this was, “Man, the vice president of Sudan looked like the Big Bopper.” If you don’t understand why that correlation is intense, we’re through. Though not really, cause it even took me like five minutes after I thought it to realize how awesome I am.

Yao Ming Dynasty.

2005-07-25T16:29:00.000-04:00

This is supposed to be the season where I have a lot of time to sit around and write these droll monologues on the punctuality of Christian Vander arrangements and make a lot of noise about where I was when. You’ll notice by the postmark that I haven’t recently made the time. Thankfully, when you all take the printout copies of these essays that you’ve reformatted into DOS following the Cyborgian Wars of Twenty-Tickety-Two to the time capsule, a month-long gap won’t seem so large and conspicuous. Not as large and conspicuous as your anal cavity after our captors the Cyborgs have their way with you in the Tron-Shower, anyway.

Speaking of unforeseen butt rape: On Friday, The Pentagon refused to turn over hundreds of photographs and hours of video of Abu Ghraib to a federal judge who ruled that they must, in fact, do so after ruling in favor of the request made earlier this year by the ACLU. The material, which even militant Conservatives are willing to publicly presume contains “rape and murder” of women and children, is indeed so narsty that Rumsfeld is taking his crusade to bury the lead public: “"If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse." Dare to dream, Whitey!

"That's totally gross, Ryan.": Man, this is such a great rock and roll interview, for one reason. Not because the stories from the road in it are kind of funny (they are). Not because the musician being interviewed gives a retarded philosophy lecture on how to obtain good vibes (he does). It's because these two people are in fucking love with each other. These two people want to fuck. But even more than that, they want to cuddle afterwards and ask each other about the clubs they joined in high school. These two people are more in love than Lester Bangs and Lou Reed were in love.

Alas brothers, ‘twas the music we wanted crusty, not thine scrotums!: I caught IFC’s documentary Punk: Attitude a few days ago. Given that this film tries to, like so many misguided attempts before it, cover twenty-five years of a musical genre in ninety minutes, to call the results hit-and-miss would be generous. If I wanted to hear boring mongoloids talk about how Agnostic Front are carrying the torch for the rest of us, I’d go huff gas in Danvers. On the flipside, it’s worth it for the extended concert footage of certain great bands in their prime: come for James White punching a good deal of his audience in their poonums, stay for Bad Brains burning through apocalypse jams in Purple Rain gear. But easily the most striking part of the movie for me was seeing what these motherfuckers look like in 2005. And I’m not here to judge anyone on looks. In fact, I’m totally down with punk rock being made by and for Fuglies. And in turn, it’s no secret that people who were below average-looking in their twenties are gonna be exponentially creepier in their fifties. Really I’m just wondering where I can find the used car dealership that Pat Smear, Jello Biafra, the aforementioned Messr. White, and Glenn Branca all appear to now work at. Glenn Branca! Wasn’t he supposed to be a classy dude? Homes isn’t bending that viola fast enough, cause the camera added ten pounds to his opaque frame, and most of that ten pounds appeared to be lice and herpes. When Rollins now clearly bathes ten times as often as dudes who were selling out Carnegie Hall, the world has gone apeshit. The sole exception was Ari Up from The Slits, who was smart enough to move to Jamaica and make dub records, thereby finding the serum to eternal youth and endless spliffage.

Top Ten All-Time, In No Particular Order, Scratches of Back That Resulted in Received Scratches of One’s Own, Personal, Back: Emerson College Radio wunderkind DJ Bryan Young has been doing Listmakers for Guantanamo proud in recent days, publishing a series of lists that allow assholes like myself to stare at a short series of album titles for a few minutes while nodding approvingly. My favorite of these lists is linked to here. Not here exactly, but rather in that part of the last sentence where I typed the words “my favorite of these”. CLARIFICATION BOMB.

West Indian Archie, Jughead Ethiopique.

2005-06-09T16:54:00.000-04:00

It has been a live week lived amongst the living and the bammity-bammity-bam as Maida Ives would say.

First on Saturday the snarking rabbit-punchers Heathen Shame (Rogers / Biggar / Greg Kelley) and Sightings hit Guile-style sonic booms, making me forget what other voices sounded like, and more specifically how bad the other band on the bill was.

Then Malkmus kills it Monday with the Jicks, or at least it sounded pretty murdered after eight Busch Lights. I like that in describing a multitude of Busch, it’s like one of them single plurals, where you can say eight Busch or eight Busches. It was something mirthful to finally see the old boy: he reminded me of Jon Barron a bit, both in appearance and in the way that he was knowledgable and warmly en garde, enjoying himself with a band just unattractive enough to be having fun, but not so hideous that the audience looks away. I suggested that he might in fact be the most genuinely funny rock star I’ve ever seen, but Westropp said it was just the crowd laughing while on a seventy-minute date with a hottie (at least in terms of musical prowess) who’s out of their league. “Dark Wave”, “I’ve Hardly Been”, “(Do Not Feed the) Oyster” and “Jo Jo’s Jacket” ranked among the evening’s deffest.

Then the other night went to the FNX New Music Poll because my girlfriend wanted me to. If this doesn’t seem like a good enough reason, you have to keep in mind that my girlfriend is extremely good looking and I’ve seen her naked. On the way back, she put her head on my shoulder and it made me feel like a man and stuff. It turned out to be the right idea anyway, as I saw four bands ranging from good to gangbusters to ghostbusters play def riddums for only ten semoleons. The Raveonettes, a group I would have assumed I could tolerate at best, are in fact great dorkus malorkus fun, despite being from Scandanewwavia. DENMARK IN THE CLUB AND THEY COVERED MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK, WOOF.

Autolux from Cali-Cali were better still in my opinion, lots of really good distortion and feedback and vocoder in a fashion that Kevin wouldn’t Shields himself from. I hate myself sometimes, like just now when I tried to make a Bloody Valentine pun. What can I say? I mean, “Sometimes” “What You Want” is “Only Shallow” if it’s punnery, am I right people? (*pause for crickets, wait for it*) Plus they have a female drummer who looks like a million people I know.

The Futureheads, or what I caught of them, were not nearly as sharp as they were at Paradise a few months back but could still strum while jigging, so I remain loyal, so much so that I accidentally ended up standing as frontest and centerest to the stage as it gets. I echo the internerd’s collective sentiment that their cover of “A Picture of Dorian Gray” should be leading the pack on their next album. “Hounds of Love” was a no-go though so we could go-go and book-ass to Avalon-Avalon. Never seen that place as crowded as it was for Dresden Dolls, who were widely perceived as the headliner of the whole thing (at which three clubs that are within a hundred yards of each other run good bills and you can come and go among the dozen or so acts). Odds and sods in the place included Sarah Litvin, Max Roseglass, Roger Poulin, and Hudson the Younger. Da Drez struck up the two-piece and cranked it to at least three and a quarter, with originals I like very much (“Backstabber, “Missed Me”) and covers of songs I like that much more (“War Pigs”, “Port of Amsterdam”). It was gothy. People died.

Tooth, Oh Sand Fife!

2005-05-24T16:33:00.000-04:00

2005 ranked in an order that meagerly fails to justify thinking about art in degrees of superiority

Spoon, GIMME FICTION (May 10)
Beck, GUERO (March 29)
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy / Matt Sweeney, SUPERWOLF (January 25)
Caribou, THE MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS (April 19)
The Hold Steady, SEPARATION SUNDAY (May 3)
The Magik Markers, I TRUST MY GUITAR, ETC. (March 14)
Six Organs of Admittance, SCHOOL OF THE FLOWER (January 25)
Edan, BEAUTY AND THE BEAT (March 29)
Cold Bleak Heat, IT’S MAGNIFICENT, BUT IT ISN’T WAR (March 5)
Feathers, GNOMEOZOIC (March 1)
Excepter, THRONE (April 26)
The Game, THE DOCUMENTARY (February 1)
Comets on Fire / Burning Star Core, LP (April 5)
Antony and the Johnsons, I AM A BIRD NOW (February 1)
Black Mountain, BLACK MOUNTAIN (January 18)
Animal Collective / Vashti Bunyan, PROSPECT HUMMER EP (May 31)
Shining, IN THE KINGDOM OF KITSCH YOU WILL BE A MONSTER (March 1)
M83, BEFORE THE DAWN HEALS US (January 25)
The Magik Markers, TALE OF THE WHALE (TBA)
Architecture in Helsinki, IN CASE WE DIE (April 12)
The Books, LOST AND SAFE (April 5)
M.I.A, ARULAR (March 22)
Deerhoof, SE PIANGI SE RIDI / STRAWBERRY BANANAS 7” (February 1)
Sunburned Hand of the Man, NO MAGIC MAN (March 21)
Iron and Wine, WOMAN KING EP (February 22)
Magnolia Electric Co., WHAT COMES AFTER THE BLUES (April 5)
LCD Soundsystem, LCD SOUNDSYSTEM (February 15)
Bright Eyes, I’M WIDE AWAKE, IT’S MORNING (January 25)
Bloc Party, SILENT ALARM (March 22)
The Skygreen Leopards, LIFE AND LOVE IN SPARROW’S MEADOW (February 1)

2005 traveling to the past, returning with moon unit rox and freeze-dried vegetation: coolest reissues I haven’t yet heard

Bill Fay Group, TOMORROW TOMORROW AND TOMORROW
John Fahey, THE GREAT SANTA BARBARA OIL SLICK
Maulawi, MAULAWI
Sunn O))), THE GRIMM ROBE DEMOS
Various Artists, NEW THING!

2005 new music that I’ve yet to hear but will be proud to rank with a militant hand as soon as I acquire them for free (polaris star indicates that I actually really want to track it down as opposed to just harboring mild curiosity)

Akron/Family, AKRON/FAMILY
Andrew Bird, THE MYSTERIOUS REPRODUCTION OF EGGS
Boom Bip, BLUE EYED IN THE RED ROOM
Boredoms, SEADRUM/HOUSE OF SUN*
The Boy Least Likely To, THE BEST PARTY EVER
Busdriver, FEAR OF A BLACK TANGENT
The Decemberists, PICARESQUE
Dredd Foole, A LONG, LOSING BATTLE WITH ELOQUENCE AND INTIMANCE
Dylan Nyoukis, THE MYSTERIOUS BLUE SOUPS OF THE SOUTH
Evan Parker / John Coxon / Ashley Wales, EVAN PARKER WITH BIRDS
The Ex, TURN
The Fiery Furnaces, EP
Gold Sparkle Trio, BROOKLYN CANTOS*
Hall of Fame, PARADISE NOW
Hella, CHURCH GONE WILD / CHIRPIN HARD
Henry Grimes Trio, LIVE AT THE KERAVA JAZZ FESTIVAL
Hood, OUTSIDE CLOSER
The Howling Hex, ALL NIGHT FOX
The Kills, NO WOW
Low, THE GREAT DESTROYER
The Mountain Goats, THE SUNSET TREE
Mu, OUT OF BREACH (MANCHESTER’S REVENGE)
The Necks, MOSQUITO / SEE THROUGH
Quasimoto, THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF LORD QUAS
The Ridiculous Trio, THE RIDICULOUS TRIO PLAYS THE STOOGES*
Roots Manuva, AWFULLY DEEP
Seu Jorge, CRU
Sleater-Kinney, THE WOODS
Smegma, RUMBLINGS
Sonny Simmons, SONNY SIMMONS
Stephen Malkmus, FACE THE TRUTH*
The Thing, GARAGE*
Various Artists, RUN THE ROAD
Wally Shoup, BLUE PURGE
William Parker Quartet, SOUND UNITY*

Abase Age.

2005-04-21T17:46:00.000-04:00

Animal Collective is a band that a bunch of people are starting to know and still more people will know in the future, then probably less again sometime later. They are known for harmony and playing freeform rhythms that are very primitive, meaning danceable, and richly polyphonic, meaning you can just stand there and still really like it. As the headliner for the 2005 edition of Hampshire College’s annual music festival Spring Jam, an all-day event that sells no food except for free popcorn and cotton candy, members Panda Bear, Avey Tare, and the drummer with a real name slung hot everything. Immediately following their rousing set, the shakes were fought off in order to get down to the diner around two ay-em Sunday morning coming down. Minutes before expertly ordering the pancakeggzuntbakun, Senior Free-Folk and Hunger Pains Correspondent P. Strauss Montauk crypt walked to a nearby table to give the aforementioned musicians some no expectations, run-of-the-mill handshakes and gratitude. What he stumbled across is indeed our most unintentionally bananas interview to date: something somewhere between the flimsiest treehouse of your youth and what Mab whispers in foxhole ears.

4TEEZ: HEY, GREAT SHOW, THANK YOU FOR COMING.
A.TARE: CAN’T BELIEVE YOU MADE IT JUST IN TIME.
4TEEZ: IN TIME?
A.TARE: WELL, CAUSE THEY WERE SAYING YOU WOULDN’T.
4TEEZ: OH, UM, DID THEY?
P.BEAR: WE’RE ON LOOKOUT.
4TEEZ: I SEE. SO I NOTICED YOU REALLY KEPT A FAST TEMPO UNTIL…
A.TARE: WE WANTED UNIFORMS FOR LOOKOUT, BUT HERE YOU ARE, AND HERE WE ARE. NOTHING.
4TEEZ: YEAH, SO TRUE. PLAYING TO A COLLEGE CROWD, HOW…
P.BEAR: DID YOU FLY HERE ON THOSE WINGS?
4TEEZ: I DROVE HERE, SO IN SOME WAYS... NO, NO I DIDN’T FLY HERE ON WINGS.
A.TARE: TIP TARP TROP.
4TEEZ: [NODS, CAREFULLY WATCHES KNIVES ON TABLE]
P.BEAR: ARE WE ALLOWED TO SLEEP IN SHIFTS?
A.TARE: LATER. JUST LOOK.
4TEEZ: YEAH, I GOT TO GO, BUT ALL OF US AT SCHOOL REALLY APPRECIATE YOU COMING OUT, SO THANKS AGAIN!
P.BEAR: YOU ALMOST DIDN’T MAKE IT.
A.TARE: THAT’S HOW YOU SAY THANK YOU IN LOOKOUT.

It Don't Get Easier, Man.

2005-04-20T13:26:00.000-04:00

fotocred: steffano giovanni (band's site)

The Magik Markers, dood! They play real great and tell good jokes and the whole thing spells megaton bomb to me. Tough not to be excited about these cats, and with the shape my bladder's in, I can tell you I try not to get excited very often. M2, which is what I call them when I don't want to write out their whole name (abbreviations save type-type time) have burned a whole through their native Eastern seaboard with one of the best live shows in America today. Presently they're taking the medicine international, touring Europe and Asia in support of their duel 2005 releases I Trust My Guitar, Etc. and Thee Majik Marquers. 4Teez n' Blunse roving reporter Slappy "Slapheart" Golightly cornered frontladies Elisa Ambrogio and Leah Quimby at the band's first show following April's Brooklyn underground music gathering No Fun Fest. In addition to being actually good looking, these ingenues beat up their audience and then hug them to salvation, and are in such synchronized symbiotic blues that they provide the same answers to the big queries. Bammity bammity boom.

4TEEZ: HOW WAS NO FUN?

EA/LQ: FUN!

Hiroshimagain.

2005-03-22T17:14:00.000-05:00

J. Mascis was in a band called Dinosaur Jr. that have roasted my dome since hi-‘skool. After fifteen plus years of its original members wishing each other grim death and some good enough solo albums, the band will reunite this year for a short tour of Europe and what have you. Mascis’ guitar playing is a kind abrasion, a rush of blood not unlike the loss of oxygen that swells the chest while inhaling smoke or dirt. These days he resembles an elder god: the dude who Cronus and Zeus buy hash from. 4Teez n’ Blunse met Mascis with steadfast journalistic resolve to ask the tough questions. We also met him at a noisy Amherst diner entirely by accident. The nitties and gritties on past triumphs, foreign exchange, and ambitions both immediate and long-term await you.

4TEEZ: THANK YOU FOR AGREEING TO THIS INTERVIEW, IT’S AN HONOR.
JMASC: THIS IS AN INTERVIEW?
4TEEZ: WHAT WAS INSPIRING YOU DURING THE MAKING OF GREEN MIND?
JMASC: NO ONE EVER TALKS ABOUT GREEN MIND. IT WAS A BITCH TO RECORD AND PUT OUT AND I HAVEN’T THOUGHT ABOUT IT SINCE.
4TEEZ: REUNITING DINOSAUR, BUT WITH NO DATES IN AMERICA. WHY?
JMASC: THEY GET US OVER THERE, BETTER CROWDS. I LIKE THEIR VENUES.
4TEEZ: THEIR MENUS?
JMASC: VENUES. (TO JOHN MAHONY OF SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN) WHAT THE FUCK DO I ORDER HERE?
4TEEZ: I RECOMMEND THE GREEK MOUSSAKA.
JMASC: WHO? HOW MANY MORE QUESTIONS?
4TEEZ: I THINK I’VE GOT ENOUGH. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME, I APPRECIATE IT.
JMASC: YOU’RE WELCOME.
4TEEZ: ARE YOU GONNA GET THE MOUSSAKA?
JMASC: I’D PREFER EGGS.

Double Nagasaki, Pt. 1.

2005-03-03T03:28:00.000-05:00

(3/01/05: photo credited to kesin at ecstatic peace)

Ben Chasny plays guitar and caterwauls under the cryptic tongue-roller Six Organs of Admittance. On last year’s Blue Cathedral, he became the most recent addition to Comets on Fire, a band of fellow San Franciscans producing some of the best rock music in the world today. Chasny himself has been shooting out the floodlights since the mid-nineties, his “psych-jerk experience” Plague Lounge the breeding ground for a solo career that began around 1998. Since then he has on his own and through collaboration released over a dozen albums, each meaty and soulful and true. 4Teez n’ Blunse caught up with Chasny following a genuinely phenomenal performance at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, where he spoke at length on the subjects of live performance, collaboration, and America’s burgeoning fascination with new folk and psychedelic music.

4TEEZ: GREAT SHOW MAN, THANK YOU FOR COMING.
6ORGZ: THANK YOU MAN.
4TEEZ: HOW’S COMETS ON FIRE DOING?
6ORGZ: GOOD. THEY’RE ALL ASSHOLES THOUGH.
4TEEZ: THAT’S TOO BAD. WHAT WAS THAT BOTTLE YOU HAD ON STAGE?
6ORGZ: WINE. THEY TOOK IT AWAY, THEY THOUGHT I’D KNOCK IT OVER.
4TEEZ: WOULD YOU HAVE?
6ORGZ: YEAH.
4TEEZ: DO YOU FEEL CONNECTED TO A MODERN MOVEMENT IN MUSIC, SOMETHING EXPERIMENTAL AND SPRAWLING IN STYLE?
6ORGZ: THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE PLAYING NOW THAT I REALLY LOVE, AND I THINK YOU CAN FEEL IT IN THE AIR LATELY, SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL THAT EXISTS BETWEEN ARTISTS AS A COMMUNITY, WHICH REALLY IS A PLACE FOR LISTENERS TOO. ARTISTS AND LISTENERS WANT THE SAME THINGS. THERE ARE NEW RECORDS OUT NOW THAT ARE MAKING ME CRY, AND I LOVE THAT.
4TEEZ: HOW WAS THAT WINE?
6ORGZ: GOOD.

Tarkovsky Blood.

2005-03-02T03:43:00.000-05:00

Now I know what Cube was thinking when he wrote that song about having a good day. Major developments for my life, and for this journal, which I like to think of as what my life would be like without mates, a dame, a job, or an education. Jonesin’ for a scoop? Read on, true believer!

Stayed up until seven in the morning last night writing two papers and doing an insane amount of reading, including a couple hours worth of this for my own pleasure. Got ninety minutes of sleep, and woke up to my alarm, which plays a loud garage rock album intended to spring me out of bed and was already halfway through the third song before I was conscious enough to hear it. I don’t even remember the next several minutes, but suffice it to say that they and a few more after those were spent laying on the cold tile of my floor’s bathroom, feeling as though I was either going to faint, throw up, or make boom in my pants.

I was only up at this hour of eight ay-em to print out the aforementioned papers and possibly bathe. I was only up at this hour because I’d set my alarm for it, my sleep starved mind watching the faintest light of dawn seep through the white curtain and decide that logically, the only way I was going to feel enthused about starting my day after an hour or so of bed would be to drink the remaining beers in my refrigerator. Upon waking up, such revelry was dismissed as the terrible idea that it is. I had half a mind not to go to class at all while writhing on that bathroom tile, but picked myself up by realizing that it is these moments of droopy bravado that university is supposed to be about.

It was hereabouts that I stepped into the world only to realize that it was snowing hard once again, as it had been just after midnight before stopping around three-thirty. I slipped gracefully on a smooth egg cream walkway, my student ID slyly falling out of my coat pocket, only to be returned an hour later by the divine hand of a Murikami fan in the very class I was on my way to. Said hour passed when I found out that Hampshire was opening at ten instead of the usual nine on account of the bluster. The production class that followed was delightfully stop-start, unprepared, loosey-goosey and brief. I caught another hour of lying half-awake in bed before Ethnography, where I got in some stiff jabs of discourse and subsequent professor applause regarding an article I hadn’t even glanced at prior to the start of that day’s class. Stopped by the Foreign Exchange office to continue pestering them about ways to make the Blunse Bullet Train an international incident. We’re talking either Dublin, Havana, Prague, or Rome for a full semester within the next year: ryde or die. My last class was cancelled altogether, the professor a young, kind man sharp enough to know a chance to stay cozy is a chance to cure. Thus I smoked a baccy pipe and took a long nap.

Waking up fresh as a daisy in a baking soda box, I showered in a bathroom I don’t believe I’ve ever even been to in this building. It was cleaner and more kindly lit than the one closest to me. From there I trudged to round up cats and kittens for a concert held in a red barn at the front end of my school. The headliner slayed with cuts from his new album and extended jams with two dudes from Sunburned Hand of the Man and local drummer Chris Corsano, who is an institution among this crowd, this city, this species. Corsano himself may best be known to Bostonians and New Yorkers as the really good drummer with the shaved head who sometimes plays for Sunburned and is totally not the uber-friendly bearded frontman, who ended playing a metal bleep-bloop box and some bells on a stick. Excellent show at an endearing on-campus (meaning free) locale from which I gaffed a handsome advertisement poster. If you went to Le Tigre at Smith instead of this, you're on Pity List '05.

While I was out livin' and preachin', Soulseek was draining the bones of Viking enemies, from the marrow of which came, no joke, a dozen goddamned albums. For no reason other than to have another place for me to look and their unified splendor and soothe my war on the internet with a Shaq-sized Icy/Hot, behold the reaped: Comets on Fire, Live! From the West Coast, Double Leopards, Halve Maen, Dredd Foole, Daze on the Mounts , Fushitsusha, Double Live , Keith Rowe and Fennesz, Live at the Lu , Phil Ranelin, Vibes From the Tribe , Sarah Peebles, Walking Around Tokyo at the Turn of the Century, Shit Spangled Banner, Infiltrated with Self-Hatred, Sunburned Hand of the Man, No Magic Man, Terry Callier, Alive, U-Roy, Dread in a Babylon, and Wolf Eyes/Double Leopards, Heavy Tapes.

Went to a diner afterwards with some charmers. On the seven-to-a-station-wagon-oof-my-legs-argh-my-junk ride there, I pondered to no one but myself how funny and typical of the local music scene to see the very musicians we were just hooting and hollering for at the establishment we were sitting down to. Needless to say, it happened. It simply was that day. All fellows listed above, plus some chicks and some dudes, cooling out at a table five feet from ours. We exchanged pleasantries on the way in, and it was then that I realized that one of the non-descript, nameless dudes looked like a forty-five year old version of one of my dearest teenage idols. I here realized that this nameless dude had a name I knew, or at least a last name and a first initial.

Long story short: tomorrow on 4Teez n’ Blunse we begin a two-part series of brief but beautiful interviews with two of the most innovative, raucous, yip/jump rock musicians in the world today: songwriter/guitarist Ben Chasny, better known under the moniker Six Organs of Admittance, and J. Mascis, professional longhair/grayhair and founding member of punk rock deities Dinosaur Jr. Get pumped or get gone.

Crowning Jim Crow.

2005-02-09T17:34:00.000-05:00

The new day’s inspiring icon is he who painted in three-piece suits, intensely studied theology for kicks, was the best brush man in the world for a prime twenty years or so, believed that cobalt could made people fertile, wrote prose that makes William Blake read like an adopted-black-kid sitcom, and convinced a girl to whom he gave abominable VD to let him crash at her place for like a decade. Russia was his long gone heaven, which with loathing he ran from, then put a halo ‘round forever. He also did more to sell the world on the idea that audio and visual mediums could be unified than anyone before or after. Street Fighter II Turbo was born with his mother’s sonic boom, her afterbirth a seeping watercolor utopia, that which two World Wars were waged to destroy.

Soulseek has brought gifts from the mountaintop which we will pet while George tells us about the farm and rabbits. I like the suspenseful cowbell-countoffs and pauses in this, an album stoned and Stones-ed in all the right ways. Just pack some Jack and sandwiches to get past the always-unappreciated Stealers’ Wheel cover and faux-Dixie come-ons. I also like the strong finish and stronger start of this one, even if the middle is repetitive kettle corn laced with harmonies that could grate cheese by third listen. To have track one be your creative peak is a pornographer’s blessing and curse. And this might be the best of the bunch when it spares us the Twilight Zone harping and Bjork-in-the-high-school-production-of-Oklahoma! vocal warm-ups. The guitarsmanship will have you downing vitamin C and playing connect-the-trails.

What’s with this music that is in some spots ripe and others pulpy? These records, when amalgamated into a remix, could be a phalanx in any club from Portland to the Other Portland. In Chuck E. Chaplin’s foreseen modern timez, why must I even make my own subdivisions between what is “liked” and “disliked”? Was hasn’t a whipper/snapper of necessary means and bravado already mashed these three into a clean, ironic paste with whitening and peroxide? Why is it that the new learning box can take us to the river, but still can’t grab us by the hair and baptize us into the Blade Runners we were promised we’d be by now? O Big Brother, Where Art Thou? That last one too obvious and a total rhythm killer? I agree whole-heartedly!

I leave you with a fine example of someone being funny. Specifically, writing funny. To be more precise still, funny writing from one who has taken the stupid joke that people who don’t know or care about sports make everytime they’re forced to watch sports and made it into something beautiful. Come often and don't just browse: limited-run paperbacks about “opulent shadows” and bike chain photography don’t pay for their idiosyncratic selves.

Game Hen Roost in Ibiza.

2005-02-04T16:47:00.000-05:00

I (THEY TOOK JFK AWAY A SECOND TIME TODAY.)

Ossie Davis is dead at 87, which should hit you in the crosshairs if you've liked seeing American film and theatre's intelligence quotient raised greatly over the last fifty years or so. This guy was grand royal: legitimately one of the best actors in the world since your parents were in footsie pajamas. You may remember him as Da Mayor in Do the Right Thing, the Reverend in Jungle Fever, and more recently as the best parts of Baadasssss! and Bubba Ho-Tep, the latter of which would have won him some major league statue-bling in a just world. He also found time to direct some of the best films of a genre called blaxploitation (Cotton Comes to Harlem, Countdown at Kusini, and an excellent 1973 sleeper called Gordon's War, in which black Vietnam vets ride around Harlem on motorcycles and wail on pimps and pushers), though his works sought to exploit no one but the willfully ignorant and unwashed bigots that his heroes took to beating the shit out of. He was branded a communist by McCarthy when to be one was suicide, yet refused to name names like that of friend Paul Robeson before the House of Un-American Activities, despite his precarious position of being a minority in the fifties. Did I mention the dude gave both Malcolm X and MLK's eulogies? That is bonkers. Think on that shit for an minute and get back to me.

His voice was something not unlike Mingus' bass: capable of sweetness and whimsy as well as tears of woe and regret. I had a dream once in which my parents abandoned me and my sister. Davis walked down my street as we sat on the curb, before squatting down next to us and telling me that things would turn out fine, that his wife was on her way. And it's obviously not like I ever met the dude either. But I knew his face, and his truth-seeking stare, and I will miss that pride and vigor.

II (AT MY FUNERAL, LET THEM LAUGH LIKE THIS: A TANGENT OF GOMORRAH.)

nick replied: WOW DELA WORKS AT YOUR SCHOOL
nick replied: HE CAN LIKE, TELL YOU WHAT TO DO
WRMeS: WOW
WRMeS: he can like, file a lot of incoherent applications
nick replied: WOW ANIMAL COLLECTIVE/SUNBURNED AT HAMPSHEE AT THE BEGINNING OF APRIL
WRMeS: HOLY SHIT HOW MANY TIMES WILL YOUR REMIND ME ABOUT A SHOW THAT'S 3+ MONTHS AWAY
nick replied: MANY MANY MORE
WRMeS: APPARENTLY
nick replied: THIS IS ONLY THE SECOND TIME, AND THERE WAS NOT A SUFFICIENT STAIN OF JEALOUSY ON YOUR PANTS THE FIRST GO-AROUND
WRMeS: WELL I SAW THEM PLUS A SHITTY BROOKLYN BAND RECENTLY
WRMeS: LIKE BOTH OF THEM BITCHES
WRMeS: HEY HAVE YOU SEEN THIS DAVID LYNCH MOVIE WITH NICOLAS CAGE IN IT
nick replied: WHAT WILD AT HEART
nick replied: YEAH WITH DAFOE CHEWIN' ON SKULLS AND WHATNOT
nick replied: THIS IS THE STEVE SHOW NOT THE NED SHOW
WRMeS: WORTH MY SEVEN DOLLA$
WRMeS: WOW I JUST FINISHED WATCHING THAT SHIT
WRMeS: SUPA BOOTLEG
WRMeS: DO YOU REALLY THINK IT'S COOL TO HIT THE SAUCE WHEN YOU GOT A BUN IN THE OVEN
nick replied: I LIKE WHEN HE GETS ALL SAD ABOUT NOT BEING ON NIC CAGE AND LAURA DERN'S PIRATE DEFENSE SQUAD
WRMeS: YEAH TOTALLY RIGHTEOUS
nick replied: WAIT WHEN DID YOU SEE THOSE BANDS
WRMeS: LIKE A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO
WRMeS: IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE BLACK DICE/ANIMAL COLLECTIVE. BUT...WAIT FOR IT...
WRMeS: NO DICE!!!
nick replied: BANG
nick replied: SON THIS NEEDS TO BE A VAUDEVILLE ROUTINE
nick replied: I SAY MR VLADIMIR, HAVE YOU ATTENDED ANY LOCALE AMUSEMENTS IN YOUR NATIVE BOROUGH OF THE COMMONWEALTH THIS SAESON
WRMeS: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT
nick replied: WHATEVER CAPS LOCK SAVES IT
WRMeS: RIGHT
nick replied: HOW WAS SANDY'S BIRTHDAY
WRMeS: SHIT FELL THROUGH
WRMeS: THE MAN MADE HIM SLAVE AWAY
nick replied: WAIT HE HAD TO WORK THAT SHITTY DINER ON HIS BIRTHDAY
WRMeS: YEAH AND THE DAY AFTER WHICH WAS SUPPOSED TO BE TRIPPED OUT KOOL OUT TIME
nick replied: WACK
WRMeS: HE HAD A PARTY LAST NIGHT BUT HE WASN'T GETTING OFF TIL LATENIGHT
nick replied: WACK SQUARED
nick replied: I GOTTA GO TALK TO A GIRL
WRMeS: OOCHIE WALLY
nick replied: STAY FRESH
nick replied: OH MAN, ALSO, RENT THIS JARMUSCH MOVIE
nick replied: CALLED STRANGER THAN PARADISE
WRMeS: OK MR RUMFUCK
nick replied: IT'S ABOUT BEING A RUSSIAN IMMIGRANT AND IT'S MAD FUNNY, AND RAMMELZEE PUTS IN THE DOPE CAMEO
WRMeS: THAT JUST MADE ME NOT WANT TO SEE IT
WRMeS: IS IT JUST LIKE THAT MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON OR WHATEVER. CAUSE THAT'D BE JUST GREAT
nick replied: POLICE ACADEMY 4
nick replied: THE ONE WHERE THEY GET YELTZIN'S CLONE BLIZZED
WRMeS: DAMN

Cronus Newsun Appleseed.

2005-02-01T01:18:00.000-05:00

From the Jan 31, 2005 USA TODAY:

U.S. students say press freedoms go too far

One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.

The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion. Asked whether the press enjoys "too much freedom," not enough or about the right amount, 32% say "too much," and 37% say it has the right amount. Ten percent say it has too little.

The survey of First Amendment rights was commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and conducted last spring by the University of Connecticut. It also questioned 327 principals and 7,889 teachers. The findings aren't surprising to Jack Dvorak, director of the High School Journalism Institute at Indiana University in Bloomington. "Even professional journalists are often unaware of a lot of the freedoms that might be associated with the First Amendment," he says. The survey "confirms what a lot of people who are interested in this area have known for a long time," he says: Kids aren't learning enough about the First Amendment in history, civics or English classes. It also tracks closely with recent findings of adults' attitudes. "It's part of our Constitution, so this should be part of a formal education," says Dvorak, who has worked with student journalists since 1968.

Although a large majority of students surveyed say musicians and others should be allowed to express "unpopular opinions," 74% say people shouldn't be able to burn or deface an American flag as a political statement; 75% mistakenly believe it is illegal. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1989 ruled that burning or defacing a flag is protected free speech. Congress has debated flag-burning amendments regularly since then; none has passed both the House and Senate.

If you just read that and don't have any absinthe or lobotomy saws lying around the house, go get knowledged on great science future whilst mounting the sound of great science past. Also having happened today, or yesterday, or hours ago:

A federal judge ruled against the administration’s policy of keeping motherfuckers in hotboxes that make your elementary school locker look like Shaq’s house.
I smoked two bowls with my dealer while he told me how business is good, and how business will stay the same as the seasons change, because “heady nuggets be sold when both sun-drenched and cold.”

La Regle De Ah-Choo.

2005-01-30T23:36:00.000-05:00

Of my cohorts, few have resisted the damned urge of penning a manifesto at the ripe old age of nothing. This would be the place to do so, and I fight the urge as one fights lyme disease: with distracting clattering, Bombay vapor salves, and chronic masturbation. But O’Henry, isn’t this entire forum a means with which to beat off endlessly? Alas, no axis, mon amour. If you are to read this, you are to know it as something with the potential to guide a cornfield voyage through every highway vein, just as it could with equal ease falter into inconsistent tedium and long-winded balderdash.

Returned to academy this week. Found excessive bong hits and cheap vodka to do very little good. There must be something to laugh along with it to. Ideally, there are women and song with wine, and these did not arrive until Wednesday or so. In the last few moons came the familiar glow of eyes that have vaginas. Gracefully, in less time than I could have even hoped for, the futtbucking luxury of the place is again making me quietly glow. Nearly all the good souls are back: to the departed, I can do neigh but wave and pray the plateau one day curve sharp enough to see ‘em. I danced until three-thirty or so last night, then listened to the fables of drunkards. They know when you’re putting them on, right? This one girl, she’s drunk all the time. She’s becoming a bartender in Springfield, that’s how badly she wants to be drunk all the time. Last semester this girl kicked open my unlocked door in the middle of the night to find myself and another naked. Not emotionally either, I mean unclothed. So I put down my cigarette and spoke to her in the hall, told her how such things are considered inappropriate by some. She was all too apologetic, and all too apologetic last night. Sorry about being sorry about being sorry. Yet still I wish this girl well, because at least she talks when my feet need rest, and at least she is a fine writer, and at least she gave me a sip.

At pre-school, I am met with a new schedule through which I will no longer see many of my favorite children and will see all of the offspring of assholes. There is hope for our states though, and these intrepid are the ones who will get me through early Friday mornings. Kai continues to be a trip, speaking spanglish like a poet and wanting to know if he can tell me something. Emmett is in good spirits. At three and a half, he is confident enough in his sexuality to ask that I refer to him as “Clarice” whenever he comes to class in his ballerina costume. Genuine props are in order for Mina, age four, who considers herself to be at an advantage because she is from the third world, adopted by two moms. She is curious and temperamental, and may one day own a bathhouse on the moon. She is protective of her friend Zoe, who is too kind and sweet for this life. Mina knows this and cares for her, puts her boots on for her, holds her hand on trips to the museum, where they search together for “more blue”.

I too search for more blue, as we all should. To tide you over before we come across the mother load, I would recommend this. It is the sound of great frustration, the kind that we should approach not with reservation but open arms. The sound of a man discovering his cancer and his spliffs, confused by the art he is making. Warmed and saddened by the great bellow he had to produce, that burden of spitting something that would raise our collective consciousness. His was an obligation to make you and I more impressed by what is and what could be. It is this central notion that all my favorite things seem to possess these days: higher expectations for the world at ground level, assertion that now is not the time to regret, or give in to that tempting surrender.