the velvet howler, Has life without fire become unbearable for them?
Decoding Op. 4
the swallows are back to feast on territory
border book page 5 tuesday, important music
from a computer with audio political agenda
[must went out with expletives stands for mudder]
treated to copious amounts of ganja, animal parts the battery
may demand matches to manually administer on war torn liberia
connect administration to comply with the limits for a class b
everywhere Avermaria dumps during time everywhere the slider notes
conflicting reports arriving simultaneously from every poor town
of this summer storage allocation to our laughter having flown
away settings in the dumps pull weeds of composite metals
out of cathode ray tubes appareil numérique. Be sure you have
the controls to ninetten years! buttoning their pants and the off
underneath the down spout transferring variations in bird anatomy
if not adjustable, similar products must always be supervised
partly at the chance they remove the back from any ape so widely
reported in the media because transferring and sprays, solvents
and alcohol and abrasives carry features of this abuse to exponents
of proper human condition. december’s batteries are tuesdays page 8
turn it on again, wait five seconds, then turn it on again.
additional suggestions hung in the square.
our unmarried women includinginterference never service
never force a connector into a port. if the temperature
is always between 0 and 35 degrees c than keep a saw
in hand toward her tiny face going her port. do not
use headphones while driving however, there is no guarantee.
the indigenous rebel 3 is a collection of insects and catalog
shorts painted brow-wise over a million transfers to stations
dried up in his hearts with a smiling riff but she did not cry.
I see a joy encoded if obstructed they smoked december 21st
also two countries suck in seemingly endless life use low-power
jaunty and dynasty havingproblems with railroad tracks respectetoutes
les exigences accessories you’d have been 21, 10:29 am page 9 9 1
transferring rating5v dc, 1 a maximumbatteryyou’re following twoconditions:
(1) this the arms of would-be foes were hacked off computercomplete
this step if you haven’t.(2) quel sauvage! if you were ever in the level
of tennis racket cases make space for songs, you must delete
interference stops, it was probably transferred to the invisible guy.
The Man I Trust
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
I’ve been fooling around with an ebay bass!
Selections from “The Fall” by Albert Camus
Here are some selections from The Fall, a book about a lawyer who confesses his pride and disgrace to a reader over a few nights. Like The Stranger, the narrator is a warning about the true nature of man– and it’s a trap! You can’t help but identify with the seductive voice and honesty of the confession.
On those he’s taken to bed –
Some cry: “Love me!” Others: “Don’t love me!” But a certain genus, the worst and most unhappy, cries: “Don’t love me and be faithful to me!”
On punishment and judgement –
“I’m not saying to avoid punishment, for punishment without judgement is bearable. It has a name, besides, that guarantees our innocence: it is called misfortune. No, on the contrary, it’s a matter of dodging judgment of avoiding being forever judged without having a sentence pronounced. … Today we are always ready to judge as we are to fornicate.
On camaraderie –
“This is so true that we rarely confide in those who are better than we. Rather, we are more inclined to flee their society. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we don’t want to improve ourselves or be bettered, for we should first have to be judged in default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen. In short, we should like, at the same time, to cease being guilty and yet not to make the effort of cleansing ourselves. Not enough cynicism and not enough virtue. We lack the energy of evil as well as the energy of good. Do you know Dante? Really? The devil you say! Then you know that Dante accepts the idea of neutral angels in the quarrel between God and Satan. And he puts them in Limbo, a sort of vestibule of his Hell. We are in the vestibule, cher ami.
On human affairs –
“… In any case, here it is: I have never been really able to believe that human affairs were serious matters. I had no idea where the serious might lie, except that it was not in all this I saw around me–which seemed to me merely an amusing game, or tiresome. There are really efforts and convictions I have never been able to understand. I always looked with amazement, and a certain suspicion, on those strange creatures who died for money, fell into despair over the loss of a “position,” or sacrificed themselves with a high and mighty manner for the prosperity of their family. I could better understand that friend who had made up his mind to stop smoking and though sheer will power had succeeded. One morning he opened the paper, read that the first H-bomb had been exploded, learned about its wonderful effects, and hastened to a tobacco shop.
On immortality –
Despairing of love and of chastity, I at last bethought myself of debauchery, a substitute for love, which quiets the laughter, restores silence, and above all, confers immortality. At a certain degree of lucid intoxication, lying late at night between two prostitutes and drained of all desire, hope ceases to be a torture, you see; the mind dominates the whole past, and the pain of living is over forever. In a sense, I had always lived in debauchery, never having ceased wanting to be immortal. … Then you’ll see that true debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself; hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person. It is a jungle without past or future, without any promise above all, nor any immediate penalty. The places where it is practiced are separated from the world. On entering, one leaves behind fear and hope.
Noise, Lou Reed & The Thing
You have to admit that consistently doing this to critics and fans for almost 50 years is a feat.
“If you don’t think this is music, you can get the fuck out of here.” With a million happy customers every year, these are not words you associate with audiences or performers at the Montreal Jazz Festival. But John Zorn’s F-bomb from the stage was aimed at one of many agitated audience members who expressed their displeasure over the evening’s all-star trio of himself, Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed. No doubt a large part of the audience was expecting “Sweet Jane,” “Walk on the Wild Side,” or even Anderson’s “O Superman.” Instead, it was a free improv showdown that shocked the crowd, prompting dozens to walk out after two songs.
Lou Reed is at his best when people are walking out and yelling at him and having resigned himself from releasing pop music temporarily, it’s great to see him making good use of his time and embracing the Metal Machine Music within.
You would hope that the one place people wouldn’t walk out and boo at these sorts of performances would be a Jazz festival. My hope would be that those interested in Jazz would have an open mind about dissonance and improvisation, just as they have an open mind for the pop groups that perform at Jazz festivals or the other musical movements Jazz musicians have cross pollinated with. I’d also hope they’d consider the unfair/dismissive attitudes many Jazz musicians have faced when innovating and try not to duplicate that behavior.
But, you ask, “Does it meet a definition of Jazz?”
The music played by Reed et al here is hardly as difficult and “noisy” as Lou Reed can get and I couldn’t convince you Zorn’s horn sounds like Jazz, but more importantly I think it sounds interesting (A++++ would buy again). What I could convince you of perhaps is that Zorn sounds like Ornette Coleman, who coincidentally gets played a lot on Lou Reed’s New York Shuffle radio program.
In 1989, Zorn recorded Spy vs Spy: The Music of Ornette Coleman, a hardcore punk collection of Ornette Coleman compositions that sounded like this… well it’s not on youtube, so forget it. Maybe I’ll find it later.
You say again, with that annoying persistence you get, “Was this performance Jazz?” To me that’s a boring question and echoes the ever-present “is this art?” question you’d likely hear in a freshman seminar. Whether it’s technically proficient is of very little interest to me, though I suppose that could be a priority for some. Personally, I can think of few things less exciting than virtuosity. Melody is nice, and they have that here, but sometimes disconnection between the instruments is as important as connecting them.
I prefer to ask the following when faced with a work:
So here’s the Thing:
Decoding Op. 3
using the rules of bereaved grammar
for windows, and lock holes negate your author to
operate the negative recharge the face of the outcome
of four steps to heaven through heels and old water
and more of the same m16 copper muzzle the shift in the heel
feeling romantic the battery status; 1 in 24.
notinstalled and used unproperly—that is,
in disk, the status light on the front of accordance
with the moisture in openings expanding and closing
the aerosol movement of aerosol important more often than not
don’t use the and knot the insertion or later the erect border
so blown and limp that we look on the run to
avoid getting minutes of water on ankles and shuffle to drag songs
in harlequin turn off of one minute charged
openingautomatically when you (willing to take tasteful risks).
the most sands of west africa. the scramble to make like.
then, each time youconnect it’s causedby the computer
or one of the photos from bottom patrol the streets of baghdad
in a roundabout way. ensemble of portions the first time you
lay on the buckle of positions tied to infirmed.
a headdress and sessions with compliance and dispose the port
the first the port. dispose the port the serial number.
Tomorrow or later you listen to using
you can not object the requirements of 2004
and handling instructions from fitting your slung
maintain the components over your shoulder– a gate
swings open and a pale child comes out inserted one way.
10:29 am page 15 of combat. some chose this
and (2) this device mustaccept any format. this can be useful
if you want to reserve a format. guidelines.taiwan:nederlands:
we’re 80-percent charged on rewind and drugs,
diamonds and even slavery, but in comes a pair of abuse
exacted by data and running, he sits on a pile of stones and trash
showed us what humongous pussies our locals endure
not the endless rape, extortion, application and so forth.
(headed to press and you lift up his wig the light is amber)
purpose in her pointed foot; her thighs and probably last for
only a few days. tinage riot. there’s another battery:remove the usb cap
and connect soldiers. store in the source list. click the volume.
you can adapt over time to a higher collection away from home
and inhabit the world with a glowing smile.
extraordinary gentlemen aren’taffected.
otherwise the rats no longer crawl.
Kurt Vonnegut: Sports Reporter
Futility Closet on Vonnegut:
Strapped for cash in the mid-1950s, Kurt Vonnegut took a job at Sports Illustrated, though he “didn’t care or know squat about sports.”
They asked him to write a piece about a racehorse that had jumped the fence at the local track.
He fed a page into his typewriter, stared at it for several hours, typed “The horse jumped over the fucking fence” and left.
Smile or Die
Via Lenin’s Tomb.
Now try Naomi Klein…
As we have all discovered, after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on 20 April, the company had no systems in place to effectively respond to this scenario. Explaining why it did not have even the ultimately unsuccessful containment dome waiting to be activated on shore, a BP spokesman, Steve Rinehart, said: “I don’t think anybody foresaw the circumstance that we’re faced with now.” Apparently, it “seemed inconceivable” that the blowout preventer would ever fail – so why prepare?
This refusal to contemplate failure clearly came straight from the top. A year ago, Hayward told a group of graduate students at Stanford University that he has a plaque on his desk that reads: “If you knew you could not fail, what would you try?” Far from being a benign inspirational slogan, this was actually an accurate description of how BP and its competitors behaved in the real world.
Decoding Op. 2
recent developments in the occupation update application
doesn’t your computer present the latest information?
go to make him impervious to bullets, he shuffles pulls it from the fccrules.
illustrated by the mid-90s for american rap
satan as a teenager [again, this is your connection calling]
thanks to the arrival of the internet we can only purchase.
The user is obstructed from fitting. residentialinstallation.
they made us prisoners in their own applications/utilities.
if nothinghappens set the switch
plays all alone with a shiny tin can. his computer.
for fastest transfer speeds, uniform dress doesn’t mean all
wars are of the television or radio.
tribal hunters, they pluck their style and source page 17:
following measures calmly. turn the television or believe us but we swear to god this is certain amount of space
near the to disconnect your reception is suspected.
radio is visible, the battery is out of power
so have some fun with it. death is out there causing interference for our own boys in uniform.
in about two hours, send your equipment and military uniforms. you could improve performance or add features. drag and conceal your collapsible stocks– you need to get started.
become caught or trapped—forexample, while canada makes electrical statements on civil wars: “Replace all civil wars with visual manifestations of combatants pushing rafters in cycles creating gothic structures out of sheer force of chaos. no warning bells or flashing lights,” says canada.
Be sure you are scratching the ground, this is a good land and gifts are measured in carbon weight. Do not help those who disconnect. Delete this starement.
migratory birds and their parts, compile and organize the familiar confusion of information glut, functional ascendance of killing. it was a great look according to your localenvironmental laws format by default.
Zunguzungu v. Clapton
Over at zunguzungu, there’s much talk about Eric Clapton, electrification, manipulation, authenticity and Robert Johnson:
From the Guardian:
Eric Clapton once described Johnson as, “the most important blues singer that ever lived”…[but] nearly 50 years after Columbia first packaged his work as King of the Delta Blues, we discover that we’ve been listening to these immortal songs at the wrong speed all along. Either the recordings were accidentally speeded up when first committed to 78, or else they were deliberately speeded up to make them sound more exciting. Whatever, the common consensus among musicologists is that we’ve been listening to Johnson at least 20% too fast. Numerous bloggers have helpfully slowed down Johnson’s best-known work and provided samples so that, for the first time, we can hear Johnson as he intended to be heard.
I, like many people, only know of Robert Johnson through Eric Clapton; I know Cream’s Crossroads a lot better than Johnson’s, and like it more too. But I love the fact that the figure of origin, used to authenticate electric blues by so many white electric bluesmen like Clapton, cannot now be disentangled from studio gimmickry. Part of the Clapton thing was that he was supposed to be taking the acoustic, rural, old, and black song of the Robert Johnson figure and making it young and white and modern and urban and electric. Rock and Roll as the electrified blues is every hack music journalist’s favorite cliche. And now it turns out that Johnson was himself playing games in the studio, that the authentic backdrop which your white bluesbreakers were trying to modernize was already always a function of industrial reproduction. Lovely. And yet, your music writers still can’t get over the desire to return to the original rural black acoustic singer — the completely unsupported sense that “he intended to be heard” as slow rather than fast — because of course, Johnson himself couldn’t have been the one who speeded up his playing on tape to make it sound more awesome. Only white people get to speed up and electrify his songs…
This is still under debate and the consensus is closer to the standard recordings than the slowed down ones. That being said, it isn’t the speed/pitch of the tapes or misplaced notions of “authenticity” that should be the final word on Johnson’s music– it’s the music itself.
There’s a great biography about Johnson, his peers and their myth called Escaping the Delta by Elijah Wald. He makes the point that the focus on “authenticity” and references to the blues coming out of the atmosphere or “soul” of rural delta life mainly serves the purpose of stripping blues players of their intellect and creativity. When we talk about authenticity, the focus on musicianship, song craft and ability is lost in some sort of zipp-a-de-do-dah myth that denigrates instead of celebrates.
That being said, it was common practice for bluesman like Johnson to craft myths around themselves in order to develop a following and a mystique. Think of it as a means of marketing before the era of music marketing. The crossroads myth in particular belonged to Tommy Johnson long before it belonged to Robert Johnson and much of the attribution of that myth to Robert Johnson was the result of revisionist history by Son House during the early 60’s folk revival.
Zunguzungu does make a good point about early bluesmen being aware of the industrial process of recording. Johnson purportedly sang into the corner of a room for his hotel recordings in order to project his voice and guitar, so he seems to have intentionally manipulated of his sound to an extent. He certainly didn’t live in an isolation chamber of Delta authenticity. Elijah Wald mentions that Johnson’s friends reported he used to listen to the radio obsessively and would copy styles he heard on the radio. He liked the music of Gene Autry, the Nashville/Hollywood star known as “The Singing Cowboy”, who was as close as you could get to a mainstream musical star back in the day. (EVEN WHITE MUSIC! OH NO! OUR NOTION OF AUTHENTICITY IS SLIPPING AWAY! )
Johnson was clearly aware of the power of the media and it’s image as well as the industrial process of recording, though the claim he manipulated his record speed seems patently ridiculous to me as recording artists had little influence on the engineering of the records back then. They just sang. What’s plausible is an error in the recording/fabricating process of the records, but even that seems questionable.
I’d like to call Clapton a wang. Having grown up listening to his ever-so-serious and ever-so-boring adult contemporary music, I have a hard time enjoying him and his bastard Mayer spawn. “He’s a wang!” I say, but… I don’t really think that’s relevant.
Despite his misguided statements and motives he has made some interesting music, particularly in the 60’s with Cream. As a believer in death of the author, I tend to favor looking at art and artist as separate as possible, because even if Clapton is at his worst– a racist, idiotic, middle of the road, laurel resting WANG thief– “Crossroads” is still a great sounding song and that thing, the recorded material, whether it’s Clapton or Johnson, is all that will ever matter.