clandestine band

La Falk

2012-01-03T04:06:00.000-08:00

xmas booty

2012-01-02T04:08:00.000-08:00

i love my brother Jonathan Toubin

2011-12-19T19:11:00.000-08:00

2011-12-10T17:14:00.001-08:00

Capitalist Time

2011-10-28T08:22:00.000-07:00

Temporality as a measure of activity is different from a temporality measured by events. It implicitly is a uniform sort of time. The system of work bells, as we have seen, was developed within the context of large scale production for exchange based upon wage labor. It expressed the historical emergence of a de facto social relationship between the level of wages and labor output as measured temporally…
...It was within this social context that mechanical clocks were developed in Western Europe. The introduction of striking clocks placed on towers and owned by the municipalities (not the Church) occurred shortly after the system of work bells had been introduced, and spread very rapidly throughout the major urbanized areas of Europe in the second quarter of the 14th century. Mechanical clocks certainly did contribute to the spread of a system of constant hours; by the end of the 14th century the sixty minute hour was firmly established in the major urbanized areas of Western Europe, replacing the day as the fundamental unit of labor time.
from Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory By Moishe Postone

2011-10-13T08:38:00.001-07:00

Utopia
Island where all becomes clear.
Solid ground beneath your feet.
The only roads are those that offer access.
Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.
The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immermorial.
The Tree of Understanding, dazzling staight and simple.
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.
The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.
If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.
Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.
On the right a cave where Meaning lies.
On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.
Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.
For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.
As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.
Into unfathomable life.
-Wislawa Szymborska

2011-10-01T13:57:00.000-07:00

2011-09-05T08:49:00.001-07:00

"from a contradiction, anything follows" - this is the principle of explosion

I have been dead for over 5 years...

2011-09-02T13:57:00.000-07:00

Sent to clandestineband by a 'friend'....

2011-09-02T10:23:00.000-07:00

Earthquake in NYC

2011-08-23T12:23:00.000-07:00

"Nature is a bitch...It is one big catastrophe which is from time to time contained in a fragile balance, but then explodes again. Nature itself is not natural: rather it is naturalised". - S.Zizek

...further interpellations

2011-08-16T11:17:00.000-07:00

The compulsive use of Purell Hand-sanitizer is another indication that one has been interpellated into the prevailing bourgeois ideology.

Fear of CONTAGION extends not only to viruses and bacterium but logically and inexorably to Class.

Keep away the misery and the bad luck of the poor and the lazzaroni by using Purell.

In this era of bedbugs and flesh-eating bacteria, contagion is the watchword.

2011-07-21T08:35:00.000-07:00

"We know, indeed, that it is the end of the world, and there is nothing illusory (nor 'fin de siecle' nor 'millenarian') about this knowledge...the world today is a heap...and a foul one (un monde immonde)"
- Jean Luc Nancy

MARSHALL MCLUHAN: First of all - and I'm sorry to have to repeat this disclaimer - I'm not advocating anything; I'm merely probing and predicting trends. Even if I opposed them or thought them disastrous, I couldn't stop them, so why waste my time lamenting? As Carlyle said of author Margaret Fuller after she remarked, "I accept the Universe": "She'd better." I see no possibility of a worldwide Luddite rebellion that will smash all machinery to bits, so we might as well sit back and see what is happening and what will happen to us in a cybernetic world. Resenting a new technology will not halt its progress.

The point to remember here is that whenever we use or perceive any technological extension of ourselves, we necessarily embrace it. Whenever we watch a TV screen or read a book, we are absorbing these extensions of ourselves into our individual system and experiencing an automatic "closure" or displacement of perception; we can't escape this perpetual embrace of our daily technology unless we escape the technology itself and flee to a hermit's cave. By consistently embracing all these technologies, we inevitably relate ourselves to them as servomechanisms. Thus, in order to make use of them at all, we must serve them as we do gods. The Eskimo is a servomechanism of his kayak, the cowboy of his horse, the businessman of his clock, the cyberneticist - and soon the entire world - of his computer. In other words, to the spoils belongs the victor ...

The machine world reciprocates man’s devotion by rewarding him with goods and services and bounty. Man’s relationship with his machinery is thus inherently symbiotic. This has always been the case; it’s only in the electric age that man has an opportunity to recognize this marriage to his own technology. Electric technology is a qualitative extension of this age-old man-machine relationship; 20th Century man’s relationship to the computer is not by nature very different from prehistoric man’s relationship to his boat or to his wheel - with the important difference that all previous technologies or extensions of man were partial and fragmentary, whereas the electric is total and inclusive. Now man is beginning to wear his brain outside his skull and his nerves outside his skin; new technology breeds new man. A recent cartoon portrayed a little boy telling his nonplused mother: “I’m going to be a computer when I grow up.” Humor is often prophecy.

2011-06-03T07:17:00.000-07:00

Rock and roll both invites and repels biography in equal measure

Old Fashioned from Bad Timing

2011-06-02T08:31:00.000-07:00

04 Old Fashioned from Bad Timing
Old Fashioned
I’m in love with the trash-man, ‘cause he’s so old fashioned…
A pack of smokes rolled up in his t-shirt sleeve
And he looks like Rock Action
Like a space/time contraction
Back to the Year of Our Lord, 1973
He don’t have no phone
It makes him feel too alone
He’d rather be out crawling, on his belly while the stars are falling.
I’m in love with this actress
But she only fucks black chicks,
‘Though when she’s stoned, she likes dancing with me…
She says I look like a fascist
With my black moustaches
And my field jacket from 1963
She ain’t never home...
She can’t stand being alone.
She’d rather be out crawling, on her belly while the stars are falling.
She got a real flair for theater
She’ll hit you in the face with a phone receiver...
A girl like that, she digs an old fashioned scene…
Well, don't ya know is it’s a crying shame,
This new regime
It really feels the same…
I fear it’s curtains
For her and me…
And the Sick Ones send me Christmas cards,
They say my baby she's still at large;
In one version, she got a terminal disease
…In Houston I played in a rock and roll band
In Portland, Maine I drove a taxicab
And then just like that, she walks out on me...
Because she’s old fashioned.....

(Per Request of E. Effort)

Vintage Violence

2011-04-06T15:36:00.000-07:00

"The reason why Georges is barreling along the outer ring road, with diminished reflexes, listening to this particular music, must be sought first and foremost in the position occupied by Georges in the social relations of production" - Jean-Patrick Manchette 3 to Kill

Bifo

2011-03-24T13:41:00.003-07:00

"In our time of digital mutation, technical automatisms are taking control of the social psyche".

2011-03-11T10:24:00.000-08:00

All non-sleeping time is work time

2011-03-11T10:23:00.001-08:00

...Dallas Smythe wrote about the dissolution of the boundary between an individual’s role as worker and buyer. Smythe believed that all non-sleeping time is work time. Work time is devoted to the production of commodities, producing and reproducing labour power. Time away from work, but not asleep is sold as a commodity to advertisers. This is the audience commodity, which perform marketing functions and work at the production and reproduction of labour power...

Grand Mal Selected tracks 1995-2010

2011-03-09T14:39:00.000-08:00

Grand Mal Mixtape 1995-2010 by Howell Ray

Viscount Lascano Tegui

2011-02-24T10:09:00.000-08:00

"I write out of pure voluptuousness, I confess. I write for myself and for friends. I don’t have a large audience or fame and don’t receive awards. I know all the literary strategies intimately and despise them. The naiveté of my contemporaries pains me, but I respect it. I’m also conceited enough to believe I never repeat myself or steal from other writers, to believe I never repeat myself or steal from other writers, to believe I’ll always remain a virgin, and this narcissism doesn’t come cheap. I have to suffer the indifference of those around me. But, as I said, I write out of pure voluptuousness. And so, like a courtesan, I’ll take my sweet time, and begin by kicking off my shoe."

-epigraph of On Elegance While Sleeping, 1925

2011-02-24T08:33:00.000-08:00

GRAND MAL /// Guitars Strum in Dejection from kenny curwood on Vimeo.

Kenny Curwood, experimental, underground filmaker...has directed a video for Guitars Strum in Dejection, a track off of Clandestine Songs....He shot, edited and animated the Super-8 film...

Ratner's Star

2011-02-24T08:05:00.000-08:00

"Little Billy Twillig stepped aboard a Sony 747 bound for a distant land." Don Delillo 1976

check out that DFW marginalia, yo....when all the paper books are burned and replaced by hideous, obscene e-books...treasures like this will be lost

2011-01-28T16:33:00.000-08:00

In a seminar, Giorgio Agamben was asked: Do you believe in Capital Punishment?
His answer? I believe in no punishment.....
The room broke into applause...

(That is the correct response...)

Against Bourgeois Art

2011-01-28T08:57:00.000-08:00

Amiri Baraka

"revolution sweeps the world but bourgeois poets stare at crumbs of dust in the light...
like vultures they snack on open graves...the world is heavier than they know..."

it begins at 30.48

Arthur G.

2011-01-28T08:10:00.000-08:00

2011-01-27T17:07:00.000-08:00

2011-01-27T09:03:00.000-08:00

"I will maintain that rock music is late capitalist romanticism. Romanticism we will take to mean artistic and philosophical impulse toward unification of the fragmented whole. The original romantics were mostly pantheists or deists and were concerned with the fall of man, his separation from god. High period rock and roll, the music of the long sixties (1963-73) was the dynamic source of a counter culture (as opposed to subculture) that sought to liberate humanity from social and sexual atomisation". - Richard Seymour

Update

2011-01-26T09:46:00.000-08:00

...even more so than an Ipad or an Iphone, posession of a yoga mat indicates that the subject has been fully interpellated by the prevailing (bourgeois liberal) ideology...
(recording postponed due to death threats and intrigues...another day in the year of the insane... will resume in one month at an undisclosed location)

Mahler

2011-01-24T08:14:00.000-08:00

the Great Bolano

2011-01-23T08:40:00.000-08:00

“Reading is more important than writing.” - Roberto B.

...listen to the entire album

2011-01-23T07:53:00.000-08:00

Grand Mal - Clandestine Songs by Groover Recordings

one can buy it here

Accione Mutante

2011-01-22T13:15:00.000-08:00

...Mutant Action:
...a terrorist group of disabled people who see themselves as mutants take arms against their oppressors to rid the world of "beautiful people" and superficiality.

Gnossos Pappadopoulis

2011-01-22T07:24:00.000-08:00

16 House Un-American Blues Activity Dream by Richard Farina by Howell Ray

I am immune....
(so far the only rock singer ever to write a decent novel...so far)

Luftmensch

2011-01-16T07:14:00.000-08:00

an impractical contemplative person having no definite business or income

Recording Began August 7th....

2011-01-05T11:24:00.000-08:00

....h...working title of the album: ~~I am Only a Reflection of You, Catechism of Rock and Roll,~~ H~~ere's to Our Estrangement,~~ Convulsively Yours, The Part of No Part

Arielle Falk / Lego My Ego

2010-07-26T16:58:00.000-07:00

Arielle Falk // Lego My Ego

LZ Project Space, 164 Suffolk Street, New York, NY
Reception: July 30, 7-9 pm

2010-07-10T07:37:00.000-07:00

A Critical Reading of Mork and Mindy

2010-07-09T17:13:00.000-07:00

Mork provides a hedonistic, anarchist philosophy, a penchant for oppositional inversions, and an alternative language of rationality to the instrumental rationality of the market, bureaucratic structure, and modern science. Mindy, on the other hand, is consistently the voice of Western reason speaking in the interest of order, benevolent paternalism, competitive individualism, and bourgeois morality. To confuse matters more, Mindy's liberalism qua humanism is a contradictory amalgam of the hackneyed defense of endangered bourgeois institutions plus a humanism that extols the virtues of a nonsexist, nonracist society. Mindy never raises the subject of social problems, but reacts to them with the constricted vision of her class or with superficial humanist pleas against the irrationality of the socioeconomic world. The conflict between these two positions is exemplified in an episode dealing with children's rights and the legitimacy of parental authority. In the episode, Eugene runs away from home "because of my mother, she acts like she owns me." Mork takes seriously Eugene's account of parental domination, whereas Mindy defends the benevolence of paternalism - parents are simply doing what is best for children, although children are frequently incapable of recognizing this. When Mindy attempts to take Eugene home to this parents, Mork intervenes.

Mork: No, no! (Grabs arm of Eugene and pulls him away from Mindy.) You're not going to take him back to that tyrant. I grant him parental asylum.Mork and Eugene: (Chanting with clenched fists upraised)
Hell no. We won't go. Hell no. We won't go.

Historical interpretation of this joke reveals that the audience's capacity to laugh at it is based on their grasp of 1) the political content of the concept of asylum as an escape from tyranny and 2) the resistance to authority signified by the gesture of the raised fist and the chant associated with the opposition and resistance to the Vietnam War. Whereas this appears as a statement of defiance toward the hegemonic notion of parental authority, it is a gesture of stereotyped defiance that the audience is not expected to take too seriously (because both Mork and Eugene are depicted as childlike). In the course of the narrative Mork directs the wedding of Eugene and Holly (not only are two children married together, but one is Black and one White) so that they may seek a "better world" in which fun reigns supreme.
The overwhelming message seems to be that we have a basic need for "otherness"; in the absence of that otherness or relatedness the self becomes shriveled or distorted. This scenario of intense individuation and the subsequent estrangement from self and others is presented in a variety of ways. In the commentary that concludes one episode, Mork observes that loneliness may be anticipated in a society that counsels its children not to speak to strangers, prohibits speaking to those next to you in both school and work, and attaches stigma to those who openly speak to themselves. Alternatively, he contends that the development of the self requires interaction with others in an atmosphere of trust. This is highlighted in an episode satirizing singles bars....
Robert Goldman, HEGEMONY AND MANAGED CRITIQUE IN PRIME-TIME TELEVISION: A Critical Reading of "Mork and Mindy". Reprinted from Theory & Society, 11 (May 1982): pp.363-388, Part 4

2010-07-06T12:18:00.001-07:00

2010-06-10T12:36:00.000-07:00

Grand Mal - Lower Yer Heart by Groover Recordings

Digi-EP out June 15th

2010-05-15T18:34:00.001-07:00

2010-05-13T18:37:00.000-07:00

Prince is right

2010-05-12T14:09:00.000-07:00

Below are excerpts from an invective-laced diatribe, the full text of which, can be found at
Blanco Music
What Prince has figured out is that the proportion of effort/return on pushing the internet user to actually BUY music, is not worth the resources it takes to do so. When 80 – 90% of your PR effort disappears into non-revenue online areas (piracy, Spotify), the PR needs to be 8-9 times as ubiquitous as in the pre-internet era to make the same gains. He’s done the sums, and has figured out that even if he only stands to make a penny profit on each CD that goes out on the cover of various European newspapers, that it’s worth more to him than a hundred million people retweeting a video clip of his track on YouTube. Newspapers are an established physical distribution platform, to make them the sole legal source of your music is a mark of genius thinking. Why SHOULD Prince make his music available to be listened to at will, for nothing (or as close as nothing, dammit) on YouTube, Spotify or Mog.com? For YOUR convenience? So that you can enjoy his work and display your musical credibility to your dinnerparty guests without the painful business of compensating the artist in question? Oh how RUDE of dear little Prince to deny you the opportunity. He’s an artist. Artists reserve the right, in fact, would not be worthy of the name if they didn’t do so, to piss from a height on the money-grubbing mores of the chattering classes. Don’t give me the ‘democratisation of music’ argument. If it were something we could do ourselves, what would be the value in that?! If you want free music, go and get free music from the many, many fame-scrabbling halfwits with guitars and laptops out there who are willing to give it away. That’s how much free music is WORTH.
> Bitter? Moi? Yes. Exceedingly so actually. Because long before (and who can say, possibly long after) BlancoMusic existed, I was a music lover. And even if there comes a point where music no longer provides me with an income, I will still hate this period in music’s lifespan – when even the types of people who buy eggs from farmers’ markets and FairTrade coffee are somehow too eager to blame the decline of music on the malpractice of the music industry and spout fatuous self-serving nonsense about how filesharing is ‘free pr for the artists’. I can make a living without music, that’s not an issue. The issue is that the internet is making music shit. There, I’ve said it. It’s putting the actual making of music secondary to the complicated business of trying to find a way of sustaining a living from doing so. Genius, forced to figure out ways to tour without having to incur excess baggage costs. Virtuosos, giving up music because they refuse to take the whore’s option of product placement or naked dancers in their videos. Music lovers have CD collections, not hard-drives full of shit they never listen to. This all happened before, we call it the dark ages. Yep, the internet is over, it’s killed my first love.
(And)...Don’t tell me you can’t afford to buy CDs. My entire collection is worth less than your phone and laptop.

2010-05-12T05:55:00.000-07:00

2010-05-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

"...particular rock and roll texts only produce effects insofar as they are located within a larger "rock and roll apparatus" through which the music is inflected. This appartus includes not only musical genres and practices, but styles of dress, behavior, dance, etc. as well as economic and political relations....the power of rock and roll is located in it's affectivity, that is, in it's ability to produce and organize structures of desire".
Lawrence Grossberg

2010-04-14T06:32:00.001-07:00

2010-04-13T13:02:00.000-07:00

new album release april 7, 2010 in Sweden, uhh July15th....did i say June 15th (did i say may7th?) in the u.s.a...recorded in my apt...mastered by the master dave fridmann...featuring me & my friends...will be available on itunes etc via Groover Records...you can buy a physical copy here

tracklist:

1unwholesome visions

2lower yer heart
3you mean well

4laugh it off

5call my name

6us vs them

7his death was our punishment
8praxis tape
9children of light

10done my head in

11guitars strum in dejection
12burn the world
13drink 'em up

2010-04-13T11:32:00.000-07:00

Clandestine Songs Recording Studio...where the magic happened

Friends....

2010-01-09T12:41:00.000-08:00

who were nice enough to play & sing on the forthcoming album..
ken griffin- backing vocals

brad truax - bass
dave sherman - piano, organ, synthesizer
parker kindred - drums backing vocals
mike bones - lead guitar

j.russo - lead guitar
mike robertson - lead guitar
tom whitten - lead guitar
rich meyer - backing vocals, guitar, bass
kevin thaxton - bass
jeff bailey - bass
justin russo - piano, synthesizer
jake alrich - drums
mike fadem - drums
karen codd - cello
mark ephraim - bongos, guitars

St.Johnny

2010-01-09T11:04:00.000-08:00

My old band's albums:

High As A Kite - recorded at gun point in Hartford, Ct
Speed is Dreaming - Counterfeiters disguised as drunks.
Let it Come Down - the much derided farewell album...recorded under the twin influences of geschlechtsverrücktheit and harsh 90's reality...

courtesy http://bitemefanboy.wordpress.com/

a thorough discography can be found here.

and here I offer some membra disjecta

St. Johnny from Ravi Dhar on Vimeo.

2010-01-09T06:34:00.000-08:00

Russo, Russo & Sherman

2010-01-09T05:48:00.000-08:00

2010-01-08T16:25:00.000-08:00

FALK

2010-01-08T16:09:00.000-08:00

Truax

2010-01-08T05:52:00.000-08:00

2010-01-08T01:13:00.000-08:00

Kindred

2010-01-06T05:58:00.000-08:00

2010-01-05T16:11:00.000-08:00

2009-10-14T13:47:00.000-07:00

went to see slavoj zizek speak at cooper union....reactionary forces called in a bomb threat!....bummer!

2009-10-13T13:59:00.000-07:00

Pirate Love

2009-10-07T17:11:00.000-07:00

Hartford

Robert drank his third beer and scanned the room for girls. In a crowd of fifty people there were perhaps three young women who were not accompanied by their boyfriends. This was about right for a night out in Hartford; the ratio of men to women would be 50 to 3. Was that not the definition of misery?

The Lit Club, where Johnny Thunders was scheduled to play, was in a dangerous part of Hartford, a crime ridden and blighted city. Robert was at the show with his younger brother, who like himself was a serious fan of JT. Both were on summer break from college and it was their day off from their job at the frozen foods warehouse. They were "order pickers" and spent their nights working in a bleak lunar landscape. The warehouse was filled with ski-masked men in snow-mobile suits moving in slow motion beneath harsh sodium vapor lights, traversing canyons of frozen food in sub-zero temperatures, dragging behind them carts filled with frozen peas and ice-cream.

Their co-workers, a diverse group, included a contingent of serious troublemakers and misfits. Alcohol abuse and drug taking were common and the occasional fistfight would occur in the break-room or in the eerie perpetual twilight of the warehouse.

Many of the forklift drivers were veterans of the Vietnam War and they would tell incredible tales illustrating the horror and absurdity of war. It was a surreal experience to be 19 years old, working at 3 AM on a hot summer night in sub-zero temperatures and listening to fantastic stories told by men who claimed to have survived the Tet Offensive. It was perfect preparation for a Johnny Thunders show.

Johnny's set was running seriously behind schedule, the opening bands - Jack Tragic and the Unfortunates, and the Reducers - had long since come and gone. The handful of people in the Lit Club stood around drinking beer and listening to a mixtape that featured The Dead Kennedy's, Echo & the Bunnymen, the Specials, the Scars, Killing Joke. The crowd openly speculated about whether or not Johnny would actually show up here in Connecticut; it seemed inconceivable, especially now at 1am.

Even more improbable was the fact that Johnny was scheduled to co-headline the show with ex-Sex Pistol and his stylistic heir, Steve Jones. Could it be that an ex-New York Doll and an ex-Pistol were really about to plug in their guitars and make rock and roll history on a stage in Hartford? Robert knew that they had played together in England but as far as he knew (and he knew a lot about Johnny) they'd never shared a stage in the U.S.
It was almost too much to contemplate.
When he'd bought his ticket for the show he was immediately filled with dread; he knew that seeing Johnny in person in a run down club was a far more dangerous experience than listening to him on vinyl or cassette. He knew that the reality of Johnny might prove too much. Thunders might be too debauched, too real - he could collapse onstage and topple onto Robert or his brother. His black, opiated eyes - the dead eyes of a Mafioso hit man - might suddenly focus on one or both of them, spurring Johnny into one of his rambling, unnervingly deranged tirades. Robert's enjoyment of Johnny's recorded oeuvre might be seriously put at risk by attending the show.

He looked around and thought that he liked the space; there was a balcony and a proscenium arched stage. Old and crumbling, it used to be the Lithuanian Club but there were no longer any Lithuanians in Hartford. He surveyed the crowd and figured that this was the entire population of serious punk rockers or new wave freaks in the Greater Hartford region. 50 people. A third of them were fashion punks who wore extensive gear and elaborate, labor intensive coiffeurs, while another third were skinheaded hardcore aficionados. The rest of them were vaguely unclassifiable and looked like Robert looked - classic burn-out - with long hair, engineer boots, Levis and t-shirts.

Robert believed that neither the Hardcore nor the Punk contingency had any business at a Johnny Thunders show, which was at heart about pure, elemental rock and roll. Thunders qualified as punk only by dint of his bad attitude and outlaw life.

Robert drank beer out of a plastic cup and tried not to talk too much to his brother, who would accuse him of drunkenness at the first opportunity. John, two years younger than Robert but 3 inches taller and 20 pounds heavier had a higher tolerance for alcohol and a lower tolerance for what might be viewed as unseemly behavior. Slobbering drunkenness on Robert's part would bring out the sneering, judgmental side of his brother's personality. John had inherited an almost puritanical sense of propriety from their mother, a Yankee farmer's daughter. Robert was like his father, laid-back and tolerant, forgiving of others. Unless he was psychotically drunk, then all bets were off. This too was part of his patrimony. His father Robert, sr. was a violent, unpredictable drunk.

There was suddenly a change in the room's atmosphere and Robert was jolted out of his reverie and watched Johnny, Walter Lure and Billy Rogers emerge from a side door to the right of the bar and walk through the crowd towards the stage, guitar cases in hand. Johnny wore a black, backwards flat cap, a beige jacket and scarf, like on the cover of his album In Cold Blood. Walter and Billy were similarly attired; they looked like the Rolling Stones younger brothers. A fat man in a trench coat wearing a Mohawk haircut and a bass guitar appeared on stage. Johnny slurred into the microphone: "Hey Luigi, you got a guitar pick"?

the Grand Mal Story

2009-05-06T11:14:00.000-07:00

"I'd like to manage your band Bill, but I've seen comedy albums with bigger budgets" - Jerry Jxxxxx , 199x...

His Death Was Our Punishment

2009-05-04T12:35:00.000-07:00

...the last modernist guitar player...a human paradigm....

after his passing we are left with a rock music that is homologous to air conditioning...

his genius was never truly captured onstage or on record, and yet he was seemingly the apotheosis of rock and roll.

the toxic effect of his legend reduced him to a terminal hollowness -the consequences of which no human being could survive.

ultimately, he became a vicious parody of a rock musician.

his death was our punishment.

Rock and roll is an addictive machine from which there is no escape

2009-05-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

Another gig ...

The singer from ?? (not sure which band) was some kind of demented egomaniac who demonstrated his musical profiency by playing, in succession, every instrument on the stage, while grinning and hamming it up a la Paul Shaffer....it was clear that every member had a degree from the Berklee school of music...and all sported Supercut- emo-hairstyles and velvet jackets from h&m...they were adherents to the new gospel of ugliness

...professionalized amateurs....

The crowd in public assembly was not unlike what you would find in a casino in Atlantic city...

The entire evening was an offense to the eye, the ear, the nose, the brain, the tongue..

Williamsburg is a meat-grinder of late capitalism and it's flourishing pathologies...

Of course Grand Mal played a miraculous set; the ransacked corpse of rock and roll was briefly resuscitated by my words, my melodies and the classic stagecraft that I'm known for-

I've perfected the art of non-movement...

...

2009-05-03T10:43:00.000-07:00

-Although rock shows in their various sizes and permutations can resemble political rallies, generally speaking, attendees (the fans) are not encouraged to participate in or contemplate collective action but instead are urged inwards, on solitary, quasi-spiritual journeys of false transcendence. Fists are pumped, beer is drunk, boyfriends and girlfriends hold hands and look past each other with glassy, unfocused eyes.

-Atomization is encouraged due to the frequent consumption of rock music by the solitary listener. A universal experience of the rock fan consists of consuming rock music while alone in one's bedroom etc. (or alone in a crowd while wearing headphones) and partaking in a pseudo-spiritual communion/identification with the rock performers. Physical response to rock includes a rise in blood pressure, increased heart-rate, adrenal response, feelings of ecstasy and well being. Rock music is often consumed (in the same way that alcohol, caffeine or other drugs are consumed) in a solitary fashion in preparation of and prior to important events in the listener's life, such as: work, exercise, social activities, dating, mass murder, sporting events, war etc (it is also consumed in conjunction with these events).

Common themes in rock songs:
-Rugged individualism
-Nihilism
-Misogyny
-Greed
-Depoliticization, the encouragement of apathy (the cri de couer of rock is I DONT CARE)
-Commodity Fetishism
-Enshrinement of bourgeois sex roles
-Encouragement of false transcendence via drug and alcohol abuse
-Violence
-Revenge
Punk Rock, as both a style of rock music and as a product of the groundbreaking Punk era, is widely viewed as Rock and Roll's most revolutionary moment/movement. It is, however, the embodiment of counter-revolution in rock and roll. Reactionary in musical form, fashion and outlook Punk began during a period of world-wide economic turmoil (similar in circumstance to the beginnings of other populist, reactionary movements) and following the end of the Vietnam War and the subsequent de-mobilization and demoralization of the anti-war Left. Punk was, according to its adherents, theorists and players, a direct response to the 'excesses' of the 'hippies'. Song lengths were cut from ten minutes to two minutes. Tempos were doubled in speed. Long hair was shorn and replaced by close cropped quasi-military hairstyles. Punk fashions evolved from the torn t-shirts festooned with safety pins favored by Sid Vicious to the military chic of the (unabashedly left wing) Clash and others.Along with the martial beats that characterized the music, Punk bands and fans flirted with overt fascist imagery (Swastika chic)*. Transgressive nihilism was embodied by songs like "No Feelings", "Holidays in the Sun" (an incoherent mish mash of Situationist slogans) and "Beat on the Brat". Self-mutilation and mortification of the flesh were fashion accessories common to both the practioneers and fans of Punk. Punk Rock as a cultural phenomenom channeled the anger of disaffected, angry working and lower middle class youth away from political activism, a significant component of the previous decade, towards an all embracing nihilist world view that accentuated the meaninglessness of one's own life and actions. Violence was common at many Punk shows and narcotic and alcohol abuse were celebrated. Before it could become a truly mass movement Punk was watered down and 'liberalized' by a more consumer friendly version of itself called New Wave. Thatcherism and Reaganism followed on the heels of the Punk era.…

Rock and Roll, like Christianity, with which it shares the worship of long-haired, bearded men, is a source of solace and spiritual/psychic regeneration for the bruised psyche of the worker and executive alike. It is a mechanized folk music for the thrill seeking inhabitants of the hi-tech, capitalist West…and when one considers the apathy and political disengagement that this folk music encourages, and it's constant reinforcement of patriarchal, capitalist values, it seems reasonable to think that Rock and Roll was not the ideal personal soundtrack for a member of the SDS, but instead it was and is far better suited for a member of the Rotary Club...

*Punk's NYC pioneers/progenitors (Richard Hell, Television, Patti Smith etc) were acolytes of the hermetic, hyper-atomized Bob Dylan school of rock and roll and eschewed fascist imagery and martial, hyper aggressive musical styles.

1976-01-02T08:27:00.000-08:00

Hell-fucking-lo

welcome to grand mal 'headquarters'…it's a goddamned blog!
that's how shit is done now. a blog is a place where a human is supposed to talk about himself…his interests, grievances, things that he likes - and it can also function as a form of self-surveilance as you present all these things for the delectation of both the Big Other and Big Brother...
is a blog a sort of dispositif that creates a new subject; the blogger?