Matt, Dan and R. discuss Billy Corgan and Danger

Hey, 

Did you hear this on NPR yesterday?  

  I loved Billy Corgan's take on the modern state of rock n roll. 

 

"When you deal with rock and roll,  you know,  it sort of played itself out,  you know? You can't play any faster. You can't play any louder. You can't be any crazier than Iggy Pop or Jim Morrison or,  you know,  Kurt Cobain. You pick your guy or your girl,  right?, So what ends up happening is it gets kind of staid and safe,  even though it appears to continue to be dangerous and everybody looks dangerous - nobody's really dangerous,  and they know that.

So when you actually push a button in rock and roll,  even if it's your own,  you're actually accomplishing something pretty incredible because that's really all there is left to do is find those spaces that haven't been trod over."

 

I'm not sure if he captures those spaces, but what he said rings true for me about the emperor's new clothes.  That little dab of extreme truth caught me off guard.  Not used to it. 

I think I probably like him more than his music.

*

He's one of those guys whom I mock, but then I would totally listen to a few songs, especially Cherub Rock, Today, and that 1979 song, so who am I to mock him? That's more than The Grassroots get, or Steeler's Wheel and I'd be totally jazzed to meet one of those guys.

Sounds like an intelligent if possibly grandiose guy. The thing about rock being dangerous, well, we've known that since punk broke. But there's still the world of art and music having a subversive cause and a home for the sensitive and dysfunctional. I do think it's more like the heyday of the jazz-age, when songwriters were just toilers not champions. The key is getting some cool songs out of the deal.

Rock and roll can be dangerous (just ask Euronymous, or get your nose broke in the pit at a Trash Talk show).

But it's true... danger is just set on repeat. But just because it has been done before, does not mean it won't be done (and be dangerous) again.

There will always be someone summoning Satan and/or stabbing his bandmates death, someone screaming and flinging his feces (or HER feces!), some band being jailed for political reasons (Pussy Riot), it just will never be--and it never was--a whiny boy named Billy.

Billy tried so hard to be dangerous, too... what with his "zero" gothica reinvention... he's a twat. He's saying it's played out because he is making pre-emptive strike against the reviews of his new record.

You want danger, Billy? Move to Syria.

Of course a question is, what's the point of being dangerous? There's the artistic sense of breaking free of norms, not being like your parents or stifling community which is liberating, but there's also the greater dangerousness, which on some subconscious or conscious level seeks to overthrow large chunks of society. 50s rock had a larger lever of reaction to racism, the 60s to the war (STILL a bigger, nastier war than anything like what we've got today) as the 70s wore on, the social rebellion road on the coat-tails of the political rebellions of the past for authenticity, while replacing self-destruction and un-earned majesty for any real non-conformity. Synths and suits rebeled against guitars, but then they all got subsumed by capitalism.

What could be dangerous today? I think it's important that you not be dangerous for dangerousness's sake, otherwise it's something ultimately stupid, like satanism, which is just a monster mask, or actually evil, like racism.

I think with the internet there's a chance to create a DIY arsthetic that didn't just look like ripped up clothing. Corporate rejection could be dangerous.

Madonna used to be dangerous. Y'know what happens to dangerous people? Sometimes, they survive long enough to be boring.

All this said, someone hit me in the head with something really hard when I went to see the smashing pumpkins in 1991 at the Moon in New Haven. I was jumping up and down (pogo-ing, I guess you could say) and someone didn't like it and hit me. Didn't feel like a fist... felt like a bottle. I turned around, but no one would own it. Dangerous, indeed.

Bowie took on anti-gay prejudice and Madonna took on sexual hypocrisy. For a while there, it was cool to be bi, but I think AIDS set things back. Bowie stuck around long enough to become "straight." Madonna's ownership of her sexuality led to a generation of whores/teases. Now music sucks, but you can masturbate to it. Of course, I like how sexy everything's become, but it's empty, and it gives the jocks more power. Ultimately it's geeks vs. jocks, and the jocks are winning. Someone said The Red Hot Chili Peppers meant jocks were getting into Rock. Were they the first beefsteak rockers? One could envision either a religious, button up movement or an apocalyptic loose sex movement, but either would suck, and danger for danger's sake is too dangerous, just like dysfunction for dysfunctions sake gives you Syd Vicious or G.G. Allen. Just looked up G. G....nephew of Woody Allen!

Matt, 

That was you at the show?  I knew I was right to deck ya. 

Danger as a concept is a little confusing. Social, sexual, political?  If I was backstage at a Black Sabbath show when I was 12, I'd think those guys were way dangerous. 

Pete Seger was dangerous. Dylan was dangerous. Elvis, Hendrix, Zeppelin. Springsteen,  Madonna, U2 in Sarajevo. Janes Addiction during the LA riots.

It's that sense that something is getting pushed a little too far.  That this might not end well. For real.  Or that I'm personally not on my comfy sofa anymore. 

But I don't fault them for getting old.  It's not the person, it's their message and every era has it's relevant messages. 

I was just assuming -- and seriously hoping -- that the mantle would be taken by a new generation of post GenX kids who had their own reason to flip off the system, have angst and blow something up.  And they didn't.  At least not in the form of an arena-sized band (though this may be a good thing. Are revolutions televised?)  A generation of Pitchfork snark battles? How utterly unpowerful. 

***

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/opinion/sunday/the-generation-gap-is-back.html

"Younger adults are faring worse in the private sector and, in large part because they have less political power, have a less generous safety net beneath them. Older Americans vote at higher rates and are better organized. There is no American Association of Non-Retired Persons. “Pell grants,” notes the political scientist Kay Lehman Schlozman, “have never been called the third rail of American politics.”

They are numb. They are living with their parents. They are neutered. Power isn't asked for. It's taken. 

***

The other day, on impulse, I wanted to hear What's My Age Again.  What a serious 4-on-the-floor beat.  F-you guitars.  A great punk/pop confection.  2 minutes of fun.    I grabbed it off YouTube and went for a drive. 

We started making out and she took off my pants

But then I turned on the TV

And that's about the time she walked away from me

Nobody likes you when you're 23

I never really listened before.  I had no idea how fantastically stupid this band was.  These are sick sad puppies.  Talk about whiny.  He's about to score with his girl and he suddenly turns on the television?  What a colossal jerk.  I just started harshing on anything remotely related to them.  (Though it's still a great song.)

I suppose I got what I deserved, but geez... these bands literally *line up* to get merchandised, jingled, sold out, co-opted, etc.  

On the bright side, I saw Bruce Springsteen's keynote at SXSW this year.   He's old, but it felt just a little dangerous.  We didn't know what he was going to say. He was funny, but edgy and he came with something to say.   It's nice to see an old loose cannon still going off.  

I think it all depends how we define "danger." A 12 year old at a Black Sabbath show is scared, but there's no real danger.

I think danger might simply be a collective, emotional state of mind that precedes change. Because we naturally fear change. So look at the rockers that helped bring about change, and maybe that's where you see "danger." Elvis and Dylan might be the only "dangerous" rockers (what's that hippie quote...? "...Elvis freed our bodies, Dylan/Beatles freed our minds...").

Billy Corgan is dumb (and revealing his repressed urges) when he singles out Iggy/Jim. When you get down to it, they were merely exhibitionists. RHCP were/are the same, except stupider and "fon-kee." Blink-182 are dangerous in that their crappiness and ability to sell records is a harbinger to a fascist state. No shit.

--Matt Casper

Dan Kilian

R.

Fealtish: The K Word

The Rong

Basher

I was walking down 46^th Steet when I saw him. Those deep-set heavy browed half-frightened half-twinkling eyes. That long nose and chipmunk cheeks. That thin, narrow, insolent smirk underneath that joke of a mustache, the kind of mustache a high school burn-out would have scorned. It’s a face that embodies the banality of evil. Bashar al-Assad the tyrant President of Syria.

What was he doing in New York? And alone? The Syrian Embassy must be somewhere around there. No doubt he thought he could slip out on his security, like when he was studying optometry abroad back in the day. All good fun, spoiled princeling antics then. Now it was a deadly mistake. Sorry Bashar, you’re too known a quantity now. Think we Americans are so oblivious to the outside world you can hide in plain sight? Well guess again. Here’s one American who watches Anderson Cooper.

108 people in the Houla. All those bodies shrouded, wrapped and laid out like cigars. I’d seen the corpses in their houses. They’d just wanted to be free, like Egypt and Tunisia and the rest of them, but they’d been born unlucky. They’d been born with this guy, this evil creep who preferred wholesale murder to resignation. He wasn’t even going to be the leader until his brother died. He was going to be an eye-doctor, and now he was a monster. I’d seen the mourners screaming. I’d seen the children, crying, bloody, dead. I’d seen it all, and now I was going to make him pay.

“BASHAR!” He tried to ignore me, but it was clear I was shouting at him, and coming for him. Once he saw there would be no easy brush-off, that he was in trouble, he made some feeble gesture of protest, some whiny noise of confusion. Then I had him.

He tried to pull away, but I swung him around and he fell to the ground. In an instant I was on him, pinning his arms down with my knees, punching down.

“This is for HOULA! This is for HOMS! This is for the KIDS you MURDERED!”

He tried to call out STOP! or something, but I laid in too fast and hard for him to say anything. Soon my fists were slick with blood. He was already too beat up to fight back. It was happening too quickly. There was no satisfaction. So I hooked my thumb into his left eye.

“You should have stuck to optometry, Bashar! Now see if you can fix this!” I dug in. It resisted and wiggled, but soon enough it popped. Then I did the right eye.

Finally I’d had enough of holding on to his slippery, gore streaming head. I gripped it as best I could, and slammed his skull as hard as I could into a fire hydrant, right on the nut. I could feel his head crack and I could feel the metal sinking into his brain. The hydrant must have been somehow faulty, because it began spraying into his head. I washed my hands off in the spray and left him there, watery blood weeping from his eye sockets.

Later it turned out that guy wasn’t Bashar, but he looked like a real asshole anyway.

--Dan Kilian

Khomeini and Khamenei: A Dialogue

Yellow Savaughn

The Purple Pirate

--Dan Kilian

Badfruit

Bad Fruit, Revisited

Three Kitchen Jokes and Three Hippie Jokes

Who is the vampire of the kitchen implements? Spaaaatula.

The colander shot the skillet. In his last words, the skillet  delivered a comedy routine, and it was pretty funny. It wasn’t the jokes so much as the dead-pan delivery.

The deep dish pan was really being a jerk to the muffin tray, so the muffin tray said “Cut it out, you casserole!”

 

Q: What does a hippie-Vulcan say?

A: It’s not logical, maaaaan!

 

Q: What does a hippie-vampire say?

A: Free blood!

 

Q: What does a hippie-cowboy say?

A: Woah!

--Dan Kilian

Octopus Man #3: Ben and the Monster

Huck That!

The Weathergoat

The Weathergoat trudges on.

First in blinding sleet, through slush and puddles that soak his feet to the skin, plodding next to garbage-strewn highways, salt trucks casting stinging fans of salt across his thighs as they lumber past.  The sleet then turns to freezing rain, plastering his hair to his face, drenching his clothes, making pale mushrooms of his hands.  Still he trudges on.  The rain passes and a bitter wind starts to blow, an eager pickpocket stealing whatever warmth he'd secreted away – even his armpits feel cold.  With the wind comes dust that cakes in the corners of his mouth and eyes, a chalky foulness that he can neither spit nor swallow away. The Weathergoat digs his hand deeper into his pockets and continues to march.

Finally, the sun comes forth, a baleful eye that cooks the water out of the blacktop, tainting the air with a humid petroleum funk.  But there are no clouds – the Weathergoat's skin peels and blisters.   Pollen bursts forth from the ragged grasses on the side of the road, filling the cracks on his brow and in his lips.  Still he walks.

Elsewhere, in dappled shade under swaying sycamores, a man pours lemonade from a pitcher and passes it out to his friends.  Hamburgers flare and sizzle on a portable grill.  There is a cooler filled with ice and beer.  A gingham cloth is held down on a picnic table by bottles of ketchup of mustard on one side and a bowl of potato salad with hard-cooked eggs and scallions on the other.  A woman in a sundress waves a fly away from a platter of cheese and tomatoes for the burgers.  It's a beautiful day.

For this the Weathergoat trudges on.



--Steve Kilian

Excerpt From the Proceedings of the IMF Field Survey of Candidate Nation 34-T-89

Taxi

Novelty

The other day I noticed the following bicycle and took a photo:

Note that there are many spokes on the wheel – many more than necessary.  It is bad engineering, this wheel.  And yet it caught my eye and was interesting enough for me to take a photo.  This is due to the tyranny of novelty.  Something does not have to be good to attract attention.  It merely needs to be novel.  So the over-spoked wheel looks cool in its way simply because it's unusual.

It is 19th-20th century industrialization that has led to this condition.  Mass production and standardization of consumer products have filled our material needs (or could fill them, but we choose not to afford everyone a baseline share in the riches -- that's another topic).  But they've also made our product-scape a monotonous one.  Where every bicycle, car, building, jacket, or fork looks more or less the same, spastic deviations get undue credit and attention.  And yet I wouldn’t want to go back to pre-industrial levels of scarcity.

Fortunately we are poised on the verge of a new mode of mass production, with near-infinite variety being possible while maintaining low cost of goods and services.  In such a society novel items will be commonplace – not novel at all – and thus would be judged based on their intrinsic merits and not difference for its own sake.

Yes, there will still be items that are produced with what are now considered traditional methods.  There will be products issued in lots numbering in the millions.  But eventually my hope is that individuals will take a larger role in creating (or at least choosing – and there is some feedback between the two) their product-scape.  This could be extrapolated to a world consisting entirely of unique items.  In such a place fashion would be eliminated, as every fad would be regarding a product-issue of one item.

This is already starting to happen in digital media, where the masters of content origination are losing market share to individuals.  Yes, we all watch stuff put out by the networks, but there are new content producers and distributors catering to ever-smaller slices of the market.  Web TV channel for Renaissance Fair enthusiasts?  Check.  Star Trek channel?  Check.  Dog TV?  Check.

At some point there will be more content being originated than the gatekeepers will be able to categorize or mediate.  The velvet rope will be trampled by all of the traffic flowing from originators to consumers.  And eventually all consumers will be originators – creative life will be the norm, not the exception.

--Steve Kilian

From Beneath to Destroy

That Old-Time Magic, Revisited

psi K a tree

Our unconventional friends got  us a tree for our wedding. Big sac of roots and all. A baby tree, still it was hugely impractical and hellish for Karen’s Mom to get from the banquet hall to our house. Still we loved them, loved each other, loved our new back yard, and we planted it. We don’t live there anymore.

Went by there the other day, just driving by, then I parked. Knocked on the door. No one home.

What was I hoping to find? Traces of our more innocent, happy days? Just how much a new family alters a place, how much the place stays the same? Some patch of carpet or paneling from those different days? A “For Sale” sign?

Walked around back. Now I was an intruder, a burglar, a creep. The lawn had gone to shit. Did that make me feel better about myself, that these new owners couldn’t handle the up-keep? No, it was depressing, as any poorly tended lawn is depressing. So what if thick watered manicured turf is unnatural? Nature, with its wild seeds and brown patches, its entropy, is depressing.

Yet the tree is still alive! And huge! How did it get so big?

And the K, where I started carving Karen’s name and then thought better of it, it’s opened into a great gnarled mouth of exploded tree bark.

I walk up to it, put my hand in the wound. I feel the wet sap inside. I push and it parts for me, letting me probe its inner bark and the wet wood within. I push my full arm inside. Does it have some disease? It feels so healthy! I pull it wider and look inside.

Head, arms shoulders, I shimmy into the body of it’s trunk, dark and wet, enclosed. I feel the xylem and phloem transporting the water around me. My scalp tingles with vibrations from the branches above; I feel the wind in my hair. I feel her love again, and I drink in the sun with my leaves.



--Dan Kilian

This was the program from the Saturday, April 21st show at Otto's Shrunken Head.

Here' s a video of us playing there!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf4NYySqG9I&w=560&h=315]

Tiw’s Day

Election Night