If your instrument does not exist yet you build it. Then you fuck around.
This is Moondog with his Trimba, which he built himself. Moondog is a blind homeless man on the streets of New York City. It is 1953 (I think) and he dresses like a viking because vikings are rad.
“I am essentially not an instrument builder, but a composer. I am a philosophic music man who long ago was seduced into musical carpentry. As a composer and a musical philosopher I make my living by selling records of my music. I am both the manufacturer and the retailer. And I distribute the records very largely by mail.” — Harry Partch, 1958
Love will tear us apart cover
I found out from wikipedia today that Ian Curtis hung himself. Sorry I did not know this earlier. He was the singer of Joy Division, named after what Nazis called a special area designated for all the attractive Jewish girls to rape. Because I’m morbid, I often think about how bad it would feel being slowly herded towards my noose, seeing that circle from afar, that apathetic rope just hanging there. When you’re young and sad, maybe you gravitate towards Joy Division, and then in high school art class when the teacher asks you to draw something, you draw Ian Curtis. You draw it with paint or pencil, filling in your self-made lines like a coloring book, fleshing out the shading in the name of a human. And maybe when you hear “love will tear us apart” in that robotic monotone, you think of that boy or girl you really like, and how you’ll never be together, how love — that soft word oft used to describe, oddly, the pit in your chest those sacred moments they pass in the hall — has failed to tear you apart. It only punctured you. And you remember these people forever, each syllable that made up their name, until the past becomes the present in f , and each facebloat is a little bloated older, a little less mind-photoshopped as you remembered, and here we are.
NewVillager: “RichDoors”
Some of you might know Ross Simonini from his work at The Believer (and elsewhere), but he’s also an incredible musician, and his band NewVillager just signed with IAMSOUND, to release their debut full length early this year. I can’t stop listening to it. Below is the magical stutter-video for their first single “RichDoors”; the rest of the album is just as addictive and inventive, and beautiful.
Gucci Mane vs. Young Jeezy
I like thug rap. I can’t help it. When I was like 14 I would go around saying most rap was stupid because it wasn’t serious enough. Now I think it is the most serious shit in music, and particularly thug rap more than the smart shit, even though I like a bunch of that too. Thug, for its particular mode of swagger and affect: being what it is and ready to die or explode and get the cash and freakspirit. There is more furtive emotion, spirit, force, and fight in the presence of thug rap even if, or perhaps in the light of, the meat of the lyrics being trivial, childish, base, ridiculous. It might sound cheesy for suburban-lifed guys or girls white or black to get serious inspiration from stuff that’s as foreign to their daily life in physical manifestation as you can get, that being: killing, drugs, prostitutes, shitloads of cash; there is something heaving and overwhelming in a beyond the hour kind of way, actually more intense because of its otherworldliness, and it often seeming more punk as fuck and ready to party with the god of god than any other kind of music. It’s like “fuck America” and “yeah America” at the same time, which seems like life.
Atlanta is a big rap town. There are probably more famous and upcoming rappers here than any other city. Two of the biggest Atlanta faces who have yet to take it really to like a household name level but are still in most every club around the states are Gucci Mane and Young Jeezy. I like them both for different reasons and in different settings or times somewhat. I feel like comparing them head to head, and thinking a little about what I like about small consistencies of style in thug rap.
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Lyrics: One reason I like Jeezy is because his lyrics are about as base sounding as you can want. If I’ve learned anything from listening to a lot of thug rap it is ideas about streamlining sounds down to these things you don’t mind hearing over and over, and getting your point across quickly even if your point is totally amorphous. It’s not about clarity as much as presence. Jeezy is a frequent abuser of the rhyme-one-word-with-the-same-word-again style, like: “I commentate the game like John Madden / cuz I played in the game like John Madden.” He talks a shitload about selling drugs, which I guess he actually did, which most rappers seem to do. I always wonder why rap albums can’t be used as law evidence, like dude is saying he sells a fuckload of cocaine, maybe you should go to his house. I know that’s not how it works, but still. It seems like they are toppling novels by throwing that shit out there like they’re talking about actual snowflakes, giving no fuck and therefore giving more of a fuck than giving a fuck is. Gucci talks more about having money and hanging out and having fun and shit; he’s less serious even when he’s talking about the same things Jeezy does. I also feel like Gucci has a sense of humor more, and when he makes me laugh it seems more on purpose than me just laughing because Jeezy is kind of like a big little boy acting serious, if in a good way. Gucci is an insane goofprince. Point: Gucci.
Rainbow Theme Reading The Book Song Read A Book I Read
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6j8EiWIVZs
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W88pxaZn-1o
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnhonJY135I
Congratulations Patti Smith
Patti Smith won the National Book Award. You know what this means right.
Probably it takes so long for the language of life to pry its way into literature because most writers are too busy doing that to live it. In Patti’s case of course writing was music most of the time and she was living and doing. She was a poet before she was a rock star. The same thing I think. Just different ways of doing.
My friend read the book and she thought it was great. I recommended she go to the library for some Eileen Myles. I think it will take a while to get Just Kids from the library.
Oh yeah and umm. The fuck is this?
We are Jack the Ripper, I mean happy weekend.
Today a little girl called me a giant.