Diary of a Subcultural Refugee

Move Country, Move Blog

2007-06-24T22:58:00.000Z

In keeping with the theme of moving, after transplanting my physical self from Chicago to London eight months ago, I've now uprooted my digital identity as well. Fear not, however, for all posts and comments that (all five of) you have come to know and love have been migrated over to my new site at www.daveknapik.com. If you link to this blog, please update your links to point there. If you read my blog via RSS, then get the new feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/daveknapik.

This blog will stay here for archival purposes, though no new posts will be made to it unless I'm feeling particularly sneaky and want to see if anyone is paying attention.

Thanks for coming here and for being a part of my first year of blogging: Diary of a Subcultural Refugee, established 8 June 2006. Please visit www.daveknapik.com and continue reading. Cheers!

Shared Sight

2007-05-13T15:01:00.000Z

Of the many social tools available on the web, my hands-down favourite is easily Flickr. It's not something I came to prefer based on a systematic comparison of all of the features of the various web applications I use, quite the contrary: I just like it a lot, plain and simple. It's a feeling more than it is a thought. Isn't that the sort of user-engagement most software products only dream of attaining?

It's feature-rich, yes, but on a more personal level it is responsible for making me passionate about photography. On the surface that statement suffers from a basic chicken-or-the-egg problem. Many professionally-trained photographers would no doubt scoff at it, because in a way it's like saying that a typewriter or Word has sparked one's love of writing. But that's a bad metaphor, because it's really more like saying that blogging has made you love writing, which is true for me as well.

Publishing tools fundamentally changed when they became social. Obviously a blog is more interactive than a typewriter, and for me Flickr has made me want to take more pictures. It's like visually blogging, for those times when I need to show you what I saw instead of describing it.

My Flickr usage has rapidly increased in the past year. At first I just posted my photos as a way to share them easily with a few close friends. Around this same time I tagged photos like I would tag del.icio.us bookmarks, so that they would be useful to me and I could find them again later. Then at some point other people started finding my photos - total strangers - and I started noticing their photos. We became social network "friends" because we liked seeing the ways each other saw the world. Around this time I started additionally tagging my photos according to ways I thought others might enjoying stumbling upon them. As my experience of Flickr as a community grew, what started as a personal system of classification became social.

As Ross Mayfield observes in his post Power Law of Participation, "Part of what makes Flickr work isn't just excellence at low threshold engagement, but the ability to form groups." A few weeks ago I could no longer resist the pull of the high engagement side of the graph. I started not one, but two new groups and one of them, believe it or not, actually is related to the original idea (and title) of this blog!

First up is Stuff on the Ground. The concept is simple. It's photos of stuff. On the ground.

Next up is my first case of ever staying on-topic with anything: Subculture: The Meaning of Style. Although I nicked the title from (paid homage to?) Dick Hebdige, this isn't an exercise in cultural theory. I just want photos of punks, goths, hippies, ravers... all the freaks we know and love because they make the streets of this planet more colourful. If that leads you to a meaningful examination of some dialectic or other, it's not my fault.

If you enjoy photos in any way, taking them or just looking at them, and haven't yet visited Flickr, dash over there and check it out. You don't have to contribute photos to have fun or be social. Leave comments on the photos you like or participate in group discussions. If you're anything like me, though, it will suck you in and very shortly you'll be obsessively carrying a camera everywhere you go.

15-18 (Lower That Number)

2007-04-30T00:33:00.000Z

(Spoiler warning: Some spoilers for the film This is England follow. You may wish to see the film before reading this post.)

The above clip of a young skinhead's induction into his club of friends is one of the sweetest moments in Shane Meadows' new film, This is England. It resonated with me partly because I'm biased toward remembering subcultural rites of passage fondly. I wasn't a skinhead, though, so the hair didn't come off, it just got dyed fuchsia. While I promise pictures will follow at a later date, this post is about this fine new film, not my hair.

The rituals carried out to welcome a new person into a subcultural group serve a purpose for more than just the inductee. The veterans have their sense of unity reinforced as they remember how they met their friends. Everyone is given a chance to recall what it felt like to be delivered from teenage outsider isolation into a family that cared about you and looked out for you possibly more than your own biological one ever did.

The hair falls to the floor and young Shaun (played by newcomer Thomas Turgoose) gains a sense of belonging. Unfortunately, as with any coming-of-age tale, the innocence is confined to Act One. When an old friend of the gang returns from a recent prison stay, his racism splits the group and he persuades an impressionable Shaun to stay on the wrong side of the divide.

Easily the best film I've seen so far this year, This is England sees exceptional performances from each of its actors, a soundtrack full of ska classics (I do love hearing Toots and the Maytals on a cinema sound system) and a superb period recreation of early 1980s England. In some ways it's a skinhead Quadrophenia, which the film directly references with its shot of the full ensemble cast lined up against a wall on its promotional poster. However where The Who's film focuses on the internal struggle of a boy finding himself, Meadows' story is as much about an era's and a country's identity crisis as it is about one boy growing up.

Offering a complex depiction of racial violence, it is a story every bit as relevant to 2007 as to 1983. This makes it all the more frustrating that the British Board of Film Classification gave This is England an 18 certificate, citing "realistic violence and racist language" as its reason for keeping any person under 18 from seeing it without parental consent. Meadows sadly notes that "the film is now unavailable to the audience it will benefit the most".

After seeing this film, I'm completely at a loss as to how this would get an 18 certification when so many more violent films receive 15s and 12s. In the above news segment, the BBFC representative attempts to single This is England out by noting that its violence dwells on the infliction of pain. Somehow this is more harmful than other kinds of non-pain-focused violence?

The most recent James Bond film, Casino Royale, received a 12 certificate from the BBFC. Aside from numerous instances of hand-to-hand and weapons-based combat as well as massive explosions, there was a particularly memorable scene of graphic torture. I'm 32 years old and when the big bad captures Bond, strips him naked and proceeds to penalise his, um, penis, well... I'm still emotionally scarred. But at least it was educational. Kids may not learn about the history of racism and youth culture in their country, but they will know that if they become MI5 spies, they should avoid capture by Le Chiffre, because he is prone to go straight for the penis.

All Meadows has asked for is a 15 certification, which thankfully Bristol's City Council has had the good sense to grant. Following an appeal by Mark Cosgrove, Head of Watershed Media Centre's Film Programme, the Bristol City Council's licensing committee unanimously voted in favour of reclassifying the film. Hopefully other enlightened city councils will do likewise and give more young people access to this great film. If twelve year-olds can go to the cinema on their own to see a baddie bludgeon Bond's bollocks, certainly young people three years older than them should be able to watch an intelligent movie about growing up dangerously.

Official site for the film
Under My Skin by Shane Meadows
Response by Shane Meadows to 18 certification
Bristol City Council re-classifies This Is England

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UPDATE (13 May 2007): Westminster City Council has followed Bristol's example and lowered the film's certification to 15.

Manifesting Peace

2007-04-18T12:24:00.000Z

With a few days' distance from my first really negative experience in England, I've had time to reflect on expatriate life and Google for information on others' experiences as well. Today I came across the Ex-Pat Manifesto, to which I would like to add the following point:

While I am a representative of my country, please consider that perhaps I left it for a reason. The probability that I disapprove just as much as you do of the government that I left behind is high. I'm happy to engage in intelligent discussions of my reasons for leaving it, but as a human being with feelings, it hurts if the first thing you say to me is along the lines of "I hate you people". That said, I will still respond civilly to these sentiments. I'm a guest in your country and I respect that. I hope that one day we can share a mutual respect and that our learning about each other will give some hope for the world learning to get along peacefully on a global scale.

The weekend really left a poor taste in my mouth. I was hurt, but I'm not going to allow the actions of two people to discolour my impression of an entire country. Doing so would only be hypocritical.

North American Scum

2007-04-15T23:20:00.000Z

"Oh I don't know, I don't know, oh, where to begin. We are North Americans."

Everyone should live at least part of their lives abroad. Aside from all the obvious horizon-broadening it does by introducing you to new places and people, one of its most educational aspects is its gift of your new identity as the foreigner. Although it’s a negative lesson, good comes from it. You start to have more compassion for outsiders everywhere.

"And for those of you who still think we're from England, we're not."

I was at a friend’s birthday party last night where I met loads of wonderful people with whom I stayed up drinking until nearly dawn. But there was one guy there that, when I met him, I thought he was joking with what he first said to me. Having heard my accent, he asked, “Whereabouts are you from in Canada?” So I said, “Oh, I’m not Canadian, I’m American. I’m from Chicago.” Immediately he plainly stated, “I hate Americans.” It was funny so I wrly replied, “Yeah, me too.”

"I hate the feeling when you're looking at me that way 'cos we're North Americans."

As the night went on, I started to see that it wasn’t the good-natured joke that I thought it was. Every time I saw him, he shouted “Hey, American Dave” or “Look everybody, it’s American Dave!”

It was actually mildly amusing the first 20 times, but a few “American Daves” later and it was drifting into the arena of the annoying. It was annoying because no one likes being defined by their otherness. It’s insensitive and it’s rude. It stopped being funny when I realised he was laughing at me, fixating on my nationality and judging me for it instead of taking any time to get to truly know another human being.

I’m just Dave. And even that’s just a word my parents decided to apply to me many years ago. I want to know you and part of that is where you were born and the places you’ve lived, but most of it is who you are now. When we meet, just be real and keep it that way and we’re cool.

"So where's the love, where's the love, where's the love, where's the love tonight? But there's no love when the kids are uptight."

His story was mostly just drunken stumbling and a silly nickname. Writing about it makes it sound like he was really malicious. I don’t think he was a bad guy, just ignorant, drunk and obnoxious. Unsurprisingly, he nearly Jimi Hendrixed himself in the middle of the night ‘cos he partied like such a rock star.

"And yeah, I know you wouldn't touch us with a ten-foot pole 'cos we're North Americans."

The night was still young for me, however, and I was only mildly offended by Mr. Sick. Fortunately, my next random conversation would intensify those feelings so that I could fall asleep feeling like a proper second-class citizen.

I was talking to an English girl during my DJ set and she asked, “Do you know what we call Americans?” Not knowing, and willing to play along with her guessing game, I asked the obligatory, “No, what?” So she happily beamed, “Septics!” I was confused so she explained “like Septic Tank”. And, understanding, I said, “Cockney rhyming slang. It rhymes with ‘yank’ and it’s the tank that holds your shit. That’s funny stuff.” With alcohol impairing her sarcasm detector, she laughed gleefully, “Haha, yeah, you’re a septic!!! You’re a septic!”

I always knew I was full of shit, but damn, “septic”? It’s kind of great because it sounds like something out of a sci-fi film:

It’s the year 2375. It’s been three centuries since the last of the polar ice melted and left the earth a scorched wasteland. There are now enclosed cities that artificially support growing crops and raising wildlife. Each is an oasis encased in glass and only the wealthiest can afford to live in them. But there are still some people on the outside, in the irradiated wilderness. They are diseased and insane. Rumour has it they are cannibals since there isn’t anything else left to eat out there. Inside, they call them “septics”. Occasionally one breaks into one of the cities, but they are caught within moments. All it takes is one good shot to the head: if you kill the brain, you kill the septic.

As previously noted here, learning new slang for the word “toilet” is awesome. New racial slurs to apply to myself… eh, not so much. Viva hate!

Holiday in Avalon

2007-04-13T18:25:00.000Z

After a refreshing holiday in a particularly magical corner of the English countryside, the return to workaday drudgery in the capital is an uninspiring proposition. Fortunately, the mystical powers of the Chalice (w t f d) and the Tor (w t f d) had already transformed it into a memory museum.

Photographs as memories...

Flat Cap Fever

2007-04-09T11:56:00.000Z

According to The Bolton News, flat cap sales are booming in southern England. I cannot help but notice that this trend has curiously coincided with the recent arrival of a certain flat-cap-wearing American on these shores...

Here I can be seen setting my fashion focus on the Vatican. The Pope needs to move past the beanie and get down with the flatness:

In learning of this trend, I finally figured out of all the fuss being made over my cap. Many people I know in London seem to comment about my cap, whereas back in the States it always seemed rather unremarkable. Wikipedia shed some light on the matter for me: "In British popular culture, the flat cap is associated with working class men in northern England."

Ah, so that's it. I'm a middle class foreigner in the south. I seem to have crossed a class line. It was bound to happen, eh?

A chain-reaction of class-conscious questions ensued. Am I even middle class? Isn't that the great myth, that all Americans are middle class? Maybe I'm upper-lower-middle or lower-upper-lower? What other behaviour gets casually and silently scrutinised on a daily basis?

If I go to a an old formica-countered cafe in Soho and call it a "caff" instead of a "cafe", given that I'm university-educated, what does that communicate? Personally, I just like bacon, I don't care what you call the place that makes it. If I shop at Somerfield, will that be seen as ironically "slumming it". Hm, no, actually that would just be a bad idea. Somerfield is shit.

This photo here was taken from my former life as a half northern working class man, half chav:

I can't recall whether I was watching over my sheep or contemplating dope beats and/or knives.

UPDATE: I just returned from a holiday in the town of Glastonbury. Although in the southern county of Somerset, I saw many old men wearing flat caps on the way. I then remembered that I first wore a flat cap as a young boy. It was given to me by my uncle. He wore flat caps all the time. Granted, he was in his sixties, but this never struck me as a reason not to adopt his keen fashion sense.

I don't think my present readoption of the flat cap has anything to do with class politics, rather, I think I'm just an old man trapped in a 30-something's body, much like I used to be a geriatric junior high schooler. And I guess I don't even really believe that my current donning of the flat cap has anything to do with age. I may be 32-going-on-78, but I'm often simultaneously 57-going-on-12 and 25-approaching-7.

Caught in the age flux, I kinda like it here.

The Felt Fantastic

2007-03-29T16:45:00.000Z

Now that I've finally posted all of the photos from our recent holiday in Rome on Flickr, I can prove to you that Rin makes me go to fabric shops in every country we visit. Here she is, caught felt-handed:

Secretly, however, I like it. She's been doing wonderful things with felt lately and I like being involved in the creative process. Besides, if I didn't, I'd still deserve it as penance for all the non-music-geek friends I've made wait with me for endless hours in record shops around the globe. Everyone I know should collectively thank the internet for keeping me out of the shops these days. I was beginning to look pale.

If you're curious as to why Rin is stockpiling felt, head on over to her portofolio and have a look at a not-so-top-secret project soon to debut at a market near you - if you're in London, that is. If not, you'll have to beg for mail order options.

Note to creative/media employers: If you like what you see there, feel free to contact her, as she is currently available for work.

Karzy Little Thing Called Toilet

2007-03-28T16:28:00.000Z

Since there was an ace gig we were attending near my gaff last night, Martin took the opportunity to continue his ongoing efforts to expand my British slang vocabulary. One can really never have enough ways to say "toilet" so now in addition to referring to it as the bog and the loo, I have come to call it the karzy.

And what an exciting bit of slang it is, with no less than six ways to spell it! From the brilliant slang dictionary at www.peevish.co.uk:

karzy: Noun. A lavatory, toilet. The word lavatory is in itself, a euphemism for a place to wash. From the Italian for house, casa. Numerous alternative spellings include khazi, kharzie, karsey, karzey and kazi.

I, however, have since stopped calling it that and instead am now opting to be Cockney. I've decided that "marsy" rhymes nicely, but means nothing, so I'll shorten it to "mars". This will confuse the squares into thinking that I'm talking about chocolates or the red planet. Only my plates born within the sound of Bow Bells will know otherwise.

Sample usage:

Dave: Where's the mars?
Martin: Just round the corner to the left.

Unfortunately, this changes of the meaning of "a Mars bar" quite a bit, I'm afraid...

A Dictionary of UK Slang and Colloquialisms
The English-to-American Dictionary
Cockney Rhyming Slang

Mmmm, Pie

2007-03-23T15:51:00.000Z

One of my favourite things about London is its fantastic markets. I don't live far from the Camden Lock Market and I work quite close to Borough Market. Both occupy special stalls in my heart, but when it comes to gastrointestinal real estate, there is one booth that rules over all and it requires a trip out of my way to E1.

I should clarify here that Borough Market's endless variety of exotic culinary delights is truly a thing of beauty. From the wild board sausage to the turkey, stuffing and cranberry sandwich, I could live for decades eating only there and never get bored. When I need comfort food, however, Spitalfields' Square Pie Company provides the most Itis-inducing treats in the whole of London.

Initially indulging my love of Guinness by going for their steak and Guinness pie, my wife eventually convinced me of the superiority of the Lamb and Rosemary option. If you try to be frugal by only getting the pie, you're missing out. The only way to experience your Square Pie is to drop £6.50 and get the pie plus two sides, which for me are always mushy peas and mash, with gravy poured over the entire feast.

On a recent Sunday outing to Spitalfields, I captured these unboxing photos. Who cares about opening your new MacBook Pro? This is stomach technology!

Here we see the closed Square Pie box, coyly pretending it doesn't hold ample treasure inside its plain cardboard walls:

A-HA! We enter the hall of pie!

After a brief moment spent appreciating it's loveliness, it's time to move in with only two plastic utensils and a solitary serviette by my side:

Photographing whilst eating may result in gravy on the lens, and the next ten minutes went by in a blur anyway. Suddenly, there was no more pie! I felt not sad, but victorious:

Time to head home and resist the urge to fall asleep on the Tube. That would only result in me ending up in High Barnet, and since there's no Square Pie in High Barnet, I have no use for it.

I hope this unboxing has convinced you that your life is incomplete without pie and mash (and mushy peas). Charter a plane if you must, but get to Spitalfields as soon as you can and join me for a pie! JOIN ME!!!

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UPDATE (19 April 2007): According to this article, as of yesterday Sainsbury's has started selling Square Pies, including my beloved Lamb and Rosemary! You just don't know how many times I've looked at the pie section in Sainsie's and taken a few moments out of my day to simply stare at it, sadly thinking "if only they had Square Pies". Now they've read my thoughts and turned wishes into horses (but thankfully not horses into pies, that would be terrible). I knew they were my favourite supermarket for a reason. Tesco be damned, I'm going shopping for pie!

Social Networking, Minus It Sucking

2007-03-22T14:30:00.000Z

I register at, and frequently use, a lot of online social networks. The internet's human element has interested me since the moment I first fired up a Telnet (w t f d) client at university in 1993. I quickly realised that I could use it to chat in real-time with friends around the world, which felt pretty revolutionary at the time. Since then, I met the woman I married on Friendster and moved my life across an ocean to work for a social software company.

While there are myriad ways to engage socially on the web today, few require more dedication than a social networking application. I can start a blog with only a few sentences or maybe just a funny YouTube video, but to really use a social network to any extent that will produce actual fun, you have to put work into it. You have to fill out your profile, get your friends to sign up, add some photos to it and so on. Okay, granted, it's not a lot of work compared to, say, building a fully-operational space station with planet-disintegrating lasers (w t f d), but once you've done it on Friendster, then on Orkut and then again on MySpace, do you really feel like doing all over again anywhere else?

With this reluctance, today I registered with Facebook. Why did I bother? Colleagues whose social software opinions I highly value told me it was super great! Why else? And so far I really like what I see.

MySpace makes me die a little inside each time I have to use it. It's not the schizophrenic ways in which people customise their pages or too many LOL OMFG comments (I actually like those, yeah, I'm sorry), it's just the horrible user-interface. It takes me a million clicks to get anywhere and it's zero fun. Perhaps even negative fun. I put work into setting up my profile and getting all my friends into it, but I never got any fun back out of it. I just click and wait, click and wait and bitch and bitch and moan. I know Facebook won't be any MySpace-killer, but as long as the initial investment is lower and it is even slightly more enjoyable to use than MySpace, maybe it'll be fun for a little while until something else shiny distracts me and I sign up for that.

The Facebook feature that became my first favourite is that I can import this blog into Facebook using RSS. This means that I don't have to start a new blog on their site or go blogless as I do with my MySpace account, rather I can easily establish a self-updating connection from here to there. Ace!

I also quite like the fine-grained definitions you can apply to your friendships. If Rin signs up, I can specify that I'm married to her, and next to "Married" in my profile, it will add "...to Rin" and link to her profile. This may not seem like much but I find it to be little nuances like this which make the whole experience more organic. It's a social network and this emphasises The Social. Instead of having your primary way of learning about who I know be through browsing my list of friends, the "Married to..." link brings this connection centrally into my own profile. This small action integrates telling you about who I know with the page that tells you about who I am.

The only bit of advice I have for Facebook this early in my evaluation of their site is that they really should consider making some options radio buttons rather than checkboxes. There are some overlapping relationships that I'd just rather not know about...

(Note: Rik's not my dad, this guy is. And we never hooked up in 1982, I was too busy playing table top Ms. Pac Man at Pizza Hut.)

Suburban Swedish Embassy

2007-03-13T12:18:00.000Z

So my fucking cat pissed all over my goddamn bed again last Saturday night and while I personally felt that my duvet could survive one good cat pissing, I had to draw the line at two. I can eat a chip that's fallen on the floor, but once it's rolled around and gotten hair all over it, you just gotta let it go. And so it was with my duvet. Once yea twice, but alas, ne'er thrice pissed upon 'twould it be.

It would cost at least a tenner to clean the fucker and it would probably still smell like cat piss to my fucking cat that's gifted with a superhero-sized sense of smell. Since we bought it at IKEA in the first place and they had one like it in their catalog for £35, Saturday night cat-cursing quickly gave way to Sunday afternoon shopping. Perhaps it was fate's way of keeping the Swedish motif going for me. Cheers.

After a Northern Line train from Camden Town to Euston, a transfer at Euston to the Victoria Line and then quite a journey up to Tottenham Hale, we had the pleasure of waiting for about 50 years until the shuttle bus arrived to take us from the suburban tube station car park to the IKEA. In Chicago, you had to have a car or know someone nice with a car if you wanted to shop at IKEA, as there weren't any trains or shuttle buses to take you there. I really do appreciate that in London one can get to IKEA via public transportation, but I think a part of me misses travelling there by car. Because whilst shopping in IKEA, knowing that a car is at my disposal in the car park gives me comfort. I have an escape route, an exit strategy.

All that standing around waiting for the shuttle made us hungry. The smell of fried chicken wafting over from the nearby KFC didn't help either. So upon entering IKEA, we made haste to the restaurant, in search of cheap Swedish meatballs and pie.

Once we waited through the long queues and got our food, the desire to hurt small children subsided and we found a place to sit down and eat. It was then that I experienced an IKEA-related emotion that I never thought I'd have: I started to like it there.

The IKEA restaurant was completely anonymous. It was sterile and neutral. It was an in-between place, like an airport. After two free coffee refills and a half plate of meatballs, I started to believe I was in international waters. Whose laws applied here? Maybe we were on the edge of slipping into anarchy and then if we ran out of meatballs, we'd have to eat people.

Outside the large wall of windows, suburban sprawl stretched as far as I could see. British suburban sprawl, American suburban sprawl, it's all the same. Maybe it's because I so deeply associate suburbs with America that I found this experience especially disorienting. At any rate, I was fastly drifting into the arena of the unwell, so I finished my fucking meatballs and pie and went to replace that pissed on duvet.

Later that night, tucked under the warmth of my dry, unsullied duvet, with my cat locked in the kitchen away from any absorbent fabrics, I found myself closer to resolving the question of what North London football club I should support: Arsenal can go fuck themselves, Tottenham has an IKEA!

Summer Ended Before It Began

2007-02-21T22:24:00.000Z

Thankfully I read this week's issue of Time Out immediately upon buying it. Had I not, I would have missed out on learning that All Tomorrow's Parties is bringing Sonic Youth to The Roundhouse on 31 August 2007 to perform their classic 1988 album "Daydream Nation" in its entirety. It's been one of favourite albums for as long as I can remember, so after reading the news that tickets were on sale, I was online buying one just as soon as I could confirm that I would have enough cash left over to avoid starvation over the weekend. It's a good thing I acted fast, too: tickets have already sold out everywhere except for via the venue itself. If you haven't already bought yours, try checking out www.roundhouse.org.uk and if they don't have any, your only hope is your friendly neighbourhood tout.

ATP also has two more gigs in their Don't Look Back series scheduled for later this year. On 22 August, Slint will be performing "Spiderland" while the 13th of September sees House of Love revisiting their first record for Creation. Both gigs will be at Koko and at the time of writing still have tickets available for purchase.

The night before learning about this ATP series, I was having one of my occasional looks around MySpace and learned of Throbbing Gristle's 2007 schedule. I had no idea there were any TG live plans for 2007, so it came as a nice surprise. In 2004 I had the good fortune of seeing them live at the London Astoria. This time around I'll hopefully be able to see both their 27 May tribute to Derek Jarman at the Tate Modern as well as one of their six planned recording sessions at the ICA between the 1st and 3rd of June. Full details are available at www.throbbing-gristle.com.

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UPDATE 22/2/07: Breaking news! Second Sonic Youth "Daydream Nation" gig added for 1 September 2007. Go get tickets now!

UPDATE 14/5/07: Third show added for 30 August 2007, which as of today still has tickets available for purchase. The other two shows are sold out.

One From Spain, Two From Japan, 20+ From Sweden

2007-02-09T15:15:00.000Z

In retrospect, it's easy to see the underlying Swedish themes appearing in past decade of my life. Shortly after university I had an imaginary electronic pop duo named Farmor and Farfar. To our credit, we aspired to move beyond the theoretical realm, but at the time I suppose I did as well. Then from 1998 - 2006 I lived in Chicago's Swedish neighbourhood, Andersonville (w t f d). Living in Andersonville as a young indie rocker naturally meant that I drank at the indie-rocker-living-north-of-Addison's pub of choice, Simon's. Simon's has a brilliant neon sign that only lights up for a few months each year. During those cold months, it proclaims "It's Glögg Time!" and, once lit, anyone within a 5 mile radius feels compelled to enter and consume copious quantities of this Scandinavian mulled wine (w t f d).

Until recently I had been mostly unaware of the massive quantities of excellent pop music this country was producing. Lucky for me, my friend Martin insisted that I get the I'm From Barcelona album "Let Me Introduce My Friends", which has quickly become a favourite of mine. Infectiously catchy, but with enough attitude thrown in to prevent sugar shock, it's a new staple of my weekly musical diet. Once I'd fallen in love with this record, there was no turning back and I told Martin to let me know if they ever came back to England.

Happily, they returned to play a gig on 24 February at the University of London Union. Well, most of them. Apparently they have about 29 members in the band, but I only counted about 20 that night. Still, that's impressive considering that almost constitutes chartering their own private plane for the occasion.

Focusing on their sheer numbers as novelty, however, misses what makes seeing I'm From Barcelona so special. It's not just a quirky gimmick, it's a necessary number: at all times it appeared as if there were a party happening on-stage. It mirrored the party happening off-stage, of course, in the crowd. In the end both threads wove together, as the band invited people up on stage and some of the band members wandered off into the audience. You could theorise all you wanted to about the line between the performer and the audience at that point, but it simply wasn't there anymore. And it was great.

A few days ago Ryan Air announced a sale too good to pass up which will take Rin and I to Stockholm for the early May bank holiday. It feels like Sweden is bursting at the seams with quality indie pop at the moment, so if anyone has any recommendations of record shops, clubs or bands playing Stockholm gigs 4 May through 7 May 2007, do please leave a comment!

Breaking news! I just received an email from Martin telling me that I'm From Barcelona is returning to London again, this time just a few steps from my flat at Koko on Tuesday 27 March. See you there!

- photo courtesy of Paul Wilcock (best of luck with your move to Australia, sir!)

Fade to Grey

2007-02-06T20:44:00.000Z

Rin just discovered my first grey hair. I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank all the assholes that gave it to me.

Only for the Hardcore UK Raver

2006-12-31T19:13:00.000Z

Since I think I may have finally regained the ability to express coherent thoughts, I can contribute a bit of content to the internet instead of just staring blankly at the public Twitter timeline. (To my credit, I did have a semi-productive morning on Yoshi's Island DS, clearing half of World 3 and unlocking Baby Wario, so I'm not a complete waste of space. And "finish World 3" is even a fairly high-priority item on my weekend to-do list.)

Richie Hawtin is easily my favourite techno DJ of all-time (no offence to my Docile boys). Always has been, always will be. His Detroit parties have consistently been the best events in their class, never failing to raise the bar with the bedtimes. Unfortunately, however, whenever he would come to Chicago to spin, it just.... kinda sucked. His Chicago appearances were capable, just boring - it could have been any DJ in that booth. The Detroit parties were special because they were hometown gigs, yes, but couldn't just a bit of that have come with him to Chicago? At a Detroit Hawtin gig it was not uncommon to have the beats completely fall aside for a few minutes to give space for ambient noise and voices claiming to have called us when we weren't there. In Chicago, it was always techno-by-numbers safety, or worse yet, tepid house music. Was it that Detroit was extraordinarily receptive to experimentation or was Chicago just more sonically conservative?

With no better way to answer this question than through empirical research, I attended the Minus Records night at The End on 30/12/06. This was my first foray into a club since moving to London, so I was well excited to break in the city's nightlife. And despite the ticket-taker being a real cockgobbler (he dropped one of our tickets after we handed it to him, then insisted that I pick it up for him), we eventually made it inside.

The venue was impressive: just the right balance between spacious and intimate, with full bass warmth eminating from the sound system and easy access to the bar and toilets. As the night moved forward, intimate would give way to overcrowded and reaching the toilets would become a journey for which the George Cross should be awarded, but for now we were there early and the club was ours.

We did a fantastic job finding an almost perfect base camp for the night. I say "almost perfect" because it had a couch, a pleasant breeze (a fan or the bass wind, I wasn't sure) and a friendly group of strangers by us, but it also was about a million miles from the nearest toilet. Clearly the place was oversold, but that wasn't the problem here so much as the lack of basic common sense. I know, it's hard to think on drugs, but trust me, standing or sitting on the stairs connecting the dance floor to the area with the bar/toilets is a rather bad idea. If you've consumed too much ketamine, there are some very nice stretches of floor near the speakers where you can have a sit down.

But the effort required to wee didn't cramp my style completely. Quite the contrary, it gave you something to do, a good chance to take a break from the dance floor and buy another round of booze so that you could repeat the whole experience all over again in half an hour.

When not peeing, I danced. There was so much music worth dancing to. Magda's set was at her usual level of brilliance. I can remember the first time I ever saw her. I had never heard of her before in my life, but she was warming up the room for Hawtin at a Detroit party that he threw sometime in the early 00's. At the time I happened to be getting into a lot of old acid house records, so when she smoothly cooked up a set packed with 80's Chicago-style treats, my night was made. Her set at The End was more modern, but consistently hard and funky, just like I like it.

By contrast I wasn't sure what to make of Gaiser. Perhaps I was just too tired at that point, stuck somewhere between my second and fifteenth winds, but his music fell flat for me. It lacked the funk that Magda was able to bring, no doubt in part because she had several artists' music at her disposal, hers being a DJ set instead of a live PA. The homogeneity hurdle can be a difficult one to overcome for an artist doing a live PA. Gaiser's tracks are quite good on their own, but they weren't enough to keep me awake when I needed it most.

A word about keeping awake: I was in it for the long haul here. This wasn't a simple leave-by-5am Chicago club. Officially The End was open until 7am, and Richie wasn't even starting until 4:30 a.m. My lame ass probably should have taken a disco nap in preparation for it, however I do think I slept standing up in the middle of the dance floor for ten minutes around 6:30 am. My apologies if I impeded anyone's efforts to get to the toilet.

Finally the time was here to get the proper techno treatment that I came for. Hawtin was getting ready to spin and one of my friends suggested we make a move closer to the DJ booth, just to shake out some of the laziness bred by the comfy sofa we controlled for the past few hours. Sounded like a good idea to me, so off we went into the sea of people.

Have you seen the "Dawn of the Dead" remake? You know the part where they say fuck it and just leave the shopping mall on a school bus to try and reach that one dude's boat and find some island? Yeah, it sort of felt like that side of an ill-conceived equation once it was too late to return to our shopping mall in the corner. It was so fucking overcrowded. I thought I was going to get eaten by mutant zombie ravers.

Thankfully, my flesh remained intact, though my beer did not. I was stupid, but too tired to fend off morons anymore. Some chick asked if she could have a sip of my beer and I just gave it to her. Now I'm no germ-o-phobe -- I'll share water and drinks with people I know. But some random girl hanging out with some random guy at a club? I think I'd rather everyone just kept their backwash to themselves. The best part was when she took a sip of my beer, then handed it to the guy that was with her. After he took a sip, he passed it on again to one of his mates who then gave it back to the girl. I was really entertained with the whole scene, wondering if they had so much nerve as to just keep the beer. Unfortunately, they didn't. She returned the beer to me with a polite smile moments later. A few moments after that I discreetly left it in the corner without taking another sip. (In all honesty, I'm sure she did me a favour in the end, sparing me a hangover on the morning of New Year's Eve.)

Up close and personal with the DJ booth, we were ready for the main event. I still wasn't sure what to expect. Would I get a proper Detroit techno night like all signs were pointing to or would I be disappointed with a phoned-in club set? Happily, I got a lot more of the former than I'd hoped for and none of the latter. Richie slammed it hard and played it weird, pulling out stops that he wouldn't even bother wasting on a Windy City crowd. I even got a replay of his favourite Lil Louis sample from "I Called U".

It wasn't Detroit-quality, but that would have spoiled the legend a bit, wouldn't it? Of course I really didn't care so much about the differences between Detroit's and Chicago's ears as I did to suss out London's. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that I've relocated to more of a techno town than I'd originally given it credit for being. I'll be back for more, but first, a bit more sleep.

---

End of weekend update:

I did finally finish World 3 of Yoshi's Island DS. I am even well-into World 4, with or without that fickle Baby Wario!

The Day The World Turned Day-Glo

2006-12-28T17:00:00.000Z

Since I live equidistant from both the Camden Town and Mornington Crescent tube stations, unless I need the Bank branch, I avoid Camden Town crowds and opt for everyone's favourite game and Belle and Sebastian song instead. Hop off the train a bit sooner, ride the lift upstairs and maybe even stop off for a pint and some Thai food on the way home. I love you, Mornington Crescent!

This, however, was not an option on Boxing Day, when limited London Underground services were running, so Camden Town it would have to be. (Note: Don't get me wrong, I love the Camden Town tube station for the amount of life that oozes from it and I feel fortunate that I get to use it on a daily basis instead of some boring quiet stop. I just avoid it sometimes on the weekends when large quantities of life-ooze are likely to make me ooze violence.)

As I emerged from my little transport capsule, I initially felt that something was off, but quickly came to see that something really was quite on. Paint was everywhere. On the ground, on the tiles, across adverts, covering tube maps and even electronic signs. A grin spread across my face as I realised that Camden Town tube station got massively graffiti bombed!

Of course this was the rare occasion that I wasn't carrying my camera, so I raced home to get it. Fifteen minutes later, I was back underground taking loads of photos. My favourites?

The initial shock of seeing this familiar daily sight turned on its head when you first come down the escalator:

Its close-up counterpart:

The melting acid swirl that once was a plain instance of familiar London Underground iconography:

The funny aside to Mr. Christ (apologies for, and to, the guy who is picking his nose):

These wishes of a good Christmas:

The punk prankster's reminder that this is not a socially acceptable way to celebrate:

Most of the graffiti was text, not drawings. Brixton, however, got treated to a cute rendering of Buster and Babs Bunny along with a manifesto. And who doesn't love a little manifesto, especially with a side of cute? (Certainly I would rescind at least a portion of my hatred for Matthew Herbert if he would draw bunnies in the margins of his rants.)

Photos:

Camden Town Tube Station Graffiti Bomb: 26 Dec 2006 (my Flickr set)
Photos of the Brixton graffiti bombing (courtesy of Alex Buchanan)

Blogs:

London Underground Tube Diary - Going Underground's Blog
rodcorp: Graffiti taggers vs British Transport Police
Camden station graffiti bombed

News:

Graffiti gang defaces Tube stop
Police target graffiti vandals

---

Update (1/1/07):

I moderate the comments on this blog due to the sort of harassing rubbish I've been getting from quasi-stalkers here and on Flickr. I'm not silencing dissent: I'll gladly post a comment that disagrees with me if it can do so with even a mild degree of intelligence and avoid threats to me and my (landlord's) property. I happily let-live a comment on my Flickr site that so eloquently stated, "it's a piece of mindless vandalism by a group of low life scum". A bit blunt, but that's his/her opinion.

I like open debate, I just don't like trolls. Thanks again for stopping by.

Alive and Well and Er, Um, Okay, hmrphh...

2006-12-27T19:51:00.000Z

My poor blog. It just lays here sadly dormant while I go off trotting around the globe...

It's not all been a pleasure trip, though. The last few months have been hard work, but never has there been a dull moment (well, okay, there was a rather relaxing coach ride from London to Oxford that qualified as pleasantly dull and then there was that other dull moment when I went to Sainsbury's and only had to get peas). There have been ups and downs, but as I said in the last post, you didn't come here for the life story. Well, okay, you kind of did, but we have to wrap that story within another story because I'm too old to keep a LiveJournal and too young to write my memoirs.

Suffice it to say, we arrived safely in London on 23 October 2006 and I started my new job on the 25th. Many adventures followed (including one involving hiding our cat away in our cheap hotel room for over a week - not my highest moment, though not my lowest either), much questing was done and high hilarity ensued until at long last our hero, heroine and cat finally came to call Camden Town home.

Our shipment of stuff from the States, including my record collection and some furniture, arrives next week. I hope we can fit it all into our flat. It should be fairly surreal to again see all these material possessions that I have learned to live without. I started to feel very liberated from them, though it will be ace to have my vinyl, our bookshelf and books, our vintage bar/booze cart and booze and our pink shag rug back in hand. How I do miss that pink shag rug! In January, if you need to find me, I'll be at home sitting on my pink shag rug drinking copious amounts of mezcal.

It's just over two months into our English life and we're over the roughest bits and ready to settle in and enjoy life again. As soon as the 4 p.m. sunsets are swallowed up by summertime and we can spend weekends walking in parks without overcoats, that enjoyment should come rather easily.

From London with love...

LDN

2006-09-02T22:38:00.000Z

Some of you already know this and some of you don't, but I have one more big life change happening this year in addition to my wedding. Need a hint? It has a population of approximately 50 million and an average daily tea consumption of just under three cups (though either that statistic is either seriously flawed or my friends are dramatically raising the average)…. give up yet? It's England! And I'm moving there!

Okay, so technically it's not one more massive life change, but really two. The reason why I'm moving to England is because I recently accepted an offer from a fantastic social software company in London, where I will continue to work with ColdFusion and potentially Ruby on Rails as well. I'm tremendously excited about this new opportunity as well as the move to London.

I'll finish work at my current job in approximately two weeks. Shortly thereafter, Rin and I leave for our wedding/honeymoon in México. We'll leave for London soon after our return from our Mayan adventures, and I'll start my new job within a day or two of my arrival.

This blog will, of course, hibernate while we are in México, but I'll probably post again as soon as we return, with regular posts resuming once we're settled with a flat in London. I'm having my studio monitors shipped over, so I'll also follow through on my promise to give you a new DJ mix before the year's end. I'll also be expanding the focus of my writing to include my stories and observations of the UK.

I try to avoid discussing my personal life on my blog, so I'll wrap this up now. Thanks for reading and I'll catch up with you soon!

Plastic Smiling Zombies

2006-08-30T22:36:00.000Z

There are few things cooler in this world than ninjas. While that short list also includes lightsabers and Ruby on Rails, above even these are zombies.

After about 9 or 10 years of geek living on this planet, puberty's early stages set in and my nerd know-how began to grow past Star Wars action figures and the burning desire to launch global thermonuclear war from my Commodore 64. While my junior-high loser colleagues were busy securing their social pariah status with comic books, I found a love for horror movies. Freddy made me want to sleep in and Jason had me wishing that my parents would send me to summer camp in nearby Crystal Lake. But as soon as I discovered an old black-and-white film called "Night of the Living Dead", all these slasher slackers would soon be forgotten.

Maybe it was the way black-and-white left so much to fear hiding in the shadows or in the tar-like blood. Perhaps it was the charm of its low-budget simplicity providing my 1980's over-stimulated senses with much needed room to breathe. And no doubt Romero's powerful direction, the everyman cast and the politically-cold commentary all played a part in my obsession with the film as well. Nah, I may have been supremely nerdy, but I don't think I was intellectualizing it that much as a kid. It was probably just the awesome premise of the dead reanimating with the sole intent of feasting on the flesh of the living. Oh, and that little zombie girl near the end eating her parents. Holy crap that was fucking cool!

Awkward family moment

My parents generally exercised poor censoring judgment. They let me watch "The Shining" on TV when I was like 8 years old. I was already having trouble talking to the ladies but that pretty much sealed the deal. Every time I would look at a girl in my 3rd grade class, the phrase "come play with us forever and ever and ever…" echoed through my mind. I probably would have had a goddamn heart attack if I ever saw twins. But I digress…

The poor job my parents did of filtering objectionable content from my impressionable senses led me to acquire what soon became a prized-possession: my very own VHS copy of "Night of the Living Dead". I must have watched it at least twice weekly. Soon I not only was able to do a pretty good zombie walk, but also an uncanny recitation of the film's classic line, "They're coming to get you, Bar-bar-a!"

As the film wove itself into my cultural DNA, I eventually hungered for more. There seemed to be an overabundance of slasher movies, but why the criminal neglect of what was obviously the best horror subgenre in existence?!? Then one day, while voraciously devouring the latest issue of Fangoria, I saw that George A. Romero was making a sequel to… "Dawn of the Dead"? Reading on, the article noted that "Dawn of the Dead" was his amazing follow-up to the classic "Night of the Living Dead". Okay, I could handle that there was one sequel soon to debut, but there was one before it which I missed? So this will be a trilogy? All this time I was savoring my new hope, oblivious to the knowledge that not only had the Empire already struck back but that the Jedi was soon to return!

In the end "Day of the Dead" was a bit of a disappointment, but I still cherished it. More importantly, much questing through bleak poorly-stocked video stores eventually led me to a copy of "Dawn of the Dead" and I quickly had a new favorite in the zombie realm. Growing up semi-suburbanly on Chicago's Northwest Side, shopping malls were familiar terrain so this helped transform boring outings to JC Penney's into potentially valiant missions to rid the Brickyard of cannibalistic hellspawn.

Years went by, decades in fact, with nothing more to see. Romero seemed to disappear just when I was hooked. I got older and finished high school, went to university, traveled the world, got jobs – all of that daily people stuff we all do – and just really gave up on any more zombie movies worth my time ever seeing the light of day. I had the classics to revisit, my sturdy old trilogy, and I grew to be okay with that. The Playstation even brightened my day along the way with the "Resident Evil" series, enabling me to spend late nights getting scared out of my socks while blasting undead baddies in the dark. Yes, the 90's were low on zombies, but there were a few bones thrown here and there for fans to gnaw on.

Fortunately the tide was destined to turn in the 00's: zombies were back big-time! I should make it perfectly clear now that I'm not one of those zombie snobs that kicks "28 Days Later" and the "Dawn of the Dead" remake out of bed for eating crackers (or humans, I guess): I can equally appreciate fast and slow zombies. Fast zombies are scary! Sure, it doesn't make much sense that they can run, but it's not exactly a compelling argument that a space satellite crashing to Earth could reanimate the dead in the first place. And yes, technically, the "28 Days Later" lot weren't really zombies since they were the living infected with a virus, but that virus made them act a hell of a lot like zombies, so that's good enough for me.

The gem of the new crop of zombie films, however, was not a remake nor a film filled with the technically-still-alive, but a romantic zombie comedy from England. "Shaun of the Dead" succeeded as not only a genre satire, but also as a quality entry in the genre itself. With the winning team of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright behind it, how could it fail?

Previous to the RomZomCom film that garnered them international attention, Wright directed the brilliant Channel 4 comedy "Spaced". Written by co-stars Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, "Spaced" followed the lives of a small group of North Londoners stumbling through their late 20's. Equally hilarious as it was kind and insightful, "Spaced" captured what it felt like to begin your quarter-life crisis at the end of the century. This was a "Friends" for the fuck-ups and we loved it.

Sadly "Spaced" was destined to last only for two short seasons, as most of the cast quickly moved along to greener pastures. There have been long rumored stories of an eventual third season or perhaps an hour-long television special, but that remains to be seen. It's no matter, really, as the moment has passed in some ways. I'm not sure much how a 30-something me would like seeing a 30-something Tim and Daisy anyway, but if anyone could pull it off with style and poignancy, it would be Pegg and Stevenson.

I lived through a drought of zombie films, so I can survive the current dearth of Pegg-Wright comedy. To hold me over, I made a trip to my local comic book store recently to procure an item that I deeply coveted ever since it was announced earlier this year: the NECA Cult Classics Series Shaun of the Dead action figure!

Standing approximately six inches tall, this menacing bit of plastic is sure to strike fear in the hearts of the miniature undead everywhere. He's currently standing atop my external FireWire hard drive, looking like he's about to take a cricket bat to my PowerBook. My PowerBook, happily, does not appear to be fear-stricken. (If it did, it's kernel might panic! Wakka wakka wakka… geek jokes: I got a million of 'em!)

And just so Shaun wouldn't feel lonely, I bought a zombie friend for him to attack from NECA's Series 3: Zombie Flyboy from the original "Dawn of the Dead"! He looks a bit green in the face and is rather blood-soaked as well. And Shaun thinks he's got red on him?! Hands off the PowerBook, Shaun – worry about that other classic horror icon creeping up behind you instead!

I've taken a few photos for your enjoyment and I'll leave you with them. If your DVD player can handle Region 2 DVDs and you haven't seen it yet, buy "Spaced". If Simon Pegg is reading this, congratulations sir, you've finally made it to the top of the geek heap: you are immortalized in plastic! Hey!!!

Slip Slip Away

2006-08-04T12:27:00.000Z

I refrained from posting about Syd Barrett's death just less than a month ago. I always found his music enjoyable and the only capacity in which I ever liked Pink Floyd involved Syd at the helm. Nonetheless, I held back from posting because I knew five million other bloggers would. I cringed as blog after blog told that "crazy diamond" to "shine on", as I certainly didn't see that lyrical reference coming. It's a curious role that blogs occupy in the online body of news. Often they supply a completely fresh perspective that you don't hear anywhere else, but just as often they mimic mainstream media and fall prey to its clichés.

This morning, however, I woke up earlier than usual and began to read the news with blearier eyes than usual. I hardly believed it when I learned that a man whose music touched me far more deeply than Syd's had passed away yesterday: Arthur Lee of the 1960's Los Angeles psychedelic pop band Love.

Lee's lyrics, combined with his ability to deliver them either tenderly or ferociously depending on the situation, never failed to leap out of the speakers and linger in my head for days. Sometimes even months after having last listened to a Love album, suddenly a song fragment would appear in my head: "I'd go slip slip, you'd go slip slip, away...." In those moments, I'd almost always fill with an uncontrollable need to spend the next hour or so listening to old Love records.

I think the first Love song I ever heard was their Bacharach and David cover, "My Little Red Book". At the time I didn't know it was a cover, so I just assumed it was their original song. No matter though, it may as well have been considering how much they made it their own. This was Lee softly vulnerable while screaming from the center of his broken heart. With each return to the end-of-chorus line "there's just no getting over you", you feel yourself getting over all the heartbreak you thought you'd never let slip away.

After my fascination with "My Little Red Book" and its neighbor on Love's eponymous debut album, "Can't Explain", my elder music geek friends at the time told me I had to hear Forever Changes. Widely regarded not only as Love's best record, but one of the greatest rock albums of all time, this 1967 album deserves every accolade heaped onto it. You can preach to me about Sgt. Pepper and his Pet Sounds all you want, but if I had to take only one late-60's lysergic pop gem to the proverbial desert island with me, this would be it.

Arthur's gentle love of life is still here, but it dances with fear and doubt throughout. The optimism and the turmoil of the decade in which these songs were conceived can be heard in almost every one of their lines:

"And I'm wrapped in my armor, but my things are material. And I'm lost in confusion, 'cause my things are material."

"I know the old man would laugh. He spoke of love's sweeter days, and in his eloquent way, I think he was speaking of you. You are so lovely, you didn't have to say a thing."

"There are people wearing frowns who'll screw you up, but they would rather screw you down."

"By the time that I'm through singing, the bells from the schools of walls will be ringing. More confusions, blood transfusions, the news today will be the movies for tomorrow. And the water's turned to blood, and if you don't think so, go turn on your tub. And if it's mixed with mud, you'll see it turn to gray. And you can call my name. I hear you call my name..."

These are mushroom trips taken in the shadow of the mushroom cloud. Acid dreams forming and promising a brighter tomorrow, then slowly melting away. When I first heard the last quote I listed above in "A House is Not a Motel", its fast delivery, unwavering certainty and sense of being alive all made me question exactly when the song was recorded. Was it really that long ago? Certainly someone made this last week! I will listen to this album as soon as I finish writing, but right now in my mind's ear I can hear Arthur singing fiercely, "go turn on your tub". The short stab of the word "tub" is giving me shivers and the record isn't even playing.

My favorite song on Forever Changes is probably an odd choice, considering it's not the classic "A House is Not a Motel" or the oft-quoted "The Red Telephone". And I always forget about my favorite, as it sits nestled just inside the second half of the album. I can't extract one single quote that can explain why I love "Live and Let Live" so much, because there isn't one that would do the song justice printed here away from its musical accompaniment. Just go buy this record if you don't already have it, it's great, trust me. When you get to this pretty little song, I hope you smile.

In the last few years of his life, Arthur Lee went back out on tour, sometimes playing Forever Changes in its entirety. Although he played in Chicago a few times, I never took the opportunity to see him. I think initially perhaps I was afraid that the gig wouldn't be very good and that I'd see a master off his game. I'd heard so many reviews to the contrary, however, that I don't think that was the case when he came through town again.

I think that perhaps my relationship with Arthur Lee's songs was so personal, it just wasn't something I could share with strangers in a bar. I'm the anomaly among my music-loving friends because live music doesn't usually matter to me as much as its recorded counterpart. Arthur's songs came into my home via vinyl, and they came to live with me there. They moved with me wherever I went and now they are a part of me. I don't care so much that I never got to see Arthur Lee play live, as I wish there was some way for me to tell him how much his songs meant to someone so far removed from him, someone he'd never meet.

The power of music - art in general, too, really - to form these connections across time and space is amazing, remarkable stuff. But that's why we love it, right? It's like life. Thanks, Arthur.

I'll leave you with more lyrics. Appropriately they come from the closing song on Forever Changes, "You Set the Scene", and impart some of the life wisdom that Arthur Lee had acquired by the age of 22.

"This is the only thing that I am sure of
And that's all that lives is gonna die
And there'll always be some people here to wonder why
And for every happy hello, there will be good-bye
There'll be time for you to put yourself on

Everything I've seen needs rearranging
And for anyone who thinks it's strange
Then you should be the first to want to make this change
And for everyone who thinks that life is just a game
Do you like the part you're playing?"

Look out, Sun, it was nice to have met ya!

2006-07-28T16:10:00.000Z

According to the latest World Health Organization report, the sun kills 60,000 people each year. I, for one, was shocked to learn this. No doubt it is America's responsibility to respond with merciless force against this luminous terrorist threat, just like we did with that crappy old moon:

You Make Me Feel Free

2006-07-18T18:48:00.001Z

This past weekend, I sat down to work on my new DJ mix in Ableton Live and instead ended up creating the basis for a new song! Waaa-hey! It’s not ready yet (I’d forgotten how much work goes into producing original music), but when it is you will be the first to know. The only hint I’ll give you about it is that it’s a techno/house track about alligators fucking.

I haven’t abandoned the new mix by any means, but since my archives runneth over I’ve decided to release an old one back into the wild in the meantime. This mix originally aired on March 28, 2002 as part of my The Sound of Confusion programme on the WNUR Rock Show. The noise addicts among you should be particularly interested in the last half-hour, where we travel to Jupiter and beyond the infinite inside the collective mind of three alligators fucking (as witnessed by an Israeli soldier on leave from killing innocent Palestinians, then later recounted here by his Hezbollah concubine).

powered by ODEO

The foundations I laid this weekend for my new song led me to think that if you like my mixes, you’d like my songs. The Diary of a Subcultural Refugee podcast will now not only include past and present DJ mixes, but also past and present songs I’ve made. First from the song archives is a hard techno track I made under the name No Love. It’s called “You Make Me Feel Cheap” and gives a stiff kick in the groin to all the haters.

powered by ODEO

All my audio is hosted at odeo.com. Stream it here or there or download the mp3s for future reference:

The Sound of Confusion, March 28, 2002
No Love – “You Make Me Feel Cheap”

Wiki Wiki Wack

2006-07-14T17:51:00.000Z

A person’s web surfing history often provides a better window into the soul than their eyes. I’m not sure which of these soul windows I’m opening the shutters on with this article, but 1:00 a.m. last night found me wondering who the person is that performs the monologue about the word “motherfucker” on DJ Assault’s track “U Can’t Stop Us”, the song that precedes “Mista Muthafucka” in the collection I have. And as with all things that I wonder about in the middle of the night, I asked Google.

Google didn’t have any answers, but to my surprise a Wikipedia entry on DJ Assault came up. I guess I just didn’t expect ghettotech to have much of a presence in something so seemingly official and mainstream. Then I remembered that, of course, anyone can edit and create articles on Wikipedia – such is the collaborative spirit of the wiki! Someone hip to the D-town beats must have diligently been making entries in the hopes of spreading the gospel of funk.

Once I followed the link in my search results, I found that the entry was pretty piss-poor: just a three-sentence biography, a partial discography, a section entitled “criticism” and a handful of external links. Wait, hang on – criticism? That piqued my interest so I settled in for the hardy read provided by its one whole sentence, “DJ Assault has been criticized by many for his misogynistic attitude and low-quality rhymes.”

Huh. One line of criticism like this in the face of three lines of biography kind of boils the entire article’s message down to “DJ Assault: shitty rapper that hates women”. Where’s the praise section? How could they leave out vital tidbits like “DJ Assault has created myriad dope beats known to have shaken booties worldwide” or “DJ Assault’s brand of ghettotech masterfully mixes hyperactive broken beats with repetitive lyrics about what really moves everything around me: ass and titties”?

My frustration quickly gave way, as it often does, to mischievousness. I couldn’t sit idly on the collaborative internet sidelines and let some pseudo-encyclopedia talk shit about a man that’s brought so much fun into my life. Since anyone can edit wiki articles, I decided to set the record straight by changing the criticism line to read, “DJ Assault has been criticized by many for his misogynist attitude and low-quality rhymes. These critics have, however, recently been found to be bitches, a discovery that will undoubtedly lead to them getting theys mouths blew out.”

I thought it was funny. Well, at least it provided me with some lulz whilst sitting in front of my computer at 1:30 a.m. And if my dad taught me anything when I was growing up, it was the importance of making yourself laugh. Ideally you can make others chuckle too, but failing that, at least try to give yourself a smile ‘cos there’s enough things out there in this rough-and-tumble world ready to stop you from doing even that.

The next morning I discovered that while I happily laughed at my own joke (and sang the lyrics to “Mouth Blew Out” in my head), a Wikipedia administrator named Conrad Devonshire did not. I awoke to find an admonishing note from Mr. Devonshire that read, "Please do not add nonsense to Wikipedia. It is considered vandalism. If you would like to experiment, use the sandbox. Thank you."

A few things:

* I do like to experiment, but I haven’t been in a sandbox since the age of 8 (yes, I know, a pity, really).
* Since when was vandalism so wrong? Most of the art that I dig comes from vandals.
* I didn’t post nonsense, I posted fact. These critics of DJ Assault have indeed since been revealed not only as bitches, but also haters, and if they don’t watch it they may get they mouth blew out. (Geez, I was just being nice and warning them!)

Wondering who died and made Thurston Howell III overlord of the online democracy, I clicked on the convenient link to his profile that he provided in his note. There’s enough ammunition in it for me to devote an entire fascist online encyclopedia to it, but I’ll just note the best bits here and encourage you to read the rest for yourself:

* He was born in Texas. (Sorry Texas readers, yes, some of you are cool but for the most part your state is chocked-full of douchebags and the other 49 of us wish you would have never joined the union in the first place.)
* He is proud of his Roman Catholic heritage.
* He was born in 1989 and is currently in high school.
* Although he spent his formative years in Japan where his dad worked as an English teacher, he is proud of not knowing any Japanese.
* He believes that “so-called ‘feminism’ has destroyed much of the appeal that the female sex once had”.
* He is “in many ways… ultraconservative”.
* He is “fond of Great Britain and the British Isles” and “sometimes spell[s] words in the British dialect of English”. (I’m sorry, Conrad, but that makes you a moron. I once spelled words according to their UK spelling… when I worked as a fucking secretary in London! If you’re in America, spell American. And shoot things.)
* He thinks that “vandals are fools”.
* He is still a virgin, but longs to be active in the furry community.

Okay, so I made that last one up (maybe), but the rest are all true! Who spends age 17 listening only to classical music, worshipping Jesus and valiantly fighting vandalism on the internets? I thought no one, but thankfully Conrad Devonshire is out there keeping the world safe, one ghettotech DJ wiki page at a time.

Now what are you waiting for? Befriend your inner vandal and get out there and give Conrad some work to do!

Related Links:

Conrad Devonshire's Wikipedia User Page
Jefferson Ave: Home of DJ Assault's Accelerated Funk

3-2-1 Contact

2006-07-11T16:10:00.000Z

Upon entering the Town Hall Pub at 3340 N. Halsted, I was greeted by a big friendly guy checking IDs at the door. Upon paying him the $5 cover charge and entering the main room of the pub, I was greeted by a rather intense smell. I think it was a mixture of body odor, cigarettes and booze, though it was definitely body odor that rose to the top of that fragrant blend. I joke about dirty hipsters a lot, but man, these were some dirty fucking hipsters. Like, they-needed-a-shower dirty. Or a can of Axe. Or at least a Glade Plug-In behind the bar.

Once I got some bourbon in me, everything became more pleasing to the senses, except for the balding white rapper finishing up his shtick on stage. His glittery white unitard revealed the outline of his package, while his delivery revealed that irony wasn’t dead, just really trite and cringeworthy. Yeah, dude, we get that you think hip-hop is laughable and you write wack rhymes and dress in a silly outfit to drive that point home. We got that after like 2 minutes, so that should have been the length of your set, not a full half-hour.

Next up was Ecstatic Sunshine, the band I came to see. They’re soon to have an album out on my friend Todd’s label, so I wanted to see what the fuss was about. When I mentioned that I’d let him know if I ended up writing about the gig, he informed me that writing about a band on a friend’s label would be a conflict of interest: I’d be a biased reporter, not giving you a fair musical scoop. I don’t really see myself as a music reporter with this blog, but I also see his point and respect his integrity. In the interest of compromise then, I’ll skip over reviewing their set in any depth. I’ll just say I really dug it and that my recommendation comes totally on the IMHO, yo.

I was about to leave after Ecstatic Sunshine’s set, but Todd urged me to stay and check out some of the next artist’s material. He said that he wanted to know what I thought of it, and his slight grin gave away that I’d be in for a treat. I needed to sober up for the drive home anyway and Dan Deacon, with his table of cracked electronics and Elvis intro music, seemed well suited for the job.

Dan Deacon certainly did seem to like Elvis. He subjected us to “Blue Christmas” on repeat for about 5 times during his opening technical difficulties. Although at the time it was mildly frustrating, it was also somewhat liberating. With each successive play of the song, I felt one more piece of sanity refreshingly slip away. I’m still not sure if he really had technical difficulties or if it was all part of his circus.

Once his battle station was fully operational, Deacon launched into his opening monologue. One-man bandleader and chat show host all rolled into one, Dan proved to be seriously fucking hilarious. He could have carried a night of stand-up comedy just as well as he did an indie show, but then we would have sadly missed out on his electronic mayhem.

Although an Apple Powerbook was present on stage, I think it was only used for playing “Blue Christmas” from iTunes at the start of the gig. It looked a bit stunned, sitting there trying to figure out why its analog grandparents got all the love. Lo-fi, warbly and fast, Deacon’s tunes whipped around the bar like Devo on a case of Red Bull. Hidden within the synthesized discord, however, lived a love of classic rock and roll melody reminiscent of Daniel Miller’s Silicon Teens. Perhaps Dan Deacon is secretly Zombie Elvis, reborn with a vocoder and an itchy finger on the pitch-bender.

Most of Deacon’s inter-song dialogue consisted of what I later learned were his trademark elaborate countdowns. Yeah, in case you’ve never been to a Dan Deacon show, I know it sounds weird, but the dude counts down a lot. I never thought counting could be that much fun, but he seriously makes it into an art form, instructing the audience with painstaking detail on how each countdown is to be specifically performed. If Oscar the Grouch ever starts selling as much meth as my next-door neighbor does, The Children’s Television Workshop should consider Dan as The Count’s successor on Sesame Street.

The best part about Saturday night was how Deacon seemed to be able to fit in any place where people craved fun with open ears. It’s a shame that the Drop Bass Network were run out of every county in Wisconsin by the early 00’s, because if there were ever a breed special enough to play the Massive tent at 2 a.m. and singe already burnt brains with twisted tunes, it’s Dan.

I ducked out before the last band of the night, the Killer Whales, took to the stage, despite another friend of mine urging me to stay the full course. I knew that I would have enjoyed it, but as I’ve said before, I can’t stand the whole 500-bands-in-one-night Fireside Bowl bullshit anymore. Okay, I just checked my notes and it appears that only 4 bands played in total that night (if you count MC Unitard), so I guess that means I’m just too old to stand that long. I’m okay with that. It looks likes Time Out Chicago took care of reviewing their set for me, so I’ll leave you with that article and most likely see you at the Killer Whales’ gig at the Empty Bottle on August 21.

Until then, keep on counting...

(I can’t watch this clip without wanting to go to another Dan Deacon show right fucking now! Magicians foreverrrrrrrr!):

Dan Deacon:

http://www.dandeacon.com
http://www.myspace.com/dandeacon

Ecstatic Sunshine:

http://www.ecstaticsunshine.com
http://www.myspace.com/ecstaticsunshine

A Link to the Past

2006-07-05T19:51:00.000Z

In an earlier post I mentioned that I used to DJ on a Chicago-area college radio station. Lately I’ve realized that I miss it. DJing, that is, not the college radio station.

As a means of scratching the itch to mix, I’ve decided to start DJing again. This time, however, instead of lugging a bunch of crap all the way up to Evanston just so that I can broadcast to most of Chicagoland (oooh, aaah), I’m planning on firing up Ableton Live and giving it a go from the home studio, podcast-style. Although it was good fun battling every few months against barely post-adolescent whimsy to have my show renewed, I think I’ll prefer just having to battle my own laziness.

While I work on this new mix, I thought it would be nice for the uninitiated to have a sampling of my past work. I really enjoyed some of the old mixes I did and I think they stand the test of time. I hope you agree.

First up from the archives is a mix from my old radio programme on WNUR-FM, The Sound of Confusion. This mix originally aired on March 7, 2002 and is fairly representative of the chaos that was The Sound of Confusion. Although it was broadcast as part of the WNUR Rock Show, a quick listen should tell you why it didn’t last long there.

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Since I can’t be so unceremonious as to start a podcast with one measly show, I’m also giving you episode 19 of the successor to The Sound of Confusion, Discipline, which aired originally on August 19, 2003 from 10-11p.m. While The Sound of Confusion was a programme that mixed anything and everything fluidly, Discipline focused more specifically on electronic music and aired during WNUR’s Streetbeat Show instead of their Rock Show. Similar to the relationship between the Rock Show and my The Sound of Confusion programme, however, Discipline’s controversial sonic nature ensured that its life within Streetbeat’s narrow-minded definition of electronic music would be short.

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Both shows are hosted at odeo.com. Stream them here or there or just download the mp3s:

The Sound of Confusion, March 7, 2002
Discipline, Episode 19, August 19, 2003, 10-11p.m

Dig it!

God Save the Queen

2006-07-04T19:26:00.000Z

Those of you that know me, even as an acquaintance, know that I am not very patriotic, but--

Okay, fuck it, who am I kidding? I am a dirty liberal America-hater through and through and I only took this picture out of a spiteful urge to make fun of this silly lady. (At least I’m honest, right?)

Happy Fourth of July, Great Satan!

Let’s… commence!

2006-06-27T16:24:00.000Z

Technically summer started on June 21, but it didn’t feel quite like it around here until Vice Records kicked it up a notch with their Intonation Music Festival this past weekend in Chicago’s Union Park. Last year’s inaugural Intonation was curated by local tastemakers Pitchfork Media, but 2006 has seen them hand the reins over to the Vice crew. Don’t worry, we didn’t lose a festival, they just splintered off like something from high school biology class and regenerated: P-Fork is throwing their own two-day Union Park party in late July. Two great festivals only a month apart from each other? Both located only a 10-minute stroll from my house? Hot damn!

I can remember being a Chicago indie kid in the 90’s: man, was life ever rough back then! Summertime showed us no sunshine. We had to get our kicks by night in the dark recesses of Lounge Ax or Empty Bottle. And we had to walk uphill both ways in the rain just to get there.

Although Intonation spanned two days, Rin and I were really only thrilled about Saturday’s second half. It’s the only part of the weekend we attended, but with The Streets, Lady Sovereign, Ghostface, Boredoms and Roky Erickson packed into it, we didn’t need anything else.

I like my live concert-going experiences to be concise. I don’t want any of this five-million-opening-bands-I-don’t-give-a-fuck-about nonsense; I just wanna cut to the business. The indie/punk era spawned this weird rock thrift, wherein we were led to value quantity over quality. I think I was about 17 years old when I first heard about how The Jesus and Mary Chain used to do 15-minute concerts back when they first formed. Apparently, so the story goes, people would get pissed off because they felt gypped by this and riot and spit and throw shit and generally go apeshit in ways that rockers always do in stories, but never do at, say, the Empty Bottle. But I wouldn’t have rioted for more, I woulda been cheering them on. I’d take 15 minutes of thrilling sonic mayhem over a bloated hour-long set (plus encores) any day.

With that spirit, we stayed home to watch Mexico lose to those dirty fucking cheating Argentineans and then walked over to the gig. Arriving during the opening moments of Roky Erickson’s set, I was pretty impressed with the space: two stages, a nice big park, lots of food and retail vendors and plenty of space to move around in. Roky’s set was a bit too bluesy - not lysergic enough for my tastes - so we took the opportunity to stroll around the grounds. I noted a place selling half-slabs of BBQ ribs, which I could sense were in my immediate future.

About midway through our questing, we passed by the Tower Records booth. I have no interest in buying CDs anymore, so I almost didn’t pay it any mind, but luckily I stopped to read their sign promoting the day’s artist “meet and greet” sessions. My mouth dropped open in disbelief as I read that from 7.30 – 8:00 p.m. I could meet Lady Sovereign! Could this be real? Like, I could meet the biggest midget in the GAME? Oh snap!

With about an hour to go on my photo op with the S-O-V, I bought some ribs for myself and some pulled turkey for Rin and we sat our asses down on the lawn for some Roky. He was starting to cook a bit now and even treated us to the 13th Floor Elevators' classic “You’re Gonna Miss Me”. Not quite the full 20-minute jam on “Rollercoaster” that I had been fantasizing about ever since I heard he was playing the festival, but it was good enough. Hell, it was good enough he was even there in the first place! The only stories I had ever heard about his past left me thinking that the rest of his days would be spent in relative obscurity at home in Texas, damaged by the electroshock therapy administered to him in the early 70’s under the mistaken notion that he was insane when really he just liked pot (who doesn’t?). Roky making a public appearance with a full band, and playing this strongly, was pretty inspirational.

Soon after I finished my ribs and Roky finished his set, it was time to get serious. It was Boredoms time. Japan has plenty of experimental noisy exports, many of who have been aurally terrorizing us for longer than even Boredoms’ impressive 20-year run. Having a higher ratio of fun to fucked-up-sound than most bands do in their live acts, their performances never fail to surprise and please.

These days their music is less random and more tribal, with no less than three drummers to bring the focus home to the rhythm section. It was Rin’s first exposure to their sound and she aptly noted its similarity to traditional Japanese taiko. I hadn’t thought of it that way, and I couldn’t help but agree once she pointed that out. And then some crazy bloops from a synthesizer washed over us, making sure that we didn’t forget the modern hidden inside the ancient.

Although it was hard to tear myself away from the mesmerizing call of Boredoms’ drumming triad, I knew that I had to answer another, higher, calling: the Lady Sovereign meet-and-greet at the Tower Records booth! It was 7:26 p.m., 4 minutes until the meeting and greeting was set to begin. We dashed over to the booth and were met with a mild queue. I could see the S-O-V already signing and posing for pictures. The only coherent thoughts I could muster were “OMG!” and “Do I have BBQ sauce on my face?”

The next few minutes were a bit of a blur, which ended with me at the front of the queue. Sovereign seemed surprised at her popularity, gazing out over the crowd while lamenting to herself and me, “Oh noooo, this queue’s never going to end!” I just sort of stood there looking at her thinking, “Uh, sorry dude, that sucks”, surprised to be having this funny little aside happening. She quickly snapped out of it, whisking around to me and quite sincerely saying, “Oh, sorry”, realizing that she was spacing out during my 10 precious meet-and-greet seconds.

And then the best thing ever happened: she grabbed my Tron jacket and said, “Hey, Adicolor! This is cool, I don’t have this one!” Having just received a high compliment from newly-crowned hip hop royalty, I said “thank you” like some five year-old that had just met the Queen of Siam and asked her which Adicolor gear she had. She said she had “the red one”, which I’m guessing is the Betty Boop jacket. No matter, Sov just praised my threads and the picture got snapped:

I could have called it a night here and been well happy, but there was more music to take in!

Wu-Tang’s Ghostface rocked the park next. Errbody loves some Wu-Tang action, but admittedly I’m a bigger fan of classic Wu-Tang than his new output. It’s probably safe to say most people are, unless you are in Ghostface’s posse, in which case your life insurance premiums go down a bit favoring the Killah over the classics.

After running through his own repertoire, Ghostface paused to pay homage to the dearly departed. We all raised our fingers up high in the air for the Ol’ Dirty Bastard, kicking off what can only be described as Ghostface Killah’z Medley Of Wu-Tang Tunez. All the classics were there, represented by a verse from one and a chorus from the other. The recitation of the “Wu-Tang clan ain’t nuthin’ to fuck wit” mantra made me realize that they just could have done that for an hour and it would have been an awesome show, because that’s how powerful that one simple refrain is. Hands were raised in the air in the shape of the familiar W but despite enjoying the music, I couldn't shake the nagging sensation of being an extra in a Chappelle skit.

Ghostface’s biggest enemy wasn’t his new material nor his overindulgence in the past, but rather the sound engineering. His vocals felt too high in the mix with the bass failing to even remotely surround us. It’s a problem that would carry over to Sovereign’s set as well. Ghostface’s minimal arrangements, however, still gave his flow some room to breathe, whereas Sovereign’s grimy chaos left her fighting her own backing tracks.

It was still pretty damn exciting to see one of my favorite MCs of recent times take the stage. Hits like “Random” and “Ch-Ching” were as fresh as ever, but given the bad mixing job I think that my enjoyment was only facilitated by my prior memorization of the lyrics. With the subtraction of thick bass, the songs veered away from grime toward the unholy terrain of rap-rock, where no man (nor midget) should tread. I wish I could have seen her last year at Sonotheque, a tiny club near my house, instead. Her strength lies in her ability to engage playfully with the listener and to deliver lethal dosages of bass, both of which were not possible in this larger festival setting.

The first few songs in the subsequent The Streets set were all muddied up too, then thankfully someone capable took to the controls and balanced it all out. Mike Skinner’s ramblings were now bouncing happily over his garage beat, just the way they were meant to, and we soon had a new contender for the “Most Fun of the Day” title.

I didn’t really think much about The Streets having ever been fun, but they certainly were on Saturday. Sure he has his cheeky rhymes that make you smirk, and entire hilarious songs like “Don’t Mug Yourself” and “The Irony of It All”, but just around the corner from those he takes you back in where it’s dark. Live in concert, however, he’s a very different animal and soon I found it hard not to smile the entire time.

Skinner snatched up every opportunity to keep us along for the ride. His on-stage banter quickly centered on some big dude in the front row dressed in green. I’ll never forget him bringing this guy five free drinks, urging him to consume them all at once with the assertion, “We need to feed this green man some more alcohol."

At the end of the night we were energized and thirsty for more. I don’t know if I would have felt that way had I attended for the entire day, but trimmed down to a dinner of all meat and no potatoes (ooh and ribs – don’t forget the ribs!), it was just the sort of quality-over-quantity soirée that I’d love to repeat. Guess I’ll see you fuckers at the Pitchfork weekender!

For those about to rock it, we salute you!

2006-06-20T16:54:00.000Z

Like it or not and say what you will, but my daily web meanderings always include a stop by Pitchfork. If nothing else, it gives me songs to search for when downloading, which I can listen to at my leisure and make my own conclusions about. Occasionally, however, I make the mistake of reading some of the twaddle that their poor writers crap out.

Today I was happy to see them post an article self-explanatorily called “100 Awesome Music Videos”, complete with embedded YouTube links. Awesome! Simply flipping through the first few pages of this feature I see loads of videos that I need to watch (some for the first time, most again). Then my browsing through these pages stopped abruptly at H, because I had to catch my breath at what Joe Tangari had to say about Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” video, especially in light of my last post:

“In the future, every home will be full of half-constructed robots dancing to the least challenging keyboard part Hancock ever played.”

WTFuck? Wait, hang on, I need to read that again. Did he just diss on “Rockit”?!? Both the song and that amazing video that fried my 8 year-old mind when I first saw it? Seriously, the image of that robot-mannequin thing with no body above the waist thrusted permanent damage upon my young brain in the best way possible. Watching it now, it still makes me feel like I’m touching the future.

Holy shit, he dissed on the jammiest prince of all jammy jams with one flippant sentence and then strolled the fuck on. Wow. Okay, I’ve regained my composure enough to continue.

Comparing “Rockit” to older Hancock is apples and oranges. Aside from “Rockit” being the awesomest breakdancingest, poppinest, lockinest house-burner of an electro track EVER that will STILL make a room erupt almost 25 years later, it’s a different genre of music than his preceding works. It has the funk, but it’s electrified and supercharged. It’s an old master demonstrating that he not only “gets it”, but that he’s going to possess your mind until your ass follows and gets it too.

The keyboard part is simple, but therein lies its beauty. Challenging? I just have to rant because I fucking hate that word in music criticism. It reeks of the worst degree of pretension. It supposes that every song’s quality is steeped in its ability to forcefully expand the listener’s palette of what is musically digestible.

I can swallow “challenging” as a positive, just not as a negative. Used positively, it can accurately state something crucial about a piece: you may not like it at first, but trust me, be open-minded and let it into your life and this music will change it. Used negatively, however, it holds every song up to a criterion that doesn’t always fit and reveals how close-minded the author of these sorts of statements is. It makes for inept criticism, with critics complaining about music not being challenging enough seldom able to elaborate on such generic accusations.

When “it’s not challenging” is used to discredit a song, it fails to see all sides of the equation. It means to say “it’s not challenging to your mind”, which is still a pretentious and boring non-critique, but it’s also an essentially intellectualist and rockist oversimplification. Funkadelic told us to free our minds, after which our asses would follow. Sounds simple enough but it would be a directive well heeded if you find the keyboard part in “Rockit” not challenging enough for you. It’s dance music, man. Get up and shake what yo’ mamma gave you. Shake that shit to the left AND the right, brothers and sisters! Stop overthinking it and get to the groovin’ like you know you should!

Bridging the mind-ass divide isn’t a discussion limited to the musical realm, it’s one that manifests itself at the center of our existence: the schism between our minds and our bodies. The mental often feels so separate from the physical. As a middle-class luxury most of us can spend the majority of our time being mental instead of physical, to the extent that the mental can begin to feel much more important and significant than the physical. We forget the simple truth that they’re equal.

When I hear “Rockit” and can’t get up and dance to it, for example when I’m driving, my brain dances. I can feel my synapses firing in time to that most exciting keyboard part: bomp-BA-bomp-BA-bomp-BA-BA-BAAAAA… DA-da-DUM… DA-dum… ba-duh-DUMP (don’t stop it, rock it)! I’m singing it to myself right now in my head. I don’t need an mp3 of it, ‘cos Herbie’s etched this one directly into my cerebral cortex, child, and once the groove has sunk this deep, there ain’t no erasin’ it!

And when I can get up and dance to it, I cross the great divide: my body dances with my brain and you can hear the harmonies they produce echoing for miles. They join with the brainbodyharmonies of everyone rockin’ it. Right about now these echoes are landing on the shores of distant planets. The extra-terrestrials all the way out there, being more unified than us, have no internal divides. They just are. And as these echoes of our dances absorb into their skin, they smile with understanding and feel happy that we tripped into the intergalactic groove…

Is this challenging and offensive enough for you?

2006-06-14T16:50:00.000Z

During a recent mp3 binge, I happened upon a random collection of works by the artist O Yuki Conjugate. The name rang a bell, and I couldn’t think of what they sounded like, so I thought I’d give it a shot. The album, Primitive (1983 – 1987), turned out to be a wonderful surprise. It’s experimental post-industrial ambient – occasionally you can hear the time frame it came from in its tracks, most certainly, but in a good way. It’s dirty and grainy, ghostly and creepy, repetitive and psychedelic: just the way I like it.

I liked the record enough to want to learn more, so I turned to allmusic.com. Now, a quick word about allmusic.com. Pre-internet, the All Music Guide along with the Trouser Press were the weirdo music lover’s bibles. They held myriad details of the secret history of underground music. If you wanted a discography on The Raincoats or Throbbing Gristle with descriptions of their music, they had it at a time when you were the only kid on your block that ever even heard of those artists let alone actually heard their music. When All Music Guide launched allmusic.com, it was an online music geek’s dream. To this day, I use it all the time, but I have my problems with it.

Chief among allmusic.com’s problems is its slow speed. I already feel a bit 90’s when consulting AMG, but I really have to congratulate them on their 56k modem simulation, as it really completes the sensation. Worse than the lag, however, is the consistency of the content: poor quality writing and half-baked opinions litter the site randomly. You might find a fantastic article on one topic and then an utterly awful one on another with your next click. The trouble with this is that because it all falls under the allmusic.com umbrella, it takes on an authoritative feel. The branding makes it feel like if you can trust one article, you can trust them all.

The more I thought about allmusic.com last night, the more I came to the conclusion that I was right in my “it feels 90’s” hunch on a level that was more fundamental to web development than music fandom. Whether you hate buzzwords or love them, it’s succinct and safe to say that allmusic.com is very Web 1.0. Yes, it has a varied group of contributors, but they are all chosen through a hiring process, which their FAQ told me I could learn about from their corporate web site. I went there and they told me exactly how eager they were to hire me: “AMG is not currently looking for additional freelance writers, but please check back for changes.”

It’s fine to hand-select your writers in this way. Music review sites that I read every day do this to a great effect. I wouldn’t let anyone else but me write on this blog, for example, except in the comments. But the internet is growing in a direction that makes it feel less useful for information repository sites like allmusic.com to do this. I can’t help but think that an allmusic.com wiki would be more useful. The collaborative spirit of the wiki would allow a wide variety of people to contribute to articles, resulting in a greater diversity of opinion and a more complete set of facts. If that’s too extreme, then at least the addition of a message board on each artist’s page or each album’s page would give the site visitor a polyphony of voices sounding on the subject of their research rather than the monolith they currently offer. Their model works great for a printed book, but it’s pretty closed-minded given the wide range of possibilities that emerges when bringing a concept like the All Music Guide to the internet, where nothing needs to remain static or single-sided.

I’ve digressed so much that I almost forgot about the O Yuki Conjugate, and might have were it not for the sound of the child chorus in “Sedation” playing in my headphones, making me wonder if there was acid in my morning coffee. Every day I listen to a lot of music that I’ve never heard before, so often I hear many things that I don’t find remarkable. It’s the price you pay for trying to find something awesome (remind me sometime to talk about the 60’s psychedelic album by the Freak Scene that I listened to yesterday: proof positive that drugs didn’t help everyone make cooler music). But after hearing a few songs on Primitive, I woke up and realized that I really dug this… enough to look them up on allmusic.com! (You doubted me, but I made like Dylan and brought it all back home, yo!)

After a brief skimming of their bio page, I skipped along to check out their discography, wondering what other treasures awaited me. On the discography page, each album an artist has released is listed along with a star rating on a scale of 1 to 5, with usually the highest ranked one receiving the “Best of Artist” honor in the form of a checkmark. I was excited to see that this honor went to O Yuki Conjugate’s mid-nineties excursion, Equator, which I haven’t yet heard. I was also surprised, however, to see that the album I dug so much, Primitive, only got two lousy stars. With such a low rating, I figured there must be a review to accompany it, and indeed there was.

The review was only a paragraph long, but it was possibly the snottiest, most pretentious review I’d ever read, and I read a lot of snotty, pretentious reviews on a daily basis. It’s fine not to like the album I like: diversity of opinion is a good thing. This review, however, went beyond that to say that not only did he not like the album, but that “there is no reason to like this disc.” That really got me, not to mention the fact that he closed that sentence and the paragraph by saying another close-minded adage: “and that is reason enough not to like it.” It is one thing not to like something, but it’s entirely another to crap on the act of liking it. What reason do I need to like it other than I like it? And since when was art about reason anyway?

Here’s another sampling of our writer’s fine criticism: “If there is such a thing as ‘middle-of-the-road’ e-music, this is it. OYC does very little to offend or challenge -- at least on this disc. There is some dissonance, there are atmospheres, but the music is just kind of there.”

Okay, that’s a tall statement. Let’s dissect it.

First, he calls it “middle of the road”. I’ve heard a lot of music and this is far better than “middle of the road e-music” (whatever e-music is… personally I’d rather do ecstasy whilst listening to Merzbow, but that’s another story for another day). What a pretentious pseudo-critique to throw down and then give nothing to back it up!

Next is the real kicker given the background of the reviewer (more on that in a second): “OYC does very little to offend or challenge… there is some dissonance, there are some atmospheres, but the music is just kind of there.” I like a great deal of potentially offensive, challenging music, and this O Yuki Conjugate disc is certainly not all that offensive, whatever that means anyway. It’s not even the best of its class, but that’s not the point. It’s a solid collection of some far out tracks which I’m probably going to use in an upcoming DJ mix. It’s good and I dig it. To say that it does little to offend or challenge really sells it short. It makes it sound like a goddamn Enya record and belies the musicians’ real talent here for making intricate sound experiments with a taste for the dark side. And since when was art about offense anyway?

When you bitch to me about a piece of music doing little to offend or challenge, you better have something to back it up. Few people have that privilege around me. After all the noise they’ve heard, I’ll let Peter and Spencer say that. I’d let Masonna or William Bennett say that. I’d still find the comments pretentious, but their backgrounds afford them such bold statements. With that in mind, I Googled the author’s name: “Jim Brenholts”.

I got an assload of results. All of them from sites claiming to be about ambient music, but really were about new age music. Yeah. Not the good ambience that you or I or anyone decent and wholesome likes to hear upon getting home at 6am wanting the drugs to wear off, no, this is the middle-aged hippie-cum-yuppie shit that does very little to offend or challenge.

Since I came all the way to Google, I decided to peek around. I stumbled upon a site that featured a compilation CD that Jim himself released. Being a good journalist, I tracked down a few songs by these artists before starting this diatribe. What I found confirmed my suspicions. Big swooshy synth swirls, Tangerine-Dream-derivative arpeggios and the big godlike “ahhhhhhh” sound of space were all over these productions. They were like crudely-drawn caricatures of ambient music, laughably indulgent in every cliché known to the genre.

And yes, I hate this music with every fiber of my being, but despite that, I would never say that there is no reason to like it. You don’t need a reason, just like it if you like it, and if you don’t like it and want to share that sentiment, please do it in at least a semi-intelligent manner that doesn’t make blogpunks like me have to tear you a new asshole.

In summary:

* O Yuki Conjugate’s Primitive: decent dark experimental post-industrial ambient music
* allmusic.com: web dinosaur
* Jim Brenholts: middle-aged new age hippie

Up for a chuckle:

http://www.ambientvisions.com
http://www.aucourantrecords.com/books/tracks/tracks.shtml

Tronic Treatment

2006-06-13T03:37:00.000Z

Everything changed during the early hours of Saturday morning when Rin IM’ed me this link:

Adidas Adicolor Limited Edition Tron Shoes

Soon the awesome got awesomer when we discovered this as well:

Adidas Adicolor Limited Edition Tron Track Jacket

I knew as well as she did that this… was my destiny!!!

Just last week I was pondering aloud to Rin whether or not anyone still made Velcro shoes. As a child of the 80’s, I loved my Velcro shoes. Granted, at first they were purely functional because I didn’t learn how to tie my shoelaces until I was like 29 years old and your mom showed me how, but they were also the pinnacle of early 80’s haute grade school couture.

As the years went by I forgot about Velcro. I grew too cool for it and it just poofed out of my memory. That’s what happens when you don’t believe in things. Then suddenly last week it sprang back in from nowhere. Coincidence, or were the Adidas Adicolor Limited Edition Tron Shoes calling to me from the far reaches of the internets? “Save me, Daveknapik, I’m in here!!! Help meeeee!!!” Luckily it only took me a week to pinpoint the source of the distress signal.

As soon as we were able to think clearly on Saturday, we drove downtown to the Rush Street Adidas Store. After a cursory look through the shop, I asked a clerk about the Adidas Adicolor Limited Edition Tron Shoes. Immediately, his eyes lit up and he beamed, “We just got a new shipment in yesterday.” I told him I wore anything from a 9 to a 10 and so he brought out a few samples. They were immensely cooler in real life than in their jpeg renditions. They were Atari. They were laser tag.

Moments later, I found myself inquiring about the matching track jacket. If you’re gonna splurge, splurge! Unfortunately they didn’t have it, but I knew the Urban Outfitters a few doors down might. My newfound Adidas store clerk friend encouraged me in my quest, informing me that he owned the Kermit the Frog shoes and matching track jacket. He confirmed what I already suspected: separately they were nice enough, but together they were a one-two style punch sure to K.O. all bitches within a 10 mile radius and declare you the fashion champion.

When Rin found my size Adidas Adicolor Limited Edition Tron Track Jacket on the shelf at Urban, I nearly crapped my pants in joy. I hadn’t been that excited about anything since I first played Ms. Pac-Man on a tabletop machine at a Pizza Hut in 1982.

As soon as I got home, I donned my new gear. I vowed to never take it off. Alas, I found that the shoes weren’t all that nice to sleep in, so I took them off, only to discover the second best thing in the world about Velcro shoes: that lovely thhhhwwwap! sound the straps make when you peel them back. For a few seconds I closed the straps, then opened the straps. Closed. Opened. Closed… Opened!!!

I thought maybe if I were Matthew Herbert, I would sample the sound of my Velcro shoe straps opening up and then compose a house track from it. Between the beats I’d be sure to insert plenty of smug political commentary barely worthy of a first-year cultural studies student, though I would take great care so as not to make the music too experimental. This would ensure praise from the club kids while also snaring the indie kids who need something pseudo-intellectual thrown in so as not to have to admit to liking dance music. Most importantly, however, I would make it just easy enough to digest to make it good background music for department store shopping, perhaps at an Adidas Store near you.

But I’m not Matthew Herbert because Matthew Herbert is a big talentless overrated fucking wanker who ruined dance music for an entire generation.

I’ll take some pictures and post them soon. The Urban Outfitters photos simply fail to do these sweet threads justice.

Related Links:

Wanker Receives Another Free Wank From Some Other Wanker

Sometimes you just can’t

2006-06-10T14:28:00.000Z

Despite starting out life as an introvert, I’ve grown into being quite the opposite. Except for when they totally suck and I want to kill them, I like people. Mostly. (Mostly….)

I enjoy meeting people and talking to them, but I also enjoy talking at them. I like the sound of my own voice. That’s probably why I got into college radio. Monologue is the preferred form of discourse in that arena of the unwell.

My fourth grade teacher once told me that I had a good radio voice. I took that complement and ran it all the way into spending ages 18 until I-don’t-wanna-mention-it DJing at my university radio station, WNUR. In future posts I’ll talk more about the time I spent there, but for now I’ll just say that I met some nice people that I wish I got to know better, others that became friends that I hope I’ll keep for ever, others still that I could always count on for knowing where to get decent weed and also some total motherfuckers that, in all honesty, deserve to get their asses beat to this day.

At the end of the day, though, I had a good radio voice and I liked hearing it. But more importantly, I had a good name: Dave Knapik. daveknapik. All one word. @yourmomshouse.com. Actually it was a totally retarded polack name, but by a bizarre twist of fate it actually rolled off the tongue rather nicely.

Here I should stop and give props to a fellow WNUR DJ from the old days, Leslie Hellman. She always called me “Daveknapik” instead of “Dave” or just “Knapik”, as in shouting “Hey, Daveknapik!” if she saw me walk past on the street. I liked the idea of it being this one solid phrase and so it stuck. I think maybe I actually feel slightly anxious now when I hear “Dave” or “Knapik” said separately instead of as one solid mass of syllables.

As the years rolled past, the self-deprecating indie kid had his battles with the egomaniac and eventually they balanced each other out. But I never stopped liking the sound of the phrase “Daveknapik”. I like to think it’s okay to be a little egotistical as long as you’re not a total dickwad about it.

I like inserting it in place of lyrics in my favorite songs. For example, it works pretty well with the 70’s Dr. Pepper jingle. “I’m a Knapik, you’re a Knapik, wouldn’t you like to be Daveknapik, too?” If you don’t remember it, just Google the 70’s or consult a retrowiki. The internets remembers.

Similarly, it works in, say, “The Reflex” by Duran Duran in place of where, well, the phrase “the reflex” appears in the song: “Daveknapik is an only child, who's waiting by the park/Daveknapik is in charge of finding treasure in the dark”. Weird. Dude. I was an only child. I was also a fat kid. But I never waited in parks because my parents didn’t let me wait in parks for fear I’d be abducted by some fat kid molesting child molester. And I was only ever in charge of finding Little Debbie snack cakes in the supermarket, which come to think of it, were pretty good treasures to a fat kid.

Lately, however, due to my Tilly and the Wall obsession, I like plugging it into their new song “Rainbows in the Dark” from their Bottoms of Barrels album. It’s a beautiful song and I know I pay it a horrible injustice treating it this way, but how can I not give into the temptation to sing the line “Sometimes you just can’t... hold back the river” as “Sometimes you just can’t... hold back Daveknapik”?

I mean, sometimes you just can’t hold back Daveknapik.

And let that be a lesson to you, one and all, but especially the total motherfuckers that, in all honesty, deserve to get their asses beat to this day.

C'mon, c'mon. I want to hear that fucking noise.

2006-06-08T00:37:00.000Z

I don’t get out to roll with the rock as much as I used to. This is partly because as I get older I can’t recover as well from a late night of boozin’, smokin’ and, well, rockin’ as I did when I was say… 21. But it’s also just a natural state of music geekdom: as the music geek attends more and more gigs not only does that mental (or perhaps written in the case of the more extreme, scary geeks) checklist of “bands I need to see live” grow increasingly more checked-off, but it also takes a lot more to impress us. That local punk band who was the bee’s knees to you at 19 just doesn’t bring enough to the table after having seen so much live music over the years.

Of course I’d give anything to re-experience the teenage thrill of seeing that proverbial local punk band with the fresh ears, eyes and heart I had back then! What pop music lover doesn’t feel that way? But I am who I am now and that’s a 31 year old man for whom it takes a little extra something special to get him out to rock the roll. And that’s where last night’s Tilly and the Wall gig at the Abbey Pub came in.

“We've got a bottle of wine, a fresh pack of smokes. We're going to end up screaming about some midnight garage sale.”

Tilly and the Wall’s first full-length album, “Wild Like Children”, probably has its own special hole that it’s about to bore in my iPod’s hard drive because of how much I listen to it. By now it has dug its simple-beauty tunes deep into my subconscious, becoming the soundtrack to dreams that I can’t remember. And as any pop music fan knows, it’s a special treat to go see a band whose lyrics you’ve memorized like it’s going to help you pass some kind of indie rock GRE.

“So it's Friday night down on North Avenue…”

This time it was Tuesday night down on Grace Street, but the first time I experienced Tilly and the Wall live it was indeed a Friday night down on North Avenue at the Double Door. They opened up for The Go! Team and I saw them by accident, the result of poorly planning my arrival at the club hoping to miss any opening acts and just eat the main course. Lucky for me I’m never very good at timing.

“The microphone cut off so we're screaming at the top of our lungs.”

According to allmusic.com, the band’s tap dancing percussionist is named Jamie Williams. Prior to acquiring this knowledge, however, I just called her Tilly. It wasn’t something I did consciously, just when I thought of the word “Tilly” I thought of her. It makes sense: out of all five musicians, she’s the most noticeable presence on stage at one of their gigs, with her arms flailing about as she tap tap taps away.

In fact, she even flails those arms a bit when she’s not tapping, it’s just the way she grooves to the music her bandmates churn out. During a non-tap-driven song, she was standing off to the side in the background of the stage drinking some water, still doing her arm dance and mouthing along to the words. It’s a completely honest and unselfconscious dance, the sort that you or I might do, but when she does it, especially during those semi-private break-time moments, it helps bring us onto that stage in an act of that classic punk rock magic wherein the performer-audience gap closes and sometimes disappears.

“Just when we thought we were no longer lost, they kicked us out into the dirty streets of Atlanta”

Before their final song, “Nights of the Living Dead”, their male singer (AMG tells me it is Derek Pressnall, but Guitar Tilly or Tilly Guitar Boy works just as nicely) told us that the extra people he brought out on stage were in fact the very people they wrote the song about. Whether or not that was true (it probably was), it still brought everything full circle, once again taking the music off the stage and into the audience where it takes on its own life. It didn’t matter if those kids were the same ones in the song, because I was in that song too and I distinctly remember screaming about their midnight garage sale.

Tilly and the Wall make lovely songs about living and loving and the beauty found in the scrapes and bruises one gets along the way. Crafting great pop songs like that is a powerful skill all too rare, but their sharpest talent when playing live is reminding us that all these songs celebrate us and the lives we’ve spent riding the thrill contained in three fleeting minutes or less.

“You know we're just trying to get to the club and shake our asses. A caravan of kids....”

I don’t get out much to live gigs, but when I do, it’s for a show that I think will give me something more than I would get out of just listening to a record, something precious and magical and emotional and alive. Lucky for me, I had seen Tilly do that before and I drove to the Abbey last night eager for them to take me on another all-night adventure in the span of an hour. Without hesitation, in the only way they know how, they kidnapped us into their caravan of kids, hellbent on just getting to the club to shake our asses.

http://www.tillyandthewall.com
http://myspace.com/officialtillyandthewall