Michael Pettis interview

Random Chinese Robert Plant-esque statue in front of a Starbucks sign.

Professor Michael Pettis, when not teaching economics at the university in Beijing, brings a bit of early 80s downtown New York City to Beijing with his club, D-22. A hub for the new crop of guitar bands in Beijing, it was packed every night we were there. There were local Chinese rockers, curious local students, and European expats hungry for "rock" and what have you. But Pettis is a Svengali for the scene as well, nurturing players and turning them onto music previously unavailable in China. And he has the connections (not to mention funds) to bring over under-appreciated players like Matthew Shipp, Alvin Curran, Elliott Sharp, and Ex Models, furthering the dialogue between our two cultures. Additionally, he is an incredibly hospitable and thoughtful host.

So why Ex Models?

They are one of the most-admired recent bands among musicians here in Beijing and quite a few musicians have asked me over the years if I could bring them here. When I saw them for the first time in NY last July, I realized that what they were doing was particularly interesting to the Beijing scene. Young Beijing guitarists are, in my opinion, doing some of the most interesting guitar performances in the world, and there is a big Glenn Branca/New York noise influence here, and after seeing the kind of guitar-driven stuff Ex Models were doing, I thought it would be great to have local audiences see it upfront in small, intense performances.

Do you think they opened the doors for more bands coming over?

Definitely. Money is always a problem because, for all the hype, Chinese are still very poor and for musicians and artists it is especially difficult, but little by little we are building a reasonable circuit that will at least limit the losses. I hope in particular that the Ex Models trip leads to a flood of New York performers coming here because the really serious music scene here has a strong affinity for a New York kind of aesthetic, and what goes on in New York is very closely monitored out here...

Do you think they inspired Chinese bands as well? Do you think there will be a greater dialogue between New York and Beijing music now?

Yes and this is one of the things I really want to help develop. Although there is a strong Britpop element here, the most serious musicians see New York as the absolute center of the world and everything New York is studied and hoarded -- this is true of artists and writers as well as musicians. In particular, a young musician like Shouwang, who is considered by many to be one of the most important musicians to come out of the Chinese scene, sees himself almost as a New York artist living in Beijing. Anything that increases the relationships between leading New York and Beijing musicians will significantly increase the ties between the two art scenes. It was great that Ex Models played with one of the most important of the older bands -- PK14 -- and the two most important younger bands -- Carsick Cars and Snapline -- and the relationships between them were so easy and friendly that I expect that they will perform together again in China and in the US.

Over the past few years a lot of second rate European bands have come out here, sponsored generally by local cultural institutions, but Beijing audiences are no longer as impressed as they once were, especially as local bands have become so good and so much more innovative. A few years ago anything foreign was taken very seriously, but with bands like Sonic Youth and musicians like Elliott Sharp, Martin Atkins and Blixa Bargeld taking so much interest in the scene, Beijing musicians are no longer easily impressed and have become much more confident and aware of their place in the world. The tour by Ex Models was very helpful because they are considered a really serious band and their tour showed that they take Chinese musicians seriously. It really helped that the guys in Ex Models were so friendly and so respectful of local musicians. Some Chinese artists still lack confidence and are a little intimidated by New York, so the way Ex Models threw themselves into the scene really inspired a lot of local musicians.

What did you notice about Beijing when you first came?

In terms of music I nearly immediately started going to clubs to check out the music scene. What I noticed was that the Beijing music scene in one sense was extremely provincial – most of the bands were not too good, they were ranked in coolness to the extent that they did good imitations of cool American or English bands, the audience was small and not very adventurous and preferred the familiar to the new. In fact Chinese audiences so lacked confidence in their own musicians that anyone who did something different was either ignored or criticized, and bad no-name foreign bands who happened to be touring in China regularly drew much bigger audiences than good local bands.

At the same time however I noticed that there were a few bands – PK14, Joyside, Glorious Pharmacy, and Hang on the Box being the most obvious – that were very good and quite original and fighting hard to be taken seriously as local bands. There was also a huge amount of talent among the much younger musicians and a real frustration about their being forced by audiences and clubs to play safe imitations of the more popular cool foreign bands. These musicians not only impressed me by their talent, but also by their sophistication – they knew so much about music and loved some very important but often obscure musicians and bands.

If my math is correct, Jeff didn't learn about even Michael Jackson (and Warhol) until 2001 or so? Is that right? When did you meet him?

Yes. I met Jeff in 2002. He already knew a little about American music and was a fan of Andy Warhol’s, hence the VU t-shirt. He didn’t know the music of VU and most of the music he knew was either by bands that were very well-known and popular in China, like Nirvana or Radiohead, or from CDs that he had picked up randomly, like the Ramones (who of course are quite big in China, although Jeff didn’t know much about music then).

What prompted you to start D-22? What struck you about Beijing musically? Could you see the promise of a new scene beginning there?

It just seemed to me that Beijing had most of the conditions to becoming a major musical center. It was the capital of a very important and large country going through enormous social transformation and taking up a more central place in the world. It already had a thriving art scene. There was so much talent everywhere and a lot of musically very sophisticated people. The only thing it lacked was a good audience and artists willing and able to take risks. I started the club because I thought that if we ignored commercial pressures and just kept programming the most interesting artists we could find, building their self-confidence, and encouraging them to chase their wildest ideas about music, eventually over the next four or five years we would have great music and the audience would naturally develop.

Actually it took us only one year to realize that we had been sitting on a volcano of talent and all it took was one club very serious about agitating the scene to create the explosion that followed. At first we worried about getting enough good bands and musicians to fill our weekends, especially since most of the well-known bands, with the exception of PK14 and Joyside, we didn’t like or else they didn’t want to play at our club because we were very openly disdainful of the older scene and their passion for imitation.

But the musicians, especially the younger ones, were waiting for something like this and they responded in floods. And it was not just young musicians. The three ladies in Ourself Besides Me had been around for several years, but they are so wrapped up in their music and so indifferent to audiences that they never wanted to play anywhere, until about a year ago when they first started playing in our club. Their first show left us open-mouthed in amazement (this is not an exaggeration), and we knew that if they were a NY band they would already be the queens of the Lower east Side or Brooklyn scenes. They are now one of my favorite bands and we are just finishing the the mixing of their first CD, which PK14’s Yang Haisong has produced.

Now we have thirteen house bands (bands who are part of the D22 scene, who play at least once a month at the club, and who are now generally considered the most important bands in the Beijing scene), and are adding three more soon, as well as dozens of new and younger bands from all over Beijing and other places in China. It has reached the point where some of the older, famous bands are bugging us for gigs because everybody wants to be part of this new scene. We also have too many good bands and performers to fit into our schedule.

We knew this would happen, but we had no idea it would happen so quickly and so explosively. Already all around China there is this sense of excitement about the Beijing scene and everyone wants to come here. Smart college students who two years ago couldn’t name a good Chinese band are now forming bands that cover songs not just by Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth but also by Carsick Cars and the Gar. During our second anniversary celebration, while nearly every good Beijing band was at the club performing, we were really touched by the fact that several bands from outside Beijing sent us phone messages congratulating us on our birthday. We didn’t even realize that they knew.

What are your thoughts now, as the Olympics loom, and other things mount? Do you think the music will play a vital role in changing perceptions?

It can’t help but change perceptions about what life in China is like. Beijing, and some other parts of China, are much more open and sophisticated than people realize, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the music scene. Nearly every day we receive foreign tourists who express their shock and amazement at the quality of the music and at how wide-open and varied the scene is. Yesterday was university-band tryout night – so the bands were all new and inexperienced – and three girls from University of Michigan in their first week in Beijing were there. One was very involved in the Ann Arbor indie music scene and all three told me they were amazed at how good the bands were and how they never expected music like this in China (although we thought only one of the five were worth booking again). This happens nearly every day.

One annoying problem, and this is especially a problem with European visitors, is that many visitors come here already having a very clear idea of what they want and expect a Chinese music scene to sound like – something vaguely ethnic and “Chinese” – so since Beijing is a major international urban center whose young people have grown up with the same noise, stress, traffic, music and culture as kids anywhere else have, these visitors are often disappointed by the lack of “authenticity.” But that is really silly. Beijing musicians have just as much access to the world of musicians someone in Cleveland or Brussels or Sao Paolo, and they treat all music as their playground. They expect no more to be restricted to “authentic” Chinese music than Ex Models feel the need to limit themselves to playing authentic cowboy music or the Fall feels the need to Morris dance.

How do you perceive the infrastructure there (in terms of sound equipment, record labels, management, and the like) changing in the next few years?

Money is always a problem but things are getting better so quickly that it is almost hard to keep track. Recording studios are opening up in Beijing and nearby cities (where life is much cheaper) and independent labels are springing up. The amount of attention and help we have received from the US and Europe has also helped a lot -- for example Brian Hardgroove of Public Enemy fame, is in Beijing right now producing, at cut rate prices, the CD of local punk band Demerit. But our real strength here is just sheer talent. With a population of 1.3 billion, even if only 20% of the Chinese are plugged in enough to the modern economy and educational system to participate in an urban western life-style (and over 40% of the population is urban), that is still as big as the US or Europe. The difference is that Beijing is unquestionably the artistic center of China and there are no rivals, so everyone really serious about music ends up in Beijing. That gives us a huge pool of talent and with more and more foreign musicians moving here to take advantage of the low prices and burgeoning scene, we have the makings of a real musical explosion.

I was wondering what your final thoughts on the whole experience was.

Last night I was at a show at Yugong Yishan and one of China's most famous experimental guitarists, who I hadn't seen in months, walked up to me and thanked me profusely. He said that he has always been a huge Ex Models fan but could never afford to go to NY to see them.

Carsick Cars Interview

The very night we landed in Beijing, we were ushered to Beijing rock club, D-22. Our first night there, we saw both a carbon-copied "post-rock" band that was seriously Spiderland crossed with Explosions in the Sky (complete with a brooding frontman who rocked sweatpants(!), a first in over a decade of going to shows) as well as this crackling improv group. A one-off between guitarist Zhang Shouwang, D-22's sound guy on drums, and this fellow who played the gnarliest morse code tapper(!), it keyed me to the fact that Zhang was one of the most-gifted musicians of any scene, something that was only reinforced by seeing Zhang's main band, Carsick Cars over the ensuing two weeks. He's obviously a gateway for many western ears, featured also in Alex Ross's exhaustive survey of the Beijing scene but he has the ear and ability to transcend the 'gimmick' of being a Chinese rocker. We talked often during my time in Beijing and Shanghai, but this brief interview was conducted via email earlier this spring.

Where were you born?

I was born in Beijing in 1986. Both of my parents are also from Beijing, but my father was actually born in Dongbei (northeast China). My grandfather was a professor and well-known intellectual so early during the Cultural Revolution he was forced to leave Beijing and live in a small town in Dongbei where my father was born. When the Cultural Revolution was finished in the late 1970s they were allowed to move back to Beijing and my father met my mother there.

What was your first exposure to American/ western culture?

I knew something about American culture from TV at an early age but the first thing that I really knew and loved about American culture was professional wrestling, which I still love. In fact I am a big Jeff Hardy fan and I desperately wanted a Jeff Hardy T-shirt, which I have never been able to get. In music the first thing I remembering listening to, when I was about 15 or 16, was Michael Jackson. I am still a fan of his although I don't listen to him as much. Later I began to listen to Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins because one of the kids in high school who never studied and always did bad things told me about them, and even though I was one of the good students I thought he was so cool, so I started listening to them. That is what made me like rock music.

I also liked American artists and when I was 17, I read an article in an underground magazine about Andy Warhol, and I became really interested in him, so I started to look for his pictures in the books in the art stores and I was even able to buy the Velvet Underground T-shirt with his banana design. In fact that is how I met Michael (Pettis, D-22 club owner) and got seriously into music. I was wearing it one day while walking around the park in Houhai, and a foreign guy pointed to my T-shirt and said he loved Velvet Underground. When I said I didn't know their music he said we should go right away to a CD shop and get the CD. As soon as I heard it later at my home, I became completely crazy for Velvet Underground and decided I wanted to be a musician. Then Michael started giving me a lot of other music from that time, like Suicide, Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth, John Adams, DNA, Steve Reich.

I know we discussed this when I was in China, but can you tell me again about how you came to find American music in Chinese markets, via cut-outs?

In the beginning that was the only way to get foreign CDs. I think that the US manufacturers had made too many and so they threw them away, but first they made a hole in the CD. You could still hear most of the music but some of the songs would be lost. In China some companies would buy boxes of those cut CDs and distribute them to some small music shops in Beijing, Guangdong, Shanghai and a few other cities. Every time a shop got a new box all the kids who really liked music would find out when it was coming and would run to the shop and go through everything and grab whatever they thought might be good. It only cost 4 or 5 RMB and there weren’t many good ones, so people would do anything to get them first. The first time I went to one of those shops I was 17 and I remember there was a boy next to me and his hands were bleeding from a cut he had gotten in the rush to get the CDs. At first I thought it was crazy but I met many friends that way because we all did the same thing. Everyone who really loved music would do that, and that is how I met some of the people who later became musicians and writers and artists.

Were these records, CDs, cassettes? What sort of titles are we talking about?

They were CDs. Most were crap and some were really terrible, but even if we didn't know the music we sometimes bought the CD if the cover was cool. I once got a 3-CD set of Ramones and I had never heard of them but the cover seemed interesting. That was so cool and of course that is when I started to love Ramones. I also learned about White Stripes that way – from the cover. And I got a really cool set of traditional Indian music, which I had never heard before and which I still love.

What did you think of the music at this age?

Even though many of the CDs now I think are crap it was still really great to hear so much strange stuff that we never heard in China. In China the music we always heard was really bad Hong Kong or Taiwan pop or the mainland copies, or the patriotic and old-fashioned songs on radio and TV. The western music we heard was Kenny G and the Carpenters or some Western classical music arranged in a simple way. When Titanic came out Celine Dion became the favorite foreign singer in China and we heard her everywhere. Of course before I started going to the CD shops I never really liked music. It seemed so stupid.

What was Chinese music like at the time?

I started going to clubs when I was about 17 or 18. I was still in high school and so it wasn't easy because I was preparing for the national college entrance exam and my parents were strict. Once I went to college it was easier to go. The first bands I saw all seemed so cool to me. To hear rock and roll live in a small club with people that looked like criminals or troublemakers was scary, but the music was so exciting and I wanted to be like the musicians and hang out with them, but I was too shy. I didn't know it then but now I realize that most of those bands just copied American or English bands, but it was still great to hear it. After one or two years I realized that there were three or four really good bands, Hang on the Box, Joyside, PK14 and ReTROS and most of the other were just simple copies. There were also a lot of heavy metal and death metal bands, and old school and new school punk. I think it was only in 2004 and 2005 that suddenly so many very original bands were born and the music scene became so good, but at that time I didn't really know. It was all cool and I went whenever I could afford to.

Ben Sisario Interview

Before I left for China last December, New York Times writer Ben Sisario published two fascinating and perceptive articles about the nascent China rock scene which were crucial reads before visiting myself. Bumping into him during SXSW, I asked for more of his insight into Chinese rock and he provided the response below.

"I found myself perplexed and disappointed by what I saw as a widespread aesthetic of mimicry among Chinese rock bands of all stripes. Beijing, a city of 17 million, is like a provincial college town when it comes to its rock scene: there are four or five venues, which week after week play host to the same dozen or so decent but unexceptional bands, each recreating the sound of a different brand-name alt-rocker. There's (at least) one that sounds like Sonic Youth circa "Goo"; another is a ringer for Gang of Four; another sounds a bit too much like Sigur Ros and Radiohead; the girl-punks could very well be lip-synching some 1992 riot grrrl act from Olympia were the lyrics not in Mandarin. And those are the progressive, creative bands. Metal, the most popular and established form of rock in China, is stuck in a Queensryche-meets-Faith No More time warp familiar to any Westerner who flipped on Headbanger's Ball in 1990.

"Part of the reason for this is simply the novelty of rock in China and the difficulty it's had establishing roots. Tiananmen quashed its early momentum, and throughout the '90s other factors like the scarcity of imported records and the lack of a basic music infrastructure (venues, instruments, studios) kept it in a retarded state. Many people I spoke to said the Internet changed everything starting in the late '90s and early '00s: suddenly kids could hear EVERYTHING instead of just the miscellaneous cutouts that made their way across the Pacific. If the Internet was a big deal in the West, imagine the effect it had on a formerly closed Communist nation. Chinese people will never say "rebellion" or "revolution" in public, but in their society rock music is still alien and dangerous (literally), and choosing to play in a band and live a rock 'n' roll lifestyle is a significant act of nonconformism.

"The absence of new ideas in Chinese rock is partly due to a lack of confidence among the musicians: they haven't fully figured out what it means to play rock music in their culture, what Chinese rock should sound like. All their musical heroes are Westerners, and they're still making their way through that influence. It's like England in the early '60s: everybody's still playing Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley covers, still learning a foreign musical language. (One thing I suspect but never investigated was the problem of Japan, which has an extensive and mature rock culture but is hated by the Chinese, who like many other Asian societies have never forgiven Japan for its wartime atrocities. Purely personal theory.)

"Westerners also bear some responsibility for the arrested development of Chinese rock. There is a large expat community in Beijing -- and also in Shanghai and elsewhere -- that has supplied the scene with many of its club owners, booking agents, artist managers, record label honchos, journalists and assorted hypemongers. These people provide guidance, pay for recording sessions, book tours, and have a hand in most other aspects of a band's development and marketing, such as it is. They didn't create the sound of Chinese rock, but they're helping to keep it static.

"One of the most interesting things I was told while in China was that the idea of imitation has a much different cultural connotation there. In the West the idea of one artist copying another is usually seen as creative deficiency, if not fraud. But in Eastern societies, imitation can be an important part of the educational process, where a student learns by emulating a master. I don't know enough about Chinese culture in general to know how valid this theory is in explaining the sound of Chinese rock, but it's an interesting one. And many of musicians I asked about this said that they did not see what they were doing as outright copying. They saw it as absorption of an outside influence, and many pointed to their lyrics for signs of innovation: their meanings are lost on any Westerner who doesn't speak the language (like me), but whenever song lyrics were explained to me, I was impressed with their artistry and depth. The best bands even manage clever social commentary by employing complex wordplay to avoid the censors, such as Carsick Cars' song "Zhong Nan Hai," which puns on a brand of cigarette that is also the name of a Beijing neighborhood where party bosses live. Others get in oblique comments about Tiananmen and other unspeakable issues.

"Tibet is a fascinating question. I have no idea how it could affect Chinese rock. But I do think that much of China's politics are dictated by its economic situation, and as long as Chinese factories keep running and the money keeps rolling in, I don't think there'll be much change at all with the government or its laws. I also have little faith in Western consumers and businesses (and governments) to protest the Tibet crisis by boycotting Chinese goods or engaging in any other economic sacrifice on moral grounds. Out economies are so intertwined at this point that it may be impossible to do anything like this. But we're enabling the Chinese government to do whatever it wishes in Tibet. Unfortunately I think the Olympics will go off without a hitch and this will all be largely forgotten about, just like Seattle in 1999, Genoa in 2001, and all the others. Maybe it'll make for some good rock songs."

Matthew Shipp interview/ Elliott Sharp Interview

As noted last week, I'll be posting interviews from my China rock piece (see here). Below are email responses from jazz pianist Matthew Shipp and guitarist/ composer Elliott Sharp. Both gentlemen have been to the country in the past year, and had this to say about their time.

Matthew Shipp

"I was surprised to get an offer from China-I assumed there was not much of a market for what I do but was surprised to find out there where people who knew about me. I started out in Shanghai and it felt like New York on speed- It was pure energy and had the rhythm of a hyper urban jungle.everything seemed to run by money.This was my first time in China. Bejing seemed a little more relaxed than Shanghai and seemed a real interesting mix between the old city and a college town.

"I don’t know if my music had made it over there-there where people who came up with cds for me to sign but I have no idea where they got it from-I have no idea what is going on in black market in China-I saw nothing of jazz inprov scene in China –I did see some really good straightahead players at a jam session-I was in China for a week-I'm pretty focused about being me when I play and the local does not influence me.

"I did get a sense that people there look up to New York and New York musicians-there are musicians every where on the planet that mimic and there are some everywhere that have moved beyond that. I have no ideaa where things will move as far as jazz growing in China. The cuisine was great-I never knew there was such a variety of Chinese food and different types of cuisines in different areas."

E#

"I know that Michael Pettis brought some of my music back for Chinese musicians to hear and a few I met there seemed pretty knowledgeable about my work and others on the NY scene. I didn't see my CD's on the black market as people most likely just traded CDR's and mp3's - it's a pretty small niche there.

"There was a definite vibe about my concerts re: "NYC music" - there's always mimicry (a lot in Japan when I was going there often in the 80's and 90's) but not so much of what I do as it's pretty hard to fake. Jeffray (especially in his band "White" with Shen-Jin [Shenggy]) and the circle of musicians around Yan Jun are pretty original sounding which is what makes their work exciting. Those that tour internationally get to hear a lot more and meet more musicians as well as "test" their work on audiences outside the somewhat-insular Beijing scene. it's really quite underground there still - reminds of NYC in the early 80's - audience mostly of other musicians and artists and interested foreigners - the feedback keeps the scene bubbling.

"Despite being "shut off", as I mentioned, people were quite knowledgeable about art & music movements. The sons & daughters of the preofessional classes all had pretty open access to web info so I don't feel they were out of the flow at all (though it's different when it's ONLY via the web).

"There were many great players there (guzheng player Wu Fei and gu zin player Wu Na especially come to mind - fantastic technique in the classical sense (along with knowledge of Chinese classical music) but also open ears and vibrant sense of improvising sonically. Hard to say what will happen as governments are unpredictable. One hopes the old guard will just die out and let things grow and expand. The genie's out of the bottle in China and there's no putting it back and this will certainly extend to all cultural activities. China wants to be part of the world marketplace (is already, needless to say!) but they need to allow the musicians to be their ambassadors and welcome the cross-pollination that foreign musicians coming to China will bring. The Chinese have almost always made use of the strengths of foreign ways and brought them into their own way of operating."

china beta

While I still haven't seen the August issue of Paste (guess getting the cover story doesn't warrant a copy?), my piece looking at the current Chinese rock scene is in it. Entitled "Daydream Nation", it touches on how NYC noise-rock inspired a new generation of Chinese rockers. While I wished there was more room to expand on such sub-topics like the woeful audio engineering/ management/ recording company infrastructure of the country, I was pretty proud of the piece (and thought the illustrations were pretty sweet). Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting several interviews stemming from the piece with folks like composer/ guitarist Elliott Sharp, club promoter Michael Pettis, Carsick Cars' guitarist Zhang Shouwang, and Public Enemy bassist Brian Hardgroove.

turntableta

After going without for far too long (and having an acquaintance string me along for an extra six months with unfulfilled promises of selling me hers) I finally broke down and bought a new turntable. If you are a PR person sending me CDs in the mail, you might want to hold off for the next three months, as I have loads of LPs to catch up on and a few familiar favorites to revisit. A quick list of what's getting spins:

LL Cool J: Goin' Back to Cali 12"
Prince Language: Editions Disco Edits (Paul Simon, Belle Epoque, Arthur Russell, etc.)
Keith Hudson: Flesh of My Skin, Blood of My Blood
Pharoah Sanders: Tauhid
Pharoah Sanders: Wisdom Through Music

ZZ Top: Eliminator
Jimmy Giuffre: Clarinet
Waylon Jennings: Lonesome, On'ry and Mean
Erik Satie: Piano Music Vol. 1
Ocrilim: Octis

Prince Douglas: Dub Roots
Mickey Newbury: I Came to Hear the Music
Franz Schubert: Music for Violin and Piano
Grace Jones: Nightclubbing
Butthole Surfers: Locust Abortion Technician

Mad Professor: Dub Me Crazy Volume 5
Wade Nichols (a/k/a Todd Terje): Horse With No Shame 12"
Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Music for Port-Royal
Al Green: Let's Stay Together
Al Green: Explores Your Mind

Zapp: s/t
Holst: The Planets
Disco Not Disco Volume One
Xanadu OST
Bohannon: Stop and Go

Low Motion Disco: Love Love Love 12"
Chopin: Ballades
New Order: Thieves Like Us 12"
The Temptations: Masterpiece
Lovejoys: Lovers Rock

bambuta

Where I go, Dennis Wilson goes too. I have heard his lone album Pacific Ocean Blue at all my frequent haunts: Academy Records, Daddy's Bar, DFA offices, Other Music. Complementing that, I have also watched his single turn as an actor, in Two Lane Blacktop, three times this year alone.

Each and every time back through TLB, I'm amazed at how much weirder and deeper and more inscrutable it grows with every screening. Seriously, how inscrutable is Warren Oates in this film? Why does he have a different pullover sweater on in every scene? Why does he sip from that Coca-Cola bottle and then put it back into the slot twice? Is he really that much of a pathological liar? Where did he get such groovy 8-tracks?

Which is to say that you can read my thoughts on both works over at The Fanzine, who recently posted "Holy Man," my essay on the man.

betahole surfers

While the Butthole Surfers --more than any other band I listened to in high school (meaning Beastie Boys, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Cypress Hill, Fugazi, Guns'n'Roses, Led Zeppelin, the Jesus Lizard)-- were responsible for more brain cell evacuation than all of the others combined, I had basically forgotten about them since the 90's. (Though surely the two are related, no?) And crazily enough, their depravity and weirdness were folded into my listening habits enough so as to become seemingly normalized: dub, Stockhausen, doom-metal, Aphex Twin, Thai pop, Black Dice, all were made chewable like George Lucas's chocolate.

Part of my love for the band even predates loving their music. Both Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary are from my hometown of San Antonio and aside from Doug Sahm, they are the only act to ever break out of that goddamned city, so they were always a source of pride and ownership (sorry Athens, San Francisco, and Austin). Not that I could actually get all the way through Brown Reason to Live or PCPPEP. Punk though I was, this was some noisome, repulsive, juvenile shit.

It wasn't until a friend convinced me to buy Psychic, Powerless...Another Man's Sac that my friends and I got hooked. "Concubine" and "Cherub" are two of the heaviest songs I know (and Optimo dudes agree). I can still hear a long-departed friend recount dropping acid at the Texas Military Institute and listening to "Lady Sniff" on repeat in his bunk, making all the sound effects (kahk-too!) until he spilled his mental marbles everywhere. Another friend had a pleasant acid trip turn dark and traumatic at a Butthole Surfers show when he realized that he was watching a film about penis-reconstruction surgery. (I would just as soon send you to a review I wrote for Pitchfork about these early BH records and these anecdotes, but since PFK switched servers, their archives have gone to shit (shocker!) and nothing shows up on any search engines.)

The only instance I can think of where I took a road trip to go see a band was in 1992, when the Butthole Surfers played with Stone Temple Pilots and The Flaming Lips at some rodeo up in Dallas. Asides from accusing STP of being "cops," I can't remember much about the show, save that the Flaming Lips sounded like a Boeing 747 pulling into a hangar and that Gibby Haynes squirted lighter fluid on a crash cymbal and sprayed flames everywhere (a trick he had done since the band played a show in a friend's garage in 1983).

By the time of "Pepper," I was far enough out on my own that the Buttholes having a legitimate hit was so surreal so as to appear normal. I honestly hadn't given them much thought until the prospect of seeing them reform to play tonight in New York City. Somehow, I've parted ways with the Alternative Tentacles stuff and sold the Caso Raro! bootleg and both my LP and CD copies of Double Live, mostly as having people pay $80-100 for such items are at times too much to pass up.


To this day, I honestly don't know who/ what the fuck this is. Anyone?

That said, I did discover that I still own Locust Abortion Technician on vinyl and with great relish, I played it out on my DJ night. Downloading "Jimi," the first track on Hairway to Steven, I was alarmed by how fucking odd the band sounded some twenty years on. How did I just listen to this as par for the course way back when? And why does nothing sound this brain-destroying anymore? Maximized weirdness in every direction (those drums, the chopped'n' screwed butler, the Gibbytronix in all its majesty, those corrosive blasts of industrial noise, the "Don't touch my little peeeeeenis!" talk, the unhinged and epic guitar solo by Leary, the baby cries, the "What do you know about reality?" demon sermon, the..), it's futile to unpack the psychedelic pleasures to be had here, but it's also kin to picking up an open garbage bag of hot sick: getting a handle on it only means having that acid spill onto you.

And yet, I've gone back to Rembrandt Pussyhorse/ Cream Corn From the Socket of Davis the most. Yes, it's always been a given that the Buttholes were deranged, perverted, sick, filled with fart jokes, but what's astonishing is how twisted and beautiful and alien they could be for a punk band. Of all the bands in Our Band Could Be Your Life, who was opening with piano ballads or deploying violin and pipe organ much less devouring classic rock tripe like "American Woman" and pooping it back out whole? And for as unsettling as they already were, such bits of melody only made them that much more disquieting.

I cracked up when "Two Parter" came on, as I had forgotten that years ago I took that cassette to my guitar teacher, hoping that he would teach me how to play it. Needless to say, despite his ability to play transcriptions of Charlie Parker solos on guitar, he was taken aback (not by it's awesomeness, apparently) and wasn't much help. Apparently, Paul Leary never tuned his guitar but had really strong fingers to bend the strings. To this day, that song and the Buttholes at large (heh) remain similarly inscrutable. For all my joking about "cream corn from the socket of Davis," I basically had to re-remind myself that such a title references not female genitalia, but rather the glass eye of Sammy Davis Jr. How could I ever forget such a sight?

Diplo interview

Originally, the plan was to run parallel interviews (or failing that, one interviewing the other) with both Alan Bishop and Diplo for The Believer's 2008 Music Issue, as both gentlemen are polar opposites in how they incorporate disparate worldwide sounds into their art. Schedules didn't quite permit, so instead, I conducted two separate interviews.

I met Diplo in person at the Indonesian consulate as he was getting his papers together for a travel visa there. In the same breath that he told me his one-off DJ fee (about a fifth of my yearly income), he also borrowed my last five bucks to pay for the visa. We then walked through Central Park and talked about Missy's beats, Santogold, and I passed him a copy of Sublime Frequencies' take on favela funk. We agreed to an email interview, but that's where it began to fall apart...he started traveling, the responses shortened up, and it wasn't ready when the other was. Maybe one day some of this will get saved.

I'm curious as to your thoughts about the C.V, the Sublime Freq. disc. Is it true to the sound of favela parties? Will armchair listeners get it? What is a better conveyance of the experience, something like this or Favela Strikes Back? or something else?

Diplo: i mean yeah the songs on the CD cover like 10 yrs of the scene.. it is more closer to the tru sound, which changes every day

favela on blast mixtape was like damn.. i can dance to this at home sorta was with the easy samples, etc. its a djs mix and its very tame.. but it does sound a lot like a marlboro radio show. as hes the pop funk DJ.. i do think that rio is big its not jsut favelas and everyon in that citie s thinks funk is the soundtrack to thier lives

but when it comes to gangs and the bigest wildest free parties.. yes this music rules ever the artists have to play this type of sound as opposed to thier own track when visiting a trafiicante party

Hollertronix mash-ups helped to establish you. When you were doing stuff like pitting TV on the Radio against Afrika Bambataa or else Mike Jones and Britney, what informed such decisions? Was it simply that it worked, that you could juxtapose two separate entities, or does it go beyond that? Is it just brokering a dialogue between two artists that otherwise wouldn't talk? Is it a dialogue that instead takes place in the listener?

Diplo: well we just worked things in that worked,, the club music landscape was changin while we werereally developing our style. gwen stefani on black radio, outkast on rock radio? we started out as an electro and 80s kinda party but we got the crowd open nough to really play different shit.. our demographics beign so diverse.. - really working class philly, white kids black kids.. anyone that grew up on hip hop and DJs.. but was bombarded by radio playlists.. they were our customers and we gave them everything we had and got really drunk and werent afriad to try different shit

And I guess along the same lines, an anecdote you posted on Mad Decent:
"when vampire weekend finished i got on and played the theme song to coming to america (black ladysmith whats there names cover of the tokens) and a couple of prissy journalist jerks down stairs gave me the fuck you dude face and it was worth it"
Why that song?

Diplo: i do like them . but i just thought it was funny to play coming to america, thier hype seems really silly cause they were boats shoes and play afropop, regardless that one dude was a good songwriter and they sound good, but journslists take them too seriously, they love tohate me too, but i just keep stickin around , that makes em the maddest.. but the ladysmith covering tokens is pretty funny idea anyway

Also from the Mad Decent site, I saw that Paul was discussing how "Jam On It" was popular in India. When you travel to different countries, does it surprise you to across such American cultural debris in other settings? I'm thinking of samples from stuff like Inspector Gadget or the use of Sanford and Son (for Baltimore club beats, which isn't exactly not American, but...). Is it just a matter of them hearing our trash in new ways?

Diplo: cultural debris is a really cool word.. i think that theres a lot of truth in sound when you dont have the cultural baggage.. what we consider trash in brazil or africa they get sent down in some way and it is just the sound and notes.. no pop references in a brittany sample or cheesy techno.. its just what moves them .. i tell you one thing though! SPoNGE BOB rules the world .. if your region or language doenst have a spongebob trak or sample. you dont exist


To clarify something you wrote to me: "if your region or language doenst have a spongebob trak or sample. you dont exist"
can you explain that? a language that doesn't have a sample? or give an example of stumbling across a Spongebob song out in a crazy country somewheres?

Diplo: well i guess these days theres a few cultural icons.. like disney people.
but everywhere form africa to english speaking countries to brazil and southeast asia. theres spongebob on tv dubbed in the local language.. hes the new new for kids
i have angola spongebob, budstep spongebob, bmore club spongebob, afrikaans techno spongebob, 2 live crew spongebob, bail funk favela spongebob.. and thats without even searching

And what about how "exotic" tracks become popular in the US, I'm thinking "Get Ur Freak On," "Rock the Casbah," "Walk Like an Egyptian" the little foreign noises that capture American listeners? Is it a novelty then? When I think of the little noises that inform these tracks, it makes me think back to Inspector Gadget, Sanford & Son as mentioned above.

Diplo: shit well I was listenin to a zulu nation tape yesterday . bambaataa playing at a party.. he was droppin tim maia, banjo tracks - "bad bascomb - black grass, kraftwerk, and babe ruth keep your distance.. some christian song i didnt even recorgnize... this is in 1981.. so its not a new idea . it is the findamentals of hip hop . i think walk like an egyptian was a gimmick.. or more like bow wow wow wow doing that african dumming things.. i mean there are no rules to what tools you can use.. the second irish peopele were doin jigs in nyc or africans were out on congo swuare in luoisiana 300 years ago -- up til imigrants from eastern europe at the turn of the century ... thats when we started this mess.. i mean i cant even tell you what is true american msuic from when I started growin up and listenin, was it madonna, woody guthrie, fats domino
bottom line is that it was exoticized when africa and europe met in americas and developed a blueprint


You reference the 80s a lot in your tracks and remixes, like the Pixies interpolation on your iTunes EP, as well as that 8-bit Nintendo sound on your Spoon remix, or copping that "Careless Whisper" sax on your PRGz remix. Is it a nostalgia that you yourself have for these sounds that makes you go for, or is it that your audience responds to something that's familiar more? Does it help to use something that has 'baggage' for your stateside audience?

Diplo: nah i just like to use samples, its very "hip hop"

Do you feel that by having Jay-Z and the Bangles (two "exotic" sounding radio pop tracks) on M.I.A.'s Piracy mixtape, that it helped to make it such a hit? When you look back on it, what do you think caused such a critical and popular breakout for the two of you? And when you talk about people hatin you at that SXSW set, what do you think they specifically "hate"? Why would they not want you to stick around?

Diplo: nah i didnt think peopel hated on me..
they just took them selves to serious (journalists) they like music journalism to be very dramatic or somethin.. i think we are all just in a big rave called life and some bands r just a lil too tiesto and the journalists are like the girls with thier tits out

Do you feel that in America that they've become more or less aware of global trends? Is America increasingly insular with fears of terrorism and the like? I felt when I was overseas that I didn't see many Americans travelling around. What is it like when you stumble across a phenomenon like the "Dança du Creu" dance? Is it any different than...say "Chicken noodle"? Are people more connected? back to Piracy's art for a sec, with images of b-boys, monks, freedom fighters, etc. all kinda together, was it aimed at that same sorta idealism? that it's all connected in the end?

Diplo: hmmm. yeah american accepts global trends .. but we co opt them as exotica and its kinda falls somewhere between world music and trendish.. something stick aroun when the community exists - fanis records and then reggaeton etc.. is here to stay and has been co opted into other genres. but yeah we dont accept and adapt easily like other micorcultures like jamaica where the indusrty is soo small but strong and has the balls to do whatever it wants and doesnt think twice

You decried New York City's radio when we met up. Why do you think they are so far behind the times? Is it like that around the US? Do you ever see media conglomerates losing their grip on things?

Diplo: yeh ny is over
philly is late on shit too
baltimore was pretty progressive.. not like canada or even ldn radio where djs are playilisting not the major labels

You contributed Missy beats, right? Do you like fucking with major labels? Is it a good platform or not worth the hassle?

Diplo: well im the hassel to them cause i can care less. havin a beat on a missy (or major label) record is not the end all be all (like it is to a lot of hip hop producers..) i can have a an underground track that goes all over the world from a free DL from my site or whatever and get played out more than a missy cut.. - i think debonair samirs "samirs theme" got more play in european clubs last year then any current pop/dance hiphop track...
but there wasnt much money for him to make off it (and he didnt know how to capitalize) but those big artist have to fuck with us in the underground now cause we are what keeps them current.. they are no longer trendsetters, they re just rich

Can such conglomerates ever really keep up with the kids and trends happening at street level? How do you keep up? How much of your time is spent simply processing music? Sam Hunt tells me that he emails you tracks every week.

Diplo: i cant keep up even cause if i played for a room full of diplos.. id play all new tracks that were wierd.. but i still gotta debut sounds in say berlin or some places like that.. where its still quite new to the stuff we are experimenting with

When you moved to Philly, you were working with inner-city youth, were you not? And one of your kids there turned you onto crunk and Baltimore club music. Is it crucial for you to keep the pulse of what "the kids" listen to and follow?

Diplo: well i always say this.. and of underage dances..
kids react to music in a more instictive way.. u can blow new tracks and styles to them.. only when they are a lil older and cooler do they start to thinkk//// hmm thats not cool , thats kinda gay, wierd.. etc..
songs being to gay is a pretty realistic concern to some kids that i find funny

Was it this work with kids that led you to create Heaps Decent? Your label seems to invest a great deal in making sure that kids, especially in third world slums, have access to technology, so as to create their own music. Can you talk about this program, how it works?

Diplo: its a sort of trade off for the hype and exposure i get from being the dude that capitalizes on music.. its every DJs job to do i mean most those uk euro dudes should go to chicago and detroit and set up shelters and build house in thier armanis shade if they got the same slack i get from breaking new music... (thier roots lying in house and techno) but nah what i do is much more obvious and i think we have a responsibilty, but i like to work with kids anyway its a thing that makes me feel good

When we first talked, you admitted that you don't consider yourself a 'great DJ'. What do you think it is that you do best? Spot youth culture trends? Put disparate things together? Bridge gaps between indie and mainstream? What?

Diplo: i think i have a good ear for things and i alwasy try and be progressive.. its important to me to always move forward.. goin backwards make me depressed

And what was it like working with the beats of someone like Tony Allen? I read something once where he said that you achieve trance states not with the bass drum, but with the hi-hat. Anything you discovered when dealing with his beats?

Diplo: well his i didnt have much to work with .. but i do see trends.. liek that in minimal techno.. where a beat can move peopel with no change for 3 minutes and on minute 5 hi hat comes in (only hi hat) and peopel heads explode.. somethign similiar in brazil in the favelas how that sound I was acttracted to has turned much more afr0-brazillian and perscussive without music .. and it sounds even more moders

Alan Bishop interview

The following sections were excised from the published Believer interview with Sublime Frequencies co-founder (and Sun City Girl) Alan Bishop. Some topics touched on here include Diplo, M.I.A. and funk carioca, the serendipity of travel, and the academics and ethnomusicologists not having "the fucking spine" to do what Sublime Frequencies does.

BLVR: What was the paper you saw presented at EMP this year about Sublime Frequencies, the one presented by David Novak?

AB: It was an overview of some of the more extreme concepts that have been affiliated with the label and he covered it from an academic (versus the academic ethnomusicological) approach and how different it was. That was his main point and how it challenged so many different viewpoints that were established over the years from the early days. He pointed out the differences in what we did as opposed to what is expected in the genre of ethnomusicology or international music.

It wasn’t that passionate a delivery. We may have made him a little nervous cuz we came in there and announced ourselves, shook his hand, then sat down. He just went with…it was a pretty shoddy sense of research. He started off by saying that Charles Gocher was an owner of the label and he was married to a Burmese woman. It was just all wrong. I’m the one married to a Burmese woman, Charlie was never involved with the label other than just being around. That’s nowhere to be found on the internet. I don’t know where he came up with that. It really shows you that if you can’t get that right… He brought in the Sun City Girl angle as a prelude to mine and Rick’s part in the label. He never mentioned Hisham (Mayet), he barely mentioned Mark Gergis.

He just got into all these things that are so generalized and not-specific, then glossed over very important points just because of a smart-ass quote I gave to Erik Davis designed to piss people off: “If these things start making money and selling like Outkast, I’ll fly over to Sumatra and just hand out Benjamins to anyone that looks like these people.” It was obviously a fucking crack but he prefaced the whole thing with: “Obviously, the label doesn’t believe in paying royalties or compensating musicians, as Alan Bishop is quoted…” and then he just blankets that and moves onto the next point. It’s by no means the case. If he had done any research in any of my diatribes on the Web, he would’ve been able to see that it’s not as black and white as that and it’s not --in any regard-- that we don’t want to pay anyone; we do. It’s just set up where it’s really difficult to pay. You have to make that decision. Are you going to take the risk to do it or are you just going to not let it be heard? That needs to be dealt with, that needs to be said, instead of what he said. You start to wonder how well minds can process information. How smart are these guys? How serious are they if they’re not going to bring this stuff to the table correctly? But that’s just the nature of the game, the nature of information, whether you’re covering politics or sports or music or whatever. It totally is in line with the way that things go down.

BLVR: Which is why you’re there in person.

AB: Yeah, I was able to defend it a bit. A couple questions came up and he directed them to us, as he would have said the wrong answer (laughs). I think he knew that. It tempered the situation. I got a few jabs in: “Well, there are a few things that were said that were completely inaccurate and I don’t know how you could have found them. They’re not even on the web!” But that’s the nature of it. It’s when that information gets spread around and compounded in articles as though they are gospel, then other people are going to propagate that forever and ever, they’re just always there to refer to. It’s always disinformation being thrown out there. To make a point about how we function sometimes, we put out our own disinformation. We want our own disinformation to be dealt with, not the ones that are completely wrong facts said by other people. We can’t have it both ways.

BLVR: Ethnomusicology just left the field, climbed up inside the ivory tower, and has been firmly ensconced there ever since.

AB: And they have their exclusivity and how they have their papers written and recordings filed away and there’s no access to them unless you’re a member of their club. You have to kiss their ass to get in to it and pay them money to get in. That’s the only way you can get it. Which is worse. I look at what we’re doing as practical work in things like that, weighing our options and trying to do the best we can as we move along, learning as we go and we’re making it up as we go along and side-stepping the whole thing and just getting our work done in the only way we have the means to do so without the funding and power machine that the institutions have. It still can make an impact.

BLVR: Having heard appropriations of the music by DJs here like Diplo, I was surprised to hear Sublime Frequencies dip into baile funk with the C.V. release. Did you know much about funk carioca and baile funk before Carlos Casas sent you those recordings from Rio drug gang Comando Vermelho’s parties?

AB: I really didn’t know too much. I’ve heard a few clips and I wasn’t really interested in that kind of music. But when I encountered the music that Carlos sent me, it struck me as something completely different. I didn’t know what it was. All I knew was that it was from Rio and that it was recorded within the favelas and I didn’t associate it with baile funk or the Miami bass at all. I had no idea what it was. It just sounded like raw spontaneous hip-hop beat music from the urban Rio, in the favelas. And because it was so raw and the way that it was mixed, and the way that it was presented, I liked it. That’s the only thing to it. I immediately liked it.

An anonymous Belgian holds up a photo of George W. Bush for the sublime Frequencies DJ team and they immediately salute their president (from Sublime Frequencies DJ night in Belgium).

BLVR: You didn’t know about Diplo or M.I.A. and what they had done with it on Piracy Funds Terrorism, their mix CD?

AB: I hadn’t heard Diplo, but I heard his name. I was familiar with MIA’s music but I didn’t see a connection at all when I heard this stuff. To me, that was a different kind of music. MIA was this beatbox urban sound. I don’t know what she does. It sounded okay, but it’s not anything I’d sit around and listen to. Ever.

BLVR: She seems have this similar ethos of taking these third world cultures and re-appropriating them within “western pop” sensibilities.

AB: I find it hard to really say how mush she’s taken. It’s so wide open, the influences are so homogenized now, that it’s really difficult to say how much she’s taking from them. She is Sri Lankan and maybe there’s some things she has done, but even with what Sri Lankans are doing in that vibe, and what the Indonesians are doing in beat music or Thais in hip-hop, it all sounds alike to what the West has always been doing. It’s too close for me, it ‘s a kind of music I don’t respect. I’m not interested in it.

BLVR: Have you ever been down to Brazil?

AB: Never been down to Brazil.

BLVR: Do you find it difficult when you’re presented with music from a country where you haven’t been to wrap your head around it?

AB: Not necessarily. I’m very interested in Brazilian music, just not in that type of Brazilian music. There’s 500 kinds of Brazilian music to like. Funk carioca really wasn’t one of them on my want list when I do go to Brazil. You just never know. I have to hear to know if I’m going to be able to wrap my head around it. Sometimes, it’s not a matter of me not being able to wrap my head around it. I prefer not to go there because it doesn’t interest me. I look at the music as too simplistic or too easy to do or I don’t respect it because too many people that are associated with that music I would just as soon wish would vanish from the universe. I just can’t stand it. It reminds me of all that is wrong with the people that I despise. It’s a personal thing.

BLVR: Who are what are the earmarks of this music?

AB: People who worship pop culture to the point where they try to emulate it too much and all they’re concerned with is fame and money. The slick production quality, the lack of creative ideas and inspiration, the lowest common denominator factor of worldwide acceptance so as to continually promote a handicapped mentality of thought, where stupidity and an inferior mindset are 'cool'; There are pockets that interest me when I hear them but they are few and far between.

Even if it’s poor people growing up in the ghetto, I understand the situation but when it comes to people from other countries emulating what is big and powerful about the rest of the world and they’re blinded by it all, it doesn’t mean I have to feel sorry for them because they’re hypnotized. You either get it or you don’t and if I start feeling sorry for them, then I’m going to become weak and not be able to do what I can do to destroy the fucking thing that I hate.

I can go out and try to do social work that’ll never get anywhere or I can try and go at it with all the ammunition I have to just completely annihilate the thing that I hate. It’s the kind of music that reminds me of the big machine that creates that music and that entertainment and that hypnotism and that social engineering, cultural engineering that keeps people in their place and doesn’t allow them to innovate or evolve into greater beings.


We’re pushing the idea of the higher-minded bootleg being something that is legitimate. Because the system has failed, the system needs to be changed, and the system needs to relax, and the system needs to be less precious. And we’re pushing that envelope and we have the guts to do it and nobody one else out there has the fucking spine. You can’t find them, they’re not there. We’re the only ones.

BLVR: You told me before that you had never been into Laos or Vietnam. I was wondering what it was about those countries that isn’t interesting to you.

AB: That’s not the case. I just don’t have the time. I’ve almost been to both, it just didn’t work out. When I go to a place, I like to stay in one place for a period of time, so that I can get some things going. I could’ve gone to Vietnam but I wouldn’t have accomplished as much as I did in Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, India, other places I have been. It’s a matter of time. There are a lot of places I’d love to go: Brazil, Haiti, Yemen, Sudan, all over Africa. I’m not going to get spread out just to say I’ve been to a place. I have friends and contacts and continuing projects in the places I’ve been. That’s seven or eight countries I have worked in multiple times, that’s a lot for any one person. I’m not working for the corporate world anymore. It’s not easy to accomplish. I’ve got to make it all happen myself.

BLVR: How difficult is it negotiating in new countries?

AB: I think you build off your experiences and the more that you’re used to going into different places. The first time anywhere is mind-blowing. I was overwhelmed by everything. I now have experience in these religious cultures in Islam and Buddhism and Hinduism and have learned quite abit about all of it. it’s not nearly as big a deal as it used to be. There are challenges and you never know when it’s going to come. I'm pretty fearless about anything, I just naturally blend in to the situation. I’m really good with people and have the power of communication, I can pretty much do whatever I need to do no matter where I go and I have that confidence and people tend to like me no matter where I go. It’s pretty easy for me.
...
BLVR: I feel there’s a serendipity, a synchronicity, once you’re fully in the travel mindset, where magical things just start to happen. You meet certain people…certain things align.

AB: It’s amazing how many instances are like that. The more that you’re experienced, your radar works better. You know what you’re looking for or where you might find something. You know something’s going to be happening and you’re always ready to pull out the camera or record something; you’re going to catch it. There’s too many times when you have documentation equipment with you that you’re just thinking you’re not experiencing this the way that I wish I could. When I watch it back, it’s not going to be the same either.

BLVR: How do you balance it then, being in the moment versus capturing it?

AB: I don’t think about it. I go into mode. That’s what I’m doing…I’m taking it all in and I’m digging it as it’s going, but you have to be aware of what you’re doing if you want to document it in a way that can be used. It’s a give and take. There are so many different situations that are unexpected. Those are the greatest ones. It’s like a gift, it just shows up and you’re at the right place at the right time. In terms of collecting, I’m always looking for old cassettes and old vinyl wherever we go. That’s part of the situation as well.
...
BLVR: Of the different religions you've come across in your travels, is there any one that is more convincing than the others. If you were to subscribe to one set of beliefs, which do you go for?

AB: Hinduism is by far the most interesting and endlessly fascinating. Nothing else even remotely comes close. Although I will always respect and admire the beauty and discipline of Islam. Muslims are perhaps the most hospitable and kind people I have ever encountered overall.

the betiever

My interview with Sublime Frequencies founder (and Sun City Girl) Alan Bishop is in the new issue of The Believer, as part of their annual 2008 Music Issue. An honor for me. While you can read the full interview here, the actual issue also features a swell mix CD (featuring Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance, Mahmoud Ahmed, Dirty Projectors, and others) as well as a centerfold map of my failed search for Thai molam music through Southeast Asia (with Bob Marley jokes aplenty). The best part of the magazine though is that the mix CD mounted in the front synchs with Irma Thomas's teeth and soft palette. Nudge the disc just so and she's either without her dentures or sporting giant horse teeth.

cerebro eletronico

A head's up (get it?) that you should chew some blotter and then buy the recent reissue of Gilberto Gil's self-titled album from 1969, often referred to as Cerebro Eletronico (trans. "Electronic Brain"). I wrote the liner notes and was pretty proud of them. (Fellow associate Mike Powell wrote the notes for Expresso 2222.)

While I usually leave out such claims (don't expect much hyperbole in the notes themselves), I will say that there are moments on this album (like "Vitrines" and "Futurivel") that are the finest examples of psychedelia that I've ever heard (and yes that means Can, Fifty-Foot Hose, Linda Perhacs, Dom, and the first Pink Floyd album): majestic, nuanced, destabilizing, sumptuous, rapturous, visceral, a perfect blending of pop song, acid guitar, avant orchestrations, and studio trickery. Eat it up.

heep see

Bonnie "Prince" Billy: Lie Down in the Light

Not prone to use such vocab, but this is Will Oldham's "best" album, his "masterpiece," my "album of the year." Call it the polar opposite to what's often considered his most fully-realized work, I See A Darkness, full of life and light. In making such a proclamation though, it's difficult to pinpoint just what it is about this album. He's audibly happy and in love, and for some reason, that's led to song structuring that feels perfected yet not strained. Of course, he said-she said dialogues are present, as is his ever-present naturalism.

Rather than the "first thought, best thought" in his approach in the studio, it seems like there's a place for everything here, be it a clarinet or a guitar tone right out of "Rock'n'Roll." The best example I can conjure off the top of my head occurs on "So Everyone," which seems at first like its chords are based upon Fred Neil's "The Dolphins." But whereas that song was world-weary, finding solace not in another human being but in submerging that pain in the animal kingdom, here Oldham finds his peace in his betrothed. That it's a blowjob song appropriate enough to play at a wedding reception is just the cherry on top.

Portishead: 3

A few months back, listening to a promo of the new Boris album, I kept being struck by the "rupture" inherent in its sonics. That is, until I paid enough attention to realize that it was just an edited, truncated promo. Such rupture is instead best put on display here: re-vitalizing a decade-dormant career only to riddle their telltale sound with shards of ancient synthesizers and drum pads. Or else plunking in an homage to The Jerk that endearingly --albeit wholly-- derails the album's momentum. Recurdling sour times only to leave listeners in an ice-bath. Laid flat by the appearance of "Threads" (which could totally be covered by Sunn O))) ), I kept hearing behind Beth Gibbons's mewl this hole where a man's voice could've been harmonizing. That is, until I realized the hole was in fact a man's howl. I think it clenches into that Morricone-esque yip nearer the end, but I'm always so unsure.

Erykah Badu: New Amerykah Part One

It'd be easy to say that Erykah's been getting her daily dose of Parliament/ Funkadelic, but then I thought that maybe she's just watching Spongebob with her kids and getting all those tweaked voices from there instead. But much like Bill's paternal turn in Kill Bill, Erykah also weans her kids on kung-fu matinee, too. A true pothead's album: indulgent, meandering, prone to lean and headnod, super-paranoid, silly, messy, weirdly anal retentive, knee-deep in dusty funk, apocalyptic.

Lindstrøm: Where You Go I Go Too

As I stated on the I Love Music message board, this is the Ys of Neo-Disco, every bit as expansive and endgame for its respective musical subgenre, save HP's effort is Jacuzzi-warm instead of chilly.

Les Autres:

Blues Control: Puff
Toumani Diabaté: The Mandé Variations
Earth: The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull
Low Motion Disco: Keep It Slow
Daniele Baldelli and Marco Dionig: Cosmic Disco?! Nah...Cosmic Rock!!!

heep see

Husbands dir. Cassavetes

A friend sweetly and unexpectedly bought me a bootleg copy off of eBay of my favorite John Cassavetes film, to this day not available on DVD (thanks AAAA). The only noticeable effect of such a transfer is that there's this weird artifacting on the black fabrics, which makes the funeral scene turn slightly psychedelic. This marked my fifth time through the film, and I realize that the promise I made to myself a decade previous upon my first viewing of the film --that I would one day be as sartorially unfuckwithable as Mssrs. Cassavetes, Gazarra, and Falk-- has still not come to pass. I also lament that there's no sort of Smell-O-Vision here, especially as the bender the three husbands indulge in stretches on ever longer. If only you could get a whiff of Peter Falk's vomit and cigarette breath.

Seriously though, click this and sign the petition to have Husbands released on DVD.














Battle of Algiers dir. Pontecorvo

Since the Iraqi War is no longer front-page news, it may be best to learn about our enemy via a forty-year-old documentary-style story on how Algeria threw off French occupation. The Criterion set is heavy, revealing that the film was made less than five years after liberation, on the very streets that were covered in blood and rubble but a few years previous and including a roundtable discussion with Richard A. Clarke (author of Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror) about the movie's effects. Mandatory viewing for both Al Qaeda recruits as well as US special ops.

While the film's depiction of both torture and terrorism tactics (see women hiding their bombs in their baskets or police using live wires on suspects) are chilling and spot-on, there's something else at work. We see how effective both strategies are, in that the bombs kill hundreds of innocent civilians, rally Algerians to their cause, and entice the oppressors into more self-defeating policies, while the gruesome torturing of captives allows the police to capture/ kill the insurgents and their leaders. Yet at movie's end, both terrorism and torture fail. And yet, due to some intangible movement that the camera does not register, liberation still occurs. Even the film itself professes to have no answers as to why independence finally comes, why the populace finally rallies and throws off the French. It is, as Clarke states though, about an invisible war, a war of ideas.


2 or 3 Things I Know About Her dir. Jean-Luc Godard

Perhaps it's as Godard intended, to have the Law of Diminishing Returns enacted on celluloid. While my first viewing of this film imparted a giddy and heady rush, each subsequent viewing has turned into more of an pedantic slog. It's also incredibly noisy, with a near-constant clamor of construction work and a clanging pinball machine. There's still whispered Brecht, mere reportage of the senses, 'Nam polemics from the mouths of babes, endlessly quotable lines like "Language is the house man lives in" and "If you can't afford LSD, try a color TV," but it tells of things to come (like the execrable Le Gai Savoir, which we also suffered through. That said, it has two of his most poetic visual musings, one involving the play of tree-dappled light atop a candy-red car hood, another of that cosmic cup of stirred coffee.

heep see

The Pawnbroker dir. Sidney Lumet

MoMA's theatre must run an elderly special, as we were the youngest people in the crowd by a good three decades. Caught this early Lumet flick as part of the museum's ongoing (and simply exhaustive) overview of jazz-inflected soundtracks for American and world cinema, Jazz Score, I would've written this up for my soundtrack column, save that I can't find any usable clips for this film on YouTube. Lumet weds Quincy Jones debut film score to the gritty B&W cinematography of Boris Kaufman, and shows how a cage can follow a man. Who knew that 1960's Harlem bore such close resemble to concentration camps? Or that in the middle of this depressive/ redemptive film would appear the theme from Austin Powers?


Crazed Fruit dir. Ko Nakahira

Also part of the MoMA Jazz Score series. This directorial debut from Nakahira (who --according to critic Donald Ritchie-- was assigned more middling fare ever after) was the first film of Japan's new wave, kin to Rebel Without a Cause and Breathless. Was delighted to learn that this film features the first score of Toru Takemitsu, whose significant soundtracks I dig immensely. Here, Takemitsu presents a winsome interplay between Hawaiian steel guitar and muted trumpet. Damn YouTube, why is there no clip of the subtle seduction scene, wherein the slight movements of fingers, thighs, and quick glances (all while the sea heaves and seaweed wags and sighs) hint at the urges teeming just beneath the surface? One of my favorite scenes in recent memory. And the ending remains jarring some fifty years on.


Cat People dir. Jacques Tourneur

Reading Martin Scorsese's lecture/ book on American cinema got me excited about trolling deeper into low-budget noirs, which prove that whole "necessity is the mother of invention" adage. Can't afford special effects to transform Simone Simon into a black panther (no afro wigs and hip-huggers in the 40's)? Then convey such animalistic change and its attendant fear and bodily terror via shadows, shrieks, the disorientation of light that comes from a pool, the held shot of an otherwise orderly descent of stairs growing more ominous merely through deepening lines of shadow.

















Gun Crazy dir. Joseph H. Lewis

Again, as recommended by Scorsese, a raw and careening predecessor to Bonnie and Clyde. The gun-loving guy is disgusted not by death, but instead by the resulting convenience: "Two people dead? Just so we can live without working?" Too many incredible shots to be had here: the camera on the floorboards of the getaway car, the tracking shot through hallways of carcasses or else a looooong backseat shot that follows the heist and pistol-whipping of a cop outside of the bank before following them on the getaway, then that discreet smile back at us as they speed away. And is there a sexier cinematic entrance than that of Peggy Cummins (as Annie Laurie Starr) firing her six-shooters at the county fair?

Looking at IMDB now, it makes sense that Dalton Trumbo helped on the screenplay. Check this dialogue:

Him: "It's as if nothing were real anymore."
Her: "I'm yours. And I'm real."
Him: "But you're the only thing that is. The rest is a nightmare."

cry tuff the beta encounter

A friend of mine is about to undergo an emergency root canal. And as she tussles with tooth pain, she also has to hit her deadlines throughout the process. Listening to music in the throes of such physical pain isn't much fun. I recall how I had to review the needling onslaught of Orthrelm's OV a few years ago while dealing with fallout from food poisoning: horrific body aches, nausea, and a blinding feverish headache. Not fun. Needless to say, I have yet to revisit that album, lest I feel such symptoms again. I am curious as to how music gets coupled with acute physical sensations though, embedded into the nerve endings.

When she told me the "good news" about getting a root canal, my entire body shivered. While my own troublesome tooth (and non-dental plan) was from a few years back, that physical misery was conjured so that I re-lived it for a second. Again, I felt that never-ebbing sear of hot pain, white light, the hallucinatory tremble of my skull from those weeks leading up to the drill. And there's an exact song that encapsulates that pain. When I think about root canals, I think about Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love."

It was a few summers ago and I was out at Siren Festival. It was my first time out at Coney Island and I was with then-fellow Pforker Brandon Stosuy. Unable to chew down a Nathan's hot dog, I wandered instead into the decrepit penny arcade out on the boardwalk, the skull pain masked by the din of skee-ball thumps, Street Fighter, and Dance Dance Revolution noises. As "Crazy in Love" burst forth, that horn line (from the Chi-Lites' "Are You My Woman") incessantly drilled deep into my head (where it would remain the rest of that summer). My skull reached the threshold: all brass blasts, Jay guest verse, arcade noise, Coney Island teen yammer, sweat, leathery local skin flash, skull nerve throb. At "got me going so crazy right now," everything roared white.

It was at this precise moment that the arcade attendant deployed some sort of industrial strength room deodorizer to cut through the pall of B.O. that hung in the hot room. Stunned and stuck in place, I was hit square in the face with that noxious mist. I can't hear that song without all those bells, whistles, and florid stinks flooding back and overtaking me.

Recently, another friend of mine recounted the first time he ever heard the God of Thunder, Prince Far I, on his face-melting dub reggae classic Cry Tuff the Dub Encounter Volume 3. Reduced to a puddle (bong-abetted, no doubt), he then had to be scooped up and put into a Brooklyn gypsy cab. It was a late November night, but for some reason, his cabbie had all the windows rolled down. To top it off, the cabbie had "Unchained Melody" cranked up. Already a bundle of nerves, the cold and the soaring Righteous sound (arranged for maximum beatitude by Jack Nitzsche, natch) shook my friend down to his spinal column. In simply retelling his tale and thinking about the Righteous Brothers, his arms had broken out anew in goose flesh, still cold at the sound of music.

the secret life of beta

Without my knowing it, writing chums Peter Relic and Dave Tompkins apparently created this hippe-dippie pseudo-entity in the early 70s known as "Peter Tompkins" and co-authored tomes like The Secrets of the Great Pyramid and The Secret Life of Plants. I hold the two of them wholly responsible for inspiring the worst Stevie Wonder double album ever.

Still, there's lots of kooky science goodness to be had in The Secret Life of Plants. Nothing is quite helpful tipwise, like how to prevent root shock, secrets of how to make bulbs bloom, or what Beethoven sonatas will make plants grow best. Should I be playing Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations from 1955 or 1981 for the aloe? Will geraniums thrive better hearing Pablo Cassals's recordings of the Cello Suites or else Yo-Yo Ma's take? Can they hear Wagner looped in the GAS box set? Will the twee-classical of Nico Muhly shrivel them outright?

Instead, there are all these weird experiments that prove that plants are lie detectors, mind readers, can feel the death of any and all animal cells, and have a telepathy that has no bounds, meaning plants have a sense that extends beyond our understanding and conceptions of space and time. So the more I write snarky criticism, the more my plants will suffer? Oh, and they receive transmissions from deep outer space. Weird reports stream in from the Soviets and from India too (Pravda headline: "What Leaves Tell Us: Plants talk...yes, they scream").

They also talk about Goethe's lesser-known career discussing the morphology of plants: "To Goethe the fact that the action of the root of a plant is directed earthward toward moisture and darkness, whereas the stem of trunk strives skyward in the opposite direction towards the light and the air, was a truly magical phenomenon." Even during yoga class now, I keep imagining myself becoming some sort of plant: spine like a stem, face and hands turning towards the sun, growing ever so slowly. Guh, can I really be turning back into a hippie? Even if the archival discovery of this Father Yod album from 1973 makes my skin creep?