Monday, October 29, 2007

Nationalism? Music? You gotta own it!

I just learned that "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" IST not in fact the first words of the current German national anthem. Aparently some controversy over the words (which translate to "Germany, Germany above all/everything!"), cause some to beleive they were a tad too nationalistic.

German nationalism? What harm could that do?

In any case, West Germany opted to use only the milder, less offensive third verse in 1952, and in superficially researching this a little furher, I found this editorial from a German paper.

Germans Stop Humming, Start Singing National Anthem

As you will see if you follow the link, Joseph Haydn wrote the tune forty years before August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben stepped up the jingo lingo while exiled in England of all places and nearly ninety years before the Nazi's put it into practice.

Like the modern soccer hooligan Germans mentioned the article, I genuinely love the tune, but humbly suggest that anyone uncomfortable with the uncomfortable history attached to it give a listen to Noel Coward's London Pride or Elvis Costello's Little Atoms, which both make use of a melody similar to Hadyn's in interesting ways.

Coward's song, true to the sweepingly fey chariacature of British homo-masculinity that he so deftly mastered, re-writes the tune about a flower which can grow just about anywhere in the heart of London. Coward wrote it during the London Blitz, whilst huddled in the Underground amazed at the resiliance of the British public. According to Coward:

London Pride was written in the spring of 1941. I was standing on the platform of a London railway station on the morning after a bad blitz. Most of the glass in the station roof had been blown out and there was dust in the air and the smell of burning.

The train I was waiting to meet was running late and so I sat on a platform seat and watched the Londoners scurrying about in the spring sunshine. They all seemed to me to be gay and determined and wholly admirable, and for a moment or two I was overwhelmed by a wave of sentimental pride. The song started in my head then and there, and was finished in a couple of days.

The tune is based on the traditional lavender-seller’s song, "Won't You Buy My Sweet-Smelling Lavender, There Are Sixteen Bunches One Penny". This age-old melody was appropriated by the Germans and used as a foundation for "Deutschland Uber Alles", and I considered that the time had come for us to have it back in London where it belonged. I am proud of the words of this song. They express what I felt at the time, i.e. London Pride.


(Coward wartime stuff is amazingly complex for being so sentimental, listen also to his 1943 song Don't Let's Beastly to the Germans
).

Interestingly, Elvis Costello's song begins with similarily flowery allusions ("I arose and Marigold lay down with Curious Iris / Cherry gave to Victor her prudence and her virus...") only to turn further inward about how the first-person speaker of the song "betray with a kiss," "the particles of me that care for this."

Which bring me to my main point and the reason I'm putting this up: the author of the above article does not mention the myriad of permutations of the tune, which begs more pressing questions about ownership and property, which are the very systems of thought underlying the problem of nationalism in the first place. Which seems especially pertinent to music with the recent wave of legal action being undertaken in the name of copyrights against file sharing sites like Oink and Demonoid. Music is like the flowers, man--it belongs to everybody! Anyway.



Here's Little Atoms, maybe (they might pull it down)

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

The bands that aren't

I like naming bands, especially band that I'm not in... so here's a running list of the best of them--I'm just trying to get one of them on a flyer:

She-Hulk and the Time Friends

'Twixt & 'Tween

Death Woo

The Vienna Boys Saussage

Infinite Guest

Terminal Jest

Great Acoustics for Electronic Music

Fact Similie

Similie-time Station

Klondike, Keener & Skib

The Bashful Hitlers

John Deere & the Dear Johns

Foreign Conversation

Seltzer Pants Alloy

Syndrome of a Downs

Rigorous Mortis

Chuck Yeagermeister Stands Alone!

The Lawfirm of Kitchen, Pond & Mattress

Sex without Coercion

Cher and Cher Alike

Charismatic Frontman

Chomsky, We Had Explosives

Frankly, We Have Explosives
(taken!)

(more to come)...
80s-90s Movie-themed band names"

Inigo Montoya

Provasic

Devlin MacGregor


There must be more....?

Just to clarify, these are not bands... yet!

Sunday, October 21, 2007

DAYS 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 & 21: An Imminent, Staggering Plastic Baggering Strait

It has been a bizarre but uneventful MASH-tober. The challenge persists, but yields little. Last night, it was warmer so I left the windows open and over the strains of "Boris"' mashing, I heard my downstairs neighbours living and boozing it up into the wee small horas. The alley often sports broken bottles hurled there by Westmount teens or poor recyclers. Perhaps, the lag and unHalloweenliness of the season owe to climate change? In which case, as I noted last time, Monster Masher Bobby Pickett may have hoped on a much more prescient bandwagon when he turned to the Mashing Climate Change with his swan song, the Climate Mash.

Which reminded me that as I was sitting here working at the computer in front the dark alleyway between mine and the building next door, a plastic bad fell straight down, parachute-like, from on high, perfectly in my line of vision. The sky was literally raining plastic bag. It was an American Beauty moment, but it made for a dirty alleyway.

The warm air, the plastic bag, broken bottles, and the mutant squirrel... all of this reminds me of something which leads to something else:

The Vortex of Garbage in the North Pacific Ocean.

I don't remember if Al Gore told me (and 20,000 other people) about this when he spoke in Montreal in March, but it is alternately known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the Eastern Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex, but I'm partial to Vortex of Garbage. It forms around the North Pacific Gyre, which is apparently the system of currents tugging at the world's oceans. The currents in turn deposit vast amounts of garbage into the North Pacific, and this semi-buoyant trash heap is currently about the size of Texas.

What this means, I cannot be sure, but I have visions of a distopic future (there's seldom any other kind in the waking imagination) in which a Bering Straight is filled in again with trash, allowing a motley of Americans to walk back to Asia across a pile of dirty tennis shoes, Huey Lewis albums, computer monitors, discarded tubes of petroleum jelly, and other non-biodegradable remnants of human civilization. Eventually, humankind or whatever's left of it will settle the vortex, perhaps breeding Great Pacific Garbage Pale Kids and later, a system of government will evolve there after centuries of warfare for the heaps, but right now it's just a slowly swirling pile of garbage. That's terrible.

I'd like some suggestions for following up. Can anyone direct me towards:

- a cultural histories of plastic (chronicling varied cultural attitudes towards plastic from the fifties to present)
- Climate Mash, where can one hear it?
- Where the last 13 days went?

LINKS:

Ocean Secrets

North Pacific Gyre

Across the Pacific Ocean, plastics, plastics, everywhere

Greenpeace's piece on it

The Original Bering Strait

Garbage

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Days 5, 6, 7 & 8: Mash fatigue

LISTENING CONTEXTS: varied, the most interesting being in Aunt's car

In the middle of nowhere, I was interupted by drums, and what turned out to be a re-recording of the Monster Mash. K-tel et al made the worst of these sort of things. As I mentioned, Bobby "Boris" Pickett made a career out of the Monster Mash. I remember hearing another record once on the radio about this time of year in which Boris basically sang the whole of the Monster Mash in the past tense, "still working at the lab, late that night... remember the Monster Mash?" Etc. The last thing he did is said to be the Climate Mash, having turned his attentions to the HORRORS OF GLOBAL WARMING... Haven't been able to find it anywhere. Have found Beach Boys with Bobby...

Friday, October 5, 2007

Day 4: duly noted

LISTENING CONTEXT: on a bus, people around, sadly mashing

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Day 3: Monster Sociality = Music Sociality

LISTENING CONTEXT: bus stop, starring up at the crest with an old Packard logo in it waiting for a bus

Okay, I know that yesterday I said that the Monster Mash was isolating, but here's a shocking fact: the monsters are having fun. Despite their monstrosity, and the implicit social stigma attached to that, they seem to be getting along, mashing.... At the same time, the musicians on the record genuinely seem to be having fun too--it's a party record, and it sounds like a party! There are few party records I can think of that don't--it was 1962, Lesley Gore's bad time party records came the following year, and synthesizers were several years away. Party records underline the role of sociality in pop music. The lyrics bring that home. Even if Leon Russell's piano sounds like its having it's own little party in a closet somewhere, away from the rhythm section, and everything is super compartmentalized on the recording--and parties often involved stuffing Leon Russell in a closet.


As I was listening to it, I thought about another great dance party record (and one I'd listened to a few minutes earlier): Quarter to Three by Gary US Bonds. The record sounds like a party was happening in the studio, and I think part of the genre's appeal is in conveying that sense of partiness. His New Orleans is another great example. Which, as I've been learning recently ties into the fun of actually playing music with other people. Which is a social phenomena. However, it also explains, going back to yesterday, why listening to other people's good time together can be so isolatin' when you're walking through Westmount.

Also, whatever became of Packard cars?

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Day 2: Mash Indifference

LISTENING CONTEXT: walking along Ste Cath West, near Greene, random. slightly on purpose (ipodishly)

Today, twice, swimming through an afternoon crowd along a busy sidewalk. Face after unsmiling face passed me by unaware that the grin (I had, beaming myselfishly), which seemed to be making everyone uncomfortable began with the sound of science bubbles at the beginning of the Monster Mash. Nothing highlights the nakedly subjective nature of pop music listening in the 21st Century like the scorn of strangers at your enjoying it. Otherwises, I heard Lucretia MacEvil by Blood Sweat and Tears twice today, too. Equally silly, equally isolating.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Day 1: Mash Good!

So begins my immersion in Mash-dom as I enter the THIRTY-ONE DAY MONSTER MASH CHALLENGE, a self-imposed experiment in which I will listen to Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s the Monster Mash every day for the month of October, 2007, AD., and record whatever I am able to produce as a result of it.

Why do this?

Well, my experience has led me to believe that there is something compulsive built into the academic mindset—a mindset I am trying to feign. I’m partly trying to reconnect with that. I’m reminded of an older age of clerical pedagogy that required hand copying of canonical works. This led to such bizarre sentences as “there’s no Ecclesiastes like Gary’s Ecclesiastes.” (Evidentally, Gary had poise and remarcable penmanship).

I’ve even seen instructional manuals from as recent as the 1980s recommending that aspiring writers copy the great works of Western Literature (oddly all written by Great Men) out by hand so that one can get the feeling of having written a Great Work. I know Hunter S. Thompson claimed to have re-typed works by Fitzgerald and Hemmingway, and hand copying the works of Shakespeare was once quite common. (I heard comedian George Carlin explain that his maternal grandfather had done this.)

This old school self-publishing was about self-improvement and education by imitation. The subject is supposed internalize these external models. But I think there’s something more fundamental going on. I can remember hand writing the lyrics to all of the songs on the Beatles’ Red & Blue LPs when I was 11. I did it because I really liked the songs.

My ambition is to write one amazingly annoyingly catchy pop song and live off the resulting multimedia franchise until my great-grandchildren are all dead. That’s precisely what Bobby “Boris” Pickett did and there is something that has always fascinated me about the curious notion of being able to base an entire career on just one thing—the true one-trick pony. The Vaudeville stage was made up of act after act who would essentially hone a single five to ten minute routine into its perfect form over their entire careers.



The challenge is not about the Monster Mash. It doesn’t need commentary. As the Igor says, mash good! My important work is an exercise in purpose-driven purposelessness. It’s a spiritual journey through specific culturally-ubiquitous media to arrive at… well, we shall see…

Which is why, each day for the entire month of October, I will listen to the Monster Mash at least twice every day, and record my observations. I’ll try to get out and get into increasingly bizarre circumstances so that the Mash has the potential of altering my perception of the world. I’ll turn over lyrics in my mind and unpack, deconstruct, disenfranchise, and do violence to it, until I get somewhere. Bear with me!

This will be the first time I've ever attempted to do this when it is seasonally appropriate. Depending on how it goes, in December, I can begin my month long observance of the same basic experiment with Christmas Don't Be Late, I will expect to have learned a great deal about human endurance. January, I could do No Scrubs by TLC.

LISTENING CONTEXT: 3:00-3:15 PM EST, my apartment, on purpose

Peripheral. I put it on four times while I was doing mundane school work. It was not profound. I was struck by how tame it sounds-—how profoundly non-threatening, for a song about Monsters, mashing. It is kinda-goofy, and Leon Russell plays the piano.

I had intended to wake up to the Monster Mash this morning, but I forgot when I was setting my alarm that the first track on that Halloween CD is The Who’s version of Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” That was loud.

Go FURTHER: for starters, take a look at the official webpage of the late Bobby “Boris” Pickett. He made a career out of the Monster Mash, and much of it is evident here.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Wiki finds

I just heard a promo for The People's Court that promised "...but there's no landscaping in PRISON!"

On that note... I thought I might keep a running list of the most amazing things I've found on Wikipedia. Oooh... the novelty!

List of City Nick Names in the United States
Favourites include The Only Black Earth in the World, San Pornando Valley, and Cincinnati is 'The 'Nati.'

Bath school disaster

Serial Killers:

Servant girl annihilator

H. H. Holmes

The Pied Piper of Tucson

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Montréal entendu à pied

I like Souvlaki. I just can't eat it anymore.

- a heavy set and heavily disappointed woman walking past the Arahova on Ste Catherine. (This is same Arahova whose front plate glass window I saw a man use as a urinal a few weeks back. It is also the same Arahova I walked into in April and all of the staff were singing along to the Sheryl Crow version of "The First Cut is the Deepest," including the Kojak/Mr.Clean-lookin' Maître d'.)

You worked on Crescent--you're used to Americans.

- a thirtysomething man arguing with his date about the great Elephant to the south.

Roid Rage: Arizona March Song, 2007

I was a semi-proud Arizona resident from January 1992 to August 2002. There, I completed all of the schooling there is between grade 6 and my bachelors degree at the University of Arizona, and made some of the best friends I've had. When I went back to visit Arizona this May, I stumbled on an old polaroid camera which I had used to use to quell teenage roid rage in the late 1990s. There was also a small packet of film that was well-over 10 years past the expiration date. Given my fondness for expired goods and chance opportunity, I suddenly felt obligated to plastically record various aspects of this trip, documenting all of the important things (my friends, family and locales) that instantly seemed quite distant on account of the immediately ancient polaroiding effect of the expired film.

See the series below...
#1 - black, car, AZ

#2 - Kitty @ UA Mall, Tucson, AZ

#3 - Gareth @ Old Main, UA, Tucson, AZ

#4 - Chris @ Olde Spaghetti Factory, Phoenix, AZ

#5 - Mike @ Motel 6, Tempe, AZ

#6 - Andy @ Salt River Tubing, northeast Mesa, AZ

#7 - Chris @ In-N-Out Burger, Chandler, AZ

#8 - Gareth @ TVES, outside Tucson city limits, AZ

#9 - Mum & Marty @ front yard, home, AZ

#10 - Dad @ backyard, home, AZ

See also, facebook version

Monday, July 23, 2007

AD/BC: gay old times

The new Kids in the Hall show, which I just saw as part of the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal last week, has Scott Thompson's Buddy character do a bit about Jesus being gay. It went over bigger than the moment where Scott Thompson blames the cancellation of News Radio on Phil Hartman (for getting murdered). That got a resounding BOO! from the audience. But that's another story.

Gay Jesus. Well, given the cultural climate at any given point in the last 30 years, the idea has the ring of inevitability to it. Even forgetting that, the deconstructionists need it--ying for yang. It had to have come up before--and a lot.



Thanks to the blogosphere, I was happy to stumble upon a long-going debate about the existence of one such manifestation. Follow the links below to uncover the weird story of a gay-Jesus gay porn film called HIM from 1974. Nobody seems to agree whether or not it could have existed, but it seems like it did. I won't repeat too much of what is written, but demi-mainstream knowledge of the film began with cultural crusader Michael Medved's horrible movie books (which are both horrible books and books about horrible movies). It's about a man with a present day obsession with the Christ and Christian homoeroticism.

film chat: Gay Jesus Movie - Hoax or fact?

NT Gateway blog

SNOPES: Gay Jesus

A listing of strange urban legend type 70s movies and the image reproduced above can be found here:
THE WEIRD WORLD OF THE 1970s

While we're at it, you may want to explore the secret gospels of Mark:
The Secret Gospels of Mark

Anyone have a print? I don't know that I'd want to see it (as Albert Goldstein's SCREW review makes it sound a little slow), but I know a few people who would.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Fighting Foo: On the Cat Napper's Tail, a young adult choose your own adventure (draft)

Chief Kirby arrived at Central Memorial High School a few minutes after the dispatcher had told him there was trouble. The big game against Union was coming up on Thursday. As a regular big-game attendee, the Chief knew any trouble could be serious. Officer Ryan was already on the scene.

"Well, what do we have here, Ryan?" Kirby asked.

"Well, it's incredible, chief," a flustered Officer Ryan explained. "Cat napping! The worst I've ever seen. Somebody has stolen the Fighting Foo, the prized high school mas-cat. And the big game against Union is this Thursday!"

"Unbelievable! That can only mean one thing..."

"Ninjas?"

"Exactly..."
  • If you want Chief Kirby to continue with his EXPLANATION about the Ninjas, turn to page 68 or click here.
  • If you would like a lone NINJA, who had been hiding under the bleachers waiting to ambush the police chief, to attack, turn to page 86 or click here.
  • If you would like Chief Kirby to complain about searing GAS PAINS and offer a candid index of his intestinal discomfort and other recent personal medical history, turn to pages 14-55 or click here.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Persons of the week: 06/05 to 13/05/2007

Breakdancin' Spiderman on Ste. Catherine street in downtown Montreal.

Given the piss-poor reviews Spiderman III has been getting in the press (even though I kinda liked it) I thought I should give the super man-rachnid a break.

I had previously blogged about a man who breakdances while dressed as Spiderman last July. Since then, he has become something of a YouTube mainstay, and so in tribute, and with the utmost respect, I give your Ste. Catherine Spiderman and his sometimes-present, always creepy sidekick:





































Thursday, May 3, 2007

"This is not a popularity contest...

...it's a murder trial!"

...it's a Presidential Election!"

...it's football!"

...it's the line at the DMV."

...it's Christianity!"

...it's prison bingo!"

...it's the neurosciences."

...it's Jack Valenti's funeral procession."

...it's the United States Postal Service."

...it's the widow bus!"

...it's a z0mbie wedding."

Monday, April 30, 2007

wireless technology for loose wires

Bastard!

Fuck!

Rapist!

With the bluetooth and the headset and the affordable calling plans, it seems that cellphones have obliterated the stigma against talking crazy in public. As I write this at a university computer lounge, there's a girl a few computers down angrily cursing the asses and holes responsible for some gravely unforgivable something that she's got going on in her head. But on account of the cellphone, I can't tell whether or not there's an actual person on the receiving end of the tirade. YET, Lady Dice Clay's tirade continues unabated. She also types loud, which is poor computer lounge etiquette.

I, for one, welcome the liberation that comes with the blurring of the line between sanity and insanity, which cellphones have brought about.

I heard a guy walking on Ste Catherine telling anyone he met,

You see Satan wants you not to believe in him. That's the source of His
dark power...

Now, this would have sounded crazy under normal circumstances, but the whole cellphone thing--their very existence--gave me cause for pause.

I first knew these telephonamajigger things would be a problem back in 1996 when I walked in a men's room and heard a man's voice from one of the stalls telling someone (probably named Jack or John),
Jack? You'll never guess where I'm calling you from....

But not ten years later I watched a man at a Costco walk right into a men's room, use the urinal and wash his hands, all without interrupting what was an altogether trivial conversation on his phone.

Monday, April 23, 2007

SNL' of an opportunity!




Pantomime psychic to the stars!


This is what's going on my business card and I don't give a damn what anyone thinks! It evokes a bad SNL skit, like my other "character" idea of the militant R. Lee Ermey yoga instructor. The other character would have psychic powers that could only be communicated through the medium of pantomime. As a result, a psychic reading looks like a game of charades.


Both are hits just waiting for a bad improv troop to bite. Any takers? Please contact me through here.

It's comedy gold... or at least, bronze, and what better can SNL hope for?

oh yeah


My good friends and I wound up starting up a new, collective blog at the Gypsy River Hotel & Casino.

They all thought the name Helen Reddy Mades to be a little too esoteric. I'll still post unpopular things here... if you'll let me.



Wednesday, April 11, 2007

higher learning

I had a meeting today at McGill, the more austere and stately Montreal university picturesquely perched atop a high hill in the centre of town. During my brief time walking the hallowed halls of this internationally recognized bastion for the brightening of young minds, I learned that the chief distinguishing characteristic of the ladies room is a total lack of urinals.

Oops.

Sunday, April 1, 2007

Ghazal, the City Built on Rock'n'Roll

Kitty was reading the student newspaper (the Link!) that featured Kenny's election profile from my last little note. As she turned the pages, I noticed the unmistakeable stink of student poetry. Looking it over upsidedown, I told Kitty that while I didn't know much about poetry, I did know it was a bad sign if the poem could be improved by adding the phrase "and we built this city on Rock'n'Roll!"

She found this poem which it quite fit, so I give you "Ghazal, the city built on Rock'N'Roll."




Baby, I wrote (on) this poem for you...

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Allegories of Unilateral Action and the Burden of Dreams

It was then that I realized that the metallic static I had heard was not robots but the menacing but unmistakable sound of a marching band, distantly and discordantly pumping along. It meant only one thing: danger!

Alone standing in the middle of a large, sparse green space—like a small town after a tornado—which was crosscut with roads and the odd indices of settlement (a postbox, street signs, etc.), I started to walk quickly along the wet grassy strip of land. It must be near the mall in Washington, D.C., but I don't remember why or when that became apparent to me.

With the sound of the marching band getting closer and closer, there was only one thing to do, which I exclaimed as it occurred to me, "I had better warn the President!"

In a flash, I was in the White House, and found George W. Bush sitting alone, trying to solve a Sudoku. He looked up, but when I tried to warn him, before I got a word out, it was clear he didn't want to talk about whatever I had come to tell him. He threw down his pen, and said, "Let's roll!" pointing to the hallway with the cool resolve of a motorboat salesman.

With that, he started to lead me on an art historical tour of the White House, showing me painting after painting, making banal comments with absolute severity.

In front of a pastoral landscape, he looked me hard right in the eye and said, "The trees provide shade."

Then, he showed me the knit poster that's in the offices of a lot of guidance counselors, child psychologists, and the like—the one that depicts circular children of every colour and nationality standing together on a white background (it was over the mirror between Mrs. Adler's office and the counseling room at Emily Gray for my Tucson friends). He knelt down (it was hanging lopsided near the ground) and said, "I call the little one Pocahontas."

I probably should have mentioned that this was a dream. Next thing I knew I was up and life was as it remains.

As for the interpretation of dreams, I have my ideas. I think it's about Robots. I recently came to believe that Sudoku was part of an elaborate conspiracy to turn us into them—robots, that is. Number-munchers.

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Helen Reddy! Set! Go!

This is the first post, so welcome! WELCOME!

Please come back, frankly I'm just happy anyone's coming at all. There should be a lot of activity and interesting stuff here in the future. This is a general interest type thing, which is to say that it is the product of an idiosyncratic and easily distractable semi-conscious consciousness.

I'll probably retro-act some old stuff onto this page, but if it comes before this page it's old.

Okay. Supper's on, so I gotta go. Women's Lib! Gay lib! Heteroglossia! Free Cookies for hot girls! Coat check at the library!

Friday, January 26, 2007

bad news indeed travels slow

I was on the bus this morning when a girl in her early twenties got on and shouted at the top of her lungs:

"I can't believe they killed him."

Naturally, this caught my attention. Which is good, because it allowed me to pay attention to the second part.

"I can't believe they killed Julius Caesar."

Indeed. But it went on for most of the rest of the ride...

"It's stupid. They're stupid."

There was some gape-mouthed boyfriend-type with her who periodically would agree.

Finally,
"How do they think they're going to run Rome? He was like, the smartest one."

Somewhere in there I caught on that they were talking about the TV show, Rome. Still, the idea that someone could be watching these events--a full 2000 some years after they occured--and still be surprised, floors me.

I would have loved to have been there when she saw the Passion of the Christ. ("Why won't they stop like hitting this guy? I hope he don't die.")