3 posts tagged “experimental”
So, as I mentioned yesterday, tonight is the big Seattle Jandek concert! Which is really pretty wicked awesome, considering that the dude had been putting records out for, what, not quite 30 years and has only started playing live in the tail end of 2004? (Amusing co-inkydink: The date of Jandek's very first show was the same day that my friends and I had all seen Jandek On Corwood for the first time at the Film Forum. So, how about that?) So, yes! Here's a cut from Your Turn To Fall, one of the earlier records, put out in 1983. For more on Jandek, including the whole history and whatnot, pick up the DVD of Jandek On Corwood, and check out Seth Tisue's Guide To Jandek, which is really wicked awesome.
Also: If you are in New Jersey or the neighborhood, The Red Paintings are playing a show (I believe with the Dresden Dolls, who are wicked awesome) -- they're Oh-Kay, I Guess, but the main reason I'm mentioning this is because they had a film backdrop when I saw them a week or so ago, which I was really trying to figure out the source for, because I really wanna see the movie they were using.
Anyway, though, the stuff I remember from the film:
Nuclear bombs go off, as there're mushroom clouds and whatnot. A man
with glasses appears to be in pain and nerviously, he rolls up his
shirt sleeve and discovers that his skin is cracked and gross from the
radiation. He also
sees a hunk of metal pipe in there, and kind of goes "AHH!" at it,
which I suppose would be the proper reaction. He finds a woman
and kidnaps her or beats her up and kidnaps her or something and puts
her bloodied body in a bathtub. The odd thing, though, is that she
actually seems to be enjoying it sexually, even though she looks like
she's beat up pretty bad. The guy ends up in more pain and I'm guessing
through mutation, he starts to get all sorts of....
fluffy-dirt-mud-skin-something over him (I'm thinking it was supposed
to be tumors), and it seems to be very painful and perhaps making him
more into a monster.
It was Black & White, and LOTS of fast motion/jump cut kind of stuff. One of the other things I remember is another guy with an "X" on his jacket running around in some of the fast motion scenes (which were often basically a collage of stills going down a street with telephone poles and whatnot),
Ben & I both saw it, and said that it reminded us that we'd both rather be watching this or Eraserhead (Ben)/Funeral
Parade Of Roses (Me). Ben said it reminded him of Eraserhead because of
some faces looked kind of like the Baby. It kind of reminded me a
little of Funeral Parade just from the general feel.
Ben thought to note too that it may have just been sped up by the Band, but to me, it looked like it was like that in the
real film. Ben also remembers the X guy riding around on a
bike. I've also heard it suggested that it was a collage of
different movies, but disjointed though it was, it really seemed to
have the Same Feel, like it WAS all from one movie.
Also, there were a few shots of piles of rather dryish looking dirt,
and also some spaghetti lookin' stuff, though those might have been
wires. Also, the Mutated Guy looked like he might have been part robot
or part wires and such
like, too. (There was a shot of a rotating pile of un-sorted wires, that I actually noted reminded me a little bit of the
way Cartoon Planet would, say, have a stop-motion spinning plate of beans or spaghetti. But that part isn't helpful,
probably.)
(Also, it cut out about halfway through their set, and got replaced with footage of the eye-slitting scene of Un Chien
Andalou (and NOTHING ELSE from UCA), then a movie which had the
Creation Of The Universe, which lead to a bunch of weird religious
imagery and also hole imagery, but the main thing I remember is an old
guy in a hospital bed, a Televangelist Lookin' Dude with a white bible
throwing the bible down in a really bright place, and then a cut back
to the Hospital Dude, where you're going to expect the bible to hit
him, but instead he's covered up with the Shroud Of Turin, which he
pulls from his face angrily and throws in the corner. Soon after, it
cuts to a multi-eye goat-headed man being crucified. I wouldn't mind
finding out what that was too, but it didn't look nearly as compelling
as the Weird Japanese Avant Film. It looked like the
Televangelist/5-or-6-eyed-goat-jesus film would have been more of an
Ironic Watchin', rather than the Japanese one which looked legitmately
rad.)
I know that it sounds like it might be Tetsuo: The Iron Man, but the stills I've seen from that don't seem to match. (Also, I would have noticed if anyone had a drill-dildo-penis, too. That's not something you typically overlook.) So, yeah, a) If anyone knows, that would be awesome, or b) If you get a chance to talk to the folks in the band, that would be awesome too. I've emailed the band via their website, but I haven't heard back, so, yes, I don't know! Hooray! I like pie! I'm gonna crosspost this to my LJ too, just because I think more people read that. Also the Music Wiki, just because I like to include all the notes there, even those that don't have anything to do with anything. Hooray!
Here's a cut from Brian Eno's first solo record, Here Come The Warm Jets, which is a song I almost hesitate to post, just because you should all really, really have this record. If you don't, the Amazon link's right there -- edjumacate yerself posthaste. Because, OH MY GOD, this record is SO GOOD. This isn't even the best track. I'd say it's "The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch", but apparently Eno hisself doesn't think much of that one. I'm not sure why, though, it's mindblowingly cool. But this one really is as well.
The cool thing with this is the way Eno wrote the lyrics -- his lyrics, particularly from this era, were more-or-less nonsensical and made up to go with the sounds. Basically where most people will go "da da da dum dum" to do a melody, he'd do that and replace the "da da dum"s with words that SOUNDED like the "da da dum"s and whether or not they made sense was cool. After all, the lyrics weren't important to what he was doing. (Of course, he got some real corkers in, though, like "By this time I got to looking for a kind of substitute/I cant tell you who I found, except that it rhymes with dissolute" from the aforementioned "Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch".) So, it was basically all just stream-of-consciousness. The funny thing with this one is when he was playing the demo for people, people kept saying "My god, this is about Bryan Ferry, isn't it? It's rather nasty, don't you think?" and Eno went "What? No, it's just nonsense!" and then he went back and listened to it again, and realised that Yes, it WAS about Bryan Ferry, and yes it WAS rather nasty. So, he changed some of the lyrics between that version and this one. It's pretty much still about Bryan Ferry, but at least a little bit less so.
Also, as promised, episode 2 of the Untitled TODCRA Productions Project is up at TODCRA@VOX, so go check that out!
I'm real tired right now, and I haven't posted an mp3 for the day, so here we go! I've always dug this track (it's not really a song in the straight definition of the word, but if that matters to you, you suck) -- it's just so goofy and quotable. Granted, the bulk of the lyrics are variations on "HEY FAT BOY! ASSHOLE! C'MERE! YOU KILLED MY MOTHER! I KILL YOU!!", but when do those words NOT come in handy, huh? It's from the album Pure Guava, which is a pretty good one, though it took me a bit of warming up to, due to the sound-quality not being the best. But it's still pretty rad, and, hey, it's got a fat boy and threats of murder! What more can you ask for?
ALSO -- I'm not gonig to do it now, because I'm tired, but probably tomorrow, I'm going to go through here and provide Amazon Links to the albums from which you can buy all the tracks. At least the ones that aren't real rare or anything. They'll probably be affiliated up, so either a) You can buy them and I'll get a kickback or b) You can follow the link, add it to your wishlist, then log out and restart your browser or some such and buy the record without giving me a kickback. That's fine too. I do not expect/request/etc. the Amazonian Kickbacks, I just wanna make it so y'all can maybe actually BUY these records which I'm plugging. Because, seriously, they're all pretty damn rad albums and worth the purchase. And, hey, supporting artists is a good thing, because it lets them make more art and not wind up workin' in a gas station.
So, hooray for that!
