(Thanx Fifi!)
Dream on, Min Ding
2 hours ago
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
Conor Oberst writes open letter for Zack de la Rocha's Sound Strike boycott of Arizona
Bright Eyes' mainman Conor Oberst has been an outspoken advocate for Zack de la Rocha's Sound Strike effort, joining fellow musicians and artists in a campaign to compel the state of Arizona to repeal its controversial immigration law. Ry Cooder, Nine Inch Nails, and comedian Chris Rock, Maroon 5, Gogol Bordello, My Morning Jacket, Ben Harper and Pitbull are among the dozens of artists that recently announced their support for the Sound Strike effort and have pledged to boycott Arizona, refusing to perform in the state until the law is repealed. Steve Earle, Billy Bragg, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Anti-Flag, Throwing Muses, State Radio, Aztlan Underground and DJ Spooky also announced support for the effort in a posting on thesoundstrike.net.
Charlie Levy, the owner of Stateside Presents, an independent concert-promotion company based in Phoenix that produces over 200 events a year in clubs and theaters throughout Arizona and New Mexico, published an open letter to the the artists involved in the Sound Strike, asking for them to reconsider the boycott and to use Arizona performances to register opposition to the law.
Below, Oberst responds to Levy with an open letter of his own.
Dear Charlie,
I read your letter and I do understand where you are coming from. You bring up valid points. I personally regret any of the collateral damage the boycott is causing you, other like-minded arts promoters and the fans in Arizona. A boycott is, inherently, a blunt instrument. It is an imperfect weapon, a carpet bomb, when all involved would prefer a surgical strike. I agree with you in part, and the radio host you quoted, that the authors and supporters of SB1070 could give a shit whether or not my band, or any other Artist, ever plays Arizona again. The only thing, clearly, that these people care about is Money and Power, that and the creation and preservation of an Anglo-Centric Police State where every Immigrant and Non-White citizen is considered subhuman. They want them stripped of their basic human rights and reduced to slaves for Corporate America and the White Race. They are engaged in blatant class warfare. It is evil, pure and simple.
I have on many occasions spoken my mind from stage. I have offered organizations table space by the merch booth. I have donated a dollar-a-ticket, or the entire guarantee, to different causes. I have registered voters. I have played on behalf of political candidates. Sadly, this time, I fear none of that is enough. If I return to Arizona to pay lip service to a roomful of kids at the Marquee it will do absolutely no good for anyone. What I can do is to help organize, and play my small part in, what I hope is the largest and most effective boycott this country has seen in a long time. To work it will have to involve members from all sectors of society. The Sports Industry, the Entertainment Industry, the Tourism and Convention Industry, other State and City governments, private businesses and individuals from around the country and the world---all of whom, by the way, are already participating in the boycott. Much of the Artist end of the boycott is symbolic, I acknowledge, and no real threat to the economics of the State. But it is an important part none-the-less for awareness and messaging. The Boycott has to be so widespread and devastating that the Arizona State Legislature and Governor have no choice but to repeal their unconstitutional, immoral and hateful law. It has to hurt them in the only place they feel any pain, their pocketbooks.
What I would encourage you to do, if you haven't already started, is to organize with all the local businesses you can to put as much pressure as possible on your State Government until the Law is repealed. An economic death rattle is the only cry of outrage they will hear.
I realize that the people of Arizona did not vote on SB1070 and I empathize with the anger and frustration you all must feel. I applaud what you are doing with Viva Arizona and do wonder if there might be a way to reconcile both our efforts while maintaining the integrity of each. After all, we are trying to achieve the same thing. But just as you may feel the boycott is an empty gesture, I fear that if we return to business as usual (under the guise of some civic movement) that this will all devolve into the typical grandstanding that is political activism in music. It might make us feel better but won't do a damn thing to change the minds of the radical, racist minority that seem to have controlled Arizona politics for decades. In short, it will lose its teeth.
Just this past week, the little town of Fremont Nebraska passed a very similar, almost more radical, city ordinance. It was co-authored and championed by Kris Kobach of Kansas who helped write SB1070. I was outraged, saddened and embarrassed for their town and my state. I am already in the process of organizing a fund-raiser for the NE chapter of the ACLU who is suing the town of Fremont. Our situation requires immediate legal action and a campaign for public awareness (there has been very little press on this). Charlie, I promise you, if this Fremont law had been passed Statewide instead of in a rural town of 25,000 people, I would be the first to call for a boycott of my home state. This way of thinking and legislating is so dangerous, and such a threat to our basic ideals as Americans and Humans, that we cannot stand by and do nothing. We cannot play on as if nothing is wrong. This is not just about Arizona. I am not just skipping a tour date. This is not going to be easy for anyone.
Charlie, I consider you a friend and you have always been great to my bands and me. I have played for you many times and I hope to do so again soon in New Mexico or anywhere else. I sincerely look forward to the day when I can return to Arizona and this will all seem like a bad dream. But I can't come back now. I'm sorry. I hope you will understand.
Your friend,
Conor Oberst
Charlie Levy, the owner of Stateside Presents, an independent concert-promotion company based in Phoenix that produces over 200 events a year in clubs and theaters throughout Arizona and New Mexico, published an open letter to the the artists involved in the Sound Strike, asking for them to reconsider the boycott and to use Arizona performances to register opposition to the law.
Below, Oberst responds to Levy with an open letter of his own.
Dear Charlie,
I read your letter and I do understand where you are coming from. You bring up valid points. I personally regret any of the collateral damage the boycott is causing you, other like-minded arts promoters and the fans in Arizona. A boycott is, inherently, a blunt instrument. It is an imperfect weapon, a carpet bomb, when all involved would prefer a surgical strike. I agree with you in part, and the radio host you quoted, that the authors and supporters of SB1070 could give a shit whether or not my band, or any other Artist, ever plays Arizona again. The only thing, clearly, that these people care about is Money and Power, that and the creation and preservation of an Anglo-Centric Police State where every Immigrant and Non-White citizen is considered subhuman. They want them stripped of their basic human rights and reduced to slaves for Corporate America and the White Race. They are engaged in blatant class warfare. It is evil, pure and simple.
I have on many occasions spoken my mind from stage. I have offered organizations table space by the merch booth. I have donated a dollar-a-ticket, or the entire guarantee, to different causes. I have registered voters. I have played on behalf of political candidates. Sadly, this time, I fear none of that is enough. If I return to Arizona to pay lip service to a roomful of kids at the Marquee it will do absolutely no good for anyone. What I can do is to help organize, and play my small part in, what I hope is the largest and most effective boycott this country has seen in a long time. To work it will have to involve members from all sectors of society. The Sports Industry, the Entertainment Industry, the Tourism and Convention Industry, other State and City governments, private businesses and individuals from around the country and the world---all of whom, by the way, are already participating in the boycott. Much of the Artist end of the boycott is symbolic, I acknowledge, and no real threat to the economics of the State. But it is an important part none-the-less for awareness and messaging. The Boycott has to be so widespread and devastating that the Arizona State Legislature and Governor have no choice but to repeal their unconstitutional, immoral and hateful law. It has to hurt them in the only place they feel any pain, their pocketbooks.
What I would encourage you to do, if you haven't already started, is to organize with all the local businesses you can to put as much pressure as possible on your State Government until the Law is repealed. An economic death rattle is the only cry of outrage they will hear.
I realize that the people of Arizona did not vote on SB1070 and I empathize with the anger and frustration you all must feel. I applaud what you are doing with Viva Arizona and do wonder if there might be a way to reconcile both our efforts while maintaining the integrity of each. After all, we are trying to achieve the same thing. But just as you may feel the boycott is an empty gesture, I fear that if we return to business as usual (under the guise of some civic movement) that this will all devolve into the typical grandstanding that is political activism in music. It might make us feel better but won't do a damn thing to change the minds of the radical, racist minority that seem to have controlled Arizona politics for decades. In short, it will lose its teeth.
Just this past week, the little town of Fremont Nebraska passed a very similar, almost more radical, city ordinance. It was co-authored and championed by Kris Kobach of Kansas who helped write SB1070. I was outraged, saddened and embarrassed for their town and my state. I am already in the process of organizing a fund-raiser for the NE chapter of the ACLU who is suing the town of Fremont. Our situation requires immediate legal action and a campaign for public awareness (there has been very little press on this). Charlie, I promise you, if this Fremont law had been passed Statewide instead of in a rural town of 25,000 people, I would be the first to call for a boycott of my home state. This way of thinking and legislating is so dangerous, and such a threat to our basic ideals as Americans and Humans, that we cannot stand by and do nothing. We cannot play on as if nothing is wrong. This is not just about Arizona. I am not just skipping a tour date. This is not going to be easy for anyone.
Charlie, I consider you a friend and you have always been great to my bands and me. I have played for you many times and I hope to do so again soon in New Mexico or anywhere else. I sincerely look forward to the day when I can return to Arizona and this will all seem like a bad dream. But I can't come back now. I'm sorry. I hope you will understand.
Your friend,
Conor Oberst
Slavoj Žižek - the world’s hippest philosopher
Flapping his elbows and lathered in sweat, Slavoj Žižek looks like a man in the final throes of radiation sickness doing the birdy dance. But the world’s hippest philosopher is actually miming what he imagines it would feel like to be trapped inside an all-body condom.
“I saw this thing in an American store!” he explodes, lurching towards me in the quiet conservatory of a Bloomsbury hotel. “A total mask for the body! The ultimate in safe sex! So obscene! My God! But I do believe that by analysing this sort of phenomena you learn a lot about where we are. We want coffee without caffeine! Cake without sugar! And this is decaffeinated sex!”
In the hour we talk topics include his “growing admiration for the works of Agatha Christie — she worked through every formula!” and his condemnation of the 3D blockbuster Avatar as “racist”. He locates “a wandering Jew” at the centre of Wagner’s work and hears a beautiful, minimalist communism in the music of Eric Satie. He points out that the “close doors” button in a lift doesn’t speed the closing of the doors, it is just there to give the user the illusion of action. Voting in a modern Western democracy, he feels, is much the same. He pauses to pant, sigh and throw up his palms. But he is not pausing now. A provocateur whose work inhabits the place where Lacanian psychoanalysis meets Marxist philosophy is going to have something to say about sex.
And it is to alert us that “something weird is going on in Hollywood. Did you see the film of Dan Brown’s novel, Angels and Demons? There is sex in the book. They erased it from the movie! What is going on? It used to be the other way around. Hollywood inserted the sex. This is something, no? I agree with [French philosopher] Alain Badiou, who has a nice theory that with all this internet dating we are returning to premodern procedures of arranged marriage. He found in France a dating agency advertisement which promised 'We will enable you to be in love sans tomber — without falling’. It is a wonderful metaphor. Because this is love, no? A dramatic, traumatic, moment. But this is too dangerous for us now. We are too narcissistic to risk any kind of accidental trip or fall. Even into love!”
Such passion, in a man whose work forms a shaky, cartoon rope-bridge between the minutiae of popular culture and the big abstract problems of existence, is invigorating, entertaining and expanding enquiring minds around the world. Žižek (pronounced Gee-gek, with two soft g’s, as in “regime”) has now written more than 50 books and seen his work translated into 20 languages. His lectures rack up hundreds of thousands of YouTube views.
A master of counterintuitive thinking and a man in thrall to paradox, he has been attacked for being a crypto-Stalinist defending terror and for spreading bourgeois lies about communism, for being both anti-Semitic and spreading Zionist lies. He is both a serious revolutionary and an absurdist prankster. An atheist who has made a spirited case for Christianity. His work has been published in serious Leftist journals and in a catalogue for US fashion retailers Abercrombie & Fitch.
Although he tells me “I hate students. They want to ask a question? ---- off!”, he holds two academic posts – as president of the Society for Theoretical Analysis of Ljubljana and as international director of the Birkbeck Institute of Humanities in London – and has starred in two documentaries: Žižek! (2005) and The Pervert’s Guide to the Cinema (2006).
But Žižek dismisses those who dub him “The Elvis of Philosophy” with a brisk: “To the gulag! All of them!” And he hasn’t seen either film. “It is too traumatic for me to see myself. Whenever I see such a thing, my reaction is to ask: 'Would a woman allow me to take her daughter to the cinema?’ My God! Of course not! I don’t want to deal with myself. I don’t want to exist. I just want to think.”
But whether he wanted to or not, Slavoj Žižek came into independent existence in March 1949, in the then-Yugoslav republic of Slovenia. His father was an economist and civil servant and his mother was an accountant.
“My life is straightforward,” he says. “Nothing happened. At 15, I wanted to be a movie director. But I saw some really good European films and I accepted that I couldn’t do that. Then, at 17, I decided to become a philosopher.”
I try to suggest that all children are philosophers. That perhaps he was just one of those people who never got tired of asking “why?”. But he waves me away with a swift: “No, I don’t think so. It wasn’t any of this existential bullshit — it wasn’t that I felt that life has no sense and all that adolescent stuff. But in the former Yugoslavia philosophy had a certain dissident charm and I was intrigued by the beauty of the arguments. Our communism was a little more open than it was elsewhere. We could go to London, Paris and Berlin to buy books and so on. So we didn’t have any illusions about communism. We didn’t buy their bullshit. We were well located to see what was going on and had no illusions about the East or the West.”
Žižek started out as a Heideggerian, but changed his position as soon as he found a way to get more irritatingly under the skin of the authorities. “In Slovenia the 'official’ philosophy was a kind of Frankfurt School Marxism,” he explains. “Heideggerians were the dissidents. But in the late Sixties there was an explosion of so-called structuralism in France – Foucault, Lacan, you know? – and both the Heideggarians and the Frankfurt School Marxists brutally attacked it. Rejected it in the same terms. And this was the enigma to me. It is always interesting when old enemies unite. So I decided to become Lacanian.”
He had been in line for a professorship at Ljubljana University until there was “an Indian summer of communist oppression”. His masters thesis was rejected for being “non-Marxist” and he was thrown out in the cold.
“And this was a blessing in disguise. After a period of unemployment I got a post at an out-of-the-way university. I was able to survive and I had the freedom to develop my own ideas. Without that communist oppression I honestly believe I would be a stupid professor in Ljubljana. I am very lucky!”
The paradoxically freeing potential of such open oppression forms a key plank in Žižek’s philosophical rope bridge. It sends him spiralling back to the subject of sex.
“My psychoanalytical friends are always telling me that we once needed classical therapy to free us from internalised repression so we could do it. But today you feel guilty if you do not have wide-ranging sexual desire and experience. Once enjoyment becomes permitted it slides imperceptibly toward the obligatory. You have to do it and you have to enjoy it. Think about extremely hedonistic gay communities in America: life there is totally regimented. They eat the same food, take vitamins, watch the same films. We live in a permissive society but the price we pay is that there never was so much anxiety, depression, impotence and frigidity.”
Waving his pasty arms and tugging at increasingly soggy, proletarian grey T-shirt, Žižek tells me a favourite parable about “the falsity of permissivity”: “Say you are a little girl and I am a totalitarian father. It is Saturday afternoon. I say, 'I don’t care what you want to do, you have to visit your grandmother.’ You go but you secretly hate me and try to revolt and that is OK. That is good. But the monstrous permissive father will say: 'You know how much your grandmother loves you, but visit her only if you really want to.’ Beneath the appearance of a choice is a much more severe order. Not only must you visit grandma but you must want to and like it. I had such a father, which is why I hate him.”
Žižek has two sons (from different marriages — he is in the process of an “amicable divorce” from an Argentinian lingerie model 30 years his junior) aged 35 and 10. Is he stricter than his own dad? “I am worse! I am a catastrophe! I teach them all the dirty words. The only thing I insist is that they learn to work and don’t be evil to others.”
Suspicious of simplicity, Žižek believes in complicating the answers to even the most basic of questions. But it does seem that one aspect of his paternal ban on “evil” means he expects his boys to tolerate the beliefs and lifestyles of others to some extent. And yet he points out that the notion of tolerance in liberal democracies is a joke.
“One of my formative experiences occurred in Belgrade in the mid-Nineties. I was there secretly to see a friend who was dying and I happened to meet in a cafeteria some people who were murderers, ethnic cleansers. And they totally undermined the assumption that people like them would think that what was wrong with modern society was too many choices, the need for an order. No. For them modern society was too regimented. They said '---- it! In modern society I am not free to rape, to kill, to tell racist jokes.’” He turns this idea on me. “You are a feminist? Yes? Good. You don’t want your feminism to be only 'tolerated’, do you? No!”
It follows that 21st-century fundamentalists do not want their beliefs “tolerated” by a liberalism they want to destroy. “Can we even imagine the change in the Western 'collective psyche’ when (not if but precisely when) some 'rogue nation’ or group obtains a nuclear device, or powerful biological or chemical weapon, and declares its 'irrational’ readiness to risk all in using it?” he writes in Living in End Times. The premise of this wide-ranging, often revelatory, frequently bewildering work is that the global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point.
“Its four riders,” he writes, “are comprised of the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution, imbalances within the system itself (problems with intellectual property; forthcoming struggles over raw materials, food and water), and the explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions.”
From the ashes, he argues, we should be able to build a new communism. “The standard liberal-conservative argument against communism is that, since it wants to impose on reality an impossible dream, it necessarily ends in terror. What, however, if one should nonetheless insist on taking the risk of enforcing the Impossible onto reality? Even if, in this way, we do not get what we wanted and/or expected, we none the less change the coordinates of what appears as 'possible’ and give birth to something genuinely new.”
But the book offers no clear idea of how its readers might begin to go about doing this. When I ask Zˇizˇek if there are any pointers I’ve missed, he explodes one final time: “I despise the kind of book which tells you how to live, how to make yourself happy! Philosophers have no good news for you at this level! I believe the first duty of philosophy is making you understand what deep s--- you are in!”
Noting with relief that our hour is up, he tells me he must to get back to work on his “megabook” on Hegel. “Because time is running out. I am 61, I have diabetes.”
He holds out a slippery paw and shakes my hand with warmth and vigour. “This is all? My God! Good. Goodbye!”
Helen Brown @"The Telegraph'
Fact Mix 164: Pinch
Pinch, real name Rob Ellis, has been a significant presence in our musical lives since his brutalist debut 12″ ‘War Dub’, released via his own aptly named Tectonic label back in ’05. Ellis’s more reflective 2006 Planet Mu single ‘Qawwali’ – among the best and most distinctive dubstep records ever made – paved the way for Underwater Dancehall, his debut album of 2007. Featuring a number of wisely chosen guest vocalists, including Juakali and house diva Yolanda, Underwater Dancehall stands up as one of the most coherent, sophisticated and satisfying dancefloor-derived albums of the noughties, and, as far as dubstep LPs go, it’s perhaps second only to Burial’s brace in terms of vision, ambition and virtuoso execution.
In the three years that have elapsed since then, Pinch has continued to work his fingers to the bone as a DJ and producer, releasing singles not only through Tectonic but also Punch Drunk, Soul Jazz and most recently Dancing Demons. As a label-owner and A&R he’s shown incredible commitment and integrity, rigorously maintaining Tectonic’s dubstep core while being bold enough to signmore leftfield offerings such as Pursuit Groove’s recent Foxtrot Mannerisms EP. A roll-call of some of the producers who’ve released 12″s and LPs on Tectonic, or contributed productions to its Tectonic Plates compilations, says it all: 2562, Flying Lotus, Skream, Peverelist, Distance, Shed, Benga, RSD, Loefah…
Interestingly, Tectonic is but one arm of the musical empire over which Pinch presides. Formed in 2004, Multiverse is a creative studio and publishing company that acts as an umbrella to the Tectonic, Kapsize, Earwax, Caravan and Build labels, with a recording and production facility on Bristol’s Whiteladies Road. A new double-CD compilation, Dark Matter, celebrates five years of Multiverse, and ranges from the grotty industrial dubstep of Vex’d to the springy UKF-inflected house of Baobinga & ID, via the subtle techno variations of October and Emptyset and the super-saturated purple funk of Joker. More than just a collection of tasty tracks, Dark Matter enshrines a hugely important spasm of creativity in Bristol, one which has seen it shed its early noughties reputation as a d’n'b ghost-town to become, once again, the envy of the global underground. Dark Matter is out now; for more information and tracklist, click here, and buy your copy here.
To celebrate the release of Dark Matter, not to mention his new quarterly DJ residency at London’s Fabric, Pinch has put together a 100% vinyl and acetate mix for FACT that’s absolutely stuffed with as-yet-unreleased material. There are a bunch of new tracks from Skream (‘Amitystep’, ‘Phatty Druma’) and Mala (’2 Much Chat’ ‘Answer Me’), Peverelist & Appleblim’s take on Bass Clef’s ‘Promises’, Pinch remixed by Pangaea and remixing WAX (aka Shed) as well as repping with three originals of his own (‘The Boxer’, ‘Elements’ and ‘Swish’). There’s further dubplate action from Jack Sparrow, Redlight, Distance and Goth Trad. If you want to know where dubstep is in 2010, get downloading and listening.
Tracklist:
1. Bass Clef ‘Promises’ (Peverelist & Appleblim remix) (Dubplate)
2. Emika ‘Double Edge Sword’ (Pinch remix) (Ninja Tune)
3. Skream ‘Amitystep’ (Dubplate)
4. Mala ’2 Much Chat’ (Dubplate)
5. Jack Sparrow ‘The Cahse’ (Tectonic)
6. Pinch ‘Midnight Oil’ (Pangaea remix) (Dubplate)
7. Dubkasm ‘Hail Jah’ (Jakes Remix) (forthcoming on Sufferer’s Choice)
8. Jack Sparrow & Ruckspin ‘Dread’ (Dubplate)
9. WAX20002b (Pinch remix)
10. Jakes ‘Time Ends’ (Tectonic)
11. Mala ‘Eyes’ (DMZ)
12. Distance ‘Ill Kontent’ (forthcoming on Tectonic)
13. Jack Sparrow ‘Terminal’ (Tectonic)
14. Red Light ‘MDMA’ (Dubplate)
15. Joker ‘Output 1-2′ (Tectonic)
16. Skream ‘Phatty Druma’ (Dubplate)
17. Pinch ‘Elements’ (forthcoming on Swamp 81)
18. Goth Trad ‘Sublimination’ (Dubplate)
19. Distance ‘Reboot’ (Dubplate)
20. Pinch ‘The Boxer’ (forthcoming on Tectonic)
21. Pinch ‘Swish’ (Dubplate)
22. Mala & SGT Pokes ‘Answer Me’ (Dubplate) [Tease]
Brion Gysin: Dream Machine New Museum of Contemporary Art. July 7 to October 3.
The New Museum’s “Brion Gysin: Dream Machine” is intended as New York’s reintroduction to this painter, poet, innovator, and total subversive, and that it will be. Gysin was the artist’s artist among the Beats, the man who invented William S. Burroughs’s favorite writing technique—the cut-up, in which newspapers or other printed materials are sliced and reassembled to make unexpected new connections—and is a key figure in the development of postmodern literature, Kinetic art, street art, spoken-word poetry, and experimental punk, rock, and pop. Yet outside the art world, he’s been almost totally unknown, at least until now.
The building itself is a sturdy-looking brick chunk, built in 1884, that would blend into nearly any downtown block. In its early decades, it was home to the first modern YMCA. During and after World War II, the artists started to move in. First came the French Cubist Fernand Léger; painters James Brooks and Wynn Chamberlain arrived soon after. In 1958, Mark Rothko leased the building’s huge gymnasium to work on his murals for The Four Seasons, the ones whose story is told in the Broadway show Red. Rothko handed down his space to the second-generation Abstract Expressionist Michael Goldberg in 1962. Lynda Benglis, whose own retrospective opens at the New Museum in February, secured her loft in 1974; the sculptor and painter Lynn Umlauf, who later married Goldberg, came in 1977. (Both women still live and work there.)
The real social butterfly of 222, though, was Gysin’s former lover, the poet and artist John Giorno, who followed Chamberlain there in 1966. Giorno remembers one of Gysin’s long-ago visits vividly. It was 1978, and their affair had long since fizzled. Gysin was in town for the Nova Convention, a poetry festival co-produced by Giorno and dedicated to Gysin and Burroughs—who had moved into his own loft at 222, which he famously called “the Bunker.” Gysin was used to Parisian garrets, and loft life, with its high ceilings and few walls, was a revelation. He took one look at Giorno’s space, cluttered with Oriental rugs and piles of poems, and remarked, in his particular British-Canadian cadence, “You all live like bohemians!” Which they did.
What followed was typical of Giorno and Burroughs’s interlaced lifestyle. They escorted Gysin (and others, like Burroughs’s longtime companion James Grauerholz) down to the Bunker, where Burroughs drank (vodka) and Giorno cooked (bacon-wrapped chicken was a Burroughs favorite). Guests were always high and liquored up by the time dinner was served, at a conference table surrounded by orange vinyl chairs. Drinking and smoking would continue until 10 p.m. or so, when Burroughs would retreat to bed, after engaging his guests in some convivial target practice with his blowgun.
Things were always a little more intense when Gysin was in town. There were visits with Allen Ginsberg and Blondie. Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat were always around, stopping by with their expensive pot after dinner, getting Gysin high, and hanging on his every word. But it was Burroughs who was most affected by Gysin’s presence. The two had known each other for decades, going back to their time as expats in Tangier in the fifties, and “Brion brought out a very somber, self-conscious Burroughs,” says Stewart Meyer, a novelist and Bunker habitué. Giorno agrees: “When William was asked, ‘Did you ever love somebody?,’ he always said, ‘I’ve never respected anybody more than Brion Gysin in my life.’ That was his word for love. He had lovers, but somehow Brion was on another level. They were gay and never had sex together, but in a certain way Brion was William’s lover.” Meyer says Burroughs was painfully concerned with Gysin’s perception of him. “William could not paint while Brion was alive, though he had wanted to. He did not want to overshadow Brion in that area, because he had already overshadowed him in every other area.”
That continued up to Gysin’s death at 70, in 1986. He’d never become well known and never saw full publication of The Third Mind, the instructional tome (created with Burroughs) that meant to introduce the world to the cut-up. (Burroughs’s own cut-ups, the “Nova” trilogy, were not only published but are still in print.) “Brion knew it wasn’t William’s fault. But in terms of the general popular culture not recognizing the importance of his contribution, there was a little bitterness,” says the artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, who befriended Gysin in the late seventies and credits him with inspiring the project he undertook with his late wife, Lady Jaye. (The two literally cut themselves up via plastic surgery to form the “third being,” with matching lips, eyes, beauty marks, and breasts. Gysin’s methods taken to the extreme.)
The building at 222 retains vestiges of that era. Burroughs returned yearly until his death in 1997, and since then, Giorno has preserved the Bunker, adding a Buddhist meditation shrine opposite the kitchen. Burroughs’s typewriter is still here, as are the Gysin paintings he prized. Giorno accumulated three apartments in the building, and he and his partner, the artist Ugo Rondinone (whose HELL, YES! sculpture hangs on the New Museum’s façade), still hold eccentric, intimate dinners. But their world is vanishing fast. The top two floors have been bought and are rented out at market rate. Green Depot, an ecofriendly home-goods chain, occupies the storefront, and Goldberg’s (and thus Rothko’s) old space is changing hands at year’s end, its hardwood floor still caked with traces of both artists’ paint.
Rachel Wolff @'NY Mag'
Monday, 5 July 2010
Lou Reed booed in Canada for free-improv set
Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson and John Zorn faced a furious crowd on Friday night, playing cacophonous music to a cacophony of boos at the Montreal International Jazz festival. Fans expecting Sweet Jane or Walk On the Wild Side were instead met by the skronk and skree of Reed's more recent free-jazz work, infuriating sections of the crowd. As audience members hollered their complaints, Zorn responded. "If you don't think it's music, then get the fuck outta here." Then the walk-outs began.
The nature of the concert shouldn't really have been a surprise. After all, Zorn is one of the world's leading avant-garde musicians and Anderson is preceded by a reputation for, er, eccentricity. Reed was once, yes, a wry urban troubadour – but that was decades ago. Recently he has been touring his controversial album, Metal Machine Music – a work so noisy and abrasive that for years many thought it was a joke.
However, there weren't any punch-lines at this gig, which attracted more than 1,000 fans – some paying almost $100 (£62) for tickets. The concert consisted of just four instrumentals plus encore, according to the Globe and Mail, with "no singing ... [and] no rhythm section". The only sounds were Anderson's violin and keyboard, Zorn's alto sax, and Reed's electric guitar. In an interview earlier that day, Reed had gleefully promised a "fearless night of non-rock", "100% improvised". But the jazz festival programme had been less clear in its description of the gig, hinting at Reed's Velvet Underground past.
Though Montreal is well-acquainted with "free" music, hosting one of North America's premier genre festivals, this was a headline performance at a middle-of-the-road jazz festival. What's more, it was at the festival's largest concert hall. So it didn't take long for the first boos to come. Initially, these complaints were misinterpreted as calls for "Louuuuu!" but soon the fans became more direct. "Play some real music!" one called.
But others loved it. "There were moments of stunning synchronicity," reflected Globe critic JD Considine. Montreal Gazette writer T'Cha Dunlevy was similarly moved. "Zorn's never-ending sax trills were mesmerising and Anderson's unexpected melodic offerings late in the show were like flowers in the rubble," he wrote. Another Gazette critic, Jordan Zivitz, called it "marvellous noise ... [with] numerous moments of telepathic playing".
"Yes, there were those who claimed to enjoy the cacophony of discordant noise lacking melody, style, beauty or skill," replied one Gazette reader. "[But] to label it correctly, it was pure elitist, pretentious rubbish." At least it wasn't recorded for dogs.
Sean Michaels @'The Guardian'
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