Here’s a set of electric guitar duets I recorded with Woody in Z’s and my living room in Echo Park, Los Angeles, CA, Earth, on November 22, 2008. I call this place the Echo Parks Department, because it sounds better than The Pabst Building, which is technically where we live.
The feel here is post-Ali Farka Toure blue-drone-Nile-delta style, as played by a coupla white guys in Los Angeles. And we take it out from time to time, lest you fall asleep. “Exafrical” includes a subtle phase of extended changes to keep your trip interesting.
I had intended this as an optional-purchase downloadable album. But I’ve decided not to charge for stuff I record with the portable mini-disc unless such time occurs as improves the sound quality like mad. So download away. And if you want to send money, please feel free. In fact, if you do, I’ll send you three more tracks from the same session.
Pigchopper put this together. He wrote the tune, played the bass, programmed the drums, played the spiky leads and some whooshy guitars, and I played two acoustic guitars, two electric guitars, hand percussion and “singing”. Then Pig-C made the video.
It is worth mentioning that Pigchopper is in New Hampshire and I am in Los Angeles.
I thought I was going to see UFOs in Seattle, circling low over the various mountain ranges, dropping off or picking up Bigfoot on a zorbing mission. But I never did.
I guess it makes sense, in retrospect, that they not only do appear in Los Angeles, they’re thicker n flies on wine. And if you don’t know what I mean by that, you should talk to the fruitbat.
Anyhoo, one of these here Flying Saucers (so-called, though actually they come in many shapes and sizes - common designs being film cannisters, flying spliffs, cellular phones, mp3 players, titanium laptops, compact discs and dildos, all of which are mainly driven by movie stars or music producers) did accost me as I traversed Elysian Park one twilit eve. The pilot, an up-and-coming young producer from the Horsehead Nebula, had somehow heard I was from Neptune, and kept a blog. They wanted a review.
I’m going to do them one better.
The errant spin of a musical planet has been corrected, if not for the ages then at least for the now. A shining knight has ventured into the dangerous wastes of conceptual no-man’s-land and returned with a cultural artifact. A wyrmwhole has been drawn between distant plateaus: the garage (basement, bedroom, low-rent guerilla-style home-studio assemblage) and the Phatty Spread of the celebro-core jetset; the DIY and the do-it-for-me; the 70s, the 90s and the Blanks (for we are truly in the throes of the Blank generation); a wyrmwhole in which irony, post-irony, and a certain timorous sincerity collide like muons in a particle-accelerator; the connective tissue nano-braided from strands of the (collective) creative will and a hearty “This rocks!”
The knight? Jasper Johns.
The artifact?
“Jasper Johns Plays The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars.”
Every part on every instrument is performed by Jasper himself. Many of the instruments are toys or household objects. Some are “actual” guitars. Some are kazoos. This is a note-for-note remake in which a true heartfelt appreciation for the original artifact is demonstrably apparent, and in which also a genuinely rebel spirit howls and gripes and mutters and yawps, then swiffles away to lounge in a state of ambient hysteria until it’s time for the next round of eggregiously vari-speeded vocal overdubs, oohs and aahs and “Suffragette City! Quite alright…”s. Joy and devotion attend every homegrown note.
And now you yourself may dig the word and decide for yourself if Jasper is the Nazz or just Jiving Us That He Is Voodoo:
This is the unexpurgated text of an email I wrote to a friend in response to two DVDs he’d lent me. Both DVDs were of movies called Solaris, both based on the excellent novel by Stanislaw Lem. The older movie is Russian, the newer one is American. The newer one stars George Clooney. Perhaps you have seen it?
Anyway, this is what I though after watching both movies. I’m sure a more detailed analysis could be made, but this should be enough for any casual interest.
Wow -
We checked out the Russian version a few weeks ago.
It’s about the slowest-paced movie I’ve ever seen! Even slower than Fitzcorraldo! Slower than The Shining! Amazing - like watching a painting. Very strange, but I enjoyed it a LOT. The use of rain in the beginning reminds me of the Japanese director who made Rashomon and The Seven Samurai. The whole look and feel of it - I wonder how much was deliberate and how much was budget or technology available at the time? It says in the notes it was the Russian director’s break-out success film, which makes me really wonder about his OTHER ones!
I also saw that Lem didn’t feel like the director quite got it - like, what Lem intended with the book is not what finally made it to the screen. I think this is probably true. As I recall, the book is more idea-driven than plot-driven, and the ideas have much to do with the problem of communication with a vastly alien being - ie, the Ocean of Solaris.
Now, Clooney bugs me anyway. He was good in Syriana, and the Coen Bros know how to use him effectively (he’s GREAT in Burn After Reading), but otherwise I have little use for him and this was no exception, he just doesn’t act. The characterizations were good, but generally not well acted on everyone’s part (I’m such a wet blanket!) … The script was alright, but I didn’t feel like the moviemakers knew what they were trying to do - like, no real sense of form, no real sense of underlying philosophy - I had the feeling they used a few imageries as a kind of homage to the first movie (the spaceship docking when Clooney lands on Solaris), and there was a kind of PhilDick-ness to the plot - the way it was hard to tell what was real and what was not - but it lacked Philip Dick’s sense of structure. We both (Zinnia and I) thought we would have been very confused if we hadn’t sort of known what was going on already from the other movie.
That said, it LOOKED really good, it was paced very well, it was moody without being cumbersome… Just poorly acted and nonsensical. Sad, because I think a movie of Solaris could be made that would attend properly to all these things. Interspecies communication is one of my interests, so I’d like to see that happen.
Thanks so much for lending these! I’ve been wanting to see them both for years (tho clearly not badly enough to go and get them myself). I’ll return them to you shortly.
