Songs our mother taught us

Julio on the second question: What did your parents sing to you?

tracer what have you done?

I want this borbetomagus thread to have more than 10 replies man!

I have never heard Borbetomagus, but I have taught my nearly 2 yr old son to say 'Hey Ho, Let's Go!' Hopefully in about 10 years he can reply to this thread.

aww...how nice!

cheers! Just for that, I'll look around for a Borbetomagus track!

I never knew I had so many siblings!

my parents actually sang Borbetomagus to me, Julio; it fucked their throats bigstyle but it sure helped out with those Borbetomagus conversations in the kindergarten lunchroom

Borbetomagus rules. Snuff Jazz is splendid j(sp)azz fun. Tres noisy. Me likes. The COncordat Jam things I've heard are also excellent. I say classic overall.

I've decided that my children will listen to nothing but Type O Negative and Alan Jackson. (In the name of science, you see.)

''my parents actually sang Borbetomagus to me, Julio; it fucked their throats bigstyle but it sure helped out with those Borbetomagus conversations in the kindergarten lunchroom''

ho ho.

My tonedeaf mum tells this rather funny story about when I was a very very little girl - like about 2 - and she tried to sing to me, and teach me some hymn or something, and I basically reached up and put my hand over her mouth and just said "Mummy please stop".

There is a dynamic to borbetomagus which makes them so much more interesting than other 'noise' type stuff. Most noise is terribly boring as far as records go but I feel v different abt them. I think they are definetely in AMM's footsteps.

AMM are my two favourite (still going) improv groups. it would be nice to see them live.

They were great the one time I saw them. I wrote a brief blurb about it here (the first entry).

the link doesn't work. acn you cut and paste it onto this thread nate.

Try this: http://o_nate.pitas.com/nov_dec_02.html

I have an album of theirs somewhere, i'll look it up and give it a listen then.

nope still doesn't work. this is what it says:

Bad Gateway
The following error occurred:
The host name was not found during the DNS lookup. Contact your system administrator if the problem is.not found by retrying the URL. (DNS_HOST_NOT_FOUND)

Hmm, don't know why that would be happening. Oh well, I'll just paste it here:

(Dec. 8, 2002) Last night I went to the Noise Fest at Tonic, a double-bill featuring two of the biggest names in noise: Borbetomagus and Merzbow. Borbetomagus went on first. The show was scheduled to start at 8, but apparently that meant the doors opened at 8 (which is not what it usually means at Tonic) because there was a long line outside in the cold December air when I arrived. By the time everyone had finally bought their ticket and made it inside, it was well past 8. It was a big crowd for Tonic. They had cleared away all of the chairs, so it was standing-room only, except for a few small tables along the walls. By the time everyone got inside, the place was pretty well packed. I was standing towards the front of the room when Borbetomagus came on, but I quickly decided to move to the back, for reasons of volume. I think they beat out Fushitsusha as the loudest band I have ever seen at Tonic (a club that showcases more jazz than rock). They started loud and they never let up. I had been warned to bring earplugs, but I'd forgotten to, of course. However, luckily I was able to find napkins and some water at the bar, and I improvised a serviceable set of earplugs out of wet, wadded-up napkin. After that, volume wasn't a problem, so I set in to enjoying the "music".

If you know Borbetomagus, then you know that they are a trio of two saxophonists and a guitarist. However, what they sound like is basically a wall of noise. Everything is highly amplified and distorted. The guitarist lays down a thick, chunky rumble, and the two horn players are in full-bore squeal and skronk mode. Borbetomagus hail from upstate New York, and they don't look like your typical urban hipster types. In fact, with hair cuts, clothes, etc. they look mostly like normal guys from the Midwest. They are also very physical in their approach to playing the music. One of their favorite moves is to have the two sax-players put the bells of their horns together and blow for all they're worth. As they're bent over, blowing, necks straining, and slowly circling each other, it looks like they're locked in a strange kind of mortal combat. They also do a neat trick in which they attach rubber hoses to the mouthpieces of their horns and then gurgle water in them while they're playing. To be honest, with all of the amplification and distortion, I didn't hear much difference in the sound when they did that.

After a short break, Merzbow came on. Merzbow is, of course, Masami Akita, the biggest name in international noise, who has pursued his austere muse with remarkable single-mindedness of purpose across a couple of decades and countless albums. For this show, Merzbow was in full digital mode. His equipment mainly consisted of two Apple Powerbooks, connected to a mixer and a mass of wires. Visually, there wasn't a lot going on in his set. After a few minutes up front to get a look at his set-up, I moved to the back of the room, where it wasn't so hot and crowded, and there wasn't as much glare from the big floodlights that they had set up to film the show. If I was to attempt to sum up the difference in the sound between Merzbow and Borbetomagus in a short sentence, apart from the obvious differences between their instruments, I'd say that Merzbow has more structure in his noise. When Merzbow plays you can hear patterns that overlap, fade in and out, abruptly stop and start, merge, etc., whereas Borbetomagus sounds more like an unrelenting howl of pain. In Merzbow, the howls of pain arise from within the shifting patterns of noise. It was a fine set, and I was tempted to take my earplugs out for a few minutes, just to hear what the unmediated blast sounded like, but thoughts of hearing damage restrained me. Even through the wadded-up napkins, it was still pretty loud.

thanks for that nate. funny bcz i do think of borbetomagus as diff from the noise merchants like merzbow.

fuckin borbetomagus fuckin owns. i just played something from asbestosshake on the radio last night - not a single phone call, thank you borbetomagus!

think my favorite borbeto albums are the sauter/dietrich/doherty/miller thing, _work on what has been spoiled_ (which i've only heard a couple of times), _snuff jazz_ and the collaborations with shaking ray levis and voice crack are swell. there's really nothing that i've heard by them that isn't up to, uh, snuff.

i really didn't like snuff jazz for a long time, actually - it took buying a new and better turntable and turning it way up to unleash the fury, now i love it.

I actually played 'buncha hair' last night and I think I like that one as well, especially the last track (a 'version' of 'blue jay way').

''fuckin borbetomagus fuckin owns. i just played something from asbestosshake on the radio last night - not a single phone call''

um, phone calls for requests or complaints?

yeah, i've been trying to locate a copy of "buncha hair" for a while now. they don't really try to get that stuff in the stores.

um, phone calls for requests or complaints?

complaints, usually. not as bad for borbeto as for caroliner or the shadow ring, but still...

yeah from all the borb releases i think are all found 2nd hand bar the CD on PSF and the new one.

just played 'zurich', which was downloaded/burnt today.

SOULSEEK DELIVERS HURRAH!!!