duz momus noize?

Well, yes.

Sounds like a Grandma sentiment to me.

I think it's a shame that both Faiza and Vanek declined to comment, though I hear there was a group hug between Halleck and Japanther at the end -- Halleck told me that Ian was all wet with sweat, and that she got soaked! I also hear that Faiza's son is into thrash metal, so this may be more about generational divides than cultural ones.

It isn't in my case, though: I've been dead-set against rock since I was, well, a very young fogey. The idea that texture has a politics all its own is, needless to say, one that fascinates me.

But Rockist, in the guy's defense, I'm guessing his perception was that he wasn't being treated with very much civility -- i.e., that bands like his were invited to contribute their talents and ideas to a cause and then scolded as somehow inappropriate and beneath participating. Any fault here lies with (a) the organizers, obviously, and really kinda (b) Halleck, who, if she had a bit more tact and a bit more dedication to her own cause, could have taken a wholly different tack with addressing the whole thing. (E.g., a sort of "we all express our feelings in different ways" tack.)

...at which point Japanther loses ANY sympathy that might have gotten from me (and, I'd wager, any other veteran of the DC protest/benefit scene). No, you dope, you're supposed to be stopping an illegal war.

Funny that the criticism came from the mouth of a filmmaker, because my guess is that her response to war is not to counter it with idealized romantic comedies -- my guess is that she'd say unpleasant horror-of-war documentaries are a reasonable response.

OTMFM. hence "this is the tanks".

Oh yes, that's a perfectly fair point, and in fact there was a beautiful test case in the form of a band called New Humans, a band I loved, who played right between Apeshit (whose hardcore cartoon lunacy made Faiza leave) and Japanther. New Humans (two Japanese and one Chinese) started very quiet, fading up tones that turned into deafening feedback. Their set was by far the most radical (as well as the loudest) of all the bands that played that night, and yet there was no sense of hooliganism or violence in it at all. It was more like some kind of Buddhist invocation. Zen, exactly.

All I can say is that you recognize aggressive energy when you see it, and sometimes you recognize "wrong" (that's to say, in a personal way that not many others share, especially people from a different age or culture group). Apeshit were loud, and there was a certain change in the room's atmosphere. It came no longer rational, peace-loving lefties talking about the 60s, but instead really young mental metal kids pointing beer bottles aloft. And there was a real sense of "Jesus, how's anyone going to follow this with reasoned debate?" Even John Giorno looked rather anxious, though he managed to pull things back around admirably.

But by that time Faiza had done a runner. Halleck was very upset, and Vanek acted like an asshole, quite frankly, shouting down someone who's made a very important documentary about Iraq ("Shocking and Awful" is a must-see) at a peace event. He gave the impression that he wanted only to defend the honour of rock, and possibly the US and its forces, and cared not a whit for peace or Iraqis. And that, as they say, is fucked.

x-post -- what Nick said.

I once loaned No Pussyfooting to a Palestinian-American who found it very disturbing, even saying that it was making weird things happen in the store while he played it (with what I seem to remember were magickal implications).

nabisco, you are probably right that the organizers can take most of the blame.

Gee, I wouldn't know any figures in the larger culture who think THAT.

(a) why aggressive energy can't be channeled toward good purposes, which is what a lot of rock seems to believe (Japanther in particular have that old-school hardcore corny "inspirational" rise-above quality), and

(b) whether this -- "there was a real sense of 'Jesus, how's anyone going to follow this with reasoned debate?' -- couldn't be seen as a perfectly valid response to American politics and the war, you know what I mean?

I'd love to know what Faiza would have made of New Humans. My feeling is that she would have found it too loud, but liked that they weren't Americans (and of course there were some Japanese in Iraq, a very small number of "peace corps" who very probably were not listening to loud rock in their armoured vehicles), and liked that they started very quiet and were very concentrated, very respectful in their body language. They sat in a circle, staring very fixedly at their horizontal guitars, turning the noise up very very slowly.

Never have "you had to be there" and "it's all in the way you tell them" and "you know it when you see it" rung so true.

And he's no stranger to noise rock, obviously.

Those are both valid goals, and organizers kind of have the burden of either choosing between them or balancing them delicately enough that nobody gets pissed and leaves.

As someone who's done a lot of satire, this is something I'm very conflicted about. I think I've concluded that the problem with satire is that it very often buys into exactly the same hostility (and works up the crowd with exactly the same devices) as the people it claims to be attacking. But also I think that punk rock, for people like Japanther, is a religion. They think it contains an ethics, and they think that its ethics are all of a piece with its aesthetics. I disagree. I think rock's power comes from its cock (Eros/Thanatos), and I think its bull (punk rock ethics) is, well, bull. Rock's cock (power) and its bull (ideology) are in different places.

(b) whether this -- "there was a real sense of 'Jesus, how's anyone going to follow this with reasoned debate?' -- couldn't be seen as a perfectly valid response to American politics and the war, you know what I mean?

I can't believe you're seriously saying that nothing can seriously be said about Iraq? I mean, Adorno's "no poetry after Auschwitz", nobody really believes that, do they? Nobody tells Paul Celan to shut up because of that, do they?

Yeah, I can definitely respect that. Honestly I was more upset by (what I perceived as) your blanket condemnation of a certain sound as having no place in a certain discourse, but I can buy the "change in the room's atmosphere" explanation. The only thing I wonder about is who the "mental metal kids pointing beer bottles aloft" were and what they were doing there (assuming you weren't just talking about the band).

EXCEPT here's where I reject that -- with your second point. I'm not saying that nothing can seriously be said about Iraq; I don't believe that. But to be honest I don't think that everyone has the capacity or expertise to make cogent arguments about everything. "A real sense of 'Jesus, how's anyone going to follow this with reasoned debate'" -- as a reaction to have to political developments, this kind of frustration isn't necessarily something to be carved out of the dialogue when it comes from people who are basically On Your Side; it's not eloquent, but it's yours. The guys in Japanther are not astute political commentators or brilliant political thinkers, and I don't mean that as an insult toward them. Is it always a bad thing to make space, in the whole of protest, for pure ineloquent energy in favor of your point? We talked a lot about this when anti-war protests were going on, about how difficult it could be to get involved when there were people around you whose other views and other behavior seemed silly -- and we talked a lot about how maybe part of the purpose of the thing was to bring together people who didn't agree around one thing on which they vaguely did. So I don't know that noisy war-responses here are the worst thing -- they're not my responses, no, and not the type I prefer, but I'm certainly not going to condemn them.

Thing is, I don't know Apeshit that well, really, and I'm thinking largely of Japanther here, whose music is fundamentally "inspirational" -- kinda let-loose joyous simple major-chord stuff with lyrics that are downright corny in their "you can do it" qualities.

Aesthetics of protest: clear, sober voices? Catharsis and energy? Ha, the usual for America is something lightly funky, some bit of black music that feels earthy and stirring but fundamentally positive in creating good feeling.

Over 300 Black Panthers are now in jail in a national plot to destroy their organization. White radicals are being arrested. Underground newspapers are being harassed. GI's who speak out are receiving harsh sentences. The police have been unleashed. Last summer in Chicago it was clubs and tear gas; in Berkeley this spring it was shotguns and buckshot.

The hard rain's already falling and it wasn't just the politicos that are getting wet. Read the list: Jimi Hendrix, MC-5, The Who, Phil Ochs, Tim Buckley, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Jim Morrison Creedence Clearwater, The Turtles, Moby Grape, Ray Charles, The Fugs, Dave Van Ronk, Joan Baez-all have been busted recently. Busted because the authorities want to destroy our cultural revolution in the same way they want to destroy our political revolution. Maybe the man can't bust our music but he sure as hell can bust our musicians. if the government wanted to it could bust rock groups on charges of conspiracy to incite riot. Last, year Congress passed an anti-riot act which made it illegal to urge people to go to an event at which a riot later occurs. The law makes it illegal to travel from state to state, write letters or telegrams, speak on the radio or television, make a telephone call with the intention of encouraging people to participate in a riot. A riot meaning an act of violence occurring in an assemblage of three or more persons. The people doing the urging never have to commit an act of violence or know the people who do. They never, in fact, have to urge a riot. William Kunstler, famed constitutional lawyer, feels "rock and roll stars and promoters could be prosecuted under this law if violence occurred at a show."

The law is currently being tested in the upcoming trial of eight movement activists: Rennie Davis, Dave Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, Lee Weiner, and myself, all participants in the demonstrations last August in Chicago. You remember Chicago where the facade of a democratically run convention was washed down the streets with the blood of young people. The Whole World Was Watching and what it saw was what the official Walker Report later termed a "police riot." Richard Nixon wants to put an end to demonstrations. Mayor Daley wants revenge. They have decided to set an example to anyone who speaks out against the government by putting us in prison for ten years.

None of us are shedding any tears about our upcoming trial. In a sense the indictments are like receiving the academy award for our work. Many of us have already done time in jail. We have been arrested and beaten numerous times, we have lived with the FBI following us and monitoring our phone calls. For us personally the trial is just a part of our activity in the movement. When you get down to it we are guilty of being members of a vast conspiracy. A conspiracy pitted against the war in Vietnam and the government that still perpetuates that war, against the oppression of black communities, against the harassment of our cultural revolution, against an educational system that seeks only to channel us into a society we see as corrupt and impersonal, against the growing police state, and finally against dehumanizing work roles that a capitalist economic system demands.

What we are for quite simply is a total revolution. We are for a society in which the people directly control the decisions that affect their lives. We are for people's power or as one of our brothers in Berkeley put it "soulful socialism." In the past few years our numbers have grown from -hundreds to millions of young people. Our conspiracy has grown more militant. Flower children have lost their innocence and grown their thorns. We have recognized that our culture in order to survive must be defended. Furthermore we have realized that the revolution is more than digging rock or turning on. The revolution is about coming together in a struggle for change. It is about the destruction of a system based on bosses and competition and the building of a new community based on people and cooperation. That old system is dying all around us and we joyously come out in the streets to dance on its grave. With our free stores, liberated buildings, communes, people's parks, dope, free bodies and our music we'll build our society in the vacant lots of the old and we'll do it by any means necessary. -AbbieHoffman

"His name? Lawrence Heyward. His latest meme? Go-Kart Mozart. Last known whereabouts? Hell, or thereabouts. Kitchen-sink kult kitsch for dandyish layabouts (my specialty and raison duh'tre—visit Momus's Web site for further elucidation, but visit at your peril; my firewalls are strong, my encryption software a Korean family named Kim), or kultur-klashing kid-stuff for Warholian jackanapeses,"

okay, there you go. i'm usually five years behind too.

Yeah, rockin' out for peace is going to stop those Humvees and tanks right in their dusty pathways.

While I think it goes without saying that a good deal of music is political in its conception and execution, there is a difference between music that happens to be political (or have political implications) and political music. As Jerry Lee Lewis, people who willingly mix politics and music (that is, those who make political music) are "a buncha fucking idiots."

Also, everyone loves noise music. Those who say they don't just don't understand it yet, and that is their right.

But in a sense, "peaceful" music represents the status quo even more so, whether it's country, crooners, folk, world, adult-contemporary, or classical -- surely.

If Susan Sontag was right that rock music is "aggressive normality", a deviant gentleness would be very radical indeed. And, to take two examples, one old, one new, I think The Clash are a more radical band than The Sex Pistols for incorporating the "gentle" sounds of reggae, and that post-Hisham Black Dice is more radical than early Black Dice because they started incorporating world music sounds (notably distorted takes on African music).

(I'm traditionally in favor of deviant gentleness too, dude, but the point was that the usual music of anti-war protests inevitably has more to do aesthetically with the status quo than noise acts do -- in large part because the usual music of anti-war protests is not "deviant" gentleness, just toothless feel-goodery.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC2xCkItF-o&search=momus

1. Because the status quo in Japan endorses collectivism and nature-worship, these values don't have to be oppositional ones, expressed with anger. (Angry collectivism: communist revolution. Angry nature-worship: the Unabomber.)

plays into that. I'm not going to attempt to refute anything you've said just yet, because I'm worried that I've completely misinterpreted this point.

When Japan as a country really seemed to be leading the pack, it was the presence of the humorists that made it that way: Yamatsuka Eye's different bands, Masonna, etc.

I thought it would have been good if Faiza stayed and said how she felt. She didn't think 7 minutes, in that program, would be the right environment to talk about her life under the occupation. People were bopping around dancing to music, drinks in hand, and then she's going to be the wet blanket at the party to remind people that the war is more than an idea that we reject, it's blood and pain and loss and you can't dance to it.

She said to me, and I repeated it on the mic, and this hasn't been brought up by anyone which baffles me, "I am not going to criticize how Americans choose to express themselves." She didn't want to cast judgement. So in her absence, Dee Dee decided to do so on her behalf. Ostensibly the point of inviting Faiza to speak was about giving Iraqis a voice. Faiza spoke to Dee Dee at length about why she didn't want to stay, there were a variety of reasons. But rather than talk about the venue or curation, Dee Dee choose to attack the performers who were invited, as she was, to speak to their feelings about the war at the event.

Apeshit, the New Humans and Japanther can express their anti-war feelings however they choose. It's America. Faiza's got no problem with that. They didn't create the context they performed in that night.

Faiza was tired. She wanted to go home. We went to the corner market where she bought some fruit and salmon for dinner. I spent ten minutes trying to hail her a cab, at which point I realized it was her son's blog I'd been reading three years ago when the invasion began.

Are you saying that Faiza's son is Salam Pax?

Now she blogs with him and her two other sons in:
http://afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

Its scary. I imagine its either war or us humans....(like if we gave power to the kind of human who would just go nuclear one day) therefore, the abolition of war is part of the evolution of our species. learning how to treat with respect ("you did not behave as directed"-bush style) those who are less civilized...

we are rubble-bombing under the false pretense we are defending---
defending what. these shopping values???
I'd fight to protect great art... the kind of air you breath during these short pockets of inspiration. visible speed is a generator for more positive matter. It should never be peaceful or noisy, don't be square... its so not about your cock either. please.

I think Japanther sounds like a brand-new white form of raping, underaged-at younameitage-beats, heartpounding at the horror house, jerryspringer's awe, 1000 plateaus'best 5 minutes, the rememberance of the very first hitpast, and also very scared-

I agree with you in principle & often in practice on this point, though it seems to me that you lean rather heavily on this idea from time to time. There's certainly something in it - "beginner's mind" and all that. But to proceed from "beginner's mind" to broad generalizations devoid of (say) a preferatory "I don't actually know much about the subject, but it seems to me that..." is — well you see my point anyhow. An uninformed opinion can certainly bring a fresh perspective. It can also just be wrong.

I meant rapping. sorry...also Bush'd quote is there as an example of the problemo. writing is not my thing.obviously.

Some just believe "either or" does not like art.
art subverts. es indirectamente proporcional.

Some rock artists just come up with soundracks to larger-scale happenings that some art-world artists (unlike bill-stinky hirst) can not help but be affected by.

these larger scale happenings are not quiet. they are, rather loud, don't you think?

gatherings around live music are what is left of religion, or the only thing worth rescuing about religion...for me anyway... peace means these pockets of collective inspiration.

"I wish museums"
I wish museums got better at peace events
I wish they made some non-introverted ones,
on weekly basis,
and with mics for fuck-ups, mistakes, questions, screamings or tender whisperings
sexy?
with accents,
mics for crying,
for intorducing participants
for teaching, for bitching.
you know,
all different things humans do.

allright nicks~

It's high time we ask those who don't know a fucking thing what they think about the things they know nothing about.

-- JW (jo...) (webmail), May 23rd, 2006 6:14 PM. (ex machina) (later) (link)