DJ Olive : Art as medicine, music as medicine

DJ Olive's Sound and Sculpture Installation at the 2008 Whitney Biennial

Lux Interior R.i.p.

True Wildman of the dark swampy recesses of the world of R&R- The Cramp's Lux Interior has apparently passed away.

Weekend America interview

"Weekend soundtrack" segment...

Yee HA! It's up. Thanks to Weekend America and Michael Rapheal for giving me the opportunity to tell my story!!

12/29/08: PM...Hey Apple computer users, this podcast won't play on your Mac in Firefox, try Safari. :) I'm posting an excerpt from an email to the show's producer, the awesome music geek Michael Raphael.

Hi Michael,

...Speaking of Facebook I heard Weekend America is getting canceled. Bad
news. Weekend America is entertaining, and more. Your program lets
the voices of people around the country be heard, and gives people a
chance to share their stories with the public radio audience. Another
good thing about your show is that the giant money-making machine that
is commercial media has no hand in this process. Weekend America does
a truly fine job of demonstrating that the mass media is a public
resource. Neither I or any of my friends can even stand to listen to
commercial radio or television.

Let me know what is going on.

Charles

JOY DIVISION

The foundation of EVERYTHING. Live 1979.

Buddy Miles

Buddy Miles, Hedrix' drummer in the outrageous Band of Gypsies, died Tuesday in Austin Texas, his home. He was 60, died of heart failure. He was also a stroke survivor.

Buddy Miles was one of those singing drummers, playing well and singing well, being the heartbeat of the band and its voice simultaneously. Miles founded the Electric Flag in the 60s and in the 80s was involved in TV advertising-music, singing in the animated claymation ads in the California Raisins.


Band of Gypsies was a milestone in Hendrix' career after the Experience broke up. Three black men playing soul-influenced funk, marked by Hendrix' indelible guitar-power were a bit of a new thing in those days, and reflected the music Hendrix was working on when he died.


"machine gun" pt.1
Black and while uTube videos of the Band of Gypsies are out there, but somehow putting on the original record album, holding the album cover in your hands and looking at its vivid color photographs shows how the music really is, vivid and transfixing and timely.



"them changes" Buddy Miles

Stockhausen

R.I.P. Stockhausen. We've lost a real giant, a real innovator, a big inspiration to us noise-lovers & classical music freaks.

BBQ Movie

More Butthole Surfers. I am surprised YouTube did not pull this one. Whacky vid of "Fast Song" from BBQ Movie...

More Chuck Biscuits

As and addendum to the R.I.P. of a year and a half ago, here is the Man in action. With the Big Boys, Austin TX. I am guessing about 1986.

Butthole Surfers

I don't think there is a better explanatory video for this wild Texas band than this:

These guys were crazy, not in the crazy sense but in the way beyond crazy sense where humor meets musical prowess and originality and just plain common sense.

Here is a version of "Florida" ca. 1988:

Forida

And let us not forget this older 1983 performance, where you can really see they used to be a punk band. Includes my fave B*tthole Surfers song "BBQ Pope!"



Also worth noting is this 2-part "interview in bed" with them (ca. 1989?) -very strange and worth watching: ("Tommy Forester is dead" !!)

Plateau ala Nirvana

"What're they tuning, a harp?" Dig the crazy version of Sweet Home Alabama while they are waiting (see 1st part of vid below).

Dig Dave Grohl smoking a cigarette while playing. That's how good players everywhere just spontaneously bust out in music.
The subject however is Plateau, its lyrics, something about Greenland, the Brothers Meat of the infamous Meat Puppets, another twisted band comparable in stature to the ever-loving Butthole Surfers. Both bands have a distinct Southwest (US) flavor, both rock, both will kick your ass. And dig, my brothers and sisters, Nirvana playing a Meat Puppets song, acoustic, on TV, with 2 founders of the Meat Puppets.

There were times where I keep walking around singing this song...

Nothing on the top but a bucket and a mop
And an illustrated book about birds
You see a lot up there but don't be scared
Who needs action when you got words...

Also dig Cobain reading an apparent WFMU newsletter:

Lightening it up with Isabel Baker

Alright, let's lighten it up here. I ain't saying nothing about the Brian Jones hairstyle in the photo but I'd kill for the old Fender Mustang. Listen to Isabel's caterwaulin' gospel here.

Posted on the fabulous WFMU's Blast of hot air. If you love radio, and if you love music, listen, and contribute. WFMU is a major voice in non-corporate-controlled media, and a major voice in music itself.

Motorhead sponsoring kid soccer team

Now who ever said these guys didn't care about the community. The soccer coach in the UK Guardian article I stumbled across says he was hoping Motorhead's sponsorship, team uniforms w/ Motorhead's logo, and blasting "Ace of Spades" as the kids take the field would boost performance.

Now that is really nice. It's just that you'd usually expect a local dentist or hardware store owner to sponsor a soccer team, not the rowdiest rock and roll band of all time.

Syd Barrett dies

Syd Barrett was MAJOR creative force behind Pink Floyd and a lot of the cool things happening in the thriving British music scene of the mid-late 60's. Read his obituary here in the BBC.

I read a decent biography, whose name I can't find at the moment, a few years back and was very interested to learn of the early Pink Floyd's big inspiration in Syd. He seemed to have made the Floyd was it was, and IMO a listen to the earlier Floyd shows them to be inspired, creative, weird and open like no other band. As time passed and Barrett's influence seemingly waned, the band seemed to become cliched and predictable, although their live shows were supposed to be spectacular.

Barrett's reputation is that he kind of went over the deep end on a psychedelic wave at some point and left the band when they were still new. He lived the rest of his life as a recluse. There's a story about a recording date of the later Floyd where a fat bald guy showed up and said he was there to add a guitar part. Folks at the studio laughed him off as a local nut job, but band members caught a glimpse of him as he left and shouted, "Hey!! That's Syd!"

Nikki Sudden 1956-2006

Vocalist from the Swell Maps, one of the coolest bands ever, and numerous other cool bands and projects. An archive of one of Sudden's last performances, recorded live a week before his death at WFMU, is available here on Real Audio and here on 128k MP3.

Man what a bummer, Nikki Sudden was great. The Swell Maps were a big influence on many of us.
C7

"If it's not at Walmart, it's not real"

Quoting the late Randy J. "Bisucit" Turner, of Austin punk band the Big Boys. This guy had some things to say.

"I got a place over by the university for $45 a month," he recalls. "About a week after I moved here, they had a big music festival out where the old baseball park used to be by where the UT art building is now. I remember it was the Allman Brothers, It's a Beautiful Day, Pacific Gas & Electric – all for $3, with people rolling joints outside in full view. I just thought, 'God, I'm in heaven; this must be Mecca!' It was a wonderful time for me because suddenly I was surrounded by my kind of people, who reassured me that I wasn't nuts and who immediately gave me the encouragement to start being as weird as I wanted to be.

"Austin opened me up to the vastness of other people like myself, people I could really trust artistically and with my soul. People who would reassure me that I'm not crazy, that who I am is okay, and that the most important thing is to be happy. And I think moving to Austin showed me that right away.

"I had grown up in a horrid little backwater East Texas town and been earmarked almost from day one as resident weirdo. I remember I had to tuck my hair under my graduating hat in high school so that they'd let me graduate with the other students. I had a peacoat mod outfit and a little John Lennon hat I would wear that would freak people out. It was pretty weird, and that sort of leaves an impression on you. Even now I equate things like this: If it's not at Wal-Mart, it doesn't exist. And that's what I think all these small-town Texans think. If it's not at Wal-Mart, it's not real."

The rest of the article from the 8/19/05 edition of the Austin Chronicle is here at this link. Apparently Biscuit was found dead of natural causes at his home days after the article was published.

punks and George Hurchalla

Author George Hurchalla has an awesome book out about the punk rock music scene. It's called Going Underground: American Punk, 1979-1992.

Your Imaginary Friend, at Kzsu Stanford, has just interviewed the author and included the interview as part of a 6 hour punk rock special. The special ecompasses music from roughly 1980-1984, mostly the "hardcore" part of the punk scene in those days, i.e. the time when metallic influences crept their way into punk, and slowed us all down forever. The way it happened, meaning and messages could be heard more clearly. Lots of punks are very literary, and meaning, influences, and spur-of-the-moment fun have a huge influence, although the music and dance is decidedly chaotic and admittedly anarchic.

Hurchalla's interview, for those of you who love the message, the music and the social scene, is kickass, and may be archived sometime at www.shavedneck.com. This is a good archive and you music fans should check it out, especially if you dig the punk rock scene.

[UPDATE 1/30/06: go to http://www.shavedneck.com/SoundFilePage.htm>this link at Shavedneck.com for the archive. Archives, folks.

Slowin' it down with the dead John Cage

Some folks in Germany are putting on a performance of a piece by John Cage entitled "organ2/ASLSP." The ASLSP stands for As SLow aS Possible.

In view of our fast moving age this plan is a way of trying to slowdown, the „discovery of slowness” and the planting of an „musical apple tree” can be understood as a symbol of confidence in the future.

According to this story in Yahoo news Cage wrote the piece in 1985 for piano- a twenty minute piece consisting of a few chords and some silence. Pretty cool eh? Well there was an organ transcription made a couple years later, then the folks putting on this performance in Germany got to thinking that since the piece is after all supposed to be played as slowly as possible, that it might be nice to stretch it out a bit and make a little ceremony to commemorate the building of an organ in Halberstadt. The catch is that the organ, which was apparently quite the organ in its day, was built nearly 650 years ago, and this performance of Cage's "organ2/ASLSP" is scheduled to last 639 years.

The performance began in September of 2001. The name of the project is The John Cage Organ Project. The website has some stunning photos of the old church where this is taking place.

This just says a lot about pace, a lot about history. A lot about stretching one note in music. That's one of the things I like the best in music; really long notes, which is why I like the bands Sun o))) and Earth so much!

Banning "western" music

Now this is just plain fucking stupid. Some fundamentalist bury-your-head-in-the-sand-guilt-ridden backwards-ass control freak in a high place "bans" western music. Nobody is taking this seriously over there, according to this NPR interview w/ an Iranian DJ I heard yesterday (this link points to an npr.org page w/ a button that'll play the radio story in either WMV or RealAudio).

Having fundmentalists in high places has got those people used to attempts at repression. You get thrown in jail for blogging, you get thrown in jail for playing the wrong kind of music, they have some absolutely psycho laws regarding control of women, too.

But can you see my point about fundamentalism and letting it, and religion in general take a place in government? People need to realize that religion deserves respect but it's not perfect and has no inherent control over people- just guilt.

After all, we are just humans interpreting what we believe to be divine- just humans, all our prophets, priests and priestesses, etc.

I think knowledge is key here- study history, comparative religion, sociology, current events. Critical thought in education- Liberal Arts is not a dirty word, people.

Political Ringtones (via boingboing)

Now this is fucking wierd- at first glance. But it makes sense, and it's funny. "Brownie yer doin' a wonderful job" overlaid on the old song "City of New Orleans." -Every time your cellphone rings!!

How about Bush's "we wanna keep all options on the table" juxtaposed with an air-raid siren sample from that guy's website at www.airraidsirens.com? (cool site- full of air-raid siren samples, video, mechanical breakdowns of how they work, etc. If you grew up in the 60's like I did you remember them testing the sirens weekly all over town- it was on Thursdays, I believe, in Sacramento. These days here in Tucson they blow the air raid siren daily at noon on Davis Monthan Air Force Base- a mournful, chilling, deeply disturbing sound you can hear in my neighborhood about 3 miles away. This is nothing, however, compared to the sound of these fuckers going off all over town- shudder. There is a defunct siren not far from here that I see on my morning ride to work- I'll have to photograph it and post it here asap!!)

Anyways, we used to make sound cut-ups with Reagan crap years ago. I don't think there will ever again be a King of the Idiots quite as grand as Reagan was, although Bush is equally pitiful and a good bit scarier.

It's made-up words from the Simpsons!!

made up words from the Simpsons. Ya I got it from boingboing. For example,

Scientician

>A scientist with questionable credentials who publicly supports spurious hypotheses. From "Lisa the Vegetarian":

"Jimmy: Uhh, Mr. McClure? I have a crazy friend who says it's wrong to eat meat. Is he crazy?
Troy: No, just ignorant. You see, your crazy friend never heard of "The Food Chain." Just ask this scientician.
'Scientician': [Looks up from microscope] Uh…
Troy: He'll tell you that, in nature, one creature invariably eats another creature to survive."

[this is timely, what w/ the "intellegent design" bullshit. ...Ever hear of "flying spaghetti monster?"]


How 'bout this? Not from boingboing:

It's THE SOCK GUY!!



This guy's badass. I worship the ground he walks (in his stocking feet) on. Got some fairwheel bike socks at Fairwheel the other day. Really cool. Best socks I ever put on.

Ahh, so what the hell's going on. Glad you called.. Socially dull around here. Did you make it back in time for your show? Say hi to dubya for me? What the hell's going in Philly? Say hi to Simoºª•¶§∞¢£™¡åß∂ƒ©˙∆˚¬…æ÷≥≤µ˜∫√ç≈Ωºª•¶§∞¢£™¡n~'? (looking for a nasal o and accent there). There's something on the a-file I'd like to request. Will dig it up later.

Wierd sounds from the highschool coming tonight. The whole marching band is up there. They are not playing music per se. Just their military-sounding chanting (which I hate, and which I never heard up there prior to the Dubya-regime), and you can hear the director/teacher over his megaphone/microphone, "blah blah, blah, blah blahblahblah." Then this metallic metronome sound, "tink-tink, tink-tink, tink-tink," (played by one of the drummers, I'm sure) interspersed w/ like a wood, "tock tock" sound, then the wailings of the band as they tease, comment on, agree with, disagree with, cheer for the band director. Blah-Blah-blahblahblah, in their hoarse voices. The whole thing is pretty cool, given the stops and starts. I don't think they quite intend or know it to be so, but there ya go. And when they do pick up their instruments, they really do rock. Loud, with loud drums and loud horns, holy smokes, reminds me of Violet Blue writing about Extra Action Marching Band, up there in your territory. (see http://www.tinynibbles.com/blogarchives/2005/10/my_life_with_th.html ) Those fuckers (the Rincon High School marching band) are out there till like 10 o'clock sometimes. They've been practicing "You never give me your money" from the Beatles' Abbey Road, and McCartney's Live & let Die a lot this season.

I'm going up to get more beer, take a passing look at the band.

Blaaaaaaphggh,
C7