hott...my friend luke think's there's a brian chippendale look a like thing going on here in the dusty den of providence, and by the judging of the ridiculous loft shows full of functional, artistic and meagerly fed folks that constitute my anti-social sphere, i might be inclined to agree. this boy 'kites' that i saw on thursday def. goes there somewhere - he was strapped down with wires like a metallic scarecrow, screaming into his amp and dancing like a polecat in the jazz scene of funny face. also dished - the young people, who i was told i'd like, at as220 - very ackward and non-experimental (aka, just like the decent little album) and the girl intimidating and or nervous, not really going for it like i admired as a recorded effort.

recent thoughts - a silence rock band (in opposition to noise rock, which is the opposition to music rock?), a band whose sole influence is 'baby's on fire' from here come the warm jets, the relative worth of indie pop???

also- lost in translation...coppola's high school sketch book/mix tape of daydream fantasies. a) make out with...bill murray? b) watch a traditional japanese wedding in a beautiful garden c) get kevin shields to write me new material for my dumb movie then use it as exit music

the world would be better for me if i didn't even know who larry t was

here's more inane Radiohead machinery because as the Pink Floyd of our generation, they really do warrent endless stoned out pontification.

On Sunday, I saw Brown's magnificent organ. The cute, be-bowtied David Briggs played the requisite Bach and some nominally interesting romantic music, along w/ some Fantasia crap, before launching into a wonderful improvisation based on a really lame Ode To Brown that had been sealed up for 100 years. The sound was rather thin and rattled but still wonderful -- I love how the organ's sound billows like an invisible cloud through the room. The reedy melodies are just a tease for those big breath chords. Is there any way to hear the organ w/o sacred thoughts? Messiaen tried but seemed to only get it right when the sound is a wash (Radiohead seemed to think so).

Just got assigned an interview with Belle&Sebastian for Venus. Should be interesting since, well, Isabel doesn't really cut it as the 'female musician' but they are all about gender fluidity so...

A fellow ethno grad loaned me some of his favorite CDs - I've been listening to S.Wonder's Talking Book and the godforsaken Abraxas LP of the three. I am a huge sucker for "I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)" but I can't get into the more sparse ballads. As for Santana...I can't fucking stand it. The blues/jazz/rock thing (plus the party down cowbell) is how California went wrong in 1970. I can just see Hunter S. sitting there, watching the tide roll back with "Black Magic Woman" playing in the background.

last night - the providence civic center, aka the stinky punk loft of many shows - had a great little thing with friends forever. stood outside in the cool evening with about sixty people watching these three play out of their vw bug van while lasers and pyrotechics poured out in to the sky. did i mention the bubble machine? the difference between a 'good' noise band and a 'bad' noise band is immediately obvious but hard to define. first word - tight- but then again, sloppy can be wonderful - je to chaos? as they'd say in the cz. then there are the costumes, the confrontation, the performance, the performance art, the gear, the beat/lack there of, the loudness/intensity, use of space, amount of time playing...

in other news, i bought all the brainiac albums off of half.com so don't even bother looking. god i miss that band and enon just doesn't cut it for me -- too tame.

there's something terribly wrong and godforsaken about the new belle and sebastian album. it matches the worst parts of elephant 6 psych big band with overwrought twee and...later byrds' production. icck.

am making a mix for my 'music and modern life' class which i like to think of as going back into the 'mod life' once a week for 2.5 hrs. the theme is 'dirty pop' based on the v/vm comp slam of n'sync's fantastico piece of plastic. will prolly include momus' 'the penis song' just for adolescent amusement, since the CDR will be placed in the library sans name for all to guess who made what. what do you want for an assignment based on 'high fidelity'?

in other news, W butter not veto that FCC overturn shit. it's hott that those DC types are paying attention to crap that Powell&co spew from their big-5 funded asses.

In the Sunday NY Times, John Leland
wrote, in the style section:

"The law, of course, will inevitably catch up. When rap acts started sampling James Brown records in the 1980's, complaints raged that they were violating copyrights and the principles of art. In a Bronx home studio in 1987, the producer Jazzy Jay described the law of the copy: "The laws on taking samples are, You take 'em until you get caught."

Two decades later, musicians usually pay for their samples, and the aesthetic argument — that sampling was theft, not music — has quieted. Now sample fees are part of the business model, and no one seems to worry about whether it is art.

At both stages, value judgments about copying followed technology and money, not the other way around."

the title of the article is 'beyond file sharing, a nation of copiers' and it explicitly mentions blogging and how "much of the culture's heat now lies with the ability to cut, paste, clip, sample, quote, recycle, customize and recirculate."

In said spirit, here are some fun links to why this dumbass is wrong about the apparently egalitarian nature of hip hop sample settlements and other sad corporate turns in fair use law.

sonic outlaws, listen to the sample and original

negativland's hott links, always good to plunder when you're lazy

there's a second enclosure movement website chatted abt on the poptalk list that i have forgotten...argh.

my mind has been going on abt this all day and also from a chat w/ a professor about the RIAA suits going out to unsuspecting types, maybe like yrself.

from Sunday 9/7

I've been here just over a week and already feel the drag. Where New York had two shows a night I might see, Philly had four a week, Providence has one ever nine or ten days. Then there's Boston, but the drive and the bizarre let down of the city make it unlikely that I will be journey up there often, even to go to the Harvard Square Other. The folks in my department seem generally enthusiastic, sometimes even passionate about the music that they study, but none of them seem passionate about music in general. Maybe it's curiousity that has put me in the predicament of being a rock critic - a professional obligation to stay broad.

Checked out the Sounds as my first foray in the Providence rock club scene. Lupo's Met Café isn't a bad place, though the sound was shoddy. I was warned about the sightlines but find the foundation supports minimally intrusive, maybe because the show was only 1/3 full. Providence is a rock town, maybe even a metal town, and it has little love in its heart for hipster pop bands. The Sounds, granted, are little more than a stripped down Motley Crue cover band with a chubby Debbie Harry impersonator on vox, but I was surprised that the NME hype hasn't made it this far north. Haven't heard the album, but the cheerleader S O U N D S song is amazing taken in context of either punk or indie culture. It only truly works as an underground hair metal anthem.

And…ha ha ha…I've already seen Lightning Bolt twice in the week I've been here. Saturday was some marathon of crusty punk and noise bands at AS220 and the Living Room, the latter being one of the most disgusting wrecks of rock civilization I've ever had the misfortune to pay money to enter. No wonder shit goes up in flames in this city. Also Chinese Stars, a more fringed, asymetrical and downright bad version of the Rapture (a phenomenon I refused to believe but is true - bands that rip off the Rapture?) and Mahi Mahi, two guys with matching white synth drums and keys, a camp/industrial mojo and a perma-vocoder. The singers/keyboardist, painted with red and blue siren light, pumped a ghostly fist to the audience while riffing on staccato melodies not unlike Fad Gadget. Strangely, girls danced and boys stood dumbfounded at this neo-industrial robot dance party tragedy.

new kevin shields material from the sophia coppola film lost in translation. you're not sure until :17 that it is truly true. ahh, shugazer. how i used to (and still do) love.

finding that at grad school, liking of j. tim is a litmus of potential friendship. i am surrounded by authenticity obsessed old timey banjo heads, which is quickly becoming a good way to find out what i am not interested in about thinking about music. have been forbidden to use the phrase ' the music in itself ' which would infuriate those christgau anti-immersion types to no end. the difficulties unfold. never bother to think about comparative musicology, aka the bullshit scientific reasoning that evolution left out some cultures (aka the primitives) and, as levi-strauss jokingly posits, allows one to walk back 'a thousand years' when visiting non-Western cultures. all of ethnomusicolgy as apology for colonialism?

the new stars album - pastels-sounding brit pop through the marritt filter aka not new in any way but partially satifying - reminds me of the first, totally wonderful vitesse.

if you've never been to providence, let me tell you this. it is true that all the risd kids live in weird lofts full of broken bikes and nine-foot-high monster costumes. alternately wonderful and ridiculous, i am quickly wondering when i will next pay money to see a show or hear melody. no real complaints.