marc pietrzykowski

Here’s a good one: “tradition is based on pride in collective habit, on the conscience that approves the pride, and on the fear that if habit and conscience fail, the result will be social chaos, the fear of which is in turn based on a particularly low assessment of human nature” (Ami-Scharfstein). I am trying to write a novel, which is a fairly traditional thing to do, and I suppose I do have pride in the collective cultural habit of producing novels. My conscience, the moral judge seated in every person (well, almost every person) by the same collective habit, approves this pride, believes novels are  “good to think” (as Levi-Strauss put it). I do not think that we would descend into social chaos if people stopped reading and writing novels, however, though I do find the idea very sad. I am fairly certain, actually, that we will grow beyond reading and writing at some point in the near future, though i think we will retain a grammar for things, however we do manage to communicate them. Ah well, time is long.

I managed to write 6,000 words yesterday, then was overcome by the need to go get ice cream. Maybe I can get to 10k today; then again, maybe I need to get some qat.

278) Gogol Bordello: Multi-Kontra-Culti vs. Irony

I have heard that the Rick Rubin produced the latest GB CD, and that it flies out of the speakers in close approximation to their live shows. I can’t believe that, since their live shows are something to behold, but o what a fun band, even if Hutz is faking the whole accent thing…

279) Eugene Chadbourne and Evan Johns: Terror Has Some Strange Kinfolk

Boy, Eugene loves to make scritchy noises with his guitars. Any recording by him will feature: scritchy, noisy guitars; goofy covers (“Achy Breaky Heart”); clumps of free jazz that last 30 sec-2 min; political rants in a comical southern accent. For people who find this approach appealing (like me), it’s loads of fun. Everyone else will leave the room.

280) Huun-Huur-Tu: The Orhpan’s Lament

There’s a lot more to Tuvan music than throat-singing, though the throat-singing is pretty cool. Tone, timbre, mood, all are carefully orchestrated to evoke the mood of the open plain, the relationship of human art to the natural world, and the essential loneliness of human beings. And they play a rattle made from a bull scrotum.

281) Gang of 4: A Brief History of the 20th Century

I like this band more than just about any band that made music between 1978-1985. Why? I’m not sure exactly, maybe just the fact that the idea we could dance our way to revolution seems real when I listen to them…

Tags: Uncategorized by admin
2 Comments »

I’ve started a novel, and need to spend the next several days in a marathon writing session. I’m shooting for 10,000 words a day, no idea if that’s feasible, but what the hell, it’s a nice round number. The added benefit is that I will get to listen to plenty of CDs, and perhaps get to #300 soon; so, 10k and 300, here we go.

273) Carl Perkins: Go Cat Go!

A collection of Perkins tunes, most of them duets: Perkins and Willie Nelson, Perkins and Tom Petty, Perkins and Bono and Willie Nelson and Tom Petty; a few songs featuring Carl by himself; and then, not sure why, 2 covers of “Blue Suede Shoes,” one by Jimi Hendrix and one by John Lennon. A strange project, but very listenable, since the songs are uniformly great.

274) Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose: Classic Masters

Yes, they had more songs than “Treat Her Like a Lady” and “Too Late to Turn Back Now,” and some of them are excellent, like “Since I Found My Baby” and “Let Me Down Easy.” Their version of “Ain’t No Sunshine” is good too… but some of the others are buried under schmaltzy K-Tel strings. Oh well, it was the 70’s, after all.

275) Etta James: Her Best

And her best is awful good, throaty and powerful, reaches down into the belly and lifts the listener out of the chair by the bowels. “I’d Rather Go Blind” makes me weep:

276) Los Amigos Invisibles: Arepa 300

Highly contagious dance/rock/samba/funk/acid jazz and etc. From Venezuala, where they eat lots of Arepas, which are a bit like pupusas but fatter, and boy are they yummy. Eating while listening to the Amigos is not recommended, as you are likely to drop the Arepa because you are dancing uncontrollably.

277) Tom Waits: Real Gone

I wasn’t so crazy about this CD the first time I listened to it, and then forgot about it. Now I think it’s pretty fantastic, it’s very subdued but also kind of noisy, and features Waits doing beatbox on more than 1/2 the songs (!). Lots of looping, some scratching, and apparently a lot of instrumentation by various Waits children. Some of the lyrics seem phoned in, but some are the equal of the best Waits stuff, and the whole thing is a reminder of how willing Waits is to experiment with his formula–a valuable thing in the era of art-as-market share.

Tags: cd collection by admin
No Comments »

Works of art, ideas about art (which are kinds of art), “come in families, lineages, tribes, whole populations, just like people. They have relations with one another as well as with the people who create and circulate them as individual objects. They marry, so to speak, and beget offspring, which bear the stamp of their antecedents” (Alfred Gell). A fine metaphor, though apparently Gell did not mean it metaphorical, but rather that works of art were living beings; I’m not sure I buy that, I’ll have to read more of his work, but the metaphor above helps explain what depresses me about so much modern, internet-influenced art: all artistic objects emerge from other works, all works of art are “mash-ups” to some degree, but when the aesthetic focus is on the mechanics of the collage, then of course the content needs to be familiar and immediate: a mash-up of LaMonte Young and Mahjoub Sharif would be fascinating, but not as a mash-up, because it would not stimulate the average listener with juxtapositions of the familiar. The cliche is that we live in an ocean of information, and so slapping together a few aesthetic bits in a way that draws attention to the fact that they are a few aesthetic bits slapped together is supposed to reflect the state of living in said ocean. We don’t live in such an ocean, however; we live in something more like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a vortex of mass-produced iterations of cultural junk, and so the same junk gets slapped together in more or less the same way, and we get to pretend that we’ve seen something new, something stimulating, like Iron Man 2 or Lady GaGa. One reason pastiche is so popular is that it’s is simple to produce, there is a formula, and since those in charge of distributing art have a vested interest in consolidating power and because the formula is not very interesting (especially for producers!), the distribution itself becomes a kind of elite art form (just ask Will.i.Am). Many US poets have been lost in the same mess for decades, except that instead of talking about generating multiple income-streams and Real-Time Personalization, they talk about “poetics” and schools of poetry… and boy is it getting long in the tooth, as witnessed by such desperate attempts to maintain institutional genealogies as The New Thing.

270) Tom Waits: Orphans

3 CDs worth of odds and ends, some fabulous (versions of “What Keeps Mankind Alive” and Daniel Johnston’s “King Kong,” and 2 Ramones covers!), some just interesting (the song about Ants), some not really fabulous or interesting, but groovy nonetheless…I’ve met a lot of people who hate Tom Waits, which baffles me, but then I’ve met lots of people who really like Pizza Hut, so there you go.

271) Little Feat: Shake Me Up

I’ve heard lots of Little Feat over the years, and the only song I remember is “Mojo Haiku,” because I like the title. I know the Lowell George stuff is funky and well-written, and that this CD is not from that era; it is: bland, MOR flailing with the occasional capitivating guitar break.

272) Fishbone: In Your Face

That the Red Hot Chili Peppers became B-list glitterati and Fishbone did not is just plain wrong. But then Fishbone are black, and political, and like to make songs about their testicles…

Tags: cd collection by admin
No Comments »

My lovely wife expressed some envy about the way I read, that is, the way I read 7 or 8 books at once, bopping back and forth between them. I have always done so, I like how they books often talk to one another, and I have books assigned to different times and places: my read in bed book (currently: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal ), my downstairs bathroom book (currently: The Pelican History of the World), my upstairs bathroom book (currently: Run With the Horsemen)  my waiting around book that I keep in my car (currently: On Bullshit), and then the 3-4 others I read when not in bed, the bathroom, or waiting somewhere… my wife reads many things each day, as we all do, but prefers one book at a time, which I find just as puzzling as she does my multiple book habit. I suppose my reading habits also mean I am not the target audience for eBook readers, since I would have to chain it to a pierced nipple of something so I was sure to have access to books at all those times and places…

267) Linda Thompson: Fashionably Late

The story of Linda Thompson’s crippling stage fright (hysterical dysphonia) is fascinating, she couldn’t sing for 17 years; I’m certainly glad she found her way out the other side, as she is a wonderful vocalist and also a fine songwriter, as is clear from this recording. And Richard even shows up to play a bit, which is somehow comforting.

268) The Neville Brothers: A History of the Nevilles

Such a weird double CD; the cover is a weirdly drawn picture of Cyrille Art and Aaron, smiling away, and the tracks alternate, one after the other, between Neville Bros tracks and Meters tracks. Great songs, of course, but a strange package… and this is odd, too, though also cool: a fan-made “Hercules” video mashed up with scenes from Meanstreets:

269) The Be Good Tanyas: Hello Love

I first heard these women while driving through Kentucky and Tennessee, up and down the foothills, desperately searching for something that was neither glitter-country crap nor classic rock nor wackadoo preachers, and lo, I found it, though I’ve still no idea what station it was, because they played 4 songs by The Be Good Tanyas, minimal, delicate, raw country folk, and then the station broke into static. I may have dreamed the whole thing, and could in fact be laying in a ditch on the side of Route 65 even as I am dreaming of writing this… but probably not.

Tags: cd collection by admin
2 Comments »

Hmmm:

The operation of a peer-matching network would be simple. The user would identify himself by name and address and describe the activity for which he sought a peer. A computer would send him back the names and addresses of all those who had inserted the same description. It is amazing that such a simple utility has never been used on a broad scale for publicly valued activity.
–Ivan Illich

That sounds familiar, though Illich wrote it in 1971. He also wrote a lot about substituting “webs” of learning for “funnels,” meaning the learn-to-work training mission of modern education. Unfortunately, management shamans have got hold of things even more than they did in 1971, assessment and accountability and other such empty buzzwords drive curricula, and students learn to toe the line or else. Same as it ever was. I teach in a college, and can’t ever quite tell if I’m helping people learn and explore and find meaning, or if I’m just another fool who thinks they can “change the system from within,” otherwise known as Jerry Rubin syndrome. And I guess I won’t ever know, and it’s probably not as bleak as it seems, there are good people teaching here and there, I’ve been taught by some of them… ah well. Sometimes it’s reassuring to know you are too far gone to ever be properly assimilated.

264) Kool Keith: Black Elvis/Lost in Space

Lots of great, funny songs, and I’m a fan of the pre-grime production beeps and fuzz bass wobbles on here, some is Sadat X, some is other folks… and he drops Stretch Armstrong, Chairhead Chippendale, Argonauts, Ringling Bros, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, and the Vulcan Neck Pinch in one verse, for god’s sake.

265) Loudon Wainwright III: Attempted Mustache

Loudon and Kool Keith, that makes sense somehow, they should do a song together. I like watching Loudon on M.A.S.H., but all the clips of him from that show on YouTube have been taken down, so instead, the first song on this CD:

266) The Kinks: Muswell Hillbillies

One of their best, most consistent recordings; even the fluff (“Have A Cuppa Tea”) is inspired, and the band sounds tight and bluesy, and, and, and, well, even if it only had “Complicated Life” and 10 versions of “Louie Louie” I would buy a copy. Really:

Tags: cd collection by admin
No Comments »