I'm It...

Thanks Dave...

Here are the rules:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Okay...so here are my answers...

1. Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam remains the best bill I have ever seen...plenty of bang for my 20 1991 dollars. We waited outside the Coliseum for an hour-me, Dan from Mallory, and this girl I had a desperate crush on, and had grown the balls to ask her to the show. Then I found out she was wearing a Dickie, but it didn't matter too much: It was doomed. Later, she became a jesus freak.
2. I used to manage the Phantom Fireworks in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. If I still did manage it, this would be my 17th straight 12+ hour day, and I'd probably be drunk already. That was a bad time in my life.
3. The first tattoo I got was a Picasso portrait ofRimbaud on my right arm sometime during the summer of 1993.
4. The Great Escape is on in my living room.
5. I love cheese-really. Alot. Gouda and Cave cheese (mmm like candy) being my favorites, though a sharp cheddar works just as well. With pretzels. Mmmm.
6. When I opened Media Player today, because I do all my great thinking with music, the first song that came on was LL Cool J's "Around the Way Girl". Bamboo earrings-at least two pair.
7. My favorite book is Ulysses-by far, the greatest story ever told.
8. One time, I took mushrooms in Donner Pass. It was September in the late afternoon, and the rock turned this brilliant red-orange-gold. In the car, Charles Wright and his Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band were playing, nay, testifying, "High Apple Pie in the Sky". I almost wept at the beauty of it all. For that moment, I experienced perfection...

Okay...I'm Tagging, but I don't have 8;

Katie G.

Wake Up, Trav!

Brian

Let's Go That Far!

At the very least:

"The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee signaled today that he would seek to hold White House officials in contempt of Congress if they do not comply with congressional subpoenas."

Fitting, since he's been in contempt of Congress his whole term.

After that, let's impeach 'em all for being in contempt of the Constitution and the people it protects.

Ghost of the Machine, part 1: Anima and Ideological Illness

One of the great things about being an academic is, simply, I get paid to read Derrida. This summer, I have been enjoying, simulataneously, Paper Machine, his meditations on books, archiving, and "the mechanicity in language, the media, and intellectuals" (check out "The Word Processor" if you are feeling self reflexive), and a wonderful article Geoffrey Bennington wrote called "Derrida and Politics", that wonders why Derrida never made any specific political pronouncements: He's Derrida, he doesn't make specifice pronouncements, he asks hyper specific questions. You figure it out.

Another great thing about being an academic is having Derrida pinging around your head like a spaceball ricochet while absorbing more cable news than a human being should. If you didn't catch Ann Coulter's surly drunk routine (complete with black sunglasses) on Hardball last night, then you missed "Ms." Coulter's most incoherent ideological nonsense to date. What's worse, her "fans" ate it up, as though being an ill informed boor is the mark of some intellectual and moral genius. Chris Matthews, predictably, made her look like an asshole.

Speaking of ideologues and assholes, watching the equivocating of Cheney about his shadow government, scourged by the light of day in the great Barton Gellman and Jo Becker expose (essential reading, if you haven't already) has been fun, troubling (well, not really, we all knew anyway), and fascinating through the Derridian lens.

Dick Cheney is an interesting character who, based on his own statements, is not a character at all, but a ghost in the machine, being both legislator, and executive, and yet, neither.

The machine, of course, is the our government, or rather, the manner in which we speak and write about our government as the mechaniations which seem to work contrary to the welfare of the people. This, distilled, is the complaint of both conservatives and liberals. The solutions to this complaint, of course, vary.

It is in this complaints, or rather, these complaints, for though the complaint is the same, the perceived solutions are different, thus the valence of the complaint itself is different, the trace of of the complainer's ideology becomes apparent, either in the qualification of the solution, or in the qualification of the complaint itself, the underlying ideology is laid bare.

Bare ideology is, of course, the meat and potatoes of a professional pundit and hustler like Ann Coulter to the extent that one could upon her as a kind of W.A.S.P golem, a body that was animated by solemn, arcane, recitations from Fukuyama's "The End of History", with a copies of the the Federalist Papers strapped to the head and arms, phylactery style, that perfectly, with all the subtlety of Frankenstein's monster, defends the corporatist, patriarchal, ideology of her maker. A golem is the ultimate agent of victory at all costs.

Humorous as this account might seem, if we apply further tension to this idea of a golem, removing the pseudo cosmis negligence embedded in both its folklore roots and its absurd recasting here, what are you left with, in essence, is a host, the "raw material" for the kind of parasitic ideology that birthed the NeoConservative Movement, while, at the same time, infecting the body politic to the point that the Goldwater Conservatives, and their rational, if flawed, reading of the Constitution, are all but extinct on the national level.

What is left are hosts to this ideological illness, some infected through a fear of Communism, some infected through a fear of terrorism, some infected through a fear of homosexuals/immigrants/ ad infinitum, but in every case, fear feeds the parasitic ideology, and though the phenomenological experience of the host could, and should, kill the parasite, its epistemological justification of its continued existence is the continued existence of uncertainty, and of fear, and, as long as the ideology is fed, its powers of denial, both of the phenomenological and the rational when they contradict the doctrine, or contextualize the uncertainty, are all encompessing, reducing the host to a golem, or perhaps, more aptly, an automaton, a mechanized object that's sole purpose is perpetuation of the ideology, and the infestation of others by praying on the most primal: the fear of the dark, if you like.

Part II: Infections of the Machine.

Organized Labor

The forces of evil on at it again, screwing the working man at every turn.

Orrin Hatch explains the GOP position as "stand[ing] up for American workers by defeating this bill." He then tells us why we should listen to him:

" I was a card-carrying member of the AFL-CIO Metal Lather union in my youth, and I understand the role that unions can play. But unionization is increasingly facing organizing challenges.

Unions have seen a steady decline in membership, from 16.1 percent in 1990 to 12 percent in 2006. Right now they’re less interested in seriously defending workers’ rights than they are about simply holding onto their power. It seems obvious that big labor wants to rebuild its membership rolls — and its bank account — through a forced unionization process called 'card check'.”

Orrin Hatch, that old union dog that he is, has an 7% Pro Labor rating according to AFL-CIO, so you know he's extremely interested in the rights of workers.

Here's the evil that he helped saved us from.

Ken...By Request

Via Mike at the Naked Vine

The Worst Album Covers...ever.

I hadn't seen this before... it kind of sucks, though, because I always dreamed that, one day, I would call my first album "The Ethel Merman Disco Album"...

Renege of the Sith

"Luke...I am not your father".

Bildungsroman, Progressive Rock and the The Return of Mallory

Here's an admission of bias, the full disclosure:

1. I do not follow most local music, because I find a lot of it too hip, too self satisfied with its own ironic pose, plus I tend to gravitate to dumb rock and roll for a night out, or utter schmaltz, neither of which is in great supply these days, so I really don't go out and check out bands much.
2. Their album the first one hundred years, when taken in conjunction with Camel Lights, Espresso and Adderall, makes paper writing on a graduate level the intellectual stretch it should be, giving one all the bravery they need to go out on a limb and compare De Quincy's "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Burrough's Junky as a kind of Camusian story of discovery, the birth of the writer into existence by the act of writing (a success) or querying which is the true sign of A Clockwork Orange? The American Version? The British Version with the extra chapter? Kubrick's rendering (not a success). Or passing the MLA Comps (take God)-the album can help make it happen. There's a blob of espesso on the CD, for crissakes. How long's that been there?
3. Okay...and the guitarist used to sleep on my floor, and I've known the drummer and singer for over ten years.
4. Okay okay...we went to the same High School.

Having said all of that, it is important to note that this Mallory's first opus came out around 2002. We haven't heard from them in quite a while-over two years, by my recollection, since they have rocked out live, for paying enthusiasts.

But Mallory, Matt Arnold, Dan Heier and Jim Cunningham evidentally haven't been cooking up Chinese Democracy or some other self indulgent rock "masterpiece", but instead woodshedding, pondering, inventing- being musicians, in other words.

Self indulgent as an insult may sound like rocks and glass houses with a band that is not only willing to stretch out some, but sounds a bit "prog-y" while they do it, but this is not the case: They won't be "the roundabout".

Instead, what they are is, in effect, a deconstruction of the word progressive, at least in a musical sense: Progressive means forward, and the early progressive bands were Barrett era Pink Floyd, The Velvet Underground, and The Mothers of Invention-freak rock, if you like.

As the sixties became the seventies, this definition changed, with only Pink Floyd remaining in the definition of Progressive Rock. Noisy and experimental were out. Slick and musicianly were in. Rick Wakeman...RICK FUCKING WAKEMAN...shit salad surgar-y. Nothing weird, just complicated. Nothing too uncomfortable, almost soothing, like valium and red wine, you get kind of lulled into a mellow out complacency... give up grass for tranquilizers and anti-depressents...Soon, you start digging Vangelis, listening to Yanni in the car...burning sage around the house...pan flutes...the horror...

The important thing to remember is that, in this case, Progressive is not Rick Wakeman (Wake Rick, man...). Progressive is The Velvet Underground; noisy poetic dark and uncomfortable. Progressive is The Mothers; the smartest guy in the room calling you an asshole. Progressive is Syd era Floyd; expansive, dense yet spacious, imagistic, druggy. This is the tradition begat the best and most influential bands of rock: The Stooges, Bowie, Roxy Music, Sonic Youth, The Pixies, Radiohead, My Bloody Valentine, nearly everything that can be called Punk or Post Punk, all the early Industrial, from Caberet Voltaire to Psychic TV-experimental, dangerous, music, life affirming, scary art. The other so called progressive music, with its madrigals and masturbatory moog symphonies...Wake Rick, man!

Mallory come from the former tradition. They have no bass player. Dan and Jim work in clouds of sound, which seep and groan out of their instruments, vacillating between monochrome to Kodachrome-shrill to heavy to lighter than air, all in the gravitational pull of Matt Arnold's intuitive expressive percussion, Bonham bombast to brush soft. All three can be found at various times adding a little funereal keyboard, another hue in the enveloping fog.

(Everything orbits everything, or everything orbits the drums, like the Milky Way, though that's not strictly true in every case.)

Mallory is a band that knows the importance of the tradition that begat them, and one can find traces of those bands and artists, yet Mallory recasts these through their own experiences, the secret to working in any artform and not sounding, or looking, like a pastiche. That was always the problem with Emerson Lake and Palmer, Yes and their ilk: They always looked backwards instead of looking ahead: Their progression was a regression, Rock that is classical but not classic. It's hardly innovative to look to Brahms for inspiration.

Mallory doesn't sound like My Bloody Valentine, for example, but somebody in the band listened-and listened well.

One of the tracks on their first disc was called Bildungsroman, which is one of many taxonomies of biography: The journey of self-discovery, like Rousseau, St. Augustine, etc. One of the ideas I hold near and dear is that, for the artist, every act of creation and capture is the contemporaneous bildungsroman, because every act of creation and capture, be it on canvas, on film, on tape or in the human senses, reflects something a grander tradition while at the same time being a biographical (or autographical) unit reacting to and commenting on what creation came before it- expectation and memory informing this moment, possibly obscuring, the new knowledge, the new chapter. The question is: What came of these "years in the wilderness"? Has Mallory progressed into something even more formidable and special? I have it on good authority that everyone will be mightily impressed. How does this bildungsroman now read?

Friday Night, we find out.

Update: If you want a set list, fuck off.

Unusual for it to be so cool this time of year, and yet, it still managed to be humid for Mallory's first show in ten thousand years, and there were alot of people, with a lot of expectations, for the return of the only original band in Cincinnati.

The pre concert ritual is the same as it has been for generations of rock fans: Meet in bar before the show. Drink beer. Drink beer DRINK BEER. Go to show. There is something comfortable in this ritual, especially around here, because you never know what variety of people you will run into at a local rock show. If they are friends, then, in all likelihood, they will have been doing the same, and it will be a wonderful family reunion. This was the case Friday, as my entire young adult life converged, mightily drunk, to see this show. Mallory, with its ur in greater and lesser Lawrenceburg, Indiana, area, brought every single freak from my hometown out. It was a big happy family reunion, with comedians Brad Thacker, local artist Gene I. Kerley (responsible for the great advertisement), impresario and activist Jon Sheperd, The Deacon of this board, many doobie cruise buddies from back in the day, Mike from the Naked Vine...

The other reason to drink beer before the show was evidenced in a smaller quantities than I expected: Hipsters, people with severe bangs, and thirtysomethings clinging to whatever alternative meant, if it ever meant anything. With these folks in smaller quantities, we were all served up little or self conscious irony, snark, back biting, or any of the other shit that tends to haunt local shows, and has for years. It used to be the "Punker than Thou" Olympics, though now it has morphed into "Hipper than You" Olympics. In either case, this bullshit was at a minimum, thank God, because it allowed for the dark rapture of the music.

In the bildungsroman we call Mallory, the last one thousand years has been fruitful. The first thing that struck me was the sound: Matt Arnold's drums sounded huge, epic, forboding, filling the ballroom of the Southgate with the kind of sledgehammer low end skips your heart a couple of beats. The guitars sounded, well, full, with the space between the parts that Jim Cunningham plays (usuallly the chord-y stuff) and Dan Heier plays(usually melodic and/or noisy stuff) melding into the most gigantic, fucked up chord ever played, a feat I have not witnessed since Fugazi's last trip to Bogart's. Whereas Mallory had been a great rock band before, these years have turned them into a machine: The War of Worlds raising space rock, art rock, psychedelic daydreams and the nightmare of lonely poets from the grave of progressive rock...Wake Rick, man...tell him he sucks and always has...an annihilating derivative, safe, posing, self styled irony rock in its wake. The bands that bookended the show didn't stand a fucking chance. Did I mention that, somehow, Jim Cunningham stole Bill Wyman's bass, and thus, bass guitar showed up for the first time in a Mallory tune?

The lamps were back, glowing red balls of light, but Mallory, this time, brought film. I heard several in the audience quip "Is this a power point presentation. ha ha ha", only to be silenced when, swallowed by the blackhole of the Mallory sound, they also had to deal with a montage of public domain film clips which may, or maynot, elucidated the theme of the song. Or they may have provided counterpoint. Or they may have been a kind of visual tone poem for the song. Either way, the clips chosen were cleverly chosen, stunning to behold, and poignant in a way that sort of transcends description.

Mallory 2007 are pretentious.

Pretentiousness is a word that gets thrown around, yet most people aren't aware of the nuance. Typically, we throw this word around about bloated corporate rock bands, mired in their own importance (see late period Floyd). So convinced are they of their own genius that they assume everything they produce will be absolutely earth shattering, when, in fact, it can be said to be insipidly obvious.

The other definition, which some people might argue is the same thing, is striving for new breakthrough, consciously pushing your art, and it is in this way that great bands are pretentious bands, with each performance, each album, being evolved from its predecessors; Funhouse is better than eponymous debut; White Light/White Heat is better than The Velvet Underground and Nico, and while this isn't always the case, it does illustrate the importance of a band pushing its limits. You should want bands to evolve, and grow, and stop living in some constructed past. Some bands are pretentious, and pull it off. Don't confuse this with that shit Jack White puts out now, or worse, that horrible ersatz post punk bullshit...Going for it...no bullshit...no pose...getting out on the limb...the canvas widens...highwire...dangerous and uncompromising...

This is the fucking real thing, folks...