Rise

I've been meaning to make a post about how a couple songs have deeply influenced how I look at love and whether this is good, but I'll put that off 'til later and instead talk about the show I went to Saturday night at the 119 Gallery.

I originally decided to go because Crank Sturgeon was playing, and I hadn't seen him in a good long while. The kid who had set up the show had also gotten a shit-load of other outfits that were performing and I figured that I'd see at least a couple other ones that I enjoyed. The last noise-show I'd been to (I think) was Grunt in November. Although Grunt didn't impress me that much that night, the night was still really fun. Me, Russell and Davenport went. Brian brought a 30-Rack for me and him.

The first act (sorry, but I don't remember most of the groups names, if I even knew them in the first place) was this guy who rolled around in the corner with a couple of pedals and a contact mic on a section of one of those pipes that drain water down from the gutters. I don't really remember anything that specifically stood out from his set, except that Andy (the kid who set the show together) and Walter (the guy who runs the 119) kept fiddling with the sound levels.

Next, was Andy and some other guy. Just messing around with pedals and vocals. Again, I wasn't overly impressed. They weren't bad, and any live noise is fun in my book, but it was nothing that really stood out.

I can't be sure, but I think that Halflings performed next. I wasn't expecting them to be there, 'cause I had seen the bill and I thought I would remember their name being on it. They, in my opinion at least, were the best act that night. Very, very powerful PE-ish stuff. They also performed for a pretty long time (at least, I thought), which was nice. What struck me the most about their performance was that they seemed to be in total control of their gear. A lot of noise outfits will just fiddle with knobs and scream into mics, and it sometimes seems like what they are doing is not effecting the actual sound AT ALL. When one of the Halflings would twist a knobs or tap a button, you could hear the change in the sound. A+ set.

Of the other people that performed, the only other one that really struck me was the people that played immediately after Halflings. It was almost black-metal-y, and the singer (who did his best deep guttural, Satan influenced vocals) was very drunk; but I still found their set pretty interesting.

Damn, I almost forgot, the other outfit that impressed me was Ted (from Twodeadsluts Onegoodfuck) and Nate (something or other; I've seen him perform with Jessica Rylan before). Nice PE-ish stuff again, with really strong vocals from Ted. Afterwards I got to talking with them (and sharing beers from the 30), and I need to somehow get that video of the Sluts last St. Patrick's Day to Ted.

Crank's set was okay, but I was kind of distracted because Davenport had gotten pretty drunk and then disappeared, saying he wasn't feeling that good. His sets are fun, but they border too closely on performance art to really enjoy sonic-ly.

All in all, though, it was a really fun night in Lowell. The largest crowd I'd seen at the 119 since two Halloweens ago when I saw Capital Hemorrhage. The angry PE stuff really made me feel good, and made me realize how much pent-up anger and sadness I have inside me right now.

Barzel

I shouldn't have shaved. I look like a chick/10 year old.

Barzel is a Israeli/ostensibly Zionist PE outfit. Its concept kind of annoys me, not because I disagree with Zionism (although I'm not sure I agree with it), but because it seems like a project that is purely the opposite of all of the anti-Semitic PE outfits that exist. If you are going to make power electronics, do it with true feeling. Maybe they do have a real passion for making this, but it just seems too much like something that is purely in opposition to those other acts (Genocide Lolita, Green Army Fraction). But I still have their album on my computer. Is it from some guilt about listening to bands that are so stringently racist? I think that all of those type of bands are fucking idiots, but they still sometimes make decent music. Then again, I don't think Israelis and Zionists are that good either. I'm listening to the Barzel album now, and it really isn't the greatest thing ever, but neither is it the worst. Since a lot of PE is not strictly serious about its content, maybe this album is somehow supposed to be negative towards Zionism. It has the same forceful speeches in different languages that I don't understand but can feel the power behind. This song right here is pretty fucking good ("By Blood And Fire"). I don't understand why there is so much hate in the world, and it does really depress me, but I still think that PE is one of the best listening materials out there.

The Day Before The Sky Fell In America

Holy shit! Justice Yeldham is touring the U.S. next spring! I kind of want to ask him to come to Lowell, but I wouldn't really know who to talk to to set up a show here. For all you guys out there who have never heard of him, Justice Yeldham is the alter ego of Lucas Abela, an Australian noise artist/turntablist. He did some crazy ass shit with turntables, like putting high-powered motors on them and then using sewing needles to pick up the record sounds, but with Justice Yeldham, what he does is put a contact-mic on a sheet of glass, cover his face with KY jelly, and then gives the sheet raspberries while simultaneously punching the glass into his face. I've only seen videos of his act, and would really like to see it in person. He is playing in New York, I think, and maybe that'd be an excuse to see the cousins.

Jake's Thing

I just finished Kingsley Amis's Jake's Thing. I had previously read Lucky Jim, which had TOTALLY blown me away. The was one of the most consistently funny books I'd ever read, and the main character, to a certain degree, reminded me of myself. I have this bad habit (or maybe its not, who knows) that I tend to see my life or the situations that happen to me mirrored in books or music. Regardless, though, Jake's Thing is one of his later period books (late 70s, I think, Lucky Jim being 1954 or something like that) and, while it is really funny, it is really, really misogynistic and seems kind of mean spirited in parts. I mean, most everyone in Lucky Jim was portrayed as utterly and completely foolish, but the characters that are torn apart in Jake's Thing (Amis tears a new asshole for psychoanalysis, generally, and, in particular, blaming all mental problems on sexual dysfunction and those programs like EST, where they supposedly "helped" you by making you feel like living shit--he also takes a very gloomy view on women) are portrayed with nearly no redeeming qualities. Most of the women in the book, especially, are either portrayed as outright crazy, totally superficial or unable to deal with Jake's loss of interest in sex. (Oh, yeah, I didn't even say what the book was about. Basically, Jake is getting near to 60, and his libido has significantly decreased. This is straining his relationship with his wife, so he goes to visit a therapist. Hilarity ensues.) Amis was notorious as a womanizer, but Lucky Jim didn't have this hatred for women and total lack in faith.
That being said, here is the closing passage from the book. Jake has been having bowel problems, and he goes back to visit his GP (general practitioner). This GP had sent him to the crazy therapist, originally, saying that his lose of libido could not be a physical thing, but must be mental blockage or something. He now informs Jake that it could, in fact, be something messed up with hormones. Jake would have to undergo some tests first, and he thinks about whether its even worth it:

Jake did a quick run-through of women in his mind, not of the ones he had known or dealt with in the past few months or years so much as all of them: their concern with the surface of things, with objects and appearances, with their surroundings and how they looked and sounded in them, with seeming to be better and to be right while getting everything wrong, their automatic assumption of the role of injured party in any clash of wills, their certainty that a view is the more credible and useful for the fact that they hold it, their use of misunderstanding and misrepresentation as weapons of debate, their selective sensitivity to tones of voice, their unawareness of the difference in themselves between sincerity and insincerity, their interest in importance (together with noticeable inability to discriminate in that sphere), their fondness for general conversation and direction-less discussion, their pre-emption of the major share of feeling, their exaggerated estimate of their own plausibility, their never listening and lots of other things like that, all according to him.
So it was quite easy. 'No thanks,' he said.

Say what you want about his misogynism, but that could quite possibly be one of the most scathing passages I've ever read directed at anything. I hope I never grow to hate women that much. I doubt I will; I'm not a drunken, womanizing Englishman.

Scatology

I just had one of the biggest shocks of my life. I'm going to be a daddy!!

Jay-Kay.

I was walking home from class on South Campus. It was very cold so I was walking at a brisk pace. The street that I take home is a pretty busy street, especially during rush-hour. I was listening to Emmylou Harris, and I happened to glance down at the street. Lying there, with blood everywhere and its neck broken, was a poor, little kitty-cat. I've seen dead cats before (well actually, dead cat; I was with Sylvia when she died, but that was peaceful and she appreciated me being there), but this really fucking shocked me. I looked away immediately, and started breathing really heavily. The image kept popping up in my mind. Why does my brain get so bothered by dead cats? If I saw a dead human (who hadn't died relatively peaceful or been made up for a wake, 'cause I have seen dead people in both those states before) who had their neck twisted and blood coming out and shit, would I react the same way? I want to imagine I wouldn't freeze up and try to help if I could, and if I couldn't, cover the body, but I don't know. I know I'm all into PE and there are lots of pictures and images of dead people on their albums and shit, but even that bothers me to a certain degree.

I was eating a chicken sandwich today, and started to think about veins for blood, and how I was eating meat that once had veins in it, and how the chicken was once alive, and I started getting really grossed out. If we eat meat (and wear leather, like I do), we should be able to look at an animal being slaughtered for our sustenance. I have a soft spot for cats (they are my favorite animal), but I've watched movies where animal killings happen, and it really bothers me. And I feel kind of guilty about this. If I was a vegetarian, I might have the right to turn away from animals being killed, but since I am not, I really have not such privilege.

Brideshead Revisited

I just read the funniest line (eva) and I probably made my roommate think I'm a lunatic, because its 2:15 in the morning and I'm in my boxer-briefs laughing like a freak:

We were joined by a Belgian Futurist, who lived under the, I think, assumed name of Jean de Brissac la Motte, and claimed the right to bear arms in any battle anywhere against the lower classes.

Anyone who has never read Evelyn Waugh should really get one of his books, because it will be fairly serious story and you will just come across these lines that are so scathingly hilarious and beautiful. I really don't often laugh out loud to things I read in books, but I think that has happen four or five times so far with this book. (Don't worry, I haven't stopped with "Jude The Obscure". I just wanted to read something a little more light-hearted).