Monday, November 24, 2008

Expose Yourself to Children

"We watched Shopgirl."---Jacob Stewart
"Was it good?"---Alex Daboub
"Well, Steve Martin is the Lord of the Pit, he's the Devil."---J.S.
"So, not good."---A.D.
"No, no listen, he's the blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things, encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous dancers, and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a demonic flute held in nameless paws"---J.S.
"Sounds OK."---A.D.




The other day I noticed one of Hunter's old posts which read:

God, it's so weird to find out when bands are right-wingers. I mean, I know this happens from time to time, but it's still a bit disconcerting nevertheless. This is particularly egregious, however: playing a party for Tom DeLay? WTF?? It certainly doesn't dissuade me from my stance that "All Star" is the Worst Song Ever Recorded.



I then wrote Hunter a response by electronic-mail on my machine which read:
smashmouth, ha. i think the general impulse to play music originates in a fascist part of the brain so denoting which bands are right-wing is redundant. some bands may be liberal in their off-stage lives, but the desire to play music on a stage is right-wing to begin with. fascism and conservatism are generally anti-intellectual by nature, as is rock and roll music. maybe i'll blog about it.
alex


And I did. My ideal rock and roll show involves me standing on a stage with a guitar. I plug it in and stuff, and then I take a screwdriver and painstakingly, methodically dismantle it piece by piece. I put all of the pieces in a plastic bucket as I take them off. Then I slowly put all of it back together again. Someone could do a performance art thing like this, and the NY Times would give it a hundred boners in a review.
The other thing is that GG Allin was sort of a genius in an accidental, demented sort of way. He took what most musicians pretend to do and took it to the absolute logical limit. Some rock and roll pretends to be out of control and dangerous. He just gave up on playing music and physically assaulted the audience. He was also an absolute idiot and genuinely insane. At least he wasn't pretending though.

"Adventures of Sherlock Holmes"---Still watching it.




6 comments:

Me said...

music is evil!

ergo said...

oh shit i should check that e-mail account

ergo said...

i want to play devil's advocate with you here, alex, but i don't really disagree with you, fundamentally. at the risk of sounding like a reactionary/paleo-rockist though, i guess i would argue that intellectualism isn't the only virtue worth pursuing in art (or politics), even if it may be what i value most. i think. but you weren't arguing that.

does the nytimes review performance art?

i give this post 4 out of 5 boners.

Alex Daboub said...

yeah, I don't really really think it's bad that it's anti-intellectual. It just is, that's all.

Anonymous said...

What about the self-agrandizing nature of performing music? For me that's the worst thing about people in bands.
Fuck rock music!
Does this mean we can boo Hannah and Annecy's cheesy indie rock band? Can I at least throw something at whoever it is who convinced them to be in the band?

Alex Daboub said...

Yes.