r.mutt's blog

2/26/06 SUBBACULTCHA like everyone else, i've been wading aimlessly through the youtube archive, which led me to the early nineties: middle period sonic youth, pavement, early beck, and all the rest. ah, the nineties, when underground culture intersected with mainstream culture and, for the most part, didn't care. you had beavis and butthead screaming "try harder" at the television while watching pavement's "cut your hair" video, the riot grrrl press embargo, and, this one is priceless, harmony korine on letterman, a far cry from the sex pistols on bill grundy for sure. a far cry, as well, from the intersections between today's so-called independent culture and the mainstream. today's televised hipsters act as if it's no big deal, as if nothing is at stake when they appear on late night talk shows. in the nineties, there was a clear discomfort as the underground met the mainstream but, nirvana excluded, the mainstream was neither a populist platform for sweeping political declarations nor was it some sort of shangri la that proved you'd made it. and it wasn't, as the vice magazine crowd later had it, a completely nonchalant encounter, a happy accident to be passively and complicitly enjoyed. you can see it in harmony korine's body language: this isn't right, but i'm here and i have no idea what to do. 2/24/06 SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: THE ELVIS OF CULTURAL THEORY though i had my reservations about the film, the ridiculous poster was reason enough to go see žižek! i suspected that it was going to be like derrida in that a camera follows žižek around, capturing žižek walking down the street, žižek getting some coffee, žižek scratching his ass waiting for the light to change, žižek reading things he finds on the ground, etc. or else it was going to be one of those bullshit leftist intellectual pat-yr-own-back-fests like that awful howard zinn docu-bio i saw during a political documentaries double feature at the pacific cinemathčque. and, to be sure, there were charlatans throughout žižek! forcing themselves to laugh in order to perform some kind of intellectuality (which is somehow even more insufferable than the ostentatious performance of intelligence). there were also idiots who only laughed when žižek swore or made some off-hand crude remark but, as žižek himself would say, that kind of response is preferable to the former; it's more honest. really though, it was nothing like the self-righteous zinn biography nor what i read and heard about derrida, which i refuse to see. žižek is "the elvis of cultural theory" and "an academic rock star" as much because he's an extremely engaging speaker and personality as for the philosophical insights of his writing. i won't make a value judgement on this phenomenon, but žižek takes it on in the film. he hates it. but the film was enjoyable and its deliberate construction (žižek talking to the camera while naked in bed, žižek talking to the camera in the attic surrounded by old toilets, etc.), i think, was parodic. in parts, this construction lost its self-consciousness and was merely moronic, but it was, on the whole, a worthwhile expenditure of seventy-five minutes and five dollars. žižek didn't directly address the howard zinn biography — žižek, notorious consumer of and writer on popular culture though he is, would never sink that low — but a passage from the film speaks to it. žižek, a guest on some nbc news magazine show to pimp his book the sublime object of ideology, was trying to explain to the host, whose sole interest in the book was its difficulty and obscurity, how our "tolerance" is ideological. žižek: the old totalitarian father would tell his child on sunday that he has to go visit his grandmother. the child obeys his father. the 'postmodern dad' says to his son, 'your grandmother loves you very much, but you only have to visit your grandmother if you really want to.' this is even more totalitarian: you not only have to visit your grandmother, but you have to like it. host: so you prefer the old [gestures forcefully with his fist] dad? žižek: yes. it's more honest. in the same way, the howard zinn biography works to glorify zinn (a jingoistic idiot if i ever heard one speak) through guilt. unlike those no good french guys (read: gays), howard zinn is committed politically. howard zinn doesn't merely write theory (actually, he doesn't write theory at all), howard zinn taught at an african-american college. howard zinn was involved in student demonstrations. and so on. howard zinn is great because we are selfish jerks. and this is how the consumer left mobilises political activity. (of course, there is also the matter of the viewer's self-identification with howard zinn. i admire howard zinn. i emphathise with his sacrifices. i am a good person. only an idiot would not admire howard zinn. i am a smart person. and, at its basest level, i am not watching a friends rerun. i am watching this movie. i am a smart person.) but for all of žižek's dissing of the consumer left, pointless deconstructionist practices, the academic culture that turns fredric jameson, judith butler, homi bhabha, and, indeed, žižek himself into superstars, and the tendency among leftist intellectuals to attend talks by these superstars for, in žižek's words, "answers, political advice, or some sort of spiritual guidance" (while i would imagine that a good deal of the film's audience represents the latter two camps, if not all three, and so this move is clever, ironic, etc., you're preaching to the converted here, slavoj), i came out of the theatre suspicious. in the film, žižek in his casual manner explains grander questions concerning philosophy, lacan, and ideology in clever and easily apprehensible ways and i wonder if these explications and neat analogies are just easy answers. there was a funny scene where žižek is at his computer and you can see on his bookshelf behind the screen spanish for dummies. and i'm left wondering if žižek! was "major concepts in theory for dummies" and, if it was, whether this is necessarily a bad thing. i don't have an answer at the moment (ask terry eagleton). actually, my question leads me to further questions. firstly, can we distinguish between explaining theory in a way that turns it into an easily consumable soundbyte on the one hand and explanations that de-obfuscate on the other (i.e., is "major concepts in theory for dummies" the same thing as "major concepts in theory for charlatans")? then, if the latter is indeed possible, why theoretical language? which leads me to wonder, starting from barthes' contention that so-called "plain speech" is always ideological, on what levels philosophical and/or theoretical language is ideological and in which ways this kind of language is necessary to its discourse. and, finally, i must ask what kinds of consumption and what kinds of reification are always at play in the engagement with philosophy and theory. in the film, žižek claimed that philosophy is a modest undertaking. it does not, he contends, ask (nor would it be so bold as to answer) "what is truth?" rather, philosophical inquiry asks "what do you mean when you say that something is true?" it seemed too easy and too obvious. there was probably not a single person in that theatre who had not come to the same conclusion before. and i suspect that, here, žižek! finds a common ground with the pat-yr-own-back aesthetic. because the viewer already knows what žižek is telling him or her, the viewer precedes žižek. in a way, the viewer here is žižek. so, slavoj, what does it mean when you say, "what do you mean when you say something is true"? none of this, of course, should draw the reader's attention away from the sickeningly vain, self-congratulatory nature of this blog entry. i may not have seen his movie, but i've read enough of derrida and the deconstructionists who followed him (in the film, žižek only somewhat jokingly characterised the whole lot, excluding kristeva, as totalitarian in their wholesale acceptance of derrida's ideas) to dutifully ask what it means when i say, "what does it mean when you say, 'what do you mean when you say something is true'?" 2/21/06 TELLING MYSELF ABOUT THE RABBITS the dream, it seems, is dead. because i have this psychological disorder that renders me completely unable to let any thought that crosses my mind go unread, i'm reproducing my (admittedly somewhat maudlin) review of secret mommy's recent album very rec below. EDIT: nevermind. i jumped to conclusions. the dream is not dead. the review is available here. POSTED BY GODFRE AT 9:45 PM   COMMENTS 2/19/06 THEY CALL YOU "LORD ANTHONY" BUT HEY, IT KIND OF SUITS YOU ANYWAY move over stars of track and field, there's a new twinkly tweemo band named after a belle and sebastian song. i hereby introduce to the world dylan in the movies, featuring, weirdly, tanya donnelly. whatever. as long as the tweemoaners stay away from my yet unused but trademarked side-project name "take your carriage clock and the shove its," i don't care if boy least likely to change their name to "boy done wrong again" and death cab for cutie become "judy and the dream of whoredom." ADDENDUM (2/20/06) speaking of emos on myspace, here's a band called :(. the band, whose name is pronounced "colonopenbracket," plays formulaic emo with that annoying vagrant/post-vagrant era singing style (how would you characterise it? it's not wounded in the sdre/christie front drive/boys life way, but it's also not quite mall-punk ŕ la a simple plan). the catch, though, is that they sing this mall-emo over cutesy, 8-bit nintendo-sounding casio keyboard lines, so it sounds like bis or maybe that freezepop band fronted by nature's greatest mistake, the angst-filled suburban american teenager at the mall. and this band is scottish, which makes me lose just a little faith in society. all that said, a few of you will absolutely love :( and you know exactly who you are. (think: an even more hot topic-y postal service; incidentally, do kids still shop at hot topic?) my only source of amusement in these aimless myspace travels is that they call this music "emoticore." it would be funnier, though, if the band weren't actually emo. 2/17/06 IT'S OKAY TO EAT FISH 'COS THEY DON'T HAVE ANY FEELINGS disgusting shit that reminds me why i am not a lawyer: "And it's right to assume," the ruling went on, according to ANSA, "that at the time of the encounter with the suspect her personality, from a sexual point of view, was much more developed than what one might normally expect from a girl of her age." The suspect's lawyer, Andrea Biccheddu, defended the ruling, saying the episode between his client and the girl "didn't provoke any trauma," because the girl had had so many sexual partners. first of all, am i right in assuming that we're talking about forced entry rape and not statutory here? "sexual violence and threats" is a bit ambiguous when pertaining to a fourteen year old. and, secondly, does differentiating between statutory and forced entry matter? she was fourteen years old. this is a pretty fucking slippery slope and italy's women better watch out before they institutionalise the age-old, unwritten it's-okay-to-rape-"sluts" rule as a hard and fast law. COMMENTS i recall that a number of years ago an italian judge acquitted an accused rapist on the grounds that the woman had been wearing a short skirt. so the "white boy" mentality may already be pretty engrained. POSTED BY JOHANNES ON 2/19/06 2/16/06 A WOMAN MUST HAVE MONEY AND A ROOM OF HER OWN IF SHE IS TO WRITE FICTION i am here to alert the masses that i (and not r.mutt, whose blog this is; i merely ghost-write it) have found what i have long been looking for: a space to publish my music writing. now, i've had these kinds of spaces before, lots of them (including this one). but the column they gave me at this space both allows me to do whatever the hell i want, no matter how theoretical or uninteresting or unreadable or pointless, and, presumably, gives me an audience. on the latter, we might just have to wait and see. they also give me much-needed money, which i need to trade for food. again, my hopes are tempered, this time by the fact that the amount of money i used to get for every ten words i wrote i now earn for an entire article. that's not going to put much food on the table. now, excited as i am to i have my own logo (at last, a logo of one's own) and as happy as i am about the marxist imagery, i do have a quibble. is it just me, or does the logo (pictured above) totally not get the joke of the source image (reproduced below) that i provided? i'm not trying to be an ingrate or anything. i'm just sayin' is all. (for those in the dark, my image is a play on the image below, whose history is explained here. it should be obvious, then, why superimposing the slogan onto a four track is funny or, rather, it should be obvious why it is funny to me.) POSTED BY GODFRE AT 9:45 PM   COMMENTS 2/14/06 WELL I GUESS THIS IS GROWING UP ca. ten years ago, i used to stop listening to the album version of "the diamond sea" at about the eight minute mark, when the "song" part of the song ended. my attention span then being even shorter than it is now, i almost forked over twenty dollars for an import copy of the "diamond sea" single (this was, of course, before the time of internet file sharing). i went back to the song today because i could think of no greater love song than the one thurston wrote for kim when they got married. after listening to it all the way through while making and then eating breakfast, i've been skipping to the eight minute mark and listening to the remaining twelve minutes of aimless chord strumming that turns into a remarkably pretty wall of feedback and amps being mistreated. that was sonic youth growing up and learning to make subdued, almost ambient freeform noise that only makes your ears bleed if you turn it up loud enough (which i've been doing). but this is also me growing up and not holding the fact that "the diamond sea" isn't evol and, more specifically, "expressway to yr skull," against it. i similarly made peace with silver session (for jason knuth) this week. i hesitate to make the comparison because the artist would surely bristle at the inference that his work is on any level "pretty," but what i've come to appreciate in late-period sonic youth is something i love in my friend johannes silentio's most recent demos ("bass 'drone' 1," "bass drone 2," and "speakers dying," as well as parts of last year's brilliant "symphony one, first movement, adagio molto e cantabile"). sometimes radical music doesn't need to flay your mind or smash your head on the punk rock or, rather, it can do these things in less obvious ways, for example the way "bass drone 2" makes your left headphone vibrate against your ear, the way "speakers dying" makes your skull buzz when you listen to it on headphones, or how, with proper speakers, the second half of "the diamond sea" fills a room in a way that the noisy section in the first half can't. all that said, the minute i start extolling the neo-furniture music of steve reich or philip glass, kill me. 2/11/06 MP3 BLOG-BY-NUMBERS you kids have yr own bittorrent clients, limewires, and soul seekers, so download what you will. here is a list of songs that are currently in heavy rotation here (there are no pan-asian supermakets down in rochester, so you can't buy golden boy peanuts). i will, however, say that these songs are sequenced to fit nicely on an eighty minute cd-r. young marble giants "credit in the straight world" so many things came together to make young marble giants one of the most interesting bands of the early eighties: a fascination with reggae, a hatred of the sound of guitars, new technology angst, punk is dead angst, and maggie thatcher angst. but then a lot of bands of that period shared these influences. how and why, then, young marble giants? because they were so much smarter than stiff little fingers and the clash. patrik fitzgerald "work, rest, play, reggae" like ymg, i can only talk about patrik fitzgerald in negative terms. in this case, he's not billy bragg. he's not a jingoist, he's not a knuckle dragger, and he never gave up what would become known as indiepop to rely on the rhetorical authenticity of i-mean-it-man-'cos-i'm-that-kind-of-man folk music ("a new england" —> "greetings to the new brunette"). the clash "straight to hell" the one and only sign of life on combat rock. jimmy cliff "time will tell" when i was working at the college radio station, the resident reggae dude on staff was adamant, despite my protestations that the harder they come was an essential album, that the music library be pure and devoid of jimmy cliff records because "jimmy cliff isn't real reggae." well, he was right, at least pertaining to this song, which is actually gospel blues from jamaica. the nerves "when you find out" i recently rescued the standells' first LP from a thrift store for the small price of fifty cents and everytime i feel like putting it on, i listen to "when you find out" instead. who knew they were still making classic nuggets pop songs in 1976? paul westerberg "postcards from paradise" the hidden track at the end of his stereo album, paul westerberg turns john hughes movie theme material (the original band, flesh for lulu, also did the song "i go crazy" from the underrated some kind of wonderful) into something approximating the sonics ripping through a new york dolls song. westerberg used the tape cutting off before the end of the song conceit (the best known example of this might be dinosaur's own eighties british pop cover, "just like heaven") throughout stereo, but only on "postcards from paradise" does he achieve the sense of haphazard, first-take immediacy he was going for and which made the replacements so relevant during the time of john hughes soundtracks (though i should note, of course, that the replacements' tepid contribution to the say anything soundtrack in no way compares to the awesome pretty in pink soundtrack). josie cotton "johnny, are you queer?" if you were looking for a nineteen-eighties suburban california retro-sixties pop song to top "vacation," where else would you turn to but valley girl? young and sexy "without your love" the hidden gem on yet another otherwise unremarkable young and sexy album. usually, young and sexy come off like the ugliest, most snivelling and pretentious anglophiles in all of british columbia. in their best moments, they try to sound like the inimitable colorifics. "without your love" is the closest they've ever come, 6/8 time and all. belle and sebastian "simple things" on "lazy line painter jane," stuart murdoch approached the high (melo)drama of his hero morrissey. only once more did he ever reach that height, here on the standout track of belle and sebastian's very own combat rock. morrissey "why don't you find out for yourself" the barely audible backing vocals panned in the left and right channels that replace morrissey's usual over-orchestration make the song. the lame acoustic guitar and hand drums are actually necessary to draw out how perfectly the backing vocals replace all those strings and all that bathos. jeff hanson "as honest as a liar can be" speaking of bathos, jeff hanson uses every cheap singer-songwriter hook and trick to make this song my guiltiest pleasure ever. that the texture of the backing vocals on this song (as well as on most of the rest of jeff hanson's first album) makes me shiver almost makes me okay with listening to this song way more often than i should. ted leo "dancing in the dark" this acoustic rendition of "dancing in the dark" from a WFMU studio session only works (read: escapes its springsteeny cheesiness) when ted forgets the "sitting 'round cryin' over a broken heart" line and starts laughing. (scroll to the bottom of this page) the supremes "(he's) seventeen" the lyrics to this song make zero sense to me, but it's one of the finest pop songs of any period. and it's not like "leader of the pack" is a nobel laureate. tender trap "face of '73" amy fletcher, who three and a half years ago attempted to be the new new kylie, can release the shallowest crap in the world and she'd still be my hero. this isn't that, but it's also more parts her failed attempt at becoming the new old kylie (cf. the early dance-pop version of "wrap your arms around me" on the b-side to the 1988 amelia fletcher can you keep a secret 12") than heavenly vs. satan. ladytron "destroy everything you touch" this might actually be the shallowest crap in the world, but i love singing the chorus of "morning train" along to it. the clean "diamond shine" i want to give the clean credence for doing most of the great things bands as diverse as the pastels and stereolab did, only seven to ten years earlier than they did it. but, really, shouldn't it be enough to just enjoy a great band on its own terms? besides, television personalities did most of it even earlier. saturday looks good to me "lift me up" on saturday looks good to me's new b-sides and rarities compilation sound on sound, there's an early demo of this wonderful katrina-relevant song with a different melody and somewhat different lyrics in the verse. but what makes this song, as well as the early demo of "until the world stops spinning round" on the compilation, is that it sounds like someone is actually singing in an actual room instead of saturday looks good to me's often brilliant but generally overly slick album versions. architecture in helsinki "wishbone" of all the bands mining that whole all-american "hey mickey" thing, it took eight australians to get it right. the go! team "huddle formation" but these british people, for all their ladytronic shallowness, also do "hey mickey" better than le tigre. elton motello "jet boy, jet girl" one of the few things in life that sounds better in english than in french. the flying lizards "money (that's what i want)" it had to be brought to my attention that this was the same song that gordy barry wrote for that early motown band whose name escapes me and that the beatles later covered. twenty years later, chicks on speed pranced around pretending that they were new. shoplifting "cover to cover" shoplifting have joined young people, gang gang dance, and out hud as an exciting, young radical band that has embraced a more legible, listener friendly sound (in this case, it sounds like they really really got into fugazi's the argument and, weirdly, probably got their hands on the reissue of the hot hot heat/red light sting split) but which does such interesting things with it that you don't even care that they totally sold out. d.b.s. "our son, arson" for the last five years, this song has kept me up at night wondering what might have been if d.b.s. had never broken up. johnny thunders "you can't put your arms around a memory" i always liked the sentiment of the strokes' "work hard and say it's easy," but it always seemed too self-satisfied to be meaningful. it takes being so sick on junk you start writing songs about not dying to stay alive to come up with "it doesn't pay to try/all the smart boys know why/it doesn't mean i didn't try/i just never know why/...don't try don't try don't try." r.mutt's diaryland profile tradition and the individual talents' friendster profile r.mutt's shopping list r.mutt blog archives