r.mutt's blog

6/29/07 AY LUV TH' LANGUAGE MEANIES checkit: download thurston moore's "wonderful witches," from trees outside the academy (to be released this september). it's the best song on the album, even though (maybe because) it's very similar in many ways to "jams run free" off the last sonic youth album. but the words thurston sings? well that's just not cool. (still, dig the mascis solo.) the lyrics: here come the language meanies they don't speak a word picture pretty conflicts and they will love yr work i'm not superstitious but maybe i'm losing my mind 'cos i just met these wonderful witches who seem to have captured time mellow realism the pleasures of peace backstages of prison yr wink is my release i'm not here to fuck up but i just wanna say that if you just don't shut up soon i'll have to quit the play here come the language meanies here comes the party line can you say b-e-d spells bed can you say it to my eye i'm not superstitous but maybe i'm losing my faith 'cos i just met these wonderful witches who seem to have captured space here's what he said about the song: I think I'm going to call [the album] heer kum th' language meanies, and it's going to be spelled kind of all weird, but I mean, you can spell it however you want. There's one song on the record that has that line in it, "Here come the language meanies." I'm sort of an archivist of post-war poetry; mimeo poetry and journals and stuff. And I've been involved with that for years. One of my heroes in that scene is the late Ted Berrigan, one of the most significant poets of the St. Mark's Poetry Project, like, the second, third generation school in New York, after Frank O'Hara and that gang, and after Allen Ginsberg and that gang. He was a really interesting dude; he was all about taking the common language of the home and the street and really bringing it into contemporary poetry. He was sort of rejecting language poetry, which is much more academic, and kind of this art object, and it comes very devoid of any kind of emotion. Or, you know, it takes itself away from the human condition, where it becomes object-oriented. I don't know if that's really a valid interpretation of what language poets were up to, but it was just a much stiffer exercise than, say, what people like Ted Berrigan represented. Anyway, I was reading an interview with Berrigan back in the day, and they were asking him about the scene, and he says, "Oh, you've got to be careful of those language meanies," which I thought was a great way of dealing with another discipline. I like the idea of language meanies, and how people sort of look at your work and how you express it and how judgmental they are about it, and how it doesn't really mean anything in the long run. i'll ignore what i think he means by "wonderful witches" and point to what he ended up naming the album, trees outside the academy, which is to say a democratised poetry for all. of course, as thurston himself admits, his characterisation of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E school isn't really fair. but i'm not going to argue about the affective possibilities of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry produced precisely by breaking down the myths of "the human condition" that moore laments, nor am i going to call him out for being a romantic, or anti-intellectual, or misunderstanding what L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E does. no, i'm just going let this one sit and think by myself a bit about what happens when heroes of mine take on other heroes and the hierarchies that arise therefrom, the priorities and real loyalties that i hadn't seen before. 6/26/07 THE CITY ON THE RIVER THERE IS A GIRL WITHOUT A DREAM the newest column by indie yuppie apologist/corporate music sympathiser/enemy of this blog chris dahlen: "Working for the man is good enough for the rest of us. Shouldn't it be good enough for rock stars?" my immediate response: how dare you assume that working for the man is good enough for me, that i'm one of you?, followed quickly by: don't you know who i am? i want yr badge number. give me yr badge number. one of many other responses to him in this space: here. 6/18/07 I COULD ONLY MAKE YOU CRY WITH THESE WORDS/LA LA LA LA LA FATWAH holy shit. "If someone commits suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Muhammad, his act is justified," the minister for religious affairs, Ijaz ul-Haq, told Pakistan's national assembly, according to the translation from Urdu by Reuters. while i obviously think that suicide bombing is a bit of an overreaction, i'm pissed too (for a number of reasons). 6/14/07 I'LL NAME THE FRIENDS THAT CANNOT SUP WITH US/BESIDE A FIRE OF TURF IN TH' ANCIENT TOWER It's art that I love, and when I encountered it, I wept. [...] But why would those things make me weep? [...] I am speaking about art with a rigorously purified formal vocabulary. Could there be an identification of formal purification with affective purification?              — Andrea Fraser, "Why Does Fred Sandback's Work Make Me Cry?"              in Grey Room 22 (Winter 2005), 37-38. 6/09/07 NEUN UND NEUNZIG LUFTBALLONS a sneak preview of the first installment of 2007 monoculture fanclub mailings. it's a two-disc mixtape called 99 minutes, originally recorded at The Space on WRUR, 2/12/07. this version was rerecorded a month later at john's house, produced by him and, nominally, me. tracklisting: >> françoise hardy "ce petit coeur" >> deerhoof "our angel's ululu" >> julie ruin "i wanna know what is" >> atari teenage riot "deutschland must die" >> the zombies "the way i feel inside" >> young marble giants "brand - new - life" >> the blow "fists up" >> yoko ono and john lennon "every man has a woman who loves him" >> kid creole and the coconuts "endicott" >> ramelzee v. k-rob "beat bop" >> the dixie cups "iko iko" >> green day "longview" >> the avengers "amerikan in me" >> dinosaur "feel a whole lot better" >> architecture in helsinki "wishbone" >> the clash "magnificent seven" >> the clash "this is the radio clash" >> gwen stefani "hollaback girl" >> annie "chewing gum" (mylo remix) >> duchess says "black flag" (treu remix) >> yoko ono "walking on thin ice" (spiritualized remix) >> kirsty mac coll "a new england" (extended dance remix) >> talulah gosh "talulah gosh" >> aztec camera "we could write letters" >> the smiths "panic" >> indeep "last night a dj saved my life" >> belle and sebastian "le pastie de la bourgeoisie" >> t-rex "jeepster" SIDE A SIDE B for a limited time only, it's here for the downloading. a week today, it will be gone and you'll have to wait for the hard copies from the fanclub. 6/08/07 HE BUILT THIS CITY actually, he and zöe did. r.mutt's diaryland profile tradition and the individual talents' friendster profile monopöle!'s myspace profile your emily dickinson's facebook profile —————blog archives