Author: substitute

nope

The Holy Grail of My Musical Past

When I was in high school I read a magazine called Op. It was published in the Northwest somewhere (Olympia?) and it covered experimental, underground, punk, new wave, and free jazz music among others. They would review damn near anything sent in, from real record label stuff to home made cassettes. Between them and the New Music Distribution Catalog, and KPFK’s late night radio shows, I learned all about the music that was hidden. Henry Cow, Pere Ubu, Clock DVA, Cabaret Voltaire, Joy Division, Suicide, Chrome, Eno, Carla Bley, Glenn Branca, all that crazy crap. Heady stuff for a young teen me.

Anyway, I bought records through the mail based on their reviews or the ads in the magazine. One of the records I got, for $1 or some fire sale price, was a 7” record obviously by a staffer there. It was on “Mr. Brown Records” and the artist was “Anonymous”. The two songs were “Snake Attack” and “Corporate Food”. It was great stuff! Weird, marginal electronica done on no budget with a great sense of humor.

I lost track of this record over the years. I don’t think I have it, even in packed-away boxes. “Corporate Food” turned up on an anthology called Let Them Eat Jellybeans which is pretty common, and on a few other comps. “Snake Attack”, however, disappeared.

I recently decided it was time to find it again. I loved that song! Menacing paranoiac mutterings about the snakes coming, scifi movie style vocals about the snaaaaake attaaaaaack, and occasional hilarious break-ins from a supermarket PA asking for Customer Service on Aisle 9. Who could beat it? But I found out that this 7” is now selling for fifty bucks, because it was the first record from Steve Fisk. Fisk, who must have been an Op writer, later on went to be the Svengali of Northwest Rock and produced or engineered a load of Nirvana records, etc., as well as doing his own stuff, and is a superstar nowadays. Sucks to be me, I lost my snake attack!

Soulseek rules, though. Someone had it, and so now do you: Snake Attack (6.4 M mp3).

Oh, and by the way, Op ended with its last lettered issue as it was supposed to, in 1982 or so. I later worked for their successor, Option Magazine, in Los Angeles as an intern. They were assholes with the exception of Richie Unterberger who is now also a superstar.

Keep your ear to the ground keep your eyes peeled if they find you it’s all over.

Double meat? Hmm… let’s see about that

http://www.aclu.org/pizza

Today, our hosting provider at work decided to give the IP address of our great big fileserver machine to another machine, too. For those of you who don’t do this kind of work, that’s like assigning the same phone number to two people. Chaos followed, with earsplitting clown music playing.

Speaking of earsplitting, Tile Guy is currently doing the moldings which involves short loud episodes of sawing at irregular intervals and occasional surprisingly loud bangs. I think I am going insane. There, good, I am insane now.

I’m reading Wendy Kaminer’s Sleeping With Extraterrestrials which is another pretty good but disappointing attack on the New Irrationalism. She has a finer hand and a more sympathetic eye, but it still ends up being 250 pages of Stuff Wendy Can’t Stand, rather than a nice tight organized argument for or against a particular view of the world. I wish she had concentrated more on official insanity like police use of psychics or the acceptance of various mad beliefs in the medical and mental health fields.

And now, I quote the immortal Schwern, who wrote in a haiku about summer years ago:

It’s too fucking hot
Living in a hot, wet sponge
It’s too fucking hot

A distinctive metallic taste in my mouth.

I don’t know whether to be enraged or defeated. Twenty-five years of rejection, another thirty, and then death? A variety of shitty consolation prizes? For every it wouldn’t work, for every I’m not ready, for every you’re a friend, for every sorry I just don’t think so, for every embarrassed shrug I want to throw a punch. Any 17 year old kid in town is ahead of me. I watch generations of friends age past me into stable happy lives and I burn. I’ve always been ugly and gawky and weird and now I’m old on top of it. Go ahead and twist that sneer of distaste into a concerned and friendly supportive smile. I am not fooled, even if you are. Go stick some pretty, well-adjusted boy between your legs if you want but don’t ask me for an avuncular smile; they’re all gone.

I always knew I was Nick Carraway, but I never expected to be Caliban.

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and strops,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

–Wilfred Owen