nixe

Triclops!

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:34:32 -0700

I've had a rich summer of music this year; Dresden Dolls at the Fillmore...Camper Van Beethoven's 25th anniversary show also at the Fillmore - with the Catheads opening (a highlight!)...the Symphony at Dolores Park...the Buckets reunion show at the DuNord (for me, that show was like the high school reunion everyone should have)...all so much fun and filled with such great energy.

Yet the one that prompts me to write is the Triclops! show that I had the privilege to witness this last Friday night at the Hemlock Tavern.

Triclops! played last of four bands. It was worth the wait. They took to the stage and proceeded to take over the small room with a vengeance. The lead singer, John, is mesmerizing. His vocal effects are clear and deliberate. His stage presence is singularly unique. Getting down to business - first thing - he duct taped a flashlight to his microphone. The flashlight is such a simple prop, but he integrated it perfectly into the performance. In the middle of the first song, he stepped off the stage and crowd surfed the audience. The flashlight helped to keep track of where he was - it gave definition to what could have been a melee - it's unsatisfying when you aren't quite sure what's going on, and the flashlight totally took care of the issue. He washed back and forth across the audience seemingly effortlessly, maintaining his vocals as he literally walked upside down across the ceiling with the audience's support.

Bassist Larry Boothroyd (who I've seen with Victim's Family in past years) is mind bogglingly accurate and succinct in his playing. In combination with guitarist Christian Beaulieu's vicious, effects laden decorations and the powerhouse backing from drummer Phil, this band is poised for acclaim.

My favorite part were the flashlights, however. John had two...the one duct taped to the mike and another that he integrated into his remarkable physical performance. He was having a hard time keeping it switched on at one point, so he just stuck the thing into his mouth, held the switch on with his teeth and used his tongue to waggle it back and forth across the audience during a guitar solo. It was an honor to see such comfortable and connected performers, and an utter pleasure to hear such intentionally driving music. I can't wait to see them again.

Early Morning Thoughts

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 07:22:36 -0700

What is an internet troll? The Wikipedia definition of an internet troll is kept well up to date. I wonder, though, where is the line drawn between a troll and a simple curmudgeon?

Various forums that I contribute to have strict guidelines that deal with this issue. Basically, if a contributor does not provide useful discussion in a supportive and community oriented manner, they are banned with some warning. Some sites are more exclusive than others; it depends on the culture of the site as defined by the users.

As one who is fascinated by the ways that humanity has formed various types of communities and subcultures throughout history, I am in a state of continuous awe through the glorious examples that are offered throughout the internet. The common thread throughout my observations (both internet and real life) is that a community is as strong as the people who define it.

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One thing I always do before I post (or email) is I ask myself; would I say this to this person's face?

I frequent a local coffee shop here in my town on an almost daily basis and the owner and I enjoy an ongoing rapport. On the internet, I rarely get the opportunity to see the face of the user with whom I am interacting. One trick I use as a self check I've privately termed "the coffee shop owner"; what if I walked into his place of business and made this statement during the course of our small interaction?

How would the coffee shop owner react? How would the impact register on his face? How would it affect my future morning adventures as I retrieve my soy hot chocolate every morning?

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I'm going to go ask him right now...he's French...perhaps the French definition of an internet troll varies from the American. In the meantime, any other thoughts?

TED

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:05:59 -0700

Okay, I'll break it to you gently (well, no, I won't); I stopped watching mainstream television after 911. The news and commercials just became unbearably, audaciously offensive. They were probably that way before 911, but for some reason, that was when it became obvious to me.

Not watching television on a regular basis has actually been incredibly freeing as a lifestyle choice. I write a lot more and read a lot more and go for more hikes and know all of my neighbors and take a lot more time to listen to their life stories, not to mention I see a lot more live music! I rent series on occasion and watch them at my leisure...The Sopranos, Deadwood, Weeds. (I didn't make it ten minutes into Rome, and there is nothing new on the horizon, so if anyone has any recommendations...)

While I am waiting for the latest somewhat intelligent, hopefully fairly non predictable television series to find it's way to me, the TED talks have become my newest sitcom. Witty, intelligent, oftentimes sexy thinkers talking about witty, intelligent and oftentimes sexy ideas.

Check it out.

Flock

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:56:41 -0700

Whew, I've finally found some time to take a deep breath and write about Jason Freeman's Flock in presentation with the Rova Saxophone Quartet. See the video here.

Franciscan Monk and I headed down south to the Black Box Theatre at MACLA in San Jose, early June. Flock was being presented in correlation with the highly lauded inaugural Zero1 Festival in downtown SJ. We exchanged our tickets at the door for baseball hats with glowing plastic half baseballs attached to the top. The room was darkened and a screen with an animation of a grid hung over the stage. Jason Freeman and Mark Godfrey were seated behind three monitors like dual Wizards of Oz.

Franciscan Monk with a glowing baseball hat upon his head.

Initially the audience was encouraged to go up front to a rectangularly taped floor space. As the flock gathered, it soon became apparent that the glowing lights moving across the grid were animations of the plastic baseballs atop our heads. Cameras hung from the ceiling tracked the locations and movements of each individual.

The Flock.

The verbal introduction of the piece was awkward...Flock is a piece that speaks for itself. I don't think one is capable of truly understanding it unless one delves into the experience firsthand. Yeah, sure, the concept sounds pretty cool: "In Flock, music notation, electronic sound, and video animation are all generated in real time based on the locations of musicians, dancers, and audience members as they move and interact with each other." But to actually get out there and move in a connected space with mindblowing musicians like the Rova Saxophone Quartet and tounderstand on an intrinsic level that you are actually shaping the creation of the music...that your body and movements are an integral part of what you are hearing...well, it's a singular experience.

AND there were dancers! As part of the intro, the dancers choreographed within a clearly defined space in correlation with the musicians to facilitate a deeper comprehension of how the piece worked on a technical level.

The second stage of the performance involved dancers inviting willing audience members to involve themselves in the unfolding alchemy of the dance with the music, enabling audience members to take turns, interact with one another anonymously in a communal setting, and giving them a chance to participate as much or as little as they pleased.

I stood back for a while and watched Freeman and Godfrey manipulate the notation sequences, listening to how the music changed, absorbing the basic communal composition. It is notable that although Freeman and Godfrey have a certain amount of control over what the computers put out, Rova, the dancers and the audience exercised equivalent influence over what was being created.

The four members of Rova have played together for over twenty years and communicate seemingly effortlessly on a musical level. I cannot imagine a better pairing with the Flock application. Each musician had an lcd screen mounted on the front of their sax - marching band style - with the notation generated from the movements of the audience and dancers streaming across. Each player occupied a different line on the grid, each translation separately affected by the movements of the individual glowing plastic balls on our heads.

By the time I decided to go up, I had conceived a dubious strategy. Instead of following the dancers through a guided choreography, I danced my own preconceived choreography through each of the musician's realm and was rewarded with a gorgeous uptempo and heightened intricacy in the musical tradeoffs between the Quartet. I discovered that when I moved across the back of the rectangle in a zig zag motion, the musicians responded by moving to the center of the rectangle, forming a circle and trading off more diverse rhythmic complexities.

It left me breathless, as one who loves music unequivocally...to be able to take an active part in the creation of new music, replete with fine musicians and a like minded community. Not to mention the plastic glowing half baseball cherry on top. Thanks, Jason Freeman, for finding and sharing the joy in being part of the Flock!

These guys

Mon, 26 May 2008 07:46:59 -0700

I am rendered helpless by their cuteness...as I continue to work on my 1, 2, 3, 4...omg up to 10 pages so far final paper on A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen.

Finding a happy balance between the anarcho-primitivist and the Brechtian punk cabaret!

Groupthink

Wed, 14 May 2008 07:12:45 -0700

Usually I agree with Mark Morford wholeheartedly. His column today...not so much.

I haven't thought deeply enough about the article yet, but my main issue with Morford is that of devaluing "groupthink." Social networking is time consuming, no doubt about that. The social cohesion factors are arguable. Without face to face contact, power structures are easily manipulated.

But it's a start towards a necessary change. People are interacting instead of isolating. It's encouraging global interaction. Providing alternative viewpoints by the very nature of the medium. The way I see it is that it's a positive step for a culture that has been sucked dry by the boob tube for too long.

This is my base first impression. I haven't viewed his links yet. Placeholder for future thoughts a la TCC : )

*** Wow. Just watched the Shirky link. Definitely worth the fifteen minutes.

Map of Humanity

Sun, 04 May 2008 09:36:45 -0700

Where do you dwell, mostly?

I was surprised at how much time I spend in the land of Wisdom. There are many days I ought to be ferrying over to the land of Reason.

cultural implications

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:39:30 -0700

And, twenty years later I find myself wondering; what is the backstory here?

quiet night

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:21:43 -0700

There is a tomcat that deigns to live with me. He's an indoor outdoor cat and he parties hard. He brought a hummingbird into the house the other day and dropped it, still alive. Man, has anyone ever tried to catch a panicked hummingbird in the house?

He's stretched across my arm, paws splayed, wet nose tucked under my wrist, purring loudly, oblivious to his own eminent stinkiness. I wonder what he's been rolling in and perhaps he shouldn't be in my bed as I surf youtube for '80's videos like this one:

O, Roddy Frame's leather pants...

I choose interesting role models

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 22:11:35 -0700

The new Amoeba Video Gallery is rich. Check it out. Not only are there Fuzz artists - Gore Gore Girls, and Tom Morello and (who'd I miss?) Featured is one of my absolute favorites and a major role model; Kristin Hersh. I happened to catch this particular performance right after a life altering heartbreak. It fit right in. Kristin's music is transcendent. She breaks right through the lie - cleans it out, clears it up.

Kristin also has an amazing website through which she is exemplifying a new approach to disseminating her music sans the industry.

hip hop

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:44:48 -0700

In the interest of understanding more deeply what the hell is going on around me, I have begun to scratch the surface of hip hop.

The language is pretty intense. The lyrics are too, in a totally different way. I am impressed with some of the fresh insights I am hearing.

So far I haven't found so many female hip hop artists here...still looking, but any recommendations?

Busy Day

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:23:55 -0700

Yes, still procrastinating the Eumenides essay. But getting it done nonetheless...

OMG.

Has anyone checked out Twitter?

Sample.

Much potential for hilarity, but for writers, a fairly useful way of collating all those insanely amazing story ideas that come up when you have nothing to write them down into. You can Twitter from your cell phone. Most of my writer friends carry a mini recorder, but the Twitter seems to have a lot of potential.

Jello Washes It All Away

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:35:41 -0700

This was written on my super secret blog after the Tool show I attended a couple of months ago.

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The overwhelmingly Jungian based images from the Tool show last night stimulated a peculiar state of mind...well, the images and perhaps the abundant smoke. The images reduced my psychological defenses enough ...(well, and perhaps the smoke) for Jello's appearance to impact me beyond just being surprised that he actually did make an appearance.

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I first saw Tool at some sort of gigantic celebratory music festival around 1997 at the Concord Pavilion. The band everyone else was there to see was The Orb.

We sat back on the sidelines, drank overpriced beer piss and bemusedly watched everyone mob the stage for The Orb. After their set, we were astonished to see a large proportion of the crowd disperse. As a result of the mass exodus, we were honored to see Tool from the twelfth row, empty seats all around.

It was a totally minimal show. Maynard sported a long mohawk and a Daniel Ash-ian white dress. There were a couple of medium sized screens featuring Tool's famed graphic footage, mostly from previously released videos, but the band was really the focal point, relatively unknown. They were supporting Aenima and Undertow, and A Perfect Circle was a gleam in someone's eye.

It was the best large venue rock show I had ever seen.On the ride home I remember being limp with a post cathartic bliss.

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My experience of Tool, at that time, was definitely about exploring the darker sides of human nature ( i.e. my own). It was the lyrics that initially caught my attention. After some more definitive listening sessions, I was utterly enthralled with the driving bass (that just caught me right in the tummy) coupled with the backwards syncopations of the drums.

The lyrical images combined with the raw power of the music both echoed and gave a soundtrack to common generational thought processes at the time - my own and those of others in my circle. Tool was a massive community builder on a deeply organic subcultural level. They enlightened and freed us from both the plastic remnants of eighties new wave and the recent devastation of grunge. They introduced us to a new level of psyche based production.

Tool's lyrics and images have been referred to as Jungian; death and sex and self destruction, enlightenment through devastation, cathartic - washing it all away. They illustrate archetypal contrast. Stark images of internal motion, equally suggestive and literal. The graphic images and subsequent messages spoke to a definition of the nineties as I experienced them. Does anyone remember the term "slacker"?

Observing these images from my current point of view is odd. I found them difficult to watch at this latest show. I wondered what the millennials in the audience were experiencing, and how those experiences compared to mine. I wondered if I was discomfited because I have left behind some of that scab picking. Recalling it so viscerally, again, made me kinda squirmy.

The nineties were a more hardcore painful period of time; not only for me personally, but the things that were happening worldwide, as well as in our own government would still be considered reprehensible today on a variety of levels. Our cultural propaganda was taking on a new shape and it wasn't pretty ponies pooping rainbows. I suppose that type of change can be held true for any era, but the nineties were a particularly harsh growth cycle.

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I lost myself in the music last night, nonetheless...happy to toss out old neuroses. Tool is gorgeous, powerful stuff. They haven't lost a bit of strength. It was thrilling in a different way, to hear it from who I am now. It was a bit of reaffirmation that yeah, I did survive and I still do, scars and scabs and all. It's all still falling down and getting up, just falling down a little more gracefully and getting up faster, with more focus.

When I move to Tool, it's a weird sort of dance, a sort of backward, a bit of forward, a slide of the head moving sideways. A response to the twisted syncopations; an opening of self to the power of the noise.

I will admit that the current resurgence of eighties music has put a tiny bee in my bonnet. I love Haircut 100 as much as the next girl, but there is a time and a place for those sounds and I am telling you, it ain't at Whole Foods. I've been grocery shopping to "Hungry Like the Wolf" and "Poison Arrow" like a cat with my ears laid back and there are definitely days when I just plain want to spit in the heirloom tomatoes.

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But Jello.
Oh, Jello.
Last night, Jello washed it all away.
Jello gets it.

I sang along; I cannot believe I remember all the words to Holiday in Cambodia. I simply could not restrain myself from jumping up and down. I busted out into spontaneous headbanging. I remembered The Quake FM and Alex Bennett in the morning. I remembered KROQ and Rodney Bingenheimer from time spent in Orange County.

And all of a sudden I got it; this is why eighties music is back. Eighties music is snarky, tongue in cheek, yet brilliantly hopeful. Eighties music makes you dance. Eighties music is all about experimentation and discovery and finding the laugh when everything seems like it is going to hell. It's about being a rock solid individual, no matter how silly it may seem (remember the guy with the hair from Flock of Seagulls?)

Perhaps we are beginning to break away from some of the oppression that our culture has been feeling these past almost eight years (and counting!) Perhaps it's time for a bit of hope.

That's one thing we've always been able to count on Jello for; a telling of the truth, a bit of hope.

Grooving

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:37:13 -0700

When I SHOULD be working on my darned essay on the Eumenides. Four pages illuminating my teacher (who already has a PhD on the subject) of the ins and outs of Aeschylus' propagandist techniques as instrumental in retraining post Neolithic Greek society to accept a more patriarchal way of life.

I found this instead ; )

A little education for the soul, as it were.

childhood memories

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 18:08:59 -0800

Animal always been my favorite Muppet.

Check out Animal's expression over Buddy Rich's shoulder. That was me.

Friday at the DeYoung

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 11:06:06 -0800

For the San Franciscans around here, the DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park is open on Friday nights until 8:45 and features some amazing local music acts. These events have a real community feel and the acts have been phenomenal. Friday February 15th features a performance by DJ "The Operator", a spoken word performance by Jello Biafra and music from Penelope Houston (does anyone remember The Avengers?)

Info here.