Demonstration of latest Quintron invention called THE SINGING HOUSE. This is an analog “drone synth” can be installed into any building in order to provide its inhabitants with a pleasing chord that is constantly changed by the weather. Preliminary studies have show that these soothing sounds can bring mental relaxation and healing to the modern home or institution. The music is actually played by the skies above. No two days sound the same.

Chuck Berry. Photo: Roland Godefroy (CC)

You do? Well in that case you must be a Gee-Bee. Jim Fusilli explains for the Wall Street Journal:

It’s 1955 and you’re in a record shop. The proprietor puts on “Maybellene” by a newcomer named Chuck Berry. You’re enjoying it, but a fellow customer saunters over: “That’s nothing more than Roy Acuff’s ‘Ida Red’ with different words,” he says, pointing out that Acuff cut his track in 1939. “I wouldn’t call that original.”

Or it’s 1963 and you’re listening to “Girl From the North Country” from “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.” Someone says, “Dylan didn’t write that. That’s ‘Scarborough Fair.’ It’s on Shirley Collins’s ‘False True Lovers,’” he adds, referring to the 1959 recording. “Dylan put new words to Martin Carthy’s arrangement, that’s all.”

Or it’s 2012 and there is a multitude of young singers, songwriters and musicians trying to develop their own sound. They’re not quite there yet, so the music they make is still familiar to veteran pop and rock fans, some of whom dismiss them, often without reflection or musical expertise.

These naysayers among us demonstrate a kind of generational bias that can blunt a promising musician’s career. It can be summarized thus: “The only valid music is what I liked when I was in my teens.” They tend to be vocal about their disapproval and aren’t likely to exploit new methods of dissemination, such as downloading or using Spotify, to hear new sounds. When they come across new music, it’s usually pushed toward them by a critic or a friend, or they hear a snippet on television. Had they been around in 1955, or 1963, they might have dismissed Messrs. Berry and Dylan too.

Often aggressive and belligerent, the generationally biased—let’s call them Gee-Bees—rarely attribute their affection for the music of their youth to tender memories. They present their argument as perceived wisdom: Popular music was better then. For you to disagree is to reveal a deficiency on your part. Cite examples of excellence among today’s musicians and you too are dismissed…

[continues in the Wall Street Journal]

Courtesy of Brandt Hardin

From RockStarMartyr.net:

Pantera’s furious music was propelled by guitarist Darrell Abbott’s maniacal claws ripping across a Washburn fretboard. The music was aggression distilled, warfare on vinyl, the hellish harmonics of testosterone-pumped teenagers smashing beer bottles and crucifixes, the pentatonic expression of sociopathic sexual impulse turned loose on loose pussy, power chords and possession, amplifiers and alcohol, whammy bars and whimsical youth. Pantera was pissed. And yet, no one remembers the jolly Dimebag Darrell being particularly pissed in day-to-day life. Not nearly as pissed as John Lennon was, anyway.

Behind the lead Beatle’s circular granny glasses and tireless promotion of peace burned a fury unmatched by most metal enthusiasts. Lennon was pissed at his parents, pissed at his bandmates, pissed at his stay-at-home wife, pissed at Her Majesty the Queen, pissed at America’s war machine, pissed at the world for not giving peace a chance. Lennon was fucking hostile. But neither Dimebag nor Lennon were as pissed as the two pistol-wielding schizophrenics who made them into rock star martyrs, both on December 8, twenty-four years apart.

To be fair, John Lennon’s youth in England was marred by parental abandonment and random death. His sea-faring father left John in 1946 when he was only five, and his eccentric mother, Julia, left her son in care of his aunt Mimi in a house full of women. His mother eventually came back into John’s life a few years later—even buying him his first guitar—only to be run over and killed by an off-duty cop one sunny afternoon when John was only seventeen.

John took his personal pain and pissed disposition to the Liverpool College of Art, where he met the straight-laced Cynthia Powell, who would become his wife, and became best friends with the brilliant painter Stuart Suttcliffe, who for a brief time would become the musically incompetent fifth Beatle during their formative residencies in Hamburg, Germany.

In January of 1962, the Beatles signed a contract with their new manager, Brian Epstein, a closet homosexual Hebrew who immediately fell in love with the young John Lennon. Epstein’s savvy negotiations would see the barely-known Beatles become the biggest band in the world within two years, and that astonishing success would see Epstein become, in Lennon’s playful words, a “rich Jew fag.” Everybody wins until somebody dies.

The Beatles returned to Hamburg in April of that year, where they were to visit Stuart and his new wife. They were greeted with the news that Suttcliffe was dead. Coroners had found a brain tumor below an indentation in his skull—perhaps inflicted when a group of thugs attacked Stuart in a pub, or else by John when he kicked Stu’s head into the pavement for leaving the band. John fell into a somber silence for days, finally pulling it together to console Suttcliffe’s widow, and then resume his raucous rock star ambitions.

In July, Lennon learned that Cynthia Powell was pregnant. Rather than getting pissed and knocking her around, as he would do during jealous rages—or paying a £200 settlement for her silence, as Epstein had done for numerous others—John a sked Cynthia to marry him. Their son Julian was born in April the next year, two days shy of Sutcliffe’s deathday. Family life is usually a total cock-stopper for hard rockers, but unlike many aspiring musicians, becoming a father never stifled Lennon’s rise to ultra-mega-super-stardom. It didn’t slow his groupie-scrogging, either.

That year, 1963, Beatlemania engulfed the UK on the heels of Twist and Shout. These dazzling English chaps with their shaggy mops and spiffy gentleman’s suits rode to the top of the world on a wave of squealing pubescent girls. Twenty years later, Dimebag Darrell (then known as “Diamond” Darrell) would launch what would become the biggest, most aggressive mainstream metal band in the world. Of course, in those days the glammed-out members of Pantera dressed like, well, squealing pubescent girls.

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By all accounts, Darrell Abbott and his brother Vinnie Paul enjoyed a remarkably stable childhood growing up in a working class neighborhood near Arlington, TX. Their father Jerry was a musician, and fervently cultivated his sons’ ambitions to become rock stars. Their mother was no less nurturing, working hard at a factory to support her jobless boys’ hobbies.  By this point in history, rock n’ roll was just another pastime.

Darrell spent countless hours alone in his room practicing guitar licks while Vinnie hammered away on his drum set. Unlike many disturbed metal fans, the boys didn’t immerse themselves in hard music to escape from the irritating world outside so much as escape into the powerful fantasy worlds of heavy metal. While other boys went to school, played sports, partied, got laid, got jobs, and all that normal shit, the Abbott brothers continued to rock out at their parents’ house well after most kids had gone off to college and started careers.

Darrell prostrated himself before the guitar gods of his youth until the day he died. He gauged his musical progress by phlegm accumulation—while playing a particularly difficult lick, he would arch back and hock some nostril sauce over his shoulder onto his infamous “loogie wall.” Each thick splat signified another riff under his belt. Listening to the exquisite dynamic between Eddie and Alex Van Halen, the Abbott brothers wouldn’t be satisfied until they became Van Halen.

Pantera’s first six albums were recorded at Jerry Abbott’s studio near the boys’ home. Their father actually created a label for their first releases. Pantera’s early efforts were a dripping cheese sandwich on toasted metal: Metal Magic, Projects in the Jungle, I Am the Night, and finally, Power Metal, which was written by their original singer—who was a pussy—and recorded with their newfound singer, Phil Anselmo—who was pissed. Once Phil showed up, Pantera became what they were always meant to be: cowboys from hell.

Dimebag’s blistering riffs and Phil’s endless anger—at cops, Christ, corporate trendies, and the various cock-nozzles life will throw at you—propelled Pantera to the heights of Headbanger’s Ball and around the planet on multiple world tours. But it didn’t matter where Dimebag found himself—the world was his wet bar, every new face was a new best friend, and each concert was a hysterical joke for which a smashed guitar was the punchline. Darrell rarely found time to be truly pissed. Life was entirely too fun for actual fury.

✝✝✝

Courtesy of Brandt Hardin

John Lennon prostrated himself before many gurus during his life, in his own swaggering manner. Through absorption, projection, and continual metamorphosis, he became the most iconic guru of the revolutionary generation. Lennon became a hero wherever a hero was needed most.

The first waves of Beatlemania saw John Lennon: Sex Icon. He had watched Elvis get all shook up, and now it was his turn. One glance could unleash a spastic spontaneous orgasm—or at least, so it seems from the grainy footage. The Beatles were like sweat-soaked vibrators buzzing across the world. The teeny-boppers lined up in droves, panting, weeping, screaming, fainting, falling all over themselves to get just one inch closer to the sly, if agonized Lennon. Of course, pretty boy Paul McCartney got the lion’s share of adoration, and for the competitive Lennon that would never do.

Fortunately, no other Beatle had the nerve to touch his role as John Lennon: Rebel Icon. Sensible, traditional, down home decent folk balked at his observation that “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink … We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first—rock n’ roll or Christianity.” Inflammatory statements like that ensured that kids would love him and parents would hate him, even if they wound up buying their kids more Beatles albums.

After turning off his mind in the mid-Sixties, he became John Lennon: Psychedelic Icon. Inspired by Timothy Leary’s enthusiastic writings and bombarded with a continuous supply of LSD, Lennon began dosing on a daily basis. The first few times were freak outs, but once he got the hang of it, tripping became his fast-track to enlightenment. The Beatles’ music shifted into another dimension. Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club became psychedelic staples. “Tomorrow Never Knows” and a sugar cube might take you across the universe. It wasn’t long before Lennon got burnt out on chemical mind expansion, though, and set out looking for a heavier trip.

The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was a creepy little gnome, but his Transcendental Meditation cult briefly captivated the Beatles in 1967, and inspired the development of John Lennon: Spiritual Icon. This short period of navel-gazing and chanting the sacred Om was to be an eerily pivotal moment in the singer’s life. After years of abuse and alienation from John’s life of stardom, his wife Cynthia made the decision to leave John after she was pushed back by a security guard while trying to board a train for the Maharishi’s retreat in Wales. The Beatles went on without her. Lennon’s manager Brian Epstein was wary of the devious guru’s exploitation of his clients’ fame, but Epstein died of a drug overdose while the band was meditating at the retreat, so that was that. “Now you will be able to come to India with me,” the Maharishi told them, which they did. Lennon didn’t last long in India, though, what with all the mindless conformity, bland food, and accusations that the Maharishi had sexually assaulted Lennon’s fellow aspirant, actress Mia Farrow. When the guru asked why he was leaving, Lennon replied, “If you’re so cosmic, you should know.” Lennon’s spiritual quest would not end there, however, as he would soon find himself kneeling at the Goddess’ feet.

John met Yoko Ono at one of her art shows at the same Indica bookshop where he had discovered Timothy Leary’s manual The Psychedelic Experience. He later said that lightning struck immediately, creating John Lennon: Pussy-whipped Icon. After a bizarre courtship in which the witchy Yoko basically stalked Lennon at his home and wedged herself between him and his already estranged wife, the two finally consummated their love. The day before, Lennon had held a meeting with the Beatles and core members of the Apple Corps, where he proclaimed with no hint of humor, “I’ve got something very important to tell you all. I am Jesus Christ come back again. This is my thing.” Yoko became his Mary Magdalene with which he could work on half-baked conceptual art projects, record bizarre noises that barely resemble music, release album covers and photo shoots displaying their fig-leafless flabby asses, abandon his band, his family, and his manhood, and of course, do up massive amounts of heroin.

By the end of 1969, Woodstock had made people believe in the power of music to create peace, Charles Manson had been inspired by The White Album to slaughter of Sharon Tate and friends to start the race war, Altamont had called all possibility of peace into question, the draft had been reinstated for the Vietnam War, and the Beatles had called it quits with extreme animosity, after less than a decade together.

With his leftist lover now permanently attached, he became John Lennon: Revolutionary Icon. The couple moved to New York and met with the Yippies to lend a hand in stirring up the shit. They wore bags during interviews to subvert the prejudices associated with race, beauty, and of all things, hair length. After marrying, they held a highly publicized “Bed In” as an eccentric “commercial for peace.” John took Yoko’s last name, becoming John Oko Lennon, and began calling his wife “Mother.” He wrote cynical songs about working class heroes, hopeful songs imagining no religion, countries, or possessions, provocative songs about women being the niggers of the world, doubtful songs about not believing in Hitler, Jesus, Kennedy, Kings, or Elvis, desperate songs asking people to just give peace a chance.

They projected the image of perfect soul mates, inspiring people who had given up on love to open their hearts. But in 1973, John took some time off from the marriage. He moved out of the house, got wasted every night, and perhaps most importantly, he started banging his twenty-two year-old personal assistant, the petite Asian May Pang—all at Yoko’s insistence. After a year and a half of belated bachelorhood, he crawled back to Yoko with his tail tucked between his legs. In 1975, Yoko gave birth to Sean. They both retired from public life to raise their son, and the new father settled into John Lennon: Family Man Icon for the last five years of his life.

Three weeks after the release of their comeback album, Double Fantasy, John Lennon signed a copy for a disgruntled fan waiting outside the Dakota apartment building in New York. A few hours later, that same fan shot him dead. The signed copy is presently on sale for nearly one million dollars.

✝✝✝

Dimebag Darrell’s story isn’t nearly as complicated or convoluted. The details of his life are scant compared to someone like Lennon, whose every burp and fart was documented and filed away, but by all appearances, life was really quite simple for Dimebag. He celebrated Halloween like it was New Year’s Eve, and approached life like every day was Halloween. Special occasions called for a drink, and every moment was a special occasion. If you were invited, you had to drink, most likely a black tooth grin (two shots of whiskey and a splash of cola.) And it didn’t matter who you were, everyone was invited.

If he didn’t have a guitar in his hand, Dimebag had a drink or a bottle rocket ready to blast it in your face. He was a tireless prankster. If he caught you asleep, you were canvas. If you were looking the other way, you were a target. If you took yourself too seriously, like the time he stumbled across tedious guitar god Yngwie Malmsteen at a hotel and had his roadie accost him with a bag of donuts (“No, I don’t like donuts! I don’t like donuts!”), you were a piece of performance art for his home video collection. One of his posse’s finest productions was short skit in which a roadie gets his hand smashed off by a road case and stolen by a random passerby. Had he not been so engrossed in music, Dimebag may have been an America’s Funniest Home Videos contender.

First and foremost was family. Dimebag was fiercely dedicated to his brother, Vinnie Paul. When Dave Mustaine left Metallica, he offered Dimebag the spot as lead guitarist in Megadeth. Darrell agreed, on the condition that his brother would be the new drummer. But Megadeth already had a drummer, and Dimebag had better songs to write, anyway.

Whenever Darrell came home to Texas from touring, the first thing he did was have a drink. The next thing he did was visit his mother and pay off her credit cards. Even after he had earned a small fortune, Dimebag’s home was never more than a few miles away from the house he grew up in, which was just a few miles from his father’s recording studio. Pantera’s first six albums were recorded with his father, and the seventh, Far Beyond Driven, was recorded with another producer at their father’s new studio in Nashville, TN. Dimebag never tired of familiar places. His love life was no exception.

Darrell met Rita Haney at the age of eight when she kicked him off of his bicycle. They remained friends until they were teenagers, when he made his first move. They never looked back from that kiss, and were joined in common law marriage until the day he died. By all accounts, Rita never slowed Dimebag down. At the very least, she never asked him to wear a fucking bag during interviews. If Dime wasn’t partying at home or playing onstage, he was doing both at a strip club. How many women Dimebag slept with is not a matter of public record—it could have been one, it could have been one thousand. Considering the typical road rules of the rock star fraternity, one is inclined to believe the latter. A gentleman does not kiss and tell, but it’s doubtful that Rita would care if he did either.

When the band settled into their final four-piece—Phil, Dimebag, Vinnie, and Rex—they shed their girly outfits for regular street clothes. Pantera’s true debut was Cowboys from Hell in 1990, and it blew up like a car bomb. Vulgar Display of Power had twice the blast radius, and 1994’s Far Beyond Driven remains the most aggressive album to ever chart at #1. Any pissed off kid who didn’t want to be pissed alone gathered around Pantera. Their message was blood simple: Fight for your friends and fuck up your enemies.

Phil Anselmo wrote all of the lyrics, but of course, Dimebag sang along to every song. The message flowed through him. Phil was an archetypal warrior male, furious at the world. His words aimed the machine gun and Dimebag fed him the gain-heavy ammunition. Fuck your parents, fuck your girlfriend, fuck the cops, fuck their government, fuck the Christians, and on a bad day, fuck the Christ they stood for. Pantera’s sound was as provincial as Dimebag’s drawling Texas accent, as Southern as the Confederate flag on his custom Washburn, as damaging as the black tooth grins soaking into his liver. Funny thing is, Dimebag never stopped smiling. Everything was a laugh.

While the trials must have been many, Dimebag’s biographies only describe three traumatic experiences in his life. The first was the death of his mother, who succumbed to cancer in 1999. The second came after 9/11, which left Pantera stranded in Ireland for two weeks. Phil had been struggling with heroin addiction for years, exacerbated by degenerating discs in his spine. The tension was mounting over his erratic behavior. When the band arrived back in the States, they went their separate ways but never came back together. In 2003, they finally announced the break up of Pantera. The Abbott brothers had become the “enemy” that Phil was so intent on fucking.

So far as Dimebag was concerned, Pantera and their road crew were family, thick as blood. Nothing could hurt him like the dissolution of his tribe. The Abbotts formed a new band, Damageplan, but had fallen from playing packed arenas to filling small clubs. “The highs and lows of rock n’ roll,” was all the bitching Dimebag would indulge. To make matters worse, a war of words continued in the press between Anselmo and the Abbotts.

In December of 2004, Metal Hammer published an ominous interview with Phil Anselmo in which he unleashed his fury:

“[W]hat comes around obviously goes around, and that is definitely something that is a very powerful force in my life…Cycles on top of cycles. Revenge on top of revenge. I suggest no one do me wrong…Things don’t go so well for them…And I lift not a finger…”

When the subject moved on to the Abbotts, Phil said:

“[Dimebag] would attack me vocally, and just knowing that he was so much smaller than me, I could kill him like a fucking piece of vapor…He knows that and the world should know that and so, physically of course, he deserves to be beaten severely…

“I was…a unique, unbelievably magnetic front man…I have a devoted following that would do anything for me, anything that I say.”

One week later, a crazed fan jumped onstage and gunned Dimebag Darrell down as well as a body guard, a stagehand, and a fan, before being shot by Officer James Niggemeyer. Talk about unfortunate timing.

✝✝✝

Happiness is a warm gun. So heavy in the hand. So easy to pull the trigger. One flick of the finger makes a tiny hole. God-like power. Any idiot can do it.

Nathan Miles Gale grew up in small town Ohio. He was batshit crazy, and pissed as all hell. He believed that Mike Judge was watching his every move, basing Beavis and Butthead off of his pathetic life. He also believed that the guys in Pantera were up to the same tricks. He listened to their music so much that the songs became his own. They were stealing his lyrics for their songs. Why wouldn’t anyone else understand that?

He saw menacing faces hovering above his bed at night. Their voices taunted him, called him a homosexual, told him to hurt people.

Nathan enjoyed drugs. He smoked dope, dropped acid, ate pills, snorted coke. When the Twin Towers fell on 9/11, Nathan was alone in thinking that Marilyn Manson was behind the attacks. He joined the Marines at nineteen, but was discharged when it was learned he was schizophrenic. He moved into an apartment next to his mother. In December of 2002 she bought him a 9mm Beretta. Two years later, he took it to a Damageplan concert at Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio to find Dimebag Darrell and settle the score.

Mark David Chapman was born in Texas, but went to school in Georgia outside of Atlanta. He traveled the world from there. He also smoked dope, dropped acid, ate pills, snorted coke, and became a born again Christian. He was also batshit crazy, a god in his own mind, ruling over the voices which he called the Little People.

After cheating on his fiance, he decided to go to Hawaii where he would kill himself. He was committed to a mental facility there, but was so liked that he was hired on part time after his release. He eventually married a Japanese-American woman, just like John Lennon. He listened to Lennon’s music obsessively, just as he read The Catcher in the Rye. After reading a book about Lennon’s lavish lifestyle in New York, he was extremely pissed. He was indignant that Lennon would arrogantly disavow Jesus. And how could John Lennon: Revolutionary Icon tell people to imagine no possessions and yet live as a millionaire? He told the Little People that he would kill John Lennon. They begged him not to, but his mind was made up. The Little People fell silent.

After two previous attempts were aborted in last minute panic, Chapman arrived in New York on December 6, 1980. The last thing he did before finding John Lennon was buy yet another copy of The Catcher in the Rye, in which he would write: “This is my statement” signed—Holden Caulfield. He left the book in his hotel room, but brought a copy of Double Fantasy and a loaded .38 with him.

By demons be driven.

✝✝✝

John Lennon gave his final print interview to Rolling Stone the day Mark David Chapman arrived in New York, but it was never published until thirty years after his death, one year ago. Many people claim that Lennon had shown foreknowledge of his death, and this interview shows an eerie prescience that makes one wonder if Yoko’s nutty New Age ideas of cosmic connections were really that far-fetched, though it raises a number of questions about the couple’s belief that projecting one’s thoughts and intentions can create one’s reality.

“They only like people when they’re on the way up,” Lennon told Jonathan Cott, “and when they’re up there, they’ve got nothing else to do but shit on them. I cannot be on the way up again. What they want is dead heroes, like Sid Vicious and James Dean. I’m not interested in being a dead fucking hero….So forget ‘em, forget ‘em.”

© 2011 Joseph Allen

To see the full collection of the sanctified dead, visit RockStarMartyr.net

Photo: http://www.glenjamn.com

Disinformation readers have long been tracking the illuminati agents Jay-Z and Kanye West (currently on a world-dominating tour together), as well as mind control puppet Lady Gaga, but now Jonah Weiner reveals for Slate that the pop conspiracy goes way deeper…

I’m not sure if Eminem has yet managed to escape the grasp of the Illuminati — the secret society of string pullers whose ranks he joined years ago in exchange for wealth, fame, and power — but I know he’s been trying very hard. Numerous people online tell me so. There is, for starters, a Yahoo Answers page that poses the question “Is Eminem trying to break free from the Illuminati?” and offers spirited excavation and analysis of the hidden anti-Illuminati messages Eminem embedded in his song “Not Afraid.” There is a four-page message-board thread titled “Is Eminem an Illuminati slave?” A YouTube video called “Eminem vs. Illuminati” explains, via solemn text and creepy music, that when the Detroit M.C. titled a song “Cinderella Man,” it was not because the redemptive plot of the 2005 Ron Howard film Cinderella Man echoes Eminem’s own comeback from drug addiction, but rather because, like Cinderella with her wicked stepsisters, Eminem was “forced to do the chores for the Illuminati by sending subliminal messages through his music.” Ignore any comment-section sheep who bah that this is ridiculous: When that video ends, the hunt for truth has only just begun. From a list of suggested related videos, you can choose “Eminem: His illuminati sacrifice Part 1”; “Eminem Fights Back Against The illuminati”; “Eminem against illuminati 2011!”; “Eminem My Darling Illuminati” and on and on. Some of the Eminem/Illuminati videos have been viewed 5,000 times. Others, close to 300,000.

Welcome to the world of pop-music trutherism, a bustling, grassroots exposé industry in which Eminem is one of many performers called out by anonymous instigators for Illuminist sympathies. The best conspiracy theories go all the way to the top, and this one goes all the way to the top of the charts…

[continues at Slate]

The concert was particularly poignant for the hundred or so people who stood listening intently in the bright light off the East River in Brooklyn because it was the last time they would be able to gather for a block party at Monster Island, a collection of performance spaces and studios in a faded commercial building covered with murals near the Williamsburg waterfront. Many said they had been going there to hear new music or see off-the-wall art installations for seven years. Some were heartbroken; some philosophic.

Monster Island is shutting down this month because the landlord wants to redevelop the property and has not renewed the lease. Its fans marked its passing with a block party on Saturday. The end of this haven for struggling artists and musicians is a sign of broader changes in the neighborhood, where new condominiums are replacing the dilapidated warehouses, and upscale bars and restaurants have appeared on streets where once there were only underground clubs in vacant commercial buildings.

The eviction of Monster Island — home to two nonprofit performance spaces, a screen-printing shop, a surf shop, a recording studio and several artists’ studios — is a reminder that the city is always remaking itself, and nowhere is that more true than in the world of underground music, where performance spots and galleries operate with little cash, often on the fringe of the law.

A few, like Monster Island, become institutions of a sort. In the past 18 months two other spaces — the Market Hotel in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and the Silent Barn a bit farther east in Ridgewood, Queens — have also been forced to close. Both were raided by city authorities, who demanded they comply with fire and building codes. (City officials said there had been no concerted effort to crack down on underground clubs in the area.)

The people who operate these spaces said they would revive them. Secret Project Robot, the main institution at Monster Island, is relocating to Melrose Street in Bushwick. Market Hotel’s promoters have formed a nonprofit to court grants and donations; they plan to do the renovations necessary to come up to code and reopen. The group that ran the Silent Barn has raised money to replace its equipment and is seeking a new space to rent.

Still, the turmoil has sent shudders through the network of people who run underground gathering spots, which are known as do-it-yourself, or D.I.Y. spaces. Just a few years ago the Brooklyn music scene was known for its vibrant D.I.Y. clubs that had been incubators for dozens of independent acts, among them the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, Vivian Girls, Dirty Projectors, Dan Deacon and Teengirl Fantasy.

Todd Patrick, a concert promoter who ran the Market Hotel and books bands at several other D.I.Y. spaces, said that times had changed. “A lot of places are by necessity becoming more permanent if they can, just because they are under fire,” he said. “There has been a change in the climate of the city.”

As rents have risen in Williamsburg, and the waterfront has been rezoned to allow residential high-rises, more and more of the D.I.Y. crowd is moving east to Bushwick. Only a few, like Death by Audio and 285 Kent Avenue, remain near the water.

Rachel Nelson, who runs Secret Project Robot with Erik Zajaceskowski, said that when they took over the Monster Island building, the waterfront contained mostly factories, warehouses, fuel tanks and auto shops, a dismal strip where prostitution and drug dealing flourished. A couple of years ago a condominium building went up cater-corner from Monster Island, and some of the new residents in the neighborhood consider the colorful murals on the building an eyesore.

For musicians the D.I.Y. spaces are critical to developing new talent. A chance to perform live for an open-minded audience without worrying about earning money for a club owner is invaluable. Not only are the D.I.Y. concert promoters committed to experimental music, but they also have low overhead and can afford to take risks. The lineup on Saturday included the duo Divine Order of the Blood Witch, playing a 20-minute composition that sounded like a sustained train wreck in a horror film, evoking explosions, metal shrieking, rubble collapsing, layered above guttural electronic noises that sounded like movie monsters.

The Federal Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. has suggested that the use of wood from India that is not finished by Indian workers is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because it is the Justice Department’s interpretation of a law in India. (If the same wood from the same tree was finished by Indian workers, the material would be legal.) This action was taken without the support and consent of the government in India.

On August 24, 2011, around 8:45 a.m. CDT, agents for the federal government executed four search warrants on Gibson’s facilities in Nashville and Memphis and seized several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. Gibson had to cease its manufacturing operations and send workers home for the day, while armed agents executed the search warrants. Gibson has fully cooperated with the execution of the search warrants.

More on Brooklyn Vegan

You will at once notice at least two unfamiliar terms, TOPI and COUM. Let us start with COUM or coum and see if we can then speak a little more about this One True TOPI Tribe. It’s hard not to notice, how coum is spelled (but how does it sound?), COUM (the capitalization is just to draw your attention to) or coum can be pronounced ‘cum’ or ‘com’.  Yet we do not stop at that level. The term also resonates with the word ‘come’ as well as ‘cum’ (like in your face).

This portmanteau word, this phoneme/morpheme, coum invokes other terms that it may combine with, such as communication and all other (dot) com- related terms, even communion. According to Simon Ford text on the Coum Transmission & Throbbing Gristle, short-titled, Wreckers of Civilization (1999), the term Coum came out of P-Orridge’s early work with language restrictions inspired by the Exploding Galaxy commune/group (”when in doubt-be extreme”, Genesis). P-Orridge has been since working on honing the idiosyncrasies of he/r (pandrogeny) speech, introducing terms such as o.v. and L.ov.E., but for now, that is all you get on that. Well, there is another interesting tidbit we can share before moving on, “coincidentally,” in 1973—4, the year that Genesis is said to start he/r language experiments is also the same time period as the emergence of the famous French writing group Oulipo.

This compilation includes work from the famously weird Steven Johnson Leyba, Obiekt 172, OT3, HoodooEngine, and many others. (Check it out.)

(Part 1, titled “What Is A Hipster, And Why Does Everyone Hate Them? or: You’re So Fake (And So Am I)“, can be found here.)

As noted in Part 1, the main thrust of the criticisms against hipsters have roots in a notion of authenticity.  Lorentz mentions the words “authentic” and “inauthentic” a dozen times in his article, and the Adbusters piece is just as bad. It’s a fair charge to say that hipsters fetishize the authentic, as Lorentz does. This is hardly unique to hipsters, though; one can find it in practically any sub-culture. It’s so common that I find it disingenuous to use it as a criticism of hipsters and Hipsterism. The problem, as I see it, is that notion of authenticity being used is utter bullshit.

Some years ago, before I became a hipster or had even heard of hipsters, I was confirmed as “real” at a party by a group of counter-culture kids. There were several reasons given. First, I was living in a “real” neighborhood. At that time my rundown flop of a house was located in a neighborhood of Detroit, a mostly working-class ethnic neighborhood that was deemed hip by the minority of caucasian youths living there. It was popular for a number of reasons: it was much safer than the surrounding areas, close to a University and had been, even back when it was predominantly white, an ethnic neighborhood (Polish). Second, I was working two jobs to pay my way through school.  I was living month-to-month, sometimes bills didn’t get paid and I lived for months on brown rice and Siracha stolen from the Chinese restaurant at which I was employed. Third, I had a pretty good drug habit going, the likes of which would eventually take the life of a couple friends later on down the road.

I contemplated this. Apparently, making several terrible choices in the suburbs that resulted in losing my funding for school and having to move to the significantly cheaper housing in the city had made me “real”.  And to think I didn’t even know I was “fake” when I was out in the suburbs!  Apparently, my gritty, dirty, dangerous life meant I was “real” and not some automaton or something.

This notion of realness, of authenticity, is very popular today. Grit and dirt = real.  Danger = real.  This is despite the fact that all of the above can be acquired without much effort: you can move to a shitty-but-hip neighborhood, you can give up your scholarship and work all the time, and believe you me you can pick up a substance-abuse problem with startling ease.

The absurdity soon makes itself apparent. If it can be faked with ease, where is the value of its authenticity? Someone doing the three steps listed above can have just as “real” a life as I was leading.  It would be indistinguishable from the life of someone who ended up there by accident or, like in my case, as the result of poor decision-making skills. The real life can be acquired, and when it is, does that person miraculously go from “fake” to “real”? How does that work? If all the ways one uses to define oneself as authentic are, in a way, “for sale”, how authentic can one’s identity really be?

The primary problem with the counterculture is its rebellion against perceived inauthenticity, against the manufactured lifestyle represented by prime-time television and pop culture.  The problem lies in where we are running to, in what we are clinging to instead of the manufactured lifestyle. We think we are leaving image-without-substance behind and embracing realness, embracing something with meaning and substance. We are doing no such thing.  We’re just falling for a different kind of deception.

They say that if you’re going to steal, then steal from the best.  With that in mind, I offer you an excerpt by Warren Ellis from his discontinued series Doktor Sleepless:

Now, after seeing hordes of people rebelling against Pop and seeking refuge in authenticity, I see his point. Punk, now, is as baldly selling an image, a brand, as any bit of pop culture. It’s about as authentic as Bob Dylan, and the same goes for pretty much every counter-culture.

How do you rebel, then, when all the culture rebels are buying into bullshit notions of authenticity?  What do you do when the people rebelling against the image and the spectacle of pop culture are indulging in an image and a spectacle of their own? The answer is obvious: go the other direction. Embrace the shallowness, embrace the trends that have a half-life of half a season, embrace the superficial fashion and culture that Hipsterism provides. If its authenticity you’re after, be like me.  Be a Real Fake. Be sincere in your devotion to affectations, in the shallow trends…

Courtesy of Brandt Hardin

Robert Johnson supposedly made a deal with the Devil to obtain his blues licks and Elvis Presley was the televised Son of God. How appropriate that they share a death day at RockStarMartyr.net:

Even after the abolition of slavery, life in the Mississippi cotton fields was brief, brutal, and as boring as an aging preacher’s Sunday sermon. No wonder fieldworkers sought the fleeting comforts of cheap moonshine and loose women at the Saturday night juke joints.

Robert Johnson could mix it up with the best of them, but he was never one for hard work. His bizarre, spider-like fingers weren’t intended for cotton-pickin’ and penny-pinchin’. They were made for crawling across guitar necks, whiskey bottles, and the legs of middle-aged sugar mamas. If Johnson was going to suffer hell to make a dollar, it would be as a wayfaring musician. His road was full of adventure and ecstasy, but ended in hell just the same. On August 16, 1938, Robert Johnson became another silent corpse wrapped in the shrouds of rock n’ roll mythology.

As legend has it, Robert Johnson obtained his profoundly influential guitar licks after trading his soul to the Devil at a dark, isolated crossroads. As usual, Ol’ Scratch came through with the goods, but America was still dragging itself out of the Great Depression and debt-collectors were ruthless. Why should Satan be any different? Johnson had enough time to make his name as a blazing live musician and to record forty-two immortal tracks before Satan came to collect the player’s soul at the prime age of 27.

Like the crossroads myth, Robert Johnson’s handful of recordings would not surface until many years after his death. Also like the myth, these forty-two recordings have been open to interpretation and elaboration ever since. His slick slide guitar style was first taken up by black blues players. Son House, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker were among the many to follow those smoking hoofprints to notoriety. Ultimately, it was only when Robert Johnson’s work was unearthed and re-released during the Delta blues revival of the 1960s that the man and the myth came into their own. White rock stars—Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Paul McCartney—rode Johnson’s Afro juju to the top of international charts, where the fires he unleashed burned the soul of Western civilization.

As a journeyman guitarist, Robert Johnson was the laughing stock of his juke joint peers. His unorthodox style sounded like a stray cat shaken violently in a metal trashcan. After a brief hiatus, Johnson returned to the scene with a totally unique style in which he would hammer a rhythm with his thumb while picking a slide melody with his fingers. Johnson’s recordings may sound like the goofy meanderings of a slap-happy simpleton to the average listener, but in those days he was the bee’s knees. No one had done anything like that before…

Read the rest at RockStarMartyr.net

PART ONE: WHAT IS A HIPSTER, AND WHY DOES EVERYONE HATE THEM? or: YOU’RE SO FAKE (AND SO AM I)

My name is Tuna Ghost and I have a confession: I’m a hipster.

One may think this is a self-defeating statement, like “this sentence is false” or “all Cretans are liars, says so-and-so of Crete”, as one of the commonly accepted hallmarks of a hipster is that he or she will vehemently deny that they are a hipster.  This bit of conventional wisdom is easily verified, all one has to do is ask the hipsters around one if they self-identify as a “hipster”.  Personally, I have to look no further than my own friends to see evidence of it.  By the traditional definition of “hipster” they are obviously hipsters, but thus far I am the only one who will gladly self-identify as such. One may wonder why anyone in their right mind would identity with a subculture that has become synonymous with shallowness, lack of authenticity and sneering douche-baggery (my friends certainly do), but in this article I will demonstrate that this is not a fair assessment of Hipsterism.

But before I can defend The Hipster, we should define our terms. From Wikipedia:

Hipster is a slang term that first appeared in the 1940s, and was revived in the 1990s and 2000s often to describe types of young, recently-settled urban middle class adults and older teenagers with interests in non-mainstream fashion and culture, particularly alternative music, indie rock, independent film, magazines such as Vice and Clash, and websites like Pitchfork Media.

Well that sounds innocuous enough, yes? I don’t read Vice or Clash but I am certainly a type of young(ish) adult from middle-class roots with interests in non-mainstream fashion and culture, particularly indie music and independent film. My friends all have similar interests, and surely these interests don’t have any intrinsic, toxically condescending elements that transfer to the people who who are involved with them.

Then why are hipsters almost constantly under fire? For a closer look, check out Christian Lorentzen’s article “Why the Hipster Must Die: A Modest Proposal to Save New-York Cool.” Here he provides another, much more accusing definition for “hipster”:

Under the guise of ‘irony,’ hipsterism fetishizes the authentic and regurgitates it with a winking inauthenticity. Those 18-to-34-year-olds called hipsters have defanged, skinned and consumed the fringe movements of the postwar era — Beat, hippie, punk, even grunge. (Read more: Time Out NY)

The definition reeks of an agenda, sure, and it is total bunk in many ways, but it provides us with an adequate starting place.  Ignoring the debate over whether or not these movements ever had “fangs” to begin with, all of the movements listed were the hipster movements of their times if we use the Wikipedia definition.  Urban young adults with middle-class roots? Check. Interests in non-mainstream fashion and culture?  Check.  Mostly white and appropriating minority cultures? Check. In the article, Lorentzen calls hipsters the “assassins of cool”, charging them with the attempted murder of New York Cool.  He comes off like an aging hippy complaining that these kids don’t know what real cool is, angry and afraid that his values are disappearing with the advent of a new movement devoid of meaning that will leave him behind.  And, as he is surely aware, to be left behind in this race is to be made un-hip.

As problematic as Lorentz’s article is, it nevertheless provides us with the conventional answer to “what is a hipster”: someone who values the aesthetic value above all else, who prides themselves on their coolness while at the same time denying it.  They wear clothes for the ironic/fashion value, because it is deemed hip or cool.  Their favorite music and literature are chosen for the same reasons.  They go to shows and hit the scene to be seen, to be viewed as cool.  They buy working class beer (Pabst Blue Ribbon is often cited) instead of the more expensive beer they can obviously afford.  Their entire identity is just a construction. They slum. They’re fake.  Check out Look At This Fucking Hipster, www.latfh.com. Or Hipsters: The Dead End of Western Civilization at Adbusters (I should warn you that the article is pretty lousy, but there are some insightful comments) for confirmation of this idea.  Basically, it seems hipsters are focused on image, even to the detriment of feelings or sentiment or meaning of any kind.

The problem is, a lot of this involves some pretty crappy and occasionally insulting reasoning. A common criticism I hear, perhaps you’ve heard it yourself, is “they don’t wear those clothes because they like them, they wear it because x/y/z”. Apparently they are wearing those tight jeans and t-shirts for some other reason, something incriminating. They don’t wear those clothes because they like them, ergo they are “fake”.

This is a ridiculous criticism for a number of reasons. First, someone wearing clothes for reasons besides the apparently primary reason of “I like it” is not a new phenomenon. Simply put, people wear clothes for reasons other than “liking them” ALL THE TIME.  Why did women ever wear corsets and girdles? Or high-heels that smash one’s toes?  Why does anyone wear a hijab in terrible heat?  Why do we wear suits to funerals and tuxedos to weddings?  For that matter, why don’t we all strip our clothes off whenever it is too hot? “Because I like it” is not always the primary reason to wear something; in fact, it’s pretty far down the list.

Secondly, to charge someone with insincerity because they are wearing something simply for ironic value, rather than because they like or enjoy something, is equally silly.  If one enjoys irony, or any other post-modern idea for that matter, and are wearing something to achieve a desired effect in that area, then I think that qualifies as “liking it”. How could it be otherwise?  There’s a very nasty idea at work here: Irony isn’t fun, therefore you can’t have fun being ironic, therefore they’re not wearing it because its fun. They must have some other, more insidious reason for wearing it.

There are class issues brought up in accusations of hipsters as well; there’s this notion of middle-class white kids appropriating working-class fashions and tastes for reasons other than because they are working class, e.g. hanging out in dives rather than the upscale bars they can obviously afford to patronize, wearing shirts found in thrift stores and Salvation Army donations instead of the more expensive clothes they could easily purchase.   I find this accusation of middle-class people not acting middle-class enough for someone’s taste very strange and a little unsettling.  For one, determining someone’s class by a glance is not a talent most people have. The age of most hipsters is in an area where their class is fairly nebulous anyway — their careers are only just beginning, and that’s if they’re lucky.  What does it mean when you label the person who serves you coffee or rings up your purchase at the counter “middle-class”? What about the line cooks and the waiters?  The young man or woman working at the bank? The bartenders? How do you know they are supported by their parents?  My parents may be financially comfortable, but when I was living in a rundown rat-hole of a house in Detroit working two jobs to pay rent and tuition (and to support my fairly robust substance-abuse problem) was I still “middle-class”?

Even if they are definitively middle-class with the money and education typical of that demographic, frankly the idea of a group of bohemian-minded middle-class people purposefully standing apart from the dominant trends, politics, and morals of their class is nothing new. Aside from the already-mentioned Beatniks and Hippies, what about the Dadaists?  Shelley and Byron? How are they different? Do the same criticisms apply to them?  I often hear the argument that these people contributed something to music or the arts and so become (somehow) exempt from the same criticisms, but will one then make the claim that hipsters don’t? That is plainly false. Bands started by hipsters are everywhere. I can’t throw a rock without hitting a hipster artist or musician, and if you claim that hipsters aren’t making good music or art you’re simply not looking hard enough. Not only that, but hipsters have a wide-range of artistic interests, and their attention (or at least their financial support) has helped bring formerly small-time acts into a larger arena.  Take metal for instance, a scene with a large variety which has recently found a new market in hipster circles (I’m not just talking about Mastadon here, before anyone says anything). This attention has helped metal bands sell more records and reach a new audience, something vital to any artistic endeavor.

Too much of the criticism against hipsters seems to be from people who cannot understand how indulging in fashion and fun hair and the “scene” can be fun, therefore it CAN’T be fun, therefore these people aren’t actually having fun.  They’re just fakes with ulterior motives.  They don’t want to look good and be passionate about music and the arts, they are forcing themselves to do so in some masochistic fashion to seek approval from a scene they actually detest. There’s a very troubling notion inherent in all this, that indulging in fashion and being passionate about music and the arts is not something real people do, that one cannot like something just because it is fashionable, which is ridiculous beyond words.

You may have noticed a common theme in these criticisms of Hipsterism: authenticity, or rather the lack of it.  Many of their trends are affectations, so they’re not sincere — but if someone genuinely likes affectations, what does that make them?  Real or fake?  Does that make them, a la Breakfast at Tiffany’s, a “real fake”?  Once again, there’s an unspoken but agreed upon idea at work here, namely that real people don’t indulge in new trends or fashions simply because they are new or fun.  Are we really willing to agree with this? The implications are pretty severe.  Look around you — if we operate as if this idea is reality, then there are almost no “real” people out there.  When did indulging in fashion and fun hair become a crime?  When did “real” people stop doing this?

Too often the criticisms I hear simply reaffirm that “hipster”, as a pejorative, is functioning only as an othering device. Hipsters are as guilty of this as anyone, but only because “hipster” is such a dirty word.  I see so many people, people whose notions of culture or masculinity are being threatened, using “hipster” simply to mean “someone who’s cultural markers, as evidenced by the clothes they wear and the music they listen to, reflect a culture that I am not a part of and therefore must be stupid or fake”. The assumptions about the accused, about their sincerity in regard to their tastes and fashions, come shortly after.  Someone can’t be politically or socially aware because they want to, because surely nobody likes that. They can’t dress in an androgynous fashion because they like it, because nobody “real” likes being androgynous. They can’t have fun with irony because irony isn’t fun — therefore, they’re just doing it to be popular, to get laid, or, most importantly, to make me feel stupid or out of touch.

People, please!  I’m doing it because its fun and to make you feel out of touch.

Stick around for Part 2: AUTHENTICITY IS BULLSHIT, or: POP IS THE NEW PUNK, in which I will explore the notion of authenticity that is the root of most criticisms of Hipsterism, and explain why it is bullshit.

A Sony distribution warehouse in North London was burned to the ground around during the third night of riots in the UK, as the BBC reports. The 200,000 square-foot center housed the entire inventory of PIAS UK, the primary distribution hub for more than 150 independent labels.

No injuries were reported in the blaze, but all inventory is feared lost. XL/Beggars, Warp, Rough Trade, Domino, 4AD, Sub Pop, Secretly Canadian, Jagjaguwar, Drag City, Thrill Jockey, FatCat, Kompakt, Mute, Ninja Tune, Vice, and Soul Jazz are among those affected.

Looks like they haven’t managed to get completely get rid of it. Hard to believe this story is real. Lauren Schutte reports in the Hollywood Reporter via MSNBC:

Twenty years later, Nirvana is still managing to cause controversy.

The band, whose Nevermind album made waves when it was released in 1991 because of its cover art which featured a naked baby boy floating in a pool, has run into censorship yet again, this time on its Facebook page.

After product shots of the album (which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this fall) were uploaded to Nirvana’s Facebook page, the social networking company removed the photo citing a violation of its Terms of Use.

“Facebook does not allow photos that attack an individual or group, or that contain nudity, drug use, violence or other violations of the Terms of Use,” the notice read.

More on the Hollywood Reporter via MSNBC

I have on good authority that this song was played at something called the “Jihadi Bar,” a place where CIA interrogators working at a Black Site went to unwind. That and other secrets of undisclosed torture prisons are found within my interview with ex-interrogator Glenn Carle for Danger Room.

Much like at Guantanamo, detainees at this specific Black Site — I don’t know this for sure, but will irresponsibly speculate based on certain clues that it was in Afghanistan but not at Bagram — had heavy metal blasted at loud volumes, constantly, to torture them. Alas, Carle couldn’t tell me if one of the songs he heard there was “Bodies” by Drowning Pool, a staple on the torturers’ mixtape of the 00s.

More on Spencer Ackerman’s Blog

This record can easily go from turntable to coffee table. Scottish band Found, looking for an inventive new way to release a new single, baked up a sugary idea: to press the 7” record on chocolate.

The band enlisted the help of a friend, baker Ben Milne who, after several failed attempts, managed to successfully created the Willy Wonka-like treat; the entire record, including the paper label, is edible. While not audiophile quality by any stretch, the chocolate disc plays a decent version of the band’s “Anti-Climb Paint” single.

Photo: Roy Kerwood (CC)

Via the Toronto Sun:

John Lennon was a closet Republican, who felt a little embarrassed by his former radicalism, at the time of his death — according to the tragic Beatles star’s last personal assistant.

Fred Seaman worked alongside the music legend from 1979 to Lennon’s death at the end of 1980 and he reveals the star was a Ronald Reagan fan who enjoyed arguing with left-wing radicals who reminded him of his former self.

In new documentary Beatles Stories, Seaman tells filmmaker Seth Swirsky Lennon wasn’t the peace-loving militant fans thought he was while he was his assistant.

He says, “John, basically, made it very clear that if he were an American he would vote for Reagan because he was really sour on (Democrat) Jimmy Carter.

“He’d met Reagan back, I think, in the 70s at some sporting event… Reagan was the guy who had ordered the National Guard, I believe, to go after the young (peace) demonstrators in Berkeley, so I think that John maybe forgot about that … He did express support for Reagan, which shocked me.

For more information, see original article.