Here’s a great collection of live performance clips, programmed by one of today’s foremost experts in the field of electronic music, Keith Fullerton Whitman via the appropriately named Network Awesome:
1. Laurie Spiegel “Improvisations on a Concerto Generator” live at Bell Labs, 1977. Here Laurie is manipulating the Bell Labs Digital Synthesizer, aka the “Alles Machine” (or just “Alice”) in real time. I love how baroque this is ; the pulverizing 16th-note motorik starts to blur together until all you hear are the lovely arpeggiated chord-shapes.
2. Speaking of motorik ; Can “Paperhouse” live in 1972, at the peak of their powers ... You often think of Can as this freak-out group, but here they sound as restrained & musical as ever ... of course Jaki is on fire throughout, but I’m more impressed by Holger’s timekeeping in this clip !!! One of Damo’s best performances to boot, perfect Karoli guitar tone ; I could watch this on repeat, all day, every day ...
3. Seeselberg “Synthetik-1” , ca. 1975 c/o WDR. Seeselberg were two brothers (“Eckhardt” & “Wolf-J”) who issued a lone LP in 1973 of some of the most bewitching, non-denominational electronic music ever committed to tape. This feature-ette shows them jamming in front of a small gallery crowd, then at home in the studio ; cut with some rather Brakhage-esque direct-film experiments ... Sounds like a million bucks !!!
4. Bembeya Jazz National “Petit Sekou” live at the RTG studios in 1979. Slays me every time. Top-notch interplay, jagged but never showy guitar ... Love the VHS / helical scan wobble in the intro as well ...
5. Short film of Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s commission for The Curve at the Barbican Center in London, 2010 ; Incredible idea, gorgeously executed ...
6. Great clip of Moroder actually performing “The Chase” from “Midnight Express” on a MiniMoog in 1979 ; proper synth freakout in there as well ...
7. Harry Bertoia Sound Sculptures, performed by his son, Val in 2001. About 5 years before this was filmed, I made the pilgrimage out to rural Bally, PA to witness these for myself ... since Harry’s passing in 1978, the sculptures have been standing in a barn, largely untouched, for the last 30 years; this is a rare document of their majestic forms / sounds ...
8. Pink Floyd “Echoes Part II” ; never was a big Gilmour fan, but I’ll rate this as the best bit from the later “Stadium” Floyd’s reign ...
9. Erkki Kurreniemi “Computer Music” ... mid-60’s film showing Erkki’s process for composing with computers. Typewriter? Check. Scads of jumbled up paper tape? Check. Composer falls asleep, dreams of psychedelic spinning landscape, rife with paranoid overtones? All there. As close as you’ll get to a valid “performance film” of early Computer Music ...
10. The Voice Crack trio of Norbert Möslang, Andy Guhl, and Knut Remond performing a set of their trademark “Cracked Everyday Electronics” in a gallery in their hometown of St. Gallen, Switzerland, 1989 ... I hear this not only as the blueprint for every “pedal noise” performance of the 90s / 00s, but as the invention of a few different languages that make up a large part of our current experimental music vocabulary. These guys are VISIONARIES ...
If I had to sit down and compile a list of my top favorite books—which would be difficult for me to do—there would most assuredly be a spot in the top fifty for Greil Marcus’s sprawling, idiosyncratic and essential, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century
This book is about a single serpentine fact: late in 1976 a record called Anarchy in the U.K. was issued in London, and this event launched a transformation of pop music all over the world. Made by a four-man rock ‘n’ roll band called the Sex Pistols, and written by singer Johnny Rotten, the song distilled, in crudely poetic form, a critique of modern society once set out by a small group of Paris-based intellectuals.
Lipstick Traces
Although I can recall a lot of criticism that was leveled at Lipstick Traces
But what many ardent admirers of the book don’t know, it that Rough Trade released a companion “soundtrack” CD to Lipstick Traces that came out in 1993. Like the book, it’s always had pride of place in my vast collection of “stuff.” The CD was rarely encountered in a world prior to Amazon.com (there’s not even a listing for it on Amazon today, either) but now, thanks to the fine folks at Ubuweb, these rare audio documents, lovingly assembled by Marcus, can be heard again. The selection runs the gamut of weird old hillbilly folk, doo-wop, to punk rock from the Slits, Buzzcocks. Gang of Four, The Adverts, Kleenex/Liliput, The Raincoats, The Mekons, a recording of the audience at a Clash gig, and best of all, the blistering mutant be-bop of Essential Logic’s “Wake Up.” Interspersed between the music is spoken word material from French philosopher Guy Debord, Triatan Tzara, Richard Huelsenbeck and even Marie Osmond reciting a brain-damaged version of Hugo Ball’s nonsense poem “Karawane” that must be heard to be believed.
Below, Benny Spellman: “Lipstick Traces (On A Cigarette)”
The Anton LaPez Candy Dispenser by Etsy seller Stexe. They’re selling for $30.00 over at Stexe’s shop.
Back in the 1980s, when I had nothing better to do than watch TV and collect unemployment benefit, I saw a video of the artist Bruce McLean. It was shown as part of Channel 4’s art series Alter Image in 1987, and after watching, my first thoughts were: Who the fuck is Bruce McLean and what does he want?
I was lucky, I had time to go and investigate. In the library, I found this:
Maclean / McLean an Anglicisation of the Scottish Gaelic MacGilleEathain. This was the patronymic form of the personal name meaning “servant of (Saint) John”.
Interesting. But not quite right. Later, there was more.
Working in a variety of mediums including painting, film and video projection, performance and photography, Bruce McLean is one of the most important artists of his generation.
It was with live works that McLean first grabbed the attention of the art world. An impulsive, energetic Glaswegian, he became known as an art world ‘dare-devil’ by critiquing the fashion-oriented, social climbing nature of the contemporary art world in the ‘70s. At St Martins his professors included the great sculptors of the day, Anthony Caro and Phillip King, whose work he mocked ruthlessly. In Pose Work for Plinths I (1971; London, Tate), he used his own body to parody the poses of Henry Moore’s celebrated reclining figures, daring to mock the grand master himself.
Pose Work for Plinths (1971)
The notion of using his whole body as a sculptural vehicle of expression led him to explore live actions: ‘it was when we (a collective) invented the concept of ‘pose’ that We could do anything’. Pose was live sculpture: Not mime, not theatre, but live sculpture. My colleagues, Paul Richards, Ron Carr, Garry Chitty, Robin Fletcher and I created Nice Style ‘The World’s First Pose Band’, which performed for several years, offering audiences such priceless gems as the ‘semi-domestic spectacular Deep Freeze, a four-part pose opera based on the lifestyle and values of a mid-west American vacuum cleaner operative’. Behind the obvious humour was a desire to break with the establishment, something that he has continued to do throughout his life and work. In 1972, for instance, he was offered an exhibition at the Tate Gallery, but opted, for a ‘retrospective’ lasting only one day. ‘King for a Day’ consisted of catalogue entries for a thousand mock-conceptual works, among them The Society for Making Art Deadly Serious piece, Henry Moore revisited for the 10th Time piece and There’s no business like the Art business piece (sung).
Now, I knew. Bruce McLean is a performance artist, a conceptual artist, a painter, a sculptor, a film-maker, a teacher, a joker, who knows art can be fun, which is always dangerous.
Bonus clips, including Tate Gallery interview with Bruce McLean, after the jump…
On January 29th, at the opening of their new space, Pop tART Gallery in Los Angeles, Dangerous Mind pal Lenora Claire and her partner, Phyliss Navidad, along with super-talented photographer Austin Young, orchestrated the chaotic first night of Young’s performance art/installation piece YOUR FACE HERE. With a crack team of some of the best make-up artists in Tinsel Town, Young and his glamorizers (in full view of an invited audience, passers-by and a reality TV camera crew) worked their magic. Margaret Cho was in the make-up chair when we got there. I’m told that he was able to shoot 40 portraits at the opening party alone.
Over the course of the following five weeks, Young moved his studio into the gallery and took portraits of people from all walks of life—grannies to trannies—and tonight the fruits of these labors will be unveiled when 100 of these portraits go up on the Pop tART Gallery’s walls. Some of the celebs who sat for Young’s camera include Joe Dallasandro, Karen Black, and Perez Hilton.
I’m pretty unabashed in my enthusiasm for Austin Young’s work. I think he’s the most original photographer to emerge in America since David LaChapelle. If you happen to be in Los Angeles tonight, this is going to be the best party in town.
Above, a “Young” James St. James of The WOW Report.
New York-based Israeli photographer Noam Galai’s 2006 shots of himself screaming have become unexpectedly widespread emblems of angst and rage that could possibly reach the ubiquity in radical politics of Alberto Korda’s Guerrillero Heroico photo of Che Guevara.
Pro photography blog FStoppers got the exclusive on the fascinating story of Galai’s whim-turned-digital-phenomenon, which spans from his studio to about 40 countries and counting.
After much exploitation of his holler, Galai’s seen fit to cash in himself, which makes sense.
Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang, formerly of cult favorites, Galaxie 500, began recording in 1992 as Damon & Naomi. Their first album, More Sad Hits
Too true! I was actually a silent onlooker in the studio when some of the record was being recorded and mixed, because Kramer and I were collaborating on a screenplay and they, and I, were house-guests at his Demarest, NJ home at the same time. It was a real treat for this fly-on-the-wall “rock snob,” I can assure you.
For their upcoming release, False Beats and True Hearts, the dreamy avant-gardists have just released a new “video” by French artist and filmmaker Chris Marker.
Naomi Yang writes on the Damon & Naomi blog:
We are delighted to announce a new “video” by visual artist Chris Marker. Consisting of a single still image set to a song from our forthcoming album, the project is being hosted by the Wire Magazine.
“The song, ‘And You Are There,’ is about the way time can compress when you are lost in a memory, something I have learned a lot about from Chris Marker’s work—his films (La Jetée, Sans Soleil), his writing (Immemory), his photographs. When the song was finished, I sent it to Chris with a note—since his work had provided inspiration for the song, I wondered, might he in turn have a visual response to it? He sent back this image, with the note:
“Dunno if it fits your pretty Proustian melancholy, but I thought it could… And thanks for linking me to music, the only real art for me as you know (cinema? you kiddin’...)”
Watch Chris Marker’s “video” for Damon & Naomi’s “And You Are There” here:
Below “E.T.A”—how incredible is this song?!?!
H/T Chris Campion of Berlin, Germany!
I’m not entirely sure what to say here. I’ll just let the designer, iratepirate, of International Erotic Stained Glass Shop & Emporium explain his art:
Q: Why would anyone make sexually explicit stained glass?
A: Because no one’s ever done it beforeAll my pieces are inspired by photographs and custom work is available. I will work on female inspired pieces but not with pleasure as I am gayer than handbag full of rainbows.
There you have it.
You can view more of iratepirate’s work here. (NSFW)
(via Regretsy)
