Time Travel Via Tottenham, War Zones & (The) Coventry (Automatics)

One day I intend to move to a war-torn country to post blog updates on the terrors unfolding around me in a bid to get thousands of readers, and a book deal. That may seem extreme, but what have I got to lose? Let’s see...
   A job that I don’t hate.
   A flat in London.
   The British countryside.
   My music, book and DVD collection (because I wouldn’t take it all with me)
   My lovely woman (don’t think she’d agree to the move).
   Charity shops.
   Football on Sky down the pub.
   My life.
   Mmm...perhaps I won’t bother.
   I did travel quite far the other day, though, through the badlands of Tottenham and even further North. Terrified, we clutched each other as the bus trundled past shops that looked like they should be in a war zone and housing estates where commoners live. At one point I turned to LJ and said ‘If we don’t make it, I want you to know that I love you.’ Thankfully, at the end of the journey, a friend was awaiting us, along with barbequed food cooked by his charming wife. It’s not that we live in a posh area in a posh house, you understand, but it’s not Tottenham.
   Anyway, whilst in the kitchen (rain having forced us inside) with fans of The Specials, I was prompted by my friend and host to tell them my ‘Specials Story’, which isn’t much of a story at all, really. It simply involves me seeing them support The Clash (read my in-depth review of the night here) on the day they transformed themselves from The Coventry Automatics into The Specials. According to Gary Bushell, this took place four hours before the gig. I could, therefore, claim (along with 1800 others) to have witnessed The First Specials Gig, which is not something I’m particularly excited about. Some people, I realise, may kill to have been there. My lasting impression is that they were good, of course, because they were a good band, but unlike those fans in the kitchen, I have no interest in seeing them now, or listening to their music.
   In time our musical taste may change, although having left Punk (and Two Tone) behind, other sounds from earlier in my life remain with me today. Why, just the other day, should you have peered into the bunker, you would have seen me using my badminton racket as a guitar in order to play along with Jimmy Page. I wish I hadn’t told you that now. After all, I have my credibility to maintain. ‘What credibility?’, you ask. OK, in my head, if no-one else’s.
   So yes, Funk, Bowie, Reggae, Led Zeppelin and so on still get regular airings, constituting a form of travel every time they get played. After all, I would ultimately rather visit my past than a war zone, or Tottenham.

William Burroughs Married To Tod Dockstader’s Eight Electronic Pieces

On the day of the royal wedding let us celebrate another marriage, in this case the one between ‘real’ (concrete) sounds on tape, and an oscillator. Also in 1961, William Burroughs’ 'Soft Machine' appears – and I hereby declare that to be married to 'Eight Electronic Pieces', in this article at least.

   Cut up tapes, cut up words – why not? Whilst Bill mixes old prose (the ‘real’ of literary tradition) with nuggets from The Word Hoard, Dockstader combines pure electrical sound with the ‘old’ reality of recordings on tape. Burroughs would also experiment with tape recordings in the 60s, manipulating his own voice along with music, and snippets from the radio.

   Back and forth, splicing and dicing word and sound – two bold ventures to match the space race of the time. Dockstader’s pieces could even provide a soundtrack to Bill’s book, if you wish.

   Scissors and a typewriter, tape and the machine – Dockstader adds echo to electronic sound to give it depth, to round off the edges, and Burroughs adds fractured poetry, echoes of the past leaking through, of TS Eliot and Tristan Tzara, or in Dockstader’s case, Schaeffer and Stockhausen. The soft machine, the sounds of the machine softened.

   Dockstader runs two or three tapes simultaneously and, from the chaos of chance combinations and accidental themes, imposes structure in search of completion. Burroughs, on the other hand, revels in chaotic anti-composition, the destruction of conventional narrative. Similar methods employed for different ends. Both recycling, remaking ‘reality’ in ways which camouflage concrete sources, you might say.

   At the very beginning of track 8 on this album we hear the sound of a saucepan being hit, but that in itself is not enough for Dockstader; he manipulates that sound. Burroughs admitted later to having lost track of everything he manipulated, but we know that Kafka, Grahame Greene, Conrad and pulp sci-fi etc were all used. His total canon is a more powerful entity than any individual work. The details matter less than the whole mythology. In these pieces by Dockstader, however, we can marvel at the minutiae over which he laboured in an effort to make ‘sense’ of the material.

   What would become known as Burroughs’ Nova Trilogy did not predict a future form of prose, but these electronic pieces do suggest the shape of sounds to come, sounds which, even today, cannot improve upon, or advance, what Dockstader did 50 years ago.

Fantasmagories – Camille Sauvage

Three days ago this was The Greatest Album Ever Made. It may still be that. Brilliant music should evoke such claims, right? But time often cools the white heat of wild enthusiasm and so, in a level-headed manner, I shall simply say that, yes, this is fantastique. And you know I wouldn’t tip you off about any old rubbish that happens to tickle my fancy.
   There are plenty of blogs that can satiate someone’s thirst for library music, much of it really being little more than incidental sounds, as they were designed to be. That said, there’s a place for incidental, background material. I’d rather listen to the poorest KPM LP, like ‘Music To Decorate By’ (it probably does exist), than most modern music. Funky library sounds are popular, but digging deeper there are more interesting records than those, and this is one.
   The release date is 1970, as far as I can tell, and Camille Sauvage created 12 complex mini masterpieces on the phantasmagorical theme. I don’t know what came over him...a fit of absolute inspiration, it seems, judging by the other work of his I’ve heard, most of which seems to be pretty average jazz/Easy orchestral stuff.
   There’s a jazzy element to all this, but it’s so skewed as to render the term meaningless. Yes, there’s a vibraphone, horn section, double bass, and even some finger-snapping on ‘Enferissimo’, but as much as a certain brand of Exotica is implied, so too is the inventive play of, say, the Art Ensemble of Chicago. This is far from ‘Free Jazz’, though, being very tightly arranged, which is part of its brilliance. There’s a hint of Satanic noir jazz about ‘Rhapsodie Pour Belphegor’, and ‘Magma’ also suggests swinging big band Jazz, but the jaw harp, use of vibes and generally leftfield sound ensures that it strays far from the generic.
   Various percussion instruments play a major part, punctuating, adding intricate patterns, especially on ‘Musique De L’Au-Dela’, which features some remarkable drumming. Take this track and play it to a Free Jazz fan and they’d think they were listening to the Art Ensemble, who spent some time in Paris, so perhaps Sauvage was listening. But as with all distinctive music, it’s not easy to pinpoint the influences.
   Listen hear and marvel.

Angel Face (1952)

In this Mitchum looks bigger than ever. Up against the young Jean Simmons he’s a giant, but we’ve learned from film noir that powerful masculinity is no match for a scheming woman, or in this case, a nineteen-year-old girl. She’s so young, it almost appears illegal. Simmons is outstanding as Diane Tremayne, the father-fixated femme fatale with a radical fringe and eyes made for luring suckers like Frank Jessup into her tender trap. And whilst noir traditionally offers a world of pain played out in sharp contrast of shadow and light, here Diane’s eyes exert all the force of black holes into which Frank cannot help but fall. From the minute he hears her playing the piano he’s doomed, failing to get the hint when she’s returns his slap with equal force. But Frank’s no angel, ditching a dinner date with his steady girl for this little minx once he finds out that she’s on his trail. So the game begins; the classic acts of manipulation and man management by the angel-faced girl with a big grudge against her stepmother. Otto Preminger’s direction is faultless, and the story moves at great pace, almost as fast as Diane’s high-powered car. Frank falls for that too, being an ex-racing driver. No time is wasted, to the point where the rapid succession of some events come as a surprise at times. It’s as if Preminger is trying to emulate the tempo of the best hardboiled books. Godard rated this film very highly, and it’s easy to see why.

The Musical World Of Metal And Science Fiction - Edouard Scotto

Yes, from the title you’d expect Spinal Tap pomposity, perhaps, with hard Rock riffs accompanying a greasy, long-haired Brummie singing about cosmic trips in a silver machine – except that the title is too formal for that, and one look at the sleeve tells you otherwise.
   The title is actually so right in its dry description, as befits a librarian, and he could not have known that Metal would become a genre in...whenever. I like to think he was referring to Bill Burroughs’ Heavy Metal Kid, thus making a space-age connection with machine music and Bill’s Nova Trilogy, but this is not soft machine music, far from it – there are fantastically brittle elements, all arranged in a stunning fashion so as to give that full ‘science fiction’ feeling whilst, headphones on, you drift off to colonise Neptune and set up speakers on every street corner playing this album all day, every day.
   There will be street corners when we colonise Neptune, and Tesco outlets, of course. There will also be insects, small ones, like ants, but with jaws that can bite through metal, and they will eventually overrun the human colony, eating everything we’ve built. The only good news being that Tesco will also fall victim to them and subsequently hesitate to open branches on the next planet we colonise. Coincidentally, Scotto has provided the perfect soundtrack for the insect’s domination with ‘Insect’s World’, an amazing piece that electronically mimics the sounds we hear when we drop microphones into their world (that chatter of clicking pincers, wings, whatever). Ever since watching ‘The Hellstrom Chronicle’ I’ve been keeping an eye on insects.
   A great album, which you can get here.

People In The Sky - Michael Czajkowski

The People In The Sky (1969), judging by the cover, looks very much like a product of California cultism involving hippies holding their hands up in the hope of hitching a ride on the chariots of the gods, although that’s unlikely to be the concept Michael Czajkowski had in mind. Then again, who knows? It was made in New York using the Buchla 100 synthesizer which, as you know, is a Modular Electronic Music System composed of functional modules, each designed to generate a particular class of signals or perform a specific type of signal processing. Each module is 7 inches high and 4 1/4 inches (or an integral multiple thereof) wide. Up to 25 modules sharing a single power supply may be assembled in a single cabinet to form a super-module. As you probably also know, it employs three varieties of signals, each with a distinctly different function:
   Audio signals, the raw material of electronic music, are formed by various sorts of generators (sine, square, sawtooth, harmonic) or are produced externally (tape loop, radio, microphone). In composing a piece, signals may be filtered, gated, mixed, modulated, or otherwise processed. A standard level of 0 dB (ref. 600 Ohms) is employed for audio signals within the system.
   Control voltages, used to determine frequencies, envelope characteristics, amplitudes and other parameters, are generated by keyboards, programmable voltage sources and envelope generators. The standard control voltage range is from 0 to 15 volts.
   Timing pulses are originated by keyboards, programmable sequencers, and pulse generators. They are used to trigger notes, open gates, or initiate chains of musical events. Timing pulses are about 15 volts in amplitude.
   And the rules for interconnecting are straight-forward. Any number of inputs may be connected to a single output. Timing pulse outputs may be paralleled and connected to one input. The system output may be derived from any module; output is of sufficient magnitude to drive line inputs on tape recorders or sensitive inputs on power amplifiers.
   Isn’t the technical aspect of machine music fascinating? No? Since The machines have currently more or less taken over the bunker, I felt I should find out something out some of them. But none of the above information lends a clue (unless you really know your machines) as to the nature of the sounds created by Czajkowski. By the way, Morton Subotnik used the same machine to create his classic ‘Silver Apples’ album. He also renamed the synthesizer, which it’s co-creator, Don Buchla had, with all the creative powers you would expect from a computer designer, called ‘The San Francisco Tape Music Center’. Whilst Buchla is better, I would have gone for ‘Fred’, just Fred, or perhaps ‘Mack’, standing for Modular Audio Control Komputer.
   Like Grossi’s ‘Computer Music’ of the last post, this is very much a ‘let the machines sing’ kind of album, albeit produced by different methods. And it gives the impression that whilst Czajkowski may be ‘playing’ the Buchla, as we know of machines, it very much has its own mind. Over the two 20mins-plus parts, it wanders in all kinds of directions. But unlike some musicians who do the same, it never seems to get lost because, of course, it does not really know where it’s going in the first place. Nor, I suspect, does it care.

Computer Music - Pietro Grossi

Aldous Huxley’s much-used quote states that ‘After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music’, but what can a computer express? In the hands of Pietro Grossi, it is programmed to produce sounds, even to recreate works by Paganini and Bach, but unlike Wendy Carlos’s efforts to switch the modern world onto Bach, here Grossi creates a purely computerised rendition of classical music. He has fed the machine instructions, and it obeys.
   The very names of these machines, the System/360 IBM Model 67 and IBM System 1800, evoke futurist dreams of a golden age when the machine was bigger than us in every way, in capability, possibility, and size. So it seemed. They would play human masters at chess, and perform seemingly miraculous calculations. And here, the machines sing, as only they can, because They have their own fantastic sound-world.
   Listening to ‘Monodia’ is like being allowed a privileged peek into machines communicating when nobody is around. It’s what I imagine they say when everyone has left those vast rooms that house them. After the initial surprise (what could be expected? Melody? Harmony?) these sounds become spellbinding, in the way that all alien voices are. And this is how I picture extra-terrestrials communicating, in a mechanical warbles and trills, rather than the simple musical motif of Spielberg’s close encounter.
   ‘Unending Music’ is an appropriate title, because although it does end after 19mins, I suspect it may still be playing today. It’s the most fascinating piece on this Creel Prone release, sounding as much like conversation between the machine and it’s alter-ego, as it does mechanical improvisation.
   People play machines in order to tame them, usually, to impose emotion on them, to evoke feelings via them, but Pietro was not interested in that. So often in musical appreciation, emphasis is placed on ‘soul’ and ‘individualism’. Here, all that we have are machines making sounds, and as such, it’s a challenge. But after unburdening yourself of all musical preconceptions, it proves to be a fascinating sonic experience.

Autechre EPs 1991 - 2002

Genius blah blah...of course, it’s obvious, and listening to it all may well give you ’19 Headaches’, but oh what sweet pain that would be. From the ‘rave’ sound of  ‘Cavity Job’ to the frantic tick and squiggle of ‘Cap IV’ with its contrasting doleful piano, we witness the dynamic duo’s digression from the norm. By 94’s ‘Lost’ they were already well on the way towards greater abstraction, warping (ha-ha) drum ‘n’ bass and electro as they saw fit, as shape-shifters supreme, the boys would keep on mutating the elements.  By ‘EP7’ (1999) they’d reached a high point in the art of sophisticated sonic sabotage with sounds far beyond the comfort zone of genre, reaching some fantastic place on the other side where your ears are both assaulted and massaged, frequently at the same time. Yet with ‘Dial’, from ‘Gantz Graft’, they were still capable of touching some remote base back on Earth (Detroit), whilst in hyperdrive through their unique parallel universe.  

Parental Guidance With Bryan Ferry

Sunday morning – Marcus Belgrave’s ‘Glue Fingers (Part II)’ coming out of the computer speakers, quietly, so as not to wake the neighbours, because I’m considerate like that, and although whilst living at home I used to plague my parents with The Pistols and P-Funk now I’m more thoughtful when, really, it should be the other way ‘round because neighbours plague me with their screaming offsprings, noisy guests, barking dogs, awful music and so on. And all my parents ever plagued me with were requests to get a decent job (or any job at all) not to wear those trousers, or sleep with my girlfriends when they stayed over, help with the garden, etc. They didn’t know, of course, that all that music was in preparation for a great career as a champion blogger and writer of one book about Jazz which earned me approximately £27.
   My parents weren’t the type to buy music. They didn’t buy one record. I would say it’s a generational thing, but LJ’s parents bought music because, well, they were more ‘with it’, and had parties during which they could play their latest Burt Bacharach purchase. The only record I recall my father expressing a liking for was Sandie Shaw’s ‘Puppet On A String’ – he must have got Eurovision fever that year. Mum once told me she liked Bryan Ferry’s ‘Avalon’. I didn’t say ‘But, Mum, you should hear ‘For Your Pleasure’, of course. There would be little point, would there?
   Ferry’s career is such that he no doubt attracted many a cloth-eared fan as he transformed himself from art (pent)house lounge lizard supremo and twisted visionary to plain Pop crooner for Mums, with a pro-hunting protester for a son. I wonder if he’s ashamed, proud or indifferent to what his boy gets up to. Well, Bryan was not exactly Left-leaning as far as I know. His was the politics of the boudoir, strutting peacock-fashion beside the pool decked out in Anthony Price.
   My folks weren’t big on fashion either, as you probably guessed. It was no doubt the sight of my older sister in her tonic skirt and more to the point her male friends in their two-tone suits that influenced my style. The girls would come ‘round and listen to ‘Motown Chartbusters’ on the portable player that we stood on the kitchen table. It was the machine that I sat in front of listening to Roxy Music’s first album, and ‘Ziggy Stardust’ – other-worldly sounds in a down-to-Earth council house – sounds that set me off on a life-long passion.
   Perhaps my father’s conservatism triggered a reaction in me years later that would see me shouting socialist slogans. And, in a strange way, his complete lack of interest in music may have sparked my obsession with it. Reverse psychology or the Reactionary Syndrome may not always work with kids but if I had any, to err on the safe side, the last thing I would do is insist they listen to my kind of music. Saying ‘Look son, forget all that Grim Step and listen to Sun Ra!’ seems unlikely to work.

Speedball Experience - Murder In The Library, Italian Style

The bunker’s crawling with Italian cops and robbers – there are bodies in the library music and Miss Marple’s no use. This is something to do with the criminal side of Italian music, but I don’t know how, exactly, and I don’t care enough to research. More Italian cops have entered the sonic scene here recently, but this is currently the one being spun the most. It’s littered with great drum breaks, devilishly ‘groovy’ organ-playing, and plain good vibrations, so good they make you want to board a time machine back to Naples circa 1971, do a jewellery heist and flee whilst firing from the window of an Alfa Romeo before meeting up in a farmhouse, shooting your partners in crime and heading off to a villa in Rimini where your fur-draped beauty awaits. But after you’ve formed the beast with two backs she pulls a Beretta from her bag, locks you in a cupboard and makes off with the cash.

   Much ecittamento.

I Am Lost In Space With Conrad Schnitzler

‘It's not enough that an artist creates some nice art, but an artist should create his own individual mythology - the way he lives and the art he creates should be a unity and something unique.’ – C.N.


Pass me that conical hat with the ‘D’ on it ‘cause I’ve only just discovered the music of Conrad Schnitzler – you may laugh (or shrug and say ‘Who?) but, you know, the ocean of sound is vast and in its depths lurk many treasures. Now, Con may be the equivalent of a blue whale to some, by which I mean so big as to be impossible to ignore, but to me he has appeared as a strange, fantastical thing akin to those transparent fish seen only by remote-controlled subs...the ones that dangle a glowing appendage as bait (I don’t think I made that up). The bait for me regarding Con was the new M=Minimal vinyl rerelease of his 1978 album, ‘Ballet Statique’. I think CN’s name was buried way back in my subconscious mind, but anyway, this release prompted me to don my diving gear (that’s enough of the deep sea analogy) and explore.
   As you (know-all) are probably aware, he co-founded Tangerine Dream before quickly jumping ship for the Kluster project and so on through four decades. At some point he went completely maverick by only making cassettes and then CDRs. He’s recorded all kinds of music, much of which I’ve yet to hear, but he was a student of Joseph Beuys in the 60s and that should give you a clue as to his orientation. That said, a lot of his music is not ‘uneasy’ ‘art’ sound. Much of it is way ahead of every electronic modern record you’ve heard, but then, we can’t help when we were born, can we? If all modern machine-music-makers worried about not being original they’d never bother...which may be no bad thing...I wouldn’t mind only having the originals to listen to, but then, they were all influenced by someone, and so it goes...
   I may have drunk too much coffee at this point, whilst ‘Krautrock’ from ‘Rot’ (1973) bleeps, gurgles, blips, bounces and, yes, kicks it way out of the speakers – it’s a trip, a magnificent template for all cosmic mechanical music – and it’s making me wonder if he left Tangerine Dream because they were too damn...soft? Straight? Predictable? Not exploratory enough and destined to become a byword for hippy tripiness rather than real progression? I dunno.
   ‘Ballet Statique’ is a good place to start. It’s a ‘minimalist’, beautifully arranged work, which does not suffer from the paucity of ideas which plagues a lot of so-called ‘minimalist techno’. It’s not fair to compare him to Robert Hood, though, so I won’t. Perhaps you know what I mean, but then, if you understood everything I said you’d be me (as Miles once said). The album can act as a portal, if you like, into the CS universe, wherein I guarantee you will become blissfully free of Earthly concerns and drift, not without experiencing sonic eruptions, through Con’s vast space, an intriguing place to explore.

Morphine Mambo Jazz Club - Various (Plastic, 2001)

What a comp – take a trip down the dark alleys of 60s Soho and, you never know, you might stumble upon a party hosted by Dickie Attenborough where Brubeck drops in to play a tune, but watch out for Patrick McGoohan, he’s a very moody drummer on the make – it could happen, and I could play this selection all night long – sporting a Tuxedo, on a secret assignment, perhaps, caught in the crossfire of criminal activity. It’s all here, the cool of Johnny Hawksworth’s ‘Elusive Samantha’, the late-60s ‘groovy’ beat of Jack Trombey’s ‘Assignment London’. And Reg Tisley. Yes, perhaps not a name that has the panache of the American stars, but don’t be fooled, he crops up a few times with magnificent tunes such as the splendidly woozy  ‘Anaesthesia’, and ‘Slow Moody Blues’, which believe me wouldn’t put the mighty Q to shame.  The oddest track is Pete Wilshire’s ‘Dr Witch-Wot’, lifted from the De Wolfe album, ‘Lunar Probe’, which may not fit with the overall style preference of this comp, but is absolutely brilliant all the same. ‘No fillers’ is a common claim of compilers and enthusiastic reviewers, but here it’s true. Even the less extraordinary tunes are more than good enough. It’s worth having for Peter Reno’s ‘Silent Service’ alone. Listen Hear.

German Oak - The Heavy Sound of Young Germany (circa 1972)

Probably the Album Of The Week, although there are a few other contenders since I’ve been adding music to my library like it’s going out of fashion, and you know, Stockhausen can’t stay Flavour Of The Month for long, can he? About a month, I suppose, but if we start from now there are four weeks left for everyone to shout about his genius before dropping him for Les Baxter, which I wouldn’t mind at all.
   Music may one day go out of fashion, although I doubt it. When I see so many people walking around with earphones in I can’t help but wonder what they’re listening to. Sometimes I take a wild guess, but you know, unless you try judging that particular ‘book’ by its ‘cover’, you have no chance. Young, ‘street wear’, got to be, um, whatever’s ‘cool’ on the streets, right? But it’s all the others that puzzle me...yes...that middle-aged man in smart casual clothing? If he’s a Dad, does he have to have Paul Weller in his collection? What about that girl in her office clothes? I’ve no idea. Although at this point I can’t help bragging about my greatest achievement in this area when, spotting a girl carrying a record bag (remember them?) in a park one day I told my girlfriend it held a Kate Bush album. And it did. So...well...it impressed her (my girlfriend, not the girl with the record, who just looked at me as if I was mad for asking, naturally).
   It’s a safe bet that the next person you see listening to music will not be tuned into the sound of young Germany circa 1972. I say that as if German Oak were making regular appearances on Pop TV. That seems unlikely. Krautrock – what the hell is it, exactly? Like all genre tags, it’s nothing, exactly, and anything from electrickery to Rock and a mix of the two, which is what German Oak were. I’m reluctant to categorise them, though, because, well, they go Way Out on these jams, at times sounding like a cross between Funkadelic and Can, perhaps. They even remind me of Miles at times, not during his Be-Bop phase, you may be surprised to learn, but when he plugged in and also went Out There.
   And what about that cover? And the titles? ‘Down In The Bunker’, ‘Raid Over Dusseldorf’, ‘Swastika Rising’, ‘The Third Reich’...if you didn’t know better you might think this was all Nazi propaganda by fringe lunatics trying to kick-start all that shit again. I imagine they caused quite a stir at the time. Even today people might just look at the titles and recoil in horror. That would be a mistake, unless you’re averse to grungy distortion treated with electronics and such ultra-heaviness as to suggest this should all be listened to in a bunker for the safety of the general public. But, well, what do they know about music, eh?

You can get it if you really want it.

Stockhausen, Stupid Culture & Sonic Terrorism

I found a Stockhausen LP in the Easy Listening section of a shop this morning, which was funny, and coincidental, since I’ve been listening to the compilation, ‘Elektronische Musik 1952-1960’ since yesterday.
   The placement of The German Genius (official) in the wrong box must have been a prank by somebody. I’m all for such gestures, although I have to say that when I find items in the wrong category, I’m always tempted to tell the shop owners, as I did here (and we both had a chuckle about it). I tend to make the effort more in charity shops because I want them to increase the chances of them making a sale. I confess, though, to finding Jeffrey Archer in the Literature section once and not saying a word.
   Now I wonder if anyone has taken the place of Archer in the most-obvious-name-to-drop-when-citing-anti-literature stakes. The thing with him is that most people get the reference. I still think someone should have taken his place by now. Furthermore, I don’t even think he’s that bad. I mean, his isn’t the worst kind of writing I could think of. For starters, books that drive me insane just at the sight of their spines are so-called ‘Chick Lit’ efforts. ‘I Got Knocked Down By A Bus Whilst Wearing Big Pants’ and ‘My Yummy Mummy Years’, that kind of thing. It isn’t even the nature of the content that riles me as much as the idea that a market has been created that seems to be designed to encourage total stupidity and low cultural ambitions in girls and women. The equivalent exists for men, of course.
   Publishers love tapping into that massive market comprised of the simple-minded. Ditto TV and film producers, naturally. Yet, as I say this, I remind myself that some consumers of Stupid Culture may in fact be Extremely Intelligent, and read or watch Easy things because all day they’ve been doing something intellectually taxing. Besides all that, my motto now is Each To Their Own. I say this as I’m about to explode when confronted with another example of Total Idiocy in relation to culture. It’s a calming mantra. Mind you, I was watching TV the other day and couldn’t help asking LJ why the world was ‘full of fucking morons’. I do lapse.
   TV is both relaxing and infuriating, but having been raised on it since childhood I cannot kick the habit. Whilst disasters (natural and male-made) queue up for top billing on the news, I read Stockhausen’s comments about 9/11 and recall some of my own from the time. I upset a few people by suggesting that The West goes into rabid reaction mode (publically and militarily) when terrible things happen to its people, but forget that innocents are slaughtered every day outside the zone of self-interest, ie, in foreign places we can’t pinpoint on the map.
   Stockhausen got into trouble when he called 9/11 ‘the biggest work of art there has ever been’ – oops. ‘Compared to that’, he said, ‘we are nothing, as composers’. He later qualified the comments by explaining that they occurred in the context of being asked about Lucifer, who he said was in New York, and that 9/11 was his greatest ‘work of art’. Stockhausen’s electronic masterpiece, ‘Kontakte’, is one of his greatest works of art. It’s also quite possible that, should it be flown into the homes of The Masses wherein it automatically began playing (and could not be stopped), it too would prove as psychologically disturbing as any act of terrorism.

Sixties Grime Beat Band Sensation!