Because I haven’t updated this blog in almost three years, and because the interests I write and post about have shifted quite radically, I’ve started from scratch at the above. Dys/Utopian. If you are still on here (and I know Tumblr is so 2014, so that may be a big if...) then by all means give me a follow.

My latest for the Electronic Intifada.

I'm sure I don't need to say what state should be replacing Mississippi in this song right about now...

My latest post for the Electronic Intifada on the new track from Immortal Technique, Don Martin of Gatas Parlament, El Tipo Este, Tumi Molekane and Tonto Noiza.

A glimpse inside the mind of Robin Thicke

"Hey, I know what'll be romantic! A song that seeks to strip women of their own sexual autonomy..."

"Dammit, the world thought that song was creepy and my wife left me. I know! I'll record a whole album dedicated to her! That'll prove to her and the world that I'm not a creep..."

"Fuck! Nobody's buying the album, I'm getting trolled on Twitter and my now-ex-wife still won't have me back!"

"Look everyone! I've attached my likeness to a massive bunch of roses and offered free copies of this weird album dedicated to a woman who wants nothing to do with me! I'm really romantic! I'm not desperate or a creep at all! Somebody love meeeeeeeeeee!"

Happy Juneteenth.

This is a song that Seattle-based duo Blue Scholars recorded a few years back dedicated to revolutionary activist Yuri Kochiyama, who died over the weekend at the age of 93. There are plenty of tributes that have been penned to Kochiyama over the past couple of days, so I won't belabor. Suffice to say that the Scholars' Geo was clearly moved by his own meeting with her, and that says quite a bit.

It's difficult to overstate what a loss the death of Fred Ho is for jazz, for music, and for the nexus of art and revolution. He had been frank about his prognosis for some time and was quite open about the fact that he had a very limited amount of time left. Still, this comes as a shock.

The sophistication Ho brought to the table when he conceived of integrating his radicalism into the aesthetics of his music was second to none; easily on the same level as Mingus, Roach, Shepp and other radicals throughout jazz history (though it's only fair to point out that Ho himself understandably bristled at the very term "jazz"). The above composition -- a tribute to Muhammad Ali -- illustrates this as well as any of his compositions. One fears that with his death, one more link between that history and a future for the political avant-garde has been severed.

There's more to say, and I certainly will. But in the meantime it is worth appreciating the staggering breadth of Ho's work. Not just countless albums but a roster of stage operas, a handful of books, even a few art exhibitions on his own idiosyncratic style of dress. Not many artists of any genre can really claim this much and have it be so consistently stunning.

This is an article I wrote five years ago on the fifteenth anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death. If I had to write it over again there are plenty of things I'd give more attention to: I would have spent more time fleshing out the general effect of grunge on music and the impressive flourishing in alternative music that kept up for a couple years after Cobain killed himself. And I probably could have stood to talk about the actual music much more than I actually did. Nonetheless, I think the piece holds up and successfully communicates the basics of what Nirvana's music meant in its time and place.

RIP Oderus Urungus

There’s one headline I never thought I’d write. Not because one actually thought Dave Brockie -- the man who spent the past thirty years known better to the world as the malevolent Scumdog Oderus Urungus -- was actually immortal. But simply because if anyone were to ask me, I’d guess that Gwar would have ended somewhere down the line when the group’s members called it quits well before any of them died, the outlandish characters retired in some way that wrapped up the squealingly fun mythos and left a compendium of solid thrash metal behind.

Maybe the end of the Gwar saga would have been a return to their home planet. Maybe the characters would have all died in some hilariously gory episode. Or maybe climate change would have finally melted Antarctica and drowned the Scumdogs’ Earth base. Now we’ll never know. Because in real life, Brockie is dead of some boringly natural cause.

Make no mistake, this is probably the biggest loss for heavy metal since at least the death of Slayer’s Jeff Hanneman last year. Of course, Gwar always had an impressive array of excellent musicians through its various lineups over the years, people who were always able to seriously shred even underneath the schlocky costumes. We were never allowed to forget that at the end of it all this was just good thrash. But it made a difference that the consistent center of it all, balancing the shock and the rock, was Oderus: magnetic, disgusting, hysterically funny.

Former Gwar bassist Mike Bishop (a.k.a. the original “Beefcake the Mighty”) described Brockie: “He was brash sometimes, always crass, irreverent, he was hilarious in every way. But he was also deeply intelligent and interested in life, history, politics and art.”

Thirty years ago it was still possible to talk about “shock rock” in a way worthy of the title. Nowadays, not so much. Want to see someone get their flesh ripped off? Why pay for a ticket to a Gwar show when you can just watch “The Walking Dead”? Given that, it’s rather impressive that Gwar have managed to stay at least somewhat relevant since the early ‘90s, well after the whole concept of shock rock started to lose its potency. I have no special insight into why that is, except to say that maybe Brockie was able to keep it up for so long because he understood that there’s actually something very heady and artistic behind it all.

There’s a story told about Alice Cooper and Groucho Marx, who believe it or not used to hang out before the latter’s death. Keep in mind that back in the ‘70s Cooper’s music and performances legitimately horrified uptight conservative Christian types. Marx, however, according to Cooper, “came to the show and said, ‘Oh, vaudeville.’ Before that everybody said ‘shock rock,’ and ‘theatrical rock’ and ‘glam rock.’ When Groucho said, ‘vaudeville,’ I said, ‘Wow, that’s exactly what it is.’”

On some level, Brockie understood this. Today, Cooper is himself a conservative and I’d imagine that there are plenty of Tea Partiers out there who think nothing of listening to Ozzy or Metallica. How do you manage to shock the senses in the midst of this? Well, part of it has to do with keeping the satire and fun front and center. Anyone who thinks that this is substantively different from vaudeville or burlesque needs to come back to Earth. Part of Gwar’s charm has always been that they seemed to be poking fun just as much at the self-serious darkness of metal itself just as much as those who were outraged by it.

In the ‘80s and ‘90s it seemed that every daytime talk show had its “offensive music” episode, pitting concerned parents against over-the-top musicians. Marilyn Manson appeared on “The Phil Donahue Show.” Oprah Winfrey had on Ice-T. In 1997, just as the moralistic “Satanic panic” was starting to run out of gas in the mainstream, Gwar appeared on Jerry Springer. As if to prove that the outrage at the spectacle had itself become spectacle.

That’s the crux of it all; that in good art and good music, seriousness is often found in the most irreverent behavior. Some might call this a rather postmodern takeaway. I happen to think it’s just an essential element of any non-realist artistic outlook going all the way back to Dada and even before. What distinguishes the two views is that the latter has at its very core a kernel of genuine, unmanufactured sincerity from which the sendup grows. It’s not the slimy costumes or gory performances that are absurd; it’s that we live in a time when things like this can flourish organically, when bombs can drop and people cheer but fake blood and urine at a concert can whip up gaggles of suburbanites into a frenzy.

Is this to say that there aren’t elements within popular culture that progressives, feminists and anti-racists shouldn’t have legitimate grievance with? Of course not. I’ve written quite to the contrary elsewhere. But those types of songs are made of a notably different stuff than when a band puts out a song called “Bring Back the Bomb” at the height of Bush’s war in Iraq, intended to use its gleeful ultra-violence as a way to comment on what in a way already exists.

But I digress. What needs to be said here is that Dave Brockie was a hell of a musician and artist. There was a simple understanding and genuine showmanship that he always brought to the music; an understanding too often swapped out for behemoth budgets and jumbotrons. Even at the height of their success, I’d argue that Gwar have been tragically underrated. One doesn’t have to like metal to appreciate this, but it certainly fucking helps you feeble human.

From Stereogum. Not much to add here except to point out the obvious: that it was ridiculous enough for the NFL to attempt suing M.I.A. for flipping off the bird when they were only asking for a million and a half. Now the demand for an additional $15 million doesn't just test the bounds of credulity, it shatters them and leaves them in a ditch for dead.

On a deeper level, I'd say that this little episode -- absurd as it is -- represents a basic insustainability in so much of modern popular culture: that in order for it to appear both "wholesome" and "edgy" it has to construct fairly arbitrary limits that of course can be moved at any time. Like most contradictions under capitalism, the fallout from this lands mostly on the shoulders of those who actually make the culture possible in the first place. In this particularly weird saga, that's M.I.A. 

For that same reason, it bears emphasizing that the defense being pursued by M.I.A.'s legal team is basically correct. That's something that anyone looking reality in the face can see whether or not they're a football fan. I can recommend the best coverage of this from Dave Zirin at The Nation.

Hanns Eisler

Ruminations on Sochi

I must admit right off the bat that I didn't watch a single event of the Winter Olympics. I don't really have an excuse as to why except that I'm not a particular fan of winter sports. As a cultural entity, though, the Olympic phenomenon is impressive. There is something truly jaw-dropping about an event of this magnitude being built on such flagrant corruption, ecological devastation and outward violation of human rights even as it is designed to inspire feelings of warmth and international cooperation.

Through a western lens it may be easy to say that Russia was exceptional in this regard, and indeed the price-tag for Sochi was astronomical. But every Olympics brings with it both an unacceptable amount of corporate and governmental fuckery and an incredibly fawning and manipulative sense of perceived ownership: the pretense that these are "the world's games." In the society of the spectacle, the Olympics are pretty close to a cultural lodestone, bridging the chasm of alienation that can allow the logic of empire and corporate hegemony free reign.

As such, it's plenty rewarding when the mask slips. On the lighter side of things, the Internet seems to love (in that oh so ironic way that only the Internet is capable of) the police choir performance of Daft Punk's "Get Lucky." And there's no denying that the sheer awkwardness of the video induces a certain morbid delight. Again, there's a potential to look at the whole thing through west-colored glasses and simply remark on how tone-deaf and lacking in self-awareness it is, as if the Russians had no idea how kitschy it comes off.

The kitsch, of course, is the point. And therein is the tragedy. This, dear readers, is what has become of the Red Army Choir. That's not an exaggeration. The MVD Ensemble (the official name of this police choir) is one of only two choirs in Russia with the official right to claim the name, and goes back to the late '30s. There's undoubtedly something to be said about the fate of Stalinism and Zhdanovism here: an aesthetic that was forged in an incredible self-seriousness, borne of a consolidated roll-back of the gains of the Russian revolution, now itself twisted into doing odd covers of dance songs at the Olympics.

What was the point of including "Get Lucky" in the opening ceremony? An attempt to show that despite the repression the Russian government still knows how to have fun? A way to -- much like the Sochi games themselves -- that the post-Soviet Russia is just as culturally relevant as ever? God only knows. But the crux about kitsch is that if you put it in the midst of an event like the Olympics, no matter how much you try to bring the crowd "in on the joke," no matter how much you wink-wink and nudge-nudge, folks still end up a bit weirded out. Perhaps it was the knowledge that even while this police choir was inside showing they know how to have a good time, actual cops were just outside arresting LGBT rights activists.

That's where this same slip-of-the-mask can become horrifying. Papers and magazines were eager to hop all over the frenzy of (maybe, sort of?) Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina being arrested again. No matter what differences the two may now have with the rest of the group (it's admittedly difficult to keep one's anti-capitalist cred when meeting with Samantha Power) there was something quite exciting about seeing footage of the bright dresses and neon balaclavas streaking through the gray gloom of repression. And none of it made the footage of Nadia and Masha being literally whipped by Cossacks less shocking.

At the risk of falling into the kind of Russophilia that can be all too irritating and prevalent among much of the Marxist Left, there's something between these two incidents -- one just plain awkward, the other outrageous in its brazen violence -- that seems to illustrate the tragic and turbulent aesthetic history of the country.

On one hand we have a kind of performance art strongly reminiscent of the austere and abrasive art-forms that rose up in the years before the revolution and would briefly flourish in the years following the Bolsheviks' rise to power. It's not hard to find the influence of constructivism and suprematism in Pussy Riot's practices. The image of a Cossack in full dress uniform abusing them with a whip just amplifies the sense of historical deja vu.

On the other hand, the cultural order that the Cossacks are seeking to protect: the calcified, pained ghosts of Zhdanov, now in the employ of a system they may have once feebly tried to shun, trotted out for an official event and hoping to hide behind a cloak of irony that is so thin it may as well be invisible. 

I believe these are the kinds of moments, to paraphrase Luxemburg, in which we catch a glimpse of the sand laying underneath these fifty billion dollar complexes.

I'll normally take any excuse I can find to post a Nina Simone video. What would have been her 81st birthday seems a fine one to me.