Catching up on the Last 13 years of cinema: David Lynch's Lost Highway

Started this process off with a viewing of Lynch’s 1997 film noir Lost Highway. Can’t explain why, other than Teeber and Jess indicated that it might be time. Josh was in. It was time.

Lynch’s film is sexy. And it is dated in a somewhat refreshing sense: Lynch is not completely out to lunch, not some total singularity, because Lost Highway betrays the stylistic conceits of that particular vintage of american cinema (early-mid 90’s) indicating an artist well aware of and ready to emulate, his contemporaries and their work.

But its a somewhat quaint notion presented by Lost Highway that interests me. Part A protagonist played by Bill Pullman makes a living playing free jazz. There is no indication whatsoever that his wife (Patty Arquette) is breadwinning. No, the indication is that dude affords the luxurious modo-styled LA hills mansion by playing OUT jazz at a club called the Luna Lounge. This would be a wonderfully anachronistic notion if it were in any film OTHER than one by Lynch. This was a time, remember when downtown avant-jazz was on the ascendancy in a big way. Zorn was at the height of his popularity, the Knitting Factory sold their records in Sam’s and HMV’s and opened a club in Los Angeles. (NB: The Knit began its life as a shitty whole in the wall in Lower Manhattan and up until twelve years ago its programming was devoted entirely to experimental/avant guardia) People still bought cd’s. In fact, cd’s were as much a item of conspicuous consumption as anything. Whether the Knits success was the result of a genuine burst of popular interest in the avant guard or simply a byproduct of getting in on the ground floor of the real estate boom and gentrification process of Lower Manhattan, is unclear). Heady times indeed. Whether you are Charles Gayle (who in ’94 played the Ottawa Jazz Festival and legendarily spent half the gig rambling on with his paranoid, Christian rightwing views) or Bill Pullman’s Fred character, there was at least some degree of money to be made in the out-jazz hustle.

O-Or its pure Lynchian fantasy. Along with the notion that on either side of Dead you’re fucking a variation of Patty Arquette or that physical imprisonment can’t keep a brothers mind down.
Either way, not saying in any sense that I’m stoked on the dudes’ music really. It sounds like that awful muscly-boutique-out-jazz white dudes are so prone to make, especially in that era. Zorn and cohorts, Vandermaark, all guilty.

And what if Lynch simply decided that the theme to this one would be taking it OUT!? That the audience should put into a situation in which they must relate to a man who’s living depends on his ability to take it OUT: Beyond the confines of evenly-paced time keeping, beyond slavery to harmonic structure and clean tonality. Why not then take it out in the filmmaking, to reinforce the theme. Beyond the confines of logically functioning plot devices, or the slavery of a straight narrative structure and direction. Indeed, why not take the man OUT of his body and give him a new one. Instead of making a shitty record of limp spy-music or retro-retro cool jazz with a skronk, why not make a psychological thriller that’s narrative gets to be similarly cluster-fucking as say Coltrane’s Ascension or a 70's FMP Evan Parker joint that's just streaming sheets of reed atonality.

But beyond my own jazz obsession: There is also the wonderful thematic device of Mystery Man and his video camera, which hints at early paranoia of the (At the time, a trend, NOW fully into a next level, well, really real) increasingly surveilled nature of our reality. And here we would need to dip into Mike Davis and Paul Virillio to really get a handle on what notions were kicking around that time. Mystery Man is the perceiverless perception of Security Cam/Vision Machines that began to be a constant presence in many cities but especially Los Angeles. Virillio sums up the question of “who” watches behind, what Davis in City of Quartz (1990) calls “Panopticon Eyelids”, in The Vision Machine (1994) and finds the answer to be: no one. (For example: I recently went through Airport Security with a small four-track tape machine in my bag. I decided to watch it come through on the xray monitor. It looked insane all exploded and thermal like that. Anyhow, the Security Monitor detail didn’t have to do much. My bag stopped in the middle of his monitor frame and the words Tascam Micro Cassette Recorder flashed across it. The xray machine can obviously take an image of my fourtrack's guts and cross reference it with specs in some super computer somewhere...WTF!) Mystery Man represents that deeply unsettling nobody who watches us from multiple angles in multiple places, omniscient. And despite being a non-existent other, but still present, the interest is somehow more directed to our depravity than anything to do with our so-called safety. Virillio, in his book, furthers this idea into the realm of military strategy and more or less becomes incomprehensible.

Lynch, on the other hand, continues to pursue OUT by presenting us with an examination of the formal structures of SUSPENSE (ie here is every plot device possible chained together and thrown at you to the point where it goes beyond plot). Free jazz of course does something similar, sort of, by means of an amplification of jazz’s tendencies. The differences between say Ayler and honker Big Joe Turner is really not much. Much like, beyond Lynchian flourishes, the actual formal qualities of Lost Highway are not far removed from those of any other psychological thriller, simply what tends to be the focus (resolution, linearity, one-actor per character ect) in the normal example are brushed aside by Lynch.

Once outside jazz’s traditional parameters you are left with a sometimes atonal haze, in a tempo so fractured that it becomes fractureless. Kinna how Lost Highway is. And as it should be.

(Thanks to teeber and autodestrukt for explaining what this is really about)

Terraform's "Temporal Junk"

Maybe this blog is totally dead now (and for my part I confess I don’t exactly write at a blog-sustaining pace) but . . . I still love rock music, and I especially enjoy when bands question the elements of rock that get taken for granted, while still conveying the sense of the physical and the immediate so prized throughout the genre’s fifty-odd years.

On their cassette “Temporal Junk,” Portland, OR’s aptly named Terraform [http://www.myspace.com/terraformit], barely two years into their existence, reshape a familiar musical landscape into something alien yet no less inviting. If there is one immediate carryover from past tradition, it might be in the drums’ providing of the time-honored forward momentum. The bass left to its own devices might be playing something akin to standard riffs, but it certainly doesn’t mirror the guitar parts, which are modulated into a percussive crunch for the bass and drums to texturally, as opposed to tonally, outline. Vocalist Ryan yelps over his scrambled strings, goes “Ugh!” at the end of some songs, and pleads, for exactly what it’s not immediately clear. It adds up to even more incongruity between the previously mentioned elements. What’s more, his voice at times sounds like it’s engaged in a bizarre convo with the saxophone, the latter of which is to me Terraform’s secret weapon. Sax player Katarina’s parts consist of a lot of aggressive squeaks and human speech-like bleats, which shudder and refuse to neatly line up with anything else going on in the mix. It sounds delightfully wretched, accidental, free of any overt genre references, and it faintly recalls to my ears the synth-derived blurts of Pere Ubu’s Allen Ravenstine, though she’s using non-electronic means to arrive at a similar conclusion (or maybe “challenge” is a more appropriate word here). It takes guts to sound this much like you seemingly don’t know what you’re doing, and she pulls it off incredibly well, bizarre phrasing, extended technique, and all.

“Temporal Junk” can be purchased from Karamazov Tapes: http://www.myspace.com/karamazovtapes http://karamazovrecordings.blogspot.com/

Terraform also have the audio available for download from their Myspace, which is fine and dandy, but someone with the interest and wherewithal should seriously consider putting this out on a 12” @ 45 rpm. Their approach and material merit it.

Ra uprising

Just my favourite 7" cover as of late, from the first and only Amon Duul 7", released on Ohr in 1970, and the best slab of psych-savant tripping this 2-session band ever offered. Take it as a little something to let this blog know I still care and will someday find it in myself to rant and rave at length about musics timeless and modern.

MONOTONIX interview

The last time MONOTONIX came to my hometown (Providence, RI) they stayed at my house. The house was a real small shithole, much like a morgue, drop ceiling, dank, a "so where does the body get washed", formaldehyde type of place. I felt bad. I also had to go to a "job" the next morning so we had to leave MONOTONIX in my house (I gave them the keys). Not only did they eat all my groceries I just bought for the month, they left mounds upon mounds of long curly hair in my bathtub (which I sold on E-Bay a week later - Official MONOTONIX hair). I forgive them, and want you to know, that these guys are the best. Super live, amazing layers-down of Rock riffs and beats and growls. MONOTONIX is hard-working too, touring extensively, making records and moving in a music scene that is difficult to win over at times, but they always seem to bring the fun and keep it real when the calling is there. I love this band and hope you do to. Give it up for MONOTONIX. Go read elsewhere a real review if you need concrete evidence or just get into this humble interview I did with Yonatan Gat axe-master extraordinaire of the best band from Israel and the best band pounding the US tourpath in the year 2010 - MONOTONIX.

MONOTONIX is -

Singer - Ami Shalev

Guitarist - Yonatan Gat

Drummer - Haggai Fershtman

1. What have you guys been up to lately? Got any new material that you'd like to describe for us?

We actually just put out a record 2 months ago.
It's called "Where Were You When It Happened?".
We're gonna work on new songs and do some more recordings in January.

2. How are things at Drag City? What do you think about being on a label these days? It almost seems like DiY is better financially, is there a reason to have a label for you guys?

There are many things I like about Drag City.
One of them is that they let us be our own boss, we're kind of in charge of ourselves and make our own decisions, but they really help us with a lot of the work, and help us get press, distribution and other things.
They are great people and friends, and we're proud to be on their Catalog.

3. Do you notice any trends in underground music scenes these days? A few observations I have is that it is a lot less common to see bands or musicians have a "following" it seems that music fans take it a lot more night to night now. What do you think? It seems Monotonix is one of the few bands going that actually have developed a loyal following.

We live in Israel, and home, we don't go to shows at all.
When I do go to shows in the US/Europe it's usually our shows, and they happen 200 times a year, so the only trends with live shows I can see are trends at our shows.
There used to be an annoying trend of steel trashcans bouncing from person to the next, but I believe it stopped. Maybe steel trashcans are a 2008 trend.
I think this could turn into an exciting time with all that anarchy in the record business, recorded music becoming free and almost meaningless to people, live shows becoming the one thing that can not be captured digitally, records becoming songs, songs becoming versions of older songs. I know a lot of it sounds shitty. But I think rock'n'roll is getting more boring every day and any revolution is good. I'm hoping these silly, amazing times will maybe lead to one last exciting era in rock and roll.

4. What music are you currently listening to? Anything good coming out of Israel these days?

Not really. I just listened to a bunch of old Israeli stuff. Not too many things I would recommend to someone who's not from Israel and doesn't understand the nostalgia.
Iv'e been listening to a lot of old ska & dancehall. some django reinhardt, and that oh sees record "help".

5. Do you have any advice for kids just starting off in a band?

Tour a lot. Go out and play shows. It's an interesting way of seeing the world.
Plus it makes your band better and you learn some stuff about yourself.
Don't be afraid of American Cops.

6. What is your opinion about Music and Politics? Is there a political message in your music?

No political songs, no.
But I think the world would have been a better place if people thought and learned more about what they form their opinions about.
In my opinion, having a formulated opinion about something you don't know much about is ignorance.
There's also usually something pretty ignorant about rock guitarists going on about politics in zine interviews so i'll just stop here..

Awesome Flier Art By My Pal JOE LEGS!!!!!!

I first met Joe Legs when he was a film major at VCU here in Richmond, VA. I always saw him at shows and he was in this weird band HO-AX, through these meetings we became good friends. Last year he relocated to Austin, TX and joined a band called MAGIC JEWELS. He also started drawing like crazy and told me if I ever needed art for fliers or record covers to hit him up. So I did, and was more than pleased with the results:





Joe Legs is no longer with Magic Jewels but he's still doing his solo work with YOKO BONER...he also paints, draws, makes videos, he obviously does fliers but also does other band art, and computer art/ other mixed media art. If you want to contact him for quotes or just to creep him out, contact him here. He also blogs at BLACK FONTANELLE and CONTORTIONIST JAZZ EXOTICA. I now leave you with a couple of his other pieces:

DESTROY ALL MUSIC FESTIVAL (Atlanta, GA) 10/24/09

DESTROY ALL MUSIC FESTIVAL / 25^th ANNIVERSARY
THE EYEDRUM (Atlanta, Georgia) 10/24/09

WASTELAND JAZZ UNIT / TRAUMA
TAMIO SHIRAISHI + SEAN MEEHAN
ANDREW COLRANE / GRAHAM MOORE
MR. NATURAL / FENTON

Plenty of people enjoy the fetish of collecting things that are obscure, it's apparent in the closed auction listings on Ebay when you search “American Tapes”, that's for sure. But I wonder: How many people there are, out there, that truly appreciate how special these artifacts are, both in the absurd aesthetics as well as in the unpredictable, outlandish and often times regurgitated sounding audio content. And I wonder: How many people read through John Olson's AOL 1996 style listings for new releases, and instinctively forward them to their friends because there is something so special and smile inducing about reading through such upside-down / “weirdo English”, but also due to getting excited and knowing you'll be buying one copy of every thing listed in that e-mail, maybe even some at wholesale if it's something familiar (or if there's more than 15-50 copies that are ever going to be made). And what about when there's the rare opportunity to see some of these documented projects, outside of the narrow confines of art galleries and basements in their home towns? I suppose I can only really know for myself, how I feel.

Which brought my girlfriend, Teta, and I to a large Atlanta warehouse gallery, The Eyedrum, for a fest commemorating the 25^th anniversary of the Destroy All Music festival. I was supposed to fly home on Saturday night, but since booking my ticket, I no longer had any obligation to be home in Phoenix on Sunday. We had already considered having me change the return flight to Sunday instead, so that we could have an extra day together, but getting an e-mail from Blossoming Noise a few days before leaving, about this show, really pushed it over the edge. An extra 24 hours with my significant other and the chance to see some of these people / projects in a live setting was just too much to pass up.

So:

Fenton: I was a bit confused by what the desired effect was with his performance. Two long copper pipes were propped up in front of a couple of combo amps that were spewing out what sounded like low-end feedback, the kind that makes you really question the stability of you speakers' frames... but I couldn't tell if the sound was being altered or created by movements in the pipes. He seemed sincere and extremely drawn in and attentive, this came across like a project that he had much time invested in and that he was actively attending to the minor fluctuations in sound, but I felt like so much more could have been happening, even if just tapping or scrapping other pieces of metal or pipe into the ones that were upright. I was anticipating something dramatically different at some point or towards the end, but it never found it's way to that subsequent portion. I want to know.

Graham Moore: Fairly loud, wall of noise approach, the type of set up the easily allows chilling and the consumption of alcohol, only hindered by the occasional tone adjustment, for the most part. I appreciated the high volume and abrupt start, and even more so: unexpected increases a long ways in that really seemed to upset various portions of the PA in uncompromising sequences, but I really was not grabbed by what he was doing until things came to a stop towards the end of his set, with the last five minutes of churning, fluttering low end tones lurching in and out of existence, with higher end sound and feedback skirting on it's cruxes. It was really well done: tense and slowly peaked at smaller and smaller spikes until fading out completely. I was won over, 100%.

Tamio Shiraishi + Sean Meehan: The Eyedrum has several rooms that make up it's innards, the one in which the stage and the majority of this night occurred is actually not the largest, which is actually a rather gigantic square, white-walled gallery space that you first find yourself in when entering, an openness that begs for large multimedia pieces to be sprawling for 100 feet at a time. From one of the even smaller corners of the building, this squealing started, unannounced. The type of squeal that I've only experienced when an accidental and dangerously loud signal is patched into the wrong jack, and meets an open-air feedback loop (unloving accomplished on several occasions when sampling an old solid state washing machine sized receiver's faulty AM feeds into layered tape collages, which is an artistic way to dance around the fact that I could have easily broken an ear drum and surely irritated all dogs in a three mile radius of my living room). ...the sort of situation where you hear feedback, but it sounds like there are multiple pitches sort of shifting back and forth.

Over the course of the following twenty minutes or so, the apparently saxophone generated high-end tones ricocheted off the walls of the main room, into which an older Asian man (Tamio Shiraishi) eventually walked into, meeting up with another man who sat calmly at a single snare drum, using sticks and cymbals to create friction based, smooth sustained tones, at times coming close to matching the ear drum slicing sounds that were somehow being belted out of this man and horn. The sheer amount of physical force that he pushed through his entire body and instrument was perfectly contrasting that of Sean Meehan, who at his most animated moment, found his way down onto his knees, using forks to generate series of short ambiance until ultimately using the snare's head to crackle and crush an empty beer can that had been left on the gallery's floor, at the most slow pace imaginable (it probably went on for about five minutes or so).

Shiraishi and Meehan's piece was the most confrontational and performance based of the night, and the tenseness and anxiety that their presence created even phased me a bit. Shiraishi walked along the walls of the gallery, occasional in-between some of the people that were watching, and he seemed irritated and angry. His sax never made it down to the range in which notes are generally produced for more than a split second, and it seemed as though he was just blowing through and biting down as hard as physically possible, destroying three reeds in the process, while Meehan seemed completely devoid of emotion and life, never changing or moving at any more than a snails pace. The two seemed completely unaware and detached from each other in some ways, but still strangely maintaining this uniform state that relied on both of their input and stability,... they did an incredible job of utilizing the enormous space of the gallery's front room and complete attention and silence from everyone in the building.

(...okay, to be fair, some of us absolutely did let out a laugh when after changing out one of the reeds, Shiraishi approached the front, seemingly swung the entrance door open with much annoyance and then let a few seconds go by before belting out another series of extremely loud saxophone squealing for the few unexpected and unappreciative people on the patio and in the parking lot. ...because that was just truly smart and funny).



Mr. Natural: Before he started, Teta made a comment about this insane looking antler “instrument” that was sitting on the stage, leaned against a stack of amps. I told her about how I once played with this band in Phoenix, in which one of the members had made a contact-mic based unit using antlers, and they had springs of bike chains or something along those lines attached to them, and as the rest of the group (which I later tacked down as Sikhara) did their own thing, he would bow it or smack it against the ground and it would sound like thunder. ...a few minutes passed, and this taller guy, that had already looked familiar, walked by a few times, and too many different light bulbs started going off. It was absolutely the same guy, it had to be.

Sure enough, in ten minutes time, Teta and I were sitting on the floor in front of the small stage, completely enthralled by the simplistic genius of Mr. Naturals set, a dense and intricate collage of sounds generated by tapping and dragging the antlers across the wood planks and bowing (or hitting with the bow) the two long springs that ran parallel down the length of “the instrument” (as he refers to it), with the contact mics feeding the organic sounds through several effects and delay. The overall tone shifted from thick and low and percussive, to portions that were almost harmonic and ambient, which felt delivered from a natural combination of pitch-shifted vibration and occasional allowance of feedback.

In conversation, he expressed that he felt like he went into the performance without the needed preparation, but I feel obligated to express that what he managed to produce for those 20 minutes was not only textured, varied and interesting, but an impressive display of control and innovation (even if it might be a simple idea, he's the one doing it, making it interesting and having me love it). Really neat / nice guy.

Trauma: In my excitement for the night as a whole, I had completely spaced on who Trauma actually consists of (specifically Ben Hall!), and I was ultra excited to see a table full of Graveyards and Editions Broken Research releases, as well as the momentary / situational meeting with Ben, who is the percussive machine in various outsider units (Graveyards, Melee, Traum, Hell and Bunny, ect ect ect). A gigantic relief for me, (and sub-sequential bummer for them), I already owned a majority of the extremely neat things they had with them: some recent and not so recent Graveyards LPs and 8” lathe, a few tapes and countless Broken Research releases that I had gotten from Ben awhile back via the mail. I mentioned that if he had invested his paypal balance wisely, they'd be in good shape, but still managed to grab some exciting new things: new Melee and Graveyards LPs that he had released and I hadn't grabbed from elsewhere yet, a couple of Trauma cassette and a heavily advised / recommended tape from an artist called Skin Graft on Chris Riggs' (the other ½ of Trauma) label, Holy Cheever Church Recordings: which sadly did not come to my attention as the name of his label until Teta and I were back at our place, because the reference in that name is extremely obscure, to the point that I've never met another person who has even seen the film it's culled from, and I would have loved to connect on a mutual appreciation for it. I need to e-mail that guy.

Trauma's set was truly fantastic. Ben had an assortment of belted down styrofoam, what seemed like guitar or bass strings and other assorted items which were bowed atop on large drum, while another, which was more obviously contact mic'd, was used for generating vibration based drones and rapid, forceful skips of drumsticks across the head (with bells eventually making their way on as well). The dynamic range in both volume and type of sound that Ben crafted was completely engaging, the styrofoam and particular edge of this long plastic tube were scathing and could compete with any harsh noise approach that could have been alternatively used, and his various other combinations of actions kept things subconsciously rhythmic, the sort of vibe that causes you to start swaying, without really knowing or understanding to what pace. Chris used a bow and several wooden sticks and other small items to occasionally re-”prepare” the guitar across his lap, and often provided a simple, perfect baseline for what the two would be creating at the moment. Most notable were the movement changes, sparked by the occasional eye contact and body motion, the two would completely alter what they were doing in unison. The changes were exciting and further drew me in. I really loved their set and am grateful to have been able to catch them outside of the parameters of the cassette on American Tapes that I've come accustomed to letting repeat while working on projects at home.

Andrew Coltrane: ...actually played as a duo with a drummer, under the name Cold Turkey. In both his demeanor while playing and throughout the rest of the night, Andrew seems like a really shy, nice guy. I had really been looking forward to see what he was going to do, the various releases of his that I own are pretty varied and almost always really interesting. As Cold Turkey, while the other guy played scattered jazz-style percussion, Andrew played sax through a rig of various machines, not sure if some were tape units or samples of other sorts, but he had healthy amounts of sound spinning around underneath each fresh onslaught of reeded noodling, which itself would often have thick murky substance to it. While I liked what they did overall, the drums kind of took away from it a lot. Unless I was completely misunderstanding what I was hearing and how loud things were, I think they might have even been going through the PA, which seemed completely unnecessary. Of course, to be fair, it's probably hard for anyone that is banging on anything to leave much of an impression directly after watching Ben Hall do anything. (I would assume).

That being said, with an awareness of the critical tone, I was actually into it and grabbed their LP without hesitation. (and it's awesome, much more sparse, no percussion at all, just some heavily effected sax sputter that got a double play spin earlier this afternoon).

Wasteland Jazz Unit: Other than Trauma, I was most excited to see these guys. They had gotten a hold of me to say hello after they saw something I wrote about them (in regards to a CDr they did on American Tapes, actually), and since then, I played with Talibam! (who they have a split LP with), and have come to learn about the space and radio show they help coordinate in Cincinnati, the Art Damage (Lodge). Their schtick is simple and to the point: a reeds duo (sax and clarinet) through some effects and extreme volume, and it becomes much more apparent live, as the two play their instruments the way you would aggressively imitate Glenn Branca on guitar, that the approach is half of the game. It's not easy to swallow, but once you get to a part of the room where you can stand and watch them without your ears bleeding, you catch that it's a full on noise/jazz freak-out, most directly carved in stone when the amps shut off for the last couple of minutes and you can clearly hear John Lorenz wailing relentlessly. Obviously not for everyone, and especially not for anyone with sensitive ears or an opposition to feedback, but the “anything goes” / “fuck it” vibe is playful and sincere in it's specificness. I was way into it, despite taking a bit to figure out where and how I could be able to tolerate the aural attack. “All music has been destroyed”, indeed!

...neat meeting these guys and chatting for a second. I gladly picked up their new CDr that documents a collaboration with C. Spencer Yeh. “That's a fucking weird one”, the other John points out while laughing a healthy bit. I laughed too: “yeah, I bet!”. I look forward to eventually passing through their part of the country, I am sure it's a blast.

I thought it was extremely refreshing to see a group of people doing this sort of thing, keeping a cool, positive attitude, not taking it all so seriously when appropriate to acknowledge the absurdity, but in other contexts: having a psuedo-professionalism in the instances of well-thought out ideas and intricate / innovated creation, and universally: being approachable and nice for the most part. I was really happy to see all of these different personalities intersect and balance so well. I wish that there were some more people attending and that I had played too (I never think that though), but it was hard to not feel extremely good about walking to the car at 11:30pm, when it was originally set to last until about 1:00am. I didn't spend nearly half or even a third of what I was expecting that I would have been tempted by via merch, but still left with some exciting new stuff to check out. Met and re-met a few nice people, got to check out a legit gallery and space that I've never been to before, was truly blown away by several of the performances and shared the experience with someone that I love. I feel as though it's safe to say that I may have enjoyed this night more than most anyone else in the building, and I'm grateful that my obsession of the fringe delivered us to that moment in time.

LYDIA LUNCH & HER JERKS' LAST LAUGH

I got excited when Teenage Jesus & the Jerks "reunited" to play those Knitting Factory shows a while back. I checked airline tickets, promised myself I was going, realized it was too expensive and ultimately forgot about it. So when word came about that Lydia Lunch was taking the band on tour I got excited. Now a two hour drive is all it would take for me to be face to face with a band that rearranged every conception I had of music and how to make it. DNA were always my favorite, but Teenage Jesus were the most punk in a time where words like that were a thing of the past.

First off, it must be mentioned that this was not a true to form reunion, but considering TJ&TJ was a revolving cast of members, all that really matters is Ms. Lunch was on stage with hopefully at least one member of the original band. And that's all you got... Lydia on guitar and vocals, James Sclavunos literally playing one drum and Algis Kizys from Swans on bass. Considering the band's discography is about as long as the dead air before the first song on my highschool band's demo, my expectations of a magical, lengthy set never danced across my mind for more than a moment. Perhaps this was the reason each show's openers were a who's who of modern no wave, punk and whoever else made it onto the bill: Mika Miko, the Bay Area's unruly Burmese, Talk Normal (best NY band going!!!) and so on and so forth. Could these be great shows? Possibly... but I'll never know.

Why? I didn't go. Chalk it up to my general laziness and procrastination of even the things I'm most passionate about, but I'll blame it on youtube. After watching video after video of recent Teenage Jesus shows, I vowed not to waste my 20 bucks and stayed home. As my friend Patrick mentioned (he actually went to a show), "you could tell this was a big joke on everyone who came", and maybe I should have expected that and probably would even embrace it? Hell, I like a good joke, but from the sound of Ms. Lunch's vocals, their set was either a 15 minute anti-smoking ad (thanks Patrick, I'm still laughing) or Large Marge from PeeWee's Big Adventure reincarnate on stage after her fatal truck accident. Gone is what I truly loved about this band... youthful angst, a sound that challenged your ideas of what music is and so on and so forth. With those key elements in the trash, why reunite? Money... I get that, and fuck she probably needs it, and while this is hardly as obnoxious as say Joy Division getting back together with Ian Curtis' daughter on vocals or some lucky chap they met at a pub "who had er' real passion fer the urly werks", I still think it's silly that this happened.

Proof?