Just landed in the CZ so won't be there, but am happy to have helped put together this show for the fabulous ERMP - go enjoy a beautiful day in the Lower East Side!
DC on NIN: Heroes for Ghosts
Today my LA Weekly article on the new NIN album The Slip is out. Been thinking a lot about that "Welcome to the Machine" reference – neither of them denied the mechanisms of fame, just the indignities that were suffered for it.
Re: the lede. Best when angry. For my book I interviewed one of Reznor's roadie/techs whose job it was to glue the keys back on his keyboards after each performance. Who knew this could be a 20 year career?
Convincing People is not easy
So last week I read Drew Daniel's excellent Throbbing Gristle book 20 Jazz Funk Greats (Continuum), and directly afterward spent 21 hours watching noise live at the Knitting Factory for the No Fun Fest. Yesterday I turned in yet another NIN piece, this time for the LA Weekly, and so all revolves right now around the noise/industrial nexus and my blossoming (re)interest in what it means to listen to and participate in so called transgressive art. I want to share this bit from Drew's book, which is part of the chapter on the song "Convincing People," because it reveals something that bothers me about the contemporary noise scene, which I see as very much the inheritor of the values Genesis et al. founded, however ironically given the context of this extended quote:
Lucky Dragons curate East River Music Project, Obits play East River Music Project 2008!
The most excellent Luke Lucky Dragons agreed to curate the first East River Music Project show of the summer. Mark your calendars! And...the world is ready for Obits, the new project of my dear friend Scott Gursky (of Shortstack and the Ruby Dare fame) and Rick Froberg (Drive Like Jehu/Hot Snakes). Are you? Get with it.
East River Amphitheater (Cherry St. @ FDR Drive, NYC)
June 7, 2008 | 2 PM
