transmissions from a compromised antenna

Great time in Philly as usual this weekend, although things went a little different than I expected. One of the most fun and exciting things was just going to the Digital Ferret store. The whole record shop is dedicated to dark electronic stuff with a bit of old-school industrial, neo-Celtic, ambient, power noise, and so on. Also great selection of t-shirts, magazines and DVDs. New York City, for some reason (and I do have my theories as to what that reason might be), just can't support subcultural institutions like Digital Ferret, Relapse Records, and the rest of the Philly scene. There's plenty of jazz shops and weird old record shops, but they don't cater so much to weird, marginalized cultural forms.

 

In Philly tomorrow for Dracula's Ball and then, later, the Philadelphia Experiment party. Should be totally amazing. I'll let you know.

Are you hardcore enough?

Holy shit, peops!

Last night was a big whirlwind tour of old-school Florida fun. Bhall's family was having a little family get together, so my sister and I drove up to Largo to sip home-brewed beer and look at these hilarious glamour shot pics of Brian in high school, beaming at the camera from under a huge curly afro. Some old friends who I hadn't seen in ages came around from their digs in LA, and around 10 my sister went home and the rest of us went to visit a local artist who lives in St. Pete now. We picked up the gifted songwriter Alex Hooks and drank and talked some more, until around midnight when Merc and Syd came up and asked me if I still wanted to go to the Castle.

Yes I did yes I did yes I did. There is no club in New York like it. The people there are all about the culture and the music and the fetish stuff is wild and for real but anybody can feel accepted. I got up on that dance floor and shook it to the dark sounds with some graceful stranger in pigtails and black lipstick and hours went by in a state of pure techno-gothic bliss. It might have been nice to talk to more people but it was one of those nights when I communicate with movement and not with words. Alex had never been to the Castle before and it was awesome to see him get down too. Merc drove us home and we ate gnarly Taco Bell nachos with Alex's dog, which he says is 150 years old in dog years.

Fucking amazing night. Thanks to everybody who made it happen.

Flying in triangle formation over Williamsburg, Brooklyn. So weird.

In other news, I got drunk the other night and made a complete horse's ass of myself. Man, put the booze in the cabinet. M.I.A. was totally kick-ass on Saturday though. Like a cross between Madonna and Che Guevara. Then we had a great time in Philly driving around listening to Dulce Liquido and turning sharp corners. The next day, we went to the original Relapse Records store (independent metal) and to a goth fashion shop called "Armed and Dangerous." Between all the Christmas gifts I've picked up so far, it's looking to be a gothic, satanic, even fascist Christmas.

So little boys and girls, I hope you've all been very nice!

Because I MAY have a free second ticket to see the British-Sri Lankan rap phenomenon in Philadelphia on Saturday December first. I am trying to get a date, sort of, but it's really more important to me to go with someone who actually listens to and digs M.I.A. My roommate's an obvious choice but he'll be busy stocking shelves  at Wal-Mart in New Jersey Saturday night.

So if you live in Philly or NYC and you like the M.I.A thang, let me know.

In other news, current writing projects include:

1. A memoir of some adventures in Prague revisited through the lens of Google Earth, moving towards a concept of the "techno-memoir"
2. A New York Review of Books-style book review of two non-fic books about the near future, one of which is almost entirely about robot sex. Or I could review two recent books about Sputnik and the Cold War space race. My teachers have told me to try to write more concretely and avoid abstractions so I might pick the second and then write the first one later for a funkier audience.
3. A propaganda piece urging graduate students to consider a series of hard questions about whether staying in graduate school will bring them anything resembling happiness and satisfaction.
4. Also contributing research to a piece on political caucuses for the Huffington Post. I'll make a note here when the piece appears on OffTheBus.

Went to the first night of the "afropunk" weekend festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music theater tonight to see the eponymous film with A--. If you want more information it can be found here. Apparently they have a huge community of people getting black hardcore and punk bands in front of largely black or at least blacker-than-usual audiences.

The film covers some challenging ground. What I found most educational was how many young black kids who get into punk are basically attacked by the black community for either a) acting white b) rejecting middle-class privilege or c) being a "satanist," devil-worshipper, whatever. There was one guy who has become a very well-known drummer who told a story about how he had scored a job as a banker on Wall Street and then left it to be a musician. His parents were howling over "the benefits" he was giving up. Oh!!!! And some of these kids said they don't even talk to their parents anymore....

In a certain sense, none of this is entirely new. I mean, I've heard lots of the same kinds of things from white punks and have even gone through some of the same shit myself at a certain age. But what's probably different is that the parents, especially if they are middle-class parents--have more to lose. Or, more precisely, they had more to overcome in order to get up to where they are. And so to have their kids shave all their hair except for one giant green dreadlock in the center of their forehead and try to make a career out of screaming on the stage is especially painful.

But James Spooner, who directed the film, is now using it as a sort of counseling tool to build community for the black music counterculture. I think this is awesome. Whatever the weaknesses of the film (and there are a few), it sucks for somebody to feel that they can't experiment with the underground because their back is against the wall due to their race. Or that you have to listen to hip-hop to prove to everybody that you're really black. Bringing these issues into the open is good.

Several times during the film, the audience's reactions were interesting. Once was when Moe Mitchell, the singer for Cipher, said "My music isn't for white people at all" while footage showed him playing to an apparently all-white audience. That got a few chuckles from the peanut gallery. Actually I felt that particular juxtaposition of audio and viddie was a tad hostile to Mr. Mitchell, but yeah, the point stands. It's especially weird that all the lyrics are about Black Power.

Another strange moment was when this California woman who's prominently featured in the film but who I'll here just refer to as M-- goes on a long shpiel about how she doesn't date black men because her parents love her and "actually live in a nice neighborhood" and they all sell drugs anyway. That got actual gasps. Again, I felt the director was hostile to his subject here. I'm willing to bet that M-- is not pleased with how she's represented in the film and her comments are taken out of context. Plus, they bring up the invisible zeppelin in the room: class. As A-- pointed out, class is at the root of the definition of punk when we think of how it originated in the UK slums. So what does it mean to make a film about punk where we don't mention class and focus only on race--not even to contextualize comments like those above, and from what I could see the afropunk movement tends to be pretty middle-class?

Yeah. So, class would add a lot. But, leaving that to the side for now, I think the film is rad and the movement coming out of it is potentially liberating. See Afropunk if you get the chance.

J