Frank Rich: Has He Started Talking to the Walls?

Frank Rich: Has He Started Talking to the Walls?

"It turns out we’ve been reading the wrong Bob Woodward book to understand what’s going on with President Bush. The text we should be consulting instead is “The Final Days,” the Woodward-Bernstein account of Richard Nixon talking to the portraits on the White House walls while Watergate demolished his presidency. As Mr. Bush has ricocheted from Vietnam to Latvia to Jordan in recent weeks, we’ve witnessed the troubling behavior of a president who isn’t merely in a state of denial but is completely untethered from reality. It’s not that he can’t handle the truth about Iraq. He doesn’t know what the truth is."

keep reading...
Rozius Unbound: Frank Rich: Has He Started Talking to the Walls?

Back Home

Lisps tour was amazing. We got back last night. DC, Chapel Hill, Atlanta, (conyers), Greenville, Greensboro, Philadelphia. so Much love. Pictures videos coming later.

Tomorrow I think I'm going to this:

Panel Discussion
"Open Source: On the Line"
Monday, December 4, 2006 - 6:30 p.m.
The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center
55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor
New York City
Admission: $8, free for all students, as well as members of Rhizome.org
and New School faculty, staff and alumni with valid ID

Panelists:
Cory Arcangel, artist
Joy Garnett, artist
Patrick May, Director of Technology, Rhizome.org
Daniel Mayer, Co-founder, Wikipedia
Laura Quilter, Founder, Fair Use Network

Moderator:
Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts, The Whitney Museum
of American Art

A panel on the aesthetic and political possibilities afforded by open
source systems, and related debates around copyright and intellectual
property.

The panelists will examine sites like Wikipedia and Digg.com as well as
p2p networks and social networking sites, and the practices and
challenges inherent to each. They will also explore artworks, arts
institutions, and businesses that have sought to adopt open source
models, and touch on current challenges to the continuation of this
ethos such as "net neutrality" legislation.

and then this:


This is the show of my friend Nick Ross, and I did some sound for it.
at Upright Citizen's Brigade 7pm

and then this
Monday, December 4 - Waiting For Barbara Galapagos Art Space (70 North 6th St, BKLN) The workshop premiere of Dan's new play. Starring: Dan Fishback, Max Steele & Julie Lake Directed by Michael Schulman (FREE, show starts at 8pm)


and then go see Warhammer 48k at Club Midway.

We shared a show with them in Greenville but had to leave before they played.
We checked out their album and agreed that it was pretty amazing. Apocalyptic yes, but with a huge dynamic and textural range. Very bizzare. Very compelling. They've been on the road for about 6 weeks and deserve the love.
also on the bill is Titus Andronicus.

Warhammer is playing a Todd P show on tuesday 12/5 at Uncle Paulies w/
:: Animandible
:::: Team Robespierre
:::::::: Runny

check out warhammer's myspace page

Rest in Peace Crispin. We are going to miss you so much.

Crispin's "Violin for Nam June Paik"

It is so sad to lose such a young, wonderful, caring, prolific and radiant artist.
Tribute To Crispin Webb (blog)
Crispin's "Do Something" project was so great.
Crispin Webb

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Stone tonight. Brendan Connelly's percussion piece was brilliant. Jeremiah Cymerman was ever present and Ashley Fure's ipod was well equipped for the task of public mashing.

Ashley has no website but here's the piece she wrote for eight blackbird:

[mp3] Ashley Fure - Inescapable (in broken form) (2004) for ensemble, written for and performed by eighth blackbird


speaking of eight blackbird...here's a recent post from their blog:
"Making an Album in an iPod World"

They bring up all the right points, but they sound a little defeatist. Chin up kids, the proverbial "album" needs you guys to redefine it. And I'd start by not agonizing over pause lengths between tracks, because those really are pretty arbitrary these days. But maybe this will lift your spirits.

Not your Grandaddy's Rock Band.

Volcano the Bear (w/ No Neck Blues Band. The Psychic Elves)
Friday November 17th, 2006 at Hint House (No Neck's Loft space in Harlem)

This was a brilliant show and here are some reasons.
1.

2. I hear you asking: "Why is Volcano the Bear so much better than nearly every other band in the world?"
3. maybe because they are brutally original, and uncompromisingly bizarre.
4. The show began with Aaron and Dan throwing cymbals on the ground and the growling and whining of Laurence's tape decks. The whole show in my head is this chopped up collage of wild gestures and gags. some highlights:
5. aaron walking around furiously with a microphone in his mouth, laws' hitting aaron's adam's apple like an amplified throat whammy bar,
6. Aaron walking into the audience with his weird clarinet mouthpiece chanter tube thing.
7. Dan's kazooing and playing piano like hand drums
7.1 Dan/Aaron clarinet duet
8. Laurence's tape hacking and fader/tapespeed play that created a completely surreal sense of postdigital decay. Like the floor the music stood on was rapidly deteriorating.
9. Aaron's stadiumrock/tribal/"animal from the muppet babies" drumming
10. now in retrospect it all reminded me of a play i saw in Finland once. I couldn't understand a single word but the men were always thrashing about in fits of anger and emotion, grabbing each other and fighting. In a completely exaggerated way...like pro wrestling. It turned into a dance, that was deeply masculine but terribly entertaining.
11. Volcano the Bear is like watching your three best friends, The demure/sensitive one, the alpha/performative one and the zany/eccentric one, all battle it out for your wonderment. They pose and posture, dance and wrestle, yell, touch gently, sing, honk, and bang. And then they all telepathically revert into these pre-literate post-rock super-british "manthems," which steal your heart away on a gentle caveman kabuki rollercoaster.
12. VtB isn't highbrow, it's pure entertainment but these are things you have to leave at home: conventional song structure, expectations for normal instruments, hopes for a sound world that is consistently soothing/familiar and...well...most of what you expect when you think about "entertainment." But once you leave all those things behind and sit on the floor while Aaron stomps through the audience squawking a clarinet mouthpiece into a big piece of bamboo, I'm sure you'll agree that was worth it.

They're on tour in the States..don't miss:

Nov 20 2006 9:00P	AS220, Providence	Providence, Rhode Island
Nov 21 2006 9:00P	611 Florida Ave NW w/ Charalambides	Washington DC,
Nov 22 2006 9:00P	Nightlight, Chapel Hill, NC	Chapel Hill, North Carolina

VtB myspace
VtB Website

this is funny
oh so negative. but oh so funny.

You know what's wrong with you northerners?

You don't read enough southern blogs:
Manns World
Southern Shelter
Le Monde Moderne
Half-life and Times
Jukebox bully

cableandtweed
kiss atlana
3 red square

Confessions of a Music Addict

ya heard?

Universal Music Group Sues MySpace

"Universal Music Group is taking on the Internet's most popular social networking site and its global media parent. UMG labels and publishers sued MySpace and parent company News Corporation today (Nov. 17) for copyright infringement. "

"Businesses that seek to trade off on our content, and the hard work of our artists and songwriters, shouldn’t be free to do so without permission and without fairly compensating the content creators," a UMPG spokesperson said in a statement. "Our music and videos play a key role in building the communities that have created hundreds of millions of dollars of value for the owners of MySpace. Our goal is not to inhibit the creation of these communities, but to ensure that our rights and those of our artists are recognized."

hmm...another beast at bay. I'm just wondering/hoping that myspace might be replaced one day by a non-commercial (or less commercial), entity. That might change everything if the "portal" wasn't really making millions off ads. (eventhough I've read myspace has so much adspace it can't give it away) The great myspace migration would be an epic day. Craigspace!!!
(right now this is what i find for craigspace is some australian guy's blog)

from Visual and Acoustic Space by Marshall Mcluhan

I'm sorry. I'm obsessed.

"Acoustic space structure is the natural space of nature-in-the-raw inhabited by non-literate people. It is like the "mind's ear" or acoustic imagination that dominates the thinking of pre-literate and post literate humans alike (rock video has as much acoustic power as a Watusi mating dance) It is both discontinuous and nonhomogeneous. Its resonant and interpenetrating processes are simultaneously related with centers everywhere and boundaries nowhere. Like music...acoustic space requires neither proof nor explanation but is made manifest through its cultural content. Acoustic and visual space structures may be seen as incommensurable, like history and eternity yet at the same time as complementary, like art and science or biculturalism."

Marshall McLuhan on recorded sound via Excerpter

From “Understanding Media” (Routledge Classics, 2001), first published 1964

300: “Just how obliquely the phonograph was at first received is indicated in the observation of John Philip Sousa, the brass-band director and composer. He commented: ‘With the phonograph vocal exercises will be out of vogue! Then what of the national throat? Will it not weaken? What of the national chest? Will it not shrink?’
One fact Sousa had grasped: The phonograph is an extension and amplification of the voice that may well have diminished individual vocal activity, much as the car had reduced pedestrian activity.”

309: “A bried summary of the technological events relating to the phonograph might go this way: /…/
The telephone: speech without walls.
The phonograph: music hall without walls.
The photograph: museum without walls.
The electric light: space without walls.
The movie, radio, and TV: classroom without walls.
Man the food-gatherer reappers incongruously as information-gatherer. In this role, electronic man is no less a nomad than his paleolithic ancestors."

The Mixtape Lives on in Our Hearts.

great "mixtape" at raven sings the blues:
mixtape

Podcast:
[Mp3] César Alvarez - Live iPod Mashup #3 8'05"

Ingredient list
Fit Black Man - The Skeletons and the Kings of All Cities
vs.
Messiah No. 42/43 Recitative - G.F. Handel
Hurdy Gurdy Man - Donovan
In Particular - Blonde Redhead
vs.
C-Jam Blues - Duke Ellington
vs.
Portuguese Language Tape

are these my new favorite bands?

The Happy Hollows

their myspace
their You Tube

their friends:
Lo Fi Sugar