In 1967, Mr. David Bowie (nee Jones) got his first fan letter from an American, in this case a 14-year-old girl in New Mexico whose father received a copy of Bowie’s first album from the radio station that employed him.
Mr. Bowie’s response to the girl is very sweet, and reminds us that behind the iconoclastic rock god we’ve come to know for four decades lurks the 20-year-old striver who was excited to discover a new fan on a distant continent.
Two months ago I wrote about Brian Eno’s work with music and art generated randomly by computers. At that time, “Bloom,” his iPhone app that allows one to do similar work on a small scale (and on a smaller screen: your iPhone), had been out for a while and was a hot download from the App Store. Eno mentioned that the next iteration, “Trope,” had been released on iTunes that weekend, but what he failed to mention (or did not know) was that it was available on the U.K. iTunes, but not on the U.S.
At some point since then, it’s been released here. And so, here’s a brief video that shows the application in action. I haven’t downloaded this yet, but I probably will. How much iPhone “Risk” can one play before needing something new to play with? Moreover, I remain mesmerized with Eno’s work all of which, to credit Rich Roesberg with the point, descends from John Cage.
What’s remarkable here is the degree to which smartphones are revolutionizing our work, our play, and our lives. This tiny device smaller than my hand has most of the technological power I so desperately craved when I was 12: the power to write, or draw, or record, and then distribute that artistic creation freely anywhere in the world. No one younger than 40 can imagine what it was like for homegrown artists 35 years ago to have to choose between the bad options of hand copying, mimeograph, carbon paper, or 25-cents-a-page Xerox copying. None of them was suitable.
Yes, it’s Pere Ubu again — but it’s my blog, and I’m trying to evangelize. Or, at least, be understood.
So why do I so love this video of “Folly of Youth”?
It reminds me how sexy Michele Temple is. I took a friend with me to see the band on the tour that accompanied this album release in 1995 (hard to believe now that it was that long ago). He was a novice, and he was smitten too. Her bass line fills my dreams.
I love the way Jim Jones warps the guitar tones with feedback.
I think the song, and David Thomas’ singing, are hypnotic. To me anyway.
And I could watch Robert Wheeler play that homemade theremin all day. Very much calls to mind this.
I love it when artists are inspired by other artists whose work is stylistically utterly unrelated. Just because you sing the blues shouldn’t mean you can’t appreciate Burt Bacharach. There’s lots of bad country — and there’s also Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. My favorite such example — and one I’ve quoted to students for years — is that the aloof existentialist Samuel Beckett’s preferred reading was detective thrillers and his preferred viewing was Laurel & Hardy. Parochialism is the province of snobs and poseurs.
How fun, then, to discover Pearl Jam, the last standing major grunge band, performing a song by Devo and donning the appropriate attire to do it in. I like that a lot.
Last night, ubiquitous friend Trey and I went to see Devo at the Music Box (aka “The Henry Fonda,” and I doubt Henry would be pleased at what goes on there most of the times these days: rock and hip-hop shows).
Some of us (well, me) have waited 30 years to see this band do “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” live. Yes, there is another version of this song that to this day is performed by those old Rolling fellows, but really, it can’t compare. Here’s how the song really sounds, and how it was performed last night by a very energetic quintet that I remember freaking out and scaring off everyone I played that album for back in the Carter era, but who now, somehow, is beloved by attractive young women who were nowhere to be found near this band 30 years ago.
Maybe it’s not a great song. (Or even a good one.) But the video’s got perhaps the best unrecognized camp line in movie-promotion music video history: “Flash, I love you — but we’ve only got 14 hours to save the Earth!” It’s got that, plus blow-dried hair and reflective clothing. 1980, where did you go?
The recent demise of all those record stores like Tower Records and Virgin Records and The Wherehouse has been very good for some other people: the stores that remain. Like Rockaway Records here in the Silver Lake District of Los Angeles, happily near my theatre, which I’ve visited many times over the years. They’re doing just fine because they stock things you can’t find at Best Buy or Target, and because they know what they’re doing. Here’s a great profile in the LA Times that explains their success. Any store offering Frank Zappa collectibles and doing this well must be run by very smart music fans.
Last week, Pere Ubu guru David Thomas kindly emailed me to say he’d make sure that I got the new Ubu disk, as well as the recent CD he produced for 15-60-75 (the Numbers band), in the mail.
The Numbers’ disk arrived two days ago and I’ve just started to explore its deep soulful blues.
Today in my mail, there was the new Pere Ubu disk. In a hand-addressed bubble mailer. With the hand-written return address of… Steve Mehlman, the drummer.
