Ovidscillatorial Gogol Amphibian

 No.224, aired July 24, 2013. First half of the program included a series of overlays upon A Band’s 21-minute Amphibian. Second half featured Out To Lunch’s mix of moments from the 6th Meeting of the Association of Musical Marxists, including his own reading of an extended passage from Eugune Gogol on Hegel’s Absolute Idea, accompanied by Paul Seacroft on guitar. Videos and additional info at:
http://unkant-publishing.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/amm6-amm-capitulates-to-hierarchical.html.

Part 1

1. CAKE! – A Band
2. Nights Like This – Kroovy Rookers
3. Amphibian – A Band -- Ovid / M9 – Derek Bailey / passage from Preface to Phenomenolgy of Spirit – G.W.F. Hegel / M12 – Derek Bailey / more Ovid
4. Here Comes The Judge – Kroovy Rookers
5. Naval Aviation In Art? – Frank Zappa
6. No More Boring Crap! – Kroovy Rookers

Part 2

1. AMM6: OTL’s Political Mix – Out To Lunch (featuring Dave Black, Oscillatorial Binnage, Felt Beakers, Esther Leslie, Keith Fisher, Ulli Freer, Mordecai Watson, Michel Prigeant, Paul Seacroft and Jacob Bard-Rosenberg)
2. Sally – Gogol Bordello
3. M6 – Derek Bailey

Have Gun, Will Travel

No.223, aired July 17, 2013. An unplanned episode lacking in conceptual wholeness but rich in suggestion & sonic energy, I hope. Audiobook heard throughout was the Commuters Library edition of (The Best Of) Have Gun Will Travel, Show 1: Three Bells To Perido. This was a radio program that originally aired in 1957. The audiobook preserves the original radio advertisements, three of which were featured here.

Part 1

1. Snodland – Soft Machine
2. Outta Town – B-Monster
3. 4 Songs For Soprano & Orchestra, Op.13, No.1 – Anton Webern / London Symphony Orchestra
4. Naked Machine Gun Girls – B-Monster
5. Viscous Delicious – Infected Mushroom
6. 4 Songs For Soprano & Orchestra, Op.13, No.2 – Anton Webern / London Symphony Orchestra
7. 4 Songs For Soprano & Orchestra, Op.13, No.3 – Anton Webern / London Symphony Orchestra
8. Psychobabble – Dog Eat Dog
9. Nettle Bed – Soft Machine

Part 2

1. Cockroach – Dog Eat Dog
2. 4 Songs For Soprano & Orchestra, Op.13, No.4 – Anton Webern / London Symphony Orchestra
3. Caveman – Dog Eat Dog
4. Naval Aviation In Art? – Frank Zappa
5. Lo & Behold – B-Monster
6. Composition No.124 (+108D +96) – Anthony Braxton
7. Zombie Woof – Frank Zappa

In The Chambers Of His Imagery

No.222, aired July 10, 2013. Featured audiobook was Ezekiel Ch.6-10 from the Commuters Audio-Bible. In this episode I grappled for a connection between the Blakean view of gods as energies struggling within the human body (versus spirits with a separate existence) and Iancu Dumitrescu’s phenomenological approach to composition where he composes from inside the sonic material (rather than seeing instrumental timbres as pre-existing, as in Classical music).

I’ll keep working on that one, but I did enjoy this quote from the Book of Ezekiel that seems to equate the inner sanctum of the Temple with the unconscious:

“And he brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, behold a hole in the wall. Then said he unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall: and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door. And he said unto me, Go in, and behold the wicked abominations that they do here. So I went in and saw; and behold every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, pourtrayed upon the wall round about. And there stood before them seventy men of the ancients of the house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, with every man his censer in his hand; and a thick cloud of incense went up. Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his imagery? for they say, The LORD seeth us not; the LORD hath forsaken the earth” (8:7-12).

Part 1

1. A Love Radio – Royal Red Brigade
2. Naval Aviation In Art? – Frank Zappa
3. Outta My Mind – Royal Red Brigade
4. Plutonian Frenzy – Iancu Dumitrescu
5. Made Of Stone – Spiral Beach

Part 2

1. No Soul To Sell – Royal Red Brigade
2. Melting Pot – DJ Yamaguchi -- “All journeys prove without destination” – Colin Simms / Grain – Graham Hill
3. Teddy Black – Spiral Beach
4. Speak For The Dead – Royal Red Brigade
5. Hyperspectres – Iancu Dumitrescu -- Outliers / The Owl Of Death And The Dancers (Picasso) – David Barnett
6. On The Loose – Slowly -- Earthworms - David Barnett / “I slide down the stairs of the sky” – Colin Simms
7. Sinking Ship – Royal Red Brigade
8. March Of The Crabs – Anvil

Common Blood

No.221, aired July 3, 2013. Began as a primer for the SNFU concert at the Exchange on Friday July 5. Lead vocalist Mr. Chi Pig, once the epitome of the leaping high-energy skate-punk, now 50, performed in a Chinese dress and demonstrated his cock-sucking skills with both ends of a beer bottle. All of SNFU’s live songs sound like fist-pumping anthems for the end of the world, but in this show the apocalyptic chorus “This is The End” was revealed to be about the back end of your body. The show also included She’s Not On The Menu, Joyride, Cockatoo Quill, and Painful Reminder. Regina’s Royal Red Brigade opened for SNFU, and will be featured in the July 10 program.

This episode held several half-formed thematic elements that simmered & threatened to bubble up into a conceptual umbrella. The “common” theme took shape after hearing Jungle’s Common Blood, when I impulsively shared a passage in Marx & Engels’ The German Ideology I had read earlier in the day on the historical relationship between individuals and their classes. The quote begins -

“The separate individuals from a class only insofar as they have to carry on a common battle against another class; Otherwise they are on hostile terms with each other as competitors” (82).

And the theme really took shape when the following passage from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (as always, selected at random) came up near the end of the program:

“Why do you deny me water? The enjoyment of water is a common right. Nature has not made the sun private to any, nor the air, nor soft water. This common right I seek.”

As the ancient “right” to water now lives under global threat by 21st century robber barons, it is time to ask why should anything not be common to all?

Part 1

1. Don’t Count On It – Swelter
2. She’s Not On The Menu – SNFU
3. Naval Aviation In Art? – Frank Zappa
4. Money Matters - SNFU
5. Prophesy (Albert Ayler) – Eugene Chadbourne – Metamorphoses - Ovid
6. Whatever Would Beckett Have Said – Swelter
7. Common Blood – Jungle
8. Ochre Ringlet – Eugene Chadbourne -- on Individuals, Class and Community – Karl Marx & Frederic Engels, from The German Ideolgy / “Out of hill mist as often before” – Colin Simms (from Angel Exhaust 22, The Romance Of Insects)
9. Misfortune – SNFU

Part 2

1. Plastic Surgery Kept Her Beautiful – SNFU
2. The Man With The Prosthetic Head – Swelter
3. I Wanna Be Your Bicycle Seat – Acid Mothers Temple And The Drowning Paraiso UFO
4. Seeing Life Through The Bottom Of A Bottle – SNFU
5. Attack From Planet Hattifatteners - Acid Mothers Temple And The Drowning Paraiso UFO -- Wintering Snowy Owl In The Snowfields Above Eden - Colin Simms (from Angel Exhaust 22, The Romance Of Insects)
6. Desirade – Swelter
7. This Is The End – SNFU
8. The Walking Dead – Eugene Chadbourne
9. It’s So Fucking Great To Be Alive – Jungle
10. Exit Plexit - Simply Saucer

Break Iron Walls, Draw Tawdry Curtains

No.220, aired June 26, 2013. A belated summer solstice episode, with more passages from the Book of Ezekiel (Commuters Audio Bible) and readings from Cosmic Orgasm: The Music Of Iancu Dumitrescu, a new book from Unkant Press edited by Andy Wilson. 

The title of this episode comes from three quotes, the first of which is from the AMM statement by Out To Lunch:

“Blood in your eye! / Our poetry is not evasion, it draws back the tawdry curtain of celebrity and voyeurism which hides capitalism from itself, and from our hungry eyes” (Cosmic Orgasm, 85).

The second is from the Dumitrescu interview:

“The paths of art are infinite! Innumerable! If you divert from this fundamental search, like a simple ‘free’ artist, a thick, opaque, impenetrable wall bars your road” (Cosmic Orgasm, 84).

And the third is from the Book of Ezekiel:

“Moreover take thou unto thee an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city: and set thy face against it, and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel” (4:3).

Part 1

1. Pemiyo-nakwan (Beautiful Dancing) – Young Spirit
2. Comeland – Muscle Bitches
3. M7 – Derek Bailey
4. Save The Nymphos – Muscle Bitches
5. Integrales – Edgar Varese / Ochestre National De France -- Our Kinetic Kynicism Knows NO BOUNDS – Out To Lunch
6. Red Sand (Intertribal): Hopi Song – Young Spirit
7. Country – Muscle Bitches
8. Mochikita (Having Fun!) – Young Spririt

Part 2

1. Noon Harras – Derek Bailey / John Zorn / William Parker -- In Resonance With Iancu Dumitrescu And Ana-Maria Avram (interview)
2. It’s Unanimous (Ow!-Ow!) – Stiffed
3. Ecuatorial – Edgar Varese / Ochestre National De France
4. Naval Aviation In Art? – Frank Zappa
5. What It’s Like – Stiffed
6. Invisible Dimension – Forbidden Dimension