In the Shadow of Hollywood and Vine

I attended the Throbbing Gristle event last night at the Montalban Theater on Vine Street as promised, and it was actually pretty fascinating. They appeared live and played the score to Derek Jarman’s 1972 arthouse film In the Shadow of the Sun. It’s funny how times have changed – Apple laptops have taken the place of synthesizers but you could tell some of the audience had been TG devotees since their inception in 1976; there was a lot of silver hair in the crowd, and a lot of black clothing. This score was actually added to the film in 1980 as a collaboration between TG and Jarman, and its ambient grind fits the images perfectly. The style of the film is painterly and surreal, with scenes that reminded me of Bunuel and Dali, and some that I think were in direct homage to Maya Deren’s experimental Meshes of the Afternoon. Jarman holds some shots for so long that even with slight movement they take on the character of pictures in a gallery rather than film, a device he used later to great effect in Caravaggio. The alchemical content was subtle, an occult undercurrent told in symbols rather than words (there is no dialogue and no linear plot): a young man lies in a flaming square, a large key is pulled from a drawer, pyramids loom behind archaic statuary and men in animal masks silently impart a shamanic presence. Soundless interactions are staged like live theater, such as the pairing of a seated young man and a figure dressed in a Seurat top hat who simply stands and stares at him from the opposite side of the frame. The film clocks in at just under an hour, and the band closed their appearance with the live performance of one song, Persuasion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Shadow_of_the_Sun_(Throbbing_Gristle_album)

http://www.elizabethdeegallery.com/files/press/DJ_2009-02-10_Artforum.com.pdf

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080920/

http://greg.org/archive/2008/03/04/derek_jarmans_in_the_shadow_of_the_sun.html

Re: Caravaggio, mentioned above and filmed in 1986, it’s a beautiful film and stars Tilda Swinton (in her first film role).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090798/

Swinton also appeared in Jarman's segment “Depuis Le Jour” in Aria in 1987, and it’s stunning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqEImF2SfL8

I’ve always meant to see Jarman’s punk-era film Jubilee, but have never gotten around to it. I’ll have to look it up – it sounds fascinating.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_(1977_film)

And apparently there is a new documentary about Jarman. I really do find him compelling. There is nothing like a real artist.

http://www.derekthemovie.com/

Give Me Some of That Old-Time Industrial Music

I got a notice that Throbbing Gristle have reunited, and are going to play a show at the Montalban Theater in Hollywood. I just bought a ticket. This should be interesting, especially to see the kind of crowd that shows up for it. They are planning to play the soundtrack to filmmaker Derek Jarman’s 1974 alchemical opus In the Shadow of the Sun.

Here is more info in case anyone is interested:

http://www.throbbing-gristle.com/

Avant Garde Memory Lane

I just remembered something, and wanted to mention it briefly. The first time I recall seeing anyone representing the vibe that would later evolve into what would later be called Emo was in the late ‘90’s in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. I went to a show, I don’t remember what band was playing, it was just some weeknight local band at the kind of (probably illegally operated) urban industrial space club where water runs down the walls, but there were two kids in the audience that caught my attention. One was a tall skinny blonde girl who looked a lot like Pris from Blade Runner. Her hair was really short and choppy, and she was wearing weird skinny pants and a striped t-shirt with detachable sleeves (I pay way too much attention to clothes). Her companion was a young guy, probably gay, and he was dressed about the same, only with dark hair and his clothes were kind of floppy and asymmetical. At the time, I had never seen anyone dressed exactly like that, not yet. They just looked really, really different. A few years later, every kid in NYC looked identical to them, but they were just WAY ahead of the curve. Now Emo seems to have fully matured and is even receding in the cultural rear-view mirror, but it’s interesting to look back and think about that evening, like it was a singular anthropological spotting. Another girl who really caught my attention in a similar manner was also very young, maybe twenty and possibly much younger, whom I saw on the subway in lower Manhattan in 2005, right before I moved away from New York. I noticed her on the train at the City Hall stop. She also had asymmetrical short hair, in a modified mullet like the style that was popular in the early ‘80’s. Her hair was light brown, and she had put some lighter streaks in it that were eye-catching, and was wearing really funky eyeliner and black clothes. I really admired the way she was put together. It was a highly individual interpretation of the growing trend, but she had a strong element of original New Wave in there, too. She looked modern, but also would not have looked out of place if it really had still been 1980 or ’82. I love clothes from that era and collect them, but she wore them very differently than I do, and I was impressed with her sense of style. And the first time I ever saw a faux-hawk was in about 2003, on a girl in a Starbucks’ in Union Square in Manhattan. That trend played out fast once it hit big, but, again, she was months ahead of the curve. She was petite, and wearing an enormous black military coat and Doc Martens and she looked fantastic. Her hair was also light brown, and she was very pretty, the kind of model-pretty that needs no makeup, so the overall effect of this beautiful face with the severe hair and clothes was amazing.

Gonna Get Schooled

I have been looking into some educational opportunities to further my career, and have figured out what to do to get the skills I need to move forward with my music. UCLA offers a music production certificate program now, and while I don’t think I need the entire set of classes in order to accomplish what I want to do, I need most of them. I did a run-down of all of them, and picked eight classes I think are essential and two more that are optional but would be good if I am so inclined to take them after I finish the others. I just invested in my Mac Book Pro, and I plan to invest more in a MIDI set-up this summer, and then after that’s bought and paid for, I plan for to enroll in the first of the UCLA classes, a comprehensive introductory course in LogicPro. Except for that one, which is condensed into several long sessions over the course of a month, each class is spread out over twelve weeks. They are also held at night on the UCLA campus, which works out really well for me.

I tried two years ago to enroll in music technology classes, but when I looked into Musician’s Institute and the Los Angeles School of Recording, they were, respectively, $24,000 and $27,000, each for a two-year program. I don’t need an entire course of study in recording technology, because I don’t plan to become a commercial producer. I just want to record my own music. I can’t invest that much money into a program most of which I don’t need, and those schools don’t offer individual classes – it’s all or nothing. And they only have day classes, which doesn’t work so well for grownups who are also concurrently responsible for earning their own living. As I said above, I don’t even think I need all of the UCLA program, which is much cheaper (a total of about $7,000 if you do go for the whole certificate course). I’ve taken some classes at Sunburst Recording Studio through a local community college, but it’s more of an analog set-up and they only teach studio recording and mike technique, not computer-based applications. There is also a local independent Apple certified Logic Pro school, but, honestly, I’d rather learn through UCLA. They have some of the best people in the media business as instructors and the classes are good networking opportunities. I got some freelance music writing assignments through a class I took there last year and met a lot of people whose paths I never would have crossed otherwise.

Part of the reason I don’t want to go for the whole certificate program is simply to save money. There are several classes in it that I feel are either above my head technologically or that I will never use and by not taking them, I can bring the total cost down by more than two thousand dollars, which more than covers the MIDI equipment. Another reason is that I want to be able to learn with no outside pressure. To earn a certificate, you must achieve a certain grade in each class, and I would rather just audit the classes. That is what I did with the industry class last year, and it worked really well for me. I’ll have a record of completion of every class I take, which is good enough for my purposes. I might be able to parlay the knowledge into music industry employment at some point in the future outside of my own personal goals, but I feel I can do that by demonstrating mastery of it. It should also help with my music writing – the more you learn the better your articles become. The Sunburst classes came in handy for an interview I did with a producer.

I also found out you can take free one hour tutorials at the Apple store, and I booked the Mac general intro class in case it can teach me something I don’t know, and also an intro to iWork and one to LogicPro. They’ve got more, for iWeb, Final Cut Pro, Aperture, etc., and I’m going to take them all. After that, if I still feel I need more help, I also may book some one-on-one time there with an instructor.

Sleepwalking Through the Mekong

I got busy and let a couple of weeks lapse, but I still wanted to post a review of the Dengue Fever documentary I attended in Hollywood because it turned out to be very worthwhile. The screening was sponsored by Amoeba Music and was held at Space 15 Twenty, a new outdoor shopping area just off of Sunset Blvd. It was a bit chilly to sit outside for almost two hours to view a film but I am still glad I went. Dengue Fever was formed in Los Angeles in 2001 by brothers Zac and Ethan Holtzman. They both got serendipitously inspired around the same time by Cambodian pop music of the 1960’s and ‘70’s and went on a search for a singer, finding an established one in Chhom Nimol, a Cambodian immigrant to Long Beach, CA. The documentary, Sleepwalking Through the Mekong, chronicles the band’s tour of her home country. Dengue Fever is the first American rock band to tour Cambodia, and the film includes their performances in Phnom Penh, their appearance on Cambodian television, and their trip to the rural countryside to perform both in a children’s music education program and on a makeshift stage set up in a slum. The band made no money on this tour because Cambodia is a poor nation with persistent third-world conditions, and they had to turn to their record label to provide part of the financing for the trip. In interview segments interspersed through the film, the musicians said they had wanted to make the journey in order to explore the source of the music they found so compelling and to give something back to those who had inspired them. The film is eye-opening in chronicling the lasting effects of the Khmer Rouge dictatorship on the Cambodian populace and their culture. Many of the original artists that Dengue Fever references in their own music were killed in a cultural purge ordered by Pol Pot, the architect of the Khmer. He installed a state radio station which played only his own propaganda songs, and folk and pop songs were outlawed as they could be used to undermine his authority. It’s clear that, despite his efforts at control, they lived on in the underground - when Dengue Fever played some of the older tunes, entire audiences sang along with every word. The children at the school the band visited also were well-acquainted with the music thanks to the determined efforts of their teacher, an admirable woman who spoke of her own childhood sadly interrupted by war. The Cambodian artists of that era had originally been inspired by rock and rock from the U.S., so it was very interesting to watch the cross-pollination come full-circle over the course of events highlighted in this documentary. Some of my favorite parts of the film showcased the interaction between the Western members of the band and people they encountered in Cambodia. In one scene in an open-air market, the band good-naturedly socializes with vendors, and a dinner with the lead singer’s family is also entertaining. But I was most taken with the scenes that documented the band setting up and performing in a shantytown. The local children hung on the stage and watched them as though they were gods descended to earth and an enormous crowd massed to view the spectacle. It made a lasting impression on me to be reminded how impoverished much of the world remains, and it made me more consciously grateful to live as I do in such a culturally rich and diverse environment as Los Angeles.

I recommend Sleepwalking Through the Mekong for music fans, devotees of Asian pop culture and anyone interested in cultural history in general. There is a very nice website for the film at the following address for anyone who would like more info:

http://www.sleepwalkingthroughthemekong.com/

Amoeba Music Film Night

I am going to this indie music film tonight with a colleague:

http://www.amoeba.com/content/amoeba-music-space15twenty-present-monday-movie-nights.html

It's about a local L.A. band, and it sounds pretty awesome. I'll give a review shortly.

The Big Apple

At last, I have a music-related topic to post about. I finally found a good enough deal on the MacBook Pro I need to record my songs, and I bought it recently. I found it online, at MacMall, an authorized reseller you can link through to from the Apple website. They had last year’s model at a discount with additional rebates that totaled $180.00 for the notebook and software, all of which brought the price down nearly $500.00 from retail. I paid for it on a Friday and it was delivered the next Monday before noon. I set it up that night with antivirus software, iWork and iLife. I also installed my digital camera upload software, transferred all of my photos into the new machine and started posting more photos to my Flickr account. I also have huge amounts of poetry, lyrics, research and other written material that I need to dump into the machine and organize. I ordered a black plastic cover for it, too, and my friend is going to refer me to a design shop that can etch the case with my FLEUR D’AMOUR logo, sweet. I still need MIDI equipment, more memory, an external drive, renter’s insurance, and a better waterproof laptop bag, but this is real progress. I plan to take classes at the Apple Store and UCLA this summer to maximize my Logic Pro investment.