Hey party people, I’ve been out here in Irvine, CA since Thursday morning. I’ll be headed from here, tomorrow, straight to Boston where I’ll be until the end of next week.
I’ll share some of the adventures here when I get some typing time ( planes and airport lobbies generally offer a fair amount of that ).
Our man in Amsterdam, er, South Austin, The League of Melbotis has purchased a new car.
He has chosen a shiny blue Honda element.
I was talking to Lauren about this last night and she said, “Isn’t the blue element sort of a superman blue?”
I assented, it may be a bit more electric than Kal-El’s longjohns, but it’s definitely super-ish.
“Do you think he chose it on purpose”? “The Blue?” “You know, to make putting a red ‘S’ on it easier?”
Knowing that our friend The League is into Superman in a big way, I thought it was likely.
But, lo, what sound breaks like a speeding bullet, a blog post by The Purchaser (“I’m the purchaser, Mission Accomplished!”) himself.
On March 13th my world became a little bit weirder and a little bit richer as I watched Scott Walker: 30 Century Man. It tells the story of an American boy named Noel BrelEngel, who heads to Los Angeles and joins a trio called The Walker Brothers. The Walkers have minor success in the early Sunset strip scene, but then head to Jolly Old England where their success is of a much larger and much more lucrative variety.
There they seem to tap into a post-war ennui psychology that ties the bourgeois-making-tea-staring- out-the-tenement-development that defined Britain. Listening to the music you hear the heavy reverb, the Phil Spector influence overwhelming the headphones. Unmissable is the driving bassline and Scott’s present, urging baritone.
Now, to this point in the film, I was intrigued that I had never heard of this band.
Eventually the Walker Brothers ( neither Walker, nor brothers, discuss ) break up and Scott starts releasing edgy matrial. English translations of the chansons of Jacques Brel about the seedy side ( a decade ahead of Lou Reed ) of life and, somehow, his core audience sticks with him.
Yet it was clear that is not thinking of this being the limit, Wikipedia notes Walker studying Gregorian chant, dissonances, and other elements that made his work completely indescribable.
Scott proceeds to do a “Doors on Ed Sullivan” and continues to be booked as a pop singer, but performs his exploratory and, occasionally shocking material. His emotional state and distaste for fame push him into being a near recluse, separating his albums by intervals of whole decades.
The film chronicles Scott’s unworldly use of vibrato and analyzes his harmony content as being a counterpoint between dissonance and implied resolution. It’s eerie, it’s creepy, it’s disconcerting and the lyrical content, swimming in vibrato hints of tortured nightmares of a hellish landscape.
In short, music to play Silent Hill to.
Lyrics like:
And I used to be a citizen I never felt the pressure I knew nothing of the horses nothing of the thresher.
Or
Do you swear that the breastbone was bare? I saw it, and made my escape. Do you remember what happened to most of the children? You were in charge of the rolling stock.
Or
“I’m the only one left alive…aaahhh….live. I’m the only one left alive.”
Make you know that this person is doing something dramatically different to the thing that you call “song”. He’s somewhere beyond “song”.
The film footage shows vivid scenes of a percussionist beating pork loin in a syncopated beat with his bear hands. This providing core background to Scott’s vocals.
The impressionistic feel of horror and modernity and convenience and horror really work together in the track “30 Century Man”.
See the dwarves and see the giants Which one would you choose to be? And if you can’t get that together Here’s the answer, here’s the key You can freeze like a 30 Century Man Like a 30 Century Man I’ll save my bread and take it with me ‘Til a hundred years or so Shame you won’t be there to see me Shakin’ hands with Charles De Gaulle Play it cool and Saranwrap all you can Be a 30 Century Man You can freeze like a 30 Century Man Like a 30 Century Man Like a 30 Century Man
Through all of this Lauren and I have started to laugh a bit about the Walker dramatics. It’s a good laugh to drum arhythmically and recite the grocery list with Walkerian vibrato:
Tiiiiilllll a slap moooook slap Cereal Cereal cereallllll Salad Dressing!
But as I think about the miages and scapes I know that this man is doing Art and it disturbs and jars me, and that is rather rare.
I think under Walker’s presence I can understand the baritone over-vibrato’d stylings of Andrew Eldritch of the Sisters of Mercy or Ian Curtis of Joy Division. Their idol was this man, this man out of phase with the pop music which bore him into a fame he didn’t really seem to care for.
I definitely hear Walker’s influence in Japanese video games of the late 90’s and even today. Silent Hill has got to be the most Walkerian soundtrack ever. Walker used rusty wheels as an instrument, their metal grinding metal. I hear it in the palette of Silent Hill. I hear it in the ambient mood shifts as the Silent Hill characters emerge from the other world, where neutral, but not hospitable], long tones re-calibrate but do not release.
It was an accident that we walked into that movie, it happened to be on when we left SXSWi, but I believe that Lauren and I both feel that our sonic palette is now ever so much more wide.
Here are the movies I saw, via images:
I realize this is coming some 2 months late from the event, nevertheless, in Google, every moment of history is now, so putting these words to bits late is no crime
During SXSW I saw this shirt everywhere.
Congratulations Target, with this particular item you hit your target demographic square in the chest.
You hit the:
Post-religious, but spiritual ( Buddha ), educated ( correlate to earning power and choices elsewhere in this summation ), making enough money to have disposable income but not so much that they’d be snobby about actually buying clothes at Target, working in the tech industry, Mac-inclined, likely to have relaxed workplace clothing strictures, buys pre-faded so that machine-wash isn’t a hassle male between 21 and 35.
Madison avenue I am your lapdog.
Had I been able to get over the sheer embarrassment that I associate with using Twitter during the conference I might well have organized a Buddha shirt guy meetup
Last verse:
Zo gingen jaren heen. De kindren werden groot en zagen dat de man die zij hun vader heetten, bewegingloos en zwijgend bij het vuur gezeten, een godvergeten en vervaarlijke aanblik bood.
So went the years past. The children grew and saw the man whom they called their father, seated still and silent by the fire, bode a God-forgotten and dangerous countenance.
—Wm. Elsschot aka J-A de Ridder
I swear, this poem still sticks with me though it’s been ten years since I was on the continent where it was penned.
I’m currently running an old PB G4 ( 2004 vintage ) and I would really like to get a new one.
With buying apple hardware there’s always a waiting game and a cult of “but the next rev will have XXX that will really be worth waiting for.”
In the end, I just usually get fed up and say, “Eff it”, plunk down a charge card and am happy.
But I’ve made so many friends in the world these-a-days, perhaps some of them could help me.
Me, I want to get Textmate and Coda and Xcode running with some more snap. Besides, if I ever get around to writing something in Cocoa again, I certainly don’t want it to be limited to the testing that I could do on an old PB, I want to make sure that I can service the vast ( and growing ) world of the IntelBook.
So, comments, please! What should I do.