Monday, June 21, 2010

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

even as a rock-ignorant 12 year old i knew there was something a bit off about Rock Follies


















julie covington had been a folk singer and definitely has pipes (if somewhat strident and shrill) but you'd think for the other two they could found people who had thespian skills but also a bit of rock'n'roll about them

still in lots of ways, only some of them campy, this is a highly enjoyable series to watch as a rock-no-longer-ignorant adult, if you happen to live in a building where people throw out all kinds of amazing stuff, books, records, bizarre porn, and sometimes complete series of 70s British TV shows that they taped onto videocassette off PBS when said series was aired at some point in the Eighties.

talking about thesps-as-rockers i wonder what Helen Mirren was like as rock singer Maggie in the original 1975 version of this...

Friday, June 4, 2010

spot-on satire from Vice magazine's blog: "If you were wondering, we’re not sure what specific genre you’d class Ikonika’s material as – it’s way too good to be dubstep. There hasn’t been an apt enough one invented yet. Simon Reynolds would probably call it “flib-flob” or some other terrible made-up name. And then go on to write an essay about how Ikonika’s penchant for Polo mints has made her approach music in a totally new way."





Like Gaga, like Beyonce, it's all grist to the PhD mill I spose. I'm surprised anyone can still get mentally aroused by the Cyborg Woman stuff. It's all a bit 1995.(But then so is the talk that surrounds e.g. Cosmogramma in lots of ways).

Where did all those ideas go? Donna Haraway got into this trip that was the academic equivalent of those people who fall in love with their pets, really think they're listening and can understand your problems.



I actually started reading this, only to give up several pages in, partly because it was a bit labored, but mainly because I thought, "I'm reading a book about dogs"

Oh yes forgot about this one ... Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©Meets_
OncoMouse ™
... another "got to page 11" job. Turgidity beyond the call.

Cybertheory, I would have to say,pretty much killed my enthusiasm for theory for a good while back there. (That and postcolonialism). In fact this volume may very well be the culprit, the final blow.


The cyber stuff does work best with pop culture, it's true, CGI-era movies and industrial and techno and what not. But found with 99 percent of it, back then at least, is that there was a weak sense of music, i.e. the one area where all these ideas were really in play. You would get, at best, a chapter on Survival Research Laboratories. Or a reference to Skinny Puppy.