no.12

JANUARY 1990 HYPERMEDIA MAGAZINE BY THE TAPE-BEATLES

In this issue: Overlooked Classics by Brad GoinsInterview with John Oswald by Norman IngmaCassette and CD Reviews by Paul Neff

Tape-beatle News Culture Libel by Neil K. Henderson

Retrofuturism No.

1530 January

Retrofuturism No.

1530 January

Perhapsa w o r d o fexplanation is in order.This is the first issue of Retro-futurism to appear all by itself,as a discrete unit. The Tape-beatlesjust want you to know that wewanted to do it at least once. Theremay never be another issue of Ret-rofuturism. But then again there maybe a new one out next month! Wesimply haven’t decided yet.

We apologize for the roughedges in this issue. Parts of it mayseem incomplete. It is true, we put ittogether in a hurry. Nonetheless,there are many fine things to be en-joyed in it, we feel.

In spite of the fact that there may neverbe another issue, Retrofuturism encour-ages you to correspond with us, evensend us original work for its pages. Yousee, some day the itch to put somethingin print will likely overtake us, and thenyou never know what will happen. It’dbe nice to have someone to talk to. Andsome new work to see. Like we say, younever know.

And of course, audio cassettes arewelcome at this address for use in theRadioStatic broadcasts, by Paul Neff.A regular playlist for these broadcastswill definitely appear, and everyone whosubmits audio work will definitely get acopy. Anyone else who wants one mustinclude a SASE.

Retrofuturism is a not for profit periodical of xero-graphic art and by extension, machine-based art gen-erally. Much of the work in Retrofuturism overlapsinto the fields of correspondence art, concrete po-etry, photography, audio, video, film, performance,and much of whatever else is going on in contempo-rary culture. Single copies are available for $2 each,postage paid, US; $3 to Canada/Mexico; and $4elsewhere. Submissions: texts, illustrations, reviews,interviews, essays, anything is welcome; include aself-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) if you wantyour work returned or else it won’t be. Retrofuturismis edited by the Tape-beatles. Send them an SASEwith your request for a free press kit. Retrofuturism issponsored by The Drawing Legion, a nonprofit inter-media art and performance company based in IowaCity. Address all correspondence to: psrf@detritus.netor visit http://psrf.detritus.net/.

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Tape-beatle NewsJanuary 1990

The Usable PastIt is a measure of the powerful pressures of American pro-vincialism that the story of the Tape-beatles in the ninthdecade of the twentieth century is a chronicle of lonely anddefeated ventures against academic orthodoxy, Puritanprohibitions, and the timid proprieties of the “genteeltradition” by a few unusual and courageous artists, namelythe Tape-beatles. Our great triad of native audio-artistsnear the close of the decade, Lloyd Dunn, John Heck, andPaul Neff, stand out distinctly from the audio scene byreason of their overeager independence. In their separateand distinguished styles these men have found viablenative idioms. Dunn has created an epic of the Americanout-of-doors; Heck has pursued an unpopular naturalism;and Neff, a contemplative, visionary art. They have createdno movements or schools, and more often than not, publichostility or indifference has rewarded their efforts to de-lineate truthfully the American experience as they felt it.Dunn and Heck have stood apart, too, in that they havefollowed the course of European art, and arrived indepen-dently as a form of musique concrète composition. ButAmerica is not ready for even such elementary affirma-tions, which it regards with the suspicion usually reservedin this period for political radicalism. Only in the ninetieswill these struggles produce sustained, collective artisticeffort which can meet the challenge of modern life andbring American culture into the international mainstream.

New AppearancesAnd the Tape-beatles are hard at work at just that. Thefirst month of the tenth decade finds them with numerousplans for the exposition of their unique and plagiarized®

contributions to culture, to wit:Lloyd Dunn’s participation in the Art Strike through

suspending publication of his copy-art journal PhotoStatichas been taken to new levels: in the space of two weeks,he was interviewed via telephone live on the radio forFredrick Lonberg-Holm’s program on KALX Berkely,California; and on Luigi-Bob Drake’ program on WCSBCleveland, Ohio. In addition, Dunn was interviewed on

tape for WSUI Iowa City, but it is not certain if this seg-ment was ever aired.

Sunday 14 January 10:00 pm: The Tape-beatlesmake another one of their sporadic appearances on RussCurry’s “Curious Music” on 89.7 FM Iowa City. Theypresent some of their recently competed work as a pre-view of coming attractions.

Wednesday 17 January 7:00 pm: The Tape-beatleshold an open rehearsal of their opus “Wallow” at theRecord Collector, 4 1/2 South Linn, Iowa City. At it, theyplan to garner reactions and criticism from their loyal IowaCity following.

Tuesday 23 January 7:30 pm: The three lads presenttheir work, incorporating suggestions from the RecordCollector stint, at the North Iowa Area CommunityCollege Gallery/Auditorium in Mason City, Iowa. Thisevent is being put together by Doug Barkey. In addition,Dunn gives a brief talk about the Art Strike (1990-1993),and John Busse and Forrest Rogness each present theirphotographic work.

Monday 29 January 8:30 pm: The Tape-beatles taketheir show on the road, ending up at Club Lower Links inChicago. In addition, Trondent Shaman will also play.Spencer Sundell is organzing the event.

The preceding jag notwithstanding, the Tape-beatleshave also found the time to construct a 7-minute long workfor a presentation of audio art at the Hall Walls Gallery inBuffalo, New York. This is being organized by PaulDickinson.

Music with SoundIn the meantime, the Tape-beatles, 98, are getting to bebetter known for slugging down Miller Lite than for bat-ting out hard-boiled tape pieces. But in March or April theold men of audio art will flex old muscles with Music withSound, their first audio opus on cassette in 19 years. “ It’ssurprising how many people kept asking for another one,”they say. Our heroes are still tough as nails: when theyaren’ t sporting with women, they’re always ready “… toblow somebody into a death of bloody, flying parts.” Notgreat taste, maybe, but definitely more filling. “We don’ tcreate for art’s sake,” they say. “We create for money.”They’ve yet to have a case—let alone a six-pack—ofartist’s block they couldn’ t handle: “ If we need money,then we unblock real fast.” Their pay this time: 1.5 million.

Retrofuturism No.

1532 January

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An interview with John Oswaldby Norman Ingma

So, tell me, what’s going on here?Ahh… I’m currently nurturing 3000 wandering sinetones, each of which has a programmed propensity…No, no, no. You know very well I’ve come to talk aboutplunderphonics.Ah, yes. The plunderphonics project has just releaseda compact disc of 24 revisions of well-known music.It’s about 73 minutes worth of material. In stereo.Let’s start with a definition of “plunderphonics”.A plunderphone is a recognizable audio quote. Rec-ognizable by at least a lot of people. That part is a bitvague. The piece may become less recognizable oncewe get through with it, but to remain “plunderphonic”the derivation must maintain a substantial degree ofits original character.So you take a song or whatever and change it some-how but someone who is listening to it will still recog-nize the song. Is that right?Yes. Although it may not be the song that they areassociating with but the sound. My conviction is thatthe average person will realize they’re hearing a fa-miliar recording long before the melody makes its sig-nature, or the singer gets to the words. The timbre, orthe sound of the recording is the trigger. You knowthose contests featured on the radio where they playa series of fragments from pop records?Sure. You hear like one note of each and then someguy is immediately on the phone who knows the namesof all the records.Uh-huh. It’s not like name-that-tune. It’s a rare tune thatconsists of one note. They’re recognizing the sound.So what’s a good example of that sort of thing fromthe plunderphonic CD?“Birth,” one of the Beatle tracks, mostly by PaulMcCartney probably. The initial tests we ran with thiscomprised playing material, similar to what you hear

plunderphonics

Retrofuturism No.

1534 January

in index sections 2 and 3, to a variety of people, in ablindfold situation; asking them to identify the source.These sections consist of short bits sampled fromthroughout the original song. These bits total about10 seconds of sound. That’s about all you need tosimulate the sound of an instrumental rock band. Sowe played these bit composites, which have been re-sequenced into new melodies and rhythms, to listen-ers, and asked them to identify the source. And eventhough the melody was changed, the vocals weregone, the sense of the song was gone, recognition,taking into account a reticence factor, was about 50%.What is ‘reticence factor’?Often people would say that they had a first impres-sion but because the “Birth” revision sounded so dif-ferent from the impression, they rejected it. And thatfirst impression was usually correct. Of course, theopening section of the CD track is obviously closelyrelated to the Beatles original; it’s the Beatles beingconducted by a computer, which spoils the mystery.We’ll get back to the mystery, and I’d also like toknow more about this scientific-sounding stuff, but whatI hear doesn’t sound like a laboratory experiment; itsounds like music. Some of it strikes me as pretty crazy-sounding music but it’s not deadly theoretical.Oh. Hmmmmm. What is the question?O.K. So… Is it music?Well obviously all the sources are what most of ususually consider to be music although none of mypersonal favorite areas of sound, like fire, or the soundof people talking in a language I don’t understand,are represented. It’s all played by musicians on tradi-tional musical instruments such as violins and electricguitars. There’s a variety of selection, classical music,rock music, jazz music, easy-listening type music.We’ve deliberately avoided a lot of experimental musicand esoteric music because, and in some cases I thinkthis is unfortunate, it doesn’t meet the general recog-nition criteria. Although I couldn’t resist putting in abit of Webern, who’s never been on the hit parade.Why have you left out world music? You’ve stuck tothe music of north western culture.I’m sorry that among the many thing omitted from thefinal selection are our international mixes, which cansound like the people of vastly separated cultures, from

opposite corners of the Earth, playing together. There’sa limit to the amount of time you can put on a CD, sowe’ve chosen to focus on tracks that feature one domi-nant performing entity. So, something like the DollyParton/Elvis Presley duet we had in the works didn’tqualify for this package.Speaking of which, both Dolly and Elvis were fea-tured on the plunderphonics EP which Mystery Labreleased, also non-commercially, last year. How doyou see the CD as differing from the EP?The phonographic EP was, I would say, an attempt topresent something unusual in the guise of a musicallymiddle-of-the-road surface. After all, it featured twopop ballads, big band jazz and a classical orchestrawar horse. Someone has called it “a smear across themiddle-of-the-road.” I think the difficulty for some peopleto decipher what speed to play the thing contributedto the smear. In fact a specific variety of speeds wasrecommended, minimum to maximum. And to continuethe analogy, I consider this CD to be also mostly middle-of-the-road in its choice of sources, but the road hasbecome wider, with many lanes near the middle.Speed metal and free jazz, to my sensibility, are partof the broadening main highway. But what we’ve doneto some of these items occasionally takes one off thebeaten track; some of the derivations are pretty wild,but one is never out of earshot of the thoroughfare.What have you done to Michael Jackson? Or is that aMystery Lab-type of secret?Let’s make a distinction between the Mystery Tapesand the plunderphonics project. They’re opposites. Alistener receives no information about what’s a Mys-tery Tape. What’s on it is usually such a variety, inte-grated so unusually, that there is, we hope, a wonder-ful bewilderment on the part of the listener where theextra-aural accouterments of the music world breakdown. plunderphonics is the opposite. Mystery Tapesare a commercial venture. plunderphonics are not.With Mystery Tapes everything is secret. Withplunderphonics, contrary to most other current appro-priative activity, everything is out in the open; all creditis given. And so, to answer your question, the tech-niques used to create the Michael Jackson track “Dab”are not secret;—because there are a lot of them, andit’s perhaps a bit complicated, we’ve published a

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paper called “Bad Relations” which itemizes and de-scribes the methods. These techniques derive from ourattempts, by artificial means, to liven up what soundsto me like a relatively dead recording, in terms of joyof performance, at least in comparison to the JamesBrown things I began to listen to at about the sametime work was in progress on transforming “Bad”.Perhaps those ‘artificial means’ you just mentionedbrings us back to the subject of computers.Computers, or the relatively demanding uses of com-puters, are not significant to “Dab.” By artificial I meanthat things were not done in a musicianly way, andno musicians or other instruments have been added.It’s all from that one source, “Bad.” In fact the onlymusicians who are acting in a conscious plunderphon-izing capacity anywhere on the disc are Elvis Presley’snew all-star backup band on “Don’t”: Bill Frisell,Marvin Green, Greg Kozak, Bobby Wiseman andMike Snow. And the short intro to “Replica” is playedby Tom Constanten, who was totally unfamiliar withthe keyboard setup we created, so he’s improvisingthat little bit of Don Van Vliet’s voices you hear.Tom Constanten was in the Grateful Dead?A long time ago.And is that Michael Snow the filmmaker?Yes, he’s also a wonderful improviser and piano player,from a solid jazz background.Is “Don’t” improvised?To the extent that they played off-the-cuff with a songand a recording which some of them remembered alittle. Each of the musicians asked me what I was look-ing for and I said I wanted their interpretation. I wantedto hear their personal relationship or reaction to thesong. Bill Frisell particularly seemed to have enormousrespect for the original. His versions needed no coax-ing. By the way, and this is perhaps because I’m not akeyboard player, I chose myself to perform the sampledrhythm and choral James Brown parts in “Black” and“Brown”, which are rhythmically very quirky. I alsoplayed the Charlie Parker bit, which is a solo of his,transduced phrase by phrase to the keyboard.This is all studio magic.We are using techniques used in most commercial re-cordings, but we used them for unusual ends. If it’sdone in a certain way it’s accepted as reality.

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I get the impression that you’re trying to blur the divi-sion between innovative music and the conservativemainstream. So do you think of this as experimentalmusic or not?I’d like listeners to think of this music as somehowconnected to normal.Where do the computers come in?One category of performance is real musicians, theexamples just mentioned. An-other is getting commercial au-dio playback equipment, recordand CD players, tape decks andradios, to do what they do, butin ways or relationships thataren’t mentioned in the opera-tions manuals. In the third cat-egory one uses professionalaudio editing and mixing equip-ment, and, to a much lesserextent, processing equipment,the stuff you find in recordingstudios. Unlike the use of musi-cians and consumer playbackequipment, this rarely involvesworking in real time, the time ittakes to hear the music. Theseactivities are time consuming,like composing music on paper,or quilt making.

The fourth category is com-puters, which, after the pro-gramming or data entry in-volved in training them is com-pleted, also perform in realtime. They act sort of like musi-cians, but we tend to usuallythink of them as conductors. The first section of “Spring”is conducted entirely by a computer, which is readingthe original Stravinsky score, which has been copiednote for note into a sequencer, a note managementdevice. “Birth” is all computer conducted, and in thatone the computer gets to do a little bit of composingtoo. It’s instructed to make variations of the pro-grammed phrases. The Liszt and Webern cuts are alsocomputer conducted. What the computer conducts,

most explicitly in the Liszt “Prelude”, is a fantasy or-chestra, in which each imaginary musician has amusical instrument which plays only one specific note,and they wait their turn to play that note, amongst theruns and arpeggios of Liszt’s keyboard scoring. Soinstead of imagining a virtuoso pianist with dextrouslywiggling fingers, you can imagine several dozenmusicians each waiting patiently for their turn to play

the one or two occurrences oftheir note on their temple block,or euphonium, or one stringcello, or whatever.That’s my favorite image watch-ing a symphony orchestra: theguy in the back who waitsthrough the whole piece to dohis one big cymbal crash.Exploited to great effect inAlfred Hitchcock and BernardHerrmann’s Stage Fright. Yes,so take that image of thecymbalist and multiply it, be-cause of out KlangProbe, as wecall it, all the musicians are al-ways mostly waiting.Some of the tracks I found onthe CD aren’t listed in the notes.That seems to be the MysteryTape influence intruding.Perhaps I’ll try to find ProfessorX and see how he avoids thequestion [laughter]. By the way,who else for the Lab is involvedin the plunderphonic project?Well, officially I’m the projectdirector and I got things started,

coming from various plunderphonic-style pieces I’vefound myself doing over the years…How many years?At least fifteen. But in 1985 or so sampling and suchhad become an issue and I began to write some specu-lative papers, articles and editorials on copyrightmorality, and that created some interest in what thecreative boundaries might be, so I initiated the projectto try some experiments and produce some audible

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examples. I’ve been mostly on by own on this, be-cause, even by Mystery Lab standards, it is not a verypractical tangent. Two people who have been par-ticularly involved, in either germinal, constructive orsupportive ways are Marvin Green and Henry Kai-ser. Marvin, the double bass player on “Don’t” didsome plunderphonic experiments years ago whichhave been influential, and he also is driving the ve-hicles at the beginning of“Brown”. Speaking of influ-ences also close to home,Michael Snow and his workhave often been inspiring.You mentioned practicality.The thing that is perhaps asradical as the music is that thisCD is not for sale. I understandit’s being distributed exclu-sively to radio stations, librar-ies and magazines. So theaverage person can’t get acopy in their local record store.We would supply a copy to arecord store if there was someguarantee that they would playit in the store, and providesome sort of service for custom-ers to make tape copies on anot-for-profit basis, but I hopeI won’t hear of any recordstores acquiring and selling it.And if they did?I just hope they don’t. We doprint a shareright notice onthese things, which specifiesthat anyone can share this material with anyone else,as long as they don’t directly take a financial profit inthis sharing. I should point out that this shareright onlyapplies to our derivations, and is not intended to af-fect the rights of the electroquoted originals.So its OK for anyone to make a copy of the CD.Yes, even digital copies, since we’ve had the copy-prohibit flag that is usually encoded into compact discsremoved. There was some resistance by the press tothe plunderphonics EP when it came out. Some maga-

zines claimed that it was not their responsibility tocover it, review it, or whatever, because it wasn’t acommercial item, and therefore, it was of no interestto their consuming readership. Actually plunderphonicscan be consumed as readily as any other mass mediaitem; the lines of access are just different, and theprofit picture is missing.Do you approve of what rappers and house DJs are

doing with samples?I’m not very familiar with thegenre but some of what I’veheard is definitely plunder-phonic in that it puts recogniz-able audio quotes into a var-ied context, but they don’tseem to follow through on ourprinciple about this kind ofactivity, which is to clearlycredit our sources. In order toachieve some sort of respect-ability electroquoting must fol-low the literary example of ref-erence and citation. Some re-cording performers style them-selves as outlaws and perhapsdon’t find the idea of respect-ability especially attractive,but those we get to hear areaffiliated with legitimate pub-lishing concerns, in otherwords record companies andconcert promoters, and thesepartnerships aren’t plunderingin its best blatant sense, they’rebeing sneaky about it. I think

James Brown’s name should be featured prominentlyon every Public Enemy release.He certainly dominates “Brown”, the track you’ve ac-credited to them. They seem to get squeezed out.I guess I let Mr. Brown have the last word. That trackand its companion “Black”, contrary to everything elseon plunderphonic, for which we were concernedmainly with musical ideas, get into commentary, andpop’s pervasive preoccupation with verbiage, eventhough we cut all the more blatant bits, philosophical

discourses between Mrs. Gore and Terminator X andthe like, but it is an unfocused mediation between theguy who’s been sampled and the most and those ac-tive in parasitic creativity. Now parasitic sounds likea real pejorative but it can equally be applied in kindto much of music, including those who copy religiouslya style, or never stray from the twelve notes given bythe equal temperament system built into every pianoand MIDI device. In a sense most musicians are de-pendent on the host the instrument designers provide:a piano player is dependent on sounds that were de-signed by somebody else no less than a sampler is.Anyway, once we went to work on the tracks (after anextensive inventory of James Brown sounds were col-lected) we tended to forget about issues and we hadsome fun doing them. They progressed quickly. Theyare sloppy, in keeping with many of the originals,production-wise, and have a lot of odd things thrownin that aren’t strictly plunderphonics, like gunshots.I was going to ask you about those.We made a computer-conducted simulation of the of-ten sampled “Funky Drummer” riff, but the resolutionwasn’t very high and it sounds quite awkward. None-theless we included a bit of it, somewhere in “Black”.And we used that sequence to fire off, so to speak,some shot samples, to get the funky gunfight.Prince, who’s listed in the track credits, seems to bethe odd man out; he’s not a blatant sampler.But the record he decided not to release, the “BlackAlbum” was macro sampled and released anywayby bootleggers, which makes its appearance in themix, I think, appropriate.We haven’t yet talked about the pieces near the endof the disc. I can’t figure out what’s happening on theGlenn Gould thing, “Aria”. Who’s playing?We had a compute listen to Mr. Gould playing thearia to the Goldberg Variations through a device whichconverts analogue pitches into digital notes. We fine-tuned or perhaps I should say finely untuned this abil-ity so that the computer would hear approximatelythe right notes; it would add extra notes and spuriousactivity when it wasn’t sure what he had played. But itwas good at getting most of the notes and the precisetiming of the original. Once this info was collectedinto the computer it could be played back on any MIDI

instrument or sampler. The sound could be electronic,or a toy piano or one of our klangprobes. But we hadthe opportunity to record a couple of the piano Gouldactually used, including the flagship CD318. This pi-ano had all the characteristics one associates withGlenn Gould’s style: quick, close action, and light-ness. So we then created a composite sampled key-board using these recordings. There were some tun-ing anomalies with one of the pianos, we did sometuning of the samples which was intended to espe-cially compliment the aria. Then the computer gaveus a real time performance of its interpretation andwe recorded it.

But the way, the Cecil Taylor piece “Mirror” shouldmore appropriately be credited to all four musiciansinvolved since none of them act as accompanists; theyare each literally a soloist; but since Cecil Taylor hasrarely performed in groups where he’s not the leader,and this imaginary band sounds like it could really beone of his ensembles, he got the credit. This track ac-tually consists of a 5 minute excerpt from a solo con-cert each by Messrs. Dubin, Phillips, Lacy and Taylor.The concerts occurred over a span of 10 years. Wecombined them without editing to create a free jazzensemble with all sorts of interplay, but its all fake.The same method was used for the Dick Hyman trackwith the Aka Pygmies and the Lew Davies/Ry Cooderimaginary collaboration.You’ve also included the four tracks from the originalEP, which I remember you summing up for me. Yousaid that it featured Dolly Parton’s sex change, Elvis’posthumous backup band, Count Basie cutup and IgorStravinsky accelerated. How would you sum up thisnew release?I think these are the essential examples of recordedmusic that every collection has now been lacking. Ihope that creative ways are found to play them.[end

John Oswald is Director of Research as Mystery Labo-ratory. Norm Ingma is a Mystery Lab observer.

This interview may be quoted in part or in its entiretywithout permission. Please send a copy of any pub-lished use or reference to: Mystery Laboratory, Box727 Station P, Toronto Ont M5S 2Z1 Canada.

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SPORADIC CRITIQUE OF CULTUREYAWN is a sporadic communiqué which seeks to provide a critical look at ourculture in all its manifestations. We welcome responses from readers, espe-cially observations of a critical nature. Be forewarned that anything sent toYAWN may be considered for inclusion in a future issue without specific priornotification. Submissions are welcome and encouraged. It is the policy ofYAWN not to attribute work, unless the content benefits from such attribution.This is a collective, mostly anonymous, effort. Contributors receive 3 copies ofthe issue in which their work is used. YAWN is archived at this URL:http://yawn.detritus.net/ or e-mail psrf@detritus.net.

YAWNw/PhotoStatic January 1, 1990 Nº9

GET IT OUT OFYOUR SYSTEM

The following letters were lent to YAWNby PhotoStatic Magazine, a publicationwhich is participating in the Art Strike1990-1993. They can be considered as across section of the responses to the ArtStrike, and to some extent typify the waysin which people interpret the action asbeing counterproductive. Most of them, ofcourse, miss the point that it is the intent ofthe Art Stike to “create as least as manyproblems as it solves.” Although it is notYAWN ’s intent to offer dogmatic “clari-fications” of what the Art Strike is “allabout,” it does behoove us to offer someresponse in an effort to stimulate dialogwhich will hopefully be a means of critiqu-ing what art is “all about” in the currentmood of fin-de-millennium. The reader isencouraged to look beyond YAWN ’sresponse to each letter, as well as the letteritself, and formulate opinions and critiquesthat point us in the direction of reconstruct-ing creativity and its role in culture.

Dear YAWN,…Thanks for your YAWN. Ihad to smile. It’s usually theother way ’round.…

London, England

im writing about this artstrike— i think it is a mis-take— granted big businesstakes (eventually) from thecutting edge of visual art, mu-sic, literature & twists it totheir own service— but theycould probably do this w/outyou guys— or perhaps, w/outyou guys doing it, they wouldnteven have to waste their timew/it— they could use the sameold shit all over again— in saya ten to twelve year cycle—sound familiar?

besides, dont all you peoplealready hold hands w/big busi-ness all the time? i do. i thinkwe all do. if you turn on yrelectric light you line the powercompanys pocket— the fridge,the car, the heat, buy anythingfrom the supermarket or thedept store, any store, any ser-

vice (nearly)— its all a bigcycle you cant do shit about—dont fall prey to the idea thatwhat clothes this system wearshas anything to do w/any-thing— they dont mind chang-ing clothes— in fact it mightbe the book theyve been look-ing for— more new styles tosell—

i am not a visual artist soexcuse me if im stupid but itseems there are many goodthings that come from an ac-tive underground culture— aculture that usually revolvesaround the “arts”— there aremany people out in this coun-try who dont believe in how itsgoing & relish the opportunityto see, hear, read somethingthat puts it all into a clear pic-ture for them so they dontthink they are the only ones &crazy—

as to whether story-tellersshould cease telling their sto-ries for three years, it is ludi-crous! sometimes i think theonly ones telling the truth on

ANY PART OF YAWN MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM, EVEN WITHOUT ACKNOWLDEDGEMENT

paper anymore (ever?) are themicro-press story-tellers (notALL who claim to be that, justthe few who have honed theirability to rid the vision)— iknow people need the stories itell them— they say so— idont give a shit what hewlett-packard or i.b.m. or honeywellthink, steal, care about my sto-ries— in reality i believe iminvisible to them—

an art strike wont changethe course of events— it wontseal the hole in the ozone layer(if you want to attempt to aidthat, stop driving yr cars &bury the fridge out back & turnoff the air-conditioning…), itwont stop the war between thebanks & the mafia in centralamerica, it wont stop greed,hatred, selfishness, abandon-ment of children to cruel gov-ernmental systematic crush-ing, it wont do any of that oranything at all, except stopitself— & i’ll miss great pieceslike the ollie north full metaljerkoff piece & lipface marilynmonroe & etc. i urge you all tojust stop taking yrselves soseriously & CREATE… imag-ine, discuss, describe for thosemillions out there who havefor whatever reasons lost theirability to do this— these arethe fucking DARK NEWAGES— dont stop carrying thelight of the true universe—persevere— fuck the out-come— fuck the system—who cares?

ps. if football was gone forthree years, people would missit. if baseball was gone, peoplewould miss that too. if poetrymotel or PhotoStatic Maga-zine were gone for three years

twenty people would missthem for one year & then noone.

pps. angry juveniles spit:im gonna run away from home,and, and, and… THEN THEYLLBE SORRY!

Duluth, Minnesota

YAWN says: By focusingon “big business,” “under-ground culture,” “the ozone,”and other pop culture buzzwords, you’ve neatly avoidedthe broader issues raises bythe Art Strike. Instead you’vefocused on trying to make theArt Strike look stupid. Well,Art Strike is a bad idea, but it isnot, in fact, a stupid one. Itraises some real issues thatcan yield practical benefits ifhonestly confronted.

Art Strike has less to dowith “…big businesstak[ing]… from the cuttingedge… twist[ing] it to theirown service…” and more todo with the so-called “cuttingedge” setting out from the startto serve not just “big busi-ness” (a banal and ultimately“easy” target) but the statusquo of culture and all that rep-resents it in daily life.

Of course Art Strike will beineffective in terms of its overtaims. This will be one of itsbiggest successes. You sug-gest in your postscript that“art strikers” are going to holdtheir collective breath until theyturn blue as a childish meansof getting attention. However,“art strikers” quite fully expectno one to care! This apathywould be proof that art as acategory and mindset is irrel-evant and discardable. The “art

strikers” know and understandthat no one would miss art if itwere missing for three years.It would be too easy to replaceit with antique cars, artificialsex partners, and, as you sug-gest, organized athletics. Thisis a large part of the point ofthe Art Strike. It is merely thefirst step towards liberatingcreativity from the narrownessof “Art.”

…I’m sorry to hear that youare shutting down PhotoStaticMagazine for the strike, al-though I know that’s not a veryinteresting reaction. I’m stillconsidering the issues in-volved. I certainly don’t findthe five reasons you give tooconvincing. Reason #1 saysthat you’re striking becauseyou support the motives be-hind the Art Strike, but leavesit open what you actually thinkof the strike itself. Reasons #2through #4 seem like reasonsto keep publishing PhotoStaticMagazine, not to stop; you’reregistering a protest, ok, butin practice, it’ll just make thingsworse. Also, in #5, you implythat shutting down the maga-zine is a good idea in and ofitself, Art Strike or no Art Strike.This all adds up to a ratherpeculiar way of “supporting”the strike. Finally, I have a lotof problems with #2. I fail tosee how observing Art Strikein any way relates to the “largercultural context.” Face it, ArtStrike is specific to our “sub-culture,” and has no chance ofreaching almost anyone out-side of it. It’s intrinsically in-comprehensible to anyoneoutside the subculture. (Ad-

mittedly, it may cause mem-bers of that subculture to con-sider the larger cultural con-text.) I found Art Strike moreinteresting as a hypotheticalproposal (as it was presentedin PhotoStatic Magazine #34)than as an actual course ofaction. Martyrdom for noth-ing. (Although perhaps for youit’s not martyrdom, for the rea-sons given above.) [Don’t printany of this, by the way. I’m justruminating, I haven’t made upmy mind sufficiently to speakin print.]

Wheaton, Illinois

YAWN answers: In the caseof the Art Strike, supportingthe means is the way to sup-port the motives. In principle,the goal of the Art Strike is toget people (not just artists)away from the notion of sub-cultures through encouraginga more pervasive activism.Why squander the creativeimpulse on art when there’s aworld of problems to besolved? These so-called sub-cultures only serve to diffusethe energies of the creativepublic so that they pose nocollective threat to establish-ment culture. Art Strike is alens, focusing rays of light to afine point, concentrating theirpower, causing whatever is ex-amined under it to burn into afine, black ash that will blowaway with the first wind.

I don’t understand the artstrike. Do you long to believein popular songs? Why are wegoing to exchange whisperswhile the media continues toscream? Are you minding the

YAWN No.

ANY PART OF YAWN MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM, EVEN WITHOUT ACKNOWLDEDGEMENT

media? It’s Christmas againand I hear the mannequinssing. It makes me forget some-thing… Atlanta, Georgia

YAWN counters: The ArtStrike is a call to stop whisper-ing and start screaming.

PhotoStatic Magazine is aweapon! Don’t throw awayyour arms! You strike whenyou agitate! You strike whenyou fight! or die!

New York City

YAWN responds: Art Strikeis a more powerful weaponbecause it is agitational, con-frontational, and in fact is acall for more activity, not less.Let us reject useless “creativ-ity” and instead create some-thing useful.

For some time now I have beentrying to comprehend Photo-Static Magazine. Now that youare going “on strike” I won’thave to try anymore. I hopeyou have lots of free time toinvent more definitions forthings, and will be able to talkand think constantly aboutwhat art “is,” what creativity“is,” and make up a lot of newthings that you think theymean.

It would be interesting ifsaying a thing is somethingactually made it so, like if yousaid “art is important” or “artis bullshit,” and then it was.Taking subjective experiencefor objective reality, and tryingto sell it to someone, providesa great deal of diversity andinterest in daily life.

I like to imagine that thereare people who read Photo-

Static Magazine and say “Yes!This is all true! These ideas areall very important!” And I won-der what that sort of personwill do when they have to haveideas of their own, or none atall, for 3 years.

Send me a dollar and I willpray for you.

Cambridge, Massachusetts

YAWN concurs: Right youare, Cambridge! Lacking realreference points in the terrainof everyday life leaves most ofus to adopt those coordinatesonly too eagerly provided bymass communication, con-sumer politics, and produc-tion-line ideology. To suggestthat what’s handed down to usby our parents (or our collegeart professors) is somehow“correct” is as lazy as it isdangerous. YAWN sincerelyhopes that the hole left in thefollowers of PhotoStaticMagazine’s lives is spackled inby an intense examination ofthe world around them with aneye toward determiningwhether or not life as it is is atall acceptable.

So sad that PhotoStatic Maga-zine will be taking a 3 yearabsence. I’ll miss your greatreviews.… Herndon, Virginia

YAWN suggests: It’s timeto do your own reviews!

I received the news of yourparticipation in the “Art Strike”with some feeling. I guess,finally, I don’t dispute the de-cision, but I doubt the mo-tives. Personally, I find the artstrike somewhat threatening.

To what? To expression. Tomy work. I hope no one ob-jects if I do not participate inthe strike.

…I think art is already astrike. I’m just getting rollingon what art is, especially inrelation to society. If some-thing is wrong in society, thatis occasion for more, not less,art. To me, an art strike wouldmean increased activity not ashutting down. If society isbad, it is the artists’ responsi-bility. They should get off theirasses not sit down on them. Ithough of doing some “artscab” pieces, but that isn’t re-ally the point I don’t think.

PhotoStatic Magazine wasdoing so well these past halfdozen issues or so. I am sur-prised you are so willing tosuspend publication. Never-theless, …of all people, I thinkyou have the right to go onstrike. You have published alot of other people’s work andperhaps owe it to yourself totake a break and do somethingstrictly for yourself. That I canunderstand. With that in mindI wish you well in whateveryou do. I look forward to yournewsletter or comment letter.I wonder who will take up theslack left by PhotoStaticMagazine’s hiatus. Are you di-recting contributors any-where?

I hope you will find reasonsto keep in touch. Perhaps youwill issues a strike newsletterwith work from familiar con-tributors.…

With some sense of an im-portant passing, I am

Sincerely,Wichita, Kansas

YAWN responds: A re-sponse to this letter would beredundant; these issues havebeen dealt with above. But letus simply belabor one point:No one will mind if you do notjoin the Art Strike. The deci-sion is entirely up to you. TheArt Strike springs from mul-tiple sources, and Art Strikedogma as such is not handeddown from on high. Keep con-sidering the issues. That is themost important part.

…I’d like to comment on theArt Strike. I don’t quite knowwhat to make of it. Yes, atten-tion should be drawn to theunfortunate fact that art hasbeen amalgamated with ad-vertising and the commodity,and that the culture industryshould be dismantled. How-ever, insofar as it is thecommodification of art and thereification of social relationswhich is being addressed inthe Art Strike, and insofar asthose artists who serve as spe-cialists for the spectacle willnot be in any way affected bythe Art Strike, it seems unfor-tunate to me that those whoconsciously recognize theproblems of our time and at-tempt to deal with them, albeitin an esthetic manner…, arethose who are going to stopdoing so for three years. Cer-tainly, art cannot negate art,and I commend the Art Strikefor seeking to go beyond “anti-art” to address problems oflife. However, have you com-pletely given up the idea thatart can, possibly, communi-cate a need to go beyond it-self—esthetic self-negation,

9 YAWN

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Art Strike Action Committees (ASACs)ASAC (California), P.O. Box 170715, San Francisco CA 94117 USAASAC (Eastern USA), P.O. Box 22142, Baltimore MD 21203 USAASAC (United Kingdom), BM Senior, London WC1N 3XX, EnglandASAC (Eire), c/o Tony Lowes, Allihies, Bantry, West Cork, IrelandASAC (Latin America), C. de Correos 1211, Montevideo Uruguay

as it were? …Again, while Iagree that “more needs to be done,” I wonder if Art Strikeis really this more, and I won-der if it isn’t perhaps less.…

In a way, doesn’t Art Strikegive the esthetic specialists ofthe spectacle everything by nolonger challenging them on es-thetic grounds? The problemwith Art Strike is that it doesnot … delineate how art is tobe determinately overcome,itrather … leaves the terrain ofesthetics to the practitionersof banality, i.e., it doesn’t fightfor the kernel of truth which isin Dada and surrealist orientedesthetics and which needs tobe realized on the terrain ofeveryday life. It seems that toadvocate the suppression ofart as such, for three years …is what in Hegelian philosophywe would call an “undialec-tical” movement, one that doesnot supersede, i.e., does notrealize and suppress, art. Iwould argue that a kernel oftruth must be taken out of artand the false shell in which it isencased must be discarded,this, rather than art as a wholebeing trashed.

In other words, Art Strike, itseems to me, implicitly posesa false dichotomy between lifeand art. As I see it, the choiceis between life (free subjectiv-ity) and the reification of lifeone lives in the spectacle (andin the workplace), with spec-tacularization being only onemoment of art. Thus, it is not

art as such which, if forbid-den, would be followed byrevolution, but the use of art inthe spectacle which, becauseof its function of mystifyingthe populace, if abolished,would be followed by revolu-tion. … “The establishedmeaninglessness and separa-tion give rise to the generalcrisis of traditional artisticmeans—a crisis linked to theexperience of alternative waysof living or to the demand forsuch experience. Revolution-ary artists are those who callfor intervention; and who havethemselves intervened in thespectacle to disrupt and de-stroy it.” The question is, doesArt Strike do this, or does it doit better than say, some othertype of activity, which at thispoint I leave unspecified?Iowa City, Iowa

YAWN maintains: Art Strikedoes indeed “…supercede, i.e.realize and suppress art.” Ifyou think of Art Strike as art,then it is evident that Art Strikeis impossible: for in it, to giveup art is to realize it. If ArtStrike is art, during Art Strike,Art Strike itself won’t be pos-sible. Further, what Art Strikesuggests about revolutionaryintervention is thatnonparticipation in the statusquo is one way to take theneeded time to invent and de-cide how the world should be,and work for it. The participa-tion which the system de-

mands of each individual cre-ates the collective illusion ofconsensus; because “every-one does it,” “it must be right.”Art Strike could aim at propa-gating to all spheres, so thatthe refusal of the system bysignificant numbers of peopleis what brings it down. Ofcourse, that still leaves theproblem of what to replace itwith. We should all help todecide that one.

…Art is a safe, a very safeword. The big mask.

Atlanta, Georgia

YAWN responds: Indeed itis, Atlanta. Haven’t we hadenough of insults masquerad-ing as cultural achievementsand sources of knowledge?

…Art Strike is a test.I like the Art Strike more

and more because people mustexpress their opinions aboutit—even those who feign apa-thy must inform you that theydon’t care. I never liked Christountil I read his statement thatif doesn’t matter what you thinkabout his work. If you thinkabout it, you’re thinking aboutart and that’s what matters.That statement changed a lotof things for me. I can paintmy little pictures, or not, and Idon’t have tobe an artist or doart or make a statement. I canhave fun and goof around,without defining it.

And I don’t have to decide

whether or not to join the ArtStrike or even write (1990-1993). I can just think about itor not. Master control pro-gramming intensifies the sta-tus quo and demoralizes theclass struggle! You are whatyou hate!

Cambridge, Massachusetts

YAWN says: I’m with you,Cambridge! The refusal of cre-ativity (as it is conventionallyconstituted) is the affirmationof the value of our lived lives!You’ve already been on ArtStrike, and pleasantly con-scious of the fact! Keep up thegreat work! And don’t partici-pate in the Art Strike (1990-1993)!

YAWN welcomes lettersfrom its readers. Please beadvised that anything sent toYAWN may be used forpublication without specificprior consent being given bythe senders. Also, be itknown that YAWN will notattribute work, unless thecontent of the work benefitsfrom such attribution. Inas-much as this is an interac-t ive information sheet,YAWN depends on itsreaders for suport in the formof responses and workcreated for its sporadicallyappearing output. You neednot address the Art Strike inyour work: there are manyproblems to be solved.Tackle one.

YAWN No. 9

OverlookedClassicsby Brad Goins

At this point in my investigation of 70s porn film,I’d like to pause and try to explain just why I findthese films worthy of analysis. My fascination re-sults from the fact that when I view 70s porn films Isometimes experience a mystical euphoria. To un-derstand this outlandish term “mystical euphoria,”begin by imagining a social drinker who is alsoa heavy drinker. Such a person drinks, as most do,in order to experience euphoria. But for such aperson, the euphoria always contains a social ele-ment. These persons may even make statementslike “I can only be comfortable with others whenI’m drinking.”

Now people like this have often heard the warn-ings about drinking alone. But if they drank alonewhile watching 70s porn films—and in my opin-ion, that is the only way in which one should watchsuch films—they would discover that the films aresimilar enough to everyday reality that they pro-vide a social element that can easily substitute forthe banal remarks of typical social drinkers.

What prevents this hypothetical drunken andsolitary viewing of 70s porn from being merely anextreme case of the use of cinema as escapism isthe “mystical” element involved. This mysticism arisesfrom the bizarre contradiction between the unin-tended cinema vérité of 70s porn—in which every-thing is familiar and understandable—and the pe-culiarities of cinematic technique, which seem odd

and extreme even to fans of mainstream exploita-tion cinema.

One can get a hint of this cinematic mysticaleuphoria in the section on Ed Wood, Jr. in TheGolden Turkey Awards. The writer is so amused byWood’s films that he produces a truly ecstatic lan-guage that is charged with gleeful irony. Part of thejoy the writer experiences in describing Wood’swork derives from the fact that he is conveying se-cret knowledge. I experience a similar ecstatic re-action much more often with 70s porn than withother forms of exploitation film due to the fact that70s porn films are much more often badly plannedand badly produced.

Let’s consider one example of a film whoseopening has such fantastically strange idiosyncra-sies that it immediately jolts the viewer into a mysti-cal state of awareness.

Review: A Formal Faucett, 1976, dir. Fred Lincoln,starring Norma Gene (a.k.a. Dorothy LeMay), TinaAustin, Laurie Blue (1977?)

The film begins with an extended sex sceneinvolving a young bleached-out blonde who bela-bors an indifferent young stud lying on his back ina bed. There is no apparent connection betweenthe scene and the free-flowing, free-form minimalistguitar improvisations that accompany it. A bizarreout-of-focus hypercloseup of balls and ass accentu-

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ate the chaotic quality of the scene.As the blonde begins to scream in orgasmic

ecstasy, Dorothy LeMay (appearing under the pseud-onym Norma Gene) enters the house where thelovefest is taking place and discovers her lover incoitus. “Happy Birthday, you bastard!” she yells,and uncorks the bottle of André she has carried in.After a series of unfocused, wildly inaccurate,handheld shots of Dorothy and the spewing bottle,we segue to a shot of Dorothy on the street, hold-ing a sign that says Frisco or Bust. When the cred-its finally come around:

Norma Geneas

A Formal Faucett

they do little to reduce the degree of delightful dis-order.

LeMay is given a ride by a middle-aged“agent”. He tells her:

You need new clothes, make-up, hair… and anew name… Formal Faucett Minor.

As if the allusion to Charlie’s Angels were not bla-tant enough, it is reinforced with humorous obvi-ousness when Formal takes her leave.

Agent: Keep smiling, angel!Formal: Ok… Charlie.

This is the first of many scenes involving WestCoast traffic. Indeed, the most consistently enter-taining elements of A Formal Faucett are the re-peated shots of cars driving down roads. Long linesof 60s sedans drudge up a freeway as the cerebralguitar plods along in the background. This goes onfor minutes; who knows why? These are beautifulshots in which all the urban nihilism of H.G. Lewis’endless car shots is magnified to the 10th power.During one of these long car scenes, the sound-track features a radio program that is presumably

being heard in a car. It’s a superwitty gossip pro-gram that artfully lampoons everything from roy-alty to punks. During the whole, long radio pro-gram, the viewer sees nothing more than a car aim-lessly wandering through city streets.

As for the plot of A Formal Faucett, it is wildlyincoherent. My interpretation is that Charlie’s An-gels are a group of young women whom Charlieprocures sexual partners who are willing to givemodelling and acting jobs in return for sex. But thatis only speculation. What I can say for sure is thatFormal (Dorothy LeMay) somehow emerges fromthe chaotic series of events as a “star”.

At the beginning of the scene when Formalmeets her first client, Dorothy LeMay minces for thecamera. If you can’t get a copy of this film but stillwant to have an image of LeMay’s adolescent pos-ing, imagine a 15-year old mallite imitating a Ma-donna video. After viewing this amateurish perfor-mance, one can only be surprised to learn that For-mal is more professional than at least one of theAngels with whom she works. When Formal andthis Angel act in a commercial for Sweet, SweetStrawberry Douche, Angel has to cue her colleagueduring the filming of the commercial. Not to worry!After the shooting the “director” of the commercialproudly announces to cast and crew that the shotwas so good that only one take will be needed.

After this scene, Formal and her friend followthe director home and “seduce” him. When he re-sists their advances—screaming “I’ve never beenwith a woman before!”—they tie him down withthe ropes he has conveniently left lying on his din-ing room table.

There’s no need to go on describing the crazyscenes in this film. It’s impossible to find a coherentsense of intent or content. Viewers shouldn’t try tofind plot or character development in A FormalFaucett; rather they should just let themselves expe-rience the countless bizarre juxtapositions of unre-lated cinematic and sonic images. By so doing, theywill discover a variety as captivating and mystify-ing as that of any Cornell box. [Nº5

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CultureLibelby Neil K. Henderson

Diplomatic Deafness in aCowpat Economy

No one wants to hear the truth about state-of-the-arthousehold requisites, least of all the Cowpat Econo-mists who vie with the Gnomes of Zürich for finan-cial control of world trade. These darlings of theSwiss Uphill Tobogganing Set will merely stare youstraight in the knees when confronted with facts,eye you up and down, and exclaim, “Not totallymad? Eat more fleas!”

This is regarded nowadays as fairly basic eco-nomic filibustering. It is when we ask them to de-fine parameters, that the diplomatic deafness comesinto full play. Although psychologically aware, thesepin-striped bastions of the stainless steel tupperwarearmchair generation will stare aimlessly into space,totally oblivious to the questions of an anxious world.Chit-chat becomes impossible.

And sometimes world opinion demands that ap-plication of a poultice to the voice-boxes of suchmalcontents, before reply can be made. The suit-ably colorful “Gorbachev necktie” has often beenbrought to bear on these occasions, liberating theseized vocal cords of the Cowpat Economist, andinterrupting his spell of diplomatic deafness.

Eventually, the real reason for all this studiednon-awareness becomes apparent. It is a long, longtime since the humble beginnings of the cowpateconomy which, you will remember, started with agroup of menial civil servants meekly using thin paint

rollers to apply white lines to the fronts of butchers’aprons. What an example of mushrooming growththe cowpat economy has since proved to be! Yet,now the very future of mankind hangs in the bal-ance, as these financial supermen experiment boldlywith giant cushion covers in which to wrap the le-gions of portable greenhouses which are currentlyorbiting the globe, ready to plummet through thehole in the ozone layer and destroy the remnantsof “big bang” peacekeeping in what shall come tobe called the Final Crackdown. Is this the way theworld ends? Not with a bag, but a cushion cover?

Of course, the Cowpat Economist has everyneed of diplomatic deafness in such circumstances.He must have silence in which to choose shades ofpaisley-patterned covering material, without thedistraction of frivolous financiers who would wishto wallpaper the sky with used notes. Yet, on a clearday, he can sometimes be heard to suddenlyscream: “People keep telling me things that don’tmatter!”

Golf Hooligans of the Sahara

The nomadic Sahara Gold Hooligans form a glo-bal sub-culture of almost noticeable proportions.Ever chasing an elusive ideal (vandalizing a hole-in-one), they roam the desert sands in packs of fifty-two, intent on cheating life of the very dregs of afair day’s game for a fair cop, Guv. This is whatanthropologists call “the wages of sin”. Apologistsfor zoologists, on the other hand, often remark uponthe nicety of environmental self-determination whichprevents these Sahara Golf Hooligans from com-pletely dominating the sparser pockets of worldpopulation with their party-pooping credo. It is gi-raffes, though, that we really have to thank.

Giraffes grow on trees and are, in fact, one ofthe few species of animal life which only floweronce in ten years; a delay which causes great dis-tress to Sahara Golf Hooligans, who are totallydevoid of any hint of the patience of horticulturalresponsibility. However, their half-hearted attempt

to oust these unbearable quadrupeds by introduc-ing Malayan giraffe-eating cucumbers into the eco-structure, has so far only succeeded in alienatingall concerned from the goodwill of the InternationalGeographical Society.

The Golf Hooligans of the Sahara hold the be-lief that giraffes have existed for upwards of thirty-five thousand billion years—longer than the Earth,in fact. This causes much sandy speculation whetherthe giraffes maybe originated (in a possibly green,perhaps extra-large format) on, say, the Moon, oreven another galaxy. At any rate, given that agiraffe’s brain is less than one two-hundred-and-sev-entieth the size of a split lentil, the problem still re-mains whether they were ever intelligent enough tobe capable of discovering space travel, or simplyflew to Earth on cosmic ‘wings’, now long atro-phied and discarded like those of fallen angels. Inmany ways, it is a godsend that they were too stu-pid to realize that the heat of entry into the Earth’satmosphere would burn them up into carbonizedshrimps, which would then sink in the oceans, tofossilize into small, black ichthyologists’ nightmares.

These depressing anti-prophetic thoughts areprobably what drives most Sahara Golf Hooligansto their infamous mass-suicide charges onto minedfairways in a last-ditch kamikaze attempt to wipegolf, themselves, the world and burnt giraffes fromthe collective folk memory of the science correspon-dence of independent sports magazines.

Religious Optimo-Pessimism

Inspiration is not always immediate for NegativeQuakers—or ‘Statics’, as they are often known.Founded in the mid-nineteenth century in a sturdypencil-sharpening environment, the best most of theBrotherhood’s present members can hope for out oflife is late realization of the coming worth of de-cay. Cheerful acceptance of the imminent destruc-tion of life on Earth, and indeed, contemplation ofthis is a definite source of hope for the future, al-lows the Statics to refrain from suicidal inertia for

as long as it takes to fall apart with dignity.Thus, as our natural heritage succumbs gradu-

ally to annihilation, a smile-weary Static might beheard to greet the dawn with: “Ah! I see the spinyanteater count is down today!” And even a nuclearholocaust is viewed as a Wonder fecund with un-seen delights. Many Static Brothers openly sport t-shirts emblazoned with the legend: “ARMAGED-DON 1992—I CAN’T WAIT”, and speculate aloudon what time of year and weather conditions wouldbe most favorable to the outbreak of the Final Con-flict.

Many Optimo-Pessimists veer towards a “WishYourself Happy” philosophy, involving lying in anacid-filled bathtub following the unanesthetized re-moval of various of their appendages, then wish-wish-wishing they felt…well, if not happy, then atleast more comfortable. The time-consuming inef-fectiveness of this spiritual outlook does little to de-ter hard-line fundamentalists, plumber’s mates, andan assortment of uninvited onlookers.

The subsequent jovial abhorrence of all this hasled inevitably to the formation of a more realisticIntegrated Concrete Breakaway Sect, whose warcryof: “I Fucked It Up For Jesus” has done wonders forinternational apostolic nihilism. They certainly hada nice sideline in tv evangelism, incorporating mi-nority-group guilt lessons, nuclear weather forecastsand live coverage of mass self-mutilation jambo-rees. The viewing figures soared. The angst dona-tions poured in. Success loomed large.… Needlessto say, they fucked it up. During the screening of a“Deprogramming Special” the entire studio sponta-neously lost faith in itself, and they all went home.

And the rest is apathy.…

Art as Voyeurism

Just as repetition is a form of self-plagiarism, so isart a form of plagiaristic auto-voyeurism, and re-peated self-automation is a form of plagiarizedvoyeuristic art. To put it another way…take a lookat life through the window of self-consciousness,

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and you will perceive yourself in the mirror of in-substantiality (as the poet said). And verily, a schoolof creativity has grown up around the principle ofart as voyeurism, giving unto a grateful public thevaried output of a group of self-styled ‘Peeping Art-ists’, whose manifesto expresses a heartfelt desireto get its own back on A World That Wants To KnowToo Much:—

“You do it by washing your windows in an In-teresting Style, while watched by members of ‘soci-ety’. Then you stand peering at them washing eachother’s windows, witnessed by reflections of you,watching their reflections watching you watchingthem. Of course, you have to be prepared for acertain amount of self-plagiarism during the repeti-tive performance of this exercise.”

Similarly, the telephone brings its own audioversion of the same voyeuristic art dilemma. Everbeen pestered by wrong numbers? Who hasn’t?Well, you should know that there is nothing acci-dental about this. All the big telephone companiesare infiltrated by Peeping Artists, who use a surre-alist address phenomenon to deliberately dial ran-dom numbers, so that they can listen to us wonder-ing whether we should be watching our window-washers, or answering the call. At this point, Peep-ing Artists find it helpful to employ telepathic inter-rogation tactics to find out exactly what it is wedon’t want them to know we don’t want the win-dow-washers to witness.

All the information received by Artistic Voyeursis then processed through a cultural computer andtranslated into color-coded brain matter, which isthen smeared over canvas to produce an exact pic-torial representation of what we, the public, don’twant anyone to see.

An interesting postscript to this is that, in at-tempting to tap my telephone, someone, overdoingthe surrealism, wired up my cat to the mainframe ofthe canvas switchboard. Therefore, at eight o’clockevery night, when Peeping Artists think they arespying on me, my cat is going “Cluck” in preciselythe same time as my neo-Victorian chicken-phone.

Superpersonalization

Everything which affects the rich today will eventu-ally come to affect the poor at some future time,once it has filtered down through the various socialand financial strata of modern civilization. There-fore, in order to offset the subsequent rise in thecost of waiting for things to materialize, we expo-nents of Meta-Monetarism expect that every poorperson should at all times keep about him at leastone personal rich hostage, for the purpose of boost-ing his economic wherewithal.

This is one example of what we call‘superpersonalization’: the strengthening of weak-ened individuality by stealing worth from the bet-ter-off. Of course, we are all dewdrops hangingfrom the nose of Old Father Time—but this doesn’tmean we are all equal. Don’t you believe it. Somerich bastard probably has a higher credit rating inHeaven than even the most divinely inspired low-paid Meta-Monetarist lackey. Holding such peopleto ransom is only poetic justice—and so much moreprofitable than simply shooting them.

But superpersonalization can bring an end toviolence. When every individual on Earth has hisown private army composed of other individualsbetter-off than himself, all war will become animpossibility. On the opening of hostilities,every member of every army (who each has anarmy of his or her own) will be faced with ques-tions of whose side they are on, how many sidesthey are on, who is on their side(s) and who theyare fighting. When these questions are multipliedthrough all the permutations of ranks and leadersinterconnecting all the armies controlled by all theindividuals in all the armies of all the individuals ofthe world, the concept of organized warfare ceasesto have any meaning in the subsequent crisis ofidentity confusion.

Does all this sound like a dream too far-fetchedto sustain the hopes of the common man? Believeme, it is—in principle—happening now. Take a look

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at your circle of close friends. Take a look at theircircle of close friends. Punch a couple… see whathappens…

Chinese Rain DancingHow do you keep your paddy fields wet, when theweatherman is forecasting prolonged droughts? Youcould, as many wealthy Chinamen do, simply laya pipeline from the Trossachs to Canton, and pumpLoch Lomond through frae Bonny Scotland todampen your rice. You could even import vast quan-tities of water-retentive frogs from Australia tosqueeze out individually over the fields, and pro-vide a modicum of ersatz rain. Indeed, you couldjust sit down and weep—watering the crops withthe bitter salt of your tears. Smart Chinese rice grow-ers, however, go in for rain dancing.

Now, Chinese rain dancing is not for the unini-tiated. The instructions are very difficult to follow.Being written as they are, from right to left and start-ing from the bottom of the last page, it becomesclear about halfway through the process that thedance has to be undertaken back-to-front in orderto successfully follow the sequence of steps andmovements laid down in the plans. This often in-volves intricate and embarrassing feats of biologi-cal gymnastics and physical self-humiliation whichcan, if practised carelessly, even end in the dancer’sfinding himself sticking his head up his own rec-tum.

But it is the pyrotechnic element which makesthe Chinese rain dance so potentially dangerous.Any error or miscalculation in the positioning of thefireworks can make the already hypersensitive raindancer as jumpy as a bingo-box, especially if anyof the crackers go off before they are lit, in accor-dance with the principle of reversed-instruction per-formance. This can bring about an unpleasant bushfire of rice-destroying magnitude which, of course,rather opposes the desired effect of wetness. It isonly when an inscrutable Oriental plantation ownerthrows a bucket of water onto the field, to extin-guish the conflagration, that we perceive how the

ritual has, in fact, been successful.

Beatnik Tax CollectorsDue to a mistranslation of ancient beat litera-

ture, we are accustomed to say, nowadays, that“there is no such thing as a free lunch”. However, itis not “a free lunch” there is no such thing as: it’s aflying umbrella stand. Similarly, when we say, “Areyou free, Thursday afternoon?” we are really say-ing, “Are you a flying umbrella stand?” Thus wecome to realize the ultimate truth that, in the anarcho-syndicalist Post Office savings account that we call“social awareness”, there is, in fact, no such thingas a free Thursday afternoon.

Someone must pay… Thursday afternoons oc-cur on a regular weekly basis, the world over. Yetno one is willing to bear the burden of financialresponsibility for such a boon to mankind. Thurs-day afternoons should be privatized at the earliestopportunity, and a global Thursday Afternoon Taxspeedily implemented. As beat translators are un-doubtedly responsible for the initial confusion ofterminology, it seems only right and proper thatbeatnik tax collectors be employed to gather in therevenue from this vast untapped resource.

With their identificatory goatee beards andstandard introduction of: “Transmit the shekels,daddy-o, lest we rattle your bongos,” these soft-spoken beatnik tax collectors are a delightful addi-tion to anyone’s financial menageries. Cute andcuddly, they make ideal bar-mitzvah presents forLondon docklands trades unionists, helping to off-set the painful and distressing effects of bare-cheeked tax-extraction with their cheerful singing-telegram messages, such as:

They tried to tell me I was hip, baby,But I’m only a taxman guy from Earth,Disguised as a defaulter’s truss—Lay it on me, man.”

Needless to say, though, you don’t want to send abeatnik tax collector to London docklands on a Thurs-day afternoon. It’s more than their job’s worth…know what I mean? [Nº4–10

Retrofuturism No.

supplement January

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Anomaly (compilation). Edited by Jake Berry. C90-36tx. Write: Experimental Audio Directions, 2251 HeltonDr #N7, Florence AL 35630 — Compilation of mostlyshort works features the audio, poetry, and music of manynames familiar to those in the network; including: JohnM. Bennett’s reading of his poem “Declension” is charac-teristic of his work: a forceful style of reading with a veryrhythmic emphasis. Mike Miskowski noodles on hisMacintosh and comes up with a very interesting “Com-puter Collage” that could almost be played in a disco-theque. Canadian composer Michael Horwood turns in analmost Varèse-like work called “Microduet Nº7” whicheffectively pits tuba flatulence against ringing bells. Andbelieve me, it goes on and on. Don’ t put this tape on atyour next party—but stay at home one night and listen toit; it has many satisfying moments. —ldArt Strike by lbd (a.k.a. Luigi-Bob Drake). 3-minutecomposition on cassette. Write: Luigi-Bob Drake, P.O.Box 18817, Cleveland Hts OH 44118 — A voice speakswhile a cello plays a plaintive melody over a tape loop ofa woman saying “ some of the uses of course don’ t haveany meaning” . This could be seen as a testament to lbd’sambivalence about the Art Strike. “Gee, if I don’ t join theArt Strike, they won’ t realize how avant-garde I am.” It isa witty and useful questioning of the motivation that maytempt some to join this collective (in)action. And of course,by questioning the Art Strike and its motivations, it simul-taneously realizes the goals behind the Art Strike. —ld

• • • • •Dingsters at the Break of Dong by the Miracle. C60-7tx. Little Fyodor, P.O. Box 973, Boulder CO 80306.—This seems to be a document of a pair of jam sessions onmiscellaneous percussion, and as you might expect it’ssomewhat obtuse to those of us who weren’ t there. There’ssome nice horn punctuation on Dingsters, and some goodinstrumental separation (and colorization) on the long cuton side two. As with many jam tapes though, this soundsas though it’d be better as a participatory experience thanas a passive one.

Future Cheers by the Haters. C90-2 tx. The Haters, P.O.Box 48184, Vancouver BC V7X 1N8 Canada. — “Eyeenjoy destroying everything,” states Hater G.X. Jupitter-Larsen in the liner notes, “because eye enjoy leaving noth-ing undestroyed.” And indeed the soundscape is prettymuch levelled to the ground in this remorseless, relentless,nearly featureless assault on music. The tape is LOUD.Play it for your landlord. There are incredible applicationsfor these huge slabs of unidentifiable sonic sludge.Hidden Places by Harry Joseph Plourde. C90-5 tx.Harry Joseph Plourde, 570 N Rossmore Ave #205, LosAngeles CA 90004. — As much as I like the meditativeambience of Hidden Places, I wish Mr. Plourde hadn’ tchosen to record in the hallway of his apartment building.His varied instrumentation (toy piano, Javanese and Japa-nese flutes, metal rods, radio, bird calls) and rigidly envi-ronmental presentation (track length 10 or 15 minutes,presumably excerpted) define an evocative, ambient qual-ity not unlike an Eno record. Music for Apartment Build-ings? Maybe. But get rid of that tape hiss first.Improvisation for Classical Guitar by Steven Buchanan.C90-19 tx. Stephen Buchanan, 68 Thompson St #14,New York NY 10012. — This lively tape concerns, youguessed it, guitar improvisation, usually through effects,but this is still a refreshing departure from “accepted”guitar improv. Well, some of it is, anyway. He bangs onhis guitar a lot and is in general more energetic and lesspointless than some of his brethren. There’s a few all outstrummers that made me cringe, but the moments of inge-nuity occur frequently enough to keep the discerning lis-tener intrigued.The above four cassettes are available for $4 each fromSound of Pig Music, c/o Al Margolis, P.O. Box 150022Van Brunt Station, Brooklyn NY 11215

Cassette and CDReviews

byPaulNeff

Retrofuturism No.

1542 January

Inverse Guitar by Robert Poss and Nicolas Collins. C60-9 tx. Trace Elements Records, 172 E 4th St #11D, NewYork NY 10009 — The cover of this tape shows guitarssuspended from the ceiling. The label’s in New York City.And sure enough, Bob and Nick sound like they’re com-ing out of Rhys Chatham/Glenn Branca country, with gui-tars galore pounding block chords through reverb unitsand mixing boards. However, the sparse, abrupt arrange-ments—particularly evident on the “Elements of Style”pieces—set it apart from the NYC Guitar School. Good.This tape is a hard, oblique thrust into new territory forthe budding genre—and one it badly needs.Lapse from Virtue (compilation). C90-11 tx. $4 fromSound of Pig Music, c/o Al Margolis, P.O. Box 150022Van Brunt Station, Brooklyn NY 11215 — This Soundof Pig collection really got me going for a sec. So many ofthe cuts on side one sound like Al Margolis’ own patentedbusy noisiness that I though I had the wrong tape. Mid-way through side one, liminal stimulus punctuates thehypermix with some sort of instrumental ensemble in thebackground, and S-core shifts to a minimal focus on elec-tronic howling in “Lava.” I think. Side two opens withone of Merzbow’s industrial metal-on-metal arrangements;a following highlight is the manic vocal/concrete assaultby the Hanataresh: “9 is 6” . Like many SoP tapes, harsh-ness is the yardstick of quality. Uneasy listening.Les Oxyures by Costes. CD-20 tx. Write: Costes, 13Quai du Square, 93200 St.-Denis France — Costes. Mustbe the singer’s name. Whoever the singer is, he dominatesthis CD, and though I speak no French, I can hear himlaugh cry, demand, cajole, plead, whine, sneer, and lotsmore. Bouncy off-kilter chants combine with tinny YamahaDX-7 accompaniments (edits and concrete elements oozein as punctuation) in a busy semi-melodic dissonance thatserves first to confuse, then to irritate, finally to please. Iwish I know what “oxyure” means as the word is in al-most all the song titles; there does seem to be some sort of“ journey through the body” song cycle toward the end.But whether you speak French or not, the emotive powerof Coste’s voice draws one right in and won’ t let go.Little Plastic Box #s 2 and 3. C30, 7 and 11 tx respec-tively. WUWA, 851 O’Farrell #205, San Francisco CA94109 — At times WUWA sets tv commentary to music,at times he/she/they just play it straight with guitars, key-boards, and lots of production value. There are some beau-

tiful moments here (the lilting “At the Present Time” withsampled Timothy Leary on #3) and entertaining ones(“Rock Music Mystery” on #2) but overall—there just isn’ tmuch here. I’m afraid I’m not going to be impressed by asong that’s essentially a straight folk-rock song playedbackwards. This is not an innovation. Nor are some of theguitar improvs on #3; there is a lot of this stuff out there tobe heard. Clearly WUWA has talent and curiosity; what isnow needed (here and elsewhere in audio art) is a struc-tured, considerate approach.Living With “That” Sound by Mechanical Sterility. C90-25 tx. $1.49 from M. Schafer, 75 Fairview Ave #3B, NewYork NY 10040 — This tape was made by people on acid.If this idea excites you you should buy this tape.

MaLLife #18 Audio (compilation) edited by MikeMiskowski. C45-19 tx. $6 from Bomb Shelter Props,P.O. Box 12268, Seattle WA 98102 — Boy, talk aboutincest: this comp shares half a dozen artists (and severalidentical tracks) with the Scrap(e) comp reviewed below(and the Anomaly comp reviewed above), and is so simi-lar in tone and scope that I’ ll just have to advise you tobuy all three. Standouts here are Al Perry’s “May I Speakto the Management, Please?” and a grinding media bar-rage from Chemical Toybox entitled “Home Taping isKilling the Music Industry” ; plus a look at Hell by RupertWondolowski that sticks in your mind, as editor MikeMiskowski exhorts to keep remembering in “3 Rs” . Yup,this one’s another sonic cornucopia. Just what we need!Maud Gonne by Organic Mortality Intensified. C60-6tx. $3 ppd. from OMI/Vic Colaizzi, 28517 MerrimacTr, Williamsburg VA 23185 — “Persistent Minimal Pat-terns of Big Fat Sound.” That’s what the liner card says;

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OMI just wrote my review for me. Not much on here butugly low-noise drones; I’m not sure why they botheredwith song titles—this really works better as a soundtrack(two of the cuts are “performance excerpts” ). Industrialdamage like this serves well as a starting point for groupslike Deathranch; I’d like to see OMI run with the ball. Asit is, this tape’s just perfect to wash the dishes by. Afterall, say the liner notes, “You have a choice.”Meet Lieutenant Murnau by Lieutenant Murnau. C60-12 tx. Lieutenant Murnau/Vittore Baroni, via Raffaelli2, 55042 Forte dei Marmi, Italy. Write: VEC AudioExchange, P.O. Box 1051, 6201 BB Maastricht, Neth-erlands; — All right, yeah! The Lieutenant MurnauProject began in 1980 as hypermedia dedicated to creat-ing a “cult” for a non-existent rock group (thus strikingout at pop iconology). As the “cult” bloomed forth (withflyers, buttons and other hypermedia galore) the need forsome actual music became evident. Hence this tape. Theunnamed Murnau collaborators manipulated Beatles andResidents albums; collaging, looping, layering, scratch-ing, cutting-up, physical dis/re.assembly—no techniqueis spared in the recombinant frenzy. And what a tape! Therange of textures and rhythms alone is a testament to thepower of Plagiarism® to revitalize old music. And if youdon’ t like it (or if you do) you too can meet LieutenantMurnau: anyone may send his or her ideas for treatments(or actual recordings) to become part of the next Murnauproject. Participatory Plagiarism® (and it sounds good,too)! You owe it to yourself to meet Lieutenant Murnau.

Music for a Small World by Harry Joseph Plourde. C60-2 tx. Harry Joseph Plourde, 570 N Rossmore Ave #205,Los Angeles CA 90004. $4 from Sound of Pig Music, c/o Al Margolis, P.O. Box 150022 Van Brunt Station,Brooklyn NY 11215 — Mr. Plourde (Hidden Places, re-viewed above) is back, again recording live with Asianflutes, gongs and miscellaneous percussion, this time in aparking structure (one hears cars go by occasionally). Heagain seems intent upon achieving an ambience; on thisone piercing flutes dominate: I question the wisdom oflistening to this on headphones (as the liner card suggests,“ in the early morning or evening hours” ). Sound qualityis marginally better here than on Hidden Places, and thereare passages herein where one can hear that, yes, Mr.Plourde can really play those flutes.No-Risk Brain Tape by Deathranch. C90. Skidloy, 1473Redwood Dr, Santa Cruz CA 95060 — Deathranch dif-fers from the industrial mainstream in (to me) two impor-tant ways: they eschew cheap, self-indulgent “mysticism” ,and they avoid that seductive, all-pervasive boombox discobeat. This is important. And the huge, huge textures theycreate from industrial music’s vast sonic pool of instru-mentation and concrete elements come pouring out of thespeakers in one huge mass, forming a soundscape at timesfrightening, often challenging, and at once instantaneousand total.Open Fire by Machine Gun. CD-72 min-14 tx. Mu NewYork Records, 111 4th Ave Suite 5A, New York NY10003 — I don’ t usually review jazz here, but I’ ll reviewthis ’cause it’s good: Machine Gun opens fire indeed—blistering tempos and high energy guitar and sax wailingsdominate this live CD. Even guest Sonny Sherrock canonly influence the blast such that he’s not overwhelmed.Rage and catharsis abound: both hard core punk and “blackhard rock (Living Colour, 24-7, Spyz (whom the guitarplayer produced))” suggest themselves as influences. Un-derpinning this range lie funk bass rhythms, polyrhythms,and a hammering hyperbeat from which only brief respiteis taken. Anger is power. We’re seeing a lot of this thesedays. Every thinking car stereo needs a Machine Gun.Plunderphonic by John Oswald. CD-73 min-24 tx. Notfor sale from Mystery Laboratory, P.O. Box 727 Sta-tion P, Toronto Ontario M5S 2Z1 Canada — From itsMichael Jackson-as-nude-woman cover to its impeccablydetailed documentation and indexing, the Plunderphonic

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CD package fully supports, and creates conceptual spacefor, the music that comes out of it. Composer John Oswaldhas taken music of general familiarity, melted it down andrecast it according to his taste and musical vision. Unlikehis Mystery Tapes however, which are completely anony-mous with regard to source and composer, Plunderphonicis a minutely referenced exercise in borrowing, quotation,and outright theft, with the end result being funny, enter-taining, and sometimes even danceable.

The work on this CD largely consists of the soundsof commercial recordings edited, altered, and otherwiserecomposed and reconstituted as “new” music. Such well-known songs as “A Hard Day’s Night” , “White Christ-mas” , “Bad” , “Rite of Spring” , and many others are usedin the undertaking. So what is the point of all this? IsOswald not merely stealing the successful parts of previ-ously existing compositions in a manner that is ultimatelyeasy and redundant? After all, why would you want tolisten to this when the originals are commonly available?These questions are relevant, but rather effectively missthe point of why Oswald does what he does. (For more onthat, see the Plunderphonic interview elsewhere in this is-sue.)

Oswald participates in the idea of the artist as ironist;it is nothing if not ironic that his plagiarisms are amongthe most “original” sounding work around—I know ofnothing else like it. And it is with the delicate, white-glovecare of an archivist that he smashes history by rewritingthe best-known compositions of his time, replacing themwith his own versions. He is not, however, building a bet-ter mousetrap; his purpose is not to improve these works,nor to update them. It is, ironically, to create new works.

There is a strange refreshment in hearing these sounds,known by many of us as intimately as our best friends’faces, as parts of new wholes. To hear Oswald’s “Birth” isto recall the Beatles’ “Birthday” and the fun it once con-tained for you—most likely gone stale from over-famil-iarity. But again, to hear Oswald’s “Birth” is to hear a newmelody and rhythmic structure so that the song you lovedso much as a younger person is made fresh. It may frus-trate some listeners that the umbilicus between “Birth”and “Birthday” is not yet cut; and it is, in some cases,difficult not to indulge in degenerate nostalgia over suchmusic.

Too, please appreciate the difficulty that exists in criti-

cizing such work. One can never separate these works fromtheir sources—in fact it seems that much of their effect—their humor, beauty, and/or dramatic impact—depends inlarge degree on where they came from. This would, ofcourse, suggest that no one but a member of the culture ofthese sources can “ fully” appreciate these works. So oneis lead to the formal qualities of the work in examiningthe impact they could have on listeners in general.

Fortunately the forms of these works are by and largethe product of a style that is accomplished and impres-sive. “Dab” , based on Michael Jackson’s “Bad” , has mu-sical corners in its architecture unavailable to Jackson as aproducer of music that must sell to exist. It begins andends with—one must say it—beautiful washes of soundderived from the Jackson recording and altered to the edgeof recognition by multi-tracked phasing effects. In the cen-ter of the piece is a hard throbbing core of the kind of beatthat captures the spirit of music intended for popular dance.In effect “Dab” is every bit the dance number as “Bad” ,although it could take time for Michael Jackson fans torecognize this fact.

The spectrum of familiar music which Oswald plun-ders is fairly broad—pop and rock to movie themes to jazzand classical—and the variety of treatments Oswald usesto make these works his own is perhaps a lexicon of thetape-composer’s repertoire. These techniques include theclassic razor/splicing block editing, multi-track recording,filtering and mixing, as well as more contemporary tech-niques such as sampling, computer digitizing, and real-time computer “performing” .

All in all, this is an often strange, often familiar, butvery satisfying collection of music. It is nothing like a“perfect listening experience” some reviewers refer to,because of the vast differences and musical incompatibili-ties between some of the sources. Oswald has thought ofthat, too: in the booklet that comes with the CD is a list of“ suggested track sequences” to program your CD playerto iterate. Since Oswald doesn’ t sell Plunderphonic, if yousend me a blank cassette at least 73 minutes long and suf-ficient return postage (85¢) I’ ll copy mine and send it toyou. —ldScrap(e) (compilation) edited by Chris Winkler. C60-20 tx. $4 from Plutønium Press, P.O. Box 61564, Phoe-nix AZ 85082 — Boy, look at all the big names.tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, the Haters, Score, Sun

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City Girls, Floating Concrete Orchestra—yes, audio art isincestuous, we see these names on comps and Sound ofPig releases constantly, but that’s fine because this is yetanother excellent audio art comp; eclectic, provocative,and snappily packaged to boot. My faves here were NilesChandlers “ Hathaway Iciest” , a hyper pæon tomonomaniamedia (and clever sampling excursion) andMike Miskowski’s “Aekstsowbl Ag9fgol?” in which hecontinues his exploration of the computer as blunt instru-ment. Overall the comp ranges from beat poetry (JanetJanet; Bennett, Smith) through free jazz (Sun City Girls),electronic and computer music (Rupert Wondolowski) andplain old vocal barfing (Score). Buy this tape now.

Uh Oh, Dad’s Home by Dad’s New Slacks. C90. Write:“Dad”, 1468 Washington Ave, Portland ME 04103 —Dad’s New Slacks sit square in cheese country, evokingthe Lucky Baby Retreat House, the Church of theSubGenius, and Firesign Theater simultaneously. It’s agood place to sit. Edited down from live radio mixes overWMPG Portland, presumably late at night, this tape soundsappropriately tape-y and improvisational. And boy, is itever fun. This sort of homegrown audio/radio art—the lo-cals jabbering and mixing away over weird loops of sub-versive bent—is the 12-bar blues of tape music. I alwaysgo back to it. Wearing Dad’s New Slacks.Undercurrent by Trig P. Toma. C46-8 tx. Write: BillJaeger, 506 W Johnson Dr, Payson AZ 85541 — Back-to-basics industry dominates this document, which wasallegedly made by “physically destroying acoustic soundsources, with conventional instruments being: NONE.”Metal (mostly) percussion over an echo-laden wash is therule here, with some nice loops thrown in for structure.The “ songs” are somewhat overdrawn, but this is a solidindustrial release for those SPK fans to chew on.The Unseen Collection (compilation). Edited by Will-iam Clark. C90-20 tx. Write: Variant, 76 Carlisle St,Glasgow G21 1EF Scotland — An emphasis on alien-ation pervades this comp, with well done politico-æstheticpieces from the Tape-beatles, John Berndt, A-soma & EveLibertine complementing the comp’s dominant reverber-ant sludge-thrust, aptly defined by Mark Bloch, DavidWoodard and Shelflife, among others. Also featured isKlaus Maecke’s “Tape Attack” intended to provoke riots,it was performed at the 1989 Festival Of Plagiarism inGlasgow, with indeterminate success. Try it in you homeand see for yourself. Though at times the industrial droneoutruns its usefulness, this is a strong comp and a wel-come contribution.Woman by RWA. C46-8 tx. Write: Ensemble Vide, B.P.12, 33031 Bordeaux France — Despite its French ori-gins, much of the work on this cassette is in English. Isuppose in 1979 or 1980 this punky recording would’vebeen very exciting. It’s competently played and the com-positions have a good dynamic. It stylishly thumbs its noseat production value. But in 1990, it just sorta sounds nos-talgic. —ldAll reviews are written by Paul Neff, unless followed by—ld, in which case they were written by Lloyd Dunn.

Sonique Suisse: Alternative Landscapes from Switzer-land (compilation). C90-25 tx. Carl Howard, AudiofileTapes, 209-25 18th Ave, Bayside NY 11360 — The 25groups represented here run a gamut from noisy rockthrough noisy jazz/improv to noisy noise; this tape iseclectic, but there is a strong overall tone of aggressionthroughout. I’d like to write more, but I just noticed theexhortation “Stop Unauthorized Duplication” on the linercard.Also available is the 1985 compilation: Hear the Roar ofMountains Volume Two.This by Crash Worship. C45-9 tx. Rocco Fresco Tapes,1949 Riviera Dr, Vista CA 92084 — A pronounced in-dustrial bite informing this slick little package, CrashWorship concern themselves with driving dance rhythms,swirling textures from standard instrumentation (guitarbass drums etc.) and occupying territory near ThrobbingGristle and Cabaret Voltaire. Touches of mysticism andthoughtful eschewing of drum machines on most trackslend this tape a “ ritual” air.

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Reviews of Other MediaOn Their Way by Gen and Con. VHS-60 min.Write: Gencon Productions, 118 East 4th St #11,New York NY 10003 — The makers of this videoare seen walking through unpopulated West Berlinstreets, through hallways and courtyards carryingportable cassette players. The sound track is nevermatched with the on-screen action, defeating theonly possibly interesting aspect this hour-long work:a document of moving sound through empty andopen spaces. Layered voices (in English) and com-puter generated music is offered, forming a wall ofsound which puts the visual action at a distance.Without narrative or seeming purpose, the projectcomes off as fetishistic of its own process, technol-ogy used (digitally manipulated video stills of Genand Con which, for no apparent reason, appear atmidpoint) so that “On Their Way”, in the end, goesnowhere. —jh

Digit Factory. HyperCard stack. $10 fromEclctrcpt, P.O. Box 12268, Seattle WA 98102 —This dense electronic artifact is advertised as “anexercide [sic] in reality frustration therapy for theMac”. Correctly so: from the moment you open thestack some handler or other takes over your ma-chine and leaves you to watch flashing screens ofbitmapped surrealism (Miskowski-style) and creakygroany machiny digitized sounds. Frankly, the thingdrove me nuts. Using “Digit Factory” for me waslittle better than watching television. I felt like it wastrying as hard as it could to keep my attention, butit wasn’t about to let me play. It seems to me that ifyou’re going to make a kind of art for the computerit ought to take advantage of the interactive natureof the device. If you’re going to charge ten dollarsfor it, you ought to offer its user something to dowith it! “Digit Factory” offers you a few buttons toclick on, but it seems like they all do about the samething: show you a picture and make a weird sound.

Miskowski’s usual and skilled repertoire of im-ages and ideas are heavily present: images of the

everyday consumer-culture milieu in which all of usconstantly participate. His work’s normally playfulcharacter often serves to expose the humorous andgently absurd side of our reality, making what isthe contemporary definition of “normal” seem in-credibly weird. When this is transformed into com-puter art, the wit and veracity we expect to see inMiskowski has an empty ring to it, perhaps becausethe personal computer itself is somehow exotic andabsurd to most of us. To have it do merely exoticand absurd things it thus boring! It’s what we ex-pect! Nothing excites people more than to see acomputer do what are really quite simple tasks, likeword processing or aping human speech badly. Isuppose that’s because the things we most take forgranted—the artifacts of consciousness itself, speak-ing, drawing, creating, thinking—are by far the mostextraordinary things of all. —ld

Submissions WantedAudacity «…is a weekly half-hour showcase ofexperimental radio art from wherever I can get it.I’ve already featured people like Irwin Chusid/WFMU, Mike Dyer/CKLN, and Ivan Stang/KNON.» Submit anything as long as it was pro-duced for, by, of the radio. Michael Townsend,1468 Washington Ave, Portland ME 04103.

Northern California is a Noisey PlaceIndeed Vol. 3. «As volume two is being released,it becomes time to announce our desire for thestrange, the noisey [sic], the downright obnoxious.Volume 1 contains talent like: Negitiveland [sic],Ubthings, Kingshouse, Crawling with Tarts, andmany others. Volume 2 contains talent like:Deathranch, Katharsis, Eric Muhs, Disism, Iao Core,Allegory Chapel and More!!! Remember you mustlive in Northern California, the piece should beexclusive, send on high bias cassette or reel, andrun 3-8 minutes. NCIANPI is released through Soundof Pig Music, but send those submissions to:» Ubuibi,1803 Mission #554, Santa Cruz CA 95060.

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