I had an interesting experience yesterday: recently saw the profile of a young woman on deviant art and she had some images of asian youths dressed in this neo-goth (as opposed to victorian goth or one of the other subsets) gear, i.e. cosplay. I’d seen some similar shots on FLickr and though I’d ask if there was a relation. Thus began my education on visual kei. Lain is quite young and lives in Germany. She wanted to IM rather than just try and answer me outright. It took us a few days (and me updating my IM, since my GAIM was gone wonky) to be on at the same time, but eventually there she was, complete with webcam, which in and of itself wasn’t such a big deal, but I don’t have one - so I’m ‘invisible’, talking with a girl less than half my age, and when you learn more about the subject matter, you might get the creepy vibe too. But this is about music education.
So after some introductions, she starts rapid firing images, songs and video links. I send some too, trying to explain my version of metal and darkness, but she isn’t digging it. I can forgive her the teenage attention span, after all she’s talking w/video to several other friends around the globe at the same time. But this basic difference in the way music and image have changed is what alarmed me. For me, Metal 101: Blue Cheer (’68, acid rock really but considered proto-metal) and Black Sabbath (’70) are the inital building block. I grew up in the 80’s and saw Maiden give way to Hair Metal. Then came mathrockesque neo-metal revival: Melvins, Breadwinner, Sepultura, The Fucking Champs, Mastadon et al. Sure there was always Slayer, and in truth, when mainstream metal went cheese there was serious underground splinter factions ‘keeping it real’ all along. See various Black Metal church burning, Thor whorshipping, lead guitarists commiting suicide so the remaining band members can wear pieces of his skull on chains around their neck, bands. Though I’ve never been one for that cookie monster voice/autistic drumming/arpeggio fest stuff. Out in Portland once trying to discuss it with a fan he explained to me what I’m into is ‘art metal’. But we were equally frustrated to encounter other fans who tried to relate by naming Tool, Metallica (yeah yeah yeah, ‘first few albums’ blah blah…but they went on to show their true colors…) or somesuch.
But she is of a different era. Image means just as much as the music. Rumors about pacts with the devil or what the acronym of your band name might stand for just don’t cut it anymore. The actual music she’s into strikes me as weak but I must say I’m taken by the imagery - after all I’m also an asian horror fan. And she had no interest in the ‘Honey Bucket’ video, as the guys had no budget and most likely shot it on some friend’s goat farm. Well, I guess you’d call that a ranch…
What can you do? The world is always changing. And in some ways it isn’t. At one point she typed ‘no one cares about the pain of the youth today’. *Ahem* I encouraged her to check out Nietzsche, esp. as she can read it in the original form (whoops, I mean ‘Prussian’). One thing’s for sure, alienated, pained youths didn’t used to have connectivity like this. A good and a bad thing on different levels.
This post could splinter in a variety of directions with discussions of ‘industrial’ (by which I’m talking Throbbing Gristle, Brighter Death Now school i.e. dark experimental music; not some sexy, whiny bitch dance music), or ‘punk’, whatever that means. But the fact is the tree branches just keep on splintering. There is good and bad in all genres, like always, and no accounting for taste. But personally I’d like to see the actual riffs and fills stay strong - keep striving for originality in the actual sound, not just the eye candy. But what do I know, I’m just some ranting geezer. So without further ado, here’s the Japanese band Dir en Grey-



I would also point out my American-centric and essentially hard rock shaped tastes when I go to complain about how fluffy the chorus of ‘Obscure’ seems to me, but when you consider the rich tradition of Japanese noise rock (see also Japanoise), there really isn’t much excuse for those boys. It’s marketing, slick and at root ‘mainstream’, despite some of what you see. Makes you wonder about future decades of hard music/image-

*also props to Sam Dunn for general research and info*

Another gem from the Jasonaut vault. Careful ladies: sure, you’re just letting some guys video tape this now. Maybe they ARE older pervy freaks, but it’s fairly innocent. However within 10 years technology will be available for them to share this with the entire globe!, right about the time you may have settled down with families of your own. Luckily, they may be ethical enough to not use your full names, to at least hamper the google search.
Horny young fools with younger women. The girls love to come ‘hang out’ at the bachelor pad, and do so often (btw, there were several more not shown here). The men make their move, but to no avail (well, one of the three of us hooked up…often) turns out the girls only want the attention. Their ethics don’t prevent them from ‘dick teasing’. But one night, after some drinks and some Indigo Girls (or whatever that shit is playing in the back ground) to soften the mood, maybe they get talked into some silly stuff like this. Don’t get too wound up before you hit play….it ain’t all that.
But I got full on ’spatula fever’. I brought it back to the east coast, found some new fem buddies through which to work out the frustration. There was an era there, when some friends were living in the mattress factory, that once the drinking started - it was only a matter of time ’til the spatula came out. A woman even gave me one wrapped in a bow from christmas. There we were, dancing around to Abba or whatever, taking shots at one another and whooping, wiggling, and rubbing the red marks. Newcomers were often pulled into the game whether they liked it or not, it was their asses that made them worthy of spatula magic.
What I really wish I had is a video of that one Brazillian woman who’s apartment we randomly spilled over into on New Years Eve. They were all chic and well dressed, accepting of other unknown revelers but unaware of our dorky fun. I was biting my lip the entire time I was in there, the pancake flipper literaly vibrating in my coat pocket. She/her pooper was SO fine, and I simply didn’t have enough time (or balls) to socialize our relationship to the point of making the act acceptable; and I can’t just ’spank and run’, because it’s all about ’spank and spank again’.
Yeah, give ol’ Ahab a few drinks and he’ll tell you all about ‘the one that got away’….

I found this woman recently through Flickr. She’s a professional photographer who’s travelled all over the world, and the thing most likely to catch a hetero male (or bi female) eye about her work are lots of shots of sex workers. Lately she posts these along with headlines taken from current events, often with ironicly comedic results, and posts the entire article under the pic. But there are lots of other shots of all types of people from all over the world. From her own statements found on various sites:

A sex worker is a truth worker, if only Washington had the values of most hookers

I am promoting lookism, extending the power of wonderful sexual images and other photographs from around the world that I have shot-

I photograph the sex workers, prisioners, poverty, war and difficult marginal sitautions.
I will now merge these forgotten people with the headlines of the news, usually only shown with pictures of the powerful, or blonde news presenters!!!

The world is a chaotic flux of images upon which we impose a meaning. My photography aims to crush through the imposed meanings to get to the image itself.

From the image I find an infinate number of unconventional meanings-this is particularly why I like strippers and drag queens because I try and remove them from a sexual context and place them in a freespace where all kinds of meanings can arise for the viewers.

I studied photojournalism at The School of The Art Instiute of Chicago and than received a Masters there as well. I was a stringer for AP when I was twenty-four years old. I worked for the mayors office in Chicago and a press photographer for the Immigration Office in Chicago, and Telemundo channel 44 and for the Hilary Rodham Clinton foundation for children. I also won the Patagonia travel award but I didn’t go at the time. I have received several grants but they were never large enough to pay for my photography. I was invited to join Gamma and I received a post in South Asia. I could not take it as we had spent all of our money coming to live in Europe. I continued to shoot everything even though I was not linked to an agency and than Corbis/Sygma picked me up and I ended up leaving.

I love my early photos from my days in Central America in 1982 when I went and photographed prisons in Guatemala. I have travelled around the world capturing everything from sex workers to Russian prisons and riots in Serbia.

(I did a little typo editing in the text, might have missed some-ed.)

Here’s a link to a few photo-essays. Note: click where it says ‘photos’ to begin the text for the various countries represented.

Here are the links to her Flickr (warning:lots of boobs) and MySpace pages. Apparently she has a podcast as well, but I haven’t gotten that far yet…

Also thanx to the Doc for turning me on to Gail’s work!

It was on this day in ‘69 old alchy Ti Jean gave up the ghost. Here’s a montage of him representing some of his best (but of course the very best couldn’t have been televised) on the Steve Allen show (oh, sure your ain’t nervous Jacky boy) and some of his worst, dead drunk making of fool of himself, in front of the ultimate cocksuck William Buckley Jr. no less. The more you read from and about him, the more you realize the general public had no idea who this guy was or what he was doing. He had golden moments of transcending much of the muck, but then there was that which he just couldn’t let go of, and it took him on down. Well, it took the mortal coil down, the rest is still out there.

So I guess this nostalgia kick continues. I searched through lots of old Electric Company (most Revolutionary theme song of children’s television ever: “We’re gonna turn it on! We’re gonna bring you the power!”) and Vegetable Soup (those Outerscope 1 puppets freaked me out then and still do! So much so I won’t even link to them, but can handle the pcp animation) shorts trying to decide what best illustrates this point. Almost went with the S Street ‘count to 20′ with the sitar, mutating yogi and giant machine cranking out number boxes, but then remembered and found this gem.

There really is some good advice given here that can be applied to finding lost keys, checkbooks, as well as lost selves. But one shudders to imagine any child conversing with a character dressed like this dandy, much less a chap who can vanish into his own yo yo, or sing songs about what might be behind your face. But when you think this tidbit was essentially made for a child who lived in a large urban area in the 70’s, these psychedelic characters are far less sinister than street reality was at the time.

So the earliest influence Japanese culture had on me, even before the 10 year old ‘I want to be a ninja’ phase, was through monster shows and anime. Sure there were movies, but the same thing was being done in late ’60’s television, then a few years later we got the rerun’s (most likely because they were cheap). It was an era before cable, you wippersnappers, and most households got the three main networks, TBS in ATL of course, and perhaps one or two other local indie channels. That was TV. But children are easily impressed.
Early Saturday morning, just before or after the animated Spiderman, there was live action Ultraman. Seeing the American intro again (though this actually comes from Italian or Spanish TV and is low quality), with that backward, split screen swirling paint and insane sound intro took me ALL THE WAY BACK, as well as the graphics and theme song. No wonder I was destined to experiment with psychedelics, but like the Beatles I was actually turned on by my dentist years later - nitrous oxide, liberally dispensed in offices before pillhead Nancy became first lady.

Space Giants(Japanese title ‘Ambassador Magma’) came a few years later to the Americans, though the shows were created at the same time, and was after school afternoon programming during the week. The show itself was rather lame, but watch a few episodes linked to the intro in youtube to see how far your disbelief could be suspended with the lofi changeover of Gam from boy to rocket, not to mention Rodac’s ‘Fro. But I suppose it was the idea of having a whistle which could summon robo-saviors that could carry the show in a young boy’s mind. Love the jazz themesong and the way everyone is caught up with the story idea during the intro.

You may know Don Hertzfeldt from the short ‘Billy’s Balloon’. Here are some supposedly rejected animated films he did for commercial spots. Eventually everything spins out of controls in a unique way…

On this day in ‘67, recently turned over by American CIA/Special Forces fresh from the Vietnam conflict flown in for the ‘hunt’, Che Guevara was executed by the Bolivan govt.

I can’t find a link to my favorite quote of his, so I’ll parphrase from a documentary through which I heard this:

‘I’ve found the greatest relief for my asthma to come from the aroma of gunpowder.’

It’s also John Lennon’s birthday. He was killed by a paranoid wacko as well. Both of these guys have been much mulled over in the public mind, and most Americans have some impression of each. Leftists who stood tall with a middle finger raises to ‘the Man’, fighting in different ways and to different result, but both clearly ‘enemy’ to certain minds. One said ‘Peace’ often while the other was more into saying ‘War”, but both were also saying in no uncertain terms ‘Revolution’.

It may be harder to find megolithic Rock icons these days, but Latin America still represents with the revolutionaries. Subcommandante Marcos in a way embodies the spirit of both John and Che, check him out, and the excellent documentary A Place Called Chiapas.