Eric Clapton Re-imagined as a Free jazz Guitarist

Fucking brilliant video wherein a Finnish smartypants has dubbed his own guitar playing over Eric Clapton’s pseudo-soulful histrionic posing:

Late last year a Finnish media artist named Santeri Ojala got a lot of attention for a series of hilarious YouTube videos in which he lifted concert footage of various guitar heroes and overdubbed his own intentionally awful playing. The bad musicianship was funny enough, but the verisimilitude made it even funnier: Ojala was great at matching each player’s hand movements and timing, and he sprinkled lukewarm applause and other sound effects throughout. The videos were like alternate-universe versions of rock-god cliches.

I think Clapton’s a pretentious, boring twit, so it’s doubly funny for me.

More here.

Found at Boing Boing

Big City Orchestra

Pal Ninah Pixie sends me the following:

Brand-New WEB RELEASE from BIG CITYE ORCHESTRHAE

LULLABY

NOW AVAILABLE from the UMBRELLA NOIZE COLLECTIVE

download full tracks + album cover art:

1. Passing Note
2. uBung
3. Virginal
4. Wind Chest
5. Wood Wind
6. Faster
7. Chance Music
8. Tirez

cast: dAS, Ninah Pixie, Andy Cowitt, Michael Wertz, Cliff Neighbors, Melissa Margolis, Insect Deli, Dark Muse
cover art & design: Michael Wertz (www.wertzateria.com)

Ken’s Last Ever Radio Extravaganza

Ken of K.L.E.R.E. has dropped me the following line:

two new live shows to be created
one: in a few hours (friday june 8, 4:30-6pm CT / 5:30-7pm ET)
the other: in a few days (monday june 11, 12-1pm CT / 1-2pm ET)

both via live webcast: http://counterfolk.com/lastever
and both on live radio in austin, tx: 91.7-FM
*thanks to gary and john for airtime

live, improvised sound collage experiment
wherein you may participate via contributing sounds with telephone during show
or other ways you may devise
then/now/later

mixing combining existing playing happening
free from plan or thought

may also be listenable later on web page if you miss it

live listening, past archives, ‘podcast’:
http://counterfolk.com/lastever
(try a blue show from the upper-right corner)

If you’re a fan of live, improvised collage radio, be sure to check it out.
It’s his last one ever, so you have to.

Bill Laswell, Otomo Yoshihide, Yoshigaki Yasuhiro (repost)

Soup

P-Vine Japan

Four lengthy, fairly dirgey jams from Laswell, Yoshihide and Yasuhiro. Otomo’s an amazing guitar player! Who knew? I always assumed he was more of a turntablist/manipulator, but as an axe-grinder he’s no slouch.
Sometimes the tunes take on a dub-like quality - a Laswell trait.
This sounds like music made while coming off of a bad acid trip in Yokohama, Tokyo or a sushi joint in New York.

Download:Right here

(5/29/07) This is a repost for someone who wandered into my old blogger incarnation - and a timely one, too. I just recently accidentally deleted everything from my iPod, which wouldn’t have been such a big deal if I didn’t have lots of stuff on it exclusively. This album is one that I thought perished forever (along with more than one un-backed up album*) until I remembered that I burned it onto a CD. Crap! - When do I EVER make CDs anymore? So, luckily for us, here it is.

*The others I’ve noticed so far (inasmuch as I miss them): Peter Hammill - Nadir’s Big Chance; The Orb - Auntie Aubrey’s Excursions Beyond the Call of Duty pt. 1, and lots and lots of single tracks.

Negativland

Over the Edge Vol. 4: Dick Vaughn’s Moribund Music of the Seventies
Seeland Records

Fabulously overblown re-issue of the formerly cassette-only Over the Edge series entry Dick Vaughn’s Moribund Music of the Seventies, presenting Richard Lyon’s titular soul-less radio personality character in his many failed attempts at radio stardom. The first disc unveils an insidious change to KPFA’s programming to a bland, middle of the road music and canned news segment format called The California Superstation. the horrified and clueless call-ins are priceless, as is Lyon’s portrayal of a huckster who is totally oblivious to his own vapidity. Done in ‘air-check’ style, all songs - horrid though they are - have been culled out of the mix, leaving Dick’s IDs and commercials alone.
Side two, titled Dick Vaughn’s Moribund Music of the Seventies, documents Dick’s failed countdown show to highlight some of the low points of Seventies music. All this is wrapped around some befuddled call-ins (not included on the original issue), an assessment of Dick Vaughn’s pathology by a radio psychiatrist (Dr. Oslo Norway) and some relatively recent updates on the death of Dick Vaughn from Negativland’s 1993 concerts.

Dick 1: The California Superstation
Dick 2: Moribund Music of the Seventies

For more Negativland mayhem, be sure to visit Carnival of Headaches. He’s got the excellent OTE Time Zones Exchange Project, as well as lots of other goodies.

Meet the Meat Beetles

Sometimes when taking a long break from finding cool music, cool music finds you instead.

The well-named Wongo Starr dropped me a line to let us know about his cool sampledelic band the Meat Beatles. Fantastic tape manipulation, turn-tablisms and great use of sampling are contained herein.

The lengthy track Backwards Devil Music #13 had me chortling coffee out my nose this morning.

They’re so good, I wonder why I haven’t heard of them before.

Go check ‘em out!

Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything -
Or, Old Bob Exposes His Ignorance

Our favorite stand-up philosopher managed to escape this penal colony plane of existence recently after a long bout with Post-Polio Syndrome, so I have dug this gem out and have been listening to it lately. RAW’s Cosmic Trigger series, as well as the Illuminatus Trilogy really warped my perceptions of reality for good.
This is a rip of my six tape set available in the late eighties, so there’s an appropriate amount of tape artifacts or the occasional wow and flutter. On the whole, it sounds pretty good though.

Tape 1: The Life and Times of Robert Anton Wilson
Traces Pope Bob’s childhood, formative years, Catholic rearing (pun intended), his lifelong love of James Joyce via an interview.
Warning: Side B has a great example of twisted tape syndrome, wherein a small chunk of it plays backwards. Don’t worry, it’s in a very appropriate place, as you’ll hear!

Download Tape 1

Tape 2: Language and Reality
Incorrigible optimist Bob explores how language shapes our perceptions of the world, or how our reality tunnels are formed. He discusses Korzybski and Neuro-Linguistic Programming and other modes of thought construct.

Download Tape 2

Tape 3: Techniques for Consciousness Change
Bob discusses various methods for obtaining various states of consciousness as well as LSD, Sensory Deprivation and Leary’s Eight Circuit model of consciousness and how to reprogram them.

Download Tape 3

Tape 4: Politics and Conspiracy Theory
How trying to unravel the big control conspiracy can both drive you mad and how the more you learn about it, the less plausible, yet undeniably ‘real’ it all becomes. Also how dogmatic religions tend to have their own, unique conspiracy theories.

Download Tape 4

Tape 5: The Acceleration of Knowledge
Live lecture on the doubling of information and how it seems to be occurring at an increasing interval and where Bob thinks we’re headed.

Download Tape 5

Tape 6:
A- Religion for the Hell of it
B- The New Inquisition
Hilarious and enlightening two-part lecture in Boulder Co., where Bob rails against all stripes of fundamentalism and the rigid, Aristotalian mind-set, as well as the hardcore skepticism of fundamental materialists (with their mantra of ‘it’s only a coincidence, it’s only a coincidence!’) . Also, the rabbit-UFO connection revealed at last.

Download Tape 6

Negativland

A Big 10-8 Place
Seeland Records

The follow up to 1981’s Points has Negativland fine-tuning their homespun audio collage to mind-blowing proportions. It also introduces more thematically tied material and a narrative story structure of sorts (albeit a very dada one) thanks in no small part to uber-nerd and band mascot/muse/technician David ‘The Weatherman’ Wills. This also introduces a very deft use of tape collage (thanks to the newly joined Don Joyce), which forms the first part of this two piece epic, which is so mind-pummeling magnificent and at times resembles Frank Zappa’s Lumpy Gravy. The second major section is an extended story narrated by the Weatherman that is very silly and surreal and introduces lots of trademarked words and phrases into the Negativland lexicon - featuring also an apparently real argument between Wills and his mother. The back of the craftily packaged CD tells you to listen to this loud with headphones on, which may be the case, but you’ll feel like your brain has been soaking in Formula 409 afterwards.
Highly recommended.

Fetch My Cigarettes

Inexplicably, the first two albums, which I posted last summer, are still active.
Check them out here and here.