You know what I’ve been doing in my seventh to last week of being a goddamned teacher? Getting involved in open source cinema and being absolutely goddamned inspired by weird nonmusic.
I listened to DJ Food’s Raiding the 20th Century earlier this week and fell in love. And this isn’t like all those other times I’ve fallen in love; cutups love me back. Oh blooody hell I wish I could say that about a person, but I guess a genre of music is all I get so what the fuck eh? This is something I can do. Listen to something by Steinsky or Public Works. Please.
I actually have a modicum of talent in this arena (from the radio training with DNTO) and I love what happens when you put together things. Someone, possibly named Burroughs said “When you cut up the present, the future leaks out” and that’s something that it is possible for me to do.
It’s all connected to that “What the hell am I going to do when I go back to Canada?” question and I keep on waffling. At this very moment I’d almost be content to get a horrible job I’d hate so I can spend the rest of my time creating things. Having a day job you hate is a legitimate path right? As long as you hate it? If I’m making something that no one cares about in my spare time? And when people ask what I do if I don’t say “I work in marketing at Agrifuckingcore United” but “I make music that (ten to one) you can’t dance to” I’m not a horrible soulless drone in an Albertan apiary, right?
Today I’ve got the White Album on the iPod and it’s crazy how the Grey Album has shaped my experience of this piece of art. Can I extricate it from Jay-Z? Yes and no, but that’s what’s insensible about the whole deal. I understand now why Kate was so angry at that Beatles 1 CD (or possibly I’m missing the point; it’s entirely possible she was just being a snob); there’s nothing from this greatest artistic expression of whatever the fuck decade it was on it. Number Nine?
If you were to ask me today about my favourite musicians, I’d be saying Dan Bern, Tom Waits or the Kleptnes. And the Kleptones come from a long tradition including the Tape-beatles, whose early nineties stuff I’ve been downloading like mad. It’s crazy how these people were pioneering things on analogue tape, and how much easier and better sounding you can make it in this digital age. But they had to cut up tape back in the day. But I like how the three work together. Dan Bern’s at his best all stripped down, just voice and guitar (and harmonica), while Waits gets increasingly more esoteric in his orchestration, and then the Kleptones are all about organized confusion.
I’ve been writing a song over the last couple of days. It started off very countryish but has morphed into a kind of jazzy acoustic pop thing. It still needs a third verse, but I’m happier with it than any pseudo-song I’ve ever done before.
