Thursday, April 29, 2004
katherine and i went to the weirdest show last night. john camerone mitchell (hedwig & the angry inch) put together this benefit show for "freedom to marry" at crobar...the lineup looked amazing, so we bought tickets. there were moments of GENIUS but it had the distinct feeling of a semi-assed C-list celebrity talent show.
first ALAN CUMMING came out to do a really adorable cover of that "married" song that goes, "somebody wonderful maaaariiiied meeeee." that was cute. he's very cute. then out of nowhere he introduced surprise guest LOU REED...who read song lyrics out of a binder as if they were poems. it was funny...cuz if he was just some random guy who came to sidewalk and read that stuff, no one would pay any attention to him. it was totally uncompelling. and yet everyone was fixed on the stage, because really -- this man had sex with david bowie. didn't he? or was that someone else. regardless, he lives with laurie anderson, so he has some aura of mystery around him for me. he closed with "take a walk on the wild side." it was beyond surreal. it was like michael jackson RECITING thriller.
things started getting more exciting when the emcee, lady bunny, came out in a wedding dress for a shrieking cover of "wuthering heights" by kate bush. it kinda felt like katherine and i were the only people who knew what was going on. i wanted her to stay on stage, but then she announced freaking LE TIGRE. they were more or less the reason i came, and at first i was surprised they went on so early, but as they were getting to their microphones, i looked around at the crowd: Chelsea folks who did NOT dress for a mosh pit. there was even a guy next to me with a videocamera on a tripod. for a second i thought, "wow, that's gonna get knocked over when we all start to dance," but then they started 'hot topic' and everyone just stood there. the funny thing about electroclash is that it ONLY WORKS if the crowd is into it. otherwise it looks really awkward to see 3 women struggling to maintain a sense of whimsy and spunk, without instruments to focus on or fans to interact with. i bopped around as hard as i could, and sang along, and at one point kathleen hanna sorta looked in my direction and smiled, but mostly i felt really bad for them, with all that human furniture staring at them. i just wanted to give them more energy! ah well. they only played two other songs -- 'keep on living' and 'deceptacon.' for the last one, john cameron mitchell came out and sang the last verse -- the "yr lyrics are dumb like the linoleum floor" verse. that was pretty fun.
anyway things got way LESS surreal when MARGARET CHO came out. i'm a pretty regular reader of her blog, so i was up-to-date on the things that were pissing her off. it was nice to see some of her rants embodied on stage, instead of just reading them on my computer during work breaks. she's very thin!! she had a nice bit about how wedding planners should go on strike until gay people can get married. she put on this black drag queen voice and went, "*I* can't get married? *YOU* can't get marr-ied!" i liked that. she did a pretty long set (thank god) and the audience was WAY more receptive to her than anyone else. i think most of the crowd came specifically to see her. so it was something of a let down when the next act was bob mould of husker du. he played two pop songs he wrote on acoustic guitar. the first one was like "i love you. i love you. i want to marry you," or something, and, while i doubt anyone in the room had ever listened to husker du, i think i still would have rather heard some of their songs.
my memory of the guests is a little mixed up, but i THINK this was when SANDRA BERNHARD came out! i've said it before and i'll say it again -- good performance art, by definition, CANNOT be described. but i'll try. she had a keyboard player and a guitarist, who were vamping for most of her set, while sandra sorta rambled on and on about a variety of unrelated stuff, occasionally punctuated by her singing, "don't let it bring you down!!" it was transcendent, the way her COMPLETELY BENIGN complaining somehow manifested itself as hilarious and profound. it was ephemeral, like instrumental music, and i cannot do it justice here. although her confidence and lack of apology was tremendously inspiring, and i think i'll remember that performance whenever i go on stage from now on.
i do believe that THIS was when things got REALLY weird. they brought out a "surprise guest" -- some no-name hot guy billboard proto-popstar, who supposedly had a big hit, but i never heard of him. and he was STRAIGHT. he came out with some studio-purchased hot boy band, with expensive belts and sunglasses, and they played this absurd, shmaltzy version of 'talkin bout a revolution' by tracy chapman. my mouth was just hanging open in confusion as he and his electric guitarist both played identical open chords for the entire duration of the song. the music was intensely crappy, and somewhere tracy was twitching in pain. i was duly insulted by this display -- more an advertisement for a rising popsinger than anything artistically or politically worthwhile.
thankfully, the stage was rescued by PENNY ARCADE! i've never seen penny perform, but i've always seen her name on lists of hot performance artists. she gave a really satisfying and hilarious rant about the history of queer politics, but unfortunately, even through her intense and fiery stage presence, a lot of the audience was at the end of their attention span, and drifted off, with a lot of talking and noise. ah well. i'm a new fan, and i'm going to hunt down her work wherever i can find it from now on.
so at this point the crowd is restless and uncomfortable from standing for such a long time, and i'm hoping that things will start going faster, when lady bunny announces that there's a new surprise guest...one of those people who "only needs to go by one name"...and we're all thinking, "madonna? mariah? britney? kylie? janet? christina?" (by the way i think it's RIDICULOUS that for some gay men christina aguilera has seized the monopoly on her first name)...but NO. it was none of these people. it was fucking MOBY. i know. who needs to see that? i certainly don't. he brought out two people and he was like, "i'm gonna do something really audacious. this is a tribute to lou reed, who was here before"... and they freaking did "take a walk on the wild side." i don't think they even knew we had already heard it. the whole crowd was just sorta chuckling awkwardly as they played this totally blah rendition, punctuated by a too-long rant about george bush, and followed by a cheese-pop version of that "stop children what's that sound" song from the 60s. then he left. praise jesus.
i need not comment on the subsequent parading of mayor gavin newsom's wife, a 50 pound CNN newscaster with some lame jokes about marriage and credit cards.
finally sleater-kinney came on to save the day, with two rockin originals i'd never heard, and a cover of "fortunate son." the brunette with the guitar (i'm not indie enough to know the names of the sleater-kinney girls) had an incredible stage presence, flailing her hands around when she wasn't using them, and staring at the crowd really fiercely. there was a wee bit more dancing at this point, but not enough to make it raucous fun.
the next performance was the finale: john cameron mitchell and bob mould playing a boring cover of a neutral milk hotel song that no one in the venue had ever heard, and then john and margaret cho (dressed as hedwig) doing a duet of "the origin of love." that last bit was visually surreal enough to justify the whole evening.
things i learned:
-a lot of my friends are way more talented than a lot of famous people
-most good bands are only worth seeing if they can play more than three songs
-confidence in your presence can provide a bedrock for performance that confidence in your MATERIAL cannot
-some clubs are really nice! crobar was like a museum! i really liked being there. maybe i should go dancing sometime.
anyway, i just wanted to document all that. expect a few political blabberfests soon. and prepare to yawn.
xoxo
dan
first ALAN CUMMING came out to do a really adorable cover of that "married" song that goes, "somebody wonderful maaaariiiied meeeee." that was cute. he's very cute. then out of nowhere he introduced surprise guest LOU REED...who read song lyrics out of a binder as if they were poems. it was funny...cuz if he was just some random guy who came to sidewalk and read that stuff, no one would pay any attention to him. it was totally uncompelling. and yet everyone was fixed on the stage, because really -- this man had sex with david bowie. didn't he? or was that someone else. regardless, he lives with laurie anderson, so he has some aura of mystery around him for me. he closed with "take a walk on the wild side." it was beyond surreal. it was like michael jackson RECITING thriller.
things started getting more exciting when the emcee, lady bunny, came out in a wedding dress for a shrieking cover of "wuthering heights" by kate bush. it kinda felt like katherine and i were the only people who knew what was going on. i wanted her to stay on stage, but then she announced freaking LE TIGRE. they were more or less the reason i came, and at first i was surprised they went on so early, but as they were getting to their microphones, i looked around at the crowd: Chelsea folks who did NOT dress for a mosh pit. there was even a guy next to me with a videocamera on a tripod. for a second i thought, "wow, that's gonna get knocked over when we all start to dance," but then they started 'hot topic' and everyone just stood there. the funny thing about electroclash is that it ONLY WORKS if the crowd is into it. otherwise it looks really awkward to see 3 women struggling to maintain a sense of whimsy and spunk, without instruments to focus on or fans to interact with. i bopped around as hard as i could, and sang along, and at one point kathleen hanna sorta looked in my direction and smiled, but mostly i felt really bad for them, with all that human furniture staring at them. i just wanted to give them more energy! ah well. they only played two other songs -- 'keep on living' and 'deceptacon.' for the last one, john cameron mitchell came out and sang the last verse -- the "yr lyrics are dumb like the linoleum floor" verse. that was pretty fun.
anyway things got way LESS surreal when MARGARET CHO came out. i'm a pretty regular reader of her blog, so i was up-to-date on the things that were pissing her off. it was nice to see some of her rants embodied on stage, instead of just reading them on my computer during work breaks. she's very thin!! she had a nice bit about how wedding planners should go on strike until gay people can get married. she put on this black drag queen voice and went, "*I* can't get married? *YOU* can't get marr-ied!" i liked that. she did a pretty long set (thank god) and the audience was WAY more receptive to her than anyone else. i think most of the crowd came specifically to see her. so it was something of a let down when the next act was bob mould of husker du. he played two pop songs he wrote on acoustic guitar. the first one was like "i love you. i love you. i want to marry you," or something, and, while i doubt anyone in the room had ever listened to husker du, i think i still would have rather heard some of their songs.
my memory of the guests is a little mixed up, but i THINK this was when SANDRA BERNHARD came out! i've said it before and i'll say it again -- good performance art, by definition, CANNOT be described. but i'll try. she had a keyboard player and a guitarist, who were vamping for most of her set, while sandra sorta rambled on and on about a variety of unrelated stuff, occasionally punctuated by her singing, "don't let it bring you down!!" it was transcendent, the way her COMPLETELY BENIGN complaining somehow manifested itself as hilarious and profound. it was ephemeral, like instrumental music, and i cannot do it justice here. although her confidence and lack of apology was tremendously inspiring, and i think i'll remember that performance whenever i go on stage from now on.
i do believe that THIS was when things got REALLY weird. they brought out a "surprise guest" -- some no-name hot guy billboard proto-popstar, who supposedly had a big hit, but i never heard of him. and he was STRAIGHT. he came out with some studio-purchased hot boy band, with expensive belts and sunglasses, and they played this absurd, shmaltzy version of 'talkin bout a revolution' by tracy chapman. my mouth was just hanging open in confusion as he and his electric guitarist both played identical open chords for the entire duration of the song. the music was intensely crappy, and somewhere tracy was twitching in pain. i was duly insulted by this display -- more an advertisement for a rising popsinger than anything artistically or politically worthwhile.
thankfully, the stage was rescued by PENNY ARCADE! i've never seen penny perform, but i've always seen her name on lists of hot performance artists. she gave a really satisfying and hilarious rant about the history of queer politics, but unfortunately, even through her intense and fiery stage presence, a lot of the audience was at the end of their attention span, and drifted off, with a lot of talking and noise. ah well. i'm a new fan, and i'm going to hunt down her work wherever i can find it from now on.
so at this point the crowd is restless and uncomfortable from standing for such a long time, and i'm hoping that things will start going faster, when lady bunny announces that there's a new surprise guest...one of those people who "only needs to go by one name"...and we're all thinking, "madonna? mariah? britney? kylie? janet? christina?" (by the way i think it's RIDICULOUS that for some gay men christina aguilera has seized the monopoly on her first name)...but NO. it was none of these people. it was fucking MOBY. i know. who needs to see that? i certainly don't. he brought out two people and he was like, "i'm gonna do something really audacious. this is a tribute to lou reed, who was here before"... and they freaking did "take a walk on the wild side." i don't think they even knew we had already heard it. the whole crowd was just sorta chuckling awkwardly as they played this totally blah rendition, punctuated by a too-long rant about george bush, and followed by a cheese-pop version of that "stop children what's that sound" song from the 60s. then he left. praise jesus.
i need not comment on the subsequent parading of mayor gavin newsom's wife, a 50 pound CNN newscaster with some lame jokes about marriage and credit cards.
finally sleater-kinney came on to save the day, with two rockin originals i'd never heard, and a cover of "fortunate son." the brunette with the guitar (i'm not indie enough to know the names of the sleater-kinney girls) had an incredible stage presence, flailing her hands around when she wasn't using them, and staring at the crowd really fiercely. there was a wee bit more dancing at this point, but not enough to make it raucous fun.
the next performance was the finale: john cameron mitchell and bob mould playing a boring cover of a neutral milk hotel song that no one in the venue had ever heard, and then john and margaret cho (dressed as hedwig) doing a duet of "the origin of love." that last bit was visually surreal enough to justify the whole evening.
things i learned:
-a lot of my friends are way more talented than a lot of famous people
-most good bands are only worth seeing if they can play more than three songs
-confidence in your presence can provide a bedrock for performance that confidence in your MATERIAL cannot
-some clubs are really nice! crobar was like a museum! i really liked being there. maybe i should go dancing sometime.
anyway, i just wanted to document all that. expect a few political blabberfests soon. and prepare to yawn.
xoxo
dan
Saturday, April 24, 2004
so i'm reading that woodward book, and bush is going on and on about liberating people, and woodward says something like -- isn't that a potentially dangerous paternalism? -- and bush is all -- the people who are liberated don't think so, and besides, that's an elite view. or something. notice that a) bush seems to know an awful lot about the sociology of liberated peoples, and b) he uses the word ELITE to categorically DISMISS woodward's position.
i remember getting to high school and finally realizing that intelligence alone would no longer brand me a social outcast. THANK GOD, i thought -- now we're all grown up enough to appreciate intellectual curiosity. i thought it was unique to middle and elementary schools -- this phobia of the smart kid.
but now this phobia has become institutionalized in government. to the president of the united states, elite intellectual thought has become synonymous with IRRELEVANT. GOD FORBID someone actually question or debate the political philosophy. GOD FORBID someone question western assumptions about "freedom" and "liberation." GOD FORBID someone PAID ATTENTION IN CLASS, MR. SKULL & BONES LEGACY GOT Cs AT YALE NOT BECAUSE YOU'RE A MORON BUT BECAUSE YOU DON'T CARE YOU DON'T CARE YOU DON'T CARE MOTHERFUCKER. i mean really -- WHY did i go to college in the first place if the ELITE intellectualism i absorbed there is politically irrelevant. WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY. i mean now it sort of MAKES SENSE that the president putting like NO effort into making college affordable and rehabilitating public schools. because OBVIOUSLY -- EDUCATION DOESN'T MATTER. what MATTERS is:
common sense!
that's the lesson i've learned from our distinguished president. i'm gonna go burn my diploma and enlist in the army. THERE ARE BAD GUYS TO KILL!!! OBVIOUSLY!!!
xoxo
dan
i remember getting to high school and finally realizing that intelligence alone would no longer brand me a social outcast. THANK GOD, i thought -- now we're all grown up enough to appreciate intellectual curiosity. i thought it was unique to middle and elementary schools -- this phobia of the smart kid.
but now this phobia has become institutionalized in government. to the president of the united states, elite intellectual thought has become synonymous with IRRELEVANT. GOD FORBID someone actually question or debate the political philosophy. GOD FORBID someone question western assumptions about "freedom" and "liberation." GOD FORBID someone PAID ATTENTION IN CLASS, MR. SKULL & BONES LEGACY GOT Cs AT YALE NOT BECAUSE YOU'RE A MORON BUT BECAUSE YOU DON'T CARE YOU DON'T CARE YOU DON'T CARE MOTHERFUCKER. i mean really -- WHY did i go to college in the first place if the ELITE intellectualism i absorbed there is politically irrelevant. WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY. i mean now it sort of MAKES SENSE that the president putting like NO effort into making college affordable and rehabilitating public schools. because OBVIOUSLY -- EDUCATION DOESN'T MATTER. what MATTERS is:
common sense!
that's the lesson i've learned from our distinguished president. i'm gonna go burn my diploma and enlist in the army. THERE ARE BAD GUYS TO KILL!!! OBVIOUSLY!!!
xoxo
dan
Thursday, April 22, 2004
a quick post:
-started reading "plan of attack" by bob woodward (REALLY interesting)
-hard at work on two new performance pieces (one overtly political, the other covertly)
-beginning negotiations on how to produce solo album
-still shocked by the constantly-rising death-toll in iraq
-gorgeous day in washington square park.
love
dan
-started reading "plan of attack" by bob woodward (REALLY interesting)
-hard at work on two new performance pieces (one overtly political, the other covertly)
-beginning negotiations on how to produce solo album
-still shocked by the constantly-rising death-toll in iraq
-gorgeous day in washington square park.
love
dan
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
hooray! yoko is a genius and a rockstar and a beam of sunshine!
wow does this work?
