Wednesday, April 16, 2008

:::: ERNEST GARY GYGAX

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We lost one of the best ones ever in early March, the 4th to be exact. Without E. Gary Gygax, there would not have been a lot of things that I find personally important to my growth and interest. His legacy and influence is massive and equally as important.


Tuesday, April 15, 2008

::::Stuff is Amazing! Thanks!

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ANTRHO REX:

Is the RADDEST DUDE EVER. Is the dude that ormolycka dude, synt.tofs did a split tape with. BUT WAAAAAAAAY MORE THAN JUST THAT! Anthro Rex hails from Lynn, Massachusetts, Lynn? Lynne? I have not been there, yet, so I can't be sure of the spelling, yeah I don't have gooogle. The tape of question here is the newest slab of tape on SHORTY! an amazing new bass farts and dumb dancing label run by jelle crama and leiven of bread and animals and puik and zeikzak and a million million trillion other completely glorious things out of Antwerpen, Belgium.

So, Anthro Rex, there is nowhere to begin other than by stating, as always, find all media that you can and suck it all dry for its golden wisdom in the form of music and wit and a funnel for popular culture and suggested imagery and reference. Wit with bass. I was introduced to the genius that is this dude by way of a CDr titled "Goth Sluts, Jeep Beats and Jeff Foxworthy" released by breakingworldrecords a few years back.



Listening to A.REX for the first time was like taking that maiden voyage into the wealth of genius that is Spinal Tap for the first time. Only through A. Rex it was in the form of a person that I just got to hang out with for a few days straight and have the raddest talks about the most and least important things on the planet for hours. True relation love, only if it were closer than always on the other side of the country or planet or state or what have you. This work spoke directly too me and the person who made it and I got along immediately for that reason.

Full of ass class and sass and bass or ass claps, perfect ass claps that make you just smile, real big. The overall delivery and presentation and concept of this project is super rad in every way, in all its variation. It is as simple as that. Anthro has been active for a few good long years now and has not yet ventured super far from the New England perimeters that are his home. He plays in and belongs to several other projects that you know or should know that are different and equally amazing in every way. Greyskull, DefNeg, and blah blah blah are a notable few of many and he is a huge part of the driving force behind breakingworldrecords.

The A.REX SHORTY! tape starts out with a vocal spazzmogram that lulls and chuncks its way into some twisted up and killer booed forth dark dancing 90s R & B glub glub. It takes you there, and in an especially special crusty way, asks you to hang out in a musical place where we all belong anyhow, it doesn't always ask nicely though. Once I am in the realm of anything remotely Tony! Toni! Tone! I pretty much do not want to leave. Ever, or at least until my sweatpants are too drenched with sweat to be able to safely dance anymore, and/or are too drenched with sweat that they fall down under the pressure of their own sweaty weight.

Thus is the work of one of the worlds true hidden gems. Doing completely amazing stuff forever and getting why he is doing it and doing it for all the right reasons. Mostly to make himself smile and to make people like you and me smile. His stuff speaks volumes, whether it be in the form of music, writing, visual arts or farts, it speaks pure volumes. Like a sunbeam of rainbow vomit through a huge cloud on a gloomy cartoon day.

Anthro is the type of person who should be in charge of something really large and "important", other than the aforementioned things that he contributes his wisdom and creativity to that are large and important in my eyes. I am thinking more of something like the Time Warner AOL conglomerate or something akin to that that is equally as far reaching mass culture/media wise, no offense Dan, I mean this in the most positive and heartfelt of ways and I only wish the world worked that way for all of our sakes.

Love at first anything, maybe it was being allowed to sleep in his and George's spare toy|game room where they kept all their M.U.S.C.L.E.S. Or maybe more especially the Hulk performance that was only described to me in typed words. I'm forever smitten, in the capacity of admiration and hopefully lasting friendship.

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ALAS... SHORTY! tapes and disco bar :

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Thus far the only releases I have by this amazing new unit of tape distributors | glory distributors are the above, Synt.Tofs/Anthro.Rex split cassingle and the Stroheim tape. There are two others, FRAK (the dude who runs Börft and a cohort, from my old neighborhood in Sweden, Helsingborg across from Helsingør, Hamlet land.), and a BOCCACIO MIXWEAPON CD.CD. Those are both really good, I can safely say that without having heard them yet.

STROHEIM - are the worlds gift to Acid? is that the appropriate category? Or is it more probably just super rad punk people making amazingly even more rad dance music. This cassingle is more danceable than anything Rufus and Chaka Khan ever accomplished, maybe not Rufus solo, but definitely Rufus and Chaka Khan. This is that tape you bring when bringing a boom box to a bonfire BBQ, drinking a cool mexican beer or pinà colada slurpee, having a taco whilst stripping down to your short shorts and whirling your shirt above your head stuff, this is that kind of "dance music". I think I wrote "acid" because I have a tape from a long time ago called "This is Acid" and this is like a compendium volume to that tape that IS assuredly titled ACID. Shorty! is on to something really rad. This tape and the Anthro Rex \ Synt.Tofs tape, and the Frak, Mixweapon stuffs that I have yet to hear are proof of this.

Retarded dance music done by rad people.

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GENE WILDER the author...?
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Did you know that Gene Wilder writes books? I didn't either, thanks to the Oakland Public Library I now do.
I sucked dry "Kiss Me Like a Stranger" The first? of his three? I think 3, books that I have gotten my hands on. And not a moment too soon, he just gave a talk and signed his latest book: "The Woman Who Wouldn't" at the breathtakingly memorable Castro Theater in SF last month along with a screening of three films, guess which, or just look it up on the interweb. Kiss Me LIke a Stranger is truly genuine and a perfect invitation into who Gene Wilder, born Jerry Silberman, IS, truly and to his amazingly sincere core. A super revealing memoir, that is selfish and sensitive and sincere and super good for all of those reasons. A very thoughtful and innocent, as you may assume that he would be given how he generally plays out his sense of humor on the screen. It was nice to feel close to this amazing dude by reading his thoughts and experiences in his own words. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who liked to smile, or think about Young Frankenstein. Spoiler alert! He didn't get along all too well offscreen, or didn't really hang out at all with Richard Pryor, it seems Gene didn't do much cocaine though linked to Pryor and married to Gilda Radner? Weird right?



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NILE and NEGURÀ BUNGET

Surprise! I LOVE metal, I don't know if that is entirely clear given the fact that no one who I know through this forum of sharing "really" knows me, other than a select few. But yeah, I grew up with heavy metal flowing through the real metal of my BMX into my veins, play me any MANOWAR or KING DIAMOND or JUDAS PRIEST song and I can sing you every word, I make no claims of course to be vocally equivalent to King Diamond or Halford or Eric Adams, the self-proclaimed "Ultimate Voice of Heavy Metal" but I am truly a fan of what all of them and beyond do, to my core and very genuinely. I used to be the dude who ordered you black metal records in the middle to late 90s if you bought records from Epicenter records in San Francisco... yes, I love heavy metal and all of its bRUeautiful mutations. "The Gods Made Heavy Metal... they knew that it was good!"

So... on that note, lately I have been sucked under by:

NILE



What good and interesting and "brutal" has not already been said about NILE by others who write more often on the topic of heavy stuff, totally amazing, blazingly fast, crystal-cutting accurately detailed outlines of egyptian historical events veiled in the guise of "death" metal. I am not so interested in the "death" metal aspect of their repertoire as I am in the obsession(s) contained within. NILE aside from playing 220 bpm insanely intense headbangingly radical metal are OBSESSED with ancient Egyptian history and mythology and the music, atmosphere and instruments of that period of history.

There are several songs on each of their 5 albums and several EPs that put to absolute SHAME anything that any film or other form of mass media you have ever witnessed has created in order to evoke the period of Egypt and its majestic lore. DEEEEEEEEEEP crazy sounding bone flutes, snares played by sphinxes and slaves with other bones, ect. This music is purely amazing, the metal side of the work is not bad either. SOOO fast and accurate and not dumb in its accuracy, it is just good. Simple.

Nile are totally radical nerds from South Carolina who probably met around the same time your older brother and his oily friends were playing D & D in your rompus room bumming out your religious aunt. I don't know what else to say other than to segue into

NEGURÀ BUNGET


From Romania, Transylvania, the legitimate Carpathian Forest dwellers, or probably not, but who cares. Their brand of creepy black metal and atmospheric scary soundscapes are so rad it completely does not matter at all if they are REAL TROLLS. Or human wolf hybrids who learned how to play guitars and their other range of crazy instruments by drinking the blood of ancients out of Vlad Tepes' hollowed bones. IN ANY EVENT THIS STUFF TROLLTALLY RULES!

Just a taste of their "Self Proclaimed Ideology" the, "Transcendental spirit melting the conscience in with the will of the Universe the Human Natural Nature creates the methodology of the Transylvanian Spirituality ZSLAMOLSKXISA!" Whatever that means does not matter at all once you hear the crazy bells and rhythms that you haven't heard before in black metal or otherwise as these dudes tear through some amazing stuff. SO GOOD. I don't know what to compare it to, type their name into google: or just click this NEGURÀ BUNGET. I think I love these dudes, I hope they aren't some sort of nutty anti-semites or pagan baby eaters or something more newsworthly like that, or actually, I totally don't care, the music is rad.

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Lately I have been obsessed with the idea of a...

!!!!PHIL COLLINS

tribute? should it be in the works? Well at least it is stuck in my head as a concept:

So, I am toying with the idea of doing a "ormolycka's world" tribute to one of my personal heroes, of whom there are only a few, this one is none other than THE Phil Collins. Yes, Phil Collins, of Genesis, Su su ssudio, Burglar, and lately, having followed the shameful path of Rick Moranis and mistakenly selling his soul to the ridiculously horrible modern Disney fascist regime, he is still a hero of mine nonetheless. If you don't think I am correct in feeling this way, just try to listen to "In The Air Tonight" without welling up with some sort of emotion, even if it is anger for how much you hate, or in my case, LOVE that song and every song he wrote, I feel that Phil completely deserves more acute attention from a different branch of creative musical universe.



I have this vision or dream or whatever that there can and will be some really incredible results coming out of a large group of creative people putting some energy into "covering" or re-interpreting a track that Phil Collins created. If you can express some love or hate or any emotion about Phil C. write to me and I will start to map this idea out more fully.

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LASTLY for just now... LAST WEEKEND!

I visited

THE JACK HANDEY GALLERY, San Francisco:


My brother was in town this past weekend, second weekend of April, with his wife. She studies cool newOLD medicine stylings from the east and was called up to the Bay for some new learning. It was really awesome to spend some time with my brother and even better that he got to hang out with not only me but my special lady friend, PoofFumi. Total Bonding.

As part of family bonding we decided to go and see what we mistakenly thought was a Chris Ware show at the Jack Hanley gallery space in San Francisco, just across the water from our home. The Jack Hanley gallery is located on Valencia street just by where I stumbled upon a dead body, across from the Levi Strauss building, in an alley near to 14th Street when I was 18 or thereabouts. The space is an often lauded one that is by every account the most unfriendly gallery experience that I have ever lived through personally to date, and I am now old(er) than I used to be. I am going to do my best to not come across as super negative here, because, well negativity pretty much blows, but nonetheless this experience bummed me out and I thought, what better to do than "blog" about it, since I am super into "blogging" these days.

First and foremost, I think the Chris Ware poster we saw was ancient, a show from history past, 1981?, totally kidding of course, but a bummer for us, we were all pretty jazzed to see some amazingly obsessive detail oriented incredible talent first hand. What we saw instead was work by Chris Johanson, Johansen? You probably know who he is. He likes Raymond Pettibon a lot, and rightly so, who doesn't. I hope not to isolate myself here as, "not liking" this artist, it wasn't that at all, it was a good quick walk through, nothing stopped me in my tracks though.

The important part of this tale is not the art, or the mistake we made and the inherent disappointment therein. It was the experience as a whole. I always have amazing memories, super vivid ones of the neighborhood that Jack Handey is located in, not only because of the aforementioned dead body experience, but it is just part of my teenage nostalgia era of memories. I saw Exhumed in the garbage room of a building just around the corner from where this space now sits on Halloween several years ago, one of the better shows of my formative years. BUT, this day, to put it bluntly, the experience was a TOTAL BLOW FEST, the space itself is super unassuming, which is cool, right? I think it is intentional, in order for "those who know" to feel like they are part of something that only they know about or something like that. I think that is pretty ok, nothing wrong with keeping stuff under the radar. I think though, that this space, and its clientele take it a step further, you know, that kind of aloof thing that galleries are supposed to have, the "we know what is rad", because after all that is what it is all about to showcase things you think are rad, and rightly so. I guess the bummer of it was just the feeling that was thrown out there upon entry into this secret yet public locale. The two Joni Mitchel's behind the reception desk looked super bummed out that people were actually coming in to check out the artwork, one male and one female. It was real cruddy, I mean, the only human vessel for information exchange outside of the work itself, which is the important vessel to be sure, but still some positive vibes would be super welcomed in such a venue. Instead thrown out was the coldest feeling ever, and strangely so. My brother and I walked up to the counter to look through the book that had the pricing for the work, and man, it was like we came in and smeared shit on the walls or something, total sourpusses glaring at us from behind their shared magazine. Fumi had already escaped outside after a quick saunter through the space. It was a real drag, any good feeling I might have had from the work inside was sucked out of me by the jeering looks from the gallery staff. TOTAL BUMMER SUMMER.

I guess I only write about this because. A: I really like art, and sharing it, and creating a dialog around it, and spreading my interpretation of it because it is going to be different than yours, and I was utterly confused by this weird experience. I am usually pretty in my own head in a small gallery and don't like the people who work there to harsh my art mellow or what have you, but this was the exact opposite, it was like they were super angry that we were there to see the work. Maybe they were closed? B: I was sad to see that a more celebrated gallery in what I consider to be my hometown threw out such a bad experience, maybe it was just a bad day for those two. Hopefully this isn't everyones experience, or maybe it is part of this spaces' deal? Either way, I always vote for nice people over jerks. I will go on record here though that sometimes being a jerk is necessary, I mean, if someone is being an A-hole. But this instance was completely unwarranted, maybe we looked at the art wrong?

Take that for what it is worth. I don't know what it is worth? I guess for me it won't be worth going to a little space that is uncomfortable to visit to see some hopefully amazing artwork in the near future, at least not this space. Bummer. Tell a friend to tell a friend who probably knows a friend who works there that they are making that space and the stuff within a bummer for their patrons.


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Apologies to friends whom I have not connected with since moving back to this Bay Area... I have been busy adjusting to a semi-long yet relaxing commute to Palo Alto on a daily basis and a fairly intense new working life. I began work last month, mid-week, to a fairly unusual, for myself, cast of subjects to start off a first week at a new job that was not for myself in politics or something having to do with legitimate "power". I do now know that not unlike myself the former president of Peru has a pet chinchilla. Weird stuff. Dear social life I will see you soon, as I am nearly adjusted.

HUGS.
Ormopants