POPTONES Drive to the forest in a Japanese Car
The smell of rubber on country tar
Hindsight done me no good
Standing naked in the back of the woods
The cassette played Poptones
I can`t forget the impression you made
You left a hole in the back of my head
I don`t like hiding in this foliage and peat
It`s wet and I`m losing my body heat
The cassette played Poptones
This bleeding heart looking for bodies
Nearly injured my pride
Praise picnicking in the British countryside
Poptones
(Public Image LTD-Second Edition) [we called it The Metal Box]-1979
Andy Warhol initiated a revolution in pop-art barnone. He was never totally original, but he never claimed to be either; sometimes he said he was a fake! Some have suggested that George Seurat`s A Summer Sunday on the Island of the Grande Jatte, 1884 was the beginning of “Modern Art”, and is suggested in the above line by John Lyden, but rather it is in France. “Modern Art” modulates profusely with all the Ism-hues vaguely defined by art historians through time. At last comes Abstract Expressionism, nicely expressed by Jackson Pollack or Mark Rothko, and it was really a rebellion against this that defines Andy Warhol. I believe he did not want to get caught up in all the endless painting that would be required to produce works. Somehow he came to silkscreening images on canvas, then adding a bit of paint to them, in order to produce more works for the market. Andy was coming from a designer background, had very clever instincts, and used these to mass-produce images of Campbell`s soup cans, cows, or Mao Tse Tungs. He was playing with us, teasing us, or maybe just entertaining himself, in a most narcissistic manner. Whatever the deal was, it started to take, and now his works command the most money, only second to Pablo Picasso.
Second Edition née The Metal Box (the latter perhaps the greatest packaging concept in history, and I don`t give a damn about the price, I`ve bought two copies already and how much else is there that`s worth any money at all?) is one of the best records I`ve heard since, oh say, maybe White Light/White Heat. It`s assured. It`s no joke unless you want it to be, in which case you`re welcome to all the Gary Numans. This is a real ensemble making passionate music out of noise and sonic scraps. Quote me: “the first music of the Eighties.” It`s not entirely new; there`s Spanish guitar in “Memories,” and the ending of “Swan Lake” harkens back to the Velvets` “Loop” and the ending of the original “White Light/White Heat.” “Radio Four” even sounds a little bit like Eno, but all those hours in the studio and remixes (there are between three and five-I`m not entirely sure which-mixes of “Swan Lake” a.k.a. “Death Disco” on various records) paid off. It`s not arty, either-what it is is bitter and variform, an hour well-spent. It hasn`t a commercial chance in hell and wasn`t even necessarily designed that way, nor is it particularly obscure-you can`t get much more blatant than the group`s name itself.
Lester Bangs-John Lydon Across the Border-The Village Voice, March 24, 1980.
(That is Lester Bangs in the photo below when he visited Austin in 1980. He is at the New Wave Club, Dukes Royal Coach Inn, grimacing as the photo was snapped by Ellen Gibbs. This would be the time that he lived at the Contempo Culture House, the domicile where a fanzine was published by Stewart Wise, Ellen Gibbs, and Cathy Darr. Lester too made some worthy contributions to it!)
Andy Warhol did the same thing as Public Image Limited, he made terrific art out of scraps-advertising, publicity snaps, or grocery store shelf products. The way that it was originally packaged does synch with Warhol`s MO; three 12” 45s with eight songs altogether, were included in just a generic metal box-unique industrial packaging, most original for 1979.
…great pictures from that party: Bowie staring intensely at nothing, looking best; Jagger looking tattered, old, used-up, unelegant, plain bad, definitively flaky, head bent as he stares into his wineglass and purses his lips as if about to spit a rancid sip back; Lou Reed pudgy faced, matted shock of hair, nervously glancing to the side, beginning to resemble Porky Pig…as good as the famed Iggy-David-Lou pic in its way, because this time everybody really looked like garbage…and other pix of Mick dancing, incredibly stiffly, with that bitch he supposedly immortalized in song on his new album. This is rock aristocracy?...Lester Bangs-“1973 Nervous Breakdown”-Creem, December 1973
By the time the seventies rolled around, lots of the mega-stars of the sixties were moldy, mostly shrink-rapped, and puffy-eyed from too many photo-ops! Andy himself was wasted out-remember, he had been shot just a couple of years before!
Photo Falling ///
“The Subliminal Kid” moved in seas of disembodied sound-He then spaced here and there and instaff opposite mirrors and took movies each bar so that the music and talk is at arbitrary intervals and shifted bars-And he also had recorder in tracks and moving film mixing arbitrary intervals and agents moving with the word and image of tape recorders-So he set up waves and his agents with movie swirled through all the streets of image and brought back street in music from the city and poured Aztec Empire and Ancient Rome-Commuter or Chariot Driver could not control their word dust drifted from outer space-Air hammers word and image explosive bio-advance-A million drifting screens on the walls of his city projected mixing sound of any bar could be heard in all Westerns and film of all times played and recorded at the people back and forth with portable cameras and telescope lenses poured eddies and tornadoes of sound and camera array until soon city where he moved everywhere a Western movie in Hongkong or the Aztec sound talk suburban America and all accents and language mixed and fused and people shifted language and accent in mid-sentence Aztec priest and spilled it man woman or beast in all language-So that People-City moved in swirls and no one knew what he was going out of space to neon streets-Nova Express-William S. Burroughs-1964
I`m seeing “The Subliminal Kid” as Andy here, because that is just what he did, he tape-recorded everything and filmed everything in sight. I can only speculate as to whether Burroughs was hearing about The Factory, as he wrote, a possessed shoman, down in Tangier, Morocco, circa 1964.
that was wonderful.
Patti Smith is right about the power of r&r. My parents have 8mm film of me about four or five years old, dancing like a maniac (later called pogoing) and in a state of ecstatic bliss. My parents told me that it happened every time they played “Great Balls of Fire” and I wanted to hear it over and over. I still find that song kind of thrilling.
Years later, in 1975, I had moved to Austin a few months earlier and had managed to make a lot of friends in a very short time. I struck up a friendship with a guy from El Paso named Chico. Chico was a music writer for the Daily Texan. One day I went to his house and he brought out an advance copy of an lp he`d just received in the mail earlier that day. He couldn`t decide what he thought about it and wanted to hear my opinion. It almost affected me the way “Great Balls of Fire” once did. I`d never heard anything like it. It was a revelation, a point of epiphany and it changed the course of my life. It was Patti Smith`s “Horses”.
Once I started listening to this music and the later flood of new stuff from NYC, CBGBs, and England, I found myself less and less inclined to hang out with my friends who didn`t listen to or like this music. In fact I was verbally attacked at a party by someone I considered a good friend simply because I was wearing a t shirt with the Ramones logo on it. Within a couple of years I had pretty much shed my old crowd and managed to work my way into a totally different circle of friends who mostly listened to this new music. It`s weird, but I view my life in Austin as two separate experiences and you could date them bd. And ad. That stands for before Dobie and after Dobie.
Stewart Wise-March 15, 2007-The CasaGrandeEast Yahoo Group
And even more than that, Patti`s music in its ultimate moments touches deep wellsprings of emotion that extremely few artists in rock or anywhere else are capable of reaching. With her wealth of promise and the most incandescent flights and stillnesses of this album she joins the ranks of people like Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, or the Dylan of “Sad Eyed Lady” and Royal Albert Hall. It`s that deeply felt, and that moving; a new Romanticism built upon the universal language of rock `n` roll, an affirmation of life so total that, even in the graphic recognition of death, it sweeps your breath away. And only born gamblers take that chance.
Lester Bangs-Patti Smith: Horses-Creem, February 1976.
Back in the 70s I wasn`t really familiar with this seminal record for rock.
The death of the Beatles as a symbol or signification of anything can only be good, because like the New Frontier their LOVE nirvana was a stimulating but ridiculous, ephemeral and ultimately impracticable mass delusion in the first place. If the Beatles stood for anything besides the rock `n` roll band as a communal unit suggesting the possibility of mass youth power, which proved to be a totally fatuous concept in short order, I`d like to know what I have missed by not missing the Beatles. They certainly didn`t stand for peace or love or true liberation or the brotherhood of humankind, any more than John Denver stands for the preservation of our natural resources. On the other hand, like Davy Crockett hats, zoot suits, marathon dances, and bootleg alcohol, they may have stood for an era, so well as to stand out from that era, totally exhumed from it in fact, floating, light as dandelions, to rest at last on the mantle where, neighboring your dead uncle`s framed army picture, they can be dusted off at appropriate intervals, depending on the needs of Capitol`s ledgers and our own inability to cope with the present.
Lester Bangs-June 1975 Creem
Lester could be an ornery iconoclast, but like a smooth gazelle he chops the rock-gods down to a soggy straw hut; but in hindsight he is right, the Beatles were over-inflated with adulation by fans and/or their dogs. I am seeing this phenomenon of hero-worship in light of art too. That is, I am seeing a clear parallel or analogy between the Beatles for pop-music, and Andy Warhol for pop-art. One observable difference, however, is that no-one is pulling Andy back to earth from the misty stratospheres, where dudes like Peter Max dwell. En contre, he is drifting further afloat on his air-balloon into the bloated pantheon of the gods-ala Leonardo, Massacio, and Jackson Pollack! And for reasons unknown, this is his proper, righteous domicile. The Beatles as little menageries on the mantle is perfect; Andy liked to collect these and rove over the flea markets on a Sunday afternoon. The Fab Four as trinkets is apropos; I am reminded of the glass children on the mantle of the film “Little Children” that stare out at you in the opening shot. Later I remembered the little toy Stones on the cover of “Let It Bleed”-Andy saw celebrities as abstract objects that titillated the fancy of a ravenous audience. Lester too saw the Beatles as plastic objects, ogled victims, icons of mindless admiration by banal baby-boomers.
The boy sacrifice is chosen is by erection acclaim. universal erection feeling for him until all pricks point to “Yes.” Boy feels the “Yes” run through him and melt his bones to “Yes” stripped naked in the Sacred Grove shivering and twitching under the Hanging Tree green disk mouths sucking his last bone meal. He goes to the Tree naked on flower floats through the obsidian streets red stone buildings and copper pagodas of the Fish City stopping in Turkish Baths and sex rooms to make blue movies with youths. The entire city is in heat during this ceremony, faces swollen with tumescent purple penis flesh. Lightening fucks flash on any street corner leave a smell of burning metal blue sparks up and down the spine. A vast bath-town of red clay cubicles over twisting geological orgasm with the green crab boys disk mouths` slow rasping tongues on spine centers twisting in the warm black ooze.
William Burroughs-The Soft Machine 1961
This seems to be a description of one of Warhols manic films. Burroughs and Warhol were kindred spirits; I have seen one photo of them together. They were projecting similar ideas very early in sixties.
Jackie O in crimson, the pill box hat sequence repeated black and white, or tinted blue the down turned head as LBJ is sworn in…beaming bliss before the shots, frozen sorrow afterwards as the paranoia filters through…four snaps times four, first lady stacked on cornflake and brillo boxes…Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building into the night…distorted, tinted green and vermillion, silk-screened ad infinitum or Uncle Sam his martial scam bring GIs home in a box… red, white, and blue or dove-tailed joints with rivelets of marijuana smoke billowing to the skies…Silver Factory wing ding with motor scooters, mini-skirts, polka-dot Nehru shirts. Ray Bans, eye-liner, cocktails and one-liners, tin foil with gargantuan cow-print wallpaper…signing soup cans or silk printing Campbell`s Cans with Gerald Melanga, the wizard of this technique…the rock & roll music pulsates as more canvas is printed with the dead and famous. Marilyn is more of an image as sticker print on a flagpole that movie idol…Andy transforms her and Jackie O…car crash idealized, electric chair in reversed exposure is more the throne of Louis XIV than a Sing-Sing death Row victim. Gothic handgun stained with red, grim reminder of a violent society. Converting the banal to high theater…Elvis is not Elvis anymore, but rather a Hitlerian Cut-Out-Doll that is frozen in quick draw mcdraw…a cartoon but not a cartoon, fake but not fake, anti-fake actually…a spoof but not one, who is the joke on? Is it Andy himself? Is everything a self-portrait? Maybe…The reversed Marilyns of 1979-1986 are a fresh take on a very withered idea, recycled and used over and over again. Just like American Corporate Carnage, wee-willy-winkies & twinkies…Hostess Snow Balls electric & sugar rush to homicide, remember White in San Francisco, sugar-coated powder donuts as art, why not? But bigger than life or John Wayne combined! These paltry pieces fetch millions of dollars! If only this word puzzle would portion a grand prize, then me thinks i`d take a little trip to Tunesia or Singapore in a sling some muggy night, but that ain`t right…Grandma Moses spent her days painting pretty pictures…manichens on display with spacemen of the future…Crabby Grablocks plays her flute with brilliance so outstanding, drag queens walk the shanks of paltry peacocks swaying, orange goblins lick their chops for sumptuous piglets playing, floral patterns thousand fold can make your daydreams brighter, petals blossom through the air, whilst sky cranes glisten lighter, galleries stacked with Chairman Mao and Flower Power kites and silver balloons, and the Velvets pulsate with vitality! Nico swings her hair and croons in the microphone over clever chord changes and dissonance from the viola. Silk-screening madness, work for 24/7/365 and still total masterpieces, flying hamburgers not billboard signs but better Huh??? More delicious than the burgers themselves…caches of cash, more than Blackbeard, actually on Death Row but making millions in the meantime…a tad bit cruel but total Catholic with cowlick and a mustard dog Coney Island Baby, so Manhatten, but from the Bronx & Queens too, oh yea? From Pittsburgh, Pa. and Chuck Berry doowap, Charles Baudelaire rules, Tom Wolfe saw it too…Has anyone ever seen all the movies? Life is a big scrapbook or a crap game cock-a-doodle-doo Mister Greenjeans, how do you do what you do to me? I wish I knew! 4,000 audio tapes sitting in a museum waiting to be heard! In the gallery the camaflouged head of Jesus from the Last Supper subtly buys your time just like he has for 2007 years. Was Andy religious? Is his rendering more important than Leonardo`s? The answer is yes! The Beatles are bigger than Jesus. Warhol is bigger than Pablo Picasso. I`ve wanted to say that for a very long time. Is anything art? Maybe. Think Frank Zappa`s “Freak Out.” That is art (me thinks). The head of Jesus repeated a zillion fold, until it finally sinks in: Man as God! God is Dead! “Rosemary`s Baby” cult ruined the sixties. Charles Whitman doomed the Vietnam War, right? Why did Andy so dwell on disasters? Was he a gloomy person by nature? Did he think about death and destruction a lot? Perhaps. What were his main grooves? Shoes, shoes, shoes. Did he help the gay cause? That is a certainty! He improved the lot of homosexuals. Did he make Campbell`s Soup a lot of money? Of course…Was Lester Bangs the Andy Warhol of rock criticism? That is absurd, but rings Yes. El Fino! Grandma Moses spent her days painting pretty pictures..
The frenetic energy surges from the granite and marble plates, dinosaurs with thorny shields, and color magma boils to the surface. Orange/yellow synthetic polymer paint over Debbie Harry silkscreen, thick blue eyeliner & painted ruby lips and she is what she is not. Wild silver wig flaring, New York streets o`erflowing with Macys and Bloomingdale bags of excursion-extended, 8 millimeter brownies drinking, punctuating, recorded time, the happy sequences of urban bustle palpitating in real time perspiration & suffering, the guts of urban decay, the panophobia. Andy swishes polymer paint whilst bouffant hair-do queens dance the disco to blue film, plotless, seething with monotony, nothingness with scratches & pops & grainy bits. Motion and music, calm ocean breezes in Cannes…vacant vacations, orange groves & paisley palms as exhibits…department store fragments, colliding collages, memory moondreams-Americana is Pittsburgh but through a looking glass refracting back on itself…reflecting pools of image, Narcissus peers through a mirror…upper East-Side blueprints, primordial perception, anti-art & anti-fashion, a predilection for closure, mirrors to moving matter. A universal globe of burning magma comes jetting, twirling, glazing through space…a bundle of tumult-race riots, political shootings, napalming Vietnamese landscape, jabbing the veins with white heroin, orange trips to the devils lair, somehow survive and all is photographed and filmed. The sex & glamour-still dancing, Keith and Mick pumping it out…the Rolling Romp an` grind of NYC swinging frantically with molten lava motion, shaking an` jiving, aluminum foil, rabbit ears an` black & white portable TVs rattle…machine guns rat-a-tat-tat-super vixen models go-go-queens an` the Chelsea Hotel scenes with Edie mangled in a snakepit of seething false-merriment, doused with drugs and mental illness, abandoned by Andy, lost, a fading star, holding on for dear life, rejected by her parents, a swarm of junkie bees an` blue movie birds…but still famous, living a deprived junkie life…preserved in mag ads and underground celluloid viewed by millions through the ages…photogenic, rich, and wasted-out? Promethian reptiles wail and whine their meat-eating chants for flesh…filming the riot on a stormy noon in Watts…Black Panther funeral or Stokely Carmichael standing up for his black brothers, shoot the cops here before going to Vietnam to kill yellow people…but tabloid silkscreens of pandemonium, car-crash victims on 40” x 40”, larger than life in the very instance of death-& why not? A new art where the terrible is captured and objectified, distant and cold, a cheap funeral for his own dear mother, and why? Why so frugal when you are worth a half-billion dollars? So utilitarian & using everything for pieces…Cut a new path for us all. Heard a new song and sang it. Saw a superstar in drag queens & served um well. Flowers were celebrated, but twisted autos too-loved Shirley Temple and went on to shake your booty at Studio 54. Mesmerized a generation by converting the ordinary to extraordinaire! That is it in a nutshell. Our whole pop culture shifted after 1962, and colors vibrated, shapes pulsated, hearts were open & free, happiness came to NYC, the Museum of Modern Art morphed to rhythm…Mao was a Mayan, Andy was an Aztec?...Mao was a kaleidoscope villain for China…took cold mug shots and plastered them on the New York State Pavilion, 1964-collage was censored but many saw…start from the beginning, flash to the end…Catholic through an` through-tolerance for others, eclectic borrower, introverted, hidden spiritualist, blue-tinted “Last Supper”, Polaroids of the upper crust, 25 grand a pop, look at Roy Lichtenstein`s cartoons and compare to Andy`s Dick Tracy? Waves pounding on the shore! Herculanean hero plasters another Elvis, the gun-slinging one, the King of Rock & Roll elevated skyward by the Pope of Pop!
No comments:
Post a Comment