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Tommy T
Tommy Tompkins' extreme measures
Monday, June 28, 2004
Sunday, June 27, 2004
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Monday, June 21, 2004
Thursday, June 17, 2004
Gunz 'n' Pussy
I confess that there have been times when I've wanted my friend and colleague Oliver Wang - writer, DJ, and mad blogger - to send me something on deadline day that's so full of obscenity and vulgar observation that the Internet reeks. It hasn't happened yet. You know those "clean version" CDs? Oliver f******writes clean g**d*** version articles. I want to make one thing clear: I am not dissing the man: O-Dub publishes everywhere, he's about to get his doctrate, give or take a dissertation, and he listens to more music in a week than you do in a year. He just won't fucking swear, which I notice because i can't fucking stop. I have a few questions on the matter -- Can popular culture be properly articulated without swear words? Are we able to capture the nuances of modern societal anger without using obscenities? One day, after Oliver finishes the dissertation and I get my MFA, we'll sit down and parlay.
But for the time being, I want to withdraw my objections, because today, at Pop Life, the homepage for O-Dub's family of blogs, Oliver has posted a picture that is hilarious, cynical, sick, pointed, and made for the confused moment we're trapped in. Or should I say that most of us are trapped? It's clear that one cat's ready to fucking shoot his way out - log on to the Pop Life and see for yourself
| Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Coast of living
If one were to put the best possible face on the the Bay Area's reputation in the art world, one would say that artists in these parts have a unique freedom to work outside the confines of tradition and rigidly defined aesthetic and social expectations. Were one to get out of bed on the other side, one might point to an annoying army of recently declared artists who for no particular reason believe they can do anything, and - unfortunately -- too often try to do exactly that. The results can be catastrophic.
I've lived here for 35 years, most of them spent neck deep in art and artists, which means I know a few things about so-called soft left-coast living, about over-enthusiastic under-endowed artists, and about what happens to a mind that never crosses E. 14th St. As arts editor at the San Francisco Bay Guardian, I get a fair amount of mail, most of it sent my way by crackpots, stalkers, runaway egos, and Star Search rejects. I also get letters like this, which I print unedited, just to keep things real: you think Frisco's soft? You think life as an arts editor is all free tickets, free drinks, and free CDs? You think those bloggers from Baghdad have it bad? Well, dig this:
Mr Tompkins,
I am sending you a letter I sent to Theatre Bay
Area. They have refused to print it because "it
would hurt my career." I have no career quite frankly. I
hope you get to read this letter and eventually
print this, but I understand if you don't, with other
important issues at hand compared to my trivial
gripe. I am send out an open letter to you. You may
publish it you wish.
An open letter to all SF, Oakland & Berkeley
companies. My Name is ****. I know
many of you have never heard of me, or if you have,
most likely you think of me as a worthless joke that
keeps the laughs going. For five years I have been
trying to get a decent acting career going. I knew
I couldn't go to NY or LA because there was too much
competition. I came here to get experience and the
opennessyou have of all art forms, but I was
mistaken.
For those five years I have done a few productions
while I know many others have done that in a single
year. All I asked is a chance, a shot to show how
much of a hard working actor I am. And who knows I
might have been a good actor. But most of you never
ever noticed me, only the ugly reject **** who wasted
everyone's time during auditions. I was even
rejected three straight times for TBA Auditions. This
summer is my last opportunity to become an actor here.
But most likely, because of my stupidly self-imposed
credit card debt, I will have to go home, where
there is nothing but a suburban hell, no freedom, little
friends, living with my parents. Forced to be a
nothing as I always am will be.
Acting on stage is the only thing that keeps me
alive. Its where I am not that piece of shit ****,
but someone else even for a limited amount of time.
Wiithout it, I WOULD HAVE SLASHED MY WRIST A LONG
TIME AGO. I am so tempted to [say] "I am a great and talented
actor and you'll be sorry when I become a big movie
star", but we all know it just bs. All I can say is
thank you for killing my entire spirit, and helping
me to destroy my faith in art, theatre, and humanity.
| Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Monday, June 14, 2004
Friday, June 11, 2004
The freaks come out at night
When word that the catalog of the long-defunct Clubbo – a label that might qualify as a pop music mystery – had been purchased and was going to be reissued, you could almost feel the swell of human activity. Collector geeks, nostalgia junkies, quick buck artists, and contenders for the Avis chair in Clear Channel’s world started to stir. The catalog itself ranges from the well-loved (or at least well-known) hits by Bleep (the first time I heard “Rubber Lover,” all I could think of was how cool ninth grade was going to be because I’d get to see all the greaser chicks who were bused in from Deer Park, and tended to make out in the hallways with their boyfriends) to full-on freak-bait like Clipper Cowbridge’s three-chord whoopee cushion “Soda Pop Shop,” perfect for record-collecting loners (a favorite for music fans working Postal Service graveyard shifts).
Devon Shire? The Spooky Bunch? Rockfinger? Action Plus? And damn, how can anyone who heard the bleepin’ story ever forget Bleep – a group blessed with enormous talent in the person of Martin Jarrow, and cursed with internal problems so bad that the Spinal Tap break-up seems like child’s play in comparison. Okay, so you don’t remember the label - what can be said except that’s your problem, Buster (no one made you take those Quaaludes back in the day). But the fact remains that although you may be on the way out, the mighty label lives. Get in line because the rush is beginning with Clubbo sampler CD, vol. 1
| Monday, June 7, 2004
Random Sampling
You already know what happened, but you should still read Kembrew McLoed’s interview with producer Hank Shocklee in Stay Free, about the effect copyright law had on the evolution of hip-hop. Shocklee, who anchored the pioneering producers of the Bomb Squad, created the sound for Public Enemy’s incredible It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back. The dense, deliberately complex collage depended on borrowing – without paying – sounds, lots of sounds, from already recorded albums. When record labels caught on, they went out and shot fish in a barrel - it was too late to pull the songs off an album - going so far as to hire kids with great ears to sit down with a few years of hip-hop and track each sample to its source. It cost a lot of people a lot of money, and hip-hop has not been the same since.
Here’s one of Shocklee’s observations: “We were forced to start using different organic instruments, but you can't really get the right kind of compression that way. A guitar sampled off a record is going to hit differently than a guitar sampled in the studio. The guitar that's sampled off a record is going to have all the compression that they put on the recording, the equalization. It's going to hit the tape harder. It's going to slap at you. Something that's organic is almost going to have a powder effect. It hits more like a pillow than a piece of wood. So those things change your mood, the feeling you can get off of a record. If you notice that by the early 1990s, the sound has gotten a lot softer.”
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What is hip?
Like most people, I've been struggling with this one since Tower Of Power dropped the groove down on my head and demanded I take a look ("Tell me tell me if you think you know/ If you're really hip the passing years will show/ You're on a hip trip/Maybe hipper than hip/ What is hip?") So I've thought about it - in those terms - for some 30 years; in fact I've gone deeper, and tried to find out where the term "hip" came from in the first place.
I've traveled with fast company - I have the gift - but it was not until I picked up the New York Times Sunday Book Review section and read Hal Epsen's review of Martin Torgoff's Can't Find My Way Home, that I discovered this:..Herbert Huncke - the man who became a key emissary from the drug demimonde for Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac - had himself been drawn to heroin by talks of Shanghai opium dens "posh layouts with cushions on the floor and naked or half-naked men and women laying about...It was called 'lying on the hip,' and that's where the word "hip" comes from."
Remember, of course, what TOP's Mimi Castillo and Doc Kupka said: "Sometimes hipness is what it ain't..."
| Sunday, June 6, 2004
Thursday, June 3, 2004
This is drama
The American Theatre Critics Association's annual convention is underway in San Francisco -- a big week for cabbies, waiters, and, um, underemployed theater professionals, no doubt. Critics who have answered the call are being treated to panel discussions, a speech or two, group excursions, and plays. But all the drama is not onstage -- and though this tired notion may seem like an utter impossibility when it comes to the average critic, I urge you to keep an open mind. For instance, consider this: a critic is headed home on public transit, minding his business when he realizes a passenger is sitting across the aisle from him, glaring ferociously in his direction. The critic is startled and then confused, until he remembers the face as that of an actor who, some months prior to that day, received a less than glowing review from the actor.
A dozen or so blocks later the bus pulls up to a stop, the critic gets off, the staring actor stays onboard. Later, he tells his editor, they laugh, and that is that. Or so it seemed. Fast forward nearly a decade, when said critic receives a call from a stranger, who turns out to be the wife of the actor. She is, it turns out, in the middle of an ugly divorce and asks the critic to provide a statement attesting to the actor's violent nature. The critic says that the mean look on the bus doesn't really qualify as violence, to which the wife says "but what about the fist fight you two had when my husband jumped you on the bus?"
Perhaps the tendency to exaggerate was worth raising in court...
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TOMMY T
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TOMMYT archives
About Tommy
Tommy Tompkins has been on full alert for most of his adult life, looking for art endowed with sufficient power, wisdom, courage, and grace to save a struggling humanity from itself...
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About Extreme Measures
Extreme Measures comes at you at a time when, as a society, we are experiencing a kind of aphasia; language has been so distorted by corruption of aging institutions and the commercial pressures of an all-consuming, popular culture that our range of motion -- our ability to feel, to dream, to rage beyond the toothless dictates of media and capital -- has been critically circumscribed.
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Me:
2extremes@earthlink.net
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The Reading List
Q: How many Bush Administration officials does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:None. There is nothing wrong with the light bulb; its conditions are improving every day. Any reports of its lack of incandescence are a delusional spin from the liberal media. That light bulb has served honorably, and anything you say undermines the lighting effect. Why do you hate freedom?
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| TOMMY ELSEWHERE |
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Cheap shots, anyone? Hell yes, like shooting fish in a barrel - Crosby, Stills, & Nash, to be exact in "Second Time Around," my weekly reissue column in the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
The successful selling of Crosby, Stills, and Nash as one of rock's first "supergroups" was, above all else, a marketing triumph. The insipid folk trio with a penchant for predictable three-part harmonies were packaged as a brilliant, innovative rock band and sold, no questions asked, to a generation that would go on to make history for a consumerism as voracious as its perceptive powers were small...
Read on, please...
Crosby, Stills, and Nash
Greatest Hits (Remastered) (Rhino)
I would have rather been in California than anywhere during those days, and in fact I was in California. Nevertheless, though my ass moved, my ears were another story. Take the O'Jays, for instance, whose blue-collar soul music helped me forget about CS&N's lame folk music.
The core of the O'Jays – Eddie LeVert, Walter Williams, and William Powell – had been together for 14 years when they had their first big hit, "Back Stabbers," during the summer of 1972. Their career had gyrated everywhere except up when they joined forces – for a second time – with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff shortly after the songwriting-production team formed their label Philadelphia International...
O'Jays
Essential O'Jays (Epic/Legacy)
The flurry of reissues may be proof the music industry is dying, but it's produced a few sublime moments, like the "Deluxe Editions" of the Wailers' Burnin' and Catch A Fire. This piece, titled "Wailin'," ran in the Bay Guardian with Jeff Chang's take on the new Trojan Records box, "This Is Pop.".
DURING SO MUCH rain, one – or, in this case, two – bright spots really stand out. Ever since the birth of Napster and the gloomy end of days for the music business, the reissue industry has been going full tilt. It makes sense on both sides of the commercial exchange. For the labels, there's very little overhead and practically no guesswork; deliver Al Green with a couple of mysterious "alternative takes," perhaps a previously unreleased cut, and remixing or remastering – another mystery...
San Francisco Bay Guardian Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Brian Jonestown Massacre: And This Is Our Music
Pitchfork Media, July 19, 2004
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Sites I like...
L.A. Observed
HipHopMusic.com
TomDispatch.com
Danyel Smith's Naked Cartwheels
Then It Must Be True
Davey D’s Hip-Hop Corner
Pagan Moss Sensual Liberation HQ
Different Kitchen
War in Context
Cursor
Virtual Library For Theater and Drama
Jeff Chang's Can’t Stop Won’t Stop
Usounds Internacionale
Maud Newton
Paris's Guerrillafunk.com
Silliman's Home of the Hits
Negro Please
mp3s please
Boondocks
Oliver Wang's The Pop Life
American Samizdat
Sasha Frere-Jones's SF/J
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