Tuesday, 2 July 2002

What Would Adorno Do? "....The power of the culture industry's ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness. The order that springs from it is never confronted with what it claims to be or with the real interests of human beings. Order, however, is not good in itself. It would be so only as a good order. The fact that the culture industry is oblivious to this and extols order in abstracto, bears witness to the impotence and untruth of the messages it conveys. While it claims to lead the perplexed, it deludes them with false conflicts which they are to exchange for their own. It solves conflicts for them only in appearance, in a way that they can hardly be solved in their real lives. In the products of the culture industry human beings get into trouble only so that they can be rescued unharmed, usually by representatives of a benevolent collective; and then in empty harmony, they are reconciled with the general, whose demands they had experienced at the outset as irreconcilable with their interests. For this purpose the culture industry has developed formulas which even reach into such non-conceptual areas as light musical entertainment. Here too one gets into a 'jam', into rhythmic problems, which can be instantly disentangled by the triumph of the basic beat." an excerpt of "Culture Industry Reconsidered" from The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture     by THEODOR ADORNO

On Saturday, we played East Austin's own Cafe Mundi in-between torrential downpours. It was a benefit for Austin Daze (a name apropos of both the look and the content - their mascot is the Octopus). It seemed unlikely, but somehow we showed up, the rain stopped, and we played (minus Dale, Jason, and Robert). Just the core four. At the time I thought it was a really sloppy performance, but through the mediated magic of MiniDisc, the recording angels happened to Hoover up the soundwaves into an artifact worthy of review.

It seems like we're a long way from being as cohesive as we should be by this point, but I am cheered by some things I hear amid the clams and such. Ours is a muscular ensemble, yet sometimes we need additional focus on nuance and subtlety. Word.

(Conspicuous Consumption Alert: Spotted at Central Market South - Galapagos Island Coffee - only $24.95lb. Whoa! I don't know anyone stupid enough to think that a cup of Darwin's Brew is somehow worth that kind of loot. Calling David Brooks - Bobo Insanity is still alive; they can still be brainwashed.....unashamed at such naked acts of consumer fetishism.)

Le Grand Recap

Hard to believe it's been over three months since an update around these parts, but it's true - we've been out of touch for awhile. Where to begin? Well, Bill Munyon played a few more shows with us in March and April, before being called back to the court of the Crimson King, where his assistance with Pat Mastelloto's percussion setup (in Nashville, at Adrian Belew's studio). Bill's been busy with several other projects, including working on videogame soundtracks, remixing Euro-beats and (eventually) another BPM&M album, so we haven't seen a lot of him since the spring. Sometime in July, we hope to have Bill's help in mixing the tracks we recorded in March. That would put our first CD as coming out sometime in Fall 2002.

In April, guitarist Dale Clowers (formerly of the Barracudas and Beth Black) started sitting in with us. Playing MIDI guitar parts on his custom Strat, it's like we added a both a second-guitarist and a keyboard player. Since that time, there's been a nice musical conversation between Peter's style and Dale's style.

Panda went to the Kerrville Folk Festival, and after a few weekends of strumming, singing and networking around the campfires - found himself invited to play in the closing night show (evidently for the volunteers/employees who work the Festival). He impressed an organizer from the Winnipeg Folk Festival so much that he got an invitation to play there next year on the spot, and was also invited up to Maine to play some gigs in the Pine Tree State. Soon back from the land of moose and blueberries, Panda's solo career seems poised for taking off on its own trajectory. Time will, indeed, tell.

Peter has been putting the final touches on an album by Newland Moorefield, an Austin-based singer-songwriter, recorded in his home studio, in addition to playing occasional solo gigs at The Gingerman, and at Saks Fifth Avenue (high-fashion guitar, tres chic!).

Dick has been playing shows with Big Hands and Dime A Dozen (both of Kerrville). Last week, we both took a percussion lesson from Brazilian percussion master Jorge Alabe, in town from New Orleans (his US home). It was a blast - I was humming Brazilian clavé patterns for days afterward. We're hoping to bring more samba-flavored grooves to the group, so - we'll see where that goes. (Thanks to Robert Patterson of Sambaxé for hooking us up with Jorge).

Myself (Will), I went to London for a week in May - we (Tracy and I) saw some great music on the street and at the Barbican, and we want to go back already. Sadly, didn't get a chance to see any underground DJ's on the decks, pumping up the crowd. Next time!

New shows coming up at Café Mundi and the Empanada Parlour (where we were supposed to play on May 23rd, but got bumped in a grand mal screw-up seizure by the club management. Hopefully, this show (July 6th) will actually happen.

Theme Nights

Well, we played the opening "music event" night at the new Austin Hard Rock Cafe on Monday, March 4th - an evening entitled "High Tech/Hard Rock" - organized by Sunset Direct, a technology marketing/sales company in Austin. Six bands, and for all the things that could have gone wrong with that many "acts" in one night, it went remarkably smoothly. I thought about my first impression of the HRC - having never been a fan of the cafe or a follower/collector of their ubiquitous T-shirts that inspire such pride on so many plebeian tourists who seem to base their vacations around the convenient proximity of a familiar franchise on foreign soil. I also thought about the utopian hippie/capitalist Brits who started the place, and wonder if they're happy with where their creation has evolved to. I noticed they've been a contributor to PETA, yet meat has a major place on their menu. Contradiction? I wondered as a I bit into my turkey burger.

We played for about 40 minutes, all of 5 songs. DR played with a borrowed kit, and myself with a borrowed bass amp that seemed to be maladjusted (not emotionally, but settings-wise) to the point where it clipped my volume on stage and I could only rely on the sound through the PA - not the amp itself. The crowd reaction was good, and Panda had people at ease with his friendly personae. On Thursday, we played our regular WBC gig, with the first appearance of Bill Munyon on keys/ turntables/ effects. It's a really different sound for us, as we had been using samples on only one song. Some might find it jarring - the juxtaposition of our happy afropop/worldbeat-style tunes against Bill's recombinant splicing of spoken word mindphuk - processed through distortion and a handful of other effects. Still, it's early in the process - and we have time to integrate his ideas with our sound - making something new.

On Saturday afternoon, we played Cafe Mundi - an outdoor gig in East Austin - and then went out for crawfish.

South Austin Sessions

Spent the evening recording at PM's house in S. Austin tonight. Our non-gig sessions are so few, that there seems to be a lot of catching-up to do when we just play for each other -- I liken it to a really great sounding word that takes months to pronounce completely. We'll go at it again tomorrow night, but tonight - we took "Inexorable" and really brought out the afrobeat groove in it, with Peter playing a series of Fela-istic loops that sounded like four guitarists in a trance-state. Life of Luxor, TownShip Train, Street Urchin and a song we're calling "Gaye Watermelon" - for reasons that make sense, but take a while to explain. DR forgot his cowbell, tomorrow we take on some of our more spicy tunes that happen to be be cowbell-dependent. A good session.

Panda Joins the Band

From out of the bamboo forests of Lake Tahoe, CA - we have found Panda - a singer with three CD's already to his name, and a new Austin, TX mailing address. The only errant detail in the previous sentence is the part about bamboo forests in Tahoe, but the rest is true. Panda, (AKA - William Coffey), originally from Schenectady, NY, moved to Austin from Tahoe about 5 months ago. He met Peter (our guitarist) at a series of songwriter nights at Threadgill's and The Ginger Man. In December, he started playing with us regularly at the World Beat, as well as two really crucial shows at Ruta Maya (we helped "close" the place as we know it - on a Saturday night in mid-January that had nearly everyone on their feet and dancing!)