Cultural Detritus, Reviews, and Commentary
Link to an article by Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld:
“Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace”
Bonus link: “Amazon’s Brutal Workplace Is an Indicator of an Inhumane Economy” and “Undercover at Amazon: Exhausted Humans Are Inefficient So Robots Are Taking Over” and “Amazon Must Be Stopped” (this stops well short of suggesting [inter-]nationalization, which seems quite appropriate) and “Giving Amazon’s Side of the Story”
Link to an article by Jeffrey St. Clair:
“The Rise and Fall of Death Row Records”
Bonus Link: “Here’s What’s Missing From Straight Outta Compton: Me and the Other Women Dr. Dre Beat Up”
The Incredible String Band – Wee Tam & The Big Huge Elektra EKS 74036/37 (1968)
The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter is their best, but Wee Tam & The Big Huge may well be my favorite — it’s the one I reach for most often. Robin Williamson emerges as a strong songwriter. As before, there is still a lot of worldly post-modern folk eclecticism at work. Maybe a bit fewer improvisational surprises. But even a streamlined “Log Cabin Home in the Sky” is a pure delight. Looking back upon ISB’s two albums from 1968 it would be hard to argue they weren’t the pinnacle of psychedelic folk.
Link to an article by Peter Rugh:
Link to an article by Richard Goldin:
Pere Ubu – The Modern Dance Blank Records 001 (1978)
Pere Ubu made music in bold, sweeping motions. Their full-length debut The Modern Dance is a freewheeling album. It puts Allen Ravenstine‘s tape manipulation precariously in front of the rather isolated guitars. This album is much easier to decipher than its follow-up Dub Housing. The Modern Dance is quite open about its motivations. It looks for something new. The dang thing holds up because it found something new. But also because it makes a sincere effort to preserve the group’s own identity.
The Modern Dance still has a lot in common with the group that spawned them, Rocket from the Tombs. The Rocket song “Life Stinks” by Peter Laughner keeps the old energy alive — for the most part. Refined as it is, “Life Stinks” is still one of those songs that can rile even the most hardened listener.
I respect any band that refuses to fabricate straight answers. Sometimes there are none. Sometimes there are only mangled lies showing the appearance of truth. Take “Humor Me” for example. It takes aim at the biggest joke in human history: western “civilization”. And with no apologies! While these continuous attacks on the social bell curve kept Pere Ubu an underground act, they also elevated the group to a level worthy of their namesake (the name Pere Ubu was drawn from Alfred Jarry‘s play Ubu Roi).
There are many levels of understanding the world. Some people just “get it” in a way others don’t. That’s what “The Modern Dance” is all about. Many things happen on levels that some march right past. Pere Ubu wasn’t just some band that heads for easy results-oriented nonsense. They came from Cleveland. So of course despair, isolation and suffering are the most familiar themes. More surprising though is how fatalistic The Modern Dance is. References to concrete destiny are everywhere.
The album’s best songs are full of many intricate layers. “Chinese Radiation” bleeds with sentimental washes from an acoustic guitar, running over the electronic background. A carefully deployed piano resonates with slowly pounded chords.
“Non-Alignment Pact” is genius as an album opener. It starts with a looping, screeching blast like a siren. Only after the noise has its time out front do the guitars and the rest of the band join in. “Non-Alignment Pact” is a great twisted take on a love song. Actually, I’m not sure it’s supposed to be a love song, but I hear it as one. Other love songs speak in the positive. This one is about not making other allegiances. What matters is what is excluded. A punk love song would almost have to be that way.
Pere Ubu’s next two albums (Dub Housing and New Picnic Time) improved on some of the stranger experiments of this debut. But The Modern Dance has its own kind of tightly channeled manic energy, and, frankly, somewhat more consistently catchy songs as such. Experiencing it is consistently refreshing.
Link to an article by Sarah Jaffe:
“Activists in Ferguson Broaden Scope, Unveil ‘Power Behind the Police'”
Bonus links: “A Long Time for Killing” and “The Politics of Mass Incarceration”
Link to an interview with Miya Tokumitsu, author of Do What You Love: And Other Lies About Success and Happiness (2015), by Bouree Lam:
“Why ‘Do What You Love’ Is Pernicious Advice”
Bonus links: “Forced to Love the Grind” and “Žižek!” and The End of Dissatisfaction?: Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment
Link to an article by Jason Hickel:
Johnny Cash – Everybody Loves a Nut Columbia CS 9292 (1966)
Johnny Cash had a sense of humor. One of his best characteristics was the breadth of his interests, his ability to strike a lot of different emotional notes, with humor being in that mix alongside his penchant for grim tales of murder, gut-wrenching stories of love and loss, and sincere professions of religious feeling. Everybody Loves a Nut is a collection of novelty songs. By this point in Cash’s career, he was looking for new twists on his old formulas. So this seems like just another gimmick. And it is a gimmick. But Cash brings a kind of unselfconscious earnestness to these songs that makes them a lot of fun. The best-known cut is the satire of the urban folk revival movement, “The One on the Right Is on the Left,” but the title track is pretty good too, and “Please Don’t Play Red River Valley” is a great performance. Almost a decade later Cash would make his Children’s Album, which took a similar approach without hardly any of the same enthusiasm or flair. This is a solid second-tier Cash album.