One of the underlying reasons for turning q-sputnik into a music-only blog is to indicate that all (my) life processes are musical in a way or another. My everyday reality this summer includes a 10-5.30 stay at the library, working for the disseration, and this routine has its own soundtrack. Though not the same every day, it more or less stays within specific bounds, determined by the finite space in my USB stick and my mp3 player on the one hand, on the functions of the music I am listening to on the other. I will explain the latter. There are certain things I can listen to while studying and preferably I do not listen to music at all. But I need to block myself from all sorts of non-predictable sounds happening around me when I am studying in a communal space like the library. I cannot listen to traditional rock-style songs because lyrics draw my attention. Electronic music or strings are ideal in this case.
The playlist I am posting also encompasses music on the bike, to and forth. This is essential: a decision about what will be the first thing I will listen to each day. I have been severely obsessed with Portishead’s ‘third’ lately, and though perhaps stereotypical assumptions about what constitutes as an ideal acousma for the morning would find this suprising, it actually starts me off really nicely (I just found out that ‘acousma’ in greek is ‘acousma’ in english which is funny). Unfortunately, as my stamina has increased substantially, I do not manage to finish the record by the time I reach campus. AnOther most likely option for starting off is ‘Silent Shout‘ by the Knife, which is one of the most inspired groups ever. Recently I discovered ‘Crazy love’ by Honey is Cool (1997) where Karin plays guital and does vocals, so I often listen to that in the morning (because I am totally in love with her). Sometimes I do the mistake of listening to Belle and Sebastian and I reach campus with nerves, I am not sure why though. Or other really stupid choices, like Placebo or Dresden Dolls or, worse, Dead Moon, or even New York Dolls or The Smiths, these are really bad for me on the way to campus. But anyway, here is a playlist:
Third- portishead (entire album)
100th window- massive attack (or Mezzanine, just to check emails and sit well on the chair)
mardugada(200 - madrugada - but make sure that ‘our time won’t live that long’ is played last on media player. Its a real pity that they dont play in this country, I wont get to see them for a while, and they are a treat in live performances)
kronos quartet (now this is for either when overload is eminent, or generally as an antidote. It can be anything, thelonious monk the least possible and philip glass the most, as long as it is Joan Jeanrenaud on cello)
Experiments In Violent Light (2007)- flykkiller (Patti Yang may sound a bit like the Peaches in this recording, but then she does not and there are instances as if from David Lynch film. Though the homonym song reminds me of ‘Fuckin Amal’, who knows why, perhaps because of the bridge lyrics)
and for the return home, just to ground a bit, Tiamat Amanethes album, which is very much like Sisters of Mercy and is a really old fashioned gothic album but nevertheless, superb in all aspects, especially at 6pm and on the way to the sea.
I always thought that groups perform best when on stage and that a live performance has to entail someting more than a plain reproduction of the recorded material. That live performances are the essence of the band, as if there is a real core, a psyche that can only be dragged into light at the here and now. This idea just does not pay attention to the second word of ‘live performances’, that is ‘performances’. Surely there are groups that really let go while playing music on stage but is it not really really difficult to stay focused when there is a wailing mob jumping on and off? And is it not really too much to listen to professional mucisians repeat, day-after-day, the same routine and playlist with some expectations of spontaneity?
Here comes the anticipated personal touch of the post, and obviously from the far past. Sometime along with the records, I discovered the feast of live performances. At this point in 1990 a nicely polished pair dr martens were an essential feature for a revolting non-mainstream teenager, at least at this part of the hemisphere that I am talking of. And that was more or less it for me, oh and the jeans, which had to make a perfect bottom. My introduction had to be a Jesus and Mary Chain live but for certain reasons (I really do not want to make this a teenage memoirs post) it eventually was an Iggy Pop performance. As I imlplied a few lines above, there is a certain ritualistic preparation to lives, especially when they have yet not been entirely demystified. This included minimal food intake during the day (because you were too anxious), making sure you have a (preferably unopened) packet of cigarettes, being immaculately clean and having the ticket well before the day. Most importantly, having spent at least a week listening to all the albums from the group or the artist and fantasizing about the live. From this Iggy Pop performance I more remember the destroyed sound boxes, his characteristic quick hanging from one place of the scene to the other, and the immense fear that I would be in the middle of a confrontation between skinheads and rockabillies and that I would end up going home barefoot. This was one of the urban legends that circulated, even outside a live scene’s premises, if you had a perfecto jacket and dr martens on, then older skinheads could mistake you for a rockabilly and teach you a lesson. Another thing I remember is the important but unresolved debate about whether ‘the passenger’ sounds nicer from iggy pop or siouxie. The undisputed status of the artist, who is always bigger than mortals and can freely break objects and be considered a genious because of that. Other things I discovered in this live was how the magical atmosphere of that particular place (Athens, Rodon: Live) can make you fall in love with the boy for the rest of the school year and with live performances ever after.
i tend not to differentiate between punk and hardcore which is because i also tend to have my own private definitions of punk and hardcore (and rock and roll). also (and this is after comment i got) this is a random-phrase-article, not your usual well edited one that has something new to say, my music blog is not a music-critic’s blog, or even a research and info one, its more of a short note thing with a conversational mood, that is with pauses and breaks.
so why did women play bass in punk bands? guitar is supposed to be more sophisticated and the lead usually plays it who in a mixed band is usually a man. unless the singer is a woman which is the case with nika from post regiment, a punk band from poland which I adore. There are a couple of songs here. and a preview of all their work here. and just because there is the heartbreaking ‘chory’ that they have covered, I alsways think of ballast when I think of post regiment. ballast are not together anymore and I did manage to see them in villa amalias (in 2006?) so I am happy. the voice is melodic and very descriptive. three women in ballast, bass and voice, but even while saying this, I want to acknowledge that women playing in bands is not a matter of numbers or tokenism like in the case of early mixed punk bands (anyway ballast was a non-hierarchical band). here is a video with terrible (almost non existing) sound.
I couldn’t choose a topic for the first post but then I couldn’t have started differently. Sonic Youth mark my sonic youth for a few reasons. They mark my youth even though the first record I bought (on my own and feeling that I myself discovered them) was Tender Prey by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and that was in 1989. I did not connect with the record at that moment, it was too early for me and I re-discovered it a couple of years later.
It should be school year 1990-1991, I collect small weekly amounts of money that my parents give me for food at school, bus tickets and so on and deposit them for one or two records at a time, at the infamous ‘7+7′ underground recordstore. This is always a Saturday. I either go there with my best friend who is a boy and better off (so can afford always more records than me), or by myself. I have no idea where I read or heard about sonic youth in athens 90, nobody knows them yet. I ask the extremely kool-shop assistant- who is supposed to know everything about the alternative scene- and own the second largest record collection in the country- so I ask as if I know the group. He decisively states that they are hard listening and that I should start with flower so I do. There are various odd things, the back of the cover with the naked woman and the lyrics ’support the power of woman…use the word fuck’, and the fact that I play the record on 45rpm initially, then play it right and still do not know what’s going on, and I want more. So I get EVOL and this is the official start of my musical identity, all that I will listen to or play after that moment will be marked by that record.
I do still consider EVOL my favourite sonic youth record. Little did it matter to me at the time that it was released many years earlier. I am actually really happy that GOO didn’t make it to greece till sometime in 91. I got really stuck with EVOL, really absorbed in it, I played it countless times per day and illustrated all the songs. GOO was good, actually it was good that it happened while I was trailing the group, it is different to discover, for example ‘the 13th floor elevators’, who are really in the past. By the time GOO came out, I was part of sonic youth and people started talking about it. They actually played Kool Thing on decks. By 1993 I was out of youth and looking for new meanings in music. CDs had started to take over the world.
as a ps, here are a few videos from a live in 85, that look and sound suprisingly well. I saw sonic youth live in 99 which was really late.
I know this looks, sounds, reads inconsistent but I am after all the author of my own identity in this strange world that is called the blogworld and I now pronounce q-sputnik a music-only blog. This happens for two reasons. One is my lazyness to maintain more than 100 different blogs and types of blogs about all these different experiments I want to do with blogging. So I spent some time thinking about how I will handle this, especially about the personal and the political and how these whould be articulated in my understanding, in a blog and this would be a blog inaccessible to people I know offline. Then I still want to write about all sorts of things and though I constantly need new ’spaces’, open spaces and re-defining, I decided to fight that and stick to q-sputnik for a little longer.
But only for music-blogging. This still places the blog within the realms of media-related-discussion, after all blogging about music is another way to say ‘ I blog about pop cult’. The other reason to do this, is that split lentil81 started blogging about music. Now, I do not need to talk with split over the net about music, our disagreements about the hellacopters and other issues are clear and repeated on systematic, even everyday rituals. It is more the realization that I find less and less people who actually talk about music after a certain age, plus that there is a gender divide in talking, listening or playing it. So it is a matter of age and gender. And anyway this blog was more and more turning into a music-video-with-lyrics post populated. [Also, I decided I will be less disciplined about language usage so a bit of bad attitude towards english should be expected, please english-native-speakers do not be offended, poetics is the term, not 'mistake', it happens when language is written unsurveilled (a spellchecker in wordpress would help though, is there any?)]
In Lesvos since 22/06. These are 58 unaccompanied children, along with some women, living in bad hygiene conditions, because there are no proper guest houses for them. deviousdiva wrote about a similar situation in the island of Leros last month here.
Lesvos, like Chios, Samos, Kos, Rhodos and other islands on the east part of Greece, signify the exterior borders of the EU and they host migrant detention camps, usually in former warehouses.
At least the greek ministry of interior affairs plans to grant citizen rights to the 120,000 second-generation migrant children living in the country at the moment.
29 JUNE UPDATE : The immigrant and refugee rights group ‘Clandestina’ is asking for the release of the children. The children, unaccompanied Somalian girls between 8-12 yrs old, Afgan boys between 12-18 yrs old, a baby and the women who strike on support, are kept in prison cells. This happened apparently because, after the new measures to protect children from trafficing were put into use, no appropriate housing was found. So the Lesbian authorities thought that it’s better that the children are kept prisoners. The announcement also notes that the district attorney, who could put an end to this bad joke, is on vacation till July and the social workers who are in charge at the moment are unable to take responsibility or make a decision about the situation. Here is the indy athens bulletin about the children.
Junichi and Toru, the two greenpeace activists, who got arrested for stealing the whale meat in order to provide it as evidence to the government, appeared in court this morning. The judge ordered them held for another ten days without charges. The appeal is tomorrow morning so apart from blogging about it here is what you can do to support them:
it’s been a while more because of my ambivalence about what consists as personal and who actually reads this blog. Much traffic comes from searches about facebook and about male nudes and lesbians and squatting and golden girls (why do people search for ‘golden girls’?!). Whoever the readers are they don’t regularly comment, which makes it difficult for me to think of the ‘death of the author’ in cybertexts. It occurs to me that blogs are not that much an expression tool as much as a networking tool. Diaries that are made public cannot but provide information selected to be published. This is I think why some blogs are discontinued, not just because the authors have little to write about, but because of the thin lines that divide the personal from the critical and the social and because it is difficult to find a balance between them. This is for blogs that are not journalistic blogs. For me, blogging about the news has been an interesting resort so far, this is my contribution to what i think of as public sphere. When life becomes overwhelming however, it is increasingly difficult for me to include it in my posts, even knowing that anonynity is guaranteed (except that it is not- did I read a while ago about how the council filters emails to secure the well being of its citizens?). I have the sense that an intensly personal blog or entirely critical one would attract more reactions, the personal because it would attract sympathy, the critical (but not academically critical) because language is deliberately provocative in these blogs. My point is that connectivity requires some sort of outing, disclosures need to be made otherwise readers cannot identify and find no reason to respond because they do not feel talked to. I am still however undecided about why I blog, I seem to return to my self-reflectivity every once in a while and this comes persistently when I attempt to disclose something undisputably personal, which I finally don’t write about. I am also very much concerned how far this has to do with my being a ‘linguistic outsider’, writing in english as a second language, and thus whether i would use greek in an entirely other way. Since this blog is an experiment with the medium, I might as well try that- would writing in greek alienate me even more from my personal situations I wonder, which seems the logical outcome to me since I would feel more exposed in greek. Pfff, it is late and this is a rather meaningless post.
- madrugada - but make sure that ‘our time won’t live that long’ is played last on media player. Its a real pity that they dont play in this country, I wont get to see them for a while, and they are a treat in live performances)
Here comes the anticipated personal touch of the post, and obviously from the far past. Sometime along with the records, I discovered the feast of live performances. At this point in 1990 a nicely polished pair dr martens were an essential feature for a revolting non-mainstream teenager, at least at this part of the hemisphere that I am talking of. And that was more or less it for me, oh and the jeans, which had to make a perfect bottom. My introduction had to be a Jesus and Mary Chain live but for certain reasons (I really do not want to make this a teenage memoirs post) it eventually was an Iggy Pop performance. 