Posted on by mwhybark

Mash

I spent a part of last spring interviewing participants in and observers of mash-up culture for an overview piece that appears in Now Playing’s current issue, which went into distribution about a month and a half ago. I structured the piece as a history, beginning with Mark Gunderson’s recollections of developing the Whipped Cream Mixes with the ECC in the 90s. The issue includes at least a glancing look at the new Gorillaz release as well.

So you might say I found the new cover of Wired unusually compelling.

Treo 063005 001

Neil Gaiman interviews Gorillaz, for Pete’s sake.

Treo 063005 Zoom

This bit of creative copy – “The History of Mash-Ups, by William Gibson” – was especially entertaining. Gibson’s piece relates the avant-garde creative method that William S. Burroughs dubbed the ‘cut-up,’ to the current fooraw over sampling and borrowing to deep Western historical roots. It’s a cogent observation.

Understandably, that’s not what I thought I was about to read when I flipped to the piece. Still, I laughed heartily upon seeing the cover. It’s just not credible that Now Playing is prompting competitive moves from Wired. At best, I think maybe I channelled some aspect of Wired’s editorial decision-making when I pitched this story – and others – to Now Playing.

Now, if I can do it again next issue – well, that would be success of a sort, I think.

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Update

It’s done. I closely examined the J21 M, per Tom’s comments, but concluded that a 1995 D-16T was a superior choice, acoustically, aesthetically, and financially (it was less than half as expensive as the J21 M).

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Don't be late!

8X-Day: JUNE 30 – JULY 5, Sherman, NY.

“You’ll notice that July 5 lands on Tuesday this year. DON’T PINK OUT! This is YOUR ONLY RELIGIOUS HOLIDAY.”

Let the will of slack be done. Me, I’m afraid I’m slacking, so no pleasure saucers for me this year – again!

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Guitar

The time has arrived.

I am in the market for a mid-range acoustic guitar. I am considering the current O-series mahogany Martins, but have always played pre-owned instruments and would be thrilled to find an older guitar as well. Currently the Trading Musician has their usual broad selection, including a 1979 Gibson, a 1975 Guild, and a Martin J21M as well as several Martins priced well out of my range. After years of pawnshop trolling, I had come to think of the Trading Musician as a bit pricey, but compared to the undeniably mouthwatering goods available online from Jet City Guitars (at the time of linking, the lowest-listed guitar price is over $2k), and there are several items listed at over $10k), the listed prices and selection appear quite reasonable.

You know, that ’33 is more or less what I want, come to think of it. It’s over my budget, though.

As it happens, just up the street from the Trading Musician is the Folkshop (apparently and appropriately not online), which always has new and used Martin inventory on hand.

For the record, my current guitar is an end-mounted tension-bridge parlor Stella (but quite unlike the guitars that site celebrates, mine is more like these). Mine is probably from the 1970s. It’s covered with stickers and some ill-advised marker graffiti from the previous stewards, now lost in the mists of time. When I started playing it, it sounded like shit and played like an instrument of torture. The action was high enough that it hurt to fret it, and when I lowered the action, the fret buzz made the thing into a cousin of the sitar. The original machine heads in conjunction with the end-mounted tension bridge meant that for ages I was convinced that the instrument could not stay in tune.

After many years of fiddling, I can report that the instrument has a decent voice, at long last, and while it’s still a bear to fret, the action is not nearly the painful torture mechanism it once was.

I once knew a kid who moved to the US to attend high school from his native Venezuela. He told me about how he learned to skateboard. He was a gifted skater who was able to outperform most of the other kids we hung out with. His first skateboard was made by nailing the wheels from a steel-wheeled adjustable roller skate to the bottom of a 2×4 plank.

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Ink

While Excavating Past, John Irving Finds His Family [NYT blogerated link].

I am a profoundly reluctant admirer of Irving’s work – I still find it gratingly self-absorbed – but this article unlocks some persistent themes in the man’s work, and I cannot help but be transfixed by the tragic narrative associated with his absent father and the conflict stemming from loyalty and love to his adoptive parent. I’m grateful that my own questions about who I am and where I come from are not subject to the complications of knowing one biological parent and not another.

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Flashbangback

Someone down near the Broadway Playfield, near what has previously been the staging area for participants in the annual Gay Pride Parade, has been setting off m-80s or cherry bombs or something. That, in conjunction with the flock of chittering helicopters plaguing the neighborhood this morning, have created a mild flashback to November 1999’s WTO experience. For us that week included about five days of twenty-four hour helicopter noise punctuated by explosions in the distance as various police units used flash-bang grenades and pepperball grenades to, among other things, harass me with their incessant noise.

Each time one of today’s bangs echoes down the street, Viv and I tense in anticipation of a change in the tone of the crowd noise or – worst thought of all – a great but brief silence broken only by car alarms and shattering window glass tinkling onto the pavement. In 1990, the FBI arrested a group of folks who had driven a van loaded with explosives into the neighborhood with the intent of bombing a popular gay nightclub.

The person lighting m-80s has no idea what an ass they are. I hope they continue in blissful ignorance.

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Breakin'

Media Activists Who Smile and Throw Cheese [NYT blogerated link]

… Since Jan. 6, when the five-member Rochester-based group executed its first bust, as it calls them, of a live remote in their hometown, viewers in Boston; New York City; Manchester, N.H.; Columbus, Ohio; and several other cities have seen their local news briefly hijacked by elaborately planned vignettes that are more likely to baffle or alarm reporters than make them curse on the air.

The Newsbreakers’ repertory of characters includes Cheese Ninja, who cavorts in the background of live news broadcasts, derisively tossing slices of processed cheese, and Jiminy Diz, a supposed newspaper reporter, wearing a loud jacket and a hat with a “Press” card in the band, who is angry with local television news for lifting reports from the morning paper.

These humorless aesthetes are clearly a front intended to increase overall viewer numbers for local news!

Grimfaced, I await their eruption hereabouts.