saint_monkey

i recently read curt cobain's Journals. courtney love won a big legal case to obtain all his personal items, which she promptly released as high quality color copies hardbound and jacketed in that slick flat black paper that picks up your fingerprints in a sort of rainbow oilslick way. after a while the thing gets a sort of greasy sheen, that lets you know the book is well used. all the copies at the barnes and noble were shrinkwrapped, but i found one in the library. cobain was an interesting guy. although he seemed a bit sad. it was interesting to see how much his journals were like my own adolescent journals. (although cobain seemed a lot more political, more relevant, less quantity more quality.) my own journals were sort of a purging, and they were full of all kinds of stream of consciousness stuff that perhaps, was better left in my head. some of the nice stuff was his extensive technical notes on amps, guitars and ways to make very cheap equipment sound better, or noise reduction techniques to use on concert instruments so that they could be used in an apartment. i always thought that butch vig was responsible for NIRVANA's "DIY" punk sound through heavy post production... but it seems that a lot of it was owed to .. well, actual "Do It Yourself" engineering by Curt and friends. inspiring.

it made me miss my electric guitar and practice amp. sometimes you need to hear the buzzy-clicky sound of plugging the guitar lead into a live amp, and then play for a while, with the gain way up and the volume way down.... all the wrong notes sound just fine when they are distorted into an angry green buzz.

that reminds me... i got a cd named "point" out of the library by a japanese progressive jazz/electronica band called "cornelius." the cd seemed a concept album on the theme of direction and relationship. not in the metaphorical sense, in the actual sense. most of the songs were full of the japanese words for "up" "Down" "underneath" "behind" etc, drawn way out and harmonized in many voices. very odd. that's what you get when you grab cd's at random from the library. i did however, enjoy some aspects of the album, which sometimes got away from thinking the crap out of itself and got down to the business of playing some actual music. they had a fantastic cover of the lounge song "Brazil." anyhow, at one point, they used the buzz-click as a percussive sound to begin a solo in one song... the guitarist was already in the middle of his solo when they plugged it in, and the end of the solo was the percussive sound of someone pulling the lead back out again. i kind of got the picture that the guy was continuously jamming away in the background, just not miked or jacked in, and when they needed a solo from him, someone would signal a roadie in a batzu-maru t-shirt who would simply plug the guy into the amp.

that's the job i want... not the guitarist, that would suck. but the guy that plugs him in. what do you do, steffan? " i work for a progressive japanese electronica slash jazz band. i plug the guitarist in when he is supposed to solo, and unplug him when he is supposed to stop." why is that, steffan? you might very well ask me, if you were you... "because, he's way to dangerous to listen to all the time. it could seriously damage your perspective, like inviting lenny bruce to be your roommate." can't he decide when he stops and starts himself, steffan? you would object, you objector you. "no." i would reply. "he can not be relied upon, he is a guitarist, so for him, every problem can only be fixed with a guitar. he is like a force of nature. besides, he might interrupt the vocalists harmonizing on the word "below" for a minute, and it would screw up the whole concept of the concept album. and what is the point of a concept album named "point," if it has no concept?" ah, you would say, and order another espresso, because i'm sure we'd be having this discussion in an espresso bar.