GG Allin versus Asa-Chang: fite for the future!

[imomus]

In one of those delightfully poignant surf transitions that reminds you who you are and what you believe in, I found myself last night (on the recommendation of rhodri) watching with appalled fascination the vlogs and cartoons of Steve Sutton, an American 3D animator whose calming voice and banal observations exist at a midpoint between The Dullest Blog in the World and Andy Warhol, with perhaps a touch of Daniel Johnston and David Lynch thrown in. The more I watched him, the more I began to see little traces of Dick Cheney in there too, and maybe a bit of Bob Ross in the hypnotic quality of Sutton's voice. Put it all together with the disturbingly suburban animation series Clover Beach and you get an archetypal piece of schizoid, deeply dysfunctional Americana. I followed up the suttsteve videos with some GG Allin performances and found Sutton the more psychopathic of the pair.

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Imagine my relief, then, to find, next, Asa-Chang and Junray's excellent video for their track "Hana". The setting wasn't much more elaborate than Steve Sutton's bedroom, and yet the sense of sterility, anomie and sadness that seeps from his vlogs was completely absent. Here we were in a house -- and a culture -- which gets object relations substantially right. And this music was more than just a freakshow, an ever-more-spectacular demonstration of the pointlessness of human life (the message I get from both Steve Sutton and the late GG Allin). It was experimental in a warm, inviting and intriguing way. Asa-Chang (who used to be in the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra) manages to combine emotional, empathetic sounds (here, a string chord sequence as touching as the one Massive Attack used in "Unfinished Sympathy") with radical structural experimentation I can only compare with the post-Fluxus experiments of his countryman Tomomi Adachi. Tabla hits are grouped (electronically, using his own Jun-Ray-tronics sound system) with vocals in a way that changes the fundamental relationship between words and music. It should jar, but it doesn't. Instead, a whole new way of marrying voice to sound opens up, and -- without sacrificing warmth and empathy at all -- instantly makes more trad songsmithery look like fusty hackwork.

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I must say I hadn't paid much attention to Asa-Chang before, despite hearing my friends in The Nelories praise him to the skies back in the 90s (he produced one of their albums, Starboogie). But last night he burst through to the front rank of my musical heroes. And oddly enough, in a purely negative way, Steve Sutton and GG Allin are partly responsible; without their sadness and alienation I would never have felt that palpable rush of relief -- that feeling of "Phew, I'm coming home!" -- when "Hana" kicked in. A bit like switching from a Diane Arbus freakscene to the refined feelings spread across a wall of photographs by Rinko Kawauchi. One turns you into a rubbernecker, fascinated by lurid dysfunction and, ultimately, death (GG Allin's heroin overdose). The other signposts values that might ensure a future -- both ethically and formally. GG Allin's boring three-chord thrash certainly didn't waste any time paving the way formally for the future. As someone comments under his Outlaw Scumfuc video, "there's a man who hated existence". Asa-Chang seems to love it.

Comments

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised you think that Sutton comes across as psychopathic. A bit bored, maybe. But if you can bear to watch it for any length of time, you get a thigh slappingly hysterical moment of high comedy about ever 10-15 minutes or so. He's obviously aware of the banality of what he's doing, and just playing on that. I especially like the bit in his FAQ:

Q: You act sad and depressed. Are you?
A: No, I'm just stoic.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I did find it rather fascinating to speculate on whether he's really much smarter than he comes across as. That's why I made the Warhol reference -- Warhol was a master of appearing more stupid than he was, and therefore more intelligent than he was too, if you see what I mean.

And there's a very telling -- and probably autobiographical -- moment in one of the Clover Beach episodes where the young boy arrives at a new school in Florida and is so bright he's advanced two years. All the kids in the class look like they're about to beat the shit out of him when the teacher announces this, so the boy says "No, no, actually I'm really dumb".

re: Clover Beach

[thebestweapon.livejournal.com]

Too true.

[thebestweapon.livejournal.com]

I laughed at that bit of the FAQ, too, before and after watching the vlog. iMomus is right, though, in a way... Mr. Sutton (the caricature) is what I fear most about baseline, middle-road America. With all the sensationalized crime we have here, it's all too easy to imagine what grotesque odd bits are stored on his hard drive or within his closet. Maybe that says something about me, too (I would argue more as an entity of the state rather than as an individual), but that's what America's all about, self-reflexive paranoia.

Time for bed.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

For me, he produces the kind of non-threatening viewing that I find myself watching on TV - against my better judgement - in those moments when I require calm and tranquility. You know, woodworking or cookery shows. Or Bob Ross, indeed.

If I were a more well-rounded individual I'd probably do yoga instead, but watching Steve Sutton guide me through his drawer full of old audio tapes just makes my anxieties evaporate.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

So you don't pick up on "the sense of sterility, anomie and sadness that seeps from his vlogs"? Or maybe it's all part of the entertainment, like when someone on your blog talked about how pathetic the TV dinner for one he produces is?

See Bob Ross I think comes from an America that's still relatively healthy, a 1970s America that still has some humane core. But Steve Sutton comes from a much darker America, a place of social fragmentation and psychological scarring. Somehow it's no surprise that this is the number one film there this week:



You know, people hammer me for pointing this stuff out, but I wish it weren't so, you know. I'd love for Bob Ross's America (or Jimmy Stewart's, or Jimmy Carter's, or Orson Welles') to suddenly reappear.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

I pick up sterility and slight boredom, but I don't pick up sadness. And I don't feel sorry for him. True, I don't think I'd particularly like to live in a trailer in Georgia, eating TV dinners and obsessing about the weather, but Steve doesn't seem overly concerned about his lot. He's just quietly getting on with his life. Being slightly introverted and thoughtful doesn't equal psychological scarring. At least he's creating, rather than just sitting back and passively absorbing.

You know, if the lighting was better in his room, and if his decor wasn't quite so drab, and his clothes weren't all so similar, we'd probably have a vastly different perspective on his outpourings.

[thebestweapon.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I agree with your assessment of either point. Re: the latter, if anything it would serve to greatly exaggerate the caricature; a drab, sterile man in bright surroundings and colorful clothes further suggests the drugged victim of a psychiatric ward, whether that be a literal (Kirkbride) or figurative (subdivision) institution.

Re: the former, you are setting aside plenty of context here. The rise of the East as a world economic power is but one more source of frustration to the American South. It's clear to see in our politics, the division of "red" and "blue" and how easily the "red" feed off these frustrations as the Democrats once did with regards to the US Civil War. It is especially prevalent in a state like Georgia where - if you'll allow me to work under the assumption that Mr. Sutton is, indeed, from Georga - the state's inability to function seamlessly with the prosperous, industrialized North for the past century, as well as growing shifts in production and - more recently - a severe freshwater shortage are serving to reinforce exactly the type of identity crisis we see in (as mentioned below) the duality of "secure, stable America" and our tendency to pay $10 on a weekend to watch gruesome torture with our neighbors and girlfriends.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

I tend to shy away from over-analysis. All I know is that I enjoy watching Steve Sutton, and it's certainly not because I'm laughing at him. He's just a guy. He's not grotesque, and he's not a freak.

Anyway, imomus, what happened to your fireside chats?

[thebestweapon.livejournal.com]

Some film student friends and I have been discussing this recently. To paraphrase / juxtapose those conversations and this one, "torture as popular entertainment would never be so widely accepted in the same America that produced Bob Ross." It really freaks me out.

As for the sense of "sterility, anomie, and sadness" inherent in Mr. Sutton's vlogs, I think that's deeply rooted in the work of North American filmmakers such as David Lynch or David Cronenberg, who both expertly dissected the danger - or, to be less over, "duality" - of the uniquely American sense of suburban safety.

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

It's funny - when I discuss the sociological dysfunction underlining splatter films and torture-porn like Saw, people seem to automatically assume I'm trying to ban the films. I have no idea where this particular meta-insecurity comes from.

[(Anonymous)]

What is torture porn?

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

I'd love for Bob Ross's America (or Jimmy Stewart's, or Jimmy Carter's, or Orson Welles') to suddenly reappear.

I won't hammer you for it. I have the same affliction. It gets worse as you get older - "why when I was a boy..."

And the neocons have built a platform on an idealized past that never existed.

I try not to look back and I try to focus on what's on the other side of this darkness.

But ahh the good old days... (http://www.ifilm.com/video/2816011)

[(Anonymous)]

I hate to say it, Momus, but you can thank Japan for that style of horror movie.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That's a perfectly valid point, and one I knew I was opening up to. In fact, the biggest film this week in Japan is Crows Episode 0 (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film/reviews/article_display.jsp?&rid=9988), a yakuza-in-high-school fight movie by Takashi Miike.

For an art project (http://www.2dk.net/urbanlenz/artists/e-Momus.html) I once extracted all the violence from a Takashi Miike film and exhibited what was left in a gallery. It was a scene, lasting approximately two minutes, of people sipping noodles.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

that was very much the intention in my amateur remix of The Ripper (http://akabe.livejournal.com/60757.html). (i'm shameless when it comes to promoting my ,ehm, music.)


and .. speaking of japan . i'm inclined to think that if you actually removed all the, ok, not violence, but intensity that is behind that violence you'd probably be left with little more than sipping noodles. (the type that are left too long in water that's just a few degrees below boiling point. )

[thebestweapon.livejournal.com]

Apologies for the typos (Georgia, overt), I'm just off from work and must go rest. I admire you both in extremely different ways, and it was a pleasure to take part in this discussion with you, though it may be a bit of a digression from Momus's original post.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Not at all, I thought you put the core case very well!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Of course, once a case like this is stated, it becomes at best a partial truth, and a dialectical turn begins. People start asking -- quite rightly -- whether flower arrangement is really more culturally valuable than "Macbeth".

[thebestweapon.livejournal.com]

Haha, indeed. Isn't the TV dinner a self-reflexive safety blanket? Cannot legitimate sterility be projected for/by itself, as a means of shelter against mass-pop-media displays of commodified torture? Isn't Mr. Sutton making use of the Internet in such a way that's truly radical?

As I said, I must rest, but the discussion is appreciated, and I always enjoy the read.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

flower arrangement is really more culturally valuable than "Macbeth

It is.

花らしい

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Hana has a soft, sad quality that contrasts with the mechanical, robotic sounding vocals. I remember a friend playing me Hana a while back, the video for it is excellent.

Anyone who enjoys Hana might also enjoy this track I've uploaded (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CAY71330) composed by Takayuki Aihara & Nobuyoshi Sano called "Route D". I'm sure a lot of music savy people read this blog, but I can almost guarantee none of you have heard it. Give it a listen, it's a beautiful track.

[anglerfish96.livejournal.com]

I never thought of looking for a video by them!

Thanks, I think I'll watch that again, now.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

there are a few asa chang collaborations out recently that i've been meaning to check out.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%82%8F%E3%81%9F%E3%81%97%E3%81%AE%E3%81%86%E3%81%9F-%E7%95%A0%E5%B1%B1%E7%BE%8E%E7%94%B1%E7%B4%80-ASA-CHANG-%E3%83%96%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BC%E3%83%8F%E3%83%83%E3%83%84/dp/B000UVXIGC/ref=sr_1_2/250-0953095-6431462?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1193758375&sr=1-2

[akabe.livejournal.com]

cigarette smoking hasn't looked so good on screen since the 90s movies of Hal Hartley

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think I wouldn't mind smoking so much if people did what they do in that video, ie pulled all the ambient smoke in a room into their lungs and left the air cleaner than they found it. They would still die, of course, but less selfishly.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

yes, i think that's exactly what us smokers will have to do in the near future. when there'll be no more cigarettes left we'll head to the freeways and factories and continue the good work. thereby future generations will remember us as the beautiful, sensitive souls we were.

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

not going to go too much into steve except that I think he is totally okay in most ways, and a model citizen of youtube--just his sheer daily output was a big inspiration for me back in the early vlogging days... he just needs a camera that isn't hardwired to his PC.

but i love those two Asa-Chang videos!!! especially the second one, the way it uses a 3-camera sitcom or game show setup for purposes very different (and the same) from typical "coverage". It's a performance!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I must say, Steve Sutton's Halloween vlog (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0sXk0aL9BfI) really brought home how cunning he is, and how he's really in showbiz. A sort of YouTube Bob Newhart, in fact.

[slime-slime-sly.livejournal.com]

[beketaten.livejournal.com]

But as I see it, though both forms of art and their perspectives have equal value, death IS the future! We're all headed there! Death = Life

[beketaten.livejournal.com]

oh, but yeah, GG Allin sucks and was interesting only as a trainwreck. But I do love me a good trainwreck.