Alice, Uovo, mongoloids and meat

[imomus]

Hisae and I went last night to a launch party for the new Berlin offices of Uovo magazine, which happen to be directly below where my Berlin record label, Bungalow, used to be ten years ago.



We managed to miss the Davide Balula performance (though we chatted with him awhile) because we had to rush off to see the performance Ujino Muneteru was giving in a warehouse in Mitte.

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Muneteru uses drills and mixers and hairdryers and things to produce "domestic-industrial" sound. He also has turntables rotating physical objects which produce rhythm loops, and rigs up smashed vehicles (a Trabi and a truck, last night) with chandeliers and blinking lights. His work reminded me of Pierre Bastien's:

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Tonight we're having a food-and-film supper, projecing for Japanese neighbours a recent NHK programme about Japan's food self-sufficiency -- or lack of it. NHK shows what the average Japanese supermarket would look like emptied of food not grown in Japan; pretty threadbare! They also make two men live on a diet of Japanese-only food for a week. They soon get pretty bored -- there isn't even any soy sauce!

After the NHK doc we're showing Our Daily Bread, the award-winning 2005 commentary-free documentary showing (with stunning Andreas Gursky-like photography) the industrial processes of food production usually hidden from the consuming public:

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Ever since having vegans Joe and Emma to stay, Hisae and I have cut way down on our meat consumption. We both used to be vegetarians at one point (me for four years). It's interesting to see headlines in today's papers relaying advice from the UN Climate Change panel saying that eating less meat could temper the ill effects of global warming.

Finally, here's my favourite pop song of the week, discovered in Polypunk 34, the latest DJ mix from Digiki. It's Schneider TM's take on Popchor Berlin's take on Devo's classic satire Mongoloid (which I bought in 1977 when it first came out as a single, c/w Jocko Homo -- I was a teenage Devo fan, naturally!).

Mongoloid (Schneider TM's take on Popchor Berlin's cover)

Schneider TM's version came out in 2007; here's Popchor's a capella version, from 2004. But wait, can that chronology be right? Because if you listen carefully you can hear the Schneider TM version spilling from Popchor Berlin's cans.

The Wikipedia entry on the song says, cautiously: "Although it is a positive song (a rarity for DEVO at the time of the song's recording), it has received much criticism due to its controversial title. Alternatively it is an ironic song referring to the level of intellect and education of the average American being equivalent to a mongoloid, so that he was undetectable in modern American society."

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Finally, a rather spookily addictive song someone called Pogo has made using only sounds sampled from Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" -- a film I've never seen, by the way, and never will; I absolutely don't accept Disney's right to have made it in the first place. I do, though, accept the right of someone to cut up the Disney version for scrap and samples. Which raises an interesting spectre: that some of us are encountering recontextualised appropriationist art without having experienced the original contexts in the first place. How do we know how much of what we're responding to is Pogo's and how much is Disney's? It's a bit like eating a vegan burger that simulates meat just a wee bit too well.

Comments

[cutup.livejournal.com]

Oh c'mon - go see Alice in Wonderland. For a while Disney was actually pretty awesome.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

"NEVER!" said the Mad Hatter (depicted by Tenniel or, failing that, Svankmajer or Jonathan Miller (http://imomus.livejournal.com/363991.html)).

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with this sentiment. What Disney has become is really awful (http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=UprhO7NY0ms), but to deny Disney the respect it deserves for creating some of the greatest examples of pop culture of all time is just unfair.



Without Disney, there would be no Tezuka Osamu, there would be no anime and manga as we know it today.

I also really like that Alice in wonderland song by Pogo.

lol vegan sausage

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

Well, Momus, I'll keep you in mind as an option for the sexiest vegetarian poll next year, though you're still behind Little Richard, Nick Rhodes, Adam Ant and Morrissey in the men's list, sry2say.

electricwitch and momus

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

Re: lol vegan sausage

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

omg speaking of adam ant lolol i know someone whose cousin dated adam ant and we're still waiting for her to call and say how good he was in bed etc etc idk i'm pretty excited

[insomnia.livejournal.com]

I think it's fair to say it's a completely original work that only borrows some of the general tone to "Alice's" voice...

As such, I would recommend downloading it, as I expect cease & desist notices soon.

[(Anonymous)]

Parasite! That was the word I was looking for.

[harveyjames.livejournal.com]

You should know what the things in your underpants are called by now, surely.

[harveyjames.livejournal.com]

Great post! I read it while I ate dinner.

[gillen.livejournal.com]

He's created a Björk track.

[bricology.livejournal.com]

"Ever since having vegans Joe and Emma to stay, Hisae and I have cut way down on our meat consumption."

Going vegan is one of the few (and best) revolutionary acts available which requires neither ill manners nor conformist dressing. Difficult to do in Japan or the Netherlands, but easy in the US (and perhaps in Berlin?)

[robinsonner.livejournal.com]

Of course walking must be in that "few" too.
Don't you think revolutionary gives resistance a bad press though?

[cheapgreens.livejournal.com]

yes, very easy in berlin. unfortunately much more difficult in aberdeen where we are now living. not difficult enough to give it up though!

[violet-hemlock.livejournal.com]

You are lookin pretty MIAMI VICE up there in that pic...LOL

[robinsonner.livejournal.com]

I think he looks sexy but that says way too much about me.
Its the unexpected.

[(Anonymous)]

If only the world would hurry up and run out of natural gas, then we could shut down these massive commercial farms and solve the overpopulation problem.

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

Hmm, when I hear people come out with things like 'not eating meat will save the planet' (my paraphrasing) I can't help think of Joe's garage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe's_Garage)....

synopsis:
"Desperate nerds in high offices all over the world have been known to
enact the most disgusting pieces of legislation in order to win votes
(or, in places where they don't get to vote, to control unwanted forms of
mass behavior).
Environmental laws were not passed to protect our air and water...
they were passed to get votes. Seasonal anti-smut campaigns are not
conducted to rid our communities of moral rot...they are conducted to give
an aura of saintliness to the office-seekers who demand them. If a few
key phrases are thrown into any speech (as the expert advisors explain to
these various heads of state) votes will roll in, bucks will roll in, and, most
importantly, power will be maintained by the groovy guy (or gal) who gets
the most media coverage for his sleaze. Naturally, his friends in various
businesses will do okay too.
All governments perpetuate themselves through the daily commission of act
which a rational person might find to be stupid or dangerous (or both). Naturally,
our government is no exception... for instance, if the President (any one of them)
went on TV and sat there with the flag in the background (or maybe a rustic
scene on a little backdrop, plus the flag) and stared sincerely into the camera
and told everybody that all energy problems and all inflationary problems had been
traced to and could be solved by the abolition of MUSIC, chances are that most
people would believe him and think that the illegalization of this obnoxious form of
noise pollution would be a small price to pay for the chance to buy gas like the good
ol' days. No way? Never happen? Records are made out of oil. All those big rock
shows go from town to town in fuel-gobbling 45 foot trucks...and when they get there,
they use up enormous amounts of electrical energy with their lights, their amplifiers,
their PA systems...their smoke machines. And all those synthesizers...look at all
the plastic they got in 'em...and the guitar picks...you name it...

JOE'S GARAGE is a stupid story about how the government is going to try to do away
with music (a prime cause of unwanted mass behavior! It's sort of like a really cheap
kind of high school play...the way it might have been done 20 years ago, with all the sets
made out of cardboard boxes and poster paint. It's also like those lectures that local
narks used to give (where they show you a display of all the different ways you can get
wasted, with the pills leading to the weed leading to the needle, etc., etc.).

If the plot of the story seems just a little bit preposterous, and if the idea of The Central
Scrutinizer enforcing laws that haven't been passed yet makes you giggle, just be glad
you don't live in one of the cheerful little countries where, at this very moment, music is
either severely restricted...or, as it is in Iran, totally illegal."

[crowjake.livejournal.com]

God i truly adore all the music on here today! I love this and yesterday's post.

A' la disney... I prefer Dumbo... who's soundtrack is outstanding, and way more experimental. The white-feather symbolism is interesting seeing as it was released during ww2. It was strung together and rushed which somehow makes it feel more sincere. I like that it is set in america... it's almost disney/america looking in for once. And the basic fable in the plot is loveleh.

I love that you said "wee bit too well" --- that made your Scottish cyber-accent just thicken ten fold.

[shadowshark.livejournal.com]

The most interesting/'experimental' Disney soundtrack is definitely Bambi's, and not just because the principal composer killed himself a few months after completing it.

Listen to "I Bring You A Song" again. And that freaking raindrops song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJZnIHwzvzM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00u1OiQ_KY4

mongoloid synchronicity

[(Anonymous)]

Funny, just last night I went to a Bruce Conner film watching party, and after seeing his short film for Mongoloid twice through I woke up with that tune running through my mind this morning.. I check Click Opera today, and (of course) you've written about the song as well...



I don't know, first you blog about Google StreetView Japan the same day I discover it on my own, and now this.. there's something fishy about this Click Opera! i just can't quite put my finger on what it is...

Jonathan

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

MC Sniper "Better Than Yesterday"

I can't go for a walk in Korea without hearing this blaring from cell phone stores, restaurants, etc. The sample is really obvious (so obvious, in fact, I'm surprised it hadn't been done yet), but incredibly infectious. Such a summer jam.

[(Anonymous)]

damn I've been pavloved! I'm sitting here drooling on my keyboard waiting for the next click opera.

[(Anonymous)]

It may be your iconic-aholic.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm surprised you go for all that global warming stuff. Do you simply defer to the experts in these matters?

[bongo-kong.livejournal.com]

>>I absolutely don't accept Disney's right to have made it in the first >>place.

Rockist? Not that old chestnut again!

Haven't you even seen "The Jungle Book"? Maybe you should watch the Disney version then straight after watch the Soviet version that was released in the same year. Then, if you're not too bored, watch the Japanese anime version. Which one is best? Fight.....

[noskating.livejournal.com]

you don't accept disney's right to have made the movie???? what???

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Seven exclamation marks! One for each dwarf in Snow White!