imomus | Gorillas and bears

Gorillas and bears

Last week BBC Radio 4 transmitted a documentary about the great french singer-songwriter Georges Brassens (1921-1981), the man with the walrus moustache who shot to fame in France in 1953 with a rude song about a hanging judge and a randy gorilla. The 30 minute documentary is archived on the BBC's site in RealPlayer format:

The Man With The Famous Moustache

It's a good basic introduction to Brassens for English speakers. I talk about why Brassens has been important to me in a couple of essays:

The Electroacoustics of Humanism

Le Grand Jake (Jake Thackray obituary)

Prompted by an entry about Broadcast on Toog's blog, I've also been listening to broadcasts by Broadcast, perhaps in a spirit of nostalgia for that school of 90s 'cold wave' represented by Stereolab, Komeda, and The Sound Gallery as well as people like Portishead and Goldfrapp: that place where the Easy Listening revival was less about capturing the warmth of the Beach Boys (High Llamas etc) and more about evoking the Cold War vibe of 1960s spy thrillers scored by John Barry and Ennio Morricone, or BBC Radiophonics, or weird children's TV shows like The Singing, Ringing Tree, a spooky production from communist East Germany (Potsdam, actually, right outside Berlin) which seems to have supplied the inspiration for the Mark Wallinger exhibition 'Sleeper' currently running at the Neue Nationalgalerie at the Potsdamer Strasse here in Berlin.

Wallinger dresses up each night as a bear, which is the symbol of Berlin, and wanders around the glass cube of the Mies-designed Neue Nationalgalerie. He did the same in London for the opening of the Frieze Art Fair, which just finished yesterday.

Mark Wallinger dressed as a bear Quicktime stream (available from 22.00 into the small hours each night until October 22nd).

Going back to 90s Cold Wave (and of course Wallinger also came up in the 90s), what interests me is that a lot of the people making that music (and I was very marginally involved) have transitioned, since then, into making 'sinister folk music'. You can hear the transition happening in Broadcast's broadcasts; they're playing Stereolab-like 60s French and Italian electronic formalist pop by Roger Roger and others, but also folk tracks by Vashti Bunyan and Comus. Of course, St Etienne's Bob Stanley also made this switch from lounge to folk, and so did I, although it's odd that people like Stereolab didn't. These cultural shifts are fascinating, and even the people who make them can't quite explain why they do. It's just 'something in the air'.

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Indeed, though in some cases you have to wonder what else was in the air...

http://www.rossetta.com/patboone.htm

Stereolab went jazz. Any movement always loses a few to jazz ;-)

Stereolab got into the Brazilian tropicalista movement, which is totally apt for their socialist retro-modernism. For Broadcast, the move to acid folk was appropriate because of their abiding interest in psychedelia.

These explanations are square duvets -- they keep you warm, but never quite cover your feet. 'Socialist retro-modernism' decribes my 'Oskar Tennis Champion' album quite well -- there are songs about communists and slapstick odes to Walter Gropius. But that led me to electronic folk, not tropicalia

Point taken. Although I'm not sure that 'Oskar' is remotely folk. There's a big debate here about what genre represents. Your version of Marxism is paradoxically individualistic, whereas I think the 'lab find something in the Tropicalista which would not necessarily lead you there. Folk is also about a notion of community but it differs somehow. I don't have answers here. But I'm going to have a think about it.

Totally off topic, but I was wondering what your thoughts were on children and the begetting of them. Not that I want to have your babies or anything, just curious - as a man in your mid-forties you must have given it some thought. Please feel free to ignore my question if it's too personal.

Keiko

I can't afford children myself. My sister's pregnant again, though, and she's already got two, so she's making up for my indigence / recalcitrance. I'm enjoying being an uncle. As for being a father, I'm open to offers from very rich and beautiful women, preferably Japanese. I do think the sum total of beauty in the world should be increased whenever possible, and in some cases having children is a means to that end. I also like the idea of having 'late children'. No, not dead children, you sick Edward Gorey fans, I said late children.

The Gashlycrumb Tinies (http://www.wishville.co.uk/gorey/).

While it is well-known that female fertility declines with age as a result of impaired egg quality, researchers are finding that a similar reduction in fertility takes place in men. At the University of Washington, in Seattle, Narendra Singh and his colleagues found that as men age, the percentage of their sperm with highly damaged DNA increases. At the same time, apoptosis, or programmed cell death, of the damaged sperm becomes much less efficient, contributing to the increase of damaged sperm.

Sixty-six men between the ages of 20 and 57 participated. Forty of them were patients recruited from an infertility program and 26 were sperm donors or young men seeking to freeze their sperm. Potential subjects were excluded only for prostatitus, prior cancer treatment, or lack of sperm. All subjects’ semen samples were analyzed for standard semen quality parameters according to World Health Organization protocols. Portions of each semen sample were retained for sperm DNA analysis and apoptosis assessment.

The only age-related difference found in semen analysis results was that younger men had a much higher percentage of motile sperm than older men. Total number of sperm and sperm morphology (shape) were not affected by age.

DNA testing revealed that older men had a significantly greater percentage of sperm with highly damaged DNA than younger men. This finding stood, even when the age groups were configured differently- that is whether the dividing line was placed between 25 and 26, 35 and 36, or 43 and 44, the older group always had more DNA damage. At the same time, other testing found that apoptosis, the body’s mechanism for selecting out damaged sperm and eliminating them, becomes less efficient with age. The appearance of a subject’s sperm had no bearing on the degree of DNA damage it exhibited.

The researchers note that age is only one factor contributing to DNA damage in sperm; other environmental factors include cigarette smoking, alcohol and caffeine consumption, and chemical and radiation exposure.

Anthony Thomas, Jr., MD, President of the Society for Male Reproduction and Urology (SMRU) commented, “Unfortunately we can’t stop age, but men who are putting off fatherhood might want to consider their lifestyle choices to minimize their risk of infertility, or perhaps revise their timetables. It takes healthy sperm to make a healthy baby and with more research, we can perhaps determine how to best protect sperm from DNA damage.”

Singh et al, Effects of age on DNA double-strand breaks and apoptosis in human sperm, Fertility and Sterility, Vol.80, No.6, December 2003.

Thank you, Charles. I'm just picturing you sitting there in the Kensington Library copying that all out of Fertility and Sterility magazine painstakingly before making your way to the internet cafe.

Whatever. At least the information I'm copying doesn't contain severe errors, unlike the gametes of someone I could mention.

Thank you for this posting, I have not thought of Brassens recently.

I do not comment often, but I must tell you I enjoy reading your LJ. Thank you!

Yes, Brassens is perhaps one of the strongest (and strangest) singers/authors in the last 50 years. There is one song, though, that I cannot listen to: Corne d'Auroch - it is just horrible. But all the rest is so fantastic!

Thanks for your posts, and for the essays!

This is incidental, and going down only one of many possible paths, but... I've long had this fantasy of being on a hippy caravan in 1968, on the road to the Ganges, the Haight, or the Inner Hebrides. We're led by Donovan in a caftan with an ostrich-feather print, carrying a psychedically painted acoustic guitar, but there's Mary Hopkin before she was tainted by Paul McCartney, with her long blonde hair in St. Lucia braids, and over there Steve Peregrine Took and members of Pentangle or Steeleye Span, herding the patchouli-scented goats and chasing the naked children--and now I realize Vashti Bunyan must have been there, too, daisy tiara, barefoot,tootling on a recorder. Thanks for making the introductions, Momus, and now I know I have yet more music to consume. For a wannabe knowitall like myself, it's good to be reminded I know nexttonothing and "Open Road" and "Earth Song/Ocean Song" are at the end of the trip, not the beginning.

Oh, yes, and there's nothing like the tonic of Edward Gorey.

That exhibition looks wonderful, i hope he takes it to more locations.

Devendra Banhart, who I think has been making some sinister folk himself, has Vashti singing with him on his last album.

I loved and listened to these bands in the 90s and since, but this year I have listened almost exclusively to folk and traditional song. Martin Carthy, Shirley Collins, John Renborn, old British field recordings etc etc.
I've also started going to a folk club in Euston (London) where ordinary people in their 50s and 60s get up and sing beautiful unaccompanied songs. I've been blown away by this music and all the storys that go with it.
A folky now forever.
Frances

http://www.transistorsix.co.uk

That club sounds amazing, Frances. I remember going to a pub in Arbroath once where celtic fiddlers were playing and feeling transported to some other age. Liked your 'Neasen Poisoners' track on your website, by the way! Spooky!

That sounds great. Can you tell me where to find it? Thanks

"switch from lounge to folk, and so did I, although it's odd that people like Stereolab didn't."

For the duration of the last track on SoundDust they almost went folk...too much of that medieval fair music sound ala Brigitte Fontaine "Vous Et Nous" being implied...damn it if they would have only had pipes, zithers, and skindrums tweaked from their Moogs it would have been the ultimate transition into folk. lost lost lost. margarine is fake butter.

OK, I'm totally fascinated by that "Sleeper" poster! Is this something that's available on DVD...?

Singing Ringing Tree DVD (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00004YS9R/103-4263172-0931868?v=glance) (I'm pretty sure the Sleeper poster is a still from it).

The folk club is called the cellar upstairs, it has a website here:
http://hometown.aol.co.uk/cellarupstairs/

They usually have a guest then regular singers who tend to be as good or better than the guest. Martin Carthy is playing this weekend so it will probably be busier than usual. Glad you enjoyed my music.
Frances

when you write do you write with FULL HISTORICAL AWARENESS OF THE TYPE OF PERSON YOU WANT FUTURE INTELLECTUALS TO SEE YOU AS?

MEIN GOTT IN HIMMEL!

stands at attention,
tomas

i mean, what if they publish THE WRITTEN DIALOGUES OF MOMUS, SCRIBE OF THE TWENTY FIRST (second? i don't know.) CENTURY.

with a little image of you on the front, etc.

do you write with intention for the future or what?

will your very reply to this be dripping with significance? you whelp!

"away with him! send him to the dungeons!"

-tomas

p.s. i'm warning you, this COULD be a written test.

its pretty easy to become a knight in momus' service!

-your young squire

on a different level
is your icon of a tiny momus character in the place where a little angel or devil would normally go?

the young upstart!
you know what i'd like to do with young whippersnappers like you!

-tomas

My dear sir, I see the drugs in 2006 are much more powerful than anything we have today. I have therefore renounced all my claims upon posterity. Have a nice trip!

i don't mean the icon that you use to reply to people with....

i mean the one of you in the grey shirt with the little you standing on your shoulder.

what do you mean you have renounced claims upon posterity?

i'm going to sleep.

besides, my comments were mostly sincere and only intended to make you laugh, not to make you dismiss me as a drug addict.

i guess i was aware that they might annoy you also.

primitive disorienteering, perhaps?

just wasting time until tardive dyskinesia sets in.

-tomas

Darn, the quicktime stream link is dead. Do you know if this has been -- or would you be willing to post -- on YouTube?

I'm enjoying your commentary; got here through the Japanese woman imitating the hamster, obviously.

Well, perhaps not so obviously, but trust me. :)

I think the stream only lasted as long as the performance. I've checked YouTube and there's no record of Wallinger's bear days, alas.

Well, thank you for looking! I have posted (http://ankhorite.livejournal.com/46995.html) using your photobucket image; I hope that's all right -- if not, I'll either pull it off, or mount it somewhere else, whichever you prefer.

I assure you, my minuscule readership won't tilt your photobucket usage at all. *sigh* Thanks again for checking on the Wallinger work; I'm sorry to have missed it. And thanks for your insightful remarks about these works.

It's fine to hotlink to the Photobucket image -- they don't charge me by bandwidth.

I sort of agree with you that Sako's motives, as outlined by her, are not best served by the performance she put on. But it's what we "serious art people" call the Intentional Fallacy to pay too much intention to what artists say they mean.

Ah! Thank you for the lesson. :)

Argh, I meant "pay too much attention", not "pay too much intention", obviously! Slip of the sleepy brain.

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Gorillas and bears

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Brassens

Pioneers of fake folk

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folk

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folk

hahaha

today i'm going to follow my tinnitus sound around

guess which conceit of yours i'm copying with this comment!

sincerely

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Wallinger as Bear

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Re: Wallinger as Bear / Intentional Fallacy

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