upcoming events at hallwalls contemporary arts center, buffalo, ny;
other local listings; sundry filler material
Friday, May 30, 2008
It used to be a good hotel, but that proves nothing. I used to be a good boy. — Mark Twain
The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it. — P.J. O'Rourke
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. — Krishnamurti
Success is not forever, and failure is not fatal. — Don Shula
Installations, roaming performers, roaming models, live music, burlesque, and Ike's Barbecue, all in one place. Artvoice Preview Lucy Yau
Not many installations are complete as of this writing, but here's a short video of the first work installed at the Central Terminal, as Ani Hoover continues to show circles who's the boss....
Here's my colleague Carolyn Tennant rocking her badass touque at the beginning of our sentry duty this week...
Stephanie Koenig builds her cozy pirate ship...
Lewis Colburn sets up his war room...
And Lorna Mills' shape-shifting kitties are in the house...
But living your Artists & Models experience through an art blog can hardly be called living. So we'll see you tomorrow night, 9pm to 2am at the Central Terminal.
One Week Later—June 7
and on July 26... Karma Cab Boa Hallwalls 2008 Members Exhibition It’s an anagram for “Barack Obama.” Which doesn’t mean the title requires a politically-themed submission or a portrait of the O-Man, though both are welcome. As always, you can ignore the theme. (But you must be a dues-paying Hallwalls member to participate—this you cannot ignore.) You might consider whether or not we are about to turn and face the ch-ch-changes. Is it karma, a generational shift, the beginning of a new direction for the pendulum? Is he a snake, spewing snake oil, a new boss the same as the old boss? And what of the cab? Is our meter running? Are we stuck in traffic? Or does the driver know the shortcuts? DROP OFF DATES BEGIN JULY 19
and on June 25 & 26, Finley On Spitzer “It’s a play, it’s a work of art, it’s not Encyclopaedia Britannica. I’m using these characters as a way to access the human experience of living through grief and all the turmoils of trying to know one’s soul.” NY Times Cityroom blog Photo: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
Opening Elsewhere • Kristina and Cindy Wentzell at redFish opening Fri, May 30, 7-10pm (thru July 23) • Buffalo Society of Artists Annual Spring Exhibition at Insite opening Fri, June 13, 7-9pm (thru July 26) • JOnathan Rogers at Gateway Studio Fri, May 30, 7-10pm LOcust Street's 48th Annual Art Show with DJ Poppa, 2-5pm Diane Gail-Meldrum at Rust Belt opening Sun, June 1, 3-6pm
Continuing Elsewhere • Geoffrey Alan Rhodes at Big Orbit thru June 28 Artvoice Yau • Michael Veit at the Castellani thru Sept 14 • Barbara Baird at Studio hart thru June 16 Patrick Robideau at SPACES (Cleveland) thru July 6 • Nancy Treherne Craig at Meibohm (E. Aurora) thru May 31 • Jennifer Steinkamp at the Albright thru June 29 • Ellen Carey at Nina Freudenheim thru June 25 Buff News Dabkowski • Gerald Mead at UB Anderson thru June 1 Artvoice Yau • Catherine Parker at Charles Burchfield Nature & Art Center thru June 29 • Raleigh J. Spinks at Art Dialogue thru June 6 Artvoice Einach • Douglas M. Bauer at Artsphere thru June 7 • Lawrence Badgery at Kenan Center thru June 29 • The Imaginary Line at Buffalo Arts Studio thru Aug 9 • Impact Artists Gallery Annual Members Exhibition thru June 20 • Julian Montague at Socrates Sculpture Park thru Aug 3 • Edollia at Quaker Bonnet thru Mar 31 • Unpacking at Artspace thru June 14 Buff News Dabkowski • Jeffrey Vincent, Peter Fowler, Colleen Cunningham, Gerald Mead, Elizabeth leader, Dorothy Fitzgerald, Joseph Verrastro, Neil Mahar, Dario Mohr at College Street Gallery thru June 13 • Gruppen Werks 003 at Cosmopolitan Gallery thru June 7 • Trash & Treasure and Viktoria Ciostek at Buffalo Big Print thru June 7 • Ralph Siriani at the Arts Council thru June 13 • Shadi Nazarian at UB Art Gallery re-opens to the public July 1—July 25 • Tony Paterson at the Center for Inquiry thru May 31 • Josh Dorman at Mary Ryan Gallery (NY) thru June 21 • Diane Baker at Globe Market thru May 31 • Diane Bakerat The Mansion on Delaware (indefinitely)
Your Guide To Aggressive Common Sense For the next several weeks, we'll continue to work our way through the alphabet and consider some definitions extracted fromThe Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense by John Ralston Saul. We're up to the letter R...
REALITY You should not, as the Washington hostess Alice Rossevelt Longworth pointed out, trust any balding man who combs his hair up from his armpit over the top of his head. Or rather, it is the considered opinion of most members of our rational elites that, in any given difference of opinion with reality, reality is wrong. "On a recent afternoon in his Beverly Hills office, he held up digital renderings of the two buildings, the geisha’s face from Blade Runner superimposed on their facades." NY Times Rebecca Cathcart
Harvey Korman 1927—2008 If the only thing he'd ever done was play Hedley Lamar in Blazing Saddles, one of my favorite comedies, his passing would be worth mentioning. But he was a great comic actor for long time and was consistently good, even if he always seemed to be playing subtly different version of the same character. Not to mention that he was also among the most egregious actor-offenders of breaking character in a skit by not being able to contain his own laughter—which happened with regularity, so much so that his inability to contain himself became its own long-running piece of performance art. Sometimes it was the thing that saved a sketch from its own mediocrity and made it hysterically funny. You would swear that Tim Conway had implanted a remote-controlled electrode directly into Korman's funny bone. NY Times obit
Something I listened to this week... Another perennial for me, can't let too much time go by before I listen to it again. I miss Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell, though Buddy Miles is hardly a consolation prize and, with bassist Buddy Cox both old friends of Hendrix, the result is a super smooth and funky concoction that's both loose and tight simultaneously. Band of Gypsies marked the moment when Hendrix decided he was no longer going to rely on theatrics—burning his guitar, playing behind his head, with his teeth, etc—and chose to simply stand more or less still on stage and just play. The result is hearing Hendrix get deeper into his grooves and crafting an utterly infectious sound. Not as raucous as his earlier work with the Experience, it has an ethereal quality that his ealier band didn't approach. It's also the album that hints at what compelling directions Hendrix might have gone had he no died so young. Sigh.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. — Martin Luther King Jr.
Friday, May 23, 2008
When spiders unite they can tie down a lion. —Ethiopian proverb
Government is not reason. It is a force, like a fire; a dangerous servant and a terrible master. — George Washington
A computer is like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy. — Joseph Campbell
If you can’t beat ‘em, arrange to have them beaten. — George Carlin
Hallwalls in MAY May 31 • Artists & Models: UNHINGED For times, ticket prices, and futher details, see Hallwalls May Calendar
One Week Later—June 7
and on July 26... Karma Cab Boa Hallwalls 2008 Members Exhibition It’s an anagram for “Barack Obama.” Which doesn’t mean the title requires a politically-themed submission or a portrait of the O-Man, though both are welcome. As always, you can ignore the theme. (But you must be a dues-paying Hallwalls member to participate—this you cannot ignore.) You might consider whether or not we are about to turn and face the ch-ch-changes. Is it karma, a generational shift, the beginning of a new direction for the pendulum? Is he a snake, spewing snake oil, a new boss the same as the old boss? And what of the cab? Is our meter running? Are we stuck in traffic? Or does the driver know the shortcuts? DROP OFF DATES BEGIN JULY 19 and on June 25 & 26, Finley On Spitzer “It’s a play, it’s a work of art, it’s not Encyclopaedia Britannica. I’m using these characters as a way to access the human experience of living through grief and all the turmoils of trying to know one’s soul.” NY Times Cityroom blog Photo: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
Opening Elsewhere • Buffalo Society of Artists Annual Spring Exhibition at Insite opening Fri, June 13, 7-9pm (thru July 26) • Poetry and Artwork of Healing at Starl ight Studio Thurs May 29, 5:30-7:30pm
Continuing Elsewhere • Geoffrey Alan Rhodes at Big Orbit thru June 28 • Michael Veit at the Castellani thru Sept 14 • Barbara Baird at Studio hart thru June 16 Patrick Robideau at SPACES (Cleveland) thru July 6 • Nancy Treherne Craig at Meibohm (E. Aurora) thru May 31 • Jennifer Steinkamp at the Albright thru June 29 • Ellen Carey at Nina Freudenheim thru June 25 Buff News Dabkowski • Gerald Mead at UB Anderson thru June 1 Artvoice Yau • Catherine Parker at Charles Burchfield Nature & Art Center thru June 29 • Raleigh J. Spinks at Art Dialogue thru June 6 Artvoice Einach • Douglas M. Bauer at Artsphere thru June 7 • Lawrence Badgery at Kenan Center thru June 29 • The Imaginary Line at Buffalo Arts Studio thru Aug 9 • Impact Artists Gallery Annual Members Exhibition thru June 20 • Julian Montague at Socrates Sculpture Park thru Aug 3 • Jennifer Contini, Amber Maida at Redfish Studios (E. Aurora) thru May 26 • Edollia at Quaker Bonnet thru Mar 31 • Kate Kennedy at El Museo thru May 24 • Unpacking at Artspace thru June 14 Buff News Dabkowski • Jeffrey Vincent, Peter Fowler, Colleen Cunningham, Gerald Mead, Elizabeth leader, Dorothy Fitzgerald, Joseph Verrastro, Neil Mahar, Dario Mohr at College Street Gallery thru June 13 • Gruppen Werks 003 at Cosmopolitan Gallery thru June 7 • Trash & Treasure and Viktoria Ciostek at Buffalo Big Print thru June 7 • Ralph Siriani at the Arts Council thru June 13 • Shadi Nazarian at UB Art Gallery re-opens to the public July 1—July 25 • Tony Paterson at the Center for Inquiry thru May 31 • Rita Argen Auerbach, George Palmer at Insite thru May 27 Buff News • Sam Francisat UB Anderson Gallery thru May 25 • Josh Dorman at Mary Ryan Gallery (NY) thru June 21 • Diane Baker at Globe Market thru May 31 • Elizabeth Leaderat CG Jung Center thru May 23 • Diane Bakerat The Mansion on Delaware (indefinitely)
We Have A WINNER: Most Ambiguous Listing Of The Week.... "I am putting some new work up at that bar called staples (across from nietzsche's, next to hardware) in allentown—in the back room there...right now i already have some paintings up there that are done on Pano's old tabletops and windows, but i will be putting new paintings and prints up in place of the ones already sold...i guess it's not really a show, but more like a jax deluca yard sale..."
Your Guide To Aggressive Common Sense For the next several weeks, we'll continue to work our way through the alphabet and consider some definitions extracted fromThe Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense by John Ralston Saul. We're up to the letter P...
PENIS All organized societies are dedicated to controlling the use of this remarkable insrument. Yet the cultures of these same societies, whether through fiction, film, advertising, social mythology, even jokes, are devoted to praising the penis as innately uncontrollable.
PESSIMISM A valuable protection against quackery. Of greater use to the individual than skepticism, which slips easily into cynicism and so becomes a self-defeating negative force. Pessimism is a conscious filter which disarms ideologues and frees us to act in a practical manner. PRAETORIAN GUARD See "White House Staff."
PUBLIC RELATIONS A negative form of imagination. In Mussolini's phrase, "invention is more useful than truth."
"Instead of subjecting herself to a long wait and another possible defeat, she could don one of those roomy black robes, make a potentially ineradicable impact on the course of the republic—and never again have to worry about being liked." This was an immensely intriguing op-ed piece in the Washington Post. A cogent argument, a compelling resolution, and a notion I hadn't heard anyone float yet. Took me completely by surprise and made good sense. I can already see the lightning bolts and the word "Booyeah!" sewn on the arms of the robe. Washington Post Bruce Adams Website
"...history tends to hetero-wash whenever possible...." In his Artsbeat blog this past week, Colin Dabkowski of The Buffalo News was pretty excited by a recent posting by Tyler Green. Green was writing about the reluctance of critics eulogizing Robert Rauschenberg to mention his homosexuality. I noticed this as well, in passing, as I read the Times obit and Kimmelman referred to the close relationship of Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Green really takes everyone to town ("It's a completely well-deserved bloodfest. Read if you dare," says Colin) and it's a point well taken, particularly given that it's the 21st century and the history of art, and especially 20th century art, owes no small portion of its creativity and success to gay artists and gay culture. I thought Green's posting was pretty astute—he correctly cites all the critics who hedged on the sexuality question, he had solid rationale for his argument, and he used the hilariously brilliant phrase "hetero-wash," which was pure gold. But Green's posting led me to the other obituaries and particularly to Jed Perl of The New Republic. I always love a good contrarian and Perl ponies up the contentious goods:
"For all I know, Rauschenberg's has been a life well lived. As for his art, it stank in the 1950s and it doesn't look any better today...Of the dead, speak no evil. But of the works of the dead, it seems to me that we have a perfect right to say whatever we think...I cannot see that there is any poetry or power in Rauschenberg's work, not even in the Combines of the 1950s and 60s...I find no mysterious or striking qualities about the tire that is hung around the midriff of the goat in Monogram...The sum effect of his Combines—not to mention the nearly endless silk-screen thingamajigs of more recent years--is a zero."
Perl goes on: "Isn't part of what attracts people to this kind of act the suspicion that what they are seeing is a magnificent fraud? Doesn't the public draw closer because they are fascinated by the performer's ability to confuse and mislead? Rauschenberg's chutzpah—the man painted, sculpted, danced, choreographed, designed sets, even composed music—opened up the possibilities that are now being mined by contemporary con-artists such as Damien Hirst, Mike Kelley, and Jeff Koons." None of this much offends me. Rauschenberg doesn't really move me (Warhol moves me), but I am fine with giving the man his props and his place in the pantheon or the lineage or wherever you prefer to stack him. I'm also fine with Perl putting Rauschenberg on the chopping block and dicing him up for his own posterity stew. But I thought it was pretty funny that he framed "magnificent fraud" as some sort of put-down. Or "contemporary con artists." Last time I checked, this is ALL illusory, or was I not copied on a memo? And con artists? Con artists are called that because they are selling you confidence in the illusion they are peddling. Those seem like factual descriptions to me.
Besides, Magnificent Fraud would look splendid carved on a tombstone.
"Speaking for myself, my unease has to do with her all too frequent use of the imperative voice, which arguably gives participants in her interactive works no choice but to obey her commands." artnet Cone
"You have seen these eyes before, in Chagall’s large birds, in erotic miniatures of the Punjab, in Max Beckmann’s sadistic shamans." artnet Finch
"Her swoony weightlessness is sprouting roots and gaining gravity. She is painting and drawing more from life." artnet Saltz
"I once joked with a Brit writer at the Art Basel Miami Beach solstice that I could teach 20th-century art history in four words: 'Duchamp won, Picasso lost.'" artnet Croak
Something I listened to this week... From Trent Reznor, the man with no record contract, creating with impunity and getting it out to you, the listening public. Not quite the album I would have expected from NIN, who I saw live back in 1991 at the first Lollapalooza tour—alongside Ice-T(awesome), Rollins Band(very good), Siouxie and the Banshees(forgettable, as always), LIving Color(no recollection), Violent Femmes(very fine, as always), Butthole Surfers(!!!), and Jane's Addiction(ridiculously awesome). In that lineup, amid more than a few ferocious sonic assaults, NIN still managed to stand out and carve their own raging niche. Ghosts is a really beautiful album from Reznor—quiet, experimental, symphonic, ambient, it really swerves through a landscape of alluring sounds. Go here for a free 9-song download or 36 tracks and 40-page pdf of album artwork for $5.
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before... He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. — Kurt Vonnegut
Friday, May 16, 2008
“I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop.”
“I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.”
“Anything you do will be an abuse of somebody else’s aesthetics. I think you’re born an artist or not. I couldn’t have learned it. And I hope I never do because knowing more only encourages your limitations.” “Screwing things up is a virtue...Being correct is never the point. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”
— Robert Rauschenberg
Crash of the Titan When you're hoisting a beer this weekend, how about one for Robert Rauschenberg? He went to art school on the G.I. Bill and became one of the most important names in 20th century art. There's your tax dollars hard at work. NY Times obit
Hallwalls in MAY May 16 • Douglas Ewart Ensemble (music) May 17 • Open Music Ensemble: Asheboro Wake (music) May 31 • Artists & Models: UNHINGED For times, ticket prices, and futher details, see Hallwalls May Calendar
Douglas Ewart Ensemble Fri, May 16, 8pm @ HW $10 general, $8 members/students/seniors Douglas R. Ewart (sopranino sax, flutes, didjeridu, homemade instruments, compositions) Verneice Turner (voice) • Rey Scott (baritone/soprano sax, oboe, flute) • Steve Baczkowski (baritone/tenor sax, clarinets, didjeridu) • Greg Horn (trumpet) • Odell Northington (contrabass) • Greg Piontek (contrabass, cello) • Greg Millar (guitar) • Ringo Brill (djembe, congas, percussion) • Ravi Padmanabha (drums, tabla, dolek, sarangi, percussion) Hallwalls Music
Open Music Ensemble: Ashboro Wake Sat, May 17, 8pm @ HW Hallwalls Music
May 31—Mark Your Calendars
One Week Later—June 7
and on July 26... Karma Cab Boa Hallwalls 2008 Members Exhibition It’s an anagram for “Barack Obama.” Which doesn’t mean the title requires a politically-themed submission or a portrait of the O-Man, though both are welcome. As always, you can ignore the theme. (But you must be a dues-paying Hallwalls member to participate—this you cannot ignore.) You might consider whether or not we are about to turn and face the ch-ch-changes. Is it karma, a generational shift, the beginning of a new direction for the pendulum? Is he a snake, spewing snake oil, a new boss the same as the old boss? And what of the cab? Is our meter running? Are we stuck in traffic? Or does the driver know the shortcuts? DROP OFF DATES BEGIN JULY 19
Opening Elsewhere • Lawrence Badgery at Kenan Center opening Fri, May 16, 7-9pm (thru June 29) • The Imaginary Line at Buffalo Arts Studio opening Sat, May 17, 7-10pm (thru • Impact Artists Gallery Annual Members Exhibition opening Sat, May 17, 7-9pm (thru June 20) • Ellen Carey at Nina Freudenheim opening Sat, May 17, 6-8pm (thru June 25) Buff News Dabkowski
The Free Translators @ SW Sat, May 17, 8pm "In a world that invents and facilitates endless methods and technologies for successful communication, The Free Translators happily construe known grammars and vocabularies in favor of the barely heard and the incomprehensible with the purpose of uniting thepolitical and poetic in language. Culling from a multitude of conflated narratives, The Free Translators present a program of video screenings deliberately complicating the textual content of our everyday lives and dedicated to the idea that multiple translations continually unhinge single meanings."
Media Art Regrant Screening @ Carnegie Sat, May 17, 7:30pm featuring Andrew Keleman, Carl Lee, Lauren Sonnenberg
Call for Small Work • May 23 Deadline Only one week left to crank out a wee work to support the Rochester Contemporary...come on, you can do it! Rochester Contemporary
FishNet...sorry, no stockings... Canadian Art should do an article about York Quay Gallery and its Director/Curator Pat Macaulay who for the past several years, in the shadow of über-hipster joint The Power Plant, has quietly and persistently been rocking the casbah with innovative programming and exciting artists. YQG was actually the first contemporary art gallery on Toronto's waterfront, named The Art Gallery at Harbourfront, founded by Anita Aarons, one of the great Canadian art-dames of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. As Harbourfront developed into a family-friendly fun zone and official art world cool moved into The Power Plant, York Quay Gallery seemed for a time more like an offshoot of the craft studios with which it shares a building. (I took a glass blowing workshop there one weekend and almost popped a lung trying to blow a tiny air bubble into a glob of molten glass, though I have to say that spinning hot glass on a rod until it flops into something resembling a plate was an adrenelin rush of the highest magnitude.) But over the past decade plus under Macaulay, York Quay Gallery has grown ever more interesting and innovative. Many contemporary artists in Toronto have exhibited or worked on projects there and Macaulay has managed to balance a challenging and creative program without alienating the family and tourist trade. Every media gets play at York Quay and there's even room for artists' garden projects on the exterior grounds. No mean feat.
In a phrase popular when I was in grade school, and which Anitra Hamilton tried to help me revive a few years ago (to no avail), "Way to be!"
Opening May 3 and running thru June 22 York Quay will exhibit FishNet: The Great Lakes Craft and Release Project , "a two-part project comprised of a *craft phase* and a *release phase*, transforms textile fish into real fish. The heart of the *crafting phase* centres on 26 Toronto based schools each building a regionally specific school of textile fish and researching and sharing information about their species on the FishNet project web site projectfishnet. The *release phase* occurs when Harbourfront Centre, acting (metaphorically) as a fish hatchery, sponsors the 'release' of the crafted textile fish, an activity which will ultimately underwrite fish habitat restoration and restocking programs in the Great Lakes."
Your Guide To Aggressive Common Sense For the next several weeks, we'll continue to work our way through the alphabet and consider some definitions extracted fromThe Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense by John Ralston Saul. We're up to the letter O...
ONE One should never say "one." It is a neutered pronoun which suggests that one is too proper to have a sex. A term once popular in Victorian parlors, it is now most at home in committee meetings where everyone wants to have one's way, but no one wants to take responsibility.
OPTIMISM When applied by ourselves to ourselves, a pleasant and sometimes useful distraction from the oppressiveness of a day and the certainty of death.
When encouraged as a social attitude it is an infantilizing force which removes the individual's consciouis power to criticize, refuse, and doubt. Optimism, like patriotism, is the public tool of scoundrels and ideologues.
"Michael Smith, an undersung hero of the New York contemporary art world, is like putty in his own hands. He turns himself at will into his own living artwork: a hapless, naïve, tackily dressed, endlessly puzzled Everyman named Mike." During the late fall of 2001 and through the next year, David Kramer and I roamed around Brooklyn doing hordes of studio visits for a show we were intending to curate together, which would become B-LIST: Brooklyn, Angst, and Desire at Hallwalls in 2003. We were surveying Brooklyn art after its first big art bubble in the couple years previous, when Williamsburg was revealed as the latest hotbed of art in the shifting New York scene. We were interested in pathos and ambition, failure and desire, the hapless and the hopeful. Comprised largely of emerging and mid-career artists, we were immensely pleased to have MIke Smith in the show. He was perhaps the most senior of the artists assembled and his work was irresistible to both of us and we ending up including several video works into the exhibition. MIke was very generous with us and willing to go with whatever we liked and I remember him telling us, at that time, how his career wasn't really moving in the US, that he was getting most of his shows in Europe and how his career had continued but had shifted geographic terrain. It's doubly gratifying to see MIke get a well-deserved 30-year retrospective on US soil. NY Times Ken Johnson
"Rauschenberg was Jack Daniels, a mess of mellow impressions dancing off each other. Warhol was Obitrol: speed, whip dances, car crashes, dead celebrities, getting shot." artnet Finch
"Shvarts’ piece is all the more powerful because it exists as artwork solely in our perception of it, starting with the idiotic ex post facto censorship by Yale authorities on the grounds of protecting the artist’s health." artnert Finch
"Taking the workshop, which Ms. Barry teaches several times a year, is a bit like witnessing an endurance-performance piece...Ms. Barry sings, tells jokes, acts out characters and even dances a creditably sensual hula, all while keeping up an apparently extemporaneous patter on subjects like brain science, her early boy-craziness, her admiration for Jimmy Carter and the joys of menopause." NY Times Carol King
"Lately, it seems, biennial exhibitions don’t do much except sit there, looking good and offending no one. Instead of being shows that people “love to hate,” or vice versa, these big, often international affairs now inspire mild interest or resigned indifference. Their underlying message seems to be: Careful now, don’t frighten the trustees." NY Times Roberta Smith
Something I listened to this week... Dig the terrific no-frills album cover and that gentle bend in the guitar neck. This was absolutely, unreservedly great. Not exactly surprising—twentysome years in, Sonic Youth's recent albums, including Sonic Nurse and Rather Ripped, showed that the band has remained solidly on top of their game (see the last two albums by The Fall for more evidence to the Aging Hipsters Are Sublime theory). Moore's second solo album, there are enough sonicyouthy touches, a noisy fill here and there, to remind you from whence he comes, but Thurston's acoustic guitar and sweet, hesitant vocals rule the day. You could invite friends over and play this during dinner and all would be right with the world. SY's Steve Shelley on drums and Samara Lubelski on rapturous violins. Eloquent, beautiful stuff, with the added treat of a final track of Thurston recording himself at age 13, dropping coins onto tables, opening and spraying an aerosol can, admonishing himself several times for not knowing why the fuck he's doing it all, until he finally asks "What am I going to do next for your ears to taste?" Indeed—what next. I can hardly wait.
"John Cage said that fear in life is the fear of change. If I may add to that: nothing can avoid changing. It’s the only thing you can count on. Because life doesn’t have any other possibility, everyone can be measured by his adaptability to change." — Robert Rauschenberg
