Hello It's 1987

[allynh%miro@berkeley.edu (Allyn Hardyck)]

Hi folks...  for those of you who got or are getting the zines,
hope you like them - let me know...

Magazine called _High Frontiers_, appears to be annual due to prohibitive
publishing costs, out which John (from IAO Core) let me know about,
has a few things which might interest you...  This is the wrong magazine
to purchase if you are anti-drug, although it does mention SIGGRAPH.

A Few Excerpts:
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Putting the Pain Back Into Psychedelic Music

an interview with Jello Biafra

...
I did acid recently with the Butthole Surfers and that was pretty interesting.
People ask me what their political views are.  Well, I just gotta flashback
to acid in the middle of the night on the beach with the Butthole Surfers,
with Paul, their guitarist, looking up from the bottom of the sand dune...
"You know what would be the ultimate picture disc, Biafra?  Get a bowl of
big old logs with the corn and everything, so when you put the record on,
the big logs go spinning around but they never go down the pipe."
...

[Wow, talk about your dream date... Ed.]

----

And, the obligatory KB article, for those interested:

KATE BUSH'S PSYCHEDELIC PRAYERS

     As the neo-psychedelic movement continues to gather steam (who would have
thought that a British trio with a name like The Dream Academy could push an
enigmatic song like "Life In A Northern Town" into the American top ten?),
I am becoming more and more troubled by the relatively small boxes these bands
have constructed to live in.  I mean, where is it written that an eighties
psychedelic band has to utilize the conventions of the sixties psychedelic
bands?  And of course, if it is written somewhere, since when did worthwhile
musicians give a shit about what someone else thought they should sound like?
Like, the thing that made all those bands exciting was that they were minig
a new vein.  If you study your history, you will see that the death of New Wave
was its inability to go anywhere with the 64-66 Beatles/Mersey sound that they
were using as a launchpad.  Is psychedelia going to be content to do the same
thing with the 67-69 sound that it is using?  Just wondering.
     One artist who is never linked with the psychedelic resurgence is Kate
Bush.  For my money, though, her music is organically psychedelic in a way that
totally goes beyond surface aural appearances.  No twelve-strings or jangly
guitars, no Nico or Mouse vocals, and (My God!) she writes on a piano.  But it
isn't style that makes me think Kate the most psychedelic pop musician alive.
It's the effect of the sound on my body.
     Though I think her first album (_The Kick Inside_) is the most
holy-ecstatic profoundly brain-changing album produced in the last fifteen
years, her latest album, _Hounds of Love_ is certainly more mature, and perhaps
more importantly in this society, it is new.  It is also the culmination of the
efforts she has made on all the albums subsequent to the first, and side two 
makes her last album (_The Dreaming_) completely dispensable (except for those
of you who love to program yourselves into really bummer realities).
     Side one is poppy.  Songs that work take from the context of the album.
But then again, if you listen to them, you get deepened.  The rhythms and tones
put you in spaces that usually require meditation or Adam. [that's 3,4-methyl-
dioxymethamphetamine right?  Ed.]  And what does she sing about?  How about the
non-spiteful twist on "Positively Fourth Street" in "Running Up That Hill (A
Deal With God)" - "Is there so much hate for the ones we love? ... If only I
could/I'd make a deal with God/And I'd get him to swap our places/Be running
up that road."
     "Hounds of Love" chronicles fear of love, while the singer in "The Big
Sky" spends all of her time watching; the clouds taking shape, Ireland, God
telling Noah to build an Ark...
     "Cloudbusting", based on Peter Reich's (I'm Wilhelm Reich's son) _A Book
Of Dreams_, closes out side one with a moving account of father/son love and
the societal forces that destroy that particular relationship.
     Side two, subtitled "The Ninth Wave," utilizes a lot of aural patterns
and tones of _The Dreaming_, but to a much different effect.  Where that album
was simply a season in hell, what we've got here is a descent into, and 
subsequent ascent out of, those particular spaces in our consciousness that
seem determined to control us and make life as ugly as possible.  And where the
experience of _The Dreaming_ seemed merely something any sane individual would
want to avoid, the effect of "The Ninth Wave" is an understanding of the 
importance of utilizing all experience, pleasant and unpleasant alike, as
opportunities for self-knowledge (is there any other kind?).  It is a bit
harrowing at times, but any trip for knowledge holds out that possibility.
"Do you know what?" she asks in "The Morning Fog", "I love you better now."
And then she's wrapping it up.  "I'll tell my mother/I'll tell my father/...
I'll tell my brothers/How much I love them."  And who but the most disaffected
wouldn't want to be able to do that?
                                                               Charles Faris
----

Pretty hippy-dippy, but should provide some gristle for you KB fans to chew on.

Let's see, shows:

Flora Fauna / Nova Mob / Pray For Rain @ Club Nine, SF, Dec. 17

Like 10 people in audience when PFR who refused to identify themselves properly
came on.  Figured it was just trendosity that kept them from getting a good
response - couldn't believe it after the warm flood of pleasant memories of
watching _Sid and Nancy_ came to me when they played their first song.  It
was probably the acoustic guitar that lost them to this crowd.  The sort of
band that will make it once they go on tour.

Nova Mob - got something for everybody.  Wacked out guy thrashing around on
one set of keyboards, woman in 60s orange lame' walking like an egyptian on
another, Asian dude in black jumpsuit with 4' bank of black signal processing
components behind him doing awesome fretwork.  Session-looking type drummer
with headset etc.  Danceable.  Loud.  Tape loops.  Distorted.  Fun.

Flora Fauna - this is one half of extinct faves KuKuKu, the half led by
chanteuse Mantra ben Ya'akov.  The replacement parts are all female,
making cellist James the token.  To be honest, they need work still,
although new violinist Shira shreds.  Mantra has taken over in a big way - 
this is *her band* in a way KuKuKu wasn't, and her domination got pretty
obvious at times, side comments about ex-members etc. and on-stage theatrics
seeming more wooden than usual.  Maybe next time.

The art motel there fun though - got this black stuff on face from woman
screaming through orange peel in mouth.

----

Social Distortion / DI / Sea Hags + some other dudes @ the Farm, SF, Jan. 9

The Farm is under threat of eviction from present owners and since it is
often the best place in the area thought I should check out the show.
Sea Hags' Zeppelin-like riffs had the teens grooving in slomo, DI's
singer (ex-Adolescents along with Rikk Agnew) told a dumb joke so me and Kyle
(not UCLA dude) left in search for alcohol, missing SD.  No big loss according
to reports.  Call it an $8.50 donation to the Save the Farm fund.

----

The Residents' 13th Anniversary Show featuring Snakefinger / Penn and Teller
     @ Warfield Theater, SF, Jan. 10

A hot blast of weirdness, and a welcome one.  I'm continually amazed at the
bands capable of selling out this place.  Penn and Teller's act was woven
into the show, popping out every so often for "performance art" on the
Pleistocene Age w/ domesticated balloon animals, arm jabbing and blood
drawing, etc.  Shopping carts containing reptiles, one Kennedy wig w/ big
ears, tortured rendition of "It's a Man's Man's Man's World".
Dancers in full-body black leotards.  Mutant swing.  Snakefinger playing
"too loud" and set upon by the three in white tuxes + eyeballless fourth
in black skull mask.  Shocker of the evening:  preliminary Penn and Teller
video:  "I'm Penn, this is Teller, and this is our actress slash vice-
president in charge of production, Lydia Lunch."

----

Shows upcoming:

Tonight - Wiseblood (Jim Clint Ruin Thirlwell Foetus + Roli "Ex-Swan" Mosimann)
          @ I-Beam
Jan. 19 - Big Black @ I-Beam
Feb. 5  - Beastie Boys @ the Stone

allyn