Just Tryin' to Tell a Fucking Kid About Brand Recognition

February 09, 2005

Just Tryin' to Tell a Fucking Kid About Brand Recognition

In the library, as usual. An androgynous freshman dude walks into the "Internet cafe" (scores of PCs on tables, backless chrome-rimmed stools, and self-serve Starbucks in an adjacent room) wearing a CBGB t-shirt. I'm listening to Marquee Moon on my Rio. The dissonance... too perfect. I'll bet you 50 million dollars he doesn't know who TV are... Hold on, I'm gonna ask.

You people better dig out your shovels, 'cuz I'm owed serious clammage. He knew squat.

No big deal, but I had to race my Yugo through the jarring intersection... I'm old, he's probably an evangelical, shit changes, and the scales never fall away.

Comments

ommyth said…

And so awesome in its meaning(less)(ness) that you posted it twice! It's weird, at least from my perspective: local mall shops sell Ramones and CBGB shirts to students who idolize John Mayer. They've no idea of Sonic Youth, much less Suicide... Not distressed, of course, for this has always been the way.

NOFX is as close as most get to sniffing the underside; reckon Hermann Nitch is closer to the front of the queue than TLASILA!

ommyth said…

I totally dig the Manics' "Holy Bible" alb... I've been in Rich James' headspace before, and thus I continue to empathize. They wore vital organs on sleeves, as do most alterna-Brits, with overarching sincerity. I'm often made ill by this lack of subtlety, the abrogation, the tacit nullification of textual ambibuity, but the flipside is, of course, wholly positive, or at least reasonable: messages are distributed to many. This is the fount of the eternal tension, no? Wanting one's cake, but preferring someone (or all) be able to taste it as one does...

ommyth said…

One group of musicians out of tens of thousands, one album out of five hundred thousand... Of course, you're kind to acknowledge the affinity.

My tastes are tacitly ecumenical; I must walk the talk. I hew to no one sound; I brush up against 'em all. Slow absorption is preferred over total immersion. (Then again, sometimes you have to peel off your Speedo and dive off the edge of the glacier...)

ommyth said…

Steve Vai... Hmmmm. I dug his performance on PiL's Album (the only post-Wobble/Levine collection of theirs I can even remotely begin to listen to), but I'm more or less, er, repelled by the prog genus (no offense, AS), whether it be "brutal," Daevid Allen's old sweatpants, or otherwise. Still, it's cool you have absorbed such virulent toxins and lived to publish a moving hommage to abrupt shifts in meter. Keep the surprises coming!

ommyth said…

Hello Bruno! Thanks again for yr thoughtful emails... Hermann Nitsch's musik isn't so much about "releases" as it is about the documentation of a nearly 40-year-old project, Das Orgien Mysterien Theater. His canvases, manuscripts, recordings and aktionen compliment each other; his work is wholly interrelated.

He's got a very informative website: http://www.nitsch.org/

The shop is chock full of goodies, all very expensive and worth every Euro.

Dig in, go crazy.

ommyth said…

Although Ohne is probably kaput as a live entity, we owe a double vinyl studio album to Mego (a project which we've yet to begin); so, we're moribund, but not dead. Apart from the original 2002 Mego release, there have been three subsequent discs documenting the same year's "Euro-Schizo" tour. Currently, I'm working on an Ohne composite suite, a work comprised of interlocked elements from the 26 or so concerts we gave between 2002 and 2004. As for my solo album, I've completed it, but I've been sitting on it for five months. It just doesn't feel right yet... When the muse revs up again, I intend to revist it. 94-98% of the work is done, but as my perfectionist instincts always get the better of me, expect a March 2016 release...

ommyth said…

Hey Bruno,

Grab Daniel's attention while you can! He's getting hitched soon, and might not be hovering 24/7 over Tochnit Zentrale. Thanks again for yr positive vibe, maaaaaan.

Yrz,

TS

ommyth said…

Wow, this thread has gone rather far afield from my original late-night observation; some crummy kid in a Chess King-esque CBGB shirt who didn't know squat about the history of the dump, the bands who revved up the joint ca. '74, etc. No big shock, as most (not all!) American 18-year-olds are fucking idiots anyhow, and the vast majority of middle-aged turds (my age bracket, their coropreal predilection!) have even less of a gander. Oh well, we outsource torture. Given that level of intellectual anomie, How the fuck is some dumbass freshman in Georgia supposed to know who Billy Ficca was/is?

Bruno, dude, not trying to drive you to shell out big Euros to possess OHNE stuff, but since Tochnit Alec Empire is a personal bud and sometimes bandmate and all, well, he's getting married soon, and he needs the dough for household appliances. Gadgets are so much cooler in Europe, after all, and so much more expensive!

Bizet,

TS

ommyth said…

Damn... So many typos. I'm posting with way too much caffeine in my shitstem... Forgive me, troopz.

ommyth said…

Hey AS,

Dude, not dissing Vai at all. The man has gargantuan chops, and as I'm only dimly aware of his sizeable ouevre, I haven't a leg to stand on. (At least from the critical perspective of classical Vaian ontology.) Don't naturally vibe too much with things prog (especially contemporary variants), but I'd be lying out my motley flotilla if I said I didn't already have hundreds, maybe well over a thousand 70s prog anomalies in the ommyth archive...

Enjoy all forthcoming activities, say hello to Trevor, and keep on *ockin'!

TS

ommyth said…

Bruno, the impediment to "omdrumm," the planned collab with Alexi Borisov, and a dozen others you may have read something about, is I, me, yrz truly. I take so fucking long with everything that by the time I begin a new project in earnest, the folks with whom I wished to work are either dead, disinterested, or have likewise moved on to other concerns. I'm stuck in a rut, I guess; I'm also fairly isolated. When in NYC, I tend to get a lot of work done. Here in Georgia, in grad school, I lead an insular existence. Once this shit is behind me, and I have the MFA, I can perhaps devote a more significant portion of my time to cranking out releases for the cut-out bins of tomorrow. As it is, I'm averaging four or five albums a year; can't imagine that anyone would want to be that intimate with my work... But, yeah, I guess my work ethic could use some tweaking. I take too fucking long with everything.

Best,

TS

ommyth said…

Thanks again, Bruno, for your very generous ruminations and thoughtful, unsentimental analyses. They're much appreciated.

With luck, I'll be disappointing my craven cabal of (steadily dwindling) listeners for weeks, nay, days, to come...