I thought I was going to see Vincent Gallo and Sean Lennon make weird psycho-ambient music together. Instead what I got was a similar ensemble to Gallo’s former band RRIICCEE, followed by Sean Lennon crooning away with his girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhl as The Ghost Of A Saber Toothed Tiger. All the same, totally worth 7 bones.

Gallo’s stage presence, in his white motorcycle jacket, back turned to the audience, a mess of dark curls covering his face (thankfully making illustrating the show a lot easier) provided sparse enough elements to compliment his musical minimalism – a vintage keyboard, his voice just above a lover’s whisper. The songs ranged from road tripping through space to post-apocalyptic love songs. Soft lyrics like “love me forever” and “The future’s not returning, bridges built for burning… Are we the chosen ones?” wafted through the room.  

Then came Sean Lennon and the ridiculously pretty Charlotte Kemp Muhl. They were very convivial with the audience, and acoustic – a good contrast to Gallo’s electronic set. When switching to an electric guitar, Lennon laughed as he was repeatedly electrocuted by his instrument, and then began singing about unicorns down the yellow brick road. Charlotte Kemp Muhl’s strong vocals were wistful, sparkling.

PS – On a somewhat unrelated note, go see Tetro if you haven’t already. The cinematography is orgasmic, and completely stole the movie.

Two years ago I layed gloved hands upon a copy of Harmony Korine‘s Humor zine at the special collections library. This was one of several limited edition fanzines Korine made (sometimes in collaboration with Mark Gonzales) during the 90s, through the Alleged Gallery and Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York. On November 18th, the gloves come off, when Drag City re-issues eight fanzines with the publication of The Collected Fanzines. My Friend or Sheep Boy, Adulthood, Aldulthood 2, Oh Death Where is Thy Sting, Foster Homes and Gardens, Humor, Pocahontas Monthly, and Hümer will be available as a deluxe boxset (containing exact reproductions of the originals) and as a trade paperback (for a whole lot less). Even better, Harmony is considering doing some readings, maybe with Mark, to promote this release.

Commenting on The Collected Fanzines, Korine says:

Going back ten years… it’s so hard to remember, I was always tripping and falling over myself.

These ‘zines were written over the last fifteen years, mostly in dark rooms and the basements of old people. With names like Adulthood, Foster Home and Gardens, Pocohontas Monthly, Hümer, and others, they were sold in limited editions out of the Alleged Gallery and Andrea Rosen Gallery. Some were sold on street corners and given away to the tramp sects that were so prominent during that time period. Scraps of paper and half thoughts in the guise of art objects, you see.

Not many people actually got a chance to have these but the ones who are still amongst the living have greatly benefited. I know one lady in Panama who has the complete set, her family has stopped referring to her as a gimp now, now they call her Sue.

They were never meant to be collectible – just low-concept laugh-inducing juxtapositions of words and images, images and images, lists, monologues, cartoons, free verse, jokes, half-thoughts, fake/real interviews, innuendo and Matt Dillon’s phone number. If you sold them on eBay for a bunch of money, I want my cut. Or if you bought them then please spare a percentage to the dyke army and the flame militia, its a good charity and it’s ribbon buttons are invisible.

Some of them read like letters from prison. I know these were popular in some prisons but I’m not sure why.

Now if only they would re-issue The Bad Son, because my drool on the glass cases at the NY Art Book Fair was rather unsightly.

After 19 years, the self-proclaimed “Queen Bitch Jungle Mother of Jew York,” Grace Jones herself, is back. Following her return to the stage at this year’s Meltdown Festival in London, Jones released Hurricane, featuring an all-star production team led by Ivor Guest, including Brian Eno, Tricky and Sly & Robbie. Unfortunately, she won’t Grace us with her presence stateside, but friends across the pond can catch her on tour this January. In the meantime you can catch her video, the sublime Corporate Cannibal from director Nick Hooker.

Who knew the supply closet at The Directors Bureau could produce a talk show as fun as the Lana Show? Host Lana Kim conducts quirky interviews with rad bands — No Age, Ratatat, Born Ruffians, etc. — interspersed with music videos. The best part is that after watching the show, you can hop over to Lana’s webstore and buy the albums and whatever weird items were mentioned during the interview (I am still mourning the fact that they are sold out of Nickelback business card holders).

Both Jean Genet and Japanese author Yukio Mishima rejected the dominance of words in their only films — Un Chant d’Amour and Yukoku (Patriotism), or The Rite of Love and Death — both just released on DVD this year. Omitting dialog, the films depend purely on gesture to express sexuality, desire, repression and escape, and both Genet’s homoerotic prison love and Mishima’s graphic act of harakiri resulted in the films being banned or lost for decades.

In Patriotism, Mishima preserves beauty by destroying it at its zenith. “Just before the pinnacle when time must be cut short is the pinnacle of physical beauty. Clear bright beauty. In that moment the beauty of a man and the beauty of a gazelle are in wonderful correspondence. Raising its horns proudly, raising the hoofs of the white-spotted leg ever so slightly in the face of the denial.” The characters in Patriotism are young — newlyweds of 23 and 30 years. They focus on their naked bodies in a manner similar to Yoko Ono’s film Fly, eventually committing seppuku — ritual suicide by disembowelment.

For Genet, film itself is the medium with which to immortalize beauty; corporal destruction is unnecessary. The gestures of Un Chant d’Amour then are those of life, despite being spent behind bars. Like Mishima’s, the film is a celebration of the body, and of beauty, and its silence forces the viewer to focus on close-ups of faces, armpits, semi-erect penises and cigarette smoke shared through peepholes. This artistically-rendered, highly sexualized atmosphere would influence Andy Warhol and other later filmmakers.

“As long as you have people working for money and not love, there will be violence.”

In light of current events, I believe this message from the Living Theater‘s Paradise Now carries some weight. Released on DVD earlier this year by Arthur Magazine, this 1968 performance has been on my mind. Perhaps I have been reading too much Antonin Artaud, whose Theater of Cruelty was the impetus for the company, or perhaps the truth we’ve been ignoring is finally being revealed.

On this revelation Julian Beck writes, “Collective creation is the secret weapon of the people…This play is a voyage from the many to the one and from the one to the many. It’s a spiritual voyage and a political voyage, a voyage for the actors and the spectators. The play is a vertical ascent toward permanent revolution, leading to revolutionary action here and now. The revolution of which the play speaks is the beautiful, non-violent, anarchist revolution. The purpose of the play is to lead to a state of being in which non-violent revolutionary action is possible.”

Of course, young naked bodies writhing to the tune of distant drums make the process more palatable. After all, when Bernardo Bertolucci chose to work with the Living Theater in his piece for Amore e Rabbia (Love and Anger) the result looked like American-Apparel-ad-meets-Feist’s-1234-video-meets-Animal Collective-hoots-and-screams. It was this piece of glorious vibrancy that began my obsession.

Nagi Noda, the talented Japanese artist/designer/director of groundbreaking shorts and spots, passed away last Sunday, September 7. She was 35.

Noda was best known for her short film Mariko Takahashi’s Fitness Video for Being Appraised as an “Ex-fat Girl,” which reminds me of the artist collective General Idea and their video Shut the Fuck Up (1985) where, following a segment of 70′s poodle jazz dancing, they revisit their performance XXX Blue (1984) in which, taking after Yves Klein’s Mondo Cane performance, they painted large X’s using stuffed poodles dipped in blue paint.

Rest in peace, Nagi Noda and General Idea, two creatives who inhabited and subverted forms of popular media culture.

Judging from appearances, I think General Idea would have also been a fan of Noda’s incredible hairhats.