You couldn't believe me if I tried

NOTE: The following are all YouTube links, just to shake things up a tad.

HUSKER DU, "I Apologize," "If I Told You," "Folklore" (live in London ca. '85)
LES ROCKETS, "On the Road Again" (live on TV)
SHOP ASSISTANTS, "I Don't Want to Be Friends with You" video
JOHN & JAMES WHITNEY, "Lapis" film
ROSETTA THARPE, "Down by the Riverside" (live on TV)
NORMAN McLAREN, "Dots" film
X-CLAN, "Funkin' Lesson" video
JUNE BRIDES, "In the Rain" video
BRUCE CONNER, "Valse Triste" film
LES RALLIZES DENUDES, short TV documentary clip
JACK SMITH, "Scotch Tape" film
REPLACEMENTS "Careless" (live in Mpls., '81)
TELEX, "Moskow Diskow" video
POP GROUP, "She's Beyond" video
NAM JUNE PAIK, "Videotape Study #3" film
ODB (live at the Grammys)
EDIE SEDGWICK, lost footage from "Ciao Manhattan" with commentary
FRED McDOWELL, "Down to the River" (live on TV)
FUGS, "Crystal Liaison" (live on TV)
BROADCAST, "Papercuts" video
WS BURROUGHS, "Towers Open Fire" film
VILLAGE PEOPLE "Sex Over the Phone" video
ED EMSHILLER, "Sunstone" film
WANDA JACKSON, "Rock Your Baby" (live on TV)
SWELL MAPS, "Midget Submarines" video
HAWKWIND, "Silver Machine" (live)
WERNER HERZOG, "Measures Against Fanatics" film
Some East German COMMERCIALS from the '60s
NEGATIVLAND, "Gimme the Mermaid"
NERVOUS GENDER (live in LA in '83)
RAM JAM, "Black Betty" video
FEELIES, "Crazy Rhythm" live footage
STANDELLS, on the 'Munsters'
POPOL VUH (live on TV)
NAM JUNE PAIK, "Electronic Moon #2" film
SON HOUSE, "Death Letter Blues" (live on TV)
DEAD C, "Sky" (live on TV)
WU TANG CLAN, live interview on TV
PRIMITIVE CALCULATORS, "I Can't Stop It" video
CHICAGO, "If You Leave Me Now" (live on TV)
Why Richard Hell didn't last too long in TELEVISION
KEVIN AYERS & JOHN CALE, "Howlin Man" (live on TV)
FLIPPER, "Way of the World" (live footage)
THIS HEAT, playing live and stuff
ELO "Turn to Stone" video


Word hit the blog-o-street this week that Kevin Shields and Sofia Coppola have teamed back up, for the soundtrack to her new (romantic) movie. I'm the last person in the world to begrudge a man his hack-work (being a total hack myself). And as work goes, I'd much rather Mr. Shields do remixes or record other bands than play sound effects guitar in a sometimes great but often shoddy retro-rock band. In an ideal world, Shields would be able to live entirely free of commercial pressures and restraints, but I doubt I'll blow your mind when I say this might not be an ideal world.

I definitely wonder how the fuck people could seriously be that psyched to hear the dude's two remixes of Bow Wow Wow? Yes, he is an utter genius, somtimes, but it's really come to this? Let's face it, Sofia Coppola is a pretty dreadful filmmaker. Like most folks my age (and younger), I enjoyed Lost In Translation while I watched it. But afterwards, it kept coming back up, like bad cafeteria food. And then the xenophobia and the fake-artfilm moodiness of it all just bummed me out, a lot. These criticisms have of course been mademuch more succinctly elsewhere, and Lord help me before I fashion myself a movie critic. Though, those folks actually get sent on junkets you might want to go on (not to mention getting loads of promo-schwag people might actually want to buy later)... Hmmm.

While procrastinating last night, I googled myself (wait, is this like confessing to jerking off? well I never...) and found that not only did people like my EMP ELO paper, they really liked it! I guess I should publish it somewhere... Hmmm. Who has a magazine that prints pretty much anything, regardless of "release dates" and which publicists might be working it? Damn, can't think of a single place. I saw also that some people were discussing the Loveless book on the main MBV fan site's forum thingie, and I found it interesting that one person wonders how many times I use the word "shoegazer" in the text. You ready for the answer? Once. Really. I threw quotes around it to show my "disdain," too. Hah.

I used to rather dislike that term, shoegazer, though it is fairly evocative and descriptive. And it's one of many myspace genres you can slot your band's music into... Back in the late '80s/ early '90s, the two little rock writer genre words that used to really twist my goat were "indie rock" and "lo-fi": the first one because it surmised that a means for distributing music could somehow be flat-out descriptive of all of it, and the latter for even more reductively assuming the same for the way that certain kinds of music might appear to be recorded. These terms seemed almost totally arbitrary, and to paraphrase Dubuffet, about as useful as saying there was a kind of music made by dyspeptics, or people with knee problems.