[Landline] Rude truths and second thoughts

Frank Randle, Azeri shredders, techcels, insect orchestras, Joe Preston, podcast picks, dealing with death, more

Hello! Got a bit backed up recently. Apologies. Anyways: on we go, forward, onward, inward, outward, upward and all the other directions, including just sitting there. Here are a few absolute units:

1. RUDE TRUTHS IN BLACKPOOL

Fantastic cover, but I should’ve scanned some of the b/w photos from the interior for y’all before I had to return the borrow. Sorry about that!

KING TWIST by Jeff Nuttall (Routledge, 1978), borrowed via local public library Inter Library Loan system. Beautiful, compact para-biography ("portrait")/posthumous pursuit of '30s-'40s British working class music hall boisterously rude comic/madman legend Frank Randle (1901-1957) by poet/pivotal counterculture mover/author Nuttall. Journey into mystery of shamanic comic genius; contemplation of the nature of (vanishing) unified working class circumstance and saucy, pre-television culture. Lots of alcohol and simulated burps, farts, erections. (h/t Landline reader Ryan Shepard on this banger!)

2. GO AHEAD, TRY TO ERASE THEM

And then television arrived.

From 70 ADS TO SAVE THE WORLD: An Illustrated Memoir of Social Change (Synergetic Press, 2022) by Jerry Mander¹:

[M]y late partner in the commercial ad business in the 1960s, the amazing, brilliant, Howard Gossage often argued: “To appreciate the full consequences and powers of mass media advertising, it’s important to understand the impacts of directed media imagery.” Gossage was especially appalled by advertising on television. He explained it this way: “Once TV images are directed through your eyes and into your brains, they never leave. The images are permanent.” Gossage liked to cite particular mid-1960 commercial images: “Did you know you had the Jolly Green Giant still living in your brain? Or the Geiko Gekko? Or, the Marlboro Man? Go ahead, try to erase them,” he’d say.

The images you ingest from repetitive TV advertising––and now social media “influencers”––will permanently occupy your mind. Forever. You cannot get rid of them. This brings astounding advantages to the senders of mass-media imagery. It confirms their ability to permanently implant and to “occupy” mass consciousness. The power relationship is profoundly, insidiously inequitable.

3. RESIST THESE TECHCELS

And then computer networks arrived, which coupled with finance and capital to produce a cohort of biophobic-technophiliac horrorpeople.

Opening paragraphs from Becca Rothfeld review in the Washington Post of Ray Kurzweil’s new book, The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge With AI:

There is a meme, popular among tech world insiders, that distinguishes between two types of people: wordcels and shape rotators. Wordcels are humanists, effete creatures who trade in anachronisms like writing and philosophy. Shape rotators, in contrast, are staunchly modern, possessed of a ruthlessly practical intelligence. They are the movers and shakers — the engineers and programmers who congregate in Silicon Valley in hopes of remaking the world.

The wordcel/shape rotator dichotomy — a 21st-century update of the right-brained vs. left-brained taxonomy — may appear laughably reductive, but it is only half ironic. When tech billionaire, venture capitalist and Silicon Valley darling Marc Andreessen tweeted disparagingly about the other half — the wordcels — he was expressing a view that he seemed to hold sincerely. His cohort of digital disrupters is disdainful of an entire domain of human endeavor, which may explain why its denizens are so eager to shed their personhood and transform into machines.²

4. PODS AT AN ODD INTERSECTION 

Now that I’m all caught up on the contemporary magical realist comedy Valley Heat podcast (and its spinoff Good Morning Burbank podcast and—I’m not making this up—the even further spunoff [?] Right Now in the Rancho podcast) and recovered from the absolutely definitive/insane Carlos Castaneda WTF podcast Trickster, I’ve been poking around for something to listen to on the morning jaunts around the park.

Well! In my moment of pre-morning walk need, I came across the following recommendations, which I have not yet tried out, from trusted friend-of-Landline Andrew William Smith aka Andy Sunfrog, which I now share onto you. Here’s Andy:

The last few years, I have discovered some amazing storytelling/narrative podcasts that hold an odd intersection where crime & counterculture, underground music & lefty politics/activism meet. They also work as an entire story, so these lend themselves to binges on long drives or for listening during certain chores or walks or work projects…

Mother Country Radicals -- a child of the Weatherpeople & 70s militant revolutionaries retells the story of those times & that movement from the perspective of being reared in it

City of the Rails -- a mother learns & lives & gives us a glimpse of modern hobo-train-hopping subcultures & even the railroad industry from the lens of almost losing her daughter to the lifestyle

I Was Never There -- a deliciously loving deep dive into the place where 70s back-to-the-land meets 80s punk rock anarchy, centered around the mysterious disappearance of Marsha Ferber, the agitator & organizer at West Virginia club called the Underground Railroad (still open & hosting shows as 123 Pleasant Street).

5. MASTERS OF THE HIGH FREQUENCY AIRWAVES

Had enough with people and their machines?

I went to bed early a few weeks ago, left the windows open, and listened to forest sound creatures for hours: hums and hoots, drones and buzzes. Bliss!

Later, back in the city, suffering withdrawal, a knowledgable friend prescribed Broken Hearted Dragonflies (2010, Sublime Frequencies³) featuring gloriously unprocessed recordings of dragonflies, cicadas and other insects in Southeast Asia.

Excerpt of the promotional text for the album:

There is a legend in Burma stating that swarms of male dragonflies gather to join in choruses of high-pitched tones to court their mates. The ones that don’t succeed in mating eventually scream so loud that their chests explode and they drop dead to the ground. These recordings are a tribute to this legend. Droning cicadas, dragonflies and other insects display their charm as masters of the High Frequency Airwaves recorded live and unprocessed by Tucker Martine in the lush settings of Laos, Thailand, and Burma. Enter the supernatural world where Entomology and Electronica converge in a tropical hallucination of alien sound. Anyone who’s ever wondered if these strange symphonies could be recorded or preserved AS precisely as they sound in the field need look no further! Martine has done it and you will be transported to the exact experience one would encounter in these mysterious lowlands…

6. AZERI SHREDDERS NOW ON BLAST

Longtime Landline readers may remember my enthusiasm for the absolutely staggering Azeri electric guitarist Rəmiş⁴, kindled a coupla years ago via a posting by Radio Is a Foreign Country. RIAFC wrote this:

The legendary RAFIG "REMISH" HUSEYNOV, the GODFATHER OF AZERBAIJANI ELECTRIC GUITAR, and one of the great GUITAR GODS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST, performing a blistering set at a wedding in the town of AGHDAM in 1991. The entire performance, as Ben Wheeler and Anna Harbaugh note on the CAUCASCAPADES BLOG, is an orgy of insane electric guitar ornamentation using trills and bends, as well as some heavy analog delay and overdrive. There are also unpredictable tempo changes and shifts between major and minor 3rds, impromptu exchanges with a clarinetist and accordionist, and some slide guitar using a glass bottle. Remish smokes cigarettes throughout and, at one point, plays with one hand while drinking vodka with the other.

…about this video:

I wanted more of this but before long I deadended… you really need a guide on this stuff, or at least I do, and I didn’t do a good job in finding one…

But, now: good news! There are guides. David Mittleman from the essential Observations of Deviance radio show hipped me to the recent release of an ear-blistering compilation by another extraordinary Azeri electric guitarist, the dapper Rəhman Məmmədli…

David also hipped me to GITARA, a 45-minute documentary that came out in 2019 about the Azeri history/scene, which features provocative interviews (“Guitar is an Eastern instrument. If a stringed instrument ends with the word ‘tar,’⁵ it belongs to the East. Not the West”) and a series of scorching, calmly ecstatic performances (check out Ramal İsgəndərli, good gawd) by usually quite nonchalant dudes. Given its length, the film is by no means definitive but it’s a smart, exhilarating primer with zero fat—I've screened it twice in the last week and, honestly, can't wait to watch it again. Here it is… remember to click on CC to activate the English subtitles….

7. IT MIGHT MEAN SOMETHING TO SOMEBODY I

Rather dispiriting to see the following frank assessment from all-star low-frequency music bassist JOE PRESTON (Thrones, Earth, Melvins, High On Fire, SUNN O))), etc.) in a recent interview, but it’s a sadly common experience/reflection, and perhaps one that will be of use:

I hate the music industry. Personally, I think it’s the worst thing in the world. Here’s my regret: trying to make a living off playing music. That was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life. It was one of those things where it sapped all the joy out of it for me. So now, it’s difficult for me to pick it up and go, ‘This will be enjoyable.’

…I recently played three shows, but I don’t really play shows anymore. My life has changed radically because of family stuff over the last decade, and touring turned into a pretty stressful thing for me to do. 

But I had three really good shows and got great feedback from people, which made me think, ‘I have to remember to check my attitude about stuff.’ I have to remember that while I might not like what I’m doing all the time, it might mean something to somebody, and it’s a good thing to spread it around.⁶

8. IT MIGHT MEAN SOMETHING TO SOMEBODY II

I recently learned of departingdearly.com, which is run, anonymously, by a Landline subscriber. It’s an incredible, generous, artful, not-for-profit resource about dealing, pragmatically, with death.

“I started it back in 2019 after my mom died and there wasn’t any website that had good info that wasn’t religious or lame,” the person told me. “I work on it when I get time. It’s just a side project.”

Related: The (very funny, very wise) Grim Reaper is now posting on bluesky…

Happy trails to you,

Jay

Arizona

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1. The late great anti-tech crusader Jerry Mander (real name!), author of Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (William Morrow, 1978) probably needs no introduction to Landline readers, but just in case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Mander

2. Read the rest of the review: https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/06/26/singularity-nearer-ray-kurzweil-review/

3. See “No Sleep Till Beirut: ALAN BISHOP of Sun City Girls speaks with Brandon Stosuy about terrorism, travel, clueless Americans and curating the cut-up world music collages of his Sublime Frequencies label” (Arthur Magazine, 2005)

4. Rəmiş died in 2021 at age 76.

5. Tar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_(string_instrument)

6. Read the rest of the interview: https://www.musicradar.com/news/joe-preston-underground-bass-hero-reflects-on-career-melvins-thrones-high-on-fire