Courtesy J. Coulthart!

Nov 25, 2005 New York Times

Art Review | ‘Day Is Done’

Adults Playing Children’s Scary Games

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
The Los Angeles veteran Mike Kelley’s latest show is a sprawling, scabrous spectacle of noisome installations and hilarious videos, occupying the whole of the cavernous Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea. Ingratiating Mr. Kelley’s work never has been, nor is it now. But serious it is, in its brainy, abrasive, black-humored way, and this is by far his most ambitious and perversely entertaining effort, an attempted Gesamtkunst-werk of satanic rituals and advertising jingles mingled with allusions to Godard, German Expressionist cinema and Stockhausen.

That there is a heart at the core of this crazy-sounding, toxic-comic carnival may be hard to detect at first because, as always with Mr. Kelley, the affect is severe. But it’s there. Like all dark social satirists, Mr. Kelley is simultaneously transfixed and outraged by the treacly, sentimental garbage and pointless violence that pass for contemporary culture, and so turns it to his mischievous use. Tapping into the perverse, libidinous, irrational undertow of ordinary American life, he produces something not quite redeeming and rather abstract.

This show is called “Day Is Done” and it extends a conceit of Mr. Kelley’s recent work. He devises oddball dramas and forlorn installations, imitations of amateur stage sets, based on photographs from high school yearbooks. School plays, musicals, square dances and other endearing or pathetic all-American dress-up rituals provide fodder. Mr. Kelley recreates the cheesy backdrops and get-ups worn by teenagers in the original black-and-white pictures, hires more-or-less look-alike actors – adults playing pubescents – then restages the photographs in color.

Occasionally the original photographs are tough to decipher. Mr. Kelley translated the graphics on one girl’s T-shirt as a baby duck on a stilt, a one-eyed kelp, and a tree branch or a pair of mechanical limbs, take your pick. He had a T-shirt made. A friend saw the original picture. It was the Looney Tunes Road Runner. Amused, Mr. Kelley produced an edition of T-shirts in sickly pink and baby-blue emblazoned with his surreal Looney Tune (the shirts are for sale at the show), as a kind of gag metaphor for his whole translating enterprise.

The photographs are the start. They also inspire far-flung riffs on their unknown characters: scripted, bizarro playlets with accompanying musical numbers in helter-skelter genres – image, text and music often clashing intentionally.

There are 28 installations-cum-musical-theater works in the show, a bazaar or a medley, depending on how you look at it. On a video alongside a high-backed chair rotating on a carpeted platform before a red curtain, a vampire belts out in the style of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical: “Blood is all I crave, sweat is what I get, I hunger for … love.” The lonely vampire vainly waits for someone to sit in the chair, too shy to venture from behind the curtain.

Nearby a boy in a Nativity play slowly gesticulates to a soundtrack of electronic beeps. In the style of the Italian horror-film director Dario Argento, a chase is filmed through a house. Gospel singers wail before a 15-foot-long rocket ship. Heavily made-up barbers menace a kind of wild child who, while waiting for his haircut, thumbs through a porn magazine, then detects a curious similarity between one of the pictures and one of the customers.

A teenage girl dressed like a hillbilly recounts a nonsense parable in the manner of H. P. Lovecraft crossed with William Faulkner as part of a faux-reality show in which each character paints on black velvet a beloved tabloid-troubled celebrity. A catfight ensues with a Kiss-lover who rhapsodizes like a medieval troubadour about Gene Simmons’s tongue.

Did I mention the church confirmation in which a plump female communicant morphs into a devil worshiper, and teenage boys dressed in Nazi outfits suddenly rap about sex with fat women? Or the mesmerizing exotic dancer whose undulating silhouette casts a shadow that splits, mirror-fashion, on a mechanized, rotating curtain? Outtakes from her wiggly show, spliced together, create a separate short video, flat-screened, in the manner of experimental film.

Whatever else it is, Mr. Kelley’s button-pushing shebang is an amazing feat of industry and poetics. (Scott Benzel composed the music with Mr. Kelley.) It can grow on you, as it comes together, visually. Purple backdrops echo across the sea of abject bric-a-brac. A candy-cane throne, copied and turned on its side, makes a kind of Bauhaus-derived shelter, a sculptural echo. Figures crop up from one scenario to another. The boy in the barbershop is in the Nativity scene, and one of his barbers plays a devil. Themes of sexual desires go everywhere unfulfilled. Adults menace children.

That most of the characters are adult actors playing teenagers playing roles from high school dramas layers the irony and locates the emotional center not in juvenile angst but in some adult realm of sublimation and fantasy.

Rhetorical whiplash is Mr. Kelley’s style, and it can seem obfuscating. Coy allusions let an art audience flatter itself. But Mr. Kelley’s deep roots are in the performance tradition going back to the Vienna Actionists. Such raw theater is for some traditionalists art’s nemesis, but it is not meant to be easy.

The sheer ambition of this project suggests a conscious rebuke to the thinness and cookie-cutter-competence of much contemporary art with its go-along, get-along relationship to the market. Mr. Kelley’s art doesn’t get along and it doesn’t preach. He is an unlikely romantic, for whom art, when practiced at a stretch, should stick in your head and your craw.

Electric Masada
At The Mountains Of Madness
(Tzadik)

Cat. # 7352-2
Released Nov 2005
cd 1 time – 77:54
cd 2 time – 74:54
US Price $25.00

“Electric Masada combines the raw power and manic speed of Naked City, the improvisational edge of Cobra and the spiritual lyricism of the Masada songbook. Their second release captures them at the end of a long European tour, at the very peak of their powers. Tight as a drum and as hot as a blow torch, these two incredible live performances will leave you breathless. Featuring a level of musical communication, excitement, versatility and complexity very few bands have been able to attain, this is Zorn at his very best. Astonishing group conductions, searing solos and crazed insanity from one of the most amazing bands Zorn has ever had.”

Personnel:
Cyro Baptista: Percussion
Joey Baron: Drums
Trevor Dunn: Bass
Ikue Mori: Electronics
Marc Ribot: Guitar
Jamie Saft: Keyboards
Kenny Wollesen: Drums
John Zorn: Alto Sax

THE CATERER COMI

An oblong gift to fans of 70s pulp and of cult author Jeff Lint

Thirty years after the spectacular collapse of Pearl Comics, a celebration of the cause of that collapse – Jeff Lint’s THE CATERER.

Described by Alan Moore as “the holy barnacle of failure”, The Caterer dragged Pearl into a legal hell when its hero spent the whole of Issue 9 on a killing spree in Disneyland. The smirking Jack Marsden became a cult figure and role model for enigmatic idiots in the mid-70s. His style and catchphrases were such an insider code that hundreds of people got beaten up by baffled or enraged onlookers.

Steve Aylett presents a reprint of Issue 3: this stand-out issue includes the beginning of Marsden’s goat obsession, a fierce appearance by the ghostly Hoston Pete, a great example of the Marsden ‘stillness’ and no less than four classic Marsden hallucinations. The leaning Chief Bayard’s preoccupation with our hero results in the violent deaths of six people, and Jack delivers his infamous ‘lipstick for dog’ diatribe.

Color cover and strange 1970s color throughout – full use of the word ‘thru’, the term ‘strides’ for pants, and repetition of the phrase ‘stroll on’, never used by a single person in real life ever.

For those who read LINT and those who love Lint, an artifact to baffle friends and scorch the eyelashes of one’s enemies.

Includes ads and letters pages in the Caterer style.

This is an oblong gift to fans of 70s pulp and of cult author Jeff Lint.

Color reprint of Jeff Lint’s THE CATERER issue 3
Color cover + 28 color pages.
6.625ins width x 10.25ins depth
(16.83cm width x 26cm depth)
32 pages
$9.45 (around Ôø?5.67)

COURTESY S. AYLETT!

US intelligence classified white phosphorus as ‘chemical weapon’

By Peter Popham and Anne Penketh
Published: 23 November 2005
The Independent

The Italian journalist who launched the controversy over the American use of white phosphorus (WP) as a weapon of war in the Fallujah siege has accused the Americans of hypocrisy.

Sigfrido Ranucci, who made the documentary for the RAI television channel aired two weeks ago, said that a US intelligence assessment had characterised WP after the first Gulf War as a “chemical weapon”.

The assessment was published in a declassified report on the American Department of Defence website. The file was headed: “Possible use of phosphorous chemical weapons by Iraq in Kurdish areas along the Iraqi-Turkish-Iranian borders.”

In late February 1991, an intelligence source reported, during the Iraqi crackdown on the Kurdish uprising that followed the coalition victory against Iraq, “Iraqi forces loyal to President Saddam may have possibly used white phosphorous chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels and the populace in Erbil and Dohuk. The WP chemical was delivered by artillery rounds and helicopter gunships.”

According to the intelligence report, the “reports of possible WP chemical weapon attacks spread quickly among the populace in Erbil and Dohuk. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled from these two areas” across the border into Turkey.

“When Saddam used WP it was a chemical weapon,” said Mr Ranucci, “but when the Americans use it, it’s a conventional weapon. The injuries it inflicts, however, are just as terrible however you describe it.”

In the television documentary, eyewitnesses inside Fallujah during the bombardment in November last year described the terror and agony suffered by victims of the shells . Two former American soldiers who fought at Fallujah told how they had been ordered to prepare for the use of the weapons. The film and still photographs posted on the website of the channel that made the film – rainews24.it – show the strange corpses found after the city’s destruction, many with their skin apparently melted or caramelised so their features were indistinguishable. Mr Ranucci said he had seen photographs of “more than 100” of what he described as “anomalous corpses” in the city.

The US State Department and the Pentagon have shifted their position repeatedly in the aftermath of the film’s showing. After initially saying that US forces do not use white phosphorus as a weapon, the Pentagon now says that WP had been used against insurgents in Fallujah. The use of WP against civilians as a weapon is prohibited.

Military analysts said that there remain questions about the official US position regarding its observance of the 1980 conventional weapons treaty which governs the use of WP as an incendiary weapon and sets out clear guidelines about the protection of civilians.

Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, called for an independent investigation of the use of WP during the Fallujah siege. “If it was used as an incendiary weapon, clear restrictions apply,” he said.

“Given that the US and UK went into Iraq on the ground that Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against his own people, we need to make sure that we are not violating the laws that we have subscribed to,” he added.

Yesterday Adam Mynott, a BBC correspondent in Nassiriya in April 2003, told Rai News 24 that he had seen WP apparently used as a weapon against insurgents in that city.

CNN.com – Bush calls Saddam ‘the guy who tried to kill my dad’ – Sep. 27, 2002
From John King (CNN)
Friday, September 27, 2002 Posted: 1:48 AM EDT (0548 GMT)

HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) — President Bush leveled harsh criticism Thursday at the Senate on homeland security issues, but he revised his stump speech to make clear “there are fine senators from both parties who care deeply about our country.”

And, in discussing the threat posed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Bush said: “After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad.”

…

Bush was speaking in Houston at a fund-raiser for Texas Attorney General John Cornyn, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Phil Gramm.

Houston is the adopted hometown of the president’s father, former President Bush, and in discussing the threat posed by Saddam, the current president offered his staple list of complaints about Iraq’s defiance of the United Nations and his contention that Iraq is working aggressively on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. “This is a man who continually lies,” Bush said.

He said the Iraqi leader’s “hatred” was largely directed at the United States and added: “After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad.”

In his speech September 12 to the United Nations on Iraq, Bush mentioned the alleged plot to kill a former U.S. president but did not mention that it was his father. The alleged assassination attempt came when former President Bush visited Kuwait during the Clinton administration. The former president had orchestrated the U.S.-led coalition that pushed the Iraqi army from Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War.

“Greg at the Jim Drain show, Deitch”

Warner Music Settles With Spitzer on Radio Payoffs – New York Times

By JENNIFER BAYOT
Published: November 22, 2005
The Warner Music Group, the country’s No. 3 record company, agreed today to cease using pricey gifts and promotional giveaways to buy radio airtime for its artists. It was the second settlement to emerge from the New York attorney general’s investigation into such pay-for-play arrangements.

Home to more than a dozen record labels, including Atlantic, Bad Boy and Lava, Warner Music said that as part of the agreement it would give $5 million to New York music charities and pay the state’s $50,000 in legal expenses. It said it would disclose any valuable items given to radio stations in the future.

” Warner Music Group Corp. acknowledges that various employees pursued some radio promotion practices on behalf of the company that were wrong and improper, and apologizes for such conduct,” the company said in a statement.

“What has been described generically as ‘payola’ for spins has continued to be an unfortunately prevalent aspect of radio promotion,” Warner said, adding that it “looks forward to defining a new, higher standard in radio promotion.”

Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general, described the pay-for-play deals as bribes that violate state and federal law while duping listeners into thinking that songs are selected for their popularity or artistic merit. “Unfortunately, other companies continue to engage in them,” Mr. Spitzer said in a statement.

The incentives typically include personal benefits offered directly to radio programmers who decide which songs will receive airtime. Warner offered the programmers electronics, airfare and tickets to major sporting events like the Super Bowl and World Series, Mr. Spitzer said.

Other payments help radio stations cover operational expenses or provide prizes for the stations’ giveaways, like iPods, digital cameras and tickets to events like the Grammy Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards and the American Music Awards.

“Z100 has approached us for a Linkin Park Flyaway to L.A. or Glasgow for a grand prize in their big match game contest on the morning show,” says an internal promotions message dated Feb. 28, 2004. “Can we approve this??” The sender and recipient of the message were obscured.

By increasing a song’s radio presence – described by Mr. Spitzer as the single-biggest driver of music sales – the practices are designed to inflate profits and manipulate a song or album’s ranking on record charts.

Warner’s settlement follows a similar agreement in July by Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a unit of Bertelsmann and one of the country’s largest record companies. The investigation by Mr. Spitzer’s office is continuing, and he has encouraged other music companies to step forward and abandon similar incentives.

The settlement statement released by Mr. Spitzer’s office described many of the practices at Warner in detail. It said the company used independent promoters as a conduit for illegal payments to the radio stations and hired outside venders to call radio stations posing as listeners requesting Warner artists’ songs.

In the 45 years since federal statues banned similar, if less elaborate, inducements, the record industry’s promotional tactics have evolved along with the structure of radio stations, Mr. Spitzer said. As disk jockeys’ power to choose songs has dwindled, radio programmers and the station’s day-to-day expenses have become targets.

For instance, David Universal, a former program director at WKSE in Buffalo, received a trip to Miami, a laptop and several other perks, Mr. Spitzer said. “We all had to do business with Dave if we were going to get our records on,” a promotion manger with Atlantic Records was quoted as saying. “It was a game that you either played or you didn’t have a shot at getting your records on the air.”

Another Warner promotions employee urged colleagues to be aggressive in demanding “spins,” or song plays. “We need to jump into spins immediately this morning,” said an Oct. 13, 2003, e-mail message tagged as high priority. “No one should be less than 21x per week. Will send you a list of offenders. Close the holes!!!”