For those about to go on a gender-bender? (we salute you) [The Tripitaka Moment]

We’ve all been there. You think you know all there is to know about the crying game, but nothing can prepare you for the feeling when it hits. I’m talking about the Tripitaka moment. Oh yeah, that’s right girlyboys and manladies, remember Masako Natsume? She was the actress who played Tripitaka in Monkey Magic – and she is wholly responsible for scrambling the minds of a whole generation of Australian youths who were exposed to her ambiguous charms.

The character of Tripitaka effected a three-way headfuck: the story said she was a prince; she was dressed in tights and robes; and the woman who over-dubbed her voice had a sexy gravel in it that was suspended dangerously between either of the assigned genders. It wasn’t just that Masako Natsume was an attractive woman playing a prince, or that she had a shaved head – it was that she was also convincingly Tripitaka, the young prince, who was… hot. Go to Tonga and see the Fafafinas; watch the filmclip for Von Südenfed’s ‘Fledermaus can’t get it’; hire out Priscilla and see Terrence Stamp’s cock in a frock on a rock – none of them can pull enough wool over their frog’s eyes to hide the shadow of the man, and they don’t really try to. Tripitaka’s character wasn’t drag, no siree, it was something far more disquieting, the figure of a person who was attractively male and female simultaneously – not either/or, not androgynous, but somehow both male and female. You ‘knew’ she was she, but somehow, you also felt that she was he. It was thoroughly and disagreeably uncanny. And it was good.

But it was also something that (for me as a boy) was a permissible perversion that never forced me to beg any deeper questions about the angle of my dangle, and this is where you can catch your own brain fooling you. You know how it is, it happens at the gym, on the dancefloor, in a dark room – you catch sight of a neck, a leg, the curve of a buttock – straight or gay, your brain matches and fits the visual information against a catalog of ‘hot’ or ‘not’, ‘permissable’ or ‘impossible’. I sprung myself the other day, riding through traffic behind a cyclist in lycra. We stopped at the lights, I realised she was a woman, and then I gave myself persmission to find her ass attractive.

The flipside of this is something like your own personal equivalent of the Aphex Twin’s ‘Windowlicker’ filmclip. You’re at the beach, you see a girl in a bikini and think, ‘she’s hot’… but she turns around and it’s your mum, your sister, or Richard D. James. I can’t imagine what life must be like for the vision impaired – how much longer would they have to squint and doubt before the awful truth turkey slaps into focus? In all these fanny-packing, bush-whacking instances, the common factor is not attraction, but what you let yourself be attracted to – not that admitting this makes the ‘moment’ itself any less disturbing. The only thing I can suggest when the moment hits? Enjoy your symptom! Tripitaka’s character was trying to seek enlightenment – but the ‘Tripitaka moment’ can likewise teach us all something about ourselves.

© Peter Chambers 2007

I’ve had fun (and it wasn’t all that)

‘Watcha gonna do when you get outta jail?’
‘I’m gonna have some fun.’
‘What do you consider fun?’
‘Fun, natural fun!’

Listening to the Tom Tom Club lit the synapses. Ah, memories... remember fun? Once upon a time, fun was one of the most enjoyable of all the three letter words. Better than bat, stickier than bun, more valuable than oil. Fun could be anything, and eveything was fun. That was then. I just don’t feel the same way about fun as I used to. Ever since... Oh God, it was heartbreaking. I came home from the disco, and there on the couch, copping it the ol’ fashioned way from the law of diminishing returns, was my most beloved concept.

Why fun, why?

Fun’s been sleeping on the couch it so sordidly soiled ever since, and although we’re on speaking terms, it’s only so I can call fun horrible names. Here goes:

Fun, you’re a limp, stale crumpet, a shrivelled abstraction - and a lousy root.

It’s a crisis that’s taken a while to come to a head. I should have read the signs. Some people have even told me that it serves me right for attempting to have a meaningful relationship with a concept. But I don’t care what they think, ‘cos the truth is that fun just isn’t as much fun as it used to be, hasn’t been for a long time. And fun doesn’t seem to wanna have fun with me anymore, or when I wanna have fun, fun has a headache (and vice versa).

It’s me, too, I think I bear some responsibility. I’ve changed. I began having my doubts, and spent many a sigh-filled languid afternoon tootling around from amusement to amusement, jealous of the kiddies down the local park or disco with their bouncey balls and their unbridled, shrieking joys. I began to feel sorry for myself and my creeping numbness, caused by the deadening weight of carrying around that growing shitlist of things I can no longer enjoy. The heaviest addition to the list was only three loved letters long.

I miss fun, I do. Fun was my main squeeze, my big banana, my ripe, rosy tomato. But now there’s no juice in the fruit (aint it pithy). And meanwhile, fun doesn’t have any time for leisure, being too busy earning its keep. You don’t want to know how it earns its bickies...
... And that smile that used to be a joke, that I found so endearing, now it just reminds me of synchronised swimmers. Fun’s whole repertoire is wan and calloused, and its formeerly charming patter holds nothing of value or charm, just the laboured, grunting humourlessness of porno. Like all XXX these days, it’s all so horribly earnest. With all the mystery gone, and us just going through the motions, it was a matter of time before one of us either ended up dumped, or even worse, dumped on.

So I’ve left fun, trapped in its rigor mortis of cool and forever trying for happiness, and started seeing other concepts. Not for good, but for play. Yes, rather than focussing on squeezing the last drops of juice from those saggy old fruits, I’ve decided to take up juggling them, or planting their seeds where something might grow. I’m not talking about uphill gardening or running away with the circus, but I am playing with play again, and I’m loving it. Me and my old pirennially pert sweetheart of yore. It’s a beautiful thing. Play likes to experiment, fool around. Play focuses on the act, rather than the outcome. Play, leading me to the floor, says, ‘Fuck art, let’s dance!’ Play even reminds me of all the things I liked about fun, but it doesn’t take itself too seriously or demand that I spend all my money and time on it. Play, I love you!
To whoever of you is with fun now, my sympathies, and the best of luck. Just be honest with yourself, and don’t forget for a moment what fun is, and what it will always be.
I just don’t want you to get hurt.

© Peter Chambers 2005 (from the archives)

Who’s the Dogg? (Snoop shows Ruddock the pound)

You know what? You’re wrong about Snoop Dogg. Sure, he’s an ex-crim and a misogynist thug, but these things are all relative. Woman-hating asshole? Compared to whom? That’s worth asking. Well, what about compared to Isaac Hayes and Tim Buckley, two of electric ladyland’s most beloved rakes? We could say there are a lot of other mitigating qualities, too, maybe ones that flip the script in favour of forgiving either the scalp-wax abusing Scientologist pants technician or the junkie honeyman. But that’s neither here nor there. The point is simple: Snoop Dogg’s hateful attitude toward women possesses a rare honesty and a willingness to take responsibility for his mind-set and actions, two qualities that Hayes and Buckley lack.

Cop a load of Hayes on ‘One Woman’. The guy drives home, kisses his wife, then gets up in the morning and drives back through gridlocked traffic… to have breakfast with his mistress. There’s nothing in the song that suggests any discomfort or remorse (just the fear of getting sprung with yolk on his cuff and the pain of having to choose once he’s busted double-dipping). Not only that, but Hayes manages to twist the situation around so that it’s both women’s fault somehow: ‘One woman’s making my home/ while the other woman’s making me do wrong/ I didn’t intend to let it get that strong/ Now I’ve got to decide where I belong’ Note the use of the expression ‘making me’, as if the women have Alan keys and claw hammers, and he’s a piece of Ikea furniture. Hayes reckons he’s having the whole situation ‘done to’ him – he’s as passive as a Rohypnolled mormon copping a love shampooing from a shaft-strapping widow with cruel intentions. Now that’s a mouthful.

Exhibit two in this atrocity exhibition, Mr ‘Crooner’ Buckley the first, is no better. You wanna know why he cheated on you? It’s the classic ‘Neanderthal defence’ – cop this: I’m a predator, baby, and, frankly, you wouldn’t let give you one a là Backstreet Boys. And honey, ‘I want it that way’. In his own words (‘Sweet Surrender’): ‘Well I had to be a hunter again/ This little man had to try/ To make love feel new again/ ‘Cause there’s just a few things, honey/I’m not old enough to do for you/ And there just the kind of things/You just never care to show me.’ Again, it’s the same pattern, one that says, ‘Hey, I sure screwed the pooch, didn’t I, but after all, I can’t control myself… and you don’t satisfy my needs… biyatch.’

Compared to this, Snoop comes up smelling like (suspiciously musky) roses. From the get go, he lays it on the line – I’m a total dogg, with no respect for women at all. If you ‘step into the ring’, you’re gonna lose your halo, baby. And if you come with me, knowing what a vicious cad I am, well, maybe you don’t respect yo’self either. From ‘Aint no Fun (if the homies can’t have none)’: ‘When I met you last night baby/ Before you opened up your gap/ I had respect for ya, lady/ But now I take it all back/ Cause you gave me all your pussy/And ya even licked my balls/ Leave your number on the cabin/ And I promise baby, I'll give ‘ya a call/ Next time I'm feelin’ kinda horny/ You can come on over, and I'll break you off/ And if you can't fuck, that day, baby/ Just lay back, and open your mouth/ ‘Cause I have never met a girl/ That I love/ in the whole wide world’. The lyrics show utter contempt for ‘her’, but at the same time, there’s four counteracting gestures: Snoop is honest about his bastardry, up front about his needs, willing to takes responsibility for the consequences and he’s conscious enough to mourn the fact that he can’t relate to women. By every measure, the Dogg is a more sensitive, responsible and mature adult than both Hayes and Buckley, who (like children), want to make a mess, not have to clean it up, and blame the other person for the scat lodged in the teeth of the fan. My mess, your fault… biyatch.

Now, compare Snoop to Phillip Ruddock, a man prepared not only to defend Snoop’s ban from Oz, but also to abandon David Hicks to five years of solitary confinement and torture, blame Hicks for his own predicament, then bend over and cop the $500,000 charge the US government wants to shaft Australian taxpayers with for flying the jihadi-tourist home, on the same day that he issues a statement saying he’s happy Hicks is home, and that he never really supported the US anyway. Yeah right. Nobody knows (and has approvingly enjoyed) the hilt of US power more than Ruddock. ‘Oooh, Bushie, what a fat, throbbing sword of Damocles you have. It’s so glistening, so… evil. Oooh, yeah, dangle it above our heads. Ooh, yeah, I like that.’ His disgusting little press conference was more or less the Liberal party equivalent of saying, ‘Aww, shit, pimpin’ ain’t easy… biyatch’. I’m gonna call it – Snoop Dogg, for all his pimping, dealing and hateful views, is a more humane and responsible adult than Hayes, Buckley or Ruddock – let him in, give him citizenship. Hell, give him a job… hey, maybe we can swap him for Ruddock? I’d like to see that – Snoop at the airport in a pimp suit giving a press conference, like ‘Yo, we had enough o’ this biyatch, fo’ shizzle’. And Ruddock in orange overalls, being herded onto a waiting plane full of CIA thugs, all eager to show him their extra special Dogg pound, the one with no windows. Oh dear, I think I’ve just gone too far.



© Peter Chambers 2007

The Errorist Disorganisation (versus the functional, preventative, security organization)

With all this talk of terrorism, it’s easy to forget that there are actually other, far more subversive, subtle and less destructive ways of fucking with people to get your point across. Ways that will blow them away, without ripping them apart. That will mess with their heads, without making a mess of their heads. In a world with so much destructive violence and confrontation, it’s important to try to think different. And that’s why it’s time to introduce the errorist.

What is an errorist?

Simple: an errorist is someone who uses error to get their message across. Think about the typical spaces where there are high concentrations of people: airports, train stations, nightclubs, shopping malls. In all these spaces, surveillance and security is used to pre-empt you. ‘No alarms and no surprises’ isn’t just the chorus to a sadsack Radiohead song, it’s also the new motto of security. When you go to a night club, they really were expecting you, you know? But it aint hospitality, lads and ladies. The whole structure of the nightclub is designed to anticipate any kind of misbehaviour –it forces you to behave a certain way by preventing you from behaving freely, at pain of bouncer, of staircase, and of footpath. That’s why most nightclubs are actually incredibly conservative, conformist places – try getting naked, try getting up on the speaker stack – you’ll be ejected. They’re not spaces of free expression, they’re spaces of permissive repression. The fact that a man was shot at the Viper Room and no-one noticed does not diminish the point. I’m talking about places where humans go. And this is where the errorist comes in.

Because any successful errorist understands that if you create direct, visible confrontation, then the goons will spot, block and toss you. Look at what happens every time the Chaser tries one of their corporate lobby appearances. The system knows how to deal with disturbances that directly confront it. But what the system can’t deal with is noise, error. That’s why you’re not allowed to joke about the contents at your luggage at the airport check-in counter. And that’s why it’s important to keep cracking that very joke. But not just that joke. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, should be to introduce errorism into every space where you can hear the melody to ‘No Surprises’ playing. Anywhere you see people being ‘alert, but not alarmed’, muck with their heads. Scramble them. But do it subtly. It doesn’t have to be ‘I’m Brian and so’s my wife’ to get the message across. Example: blokes, wear a skirt. Just a skirt. No no, I mean – with all your other regular clothes. You would be amazed how much this ruins people’s heads. Or women's perfume. Or sunglasses. You can think of better examples, be creative. The point in every case is not to create direct confrontation, just to make 'noise', create that wonderful cognitive dissonance. Do a redundance. Never ‘identify yourself’ – straddle the identifications. Get under their radar. Get up their skirt – but do it gently. Spray on the scene, like a glitchin' machine. Make them wonder whether it’s you, or just a tickling breeze, an ocean spray. In this day and age, with more and more of our shared spaces becoming infected with this whole bullshit security mentality, this gentle art is our best weapon.

I believe the children are our future (Jagerbomb them well and let them lead the way)

I promised myself I’d never let this one slip out, but it’s too good. I have this idea for a book, you see (followed by a film after I’ve sold the rights for millions). You bastards better not bite this one. The idea goes like this: two blokes sit down to nut out a better way to ‘do’ terrorism. Explosions? How very last year. Thinking backwards, the duo think about the ‘evil doers’, then wonder about how to find a method of destroying them, and only then – maximising the impact whilst minimising ‘collateral damage’. The idea they hit upon is genius (if I do say so myself). Poison the cocaine supply. But not just any poison either, ‘cos if it took effect immediately, the offending gear could be binned before any more than a few lusty nostrils became the dust-bringer of doom. No, this stuff would have a delayed effect, say, six months. Imagine who would fall victim…

But behind the fascinating victim list that would result from this calamity would be a simple motivating the idea that drove my two terrorists, namely that ‘bad people’ would be slain and ‘good people’ spared. It’s hardly a new thought – read through the book of Revelation and you’ll see: the apocalypse is basically a nightclub queue.
‘Sorry lads, private function tonight…’
‘Nah, I’m on Papa’s list… plus one’
‘How do you spell that?’
‘P-A-P-A… The Bishop assured me tha-’
‘Sorry mate, no papa here… I’ve never heard of the Bishit or whoever…’
‘Bu-’
‘Mate, I don’t wanna hear it. Don’t make this difficult…’

It’s exactly this idea, of sorting the ‘goodies’ from the ‘baddies’ which was behind the recent foiled attempt by a groups of zealots to blow up Ministry of Sound. As Jawad Akbar said of his thwarted plan, “No-one could turn around and say, ‘oh, they were innocent’, those slags dancing around.” Even London’s chief of police said more or less the same thing in a responding press conference: "If you have 2,000 'decadent' Western youngsters in a dance club on a Saturday night; drinking, drugs and sex are all in there," the London police chief told defence journal Janes Magazine in January 2005. "If some sort of organisation wants to target a location, what better place to put a bomb?" he warned.

But the question that hit me straight away was: are they the guilty ones? Can they even be guilty? What does it take to be guilty, guilty enough to be judged and killed? Well, in most places, you have to be an adult, and of sound mind and body. Only Americans in some states kill people with mental disabilities, and Rumsfeld’s controversial plan to torture and publicly electrocute ‘young punks’ as young as ten never made it past the first round of discussions. But aside from the violent, sadistic excesses of some US states, if you’re a child, if you’re intellectually handicapped, or if you’re criminally insane, it diminishes your responsibility. It’s not to say that you ‘didn’t do it’, just that you have less control over your actions, and punishment is adjusted (or waived) accordingly.

Now think about what it means to be in the Ministry of Sound. Really think. Could you honestly be considered a ‘responsible adult’ and even want to go there? I’m not just being flippant, I mean it: in a very real way, there’s no way you can say that you’re acting and behaving as a responsible adult AND be wanting to wiggle at the MoS. This becomes true from the age of eighteen, but it is also a truth which intensifies as the years roll by. We’ve seen the sad-cases with our own eyes: a forty year-old who’s at Revolver on a Sunday could be said to be in every way infinitely more childish than a twenty year old taking their first tentative steps into the world of ‘slags’, ‘fags’ and amphetamine-enhanced folly. Hasn’t our generation witnessed the final collapse of child and adult into a juvenile heap? Children are becoming more adult, true, but adults are also becoming more childish, more childlike. Our whole culture is infantilised, we are all ‘his majesty the baby’ turning our lives into a series of impossible demands, tantrums and endless attempts to defer responsibility, defer adulthood, pretend we’re still carefree and that there are no consequences to our actions. Adults? Show me one. I don’t know any under the age of fifty. Basically, it’s as simple as this: where there are Jagerbombs, there are no adults. So how could you bomb them?

The Rebirth of Fool (Foolsies: a user’s guide)

“Beware,” I tell you, “he’s a foolsie.”
A foolsie is not an idiot. Foolsie is unto fool as ‘tricksies’ is unto Gollum, geddit? Foolsies can infiltrate friendship groups, spoil relationships, ruin lives and defile bed linen. If foolsies sound awful, well, that’s ‘cos they are – but you can stop a foolsie, if you know how to spot one. But how can you spot one? Basically, a foolsie is your typical male chauvinist pig, or at least, these remain his core values. The difference between a foolsie and a fool is in the veneer – like the superior shapeshifting ‘T-1000’ in Terminator 2, foolsies are clever enough to have developed elaborate ‘cloaking devices’, and can thus blend in. At the bar, in polite conversation, the foolsie always seems like ‘one of us’, no matter who that ‘us’ might be. He might wear Nudie downpipes, vintage Wayfarers (real vintage, not retro!), a Ksubi t-shirt and a ‘Make Poverty History’ bracelet. He might use ‘product’ and be able to tell you about his cleansing, toning and moisturising regime in lurid detail. He might be au fait with being recognised as outwardly metrosexual, or even pleasingly ‘just gay enough’. But make no mistake, none of these things are an expression of his being sensitive and in tune with himself and the needs of women. Beneath all the skin and jewellery, he’s the same asshole he always was. He might appear at home in his own skin, but that’s only ever because he wants a piece of yours (and not just any piece, either). This guy doesn’t just want a pound of flesh, or to pound the flesh – the punchline rolls in three years later, three years too late, when you realise that he set out with no intention but to fool you. Had you, didn’t he? That’s it, you see – everything, the whole elaborate routine – just to fool you. The joy of utter contempt. Not just to pull the wool over your eyes, but to deal you and your self-esteem the mental equivalent of a turkey slap. To the foolsie, the mindfuck is the sweetest of all sweets.

Foolsies are necessarily difficult to spot. Unlike vampires (and their nocturnal habits) or witches (with their wigs and spit), foolsies could be anyone. Hell, maybe your dad’s one… but never fear, in some cases there are telltale signs. Some foolsies emerge from a background they’re trying to define themselves against – meet his friends and family and you might see what I mean. Or when you say something ‘off the cuff’ and you glimpse deep, magmatic violence flashing across his eyes, cross-reference that against the Saturday you met his ‘mates’ and remember how they talked about other people to each other – when you weren’t supposed to be listening. Investigate. The way he laughs, really laughs (high-pitched devilish laughter) while watching the Footy Show. His garage, full of free weights, FHM, Jessica Simpson posters and a collection of bowie knives… But no – the most terrifying fact for any of you out on the town looking for love is that only the most careless foolsie will leave his toys lying around, or let you hear how his boys talk about you when you’re not there. And actually, a lot of foolsies are characterised by the fact that, well, there’s nothing exceptional or unusual about them. They’re just your average pig. They really are. You’ve just got to see through the stage props, people – ‘cos if there’s one thing a foolsie can’t operate without, it’s his ruse. See past the ‘stuff’ and you’ve spotted the dick. That’s all you’ve got to do. Remember, a pig who moisturises is no less a pig for having soft, supple skin.

Of nasty mums, sad beavers, and the FLAC-copping community [Pt. III of III]

So we’ve heard about the needle, the laser, the flash-drive and the damage done. And last week I scored a few cheap points (cheap, ha, they were free – I downloaded them!) against the recording industry.

Speaking to people (as opposed to record execs), one of the refrains was the idea of not wanting to harm the ‘little guy’. Mr Footstool is the friend of the little man… can we be too, and keep downloading? Forget about the ‘big, bad’ recording industry, what about indie record stores, small distribution networks, boutique labels? The ‘bad’ industry will look after itself, and has – collapsing celebrity, marketing and genetically-engineered spectacles into an interminable rutting circus, a media orgy (available on iTunes) of pole-dancing, pole-smoking Pussy Cat Moles who will nip, tuck and grind for your tweenage delectation, provided you’re willing to pay through the hose. So much for them. A lot of people just want the latest fad single, the latest ring-tone – and they’re willing to pay to download it, as the success of iTunes has demonstrated.

But what about the ‘good’ industry? Well, the first point to be made on this tip can be summed up by the (mythical) idea of ‘lossless’ files. There’s no such thing as a lossless file, just like there is no such thing as a ‘war without casualties’ ‘sin without God’ or ‘calorie-free food’. There are no gains without losses, and although we can minimise harm and loss, we can’t get rid of them all together. As a perceptive friend pointed out, “It's almost like the cries of sheet music publishers when radio was introduced: ‘what will we do now that songs can be heard for free?!’ But in the end their songs were heard by more people, and a new era started.” Or recall the British recording industry’s 80s campaign: ‘Home Taping is Killing Music’. Just like home cooking is killing hospitality. Or home damming is killing beavers. What nasty mums. What sad beavers. Indeed.

So if this a new era, a new reality, and we can’t eliminate loss or harm, then how can we minimise it?

I’ve spoken to downloading addicts, I’ve spoken to DJs, I’ve spoken to gigging musicians, and I’ve spoken to record store owners. A lot of people mourn ‘the loss’ (wherever it may be), but there’s only three aspects of the industry that are absolutely under threat: record stores, the recording industry ‘as is’, and medium-sized producers or bands who can’t, don’t or won’t perform live.

To musicians who won’t perform – well, you should. Musicians were performers. And so should they be. If you can’t perform, then DJ. And if you won’t do either? Well, okay, then you’ve got a problem. To the recording industry – change, or perish. But I get the idea that this has already happened, although not without ‘casualties’. And now we come to small record stores, and the joy of buying a work of dedicated creativity from a passionate expert who is themselves dedicated to creativity, one of the guardians of the archive. This is where I’m really sympathetic. Without knowing the details in each case, in the past three years Melbourne has seen the closure of Rhythm & Soul’s city store, substrata’s wonderful online service, Slap records and more recently Synaesthesia (although this was apparently for other reasons). It can't be a mere co-incidence. These are all very real losses whose impact will be felt as a loss of expertise, a loss of the joy of buying music (even with all that entails) and, perhaps most importantly, as a loss of community.

Online aesthetic communities, the so-called blogosphere, they’re all very well, but it doesn’t amount to much. The flipside of being free to discuss music is being free from any kind of embodied relation. The blogosphere can create weak links between two people anywhere in the world, but it struggles creating strong links between you and the girl next to you on the tram. As I’ve said, she might be the only other girl in Melbourne who likes sleeparchive… but how would you know? Forget money, forget records, forget music. If we can’t relate to each other face-to-face, then that is a great loss. And a real challenge.

Dirty Sanchez in El Dorado (the returning of the screw?) [Pt. II of III]

Last week, we looked at the world of Squibznik (private tracker extraordinaire), a world that is El Dorado to downloader-members, and Dirty Sanchez to the recording industry. I finished the column begging the question, (thee question if you’re wearing chocolate face fluff): why would I buy a CD?

‘Because it’s illegal not to,’ squeaks Sanchez the rec. exec, ‘downloading music is stealing!’

Is it stealing? Hmm…

In that irritatingly unskippable ad on a lot of rental DVDs, downloading is equated with stealing people’s ‘things’. ‘You wouldn’t steal a handbag… so don’t steal movies!’ Is the irony of the fact that this appears on rental DVDs lost on these eedjuts?
Whatever the case, the ad is wrong for two reasons: downloaders are not thieves, and they’re not stupid. Let’s say I steal your manbag, full of cash you earned dishpigging of a Saturday eve to pay for your tweakend shenanigans. It’s ten o’clock on Saturday night. The phones are running hot. You’re all gee-d up. And I took your money. There goes your lost weekend. I’ve taken from you, past and future: your projected fun and the time it took you to earn that cash, which you’ll never get back. Those five hours, those precious moments of your life you sacrificed washing dishes… I’ve robbed you of something you can never replace.

But mp3s are different – ‘almost’ nothing, just information telling your vibrator how to vibrate (yes, your iPod is just a fancy vibrator for your mind). Now, if I learn Japanese, I’m not depriving anyone in Japan of his or her language (imagine poor little Kenji, reduced to a lifetime’s grunting and signing because the nasty foreigner ‘stole’ his Japanese). Similarly, sharing music files doesn’t decrease a finite, scarce amount of something owned by an individual. Artists (well, living ones) ‘retain’ their music – they keep their own copies, and sometimes even the rights to its reproduction (if they’re lucky with the record deal). And they get to keep their unique ability to ‘perform’ their music face-to-face, which is something that nobody can take away from them, even though cover bands try.

The downloader hasn’t deprived anyone of ‘music’ – they’ve actually contributed to its abundance. It’s dishonest to say you’re ‘stealing music’ – historically, only record deals have had the power to steal an artist’s own music from them. What you’re actually doing is stealing ‘revenue’. Copyright, intellectual property – these are just ways of protecting profit. Because record companies see artists as sources of profit, it’s easy to see why they get confused. But, by their logic, why not sue all cover bands? Or attack second-hand record stores, who contribute nothing in royalties, and actually profit from selling other people’s music (unlike downloaders)? Or ban cassettes? But they’ve all been tolerated, because the record companies knew they retained their monopoly. Really, if you wanted to acquire a collection of music, it was impossible to bypass them. But now it is. Hence the panic. You’re not just stealing milk… you’ve Squibznicked their cashcow.

So there are two ‘real’ issues: providing a way for living artists to continue living as artists, and refusing or allowing the recording industry to retain its monopoly over the means of distribution. To me, this is a no-brainer: provided we can look after musicians and their entourage, the labels can go jump. This is an industry that ensures artists get no more than a few dollars from the sale of their own work; that has been happy to sell re-packaged versions of dead artists’ work at full price and take all the profit; that ‘forced’ digital on consumers because it was lighter, cheaper, and smaller. This aggressive, possessive parasite is screaming blue murder, now that they too have been rationalised by the same logic they forced on us… is it time to return the screw?

But what about ‘good’ record stores? Live venues? Independent distribution networks? The artists who’ve made all that incredible cover art? And the studio heads? Isn’t downloading kind of like A-bombing the temple, just because there are some thieves in it? Or is it that now, for the first time, we have to ‘think’, because we finally have a meaningful choice to make?

That’s what we’ll look at next week…

© (he he) Peter Chambers 2007

From Napster to Squibnik (‘Heaven on Earth’ vs ‘Our Worst Nightmare’)

Remember Napster in the ‘good ol’ days?’ When that puppy peaked in late 2000, almost everyone I knew was getting their first real taste of downloading. I’ve kept one of the first compilations I made on CD-R: it’s full of brittle, thin-sounding obvious ‘copies’ of each purloined piece. The volume and intensity of each track varies wildly, and a lot of them pop, click and glitch.

Fast-forward to ’03 and everyone’s on Limewire and Kazaa: mostly singles, lots of corrupted files, badly or incorrectly labelled tracks, no cover-art or proper tracklisting, and still no good for complete albums, very underground artists or up-to-date singles/EPs and remixes. That, and the spectre of dodgy spyware attached to a program that crashed and hung constantly. Certainly, it was no substitute for purchasing music, if you were serious about collecting.

Two years later, and people are getting whole albums off BitTorrent, ripped at 320kbps or even encoded with ‘lossless’ codecs, supplied with comprehensive tracklisting and cover art, and even (in some cases) pics of the original disc. The download speeds are still erratic, and you can’t get anything you can think of. But you can get almost anything. And suddenly, it’s almost possible to acquire a decent collection of music without paying a cent more than the cost of your broadband subscription.

But all that malarky, that’s just greasy kid’s stuff compared to Squibznik. Ladies and gentlemen, enter the ‘private tracker’. Private trackers like Squibznik (not its real name) are the private gentlemen’s clubs of the internet. In order to gain access, you have to be ‘invited’ by an existing member of good standing, who risks their reputation on you. Once invited, a new user is asked a range of questions, similar to the T&C everyone skips when downloading software. Having agreed to the various rules of the site, the new user is then allowed access to the Squibznik’s complete list of torrent files. But in order to keep downloading, you have to guard your sacred ‘ratio’ – if you don’t share torrents with others by allowing them to upload from you, you’ll eventually be barred. Like being discovered drunk and disorderly at the bar of the Melbourne Club every Saturday. It’s strict to the point of irritation, but users inform me that virtually any piece of recorded music (yes, really) can be had at 320kbps (at least), and all within ten minutes or so. Yes, really.

Basically, technology and sociability has ‘solved’ the distribution problem. Provided you’re wealthy enough to have broadband (or even live in a country with such luxuries), and are then invited by an existing member, you can have ANY music you want, without having to pay for it. For the music consumer, it’s heaven on earth. For the recording industry? It’s their worst nightmare. But given this situation, a profound question arises for your average cash-strapped and time-poor punter:

Why would I buy a CD?

What the entertainment industry is asking the consumer do is to pay AU$30.00 for something that can be had for about a dollar. The retail CD might be a bit prettier, but really, is it $29.00 prettier? Is it thirty times better? ‘But that’s illegal!’ you squeal. ‘That’s why you should buy the CD. You’re stealing from the artist.’

'Am I? Should I? That’s what we’ll be exploring next week.


© Peter Chambers 2007

My Life in the Bush of Mnml, Vol I

The first thing you should know is that mnml is nothing. We were never mnml, and neither should you be. And especially if you say you are, you’re not. So there.

With that in mind, MLBMnml is pleased to report the following trendencies:

1) Tools: No, not you arseholes. A lot of artists are releasing tracks that are openly designed as loops and sampling tools. Whilst this will make the (un)genre even more perplexing to the uninitiated (imagine paying forty bucks for a double EP with four sides of ten minutes of an unchanging groove, outrageous!), but it does put more creativity back in the hands of the able DJ. (Un)fortunately, this means both an increasing scope for hands-on, balls-out, multi-layered mixes and the inevitable ‘don’t you get it?!’ scenario of idiots playing a four-bar-loop for ten minutes. That means you folks are hearing that beat around 1300 times before (s)he mixes. Argh. Some EPs to check on this tip are Luciano’s fabulous ‘No Model No Tool’ package, Donnacha Costello’s 6x6 series or Onur Özer’s ‘Red Cabaret’ EP on Vakant, which is totally unsatisfying as a composition but chock full of ‘cool, spooky horn noises’ which fade in and out of the mix.
2) Dubstechno: some commentators are convinced that it’s a fringey, nerdy thing that won’t take off down the disco. Certainly, this music seems to be appreciated (mostly) by nerdy boys in bedrooms dreaming of sexy girls (attested to by the bedside piles of tissues). But from Shackleton’s atmospheric mesmerisers on Skull Disco to Surgeon’s recent convergence of his old abstract, banging style of techno with dub-techno and dubstep rhythms (check ‘Whose Bad Hands are These’ Pts I & II), an fascinating cross-pollination is afoot. Interestingly, both dubstep and techno seem to share an imagination of romanticised urban decay, alienation and dread that’s allowed them to cross-mutate without any friction their stylistic differences might have caused.
3) Banging (vs. deep house): A lot of German floors are in the grips of a (re)discovery (and re-interpretation) of a lot of classic house, especially deep house and even (apparently) wild-pitch. Berlin label Diamonds and Pearls seem to be riffing on some of these ideas. Check EAT’s wonderful ‘upbuilding’ tracks. Not that it ever existed, but I have it on good authority that mnml is, like, so three years ago, and not even worth disavowing anymore. All this as M_nus’ Magda explains, “When I think of minimal, it's not what we play, you know?” Then M_nus goes ahead and releases two records that are, well, quite banging and old school, like the recent Tractile and Baby Kate remixes. Meanwhile, another thread in the bastard tapestry appears to be going right into the bleep/sine-wave techno of old, as you can find in full effect mixed in with the usual gems and oddities on JG Wilkes’ (of Optimo fame) amazing ‘Walkabout’ mix, definitely my mix of the year so far.
4) The continuation of trance by other means: If Misstress Barbara’s recent (and appallingly bad) release on Border Community is any indicator, the interesting if muddy intersection between clicks’n’cuts, micro/tech house, mnml and prog/trance that the label instituted has withered and turned into a parody of itself, re-spawning an openly regressive ‘trance’ turn but (hopefully) enabling more than a few former trance-allergists to follow the word and the idea without shame into dark and mesmerising territories. All this as (formerly incredible) Aril Brikha drops another trance-as-dishwater badboy on Kompakt, simultaneously proving both that Kompakt are the ‘Ikea of techno’ as someone suggested, and that Detroit is sooo dead. AND that dodgy trance will never die. Meanwhile, stay tuned as trance’s ‘bad camper’ self returns, muddier – expect lots of hard, trippy tech-trance reminiscent of the Air Liquide days, but returned repackaged as… mnml. Donato Dozzy, Modern Heads and even some of the recent Metope tracks like ‘Braga’ are really worth checking on this tip, and Dozzy’s ‘dozzydozzydozzzy’ mix is well worth the free download from Mental Groove’s website.
5) Fossils, nerdscapes and Ksubi party monsters: Meanwhile, in the absence of an organising visual principle (a la Modular), mnml’s fractious trendencies appear to be fated to attach themselves to (then be disavowed by) a range of genres which are fossilising, being re-born, or just plain miscarrying (again). The nerdscape/blogosphere/production microverse keeps on revolving and evolving new, hyped sounds every few months, but so often these days this only seems to have a (ahem) mnml relation to what the ‘kids on drugs in clubs’ are dancing to, or at least how they understand what they’re doing. Younger peepz, unfussed by the sharp genre-specifics of 90s partying, appear to be picking, mixing and re-arranging parts and pieces of mnml into an overarching ‘style’ unified by visual cues – so the successful parties are increasingly those which offer a wearable subculture.
Nano’s recent successes (offering a vision of mnml to a dedicated audience) seems to have ‘proved’ (at least temporarily) that the music is viable in Melbourne. And why not? The parties are great, especially in the openness of Miss Libertines. But time will tell whether the style, which seems to yearn for stylistic purity, is at odds with Melbourne’s innately rockist, eclecticist music culture (on the one hand) and an increasingly visualised clubbing culture that subordinates content to coolsie kids in Ksubi jeans who cut their musical teeth on Triple J Hottest 100 comps in the suburbs… shhhh.

© Peter Chambers 2007

Roots Music Festival (singer/songwriter/strategist)

People become music makers for lots of reasons. For some, I’m convinced it’s the posture they like – they dream of an image of themselves rocking out on stage, mic or guitar in hand, faced by a teeming horde of screaming teens, and that’s enough to drive them to be their own hero. For others, it’s all about the equipment: playing music just gives you an excuse to horde, cherish and discuss obscure pedals, drum machines and so forth, which you then get to ‘spot’ in your favourite records. The whole of techno is just that, for some people.

Some people even love music for its own sake (shocking, isn’t it). But they’re always the minority, and usually not musicians. Seriously, hang out with fangirls, blog geeks, radio DJs or maniacal collectors (think John Peel) and you will know the difference. But although these strange people do exist, they’re a relative minority compared to those who are into air guitar and rare guitar. But to these two neck strokers, and the music lovers, I’d like to add a fourth category, for whom it’s not a matter of fretting, getting or feeling the groove. A group of people for whom, I guess you can say, it’s all about the skin flute.

That’s right kids, no pussyfooting. For some people, music is a mating strategy. Musical means, carnal ends, no accident. Lead singers, superstar DJs (if there are any left) – these are all just ways for ugly, undomesticated clap-toting ego-maniacs to sink the pink under the cover of rhythm and melody. But yank off the blanket, and the truth is laid bare. Basically, the ‘lead singer’ thing is a boomer hangover, and the DJ myth was always mostly that. The former’s rockist golden age expired with the likes of Jim Morrison’s leather pants and Michael Hutchence’s belt. And being a DJ – well, it’s more about the drink cards really, isn’t it? Does anybody really want to see your record collection? Undoubtedly yes, but not the kind of people who want to see the dilznitch. It’s not a sexy obsession, really. No, if music is a mating strategy, then its smoothest user is that other son of sin, the singer/songwriter.

S/Ss are canny, cunning muthas, and their mating strategy is subtle and mind-bogglingly effective. For starters, that’s because your average S/S presents a face to his/her audience that says, ‘I’m all about the lyrics man, and the pain of love.’ Their whole persona positions them as a person uniquely sensitive to the middle parts of fortune, in touch with some kind of heart-stopping, cosmic tide of romance. ‘Listen to me and you’ll hear peals of bells and a chorus of angels, I’ll sweep you away.’ Don’t let ‘em fool you. All that sighing, all that tinkling in your ear, that’s their ding-a-ling, you ning-nong.

I live next door to one of these guys, and I know how he operates ¬¬– I live with the consequences of thin walls and sharp ears. A tradesman by day, Mr S/S returns home of an afternoon, gulps the heads of a few glasses of Coopers, then sits down with his guitar and sharpens his licks. Strangely, I never hear him preparing food… But then around eight, he leaves the house, and presumably goes out to gig and jam around the northern suburbs. A few hours later (by the time I’m done staring at the flashing LEDs on my cherished machine), Mr S/S returns home – but never alone. Sitting in the passenger seat of the ute that pulls into the drive, you see her: a doe eyed, sandal-wearing undergrad dreamboat who dresses like the café-tanned offspring of Erykah Badu and Ani di Franco – hey, I’m sorry if it’s your sister. For her, a romance that started with Ben Harper or Jack’s Johnson at the Byron Bay Blues and Roots Festival is about to continue, only this time without BB and his blues.

You know it’s on when you smell the spliff smoke and the nag champa. Then the guitar comes out: a few chords, a shy song… then giggles, swiftly degenerating into a chorus of wailing, and much gnashing of teets. It works, every time. This dude has got his shit locked down, seriously. I reckon he jams about three times a week. There’s not a DJ, a plank-spanking axe-grinder or a drummer (hah!) on earth who’s got a mating strategy as sorted as this one.

But it gets better, because every single one of his ‘victims’, they’ll never grudge him his irregular tunings. In fact, they’ll be back there at the Wesley Ann the very next week, all of them, listening with rapt attention – cos they all think those heart-rending, sensitive words about the love that just ‘didn’t work out’, they all think it’s about them. Roberta Flack’s ‘Killing me Softy’ may well be the perfect song to describe this. But what Roberta didn’t realise was that she was sitting in the audience with twelve others who’d experienced the same practiced stabbing.

And here’s where it’s foolproof for Mr S/S, too, because for him, every lady he uses and loses that he sees in the audience, they just remind him of him, of his prowess, the power of his music to woo, and the tragedy of all those beautiful romances he had to sacrifice at the altar of his genius. The least he can do, for all those who he boofed and piffed, is to immortalise them in song. So you see? It goes on, forever. Listen to any of these guys, or witness the undead fitness of either Buckley to reduce grown women to a puddle of goo (lest we forget, Jeff Buckley’s ‘Grace’, the ‘textbook’ of this strategy, was number two on JJJs ‘Albums of All Time’).

But the thing that really ties a bow on all this is the net effect: a whole audience of people, nay, a whole scene, all convinced they’re drawn together by the love of the music, all listening to hear the failures of their love lives, which are (in fact) nothing to do with them, and everything to do with the S/S’s narcissistic reflection upon himself. It’s a mating strategy that’s not only devastatingly effective, it hides its true nature behind the veil of music, and then thrives through what it hides, generating a festival’s worth of sighs. No wonder the S/S’s grand ‘second theme’ is injustice, that’s the punchline. But shh, the singer’s about to strum. So it all (bl)ends perfectly. The S/S gets the girls, the audience gets to feel good about having been used, and we can all pretend we’re there to listen to music. A perfect roots festival, indeed.

© Peter Chambers 2007

[S]i[gh] Robot (Do humanoids dream of electric peepz?)

‘The future’ has proven itself to be a junkyard, littered with dead-ends and unfulfilled promises. Jetpacks, hovercars, salvation and/or destruction by alien intelligence (who, it turns out, couldn’t give a rats about us apes) – even those air skateboards from Back to the Future II. As it turns out, time travel is implausible, and space is actually cold, boring, and nausea-inducingly vast.. And am I the only one who considers NASA a wasteful extravagance? The coolest thing that ever happened in the space program was that nappy-wearing psychpath astronaut Lisa Nowak. Who cares if whitey’s on the moon, really? So the future’s over-rated, and space is boring, sure. But more than those two, the most striking imaginative cul-de-sac, the grandest ‘battery failure’ of the past’s futures, has been the death of the robot imagination.

In a recent ‘Slices’ DVD interview, Underground Resistance’s Mike Banks talked movingly about the impact of hearing Kraftwerk as a kid: “When we were kids and we listened to Kraftwerk, we thought they was robots. We figured ‘Hey man, this is some cool shit’ and the guys was robots. We never thought ‘black Kraftwerk’ or ‘white Kraftwerk’ – it was just ‘Kraftwerk’. And the shit was funky and it permaeated the inner city.” It’s cute imagining ‘lil Mike dreaming of robots, but boyish chuckles aside, what’s so touching about the comment is the bitter, metallic taste it leaves in my all too human mouth. Fact is, we gave up dreaming of a future filled with electro-hearted robots in the mid ‘80s.

Tokyo was always the place to go and dream of robots – this is the city, after all, that created Astro Boy. And just like ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ was set in the improbable recent past of six years ago (a year marked by a lot of things, but not by jealous, vengeful robots named Hal 9000), so Astro himself was meant to have been born in 2003, in Takadanobaba, of all places. Takadanobaba might sound like the name of an ‘end of level’ boss to be defeated in a Nintendo game, but it’s actually a faded, glum, crowded inner-city Tokyo area between the glowing, glistening metropolii of Shinjuku and Ikebukuro – a place on the tracks between two cities and that’s fallen into the cracks between two mutating, sprawling neon, concrete and silicon realities of the future. They’re realities that are both bleak and entertaining, but whilst the ATMs and ticketing machines do talk to you in a friendly way (more than the locals, at any rate), there are no robots. And especially three clicks down in ‘Baba. It’s the last place you’d expect to see robots created. Middle-aged hookers, undergraduates and obnoxious beer-toting English teachers sure, but not robots. That’s just the happo-shu talking.

But Astro, with his 100,000 horsepower, his jetboot legs and his all-powerful arse-mounted lasers, does survive in Takadanobaba, as a ghostly presence whose spectre haunts the walls of the underpass on murals, and in the jingle, programmed to the melody of the theme tune, that greets the arrival and departure of the trains running north-south between Shinjuku and Ikebukuro. On a cold, rainy Saturday night, between the vomited ramen and backlit signs advertising Irish theme pubs and massage parlours, it’s a forlorn melody. But with your eyes closed and your headphones on, even the most jaded robot-loving commuter could still lose themselves in Tezuka Osamu’s visionary comics, or the high-tech soul of UR, dreaming of Kraftwerk dreaming of robots. Even in ‘Baba. Until the fateful day I saw Kraftwerk’s robots come alive in Tokyo. That was the day my own robot imagination came to dust.

I caught a monorail over Tokyo Bay, to an island reclaimed for the future (from garbage). We went past Sega’s ‘Joypolis’, and saw a father and daughter being jiggled in a simulated ride, wearing ‘VR’ goggles and huge, sharp-toothed smiles. The gig started on time, and Kraftwerk delivered a hyperefficient summary of their greatness, without smiles or interruptions. All the classics, accompanied by an integrated visual presentation, played beautifully – the whole show slickened by the streamlining of digital technology, delivered on three laptops (revealing an imaginative superhighway that has led somewhere). But then, as the climax of the stage show, Kraftwerk unveiled their robots. What were they? Torsos, with jerky metal arms and showroom dummy heads styled after the faces of the group’s present lineup. It was kitsch, it was cute, it was gutting. It did unto my robot dreams ‘Rockin AB’ from the Simpsons’ ‘Duff Gardens’ episode did for hip-hop, democracy and alcohol marketing, all in one break-down. It crushed them, like an empty can.

A robot future was a better future – Mad Mike talks in the same interview about how Kraftwerk came and ‘hi-teched’ the mindset of inner-city Detroit youth, giving the first-wave of techno innovators a dream of a brighter world. But the robots, and their future, never came – Detroit, Takadonobaba – the revolution never happened, then it returned as a cute setpiece in the middle of an erstwhile junkspace. No wonder techno floundered – they were no longer able to dream. Back to you, Mike: “We need some hi-tech motherfuckers to come through. Until that, kiss my ass.”

Originally published in Inpress, March '07
© Peter Chambers 2007

Loving Desiré… or the Marquis du Sadé?! (from The Loneliest Pillow to Use Less Objects)

Okay, let’s start with a three diva mix: get Grace Jones ‘Pull up to the Bumper, Eurythmics ‘Sweet Dreams’ and Sadé’s ‘Smooth Operator’. Alright, ready? Mix… ignore the clashes, that’s natural. They’re just getting to know each other. Okay, likee?

I want you to create this ungodly union of chanteuses, because I want you to think about desire. No, not Desiré – she’s been laid up with a cracked pipe. I’m talking ‘bout desire, fool. Let’s start with Grace Jones’ ‘Pull up to the Bumper’, by way of laying out the first principle: if you’re gonna want something, it has to be within range. Does anybody want the moon? You can try, but you’re not going to be able to use it, have it or be it. But we’ll get to that. Point is, (s)he has to be in firing range if (s)he’s gonna pull your trigger, dig? You have to be able to pull up to the bumper, baby, if you’re gonna drive it in between. In the same way, how much does seeing a beer in a hand, a cigarette in a movie or a hand in a glove make you want to ‘get all up in that’? Isn’t that what’s so dangerous about eBay, that it brings things that would otherwise be unobtainably ‘far’ (even if they’re in the garage next door) into the minimum desireable distance?

But the thing about all these triggers is, they fool you. There’s real wisdom in that Tiga song… seriously. ‘I know, you’re gonna want me/but when you want me/it might be, a different story.’ It’s true. You see your object, and suddenly you think you want it. See a beer, want a beer. No problem. But no. In most cases you don’t want ‘the beer’ you just want satisfaction (and like Mick Jagger said…) And the closer you get to enjoying your object, the less you care about it – does the man who is already inches into his melon give two hoots about the bruised feelings of the fruit? Likewise, we see smoke, we think we want smoke, but the closer we get (and once we get lit), we don't want smoke, we want the satisfaction we get from it. We want nicotine. You can take this thought for a walk in all sorts of disturbing directions…

So much for things you want to use. Yeah, okay, there are things you want to ‘have’. Nobody wants to ‘use’ a painting or a rug. Ever heard of a rug user? That’s ‘cos only losers use rugs. Point is, some things you mostly own. For inanimate objects, this is usually unproblematic – neither a knife nor dildo cares whether you stick them on your mantelpiece or into your neighbour. So having or owning ‘things’ isn’t a problem. But people are different – and this is where it gets tricky. We use each other as objects, but we expect to be taken as, well, people – subjects. You might just ‘use’ your boyfriend, but he wants you ‘be’ with him. Or ‘have’ sex ‘with’ him (as opposed to just do it to him). The Spice Girls ‘Wannabe’ is a whole pop song dedicated to this fundamental confusion. They sing ‘If you wanna be my lover’, but in actual fact, what they want (what they really, really want) is to ‘Huh, I wanna huh’, ie, use their lover. If the usin’ is sweet, then, and only then can we talk about having their lover. First the dildo, then the dinner date, then you can share your wad, and maybe even bare your soul.

In some intimacies, this object to object relationship is a no brainer boner – beat sex is the quintessential example. But even then, talk to a withered old queen whose wild yesterdays have given way to teary moments and solitary crying jags while listening to Frankie’s ‘Power of Love’ and you’ll see – you might have been young and thought you just wanted to use ‘em, but you found out, all too late, that you wanted to have ‘em. Nothing’s lonelier than a pillow you have to bite all on your own. So what’s to be done about this… ?

The moment you step foot in any bar or club, it’s a muddy thing, desiring people. You pick ‘em up to satisfy your objective needs (cue Eurythmics). ‘Some of them want to use you/ some of them want to be used by you/ some of them want to abuse you/ some of them want to be abused’ and so forth. But then they call you, and want dinner. Your object gets all icky and ‘human’ on you. One minute you’re frequenting the booty clubs, the next four years you and somebody's daughter raisin' y'all own young'n as Outkast might say. So she pumps a few out… then she pumps your best friend, and leaves you with the kids, a thank you note, all her Sadé CDs and a suspicious discharge. Smooth Operator indeed. The humpire (ex hump turned vampire) strikes back. You then discover very quickly that you thought you wanted to use her (you wanna Huh, you wanna Huh), but actually, you needed to have her. She thought she wanted to have you, but actually she just wanted to use you. And now, there are these little things called kids, who in a very real way are you…. dear, oh dear.

What’s the solution? Well, you can just do as Pulp Fiction’s Vincent Vega advised: ‘Go home, jerk off, and forget all about it.’ In this way, you’re being, using and having yourself in one convenient flick of the wrist. When you think about it, it’s one of the only possible ways of having an intimate human relationship with very little chance for misunderstanding or objectification – but then again… what if you end up thinking it’s more than just a little romancing the bone? Who are you going to blame? What if it’s crap? What if you’re horny… and you won’t put out? The breakup could be Bobbitlike in its horrors. Hmm, maybe there is no solution. So just remember kids, remember. Keep your eyes open, and your ears. Listen very carefully to her Sadé records, before you end up owning them, along with the harpie’s herpes and little baby Grace. And if you end up hearing ‘to have and to hold’ when all you wanted was ‘to use and to lose’, don’t let me say I told you so. Wise man once say: those who go out planning to use objects may all to easily become a used object themselves.

Originally published in Inpress, March '07
© Peter Chambers 2007

Jeff Mills Live at the Liquid Room (1995) Screenings: Mon-Sat 2:30pm (babes in arms); 5:30pm; 7:30pm ; 9:30pm (Sat only). No free list.

One night in Paris I saw a very strange thing. A super kooky horror show, performed by enthusiastic undergrads in underwear. No, it wasn’t some blood orgy of the damned being performed at midnight in the Jardin du Luxembourg (that happened later, after the absinthe kicked in). No, this was a real horror show, The Rocky Horror Show: screened in English, with French subtitles, and ‘performed’ in time-honoured fashion by the students. It actually went beyond causing bawdy snorts to provide snickers that really satisfied.

Anyone who’s been to a similar performance of Rocky ‘Orror or the Blues Brothers (anywhere in the world) would know that it’s an experience utterly unlike watching a ‘normal’ film. At a conventional screening, the majority of viewers are seeing the action unfold for the first time, and the rest can just bloody well keep their fool mouths shut. But the pleasure of watching these cult films, like that of The Young Ones or Monty Python’s Life of Brian, is sharing the recognition through repetition, of knowing *exactly* what’s coming up and being able to quote whole scenes in character: ‘No ma’am, we’re musicians’; ‘We know you’ve got a telly, we detected it!’; ‘I’m Brian and so’s my wife!’ And so on. It’s all about the state of anticip… pation.

Film is full of theses ‘traditions’ – so why haven’t we ever extended this idea to the clubs? Imagine going to hear Jeff Mills Live at the Liquid Room performed so that it was neither live nor at the Liquid Room, but in a small auditorium with a group of people drawn to the event because they, like you, love and cherish these and other classic recordings. We could sell overpriced glowsticks, talc and coke in the foyer. You could even have a complete dance routine worked out in advance. As a matter of fact, I always harboured the desire to do a dance like Public Enemy’s S1-Ws in time with Jeff’s classic mix. This, finally, would give me the opportunity to bust it out. Hmm…

Prog-heads could do listening parties for Dark Side of the Moon, and the Flaming Lips’ four disc opus Zaireeka apparently has to be heard in this way, as any combination of each of its four discs played simultaneously reveals a ‘new’ album. But imagine a club that, like a cult cinema, did nothing but offer listen-ins of classic mixes. Unlike a ‘normal’ nightclub, you’d know exactly what was coming up. No more disappointing internationals past their prime, no more trainwrecks – all killer, no filler. And none of you ‘89ers can claim it ain’t what it used to be. The power of surprise and the sense of an epic unfolding is gone, sure, but in its place is the power of anticipation. That, and a complete displacement of the Ego behind the decks. It’d just be you, your mates, and the music that brought you together in the first place.

This has been going on unofficially for years – at house parties, in cars, among sofa surfers on many a stupefied Sunday. So why not make it official? Before the advent of film, plays and variety shows were the most popular form of audio-visual stimulation (outside the boudoir) – but cinemas offered a way for people to see Errol Flynn’s tacklebox without having to squint, or even lose an eye. In light of the availability of all the necessary technology and a presumed audience, we have to seriously wonder why we have failed to make the parallel invention for music.

Originally published in Inpress, February '07
© Peter Chambers 2007

(HE)HE= DJ ² [mixmastermatching]

DJs play other people’s music. This shouldn’t come as a shock to most of you. If it does, here it is again: DJs play other people’s music. More recently, DJs have been playing smaller and smaller parts of other people’s music, with some people like Magda or Richie Hawtin making whole albums out of techno’s greatest ‘hits’. You just take Baby Ford’s kick, Zip’s snare, Wink’s hat, combine, and repeat. Voila! Nothing’s more up-to-date, more hip, and (let’s face it) more minimal than that, right?

But what if we went the other way? I mean, maybe it’s time we thought about presenting combinations of far larger chunks of another artist’s music? What I’m suggesting is: why don’t we start mixing mixes?

Think about your favourite mix CDs. Think about their sublime moments, where the mix is no longer about getting from A to B but suddenly creates something more magical than the parts themselves. Or maybe there’s a sequence of five really killer selections you love that you could pinch from an otherwise average live set you downloaded.

Now, imagine if you then took the best fifteen minutes from twelve of your favourite recorded mixes and sequenced them: you’d have a three hour set that would re-present both the tracks in their already magical inter-relationship with each other and create an additional flow between all of them. Provided your own mixing was up to the task, we could be witnessing the birth of a heretofore unheard of way of making music, one that could potentially condense a collective total of hundreds of years of collection and selection into one performance.

No doubt this has already been done in an oblique fashion by novice bedroom DJs, armed with nothing more than two CD-Js and a pile of mix comps. But it’s hardly anything a self-respecting DJ would openly do. I mean, there are all those horrible rumours about lazy superstar DJ having ‘piss discs’ – CDs with two or three pre-mixed tracks on ‘em, long enough for said jock to lay a cable or lift a line in the bogs. But you can hardly imagine a big-name DJ openly playing another DJ’s mix, can you?

But why the hell not, really? If Stevie Ray Vaughn can play Hendrix’ ‘Little Wing’, why can’t Sasha play his favourite Digweeeds? With the CD-J revolution almost complete, and with our already bulging archive of mixed sets, maybe it’s time we prised open the mix-matching closet and ‘outed’ this ‘art that will not speak its name’. I can see you’re hesitant, Mr DJ. I mean, ‘mixing’ is your art, right? And mixing mixes, well, what if his mix is longer than yours? Maybe we’re crossing more than channels here. Hmm. If you’re hesitant… what are you trying to hide?

But c’mon now –with the exception of turntablism, mixing has always been about presenting a piece of music as it relates to two others, and removing the lowlights so you only play the highlights of each. But with mix-matching (or metamixing) it would be the mixes themselves that we’d be showing off – you’d just be highlighting the highlights. It’s just the same process of collection and selection, taken to the next degree. Conceptually, it’s no different. You’re just playing other people playing other people’s records, kind of ‘DJ ²’. If the idea of this makes you feel slightly queasy, is that because it’s wrong, un-natural, or because there’s something a bit subversive about the whole thing? It seems unthinkable, but really, it’s a logical step. I doubt there’s a DJ in the world humble enough to give it a go. But go on, I challenge you to be the first. Then imagine trying to explain it: a DJ ² is a person who plays other people playing other people’s records.

Originally published in Inpress, February '07
© Peter Chambers 2007

There’s no wave like show rave

I saw an interesting thing the other day. Somebody had taken a pen to a Paul Stanley tour poster and re-drawn his Kiss makeup. You know, I had to admit, it looked better – compared to the three untampered posters next to it, Paul looked somehow more himself. More relaxed. Less… artificial, if you can believe it. As if the person, by ‘colouring him in’, had put his clothes back on.

Seeing ‘nude’ Stanley got me thinking – the anonymous scribbler was obviously really bothered by the Kiss man’s raw lips, enough to take not just a black, but also a white pen down the street and carefully, lovingly return him to his ‘original’ state.

Image is a funny old thing that way. This whole ‘New Rave’ thing is a good example. It’s a stupid term, I’ll give you that. Of all the groups associated with the NME-flogged tag, only Trash Fashion make music that’s ravey in the slightest. And even if they’re not a Nathan Barley-esque pisstake, they still are, if you know what I mean. Don’t believe me? Log on and check out the ‘Rave Dog’ quicktime video on Channel 4’s website. Trash Fashion are keepin’ it foolish.

The Klaxons are another matter. The guys are ostensibly an indie pop band – they just wear clothing that loosely references the rave era, but in a much more coolsie way. Kinda like the grunge equivalent of ‘Kurt Urbane’.

But it’s not like the group have ever made any grand claims. Aside from doing an indie-coolsie cover version of a minor rave classic, the group are doing nothing more than playing with their visual image. It’s dress ups, nothing more, and it has nothing to do with their music. As their bass player explained: "There doesn't seem to be much fun in music at the moment… Rave is something that's bright, attractive to the eye."

So why does it give so many people the howling, screaming shits?

People talk about style over substance. But the case of the Klaxons might mark an interesting point in culture. Maybe what we’re seeing here is not just the total disassociation of style and substance, but their mutual irrelevance. If they were a couple, they wouldn’t have broken up, no. This is more radical. If style/substance were formerly boyfriend and girlfriend, what the Klaxons have done has effectively made it so they no longer even have corresponding genitals. It’s like frogs and trees trying to mate. The bits don’t just ‘not fit’, they don’t want to. Or they’d croak trying.

It’s a step up from what Matisyahu has done. Matisyahu is an Orthodox Jew and a ska singer, but he is genuinely both these things. But if his message makes it thinkable, or even normal, for anyone to be an orthodox Jew and a ska singer, the Klaxons are saying that you can be an indie band and dress ‘rave’ ¬without the two having to mean anything in common, or even having to mean anything at all. This goes with that at Sussan. Next question.

This is pioneering stuff. Give it ten years and we’re gonna start seeing all kinds of kooky chimeras – imagine: thugged out rappers dressed as Alice in Wonderland; country and Western singers dressed as African dictators; shred metal guitarists getting about as frump feminist lesbians.

It still makes people angry, seeing the divorce of sound from vision. But in ten years it will be common sense, and our generation will the ones who appear out of touch when we question our spawn as to why they’re dressed as Nazi punks when they’re off to the opera. Buckle your seatbelts, kids. We’re in for a bumpy ride. I think SLUTTT, writing about the New Rave backlash on someone’s blog, unwittingly summed it up perfectly:

“LABELS ARE SO STUPID. MY DUMB PARENTS AND TEACHERS ALWAYS TRIED TO LABEL ME AND I TOLD THEM “FUCK U !! U DONT EVEN KNOW ME!!!!” EVERYONE IS A SPECIAL UNIQUE PERSON IMO.

NOBODY HAS ONE PARTICULAR TASTE EVERYONE IS A SHINING INDIVIDUAL IMO.

I LIKE NEON COLORS AND XTC BUT I ALSO LIKE GOTH SHIT.

I GUESS I’M A NEU GRAVER!!!!!LOLOLZ

N.E.WAYS EVERY1 KNOWS MAGAZINES JUST MAKE THIS SHIT UP I JUST LIKE 2 PARTY NO STRINGS ATTACHED WHETEHER ITS RAVING OR MOSH PITS OR JUST DOIN DRUGS HAVING FUN. XOXOOXOXOXO SLUTTT”

This rant was originally published in Inpress, February '07
© Peter Chambers 2007

Unzipping Access (Me and my Lack)

I spent half of Saturday last week assembling my Träby, my Billy, and my Lack. Yes, after nearly two years in a wilderness of cardboard boxes and tippy piles, I finally sorted the lion's share of my records into beautiful, modular, Scandinavian order. It was a triumph – but it took its toll.

Because having all these ‘things’, to have and to hold, to schlep and to stack, to load into cars and drag out of bars, is a heavy reminder that having possessions also means being possessed. You end up being a slave to your favourite thing. Watch ‘owners’ pick up after their dogs and ask yourself: who’s the bitch?

It’s something I’m still working through. I'm deeply attached to my heavy objects. I also still like the idea of owning things. I like the idea, but I’m totally willing to concede that it’s a folly, and a redundant one at that. In fact, I’m here to offer you some advice, something I wish I’d gotten through my head before I embarked on this cumbersome adventure. The question is this: if you can access the experience, why own the object?

Last year, a good friend of mine stopped buying music, more or less. He just listens to the radio. Given that he’s into classical music, it’s not like he’s gonna miss the flood of ‘new releases’ anyway. But without spending a cent, he manages to have a near continuous stream of music. He’s got a pocket radio, a car radio, a kitchen radio – he’s even got one next to his laptop, tuned to 3MBS. Provided you’ve got access to a radio and AA batteries and you don’t someone else calling the tunes, no problem. You’ve overcome your need for objects. Hurray for you.

But say you’re a control freak, like me. The kind of guy who can’t abide letting another person choose what’s coming next. Until recently, radio just wasn’t an option.

But all that’s been exploded. Fact is, between podcasting, online radio streaming, illegal downloading and filesharing sites like yousendit and sendspace, I’m able to obtain access to almost anything – let’s say 90% of the new releases I want to listen to. Not bad, eh?

Sure, you don’t get to have a cool looking Ikea storage unit full of records, you lose some sound quality, and we really don't know how long our files will last before being corrupted – ask yourself, how many ten year old hard drives still work? How many of your 5.25” floppies still do the do? But, on the flip, you don’t have to buy, transport or store anything, which is better for the environment, easier on your back, and a dream when you need to move anywhere. It means you’re free, right? No vinyl, no CD, no Billy, and no Lack.

Wrong. Just because you don’t have ‘things’ to worry about looking after anymore, doesn’t mean you’re no-one’s bitch. In fact, my recent house-moving debacle was not just a reminder of how heavy records are, but also how dependent I’ve become on having my precious ‘access’. Four weeks without a high-speed internet connection has been like being barred from the world of work, friendship AND new music, all in one disconnected swoop. No access? No experience. At least you only have to buy an object once, then it’s yours. Unlike ownership, your access can be revoked at any time. Think about it – in this century, something as mindless as a phone company’s inefficiency can be the gatekeeper that comes between you and every experience you’re trying to access. Broadband is the contemporary equivalent of the VIP room in a club, the business lounge in an airport, or the tea room in a colonial gentleman’s club (no dogs or Chinese, thank you).

So this is where we’re at, folks. No sooner was I gloating to myself about having escaped the dismal cycle of acquisition, accumulation and storage than I realised I’ve already become dependent on something far dodgier. Those few weeks on the phone to the telephone customer service people, begging, waiting, cycling to the library or mum and dad’s to get my downloading fix were the grim foretaste of a world where everything depends on having constant, uninterrupted access. After a day without it, I felt the panic and frustration of a ‘VIP’ who’s lost their laminate, or a regular whose face has been suddenly, catastrophically forgotten by the mega Maori who stands between him and his favourite nite spot. It’s enough to make you wanna run home and stroke your faithful object. So I did. I went home, pulled a record out of my Träby, selected a book from my Billy, and stared at my comforting Lack.

This rant was originally published in Inpress, February '07
© Peter Chambers 2007

TDF vs. WT (Thoughtless, Drunk Fuckwit vs. Whingeing Twat)

Three’s a crowd, or so the saying goes. Well then, what’s a band room full of people? Surely not a mob, or an audience. No. If a mob shares the desire to spill the blood of the innocent, and an audience shares the desire to applaud politely, then a crowd, unlike these two more specific groups, shares nothing more than space. And this is precisely the problem.

Home cinema is entirely unproblematic. Provided you have a darkened room with thick walls separating you from your neighbour, you can watch Britney’s mousketeer performances, sing along with Streisand, or pound your parson to snuff porn, in complete peace and comfort.

But go to a gig and things get hairy. The performer hopes she’s got an audience, but in all likelihood, it’s a crowd watching her bray and sway. Look closely at all the people. Watch the guy carrying those three beers through the crowd like a bishop with a communion chalice; listen to the loud slurry next to you talking poon itch and imminent breakups with her nearest and dearest; feel the slide of the person’s shoulder pushing against yours as you wonder, for the fifth time, what is it that makes everyone see you as the easiest route to the bar. Experience all these things, and you can’t help but realise – we’re not all here for the same thing. In fact, we’re here for reasons which are not only entirely different, but mostly incompatible.

Consider the mind-boggling stupidity of drinking beer at gigs. When you drink beer, three things happen.

1) You want to drink more beer
2) You need to piss a lot
3) You get more and more drunk

In any good pub, none of these needs that beer users experience causes conflict. You want another drink? Go to the bar. Wow, amazing. You wanna piss? Go to the toilet. You wanna get sloshed? Repeat steps one and two. No problem. Good, clean, fun. But now, imagine that process, but between you and the bar and you and the toilet, place a tightly packed room full of people, some of whom want to stand still and undisturbed because they’re watching some inscrutable but apparently fascinating spectacle taking place on that raised platform… Raised platform? Yeah, you know, the one you and your mates are leaning against. The one as far as possible from the bar and the toilets. Can you see where this is going? So let me ask you these three questions:

If you want to get pissed, why did you come to the gig?
If you wanted to drink at the gig, why did you stand down the front?
If you’re standing down the front, why are you yelling ‘Do you wanna ‘nother beer?’ to your mate.
If you ‘wanna ‘nother beer’, why don’t you wait until the end of the song until you go and get one?

The answer to all these questions is this: because you’re a thoughtless, drunk fuckwit.
But the fact is, as a crowd, we have to share space. So what are we going to do? The rich person’s ‘audience’ solution (think tennis, think classical music recitals) involves numbered seating, polite applause and a whole bucket full of sssshhh. Fine, but what about raw power? What about rock? Well, then there’s the ‘mob’ scenario. The ‘mob’ scenario involves solving the problem by focussing all energy on one thing – you’ll be so fixed on the imminent denunciation, decapitation or evisceration of the hated object, that (for the moment at least) you’ll forget how much you need to take a leak and grab another pot. But this is expensive, messy and (if you’re the hated object being torn to shreds) cruel and painful.

Failing either making a mob and an audience of your average Melbourne gig crowd, I suggest something parallel to Leunig’s stink-freeing solution on public transport, where carriages are separated into ‘farting’ and ‘non-farting’. We have separate gigs for under eighteens, we have big-tobacco sponsored outdoor areas for smokers – why not have a thoughtless, drunk fuckwit corral at all our live houses, and a whingeing twat dress circle? You get your drink, I get my gig, and we don’t have to come between each other. But this is all sounding a bit sensible, and maybe I’m forgetting the one, essential thing, the only thing that thoughtless, drunk fuckwits enjoy more than pissing on with each other. And that, of course, is pissing off whingeing twats.

This rant was originally published in Inpress, February '07
© Peter Chambers 2007

Fuck my pigeonhole (animal, vegetable, or mnml?)

‘Pigeonhole’ is the C-word in the ear of the 21st century artist. Worse than any kind of panning, a nasty pigeonholing is what many fear most. The way people screech, anyone would think it’s an act so depraved it would make dogging seem like a pork in the park. You can almost imagine the traumatised children of the creative muse crying tears of rage and condemnation on the day of their final artistic judgement. Lips quivering, eyes swollen and pink from crying, they blubber out their accusation:

‘He…he… pigeonholed me!’

But slow down. Let’s be honest – when it comes to pigeonholing, you bad little kiddies were begging for it. Yes, that’s right. C’mon, you wanted it. Pigeonholing is your secret, dirty, dreaded desire. It’s like the magical appearance of a little boy’s rump at the altar of a monastery. We fear it more than anything for the very fact that we desire it more than anything.

But if (to stretch the sex analogy to tearing point), sexual molestation occurs where someone is unwilling or unable to consent, the crime of pigeonholing occurs at that strange moment when you say what the person wants you to think they are. It’s like saying ‘I’m cool’. If someone asks you if you’re cool and you say you are, you’re not. Simple as that. More than anything, the ‘cool seeker’ wants you to pigeonhole them as ‘cool’, but it must be a silent insertion. Shhh… and in it goes.

Mnml, like electro and indie before it, has inherited the vice. People who make their money from appearances as DJs (playing mnml), producers of music (creating mnml), and remixers (making other animal’s vegetables into their mnml) will not only deny their being mnml, they’ll then proceed to tell you that ‘Sure, mnml is boring, but nobody’s mnml anymore anyway, people are really sick of mnml, I don’t think of myself as mnml, I never was mnml anyway and if people want to think of me as mnml, that’s because they just don’t understand. And besides, mnml is a four-letter word, even in Berlin. And it’s not even a word, it’s just a string of consonants, like ‘rhythm’!’

A word of warning to the would-be pigeonholer – if you want to get ‘all up in that’, if you want this kind of animal to show you their vegetable, then don’t say mnml. It’s like rugby, or the army – for the driving, homoerotic force to work, it has to remain unspoken. Shhh!
And that’s the problem, trying to romance a pigeonholer. The only way to give them the good, hard pigeonholing they want… is to pretend neither of you know what one is.

Originally published in Inpress, September '06

© Peter Chambers 2006

Podless in P-Attle

She might have been a tree huggin’ hippie with tortoise-like nostrils, but Joni Mitchell knew a thing or two. One crusty gem in that nosehole of knowledge was this: ‘you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone.’ Ask any amputee and they’ll tell you (unless it was their head that got the chop). I wouldn’t quite call mine a limb, but I can tell you, not having it rrrreally stings. No no, not that thing. I’m talking about my iPod. The one that upped and died on Friday.

I don’t wanna sink my blue tooth into Apple over this one, after all, I caned my iPod for about five hours a day. Admittedly, I only bought the thing two years ago, but given that it’s survived travelling through five continents and been dropped more times than a Pentridge soap cake, I’m fairly philosophical about it. I’m okay, you’re okay, it’s okay… Except for the fact that now I don’t have an iPod. Which sucks, far more than I thought it would. Okay, so maybe the amputation metaphor was a bit overcooked. It’s not that bad. What it’s like is when you cut your thumb or your forefinger, and you realise just how many times you (I dunno) stir the pot, pick the parsnip or finger the villain in a given afternoon.

And I’m not the only one whose pod ate itself on Friday – there was a queue three deep at the Apple retailer, all waiting to be told just how much it costs to resuscitate the pesky things. How much could it cost? Ouch, that much. Man, at least reviving a loved one is covered by insurance. New screen? One seventy five. New hard-drive? Two seventy. New iPod? Not much more than that. Message? Spin’n’bin.

Ironically enough (given that they invented this shithouse way of making things and doing business), my Sony discman is still going strong. Sure, it’s of the non-skipping variety, but the sordid, cumbersome reality of having to do a redun-dance with a case full of discs, an accumulating mound of CD-Rs (the cellophane! the Artlines! the cracked jewel cases! the horror!) and burning through a set of AAs a week repelled me more than spider veins glanced up the spread leg of a fat old school ma’am. You think I’m joking, but seriously, the whole thing was so utterly repellant that I seriously considered stealing the pink iPod mini out of the hand of a tween standing outside the milk bar waiting for Humbert Humbert to arrive with his lollipop.

So instead of that, I’m using my digital recorder. Sure, it sounds fine, but it burns double the batteries of my massive, clunky discman, and it’s fragile. Well, anything’s fragile when you’ve got the co-ordination of a baby elephant.

My digital recorder’s got a flash memory of 1GB, which not so long ago was quite a lot. But after losing 20GB worth of music on shuffle, you realise what a difference a stupid, white object was making in your pathetic life. Which must have been the same reason why the jüzzy, Glenferrie Rd teen in front of me at the Apple shop was on the verge of tears.

Teen: Bin it? But… what am I gonna do? (lip all a-quiver)

Teen’s dad: You’re just gonna have to wait until you can get a new one.

Teen: But, I, I, I can’t…. (machinating) Daddy, can I have a new iPod? (more quivering)

Teen’s dad: No.

Teen: But dad, I can’t, I can’t live without it.

Teen’s dad: Why?!

Teen: I just, I just can’t.

And hate her though I might, I couldn’t help feeling - no, not even sympathy, but even empathy. It was true. I can’t say I understood why she was wearing marl tracksuit pants with her underpants visible over the top, but at the same time, I knew exactly, truly, deeply just how she felt.

Originally published in Inpress, February '07

© Peter Chambers 2007