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Blastitude #10.

Ladies and Gentlemen, your host for this issue, The Unknown Comic!!! Just kidding. (Anyone have a 'complete works of The Unknown Comic" video floatin' around? Something with all the Gong Show appearances, his 'blue' cameo in the movie Night Patrol, any other esoterica that somehow got broadcasted...Hollywood Squares? Fernwood 2 Night? The Love Boat?)

SPECIAL TENTH ISSUE!!!

What makes this issue special? Why, this is the issue where for some reason I decided to review every single record I listened to, while I was listening to it, for a week. To do this, you have to type really fast, and finally, I understand what Truman Capote meant when he said of Jack Kerouac's body of work, "that's not writing, that's typing." I'm definitely guilty of some typing, but the thing is, I always go back and tortuously revise my typing, chipping away at over and over again, trying desperately to shape and reshape it until it's actually writing. Sometimes I'm successful, but even when I'm not, I put it up on the web anyway because I've got a deadline. That's as close to the Blastitude mission statement as I can get after my tenth deadline-intensive issue in a row.
     Ah, but the astute ones out there have surely noticed the deadlines have been getting less intensive every issue. Look for that trend to continue. Really, I've just listened to too much improv-type noise music these past few months. Hell, I'm listening to improv-type noise music right now, guitars I think, coming from the CD shuffler, and three minutes in, I don't even know who it is. My initial reaction is, "Damn, take it off, put on some Fela" but...you know, after four minutes in, the music starts to insinuate itself.
      This whole improv-type noise thing really does have its way of insinuating. I always want to get up and turn it off, because it's just another noise record, but it numbs me into apathy before I get around to getting up. (It's not a coincidence that marijuana is a very popular drug among noise users.) Because of the inherently tedious circumstances the existence of "another noise record" thrives upon, hearing another noise record -- on your own stereo, no less -- can instantly divert you into some sort of task that helps you ignore it. For example, cleaning the kitchen while it plays in the other room, turning it down so you can better concentrate on driving while eating that taco, or writing a review about it for your webzine.
      And right now, while writing about it, I'm realizing that this record is The Somnambulist by Delayed Sleep. I've already listened to it once, and I reviewed it while I was listening to it then too, which can be read on page six. This time I'm liking it just as much, and the reason, I'll admit it, is because I'm MELLOWING WITH AGE. Call me a 'sissy' if you like, but in my humblest opinion, I'm aging like a good red wine. I like all kinds of noise music, and I think it's cool how noise killed the song, but I still really like songs too, and I wanna hear songs at least 50% of the time. I mean you should've seen Harvey Sid Fisher last night at The Hideout...those were songs...Bill Callahan can win all the Magnet Magazine "best songwriter" polls there will ever be, but he has never connected with me 1/10th as much as Harvey Sid does...I'm not joking at all...
      Anyway, it's not like I'm fleeing for Elephant 6 here. (I only own one affiliated LP, and that's a CD-R dub of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea that I've listened to exactly once.) It's just that, with all the noise music in the world, if you're gonna do it and I'm gonna be engaged by it, there has to be a song somewhere in it. I don't care how deeply it's buried, but I wanna feel it: a hook, a sequence, a progression, some kind of narrative arc, however experimental...any semblance of the soul of an individual other than simply the rejection thereof...there doesn't have to be words or vocals...there doesn't even have to be notes...there just has to be a CONCEPT other than "Being Beat Up For 30 Minutes" and "Being Beat Up For 30 More Minutes."
       Cock ESP, for example, did it by beating you up for ONE minute instead of 30 -- a much more invigorating experience. On record, they broke up the noise with interview segments, and then audio verite arguments, and then actual songwriting (retarded electronica songwriting, but songs nonetheless). Delayed Sleep know how to do this too. They don't keep punching when you're already down, they give you a backrub. And they know how to change it up; track seven ("4'15") is a killer mid-album curve ball, consisting of a slowed-down and faraway hip-hop beat coming out of an amp with one of the guys whispering some pleasantly indiscernible lyrics over it. Most of the rest is just mellow mellow mellow ominous spacious guitar improv. When it's over and a mean 'n' evil early Captain Beefheart blues demo kicks in, it actually sounds too mean. That old Beefheart raw adrenaline, so often a source of excitement, is now a source of aggravation. I wanna go back to (delayed) sleep.