Deutsche Girl Poets
Berlin is my number one lover that I take to bed each night and I think of every morning when I wake up and begin to write. For many of Berlin’s budding and surviving performers this city serves as their main fascination and obsession. Both sides of the city offer us many opportunities to test our work on audiences, on the city’s stages, we are published instantly. The audience is a melting pot, diverse, multicultural, tolerant, intolerant and rowdy yet, it is an audience that takes an interest in wordsmiths, in performing poets. An audience that can be quiet when in need, a clapping crowd when appreciative or hackling monsters when they must.
Gaby Bila-Günther, aka lady gaby, on Berlin’s spoken word and poetry scene.
Sohoitis XII: Teenage Angst on the Riverbank
I couldn’t live anywhere that wasn’t near a river. I have a need to see the tug and flow of the river every day, of course I don’t need to but I want to. It fufills a longing in me, excites me childishly, whether late at night, The Thames, fat and black in Vauxhall, displaying the whorish lights of London across its swelling belly, or young and bright rushing with the daylight energy of speeding police and fireboats, or tourist cruisers. It thrills me, absorbing me in its natural free wonder.
Sophie Parkin celebrates Mole, Ratty and Toad on the riverbank.
Religion in America
“Should you get hit by a car today, that will not be the hand of God, it will be the work of the Devil!” She blurted this out and never turned back, lecturing us about religion the fire and brimstone kind of religion built on salvation, temptation, eternity, sinners, devils, repentance, the Lord Jesus Christ, damnation, and the antichrist. She said these words and many like them in a steady voice that was just a few clicks below shouting, yet loud enough to disturb my reading. I wasn’t particularly interested in The New Yorker‘s ten-page essay about neuroeconomics and loss aversion, but I resented being unable to continue.
By James A. Reeves.
Crusader Guy
People like the Parking Clown and Crusader Guy offer something exactly opposite and far, far better than the purveyors of today’s surprises. They offer surprises that leave people with only a smile and a great image. They don’t screw up your retirement or initiate a media circus of hostility and recrimination. They just make living more fun. Maybe they should be the ones getting the capital infusions and tax breaks, since they actually do something positive for the rest of us.
By Thomas Sullivan.
Soundheads: Loop reissued
While Loop may not be on the lips of any NME cover bands at the moment, they remain a critics’ favourite and their albums often changed hands for £50 a time on eBay until late last year. It’s also probably the case that Loop mainstay and vocalist Robert Hampson, who remains active in other guises to this day, was dutifully aware that while he has no intention of following other bands of the era and reforming, five years or so of his life stood a fair chance of remaining wedged down the back of rock’s sofa if this was allowed to continue.
Andrew Stevens looks back at 1980s noise pioneers Loop.
Crackling Embers IV: Art’s Dirty Secret Redux
It was, indeed, evident by the number of press in attendance, that the appearance of Tom McCarthy and Simon Critchley in person was crucial to the event’s authenticity. One can only imagine the caterwauls of derision that would have rightly descended upon the two ‘Necronauts’ up on the stage if they had dared hoodwink those present and petulantly hired two actors to stand in for them — such temerity and tom-foolery would have undermined their, and our intentions, right? To reiterate this point I am put in mind of the unified scorn Andy Warhol suffered after he sent out various assistants and toadies to his own press conferences — in his own wigs — to impersonate him, only to answer the outraged media, after their collective protestations (to paraphrase): of course it was me, that’s what I’m all about!
Lee Rourke attends the reading of the INS Joint Declaration of Inauthenticity.
Tales from a Midwestern Lottery Winner
We waited two weeks to cash the ticket with the lottery office for tax reasons and as a fourth-grader, I was ordered not to tell anyone we had the ticket until then, though I confided to my disbelieving friend Greg in the gym. My parents locked it in a hard grey box in our basement. When we cashed the ticket in, I still remember posing with my mom, dad, and sister in front of the lottery office for pictures. The surreal nature of winning never really hit me then. I suppose I should have known when my young third grade teacher took me out to the hallway to show off her engagement ring and to ask me all about the $1.6 million.
By John Hendel.
The Idea of Fellowship: MySpace, Facebook and the Online Social Networks Phenomenon
Not unlike the online social network to which you belong in order to read these words wherever you are in the world on the World Wide Web. No doubt, some of us have blood relations on our list (a fraternity or sorority with real brothers and sisters). For most of us, acquaintanceships, friendships, relationships, were formed and are forming and will continue to form. Lest we forget the “haters,” since this is a free vehicle for the exchange of ideas and images, no doubt there will be ones with whom we don’t gel well.
By Binh Nguyen.
In The Land of Mickey Mouse
The images are far more thrilling than any backwoods smut flick, with some part-time cocktail waitress who can wipe the DNA off her face (and the cameraman can take the donkey back to the U-Haul) at anytime. Derek’s gonna be in jail forever, just like Benny M., old, senile & toothless, hasn’t had a real glass of Florida orange juice since 1951, when a proud bat-swinging store clerk forced gun-packing Benny to graduate from theft to homicide. Hey, Benny: wake up! We put a man on the moon. There’s football on Monday night. The Olsen twins grew tits.
By Raymond Cavanaugh Jr.
A little bit of intellectual shit, diversity and wit
You often read interviews in the media with band members, but crafting lyrics seems rarely to be discussed in depth. So I thought I’d contact Randy Fitzsimmons just to say what he had to say about writing exciting lines or phrases or verses. Some of you may be aware there has been some controversy about the very existence of this offstage-svengali-sixth-member of The Hives. A few years back the student indie-spindustry popaganda rag NME broke a story that the lyricist was actually guitarist Nicholas Arson, a ‘revelation’ which pissed the band off, being flatly denied.
Graham Rae interviews Randy Fitzsimmons.
Overwhelmingly Bearded
Autechre live are technically inscrutable but sonically fluid, cutting and snipping events together almost seamlessly, quite unlike the new album’s discrete pieces. The performers are lit, but barely; the main focus of the crowd’s rapture appears to be two Apple laptops, not the heads bobbing around behind them.
Andrew Fleming on Autechre live.
Kill like a girl
Qaddafi’s efforts to promote the idea of women in the military, has often had the “F” word — feminism – tossed his way like a hand grenade by Arab critics. He has deftly sidestepped this potentially explosive accusation by charging the women with not just the guarding of his body, but more importantly, the guarding of an ideology. Throughout Shadows of a Leader, both men and women will repeat this sentiment, that the women are guarding not just a leader, but an ideology. And part of that ideology is women’s military participation will not come at the expense of their femininity. As if to emphasize this notion, Colonel Fathiya Tabishat who is centrally featured in the documentary, is shown purchasing make-up and a purse in a fist-sized store as two bemused shopkeepers watch.
Andrea Fischer on Rania Ajami‘s Shadows of a Leader.
