blood, gutz and fucknuts

there's a transit strike, so went to meet mia over at warschauer sbahn since that was the only thing running out of prenzlberg, walked along the quiet skalitzerstrasse rails for about 20 minutes over to festsaal, she was on the guestlist so split the entrance with me, another one of those noise concerts in a basement.... choked with smoke, tin foil on the walls, the usual. the second set was this japanese guy with long hair, not many people know this but apparently quite famous, a little blinky light over all the cords and consoles, leaned spread leather legged over the table, turning knobs, breathing into tiny speakers, and this japanese woman in a black see through shirt began sort of humping the amp, slowly rolling along the floor, lifting her hair in chunks over her head, she had this world weary but yet masturbational look on her face that seemed appropriate for an 'interpretive' dance to beatless, melody-less music, i was sitting cross-legged on the concrete floor among the cigarette butts, and girls were taking pictures, i took pictures like the other art girls, luckily i had some earplugs, but this sonic place that goes nowhere.... i thought again about what the fuck people think when they go listen to 'experimental' music. the set was interminable.... i don't know if i'm ready to pretend i liked it, i don't discount it, but... later i was outside smoking and some guy started talking to me, he said he had heard my american accent, talking nervously and asking who/what/where/why questions, and asked me if i liked experimental music, he was from kansas, but seemed to want to mention bands that i might know, which i didn't, and i was thinking, again, who truly likes this stuff? there was this potbelly fucknut jiggling his legs later to 'sudden infant,' --who was pounding microphones against his clavicle and hopping on pedals -- and the fucknut was screaming 'fuck yeah' or something, as if by jiggling around all the rest of us could see that he uniquely appreciated this completely inaccessible music. we knew him from before, he had followed us to a party after the last noise concert i accompanied mia to back in september or so, with another fucknut german friend -- i remember we had all been walking along near frankfurter tor, and we were all talking about why germans seemed to prefer amphetamines over crystal meth, and i commented, because they are control freaks, and fucknut #2 huffs, that's just stupid.

anyway: this snobbish exclusion, it seems, of all those who 'don't get it'... i suspect, in my ripe old age, and having heard quite a bit of 'experimental' music and seen lots of weird art shit in my short, urban time here on earth, i feel confident now to say this.......... there is something to be said for the tonic note. for the carefully placed, but not excessive, dissonance. there is something to be said for melody, for figurative representations (read:words). none of this is new, the return to pop.... but now that i think of it, the sensation is that it's almost provincial: only those who feel inadequate in their own cosmopolitanism have the need to somehow show that they can appreciate the unappreciable.

of course there are levels, and there are geniuses, there is john cage, there is le monte young, i could go on... but this shit was a scene.................
at the end i had retired to the dressing room with some other pretty young things to take refuge from the noise of the last set, then came out to see there was a guy in a tangled blond wig turning more screechy knobs to a butchy lady screaming in the microphone and breaking beer bottle after beer bottle on the floor. in a moment, someone started beating the wig guy with a bat, he toppled over a table, fell onto the floor full of broken glass, the lightbulb busted and went out, the music stopped.

in the cellphone light, the wig guy was covered in blood. the fucknut guy with the jiggling legs had a spray of blood on his forehead, he seemed proud. the rest of us were practically deaf....

and now im home listening to brian jonestown massacre. so SUE me.