July 23rd, 2008
on the corner of belmont and picket avenue i seen her as if i dreamed her
·· cataloged as days of future past, tourism ··
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July 17th, 2008
7/13/08: lucifer over london
freaktard chooo-choo-chooses you, pikachu!
·· cataloged as old chums ··
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July 16th, 2008
7/14/08: YOU ARE JUST A THOUGHT THAT SOMEONE SOMEWHERE SOMEHOW FEELS YOU SHOULD BE HERE
Jason Tallon. Apparently offsprung from the chance union of a Riverboat Confidence Man and a methfreak from Warhol’s Factory.
·· cataloged as old chums, tallon ··
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July 9th, 2008
i must apologize for acting stank & treating you this way
·· cataloged as wild animals ··
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July 7th, 2008
The Dead: Thomas M. Disch
What a thing to find upon opening one’s computer: SF author Thomas M. Disch has committed suicide. I hardly know the man’s work– I only own one of his The Prisoner novelizations– but we used to live in the same building. I would see him very, very occasionally in the elevator and much more frequently see his mail laying around in the lobby and, on those moments when we’d sneak to the upper floors, in front of his apartment. I never spoke with Disch, because, well, why would we?
But I always found it enormously comforting that a genre writer could be living at the top of Union Square– and I have thought of it often in the years that have passed. His presence in the building was one of the very things that alerted me to the potential of life in New York. How sad that the apartment itself appears to be one of the contributors to his suicide.
·· cataloged as thelivingandthedead ··
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July 6th, 2008
mouse tails / o my god that britney’s shameless
This apartment.
·· cataloged as wild animals ··
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July 5th, 2008
bleedin’ life down in los angeleyze
1-3. Angels Flight. World’s shortest railway. Maybe.
4. Hotel Clark.
5. 5601 Hollywood Blvd. Next door to an empty lot with an invisible palace that can be seen only when the liquor store across the street extinguishes its lights.
6. Freeway. Celebrity Center of Scientology in upper left. Don’t forget the Guy Fawkes mask.
7-8. One of any number of pre-50s phallic buildings. Earthquake regulations. It’s on Hollywood Blvd.
·· cataloged as hollywood ··
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July 3rd, 2008
Towards an Understanding of Danzig
My entire adult life has been spent as an unrepentant fan of Glenn Danzig’s musical ventures, providing no end of amusement for my chums and pals; after all, Danzig is a patently ludicrous figure– the so-called “Evil Elvis,” a five-foot-four New Jersey cockrocker with a propensity for losing fights and keeping bricks on his front lawn. I’ve never denied that Danzig has made an endless series of questionable choices which only reinforce his perceived status as a goon: the last time that I saw him live was in 1999, at Lupo’s in Providence with my pal Dave Asselin, and a good deal of the set was performed whilst Danzig modeled a vinyl battle-vest.
There are two dominant cultural narratives of Danzig; the first is of the dumb rocker guy who sang “Mother,” a song that now resonates at sporting events coast-to-coast. The other, amongst those who care about such things, is that of the Punker Who Fell from Grace; the dude who wrote all of the Misfits’ music, invented at least two sub-genres and was the backbone of one of the most influential bands of the last 30 years (and now, given the prevalence of AFI and My Chemical Romance, might we not argue that Samhain has become as influential, if not more so, as the Misfits?) and then threw it all away to disappear in a haze of testosterone and strippers dressed like cats.
The curious thing is not the wrongness of these narratives. The curious thing is that they exist.
Pop quiz: name one American punk figure other than Henry Rollins who has immediate name recognition in the mass culture. A variation: name one post-1986 Metal Figure (and I do mean metal– no Axl, no Slash, no Marilyn) with an immediate brand recognition. Another pop quiz: when was the last time that you were able to leave the god damned house without seeing the Crimson Ghost on someone’s chest? Now, contrast and compare: how often do you see the Dead Kennedys logo, arguably the second most iconic image of American punk? Final question: how many people maintain a career in music for three years, let alone thirty?
These rhetorical questions hint at what has been a slowly dawning idea: that Danzig is best understood as a unique figure in American culture, with a remarkable persistence of musical prescence, and that, furthermore, his impact as a graphic designer and visual artist has been both considerable and virtually ignored. And it’s important, too, to realize that unlike Rollins (from the punk world) or even Ozzy (from the Grog Hall of Darkest Metal) Danzig’s recognition was achieved without ever transcending the various musical ghettos in which he dwells. There have been no spoken word tours and no shows on MTV or IFC.
The work itself (by which I mean: 85% of the Misfits catalog, Samhain and Danzig 1, 2, half of 3, 4p, Circle of Snakes and much of Lost Tracks) presents a surface level difficulty– the persistence of vision has revolved around a relatively simplistic musical approach (how many times can one man rewrite “Twist of Cain” and how many Misfits songs are reducible to Whoa-Oh-Whoah-Oh-Oh?) with an exceptionally thin lyrical palette. Put it this way: there are roughly 250 songs in total and 98% of them are about skulls, fire, demons, death and wicked, anthropomorphic she-beasts. Danzig’s easily dismissed personal appearance and choices only complicate matters. The dude who wrote “Attitude” was always going to be his own worst enemy, but something about the move to Los Angeles bloated his ego, and the New York/New Jersey visual edge of the Misfits/Samhain period became this:
In short: the man went Hollywood, and going Hollywood has always meant too much money.
The Misfits and Samhain were homegrown affairs, with Danzig designing the materials himself and never having the cash to afford a video, let alone one with a reasonably sized production budget. And thank God for that kindness, as we’ve seen exactly what we would have gotten: four dudes in black jeans invading Jumbo’s Clown Room and a red-headed ass show intercut with tight close-ups of Danzig’s own undulating face. (Note that he bears a odd resemblance to Paul Giamatti sporting the same haircut as one of my ex-girlfriends on her MySpace profile in 2006.)
By contrast, here are a few of the Misfits/Samhain fliers:
The last image– from the Die, Die, My Darling EP– is a less famous example of Danzig’s approach from the New York days, which revolved around a near-obsessive sampling of pulp media. The song is titled after the US release of a 1965 Hammer film; the band’s name comes from Monroe’s last film, and the EP features the best known Misfits logo– the letters of which were taken from Forest Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland. The central image of the cover was copied from Harvey Comics’ Chamber of Chills #19, which bears the not insignificant copy: “Here’s Looking at You Darling… On Our Happy Anniversary!”
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Many will disagree, but I find no enormous disparity between the sound of the Misfits period and the early Danzig albums; there’s a certain amount of growth and slowing down, and The Voice becomes hugely apparent, but lyrically and musically the sound is not particularly changed. (Samhain is often considered the bridge between the two, but the issue of where Samhain ended and Danzig began is a non-starter. The final Samhain lineup was identical to the lineup of the first five Danzig releases. Different names, same band.)
I would argue that the perceived change had nothing to do with the music and everything to do with visual aesthetics; here are the original covers of the first four Danzig releases:
Let’s linger over the self-titled first release. Here’s the original gatefold LP all opened up:
Okay, so: this is a great piece of design, and it demonstrates just how completely bizarre Danzig was; 1988 may be known for many things, but two-tone minimalist cover art is not amongst them. This is, sadly, one of the last gasps of Danzig’s New York design sense; immediately after we move into (more!) weird close-ups and when your record label is giving you enough money to license the artwork of H.R. Giger for your third album, you know it’s gone to shit and then you’re getting Simon Bisley to draw big evil demons and there’s no point of return. (Except there was, sort of: Danzig 4p, the fifth release, had artwork designed by Danzig. It’s great but afterwards everything immediately goes to shit and never comes back.)
The lettering for the Danzig logo on this cover comes from another pulp source– the film poster for The Giant Gila Monster– and the Skull, also used for Samhain, and which seems so prototypically metal, was stolen from the most ridiculous source of all Danzig’s sampling: Michael Golden’s cover to an obscure Marvel comic called Crystar.
It’s the same damn thing. Musically, visually; it’s all the same until money corrupts the enterprise and gives the dude too many cameras and lick-whipping strippers. (The two most recent Danzig offerings– Circle of Snakes and Lost Tracks– were self-released. Both, musically anyway, are vastly superior to the previous 10 years of crap. It’s all come full circle.)
The “Evil Elvis” moniker becomes an enormously useful metric. While I’m in no way arguing that Danzig’s cultural position is any way commensurate with that of Presley in terms of influence or importance, it bears remembering that Presley was a major artist and musical force whose late career choices effectively destroyed his achievements.
Some of the best Presley songs were recorded in the early-to-mid 70s period, but they remain hard to hear. The visuals of the period– the sequins and the jumpsuits and the fat– are overpowering. By the end of the 70s, Elvis’s aesthetic choices had done enough damage that Greil Marcus had to write Mystery Train to remind people of the revolutionary music from the 50s and 60s.
Presley was and continues to be discussed like an idiot, as if the multi-decade career was a mistake into which a country bumpkin had wandered; replace Memphis with Lodi, New Jersey and you’ll see the same kind of dismissal of Danzig. But if the 20th Century taught us anything, it’s this: anyone can get a record deal, but the only people who survived were the ones that knew what they wanted and understood what they were doing.
·· cataloged as 60s, glenn danzig, music ··
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July 2nd, 2008
I feel your fist and I know it’s out of love
A killer example of late 70s/early 80s comic art– courtesy of an unsung journeymen, the great Walt Simonson.
I often find that my tastes in 20th Century mass culture run not to The Stewards & The Highly Acclaimed, but rather the work-a-day dudes who were just churning it out, sometimes getting it right, sometimes not-so-right and sometimes killing that shit.
Simonson– and maybe someone like Herb Trimpe– is best understood as a comics analogue to directors like the profoundly underrated Don Siegel (is there any better American film from the 1970s than Dirty Harry?) or Robert Wise or even home-team favorite Robert Aldrich.
(Future Foreshadowing for the Stans: Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly basically ruined my life.)
Huzzah.
·· cataloged as comics, dr who, yr guess good as mine ··
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June 30th, 2008
the method by which one forgets and then remembers anew
Back now. “Hollywood.” After 15 or 17 or 2000 days of travel– the original plan was a week long stay in Oregon with elly, purpose: a lovely wedding (not mine)– somehow, after the ceremony and gathering of folk and a delusional wander around Eugene in which a man uncovered the heretofore ignored works of Ross MacDonald and an astonishing mid-sixties copy of (our hero) Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, I ended up in San Francisco. Even this ballooned for extra days, the city unwilling to allow a release according to my improvized schedule. I am tired. I want to hide for a million years and yet things is mad tricky; I leave again Sunday and have stupid Plans for the current week. Life, like love, comes in spurts.
·· cataloged as tourism ··
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June 30th, 2008
the definition of “home” develops scalability
·· cataloged as traintroubles ··
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June 28th, 2008
freak LA history: commerce in hippieland
January 28, 1968, “Commerce in Hippieland” by Jane Wilson:
“Trade follows the fad. On the one hand stand the hippies, suppliers of psychedelic art, tribal crafts, drug religions, acid rock, love-ins, be-ins, underground newspapers and flowers. On the other hand stand the voracious teenyboppers, curious college kids, swinging singles, gimmicky housewives, and panicky over-30s, who fear that Life may be passing them by. The hippies are supplying something, the straight world is demanding something, and in the middle–guessing–stand a few fearless entrepreneurs. Some of these are Flower Children, some are businessmen, some are greedy, some are idealistic…”
·· cataloged as 60s, hollywood ··
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June 24th, 2008
Jason Tallon Reports on Kenneth Anger at the Anthology Film Archives, June 20th, 2008
Kenneth Anger is my Grandfather. He is upstairs in my parent’s bed and I bring him his breakfast. He’s feeling better but restless and anxious to get out again. He’s planning his escape. I’m in charge of watching him, of serving him, but also making sure he does not get away. Over the next few days we get to know each other, really, for the first time. We laugh and joke, he begins to open up to me and I’m excited to make up for lost time.
I walk up the stairs one fine summer morning into his room to find an empty bed, sheets disheveled, pillows on the floor. From the bedroom window I watch as he rides off on what else but a motorcycle. At this point I become Anger and I drive through off road trails into the backwoods of the country. I slow down, get off the bike and walk, full of dread, toward my destination: prison.
The prison is some distance away. But I can tell things have gotten out of hand long before I arrived. A huge battle is being waged on the verdant fields of this stone Bastille. Full riot and a jail engulfed in massive flames of blood and steel. As I walk towards the flaming prison, an old man cries out among the sheiks firsts and smoke, “This is where you belong, isn’t it, Kenneth!”
When I awoke it was noon.
I remembered what I done last night. Cinema Dance Eros. I had come to see the good Dr. Kenneth Anger at Anthology Film Archive. To see what he had to say since last I’d heard him, live and direct from the Whitney Museum, some 2 years ago. I also came to see the new films, films many people did not believe even existed. But I had faith, the faith of a child that sees death grinning before the eye of the moon.
Lonely Christopher and I arrived early. I bought a ticket for my friend Colette. She arrived looking resplendent as always, her beautiful hat of crystal amaranth and her dress of white light. After I bought the ticket I heard, what I feared, and had not yet read on the giant sign in front of the ticket window: “We regret to inform you that Kenneth Anger will not be attending tonight’s program.” The man in person had been replaced by a taped interview conducted by, who else but, the French.
Of the new films, first up “Surfing Lucifer”, began with the Universal Studio logo and theme song, with a slight change in text, reading, “Piracy.” What followed was amazing footage of luciferian cowabunga man-boys riding hard gargantuan waves, on super 8 film stock, to the thick Cali beat of “Good Vibrations.”
The first program ended with the video taped Kenneth Anger interview. The great Anger began describing some Renaissance looking painting, obsessing over the unusual presence of a “negro.” He discussed his illness, Manic-Depression, with somber grace, and I felt a stir of empathy. He made stabs at his bastard Hollywood disciples, “I used Blue Velvet in a movie way before David Lynch did. In fact he got the idea because he liked how I used it. At least that’s what I heard.” He discussed his disgust with the politically correct and his disregard of any concern over the misunderstanding of his Nazis imagery in “Scorpio Rising.” “I like shock and I like controversy.” His face was blurred as he denoted the folly of Francis Ford Coppola, whom he called a great example of Hollywood waste, and gave good examples of such wasting, “He bought 800 Nagras and handed them out to the Filipino children to go around recording jungle noises. They couldn’t use any of it!” He ended these comments with a lesson of how demonic providence works its way against the Hollywood Goliaths, citing the disasters that beguiled the shooting of the motion picture “South Pacific”, “Nature gets revenge on Hollywood through natural disaster. If they had shot in a studio none of that would have happened.”
The second program began with the long anticipated new work, “Foreplay”. The standard pop song soundtrack was replaced with the natural sounds of balls smacking against feet and balls shot into goals after being dribbled on dirty knees and sock covered hairy ankles. An interesting take on the absurdity of competition and an ironic look at the latent homosexuality underlying modern athletics.
The great treat of the evening was the final act of the new works, “I’ll Be Watching You.”
CAUTION BEWARE SPOILERS!!!
“I’ll Be Watching You” begins with a handsome security man hidden in the booth of an underground parking garage clearly bored but focused, watching intently at the security camera monitor. The ironic ’80s pop hit with the stalker lyrics and romantic tune bopping against the images. Then in drives a stallion of a man behind his delectable Dodge Neon. As the man in the booth watches in the monitor, a man who looks just like him comes out to greet the man in the car. But how can he? He’s in the booth! He can’t be two places at once! Is he watching himself? is this a dream? A fantasy? The audience ponders as Anger cuts to a close up of a security camera. The eye of Horus camouflaged by modern technology. What ensues is an actual hard-core porno reedited but not censored. Cars roll out, parking garage doors close. Those who know Anger in laughter, those who don’t befuddled. End. Anger, Paris, 2007.
This is the perhaps final period of Kenneth Anger: the piracy period. He appropriates footage and reedits it. Kenneth Anger as cinematic pirate. I for one think the new guise entirely appropriate. There is a touch of humor and intentionality that makes these works entirely acceptable and rather, well, cute. I told all this to a friend, she remarked, rightly so, “Well, it is very modern.” And as the good Dr.’s main man said, “I have never grown out of the infantile belief that the universe was made for me to suck.”
Jason Tallon (c) 2008 by Colette
·· cataloged as cinema, movies, tallon ··
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June 23rd, 2008
Where The wild things are
·· cataloged as traintroubles ··
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June 23rd, 2008
what you needed when you had it when you wanted it
4:37pm. June 23rd, 2008. Eugene, Oregon. Train station. Bootleg wireless.
Yeti sez: drink of me and live forever.
·· cataloged as yr guess good as mine ··
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June 19th, 2008
the train which does not heal can not die
·· cataloged as traintroubles ··
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June 18th, 2008
transformations.
In the midst of an epic eleven hour sleep, a 26 hour journey becomes 29.
·· cataloged as traintroubles ··
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June 18th, 2008
Woke up from a dream where I traveled to imaginary philly bus station to witness soviets filing gorby’s execution notice. Laser printed arial.
·· cataloged as traintroubles ··
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June 17th, 2008
diagnosis.
Full onset train based mysticism has set in. I see the hands of the clock and I am the clock and I am the time.
·· cataloged as traintroubles ··
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June 17th, 2008
lets go down to the sea.
Salinas!
·· cataloged as traintroubles ··
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June 17th, 2008
cool shirt!
Hipster kid with acne whose girlfriend is excited about Spoon touring thinks that I have a cool shirt. He’s right.
·· cataloged as traintroubles ··
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June 17th, 2008
yr the 1 4 me
Aspergers in an older gent going 36 hours up the coast. This is what you pay for, this is why you live. Hunting season.
·· cataloged as traintroubles ··
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June 17th, 2008
fire in me, c-c
Holy i have no cell axis and am in the mountains and there is a russian
·· cataloged as traintroubles ··
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June 17th, 2008
dining car
what in the world
·· cataloged as traintroubles ··
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June 17th, 2008
1
Hour one of a 26 hour train journey. The price and prince of madness. At van nuys. Chatty ham radio operator across aisle.
·· cataloged as traintroubles ··
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June 17th, 2008
Letter from W.D. Fard to Elijah Mohammed, dated Dec. 18, 1933
Those who’ve perused the kobek.com mainsite know that I have a long and abiding interest in early 20th century esoteric African-American and Afro-Caribbean religion; this was, at one point, intended to be the subject of an anthology of original writings and primary documents, but landing a publisher proved problematic. In the next few months, hopefully, I’ll be migrating the lion’s share of research materials online, where they’ll be available for everyone with an interest.
Digging through old materials, I came across a really odd thing– an apparent letter from W.D. Fard, the founder of the religious culture that would develop into both the Nation of Islam and the Nation of Gods and Earths (the 5%), to his primary disciple, Elijah Mohammed.
The best book on the history of Fard and Mohammed in the early Detroit/Chicago days is The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad by Karl Evanzz. Despite the author’s paranoid willingness to believe every imaginable thing about Fard (going so far as to suggest a family tie with the Theosophist Florence Farr), it does give a fairly accurate warts-and-all picture of Elijah Muhammad and W.D. Fard.
Following legal battles with both the Detroit (being the D in the 1930s, this inevitably involved human sacrifice) and Chicago police, Fard disappeared, never to be heard from again. Much, much later, after the advent of Malcolm X and the rise of the NOI to national prominence, the Hearst press, in conjunction with the FBI, outed Fard as Wallace Ford, a one-time California drug dealer and San Quentin convict. Apparently much of this serves as the basis for Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex. (I haven’t read the book, I wouldn’t know.)
During the course of my 2002/3 era research, I was saving and archiving about every scrap of information that I could find on both the Moorish Science Temple of America and the early NOI, which operated under several names, but was perhaps best known as the Allah Temple of Islam. Somewhere I found the following text of an apparent letter from Fard to Mohammed (the spellings of NOI names in the early years were different) and scans of two of its four pages. As far as I know, this is the only letter or writing of any kind (other than the Lessons, of which the actual authorship is difficult to ascertain) that is directly attributable to Fard. Based on the look of the scans and the language, I presume that it’s authentic, but there’s so much misinformation and disinformation on the topic that a forgery isn’t implausible. Take it for what it is.
The text:
South West Part of N. America
Dec. 18 - 1933
4 A.M.Mr. E. Mohammed
The Minister of Islam
Detroit, Michigan
North America
Dear Brother:
Here is a few line to let you Know that I have received both of your letters one return mail and the other regular, also one from Kallatt; I have been just getting over the terrible mistake and unofficial movements that you been taken not only one that you went to Birmingham but different time you have done minus things with out saying any thing before. I have numbers of records of charges against you; but I not brought them to enforce knowing you have taken these steps with good attentions. NOW MY DEAR BELOVED BROTHER, I will tell you again and again you have heard me from time to time that must not under take the labor of Islam unless you do know it 100%; This is why I am here to guide you to the right road, you must always tell me other you will not be successful. It is true that you can use the wisdom but remember you are the wise and is in the mouth of the lion in his cave or civilization without any right in regards to the rules and regulations for practicing your profession in this cave civilization in first place you have no business being here but since you are here long way from home and your kind and are in the cave of savage you must use your wisdom with care, other this savage will peice you in two; The law of nature will not allow a man to run the home of another man, so be clear on this and use your wisdom with care; I will tell you to get out on the street and on the top of all the high building, yell out you wisdom when the time come, the time is not ripe yet, how many time have I told you this? Are you wasting my valuable moments on the same things over and over; My movements time and hours are limited and are for the dead nation, so you be aware not to rob the dead and your ???
You keep this letter and present to me when I see you and I will read for you and explain to you, I know you going to ask 1000 un-valuable question but write them down and present to me when I see you get on the labor now and study your assignment. See that you master your history all of the form all of the problems. All every thing I left you is to be dug out and study; Problem 31 should clear you of the mystery that you all long for but your wisdom and keep all to your self. Now right along with your study you can go over to Chicago unexpected do not tell no one where you going or when you going excepting Kallatt Mohammed, give them a lecture and run over to MILWAUKEE at 8th and Center St. inquire about Mr. Joe Bey, many semellers around there and ask to have a special metting for you, give them a lecture or two and go back to Evanston and ask for Mr. Brown. Try to get aquaited there and start a station there; you may promise some Ice Maker a big bone and get in with him and start arising the dead, With your wisdom you easily do this, but have patient; just look at me. I have all the hard luck and confronting more hard luck cause by my own people; Don’t you see they are poison by the devil and so badly poison that they can’t see me walking among them every day and eating with them give them Knowledge to compare with any body in the world and they are still in doubt. How many you want me to pick out each time when you have meeting; be wise and take lots of graveness for you are dealing with babies There will be time when they all will know you then your happiness will be give, Now I go back to my subject; Then from Evanston you can round Chicago again unexpected then home, stop in these little towns on your way home and leave little wisdom everywhere get around and get aquainted caravan the territory between your home and Milwaukee start stations every where you can St. Louis and Kansas City will be your territory too but at present you can master the above said and later I will tell you when to there; about your labor working the problems, you are doing fine; you may consult one of the Teachers on beginning and forming your figures, the distance of Platoon is given in one of the problems Light travel 186,000 miles per second and the sun is 93,000,000 miles from the Earth Then if you divide the traveling speed in to the distance it shall give you the time to strike the Earth. Ha! Ha! this is good one for you, I shall have big time with you when I see you; but now do not be bashfull to study, for the wise always go to the bottom to secure real cure: Write to me every day and tell me all about your study, My best wishes to you and family all the labors and 17,000,000 I am going with you, from W.D. Fard
The images:
·· cataloged as occultism, religion ··
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June 15th, 2008
Jibone Kicchu Pabona Re by Azam Khan
The first Bangladeshi rock star was a fellow by the name of Azam Khan. One of the things in which Arafat Kazi held school was appreciation of Khan’s astounding “Jibone Kicchu Pabona Re.” There was a time, long ago, when the sound of Kazi’s guttural rendition of its lyrics, accompanied by a drum beat slapped out on the man’s stomach, could be heard resounding up Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue like the laughter of Doctor Johnson through Temple Bar.
In the year 2002 (or was it 3?), Arafat summered in Dhaka, and while there, he hunted down Azam Khan. From The Guru himself was procured the sole remaining cassette of the original recording of “Jibone.” This tape was brought to America. I borrowed it (never returned) and made an mp3 of the song in question:
azam khan - Jibone Kichu Pabonare.mp3
While I was looking through my External Hard Drive– a/k/a The Archives– I came across the saved cache of an article that appeared years ago on bangladeshinfo.com. Its subject: Azam Khan. Its author: unknown. Sadly, this masterpiece bears no byline, but is so incredibly overwrought, and thus awesome, that it must be reprinted in full :
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AZAM KHAN: THE LIVING LEGEND
There are many bodily signs of greatness, but none is more consistently found cohabiting in the same body with greatness as plainness of appearance. In describing David Hume, the greatest Empiricist of all time, one of his contemporaries said, “Never before has genius been so uncouthly garbed in flesh”. You would feel the same way about Azam Khan too. Azam Khan is the first, and possibly, only, rock icon of Bangladesh, a true rebel, an honest rocker…but you can just walk by this strictly unassuming rock god without casting a second glance.
The whole tradition of band music owes its very existence to this one person and his charisma. Unlike his western counterparts, Azam Khan has not held onto his bad boy image just because of its marketability. We have seen many an erstwhile rockin’ rebel cast off their rebel image in favor of hipper and more financially viable images (do the names Ozzy and Metallica come to mind?) Azam Khan has failed to earn millions but has been able to keep for himself something more precious - his soul! He has successfully remained the perennial youth that so well befits a rock god and is so lamentably lacking today.
It all started back in 1974 with the formation of Azam’s band Uchharon. Within a very short time the young and restless of Dhaka were singing Uchharon tracks like “Jala jala”, “Abhimani”, “Alal o dulal” and were screaming for more. Uchharon’s music was a clear break away from the prevalent mainstream music. It was fresh, bold and innovative. Words of frustration, disillusionment and alienation were bored into the heart of the listeners by distortion- drenched monster guitar riffs played with abandon and angst. The band’s shows were charged with electricity and fans used to become almost idolatrous. Azam’s Dylanesque voice, propelled by Nayan Monshi’s heavy riffs, turned Uchharon into the Grateful Dead of Bangladesh.
Unfortunately, the band’s line-up changed shortly after this, as Nayan went away to Canada (Nayan died there a few years later in a car crash). But Azam found a worthy successor to his guitar hero in new-recruit Rocket. Azam’s music now flowed in a new direction; the next few albums had a definite spiritual tinge. Songs of this period were inspired by the untimely death of Nayan. Songs Like “Ami jare chaire”, “Eto sundar duniyae” were pregnant with mystical allusions to the temporal nature of life. His music also became more socially conscious. His classic hit “Bangladesh” was all about social inequities which he saw around him. But inspite of his huge popularity, Azam rarely appeared on TV and other entertainment media. Yes, a haircut and a toned down attitude would have made him the darling of the media, but Azam never condescended to doing something for the benefit of the media alone. But even with the minimal airplay his songs got from the media, his influence on the youth of that period was immense. Never before, nor since, has there been any other musician in Bangladesh who could draw his audience so wholly into the mood of the music.
During the 80’s, Azam took an extended break from music. Except for the release of a few compilation albums, the only major musical excursion was the 1987 Flood Aid Concert. Even in the absence of his original band (Ayub Bachhu had the privilege of playing guitar, while Tipu and Vishnu played bass and drums), Azam put on a highly-charged performance and rocked the arena, while 50,000 (it was the biggest concert till date) fans chanted “Azam, Azam.” In the early 90s, Azam and Uchharon became the first Bangladeshi band to perform in the US. The live album off that tour became the first live album in Bangladesh Rock history. After his US tour, Azam released his Anamika album, which showed that far from compromising his unique style to adapt to the music scenario of the 90s, Azam had remained true to his roots. Though the album was not as big a hit as his earlier works, it did receive much airplay and the title track became a hit. In the dying years of the last decade, the Bangladeshi music community recognized Azam’s contribution to rock music in the country. Sargam brought out an Azam Khan Tribute Album. All major Bangladeshi artists and bands covered a number of his hit songs for the album. It was one of the highest selling albums of the local recording industry. So, how does our king of pop keep himself busy these days? The Guru is a fitness freak, he swims and plays cricket and offers swimming lessons at the National Stadium swimming pool. However, there is no need to be disappointed, because the guru has not retired from the music scene. “We have to support the newcomers”, he says, “So that we can be proud of the next generation of band musicians and they can popularise our music outside the country as well.” With that goal in mind, Azam Khan is currently working with a number of upcoming bands and is planning to bring out an album soon. For the thousands of Azam Khan Fans, that is something worth anticipating.
Azam is not your politically correct rock star; in fact, he is not even a star, he is a rocker - a simple and unassuming rocker who pours his heart into every note he sings.
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Special Bonus Material. A recent email exchange between me and Kazi.
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from: Jarett Kobek
to: Arafat Kazi
date: Fri, May 16, 2008 at 10:42 PM
subject: jibonu kichu pabonare
dude what are the lyrics to jibone kichi pabonare
I mean all translated and stuff like they was done in English by the man instead of his native Bangla– like he was SPEAKING TO ME IN MY OWN TONGUE!
Many thanks,
“jarett”
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from: Arafat Kazi
to: Jarett Kobek
date: Sun, May 18, 2008 at 2:03 AM
subject Re: jibonu kichu pabonare
I’ll never get anything out of this life
I haven’t forgotten that thought, HYUH!
I’ll never get anything out of this life
I haven’t forgotten that thought, HYUH!
Come back to me, say you’ll be my mate, and never leave me again!
Come back to me, say you’ll be my mate, and never leave me again!
If you want to go off into the unknown, don’t go alone
Think about what you do before you do it, don’t do it and then think
If you want to go off into the unknown, don’t go alone
Think about what you do before you do it, don’t do it and then think
No, no, no, think about it! Don’t go alone by yourself
If you want to go off into the unknown, don’t go alone
EEEEYAAAAH
I’ll never get anything out of this life
I haven’t forgotten that thought, HYUH!
I’ll never get anything out of this life
I haven’t forgotten that thought, HYUH!
·· cataloged as johnny khalud, music ··
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June 11th, 2008
A Boon of Blood
This is a stranger one– part of the (failed) Brown MFA writing application circa late-2002. Brown’s program is notoriously tripped-out, having (or had) a gigantic VR cave and other faddish early-to-mid 90s ideas and technology. (The word hypertext was thrown around.) Had I been accepted, I probably would’ve gone, but there was a realization well before rejection: the application had been a pretext for moving to Providence. After the long years of New York, I couldn’t conceive of relocating without an academic purpose. My brain had been hard wired all student-like.
The application created two or three very funny incidentals; one of which was showing up, unannounced and at the urging of other faculty, at the office of Robert Coover and having one of the most pained conversations of my life. Another was the Writing Sample itself, which I had conceptually divided into thirds.
The first third was the worst post-adolescence prose writing that I’ve ever done. The second third was an enormous flash demo that auto-loaded a bunch of stuff, including mp3s of Arafat “johnny khalud” Kazi hollering about the fictitious English blood-libel of the Thuggee. The final section was what we have here: an incredibly complex attempt at marrying my Boston paranoia to an intentionally ill-designed and non-functional Tarot deck by structuring a narrative on the traditional back of the cards and, in theory, having the shuffle determine the way in which the tale was told.
Sometime in the Summer of 2002, I had started thinking about the Boston Strangler murders. I have a morbid streak of mind– a combination of my parents’ influence & my immediate childhood proximity to a series of serial murders. I had also been reading a bunch of London psychogeographical works. Inevitably a bad influence. And I was living in the Fenway, so I wasn’t that far from the locations of most of the murders that had been attributed to the Strangler. One day, I road my bike to the site of the first official Strangler killing on Gainsborough-street. The door to the building was open, calling me in; I took this portent as ominous.
The other thing: I had been in Boston long enough to realize its fundamental unpleasantness. At the time, I blamed much of this on exceptionally poor city planning– there’s nothing like walking on Boylston-street and nearly being blown over by winds generated from the Prudential and the cleft gully of the Turnpike.
I did what I always do whenever I become fascinated/assaulted by the place that I reside– I read about the history of Boston’s development. Somewhere along the line, my brain connected the fact that nearly every major construction project of the mid-century– which I believed were responsible for the city’s unpleasantness– had been erected close to the site of a Strangler murder. From there it wasn’t hard to make the intuitive but impossible link that the murders had been a builder’s sacrifice, a blood offering for the beginning of projects and the birth of a new city.
While this gives some sense of the motivation behind the Tarot deck, none of it explains the deck itself, nor why I would include this in an MFA application to a self-consciously Experimental program (which means, ultimately, a program focused on failed non-narrative schemes filtered through the inherently stodgy veneer of the Academy.) I have no explanation for any of the particular aesthetic decisions– why the faces of the cards feature a mixture of maps, pop stars, close personal friends and pulp art. Or why these are rendered in an intentional bland fashion. I can’t explain why I invented two trump cards– The Hill of Dreams and The Great God Pan– titled after the works of Arthur Machen, nor why they’re aesthetically so much more pleasing than the rest.
I’ve included the Instruction Sheet that I included with the deck– it’s the last image. I recommend reading this first, as it at least gives some sense of my intent. But not much.
Incidentally, sometime in… late 2005? I read a massively modified version of the story at the National Arts Club in Gramercy Park. It was there that I learned a very important lesson: don’t drink before you read.
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(Technical note: this is the first time I’ve used the Wordpress Gallery feature, so if you’re reading this via RSS, I’m not sure the images will show up.)
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