Rock Show: Swiss Army Mouth

So, I multi-tasked tonight.
Well, that statement doesn't mean a whole lot decontextually.
It's where the multi-tasking happened that's worthy of note. My friend Matt, a wine connoisseur and party thrower par excellence, plays in an instrumental rock band called Swiss Army Mouth.

I did my multi-tasking at club Ravari while we were waiting for Matt's band, Swiss Army Mouth (SAM), to get on stage. Even though the schedule has been unforgiving, I promised I'd go and support his band. So, there we were, surrounded by an absence of lights, a sea of TV's, loud people, my party, and my iPhone on which I was trying to get some paper reading and grading for work the next day. Grading a paper on Foucault at a rock show makes a ton of sense, by the way. Back to the show at club Ravari.

Matt plays bass for Swiss Army Mouth. Swiss Army Mouth's songs are paced well. Their music made me think of the person about town who has places to go, things to do, and no time to waste on a long track. Their sound is the kind that moves with purpose. I reckon, that's why I dig it.

SAM is an instrumental rock 'n roll band and I wish there were more acts out there that followed that same pattern. Economy of language is a great thing in the realm of rock. In the band's own words:

"SAM seeks to melt the faces of those who seek Rock. Armed with an Orange, a Rectifier, 15" bass speakers, and a set of plaid drums, SAM is sure to do just that. Swiss Army Mouth's songs are short and to the point, lending itself well to the instrumental niche. With their longest song clocking in at 2:53, you won't have time to wonder where the vocals are, and you won't care."

I really don't like to talk when I'm at a rock show. I do, however, like to text. Especially with my friend Liam, another good musician I love seeing on stage. During the show I write: "Oh man! I love rock!!!"

And very few people in my address book know what I actually mean by that. It means that I love rock enough to find time to pursue it even when the schedule says 'No!' and other responsibilities need attention.

Liam writes:

"i was just thinking the same thing. listening to the hives on the train. :)"

And that's what rock shows do for me. They create an arena in which a bundle of other musical connections are made and past nostalgias fuse with current sound cravings and non sequiturs.

Perhaps Liam is right. It's time to give The Hives another chance yet again. It's been a while. Maybe Camera Obscura will be next.

After the show, I remarked that what I liked about it, other than how cool it is when I see people I know in real life practice their art, was how easily the music S.A.M. played let me process the myriad of things that needed processing that night. The fact that the tracks were short, to-the-point, and denuded of certain ceremonies one is, alas, bound to see in certain rock shows contributed to my enjoyment.

The next day when a colleague asked how my Thursday night went, I succinctly replied, "Went to an industrial rock show to support my friend, Matt's band, graded papers while at the venue, caught up with friends, and agreed on a travel budget with the other half. How was PBS's Masterpiece Theater for you? What's Kenneth Branaugh up to?"

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Great Article on Economics and Dante

The true perk of Twitter is the info it gives me re: good new pieces to read.
The following is one such example.
I concur with the premise. What's even more amazing to me is that it is written by a Columbia College junior majoring in English called Lucy Tang.
Tip of the hat to you, Lucy!
As a matter of fact, we just talked about something similar in my medieval course today.
Dante, and the Middle Ages, are always relevant, folks. And I'm not just biased. I like to think I'm right. :)

"What Dante knew during the Medieval Ages still resonates strongly today. He finds usury distasteful because moneylenders generate money from money—not actual work. Like St. Thomas Aquinas once said, “It is in accordance with nature that money should increase from natural goods and not from money itself.” The crash was a huge wake-up call for former investment bankers—it essentially revealed to them that their life source had no grounding. Everything they dealt with dissipated within days.

Dante’s vocation as a poet, while considered laughable by many today, has a sense of enduring purpose. He can at least point to his poems and declare, “Here, I wrote this. These words are mine!” God, or nature, or maybe even DNA has endowed people with imagination and creative inspiration, and what could be more wonderful than revealing this innate potential?"

Read it all here.

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Fashion Is Danger

Too funny/relevant to ignore.
Bret and Jemaine channel Bowie, Duran Duran, Peter Gabriel, and much of the SynthPop scene.

It's a well-captured satire of the substance of fashion and the 'cool factor' of rock musicians.

Methinks my friend, Liam, of the West-based band Calico, will concur.

Also, to read a previous piece I wrote over a year ago on the 'text' of the scene and scensters, check this out. Tip of the hat to Liam for his continued discursive presence.

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Ohio State Mash-up/Remix Conference

Might I inform those of you in Central Ohio to check out the following info on a conference on Remixing?

I feel strongly about the importance of understanding Remixing and all its informational and cultural ramifications. Ergo, I had to make the schedule fit it.

And HetPer has already given a tip of the hat to the efforts of such academics as Lawrence Lessig who are actively engaged in making sure that remixing and copyright laws do justice to the new age of information management.

The Mashup/Remix Conference will take place this week on the Ohio State campus in Columbus.

To find more info an inquire after registration, click here.

A bit says:
"The Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law and Wexner Center for the Arts have collaborated for a novel discussion on the implications of mashup and remix in the world of Web 2.0. Recent technological developments have created a wave of user-generated content in which pre-existing sounds and images are appropriated, reshaped, and shared with unprecedented ease. Bringing together new media artists, prominent academics, and influential members of the media community, this event will discuss ways in which the digitization of music, film, and visual art over the internet is influencing the future of these industries and the future of copyright law."

The conference is free for OSU faculty and students.

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Pictures of Notice

Tip of the hat to Tyler over at MR for the pointer.
I'd want to see this in person.
A place like this would beg for literary attention. It just might bump the University of Washington's library, my favorite library at this point, by a spot.

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Podcast on Clothing: Well-Clothed Friend

And posting this podcast today is quite apropos, I find.

To listen to my piece on the Text of Clothing, click here.

This podcast will be added to my iTunes series, Gendering the Media with Brikena Ribaj on the 18th of March.

I often write and podcast about the boredom bug which is so easily caught in Heteronormative-landia where one is bound to drown one’s self in curls of tweed, polyester, and high-priced leather.

Such bug, however, had no business in my space this weekend.

I was in the presence of rich textuality this weekend.

Certain kinds of clothing and color coordinations are so effective in grabbing my attention that I am utterly powerless when it comes to resisting my verbal need to address them.

I saw a friend of mine this weekend. I had not seen my friend in well over a decade. She looked like a whole decade had forgotten to pay her a personal visit.

I felt proud. Proud that my friend's aesthetics seemed so ignoring of time.

The memory I had of my friend was one of sophistication.

I revisited a memory of sophistication when she appeared in a tailored light green coat, an orange shirt, and urban pants cut in a timeless a-la-Katherine Hepburn style.

The cornucopia of colors was accompanied by the warm brown of her city purse.

“Wow!” I think to myself.

Nothing says ‘welcome’ the way a warm palette of colors does.

My sociality filters kicked in and I resisted doing what the good half says is what I tend to do naturally: look at things I react to aesthetically the way I do a Rembrandt at the Portland Museum of Arts.

My friend is now a formally trained designer.

In her case the professional choice makes full sense as she has married what she can do instinctually well with formal training.

As she is telling me about her professional pursuits, a thought comes to mind and I remember having an urge to write said thought down. It would be rude, however, to do what I generally do in my environment, i.e., write whenever the writing instinct wants to be sated. I tell myself to remember the thought. It basically said:

Eat your heart out, Rachel Zoe.

So, today, I write proudly yet again. I'm proud and grateful to have been in the presence of the kind of style where form is solid because it's rooted in healthy content.

As I am about to depart I ask:

"So, how can you gauge which colors are 'in' for which year?"

"I don't pay attention to time. What looks good, looks good." Says my friend.

"How Jackie O. meets modernity" I say.

And what made the experience so enjoyable was the fact that its fecundity gave me such productive food for thought.
Thank you for the creative space, friend.

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The Text of Pink

This is what I saw last time I was up in Chicago.
It begged for attention and I had to give in. The text of pink, I call it.

The preponderance of pink is code for something here, I find.

This is a color/textile/aesthetic choice which this particular wearer finds apropos for quotidianity.
Mesmerizing.

How would you read this?

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U2

The new Rolling Stone cover is wicked good.
If only the critics' take of U2's new album matched the aforementioned cover.
I am not looking forward to this as much as U2 served me well as an undergraduate.
Or maybe I just respect a couple of rock journalists enough to let them influence me over things Bono.

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New Podcast: On Love

As I announced a few days ago, production has started on a new podcast series. The first podcast series, Gendering the Media with Brikena Ribaj will continue to have new pieces added to it every Friday. Most of these pieces will be on modern applications of literary theory.

This new series, De Amore: On Love, will, for the most part, be on the literature of the Middle Ages. The literature of the Middle Ages is what I am formally trained in and it is that which fuels the majority of my interests, professional and personal.
For there is nothing new under the sun, folks.
And, no, we don't know better in modernity.
Far from it.

The new series will be available on iTunes soon.

In the meantime, you may listen to it here.

This first podcast is a general introduction to the concept of love as "minne," the Middle High German word for courtly love, and "caritas/cupiditas/prima voglia" as Dante refers to it in his own work. The two authors I evoke in this first piece are Hartmann von Aue and Dante and their respective works to which I pay tribute are diu klage, Gregorius, Convivio, and the Divine Comedy.

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Conference, I

Taken a few hours ago today in Albuquerque, New Mexico where today I presented on my research on the creation of the alternative third gender model in the work of Hildegard von Bingen.
Title: "Constructing a Third Gender in Hildegard von Bingen’s Scivias, Hartmann von Aue’s Der arme Heinrich, and Dietrich von der Glezze's der borte."
The conference is the annual Medieval Association of the Pacific. Many literary scholars, historians, art historians, and musicologists who focus on the Middle Ages present their new research. It's my most favorite conference as every year it happens in a new Western urban center.



Brikena Ribaj, Albuquerque, New Mexico, University of New Mexico Campus, 3/6/2009

See the program here.

Now, I am not a fan of posting pictures of mine on my page as I tend to find that practice too unnecessarily egocentric. But I am posting one here. It's not about me, it's about that colorful piece standing proud behind me. The colors are unmistakably New Mexico and the text quite gendered.

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