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Tommy T
Tommy Tompkins' extreme measures
Thursday, April 15
Art Attacks
20-some years ago, English post-punk radicals the Pop Group recorded a difficult, inspired album called *How Long Must We Tolerate Mass Murder?*, and I couldn’t stop playing it. I play it infrequently today, but the album’s central question is no less to the point. I answer it differently today than I did in 1981, but I still find political debate in the cultural arena to be richer and more interesting than the tired volleying of slogans and easy answers elsewhere. Despite – and maybe because of - enormous cutbacks in arts funding, a clampdown on the airwaves, ass-kissing cultural institutions, and dilettante defenders of so-called “purity” -- art can take us to the heart of essential matters today. Arts Attacks is an always-changing list of the creative people and creative expression that help keep my world together.
1. Iranian film director Tahmineh Milani, arrested August 26, 2003, (or August 27, according to some reports) on orders of Tehran’s fundamentalist Revolutionary Court.
2. Sean Penn reports from Iraq for the San Francisco Chronicle, tk
3. Paris releases his first album in years on tk, the inflammatory *Sonic Jihad*
4. KRS-One talks to the people, Oakland Cultural Center, March 16.
5. Rob Avila writes about culture, community, revolutionary upheaval and William Saroyan’s *The Best tk tk url:
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TOMMY T
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About Tommy
Tommy Tompkins has been on full alert for most of his adult life, looking for art endowed with sufficient power, wisdom, courage, and grace to save a struggling humanity from itself...
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About Extreme Measures
Extreme Measures comes at you at a time when, as a society, we are experiencing a kind of aphasia; language has been so distorted by corruption of aging institutions and the commercial pressures of an all-consuming, popular culture that our range of motion -- our ability to feel, to dream, to rage beyond the toothless dictates of media and capital -- has been critically circumscribed.
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jht99@earthlink.net
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| | | TOP 5 ART ATTACKS |
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The Reading List
Q: How many Bush Administration officials does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:None. There is nothing wrong with the light bulb; its conditions are improving every day. Any reports of its lack of incandescence are a delusional spin from the liberal media. That light bulb has served honorably, and anything you say undermines the lighting effect. Why do you hate freedom?
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Previous ART
ATTACKS | | AS THE TABLE TURNS |
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Top 5 Albums
The first record I ever bought was “Penny Loafers and Bobby Socks b/w “Rocket,” by the Sparkletones, a quartet of wild hillbillies from the Carolinas (not that I knew anything about hillbillies or the Carolinas at the time. In those days – I was eight - the world was cleaved neatly into hoods and collegiates. I wanted to be a hood more than I wanted to be the 14-year-old kid who played stand-up bass in the Sparkletones (I saw them on *American Bandstand*), which was a lot. Several years later – but before I was old enough to understand payola and singles and life, I stayed up all night on a school night waiting for WINS to play “Rollie Pollie,” by Joey Dee and the Starlighters, which was in the movie *Hey Let’s Twist.* It never played, and I was late for school. Today I understand hoods, tight rotation, rockabilly, and the cosmic, undying power of music. Some people put their tongue to the rail; I turn on the box and play these albums.
1. Vernon Reid & Masque: *Known Unknown*
2. Various Artists: *The Hip-Hop Box*
3. Modest Mouse: *Good News For People Who Love Bad News*
4. The Corals: *Magic and Medicine*
5. Kanye West: *College Dropout*
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Previous TABLES | | SEEN, HEARD |
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DVDs
Our world is being reshaped by the mystery and magic of 0’s and 1’s. Music – once the stuff of vinyl, tape, and compact disc – now comes at us via computer, as does what we once referred to as video. Call it what you want, but a visual language for music is evolving, and someday seeing it will be as important as hearing it. Here are five reasons why:
1. Spike Jonze, The Work of Director Spike Jonze (Palm)
2. Prince, Rave Un2 The Year 2000 (Image)
3. Mark Levin, Martin Scorcese Presents Godfathers And Sons (Legacy)
4. Dead Kennedys, In God We Trust, Inc. (MVD)
5. The Cramps, Live At Napa State Hospital: 1978 (MVD)
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Previous SEEN,
HEARD | | SECOND TIME AROUND |
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Reissued Albums
There’s nothing worse than a Woodstock O.G. and a Doors greatest hits compilation. But when people say “they don’t make music the way they used to,” they’re onto something; I get 40 or 50 versions of exhibit A in the mail every week.
1. Various Artists, *The Hip-Hop Box* (Hip-O)
2. Luther Vandross, *The Essential* (Epic/Legacy)
3. Terry Reid, *Silver White Light* (Water)
4. The Avengers, *The American In Me* (DBK Works)
5. The Holy Modal Rounders, *Bird Song Live 1971* (Water)
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Previous
SECONDS | | REASONS TO BELIEVE |
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The Holy Land...
- Tony Kushner’s Angels In America
- John Coltrane’s Live At the Village Vanguard (4-CD version)
- The description of the map of Vietnam on the first page of Michael Herr’s Dispatches
- Peyote
- William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow
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Previous REASONS | | PUBLIC RELATIONS |
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Jugglers, Clowns, Freaks & Flaks
Popular culture -- a delightful sewer, except on those days when it isn’t delightful -- supports an enormous, voracious army of publicists. Anything worth anything has a publicist along for the ride, as do things that aren’t worth anything.
1. Avocado Consumption Peaks On Super Bowl Sunday: This is the title of a CD that was mailed to me on December 22, 2003, and arrived at my office on April 06, 2004. It contained a recipe for making guacamole.
2. Ford Rouge Plant: Although I once worked at the Ford assembly plant in Milpitas, CA, and was dues-paying member of the UAW, I doubt that that fact has anything to do with an impressive folder (bearing the slogan “Wear Your Seatbelts”) that announced the reopening of the Ford Rouge Factory Tour in Dearborn, Michigan, on May 3, 2004.
3. I received, on Monday, April 5, I received a review copy of Neighborhood Watch by Los Angeles-based hip-hop group, Dilated Peoples. Its cover was tightly shut with a sticker warning of the punishment I faced were I to copy the then-unreleased album, or to let it slip into the hands of anyone who wasn’t me. Capitol Records was so adamant about this matter that each copy of the album bore the name of its rightful owner. In my case that was Joel Selvin, the music critic from the S.F. Chronicle.
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Previous PR | | TOMMY ELSEWHERE |
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Cheap shots, anyone? Hell yes, like shooting fish in a barrel - Crosby, Stills, & Nash, to be exact in "Second Time Around," my weekly reissue column in the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
The successful selling of Crosby, Stills, and Nash as one of rock's first "supergroups" was, above all else, a marketing triumph. The insipid folk trio with a penchant for predictable three-part harmonies were packaged as a brilliant, innovative rock band and sold, no questions asked, to a generation that would go on to make history for a consumerism as voracious as its perceptive powers were small...
Read on, please...
Crosby, Stills, and Nash
Greatest Hits (Remastered) (Rhino)
I would have rather been in California than anywhere during those days, and in fact I was in California. Nevertheless, though my ass moved, my ears were another story. Take the O'Jays, for instance, whose blue-collar soul music helped me forget about CS&N's lame folk music.
The core of the O'Jays – Eddie LeVert, Walter Williams, and William Powell – had been together for 14 years when they had their first big hit, "Back Stabbers," during the summer of 1972. Their career had gyrated everywhere except up when they joined forces – for a second time – with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff shortly after the songwriting-production team formed their label Philadelphia International...
O'Jays
Essential O'Jays (Epic/Legacy)
The flurry of reissues may be proof the music industry is dying, but it's produced a few sublime moments, like the "Deluxe Editions" of the Wailers' Burnin' and Catch A Fire. This piece, titled "Wailin'," ran in the Bay Guardian with Jeff Chang's take on the new Trojan Records box, "This Is Pop.".
DURING SO MUCH rain, one – or, in this case, two – bright spots really stand out. Ever since the birth of Napster and the gloomy end of days for the music business, the reissue industry has been going full tilt. It makes sense on both sides of the commercial exchange. For the labels, there's very little overhead and practically no guesswork; deliver Al Green with a couple of mysterious "alternative takes," perhaps a previously unreleased cut, and remixing or remastering – another mystery...
San Francisco Bay Guardian Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Brian Jonestown Massacre: And This Is Our Music
Pitchfork Media, July 19, 2004
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ELSEWHERES | | BLOG ROLL |
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Sites I like...
L.A. Observed
HipHopMusic.com
TomDispatch.com
Danyel Smith's Naked Cartwheels
Then It Must Be True
Davey D’s Hip-Hop Corner
Pagan Moss Sensual Liberation HQ
Different Kitchen
War in Context
Cursor
Virtual Library For Theater and Drama
Jeff Chang's Can’t Stop Won’t Stop
Usounds Internacionale
Maud Newton
Paris's Guerrillafunk.com
Silliman's Home of the Hits
Negro Please
mp3s please
Boondocks
Oliver Wang's The Pop Life
American Samizdat
Sasha Frere-Jones's SF/J
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