Until my money situation changes I'm just going to publish stuff online at hahaclever dot com.
You may have noticed the domain name http://candyandcigarettes.com has expired. I'm going to let it go for now. Is that giving up? I feel like I'm breaking up with someone.
Check out some of my other blogs:
MUSIC FOR BOOKS - my new writer's blog, where I post music for reading books to
i haven't been blogging, i know, i've been busy living. things are sort of crazy round here, but i'm getting published a lot, or at least getting told i will be published at some point in the near future, a lot, and getting thing set up for hahaclever dot com, and doing this comic book adaptation of ubu roi that i'm translating from the french, and still doing the viva radio playlists for california select, so it's not like i'm not doing anything or anything. - reynard seifert
this mix is by jonny negron, whose art will appear in the tenth issue of mike young's NOÖ.
I approve of these people immensely. These people are Bad Boy Racing Club. I know a couple of these people. I like them. You will like their photos. These photos do not fuck around. See some of the photos below. I am very much looking forward to their future. You should buy their photozine while you still can. I have one on my coffee table. It looks awesome.
((EMAIL ME IF YOU WANT THIS MIX, YOUSENDIT LINK EXPIRED))
- I'm feeling very 'blah.' Can you help me?
- Oh, sure I can - check out this blog here.
- What? There's something new on this blog? Impossible.
- No, really, it's true. It's a new hour-long mix by Reynard Seifert.
- Isn't that the guy who posted mixes on this blog every week for forty weeks until he 'sold out' to American Apparel's Viva Radio and stopped bothering with this blog?
- Totally, that's the guy.
- I hate that guy.
- Me too, but this is a pretty good mix, he made it for Fecal Face but they didn't post it so he's posting it here, maybe you should check it out.
- Are there going to be more soon by other people?
- Yes, soon.
- Really? Soon?
- I swear to Jebus.
- What's been going on with that whole Viva Radio thing?
- It's been going pretty well. Reynard's sharing the reigns to AA photographer and vintage-maven Mae Kaufman every once in a while, and there are going to be some guest shows coming up.
- What kind of guest shows?
- Well, there's going to be a radical mix by Patrick Healy in a couple weeks.
- Reynard and his girlfriend are going to start publishing e-zines on haha clever dot com, which is just a tumblr right now, but will eventually be an amazing website, much better than this one. Their first e-zine will be zzzombiezzz, a short story about Reynard's epic battle with a zombie named Amherst who once slept on his chaise lounge.
- I meant, 'Anything else music-wise?'
- Oh, yeah. Reynard's also going to start hosting a new program on Youth Radio that may or may not be called 'Calling All Kids,' which will seek to introduce America's youth to artists that are influencing today's most interesting music makers and also include interviews with some of those people and their music.
- So it will pretty much be the coolest music program for kids (as well as adults) ever made?
- Yup, it's going to be pretty epic.
- This is like, a lot of information and I'm still feeling very 'blah.'
It just takes less time to put up whatever, because tumblr isn't really blogging. As my friend Ray said, "It isn't really anything."
My friend Jonny Negron is going to start uploading tape mixes to this blog, which will be really cool. He is a really good DJ.
And finally, the Viva Radio show is live now - California Select. There are three playlists up by me. More soon to come, so keep checking back. Hopefully it will become a more regular weekly thing on the schedule and stuff... soon.
So, I got offered a gig managing the California Select program for American Apparel's Viva Radio. While this is a really great opportunity that I'm super-duper-uber pumped about, it unfortunately means an untimely end to my 52 week/52 mixes project. Whatevs, 40 is a nice round number and it was fun while it lasted but I have a much larger audience now and I need to concentrate on this shit.
My first playlist hasn't been scheduled yet, but I'll be sure to mention when it does. Until then, give a listen to the shows already posted by other people. They're real good.
This also means I won't be blogging for a little while, since I'm also trying to put together the third issue of my zine.
I'm not even going to get started on how fucked up recent events in the Gaza strip have gotten, and how we (the U.S.A.) are supplying moral, financial, and military support to the effort.
In case you missed it, Harper's does a year in review thing every year. Always a good read. Gotta love those damned snarky mofos.
People keep asking me if I made a Best of 2008 list, and I keep asking them, Best of What? I am rarely timely with things. Usually I don't know what was really going on until like two years later, like everyone else I suppose.
Instead of putting together an actual list of each media group I encounter in my day-to-day life, I just decided to tell you what I thought was the best of each, so that later on I can look back at what embarrassing choices I made. Whatever, I have put like zero thought into this list.
Maybe you've seen one of BLU's videos by now. They're all over the internets these days. He does these like big ass ambiguous pop murals in various hip cities around the world, and videos the production of some, but he also does more simple animations. Anyway, I am a fan.
Pyrite Radio
Anybody forget how awesome KISS was? Ace Frehley's solo album was the shit.
Woah, I have like zero time to blawg these days, which sux because of course I have a ton of shit I could tell you about, as always. But I'm putting together a new issue of the zine and trying to find a publishable novel. It's tuff: life.
1. Glass Candy // Introduction 2. Phil Collins // I'm Not Moving (Idjut Boys Edit 3. Of Montreal // Id Engager 4. The Presets // Kitty in the Middle 5. Dinosaur // Kiss Me Again 6. N.W.A. // Something 2 Dance 2 7. Gang Gang Dance // House Jam 8. Sparks // Tryouts for the Human Race 9. Fitzcarraldo Variations // Gamma Model 10. Bobby Blanco & Miki Moto // 3AM 11. Sally Shapiro // Jackie Junior (Junior Boys Remix) 12. The Rakes // Retreat 13. Yo La Tengo // Last Days of Disco
I seriously have nothing good to say today. I have been working a lot on other stuff. But hey, if you're bored, look to yr right where you'll find C&C#2, our zine. Check it out on Issuu.
This month Rolling Stone decided they didn't have anything good to talk about. Out of all of the amazing new music being produced in the world today, there wasn't anything important to introduce to the millions of people who for some reason still read their crappy rag. So they did a 100 best singer/songwriter issue with various over-discussed and overrated stars of the past. Among them Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and, of course, Elvis Presley.
In an article written by Robert Plant, of all people, more undeserving praise is lavished upon the King. Speaking of him in that way that makes him sound like some sort of otherworldly angel. I just got really disgusted reading it in a waiting room, and thought it would be a good time to introduce some people to the idea that Elvis Presley was one of the biggest scam-artists the world never saw coming or going.
This track by Stan Freberg is probably the best possible interpretation of what I hear when I hear an Elvis Presley song. It came out in 1956, amazingly, the same year as the release of "Heart Break Hotel."
Listen, I know what you may be thinking, "This guy just doesn't appreciate Elvis," or, "He's just trying to be 'controversial,'" or whatever. But really, the reason I don't like Elvis is that he so blatantly ripped off the black artists who created rock and roll. People like Jackie Brenston, Big Joe Turner, and Big Mama Thronton, and even earlier folks like Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Roy Brown.
People are/were always claiming that Elvis invented rock and roll. For instance, in a recent story on VOAnews.com, someone in Memphis had this to say:
Sun Studios tour guide Jane White, 25, had not even been born yet when Elvis died, but she knows his role in creating the music she and her friends love. "My generation looks at it as the guy who started it all, pretty much… There would not be any American music at all if it were not for Rhythm and Blues and Country music."
Before Elvis came along, rock and roll was relegated to what they called "the race charts," perhaps for lack of a better word, or perhaps because they were just racists (I'm gonna go with the latter). That's why Elvis had so much appeal so fast. Because, you know, it's okay to listen to that kind of music long as it's a white guy singing. And then there was the hip-shaking and all of that sex-symbol nonsense, which was obviously totally fabricated. Seriously, who snarls their lip naturally? - give me a break. Rumor has it, Presley went so far as to use a toilet paper roll to enhance his sexual presence - I'm sure it's probably true.
In Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino famously suggests that there are only two types of people in the world: Elvis people and Beatles people. First of all, this is of course extremely culturally arrogant, because the Beatles ripped off R&B and Ike Turner and the rest just as much as Elvis - so really, what's the difference? But at least the Beatles gave them props for it in interviews and such, whereas Elvis took credit as being "the King of Rock and Roll," without protest. He could've said something like, "Listen, I don't deserve that title. Little Richard is the 'Queen of Rock and Roll.' I'm just a white dude singing some of their songs." Instead, he became an egotistical, drug-addled maniac, which eventually led to his demise.
Anyway, as Chuck D said, Motha fuck him and John Wayne. Happy Turkey Day - this was the King's favorite holiday, I'm sure.
Pyrite Radio
This is for all the twee kids out there, especially those who don't know they are.
So I went to this meta festival last week. I don't know that it was all that meta exactly. At least, a lot of it wasn't. They did something with Twitter, apparently. But I don't do the twitter thing so I guess I'm out of the loop.
That's right, the moment we've all been waiting for - everyone, including the man himself - Charlie Rose interviewing himself, in an existentialist dialogue vaguely concerning the nature of the internet. Amazing.
Despite my enthusiastic vote, the film did not win the festival. But I also loved the one that won. So it's okay, I guess.
Microcinema International, the company that co-sponsored the event, is always doing small screenings all over the country. They also sell DVDs and such. All sorts of crazy shit you're not even going to find at that really cool video store you go to that has a director's wall. Anyway, it's pretty unlikely.
They remind me a little of GreenCine, which is also San Francisco-based, but Microcinema is even more entrenched into all-that-is-indie film.
Pyrite Radio
This has totally turned into, like, a video blog lately. Whatever.
The overwhelming majority of the info for this post came from Songs in the Key of Zby Irwin Chusid of WFMU. It's a great book.
When David Bowie released The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars he started writing royalty checks to Norman Carl Odom. Who the hell is that? Well, he's the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, of course.
Bowie used his name after he was given a stack of Stardust singles by a record executive at Mercury. No one could believe had a record contract, but he did, and his records sold.
The Ledge, as Norman likes to be called, apparently lives in San Jose now, probably about 30 minutes from where I live right now. I'd so love to see this dude at the BART station.
Most people don't take the Ledge seriously. They call him a novelty act or whatever, even some of his biggest supporters - he's a clown to them. But there's something about the Stardust Cowboy and his nonsense that goes far deeper than simple sideshow stuff. It's been called aboriginal at times, and I think that's a good way to think of it. It's sort of like jazz in that way.
It's mostly "Paralyzed" that they're speaking of, which is way more intense than his other work. The majority of which is just really great psychobilly before such a thing existed. Perhaps the Ledge was just getting at something hidden beneath all the reasonable notions we have about art. He claims its because he's part Native American that he began yelping and doing animal calls at a young age.
Scope the lyrics:
I've got a gal, way 'cross town
She won't come to see me unless I pull my shades down
Paralyzed, paralyzed
She puts her arms around me, the way she squeezes me
Makes me paralyzed
When I go to the show
Boy, she does make a fella bestow [sic]
Paralyzed, paralyzed
When I look into her eyes, she makes me paralyzed
I threw my baby in a sack
Threw it over my back
And took off in a big black Cadillac
Paralyzed, paralyzed
She puts her arms around me
She keeps me warm from the storm
She makes me paralyzed
I ran to the 'frigerator
Hungry as an alligator
I opened the door, and what did I see?
I saw my baby starin' right back at me.
Paralyzed, paralyzed
She jumps into my arms
She gave me all of her charms
She makes me paralyzed
In fact, when he started playing at Lubbock honky-tonks in the late 1960s people thought he was making fun of country music, which many people still think today, however, he claims this isn't true - he's just being true to his roots (Johnny Cash, Chet Atkins, Buck Owens, etc.) while expressing whatever it is he sees in modernity that calls for these outbursts of feral absurdity which are much more akin to tribal ritual than the pop charts. Maybe the general oppression of Texas? Maybe.
The story of his making it to a wider audience is, like the Shaggs, at least as interesting as the music itself. One day the Ledge got in his Chevy Biscayne, the roof of which was painted a map of the moon, the side said "Nasa Presents, the Legendary Stardust Cowboy" in Black and Gold spray paint. The Ledge was headed for New York City to attempt to get a gig on The Tonight Show.
But the Ledge never made it to New York. He went 300 miles east to Fort Worth, to play I guess. Two vaccuum cleaner salesman spotted his crazy car in a parking lot and invited him to play at a club. He did so and, presumably drunk, they headed over to a recording studio for a session with a young recording engineer named T. Bone Burnett.
They recorded "Paralyzed" in the wees hours of the morning because they thought this transient kid might wander off or something. With no rehearsal and in a kind of hallucinatory and probably drug-induced daze, the Ledge and T. Bone laid down the track and T. Bone took it upstairs to KXOL, the local top 40 AM station, to play for the DJ, who loved it, calling it "the new music," and put it on the air right away. The stuff of legends indeed.
This full album download (minus tracks 7 and 16, inexplicably) is a little taste of what's to come for this blog after I'm done with my 52 blogs/52 mixes obsession. Basically we're going to become a legitimate mp3 blog in the vein of Mutant Sounds and Art Decade, but hopefully with more people blogging so that it'll be more like Star Maker Machine, and with lots of art like Meathaüs. Single mp3s, obscure albums, zipped mp3 mixes, etc.
Because, what else would I do with myself?
Anyway, I can't resist:
It's interesting to consider what he's singing about in "Starman," in light of from whence the name came.
Jon Arbuckle is a whole lot darker and weirder when Garfield's not around. According to Jim Davis, the webcomic Garfield Minus Garfield "is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb."
It's cute how Jim Davis calls Jon Arbuckle a "young man" because he's, like, really old.
So, where has Garfield been? That's a good question. Last I heard he's getting into sci-fi movie bootlegs. What a stud, that pussy.
Pyrite Radio
I had a country mix all ready to go for this week, but I decided to do a different one, in light of our finally electing a decent president. I decided not to go all corny with "change" songs and stuff, and instead to give you something that sort of reflects our acceptance back into the world community.
There are multiple songs from a 1983 NME comp tape, Sublime Frequencies comps, and a seventies comp called the International Psychedelic Mystery Mix. The first and last songs are Rainbow Arabia. And there are also four tracks from Aburadako's amazing 1983 s/t debut.
All of the continents represented, especially Asia.
To world peace, really. Who knows? It could happen one of these days. Maybe.
I know I'm way behind on this. Halloween was yesterday. But I thought I'd post some Halloween stuff anyway.
This is one of the really early Walt Disney cartoons, from 1929.
The Addams Family, of course. Of course.
You could maybe say this was the first Simpsons Halloween Special. It was on the Tracey Ullman Show in 1989, which produced the first Simpsons episodes before it was its own show.
The late great Bobby "Boris" Pickett died in 2007. He co-wrote the ultimate Halloween song, "Monster Mash." This is a video of his last live show, which he wasn't supposed to play because he was very ill at the time, but he did anyway. What a trooper.
1. No comma after introductory element 2. Vague pronoun reference 3. No comma in compound sentence 4. Wrong word 5. No comma in non-restrictive element 6. Wrong/missing inflected endings 7. Wrong or missing preposition 8. Comma splice 9. Possessive apostrophe error 10. Tense shift 11. Unnecessary shift in person 12. Sentence fragment 13. Wrong tense or verb form 14. Subject-verb agreement error 15. Lack of comma in series 16. Pronoun agreement error 17. Unnecessary comma with restrictive element 18. Run-on or fused sentence 19. Dangling or misplaced modifier 20. Its/it’s error
From The St. Martin’s Handbook, 5th edition, Andrea Lunsford.
Pyrite Radio
Obviously, this is mostly the Beatles, whom I've never played on Pyrite Radio before, not will I ever again after this.
Today is 24 hour Comics Day. I'm a bit of a hypocrite because I'm not doing it myself - I have a novella to finish writing and I've been feeling inspired lately, plus I had to do this. Anyway, I don't know why I'm making excuses for myself but I'm going to do it one of these years, one of these long years we have to grow old together, maybe. It's supposedly noon to noon, but you can start whenever today and just go for 24 hours or until you fall asleep. The goal is 24 pages in 24 hours.
This annual tradition was started by Scott McCloud, author of several important books on comics: Understanding Comics, Drawing Comics, and the controversial Reinventing Comics - controversial because of the epic debate that ensued between him and Gary Groth (esteemed comics publisher and journalist) about the sensitive relationship between the internet and comics.
McCloud calls for the democratization of the industry by the internet, and basically, Groth thinks the internet is a dangerous median for comics because it could lead to artists getting paid less, often not at all. Of course, this is totally true, but as Demian Vogler points out in the Salon.com article about this, the internet can get your art to a wider audience than otherwise possible.
I'm not saying McCloud won the argument - that remains to be seen - but Journalista now links to webcomics all the time, and a lot of them - most notably Achewood have made the leap to print.
Anyway, draw a comic today. Doesn't need to be 24 pages. Just draw something. It's fun.
When I am King
Demian Vogler's free webcomic is rad. As Salon.com points out, it uses the median really well. It's not that you can't do this on paper, but scrolling quickly gives you a bit of the effect of animation with the control in your own hands. There's hope, I think, for these to succeed as paid things. After all, Vogler himself has a paid comic (new ones are free) called Bloomdog, which is right above When I am King, which you should read. It reminds me a little of O. Soglow. (OMG, self linking again - funny that I had Au-Pairs in that mix too.)
Pyrite Radio
I don't know, maybe people don't realize this, but this is a one hour radio show, for free. It will not be available next week. But will eventually be for sale on a DVD with the other 52 weeks of this year, 52 hours of music, curated by me. You will also, at some point, be able to buy all four issues of Candy & Cigarettes. Over two-hundred pages of comics and writing, also curated by me. And you will be able to buy them together, as well. That will be a day, probably in April or May of next year.
But for now, this is only available until next Saturday, at which point a new one will become available. You see how this works? So you click on that link below this, and it will take you to my little world.
This blog is an extension of the zine Candy & Cigarettes; it features commentary on a variety of subjects by editor Reynard Seifert. For some reason, one might assume that he would adhere to certain journalistic standards, like publishing post-edit. Nay. All posts are subject to change at his command. And he likes the idea of that.
Contact
Reynard Seifert can be contacted at CandCmagazine((at))gmail((dot))com
