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BLASTITUDE:
your
online tip sheet for all blasting underground guh
"Blastitude"
is a word coined by Angus MacLise, original drummer
of the Velvet Underground and quite possibly the
coolest hippie of all time. (cf. track four of his
posthumous CD release The Invasion of Thunderbolt
Pagoda, released by Siltbreeze/Quakebasket.
Click HERE
for immediate cf'ing.) |
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(or
just click on Angus) |
The
Fine Print.
(You can come back to it later.)
Just by way of introduction, this here is a WEB
ZINE, focusing on but not limited to underground
music. As far as I'm concerned, it's a ROCK 'n' ROLL ZINE,
as long as we're all in agreement that rock has already
suffered death through overpackaging about 3 times: in
1959, when (but not because) Elvis joined the Army, around
oh 1969 as the post-Beatles-and-'San Francisco' (the concept
not the city) wave of mass-marketed 'love rock' started
faltering, to be put out of its misery about a year later
at Altamont, after which rock'n'roll stayed dead for a
much longer time, throughout the 70s when disco and funk
gave us a rather refreshing 'mass-market popular music'
alternative to loud and passive arena rock...okay, that's
two deaths....and we all know Death Number Three: when
rock's 'bloated corpse' was somewhat revived in the Nineties
by the career of Nirvana, which for a brief moment elevated
such pockets of the underground as SST Records and the
Olympia scene (Melvins, K Records, Bikini Kill, as distinct
from the more 'above-ground' Seattle scene with which
Nirvana ended up as full-time associates).
Inherently enough, this resurgence was dead within just
a couple years at the hand of -- you guessed it -- the
You-Are-Watching-Big-Brother marketing-values steamroller
that is MTV. In a sort of unconscious payola, the Most
Awful Channel In The History of Channel-Flipping soon
had FM radio stations all across America switching from
their bland classic rock/smooth oldies/whatever format
to a bland carbon-copy 'alternative' or 'modern' rock
format featuring an 'edgy' playlist of 'grunge' and 'modern
rock' and 'alternative' like the Lincoln/Omaha market's
truly disgusting "101.9 The Edge." These stations
featured sneering DJ's who put the jock in disc jockey
while disgracing the airwaves with cookie-cutter music
by the inevitable slew of photogenic imitators, as well
as the increasingly dispirited followup singles byNirvana
and other forefathers like Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam,
and Soundgarden. Treat a person like a rube and they might
just start behaving like one, and sure enough American
rubes who listen to the radio 'cause they got nuthin'
better to do started showing up en masse to concerts by
these suddenly reluctant hipster slackers. Unable to live
with himself as the inventor of Modern Rock Radio and
an "Alternative" culture lorded over by young
American jocks, Kurt Cobain killed himself and took rock'n'roll
with him for it's third death. (It seems there's always
a single decisive blow in the death of rock, a single
act of violence like a plane crash or a murder at a festival
or an overdose or yeah, a suicide....these blows aren't
what actually kills rock each time -- that would
be mass marketing tactics -- but they're always there
to put a period on things, to seal the metaphorical envelope.)
And
of course, we should all be in agreement that rock has
also been ALIVE the whole damn time, straight through,
in the 'underground,' it's just that things 'underground'
are almost totally invisible, unless you pick a spot and
get down there and grub and root along with the ants,
grubs, worms, punks, Trout Mask Replica fans, and
etc.
Pertinent definitions of "blast" =
"the sound produced by an impulsion of air through
a wind instrument or whistle"
"something resembling a gust of wind"
"an explosion or violent detonation"
"SPEED, CAPACITY, OPERATION"
"an enjoyably exciting experience, occasion, or event;
esp: PARTY."
"BLARE (music ~ing from the radio)"
"to make a vigorous attack"
"to remove, open, or form as if by an explosive"
"to hit vigorously and effectively"
the
above excerpted from Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary
(Tenth Edition, 1994)
Some
more pertinent and, ahem, less academic uses of the word
"blast":
SST Records:
 THE
BLASTING CONCEPT was the name of a series of various
artists LP released by SST Records in the Mid-Eighties.
(Volume 2 pictured.) Here the word refers to the vigorous
and creative post-punk spirit with which the music on
the LP is made. Music as a way to have a blast (i.e. "an
enjoyably exciting experience, occasion, or event; esp:
PARTY," cf. above) by making a blast (i.e. blasting
out some music).
Jack
Kerouac, On The Road:
 'Once
there was Louis Armstrong blowing his beautiful top in
the muds of New Orleans; before him the mad musicians
who had paraded on official days and broke up their Sousa
marches into ragtime. Then there was swing, and Roy Eldridge,
vigorous and virile, blasting
the horn for everything it had in waves of power and logic
and subtlety--leaning to it with glittering eyes and a
lovely smile and sending it out broadcast to rock the
jazz world. Then had come Charlie Parker, a kid in his
mother's woodshed in Kansas City, blowing his taped-up
alto among the logs, practicing on rainy days, coming
out to watch the old swinging Basie and Benny Moten band
that had Hot Lips Page and the rest--Charlie Parker leaving
home and coming to Harlem, and meeting mad Thelonius Monk
and madder Gillespie--Charlie Parker in his early days
when he was flipped and walked around in a circle while
playing. Somewhat younger than Lester Young, also from
KC, that gloomy, saintly goof in whom the history of jazz
was wrapped; for when he held his horn high and horizontal
from his mouth he blew the greatest; and as his hair grew
longer and he got lazier and stretched-out, his horn came
down halfway; till it finally fell all the way and today
as he wears his thick-soled shoes so that he can't feel
the sidewalks of life his horn is held weakly against
his chest, and he blows cool and easy getout phrases.
Here were the children of the American bop night.'
Terry
Southern:
“The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish.
Not shock—shock is a worn-out word—but astonish. The world
has no grounds for complacency. Where you find something
worth blasting, I want to blast it.”
BLASTITUDE
will be published on the 23rd of
each month...or every other month. We're not sure yet.
If we go monthly, some issues may be kinda slight, but
back issues will always remain online. Since the 'fast-paced'
web isn't supposed to be for reading, and Blastitude offers
lots of reading, it might take you two months to get through
all this bullcrap anyhow. Either way, thanks for blasting
in.
(If this is cyberspace, rather than, um, the cybersea
shouldn't we be 'blasting' around the internet, like in
rockets or spaceships, instead of 'surfing' the net?)
Letters, recommendations, complaints,
submissions: blastitude@hotmail.com
Any music/tapes/books/artifacts/records/documents
for consideration should be mailed to Blastitude
at 1136 A Street #2, Lincoln, NE 68502
editor,
designer, collater, curator, writer: Larry "Fuzz-O"
Dolman
"Things To Come, Elephant Boy" by Charles Lieurance
"Inklings and Musings" by Brad Sonder
BLASTITUDE #1 © 2000
Published by Tiny Press
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