in '93 i was unfortunately incarcerated for a crime--
it wasn't really a crime at all, if you ask me, never
was, never will be and it didn't harm anyone or
anything, simply something you're not allowed to do,
let's leave it at that. the first few months were
awful, they would have live music brought in from
the mainland and these guys were the absolute worst...
i'm talking slide whistles and kazoos and soulless
shit-eating grins. anyway, a few months down the road
and i haven't heard good music in ages-- i'm dying for
the feedback squall of sonic youth or the blurry pan-
dimensions of my bloody valentine-- one performer in
particular, i recall, trapsed up onstage with a
harmonica that seemed to be modified and fused with
some kind of mouth harp. it was a sunday morning.
i remember because i'd skipped the prayer service
because i'd woke up with a strange gut feeling that
my life was about to change. i told my cellmate, and
he said, 'greg, you've got 7 years left in here,
you're
life ain't gonna change any time soon 'less you serve
to right do angry by twitchy richie again.' skipping
prayer service to these guys was bad. as far as they
were concerned, the only thing worse than being black,
mexican or queer was to be an atheist. y'see, in
prison, you've got to stick to your own. it's
unfortunate, but that's the way the cookie crumbles,
and unless you want to take daily beatings and risk
getting jumped by rival races, you're left with no
choice. so the white boys, peckerwoods, as the blacks
and mexicans call them, were hardcore born agains,
most of them... anyway, i've really gone off on a
tangent, if you're curious, just ask. this guy comes
up on stage, he's wearing a sailor's hat, a hawaiian
t-shirt with a scooby doo print and these jogging
pants
that were so tight you could see that this lunatic was
wearing a cup on stage. he must have been so
horrified
of what we animals might have in store for him, that
he sought to insure the future livelihood of his
family-to-be. and he's got this bizarre harmonica.
by this point, we'd heard a billion harmonica
renditions of 'this land is your land' and 'somewhere
over the rainbow', each one more virtuoso than the
last
though also increasingly soul-crushing. we expected
that, despite the fancy mods he'd applied to this
thing
that we weren't going to be in for any particular
treat. i was wrong though, dead wrong. as it turns
out this thing was a midi controller and he had it
hooked up to a software program that he'd coded
himself
running on a PC by remote that was secure in a guard
booth on the other side of the wall. as he blew air
into this chromatically tuned cross between a robotic
hair comb and rhinoplasty cosmetic tool, we heard
kling
klang rhythms ricochet off prison walls and tinny,
haunted melodies resounded through the alluminum
coffin
of the performance hall. in a distant cell block, you
could sense curiosity, and as the performance grew in
intensity, you could hear them playing along, the only
way they could, tapping out rhythms with their food
trays on the prison bars. overwhelmed by the positive
audience response, aghast at our aghast, bewildered,
orgasmic expressions as we stared wide eyed at our
aural jesus, he collapsed into a coma. when he wakes
up though, the world's going to be in for a treat.
in '93 i wasn't just introduced to IDM in that dank
and
musky prison cellar, i saw the future.
gregory
=====
//the fawn//
performing live at the lab in
costa mesa 09/04/02//////?/
0123456789!@#$%^&*()_+
glitchitty-poppy-catch-all-phrase-
turning-indie-tech
*from the people who put the sty in style
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