here's a brief, polemical review of the atari teenage riot/ shizuo/ ec8or
show in providence. excuse the half-formed state; it's just a rant i
emailed to a friend that i figured i'd pass on to y'all.
forgot to tell you: the digital hardcore show was fucking terrible. god,
what a waste. really disheartening. i read it as nothing but the face of
our own boredom being blasted back at us, but shorn of any critical
potential.
briefly: ec8or ran a DAT, or some setup where they just had to push the
"start" button, and then pranced around, screaming nonsense lyrics and
shouting sloganistic crap like "we will not give up the fight." i'm
sorry...which fight were you referring to? then shizuo was utter
shit-zoo-o (funny, 'cause that's how they pronounced it). again, pretty
much just a set-up of DAT's & sequencers--really, no playing going on.
(call me antiquated, but i do believe in the virtues of musicianship &
technical skill, whether it's baroque harpsichords, punk guitar, turntables
& a mixer, or even just techno-knob-twiddling. if you're gonna call it a
performance, i expect you to DO something. john cage's 3'33" excepted.)
some guy running the DATs standing in back, singing some, making inane
comments. some big-titty singer in tight short black thing (occasionally
pulled down to reveal her nipples), bumping and grinding. and then a guy
in huge football pads & helmet who did not much of anything until he pulled
out an inflatable dick & waved it around, & proceeded to have it injected
by miss titty who weilded a massive syringe full of red stuff. shades of
gwar, really. (the coolest stunt was when she held her microphone between
her breasts, no hands, and sang into it. granted, that's a skill.)
technical problems, lots of noise but no energy, finally the head honcho
said "i give up" and that was it for them. at one point, someone threw a
plastic water bottle at them, and i thought mr. shitzuo was going to go
ballistic--i was kinda hoping he would, so the audience (with me at the
forefront) could drag him into the crowd and kick the living shit out of
him. i really felt like that--he really wanted to provoke us, but he was
merely annoying. so i thought perhaps we could "provoke" him instead. oh
well.
finally ATR got up. at least they had a stage presence. no lights
except for epilepsy strobes; one woman in back, playing whatever equipment,
and then empire, carl crack & the other woman in front, posturing &
shouting, punk rock style. here's the thing--they borrowed pretty much
everything from hardcore punk--the samples, the rhetoric, the postures--and
yet, in the borrowing, it was totally depleted of whatever energy, whatever
potential, punk ever had. i'm trying to put my finger on this, and it's
tough--because i don't want to nostalgize punk and say that (in all its
reductiveness) it had some essential quality that the digital reproduction
lacks. and yet. i do think that punk/hardcore had/has a visceral charge
that this did not; and i think that, at its best, punk/hardcore had a
political message that was served up here as dessicated pastiche. pretty
sad, and more than a little disturbing. i found the whole experience
aesthetically regressive, and politically neo-conservative (in the
habermasian sense of the term, as i understand him to use it). the only
other thing of note was the emphasis on self-promotion. huge DHR banner
behind the stage. ec8or was wearing their own t-shirts. shithead shizuo
kept repeating, over and over, when there was nothng else to say, "shizuo!
shit-fucking-zuo!" relentless self-promotion; pure auto-referential
commodification. given ATR's supposed "statements" about the fascist
mentality of german youth, and their music as a response to that, i have to
question their political intentions. it came off to me as nothing but
pure, unadulterated cynicism.
and that's that... sorry to burst bubbles.
phil
p.s. how could a label so bad release a record as stunningly great as
christophe de babalon's "if you're into it i'm out of it"?