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mobility-digest       Tuesday, December 30 1997       Volume 01 : Number 055



Re: (mobility) speed metal
(mobility) Moby and homosexualists
Re: (mobility) speed metal
Re: (mobility) Moby and homosexualists

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 30 Dec 1997 02:31:02 -0700
From: but not _the_ frankz <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (mobility) speed metal

At 09:20 PM 12/29/97 -0600, you wrote:
>Now forgive me, I knew Moby was a decent
>guitar player, but I didn't know that he was THAT good!!  Certainly he would
>have impressed the likes of Marty Friedman (Megadeth) or Hetfield/Hammett
>(Metallica).  I would surely like to know how many of these other
>electronic/whatever artists could possibly play guitar like that.  Anybody
>know?  I would be surprised if any other dance person heck even alternative
>band's guitarist could do that.

I know, I know.... :-)
I'm not a speed metal freak (I dig Ministry), but I listen to guitars since
I was 15....
(that is sure a long song ago!)

I have theory:
You cannot possibly play a good guitar-solo on a synthesizer (comp.)
so, electronic artists start to perform with a comp. & a guitar.... (this is
where Rock meets Electronics)
Now, fans, or listeners in general, get confused.... (because they all like
to put it in a Class, class-sorting, is what gives people certainty, class
sorting i.e. "this is rock, that is electronica"; is one of the first things
you learn in life, and prob one of the things you have to do the most....)

Like the style of guitar Moby plays in New Dawn Fades (I didn't know Joy
Division was speed metal, well, never mind....:-)
that's the old seventies hard rock style, as played by SO MANY guitarists
(lot of 'm dead) hardly possible to mention all of 'm (yo know how many
Gibsons there are sold?.... hehe  :-))

Moby said in an interview his favorite guitarist was Tom Verlaine
(ex-Television) a pure 80's guitarist i'd say...
he has a live-album out together with Chris Spedding ('cocaine') who plays
even better I guess! [there's an absurdly good number on that album, about
him killing his girlfriend and feeding her to her own mother....yahk!... the
guitar in that number is AWESOME...] [I would call it 'apres-Punk']

If you wanna hear GUITAR, go to a cd-shop and try out Frank Zappa's cd with
that name!
other great guitar-player is Prince, the OLD one, the one that LIVED, the
one that rocked...
(the Purple Haze guy...)

First time I heard Animal Rights.... (don't shoot!!!)
it reminded me of David Bowie!  The OLD one.... the one from Ziggy Stardust
("time takes a cigaret.... and puts it in your mouth...")
Listen to THAT guitar! (not Bowie himself if I remember correctly,
if i'm not wrong it was a guy called Campbell or so... probably dead too)

Electric guitar-playing was invented by the Ol' Bo Diddley ('I'm a man') on
a WOODEN square BOX with snares he played the first (blues-)rock
guitarsolo's ever played... he's the guy they ALL learned it from...
No! Everybody shouts! ROBERT JOHNSON! He was the first....
but folks, that is SO long ago.... even before I had ears! There is this box
though, The Collected Recordings of Robert Johnson.... i think every
guitarfreak should hear that!

forgive me, if i've let myself go,
but when it comes to guitars, i consider myself a specialist

(new cassette-deck is coming soon! so keep in touch!)

Frank Zappa: "When it comes to guitarplaying, in fact, I'm a ONE NOTE
player.... "

and I immediately added: "...yeah, but that ONE note, he plays SO goooood....!"


keesz




_____________________________________
"Internet:  your bright sight of life"   -  Kees
- ------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 30 Dec 1997 00:43:05 -0500
From: Joe Clark <[e-mail]>
Subject: (mobility) Moby and homosexualists

As an avowed homosexualist writer who has covered Moby twice and spent a
few hours with him, maybe I could set the matter straight, as it were.
These stories are posted on my Web site. I'm giving you the whole shebang
here, not all of it being Mobyesque.

- --

<http://www.interlog.com/~joeclark/QiYE46.html>

                              Mike Watt es mas macho!

   by [1]Joe Clark

   I apologize for starting off with an obscure Amerikanski TV reference, but
   does anyone recall the old Saturday Night Live sketch (later heisted by
   Laurie Anderson in Home of the Brave) parodying a Spanish-language game
   show? The whole sketch was such a non-sequitur it oozed a kind of abstract
   recherche charm, with Bill Murray as quizmaster asking, "Quien es mas
   macho, Lloyd Bridges o Jack Lloyd?" The answer back then was, of course,
   Lloyd Bridges (far more macho than Mr. Hawaii Five-O, who had Danno do all
   the manhandling).

   Now I wonder if maybe Mike Watt es mas macho-- or is at least a bigger,
   more charming, even more recherche non-sequitur. This Watt guy must be one
   powerful bearded hunk o' flesh to get away with an album of such
   surpassing eccentricity, such intricate packaging, and such megastar guest
   performers as Ball-hog or Tugboat?

   Watt is a hero among punk- and garage-rock queens, having written songs
   for and plucked various guitar strings in the Minutemen and Firehose.
   Indeed, careful study of the liner notes of Firehose's 1991 opus Flyin'
   the Flannel, with its comic strips and run-on lowercase text, gives clues
   to the gloriously overwrought design extravaganza that is Ball-hog or
   Tugboat?'s package.

   It's a mustard-yellow folder twice the height of a CD with three
   disc-sized pockets bound inside. One holds the actual disc. The second
   contains Ring Spiel '95, an engrossing, bizarre made-up lexicon
   ("corporate pawn: obvious palooka"; "one-on-one tug-o-war: solo record").
   The last pocket holds a poster of album credits, one side of which is
   meant to look like a broadsheet for an 18th-century Mike Watt Wrestling
   Federation match. The inside front cover sticks with this theme, showing
   an apparently headless comic-book guy with his neck butted up against
   another fellow's privates and the headline "Sex with you is like watching
   scientific wrestling."

   Weird enough for you yet?

   But wait, there's more. (This is a music column, remember? Sometimes I
   forget.) The album is a puzzling pastiche of styles (blues rock, tuneless
   guitar meandering, mumbled pseudo-ballads) with largely nonsensical lyrics
   spewed by guest vocalists like tattooed egocentric carnivore Hank Rollins,
   overrated angst-rock poster boy Eddie Vedder (monotonously reciting the
   words "The kids of today should defend themselves against the '70s," a
   fancy way of saying "disco sucks"), underrated soul crooner Mark Lanegan,
   and bald-pated hovercraft-piloting oddity Frank Black. (What, Watt? No
   Traci Lords?) If musicians are more your bag than singers, you'll find a
   similarly rich coterie of alterna-rock gods here too.

   Si, Mike Watt es mas macho. I admit it. But can someone tell me why
   "Intense Song for Madonna to Sing" has no words to sing at all?
     _____________________________________________________________________

Not quite "everything"

   Meanwhile, in another part of the forest,
   dance(hall)/techno/punk/ambient/rave impresario Moby has been driving
   Little Miss Queer in Your Ear here's fabulometers to the redline with his
   welcome combo of NRG, S-E-X, and ethics. Though for years I was absolutely
   positive Moby was a fag, in fact he is not; apart from tell-all magazine
   interviews, evidence of the wee skinhead's flagrant heterosexuality comes
   from the video "Everytime You Touch Me." It's quite an effective collision
   of overlapping frames, snippets of naked bodies with exaggerated skin
   tones, and some passionate making-out that, on close inspection, takes
   place between Moby and a couple of women. (Look closely. It's boy/girl.
   Wishful thinking clouds one's vision sometimes.)

   Remarkably, the few seconds in which Moby is actually seen tonguing,
   pulling ropes off the legs of, or spooning treats down the throat of these
   women are surprisingly erotic. Since day zero we've all been saturated
   with depictions of guys and girls making out, which for a monosexualist
   like me elicit little more than boredom (or a fond desire for the woman in
   the picture to get lost), but Moby manages to make heterosexuality seem
   exciting, if only for a manageable few seconds at a time. Fancy that.
   Heterosexuality - exciting! Talk about beating the odds.

   And the fact that Moby is a Christian vegan adds to the joy. Everything is
   Wrong is the title of Moby's second album, spanning the gamut with dance
   tracks (featuring stand-in vocalists `a la Watt) and rock numbers and
   chill-out tunes. While Moby makes reference to the state of the earth and
   the pervasiveness of suffering, in fact "everything" is not wrong. There's
   very little wrong with Moby, or his music, or his ethos. If anything,
   Everything is Wrong is the antidote to its own title. Gulp down a lovin'
   spoonful.

- --

<http://www.interlog.com/~joeclark/QiYE50.html>


                           Moby is woman, hear him roar

   by [1]Joe Clark

   It's time to revisit that multitalented vegan heterosexualist musician
   dude, Moby. After praising his album Everything is Wrong a few months ago,
   I would later enjoy a superexclusive interviewette with the thoughtful,
   matter-of-fact lad, whose teeth look much shinier in person than in those
   dreadful television interviews.

   Everything is Wrong's signal achievement is assembling a startling range
   of genres in a sequence that, in other hands, might go over as well as
   matter brushing against antimatter. (In order, those genres are piano
   solo, jackhammer disco-diva dancehall, thrash metal, industrial, dancepop,
   techno, something akin to deathmetal, urbane synthpop `a la Stereo MCs,
   funereal dirge, more dancepop, another piano solo, New Age soundtrack,
   lullaby.) The secret to this winsome assemblage, says Moby, is MiniDisc,
   an oddball Sony recordable-disc technology that lets Moby audition various
   permutations until he finds one he likes.

   The album features a handful of session singer(ette)s and Moby's own
   trademark bellowing. "I guess I have a pretty broad view (1) of singing,
   (2) of pop music," explains Moby in a typical text-aware '90s sentence.
   (We're the first generation that talks in parentheses.) "You know when
   you're young, if you had to go to church, there's always some old guy
   standing behind you sort of mouthing the words? Everyone else is singing
   tunefully, and behind you [it's]
   'On-ward-Chris-tian-sol-diers-mar-ching....' That's me. I can't do the
   tuneful thing. So I'm forced to scream and shout and vocalize.

   "I love female vocals. I have my sort of half-baked semi-adolescent theory
   that the first sound any human being ever hears is a woman passionately
   vocalizing, unless of course your mother was anaesthetized when she gave
   birth to you.... I think it sets a really powerful precedent for female
   vocals in our brains."

   Yeah, but in delivery rooms these days aren't there half a dozen doctors
   and nurses all saying "Come on! Push! Push! Push"? "Well, maybe that's the
   rap part of it," avers the deadpan bleach-blond megastar. "If you're in a
   room with five people, four of whom are talking rationally-- like, 'OK,
   come on! Push!'-- and there's one woman screaming at the top of her lungs,
   which are you going to pay attention to?"

Men loving aliens loving men

   Two music videos making the rounds now offer oddly contrary vistas into
   alien realms. Lovable rotund bassist and flannel-shirt habitue Mike Watt
   (Queer in Your Ear passim) somehow talked Sony into filming a video for
   "Piss-Bottle Man," Watt's tribute to his father's habit of toting along a
   bottle to piss in during long car trips.

   As guest singer Evan Dando croons "Driving in his shoes, using the bottle
   he used/Every time I pop I think of my Pop and pay my dues," Watt cruises
   through the desert in his Datsun pickup and is ensnared by smooth-skinned,
   oval-eyed aliens. As he is flooded by white celestial light, all the while
   being lovingly pawed by a pair of the childlike creatures, the expression
   on Watt's motile face communicates wonder, inebriation, and disorientation
   all at once. In a music video about urine disposal, I suppose anything
   short of a golden arc counts as subtlety.

   Meanwhile, quite another conception of alienness can be seen in "Crush
   with Eyeliner," the long-delayed R.E.M video. (You can also find it on the
   new home-video collection Parallel.) Directed by Spike Jonze of "Sabotage"
   and "Buddy Holly" fame, it's the clip in which high-strung Japanese kids
   in L.A. impersonate R.E.M. onstage. Rendered in film stock so grainy it
   conjures memories of sand in your shoes at the beach, the kray-zee
   superstar stand-ins cavort, vogue (yes!), breakdance, and tussle, all the
   while lip-synching only a tad less competently than most English-speaking
   bands. "We all invent ourselves," sings Michael Stipe in an ode to a
   girlfriend he lovingly dubs "my kiss breath turpentine" (piss-bottle
   breath?). "She's a sad tomato. She's three miles of bad road" (piss-bottle
   road?).

   Predictably enough, three of the R.E.M. lads show up in "Crush with
   Eyeliner." At one point Michael Stipe is seen sashaying down a hall
   surrounded by his little Japanese friends. Where's the hovering
   spacecraft? Where are the little people taking you, Michael?

   Let's face it: In Los Angeles you'll find a heck of a lot more Japanese
   kids out for a good time than gaunt enigmatic bald bisexualist Georgian
   pop stars. So who's really the alien in this little tableau?

   It all leaves me with a funny taste in my mouth.

- --
                                        Joe Clark
                                   [e-mail]
                            <http://www.interlog.com/~joeclark>

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 30 Dec 1997 17:32:24 -0500
From: "jason(INRI)" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (mobility) speed metal

a mixture of rock and "electronica" (if that's what you want to call it) is
called industrial. it's been around since the early seventies....
some modern industrial acts are nin and gravity kills...
- -----Original Message-----
From: but not _the_ frankz <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail] <[e-mail]>
Date: December 30, 1997 4:32 AM
Subject: Re: (mobility) speed metal


>At 09:20 PM 12/29/97 -0600, you wrote:
>>Now forgive me, I knew Moby was a decent
>>guitar player, but I didn't know that he was THAT good!!  Certainly he
would
>>have impressed the likes of Marty Friedman (Megadeth) or Hetfield/Hammett
>>(Metallica).  I would surely like to know how many of these other
>>electronic/whatever artists could possibly play guitar like that.  Anybody
>>know?  I would be surprised if any other dance person heck even
alternative
>>band's guitarist could do that.
>
>I know, I know.... :-)
>I'm not a speed metal freak (I dig Ministry), but I listen to guitars since
>I was 15....
>(that is sure a long song ago!)
>
>I have theory:
>You cannot possibly play a good guitar-solo on a synthesizer (comp.)
>so, electronic artists start to perform with a comp. & a guitar.... (this
is
>where Rock meets Electronics)
>Now, fans, or listeners in general, get confused.... (because they all like
>to put it in a Class, class-sorting, is what gives people certainty, class
>sorting i.e. "this is rock, that is electronica"; is one of the first
things
>you learn in life, and prob one of the things you have to do the most....)
>
>Like the style of guitar Moby plays in New Dawn Fades (I didn't know Joy
>Division was speed metal, well, never mind....:-)
>that's the old seventies hard rock style, as played by SO MANY guitarists
>(lot of 'm dead) hardly possible to mention all of 'm (yo know how many
>Gibsons there are sold?.... hehe  :-))
>
>Moby said in an interview his favorite guitarist was Tom Verlaine
>(ex-Television) a pure 80's guitarist i'd say...
>he has a live-album out together with Chris Spedding ('cocaine') who plays
>even better I guess! [there's an absurdly good number on that album, about
>him killing his girlfriend and feeding her to her own mother....yahk!...
the
>guitar in that number is AWESOME...] [I would call it 'apres-Punk']
>
>If you wanna hear GUITAR, go to a cd-shop and try out Frank Zappa's cd with
>that name!
>other great guitar-player is Prince, the OLD one, the one that LIVED, the
>one that rocked...
>(the Purple Haze guy...)
>
>First time I heard Animal Rights.... (don't shoot!!!)
>it reminded me of David Bowie!  The OLD one.... the one from Ziggy Stardust
>("time takes a cigaret.... and puts it in your mouth...")
>Listen to THAT guitar! (not Bowie himself if I remember correctly,
>if i'm not wrong it was a guy called Campbell or so... probably dead too)
>
>Electric guitar-playing was invented by the Ol' Bo Diddley ('I'm a man') on
>a WOODEN square BOX with snares he played the first (blues-)rock
>guitarsolo's ever played... he's the guy they ALL learned it from...
>No! Everybody shouts! ROBERT JOHNSON! He was the first....
>but folks, that is SO long ago.... even before I had ears! There is this
box
>though, The Collected Recordings of Robert Johnson.... i think every
>guitarfreak should hear that!
>
>forgive me, if i've let myself go,
>but when it comes to guitars, i consider myself a specialist
>
>(new cassette-deck is coming soon! so keep in touch!)
>
>Frank Zappa: "When it comes to guitarplaying, in fact, I'm a ONE NOTE
>player.... "
>
>and I immediately added: "...yeah, but that ONE note, he plays SO
goooood....!"
>
>
>keesz
>
>
>
>
>_____________________________________
>"Internet:  your bright sight of life"   -  Kees
>------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 30 Dec 1997 16:59:56 -0600
From: "Dennis Daniels" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (mobility) Moby and homosexualists

     I have that Mike Watt album and as many people are on it (ie- Beastie
Boys, 2/3 of Nirvana (or 3/4 if you count Pat Smear), Thurston Moore of
Sonic Youth, Evan Dando of Lemonheads, etc.), to put it truthfully, it
wasn't near as good (to me, anyway) as it should've been.
     Anyway, I was told by someone that Moby did the James Bond re-version
as a result of BMW wanting it for their ads. Is there any truth to that?
     Last thing, I got the Spawn soundtrack the other day, and that
Butthole Surfers/Moby song is good, but Moby really needed to do a little
more on that song. As a matter of fact, most of the songs on it sound like
the "electronica artists" (for lack of a better term) were just on there to
provide the background music, while the rock/metal artists basically took
all of the credit. For example, the Marilyn Manson/Sneaker Pimps song
sounds like M.M. took all of the credit and left S.P. in the dust. (M.M.
and S.P. hate each other, but that's a different story). On the video for
it-which sucks, just like the song.-only credit is given to Marilyn Manson;
why is that? Just wondering.

    Later,
         D.

- ----------
From: Joe Clark <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: (mobility) Moby and homosexualists
Date: Monday, December 29, 1997 11:43 PM

As an avowed homosexualist writer who has covered Moby twice and spent a
few hours with him, maybe I could set the matter straight, as it were.
These stories are posted on my Web site. I'm giving you the whole shebang
here, not all of it being Mobyesque.

- --

<http://www.interlog.com/~joeclark/QiYE46.html>

                              Mike Watt es mas macho!

   by [1]Joe Clark

   I apologize for starting off with an obscure Amerikanski TV reference,
but
   does anyone recall the old Saturday Night Live sketch (later heisted by
   Laurie Anderson in Home of the Brave) parodying a Spanish-language game
   show? The whole sketch was such a non-sequitur it oozed a kind of
abstract
   recherche charm, with Bill Murray as quizmaster asking, "Quien es mas
   macho, Lloyd Bridges o Jack Lloyd?" The answer back then was, of course,
   Lloyd Bridges (far more macho than Mr. Hawaii Five-O, who had Danno do
all
   the manhandling).

   Now I wonder if maybe Mike Watt es mas macho-- or is at least a bigger,
   more charming, even more recherche non-sequitur. This Watt guy must be
one
   powerful bearded hunk o' flesh to get away with an album of such
   surpassing eccentricity, such intricate packaging, and such megastar
guest
   performers as Ball-hog or Tugboat?

   Watt is a hero among punk- and garage-rock queens, having written songs
   for and plucked various guitar strings in the Minutemen and Firehose.
   Indeed, careful study of the liner notes of Firehose's 1991 opus Flyin'
   the Flannel, with its comic strips and run-on lowercase text, gives
clues
   to the gloriously overwrought design extravaganza that is Ball-hog or
   Tugboat?'s package.

   It's a mustard-yellow folder twice the height of a CD with three
   disc-sized pockets bound inside. One holds the actual disc. The second
   contains Ring Spiel '95, an engrossing, bizarre made-up lexicon
   ("corporate pawn: obvious palooka"; "one-on-one tug-o-war: solo
record").
   The last pocket holds a poster of album credits, one side of which is
   meant to look like a broadsheet for an 18th-century Mike Watt Wrestling
   Federation match. The inside front cover sticks with this theme, showing
   an apparently headless comic-book guy with his neck butted up against
   another fellow's privates and the headline "Sex with you is like
watching
   scientific wrestling."

   Weird enough for you yet?

   But wait, there's more. (This is a music column, remember? Sometimes I
   forget.) The album is a puzzling pastiche of styles (blues rock,
tuneless
   guitar meandering, mumbled pseudo-ballads) with largely nonsensical
lyrics
   spewed by guest vocalists like tattooed egocentric carnivore Hank
Rollins,
   overrated angst-rock poster boy Eddie Vedder (monotonously reciting the
   words "The kids of today should defend themselves against the '70s," a
   fancy way of saying "disco sucks"), underrated soul crooner Mark
Lanegan,
   and bald-pated hovercraft-piloting oddity Frank Black. (What, Watt? No
   Traci Lords?) If musicians are more your bag than singers, you'll find a
   similarly rich coterie of alterna-rock gods here too.

   Si, Mike Watt es mas macho. I admit it. But can someone tell me why
   "Intense Song for Madonna to Sing" has no words to sing at all?
     _____________________________________________________________________

Not quite "everything"

   Meanwhile, in another part of the forest,
   dance(hall)/techno/punk/ambient/rave impresario Moby has been driving
   Little Miss Queer in Your Ear here's fabulometers to the redline with
his
   welcome combo of NRG, S-E-X, and ethics. Though for years I was
absolutely
   positive Moby was a fag, in fact he is not; apart from tell-all magazine
   interviews, evidence of the wee skinhead's flagrant heterosexuality
comes
   from the video "Everytime You Touch Me." It's quite an effective
collision
   of overlapping frames, snippets of naked bodies with exaggerated skin
   tones, and some passionate making-out that, on close inspection, takes
   place between Moby and a couple of women. (Look closely. It's boy/girl.
   Wishful thinking clouds one's vision sometimes.)

   Remarkably, the few seconds in which Moby is actually seen tonguing,
   pulling ropes off the legs of, or spooning treats down the throat of
these
   women are surprisingly erotic. Since day zero we've all been saturated
   with depictions of guys and girls making out, which for a monosexualist
   like me elicit little more than boredom (or a fond desire for the woman
in
   the picture to get lost), but Moby manages to make heterosexuality seem
   exciting, if only for a manageable few seconds at a time. Fancy that.
   Heterosexuality - exciting! Talk about beating the odds.

   And the fact that Moby is a Christian vegan adds to the joy. Everything
is
   Wrong is the title of Moby's second album, spanning the gamut with dance
   tracks (featuring stand-in vocalists `a la Watt) and rock numbers and
   chill-out tunes. While Moby makes reference to the state of the earth
and
   the pervasiveness of suffering, in fact "everything" is not wrong.
There's
   very little wrong with Moby, or his music, or his ethos. If anything,
   Everything is Wrong is the antidote to its own title. Gulp down a lovin'
   spoonful.

- --

<http://www.interlog.com/~joeclark/QiYE50.html>


                           Moby is woman, hear him roar

   by [1]Joe Clark

   It's time to revisit that multitalented vegan heterosexualist musician
   dude, Moby. After praising his album Everything is Wrong a few months
ago,
   I would later enjoy a superexclusive interviewette with the thoughtful,
   matter-of-fact lad, whose teeth look much shinier in person than in
those
   dreadful television interviews.

   Everything is Wrong's signal achievement is assembling a startling range
   of genres in a sequence that, in other hands, might go over as well as
   matter brushing against antimatter. (In order, those genres are piano
   solo, jackhammer disco-diva dancehall, thrash metal, industrial,
dancepop,
   techno, something akin to deathmetal, urbane synthpop `a la Stereo MCs,
   funereal dirge, more dancepop, another piano solo, New Age soundtrack,
   lullaby.) The secret to this winsome assemblage, says Moby, is MiniDisc,
   an oddball Sony recordable-disc technology that lets Moby audition
various
   permutations until he finds one he likes.

   The album features a handful of session singer(ette)s and Moby's own
   trademark bellowing. "I guess I have a pretty broad view (1) of singing,
   (2) of pop music," explains Moby in a typical text-aware '90s sentence.
   (We're the first generation that talks in parentheses.) "You know when
   you're young, if you had to go to church, there's always some old guy
   standing behind you sort of mouthing the words? Everyone else is singing
   tunefully, and behind you [it's]
   'On-ward-Chris-tian-sol-diers-mar-ching....' That's me. I can't do the
   tuneful thing. So I'm forced to scream and shout and vocalize.

   "I love female vocals. I have my sort of half-baked semi-adolescent
theory
   that the first sound any human being ever hears is a woman passionately
   vocalizing, unless of course your mother was anaesthetized when she gave
   birth to you.... I think it sets a really powerful precedent for female
   vocals in our brains."

   Yeah, but in delivery rooms these days aren't there half a dozen doctors
   and nurses all saying "Come on! Push! Push! Push"? "Well, maybe that's
the
   rap part of it," avers the deadpan bleach-blond megastar. "If you're in
a
   room with five people, four of whom are talking rationally-- like, 'OK,
   come on! Push!'-- and there's one woman screaming at the top of her
lungs,
   which are you going to pay attention to?"

Men loving aliens loving men

   Two music videos making the rounds now offer oddly contrary vistas into
   alien realms. Lovable rotund bassist and flannel-shirt habitue Mike Watt
   (Queer in Your Ear passim) somehow talked Sony into filming a video for
   "Piss-Bottle Man," Watt's tribute to his father's habit of toting along
a
   bottle to piss in during long car trips.

   As guest singer Evan Dando croons "Driving in his shoes, using the
bottle
   he used/Every time I pop I think of my Pop and pay my dues," Watt
cruises
   through the desert in his Datsun pickup and is ensnared by
smooth-skinned,
   oval-eyed aliens. As he is flooded by white celestial light, all the
while
   being lovingly pawed by a pair of the childlike creatures, the
expression
   on Watt's motile face communicates wonder, inebriation, and
disorientation
   all at once. In a music video about urine disposal, I suppose anything
   short of a golden arc counts as subtlety.

   Meanwhile, quite another conception of alienness can be seen in "Crush
   with Eyeliner," the long-delayed R.E.M video. (You can also find it on
the
   new home-video collection Parallel.) Directed by Spike Jonze of
"Sabotage"
   and "Buddy Holly" fame, it's the clip in which high-strung Japanese kids
   in L.A. impersonate R.E.M. onstage. Rendered in film stock so grainy it
   conjures memories of sand in your shoes at the beach, the kray-zee
   superstar stand-ins cavort, vogue (yes!), breakdance, and tussle, all
the
   while lip-synching only a tad less competently than most
English-speaking
   bands. "We all invent ourselves," sings Michael Stipe in an ode to a
   girlfriend he lovingly dubs "my kiss breath turpentine" (piss-bottle
   breath?). "She's a sad tomato. She's three miles of bad road"
(piss-bottle
   road?).

   Predictably enough, three of the R.E.M. lads show up in "Crush with
   Eyeliner." At one point Michael Stipe is seen sashaying down a hall
   surrounded by his little Japanese friends. Where's the hovering
   spacecraft? Where are the little people taking you, Michael?

   Let's face it: In Los Angeles you'll find a heck of a lot more Japanese
   kids out for a good time than gaunt enigmatic bald bisexualist Georgian
   pop stars. So who's really the alien in this little tableau?

   It all leaves me with a funny taste in my mouth.

- --
                                        Joe Clark
                                   [e-mail]
                            <http://www.interlog.com/~joeclark>

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End of mobility-digest V1 #55
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