I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: BECK-“Beercan” (1994).

I had forgotten how much I liked “Beercan” as a song until I played Mellow Gold again.  It’s incredibly catchy, has some wonderfully weird elements (like the sample of the girl saying “I’m Sad” over flamenco music), and deserved to be heard more.

The B-sides for this single really run the gamut of everything Beck does.  The first track “Got No Mind” is a reworking of “Pay No Mind.” It’s done as a very simple folk song.  The words are largely different and the music is played differently, but the chords are the same.  It’s an interesting conceit to redo a song almost entirely like that.  The second song “Asskiss Powergrudge (Payback ’94)” is just a dirty slow abusive song. The guitar strings are totally muted, just making noise.  The vocals are slowed and sludgy.  And it’s just heaps of abuse.

“Totally Confused” is also on the “Loser” single and is such a pretty, mellow folk song (with Anna and Petra from That Dog singing backing vocals).  And the final song, “Spanking Room” is just a pile of sheer noise and feedback.  It is loud and crazy and goes on for some 5 minutes.  There’s a “bonus” track of which I have learned is called “Loser (Pseudo-Muzak Version).” It’s Loser sampled and played behind some weird keyboard “muzak.”  It sounds like it was done live in a small club.  Really weird.

[READ: February 28, 2014] Some Instructions

This little booklet came with the Believer 2014 Art Issue.  It is called “Some Instructions.”   It is inspired by George Brecht, a Fluxus artist who is credited with creating the written form of performance art (called the “event score”).  Brecht was bored by didactic instructions in art so his creations were utterly open to interpretation.  The example they give is his “Three Chair Events” which is in its entirety:

• Sitting on a black chair. Occurrence.
• Yellow chair.  (Occurrence.)
• On (or near) a white chair.  Occurrence,

–Spring 1961

This is the kind of thing that I think i would have enjoyed in college, being pretentious an d obnoxious, now I realize it is just navel gazing and (in many of the examples below) barely even thought out.  You can kind of see what Brecht was getting at (although why he needed to do more than one or two is beyond me), as a kind of thought-provoking questioning of what we know of as art.  But some of these below are just, well, stupid.

JERICHO BROWN-“One-Man Show”
6 lines that ends with “Never get what you want.”

K. SILEM MOHAMMAD-“Rich as Fuck Piece”
This one made me laugh as step 2 of 6 is “Buy Robin Thicke.”

CHRISTIAN BÖK-“Pac-Man Score”
I enjoyed the absurdity of this one which is to create a poem of ten lines with each line containing one word that is three letters long.  Then become a Pac Man master and put you poem in the high scores.

DYNASTY HANDBAG-“Untitled”
Continue to not do something that you know is good for you.

ALEXANDER WATERMAN-“Basketball Event”
This seems like something one might actually do: pass a basketball back and forth between yourself and a friend.  Waterman’s version is more existential of course.

BUDDY WAKEFIELD-“Keeping Sound Track”
Let the next life come to you daily.

JOHN BEER-“Outside Piece”
This is a drawing of an impossible maze.

MATTHEW ZAPRUDER-“Ceremony to Write a Poem”
A poem coming from the voices of the dead.

DAWN KASPAR-“Everything Comes to Make You Move Forward”
Take a self-portrait.  And again.

BRIAN BELOTT-“Untitled”
A very lengthy series of pretty much random ideas. This is the kind that seems like he wrote whatever ideas came into his head.

BRAIN McMULLEN-“Marshmallow Sidewalk (Butterscotch Tomorrow)”
This involves coating a sidewalk square with Fluf.

ZUBAIR AHMEN-“Evening Event for Rainy Season”
Speak with the rain in a language you just made up.

ANN LIV YOUNG-“Mary”
A series of commands, the bulk of which say “feel anxious.”

OLIVIA PLENDER-“Directions for a Play”
This actually has a set, characters, props and a scene, in which people cheat at cards.  It’s almost too doable to work in this format.

LUKE DISCHBECK-“Time Piece”
Show how many ways two lines can touch each other.  Wait until the painting becomes a clock.

NOAH ELI GORDON-“Travel”
Photograph telephone poles but don’t show them to anyone.

SASHA ARCHIBALD-“Performance”
Record people signing a book in sign language and then release it as a piece of music.  [This one might be interesting].

LAUREN BRINCAT-“Recipe Piece”
Chopping cucumbers with your lover.

MATTHEW DICKMAN-“Daily Monster Dance”
A dance that lasts between ten minutes and ten days.

SARAH RARA-“Out of the Blue”
Reply to an email written at least two years ago.  Insert the word blue into the text.  Aside from the blue aspect this would be kind of interesting to see what happens.

ANT HAMPTON-“Reset”
Practice being happy without smiling.

I suppose these are fun to think about.  Anyhow, if you like them, there are five more available at the Believer website.

For ease of searching, I include: Christian Bok.