I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: BORIS-Archive Volume Two “Drumless Shows” (2005/2020). 

In early August, Boris digitally released six archival releases.  Volume Two is called “Drumless Shows” and that’s what it contains.

I tend to think of drummer Atsuo as the leader of the band–he’s the mouthpiece after all. Plus, he’s the most larger than life of the three.  And, his drum sound is huge.

To have 46 minutes of drummless Boris music is quite a change.  It is, as the blurb says, the beginning of Drone Metal history.

Originally released in 2005 from the US label “aRCHIVE”, limited to 600 copies which sold out immediately. Includes 2 songs recorded live from Boris’s 1998 studio album “Amplifier Worship” and 1 song from “Early Demo”, all arranged for a drumless performance. The beginning of Drone Metal history in 1997.
(Reissued as part of Archive 1 on March 5, 2014. Limited to 1,000 copies)

The first of two songs from Amplifier Worship is “Huge” which was also on Archive 1 (this version was recorded at Nagoya Music Farm 9th Aug 1997).  It is 17 minutes long and is very different sounding without the drums.  It’s all drone with one of the instruments sounding almost like a didgeridoo.  After ten minutes echoing screamed vocals comes in but the drone remains.

The final two songs were recorded at Koenji 20000V 8th Aug 1997.  “Mosquito” was also on Archive 1.  It was three minutes there, but it is stretched out to 17 minutes of slow pummeling chords and guttural noises from Atsuo (I assume).  After ten minutes Atsuo starts chanting slowly with the thumping chords.  The final chords echo and feedback as they segue into

“Vomitself” also from Amplifier.  This track is only 12 minutes of drone.  About six minutes in the melody changes briefly before reverting back to the original sound.  For the final two or so minutes, squealing feedback brings this archive to a close.

Takeshi: Bass & Vocal ; Wata: Guitar & Echo ; Atsuo: Drums & Vocal.

[READ: August 12, 2020] Peep Show

Thirteen years ago I read Braff’s The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green and really liked it.  Then I forgot all about him.

This book was nothing like his more whimsical first novel.

It is set in the mid 1970s.  The main character is David Arbus, a seventeen year old high school student in New Jersey.  His main interest is photography.  He has a younger sister, Debra, whom he loves very much.  But his parents are something else entirely.

David’s father owns “real estate” in New York City.  This means that he owns The Imperial, a burlesque theater where women strip for money.  But this is the 1970s and men don’t just want tame strip shows anymore–they want to see everything.  They want porn flicks.  They want peep show booths.  They want sex toys.

But David’s father doesn’t want any of that.  He wants his business to stay “classy,” even though all of his friends and partners think he’s crazy for passing up the opportunity to make a lot more money.

David is aware of his father’s business although Debra is not.

David’s mother, meanwhile, is sick of everything her husband stands for.  Indeed, as the story opens she has become fully Orthodox and she is taking her daughter with her.  She starts calling Debra “Dena” and no longer goes by Mickey–she is now Miriam.

David is furious at this radical change.  He and his sister had been going to yeshiva summer camp for many years, but David hated it.  He refused to go, but Debra continued. As the women in his life become more and more intensely involved in the Hasidic lifestyle, David grows apart from them.  Until, at last, his mother kicks David out to live with his father.

David is not thrilled with his father’s line of work.  He has qualms about everything that he sees–even if there is an erotic thrill to it.  Nonetheless, he is now his father’s helper.

Most of the conflict in the story comes from David’s father.  He is a loud, proud man, unafraid to argue with anyone.  He argues with his business partners, he argues with Brandi, the woman he is now dating and he argues with his ex-wife all the time.

The biggest fight comes on David’s father’s birthday.  He wants to bring David and Debra to the beach to celebrate.  But Miriam doesn’t want Debra to go.  So David’s father more or less busts Debra out of school early.  He winds up taking Debra’s friend Sarah along with them because Debra’s mother usually brings Sarah home.

Sarah is not interested in the Orthodox life–at all–probably because her father is a rabbi.  When they get to the beach, Brandi has bikinis for the girls (who normally wear only long black clothes).  Sarah gladly puts on the bikini and parades around the room.  Debra is far more reserved, although she does help Brandi tighten her corset.  When their mom arrives, though, all hell breaks loose and David is forbidden from seeing either of them again.

The third part jumps two years later–Betamax is coming into people’s homes, making porn easier for everyone to see.  So David’s father has had to adapt to survive.  And David has had to do work for him.  That means taking still pictures of nude women (and women having sex).  But David refuses to film porn movies.  So his father’s partner has started doing that on the side.

David hasn’t had any contact with his mother or his sister for two years.  Then he sees Sarah in one of his photos shots.  She tells him that Debra is about to get married (at 17) to a Hasidic gentleman.  David wants to stop it but he doesn’t even know where his sister lives.

The split between the pious and the porn was a fantastic dichotomy–clearly not an easy choice for a sensitive young man who doesn’t want to be involved in either.

Braff delves quite deeply both into Hasidic rituals (he has done his research, it seems) and into the 1970s sex world (presumably he has done research there as well) and creates a very believable story.  Although as with his last book, I didn’t really like the ending.  It was very vague–I couldn’t really decide how to read the various reactions of people as the story closed–which was a bummer, since the rest of the story was so good.