psychedelic things i liked when i was a kid, vol. 2 (or: unattached thought stew)

Friend (& super-great booking dude) Dan C. told me, pre-Tortoise show, "Yeah they're really good for 5 minutes, but after that...it's the same thing. You get the idea." Now, he may have been acting salty due to Ghana going up 1-0 on the U.S. in their quarterfinal Cup match. Or, he may have had match fatigue....er, show fatigue. As a veteran of playing 300+ shows, and attending many more, I can totally understand seeing a band several times and not continuing to be impressed. However, I wonder if this doesn't say something more about our culture in general, and even something about me. A predilection to krautrock, attending Tortoise shows, and reading a 1300-page World War I-era fictional tome doesn't exactly place me in the same time-space-continuum as the rest of the Tweet-feeding, aerosol-pancake-eating, Generation ADD.


yes---this is real. pancakes are so hard to make!

I'm not trying to claim that I have some sort of super-powered attention span (I don't; as evidence, I have 6 tabs open on this Chrome browser); and although I often want to (after working with several thousand kids this year), I'm not claiming that a shorter attention span is inherent in Generation Z. In fact, my only claim is that (and I just read this somewhere on Internet...can't remember) we wear our consumable art like identity badges. This is some sort of filter for most people. "I like this_____this______and_______, what about you?" A creative filtering. Unfortunately, when you aren't into People Magazine and Baconzillas, your filter is coming on pretty strong. What have I been listening to this month? Mostly early Stereolab and CAN records. This sentence automatically flies me to NeverNeverLand. Not that I have beef with that, but what has filtered my art digestion process to the point where I am interested in something that is uninteresting to most...or, how did I end up consuming the mostly inconsumable?


CAN...a little less hip in the late 80s. But who wasn't?

The first time I heard Tago Mago, the first time I heard Trout Mask Replica...these were bizarre experiences. I'm not sure how my brain processed these---was I being influenced by those around me who were partial to such records? Yes, but if that was always the case, I'd love Modest Mouse, or the Pixies...both of which I appreciate but get no emotional grab from. I think maybe repetition is the key...something very mathematic, very primal about krautrock. Even about this Dos Passos book...events pile upon events in such random fashion that the written world becomes a fractal. World War I is merely a piece of pattern in the midst of a thousand others... Perhaps by following my natural Id, my inner circadian rhythm, the tide of my body, compels me to follow art that self-repeats, that tessellates in often-times unnoticeable ways, that digests-and-then-echoes.

Now, to figure out how to seek repetition in art, but not life. Feeling the need to break out of whatever fractal I've woven myself into lately. Immerse myself in other patterns. Other weather systems. Maybe a coast, or two?

psychedelic things i liked when i was a kid, vol. 1

while at the annual minnetrista art show (amelia had 3 photos...one got an award of merit) in my favorite decrepit-manufacturing-town-turned-struggling-state-college-based-municipality (reasons enough for a multi-hour road trip here and here), i got embroiled into a conversation for trading artwork (amelia's that is..not my chicken-scratches) for artwork of former professors, both of whom work in printmaking.

this isn't one of the pieces, but similar in flavor. the repeating, but off-centered border is equally repetitive and off-centered...the visual equivalent of kraut or drone, in a way. i really dig on the simple motifs of the fish, swimming simply in different shapes, as well as the spherical patterns inside the peacock's feathers. kinda feel like you could get lost in their 'groove'.

anyways! drinking some cafe bustelo one day at work, along with posting my history with vinyl at musicalfamilytree, got me wondering, "did i just end up appreciating this strand of music/art on my own? or was i predisposed to this even as a child?" a couple of examples have made me think that i was born with an off-center brain:

bullfrogs & butterflies was an old gaither family effort for kids. until this past Christmas, i hadn't listened to the record in at least 20 years. i thought i wouldn't recognize any of the music, but like the cover image, it had seeped into my brain, imparting a sense of familiarity. the art, though, is what really stuck---some strange amalagamation of hillbillies and fey psychedelia, all prancing around on Witness-lush green backdrops. i mean, who wouldn't want to journey to a land so saturated in color?

Barbapapa was the title character and series name of a french children's book series / animated show. we only had one that i remember, as pictured above. Barbapapa's can take any shape they choose, and live in a sort of Eden, complete with (mostly) nude children. in the book, barbapapa saves animals and people from industrial waste & pollution...via a series of brightly colored pictures of the barbapapa's taking all kinds of forms, and the sludgy-waste rendering the rest of the world dyed in grays, reds, and purples. considering my parents were pretty (standard, in indiana) conservative----strange that we would have this book and read it often. but, they were pretty much one-issue/hot-button voters, and other than that, fairly apolitical. they let me read about anything i wanted (i remember wandering the adult section in 2nd or 3rd grade and getting told where "books for your age" were by a condescending library employee), and i did! so i should thank them for that.