COMMANDER ROBOT

O'Dell has been chronicling his days via digital photos and has amassed a steady following of viewers. A former staff photographer for Thrasher magazine, O'Dell's site features stars of the skateboarding world, New York musicians, photographers, artists, and a whole revolving cast of friends and drunken strangers that populate the posts on his site. At first glance the basic design may not immediately grab you, but as you view more and more of the posts, laden with the lyrics of one Steven Patrick Morrissey, it all begins to make sense. You are experiencing, on a small level, what it is like to live in New York and be Patrick O'Dell, and it's a fun and addictive ride.

EIGHT LEGS EIGHT LEGS EIGHT LEGS EIGHT LEGS

Drawing influence from an eclectic array of bands, Eight Legs have a unique, edgy sound often likened to the Smiths

In Jan 06 Eight Legs were commissioned by style icon Hedi Slimane to produce the soundtrack for the Dior homme fashion show in Paris.

The future belongs to Eight Legs.

At first it’s comical to watch a middle-aged woman imitate the most famous blonde bombshell of the twentieth century. But the mixture between self-portrayal and idol worship in TINA BARA’s photographs is also disconcerting: an unpretentious woman exposes the tragedy of an icon who could never be herself.

Thrilled by word of a new album, Morrissey fan and celebrated author Douglas Coupland flies halfway around the world to meet the singer in Rome. But does the real Morrissey reveal himself? And can Coupland ever hope to understand a man who 'defines eccentricity'? An OMM exclusive

Sunday March 19, 2006
The Observer

Early in January I flew from Vancouver via Frankfurt to Rome. By the time I reached the hotel on Piazza del Popolo, my nervous system was shutting down on a blend of angry little sleeping pills and bad logistical planning. It was going to be a two-day cross-polar trip - insanity - all to interview Morrissey. In 15 years of media life I've never once conducted an interview. My thinking was that if I'm going to do one, it ought to be with someone I'd truly like to interview. I'd come close once before, with Martin Amis, who'd been in Canada at the tail end of a massive book tour. We met at a Japanese restaurant where he took one look at me and said: 'You're not really going to go through with this, are you?' That snapped me to my senses, I said no, and we spent the afternoon sightseeing.

But Morrissey? I'll confess that I'm a fan - not quite at the concealed shrine in the basement stage - but the title of one of my novels came from the title of one of his songs. So meeting the man, coupled with a freakishly long trip to Rome coupled with the novelty of the interview process, might be just the thing to scrub clean the post-Christmas blues and yank me out of myself. And like anyone my age, I've followed Morrissey's press across the decades and of course knew he was maybe a more complex subject than most.

My own experience with being interviewed is mixed. I suppose they're a part of my job, and as I would like readers to connect with my books, I do them. I've also made many lifelong friends whom I first encountered as interviewers - as a writer, they're a terrific way to meet and add smart new people to one's life. But in recent years I've come to question the process. It's too artificial and, in 2006, oddly archaic. And mostly, it involves too many levels of disbelief suspension: Hi. I'm your interviewer. I have this magic totem called a Sony, and I'm going to put it on the table here, and as long as the Sony is there I possess whatever power over you that you allow me to have. If you grant me no power, I will turn on you and brand you an asshole in print and trash your work. If you give me too much power, I will be contemptuous of you and also trash you and your work. If you're too nice, I will despise you. If you're too bland, I'll just phone this interview in and we'll both have wasted valuable time.

To me, interviews are mostly about trying not to make the interviewer think I'm too much of an asshole. I think that's the experience with most interviews these days, mine and most everybody else's. Let's face it, pretty much any info you need is already out there on Google. Interviews never go away any longer. They just pile up and up and up for the rest of time. If people want to know something about a subject, they can just find it themselves. All that remains is control of the asshole yes/no switch. Do you want an interviewer to flip it? Remember - if you don't want people thinking you're an asshole, it means you allow your interviewer to torture you. It all boils down to how strongly you believe in the totemic Sony.

Pre-Google, a writer preparing for an interview had to do genuine research involving paper, libraries, legwork and some dimension of vim. The accumulation of prior interviews was difficult, yet research effort, when made, was always apparent during the interview. This research went a long way to making said subject try harder to be responsive. These days, one merely Googles and goes to the 137th page of results to give the illusion of in-depth investigation.

Is the interview dead? Well, it's certainly not having triplets and running marathons. (The online Q&A interview, unlikely as it seems, has breathed new life and magic into the form. Both questions and answers tend to be far more considered, illuminating and smart - and as a bonus, the writer doesn't have to write anything.) But if we can no longer demand a certain strain of insight to emerge from the interview process, we can at least expect a bit of entertainment or ... or perhaps - well, perhaps nothing. That's the new reality.

I'd gone into this interview planning not to torture Morrissey, rather to discuss the interview process and our feelings about it. And I knew from the first moment we met that the tape recorder wasn't going to come out, and that I wasn't going to ... well ... do this interview. It felt nonsensical.

So I'll leave it at that, but here are some impressions of Morrissey that I came away from after my 105 minutes spent with him.

... He's 46 and makes no attempt to 'young himself up'. Admirable.

... He doesn't mind being recognised in public but doesn't like the notion that he has to look 'good' or a certain way.

... His head (this is really weird, and I hope it doesn't go outside the boundaries of taste) is enormous. It's like a huge Charlie Brown parade float head. I walked into the bar to meet him and I saw this guy across the room with this massive head and I thought to myself, 'Man, that's one massive head', and it was Morrissey.

... He uses a soft voice during interviews because soft voices don't record well. This is because he knows that interview tapes from the Eighties and Nineties circulate among fans, and that it's only a matter of time before they all appear on the internet until the end of time. Soft speech will make this process harder.

... He's friends with Nancy Sinatra.

... He's becoming increasingly more Catholic these days. 'Those Catholics, they really nab you when you're young.' [Makes gesture of cowpoke searing calf with branding iron.] 'They sear you. They sear you, they do.'

... He's looked himself up on eBay and says all of the autographed stuff there is fake. I called a friend of mine who's also in celebrity autograph on eBay league, and rampant eBay fakery was confirmed.

... I think (and this is based on meeting him and having read much of his press over the years) he has an almost clinical, Tourette's-like need to blurt out thoughtless things to people, and he's not even aware he's doing it, so when people retaliate, he genuinely has no idea why. When, as a joke, I removed the tape recorder from my attaché case, he looked at it and said: 'Oh. It's plastic.'

(Gee, I left my vintage Bang & Olufsen uranium-plated recorder purchased from the estate of Ella Fitzgerald back home.)

... He doesn't like celebrity culture or pop culture - disdains it really - and yet he obsesses on obscure pop stars from other eras such as Sacha Distel (French; 1960s) and seems to perceive no similarity between worshipping what's happening now versus what was once worshipped in other times.

... He's pretty scarred by decades of yo-yoing worship and antagonism in the music press. Music writers are the most passionate and evil and adoring of all writers. I don't think Morrissey's ever been interviewed by non-music press. He's really had to retreat into a shell because of it. The intensity of so many interviews has really gotten to him.

... It's not my job to develop a therapeutic analysis of the man, but I think that he's pulled so far into his shell that, save whatever friends and family he has, he's genuinely become what he once pretended to be - that reclusive glumster we all fell in love with - cranky and restless in his bedsit, mooning about obscure stars from distant eras. Which is to say, it's his myth, and he's very happy with it, thank you, and if you don't like it, piss off. And it's also why we Morrissey fans love Morrissey. Everybody wins.

And maybe what all this further boils down to is the fact that Morrissey is interview-proof. Don't bother. He's not an asshole and he's not the Dalai Lama, but you could interview him for a thousand years and you'd learn nothing. And this is just fine. Interviewing Morrissey pinpoints the bankruptcy of interviewing as a form of expression: if you don't believe in it, it can't happen. I don't much believe in interviews, and I don't think Morrissey does either. I believe that the only way to learn about an artist is to examine their work. Be realistic: people paint the flowers, not the stem of the plant. People are remembered by their flowers and seeds, not their mulch. Fuck interviews.

Thus we come to his new album. The first thing you need to know about it is that you must go out right now and buy it. Just do it. It's going to happen sooner or later, so it might as well be sooner. That way you'll be able to spend more of your life enjoying it.

Ringleader of the Tormentors is dripping with sex and death and pleading and moaning and blood and muttering and the songs all sound genuinely different from each other - instead of the Morrissey uni-song that's plagued his last few albums. It was produced by Tony Visconti who seems to have bitch-slapped Morrissey out of his LA-induced trance and said to him, 'Boy, you need to write songs people will enjoy listening to over and over and over. They must all sound different, and they must be produced with subtle layers that make each listening reveal something new. You are not allowed to paste everything over with noisy guitar nonsense. And a listener must feel like you're actually revealing something to them, because if you're not doing that, then you're not making art.'

Thank you, Tony.

The most revealing thing on this album is that, if one is to believe the thread of all of his lyrics, Morrissey is having sex these days - which sounds kind of nuts to someone who doesn't know about him. 'Let me get this straight: you have a 46-year-old man who only now is admitting to having sex?' Well, that pretty much sums it up. The celibacy thing was getting a bit stale, and good for you, Morrissey, for taking the plunge. It's made a big difference to your work. You even used revealing pronouns and the universe didn't implode. Two sizzling lines from his song 'Dear God, Please Help Me' come to mind:

'There are explosive kegs
between my legs
Dear God, please help me'

Segueing into ...

'Then he motions to me
with his hand on my knee
Dear God, did this kind of thing
happen to you?
Now I'm spreading your legs
with mine in between ... '

Oof!

It helps that the melody and the arrangements supporting this song are dazzling and endlessly listenable. I heard the album for the first time the morning after I arrived in Rome. Owing to the music industry's near-paralysing fear of pirating, none of the many watermarked CDs sent to me in Canada worked on any system I could find - my own, those of friends and neighbours - and I finally ended up listening to it for the first time while lying on my Roman bed with three-quarters of a hangover and a white plastic battery-powered Logitech portable minispeaker resting on my rib cage. It was connected to an iPod that shifted between mono and stereo at whim. Even with all of this ridiculousness, the album worked perfectly. I was told I could have four hours with the album and machine, except I got a phone call from a handler at the two and a half-hour mark saying that Morrissey was bored and wanted to do the interview earlier. OK. Whatever.

It's strange writing about this album here. It's almost as if with Morrissey, one needs to do two reviews. One for people who know him and his past, and one for those who don't know a thing about him. For those who don't know him, on this album, Morrissey writes standard length love songs that have little in common with what anybody else is doing in 2006. He comes from an experimental rock background and the new-wave strand of the 1980s. His songs are generally quite melodic and can get quite sonically raunchy, but his slow songs are the opposite of raunch. His work from the 1980s also possessed a haunting quality unobtainable in almost all other music of the time - instrumentation that shored up lyrics that often dealt with rejection and alienation. And meat.

I'd like to compare his sound to a mixture of other performers, but that's not quite possible, for he's unique. His persona, though, honed over two decades, is mixture of the best parts of Quentin Crisp, Engelbert Humperdinck, the New York Dolls and a patient dressed in a white terry cloth robe in a Swiss tuberculosis sanatorium waiting to die. OK, maybe the robe is black. And maybe it's not Switzerland, either - it's Manchester in 1983. But you get the picture.

Maybe the death part isn't quite true any more. You see, for those people who do follow Morrissey and his history, as mentioned a bit earlier, much of what he's all about is death, being miserable, being lonely, and being shunned by the popular people - glum.

This new album certainly delivers some hallmark glumness. One song, called 'Life is a Pigsty', has a refrain that says as much, over and over. It's also one of the best songs for driving in your car ever written. When you listen to it, you feel, contrary to the lyrics, like you're off to start an affair, or driving home from just having had one.

In another song, 'To Me You Are a Work of Art', a repeating lyric says:

'I see the world,
It makes me puke.'

Viva crabbiness! Pure Morrissey.

But again, as for the death stuff, I don't think life is a deathfest for Morrissey any longer. After spending six years living in Los Angeles, Morrissey moved to Rome a bit over a year ago. Why Rome? 'I fell in love with the city.' Hmmm. One can only spend so much time being in love with a city. One would like to hope that there were other things, and perhaps a human being to love there, too. And I suspect there is a human being in the picture, but as I said, that's just speculation, and should this theoretically possible person exist, thank you for snapping Morrissey out of an old life and into a new one. Because to hear the album's song list, and to read the lyrics, it's pretty obvious that there have been massive continental shifts occurring inside the man's soul, and they appear to have been the result of bonding with ... another human being

In fact there's almost a faint whiff of the therapist's couch that permeates the album, although it never sounds overtly so. There seems to be an acceptance that Morrissey is finally cool with who he is and what he does and where he comes from. In one song destined to become a single, 'The Youngest Was the Most Loved', there is a chant, with Morrissey singing along with a chorus of schoolchildren (à la the 'hang the DJ' refrain of the Smiths' 'Panic'): 'There is no such thing in life as normal'.

You can feel liberation shooting out from Morrissey's body like lightning bolts, but it's also funny to think that for 46 years in his head he's been trying to pass himself off as normal. Huh? The man defines eccentricity. Oscar Wilde is correct: the last thing we ever understand in life truly is the way that others perceive us.

The analysis could go on for a while, but every listener should have their own, so I don't want to pre-colour things too much. Let it suffice to say that there's not a lazy moment on the album, that it bears endless re-listening, that there were many decisions to be made, and all were made correctly, and mostly, that in finally deciding to break his old mould, he has become musically reborn, and for longtime fans, this is cause for rejoicing.

"Wer Santiago Sierras jüngste Installation in der ehemaligen Synagoge von Stommeln betritt, dürfte vor allem zwei Motive haben. Erstens: Er will wissen wie es war, als sechs Millionen Juden in den Tod gingen. Zweitens: Er will mitreden können. Das Erste wird er nie erfahren. Zum Zweiten: An der Diskussion über die neue spektakuläre Arbeit des spanischen Künstlers teilnehmen kann er dennoch.

Um deutliches Unbehagen zu verspüren, genügt es, das Gebäude von außen zu sehen. Mehrere dicke PVC-Schläuche führen hinein. In den umliegenden Straßen sind sechs Autos postiert. Ihre Motoren laufen. Sierra leitet die Abgase in das einstige Gotteshaus."

Dass der spanische Künstler Santiago Serra Abgase in die ehemalige Stommelner Synagoge bei Köln leitet, hält Marion Leske für "anmaßend", der Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland für "niveaulos"

---Super Idee ja wohl. Und was für Vorwürde: anmaßend und niveaulos. Sollte gerade das Kunst nicht vielleicht mal sein, meine Herren?
... Fotos im Stern

Zeitgleich heute in der SZ und der Welt Artikel über MySpace, Friendster und den Rest vom neuen geilo Web2-Schützenfest. Überschrift in der Welt: 61 Millionen gute Freunde. Überschrift in der SZ: 59 Millionen Freunde. Alles zum Thema eigentlich auch schon 1994 bei Mutter:
Freunde und Freundinnen

"Ungares Zeug provokant vortragen und dabei ernst dreinblicken, während man sich schieflachen möchte, entspannt und schont die geistigen Verdauungsorgane. In den seltensten Fällen wird der Mist dadurch wertvoller. Das ist keine Arroganz, sondern nur die pointierteste Parodie auf jede Form von Kommunikation. Ein Gespräch führen heißt bestenfalls, jeder hilft dem anderen auf die Sprünge."

das rät der gut gefönte ulf poschardt einsamen jungs auf partys als alternative zum "Fangnetz nach Girls auswerfen". mädchen haben da ja keine probleme. denn "Mädchen sind nie länger als 120 Sekunden alleine." Noch mehr brandheiße Tipps wahrscheinlich in seinem neuen Buch. Wahrscheinlich eine pointierte Parodie auf jede Form von Ratgeberbuch von jemandem der echt pointiert und so oder was auch immer kann.

ask larry flint





ist larry flint eigentlich der vater von edwyn collins?

Normalerweise wäre ich nach drei Zeilen Lektüre dieser Intro-Rezension schreiend weggerannt. Wäre. Wäre. Wäre weil zeitgleich nämlich OVER AND OVER (LOST AND FOUND) der besprochenen CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH aus dem Lautsprecher prukelte. Und - wieso auch immer - funktionierte der Text. Was ähm allerdings an der Musik liegen muss. Wow. Keine Ahnung wie das in fünf Minuten ist, aber im Moment: groß und gut. endlich. mal.

"I heard it from a friend. The revolution never happened." Scheiß doch auf Freunde. Und am besten auch noch auf die Revolution. Ich will tanzen. Wer glücklich ist, mag eine dumme Sau sein, wie Rasmus Engler an anderer Stelle in diesem Heft zuletzt schrieb. Aber eine glückliche dumme Sau. Lass mich noch ein Mal diesen Traum der alten Indiegitarre träumen. Die mit den kleinen draufgeklebten Sternen. Und gib mir eine durchgeschlagene Bassdrum. Gib mir einen Synthesizer. Oder auch zwei. Gib mir eine Mundharmonika. Gib mir Gitarren. Und dann noch mehr Gitarren. Gib mir die geil nervige Stimme von Alec Ounsworth - und die Revolution beginnt jetzt. Wer braucht schon einen Vertrieb, wenn er 12.000 CDs aus seiner Wohnung in Brooklyn raus verkauft? Wer braucht ein Label, wenn man auch alles selbst machen kann? Wer braucht Promotion, wenn man eine Tastatur bedienen kann? Doch das ist mehr als Alec from the Blog. Das ist kein "Internetphänomen", von dem die Fachzeitschriften wie Stern oder Brigitte hierzu demnächst schreiben werden, nur weil die Band über das Netz bekannt geworden ist. Und vor allem ist es keine Talking-Heads-Revival-Band. Kein Abklatsch von Arcade Fire. "You look like David Bowie but you've nothing new to show me." Komm, wir tanzen mit klingelnden Blumenfeld-Gitarren die ganze Nacht durch. Erzählen uns lila Details vom Krieg, sammeln die zerdepperten Stücke unserer kleinen Herzen auf und retten uns. Aber frag mich dann nicht, wie es weitergeht. Ich lebe schließlich auch zum ersten Mal."

Auf Biegen und Brechen. Ein schöner Artikel mit noch viel schöneren Fotos im aktuellen Dummy . Teaser: Nichts ist härter als die bulgarische Schule für Rhythmische Sportgymnastik. Sagen Kritiker. Und nichts ist schöner. Sagen die Mädchen. (Als pdf lesen) Sofort den World Gym Calendar 2006 bemüht: Ende September ist in Düsseldorf der HENKEL Rhythmic Gymnastics World Cup. Alles klar.

Keine Ahnung warum es Christian Kracht sein muss. In einem Text für die FAS über die Buchmesse in Kairo: "Julia Franck erfolglos versucht, vom wunderbaren Henry Darger zu überzeugen, auch einem Messy, einem der größten Künstler des Jahrhunderts. Darger wurde 1973 in seiner Wohnung in Chicago tot aufgefunden, inmitten seiner Sammlung von Sachen und seinem Lebenswerk, einem von ihm herrlich von Hand illustrierten 30000-Seite-Roman, den er nie jemanden gezeigt hat." Ja. Die Bilder sind schick. Ein Roman mit dem Titel "The story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion" muss super sein, auch wenn er nur gut 15.000 Seiten haben soll. Jetzt will ich den Film sehen

Zufall und endlich und inzwischen auch schon ein paar Tage älter: In der Weltwoche vier bis fünf Seiten über Steve Buscemi. Nur Steve Buscemi: "Steve Buscemi ist keiner, der von weitem schon am Horizont aufragt. Eines trüben Junitags stand ich an der vereinbarten Ecke am New Yorker Union Square und erwartete ihn zu unserem Treffen. Ich rief seine Assistentin an:" Er ist nicht da.", sagte ich: "wo steckt er?" wie sich herausstellte, stand Buscemi neun Meter von mir entfernt. Mit seinem runden Rücken, den schwarzen Hosen, dem grauen Arbeitshemd, der verwitterten Jeansjacke und der in die Stirn gezogenen Baseballmütze..."

Zufällig zeitnah: Über das Outfit, das Tyler Brule trug, als der Schweizer Promifuzzi Mark van Huisseling ihn mal für die WAMS traf: "Tyler trug wie immer seine Uniform: dunkelblaues Jackett, wahrscheinlich von Richard James, hellblaues Hemd unter grauem Wollpullover von John Smedley, Jeans und braune Schuhe von Tod's."

"Vor fünfzehn Jahren unterrichtete der Filmemacher Hark Bohm ein Semester an der Uni Bochum. Erfolgsstrategien auf dem Kinomarkt sollten das Thema sein, doch die bleiben nun einmal meist ein großes Geheimnis. Bald erzählte Bohm lieber von seinen eigenen Erfolgen. Und die immerhin ließen sich, wie er großzügig bekannte, personifizieren. Alles verdanke er seinem kleinen Bruder Marquard, der es in den späten 60ern zu Starruhm brachte und ihn einfach in die Szene schleuste. "Aber Sie kennen ihn ja alle, er sitzt ja immer in der ersten Reihe." Was wissen 20-Jährige schon vom "deutschen Belmondo" Marquard Bohm? Den verknautschten Mann, der nie etwas sagte, hielten wir für einen Seniorenstudenten."

Zum Tod vom Marquard Bohm erzählt Daniel Kothenschulte in der FR die traurige Geschichte.