AVAILABLE FROM FORCED EXPOSURE:

4 MEN WITH BEARDS (record label):

FRANKLIN, ARETHA: Spirit In The Dark LP (4M 114). "1970's Spirit In
The Dark includes five self-penned Aretha vibrant classics, as well
as songs by B.B. King, Dr. John, Jimmy Reed, and Carole King.
Musicians include: Brother Duane Allman, Big Star/Rolling Stones'
session man Jim Dickinson, along with the Muscle Shoals rhythm
section and the Dixie Flyers. The November 2002 issue of Mojo
magazine said of this uplifting LP: 'triumphant... spiritual in
immense proportions... defiant, jubilant'. Liner notes by Richie
Unterberger. Remastered at Fantasy Studios from the original 1970
master recordings." 180 gram HQ vinyl. Gatefold sleeve. $15.00

CHARLES LLOYD QUARTET: Love-In LP (4M 119). "Recorded at the
legendary Fillmore in 1966, the Charles Lloyd Quartet featuring
pianist Keith Jarrett and drummer Jack DeJohnette was called 'the
first psychedelic jazz group'. Predating Miles Davis' appearance at
the Fillmore by several years, the band blends exploratory post-bop
classic jazz themes with '60s rock influences. Four Charles Lloyd
modal groovers, two Keith Jarrett standards, and a Beatles tune.
Liner notes by Down Beat contributor Mitch Myers. Carefully
remastered at Fantasy Studios from the original tapes." 180 gram HQ
vinyl. Gatefold sleeve. $15.00

houstonpress.com | originally published: February 20, 2003

Rock Poet
Troy Schulze brings the poetry of Silver Jews front man David Berman to the stage
BY LEE WILLIAMS

Actual Air
Details: Through March 8. 713-522-8443. $10-$15
Where: Axiom, 2524 McKinney

Corny as it might sound, Infernal Bridegroom Productions' Actual Air really is poetry in motion. Adapted by IBP company member (and Press assistant calendar editor) Troy Schulze from David Berman's book of poems by the same name, the show translates his ragged lyricism from the page to the stage with astonishing grace. In fact, IBP's exquisitely crafted world premiere may even make Berman's youthful verse stronger.
    Schulze brings the hazy voice of a disenfranchised-artist-as-a-young-man into sharp focus. His twentysomething landscape is sketched out in brief scenes suffused with oblique meaning. The scenes move like a dream of words and images too strange to shape into a narrative yet too powerful to dismiss. This isn't poetry put to a beat, shaped into dance or rapped into rhythm. It is a collage of quiet musings over such modern dilemmas as the weirdness of snowmen, the dangers of smoking and "the paradox of multiple Santas" at the mall. The odd voices in Schulze's play capture the vague yet brutal disappointments of newly acquired adulthood in a world filled with endless small anxieties and ironies.
    The production is technically beautiful. Incidental music by Mike Switzer and Anthony Barilla adds to the moody darkness. And set designer Kirk Markley's zigzagging stretches of gauzy scrim thread back and forth across the stage like a tiny version of Christo's early-'70s sculpture Running Fence. A creamy, translucent slip of a curtain ends scenes with white silence. Markley's lighting is striking as well: Circles of playing area are chiseled out in golden light, focusing our attention on the smallest detail, such as the way an asthmatic with lush red lips can suck air from an inhaler in the most delicious way.
    "Do you ever think of cancer?" she asks her lover, suitcase by her side. He drags off his cigarette and says with the arrogance of youth, "Yes, but always as a tree, way up ahead in the distance where it doesn't matter."
    Schulze's careful attention to each scene gives the piece a dancelike feel, even though the actors might not raise more than an arm as they speak. Tamarie Cooper is especially strong throughout this production, in part because of her dancerly sense of the power in a single gesture. Sometimes the actors don't move at all, and the still-life scenes come off with the grace of a sepia-toned photograph. Punctuating the stillness are unexpected moments of nudity, which are most surprising for their painterly beauty. To underline his point about the struggle of the young artist, Schulze has invited different local artists to paint a self-portrait on stage as Patrick Reynolds recites Berman's "Self Portrait at 28."
    Berman's poetry is clearly the work of a young man preoccupied with lost girlfriends, the strangeness of popular culture, "honesty" and his angst-ridden teenage past. On who was cool in high school: "You could tell who'd been to last night's big metal concert by the new T-shirts in the hallways. You didn't have to ask, and that's what cool was." Schulze creates a tenuous "drama" from Berman's neuroses; the anxiety is palpable in the muscular reserve of the show.
    In many ways, the subject matter is perfect for IBP, a company that's clearly still fighting the good fight against established ideas of what theater is supposed to be. Grungy and tattooed, this chain-smoking group of actors really does seem to think of tragedy as something way up ahead in the distance where it doesn't matter. It's their youthful bravado coupled with a mature ability to work hard that makes this production so strong.
    In fact, the only misstep is when Schulze himself tries to sing songs from Berman's indie rock band the Silver Jews. Though skinny Schulze, with his intense eyes and hollow cheeks, looks every bit the lead singer when he stands on the stage dressed in a red shirt, dark slacks and bare feet, he can't carry a tune. The songs are saved only by his backup singers and a band that does a pretty good job of drowning him out. It's hard to understand why Schulze didn't give these songs to Cary Winscott, who does a lovely job with the closing monologue, "The Charm of 5:30."
    Rarefied as all this might sound, the show moves quickly, and its brevity is part of what keeps it from slipping into the abyss of self-indulgence. Lasting no more than an hour, it is as fleeting as a poem and leaves you with the same sort of wistful, melancholic glow.

COURTESY JOHN COULTHART

THE POP LIFE
Inside the Head via Headphones
By NEIL STRAUSS

SAN DIEGO
Often, when we play a CD, we want to bring about a certain emotion or state in ourselves. Perhaps we are feeling heartbroken, and want to feel comforted; or angry, and want a release; or excited, and want to dance around the room. Or perhaps we simply want to hear something familiar or escape into someone else's world.
    Some CD's, however, aim to elicit more than a feeling or a body movement from listeners. The Monroe Institute in Virginia, for example, creates CD's of music (and sometimes talk) that it says help listeners have out-of-body experiences. Other CD's by different companies try to help listeners stop smoking while they sleep or tune their bodies to the vibration of the word "om."
     For the last six years here, Eric Von Sydow, professionally known as Hypnotica, and Denver Clay, a keyboardist and composer, have been working on a CD that they say will affect the listener more powerfully than any of these.
    "This has taken all the skill that I know," said Hypnotica. "I've studied neurolinguistics, neurosemantics, psychocybernetics and shamanistic storytelling, and it's all in there."
    So what is it? It is a 51 minute 50 second CD called "The Sphinx of Imagination" (www.hypnotica.org), which comes emblazoned with the warning, "Do not listen to while operating any type of machinery." Intended to be heard in its entirety on headphones, the CD uses music and words to speak to the unconscious of the listener. Its intent is to do a little rewiring and expand listeners' perceptions, open their minds and allow them to change themselves, sort of like a Grateful Dead concert without the band or the drugs.
    "Typically, hypnosis tapes are not like this," said Dr. Marla Brucker, a hypnotherapist and motivational speaker who appears as one of the voices on the CD. "This is in its own world, its own genre."
    The CD has found its own solution to a problem that is the bane of the music business: downloading, copying and piracy. "Make sure this is an original, noncompressed recording," a voice says at the beginning of the CD. "Listening to any other encodement process will take away from its full effect."
    Hypnotica is a stocky 31-year-old who looks like a cross between two comic book characters, the Thing and Wolverine, whom he has played at conventions. He has worked for years as a stage hypnotist and a spoken-word artist, and is in charge of security at a San Diego topless club, which, he says, he uses as his personal laboratory to study human behavior and dynamics.
    There couldn't be a more different partner for him than Mr. Clay, 51, a thin, introverted sound wizard with long, tangled gray hair. "I've collected sound for 15 years in the way that some people collect baseball cards," Mr. Clay said.
    In the 70's and 80's Mr. Clay was a multi-instrumentalist, with experience in everything from lounge acts to rock bands. As part of the group California, he was signed to Warner Brothers, an experience he said was "like cliff-diving in Acapulco with no water below."
    "When I hit the bottom," he said, "studio technology, drum machines, sequencers and samplers had become affordable for regular people. And suddenly music became very fun again, because I didn't need to be dependent on other people."
    In the late 80's Mr. Clay began a seven-year collaboration designing music and sound for Richard Bandler, a founder of a branch of hypnosis known as neurolinguistic programming.
    "The Sphinx of Imagination" began in 1997, when Hypnotica was trying to improve himself through hypnosis. He wrote out the changes he wanted to make in himself, and then slowly began expanding them, until he realized it was something that should be shared.
    "When I first met Denver, I said to him, `We're going to make one CD for a million bucks, and it is going to be greater than anything ever created before,' " Hypnotica said. "Of course, back then, we were both broke. But there was a boldness to it."
    The duo say they spent more than 10,000 hours working on the text and sounds for the CD. "It would take me three weeks to write one paragraph," Hypnotica said. "The language had to be so precisely, artistically correct that it would describe something, but at the same time remain vague and ambiguous."
    The CD has a story line that is impossible to follow consciously. It is easy to drift off into sleep while listening and miss the whole thing. Against a backdrop that consists of layers of musical themes, sound effects and barely audible frequencies and whispered commands, a coddling voice spins multiple stories and metaphors, each opening up within another like Russian dolls.
    The CD, Dr. Brucker said, accomplishes its work by confusing the conscious mind and thus speaking directly to the subconscious. "We all connect to stories from when we were young," she said. "We wanted to be Superman or Cinderella. So metaphors are the basis to any storytelling, and our subconscious mind hears that very well.
    "Typical hypnosis tapes are usually a direct approach. When you pick up a CD for stress reduction, you know exactly where you're going to go," she added. "This CD taps into so many parts of us at such a big level, we have no idea where it's going to go. You and I will hear the same CD and interpret it in the way we want to for our own benefit."
    Many involved in hypnosis stress moderation in promoting the effects of a particular CD or technique. "I don't think the idea of bypassing the conscious mind and talking to the subconscious directly is that helpful," said Stephen Gilligan, a psychologist who has practiced and taught hypnotherapy for close to 30 years. Dr. Gilligan was also a leading student of Milton Erickson, a pioneer of indirect hypnosis. "The idea there is that the client is some idiot who can't change themselves and the hypnotist is a genius who has a magical answer."
    That being said, he added, "if people are in a proper state of mind and really want to accomplish something and are open to it, then these images, tidbits and metaphors can be helpful cues to stimulate a person's imagination in the direction that they already want to go."

 "Scandinavian leather is our skin... under the denim we wear Scandinavian leather. Nothing can pierce it. We are desecended from Vikings.
Plus the three most important things to come out of Norway are black metal, Aha and us. All of them wear make-up. We cannot fail."

http://www.katchor.com

                  Tuesday, March 11, 2003 at 8:15pm
                                       Is Superman Jewish?
                                 Comics, Cartoons & Jewish Identity
                        A panel discussion with Jules Feiffer, Nicole Hollander,
                     Ben Katchor and Geoffrey O¹Brien / Amei Wallach, moderator.
                                          92nd Street Y
                                       1395 Lexington Ave.
                                          New York, NY
                                              $18.
                   For tickets: 212-415-5500 or http://www.92y. org
 

                             Wednesday, March 19th, 2003 at 5:00 pm
                    Lecture: ³The Great Museum Cafeterias of the Western World.²
                                     University of Pennsylvania
                                   Graduate School of Fine Arts
                                        Meyerson Building
                        (across from the Morgan Building, 205 South 34th St.)
                                         Philadelphia, PA
                                    Free and open to the public.

04 MARCH 2003: AYLETT STRIKES AGAIN

RIP, THE ANGRIEST PIG IN THE WORLD

Cyberpunk satire author Steve Aylett has created an animated TV series, Rip, the Angriest Pig in the World, to be directed by Richard Bazley (of The Iron Giant, Hercules and Osmosis Jones). RIP follows the exploits of The Angriest Pig in the World and his ineffectual roommate, Dartmoor the fish.
    This blur-fast 78x7 or 26 half hour flash animation series takes place in a post-apocalyptic society where speaking mutant animals combat savage dangers with volatile animosity and baffling unpredictability.
    In describing the series, Alastair Swinnerton of BA20 says, "If Tex Avery had read Rip Off Comix and watched South Park, this is what he would have come up with. It’s the funniest, darkest, strangest thing I’ve seen in years, like Duckman meets Ren & Stimpy." ... or Warner Bros meets Manga ...
    Aylett writes many of the scripts and will be joined by other authors well-known for twisted logic and quick weirdness.

"We have finished tracking the new Ween album and we are currently in the mixing stage of the record. It is a monster, and we can't wait for you to hear it. We expect it to be released sometime this coming spring and we know that you're gonna love it---it is one of our illest records yet and it is a long player---about 17 songs and over one hour of music. The record was produced by Andrew Weiss and is very much a return to the browner side of Ween--the shits are heavy and mammoth in size. I can't tell you enough how stoked we are about the new record---it has been a long road in writing and recording it and it has been worth every second, it is coming soon and upon it's release we will be touring the world to support it---it's a very exciting time for us and soon the world will have the 9th Ween album."

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