December 20, 2006
Smoke Break
You can watch new episodes of my gutter chat show Smoke Break every Wednesday at the Metro Times Music Blahg. But you can also bookmark this YouTube site for an archive of all episodes.
Smoke Break: All Talk, No Action.
JTL
Posted by Johnny Loftus at 11:07 AM
November 8, 2006
Dudes of the Corn, etc.
Check out this week's Metro Times. It's my first Music Issue as music editor, and includes stories on Great Lakes Myth Society and John Speck of The Fags, as well as a bunch of Detroit music reviewed. All in all I think it went pretty well.
Plus, check out the Music Blahg for the first installment of "Smoke Break," where Brian Smith and I chat no-fi about whatever we want, live from the St. Antoine gutter.
JTL
Posted by Johnny Loftus at 2:30 PM | Comments (0)
Rumsfeld to star in Surreal Life '07 with Todd Bridges, Hans Blix
From my Google Chat program. See below. My Pal Rob T. and I, inspired by Rumsfeld's retirement. Dude can't leave our pop culture radar; please, not yet. (He can leave the gov't, though; we have no problem with that.) As Rob says below, Rummy is one of the modern era's finest existential poets.
WWRD? Well, Rob and I offer a few suggestions, from starring in the "Surreal Life" to overtaking some of our most obvs blogs. A few detours into cable news election coverage, too.
Read on...
rob: this day could possibly not get any better
1:49 PM me: I vote Rummy for "Surreal Life 2007"
rob: nope. he's going to go play golf with satan.
1:50 PM me: I say he starts a podcast where he delivers all his thoughts on celebrity in 2006.
rob: hahahahhaaha
me: Defamer? no - Rummyfied.
rob: DataRum
me: Motor City Rum
rob: Rumevs
me: Stereofeld
rob: Music For Rumsfelds
1:51 PM me: Pitchfeld
Rumsfork
me: Skeet on Rumsfeld
rob: fuck
Fluxfeld
me: Perfect Feld for Rumsever
1:52 PM rob: Rummyism
me: Rumsfeldian Apparel
rob: McRummy's
me: Best Rumsfeld Ever
rob: Donaldcrombie and Rummy
me: Rummy is the new blog
1:53 PM Last Night's Rumsfeld
rob: Donald Rumfseld is Overrated
Donaldist
me: The Cobrafeld
rob: DeadDon
1:54 PM Melody Rumsfeld.com
me: Miss Modernrums
rob: Seven Inches of Rumsfeld
me: Luke Walton's Rumsfeld
rob: Donald Are Pretty
1:55 PM me: Gurgling Rummy
rob: Donaldesko
Largehearted Don
me: Access Rumsfeld
rob: what say Fox and Friends retool and have Pat O Brien, Ted Haggar d and Rummy as hosts? that'd be a hell of a morning show.
1:56 PM me: Dude, Rummy as a host would fucking rule. It'd be like McLaughlin Group in the heyday. ISSUE TWO!
Did you see Kondrake and Barnes hemming and hawing all over Fox News last night?
rob: oh yeah. I enjoyed the Brit Hume waffling and gurgling more than some of the results
those baritone "errr,,uhhh"
me: Hume. Such a horse face.
1:57 PM rob: he looks like one of those cartoon dogs that always had the barrel around their necks
me: And they had that crazy map that looked like Cosmic Ark
rob: like his skin is about to slide off the bone any minute
me: With the boxes moving around all over it.
rob: did you watch any of olbermann having fun?
1:58 PM me: Yeah he was pretty great, but I find him insufferable after awhile. And I always resort to SportsCenter jokes.
I'd like to see a knife fight between Olbs, Patrick, and Craig Kilborn.
rob: that'd be great to hear after Rummy's resignation speech. That famliar "DAH-nah-NAH...DAH-nah-NAH"
rob: i went to cracker barrell for lunch
me: Was Chris Rock's mom there?
rob: i went to cracker barrel and apparently there's a new format of music called "positive alternative"
you heard of it?
me: Yeah, it's like Hot AC for Christians.
Jars of Clay
rob: at first i was like "cool. new andrew wk record. but it's weird nickelback sounding shit for christians"
me: New Newsboys tries to cash on it, too.
Jeremy Camp's another big one.
rob: so it's just clear channel selling CCM a new way?
me: Yep.
rob: maybe that's what rummy can do next. crank out some CCM jams with TobyMac for the troops
sort of like a breakdown in songs ala vincent price in "thriller"
me: Rowdy Roddy Rummy
2:04 PM rob: Donald The Giant
me: Hacksaw Don Rumsfeld.
rob: Junkyard Don
me: The Feldsdertaker
rob: Koko B. Rumsfeld
2:05 PM me: Supereld Snuka
rob: Donald "The Brain" Heenan
me: Karl Rove and Rums as the British Bulldogs.
Bush is Stephanie.
rob: You think Rove's gonna resign next?
2:06 PM me: No fucking way.
rob: he COULD yknow. he's gotta retool the party for 08
who else can do that? ed gillespie? ken mehlman? dick "seven nation" armey?
2:07 PM me: Armey was making the rounds of cable news last night and sounded like a confused old man sending soup back in a deli. "Answer that phone!" two Seinfeld refs in one chat post.
rob: Ron Popeil? Rumsfeld signs on as new spokesperson for RonCO
me: Rumsfeld slipped in Snapple once. He broke his hip.
rob: "there are products we know and products we don't know"
me: I predict a "Chuck Norris" string of Rumsfeld jokes.
2:09 PM rob: oh of course. there has to be some sort of fitting tribute to this century's greatest existential poet
me: Word to that. Cantankerous motherfuckers unite. TEAM RUMMY. (As long as he's nowhere near the guv.)
JTL
Posted by Johnny Loftus at 2:21 PM | Comments (1)
September 27, 2006
A Different kind of tension.
"A Different Kind of Tension: Trajectory, meaning and discovery in Detroit's noise music scene":
Noise music gets a bad rap as being too volatile and oppressive. It's often maligned as an out-there genre pursued only by those lost souls who've completely forsaken conventional rock 'n' roll in favor of routinely locking their heads inside an autoclave, or envisioned as some horrible, scary cauldron that boils with the bloody discharge of 10,000 ruptured eardrums. Lou Reed can probably be blamed for some of that. In 1975 he released Metal Machine Music, a clanging run-on sentence of feedback that can still trigger mortal thoughts if listened to in its entirety.
But while the noise scene definitely has its proponents of the extreme — Japanese noise legend Merzbow has never issued anything that wasn't singularly focused on destroying your senses — that doesn't mean there's only darkness at its core, or that all noise is meant to breed fear alone. It might not ever be warm and fuzzy, and what's at its core can be mysterious. But noise can definitely excite on a visceral level, and lately it's been offering some of the most creative music in Detroit. Obscura from the fringe of modern music? Only for those that haven't discovered it yet.
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PLUS: Check out the Noise Toolkit on the Music Blahg.
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JTL
Posted by Johnny Loftus at 2:24 PM | Comments (0)