July 15, 2014

July 15, 2014

How I see things is slightly different from the way you look at things.  I usually have a single word or a sentence, and I try to get something visual from that vocabulary.  The funny thing, once it becomes ink on a page or a font on your laptop, it appears to change its meaning.  I make a specific image, but when I have the honour to describe that representation, some sort of magic takes place where either by chance or a curse, it changes to another beast.  But my observations are often tainted by a certain amount of presumption on my part.  As I sit down at my writing table, and start to write, it somehow goes through a transformation that is totally a mystery to me.  As I mentioned in another essay, the journey is the thing, not the destination.

As a teenager I met the actor Jan-Michael Vincent in Malibu, very close to Topanga Beach.  We would go to parties there, and at least several times I have come upon Jan-Michael, although I just remember shaking his hand and never actually had a conversation with him.  I was very much raised by seeing his handsome face in various forms of media, including of course, the television set.   What I found interesting is that he seemed to be exactly what I imagine him to be, through his various roles I have seen in his films and TV work.  He was just as handsome as what I have seen in the printed and electronic media.  Also I had the impression that he was very much of a surfer, because one, he lived near the beach, and I don’t recall ever seeing him without a shirt.   I didn’t see a surfboard, but I just presumed that he had one for some reason.  He had a pretty wife, who at the time, looked just as golden blonde as he, and everything worked perfectly as in a publicity photograph.  It was a shock to see him in later years, when he slowly lost his beautiful looks, and became more haggard, angry, and drunk looking.  But even in one’s decay, you can see the traces of his beauty and that appeals to my aesthetic.  You start off with a beautiful thought or image, and it slowly turns either ugly, wrong, or painful.  Yet, like in life, I just have to accept those changes for the better or worse.   Nevertheless the image I have in my head, is like a tattoo on my perception or thought, yet is it a correct one?

When one sees an image of the famous painting of “Mona Lisa” are we actually seeing the painting?  I suspect not, because of the perception of the print-maker and how it’s cropped in a magazine or on a poster board, it can change everything.  A writer, that I greatly admire, is Lydia Davis, because her observations are so personal, yet the landscape appears to be such an impartial site.  Nevertheless as a writer one is allowed to mess with perception, to fit it in one’s vision.

I have been disappointed with Ian Curtis, for the reason, that his death seemed predictable.  Although one hears through personal accounts that he wasn’t that miserable of a person, yet, his suicide feeds into the Joy Division aesthetic.  The perception when you hear his music is that he would kill himself.  We don’t need to know why, it just seems to be written out in the first two Joy Division albums.  There is no twist to the story, and even more banal, he seemed to be listening to Iggy Pop’s “The Idiot” or/and watching Werner Herzog’s “Stroszek” at the time of his death.  If the incident wasn’t so tragic, it would almost be comical.   On the other hand, he has become the pin-up figure for those who flirt through image than reality.  But then again, reality is filtered through image, and therefore a performance of some sort, despite the fact that tastelessness takes place.  More likely he suffered in private, and it is quite insensitive for me to comment on such a private moment like death, yet, it was played out in his work.  If not specifically, it was in the packaging, the tone of the songs.  His sense of despair, had beauty, but when death came it became a vulgar incident.  I can’t listen to Joy Division anymore, because his death sort of cheapened the original listening experience.  It put a period, not a comma to a life that should have gone on.  

The Palestine/Israeli conflict will neither get better or worse - it will just be on a tape loop where no one wants to make changes to, because perhaps it suits the powers-to-be.  The very nature of destruction becomes a backdrop to a staging of one’s entertainment.  I wonder through the garden of earthly delights, to smell the flowers, watch and listen to the chirping birds, and then go in, and write something of a horror show.

Tony Wilson

I went to bed feeling edgy and I woke up this morning by reading about the death of Factory Records Visionary Tony Wilson. By heart attack. Maybe due to the cancer of his kidney. Morrissey for sure put the M in Manchester, but really the honor should go to Tony Wilson. A man who believed in his city so much that he started his own music scene, club scene and I guess a graphic arts sense of his world as well.



When I worked in a record store in the early 80's I worked with a gentleman named Jim, who was the biggest music geek freak ever. He collected records. To be more specific he collected releases from Factory Records as they were being released. Before the Internet one had to depend on import music shops or mail order. Sometimes both systems were kind of 'faulty.'

Wilson developed a system where each release had a specific number for a particular Factory Records product. Jim had to have each numbered Factory product. The records themselves were hard enough, but when Wilson started attaching a number to an "egg beater" I think it forced Jim to become an art collector of sorts. I think he bought an eggbeater from the local market and then presented it as part of his Factory Records collection. So in a way about way, Wilson introduced my manager at the store the structures of objects and how they become art. Marcel Duchamp became a useful reference for rock n' roll.



Being 19 or 22, how can one not love Joy Division. Impossible not to love them. They had a spiritual far right aspect to their look, and they sang about despair, death, and broken romances - for sure my type of band. A Certain Ratio was my favorite other Factory Records band as well. Although Tony Wilson didn't write a note of music, nor took the haunting photos of the bands he promoted via his label, nor designed any of the expensive record covers - he was in all sense Factory Records.







He saw the big picture where others couldn't see it. And he made it happen. Like the other great rock n' roll managers - for instance Andrew Loog Oldham, Simon Napier-Bell, Kit Lambert, and in an odd way Joe Meek. They all had a vision and knew it when they saw or heard it. That's a fantastic talent.

I saw and met Tony Wilson a couple of times. He came by to my work whenever he was in Los Angeles. I remembered he spotted a special issue of Mojo magazine on the stand focusing on Manchester. He got into a little rage when they put a giant photo of Morrissey on the cover and on the corner there was a little image of Joy Division's late singer Ian Curtis. After all those years he felt a strong loyalty to Ian and other members of his label.

Oh, and his business sense was sort of radical. Basically it was a 50/50 agreement between band and Wilson. There were no contracts. The band could leave any time they wanted with the master tapes. For reference read Wilson's '24 Hour Party" People or see the hysterical film.

When I started publishing I thought of myself in the same league with the great publishers of the past & present: Grove, New Directions, Olympia, Exact Change, City Lights. But at the same time I was thinking of the great record labels: Motown, Stax, early Reprise, Rough Trade, Immediate, Track, and of course Factory. So yeah, when I started my press, Tony Wilson was very much on my mind.

Now there is one less soldier against the battle....