I was interviewed today.
I've been running an
e-zine since
1998 and I've seen many of my contemporaries get interviewed by other contemporaries. I've been interviewed by
newspapers about my compositions and stuff but I'd never done a website interview. Now I have. This and
composing two fine
melodic developments is what my day consisted of.
1) you are completely correct in describing john bonham as "god". do you have any other drummerly advice/opinions that you would care to share with us?
Well, since drumming is what got me tossed out of the
Berklee College of
Music, my first instinct is to say "Don't do it."
Let me explain. I got every type of
muscular disease a drummer can get
after doing it for 11 years, non-stop. I won all kinds of contests, was
world ranked a couple of times, etc etc. Because it was ALL I DID. I loved
it and I still do but because I loved it so much it kind of
side-tracked my
music career for a bit.
As far as advice, I would say that any good
percussionist should take
lessons and learn to read lead sheets and standard notation, as well as
piano lessons. You might think I'm kidding but nothing helps your feel and
phrasing as a percussionist like understanding
melodic construction.
Also, learn to play more than just the drum set, if you have the means.
Learn
marimba,
timpani,
latin percussion,
african percussion, the works.
Your local college should offer night classes in most styles of drumming.
Finally, John Bonham was godlike in the weight and groove of his playing.
However, he also undeniably proved himself to be a total retard by
drinking
himself to death. People who are incredibly talented and very lucky should
never be that stupid, but unfortunately many are.
2) what are some of the common bonds that connect the various participants of the site?
It's sort of like a "six degrees" thing. I went to high school with Tenth
Day,
Djuxtapose, and Space Boy. Tenth Day and Djuxtapose are brother and
sister and Tenth Day is my fiance. Outlander,
Graceness and Pumkinbomb I
met playing UO. I went to Berklee with Princess, Harry Parratestes and
Waylain just asked to be a part of things. Morgan is a politcal activist I
met through some of Tenth Day's friends at work and
The Subliminal Kid is a
writer I'd wanted to work with for awhile, who I met out in California.
Skoob I met while working at a coffee shop several years ago and he's our
network admin. Hoffma is a high school friend of his from
North Dakota.
Jesus I have a lot of writers.
They're all part of
The BlackRage Organization because I asked them to be.
In former versions of the site I loved doing it but being solely responsible
for all the updating was a drag and having only my opinions expressed on the
site kind of went against the grain of what BlackRage is about. It takes
more than one person to hold up the giant fucking mirror
society
needs in
order to see itself.
3) your "stop the morons" campaign is intelligent and even slightly poignant. how does one actually KNOW if one is a moron, what can one do to stop it and how does one keep from becoming a moron?
Many people misconstrue the "Stop The Morons" thing as being solely targeted
at the webmistress or
webmaster, but it isn't. It is targeted at the
viewers who act as the enabling parties of the people who push nothing but
subject matter which will garnish an audience. They aren't funny. They
aren't
creative. They are the
proverbial mother bird farm feeders of the
digital generation who push a button to get a response.
I'm not faulting them for what they do because many of them make a living
off of their webpage, and who wouldn't want to do that? They simply provide
access to
death,
porn, and
death porn; it is the millions of viewers who
attack this subject matter like hungry hyenas feeding off the
lumbering
giant mammals that are slowing down and dying. It is a pack animal mentality
that is fearsome and most likely cannot be
overcome. In this as in all
things, the effort is of equal importance to the outcome.
You may be a moron if you visit a site or pander to a webauthor who has very
little to offer in the way of
creativity but instead publishes
vapid updates
consisting of mislabelled links to grotesque porn and
crime scene photos.
You may be a moron if the method and motive behind a website matters nothing
to you, and you would rather fill your brain with
anime bondage imagery than
humorous or investigative original commentary on current world
socio-political situations.
You may be a moron if
the Internet uses you to serve its purpose;
YOU
should use the Internet to serve some sort of purpose past shock value.
Shocking imagery is wonderful if it makes a point; otherwise it is a base
form of escapism no better than
drugs, alcohol, web design, etc.
Don't get me wrong. I think porn has a place on the internet. People view
pornographic imagery to become aroused, to appreciate the human form or to
fulfill a
curiousity. Pictures and videos of people getting hurt or in
fact dying gruesome deaths also serves some purpose, I imagine; it escapes
me but I am not the end all be all of
morality, nor should I be. What I'm
saying is this: if all you do is download porn from
Stile and get snuff films
from Archu and yet, you have no idea where you'll ever find all that
information your
research paper requires, you are a moron and you need to be
stopped.
Creatively presenting shock imagery is also eons better than just making it
a link and forgetting about. My man
Tom Fulp at
Newgrounds has a unique
brilliance for humor and animation. Many of his cartoons deal with death,
porn, and what would otherwise be considered
tragic subject matter. He uses
these images in a manner that is creative, that took years of
hard work to
perfect, and that utilizes humor to make light of the sometimes overdramatic
seriousness life presents to us.
He's an artist.
You can stop being a moron by realizing that you fill your hours and days
with
meaningless things. If you can only
get off by watching people get
shot in the face with handguns, then get all the snuff you want. But if you
do simply want to
shock yourself, watch a sunrise, or hit yourself in the head
with a
clawhammer.
They will both have more immediately relevant impacts on
your life.
3 1/2) is chubby nastygram somehow related to that evil "snuggles" fabric softener mascot of some years back?
No. The backstory on
Chubby D. Bear is that he started out as just a cute
teddy bear and somehow with the reinstatement of blackrage on the internet
he became this
dishonored ninja assassin. He smokes
cigars and drinks
whiskey, he beats a lot of ass and
talks like a sailor. He's the teddy bear
equivalent of a love child of
Tom Waits and
Bruce Lee.
Chubby became a mainstay of blackrage when iamhappyblue.com introduced
Swash
The Can Bear not too long after I linked them. Chubby began constantly
threatening the life of Swash, and said he would be forced to kill Swash
ninja-style if Swash didn't give unto Chubby the Holy Giant 10lb.
Bag Of
Blow Belonging To
Ron Jeremy. The night of the deadline, I went out on a
smoke run and tripped on something outside my
apartment door. It was a
ZipLoc bag filled with powdered sugar, addressed to Chubby in Swash-speak
asking for mercy.
I'll have you know, that since I only get about 100
visitors a day, I was
flattered and scared shitless all at once.
Now Chubby is a regularly contributing member of the writing staff but only
when something really pisses him off.
4) it would be interesting to hear some of your observations about boston, a city which seemingly has no relevance to anyone who is was not born here.
Boston is a great town and also a cruel bitch-mistress. I hate the fact
that the streets roll up at nine o'clock and going to a party in
Allston
when you live in the
Back Bay and then missing
the T totally blows, because
then the
cab ride home costs, on average, eleventy billion dollars.
Boston offers a great deal of culture in that it features one of the best
symphony orchestras in the world and a
fabulous museum, an
amazing ballet,
along with a large number of community theatres, orchestras, and acting
troupes. The venues to view these in are also amazing.
On the contrary, the Boston modern music scene eats the big one. The most
entertaining night I had in a Boston club was going to see
Nancy Mroczek,
Ph.D. And that was just because she was so very bad.
I went to
Berklee and to most people on the
East Coast, Berklee is a joke.
For an aspiring
composer, Berklee is a joke. I also spent some time at the
Boston Conservatory which is much like Berklee, only being more expensive(!)
and actually requiring talent to get into. I still have friends there about
to graduate, and Berklee can make you the best
music therapist or synth
artist or
songwriter in the world. Other than that, its a sham.
Boston is beautiful in the summer and fall. If I never go back to Boston
between November and March it'll be too soon.
The
mass transit system and everything being so close to everything else is
fantastic. Most people in Boston don't know what
a pain in the ass it is to
have to drive an hour to get anywhere, like you have to do in
Texas.
For every amazing
restaraunt in Boston there are 15 shitty overpriced ones.
For every beautiful street in Boston there's a dirty one with some
drunk guy
decked head to toe in
Patriots sweats screaming about how we was robbed.
Foxboro is a great stadium but its bereft of soul.
Fenway Park is a
shithole but you can feel the energy and pride contained therein. You can
ride a boat around the harbor for a dollar all day long but taking a taxi to
the airport costs 30 dollars.
All in all, Boston is like my favorite Boston eatery,
Little Stevie's House
Of Pizza. (On
Boylston street between the Berklee Bookstore and 1140
Boylston Berklee building.) The outside is dirty. The inside is
uncomfortable. The pizza looks like it will hospitalize you but its
enormous and its the best tasting slice you'll ever have.
5) i was very struck by your perceptive observation that there is little or no greatness in this generation. we seem to be "borrowing", "rehashing and "reinterpreting" more than ever. could you talk a bit more about this dilemma? and how does this contribute to one's status as a moron?
Not only is it rare to find true
innovation or originality among our
generation, when it does exist society does its best to quell it. We're a
civilization of people who know shortcuts but not what is actually involved
in the long form of the process. We know the easy, simple, fast and
painless way to do things.
Quick and dirty has more value than something
which sports a rigorous attention to
craftsmanship and detail and yet takes
more time to create.
The problem is that while in earlier generations good craftsmanship was
rewarded in almost every career or aspect of life, today no one wants to
wait. If an idea is presented that the masses cannot instantly identify
with or rail against, it is met with the deadliest of poisons:
apathy. The
artists living amongst us in our generation and the one preceding ours have
made the mistake, on the whole, of alienating those who would otherwise not
give a damn about what we're doing. We go out of our way to
disclude the
uninitiated from our club in hopes (conscious or not) that someone will be
upset that they don't know what's going on and investigate.
The problem is that most of society doesn't care for anything past their own
bills, bankbooks and interests; the creators and potential
brilliance of
our generation are starting to not care that society in general vists us
only with apathy and general discontentment. It's a
viscious cycle and it
has to stop.
Slamming nails through your cock and video taping it is not, in my opinion,
a form of art. Slamming bottles against the wall until they break, recording
the audio, and then
calling it music is not, in my opinion, art. Artists
and creators have a
responsibility to stay true to the intention and motive
of True Art, whatever it may be. Doing things to freak people out or making
a work so intentionally
obtuse so that only certain people with certain
backgrounds and certain life circumstances will "get it" is wrong. It is
wrong, it is
grotesque, and it does nothing but drive the Majority away from
the message we are collectively trying to convey.
All art should say something. It should never say "go away." Art as a
profession and a lifestyle cannot exist without a base of
patrons. People
have whined about this for almost all of the 20th century and of course what
little of the 21st we have experienced. If an
aspiring artist were to research
history before the 20th century he would rarely ever see anything mentioned
in journals about starving artists or potential artists complaining that no
one understood them. You either were an artist or you weren't. Sometimes
you paid your bills and debts, sometimes you didn't, but you were an
artist
because you simply could not be anything else.
If our generation were to discover this perhaps our
greatness would emerge.
We do have greatness among our ranks. It just has to get
humble and get
hungry.
How being a moron plays into this should be fairly easy to see. If you
always take the idea that's the easiest to
digest and you never look closer
at that which you do not understand, you are a moron. If you, as an artist,
make it your sole purpose in life to be as obscure and
alienating as
possible, you are a moron.
5 3/8) could you talk a bit about the concept behind the website's fairly stark black/blue/green visual presentation?
It's funny you bring this up. Originally, I designed what you see before
you as a
content-delivery device and little else. I didn't want a flashy
design or banners or mad scripting
skrillz on display; I just wanted
something that would make the massive amounts of text we produce easy to
look at.
I still feel that way but I got tired of the design we've currently got and
charged
Waylain with making us a new one. He's got a brilliance for graphic
design and visual presentation that far surpasses my own, and I trust he
will be able to keep our simple presentation's idea and
mythos at heart
while making it a little easier on the eyes, and maybe just a little cooler-looking.
Content is still king though. It always has been and until they pry the
site out of
my cold, dead hands it always will.
Regards,
Beltane