top best shit of the past 10 years or so/rejoice thee
December 29th, 2009
this was actually one of the first posts i ever started writing for this blog. in the hong kong airport on august 28th or 9th, 2006. like avatar, it’ s been a long time coming and cost me 500 million dollars but there aren’t really many changes to it. better late than never (really just an excuse to quote my newest favorite lyric, “pleasa, prayin that her period ain’t late like FEMA”) i’m forgoing my normal florid style and even capital letters and letting the good shit shine.
i think i am less excited by things than i used to be and perhaps have displaced some of my irrational excitement onto totally bizarre/drastically less worthy objects of amuse/bemusement like steven seagal and nicholas cage. increasingly i’ve turned away from the best and embraced the absolute worst (not bad meaning bad but awful meaning amazing). it’s possible i’ve started living more in the “real world” but I doubt it. i believe my excitement remains intact, however. despite my constant bitching about politics and my generally low view of humanity both as a whole and in so many of its constituent parts, i am constantly cheered by creative expression, whether it’s rather ramshackle amateur theater productions or big budget concerts. i’m not that different from the guy lying in front of the oriental chomping y2k mini powerbars after american beauty or lying clothed in my bathtub blown away by the power and depth of otis live at the whiskey a go go. except for being much taller and hairier i might still be the ten year old changing gels with utmost seriousness during intermissions at danceworks. the fact that humans continue to persevere in creativity, in all its forms, is a great joy to me and sustains me during the long hours between my four or five daily meals (food always my number one source of joy). although nothing in the world besides nosh cheers me so consistently as books (almost always mysteries of varying degrees of trashiness) and i spent the last 10+ years studying art and being fortunate enough to see exhibitions of art — from ancient to still not dry — all over the world and in the studios of the artists themselves as they created them, most of the things on this list are performances. though i still shake my noggin with amazement at the skill and vision of many artists, immersion is clearly a major factor for me — i’ve still got a total hard on for the gesamtkunstwerk — and though i tend to sink into books, both as i read them and as i chew them over in my mind for the next couple months, i think i read too much for individual books to shine through for long, although certain authors definitely do. i also reread books a bunch of times and so i experience them differently than a show i saw once. it’s very different to pick a book back up and read it against your memories and your awareness of how highly you appreciated it the first time than to sit through a two hour show and walk away with the experience contained in a relatively contained capsule. there are some big recurring themes here but i think they’re obvious enough that i don’t need to belabor them. perhaps i’ll follow up in 2027: top best points from my post on top shit in the naughty aughties.
a few of my favorite things
Ralph Lemon “Come Home Charlie Patton” — seen at MCA
2k6fred: No matter what you have to do to do it, go see this show. Drive 500 miles, sell your car and buy a donkey, by any means necessary get to see this or probably anything else Ralph Lemon’s company does
2k9fred: The 3rd installment of the ? trilogy was probably the most complete artistic creation i’ve ever had the privilege to experience i.e the best shit i’ve ever seen. there is no way i can even come within miles of describing how fucking amazing it was. if i could create something that was a fraction of a fraction as deep, moving and beautiful i don’t know if i’d die happy but i’d be a fuck of a lot more fun to be around.
Read about it for real here and here
I’m buying this DVD and you should too.
Walid Raad artist talk at UWM
2k6: This is one of the only things I’ve seen in a while where I’ve thought – that’s what I wanna be doing. In addition to having the best Powerpoint presentation I’d ever seen (since superseded by Inconvenient Truth and Al Gore) his work his smart and also very poetic.
Raad plays with history and narrative, fiction and non fiction, inventory, accumulation and abstraction and it’s awesome.
2k9: The Huang Yongping show at Ullens was similarly inspiring in its interaction with history, myth and the history and myth of art without it being academic. Both are influenced by Joseph Beuys, though Huang much more explicitly so than Raad.
Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band at the Bradley Center
2k6: The boss is killing it with this 17 person band, rocking the fuck out of old American songs. You’ll know a lot of them but you’ll probably only have heard them with some acoustic guitar backing. This band rocks so fucking hard it’s ridiculous – horns, accordion, banjo all acoustic and this shit is heavy. The best paced show I’ve ever seen and each song was perfectly paced itself. My neck was snapping and when he told us to I screamed til I almost passed out.
2k9: I like old music but never got down so hard to 100 year old songs. Finally copped “Live in Dublin” vid a few months back and it’s just as good as I remembered. That this dealio was far more popular in Europe reflects horribly on the US. There may have been better bands but this show isn’t as close to perfect as one can get; it is perfect. Period.
Ignore the rather halfass, though positive, reviews and buy the damn DVD