Biting Tongues at Plan-K: A Site Report

Steel pillars and concrete floor – industrial acoustics and echoing monitors – bodies packed into the front of the stage – beer, sweat, noise and gantry lighting – just like the old days. My thanks to everyone involved in A Factory Night at Plan-K in Brussels for such a great event. Pictured above: the Tongues onstage, courtesy of Kitty Keen – roving shutterbug for The Daily Planet.

‘Utter Trash’: The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson Denounced by Fan

The official launch last week of The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson was made a happier and brighter affair by news that a reader’s review of it had just been posted on the book’s Amazon UK webpage. Composed by a creature of indeterminate age and gender, but with a greater command of written English than its idol ever achieved during his lifetime, it condemned the book as ‘utter trash’, tagging it as ‘lies’, ‘rubbish’ and ‘character assassination’ before damning it with only one star. Needless to say, the author’s opinions were based solely on reading the free extract taken from anthology editor Mark Fisher’s introduction. I'm sure he feels suitably ashamed of himself.

That in itself would have remained unworthy of comment until the same review also turned up on the book’s Amazon US webpage, at which point it is interesting to notice the contrasting responses it provoked on either side of the Atlantic. What was gratefully received as a dire warning to MJ fans in the United States has proved to be the making of the book in the UK, gaining it a couple of five-star reviews plus some comments in its support. ‘After reading your review,’ ran one, ‘I'm definitely going to buy this book. Thanks!’ And I, as a contributor to the book, thank you too.

I draw no conclusions from this comparison – I merely make observations. I should probably add, however, that I have never seen a more sordid cabal of intellectual muckrakers and cultural pornographers as that assembled by Zer0 Books to celebrate the launch of The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson. I felt so sullied and compromised in their presence that I have been sobbing in the shower ever since – hence the lateness of this post. My apologies – but I’m sure you all understand how that can feel.

Biting Tongues Play A Factory Night At Plan-K

Biting Tongues are part of the bill for a special event at Plan-K in Brussels on December 12 next week. A Factory Night (and then again) - and it looks like being a long one too - features performances by A Certain Ratio and Section 25, screenings, an exhibition and DJ sets that go until 6.00am, effectively making it a small-scale festival dedicated to the memory of Factory Records and its many connections and influences. The members of Biting Tongues are looking forward to renewing some old acquaintances, least of all with each other, and encountering a few ghosts from the past. If nothing else, the event will allow everyone to contemplate the strange relationship between the early MCR industrial music scene and a city that is home to the Atomium, Tintin and David’s Death of Marat. Expect a full report in due course – or come and join the show, if you can’t wait that long - in which case you may need to know the following:

Tickets
Presale: 25€ (+ costs) (afterparty included)
Belgium
Ticketnet.be
FNAC
Night and Day
Caroline Brussels
France: FNAC
Other countries:
Ticketnet.be
France Billet
At the door: 30€ (afterparty included)
Afterparty only: 10€ (after 0:00)

Time Schedule

18:00 doors
Muffin (dj set)
19:00 The Names (with strings)
X-Pulsiv (dj set)
19:50 The Wake
Muffin (dj set)
20:50 Biting Tongues
Gore (dj set)
21:30 Screening:
Looking for the Light through the Pouring Rain
(Kevin Cummins & Graham Massey)

21:50 Section 25
Gore (dj set)
23:10 A Certain Ratio
0:10 Graham Massey (dj set)
1:00 Re:Order
2:00
Tom Moderne (dj set)
3:00
Muffin (dj set)
Gore (dj set)
X-Pulsiv (dj set)
6:00 curfew

Address
Plan K / La Raffinerie
Rue de Manchester 21 - 1080 Brussels
Link: www.charleroi-danses.be

Midnight Cowboy Screentalk at Barbican Centre

On Thursday December 10 at 8.30 I am taking part in a special Barbican Film event. As part of Jay Clifton’s Stranger in Town series, I shall be talking with music writer Eddi Fiegel about the classic sixties movie Midnight Cowboy and what it tells us about American film culture at the end of this most turbulent of decades. The following is taken from the Barbican press release:

Cult film screening and pre-film discussion: MIDNIGHT COWBOY (d. John Schlesinger, 1969) plus pre-film discussion with KEN HOLLINGS (writer and broadcaster) and EDDI FIEGEL. Event devised and curated by JAY CLIFTON for Barbican Film. THURSDAY 10 DECEMBER AT 8.30PM, BARBICAN CENTRE.

From the starting point of film composer John Barry’s score for the film, biographer Eddi Fiegel (John Barry - A Sixties Theme, Dream a Little Dream of Me: The Life of Mama Cass) will discuss the film ‘Midnight Cowboy’ with Cold War pop culture historian Ken Hollings (Welcome to Mars), in relation to the changing face of America at the tail end of the Sixties.

Followed by a screening of the Oscar-winning film, directed by John Schlesinger and featuring career-best performances from Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. Book signings by Ken and Eddi at 8pm in the foyer, plus socialising. Screentalk at 8.30pm and film starts at 9pm.Tickets and more information available here or by phone from the Barbican Box Office on 020 7638 8891.

Hey, we’re talking here!

‘History and Hardware’ A Lecture on the Mechanical Reproduction of Sound and Vision

On Wednesday December 2, I will be giving a lecture to BAGD students at Central St Martins on how we are all still recovering from the technological disaster that occurred when sight and sound were mechanically copied and reproduced for the first time in the nineteenth century. Titled ‘History and Hardware’, the talk will take place in G12 at 16.30. I hope to see you then.

Using Friedrich Kittler’s Gramophone, Film, Typewriter as a guide, this lecture will look at how humans and machines have entered into a complex series of shifting social relationships. From the pen to moveable type to Emerson’s invention of the phonograph, how we mediate experience has continued to change. As sound recordings are used to contact the dead, typewriters devised to enable those with poor eyesight to write, and the cinema becomes a place where those with poor hearing can learn to speak out loud, we will be looking at how the sensory spectrum has been altered by the mechanical reproduction of sight, sound, speech and writing. Are silent movies really silent? How out of our minds do we need to be to listen to our own voices? Is the modern office a place overshadowed by the spectres of sex, love and death? What does this lever do?

Suggested Reading:
Friedrich A. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, translated with an introduction by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz, Stanford University Press, California (1999)
Lewis Mumford, ‘The Monastery and the Clock’ (essay), 1934
Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘Works and Days’, (essay), 1870
Jerrold Northrop Moore, Sound Revolutions: A Biography of Fred Gaisberg, Founding Father of Commercial Sound Recording, Sanctuary Music Library, London (1999)
Nicholas Carr ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’ (online article), 2008

Reproduced above: The Roundhay Garden Scene, shot in 1888 (all two seconds of it) and the first moving picture ever made, courtesy of YouTube, where ghosts come to life out of pure habit.

With Renée Glynne at Resonance FM

Twice in one week: recording shows for Resonance FM is starting to feel like a regular job. Following on from the Krautrock Kristmas Special, I find myself back in the Resonance studio again, this time to interview the remarkable Renée Glynne for their weekly film slot, Imreadyformycloseup. Renée has been involved in making movies, both here and abroad, since she was a production secretary on Gabriel Pascal’s Caesar and Cleopatra back in 1945 – although she also has earlier credits that this to her name – and has been responsible for script and continuity on such movies as The Quatermass Xperiment, Performance, Fire Maidens from Outer Space and Jean-Luc Godard’s One Plus One, to name only a few personal favourites. The lady has some stories to tell, from taking tea with George Bernard Shaw to having Mick Jagger and John Binden flashing their pickles at her in Soho. We recorded enough material for a couple of shows, which should go out over the Christmas period. More details on this blog as and when they come up.

Pictured above: Renée Glynne and series producer Richard Thomas setting up; Renée and KH taking a break from the recording

Recording Resonance FM’s Krautrock Kristmas Special

It felt good being back in the studio at Resonance FM again, this time at the invitation of Richard Thomas to record a Krautrock Kristmas Special, a show inspired in part by the recent successful release of Black Dog Publishing’s Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and Its Legacy, which features my essay ‘Background Radiation: The West German Republic Tunes Into Cosmos’. I consequently found myself in conversation with fellow contributors David Stubbs and Mark Pilkington, together with the volume’s editor, Nikos Kotsopoulos. Also joining us were David Knight Arkkon and Unicazürn fame and the writer and musician Frances Morgan.

The result was a free-flowing session that mixed roundtable conversation with an ambient sound mix of classic krautrock tracks by the likes of Tangerine Dream, Faust, NEU!, Kraftwerk, Cluster and Harmonia. The mood was expansive, while the range of subjects covered ranged through drugs, politics, technology and personal reminiscences. The final cut of the show will be broadcast over the holiday period in two formats: first as two separate one-hour shows and then in a special two-hour mega-mix. Dates and times are still to be confirmed, but I’ll post more details as soon as I have them.

Pictured above, from top to bottom: David Stubbs, Nikos Kotsopoulos, Dave Knight and Frances Morgan settle in; Frances Morgan and Mark Pilkington take it in turns to point and click; Dave Knight, Frances Morgan and Mark Pilkington talk hallucinogens; Mark, the session’s engineer, checks the levels.