Dec 2023 - ongoing
POEMS: Plaz(m)ae
Kind of obsessed lately with the entry signs to strip malls, or plazas, which function as tables of contents and look like hell. I wrote a long poem about them and am now putting excerpts from it on pictures of the signs. Even better: I realized I didn't need to take my own pictures of the signs in a world demarcated by Google Maps, so that crappie always-sunny and slightly-fisheye-lensed look adds another layer of generic-ness.
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September 2023
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December 2022
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November 24 2022
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My friend Scott McGaughey has a "synthy" radio show and he invited me to contribute a 20-minute mix of songs to it. I did him one better and connected the songs via a short story about the possibility of real innovation in a jaded music culture. Story is here, and story and set are here.
Pierre Schaeffer, the guy who invented musique concrète, has a son who has gone missing. In his deep deep blue study, he puts his hands on his daughter Marlene’s shoulders, instructing her to find Jean-Michel and bring him home [RUN TO THE SUN]. She infiltrates the soirées and salons where he was last seen, slipping between the cracks like dust. Each artistes bourgeoisies she finds there energetically explains their particular niche of musical creation, each more obscure and confounding than the last. But in mingling she discovers elephants in the rooms, uncomfortable issues that are obviously at hand but which go undiscussed [ELEPHANTS]. The avoidance of these problems (all revolving around this cultural reality: that everyone just keeps making the same old kind of music, never striving to move forward) leads to a decadence, an airless, sticky, cigarette decay, like Pynchon’s Entropy [DECADENCE]. She succumbs to the soirée vibe, and at dawn lies in a heap of bodies on the dance floor, looking through eye slits at a narrow window in the wall. The deep deep blue of predawn reaches her, recalling the walls of father’s study, and of the mission. She rises, achingly, and stumbles out the door [SWEET SONG OF SUMMER]. On the street, the light from the window has vanished again. She catches glimpses of it as she runs, faster and faster, as though cajoling, or aiming her, through the city’s streets, to the suburbs, then the exurbs, and finally exhausted, to the base of a hillock at the edge of the city map. There, she lays on the grass and looks up to see tableaux form in the clouds overhead. The cumulus strips weave and reweave to reveal a story of her brother leaving the city in the same way she has, realizing that newness in music can’t be achieved in the stuffy confines of trendy places and small minds [JACOB’S LADDER]. Galvanized by the message in the clouds’ story, and with a new mission (to make a music that has never been made before) Marlene achieves the hillock crest, and disappears beyond. Erasure - Run To the Sun Pete Townshend - Elephants Kevin Ayers - Decadence Bee Gees - Sweet Song of Summer Rush - Jacob’s Ladder |
October 2022
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About my dad. Employs a Pretty Things rhyme scheme.
Apr 2022WEBCOMIC: The FourthFinally! Completed a 20-panel webcomic, from a dream. The goal was to not overcomplicate, perfectionize or make it feel like work. Read it here or on Instagram.
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2021VIDEO: E.R. Jurken, "Spectre"Saving and sending the file turned out to be more difficult than making this video for E.R. Jurken in support of his amazing record. My son Oscar's hands appear at the end.
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LP INSERT: E.R. Jurken, I Stand CorrectedI drew a comic that illustrates the backstory to one of the songs on the album. It actually represents a huge step forward for me in that it's the first time in my current "phase of development" as a comics-maker that I've really made a small, focused, and pre-scripted (as opposed to free-form or improvised) work.
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Dec 14 2020SONG: Blinding LightsThe school I work at has been doing its holiday talent show virtually since COVID. The Weeknd's Blinding Lights was the #1 song of 2020.
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Sep 17 2020
PRESENTATION: High School, MusicalMoPop is the incredible pop music conference they do in Seattle every year, or virtually if it's COVID. I took the day off school to give my paper on the relationships between music students (like my great High School teacher Mr. Malone) and music teachers like (Prince). View here or read the paper below.
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2017 (ca.)
ZINE: Various Times: Oct 28 1977A consideration of records issued on 10/28/77. Includes Queen, Sex Pistols, the first Neil Comp, ONJ, etc.
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2014
SHORT FILM: Charlie Parker Played BebopWhen I was getting my Masters in teaching I took a class in Multicultural Literacy and made this video as part of a presentation on this fantastic kids book. My son Oscar narrates. View here.
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Sep 4 2011
SHORT FILM: Superimposition 1 (1 Duet/1 Trio)I put out three issues of a movie fanzine called The Molten Rectangle. The zine was cool, but the real reason I did it was to house a comp DVD (called The Victorvision Shorts) which would include a short film I made. Superimposition was the third short film I did, but it was meant to be just one scene from a larger unfinished project, a vampire movie we came up with and shot in one day. The footage from that is so cool, but this experimental dance sequence (which in the context of the vampire movie was meant to be a battle scene) ended up being pretty neat too. Click here to view.
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2004-2008
BAND: SNAKE TIGER |
2001
RECORD: FSSR
Gene Booth: electronic, vox
Jack Fisher: guitar, electronic, vox
Jack recorded about thirty minutes of guitar lines. Then, once a week for a year, we met at place and constructed this record. We took turns making decisions about how to edit, shape, filter or add sounds.
Jack Fisher: guitar, electronic, vox
Jack recorded about thirty minutes of guitar lines. Then, once a week for a year, we met at place and constructed this record. We took turns making decisions about how to edit, shape, filter or add sounds.
2000-2001
BAND: The Charismatics
Gene Booth: vox, gtr, keys
Jack Fisher: bass
Thom Jan ven der Doef: drum, media
Bizarre, amazing attempt to kind of do soul music, or at least invoke/graft soul ideas onto our jams. Some of this came out pretty good, and I had a Fender Rhodes that we used to good effect.
Jack Fisher: bass
Thom Jan ven der Doef: drum, media
Bizarre, amazing attempt to kind of do soul music, or at least invoke/graft soul ideas onto our jams. Some of this came out pretty good, and I had a Fender Rhodes that we used to good effect.
1999-2003
BAND: Xiangang DelightGene Booth: vox, gtr, keys
Maureen Loughnane: gtr, violin, vox Thom Jan ven der Doef: drum, media We made songs and performed concerts in a once-per-month assembly line method. We combined the structures of every song The Who made in 1965 with the postglobal theories of Saskia Sassen. |
1999
BAND: GBLIC
Gene Booth Live In Concert. Played one show at Empty Bottle. So good.
1997
SONG/RECORD ART: Felidae
I played guitar for the band Palace on its 1995 Viva Last Blues tour. Palace contributed our live version of the song Blockbuster (from a show at Lounge Ax in Chicago, 11/18/95) to a benefit compilation for a large animals sanctuary, and I drew the sleeve.
1995-1998BAND: USAGene Booth: vox, gtr, keys
Corre Dilworth: batterie Devin Johnston: gtr, vox Brian Calvin: gtr, vox An EP and a full-length, in the original indie style. Click here to hear. |
Jan 22 1992SINGLE: Mantis, "Who Wants To Be a Camel?" b/w "Regalia!"1st single from my 1st band (1989-1991), released posthumously. The A side, a thorny 4-pt journey through the history of music, starting with country, moving through our versions of the Bo Diddley beat and heavy metal, and ending in a possible future of music. The flip tells the tripped-out story of a soldier gone AWOL.
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1990
BAND: MantisSituating Mantis in time is hard because we were really only active and gigging for a year and change, but all our singles came out posthumously. And plus in my head there's bleed (that didn't sound right..) because we all went to high school together and the band feels like a seamless continuation of ideas spawned there. 90's the heart of it tho, so, I will place this proposed greatest hits track listing here for now. I'm unclear what the letters in parenthesis represent, maybe genre or quality of the recording?
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Everyone's Gotta Right To An Opinion... Except Mantis
1 My Right Hand Is Bea Arthur (H/O) 2 Who Wants To Be a Camel? (S/R) 3 Gridlock (H/O) 4 Regalia (S/R) 5 Drüler (S/R) 6 Cameldemo Pts. I & IV (H/O) 7 199(7)1 (S/R) 8 Much To My Chagrin (S/R) 9 Travelin' Fist (S/O) 10 La Noche Del Esperanto (Night of the Universal Language) (H/O) 11 Grits, Dummy (S/R) 12 Herbalessence (H/O) 13 You In America Now (S/R) 14 Mama No (S/R) |
Olden
The Molten Rectangle (movie magazine)#1
#2 #3 The Victorvision Shorts (short films)Justin
Skillz
Eleven Reminds Me Of (poetry chapbook)
Stop SmilingReviews and interviews about comics
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Palace (assorted drawings)About 20 posters for Viva Last Blues tour
Label art for 10" single Arise Therefore album cover and label art |