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Wish we could just forget the likes of Bushido

German rapper Bushido has a new song out with lyrics that put death threats to some german politicians and also include homophobic slurs. He wants to get publicity from upsetting people and people get upset. Woohoo, scandalous. I’m glad that not everyone cries for the song to be indexed and him being prosecuted but that there are quality reactions like the one from Nouripour (Green Party) who tries to play down the whole thing by explaining the pathetic mechanisms of such ‘scandals’ for Bushido’s career.
Less press and he would quickly fade out of the mainstream audience’ memory. I remember when Anita Sarkeesian, back in 2011, wrote about the violent sexism in Kanye’s Monster (don’t get me started on all the people who are happily ignoring the lyrics of Kanye’s new album cause the music is ‘relevant’):
“So whose to blame? Kanye clearly, but also Roc-A-Fella Records, Universal Music Group, the entire music industry, and how the market functions in general. Record labels have a goal of trying to get their artists to stick out of the crowd in an oversaturated media landscape.  For decades they have been making sexualized, shocking, violent media products. More and more we see the industry cynically relying on sensationalism and glamorization of violence against women in order to boost sales.”
Wether it’s violent threats, homophobia or sexism – provocation via hate culture works. There are people who want to make money with this and there is an audience who buys it. The public gets what the public wants. Guess we’d be better off challenging this than just getting upset about single artists.
For me as a queer feminist diy promoter who likes some hiphop (but does not want to support the carelessness with which big parts of the hiphop scene ignore crap lyrics) trying to at least sometimes actively booking hiphop artists who are a bit of a counterpoint to that scene is my way of actively dealing with it. That’s why we had Mykki Blanco playing a damn cool show at the K4 and that’s why we bring Cakes Da Killa to the Radio Z Fest at Desi next week. Tiny steps but … my… rather a small contribution than just complaining.
Aside
I had a wonderful time at last night’s Retox  + Zeus! + Sonytony show. Aggressive noise can be the most liberating kind of music. Sonytony was breathtakingly intense as ever. I love Anton’s work because it’s so uncompromising and furious. Retox were not less furious and also played right up to what I had hoped their show would be like – it was a blast, and I love that Justin doesn’t get any tamer over the years. Lots of chatting with friends, meeting Justin and Anton again, and getting a tiny bit tipsy, hanging around on the street in front of the K4 – time flew, I don’t even know how it got 4 o’clock.
[vimeo 62727666]
It was the first time that coming home so late/early and still semi-drunk I suddenly got a burning hunger for something healthy. I chopped all vegetables I had left into a huge bowl of salad I ate while watching the sun rise, feeling like a little munching rabbit, thinking how powerful nights like this are. This one made me feel like I have emotionally and idealistically recharged myself.
*
I have caught up a bit with reading the news today. It seems – backfiring the flight restrictions Bolivia’s president suffered a few days ago – Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua have now offered asylum for Snowden.With the public eye focussing on Snowden so much I think this article does a good job by using this attention to make people aware of the situation of refugees at large.
I find it very fascinating how many different discourses this whole leaks affair resonates with. The biggest of course being surveillance, the whistleblower vs spy debate, and the role and legal position of journalism/blogging. But it can also be linked to subjects like the globally growing distrust in governments, the fascination about what is technically possible if it comes to surveillance, drones, etc., the comparison of state-induced tracking vs commercial tracking (hello, Jay-Z/Samsung), rebranding of patriotism, excellent satire, and yes, even design (powerpoint wtf). I still have a lot of articles bookmarked that I haven’t yet found time to read and find it all equally scary and fascinating.
And as I know that a few of my friends haven’t watched it yet, here’s the link to the Snowden interview video (Guardian).

Retoxing and recharging

It’s The Beats with Busdriver, Bikini Kill 1996 show, instagram goes video

Just a quick one while I’m still listening through tunes to play out tonight, here, flyer by yours truly:
 

Bild

 
I like BUSDRIVER for being mighty entertaining yet complex, for not sticking to hiphop only but breaking down walls to other genres, for thinking outside the box, for being fan/critic as well as musician, for collaborating/networking a lot in the old school sense – he’s one of those artists with whom it’s ‘more than just the music’. More than just the sounds. Track titles like “Werner Herzog”, “Unemployed Black Astronaut” or “No Blacks, No Asians, No Jews” are rare in today’s hiphop world and as for some of his lyrics, I’d also might buy them if the were sold as books.
 
 
Also I’m really looking forward to djing with Nahuel tonight, as we share a similar nerd-meets-pop-‘ridicule is nothing to be scared of‘ approach to playing out music and because I rarely meet him outside of twitter since he lives in Vienna.
 
 
Also: You! Hope despite the crazygood weather you’ll find your post-lake/beergarden/bbq way to us and dance/chat/dance/drink/dance/smile/dance/etc.
 
 
P.S.: My short Instagram video guide: Take vid, fiddle with filters, maybe show IRL friendz, then fordogssake plz delete it. I fully agree with Matthew Ingram’s ‘Why I will never click on your Instagram video, no matter how much you want me to’. Spare us the digital noise, facebook.
 
 
P.S.P.S.: One for the grrls – no matter if female or male or whatever:
 

Ch-ch-changes

I have realised that I hold back at least 7 out of 10 blogposts because I can’t decide wether to write in english or german. Since quite a while I had decide to write in german over at Breaking The Waves but somehow it doesn’t work for me, there’s zero continuity.

The internet to me always has been a place that connected me with people that I share interests with and that means: no matter where from, the international pop underground. Be it on facebook or with search engines or international online magazines (I’m looking at you, VICE) – all the developments that make it more local/regional/national make me feel a bit awkward. I do not just want the content that’s just for the country/city I live in. As for facebook: Of course it’s nice to share things with friends and of course lots of my friends are local friends but. BUT! It turns the old metaphor of the ‘global village’ into a small gossipy CSU-ruled redneck town that sometimes gives me the same feeling as I had when I was a kid at family celebrations, stuck at the coffee table for endless hours, bored to death but just getting enough cake, gifts or funny stories to stick around.

Whenever I blog in English I’m aware that many of my german friends/acquaintances/readers won’t bother reading it, even if they understand English. Whenever I blog in german I exclude non-german-speaking people, and might miss out on some one who would engage out of interest in the subject. And: I really feel more at home in the english-speaking blog/twitter/magazine/paper-world than in the german.

I don’t even know since when this has become a matter of thought to me at all but at some point I sometimes had a potential reader on my mind and that totally blocks me. I like blurting out what comes to my mind, spontaneously connecting dots, mapping the world around me with words, trying to understand it a little better – that was the main thing I love about writing. I didn’t check stats, I didn’t use any ‘make your blog more popular’ tips, etc. Just like with my music I just posted it, added a link on facebook and then let it rest. If something happened, e.g. others give me interesting feedback about similar experiences or bring up interesting facts or artists I hadn’t known about or discuss other points of view etc. – it was great. If nothing happened with it it was fine, too, because I’ve always seen personal blogging as a bit of a diary thing, in which I am free to mix the personal with the political, the emotional with the theoretical. An exhibitionist diary, you might add, and I’d agree: a diary with lose ends for others to connect if they feel like.

The choice of language is just one bit in a puzzle of reader-awareness that has grown bigger in me over the last years. At it’s worse it was the notion of being watched in a surveillance kind of way. One experience that definitely was a cut in personal blogging was when I got forced to either delete something I had written about a guy who stalked me (even though I had kept it strictly anonymous) or his father (! – not even himself, that cowardish scum) would sue me. I deleted it because I was on the edge of my nerves because of that guys’ behaviour and didn’t feel I had the power to stand up to him in a public courtroom. I just wanted it to end. I still somewhat regret that and hope that no other woman got hassled by him afterwards. It’s kind of ironic that this was the only legal threat I ever had as I used to post so many mash ups back in the days. What I’m getting at: legal questions also have increasingly spoiled the ease of blogging for me. I like to cross-reference a lot, quote+link style, but there were so many discussions about changing german copyright laws if it comes to quoting and linking to news articles etc. that almost every kind of quote or linkage feels a bit weird. I don’t want to waste time on reading up on the latest law bits all the time just to keep my blog hassle-free. The latest fuzz: Is it illegal to embed a youtube video – read here in the Internet Law Blog.

Another thing that made me more careful of writing opinions online is the abuse you get – and of course you do get it, especially if you voice opinions to feminist issues. Most of the time I laugh or shrug them off. For example a few days ago a guy twittered “Fact = muslims are the number 1 threat to civilised society”. I replied “No, muesli is the number 1 threat to civilised society. You got it all wrong”. He replied: “shut the fuck up you self righteous occupy wall street cunt”. I got no big problem with such internet abuse and threats, and I’ve been called worse (one of my favourites was something along the lines of ‘your father should have ejaculated in front of a running train rather than waste his sperm on you’, and yes, I also had physical threats). As long as it’s with people of whom I know they don’t live around the corner I can deal with that and it won’t shut me up. It gets scary/sad though when you get it from locals – aquaintances or people that are friends of your friends on facebook. It’s one of the things I really despise about facebook – you realize you’re just a few people away from sexist/homophobic/racist/nationalist/ableist scum. It makes you realize how people you know do not speak up against such remarks. How little support there is when a gang of guys get you in their focus. That’s the kind of thing that made me shut up a few times and I’m not proud of it.

I understand people who say that one should not start discussions in facebook comments or on the internet at all cause there are too many people just trolling but I have already enjoyed too many positive, fun and inspiring exchanges and discussions to agree on that. I have been a net afficionada for far too long to let such things spoil the web for me.

Speaking of bad comments, let me digress with a german example of an explosion of such: The absolutely out-of-proportion rude reaction to a picture on the facebook page of a big german news show: it showed Claudia Roth, a german politician (Green Party), after she had been injured at Occupygezi – here’s the blog entry about it by heute.de’s editor Martin Giesler. At the end he asks how and why journalism should still try to open up to readers. Erbloggtes, another blog, has a sharp answer online here. Erbloggtes basically asks him if it isn’t journalists’ job that if they see a problem to reach out and research and thus contribute to understanding it. In the case of the prevailing horror of online comment culture Erbloggtes guesses that the answer could tell a lot about a desolidarised and antagonistisc competitive society, about people who otherwise have no voice, who feel they have nothing to lose. The latter also meaning – that’s where both agree – that a real name policy doesn’t help.

While that journalist point of view and that answer are interesting and I really wish there would be less theoretical talk about it but more approaches like the one Erbloggtes suggests it does not really help for my situation as personal blogger. As you can tell by this longish piece about changes I have decided to post in English again which – despite my clumsiness in using it as a non-native speaker – is the language I prefer for the internet and pop culture.

Sidney Looper remixes

Sidney Looper (also: Agent Lovelette) has put up 4 old remixes of eve massacre tracks on his youtube.

EVE MASSACRE – FASCISTO SOUL MAGIC (SIDNEY LOSER REMIX)
EVE MASSACRE – MY TOMBOY (SIDNEY LOOPER 8BIT WORKOUT)

EVE MASSACRE – 48 CRUSHES ON YOU (AGENTLOVELETTES CRUSHDDD MIX)
EVE MASSACRE – FASCISTO SOUL MAGIC (AGENTLOVELETTE REMIX)

Check out his SOUNDCLOUD for more tunes by him, for example this nice juke he’s done with a Fugees sample:

Aside

I’m slowly getting ready for the last of the SUB:CITY nights and it seems appropriate to let a little blogging be part of this as my last longer post here was about it, too. Today has been one of those weird days on which everything slips away, like you can’t seem to focus on something. Start a dozen things, finish none, and suddenly it’s evening and you try telling yourself it’s okay.

This week a lot of articles featured the everyday sexism outcry. It’s like a wave that flushes up all the litter from the ground of the sea on a bad weather day, making things visible that actually have been there all the time. You just didn’t talk about it cause you didn’t want to appear like a victim. Or because you know/think the women and men around you wouldn’t show solidarity but ridicule your complaints. It’s great that sometimes social media (check twitter tags #everydaysexism or german #aufschrei in case you missed it) make it easier for people to speak out, and to show and get such solidarity. It helps to make things visible in such a huge wave that it’s hard to ignore, even for media. I just hope it won’t – like waves do – disappear as quickly as it rose but leave little barb traces in everyday life. I am sooooo longing for more anger about and action against the conservative backlash and the I-don’t-care-attitude that has risen over the last decade. After all I am someone who doesn’t have much respect left for the huminz and sometimes I’m glad to be old enough to maybe soon and finally give in to my true destiny (= becoming the bestest crazy old cat woman eremite in the universe). If only there wasn’t this annoying teensy itching bit of emotion and empathy left and won’t let cynicism and ‘that’s just the way it is’ apathy take over my world. Just as well as the teensy bit of musical edge I got left doesn’t let all this ‘that’s just the way it is’-Hornsby style bearded home-sweet-home vintage pitchforkindiefolk win me over.
Oh, it’s getting late – I’m off to help giving the sub owls the farewell they deserve.

I look like a human being so you can recognize me but I am a crack, I want to go through walls

http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/3051/brooklynfolliespaulaust.jpg

I have almost frozen to death because I couldn’t get out of the bath tub before I finally had finished Paul Auster’s ‘Brooklyn Follies’. What a wonderful novel. So full of stories each of which is rich enough to grow into a novel of its own, with more subsubsubnovels. I love books that make you feel as if literature is but catching mere bits from an endless flow of possible stories in endless possibilities of style and structure. I like how Auster doesn’t get lost in details, he sticks to the core and gives you just as much decoration as to breathe life into his language and plot.

The cream on top of my shitty week-end: My flu has stolen my sense of smell. This sucks because to me one of the few enjoyable things about having a cold is all the menthol oils that are supposed to help you get through. I love the smell of Tiger Balm – aaah, menthol mixed with something spicy, maybe cinnamon? –  but today I just feel the burn of it on my skin but there’s zero scent. Two days spent dozing and watching the ‘Misfits’ series and drinking camomille tea and dozing and reading and taking painkillers at 3am to get some sleep in spite of the pain in the limbs and getting up to switch from bed to sofa at 8am cause not feeling tiredenough to sleep anymore and drinking peppermint tea and coughing and sneezing till the lungs ache (more than after club nights before the smoking ban) and rewatching ‘Skins’ and dozing and getting all dizzy because of the fever whenever getting up to cook more tea or when sneezing. Thrilling weekend activities, I tell ya. Sorry, interweb people, but there’s no one else around to moan at. And I still don’t really feel better so I recommend skipping the read if I post again in the next couple of days cause it might only be more actionfilled stories about my flu sufferings being so much crueler than everyone else’s.

Oh, and the Kristof Schreuf show was really good. The songs – (please let’s not compare his new album with mash ups) – and his stories. He reminded me a bit of Columbo (one of the coolest tv detectives of the 70s in case you kids don’t know him): Whenever you thought he would start the next song he paused and came up with another ‘there’s just this one more thing I have to tell you..’. I loved his voice, too, especially in the more quiet songs. He’s got this velvety voice with a bit of raspiness here and there – very nice and intense. And he came across as one of those wonderful and rare idealists whose charisma can fill a room and is so soothing and encouraging.  Idealism not in a ‘I-got-the-solution’ way. It was more the kind of idealism that shimmers through little stories, told with a mix of wittiness and naivity, and is neverever afraid of ridicule. Ach, that’s my favourite kind of (anti)-‘heroes’. Very Dr. Who if I think of it. Basically also very WorldInferno FS. In my feverish little brain. Which the poor me better is off to soothe with more steaming hot tea now before I start blabbering nonsense.

P.S.: Lokale Leidenschaften has put a clip of a bit of the show online: Schreuf ‘s cover of Einstürzende Neubauten’s ‘Prolog’:

P.S.P.S.: Hier gibt’s auch eine ordentliche Konzertbesprechung vom Motorhorst. Und hier noch eine von einem Konzert anderswo, die das ‘Phänomen’ Kristof Schreuf teilweise wirklich gut auf den Punkt bringt.

INK & DAGGER show cancelled. Drummer’s missing.

INK & DAGGER’s drummer disappeared yesterday morning. When yesterday I got the booker’s desperate message ‘I thought things like this only happened in the 90s. We don’t know yet if the show can happen’ my first reaction was a laugh.

Bandfoto

Don’t get me wrong: I’m disappointed about their show here not happening and it sucks for the work/time I put in organising the show, and I feel sorry for the band and booker cause it means a huge loss of money of which both sides don’t have plenty. No worries bout the drummer though – it doesn’t seem something bad happened to him but he just packed all his stuff and left Monday morning after their last UK show – without not even as much as a note where he went and why left for his bandmates. So they have to cancel the rest of the tour.

Still I had to smile at first cause it brought back the memories of a time when touring was so much more chaotic. Today everything is so tidily planned, even with small bands. You got mobile phones and GPS and wi-fi and bands are so much more reasonable…. we wonder how things even worked out before. Memories of driving through cities like Barcelona with just a sloppy ‘drive to city centre, ask people/punx for venue, everyone knows it’ as route description to a venue – aaah, it still seems a miracle that things like this worked out. Of course it’s good that these days tours give bookers/promoters/bands less of a headache but there’s also a bit of the excitement and suspense and adventure gone missing. The funniest and most chaotic tour anecdotes all seem to be from a long time ago. Of course it’s nice if things run smoothly all the time but…but…

So, I hope both band & missing drummer are fine and will have an extra coffee on them right now.

P.S.: I enjoyed last Saturday night quite a lot, the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH and LOVE ACADEMY show (and meeting the guys from the bands!) and Quirin + Philipp’s chaos djing afterwards! Lots of nice people, lots of good chatting, and a bit of tipsiness going on, too. Oh, although – cue obligatory moan for more guests – of course there could have been more people showing up. I’ll stay greedy about this, Nürnberg.