GIRL TALK Is a Scorpio
Extended Meditation/Rant by Jim Hayes, Part 2
He has given different explanations for the origin of his stage name, once saying that it alluded to a Jim Morrison poem and once saying that it alluded to an early Merzbow side project. Most recently, he attributed the name to a grunge band called Tad, based in Seattle.
The first gig I ever legally drank at was TAD. Merzbow sent me a sticker of a tin teardrop. Philly is the other end of Pennsylvania, a vast black forest state with communist liquor store commissars brooding. I just looked at the Pennsylvania map- I see where he's from, ohhh. No wonder. Western Pennsylvania is twisted Teutonic forest, the evil Monongahela River twists and turns down to WV proper. ‘member when Santa Claus kidnapped the tourists? Fun is watching the expressions of the listeners...
Girl Talk is a medieval conjurer stoking a cauldron of contemporary soup lexicon. Just outside the American suburbs lies the dark forest of antlered shaman dancing with drums-just beyond the final ring of suburban sprawl lie the Appalachian hollow-holler. Yell, cup your hands together over your jaw and announce the approach of a master conjurer, every village needs a shaman. Every village needs an old sad bastard to add up the plugs, the minuses and the many missed cues. It's not so much what Girl Talk uses, it's what he doesn't use.
He should use some PGH history. He should slip in all the underground heroes in bits in pieces over a long hour, the history of alternative music in PGH, Revile. Ideals be fucked. The Five answering the phones on a PBS pledge drive... Your love is your weakness, the beauty of death. The entire art world is just a bunch of rich kids taking drugs.
A loop is repetitive gesture. A trap. A spin. Contemporary music is all about the loop. The endless re-cycle. A beat used over and over again. A guy recites poetry on top of it. Someone takes a song from a long time ago, chops it up and gives it a new beat- and why is he wearing a Pirates hat. Oh, he's from PGH, that's right-did he go to Eides? (Eides is or was Pittsburgh's alternative record and comic store. The guy that started "Disinformation" bought the Re/search about Throbbing Gristle there. Brother Malachi usta shop there. Jeff from Half Life and Greg from the Cynics worked there. I could tell you made-up stories about the heroic foundational period of the PGH punk and industrial scene, but most of my stories are libelous and it's a time I've chosen to forget. Was it really thirty years ago that the Clash played the Stanley?) Who are you without Mohawks and jewelry?
The artist is always the hero. You can't pick up a newspaper or magazine or a history book without a presentation from the author. First person journalism, meta-journalism, meta-musician, professional victim, take your copyright theft like a man who has recently made the writing of a text as important and personal as the reading of a text. You don't know how a camera works. U just know where t'get one fixed.
I made my own Girl Talk loops. I took some of my favorite parts that weren't long enough and I looped them. All by myself. I pretended that I was some Georgian post-industrial blues man. HWY. Psychiatric shootings in PGH, the black jacks offered as 3 river stadium security-the grainy yellow lights of the Liberty Avenue porno shops that sold liquid rush the cops clubbing DeadHeads in the Hill District outside the perpetually evil Civic Arena with its broken retractable dome, PGH where it's always twisted and perpetually cold, the folds of the hills contain the elemental spirits near the ground and restrict their movement.
The New Aesthetic is about plagiarism. Plagiarism is necessary, progress implies it. 2012 reveals the triumph of the collage. Writing is fifty years behind music, behind film, behind other artifacts you can HOLD, no need to be Stuck.
Bran Van 3000 in 1998 and 1999. A really poignant version of the Spinners, I'll be around. It starts with the beach- if she decides to call, I'll be around.
Early mashers like BV3 were much too tame; they were too shy in their approximations. The fact that Girl Talk comes from the industrial tape underground with its long history of post-fluxus appropriation is no surprise. The Haters, Hanatarashi, Merzbow, Vagina Dentata, the Tape Beatles, Blackhumor, Malok, Psychodrama (the ironic thing is that Girl Talk came from Pittsburgh which had such a copycat industrial scene typical of any mid-western city. The magnetic tape underground, embarrassing neo-new wave music with barbed wire graphics-I'm not even gonna Promote the name of a famous NYC music store. The exception was the Plastic Bottles who embarked on an extensive ‘homage to Merz').
Synopsis: Girl Talk is the musical triumph of the collage. He is popular; he gets a ton of people every night. He's enjoyable. He's danceable. He's the one they tried to ignore. Putting a rap by Ludacris on top of "war pigs"... is about driving on 285 in Atlanta because, of course, Ludacris lives in Atlanta. I flashed to my friend Frank. He was Ludacris' photographer as well as an old friend. He was cremated about a half mile from my porch. So the first song on Girl Talk is about my daily commute, literally cos I take 285 too. and I will for the rest of my life, and for the rest of my life the traffic is gonna suck- there's a timelessness to Ozzy talking about war pigs and Ludacris talking about 285 traffic...
He's also easy to discuss in terms of the Duchamp readymade thus agreeable to the post situ-demographic. He's constantly questioning who owns what, when- once a product is designed and released. He is the triumph of the Warhol soup can. The best thing about a can of Campbell's soup is that everyone gets the same one. From the President of Bolivia to the city councilman of Marietta-and everyone in between-they all receive the same can of soup. But unlike the Warhol painting-or perhaps like the Warhol paintings in different colors- everyone listens to music in different ways. This is how Girl Talk hears it. And when I loop my own Girl Talk riffs .I loop them in consequence to other pictures moving on the wall.
"In a far reaching decision, the trial judge ruled that transformation was not sufficient; the artist must also be commenting on the original material and must not be doing this strictly for a commercial purpose." Richard Prince is appealing this decision. ("Copy Right" by Barbara Pollack, Art News, March 2012 pp 82-83).
After the ruling, I imagined that Richard Prince collaborated with the other Prince and he became the first D.J. act to headline Madison Square Garden (D.J.'s do not spin records so much as command computerized sound systems, playing snippets of songs and using them to create their own protracted rhythms) (NYT 4-5-12 Ben Sisario in an article about the popularity of electronic dance music. EDM for short).
Further along he writes: Mr. Richards agreed, saying that the big investors he spoke with did not understand the market.
"You can't just franchise this like McDonald's," he said.
That's right- disco music has suddenly become an authentic experience, like the blues, like the New Christy Minstrels and JFK folk songs. I'm so honored to know this: Crass used to be ideal, now they're just unreal. Maybe people just enjoy lights loud music and drugs-now plagiarism is an authentic musical choice. The triumph of the collage.
"The rave scene won't work at a black club cos it has to be half and half, the white people sell drugs-at a black club all you're gonna get is alcohol, coke & weed-for rave to work it has to have drugs (molly)." The auteur in conversation with a young fan.
The past fifty years that music has been behind writing and behind painting, the youth of America have consistently been attracted to loud music, lights and drugs. I am not a crook nor a whore. Something that Axl Rose said really struck me: "the greed of this industry and the ever present seemingly limitless supply of wannabes and unscrupulous, irresponsible media types." He ain't seen nothin' yet-as a matter of fact I'm going to my sector chief and I'm going to complain about some unscrupulous irresponsible media types myself.
You think GIRL TALK is easy but you're wrong dept.: second girl I ever fucked was a Pavement fan. She turned into an anti-Semitic 9-11 conspiracy NUT. I never liked Pavement. They didn't have thee MAJESTY of Royal Trux, they just didn't get it. They didn't understand that being an artist was glamorous... The artist is the vicarious one you went to high school with- the person you always wanted to pretend to be-but if you think it's easy you're wrong, the price you pay is always too much-life in the new aesthetic fast lane-Girl Talk's high school was south of no North of mine. Chuck D claims that for 1000 downloads of his music he receives $80. That means $920 goes to the recording industry.
The direct quote is again from Ben Sisario: Chuck D's suit cites a hypothetical example whereby 1,000 singles downloaded for 99 cents apiece would earn the artist $80.33 through Universal's accounting, but $315.85 if the same songs were counted as a license (11-3-11, NYT).
Girl Talk is the constitutional right to bear arms. Girl Talk is Dash Snow in an open casket with an open container. Thomas Kinkade the painter of Light Beer.
Consider the greed of this industry and the ever present seemingly limitless supply of wannabes and unscrupulous, irresponsible media types like myself, it seems that making shame more shameful still is perhaps the last full disclosure. Record company man, I won't be coming to dinner.
The memoirs are writing themselves. it's about getting off junk and getting on Suboxone then getting off that. The 120 Loop. The essay about Girl Talk is 20 pages and is really about Dash Snow. I'm reviewing the new Manson book. I'm making one hundred & twenty 21 x 27 collages to go along with the memoirs. To illustrate the text. To make it more Real by existing in physical space. Writers just tell stories- u too will meet the secret police, whether you meet the physical or the psychological police is up to you. Copyright is a fence-like assumed morality-the search for meaning in realistic contemporary narrative-when I lived in PGH I heard NO TREND, they said:
nothing is special, everything is just the same.
Your love is your weakness, the beauty of death. The entire art world is just a bunch of rich kids taking drugs.
DASH SNOW was a post-industrial transcendentalist- his photographs and his masturbation upon newspapers were like a journal of a modern Concord & Merrimac river. He simply recorded what he saw- the shamanistic aspect of jacking off on a newspaper charged the press sympathetically. Each time someone writes his name in the history of 21st century American art is merely recreating the gesture. Dash Snow's art came not from within but from what he decided to LEAVE OUT. He did not have a telephone; he did not have an email address. His source material was the entire history of culture. His Walden Pond was a gas station in Jersey City with the letter "s" burned out of the sign. It merely read "hell."
Take copyright infringement like a Man. There's a drunk avant garde artist in my past. Room for one more plagiarist inside sir. Taking drugs is the New Aesthetic, the Narcotic Anonymous confession is the new Fluxus multiple- that night I saw Beck in a wig. Who are you without jewelry? Girl Talk is like a runway light at the airport. Thomas Kinkade's private jet is refueling on its way to hell. There have always been circuses and community fairs. People have always listened to music. The idea that you can experience the music only once is ridiculous. ‘Name me someone who is not a parasite and I'll go out & say a prayer for them.' The endless supply of faggot junkie irresponsible media types. The abstract use of critics is obviously the symbolic representation of conceptualizations of phenomena. My name's Jim, I'm a recovering rock critic-HI Jim-thanks for sharing. It was a potlatch of electronic consumer goods.
It could be too late to write poetry, perhaps we should just MAKE poetry become all the way alive- looting is natural in a society filled with splendor and festive occasions. Wouldn't you?
If Girl Talk made a record out of toothpicks would it sound like the Haters?
-JH, Marietta, Georgia; 12 May 12
(2 answer A ? be4 it is asked: short count is when a dealer steals dope from a bag, giving you less than the agreed upon amount- w/pharmaceuticals there is no ‘short count' it IS what it IS-unless it's a bootleg. If it's counterfeit it could be a short count, but you won't know till you shoot it, shake it, snort it or shove it up your ass. A word to the wise guy.)