AIDS Wolf

People my age trying to get shocked are kind of quaint.

Hopper seems to be saying:
1) I'm offended
2) These bands suck
3) If these bands didn't suck it would justify the offensiveness (e.g. Albini's gun was loaded so apparently he's OK)

Aside from that morally questionable stance (and Hopper is making a moral argument here), I have a hard time reading this as an AIDS Wolf "takedown" since she didn't even stick around to hear the band. Taken at face value, all her rant tells me is that Bloodyminded may not be very compelling live and AIDS Wolf has an immature merch guy. Um, so what?

It seems short-sighted and narrow-minded to besmirch a varied and variegated noise scene that arguably includes the likes of AIDS Wolf, Prurient, Lightning Bolt, Wolf Eyes, Zeena Parkins, Ikue Mori, Can't/Jessica Rylan, Business Lady, Sightings, The Bunnybrains, No Neck Blues Band, Merzbow, Borbetomagus, Sunn 0))), The Magik Markers, To Live And Shave In LA, Landed, and Sonic Youth.

I'll leave it to someone else to subdivide these bands into their micro-genres, but they frequently play shows with each other, move in the same circles, have overlapping fanbases. Some engage in sub-Whitehouse outrage-baiting tactics, some don't. Painting all "noise bands" with the same broad brush is A PRETTY POINTLESS EXERCISE IN 2005 AD. Always has been.

More stupid and tactless than offensive. Sarah Silverman's act is more offensive. Plus, what does the random spoutings of a guy at a merch booth have to do with anything?

And now I'm offended that you're offended. Offensensitivity.

Instead of performing some socio-feminist-global-policital vivisection of an M.I.A. song, I can just turn off my fucking brain and watch Hair Police ruin an amp.

dude @ merch booth, OK, it's juvenile but not much more offensive than, say, anything else in the world

haha - exactly. Go be offensive where it matters.

But...um, because of Vice they're hard to shock?

I dont know these dudes or Hopper or care about either of them really, but it seemed like you were misrepresenting what she said.

words are sometimes offensive, sure, but "AIDS Wolf gave me AIDS" (while stupid) strikes me as less offensive than 75% of the stuff on "South Park," no? (which is also often stupid)

altho it kind of comes full circle to Hopper's argument -- if it's not offensive, what's the point.

Which leads me to believe that AIDS Wolf / Wolf Eyes shticks are more crimes against music than against sensibilities. Their perceived inability to create strong music accentuates their offensiveness ("that's all there is").

http://tiny.abstractdynamics.org/archives/006237.html

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e334/totalcoward/AIDSWolf.jpg

Isn't she doing both?

Sorry that you had to stumble across this on a cursory google or a link someone forwarded. I'm sorry for this:

http://www.joebrower.com/PHILE_PILE/PIX/FR/can_of_worms.jpg

Your pal,
Christopher

It's funny you quoted, "The band, see, they did not work because I was just annoyed and not, in fact, disgusted." That's the weakest point of the entire piece - she didn't even SEE THE BAND. If she was so concerned about the aesthetics of the band, wouldn't she want to spend some time, um, actually analyzing their music?

ha ha ha, oh plz dude, 110 posts yakking about something you blogged last august is the sincerest form of flattery

I only stayed for one band. Bloodyminded (see above) were still playing when I left.

but go ahead and keep pretending this noise stuff is really pushing people's buttons maaaaaaaan

(and I say this as someone who enjoys a fair bit of it!)

I call the bloom county bite!!!

If you take your aesthetics seriously then aesthetic boredom can easily cause moral outrage ------

but then again someone insisting that they've been bored when they've actually been disturbed is a pretty common gambit -----

But one can be offended without thinking something should be banned - e.g. "defend the speech I find indefensible."

And there are many ways to feel about an offensive band.
1) AIDS Wolf offends me, but I find value in their music.
2) AIDS Wolf doesn't offend me, and I find value in their music.
3) AIDS Wolf offends me, and I find no value in their music.
4) AIDS Wolf doesn't offend me, and I find no value in their music.

I'm still not sure which category Hopper falls in. Maybe I'm projecting, but I sense disgust dripping from her write-up, and I'm not sure if it's exclusively based in "I don't like their music."

Shakey, sorry you feel like giving up. I think this is an interesting discussion.

I think sometimes irony can be powerful, when irony is multi-valent. I feel like the irony of Aids Wolf and some noiseniks (Bloodyminded is by no means new school, then been around since back when Vandermark was still just some dude in Weasel Walters band, so I cannot typify, or broad brush it, as I am wont) -- is not multivalent. I feel like it is flat. I feel like it is a direct responce to emo, and I think bands that might otherwise be good come off as effete freshman art schoolers toying with the idea that nothing is shocking. I do not need everything to be DEEP META TEXTUAL STATEMENTS ON FEMINISM for me to like it. I grew up in the noise scene, my first job was working in the mailroom at Amphetamine Reptile in 1992, and granted, "noise" was different then, but I was exposed to a lot of new musics, experimental and faux-fascist, that was more "interesting" or successfully offensive, like... I forget his name, but the funnabe nazi dude that married Lisa Suckdog? Perhaps that makes me old and traditonal. Perhaps it's just a mark of new punks rejecting old punks moral center, or the evolution of such is whole-handed rejection. Like most punx my age, I learned right and wrong from imbued in the white-shame of Fugazi and the didacts in Olympia--political correctness is what I came up steeped in, so that is still my lens, even though such seems wholly inaapropriate in 2006. But, what is music if you do not take it personal.

I know it's like, against the law to post this long or this earnestly on these boards, but just thought I would clarify and then you can beef out, or whatever it is.

Word,
JH