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dustedmagazine · 1 month

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Butthole Surfers — Rembrandt Pussyhorse (Matador)

Photo by Jerry Milton

Given the amount of ink spilled and pixels configured concerning the music and cultural phenomena associated with the Butthole Surfers, it seems a daunting task to find anything new to say about the band — even about a record as excellent as Rembrandt Pussyhorse, first released 38 years ago (say what) on Touch and Go and presently being given the vinyl reissue treatment by Matador. But two things obviate the perceived difficulty registered just above: somehow, someway, Rembrandt Pussyhorse sounds like it could have come out yesterday on some currently über-hip, punk-adjacent underground label (say, Feel It Records from Cincinnati, or London’s La Vida Es un Mus); and for certain, it feels a very particular, vividly upsetting sort of way to listen to these demented, raging and inspired songs in March of 2024, as we struggle and lurch our way toward spring.

For example: Give “Strangers Die Everyday” a spin and try not to think about Gaza. That shouldn’t be a compelling match, of past music with present, all-too-real event. The song features a nigh-histrionic, Bela-Lugosi-as-the-Count organ, plastic fangs chewing on cheap, drywall scenery. Gibby Haynes does some of his bullhorn-mediated vocal antics, and sounds of bad plumbing bubble up into the mix. It’s the Butts in nightmare mode, which was always a vertiginous blend of ruthless ugliness and brain-rattled hilarity, and there is nothing funny about Gaza. Nothing at all. But keep listening. “Strangers Die Everyday” ends up expressing a deranged pathos. The organ is hammy, but the melody is mournful. The glurping, glooping bubbling evokes looking down a mostly stopped-up drain, which is always a bum-out experience, woven into the textures of the “Everyday” world nodded to in the song’s title. It situates the sadness and disgust in a feeling tone. But just exactly where is your everyday world? If you can tune in and make an additional metaphorical leap (to all the drains in Gaza, and in Myanmar, and in Ethiopia, and elsewhere, all of them backed up and drowned by unstanched cataracts of blood, from the bodies of all of those strangers), you will feel a particular sort of weight in your gut.

The Butts’ best stuff always worked the spaces in which earnestness, nausea and a decidedly bonkers mirthfulness overlap. Perhaps “collide” is a better word for the music’s resulting dynamic. In their early recordings, you can hear them bashing and stumbling their way toward ever-more-effective smash-ups of sharply opposing affects: the delirious one-two punch of “Suicide” and “The Revenge of Anus Presley” from Butthole Surfers (1983); the ebullient, anxious, headlong hallucination that is “Dum Dum” from …Another Man’s Sac (1984). The best performance of that sort of collision on Rembrandt Pussyhorse is “Perry,” which initially registers as a hyperbolic parody of the theme music to Perry Mason. Natch, let the laffs commence. The organ is back, but this time it’s in full Phantom-of-the-Opera mode, rollicking and tempestuous, Lon Chaney grinning horribly. Haynes delivers the laffs, howling and whooping himself breathless.

Keep listening. “Perry” takes its turn toward something more than parodic goofiness when Haynes provides a series of anaphoric itineraries: “It’s about coming of age / It’s about learning how to do it / It’s about learning how to experience things the way they ought to be experienced….” And so on. It’s a reckless thing, following Haynes into that improvisatory philosophical space: How, precisely, should things be experienced? What would a Butthole Surfer say? “It’s talking about being the slave boy / It’s talking about giving head when you’re 6 years old / It’s talking about enjoying these things….” You can just about see Raymond Burr blanch, even in black and white — and sure, it’s the Butts being the Butts, invoking a series of transgressive, taboo images, perhaps only for the charge of the transgression itself.

But there are other ways to hear the transgression. We might take the reference to Perry Mason a little more seriously. In the summer of 1986, just months after Rembrandt Pussyhorse was released, the Meese Commission on Pornography published its final report, a Puritanical screed that sought to throw the full moral weight of the Justice Department (yeah, yeah, I know) behind a juridical condemnation and potential outlawing of sex work, porn consumption and kink. The most liberal — in the hard sense of that word — readings of the Report’s recommendations would likely sanction tossing a band called the Butthole Surfers and songs like “Perry” (and “Lady Sniff,” “The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey’s Grave,” “Moving to Florida,” and later just about every song on Locust Abortion Technician and Hairway to Steven…) onto the pile with all the copies of Hustler and Torso and the endless numbers of VCAvideocassettes — not to mention the models and actors themselves, and all the folks who watched them and looked at them and felt pleasure.

It's not a hard history to uncover when you listen closely. Reagan’s reinvigoration of the American Right in part drew upon Jerry Falwell’s political turn, and the idea that evangelicals could have real power if they participated in the electorate, rather than regarding it as the fallen domain of a lesser law. In 2024, the Republican Party takes that evangelical vote for granted, and its full complicity with the array of MAGA-affiliated constituencies has created a new set of political alliances, issuing in events like January 6 and the Q Shaman leading a prayer service in the evacuated Senate chamber. Not sure even Haynes could conjure that image. Return to the record. The echoes of Raymond Burr’s voice, in full closing-statement declamation, reverberate out from “Perry” to the Butts’ magisterial cover of “American Woman”: “All right, you little creep, come out of there! We know your name!” We’ve got you surrounded! Where’s Mike Pence?

No one would argue that the Butts possessed anything like socio-political prescience when they recorded Rembrandt Pussyhorse. They were too busy experiencing things the way they had to experience them, to make the music that they had to make. And some of us enjoyed it. Still do. That may be reason enough to return to the record — or to reissue it. But the band somehow tapped into some very serious energies circulating in the mid-1980s: the Reagan Administration’s bloody-minded Christian nationalism (read some of his speeches, you’ll hear it); the Israeli Labor Party’s “Iron Fist” policy of 1985 and the accompanying intensification of settler activity, all of which would soon lead to the First Intifada. And here we are: Gaza on fire and self-identified Christian Nationalists like MTG and Tommy Tuberville setting policy. Here we are, in the “Whirling Hall of Knives” Haynes and Paul Leary and the rest of the band set in motion in 1986. Even today, especially today, it cuts deep. It draws blood. Strangers die everyday.

Jonathan Shaw

#butthole surfers #rembrandt pussyhorse #matador #jonathan shaw #albumreview #dusted magazine #reissue

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behindthescreamz · 4 months

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behind the scenes of “terrifier 2” (2022)

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bebx · 1 year

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David Howard Thornton (Art the Clown himself!) just shared this on his Instagram story 😂

He’s so funny. I love him so much 🫶🏻💗🥹

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chriscdcase95 · 1 year

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Terrifier 3 predictions

Edit: as of November of 2023, and Terrifier 3’a actual preview, this post is outdated.

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Read the title. It may be a little early to make predications (edit: yup) on the third Terrifier, but it’s been on my mind for a while now.

I’ve been writing these down since the DVD release, but I’m just getting to editing and posting them now.

So I’m just gonna stop wasting time with introductions, and get to the list.

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1. It'll be set on the same night as Terrifier 2.

Damien Leone said the third movie picks up right after 2, and seeing as it’s implied to be just after Sienna decapitates Art, I doubt there’ll be a time skip. It may even homage something like Halloween II or Halloween Kills.

With this in mind, Sienna and Jonathan wouldn’t have had time to recuperate after their fight with Art; and assuming Sienna gets any kind of “Angel” powers to counter Art’s she wouldn’t have enough time to master her them.

This would allow Sienna to learn to master these powers over the movie, and keep her from being this invincible OP hero.

2. Terrifier 3 will have a hospital setting.

Again, maybe as a homage to Halloween II, but a lot of my predictions have to do with characters going to a hospital or two.

Which kind, I don’t know. An emergency room would be most likely for Jonathan at least, but Art and the Possessed Vicky are in a psychiatric clinic. I can’t think of a believable reason they’d be in the same building. Maybe the staff are forced to take Vicky to the hospital, but wouldn’t the ward have its own medical wing ?

Maybe I’m overthinking it.

It should be noted that Damien Leone also wanted to make a feature film based off The 9th Circle short film (Art’s debut). Before that idea was scrapped, its story would have involved teenagers being trapped in an abandoned hospital, overrun by demons.

Leone already recycled some of his old ideas for Terrifier 2; Sienna herself was based on a character he wanted to write back in 2008, so I can see him reviving some of the scrapped film here.

It might even be dubbed something like “Terrifier: The 9th Circle”.

Which leads us too…

3. Art will be out of commission for much of the movie…I mean, he’s literally a head at this point. But this would lead to other threats taking the stand.

I’m talking about The 9th Circle demons. Art is practically backed up by the forces of Hell, and apparently he’s important enough to them that his resurrection is a must.

So what I’m picturing is these demons stepping into the fray. If they go the hospital route, and revise The 9th Circle, these demons would take over the hospital, killing in Art’s place while rebuilding his body.

For example, they would kill and mutilate staff and patients for body parts/organs, Frankenstien-ing a body for Art to reattach his head.

Plus it gives Sienna something to build her power on. She wouldn’t just be fighting Art himself, but numerous demons of different varieties and powers. Think Die Hard in a demon infested hospital.

4. If Art is out of commission, we may learn some of his backstory. Being a reanimated head, it’s not like Art can do much of anything besides think.

So to pass the time, we’d get flashbacks here and there about Art’s past with Art thinking about how he got here…but they will subvert the typical slasher villain sob story, and keep him unsympathetic.

Here’s some examples, off the top of my head.

Art was bullied as a child ? Well, who doesn’t get bullied ? Plus, it would turn out the bullying he suffered was mere teasing, or at least pretty tame compared to more severe examples of bullying. Carrie White, he is not.

If they build up an abusive parents backstory ? It turns out his parents were well meaning, if strict and disconnected, at worst. The examples of “abuse” Art apparently suffered consisted of having to do mundane chores around the house every now and then.

If Art had someone in his life who left him and broke his heart ? Art was an emotionally distant boyfriend (at best) especially when it was clear his partner was going through something that he was indifferent too.

Alternatively, whoever broke Art’s heart wasn’t romantically involved with him in the first place; Art just had a really bad case of “Nice Guy Syndrome”.

Again, these are just examples I’d think of; things that wouldn’t make Art tragic or sympathetic, or even explain why he such a raasclaat pulling this kind of buffoonery.

5. Going with the above, if - and that’s a Big IF - we get any kind of face/voice reveal for Art, they’re gonna pull the “They Look Just Like Everyone Else” card.

It'd revealed that underneath his clown getup, Art isn’t actually deformed; his silent clown gimmick is just that; his costume is just that. His pointy nose ? Prosthetics. His rotting teeth ? Dentures you could pick up at a Halloween store.

If we ever see Art without his makeup (or prosthetics), it’s just David Howard Thorton’s normal face. Art may not even be a genuine mute; his silence would just be part of the shtick. If we hear Art’s speak, it’s just David Howard Thorton’s natural speaking voice.

The reason why no one was able to find Art over the years isn’t supernatural or that he just has a good hiding spot; he just has such a mundane and casual appearance and demeanor.

You wouldn’t think to question the guy minding his own business at the pancake house, or the grocery store, or hanging around the mall.

You could be sitting across the table from Art at a dinner date, remarking about the Miles County Massacre, and you wouldn’t be the wiser as he nods and smiles.

Think Machine’s face reveal from 8MM, and you’ll get a good idea of what I’m talking about.

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Going with this, if they want to do an “Art gets away” cliffhanger…it would just be Art getting out of his costume and makeup dressing in mundane clothes and blending into a crowd.

6. If Allie’s alive...it’ll be a “Be Careful What You Wish For” twist.

Allie has become a popular supporting character, even with (and partially because) of her infamous “death” scene. So much so, a portion fanbase wants her to come back in the third movie.

And to be fair, we don’t see her expire…

But there’s a catch. In the first Terrifier, Vicky survives Art’s attack and is left mutilated and disfigured. In the original Terrifier short, Art purposefully keeps a victim alive and heavily mutilated for his amusement.

What I’m getting at is if Allie is still alive after all of that…we can only expect her to be in this miserable state, left heavily mutilated and disfigured from Art’s attack.

If this goes for the hospital route, Sienna may pay her a visit, and the scene may be played as a Tear Jerker; practically nudging at the audience saying “Well, you wanted her alive! Are you happy ?”

And that’s not counting the possibility of Art or one of his demonic partners tormenting a hospitalized Allie throughout.

One upside I can see is, if Sienna is gaining angelic powers…angels are often depicted as having this power to heal others.

Now, I’m not saying I see Sienna magically restoring Allie’s body and undoing her mutilation…but maybe a scene where she takes Allie’s physical pain away, and causes Allie to feel an uncontrollable rush of happiness/relief.

Not sure if I can see Damien Leone doing something this hopeful, but it’d be nice to see. I was listening to Robbie Williams’ “Angels” when I wrote this part down.

#terrifier #terrifier 2 #art the clown #sienna shaw #little pale girl #jonathan shaw #allie terrifier #damien leone #david howard thornton #elliot fullam #amelie mclain #casey hartnett #all hollows eve #the 9th circle #Youtube

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arttheclown · 9 months

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i have written another terrifier fic! this one gives art’s perspective during the infamous slapping scene from T2, as well as the moments leading up to barbara’s death. mind the tags because this one deals with some heavier subject matter than usual. enjoy! �� 🖤 🤍

#art the clown #terrifier #jonathan shaw #sienna shaw #barbara shaw #siennart #sid’s fics #this one goes into art’s backstory some more #which you guys are free to ask me about if you like!!#the art is by tony btw

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sieallie · 6 months

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getting out of my comfort zone with these designs

Also wip or something I’m trying to speed run for a con

#terrifier 2 #sienna shaw #jonathan shaw #barbra shaw #furry art #furry #some of their markings represent death spots #sienna is my favorite design bc she has a lot of references #Barbra was my hardest because I couldn’t think of markings so she may not look like herself #terrifier

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eastsidemags · 14 days

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Elliott Fullam LIVE with Joe Allocco

You probably know Elliott Fullam from his co-lead role in Terrifier 2 and Terrifier 3 as Jonathan Shaw but did you know this guy can rock too?

We’re hosting a FREE SHOW featuring Elliott and local music living legend Joe Allocco on April 27 at 6pm!

Come by and check out the awesome jams!

#Elliott Fullam #Terrifier 2 #Terrifier 3 #Jonathan Shaw #rock #music #free show #legend #Joe Allocco #jams #East Side Mags #Montclair #NJ #New Jersey #Montclair NJ #07042 #fun

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reginaldqueribundus · 9 months

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Star Trek TOS: what if the captain was a slut who got in fights all the time and did whatever the hell he wanted and it all sort of worked out anyway

TNG: what if the captain drank tea and gave speeches instead

DS9: what if the captain was a single father and religious figure trying to hold onto his morals in the face of an existential threat

Voyager: what if the captain was trying to get her unruly scout troop back home and also she had a GUN

Enterprise: what if the captain was a massive dweeb

Kelvin timeline: what if the first guy was actually a horny frat boy

Disco: what if the captain was a cryptofascist? no wait, what if he was just sooooooo handsome, like so mind-meltingly handsome that is just feels unfair? wait, what if he was a deer? no actually what if she did whatever the hell she wanted, but also felt emotions about it?

Picard: what if the captain was a secondary character driven into solitude by his PTSD, and then we suddenly replaced him with some dipshit from Chicago

Lower Decks: what if the captain was your well-meaning perfectionist mother

Prodigy: what if the captain was a purple teenager

SNW: what if the captain was your dad

#star trek #a post by me™#jim kirk #jean luc picard #benjamin sisko #kathryn janeway #jonathan archer #michael burnham #christopher pike #cristobal rios #carol freeman #dal r'el #gabriel lorca #saru #liam shaw #1k

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arcticdementor · 2 years

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(link)

#twitter #screenshot #marquis de posade #the telegraph #jonathan shaw

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brw · 3 months

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your life is a gift. use it better.

brieuc's 1k celebration: 🤖 interest edit for @xanthezhou!

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dustedmagazine · 2 months

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Listening Post: Kim Gordon

Kim Gordon has long been one of rock’s female icons, one of a tiny handful of women to get much play in Michael Azzerad’s underground-defining Our Band Could Be Your Life and a mainstay in the noise-rock monolith Sonic Youth. It’s hard to imagine that quintessential dude rock band without Gordon in front, dwarfed by her bass or spitting tranced out, pissed off verses over the storm of feedback.

Yet Gordon’s trajectory has been, if anything, even more fascinating since Sonic Youth’s demise in 2011. A visual artist first — she studied art at the Otis College of Art and Design before joining the band — she continues to paint and sculpt and create. She’s had solo art shows at established galleries in London and New York, most recently at the 303 Gallery in New York City. A veteran of indie films including Gus van Zant’s Last Days and Todd Haynes I’m Not There, she has also continued to act sporadically, appearing in the HBO series Girls and on an episode of Portlandia. Her memoir, Girl in a Band, came out in 2015.

But Gordon has remained surprisingly entrenched in indie music over the last decade. Many critics, including a few at Dusted, consider her Body Head, collaboration with Bill Nace the best of the post-Sonic Youth musical projects. The ensemble has now produced two EPs and three full-lengths. Gordon has also released two solo albums, which push her iconic voice into noisier, more hip hop influenced directions. We’re centering this listening post around The Collective, Gordon’s second and more recent solo effort, which comes out on Matador on March 8th, but we’ll likely also be talking about her other projects as well.

Intro by Jennifer Kelly

Jennifer Kelly: I missed No Home in 2019, so I was somewhat surprised by The Collective’s abrasive, beat-driven sound though I guess you could make connections to Sonic Youth’s Cypress Hill collaboration?

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The more I listen to it, though, the more it makes sense to me. I’ve always liked the way Gordon plays with gender stereotypes, and “I’m a Man” certainly follows that trajectory. What are you guys hearing in The Collective?

Jonathan Shaw: I have only listened through the entire record once, but I am also struck by its intensities. Sort of silly to be surprised by that, given so many of the places she has taken us in the past: noisy, dangerous, dark. But there's an undercurrent of violence to these sounds that couples onto the more confrontational invocations and dramatizations of sex. It's a strong set of gestures. I like the record quite a bit.

Bill Meyer: I'm one of those who hold Body/Head to be the best effort of the post-Sonic Youth projects, but I'll also say that it's very much a band that creates a context for Gordon to do something great, not a solo effort. I was not so taken with No Home, which I played halfway through once upon its release and did not return to until we agreed to have this discussion. I've played both albums through once now, and my first impression is that No Home feels scattered in a classic post-band-breakup project fashion — “let's do a bit of this and that and see what sticks.” The Collective feels much more cohesive sonically, in a purposeful, “I'm going to do THIS” kind of way.

Jonathan Shaw: RE Jennifer's comment about “I'm a Man”: Agreed. The sonics are very noise-adjacent, reminding me of what the Body has been up to lately, or deeper underground acts like 8 Hour Animal or Kontravoid's less dancy stuff. Those acts skew masculine (though the Body has taken pains recently to problematize the semiotics of those photos of them with lots of guns and big dogs...). Gordon's voice and lyrics make things so much more explicit without ever tipping over into the didactic. And somehow her energy is in tune with the abrasive textures of the music, but still activates an ironic distance from it. In the next song, “Trophies,” I love it when she asks, “Will you go bowling with me?” The sexed-up antics that follow are simultaneously compelling and sort of funny. Rarely has bowling felt so eroticized.

Jennifer Kelly: I got interested in the beats and did a YouTube dive on some of the other music that Justin Raisen has been involved with. He's in an interesting place, working for hip hop artists (Lil Yachty, Drake), pop stars (Charli XCX) and punk or at least punk adjacent artists (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Viagra Boys), but nothing I've found is as raw and walloping as these cuts.

“The Candy House” is apparently inspired by Jennifer Egan's The Candy House, which is about a technology that enables people to share memories... Gordon is pretty interested in phones and communications tech and how that's changing art and human interaction.

Andrew Forell: My immediate reaction to the beats was oh, The Bug and JK Flesh, in particular the MachineEPs by the former and Sewer Bait by the latter. Unsurprisingly, as Jonathan says, she sounds right at home within that kind of dirty noise but is never subsumed by it

Jennifer Kelly: I don't have a deep reference pool in electronics, but it reminded me of Shackleton and some of the first wave dub steppers. Also, a certain kind of late 1990s/early aughts underground hip hop like Cannibal Ox and Dalek.

Bryon Hayes: Yeah, I hear some Dalek in there, too. Also, the first Death Grips mixtape, Ex-Military.

It's funny, I saw the track title “I'm a Man,” and my mind immediately went to Bo Diddley for some reason, I should have known that Kim would flip the script, and do it in such a humorous way. I love how she sends up both the macho country-lovin’ bros and the sensitive metrosexual guys. It's brilliant!

This has me thinking about “Kool Thing”, and how Chuck D acts as the ‘hype man’ to Kim Gordon in that song. I'm pretty sure that was unusual for hip hop at the time. Kim's got a long history of messing with gender stereotypes.

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Bill Meyer: Gordon did a couple videos for this record, and she starred her daughter Coco in both of them. The one for “I'm A Man” teases out elements of gender fluidity, how that might be expressed through clothing, and different kinds of watching. I found the video for “Bye Bye” more interesting. All the merchandise that's listed in the video turns out to be a survival kit, one that I imagine that Gordon would know that she has to have to get by. The protagonist of the video doesn't know that, and their unspoken moment in a car before Coco runs again was poignant in a way that I don't associate with her work. And of messing with hip hop!

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Tim Clarke: “Bye Bye” feels like a companion to The Fall’s “Dr Buck’s Letter.”

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Bill Meyer: From The Unutterable? I'll have to a-b them.

Tim Clarke: That’s the one.

Jonathan Shaw: All of these comments make me think of the record’s title, and the repeated line in “The Candy House”: “I want to join the collective.” Which one? The phone on the record’s cover nods toward our various digital collectives — spaces for communication and expression, and spaces for commerce, all of which seem to be harder and harder to tell apart. A candy house, indeed. Why is it pink? Does she have a feminine collective in mind? A feminine collective unconscious? The various voices and lyric modes on the record suggest that's a possibility. For certain women, and for certain men working hard to understand women, Gordon has been a key member of that collective for decades.

Jennifer Kelly: The title is also the title of a painting from her last show in New York.

The holes are cell phone sized.

You can read about the show here, but here's a representative quote: “The iPhone promises freedom, and control over communication,” she says. “It’s an outlet of self-expression, and an escape and a distraction from the bigger picture of what’s going on in the world. It’s also useful for making paintings.”

Gordon is a woman, and a woman over 70 at that — by any measure an underrepresented perspective in popular culture. However, I’d caution against reading The Collective solely as a feminist statement. “I'm a Man,” for instance, is told from the perspective of an incel male, an act of storytelling and empathy not propaganda. My sense is that Gordon is pretty sick of being asked, “What's it like to be a girl in a band?” (per “Sacred Trickster”) and would like, maybe, to be considered as an artist.

It's partly a generational thing. I'm a little younger than she is, but we both grew up in the patriarchy and mostly encountered gender as an external restriction.

As an aside, one of my proudest moments was when Lucas Jensen interviewed me about what it was like to be a freelance music writer, anonymously, and Robert Christgau wrote an elaborate critique of the piece that absolutely assumed I was a guy. If you're not on a date or getting married or booking reproductive care, whose business is it what gender you are?

There, that's a can of worms, isn't it?

Jonathan Shaw: Feminine isn't feminist. I haven't listened nearly closely enough to the record to hazard an opinion about that. More important, it seems to me the masculine must be in the feminine unconsciousness, and the other way around, too. Precisely because femininity has been used as a political weapon, it needs imagining in artistic spaces. Guess I also think those terms more discursively than otherwise: there are male authors who have demonstrated enormous facility with representing femininity. James, Joyce, Kleist, and so on. Gordon has always spoken and sung in ways that transcend a second-wave sort of feminine essence. “Shaking Hell,” “PCH,” the way she sings “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”

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Jennifer Kelly: Sure, she has always been shape-shifter artistically.

The lyrics are super interesting, but almost obliterated by noise. I’m seeing a connection to our hyperconnected digital society where everything is said but it’s hard to listen and focus.

Bill Meyer: Concrete guy that I am, I’ve found myself wishing I had a lyric sheet even though her voice is typically the loudest instrument in the mix.

Andrew Forell: Yes, that sense of being subsumed in the white noise of (dis)information and opinion feels like the utopian ideal of democratizing access has become a cause and conduit of alienation in which the notion of authentic voices has been rendered moot. It feels integral to the album as a metaphor

Christian Carey: How much of the blurring of vocals (good lyrics — mind you) might involve Kim’s personal biography, I wonder? From her memoirs, we know how much she wished for a deflection of a number of things, most having to do with Thurston and the disbandment of SY.

Thurston was interviewed recently and said that he felt SY would regroup and be able to be professional about things. He remarked that it better be soon: SY at eighty wouldn’t be a good look!

Andrew Forell: And therein lies something essential about why that could never happen

Ian Mathers: I know I’m far in the minority here (and elsewhere) because I’ve just never found Sonic Youth that compelling, despite several attempts over the years to give them another chance. And for specifically finding Thurston Moore to be an annoying vocal presence (long before I knew anything about his personal life, for what it's worth). So, I’m in no hurry to see them reunite, although I do think it would be both funny and good if everyone except Moore got back together.

Having not kept up with Gordon much post-SY beyond reading and enjoying her book, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this record. After a couple of listens, I’m almost surprised how much I like it. Even though I’m lukewarm on SY’s music, she’s always been a commanding vocal presence and lyricist and that hasn’t changed here (I can echo all the praise for “I’m a Man,” and also “I was supposed to save you/but you got a job” is so bathetically funny) and I like the noisier, thornier backing she has here. I also think the parts where the record gets a bit more sparse (“Shelf Warmer”) or diffuse (“Psychic Orgasm”) still work. I've enjoyed seeing all the comparisons here, none of which I thought of myself and all of which makes sense to me. But the record that popped into my head as I listened was Dead Rider’s Chills on Glass. Similar beat focus, “thick”/distorted/noisy/smeared production, declamatory vocals. I like that record a lot, so it's not too surprising I'm digging this one.

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Jennifer Kelly: I loved Sonic Youth but have zero appetite for the kind of nostalgia trip, just the hits reunion tour that getting back together would entail.

Jonathan Shaw: Yeah, no thanks to that.

RE Christian's comment: Not sure I see deflection so much as the impossibility of integration. We are all many, many selves, always have been. Digital communications interfaces and social media have just lifted it to another level of experience. Gordon sez, “I don't miss my mind.” Not so much a question of missing it in the emotional/longing sense, more so acknowledging that phrases like “my mind” have always been meaningless. Now we partition experience and identity into all of these different places, and we sign those pieces of ourselves over, to Zuck and the algorithms. We know it. We do it anyways, because it's the candy house, full of sweets and pleasures that aren't so good for us, but are really hard to resist. “Come on, sweets, take my hand...”

Bill Meyer: I would not mind hearing all of those SY songs I like again, can’t lie, although I don’t think that I’d spend Love Earth Tour prices to hear them. But given the water that has passed under the bridge personally, and the length of time since anyone in the band has collaborated creatively (as opposed to managing the ongoing business of Sonic Youth, which seems to be going pretty well), a SY reunion could only be a professionally presented piece of entertainment made by people who have agreed to put aside their personal differences and pause their artistic advancement in order to make some coin. There may be good reasons to prioritize finances. Maybe Thurston and/or Kim wants to make sure that they don’t show up on Coco’s front door, demanding to move their record or art collection into her basement, in their dotage. And Lee’s a man in his late 60s with progeny who are of an age to likely have substantial student loan debt. But The Community is just the kind of thing they’d have to pause. It feels like the work of someone who is still curious, questioning, commenting. It's not just trying to do the right commercial thing.

Justin Cober-Lake: I’m finding this one to be a sort of statement album. I’d stop short of calling it a concept album, but there seems to be a thematic center. I think a key element of the album is the way that it looks for... if not signal and noise, at least a sense of order and comprehensibility in a chaotic world. Gordon isn’t even passing judgment on the world — phones are bad, phones are good, phones make art, etc. But there’s a sense that our world is increasingly brutal, and we hear that not just in the guitars, but in the beats, and the production. “BYE BYE” really introduces the concept. Gordon’s leaving (and we can imagine this is autobiographical), but she’s organizing everything she needs for a new life. “Cigarettes for Keller” is a heartbreaking line, but she moves on, everything that makes up a life neatly ordered next to each other, iBook and medications in the same line. It reminds me of a Hemingway character locking into the moment to find some semblance of control in the chaos.

Getting back to gender, there’s a funny line at the end: one of the last things she packs is a vibrator. I'm not sure if we're to read this as a joke, a comment on the necessity of sexuality in a life full of transitory moments, as a foreshadowing of the concepts we’ve discussed, or something else. The next item (if it’s something different) is a teaser, which could be a hair care product or something sexual (playing off — or with — the vibrator). Everything's called into question: the seriousness of the track, the gender/sexuality ideas, what really matters in life. Modern gadgets, life-sustaining medicines, and sex toys all get equal rank. That tension really adds force to the song.

Coming out of “BYE BYE,” it's easy to see a disordered world that sounds extremely noisy, but still has elements we can comprehend within the noise. I don’t want to read the album reductively and I don't think it's all about this idea, but it's something that, early on in my listening, I find to be a compelling aspect of it.

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#dusted magazine #listeningpost #kim gordon #the collective #jennifer kelly #jonathan shaw #bill meyer #andrew forell #bryon hayes #tim clarke #christian carey #ian mathers #justin cober-lake

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thesadvampire · 2 years

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Absolutely living for the recent rise of long haired Latino + their government assigned white boy

I will protect Argyle and Robin with my LIFE

#stranger things #argyle #robin arellano #jonathan byers #finney blake #finney shaw #the black phone

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vertigoartgore · 5 months

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Krakoa's Quiet Council by Mike Deodato Jr. (Powers of X #1 cover).

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chriscdcase95 · 1 year

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(We are in a radio station, witnessing Art the Clown over power and wrestle a radio DJ to the floor, while the Little Pale Girl looks on with her wicked grin.)

(There station is adorned with Halloween decorations and the DJ is dressed in a red devil costume. Art is in the process of crucifying the DJ to the floor; his muffled screams indicate he's either gagged or had his tongue removed, but he is unfortunately still alive.)

(The Little Pale looks to see the station is getting calls in. With a click of the button, the Little Pale Girl takes her seat and starts speaking in the DJ's voice.)

Little Pale Girl: “Caller, you're on! How can we, at W.616, help you tonight on this All Hallows Eve ?”

Caller (a young man, early to mid twenties): “Uh hi, I'm just calling in to see if everything's alright. Y-you guys cut off for a minute there.”

Little Pale Girl (still mimicking the DJ's voice, though there's a slight nervous edge about it): “Uh, we had a slight weapons malfunction, but uh... everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you ?”

Caller: (sighs reluctantly) “I’ve...I've been better.”

Little Pale Girl (still mimicking the DJ): “Well, tell me what's up, Tom ?”

Caller: “I never said my...Okay, there's this girl. We go way back in high school, y'know ? We used to be an item, but we're still friends.”

Little Pale Girl: (still mimicking the DJ) “Aaaand ?”

(As she's speaking, Art takes two other nails, lining them up with the DJ's nostrils, readying his hammer.)

Caller: “She's engaged, with another friend of ours. And I want to be happy for them but-”

Little Pale Girl: (mimicking the DJ) “Are you feeling nostalgic ?”

Caller: “I just...I can't help but feel something's great slipping through my fingers.”

Little Pale Girl: (Still speaking in the DJ’s voice, presses the tips of her fingers together, nodding) “Mmhmm, mmhmm, I see. I see. Tell me Tom, have you heard about the Lonesome Loser ?”

Caller: “I-I don't think so.”

Little Pale Girl: (as the DJ) “He was beaten by the Queen of Hearts everytime. He's a loser, but he still keeps on trying. And that's why he's a loser, Tom; he doesn't know when to quit.”

Caller: “I...I-”

Little Pale Girl: (As the DJ) “Tell me Tom, are you still friends with her ?”

Caller: “Yeah ?”

Little Pale Girl: (as the DJ) “And her fiancé ?”

Caller: “I mean we both met him in college, but it's like-”

Little Pale Girl: (as the DJ) “You care about them both, but you're starting to miss the good old days. Now Tom, take it from someone who knows-”

(As she's saying this, Art is using a pair of pliers to yank at the DJ's teeth. Art, apparently listening in on the conversation, nods in agreement with what she’s saying.)

Little Pale Girl: (as the DJ) “It's easy to get caught up in the past, and grieving the past as our lives begin to change. Now we all miss what once was, but by clinging to it, and trying to pull others with you, it keeps things from going forward. Today is a gift, that's why it is called the present. The best thing, for your friends and yourself, is for you to be supportive of them moving forward. They clearly want you to be part of their lives.”

Caller: “I...I guess.”

Little Pale Girl: (as the DJ) “No. You know. Guesses are assumptions of what we can’t be unsure of.”

(The Little Pale Girl regards Art, having yanked out the DJ's teeth, passing her a golden tooth. The two share a clap together, as Art begins pouring gas on the DJ's still living body.)

Little Pale Girl: (puts on a record, speaking over the initial instrumental, still speaking in the DJ’s voice) “Now you're listening to BL. Z Bubb, and I'm gonna be keeping you company right here, on the midnight shift.”

(The Little Pale Girl leans back in the chair with a relaxed expression on her face, taking a drink from the DJ's mug.)

Tracy Chapman (playing on the record): “You got a fast car/I want a ticket to anywhere/Maybe we make a deal/Maybe together we can get somewhere/Anyplace is better/Starting from zero, got nothing to lose/Maybe we'll make something/Me, myself, I got nothing to prove...”

#terrifier 2 #inocrrect quotes #art the clown #little pale girl #sienna shaw #jonathan shaw #david howard thornton #amelie mclain #horror #slashers

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arttheclown · 1 year

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alright. this is hopefully going to be the last time i post about the subject but i’d like to set the record straight about the “art is sienna’s dad” theory - most importantly, why it doesn’t hold any water due to extensive evidence that has already been presented to us both within the franchise itself and from behind-the-scenes material / social media stuff involving the cast & crew.

putting this under a cut because this is gonna get lengthy.

whether or not the 9th circle / all hallows’ eve films are still canon to the terrifier universe is debatable at this point, but it’s been confirmed that art’s cat of nine tails (flail) is made up of hair braids taken from previous victims. he had this weapon in the original terrifier, which reveals that the exterminators, the pizza guys, the cat lady, dawn, and tara were not his first victims. therefore, wouldn’t have sienna, jon and barb would have noticed the man of the house was going out in a clown suit and killing people?

the shaws would have surely noticed that art shared the same green eyes, height and build of their supposed father - especially jon, who is intensely observant and researches A Lot. if there were any real intentional ties there, he probably would have put those pieces together a lot sooner & brought it to the attention of his mother and sister.

jonathan appears to possess some degree of telepathic connection with art and/or the little pale girl & never mentions any sense of familiarity. all he says, quite blatantly, is that he doesn’t know what the clowns want beyond needing sienna in a certain location at a certain time.

we literally have a little girl running around who looks just like art (more about this on this post here). if they want a daughter figure for him, there is already one who intentionally resembles him and behaves as if she were his child, or at least pretending to be; not to mention that emily crane is explicitly mentioned to come from a family of mimes and clowns.

the cast and crew (damien, lauren and the producers) have all ship teased them multiple times and have been doing so since before the movie came out. any tension between art & sienna is not new or something imagined by fans. regardless of how seriously the terrifier team is taking that relationship, they’re aware there’s at least a twisted attraction on art’s side. they would not be doing this if these characters were related.

mr. shaw is implicated to have the power of foresight. why would he draw art if he Was art. mr. shaw was an ARTIST; ART is his unholy creation, if anything. someone (can no longer find the screencap, unfortunately) even pointed out that art’s black-and-white suit is reminiscent of a pencil or charcoal drawing, and that perhaps art doesn’t speak because drawings don’t talk.

furthermore, i doubt art would have left any clues behind for sienna to defeat him, or figure out her ultimate destiny, if he was mr. shaw. art has a lot of things wrong with him but self-sabotaging on purpose doesn’t sound like the guy. it seemed like mr. shaw was trying to help sienna on purposes; perhaps even guiding her from beyond the grave.

art would have recognized sienna’s sword. they made a point he was impressed by it because it was his first time seeing it. if she got that blade from her dad, why did art act so surprised and interested? lauren lavera has additionally gone on the record and shared her own opinion on this scene, suggesting that art knew that the dagger was significant to sienna but wasn’t sure how.

mr. shaw’s death is described almost word-for-word in terrifier 2: he drank an entire bottle of whiskey, crashed his car into a telephone pole and burned to death when the car caught fire. when recounting the story, brooke also mentions he died screaming, and art does not speak. furthermore, we have seen art’s naked body twice; there are no visible burns or scars on him.

brooke and allie know sienna’s parents. they both encounter art at separate points. allie, who has a lot more time to process what’s going on & spends a lot more time interacting with art, does not recognize him whatsoever.

on the topic of art’s first death, damien leone has stated verbatim that when art shot himself at the end of T1, he did not anticipate his return from the dead. david howard thornton has said about the same & intentionally played art as cockier for this reason - because he is only just becoming aware of his own immortality.

even if by some stretch of imagination mr. shaw faked his death and went onto become art, it requires an insane suspension of disbelief. it was a huge deal in terrifier 2 that art’s body disappeared from the morgue. if there was no body found at the sight of mr. shaw’s death, it would have been mentioned already and jonathan would likely be fixating on that mystery instead. sienna would not have let this rest either.

barbara clearly does not recognize art as her husband’s clown persona in any way. it is not out of the realm of possibility that maybe she knew art, or that her husband did - which would explain some of barb’s more bizarre reactions to things - but they were definitely not the same person.

i think that covers pretty much of all of it but yeah. art is not sienna and jonathan’s father. to this very small but very vocal minority, please stop jumping on the posts of random people & making this insistence. it’s weird.

#terrifier 2 #terrifier #art the clown #sienna shaw #jonathan shaw #sid's meta

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