Throbbing Gristle
March 29, 2009 2:37 AM Subscribe
So the legendary Throbbing Gristle have regrouped and are touring this spring. Here's a short video of Chris Carter testing out some new gear. Cosey has some new toys as well. Sadly, the original Gristlizer died awhile back. But it is being cloned.
that will be a beautiful moment in performance art history. i'm going to be onstage crosstown from them on the 16th; maybe i'll do an acapella version of hamburger lady as an homage.
posted by artof.mulata at 3:51 AM on March 29, 2009
posted by artof.mulata at 3:51 AM on March 29, 2009
When I got to college in 1984, I met a guy named G.A. who had everything Throbbing Gristle had ever released on vinyl. We would listen to it and smoke pot. G.A. screwed only Asian chicks. He got a doctorate in divinity at Yale before going on to work for the CIA. His dad lived on a houseboat in Delaware and had eyebrows of epic proportions.
That's everything I know about Throbbing Gristle.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 3:59 AM on March 29, 2009 [11 favorites]
That's everything I know about Throbbing Gristle.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 3:59 AM on March 29, 2009 [11 favorites]
That's amazing. I was just muttering to myself about T.G. In 1978, they played at the 24-hour long dark space gig in Dublin. I slept through the whole thing, including Dublin's first strip tease. (Slept through a crap band from the north side called U2 too, but the rest of the gig was good). Chances of a Dublin slot?
posted by stonepharisee at 5:03 AM on March 29, 2009 [1 favorite]
posted by stonepharisee at 5:03 AM on March 29, 2009 [1 favorite]
When I got to college in 1984, I met a guy named G.A. who had everything Throbbing Gristle had ever released on vinyl. We would listen to it and smoke pot. G.A. screwed only Asian chicks. He got a doctorate in divinity at Yale before going on to work for the CIA. His dad lived on a houseboat in Delaware and had eyebrows of epic proportions.was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery ...
posted by kcds at 5:40 AM on March 29, 2009 [1 favorite]
posted by kcds at 5:40 AM on March 29, 2009 [1 favorite]
Aw man, I'm really not that far from London on that day...
posted by vernondalhart at 5:45 AM on March 29, 2009
posted by vernondalhart at 5:45 AM on March 29, 2009
oh good god. tix for that new york show are only $35???????? that's insane. unfortunately, i'm going to be in the middle of a huge project at work that week, and have a friend coming in for jazz fest the next day. copenhagen is looking good, though.
posted by msconduct at 6:52 AM on March 29, 2009
posted by msconduct at 6:52 AM on March 29, 2009
Excellent, Los Angeles tickets haven't gone on sale yet. It'll be worth it to see Sleazy; in fact I'd much rather it had been Coil, but this should be pretty good.
posted by malocchio at 7:53 AM on March 29, 2009
posted by malocchio at 7:53 AM on March 29, 2009
New York tickets (at the Masonic lodge, no less) are sold out.
posted by swift at 8:13 AM on March 29, 2009
posted by swift at 8:13 AM on March 29, 2009
Thanks for the shout peewinkle. A little father's Day present for myself.
posted by Dr.Pill at 8:14 AM on March 29, 2009
posted by Dr.Pill at 8:14 AM on March 29, 2009
(Slept through a crap band from the north side called U2 too...).
Eh, don't worry. Nothing good ever came of them.
posted by mykescipark at 8:40 AM on March 29, 2009
Eh, don't worry. Nothing good ever came of them.
posted by mykescipark at 8:40 AM on March 29, 2009
Yeah, Chicago tickets are actually sold out. (Don't trust their webpage on the availability of the tickets). I may have to take a trip to NY for this one.
posted by peewinkle at 9:22 AM on March 29, 2009
posted by peewinkle at 9:22 AM on March 29, 2009
Genesis P-Orridge appeared on Ian Svenonius' "Soft Focus" show a couple of years ago. If you're familiar with Genesis but haven't followed his activities in the last 15 years or so, his appearance these days may surprise you.
posted by DaDaDaDave at 9:44 AM on March 29, 2009 [1 favorite]
posted by DaDaDaDave at 9:44 AM on March 29, 2009 [1 favorite]
Is he still a woman?
posted by boo_radley at 9:59 AM on March 29, 2009
posted by boo_radley at 9:59 AM on March 29, 2009
Yeah, I had stopped following PTV a long time ago, but strangely, Genesis' new look wasn't that surprising. Forget the boobs, does he have the gold teeth yet?
posted by malocchio at 10:04 AM on March 29, 2009
posted by malocchio at 10:04 AM on March 29, 2009
I hope this means Psychic TV will be touring again. Or are they still touring? I haven't followed them since the early 90s, when a lot of my friends joined the Temple ov Psychick Youth.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:35 AM on March 29, 2009
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:35 AM on March 29, 2009
gen gotthe gold teeth years ago; told me he felt it would attract money to him. seems to have worked cuz he seems pretty happy. thank god what with his wife dying on him and all and that whole fleeing from england when they tried to steal his kids...
there probably won't be a coil reunion; john balance, sleazy's beautiful other half fell down a flight of stairs a few years ago and died. so fucking sad. they were brilliant.
posted by artof.mulata at 12:11 PM on March 29, 2009
there probably won't be a coil reunion; john balance, sleazy's beautiful other half fell down a flight of stairs a few years ago and died. so fucking sad. they were brilliant.
posted by artof.mulata at 12:11 PM on March 29, 2009
sorry for the bad punctuation above; i seem to have misplaced my brain, again.
posted by artof.mulata at 12:12 PM on March 29, 2009
posted by artof.mulata at 12:12 PM on March 29, 2009
Never got a chance to see them, I'm thinking a trip to Chicago is in order.
posted by formless at 12:56 PM on March 29, 2009
posted by formless at 12:56 PM on March 29, 2009
Man, I'd love to see one of those shows. I bet they're going to be great.
That's an impressive array of noisemakers Chris Carter's got there - even a Stylophone! As far as the original Gristlizer, it's got to be the most mythologized piece of gear ever. Look at the schematic (you can get to it through the "Cloned" link, it's the original article that Carter used to build them) - all it is is a simple VCF/VCA, originally designed as a guitar pedal and published in a UK electronics magazine in the 70s. To hear some people talk about it, you might think it's a magic box of evil built by Satan himself. Pretty much any self-respecting circuit bender/noisebox builder has something cooler, probably several things.
posted by DecemberBoy at 3:22 PM on March 29, 2009
That's an impressive array of noisemakers Chris Carter's got there - even a Stylophone! As far as the original Gristlizer, it's got to be the most mythologized piece of gear ever. Look at the schematic (you can get to it through the "Cloned" link, it's the original article that Carter used to build them) - all it is is a simple VCF/VCA, originally designed as a guitar pedal and published in a UK electronics magazine in the 70s. To hear some people talk about it, you might think it's a magic box of evil built by Satan himself. Pretty much any self-respecting circuit bender/noisebox builder has something cooler, probably several things.
posted by DecemberBoy at 3:22 PM on March 29, 2009
I've always found the cryptofascist imagery (see their logo, etc), occult loopiness, and self-mutilating practices of the TG/PTV phenomena--as well as some of the other "lights" of industrial (Boyd Rice, etc)--somewhat disconcerting. It's the same queasy feeling I get from Hermann Nitsch's Vienna Action Group or for that matter from Marquis de Sade.
I understand that provoking discomfort, subverting expectations, and testing limits for the sake of catharsis is a hallmark of extreme transgressive art, but the hallucination here feels like a bad trip of sadomasochistic, monochromatic drabness interspersed with something not unlike black magic.
I'm sure growing up in Hull when COUM formed, reading Crowley, learning about Cabaret Voltaire (the first one, not the makers of "Nag Nag Nag") or situationism, hearing Stockhausen: I'm sure such things had a certain sort of appeal. But there's an autopsychological negative aesthetic involved that feels like playing with fire to me.
posted by ornate insect at 3:30 PM on March 29, 2009 [1 favorite]
I understand that provoking discomfort, subverting expectations, and testing limits for the sake of catharsis is a hallmark of extreme transgressive art, but the hallucination here feels like a bad trip of sadomasochistic, monochromatic drabness interspersed with something not unlike black magic.
I'm sure growing up in Hull when COUM formed, reading Crowley, learning about Cabaret Voltaire (the first one, not the makers of "Nag Nag Nag") or situationism, hearing Stockhausen: I'm sure such things had a certain sort of appeal. But there's an autopsychological negative aesthetic involved that feels like playing with fire to me.
posted by ornate insect at 3:30 PM on March 29, 2009 [1 favorite]
Ornate insect's response to TG is similar to my own... but when i had first come into contact i was totally blind to the masochism aspect. Where i'm at now actually comes from Theodor Reik by proxy of Valis (The Philip K. Dick Novel), which has a genius explanation to the phenomenon of sado-masochism being developed (and Anhedonia, the state wherein one knowingly rejects happiness) as such:
"A Human sees something bad which is coming as inevitable. There is no way he can halt the process; he is helpless. This sense of helplessness generates a need to gain some control over the impending pain -- any kind of control will do. This makes sense; the subjective feeling of helplessness is more painful than the impending misery; he hastens it. This activity on his part promotes the false impression that he enjoys pain."
p.78 of Valis, by Philip K. Dick
So that process causes the anhedonia, which happens by subverting the unexpected stimulus (in this instance, "challenging music") and then by convincing yourself that you like to be challeneged as such, you become further away from the things that would cause true gratification. Which is pretty much my barrier now whenever i ask myself why i would knowingly be drawn towards things that i know are either painful or suck in a more or less concrete way -- i'm merely challenging myself to be in control of a situation, but drawing further away from what i would actually enjoy without struggling so much.
What TG, and G.P.O. write about are aware of much of this, but their response seems to be more geared towards controll and i find myself disagreeing with the way it ends up sounding.
I won't be closed to this reunion, TG taught me quite a bit about myself but i'm pretty sure it won't be what i'm into at this point.
posted by phylum sinter at 6:55 PM on March 29, 2009 [1 favorite]
"A Human sees something bad which is coming as inevitable. There is no way he can halt the process; he is helpless. This sense of helplessness generates a need to gain some control over the impending pain -- any kind of control will do. This makes sense; the subjective feeling of helplessness is more painful than the impending misery; he hastens it. This activity on his part promotes the false impression that he enjoys pain."
p.78 of Valis, by Philip K. Dick
So that process causes the anhedonia, which happens by subverting the unexpected stimulus (in this instance, "challenging music") and then by convincing yourself that you like to be challeneged as such, you become further away from the things that would cause true gratification. Which is pretty much my barrier now whenever i ask myself why i would knowingly be drawn towards things that i know are either painful or suck in a more or less concrete way -- i'm merely challenging myself to be in control of a situation, but drawing further away from what i would actually enjoy without struggling so much.
What TG, and G.P.O. write about are aware of much of this, but their response seems to be more geared towards controll and i find myself disagreeing with the way it ends up sounding.
I won't be closed to this reunion, TG taught me quite a bit about myself but i'm pretty sure it won't be what i'm into at this point.
posted by phylum sinter at 6:55 PM on March 29, 2009 [1 favorite]
One way of thinking about it is simply as the opposite of pop. If we need Kylie in this world, we need TG too.
posted by stonepharisee at 11:46 PM on March 29, 2009
posted by stonepharisee at 11:46 PM on March 29, 2009
« Older Bollywood Agitprop | Inside Red China Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by The Giant Squid at 3:43 AM on March 29, 2009