From Bob Bannister Sent Fri, Mar 12th 1999, 06:19
From Bob Bannister Sent Fri, Mar 12th 1999, 06:19
I pulled the Jan Hammer/Jerry Goodman "Like Children" out of storage fairly recently and enjoyed it much more than I'd expected - at the time it came out, of course, its legitimacy for me lay in its being post-Mahavishnu (unless you're a big fan of the The Flock) but Hammer kind of squandered his reputation with all that Miami Vice stuff in the 80s - kind of the Bob James of fusion I guess. As for taking kids to gigs or cultural events in general, I'm all in favor and that news blip you referred to seems quite likely the work of people who fear, distrust and just don't understand rave/dance culture in general and seize upon the presence of children as a convenient way to cast aspersions on something that, in the pretense of pluralism, they'd ordinarily have to portray in more neutral terms. My son's 4th year has included seeing the big Mego fest outdoors last summer - needless to say he didn't care much about the music (he enjoyed the dancing part later, just not the screeching noise that was apparently coming out of those laptop computers) - as for exposure to drug use, he did sit and chat amiably with Russell Haswell about the sculpture in the outdoor garden while the latter smoked his post-performance "bone" but I doubt he understands that there are varieties of cigarettes. We also attended the annual winter solstice drone-fest at avant-garde NYC composer Phill Niblock's loft in Chinatown - this consisted of hours of humming, melodic sustained drones on tape while various musicians played along live, accompanied by films of Chinese peasants going about their daily activities of fishing and farming which included footage of enormous sides meat on hooks being hacked apart with machetes - now that was scary, but he fell asleep quickly nonetheless. He's also fond of the enormous range of imported Japanese toys at the Mondo Kim's store where I sometimes drag him on record shopping trips - since the merchandise is aimed at adult collectors, it's a bit of a problem that the harmless stuff he likes (Sailormoon, Dragonball-Z) is side by side with the unabashedly pornographic - maybe when he's learned to read and see that they stock something called "The Cunt Coloring Book", I'll have to think twice about taking him along. Right now the problem is just convincing him that, no, that 6-inch tall action figure is not worth $30 (I mean not compared to a Skam 12" or anything!). <What I'm talking about are outdoor events, usually beginning at sunset with an ambient set. Generally they are held away from the city in really beauiful surroundings, near the sea, mountains or rivers.> All of your descriptions of these events are so pastoral - around here just walking to school and buying a sweet at the corner store on the way home involves more exposure to vice than what those film-makers fear (and we live in a decent neighborhood - it's just a big gritty American city of the sort where millions of kids spend every day). It's always amusing what a little time and money will do to temper memory - Woodstock is currently being used to sell tampons here in an ad presumably aimed at middle-aged mothers who will be advising their teenaged daughters' purchases. Still undecided whether to send this just to Irene or the list -after the "clitorides" thread I guess nothing is off-topic. Bob