Killing Civilians

At the age of 71.

Strangely, for the past two mornings my iPod has been set to wake me up to “Eastbound and Down.”

Here’s this:

Bizarrely, Jerry Reed’s career (and self-image) was somehow able to survive this:

In July, we made a whopping $7 from iTunes… followed by an additional $10.36 from eMusic! I can’t wait to tell our accountant!

If you add in the $29 we made off with from the Towne Lounge show, I’d say it’s never been a more lucrative time to be a member of Team DYM.  We’ve got room onstage for a couple more members, if anyone is interested in getting a piece of this action.

Oh, and someone remind me to give Pennystripe her $6 cut when I see her this afternoon…

And I was worried we wouldn’t have Karl Rove to kick around anymore!

Yeah, I don’t actually have anything to say about this.  I was just sick of seeing my damn ancient face.

Happy birthday to Jimmy.

Another track for the Jimmy Kaufmann solo EP is up. One more to go.

This one I kind of feel bad about doing solo. It almost sounds like a sketch for a DYM song… but I still can’t quite shake the feeling that there’s something inherently shitty about it, so maybe all is for the best.

I imagine the title is the result of watching way too much Guy Maddin over the past few weeks…

Then this site has some helpful tips you should read.

Unfortunately, they buried the most important piece of advice:

“DO NOT CALL YOURSELF A WITCHCRAFT STORE.”

Also, this seemed appropriate:

That’s right… we’re once again helping to raise money for our favorite LGBT literary journal and small press, Gertrude.

Tickets for the event are on sale here.

Once again we’ll be auctioning off an original DYM song written to the specifications of the highest bidder. You might recall that last time around, we auctioned off three songs. In case you’ve forgotten them, here they are!

True Love Turtles

Theme to Love Bus

The Arbitrary Apocalypse

Remember, there are only two ways to get Delightful Young Man to write a song for you: we either have to really like you (in your case, that’s a long-shot), or you have to show up to the Gertrude Fundraiser and be willing to cough up some serious cash.

Photo courtesy of Pennystripe

Today’s the birthday of our Co-#1 Fan. He’s the guy who designed our logo. He’s the guy who designed the cover art for Roboctopus (and will be designing the art for Musicians of Sound). He’s the guy who has to defend us to his work friends when we’re complete assholes on the Internets. He’s the guy who comes to our shows and lovingly sponges the sweat from our brows in the middle of a slow jam. He’s the guy who always tells us we kick ass, even when (or maybe especially when) we know for a fact that we suck ass.

Happy birthday, Bubba!

At least he did back in April, before he realized that we’re totally committed to putting out song after song of overproduced crap just like the rest of the goddamn music-entertainment industry. I love watching the hope die in people’s eyes as they realize that we, too, are soulless sell-outs.

Whoa! I guess we’re playing a show next week. How about that? Maybe you want to come see us play several of our songs for the very last time before we move full-bore into Musicians of Sound.

Friday, August 15, at the Towne Lounge.

We’ll be playing with Branden Daniel, who according to his band name boldly predicts that he will fuck every man, woman, and child at the show, as well as the Satisfied Minds, who I’m looking forward to introducing to the extensive-and-growing catalogue of Robyn Hitchcock… because I have a sneaking suspicion they might dig his stuff.

“Warrior Christ” is here.

And that’s going to be it for a while for the Jimmy Kaufmann solo EP. The next two songs are quite a ways off from being anywhere near ready to record, and since I’ll be working on the Kaufmann on Kaufmann EP, Musicians of Sound, recording the rest of Tough Nuggets, and actual work I get paid for, I can’t even give you a ballpark estimate of when it will be finished. The damn Homo Camp double album might come out before this EP is finished… hell, so might the Squidbeak album.

Anyway, I said I’d have something to say about the lyrics, and since I hate lying to small groups of people over the Internet, here’s the megalomania: Continue Reading »

OK. First, the really, really good news. At practice today I came one step closer to achieving a lifelong dream. Actually, it was more like 500 steps.

Djerzi’s written a bunch of new songs for Musicians of Sound, and he expressed an interest in playing guitar when we play them live. Which means I’ll be moving over to bass.

Which means as soon as I figure out how to sing and play bass at the same time, I am 500 steps closer to becoming Sting.

Next stop: 28 straight hours of sex!

The Jimmy Kaufmann solo EP is now a third of the way done. I’d hoped to have it halfway done by today, but I’m still working on The Song Currently Known As “Warrior Christ.” That title will probably change, after I finish writing the lyrics.

I’m also writing the lyrics for Musicians of Sound. I’ll have something to say about the two different approaches I’m taking when I finish TSCKA”WC”–but until then, please enjoy the incredibly bleak¹ “We’ve Been Married”!

1. And not at all autobiographical, in anticipation of a potential objection from Eloise. [↩]

What a big guy! 44 pounds of luv-able tub. Check it out:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25937546/

In Amsterdam, the right of way goes something like this:

1. Bicycles
2. Scooters
3. Pedestrians
4. Buses
5. Cars

In some parts of the city, trams/trains obviously take the first spot, but even then they’ll have to wait until the bicycles get out of their way to start moving.

Every street has a bike lane that, to Americans, looks suspiciously like a sidewalk, which means that many times you’ll be walking down the street before hearing the ringing of a bell behind you (which is how cyclists politely advise you to get the fuck out of their way).

Here’s a couple of photos, but it’s kind of hard to express the sheer pervasiveness of bikes in the city. Old people, kids, people in formal business attire, people all dressed up for going out, everyone rides a bike. Looking around Amsterdam (population-wise, a bit smaller than Portland), it appears that there are more bikes than people living there.


The parking structure in this second photo is enormous, and it’s crammed with bikes, most of which are fixed speeds or cruisers.

True, the Netherlands is mostly flat, which makes it ideal for cycling as a primary form of transportation, and Amsterdam is incredibly compact, which makes it easy to get across town in a manner of minutes on a bike, but goddamn, this is a mostly-medieval city that’s had to do a lot of infrastructural work over the past few decades to ensure that biking remains the preeminent mode of personal transport.

Beyond the amazing infrastructure, though, is the attitude of the culture at large. I don’t know how many times we saw bikes, cars, pedestrians, and trams all jammed into one narrow street… and it worked. People understand the right of way, and traffic flows smoothly, and no one gets too angry at the millions of near-misses or occasional minor bumps.

Actually, for your amusement, here are the two worst conflicts I witnessed on the streets and alleys of Amsterdam:

1. The Gollem (the best bar we found in Amsterdam) is on a tiny alley/street near the middle of the city. It’s barely wide enough for three people to walk down side-by-side, but as elsewhere, bicycles have the right of way. So do scooters, although most people on scooters realize that it’s a cramped space and kind of coast through the alley. Not so with the pizza-delivery scooters! They gunned their engines and raced down the alley a couple of times while we were standing outside with a couple of regulars having a smoke. This pissed the native Amsterdamians off, and the next time a scooter whizzed by, one of the dudes reached out and grabbed the delivery guy’s arm. The scooter must’ve been going close to 25mph, but the dude who grabbed him pulled him to a halt (and almost made the delivery guy fall off his scooter) and gave him a piece of his mind for about a minute before the dazed delivery guy was able to recollect his bearings, tell the dude to go fuck himself, and speed off again.

2. A construction worker was on his cell phone and had absent-mindedly wandered into the middle of the bike path (the construction materials and equipment outside the house he was working on was blocking the pedestrian sidewalk). A lady on the bike rang her bell, but the worker didn’t hear her. The lady got closer and shouted “Hey!” and had to brake hard, and the worker looked up, stricken, and said, “Sorry! Sorry!” and got out of her way. She shot him a dirty look and shook her head before pedaling off.

And now that we’re back home in Portland, I look around and it looks like there are no cyclists at all. Which is crazy and depressing, considering how we’re known for being a bike-friendly city. Someday maybe we’ll inch closer to Amsterdam… but it probably won’t be soon.

I think this guy and Jimmy went to the same school of introducing your work, where they both majored in “Your Audience Is A Bunch Of Bumbling Half-Wits Anyway, So Why Are You Even Wasting Your Time Trying To Explain Your Brilliance?”

From the introduction to the Russian modern art museum ART4.ru, as highlighted by the omni-fantastic Harper’s:

“Something Like an Introduction

If anybody thinks he or she can draw a square better than Malevich, he can come on and fucking do it. Don’t worry if people underestimate you – it’s not because you’re an asshole, but just because there are memsers* all around that will not live to see winter. Why should you worry about their winter if you permanently live in summer, have a positive attitude, and jump about the minefield certain there are no mines, only harmless piles of accurately placed squat. Maybe it was Kulik himself who squatted on your creative path, and you are not in your miserable apartment in some Asshole City, but in Switzerland.

It is so simple to find things you just don’t understand to be stupid and worthless. To smash with a bulldozer the exhibition of people you don’t give a shit about calling them buggers and giving them the status of mentally different persons in order to appear adequate, at least to yourself.

Well, why talk so much about this shit? Shouldn’t we change the subject? For example, let’s speak about drooling.

Drooling is everything to us. If it weren’t for drooling, there wouldn’t be shit.

How many people are drooling about other people being successful, gifted, or in demand?! As many as have read this article, plus a couple more. Come on, moisten abundantly. Saliva is the best lubricant for tight-assed hypocrites who turn pale and puke hearing the word “prick”, even when in this case the “prick” has been painted by Ter-Oganyan, Zvezdotchetov, or Osmolovsky. The word PRICK* shall sound proud, it neither causes religious hostility, nor provokes persons beyond 14 years of age to engage in sexual intercourse, sodomy, or lesbian relations with the artist.

Though, to be honest, we wanted to tell you about the world of art, modern art, and collecting, in particular. And this is the introduction to the catalogue, as you may have guessed. The catalogue, in turn, is an entrance fee for the museum of topical art – ART 4. And the museum is a collecting tool.

In this particular case, the museum is just storage space. If it seems to somebody that the museum is a way to soak through the floor to history and to immortalize one’s name in the annals (God save us) of culture, this is, mildly speaking, a mistake. And if we would not speak mildly, just look at it, almost for free, and don’t fucking talk about some historic part of the collection or some topical part of the exhibition…

Igor Markin is just a dude whose significance for the history of art is evident regardless of what parts of him bitter tongues are licking.

He gathered the collection first of all for himself and has the right to send all who are not satisfied to hell, like Ranevskaya sent the pioneers, including those citizens dissatisfied with this introduction.

It is true, Markin has no special education, neither is he an art critic nor an artist; moreover, he is a Daltonian and former radio engineer. So what? His love of art is enough to successfully invest loot in the things he simply enjoys. And he enjoys quite tangible things that are beautiful and rare.

Collecting is like a disease, the urge to snatch the coolest bubble-gum insert in order to become a bit happier than others. It is not that there are as many pictures in the collection as a fool has gum wrappers, but there are about 700 pictures, among which some shit is definitely also present. But a small portion of the shit looks nice against the average background.

When you have 11 pictures by Krasnopevtsev worth as much as 11 apartments in Moscow you can afford to buy something worth the cost of a T-shirt just because you like it, to buy, and to hang in your museum.

Anyone can offend an artist. Collectors offend artists on a regular basis, it is their hobby. And it is a justified hobby, because artists sometimes behave like that notorious old woman selling a rooster. Just how much is the rooster? Five hundred thousands bucks! Why so much? You see, sonny, I really need the money.

Everyone needs money. And, for example, artists are paid for different reasons. Kabakov and Bulatov are paid for their genius, Zvezdotchetov and Koshlyakov – for their talent, Dubossarsky and Vinogradov – for being in fashion… Vlad Monro should be in diamonds by default. It is impossible to satiate so many hungry bellies.

To invest in painting is an interesting move, but it requires grown-up investments of power, a change in one’s circle, and knowledge, as well. By the way, Markin acquired the knowledge by himself. Even a bear could sing after 5 years of close contact with people in art. Some people have no such skills and gain experience though studying in universities. Knowledge comes very quickly when one doesn’t wear his ass out at lectures but instead – oops! – buys a fake Zverev. And thrashes with it from one expert opinion to another, fucking with one’s own and other people’s minds, studying the so-called subject so as not to be caught once more with the same bait. And then the Zverev turns out to be authentic, and you are in spades and the whole world is at your feet.

Once upon a time, though not so long ago, about 12 years, Markin bought his first piece of modern art. And, like any other collector, fell into a hallucinogenic trip through museums, galleries, and auctions while quite sober. Instead of engaging in entertainment waiting like a normal Commie* for cocaine*, whores, and work, he started buying pictures. Besides, there were almost no competitors, and a clear business field is any huckster’s dream. The dude* just guessed that he could do it better than anyone in the world, constantly developing, and gaining new knowledge. It is interesting to him that he could become grand doing almost the same things that Tretyakov and Shukin did.

Let us continue speaking about the museum. Is it possible to appreciate a 3×4 meter picture if it hangs in an office corridor and you stand touching the canvas with your beak. That’s hoggery and an eyesore! So, when the soul calls for the feast to continue in the form of a museum, the museum will appear.

Surely, not the greatest museum in its significance to art, but, whoopee, sometimes size also matters. In general, 600 meters is quite enough to display the major pearls of the collection. But there is not enough space for a fountain.

Without the usual activities, Markin has become an altruist. To buy 600 meters in the centre of Moscow and to make repairs is not as easy as pissing in doorways, it is fucking difficult!

But somebody should act as the mother of modern art, generously giving it all 13 nipples!?

Artists need appraisal and appreciation, preferably in cash. There are no hungry artists in present-day modern art. It is not comme il faut – to be widely acknowledged on a massive scale post mortem. We should admit that for a museum, for a collector, a good artist is a dead artist. But Timur Petrovich Novikov has died in vain; some people should live forever.

Artists who have lost their minds are also good. Chubarov could have cut off his ear, but instead he paints with two hands simultaneously, while his brain is completely astral. Weisberg cut his veins because of models being late, while Yakovlev has just spent half his life in a nut house. On the whole, not all guys drawing, creating, and doing things have got their pieces of the pie. They just have not lived long enough to get it.

Modern art also needs support, otherwise it will perish. The epoch of exhibitions in communal apartments is gone even in St Petersburg. The underground is as dead as rock ’n’ roll. Even Tzoy’s boiler room has become kitsch. The system of good old alcoholic values has crashed. What would people know of art if it were not for the Tretyakovs-Markins?

People are always eager for bread and circuses. If you need something for the gut – there is none of that here. Everything that stimulates emotions and is a subject for discussion is a sort of circus. It doesn’t matter what you do. The novelty of a concept, an invention, and the discovery is what’s primary. The one who is first is a genius. He makes history painting a black square, biting people on their legs, chopping up icons in public, and erecting barricades on Nikitskaya Street. Outrageous. Scandalous. And a distinct new accent in the history of art.

Markin is the first man in the last 100 years who has set up a private modern art museum — a museum both for him and for us.

People frequently ask why oh why is it called АRT 4.RU, and in the end everyone does ask. For those who prefer to go around in the dark – ART 4.RU translated into Russian means art for Rushka*.

Don’t shoot altruists – they are playing the best they can. If you can play better – no fucking problem! Come on, go and paint a Malevich square, set up a museum, or read this article from the beginning and try to write it better.

Brief glossary for those in the dark.

Memser – a bloody mixture of an asshole and a loser
PRICK – ask Ter-Oganyan
Cocaine – an expensive narcotic
Dude – a man
Commie – an entrepreneur
Khavchik (something for the gut) - food
Rushka – Russia (diminutive and derogatory)”

Should’ve seen that coming. They’re not called Leopold and His True Stories, after all.

No show on Thursday at the East End! Instead, we’ll be drinking fruity vodka drinks on various patios across the city.

Are up on the 61. I think Marvin Gaye is close to being done, but it seems like there’s something lacking or off about Christmas Over Pearl Harbor. Also, in this new mix I fucked up Eloise’s backing vocals on the verses. Dammit.

I just got this:

Dear Delightful Young Man:
Thank you for joining Stereofame! Stereofame does not currently allow explicit lyrics. Because we’ve discovered explicit lyrics in your music, we’ve removed that song(s). All songs submitted need to be “radio edited” so we welcome you to resubmit once any explicit content has been removed.
Stereofame
The social music game where artists and fans get what they deserve

And of course they don’t make it easy to close an account, so I’ve been reduced to the childish ploy of changing every word on our Artist Profile to “fuck.”

>>>>>UPDATE: Childish ploys are the only things that work on the internets:

Dear Delightful Young Man:

Thank you for joining Stereofame! Stereofame does not currently allow explicit content postings of any kind. Because we’ve discovered explicit content on your profile, we’ve removed it. We request that anything posted be “PG-13.”

A cover song idea:

Customized version:
Jem switches to Dym
The “Misfits” change to whoever we’re playing with that night.