power pop consciousness

Yet-DIY'd detail of Rauschenberg's Poster for Peace. 1970. Poster collage of photos and images. Up now at the LSU Union Gallery.

R.E.M., Collapse Into Now
The dB's, Repercussion
Dwight Twilley, The Luck
exhibit at the LSU Union Gallery
Squeeze, The Complete BBC Sessions

• One of my co-workers is working on his net-casting skills; said when he throws a net it looks like a "sack fulla assholes". If I ever put together a slim volume of edgy, symbolist poetry, I'm taking that for the title.
  
• All about Dwight Twilley today. He's one of those guys that lives at the edge of your power pop consciousness if you have one.  Sure, some of his songs sound a little like Ratt, but then I kinda liked Ratt. I came of age in the mid-80's in an uncool place so things were not so cut 'n' dried. I had a B&W Ratt poster on the wall in my teenage bedroom next to the giant R.E.M. one for Lifes Rich Pageant and the lifesize Iggy Pop from Blah Blah Blah. We kinda took what we could get from the Record Bar at the mall. I'm pretty sure I bought both Screaming Blue Messiahs and Coil's The Anal Staircase EP from the same bargain tape bin on one trip. What I'm saying was, I'd've been all into Dwight Twilley too if someone had just put him in my hands.
  
  
  Dwight Twilley, "Remedies"
  
  
• I always wonder with interactive pieces like Rauschenberg poster up there: does anyone ever takes the artist up on his or her offer to add to a work? I bought a poster from Howard Finster while he was still alive. He recommended I color it in and of course I haven't done that. I've instead let it grow brittle unframed in a closet, ruining a perfectly good piece of art in a manner befitting my own personal aesthetic.
  
• This collaborative piece was also at the LSU Union Gallery. Super obvious, badly lit, but still effective.
  
  
  Brad Jensen, Untitled. 2009. Acrylic paint on wooden door + Marc Fresh, Untitled. 2009. Acrylic paint on wooden door + Jonathan Mayers, Untitled. 2009. Oil paint on wooden door.
  
  Jensen is the local Shepard Fairey with his ICON brand and befezzed Capt. Kangaroo guy. I think I've seen some graffiti by Fresh; I register that big pink face as such, but my favorite part of the whole thing is the black/blue star with the eye in it. It's like the mark of the Ghetto Masons, which might not be too bad of a band name. I'm unfamiliar with Mayers' work but admire how he was willing to de-exquisitize the corpse a little by utilizing a different medium and not sticking so heavily to the script. Those three black lumps against the red at the bottom of his panel make me think of the silhouetted seats in Mystery Science 3000; in fact that penis/plant cropping out of one of them could be a robot. If that's what it is, bravo! MST3K is an excellent reference on the nature of collaboration.
  
• Would John McIvor be offended if his Le Promenade made me think of bubblegum angrily smeared on a picture of flowers; an innocent's quick revenge against tyranny? Would Squeeze be offended if I said the same of their 1977 material on The Complete BBC Sessions? I mean both in the best possible way.
  
  
  John McIvor, Le Promenade. 1960. Oil on canvas.
  
  
  Squeeze, "The Knack"