Thursday, May 12, 2011

Hail Rainbow Cthulhu!


Hail Rainbow Cthulhu!

H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" (PDF from Feedbooks)
Various Artists, The East Village Other's Electronic Newspaper (via ROOT BLOG)
Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet
Mayer Hawthorne, Impressions (free covers EP, full breakdown at Blurt)

It was not a tough sell to get my daughter into Cthulhu (what's not too love? Her rendering rendered even more psychedelic by the iPhone Photoshop app) and even after reading the ponderous 1920's patter of part I of the story, she's still anxious to get to the madness-inducing apocalyptic wrath of He Who Waits. That's my girl!

The East Village Other produced, among other things, this "electronic newspaper" from 1966, collaged and assembled by ESP-Disk analyzing the media spectacle that was Luci Johnson's wedding. It's been on my hunt list for years and there it pops up to the surface of my feeder like noxious gas bubbles exhaled from the Ancient Ones. Thanks to ROOT BLOG for putting this forth.

What I want to know is, where is mashup culture in the arena of social protest? Twenty years ago, hip-hop applied the collage strategies of the 60's to DJ barrages (think how Terminator X was often as potent a voice on Fear of a Black Planet as was Chuck and Flav) With the broadside, wheatpaste nature of social media, you'd think the modern dub reorganizers would be all over it, or maybe they are and I am too hopelessly square to be aware. If that's the case, hip me to it. As this blog can attest, I'll listen to anything once.

Speaking of collages and noxious gas bubbles, would you listen to this blog if it were condensed weekly into a radio show and/or podcast? We've been approached.

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