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For me one feature of 'Avant Garde' is when an artist is trying to expel from himself as close a reproduction of himself as possible, that is, the creation with the least possible artifice or superficiality, with the belief that the more genuine it is the more it will resemble everybody else also - and can therefore be separated from its creator, more so than either those superficially and traditionally ‘representational’ works grounded in previously successful (popular) methods, or other more intentionally 'weird' or wilfully obscure stuff. As such it’s also often linked with an impulse to destroy ‘art’ - both high and low, and as people have always discovered the act of detruction also creates anew. To me the Beatles were too interested in making superficially ‘different’ recordings in order to maintain their success and actually imploded because of their different outlooks on the avant garde.

MANIFESTO OF MONSIEUR AA THE ANTIPHILOSOPHER, Tristan Tzara without the pursuit of I worship you which is a French boxer maritime values as irregular as the depression of Dada in the blood of a bicephalous animal I glide between death and the vague phosphates that scratch slightly at the common brain of dadaist poets luckily because gold mine tariff's and the high cost of living made me Decide to abandon D's it isn't true that sham dadas have Deprived me of them because here's enough to bewail the nothing that is called nothing and I've cleared illnesses at the customs I the carapace and umbrella of the brain from noon till two o'clock two hour's subscription superstitious releasing the mechanism of the spermatozoon ballet that you'll find being dress-rehearsed in all the hearts of suspect individuals I'll eat your fingers a bit I'm renewing your subscription to the celluloid love that creaks like metal gates and you are idiots I shall come back once in the guise of your renascent urine as the obstetric wind of joie de vivre and I'm going to establish a boarding school for poets' supporters and I've come again to start again and you're all idiots and the selfkleptomaniac's key only works with crepuscular oil on every knot of every machine there's the nose of a new-born baby and we're all idiots and very suspect of a new form of intelligence and a new logic after our own manner which isn't at all Dada and you're letting yourselves be led astray by Aaism and you're all idiots poultices of the surgical spirit of purified sleep of bandages and of virgin idiots

my round... I'm off to the fridge...

Cigar

maybe Rock and Roll seems to be not easily compatible with 'avant-garde'?... I mean, rock and roll as I think of it seems to eschew 'artiness'

King Tubby - though maybe his full impact comes a couple of years late - but he indicates the impending rise of the engineer as an artist with the remix/version, which Tubby particularly was pioneering in '68 onwards...

layout grid (6 rectangles)

I normally listen within 24 hours - usually on the hour's commute to work in the motor. Books is another matter, there's a pile I've bought and haven't read - mainly art books that are too big to read in the bath (I've looked at all the pictures though).

aquatic mouth...

Apologies

very interesting - he talks a bit about the incident in this interview - Herbert Read was among those who criticized him

right - I wondered about that line!

I have some sympathy with the man at the cemetary wishing to remain anonymous in view of the fact he had no idea what they were looking for, maybe if he had known it was a worthy enterprise he may have thought differently? - difficult to determine what is some kind of 'racial' suspicion and what is just a normal feeling of trepidation

I've been waiting for this one - Fire In My Bones was amazing. There's a newish Rev Charlie Jackson release out too from 50 miles of Elbow Room - just lp at the moment though I think. A sample on Youtube: You Got to Move: Live Recordings, Vol. 1 LP