Blondie: Chris Stein
News about Chris Stein, guitarist and songwriter for the rock band Blondie.
|
|
Archives
|
Links
|
Earlier pages:
|
|
Posted by Chris Stein at 5/23/2004 05:20:00 AM
sooo back briefly...
as i figured various people misconstrued the 'egypt' stuff i was trying to put into words, i got a few messages about slavery etc... the way i understand it pyramid building and various activities in those days were in fact devotional acts undertaken voluntarily by the whole of the community... in certain esoteric psychology moses represents the 'ur-father' , male element that undermined the feminine nature of egyptian culture... more basically many people have bought into the hollywood view of reality and history... (for ex the 'thumbs up/down' audience reaction to gladatorial events is a total invention of hollywood silent films, is not based on any history or reality) i got a very thoughtful letter from Bill that includes this: "The division of Church and State (which began with Machiavelli and grew to full bloom under Voltaire) is one of the greatest advances in all of Western Civilization. It may, in fact, be the finest thing the West will ever contribute to the world."... and this is just what im on about, how we've been taught this junk and dont question it... of course in a context of material finance based western religion we are probably better off having laws that keep it at bay but we have gotten everything backwards these days, so called 'primitive society' is, was way out ahead... what im awkwardly attempting to suggest is that the west is in desperate need of spirituality in its day to day existence, that we already have the religions of money technology etc etc deeply imbedded in our culture...
anyone who wants to check out a more radical view of egyptology should try and find a book called "Serpent In The Sky" by John West which deals with the work of Schwaller de Lubicz who was a fascinating character, mystic etc
over to the UK shortly i'll keep at it here from there
|
|
|
Posted by Chris Stein at 5/14/2004 05:20:00 AM
this leg of the tour is winding down into a break before europe... in cincinnati...
im really sorry about the detroit show being cancelled, i'm not exactly sure why, mostly cause of weak ticket sales but there may have been additional factors... im fairly certain we'll be back after the UK and summer jaunt in europe... thanx for all the nice words about the various concerts, the A&E deal... i'll pass along comments to D. etc
so... ok jimmy is just not able to be out right now he's got "issues", stuff hes dealing with and i dont really know whats gonna happen with him in regards to the live situation, hopefully he'll contribute to any upcoming blondie recordings, everyone is on good terms and thats about all i can report...
again im really glad that you liked the live by request event i for one didnt have a clue as to how we came off and the next night at the boston show i noticed that some of the other guys were equally shell shocked, its kind of weirdly terrifying to see yourself on video, film etc... its like seeing some alien creature (me) surrounded by familiar people, i know plenty of actors who cant look atthemselves, their recorded images
laura sent a link to a pretty grimly fascinating site http://www.kiddofspeed.com/default.htm ... check this, its a personal view of i presume a russian girls bike trip thru chernobyl, site of the nuclear disaster
i was encouraged to see that bush is finally facing some difficulty in "the polls" as bullshit as all of that is, apparently no incumbent pres. has made it back with the current numbers he's got, something in the mid 40s% area... i guess i should be urging everyone to vote... i also saw/heard on the news that the republican campaign budget is over 100 million dollars while the democrats have got like two in theirs...
i got this in an actually positive e-mail "Chris: I am a major fan of Blondie and of you so please don't get political on me. Please don't be a lefty. I and many of your fans would be crushed. If you are a lefty just keep it hush-hush. You're better than that" is this an example of the way people are thinking in such superficial ways? one would imagine that somebody who could use a computer would have a little deeper understanding into at the very least what some of these terms are about... maybe just another side effect of all the labeling that goes on... communism for whatever its early proponents may have intended is as failed a system in todays world as is capitalism... i dont have any alignment with any existing political system... i think all the systems of government around now are antiquated, should be completly re-vamped... the ancient egyptian culture is probably a much better model, a system whereby art religion and commerce were all one and the same... i think the reason egyptian culture went on almost unchanged for three thousand years was because it was succesful... the changes that undermined it in the ancient world are based partly in the ideas of separation of religion and state that we are taught are such advances... so now people are desperately seeking some kind of spiritual life which certainly doesnt come from the church and the masses are turning to rampant materialism... at the same time increased interest in the occult ufos and all manner of odd stuff is an example of peoples unfullfilled yearnings for things beyond... technology is fast becoming the new religion and ive seen it suggested that soon macines will be so complex that no single person will be able to explain their workings there by putting them even further along the path of deification
what?...
gotta go more soon
|
|
|
|
Posted by Chris Stein at 5/10/2004 05:21:00 AM
today in wash dc... this place says a lot about the culture what an odd state of contradictory affairs exist in amercica now... the streets here are well populated with homeless, mostly men, as we arrived from boston in the early morning many of these half dead souls were waking up and stirring in their sidewalk encampments, cardboard boxes, garbage bags etc... further on an ambulance was removing some guy who hadnt made it through the night... i recall that on past trips dc was home to vast slum areas... this condition seems to have been corrected but for whatever reason the nations capital is still filled w/homeless , maybe its partly cause of housing costs going up but whatever its just weird... we walked around georgetowns main drag which resembles a street from universal studio in florida... in the midst of this ultra straight reality is of all things a tattoo joint and i was amused to consider that some of the guys in golf shirts and women in stepford wives drag might be sporting massive tribal tats under their disguises (not) actually after seeing the tattoo place i looked but didnt see a single tattoo anywhere...
the night before in boston was a very great show and i wished that it'd been the one on tv but of course part of the reason it was good was due to us being relaxed in comparison to the tv event, everyone said that they felt quite released to be back in the real world as it were...the gig itself was really an odd one as it took place in a large club that was divided up into various size rooms and at the same time we played there was a concert of local punk/thrash type bands going on right on the other side of a dividing wall, when a song would end there would be a rumble of awesome sond that would arrive from the stage rear, i dont think our audience heard it though... i heard a bit of the "Street Dogs" who i think were the headliners and were good (they gave me a t-shirt)... (on that note i should mention another band i ran into in minneapolis [i think] "All The Pretty Horses", i really like them, have been listening to their cd, they've got a site up, very cool)
now i also couldnt help but feel that one of the reasons the boston show was so enthusiastic was due also to the A&E show, the power of tv and celebrity myth and all... but debbie was very on, relaxed... (she said later that if the crowd hadnt been singing in hanging on the telephone she would have missed a cue, that pertaining to the state of general burnt outness that lingered from the tv show)
we found dc's china town which is tiny and didnt yield any asian films except for basic kung fu stuff... went on to see kill bill 2 which is pretty great, i liked it way more than #1,my only problem with it was that i dont really think the 'elle' character could have really poisoned the chinese masters fishheads, i mean she couldnt really have killed him so easily... when we got to the theater i was amazed to see a big banner for "Riddick"...none of us had heard anything about this movie being made... i was a huge fan of "Pitch Black" have seen it many times, i checked out the very elaborate 'riddick' site (i wish we had fifty grand to spend on the blondie site or whatever that thing costs) and i got to say im really fucking disappointed with what this thing looks like its gonna be, pitch black was a terrific sci-fi film and i had had thought that ol' vin was gonna go on to be a really hip star, instead he has just done a load of dumbass hollywood crap and 'riiddick' appears to be another overblown cgi hollywood piece of un-original mass produced commercial junk with feeble stabs at 'Dune' references... very sad, still sticking to asian horror films for now... oh i did see that Quentin has tagged his name onto the Jet Li movie "Hero" and probably is involved with it finally getting a full blown US release... i for one never appreciated that there are some great major big budget films coming from asia that never see tha light of day in the states... 'hero' is maybe four years old already, is a massive epic feature, i saw it a few years ago and was surprised at it being 'under the radar'... in our current quest i've come accross a current similar chinese big budget production called "Double Vision" which is in a way almost cooler than 'hero', its a modern genre film that is like a lot of formula hollywwod 'occult serial killer' except it deals with Taoist/ Chinese magic
|
|
|
|
Posted by Chris Stein at 5/07/2004 05:22:00 AM
the big A&E show was last night, i hope it was ok, it was pretty exhausting, lot of work but felt good, hopefully i didnt come off like too much of an idiot, im not sure that i really care though but all is vanity as the fella says, D got a bit strangeled by the smoke and squelched the first note of the first chorus of maria, later she growled at the director, im not sure if that got out on the air, for me that was kind of the only semi major mishap, when we do tv they frequently want to have smoke lingering in the air to enhance the mood of the lights and she really dislikes the effect it has on her throat, so they werent supposed to have it on but did... it took us a few songs to warm up and the top of the show may have been a bit stiff... all in all tho i enjoyed it, i of course would like to be on live tv more regularly...
anyway i hope you who watched or will see it liked it and im grateful that we were able to do it, the A&E people were fantastic and accommodating to the max so thanx are very due to them if you liked the thing...
so now earlyish morning in NYC in this crappy but expensive dump that is reminiscent of a college dorm more than an upscale hotel, the beds are more like cots and they sag big time, dirty beat up rooms etc, if it was just a little bit worse it would be cool, but its kind of in the middle... spending a lot of time in hotels is perhaps making me more critical... actually the dvd player and flat tv is cool so i shouldnt complain... speaking of, i gave you a bum steer in that two of the films id identified as chineese are actually korean, i lose face as they say, "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" and "Memories" are still two of the coolest movies i've seen in a long time, "Mr. V" is really fucking brutal and i wouldnt reccomend it for everyone but its just weirdly beautiful at the same time ("Ichi the Killer" is released in a US package, is a great one that can be found in tower or virgin)... now another one thats just amazing is "Volcano High", again just fantastic by any standards, if this one doesnt come out in the US i'll be flabbergasted.... sort of like matrix set in high school, funny great, very hip... we've been finding these movies in various chinatown areas, have hit toronto, SF and NYC so far, all one has to do is go to an asian dvd store and look for ghost and horror films, again im so impressed by whats coming out of the east with these things, its a whole genre and its got to break in the states pretty soon so if you want to get in on something really fresh do check it out
what else... Akira and Barbara have been out with us for a few weeks, the baby thing is really great, she came to the rehersal for the show and seemed to be impressed by all of the lights and monitors and stuff, so far she hasnt really been at any of the concerts cause they are loud and we dont want to blow her ears out, at least not without her permission, she gets horribly cuter all the time
everyone who writes is always so polite and nice that i get a sort of kick out of messages that say how screwed up i am, that i am a communist etc. problem is i am really quite concerned about what is happening to american culture, its easy to throw the 'un-american' lable around, the world is just too small now, i cant believe people are still thinking like this, that we can just cut ourselves off and live in some kind of island void... so who is really surprised by prisoners being abused, i thought that this stuff was a part of what war is all about, i watched bush apologising and the caption under him was "damage control", everyone knows whats going on, that hes more pissed off about looking bad, losing face than he is about people being killed and beaten up... the whole 'shock and outrage' deal is just so much bullshit its stupid that they find it necessary to even get into it... war is about horrible things, no matter how much we may enjoy blowing things up in video games the reality is grim and part of the problem is the blurring thats going on, the merging of entertainment and news for example, more and more i hear these 'action' movie soundtracks under news events on tv, what is this saying if not that the event is somehow entertaining, not existing in the dull world of mundane reality... the ads for the army are like video games, its a bad thing, theres not going to be an army commercial with some guy all blown up screaming...
ok ive gotta go... to be continued thanx everyone
|
|
|
|
