You will feel all the feelings here—the slow, the sad, the sultry, the rage, the disgust. From—Victory at Sea were a legend of Boston dark indie rock and slowcore, with their heavy, brooding passages, Mona Elliott’s aching, "euphoric" vocals, dynamic range, and overall mood, i.e. somber & spooky—to—Shiva Speedway, and its angular, guitar-heavy sound of '90s feminist punk and indie rock, blending riot grrrl energy with a Sleater-Kinney-like tight, dynamic, guitar-driven sound featuring inventive riffs, stop-start rhythms, and sometimes slow-burn tracks with varied vocals, offering a raw, catchy, and attitude-filled rock experience—to—Lisa King, the slam poet, very Gil Scott-Heron.
Series
Chapter 15: Every Day a Different Toxin
in Podcast, Series, Weltschmerz
In this final installment of Welcome to Weltschmerz, USA, Boyer finds himself at Burning Man on psychedelic mushrooms, through nervous breakdowns and binges and general drug-fueled confession upon the sands of Black Rock, NV. His summer taking theater to bedrooms across America has ended and all he’s got to show for it is a nagging twitch of the eye
You can find Chapters 1 - 14 here.
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Video: Triumph
“One day we’ll sit back and look at all what we did.” We end our collection of Manson & Madri Song-A-Day songs with a truly great song about looking back, taking stock, and what is left. Triumph is perhaps my favorite of the lot, with its shimmering synths and John’s affecting lyrics performed in his usual understated style. “Leave your conscience at the door and live triumphantly.” Enjoy!
Triumph is just one of a series of rock videos we have been posting from their collaboration, all of which can be found under the Song-A-Day link along the sidebar and you can find a selection of these songs on their album Secret Griefs here.
John Manson and Dan Madri of The Gondoliers, became involved some years ago in a project called Fun-A-Day. (Or FAD.) And now John and Dan are continuing this tradition under the title Song-A-Day or SAD, and over the course of the coming months, we here at Mutable will be posting them regularly for your viewing and listening pleasure. Enjoy!
Video: Crush
“When I first saw you, I was pretty sure I would be crushed.” Some jarring guitar, simmering cymbals, and another poignant word poem from the minds of Manson & Madri. Enjoy!
Crush is just one of a series of rock videos we have been posting from their collaboration, all of which can be found under the Song-A-Day link along the sidebar and you can find a selection of these songs on their album Secret Griefs here.
John Manson and Dan Madri of The Gondoliers, became involved some years ago in a project called Fun-A-Day. (Or FAD.) And now John and Dan are continuing this tradition under the title Song-A-Day or SAD, and over the course of the coming months, we here at Mutable will be posting them regularly for your viewing and listening pleasure. Enjoy!
Boston Bands in the 90's: Taylor Ho Bynum Quartet
There was a time when the free jazz was flowing and joyful, and Taylor Ho Bynum was part of that. The trumpeteer and composer went on to play with Anthony Braxton and record an array of influential albums, including The Middle Picture, Asphalt Flowers Forking Paths, Owl Jacket, and Navigation. A reviewer from Next commented that Bynum "deploys a litany of buzzes, whistles, drones, pinched fanfares and garrulous brass muttering in acrobatic arcs that twist and somersault." He has been the director of the Coast Jazz Orchestra at Dartmouth College since 2017.
Billy Ruane was a staple of the scene at one point, and he documented endless shows throughout the 90’s and beyond. These videos came out of that.
Chapter 14: Alone Again, Naturally
in Podcast, Series, Weltschmerz
Gabe and Jill wonder about the Pacific Northwest, running out of money, stumbling into dinner parties, working at a buritto shack during hempfest, attempting to spoon, and ultimately saying their final goodbyes. As we approach the end of our Bedroom Theater tour of America, Gabe and Jill have only succeeded in completely breaking each other's spirit in this penultimate episode of Welcome to Weltschmerz, USA
You can find Chapters 1 - 13 here.
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The Zulu and the Redcoat
Walker Zupp
1
Now it was 6:00 a.m. and everyone was tired from weeks of travelling to this benighted spot the locals called Isandlwana and Lorne Novak was wincing before a small parade of his fellow soldiers, including Captain Wallass, whose pocket-watch Lorne had pocketed the night before.
Their superior’s sjambok split the sun in two before whistling through the air and striking Lorne’s hairy spine.
“It didn’t work, sir!” Lorne assured him, referring to the pocket watch.
“Be quiet, Novak!” the Officer replied, raising his sjambok again, cutting the sun, and adding another red bar to Lorne’s skin.
“Twenty-second of January,” Captain Wallass noted inwardly, enjoying the sight of Lorne’s penalty, but also thinking about what the damaged Lorne had in stall for him…
After he delivered the last blow, the Officer replaced his pith helmet, mirroring the submarine-like protuberance that shadowed the campsite. It seemed to have burst though the dry landscape like a modern submarine through arctic ice, and the British soldiers were afraid of the odd dark tower.
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Video: Seduction 1
In this darkly profound exploration of desire and its malcontents, Manson’s signature spoken word is off-set by a disquiet of drum machine and synth. “Our growth is retarded by fantastic tools” We are bombarded by the fake and fakery of the erotic in the accompanying video as Manson & Madri croon their way through another cynical masterpiece. “Nothing’s more important than your feelings feeling okay.” Enjoy!
Seduction 1 is just one of a series of rock videos we have been posting from their collaboration, all of which can be found under the Song-A-Day link along the sidebar and you can find a selection of these songs on their album Secret Griefs here.
John Manson and Dan Madri of The Gondoliers, became involved some years ago in a project called Fun-A-Day. (Or FAD.) And now John and Dan are continuing this tradition under the title Song-A-Day or SAD, and over the course of the coming months, we here at Mutable will be posting them regularly for your viewing and listening pleasure. Enjoy!
My Asinine Life: Unrequited Me as Still Life
in Article, My Asinine Life, Series
Gabriel Boyer
How do you summarize a life? How do you conclude yourself? Where are you when the boulders come bouncing down the incline? Are you at home and gazing at the glowing screen with some excitement? Are you out on a hike with your long-suffering spouse? Do you have your fingers in many pies at the moment? Have you given up on ever being anything like yourself?
Are you alone in your room and realizing that you are always going to be alone in your room from now on as you nurse your gout-ridden foot? What about that you didn’t end up here because you slid into a giant trap door in the sky or because of some other deception of the scene and the people in it but more because of the general complications of being, some of which very much have nothing to do with you and who you are, and some of which very much do—you ended up here because you just couldn’t help yourself—whatever that means in your specific case—or because you didn’t have the courage to do it differently—or maybe you did and that’s why. ‘Here’ herein meaning wherever you happen to be at the moment.
Could of been you didn’t think it through. Or you just got lonely. Or your mother got sick and someone had to take of her and it ended up being you. Or there came a point in your marriage when nothing made sense any more and now you’ve been divorced for five years and it still doesn’t make sense.
This is where I am.
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Video: Passion
“There was passion in my walk and it hurt in my feet.” With a jangle of tambourines and wailing guitar we are introduced to the many passions of Manson. His deep baritone voice speaks through the passion like a knife cutting through hot butter. “Passion dies like little bird except it doesn’t make a peep.” Enjoy!
Passion is just one of a series of rock videos we have been posting from their collaboration, all of which can be found under the Song-A-Day link along the sidebar and you can find a selection of these songs on their album Secret Griefs here.
John Manson and Dan Madri of The Gondoliers, became involved some years ago in a project called Fun-A-Day. (Or FAD.) And now John and Dan are continuing this tradition under the title Song-A-Day or SAD, and over the course of the coming months, we here at Mutable will be posting them regularly for your viewing and listening pleasure. Enjoy!
Businessman and Apple
Chapter 13: Anarchy for You and for Me
in Podcast, Series, Weltschmerz
Jill and Gabe find themselves on an anarchist compound in Saginaw, OR. Do they actually have lamas? Gabe reminisces about the future, when he will one day indeed live on this compound while working as a wildland firefighter while Jill is nowhere to be found. Beer is procured and an anarchist musical is performed. Later, that musical will be filmed. You can view the results of this filming here and the final shot of the Kenny Rogers Rock Opera (also performed in Saginaw) can be found here. Eventually, Gabe gets a haircut. Everything ends in tragedy.
You can find Chapters 1 - 12 here.
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A Room That Is And Or Is Not Past Tense
Ben Segal
In the felt room is a softer spot in the soft of the whole. There is a slot there for the cards that poke out each morning and afternoon.
The morning card is Tongue Exercise
So the morning was for flexing and stretching, for folds.
Afternoon was another easy one, Sitting Still. It was a common card. A favorite.
At night the four people in the felt room slept side by side without touching.
In the morning the card said Diamond Mining and the four people who live in the felt room switched on their helmet lamps and entered the mine shaft. They carted diamonds to the softer spot in the soft whole of the felt room and pressed the diamonds to the slot, which was warm and wet, which one of them swore was pulsed with breath, which one of them swore tasted right. The afternoon card read Handcuff Game and that took the four of them to night.
The slot in the softer spot of the soft of the felt room is not mouth or vagina.
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Video: Fantasy
“Tell me your fantasy. Tell me your secret.” With Manson & Madri’s signature driving drums and shimmering guitar. “Tell me your dirty secret and I’ll tell you mine.” Manson’s voice lost in the storm of sound continues to coo to the listener his saccharine half-truths with the deadpan candor of grifter at last call. Enjoy!
Fantasy is just one of a series of rock videos we have been posting from their collaboration, all of which can be found under the Song-A-Day link along the sidebar and you can find a selection of these songs on their album Secret Griefs here.
John Manson and Dan Madri of The Gondoliers, became involved some years ago in a project called Fun-A-Day. (Or FAD.) And now John and Dan are continuing this tradition under the title Song-A-Day or SAD, and over the course of the coming months, we here at Mutable will be posting them regularly for your viewing and listening pleasure. Enjoy!
Boston Bands in the 90's: Sebadoh
Lo-fi pioneer Sebadoh shown here with the original line-up of Lou Barlowe, Jason Lowenstein, and Eric Gaffney performing early renditions of such hits as Oven is My Friend, and As the World Dies, the Eyes of God Grow Bigger, and tossing out the occasional witty banter. Raw, intense, with a driving beat and minimalist, distorted guitar—beautiful tunes and beautiful times. “Every time I get up on stage, it’s like the spirit of punk rock inhabits my body.” Indeed.
Billy Ruane was a staple of the scene at one point, and he documented endless shows throughout the 90’s and beyond. These videos came out of that.
Chapter 12: I Sing a Slice of Life
in Podcast, Series, Weltschmerz
Jill has cooked a delicious kale dinner for Boyer and co in Silicon Valley. A performance at a loft in Oakland goes terribly and Jill goes missing. They journey north, to a pebbly beach, a pizza shack and its lost waitress, through dreams of John C. Lilly, into the redwoods and the future of 20 years from now, and ultimately, to Riddle, Oregon.
You can find Chapters 1 - 11 here.
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Mosaic of Time: PRVSLY RCRDED
in Series, Mosaic of Time, Poetry, Story
Lina Ramona Vitkauskas (b.1973, she/they)
"1996" from PRVSLY RCRDED
All video poems included in the project PRVSLY RCRDED revolve around the notion that all life is “previously recorded” via inherited memory or biological encoding. The cycle of life (birth/death)—as well as the epigenetic scars inherited from ancestors’ fight-or-flight past—contribute to how we re-imagine/re-tell our narratives. Past poems (written) have now been deconstructed, re-arranged, and re-told as video poems. In the poem "1996", we hear the artist retell her journey to Lithuania as a 25-year-old graduate student—not a typical trip—as all "coincidences" in her journey seem to suggest she was being vetted as a diplomat or intelligence contact at the time. A trip to the borderland area of Kaliningrad, a conversation with the president, and some family secrets divulged resonate throughout the piece, causing the artist to ponder this suspicious series of events.
PRVSLY RCRDED will be an ongoing project, eventually becoming an online space / portal where I can re-purpose / re-present poems. As a 50-year-old poet re-inventing my work—also as a new immigrant from the US during a tumultuous time in all geopolitical spheres—I hope to offer a space for dialogue for those who have also experienced ancestral trauma.
Mosaic of Time is a monthly series that each month explores another cinepoem by author and artist, Lina Ramona Vitkauskas.
The whole body of the “Mosaic of Time” section will create a broader mosaic, over time, and ideally capture time as the world progresses or regresses—plunging into global events and out again.
Video: Majesty
“Yes, your majesty. We are your yes men. We will happily do your bidding. Your majesty.” With Madri’s driving drum & bass and its whining synth accompanying Manson’s sultry spoken word like a post-apocalyptic cabaret, like something diseased come upon the world, we are drawn into a kind of Mad Max dreamworld happening somewhere off stage left of this vignette of the end times, this twisted and cynical ode. Climb those majestic mountains, sirs!
Majesty is just one of a series of rock videos we have been posting from their collaboration, all of which can be found under the Song-A-Day link along the sidebar and you can find a selection of these songs on their album Secret Griefs here.
John Manson and Dan Madri of The Gondoliers, became involved some years ago in a project called Fun-A-Day. (Or FAD.) And now John and Dan are continuing this tradition under the title Song-A-Day or SAD, and over the course of the coming months, we here at Mutable will be posting them regularly for your viewing and listening pleasure. Enjoy!
Ostrich Derby
Stephen Scott Whitaker
Ostrich Derby took place every year on the same day as the Kentucky Derby, starting approximately an hour after the winning horse made his/her triumphant cross over the finish line. Ostrich Derby took place on Mung’s Farm, about four and a half hours north of the Hayes farm and environs. Jeffery Mung and his wife Fay raised ostriches, two and a half dozen of them usually, sometimes as many as three dozen on a sizable chunk of land on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Mung had begun commercial ostrich farming for eggs, not the actual bird themselves, but the leather, the yolk, the albumin, the shell, the whole of the egg. Ostrich eggs retail somewhere in the high teens, sometimes twenties. There’s been rumor that Mung has branched out into farming the birds for meat, which he has yet to publicly confirm, or deny. All in all, it’s a labor of love, and Jeff Mung charges admission to local school kids to come to see the ostriches. Mr. Bill often reflects on the day he drove through the lazy Maryland countryside, almost identical to Virginia’s Eastern Shore in terms of vegetation, animal wildlife, etc., when he saw out the passenger’s window a large almost saurian looking bird running at high speeds round and round a fenced section of land. Mulch had casually remarked, “Oh yeah, ostriches,” and slowed so Mr. Bill could see the birds. Then even more casually Mulch remarked, “We’re coming here next weekend for the derby.” But Bill hadn’t heard that remark, he had been too busy admiring the stride of the birds, the large nine-foot body, the long sloping necks, and the head which reminded him of an old balding man. Bill then saw several other birds in orbit inside the black screened fence, high as an elephant’s eye. Bill, for a second, was transported somewhere else, a real honest to god mind-warp. Mr. Bill never forgot that moment, the odd, but quick black and white cartoon-like bird cutting, zipping across the long stretch of fenced-in green yard, backed by a row of large blocky shed-like things, which housed the dinosaur’s closest relative. For a moment Bill thought he was in another country. Where was the desert savanna, the palm trees, the Egyptian oasis? There was only Maryland humidity and hot summer sun.
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Chapter 11: Unicorns & the Rest of the Bestiary
in Podcast, Series, Weltschmerz
Boyer is in San Francisco, but his mind is wandering, from his childhood to the 90’s and being young in hacker houses at the turn of the century, or performance lofts, or somewhere in between, and somewhere in there, God plays a part. This chapter is more a rumination than a Bedroom Theater, although it does contain a smashing musical number from the forgotten classic, Free-Thinking Man as Commodity. And food is featured prominently.
You can find Chapters 1 - 10 here.
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8" x 5.25"
560 Pages
$16.00
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Video: Liberty
“While I have no intention of teasing an extra squirt or two of milk from this old mother-shriveled old teat.” Pass on your entitlement, and let your bones fertilize the firmament. We are indeed freer than the wildest of babies. Taste the liberty! Another bit of brilliance from John Manson and Dan Madri.
Liberty is just one of a series of rock videos we have been posting from their collaboration, all of which can be found under the Song-A-Day link along the sidebar and you can find a selection of these songs on their album Secret Griefs here.