This week, the cheap shitty MP3 player is filled with improvised noise. I have entirely too high a tolerance for this sort of thing if it’s the right genre, in this case early industrial — all those albums from the eighties released in limited editions of a few hundred for the Artist’s Shit market.
You might be suffering from Artist’s Shit if:
- you’ve bought a box set of anything ever, particularly ten or more live recordings by one band.
- you have MP3s of twenty remixes of any single song.
- you have over twenty gigabytes of MP3s you haven’t listened to yet, and if you do it’ll be once in your life and probably never again.
- you bought all the Damage Manual remix albums Martyn Atkins is pushing on eMusic.
- you bought the supar l33t everything edition of Ghosts I-IV by Nine Inch Nails.
- you have a copy of “The Laughing Gnome” for any reason other than to sell it on.
Recovery involves realising (a) you cannot buy souls on a record (b) you wouldn’t want to if you could.
Some music was much more fun to make than it will ever be to listen to. “Oh no, the Tombliboos are under the delusion they’re Miles Davis or equivalent!” You are not Miles Davis and nor are these people.
p.s.: the NWW list contains vast vistas of suction by any sane measure.
I saw a pile of those poo-cans once. There was a Manzoni exhibition in the Serpentine Gallery about ’98 or ’99. The Magic Bases were fun too, as was Umberto Ecos’ certificate of authenticity. For some reason it all seemed much cleverer and funnier than the similar stuff that’s still being produced 45 years later.
I have a 7″ of The Laughing Gnome so I can play it at Goth clubs to people whi think they’ve got up to dance to “Let’s Dance”. You should try it. Nobody at all ever objects in the slightest.
I saw the above can of Artist’s Shit at the Tate Modern. I laughed and laughed. Giggled for ages. Giggling now. It’s BRILLIANT and PERFECT. The photo doesn’t communicate its hilarity.