Throbbing Gristle Live at Camber Sands

JWise Moments

TG Live Camber Sands

I received Throbbing Gristle’s Live at Camber Sands this afternoon in the mail from Mute UK. After hearing TG Now studio recording from earlier this year I was impressed with the effort put into the recording from a band who hadn’t worked together in 23 years. Upon completing this last live gig, the band released a recording of the show 10 minutes after the end of the show; that is the CD that arrived today.

It was great to hear the chemistry of the Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter Christopherson, and Chris Carter meld after so many years of acrimony between them. Their feeling for the time is right on the mark; after hearing the new CD, I felt that they had taken the 70’s style of Industrial Music and brought it forward to 21st-century Industrial music. Instead of the manufacturing and grime of the ’70s, the soundtrack was transformed as an accompaniment to the service sector Kinko’s and Starbucks’s landscape of today.

Unfortunately, the group revisited old grounds when they performed a few songs from the old days; I suppose to keep the fans who attended the show feeling they got their money’s worth. For me, I would love to hear more of their interpretations of the current moment. From TG Now, the songs Splitting Sky, Almost Like This, and How Do You Deal are three of the best soundtracks I’ve heard this century; only X-Ray leaves me flat. On Live at Camber Sands, the band delivers a sobering show which, knowing that their good friend Geoff Rushton (Jhonn Balance of Coil) had recently died, is understandable. The mood of the performance was heavier than and not as focused as the TG Now studio or the live recording that was made immediately after TG Now was recorded. I still have a profound interest and great respect for the new recording as it is an absolute snapshot of our times via TG’s view of things but TG Now is more precise and far more prescient.

Camber Sands setlist is as follows as it is not printed on the CD and is not the easiest list to find: P-A D, What A Day, Greasy Spoon, Live-Ray, Hamburger Lady, Almost Like This, Splitting Sky, Convincing People, Fed Up, Wall of Sound.

My only wish is that this not be the last ever recording of Throbbing Gristle.

44th Century Sweden

JWise Dreams

Burned and worn-out shells of city blocks with broken streets are all that is left of civilization. No one over 50 can be seen. Going out can be problematic, but my guide, a woman about 30-something, has no problem maneuvering the landscape. She takes me to where she lives through a series of broken-out walls past other squatters who are living with the best shelter they can find, typically on the floors below the long-gone roofs and off the ground floor as a measure of safety. A school has been set up to try to preserve the language, logic, and civility skills, but the situation is precarious due to crimes committed in the effort to get things to trade. One of the students demonstrates, while in the woman’s living space, a glass device with two substances that come together to create a plasma containing electricity that flows over the flat piece of glass inside the glass bottle. Communication between species has changed as two animated lions are going on about something or other while lying on their backs, talking back and forth with one another.

Skyping

JWise Moments

About a year ago, I installed Skype but had no one to talk to. Today, I use it to talk with Michael Geesmann in Berlin, Germany, and Caroline uses Skype Out to talk with her mom in Frankfurt, Germany. Michael is an old friend from Frankfurt who now makes a living working out of his apartment selling various small gift items on eBay. Since last September Michael and I have talked for free for a total of many hours. Another old friend, Olaf Finkbeiner, is also using Skype but he is rarely available. Using Skype Out Caroline has talked with her mom for about a dozen hours with a cost of only .02 cents per minute. Voice over I.P. or VOIP is a dream on broadband, but using Skype Out to call our friend Jay Patel in Bombay, India, on his cell phone hasn’t worked out yet; the connection is far too noisy and impossible even to establish anything resembling a conversation. Having a chat window open while at the same time talking is the best of both worlds – telecom and the internet; as we talk, we send links back and forth, introducing each other to various websites.