Tag Archive: Lady Gaga


Walls are no obstacle for Marina Abramović

Filed under: Books, Gender, Modern Art — Leave a comment
January 3, 2018

 

Walk Through Walls: A Memoir by Marina Abramović (2016)

marinaI suspect most will, like me, come to this illuminating book through the publicity surrounding Marina Abramović’s recent works of performance art like The Artist Is Present at MoMa New York (March 14 – May 31, 2010) and ‘512 Days’ at Serpentine Gallery, London in 2014 or through the numerous fascinating video interviews and talks to be found on You Tube.

These show her to be powerful woman who is both strikingly beautiful and rivetingly charismatic. It becomes clear after seeing and hearing her how she can so fully captivate audiences and inspire adulation. Through the force of her personality and strong physical presence she comes over like a cross like a dominatrix or femme fatale yet also exudes warmth, humor and compassion.

The memoir – ghostwritten by James Kaplan based on extensive interviews – reveals her as an all or nothing character for whom nothing short of total committment is good enough. Continue reading →

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Song highlighting campus rape

Filed under: Gender, Good causes, Music — Leave a comment
November 22, 2015

violenza_donneTo mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, I’m sharing this song and video.

It was written for the documentary The Hunting Ground which highlights the shocking number of rapes that take place on US college campuses and the subsequent cover up by the institutions involved.

The song written by Diane Warren and Lady Gaga is entitled “Til It Happens to You” and the video graphically addresses this important issue:

 

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UP IN THE SKY THERE’S A HELL

Filed under: Music — Leave a comment
January 14, 2012

77 Bombay Street – someone make them stop!

Every so often a song comes out that becomes the bane of my life.

Try as I might to avoid it, the incessant radio plays mean I keep hearing it at the swimming pool, dentist and supermarket – places  where I am a captive audience.

It’s the musical equivalent of a turd that you can’t flush away.

The offending tune, this time, is Up In The Sky by a Swiss band called 77 Bombay Street named after a home in Adelaide where the Buchli family  lived for two years.

Three of the four members are part of a family of nine which raises the spectre of one or all of the other six deciding to follow in their brothers’ footsteps.

They dress like extras in Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band  and the relentless jollity of this tune together with lyrics of mind-numbing banality made me hate it on first hearing. Continue reading →

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LADY GAGA – THE MORPHINE PRINCESS

Filed under: Music — Leave a comment
December 2, 2011

You don’t have to be mad to be a superstar, but it helps.

Lady Gaga bares all , well almost, in her video to the single Marry The Night.

In the 14 minute video (which she directed herself)  you have to wait until  the 8:48 mark until the music itself  kicks in. The song will be a massive hit but that goes without saying. What’s more interesting is the way Lady G presents her vulnerability and psychological trauma as a vehicle for fame. It’s as if this is being presented as necessary to stardom rather than an unwanted by-product.

In the pretentious voiceover she refers to her past as “an unfinished painting” and declares “I loathe reality”. The first scenes show her in an asylum and telling a nurse (who calls her a “morphine princess”) that :   “I’m gonna make it …..I’m gonna be a star……because I have nothing left to lose”.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest morphs into Fame via Black Swan and Cronenberg’s Crash. After freaking out and overdosing on Cheerios she pulls herself together and reinvents herself (“I still had my Bedazzler”) – the dance sequence starts – cars are set alight and it’s business as usual except that  P-P-P -Poker becomes M-M-M-Marry.

“I’m a warrior queen ……..I’m a soldier to my own emptiness” she sings and I wouldn’t argue with either statement.

Related link:
Marry The Night is either sublimely brilliant or ridiculous (Nerve.Com)

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THE COSMIC KITSCH OF PRINCE RAMA (Netmage.11 #3)

Filed under: Italy, Music — 4 Comments
January 26, 2011

Here’s my (mostly speculative) theory of how Prince Rama came into being:

  • Two sisters (Taraka and Nimai Larson) escape under cover of night from a Hari Krishna clan and find sanctuary in the home of an aging new romantic.
  • they  both go to art school in Boston.
  • they fall in love with glam rock after chancing upon a roommate’s extensive David Bowie collection.
  • the universe provides the Taraka and Nimai with gifts of a drum kit and synthesiser.
  • they teach themselves the rudiments of these instruments and begin copying tracks by Soft Cell, Siouxsie & The Banshees and Human League.
  • they soon become frustrated that all the best music seems to be old and made by stuffy Brits.
  • at a low point in their lives they briefly fall under the spell of Lady Gaga.
  • they are saved by hippy chick dropout from a nearby commune who introduces them to the all American Freak scene peopled by the likes of Pocahaunted, Zola Jesus, and Peaking Lights.
  • back in their bedroom and newly inspired, they produce a cacophonic stew where tone deaf singing and rudimentary drumming can be hidden under the mask of this being in tune with other DIY psychedelic -pop wannabees.
  • they name their band after a Hindu deity (the original name was Prince Rama of Ayodhya),
  • an impressionable friend of an impressionable friend gets drunk at a party and signs them to his label and they make a record which they describe as “mapping utopic space via the mandalic architecture of controversial visionary artist Paul Laffoley“.

    • Continue reading →

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