Hey, hi, hello,
First! A little housekeeping: if you’re in NYC, maybe you want to come to T.J. Byrne’s next Tuesday, 5/13, where I’ll be reading fiction as part of the lineup of Patio, the monthly series programmed by Bronwen Lam and David Dufour. Doors at 7:00, readings at 8:00, a thoroughly no muss/no fuss type arrangement.
Voici le flyer:
This week, meanwhile, something entirely else:
I’m talking up the release of LCD no. 28, the first new print edition of WFMU’s legendary program guide Lowest Common Denominator since 2001. The issue was edited by Kendraplex--important modern musician and host of the very sick Monday night show Freaking Out--who was also kind enough to include some short fiction of mine in the issue.
The deep background here is that I’ve been a WFMU listener and partisan since I was a very young person. I grew up in the station’s listening radius, and it’s hard to overstate how much of an impact its programming has had on my cultural universe, going back to the days when we would get stoned on Tuesday afternoons and cozy in to Brian Turner playing hourlong Boris tracks and stuff, only to then get rocked by Dave Emory delivering a really scary lecture about I.G. Farben. It was an insane vibe, is the point, and I have repped the station fiercely ever since, even when the “soft merch” hasn’t always been the freshest. I volunteered at WFMU during and after high school and bugged all the DJs and tried to give them my tapes, programmed and “hosted” an episode of their Listener Hour program when I was 19 and obnoxious, and recorded a live set with my band Angels in America on the great Scott Williams’s show a few years later--a straightup vindication of my prior cassette-foisting.
Anyways, maybe goes some way toward accounting for why I’m so psyched to have been included in this mag; this place has meant the world to me (which is also why you should donate). Meanwhile my LCD piece, “Scene Report,” is reproduced below (in its print layout, which I didn’t make but am into, since I’ll never be bummed to pick up a zine and see crazy drawings and, like, snake creatures). The text is loosely excerpted from a way lengthier novel manuscript, and concerns a group of kids in the experimental arts community getting into all kinds of convoluted relationship dramas while also reaching the exhausted endpoints of their DIYer idealisms. This excerpt features an opening quote stolen from something our long-ago buddy Ryan (from the Western Mass freakout band Astral Plane Junkies) laid on us when we told him we were studying Gnosticism. Just a really good quote IMO.
The piece also contains my best attempt to date to explain what is meant by the term “noise scene,” in case that’s useful.
Enjoy, if you can!
Mark
”Scene Report,” as it appears in LCD no. 28.
The issue’s cover art, by Mary Fleener.
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