Re: RAT No Subject

[shadowtackle@att.net]

Dear Trav:


     I know you're onto something, and I can intuit a 
direction, but the ice is thin and the lake is wide. 
Populism has a dicey history (Huey Long and George 
Wallace were populists; Wm. Randolph Hearst; 
Swaggart...). Coming at it from the other direction, 
Wellman's Bad Penny and Crowbar were populist; Foreman's 
language is argualbly universalist; J. Jones (to expand 
the school) was blazingly Barnum-like with MC Kat and JP 
Morgan Saves the Nation... his latest up at Annex (Dirty 
Little Secrets), well and rightly hurrahed by Nick, has 
pop as it's subject and is wide open to the understanding 
and emotions. Experimental writers are no more 
deliberately obscurantist than Coletrane - not trying 
to say "no" to anybody, all trying to get a new sound 
exactly right. When the truth of a sound is perfectly 
identified, a wider audience than might be supposed can 
access it (football is completely strange, but popularly 
enjoyed). Part of the problem with the vanguard has been 
improper distribution/concentration of attention. One of 
Rat's functions is to address this by encouraging movent 
and opening new spaces. Roller coasters have Six Flags 
and Graeat America to distribute the idea of roller 
coasters; circuses are mobile. Our spcific, strange, apt 
sounds become can more pop by changing access vs. form. 
An old anecdote: the salt-sellers of America were 
worrying about flat sales at a convention, and they 
talked about new flavors and additives... the solution: 
bigger holes in salt shakers. We need bigger holes, not 
(necessarily) new salt.



e