Not really 313, but for me Arthur Russell is a personal idol. He was
from Iowa, and a 'cellist, and I'm from Iowa, and a 'cellist. All of
his music has an open-hearted romantic naivete that is very Iowa. His
best works rise and fall like the Iowa prairie.
Even when his tracks have an explicitly gay eroticism ("Is it all over
my face?", "I want to see all my friends at once go bang!") they also
have a second, giddy, sweet universal meaning, invoking the sublimely
romantic without guile or cynicism.
His fascination with an eternal beat meant he never really finished
tracks himself -- all of the famous tracks were edits done by others.
This is illustrated on the recent "Springfields" release -- the
Russell version meanders, and the DFA remix is more finished. Neither
is 'better' -- the DFA mix is focused and tightened into a lovely
dance track, and the Russell version never really settles on being one
thing to the exclusion of others. It sounds like whenever Russell
started something it suggested so many possibilities he could never
settle on one, and would try as many as would fit on the reel.
That combination -- an incorruptible innocence coupled with a vision
of infinite possibilities -- gives Russell's work a childlike
sweetness, that persisted through personal disappointments and
illness. He was a contemporary of and artistic fellow traveler to
Keith Haring, whose work had some of the same feeling. I feel the
loss of these artists as personally as I do the people I knew first
hand who we lost to AIDS. Luckily, unlike most of my friends who are
gone, they _were_ artists and left things behind for the rest of us.
On 4/16/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
http://www.arthurrussellmovie.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5tM1coZr4k&mode=related&search=
looking forward to this
MEK
