Pure Data Patch, Thursday's Performance, Ramones

The above is a simple patch that I created while figuring out Pure Data and the theory behind basic things like amplitude and pitch modulation. I control them with sine waves to make them constantly changing. Also, I had initially experimented with adding a harmonic to make the sound richer, but it didn't sound very good.

During the AV Club performance, I saw two acquaintances that I hadn't seen in a while - Chris of ESS and Frog (who turned out to be Amazing Mr. Slug). My favorite part was seeing how Isadora works in a live performance - seeing the visuals and audio correspond live. I also appreciated Ars Phoenix's combination of guitars with electronics and seeing Anton's program in action. Anton's program allowed the audience to also express themselves, and I could tell a bit about the crowd's character - lots of appreciation for nerd culture made the screens very entertaining.

As for blogging about a band or artist, I'd like to talk about the Ramones, the harbingers of punk rock. After Legs McNeil, who co-founded Punk magazine, saw them at CBGB, he said: "They were all wearing these black leather jackets. And they counted off this song...and it was just this wall of noise.... They looked so striking. These guys were not hippies. This was something completely new." FYI: Dee Dee Ramone was known for counting off "1-2-3-4!" loudly before each song. Their uniform look of black leather jackets, t-shirts, and torn jeans combined with their straightforward short songs emphasized the minimalist movement popular in NYC at the time.

I've heard people argue that their punk counter-part in the UK, The Sex Pistols, started punk rock at the same time. I've even heard the argument that New York Dolls, now known as protopunk according to Wikipedia, started it. What do you think?

I think it's interesting that the Ramones were heavily influenced by pop music of the '50s and '60s and started out trying to play it together. They all realized that they just couldn't do it, so they resulted to playing a faster and louder wall of noise instead that became punk.

Ira Robbins and Scott Isler of Trouser Press say:
"With just four chords and one manic tempo, New York's Ramones blasted open the clogged arteries of mid-'70s rock, reanimating the music. Their genius was to recapture the short/simple aesthetic from which pop had strayed, adding a caustic sense of trash-culture humor and minimalist rhythm guitar sound."