San Fran Smartass Takes on Fist Dumplings and Gordon Lightfoot

Elsewhere he constructs field-recording documentaries from the Middle East and Southeast Asia, but on Porest's Prude Juice for the Heritage Swinger, Mark Gergis splices Negativland-styled agrarian-to-urban ethnographical montage and fittingly co-releases it on Seeland, the U2 tape-suffragists' own post-SST label. A founding member of SF Bay genre-bending pranksters Mono Pause, Gergis lets rip with spliced ha-ha salvos—nostalgic recounting of fist dumplings shifts into a Vienna Actionist's first-person tale of sodomizing and dismembering his wife; a San Fran yuppie crushes out on "cool" Nazis and designer coffee. More subtly, "Fought for ME" unmasks solipsism behind anti-war folkies and "Skin Bitch" turns Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown" into misogynist shit talking: "I hurled up my skin bitch and she's not lovin' nothing/Some men petition when I hit her in the nose."

photo: Hana Richard

Montaging Mark Gergis

Details

Porest
Prude Juice for the Heritage Swinger
Seeland/Electro Motive

Related Content

• The Peony Pavilion: Silken Spectacle
  January 11, 2012
• The Grammys' 53 Record Of The Year Winners, In Order
  February 8, 2012
• As One Indonesian Family Goes, So Goes the Nation in Position Among the Stars
  September 14, 2011
• Machine Drum+Chrissy Murderbot
  August 24, 2011
• Satellites and Debris: Star-Crossed Lovers
  July 29, 2011

More About

• Asia (Band)
• Raymond Scott
• Philip Jeck
• Howie Stern
• U2

When Howie Stern playfulness falls Jerky Boy flat, fuzzy instrumentals keep things afloat: Sun City Girls raga, Thinking Fellers angularity, Philip Jeck gamelan, farm-animal choirs, Raymond Scott interludes, raucous Borbetomagus hip-hop, and looped washes of layered shortwave, synthesizer, and processed percussion disguised as indie rock. Without these breath-catching bridges, the whole shebang would be morning-show obnoxious. Pauses in place, it's a pleasing Folkways rarity spit out by Pierre Henry.