Letters

The Haters' GX Jupitter-Larsen is "portly" and "brutish," lives in a "grimy cubbyhole," and yet is somehow polite and well-spoken. Maria Moran is "tiny," and is "nervously trying to occupy her delicate hands" (and is unflatteringly compared physically to the girlfriend in Rocky). Thomas Dimuzio is "pallid." And, perhaps most egregiously, AMK is "short, slightly tubby, scruffily dressed" and is described as (and I almost can't believe that I'm quoting this, it's so absurd) "the crass, cash-driven commercial underbelly" of the Bay Area noise scene. Never mind that, according to Smith, he painstakingly makes handmade packages for the works he sells, he's been targeted for copyright infringement/annihilation by a huge oil conglomerate, sales are down, and ... he's homeless! Quite a cash-rich music mogul, that AMK (I guess Smith's never heard of Merzbow, or that artist's rumored limited-edition-of-one CD encased in a Mercedes-Benz for $150,000).

Naturally, Smith betrays a complete lack of knowledge of the history behind contemporary "noise," "noise music," or what have you, and is seemingly ignorant of the pioneering artists (in various mediums) who are this generation's forefathers, from Varese and Stockhausen to Tod Dockstader and John Cage, to mention very few. This doesn't stop him from criticizing the music (and the underground, elitist audience which pretentiously feigns enjoyment of it) by repeatedly denigrating his subjects' works, and leading off the whole piece by calling their "aesthetic proclamations" "truly appalling." The end result of all this is having to ask yourself why this guy is writing this article in the first place. His occasional use of the word "wonderful" as a description doesn't jibe with a single facet of the story and smacks of an editorial decision (trying not to alienate everyone after all?).

Peter Conheim
Berkeley

Correction
Eric Lenchner's name was spelled incorrectly in last week's Riff Raff column. SF Weekly apologizes for the error.