Joel Schalit

Frigging in the Rigging

The commercial success of Christopher Hitchens‘ most recent book, God is Not Great, is generating a lot of interest abroad. Many people are asking whether, in the wake of Bush, and his combination of military violence and Evangelical piety, a new secularism is now formally in the making.

From this vantage point, though I absolutely support such an endeavor, I am not so certain that this is indeed the case. A lot of extremely overdue noise about the political need for secularism, yes, but a broad-based social movement in the US, I remain skeptical. At the moment, its just a cultural exercise.

In this article in the July 27th weekend edition of Maariv, Israel’s largest-circulation daily, I was one of several folks journalist Vered Kellner spoke to about the issue. Though not frequently available in English, if you read Hebrew, Vered’s thoughtful work is always worth catching up with.

Metal Health

During my last year at Asphodel (2003-4), I spent most of my time helping the label’s owners acquire new projects. From traveling to Europe to meet artists, to endlessly redrafting new recording and distribution contracts, I frequently forget how many CD and DVD deals we eventually landed.

By the end of 2007, with the exception of one DVD, nearly all of the projects we worked on signing during that period will have finally come out. Of special note are two album-length works by the Berlin-based, new music group, Zeitkratzer ("Timescratcher") due out in September.

Consisting of an orchestral cover of Lou Reed‘s legendary 1975 album Metal Machine Music (a 2xLP of guitar feedback), and an additional CD/DVD of Iannis Xenakis-inspired works (cheekily referencing a classic Kiss title,)  Xenakis [Alive], I feel particularly sentimental about the impending release of these recordings.

The product of bandleader Reinhold Friedl‘s playful imagination, I’ll never forget the amazing dinner we had together in a restored Cologne rail depot in August 2003. I’m not sure whether it was the food (pasta) or the setting (subterranean). Needless to say, its nice to see the albums we discussed then finally seeing the light of day.