Monday, April 27, 2015

57. ABCDNA
     ABCDNA began as a stoner-concept; the innocent notion that we could wrestle millennia-coded, mass-programmed DNA from the powers-that-be, manifesting blatantly in the 1980s in the form of Dirty Wars1, corporate hegemony, and hyper-consumer-hysteria. As self-appointed, avenging angels of the dead-to-us society, it was our cross to bear counter-slogans and propaganda antidotes; to this end, we fed our nascent revolution "sonic ritual magic".
     ABCDNA, the band, consisted of Francophone on drums, myself on bass, M's satyrical guitar chops, and the demolishing synth tracks of the Baron. To unwind, or to further collective creativity, everyone switched playing whatnot. Minimalists at heart, we transmogrified musical variations on the theme, "MUTATION" for hours, chanting and droning out the singular word, "MUTATION" faster and faster, like punk Hare Krishnas. We applied for and received an art grant from the Québecois government, who kindly supported half-starving, junk-sick, hash-frenzied, subversive artistes, bent-on liquidating CONTROL.
                                                                            Brion Gysin and W.S. Burroughs, Tangiers
     We collaborated on a color-xeroxed, collaged magazine with an accompanying audio cassette tape, entitled ABCDNA....code lingo for Automatic Behavior Control DeoxyriboNucleic Acid! We tweaked a graphic of the serpentine, DNA double-helix, inside a neon rainbow blaze (an effect of xeroxing aluminum foil) on the cover, and applied twists of W. S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin's famous cut-up techniques to the text; we exulted in our cryptic and necromantic iconographic style. Like everything else we did, it manifested itself brilliantly (in total obscurity!) (entertaining ghosts again!) (though we did have the pleasure of presenting a copy to El Hombre Invisible; the sight of him leaving the building, after a reading in Vancouver, clutching ABCDNA to his chest, made it oh-so-worthwhile).  
                                                                     Gysin, Brion, Rub Out the Write Word

1 Scahill, Jeremy, Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield (2013)

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