#SPIT and SNOT Icelandic band

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

""I liked DISCHARGE, and really respected CRASS too." Before she became a world-famous pop star, BJÖRK had an angry anarcho-punk band called SPIT AND SNOT."

"Pop stars rarely cut their teeth in anarcho-punk and jazz-fusions bands, but then Björk isn't like other pop stars."

-- LOUDER SOUND, by Paul Brannigan, published 3 hours ago

Dis nightmare still @%*$!#& continues!!

PIC #3: Spotlight on UK anarcho punk band CRASS, performing live at The Conway Hall in May 1978.

Learn more @ www.loudersound.com/features/bjork-discharge-crass-spit-and-snot.

[intriguingpeoplebyangelafloyd]

BJORK

BJORK

21 November 1965

Björk is a music artist from Iceland, she is best known for her singles: Human Behaviour, Hyperballad, and It’s Oh So Quiet.

Bjork Gudmundsdottir was born in Reyjavik, her mother was an activist, and her father was a union leader and electrician. Her mother remarried to a musician as a child and Bjork grew up surrounded by music. During her school years she studied music, her school was so impressed with her musical skills she got to sing on radio. At the age of 11, she gained her first album contract. When she was 13, she started a punk-rock band called Spit and Snot. As she got older, she turned to jazz music and started experimenting with music, as she wanted her own sound. Bjork used to work as a fish factory worker, she would have to work 12-hour shifts pulling worms out of fish with tweezers.

In 1986 she joined the band The Sugarcubes and married guitarist, Por Eldon and had a child. The couple lived in America and Europe. They opened for U2 at their 1992 world tour, when Bjork wanted to launch a solo career, the band broke up. Her first solo album was Debut (1993) and performed at the Athens Olympics in 2004.

In 1996 she attacked a news report at a Thailand airport. Bjork pulled the female reporter to the floor and banged her head onto the ground. Bjork alter apologised for the attack. In 1996, a bomb was found at South London post office in the sorting section, they discovered a bomb addressed to Bjork. The bomb was made by Ricardo Lopez, who took his own life after he filmed himself making the bomb.

Bjork’s performed at Shanghai concert in 2008. Bjork caused controversy in China when she shouted ‘Tibet, Tibet’ during the concert whilst performing her song ‘Declare Independence’. Tibetan independence was a taboo subject in China since 1951. Bjork was declared banned in China if there was a report performance.

#bjork

[bopinion]

Book of the month / 2021 / 04 April

I love books. Even though I hardly read any. Because my library is more like a collection of tomes, coffee-table books, limited editions... in short: books in which not "only" the content counts, but also the editorial performance, the presentation, the curating of the topic - the book as a total work of art itself.

björk :archives. A retrospective

Klaus Biesenbach

Monograph / 2015 / Schirmer/Mosel Publishing House

Iceland, the land of geysers, the largest volcanic island on the planet. Home of the Icelandic pony with its exclusive gait of the tölt and the most active literary community in the world. Soccer mecca and most sparsely populated country in Europe. Icelandic names - for example the highest mountain Hvannadalshnúkur - are hardly pronounceable, although the alphabet does not even know many common letters such as C, W, Q and Z. There is a separate holiday for seafarers and a division of time into 3-hour periods starting at midnight. 16 German cities each have more inhabitants than all of Iceland, which has therefore its own dating app to prevent relatives who are biologically too close from mating. It's a fascinating country.

Given the size of the country, it's probably no wonder that Iceland's pop cultural influence internationally is rather limited. Despite the Nobel Prize for Literature winner Halldór Laxness, whose work I don't know, and the crime series The Valhalla Murderers, which I know thanks to Netflix. But wait - wasn't there something else? Yes, that's right, Iceland has a globally successful Gesamtkunstwerk named Björk. Her contributions to music, video, film, fashion and art have influenced a generation worldwide.

Björk Guðmundsdóttir, born in Reykjavík in 1965, has made a name for herself as a singer, music producer, composer, songwriter and actress with a broad interest in different types of music, including pop music, electronic music, trip-hop, alternative rock, jazz, folk music and classical music. To date, she has sold over 20 million albums worldwide. Certainly not only because of the seemingly endless variability of her compositions, but also because of her voice, which one can confidently call unmistakable. She causes goose bumps, whether you like her music or not.

Little Björk attended music school at the age of five and was taught singing, piano and flute, among other things, for ten years. One of the teachers sent a recording of her singing the song "I Love To Love" by Tina Charles to a radio station. The broadcast was heard and liked by an employee of the Icelandic record publisher Fálkinn and subsequently offered her a recording contract - when she was eleven years old. With the help of her stepfather, who played guitar, she recorded her first album. It contained various Icelandic children's songs and cover versions of popular titles, such as "Fool on the Hill" by the Beatles. The album became a great national success.

At 14, Björk formed the girl punk group Spit and Snot, the maximum contrast program to the children's songs. This was followed by the fusion jazz group Exodus, later Tappi Tíkarrass and Kukl (Icelandic for witchcraft), with whom she developed her signature vocal style. First foreign tours to England and West Berlin followed. Then in 1986 came the formation of the band Pukl, later renamed The Sugarcubes. The first single brought respectable success in England and USA, The Sugarcubes reached cult status. The first record deal with Elektra Records led to the album "Life's too good" in 1988, making them the first Icelandic band ever to become world famous.

The transformation into a total work of art began in 1992 at the latest with Björk's move to London. The first solo album, appropriately named "Debut," became the album of the year according to New Musical Express. Now even Madonna wanted to have a whole album written by Björk, but it remained with the title track "Bedtime Story", she remained true to herself and her love of experimentation. The New York based news magazine "Time" named her the "high priestess of art" and in 2015 put her on the list of the 100 most influential people on earth. She rounded off her visual extravaganza, that even her wardrobe was prominently featured in the major retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Schirmer/Mosel Verlag is an art book publisher in Munich founded in 1974 by Lothar Schirmer and the commercial artist Erik Mosel. Schirmer became friends with artists such as Cy Twombly and Joseph Beuys at a young age and began collecting their works. By buying and reselling art prints and drawings, he earned the start-up capital for his publishing house. With his publishing debut, he ensured the rediscovery of August Sander, a visual artist of the Weimar Republic. There were various publishing collaborations with the MoMA, and in 2015 there was also the retrospective mentioned above. And of course, in keeping with the protagonist, the publication had to become a work of art itself.

"björk :archives" comes in an elegant slipcase containing six parts: four booklets, a paperback and a folded catalogue raisonné poster with the covers of all Björk albums. A closer look is worthwhile: first there is a thematic introduction by the editor and exhibition curator at the MoMA, Klaus Biesenbach. Then an illustrated essay by Alex Ross, music critic of the New Yorker, which deals with Björk's creative dissolution of musical and aesthetic boundaries. Another by Nicola Dibben, professor of musicology at the University of Sheffield, on Björk's creativity and collaborations. And the collected e-mail correspondence similar to a pen pal relationship between Björk and American publicist, philosopher and literary scholar Timothy Morton.

The book itself, the centerpiece of the edition, is about Björk's seven major albums and the characters she created for them. Poetic texts by Icelandic author Sjón, with whom Björk has long collaborated, are joined by a veritable treasure trove of illustrations: Photos of live performances, stills from the music videos of masters like Michel Gondry or Spike Jonze, Björk in stunning costumes by designers like Hussein Chalayan or Alexander McQueen, and PR shots by star photographers like the duo Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin or provocateur Araki.

The design of the publication quotes music scores and comes from the renowned Parisian design studio M/M. It all adds up to an extraordinary visual masterpiece, a tribute to the magical world of Björk. And that at an hardly believable price of € 19.80. A reviewer on Amazon (no, you shouldn't shop there - support local businesses!) sums it up: "This is a collection of art, stories and references very well organized and assembled with care. The price does absolutely not represent how valuable this product is, I am positively surprised." Positively surprising - that could truly be Björk's mission statement.

Björk's music itself is so rich in pictorial statements that it doesn't really need any exuberantly creative videos to go with it. Therefore, according to Slant Magazine, her best video is her first, relatively simple one: "Big Time sensuality" from her "Debut" album purely shows her joy in music. Here's the link:

https://youtu.be/-wYmq2Vz5yM