Jasmine Star mystery
Prentiss Riddle
Jasmine Star's "cult" is real, manufactured or a hoax. I say it's a
hoax: their website's grainy b&w photos of a faceless woman in a
hospital gown artily posed with a guitar and tanpura resemble nothing
so much as a homage to John Lurie's Marvin Pontiac schtick. The
band's one-line Narcopop blurb doesn't convince me otherwise. And
since I find no other web buzz for the band at all, the imputation of a
"cult" sounds like the DJ's generosity to a new Austin band.
Anybody heard anything to the contrary?
As for what the band sounds like, I hear nice but listless vocals,
whiny slide guitar meandering and an appropriately used drone from the
tanpura. Something like Morphine's later slow numbers. Well done if
you like that sort of thing, but not my cup of tea.
Links and discussion at:
http://www.io.com/~riddle/music/?item=20020404
-- Prentiss Riddle ("aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada")
-- rid...@io.com / http://www.io.com/~riddle/
Prentiss Riddle
:
: A KOOP DJ challenged us yesterday to decide for ourselves whether
: Jasmine Star's "cult" is real, manufactured or a hoax. I say it's a
Charlie Martin of KOOP's Around the Town Sounds writes:
As the dj in question, may I suggest a fan site that may deepen
the mystery: www.jasminestar.org
Thanks for the tip. Fascinating... or not, once you realize that the
jasminestar.org site includes 29 screensful of bogus "discussion"
consisting largely of pastebombed screeds about mental illness, herbal
remedies, Indian drone instruments and legal mumbo-jumbo.
There's also a lot of discussion about a "hidden cache" of photos of Z,
all of which look like they came from the same photo shoot as the
unhidden ones. Supposedly you can see needle tracks or self-mutilation
in image 6, but I sure don't.
Possibly the "truth" is posted by Aaron R. at the bottom of page 27:
"hi. I'm aaron, I created jasmine star and all the music on the album.
for that matter, I created the content of this message board including
the various characters on it. I also created the other fansite at
www.jasminestar.net . and I created the official website at
www.jasminestar.com. jasmine star is the first in a series of personal
explorations into the meaning of things..."
Regardless of whether "Aaron R." is the real creator of Z and Jasmine
Star, it certainly seems like a publicity stunt in the vein of the
Blair Witch Project -- especially in the light of the claim that
Jasmine Star postcards pointing to the website were circulated at South
by Southwest.
Andrew Hime
> Links and discussion at:
To take it out to another level of meta, I think you're just an ad as well.