Ceramic Dog are the trio comprised of Marc Ribot (guitars, vocals), Shahzad Ismaily (bass, keyboards, backing vocals) and Ches Smith (drums, percussion, electronics, backing vocals). They have announced the release of a new album called Hope which will be out on June 25th via Northern Spy. “The Activist” is a new excerpt.
I like to rant. Ranting is a kind of semi-involuntary spewing of something that seems to be very urgent.” says Marc Ribot regarding the track. “This particular rant came up after going to a lot of Activist meetings. Now, don’t get me wrong: some of my best friends are Activists. I’ve even been accused of being one myself (although after reading Astra Taylor’s essay “Against Activism” I try to aspire to being an organizer, or at least a radical). Anyway— I got frustrated at a couple of meetings because of people trying to posture as the most super rad instead of getting things done. Later, I was supposed to be working on a reasonable position paper of something: but stuff like this came out instead: “I don’t accept sidewalks, I walk on my hands in heavy traffic, and even that is a compromise. I don’t accept gravity, or teeth! I don’t accept you, or what the mainstream media refers to as your cute little (and I quote) “doggie.” Shahzad and Ches (my Ceramic Dog comrades) thought it was funny, so we started doing it live/improvised— and eventually came up with this jam. Party! ;-)”
Listen below.