A bark in the dark

even if you never love me back

2011-02-25T20:57:00.001-08:00

even if you never love me back
Originally uploaded by The 10 cent designer

From the 10 cent designer. lovely

Mind the skies: A requiem for Alex Velvet

2010-10-24T13:21:00.000-07:00

The workers at Consolidated Overmetrics insist to this day that they were not, in fact, contracted to design a piano catapult.

Court documents and deposition transcripts indicate multiple incidences where employees and executives state that at no time was their a client workorder reading, "We need something of the dimensions x, y, z, must be capable of generating n amount of torque-feet and, by the way, also able to fire a Mahogany-toned Yamaha baby-grand Model AE564 (with the Composochrome add-on package) with lethal force at a range of 400 to 500 yards." This was not part of their work order.

Realistically, however, it should be noted that all force with regard to a flying piano inevitably can be classified as "lethal."

Still, that doesn't change the fact that the few lines in the above spec sheet that did not reference said piano were indeed part of their mandate, and that the client's request form clearly asked for the capability to propel an object of comparable size and mass from "a stand-still position to a targeted destination upwards of 400 feet from source." The socio-military applications for said device remain classified, but a string of spokesmen and witness have testified under oath that its application are myriad in both the civic and public sector.

The word "catapult," of course, never appears on the form -- this was to be a Metal-Carbide Stationary Object Linear Accelerator (MC-SOLA), the kinds of which that Consolidated had been churning out for some 11 years prior to what is now only known as "the incident" at the C.O. Proving Grounds, which are for tax and liability reasons located thousands of miles away from the California-based Practical Design Group in a gated facility in western Colombia, in a town called Xiopollin.

(It should be noted that there's no guideline for pronouncing the name of Xiopollin. In terms of native settlements in the South American nation, there was no precedent for anything of consequence at the intersection of the Chucha River and the Pixto Mountain Range -- Just 10 miles away from the Gila Resort ['Ski the Experience! / Esqui la Experiencia!']. The land in fact had be regarded as generally useless if not entirely cursed for use other than grazing land for the area's migrant ranchers, an application that vanished a short time after the native peoples of the valley were vigorously encouraged to continue their nomadic ways.)

Known colloquially among its workers as 'Facility X', the MC-SOLA at Xiopollin was tested under the guidance of Tyler Tarrington, a mid-level project manager and recent graduate from the University of Florida A&M with a degree in Mechanical Acceleration, a magnet program unique to the University designed to capitalize on the area's burgeoning interest in NASCAR and its attendant pursuits. Tarrington, a man whose personnel file gives no indication of being realistically considered a stupid person, was later said under oath to be the sort of young man who lacked judgment in numerous arenas, not the least of which being where acceleration was involved.

Hired at C.O.'s Silicon Valley location, Tarrington was reassigned to Facility X to, in the words of his Employee Travel Activity Timetable packet (ETAT), "Supervise the completion of this latest iteration of the SOLA project," which had been successfully tested in multiple markets at a smaller scale. Prior company-wide success in replicating the SOLA product gave them no indicatio to Tarrington than any other project manager.

Records indicate that the construction proceeded for three months without incident up until completion of a prototype, which when raised into launch position was upwards of 30 feet tall and 20 feet long. Prototype dates are always festive around Facility X, which on that count is again no different from the Company's other locations. As such crates of dark rum, pan-fried plaintains and rolled pork tacos were acquired for the team, in addition to the above described Yamaha piano (on loan from the Gila Resort in a trade for 50 of the spare cases of said dark rum earlier that year, a result that Tarrington described as "happy" in his logs). Bartering for goods and services, again, is a common practice South America and other outlying corpro-scapes where the Company has been successful.

Testimony -- and thorough investigation of the physical area -- indicates that initial tests of the MC-SOLA involving the Company's biodegradable foam models, a series of metal wastebaskets and one 5x5 carton of rolled pork tacos were successfully discharged with a level of accuracy .07% of target estimation some 800 feet away in the unoccupied Muhuatimoc Valley on the opposite side of Highway 175 to the West. In a deposition conducted on January 5, an engineer on hand named Hiram Willits of Sioux Falls testified that the testing celebration got "a little out of hand" shortly thereafter.

Meandering along Colombia's coast like a two-laned trickle of civilization, Highway 175 is by definition remote by most Western standards, even moreso since it was replaced by the wider, more efficient Highway 1-A as the key shipping artery for South American business. A twisting two-laned road preferred by set-in-their-ways villagers traveling from town to town to ply their wares and the unhurried tourists looking to gawk at them, 175 is a good mile and a half away from the front gate of Facility X, but switches back to a mere 600 feet from the Southeastern fenceline. One such tourist traveling along the highway on the day in question was a man named Alex Velvet, a data assistant at a small company in Vermont that coincidentally was one of Consolidated Overmetrics' vendors in the mid 80s, well before Velvet's tenure began (research into this 'coincidence' being the result of conspiracy turned up no evidence in three separate investigations).

Forensic investigations have proven inconclusive, but estimates are that Velvet was traveling 35 miles per hour on his BMW motorcycle with an unoccupied sidecar at the time of the incident. The following is an eye-witness account by Felix Hermedia, a Bolivian-born backpacker and amateur videographer who was hitchhiking along the highway's shoulder at the time.

The motorcycle had just rounded the final switchback leaving the forest, and the driver seemed focused on the road -- not one of those slow-moving touristas that clog the highway in the summertime. He was a man with someplace to go. I saw he had a sidecar so I motioned to see if he could give me a ride.

For an instant, the sun was gone, and the whole jungle went quiet. There was this explosion of sound, like an orchestra before a recital but all at once, focused.

Before I even know what had happened the motorcycle had no rider, and headed past the next turn and into the forest. Everything was quiet, and then the forest started again.

At Facility X, there was the sort of delirious celebration that comes with an unexpected triumph, the sort not unfamiliar at carnivals or perhaps traveling magic shows. Mr. Willits described the piano's trajectory as "carrying a lower angle than we expected, like a line drive but still above the brush line that frames the facility. We had no idea that it landed anywhere other than the fire zone."

Other eyewitnesses at the Facility have not been so forthcoming, but C.O. has promised their full cooperation as the investigation moves forward. One worker who has yet to be deposed and has indicated that he heard the Yamaha AE564 meet Mr. Velvet in a key that the worker identified as G but this remains unsubstantieted tho this day. Velvet, who expired on impact, was found in a clearing at the side of the highway some 681 feet from launch point, a distance that C.O. has listed in its records as "beyond scope."

Tomorrow or not somewhere

2010-09-30T13:08:00.000-07:00

I was at a wedding reception when the revolution began.

I'd never been to the city before and was grateful for the excuse, and we were all taking shelter from a sudden storm that came up in the church just a few blocks from City Hall that had been converted to a barn. It was sudden to me, anyway, it doesn't rain much where I'm from. The church where the wedding was one of those steeple-peaked, turn-of-the-century looking models but had closed down years ago. Now they rent the place out for weddings , which I'd imagine doesn't entirely impress the deacons or fathers or whatever they were who worked out of there. Or maybe it does.

I remember the light coming through the stained glass lining the ceiling was beautiful. The sun looked to be setting someplace only a few blocks away when this humpbacked cloud eased halfway over the roof, spitting lightning bolts across the sky with deep pockets full of thunderclaps as the sun feebly poked down on the tree-lined streets in the distance. The ceremony over, the newlyweds were in good spirits, and a good chunk of the crowd even raised glasses yelled with every rafter-rattling rumble. A few stragglers tap-danced their way inside for cover, leaving behind formations of folding chairs clustered around nothing in the wet grass.

The first armored personnel carrier speeding by the ex-church's big bay window barely registered, the second only slightly moreso as Kool & the Gang's "Celebration" bounced and rumbled along, right on schedule. I watched a cluster of tanks rumble crazily across the park, but they took awhile to register, their expressionless cyclops eyes lolling in front of them in a way that seemed strangely harmless, like my brain just absorbed the scene and replied, "Oh, I'd rather not," and reassigned them as some kind of wild animal, or a bunch of rogue appliances, as if a couple of lampposts had come to life and decided to relocate.

I turned away from the nonsensical scene and saw the DJ was watching me, his hands fiddling absently to start Madonna's "Holiday," which didn't make sense until i saw two men in head-to-toe camouflage come in from outside and unhurriedly position themselves on either side of the window. Their elbows rose and the glass iwas gone. Another thunderclap carved through the room and all the noises in the room reached to follow, the soldiers' rifles pumping toward scene across the street, the scattering of screams and the DJ leaving his post and heading into the rain, his white dinner jacket flailing wildly behind him before he flew into one of the clusters of chairs, tumbling over them with what seemed to be no sound at all.

The tanks were closer now, I couldn't hear much at that point but I heard them, a metronomic tick-tick-tick that nodded over some horribly insistent mechanized grind that reminded me of the Sugardale plant back home. The soldier next to me palmed a cherry red bicycle helmet to his chest as he fiddled with something in his bag, finally giving up and smacking his partner on the shoulder. The second soldier looked up from his rifle and the smoking, steadily advancing tanks, the closest of which had seemed so interested in turning its big, expressionless eye toward our former church it barely regarded the midsized elm in its path, folding it under its tread with little notice as a third armored transport lumbered down our street.

I heard a voice, some megaphone-enhanced barking coming from somewhere but I was on my back now, covered in shrimp, peanut sauce and little figs wrapped in ham that had fallen in various forms of disrepair across my chest. Tumbling, clumsy legs and guests crossed in front of me as I watched one soldier hand the other what looked like a small rocket, a strangely toy-like thing hardly bigger than his hand. He curled the bike helmet under his armpit, holding the little rocket gently by its neck and pointing it out the window like some kind of trainer waving a sock under a dog's nose before sending it on its way.

I rolled onto my side to stand and watched as it cut a crooked, manic path through the window with an evil hiss, slamming into the first tank with a flash that made my face feel flushed. Cake and frosting smeared across my cheek and into my hair and I was alone except the soldiers who screamed something into my face. I have no idea what. Another thunderclap rumbled underneath me and I realized there wasn't any rain, not anymore, and maybe there never was. The clouds had never parted and this church could never close and the music played on and on.

merge ahead

2010-09-16T17:08:00.000-07:00

"You don't even know what I used to be like," he snorted, reshuffling himself into the passenger seat and burying his elbow deeper into that seam between where car door ends and the window begins. He got like this sometimes, feeling down like just about everyone can from time to time, but then refracting those feelings into a general loathing for himself and pretty much every decision in his life. She understood this, but tapping on the nubby little grip on the underside of the steering wheel wasn't helping. Hell of a way to spend a Saturday.

The turn signal blandly metronomed to itself against his continued fidgets against his trousers and the Escalade's leather -- were they leather? Did they book that option -- seats as the car idled quietly under the light. She wished she could turn on the radio, or maybe one of the two TVs queued up along the upper spine of the cabin, anything to cover up the silence she was offering him in return. But what else could she do, really?

Was, in fact, the car worth this? The house in the foothills, the one that she had seen on "Extra" even before they met, was that enough to balance another conversation like this out? Maybe it was part of growing older, this need to reevaluate, to reconsider your every move in life just as you're close to its end. Is that the same motivation that drives people who stayed in the movie theater to read all the credits, so enthralled with the experience of the movie that even just by sitting in the dryly unyielding theater seat for just another five minutes will somehow keep the magic onscreen from dying down quite yet (even though the houselights were already up). She never was that kind of person, even when she couldn't afford seeing movies on her own.

The Escalade lumbered quietly through the intersection smoothly as a refrigerator coated in oil and she realized he was talking again, something about his time onset with Gary Fisher, or maybe it was Gary Cooper. Someone more important than who he sees now, which was basically just her. First thing in the morning she would wake up before him, pad into the kitchen, turn on the TV and the coffeepot and decide when waking him would be worth it, when she should end her own little scene of quiet morning solitude and step into the real world, their real world. One that was very comfortable, of course, with sixteen bedrooms, three pools and a jacuzzi that came on if you clapped your hands just so, but still, she was tired. She woke up tired.

Eventually she'd wake him up, he'd creak his way into the bathrobe crumpled on the nightstand, stumble for his slippers and kiss the top of her head. Some days she'd tilt her head toward him, like there was some greater intimacy in the left third of her scalp over the center, but he seemed to like it. Coffee would be consumed and he'd flick on the big screen, which was usually turned to that classic movie channel, that one always playing something starring someone dead. She'd hear his voice rise and fall like a gravel-spiked slide whistle in some kind of appreciation and that was her cue to start her day for real, to step into the bath and commence with putting up her hair, putting on her face and beginning the Appearances. This was daily.

Today's appearances were fine. Lunch at the Pompano. A brisk walk through that outdoor mall across town where she'd pick out something nice and he'd pretend not to want to buy it and she'd pretend to be grateful. Now here, back in traffic heading to the golf course to meet Saul, who always seemed to wear that gold chain with the nugget pendant no matter what time of day. Then dinner someplace nice, then back to the big screen and it started over again. This, as her mother in Bakersfield told it, was the life.

"Aren't you going to say something? Argue with me, say, 'You're just being silly Walter,' or 'Let's not fight on a Saturday, Walter,' isn't that what you always do?" This was not getting any easier.

The ninth hole at Cloverdale is a par three, a consideration made both for its short approach and its proximity to the side of the Boulevard, a necessary geographic quirk that always seemed to get in people's heads and make them push the ball exactly where they're not supposed to. Every week, it seemed like, a shot went bad and sailed over the fence like a moonshot, arcing deliriously toward parked cars and oncoming traffic like it was born to do nothing else. The man in the khaki shorts wasn't thinking about that, or at least he thought he wasn't thinking about it. He thought he had his nine iron but, by some quirk of a really bad misadventure on the pin-side green on the eighth, he actually had his six. The man in the khaki shorts was a good golfer, but not a great one. Mishits and mulligans, they're part of the game.

here be monsters

2010-09-14T15:54:00.000-07:00

Thomas looked down into the well, deep down, feeling his eyes stretch like a couple of threadbare rubberbands behind his glasses as he did. Nothing, just a few tufts of lost grass growing more and more sparse as they mistakenly pushed out between the tired old bricks, a blistered tree root elbowing into the shaft and back again, then darkness, deep, hungry, endless. It couldn't be that much, he thought, he was fifteen for god's sake, who believed in bottomless pit stories? Babies, that's who. Still, down there was a football, two frisbees, Eddie Falcon's Plasticman and who knew how many tennis ballls, lost and swallowed by something deep and unmanageable, too inconvenient for anyone from the neighborhood to pursue.

"Do it," Mark said, trying to sound casual. He'd been in a wheelchair since that ice storm in February, so obviously he wasn't a candidate, but there were only so many more summer days left at this point. How many more times could they go to the drugstore for a new ball, and with three days left until allowance day? Besides, even if they were lazy and took the bus it would still be an hour there-and-back, and it was already three. "It can't be down there that far," he added hopefully.

"You do it," Thomas shot back with a little laugh, trying to mask the fear. "You wouldn't go down there anyway, who knows how far it is? Let's just head back inside, or maybe hit up the arcade. That Hill's around the corner has a sit-down machine, we can use those." His eyes stayed on the bottom of the well. There wasn't anything down there, he thought, he was just being silly. Maybe a snake or something, but who wants to deal with that? It's just a stupid baseball.

But still, a thought kept gnawing at him. How much stuff must be down there? How many baseballs? He was going to be driving next year, he was too old to be afraid of the dark, wasn't he? He could get a flashlight and be down there in minutes, the way those bricks stuck out. Or maybe they could just lower a ladder down to the bottom, that really big one his dad kept hanging on the wall that telescoped to the roof that one summer they reshingled the roof. That sucked, but the ladder was easy.

"Gimme your pen," Thomas said. Mark always had a pen in his pocket, usually one of those cheapo bic jobbies or one of those cummerbund-clad government pens his stepdad seemed to get by the pound from his job in the city.

Mark made a face. "I don't have one," he said, digging in his pocket and feeling the four-color click pen in his pocket, each of the inviting little levers at the top sliding agreeably halfway down their little slots. This wasn't some pen that needed to get sacrificed to this stupid well. Red, black, blue, even green, this pen had it all, and deserved better.

Thomas shot him a look and dug into his pocket, finding just lint and his keys, neither of which were going to work. He crouched down and picked at the lip of the well until he could loosen the dirt, standing and stomping his heel into the edge until a few clumps of Michigan clay tumbled down the well's side. This idea had come up a bunch of times before, but each time the boys lost track of the debris' path, only hearing it skitter of the edge of the bricks and no doubt to some soft-landing at the bottom. Of course there was a bottom.

"I'll be right back," Thomas said.

under the gun

2010-01-20T20:13:00.000-08:00

I'm told that earlier this week was Blue Monday, a special little invention in Britain that apparently defined January 18 as the most depressing day of the year. This year, anyway. Their reasoning seems simple enough -- the holidays are over and, well, you live in Britain and thus probably won't be seeing the sun in a month and a half.

I certainly admire the Brits for sticking a flag in the ground for such a day (because really, their weather gives them every right), and I like the extra edge this adds to the New Order song that pounded in my head during many such Blue Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, etc., when I was in high school, but this is really just a convenient bit of calendar manipulation. Kind of like how Mother's Day falls in the middle of May -- it's not like May's a particularly hard month for moms (that I know of) or there was some kind of Mother's March on Washington that day in 1886 -- it's just a nicer month than April and June was already claimed for Dad since no major sporting events take place (or something).

Any day can be crap, and if I remember right I was feeling pretty good this past Monday as a matter of fact, despite the presence of real, live inclement weather here in Los Angeles and the fact the time was right to be awash in British melancholy. But forces are out there, emotional hot-foots and buttons that wait to be pushed. I don't necessarily think one will do it unless there's a particularly tender spot on me that day; generally it takes a multitude of things.

This is essentially a long way 'round of saying today I've been feeling a bit of crap today, and I think how the tumblers fell into place. Some were fairly on the nose -- the weather's still fantastically gloomy, something I kind of enjoy but regardless we're biologically wired to get nailed by these things (ask anyone who lives in the Pacific Northwest or, say, Scotland).

Then Massachusetts sprayed a blast of diarrhea all over what was already a fecal-friendly political climate by electing a guy who looks like the villain in 'Friday Night Lights,' and thus ensuring U.S. will not have a modern, reasonable and compassionate healthcare program in, fuck it, let's call it our lifetime.

Plus I was sick all last week and felt generally uninspired for longer than that, two obviously temporary conditions that nevertheless feel permanent when you're in them, and that's terrifying.

AND, I've got a birthday coming up, something that's certainly not a bad thing (considering the alternative) but still, it's a time to take stock of all you've done up to now and, most heavily, not done.

But i think the system running in the back of my head that finally tipped the scale was a phone call I heard on the Savage Love podcast last weekend. (If you don't listen to the gospels according to Dan Savage, i highly recommend. He's this century's Dr. Ruth if you put an improv comic's wit into her brainpan -- seriously, the guy's not just funny, he's frightfully smart.)

Anyway, a guy called in, kind of young, and all he wanted was to find love. A reasonable and even typical request, but he wanted to find love as soon as possible because he was just diagnosed with ALS, also know as Amiotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, something a small part of me is a little surprised I still know how to spell.

If you're lucky, you know that jumble of syllables only as Lou Gehrig's Disease, something far away and mysterious that probably also allows you to laugh at the variety of harmless jokes that come at that name's expense. (Denis Leary had a good one.) I'm not lucky, my mom died of ALS a little more than 10 years ago.

So, there was a time that such a phone call would've had me nearly breaking my wrist to try and turn off the radio. I lived through that stuff, after all, and don't need to hear all-too-vivid reminders of it. At least that's how my mind operated a few years ago. Lately though I've been trying to turn and face such things, let whatever emotion that pops up blast me in the face, figuring Attention Must Be Paid. It's been a long time, too long I feel like. No sense running from all that now.

So I sat in the garage listened to this guy, his remarkable strength and calm as he described his situation, considered whether he was being selfish to look for love that would only, inevitably, break the other person's heart in 2-4 years. (He spoke frankly of the ultimately pointless radical treatments out there now that only stood to add painful months to his life, never mentioned the long-term delay mechanisms like feeding tubes and respirators like those used by Stephen Hawking, who's pretty much lived forever with the damn disease as near as I can tell.) He had no delusions about what was coming and wasn't afraid, at this point anyway, and his bluntness was somewhere between inspiring and jarring.

Dan Savage dipped his voice, responded with characteristic sensitivity that the caller was over-thinking the whole thing. He had every right to pursue someone to help "take him out," as it were (or will be). He referenced the AIDS crisis of the 80s, when loved ones consumed by fear abandoned loved ones to die alone. But then there were other couples who did not, couples and individuals who showed remarkable strength. Then he frankly but somehow not bluntly said that we are not entitled to die with accompaniment, even when we couple off. But he encouraged. Then he apologized. The he apologized on behalf of me, the listener, which seemed about right.

How's your Blue Monday now?

A few days later while listening to a later episode, another caller left a message in reponse saying that she was half of the duo who recorded the podcast's power-pop theme song, and that her partner had also been diagnosed with ALS recently and just got married. So, caller from Seattle who moved there alone, there was hope. That's twice this disease, this spur into the side of my memory was hit.

I bring these up not to make a point about bad moods or memory, but more to add that i listened to both of these calls and, at least by comparison to prior years, wasn't devastated. I was sad, maybe in a different, sharper kind of way than someone might have who never knew such things, but I wasn't transported back to the most weeks of my life in August of 1999, sob into the heel of my hand and, I should mention, did not feel overcome by some bathwater-warm light of grace or acceptance that's gained through experience. Mostly it all just sort of ran off me.

And I think that's what has been sitting in my belly all week like some kind of noxious landmine, waiting to overtake my day. I didn't feel those feelings above because I'm not supposed to -- time has passed, I'm removed from the scorched Earth my mother's illness left behind because that's what my brain had to do. I need to function; distance had to be built.

And that, for as much as I need it, is kind of sad thing. I'm years removed from the raw, horrible grief from my mother's death, but since those memories were the last ones I had, I feel weirdly protective over them. Time has passed with an efficiency that seems to me almost gauche.

I can't do anything about that, of course. But what I can do is try and honor it, even if a little bit. It's writing about those experiences from 10 years ago that haunts me when I have trouble falling asleep, but it's a project that has never felt quite right in the numerous finished and half-finished chapters and remembrances I've accrued up to this point. I think that's why I've been showing up here, to either learn how to do that or even drop of some gestural sketches of how I might approach this demanding beast. I can't stop time, not really, but if I figure this out I think I can catch it for awhile.

and so this is christmas

2009-12-21T09:03:00.000-08:00

I've noticed a couple more things about this space as I try and remember to look at it more than once a month. One, it looks a lot like what it is -- something started about five years ago and generally untouched by any technological advance from the most basic template, apart from my ruthlessly pirated header above (thank you, artist who's name I forget!). Really hoping to get around to changing all that at some point but, eh, probably not. Suffice to say I'd like to apologize for my dated appearance, but that's a little consistent with real life. Plaid shirts, anyone?

Second, if you were to happen by and read some of this stuff you might be possessed by the impression that I'm one grim bastard, which is a less-accurate reflection. True, it's been a year and in some respects a bundle of years where there's plenty of material, we'll call it, to stare at my bellybutton about. But certainly not as much as others, and on the whole I'm generally not the guy at the end of the bar staring into the bottom of my glass and pondering the meaning of it all. Generally.

So today, a holiday story. Or at least an attempt at one.

One of the beautiful things about holidays is the extension of traditions, some of them so small you'd hardly notice they've been adopted until suddenly you're carrying them on. One of my favorites that we have quietly picked up through the years is acquiring odd or otherwise unique ornaments for our yearly tree, such that's it's been. We've never been the sort that rushes through Target, picks up a box of colored balls and icicles and called it a day -- not that there's anything wrong with that.

It's something that started with my dad when he was a teenager, visiting family from house to house in South Boston with my Grandfather on Christmas Eve. They'd deliver presents and have a drink and, without fail, steal an ornament off the tree at every stop. As I remember it this was an understood bit of holiday theft, and maybe there was even a moment where my grandfather would take some time to pick one out with the host's blessing, I'm not sure. But suffice to say by the end of the night my dad was fairly carrying my grandfather home as the drinks and houses added up, but out of that came my family's tradition of buying a couple new ornaments year after year.

And that's a lucky thing. When I was growing up I loved all the strange and otherworldly stars of our family's Christmas tree. I can see them now, the fake gingerbread/marshmallow house made out of chunky, Pepto-colored styrofoam. The little orange lightbulb with the clown face of yarn made by my brother in 3rd grade. A ceramic mouse napping on a crescent moon with my name on it, a gift from my teacher in 4th grade. The lanky stuffed elf in red, dangling from a rickety ladder as a string of metallic gold beads spills out of his hand and his little surprised face stitched to a tiny 'o,' only slightly larger than a pinhole. These are the decorations and stories that make up our tree, and I've adored them from every angle since I was little.

So much so that I used to sneak down to our crawlspace in Ohio, where our tree was boxed up in pieces next to a taped up green Glenfiddich box that held our ornaments. My fascination would start every year sometime toward the end of October, when the weather would turn in that unmistakably biting and smoky way to let you know, yes, Winter is coming. It all usually happened right around the time the JCPenney catalogs were expected.

I'd crouch down there in my slippers and oversized Snoopy robe and dig for some of my favorites, unwrapping them from crumpled paper and plastic to hold them up to the pale shop light that hung over our sump pump, gurgling quietly to itself in the corner. Eventually my mom would fetch me out of there, but I appreciate that I was allowed to linger a bit on that cold concrete floor.

I remember our tradition with the lights, once the tree finally went up (usually somewhere in the teens of December. My dad and I would 'build' the tree and string the lights (we've had artificial trees since I was about six or so, and I barely remember the few real ones apart from the absurdly rotund 'pregnant' Christmas tree from when I was four or five), and, like an aesthetic cavalry, my mom would come in and reshape before the decorating could continue.

The branches would be bent here or there to cover empty spaces, and the lights would be strung and restrung by my mom to get the solids over here, a series of blinking lights over here, all with the unspoken yet understood goal of giving each year's tree a unique pattern of lights to overlap with eachother on and off, a unique sort of randomness that always built a sort of tension and left no corner unlit in a thoughtfully composed holiday drama that you might see on a parade float, or some kind of gallery installation. Sometimes it took as long as an hour.

Then the ornaments would come out. My dad always placed the elf with the ladder first, just below the angel at the top, and then we cycled through the whole box, holding certain special ones up for eachother and remembering their stories. A lot of ornaments are marked by years, and inevitably those say something about the state of the family. 1981 is a simple circle of sleigh scene on painted wood, indicative of the tough times after my dad lost his job during the PATCO strike. The 1985 ornament is a Santa in a bathing cap, a tribute to our first Christmas in California after moving from Ohio. Inevitably, we had more ornaments than tree, as well as more lights, garland and tinsel than anyone probably needs. But the tree always looked perfect, and somehow better every year.

Now my wife and I have some ornaments of our own, though not nearly old and weathered. We've got a matching pair of crocheted penguins, each for some reason carrying luggage. An armory of fuzzy wool balls, each with whimsical polka dot and stripe patterns in some sort of parody of holiday colors like olive green, maroon and harvest orange. A fuzzy rabbit in a scarf and oversized knit hat. A small army of angels given to me by my father each successive Christmas since my mother died.

These all were slowly acquired year after year, carefully put away in a box, and placed sort of at random on our abbreviated attempt at an annual Christmas tree. I say abbreviated because we had misgivings about dropping a full-size dead tree in the corner, so we had little, 3- or 4-foot varieties, sold to us by bundled carnies at the neighborhood tree lot and jammed into our little hatchback. (Seriously, have you looked at the staff at the average tree lot? I think we know what happens to that guy smelling vaguely of circus peanuts and Krylon while tending to the Zipper every summer.)

This year, there would be no more of that. B finally reached her breaking point and bought us an actual, 7-foot fake tree from, yes, Target. The best faux-fir totem $60 could buy, and it is, an awfully lovely and awfully grown-up kind of tree. The tradition, the holiday as a whole, feels like it's dug in a little deeper in our lives, and it's good. But the funny thing is how quietly the other traditions have been passed along.

A few of our ornaments already have their ideal placement on the tree, and I know they'll find their way there every year (that rabbit in the hat, our first ornament, seems on its way to becoming our thin little elf). The few heavy fake-vintage glass balls hang out at the bottom, and everything else fills in. The lights, however, are all white, a shift from the rainbow-colored blinky assortment my family always preferred as I was growing up. But this Christmas I noticed that I was the one bending the occasional tree branch after we put it up, then I was the one tangled in wires and stars as I rearranged the strings of light just so, making sure every corner of the tree was lit up just right.

These days my dad still trims the tree at his home up in the desert, joined by my seven-year-old niece who I'm sure has also grown to appreciate the magic in those weird little decorations. Over the years the ornaments have evolved to where some of them light up, some have strange little movements powered by the lights on the tree, and others play unsettlingly canned holiday music. I don't have nearly the same connection with these as I did with the ones from when I was a kid, which are still scattered around the tree, but I welcome them all.

The family tree has changed, of course. The lights don't blink the way they used to -- for expedience's sake, my dad opted for a tree with lights wired into the branches in the years since my mom's been gone, and I'm sure if i was to really take the time to look at each ornament I'd barely recognize the newer ones or know their stories, or even if they have them. But each and every year when we stumble into my dad's house after making the drive on Christmas Day, I know that tree is ours.

tall, kind of gangly looking, doesn't talk much

2009-12-20T08:48:00.000-08:00

My goodness two weeks can fly by, can't they?

Not entirely sure how that happened. I know there was this and that at work, but other than all that I have no real excuse. The ability to convince yourself that you've got something important to say can at times be elusive, I guess, and the wherewithal to sit down and start looking when it's not readily apparent is even moreso.

I'm going to set aside the facing-down-loss theme that we inadvertently stumbled upon for a moment and get into my week a bit. I work at a newspaper, you see, which already gives you a couple ideas about what my day-to-day can be like.

The industry, such that it is, is dying, a fact that by the simple virtue of your ability to read this or something else far more informative on an LCD screen makes you familiar with that, or at least a couple of its reasons. Thus, layoffs -- or, better still, 'rolling layoffs' -- have gone from being what were probably once considered necessary evils to combat economic downturns or some kind of claptrap have become A Part of Life, a semi-quarterly occurrence where first everyone is nervous, then everyone is sad, and then everyone slowly feels better though (of course) not as good as they once did until inevitably another rumor of layoffs comes to fruition.

This, of course, makes for shit morale.

I've been at my paper for just shy of 10 years. Ten years. I remember some 4.75 years ago I received a snazzy pin to commemorate my fifth year at my current place of employ, a pin I can probably dig out of a drawer if someone really presses me but may have accidentally willed into non-existence. I remember at the pin-presentation meeting -- which we don't have anymore -- I talked to a then-coworker (who shortly thereafter moved onto another, equally fucked company across town) and said something to the effect of, "If I'm here to collect my 10 year pin, please come by and shoot me in the brain."

I'd like to go ahead and retract that statement.

Because barring another layoff rolling across my desk between now and April (which is, of course, possible), I'll hit that 10 year mark. And it will, in turn hit me because while it's not me at the same job for a third of my life, it's quite close to a quarter.

Now, in my darkest moments my having the same job for such an unfathomable amount of time in this decade certainly says a few things about my personality -- i like stability, I don't go looking for change very much and, clearly, take a lot of comfort in "the devil I know." Given all the various slights, disappointments and blinding frustrations that have come with my time at the paper, it hasn't been some joyless slog, and certainly it's improved from 4.75 years. I have Accomplished Things.

I came in a cog and will surely go out a cog, but the work has gotten less mundane, far less soul-crushing. I've written about artists who have meant a lot to me. I have enjoyed cover stories under my name (with varying levels of pride). I have taken in extraordinary shows and spilled my impressions of them to an unsuspecting world. I have been handed the reins of covering a style of music that has long meant a lot to me and recently published my silly notions of what the Top 10 Jazz Albums of 2009 in print -- a phrase that certainly shouldn't mean nearly as much to me as a journalism-destroying web journalist but it, still, does.

So now I've done that, and for all the time that's passed and minor milestones I've accomplished, I'm deep down still a Profit Depleting Unit in the grand corporate scheme of things, a feeling reinforced as I watched a ridiculously accomplished, gifted and hardworking writer who I had the pleasure to edit get shown the door because her name and skills didn't resonate with some balance sheet high above who makes these kinds of calls. It's not the first time I've watched this happen and, odds are, it won't be the last. For any of us in this warped little guild.

So despite it all, the accomplishments, the attaboys, the small little boosts of ego, it doesn't add up to all that much. My place of employ and I have a sort of abusive relationship in that I give it no greater than it deserves and they, in turn, keep a paycheck coming so I can try and be in as good a shape as I can when the hammer finally falls. This place, storied though it may be, is a paycheck. A frustrating, diverting, not as terrible as it could be but still a damn sight long away from its potential, paycheck.

Sometime in the last couple years, I've struggled to socialize at work, which is a little surprising as my cynicism gauge was practically pinned around the time I received the lovely and attractive 5-Year trinket. It's no reflection on my coworkers, really, they're still great people, but I think a good chunk of it is apart from a couple of people who I've known since the beginning everyone at work is part of this wildly malfunctioning machine, spitting parts and debris all over everything it touches, occasionally clanging something heavy and painful across someone's chest and knocking them out of play. My goal when I arrive at work is to go home; I don't want to dig my hands into there any more than the required eight hours, and even those can be a stretch.

This, I realize, is not a good thing. I don't -- we don't, actually -- have enough time on this dot to be viewing hours as things that are to be ignored, sped through. Yet most of us do it, for about 40 of them every week, and I can't decide if that makes me strange for wishing that weren't the case or even stranger for thinking work in and of itself is anything but that, anywhere.

So we're at an impasse, the dayjob and I. It's capable of great things, even moreso in departments I'm hardly associated with, to say nothing of the great feelings I get when something falls out of my brain and onto a page and winds up being of use to somebody. But it's not my goal, it's not where I've always dreamt to call home like it has been for so many people inside its walls including -- all too often -- so many people who have been let go. Like this week.

So we're deadlocked. I take the money and accomplishment, keep improbably dodging the layoff bullets while I secretly hope to one day get tagged as I wait for a coconut to fall off a tree and conk me on the head with the idea of what I really should be doing. I have this feeling, like I've always had this feeling, it looks a little more like this at least as far as what I'm typing.

I'm not entirely sure if I'm right -- the burgeoning responsibilities of adulthood certainly make such an idea a terrifying one. But I'd like to hang out awhile and figure it out if there's any hope of it. That, I realize, is what this space has always been about.

way down in a hole

2009-12-01T17:42:00.000-08:00

So as you've probably noticed and as I've already addressed, I'm a bit hung up on this topic of grief. I'll get more to the why's and what's to this a little later, I'm sure, although I'm (mostly) happy to report that the raw emotions I shared below of the past few weeks have subsided. Time and the need to Get On With Our Lives demands that be the case but, inevitably, as I think about it now, there's a little bit of mourning that's in order for the end of mourning, so to speak.

Loss is something that's approached, processed and, if we're lucky, worked through -- preferably as fast as possible, at least while we're in the moment. God knows its not an experience anyone wants to have or hardly enjoys -- barring what I'd imagine are a couple fetishists out there (don't tell me there aren't, the very fact you're reading these words indicates you're on the Internet, and as such are aware of what a playground of fringe behavior it exposes we humans to be).

Yet while we are in the middle of what generally is crushing, all-encompassing, kick-you-in-the-tender-bits grief, it's truly striking how powerful it is. Think of this as the part in the movie where some scientist, probably of European descent, holds of a vial or perhaps stares intently at a microscope and marvels at a virus/alien being/professional killer's power, it's simplicity. And grief more certainly is both of those. I'd argue it's the most powerful emotion we can have.

At the heart -- or heartlessness -- of its strength is its speed, its inherent ability to go from Nothing to Everything in your field of vision in a matter of seconds. All it takes is a reminder, a part of the carefully tended system that you've built to fight off its relentless advances to fail and essentially you're back to start as far as assembling yourself for public viewing.

The most recent example I have of this happened last week, when Shenoa's eye doctor's office sent along a wonderfully sweet sympathy card, some two weeks removed from the Event. They had heard from our across-the-street neighbor, I'm sure, who by some then-wonderful coincidence worked at the same office where for years Shenoa received an assortment of magical and at times wildly expensive eye drops to combat her glaucoma. She frequently dropped Shenoa's prescription at our doorstep, saving us a drive out to Arcadia, which for those of you who don't know your Southern California geography is near absolutely nothing else of interest for our household.

ANYWAY, our neighbor told her office, who in turn sent a card, which I received last Saturday. I was ready for it -- I saw the return address, I knew what it was, I was -- as much as anyone can be to face grief -- Prepared.

Yet there I was, seconds after opening the card and its packed white space of hand-written messages of condolences from everyone on the office's staff, crying into my hand as suddenly as if I'd been hit with a bat -- even faster, because even then there's the moment of surprise and, presumably, the desire to get your shit together because, hey, you've been hit by a bat shouldn't something be done about this?

Its speed was truly remarkable.

I was fine, had things to do, was on my way somewhere else and was then, as I am now, at a sort of peace with saying goodbye to our beloved dog, and then I wasn't. It passed almost as quickly, but I'm still impressed with its capabilities. Attention, respect for its strength, must be paid.

But as I said, I'm back to 'OK' now, which I'm sure is a relief to you, gentle reader, who stumbled on her looking for a Boris MP3 I posted three years ago and may be puzzled, if you've gotten this far, why this guy can't stop talking about his late pets. So, yeah, I'm hesitant to follow through on my promise below of sharing the lengthy and hot-with-grief reaction to the loss of our cat earlier this year. We'll see. The editor in my head -- let's call him Francis -- takes great pleasure in asking from time to time the simple question of 'Who gives a shit' when it comes to some of these Unsolicited Personal Narratives. I work in the chaotic and generally short-attention-span ravaged world of the Internet, you see, and I imagine someone stumbling upon this corner of the world and spinning right out as if through a revolving door.

Still -- have you seen the news lately? Editors can't keep their jobs for shit.

toward the within

2009-11-23T21:09:00.000-08:00

Hi. Now where were we?

I'd apologize for the silence, but I'd imagine if you track through this little bulletin board you'd find a lot of those as daily posts turned to weekly theen turned to yearly and so on, so let's just skip it. Still, a shame for me to part ways with you on such a down note.

I'd like to say that my absence had to do with grieving, that the house was shrouded in black drapery and thoughtful candlelight for the past week in light of the loss described below, but that hasn't been the case, at least on a physical level. More to the point the firecracker of need, such that it is (and wouldn't that be a nice item to see in a roadside blow-'em-up stand next July), slipped out of my hand, had its fuse silenced, whatever fits best at this point, really. It's an elusive thing, the desire to show up every day and face down the potential nothing that could be looking back.

I'm talking about the empty page, mostly. But I suppose we can touch a little bit on the Big Issue that has sort of consumed this inadvertantly aptly named space since I flipped aside the passive 'Closed' sign. (Strange timing, that.) Maybe it's a subject that's kind of been on my mind for quite a few years, maybe even since I first became aware of the concept of death. Hell, I'd imagine this is the case for most people on some level.

I don't know if I was what you'd call someone who grew up obsessed with The Big End, at least not in a manner as someone would picture. No Christina Ricci-esque dark ensembles or eyeliner, a casual but not wardrobe-defining interest in what unbeknownst to me was known as "goth rock," of course, but not much outside of the typical suburban upbringing with a lot of laughter and 0% interest in, say, cutting on a Saturday night while Dead Can Dance percolates on the Discman.

Still, I remember quite clearly how The Fear manifested when I was young, somewhere around eight or nine. You can't sleep, you suddenly become very, very conscious of the silence in the room and the whirring inside your head and suddenly, for reasons that maybe only my goofy Irish Catholic DNA can explain, you have thoughts of The Void. The howling black nothing/something that awaits at the end, the impenetrable unknowableness of it all which, for a vaguely introverted kid like me led to a crushing consciousness of my own breathing, a heaviness across my chest and, soon after, a helpless wet-eyed vigil at my mother's bedside as I silently attempted to will her awake with my mind. (Which was successful for a reason that maybe only parents know.)

But that consciousness of death, isn't really why I showed up here. This is part of the game as you grow older, as I alluded to below. The longer you're around, the higher the probability goes that you're going to have to face down that potential nothing that could be looking back. It just seems that for us over the past few months, we've gotten our share of practice. Prior to saying goodbye to our dear friend Shenoa last week we also lost a housecat Maja (from the Polish and pronounced "My-uh," a name my wife chose in reference the fat cartoon bumblebee found here). She was a strange, difficult, damaged and yet loving and beautiful creature who we lost suddenly, struck by a car out in front of our house in an appalling, even gauche reminder that loss can also come in a blink of an eye as easily as it can slowly come at you from the horizon.

I started writing a similarly long-winded tribute to that little beast a short time after that happened, and maybe I'll share those in-the-moment remembrances here next time as this seems to be going on long enough for this evening. Might make for a good read, and besides, theoretically everything has to go somewhere.

funeral for a friend

2009-11-13T11:25:00.000-08:00

Well. That sucked.

Yesterday went about as I feared / expected and our beloved wilderness explorer, urban trail guide and pack leader Shenoa lost her battle with Time, just a few months removed from her 13th birthday. Of course, as her guardians it fell to us to give time itself a nudge, to head to the vet's and make that most incomprehensible request of asking someone to end a dear friend's life.

And of course, it's not like that, not really. This most difficult of decisions is The Right Thing. This is What's Done. This is Humane. This is Affording Her Dignity. This is Unselfish.

I have all the descriptors at the ready, and believe them all (mostly), the healing bromides we tell ourselves as pet owners when the time comes. Oh and it's coming for all of us, you young and windswept who just got their first dog and haven't known this feeling yet. It's the bargain we all passively consent to when we make the delightful and blindingly rewarding choice to bring a companion into our lives. And no, I don't think I am entirely talking about pets, either.

As I might've mentioned below, this was my first front-line experience with this and it was, well, exactly what you'd think. I'm grateful she won't have any more terrible nights like her last two, no more pain and confusion, no more cruelly inert decline for a spirit that was too stubbornly free and brilliant and loving to put up with such nonsense.

As a manner of tribute, a brief list of Shenoa's Top 5 Likes and Dislikes, in no particular order:

Likes

Hiking/running in the woods (unleashed, if you please)
Backseat road trips
Pre-breakfast belly thwaps
Smaller dogs
Rolling in dead things and/or animal droppings (see #1)

Dislikes

Baths
Luggage
The vacuum cleaner
UPS delivery drivers
Homework

For the most part those are off the top off my head, and as I look at them, surely not comprehensive and probably not all that unique (except the homework one -- she seriously took issue whenever my wife and center of her universe started working through paper and textbooks, an activity that usually sent Shenoa to some corner of the house armed with a battery of heavy sighs and loud, elbowy drops to the floor, seeped in dramatic disappointment).

Luggage was also right out, as this usually translated to an impending separation from The Pack, a time when Shenoa's role as Our Mighty Protector could not be met, where ever my wife was headed. This manifested most notably when she packed for a business trip and Shenoa stormed out of the room, asked to be let outside and proceeded make a great show of preferring to sit in cold darkness alone in a pouring rain than watch. This show, I should add, was not allowed to last too long.

I could go on, of course -- hell, it's not as if I'm going to run out of room here, but don't want to belabor the idea. It's a curious compulsion in this world of the Unsolicited Personal Narrative; I spill this sort of thing allegedly without consciousness of you, gentle reader, lurking out there in the weeds somewhere yet, by the same token, would like to provide something of at least vague interest. And, frankly, I'd like to not think of this as some kind of depressive mission where I'm not going to shut up until at least one of us is crying (though hell, perhaps that would lead to an ever-lucrative endorsement from Oprah's Book Club).

This entire exercise could lead and perhaps should lead to a longer yet not exactly unheard of study of life being at it's root, somehow, inextricably linked with loss. As aligned with the view of some chain-smoking Eastern European poet that view may be, it's the constant threat of loss and the finite nature of life that makes it precious, fellow travelers, and to be savored. Obviously.

Even though, I should add, there is no true way to utterly and completely savor every moment of love and companionship, not justifiably because that would require stopping time somehow, both in your life and someone else's. And there's simply no way to do that -- though it's utterly vital to try.

Suffice to say, I miss our dog.

Also -- Bonus coverage! This song has been in my head since way-too-early this morning. I think it fits in a non-Wes Anderson kind of way. And it sounds like watching a dog run in the forest feels.

Ooh La La - Faces

on life and living

2009-11-11T14:27:00.000-08:00

So when i flicked this thing back on a couple days ago I had a couple of completely amorphous and occasionally ambitious ideas of what form this shoppe would take, if any. I've got big ideas, see, and every so often the wherewithal to carry them out.

But one such concept I had involves this longer project that's been, well, haunting me for the past few years. As I told a kind and literary-minded coworker of mine who asked what I was working I sort of rolled my eyes, explaining "When I lie in bed and think about what I'm doing, it's not an as-yet unreviewed jazz album that keeps me up at night." So here we are.

Still, I haven't been entirely certain if this is the forum. But while I've been twirling that around in my head life, as it does, made a move. We've been lucky enough to have a remarkably smart, stubborn, smelly and utterly loving dog in our lives since I met my wife some six years ago (she's been lucky enough to enjoy the her company for around seven years prior to that). Shenoa is her name -- that's a sort of thoughts-eye view of her up above there -- and in addition to having a volatile digestive system we often joked has long been lined with fine silk and filagree she has also has advanced glaucoma and lost about 80-odd percent of her sense of smell and hearing in the past six months or so. Yes, as those of you who are sharp enough to have done the math a few sentences back already recognized, she's old.

But she's been, in recent weeks, a mostly perky kind of old, the kind of old where can allow yourself the illusion that the inevitable end isn't really coming over the horizon. We still walk her around the neighborhood, she smells familiar smells and was back to her relatively silly and energetic self apart from getting tired earlier than usual (she was born a wild-hearted Flagstaff dog, one I swear impatiently circled my city-dwelling ass when i lagged behind on mountain hikes).

That is, until last night. She laid down in the dining room, kind of troubled-looking (which ordinarily isn't a problem--she's a dog with a lot on her mind), a little disoriented and apparently uncomfortable setting her head on the ground. It was like some kind of vertigo had set in, something that became even more noticible as we led her on a meandering and seemingly dizzying walk to the back bedroom as we turned in.

This morning wasn't any better as we watched her struggle to find her way around the house and, puzzlingly, get turned around and disoriented in the back yard. A vet appointment has been acquired, knowledge perhaps will be gained, but whatever happens, it's difficult to imagine hearing something like, "Oh, she has The Canine Spins, give her this peanut butter-flavored pill and she'll be fine."

It's entirely possible that the only course of action will be bloodwork, a battery of tests, debated 'procedures' and, inevitably, conversations to figure out the grim cost-benefit analysis of how to treat a dog that, especially for a shepherd, is a senior citizen in unavoidable decline.

Now maybe, gentle reader, you're one of the lucky ones who have stumbled onto this space not yet really knowing this kind of decision -- it's certainly my first time -- or, even more enviably, haven't ever lost a loved one, any loved one in your young and certainly charmed life. You probably have regular bowel movements and only sneeze maybe four times a year as well. Good on you. But, no doubt, it's coming for you too.

There's a line in my head now, well actually a few of them. The first comes from an unheard Warren Zevon album recorded near his death called, "Life'll Kill Ya." Warren knew, first hand.

But maybe the one most lingering is a line from Joan Didion's "Year of Magical Thinking" that is most apt, "It all evens out in the end." It was a line from the late John Dunne to the (eventually) late Quintana Roo Dunne, who was complaining about having to deal with such struggles of life and death while she was in school. Didion thought the line was upbeat, that good things also happen to leaven the impact of the bad. Didion was mistaken -- Dunne knew too.

But more on that later.

For now, I'm kind of pondering what waits for us, trying to prepare and being completely certain that there is no preparing, not really. Maybe this'll be something minor and the grim decisions and finalities can wait. But I'm completely assured that whatever lies ahead will wait for us for as long as it takes.

the end of the beginning

2009-11-09T22:28:00.000-08:00

Greetings, friends. We are once again open for business.

When this space began (good lord) over four years ago the idea was simple -- allowing yours truly the limitless space and outlet to spill notions and half-baked ideas across the world. The whole news-magazine cover story 'Blog' trend in a nutshell, I suppose. And, even more egregiously, it evolved into something that meshed pretty well with the whole mp3/music blogging wave which, given where my head's been at for the better part of my life, was just fine.

Then things, as they often do, changed.

My little hobby of tossing my Very Important Thoughts out into the howling, self-hosted cocktail party of the Internet got larger and smaller in equal measure -- larger in the sense that throwing words around about music eventually became my dayjob on the Gutenberg and online at places like this and even more commonly this, but smaller in that the music eventually overtook the message, so to speak.

This hasn't necessarily been a bad thing. In fact, you could argue that this space essentially acted as an agent of sorts to further my efforts to write about music for a living. Behave as if you're doing a certain something and, if the universe is paying attention, you will be. So, great, the self-actualized goal had been reached and inevitably the blog drifted into a pleasant retirement, a museum space of sorts dedicated to where my head was at in the latter '00s.

Except it's not all that great, actually. What's happened as I've tried on the Professional Journalist Hat is I've become fairly good at fitting into a certain template, but suddenly less practiced with another. Meaning, I can write my ass off for this publication or that but I've been terribly incapable of writing for me. This is not nearly as self-absorbed as it sounds.

Because, frankly, just about anyone who's putting part of him or herself out into the world, be it through illustration or songwriting or, yes, wild-armed bloggin, is not doing it as a selfless gesture in the name of the Greater Good. Sure, that can be a nice byproduct, but inevitably we're all doing it because of how it makes us feel, because for whatever reason we were born with the foolish notion that we've got something to say.

So, with a little luck and (gasp) motivation, that's when/why i'll be popping back here from time to time. Those of you out there who stumbled upon this place because i was giving away a few songs here and there, please move along. Your needs will find no purchase here -- besides, if in 2009 you're still wandering around these kind of places for single songs, well, I'm grateful for it but I also wonder if you've turned on a computer in the last three years. Entire albums are out there, and if you want those you'll certainly find them without listening to me for a reason.

No, this is going back to the garden a bit, a return to the dark and shadowy true purpose of spaces such as these which is -- it's all about me, man. This is not a new concept. The innovations of the past four years -- Facebook, Twitter, etc -- have essentially been founded on the basis of the kid in the back of the class waving his arms frantically in the name of holding the floor.

Now, I'd like to think that wherever we go from here won't be quite as selfish as all that and, with a little luck, it'll be half-interesting to read anyway, but we'll see. Music I'm sure will come up, but in the true nature of using This Space as an unfulfilled outlet it certainly won't play the role it once had. You want to come along? I can't promise anything but, hopefully, four years from now the universe, sun god or a magic dragon in the sky will notice these little rumblings and before i know it I'll be making a job out of that sort of thing instead.

Thank you, drive through.

In defense of beauty

2008-08-18T21:51:00.001-07:00

Let's just stop pretending now.

This isn't much of a regular jumping-off point these days and, I venture to guess, won't be. There's simply too many diversions and projects out there these days and -- nothing against you, Accidental Reader -- this is not the primary space I'd rather devote my energy.

And yet.

There's been a sort of loss of religion around these parts, if you'll pardon the expression (and you shouldn't). I am a music nerd, as my wall-length collection will attest, and this was before recent ascent/descent into vinyl-hawking. But something has gone missing in our relationship, my music and I. Half of the fun was the discovery, the search for The Sound, that one mix of melody and meaning that would take me somewhere I hadn't been. Since I turned pro at these things over the last couple of years, something is different now. I don't think it's that the act of criticism has sapped the enjoyment of music -- everyone participates in criticism of music, that's why we listen to it, to formulate opinions. I think it's a question of exposure.

Exposure and access to too much music. Exposure to more analytical and "sophisticated" than mine have hung a reflection on my own act of Considering Music, making me feel less committed, like more of a dilettante or hobbyist with my critical ear. Would I like to commit 800 words on the significance of Shwayze, Katy Perry or _____? I would not.

The first point I bring up above I've already addressed, a certain disappointment with how easily one can acquire music these days, a reality that in the wrong hands (mine, for example) can alter the primary goal of music from experience to acquisition. In fact, if you, Accidental Reader (with apologies to Stephen King) are truly here just because of the little link at the bottom of this post I must consider you "a little slow" at this point. Because frankly there are numerous outlets out there now where you needn't bother with filters and advocates such as the spoutings I go on about. You're only a few enlightened keystrokes from accessing and possessing entire albums at a chunk, no matter how much the RIAA wish it weren't so.

But be that as it may, this state of affairs has changed my consumption--and it is consumption at this point--of music. I still relish my trips to Amoeba, but at this point my adventures there rest only in acquisition of known commodities, music I have experimented with already via MP3s and I now seek the artifact, be it through vinyl or digitally encoded plastic (my transition to vinyl has been an exercise in counteracting these tendencies, to make the artifact and the exploration of that artifact More Special). There's little discovery to be done, and if there is, it is generally put back into the stacks for online research before committing my hard-earned dollars -- a maneuver that's as much about space conservation as it is about frugality.

'Little Bird,' by the Weepies

I have lost track of the cardinal rule of music listening -- regardless of the medium, it is an active pursuit. The songs that have meant the most to me in my life, inevitably, are colored by where I was at the time, what I was thinking, what I was putting into it. Whether these feelings were inline with the songwriter's intent was and remains irrelevant (as any songwriter will tell you). I just went for walk with the Weepies on a cool summer night, one such 'discovery' I made in the used pile at Amoeba a few weeks ago that I put back pending further analysis. This walk, with my dear, half-blind dog, was that.

I did not love the Weepies record when I first heard it. I loved the cover and its twee little Patagonia t-shirt-ready design, and I heard 'something' in there otherwise I wouldn't have sought it out from a friend of a friend (so to speak) were that not the case, but initially there wasn't enough there for me to buy first-listen.*

It was too pretty, too straightahead. I was pretty sure it would in time bore me, like Hem, or the newest Iron & Wine record. There were none of the scuffs and weathering I've come to adore in my music as I perused it at the store's awful listening kiosks. No bends, flaws and warping that elevate most art. Who needs simple beauty now? How many perfectly painted bowls of fruit are needed anymore when that bowl of fruit can be altered and otherwise fucked up to reflect the artist and, in turn, you? Likewise how many perfect little three-minute folk-pop songs are needed? Isn't that why the world made CSNY, Jack Johnson, John Mayer, et al these days?

The Weepies will not make you cooler. They will not be reviewed on Pitchfork, will not be part of some kind of Coney Island photo essay on Stereogum, and will probably be profiled in Anthem, Fader or Vice at approximately the same time as Toby Keith. Which may be why you need to hear them most of all.

There is hardly anything ugly in this song, except for a left-field guitar asphyxiation that flashes into view at the 2:10 mark, coming and going like headlights passing on a freeway. All else is simple, inarguable, aching beauty, and on a moonlit walk this evening this song and I crossed paths at just the right moment.

Such walks are built for introspection, something I have no shortage of these days. Change is in the wind, and not just because we're in a leap year. All around me I feel on the edge of What's Next, only what's next isn't yet determined and isn't talking They seem only hellbent on proving only that they could Go Either Way upon one, mysterious and elusive shove. All the while you feel a constant pull in life, a knowledge that after All This you're still not there yet, you're still between potential and failure, but deep inside you keep on kicking, fighting, hoping you haven't lost the plot.

That's about where this song is, but it's chosen a side. Deb Talan's quivering voice, beautiful but not cloying, is full of uncertainty yet a haunted empathy, a sense that she's been right where you are. The lyrics flirt with poetry, but an effortless poetry. There's no sign that such ambitions have been taken on a night on the town in the hopes of charming it into submission, and lines like "We are all buildings and the people inside never know who walked through the door" somehow become natural.

But don't believe me, grab this song and take it for a walk. Forget everything you think you've learned up to now and just remember everything else, everything you need to know that's gotten you right here, looking for something else. Damn. I need to buy this album.

And so should you

*this does not happen, sadly.

head on the door

2008-04-03T20:13:00.000-07:00

One of the most vivid memories I have of music doesn't even involve hearing it.

I still haven't heard the song, to this day, and I think the reason why may have something to do with the fact it was by The Cure. I don't begrudge the Cure, or their listeners. They're just a band that I was sort of adjacent to, listening-wise, but never completely immersed in. A few songs sank in here and there either from my friends or -- naturally -- a given mixtape from someone I was entangled with. "Charlotte Sometimes." "Fascination Street." "Why Can't I Be You." The usual on-the-nose basics that brand me a hopeless piker to any true Follower of Robert, or FORs as we shall refer to them here.

In the 10th grade my good friend Michelle was an FOR, through and through. Not in the sense of black eyeliner and the cartoonish (yet valid) stereotypes of the image that appears in everyone's head when I say "Cure Listener." Certainly she, and both of us really, looked what in 1988 passed for 'alternative'-minded in some form or another. Her with the requisite Big Sweaters, dark and occasionally streaked hair, occasionally omnipresent Wayfarer sunglasses masking the usual details such accessories mask.

I won't get into what I looked like. Another time.

Michelle was cool, is what I'm saying. She knew a few more bands than I did, dated Older Guys (which translated to people a few years ahead or, even cooler, someone out of school. Her and I were never involved, though of course I entertained the idea from my bramble-covered state of invisibility in the Friends Zone. (This isn't that kind of story -- Every male in high school, by the way, 'entertains an idea' about every plausible girl he comes across. Just throwing that out there.)

ANYWAY, Michelle came home with me after school one day. Me being harmless but a latchkey kid, I presume, made this a decent idea to her for some reason, though I'm reasonably certain it never happened again.

What this meant is Michelle was going to meet my Neighbor Friends, or the people you hang out with after school because all your other friends are across town. Maybe I was the only one who had such things, but inevitably there's the folks you hang out with in high school, and the folks you hang out with when you'rein your geographic circle. I have to confess, I was a little anxious of my Cool Friend mingling these people, particularly since a ruling part of me was still, yes, entertaining Those Ideas about her and I.

Regardless, there we were with Robbie and Jeremy that afternoon, two kids the same age as me who lived a few doors down in our nondescript high-desert subdivision. And despite my fears about suddenly being revealed as the complete and utter dork that I was sure I was by association, everyone got along really well.

Now it's important to note the two distinct personalities of Robbie and Jeremy, two kids who knew eachother well before I moved into the neighborhood two years prio. Neither one of them were terribly bright, not that many people reveal themselves as such at that age. Rob, for instance, was in the 'special' classes in our school, as was Jeremy I think though since his parents had sentenced him to the nearby bible high school he was already at a disadvantage on a few fronts. Rob was a charmer though, a good-looking kid with cocky ease about him, and I think he spent most of that afternoon working some engaging mix of aloof indifference and an utter, fearless clown. Everyone liked Robbie.

Jeremy, on the other hand, was a bit of an oaf to put it kindly. He was a little portly, had tangled blonde hair and the incurably goofy but eager-to-please social style that always left him on the outside of most things, even more so than the usual Pastor's Son. He had a good heart though, as most kids who have a Rough Go Of It do.

While walking back to my parents house, the conversation inevitably turned to music. I had discovered Depeche Mode around this time, and bounced between early CD purchases like "Some Great Reward," "Black Celebration" and REM's "Life's Rich Pageant" in my parents' 'big' stereo in the living room days they were at work. Michelle told Jeremy how much she loved the Cure and the Smiths as we walked and Jeremy, whose older brother introduced us all to Depeche Mode a year prior (an exceptional feat given that he wore a dusty desert mullet, dropout moustache and generally rolled around in his pickup truck to Queensryche), could barely contain himself.

"I know them!" He said with an amped-up, pre-Ritalin mania. "Kiss me, kiss me, KISS ME!" he half-yelled, his head cocking to the side as he barked out what I assume were lyrics. I can still see his face twisting in some weird parody of Robert Smith's haystack-headed angst, ridiculous gray plastic sunglasses framing his swollen, sweaty face.

"What is that?" Michelle asked. I had seen her wear a shirt bearing the very same words maybe only a few days before.

"It's the Cure!" Jeremy said, bouncing back and forth next to us. I think we were on our way to shooting baskets or something at my house at this point. I think I could've invited Michelle to join me in gutting a seal in my front yard and been more interesting to her around this time.

Michelle smiled, "But what are you doing to it?" She finished with a small, horrified laugh, and I joined right in. I had no idea what the song sounded like -- and I still don't -- but I'm as sure now as I was then it couldn't have sounded anything like that.

Jeremy was humiliated, briefly, but he bounced back a short time later. Sadly, I don't think it was a terribly new sensation. I later proved I wasn't much of a basketball player, and Michelle made out with Robbie. I think she got in trouble that same night for getting home late.

I don't remember much more from that day, which is probably for the best. But I remember that moment. I remember how important that song was to Michelle, how sacred. It was as if Jeremy had lit Robert Smith on fire in front of her.

I'm not sure why this moment stuck with me. I think it was the first time I realized how sacred songs -- and their bands -- could be, and any attempt to reinterpret them can't be taken lightly. They're too personal, their originators too distinct. The song isn't only the band's, it's yours too, and anyone who treads upon it needs to do so with reverence, and only after filling out the proper forms at the District Office.

This isn't one of those songs for me. But it seems appropriate.

The Cure, 'Primary'

Lost, verses the ether

2008-02-29T20:01:00.000-08:00

People disappear.

They just do, and I'm not talking about the message-on-a-milk-carton, Daniel Travanti TV Movie kind of disappearance. In each person's lives there are people, maybe even groups of people, who just get . . . misplaced. And I'm not even talking about where I've been the last year. Yet.

Very often it's not even as if you miss them. Years go by. People age. Lives, as they tend to do, go on, and before you know it people who occupied a space in your life -- maybe even an important space -- are just gone. This is hardly revolutionary stuff.

And yet, it's something that bears repeating. Because it's not just that people have disappeared from my life, or your life, or the guy across the street's life -- that's a given, and well within everyone's control. It's that I've disappeared. And you've disappeared.

Our lives, in the process of living them, get compressed. Not just from the perspective of the longer we go the less time we have (theoretically), but also in the sense that the older we get the more responsibilities we acquire. Jobs get complicated. Relationships grow, bloom and scatter themselves throughout your life forcing, just by process of elimination, some of the more peripheral ones out. Calls become emails. Emails become Christmas cards. Christmas cards become thoughts. And so on.

I'm peripheral. You, all of you, at one time or another, with all of your important thoughts, funny moments and (I'd like to think) brilliant flashes of compassion and love, have become peripheral, inessential and, yes, forgotten. Call it practice.

Hello, everyone.

* * *

Welcome back. Or not. It's been, what, a year maybe? Some of you may be just happening by, bored blind on a late night, flicking through Blogger or however it is one finds a random corner of the Internet like this. If so, welcome. Come by again if you'd like. Others of you may have come here a couple years ago, when this was an active shop and MP3s were littering ramblings not far from those above. Most, I'd imagine, who did such crazy things have forgotten about me and this space. Because I've forgotten too. It's only fair, you see.

But I'm coming back. I don't yet know for how long, and I don't even yet know why. Some out there -- good people, people I'm grateful for -- missed this space and wanted the words (and maybe even the music) to return. I hope one or two of you haven't quite forgotten just yet and, eventually, find this.

Sun Kil Moon, 'Lost Verses'

Not much thought went into this on my end. The song, I mean. It just feels natural in this case, even though as of this writing I'm not entirely sure of whether or not I even remember how to do this little dance of posting the song somewhere and linking to it and whatnot. But really, I don't delude myself. The days of people coming by blogs and little shops like these with the promise of free music are long behind us (sorry, HypeMachine). There are bloggers upon bloggers out there who have moved onto posting entire albums worth of material for consumption -- Exposing songs, for want of a better term, is not the point any longer. Not while a Tower of Babel's worth of music is out there. But I like to think this song scores what we have going on here, if I may be so presumptuous.

For years I hated Red House Painters. Seriously, and everything about Mark Kozelek -- unless you count 'Almost Famous.' Years ago, in what seems like another life, I dated a girl who listened to and loved "Songs for a Blue Guitar" and all of its dramatic mopery along with cry-core favorites like Belle & Sebastian, His Name is Alive, Idaho et al. She and I were terribly incompatible, but being in our late-twenties we decided to argue with and annoy eachother about this for months before finally, mercifully parting ways.

Years later, I discovered -- rather, my by-now wife discovered -- Sun Kil Moon, a seemingly indistinguishable yet to me very, very different side of Mr Kozelek. I think it was the big guitar, or the nod toward folk and in some instances Southern Rock. A balancing of Red House Painters' certain mewling melancholy ('Mistress' aside) with noise, dissonance and visceral guitar excursions. "April," his new album due, appropriately enough, April 1 doesn't as skillfully balance these two sides, but still merits a listen -- and maybe so much more for those who, like the girl a paragraph prior, who like Red House Painters.

But the matter is his this song, and the beauty it conjures. The small touches of detail outlining and setting the scene for San Francisco (Mt Tamalpais, to name one pleasant touchstone that both me and Mr Kozelek share), the warmly strummed acoustic -- it all should score a drive on a two-lane blacktop country road somewhere far from where I am now, the kind where you're not in the driver seat, but someone you love is. You're the passenger, watching as the sun slowly creeps down in the sky and you head, unstoppably, toward where ever it is you're going. It's someplace good, but at this point it no longer matters. The light flickering through the leaves of the massive, forgiving trees along the side of the road is overwhelming at times as it pierces the shade, beautiful, flickering and strobing in the periphery of your sunglasses. You're not speaking, but you don't need to. The song will do that, and you'll get there in time.

(Pre-order Sun Kil Moon's 'April' from Caldo Verde Records -- download available now!)

I'll come for dinner if you'll have me

2007-04-04T21:44:00.000-07:00

Greetings, word urchins.

So...it's been too long...

Yes, let's just leave it at that, shall we? Good lord, what are we talking, three months? Five? Six? Maybe. How have you been? Me, oh, I've been well. Busy, let's put it that way. You look good. Healthy, like you're starting to get some sun with spring starting to spring about. What can I say, I've missed you, I think. Maybe, anyway. I've missed me, more to the point, and maybe the me that I'm thinking of has a more to do with typing and dropping words and a little less to do with the paralyzing That surrounding the dayjob and other interconnected distractions which has been swallerin' me whole for the last couple of months.

So I've come back to the words. Don't get me wrong, I've been doing some heavy lifting of late and been lucky enough to contribute some decent stories to some quality pages, but the last couple of weeks things have been quiet. Too quiet, as the craggy cowboy with eyes like Ernest Borgnine would say. True that.

And I didn't think I'd miss this, to be honest, and maybe I don't. Or won't. But even so, you know, you show up at the podium, you best have something to say, which usually a spot where I drop some mp3 love on you guys. But that's the tricky part. I took on an emusic subscription recently, and I'm not entirely convinced this is a good thing. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE it, I can't cancel it, and frankly I'm a little terrified of all these rumors of their being bought out and maybe even shuttered given how much music they've given me at a decent rate. But that's just it. It's 65 songs. Per month. For going on five months--and say, just about as long as it's been since I've stopped showing up here now that I think about it.

And this had added up to 63 different artists since October, and probably around 50 albums. I comb their new releases and, especially, their older releases--things I've never gotten around to exploring but always wanted to and with technology now CAN at some twenty-odd cents a song--or even less if I get some obscenely long song from someone like Glenn Branca or Tom Carter or something. Wonderful. I ponder what to download, how to maximize my enjoyment of what seems like a small allowance per month. My collectivist brain hums with cheerful delight at the prospect.

But,

I've taken in so much music, and have drank from so many different cups that, that, that, now it's like something's missing. (Will Sheff from Okkervill River wrote about this phenomenon far more eloquently than I'm about to, and the article probably exists somewhere around here.) I have full access to the library of Babel and now that I do, these precious commodities now are less precious. I acquire, collect, hear, and move on to the next prize because, after all, I've got 65 of these things to burn through per month and if you don't download something you LOSE these credits and there's just . . . .all . . . this . . . music I haven't heard yet. So I listen to The No Neck Blues Band. Twice. I sink into Ornette Coleman's latest. Once. I marvel at Keith Fullerton Whitman's way around evoking an icy, dreamlike landscape for me to close my eyes against. Then I'm on to the next thing, not really absorbing, not really getting to know these records because after all, that takes time, and as convenient and marvelous as our mp3 iPod portable digital music toaster age is, taking time is not what it's about. The whole system is predicated on the fact you're mobile, you've got shit to do, you're probably going to be DOING it while you're LISTENING. Who has time to sit in a room and do nothing but listen anymore?

So I haven't yet given up on CDs, that's where the investment lies--which, oddly, is probably an argument that vinyl-heads would give me for why they never moved up to the CD. As hastened and comparitively impure the ritual is of putting on a CD as compared with an album, it is my ritual, and the one that leaves more of an impression, somehow, than plugging little rubber nubbins into my ears and absorbing Bang On A Can while trying to work.

I don't really have a song that fits here.

But: "The Blizzard of '77" by Nada Surf

This track is not an exclusive. It's not something you haven't seen at 12 other blogs by now because, well, it's a damn good song and that's what people do. If you haven't taken the hint yet to download it, you really aught to, and then you probably should go buy the album. That's what I did.

Friend of mine talked this band up, and if this is your first time hearing of Nada Surf since the '90s novelty "Popular," you're doing what I'm doing. Wondering, well, what the fuck, over? Marissa told me they had a quality that she thought had been missing from music recently, and this is someone who spent $50 on a used album by an obscure '80s band whose name now escapes me. So, based on that recommendation, I trolled the hype machine and sought what I'd been missing in the, oh, three years (at the time) since this album came out. This song is the first one I grabbed. Yes, this very file, so whatever blogger out there who passed this along, thank you.

Anyway, how are you going to go wrong with a title like that? I remember the blizzard of '77, or at least I think I do (I grew up in Ohio, there were several blizzards). During one of them my brother and I dug a snow tunnel from the back door to the middle of the yard, and though that's all I really remember, something about this song sort of captures the feeling of being bundled up, pushed against an icy wall and just feeling where you are. The guitar is churning, paranoid, and the vocals are soft, coated in some sort of permafrost as the narrator sings about a blizzard and cars buried in snow at first, and what feels like the end of a relationship next. Then that chorus -- But in the middle of the night I worry, it's blurry even without light -- comes in like a sigh and sounds so lonely, so sad, so full of regret, that I'm going to do a goddamned lyrical pullquote. But the last lines finish it off, after only two minutes, and a whole Raymond Carver shortstory feels like it's gone by. Then it's gone, disappeared into a drift.

walking in the summer sun

2006-11-16T08:46:00.000-08:00

It's a strange thing, the body and mind's habits. I suppose those are two things. Hmm. At any rate, they're odd.

After spending a month being devoured by work hither and yon, a lull gratefully sets in. Except it's an odd lull, one I probably shouldn't be relishing nearly as much as I am. All October I bounced from assignment to project (as evidenced by my absence from these 'pages' so as much as I'm in the habit of productivity on one front, productivity on this front (in my head at least) feels starchy, forced. Not just a little unpleasant in the always thorny theoretical realm.

So at some point the 'lull' and the time off has to not be enjoyed any longer and built upon. More things are coming up (I can see them like little pinholes of light) so really I should be Using This Time Wisely and tending to other parched little potted plants that have been clinging to life for a few years now. And yet...

There seems a need to enjoy the accomplishment a week out, to bask, just a little bit. That's human nature, just like Michael Jackson says (sorry). But in any case, while waiting between inspiration and the next bout with, well, perspiraction, it's time for a song.

'Keep Drawing Suns,' by Japancakes

I seem to be addicted to posting things on the slow and introspective side of late (when I can be bothered to post anything at all, that is). Still, no matter how much you might crave some LifeSavers-lit dancefloor framed my a boxing cage (oh they're out there), there is no denying how simply and achingly beautiful these nine minutes are. Take some time and stare out the window with me because no, this isn't dancefloor appropriate. Or maybe it is. Surprise me.

I'm not terribly familiar with Japancakes, but this album--this song, when I first heard it--pretty much floored me. As much as you can be floored by a thoughtful, atmospheric instrumental. There's a little bit of Friends of Dean Martinez in here, maybe Calexico at their most mum and spaced-out (like the tour-only Travelall, which is so blindingly lovely, scary, dark and hopeful that I can hardly stand it), and maybe a little bit of some Nashville bar band after devouring a handful of tranquilizers.

But in a good way. This song starts slowly, all sinister and cloudy courtesy of a wad of shapeless guitar fuzz, but then the pedal steel comes in, bright as tinsel on a thrown away Christmas tree, trading thoughts with a echoing electric piano. Think of this as first opening your eyes in the morning, or maybe at the beginning of a road trip as the song goes down or comes up. Maybe you can't tell. Where are you going? It doesn't matter. The first (or last) bit of sun feels warm, the air around you is a little cool, but things (and the drums) are picking up. Just keep going. You might hear some electronic blips, things might get slowed to where you feel dizzy, tired, or even a little lost, but you'll get there. Stop, slow down, step on it, whatever, but keep pointed forward. Everyone arrives.

Buy a copy of Japancakes' 'Waking Hours' from InSound

it's all part of the curse

2006-10-26T22:14:00.000-07:00

I'm not a nightowl. I'm not a morning person either.

If given a choice, in fact, I'd probably function at the relatively civilized hours between 10 am and 7 pm. Not really that unreasonable, really, and frankly I'm a little lucky that my necessarily evil professional life functions at those hours (somehow). But tonight, for the seventh night in the series of eight, I've got to put on my nightowl hat.

Not such a bad thing. It fits better than the morning hat, certainly. Morning hats are horrible, I mean come on, what those must look like (I bet they're chalky gray and uncomfortable anyway). I admire you folks who can wear such a thing and wear it well, or better yet, would CHOOSE to wear it. But getting up at 5 am or thereabouts on a regular basis would, most likely, tear me in half.

But let's get back to tonight. It's not the being up late that bothers me, not at all. Again, in my natural state I'd probably be up until 1230 or 1 anyway depending on what's happening. But it's the fact I have to GO OUTSIDE and into the world in a couple of hours. Starting my night at such an hour feels unnatural. On a school night no less.

It's going to be fine, and probably even a fair amount of fun, but I'm dreading it. I'm going to have to be kinda on my game here this evening, and I'm just not in a place for it now. If given a choice I'd rather pick up a book (this month being Stanley Elkin's "The Franchiser" which is just moving like cold syrup through me or my under-explored collection of Barthelme short stories). Yes, either of those would do nicely.

Instead there will be coffee, if I'm smart, and some music to get me going. Hopping, even. Whatever it says about me, my musical tastes run toward the introverted (if those of you out there haven't noticed yet). That which evokes images or pictures internally, for the most part, which means the tempos, well, the tempos aren't generally up. By in large, the rock 'n roll I tend to bring is heavier, maybe even slower.

This song, however, is, and on short notice it's going to have to do.

'Four Hours in Washington,' by M. Ward

Ironically enough, I sometimes suffer from insomnia.

As much as I love sleep, love relaxing and love winding down with the unconscious, some nights it eludes me. It hasn't happened lately--thankfully (it always feels like I'm fighting with a dear friend)--but whenever it hits it sounds exactly like this song.

I like M Ward. Saw him in concert a month or so ago and he nailed it. Great guitarist, great singer, and he's definitely got the sort of brooding, wild-haired singersongwriter early-Dylan thing going that fills the stage nicely. He played this song at the Fonda that night and it's just a perfect encapsulation of the frustration, the nervous energy, the twitching anxiety that comes from not being able to sleep. Especially if you need to sleep because something BIG is happening in the morning.

You worry, you feel broken, you twist in bed as your brain pounds this ever-increasing shufflebeat into your head. You try counting backwards from 100, visualizing calm, peaceful places, anything, and it doesn't work. Time goes by fast, fast enough to know you're running out of time to sleep but not fast enough to give you the impression that you've actually GONE to sleep.

Tonight, when i stumble into bed around 2 am tonight, knowing I need to wake up in maybe six more hours, I hope my night doesn't sound like this. I hope yours doesn't either. But if it does, it's nice to know M Ward has been there.

Buy M Ward's 'Transistor Radio' from InSound

economies of scale

2006-10-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

I was recently given an interesting writing challenge: Get as crazy and as vivid with a record as I want but use...only 80 words.

Eighty. Eight-oh. Those of you who for some reason have decided to come back here for more than that Boris MP3 that expired from these pages some six months ago know that I have issues with word limits, or at least prefer to function without them. I tend to go on, is what I'm trying to say.

Eighty words. What is that, three sentences, maybe five? I could drop 80 words on the shirt I'm wearing right now (plaid...flannel...green...approximately 10 years old, you see where I'm going with this). I don't know if this is a good thing or not, but I'm convinced--have always been convinced--that words have power. Curious power.

I'm starting to get better, I think, and the assignment didn't take nearly as long as I thought. The one nice thing about such limits is words become even more precious at that point. Can I drop two words if I find one perfect one? Can I kill this one to save that one at the bottom of the paragraph? It becomes a war, a symantic chess game where you arrange your pieces in as agreeable shape as you can, forming an illusion of forces far larger than what you are able to fight with.

Words are a whole other matter.

This is the sort of exercise that could send me on some thematic bender, if I allow it, but there are some songs who's passionate use of words works to their disadvantage (hello, Hold Steady) while others tell you just enough and pack a whole novel into just a handful of passages. This is one of those songs:

"My Mom," by Chocolate Genius

I don't even know how much I want to get into the story of this song, why it just crushes me every time I hear it, or anything like that. But it's vital you listen to it.

Off the formerly known as Marc Anthony Thompson's fantastic debut record as Chocolate Genius, this heart-breaking ballad tells the decidedly un-rock story of his mother's struggle with alzheimers. Fun, huh? You're dying to right-click on that sucker now, aren't you? But seriously, come with me on this.

He pulls it off. Somehow, a five-minute smoky soul ballad manages to completely avoid the songwriting rest stops of Clichetown and Tritopia, even with a chorus that---well, I'm not going to say how the chorus goes because it might dissuade you.

But seriously...if you have any interest in songwriting, storytelling and vivid portrayals of moments and people, give this a shot. It's not just the song that's beautiful, it's the little details he throws in. Describing a tree at his childhood home as a goalpost, and how "Five times she asks me, no more and no less, she says how you been eatin', boy. And I say 'OK, I guess.'"

I don't know exactly how many words he used to fit into the mourning little melody (carried by bigwigs like Marc Ribot, John Medeski and Chris Wood), but I'm pretty sure if he used one more word the structure would've been too intricate, too delicate to hear. One fewer and the whole structure would've collapsed.

Buy 'Black Music' used from Half.com. Hey, V2 let this little gem go out of print--and it's only eight years old. Thanks, guys! Hope Tower Records saves you a seat!

broke the furniture

2006-10-10T09:03:00.000-07:00

Greetings, dear readers.
Just a brief announcement sharing that, contrary to my earlier ramblings, conventional wisdom and numerous (possibly) better things to do that have been slapping me around for the last few months, it's looking more likely that I'll be pulling the boards off the windows of this shop in the coming weeks.

A drastic redrawing of purpose, is what was needed. Some time to recharge, most definitely. I still haven't figured it all out, particularly when balancing this against a few paying gigs here and there that have demanded my time of late. How many howls in the well are needed? More on that later, perhaps, but suffice to say that the cubicle farm, the bane of my existance, my nemesis and daily distant friend, has somehow, accidentally I'm sure, improved. Just a little. Here and there, you know, not enough to make me send pink-margined love notes to it, but just enough to make me pay attention. This is an improvement.

For now, take this.

"Taut," by PJ Harvey and John Parish

Off the cantankerous and clamoring "Dance Hall at Louse Point" collaboration (my that's a lot of 'c' words), this little novella draws a neat line from PJ Harvey to Tom Waits, I think.

I came late to PJ's party a couple of years ago, I'm afraid. I won't call myself a fan even now, I don't think. The album this is taken from is a little too disjointed and jagged for my tastes, and those of you who have been here awhile know, I love the disjointed, I celebrate the jagged.

But it's taken awhile for me to catch up with Polly Jean. I'd only a heard "Dress" on an SF alt-rock station back in the '90s, but apart from that I just never explored her stuff. Then came "Stories from the Sea," which my wife handed me years ago for a drive across town. One song led to another, then that led to another album, which of course led to seeing a show from her 'Uh Huh Her' tour at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood, a fantastic--no wait, it's not fantastic, it's a dump that is an embarrassment to the New York club. I don't want to get ahead of myself. But that's the trick of music and memory--while Ms Harvey and her band were on stage it WAS a fantastic, cramped, sweaty slice of rock 'n roll revival. The center of the universe. PJ was Chrissie Hynde, Steven Tyler and Robert Plant. In heels. And, when not singing, startlingly polite. Sweet, even.

Anyway, this was one of the songs she performed that night, and it's the opposite of sweet. All choked-voice dramatics, whispered obsession and religious spookery served in a hurried, desperate monologue over a clattering street-repair beat. And just as the song tries to repel you, pretty much make you run back to a retail establishment (had it not closed in the meantime), Harvey snarls, "Even the son of God had to die, my darling," and somehow you're fascinated, hooked even by this violent, disturbing but vivid little portrait. It's the opposite side of a doomed hot-rod romance. It's Robert Mitchum with 'LOVE' and 'HATE' on his knuckles and the young girl who loved him. It's a terrifying, exhilarating, difficult 3:14 that I think needs to be spread out to the world.

See you in a few days, I think.

Buy "Dance Hall at Louse Point"

his face is dark i can't hear what he's saying

2006-09-19T15:53:00.000-07:00

the clock on the wall is broken, but accurate

a man walks under an overpass, unable to escape the feeling he is being passed over.

warm sun, no rain

accurate is not the same as right

hold hearings so your voice can be heard

sift through the garbage until it looks like dinner

your voice is loud, but silent

your silence has its own voice

while the wires lie between the living and the dead

struck dumb by wires

2006-09-19T12:16:00.000-07:00

Feel like I should open with a small apology, or something.

Can you apologize to someone anonymous, someone you can't see or hear? I mean, it's not even like you're accidentally bumping into someone on a bus or in a subway and need to excuse yourself. If anything it's like apologizing for not bumping into someone, for not offering a different variable in their day.

But...those can be nice, after all.

Jumbled ideas and thoughts are rattling around my brain of late, many of them preventing me from dropping things off here. Work intervenes, as does a brain that's been clogged like bad pipes, questioning what the point is of popping by here and dropping notions and the occasional MP3 on you all. A few other folks it seems have hit a wall with the blogworld as well...maybe it's just something in the weather, or even just a point you can hit with any habit. Eventually you ask..."What am I doing...and why?"

I originally started this little corner as a space to vent, rant and exercise. An empty gym with dusty equipment where no one was looking and unfettered things could get dropped off and, with a little luck, find a musical score. Now. I have ups and downs with my comfort with my music geekery and, particularly, my writing as it concerns said geekery. I have no interest in becoming a Next Big Thing blogger, one who breaks bands or joins this incredibly powerful and indier than thou vox populi. It just makes me tired. Others do, and I love them and read their sites semi-regularly. Go to hype machine, or elbows (many of you have found my tarpaper shack this way). Bloggers everywhere of every stripe, some breaking or trying to break some beloved bands, others subscribing to the indie groupthink that is less a voice in the wilderness sharing something personal to them as it is a point of grandstanding about their own ahead-of-the-curve tastes. In short, you can throw a rock and hit an mp3 blogger. (But do me a favor, Fink...)

So yeah, I'll be sorting all this out in the next few days. My home is now internetless, thanks to a recent realization DSL service now costs as little as 12.99 these days (who knew?). Until that gets sorted out I'll maintain this certain radio silence. With a little luck a lot of this will get sorted out.

'Til then.

'How It Ends,' by Devotchka

the billboards are all leering

2006-09-12T08:48:00.000-07:00

This is going up a day later than I wanted.

Yesterday, as anyone within the sound of a television or radio knows, was the fifth anniversary of September 11, a series of syllables that have been soundbitten and talking pointed by all sides ever since that day. This is not necessarily a bad thing, of course. We should never forget what that day was like--not that we had any choice. (As an aside, it will make me very sad when think of a future where inevitably someone far, far younger than I will ask what life was like before those words meant more than a date, before our country waged war without end and shaped its foreign and domestic policy based on the paralyzing fear and rage that day inspires.)

And yet, it's difficult to capture what that day was really like, not that we really want to do that either. But I think the repetition of the numbers, the politi-speak reduction of the day into broad terms of what 'we' lost (when those who do the speaking can never really fathom the true loss that day, the loss felt by friends, loved ones and family members of the thousands who lost their lives) tends to gloss over the real horror of the day. The renewed realization that anything, no matter how horrible can indeed happen, and at any time to anybody. Beirut was no longer on the other side of the world on the 6 p.m. news; it was in the middle of one of our post cards. And there was nothing you, or anyone else, could do.

"Moya," by Godspeed You Black Emperor!

I won't be so reductive to think that the above song actually sounds like 9/11--even the actual sounds of that day barely sound real, how could an instrumental from two years prior capture it? And yet this song, all ten minutes of it, captures many sides of the damned day. The heartwrenching loss, the disbelief. The bravery and terror and tragedy and hope. Such unbelievable pain and sadness buried in these Canadian cellos, contrabasses and guitars.

The glib response to Godspeed is that they're the houseband for the apocalpyse, but I disagree. Godspeed is the houseband for struggle, sure, but not between the grand forces of good and evil. For me they score the truly epic internal struggle, the battle waged while processing those heavy-hitting marquee emotions rattled off above. Which route will you choose?

I've been fighting the urge to get political here (for some reason), but I don't think I can. Everything changed that day, just like any talking suit from either side will remind you, but not all at the hands of strangers and menacing mugshots from passenger dossiers. Everything changed in that fear is our country's--indeed, the world's--response, its main export. The only real lesson that has been gained from five years ago is the feeling that it could happen again at any moment. Did any number of invasions change that? Is that the best legacy we could come up with, the sound of terror inside our heads playing on an endless loop? Listen to this song closely...it's not just a song of mourning. There's a flicker of hope, of getting through the struggle no matter how dark. It's faint, but very very real.

Buy the "Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada" from Amazon

i held on tight and closed my eyes

2006-08-31T09:04:00.000-07:00

"The Moon," by the Microphones

I haven't been keeping with my usual format of late. You remember, you show up here, I spill whatever's in my head all over your shoes and on your way out the door you get a song for your (and my) trouble. Messy, but effective.

Not sure why, that hasn't been hitting me the same way since my work-imposed hiatus. Maybe I'm finally over this whole 'writing' thing after all, and such a relief will that be. Finally, a life of bricklaying! Plus, I can turn off the little guilt-o-meter that clangs around in my head when I piddle away 45 minutes watching the latest episode of "Project Runway" (and quietly asking myself why i'm doing such a thing when the expression on my face doesn't change the entire time).

Not to say I'm scowling or even staring with this glassy, post-lobotomy look of glee. It's more of a blank, hypnotic trance. Television's always had that power with me, ever since I used to wad myself up on the floor four feet from our big Magnavox until Bugs Bunny burrowed a hole clean through my cortex.

[There is no song cue here, by the way. You're waiting, you're tapping your foot looking for me to tie it all together in a neat bow, but I'm sorry, I'm just throwing this one up because the thing popped in my head this morning and it just wouldn't let go. Sometimes it's like that.]

The whole thing starts with a quiet, seasick acoustic guitar weaving through an an off-kilter, probably out of tune figure for just over a minute before the drums come in, all overdriven and knocking over the furniture. Somewhere deep in the background is Phil Elvrum, lo-fi orch-pop savant (or something like that). He's mumbling, sighing, whispering something and you just want to figure out what. The acoustic guitar--now insistent--along with the groaning horn section dopplering across the song buries almost everything, like he's explaining something to you from the edge of a freeway overpass.

Whatever he's going on about, it sounds important, possibly because some of the most important sounds and thoughts don't always come from the guy holding a megaphone. Sometimes it's the guy who almost sounds like he's talking to himself, shuffling his feet as you walk by and wonder what you just heard.

And then he's done.

Buy "The Glow, Pt. 2" by the Microphones

we see the light and find it useful

2006-08-29T08:51:00.000-07:00

"Everybody Knows" by Leonard Cohen

Let me tell you, my children, about the '90s. OK, maybe not. But let me tell you the weird thing about what was going on in mass media back then. Most of it, at least much of it pointed to our collective heads when we were in our early 20s and teens was pretty sure things were bad out there in the world. But it could be changed. MTV was filled with profiles of motivated young people in big cities working to change the world they were living in under a corduroy blazer and unaffected haircut. Underground music tripped and fell into the mainstream, bringing new ideas and thoughts to radio stations and listeners. Movies were filled with strange fantasies of rebellious mavericks inspiring dissent and individuality.

And it meant fuck-all. But that's beside the point.

But one such movie, one such SONG from such a movie, was this one. How many people here have seen "Pump Up the Volume," ? Come on don't be shy, we're all friends here. I don't even want to get into the whole ridiculous plot for those who haven't seen it, the page above will suffice. There was Christian Slater working that Nicholson impression for all its worth, there was a high school 30 miles away from me, there was rabble-rousing words and music that inspired people to destroy appliances and above all an introverted hero who inspired Samantha Mathis to take off her top for no logical reason whatsover. Everything a moody fresh-out-of-highschool Gen Xer needs.

But that soundtrack...

Listening to it now it's sort of this radio-friendly pastiche of pre-grunge alt-rock, engineered in some musty room in the bowels of KROQ. Of course I ran right out and bought it. On tape, bitches.

Sure, there's terrific stuff--a half-time "Wave of Mutilation," Bad Brains, Sonic Youth, and even Richard Hell and the Voidoids for the true believers. But Urban Dance Squad? Liquid Jesus? I think that cancels out the Soundgarden and Descendents. Needless to say, it's not in my collection now--but not because of the above missteps.

It's this song, this one right here. It's not on it.

Sure, you hear it playing over the opening credits and it pretty much launches the "Happy Harry" pirate radio show every scene but what do you get instead? Concrete Blonde, spilling paisley all over the damn thing. Okay, maybe not paisley, but certainly some bright and anthemic poison yellow color, something that takes away all the dread and menace from Leonard Cohen's version. Why? Probably because Leonard Cohen took a look at the movie afterwards and saw it as a seething piece of manipulative post-teen-movie crap and said, "Ok, i'm in the movie, but you can't sell me WITH your movie, got it?"

I think it's something more. I think Concrete Blonde's version with its soaring crescendo is supposed to translate into hope, that everybody does know the dice is loaded and the captain lied but if we...just...sing...togettthherrrr we can make it all right. Everybody knows, but it can change, right guys? Yeah!

Leonard Cohen's version, on the other hand, with its chugging strings and spanish accents, is a dirge. A funeral for hope, activism, and a brighter future. He can't even bother to sing, his voice just rumbles out of your speakers in a lazy croak, like the voice of the devil on your shoulder reminding you to give it all up.

This does not sell popcorn.

But, through the prism of hindsight, Leonard had it figured out. Where's Concrete Blonde now? Where are we now? "Pump Up the Volume's" tagline was "Talk Hard," and we did, I think. Talk just wasn't enough. Everybody knows.

Buy some Leonard Cohen. He even sings most of the time!

bring the rain, bring the thunder

2006-08-18T09:10:00.000-07:00

I love the bass guitar.

Every fat-bottomed, thick-stringed, finger-blistering inch of them. An embarrassing number of years ago, I decided that the bass was going to be *my* instrument, the one I was going to at long last pick up and figure out after a childhood, adolesence and college free of any musical fulfillment. As a side note, I'll pretty much always feel like I missed out on a minor part of the music geek's lifecycle growing up and somehow not a) being in a crap garage band or b) hosting a crap college radio show. These are two things that when people meet me they are somewhat surprised I never did. To be honest I am too.

So, I dropped a little over $500 on a pretty hefty Japanese Fender J bass (the fellow in Spiritualized and all my favorite britshoegaze bands seemed to prefer the J--it was that simple) and a SWR "Workingman's 12" cabinet. Big, thundering noise, at my fingertips.

This morning both of these things sit in my closet, ridiculously out of tune, neglected and sad. Lately my cat has been enjoy that lumbering carpeted amp more than I have. Years and years ago I tried to get my head around that thing, I did. I sat and worked on scales and penciled several notes-maps of its long smooth neck. I got high and wrapped myself in headphones, determined to copy some of my favorite songs and players (I came close a few times). I indulged in free-form noise rock experiments with musician friends at parties, sometimes with sloppily magnificent (or magnificently sloppy) results--and yes alcohol was involved.

I followed all the requisite steps, but it never took. I heard the music in my head and what I wanted the guitar to do but I couldn't find where those mystical notes lay, or even how to twist its notes into something reliably complimentary to a melody and the magical guts of what becomes 'music.' My bass never became more than a piece of wood bound by strings, strings that tied together all the instrument's secrets and wouldn't let them go.

So fine. I meant to get lessons and never did and other creative outlets rose up in its place. Frustrated friends in bands told me, "You'll never play bass, you're not flaky enough" (a reflection more on their current bandmate situation than my personality), and part of me actually bought it. "Well, that explains it then!" part of me must've said in relief. Maybe it's just not meant to be, and into the case went the bass, Sam I Am.

I haven't given up--I still have it, after all--even though about 8 years have gone since I first picked up the guitar and the fantastic silver-bearded man at Guitar Showcase in Campbell, California said, "You'll always find work; everyone's looking for a bass player" (see my friend's comment above). I'm still devoted to my instrument of choice and though I'm a little annoyed it didn't find me until I was old enough to have jobs and distractions and collaborators living progressively further away, I'd like to try again. But above all it hurts to realize that I could be eight years into playing right now. Dammit.

(This is the sort of thing that really should introduce a theme, and maybe next week we will embark on a sweeping Salute to The Bass. But for now, this is one of the countless songs that make me wish I had shown a little more tenacity, a lot more discipline.)

'Waste It On,' by Silversun Pickups

Silversun Pickups are a fantastic, post-shoegaze pumpkin bashing trio from my ol' neighborhood that with a little luck you've heard of already. But, as in all big guitar outfits, the bass is not-so-quietly picking up everyone's lunch tab while no one's looking.

Played by the predictably cute Nikki Monninger (seriously, the comely female bass player has joined the ironic t-shirt as a requisite indie rock accessory for some time now--not that there's anything wrong with that), this bassline is probably the most unique, most uncomfortable, most difficult sounding of its kind that I've heard all year. It's all hitches and stops, it paces and stumbles about on a wooden leg on its way around a scale and, above all, carries the whole song on its crooked woolen shoulders. It sounds like it should be in a different time signature, but probably isn't, which is even more interesting. As my drummer friend Marty said when I asked if one of his band's songs were in an odd time he said, "No, it's four but it feels like nine." Seems like a great slogan for a band: "Making four feel link nine since 1996."

And six drum geeks laugh with me.

Stereogum's linked to the Silversun Pickups' video for their considerably more raucous "Well Thought Out Twinkles" (where you can watch Miss Monninger rock the big Fender bass as well). Check that out, check the above song out, and when you're done buy Silversun Pickups' debut album 'Carnavas'. This local trio isn't staying local much longer.

make with the ha-ha

2006-08-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

Took in a comedy show Tuesday night, something I very seldom do and really should do far more often. Well, let me check that, I should see comedy far more often at certain venues and featuring certain people, yes, that's definitely the proper call to action.

Because though laughing in public is very very good, stand-up in its typical form has gotten tired. Just like aspects of any performing art eventually hit a point where they need to get shaken up, taken someplace different, or shelved all together, stand-up needs a jolt, or needs to have many of its favorite toys and go-to moves taken away so it has to relearn what made it so exciting in the first place. Not to mention the crap clubs that you have to pay $15 to enter on the condition you buy two watered down drinks. Then after all that you maybe, MAYBE, have some laughs between the squealing hoots from bachelorette party next to you as they get all worked up about something that happened to them on the way to the club that night? Is it any wonder people started to stay home and the Ha Ha Hole on Route 46 is now a tanning salon?

But the Comedians of Comedy Tour is different. Patton Oswalt, Zach Galifianakis, Brian Posehn and (in the video's case) Maria Bamford hit rock clubs, places like the 40 Watt in Athens, Warsaw in Brooklyn and, in Tuesday's case, the Troubadour. And there's something about the show that's so much more hysterical than the last time you were taken to a traditional 'Yay Comedy!' club (because it may not have been your idea). Maybe it's because you're standing shoulder to shoulder with someone so you're more engaged, but probably it's the fact that all the comics are amazing and consistently trying something different, challenging themselves and the audience--and by challenging the audience I don't mean skinning a beaver or insulting whatever ethnic group in their line of vision because that's 'edgy.' Just a different, very skewed asthetic, and it happens to be funny as hell.

I wish I could better describe what makes this show so good, but describing comedy is even harder than describing music. It's like doing an intepretive dance to describe a song in a white room with the lights off. You're just going to have to watch the movie, see the show on Comedy Central some night at like 1 a.m. when they've run out of Carlos Mencia to spill on your shoes. Or, better yet, put on something fancy and go see them on tour in September.

This is the part where if I were a better, more service-oriented blogger I would have samples of the above people's work for you to download, treasure and horde. But I can't. I have Patton Oswalt's "222" CD and great as it may be (it's weird to be listening to a CD in the car and be laughing at your dashboard), it also has no track markers--and I'm not posting a 58 minute CD. I won't do it, Petunia. (See my advice above about the tour and the movie and whatnot.) And, for the most part, songs designed to make you laugh suck.

Except:

'Polka Dot Tail' by Ween

God bless Ween. Seriously.

If you're never heard them before and think they're just sort of this goofy stoner duo that sing offensive songs like an indie rock version of "Weird Al" well, you're kind of right, but stay with me. Ween doesn't just make fun of songs themselves, they make fun of whole genres. And they play them flawlessly, which makes for this incredible cognitive disconnect. I mean, if they're just fucking around, they shouldn't be able to play so well, right? And if it's all a big goof, why are are their 'serious' pop songs so, well...good?

This song, taken from "The Mollusk" sounds a little like a bloated British prog-psychedlic band performing on the deck of a sinking pirate ship. Everything from the warped seasick vocals to the waterlogged guitar is disorienting, especially the existential lyrics that ask "Have you ever made a flan and squished it in your hand?" Oh no. Nothing really makes sense, especially around 1:06 mark, and if you're not careful it all becomes very, very funny. The really frightening part? That allmusic considers this one of their most 'concise' records. Help me.

Buy "The Mollusk" from InSound

behold the overdog

2006-08-14T08:56:00.000-07:00

Weekends are, by definition, too short. If longer than two days, then they'd hardly be simply the 'end' of something--they'd earn a name in their own right. It's an odd coincidence that they ended up falling on a Saturday and Sunday though, isn't it? I mean, I suppose the week could end in the middle all this time--a offputting full-stop during Wednesday and Thursday, giving us a differntly oblong shape to our work week. But then that probably disrupts the whole sabbath-as-end-of-week concept.

These are, with apologies to George Carlin, the kinds of thoughts that come into your head when you sit around the house and your television is broken.

Not that mine is. I've just been trying to avoid it of late. I've always had a pretty solid love-hate relationship with the Big Blue Light, and now I'm finally starting to drift toward the 'hate' side. This is a good thing, especially given the fact that I, like most 30something pop culture-devouring GenXers, am a garbage scow loaded with bad TV trivia. What was the name of one of the restaurant/bar/swinger hangout in "Three's Company?" (The Regal Beagle) Who was the late-night DJ on "WKRP in Cincinnati"? (Venus Flytrap) What was the name of the high school in "White Shadow"? (Carver) Things like this, and if you knew the answers to any of these admittedly softball questions, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about. Some days I wish I could take an ice cream scoop to my brain and remove all this stuff, which would probably free up precious neurons to work on something to reduce our nation's dependence on fossil fuels.

I don't think I started to kick until the late 90s. I found better things to do than watch the telly until the programming schedule told me to go to sleep. There's words to spill on a page, gatherings to attend, people to call. It's still a struggle--I have my addictions to ending the evening with a little bit of viewing, and I pretty much have to check in with "The Colbert Report" and such every other night or so. It still has me, but I'm fighting.

Thus, the weekend was full of a lot of reading, and going to see the wonderfully weird SloMo Video Festival over in Westwood. 100 one-minute long films played, at some point, in slow motion. Wonderful, inspiring stuff, here and there. Good art, I think, should make you want to go create good art. A few of my favorites was slow motion footage of an intersection and a crowd of people crossing the street and a man in a silver suit and a huge sphere of a mask doing the hula hoop to the tune of the Carpenters "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft." Magnificent, and I wish I could show them too you, but instead you're going to have to keep an eye out for the show in your town (LA folk, you have a second chance--the show's coming to Echo Park on Aug. 24). The films are a little hit and miss (as 100 short films tend to be), but the end result is well worth a night out. It made me want to go film one of those tall, inflated rubber creatures who wave and wiggle with varying degrees of urgency in front of car lots at a very....slow....speed and play some music over it. But what?

'Dulcimers Played by Peter Neff, Strings Played,' by Labradford

My mind raced...first I thought of something beautiful, but apocalyptic. Maybe Godspeed You Black Emperor! or even Earth to get really grim (but that would probably require some start black and white, and I want the carnival colors). But the music has to be somewhat sad becuase despite their bright colors and generally big smiles, there's something a little dark about them. They're reaching for the sky, and not only will they never get there, it doesn't even appear to be their idea. It's that big grinding machine at their feet making them do it.

Thus, Labradford.

Labradford is music made not necessarily for slow motion, but for a slow internal pace. There is no TV in their world, only concepts and images, things that pop into your head that deserves some special attention, like when you drive by the home you used to live in when you were a child. Who lives in there now? Can they see your memories too? Or maybe the nothing that pops into your head when a ladybug crawls across your finger. Languid, thought-provoking stuff.

This song is built on a slow, mourning piano line and some slowly building strings (no dulcimers to speak of--the song's title is part of the minimalist asthetic of Labradford where on the album "E Luxo So" tracks were given the same titles as the album credits). Things are sad, but beautiful. Then at the 2:40 mark, something happens. A screen door opens and shuts with a start and a little fresh air comes into the room. Why did someone leave? Where did they go? Were they unhappy? Did just they have things to do? Ten seconds later the song begins again, right where it left off. Just as if no one left at all. Let's see, where was I?

Buy "E Luxo So" at InSound

are you here for the party?

2006-08-11T08:46:00.000-07:00

Cloudy days are generally good. Always have been in my eyes.

I remember when I was a kid I always played basketball better during cloudy days, and to my kid-brain it seemed somehow surprising. Sunny days=sunny disposition and all around good feelings, right? Everything's better when it's sunny (at least if you listen to enough Beach Boys). I was probably 14 or so and certainly took this as a signifier of my own 'depth,' my complicated dark sensibilities that made me, a unique little snowflake, so doubtlessly backward I actually prefer cloudy days to sunny.

As i think about it now, it's far less complicated than that. Sunny days are hotter days. Mild temperatures, mild temperaments. And, when you're outside in the sun, especially playing some kind of sport, the sun is in your eyes and affecting your performance. Depth not required

But still. I remain convinced cloudy days are good--especially when you don't get them very often. I visted Portland earlier this month, a trial run of a trip to decide if we were going to pick up stakes and move to the pacific northwest--land of Powell's, mild temperatures, affordable real estate and yes, all those magnificent, thought provoking cloudy days.

However. There is a big difference between Los Angeles cloudy days--even Greater Cleveland area cloudy days (where I grew up)--and Portland cloudy days. Or at least it seemed as such that weekend.

It snowed. In March. The temperatures, day and night, changed by only five or ten degrees (between 30-40 F, which isn't really a difference). But what really stuck out were the clouds, this heavy, slate-colored sky that said in a booming, stern voice, "THERE IS NO SUN TODAY," followed by a softer but still serious rejoinder, "There was no sun yesterday. There will be no sun tomorrow. There will be no sun next week. Check back with us in May, flesh-creature."

It was windy, cold and damp, and of course it was. In the process I even made a local goth girl angry. The move, at least this year was off.

If any Portlander is reading this you're probably laughing hysterically at me, the sissy-boy Californian who got scared away from your town (and thank god for that, you're also thinking) by a little weather. And I sort of did--that and the fact none of the papers or writerly outlets in the ara felt like acknowledging my existence while move was under consideration. Portland, it seems, is a great place to live if you're a truck driver or machinist, but beyond that...the job market seemss in a bit of trouble.

Maybe we'll try it again one year. I still really like the city, I still really like the people, and I feel a real affinity for the land and all that magnificent green everywhere. It just definitely seemed as if a "Not Now" message was being broadcast in colored halogen lights this spring, and you ignore such messages to your peril.

I mean, seriously. Snow?

'Helpless' (Live), Ryan Adams with Gillian Welch

This Neil Young cover perfectly suits a cloudy day. Or even a sunny one (as we have here now...dammit.)

I am not a Ryan Adams fan. I think he is, for want of a better term, a boob. I think his over-sensitivity to any criticism that occasionally manifests itself thorugh getting into pissing matches on blogs is tiresome. I think he should shut up and stop leaving whiny messages on Jim DeRogotis' voice mail after he dares slag his live show. I DO think he could release one great album a year instead of three 'pretty good ones' (though not necessarily that he should), and so on.

But, I also think he's ridiculously talented. "Heartbreaker" was magnificent, and partly because of his collaboration with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. For one album, to me at least, it all lined up. Nothing before or since has really struck me, and it must've been really nice to see all those folks together live (and at the Exit/In in Nashville, no less, where this is theoretically taken). All Gillian really adds is a backing vocal, a soft sigh in the chorus but it is perfect, I say to you, perfect!

And even though I go either way with covers sometimes (either reinvent it or nail it, there's no middle ground--and some songs shouldn't be covered--but more on that later), this one hits just right. Ryan, for all his glorious faults, flaws and foibles, utterly nails it. And you even get a little bit of his irritatingly self-effacing banter at the end as a bonus.

I hope the clouds come back tomorrow.

Buy 'Heartbreaker' from Insound

critical mass

2006-08-10T09:28:00.000-07:00

I really shouldn't bother with this.

I'm like two days late to the party since this went up, but my favorite (seriously, it is, somehow) indie music pacesetting website went and got me all out of sorts this morning. Lollapalooza was reviewed, or rather assassinated, by our snarky friends, which doesn't really bother me. I wasn't there, Lollapalooza is a far cry from what it was when I was attending it...*shudder*...15 years ago or so, and I'm not in the business of defending massively corporate-sponsored music festivals.

That said...

I just want critical or even eye-witness reports of such an event to give it to me straight, and not serve some axe that's gotta be ground to a razor's edge because of the above facts. Frankly, the lineup was pretty great. Flaming Lips? Gnarls Barkley? Wilco? Sure, there were some clunkers (Chili Peppers, Widespread Panic), as there are for all--yes, ALL--music festivals. But give me the feeling that you're covering this the same way as you would if, say, these bands had been playing the festival that your own publication sponsors. Would the crowd be chastized for being older, having strollers and not bursting into a group hug once they spied their matching wristbands like the True Festival of Communal Good Vibes that is the Pitchfork Festival? Would Wayne Coyne still be judged as "indie rock's carrot top"? Would Wilco be dismissed as playing "Midwestern anthems"? I somehow doubt it.

Let's just say I take issue with his review. Let's say I think he's full of shit when he says Iron & Wine isn't meant for a large venue (I saw them at the Wiltern with Calexico last year and they were incredible). Let's say that I doubt the only suitable adjective for the soloing by Wolfmother and the Raconteurs is "shameful." I'm not big fans of either band, but is this 1977? Are we back to being embarrassed by musicians exhibitiing technical veracity? Should we take away the Arcade Fire's violins? And are we to assume that your positive words for the soon-to-be-departed Sleater Kinney were because they didn't feature any guitar solos?

Let me just say above all that I think the motives behind this slash piece are questionable. You want to hate on an overly sponsored alt-rock fest that's struggling for relevance? Fine. But don't do it at the expense of bands that are championed on your pages, possibly only because they dared play in the same city as you two weeks after your own festival. It seems disingenuine and not just a little petty.

Again, I probably shouldn't have bothered with this. The chorus of P-fork haters who still read the damn thing every day is loud enough already. I guess it's because I read the damn thing that I want it to be better than something like this.

'It's So Easy to Get Bored,' by Helmet

This one's for you, Rob Mitchum. I've read your reviews and liked your stuff, what happened here? Did you really only enjoy three performances over three days?

It's rumored that Page Hamilton was inspired by a nasty and probably difficult to impress critic for this little tune in 1997, and it's the first that came to mind for this case. It's not the usual Helmet song, it's not terribly heavy and there aren't the same start-stop hitches of guitar squalls and silence. In fact given the comparitively midtempo pace it's almost even pretty, about as pop as these guys got. It's from the last Helmet album before they broke up and never played another note (That's right, the last two albums never happened, do you understand me? Never happened.)

Enjoy, Pitchforkers. Hope one day to check out your flawless festival to see what made Lollapalooza seem like such a miserable time for all concerned.

Buy 'Aftertaste' at Insound

what the world needs now

2006-08-09T20:03:00.000-07:00

Heard a pretty beautiful and odd story from a friend today. I don't want to delve too much into the sociology of Los Angeles here (and as a result wind up sounding like "Crash" or horsehot-filled equivalent), but even those who don't live here realize a lot of what spins our world is our cars. How far we are from somewhere isn't measured in miles or blocks, it's in minutes (blocks and miles can be deceiving, after all). Public transportation is as affected by traffic as a single rider given the sad half-joke of our subway system, so most everyone drives, and most everyone drives almost a half an hour to work every day. I'm one of the lucky ones--I drive about 20 minutes.

Consequently those you see on your commute start to become your friends, almost. Just as if you were in a subway car or on a bus, you see the same car or truck every day at around the same intersection at approximately the same hour. There's the Rust Explorer with the Massachusetts plates. There's the guy with the mint julep colored vespa and matching helmet. They're your partners, your pewmates in the church of Los Angeles, struggling through anothe sermon. Maybe you even see them on the way home as well and after awhile, if they look interesting, you start to wonder.

A friend of mine had such a commute friend during her drive to mid-Wilshire every morning. An 'interesting' looking guy in a green vintage automobile. Every day, somewhere around Sixth Street or LaBrea or wherever, they'd pass, never really acknowledging eachother. But the other person was a reliable reminder of how far the commute has progressed, as much a mile-marker as a Chevron station or a Pioneer Chicken.

Then he was gone.

There's not much mourning, you figure maybe the guy got a new job, lost his old one, whatever. There are more commuters for you to share your ride with and you've still got to get to your same ol' job. But then she saw the car again a few weeks later. In her brother's neighborhood, parked just a few doors down. That's awfully strange. I've lived here seven years and rarely see any I know out on the street randomly. The city is just too big. You can date people here and if things don't work out they literally seem to disappear into vapor. There's seemingly an infinite number of Other Places people can be when you're apart, and to run into this car in her brother's neighborhood--which is only a few blocks from her neighborhood--well, that's just bizarre.

On a whim she leaves a note on the guy's car. Nothing too crazy and certainly nothing she expected to hear a response for but something capitalizing on the weird nature of the moment asking "Hey, what happened to you? I used to see you on the way to work every morning." Then she left her email address.

(My friend is single, but this wasn't really that kind of maneuver. You have to know her. No, seriously, you should, she's great)

Shockingly, the guy gets back to her. Finds her on MySpace and drops her a line. They trade a few emails and come to find out this guy actually LIVES NEXT DOOR TO HER BROTHER. Not just in the next house, literally, behind the door right next to her brother's apartment in a fourplex.

*blink*

So yeah, you're pretty much supposed to get to know this guy at this point right? This is the invisible hand behind the curtain jerking your strings. This is the universe tilting on its axis and spilling all the pool balls into the corner pocket. Something, whatever you want to believe, has aligned this moment. Maybe it won't matter anyway, but it's too much of a coincidence to ignore.

So they're still in touch, basking in the weird glow of what is A Very Los Angeles moment--made even more so because neither this guy or this girl's brother had much of an idea of who eachother were...and they shared a wall in their homes.

And it's not a romantic bolt-of-lightning thing, the guy's got a girlfriend, but courtesy of the random nature of this meeting they both got an invite to a barbecue in a few weeks. The beautiful thing is the walls of urban living were, for a moment, broken down. Those trapped in the hamster wheel of commuting all know people who sit across from them, whether seperated by 36 inches of air or seven feet divided by two different colors of shaped metal and plastic. And 99.96 times out of 100 we don't know them, we never WILL know them. Even if they sit across from you on the subway and you watch them nod out at the end or beginning of a long day. Most people's friends and family only get to see people at such intimite moments. You might as well go ahead and make nice.

'Face in the Crowd,' by Kathleen Edwards

I tried hard to find a song that could score this weird little story, but this is as close as I could come, Kathleen Edwards covering Tom Petty on one of those Hear Music compilations you fondle while waiting for your 'venti' latte. It's not quite 'Up With People' or a similar song of brotherhood...in fact it's a little dark...but it's pretty and Edwards' lazy, lovely voice is the perfect thing to fill in the space between two strangers on a train. Or a boat. Or a bus. Get to know her.

(I recommend 'Failer')

did i fall or was i pushed?

2006-08-08T08:46:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make.

When I was a kid, in the backseat of my parents' car, I enjoyed, gestured along with, sang, and loved "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" by Meatloaf. And Jim Steinmen. Both of them, together, in my head and coming out my mouth with a big 7-year-old smile on my face and a similar such grin on my brother's 12-year-old face.

I was probably wearing shorts with a white stripe along the side (now available in a far less innocent fashion at American Apparell) paired with what was probably a tshirt that didn't quite match and, most likely, a pair of tube socks with those 'sport' stripes along the top (which more than likely also didn't match). Oh yeah, and my maroon Zips that undoubtably made me run faster in the thick and sticky summer air. And listening to Meatloaf. It was the 70s and it was Ohio. Abba did not exist.

I even remember the video, all 642-odd minutes of it. There's Meatloaf, looking like he just stepped out of the pool in a ruffled tuxedo shirt and dark slacks that were nobly fighting to contain his every arrhythmia-tempting pound. Had this concert with Meatloaf been going on long? Did everyone take the stage after him taking a couple laps while being pursuued by a puma? No one's saying, certainly not the faint suggestion of the band behind him that you barely glimpse behind Meatloaf's gargantuan head. We do see, however, his singing partner, all dark shadowy eyes and clown makeup, doing everything in her power to kindly introduce the prepubescent me to the concept of breasts.

The video goes on like this through eight-odd minutes. There's a storyline here: Meatloaf wants to get laid, virginal-clad girl wants some kind of committment in return. That's it. An eight-minute, million-selling salute to a guy trying to cop a feel in what must have been an impressively large car.

This was the sort of thing I loved listening to back then. Not that I knew it, but somewhere in this operatic pomp was the groundwork for my highschool interest in fellow Steinman disciples the Sisters of Mercy (strange but true!). It's indulgent, it's ridiculous and now, under the rubric of misguided yet 253% committed bad art, it's magnificent in its quaint way.

My point? This is where I came from, musically, warts and all. We've all got these hidden treasures in our background--maybe we even enjoy listening to such things now. (To clarify: I do not now enjoy Meatloaf. Let's not get crazy. After all, I was a kid and all the song reasonably has to offer is high comedy, as well as another item under the heading of 'What the Hell Was Wrong in the Seventies?') Guilty pleasures and all that, things that I know friends of mine have on CD, but are kept in a special 'secret' area of the collection, somewhere far from prying eyes.

Which is bullshit.

'Pride and Joy (live, acoustic)' by Stevie Ray Vaughan

If i was the sort to hide these things away, my Stevie Ray Vaughan boxed set (bought solely for this song) would probably be buried in a sock drawer or on the bottom of a bookshelf between dusty copies of "Ask the Dust" and "Bloom County Babylon." It's not Stevie's fault--I'll defend his guitar skills against just about everyone. It's what he begat that is troubling, and what he stands for that is, yes, a little embarrassing.

Did I say a little? Try the "Blues Hammer" scene in "Ghost World." How about the "G3" guitar tour? Every sawdust-floored bar in the middle west with a dartboard and plastic football banners hanging from the ceiling. Yngwie! Mother of God, Yngwie! Every diarrea-fingered slackjawed white dude seated in Guitar Center, wailing away on some lipstick-colored mall 'axe' (he'll address it as such, if you let him), boring the living daylights out of his poor girlfriend in a fringe jacket, every one of those guys is DREAMING his ever-loving BRAINS OUT over sounding like Stevie. Ray. Vaughan. They probably even own scarves.

And I'm sorry. But I'm going to ask you to read all that and STILL download this song. If you can listen to Wolfmother dribble all over the entire Black Sabbath catalogue, you can give this a shot. C'mon, it's acoustic. It'll be okay, trust me. There will be nothing that some lazy rock writer can call 'pyrotechnics' here. And no one else will know.

Taken from a two-song "MTV Unplugged" performance filmed shortly before his death, Stevie bounces through a, well, soulful version of "Pride and Joy" from "Texas Flood" before an audience that was probably wondering when that "Five man acoustical jam" that was promised was going to kick off. I found this performance accidentally one night when I was 19, staying up late with my brother who was already a fan of Stevie's (my brother whose collection eventually gave me an appreciation of not only Meatloaf, but Led Zeppelin, the Beatles and the aforementioned Black Sabbath) nodded his head quietly and smiled. I couldn't believe what I was watching, what was coming out of that guitar and out of that man's lungs...on MTV of all places, the channel I was pretty sure was only reliably worth a damn for 120 minutes a week, tops.

My music collection, up to then filled with Depeche Mode, Ned's Atomic Dustbin and New Order, wasn't prepared to embrace "Texas Flood," but soon after it did. Quietly, at first. But then along came the above classic rock titans of my youth, and you know what? They all get along just fine. No introductions or apologies required.

i don't know why i feel so tongue-tied

2006-08-07T08:37:00.000-07:00

Funny thing about vacations: They end.

That's why they're called vacations, after all. Otherwise rolling around the countryside doing whatever and answering to no one would just be "Life." Perhaps your vacation would include volunteering at an animal shelter, or maybe distributing some sort of incendiary leaflet around a place it needs to be seen. It's not that much to ask, I don't think.

Tough goings moving on after a great string of days off like this past week. I can already tell it's going to be a difficult comeback. Today, yes, will be A Long Day. I'm not ready for flourescences, the beiges, the monetizing, the reality of it all. Give me back the trees and the air. Let me have my sandals, after all, can I at least bring those? No? Probably for the best.

A few notable things I learned/relearned over the last 7-10 days:

1) Jon Brion is a genius. Seriously, anyone who saw his weekly residency at Largo knows exactly what I'm talking about. His was a bizarre kind of Jiffy Pop musical alchemy, where "Purple Rain" became a Hank Williams tune, where "Tomorrow Never Knows" becomes a shoegazer anthem, all on the fly--and these are just the things I saw firsthand.

Brion was a one man band in the truest sense, looping himself on keys, drums, guitar, etc until a whole song was built before your eyes...and now it's OVER. Wha? Pllawufh?

At least for now, apparently, courtesy of tendonitus. How there wasn't a parade and/or a free concert in Griffith Park--much less a PARAGRAPH in one of our local rags--to commemorate this event back in April I'll never know. For now, at least, you can get a hint of the wonder of all that is Jon Brion--producer, visionary, maniac--in his interview on Sound Opinions with Jim DeRogotis and Greg Kot (also on iTunes). He doesn't play much, but hearing him crack open his mind with those guys is still a pleasure. I liked best his explanation of the difference between 'performance pieces' and 'songs,' with no judgement. Get well soon, Jon. Please.

2) I can spend upwards of an hour in any given used bookstore, most recently this one. This is not new, but fun to remember. I love the smell of them, the limitless possibilities on all of their shelves, the things I want to read, should read, don't even know I need to read, even each shop's individual quirks. This bookshop, for instance, features used magazine and an entire shelf devoted to the biography of Phish. It is, after all, Flagstaff.

My acquisitions? I was somewhat restrained, this time--"Death and the Penguin" by Andrey Kurkov, "Among the Missing" by Dan Chaon and the CDs of "The Pleasure of My Company" by Steve Martin (for the drive home). Thusfar "Penguin" has grabbed me nicely, as a book with a depressive penguin owned by a Russian obituary writer should, and "Company" ate up the miles and I thought was warmer and better than "Shopgirl." Thoughts?

Also, the worst part about goin to a bookstore is I can't justify going to one for at least a few weeks. Buying cat food right next door to Counterpoint on Franklin yesterday and NOT stopping in to browse went against every part of my collectivist nature, like trying to swim through woodchips. It stung.

3) Camping out in the woods in the middle of the night in a mountain town introduces you to a new kind of silence. Somewhere around midnight I found myself unable to sleep, staring at a canopy of stars in a sky so dense it looked as if there were shapes and mythic figures of darkness forming around the pinholes of light rather than the other way around. Soon the ambient noise that fills the cavern of your head like tinnitus fades and you're left with the sound of nothing all around you, a nothing that makes a moth sound like a helicopter, a pack of coyotes like a car alarm orchestra and your thoughts like megaphone announcements. Beautiful, and a much needed slice of serenity.

Plus, despite all the wonders of crawling inside nature and all its powerful meditative qualities there is no better feeling than a shower and a night's sleep in a crap Motel 6. Is that wrong?

4) Radiohead is our Beatles. Or our Pink Floyd. Or our Creedence. Or whatever band it is that you look at your parents and stare at them with wild-eyed amazement that they were alive at the time that music was created, hearing it for the first time or even--can it be?--seen them in concert. That's who Radiohead is, or will be. Just wait, don't argue with me.

I'm not even going to get into the whys or deconstruct their incredible five-album run of groundbreaking, completely unique music, or even how mindboggling some of that live stuff on YouTube is. I won't even get into the beauty and care that goes into their album packaging and the vein of social consciousness and outrage that is under almost all of their songs these days. I'll just ask that you listen to them talk about what they do, and maybe play a bit--yes, here, again (hey, it's a seven hour drive). If you're a real geek like me go to iTunes and grab the full, hour and a half interview. Drink it all up, they're not going to be around forever.

5) Coffee is better in mountain towns. Why is it LA, for all it's wonders and many joys cannot. figure. out. a. good. cup. of. coffee. Much less a good coffee house. Maybe I'm wrong in my eastsider lifestyle but closest I've come so far is Peet's, and that doesn't count because it's a chain (albeit a smaller one). I think it's because the weather's too good too often. If it rains a lot and/or freezes, coffee becomes that much more of a priority. This is one possible benefit to climate change for our area.

That said, I'll make my own coffee and accept the tradeoff of 78 degrees, sunny and ridiculous in August. You can't have everything.

And now, here comes the music:

'Paranoid Android,' by Brad Mehldau (produced by Jon Brion)

Yes, I'm somewhat lame and don't have Brion's lone solo release, partly because it doesn't come close to capturing what he does live (though it is a nice approximation of Beatleesque pop). This song, although he only is credited as playing 'prepared piano percussion,' sort of does, from Mehldau's strange and wonderful "Largo" (buy it!), which also features guests like Jim Keltner and Critters Buggin's percussion wizard Matt Chamberlain. It doesn't resemble any of Mehldau's other releases thanks to Brion's touch, and that's not a bad thing. Oh yeah, and by the way, don't forget to notice how this pretty much exposes Christopher O'Reilly as the bland, bloodless tribute act that he is.

Speaking of Brion's "touch," when I saw this ensemble play at the Knitting Factory back in 2002 that touch consisted of Brion beating the holy living hell out of the backside of an upright piano. It's a fun thing to picture during this song.

"Cuttooth" by Radiohead

Everything that could be said about Radiohead has pretty much already been said--particularly in the wilds of this medium--but I still had to reach for something isn't all over the place right now for an example, this B-Side from the Knives Out single way back when. You can hear a little bit of "Myxomatosis" in the lyrics here (I think), which is a nice treat, but mostly this is Radiohead doing what they do. An insistent piano line drives the train as the song seems to build and build and build with no real release.

The tanks are rolling into town

a handful of wheel

2006-07-31T22:50:00.000-07:00

Ah, August.

This, I have to say, is more like it. Now that the Earth's enormous thermostat located somewhere south of Nova Scotia has been readjusted, temperatures in my homecity hovered somewhere around the mid to upper 70s today, and this can only mean two things. One, that I needed to miss it all by sitting at my computer with some much overdue business and, two, it's time to leave town.

Yep, I'll be a puff of memory 'round these parts for the rest of this week. Mind the store for me, would you? The destination? The mountains, another state away, where the ground is red, the air is thin and so clear that it seems like the entire countryside is being viewed through a polarized filter. There will be hiking, nature, and burning, grateful lungs. This, I think, is reason enough for a song cue.

'Sandusky,' by Uncle Tupelo

I've been to Sandusky, Ohio. It sounds nothing like this.

That aside, these next three minutes and forty-three seconds are about as beautiful and perfectly arranged as you're ever likely to find. It's another one of those songs that make you want to look around, take in every detail of what's around you and maybe take a second to dream about playing guitar.

An all-acoustic instrumental, there's no sign of the holy war between Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar that divided the alt.yippidoodle camps, no hyphenated genres, no sign of anything at all except the open road in front of you. The sun's out, your windows are rolled down and there's no wind, no traffic, no exhaust. The sun's not even getting in your eyes as you drive and as the light shines through the trees cradling the side of the road and pours past you, leaving everything is golden, warm and bright, smelling of hardwood and honeysuckle.

Two guitars are riding shotgun, getting all tangled up with eachother because they're sitting too close, getting friendly. And the three of you sound so nice together you don't mind that they keep picking up hitchhikers. Mandolin, banjo, maybe another guitar, hey maybe even dry, soft-shouldered set of drums. Why not? There's room enough for everyone, it's a beautiful day and we're all friends here. Nevermind all that. We've only got a little less than four minutes, let's make the most of all we see.

Buy Uncle Tupelo's "March 16-20, 1992" for more

oh grow up already

2006-07-28T08:35:00.000-07:00

Opted to 'air myself out' the other night, as my mom used to say. A Promising Local Band was playing at the Silverlake Lounge, and since the last time I saw live music was the Calexico show way back in June I was, by any measure, overdue.

The Silverlake Lounge is a pit, but a curiously charming pit. The barstools have been beaten down under the rumps of so many patrons that the seats have only a paper-thin suggestion of padding. A wooden bench runs along the right hand wall, and if you lean too far back your head rests against a mind-bogglingly filthy acoustic foam. Minor quibbles especially when you consider that rock bars are for rock, which means standing. If you want to sit, go up the block to the soju bar.

With the exception of the usual domestic suspects, most of the beers are Mexican favorites like Tecate and Negra Modelo, reflecting SLL's usual identity as a Latino (latina?) drag bar. Everything is black and coated in an appropriate layer of sweat, grease and man mung, but any negative qualities are forgiven with the sight of the huge electric 'SALVATION' sign glowing over the stage like some musician's ham-fisted dream sequence. I can only assume it stays illuminated on the drag nights as well.

Given the slowly dissipating heat wave, Silverlake Lounge was extra stuffy that night, but in a tragic bit of relief it was so deserted that a small breeze would occasionally stumble through the club's open door.

Wednesday, it seems, is not a good night for the Silverlake Lounge. Those who came out that night to see either Tom Brosseau and his alien pipes or Marjorie Faire and their sleepy Coldplay-lite emptied their drinks and moved on before any band they might not have come to see could take the stage. Welcome to Los Angeles. People have shit to do.

'Crooked Mile,' by Weed Patch
'Ray Charles,' by Weed Patch

They missed out. To be fair, Weed Patch is not 22. They do not feature an accordian or any sort of eastern European accents. They are not particularly waifish and do not hail from Brooklyn, Canada, or any other P-fork endorsed zipcode. They are not at the forefront of any trend, unless you count the 'eclectic americana-based rock and pop noise' trend that's been going on for a decade and a half. The lead singer's voice is not--unless you really, really hate Michael Stipe or Bob Mould--an acquired taste. His lyrics are not tormented. They are not, at least in the indie-cum-blogosphere sense, cool. Which is a shame because what they are, instead, is a Damn Good Band if I do say so my damn self.

They have a couple of different sides at work. "Crooked Mile" is representative of their new CD "Some Kind of Happy" , a blend of "Summerteeth" squeals and sunlit sounds mixed by Centro-Matic's Matt Pence. Straightahead, windows-rolled-down guitar rock with a chorus covered in those things that get stuck on your pantlegs when you go hiking. Sticky stuff, is what I'm saying.

"Ray Charles," on the other hand, while still firmly rooted in the electric alt.whatever guitar pop world, is a little more hazy, a little less linear. Given the title, the song has an appropriately reverent feel, almost like someone's testimony before ascending to a cacophanous three-minute outro hinting at the joyful chaos lurking around the band's fringes, particularly live. Guitar squalls, effects pedals, washes of racket, sweat and electricity. Even a trumpet shoves its way toward the microphone. Bands, like people, only benefit from airing themselves out.

Buy "Some Kind of Happy" from Miles of Music

that what is not

2006-07-25T08:53:00.000-07:00

This post is perfect.

I have made a series of thumbnail sketches. I have gone for long walks were I ponder these sketches and their validity. I haev written seventeen drafts and thoughout them all I have made vicious cuts, eloquent additions, and granted clemency to those segments that pleased me. No words were spared my gimlet editorial eye.

Paragraphs were studied and sentences pondered. Individual words were compared with similar meaning but different sounding choices and judged on pitch, timbre and meter. In the end the entire piece was pasted to my wall for 36 hours to be studied once more, ensuring that I would read it at times when I 'was not ready,' to ensure that my editorial judgement was not clouded by bias or exhaustion. Every passage was judged and then judged anew.

Then I started over. New avenues were explored. Towering arguments supporting my claims were erected and then swiftly leveled, only to be built once more on a more powerful foundation. Rhetorical angles were stretched and tested for elasticity and bouyance. Adverbs pondered, adjectives viewed warily, prepositions vetted. Nothing has been left to chance.

What you read here today is, in the end, without flaw, without fault, without a single poor decision that could result in anything less than an experience that will, yes, enriched your life and, as a result, enrich mine. It is all things to all people.

'Electric Mainline (Live)' by Spiritualized

I'd like to send 'a shout out' as the kids say to Jason Pierce of Spiritualized, a fellow perfectionist and by many accounts a right bastard to have around. Okay, he's probably a very nice, very tormented fellow, but he did after all unceremoniously sack his whole band (except the horn player) in the wake of their finest hour (1997's "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space" and the incredible live document this recording is taken from "Live from Royal Albert Hall."). Why did he do that? Because he essentially trusted himself and himself alone to create the sounds that were in his head for the next two releases, "Let It Come Down" and "Amazing Grace."

Was he right? Debate is open. In some folks' eyes Pierce hasn't made a wrong move since he left Spacemen 3 and when you're a genius well, who else are you going to ask write your songs? But with a little collaboration, a little bit of strength in letting go of that control that can lurk inside your head to make this perfect little piece you can sometimes create something that, well, isn't perfect. But it's better.

This song is a collaborative effort, and although it was probably charted meticulously before they stretched this thing out to nearly seven minutes, it has touches that sound as if they happened by chance, organically. There's just no other way it could've happened.

The song starts in one place and slowly evolves through its players and its own will to someplace Other. Keyboard drones rise and fall and guitars tangle around eachother into a more and more intricate lattice work, followed by drums and even saxophone. Layer upon layer of sound piles upon itself until it can walk around the room, growing, expanding, running, breathing. Faster and faster. Transcendant, cathartic stuff, and even though I'm trying to learn the concept doesn't exist it's all somehow absolutely perfect.

the heat death of the universe

2006-07-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's the heat--no, definitely it's the heat--but a certain lethargy has set in over and around my steaming home in the foothills. What with all the trees and greenery surrounding it you'd think some milder temperatures would be in the offing, but, sadly, we've been toward the front of the field in Southern California. The air hangs over the whole city like a wet cableknit sweater, thick and sticky , while the sun flexes its favorite muscle groups and dares you to go outside. Your only comfort, only solace is, if you're lucky, whatever room in your home you've designated a 'safe zone' with, in our case, an air conditioner in the window.

The mayor wants us to lay off with blackouts on the way and my gentle, environmentally conscious ways should comply. I'd love nothing more than to not sit in my living room and watch the equivalent of ten and twenty dollar bills fly out my window...nothing more, that is, except feeling cooler. Now I understand why people live on the beach, why people swallow an extra $500 per month in rent to not...feel...like this. For another month.

The news is calling it a heatwave, but I'm pretty sure it's just called 'July' at this point.

'Amber Canyon Magik,' by Brightblack Morning Light

This song sounds like my weekend felt. Slow and hazy. Relaxed, but enrobed in something cool and anesthesizing.

First off I want to thank Rajeev at One Louder for posting "Everybody Daylight" from Brightblack Morning Light a month or so ago. That coupled with KCRW's Jason Bentley latching onto the song pretty much sealed my trip to Amoeba last week, and the whole CD is just as rewarding. I can see some folks (like our helpful Amazon reviewer) getting overcome by the post-hippie, somnabulent vibe soaking every note of the album, but let go of all that, especially you fear of 'Magic' spelled with a 'K.' Silly sure, but sometimes it's okay to get swept away by your music to someplace slower, a little calmer, and maybe a lot weirder.

I'm not sure what the lyrics are saying here, but it doesn't matter very much. Suffice to say there's a lot of sighing and a watery guitar line surrounded by some gentle hand percussion that will either make you nod your head or nod out. Fair and fine. If you're not moving you're not sweating, and given the days ahead we might need a lot more of that than we'd think.

dog days

2006-07-20T10:09:00.000-07:00

Mmm, boy. I love me some marketing.

When I walk down the street and I see something I like the first thing that pops into my head is how can I, me, and my big brain, find a way to make that irreplaceable to someone. How can I make someone need that, fall 'in love' with that and, most crucially, pay me $__ for it? Let's monetize. How can we make it a 'Furby,' net net? Let's drill down into some numbers and grow our business.

I have to not do that before noon. It thickens the blood.

Sure, it's a straw man that I'm blowing up here. I don't know anyone who likes marketing or advertising or the fact every living inch of what we see, wear, and consume seems for sale. Perhaps it's in my generation's makeup considering we've had several pop culture icons decry marketing's evils and influence (ie, Bill Hicks, 'Adbusters', Lloyd Dobler etc), but that may be simplifying things. I mean, we're all in our 30s now so, theoretically, the people making and processing said ads and marketing dollars are, well, us. Reality really does bite, Mr Hawke.

So then, is it just me--or rather--just us? Are we just skipping the groove here from the majority of the country? Many folks in their twenties (and younger!) readily share information marketeers would sell their soul (again) for on MySpace and see no harm. Most people, it seems, would rather have a NikePumaCrombieGap logo across their chest than not. We all remember when that woman sold her face to the highest bidder, but now pregnant bellies are subject to corporate brandalism as well because, really where's the harm? It's the system. Newspapers, television, movies, trees, people, they're all magnificent advertisement delivery systems.

On the other hand, maybe the tide's turning...American Apparel has built a hipster empire on brand-free clothing (unless you count softcore photographs of lithe young girls as a brand, and I think we can). TiVo has an almost evangelical devotion among my friends because it's Life Without Ads (for now).

So, to be generous, let's say 42% would rather not live with ads. I'd rather not, yet I just had a conversation with some marketing people about what content would be best to promote in our newsletter--a newsletter which of course contains ads and is in and of itself an ad itself. Most of us out in the working world, more than 42%, are probably involved with some form of selling and marketing right now, I'd bet. It's the most pervasive industry in this country. After this country goes foom all there's going to be are cockroaches and marketing executives spraying Dodge logos across their backs.

'Swastika Eyes,' by Primal Scream

I promised dance music this week (I think), but I've found it difficult to hold to that. Dance music, it seems, doesn't come naturally to me. I've got other songs I'd like to talk about or that I'd like to have provide a score to these little stories and screeds I drop off in this space, and by in large they're not easy to dance to. This song, despite its frightening title, very much is.

I've never been to a rave. Even going to college in the '90s and really starting to nurture an overwhelming music habit at the time didn't inspire me to follow the fliers and go dance for a few hours into the wee hours (see above). But this song lets me imagine the most insane, brutal rave that ever walked through Fatboy Slim's decadent id.

Multi-colored strobe lights are flashing, people are moving their bodies furiously between fire-dancers and those freaks who put glow-sticks on the ends of ropes and swing them around into surreal air-paintings. The best part? Primal Fleeping Scream is in the middle of the room, making this incredible dance-happy racket on traditional rock 'n roll instruments, drowning out all other sound. There's lost genius Kevin Shields, cradling his guitar like he's afraid of it. There's the Stone Roses' Mani pounding out a bass line against a tribal live-drum beat, and there's keyboard wizard Martin Duffy making all the bloops and bleeps that trick you into thinking this is 'electronica.' And right in the middle is Bobby Gillespe, frozen solid against the microphone stand singing some nonsense about swastika eyes as lights swirl around him. Is he angry? Is he catatonic? Is he too stoned to move? Maybe all three.

How the hell did they get here? Disregard all that faux-Stones rubbish and check XTRMNTR out. Angry dance music for angry times, and that was six years ago. Think of what they should be doing now.

welcome to world war four

2006-07-17T22:40:00.000-07:00

Almost killed a guy on the way home tonight.

It wasn't on purpose, of course. I don't travel the streets of Los Angeles waving a handgun out the window and yelling at traffic to just "gimme a reason" or anything like that. (Though I'm pretty sure there are stretches of California commute-crete that feature just that from time to time.)

I was just driving, only a few hours ago. I had just left the Happiest Place on Earth (also known as Amoeba) and was making my way out of Hollywood. My head was full of the eight--count 'em! Eight!--CDs I had just acquired and, I was tired. I was preoccupied by the $90-odd dollars I just dropped and if I spent it well and on top of that, I was a little unlucky. Or lucky, depending on how you look at it.

I was looking for the 101 freeway heading north, and for those of you who haven't spent time in this part of the country, I'll explain. Though LA is mythologized as the birthplace of freeway, we have not perfected them as a means of transportation. I mean, that's obvious, look at our traffic. But on top of that, sometimes it feels as if we're busy hiding the freeway from the average driver, perhaps out of pity. "Yes, that's the 170 right over your head, but really, are you sure you want to get on that thing? Think about it, you'll have time. We're only going to drop an onramp on maybe every fifth or seventh major intersection." There are areas where you can look up the freeway's skirt for miles and feel like you'll never actually get on the damnable thing. It's not the freeway that is LA's signature totem; it's the velvet rope.

ANYWAY, there are several ways onto the 101 in Hollywood, and my favorite is just off Argyle and Franklin. Unfortunately, in my sensory-overloaded state I thought it was Franklin and Vine, which is where I made my left turn and found a pair of pedestrians.

One was in the middle of the crosswalk, so I waited for him to pass and then began my turn, only to fail to noticed someone ELSE who had just started his trip across Vine. It was dark and that corner isn't very well lit. Now, it wasn't a close call, really, no squealing of tires, no evasive actions. I eventually saw him and slowly angled the Nissan to a stop just to curbside. He, on the other hand, had seen me for some time.

He was in a white shirt and royal blue shorts, and looked like a slightly more squat (and slightly more furious) version of Clipper point guard Sam Cassell. In fact, maybe it was Sam I Am, who can be sure? In any case, there I sat, my car accidentally 'parked' at a 45-degree angle into the top of the crosswalk, and Sam is very upset, and understandably so. He's fleshy and pink, I'm big and metal. We're not made for each other. He's stomping his feet and yelling something, and his eyes are wide and white. It's somewhat unfortunate that my windows are rolled up and I can't hear his opinion of me and my mistake.

I'm repentant. I'm apologizing and gesturing for him to please, go about your evening and proceed to your destination. Or words to that effect. I'm in the wrong here, so if there was a way to mime that I was at fault and felt terrible, I was doing it.

But Sam is very upset. He stays just steps from my fender in the crosswalk and puts his hands on his hips, looking down at the pavement and taking a deep breath, apparently wondering what, just what was going to happen next in his day and, indeed would he have to kill someone just to set the whole thing right?

Suddenly I'm getting upset.

I've apologized, I've most definitely not hit the guy and what else can I do? Before I know it anger has begat anger and I'm yelling--insisting!--through my window, "I'M SORRY," and shrugging exaggeratedly, hoping we can just go about our lives. Finally, he raises his hands and forgives me, nodding and saying something to me that looks like, "Okay, it was an accident and your display of guilt appears genuine. I will allow you proceed this time." He continues to the other side of Vine and I continue toward Franklin its terribly inconvenient onramp, which of course wasn't on Vine at all. It was located a U-Turn away on Franklin and Argyle.

And I'm angry, and puzzled as to how it happened. I completely failed the test. Being at fault here I was supposed to just let the other guy be angry and be friendly and understanding and soon after dispute is diffused. But...he got angry, i got angry with this crazy mix of embarrassment and frustration and it didn't have to be that way. I got caught up in the moment, which I guess is how it happens.

Hopefully next time it'll go better. I'll hit the small black button that rolls my window down and speak softly and calmly. Anger will go one direction, get lost and look around and wonder what it's doing in that neighborhood. I can dream, can't I?

'Let the Music Take Your Mind,' by Grant Green

Tough choice on what to post in the wake of all that, but I like to think this slice of jazz funk (what became 'acid jazz') from Grant Green's fantastic live album "Alive" (which you really aughta own--you'll recognize bits of it were used by Us3 and Tribe Called Quest, to name a few.) This massive song's a Kool & the Gang cover that wipes away any bad mood or vibration, and it's not just Green's fluid guitar that does it, it's drummer Idris Mohommad's relentless groove bouncing all over that snare. I'm pretty sure if this were playing in my car during the above exchange things would've gone much, much better.

an evening of dance music

2006-07-17T09:18:00.000-07:00

I've been chewing on the notion that I've never had a 'theme' here at this establishment, my little olde shoppe of words and ideas.

I got the notion this saturday night when we decided to take in the (free) Diavolo Dance Theatre performance at the comparitively scenic California Plaza downtown. I say comparitively scenic because, as someone who works downtown, most things in and around the center of our fair city are, in fact, unpleasant. Sure, there's some nice loft spaces where people are fortressed inside, but a few blocks away from a hip yet struggling restaurant/boutique/bar under a half million-dollar loft apartment is a Blade Runner-esque carnival of misery, addiction and homelessness. So, taken by that measure, a fountain-dappled concrete space between Deloitte & Touche skyscrapers and corporate coffee stops looks pretty good.

I digress. ANYWAY, check that picture of Diavolo out--Looks pretty crazy, right? Big wooden boat-ish structure, bodies soaring to and fro, and, yes, modern dance being peformed by gymnasts! Actors! And (presumably) dancers! I'm not someone who generally seeks out modern dance performances, but seeing words like 'surrealist' and 'absurdist' next to just about anything piques my interest. And it was better than roasting inside of a poorly insulated house during our Summer of the Inconvenient Truth.

SO, off we went and I have to say, the show wasn't terribly impressive. Sculpted men and women propping themselves up in various yoga poses, slip-sliding up and down the pictured rollicking boat thing. Every so often one would fling themselves off the boat and into the waiting arms of his/her fellow dancers, resulting an excited 'wooo!' from the crowd.

Sure, it's impressive, and risky, but surrealistic? I mean, I don't know how to fling myself off a rocking wood structure but essentially what you were seeing in the leaps were only a bit removed from the feats of skill found at the average Pac-10 cheerleading challenge. And the dance? Again, I'm not an authority, but it really just looked like an olympic floor exercise taking place on a moving surface. Skillful, sure, but not very moving.

Then of course there's the biggest culprit: the music. A series of dramatic string swells and non-verbal operatic trills from unseen voices. It may have been reaching for those fantastic "Great Gig in the Sky" dramatic wails but what it found instead? The pretention-skewering dance numbers from "The Big Lebowski." Come on, remember, the Dude's landlord greets him at his doorstep in wee Grapevine shorts and invites him to check out his "Cycles"? That's what the California Plaza sounded like. All it needed was some MagLight lighting and a chubby guy in laurels.

And people ate it up. I read that the guy behind the company has just been commissioned to choreograph a cirque du soliel show in Vegas, which makes complete sense. There was a very Vegas touch to the evening, from the retirees clustered around the fountain to the melodramatic feats of strength on stage. All that was missing was a magician to dance around a spinning, sword-skewered casket.

So, why are we here now? It made me think of dance music, and its many forms. I'm not what one would call a fan of 'dance music." (See my earlier post about my 'roughage' listening habits, but there are songs that make me want to move my feet, shake my hips and generally wave my hands in the air and wave them like I have no regard for the consequences.

'What the World Is Waiting For,' by the Stone Roses

And, I promise, one or two of these will have even been created less than 15 years ago (and the less we discuss of this song's birthday the happier we'll all be, agreed? Agreed.)

I never got to see the Stone Roses live. I came close--I lazily approached a ticketmaster in San Jose the next day after their Fillmore show was announced. Sold out, of course, which sort of surprised me given the tepid response to "Second Coming."

I even trolled around the venue the night of the show in an attempt to catch a scalper's ticket--something I'd never done before or since--and failed there as well. What I believe I missed was the band without Reni, their original drummer, who had bailed out sometime before and, possibly, a hobbled John Squire who busted his collarbone cycling around Mt. Tamalpais that week. I could be misremembering some of the whos and whats there (please advise if so), but suffice to say I MISSED THEM. One of my favorite bands of all time, and like most people I never saw them live. Instead I've got two records, one collection of b-sides (where this song comes from, in all its baggy, starry-eyed glory), and a lot of unfulfilled potential (on their part, not mine. I did all I could, dammit).

But regardless, enjoy this jangly slice of Manchester. I'd like to promise more to come tomorrow along the same lines, but who knows if the 'theme' will take hold. I might jump off the rocking little boat in my own right. Stop the world, I'm getting off.

evil don't look like anything

2006-07-13T08:54:00.000-07:00

It's almost startling how little happens to you when you don't leave the house much.

There's no denying it. The home-to-work-to-home pinwheel will keep you squared away with the internal sleep-bank and surely reduce other complications that could come up from people 'out there,' but, for the most part, a lot of things are being missed.

This is just the schedule and the fading illness talking. The ship will get righted soon enough, but lately I've been rolling home from work at about 8 p.m., which is just enough time to have a very hastily planned and vegetable-deficient dinner, relax, read a bit and unfortunately crash out. However, I have been afforded the opportunity to catch up on my "Arrested Development" DVDs, which is fairly delicious treat I can't believe I didn't start sooner.

Anyway. The following song is apropos of nothing, it just makes me happy.

"Okkervil River Song," by Okkervil River

It takes a special kind of band to willfully rock the song that's of the same name as its own. The only other one I can think of right now is "Talk Talk" by Talk Talk (who also pulled off the rare branding trifecta by releasing the song an album of the same name). Who else has done it? Would it have seemed okay if Led Zeppelin started singing about a metallic dirigible? What if the Rolling Stones covered "Like a Rolling Stone" in concert? You'd pretty much have to throw things at them, right?

And yet...it doesn't feel like grandstanding here. Maybe it's because this came from Okkervil's "first" record "Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See," which is just filled with so much wide-eyed enthusiasm, joy and ambition it's tough to begrudge the young band a thing.

This is probably my favorite album by these Austinites, and I think the biggest factor is the instrumentation. I'm not sure when it happened, but somewhere in my late 20s I drifted from my usual catharsis-rock and became utterly enamored with rootsy, acoustic 'Americana,' I think it's been least offensively called. (This has also been referred to in more vicious circles as a varietal of 'dad rock,' which, c'mon, just isn't nice.) Whatever your thoughts about acoustic music, one of the most beautiful aspects of it is there's no half-stepping. If you know what you're doing, you immediately sound that way. I've shared my love for effects pedals--partly because they can make even me sound like a guitar hero--but with a banjo or big hollow-bodied box there's nothing to hide behind. You hit the notes or you don't.

Whatever my love for that album or, particularly, this song, may say, it's tough to miss its charm. A bouncy riverboat zydeco kind of rhythm comes in at about the one minute mark, led by that most unsung of acoustic instruments, the mandolin, followed, shockingly, by a chugging accordian. Stay with me now. Pretend you never saw a bumpersticker that read "Play an accordian, go to jail."

Still here? Good. But it's not just the toe-tapping that makes you glad you stuck around. There's such longing in the lyrics, this dog-eared short story with a melancholy sense of lost love that culminates in the shouted "I searched and stared but only the river stared back." Then there's a moment of silence, birds chirping, the river (presumably) running.

What else could they name the song? This is what Okkervil River sounds like.

beefeater stares

2006-07-11T15:20:00.000-07:00

Well. That explains that.

That whole bit below, the one where I was wondering what was up with how sluggish I was feeling? Well it wasn't the Mondays, it was my body reacting accordingly to having some sort of viral throat cold thing strapped to its back. Balls. I fought something like this off a few weeks ago when I saw my soon-to-be-four-year-old neice, a little germ factory if there ever was one (no, I kid. She's fantastic. Don't believe me? Look at this.)

ANYway, her inarguable cuteness aside, she had a certain laryngitusian strep throat THING lingering in her, and I almost caught it (my sister-in-law did, and as such was incapacitated for a week), and then I saw said sister-in-law (and child) Saturday night and what happened? Inbetween the booze that is? That's right, the kissing and the hugging, so here I am.

Actually it's not that bad. I ratcheted up the irritation with it because, well, I could get sick, but I'm not, not yet at least. Not that this stopped me from calling into work in the name of not getting sick. I had a nice little prickly pear of a thing crawl into my throat as soon as I stepped out of the office last night, and there it sits even now. Strangest sore throat I've encountered in awhile, not just because it's painful, but because it's not ALWAYS painful. Just when I swallow, or yawn, or inhale wrong. It could turn into something, but hasn't yet.

It also hasn't gone away, despite the fact I stayed at home and in my pajamas until 4 p.m., probably because I was still working on my laptop thanks to several software programs I can't explain. I have to say, telecommuting? A nice deal. Work is better when you don't have to actually go anywhere for it.

So I spent today trying to drink liquids, do more work than I aught've and watch dvds of "The West Wing." Another nice thing about being sick is you can pretty much take in whatever form of entertainment you wish and not be concerned about "being productive." This is something I seem to have a problem with.

'Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby," by Islands

Most of the music I listen to is what you might call 'roughage,' that is, things that take a little bit of work to enjoy. That's not he right way to put it--I don't have to work at all, really. Most of what I listen to isn't simple, bright, shiny, sunny or poppy. Very little of it--apart from the earlier described fondness for heavy metal and the Ramones--is stupid.

This song, by the impossibly indie-pedigreed Islands, is very stupid.

Sure, there's something clever in the title up there, and yeah, this isn't Justin Timberlake or Xristina dumb, but it is a very bright, very happy, and very very harmless little pop song. About as difficult to enjoy as a lollipop. And I hate those.

I don't know why that isn't something I go for more often, or, more germaine to the topic, why I do go for this song. The chorus burrows into you head faster than a Butterfinger commercial, and twice as nonsensical. "Bones, bones, brittle little bones?" What the &%$@! is that? And then you're going to follow that with a bunch of lazy little 'doot-doots'? What's the matter with you?

Islands are Canadian. I think that's relevant, somehow.

Anyway, the song's willfully quirky, weird, joyful and not just a little bit cute. You can imagine little animated creatures singing it in a forest as a crying little baby deer complains about its sprained ankle. "What can you do, little deer? You're imperfect, and you'll get better. Doot-doot!" And the little caramel-colored deer with its Hershey-kissed spots across its back wipes away its tears and sings right along because it's sunny, and there's a chipmonk with a fife dancing alongside a goose in a kilt. How bad can it be, really?

Doot-doot.

i believe i'll dust my broom

2006-07-10T20:56:00.000-07:00

Is it possible to be hungover without actually being hungover?

My weekend has me exploring such an idea. Had a busy couple of days highlighted by a friend's barbecue last night and my aunt and uncle's anniversary party saturday, and naturally today I'm feeling like I drank a six pack and a half and washed it down with a pound of Sominex. Not a good feeling, particularly when faced with the beginning of the workweek.

I don't want to have that quote from "Office Space," running through my head, I really don't, but there it is: "Someone has a case of the Mondays." Whenever someone asks how I'm doing at work I can never just disregard the question like I should, I can never take it for the conversational happytalk that it is.

"Great!" I'm supposed to reply, or "Pretty good, how are you?"

Inevitably, and unfortunately, I answer honestly.

"Gnng," I'll say with a half smile, or maybe I'll roll my eyes and shrug. What I don't say is what I should probably get more credit for. "I'm here, aren't I? How the hell are you?"

Someone has a case of the Mondays. But it's more than that, right? Is my body just that ill-accustomed to having to be somewhere that morning? I woke up at around the same time all weekend, my lethargy doesn't make much sense.

But, on the bright side, it was a good weekend. Wine, champagne, and our family celebratory beverage Sambuca was flowing at my uncle's house, which inevitably led to a talk outside between my brother and father and myself. One of those family bonding type times that given all of our ages somehow turns, well, a little morbid you can say but unfortunately realistic.

"We're Just Temporary, Ma'am," by White Whale

I don't generally post *new* music here, figuring that's better left to those bloggers with connections and time that exceed my own, but this song has stuck with me since yesterday afternoon when I gave it a test spin on the way to our barbecue. I can't say I'm terribly crazy about the album, despite the many bands namechecked in a rather icky manner in their press release ("Okkervil River cannot contain the enormity of the White Whale!"). In fact the whole album comes across as a more practiced and glossy version of their aforementioned influences. "You want Decemberistian literary content? Check! You want Arcade Flaming singalong choruses? You bet!"

However, this song comes up with something more anthemic, somehow more arena-ready than the above, and not in a revolting Journey kind of way (not that Journey's completely revolting--more on that another time). Jangly guitars glisten soar as the narrator comforts someone (a lover? A stranger in a supermarket?) by asking--no, demanding--to be held by his love before his time is through. His voice carries that sort of trumpet-blaring assuredness that only narrators of war hymns, sea shanties and, well, this song can pull off. It's manipulative, sure, but also as difficult to wash out of your head as roofing tar. We should all be as brave as our songs.

i ain't no adobe hut

2006-07-07T09:04:00.000-07:00

Got to see a special side of the city yesterday. Through no fault of my own, I found myself awake and on the road at a little after 5 a.m. For me, at least, the only acceptable reason to be up and about at that hour is if you have a plane to catch, if you're driving to a ski resort or if you accidentally haven't even bothered to go to bed yet.

Yet there I was, on the way to work and watching the sun first curl its way back around the earth for another vacation in the land that is its own--Sunny Southern California. At that hour all of downtown resembles a restaurant just as its about to open. The last scraps of the night are slowly surrendering to a royal blue dawn, and there's no smog, no heat, nothing that even resembles that many ugly stereotypes of my home city.

It's not all pennywhistles and moonpies. Seeing the various beds the homeless population are forced to make downtown (in doorways, under overpasses, inside the carcinogenic blast furnace of the camera-ready Second Street Tunnel) and seeing them either fighting for the last fitful few minutes of nighttime sleep or already rolling up their posessions makes one a little less able to bitch about rolling into an air conditioned office.

So I won't. Work was work, and when I finished 11 hours later I was so tired my head was heavy and bloated. Stoned. I came home and all I wanted to do was look at nothing, read nothing, take in no further information and just shut it all down.

"Hyas and Stenorhynchus," Yo La Tengo

Taken from their "Sounds of the Sounds of Science" album, I'm not even sure if you can properly call this a 'song,' at least in the ol' verse-chorus-verse sense. This was part of Yo La Tengo's lovely score to an undersea documentary whose name escapes me, and though I haven't seen it (or them, I shamefully admit), it sounds like how being underwater feels. The bass, guitar and drums are all very weightless, most of the time barely tethered to eachother as gentle and curious sounds float in front of you. I'm not sure what Hyas or the other vowel-challenged creature listed in the song title look like, but I can imagine they're peaceful, beautiful and patient; and when they dream it sounds just like this.

satan's tilt-a-whirl

2006-07-05T08:45:00.000-07:00

Greeting and a happy post-Independence Day to you all.

Woke up this morning with a song in my head. Kind of strange when that happens, isn't it? I hadn't heard said song in, oh, maybe more than a year (maybe more than five years actually) and yet, there it was, dumped out of some dusty file cabinet in my brain and into consciousness just as I was waking up. I had to share.

"Disappointed" by Public Image Ltd.

Oh Johnny.

I think this song was my first exposure to Mr. Lydon back in 1989 during some episode of 120 Minutes (!), and I have to say, it was not a performance that befit a so-called punk rock icon. Oh sure, it's a great song built on giddily decade-appropriate synths, and Lydon's voice is in strong with talk of being "a really sad person." The good ol' Sex Pistol menace wasn't quite present, replaced with a car salesman goofiness, which went nicely with some good ol' Sex Pistol mugging for the camera, a camera which had the thankless job of absorbing every inch of Johnny's oversized Seussian green suit and polka dot tie. It didn't matter, I rushed out and bought the disappointing in its own right "9" from my local Wherehouse (packaged in the decadent paper longbox, thank you very much). I'd further explore PiL and the Sex Pistols later.

Anyway, I can't be entirely sure where this song came from this morning, but I did have the pleasure of my iPod spitting out the far superior "Rise" yesterday, which I'll also share later. There the punk-to-postpunk lineage seems much more obvious. Still a catchy song with it's Irish blessing chorus, but then there's that manic chant of "Anger is an energy!", a chant that finally rubs Johnny's throat raw as the song fades out. Take that with having watched this corpse-fellating documentary on the New York and London punk scenes, featuring copious shots of a sneering Johnny Rotten and an indifferent Joey Ramone and presto!--"Disappointed," somehow.

The movie certainly inspired the song in my head. There was Jim Jarmusch like a spectacular silverback rooster, giving his grainy two cents. So was a pasty and bloated Siouxie Sioux, reclined in a chair still in black S&M mesh. And then there was a wierdly Hawaiian shirt-clad Captain Sensible from the Damned, all uniformly agreeing what a special time it was, indeed, and how lucky they were to be there and to tell us poor buggers born too late how wonderful it was and will never be again.

It was fascinating, sure, but they sounded for all the world just like the Bob Dylan radio documentary I'd heard earlier that day saying the same basic thing of the '60s. You know, that self-important decade the poorly named 'punks' sought to destroy. In at least the 30 minutes I gave this IFC program (whose name in its own right is kind of gross) all but a few sounded just as nostalgic as the sad ol' hippie boomers before them.

Maybe we're all strapped that ride. Every generation had it better and was so much more interesting than the one following (wait until the sequel Punk: The Flannel Years or Punk: The Coachella Years). I hope not. Anger is an energy.

"Rise," by Public Image Ltd.

black fireworks

2006-06-27T09:23:00.000-07:00

Bad night's sleep last night.

Not entirely sure why, I was fairly well exhausted from the prior night's little spat with insomnia, but once our dog got to barking right as I was looking down at the flowery ravine of sleep (probably about midnight), I slipped the groove and was lost for a couple of hours. Many things spinning around my mind, things I need to do, things I haven't done, things other people need to do, things I couldn't do that night because of my burning eyes from all that sleep I wasn't getting the NIGHT BEFORE...so you see it was easy to fall into the little malfunctioning loop that makes our little inner computers belch the viral program "Don't sleep."

I never get out of bed. People say you should when you have insomnia, but to me that's surrendering. I get up I turn on the TV, I crack a book, that's fifteen minutes, at least, in the journey where I'm not trying to sleep. And to not try, well, then you're just awake. So, stubbornly, I'm not awake, but I'm also not sleeping.

"Rabbit in Your Headlights," by UNKLE

This song sounds like insomnia feels, except when I can't sleep Danny Aiello hardly ever shows up in my dreams to murmur soothing things about death, dying and angels. Perhaps he should.

I don't know if I had insomnia the night I found the video for this song on MTV2 or something, but I know it was late at night (and, for that matter, I'm pretty sure the main character in Jonathan Glazer's little opus has a wicked case.

(No, wait a minute, it's pretty vital you see that video. If you never have you're in for something great)

Really nice atmospheric stuff here from the pairing of DJ Shadow and Thom Yorke, held on the shoulders of one of the darkest piano leads committed to tape. The song's narrator, as the title might indicate, is a victim--or sure sounds like one backed by Shadow's hissing paranoia and gloom. He's tired but still fighting, he just can't help himself. It's like beating your head against the wall but...I can see that wall's about to give. I can tell the guy is strong, but with a little help from the video we can see how strong. We should all be so lucky.

bleary eyed and on the wing

2006-06-23T07:45:00.000-07:00

Good morning, fellow citizens.

The world looks different when you're forced to see it at six a.m. I don't want to incur the wrath of those of you out there who wake up at this unpleasant hour on a regular basis by saying how terribly unfair it was I had to wake up so early, but suffice to say it's not how I prefer to operate. And it's unfair.

Of course it was work's idea, but luckily I didn't have to go to my biege little desk surrounded by biege little walls and biege marled carpeting. Have you counted the number of shades of biege in the average office? It's fairly remarkable, like some experiment in color denial. It was promised a few months ago that our area would be spiffed up very soon and made into a less-hostile place to be, but, well, that seems to have been tabled for now. And really, short of ripping down five hundred flourescent light fixtures and punching about 36 holes in the wall to allow natural light onto our pink little faces, what could be done? A pig in a prom dress is, after all, still a pig.

But that's neither here nor there. The point is I rolled out of bed, rested my head on the kitchen table while my antique laptop booted up, and Got The Job Done. The world out there, oh it'll get its entertainment fix, you can bet that. You're welcome, world.

So ANYWAY, I've got a couple of hours now until I have to return to the hive and I've resolved to do something productive with it. (Hello, everyone.) But before going off to the gym or something completely ridiculous, I need to wake up. The bagel didn't do it. Taking out the trash didn't do it. And watching the dog consider releasing a bowel movement in the backyard, well, that wasn't much of a jolt to the senses either. So, yes, this is a song cue if I've ever heard one.

'Supernaut,' by Black Sabbath

Woe to you, oh cloudy thoughts and tired limbs. Flee, motivational difficulties and wee crunchy granola lingering in the corners of my eyes. Tremble under the weathered boot of BLACK (expletive) SABBATH.

I swear, I'm not some mullet-bearing metal-head (despite some of my prior posts). In the future, honest, I'll lay down some of the acoustic stuff that's made friends gently tease me about my age. The jazz stuff that's made other friends question my ears, or at times, my hygiene (the hippies, they love their jazz). But, yes, again it's time for the Big Rock Bang Bang.

Sabbath is stupid. We know that, it's part of their charm. A lot of great rock and roll is proudly, profoundly, perfectly stupid. The Ramones. AC/DC. The Beach Boys? Singing about surfing and sun? Not that bright, man. There's plenty of rock out there that reaches transcendence through wit and coherence (Destroyer, Radiohead, Wilco and the like). But, if you need to just wake up, just shake your head and $#@%! get on with it, you need something from the back row of the class, something that sets aside the dictionary and musical theory books for cricket bats and pipe bombs.

Sabbath does that, probably better than anyone else, especially this track from the weirdly less-heralded album "Vol 4." Released in the magical year of 1972, "Vol. 4" is for the most part 50-odd minutes of coke-fueled metal excess (witness the jaw-droppingly ridiculous messianic front man cover image), but for a few tracks--"Supernaut" in particular--Sabbath is every bit the leather-clad top fuel dragster your older brother always said them to be.

The gargantuan, driving riff that carries the song sounds like someone playing a Gibson SG with a Harley Davidson. The drums sound like street repair. And Ozzy, well, he's Ozzy. He's not a mumble-mouthed drip like we've seen on MTV. He's 45 feet of heavy metal godhead, screaming against all that unholy racket and rising directly above it.

I first heard this song prior to Primal Scream's set for their "XTRMTR" tour. They were still setting up and I was dealing with the odd sensation of really--no, REALLY--enjoying a song that could've only been from Black Sabbath. Black Sabbath? I mean, that voice. That continent-sized guitar. This was Sabbath, my brother's band of choice in the early '80s, and this was me, an indie free jazz shoegaze dance rock-loving twenty-something in L.A. in 2000. What the hell was going on? I had to find the song and buy it immediately.

Time to wake up.

like a cast shadow

2006-06-22T11:02:00.000-07:00

Have this nice little post about last night's belated viewing of "Walk the Line" percolating in my head, but since I woke up late I figured I'd pass along a little something to further the little rah-rah "Work=Bad" post from yesterday.

And, lo, there was color-blocked synthpop.

Let me add that I'm not a fan of the Faint (though, I have to admit, I liked Depeche Mode the first time around). And, as an aside, what the hell happened to these guys? Along with Captain Bright Eyes they were doing as much as Alexander Payne to put Omaha on the pop cultural map. Then, *poof* everyone seemingly decided at once that they'd rather feed their 80s revival needs from another source. Very odd--or maybe not. Maybe this is just what happens when you put out an album with an icky title like "Wet From Birth."

ANYWAY, this in my book is the peak of the Faint, all angry synths and flattened out Soft Cell vocals. I could've posted the song and been done with it (and still may), but I think it gains a bit of steak once you add in the undeniably awesome (flash?) animated video. Really impressive stuff with Reservoir Dog-suited worker bees jumping in front of Rhino-fronted subway trains. The video may be a little dated since it probably went 'viral' (in the parlance of our time) a few years ago, but all work still makes pretty little homes.

Also...if you enjoyed the Akron/Family magic that was laid down yesterday, take in this fun little live set they delivered in WNYC studios last November. Fun stuff, if a little disjointed by the enthusastic yet oddly somnabulent words of the show's host. Why do so many public radio DJs sound so similar? Discuss and show all work.

feeling the spirit

2006-06-21T10:11:00.000-07:00

Dayjobs suck.

Hardly a controversial stance, I realize, but I felt it needed to be said. I'm not just speaking metaphorically, no, they really and actually do in fact suck. They suck out your energy, your spirit, your desire to put down the remote/beer/cat and create something. Or at least mine does.

There's probably a few people out there within the sound of my little megaphone who have dayjobs that are actually what you would be doing anyway, regardless of pay. In fact, for the sake of the future of our society, I'd like to pretend most of you are so lucky. But based on the thumbnail sketch I've worked up among my friends, damn near no one enjoys their job. "Politely tolerates" is probably a better description. This is something we donate 8-10 hours of our lives doing, and a high percentage of us would so much rather be doing something else, but we've grown to appreciate the paycheck, the security of a 401K humming around in the background, and the comfort of knowing that if you trip over a curb and shatter your clavicle that the health care provided by your ever-loving employer will mend you back to health.

So you try and make do with your job, make your peace with it. You compromise. Maybe when you get home you just want to relax and forget the last few hours, like me. Watch a few images flicker on the blue box in your living room and giggle at the funny, funny things. Then you go to bed when you're tired and before you go to sleep you make a silent promise that tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow you'll stop kicking and maybe find the joy in your job, or, even better, you'll come home and work on Your Own Thing, something that's better than what you use to fill your refrigerator and that one day, hopefully, you'll be doing full time instead.

Maybe you make good on that promise, or maybe you have a bad day, a long day, and you just want to rest when you get home. Shut down. Watch the funny, funny things. And the circle goes round and round.

I think this explains the popularity of "American Idol."

So, it's times like these where I need a boost, particularly when it's been a few weeks since I've been able to sit in front of a keyboard and watch anything meaningful spill from my fingertips. Maybe it's the flourescent lights I sit under, maybe it's the basic brain atrophy instilled by said day job.

Today's boost is brought to you by Akron/Family.

"Raising the Sparks," by Akron/Family with M. Gira

Psychedelic rock as tent revival. For those of you put off by the overused rubric "psychedelic," don't be. In fact, come with me and above all come along with them and take in this celebration.

The curtain rises with this devilish guitar intro, sounding like some late 60s band trying to channel 'evil' in the days before Led Zeppelin copyrighted it. But then the bass and guitar swirl around eachother into this churning, trance-like melody and, harmonizing, Akron/Family release some nonsense about a man with sparks in his chest. Then, somewhere around the minute and a half mark, all hell breaks loose and the ritual begins. It's nothing complicated, just some melodic chanting built on repeating "yeah" over and over and faster and faster until just when you think it's only building a bridge to another part of the song it gets louder, more assertive and takes over. You can just imagine a gathering in the center of a forest with shirtless, bearded men circling a campfire as sparks fly upward. One is beating on a drum, another is beating on a wooden block while others are writing poetry, drawing shapes into the earth. Conjuring.

A minute later and the strangely spiritual nature of the proceedings takes hold, with the instruments dropping away until only gospel handclaps and exultations to "Raise the sparks!" remain, voices intermingling and joyeous noises and shouts that could be speaking in tongues all the way until the churning guitar lead comes back again and takes us home. Spent, but recharged.

Raise the sparks. They're still inside us, no matter what.

Buy Akron/Family's split with M.Gira here

serve the servants

2006-06-19T11:27:00.000-07:00

(Weird. No matter what I do the word 'servants' somehow looks misspelled.)

Longer post coming later today, but I had to pass along this post that appeared on the LA Times' Vegas blog the other day. I'm not an avid reader or anything as much of the goings on in Sin City would make my eyes cloud over, but here's word on a nice little stunt the Hard Rock Cafe pulled with their very own autographed Kurt Cobain guitar. Seems the Hard Rock didn't like that Kurt scribbled "Fuck the Troops" on his guitar and thus scrubbed out the offending naughty word, leaving a guitar only saying the non-sequitor "The Troops!" greeting paunchy gamblers as they come in from the desert heat.

So how do you like that? Not surprising in the least given what a corporation like that is capable of, but is that their right given that, after all, it's their guitar now. Or, are they violating some sort of statute protecting Cobain's grafitti as 'art'? Unfortunately, I probably side with the former but it's still just a sad, disgusting thing to do. Hey, if you were going to go to a Hard Rock ice cream parlor or whatever it is they've got their thumbs in right now, don't. Actually, if you were going to go to such a place you should probably just close your browser and go look for music news from Tower Records. We're just not fit for eachother.

horses and a fresh bottle

2006-06-14T18:02:00.000-07:00

So.

Last night was Calexico, joined by Black Heart Procession and Salvador Duran. This was my first night of live music since Coachella, which would be embarrassing if I could say I'd passed on a show that I really wanted to see since then. Yep, not to be a snob or a sloth but, well, I'm going to be a little bit of both. Hey, I'm a newly married man and I have a vivid recollection of the '80s (and parts of the '70s, for that matter). Seeing just any random show for the sake of seeing a show doesn't need to happen as often anymore.

HOWever, I do love me some Calexico. I'm not sure when that love really took hold--I think it may've been during the tour with Iron & Wine where they were trying out new material from the then-unreleased "Garden Ruin." It was that show where the Tucson band--at least to my mind--crossed over from an engaging southwestern-flavored curio to a multifaceted, genre-hopping powerhouse that can pull off anything from mariachi to straight-up pop to chaotic space rock--and all in a 45 minute set. (And, by the way, if you don't yet have "Garden Ruin," you really should.)

Opening the show was Black Heart Procession, who, to be fair, I certainly should like. They're moody, they're atmospheric, they sing about sad and probably morbid things and they do so bathed in blue and purple light. But for whatever reason I can't help pegging them as San Diego's Calexico but without the chops. Black Heart's a little more noir, sure, but all in all they just haven't grabbed me beyond a song or two. They're better live than on CD--particularly their more energetic, rock-geared side--but for the most part their midtempo stuff all started blending together. Working the bowed saw into your sound can do that. Although, I have to say, their look surprised me. For some reason a press photo of theirs from years past had me thinking they'd look like a Cuban lounge act (again, by way of San Diego), but in reality they were a lot more bearded and scruffed up than that. In fact, when the lead singer wasn't playing that saw or his guitar his long hair, gruff beard and sunglasses made the band briefly resemble a biker bar karaoke. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

"Why I Stay," by Black Heart Procession

Calexico, on the other hand, were solid. Their show hadn't changed much since that Iron & Wine date, though they did add a terrific guitar-driven detour midway through "Not Even Stevie Nicks" that was just gargantuan, and only assisted by a huge video screen projecting black and white footage of racing accidents. With horns, vibraphone, upright bass, and the occasional pedal steel, Calexico's blending of musical traditions doesn't feel like trying on a costume or searching for some exotic drama to back their songwriting; it's a genuine celebration.

Another nice surprise was the addition of Salvador Duran, who you may remember from his booming, oddly left-field contribution to "In the Reins." A beaming Joey Burns introduced him saying they had brought him along to "blow your mind," and after this 50-something Mexican man in a suit softly announced this was his first time in California he performed three songs that transformed the Henry Fonda Theater into a smoky ranchera bar in Monterrey. His fingers flickered across his guitar strings, his voice soared through the theater, and when his feet weren't stomping an amplified beat against a wooden box his mouth was somehow creating barnyard noises in time with the song. Joey Burns knew what he was talking about.

Calexico closed their set with one of Duran's original songs, which I'll surely misadentify as son if I try and place its roots, but suffice to say it involved an hypnotic call-and-response chorus between Duran and Burns, and you couldn't help but move along with it. For that night and at that moment, the border was a little closer.

And that's the beauty of Calexico, particularly during a time when parties are considering stringing a fence along the border not far from Calexico's home town. All this fear of people and languages and culture crossing from one side to the other without permission, but in their world, in the Henry Fonda theater that night, there were no borders, no need for fences. Just people, their music, and a good time. Powerful stuff.

Here's a sampling:

"Flathanded and on the Wing," by Calexico
(very noirish and sparse instrumental from the tour-only "Travelall"--yes it's 13 minutes and yes it's worth it)

"Crystal Frontier," by Calexico
(jangly and anthemic road music, from the tour-only "Aerocalexico"

Buy these from Calexico's site

four on the floor and four in the air

2006-06-10T12:09:00.000-07:00

Against better judgment and certainly against my physical capabilities, I headed out this morning at the unreasonable hour of 9 a.m. Granted, not such an unreasonable thing every other day of the week, but on a Saturday--on a Saturday with the faintest whiff of post-wine cottonmouth lingering--it was an irregular, if not unpleasant, wa to kick off your weekend. At least at first.

Not to ruin that kind of build-up, but it was really all right. My car was bathed without incident; I was allowed to sit and read (David Foster Wallace's first book of essays) undisturbed (though I think I made one portly fellow with yesterday's Sports page a bit uneasy as I sat down next to him to wait for my car); and my car was returned to me cleaner than I'd left it. There was some concern about the incredible amount of doghair still clinging to my trunk, but a trip to a 'traditional' drive-thru-and-wash-your-own-damn-car hut took care of that.

It was a cloudy morning. Every morning in June in Los Angeles is cloudy. I have to say it's something I've grown to love. It's sort of a gentle entry into the typically too-hot summer, like being taken out to dinner and fed a nice delicate dessert before being thrown against the wall and vigorously beaten about the head and shoulders.

But all in all, it was an uneventful trip. Except for one moment, a little bit of time I got to share with someone else out and about. There was this guy who accelerated by me in his black boxy sports car on the way home. I like to think his name is Cobra because that's what was written across his back window, along with an enormous cartoon rendering of a viper ready to strike that I assume was in accordance with the good people who made the black (5.0?) Mustang he was piloting. There wasn't an incident to be had here either, really, but as I briefly accelerated along with him through the intersection I caught a look at his face--as is my habit for people with odd cars or driving habits (and no, I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this).

The driver, Cobra, was probably in his late 30s or early 40s--hell, maybe he was my age, but the manner in which his life was spent had clearly diverged from mine. His face was a tanned and weathered topographical knot of valleys and grooves, highlighted by what appeared to be a still-healing gash along his left cheek. What had happened to Cobra? Was he in a recent knife-fight? Was he grazed by a thrown piston as he checked under his own or someone else's hood? Was this why he seemed in such a hurry?

Then he was gone, and we went about our Saturdays. G'bye Cobra. This one's for you...sorry about the length, I know you've got places to go.

"Cobra," by My Morning Jacket

Yes, this song's a little goofy, and yes, maybe it could've been wrapped up in 8 minutes instead of 24, but...you have to admire its spirit, its sense of the journey. It opens with a burgundy pleather jacket groove, with its rubbery disco bass and drums compressed nearly to a diamond's sharpness, the whole thing smells of muscle cars and cheap cologne. Jim James is calling out from the bottom of that well of his, warning that he knows somebody, and it seems like a pretty fun ride. Then the whole thing comes apart at around the 7:26 mark and becomes this noisy, wideopen blues-funk jam that comes close to rattling the whole song apart, but then a drum machine comes to the party and things get a little more hazy, a little more hypnotic. A Fender Rhodes stops by for a drink, then a lonely banjo ends the party with a chorus of angels. How'd we get here now?

The whole story could've only been resolved in 24 minutes. It's the Cobra, after all. You going to tell him no?

Buy MMJ's delicious 'Chocolate & Ice' EP.

whipping the horse's eyes

2006-06-07T15:37:00.000-07:00

With apologies to Calexico (who have an excellent instrumental of the same name on the equally excellent Feast of Wire), that's what this song sounds like.

Boris, "Pseudo-Bread"

I first heard Boris through a post on Coolfer pairing them with Sunn0))) as a study of the rise of dark metal on Southern Lord Records, which dovetailed nicely with a New York Times Magazine article from a week or so ago that was along the same lines.

(As an aside, why can't the Times Magazine do such things when I deign it appropriate to drop the five bucks? Last time I picked it up they did a long exposes on Google and its work in China. Certainly a more important story by many measures, but if given a choice I know which story I'dve turned to, and I think you're with me. Okay, back to the big rock sound.)

Boris aren't quite Sunn0))), on a lot of levels (that is, they use drums, vocals and some traditional song structure). The song posted on Coolfer was a lot brighter than the one I've posted here from these Japanese noisemakers, kind of like Sigur Ros and Mogwai in a knife fight. For this song, Mogwai has won, and for some reason they're torturing Billie Joe Armstrong with ropes and sticks. I'm not sure what Billie Joe is yelling about here, but since he hasn't sounded this serious--or this Japanese--in a few albums, I'm betting it's important. Meanwhile, the rest of the song stomps over your head and just keeps kicking like you tripped in front of a stage coach. And what's the stagecoach driver doing? See? It's a circle, it goes around.

Get some Boris in your life. No really.

i shall be released

2006-06-06T09:21:00.000-07:00

Y'ever just know you're about to embark on a crap day?

You're not even sure how it happened--you wake up perfectly fine, get out of bed without mashing your toe into your nightstand/dresser/bedframe, and manage to make some coffee without burning yourself and/or lighting your kitchen on fire. And yet...something's amiss. Something goes a little wrong, maybe it's just a little thing, and poof! you're hip deep in a morning grumpus. The entire day's suddenly thrown off its axis, and whatever lay ahead before that moment has suddenly started diverging toward something deeply other, something with Rube Goldbergian contraptions set in place to trip you up, slow you down and, yes, piss you off.

Turn to something good. In this case an old song twice removed, one that not only trumps the master but also reveals a new master's skills to be akin to that kid in the back of art class knuckle-deep in his right nostril:

"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," Them (Featuring Van Morrison)

You know the first few minutes of this song (even if you don't think you do). It's that languid, water-logged intro that Beck snaked for "Jack-Ass." You loved that little guitar or keyboard dither or whatever it was, didn't you? And not to take anything away from Beck, but, well, I'm going to take a little away from Beck. I mean, sample all you want, that's Mr. Hanson's gig, but what's really important is I can't believe that such a weird, warped sound came out of a band that was recording over 30 years ago. Effects pedals are magic. Never forget that.

And also never forget Van Morrison has been nicknamed 'the man' for a reason (and check out rbally's boot of a show of his from 1970 for further proof. No liquidy guitar textures that time around, just That Voice, all butterscotch and nails). Once that intro passes, all that's left is Van's youthful rasp, angry and resigned all at once, poking out above every part of the song like some crazy volcanic formation.

There. Today's not so bad, is it?

ps--I just noticed what today was. Awfully appropriate song to ease us into the End Times, don't you think? Bottom's up, fellow citizens.

talk to the band

2006-05-26T13:27:00.000-07:00

Pretty fantastic things going on over at Arthur Magazine that deserve your attention today. Jay from Arthur called up Sully from Godsmack, obstensibly to chat him up about his band's new record, but what happened instead was Sully was questioned on his band's seemingly pro-war, pro-military stance nowadays, culminating with their choice to allow the US Navy to use one of their jockrock hymns for recruiting purposes.

Now at first I thought running the transcript of this interview was a bit unfair. Of course Jay's matching wits with Sully about the Iraq war was going to be a lot like trying to swat a fly with a Buick. But now that I think about it and now that I've read the whole thing I've come down on the side of thinking this was a good thing, this is what needs to happen to people who--thoughtfully or no--lend their names to a product (in this case the military) that is causing harm. The frustrated activist in me loves this shit, and I love Jay for doing it. What do you think?

keep the water coming, raul

2006-05-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

So here were are, sitting right on the spring's ledge looking down at Memorial Day, which can only mean summer, sweat, cookouts and (in my case) copious amounts of poison air, all ready to come over and put their feet up on my furniture.

Today demands a summer song, and it shares a little something with that Swervedriver tune from the other day:

"Doornail (Hats off to Buster Keaton)," by Anders Parker

This comes off our man's 2004 solo release (no really, buy it), fresh from his days fronting the noise-country-rock band Varnaline. What this shares with Swervedriver is Anders Parker's guitar indeed once belonged to Adam Franklin. By some coincidence it was actually purchased in a Statesville, NC, pawn shop, which is where Swervedriver had their gear stolen in 1994. That's it that you're hearing right there, that big howling thing.

No, that's not true at all. But, it could be.

And this isn't to say this is a big fat shoegazing adventure (far from it), but it is a stomping, swampy seven minutes of backwoods rock, straight from the Crazy Horse School of Guitar Mashing, that one up the road that looks haunted. Sloppy static and overdriven amps merge with whirling organ and caveman drums, and once Anders' echoing voice reminds you "God won't change a thing" the windows in your car start rolling down, just like that (it's true, even when you're not in it. New technology from the good people at Nike).

And what it really shares with Swervedriver is a fact I failed to mention in that post: Both of these songs make me wish I could play guitar. And that, my friends, is what a good song is all about. Happy summer. Go outside.

salt water taffy and a side of onion rings

2006-05-23T23:27:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the day just gets away from you.

There isn't much you can do about it, things happen and before you can turn around, wind your watch or take care of any of the so-called 'normal' things you would ordinarily do. All of a sudden it's "whoops" and lookie there, a crap day (and most likely night) is all over your shirt. And what do you then? Give in? Give up?

Well, first you have a drink. Then you have another. Then maybe you try and regain focus by sharing a laugh with some friends and then, most definitely then, you cap it all off with a good song, a song that's hardwired for a good mood and a smile on your face.

"Mr. E's Beautiful Blues" (Untitled)," by the Eels

I don't have many of these songs in my collection and neither, for that matter does the man called E. Most of my tastes run to the more melancholy, most noise-heavy side of things, but today, and with this song, there's plenty of room for the sunny side. This sort of bouncy, head-bobbing little treat is one of those songs that put the spring in your step, particularly after forces beyond your control take a big heat-dump on you.

Enjoy. Goddamn right it's a beautiful day.

never lose that feeling, never learn

2006-05-22T22:08:00.000-07:00

So. How have you all been?

Sorry again for disappearing like that. You know, I've shown these tendencies before, it's true, and not just in the sense of meeting imaginary deadlines I set for myself to drop some music out there in the world (or, at least, drop some music by someone else into the world). Suffice to say work intervened, as is its custom, so to fight through the doldrums I'm going to fire up something in my wheelhouse, and it's not something necessarily spirited like that Tool track or something upbeat like that Mogwai track. No, we're internalizing this one.

"Duress," by Swervedriver

Ah, Swervedriver. Usually brought up in conversation as the Great Underappreciated Hope as they are known among the music cogniscenti (or people who use filthy phrases like 'music cogniscenti'), often paired with some claptrap about perfect they were for the road, or driving really fast, which isn't all that far fetched since most guitar rock tends to go well with "the road," be it Swervedriver, Black Sabbath or Huey Lewis (if that's how you roll). But the difference is Swervedriver (in addition to a kick-ass name) also sang about road topics like driving cars fast, or driving cars fast after taking drugs, or getting on a train and taking drugs and talking with a girl. You get the idea.

But regardless, these guys wrote some stellar tunes. Lumped in with the rest of Britain's shoegazers, their sound was too gruff to be paired with the likes of My Bloody Valentine or Ride, too swirling and psychedelic to get swept up in the grunge craze. Thus, they amazed me and about 0.00167% of the record buying public in their day, and put the rest dead asleep along the spines of their Jesus Jones records.

Back then I was in college, despite the opinions of just about everyone I knew at the time, I could not stop listening to Swervedriver's "Mezcal Head." (it's out of print, naturally--but a copy can probably be had cheap in the average used bin.) The best track by far was this one, eight minutes and three seconds of snarling, swirling menace that unspools slowly and deliberately, like a confession. The song builds in its own time, lazily allowing this glassy, five-note guitar line to pace around the room for almost three and and half minutes before the vocals kick in. Once they do Adam Franklin can barely be heard above the churning racket, mumbling some nonsense about ecstacy, murder and sleep as those guitars just gather more intensity from eachother, swarming him under. It's a little hypnotic, a little depressing, and a little amazing how inevitably you just have to give in, close your eyes and let this song take you under too.

That's where I've been.

coachella day two, the big wrap-up, or, an albatross lifts

2006-05-13T10:59:00.000-07:00

So in case this hasn't been made clear, by far the biggest downside of Coachella (other than the heat...and the crowds...and the 1-hour wait to simply LEAVE the polo fields--not the parking lot--every night), is you can't see everything. Yes, this is leading into a teary-eyed realization that hit me when Mogwai finished their set: I didn't get to have my Madonna Moment.

No, that's not it. Actually, for those of you who haven't heard the story that's been repeated ad nauseum, a lot of people didn't get to have a Madonna Moment--or I guess they did, since I supposed a six-song, vaguely exhausted and oddly underwhelming set would qualify as a moment. Just not a terribly big one, or one that could live up to the impossible hype surrounding it. Either way, they should've been mad they missed a helluva set from Mogwai, and the Editors, and, for that matter, Massive Attack.

I missed Massive Attack, most of them anyway. I have to say, as much as I love "Mezzanine" and was looking forward to catching a part of what they had going on, there couldn't have been a greater contrast than walking across the field from the last few minutes of Mogwai to the first few songs of Massive Attack. It was like going from a laserium show to a guy shaking a flashlight back and forth and burning some incense.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Their sound wasn't bad, there just wasn't much to it. You have to understand, I had just seen Stuart Braithwaite and company beat the ever-loving hell out of their guitars, surrounded by lights, noise and explosive vibrations, and Massive Attack was Daddy G with a telecaster, some percolating beats and a squiggling display of light behind him that looked like "KIIT's" overweight uncle. The vocals were whispered, hissed, vaguely sinister, and meanwhile, still well in earshot right in front of the stage, was the final hissing, howling notes of Mogwai. Pretty impressive contrast.

Not that their fans cared. Many of them were sprawled across the grass, well into the midway. Good-sized crowd, just not a particularly engaged one, which I suppose is what you get. I wish I'dve seen more, however. I was supposed catch Massive Attack back in '97 when they were to open for the Verve at the Bill Graham Civic, but they cancelled. Still, I was expecting something a little louder, a little gruffer, and a little beyond the low pulse that I heard.

However, I did reemerge from the press tent after filing my Mogwai report to hear the last few notes of Massive Attack, and these were pretty enormous. The stage was exploding in light and noise, and Daddy G was gesturing to a smiling, older woman with short hair who no doubt guested on vocals for their set's finale. Can anyone out there verify who this was? It would be a shame if this were Elizabeth Fraser and I missed that bit of candy.

Again, the downside of Coachella.

The evening came to an end fairly quickly after that. My associates wanted to catch Art Brut, so I caught only a few songs from Dungen (who were great--though their tent was maybe only 1/4 full) before heading back to man the laptop during a big, punishing dose of Tool--no wait, TOOL. Yes, that's better.

Tool was another polarizing presence--both at Coachella and out here on the Internets. They are not cool. Their mythology, lyrics, album art and, yes, fans can easily be seen as, well, a little silly at best and downright ludicrous at worst. A lot of the talk about Tool centers around their mook-like beer-swilling fans, which on that Stylus review I just linked to basically became the subject. Agreed. Tool fans--metal fans by in large, particularly those who haven't been vetted by a feature in Pitchfork or Arthur (such as Sunn0, Earth, Isis, and a host of European oddities)--can be scary, and can very much resemble the big toads who essentially drove many of us music geeks into more boutique tastes in the first place.

However, seperated from that (and I think Tool would appreciate being seperated from that as well)...They. Are. Impressive.

"The Pot," by Tool

Go ahead. Listen to this. I admit, if you're not predisposed to enjoying the guitar and proggy polyrhythms, this will never, ever grab you. However, if you listen to the above Metal bands or even some good ol' indie guitar rock, give it a try. I have no idea what they looked like onstage at Coachella, but hearing this song and the others that night explained how they did not, in fact, spur a mass exodus to the gates as many people forecast. They had the biggest crowd of the weekend. It's true.

If it's more comforting for you to think that the polo grounds were by then full of shirtless, tattooed drivers of 4x4s and musclebound faux-goth jocks, go ahead. But there wasn't a shift change. Tool got a great turnout, and everyone who did got a great show. There, I said it.

OK, that'll about do it. Odds are I'll be covering this next year as well, so until next year we'll not talk about heat, the desert and festivals (at least until I grit my teeth about friends in Nashville who get to see Radiohead). Thanks for playing along. Back to normal next week...

coachella, day 2, part iii: at war with the elephant

2006-05-11T12:15:00.000-07:00

Strange goings on by this time at the desert fest. The guest of honor was about to arrive. The ceremony--with apologies to all bloated drunken frontmen in the world--was about to begin. Madonna. Sweet mother of God, Madonna. Did you hear, she was going to be in the the dance tent. Oh. My. God. The dance tent. Close enough to touch, smell, taste if you can for a second set aside the 20-30,000 sweaty bodies all around you. Madonna. What will she do? What will she play? My god, I heard she arrived by helicopter, did you hear that too?

I didn't care. I was assigned to cover Mogwai, and I couldn't have been happier. My thoughts on Madonna are, perhaps, better left for another post, but I'm not a fan. Her set became this polarizing point of the whole weekend--"Are you going to see Madonna? Or Tool?" Carrie Brownstein asked during Sleater-Kinney's set (even though they weren't playing opposite eachother--though you can be sure those who were seeing one weren't seeing the other). It was a social barometer. My meter could be read at an decidedly low-pressure point with regards to Madge. And I wasn't alone.

It just seemed like it as I crossed the polo grounds. Sure, there were the light-stick adorned folks above who I saw walking by, but for the most part the grounds were deserted, like 1:30 pm deserted. At one point it seemed there were more empty water bottles on the ground that non-Madonna fans. I couldn't bear to think what that tent must've been like. And she hadn't even taken the stage yet.

Once I reached the Outdoor Theater I was a little worried for Mogwai. I'd seen them before so I knew they'd be okay, but would they draw the crowd they deserved? And, whatever crowd they drew, how would they react to being paired opposite Madonna? I mean, this is a band that once had t-shirts for their '99 T in the Park festival that simply read "Blur: Are Shite." They don't shy away from confrontation. Would they crank up their sound past their already face-melting levels and just try and bore a hole clear through the earth? Would they transform "Like a Virgin" into a death-metal anthem (like it isn't already)? My mind reeled.

Surprisingly, they didn't once address who was playing across the field or (it seemed) adjust their set in any way. Why would they, now that I think about it. It's not like you have any consciousness of anything else going on around you when Mogwai are playing. In fact, they didn't even announce their presence with authority (with apologies to Ebby Calvin), instead opting to open with the pensive and comparitively gentle "Hunted by a Freak."

But then someone kicked the doors open.

"Glasgow Mega-Snake," by Mogwai

I'd spent all day in the sun, two days in fact. That polo field, particularly on Sunday, was a hot, dry place. When Mogwai started with their business of building-toppling instrumental rock, I felt the first breeze I'd felt all day. I'm pretty sure they conjoured it with just the sheer physical force coming out of their amplifiers. In fact, I saw more than a few fans near me just raising their hands in front of them, arms outstretched, hoping to grab hold of the big sound slapping them about the head and shoulders. I'm pretty sure they did.

Three songs in they had a crowd. Four songs in and they unleashed the above song from "Mr. Beast," the most furious four minutes I've ever spent at a concert. I'm not sure if I've heard of a more appropriately named song as this sounded like Slayer scoring a monster movie, and the monster was 'the good guy.' Once the song ended (abruptly, like someone shutting a door in front of your face), more than a few people around me were just in disbelief, shaking their heads and screaming "Oh my God!" Mogwai was born for a stage like this where there are no walls to force their sound into itself, those three guitars can just climb out of their starters blocks and run as far as the wind can take them. Loud? Yes. But any louder than they would be ordinarily? Absolutely not. Madonna didn't matter, and neither did anything else. Cheers, Mogwai.

Conclusion coming soon, with a few scattered thoughts on Massive Attack and Tool...

coachella, day two, part ii: the big rock bang-bang

2006-05-09T21:38:00.000-07:00

(I'm going to finish this report if it kills me. Seriously.)

Okay, so after some wandering around in the sun to do some sceney-type reporting on the various domes and such littering Coachella's grounds, the Main Act of the Day, at least in my book, took the stage: Sleater-Kinney. By the way, a minor note on those domes. Impressive idea and presentation on the part of all the artists involved. Each one of them seemed to have a seasonal 'theme,' with a frozen pirate ship (complete with pirate-cicles) in one dome and a freaky springtime dome with a small armada of garden gnomes tittering at its center in another. But seriously, if the intent was for these things to offer shelter from the heat, they failed miserably. Sure, you're out of the sun but without much ventilation the effect was basically like taking a breather inside Shaquille O'Neal's hip pocket. Not good times.

Anyway, Sleater-Kinney. I remember talking to a friend about their last record "The Woods," and he was just starry-eyed about it. In fact, we both were. Much of what he was expressing was his sheer adoration of not only this great classic noise-rock record getting hatched, but most of all that it was being delivered by women, and how amazing that was. At the time I wasn't sure if I agreed--I mean, I wasn't about to admit that it could be considered weird or extraordinary that women could rock out this way. In my mind of course they could (Heart, the Runaways, and on and on).

But damn if his quote wasn't running through my mind Sunday.

"Jumpers," by Sleater-Kinney (Live, at the Crystal Ballroom--downloaded from rbally)

I'm standing there, the sun's bearing down on my big floppy hat and I'm just starting to feel that horrible trail of sweat wandering down my spine from such heat, but it was perfect. It was all perfect. Carrie Brownstein was all possessed leg-kicks and rock 'n roll adrenalyne careening around her side of the stage like a cross between Angus Young and Thurston Moore--in 7 Jeans. Corin Tucker threw her voice--the love it or leave it of S-K--so far across that polo grounds that I was pretty sure the antenna on my car was shaking against it. Janet Weiss...well, Janet Weiss is friggin' Bonham, right down to the Ludwig tubs. Just the three of them, big classic rock guitar mixed with feedback, noise and danger, and Jay's quote is just spinning through my heat-addled head--"And it's coming from women." Yes it is.

Which leads us to the next stop on my tour:

Couldn't get nearly as close to the stage for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (which surprised me--Karen O outdrawing Sleater-Kinney. Who knew?), but I was close enough. I

"Fancy," by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (live @ Coachella--again, via rbally--thanks Jennings!)

I was going to post "Y Control," as song I've got to confess I'd never heard prior to this show (and it was amazing), but since Jennings has been mighty cool enough to post their whole Coachella set we might as well go right to the fiddler for this one--as you should. Besides, "Fancy" is where I think I figured Karen O out. I'd never given them much notice with their first record (obviously), though I enjoyed "Maps" like everyone else with a pulse. But I've really enjoyed "Show Your Bones," especially the jagged "Phenomenon," which they also played. But no, this is where it's at and this is what demands to be posted This is where Karen O unleashed a...scream. This incredible, banshee wail about the two minutes into the song. Then she smiled, this big impish grin that said, "I'm having the goddamned time of my life. Aren't you?" Okay, I get it now.

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that theirs was the only set where I saw the crowd both pogoing and hippie noodle dancing as I got further from the stage. Warrents mentioning.

Part iii coming soon. I promise.

coachella, day two: the race is not always won by the swift

2006-05-08T12:24:00.000-07:00

If day one felt like a marathon of heat, sunscreen, bands and those who love all three, day two felt like a twisted joke, some strange cross between Hell and Groundhog Day, with a little bit of Lawrence of Arabia thrown in for kicks. I didn't have the Peter O'Toole scarf rig around my head, but I should've. Just as an added bonus, Sunday packed about five more degrees of heat, which was pretty much all I needed to decide that this whole Coachella thing may not've been as good an idea as I thought.

But, many of the handful of bands I really wanted to see were, in fact, playing on Sunday. Plus I was working, which sort of took the whole, "Screw this band thing I'm grabbing an umbrella drink and sitting by the pool with my iPod" notion and set it on fire in front of me.

My first trick was to absorb the above, somewhere about 100 yards from the Sahara Tent or, Madonna Central. Yes, Miss M was due to play her much ballyhooed set at 8 pm that night, and as such was entitled to rope off about 1/8 of the festival grounds so she could run through her soundcheck without running the unpleasant risk of seeing or smelling a commoner. The Mojave Tent, the AT&T Blue Room, they were all barricaded by some surprisingly powerful yellow ribbon--oh yeah, and about 15 security guards--until 12:15. Of course, doors opened at 8, and the first bands were going to kick off 15 minute before then, but of what concern are these things to a pop idol?

Crazy thing was, people were into it. People gathered behind that rope and when it was lifted ran like holy hell to the Sahara Tent--and I'm pretty sure it wasn't to get a good spot for the by-then delayed and somewhat anonymous Kristina Sky or OneRepublic. No, I'm pretty sure these people wanted them some Madge-lovin', and they were going to run across the surface of the sun to get it.

In the words of later performer Gnarls Barkley--"Crazy."

More to come, including Sleater-Kinney, Mogwai, and a brief dispatch from the fustercluck of humanity that was the MadonnaTent.

coachella, day one, part II: let the wookie win

2006-05-06T12:46:00.000-07:00

After the Walkmen's inspired mix of passion and disinterest and Wolfmother's straight-up trip to the back of an Econoline, I pretty much laid low and took care of business prior to My Morning Jacket. I'd seen them before, but that was back during the "At Dawn" days and back in the shittiest of clubs in the shittiest of towns, Tempe Arizona.

(and, as an aside, should any of you Tempeians be listening in right now, I apologize, I do, but you live in a shitty, soulless, dull as dishwater town, and one that's located like 45 feet from the sun. I understand that it used to have a lot going on back in the day between the Sun City Girls and the Gin Blossoms [before they got embarrassing], but enough. Your town and by extension Phoenix sold itself out and what used to be a pretty interesting college-fueled downtown is now covered by Urban Outfitters and the Gap, and anyone who defends such a place is really only revealing themselves as not knowing any better. So don't. And drink some water, for chrissakes

ANYWAY, point being, I didn't see what I feel was a representative performance by MMJ, plagued by bad sound and a bad atmosphere that wasn't helped by the chainlink fence running through the club, which bore the unfortunate name Bash on Ash. Needless to say I figured Coachella's outdoor, palmtree-dappled setting would really give these Bonnaroo vets a place to shine. And, yes, it did.

"Rocket Man," by My Morning Jacket

Now, they didn't play the above song, but I feel it's a fine example of what seeing them live is like, at least when reduced to its essence. It's that voice, that big, soaring voice of that Jim James fellow, that's what pretty much controls how high and how far that band can go. Of course there was the big, churning flat-out jams of "Dondante" and "One Big Holiday" with sunday drive guitar and "Crazy Train" drums, but inevitably what becomes ever more noticable about My Morning Jacket is That Voice.

It was most obvious on "Wordless Chorus," where James set his guitar aside and worked the room like some cross between Prince and Teddy Pendergrass. As the song ended James crouched and reached somewhere deep, just threwing it across the polo grounds on the wings of reverb, and we flew right along with it. It was a great trip, and a great way to greet the sunset.

Unfortnately my date with the Jacket kept me from Kanye West. I hear he was good, if abbreviated. I guess you can't go wrong when you crank up the jukebox and close your set with some Al Green and A-Ha (?), but Kanye won the day, as I hear. And I guess crowd transition from him to Sigur Ros was like a shift change at a college radio station.

I got to hear a little bit of Sigur Ros, and they sounded fine. They were one of the first acts I heard where I thought it would be terribly fun to be on some substance or another, lying back watching the sun set behind the mountains and picking up a slight desert breeze across your body. A perfectly lovely way to spend the day. But, instead, I was in the press tent, and to me it sounded like three songs stretched over an hour and a half. It probably was.

Next up was Eagles of Death Metal. I wasn't terribly familiar with their sound. I knew of Josh Homme's involvement, and I knew they did their thing with tongue jammed so far into their cheek that they start to no longer have a face anymore, but that's it. What I most noticed about them was they started a half hour late.
And, not to mention their Rock for Rock's Sake front man was the spitting image of Todd from "Boogie Nights". If I could find a picture out there right now I would show you, but you have to trust me. Also, I'm betting this was not a coincidence.

Anyway, once we agreed with emcee Danny Devito (?!) that yes, we were indeed ready to rock after waiting for 30 minutes, out they came, bringing crotch rock to a new generation. I mean, sure, there's a nice big of boogie to their Faces-era rock, and they're a lot of fun, but it's that trashy, T-top Camaro ride around the canyon kind of fun, and just as empty upstairs. But smart because they know they're being stupid but in a smart way. Like they know they're kidding around but seriously kidding, and you know they're serious about kidding. Or not. Or whatever.

All I could think while i was watching them was that with their western shirts, studded belts, facial hair and Josh Homme's tree-trunk arms is that they were probably the guys who beat up the guys from Franz Ferdinand in high school and made them learn guitar.

And for that, thank you. I heard some of Franz's set on my way back to the press tent. They sounded great, and I wished I could've covered their set instead.

Back at the press tent my colleagues wanted to go check out Daft Punk and the Rakes, so I was left minding the laptop to hear Depeche Mode's set. Now, I have to confess, I went through high school loving those guys, but I'd seen them several times before. I figured time hadn't made them change their show too much--Martin would look insane, interesting Anton Corbjin visuals would flash, and Dave Gahan would twirl like a little cranked-up pixie while Fletch pawed uselessly at his keyboard. Is that about right? So, I was content just to listen

Their crowd, I have to say, was huge, regardless. But they really could've OWNED that night, and they didn't. And this is the part I don't get because Martin had said in an interview that he knew they'd have to change their set for Coachella, to play more of the hits. Why then did it take them 45 minutes to play anything recorded before "Songs of Faith and Devotion," a record so beloved it fetches a clean .79 cents on amazon right now? I mean, guys, this is Los Angeles (mostly), your adopted hometown. Remember 101? You could've opened the show with "Behind the Wheel" or "Stripped" and the crowd would've blown the dates off the palmtrees, but instead you made 'em wait. Not smart.

But, they did at least throw the fans a bone with the first encore.

"Photographic," by Depeche Mode

All the way back from 1981, this little nugget, and I have to say from my VIP tent perch it sounded solid. Energetic, maybe a little angry. Probably half that crowd thought they were covering a Faint tune. Between that and Martin Gore's slow 'n low version of "Shake the Disease," the thirtysomethings in Violator shirts must've been smiling. But it took them an hour to do so. Why?

And with that my night (and this post) came to an end. I could get into how we started to leave at 1230 but thanks to the cattledrive leaving the venue combined with the insane traffic control that routed us the OPPOSITE way from Palm Desert and our hotel we didn't get 'home' until 3:05 am. I won't though. Never park in lot 4. That's my advice to you, my desert blossoms.

Sunday's report coming soon. Sleep well.

coachella, day one: don't fight, it's better if you don't fight

2006-05-04T22:27:00.000-07:00

Living in Los Angeles it's easy to forget the heat, particularly in April. Sure, it's been warm here, but there's springtime heat then there's desert heat, the kind of environmental terrorismthat crawls inside your clothes, gets in your lungs and crawls all over you. That's the kind of heat promised and delivered in the Coachella Valley, home to Indio, date shakes, golf, and, for some reason, the biggest music festival in the country.

Armed with about a quart of sunscreen and the biggest, silliest safari hat I could find i set out notebook in hand to cover the heap-big event, teamed with two other writers to help one of our editors blog the whole show, backwards and forwards.

The four of us divvied up the day and tried to accomodate each of our preferences (James Blunt was used punitively). The first few acts went by quickly. The Section Quartet did their thing, giving Radiohead and Zeppelin the string treatment, which I have to say was a pretty nice way to kick things off. It was certainly preferable to Head Automatica, a decent enough band that at times bore a fairly uncomfortable resemblence to Faith No More for my tastes. Yes, Faith No More. You just thought the '90s were over, but they're sneaking up on us too. Just wait until The Arcade Fire's next record comes out sporting some wicked slap-bass.

Anyway, the next act was Rob Dickinson, formerly of Catherine Wheel. Though Dickinson came to the Mojave Tent's stage with just an acoustic guitar at his side (and, it bears emphasis, no bandmates), he manipulated and looped that acoustic until he conjured some of that old 'Black Metallic' magic. You didn't think an old shoegazer was going to play a festival effectless, did you?

Next up was the Walkmen, and by now the heat was starting to take me out for a drink and ask about my family. I've liked a lot of what I've heard from these guys, so I was excited to check them out, but I've got to say...they let me down a little. The music was good, of course, even better than I would've expected with these little keyboard touches that reminded me of the Band (especially teamed with the nasally vocals), but there was something amiss. And, I have to say, I think that something was Hamilton Leithauser.

"The Rat," by The Walkmen

Hamilton. I get it. You're from New York. You're a sharp-dressed guy with an indie pedigree. This isn't your first time on a big ol' stage so you're not taking any shit from this little desert fest or anything tied with it. But behind you your band's laying down some pretty urgent stuff, especially on "The Rat," which unfortunately was the one time your pretty good-sized crowd started nodding their heads. Up until then it seemed like they were waiting for some cue to really get into you guys. Sure, it's hot, but do you think you can take the time to maybe spit out your gum, and, oh, maybe take your hands out of your pockets? Give us a little something. I know you can still bark those vocals out of you and do some damage to that larynx, but can you put your body into it? I'm old fashioned. Make me think this means something to you. By the way--snazzy suit.

After that my editor wanted me to meet him in the Mojave Tent to check out Wolfmother. I'd heard a few songs so I thought I had them sussed out as a solid '70s tribute band, even if they're one that somehow wound up on an episode of "The OC," rubbing skinny skunky shoulders with the likes of Keane and Death Cab. But I wasn't prepared for what was boiling over inside that tent:

It was like the last three decades never happened. Metal, hard rock, whatever you want to call it, was back, but not dressed up in this shrugging, "Yeah, well, you know, 'classic rock'" veneer of irony that I'd cut my teeth on in the early '90s. This was unapologetic rawk, for want of a better term.

It was Deep Purple. It was Blue Cheer. It was AC/DC and Sabbath all huddled together in Spicoli's van outside a Led Zeppelin concert, laughing and pushing against the walls, rocking it back and forth as the music gets louder and louder. Even Spicoli, high as he is, wants 'em to stop because it's starting to get scary, but it's no use. What are you gonna do now?

"Pyramid," by Wolfmother

If you're packed shoulder to shoulder in a sweaty tent while a thin Australian with Thin Lizzy's afro is twirling his microphone around him (!), bouncing around like he never knew it became ridiculous to do such things, you just scream as loud as you can, maybe throw some devil horns in the air. Leave your sense of irony at home, it's too hot today.

More day one lunacy tomorrow.

can i get a witness?

2006-05-02T13:10:00.000-07:00

Greetings, my people.
Seems I dropped off (again) the last few days, but this time around I've got a grand excuse--I was off in the desert covering the heap-big festival of dust and desert called Coachella. My first time covering such a big event, and though it was a big pile of stress, exhaustion and adrenalyne, I had a good time.

Satisfying stuff, in a lot of ways, but of course I have more that I have yet to get out of my system. Tune into this space over the next day or so for my impressions, thoughts, ramblings, and whathaveyou, featuring photos, weirdness and some audio as well. No, not from the show--I think Mussolini's brown-shirts were more forgiving than the Coachella gate gestapo (I can't bring a pen inside? Really? You know I'm here trying to give your little show some love, right?).

Bah. 'Til later.

the serpent swallows its tail in reverse

2006-04-25T22:34:00.000-07:00

Interesting post over at Coolfer today where guestblogger Alec Hanley Bemis (sort of) laments the loss of Chuck Eddy over at the village voice. Much of his argument concerns the precarious position Eddy and by extension all alt-weeklys (especially the Voice) are in right now as a result of the music writing they feature. Brief, concise (occasionally) clever, and directed mostly at the writer and people like him/her. To explain, the story referenced this rather telling lead from a recent Voice piece about E-40:

since Tupac's shooting, the Pacific sensibility -- ranging from the barbecued grooves of G-funk to Mobb music's electro picaresques -- has hemorrhaged cred since the mid '90s, while surrendering Billboard real estate to young blood in the Bible Belt. New scenes have been flashing in the pan at strobe pace, with a spate of geo-genres springing up along the nation's rim: crunk, screw, trap, and snap. Add hyphy to the list—maybe.

OK, I think I sussed out maybe half of that, and that probably puts me ahead of Bemis. What this means is both of us are probably not the biggest of hip-hop fans (guilty!) and that this story isn't written for anyone but the biggest of fans of the genre, in which case...what is it hoping to accomplish sitting out there for general consumption?.

I'm not entirely sure of the answer. Alt-weeklies should be a source for material with a more challenging learning curve than, say, the daily paper. But why antagonize your audience with so much jargon and slang for slang's sake? Is this the blogosphere's and (by extension) Pitchfork's influence, to allow writers more freedom to express themselves at their most obscure but at the expense of the reader at large?

Maybe. I just hope I haven't been too guilty of the same.

This evening's musical selection, apropos of nothing:

"It's a Lie," by Acetone

Somehow this song lept into my head as i was walking the dog this evening, probably because I was on Avenue 42 which is just a stone's throw from the source of Acetone's swan song, "York Blvd." Acetone's not with us any longer, and neither is its lead-singer and bassist, Richie Lee, but they left behind a handful of albums that were categorized as somewhere between slowcore, shoegaze and alt-country. On this song, everyone's right. Much of the song is this big chugging, sorta roots-rocking hayride, but there's that big, round Rickenbacker bass tone that came with the shoegazer crowd followed by a few breaks between verses that are slow, coupled with a few wandering, lazy guitar solos coated in a layer of sparkling fuzz. A nice cocktail.

This record was one of my favorites back in 2001 when I first picked it up, then for the last couple years I completely forgot about it before tonight's walk. Sorry about that, Richie. Thanks, York Blvd.

dance around in your bones

2006-04-24T21:26:00.000-07:00

Took a ride along with The Black Rider at the Ahmanson this past Saturday, L.A.'s very own staging of the 1993 musical combining the talents of Tom Waits, William S. Burroughs and Robert Wilson. For those unfamiliar with the CD of the same name, it's not one of my favorites, and I figured this production might crack the music open for me just a tad, just as 2002's "Woyzcek" had with "Blood Money."

Now before I get all theatre geek on you (it's bad enough I've referenced two plays in the same paragraph), I've got to say I'm not a frequent theater-goer. I dislike, no, dispise...no wait, have utterly no use for, musicals. Yes, Hedwig's a decent exception and, sure, I suppose Jose Feliciano's "Roxanne" in "Moulin Rouge" makes the room seem a bit chillier, but really, I just don't get 'em. Tom Waits was the draw here, and teaming him with Burroughs and the stubbornly avant-garde Wilson was going to keep this night pretty far from Doris Day or Rogers and Hammerstein.

Indeed, the Black Rider's got all the elements that's right in Waits' wheelhouse--the devil, a circus train and, yes, madness--and Burroughs takes a 150-odd year myth and manages to twist it into a junkie fable. But it's Wilson's staging that's the biggest challenge here. With bizarre, asymettrical sets and shafts of red and white light sometimes the only decoration, not to mention a knack for casting the same actor in multiple roles with little explanation, the play remained just a bit beyond the grasp of my wife and I, just as the music still does, to an extent. But one song still stands out like a black wind on a summer morning.

"November," by Tom Waits

That dark wind rises in the form of a whinneying saw before you've even settled in your chair, and a lonely banjo does a staggering tango at the funeral for a busted barroom piano. But Tom Waits' lyrics are what's serving you lunch and spitting on your fork. They're the most deliciously hopeless short story that's ever been told. Listening to them, you're in a bad place. You're staring down a firing squad, tied to an old dead tree with ravens circling overhead. Now you're sunk. Hope? Hope's following that wind out of town. And who's to blame? November, that sunovabitch. It's all over now. Summer's never coming. Go ahead, go on along with the Black Rider. See where it gets you.

mr. peabody and sherman's march on holland

2006-04-20T16:06:00.000-07:00

Okay, I know that with this post I'm veering dangerously close to becoming a some crazy parallel TenClub, but it's a pretty remarkable 'p.s.' to post about that Avocado dropping in a couple weeks. Regardless of how that album shakes out, this video's from PinkPop 92 is such an amazing snapshot of what all the fuss was about back in the day. Hey, if they can celebrate their legacy I can too.

I think some of the images from this show were captured by Charles Peterson in "Screaming Life", but having only seen those shots I had no idea the class five weather event these kids unleashed on that festival. If you weren't paying attention back then, you can see the whole band is this infectiously honest atom bomb of energy. There's no cringing embarrasment about the of-the-time celebration of stage-diving and mosh pits, just this explosion spreading out from the stage to the crowd. I remember reading this review of a Pearl Jam show from like Creem or Spin or someplace ridiculous (see, there were no blogs back then, boys and girls) saying that clubs couldn't contain this band, that their sound literally rose and crashed against the walls and the audience like waves. You can see that here.

This stuff was like crack to a rock addled 19-year-old...and no matter where you stand on these guys now it's just a remarkable snapshot of what the early 90s looked and sounded like. And it was good.

Anyway, watch, turn it up, and revel at the 10-legged hurricane. We were a different nation then.*

*Also, you can't help noticing all the incredible push of crowd going on toward the front, especially once young Eddie throws himself on them (hey, it was 1992). It's the kind of thing that just went with the territory back then, and up and killed a couple of kids in present day. You can't help thinking of Roskilde when you watch this. Sorry to bring the room down, kids, but it had to be said...

42% less geekery tomorrow. Maybe.

come back to wednesday

2006-04-19T22:58:00.000-07:00

Having a strange sort of evening tonight. Ever since I got back from my little hiatus it seems everything's coming out a bit starchy and forced, like that loaf of bread you pick up from Trader Joe's but leave in the fridge for a few days. I feel like my mind's having a hard time being quiet, and it's probably not helping matters that I'm trying to take this on after a long day of pushing the pixels around at work.

But, the only way out is through, so I've heard.

It's only April and, at least inside a poorly insulated house, it's a hot summer night, and a little bit of a dreary one at that. This song might relax things a bit, or at least give my mind the courage to go toward the bad mood side or just a thoughtful good mood before heading off for the night.

"Sometime Later" by Alpha

Came across this song courtesy of the beautiful and clumsy "My Life Without Me," a peppy little number about a young woman who discovers she has a terminal disease but decides not to tell anyone. Not her husband, not her kids, not her mother. But, surprisingly, it's not a three-hankie, toss yourself out the window special. She calmly makes a to-do list and sets about accomplishing whatever she can in whatever little time she has. Mark Ruffalo shows up and does what seems to be his usual Mark Ruffalo thing, except it's ratcheted up a bit with the whole strange, awkward tone the whole movie carries. Scenes go for about a beat, maybe a beat and a half too long, conversations bump into eachother like sleepy drunks, and you're a little putoff by the way the whole movie comes at you. Really, I'm not doing it justice, but it's a movie worth seeing.

ANYWAY, I don't know much about Alpha, but this track played over the closing credits. Much of their record struck me as nondescript electronilounge, the kind of stuff I used to say you could open a gallery to. But this track's a little different. Sure, it still walks on that cool, late '90s plain where DJs turned bandleaders along the lines of Air or Zero 7 dialed up what sounds like a vintage soul singer to crank up the atmospheric for their downtempo, but here it seems like Alpha's reached their own land. A torch song playing in a Film Noir-themed bar in the 22nd Century.

Whomever's singing is exhausted, but she's hit a point where she's comfortably between being happy and sad, like she's deliriously happy now but what's coming soon...well, that's got her a little uncertain. She's living in this grainy, black and white world full of slow motion and fuzzy contrasts, and she's right in the middle of this incredible night, the kind of night with someone that can't ever end. Maybe things will be just as good tomorrow, but it may not, so all you know you have is that night, and as the faux strings and synths swell and stretch around her you can just feel that clock ticking. Even the song's running out, so she starts getting desperate. Hold the sun down, she pleads, hold the sun down. It's never going to get better than this, let's just stay right here. But, really, it's going to be okay...let it come.

he not busy living is busy

2006-04-17T21:43:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's me, back again after another long and successful absense. It's tough when you try and strike up a conversation with an old friend after neglecting them for awhile, isn't it? You tense up, you start wondering if you'll be able to say the right thing, you act...a little different. In short, you stop acting like the natural friend you were in the first place, which, it stands to reason, makes you no longer the same friend. Let's not do that, all right?

Instead let's talk about something that's been sort of sticking in my head the last couple of days, an issue of sorts, and that issue is my still unresolved feelings about a band that was my best friend for an awful lot of years, the terminally unhip and unfortunately Creed-spawning Pearl Jam.

Yes, there's a vocal lot of you out there, most definitely, who are on my side. I just saw on stereogum yesterday a post that suddenly deviated into a Jam-fan flamewar between those who are with Mssrs. Vedder, McCready, Cameron, Gossard and Ament and those who are not--and man, those who are certainly can shout down those who aren't, can't we? It's like we're a bit overly sensitive or something.

Sure, ours (?) is a pretty easily defended position: Pearl Jam is one of the best rock bands of the past twenty years. Period. Fair point, that. And those against inevitably drege up feelings from the tired Nirvana v. PJ holy war from waybackwhen, where the cool kids liked punk rock, integrity and Cobain, and the dorky jocks who loved Three Dog Night and Pepsi sided with Ed Ved & Co. Or something like that.

But, and the part of me who has far too much shelf space devoted to Pearl Jam's bootlegs, albums and singles quivers as I say this, where are they now? We know where Nirvana is, they're in the pantheon--tragically elevated to such status, yes, but elected because they never had to awkwardly age, evolve, and yes (*shudder*) suck.

Pearl Jam does not suck. Everyone calm down. Their place is secure as well.

But they've got this new record coming out, and a few of the songs sampled in that handy promotional video that made the rounds had a nice level of aggression to them that showed promise but...sometime in the last couple albums or so...something happened.

It hit me at the Irvine Mea--Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre, excuse me--a couple years ago, watching the band burn through the standards--Jeremy, Even Flow, Alive and the like--along with a couple newer nuggets like Love Boat Captain and Thumbing My Way that really got the crowd into an expected mid-level lather. Trouble was...I didn't, or I wasn't, whatever. I think Love Boat Captain is...a little trite, to be honest. That legacy bit of the show, the one with the above hits off "Ten"? I thought it seemed...a little tired. A lot tired. Like I was watching a tribute band going through the motions-tired. And I became very sad.

But, the show picked up, thankfully. The surprise "Blood" raised the energy level nicely. "Boom" Gasper on keys kept things going through the end of the show, particularly with Baba O'Riley and this 10 minute "Crazy Mary." But still...there it was, like a little cloud on an X-Ray of my brain, that dead spot in the show. I'd never felt that at a Pearl Jam show before. It was like a half an hour where I was, you know, satisfied, but it wasn't the same, you know?

So here we are, on the cusp of Avocado Day when the new album gets released on J Records (?????), and the boys were even kind enough to wrap up a live CD from 1991 in with the deal as part of the pre-release candy for fans like me, encouraging us to place our order Now NOW NOW! while supplies last.

I haven't yet. Sure, it's a cool promotion and a way to give back to the fans, but isn't this already a tacit acknowledgement of 'the glory years' on the part of the band? To package the new stuff with the old stuff, or essentially what the Rolling Stones have done and their fans have grudgingly accepted with albums like Voodoo Lounge and Steel Wheels? Is that who we are now? And, even worse, I didn't get to see the band's performance on SNL last weekend, but a few people I know were a little let down, saying they looked a little old, a little tired, and a little like their best days were behind him. Even as I listen again to those songs from the new record that pack all that renewed energy, some of it sounds...familiar. Doesn't World Wide Suicide sport the same hook as Satan's Bed? It does, right?

Maybe it's not too late. Maybe that album's going to knock my socks off and be like Michael Jordan out of retirement, Jack Nicklaus in the 88 Masters, or Al Pacino in "Angels in America," an old master somehow miracling its way into just one more inspired, brilliant performance to make all us "remember when" nostalgists smile. Let's listen to this song from the 2003 tour with Sleater-Kinney and hear all that passion spilling out of this veteran band...and try not to think about how much of it is coming from Carrie Brownstein.

Pearl Jam (with Sleater-Kinney), "Fortunate Son"

Let's still be friends.

pay the fiddler

2006-04-03T11:48:00.000-07:00

Hiya,
Sorry about my silence the last couple of days, things have been, shall we say, getting in the way of my sitting here at my monitor and spilling out whatever I've been listening to of late. Planning a big event--biggest of events so the magazines would have you to believe--isn't easy, and as I've been saying a lot it doesn't matter if it's 35 people or 3500. I don't know how event planners do it, people like Jennifer Lopez in that funny funny movie with Matthew McConehghaehy or whomever it was basking in her ever-lovin' glow.

(smell that? that's sarcasm.)

Anyway, little time today and even littler space in my brain that's not consumed by "who's sitting here? what song is playing when? will people dance to 'if I should fall from grace from god' by the pogues?" But, at the end of it all, it's going to be a great day, and that's rain or shine, tablecloths or no, flowers or pinecones.

"Flesh Balloons of Tibet," by Sun City Girls

This...is a little like I feel right now. Not bad, not at all, just a little off., partly fueled by this headcold of sorts that makes my skull feel like a helium balloon. This isn't much of a 'song,' at least as you or i know of it (it's not even 2 minutes long), but it is a stream-of-consciousness rant that's one part creepy, three parts crazy, and at least a part and a half funny. I have a weakness for the sound of the unhinged, and Sun City Girls (none of whose members are, by the way, female) are most definitely that. Like some guy wandering the streets sporting a dangerous combination of a handful of acid and a handle full of whiskey (thank you, A!), you're not quite sure what to make of these guys or their song. Or maybe it's not that complicated. Just the sound of someone sitting calmly on a stool and emptying their vaguely twisted brain and seeing what people think. Just like this.

every man is evil, every man a liar

2006-03-28T08:59:00.000-08:00

Just worked up a piece on Two Gallants, a perfectly good outfit from San Francisco doing the guitar-and-drum retro-rock thing. Fair enough, there's plenty of room for that. I kind of felt a little bad for the kid, whatever the thought process behind his forming a band with his friend in the early '00s, it must not be fun to constantly get paired up against the White Stripes, the Black Keys, Mr Airplane Man and so on just because they couldn't be bothered to hire a bass player either. I mean, he didn't say this but I take his point--no one compares every quartet to the Beatles just because they've got a similar lineup.

OK, maybe they do, but not just because of the numbers.

Anyway, there's a track on Two Gallants' new album that formed the meat of my piece, this song called "Long Summer Day." It's not a bad song, your basic slice of southern country-blues choogle, but then right there in the middle of the song--a couple of times, actually--there's that word. Nigger. It's awful just to look at, so unaccustomed are we to even seeing it in print now that it's become 'the N word' in our (mass media) lexicon. You can practically see the waves of foul feelings coming of the letters.

So naturally whatever the song was doing or trying to say instantly becomes, "Holy shit, they just said that word. Wow, I've got to think about this...oh man, they just said it again!" And these, naturally, are two white kids from SF, something that now is probably getting brought to this band's attention even more than the White Stripes thing was in 2002 when the band's first record was released.

The song's written from the point of view of a slave who's about to launch a rebellion of his own, and the band's singer was pretty forthright in saying the song was his way of acknowledging this time in history that spawned music very dear to him. AND, he countered with wondering if he was only allowed to write songs from his point of view, as a 21st century white kid in SF. Fair points, those.

But, regardless, I think the song belies an unfortunate mix of experimentation mixed with hubris. Yes, you can write from a point of view other than your own. That's why you're called a songwriter and not a diarist. And yes, avoiding the word as vigorously as we as a society have only seems to empower it in a sense. But it is an undeniably ugly word, and now that you've used it that's all we're talking about. Song? What song? Whether it's shame or self-censorship, society has placed that word firmly out of bounds. We--the city on a hill, the beacon of freedom, America--stole people from a country and enslaved them. And it was 'ok' then because of what they looked like. Reprehensible. I don't think banning this word is sweeping that time under the rug, I think it's an acknowledgement of its ugliness. Our penance for that sin is we've lost our rights to that word. So be it.

So. Good effort, Two Gallants. I'm not going to post the song right now because I really don't want them to become 'that band who said this word in their song' any more than they might already. They tried something and I don't think it worked--that doesn't mean they should be saddled with that misstep from this day foreward. If you ask and think it's warrented, I'll put it up in my next post and let you decide.

In the meantime, here's another song, seemingly from the same era Two Gallants sought to acknowledge but in what I think is a more wise manner.

"Black Soul Choir," by Sixteen Horsepower

Even removed from any acknowledgement of race, this is one passionate song. I've never seen Sixteen Horsepower, and in fact never heard much beyond this, which appeared on Jim White's "Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus" soundtrack. I imagine the lead singer practically convulsing in religious fervor in the middle of a tent revival, and I'm pretty much right there with him thanks to that insistent, almost sinister banjo and a driving martial snare. Preach it, brother. Sing it.

mine's not a high horse

2006-03-27T10:01:00.000-08:00

Terrific post over at OneLouder this morning, and one that sorta taps into my earlier frustration with the redundancy of 'independant voices' here in blogland. A good rule of thumb, I'm thinking, is if it makes you feel good, write about it, and if that's something that you think has been criminally overlooked up to this point, that much better.

Okay, now that I've curtailed some redundancy of my own, here's one for ya'll:

"Wires," by Voyager One

This may not have come up in the past, but I've got a huge, achilles-shaped weakness for the almighty drone. The shoegazer sound, for want of a better term. Maybe that came across in the Nels Cline or maybe Earlimart posts, I don't know, but the late '80s and early '90s were pretty much a golden age of effects pedals, and I loved 'em all. Ride, My Bloody Valentine, Swervedriver (to a point), more more more. Beat me over the head with that flanger pedal until my head pops and releases sparklers like one of those spores from the time-lapse National Geographic shows.

Anyway.

Yes, Voyager One. Great little band out of Seattle on the aptly named Loveless records. This is off their 2002 release "Monster Zero," and hear-tell they've since released a new record, but it's one that I think found them drifting more toward a rawer, garage boogie kind of sound (at least on the two songs I heard). But here's where I think they really tapped into not just the original guitar-meets-drugs formula, they dropped it into an electric blender until the fuse shorted out. Enormous squalls of noise threaten to overtake the vocals, but between the verses an extra flourish cuts through the haze, like a blast of heat lightning. It's like one of those beloved shoegaze bands from days of yore but this time they're dressed in silvery spacesuits, fighting to escape an arcade in a flash flood. Hold on, just five more minutes and you'll make high score.

buy the ticket, take the ride

2006-03-24T10:34:00.000-08:00

My God it's an incredible day out.

I hereby apologize in advance to anyone who's still snowbound, down feather-bound, or otherwise subject to cold weather on this the tail end of march and the front end of spring but MAN. This is why it's so terribly expensive to live here.

Granted, if I craned my neck around my house to look at the low-lying hills in the distance, they're probably shrouded in some sort of smog-mess, and beneath that there's probably a knot of traffic (at 10:30!) that shouldn't be there, and inside each car is some industry tool barking at his/her assistant/child/phone/fellow commuter, but RIGHT NOW, things are grand.

I want to post a 'things are grand' song, and I've got a few choices at my disposal. But let's set aside the big rock once more and indulge my freaky jazz experimental side once more.

"Bubblehouse (Live)," By Medeski Martin and Wood
(with Marc Ribot)

Yeah, you've probably heard of MMW, and you've probably got a picture in your head of some twirling hippie, noodling around the room and getting in your space with his hair and his sweat and his fried enthusiasm. Well STOP. Just let it go. Yeah, those people are there at the shows and doing their thing, but so what? Look at decades past, they knew what they were talking about when it came to music.

Now. I'm never going to post Phish, String Cheese, Umphrey's McGee or whathaveyou here, and I'm not even going to get into why. But what I will get into is why this jazz trio (and yes they're a jazz trio) deserves your ear. This song isn't one of my favorites (something from the magnificently unkind "Dropper" earns that distinction--more on that later), but it is definitely a joyful, energetic, and very unhinged 10 minutes where four remarkable musicians deliver a instrumental rollercoaster.

The song has this gradually accelerating and decelerating tempo that reminds me of some cheesy hockey arena anthem, the kind that gets played before a power play to remind the crowd there's beer a few steps away. But Ribot's guitar has other ideas. He's driving the train here. It starts in this grimey blues-funk place, speeds through some latin neighborhood where that kid with the big eyes is having a birthday party, then slows down to cruise through the ugliest part of town with its windows rolled down. Go ahead and take a look around, we'll wait. Then just as the sun's on your shoulders things speed up and get all noisy and punk-funk and back again. By the time the ride's over, you're exhausted, spent and covered in circus peanuts. How'd that happen? Never mind, let's go again.

Spring's coming, my pets. Hang in there.

what about the sun king?

2006-03-23T11:46:00.000-08:00

Crap.

I had this whole masterplan for this post, and a lot of it centered around posting a song from Earlimart, a really solid, airtight around the edges band from LA that I got to see last night along with the aforementioned Band of Horses at King King. But, unfortunately, I've run into some technical difficulties (insert profanity here). Soooo, maybe you'll get that song later, maybe not, but for now it's going to have to wait.

ANYWAY, good show. I thought Band of Horses lived up to the line-around-the-corner hype quite nicely, definitely benefitting from a subtraction of some the fuss and fuzzle of the studio. Had a really raggedly energetic presence, with a nice indie Neil Young thing going on, right down to the lead singer's plaid shirt and trucker hat (Trucker hat? What year is this?). There were two songs, one from the record, one a cover, where I thought they really leapfrogged their influences and became something else, something that stood up and started shaking hands around the room. I'm looking forward to hearing more out of them and where they go next, but they've got a few steps yet before I stop thinking of them as more than My Morning Jacket's kid brother.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Earlimart, meanwhile, needs something, and I'm not sure what. They got a lot of well-earned love for their last album "Treble and Tremble," a lot of which because of its dedication to and inspiration from lost friend Elliott Smith. And it's a good record, fantastic in spots even, as was everything they played last night. But...they're really at their best when they get good and noisy, when their delicate and occasionally Grandaddy-esque swooshes and grandeur gets mucked up with some sloppy guitar and some just blood and bullets energy.

Like this: "Unintentional Tape Manipulations," by Earlimart
(Thank you, Savefile!)

This song is one of those instances where the band takes the noise and chaos and beauty of big guitar rock and embraces it....loosely. Everything in these five minutes sounds just filthy. Broken down, and not a little angry. Much of the time Earlimart's sound can be very constricted, controlled...cold even. Here things are breathing, shifting, running into eachother and maybe even happening at random (at least as random as you can get in the studio). Live they flirt with this messy side much more, but when ever they get right to the edge of some real craziness they always pull back before breaking through the edge. A lot of people may like that little tease, that floral-lined trip to the brink, but I want to know what they would find there! Where would they go? Would all my hair fall out? Would I go blind? And I want them to want to know as well.

They're unsigned right now and shopping around some songs, but here's hoping they get a little nudge soon, a little invitation to a place that might allow for a few more unintentional consequences.

i can't stand the rain | against my window

2006-03-20T20:15:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if it was Tina Turner who first voiced such a sentiment or not (sometime before she declared she didn't need another hero), but either way she was onto something. Not that I'm not a fan of rain, it's a fine mood enhancing drug, it's just at times its percussive qualities can be, oh, shall we say, a little less than the zen, waves-of-water-in-a-teacup mythology its cracked up to be.

Right now a surprisingly stubborn storm is dropping this arrhythmic drum solo on the window-mounted air conditioner. It's not relaxing, it's not thought-provoking, it's not even rain anymore. It's this crazy free-jazz freakbeat that defies time signature and any expectation of a pattern. And it just. Won't. Stop.

Anyway.

Funny times in blogland today. Take a look around this little site to see WHAT'S HOT out there and you'll notice several sites hawking the songs of Band of Horses, a nice outfit from Seattle. And, you know, as well they should, dammit, BUT, it's a strange coincidence that this groundswell of internet support launches on the same day as Pitchfork drops the much ballyhooed Best New Music banner all over their review.

This is fine. Theirs is a good record, sure, and maybe the dog's still wagging the tail and folks are just looking to get some page views on this the Christmas Day of the Band of Horses hypestorm. A little bit of service journalism blogging..."You just heard about this band and NOW you can hear them. Presto! I am Blogdor, your MP3-bearing Hero. Come, let us plunder."

But, it could also be something uglier. A certain interweb groupthink where a legion of like-minded indieheads doth mobilize to further Pitchfork's agenda with their newly hip golden children. A certain bandwagoning now that a band's been deemed worthy. Hmmm. I'd rather not think about that one.

So, to end the cycle (while STILL offering the heartiest congrats to Band of Horses--nice record, honestly. A lot like My Morning Jacket, but I love those guys too, so you're fine in my book), let's change gears and transition toward a place of discovery, a place where you read a few words and ask, "Hey, who's this guy and what's all this noise he's talking about?" You remember, a vast interconnected electronic web where you can hear from various individual points of view. Who knows, maybe you'll read about this on Pitchfork in the next few days.

"Black Market," by Weather Report

Yep. Nothing sets young hearts aflutter like early jazz fusion. But hang on, stay with me. Granted, I've got a thing for this song because it will always remind me of renting a house in Northern California owned by an extremely mellow elderly gentleman named Tony who had a white pompadour and a fondness for walking around shirtless. True story. My roommates and I imagined this song was one of his favorites, especially on evenings where he dabbed a little extra English Leather on his neck and pulled his 'good' ascot out of the drawer. Nights where someone he only called his 'ladyfriend' came by for Thai food and that authentic Egyptian hookah in the corner was soon after loaded with something stronger than apricot tobacco.

Follow Jaco's river-bound bass lane. Immerse yourself in Wayne Shorter's winding saxophone as he conjures the ghost of 38 virgins sacrificed in a volcano. Look around you...there's palm trees, a steaming river and fireworks exploding into pillows off in the distance. But most of all, don't look at my landlord's navel. It's got this creepy periscoping thing going that looks like a ligament of some sort, and that kills a buzz.

Buy at Insound

sunny days and grayer nights

2006-03-16T22:47:00.000-08:00

On the way into work today I saw him again, the same guy who waits in the Median on this stretch of Glendale Boulevard that cuts through Echo Park. He's got long stringy hair, a perpetually sad face and a yellow dog with a pink eraser nose that's always sleeping at his feet. Today he was holding a sign asking for 25 cents, taking whatever anyone from the line of cars seeking passage between two freeways handed him. I wasn't one of those who gave anything to him. I never have been.

He's been there for at least a year now, maybe two. You lose track quickly, especially among the home-deprived population of the city.

I see a handful of them on the way to downtown...they rarely stay around for long. I guess that sort of goes with the title, the inherent rootlessness of it all where you stay someplace as long as it feels good, or, more accurately, feels less bad. Then, you're gone. I like to think some of the local homeless people I'd see every morning--the sharp tongued old woman whose crinkled cheeks and sunburn looked straight out of South Boston, the cheerful and smiling black woman who called me 'baby' as I walked into the office--had, like the shizophrenic violinist who got his name in the paper found a way off the streets, into some ramshackle apartment that promised, or at least allowed a view of something better.

I don't let myself think about where else they can be. Working and living downtown gets a lot harder otherwise.

At any rate, not to get too 'We Are the World' (I didn't really intend for this post to go this direction when I sat down), but this song's for all of the above and everyone else. It has no real message (it's an instrumental)--in fact it's a pretty grim, cacophanous mess with, to my ears, a wee sparkle of hope buried in the dark background toward the end, but it might not really be there. It seems to fit.

"View of a Burning City," by the Appleseed Cast

More fun tomorrow.

there's something in the popcorn

2006-03-15T22:21:00.000-08:00

opprobrium: N. Disgrace arising from exceedingly shameful conduct; ignominy.

For whatever reason have that word in my head, like this crazy itch on the back of my brain that I can't stop scratching. It's a pretty good one, you have to admit, rounded off from beginning to end with all those p's and that b in the middle there. It's suitable for framing. You wouldn't think with a word that looks as sanded down as be quite so unpleasant.

I just re-encountered the word in this fantastic auto review in the L.A. Times written by the reliably fantastic Dan Neil, who for those of you unfamiliar is easily the best writer at that paper, and probably the best automotive writer walking this Earth if his recent Pulitzer carries any weight. And I don't even particularly care about cars, least of all the new Mercedes SUV.

Anyway, I'm not here to contribute to the swelling SUV-burning dogpile (not yet anyway), but between having that little piece of sound--'opprobrium'--jammed in my head all evening and the justifiably acclaimed 'Head On' on the tube, we're smack in the middle of not just an auditory fixation, it's a full-blown word of the day phenomenon (WOTDP).

Thus: 'You Belong to Me,' by The 88

WOTDPs require special measures, and this song qualifies. I have to say upfront I'm not a big fan of the 88. Their songs aren't quite adventurous enough for my tastes, though they've picked up a nice following with some really contagious power pop (though I think they could do better than the mod-fetishizing cover art--c'mon fellas, let's freshen up a bit). But these guys nailed it here with this big slice of self-loathing, which has to be one of the better emotions to pull off within the context of a three minute ballad.

Should you be in the midst of your own personal opprobrium, this is the song for you, preferably paired with stern grip on a half-empty tumbler full of iced brown liquor (your third) in an an empty bar. This song comies on the jukebox and its your only friend, you heartbreaking wretch, you terrible excuse for a human being. And hey, if you just watched your lover go to jail for murdering someone you were committing adultery with, and your family wants you dead, it sounds that much better.

waiting for the worms

2006-03-14T12:30:00.000-08:00

Nothing much new to report today, just taking up some space at work. But I wanted to throw something noisy up and at you. Look out!

"Hydrofoil," Nels Cline & Devon Sarno

There's nothing resembling Wilco or the Geraldine Fibbers here. This is Nels at his exploratory best, but it's a slow, steady kind of search, like you're feeling your way around your grandfather's cellar, the one that hasn't been cleaned or sorted through for years. And this isn't your father's father, the one that smiled a lot and used to tell you straight-faced stories of nonsense (and you'd buy them because you were a kid), this is your MOTHER'S father, the one you didn't know very well, the one who lived up in Maine and died when you were little.

What did he used to do with himself? After he retired we saw less and less of him, your grandmother says, her voice smelling like stale bourbon and fresh bitters. Sometimes they'd hear music, sometimes some mechanical noises, but mostly everyone let him keep to himself. "Go see if there's anything you want," she told you. "I'm not going to touch it."

Weird dusty machines hopelessly try to resist cobwebs in the corner, and there's so much stuff piled up that it seems to be leaning over your head. There's just this narrow path of beaten wood floor that goes from one workbench to the other, leaving only a little space for a washing machine that hasn't worked since the '60s. It's scary, but there's plenty of light, isn't there? Thank God that bulb over your head hasn't burned out, there's not nearly as many shadowy places for things and ideas to hide.

Say, some of this stuff is pretty cool. Is that a tesla coil wired to a Ham radio? How many car batteries are hooked up to that thing? And what's that smell all of a sudden? Now that you think about it, there's nothing to be afraid of...in fact, all this looks....kind of interesting, actually. I bet a few of these things would fire up if you tried hard enough. Let me just check the wires, maybe get a new transistor or a new set of couplings. In fact, down here things aren't so bad. A little bit of dusting, maybe some WD-40, and everything'd be good as new. Why don't you just have a seat. Is that door closed?

i ain't no adobe hut

2006-03-13T22:27:00.000-08:00

the following took place 88 hours ago. Or so.

It doesn't matter how close you walk to a building, if there's no awning overhead, you're going to get wet.

The sky's been lazily trying to decide whether to really get serious about this whole rain thing or just say the hell with it and make the whole city go shithouse with a good old fashioned blizzard. So what if it's March, who's in charge here, right?

Either way, it's been wet, all kinds of wet. And cold, as my block and a half walk from my blister of a rental car as reminded me. I grew up back east, but there's a definite difference, I think, between the kind of cold you feel when you're a kid and the kind you feel when you're grown and your limbs are further away from your central heating core. I'm flat cold and getting colder the longer I walk, and it's definitely the California in me talking.

The snowflakes are coming in bunches, like the torn stuffing from the world's tallest stuffed animal, and appears Mama Earth's committed to this whole winter thing for the rest of the day. Maybe all this mess will finally start sticking and I'll be trapped on this side of the river for good. It's time I grab some lunch.

I step into the cafe and to my disappointment it's the same damn one I ate in two years ago, the last time I was in this city. Much less bustling on a Thursday afternoon, but it's the same little breakfast hole. I remember it being a good place, but when you're visiting a new city--particularly one you're considering as a place to live--there's no point in retracing your steps. The waitress tells me to pick between two tables near the window and I do.

One of them is closer to the door and has a new alt-weekly already there and waiting for me, along with a half-empty (yep) glass of water on the other side, surely left by a busboy since there's not so much as a crumb of anything else on the table. I look to the counter and sitting under a pile of fliers is a copy of the city's competing alt-weekly, so I grab it and figure I can compare them both while the weather clears up. One's about WalMart and the other's about the new psychedelia--guess which I read first?

I'm seated barely a couple of minutes before another waitress corrects me: "I'm sorry, you're going to have to move. Someone's sitting there." I nod and gather my papers and my jacket, which I'd already looped over the back of the chair (c'mon, just because it's that cold outside do we have to amp the heaters up to the tropics?).

At that point my former table's original owner approaches. She's a big woman, there's no way around that, and she couldn't look more Of Her City if she had a Suicide Girls tattoo on one arm and "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" emblazoned on the other. Her hair's wadded up severely into a blue bandanna and otherwise she's dressed all in black, except for her top which is a deep navy blue sailor smock. She looks about 5'10" from where I'm sitting, though a third of that's probably boots.

Really, I'm not judging. Stay with me.

She sits down quickly next to me and barely looks my way from behind black-rimmed glasses as she says, "Can I have my Mercury back, please?" Her tone is filed down and poison-tipped in a way that leaves little doubt she's done this before.

I look down and sure enough, her paper's right there in my hands. "Oh yeah," I smile and half-chuckle. I'm caught, so let's just own it and have a laugh. "I kind of ganked it from you there."

"Yeah. You did," she says. She doesn't look at me as she speaks, biting the ends of each of her words like half a pretzel.

I'd been in a car alone, a Chevy Aveo, mind you, for the last three hours, with nothing but a buzzing iPod for company. I'm in no condition to really engage in a conversation, much less an etiquette misunderstanding. So I didn't even look her way; I was too busy wondering, "Did that just happen? I thought everyone in this town was supposed to be all nice and mellow. What the fuck?"

Her Gardenburger arrives a short time later, which she consumes quickly and disappears, her free alt-weekly jammed safely in her purse. I leaf through my competing, non-Mercury, paper and chew my sandwich. It was warm. A few minutes later the snow gives up and I grab a Mercury from the shop next door. There were plenty to go around.

*

So this one's for you, my new-found friend. Sure, I'll tell everyone here over the next couple days how we're not moving and that a switch to the rainy country isn't in the cards, at least not yet. But you and me, we know the truth. We know it's your harsh urban justice that sent me back to whence I came. Kudos. I've learned my lesson, and I hope ya'll out there have too. Free papers are never free.

"Nietzche", by the Dandy Warhols

Come on, let's be pals.

the rolling stones gather

2006-03-07T23:21:00.000-08:00

Today I offer a salute to the kind of song that I ordinarily twist and bend against, especially now when nostalgia might as well be considered a controlled substance. The kind of song that usually makes me feel carsick because it inevitably recalls my being strapped into the backseat of my parents' Plymouth Volare as we sped through some stretch of midwestern nothing on the way to Boston, the movies, dinner, what have you. Like any kid, the car stereo wasn't mine, and it was always tuned into what can only be called, for want of a better term, 'mom rock.' Not to be sexist--it's dad rock too certainly--but I've seen that term applied to maturing, semi-acoustic bands as Wilco these days, and though I vigorously disagree with that sentiment, I'm not going to invite that kind of confusion either. This is music that wasn't yours, and if you had control of the dial, even at 8, you'dve fixed it.

I came to hate all varieties of mom rock from my little beige backseat, and in the '70s there was an abundance of it. You couldn't buy gas, but you could cry on your steering wheel. Air Supply. Ambrosia. Orleans. God, they all sound like pastel-colored party drinks. But, somewhere mixed in among them was this song, a big gust of soft rock sap from Peter Paul and Mary.

Now, what differentiates this from the bearded simple-syrup merchants listed above? I mean, these are the people who brought Bob Dylan to flyover country, buffing out all the keening imperfections into one perfect, harmonous blend ready for top 40 stations, the kind of stations who weren't into the funny thoughts and funny smells coming out of the big city folk scene.

But, this song captures a mood, there's no denying it. It's filled with all this sun-drenched sadness, loss and regret, and most of all Love, big bubble-lettered love in every sighing note. It's the kind of swollen-hearted ballad that only really goes with trips on airplanes from back when you could still wave at your family from the top of the stairs before your boarded.

My mom used to sing it from the front seat when it came over the radio. We weren't and she wasn't leaving on a jet plane, mind you, she just liked the song so much she couldn't help herself. I'm sure she liked how beautiful it was, and especially liked how it was my older, tougher brother's favorite song when he was small and my dad had to, in fact, leave on a jet plane. And it IS beautiful--certainly not at that moment when I was hearing it--but it just gets brighter and glossier the further I get from that station wagon. You're a kid, the sun's in your eyes because you picked the wrong side of the backseat, and your mom--your mom!--is singing this crazy swooning ballad about jetplanes. Who says 'jetplane' anyway? Why are the vocals all warbley like that? And if someone is that broken up and really 'hates to go,' why don't they just stay? Twenty years later you figure that song and that moment out. That's true mom rock, and I hope everyone has a song like this from way back when, no matter how much it might've made your head hurt.

Peter Paul & Mary, "Leaving on a Jet Plane".

I will, in fact, be leaving on a jetplane tonight, but don't worry, I'll be back. 'Til then, champions.

i've been riding with the ghost

2006-03-06T20:38:00.000-08:00

hello my pets.

Where have I been, what's been going on? You never blog, you never call.

It's not important, really. I've been sleeping, okay? Nodding off into my lap between one corner of the Internet and this corner of "The Daily Show."

Forgive the inflammatory rhetoric, although, really, we haven't approached the matches yet. But I can feel it coming in the post. These things happen when exposed to a copy of 'Adbusters,' spine bent and left, incongruously, on a counter inside the gray concrete walls of a gray concrete office building that's a gray concrete feather in the cap of a gray concrete media conglomerate. This is where I work.

Things move slowly there. People move slowly, change moves slowly (if it bothers to get out of its chair at all). It's not often terribly offensive, it's better than a lot of places (sadly) but never ideal, and everyone wants Ideal. Nothing changes except the time, and that moves quickly. Like it or not. Hey look, a magazine. You see?

Anyway, yeah, Adbusters. No one within the sound of my encoded voice, I'd hope, is completely unaware of their wares and their philosophy. Good people, surely. I was, at least in an intimate capacity, unaware up to this point. Asleep. Certainly I'd seen their past issues, their provocative political-type covers, their self-explanatory name. "Yes. I get it. You hate ads, and you are working to stop them. "Bust" them, as it were. It's right there in bold sans serif and what a wonderful job you're doing, Ray Parker Jr."

The cynicism comes easily, you see. I am a target market.

I knew what they were against, sure, the proliferation of corporate monoliths and shareholder greed, the orange, barbed-tail silhouettes walking straight off the dvd box. Noble work, that. And it's all done with an angle toward activism and creativity that I can appreciate, well thought out poems and essays. It's a wonder I hadn't picked them up before with my lefty distaste for the current regime, the current social climate, the current proliferation of news masquerading as entertainment and distraction masquerading as news, and so on.

But I didn't.

I always walked by it, whether in Borders or, hopefully, in my Local Independent Bookseller, when I could be in the neighborhood. I never learned much beyond how expensive the magazine was to take home, and how expensive those previously described ideals must have been. Instead I stepped to the left and leafed through Paste, Stop Smiling, Magnet, any number of music magazines that feed my addiction, the collector in me searching for what's new out there to hear, what's eager to become my New Favourite (and yes, I think the 'u' is appropriate). I heard many things, i check this space (this=the internet) to learn more. I listen. I evaluate. I stretch my perceptions. I consume.

I won't stop. Forty-five minutes with a randomly placed magazine isn't about to fix that. I'm too far gone.

But,

I'm at a crossroads. It's not necessarily Adbusters-based, but it relates, I think. Before me sits a choice, all chimney orange and halloween red (as a friend might say). One is my home, my comforts, my gray concrete. My simple life of least resistance. My ability to enjoy the company of my loved ones as well as certain things I've grown accustomed to, which is all tied in with turning part of me off for seven to 9 hours a day in the hopes I can turn it back on again when i'm done. Just don't touch me, don't stain my clothes and we'll be all right. Three minutes or six years, I'll give you my time you give me my kibble, are we clear? And when we're done I'll quietly take my seat and see you tomorrow, deal? Deal.

On the other path, mystery. Potential to reach my own, yeah, potential, but a complete uncomfortable unknown. Fear, terror, discomfort and, yeah, rain. Lots of that. So, two choices, sun on one side, rain on the other. Safety over here, danger, peril and perhaps failure over there. Here I have the Johnny Olsen new car. There I have cheaper beer, tighter budgets and a pressing of the reset button, a return to start from all that's among the palm trees. On my/our own, away from the nest in figurative and, yeah, literal senses. Which way do I go, boss? Which way do I go. Safety? Stability? Insecurity? Rain? Shine?

Two songs, no wait, three songs. One's tied in with the subject, Mr Jason Molina doing his thing in a way that makes me happy. I've been told I grew up with him, or at least met him on the soccer fields of northeast Ohio when we were small. Who knows if it's true...you can't trust a writer. But you can trust a big guitar and a big voice raining down from the rafters like Neil Young in a dirigible.

One half I'm gonna use, to pay this band. The other half i'm saving...'cause I'm going to owe 'em.

"John Henry Split My Heart," by Songs: Ohia

Two more songs. One a velvet-gloved battle cry, maybe, one I don't think I'll ever mean. The other the sound of a slow search. I'm not saying the first, but I'm feeling the second. Sad, hopeful, beautiful, scared, uncertain. You have to give to get, so they say, and I've been devoting too much time to one side of the column. One way or the other, this state or the next, that has to change. I'll eat leather, I'll wear steak, but the gray concrete will never be safe, no matter how sturdy it seems.

"California," by Rogue Wave.
"S," by Labradford.

* Sorry about the mp4s here and there, it's all being done in the heat of the moment, in the interest of getting things out there while my head's hot and my fingers want to move. You don't like it, let me know, I'll fix it and go with the more universally loved and adored (and less corporately sponsored, I might add, mp3).

These just had to get out there. Welcome back, kids. It's been too long. One a day, that's all i want.

no, c'mon, how does it feel?

2005-11-29T08:42:00.000-08:00

What is Greil Marcus talking about?

I guess when you reach a certain point of esteem in the rock crit business you can chase your own tail about whatever documentary you want, regardless of whether you have a point.

I enjoyed "No Direction Home." If anyone can tell me if ol' Greil did or not, I'd love to hear it.

More new/old music tomorrow.

Thank you easter bunny!

2005-11-07T21:42:00.000-08:00

This whole post had a whole different start.

I got off on this giddy rant about those wacky White Stripes going all punk rock and writing a coca cola jingle, but who cares at this point? Moby premiered his latest "Hotel" with various dates in, yes, W Hotels. U2 translated 'catorce' into 'iPod' in the name of securing some free ad time in a competitive marketplace, so Jack's rockin' for Coke's white stripe. It was probably recorded on analog equipment while he was on lunch break. Executives are happy, Jack's happy, aren't you happy?

Save yourself. There will be no commercials sold on the backs of this buried little gem from five years back, so you'll have to fill in a refreshment of your choice (mine would be hot coffee, or maybe a good aged bourbon). But the guitar is still going to shake the walls if you let it, and Doug McCombs' bass is going to steadily logroll throughout until the whole mix percolates in such a nice cathartic way I wish it was raining. Thank you, Eleventh Dream Day. I hope its raining where you are. Have a coke and a smile.

'Stalled Parade' by Eleventh Dream Day

(buy from Amazon)

well i never

2005-09-20T09:22:00.000-07:00

It's raining today here in Southern California, an occurrence that isn't just rare, it's practically unheard of in September. If some of the scary, polar bear-damning stories I've been reading about global warming are true, is this not a manifestation of it?

This spring the LA area took on slightly more rain than Seattle. This didn't particularly bother me; I've always liked Seattle and, for that matter, rain. However, if this is to hold true does this mean that all the local television affiliates will have to come up with something else to do with their time than be on "StormWatch" or grind on their "Accu-Weather StormTracker"? Really, is it worth sending a talking head out on a damp street corner if said weather phenomena is much less a rare happening is it worth analyzing from every angle?

But enough on that. I reckon it's time to go. A thunderclap just split open the sky over my house with the sort of force usually reserved for places like Missouri, Florida, and Ohio. If global warming brings weather to the southland, will our voting habits go into the drink as well?