1. “Before and Again” – Akron/Family (from Akron/Family)
2. “Minority” – Bill Evans (from Everybody Digs Bill Evans)
3. “Frow Show Theme” = MVB
4. “New Year” – The Breeders (from Last Splash)
5. “We Deflate” – Surrender to the Air (from Surrender to the Air)
6. “Punkte” – Ursula Bogner (from Recordings, 1969-1988 anthology)
7. “Maybe In Another Year” – Jennie Pearl (from Wayfaring Strangers: Ladies from the Canyon compilation)
8. “Sanctus” – Harry Partch (from Made to Order: Bethany Ryker’s 2008 WFMU Marathon Premium compilation)
9. “B3” – Avarus (from III)
10. “Mother and the Bird Machine” – Dixie Blood Moustache (from Sounds to Sooth a Nervous Robot compilation)
11. “Echolalia” – David Gans (from The Ones That Look Weirdest Taste the Best)
12. “Summer Daydream” – Ralph White (from Navasota River Devil Squirrel)
13. “Maine” – Homegas (from Homegas)
14. “I Believe” – Lambchop (from OH (ohio))
15. “Every Year Carries A Number” – Mighty Voices of Wonder (from Local Custom: Downriver Revival anthology)
16. “Ob Ish” – Why? (from Miss Ohio’s Nameless)
17. “To The Love Within” – Megapuss (from Surfing)
18. “Warm Earth, Which I’ve Been Told” – Six Organs of Admittance (from RTX)
19. “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” – Trad, Gras, och Stenar (from Trad, Gras, och Stenar)
20. “Cricket Music 1964” – Walter DeMaria (from Drums and Nature)
21. 1971 in Review: The news, the events, the personalities as they happened as you lived them
22. “Concession Speech” – Richard Nixon (from Great Speeches of the 20th Century, v. 4 compilation)
23. “Solo” – Henry Grimes (from Solo)
24. “Chaos and the Emergent Mind of the Pond” – David Dunn (from Angels and Insects)
25. “Stridulations (miniatures for temple block ensemble” – Billy Martin (from Black Elk Speaks)
26. “New Year’s Eve” – Stephan Mathieu and Ekkehard Ehlers (from Heroin)
27. “Sasong” (un-backwards) – Avey Tare and Kria Brekkan (from Pullhair Rubeye)
28. “Voaltz (U-Bus Remix by Altz Kabamix)” – The Boredoms (from Voaltz/Rereler 12-inch)
29. “Don’t Say A Word” – Yo La Tengo feat. Smokey Hormel (23 December 2008, Maxwell’s)
30. “Accidentally Like A Martyr” – Jerry Garcia (from All Good Things box set)
Yo La Tengo at Maxwell’s
28 December 2008
*(Hanukkah, night 8)*
Metal Mountains and Todd Barry opened.
Mix disc by Zooey Deschanel.
Not A Second Time (The Beatles) (sung as “Not A Ninth Time”)
Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House
Mr. Tough
The Room Got Heavy (with Samara Lubelski on violin)
Swing For Life (with SL, Pat Gubler on guitar, and Helen Rush on keyboards)
4th Time Around (Bob Dylan) (with SL, PG, and HR)
Group Grope (The Fugs) (with SL, PG, and HR)
Saturday (with SL, PG, and HR)
The Way Some People Die (with PG)
Stockholm Syndrome
The Story of Jazz
Tom Courtenay
I Heard You Looking (with Joe Puleo on organ)
Eight Days A Week (The Beatles)
*(encore)*
Autumn Sweater
This Ain’t The Summer of Love (Blue Oyster Cult) (with Todd Barry on drums)
You Can Have It All (George McCrea)
You’ve Got A Friend (Carole King)
Yo La Tengo at Maxwell’s
27 December 2008
*(Hanukkah, night 7)*
Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band and David Cross (as Rabbi Alan Sugarman) opened.
(whole show, minus “Sugarcube,” with David Mansfield on violin, pedal steel, and electric guitar.)
Sugarcube
Let’s Be Still
She May Call You Up Tonight (The Left Banke)
Cone of Silence
One PM Again
Pablo and Andrea
Griselda (Peter Stampfel)
The Crying of Lot G
I Feel Like Going Home
Nowhere Near
Off and Running (Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders)
Barnaby, Hardly Working
Big Day Coming (fast) >
Watch Out For Me, Ronnie >
Mushroom Cloud of Hiss
*(encore)*
Long Gone (Customs/Lyres)
Walk Away, Rene (The Left Banke) (with DM and Willie Alexander)
Maybe More Than You (The Lost) (with DM and WA)
You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling (Willie Alexander arrangement, Phil Spector/Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil) (with DM and WA)
To Sir, With Love (Don Black/Mark London) (with David Cross)
(set through “Moby Octopad” with William Tyler of Lambchop on guitar.)
Jesus Christ (Big Star)
My Heart’s Reflection
Pass The Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind
Evanescent Psychic Pez Drop
Tears Are Your Eyes
Song for Mahlia
Did I Tell You
The Weakest Part
Moby Octopad
Babysitter (The Ramones) (with “Marky Ramone” on drums)
The Kid With the Replaceable Head (Richard Hell) (with “Marky Ramone” on drums)
Cherry Chapstick
Tom Courtenay
Heroin (Velvet Underground, Roky Erickson arrangement)
*(encore)* with Cyril Jordan of the Flamin’ Groovies on guitar/vocals
You Tore Me Down (Flamin’ Groovies)
Absolutely Sweet Marie (Bob Dylan)
Dog Meat (Flamin’ Groovies)
Second Cousin (Flamin’ Groovies)
Shake Some Action (Flamin’ Groovies)
(whole show, minus encore, with Fred Armisen on drums.)
Jesus Christ (Big Star)
False Alarm
I Should Have Known Better
The Last Days of Disco
Flying Lesson (Hot Chicken #1)
Little Eyes (Armisen on guitar)
Season of the Shark
Black Flowers (Armisen on guitar)
Things I Should’ve Said (P.F. Sloan/Steve Barri)
Take A Giant Step (Carole King/Gerry Goffin)
Demons (with Tara Key on guitar)
Deeper Into Movies (with Tara Key on guitar)
From A Motel 6 >
Nuclear War (Sun Ra) (with Josh Madell on percussion)
*(encore)* with Cyril Jordan of the Flamin’ Groovies on guitar/vocals
You Tore Me Down (Flamin’ Groovies)
Have You Seen My Baby (Randy Newman)
I Can’t Hide (Flamin’ Groovies)
Slow Death (Flamin’ Groovies)
Shake Some Action (Flamin’ Groovies)
Yo La Tengo at Maxwell’s
24 December 2008
*(Hanukkah, night 4)*
Jennifer O’Connor and Jon Benjamin opened.
Mix disc by Russell Maer.
Benefit for Mercy Corps.
Big Day Coming (slow)
Beanbag Chair
Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind
Drug Test
The Weakest Part
Mr. Tough
Tiny Birds
Paul Is Dead
Shadows
Angst In My Pants (Sparks)
Upside Down
Autumn Sweater
I Heard Her Call My Name > (Velvet Underground)
Blue Line Swinger
*(encore)*
(I Gotta) Dream On (Herman’s Hermits)
Detouring America With Horns
Cherry Chapstick (slow)
Rock and Roll Santa (Jan Terri)
Yo La Tengo at Maxwell’s
23 December 2008
*(Hanukkah, night 3)*
John Zorn & Marc Ribot and Slovin & Allen opened.
Mix disc by Gaylord Fields.
Benefit for Seacology.
(whole show with Smokey Hormel on guitar)
Leaving Home
We’re An American Band
Little Eyes
I Wanna Be Your Lover (Bob Dylan)
A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You (Neil Diamond)
The Race Is On Again
Damage
Can’t Forget
Don’t Say A Word (Hot Chicken #2)
Our Way To Fall (swing version)
Out the Window
Styles of the Times
Tom Courtenay
I Heard You Looking (with Yoni Wolf on keyboards)
*(encore)*
Stay With Me (The Dictators)
Center of Gravity
The Weakest Part (slow)
Big Day Coming (fast)
Guess I’m Falling in Love (Velvet Underground)
Stockholm Syndrome
Winter A Go-Go
Sometimes I Don’t Get You
Don’t Have To Be So Sad (with Claudia Gonson, drums, and Sam Davol, cello, of Magnetic Fields)
Alyda
Five-Cornered Drone (Crispy Duck)
Autumn Sweater
Double Dare
Decora
Watch Out For Me, Ronnie
The Story of Yo La Tango
*(encore)*
Be Careful, It’s My Heart (Irving Berlin) (Ira & Stephin Merritt duet)
A Foggy Day in London Town (George Gershwin) (with Doug Gillard, guitar/vocals)
No Milk Today (Herman’s Hermits) (with Doug Gillard, guitar/vocals)
The Next Big Thing (The Dictators) (with Doug Gillard, guitar/vocals)
My Little Corner of the World (Bob Hilliard/Lee Pockriss) (with Ira’s mom, vocals)
Eight Day Weekend (Gary “U.S.” Bonds)
Sugarcube
Everyday
Today Is The Day (fast)
The Summer
Beanbag Chair
Mr. Tough
Heaven Only Knows (Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich)
Shaker
House Fall Down
I Should Have Known Better
Sudden Organ
Tom Courtenay
Little Honda (The Beach Boys)
*(encore)* with Britt Daniel of Spoon on vocals, minus “Ring of Fire”
Ring of Fire (June Carter Cash) (with Paul F. Tompkins on vocals)
Public Image (Public Image, Ltd.)
Mother and Child Reunion (Paul Simon)
Me and Mr. Jones (Amy Winehouse)
This Guy’s In Love With You (Bert Bacharach/Hal David)
1. “Hanukkah, Bitch” – Brad and Barry (from Brad and Barry Stuff Your Stocking: Fifth Annual Holiday Jamz)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “I Wish You Could Be Here” – The Cyrkle (from Red Rubber Ball)
4. “How Can We Hang On to a Dream” – Tim Hardin (from Tim Hardin 1)
5. “If I Were A Carpenter” – Roy Ayers Quartet (from All Blues)
6. “Roses In the Snow” – Nico (from The Marble Index)
7. “Love Scene, variation 4” – Jerry Garcia (from Zabriskie Point OST)
8. “Degraded Hours” – Sightings (from Through the Panama)
9. “Sugar Rum Cherry (Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy)” – Duke Ellington (from Three Suites)
10. “Clouds and Snow” – Ben Kamen (from Dreams EP)
11. “12 Days of Christmas” – Twin Peaks cast (from KROQ Acoustic Christmas compilation)
12. “Santa Claus, The Original Hippie” – Homer and Jethro (from Cool, Crazy Christmas)
13. “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” – Jacob Miller (from Natty Christmas)
14. “Cold Weather” – The Upsetters (from The Upsetter Compact Set anthology)
15. “The Corpse Rises” – Scientist (from Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires)
16. “King of Kings” – Prince Jammy v. King Tubby (from His Majesty’s Dub)
17. “Comet Course” – Flying Lotus (from Los Angeles)
18. “Indigo Aerial” – Tim Hecker (from Good Night)
19. “Silent Night” – William Basinski (from Silent Night)
20. WWI Christmas voices from Salisbury
21. “The Long Christmas Dinner” – Rudolf Escher (from Anthology of Dutch Electronic Music, v. 1: 1955-1966 anthology)
22. “Gettin’ Ready For Christmas Day” – Rev. J.M. Gates (from Goodbye Babylon box set)
23. “Rap > Solid Rock” – Bob Dylan (20 April 1980, Massey Hall)
24. 1968 Christmas record – The Beatles
25. split LP with the Jealousy Party – Talibam!
26. “Electro-Tension MQ LP38/2” – John Baker (from The John Baker Tapes, v. 2: Soundtracks Library, Home Recordings, Electro Ads, Rare and Unreleased Recordings, 1954-1985 anthology)
27. “I Will Haunt You” – Oneida (13 December 2008, Knitting Factory)
28. “Astral Weeks” – Van Morrison (from Astral Weeks)
29. “Tomorrow Is A Long Time” – Elvis Presley (from From Nashville to Memphis: The Essential ’60s Masters anthology)
30. “Take Care” – Big Star (from Third/Sister Lovers)
1. “Non Dirle Che Non E’ Cosi’ (If You See Her Say Hello)” – Francesco de Gregori (from Masked and Anonymous OST)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “Maria Bethania” – Caetano Veloso (from Caetano Veloso (1971))
4. “Passion Dance” – McCoy Tyner feat. Marc Ribot (from Guitars)
5. “See You In The Paper” – The Wowz (from Long Grain Rights)
6. “Oh Boy!” – Grateful Dead (from Skull and Roses reissue)
7. “Psychedelic Man” – The Psycrons (from The Time Was Then Is Now compilation)
8. “No Deposit, No Return Blues” – Sandy Bull (from Still Valentine’s Day 1969: Live at the Matrix, San Francisco)
9. “Where Do You Run To?” – Frankie Rose (from Yeti, v. 6 compilation)
10. “Made in the Dark” – Hot Chip feat. Robert Wyatt (from Hot Chip with Robert Wyatt and Geese EP)
11. “Lust of the Blood” – Jerry Lee Lewis (from Catch My Soul)
12. “Don’t” – Keith Richards (from Toronto 1977)
13. “Silent Night” – Ween
14. “What A Wonderful World” – Major Organ (from Christmas In Stereo compilation)
15. “Xmas Time” – Au Revoir Simone (from I’ll Stay ‘Til After Christmas)
16. “Despite the Water Supply (Side A)” (Sea of Sound remix) – Jim O’Rourke
17. “Sons Silence” – Om (from Om)
18. “White Christmas” – Julian Koster (from The Singing Saw at Christmas)
19. “Aria II” – Zeitkratzer and Keiki Haino (from Electronics)
20. “Hodie Christus Natus Est” – Mount Alvernia Seminary Choir (from Christmas In A Monastery)
21. “Tramp and Orchestra” – Gavin Bryars (from Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet)
22. “Jingle Bells” – A 19th Century German Music Box (from Christmas With Krampus compilation)
23. Wall of Angels (Field recordings of angels from: http://www.choicesforliving.com/spirit/angels/angels-1.htm as well as /angels-2.htm, /angels-3.htm, /angels-4.htm)
24. “Silent Night” – The Guide Dog Glee Club (from We Woof You A Merry Christmas)
25. “Buzzers” – Scott Walker (from The Drift)
26. “Careless Love Blues” – Bessie Smith (from Gospel and Blues; Will the Circle Be Unbroken compilation)
27. “Putting Myself Back Together Again” – Lambert and Nuttycomb (form At Home
28. Ebenezer Electric – Bruce Haack and Ted Pandel
29. “I’ve Just Destroyed The World I’m Living In” – Willie Nelson (from Crazy: The Demo Sessions)
30. “770” – Alan Sondheim (from Ritual-All-7-70)
31. “Mama You Been On My Mind” – Lee Ranaldo (from Outlaw Blues (Tribute to Bob Dylan) compilation)
Albums: Satanic Messiah EP – The Mountain Goats (Village Voice) Black Pear Tree EP – The Mountain Goats/Kaki King (Village Voice) Skeletal Lamping – Of Montreal (Paste) Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin – O Death (Village Voice) Tell Tale Signs – Bob Dylan (JamBands.com) Indie-Weirdo Round-Up, featuring: Alps, Stephen Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra, Linda Perhacs, Shugo Tokumaru, Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby (JamBands.com) Indie-Weirdo Round-Up, featuring: John Baker, Menahan Street Band, Oneida, James Jackson Toth, Why? (JamBands.com)
In print:
o Paste #48 (Of Montreal cover): feature on Lou Reed, movie reviews of Filth and Wisdom and Christmas on Mars
o Paste #49 (She & Him cover): feature on movie-hopping, Harvey Milk’s hometown; movie review of Waltz With Bashir
o December/January Relix (Ryan Adams cover): album reviews of Lou Reed, David Grubbs, Vic Chesnutt/Elf Power; book review of Best Music Writing 2008; DVD review of A Technicolor Dream.
1. “Astro Black > Variations on the Kohoutek Theme” – Sun Ra (from The Concert for the Comet Kohoutek)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “People Has It Hard” – Coleman Family (from Local Custom: Downriver Revival compilation)
4. “Someting’s Wrong” – Dillard and Clark (from The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard and Clark)
5. “Beards” – The Dodos (from Beware of the Maniacs CD-R)
6. “Aguane” – Chris Watson (from Cima Verde)
7. “Tooi sora no kanata ni” – Itsutsu no akai fuusen (from Japanese Folk, Rock, and Enka, 1969-1972 compilation)
8. “Lantern on the Water” – Shugo Tokumaru (from Night Piece)
9. “Desert Toll/Spirit Guide” – Icy Demons (from Fight Back!)
10. “Vita” – Akira Ishikawa and Count Buffalo (from Uganda-Afurikan Rokky No Yoake)
11. “Ollin Arageed” – Hamza El-Din feat. Grateful Dead (from Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978)
12. “Wave Backwards to Massachusetts” – Hallelujah the Hills (from Collective Psychosis Begone)
13. “Lawrence of Arabia” – The Tornadoes (from Intergalactic Instros: Joe Meek Collection anthology)
14. “Milky Blue/Riddle in Wonderland” – YMCK (from Family Racing CD-R)
15. “Red Hat Attack” – A Grape Dope feat. Doseone (from Missing Dragons EP)
16. “Comendo Pao e Fazeno Mal” – Minusbaby (from Saudade for Beginners)
17. “The Vespertine Park” – Gavin Bryars (from Hommages)
18. “Santa Claus, Scene Three” – e.e. cummings (from reads his poetry)
19. “Robots and Cyborgs” – Francisco Lopez (from TechnoCalyps OST)
20. “Gamelan NEA” – Gamelan Son of Lion (from Metal Notes)
21. “Experiences No. 2” – Robert Wyatt (from Voices and Instruments compilation)
22. “Awaken… Larkwise” – Claire Hamill (from Voices)
23. “God Only Knows (vocals)” – The Beach Boys (from Pet Sounds box set)
24. “Romeristas (Rain Prayer)” – Las Romerista Mexicanas/Tzapulutes (from Yol K’u: Inside the Sun, Mayan Mountain Music)
25. “Waterloo No. 2” – Rhys Chatham (from An Angel Moves Too Fast To See: Selected Works, 1971-1989 anthology)
26. “Composition 40 (O)” – Anthony Braxton (from Quartet (Dortmund) 1976)
27. “Another Man’s Done Gone” – Odetta (from Folk Song and Minstrelsy anthology)
28. “I’m Going Back to the Red Clay Country” – Odetta (from Folk Song and Minstrelsy anthology)
29. “19IV75” – David Rosenbloom and J.B. Floyd with Trichy Sankaran (from SUITABLE FOR FRAMING/forms of freedom for two pianos and mrdangam)
30. “Clouds and Their Shadows” – Bird Show (from Bird Show)
31. “Red Flag on the Gondola” – Flipper’s Guitar (from Three Cheers For Our Side)
32. “I’m Only Sleeping (Take 1)” – The Beatles (from Anthology, v. 2)
1. “Rain and Snow” – Obray Ramsey (from The Music Never Stopped: Roots of the Grateful Dead compilation)
2. “Totally Confused” – Beck (from Western Harvest Field By Moonlight 10-inch)
3. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
4. “Fallen Snow” – Au Revoir Simone (from The Bird of Music)
5. “My World Fell Down” – Saggitarius (from Present Tense)
6. “Sunday Morning, Seven AM, On San Pablo Avenue” – Mushroom (from Gazed Popems)
7. “Money Folder (Four Tet remix)” – Madvillian (from Madvillian Remixes EP)
8. “Devils” – 63 Crayons (from Spoils For Survivors)
9. “Hollow Me (alt. version)” – Yura Yura Teikoku (from Remix 2005-2008 anthology)
10. “Papa Legba” – Talking Heads feat. Pops Staples (from Sounds from True Stories)
11. “Caledonia Mission (song sketch)” – The Band (from A Musical History box set)
12. “River Deep, Mountain High” – Keith and Donna (from Keith and Donna)
13. “Not At All” – Claudia Lennear (from Some Bad-Ass Bitches (1968-1978) compilation)
14. “Then She Exploded” – Nothing (from A Warm Gun)
15. “Eric’s Trip” – Sonic Youth (from Daydream Nation)
16. “Tried So Hard” – Flying Burrito Brothers (from Flying Burrito Brothers)
17. “Perrier” – Ecstatic Sunshine (from Way)
18. “Spider Conductor” – Memorize the Sky (from Memorize the Sky)
19. “Rebound from the Cliff” – Ignatz (from Ignatz)
20. Wall of Banjos (feat. Bela Fleck, Tony Trischka, Bill Keith, Harry Reser, Reed Martin)
21. “John Hardy” – Bela Fleck, Vishwa Mohan. Bhatt, Jie-Bing chen (from Tabula Rasa)
22. Wall of Calliope (feat. Authentic Calliope Music (Major Records) & Old Time Circus Calliope (Audio Fidelity))
23. “Silent Night” – The Music Tapes (from The Singing Saw at Christmastime)
24. “Track 3” – Brian Joseph Davis (from Original Soundtrack)
25. “Glitterbas Solo” – Bob Moses (from Bittersuite in the Ozone)
26. “Triage” (excerpt) – DJ Olive (from Triage)
27. “Things Are Worse In Russia” – Sam Mayo (from Sprigs of Time: 78s from the EMI Archive compilation)
28. “Anything Could Happen” – Times New Viking (from Yeti, v. 6 compilation)
29. “Bad Education” – Blue Orchids (from The Greatest Hit (Money Mountain))
30. “20,000 Leagues” – Marine Girls (from Beach Party)
31. “Pensacaola” – Soul Coughing (from El Oso)
32. “Sun Organ” – Black Moth Super Rainbow (from Falling Through A Field)
33. “Are You Leaving For the Country?” – Karen Dalton (from In My Own Time)
34. “False From True” – Pete Seeger (from At 89)
35. “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?” – Eugene Chadbourne feat. Jimmy Carl Black and Lol Coxhill (from Jesse Helms Busted With Pornography: The C&W Opera)
36. “Long Gone Like A Turkey Through the Corn” – Lightnin’ Hopkins (from Country Blues)
37. “Nothing Hides” – James Jackson Toth (from Waiting In Vain)
38. “Canela” – Devandra Banhart (from Cripple Crow)
39. “On My Way Home” – Neil Young (from Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968)
2.) I’m going to continue to post here–because, despite what Wired says, blogs really are an effective text distribution/organizational system–but a lot my 2.0 energy seems to be going towards Twitter these days. See you over there, maybe? I’m twitter.com/bourgwick.
S’more of Dad’s animation. Five-year-old me appears at the 1:08 mark, the rest of the neighborhood kids shortly thereafter.
I really love the original soundtrack to “Orange”–some great vintage library music-style electronics–but Shugo Takumaru’s “Funfair” is a good alternate score.
1. “We Shall Overcome – Charlie Haden (from Liberation Music Orchestra)
2. “Stars and Stripes Foever” – The Residents (from American Composer Series, v. 2: Stars and Hank Forever)
3. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
4. “Bat Macumba” – Os Mutantes (from Os Mutantes)
5. “Costa Pariso” – El Guincho (from Alegranza)
6. “I Zimbra” – Talking Heads (from Fear of Music)
7. “Allah Wakbarr” – Ofo & the Black Company (from Love’s A Real Thing: The Funky Fuzzy Sounds of West Africa compilation)
8. “Ed Is A Portal” – Akron/Family (from Love is Simple)
9. “In Excelsior Vaginalistic” – The Flaming Lips (from Christmas On Mars OST)
10. “The Ballad of Hank McCain” (vocal version) – John Zorn feat. Mike Patton (from The Big Gundown: John Zorn Plays the Music of Ennio Morricone)
11. “Woodbine” – Women (from Women)
12. “Life Forms (Transmission Received)” – Major Organ & the Adding Machine (from Major Organ & the Adding Machine)
13. “Strange Things Happening Everyday” – Sister Rosetta Tharpe (from The Original Soul Sister: Singing In My Soul (1943-1946))
14. “Darkpen” – Archimedes Badkar (from Tre)
15. “Vision’s the First” – High Places (from High Places)
16. “Balimba” – S. Olver Takara Percussions (from Space Oddities: A Collection of Rare European and Library Grooves, 1975-1984 compilation)
17. “Chimacum Rain” (demo #2) – Linda Perhacs (from Parallelograms)
18. “All You Can Do Is Laugh” (1) – cLOUDDEAD (from All You Can Do Is Laugh 10-inch)
19. “Werstuk-1964” – Axel Maujer (from Anthology of Dutch Electronic Tape Music, v. 1 (1955-1966) compilation)
20. “First Construction in Metal” – John Cage (from Three Constructions)
21. selections from Common Bird Songs – Donald J. Borror
22. “Julia” – The Beatles/Listener Editor B (from Beware of the Blog)
23. “Car Fumes” – Terrestrial Tones (from Dead Drunk EP)
24. “Green Valentine Blues” – Allen Ginsberg (from Holy Soul, Jelly Roll box set)
25. “Wahwahkel” – Sack and Blumm (from Sack and Blumm)
26. “Temple Bells” (from Buddhist Drums, Bells and Chants)
27. selections from Live Mixxx – DJ Chaos X
28. “Legend of Hyrule” – Koji Kondo (from Ocarina of Time: Sounds and Songs)
29. “Are You Hung Up?” – Frank Zappa (from We’re Only In It For the Money)
30. “Hula Blues” – Sol Hoopi (from Hula Blues: Vintage Steel Guitar Instrumentals form the ’30s and ’40s compilation)
31. “Omstart” – Cornelius (from Sensuous)
32. “Space Hymn” – Lothar and the Hand People (from Space Hymns)
33. “Heal Us” – The 63 Crayons (from Death Before Distemper 2: Revenge of the Iron Ferret compilation)
34. “Quartet Piece no. 2” – Circle (from Circulus)
35. “The Things That I Know” – Musee Mecanique (from Hold This Ghost)
36. “Si Tu Dois Partir” – Fairport Convention (from Unhalfbricking)
37. “Show the Cloven Hoof” – Mainliner (from Psychedelic Polyhedron)
38. “The Grid” – Phillip Glass (from Koyaanisqatsi OST)
39. “Ripple” – Sex Mob (from Solid Sender)
“Quinn the Eskimo” (take 1) – Bob Dylan and the Band (download)
A few weekends back, at the WFMU Record Fair, I picked up a copy of Bob Dylan’s Great White Wonder. The first ever rock bootleg, it was originally released by the Trademark of Quality underground label in 1969. Famously, it came in almost totally blank packaging: white jacket, white labels, sometimes a rubber stamp with the title.
The copy I bought comes with a handwritten title on the front, obviously scrawled by a dealer at some point along the way. Likewise, the labels on the vinyl itself only contain simple simple black dots, indicating the A-side (I think) of each disc. Others, it looks like, had more formal packaging.
Surely, though, with a batch of brand new, unknown songs, many people must have annotated their copies, guessed at the titles, etc..
Got one? What does it say on it? Join the Great White Wonder Project pool or upload to flickr with the tags “bob dylan great white wonder” and I’ll deal with it.
“Got To Be Some Changes Made” – The Staple Singers (download) (buy)
The Obamagasms continued today. For me, they came, quivering and screaming, through the new site, change.gov. While complete transparency and openness in government is impossible, and maybe not even desirable, this is a pleasant start. One can peruse the General Services Administration directory issued to all new White House personnel, apply for a job, or submit ideas. While WhiteHouse.gov is certainly chock full of information, change.gov is efficient and friendly. Perhaps it’ll all prove illusory, this change thing, but Obama’s clearly got better web designers. And that’s a goddamn good way to begin. I’d like to see what kind of mail comes in. Perhaps I’ll apply for that job.
There are some bits worth poking at. For example, the semi-self-serving-and-presumptuous-but-also-neat-and-2.0y American Moment feature. There are also forms at the top of the page for one to enter one’s email address and zip code, with no explanation of why they might be needed. Nonetheless, I entered them with only the briefest of second thoughts, willfully giving my contact info to a government-domained website. Apparently, I’ve just signed up to help remake Washington. Or something.
Change is “change” is “‘change,'” but it’s also a talking point, albeit the peaceful variety. It’ll certainly be fascinating to see how President Obama’s rhetoric continues to maintain or mutate the brand and how that relates reality. (Practically speaking, does he continue to use change.gov or take over WhiteHouse.gov?) Most telling, for the moment, is the blunt NEED CONTENT page behind the “Obama National Service Plan” link. Then, there’s a lot that’s empty on this site. Content will be coming soon, and probably quickly. Hope they’re ready, and–more–I hope they’re serious.
1. “The Things” – Skeletons (from Money)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “What’cha Gonna Do About It?” – The Condo Fucks (from Fuckbook)
4. “Freckle Wars” – Ecstatic Sunshine (from Ecstatic Sunshine)
5. “In the Flowers (aka Dancer)” – Animal Collective (23 October 2007 Melkweg, Amsterdam, NL)
6. “La La Radio” – Shugo Tokumaru (from Exit)
7. “Ego Blossoms” – Samara Lubelski (from Living Bridge compilation)
8. “Alabama” – Mark DeGliAntoni (from Horse Tricks)
9. “Livin Was Easy” – The Glands (from The Glands)
10. “Lazy Susan” – Oakley Hall (from Gypsum Strings)
11. “Got To Be Some Changes Made” – Staple Singers (from Soul Folk in Action)
12. “Down By The Riverside” – Preservation Hall Jazz Band (from Best of the Early Years anthology)
13. “From the Tide or the Wind” – The Tape Beatles (from Music With Sound)
14. “Help” – Count Basie Orchestra (rom Basie’s Beatle Bag)
15. “The Corner” – Glenn Kotche (from Mixtape compilation)
16. “Nannou” – Aphex Twin (from Windowlicker EP)
17. “Panang” – Critters Buggin (from Stampede)
18. “Arcade Ambience ’83” – Andy Hofle (from Arcade Ambience ’83)
19. Frogs (5 April 1989 Merritt Island National Wildlife Preseve, FL)
20. “My Blue Sky (no. 1)” – Joji Yuasa (from Obscure Tape Music of Japan, v. 1: Aoi no Ue anthology)
21. “Golden Rain (Hudjan mas)” – Gamelan Gong Kebjar (from Golden Rain)
22. “Bucaneve” – Chris Watson (from Cima Verde)
23. “Rainwater Sea” – Robert Hunter (from Sentinel)
24. “Gamelan” – Tom Disselvelt (from Anthology of Dutch Electronic Tape Music, v. 1 (1955-1966) anthology)
25. “Love at the Swimming Hole” – Louis and Bebe Barron (from Forbidden Planet OST)
26. “Georgian Instrumental” – (Organ) (from Sprigs of Time: 78s from the EMI Archive anthology)
27. selections from the Zelinsky Collection (from Musee Mehanique presents the Zelinsky Collection, v. 3 anthology)
28. “Oysters and Wine at 2 a.m.” – Polk Miller’s Old South Quartette (from Polk Miller and His Old South Quartette)
29. selections from Tron OST – Wendy Carlos (from Tron OST)
30. “Weird Dream” – Harmonia ’76 (from Tracks and Traces)
31. “Brokedown Palace” – Bonnie Prince Billy (from Pebbles and Ripples)
32. “Havana Moon” – Chuck Berry (from The Great Twenty-Eight anthology)
33. “I Get A Little Taste of You” – Z-Rock Hawaii (from Z-Rock Hawaii)
34. “Only Heaven Knows” – Kevin Ayers (from The Unfairground)
35. “I Can’t Stop Loving You” – Ray Charles (from Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music)
36. “#1” – Scientist (from Scientist Wins the World Cup)
37. “Blue Nile” – Alice Coltrane (from Ptah the El Daoud)
38. “Wayward Hum” – Vashti Bunyan (from Lookaftering)
39. “I Love How You Love Me” – The Paris Sisters (from Back to Mono anthology)
40. “Phonoballoon Song” – Takako Minekawa (from Cloudy Cloud Calculator)
41. “Here Comes My Ship” – Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby (from Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby)
42. “Tell Me Why” – Neil Young (from After the Goldrush)
43. “Roll With the Flow” – Mike Nesmith (from And the Hits Just Keep on Coming)
44. “The Revolution” – David Byrne (from Look Into the Eyeball)
o The links I post in this category are generally hacks, and free ones at that, but this $1600 Optimus Maximus keyboard where each button is a custom screen is just too cool.
o YouConvertIt goes from format-to-format for you. Awesome and amazingly handy in theory, but it sometimes has been wicked slow when I’ve tried to use it. It did do what I wanted it to do–rip a YouTube video into an mp3–though it only did so at 64 kbps and didn’t tag it all. Drag.
o SoundSnap has free loops and sound effects. (Thx, Michael.) (I think/suspect.)
o TabMixPlus is a plug-in browser-tab management system for FireFox. Allegedly, heads have been using it to set TicketMaster pages to reload automatically when shows go on sale. Haven’t tried it personally, but it seems like it’d work. (And couldn’t be worse than the Dylan on-sale last week when one had to stop loading the TM page with split-second precision in order to buy the tickets.)
o GoogleEarth-based atlas of album cover art. Perhaps not useful, but a solid database and a functional time waster.
o The Forvo database pronounces words in their original language. Wowzers. Maybe now I can learn how to say those Brazilian/Portuguese song titles properly.
Baseball, more than other sports, is a game of statistics. There are batting titles, earned run averages, and Bill James freak-outs. It is a game of distances covered simultaneously by whipped balls of cork and running feet, coming down to inches, and the strategy that pits them against one another. There are lefty/righty match-ups, pinch-hitters, and careers made or broken by the chance encounters of a baseball after it connects with a bat. Numbers are the game’s blood.
Despite this, like the point where human consciousness emerges from a collection of cells and organized tissue, stats only go so far. Ultimately, baseball requires a leap of faith — or, at least, a willful defiance of the numbers. Your favorite team might collapse down the stretch, but they’re still your favorite team. It is not rational. It is the opposite. The Phillies may have won the World Series, but I say fuck ’em, the Mets are still better with exactly the same passion as I did in the middle of the summer, and the same as I will when spring training starts. Fuck ’em. See you in three-and-a-half months.
Going Steady Singles Week! All songs A-sides unless otherwise noted.)
1. “Season of the Witch” – Donovan (from Sunshine Superman)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “Halloween” – Mudhoney (from Touch Me I’m Sick/Halloween 7-inch)
4. “Search and Destroy” (mono) – Iggy and the Stooges (from Search and Destroy white label 7-inch)
5. “U Stink But I Love U” – Billy and the Boingers (from Billy and the Boingers Bootleg flexidisc)
6. “Love-> Building On Fire” – Talking Heads
7. “Tropical Ice-Land” – The Fiery Furnaces
8. “(For God’s Sake) Give More Power to the People” – The Chi-Lites
9. “Make the Road By Walking” – Menahan Street Band
10. “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” – Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
11. “Soul Master” – Edwin Starr
12. “Everybody Suffering” – Laurel Aitken
13. “My Boy Lollipop” – Millie
14. “Dark Star” – The Grateful Dead
15. “Disco 3000” – Sun Ra
16. “Despite the Water Supply” (Side A) – Jim O’Rourke (from Touch Series, v. 7 7-inch)
17. “Despite the Water Supply” (Side B) – Jim O’Rourke (from Touch Series, v. 7 7-inch)
18. “Blue Bayou” – Roy Orbison
19. “Kites Are Fun” – The Free Design
20. “Cycles” – Frank Sinatra
21. “As I Went Out One Morning” – Why? (from Unusual Animals, v. 4 7-inch)
22. “Yo Yo Bye Bye” – Dump (from The Hollows 7-inch) (UK)
23. “Aquarius” – Boards of Canada
24. “Six Stories” – Jeffrey Lewis (from Seasons 7-inch box set)
25. “Gojam Province 1968” – The Mountain Goats (from Satanic Messiah EP)
26. “George Jackson” (acoustic version) – Bob Dylan
27. “Cold Rain and Snow” – Oneida (from Heads Ain’t Ready 7-inch)
28. “He Don’t Love You (and He’ll Break Your Heart)” – Levon and the Hawks (from The Stones I Throw 7-inch)
29. “Sour Milk Sea” – Jackie Lomax
30. “Boy Wonder, I Love You” – Burt Ward feat. Frank Zappa
31. “Baby” – Caetano Veloso with Os Mutantes (from Ao Vivo EP)
32. “A Certain Guy” – Mary Weiss (from Don’t Come Back 7-inch)
33. “Yellow Brick Road” – Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band
34. “Success” (Diplo’s Unsuccessful Space Dub) – Dark Meat
35. “Launderette” – Vivien Goldman
36. “Grains and Sauces/Ice and Rings/Aqua Waters” – Black Swan Network (from HHBTM singles club 7-inch)
37. “Two” (Side B) – Yoshimi
38. “The Present Time/Seven Thousand Luminous Aches and Pains/The Dinner Plate” – Black Swan Network (from HHBTM singles club 7-inch)
39. “Marigold” – Nirvana (from Heart-Shaped Box 7-inch)
40. “Nature Trail to Hell (In 3-D)” – Weird Al Yankovic (from King of Suede 7-inch)
41. “Early 1970” – Ringo Starr (from It Don’t Come Easy 7-inch)
42. “Memories” – Robert Wyatt (from I’m A Believer 7-inch)
43. “The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh)” – Brian Eno
44. “Sol ’07” (Side A/B) – Wooden Shjips
45. “Now 2000” (Side A) – Yo La Tengo (from Some Other Dimensions In Yo La Tengo EP)
46. “Now 2000” (Side B) – Yo La Tengo (from Some Other Dimensions In Yo La Tengo EP)
47. “Piggy In The Middle” – The Rutles (from Let’s Be Natural 7-inch)
48. “Porpoise Song” – The Monkees
49. “Goodnight Irene” – Little Richard
The Apollo Sunshine’s “Money” sounds like Simon and Garfunkel, but I think it’s really “Imagine” for 2008 — an idyllic take on the world’s corruption du jour. “War is over! If you want it,” John and Yoko proclaimed, shorthanding the 1971 single. Apollo Sunshine’s take on impending global economic meltdown is the same, existentially: fahgetaboutit. “I wonder what I’d do, if everybody forgot what money was,” they harmonize, a slightly more complex task than disregarding religion. In Lennon’s world, peace comes immediately. For the Sunshine, it’s a little more personal. “With all that’s happened, would we still play guitars?” they ask. “Yeah, we’d play guitar!” they reaffirm, voices rising into subdued falsetto glee. It’s easier to imagine such things when you can hum along so easily.
1. “Some Misunderstanding” – Gene Clark (form No Other)
2. “Obama Is Beautiful World!” – Anyone Brothers Band (via YouTube)
3. “Lonely Little Girl > Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance > What’s the Ugliest Part of Your Body?” – Frank Zappa (from Joe’s Menage)
4. “Music (Japanese version)” – Petra Haden (from Gum EP)
5. “We’ve Got To Get Ourselves Together” – The Staple Singers (from Soul Folk In Action)
6. “Sarah Through the Wall” – Brad Barr (from The Fall Apartment)
7. “Caminho Do Mar” – Quarteto Em Cy (from Quarteto Em Cy (1966))
8. “Departure” – Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid (from NYC)
9. “People Watch Change” – Capleton feat. Barack Obama
10. “This Summer Night” – Bertrand Burgalat feat. Robert Wyatt (from Cheri B.B.)
11. “Autoscope” – Benard Estardy (from La Formule Du Baron)
12. “Dinner and a Movie” – Phish (from Junta)
13. “Where Do You Run To?” – Vivian Girls (from Vivian Girls)
14. “The Horrors of Isolation: The Celestial Dissolve, Triumphant Hallucination, Light Being Absorbed” – The Flaming Lips (from Christmas On Mars OST)
15. unknown – unknown (from Yeti #5 compilation)
16. “Bye Bye Butterfly” – Pauline Oliveros (from Electronic Works)
17. “Aimless Breeze” – George Parsons (from Down In A Mirror: A Second Tribute to Jandek compilation)
18. “Jupiter Variation” – John Coltrane (from Interstellar Space)
19. “Four Freshman Locked Out as the Sun Goes Down” – No Kids (from Come Into My House)
20. “Arms, Legs, and Moonlight” – Eric Chenaux (from Sloppy Ground)
21. “Women’s Hour (Reading Your Letters)” – John Baker (from John Baker Tapes, v. 1)
22. “Music To Watch Girls By” – unknown (from Indonesian Cassette Mix compilation)
23. “Obama Is Here (Luda Politics)” – Ludacris (from The Preview mixtape)
24. “Obama Obama” – APT (from A Milli Beat)
25. “No Space in This Realm” – Akron/Family (from Meek Warrior)
26. “The Light That Fills This World” – John Luther Adams (from The Light That Fills This World)
27. “He Shoots the Sun” – Kahmi Karie (from Nunki)
28. “Albert Camus” – Titus Andronicus (from The Airing of Grievances)
29. “Pinecone Accumulation” – Greg Davis (from Vestibule and Separate: Cottage Industries 3)
30. “Fog and Shadow” – Apollo Sunshine (from Shall Noise Upon)
31. “Stella Blue” – Willie Nelson (from Songbird)
32. “Looney Tunes” – Yo La Tengo (from Sugarcube EP)
33. “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” – John Bix (from tXXXs demos)
34. “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” – George Harrison (from Brainwashed)
35. “Windfall” – Son Volt (from Trace)
36. “I’ll Keep It With Mine” – Nico (from Chelsea Girl)
“My Big Nurse” – David Byrne and Brian Eno (download) (buy)
This was supposed to have run this month, but it somehow disappeared in my editor’s inbox.
DAVID BYRNE and BRIAN ENO Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
(self-released)
We’ve been living in David Byrne and Brian Eno’s world for so long that their rekindled relationship–28 years dormant before the new Everything That Happens Will Happen Today–shouldn’t be too surprising. But, being their world–their ideas about rhythm and aesthetics formed in the crucible of the late ’70s Talking Heads, and now well-institutionalized by indie-punx, hippies, and pop fascists alike–it’s all a bit less shocking this go-round. Indeed, the two aren’t overly ambitious, either, the simple changes of “Wanted For Life” and “Strange Overtones” recalling the twang-enhanced Heads of True Stories. (“These beats are 20 years old,” Byrne admits on the latter tune.)
Written as a cross-Atlantic collaboration behind the concept of “electronic gospel”–Eno on backing tracks, Byrne on vocals–the producer’s work truly improves in higher resolution than mp3s allow, worn synth swells blossoming into holographic depth. Regardless, the two succeed best at being graceful, including the lullaby-like title track and the C&W sunset gallop of “My Big Nurse.” “A million kinds of possibilities for dancing on this lazy afternoon,” Byrne sings before a right lovely organ figure trickles by, an ethereal burst of vintage Eno, as recognizable as a Frippertronic guitar cloud on Another Green World.
It is not a perfect union. When the music slips uptempo, such as “I Feel My Stuff,” one can almost hear quotation marks appearing around the grooves–the implications of music to dance to, rather than the act itself. But, concepts be damned, Byrne himself is in marvelous form, lyrically and vocally, having evolved into a powerful singer in his post-Heads years. The future is here. And it sounds remarkably like music.
In print:
o Paste #47 (Violence issue): album reviews of Emiliana Torrini, Kings of Leon (Dischord), movie review of Happy-Go-Lucky, Patti Smith: Dream of Life, DVD review of Phish: Walnut Creek
o November Relix (The Clash cover): album reviews of Medeski, Martin and Wood, Brad Barr, Jolie Holland, DVD review of Cornelius.
1. “U.S. Millie” – Theoretical Girls (from Theoretical Girls anthology)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “Vo Bate Pa Tu” – Baiano e Os Novos Caetanos (from Baiano e Os Novos Caetanos)
4. “The Saga of Cyrus and Mulgrew” – Garth Hudson (from The Sea to the North)
5. “Kandore Mandore” – Andore Kandore (from ’69 Folk Best compilation)
6. “Untitled” – Jim O’Rourke (from Old News, v. 1 CD-R)
7. “Eleven (It’ll Rain!)” – Skeletons (from Money)
8. “Bomb” – Inara George and Van Dyke Parks (from An Invitation)
9. “On A Brass Bed (In Paradise)” – King Khan and His Shrines (from Mr. Supernatural)
10. “Shake Daddy Shake” – Eula Cooper (from Eccentric Soul: The Tragar and Note Labels compilaiton)
11. “Such A Scene” – The Changes (from First of May EP)
12. “Rory Rides Me Raw” – The Vaselines (from The Way of the Vaselines anthology)
13. “Higher than The End” – Twi the Humble Feather (from Music for Spaceships and Earths)
14. “Namer” – High Places (from High Places)
15. “Green Rain” – Shugo Tokumaru (from Exit)
16. “I’ve Lived on a Dirt Road All My Life” – Manitoba (from Up in Flames)
17. “Tintinnabulations” – The Alps (from Jewelt Spirit CD-R)
18. selections from the Musee Mecanique presents Zelinsky Collection, v. 3
19. “Train Your Child” – Washington Phillips (from I Was Born to Preach the Gospel)
20. “Harvest Moon” – Cassandra Wilson (from New Moon Daughter)
21. “This Is It” – Lothar and the Hand People (from Presenting…)
22. “Birthday Boy” – Ween (from GodWeenSatan: The Oneness)
23. “I’m Not A Young Man Anymore” – Velvet Underground (6 or 7 April 1967 The Gymnasium)
24. “Jam > Ship of Fools” – Grateful Dead (23 June 1974 Jai-Alai Fronton)
25. “Rockin’ Chair” – Mildred Bailey and Her Orchestra (from Complete Columbia Recordings anthology)
26. “Sun in Aquarius” – Pharoah Sanders (from Jewels of Thought)
27. “Love” – Yann Tomita (from Doopee Time)
28. “All You Need Is Love” – Steven Bernstein and the Millennial Territory Orchestra (from We Are MTO)
29. “Sad, Sad, Sad” – Arms (from Kids Aflame)
30. “You Win Again” – Elvis Costello (from Charlie Haden: Rambling Boy)
31. “Mississippi (Time Out Of Mind outtake)” – Bob Dylan (from Tell-Tale Signs (Bootleg Series, v. 8) anthology)
32. “Singing to the Sunshine” – Cardinal (from Cardinal)
Despite–or, perhaps, because of–this topsy-tuvry housing market, the Frow Show has scored some prime corner real estate. Specifically, the bottom right corner of the WFMU programming grid, where I’ll kick it from now through June 2009. Starting this week, I can be heard on Sunday nights/Monday mornings, from 3 am – 6 am EST.
As always, if you don’t happen to be awake during those hours, all episodes are archived almost immediately.
Unfortunately, due to RIAA impositions, I don’t think I’m going to be able to make the show available as a podcast. Drag city.
Should be fun anyway, though. Got some guests & other stuff in the works. Watch here (or listen there) for details.
Product that has expired as product, too good not to mention.
Lothar and the Hand People – Lothar and the Hand People (1968)
I sometimes think I could only download psych LPs from 1968 and never run out. That’s not to say that they’re all really good. Some are mad generic. But Lothar and the Hand People’s self-titled debut is really good. Incredibly catchy (sounds like the Velvets sometimes), plenty weird (theremin, electronics). Top notch.
What Is!? – King Khan and His Shrines (2007)
Likewise, ’68 garage-psych revival bands seem a dime a dozen (or less, if one’s jacking wifi from the neighbors), but pretty much every song on What Is!? is a total winner. The organs are exactly right, the choruses even more so.
Stardust – Willie Nelson (1978)
I’m beginning what I imagine will be a long, fruitful relationship with the music of Willie Nelson. Besides the spare Crazy demos from ’59, this is what’s grabbed me most: Willie doing Tin Pan Alley standards. A stoned sweetness in the cosmic neighborhood of Ray Charles and Jerry Garcia and Richard Manuel (see below). Jah bless.
Whispering Pines: Live at the Getaway 1985 – Richard Manuel (rec. 1985, rel. 2002)
Been on a Music From Big Pink lately, fueled heavily by John Niven’s entry in Continuum’s 33 1/3 series, whose central haunt is provided by the late Richard Manuel. Whispering Pines was recorded in a Florida club, six months before Manuel hung himself in a motel room. Played on a cocktail hour synth, the music is as distant and sweet as ever. Love the Ray Charles covers.
In My Own Time – Karen Dalton (1971)
Unfathomable loveliness. Billie Holiday with a banjo. Though Dalton despised the schmaltzed up studio arrangements—she was a Village folkie, after all–I think I love them. Her voice practically calls out for syrupy strings, for redeeming fantasias.
1. “Your Cheatin’ Heart” – James Brown (from Dirty Laundry: The Soul of Black Country comp)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “Some Clouds Don’t” – Fred Frith (from Cheap at Half the Price)
4. “Slippery People (club version)” – Staple Singers (from Slippery People 12-inch)
5. “1000 Cities Falling (part 1)” – The Sadies (from Favorite Colours)
6. “My Big Nurse” – David Byrne and Brian Eno (from Everything That Happens Will Happen Today)
7. “Unfinished” – Kevin Ayers (from What More Can I Say?)
8. “Wayne Wayne” – R. Stevie Moore (from Nevertheless Optimistic)
9. “Flower Sun Rain” – Boris (from Smile)
10. “Shiokumi Kasatsukashi (Collecting Water)” – Kachikuri Mimasuya (from Victrola Favorites: Artifacts from Bygone Days comp)
11. “Apes Guide to Apes” – The Apes (from Yeti #4 comp)
12. “Iko Iko” – The Dixie Cups/Diplo (from Top Ranking Santogold mix)
13. “Left Behind” – CSS (from Donkey)
14. “September Gurls” – The Bangles (from Different Light)
15. “Halifax” – Hampton Grease Band (from Music To Eat)
16. “Up With People” – Oneida (from Happy New Year)
17. “New Year’s Eve” – Stephan Mathieu and Ekkehard Ehlers (from Heroin)
18. “A Manha Na Praia” – Alps (from III)
19. “Exotique” – Roland Bocquet (from Space Oddities: A Collection of Rare European Library Grooves, 1975-1984 comp)
20. “Free Music No. 1 (Percy Grainger)” – Lydia Kavina (from Spellbound! Original Works for Theremin)
21. “Coloris” – Cornelius (from Coloris OST)
22. “Amok! part 1” – Evan Ziporyn/Gamelan Galak Tika (from Amok!/Tire Fire)
23. “miNd / To Be…” – John Cage (from Mesostic IV)
24. “Hydrophone” – Max Eastley (from New and Rediscovered Musical Instruments)
25. “Love Henry” – Jolie Holland (from The Living and the Dead)
26. “Past Has Not Passed” – James Blackshaw (from Litany of Echoes)
27. “Mornings Made of Gold” – John Biz (from tXXXs demos)
28. “Silver Apples of the Moon (part A)” – Morton Subotnick (from Silver Apples of the Moon/The Wild Bull)
29. “Osorezan” (excerpt) – Geioh Yamashirogumi (from Osorezan/Do No Kembai)
30. “Maremaillette” – A Hawk and a Hacksaw (from A Hawk and a Hacksaw)
31. “Air” – Greg Davis (from Cruling Pond Woods)
32. “Waiting For the Dawn To Break” – The Leapyear (from AUX comp)
33. “Sunshine Superman” – Donovan (from Sunshine Superman)
34. “Nega (Phonograph Blues)” – Gilberto Gil (from Gilberto Gil (1971))
35. “Political Science” – Randy Newman (from Randy Newman Songbook. v. 1)
36. “No More Use To Me” – Sam and Simon (from Brudders)
37. “Think Small” – Tall Dwarfs (from Fork Songs)
38. “Green Rocky Road” – Karen Dalton (from Green Rocky Road)
39. “Help on the Way > Slipknot! > Franklin’s Tower” – Grateful Dead (from One From the Vault)
40. “Journey Through the Outer Darkness” – Sun Ra (from Concert For the Comet Kohoutek)
41. “Waiting For Life” – Ron Geesin (from As He Stands)
42. “Yes We Can, pt. 1” – Lee Dorsey (from Holy Cow! The Very Best of Lee Dorsey)
43. “Naval Milk Prison” – Lee Ranaldo (from Maelstrom From Drift)
44. “Le Grand Mouille” – Vincent Gemignani (from Modern Pop Percussion)
45. “No Ke Ano Ahiahi” – Medeski, Martin, and Wood (from Combustication)
46. “Blue Hawaii” – David Byrne (from Big Love: Hymnal OST)
47. “Noh-Miso 6” – Kunihara Akyama (from Obscure Tape Music of Japan, v. 2: Music for Puppet Theatre of HITOMI-ZA comp)
48. “Sea Song” – Robert Wyatt (from Rock Bottom)
49. “Unwound” – Ralph White (from Trash Fish)
50. “All For You” – E.T. Mensah and the Tempos (from All For You)
51. “All The Dirt” – Mike Doughty (from Skittish)
52. “Ragtime Nightingale” – David Boeddinghaus and Craig Ventresco (from Crumb OST)
53. “I Feel Like Going Home” – Yo La Tengo (from I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass)
Yo La Tengo at Maxwell’s
29 September 2008
benefit for Neumann Leather Tenants Association
no keyboards
I Feel Like Going Home
Come On Up (The Young Rascals)
Drug Test
Tears Are In Your Eyes
Stockholm Syndrome
Mr. Tough
Big Day Coming
Time Fades Away (Neil Young)
Later in my life, in Venice, long after the sun had set, thanks to the imperceptible echo of a last note of light held indefinitely over the canals as though sustained by some optical pedal, I saw the reflections of the palaces unfurled as if for eternity in an even darker velvet ovver the twilight grayness of the water. One of my dreams was the synthesis of what my imagination had often tried to envisage, during my waking hours, of a particular landscape by the sea and its medieval past. In my sleep I saw a Gothic citadel rising from a sea whose waves were frozen still, as in a stained-glass window. An inlet of the sea divided the town in two; the green water came right up to my feet; on the opposite shore it lapped around an Oriental church, and around houses that already existed in the fourteenth century, so that to move across to them would have been to go backwards through the centuries. (The Guermantes Way, 139-40)
The winners of the division pennants and Wild Card slots are determined by the best winning percentage. In mathematical and actual truth, minute fuck-ups and come-from-behind victories in April count exactly as much as they do during these last, fraught weeks in September. It’s an existential thing, all this drama, coming to appreciate emotionally of what every turn of the game really means, statistically speaking.
Watching the Mets unscrew towards statistical insignificance against the Cubs the other night–hopefully not my last Shea outing, though possibly–I returned bitterly pissed off at the Mets for selling off the last week at Shea for some bullshit VH1-type promotion looking back at the decades and therefore not playing “Meet the Mets.” WTF guys?
“Stephanie Says” – The Velvet Underground (download) (buy)
In the last New Yorker, George Saunders’ merciless Sarah Palin parody, “My Gal,” and Philip Gourevitch’s remarkable dispatch on Alaskan politics, “The State of Sarah Palin,” are fine companions. Under an Obama administration, perhaps they could even marry.
On one hand, Saunders’ insane language games are probably a perfect embodiment of the cabalistic eastern elite that Palin and company often rail against. On the other hand, reading Gourevitch’s piece–for which Palin was interviewed before her VP candidacy–one can’t help but get the impression that Sarah Palin is a Coen brothers character placed on the public stage for the purposes of setting up some cruel, violent prank. Certainly, when she speaks, she sounds like she could be from Fargo. Even more, though, it’s the rhythms, the constant self-interruptions. via Gourevitch:
Palin continued, “Our security detail, when I first got elected, met with us and said, ‘Do you guys got any issues with any threats?’ ” To which Palin replied, “ ‘Yeah, well, by the way, there happens to be—the only threat that I knew of was one of your own troopers.’ And they’re, like, ‘Geez, this doesn’t sound good, you need to go tell your commissioner that.’ So I did. I shared that with the commissioner. So did Todd, and then Todd followed up to say”—at this point, Palin seemed to be quoting her husband: “ ‘We were interviewed back in ’05 before Sarah was even a candidate—what ever happened to that investigation, that interview? We know that the trooper’ ”—Wooten—“ ‘got to see the interview notes; well, we never have, and that’s kind of a scary position for us to be in. We complied with your request to bring you information on this trooper forward, and did we put our family in jeopardy by letting him see the interview notes about the illegal activities?’ ”
Palin insisted that Wooten “did have illegal activities. We witnessed them, and people have come to us with complaints. He Tasered his eleven-year-old stepson. This trooper, he was pulled over for drinking and driving and a witnessed open container in his car, and he did threaten to kill my dad—I heard him—and illegally shot a moose, which is a big darned deal here in Alaska.”
If that doesn’t sound like Jerry Lundegaard reincarnated as an Alaskan governor, then–well–geeze, I just don’t know what to say, Bob. via Saunders:
I know that many times, in my life, while living it, someone would come up and, because of I had good readiness, in terms of how I was wired, when they asked that—whatever they asked—I would just not blink, because, knowing that, if I did blink, or even wink, that is weakness, therefore you can’t, you just don’t. You could, but no—you aren’t.
Later:
Now, let us discuss the Élites. There are two kinds of folks: Élites and Regulars. Why people love Sarah Palin is, she is a Regular. That is also why they love me. She did not go to some Élite Ivy League college, which I also did not. Her and me, actually, did not go to the very same Ivy League school. Although she is younger than me, so therefore she didn’t go there slightly earlier than I didn’t go there. But, had I been younger, we possibly could have not graduated in the exact same class. That would have been fun.
I imagine if Sarah Palin read this–and, especially, Saunders’ glorious conclusion about a moose, which I shan’t give away here–she’d be all WTF? And that’s not a comment on her intelligence, so much as her sensibility. We’re dealing with a language barrier here, I think.
1. “Jungle Drum” – Emiliana Torrini (from Me and Armini)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “The Two O’Clock Spot” – John Baker (from The John Baker Tapes, v. 1)
4. “Tomorrow is A Long Time” – Elvis Presley (from From Nashville to Memphis: The Essential ’60s Masters)
5. “Shake Sugaree” – Elizabeth Cotton (from Shake Sugaree)
6. “Train Leaves Here This Morning” – Gene Clark (from No Other)
7. “The Locusts” – John Baker (from The John Baker Tapes, v. 1)
8. “Crickets” – Akron/Family (from Love is Simple)
9. “September Song” – Willie Nelson (from Stardust)
10. “Jugband 2000” – Jackie O Motherfucker (from Wow/The Magick Fire Music)
11. “Venus” – Proyecto A (from Proyecto A)
12. “Going the Distance” – Menahan Street Band (from Make the Road By Walking)
13. “Anak Jalanan” – Yockie Suryprayogo (from untitled Indonesian cassette mix)
14. “Blues Subtitled No Sense of Wonder” – Gastr Del Sol (from Camoufleur)
15. “These Few Presidents” – Why? (from Almost Live from Eli’s Live Room CD-R)
16. “Vote For Nixon-Lodge” – Clancy Hayes Dixieland Band
17. “2 Under Par Off the Coast of Africa” – Christian Kiefer feat. Tom Carter (from Of Great and Mortal Men: 43 Songs For 43 U.S. Presidencies)
18. “Original Material” – Richard Nixon
19. “Richard Nixon Died Today” – Negativland (from Thigmotactic)
20. “Computers In Business” – John Baker (from The John Baker Tapes, v. 1)
21. “(Tape Composition), Evening Drones, Dusk at Cubist Castle Closing Theme” – Olivia Tremor Control/Black Swan Network (from The Tour EP)
22. “Stephanie Says (1.15.91)” – Lee Ranaldo (from Fifteen Minutes: A Tribute to the Velvet Underground)
23. “Sign of the Times” – Petula Clark
24. “Love Loves to Love Love” – Lulu
25. “Strange Lights” – Deerhunter (from Cryptograms)
26. “Take the Cash (K.A.S.H.)” – Wreckless Eric (from The Wonderful World of Wreckless Eric)
27. “Magnolia” – Apollo Sunshine (from Apollo Sunshine)
28. “I Saw a Hippie Girl on 8th Avnue” – Jeffrey and Jack Lewis (from It’s the Ones Who’ve Cracked That the Light Shines Through)
29. “Love Can Tame The Wild” – The Monks (from Black Monk Time)
30. “Sad and Lonesome” – RANA (from Here in the USA)
31. “You Don’t Know Me” – Richard Manuel (from Whispering Pines: Live at the Getaway)
32. “Telescope” – Tristan Perich
33. “Theme From Ulcerative Colitis” – Yukio Yung (from Valborgmassoafton)
34. “Threnody for the Victims of Louisiana” – Col. Bruce Hampton (ret.) (from Give Thanks to Chank)
35. “QWERTY Waltz” – Boston Typewriter Orchestra (from The Revolution Will Be Typewritten)
36. “Brood X” – Tucker Martine (from Broken-Hearted Dragonflies: Insect Electronica From Southeast Asia)
37. “Rapacite Nocturne” – Camille Sauvage (from Fantasmagories)
38. “Pop Electronique No. 11” – Cecil Leuter (from Pop Electronique)
39. “Pop Electronique No. 8” – Cecil Leuter (from Pop Electronique)
40. “Mating chorus of Southern Leopard Frogs with Cricket Frogs” – Charles Bogert (from Sounds of North American Frogs: The Biological Significance of Voice in Frogs)
41. “Mating call of the Gulf Coast Toad” – Charles Bogert (from Sounds of North American Frogs: The Biological Significance of Voice in Frogs)
42. “The ‘territoriality call’ of the southern race (the Bronze Frog) of the Green Frog” – Charles Bogert (from Sounds of North American Frogs: The Biological Significance of Voice in Frogs)
43. “An Occupation Grooms Me” – Makers of the Dead Travel Fast (from Early Recordings)
44. “Window To Mars” – Elf Power (from In A Cave)
45. “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” – Them
46. “White Winter Hymnal” – Fleet Foxes (from Fleet Foxes)
47. “Think Small” – Tall Dwarfs (from Fork Songs)
48. “Static #1” – Beck (from Radio 1 session)
49. “As We Go Along” – The Monkees (from Head OST)
50. “Can’t Leave Her Behind” – Stephen Malkmus and Lee Ranaldo (from I’m Not There OST)
51. “Visions of Johanna” – Bob Dylan (25 February 1999, Cumberland County Civic Center, Portland, ME)
52. “Rainy Windows” – Bonnie Dobson (from Bonnie Dobson)
53. “That Dream Machine” – Trey Anastasio (from One Man’s Trash)
54. “Anarchy Village” – The Lift Boys (from Anarchy Village/Anarchy Way 12-inch)
55. “Adding Machine” – Arnold Dreyblatt (from Adding Machine)
56. “Lazy Suicide” – Megafaun (from Bury the Square)
57. “Terrapin” – Syd Barrett (from Radio One Sessions)
Went to Shea on Saturday for the lazy doubleheader against the Braves, arriving midway through the first game, and stealing a nice seat in the loge. I’m gonna miss that dump, both for nostalgic reasons and aesthetic ones. Built-in to being a Mets fan–and this, built-in to Shea–is the notion of hangdog tradition.
So, instead of a noble pinstripe continuity of God-like champs from Babe Ruth to Joe DiMaggio to Reggie Jackson, like the Yankees, the Mets’ lineage traces back to something even more basic: the desire for baseball. The official reason given for the team’s 1961 incorporation was the city’s need for another team. What were Dodgers and Giants fans supposed to do when their teams moved west? Root for the Yankees? It didn’t matter if the Mets won. It only mattered that they existed, that there was baseball to attend to. It’s why they could still draw many fans when they lost 120 games in 1962 and why Casey Stengel biographer Robert Creamer could declare the early Mets to be “countercultural” three years before Dylan went electric.
I think all of that is built into Shea, in its eternal Space Age funkiness, built as part of the World’s Fair across the Meadows. It even used to have weird, modernist plates adorning its sides. (I wonder when those disappeared.) At the very least, Shea’s humble funkiness was made even clearer when I headed up to the Bronx with RK & co. to see the Mets crush the Yanks, 11-2. There, I saw the Valley of Monuments (or whatevs) in centerfield, saw the entire bleachers engage in some kind of call-and-response with a Yankee outfielder, who replied by waving at them. I saw the stands erupt into a twinkling storm of popping camera flashes when Hideki Matsui batted. Give or take the “Jose, Jose, Jose” chant and the battered Home Run Apple, Shea has none of that.
But Shea is also Shea. Because the Mets (apparently) aren’t America’s team, terrorists pose no immediate threat to Shea Stadium. Thus, you can bring in backpacks, and don’t have to transfer your book/iPod/hoodie into a plastic bag (a clear bag, as I discovered, when I aided the Enemy by trying to recycle a white one) or check it at the bowling alley across the street. More importantly, at Shea, you can get tickets. Shea Stadium is big. It almost never sells out. There are ushers, sure, but–if you can find the empty seats–you can sit almost anywhere. There are still nights when you can get into the ballpark for $5.
And next year, at CitiField, who knows? There’ll be fewer seats, more luxury boxes, and higher prices. Will there be ushers forcefully guiding people to their assigned spots in every section? More, how will the new stadiums express the differences between going to a Mets game and the feeling of going to a Yankees game? Will there be any?
The time has finally arrived for me to stay up very late.
Should you find yourself awake between the hours of 2 and 6 am EST this Wednesday night/Thursday morning (Sept. 17th/18th), the Frow Show will be filling in for Sue Per on WFMU.
The program will likely include some weird shit from an Indonesian cassette tape my friend Michael hipped me to, some Richard Manuel solo cuts, at least three songs about Richard Nixon, a dignified celebration of the 22nd anniversary of the ’86 Mets’ Eastern Division championship, and three-and-a-half hours of other material. But who’s to say, really?
You can listen live at wfmu.org, 91.1 FM in the NYC area, or in your iTunes under the ‘eclectic’ section.
See you then, I hope.
xo,
Jesse.
Should you not be up then, you’ll be able to hear it here later.
Albums: Shall Noise Upon – Apollo Sunshine (Paste) Fate – Dr. Dog (Paste) All Alone in an Empty House – Lost in the Trees (Indy Week) Indie Weirdo Round Up, featuring: Anamanaguchi, The Lift Boys, Negativland, Sonic Youth with Mats Gustafsson and Merzbow, Space Oddities (JamBands.com)
Print:
o Paste #46 (Best of What’s Next cover): album reviews of Apollo Sunshine, Dirty Laundry compilations, movie reviews of Trouble the Water, Hamlet 2
o September/October Relix (Conor Oberst cover): album reviews of Okkervil River, Christian Kiefer/Matthew Gerken/Jefferson Pitcher, DVD review of Gary Wilson
o Signal to Noise #51 (Concordia Salus! cover): live review of Rhys Chatham
It was getting quite dark on the sad campus. Above the distant, still sadder hills lingered, under a cloud bank, a depth of tortoise-shell sky. The heart-rending lights of Waindellville, throbbing in a fold of those dusky hills, were putting on their usual magic, though actually, as Pnin well knew, the place, when you got there, was merely a row of brick houses, a service station, a skating rink, a supermarket.
Over the summer, I read Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. In places, I underlined. More forthcoming.
At first, he had experienced only the physical quality of the sounds secreted by the instruments. And it had been a keen pleasure when, below the little line of the violin, slender, unyielding, compact, and commanding, he had seen the mass of the piano part all at once struggling to rise in liquid swell, multiform, undivided, smooth, and colliding like the purple tumult of the waves when the moonlight charms them and lowers their pitch by half a tone. (Swann’s Way, 216)
Swann had regarded musical motifs as actual ideas, of another world, of another order, ideas veiled in shadow, unknown, impenetrable to the intelligence, but not for all that less perfectly distinct from one another, unequal among themselves in value and significance. (Swann’s Way, 362)
“As I Went Out One Morning” – Why? (download) (buy)
from Our Unusual Animals, v. 4 7-inch (2008)
Every time I tried to imagine Why? leader Yoni Wolf doing Bob Dylan, as was announced a few months back, my brain started to hurt. It’s not that I thought it would be bad–I didn’t–so much that I just couldn’t conceive of Dylan’s melody parceled by Wolf’s metrics. But, here it is, a 7-inch b-side in Asthmatic Kitty Our Unusual Animals series, and it makes sense, of course: a nice addition to the contemporary Dylan cover canon. It’s an interesting little window into Wolf’s singing in general, too. He manages to fully articulate the melody while creating the illusion that he is speaking, never singing at all. It is casual, even conversational, and all in the annunciation. Sleight-of-hand. Or sleight-of-tongue, I suppose. The arrangement helps immeasurably, shifting the chords with lush authority, and doing much of the work.
o Baseball, meth, and home games. Misleading title. Dude just means pills. Not, like, middle relievers getting cranked and scrubbing the bullpen bench clean with toothbrushes. Still, interesting (and probably correct) theory that I’ve seen floated more informally elsewhere, notably by radio color dudes.
o A solid guide to Sun Ra. Szwed highlights two of my fave Arkestral excursions (1978’s Lanquidity and 1967’s Strange Strings). Looking forward to checking out his other recommendations.
o A gallery of Al Jaffee’s Mad fold-ins. Lovely interface.
o Generic names for soft drinks by county: a map.
o Jim O’Rourke: old-time ballplayer. (Thx, Artis.)
o The Beeb reports that “nearly 500,000 people in developing nations earn a wage making virtual goods in online games.”
o Akron/Family’s Daytrotter session, taped during South by Southwest in March. I’m one of the auxilary chanters/finger-snappers/pot-bangers. Great sound quality.
“What Kind of Friend Is This?” – Stephen Malkmus and Lee Ranaldo (download) (buy)
from I’m Not There OST (iTunes-only) (2007)
“Bessie Smith” (live) – The Crust Brothers (download) (buy)
from Marquee Mark (1999)
“Visions of Johanna” – Lee Ranaldo (download) (buy)
from Outlaw Blues, v. 2 (1993)
“Goin’ To Acapulco” – Bob Dylan and The Band (download) (buy)
from The Basement Tapes (1967/1975)
(files expire September 9th)
This is an expanded version of my October 2007 Paste profile of I’m Not There director Todd Haynes, intended for the web, but which somehow never made it there. A year later, I still love the movie, maybe even more. Though, I suppose, I’m also the target audience. Of all the things the film did, it reintroduced The Basement Tapes to me–the official, cleaned-up two-disc version–as a concept album about running away to a weird, self-isolating internal place.
And some INT-related tunes to go with: an iTunes-only Stephen Malkmus/Lee Ranaldo cover of “What Kind of Friend Is This?” (from the ’66 hotel room tape) left off the official soundtrack, Malkmus’s piss-take version of The Basement Tapes‘ Band-penned “Bessie Smith” with Seattle’s Silkworm live in ’97, Ranaldo’s reading of “Visions of Johanna” from 1993’s Outlaw Blues, v. 2 compilation (with Mike Watt, Steve Shelley, and the late Robert Quine), and–finally–the Dylan version of “Goin’ To Acapulco,” pretty much the theme song for my summer.
***
The Thick, Wild Mercurial Movie: Todd Haynes and the Weirdness of Bob Dylan
by Jesse Jarnow
(originally published in shorter form in Paste #38)
Todd Haynes is affable, enthusiastic, and forthcoming — in other words, the complete opposite of Bob Dylan, the subject of the 46-year old director’s recently released I’m Not There. This, of course, does not mean that the six different Bob Dylans that occupy his film’s non-linear plot (none of which is named ‘Bob Dylan’) and two-plus-hour running time are any easier to grok than Dylan’s work, nor — for that matter — any less dense with magpies’ bags of allusion and theft. Haynes is just more willing to talk about his than Dylan.
“Ray Charles’ music couldn’t be further from Johnny Cash’s, so why put them in the same-shaped box?” asks the former semiotics major, who rendered Karen Carpenter’s anorexic demise with Barbie dolls in 1987’s Superstar. Though he expresses admiration for Ray, Haynes says, “Dylan is more like dropping acid than reading a Cliff’s Notes, and that should be true for all these artists at one level or another, if it’s possible to find a cinematic language to get to the core of what their music is about.
“All biopics combine fact and fiction, and this one does it, but lets you in on the process,” continues Haynes, who turned David Bowie into Brian Slade in 1998’s Velvet Goldmine. “You know [Dylan] wasn’t really a black kid who called himself Woody Guthrie” — as sweet-voiced newcomer Marcus Carl Franklin does in the film — “so then you have to think ‘why are they doing it this way?’ That’s saying something about what Dylan was at this time.
“What was so remarkable is the unstated joke in all the accounts of him is how none of these unbelievable tales of his past made any calculable sense to anybody listening, but the sheer performance was so compelling that no one cared. That idea, of projecting yourself so passionately that nobody added it all up, I thought to take that one step further, and make the joke a visual joke where he’s also a black kid and nobody mentions his color through the whole time.”
***
Todd Haynes has never met Bob Dylan, though — in the fall of 2000 — the songwriter approved a two-page proposal titled “Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan” which quoted French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud and declared a “strategy” of “refraction, not condensation.” Haynes’ Dylans are amnesiacs all, Cate Blanchett’s thin, wild Jude Quinn trapped in a lush Felliniesque black-and-white and unable to reach Richard Gere’s heavy-handed Billy, exiled in Riddle, a town comprised of Dylan’s characters and indebted to Greil Marcus’s Old Weird America and Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (in which Dylan appeared).
For all of its flaws, and it has many, it is obvious that Haynes is a stone Dylan freak, a fact that lends a certain charisma to the proceedings. He gets Dylan right, to the point where one could imagine a mash-up integrating I’m Not There with sequences from 1978’s Renaldo and Clara and 2003’s Masked & Anonymous, Dylan’s own garbled autobiopics. As an anthology of myths fashioned from interviews, liner notes, song lyrics and hearsay, I’m Not There might be daunting to non-fetishists, but it’s exactly this half-knowledge that Haynes wants to play from.
“People probably know more about Dylan than they know they know,” Haynes argues. “Whether it’s songs that we grew up singing and thinking ‘was that a traditional or did somebody write that?’ to literal things like ‘right, there was a crash! That sounds right!’ or how that echoes James Dean’s crash. And that’s fine. That’s actually so correct to see a repercussion of events in these very self-conscious anti-heroes that they themselves were the key architects of.”
For all of its shattered intentions, I’m Not There remains a series of a storylines, each character driven by his own boundaries, personal and cinematic. Some, like Blanchett’s Jude, ring with enough emotion to keep the runes of Dylan’s cryptic life aligned. Others are kind of hilarious, like Ben Whishaw’s Zoolander-like reading of the weary Dont Look Back-era press conference surrealism.
“I’m a consumer of biopics,” Haynes says, “and I think mostly what they offer as their raison d’être, and it’s a good enough one, is an extraordinary vehicle for performances, where an actor gives you something unique to bowl you over or frustrate you. That’s true for all those films. The performance Sissy Spacek gives in Coal Miner’s Daughter is one of the most astounding performances on film and makes whatever limitations the genre has, the formula has, pale at the power of that extraordinary performance.” But even if it is a good enough reason to exist, Haynes has his sights aimed much higher.
Like Dylan’s catalogue, I’m Not There frustrates. As Haynes points out, though, as experimental as it might be, it does deliver the “hit songs, the hit moments.” It gives enough of the songwriter that it makes perfect sense to talk about the film in the same breath as Martin Scorsese’s equally flawed No Direction Home, though in many ways the two semi-official features are opposites — Scorcese’s the Approved Baby Boomer Myth, Haynes’s a more gleefully modern and imploding deconstruction.
“He’s yours,” the Weavers’ Ronnie Gilbert introduced Dylan onstage at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, and he has been for over 40 years now. While Dylan might miss himself, as he suggested in his 2004 autobiography Chronicles, his listeners probably don’t. One can keep discovering bootlegs, session tapes, outtakes, rehearsals, film clips, interviews and miles of other musical arcana from a functionally infinite body of work, all capable of yielding something seemingly new.
I’m Not There does exactly this, its name calling attention to one of the great, lost basement tape ballads recorded with The Band in 1967. The film plays by Dylan’s rules and is enjoyable for many of the same reasons his music is. Finding the real Bob Dylan isn’t the point. There’s probably a song or two about that. “It’s not all in there,” Haynes says. “It’s not all there.”
1. “Waves of Bark and Light” – The Circulatory System (from The Circulatory System)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “For Every Field There’s A Mole” – Bonnie Prince Billy (from Lie Down in the Light
4. “The Warmth of the Sun” – The Beach Boys feat. Willie Nelson (from Stars and Stripes, v. 1)
5. “Sun Spots” – Best of Seth (from Sun)
6. “The Mermaid Angeline” – Apollo Sunshine (from Shall Noise Upon)
7. “I Wish It Would Rain” – The Cougars (from Jamaica to Toronto: Soul, Funk, and Reggae, 1967-1974)
8. “Underground Antes De Primeira Hora” – Quarteto Em Cy (from Quarteto Em Cy (1972)
9. “4” – Greg Davis (from 14 Locations Along Hunter Creek)
10. “No. 15” – Roger Roger (from Space Oddities: A Collection of Rare European Library Grooves, 1975-1984)
11. “Maria Bethania” – Caetano Veloso (from Caetano Veloso (1971)
12. “Love (It’s Been So Long)” – Frankie and Robert (from Eccentric Soul: The Tragar and Note Labels)
13. “Everybody Suffering” – Laurel Aitken (from Woppi King)
14. “Barack Obama” – (from Do You Smell What Barack Is Cooking?)
15. “Electric Music and the Summer People” – Beck (from Cold Brains EP)
16. “Holiday Road” – Lindsey Buckingham (from National Lampoon’s Vacation OST)
17. “Miami Ice” – Icy Demons (from Miami Ice)
18. “Kim Smoltz” – Ween (from The Mollusk demos)
19. “Crazy Fingers” – Grateful Dead (from Blues For Allah)
Mr. Tough (with horns)
C’mon and Swim > (Bobby Freeman) (with horns)
Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind
Stockholm Syndrome
Pablo and Andrea
The Weakest Part
Somebody’s In Love (Sun Ra)
Cherry Chapstick
Artificial Heart
Moby Octopad (with horns & “Easley makes the turn…” lyrics)
Watch Out For Me, Ronnie
Tom Courtenay
Blue Line Swinger
*(encore)*
Bad Politics (Dead C) (with horns & Titus Andronicus)
Where Eagles Dare (The Misfits) (with Titus Andronicus)
Sorry the Frow Show has been absent for the bulk of the summer, but it’s all groovy, since we were just waiting to be able to announce the happiest of happiests in radioland: the Frow Show is moving to WFMU! (Let me just add two more exclamation points to demonstrate how honored and psyched I am: !!)
It’s gonna be fairly irregular for starters, probably fill-ins at odd hours. But that’s totally rad, too, ’cause FMU are real good about getting their shows to people who don’t occupy the same physical or linear space as their studio in Jersey City. All future Frow Shows will thus be available at: http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/jj (and, once I get comfortable, I’ll hopefully get podcasts going as an option again, too)
I begin with an episode this Saturday, 8/23, as part of The Listener Hour, from 9 am – 10 am.
Frow Show announcements will be made here, and via this handy Google mailing list. Do sign up!
1. “Hello, Goodbye” – The Beatles (from Magical Mystery Tour)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “What Am I Doing HanginRound?” – The Monkees (from Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.)
4. “Sunshine Superman” – Donovan (from Sunshine Superman)
5. “This Is It” – Lothar and the Hand People (from Presenting…)
6. “Groovy Girls Make Love at the Beach” – Gary Wilson (from You Think You Really Know Me)
7. “Bessie Smith” – The Crust Brothers (from The Crust Brothers)
8. “U.S. Millie” – Theoretical Girls (from Theoretical Girls)
9. “Rory Rides Me Raw” – The Vaselines (from The Way of the Vaselines)
10. “Rapacite Nocturne” – Camille Sauvage (from Fantasmagories)
11. “Strung Out Deeper Than The Night” – Les Rallizes Denudes (from Heavier Than A Death in the Family)
12. “Hello, Goodbye reprise” – The Beatles (from Magical Mystery Tour)
“Jungle Drum” – Emiliana Torrini (sorry, nastygrammed by Rough Trade–first time ever!–despite the fact that this is the album’s single! WTF? See below. Good promotion, dudes.)
from Me and Armini (Rough Trade) (out 9/8)
(file expires August 25th)
I have a silly crush on this song. It’s not particularly complicated, but at least one–if not both–of the chorus’s twin hooks were stuck in my head for better parts of a glorious New York weekend. There are all kinds of little appeals: Emiliana Torrini’s ESL cuteness, the kitschy escapism of drums in the jungle, the perky electro groove, the soaring title refrain, and–of course–the onomatopoeic thump of Torrini excitedly sounding a cartoon heart-pulse. The modulation for the final chorus is rather pleasant, too. It feels kind of like a reduced version of Björk or MIA’s foreign otherness: a whiff of the weird to propel it, but–unlike those two–hardly challenging pop’s international, institutional grammar. Who cares, really? It’s just a silly crush.
o A previously unpublished short story, “The Night Before I Got Home,” will be featured in the Real Magicalism comics/fiction anthology, edited by James Burns.
o A 2003 interview with Hunter S. Thompson, originally in Relix, was reprinted in Conversations with Hunter S. Thompson, edited by Beef Torrey and Kevin Simonson, published by the University Press of Mississippi.
o A 2001 interview with Bob Weir, a 2003 interview with Mike Doughty, and a 2004 interview with Lou Reed (the latter two in different forms than originally printed) are featured in Song: The World’s Best Songwriters on Creating the Music that Moves Us, published by Writers Digest Books.
o New biographical essays on Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, and David Bowie are featured in the Greenwood Icons edition, Icons of Rock, published by Greenwood Press.
o New biographical essays on Prince and Stevie Wonder are featured in the Greenwood Icons edition, Icons of R&B and Soul, published by Greenwood Press.
o Educational book, Presidents: The Race for the White House, illustrated by Scott Peck, published by innovativeKids, edited by Russell Kahn (not necessarily recommended for anybody above, oh, the third grade — though it does come with a nifty jigsaw puzzle)
“Rory Rides Me Raw” – The Vaselines (download) (buy)
from Son of a Gun EP (1987)
(file expires August 12th)
It’s rare that indie rock is straight dirty. Romantic, sure. Coy, frequently. Sexy, almost never. And, no two ways about it, the Vaselines’ “Rory Rides Me Raw” ain’t about horses, despite the lyrics about galloping through the morning dew. Oddly, I think it’s the just-off double-tracked guitars that add to this impression as much as the lyrics, as if the singer knowing that “I’m gonna do it soon” is making it a bit hard to focus.
Spent some time traveling over the past few days. Through the TSA lines (and especially after they confiscated a nifty swag water bottle I’d gotten), elitist airline terminals (at Delta at JFK, once site of Pan Am’s utopian glass Worldport, coach customers wait in makeshift screening areas, and funnel through a series of endless hallways before only to be spat out at the backdoor of the first class entrance), and down Utah highways, past gas stations (where prices make road-trips for fun or friendship both morally and economically unfeasible), I thought pretty much non-stop of Hunter S. Thompson’s vision of 9/11.
It was the death of fun, unreeling right in front of us, unraveling, withering, collapsing, draining away in the darkness like a handful of stolen mercury. Yep, the silver stuff goes suddenly, leaving only a glaze of poison on the skin. (Kingdom of Fear, 160.)
“Turn On Your Lovelight” – Akron/Family (download)
recorded 11/07, UK
My feature, “How Jerry Got Hip (Again),” appears in the current issue of Relix.
Download an accompanying mp3 mix here.
Dead-influenced tunes:
“Ed Is A Portal” – Akron/Family (from Love is Simple)
“Blessing Force” – Akron/Family (from Meek Warrior)
“Lazy Suicide” – Megafaun (from Bury the Square)
“Centermost” – Greg Davis (from Somnia)
“Peacebone” – Animal Collective (from Peacebone)
“Jugband 2000” – Jackie O Motherfucker (from Wow/The Magick Fire Music)
“For Every Field There’s A Mole” – Bonnie “Prince” Billy (from Lie Down in the Light)
“The Party’s Crashing Me” – Of Montreal (from The Sunlandic Twins)
“Preteen Weaponry, part 1” – Oneida (from Preteen Weaponry)
“The Diamond Sea” – Sonic Youth (from Washing Machine)
Dead covers:
“Stella Blue” (live) – Ween
“Brokedown Palace” – Bonnie “Prince” Billy (from Pebbles and Ripples)
“Cream Puff War” – Oneida (from Heads Ain’t Ready 7-inch)
“Turn On Your Lovelight” (live) – Akron/Family (11/2007 UK)
“We Bid You Goodnight” (live) – Animal Collective
“Shakedown Street” (live) – Kevin Barnes (15 March 2008 South by Southwest)
“Ripple” (live) – Yo La Tengo (19 October 2007 Landmark Theater)
“Attics of My Life” – Megafaun (29 April 2008 Union Pool)
“Franklin’s Tower” – Meat Puppets (from Meat Puppets I bonus)
Dead references:
“I Saw A Hippie Girl on 8th Ave” – Jeffrey Lewis (from It’s The Ones Who’ve Cracked That the Light Shines Through)
“Drug Test” – Yo La Tengo (from President Yo La Tengo EP)
“So Long Jerry” – Ween (from 12 Golden Country Greats sessions)
Like a slacker, I totally spaced on mentioning that I was going to be a guest on Gary Lambert and David Gans’ Tales from the Golden Road show on Sirius radio on Sunday afternoon, along with my pal Barry Smolin and journalist Denise Sullivan.
So, uh, sorry.
If you happen to read this before 9 am EST on Monday, and want to hear more musings related to my Relix story, “How Jerry Got Hip (Again),” and some random call-ins that didn’t have much to do with it, that’s when the show will re-run.
Sorry for the lack of updates lately. Y’know: life/summer, etc..
Articles/profiles: James Brown? James Brown!, on the James Brown auction at Christie’s (Village Voice blog) Emergent: Todd Rohal, interview with Guatemalan Handshake director (Paste) Repeater, James Blackshaw profile (PaperThinWalls.com)
Books: Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex edited by Ellen Sussman (San Francisco Chronicle) Sonic Youth books: Goodbye 20th Century by David Browne, Psychic Confusion by Stevie Chick, and The Empty Page edited by Peter Wild (London Times)
Songs:
“Black Rice” – Women (PaperThinWalls.com)
“Veins to the Sky” – Alexander Tucker (PaperThinWalls.com)
Albums: Indie-Weirdo Round-Up, featuring: African Scream Contest, Animal Collective mixomixes, Colin Meloy, Yeti v. 5, John Zorn (JamBands.com) Indie-Weirdo Round-Up, featuring: James Blackshaw, Eric Chenaux, Andy Votel Presents Brazilika, Do You Smell What Barack is Cooking? (JamBands.com)
Print:
o August Relix (Jerry Garcia cover): cover feature “How Jerry Got Hip Again” (feat. Akron/Family, Megafaun, Greg Davis, Animal Collective, Sonic Youth, Will Oldham, Black Flag, Earth), album reviews of Beck, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Mike Gordon, Inara George with Van Dyke Parks, The Music Tapes, Brian Wilson, Patti Smith and Kevin Shields, Karen Dalton.
o Paste #45: profiles of CSS and Roel Wouters, album review of Brazil Classics at 20.
“Smile, part 1 (Tim Smolen mix)” – The Beach Boys (download)
Lewis Shiner’s Glimpses — which I discovered via a review in the back pages of (I think) Guitar for the Practicing Musician — was how I first heard of the Beach Boys’ Smile, which I wouldn’t hear for another eight years after the book’s publication. Written at the tale-end of the ‘zine/cassette era, Glimpses‘ sci-fi reconstructions of lost albums comes from an age when lost albums were more rumors than downloadable fact. Shiner’s narrator, an audio repairman named Ray Shackleford, hangs out with Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, but it’s his time with Brian Wilson that resonated with me most. Here, Ray arrives at Brian’s Laurel Way home in early December 1966.
The decor was schizophrenic: plaid drapes and pole lamps and heavy Spanish furniture, mixed with Lava Lites and orange-and-blue wallpaper and campy religious icons. It was all I could do not to rub the curtains between my thumb and forefinger, or pocket an ashtray for a souvenir.
Downstairs there were glass doors that led to the pool. A slide curved down to it from the roof of the house. In the steam from the pool, I smelled chlorine, perfume, cut grass. Of the four people who splashed around in the shallow end my attention went to Brian right away. First off because he was so big, six four and really starting to put on weight. There in his baggy trunks, as he straddled a child’s inflatable horse and almost sank it, he seemed larger than life.
Running at the Sunshine is a 2002-2003 collaboration between composer Matthew Van Brink, choreographer Judith Chaffee, and myself. It’s based on the Sunshine Motel, the last remaining flophouse on the Bowery. I’d often walk by en route from the Bowery Ballroom to San Loco and imagine life within. (Recently a cube of white light was built on the formerly vacant lot next door.)
Matt posted a video of Sunshine‘s debut performance at the Huntington Theater at Boston University on February 20, 2003:
Dr. Tuttledge expresses his thanks to MVB for this glorious example of outrageous political racketeering. And though we here at the Ordovician archives cannot endorse 419 scams or their perpetrators, we greatly appreciate Senator Obama’s willingness to engage in contemporary mediums. His understanding of the form is absolutely elegant.
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The flowers wilted overnight, shriveling from a Technicolor fanfare to something more in line with the muted browns of the rest of the room. Heidi was gone, and an early fall storm battered the ocean-side door. I burrowed under the blankets and thought of Dani, of the company that sent her to Tokyo to investigate “possibilities,” to look pretty with prospectuses, and how she might move among the steam and neon and ringtones and salarymen. Later, if I didn’t check out, she would fill the room again, absorb me in her drama via her company-issued calling cards. The wifi was back. I ignored my email and drifted in and out of sleep. Eventually, I got out of bed and pulled on my pants. I wondered how I could express the notion of time travel to my professor, that I’d been there, and knew what he was feeling, by the water, his dying father, and young beautiful friend, George Peabody. I put on my shoes and left the flowers for the maid. [END]
Her name was Heidi and I could still see her bikini under her grey tee-shirt. She was from a few towns inland. “Me and Gene walked there once,” Peabody said. Heidi giggled. “How long did that take?” she asked. “Oh, a day maybe,” Peabody replied, accepting another beer from the chief Angel and nodding at him. “Why did you do it?” she asked. “The territory,” Peabody replied. “Had to know it.” One of the baymen reported the sick Angel in the bathroom, which broke up the card game as the bikers helped their drunken brother to his feet. She put her weight on one foot, leaning towards me. Up close, she seemed older, in her early 30s maybe. “I heard the music down the hall,” she said. “And then this little man came walking by when I opened the door.” “What little man?” I asked. “Not, like, a midget. In suspenders. White tee-shirt.” “Never saw him,” I said. She looked around. “Talked just like Peabody. Yeah, he’s gone now.” So was almost everybody, the party disassembled around us. Peabody tapped me. As I turned around, I could see his shoulders sink. “Mmm,” he said. “It’s there,” he said, spirit escaping. “Just… don’t worry about it.” He was gone and Heidi and I lay down on the bed.
It was a hipster’s musicality: a dry, bright singsong punctuated by occasional ironic drawls to slow the tempo. I’d heard it for hours, on every extant tape of Harrison. “What’s it there?” Peabody asked once more, arm around me again, in the voice he’d preserved. “Um, pretty alright,” I answered. His fingers gripped my shoulder once and let go. He looked disappointed. “S’okay,” he said in his dead friend’s voice and his face softened. When he stood upright, I realized he hadn’t been previously. He was only 18 when he met Harrison, who was then nearing 50. “Listen, don’t mind any of this,” he said, suddenly lucid and grinning. “It’s just a party, that’s all. You know what I mean. Who has time for all that?” He closed his smile, like a ghost in a corn field, and took of up three lines of conversation at once: one with the card players, one with a distant cousin, and one with the girl I’d seen earlier in the bikini. She took a step towards us as a Fire Angel staggered towards the bathroom.
I wondered briefly what the night manager might think, and only then could I envision it as a series of comic events, of characters trooping by, past his ice machine, to room 302, around the back and upstairs, my room. Could there possibly be anything more exciting going on in the seaside town? The question wasn’t so much conceited as it was a way of marveling at Peabody’s ability to make this coastal outpost feel like a happening place. I pushed myself off the wall and tried to find Peabody, who was talking to a florist, just arrived with a psychedelic bouquet he positioned next to the mirror. Peabody put his arm around me. “What’s it there?” he asked, happily, a definite question. When I didn’t answer, he smiled and nodded slowly, as if prompting me. “C’mon, what’s it there?” he asked again. As he repeated the phrase, the intonation the same, it reminded me of a recording of Harrison reading at NYU just before returning to his father. Peabody suddenly looked much younger as he leaned back and laughed against the lamp, which had somehow acquired a gypsy shawl and was shining silver moonlight over the stucco ceiling.
Peabody’s drunken sway made sense when the party hit critical mass, symmetrically lilting to the rhythm of the bebop. He was a ripple at the center of two dozen other ripples, people who’d found their way into the motel room. There were at least five baymen, their eyes becoming more resilient as the evening grew. One, named Ricky Schmidt, lectured on the history of tailpipe design in American cars. Another pair, Corey Lagasse and Rodney Santini, led a card game at the small, lacquered table with four members of the Fire Angels, a local motorcycle club (of which Santini was also a member). They’d been in the town for nearly 40 years — a father and a son were present, the Smiths, their hairlines the same, the curvature of the younger’s back noticeably straighter. I was mildly drunk, but found myself unable to sway as gracefully as Peabody. Instead, I confined myself to one wall, and let the salon of local color circulate around me. I occasionally spotted Peabody ricocheting between conversations, though I was unable to hear any myself. I tried to move towards him.
1. “Hershey’s Miniatures” – Corn Mo (from I Hope You Win)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “666: The Coming of the New World Government” – Apollo Sunshine (from Noise Shall Upon)
4. “Black Rice” – Women (from Women)
5. “I Wanna Be A Girl” – King Khan and His Shrines (from What Is?!)
6. “Girl With the Vagina Made of Glass” – The Billy Nayer Show (from American Astronaut OST)
7. “Bexxlaws (Chipsploitation remix)” – Bud Melvin (from Rock the Plastic Like A Man compilation)
8. “Djanfa Magni” – Tidian Kone and Orchestre Poly-Rythmo (from African Scream Contest: Raw and Psychedelic Afro Sounds from Benin and Togo ’70s)
9. “Happy” – The Rolling Stones (from Nasty Music)
10. “Guitar Trio (1977)” – Rhys Chatham (from A Rhys Chatham Compendium)
11. “Beloved Binge” – Megafaun (from Impala Eardrums compilation)
12. “Green Rocky Road” – Karen Dalton (from Green Rocky Road)
13. “Temple Bells” – various (from Buddhist Drums, Bells, Chants compilation)
14. “Waiting For the Dawn To Break” – The Leapyear (from AUX compilation)
15. “Sun Spots” – Best of Seth (from Sun)
16. “The Warmth of the Sun” – The Beach Boys with Willie Nelson – (from Stars and Stripes, v. 1)
17. “Mean Old World” – Sam Cooke
The first to arrive was Walter Manteau, a local artist who gave Peabody rides home, up the soft incline to his house near town, when Peabody was too drunk. Manteau had a wife and a child. We chatted pleasantly, though he didn’t stay very long. He was closer to my age than Peabody’s. “He has these moments of profound lucidity,” Manteau said. “Once, I had a painting with me, and he looked at it. This was on a day when he wasn’t making much sense. He told me, ‘if you put that on TV, it would be like… reality.'” I looked at Peabody, who was fiddling with the record player he’d carried in earlier, finally getting it playing. He put on Charlie Parker. He was on his fourth or fifth beer, and was starting to tilt mildly when he walked. I wondered if I would see that side of him. “You think he really knew Harrison?” Manteau asked me. I was somewhat taken aback. Manteau backpedaled. “I’ve heard some crazy stuff come out of his mouth, that’s all,” he said. Manteau excused himself. He had to get home. It was nearing midnight when I stopped wondering when the party would start.
I had a totally normal childhood. There was the time I ran into Stonehenge. Knocked myself out. I have no memory of this, of course, but it became something of a family joke, in as much as my father sometimes reminds me that this is something I once did.
The other family joke to come out of our trip to England in 1982, when I was three, is the line (spoken in a Monty Pythonesque chirp) “I’m sorry, sir, but can’t you film Stone’enge someplace else?” to be repeated whenever an event is threatened by inclement weather.
Its originator was a British weather services operator whom my father had asked for the conditions at the mythological site, where he was to shoot an experimental film titled Celestial Navigation. The result, as John Luther Schofill of the Experimental Film Coalition would proclaim, “captures, first person, the experience of being, in the words of Buckminster Fuller, ‘a passenger on Spaceship Earth.'”
To me, the filmmaking only meant chaos in the weeks leading up to our departure, which included setting up Dad’s high school buddy from Brooklyn, Paul, as a housesitter in our Long Island home. His duties included feeding the cats and operating the time lapse cameras tracking shadows across Dad’s attic studio, while Dad marked similar solar-seasonal changes across the ocean. “These are the means by which space describes its meanings,” Dad’s reverb-laden voice explains in the narration. “Touch, sight, and the echoes of distant walls.”
More exciting to me was the animation he did for Sesame Street and other PBS programs. On occasion, I even got to be in them, making my hip-hop debut in a series of number raps. (Yeah, they’re on YouTube.) Stuff from around the house turned up regularly — a toy train chugging with tumbleweeds across the frame, or even our cat, Banana, appearing in Real Cat Drinks Milk.
I wish I could say that being an animator’s son made me think all animation came from mysterious attic studios filled with zoetropes and homemade orrerys, or that any old toy could lurch into magical movement like a Michel Gondry movie, but this is not the case. I knew the harsh realities of children’s television.
Once, Dad brought me to the Sesame Street set (a place he rarely ventured), then located in Manhattan. Where I once imagined winding catacombs in the depths of Oscar’s garbage can, I saw a tangle of wires. Later, I saw Snuffalapagous hanging on the wall. True story. There are pictures of me sitting on the set’s central stoop, looking quietly mortified.
A parade of undergrad assistants became family friends. College students, perhaps, they were also filmmakers in their own right, members of a very real community, whom Dad was, in a sense, welcoming in. We attended their weddings, went on family trips with them.
In Santa Cruz, we stayed with another of Dad’s friends at a synagogue-turned-studio purchased with money made animating Luke Skywalker’s targeting computer in Star Wars. Below a mantel displaying chunks of the original Death Star, we watched a video of folk collector Harry Smith’s painted-on-film abstractions. In Boston, we visited Manhattan Project physicist (turned humanist peacenik) Philip Morrison and his equally brillaint wife Phyllis, who Dad worked with on their 1987 PBS series, Ring of Truth.
Had I been more conscious, I might’ve observed that culture — be it abstract animation or atom bombs or 4,000-year old stone calenders — isn’t a thing so much as it is people. But sometimes that can be hard to notice when art is life and life is art (and science and literature and history) and all are rushing towards you in the shape of monoliths in the British countryside near Salisbury.
Indeed, our trip abroad — partly underwritten by an American Film Institute grant — was worked into a family vacation with my parents, grandmother, aunt, uncle, and two cousins. After several days, crappy weather or no, Dad befriended the guards at Stonehenge. When Mom and I arrived, he asked if I could touch the plinths. The guard let me through.
At which point — perhaps drawn by the ancient power of the rocks — I apparently charged, knocked myself out, and made a family memory just as worthwhile as any experimental film, not to mention concisely answering the question of why one can’t shoot Stonehenge someplace else. If only I remembered it.
Articles/profiles:
the-tinkerer, 464952,22.html”>Tristan Perich: The Tinkerer (Village Voice) The Spirit of Radio, long-ass WFMU 50th anniversary profile (Signal To Noise) The Record Store: A Good Thing, blurblets on Other Music and Turntable Lab. (Paste)
Columns, etc.: BRAIN TUBA: Morgan the Lion, no. 1 BRAIN TUBA: Morgan the Lion, no. 2
Print:
o Paste #44 (My Morning Jacket cover): record store blurblets (Other Music, Turntable Lab), album reviews of Dr. Dog, Coldplay, Mudhoney, book review of Haruki Murakami, film review of My Winnipeg, DVD reviews of The Guatemalan Handshake, Persepolis (see: Paste digital edition)
o July Relix (Dr. Dog cover): album reviews of Sound Tribe Sector 9, The Fiery Furnaces, Tony Allen remixes, Dennis Wilson, Daptone anthology
o Signal to Noise #50 (Our Favorite Things cover): WFMU feature
The last email I got before the motel’s wifi network mysteriously blinked out was from my thesis advisor, asking why I hadn’t responded to his previous message. “Need more proof that Harrison was happy in later years,” he’d written. “Presently insubstantial, unacceptable.” I stared at the blank reply screen and gave up. I thought about calling Dani and decided against it. She could call me. I looked around the room and wondered what else I should do. I put my bags in the closet, on a shelf, and waited for Peabody. It was almost 10 when he arrived. He stood at the foot of the band with his hands on his hips and cocked his head slightly. Turning only his face, he glanced around the room, taking in its contents. He reminded me of a hitman. Though he seemed ancient to me, I realized–watching him–that when Peabody had spent time with Harrison, he was 20 to the former novelist’s 40. He put his fingers to his chin, and I tried to imagine him genuinely boyish, instead of Peabody’s alcohol-hardened perversion. “Alright,” he said quietly. “This can do. Help me unload the car.”
She was by the motel pool–the indoor one–in wide sunglasses and a bikini the color of the chlorine water. She listened to a yellow walkman with headphones and, other than her tapping foot, might’ve been asleep. It was nice out. Perhaps not bikini weather, but certainly pleasant enough for a walk on the beach. I thought about inviting her to the party that Peabody was apparently organizing in my room. He’d told me to get seven bags of ice, tomato juice, lemons, Tabasco, and candles. He’d do the rest. I’d told Dani about the party, too, though not the girl. Not that I knew Dani too well, trans-Pacific conversations or no, but still. Besides, inviting poolside sirens to parties thrown by chronically unemployed 60somethings in New England hotels wasn’t something I did lightly, or–really–at all. Peabody was in the main texts about Eugene Harrison, but never as more than a footnote from the last, lost years. A looming figure in the unfinished sheaf of poems from ’68–he’d had a few published himself–nobody had yet interviewed him, and discovering that he was still alive was something of a surprise. “Better read than dead/God of mythic dance worlds,” is how Harrison himself put it. “You get the fucking ice yet?” Peabody squawked from the phone, which had been mysteriously replaced with a rotary model.
“My old man knew his old man,” Peabody said, nodding up the stairs, towards his sleeping father, who we’d helped from the toilet and back to bed. “Didn’t grow up together. Only showed up, shit, sometime after his dad. Didn’t know he was a writer at first. I know he had a reputation in the city for knowing everybody, but he pretty much kept to himself out here. Old man fit right in, though.” Peabody’s cheeks had hardened into a permanent softness, like they’d bloated outwards at a young age and solidified before worry lines could arrive. He sipped a Bud. It was past dinnertime. Every time I asked him a question, he stared suspiciously at my digital recorder on the table between us. He forgot it as soon as he started to talk, but didn’t offer anything I didn’t already know: Gene had stopped writing after his arrival, and became an enraged, alcoholic Goldwater supporter, like the ailing father he’d come to take care for. He tried to explain the explosion of emotion when Gene, the self-exiled writer, came into the bar, what the night would turn into. Peabody saw my disappointment, and suddenly looked very old. “Tell you what,” he said, smiling. “I’ll get something together for you.” He stood up. “For you,” he repeated.
Peabody’s living room was filled with books, but no Peabody. “Door’s open,” he told me on the phone. “Shoulda come in before.” Detective novels and sci-fi paperbacks were next to the disintegrating gray couch, but also Balzac, Proust, Blake. The walls were paneled with a dark, fake wood that had muted to a sickly tan. Moldy but undusty LPs leaned against a turntable set on a low olive bookshelf. A bouquet of red helium balloons–two or three popped, another half-dozen intact–floated in one corner. Upstairs, there was water running. “Hello?” I shouted tentatively. To my left, a counter gave way to a kitchen, three of the four cabinets open. I could see another three balloons straining to escape from inside one. I stepped towards the stairs at the back of the room. Boards creaked. “Hello?” I shouted again, and listened. There was a shout on the second floor. I walked upstairs. “Yes?” I replied. “Come in here and help me,” a voice returned. On the right, an open bathroom door revealed two men, old and older, the former attempting to the lift the latter from the toilet. The older man grinned stupidly, his wrinkled features recoiling to the guileless guilt of a small child.
1. “Give Booze A Chance” – Bonzo Dog Band (Tadpoles outtake)
2. “Elvis is Everywhere” – Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper (from Bo-Day-Shus!!!)
3. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
4. “Big Ideas (Don’t Get Any)” (James Watson dot matrix remix) – Radiohead (via YouTube)
5. “Fallslake” – Nobukazu Takemura (from 10th)
6. “Sad, Sad, Sad” – Arms (from Kids Aflame)
7. “Just One Girl” – The Knickerbockers (from Chapel in the Fields 7-inch)
8. “Mama You’ve Been On My Mind” – Lee Ranaldo (from Outlaw Blues: A Tribute To Bob Dylan compilation)
9. “Stephanie Says” – Lee Ranaldo (from Fifteen Minutes: A Tribute to the Velvet Underground)
10. “Viola Lee Blues” – The Grateful Dead (recorded 3 September 1967, Rio Nido, CA)
11. “I’ll Be on the Water” – Akron/Family (from Akron/Family)
12. “Nothing’s Going To Happen” – Tall Dwarfs (from That’s The Short & Long Of It)
The motel was on the water, but had two pools anyway — one on the edge of the parking lot, one inside, just off the lobby — both devoid of swimmers. Dani filled my room with her room while I waited for Peabody to wake. Hers was in Tokyo, landlocked amid others, mid-block. I lay back on the starched bedspread and imagined as she described it. It was like a spaceship, she said, the capsule-bed she was in. “It’s like I’m at the controls. It’s totally cool. There’s just enough room to sit and eat my Bobby-burger.” On the blank walls, the Atlantic lapping at the Massachusetts coast, I imagined her ship parting the grey, a fire trail behind, heading towards unnamed spheres. I told her about my sunburn. I could still feel the warmth there shivering and trying to escape. “I guess it’s technically sun poisoning,” I said. But she was gone, disconnected, alone in Japan. I wondered if I should knock on Peabody’s door again. I slept more, the comfort of a deep lethargy like a warm drizzle blurring the view from my glasses. The motel phone rang, red light blinking. “Whaddya want?” the voice on the other end asked me abruptly.
The first time I rang Peabody’s doorbell, just late for my 10 am appointment, I nearly electrocuted myself. An ungrounded wire on the buzzer jolted me, the millisecond of rich current like a thick, long spark, unlike any other type of pain, my body recalling previous shockings in a continuum of electricity: the first, as a five year old, under a poster of the Earth; in high school, drunk on scotch and reaching for a phone charger I’d been too lazy to plug in all the way. I stood under the thin linoleum overhang on Peabody’s stoop, gathering myself against the sudden rain. It pattered in sheets, and I was unable to discern if any life stirred inside. The late summer storm burned off quickly, the wind from the Atlantic blowing warm air over the neighborhood. The second time, two hours later, I knocked firmly. Still no response. I bought a turkey sandwich and went to the beach, made absent notes about the town, and dozed — curled up — on the sand. At the motel, I felt the burn on the back of my knees and slept again, until Dani pulled from me by satellite.
Sorry for the late notice, but if anybody’s around, I’ll be reading some fiction here on Sunday eve:
Rhymes with Birds at the Petri Space
A night of poems and prose by acclaimed local writers (plus free food and cheap boos)
June 8 at 7:30pm
114 Forrest St. buzzer 15
Take the L to Morgan. Take the Bogart exit, turn right out of subway onto Bogart. Walk on Bogart to Flushing.
Forrest st. is the diagonal street across Flushing and Flushing Farms. (directions) (More info.)
“Tangled Up In Blue” – Bob Dylan (download)
“Silvio” – Bob Dylan (download)
recorded 30 June 1988, Jones Beach, Wantagh, NY
“Tangled Up In Blue” – Bob Dylan (download)
“Silvio” – Bob Dylan (download)
recorded 19 May 1998, San Jose Arena, San Jose, CA
(files expire June 12th)
Bob Dylan’s so-called Never-Ending Tour launched 20 years ago this week, on June 7th, in Concord, California. Though Dylan claims in Chronicles that he’d been inspired to hit the road by figuring out a new way of singing, the tapes don’t bear this out entirely. For the most part, Dylan’s singing was still the insanely caricatured tweeting that made Real Live and Dylan and the Dead such bummers. It would take a few years for him to relax into the new mode of phrasing. Compare the above versions of “Tangled Up In Blue,” recorded in June 1988 and May 1998, respectively. The older version is just bloody awful, all kinds of rubbery, nasal melodrama. The ’98 rendition is typical of the period, totally confident.
All of which is to explain why “Silvio” — a fairly minor Dylan tune, lyrics by the Grateful Dead’s Robert Hunter, from 1988’s Down in the Groove — was such a Never-Ending staple. On the ’88 version, the grating upper register yawls that mar the rest of the show are entirely absent. The take from a decade later is slower and clearly improved, but the difference in strategies is almost negligible. Minor as it was, “Silvio” was maybe the template for the gentleman-on-the-skids persona Dylan developed during the Never Ending Tour, and picked up officially on 1997’s Time Out of Mind — all of which informs the excitement bubbling beneath Dylan’s voice as he stops rushing the phrases in the second verse, a new pleasure for him in a decade of dead ends.
Though songs from these albums — all older stuff I’ve been digging — have and will likely continue to turn up in Frow Shows and various blog posts, the albums don’t easily lend themselves to mp3ification. Mostly, they’re just brilliant vibes.
And the Hits Just Keep on Comin’ – Michael Nesmith (1972)
The former Monkee, singing and playing acoustic guitar, is accompanied only by pedal steel legend Red Smith. The humor is wry, a backcountry depot in the land of Head and Elephant Parts.
Rev. Louis Overstreet with his sons and the congregation of St. Like’s Powerhouse Church of God in Christ (rec. 1962, rel. 1995)
Great gospel from Arhoolie, found in the FMU archives. There’s a lot here: some beautiful blues (“Two Little Fishes”), ecstatic chants (“Yeah Lord! Jesus Is Able”), and amazing vocals by Overstreet. The warm recording quality puts it totally over the top.
Wow/The Magick Fire Music – Jackie O Motherfucker (2000-2001)
Like a perfectly melodic middle ground between SYR-era Sonic Youth and ’72-’73 Dead jams. I suspect this is the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship. So much more to be had. Hooray for prolific collectives. (Word, Sancho.)
Quarteto Em Cy – Quarteto Em Cy (1972)
Apparently a pre-tropicalia vocal group, this self-titled disc from ’72 is damn well sublime, just endlessly pleasurable: girl group/Beatles harmonies and strange, lush arrangements. Not coming out of the rotation any time soon.
Valborgmassoafton – Yukio Yung (1991)
Wikipedia sez that dude is a crazy prolific mofo, and — from the sound of this disc alone — I believe it. It’s like Devo meets the Mothers. Delicious use of synths, adventurous at every turn, and never predictable: jazz solos with doubled kazoos, fuzzy baroque interludes, Residents-like dance breaks, alien chants… and somehow it all holds together. Maybe it’s the cassette hiss. (Thx, Mutant Sounds, check it there.)
“Creep” – Prince (download)
recorded live at Coachella, 26 April 2008
(file expires June 8th)
And, so an act of civil disobedience against His Purple Dudeness: Prince Rogers Nelson covering Radiohead’s “Creep” at Coachella. At first, I was bummed to find out that the alleged soundboard circulating was a fairly audiencey audience recording, but — besides Prince’s performance itself, which Clappy so bitchingly deconstructed — what unfolds is that it’s not Prince’s song, it’s not even Radiohead’s. It belongs entirely to the crowd.
A few people seemingly recognize it at first, and there is a smattering of definite cheers. Somebody mentions James Brown. Somebody else repeatedly chants “whoo” or maybe “booooo.” Hard to say. There’s another wave of cheers at 1:10, but the music still sounds like a vaguely generic Prince arpeggio (though it’s also obviously “Creep”) and it doesn’t compare to what happens at 1:45, when Prince actually starts singing.
Then, a wave of noise rolls over the crowd. “Awesome!” somebody says almost immediately. People go, predictably, apeshit, and a dozen conversations spark up in mic range. Presumably, there’s some fierce texting going down, too. After the first big peak, the band passes through the opening changes again. Except now the crowd knows what it is, and begins clapping along — and with extraordinary dullness, as if they bought the hype and are already being ironic about it — which continues through the next verse before fading. The dull clapping continues, a little quieter, as Prince busts out his falsetto. Somebody even laughs.
But then Prince shreds fucking balls again, in an old-fashioned, gas-guzzling wank, and it’s awesome, despite a weird sinking feeling in a crowd that’s not sure if it’s ready to be as wistful as they feel, nostalgic for a time when Radiohead was simply another post-grunge guitar band with a genuine summer hit, but already preparing to yearn for the present moment, surely to immortalized in Flickr sets, text messages, viral videos, and blog postings. If His High Exalted Mothersquonking El Purple Duderino (if you’re not into the whole brevity thing) doesn’t have them all purged first.
1. “Real Talk” – R. Kelly (from Double Up)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “Favorite Sweatshirt On” – Mixel Pixel (from Let’s Be Friends)
4. “Dam Maro Dum (Take Another Toke)” – Asha Bhosle with the Kronos Quartet (from You’ve Stolen My Heart)
5. “Jan Pahechan Ho” – Van Shipley (from Bollywood Steel Guitar compilation)
6. “I Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Is In” – Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings (from Daptone 7-Inch Singles Collection, v. 2 compilation)
7. “Could Have Been – Lee Fields (from Daptone 7-Inch Singles Collection, v. 2 compilation)
8. “Is There Any Body Here Who Loves Jesus?” – Rev. Louis Overstreet (from Rev. Louis Overstreet with his sons and the congregation of St. Like’s Powerhouse Church of God in Christ)
9. “Between Me and You Kid” – Mudhoney (from Five Dollar Bob’s Mock Cooter Stew EP)
10. “Etude #7: Ballad” – Marc Ribot (from Exercises in Futility)
11. “Can I Sleep In Your Arms?” – Willie Nelson (from Red-Headed Stranger)
12. “Hula Blues” – Sol Hoopii (from Hula Blues: Vintage Steel Guit Instrumentals from the ’30s and ’40s compilation)
13. “Moonglow” – Bud Melvin (from Return of Bud Melvin)
14. “Typical Hippies” – Lucky Dragons (from Dream Island Laughing Language)
15. “Hydrophone” – Max Eastley (from Rediscovered Musical Instruments split LP)
16. “Window To Mars” – Elf Power (from In A Cave)
Print:
o Paste #42 (Ben Gibbard cover): Philip Glass blurblets, Hammer and Tongs profile, I’m Not There reassessment
o Paste #43 (Scarlett Johansson cover): “Running Into Stonehenge” essay, album review of the Silver Jews, Be Kind Rewind reassessment.
o June Relix (Tom Petty cover): album reviews of Phish, Imaginational Anthem, v. 3; book reviews of Sonic Youth, Bob Dylan Drawn Blank
1. “20th Century Fox Fanfare” – Alfred Newman (from The Essential Alfred Newman Film Music Collection)
2. “Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago” – Soul Coughing (from Ruby Vroom)
3. “Katie’s Been Gone” – The Band (from The Basement Tapes)
4. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
5. “Espiral” – Cineplexx (from Picnic)
6. “Majesty” – The Music Tapes (from Music Tapes for Clouds and Tornadoes)
7. “Worlds Approaching” – Sun Ra and His Astro Infinity Orchestra (from Strange Strings)
8. “Positively 4th Street” – Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders (from Live at Keystone)
9. “Why Not Your Baby?” – Doug Dillard and Gene Clark (from The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard and Clark)
10. “Take Me” – Karen Dalton (from In My Own Time)
11. “Opportunity to Cry” – Willie Nelson (from Crazy: The Demo Sessions)
12. “Roll With the Flow” – Michael Nesmith (from And the Hits Just Keep on Comin’)
13. “After the Gold Rush” – Neil Young (from After the Gold Rush)
14. “I’m Not There” – Sonic Youth (from I’m Not There OST)
15. “Take Care” – Big Star (from Third)
“Take Me” – Karen Dalton (download) (buy)
from In My Own Time (1971)
“Take Me” – Jerry Garcia and David Grisman (download) (buy)
from Been All Around This World (2004)
(files expire May 19th)
I’m a sucker for songs that send the singer to some specific utopia, like “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” or Roy Orbison’s “Blue Bayou,” or Patsy Cline’s “You Belong To Me,” or any of the Mountain Goats’ “Going to…” numbers. George Jones and Leon Payne’s “Take Me” is a neat variation, a catalogue of desolation — an impossibly dark room, Siberia in winter — twisted into sunshine. But it is mostly imagined sunshine, the singer in a state somewhere closer to the darkened room than the springtime California promised in the final verse.
The desolation is clearly present in Jones’ original with Tammy Wynette, but that’s probably more reflex than anything. Jerry Garcia and Karen Dalton amplify it to the song’s front. Garcia’s junk-decayed voice cracks as it needs to, his delivery all resignation, though David Grisman’s mandolin is perhaps a little too airy for the proceedings (at least until his solo). One-time Village folkie Dalton, meanwhile, is perfect, her own junk-cracked voice unbearably hopeful over a quietly lush combo, like a feminine Ray Charles.
“Roll With the Flow” – Michael Nesmith (download) (buy)
from And the Hits Just Keep On Comin’ (1972)
(file expires May 14th)
It’s hippie-country heartache week here in the wunderkammern, and former Monkee Mike Nesmith’s And the Hits Just Keep on Comin’ is a remarkable, hook-filled beaut.
Country tunes don’t often speak, word for word, to the specifics of one’s particular heartbreak. But even narratives that are the 180-degree opposite of the use they’re serving can still stand-in just fine. Break-up songs sung from the perspective of the one leaving, like Nesmith’s “Roll With the Flow” can be of use to the broken. (In this case, perhaps through contrarian, pissed-off empowerment.) It is almost as if the sound of country — here stripped close to absolute simplest: acoustic guitar, pedal steel, and voice — acts like a welcoming arm. Warmed in its embrace, country veritably promises that even if this singer doesn’t address your problem with this song, it will most assuredly come around sooner than later. That faith hums warmly through the genre, like the anticipatory minutes after one has fed money into a crowded bar’s jukebox but before the sound in his head has made itself manifest in a room full of strangers.
I will still probably post here more days than I don’t (so keep checking back!), but I’m gonna take a small step back from the blog for the next few weeks, at least. I need to do some writing for myself and only myself. Been a while.
o Robert Rich’s response to Kevin Kelly’s 1000 True Fans theory.
o A BusinessWeek profile of Other Music, the awesome Manhattan record store whose new release bin (and equivalent section in their newsletter) is probably the most discerning review section in the country.
o While at school in Ohio, a friend and I joked about running a pipeline from New York to bring a supply of tap water for proper pizza and bagels. Kottke looks into it.
o The NYRB gets loose on Wikipedia. Looking forward to sinking into this one.
o With all the insidious cross-marketing, yadda yadda, sometimes it’s a relief to know that the Man often still just doesn’t get it.
o Dmitri Nabokov is going to publish The Original of Laura. Yay!
“Honey in the Rock” – Blind Mamie Forehand (download) (buy)
from Goodbye Babylon (1927/2003)
(file expires May 8th)
Burkhard Bilger’s recent New Yorker piece, “The Last Verse,” is excellent — the type of typically sprawling think-piece/profile that could end up in a future Da Capo Best Music Writing edition. But it also bummed me out. “Is there still any folk music out there?” the subhead asked. It’s an endlessly fascinating question, but — if you limit “folk” to its literal definition — the answer becomes equally limited.
For his own recordings, Rosenbaum laid down only a few ground rules. The musicians could come from anywhere and play almost anything: fiddles, guitars, washboards, or spoons; harmonicas, Jew’s harps, or accordions. (In one recording, a broomstick kept time; in another, a pick-axe.) But the songs had to be traditional, the music learned from relatives or local musicians. He wanted folksingers, as he puts it, not just singers of folk songs.
And, thus, another story about dudes driving the South around looking for old performers and older records. But folk music is more alive than that, pulsing from car stereos and ringtones in the centuries-old rhythms at the core of reggaeton, or in the magpie strategies of the bootleg/mash-up world. Even if hip-hop is the very definition of mass culture — see, for example, the ridiculous Jay-Z/Soulja Boy feud being played through the NBA — it still requires an intricate constellation of references to understand it, many of which can only be passed person to person. While there’s plenty that comes through media, there’s still plenty of slang that can trace back decades, if not more.
The answer to Bilger’s question is unquestionably, “yes.” A truly oral culture is no longer possible, but we have something else — a world where text is so plentiful it becomes both meaningless and ephemeral. How does one collect it?
1. “You’ve Got To Believe in Something” – Spin Doctors (from You’ve Got To Believe In Something)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “My Pillow is Threshold” – Silver Jews (from Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea)
3. “Absolutely Sweet Marie” – Bob Dylan (recorded 19 May 1998, San Jose)
4. “Jambalaya” (demo) – Hank Williams (from First to Last)
5. unknown song – unknown artist (southeast Asia) (from Yeti #5 compilation)
6. “Steppe Spiritual” – Sun City Girls (from Mister Lonely OST)
7. “Underground Antes Da Primeira Hora” – Quarteto Em Cy (from Quarteto Em Cy)
8. “Vô Batê Pá Tu” – Baino and Os Novos Caetanos (from Baino and Os Novos Caetanos)
9. “Book of Numbers” – The Mae Shi (from Hillyith)
10. “Rainbow Flag” – Matmos (from Supreme Balloon)
11. “Sullen Lamp Lighters” – Computer at Sea (via MySpace)
12. “Agnes B Musique” – Sonic Youth (from SYR7: J’Accuse Ted Hughes LP)
13. “The End of the Tour” – They Might Be Giants (from John Henry)
Yo La Tengo give M. Ward & Zooey Deschanel a little bit of that YLT feeling:
Snoop & Willie:
Not only do I think that it’s okay that Joe Smith talked back at heckling fans in Chicago, I think it’s kinda awesome. What’s the matter with ballplayers breaking the fourth wall (give or take, oh, jumping into the stands and beating up a handicapped guy, as Ty Cobb once did)?
Yes, Billy, this is a goddamn:
You watched Prince cover “Creep” when Pitchfork posted it, now watch it again:
“Air” – Greg Davis (download) (buy)
from Curling Pond Woods (2003)
(file expires May 5th)
Greg Davis’s cover of the Incredible String Band’s “Air” has me from the first keyboard tone, which simultaneously seems like it should be some kind of thrift store organ, but is too warm and rich to be so. Soon enough, though, come harmonies and a strum that lands somewhere between Western swing and uke-driven exotica. The verses are mostly mood — way more so than the original version — something more forceful than the wordless mmmming and just enough to gently nudge the tune along. But they’re beautiful, too. After a fairly New Agey beginning (“breathing, all creatures are”) it drops down to ominous folk mystery: “you kissed my blood, and the blood kissed me.” “Air” is a sunset in unfamiliar colors.
(Actually, I’m pretty sure Doug Sisk is still alive.)
o Kottke breaks down the knuckleball using Josh Kalk’s PITCHf/x tool. The latter is amazing. Honestly, most of the math is entirely beyond me, but graphing the way a pitcher’s pitches break is a way to visualize a pitcher’s work, and is beautiful. It’s modern art, really, each chart somehow finding the truth of a particular player. Of course, the highly modern colors on the white background contribute, too.
o Safeco Field in San Francisco has some kind of free live network for Nintendo DS users. Sounds fun, fersure, but such a strange platform to do it with. I mean, I guess DSes are popular and all, but wouldn’t it make more sense to develop it for the Blackberry or something? (Thx, VB.)
o The Mets latest 5th starter/hope, Nelson Figueroa, is the definition of the contemporary international journeyman. Born in Brooklyn (represent!), in the past year Figueroa has pitched in Mexico (all-star), Taiwan (Series MVP), the Dominican Republic (Series MVP), and the Caribbean (Series MVP). Definitely an Omar Minaya type of player. (via Metsblog)
o A whole mess of links about the 1964 World’s Fair which spawned Shea Stadium.
“Agnes B Musique” – Sonic Youth (download) (buy)
from SYR7: J’Accuse Ted Hughes (2008)
(file expires April 30th)
One testament to the productivity of Sonic Youth is the insane and amazing bootleg site Kill Yr Idols, which posts at least one album/cassette/7-inch by Sonic Youth or its members pretty much every day. Totally illegal, fersure, but an exception should be made for the nobility of the cause. (“Downloading keeps the links alive: please link this site on blogs, forums,” they proudly proclaim.) The territories keep growing. The newest ephemera, an entry in the venerable and psychedelic SYR series, and released on vinyl only earlier this week, isn’t up yet, but it surely will be soon.
In some ways, both jams on SYR7 — “J’Accuse Ted Hughes” (from All Tomorrow’s Parties in April 2001) (2000, according to KYI) and “Agnes B Musique” (from the band’s Murray Street studio in 2001) — could be drawn from almost anywhere in the musicians’ vast collective/solo/side-project output. In theory. In practice, it’s the Jim O’Rourke-era lineup, demonstrating why they’re Sonic Youth. On “Agnes B Musique,” Steve Shelley hangs quietly behind an improv begins genially, the sheets of glittering noise coming later, drones within pulses within drones. Good with the lights off and the headphones on.
“Small Shape” – Akron/Family (download)
recorded live at Tonic, NYC, 15 July 2005
from Yeti #5
“They Will Appear, Behold” – Akron/Family (download)
recorded live at KVRX, Austin, TX, 12 March 2008
Two new Akron/Family tracks. The first, “Small Shape,” comes from a live set at Tonic in July 2005, and was recently included on the disc accompanying Yeti #5. From the bottomless catalogue of the band’s two-guitar era, it begins with a lush double-strum, a xylophone doubling the bassline as Seth Olinsky’s vocal begins. The structure is slow, if such a thing could be said of a structure, its movement beginning when the xylophone changes allegiance and begins to double a vibrating guitar as harmonies pile up and, eventually, Dana Janssen begins a marital beat. (Can’t wait ’til the issue gets to the top of the reading queue. It looks amazing, and the rest of the disc definitely is: Sublime Frequencies outtakes, excerpts from Jeff Mangum’s record collection, deep cuts from editor Mike McGonigal, etc.)
The second, “They Will Appear, Behold,” is more recent, from a South by Southwest radio session by (I’m pretty sure) just the core trio. With Afro-pop inspired guitar, and an equally slow-structured pulse, it even sounds a little like The Slip at first. Though the lyrics are a bit, shall we say, crunchy (even before they tap Sioux holy man Black Elk for the title refrain), they are hardly didactic, and unfurl over a patient, potent melody/chant.
“Here No More” – The Breeders (download) (buy)
from Mountain Battles (2008)
(file expires April 25th)
I’m going to say it anyway, because it’s right under our noses and it might get missed: Kim and Kelley Deal’s harmonies are what make the Breeders so lovely, even in 2008. There are (possibly apocryphal?) stories about the twins singing country duets for truckers in their native Dayton that I remember reading in Circus circa Last Splash. Until bootlegs surface, “Here No More,” from the new Mountain Battles, will suffice. The melody is decent, really just serving as a vehicle for their sweetly decaying singsongs to make something nice between them, pleasing genetic harmonics in full effect. Hardly radical, but it doesn’t need to be.
o Melodyne promises “direct note access” polyphonic sampling. I suspect technology like this might be similar to alchemy or divining rods, but I’m sure it’ll work for some people.
o Sorry, a break with the self-imposed ban on Google tools ’cause it’s too cool: GoogleEarth now layers current New York Times headlines over its maps, so one can read the news geospatially.
1. “Tower Records Ad” – John Lennon (from WFMU Radio Archival Oddities compilation)
2. “The Children of Rock and Roll” – Ron Lennon (from Rutland Weekend Television)
3. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
4. “Fallen Snow” – Au Revoir Simone (from Fallen Snow)
5. “Air” – Greg Davis (from Curling Pond Woods)
6. “They Will Appear, Behold” – Akron/Family (recorded March 2008, KVRX)
7. “Theme From Ulcerative Colitis” – Yukio Yung (from Valborgunmassoæfton)
8. “As Tears Roll By” – Daniel Lanois (from Shine)
9. “Richmond” – The Faces (from Long Player)
10. “Life Goes Off” – Jim O’Rourke (recorded 16 September 2002, Aoyoma Cay)
11. “A Certain Guy” – Mary Weiss (from I Hate CDs: Norton Records 45 RPM Singles Collection)
12. “Spooks” – Radiohead (recorded May 2006, Copenhagen)
13. “Asozan” – Yamataka Eye (from Re… Remix?)
14. “Empty Bell Ringing in the Sky, no. 5” – Pelt (from Empty Bell Ringing in the Sky)
15. “Mountains of the Moon” – The Grateful Dead (from Aoxomoxoa, original 1969 mix)
16. “Here No More” – The Breeders (from Mountain Battles)
Busted, down on Classon Street. Quite possibly the end of an era.
I saw lots of other people with cameras. Anybody got any better pix? Or, y’know, information? (Some more info emerging in the BV comment section. Anything concrete would be appreciated.)
“Thinking For Now” – Mark David & the Nightly Lights feat. Don Helms (download)
(file expires April 18th)
That Mark David‘s “Thinking For Now” is an uncommonly decent contemporary country tune — vintage without sounding overtly nostalgic, with a great bridge — is kind of beside the point, though its escape of nostalgia is remarkable, given the ghost that powers it. More than anything, Hank Williams’ lonesomeness found emotional form in the swelling steel guitar of Don Helms who — holy Moses — is still alive and recording in 2008, playing his original 1949 double neck Gibson Console Grand with Mark David and company, an Ohio concern. Helms’ voice is as clean and pure now as 60 years ago, cutting through its surroundings with a dignified mourn. More than any lost Hank tracks or flown-in ProTools duets (or even trios) between three generations of singing Williams, these are the true adventures of Hank Williams’ still blue, still lonesome heart in the 21st century.
These mostly fall on the latter side of the above equation. Definitely need to make some time soon to catch up on my links.
o Two pieces about what Murakami is upto.
o Cory Doctorow on multitasking and disruption.
o Recent semi-interview (circa, uh, last week) with Eye and Yoshimi from the Boredoms all about the new Super Roots disc. (Big ups, Whiney!)
o GQ begins to untangle JB’s wreckage.
o Alan Bishop on his Sun City Girls brother, the late Charles Gocher.
The additive process aptly represents the gradual process of the runner. If the initial Db that begins each measure symbolizes first base, then each added note tracks the runner’s progress toward third. The skipped additions (moving directly from five to seven and from seven to eleven notes) seem to depict the runner’s increased speed as he builds up momentum heading for third. Finally, the complete pattern is repeated once more, running as fast as he can, before the whole process is reversed beginning with an extra two measures of the final undecatuplet, as the runner returns to first base in the same way that he traveled in the first place — rapidly at first, then easing up as the base is reached.
At first glance the symbolism of the baserunner, speeding up as he rounds the bases and then slowing down as he returns, seems to be lost in this palindromic reversal, since a runner presumably might easily trot back to first base after a foul ball. However, the rule that determined how quickly one must return to the base after a foul ball changed over the years. The rules of 1883 state that “a baserunner who fails to return to his base at a run following a foul ball is liable to be put out by being touched by the ball while off his base.”
“Mountains of the Moon” – The Grateful Dead (download)
from Aoxomoxoa original mix (1969)
High on the list of Dead tunes likely to convert freak-folkers is Aoxomoxoa‘s “Mountains of the Moon.” With Tom Constanten’s swirling harpsichord and Robert Hunter’s oblique, mythical lyrics, it’s a bauble that didn’t sustain in the Dead’s repertoire, whose most tender songs required (for better or worse) a certain machismo to survive the ‘heads. While “Mountains” served as a perfect prelude to at least 11 “Dark Stars” in 1969, its modal (1) melody couldn’t even last long enough for the band’s abundant acoustic sets the following year. Drag.
I love how Hunter’s lyrics get down with the folk mythos — Tom Banjo, Electra, etc. — but also find a moment of psychedelic focus, the hallucinations parting for a brief second like ascending angels: “hey, the city in the rain.”
It is perhaps the aforementioned angels who hummm and ooooh behind the original 1969 version on Aoxomoxoa, removed by Jerry Garcia himself in a 1971 remix. On first listen, I wished there were more of them, but I think they’re in just the right proportion to last the duration of the track’s four minutes without grating. Like the Blood on the Tracks demo acetate, the Aoxomoxoa mix comes bundled with the vinyl warmth of its source. (Big ups to SeaOfSound for the music.)
A very small bit of food for thought, via Eric Alterman’s New Yorker piece “Out of Print,” about the state of the American newspaper industry:
The news cultures of many European nations long ago embraced the notion of competing narratives for different political communities, with individual newspapers reflecting the views of each faction. It may not be entirely coincidental that these nations enjoy a level of political engagement that dwarfs that of the United States.
Episode 41: A Collection of Music Played on Opening Day by the Scoreboard Operator at Snugglebunny Park, the Shining New Home of the Bourgwick Snugglebunnies Imaginary Baseball Franchise. Sort of.
1. “Threats to Herb, no. 3 – WLOK (from WFMU Radio Archival Oddities)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “Water Curses” – Animal Collective (from Water Curses EP)
4. “Walderez Walderia” – Flavio Kurt (from Obsession compilation)
5. “He Shoot the Sun” – Kahimi Karie and Jim O’Rourke (from Nunki)
6. “Clouds and Snow” – Ben Kamen (from Dreams EP)
7. “Shoulder Full of You” – Blitzen Trapper (from EP3 EP)
8. “P.O.V. Waltz” – Harry Nilsson (from The Point)
9. “Launderette” – Vivien Goldman (from Disco Not Disco compilation)
10. “Albuquerque” – Neil Young (from Tonight’s The Night)
11. “The Upside of Good-Bye” – Michael Nesmith (from And the Hits Just Keep On Comin’)
12. “Track 2” – Negativland (from Negativland)
13. “Noh-Miso 6” – Kunihara Ayama (from Obscure Tape Music of Japan compilation)
14. “Side A” – Thurston Moore, Jim O’Rourke, Lee Ranaldo, and Steve Shelley (from Melbourne Direct)
15. “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” – Doc Watson (from Black Mountain Rag)
Many wonderful passages in Nabokov’s Bend Sinister, but this one — about the nature of literary translation, in the midst of a complex Rosetta Stone explaining the language of the novel’s dystopia — stuck out this evening.
It was as if someone, having seen a certain oak tree (further called Individual T) growing in a certain land casting its own unique shadow on the green and brown ground, had proceeded to erect in his garden a prodigiously intricate piece of machinery which in itself was as unlike that or any other tree as the translator’s inspiration and language were unlike those of the original author, but which, by means of ingenious combinations of parts, light effects, breeze-engendering engines, would, when completed, cast a show exactly similar to that of Individual T — the same outline, changing in the same manner, with the same double and single spots of sun rippling in the same position, at the same hour of the day.
Albums: Consolers of the Lonely – The Raconteurs (Paste) Heretic Pride – The Mountain Goats (Paste) Exercises in Futility – Marc Ribot (JamBands.com) Invisible Baby – Marco Benevento (JamBands.com) Indie Weirdo Round-Up, featuring: Animal Collective, Blitzen Trapper, Yamataka Eye, Sun City Girls, Disco Not Disco (JamBands.com) Indie Weirdo Round-Up, featuring: Eugene Chadbourne/Jimmy Carl Black/Pat Thomas, Cornelius, Jeffrey Lewis, Megafaun, Pete Seeger (JamBands.com)
Columns & misc.: Georgie in the Sky, fiction (False) BRAIN TUBA: These Guys Are From England and Who Gives A Shit? (JamBands.com) BRAIN TUBA: Three Thoughts on Love and Hate (JamBands.com) BRAIN TUBA: War on War, parts 14-15 (JamBands.com)
Print:
o Paste #40 (Michael Jackson’s Glove cover): charticle on Why?/Lyrics Born; album reviews of the Mountain Goats and Jim White, DVD reviews of Pete Seeger, the Holy Modal Rounders, Great World of Sound; book review of Jumbo
o Paste #41 (Gnarls Barkley cover): features on Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg, Paul Siegell; album reviews of Tapes ‘n’ Tapes, the Black Keys, Lee “Scratch” Perry; Cuts and Paste singles column; movie review of Shine A Light
o April/May Relix (Eric Clapton & Steve Winwood cover): album reviews of Howlin Rain, Man Man, DeVotchKa, Colin Meloy; DVD reviews of The Trips Festival, Super High Me; book reviews of Downbeat’s Miles Davis Reader, Howard Mandel’s Miles, Ornette, and Cecil, and John Darnielle’s Master of Reality.
o January/February Hear/Say (Amy Winehouse cover): album reviews of Vampire Weekend and the Steve Reid Ensemble.
o March Hear/Say (Avril Lavigne cover): album reviews of Why? and Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks
o Signal To Noise #49 (Diamanda Galás cover): album reviews of Phish and Beck
“(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” – The Black Crowes (download) (buy)
“Mixed Emotions” – The Black Crowes (download) (buy)
Yeah, as usual, it’s gauche to repost, but I’m doing it anyway.
These Guys Are From England and Who Gives a Shit?
Recently, Maxim editors caused a kerfuffle when they ran a review — credited to David Peisner — of Warpaint, the 17th and newest album by reunited British rock band the Black Crowes, without actually listening to it. Peisner said he wrote an album preview that was given a star rating, presumably rewritten, and made into a review by editors, which is understandable, given how big magazines sometimes operate. But the problem, of course, wasn’t that Maxim didn’t actually have a copy of the album to review, but that they didn’t do more with the opportunity. After all, it’s a well-known fact that reviewers don’t actually listen to the music they write about. Who can really listen to an album until he’s heard it at least 232 times, anyway?
“Now that they’re legitimately grizzled, they sound pretty much like they always have: boozy, competent, and in slavish debt to the Stones, the Allmans, and the Faces,” Peisner wrote, not saying remotely new or, in fact, justifying its existence on a thin, dyed slab of environmentally disasterous treemeat. That Crowes lead singer Jumpin’ Jack Robinson called for Pesiner’s head on a gilded spittoon should maybe not be surprising, given the zombie-related rumors about the Robinson brothers’ falling out after brother Jimmy ate a groupie’s brain.
But it’s still disappointing that the Crowes bothered to call for an apology at all, especially given their repeated and obvious yearnings for ’70s rock culture, when their beloved Creem magazine was stocked with writers like Richard Meltzer who (in his own words) would “throw chicken bones at some annoying singer at the Bitter End, review (harshly) albums I’d obviously never listen to (or concerts I’d never attended), reverse the word sequence of a text to make it read backwards (or delete, for no particular reason, every fourth word).”
It’s a testament to the age not that Maxim would be shamed into apologizing for their behavior, but that they were so dreadfully goddamn boring in their fabrication. I am sure with fairly unflagging certainty that Peisner or whatever editor signed Peisner’s name to it was completely correct in his assessment of the Crowes’ music. In a way, the band is equally correct in their refusal to send out advance records to review, and not merely because they are trying to foil piracy. The Black Crowes are at the point in their career — some 28 albums, 32 labels, 13 ex-drummers/bassists, etc., in — that they’re not going to change, and will continue to make exactly the same kind of music they always have, regardless of whether or not some rock writer makes up some crap about a band he clearly doesn’t care about.
In other words, anybody likely to have a position on the Black Crowes already has a position on the Black Crowes — save, of course, some 14 year old kid somewhere who is hearing about them for the first time, simply because there comes a time in every dude’s life when he discovers that bands can somehow make hefty livings by mimicking classic rock and that this music may or may not be to his taste. For that reason alone, Maxim should take their job a little more seriously. Clearly, trying to publish for a broad audience hasn’t made their writing any more interesting, so why not occasionally hone in on one as finite as possible? In these Wikified, shark-jumping times, rumors circulate as fast and furious through the cultural ecosystems as they ever did — and, certainly, people should do everything their power to fight misinformation — but we’re talking only about the Black Crowes here.
Really, Maxim screwed up a golden opportunity. Clearly, they felt their reading audience — as potential consumers of the Warpaint product — required information about the album. Instead of using the fact that they couldn’t hear it as a springboard to highlight the absurdity of perpetual hype machines, advertising dollars, demographics, ’70s nostalgia, and semi-pompous rock stars who dress like an Australian’s worst nightmare, they just propagated the absurdity of a system that allows brain eaters like the Robinson brothers to have maintained a nearly five decade long career.
“Side A” – Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley, and Jim O’Rourke (download)
from Melbourne Direct (2004)
(file expires March 31st)
Not quite part of the SYR series, and not quite even Sonic Youth (Kim Gordon is missing), the Melbourne Direct double-LP credited to Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley, and Jim O’Rourke contains some of the most straight-up Dark Starry jams in the Sonics’ catalogue. Four to be exact, each exactly one album side — not coincidental given that the Sonic dudes cut direct to vinyl. Shelley lays out for most of Side A (or is drumming the supreme sublime), and everybody else is deep beneath the Diamond Sea from the first note.
“Osorezan” (excerpt) – Geinoh Yamashirogumi (download)
from Osorezan/Do No Kenbai (1976)
(file expires March 29th)
Searching for Jim O’Rourke’s Osorezan (soon to be “re”-released by Drag City, even though it was only issued in 2006 and only in Japan), I came across Osorezan by Geinoh Yamashirogumi. Labeled “1970s Japanese psych” or something, and translated as “ghost mountain,” I naturally stole it. The band, according to Wikipedia, “[consisted] of hundreds of people from all walks of life: journalists, doctors, engineers, students, businessmen,” which is tantalizing, but completely confusing. Likewise, the page’s description of the band’s “faithful re-creations of folk music from around the world” bears little or no resemblance to the music itself. At least as I hear it.
I downloaded it as two complete album sides, so I’m not sure where the song breaks are supposed to go, but these seven-and-a-half minutes slice out easily: a bassline, a building guitar solo, and chanting. The choir in the first minute portends something, and it’s not the fairly run-of-the-mill soloing that follows. Clearly, there is something lurking. As such, I like the way all the other elements slide back in, including — eventually — that choir. It’s these last two minute of chaos (give or take the cutsey/jambandy bassline) that are the payoff: a musical place unworldly just as much on its own terms as it is for the fact that it’s ’70s Japanese psych.
Thurston Moore interviews Steve Reich (download)
recorded at Austin Convention Center, South by Southwest, 13 March 2008
Amid the extraneous meat market noize of the Austin Convention Center, there was at least occasional discussion of actual music. On Thursday, that included Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore interviewing minimalist composer Steve Reich.
If that sounds remotely up your alley, the whole conversation is worth hearing.
Of note to our headier ranks were Reich’s comments on his pre-minimalism free improv group in San Francisco (listen), and his relationship with future Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, a fellow student at Mills College under the tutelage of Luciano Berio (listen).
1. Roger Angell on “yo la tengo!” (via Ken Burns’ Baseball)
2. Sex (The Urinals) (11/12/88 Cubby Bear, Chicago)
3. Frow Show Theme – MVB
4. Dreidel Party (Black Flag) (12/10)
5. Eight Days A Week (The Beatles) (12/9)
6. Pass The Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind > (12/9)
7. The Last Days of Disco (12/9)
8. Everyday (12/10)
9. The Room Got Heavy (12/5)
10. Season of the Shark (12/8)
11. Autumn Sweater (12/11)
12. Upside Down (12/5)
13. This Diamond Ring (Gary Lewis) (12/5)
14. Paul Is Dead (12/11)
15. I Wanna Be Your Lover (Bob Dylan) (12/6 with the dBs)
16. Mr. Tough (12/6)
17. Watch Out For Me, Ronnie (12/6)
18. Big Day Coming > (12/5)
19. Little Honda (The Beach Boys) (12/5)
20. The Story of Yo La Tango (12/8)
21. Take Care (Alex Chilton) (12/7)
22. I’ve Had It (The Bell-Notes) (12/8 with Alex Chilton)
23. Femme Fatale (The Velvet Underground) (12/7 with Alex Chilton)
24. Sometime in the Morning (Carole King & Gerry Goffin) (12/8 with Stephen Hunking)
25. Seemingly Stranded (David Kilgour) (12/5 with David Kilgour)
26. My Little Corner of the World (Bob Hilliard & Lee Pockriss) (12/9 with Ira’s Mom)
The most surprising music I heard during South by Southwest took place within 30 seconds of my first arrival on 6th Street: a tree full of grackles. The field recording I made the next day at dusk, across the street from Whole Foods, doesn’t quite capture the manic density of that first encounter. Composed more of the siren-like yelps (heard at approximately the 12 second mark on this track) that was more of a pitched conversation — as if the birds were in heated council — than the idle chatter heard here. Indeed, as 6th Street filled with meat marketeers and temporary stages, I never once found the grackles occupying that same tree, surrendering downtown to the tourists like the righteously pissed off locals they are.
14 March 2008
French Legation Museum
Austin, TX
Other Music party
acoustic
Et Moi, Et Moi, Et Moi (Jacques Dutronc)
Shaker
I Feel Like Going Home
Autumn Sweater
The Weakest Part
Right Track Now (Roky Erickson)
Sugarcube
The Story of Yo La Tango
13 March 2008
Austin Music Hall
Austin, TX
opening for My Morning Jacket
Cherry Chapstick
Little Eyes
Autumn Sweater
Mr. Tough
The Weakest Part
Beanbag Chair
Tom Courtenay
Decora
Watch Out For Me, Ronnie
Sugarcube
The Story of Yo La Tango
11 March 2008
The Parish
Austin, TX
opening for My Morning Jacket
IFC Crossroads Party
Mr. Tough
Beanbag Chair
Demons
Drug Test
Big Day Coming (fast) >
Watch Out For Me, Ronnie
I Heard You Looking (with Joe Puleo on organ)
You Can Have It All (George McCrea) (all on drums/percussion)
One last photo set of my last trip, before I head to Austin in the morning. Posting coming sporadically. possibly some blogging elsewhere. Maybe a few YLT setlists here. Who knows?
Every Mets fan should see Chop Shop, which is at the Film Forum until Tuesday, and hopefully other art houses in other cities at other times. Though leads Alejandro Polanco and Isamar Gonzales are a bit melodramatic in places as adolescent brother and 16-year old sister Ale and Isamar, it’s still a valuable evocation of life in Willets Point, the scrapyard neighborhood bordering Shea Stadium. New Yorkers are long used to seeing movies set in the boroughs, but Willets Point — whose streets aren’t paved — might as well be another planet, even compared to projects and tenements and other slums.
Chop Shop has most often been compared to City of God, and that’s probably fair, both plots grown wholly from geographic/economic circumstances — in this case, Ale’s dream to open a food cart. There is little interaction between the neighborhood and the ballpark, but the economic chasm is constantly on display, the stadium lights sometimes seeming like alien backdrops. There is also, of course, quiet transcendence and something like authentic human life. With the construction of CitiField comes a looming threat of gentrification and Mayor Bloomberg’s efforts to have the area leveled/redeveloped. Chop Shop is a world that might soon be destroyed.
It was the Golden Age of postwar European and Japanese cinema, the era of the French New Wave, of Ingmar Bergman, of Akira Kurosawa, of Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini. Although these films were “foreign,” they seemed more immediate, more “American” than anything Hollywood was turning out. They hit home with a shock of recognition. Sean Daniel, who grew up to become an executive at Universal and shepherded National Lampoon’s Animal House to the screen, was an antiwar activist in high school in Manhattan in the ’60s. He recalls, “You saw The Battle of Algiers ten times so you could memorize how to build the proper cell structure. I’ll never forget seeing a platoon of Black Panthers, in matching black leather jackets and berets, sitting in front of me, taking notes during the show.”
Reminds of the recent BB post about the 1886 book Danger! A True History of a Great City’s Wiles and Temptations. The Veil Lifted, and Light Thrown on Crime and its causes and Criminals and Their Haunts. Facts and Disclosures that became a handbook for petty criminals.
1. “White Winter Hymnal” – The Fleet Foxes (from Some of Mount Fairweather)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “Strange Light” – Deerhunter (from Cryptograms)
4. “Owl Cut (White Flowers In the Sky)” – Elf Power (from In A Cave)
5. “Screenwriter’s Blues” – Soul Coughing (recorded 2 or 4 February 1997 Tokyo)
6. “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” – Wilco (recorded 19 February 2008 Chicago)
7. “All the Way Around and Back” – Charles Ives (from Leonard Bernstein: Ives Symphony No. 2)
8. “Telescope” – Tristan Perich (via TristanPerich.com)
9. “Threnody To the Victims of Louisiana” – Col. Bruce Hampton (from Give Thanks to Chank)
10. “Get Happy” – Ella Fitzgerald (from Sings Harold Arlen, v. 2)
11. “Mississippi Moon (alternate take)” – Jerry Garcia (from All Good Things box set)
Please comment with all corrections/additions. (Thx, Neil.)
2 March 2008
WFMU Studios
Jersey City, NJ
no Georgia (home sick), Peter Walsh (ex-Hypnolovewheel) on drums, Bruce Bennett on guitar
Starry Eyes (Roky Erickson)
Badlands (Bruce Springsteen)
She’s My Best Friend (Velvet Underground)
Run Run Run (Velvet Underground)
Can’t Explain (The Who)
Baby’s On Fire (Brian Eno)
Slow Down (The Feelies)
I’m In Love With A Girl (Big Star)
Critical List (The Fleshtones)
Sweet Leaf (Black Sabbath)
Tales of Brave Ulysses (Cream)
Green-Eyed Lady (Sugarloaf)
Shot Down (The Sonics)
These Boots Are Made For Walking (Lee Hazlewood)
Cowboy Song (Thin Lizzy)
Aba Dabba Do Dance (The Tradewinds)
Our World (Individuals)
What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding (Nick Lowe)
Bridget Because (Hypnolovewheel)
Mannequin (Wire)
Viva Las Vegas (Doc Pomus/Mort Shuman)
Teenage Kicks (The Undertones)
It’s Only Life (The Feelies)
The Passenger (Iggy Pop)
With A Girl Like You (The Troggs)
Mystery Called Love (Ron Davis/Rodd Keith)
See My Friends (The Kinks)
Jesse’s Girl (Rick Springfield)
If I Were A Carpenter (Tim Hardin)
California Sun (The Rivieras)
Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division)
Different Drum (Mike Nesmith)
Search and Destroy (Iggy and the Stooges)
Paint It Black (The Rolling Stones)
White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane)
Chantilly Lace (Big Bopper) medley, also featuring: Waterloo Sunset (The Kinks), Yo Yo Bye Bye (Why?), Afternoon Delight (Starland Vocal Band), At Last I Am Free (Chic), Now You Know You’re Black (The Frogs), Girl Don’t Tell Me (The Beach Boys), I’ll Never Fall In Love Again (The Carpenters), I’ll Keep It With Mine (Bob Dylan), Ode to Billie Joe (Bobby Gentry), MacArthur Park (Jimmy Webb), The Tra La La Song (Cal Tjader), Boogie Wonderland (Earth, Wind and Fire), Star Spangled Banner (Francis Scott Key)
Five segments from Michael Nesmith’s Elephant Parts that particularly hold up. (Sadly, neither “Name That Drug” nor “Tragically Hip” seem to be on YouTube.)
o Ask Sunday. Still wrestling with morality of outsourcing interview transcription tasks, but that’s topic for another post. That aside, this is a sort of an amazing idea, and I might have to try it on general principle.
The Mets lost 4-2 to the Tigers in a split squad game today. Welcome back.
o Dunno how I missed this when the Voice ran the story in September, but ex-Mets pitcher/current Mets announcer Ron Darling is apparently a huge jazzhead.
o Digaman hipped me tonight to the existence of the fantasy baseball league that existed only in Jack Kerouac’s head. Really.
o Despite the utter failure of the Mitchell Report to create any kind of closure with the steroids era, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are speaking in gestures as weirdly elegant as their records are grotesque. That is, one can imagine John Chancellor’s narrator in Ken Burns’ Baseball reading off their narratives. The latest installment, far less reported than Clemens’ escapades on Capitol Hill, involves Bonds personally driving from spring training camp to spring training camp looking for work, while threatening to go play in Japan. (Thx, Russ.)
o SNY’s feature on the best Mets brawls would be a whole lot cooler with video clips. But it’s still pretty cool.
o The Times Bats blog reports on Mets’ pitching coach’s Rick Peterson’s observational skills. According to Sports Illustrated, Peterson spent the off-season “read[ing] Eastern philosophy and [drawing] sketches of his players.”
“A Sign of the Times” – Petula Clark (download) (buy)
b/w “Time For Love” (1966)
(file expires March 3rd)
Like the Beverly Hills Teens theme, Petula Clark’s “A Sign of the Times” is a random melody that got stuck in my head as an adolescent, and waited like a latent dopamine trigger for literally decades until I remembered the song and downloaded it. My introduction to it was a cheesy Banner Day montage in the same Amazin’ Era Mets video that yielded Dick McCormick’s “79 Men on Third,” and which was also my first exposure to “Changes” by David Bowie, whose chorus illustrated several dramatic trades in Mets’ history (like the Midnight Massacre that sent Tom Seaver to the Reds in 1977). Somebody could sample the big horn fanfare, but unlike the Chi-Lites’ “Are You My Woman (Tell Me So),” which yielded “Crazy In Love,” I don’t spend the whole song waiting for the part to return. It serves its function, introducing the “Sesame Street”-like progression and getting to Clark’s sweet, lovely vocal. I’m totally in love with the “maybe my lucky star” chorus, which wasn’t included in the video, and could be the basis for a perfectly serviceable tune itself.
“Summerteeth” – Wilco (download)
“Spiders (Kidsmoke)” – Wilco (download)
recorded 19 February 2008, Riviera Theater, Chicago, IL
(files expire March 1st)
It was a pleasure to arrive home the past two nights to discover Wilco webcasting from Chicago. Their five-night stand at the Riviera, during which they attempted to play every song from their primary albums, seems to mark a new phase for the band. By forcing that many songs back into the repertoire, many of which were probably dropped initially for some practical reason, some quite necessarily were a bit looser than others, like “Summerteeth.” Where Wilco’s sets at least once played at stateliness, there is now a Dead-like comfort, especially taking into account the two-set format of the shows. It works both ways, though, and the nooks have never been more detailed, like the 10-minute Neu-groove of “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” in which the band pushes decidedly out from Glenn Kotche’s elastic/metronomic krautrock.
“Eighth of January” – The Kentucky Colonels with Scott Stoneman (download) (buy)
(file expires February 27th)
Thanks to Rev for turning me onto this recording of Scott Stoneman and the Kentucky Colonels performing “Eighth of January” at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles in 1965. In the audience that night was Jerry Garcia.
I get my improvisational approach from Scotty Stoneman, the fiddle player. [He’s] the guy who first set me on fire — where I just stood there and I don’t remember breathing. He was just an incredible fiddler. He was a total alcoholic wreck by the time I heard him, in his early thirties, playing with the Kentucky Colonels… They did a medium-tempo fiddle tune like ‘Eighth of January’ and it’s going along, and pretty soon Scotty starts taking these longer and longer phrases — ten bars, fourteen bars, seventeen bars — and the guys in the band are just watching him! They’re barely playing — going ding, ding, ding — while he’s burning. The place was transfixed. They played this tune for like twenty minutes, which is unheard of in bluegrass. I’d never heard anything like it. I asked him later, ‘How do you do that?’ and he said, ‘Man, I just play lonesome.’ (Garcia, c. 1985, via Blair Jackson’s Garcia: An American Life)
By the time the music made it to tape — which is to say, in reality — it was five and a third minutes, proving Garcia’s memory to be about as blown as any Deadhead’s. He’s not wrong either, though. (See also “Cleo’s Back” for the further secret history of the Grateful Dead.)
1. “Boss Intro” – Capcom Sound Team (from Megaman II OST)
2. “A Sign of the Times” – Petula Clark
3. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
4. “Obamareggaeton” – Amigos de Obama
5. “Nowhere Man” – The Beatles (recorded 7/1966 Budokan, Tokyo)
6. “Supernatual Superserious” – R.E.M. (from Accelerate)
7. “I Got the Drop On You” – Mike Doughty (from Golden Delicious)
8. “Political Science” – Randy Newman (from Sail Away)
9. “Dawn Mist” – Eugene Wright and His Dukes of Swing (from Sun Ra: Early Recordings)
10. “Eighth of January” – The Kentucky Colonels with Scotty Stoneman (from Live in L.A.)
11. “The Real Morning Party” – Marco Benevento (from Invisible Baby)
12. “Miami Ice” – Icy Demons (from Miami Ice)
13. “Ganon’s Castle Under Ground” – Koji Kondo (from Zelda: Ocarina of Time OST)
14. excerpt from “Osorezan” – Geioh Yamashuriogumi (from Osorezan/Do No Kenbai)
15. “Whispering Hope” – Daniel Johnston with Yo La Tengo (recorded 1990/04/02 WFMU)
16. “Brazil” – Geoff Muldaur (from Brazil OST)
For fear of jinxing anything, I resisted the urge to post this on Super Tuesday Eve, but I like the implications of this Obama reggaetón tune. For starters, credited to the organization Amigos De Obama, it’s instantly historical novelty, sung to the absolute rhythm of its time. More, it highlights another, less devious, musical aspect of the Illinois Senator: his name.
Last week, Mom wondered if Obama would be the first President whose name ended in a vowel. He wouldn’t be (see: Fillmore, Monroe, Pierce, Coolidge), but her point about Presidential homogeneity is well taken. There certainly haven’t been any men of Kenyan descent in the Oval Office, and consequently none whose names roll from the tongue quite like Obama’s. Hence, the genuinely new music. (Yeah, it came out last June, but who’s counting? See translation.)
And, while we’re on the topic: There’s something reassuring but also a bit cognitively dissonant about a silk-screened Obama “The Time is Now” poster in the front window of a tarot card reader.
If there was ever any doubt that baseball is an oral culture, peep this letter written by legendary manger Casey Stengel to sportswriter Ira Berkow in the ’70s, when Casey was in his 80s. Quoted in Robert Creamer’s superb Stengel, it was a bit of a shock to me to realize that Casey — a raconteurish encyclopedia cataloguing a lifetime of players, plays and stories — was barely literate.
Dear Ira: Your conversation’s; and the fact you were the working writer were inthused with the Ideas was great but frankly do not care for the great amount of work for myself. Sorry but am not interested. Have to many proposition’s otherwise for the coming season. Fact cannot disclose my Future affair’s. Good luck. Casey Stengel, N.Y. Mets & Hall of Famer.
Man, my spell-check loves Casey. Didn’t write in the passive voice, though!
“79 Men on Third for the Mets” – Dick McCormack (download)
from An Amazin’ Era video
(file expires February 17th)
The baseball stories are increasing with the imminent reporting of pitchers and catchers to spring training this week. Today brings us a Times profile in which we discover that third baseman David Wright actually refers to himself as “D-Wright.” Uh, right on?
Relatedly, I spent some late night hours over the weekend revisiting An Amazin’ Era, the delightfully cheesy Mets retrospective produced just before the 1986 season. Included therein is the above song, “79 Men on Third for the Mets,” folksinger Dick McCormack’s novelty tribute to the nearly 80 players who’d covered the corner for the Mets between 1962 and 1985. (Though the video doesn’t include the ’86 season, McCormack manages to fit in the newly acquired Tim Teufel, who played one game at third later that year.) It’s super toe tappin’.
Anybody got info on this Dick McCormack dude? The infranet reveals the existence of a “We Didn’t Start the Fire”-style number he wrote summing up the 1987 season, though it looks like some lawyers nastygrammed it. Oh, bother.
“Diamond Day” – Vashti Bunyan (download) (buy)
from Just Another Diamond Day (1970)
“Spit on a Stranger” – Pavement (download) (buy)
from Terror Twilight (1999)
Vashti Bunyan, at least pre-rediscovery, seems exactly the type of obscurantist reference point tailor made for Stephen Malkmus. Whether or not he had her 1970 single “Diamond Day” anywhere near his bedheaded skull when he wrote “Spit on a Stranger,” the lead cut from 1999’s Terror Twilight, I’ve got no idea. Either way, given the autumn-burnt originality of “Stranger,” it’s not to accuse the Pavement leader of anything, except maybe getting a melody stuck in his head, and repurposing it for contemporary circulation.
1. “Vocca Rossa” – Corrado Lojacono (via WFMU’s Beware of Blog/Listener Marty)
2. “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” – Them
3. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
4. “Run” – Gnarls Barkley
5. “Love Loves to Love Love” – Lulu (from Love Loves to Love Lulu)
6. “Casting Agents and Cowgirls” – Busdriver (from Roadkill Overcoat)
7. “Back to the Grill” – MC Serch feat. Nas and Chubb Rock
8. “Jimmy” – Of Montreal
9. “Baby Strange” – T. Rex (from The Slider)
10. “Et moi, et moi, et moi” – Jacques Dutronc
11. “The Modern Age” – Jeffrey Lewis (recorded 2002/07/31 Peel Session)
12. “Fools” – The Dodos (from Visiter)
13. “Never Learn Not To Love” – The Beach Boys (from 20/20)
14. “A Cloud In Doubt” – Flying (from Faces of the Night)
15. “Diamond Day” – Vashti Bunyan (from Just Another Diamond Day)
16. “Spit on a Stranger” – Pavement (from Terror Twilight)
17. “Red Flag on the Gondola” – Flipper’s Guitar (from Three Cheers For Our Side)
Even as I plan to vote for Barack Obama tomorrow, Will.i.am’s “Yes.We.Can.” video kinda scares the shit out me, because it lays Obama bare. I am frightened by how easily the Senator’s cadences transform into music, how easily the simple harmonies pull melodies from his speech. And all, more or less, without content. When it boils down to it, I like Barack Obama because he’s got a good beat and I can dance to it. It won’t be the first time I’ve put my money where the music is.
Thanks to MITU for turning me onto Dutch filmmaker/graphic artist Roel Wouters (aka Xelor), whose one-take Gondry-like shorts are immaculately conceived and executed. I love the human progress bar in “Grip.” Not so much into the tunes, but dizzamn.
An oncoming cold, a new millionaire pitcher to wonder idly about, and some Roger Angell to peruse. I’m going to bed, ideally to dream of “raising my mid-game gaze from the diamond to observe the gauzy look of departing rain clouds lifting from the jagged rim of some distant desert peak, and then entering that in my notebook (with the pen slipping a little in my fingers, because of the dab of Sea & Ski I have just rubbed on my nose, now that the sun is out again and cookin gus gently in the steepl little grandstand behind third base).” We all dream of dreams.
o New Murakami on the way! In July! About jogging! (Bill Hicks: “What do you jot down about jogging? ‘Left foot, right foot, blood spurts out nose.'”) Either way: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.
o Like grapes becoming raisins, bureaucracy often transforms into absurdity, which — in turn — is a fine basis for proverb-soaked folklore. John Beamer on 14 “Rules and quirks” of professional baseball.
o New Yorker classical critic Alex Ross on Radio’eads’s Jonny Greenwood.
o This year’s Oscar-nominated animated shorts. Looking forward to watching these.
o Wired explores “The Life Cycle of a Blog Post.” Great concept, nice execution, but not nearly as complicated as the chart seems to represent on first glance.
o Jennifer Egan’s “The General” — first published in Five Chapters, collected in Best American Non-Required Reading — is the raddest piece of short fiction I’ve read in a long while. Effortlessly modern and viciously hilarious, but also sweet and heartbreaking.
o A luxurious, Joseph Mitchell-style 2002 NYT piece on Sunny’s, where I recently caught Smokey Hormel’s Roundup. (see also: bassist Tim Luntzel’s page, for upcoming Roundup dates.)
o Via the Huffington Post: “According to Us Weekly, the Terry Gillian production of ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’, which Ledger was partially though filming, has been scrapped and everyone let go.” Dude can’t catch a break; peeps can’t even spell his name right. (Of course, Brothers Grimm and Tideland kinda sucked.)
o Tom Stoppard’s book valise. Hawt.
o Not reading, but not embeddable either, Eugene Mirman’s report from the New Hampshire primary is a useful distillation of his absurdism.
o Ron Darling has been training. (And of course you’ve seen Ira Kaplan’s Kiner’s Korner-parodying interview with Eddie Kranepool.)
o Why can’t American politics be this much like Joseph Campbell lectures about folklore? (Via NYT.)
Omens of his downfall are said to have included the breaking of a gavel in Parliament and Mr. Suharto’s loss of the chignon, or hairpiece, of his wife, Siti Hartinah, who died in 1996.
Many Indonesians maintain that her death was the beginning of the end for Mr. Suharto. She was a minor member of the royal family here, the Sultanate of Solo, and is said to have been the source of Mr. Suharto’s legitimacy as a ruler. In Javanese tradition, power has an essence of its own, known as wahyu, and is conferred like a mantle on certain chosen people in a way similar to the “mandate of heaven” that empowered Chinese emperors.
After the death of Mr. Suharto’s wife, spiritualists as well as political scientists saw Mr. Suharto becoming less deft as a ruler. In his desperation near the end, according to accounts at the time, he called in a West African spiritualist to help him.
“There is a tradition of Javanese kings becoming kings because of their wives,” Onghokham, a prominent social historian, said in an interview. He died last year. “When Suharto rose to power, people believed that the wife had the wahyu, the flaming womb, and whoever united with her would get the wahyu. After her death, people began to sense the wahyu was gone.”
In print:
o Paste #39 (Art House Powerhouse cover): feature on Michel Gondry, blurblet on Todd Haynes’ Superstar, album reviews of Cat Power, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, La Belle Epoque compilation, movie review of City of Men
o February/March Relix (Black Crowes cover): features on Ween and Unbroken Chain symposium, live review of Yo La Tengo, album reviews of North Mississippi AllStars, Zox, Grateful Dead, book review of Will Hodgkinson.
o Signal To Noise #48 (Devendra Banhart cover): album review of A Hawk and a Hacksaw & the Hun Hangar Ensemble, Os Mutantes
o December Hear/Say (Angels & Airwaves cover): album review of Michael Showalter
Plus, “Ghost Stories” (from Paste #33) made Short End Magazine’s “40 Film-Journalism Must-Reads & Sees of 2007.”
Ballots for the Village Voice‘s annual Pazz & Jop poll were posted today. Mine is here. My full comments are below:
The other night Sancho and I were toasting the arrival of the Huns. His belief about the record industry’s collapse, which I support, is that it is wonderful that nobody can make a living playing music anymore, because then only people who really give a shit will try. I like it because it reaffirms the fact that everybody, it seems, does it anyway.
Granted, I write about music, and do so in Brooklyn, taboot, but I am optimistic that the glut is not local. I will have Sancho confirm this upon his annual return to Santo Domingo next week, but really, it seems that music is ephemeral again. The corporate bloodlettings — which greatly please Sancho’s North American Zoroastrian urges — are the final sign that the technologies for production and consumption are virtually interchangeable, a decidedly pre-modern balance.
Coupled with the pervasive and overwhelming data smog, one might even read the omnipresent desire to write/record/edit/curate music as culturally bred defense mechanism. Territorial pissing, more or less. Bodily fluids being what they are, this — needless to say — only exacerbates the issue. What is uncanny, though, are all the specific ways that music can make itself cut through, well, the crap. Sometimes it’s at least pretend-innovative, other times plain as day.
Released on a circular disc and judged strictly on its sonic youth, Radiohead’s In Rainbows would likely have been greeted as a songy disc by blokes reaching middle age. By selling it through ice cream trucks as they have, though, Radiohead has added a layer of (at least) temporary meaning to their work — ideally enough to get a listener listening long enough to really give the music a fair shake. (Which it’s worth. Really.)
Wilco (to use another example from the dwindling set of shared references) took a tried and true route: make it as plum pleasing as possible. Sancho thinks Jeff Tweedy is a stone shark-jumper (but that’s okay: more blood, potentially), though the shimmering guitars and dulcet tones of Sky Blue Sky wooed me endlessly.
There was just something I liked about the way it sounded, and couldn’t get enough of it for a while. Does that make it good? Dunno. I couldn’t really tell you what the songs are about, or even how I necessarily relate to anything beyond one or two lines, or — when it comes down to it — why I still consider it great even though I actually deleted the second half of the album from my iPod, cut out a plodding jam, substituted a live version of “What Light” and added some B-sides. Even with all of that, it holds up as a vessel, floating.
My enjoyment of the album is totally abetted by technology and its resultant lesson: the notion that music isn’t sacred. And it’s not even necessarily made by people with cool haircuts, righteous attitudes, or business sense. In the case of the latter, it sometimes just takes 40 years to reach who it needs to reach. Discovered anew, everything sounds current. Sometimes, everything current sounds old — like Vampire Weekend, who (on first listen) already sound like a band sucked into the hype grinder and spat out. I kind of hate myself for liking them. Sancho probably just hates them, though he’s got some theories about that, too.
1. “Can’t Buy Me Love” – The Better Beatles (from Mercy Beat)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “Only Heaven Knows” – Kevin Ayers (from The Unfairground
4. “Your Party Was Yesterday” – Sam Champion (from SM CHMPN EP)
5. “Spider Home” – O’Death (from Gigantic Series 7-inch)
6. “Amnesia” – Fire on Fire (from Fire on Fire EP)
7. “Cycles” – Frank Sinatra (from Cycles)
8. “Kandore Mandore” – Andore Mandore
9. “Ego Blossoms” – Samara Lubelski (from Living Bridge compilation)
10. “Music (Japanese version)” – Petra Haden (from Gum EP)
11. “Coloris” – Cornelius (from Coloris OST)
12. “Systems Thinking Business Modeling Consultant” – Magnetophone and John Darnielle (from Esopus #6: Help Wanted Alternative)
13. “The Deepest of Reds” – The S-Haters (from Stories As Cold as the Irish Sea 7-inch)
14. “Hyperstation” (live) – Sonic Youth (from Daydream Nation deluxe edition)
15. “California” – Dr. Dog (from Takers and Leavers EP)
16. “Four Freshmen Locked Out As the Sun Goes Down” – No Kids (from Come Into My House)
“Coloris” – Cornelius (download)
from Coloris OST (unreleased) (2006)
“Mixed Bizness (Cornelius remix)” – Beck (download)
from Mixed Bizness EP (2000)
“Music (Japanese version)” – Petra Haden (download) (buy)
from Gum EP (2008)
(files expire January 28th)
Super-dooper-like-whoa psyched for the Cornelius gig at Webster Hall next Saturday. And you should be, too. As such, here’s some arcana from the shibuya-kei bitmaster.
First up is part of his contribution to the soundtrack to the Gameboy Advance game Coloris (thanks to Dessgeega for the YouTube vid). I’d love to hear more of this stuff! I like the idea of writing loops and algorithms and standalone pieces of music for video games as a formal challenge to create music that is economical, simple, and satisfying.
Cornelius’s take on Beck’s “Mixed Bizness” is probably my single favorite remix of all time, let alone in the deep catalogues of both Hansen and Oyamada. If there were ever any doubts about one being the Oriental/Occidental counterpart to the other, the mind-blowing singularity of this cut should blow them like so many oblique paper creatures.
My major problem was last year’s Sensuous was its seeming abandonment of the acoustic side of the electro-acoustic equation. On the new Gum EP, vocal acrobat Petra Haden’s take on “Music,” Sensuous‘s penultimate cut, re-humanizes the hyper-organized bleeps. (Also included is Haden’s English language version of the same.)
“Four Freshmen Locked Out as the Sun Goes Down” – No Kids (download) (pre-order)
from Come Into My House (Tomlab) (2008)
(file expires January 24th)
File No Kids’ “Four Freshmen Locked Out as the Sun Goes Down” with Grizzly Bear and Asobi Seksu’s recent Phil Spector tributes, Dr. Dog’s “California,” and any number of other indie odes to pre-Beatles pop. It almost doesn’t matter what the Vancouver trio are singing about. In fact, I’m not even sure if I know myself, other than vague hints of a break-up, framed in the sonic guise of Brian Wilson’s vocal heroes. The title and the arrangement — both novelties on Come Into My House — are all they need to sell me on the song, which powers through on sheer vibe, the type of thing I’m happy to listen to just for the sound of it until it means something more.
“Kim Smoltz” – Ween (download)
from The Mollusk demos (thanks, Ween.com)
(file expires January 24th)
I love this Mollusk outtake before Gener even starts to sing, the endlessly airy keyboard melody that’s warm ‘n’ synthy all at once. When the vocals come in, the genre is implicit immediately: the wizened rock tune filled with maximum meaningless cliché. “Take it easy, walk with a light step, baby,” Gener sings. But without breaking voice, the song turns weird. “Walk amongst the life forms in your day,” is one piece of advice. “Swim around ’til the fish float out of the socket in your skull,” is another. While it might sound like parody, by blowing the song into the psychedelic nether-regions, Ween imbue the clichés with their original power: they’ve been through the weirdness, come out the other side, and now have something to offer. “Marinate a good piece of beef, understand the mind of belief” reminds me of the Americana of “Roses Are Free.”
I’ve tried a lot of other things through the years — like butabolidin, which is what they give to horses. And D.M.S.O. — dimethylsulfoxide. Whitey Ford used that for a while. You rub it on with a plastic glove and as soon as it gets on your arm you can taste it in your mouth. It’s not available anymore, though. Word is it can blind you. I’ve also taken shots — novocaine, cortisone and xylocaine. Baseball players will take anything. If you had a pull that would guarantee a pitcher 20 wins but might take five years off his life, he’d take it.
More present throughout are the omnipresent amphetamines:
We’ve been running short of greenies. We don’t get them from the trainer, because greenies are against club policy. So we get them from players on other teams who have friends who are doctors, or friends who know where to get greenies. One of our lads is going to have a bunch of greenies mailed to him by some of the guys on the Red Sox. And, to think you can spend five years in jail for giving your friend a marijuana cigarette.
And earlier:
There were 30,000 people in the park and it was exactly the kind of day in which you want to look good against your old club and in honor of the occasion Gary put down at least three greenies. They didn’t do him a bit of good.
Finally finished playing catch-up with many of my to-read bookmarks:
o Fantastic LA Weekly piece about Mark Mothersbaugh and Devo’s continued devolution. (“As an antidote, he and fellow Devo member Bob Casale in the beginning used to sneak subliminal messages into their scores. The first few times they were nervous, says Mothersbaugh. ‘I think it was a Keds commercial where we put in “Question authority.” I remember the people from Keds were tapping their pens on the table and the music’s playing, and it gets to the subliminal message, and I remember I flushed bright red. I looked over at this guy and he’s going, “Yeah! Yeah! Go go go!”‘”
o The McLovin12four screenname turned up on my buddy list, too.
o The Times writes a brief history of Webster Hall, which would be a wonderful place to see music if it wasn’t killing rock and roll in New York City.
o David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists–and Megastars.
o The Avant Garde Project provides an archive of out-of-print experimental LPs in FLAC and mp3.
o The Times profiles WFMU’s $mall ¢hange.
o Sad/sweet dispatch about George Harrison occasionally dressing up in the old Beatles costumes.
o A long thread (c. 2005) about the manufacture and distribution of LSD on Grateful Dead tour.
o “I Got What America Needs Right Here“: a wonderful Onion editorial by and about our man for ’08, Jimmy Carter.
o A map of online communities.
o An open-source freeware version of SimCity will be included with every computer distributed by the One Laptop Per Child project. The idea of impoverished kids learning about mega-conceptual society-building through SimCity blows my mind, but I do worry about the hegemonic implications, that SimCity merely represents the Westernized/American notion of urban development, beginning with power plants and industrial zoning, as opposed to in a poorer economic sphere.
“Paperback Writer” – The Beatles (download, regular) (buy, karaoke)
Over the weekend, I asked Spupes how to create a user account on my computer with all temptation-abetting internet capabilities blocked. Instead, he told me about WriteRoom, a text editor that takes over the computer’s full screen, literally blacking out all other apps in an emulation of a no-fuss ’80s-style word processor. By necessity, a screenshot could never convey exactly what is so wonderful about this program, so I’m not gonna try. Conceptually, it raises some interesting points about the usefulness of the complex, multitask-enabling GUIs that’ve become the norm versus the efficiency of one-track productivity. Practically, it’s just awesome. Or maybe it’s just a nice change of virtually scenery after 10+ years of Microsoft word processing products. Either way, I’m looking forward to getting up tomorrow and using this.
“Texas” – Jeffrey Lewis with Jack Lewis and Anders Griffin (download) (buy)
from It’s the One’s Who’ve Cracked That the Light Shines Through (2003)
“The Murder Mystery” (Velvet Underground) – Jeffrey and Jack Lewis (download)
recorded 2002 July 31 Peel Session
“Don’t Be Upset” – Jeffrey and Jack Lewis (download) (buy)
from City and Eastern Songs (2005)
(files expire January 18th)
Besides the press release for the forthcoming Mountain Goats album, which he illustrated, I have never seen any of Jeffrey Lewis’s comics. Nonetheless, they seem such a vivid way to understand his music. On “Texas,” speech balloon call-and-response (“How’s the pizza?” “Fucking awful!”) spirals methodically into imagistic madness, ala the Velvet Underground’s “Murder Mystery” (covered by Lewis on a Peel session in 2002), or a one-sheet comic in an alt-weekly. Elsewhere, it comes through in alternatingly hilarious and narcissistic autobiography — at it’s best, both simultaneously, as on “Don’t Be Upset” — where Lewis appears, like a self-illustrated post-hippie narrator, ala Kim Deitch’s Alias the Cat. Or maybe it’s just the power of suggestion. Just knowing that Lewis is a visual artist almost makes one forget the anti-folk cuteness that marbles his urban chronicles. Whatever it is, it’s a voice, and one that’s been absurdly prolific over the past few years, with a lot to discover. (And don’t neglect his legit cartoon classic, “Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror.”)
It occurred to me the other day that this is the first primary season of my life without HST around to bring a continuum of sanity/humanity (stylized, as it were) to Presidential campaign coverage. Drag.
There is something seriously bent, when you think on it, in the notion that a man with good sense would race out of his peaceful mountain home in Colorado and fly off in a frenzy like some kind of electrified turkey buzzard to spend three or four days being carried around the foulest sections of New England like a piece of meat, to watch another man, who says he wants to be President, embarrassing a lot of people by making them shake his hand outside factory gates at sunrise.
1. “New Year’s Eve” – Stephan Mathieu and Ekkehard Ehlers (from Heroin)
2. “New Year” – The Breeders (from Last Splash)
3. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
4. “He’s A Bad Boy” – Carole King
5. “Pochahantas” – Neil Young (from Chrome Dreams)
6. “Static #1” – Beck (from Radio 1 session)
7. “Blue Moon of Kentucky” – Ray Charles (from Complete Country & Western)
8. “Going to San Diego” – Allen Ginsberg (recorded 11/1971 Record Plant, NYC)
9. “Heshey’s Miniatures” – Corn Mo (from I Hope You Win!)
10. “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels” – Kitty Wells
11. “From A Window To A Screen” – the dB’s (from Repercussion)
12. “Tengazako 2” – Esau Mwamwaya
13. “Amok!” – Evan Ziporyn and Gamelan Galak Tika (from Evan Ziporyn/Gamelan Galak Tika)
14. “Mixed Bizness (Cornelius remix)” – Beck (from Mixed Bizness EP)
15. “Shooter” – Lil’ Wayne feat. Robin Clarke
16. “Side A (cLOUDDEAD #4; Jimmy Breeze 10”) – cLOUDDEAD (from 2002/07/17 Peel Session)
17. “We Bid You Goodnight” – Animal Collective (from unknown date, Old Market Hove, East Sussex, UK)
18. “As We Go Along” – The Monkees (from Head OST)
o Nicholas Meriwether on the Grateful Dead moniker: “steeped in scholarship, near universal in human culture and history, and still capable — as one Deadhead put it — of alienating parents.” (via his introduction to All Graceful Instruments, an anthology of Deadhead academia) (PDF)
o Chuck Klosterman on why not reading Harry Potter will make him culturally irrelevant at some point in the future.
o Why dudes like sappy movies, as long as they’re made up (and vice-versa).
o J. Hoberman on Bob Dylan’s films.
o David Cross on selling out. This is something of a genre: the confessional post about why doing X isn’t selling out, or — if it is — why it doesn’t matter a damn. (See also: Kevin Barnes.) Somebody could edit an anthology of this stuff.
o Steve Jobs at home, circa 1982.
“Box of Rain” – The Grateful Dead (download) (buy)
from American Beauty (1970)
The Lorimer/Metropolitan station connects the L train to the G train, or Williamsburg to Park Slope. It is, needless to say, a Brooklynite hub. After discovering Grateful Dead graffiti there last year, I had another late night Dead encounter, this time with a drunk hipster.
At around 2 in the morning, over Thanksgiving weekend, he wandered onto the Brooklyn-bound side, carrying a mostly empty bottle of wine, and singing at the top of his lungs. His bellows slapped off the tile, making the lyrics that much more indistinguishable as he sang along with his iPod. I slipped off my headphones, curious to hear what he was singing: “Box of Rain.” Needless to say, I started singing along.
Dude had owned American Beauty in high school but was recently inspired to dust it off thanks to the concluding episode of Paul Feig and Judd Apatow’s Freaks and Geeks, in which Lindsay Weir discovers the Dead and skips out on a summertime academic summit to head off on Dead tour.
Following my debacle with the HIP website, I soon ran afoul of their legions of contradictory phone-bank loons, two of which approved a simple physical with a Manhattan doctor, and one of which added a few hundred dollars of additional charges to my account even though I’d already shelled out the agreed co-pay.
Thankfully, I have a secret force on my side, who revealed his identity in a manner most clever amid a thick tangle of bureaucracy that (I think) means I won:
v. The decision to overturn for the processing of the claim was rendered by Senior Clams Examiner, who is experienced in claims related issues.
The Senior Clams Examiner! Calloo! Callay! I’d like to think he is working away at his desk right now, high in some post-modern box overlooking a deserted midtown avenue, his office gloriously clean and new and tasteful. He empties a bucket of clams on the clean glass before him, the residue of previous loads miraculously wiped away by the futuristic self-cleaning furniture.
The Senior Clams Examiner praises Jah for the dumbass HIP executive who didn’t know the difference between oysters and clams and hired him to look for pearls anyway. He will be home in time to put his son to bed. He smiles, and grants his benevolence on a hapless sucker who didn’t realize that just because a hospital is affiliated with HIP doesn’t mean that all of its doctors are, too.
Putting the appeal in a pneumatic tube, the Senior Clams Examiner returns his attention to the batch of mollusks before him. When he finishes, he slides a few into his briefcase for a midnight treat with his wife, and leaves the rest for the robots to clean up.
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