Got a lotta catching up to do.
Picaresque – The Decemberists
Face the Truth – Stephen Malkmus
Bonnaroo 2004 – various artists
Sun Ra Arkestra and the Dub Trio at the Knitting Factory, 24 April 2005
Bob Dylan at the Beacon Theater, 25 April 2005
Caribou and Four Tet at the Bowery Ballroom, 4 May 2005
Yo La Tengo at Rose Theater, 18 May 2005
Derek Trucks Band at Rocks Off Boat Cruise, 22 June 2005
BRAIN TUBA: The Catalogue
BRAIN TUBA: Black and White Hiss
In the current Paste (Billy Corgan cover), only in print: The Mountain Goats: Turning the Klieg Lights Around, album review of The Stanley Brothers.
In the previous Relix (Trey Anastasio/Robert Randolph/John Butler cover), only in print: album reviews of Mike Doughty and A Hawk and a Hacksaw/Four Tet/Caribou; book reviews of Dave Van Ronk and All Yesterday’s Party: the Velvet Underground in Print, 1966-1970
In the current Relix (Jack Johnson cover), only in print: album reviews of Skeletons and the Girl-Faced Boys, The White Stripes, and Spirit; DVD review of Classic Album Series: The Band; book review of Greil Marcus. (I am also interviewed in Shain Shapiro’s article about message boards.)
In the current Signal To Noise(Four Tet cover), only in print: live review of Sonic Youth; album review of A Hawk and a Hacksaw.
In the current Hear/Say(Vans Warped Tour cover), only in print: album reviews of The Bad Plus and Head of Femur.
July 1st marks my fourth anniversary as a Brooklyn resident, where I moved after college (and following a month on Mom’s couch). Since then, I have occupied the same corner of the same loft above the Morgan Avenue L-train stop, on Seigel Street. I have watched the walls grow around me and hem me in, the open 900 square foot room first divided by a half-assed frame/bedsheet construction, then scrapped to create three doorless/roofless cubicles. This year, a ceiling grew, stairs were built, and an attic was created. There was painting.
When we moved in, the remains of the A.M. Knitwear Corporation were intact below us, a ghost factory filled with unused envelopes in abandoned desks where plates of fried chicken sat uneaten, milk left to curdle in the office refrigerator. We salvaged what we could: a few clothing racks, some furniture, and what is now my absurdly huge wooden desk. Within the year, the remains of the factory were wiped free, and more rooms installed.
The building has changed. Graffiti-etched paint was scraped from the walls to reveal a rich brick. Clean marble was laid on the cement hallway floors. There are new doorways in the stairwells, and security cameras. Most of the rooms now have hardwood floors. Our crap was already in by the time that was added to the deal and you can still see the yellow paint from the factory floor in our living room.
There were people on the block before us. They were across the street when we got here. I suspect some of them were responsible for the founding of the health food store and the bar. I am not entirely sure. And so, outside our front door, a neighborhood began. The New York Times said so last weekend. My ex-roommate, who recently vacated the premises for more civilized digs elsewhere in Brooklyn, weighed in with a pretty fair critique of the Timesstory.
As an unrepentant hippie, however, I take some umbrage with use of the term “hippie music” to describe what comes out of this neighborhood. At its worst, it’s usually sub-indie shitpiles or Radiohead-knockoffs. The latter can be particularly dangerous, what with their love of bass and all. But, as an unrepentant hippie, I will also defend to death their right to make it in their natural habitat. Which, I guess, doesmake them hippies (and relegates jamband kids to the suburban youth demographic it probably always was).
The picture at the head of the Times pieces is of the public area in front of Brooklyn’s Natural and The Archive — the main drag of what I’ve been trying to get people to call Bourgwick Village. Next to the entrance to Brooklyn’s Natural, there are several surfaces ripe for graffiti. Recently, some new stickers have cropped up: KEEP YOUR ART TO YOURSELF NEXT TIME. I laughed when I saw it, but every time I think about it, it gets more and more repellant. Self-righteousness is certainly the tone of most of the neighborhood graffiti — the standard issue liberal arts cultural critiques on the subway ads, to spray-painted slogans like “devious semantics.” If graffiti’s anonymous safety is a forum for a neighborhood’s true self, then we petty Bourgwickians are a pretty navel-gazing lot. But we also live here. Don’t like street art? Get outta Brooklyn, asshole.
“I guess I’ll say that I think that everybody should play music,” Laura Carter of Elf Power once told me. “The more the better. I guess I like the Sun Ra perspective on it that you’re giving and making things, by choosing to play music, versus a lot of other things you could choose to do.” Probably 1% — if that — of all the art ever created will ever mean anything substantial to anybody besides its creator. But I don’t think that’s sad or pathetic. It’s just how it goes. And that’s cool! Make that album! But it doesn’t mean I want, or even need, to hear it, either. Maybe I’m being a bad neighbor by not going out and seeing my local bands whenever they make the trek to gig on the Lower East Side or wherever. but — shit yeah — go play.
As for people practicing music “all night,” I can honestly say that it doesn’t happen. At least not in ear shot of my open windows (and I can hear the pinched hi-hats of at least three drummers practicing most afternoons). I think that’s mostly hyperbole. (As for people listeningto music at all hours, that’s another story.) But the musicians aren’t the only loud part. There’s also a city park out our back window. And, as anybody who has ever tried to record music in the building will tell you, it’s not the other bands that leak onto your virtual tape, it’s the fucking ice cream trucks.
That said, calling it the new Haight-Ashbury is a tad absurd, and I don’t really believe that the dude meant it. Though maybe he did. The Haight, after all, was overrun with herpes-carrying pilgrims come to find the San Francisco dream (“how I love ya, how I love ya, how I love ya, ‘frisssssscooooooo — oh, my hair’s getting good in the back…”) George Harrison called them “spotty.” Even the Grateful Dead bounced for Marin County pretty early on. It’s not quite the Summer of Love out here, thankfully.
Nobody’s trying to save the world (except my friend Jeff, and he moved out a while ago) though that might change when the pilgrims start to arrive — which, with the promised Williamsburg waterfront project, could be soon. Or it might not be. Or maybe they’re already here. How can one tell? Is there a secret handshake? Maybe the Timesarticle was a blip that won’t turn out to mean anything, but it’s a blip that at least warrants some attention from those being blipped.
There is also the matter of the new building going up one block over, between the Wonton factory and the Boar’s Head plant. It is next to another pair of loft buildings owned by my landlords, and it is being built to look exactly like them. Except that it will not serve any time as a factory, despite what its architecture might suggest. It kind of creeps me out, like one of the memory-impregnated replicants from Blade Runner. Do the residents of android buildings even dream, let alone of sheep (electric, organic or otherwise)?
I moved here because there was space and because I could afford it. Split three ways, places still seem affordable. Perhaps it is an existence of prolonged adolescence, though I suppose I prefer it to one of premature adulthood. Yes, welcome to Bourgwick my hippies. Go forth and try not to suck..
(And I mean that in the nicest possible way.)
Thanks to the lovely and effervescent Andy Blackman Hurwitz of Ropeadope Records, today marks the first new episode of the FROW SHOW since the shutdown of my friend Jeff’s pirate radio station in the spring of 2001.
For the next four Tuesdays, the Ropeadope Podcast Network will distribute installments of my favorite music (plus slick DJ chatter). This week’s show includes tracks by Captain Beefheart, Cornelius, the Olivia Tremor Control, some of my favorite unsigned NYC/Brooklyn acts (The Song Coproration, The Wowz, John Biz), outtakes and B-sides by Yo La Tengo, Bob Dylan, Wilco, Brian Eno, and Beck, the all-important Frow Show theme (of course), and much mo’.
Thanks again to Andy and everybody at the fake office!
You can listen here.
“You Belong to Me” – Bob Dylan
(This file will expire on February 9th.)
Dylan did a really lovely version of Pee Wee King, Chilton Price, and Redd Stewart’s “You Belong to Me” on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack, from 1994. It’s just Dylan and guitar. Because of that — and the warmth of the recording, and those chord changes, and that tempo, and Dylan’s level of engagement — it feels to me very much like something that could come near the end of Blood on the Tracks, in the vicinity of “Shelter From the Storm” and “Buckets of Rain.” It’s real pretty-like.
The only problem with the recording was that, right after the last verse, came a sample of Woody Harrelson from the film. To put it mildly, it killed the vibe. Dunno why it didn’t occur to me earlier, but — tonight — I finally dumped it into ProTools, removed Woody, and fixed the ending. I was feeling nerdy. Enjoy.
“Hazy SF” – Six Organs of Admittance
(This file will expire on May 29th.)
I’ve been feeling the need to travel for a few months now, ideally ending up in San Francisco where I could visit my old college housemates. But I put off using my airline credit until the last possible minute, and now it seems as if it’s probably gonna expire before I can go. Feh.
Until I get my shit together, “Hazy SF” by Six Organs of Admittance is gonna have to do. It’s a perfect little slab of shimmering California boosterism that — along with the Devandra Banhart-curated Golden Apples of the Suncompilation that it’s drawn from — has become part of my morning routine lately. I lie by the living room window and shuffle through email while my head wakes up far away, on the couch of my friends’ North Beach apartment, sun pouring in, the cat skittering.
Thanks to Mike McGonigal and his awesome ‘buked & scorned blog for the YouSendIt idea.
Happier in Hoboken, my 20th anniversary Yo La Tengo feature, from Paste (on newsstands now, yo).
BRAIN TUBA: The Clock Ticked, At Times, A Regular Tock
This Feeling’s Called Goodbye by Brothers Past
The Allman Brothers Band at the Beacon Theater, 21 March 2005
Medeski, Martin, and Wood at Tonic, 7 & 8 March 2005
In the current Signal To Noise (Genesis P-Orridge cover), only in print: album review of Sound Tribe Sector 9.
In the current Tracks (Lucinda Williams cover), only in print: album review of Jack Johnson, and book review of Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason.
In the current Relix (Disco Biscuits cover), only in print: album reviews of Andrew Bird and the Chris Stamey Experience, DVD reviews of Bob Dylan World Tours 1966-1974 and Looking For A Thrill: An Anthology of Inspiration
It’s been a while since I’ve posted, I know. I’ve been busy bending circuits (both intentionally and accidentally), serving jury duty (the case of Glen C. Campbell, not the singer, and Seven-Fingered Sampson), falling in and out of mood with the turbulent season, ushering roommates in and out, and traveling to Athens, Georgia (to see the frabjous Olivia Tremor Control) and a few places in New Jersey (Dayton, to International Flavors and Fragrances, and Montclair, to see a performance of Harry Partch’s Oedipus).
And working. Oh, yes. Much of that. A post with some recent links will follow shortly, hopefully with a more regular posting schedule to resume not long after that. Since I hate meta-posts, I’ll defer to Perfect Sound Forever‘s Jason Gross and his righteous Ye Wei blog for thoughts about balancing blogging with other forms of writing.
We at wunderkammern27.com, as duly named representatives for the Friends of the Center for Anthropological Computing, would like to offer a tip o’ the hat to Rob and his fine work in reconstructing the narrative of “Alicia.” She is a true Ordovician!
week of March 26, 2005
#3 this week, #5 last week, 16 weeks on chart
More sex as seductive boredom from 50. There’s comedy, too, but it’s the kind I can’t put my finger on; the kinda resigned bleakness of Waiting for Godot that doesn’t make any particular sense as humor, but can’t really be recognized as anything else Like in “Candy Shop,” 50 laughs midway through, and — again — it’s a totally secret laugh, closed. And I guess there’s an allure to that — the private joke — and, as an audience member, I should wanna get in on it.
The groove — an ethereal theremin keyboard melody, handclaps, a tinny orchestra hit, a few synths — is subterranean: low and mean and slinky. There’s a little moment of transcendence that I almost like. The song drops out in some indefinable way (backing tracks just dimmed slightly?) and 50’s boredom, for a minute, blurs and refocuses into a dreamier fantasy: “See me shining, lit up with diamonds,” he sings. “Catch me swooping, gently couping (?), switching lanes…” And that’s where the laugh is. The “switching lanes” line — nestled atop this music — makes me imagine a late night driver, switching lanes for no other reason than that there’s nobody else on the road, and he can ’cause he wants to. I don’t imagine that it was intended, though lethargy as transcendence is kinda dreamy.
Still, not enough to carry the tune. So it goes. Long weekend. I’m taking a damn bath.
Finally finished/posted my Hunter S. Thompson rememberence.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. — Raoul Duke
