blog : Jesse Jarnow

frow show, FMU-33

Detailed playlist (with listening links).

1. Dillinger – “Natty Kung Fu” – When Rhythm Was King (Studio One)
2. King Khan & the Shrines – “le fils de jacques dutronc” – what is?! (Vice)

3. Dirty Projectors – “Stillness is the Move” – Bitte Orca (Domino)
4. Tadahiko Yokogawa – “Limbo” – Volo Interno (Sleepy Mammal Sound)
5. Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. – “Eleking The Clay” – Lord of the Underground: Vishnu and the Magic Elixir (Alien8)
6. Harris Newman – “A Quarter To Call the Ambulance” – Decorated (Strange Attractors)
7. Ted Hayes – “On Ships at Sea and Stars” – Current Working Directory
8. Port of Notes – “Duet With Birds (a capella)” – Duet With Birds 12-inch (KYTHMAK)
9. Steve Gunn – “Side A” – End of the City 12-inch (Abandon Ship)
10. James Ferraro – “Side A” – Clear (Holy Mountain)
11. Pimmon – “Some Days Are Tones” – Smudge Another Yesterday (Preservation) [feat. “The Desert Music” by William Carlos Williams] 12. Sarah Cahill – “Ruth Crawford: 9 Preludes” – Crawford/Beyer (New Albion)
13. Eric Cordier – “Osorezan” – Osorezan (Herbal) [feat. “Bayaka Harp Songs” cassette, recorded by Louis Sarno (Anachron)] 14. Famous Blue Jay Singers of Birmingham – “Sleep, Baby, Sleep” – Vocal Quartets: Volume 2 D/E/F/G (1929-1932) (Document)
15. Newband – “Columbus (Dean Drummond)” – Microtonal Works by… (Mode 18)
16. Ata Ebtekar & the Iranian Orchestra For New Music – “Little Tales 4point5” – performing works of alireza mashayekhi (Sub Rosa)
17. Elfin Saddle – “Muskeg Parade” – Ringing For the Begin Again (Constellation)
18. Dragging an Ox Through Water – “a.) The Unbearable Dumbness of Being, b.) Earthen Airlock > Snowbank Treatmant” – The Tropics of Phenomenon (Freedom To Spend)
19. Wilco – “Bull Black Nova” – Wilco (The Album) (Nonesuch)

20. The Vaselines – “Son Of A Gun (demo)” – Enter the Vaselines (Sub Pop)
21. The Oh Sees – “Carol Ann” – Carol Ann 7-inch
22. Yoshida Tatsuya – “Drevoredo” – A Million Years (Magaibutsu)
23. LSD March – “Kumoitachikumo” – Uretakumo Nakunarutorika (Beta-Lactam Ring)
24. Patrick Watson – “Machinery of the Heavens” – Wooden Arms (Secret City)
25. Harry Partch – “Rotate The Body In All Its Planes (Ballad For Gymnasts)” – Harry Partch Collection, v. 3 (Composers Recordings)
26. Realax – “Melonaire” – Apollo Guise (Little Fury Things)
27. White – “Song 5” – Look Directly Into the Sun: China Pop 2007 (Bloodshot)
28. Bob Dylan – “This Dream of You” – Together Through Life (Columbia)
29. The Buzzcocks – “Love Is Lies” – Love Bites (EMI)

The Frow Show with Jesse playlists: http://wfmu.org/playlists/JJ
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frow show, FMU-32

Detailed playlist (with listening links).

1. Robbie the Werewolf – “Drums and Guns” – Live at the Waleback
2. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention – “Motherly Love” – Joe’s Corsage (Vaulternative)

3. The Questionmarks – “The Ghost Left Town” – The Questionmarks v. NYC, v. 1 (Little Fury Things)
4. Woods – “Where and What Are You?” – Songs of Shame (Shrimper)
5. Peter Walker – “Morning Joy” – Rainy Ray Raga (Vanguard)
6. Jean-Claude Vannier – “Le Roi Des Mouches Et La Confiture De Rouse” – L’enfant Assassin Des Mouches (Finders Keepers)
7. Akai Ikuo – “I Don’t Like Such A Hot Day” – Language Without Words (Black Series) [feat. “Opening Prayer Song (Kiowa)” by David Apekaun] 8. Jacques Thollot – “Cecile” – Quand le son devient aigu, jeter la girafe à la mer (Futura)
9. Masayuki Takayanagi and New Direction For the Arts – “Second Movement” – Free Form Suite (Three Blind Mice) [feat. “Amber” by Ken Nordine from “Colors” (Asphodel)] 10. Jackson 5 – “I Was Made to Love Her” – Joyful Jukebox Music (Motown)

11. Akron/Family – “improv” – Live in the Love Room @ WFMU, 7 May 2009 [engineered by Chris Koltay and Jeff Simmons] 12. The What Four – “I’m Gonna Destroy that Boy” – Destroy That Boy: More Girls With Guitars (Ace)
13. Otomo Yoshihide’s New Jazz Quintet – “Strawberry Fields Forever” – Otomo Yoshihide’s New Jazz Quintet (Union Disc)
14. Derek Bailey and Anthony Braxton – “The second set – area 11 (open)” – First Duo Concert (Emanem)
15. The Pyramids – “Mogho Naba (King of Kings)” – King of Kings (Ikef)
16. Omar Souleyman – “La Sidounak Sayyada” – Dabke 2020 (Sublime Frequencies)
17. Keith Richards – “The Harder They Come” – Run Rudolph Run 7-inch (Rolling Stones Records)

frow show, FMU-31

Detailed playlist (with listening links).

1. Voicebot – “Instructions” – Yeti, v. 1 (Yeti Publishing)
2. Bob – “Yes For Sure” – GREATEST HITS VOL. 1

3. Crystal Stilts – “Sugar Baby” – Love Is A Wave 7-inch (Slumberland)
4. Chiaki Naomi – “X+Y=Love” – Japanese Folk, Rock & Enka 1969-1972
5. Pat Kelly – “Somebody’s Baby” – Trojan Rocksteady box set (Trojan)
6. Hailu Mergia and the Walias – “Eti Gual Blenai” – Tche Belew (Kaifa)
7. Amadou and Mariam – “Ce N’est Pas Bon” – Welcome To Mali (Because/Nonesuch)
8. Pisces – “Sam” – A Lovely Sight (Numero Group)
9. Oorutaichi – “Pan 1 nonaki” – Drifting My Folklore (Okimi)
10. Stars of the Lid – “Goodnight” – Music For Nitrous Oxide (1992 – 1994) (Sedimental)
11. Sachiko M – “2808200” – Japanese Avant-Garde (Sub Rosa)
12. Harry Smith – “Water From Roof 10:55am 12-18-88 South End Performing Arts Center, Naropa Institute (Edit)” – Yeti, v. 1 (Yeti Publishing)
13. Oren ambarchi – “#4” – Suspension (Touch UK)
14. Expo 70 – “Transcending Energy From Light” – Night Flights (Fedora Corpse)
15. John Elliot – “Outer Space” – Outer Space/Faucet Plains cassette (Wagon) [feat. “These Lacustrine Cities” read by John Ashbery (Living Theatre, September 16, 1963)] 16. Dave Clark and Walter Drake – “Several Events Related To Wind” – The Mesmerization of Water/Several Events Related to Wind cassette
17. Ku Khata – “Neco Novellas” – New Dawn Ku Khata (World Connection)
18. Sir Richard Bishop – “Taqasim For Omar” – The Freak of Araby (Drag City)
19. Ghedalia Tazartès – “Un Amour Si Grand Qu’il Nie So” – Diasporas/Tazartes (Alga Marghen)
20. Harappian Night Recordings – “Memoria Makhnovischna” – The Glorious Gongs of Hainuwele (Bo’ Weavil)
21. Mickey Hart, Zakir Hussain, Sikiru Adepoju, and Giovani Hidalgo – “Dances With Wood” – Global Drum Project (Shout! Factory)
22. Color Rabbit – “Tribal Wave” – Space Placement (Little Fury Things)
23. Jakob Olausson – “Silhouette V” – Moonlight Farm (Destijl)
24. Tenniscoats – “Donna Donna” – Totemo Aimasho (Room40)
25. Masato Minami – “It Can’t Be Over” – The Tropics (BMG Victor)

26. Sven Libaek – “Lift Off” – Solar Flares (Vadim)
27. various – “SIDECHOP: Documenting 18 fomerly secret performances (panidomatic improvisation)” – Iowa Ear Music (Creel Prone)
28. Justin Heathcliff – “Once It’s Nice To Rise at Dawn” – Justin Heathcliff (world psychedelia)
29. Chrysalis – “What Will Become of the Morning” – Definition (Rev)
30. Arthur Miles – “The Lonely Cowboy” – Another Time, Another Place (mix by dante carfagna)
31. Pete Seeger and Brother Kirk feat. Big Bird – “Sweet Rosyanne” – Pete Seeger and Brother Kirk Visit Sesame Street (Children’s Records of America) [Happy 90th, Pete!]

32. Elvis Costello – “Beyond Belief” – Imperial Bedroom (Columbia)

frow show, FMU-30

Detailed playlist (with listening links).

1. The Beatles – “I Want To Tell You” – Revolver (mono) (Capitol)
2. Of Montreal – “She’s A Rejecter” – Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? (Polyvinyl)
3. Curtis Mayfield – “if i were only a child again” – 7-inch (Columbia)
4. Richard Hell and the Voidoids – “Love Comes In Spurts (outtake)”

5. Jeffrey Lewis and the Junkyard – “Mini-Theme: Moocher From The Future” – Em Are I (Rough Trade)
6. Deerhunter – “Rainwater Cassette Exchange” – Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP (Kranky)
7. What’s Up – “Fool’s Gold” – Content Imagination (Obey Your Brain)
8. Snowglobe – “Comforted” – No Need To Light A Night Light On A Night Like Tonight EP (Makeshift)
9. The Child Readers – “Death of a Cloud” – Music Heard Far Off (Soft Abuse)
10. James Blackshaw – “Bled” – The Glass Bead Game (Young God) [feat. “Earth Horns with Electronic Drone” by Yoshi Wada (Em)] 11. Yonlu – “I Know What It’s Like” – A Society In Which No Tear Is Shed Is Inconceivably Mediocre (Luaka Bop)

12. Woods – “Sunlit” – 7-inch (Captured Tracks)
13. Chase Pagan – “Summer Games” – Bells and Whistles (Esperanza Plantation)
14. Portsmouth Sinfonia – “Also Sprach Zarathustra” – The Transatlantic Story (Castle)
15. Borbetomagus – “DC” – Snuff Jazz (Agaric)
16. Talibam! with Daniel Carter – “The Man From Plato 3000, Whose Resource Efficently Ear-A-Rounded the Antiquity Level” – The New Nixon Tapes (Roaratorio)
17. Telecult Powers – “The Ecstatic Mother” – The Amazing Laws of… (Abandon Ship)
18. Christian Science Minotaur – “Little Women v. 2.1” – Map 2 (of 9)
19. KK Null – “Side A (excerpt)” – Live @ Electron (Noiseville)
20. tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE – “Tone Fones Duet” – Scrape Audio Magazine #1 (Scrape)
21. Just Exactly Perfect Brothers Band – “Infinity Ashes” – Too Loose To Truck cassette
22. Teeth Mountain – Teeth Mountain (Shdwply)
23. Waza trumpet ensembles – Waza: Blue Nile – Sudan (Wergo)
24. Gamelan Son of Lion – “Telling Time (Miguel Frasconi)” – Sonogram (Innova)
25. Akio Suzuki – “Performance 20.10.’97” – Na-Gi 1997 (Edition RZ)
26. Arsenije Jovanovic – “Les Vents du Camargue” – Galiola / Works for Radio 1967-2000 (FO A RM)
27. Ellen Fullman – “Staggered Stasis” – The Aerial #3: A Journal In Sound (Aerial)
28. Ulf Knudsem – “Høstland” – Maskindans – Norsk Synth 1980-1988 (Hermitage)

29. Frederick Knight – “I’ve Been Lonely For So Long” (Stax)
30. Five Stairsteps – “O-o-h Child” (Buddah)
31. Cody Richards – “Open the Door Richard” – Best of Kayden and Merben Records (Funkadelphia)
32. Willie Williams – “Where the Sun Never Goes Down” – Fight On, Your Time Ain’t Long (Mississippi)
33. Tom Waits – “Innocent When You Dream” – Frank’s Wild Years (Island)

frow show, FMU-29

Detailed playlist (with listening links).

1. The Miamis – “Dada Mama” – The Miamis
2. Apples in Stereo – “Go!” – Discovery of a World Inside the Moone (Spin Art)
3. Beck – “Green Light” – Record Store Day 7-inch
4. Del Shannon – “Little Town Flirt” – 7-inch (Big Top) [Record Store Day purchase #1.] 5. Augie Meyers – “Kep Pa So” – 7-inch (Atlantic) [Record Store Day purchase #2.] 6. John Doe and the Sadies – “Stop the World (and Let Me Off)” –Country Club (Yep-Roc)
7. Shugo Tokumaru – “Rum Hee (Deerhoof remix)” – Rum Hee EP (Blues Interactions)
8. Ai Aso – “Ka Mi Tsu Re No O O Ki Na Mi Zu Ta Ma Ri” – Chamomile Pool (Pedal)
9. Guru Guru – “UFO” – UFO (Spalax) [feat. humpback whales & shit] 10. Northampton Wools – “Valley of Shame” – Northampton Wools cassette (Open Mouth)
11. Yoshio Machida – “Dec 26,2001 CAY, Tokyo, Japan” – Steelpan Improvisations: 2001-2008 (Amorfon)
12. Banda De Mocorito De Nilo Gallardo – “Marcha Zacatecas” – Bandas Sinaloenses Musica Tambora (Arhoolie)
13. Jean-Pierre Tzaud – “Maria Isabela” – Marimbas Du Guatemala & Du Mexique (Arhoolie)
14. Capcom Sound Team – “Wily’s Castle (parts I & II)” – Megaman OST
15. Fuzakenna – “Journey To The Forest” – Everything We Do Is Gold
16. Merzbow – “Angel of the Odd” – Yurikamome: 13 Japanese Birds Part 3 (Important)
17. Dum Dum Girls – “Longhair” – Dum Dum Girls EP (Captured Tracks)

18. The Heptones – “Sweet Talking” – Sweet Talking (Heartbeat)
19. The Gladiators – “Sonia” – Studio One Singles (Heartbeat)
20. The Ethopians – “Everything Crash” – Everything Crash: The Best of the Ethopians (Trojan)
21. The Abyssinians – “The Good Lord” – Satta Massangana (Jam Sounds)
22. Tommy McCook – “The Dub Station” – King Tubby Meets the Aggrovators at Dub Station (Sanctuary)
23. Prince Philip Smart – “Ja Ja In De Dub”
24. Scientist – “#3” – Scientist Wins the World Cup (Greensleeves)
25. Twilight Circus – “K2500” – Dub From The Secret Vaults (ROIR)
26. Valet – “Babylon 4 Eva” – Naked Acid (Kranky)
27. Burning Spear – “Play Jerry” – Appointment With His Majesty (Burning Music)

28. Alex Chilton – “Surfer Girl” – Like Flies on Sherbert (Peabody)
29. Brad Laner – “Find Out” – Neighbor Singing (Home Tapes)
30. Dirty Projectors – “Spring Is Here” – The Graceful-Fallen Mango (This Heart Plays Records)
31. Akron/Family – “No Space in This Realm” – Meek Warrior (Young God)
32. Infinity Window – “Skull Theft” – Artificial Midnight (Arbor)
33. Francisco Lopez – “Untitled #202” – Victoriaville Matiere Sonore (Victo)
34. The Olivia Tremor Control – “Grass Canons” – Black Foliage: Animation Music, v. 1 (Flydaddy)
35. Tim Hecker – “A Stop at the Chord Cascades” – An Imaginary Country (Kranky)
36. Sex Mob feat. John Medeski – “Blue and Sentimental” – Sex Mob Meets Medeski: Live in Willisau (Thirsty Ear)
37. George Jones – “Beneath Still Waters” – Burn The Honky Tonk Down (Rounder)

38. Black Mountain – “Night Walks” – In the Future (Jagjaguwar)
39. Yo La Tengo – “Farewell Adventureland” – Adventureland
40. Pwrfl Power – “Let Me Teach You How To Hold Chopsticks” – Pwrfl Power
41. Gene Clark – “In A Misty Morning” – Roadmaster (Edsel)
42. Blossom Toes – “When the Alarm Clock Rings” – Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts fron the British Empire & Beyond, 1964-1969 (Rhino)

frow show, FMU-28

Detailed playlist (with listening links).

1. Willie Nelson – “Sunday Morning Coming Down” – Naked Willie (RCA Nashville/Legacy)
2. Beat Boys – “Abrigo De Palavras Em Caixas Do Céu” – Beat Boys (Lion)
3. Fabio – “Lindo Sonho Delirante (LSD)” – Brazilian Nuggets, v. 1
4. Les Maledictus Sound – “Inside My Brain” – Midnight Massiera: The B-Music of Jean-Pierre Massiera (Finders Keepers)
5. Daniel Higgs – “Leontocephaline Rhapsody” – Metempsychotic Melodies (Holy Mountain)
6. Red Crayola – “Free Form Freak Out > Transparent Radiation” – The Parable of Arable Land (international artists)
7. The Child Readers – “Death of a Cloud” – Music Heard Far Off (Soft Abuse)
8. Suki Suki Switch – “Hitode” – You May Forget It (Wax)
9. Nick Schillace – “A King’s Head” – Landscape and People (Burly Time)
10. Bob L. Sturm – “50 Particles in a Three-Dimensional Harmonic Potential: An Experiment in 5 Movements” [http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~b.sturm/music/50Particles.htm] 11. Painting Petals on Planet Ghost – “Sakura no hana no oto ga kikoeru” – Painting Petals on Planet Ghost (Time-Lag)
12. Mickey Hart, Henry Wolff, Nancy Jennings – “The Revolving Mask of Yamantaka” – Yamantaka (Celestial Harmonies)
13. Sharon Van Etten – “I Wish I Knew” – Because I Was In Love (Language of Stone)

14. Pavement – “Date With IKEA” – Brighten the Corners: Nicene Creedence Edition (Matador)
15. Hampton Grease Band – “Upper and Lower Dresden > Hendon > Andy Griffith Theme” – Live 1970
16. v/a – “Lizards” – Gamehenge 09 cassette (Little Fury Things) [cameron wisch, the questionmarks, karl blau, padna, capitol k, whitman, keepbullfighting , struktur, kixly, color rabbit, liek twi, christian science minotaur, onna curry, say no to architecture, magic pencil — http://monkeytownhq.com/4_16_09.html] 17. Animal Collective – “College” – Sung Tongs (Fat Cat)

18. Wavves – “Get In The Sun” – Wavves (Fat Possum)
19. Magick Marckers – “7/23” – Balf Quarry (Drag City)
20. Magic Lantern – “Underwater Dynasty” – Somba/Underwater Dynasty 12-inch (Urck)
21. Black Artists Group – “OLCSJBFLBC” – In Paris (Aries)
22. Borbetomagus with Hugh Davies – “Concordat 8” – Work On What Has Been Spoiled (Agaric)
23. Milford Graves and Don Pullen – “P.G. III – P.G. IV” – Nommo (SRP)
24. Toru Takemitsu – “The Petrified Forest” – Film Music of Toru Takemitsu, v. 2 (Nonesuch)
25. Jessica Bailiff – “Big Hill” – Jessica Bailiff (Kranky)
26. Seaworthy – “Map In Hand, pt. 1” – Map In Hand (12k)
27. Frederick Judd – “Sprockets” – G-Spots: The spacey folk electro-horror sounds of the Studio G Library (Trunk)
28. Gil Trythall – “Little Green Apples” – Country Moog (Switched-On Nashville) (Athena)
29. Caetano Veloso – “Love Me Tender” – A Foreign Sound (Nonesuch)

30. John Doe and the Sadies – “Stop the World (And Let Me Off)” – Country Club (Yep-Roc)
31. Sir Douglas Quintet – “If You Really Want Me To I’ll Go” – Mendocino (Smash)
32. DeYarmond Edison – “Silent Signs” – Silent Signs

frow show, FMU-27

Detailed playlist (with listening links).

1. The Lemon Drops – “I Live In The Springtime” – Nuggets, v. 4 (Rhino)
2. Strawberry Switchblade – “Trees and Flowers” – Scott 5: Gaylord’s 2008 Hanukah mix

3. Boston Spaceships – “Ready To Pop” – Brown Submarine (Guided By Voices Inc.)
4. Shop Assistants – “Before I Wake” – Will Anything Happen (Overground)
5. The Whippets – “Go Go Go With Ringo” – 7-inch (Colpix) [feat. Bibbe Hansen (Beck’s momz) and Janet Kerouac (Jack’s daughter).] 6. Bill Murray – “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” – Where the Buffalo Roam OST (MCA)
7. Wooden Shjips – “Down By The Sea” – Dos (Holy Mountain)
8. Mistworld – “#2”
9. Kevin Drumm – “Untitled (Disc 2, Track 3)” – Imperial Distortion (Hospital Productions) [feat. “Martian Time Slip” by Philip K. Dick, “Prologue,” from 3 Scenes from THE CREATION, Choral Music of Vladimir Ussachevsky, Missa Brevis (Composers Recordings, Inc.); “Magic” by Emeralds, from Solar Bridge (Hanson)] 10. My Cat Is An Alien – “Brilliance in the Outer Space” – From the Earth To The Spheres, v. 1 (Opax) [feat. “Reveil des oiseaux” by Oliver Messiaen from Messiaen Edition, performed by Yvonne Loriod] 11. Mia Doi Todd and Andre Renteria – “Electrafficbirds One” – Morning Music (City Zen)
12. Curle and Thompson Greenwood – “Brother Song” – One Time, One Place

13. Bob Dylan – “Beyond Here Lies Nothin'” – Together Through Life (Columbia)
14. Conjunto Bernal – “Para Que Quiero Un Amor” – 15 Early Tejano Classics (Arhoolie)
15. Silver Summit – “Awaken” – Silver Summit (Language of Stone) [feat. “Double Music” by John Cage & Lou Harrison (from Concert Percussion for Orchestra, the Manhattan Percussion Ensemble, Time); excerpts from Live at Houston Hall by Billy Martin & Grant Calvin Weston (Amulet); You Never Heard Such Sounds In Your Life by Milford Graves Ensembe (ESP); O Solo Drumbo by John French (Avant); Sounds of the Ghetto Youth by Montego Joe Har-You Percussion Group (ESP)] 16. Grateful Dead – “The Other One” – One From the Vault (GDM)
17. White – “Roswitha Strunk” – White (Maybe Mars)
18. Uncle Woody Sullender – “A Measure of Dasein” – Live at Barkenhoff (Kunstlerhauser Wopswede/Dead CEO)
19. Mountains – “Melodica” – Choral (Thrill Jockey)
20. Marika Papagika – “Fonias Tha Gino” – Greek Popular and Rebetic Music (Alma Criolla)
21. Shepherds with Shawn Reed – “Side A, Track 2” – Eyes of the World cassette (Not Not Fun)
22. Jimmie Rodgers – “Waiting For A Train” – Hall of Fame
23. Clarence Ashley – “The House Carpenter” – Anthology of American Folk Music (Smithsonian Folkways)
24. Mississippi John Hurt – “Let the Mermaids Flirt With Me”
25. Everly Brothers – “Maybe Tomorrow” – Complete Cadence Recordings (Varese Fontana)
26. Chris Darrow – “Take Good Care of Yourself” – Under My Own Disguise (Everloving)

some recent articles.

Features:
Viva Talibam! (Village Voice)
The Jazz Loft: A Duke historian unearths a motherlode of rare finds (Indy Week)

Book:
Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits by Barney Hoskyns (London Times)

Albums:
Local Customs: Downriver Revival – various (Paste)
Indie-Weirdo Round-Up featuring: Lambchop, La Otracina, Ethan Rose, Teeth Mountain, Cazumbi compilation (JamBands.com)
Pleasant Obsolescence, featuring: Black Moth Super Rainbow, Secret Machines, Sun Circle, Talibam!/Wasteland Jazz Unit, Towering Heroic Dudes (JamBands.com)

Movies:
Goodbye Solo (Paste)
Tokyo/Tokyo Sonata (Paste)
Gomorrah (Paste)

Columns:
BRAIN TUBA: A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit Kzzzknkh (JamBands.com)
BRAIN TUBA: Hampton By Blazcooster Light (JamBands.com)

In print:
o Paste #51 (Greta Gerwig and Joe Swanberg cover): Behind the Sky, essay on technology and indie cinema; feature on Sundance Film Composers lab; album review of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Downriver Revivial compilation; movie reviews of Tokyo, Tokyo Sonata, Sleep Dealer, and Goodbye Solo.
o April/May Relix (Allman Brothers cover): Spotlight feature on Will Oldham; album reviews of Marissa Nadler, Paleface, Dark Was the Night compilation, Frank Zappa; book review of Clinton Heylin

haruki murakami: simple meals, talking cats

My 2007 profile of Haruki Murakami, published in Paste #32, never made it online. Here it is.

Simple Meals, Talking Cats
by Jesse Jarnow

The literary world rarely honors third basemen, but an exception should likely be made for Dave Hilton of Uvalde, Texas, who hit .213 over four undistinguished seasons for the San Diego Padres between 1972 and 1975. It was three years later, during an afternoon game playing for the Yakult Swallows at Tokyo’s Jingu Stadium, that Hilton hit a towering double into left, and–lounging in the bleachers, drinking a beer–a 30-year old jazz club owner named Haruki Murakami suddenly knew he could write a novel. He began that night.

Murakami’s reaction–the exterior world triggering an oblique intuition deep in the interior–contained exactly the type of determination that has motored his characters ever since. In turn, they have brought Murakami to a singular international superstardom. In After Dark, published in 2004 but appearing on American shores this May, Murakami once again haunts the magical fissures between these worlds, giving them physical body as an omniscient narrator directs the reader to imagine himself “a midair camera,” and characters pass between strange rooms on opposite sides of a television screen. Like all Murakami, it is surreal and addictive.

Consenting only to a three-question email interview, Murakami himself seems determined to live within his words. “When I’m not writing they are gone, totally,” he once told the Wall Street Journal of his darker impulses, “I don’t even dream.” To his credit, especially to American audiences, Murakami is his words, which come filtered through Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin’s translations and packaged in equally iconic jacket designs by Chip Kidd and John Gall. The latter’s paperbacks, signaling like beacons of the bizarre from subway readers and coffeeshop dwellers, have surely lured just as many readers into Murakami’s world as the New York Times calling his first American-published novel, A Wild Sheep Chase, “a bold new advance in international fiction.”

“This sounds like something he wouldn’t particularly want to see elaborated on,” Rubin emails, when asked what their friendship was like during Murakami’s late ’90s years in the United States. If Murakami is a cipher, he is a disciplined cipher, who rises without alarm at 4 am, writes five hours, runs several miles, browses for records, goes for a swim, eats dinner, settles in for a relaxing session translating a few pages of American literature into Japanese, and is in bed by 9.

If there has been a predominant criticism of his work, in fact, it is the routine of it: protagonists quietly obsessed with American culture (especially jazz and ’60s pop) whose lovers vanish for inexplicable reasons often related to supernatural chasms, frequently revealed via abandoned wells, talking cats, or the warm crackle of an LP. A parody was once titled “The Mysterious Disappearance of the Strangely Beautiful Woman.”

“The world we live in has a visible exterior and a hidden side,” Murakami says, his words finally materializing via Jay Rubin’s email account, “and in the darkness the two sides undergo moments of interchange. In order for people to grow — in order for them to achieve a certain spiritual depth — they have to descend into the dark abyss. They have to witness that interchange for themselves and understand what it means.”

It is not that Murakami’s characters are shallow, but allow him a shorthand method of accessing those cracks. “I had been wanting to write a nothing-special boy-meets-girl story like that for a very long time,” he notes of his “trim” After Dark, which — as his characters move through pre-dawn Tokyo — is anything but nothing-special. Though the boy, in this case, is in the not-so-fantastical position of giving up a jazz fixation for law school, it is precisely the author’s reassuring grasp of the absolute normal that allows him such strength.

Though Murakami writes of a contemporary world, its basic self remains unchanged beneath office blocks and all-night convenience stores. “Like the light of the full moon pouring down on an uninhabited grassland, the TV’s bright screen illuminates the room,” he writes in After Dark, effortlessly linking modernity to teeming natural forces. At least once in each of his novels a character sits down to “a simple meal.”

“It’s one of my favorite Murakami novels because it is new in so many ways, and is so firmly anchored in the real world,” Rubin says of After Dark. “Plenty of weird things happen in it, but I think one of the greatest scenes depicts a tired businessman eating yogurt directly out of the plastic container in the middle of the night… In some ways, this is the old, cool Murakami re-emerging, and readers who liked fish raining from the sky might not be so crazy about yogurt.” No matter what he does, though, Murakami will always sound like Murakami.

“When I started writing fiction,” the author says, “there were all kinds of things I couldn’t write about even if I wanted to because I lacked the necessary technique. For example, death scenes or sex scenes or scenes involving rage or anguish… I didn’t even know how to give my characters names! So all I could do was get rid of all the stuff I couldn’t write and cobble together a novel with the few things I could.” From his shortcomings, Murakami forged a new style, characters more likely to disappear into the void than pass away. Hear The Wind Sing–the novel inspired by Hilton’s double–immediately won the Gunzo Award for New Writers and was published.
Like Hilton, who later received death threats when he started in place of an up-and-coming Japanese rookie, Murakami and his American obsessions were criticized behind the veil of nationalism (parodied viciously by Murakami in the 1981 short story “The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes”). With 1987’s Norwegian Wood, which sold several million copies upon its two-part publication, Murakami became a reluctant celebrity, such that his translations of American writers such as Raymond Carver, Truman Capote, and others earned them wide Japanese audiences.

Beginning in 1989, Murakami’s works began to appear in the United States. “From the start, he had a readership that was very strong,” says his American editor, Gary Fisketjon, which began building “gradually, then suddenly,” especially following the 2005 appearance of the epic Kafka on the Shore.

Reflected through Rubin and Gabriel’s trans-Pacific translations, Murakami’s baby boomer reference points take on a just-removed authority. “The rhythms have to come from English,” Rubin observes. “A ‘literal translation’ from Japanese could make a gorgeous creature sliding down a corridor into a stumbling idiot.”

Murakami himself dismisses the power of the exotic. “The best thing is that I can have a great time reading [the] translations,” he observes. “This may be one bit of evidence that ‘Nothing is lost,’ don’t you think?” What might seem like the exotic is Murakami himself, unique no matter what language he is read in. He shows no signs of slowing, either.

“Given Haruki’s dedication and productivity, it’s not as if I have to worry that he’s suffering from writer’s block,” Fisketjon says. “Instead, he’s at the top of his game and always expanding it.” He is at work on what he described to Fisketjon as “a big novel.” Perhaps more revealing, though, will be the Stateside publication of one of Murakami’s many Japan-only non-fiction books, a volume about running. Perhaps there, as the marathon participant strips his fabulism to the simplest left-foot/right-foot repetition possible, we will finally begin to grasp the magic of Dave Hilton’s achievement.

frow show, FMU-26

Detailed playlist (with listening links).

1. The Beach Boys – “Disney Girls (1957)” – Surf’s Up (Caribou/Epic)
2. JFA – “The Day Walt Disney Died” – JFA (Placebo)

3. Wand – “Arriving” – Hard Knox or, “Are You Sure Hank Jr. Done it This Way?” (Ecstatic Peace)
4. Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez – “The Owl and the Pussycat” – Why Is Bear Billowing? (Carpark)
5. Thurston Moore – “Sensitive” – Sensitive/Lethal (No Fun)
6. “Hahirwa Nyiramibambwe” – At the Court of the Mwami, Rwanda (Sharpwood)
7. Tugboat – “Remix Medley #1”
8. Sun OK Papi K.O. feat. MC Illreme – “Radio Pirate Promo Mix”
9. Alain Savouret – “Scherzo, La Conférence illustrée et égarée du professeur Coustique” – Sonate Baroque (Le Chant Du Monde)
10. Levitts – “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” – We Are The Levitts (ESP-Disk)

Set: to walt, with love.
(thx for the bux.)

11. Orchestre De La Suisse Romande – “The Rite of Spring” – The Rite of Spring (Richmond High Fidelty) [feat. “iCon Steve Jobs” by Jeffrey S. Young and Wlliam L. Simon & “Carousel of Progress early script reading”] 12. Sleeping Beauty/Cinderella – “Oh Sing Sweet Nightingale/I Wonder” – Classic Disney, v. 4: 60 Years of Musical Magic (Disney)
13. Cornelius – “The Micro Disneycal World Tour” – Fantasma (Matador)
14. Extreme Animals – “Disney Rave” – MIDI Slaves (CD-R)
15. Wendy Carlos – “Tronaction” – Tron OST (Walt Disney Records)
16. Daniel Johnston – “Disney Movie” – His Hyperjinx Tricycle (Important)
17. – “Entering Disneyworld, 5/03”
18. Walt Disney – “The Magic Skyway” – Walt Disney and the 1964 World’s Fair (Disney) [feat. original Walt Disney sessions] 19. “Entrance to Small World, 5/03” [feat. “Isolated vocal tracks” & “chorus” (from “Walt Disney and the 1964 World’s Fair”) and “Walt Disney presents it’s a small world” LP] 20. Sun Ra and His Intergalaxtic Arkestra – “The Forest of No Return” – Second Star to the Right (Leo Records UK)
21. John Coltrane Quartet – “Chim Chim Cheree” – The John Coltrane Quartet Plays (Impulse!)
22. Miles Davis – “Some Day My Prince Will Come” – Some Day My Prince Will Come (Columbia)
23. Quarteto Em Cy – “La La Lu” – Bossa Disney Nova (Avex Trax)
24. Bill Evans Trio – “Alice in Wonderland” – Sunday at the Village Vanguard (Riverside)

25. Silver Jews – “Sometimes A Pony Gets Depressed” – Tanglewood Numbers (Drag City)
26. Iggy Pop – “The Passenger” – Lust For Life (RCA)
27. Camper Van Beethoven – “We Saw Jerry’s Daughter” – Camper Van Beethoven III (Pitch-A-Tent)
28. Allan Bryant – “Pitch Out” – Source Records 1-6, 1968-1971 (Pogus) [feat. “Small World” tracks + “It’s A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (EPCOT version)” from “Walt Disney and the 1964 World’s Fair”] 29. Art Garfunkel – “Disney Girls (1957)” – Breakaway (Columbia)

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Jesse Jarnow

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haruki murakami: simple meals, talking cats

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