Frank & Earthy blog
Over the weekend, I spent some time recording, and finally started a MySpace page for Funny Cry Happy. Included are the two demos I just made, “No Wonder” and “Textual Healing,” and a few songs from On A Clear Night, You Can Smell For Miles. I’ll post more as they’re ready.
Watching the Mets celebrate after their three-game sweep of the Dodgers on Saturday night, I again had the thought that I probably wouldn’t enjoy actually hanging out with any of them at a bar. They’re jocks after all, probably the same breed that did their best to make my life miserable in high school. What could we possibly have to talk about? But I still like them. It makes me happy to see Jose Reyes in the dugout, smiling and bobbing his head around. All of my assumptions about Reyes, though, come from trying to read into his minute variations on a very strict set of behaviors as a fielder, batter, and runner. Everything I think is probably grossly inaccurate, but that’s kind of the fun of it.
In watching baseball, I pay attention to people that I often cannot relate to in any way: physically, emotionally, financially, culturally. That’s kind of weird to me, I think. In theory, what we have in common is an interest in the sport, but I’m not sure how far that would go conversationally. Seeing the Taiwanese starter Hong-Chih Kuo — only one big league victory to his record — pitch against the Mets in game two, the dudes calling the game mentioned that if Kuo doesn’t succeed in the majors, he’ll be sent back to Taiwan, where he’ll be forced to enlist in the army. Clearly, baseball means something entirely different to Kuo than it does to me. In that sense, it’s a pretty abstract tongue, and one impossible to literally verbalize. It is irreducible, the language itself. It is spoken elegantly this time of year.
The drama of the upper deck is all misinformation. High above the foul poles, the sounds ricochet, like Branford Marsalis’s instrumental “Star Spangled Banner.” It echoes from the PA towers, all neutered soprano sax. “You suck!” someone shouts, but most people just stand, shifting their feet. Elsewhere, noises delay and cross, owing to the sheer size of the arena, like the polyphonic “Let’s go Mets!” chants that thunder at different tempos and from different starting points and collide like a Charles Ives orchestration. The chants, especially, are amazing: spur of the moment decisions by the collective, crunching names into a small library of flexible syllable patterns (“Car-los Bel-tran!” “M.V.P.!”). Sometimes, no consensus is reached, and the chants whither away like smoke (but not before more chaos).
Mostly, the game is far away and it is hard to see the ball. The mezzanine swallows the deep corner of right field itself. The crack of the bat is unreal, one sound in many. When the ball is hit in the air, it is like being thrust into an optical illusion, nearly impossible to tell if its movement is hard or soft, high up or just over the infielders’ heads, or even fair or foul. Adjusted to the dimensions, the ball still lands in totally unpredictable places, like David Wright’s bloop double into right in the seventh. A run scores, and the chanting starts all over again.
Pretty much the standard complaint against the World Series runs something like this: “It’s not really the World Series, is it? They’re just American teams, man.” Well, maybe, but the players are far from all American. Though I’m reasonably sure most major league franchises are as equally diverse, there still seems something particularly New Yawk about the Mets’ international patchwork.
They’ve got corn-fed submariners named Chad from Jackson, Mississippi and power-hitting scumbags named Paul, from Brooklyn. But they’ve also got players from the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Venezuela. And until the General Manager (also Dominican) traded him for sucking, even a dude from Japan named Kaz who bugged his eyes out at unpredictable moments. (And though he doesn’t technically count as part of the international contingent, I was also quite pleased when they acquired a good Jewish boy named Shawn in the post-All Star Break force-marshalling.)
Baseball is a game of statistics. They exist so one might reasonably compare one player to any other, to find out which one is the Best. The Major League happens to be the league of record. Should the proper business interests establish a franchise in, say, the Dominican Republic, it would likely just become the same melting pot as any other organization. If one’s got an interest in baseball, the United States is where he goes. It’s not globalization, y’understand, it’s baseball. What the hell do you expect? So, the World Series it is.
All of which is to say: LET’S GO METS.
“I’m Your Puppet” – Yo La Tengo (download here)
from Mr. Tough 7-inch (2006)
released by Matador
1. Here’s the newest obscura, a literal B-side from the “Mr. Tough” single: a cover of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham’s “I’m Your Puppet.” Presumably a Beat Your Ass leftover, it’s got lovely strings (David Mansfield?), and is a welcome addition to the late-night playlist.
2. To reach the resources of the old YoLaTengo.net, one now has to use the Wayback Machine at archive.org to consult a mirror of the old YLT.net via the now-old version of sunsquashed.com. The URLs get pretty hilarious. It is here (no graphics, so just, like, wave your arrow over the links to find what yer looking for).
3. So, apparently, there was a BBC session, recently? I seemed to have missed this. Some curious covers on the setlist. Anybody end up with a copy?
4. YLT played in Jersey City on Friday.
Yo La Tengo at the Landmark Loew’s Jersey Theatre
29 September 2006
Why? opened
Sugarcube
Pass The Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind
Flying Lesson (Hot Chicken #1)
The Weakest Part
Sometimes I Don’t Get You
Winter A Go Go
Mr. Tough
Beanbag Chair
I Feel Like Going Home
Stockholm Syndrome
I Should Have Known Better
Watch Out For Me, Ronnie
Tom Courtenay
The Story of Yo La Tango
I Heard You Looking
*(encore 1)*
Oklahoma USA (The Kinks)
Lewis
Rocks Off (The Rolling Stones)
*(encore 2)*
Cast A Shadow (Beat Happening)
Did I Tell You?
“Soul Master” – Edwin Starr (download here)
released by Motown (1968)
(file expires October 6th)
In a perhaps misguided attempt to derive some truthiness (listening to lotsa shitty hippie bands’ll do that to a fella), I once posited that anybody who sings literally about having a soul (especially one that, uh, “shines”) simply doesn’t have one, at least for the duration of the time he’s singing about it. In the case of Edwin Starr’s “Soul Master,” which I found on the MoistWorks blog over the summer, I am perhaps willing to make an exception — partially because maybe it is as Starr claims, that he’s “the guy they named soul after.” And, well, partially because it’s such a ludicrous rhyme — “I’m the soul master / I’m the guy that they named soul after” — and it somehow works.
“Soul Master” is, no doubt, a silly song, but I love the shit outta the chorus, and love even more singing it to myself in the most honky voice I can muster (which, given my general demeanor, is quite a lot, dankyouvedymuch). It’s fun, especially in public, to take this chorus for my own: I’m the soul master. I’m the guy that they named soul after. Me! It’s a good feeling. Try it some sunny afternoon.
Song reviews:
“Masa Depanmu” – Ariesta Birawa Group (PaperThinWalls.com)
“Three Woman Blues” – The Wowz (PaperThinWalls.com)
“Word Up Forever” – Curse ov Dialect (PaperThinWalls.com)
“fl°” – Trap Door
“NYC’s Like A Graveyard” – The Moldy Peaches
“I Don’t Wanna Leave You On the Farm” – Ween
Album reviews:
Bar 17 – Trey Anastasio
Live reviews:
Os Mutantes at Webster Hall, 21 July 2006
Revenge of the Bookeaters at the Beacon Theater, 23 August 2006
Bustle In Your Hedgerow at the Rocks Off Boat Cruise, 30 August 2006
Columns and misc.:
The Animals I Saw, wunderkammern27.com micro-fiction
BRAIN TUBA: Contrarianism
Only in print:
o August/September Relix (Widespread Panic cover): album reviews of Four Tet, Ollabelle, Medeski Scofield Martin and Wood, Stephen Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra, Sex Mob, Baby Loves Jazz Band; book review of Les Claypool.
o Paste #24 (Alvis Costello and Allan Toussaint cover): album reviews of Yo La Tengo, Shapes and Sizes, book review of David Shenk
o Paste #25 (Zach Braff cover): album review of Harry Smith Project
o Signal To Noise #43 (Lewis/Abrams/Mitchell cover): album reviews of Brian Joseph Davis, OOIOO, and Sublime Frequencies
Without question, one of my favorite books as a kid was Crawford Kilian’s Wonders, Inc., about a boy’s trip to a massive, mysterious factory on the outskirts of town that manufactures (among other products) lines, space, proverbs, music, dreams, and more. John Larrecq’s psychedelic illustrations certainly didn’t hurt. Here, the dopey tour guide, Mr. Whipple, and the bright-eyed Christopher wander through the surrealist mechanics of the Clockworks:
They walked among the machines, Mr. Whipple pointing them out, “This one makes part-time; this one full-time; that one three-quarter time, time-and-a-half, and double-time. We also make Greenwich Mean Time, bedtime, pastime, nick-of-time, and a good variety of specialties.”
“Specialties?” Chris repeated.
“Oh, yes. We turn out a fine brand of split seconds, not to mention fleeting moments and carefully aged days. There’s a great demand for the good old days, you know.”
“Maybe among grownups,” Chris added, “but I prefer nowadays.”
“I thought you would. We make the best nowadays on the market.”
Though it’s super outta print, Amazon has many copies starting at $1.05. Wish there were some illustrations online.
