The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, California is a most peculiar institution, dedicated to the preservation of knowledge equally wondrous and arcane, simultaneously authentic and dubious. As is pointed out in their opening presentation, a museum is a “spot dedicated to the muses,” and the MJT’s darkened halls — which seem to get more convoluted with each visit — are an improbable sanctuary in deepest Los Angeles.
Exhibits chronicle convergences, such as between opera singer Madelena Delani (below) and neurophysiologist Geoffrey Sonnabend.
One room (“The World is Bound With Secret Knots“) celebrates 17th century polymath Athanasius Kircher, who — among other things — believed that Nimrod’s construction of the Tower of Babel, whose size brushed the heavens, could have altered the Earth’s axis and caused a literal, geophysical catastrophe that, in turn, may have been the cause of the lingual chaos of the Bible story.
Elsewhere, there are three-dimensional X-rays of flowers (glasses required).
Next door, the institutionally related Center For Land Use Interpretation applies the MJT’s sense of wonder to the contemporary American landscape, maintaining a detailed database of high weirdness. On a touch screen, I traced our path across I-15 from the Nevada border onto the Los Angeles freeway (including an entry for the World’s Tallest Thermometer).
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We missed our connecting flight to Los Angeles, and would’ve had to wait it out a while for the next one, so we rented a car and headed out across the desert, stopping in Baker — a strip of abandoned and less-abandoned restaurants and gas stations — for improbably delicious gyros. The world’s tallest thermometer (bottom pic) — or so they claim — didn’t seem to be working, though sure was weird lookin’.
Thanks to the good folks at BitPim, I’m now able to merrily wire myself pictures via USB cable, despite Verizon’s desire for me to pay them for the privilege. It’s a bit evil that they sell a USB cable and software and all, though still don’t let you officially upload your own pictures directly to your own computer. Fuck ’em.
With that, some pictures that have lived on my phone for some moons…
1. Macca on the monitors, 9/05.
2. A floating two, Las Vegas, 1/06.
3. The back of some dude’s camera, random member of Broken Social Scene on the right, NYC, 1/06.
4. Times Square, 2/06.
Grand Poobah Andy just posted the newest installment of the Frow Show. Thanks, Andy!
Listen here.
1. “Royal Crown Hairdressing Ad” – Little Richard (from Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm and Blues, 1945-1970)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “Zero Point” – Rogers Sisters (from Yes New York)
4. “Big Day Coming” (fast version) – Yo La Tengo (from Painful)
5. “Crushed Bones” – Why? (from Elephant Eyelash)
6. “Johnny Too Bad” – The Slickers (from The Harder They Come OST)
7. “Are You My Woman (Tell Me So)” – The Chi-Lites (from I Like Your Lovin’ (Do You Like Mine?))
8. “Coquelicot, Claude and Lechithin Dance Aboard the Ocean Liner” – Of Montreal (from Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse))
9. “I Live in the Springtime” – The Lemon Drops (from Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era)
10. “Space Suit” – They Might Be Giants (from Apollo 18)
11. “Great Day (Four Tet remix)” – Madvillain (from Madvillain Remixes: Four Tet EP)
12. “Pull Up the People” – M.I.A. (from Arular)
13. “Twilight Time” – John Fahey (from Return of the Repressed: the John Fahey Anthology)
14. “My Grandfather’s Clock” – Howe Gelb (from I am the Resurrection: A Tribute to John Fahey)
15. “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” – Hank Williams (single)
16. “Mutineer” – Bob Dylan (from Enjoy Every Sandwich)
17. “Going, Going, Gone” – Jerry Garcia (from April 10, 1982, late show, Capitol Theater, Passaic, NJ)
18. “Find the River” – R.E.M. (from Automatic For the People)
I finally organized an official archive.org page for Stopwatch Recordings. There, you can download the three previous discs I’ve put up: Postcards: Atlantic City (an EP of modified field recordings), On A Clear Night, You Can Smell For Miles (an album of songs), Running at the Sunshine (a theater piece), and — as of now — Postcards: Consumer Electronics Show.
Postcards: Consumer Electronics Show is comprised of unaltered, binaural field recordings made at the 2006 edition of the country’s largest trade show. Over 150,000 non-consumers — vendors, buyers, celebrities, quasi-celebrities, execs — filled 1.6 million miles of floor space of the Las Vegas Convention Center, fussing over the latest and greatest in all things beepy.
1. Microcosmicomics
So large it required its own sub-map, but still only requiring three-and-a-half minutes to traverse, the Sony pavilion was a microcosm for all of CES. Ambient music blares from demonstration speakers, hawkers hawk absurdly overblown home entertainment systems and digital books, conventioneers schmooze, and Sony product provides a titillating soundtrack.
2. Authorized Mash-Up
The rear end of Sony’s space was filled with a circular 150 (?)-person capacity movie theater, screening an eight-minute corporate mash-up hype film. Between hyperspeed CGI-enhanced edits, celebrities ho themselves for new gizmos, hot movies get previewed, and an authoritative Hollywood voice booms a World of Tomorrow fantasia narrative. No mention of Sony’s innovative Digital Rights Management program, though.
3. The Full Tramp
The full tramp — well over a mile — from the two-level South Hall, across the massive Central Hall (where the Sony pavilion was), through the bass-booming North Hall (where bikinied booth babes demonstrated the hottest backseat subwoofers), into the Hilton next door (where modest stalls sported clever Asian miniaturizations), and through their casino (where Google’s Larry Page was about to give a keynote address at the theater normally occupied by Barry Manilow). Hear attendees chatter in a variety of tongues, whizzing golf carts, and even Robin Williams, who walks by at the 17:41 mark (you can hear one of has handlers say “you are a quick study today” and Williams responding indistinctly) as he exits the Hilton just before his appearance at the Google keynote.
4. Flamingo Soundwalk
Later, back at the Flamingo, the elevator counts down and opens on the casino floor, where a lush world of bleeping slot machines (all tuned to the key of C), drunken bachelorettes, clinking poker chips, and distant pop songs fans open like a lotus flower. After a walk around the floor, we return to the elevator, an endless Borgesian hallway, and the hotel room. Another Friday night in Vegas, just after midnight, circa January 2006.
We now return you to your irregularly scheduled weirdness…
With the innovations of digital feeds, and televisions, VCRs, and DVD players that magically go blue at the first sign of interference, static is gradually disappearing. It’s beautiful stuff, both visually and metaphorically.
“Electricity comes from other planets.” – Lou Reed
“Birthday Boys,” “Bubble Wrap,” and “Running Scared” – Phish
(zipped file of the three songs)
outtakes from Round Room (2002)
(file expires on February 24th)
How bad could the outtakes be from a Phish album that was basically comprised of demos to begin with? The answer, if you have any wookie blood in you at all, is relative. (And, if you don’t, you’ll come away hating Phish even more than you already do.)
Yes, yes, relative. That is: the three “new” songs circulating from Phish’s 2002 Round Room sessions are very much like their officially released brethren in that they’re half-conceived and far less than they should be. Being outtakes, this less-than-whole-assedness is also perfectly excusable. That doesn’t make them good (or of interest to anybody not already curious about Phish’s creative process).
“Birthday Boys” had already been recorded by Oysterhead, one of the bands Trey Anastasio played with during the two years previous to this session, while Phish was figuring out if they wanted to be a band or not (they didn’t, as they determined later). It’s nifty, heavy on the same impressionistic twang that defined “Pebbles and Marbles,” which led off Round Room. Playful and intricate, it would’ve made an ace Phish tune — especially the cleverly modulating ending. The version here borders on trainwreck, especially as it goes, but — hey — it’s a rehearsal. It coulda been a contenda.
The all-improv (and largely abstract) “Bubble Wrap” is — I assume — one of the band’s first jams after getting back together. They feel disconnected, their parts moving against each other and trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to lock in. It’s kind of uncomfortable to hear Phish, who were rarely less than psychic communicators with big ears, playing like this. A historical curiosity, perhaps. The last song, “Running Scared,” most likely isn’t Phish at all, but Anastasio demoing with songwriting/drinking chum Tom Marshall. Finding the song in the midst of the sloppiness is like trying to find the marble in the proverbial oatmeal (or maybe just figuring out a magic eye). Either way, it’s hard to imagine a way that Phish could’ve made it all too interesting. So it went.
“She Shot a Hole in My Soul” – Clifford Curry
single (1967)
reissued on Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm and Blues, 1945-1970 (2004)
released by CMF Records (buy)
I know shitall about Clifford Curry. This tune is on the Night Train to Nashville anthology. It turned up on my shuffle many months after I ripped the album. I’m a big believer in the power of an opening statement, be it the first line of a story or the top of a song, and “She Shot a Hole in My Soul” is one of my favorites. The horn intro establishes an instant momentum, and all the verses and arrangements unfold perfectly from there. It’s so good that the first time I really heard the song, I distinctly remember wanting the horn part to come back, and soon. It only did so twice.
Unless somebody’s done it and I haven’t heard it, it’s also waiting to be sampled and made the basis of a huge hit. That is, I know I personally would greatly enjoy a new version of this song where that horn part is repeated endlessly for two or three minutes, like “Crazy In Love” did with the horn part from the Chi-Lites’ “Are You Woman (Tell Me So)” (which only repeated once in the original version). Awesome morning music.
“Any Way the Wind Blows” – the Mothers of Invention
1965 demo
from Joe’s Corsage (2004)
released by Vaulternative Records (buy)
Here’s some post-Valentine’s Day contrast to Monday’s Beach Boys. It’s hard to call anything having to do with Frank Zappa “innocent,” but the teen-lust cynicism of Freak Out is just so durned precious. “Go Cry on Somebody Else’s Shoulder” sums it up well. “I’m somewhat wiser now and one whole year older,” sings Ray Collins from a time in life where one whole year was actually a perceptible and meaningful unit of time in one’s own emotional development. That’s the key to the whole album, I think.
Freak Out in general and “Any Way the Wind Blows” specifically have been hitting the spot lately, making increased sense with the years. This early demo (from the yummy Joe’s Corsage compilation) lacks the rhythmic sophistication of the officially released version, but that’s part of the charm. It sounds like music made by the characters singing. “Now that I am free from the troubles of the past,” Mother Ray croons. What past? Freak Out is music sung by people who’ve got nothing but future, and — being an album most appropriate for disaffected high school-age males — listened to by the same. Can it be nostalgia if you’re not remembering the good parts? And what if the good parts entailed the discovery of music like Freak Out that effectively shielded the bad parts? Can it be nostalgia then?
1. A ripped up photograph of a couple.
Found at the corner of Broadway and Bleecker Street. I actually found one-and-a-half photos. I have an extra copy of the right side, ripped in the same exact place, as if both pictures were torn at once.
2. A dinosaur.
Found at a filling station in the northeastern Colorado desert en route to Boulder to make shadow puppets.
3. A postcard from Matt.
Found in my mailbox in Ohio many moons ago.
4. Aloha Moods
Found on the kitchen table the morning after a party, during which a drunken roommate discovered Aloha Moods and other fine vinyl selections in the stairwell of our building.
