Week 26: The Midtown Dickens

Also included: the conclusion of the first cycle of The Book of Fables.

To the NAP writers – 26 weeks, half a year, and no one has quit.

The Midtown Dickens are really taking cute to a whole new level. Their new record will be released on 307 Knox Recoirds on May 12 at 305 South in Durham NC. When I was in grade school I knew two brothers, both of whom played sports, but whereas the younger brother had to apply himself to the sport he chose before being able to play it with any noticeable skill, the older brother could pretty much pick up any sport and excel on the first try. The older brother was what I would call a natural. He might not have had the proper methodology, and might at times appear a bit sloppy in his moves, but he got the baskets, the hits, the birdies, and the wins. The Midtown Dickens are natural musicians. Kym Register and Catherine Edgerton can pretty much pick up any instrument and play it with a natural musicality that is endearing. On their myspace page they list their instruments as guitar, drums, trombone, banjo, trumpet, accordion, bass, bottlecaps, uke, fiddle, slide, tinky thing, saw, (bowed) bass, harmonica, skateboard, melodica, piano, and slidewhistle, but I’ve seen them play stuff that is not on that list. I am quite sure they could pull out tunes out of a stone.

The show itself should be full of surprises. Kimya Dawson, of Moldy Peaches fame, is scheduled to make an appearance. But as if that wasn’t enough, the list of guests also includes, from Raleigh, The Bowerbirds and Megafaun; from Chapel Hill, Charles Latham; from New York, The Bicycats and Malcolm Rollick; from the Bay Area, Sarah Vroom, and from Durham, The Ex-Members, The Future Kings of Nowhere, Eberhardt, Beloved Binge, Cantwell Gomez & Jordan and the Wigg Report. However, don’t expect these acts to play in the conventional line-up way where one band plays, breaks down, another one sets up plays, and so on. If previous Midtown Dickens performances are any indication, the show will be a continuous flow of music played by a varying roster of performers using a multitude of instruments. These girls are the real deal, playing music they want to play and having a good time doing it. This is going to be a great show.

Here’s a video of the two of them, two voices, one guitar and handclaps.

And here’s the conclusion of the first cycle of The Book of Fables:
THE FIRST CONCLUSION: THE TRUE MUSIC

We all know what happens when Folk Singers hang out with Record Label Executioners right? Remember? They get eaten. Wait, you say, wasn’t it two A&R Men who ate the Folk Singer? A&R men, Record Label Executives, bad people, greedy people, people out to suck the soul out of the music just to keep their jobs while pretending that they are doing it for the music cause one has to compromise if you want to work as part of a team, and our accountant is a poet too, so he understands, here, have a copy of his new hardcover glossy poetry book, it’s called Sucking the Life Out of Music Because I Ain’t Got No Life Left Since I Am Just a Mummified Corpse. All the same, all one and the same. But also, watch out and don’t be fooled by the fearful ones, the scared people, the scardy cats who are afraid to stand up for music while claiming to only care about music all the while living inside clogged up toilets cause it’s the only way they can play the music they like since nobody understands them because people are idiots, but here’s my record that I just recorded, it’s called Giving This To You Because I Hate You and I Hate Myself for Giving it To You Because I Am Terrified of Mummified Corpses Sucking the Life Out Of My Oh So Special And Important Music. Devils sometimes dress like gods and gods sometimes dresses like devils. So be watchful but not fearful cause either way at the end of the story the Folk Singer gets eaten.

Yes, in this story the Folk Singer gets eaten, again. And the Metalhead sees it, again. And the Band of Brothers hears the Metalhead’s song, again. And the Band of Brothers play the song for the DJ, again. And the DJ, again meets The Teenager and plays her the song the Metalhead played after seeing the Folk Singer, who was her father and would soon be her, get eaten again. And The Teenager hears this song and learns it from the DJ again, and plays it for her new band, again. Wait, is this how it went? Well once again, just when I think that life is just one big spiral of crisscrossing repetitions and that everything has already happened, and everything has been done, I find that sometimes things are a little bit different than they were before, and that it is impossible to repeat the past, it is impossible to repeat the past, it is impossible to repeat the past…

But we must nearly repeat the past, almost repeat it again and again and again before we can get to the True Music of Black Death at the End of Time. Because all the music we currently hear is nothing but an echo of the True Music of Black Death at the End of Time. We hear harmony and disharmony, chords and notes, melodies and noises, but all this that we call music is a fading echo of the True Music of Black Death. We hear this echo and it gives us an intimation of the True Music, and we attempt to reproduce it with our guitars and trombones, our drums and our cellos, our voices, our hands, our feet. And thus we create another echo of that echo until we are surrounded by echoes of echoes of echoes of echoes of echoes on all sides. And we have all these echoes bouncing around and yet we have an incomplete music that promises and appears to fulfill but only with more promises. And we love it for what it is because it echoes our own incompleteness, but it is not the True Music of Black Death.

We remain cut off from the True Music of Black Death at the End of Time, until that moment when all the echoes we’ve made are all at once repeated, the oldest echo combining with the newest echo until suddenly the echoes cancel each other all the way to the very first echo and we will find ourselves in the big void of the final silence. A pause.

And then we hear the True Music of Black Death as it is created when we blink our eyes, when we move our arms, when the leaves fall, when the birds fly, when we choose to leave, when we stay, when we smile or cry, when we walk to the end, when we have a plan, when we improvise, when we listen all around us we will hear the music that we are making for an infinite moment and then it is over.

But first we must go through the cycles. We must once again tell the story of the Folk Singer and the two Record Label Attorneys. But not now. Another time. In another place. Maybe by a bedside. Maybe on a green field full of white sheep while a black sheep looks on from the nearby woods. Maybe. Depends.

Moral: Go play outside before the wolves get you.

For other parts of the Book of Fables click on the label link below.