Posting > Create > Title: Go

Time and again on this site, the continuity, fluidity and co-inky-dink amazes me. More than once I've found that my planned topic of the week falls neatly and accidentally into a pattern of the week. Right from the very first week when I wrote about Bobby Conn as the Anti-Christ which I didn't even plan as a Halloween dealy. Turns out, the anti-christ was the theme of the week sort of.

It didn't happen this week. The story I had in mind doesn't flow.* However, I am going to force the flow because several items from the past couple of weeks leads me to think about a not so obvious band but a fitting one anyway.

Which brings me to the Horsies of chorse. The Horsies was a short-lived gypsy-afro outfit out of Austin, Texas in the early nineties. They don't sound anything like the Pocket Fishrmen but that's what led me to the Horsies because they feature a mutual member who is now with Pong and also another band that Clay has informed me just wrote a song called churchbus which I can now add to my collection of two songs with the same title as the name of my band which is called Matthew Thurman just boarded the churchbus on the King's Highwayawayayix. Btw both churchbus songs happen to rock - is there a plan at work?

I don't want to talk too much about the Horsies even though they're good and you should listen to their songs...but I do want to talk about the continuity.

Okay people, pay attention, here is a colored flow chart in outline form and with arabic numerals.

1. A little, thankfully a very little, was made here on NAP recently about the mostly imaginary rivalry between the Houston and Austin rock scenes. Two things that seem to upset folks about the Austin scene are ...

a) Austiniacs are so happy, content well-off, and just having fun fun fun, and being white. Austin's just a playland and Austinaggots aren't aware that their righteousness is a front for escapism.

b) Austifreeks are sucked into the biz trying to "make it" and being hip and not being real.

Regarding number "a" the Horsies could be guilty of slackerdom afterall their theme song is all about running wild and free; and includes the line "we don't want to work we just want to have fun" (a theme echoed in song by another Austin band, the great Brown Whornet, and also by Todd Rundgren) but this theme is tempered by other very serious and difficult to understand themes and just plain good musicianship.

Regarding number "b" well the Horsies prove the point that there are a great many musicians in Austin who are not all about the biz but about making their community interesting and fortunately there are plenty of musicians around to make all kinds of weird little projects with a high percentage of them being more interesting than the average band. If you work at something long enough you will fail less. There. Now that you have something good to share go and tell that to your kids.

2. Heidi wrote of the Clarinets and that made me think of the Horsies. The defining instruments of the Horsies might be clarinet and accordion (which also might turn a few people off to checking out these tunes) but for my money it's all about Bill Anderson's noodling guitar work. Bill Anderson is a great under-sung hero but he doesn't go unnoticed by his peers - his resume includes Poison 13, the Meat Purveyors, Hand of Glory, Bigfoot Chester, Daniel Johnston, Neko Case, and Jon Langford to name a few that the Austin Chronicle listed in the link I just gave you.

3. John recently wrote about the long hair. Long Hair is also a tough little Horsies tune about confusing a long haired touch-sensitive dude for a girl...all tonque in cheek I'm sure.

4. Politics and music. Jon Langford once said that music doesn't persuade people politically rather people of similar tastes flock to similar tunes. That may be true for the most part but the Horsies' Noam Chomsky was where I first heard of Noam Chomsky and I robotically went and looked up his stuff after hearing this tune.

So. Check it out.

The Horsies

Long Hair Man.mp3
Noam Chomsky.mp3

and Finally. This ain't the Horsies but it is damn timely to this site! I've got a prize (really I do) for the person who comes up with the most "recent NAP" references pertaining to this song. I can think of three good ones and you have to hit those three at least to win the prize. They're easy really and you've got until my next post to enter. Just leave your guesses on John's last post.

St. John of Gods.mp3


P.S. As will now become "per usual," these mp3's will be available for one week.

*actually I thought of the Horsies theme before John brought out the "horses whine" point in his last comment so I'm still good on the flow.

Fuck You All

Aside from the toilet, I'm not entirely sure where the NAP is heading. We've had a ton of visits, though most have been those of us that contribute. We've had some interesting and well written posts. And the comments section has been the home for some fairly lively discussion over these few months. Having said that, I feel somewhat hollow as I write this, and to be honest, I'm not sure why.

I contribute to this blog for several reasons. Yes, I love music. In fact, I can't even imagine how I would get through my life without it. I also am glad to be a part of this group. I think we are a decent cross section of a certain era in Houston music history. In fact, we have all had a role in shaping the musical landscape of this town in one way or another. And best of all, this give me a chance to write on a regular basis, which is something I really need for my own reasons.

But what this also does for me is expose me to the world in a way that does not always feel comfortable. For instance: I really have little interest in cheerleading my loves for you, whoever you may be. Yes, I do enjoy pontificating on occasion, but when I get in to write this blog each week, and I try and translate something about my love for music, sometimes I think to myself, "what the fuck does anyone really care what I think"?

And then there's the fact Scott Grimm brought up Saturday at Ramon's son's birthday party. He basically pointed out how the comments generally devolve far away from the topic at hand into a stream of consciousness grab bag. I guess I don't really have any problem with that, and to go one further, I contribute to the anarchic melee as much as anyone. But when I think about my role in this project, I wonder how much of this is actually worth more than public masturbation (thanks again to Mr. Grimm). I want to be interesting if that's within my abilities, but I'd also like to be able to at least make a little break through the shell of ease and casual comfort that permeates this blog.

So I'm at a bit of an impasse here. I don't care to attempt to say much of actual value this week, and instead will simply throw out some musical odds and ends which will undoubtedly expose me for being the vapid fool I often am.

The other day, as I was being regaled by my son's undying love for the Cartoon Network, I caught a commercial for a little product called Tooth Tunes. And now, you have to dig what this thing is. It's a toothbrush that plays music the moment you stick it in your gullet. Two and a half glorious minutes of American pop magic. The one used in the ad is blasting Rock 'N Roll all Night and Party Everyday by Kiss. Can you imagine having a toothbrush that busts out the Black Eyed Peas every time you get up and brush? Imagine imagining Fergy pissing herself on stage as you remove that nasty plaque from your choppers. Picture being serenaded by Hillary Duff as you attempt to erase the wine cooler puke from the back of your incisors. Sheer glee. I'm getting one, and I'm demanding it plays Skid Row's Monkey Business.

I've played Van Halen's first (Van Halen), and their third (Women and Children First) albums at work recently, and god damn those albums smoke. They reinvented the invention of heavy metal and ushered in an entire era - no make that several eras - of music. You are hearing the inclusion of doo-wap, metal, pop, party music, and blues. No one could touch them at the best of their game. And I have to say that I like some of the Van Hagar stuff too. Not as much per se, but the guitar solo in Right Now is classic, and etc...

I want to use my soapbox to thank Kilian for hooking me up with the Ed CD compilation. I really dug the song Last Booth. Great vocals. Cool CD. Really nice artwork too.

In keeping with my metal theme, my friend Chris (who I will try to get to do a guest spot at some point), brought in his copy of Death's Sound of Perseverance, and I've got to tell you, that is one fantastic CD. It's the last Death CD, because Chuck Schulinder, the man who was Death, was moving on to another project (Control Denied) right before dying way too young of brain cancer at 34. In the time since I became a fan of death metal, I have been looking for that one release that simply did it for me, and Sound of Perseverance is the one. It's insanely heavy. Suffused with maximum crunch and power, the entire CD is packed with endless perfectly executed light speed riffs. And while being almost impossibly technical, the album is also pretty melodic at times, and never strays too far from the sound of historically catchy metal. They even blast through a near perfect cover of Judas Priest' song Painkiller. The rest of the band is comprised of guys that no one had ever even heard of at the time of its release, which is saying a lot because these guys play like they're seasoned. The album is worth it just for the drumming alone. Richard Christy is one serious monster on the drums. His constantly changing time signatures and effortless double bass blasts are brutal and smart at the same time. It's the kind of album that takes metal ever closer to the realm of jazz without intentionally doing so. The way Christy uses his high-hats is virtually unmatched. And I know how much you guys love listening to drummers.

So yeah, fuck you. I love big dumb rock drum solos. I saw Rush's tour for Signals, and I nearly shit myself when Peart went off on one of his retarded workouts. And I say this after being mugged while camping out for tickets to that show. Rush rules. I'm with Ramon and Clinton on that. Unfortunately I have just forfeited my friendship with Scott Grimm for admitting this.

And here's a short checklist of random shit:

Am I the only one who doesn't think Shane was kidding?

Am I really the only one around here who thinks Jeff Tweedy is an overrated dillhole?

Carlos' fables makes me think of my favorite fables: REM's Fables of the Reconstruction. Otherwise they don't make me think much at all.

After talking to Scott Grimm, I realize just how dead my musical creative life is, and just how old we are all becoming. I used to think he was crazy for bowing out of performing. Guess where I am with this subject now? As for our fossilization, I remember meeting him back when we were all skinny. Not no more.

Let me just say that I have had a running issue with anger from somewhere around adolescence forward. Nothing exciting, just your basic entry level soulless suburban whatever. I also am acutely aware that nobody probably cares about what I have to whine about, but the thing is, I don't care about that. If I have to be the one to personify dissatisfaction in regards to the realm of music, then the Grinch starts here. Yeah, music makes me ecstatically happy. I couldn't even narrow it down in reference to Doug's post about happiness. But shit, let's get the dirt out too.

Heidi briefly mentioned the passing of Alice Coltrane, and I just want to add this pithy tidbit. That lady was a total badass. She made some incredible music, and she furthered her husband's vision of expressing her spirit through music. She dies and a thousand white belted hydroencephalic yeti heads swarm in to feed on her corpse. It's the survival of the fattest. How can any of us thrive in this environment? God knows I'm struggling. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

A hundred posts in and this is what you get. I sure hope I am out of alignment. I'll sign that pact.

And finally, here's what I was going to write as my entire post before I lost the gumption to do so:

Fuck you all.

soil

One of my biggest guilty pleasures in life is listening to the Gilles Peterson ‘Worldwide’ show on Radio One every week.* It’s just so much less stressful than the Itunes Radio Electronica stations preferred by my work colleague, Tom. Daily, the earplugs have to go in as Tom gets into the groove of BassDrive, Proton, XTC or Groove Salad while blasting away demons of his favorite video game, with the sound amplified through the hifi speakers in our office. All things considered, this isn’t a big annoyance for me. Today, I’m going to force him to listen to the latest NAPcast. This should be fun.

Gilles Peterson brought his usual mix of funk, soul, jazz, latin, and hiphop music to the Hiro Ballroom* last week and also showcased Jose James and the Soil and “Pimp” Sessions, two artists/groups who will be appearing on his new label, Brownswood Recordings. Quiz question for the week: is there a Japanese word that corresponds with the English pronunciation of “soil”? Did they mean ‘soul’, but just mispronounced it? Is it a naked attempt to make it onto Kilian and Carlos' list of scatologically referenced band names? Huh. The Soil and “Pimp” Sessions were fun, if a bit overly exuberant, and deliberately, tastelessly dressed: a mix of Italian mafia, gangsta bling, and psychedelic tradional Japanese.

They are huge in Japan right now. Gilles DJed after, and my friend Scott and I would have stayed to close down the party, but we had work obligations the following morning. Gilles seems a completely self-effacing heir to John Peel’s legacy of discovering artists at the fringes and promoting them through the BBC’s globally outstretched arms. I have heard rumors about his record collection- the wiki entry says he had to move out of his house because it got too big?! Maybe someday UNESCO will designate it a World Heritage Site.

By the time Friday night rolled around I was so worn out that I passed out on a couch at BAM while Edison Woods performed in the café. They’re supposed to be enchanting and my friend David, who stayed conscious, quite enjoyed them.

And if I weren’t old enough to be bored silly by a new generation of alt/indie rock bands, I probably would have ventured into the basement of Union Hall to see any number of bands the following evening. Instead, I stayed upstairs to watch some games of Bocce. Perhaps our friend, Matthew Thurman, has wandered by there recently, since it is also in the vicinity of his home? Perhaps he’s a regular at Southpaw? Hmmm.

Finally, in the back room of Biscuit Barbeque on Fifth Avenue (Brooklyn, again), one can go hear jazz on Sunday evenings. I didn’t try the BBQ because, well, it’s New York, and one can’t really get BBQ here because the meat isn’t properly smoked due to all sorts of fire code and exhaust vent issues. The best BBQ in the city comes from a street vendor in Midtown who, presumably, prepares the meat in a smokepit somewhere in New Jersey. Jennie introduced me to this place. She’s a real, live, working jazz critic who occasionally does coverstories for Downbeat and who will fill us in on the current state of the New Orleans music scene in next week's post, if all goes according to plan.

*As you probably already know, Alice Coltrane died a couple of weeks ago. At the end of Gilles’ show this week, there’s a fantastic tribute mix.

** where a f***ing redbull & vodka costs $12

*** In anticipation of John's post tomorrow, I'll say that Bloggers fill in the huge gap between what journalists can cover in traditional media and what publicists surreptitiously try to pass off as criticism in their promo pieces.

why are you optimistic?

I meant to write about hip-hop this week, but mostly all I want to say is that it's good and people should listen to more of it (like Blackalicious's THE CRAFT, should you be wanting a recommendation, just check out this week's podcast to taste its awesomeosity, yes that is a word) and conversely gather recommendations from you for hip-hop, but I was going to use a lot more words.

But why waste words, when there's so many to read elsewhere? To wit: the World Question Center is one of the coolest things ever, one that I wish I gave the due it deserved. Each year, they gather the answers to a provocative but open question from lots of different smart people, and post the answers. Of late, they've also gathered them in book form, which I'm tempted to invest in because (apropos to the value of free that came up in a recent comments thread) I privilege the tangible and that which I spend money on. Though given the number of DVDs I own that I haven't watched that privilege is clearly modest at best.

Anyway.

The question this year is What are you optimistic about? This is where I'm supposed to tell you about all the interesting things that people say in it and make some long circuitious connection to the music I've been obsessed about this week (for the record: "Innocent When You Dream" by Tom Waits, triggered by an item on Pitchfork about him suing a soundalike; "Ceremony" by New Order, triggered by seeing MARIE ANTOINETTE last month [which uses the song prominently] and being obsessed with this song when I was in 9th grade and then not hearing it for ten years and finally downloading it; "Bleeder" by Hot Water Music, an acoustic cover of an Alkaline Trio song that makes me miss the sensation of being crazy in love, triggered possibly also by the content of the scene in MARIE ANTOINETTE but also by digging out an old zine I did which is a long story in and of itself, but anyway, I was in the middle of a sentence), but the truth is, I just started looking at this year's entries today and have been superbusy so I barely skimmed it. As it turns out, though, the very first answer informs Kilian's blog from earlier this week. So it's all topical. Also, Brian Eno provides an answer.

But anyway, to answer their question, I am optimistic about living in a world where this exists:



(This video is for Shorty's "Coopie N' Me". Shorty is a precursor of US Maple. I have great love for US Maple, but know little about Shorty. I thought they were more straightahead than I now think they are after having seen this. I also never realized how much the singer looks like Bob Odenkirk. I know my answer to the question is tangential and poorly constructed and I will maybe try to answer it better sometime when I haven't been editing reality tv for some stupidly large number of days in a row, but I have been.)

So, like I was saying, recommend me some of your favorite hip-hop!

Han Bennink - Free Jazz Appreciation with a Five year Old

I recently had the thrill everyone gets when they go to attend jury duty - sit around an entire day waiting and doing nothing. Most people handle this with enough grace but there is always that one person who takes it as a personal affront. This time it was some bearded dude in straight -off -the -rack jeans and a sweater on his back with the arms draped over his shoulders. As we're leaving for the break, the guy - with his motivational business book and work papers in hand - is practically yelling into the phone as if he's just popped a million uppers complaining about how much "bullshit" this all is. You can virtually feel the guy's teeth gnash at the idea of civic duty intruding into his time. Meanwhile, everyone else is pretty well dignified throughout the day.

The case involved a truck driver with an overweight vehicle (this was only one of several charges as the defense made a successful motion to not have all charges tried that day) . This was nothing spectacular but during Voir Dire the businessman clearly crossed the line into pathetic. After some discussion with a retired Black truck driver and a middle-aged Hispanic truck driver - both of whom were actually entertaining, informative, and their manner and thoughtfulness spoke well not only of themselves but also of the profession - the courtroom (in sharp contrast) suddenly heard the antsy nasally voice of juror number 41. "Judge, ummm. I don't think I can be impartial in this trial. I had a cousin who was behind a truck whose ladder fell off and she swerved out of its way and was killed." Nice. Yeah. Everyone jokes about doing this but this guy really did it - he totally made up some bullshit story to not have to serve. To make matters worse he didn't even need to do it - they picked the first six numerically ordered jurors not eliminated and since he was the last juror all he did was waste about 5 minutes of everyone's time.

Now the reason I bring Mr. self-absorbed myopic shrill business ass whose idea of success comes from some Tom Peters book is that as a parent I look at adults differently. I will look at someone like this and think how this person was as a child and how they got to be like this. I mean, what the fuck happened to this guy? I mean, on a more extreme end, I look at a Muslim Terrorist who will gladly kill civilians to achieve martyrdom for his cause, the US soldier who raped a girl and killed her family, or the leaders of both who send these people into the meat grinder of history and think that at some point there must have been a time where these men were kids and were smiling for their parents just because the world was inherently fresh and new. The preponderance of these types of people in the world is why I think that people like Han Bennink and the perspective they bring to us are so valuable.


Han Bennink is primarily known as one of those Free Jazz/ Improvisational musicians from Holland. He's played with everyone it seems - Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, Derek Bailey, Peter Brotzmann and Eric Dolphy to name a few. But Houston's Nameless Sound had brought him into town and that night he was to perform solo. Now I know what some of you are thinking. Free Jazz! Yuck! A whole night of just drum solos? What the fuck! Are you crazy? That sounds like the most pompous elite bullshit this side of YYZ! Nobody really likes this stuff! People just want to look cultured or cutting edge.

OK well yeah I hear ya. The premise of many people's objection to this kind of music is that it is stuff that people listen to simply because it fills some social expectation that they want to achieve by being seen at a show like this. Fine, but let me throw this in the mix at you - I brought my son who is five years old tomorrow. My son is hardly concerned with what's hip or what's not. If he's bored, believe me, he'll tell me. So what better test subject for this performance, eh?

Now, we arrived at about 7:15pm expecting the show to start at 8pm but the show didn't started until 8:30pm. Parents know that an hour of doing nothing is brutal for any child but luckily the building (which was being modified to become a woman's house) provided a lot of open space to play Karate, spinning, and other games while we waited. This may have reduced my salutations to friends to a minimum but I wanted my son to be in a good mood for the show. (My apologies if I hardly spoke to you or even saw you that night.) When Bennink arrived there was a brief introduction by Nameless Sound chief David Dove who pointed to where people could find the bathroom before the show started. This was punctuated by Bennink in a heavy Dutch accent saying "Poo Poo! Pee Pee!" which was met with cackling from my son - this guy definitely speaks my son's language!

Sure enough when Bennink began playing my son leaned forward to absorb it all. Bennink began pretty straight forward but soon moved beyond the drum heads and began playing on the side of the drum, on the metal of the stands, and using his big leather booted feet to demand the concrete floor participate as well. Bennink then lifted his foot and placed it squarely on the snare then he began to play his boot and slowly incorporating the boot and the drum into one. The rhythmic muted sounds of the boot leather against the sharper sound of the snare's head and body made for a brilliant combination of showmanship and music. From there Bennink went on to play on the floor, on a step ladder, and anything else he could reach and punctuating the music with his brand of humor: chiding a ringing Cymbal, scolding a none too compliant drumstick, or declaring with a smile his "shitty" playing. Of course all this rambunctiousness was just spellbinding to my son who was seriously pushing his bedtime. My son was constantly cackling or just sitting with mouth agape at the proceedings of this 60+ year old man.

When Bennink took a break to ask the people for questions my son was exploding with wanting to engage Bennink with a question. I had hoped he would ask the question he'd asked me all night "What is the Harpoon for?" but he simply asked Bennink how long he had been playing which Bennink gracefully answered. After the break ( a bit after 9pm) I began to notice that Orion was starting to slump a bit. Sure enough, bedtime had arrived and we quietly left though the crowd. My son says that he learned that "he was really funny and that he was a really good drummer too." Sadly, we never found out what the Harpoon was for.


PS. All you Dutch ladies in the back especially the one in the furry blue coat - Yoo Loook Mahvelous.



Links:
hanbennink.com
Nameless Sound

Credits:
Artwork - Han Bennink's (More can be found here)
Photography comes from this article in Drummerworld.
I shit you not the "Sucess Deck" is real( see mentalmotivation.com )

Jeff Leppard

There was a time that I wouldn't have thought twice about going to see Jeff Tweedy play—with or without his band. That was years ago, though. Don't get me wrong, I like Tweedy's music and I liked the last Wilco show I saw, I just don't listen to that stuff all that much of late. But when I heard that Tweedy had added a second show to his stop here in Austin, I decided I might as well go. If he needs to add a second show, he must surely be good, right? It was almost as if he was twisting my arm. Not that it needed all that much twisting.

I wasn't sure how good Tweedy would be playing by himself, because that requires the kind of personality that can carry the whole show without the help of either other people or volume. As a solo performer, you can't just play the songs without saying anything, the way you could if you were playing with a band. The silence would be awkward. And my experience with Tweedy in the past is that he is none too chatty and plenty awkward.

Some years ago, my roommate brought Uncle Tupelo up to ktru for an interview. This was when they were touring for Anodyne, and while the drummer came to the interview, he disappeared pretty much as soon as he got there, so it was mostly the Jay and Jeff show. Having a missing drummer led to a few jokes at the expense of him and his dreadlocks, but overall the interview was humorless and kind of painful. Getting either Jay or Jeff to say anything was impossible. They would answer questions with a single sentence. This makes for a bad interview. And after a few minutes, a certain station manager who also writes for this blog and whose show we were interrupting for the interview pulled the plug and started playing music, without warning. It was a particularly dry interview, so it's hard to blame her (still...).

So it was a big surprise to me to find out that Jeff Tweedy is funny—not just kind of funny, but really stand-up comedian funny*. He has all timing and the imitations down. I submit this bit as evidence:

“I see a lot of flashes, so I'm going to give you the picture of me that I see in every newspaper.”

He held up his guitar and winced, making the "singer in action" photo that you do indeed see in every newspaper. Then as he plugged in a new guitar:

“Did I just see another flash? That's not the picture you want. No editor is ever going to pick that one. Here, I'll give you the picture again.”

And he struck the singer pose for a second time.**

This being the second night, he also complained that the reviewer of the previous night's show had called him surly in that day's column***.

“What show was he at? I love you people and I can kid like that because we have that kind of relationship. I think he just wanted me to be surly. He paid to see me be surly.”

Then an audience member pointed out that this writer wouldn't have paid.

There were also these bits:

• A story about the only picture his son Sam took on their recent vacation—of an apparently sizable turd.
• A related tour bus game, to identify band names that could be associated with specific turds. Blood, Sweat, and Tears. Whitesnake. Korn.
• How he hates to play "Jesus, etc." solo because the guitar part sounds like the Doobie Brothers' “Long Train Runnin'” (though he didn't mention the name of the song, because nobody ever knows the name of that song; it's always just "that Doobie Brothers song").
• Several bits about how he is self-conscious about being a front man. Whenever he thinks he's doing a lead singer cliché, he says he has to inhabit the body of his alter ego, Jeff Leppard****. This made him seem like some kind of mid-western, country rock playing Woody Allen. Which is an awesome image.
• Stories about the invaluable advice his father gave him: "Women. They all look the same when you hang them upside down in the shower."
• Much talk about how Wilco is promoting the homosexual agenda.
  

Okay, so he was funny, you say, but how was the music? Every bit as good. You wouldn't know how good he is by just listening to the albums, but when you hear Tweedy play all the songs by himself, you can really see how good both the songs and his playing are. To further prove he doesn't need any of the rock star trappings to make him look good, he finished up the show by playing “Dreamer in My Dreams” and “Acuff Rose” without the benefit of the P.A. He just stood at the front of the stage and belted them out. Impressive.

*Possibly Jeff has been taking pointers from Robyn Hitchcock. The Minus 5 opened and Scott McCaughey mentioned that he had written some of the songs with Jeff. McCaughey also plays in Hitchcock's Venus 3, so there's no need for a Kevin Bacon stretch there.

**I should point out that Texas Monthly editor, Evan Smith, was sitting four rows from the stage.

***You'll note that the writer never actually uses the word “surly” in that column, but the implication is clear.

****This is apparently the name he gave that persona after his show in Marfa two days previous to his Austin shows. In the interval, somebody made him a customized t-shirt that said Jeff Leppard, with perfect Pyromania lettering. Underneath, it said in smaller letters “Pour Some Tweedy on Me.” This shirt was displayed behind him for the whole show.

Week 13: Jerzy Kosiński's Pinball

Also included: Part 2 of The Book of Fables.

To Tits McVenom, my favorite metalhead.

I guess by now you’ve figured out a bit about the Avett Brothers if you heard one of their songs on the last NAPcast. Still, I’m gonna put them off yet another week. This week, breaking with tradition, I am going to bring to your attention a book. Jerzy Kosiński might be best known for writing Being There, the book on which the Hal Ashby movie starring Peter Sellers is based, and that is probably his best book. But the book I want to bring up is Pinball.

Kosiński’s life was full of contradictions and semi-scandals. His first publishing contract is said to have been gotten under the pretense that the book he was shopping, The Painted Bird, was based on his own real life experiences during the holocaust, when in fact the story was fictional. Later on in his life there were a number of accusations of plagiarism, and it has been claimed that he wrote in a way similar to the way Warhol painted, having his assistants do most of the actual work and sampling freely from other writers. And then he committed suicide in 1991, but during his life most of his books were best sellers and he lived like a euro-trash movie star.

When I was a young man with untainted rock and roll dreams I read his book Pinball (1982). It is about a rock star that remains invisible while still putting out hit after hit after hit. He is basically as famous as Michael Jackson, but no one knows the first thing about the man behind the music. All they know about him is his music. He never played live and neither his record label, nor his manager had ever seen him or spoken with him. The plot of the novel revolves around a woman who sets out to find out who he is for her own ulterior motives. In general the book is an easy read though it is fairly ludicrous and filled with cheesy spy novel intrigue, x-rated rock and roll sex-and-drug scenes and the usual fare you might find in genre-mixing national bestsellers. But the whole concept of the musician who manages to speak only thru his music has always fascinated me. There have been real life instances of similar, if less extreme, situations from Jandek to all the people who have run hit factories, and manufactured boy/girl bands, people who have remained in semi-obscurity while still getting their work out there for audiences. In the book ultimately the mystery of the person behind the music obscures the music as much as any of Michael Jackson’s behavior. This makes me wonder whether it is really possible to separate the music from the context in which it exists.

And now here’s a metalhead trying to let the music speak for itself.


And finally part 2 of The Book of Fables:
THE METALHEAD IN THE WOODS

From the edge of the nearby woods the metalhead watched the two A&R men eat the folk singer. The metalhead looked closely and took in every detail, the beauty of the folk singer's desperate attempt to save his life thru a song, the cunning manipulation of the A&R men, the sound of the teeth bitting into the meat, the blood, the bones, the bloated bellies, the burps of satisfaction, the red sun of the sunset turning the fields blood red. The metalhead watched and listened and felt a great pain in his heart. Then he made his way back to the center of the woods where he made his home.

The metalhead lived alone in the very center of a very dense patch of woods. He had lived there for a long time, and was nothing but a distant memory in the world outside his patch of woods. The metalhead enjoyed the solace of his home. In his patch of woods he made his music and this brought him joy. Every night, alone, in the darkest center of the woods, he created his heavy music for no one. One composition each night, played and then forgotten. It was the only way he had learned to express the horrors he had experienced. Each night he let out a new horror, each horror compounding upon the previous ones, making each night’s music heavier than the previous night’s. He had experienced many horrors before deciding to retire from the world, a path that eventually brought him to the woods. At first he thought that leaving the world behind also meant leaving its horrors behind, but he quickly discovered that wherever he went, the horrors were there too.

He wrote one composition each night and would play it on the metal instrument he had built himself. It had a huge body of lead and cadmium, with copper and zinc pipes that blasted out the tones played by nickel and tin hammers on vanadium, cobalt and chromium strings. The hammers themselves were put in motion with foot and hand pedals made of arsenic and activated by hydraulic pumps running on mercury. The whole instrument itself was about the size of a cathedral organ and not completely different in shape. However the sounds that came out of it would’ve caused the congregation at any cathedral to fall to their knees convinced that the end of the world was at hand. The metalhead played his instrument every night and the music was so heavy that it imprinted itself into the wood of the surrounding trees, reaching down to the roots and resonating there, a rumbling echo in the bowels of each tree for the rest of the tree's life. So night after night the trees grew denser, harder, heavier. And if anyone had dared entered the woods and dared to put their ear to the trunk of one of these trees they would have heard days upon days of the heavy music the metalhead had made as if it was coming out from the very center of the earth.

As the metalhead started to set up his instrument for the night's composition, he was reminded of the bum years ago when the metalhead still lived among people and played music in public. The bum had approached him as he sat reading a book outside a club where his band had just played a gig. The bum walked right up to him and told him, “You are a metalhead.” The metalhead gave the bum a puzzled look, and the bum explained. “Good and evil are at war in the world, each fighting for the souls of humanity. You are a metalhead. Your soul will not be taken by either good or evil. You quietly observe and after good and evil destroy each other in a spiral of violence, then and only then you and the other metalheads will emerge to play your music to the wind, and the world will be at peace.” And then the bum was gone. And how right the bum had been. So far.

And now the instrument was ready and the metalhead sat down to his instrument and started to play, and as he played he lived in his soul what the folk singer must have felt while he was being eaten, what the A&R men felt while eating the folk singer, what the folk singer's heart must have felt as it was being chewed by the older A&R man, what the younger A&R man’s heart felt as it filled with the blood of the folk singer, the gluttony, the deception, the hope, the horror. And in such a way the music began to flow from his hands and feet to the pedals and thru the heavy strings unto the leaden body and thru the metal pipes and out into the surrounding woods. And the trees stirred to their roots and breathed in unison to the rhythm of the music.

What the metalhead didn’t know was that a band of brothers had recently started gathering each night at the edge of the woods to listen to the faint echoes of the metalhead's music. The brothers loved searching for new music and looked far and wide for it in their travels through the land. And one late night sitting by the edge of the woods, quietly listening to the sound of silence they suddenly heard the faint echo of the metalhead’s music that could be heard coming through the trees if one paid close attention and was as silent as a tree. The band of brothers heard the music and tried to enter the woods to find the music, but it seemed to be coming from every tree all at once, so instead they collected a few branches and twigs and took them back to their stable where they sat all night listening to the faint and distorted music coming out of the pieces of wood they had collected. And they marvelled.

Moral: Music has a life of its own and will often find an audience even against the wishes of its maker.

Coming in part 3, the band of brothers meet the dj.

Adam the American

Last week's New Yorker had a piece by Raffi Khatchadourian (btw my new favorite nom de plume) about Adam Gadahn (aka Azzam al-Amriki, Azzam the American), the kid from rural California who is now an Al Qaeda spokesman. When Adam's story first broke a couple of years ago, I remember some reference to him being into death metal and his photo looked like some pudgy suburban white kid with a little growth under the chin, long stringy hair and that glazed over look of a high school reject. But that image ain't Adam al-Amriki.

That image is what my feeble mind read into the story. The short of it - some kid who grew up in a cabin on a goat farm listening to death metal rejects his society and joins a terrorist subculture - isn't enough information to form an opinion but form one I did. We all do it. But what happens over the years as we learn more about these "crazies" is that we learn that they are not crazy and aside from the Shoe Bomber they are generally not even dumb (well the Shoe Bomber might be crazy too). Adam al-Amriki is far from dumb. And as it happens his story is pretty easy to relate to for someone like me and I'll bet many of you Dear Readers too.

The medium of it (for "the long of it" go back in time and read Khatchadourian's excellent article) - Adam Gadahn is the grandson of a prominent Urologist who was born Jewish but raised his son agnostic. His father Phil Perlman was on the West Coast Psychedelic scene with a pretty happening outfit called the Beat of the Earth*. Phil Perlman found God on the beach and changed his name to Gadahn which is a form of the biblical name Gideon (who defeated Israel's enemies). Then, after finding God, Phil Gadahn continued to play music. He put out some good sh*t in the mid-seventies - albeit under a certain born-again-esque placated title, Relatively Clean Rivers. He moved to rural California and started raising goats. Adam was born into this and seems to have respected his father and his family and all their business as weird as it was. What he seems to have rejected was what he saw around him - urban sprawl, materialism, traffic.



For living in a rural cabin surrounded by goats, Adam had a worldly education. He stayed with his prosperous grandfather (a doctor) and his grandmother (a college teacher) in the summers. He traveled the country and overseas with his aunt (an environmentalist and journalist). He even appeared on TV as an environmental journalist for his aunt's TV show. All the while and still under the age of 17, he grew passionate about death metal.

Adam wasn't a trivial death metal fan. He consumed the stuff and not just the music, he got into the literature that inspired it like Nietzsche, Burroughs, H.P. Lovecraft. He reached out to the death metal community and was "probably in contact with, minimum, several hundred people worldwide."** He eventually put out his own stuff under the name Aphasia. But his stuff wasn't exactly metal - it was noise collage with metal samples, classical music and "bleating goats."***

Then, in 1995, his metal world fell around him. As the New Yorker put it:

"By 1995, several record companies had signed death metal's most prominent bands in an attempt to replicate the commercial success of Metallica, a group that combined various metal sub genres in a way that appealed to mainstream audiences. In the liner notes of an Aphasia tape he (Adam Gadahn) made just before he moved, Gadahn decried "commercial death & thrash metal, and the rest of you losers! Die and burn in Hell!!!"

Okay by this point the kid is on to something and he's only seventeen. He reaches out to the Muslim community, a move that the New Yorker doesn't really explain but if you look at his paternal history it makes sense. His father gave freeeeking out a go as well as Christianity; his grandpappy rejected his Jewish upbringing and became agnostic (or perhaps even an atheist). He's close with his family, a family that explores things, so he goes for the unexplored. But it ain't Islam that turns him to the dark side. The Muslim teachings he gets are pretty conservative. Here's what his imam, Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, told the New Yorker about the concept of jihad:

"A struggle for peace and justice, so that you establish peace in the world, you establish justice in the world, and defend your own rights-the right of dignity and honor and freedom, and the right of your religion. So you defend yourself for that, and you defend other people who are suffering and oppressed."

Sounds a lot like what ya might hear coming out of the mouth of one of your typical American politicians really. Anyway Siddiqi and the Islamic Society of Orange County was pretty conservative and rejected the strange subculture that Adam Gadahn eventually became a part of. Adam ended up living in an apartment with five or six other young Muslim men. So he lived in an apartment with a bunch of radical guys, an apartment that one female visitor described as smelling like foot. This proved to be his downfall as the article goes into explaining. It's not about the religion. It's the old "bunch of guys" syndrome.

"...men often became radicalized through a process akin to oneupmanship."

Does this sound familiar to anybody who has played in a band? Particularly to a close-knit band, a traveling band and so forth.

The whole point is that it's all very easy to empathize with. I get it. I understand why Adam turned to music and found a home. I get why he looked elsewhere too. I get why the "bunch of guys" syndrome can lead you down a pretty crazy path. The artist formerly known as Jerm probably gets it too. My sister gets it, maybe.

My sister is a Fundamentalist Christian. She was raised Catholic so her family thinks she's freeeeky. But she ain't dumb. She graduated high school top of her class and got a full college scholarship (tuition, room & board...everything). Growing up, she was a skeptical kid. She was nobody's dumbo. She lives in China in a fairly remote area northeast of Tibet. She's trying to save some souls over there.**** But China is having a pretty impressive affect on my sister as well. She's fluent in Chinese now and she speaks some of the weird nomadic languages. She looks great in a Tibetan outfit (a local tailor had to make one her size because she stands a good foot and a half over most folks around her). She adores the culture and she's learning us (the family) some pretty good stuff. I can't wait to visit.

My sister's life changed around the same time that Adam took the big leap, Jerm too and my cousin the Wall Street Wiz turned monk (but enough already). I get it.

The point is there's more to people living at the extreme ends of the poles than is often given them credit and sometimes it takes a damn dramatic shift to make a difference; and somehow I imagine that almost anybody who has ever played music, joined a band, started writing about music in a group situation, or picked a record off the shelf that looked a little troubling...well that person has a little insight into what is going on here.

Anyway all this talk about stuff makes me want to listen to music. Here is Adam's dad singing a pretty little tune. And John Cale singing about Gideon taking on the Chinese (hint: he loses).*****

Relatively Clean Rivers - Easy Ride
John Cale - Gideon's Bible

*I couldn't find the Beat of the Earth online so I started a pandora station called the Beat of the Earth. It's a really cool thing to do. Thanks Clay for the tip.
**Spinoza Ray Prozak quote from the New Yorker
***I looked long and hard for some of Adam's work online but didn't find. If someone does, please post!
****for a humorous take on Chinese missionaries read Mark Twain's essay the United States of Lyncherdom*****

The mp3's will be available for one week. Thank you to the blog Raven Sings the Blues for originally posting the Relatively Clean Rivers.

New York Droll

Maybe it was the photos of the band, or the sound of their sloppy train wreck recordings. It may well be that I have no good idea why I felt the way I did. What I do know, is that for as long as I can remember, I have had almost no interest in the New York Dolls. It probably doesn't help that I had to see that dude from Rockin' Robin Guitars lurking about town with his Dolls-do and his skin tight black denims and sleeveless leopard print t's. You know the one, he was in the Dolls ripoff band with the shameless Dolls-related band name. I mean, go with what you know, that's cool with me, but I don't have to listen to it either.

And so I haven't listened for many years, despite the accolades thrown their way from the mouths of so many of my favorites from the same era. But I always try to keep an open mind because that's where the best stuff always seems to creep in. And so with this absorbent leap of faith in hand, I sat down and watched the documentary New York Doll, about Arthur "Killer" Kane, the bassist of the New York Dolls. That Kane was the ugliest guy in the band is quite an achievement, because that was one hideous band. Kane was like eight feet tall, had a huge nose, his hair was a disastrous reddish mane, and he wore lipstick about as well as a blind cave man stuck in an underground well.

But the thing about Killer Kane is, when all hell broke loose in the world of the Dolls, when the boys all either died, turned crooner, or went all pizza boy delivery-ish on our asses, Kane jumped out a window, and then moved to LA and found himself a member of the Church of the Latter Day Saints. For reals.

So, great idea for a movie on that premise alone. But upping the ante, Smiths front man Morrissey sets up a festival show in London, and he absolutely won't take no for an answer from the surviving three Dolls. And now with the coup-de-grace: Kane is a total sweetheart, a fascinating, childlike giant, who has led his simple life, working for the church, and dreaming of getting the band back together.

And despite all the odds, it not only happens, but for the most part, works fairly well - all things considered - and a proverbial good time is had by all.

Pepper the story with interviews with the aforementioned Mozza, the insufferable douche Bob Geldof, David "Buster Poindexter" Johansen, Iggy Pop, and others, and you've got a fairly cool story.

And here's the capper:

Twenty-five days after the triumphant return of the New York Dolls in Morrissey's Meltdown Fest, Kane feels ill, goes to the doctor, is diagnosed with Leukemia, and dies two hours later.

That, dear children, is fucking poetry.

He was a real guy in a world of fakes. He did what he believed in, and did what he loved to do. He was outlandishly ugly, his bass playing was monumentally bad, and none of that was even the littlest bit of a problem.

I just can't seem to get enough of guys like Kane, like Jandek, and like Paul Nelson (whom I wrote about in a previous post, and who, coincidentally, was the guy who signed the Dolls to Mercury for their truncated major label days). I am endlessly fascinated by those who ply the rock trade right up there with the big names (and bigger egos), all while doing so with a singular vision that far outstrips the cartoonish posturing and empty bragging so predominate in the parts of the scene that get so much more attention.

I love fevered egos as much as the next guy, but I will always relate on a more personal level to those who are behind the scenes, holding things together, or at the very least, injecting the otherwise borderline heartless process with dignity.

Yeah, Killer Kane was one tragically hideous dude, but man, what a beautiful man.

clarinets

Last week I named The Clarinets at Barbés as best gig of 2006. I doubt that anyone else reading this would have reacted the same way, but hey, I’m not here to convince anyone to go out and listen to anything in particular. At best, I may be able to communicate some information about clarinets that isn’t in the general discussion of this blog, yet.

In a world where the best acoustical environment we have to listen to music in our everyday lives is inside of our cars or on headphones* in the subway during our everyday commute to work, live gigs become the only way to focus completely, to shut out everything and concentrate on hearing the music.

Barbés is a bar with a back room where most of the musicians associated with the improvising/new music scene in the neighborhood of south slope Brooklyn play frequently. It serves as an extension of the living rooms and basements where days are passed practicing, composing, or in rehearsal sessions for projects which may or may not result in gigs, recordings and tours. I wish I could get there more often.

I am predisposed to liking clarinets and clarinetists, which I will explain later. Somehow, I’m guessing during one of the Mexican-spice-fests-of-a-dinner in Oscar’s kitchen, my three favorite clarinetists decided to form a trio and began playing once a month at Barbés. This wasn’t bound to be like some barbershop quartet (or saxophone quartet, for that matter) with each person playing either the melody, tenor, or bass in harmony of a three-part chord. I ran into Anthony Burr one day as he was walking his dog after spending the day in a recording studio. Apparently, the work of minimalist composers can be quite exhausting because one spends the day varying the tone of single notes over the top of other single notes to create different resonances, requiring immense amounts of concentration and jaw muscle strength. I can’t imagine him wanting to explore traditional harmonies in this trio. Oscar Noriega’s background may have been quite different, but it led him to want to explore similar themes in this trio. Elsewhere, he plays with Soul Slavic Party, his own quartet, and other groups I haven’t heard about because I keep my head in the sand sometimes. Chris Speed, who started a label called Skirl, has catalyzed a few other groups into finally recording a few of the projects in the community. There isn’t enough space for me to recite his discography. Let’s just say that having mastered traditional harmonics and ‘jazz’ improvisation, he has gone out in exploration of non-canonized new territories such as gypsy and Bulgarian folk music. (Not to be dismissive of the genre, but every clarinetist in New York knows how to play Klezmer). This fuses in his brain and we get results that I can’t articulate, even though I played clarinet and have listened to a whole lot of music over the years.** There is a recording out of The Clarinets which is fantastic, but can never quite duplicate what it sounds like to hear them live. Because I know them all too well, I close my eyes and I can hear each of the personalities practically speaking to each other in an overtone language of another world.

The predisposition part of it all: when I was a child, I studied clarinet for a few years and then went through a brief and traumatic period during which I all of my grades plummeted because I stopped being present in school. During that time the best form of solace I could find was in retreating into a basement room where I mastered various harmonic scales, chromatics, arpeggios, cadenzas; slurring, tonguing and trilling techniques; jumps in registers giving rise to different voicings; and how various time signatures with different meters/tempos work within a composition. Critically, I did not make it to the point where I was required to improvise more than a few bars at a time during band practice.

The outcome of all this practice was that when I performed some rhapsody as a duet with a concert pianist at some state recital in the eighth grade a lot of whispering ensued. When one is being judged as a child, especially when one is slightly depressed and almost failing out of some of her classes because she is simply not making it to class, the whispering of adults becomes especially unnerving. I remember standing there, being embarrassed about my haircut and clothing, not understanding anything about anything going on around me, when one of the judges finally made the public declaration of “That is the best performance we’ve heard all day” and then, abruptly, escorted me out of the building, across a parking lot, and into another building where I was asked to sight read some more music. “Remarkable tone”, “please study this,” and then, even more harrowingly, I was seated as first chair of the second clarinets in the all-state high school honors band slated to perform a concert that evening. This does not have the traditional happy ending; I quit playing the clarinet less than a year later. Official reason: I disliked the available repertoire of Mozart concertos and dixieland bands for clarinets. I also moved from living with my dad to living with my mom*** and there was no fucking way I was wearing any marching band outfit as I began trying to make friends in a new high school.

About six years later, during one of those humbling moments in the music library of KTRU, I finally heard the music of one John Wallace Carter, which was like some mainline shot to my central nervous system. Involuntarily, my hearing became much more acute as I recognized the instrument without understanding much of anything of what he was able to do with it. His playing is liquid. Even having heard Eric Dolphy, Don Byron, Michael Moore, David Krakauer, Hamiet Bluiett, Marty Ehrlich, Gianluigi Trovesi and others, John Carter still stands out. For one thing, he doesn’t play the clarinet as if it were a saxophone and for another, his compositions are rich with the American folklore of children’s games, slave chants, storytelling in dialect, and harmonicas combined with the principles of Ornette’s free jazz. He and Ornette grew up playing together in Fort Worth, Texas in the 40’s, and I would suggest that anytime the Local Music DJs at KTRU get bored, they could expand their definition of local to include the regional contributions to free jazz. My favorite recordings are the ones he did in his later years, and they are: Shadows on a Wall, Fields, Dance of the Love Ghosts, and Castles of Ghana. As a side note, rather than reading the blowhard reviews in the All Music Guide, I would recommend first listening to the music. Here's a link to Fields- I must warn the bass clarinet enthusiasts out there, that is not John Carter, it's Marty Ehrlich on that extended bass clarinet solo. Mr. Carter sticks to his B flat soprano clarinet.

If you ever come to Brooklyn, go to Barbés.

*One can not wear the Sennheiser sound cancellation ones inside of the New York subway system without asking everyone around to beat the crap out of you. Only the biggest social idiots wear those. I have the ones that you have to wet with your mouth and then shove deep in your ears so that they form an acoustical seal to the environmental noise around. They work really well. It’s so great to see all of the gestures of multiple conversations, people moving in and out of the doors, the train rattling along, but hear only, say, German minimal techno or a new Threadgill record.

**Fair disclosure: Chris and I used to be very close, so I hear his music in a particular way, and I can’t pretend to be a dispassionate reviewer. With that qualification in mind, he’s the best damned clarinetist in the world right now. Sorry, I’m extremely biased; this is a blog entry, not a magazine article.

***My mother and I had a few fights because I wanted an electric guitar. She thought it was a phase I was going through.

odes to joy

The fact that most "pop" music (a construct I mean in the most expansive sense) trafficks more in downbeat emotions than upbeat emotions should hardly be a revelation to anybody. For one, it's remarked upon extensively in both versions of HIGH FIDELITY; for another, it always struck me as more likely that a depressed person would write a song to get past their problems, while a happy person would be too busy doing whatever it is that makes them happy to get around to writing a song. (Massive oversimplification, of course, don't get defensive if you've been happy and written a song before, et cetera.)

Anyway, I've found that I've surrounded myself over the years with a collection of music that often pulls me down. I won't speak for other people, but I definitely reflect the emotional states of what I surround ourself with. Which are often not, shall we say, cheerful. Damien Jurado singing about asking his mother to burn his body for fuel, say. Or the latest Mountain Goats album, where a band that was once remarkable for writing semi-uplifiting songs about surviving child abuse manages to spend an entire album chronicling the emotional tailspin of the first few days after a breakup.*

These are not healthy places to live in.

And so I've been seeking out music that makes me stupidly happy lately, and so I mention two tracks here. I meant to mention four but I'm really fucking busy so you get two. Maybe you get two more next week. If you're lucky.

The first is a song by Orbital called "Bath Time". I know basically nothing about Orbital, but this wound up on a compilation I got and it's absurdly silly instrumental that sounds like a tweak on video game music from the late 80's. Some would call this a failing. (Like the Orbital fans on Amazon's product reviews, who almost uniformly view this track as somewhere between an unfortunate aberration and a war crime, and as a result have convinced me to not investigate Orbital's other work.) I would not call this a failing. I would call this fucking awesome. It's catchy as all get out, and just structured enough to justify its running length. (Also the passing defender on Amazon.com who references its "underlying darkness" is insane in my opinion. This song has as much underlying darkness as a plush Totoro.



The second track, on the other end of the abrasion spectrum, is by NZ hardcore band Black Chrome. At least, I assume they're hardcore. The divisions between hardcore, punk, and the various subgenres is completely lost on me. There's loud fast electric guitars and screaming and it's not metal, is what I can say. Anyway, I digress. The song is called "My Band", and the chorus, as near as I can discern, goes:

"My band, my band, my band, whoa-oh ...
My band, my band, my band, whoa-oh ...
My band, my band, my band, whoa-oh ...
My band, my band, my band, is a front for an Internet porn ring!"

There's some other bits that I can't really figure out, mostly some yelling, and then an outro of "It's my, it's my fucking band!"

This is glorious stupidity on a near-unparalleled level. I mean, what kind of reaction are you supposed to have to this? I can only tell you mine, which is an initial astonishment that dissolves into delight. It's loud, it's crude, it's in dubious taste, and it leaves me struck with happiness every time I hear it.

(Okay, I'll mention the other two. They are: Petra Haden's cover of "God Only Knows" and Albert Ayler's "Bells", from LOVE CRY. Both deserve more discussion, but I gotta get to work.)

Ah, and if you would like to hear the rest of this happiness, our queen of the podcasts has made a 3-song special, which you can listen to here. (I think. I haven't tried it yet. But I trust her that it works, or that she'll fix my post if I've screwed up.)

Anyway: use this as a comment thread to rant about songs that make you gleefully happy beyond reason. Because we can all use more of those in our lives.

*The issue of The Mountain Goats, who are historically My Favorite Band, is one I'll probably have to write about at great length at some point. Today is not the day.

ST37 Road Trip, The Jonx, and an encounter with one really crazy French dude!

I've been a huge fan of ST37 since I first reviewed their double LP "Glare" for KTRU over a decade ago. At the time all I knew about the band was that they were this weird and mysterious band on an Italian label who probably smoked a lot of really good dope. So you can imagine my surprise when years later I find that ST37 aren't exotic rock stars but just some laid back dudes from Austin. It didn't take long for my band to becomes fast friends with them and at one point it seemed that every show we played was with ST. Over the years, ST37 have continued to thrill and amaze me so how could I skip out on their 20th anniversary record release party. Sure they were playing Houston the next night but, since I couldn't make it Saturday, driving up to Austin after work on Friday was my only option. Given my admiration for these guys, why the hell not! Plus, Scott offered me a couch to sleep on and a free beer if I followed through - Sweet! So armed with my new Jonx CD to wake me up (as I left so that grabbing a coffee was out of the question) I headed out to Austin on slippery wet roads.

No Turn Jonx Red

If you will let me digress a bit I should probably go on a bit about this frikkin' Jonx album that I've been mentioning in passing for the last couple of weeks. The Jonx are one of those bands that combine naked musical aggression with brains and musicianship - let's just say that Mathrock went to the gym and learned how to kick your ass. Jesus, the album opens with the amazing guitar feed back wank-off that would make Jimi Hendrix proud! Soon Stew's spindley guitar is propelled by Trey and Danny's rhythm section and we're off! Take a song like "Deadline" and listen to the way the guitars, bass and drums just work so beautifully together. It starts off with a poppy enough guitar riff then goes into these manic rolls, screaming vocals, slippery bass, and skronky guitars. The band builds up, kick back, let one instrument take the lead then drops back unexpectedly to let another in the spotlight. It's impressive to listen to and the thing that gets me is how the ever changing riffs aren't frivolous! But I want to talk about the song that I was going to put on the podcast because I hoped it would kick your ass - the album's closing song - "The Scent of Earth". Live this song is brutal! The bass and the drums come at you with this low slow prowl while the guitar lets fly! Let me just say that I am a sucker for the unyeilding riff! Sharks and Sailors pulled this off with "Topple the Pillar" but - Goddamn - The Jonx with an unrelenting fury pound you and pound you and pound you for 13 minutes! It's definitely a great way to end an album but imagine if they'd released this on LP and that pulsing drone at the end (about 12:19) just kept going! That would have ruled!!!!


Other CD Spins on the Road

Also spinning on my CD player was M. Wards Post War - probably one of the most overrated CDs of 2006. That's not to say it's bad; it's a nice collection of songs that are beautifully produced but it's hardly as earth shattering as many reviewers have made it out to be. But here is where I and most reviewers likely differ, am I impressed by the folky low key porch songs? No, to me they are as pleasant as a breeze and as fleeting. To me, "Requiem" makes the rest of the material seem lifeless by comparison. Here Ward channels Queen with a shameless cop of the first two bars of "Fat Bottom Girls" and and even a Brian May like solo and just runs with it with a drunken abandon. I'm sure somewhere out there Freddy Mercury is smiling and so are we.


Meanwhile, filed in the under-appreciated category stands Devin Davis' Lonely People of the World Unite which should be on more people's top 10 of 2006. Davis' album sounds almost manic with energy as if he were thinking he'd better pack everything into this disk or die trying. Just listen to "Giant Spiders" with it's Pete Townsend like guitar assault and it's tangled web of obtuse lyrics, it has this frenetic energy that screams for attention. Listen to the sloppy stumbling drums in the verses and how they play all around the beat and let the guitar hold it down - that is just a brilliant. In 3:44 you've just run a marathon of ideas in one song and that is what the entire album is like. It's the pop album you'd make if you knew this was your only shot. Sure there are two clunkers among the 11 in here but that is the price you pay as Davis holds nothing back and takes no prisoners and isn't that is what all musicians should strive for? Pop isn't be for pussies.


Austin is smokin' without cigarettes

The Jonx CD kept me awake enough drive through the dark and slippery roads of I-10 and 71 safely. When I arrived in Austin, I noticed that the clubs were doing fine despite the fact that Austin had implemented a smoking ban. I certainly didn't see any difference walking down 6th street that Friday night; people were walking, smoking (outside), going from club to club, making out, and all the usual things you'd expect them to do. In fact, I didn't even notice the ban until after the show when I didn't have to shower and change my clothes! Wow! Nice! Now personally I don't mind a smoky club while I'm there, it's the residual smell afterwards of stale smoke on my clothes and my car that I abhor. I mean who wants to shower at 2:30 am? But that in itself is an inconvenience I can live with; the reason I have no issues with smoking bans is because of the staff of those clubs and their long term health. Hell, great sound engineers like Joe O. at Rudz should have a long and happy life and if a smoking band can make that happen, I'm all for it. So, if Austin can pull it off, I'm sure Houston will have nothing to fear. You just won't be able to look as cool as Bogart and Bacall but, between you and me, you never really did.

ST37 Masters of Time and Space

I arrived at Mohawk to find a pretty decent crowd of people and caught a few words with the ST guys. I'd mentioned that the Houston Press gave them a pretty solid write up for the upcoming show. They said that they had read the article but were perplexed at how the writer closed with a slap at them for releasing the new album on LP. Curiously, there was a fine article the prior week that acknowledged what I'd known for ages- CDs are dying and vinyl will have the last laugh when CDs are finally buried and reduced to the glorified overpriced coasters they really are. I actually applaud ST37 in releasing their new album on LP only. I'd been telling my band to only do LPs and MP3s and skip the whole CD thing for quite some time. All you guys without a turntable need to get off your ass and buy a refurbished one and get back in the game of hearing full sine waves. Remember low end? It's waiting for you in wax! But I digress.

The middle set (I'd missed Cavedweller) was Midori Umi who put on a really nice set. The guitarists had some really nice spacey interplay and as it turns out the bassist was formerly in Winslow - a band I'd long admired but who closed up shop way before they should have. I'd meant to buy their CD but I totally forgot no doubt due to my repeated trips to the bar. The main attraction though was ST37 who was there to celebrate 20 years of traveling the spaceways and they were going to do it by playing their new album.

The set was the kind of expansive mix of psych , punk, and krautrock that makes this band an institution. I think it's really easy to take what these guys do for granted. How many bands can leave you with a feeling that the club has melted away leaving you to travel wherever the band wants to take you. You are in good hands with these guys. Give these guys a solid sound engineer and they can do anything! Dave Cameron's solid drumming roots the more ethereal guitar work of Joel Crutcher who is really great at producing layered and spacey sounds. Scott Tellis is a bassist who has not qualms about his instrument taking the spotlight but my only complaint from the set is not enough of his falsetto. With his falsetto, Scott Tellis pulls off what in anyone else's hands would sound really cheesy. That, to me, should be a new rule for any bands. Can you pull off a falsetto and not come off like an ass? Anyhow, I digress, the point is that ST37 saves me the trouble of smoking a whole lot of dope. I think Justin Bankston's fist says it all - Space is the place brotha' and ST will be glad to take you there.

Bonus round: Chilling at Scott Tellis' pad afterward and listen to Krautrock until 4am!
Not-so-bonus round: The following night in Houston, Rosa gets to help ST37 retrieve their van after they unknowingly park in a no parking zone.]

Epilogue:
Your father was a hamster and your mother smelled of elderberries!


So there I am returning from Austin in my car as my windshield wipers begin challenging the rain to a futile battle when I remember that I have a trunk full of recycling I have to drop off. Sure I'm tired but do it anyways as it will only put me out 5 minutes...or so I think.

As I am sorting my last small box filled with glass, I bump into a man. He says "Go ahead." but since I have only one colored bottle I tell him to go ahead and proceed on to the clear glass. I toss the clear bottles through the opening and into huge metal hopper with a satisfying crash. Grabbing the last bottle (a green wine bottle) I toss it over the rail towards the back half of the hopper. Then, the man I'd run into mere seconds before comes at me in a heavy and angry (I shit you not when I say this) Monty Python French accent "Hey, what are you doing?! You trying put my eye out with shards?! What are you trying to do?"

I look at the recycling hopper then back at him then back at the hopper then back at him and reply with befuddled resignation "Ummm, trying to put out your eyes with shards."

Pointing at me with a sh