we interrupt the stay on the island for a public service announcement.

Ertia Creations is basically dead.

Many of you probably don't know what Ertia Creations is, which is kind of embarrassing since it's a record label I co-founded. Don't worry, this says more about how absolutely shocking I am at some brands of self-promotion than at your inattention to my endeavors.

(Although you're perfectly welcome to be inattentive to my endeavors, should you choose.)

Back in 2001 or so, when I was living in Portland, my friend Hermann and I decided it would be a good idea to start a record label. The reasoning was something like this:

1) We had a band (The Tritium Miracle) and we wanted to put out a record down the road.
2) (unspoken) No self-respecting label would want to put it out.
3) If we self-released it, it wouldn't look like a "real" label.
4) If we, however, released records by other bands, it would be a "real" label.

(God, I wish there was a MySpace-oriented model for bands in 2001. We could have saved a lot of trouble.)

So the idea germinated. I had talked about starting record labels before with people, or by myself, and liked the idea of supporting music I loved.

And then our first release presented itself. Dave Deggeller, my bandmate from Dyn@mutt, had self-released a CD-R of his new project, Secret Primper, and was gearing up to do the same for another collection of songs. I had played on one of these songs back in 1998, perhaps as part of Conor's work on his master's degree or perhaps just sneakily utilizing equipment he had access to, and four more songs in 2000. We got Dave up to Portland for some basement recordings in the summer of 2001, and Conor recorded a few more in the Bay Area (with the estimable and gregarious Matt Plock on the skins), and then we had something like an album.

The label name was one I'd been sitting on for a while - it was simultaneously unfamiliar and obvious. (Well, at least to me - consider in- as a prefix, and inertia is a word.) After coming up with a basic idea for a logo, I enlisted the help of designer and friend Todd Stadler to design both a logo and a web site, both of which surpassed my expectations and certainly my ability to do it myself. After fumbling around myself for a while without success, he saved me from myself and came up with an awesome design for the cover of the Secret Primper album, now titled Alliteration and You. (An ancient blog by him on this topic can be found here.)



After a lengthy introduction to the world of CD production, mastering, getting clearance for cover songs, setting up a business, and similar sorts of things that I probably should have documented more thoroughly at the time, we managed to bring Alliteration and You into the world in 2002.

I would like to tell you that it set the world on fire and made it possible for Dave to quit teaching, tour internationally, and sell out stadiums, but this is not remotely true. (Actually, I'm not sure how much of that Dave would have even wanted.) Of the slightly over 1,000 CDs printed, I'm confident we have several hundred left. (Drop me an email if you'd like a box of 100 at a reasonable rate.) Reasons for this are myriad and sundry, from the lack of fanbase prior to its release to the small number of shows Secret Primper actually played to the complete lack of understanding on my part that the production of the album was not the culmination of its release but actually its beginning.

Message to anybody starting a label: things like publicity and distribution are very, very important. And I was very, very bad at them. I sent it out to a few places, and got a reasonably friendly review, a less enthused review (scroll down), and a couple adds on a few radio stations. (I don't think KTRU ever played it or even knew about it, despite the love that Dyn@mutt's record received at the time of its release. How quickly the past is forgotten.)

Also, listening back to the album, the production is thinner and more problematic than I remembered. We did the best we could at the time, but play it back to back with a Polvo or Superchunk album and you definitely hear the difference. Also, there's a couple drumming flubs on my part (particularly on "Cooked Captain") that cause me to cringe every time I hear them.

I still love it, though. And I'm really proud that I helped bring it into this world.

Somewhere along this time, I was corresponding with the incomparable Kyle Bruckmann, who mentioned that he had a trio CD in the hopper that they were trying to bring into the world. I had often thought of the idea of co-releasing being a very good idea, helping out underfunded labels with more passion than capital, and so we became involved in the release of Six Synaptics, along with Barely Auditable.

In terms of building label identity, there couldn't have possibly been a less appropriate follow-up. At the time, this didn't really bother me. I liked the idea of Ertia being home for creative initiatives of all sorts, and not just musical. To further the scope of what Ertia did, I gathered MP3s from various friends and associates to put together what I called a "Sporadical". Well, two of them. The first one included Kyle Bruckmann & Fred Lonberg-Holm, Easter, S.Ghael, Lie & Swell, stuart g smith, Blue Skies For Black Hearts, and Conor. The second one, many months later, featured Lumpy, Buddha on the Moon, Jesse Canterbury, Lozenge, Dw. Dunphy, and Ultra Hummus.

(I gathered a few tracks for a third one, but never succeeded in bringing it into the world, for no reason other than, well, sheer inertia. My humblest apologies to Jeff Smith, Kilian Sweeney, and everyone else who I asked for and received music from and then proceeded to let fester.)

Anyway, despite (or because of) the complete dissimilarity of Six Synaptics in every way to our other release, I was very excited about it. (And I mean every way, not just sonically. The packaging wasn't jewel case but one of those cardboard digi-paks. Even our label logo somehow got screwed up and was printed the wrong way.) And, despite being far, far, far more difficult listening, Six Synaptics got a bit more press, sold a bit more, generally got us a very very small but not entirely imperceptible bit of attention despite, once again, my complete indifference and/or ineptitude at promoting the release in any meaningful way besides placing it on the web site.



Just as we were gathering steam, though, we were also losing it. My band (remember them?), that was part of the reason for the label, was clearly nowhere near getting it together to put out a CD. I was pretty unemployed most of this time, and thus not sitting on a cash reservoir to put out lots of CDs, particularly when I hadn't really figured out how to convert them from CD form into cash. I had grand ideas about using Ertia as a site for my filmmaking, writing, countless enterprises. I did blog there for a while - apparently I was very angry about Iraq in 2003, looking back - but other than that not much came to light. And then I changed personal directions, and I moved to New Zealand amidst a lot of personal changes I've alluded to in previous blogs here, and then just never really got back to it, but kept dumping $20/month into keeping the domain and website going.

But that's silly. So now www.ertiacreations.com and my associated e-mail address is about to go away - it may be away by the time you read this. As I wrote this, I was looking over it. I was shocked at how much I'd deliberately ignored it over the last few years, not even taking the most minimal effort to maintain it. (For instance, there's multiple references to our address being the house I once bought with my ex-girlfriend, who no longer speaks to me, and who I strongly suspect is not holding my mail.) I'm slightly sad that it wasn't more than what it turned out to be.

But it was something I needed to do, and even though I did a half-assed job in a lot of ways I'm glad I did it, and I'd rather have the 2 CDs that we made and the memories than the couple thousand bucks I spent on it, and I could probably go on a lot longer, but it would just be a more verbose way of saying that.

Thanks to everybody who helped out with Ertia in any way, and next week I'll be back on the island.

My Better Judgement

So here we are the lunch for our new co-worker at the day job. Amongst all the small talk, I make a seemingly innocuous question, "What do you do?"

"OH, I do the fixed assets."

"No, I mean what do you do."

"Huh?"

"An avocation? What do you do outside the office?"

"Umm, I guess I like to read."

"Any genre?"

"Oh I haven't actually read anything for a while."

As innocuous as this exchange seemed, I was a bit shocked. I generally assume that work is 9 hours away from your life. Something doesn't quite add up if at the end of day if all you can say what you did with your life was balance a ledger everyday, eat, shit and sleep. Imagine Here Comes Mr. Jordan with that kind of life? You think Claude Rains would go through the trouble of demanding a new body after a premature soul plucking? Hell no. He's say "Thank God that's over!" My point isn't that you have to create or do something earth shattering - just something.

Consider this, at a recent wake, there was a elderly woman who just made elaborate ornamental eggs. She would take you through each display and show you her displays of eggs: bejeweled and lined ones, ornately carved ones, and small dioramas. Someone could laugh it off as kitschy but the thing was she was making something creative that she was able to share with people. When she passes away her grandkids will likely treasure those eggs and her friends will remember her as the egg woman.

Now, the egg woman's endeavor may not seem like much but compare that with my coworker; I know I'd much rather be making eggs. I think a lot of people don't bother making stuff because they are intimidated or make it some elite practice. To me it goes back to two documentaries and how the filmmakers see their subjects. The juxtaposition of Burden of Dreams and Hearts of Darkness has always amused me. The fixation for me is in how the films address the process of creating something. One considers creation a basic necessary drive and for the other film it is something elite and precious.

In Burden of Dreams, Les Blank follows the making of Werner Herzog's Fitzcorraldo where Kinski and the rest of the film crew suffer through all sorts of misery to achieve Herzog's vision which involves hauling a boat over a mountain. Doing is as much a character in Blank's film as any one person and that oppressive verb is behind Herzog compulsion to complete the film. The success or failure of the film seems almost secondary - the point is to make it. This is no different than breathing and no less extraordinary. I'm not suggesting that the work of Herzog and his crew is anything less than extraordinary but what I always go back to is how ordinary they are in their approach. They fight and struggle but there are no "I am making great art!" moments.

Contrast that with Hearts of Darkness, maybe it's because most of the documentary footage comes from Eleanor Coppola but there is a preciousness that is far removed from the journeyman ethic of Burden of Dreams. Here there is a constant self-consciousness where they are making great art and the people making this film are extraordinary for doing it. Not surprisingly, Marlon Brando is cast as an arrogant lazy schlub who is fat, didn't do his research, and tries to scores a big paycheck. Oddly, I love Brando here because - aside from being a huge bastard - he's the one person who isn't in the service of Art - this is his day job. That insufferable way he approaches his work is a wonderful juxtaposition to the earnestness of Coppola and his crew. To Coppola and the crew there is something mystical about making a film while to Brando it is nothing. Brando is playing fuck-you punk in a bloated self-important 70's arena rock band. Brando brings everyone down off their pedestals and tells them that what they do isn't special - I fucking love that! I think the reason goes back to a populist punk aesthetic where creation isn't just for the Pablo Picassos, the Orson Wells, or the Thomas Pynchons, it's for everyone - art should be common and everywhere.

This all comes down to why we do it - why we suffer through annoying bandmates, tedious rehearsals, throwing money down a hole, and general indifference from the world. We do it because that's what we do and what you should be doing. There's nothing special about it - we're just primitive sharks and if we stop we die. You have to put up with a lot of shit, frustration, and disappointment not to mention a lot of neurotic and manic-depressive behavior along the way. Sounds awful huh? Well, the way to deal with that is to resign yourself in the manner Herzog does when he confronts the jungle;

"We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no real harmony as we have conceived it. But when I say this, I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it, I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment. "

Credits:
Herzog and Kinski by Beat Presser 1987

Coppola and Brando by UA

Links:
Burden of Dreams on IMDB - For best results don't read the Herzog monologue in the quotessection until you've seen the film.

Hearts of Darkness on IMDB


And don't forget..
Tonight is the Proletariat 's 5th anniversary. Congrats to the Prolee and kudos to Skyline Network.

Ain't No Senator's Son

I want to talk about lyrics this week. I don't mean I want to talk about their meaning or lack of meaning. I want to talk about the actual words and their use. Say you're driving along (or walking, depending on your city) listening to lyrics that go something like this:

I can't get no satisfaction
I can't get no satisfaction
'cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can't get no, I can't get no

When I'm drivin' in my car
And that man comes on the radio
He's tellin' me more and more
About some useless information
Supposed to fire my imagination
I can't get no, oh no no no
Hey hey hey, that's what I say

As I said, I don't care about the person in the car or on the radio or what it all means. But why is Mick Jagger all those double negatives? You've heard him actually speak, right? He would never say "can't get no." Now, I know what you're thinking (because I'm psychic like that)--you're thinking that Mick Jagger was just working within the blues idiom. His lyrical appropriation from the blues runs parallel to Keith Richard's (or Richards', depending on the year) musical appropriation. Fine, I can buy that. But, what about this:

Oh don’t lean on me man, cause you can’t afford the ticket
I’m back on suffragette city
Oh don’t lean on me man
Cause you ain’t got time to check it
You know my suffragette city
Is outta sight...she’s all right

Does Bowie use "ain't" in everyday speech? Or is Bowie a bluesman there? I mean seriously--Bowie? A bluesman? Bowie has created lots of personas, but that's not one of them (though, admittedly the blue-eyed soul of Young Americans comes close). Let's try something like this on for size:

She ain't fancy, she ain't fine
While her fingers number only nine
She's the belle of the ball of the insurgency.

Those would be lyrics from everybody's favorite band, The Decemberists. The Decemberists are people who wouldn't be caught dead using "ain't" in the conversaion of their precious social circles. And yet there is Colin Meloy singing it, like he's Ronnie Van Zant.

Why is it acceptable to sing these phrases when you would never speak them? Maybe it's just me, but once I start noticing these things, it's hard to unnotice them. And then I start identifying other lyrical clichés. The use of the word "baby" without referring to an infant is particularly irksome. Try to imagine, if you will, a close friend talking about the plans that "me and my baby" are making without laughing. So remember that if you find yourself writing lyrics. At best I will be laughing at you when you sing these things.

Perhaps you know of an even more grating cliché.

Week 48: My Summer Vacation 1, Calle Gertrudis

This is the knowledge that comes with aging.

Over the next few weeks I will be writing about my summer vacation in Puerto Rico. But before I get into the music which is what this blog is about, I’m going to give you a little context information. I’m going to tell you about the street I grew up on.


My grandparents lived in the mountains but in the 1940s my grandmother developed some respiratory problems. The doctor recommended they move close to the ocean. The ocean breeze will take care of it, he said. What a doctor. So my grandparents bought a little house on Calle (street) Gertrudis in Barrio Machuchal in the town of Santurce, Puerto Rico. Santurce was everything the doctor ordered and more.

Santurce used to be a big swamp. It was where the newly freed slaves lived after Puerto Rico abolished slavery in 1873. Today if you go towards the east from Santurce, you’ll reach Piñones. Piñones retained its swampland character the longest, and if you go to PIñones you can get an idea of what most of Santurce must have been like around the time my grandparents moved to Calle Gertrudis. The ocean goes right up to a narrow stretch of sandy beach dunes and from there the land goes down hill into a landscape spotted with mangroves, lagoons and palm trees. The area includes the natural reserve of the Bosque Estatal de Piñones. The tourist industry and land developers have been inching closer and closer over the years, and recently they’ve come head to head with the highly organized local citizens who recently won an important victory and gained ownership of some large tracts of land in Piñones. In Piñones you can still hear Bomba and Plena very close to the way it was played over 100 years ago. Here’s a youtube video of some bomba players in Piñones. It's a conversation between the lead drummer and the dancer.



Anyway, when my grandparents moved to Santurce there were only a few houses on the street. The neighborhood was a distant suburb of the capital of San Juan, just a few miles to the west. But as the areas surrounding San Juan developed, so did little Barrio Machuchal; the streets were paved, more houses were built, and in a fever of Americanism, the name of the neighborhood was changed to Ocean Park.

But as pretty as they might have thought the new name was, the neighborhood still sat on dried out swamplands. Which meant that every time it rained more than a few drops the whole neighborhood would flood, and in Puerto Rico it rains a lot. When my parents divorced, my mom came to live above my grandparents’ house, and thus began my upbringing on Calle Gertrudis. As a child, for me, it was great to play submarine-bicycle by riding through the streets with the flood waters up to my shoulders. But the grown ups only saw how their house foundations were tilting, or how their furniture got ruined every time the water came in the door.

To offset the flooding, sometime in the 1960s, someone, probably the government, built La Bomba. La Bomba was a giant pump located more or less in the center of Ocean Park and about a block inland from the beach. La Bomba was encased in cement so all you saw was a huge cement block on the corner of Santa Ana and Cacique streets. But underneath the cement, La Bomba was hard at work. La Bomba’s job was to collect all the water from the sewers, all the rain water that came in through the street drains along with all the water returning from toilets, sinks and bathtubs throughout the neighborhood. I never understood why it didn’t just collect the water from the street drains which were the ones causing the flooding, but then again I am no sewage engineer. Anyway, once the pump had collected enough sewer water it would push it all out through a huge pipeline about three or four feet in diameter. The pipeline ran under Santa Ana street towards the beach and would only surface right at the shoreline like a giant periscope peeking towards the horizon from under the sands.

This was the only visible part of the mechanism and the one that gave La Bomba its second meaning, because though bomba means pump in Spanish it also means bomb. And about every 45 minutes on a regular day, more often if it had been raining, La Bomba would vomit a shit, water and sewage bomb out of its mouth, right over the breaking waves of the shore.

Lucky for us Calle Gertrudis was just downwind from La Bomba, so the ocean current almost always carried the shinny shit stain right by the beach at the end of our street. It really was a sight to see. We would swim in the ocean until we saw the shit start to pour out of the pipe, then we’d get out of the water, and play in the sand while keeping an eye on the shinny stain as it traveled from La Bomba westward towards San Juan. Once the shinny shit stain had passed, we gladly jumped back in the water.

Of course there were signs on the beach that said swim at your own risk, water may be contaminated and other such warnings, but this was our beach, and you know we were going to swim in it. As kids, we would dare each other to hold our heads in front of La Bomba echoing into its pipe things like, tra la la la la, you cant spew on me…you chicken shit Bomba… come out if you dare, and other extremely clever things. Or we’d dare each other to see who would stay in the water the longest after the shit had come out or who would swim closest to the shit stain. But the truth is we were all chicken-shit ourselves, and all it took was one tiny turd looking thing to come floating by and everyone would be a Mark Spitz to the shore.

So you can imagine our beach was not the one they put on those tourist postcards. But La Bomba wasn’t the only thing that made our beach somewhat crappy. First of all, there really wasn’t all that much of a beach to begin with. The street did dead end right into the sand, but then there was, on a good day, only about ten maybe fifteen feet of sand before you hit the ocean. The ocean itself was dark, choppy and often colder than you would imagine a Caribbean island beach to be. It was a great beach for amateur surfers, for perverts who liked to jack off to the ocean breeze, for young couples looking for a place to make out, and it was great for us kids.

The beach was so narrow that the houses that faced the beach at the end of the street, had to go get a bunch of rocks to put in front of their house to keep the waves from eroding their foundations when the tide got too high. When the tide got high enough it would run down the street and past my grandparents house where us kids were busy watching our paper boats get carried away by the ocean. To me it was the coolest thing, but I think the grown ups only saw the possible Bomba turds floating down their street.

Once you get turds in your head it’s hard to get rid of them. For example, I was recently told that every time we drink a glass of tap water, we also drink a minuscule fraction of a microgram of e-coli. It's unnoticeable by itself, but if you add all those little fractions together at the end of the year it turns out you drank about two tablespoons of shit. Guess who’s drinking filtered water now?

So you can imagine what the possibility of all these turds floating down the street must have done to the grown ups on our side of Ocean Park. And so began the fight against the Bomba. I was too young to understand the details of why they didn’t just stop the thing, but I imagine it had something to do with having to make a choice between the turds going into the ocean or going into your living room when the neighborhood flooded from the rain. Most of the 1970s were spent in this battle.

In 1984 I went to Texas to go to college, and when I returned for summer vacation the following year the Bomba had been deactivated. There was no more Bomba. The giant pipe still stood there at the edge of the water, but it no longer pumped out the sewage into the ocean. What a great feeling. Proper sewage had been installed, and the neighborhood didn’t flood, and the shit went elsewhere and not right on our beach.

Then the most amazing thing happened. Within a few years, the beach had magically grown. It might have been a coincidence, but it sure looked like the shit had been eroding the shoreline cause as soon as the Bomba stopped spewing the beach started to get wide and pretty. Eventually the beach grew to more than a hundred feet of sand between the end of the street and the water.

After the Bomba closed, the ocean also miraculously calmed down, and its waters became light blue and clear. The surfers were not happy, but our beach had become a postcard perfect beach. They took off the warning signs, and within a few years, we had one of the most popular beaches in the area.

Suddenly our little neighborhood became flooded on weekends not with literal turds coming out of the sewers but with the kind of turds that drove pimped up jeeps with super loud Blaupunkt stereos and parked wherever they felt like, in front of someone’s driveway, right on the sand, on the sidewalk. They’d bring coolers and leave beer cans and cigarette butts everywhere, pee on people's yards, walk up and down the streets at all times of day or night looking for some kind of action. There was even a street girl who took to bathing with the water hose my grandparents kept on their front yard. And I mean in the nude, just like you would in your own shower, she’d bring a little soap and everything. Needless to say the hose was put away.

Ocean Park went from being a place where old people like my grandparents lived to being a place where old people like my grandparents were disrespected by a constant barrage of beach hipsters and bums. Of course the popularity and beauty of our beach bode well for property prices. The first sign of this was when the Gangsters moved to the street. Previously it seemed everyone that lived there had lived there since the 1940s or 50s. Now in the 1980s a wealthy family moved in and the first thing they did was build a 12 foot high concrete fence all around their house, no one knew them and no one ever saw them, they would drive their tinted windowed car through the gate and that’s all anyone ever saw of them. So of course we concluded they were gangsters.

Shortly thereafter, the big fences started to come up everywhere. As children we could cut through all the back yards on the street, all the way to the beach, but now the houses were all blocked off from each other by huge walls, the porches were being closed off behind bars, and everyone started to live in fear of being robbed or of someone using your water hose to bathe.

The newly formed neighborhood association got together and decided to close off the neighborhood. But Puerto Rico has a pretty cool constitutional law that says that all beaches are public, and access to the beach can not be restricted anywhere. So the neighborhood association of Ocean Park closed most of the streets, except for one at each end of the neighborhood and put a gate on each end and a guard on each gate, but the guard couldn’t keep anyone out, all they could do was take the names and license plates of visitors. To this day, to get in all you have to say is whether you are a residente (resident) or a visitante (visitor), either way you get in. The two principal members of the reggeaton group Calle 13 call themselves Residente and Visitante in jest of a similar situation which happened in their neighborhood.

All this added protection did little to stop the beach party that the neighborhood had become. The grandparents now stayed caged in their houses while the crazies ran the streets. But soon the various grandparents who owned the houses began to die, and the children who inherited the houses instead of moving into them with their children, chose to live in other parts and divide the houses into several rooms that they could rent at a huge profit to young, single beach goers with dogs. Cause for some reason, everyone has a dog.

The result was that a house that previously needed one or two parking spots now needed four, five or more. Our street is a one lane street, very narrow, and now the front yards have been paved over to make room for the tenants’ cars. I was just there and it is a weird feeling. There is hardly a sidewalk anymore, the houses either have high cement fences that go right up to a sidewalk to narrow to walk on, or the sidewalk has become part of the parking area that used to be a front yard. The fence at the Gangster’s house is now actually one of the lowest and prettiest ones, and their house, by comparison, seems open and welcoming.

However, once you get to the beach, the houses and cars disappear behind you and the beach is as beautiful as it has ever been. My mother spent a good amount of time in the 1990s calling TV news crews to report on the huge amounts of garbage that the visitantes left on the beach, and eventually the government installed garbage cans throughout the beach, and people for the most part use them. And even La Bomba is now pretty. In a weird Planet of the Apes turn of events, the only part of the Bomba that is still visible is the very top of the shit spewing pipe as it sticks out about a foot above the sand far from the water, and some local person has carefully decorated this tip with a mosaic of colorful tiles.

Right before we arrived back on Calle Gertrudis, a few sea turtles had made nests on the beach and laid some eggs. Young biologists and other nature enthusiasts made camp around the nests to protect the eggs from being stolen (they are quite prized since the turtles are endangered). The naturalists were there in shifts around the clock for over two months, and got to know the people of the neighborhood. They also seem to have acted as a catalyst in establishing a feeling of community that had been somewhat lost. The locals would visit the eggs and their caretakers and talk, watch the eggs for a little so they could go for a swim or use the restroom, they would bring them food, water, music, etc. Finally, both residentes and visitantes were rewarded with a bunch of little sea turtles that made it safely back to the ocean.

When we were there, that feeling of community and accomplishment was still felt, and I hope it grows because it will be needed. There is a developer that has bought several houses right on the beach. The same developer has offered 2 million to the grandmother who lives on another house facing the beach one street over. Luckily the grandma said if she left her house it would have to be feet first.

What this developer wants to do is build some high rise beach front condos. However local law doesn’t permit buildings higher than four stories tall so the developer has left the houses in disuse, and is waiting to see if they change the laws or if he can find somebody that will take a bribe and give him the permit he needs. It’s happened before. It happened just recently in an incredibly central part of San Juan where a developer was not only given a permit that allows him to restrict access to the beach (which as I said is against constitutional law), but the developer also got permission to restrict access to El Fortín de San Geronimo, a small historical fortress built by the Spanish throughout the 17th and 18th century, and which apparently now belongs to the developers. So as you can see local law is not exactly etched in stone.

We Are the Dying World

Here is part of a comment to Justin's musical youth post a couple of months past...

My parents were into the folk movement, not surprising for New York at the time. Lots of Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Clancy Brothers as well as stuff from the Great American Folk Anthology like Jimmy Crack Corn, Wabash Cannonball. On top of that my mom made sure to sing lots of German children songs. My dad liked to sing Italian Opera on Saturday mornings. My grandparents loved to sing songs from the forties and put on big band albums and also Al Jolson. My grandfather loved to sing me to sleep with Irish songs like tora lora lora...

The comment kind of brings together what I was struggling to write now about the essence of folk music. I don't mean folk music as a record store genre. I'm looking for something broader than that, like...

Italian Opera sang by an Irish man in his underpants is folk. But if that same Irish man took the 7 train in to sing at the Met, well that's not folk.

To define it? I don't know. How about this? The farther you can take music from money and class, the closer you get to folk.

It's a stab anyway, one that I already find painful. You try.



Let's take a look at folk as a record store genre. A terrific thing to take away is the anonymity of the songs and the ease with which these artists mixed their own work with others, demonstrating humility. A music supposedly without need for copyrights.



I'm torn on the way copyrights affect music on the whole, whether it's for the most part good or for the most part bad. Really it affects so much creativity that sometimes it makes me sad.

For instance last night I was watching American Psycho with the director's commentary track. Mary Harron's commentary is full of trivia about all the stuff they couldn't use or say because of permissions. For example they had to change the line "don't touch the Rolex" to "don't touch the watch."

From what I know about the making of this movie, I know Ms. Harron was holding back too. That is so sad. But then American Psycho is in part a commentary on the ridiculousness of brands and their affect on us, so it is fitting that the movie is actually affected by them.

So are we talking about a properly functioning piece of art here or aren't we?

Anyway that wasn't really off subject but it was distracting so sorry about that. What I'm here to tell you about is an old comp put out on vinyl in the latter part of the Organized Death Century by Ralph Records. It's called Potatoes and it's Ralph Records answer to the question, what is folk music?



Helping Ralph come to a conclusion about folk music are some innovative musicians of that time which, by the way, is the time of folk anti-heroes like Mr. Ronald Reagan and American Pscyho's Patrick Bateman. The original list of artists include Renaldo and the Loaf, the Residents, Mark Mothersbaugh, and Negativland.

Re-interpretation of old songs and anonymity is a part of this late 80's revaluing of folk music. Nothing of the earlier East Coast folk movement is examined though. The record actually has a southern tone to it, like its kid's music counterpart Goobers.

On that note, it makes me wonder if the Residents' covering Hank Williams' I'm So Lonesome I could Cry and Terra Incognita's rendition of the bluegrass standard, Rank Stranger, had any part in the Alt Country movement that soon followed.



Terra Incognita's Rank Stranger certainly had an impact on me. This version inspired me towards putting together Texas Guinness Lovers. The song itself is perhaps my favorite song of all time. It is the song anyway that I could play every time I hit a stage. I love to sing this song.

Really folk music had already been re-aligned and heatedly discussed by then, particularly when Bob Dylan re-aligned himself with rock. Then, as we all know, Men Without Hats said "the folk of the 80's is the folk of the city. The folk of the 60's was the folk of the country."

This really changed the music landscape and people started saying that Men Without Hats are the new Men with hats. So the men who did not have hats stopped playing their synthesizers and started dancing around in a medieval village with a circus freak show.

Potatoes was originally only released on vinyl. I bought my copy at Half-Price Books in the Village for 99 cents (that is such a folkie thing to do). A few months ago I did an online search for Potatoes and found nothing. In the mean time the folks at WFMU put it on the internets (a totally folkie thing to do). From there I learned that the comp was re-released the following year on CD with loads of extra tracks all of which are download-able from the WFMU blog.

Songs
Potatoes - Download the whole friggin' thing but I'd like to hear what you have to say about these three tracks in particular...

Terra Incognita - Rank Stranger

Negativland - Perfect Scrambled Eggs (the perfect 80's interpretation of folk and useful breakfast cooking advise all in one)

Mark Mothersbaugh - My Home Town (an original song from Devo mastermind)




For all you parents out there, you can also download the Ralph Records children's album, Goobers. I've listened to it. It's strange. I don't think it will freak your kid out or anything. But I'd be surprised if it held their attention, not even Tiny Tim's version of the Chicken Dance.

If your kid dances to that, you might have something special on your hands.

The Ballad of Kanye Worst or Why MTV Doesn't Care About Black People

The celebrity universe is one filled with mammoth egos so utterly disproportionate to the wade pool of talent from which they all must so starvingly draw. Trying to grasp the scope of emptiness in the upper echelons of fame would be an exercise in futility, likened to understanding what a beach is by counting every grain of sand contained within its boundaries. Thus, it is better to look at the world of celebrity as the great cultural toilet bowl: clogged, and in desperate need of plunging. Only then would these turds take their leave of our consciousness and leave us to fend with all the real, insurmountable ills we have bestowed on this world.

In bed as much with Old Scratch as their parent and corporate teat, Viacom, MTV has been an open window into the sulphurus depths of our collective soul for decades now. Adeptly recognizing the potential for exploiting the youth of the world, as well as recognizing the bottomless pockets that young Americans seem to have, MTV has mastered the art of marketing so well that if it wasn’t so utterly wicked, we might be able to admire guiltlessly their skill at manipulating the minds and hearts of American children.

As I write this, another MTV Video Music Awards show has come and gone. I am, generally speaking, not only a sucker for painful cultural artifacts, I am a veritable connoisseur of the sort of detritus that washes up on the shores of our collective unconscious. When MTV gets their roids in action, when all pistons are firing in unison, the sheer majestic glory of their grandiose awards show productions are a rogues gallery of disastrous plumage, dialed to ten, and absent a shred of mercy.

Kicking off the tumult was an appearance by the epitome of Southern American dispossession, a good five pounds over the public limit of acceptability for post-teen empty-brained wet dream candidates: Britney Spears. The years since her last chart topping success have not been kind to the young starlet. In the presentation of her public persona (not to mention the regular public presentation of her shaven genitalia), she has exposed what must certainly have been a terrible southern upbringing. There is an impersonal cruelty to the rigors of fame, and there are those who are unable to rectify their own self-interests in the face of the demands of celebrity. Spears is no exception, in fact, she exemplifies the dangers of growing up too fast in the fast lane without the proper anchor. Sadly, it is in the cards that her children will almost certainly suffer a fate worse than hers given their less than stellar gene pond.

As America has watched Ms. Spears hop from one disastrous life choice to another, on that pathetic Sunday night, we all coalesced to the point in time that is the MTV Video Music Awards. This was to be Britney’s moment to shine, her moment to finally put to rest the rumors of her lapses in sanity, her supposed leap back into the welcoming arms of pop mega-stardom, and out of the great void of irresponsible behavior. Instead, she upped the ante on her downfall, and in the process, dug herself a hole so deep she may never come out. Her performance was pathetic. She looked scared and bored at the same time. She was whored up in an outfit that looked desperate. She was clearly lip-syncing, and that was during the time when she was actually trying, the rest of the time she blankly stared into space with her blue contacts and did what I guess was supposed to be a dance. It reminded me of a scene in the (excellent) Mike Leigh film, Naked, in which the protagonist, Johnny (played absolutely convincingly by David Thewliss), arrives on the doorstep of a lonely woman in a dilapidated apartment in London, only to realize that she is much older than she appeared in the adjacent window across the street from which Johnny and a night watchman spy on her. As she continues to drink herself into oblivion (or perhaps, hopefully, absolution), she lazily dances for Johnny in hopes of his awakening her from her existential slumber. There are shades of this barren exhibitionism in Britney’s performance, and many, including myself, are uncomfortable with what it says about her, about us.

Included in the audience was Kanye West. Never one to shy away from speaking his mind, West had plenty to say on Spears’ performance, on MTV, and on the need for the world to buy his new record. Infamous for his adlibbed, brutally honest, and searing indictment of George Bush and the government’s poor response to the Katrina catastrophe, West has become a poster boy more for his opinions than his forgettable music. Prominently featured in the awards show, hyping his new record and his newly minted feud with the ballistically perforated rapper, 50 Cent, West had an axe to grind Sunday night, and nothing was going to stop him from grinding it down to a nub.

Apparently, Kanye felt that MTV was exploiting Britney by even having her on the show in the first place. But to sweeten the pot, he added that he also was upset because he feels he should have kicked off the show with "Stronger," the first single from his new album, "Graduation."

"They exploited her, they played me, and I really don't mess with MTV," he said.

He doesn’t play with MTV, unless they ask him to, and then he plays in the suite designated for his own party, replete with hired audience members, DJs, and multiple guest rappers. Then it’s like a giant fucking playground.

West even went so far as to play the race card when he explained that he should have had the show closer instead of Justin Timberlake. Never mind the fact that the closer included Timbaland, a man who certainly falls somewhere well outside the boundaries of what most people consider white.

Apparently, to Kanye West, having the opener, closer, and all the awards would be the only reasonable way for MTV to conduct their utterly meaningless awards show ceremony. Only then would MTV be freed from the shackles of racism and exploitation that plague them today. In addition, giving West all the attention would afford Britney the chance to heal and grow into a well rounded egomaniac on par with someone like, well, Kanye West.

It takes a big man to stand up to the powers that be and tell it like it is. I don’t even think that’s vaguely close to what happened in Vegas, Sunday, but it sure is entertaining to watch as the unfairly wealthy reduces themselves to cartoonish fools, both simultaneously above us and below.

That this takes headlines, steals our attention, and raises my ire, is a story unto itself, but one I don’t wish to tell. That great depths hide within the shallows of the surface dwellers gives us all a way to fathom the path of all the rest, no matter how sad and weak, no matter how short the steps. That in time, a great wave will come and wash us all out to the roiling sea of the unknown is both a comfort and an unsettling reality. For what if nothing exists beyond this, and all of our fears are simply unwarranted waste; what does this say about now, about you, in this life now? Under the open, blameless gaze of the yawning sky, the lot of humanity scrambles for an answer but gets only questions, and as we fill our days with dreams, only emptiness gives repose. This curse is our salvation, and through it all - blind, feral, and very, very hungry - tomorrow waits on baited breath.

Napcast 36 or The Killing Spree of Saturday Night

I am posting this now, because the podcast is finished, and to give Heidi a break from her blog woes today.

Hello. This podcast will accompany a tale of Aleutian village living. I've shared a couple of stories about what it's like to live in this small village. So some of you have heard me tell of the things I will kick off this post with. Hang in there if you've heard it all before. I promise that I'll eventually get to the killing spree of Saturday night.

It's kind of hard for people to relate to living on this island because of the extreme differences between here and, say, where you are right now. We don't have any law enforcement. There's no Churches. There's no 911 operators. There's no swimming pools. There's no pavement. There's no movie theater. No cell phone service. No AM/FM radio. Sometimes I can catch NPR in between native village birthday messages and NOAA weather reports from a station in Dillingham, when the weather isn't shitty. The weather is always shitty. In fact, it's a favorite past time to insult the pussy storms in other places... places like where you live.


We do have some things here that you probably have there. Like clouds (but our sky has a smaller ceiling) and all kinds of berries and eclectic geologists and electricity and plumbing and the occasional spat of generosity and good times and ... Oprah moments. Our produce is all two weeks old when we get it off of the barge, but wait... ah. You almost had me there. See how easy it is for me to try and lose to your cheap buffet of excessive resources? It's tricky looking positive next to you... Don't try to help me. I've lived in both worlds and I'll only abuse your soft spot.

There's 6 children in the school.

There's about thirty of us on this island right now. In the past few months, we have held three funerals. Two people drowned off of our docks. Many other villages held contempt for our string of losses, and most of these tragedies were because of transient people's bullshit. All of us in the village are still freshly mourning our dead beloved, as a 1,000 mile long second rate trail of ink pours salt in our wounds with slanderous accusations from dirt bag reporters. Dear Dirt Bags, You suck at journalism and your intuition is pretty bad too.

Russian Orthodox funeral services are a very somber affair. So, I won't additionally crud up the memory of people we've lost by talking shit on the coke-guzzling priest that flew in here to whip up some holy water in a pot I left at the last spaghetti dinner and take cash donations for his troubles. You wanna know what holy water looks and smells like after it has sat for a month? It looks like malaria and smells like plague.

My dog was killed by wolves at summer's onset along with 5 other dogs here. There's no leash law. Dogs are untethered. Ever lived in a place where packs of dogs run the streets? We can't even euthanize them legally. If a dog can't be helped by me after being torn apart in a gang fight or run over, they get shot in the head at the garbage dump. That's pretty much THE option. Some cops in Dutch Harbor declined having injectable drugs to put down dogs, because they said "It could fall into the wrong hands and it's easier to just shoot them." Uh... Stellar work guys. Thanks for that. I hear there's positions open in Reno.

Dogs are largely allowed to run wild because of bears. This is a refuge with a thousand or so bears. Grizzly Bears kill salmon less than 50 feet from my front door in the creek's terminus... A float plane that seats 4 people comes to bring mail when the weather doesn't suck. The weather always sucks. We don't have runway lights.

It's a hard place to live, though it's gotten easier in the past 100 years, but it still holds the character of it's former self. The population swells in the summers when fishing is more lucrative. Violence and drunken crimes have always been par for the course. The Village has shriveled in the past few years. Marine traffic is slower due to IFQ's. A highlight, I suppose is that a harbor is being built. A land based value added seafood processing plant is under construction also. When it is eventually completed, the work force brought in to fill it will double our population. ... with more fucked up people usually. People who don't do so hot when getting their first dose of the real wild west. Anyways, the only way for this place to survive right now is with this development. So, good luck to us I guess.

But this is all just a little background information. There's more to this place than the hardships. There's beauty EVERYWHERE. But for the sake of brevity, I want to tell you what happened here last night, and I've already gone too far in to the set up.

We communicate largely via a VHF radio. CB radio essentially. Some people don't have phones, or we need to know what's going on in town if we are outside or on boats, so the radio is an essential part of our life. I am one of two medics here. My title is actually different from a medic, but think of me as a crappily outfitted field nurse in a place with no doctors, and only one or two EMTs who are never sober.

"911! 911! Emergency at X's house! Please come help us" It was shrieked over the radio at about 11 pm.

We have learned to not run out the door without knowing what kind of an emergency we are responding to. If it's a fire and we show up with no water.. that house is gone. At least this person identified the location. The whole village has torn off in every direction trying to help when someone's last transmission was "Fire! Fire! Help!". One of the saddest days here, was when we heard that the mayor's fishing boat was on fire. Million dollar investments gone. Livli-hood threatened. Sons no longer inherit a boat. It's honestly devastating. Alot of people don't recover from that. This family is though. But, that morning on the beach, standing and watching his boat burn. Watching 4 guys in a smoke engulfed skiff trying to save this village icon in 60 mile per hour winds... broke my heart. Here I am on the shore with oxygen tanks and juice when you're done failing... Where was I? Oh yeah. The murders.

"What is going on?" My husband answers.

Completely distraught, the woman yells, "Oh god. He's crazy! ... Killing everyone. ... 4 people.... blood everywhere.... house is destroyed.... they're beating the hell out of us. Won't anyone come. Send the Medic. Send the medic!"

As much as I think that running into a slaughter and donning my Punisher/Nightingale superwear, there is Reality ... first rule is scene safety. You can't help if you're dead.

Of course I am wondering who the killer is, since we know everyone here. I assume it is the burly blonde dude that jumped off of a boat last night when he quit his job. This isn't Seattle. You don't just dump your fucked crew members on us without warning. Thanks F/V Determined. My point is that there was a stranger wandering around town with nowhere to stay (not unusual)... and rumor had it that he was a little off. He was from Virginia and had done a tour in Iraq... So you know.. He could be our killer. If you are interested in my story of how a former pseudo cop attacked himself and tried to blame it on Ninjas, let me know. But I digress. Jesus. It's like I can't get out of the set up.

"This is the medic. I can hear you. Who is killing people? Where is the killer? How many people are hurt? What kind of injuries do you have" I say.

"I don't know. You're the medic. Won't anyone please come. oh god. help. Knives and his eye ball is hanging out. Why isn't anyone coming?" She shrieks.

"I need to know that the scene is safe for me to go in there, I have to know more details . As soon as someone can clearly explain to me what is going on up there,... I will come and help you." I say. My heart racing. Wanting to go, but knowing better especially since everyone here has guns. I am on the phone with three men as this is going on. Trying to get the guys to go check it out first. I mean, killers? No cops... The men aren't too interested in a shit storm either, but accept the request to investigate, knowing someone has to do it. They all have guns too.

During this exchange on the radio, this super drama queen who works at the post office has jumped on the radio, wasted, to put her two cents in. Nothing important to say really. No service to offer, in the midst of a major crisis. Just being a fucking moron. What's she gonna do, show up and lick some stamps for me in triage? That was my chance to finally give her what for, but my husband beats me to it and tells her to get the fuck off the radio until we know what's going on. She was at a bonfire here, drunk off her lips, telling people that they were partying with a federal employee. In her swimming eyes, she is an extension of the president. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention. Fuck the President and you suck at being a Postmaster.

Calls start coming back to me that there isn't shit happening at the house in the valley where the calls are coming from. Everyone inside has been drinking for days. There's no blood. No one is dead. No massacre. I don't doubt that there was some kind of domestic disturbance to kick off the calls, but seriously. What the fuck? "He's killing everyone"? "Eyeballs hanging"? I still had to go out and see for myself, so I wasn't being negligent. I left out some other details of the radio chatter, that would make this story even more interesting... But I'm already being a wind bag about one night in my little world.

After the fact, my husband was kicking himself for "falling for it." Falling for what? If a family is drinking and they have a history of violence, what else are you supposed to assume? That announcing a massacre is a joke? We have no lifeline here. We don't have the luxury of guessing people's motivations. We have no choice but to respond because we are all directly impacted by every single thing that goes down here. These people aren't natural comedians either, so I've pretty much given up on there being any decent comedy on the radio, like that households are being mowed down by some crazy fucker who's killing everyone.

This place isn't new to fucked up radio chatter, but that was a new one for sure. I thought I had heard it all on the radio here. I've been part of some of it, I guess. But it can be fucking mental here. Residents get blasted and play the most obscure music. Shit from the Twilight Zone. Gummo country. I think I did hear "Blue Bayou" once though... But I may have created that memory. If people can fabricate entire crime scenes for me to deal with, then I am a god damned amateur at story telling if all I've got here is some hallucinated Linda Ronstadt. People playing crap on the radio is a pain in the ass for a couple of reasons. If someone is using the airspace, you can only receive the transmission, and not transmit over it. If you happen to be sleeping when useless garbage is playing on the VHF, you would think that getting on there between songs and telling the person to shut the fuck up would be a wise thing to do. Not wise. Not wise at all. But you can't turn the radio down, because it's used to communicate things like you know... tsunami's, volcanic ash, a constant string of earthquakes, men overboard, bears, freighters, the ferry and general distress calls like "bloody murder".

It's interesting to note, that we just purchased the property in the photo at the top of this post, last week from the crazed lady of this story on the VHF. (You could say we enabled her binge, and many more to come, with the money paid for it.) I can't wait until it's completely renovated and she returns to visit her sister here. She will see what we've done to the place and probably burn it to the fucking ground or assault our tenants. Someone gave me a letter that she wrote to our City Council here 15 years ago. It was about how upset she was that the pseudo cop we had at the time had murdered her family dog in the corridor of their house. I never knew why the letter was supposed to be humorous until last night. Now I get it. That lady is fucking whack.

Oh and you know what. A friend was recently telling me the story of the man who gave up all his possessions and trekked off into Alaska. Sean Penn adapted the book into a movie about his life which is coming out soon. My friend asked me what I thought. And it's the same way I thought about the Grizzly Man documentary. The story in general. Good for you if you're an adventuresome naturalist. But I will never be totally inspired by your story because you made stupid choices and died. I'd rather watch 30 Days of Night, with zombies killing people in the Arctic Circle, than watch another depressing example of Man vs. Nature. Maybe that's because I live in that Bush, instead of where the majority of you live, where stories like that are generally touching and inspiring.


So, in conclusion... I am a misfit, but uh... looking around me. I'm pretty sure I am one of the stable ones. And I am not saying that this is THE most fucked up place to live on Earth, but it's pretty fucking fucked up. So, Hello from Alaska, bitches. Hope you like this podcast episode. Look forward to Charlie Naked hosting next weeks podcast. As usual, you can hear the episode by clicking on the link of the NAP home page. Oh yeah. And Anaconda, I know you weren't pitting vinyl against mp3s etc... but I didn't have time to script my intro. Finally, the play list will show up in your itunes window now when listening.

What does this story have to do with music? I am this weeks podcast host. And here it is.

che guaio!

houston, we have a problem.
the showroom isn't even close to being clean or finished and the italians are showing up. in suits. they have no place to sit.
work priorities come before blog today.
not that i'm a contractor... or that i'm responsible for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit clogging up all the streets causing all of our deliveries to miss deadlines for elevator service into a construction site.
inhale, exhale... does no good to anyone if the architect goes into cardiac arrest right now.
how is it possible for my punchlist to be twice the length it was last wednesday- for progress to go backwards?!

the island, part 6: ontario

This is the sixth in a song-by-song series about why I chose FULL FORCE GALESBURG by The Mountain Goats as the one CD I would take to a desert island. Previous installments are available here.

Every morning after I first wake up I go to the beach, assuming it's not raining too hard, and I do my morning stretches. They aren't calisthenics, per se, but meridian stretches that are a way to promote the flow of ki in the body. I used to intend to integrate spiritual exercise into my daily life, but would nonetheless find excuses, whether I was working 70 hours a week or taking a month off between jobs.

On an island, alone, you realize, finally, you have no more excuses.

I never talked about my Taoism much, back in the world, for lots of reasons. Spirituality is something very few of my peer group are interested in hearing about or discussing, for one, unless it's to bitch about fringe practitioners of Christianity or to rabidly assert that obviously faith is absurd - unless it's faith in the man-made systems of reason, in which case it's infallible. Another reason is that I'm still learning and not really sure what the hell I'm talking about. (As I discovered during my early online research, some would argue that unless I spoke Mandarin Chinese and lived 2000 years ago I don't deserve to even consider myself Taoist. I like to think of these people as "twats".)

Another reason is that Taoism is so fundamentally different from other religions, in that the Tao is all around us and part of our experience. In the Taoist mindset, interacting with the ultimate God-essence of the universe isn't something that happens when you die and go to heaven, or to help dictate what happens to your soul upon your resurrection, or what have you. It's all around us. Not a transcendental worldview, but an immanent one, I heard it explained to me.

When I first learned about Tao, I tried to find a Taoist service. Boy did I not understand the deal with Taoism. Here, with the sand crunching underneath my legs as I sit down for some of the stretches, this is a Taoist service.

So much of Taoism is about being in the now, and here, stripped from everything, I should be in the now. And I try. But my mind keeps reaching back, and it's not helped by the music I brought with me. But I brought it because of its connection with who I was, and what I really want to hear, I think to myself as I complete the eighth and final meridian stretch, is to listen to "Ontario".

I wipe off the sand, wash my face in the ocean, head back to the cabin. A glass of water, some seaweed chips, a banana, an orange, some smoked fish. This is breakfast. Also, often, lunch and dinner.

It's time for track 6. Repeat play.

Yes, "Ontario" is another song about self-knowledge and its limits. But it's something else entirely to me as well.

Ten years or so ago, I got FULL FORCE GALESBURG in the mail serendipitously, unexpectedly, unsolicited. Some months prior, I had put up John Darnielle and Craig Stewart, the former being Mr. Mountain Goats and the latter being part of Trance Syndicate/Emperor Jones Records, when their tour with Alastair Galbraith came through town. As it happened, despite or because of being around one of my most revered musicians, I spent a good amount of time on the porch talking to Craig.

Several months later, on a Saturday, I go to put in an extra day at my grueling labor building global communities, and on the way to the car, in the mailbox, is a suspiciously CD-shaped envelope.

I open, and I contemplate bailing on work for another hour, but I can't. So I take it to work to listen to.

I had to work, so I wasn't giving it as full of an ear as I'd like. First listens for me are almost always impressions, kind of an idea to prepare myself to really hear the album the second time. The first time you're hearing it against what you expected it to be, the second time you're hearing it for what it is.

Then I got to track 6, and straight out of the gate there's something slightly charged, something that catches me about the guitar riff. And at the end of the verse the guitar suddenly stops and the vocal hits -

there was nothing in it but pain for me

and then the song picks up again, but I'm hooked now, and not having really heard the first verse, I listen to the second verse closely.

I know what can hurt me real bad
and what can't hurt me any more
I know how to rise up with the sun
and I am learning what sleep stood for
I thought I figured out the world in its circular way
and then I saw the sun fall out of the sky the other day
- there was nothing in it but pain for me

And I didn't know what it meant, exactly, but it seemed true, partially because of the words and partially because of the insistent quality of the vocal delivery that made every word sound like truth to me. Today, I think of the closest thing to a spiritual advisor I've had in my life, and his typically blunt advice about how you never figure everything out, and if you think you have, the universe will happily upend this belief of yours.

I have dwelt in the past here. Of course I have. I am a man scanning for traps, hidden dangers. Things that can break me. And these are likely to be the things lurking in my brain, apt to sneak up on me if I am not wary. Survival takes up some time but the island is largely bucolic, intermittent storms aside. I can live here forever, I believe, if I can stay sane.

But I am not done with the past. I still remember sitting in my office in the data center on some high floor of a Houston skyscraper, and the song continued, unrelenting and unexpectedly, into a description of a bucolic paradise of its own:

squirrels climbing trees in bloom
soft yellow light spilling into the room
my favorite records
my favorite books

- and I had no idea how it connected to the rest of the song, but I'm on the hook now, and then it happens -

the people I love

- but see, it's on love that his voice kind of breaks or goes into a different register or something completely vulnerable, and then is immediately followed as he regains his vocal strength with an audacious brilliant line expressing a sentiment I'd never quite heard before but makes perfect sense -

the people I almost love

- and that's the knockout punch, and I am fucking shattered out of nowhere, and perhaps nobody else has ever or will ever feel that way about this song, perhaps somehow I was and am the ideal listener.

And if your question is "shattered then" or "shattered now", the answer is yes. But it's a good shattered.

It's September 23rd. Tomorrow is my birthday. I'll be older than Christ was when he died, according to the most commonly believed historical records. No idea how old Lao-Tsu, the author of the Tao Te Ching, was when he died. But I suspect he would be appalled to be venerated.

I imagine a birthday party. A beautiful cabin, dappled with sun. But somewhere with people. My favorite records, my favorite books. The people I love, the people I almost love. Perhaps they are beckoning. Perhaps they are not. Perhaps they have no idea. Perhaps the world thinks I am dead.

But I am alive and I am here, and I turn the music off and throw the food waste in the compost heap down the beach and then I jump in the water for a swim around the island. I have loved being in the water for as long as I can remember, and it's perfect here. Idyllic.

I remember me a decade ago, in a skyscraper in Houston, and the days and weeks before and after that, thinking I was on the verge of figuring out everything if I could just get the right job, the right girlfriend, the right future. Now I know that I will never figure out everything, that if I think I do sudden pain will sneak in as unexpectedly as it does for the narrator of "Ontario". And that maybe the coda of that song is just about being aware of what's around you and recontextualizing it as paradise, and as tiny minnows dart past me in a silvery swarm, light reflecting off of their minute scales, I swim with them, following the current, supposing that this is a fortunate way to spend the last day of my 33rd year of life, at one with the sea, with no idea what is to come next.

------------------

VIDEO #6 for people who don't give a shit about the Mountain Goats: the children's ballet version of Deerhoof's "Milk Man".

The Return of the Bright Men of Learning Plus Record Reviews.

Bright Men of Learning

I'd been looking forward to a Bright Men of Learning show for a while now. They play this rootsy indie rock thing that goes pretty well with a few beers at a bar. Unfortunately for me, I had a staff meeting for the Free Press that ended at 8PM at Rudyard's so I got going a bit early on the booze. Add to the mix that I really hadn't had a proper dinner (I went swimming earlier which, for me, is one big appetite suppressant). So early drinking with an empty stomach and well you can guess how that went. But despite skillfully bumping Dan the Brother's beer twice(!!) and finding myself leaning on people for support, I still was able to thoroughly enjoy BMOL's set. The Ben/Chris stereo guitar duo shit was sweet with Ben laying down some downright pretty licks. In fact, the opening song is one I love where Ben plays this lovely melodic guitar line that always annoys me simply because they still haven't gotten to recording it yet. Marshall's vocals were on and the rest of the band was probably the best I'd ever heard them - kudos to the always great sound from Joe at Rudyard's. Funny how many people were there whom I'd never think would be into BMOL; maybe it's because they were opening for Magnolia Electric Company. Regardless, I was loving every note and because I was wasted, drunken reasoning dictated that everyone else was digging it just as much as I. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

OK Now Some Reviews:


Caribou - Andorra - Merge Records



Don't let the abrupt and clunky way Melody Day bursts-in when the needle drops throw you off, Caribou's new album is one of the most engaging psychedelic records to have hit wax in a while. Once you get past that mood wrecking bumble of a start the rest of the record drops some sweet textured sounds that would make any pothead swoon. The key to why this album is so brilliant is the way sound swirl and bounce against each other; the songs have a gorgeous mix of subtle beats, guitars, basses, and synthesizers that just creep up under you like that mushroom tea that you made back in the college dorm. Don't get me wrong the songs themselves are great but what puts it over the top, what makes it an experience and an album you will be able to go back to years from now, is Daniel Snaith has a great sense of arranging his songs to sound like they are in some abstract world all their own. You could call the lovingly textured production "modernized 60's psychedelia for the 21st century" be it the weird breakdown on Eli where about halfway through the song where it builds into something like the work of George Martin's bastard child or the simple almost Kraurock beat of Sundialing touched by subtle reverbed flutes and synths. This is an LP that bears repeated listening and should make anyone releasing albums feel unimaginative. And to think it was all done on a home computer.

BONUS: Here is a short documentary from the BBC:

The Weakerthans - Reunion Tour - Epitaph


[Fucking Canadians!!! This is the second review of an album I love and it's another bleeding Canadian Band!] This album has been on endless rotation since I first heard it. From when the band kicks in on the first track to the closing note it's a perfect example of indie-pop at it's best. If you are a sucker for bands like Beulah this will be right up your alley. John K. Sampson's vocals have an innocence and vulnerability that are a perfect juxtaposition to the exacting and weary narrative of his lyrics. The band has a simple plaintive beauty in songs like Virtue the Cat Explains Her Departure and Utilities that make for a dizzy swoon of emotion. Never did a cat recalling his owner arriving "with kibble and a box full of beer" sound so sweet or someone wishing they "were a toothbrush or a solder gun" sound so desperately human. It's not all mopey though, there are some upbeat numbers too. The guitars and drums on Relative Surplus Value recall The Smiths at their most driving and energetic [Fuck you! The Smiths were a great band!] and the guitars in the opening track Civil Twilight have the thrill of driving with the windows down on a perfect summer day. This is simply one of those albums like The Reigning Sound's Time Bomb High School or say Beulah's The Coast is never Clear where you will find me listening to it a year from now with just as much enjoyment as when I first heard it.



Shellac- Excellent Italian Greyhound - Touch and Go/Quarterstick

Oh shit, who thought that Shellac could become a formulaic machine. I've followed Steve Albini's stuff since Big Black and enjoyed it as much as anyone but this album is horribly dull and predictable. Albini's lyrical tropes even reach a state of tedium with the Genuine Lullubelle where you almost want to approach Albini and with a big yawn tell him "Yeah, that's real edgy bro." The music isn't poorly performed or recorded poorly. Arguably it's not even a "bad" record. Songs like Boycott and Spoke get the job done but, as a whole, the album seems nothing more than a series of stops, starts, and volume juxtapositions that leave me unaffected. Perhaps if I hadn't heard the superior 10,000 Hurts or Action Park LPs I'd be blown away but the fact is I have and they are much better records. Maybe I just need to sit on it a while longer but, at the moment, it feels like I've been here before. Oh wait there is a really nice track - Kittypants - where Albini plays a guitar line in that sounds straight out of the Silkworm song book. It's oddly undeveloped and short but the one point in the album where something happened that didn't occur elsewhere and I feel was sorely needed in this album - the unexpected. On the other hand it may be that it's unreasonable to expect something new out of Albini after this many years. Still, at least there is some pretty packaging.


Something Fierce/The Hangouts Split 7" - Manic Attack Records

From the first chords of Teenage Ruins it's clear that Something Fierce have reached a new level in their songwriting and performance in the studio. It's just straight up driving poppy punk rock and roll that makes you bounce around, thrash, spill your beer and remember how brilliant punk can be when it's got a fucking pumping heart. Throw away the tired formulaic crap you've been buying because this is the shit! This is why god made bars, guitars, and rock and roll. What, you think god wants to hear your hacky second rate Chuck Berry riffs? Fuck no! The big G, can skank like a motherfucker and Something Fierce is the soundtrack.

P.S. - I'm told there is a second side.

Bring Back the Guns - Dry Futures - Feow Records

Bring Back the Guns doesn't fuck around, No More Good Songs jumps into the ring, beats you with an unrelenting mechanical pounding of guitars and snare and within a minute and a half concludes with a blur of ass whoopin' not seen in these parts since Jack Johnson. The rest of the album makes a point of pulling no punches either. This is an album from a band with a maddening swirl of ideas. Like the manic beauty of an obsessed conspiracy theorist, the songs feel like they have been poured over and turned inside out until their purest essence has been squeezed out onto tape. The performance and arrangements in songs like Let's Not or Radio Song 04 swagger with a drunken confidence of a master architect bringing you blueprints with "Fuck you, Top This!" written atop in black magic marker. Hell, I could even see someone arguing that Bring Back the Guns and this album are too smart and too brainy. How do you respond to that? I think in the same way Pete Townsend responded when a critic at The Daily Mirror called Tommy pretentious. He just laughed and said "He's bloody well right it is!"

Nonloc - Between Hemispheres - Strange Attractors

Admittedly I'm someone who loves wanky stuff like Popul Vuh and Alan Licht so I'm pretty much a sucker for this kind of stuff when it's done right and this is a prime example of it being done right. The opening track Corpus Callosum is a gorgeous multi-track of guitars - picked, e-bowed, and looped that envelop you in their grip. Candide has a brilliant and inspired bass line that is surrounded by dancing guitars and some excellent Krautrock vocals. The rest of the album is just as good. If names like Harry Partch, Kraftwerk, or Florian Frike mean anything to you, then Mark Dwinell's multi-track musings will likely be your bag of tea. If not, then let me just try and tell you that Dwinell is having one of the most interesting internal conversations - on in which his constructions (one of brick by brick layering of guitars) slowly reveal a picture that is as beautiful as it is ethereal.


Les Savy Fav - Let's Stay Friends - French Kiss

Oh expectations are a bitch. I'm sure you had as high expectations of this Les Savy Fav album as I did. The good news is the album is really good. The downside is it's not their best work. Nevertheless, when the songs are great - they are great. The opening track, Pots and Pans is a gorgeous intoxicating mix of thumping drums and shimmering guitars over a tale of a tenacious band that seems to end much too soon. There are funky dancy songs like the The Year Before The Year 2000 and Patty Lee (which are fun), there are straight ahead rockers like The Equestrian, trippy songs like Brace Yourself, clever and catchy poppy songs that would have fit perfectly in your 80's record bin like What Would Wolves Do?, and Rage in the Plague is a classic of manic energy. Yet, despite moments like those, the album just never gels as a whole and plays more like a collection of singles. Nevertheless, it's still quite good - not where I'd start if you've never heard LSF - but a decent effort from a band that isn't out to impress anyone.

Paris Falls - Vol 1 - Self Released


This is pretty primordial stuff from a band with a with a lot of potential. Right off the cuff, the band strikes gold with Lucky - a track whose guitar line leads into a gorgeous vocal melody that would make John Lennon's ghost smile. And make no mistake of it, this band has a clear Beatles fetish which is both it's biggest strength and weakness as, at times, the influence hang a little too heavily over the songs. The album has a great cohesive flow about it that demands it be taken as a whole and not song by song. Yet, something keeps the album from being great and it's hard to pin down why given that whenever a song pops up I think, "Hey, that's a really good song." Maybe it's because lovely and outstanding song like New Rome sneak between the merely good songs it makes you realize that these guys are only just at the very early stages of finding out just what they can do. We await the follow up with baited breath.

Deer Tick - War Elephant - Feow Records

Finally, we get to hear John McCauley in high fidelity and it's about goddamn time! His talent has always poured from his low-fi releases but you always wanted to give him the room to move and run loose and like a animal released from the zoo back into the wild, McEntire embraces his new home and it embraces him back. Take the new version of Diamond Rings; his voice is sweet and emotive with all the frailty, insecurity, and hope of it's narrator. It's a perfect example of McCauley's strengths as a songwriter and a performer. It reminds me of listening to some of the early Paul Westerberg or some of the more heartfelt Big Star. In Dirty Dishes McCauley's voice is horribly pained and romantic whereas in Spend the Night his voice is drunk with hope. It's a very emotive rustic voice that carries so much behind it and the backing instrumentation and harmonies are happy to follow his lead. All in all, a gorgeous release of fragile beauty from a remarkable talent.

The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse - Jagjaguwar

Devastation is a goddamn great song. Right from the get-go...the opening swirls, the initial drum roll, and that heavy-duty riff! The ebb and flow of the verse and chorus is organic enough to pull you into its riptide and drag you down to the depths. PERFECT!

Here is the problem - the rest of the album kind of blows. It's a mish-mash of half-baked neo-psychedelia. Nothing else quite works or gels which is a huge disappointment given that there are good ideas floating within the mess. Maybe next time they can pull off a good album. Well see. But that one song - schweet!

Blades - Who's The Cream Puff Now? - Flight Dog Records

Motherfucking Blades! I'm doing a feature on them next month for a reason in the Free Press - they are as clever and ambitious in their music as they are with their musicianship. This EP, though, isn't the final Blades statement - it's more of a demo. This is very rough around the edges and doesn't come close to capturing the energy of one of their live shows but it's a good, if rough, introduction. The upcoming Grey Ghost CDR is already miles ahead in terms of the band's performance and god knows what they can accomplish once they really conquer the studio and release an album but, for now, this will be a good holdover and we are quite grateful.