memoryandreality

Power of the 45

2006-10-30T13:49:00.000-07:00

I hadn't realized it had been quite this long since I posted here. I think I'll be back this week with post-show postings from the James Hunter/Big Sandy and the Cramps shows. In the meantime...

Sales of 7" vinyl singles are up 500% from 5 years ago. What a warm fuzzy feeling that gives me.

Big Sandy & His Fly-Right Boys - Power of the 45

Instant Replay

2006-05-11T11:29:00.000-07:00

I was one of the unfortunates who didn't discover the Go-Betweens until sometime in 2003. I stumbled across some tracks from Bright Yellow Bright Orange on the now-defunct site epitonic.com* and fell in love with McLennan and Forster's honest song writing and delivery. Since then, I've wanted to see them live, and regret that I didn't do so during the last tour promoting the much-praised Oceans Apart. I can't remember why I didn't. With the sad news that Grant McLennan died this past Saturday, I'm wishing for my own instant replay...

With the Jetset issued version of Bright Yellow Bright Orange, apparently available only in some US stores and which I was fortunate to pick up, came a bonus disc with four tracks, including Instant Replay by Grant and Girl Lying on a Beach by Robert Forster, two of my favorite Go-Betweens songs of any. This is why I've discontinued my e-music.com subscription; I am unwilling to miss these wonderful surprises, and unwilling to forgo album art. The cover of Bright Yellow Bright Orange is so perfectly reflective of the content...light, sweet, direct (see "Listening" column to the right; it reminds me of one work by the copy shop artist modasfolk).

When I heard of Grant's passing on Monday, I felt as I did when I heard that Joe Strummer had gone. By all reports, Grant, like Joe, was a fantastic human being. Grant died suddenly and much too young, like Joe, both at a time when they were, in my opinion, producing some of their most interesting work. While Grant's songs were much more personal on the whole than Joe's social commentary, they moved me in a very similar way...there was something of Grant and Joe in their songs, something more intimate that reached me in a way that a lot of songwriters fail to achieve. The Brisbane gallery Inkahoots has posted a tribute on their website that includes the following passage, summing up Grant more beautifully than I could hope to:

Rarely his sentimentality would over-ripen a song, but mostly he could stun you with crystallised buried truth, deeper and more direct than nostalgia. He was a romantic in all the best senses of the word. And he could rock and he could roll with equal conviction.

Go-Betweens.net has posted a tribute to Grant, and the discussion board has more than 1000 personal memorials now, some from recognizable music names. Robert Forster has posted a lovely reply to these. As for me, Bright Yellow Bright Orange and Oceans Apart have been in constant rotation, and I've been doing something that I often do when thinking about Joe...wondering what Grant would approve of and mixing it in, or mixing in albums that have a sometimes unidentifiable similar quality. Today it's the Magnetic Fields' I and Edwyn Collins' Gorgeous George (on hometown label fave, BarNone)...

Post-script: Justin Cober-Lake, another recent fan and music writer at Popmatters, has posted a memorial worth visiting.

Post-post-script: The sad details emerge in a Village Voice piece by one of my favorite music writers, Robert Christgau.

*epitonic.com was one of my favorite sites for discovering new music; I loved it's "if you like this, you might like this" feature, and the streaming 'radio' was excellent. It is still online and you can still stream some good, obscure stuff, but the site hasn't been updated since sometime in 2004, when it was bought by Palm Pictures. Palm doesn't not response to any inquiries regarding epitonic's status, nor inquiries from those wanting to invest labor to resurrect it.

Growin' Up

2006-04-28T19:39:00.000-07:00

Grups: the moniker given by New York Magazine writer Adam Sternbergh to 30, 40, and (gasp!) 50-somethings who look, talk, act, and dress like people who are 22 years old. From this "obituary for the generation gap": Being a Grup is about rejecting a hand-me-down model of adulthood that asks, or even necessitates, that you let go of everything that you ever felt passionate about. It's about reimagining adulthood as a period defined by promise, rather than compromise. Maybe there's hope for the parents that Ed Hamell (see post below) thinks are quick to put aside their passions. I, in part, find the labeling of this phenomenon kind of absurd. On the other hand, I feel like much less of a freak for introducing my kid to The National and being the oldest person at the Cordero show the other night...

Growin' Up, Bruce Springsteen

Coulter's Snatch

2006-04-28T14:35:00.000-07:00

Ten reasons I love "string-punishing punk minstrel" Ed Hamell (aka Hamell on Trial):

Songs for Parents Who Enjoy Drugs, his latest album, about which Ed says "I've seen a lot of resentful parents who put aside their passions" more here

The track Coulter's Snatch, which, according to Ed, must stink

"I love Iggy and the Stooges, Lou Reed, the MC5" [so much so that he named his son Detroit]. "Folk singers bore me. Insincerity incites me."

"I'm trying to make the point that us left-wingers have to breed. There's too much breeding going on with the right."

"Eventually, Bush will be eating a child's heart on TV, and the Democrats will say, "Well, at least he won't eat two." So, I really don't have to care about the facts. I'm just enraged at this point."

Hamell says [the song Inquiring Minds] was inspired by the question that tortures every parent: How much about your youthful indiscretions should you share with your children, when they inevitably ask? "That was the conversation my wife and I had," Hamell says. "She said, 'I'm going to tell the truth. I made mistakes. This was not a good thing to do.' And I thought, 'I'm just going to lie.'"

The song "John Lennon", about a 1971 encounter with his hero ("Fuck off!" Lennon snapped). I can't help wonder what John would think of Ed at 51...

"I realized that the sonic structure of the acoustic guitar was broader than that of the electric guitar, so I could fill in where the bass and drums would be, all by myself." And then some...

When I saw Hamell on Trial for the first time live at the Joe Strummer tribute show at Irving Plaza in 2003, only he and Eugene Hutz approached the intensity worthy of Joe. Ed has not disappointed the two times I've seen him since. I can't believe I just missed him on the west coast...

Ed's one-man show is put together around a theme common in his songs. "The message," Hamell said, "is 'Love, and don't be a fucking dick."

Listen to Songs for Parents Who Enjoy Drugs (including Coulter's Snatch) in its entirety

Record Store

2006-04-28T10:37:00.000-07:00

Following a few weeks of mayhem, I've been spending a lot of time this week catching up on news and blogs and such. I ran across an homage to real record stores in the LA Times last month, which only partly laments the decline of indie shops but recognizes that the author, like me, may be part of a last generation who found our musical educations in these alternative bricks and mortar contexts. There are still a few left from my past - St. Mark's Place in Kearny, NJ; Tunes, Hoboken, NJ; Crazy Rhythm Records, Montclair, NJ; Bleeker Bob's, NYC. I was also surprised to find a number of good record shops left in Pittsburgh a few years ago. By contrast, I found a Wired interview in which indie store owners say that they are doing okay. In reading these pieces, I realized that since moving to Phoenix almost nine months ago, all of my purchases have been through the web, delivered either by mail or by download. I'm going to rectify that this weekend...I miss liner notes and album art.

Record Store, Darren Hanlon
Record Collector, The Planet Smashers
Record Lady, Lyle Lovett

Hmm, I was about to link to mp3s and online buying sites for these... Here are a few directories of indie record stores (they all return different results) instead:
Coalition of Independent Music Stores
Independent Record Store Directory
Groove Guide

I Wanna Hold Your Hand

2006-04-27T11:24:00.000-07:00

Recently, Jimmy posted a piece about a Jackie Leven-Ian Rankin collaboration. Today from the Guardian, another bit about "musician-author hookups." In particular, this is a fun and sweet piece about British DJs embracing the work of the English poet laureate John Betjeman, and Betjeman's own recording career with the Charisma label. Nick Cave is a huge fan and there are some sweet quotes by DJ John Lycett Green, Betjeman's grandson. The article closes with a list of mucisian-author hookups, from the Clash and Ginsberg (with a note about Ginsberg dancing to I Wanna Hold Your Hand), to Cobain and Burroughs.

Helter Skelter

2006-04-26T15:00:00.000-07:00

Saw a great film this week about the record collector and fantastic character Joe Bussard. Desperate Man Blues documents Joe's unparalleled collection of 78s, amassed by knocking on doors and scouring basements in southwestern Virginia and neighboring areas. Joe, who hated Elvis and thinks the Beatles were crap, has some pretty strong opinions about what constitutes "real" jazz and blues (more or less nothing after 1940 is "real"). Still, he now has a myspace page...

You can listen to the non-crap version of Helter Skelter by the Welch Brothers (and a bunch of other samples from Bussard's collection) on the Fonotone Records website, Joe's company and "the last 78 rpm record label in the land." Tivo caught Desperate Man Blues for me on one of the Encore channels, but I haven't seen it on any upcoming schedule, nor is it available through Netflix. If you're not up for buying a copy, this article is great read and you can listen to an All Things Considered piece on Joe.

Bussard only half jokes about marrying his wife for her record collection, and he harbors a lot of disdain for the Library of Congress. The archivist in me couldn't help but wonder what will become of the priceless collection he's created, and through whom and how access will continue to be made available as Joe has done (not that he appears to be going anywhere anytime soon)...

Come On Dear

2006-04-26T00:30:00.000-07:00

En Este Momento, the latest release by Cordero, has been in constant rotation in my CD players for a couple of weeks now. I caught them last night at the Rhythm Room after forcing myself to leave the house and I'm so glad I did. Sadly for the band but very good for me, the place was empty (which meant smoke-free), save for some underage kids there to see Koufax, in addition to me and another small group of fans who could shout out requests, which seemed to make Ani (Cordero) feel pretty good. The live show was a little rough around the edges, but in a good way...the way that makes you feel like you're in hangin' out in someone's living room with the band. Cordero, for me, is the perfect fusion of garage and punk with Latin rhythms...what Ani calls Georgiarican (she grew up in Atlanta and the band is based in Brooklyn). At the same time, they have something of a southwest sound a la Calexico and the Sadies. In addition to Ani's guitar, two of my favorite things about En Este Momento are the percussion and the trumpet. Live, the drummer was fantastic, playing at times with his maracas instead of sticks. The kid playing trumpet on tour turns out to be Frankie Lymon's nephew (man, my parents played a lot of the Teenagers when I was growing up)...he substituted keyboards for the trumpet in places where I think he just didn't have the range and that was a little disappointing. Still, I have no idea what this band is doing opening up for Koufax when they've been touring with Calexico, Ozomatli, Neko Case, and others (maybe I'm underestimating Koufax, but I tried to stick around only to take off two songs into their set). En Este Momento is infectious and one of my favorite purchases in a while.

Come On Dear

Color is a Beautiful Thing

2006-04-03T16:10:00.000-07:00

But is it ever reliable? "Colors are promiscuous...colors confound memory...colors resist systems...colors defeat language." The Washington Post has a wonderful but short piece on the unreliability of color, something that most take for shared reality. For anyone who has dealt with reproducing color for any purpose, the article summarizes the problems of perception and reproduction as they are confronted by both left-brained and right-brained individuals.

Color is a Beautiful Thing, Nina Simone
"Color is an I Ching chang/Fo' sho'/Ding dang!"

Conflict:

2006-03-30T10:58:00.000-07:00

or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Parse Error

Regular readers (all three of you) will know that I uncreatively attempt to label each post with a song title. The above is, in fact, the title of a composition by PLOrk, the Princeton Laptop Orchestra. Made up of fifteen laptop'ers, or laptopists, the group also features "PLOrkified" cellos, synthesizers, tablas, accordians, and various percussion in their performances. All of the pieces are written in a new music programming language called Chuck, created by a Princeton graduate student.

You can listen here; I really liked Conflict, On the Floor, Non-Specific Gamelan Taiko Fusion Band, and Thunderbird Suite in Eb Minor. I found the abstracts of the individual pieces amsuing and the PLOrk biography is interesting, as are the photos of the assembly of and performances by the ensemble. Also follow the link to cool stuff about the soundlab at Princeton, which includes software and sound downloads.

Here's a Guardian piece about PLOrk as well.

Life's a Gas

2006-03-22T11:29:00.000-07:00

But the Strokes show at the Mesa Amphitheatre last night was not. I went semi-willingly as my daughter's Plan B. She knows I'll go to see/hear anything musical, but also knows I'm not a huge fan and was worried that I wouldn't get front and center with her. I had to remind her where I was for the Pogues two nights earlier... Unfortunately, it was about 40 degrees in the Valley last night, and everyone in the organic 'pit' was under 16. Being vertically challenged, I opted to stand and freeze on the first riser, where I had a clear view of the stage, while she muscled her way down front. I watched in parental horror as the crowd took on a life of its own, moving tide-like left and right, crowd-surfing bodies being bandied about willy-nilly over head, then dumped head first back down into the crowd. At one point, Julian Casablancas watched as a girl was lifted out of the crowd by security and commented "What is she, like ten?" The band commented a number of times during the night about it being "kids night" at the show, and someone jokingly asked my kid if she knew where all the big yellow buses were parked. I watched the first half-hour thinking to myself that Casablancas was trying to channel Joey Ramone. He had the clothes, the hair, the stance, the way he held the mike... I nearly bust a gut when the fourth or fifth tune was a cover of Life's a Gas. These guys are an adequate rock and roll band. I can't help but wonder when they are going to develop a personality of their own. My kid reappeared out of the mass about half way through the show and, loathe to admit she was feeling her age, said that after her hair was pulled and she was punched, she couldn't take anymore of the adolescent behavior down front. We spent the rest of the show debating the lighting, which to me felt like a strategy to deflect attention from the thier lack of stage presence. Too much flashing mayhem, backlighting so you couldn't really see the band, and just enough light to see Drew Barrymore stage right; I wondered if the music could stand on its own. When the show was over, they simply walked off stage...no thanks, no good night...as if it was assumed the crowd would call for an encore. It was contrived, and it came off as arrogant. During the last song of the encore, Take It or Leave It, a track from Is This It? which I like, they finally looked like a band that could be a blast. Where the hell was that energy during the entire show? What made me saddest, however, was that my kid was so disappointed by the overall experience. I know what it's like to be that excited about a show, but I can't remember the last time I felt that let down.

As an aside, I thought that event security at the Mesa Amphitheater were a bunch of power-tripping creeps. Two nights earlier, I had encountered some of the best event personnel of any show I'd ever been to, in one of the biggest venues with one of the toughest crowds one could imagine; how did the Nokia in NYC manage it? I'm writing a letter to Mesa management about our own bad experience last night, and I'm disinclined to see anything there again.

Streets of Philadelphia

2006-03-21T00:15:00.000-07:00

How fantastic it was to be back home, even for such a short time... running into friends on the street and at concerts, musicians in the park, cherry blossoms already in bloom, public transportation that works, that stretch of the NJ Turnpike between just before NYC, while an eyesore to most, that has always looked like Oz at night to me... The few photos I took during the trip are posted here.

Fairytale of New York, Redux

2006-03-20T22:55:00.000-07:00

The Pogues show was everything I had imagined it should be: brilliant, raucous, drunk and disorderly New Yorkers being lifted out of the crowd by security, punks, New York Irish grandmothers, and everyone in between. After dinner at the Film Center Cafe, Robert and I suffered the wind tunnel that is New York and walked over to the Nokia Theatre in Times Square. (The energy of Times Square made me terribly homesick for a real city.) For a large venue, I was impressed: Lots of bars, cool rest rooms, you could take your cocktails into the show, and generally efficient, if expensive, in a lot of ways. Robert is incredibly adept at finding his way to the front of a crowd and he nailed us a spot in front to the left of the stage with an unubstructed view (it also helped that we were really nice to the security guy there). Since the band played in a row at the front of the stage, the only person I couldn't see consistently was Andrew on drums. Still, it was a fantastic view for a short person with four inch platform shoes. Although I feel a bit juvenile about this, I have to confess to getting weepy when the band came on stage. Later in the show, I got teary again, when Shane and Ella Finer sang (Ella, daugher of Jem, is in the photo above from the night of the show) Fairytale of New York, 'snow' fell on stage, and they danced. That song hits me in the gut every time... Shane, unintelligible while talking to the crowd (except for "you're a fat fucking fuck," directed at either a band member or one of the audience, one can never be sure), didn't miss a single lyric. Clearly, his voice has suffered the ravages of his habits, although Robert said that Shane seemed more sober than the last time he had seen him. The end of the night got particularly rowdy, with Shane pouring whisky down his throat (and mostly missing), balancing cups of water, pints of beer, and bottles of whisky on his head, the kicking of microphones and stools by all, Spider banging aluminum beer trays on his head...everything I could have hoped for and more. Still, there were times when I wanted to cry about Shane's talent vs. his health, while some of the crowd seems to enjoy it and egg him on. Philip Chevron is an astonishing talent (especially singing Thousands are Sailing), as is James on his accordion, and I loved when Andrew got out from behind the drum kit and sang during the second encore. I also really love Spider as a front man (Shane took a break after every three songs or so and someone else stepped up front and center). Damn, I have so much to say about this show, but I'm feeling the effects of the long flight today and will have to return to the set list, the two long encores, and other comments later. In the meantime:

bad cell phone photos here, which illustrate nothing but my vantage point
much better photos from a kind soul who was front and center on the same night, March 19th
incredible photos by DzM from the March 16th show on the Pogues website
more fantastic photos by Josie Montserrat at blackmoonphotography.com
set lists courtesy of fans at the show that night, and the band (I love that Philip Chevron is so involved on these discussion boards)

iFiddle Concerto

2006-03-19T09:58:00.000-07:00

The Orchestra Underground (a project of the American Composers Orchestra) performed Tech and Techno last night at the Zellerbach Theatre in Philadelphia. The Orchestra Underground's "initiative stretches the definition of the symphony orchestra through non-traditional instrumentation, technological innovation, and multimedia collaborations." The five works that made up the program were quite diverse in their emphasis on the intersection of technology and orchestral music. On the more conservative end of the spectrum were Justin Messina's Abandon, during which the conductor controlled the synthetic sounds, Edmund Campion's Practice, which employed "a new computer-based instrument whose core sound was born from hybrids of the orchestral triangles," and Mason Bates' Omnivorous Furniture, which used morphing electronic beats with chamber-like orchestral sounds. Bates was one of the youngest composers at 28, and I really enjoyed watching him blend into the orchestra while playing his laptop and drumpad. Two pieces stood out for me however. Neil Rolnick's iFiddle Concerto melded the computer and violin into a "cyborg violin" with wonderful results. Watching Todd Reynolds play the violin and manipulate so many peddles with such energy was a real treat. The most moving of the pieces was the last, Call Them All: Fantasy Projections for Film, Laptop, and Orchestra. Daniel Bernard Roumain (who goes by "DBR") composed the piece, adding his mentor, Bill T. Jones' voice and image on film, telling a random story, and adding the turntablist DJ Scientific to the mix. The result was a fantastic and moving aural and visual experience to close the show. I loved the performance, but do wish the Orchestra Underground pushed the limits of technology a bit more. It felt backgrounded more than blended or foregrounded. I think the alternative would bring younger audiences into the theatres. The average age of the audience was typical for your average orchestra (middle-aged, and middle-income too). The photo above is during one of the intermissions, just to illustrate the stage arrangement (no photos allowed during the perfomance). Mason Bates is in the background with his laptop (the young kid with the black t-shirt and light brown hair), and DJ Scientific up front at his turntables and laptops. You can kind of make out the controls for the synthesized sounds next to the conductor's podium. He had an earplug in most of the show and was manipulating sound as he conducted.

Tickled Pink

2006-03-18T16:17:00.000-07:00

That's the title of the first track of Up Popped the Two Lips, a disk I recently bought, and that's what I was to find that Henry Threadgill's Zooid was going to be performing at International House, the last show in a five-part series by the Ars Nova Workshop, showcasing "the progression of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians." The sextet featured a drummer, guitarist, two cellists, and, in addition to Mr. Threadgill's alto sax and flute, a leather-clad tuba player. The wild instrumentation typified avant jazz, but, because of the incredible talent assembled by Threadgill, it was strangely melodic. I especially loved cellist Dana Leong, but the intensity of the performance as a whole was overwhelming. Threadgill took on more of the role of conductor, and I would have liked to have heard more of him and his sax. But, I was so pleased to see him in Philadelphia, where he hadn't been for more than 15 years. International House was packed almost to capacity with a fabulously diverse audience, including my friend Mark, who I ran into unexpectedly at the show. Zooid is not for everyone, and it wasn't for my partner in crime at the show. She was relieved to hear Threadgill announce the last piece after a short hour, but the overall vibe at the event and the quality of the sound could have kept me rapt for another hour at least.

Streams of Whisky

2006-03-15T10:34:00.000-07:00

Preparations to see the Pogues in NYC on Sunday night...

Sharon to Robert, 8:32 a.m.
I've printed the tickets, send them to my various email accounts, uploaded them to my FTP site, and now have emailed a copy to you, just in case.

Robert to Sharon, 9:19 a.m.
Hmmm.. don't forget to turn off the lights before you leave Phoenix, and cancel the newspapers.

Sharon to Robert, 9:38 a.m.
The electric bill and the pile of newspapers be damned! Only the tickets matter. I thought you, of all people, would understand this. You are in need of some serious reform. I've printed two copies of the tickets as well. One set will go in my carry on and one will be duct-taped to my mid-section.

Robert to Sharon, 9:42 a.m.
I know, I know .. I was just teasing .... I've already ordered the microfiche version that I'm having my dentist fit into a false crown on Friday afternoon.

Sharon to Robert, 9:45 a.m.
Good man.

Can I possibly be this excited? I am going, I am going, where streams of whisky are flowing... And I don't have to worry about drinking and driving for a bloody change.

I really must return to blogging.

Listen

2006-02-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

The sad news just hitting the papers today that Ray Barretto died on February 17th. A good piece from the San Francisco Chronicle highlights his career and notes how pleased he was to become an NEH Jazz Master just last month (see archived post). The title for this post refers to a piece from The Soul Drummers, covered by blogger Funky16Corners, well worth reading and having a listen to the MP3 available there.

Post-script, from my friend, a protege' of Ray's and a great percussionist in his own right, Carlito Soto: "I did write to you and answered your email about Ray, but now my long time friend has passed on... but not without telling me that he loved me... i'm not bitter, just sad that he is not around to hear him perform or hear him tell us a joke... he had many of those..." Carlito has a short tribute to Ray on his website.

On the night of the Grammy's, I had heard that Les Paul was in the same New Jersey hospital as Barretto, but have not heard anything more of his health.

Violin

2006-02-16T18:33:00.000-07:00

From the L.A. Times this week, a wonderfully written story about the life history of a Stradivarius. Raises some interesting questions about collecting...

Kate Bush, Violin

You Call It Madness

2006-02-14T10:42:00.000-07:00

Title change, Feb 15. I'm feeling less cynical today, despite the previous week's events.

From National Geographic this month, the news that love and mental illness have much in common. People in love and people with obssessive-compulsive disorder share the same chemical profile, including low levels of serotonin.

The world, explained.

Nat King Cole, You Call It Madness
(Someday I will get back to the post below...)

Let My Children Hear Music

2006-01-31T09:03:00.000-07:00

So, I didn't get back to the previous post over the weekend, but I will. Powers' piece was too moving not to finish my thoughts on it. In the meantime, this today from BBC News about people who suffer from amusia, the inability to perceive music. To those afflicted, all music sounds the same...unpleasant.

Can you imagine not being able to hear Mingus' Let My Children Hear Music?

Another thing to be grateful for today...

Edelweiss (Yes, Edelweiss)

2006-01-27T18:53:00.000-07:00

From a lovely piece of music writing by Ann Powers, former music critic for the New York Times and Village Voice, currently curator at the Experimental Music Project:

Everybody knows that the flow of life constitutes a great forgetting. It's worse than you think though. Let's consider what we have let go, what's let go of us. We trust that it's the stupid stuff...

The mind is kind, though, and such momentous lapses occur unbeknownst even to yourself... Soon enough, the fiction you offer others becomes your own reality. Our history is what we tell ourselves, until disaster strikes. That's why, to confront the genuinely frayed relationship each of us has to our own histories, it's much more useful to start with a song. You can't fake someone else's lyric - it's in there, like a prayer, or it's gone. The lyric or melody forgotten is like a termite spotted on your brain's basement floor, its tiny presence signaling the rot within the identity you've lovingly constructed...

The melody penetrated my ear like a parasite... Every word came back to me effortlessly. Suddenly I had no favorite songs, I had no memories at all, except what I had stumbled into utterly by chance. The notes in my head bobbed up and down, erasing the fiction I clung to with such pride, replacing it with a sort of jolly sense of pointlessness. It's not that I realized I was a different person at all, at least not within a definition that included straight lines and neat boundaries. I, like you, am just a drawer full of circumstantial evidence, though I'm also the one given the job of making sense of the case...

And so I have been reminded of memory in all its cruelty: a real reflection of the tripping coincidence of days that add up to life, beyond legacy and the partial joke of free will...

Passages from Edelweiss, by Ann Powers, reprinted in Best Music Writing 2005 from DeCapo Press

More on this piece, the volume from which it comes, and the subject of music, memory, and reality over the course of the weekend...

Por Mi Camino

2006-01-18T00:14:00.000-07:00

9/11 scarred a lot of people and, in particular, a lot of people I know from the New York metropolitan area, including myself. I knew the agony of waiting to hear if friends made it out that day, but, for the life of me, I can't imagine what it would it would have been like to have been in there. My friend Donna does know; she walked down 71 floors in Tower 1 with her blind co-worker and his dog in tow after the first plane hit that morning. She walked away with him as Tower 2 collapsed behind them. Donna also survived the Trade Center bombing in 1993, and has survived more than her share of medical challenges to give birth to a baby boy today. If ever I were going to find religion, it's at moments like this. So tonight, wishing I were a bit closer to home and to her, I put on the Iguanas, who Donna and I saw live at Cafe Brasil in New Orleans in 1991 (thier self-titled first cd was released soon after and the album art was shot in and around Cafe Brasil, making it a sentimental favorite for me). We were in NOLA visiting my friend Bill during Jazz Fest, possibly my favorite musical trip ever...an amazing ten days spent between Bill's French Quarter apartment and non-stop music at the muddy fairgrounds, with the best company a girl could hope for. Bill is facing his own challenges right now, along with my friends Paul, Kit, Travis, and Lauren and her family, all New Orleans residents. Thinking about everyone, I added some Sonny Landreth, Wayne Toups, and New Orleans Kelzmer All-Stars into the mix, grateful that Bill and Paul introduced me to so much fabulous music, grateful that Donna and I can still reminisce about this trip, and awestruck by their collective ability to overcome.

Asi camino siempre cantando
Las cosas bellas que van passando
Siempre miro que voy pa casa
Por mi camino Por mi camino

So I walk, always singing
The beautiful things I see pass by
Always looking on my way home
Along my way

-From Por Mi Camino, The Iguanas

Make Believe Mambo

2006-01-14T18:33:00.000-07:00

A little news snippet while I work on a longer post...

Ray Barretto was sworn in yesterday to the new class of the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters. This got me thinking about Carlito Soto, a friend who cut his professional teeth with Mr. Barretto and went on to become Willie Colon's band leader. So, I just popped in David Byrne's Rei Momo, on which Carlito appears along with Mr. Colon and Milton Cardona, providing unbelievable percussion on tracks like Make Believe Mambo and the Rose Tattoo, with Kirsty MacColl providing backup vocals. The whole album is such a great one-stop introduction to various Latin musical forms, some of my favorites being merengue, mapeye, and samba (while Joe Strummer loved cumbia...).

Fairytale of New York

2005-12-21T18:25:00.000-07:00

And so starts a series of holiday posts...

I finally downloaded an RSS reader today and started tooling around with some of the random feeds included. Lo and behold, I ran across the news that promoters were "stunned" when the Pogues sold out all but two U.S. shows almost as soon as the tickets went on sale. What rock have they been living under?

Apparently the one next to mine. I hadn't heard that the Pogues are doing nine nights on the East coast with Shane McGowan. Where is all of my last minute Christmas budget going tomorrow? For Pogues tickets; another night in NYC goes on sale tomorrow at noon. At least I can put the plane ticket off until February.

Jane, Jane, Jane...I was living a blissful RSS-free life until today...

Fairytale of New York

45 RPM

2005-12-21T11:30:00.000-07:00

One of the first things I did when I moved to Phoenix was leave. I was friendless here and so booked a ticket out to see my partner-in-musical-crime, the always-sartorially-splendid Robert. Having come of age near Manchester in the 70s and 80s, Robert has at least one story of getting the crap kicked out of himself at the Hacienda (if I recall, it had something to do with his pants), making me green with envy. When he learned that Glen Matlock would tour with Mike Peters (The Alarm), Slim Jim Phantom (Stray Cats), Kirk Brandon (Spear of Destiny), and Billy Duffy (The Cult) as Dead Men Walking, he knew who would want to see a Sex Pistol badly enough to get on a plane to LA. Coupled with rumoured UK guest appearances by Mick Jones (The Clash) and Bruce Watson (Big Country), I had been singing God Save the Queen under my breath for a week when I learned that Matlock would be replaced by Captain Sensible (The Damned). I was crushed.

Crushed, until it took Captain (who loves the Bee-Gees) 15 seconds to charm me and the rest of the thin crowd. The show was at an ill-fitting venue (the House of Blues) in a surreal location ("Downtown Disney") where the bouncers do everything but a retinal scan before granting you access. (Captain would rag on the venue during the course of the night, and DMW played CBGBs to a packed house two nights later.) A bit of a buzz developed when Brian Setzer materialized in the audience, but disappointingly, I never saw Steve Jones (Pistols) who was also there and due to take the stage for the encore, until he apparently got lost in the building.

DMW is very much a Mike Peters project. 45 RPM, about a kid discovering punk and probably the edgiest song the Alarm ever recorded, was for me a highlight of the show (it has also become the anthem for a musical ruse soon to be the subject of a major motion picture; in the film, the song and ensuing events are inspired by the death of Joe Strummer). Still, the night was about four guys sharing the stage and the vocals on some of the great punk/punk-influenced songs they produced...Neat Neat Neat, Never Take Me Alive, Do You Believe in the Westworld, Rumble in Brighton, Smash It Up, Pretty Vacant... It had been a long time since I had seen a band having such a blast on stage. Regardless of how one feels about any of their individual material (I only ever owned one Alarm record), I would get out to see them at any opportunity. There are some great Jonesville Station interviews about the DMW project archived on wfmu.com (a NJ station named the best in the country by Rolling Stone and the Village Voice).

I read the sad news today that Mike Peters' cancer has resurfaced, in a different form.